(Reading: Genesis 15:1-21)

To understand Abraham properly, one needs to understand the centrality of God’s covenant with Abraham. As the Fourth Eucharistic Prayer tells us, “Again and again [God] offered a covenant to man and taught him to hope for salvation.” God already reached out to catch man at the Fall, promising (in the “Protoevangelium,” Genesis 3:15) the offspring of the woman who would crush the ancient serpent’s head. In the future, God will lead the Hebrews out of Egyptian slavery to make a covenant with them, “You will be my people and I will be your God,” whose content is the Ten Commandments. And the New Testament (e.g., Hebrews 11:8-10) will repeatedly return to the covenant God made with Abraham as “our father in faith” (First Eucharistic Prayer).

Covenants (berith, בְּרִית) are solemn agreements. They can be between equals or, more often, between a superior and a subordinate, e.g., God and man. The covenants set the terms for each side, to which each side pledges his life. That is why there is always a sacrifice involved in making a covenant, as one side offers blood — the seat of life as symbolic of his own life — that the other accepts. We see that clearly in the split animals Abraham lays upon the altar. The flaming brazier that appears at night moving among those animals signifies God’s acceptance of the covenant.

God asked Abraham in trust to leave Ur, to go to an unknown land, and to put his faith in God’s goodness. It’s always easy to have faith when no risk is involved, but Abram (still his name at this point) risked everything in this journey. God has given him material possessions and placed him on a land he promised. But Abram still has no offspring, no heir to inherit all these blessings, and he is convinced they will pass to his senior steward, Eliezer of Damascus. It is then that God promises him a son, although it’s not clear how that child would come into the world. Indeed, God not only promises Abram a son but that his descendants “would be as numerous as the stars of the sky or the sands of the desert,” the greatest multiples of things in Abram’s world. And to these descendants would also belong the land God promises.

God makes great promises, but he also signals tribulation. Abram’s descendants would also be aliens in a foreign land (Egypt) where they would be enslaved, but that God would not leave them in servitude but restore them to the land.

Abram builds an altar, sacrifices animals as signs of his commitment to this covenant, and keeps guard at the altar so that the sacrifice remains intact, i.e., not stolen by birds of prey. Then the Genesis writer notes that a “deep sleep” and “darkness” (15:12) fall upon Abram, not unlike the “deep sleep” that fell upon Adam with the creation of Eve. This signals great moments in salvation history as well as the primacy of God’s action: man does not bargain with God but he, in his mercy, enters into relationship with us.

Because Abram was ready to do what God asked of him, not mindlessly but out of trust that “he who made the promise is faithful” (Hebrews 10:23). And it is that covenant that remains the cornerstone of Jewish identity as well as the foundation into which we Gentiles, the wild olive branch, has been engrafted (Romans 11:17). Yes, God does remain faithful: not only did Abram see a son of his and his wife’s bodies, but the Lord has given him millions of spiritual sons and daughters over the ages.

God’s covenant with Abraham is depicted in a medieval illustration from a manuscript from around the 13th century, Rudolf von Ems’ depiction in the Weltchronik (World History). Von Ems lived in what we would today call Austria, the manuscript comes from what today is Bavaria. The Weltchronik was intended to be a chronicle of human history, which did not separate out salvation from secular history. The manuscript is held by the Getty Museum: the image is courtesy of Getty’s Open Content Program.

The illustration does not depict the sacrifice that established the covenant but, rather, God’s promises to Abraham in that covenant. Abram is shown coming out of an open door … his house, his old city of Ur, himself. He is in conversation with God, who breaks into his world (and, in typical medieval iconography, is shown on a gold background). The Father points to the promise, which Abram does as well: your descendants will exceed the stars of the sky. Abram’s eyes are slightly averted, for one does not look directly on God. And Abram shows himself the man of faith of which Hebrews speaks (11:8-19), for which God rewards him … and, thanks to him, us.