Глава 15

After this, God appeared to Abram in a vision and said: “Your reward will be great (Gen. 15:1) for your advancement in righteousness and for your deliverance of the captives.” “The verb is Avram: ...what mi dasi? I am going away without children... but my household will be my heir... I took him out and said to him: look at the sky and consider the stars, if you can destroy me. And he said: so shall your seed be. And Abram believed... and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:2–3, 5–6), and, moreover, as great righteousness. Since he believed something that was inconceivable, which not every person could believe, it was imputed to him as the truth. Having praised Abram for his faith, God “said to him: I (am) the God who knew you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit. And he said: ...by what means will I understand how the imams will inherit it?” (Gen.15:7-8). Some say that because of Abram’s doubt in the promise, it was later said: “He who knows, hang him, that your seed may be found in a land that is not his own” (Gen. 15:13). But let those who affirm this know with what faith Abram at the same time accepted the promise that his seed would be as numerous as the sand of the sea. If Abram believed what was much more important - namely, that from him alone and from one barren and obsolete Sarah there would come forth a seed as numerous as sand, then, of course, he who did not doubt the greater did not doubt the less, that is, that his seed would inherit the earth. If he had doubted, then why would God have told him: “Take... a young girl of three years old, and a goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove and a dove” (Gen. 15:9). This was what was said to Abram at night, and during the day he did it, and from morning to evening he stood, driving away the birds that flocked from his sacrifice. And now, after fire descended on his acceptable sacrifice in the evening, God appeared to him and spoke about the transmigration of his seed. If God had spoken this to him as punishment, then his sacrifice would not have been accepted, and God would not have made a covenant with him on that day, would not have promised him on that day that ten nations would be enslaved by his seed, and would not have said that he himself would go to his fathers in a good old age. God spoke all this to Abram on that very day, because “Abram believed... and it was credited to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). How then do they say that on this day, for lack of faith, punishment was pronounced on the seed of the one who was awarded great rewards for faith discovered on that same day? So, Abram believed the impossible, that from Sarah’s matured (decrepit, ancient) and almost dead womb a whole world of people would emerge. He asked about the inheritance of the land not in the sense of whether it would happen, but how it would happen. He saw that the land of Canaan had kings and armies, saw that it was filled with inhabitants, and now he hears that it will not be given to him, but to his seed, and therefore he wants to know how everything should be accomplished, although not in his time, how it will be, how his seed will enter this land and receive it as an inheritance for themselves. Will the kings, Abram thinks, destroy each other, or will other nations come, destroy its inhabitants and make the land empty for us, or will my seed become powerful and come and destroy the inhabitants of the earth and receive it as an inheritance, or will the land swallow up the inhabitants for their deeds, or will the inhabitants themselves migrate to another country out of hunger, prompted by some rumor or something else? So Abram, when he asked God, did not doubt the truth of the promise, but only wanted to know in which of these ways his seed would receive the land as an inheritance. But God knew what Abram wanted, and along with what he wanted, he also revealed to him what he did not ask for. By the fact that Abram drove away the birds of prey from the sacrifice prepared for him, God showed him that his seed would suffer for their sins, but through the prayers of the righteous they would be saved. In the image of a fiery furnace descending from heaven, God made him understand that salvation would be sent from heaven when there were no righteous people among them. The three-year-old girl, the three-year-old goat and the three-year-old ram depicted either that the descendants of Abram would be delivered from slavery after three generations, or that kings, priests and prophets would arise from among them. The division of the animals into sexes marked the division of the descendants of Abram into tribes, and the fact that the birds were not divided meant their mutual consent. Having shown this to Abram, God said: “You know, hang up (which is what you wanted to know), for your seed will be lost in a land that is not yours.” Your descendants will not go there as captives, but will migrate on the beasts of burden and the young men they have. “And I shall servile... four hundred years” (Gen. 15:13). They would not have even begged to be taken out of there if they had not been subjected to severe slavery. “But to the tongue that they will work with, I judge: to this day they will come forth with much wealth. You will go to your father... in your old age you will be kinder. In the fourth generation these will return." And the added: “the sins of the Amorites have not been fulfilled until now” (Gen. 15:14-16) - shows that the measure of sins has not yet been fulfilled, for which the Amorites would in truth be subjected to final destruction by the sword. “A dream attacked Abram” (Gen. 15:12). Just as a dream fell on Abimelech (Gen. 20:3), so a dream fell on Abram, when God appeared to him, made a covenant with him, saying that ten nations would be in slavery to his seed, and that the whole earth, from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates, would be given as an inheritance to his seed. You might be interested in: