God’s Covenant with Abraham
about 2080 BC to 2067 BC, traditional dateTraditional date
In Genesis God binds himself by covenant to give Abraham descendants and the land of Canaan. Abraham believes, and it is counted to him as righteousness. Years later God renames him and gives circumcision as the sign of the covenant.
Abram had settled by the oaks of Mamre at Hebron (Genesis 13:18). He was still childless. Genesis tells of a vision in which the Lord promised him that a son of his own would be his heir, led him outside and told him to count the stars: “So will your offspring be” (Genesis 15:1–5). Genesis adds: “He believed in Yahweh, who credited it to him for righteousness” (Genesis 15:6).
Abram asked how he could know that he would possess the land. At God’s direction he cut a heifer, a goat and a ram in two and laid the halves opposite each other. At sunset a deep sleep fell on him, and he was told that his descendants would be foreigners and slaves in another land for four hundred years and would then come out with great wealth. When it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between the pieces. “In that day Yahweh made a covenant with Abram”, giving his offspring the land from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates (Genesis 15:7–21).
Abram then had a son, Ishmael, by Sarai’s servant Hagar (Genesis 16:1–4) (Genesis 16:15–16). When he was ninety-nine, Genesis says, God appeared to him again, renamed him Abraham, “the father of a multitude of nations”, and promised an everlasting covenant with him and his descendants: he would be their God and give them Canaan (Genesis 17:1–8). Its sign was to be the circumcision of every male, at eight days old (Genesis 17:9–14). Sarai was renamed Sarah and promised a son, Isaac, with whom the covenant would continue; Ishmael too would be blessed and become a great nation (Genesis 17:15–21). That same day Abraham was circumcised with Ishmael and all the men of his household (Genesis 17:23–27).
The rest of the Bible keeps returning to this covenant. When Israel is enslaved in Egypt, God “remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob” (Exodus 2:24); the Psalms recall it (Psalm 105:8–11), and so does the father of John the Baptist in the song Luke gives him (Luke 1:72–73). Paul rests his teaching on Abram’s faith: he was counted righteous before he was circumcised, and so is the father of all who believe (Romans 4:3) (Romans 4:9–12). The promise, Paul says, came 430 years before the law and is not cancelled by it (Galatians 3:16–18). James quotes the same verse to show that Abraham’s faith was completed by what he did (James 2:21–24).
How this is dated
Traditional date. From later tradition or from internal biblical chronology, with no outside anchor.
Genesis does not date the covenant scene of chapter 15. The narrative sets it after Abram’s arrival in Canaan at seventy-five and before the birth of Ishmael, when he was eighty-six (Genesis 12:4) (Genesis 16:16). The covenant of circumcision is dated to his ninety-ninth year (Genesis 17:1) (Genesis 17:24).
On the chronology explained at the Call of Abraham, which adds up the Bible’s own figures and puts Abraham’s birth about 2166 BC, the first scene falls between about 2091 and 2080 BC and the second in 2067 BC. Nothing outside the Bible dates either, and the other reckonings described there would move both by the same amount.
Primary sources
In context
Grows out of
- about 2091 BC, traditional date
Leads to
- about 2050 BC, traditional date
- c. 1446 or c. 1260 BC, traditional date
- about 1000 BC, traditional date