Essay for Genesis 15:1

Amid scenes of great drama and almost mystery, a number of significant motifs are presented: (1) Avram’s expressions of doubt that God will keep his promise about descendants (thus heightening the tension and final miracle of Yitzhak’s birth); (2) the linking of the Patriarch to the event of the Exodus centuries later; and (3) the “cutting” of a covenant, in a manner well known in the ancient world. This last motif, especially with its setting of “great darkness” and “night-blackness,” takes Avram far beyond the earlier figure of Noah into a special and fateful relationship with God.