Commentary on Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

There are few texts in the Bible as odd as Genesis 15. The narrative comes to us in a dream-like state as Abram encounters God in a mystical vision. In the vision (or in real life after the vision—it’s ambiguous) Abram performs a strange, bloody ritual, and he witnesses a self-propelled pot of fire and smoke moving through the gauntlet of carcasses. What?!

Right in the middle of all this strangeness, the narrator utters the key line: “[Abram] believed the LORD, and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). This is the declaration seized upon by the apostle Paul in Romans 4 to make his case that God’s salvation is based on “faith” rather than “works.” Despite Paul’s clarity, however, the sentence itself perplexes. What does it mean to “reckon” something? And what is “righteousness” in Abram’s context?

Where did this vision come from?

As with most texts, context is key. Genesis 15 comes on the heels of a military campaign led by Abram—a special-forces rescue of his nephew Lot. Following the successful extraction of Lot and the routing of his captors, Abram had a cultural right to acquire the spoils of victory. But instead, Abram refuses spoils so that God alone can be credited for his wealth (Genesis 14:22–24).

It’s “after these things” (Genesis 15:1) that God approaches Abram in a vision and declares, “I am your shield”—in other words, God affirms Abram’s dependence on God for military and financial success. But what good is wealth to Abram if he has no offspring to inherit it? Remember, our world is generally more individualistic than the world of ancient Israel. For them, the only wealth that mattered was the kind that could stay with the family in perpetuity. Without children, Abram asks God to explain why he should trust in God as his “shield.” 

Reckoning as righteousness

In response, God turns Abram’s attention to the stars and promises that his offspring will be just as numerous. Abram believes God’s promise, and God “reckons” it to him as “righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). “Reckon” is an old-fashioned word that means something like “to calculate.” When someone acts recklessly (in other words, without reckoning), they have failed to calculate the consequences of their actions. 

The Hebrew word ḥashav has much the same sense; it is a term often used for calculating the appropriate rate of exchange between money, goods, et cetera. Ḥashav fits well with God’s invitation for Abram to “count” the stars (a different word, safar, but also a mathematical term). Abram calculated God’s promise and trusted; and God calculated Abram’s belief as equivalent to “righteousness.”

Righteousness, tsedaqah, in this context is not an abstract moral goodness. It is a relational term. Righteousness is “doing right by” your end of a relationship. When Abram believed God’s promise, God considered it an act of faithful loyalty. Abram’s trust, taking God at their word, was his way of being a good friend to God—and God responds by reaffirming the divine intention to give Abram the land of Canaan as his ancestral inheritance (Genesis 15:7).

Faith and doubt

Ironically, Abram’s gut reaction to God’s lavish promises is … doubt! Many readers zero in on Abram’s powerful expression of faith in verse 6 and completely miss his equally passionate doubt in verse 8. Preachers will do well to help their congregations put these pieces together. Most of us who trust God, if we are honest, also experience doubt and need reassurance. For Abram, these two realities coexist, and the expression of his doubt does not cancel out his “righteous” faith.

Abram believes God’s promise but does not understand it. Abram’s response (“How am I to know?”) is perhaps echoed in the virgin Mary’s response when she is told that she will become pregnant with the Messiah: “How can this be … ?” (Luke 1:24). And when a father brought his troubled son to Jesus for healing: “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). Belief is one thing; knowledge is another. In Hebrew, the verb “to know,” yada‘, almost always has a sense of experiential knowing—not just head-knowledge. In asking to “know” that God will come through, Abram is asking God for an experience, something tangible, so he can fuel his trust with knowledge.

God does not censure Abram’s doubt. Rather, God is ready to give him the experiential knowledge he needs. God invites Abram to prepare a covenant-making ceremony. This is the bloody preparation of several carcasses, bisected and arranged in a kind of gauntlet. While this is strange to us moderns, this scenario would have been recognizable to ancient audiences. Such ceremonies were sometimes part of treaty-making between political leaders. When the two covenanting parties passed between the bloody pieces, it solemnified their oaths toward each other—essentially invoking a death curse if either party proves unfaithful.

Remarkably, Abram witnessed God (manifested as smoke and fire) passing alone through the gauntlet! God unilaterally bound Godself to the promise made to Abram, upon pain of death. This was the tangible experience Abram needed. Notice how much God required Abram to be involved in this process: finding, slaughtering, and arranging the animals, shooing away the buzzards. Whether all this work happened within Abram’s vision or in real life is left unclear in the text; but in either scenario, the narrative emphasizes Abram’s participation.

Preachers might find a connection here between Abram’s “knowledge” and the ways that God involves us as well in the confirmation of God’s word to us. We do not see God’s promises fulfilled by sitting on our hands. Moving forward in faith provides the context to experience God’s faithfulness.

Doubt and faith coexist in all of us. One of the invitations offered by this enigmatic passage is to resist the paralysis of doubt. Abram follows God’s instructions in the midst of his unknowing. And by following despite his doubts, Abram experiences a tangible reassurance of God’s relational fidelity.