GENESIS 15, or, "Looks like Eliezer of Damascus is SOL"

Abram worries about dying without a child for an heir, God assures him he won't and reiterates that he will have many descendants who will own lots of land.

I was talking with my girlfriend about this blog, particularly about what I was reading about Abraham, and she asked how God communicates with Abraham. Is he a voice in Abraham's head? Does he appear as a man, like George Burns in "Oh God"? An angel maybe?

It's a good question. How does God appear to the people he communicates with? Most of the time the Bible simply tells us "God said..." but doesn't specify how; I've always pictured those passages as God speaking in some kind of booming, disembodied voice. The one exception I can recall is in Genesis 3, where it's written that God was "walking" through the Garden of Eden before he speaks to Adam, implying a physical form.

Here in Genesis 15, God appears to Abram in a vision. It's up for interpretation exactly what that vision was like, but it's safe to imply that Abram seeing some form of God as they spoke.

Abram tells God about his worry that he will die without a child, and have to leave all his fortunes to his servant Eliezer instead of a blood relative. God assures him that he will have a child, and that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky.

Abram wants to know how he can be certain that this will happen. God asks him for several animal sacrifices. Afterwards, Abram falls into a deep sleep, where God tells Abram that "descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. 14 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions" This is, I assume, a reference to Moses in Exodus. More on that later.

God also gives Abram the exact boundries of the land he is promised: "To your descendants I give this land, from the river [d] of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates- 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites" That would be where Israel is today, except with wider borders.

Point of interest: Nowhere in Genesis is it outlined the exact ritual of sacrificing animals, yet Abram does it anyway. Where did animal sacrifice come from and how does Abram know how to do it? It seems like a tenant of the idolatrous religions that God expressly wanted Abram to break away from. And if Abram and others did it in the old Testament, why aren't we still ritualistically slaughtering animals today?

In fact, the Jewish word for animal sacrifices in the Torah is "Korbanot". Korbanot was a regular fixture in Jewish religious practice until the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, where korbanot were offered. With Temple services no longer at the center of Judaism, the religion turned to text study, prayer, and personal observance, and thus korbanot offerings ceased to be seen as necessary. There is also a scriptural basis for the discontinuation of koranot in passages such as "Doing charity and justice is more desirable to the Lord than sacrifice" (Proverbs 21:3).

Korbanot may be reinstated after the construction of the prophesied Third Temple. But given the current state of the Israel, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Don't know your Amorites from your Canaanites? Don't worry, here's a map of the land God promises to Abram in Gen 15: