Whereby Shall I Know

And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness. Paul builds a doctrine on that sentence, and the sentence itself is a single line. Read on two verses and Abram says this: LORD God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?

The man just counted righteous for believing asks for proof, and is not rebuked. What he is handed is a shopping list. Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon. He cuts them in half, lays the pieces facing each other, leaves the birds whole, and then spends the afternoon driving vultures off the meat, which is the least ceremonial sentence in the chapter. And when the fowls came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away.

What the arrangement was for shows up in Jeremiah, where covenant breakers are described as the men that have transgressed my covenant, when they cut the calf in twain, and passed between the parts thereof. Both parties walked between the halves; that was the signature. So at sundown a deep sleep falls on Abram, and a horror of great darkness with it, and while he is under, a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces. One party walked. The chapter closes with a second list, the ten nations of the land, itemised down to the Girgashites, promised to a childless man by the party that signed alone.

So what did God do with a request for evidence from a man he had already reckoned righteous? He staged something in the dark and took the whole oath onto himself. Which leaves the question you have been holding at arm's length: what is it you have been ashamed of asking for?

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 329 is Poor in Spirit (Matthew 5:3).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two