The Covenant with Abram

1 After these things, in the fourth year of this week, on the new moon of the third month, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a dream, saying: 'Do not fear, Abram; I am your defender, and your reward will be extremely great.' 2 And he said: 'Lord, Lord, what will you give me, since I remain childless, and the son of Maseq, the son of my female servant, is the Dammasek Eliezer: he will be my heir, and to me you have given no offspring.' 3 And he said to him: 'This (man) will not be your heir, but one that will come out of your own body; he will be your heir.' 4 And He brought him outside, and said to him: 'Look toward heaven and count the stars if you are able to count them.' 5 And he looked toward heaven, and saw the stars. And He said to him: 'So your descendants shall be.' 6 And he believed in the Lord, and it was counted to him for righteousness.⁠a 7 And He said to him: 'I am the Lord that brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you the land of the Canaanites to possess it forever; and I will be God to you and to your descendants after you.' 8 And he said: 'Lord, Lord, how shall I know that I shall inherit (it)?' 9 And He said to him: 'Take Me a heifer of three years, and a goat of three years, and a sheep of three years, and a turtledove, and a pigeon.' 10 And he took all these in the middle of the month and he lived at the oak of Mamre, which is near Hebron. 11 And he built there an altar, and sacrificed all these; and he poured their blood upon the altar, and cut them in half, and laid them opposite each other; but he did not divide the birds. 12 And birds came down upon the pieces, and Abram drove them away, and did not allow the birds to touch them. 13 And when the sun had set, Abram fell into a trance, and then a horror of great darkness fell upon him, and it was said to Abram: 'Know for certain that your descendants shall be strangers in a land (that is) not theirs, and they shall enslave them, and oppress them four hundred years. 14 And the nation also that will enslave them I will judge, and after that they shall come out from there with great possessions. 15 And you shall go to your fathers in peace, and be buried in a good old age. 16 But in the fourth generation they shall return here; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.' 17 And he awoke from his sleep, and he got up, and the sun had set; and there was a flame, and then a furnace was smoking, and a flame of fire passed between the pieces. 18 And on that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: 'To your descendants I will give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Perizzites, and the Rephaim,⁠b the Phakorites, and the Hivites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites. 19 And the day passed, and Abram offered the pieces, and the birds, and their fruit offerings, and their drink offerings, and the fire devoured them. 20 And on that day we made a covenant with Abram, according as we had covenanted with Noah in this month; and Abram renewed the festival and ordinance for himself forever.

Hagar and Ishmael

21 And Abram rejoiced, and made all these things known to Sarai his wife; and he believed that he would have offspring, but she did not bear. 22 And Sarai advised her husband Abram, and said to him: 'Go in to Hagar, my Egyptian female servant: it may be that I shall give you offspring through her.' 23 And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai his wife, and said to her, 'Do (so).' And Sarai took Hagar, her female servant, the Egyptian, and gave her to Abram, her husband, to be his wife. 24 And he went in to her, and she conceived and bore him a son, and he named him Ishmael, in the fifth year of this week [1965]; and this was the eighty-sixth year in the life of Abram.