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LXX Genesis

Septuagint

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Chapter 15

1 And after these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, Do not fear, Abram, I shield you, your reward shall be very great. 2 And Abram said, Master, what will you give me? whereas I am departing without a child, but the son of Masek my home-born female slave, this Eliezer of Damascus is my heir. 3 And Abram said, Since you have given me no seed, my home-born servant shall succeed me. 4 And immediately there was a voice of the Lord to him, saying, This shall not be your heir; but he that shall come out of you shall be your heir. 5 And he brought him out and said to him, Look up now to heaven, and count the stars, if you shall be able to number them fully, and he said,⁠ Thus shall your seed be. 6 And Abram believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.⁠ 7 And he said to him, I am God that brought you out of the land of the Chaldeans, so as to give you this land to inherit. 8 And he said, Master and Lord, how shall I know that I shall inherit it? 9 And he said to him, Take for me a heifer in her third year, and a she-goat in her third year, and a ram in his third year, and a dove and a pigeon. 10 So he took to him all these, and divided them in the midst, and set them opposite to each other, but the birds he did not divide. 11 And birds came down upon the bodies, even upon the divided parts of them,⁠ and Abram sat down by them. 12 And about sunset a trance fell upon Abram, and look! a great gloomy terror falls upon him. 13 And it was said to Abram, You shall surely know that your seed shall be a temporary resident in a land not their own, and they shall enslave them, and afflict them, and humble them four hundred years. 14 And the nation which they shall serve I will judge; and after this, they shall come forth here with much property. 15 But you shall depart to your fathers in peace, buried in a good old age. 16 And in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the sins of the Amorites are not yet filled up, even until now. 17 And when the sun was about to set, there was a flame, and look, a smoking furnace and lamps of fire, which passed between these divided pieces. 18 In that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, To your seed I will give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates. 19 The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, 20 and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaim, 21 and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Hivites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.

Texts in conversation

Compare LXX Genesis 15:5 and Galatians 3:16

Septuagint · New Testament

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Summary

Genesis 15 says Abraham’s seed will be as many as the stars, meaning many descendants. In Galatians, Paul breaks a grammatical rule to apply it to one person, Jesus, basing this on the singular form of the word even though it means a large group.

Passages

LXX Genesis 15:5

Septuagint
4 And immediately there was a voice of the Lord to him, saying, This shall not be your heir; but he that shall come out of you shall be your heir. 5 And he brought him out and said to him, Look up now to heaven, and count the stars, if you shall be able to number them fully, and he said, Thus shall your seed be. 6 And Abram believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.
300–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Genesis

Galatians 3:16

New Testament
15 Brothers and sisters, I offer an example from everyday life: When a covenant has been ratified, even though it is only a human contract, no one can set it aside or add anything to it. 16 Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his descendant. Scripture does not say, “and to the descendants,” referring to many, but “and to your descendant,” referring to one, who is Christ. 17 What I am saying is this: The law that came 430 years later does not cancel a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to invalidate the promise.
48–55 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Galatians

References

"... Here Paul claims that God’s covenant promise to Abraham’s progeny was not intended for his numerous descendants (i.e., the people of Israel), but for only one of them: Jesus. Paul supports this extraordinarily implausible assertion by making two interpretive moves, one explicit and one covert. The explicit move is to draw attention to a point of grammar: the noun “offspring” (literally, “seed,” sperma in Greek) is singular in form, not plural. Despite the fact that “seed” is a collective noun in Greek (as well as in English), Paul here insinuates that God had hidden a secret meaning in plain sight by using the grammatically singular form of the word in his promise to Abraham ... There are three scenes in Genesis in which Yahweh makes promises about Abraham’s seed: Genesis 15:5, 17:4–8, and 22:17–18. Each scene uses the singular collective noun “seed” (zera’ in Hebrew, sperma in the Septuagint), and the content of each promise is that Abraham will have innumerable descendants ... Out of those three scenes Paul extracts, with surgical precision, only the words “your seed,” and on that basis argues that the promises to Abraham’s offspring were meant for only one man. We can see why Paul does not quote or describe what God promised Abraham, because Paul’s interpretation contradicts the plain sense of what God said in each scene. Paul belabors the point that the word “seed” is singular in form, but he is perfectly aware that the word is plural in meaning, for that is how he himself uses it a few paragraphs later ..."
Robert J. Miller, Helping Jesus Fulfill Prophecy (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2016), 208–209.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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LXX Genesis 15:5 and Galatians 3:16

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