Reflections on Genesis 15

Genesis 15 (Contemporary English Version)
1. Later the LORD spoke to Abram in a vision, "Abram, don't be afraid! I will protect you and reward you greatly."
   
2. But Abram answered, "LORD All-Powerful, you have given me everything I could ask for, except children. And when I die, Eliezer of Damascus will get all I own.
   
3. You have not given me any children, and this servant of mine will inherit everything."
   
4. The LORD replied, "No, he won't! You will have a son of your own, and everything you have will be his."
   
5. Then the LORD took Abram outside and said, "Look at the sky and see if you can count the stars. That's how many descendants you will have."
   
6. Abram believed the LORD, and the LORD was pleased with him.
   
7. The LORD said to Abram, "I brought you here from Ur in Chaldea, and I gave you this land."
   
8. Abram asked, "LORD God, how can I know the land will be mine?"
   
9. Then the LORD told him, "Bring me a three-year-old cow, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a dove, and a young pigeon."
   
10. Abram obeyed the LORD. Then he cut the animals in half and laid the two halves of each animal opposite each other on the ground. But he did not cut the doves and pigeons in half.
    
11. And when birds came down to eat the animals, Abram chased them away.
    
12. As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and everything became dark and frightening.
    
13. Then the LORD said: Abram, you will live to an old age and die in peace. But I solemnly promise that your descendants will live as foreigners in a land that doesn't belong to them. They will be forced into slavery and abused for four hundred years. But I will terribly punish the nation that enslaves them, and they will leave with many possessions.
    
14. (SEE 15:13)
    
15. (SEE 15:13)
    
16. Four generations later, your descendants will return here and take this land, because only then will the people who live here be so sinful that they deserve to be punished.
    
17. Sometime after sunset, when it was very dark, a smoking cooking pot and a flaming fire went between the two halves of each animal.
    
18. At that time the LORD made an agreement with Abram and told him: I will give your descendants the land east of the Shihor River on the border of Egypt as far as the Euphrates River.
    
19. They will possess the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites,
    
20. the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaites,
    
21. the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.
    
    

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    Abraham, the father of our faith, experienced in the accounts of this chapter a lapse of faith. From it, we learn that God is forgiving, but we also learn that there can be unpleasant repercussions from our lapses in faith despite God's forgiveness.
    
    Humanly speaking, what Sarai and Abram did in this account are understandable. Ten years after God had given His promise of many descendants from Abram and Sarai, they were still childless. Therefore, they decided to help God with His promise. We are prone to measure faith in terms of actions. That is, what we are willing to do based on our faith in God. But often the greatest demonstration of our faith is to wait upon God, trusting, despite the passage of time, that God will do what He said we would do. Besides being a greater demonstration of faith, waiting can also be more difficult than taking action. In fact, it is action we turn to, as did Sarai and Abram, when we have given up on waiting. We can no longer wait so we act. And in our acting, we take things into our own hands and out of God's hands.
    
    Sarai decided not only that God was not going to give her a child in fulfillment of His promise, but she concluded that God was restraining her from bearing a child. It was in this loss of faith that she enacted her own plan. Thus she suggested her husband sleep with her handmaid and have the promised descendant through her. This was a common practice of the time for the wife's handmaid to serve as a proxy for bearing children when they were childless. By turning to common practices when we take God's plans into our own hands, we more easily deceive ourselves that we are acting acceptably.
    
    Once Hagar, Sarai's handmaid, was pregnant human nature took over. Actually, human nature took over when Sarai decided to take the situation into her own hands and Abram agreed to the plan. Now human nature was following its natural course. Once Hagar was pregnant she thought herself better than Sarai since Sarai could not become pregnant, and Sarai retaliated by treating Hagar harshly. Because of the harsh treatment, Hagar ran away. At this point God intervened and told Hagar to return and submit once again to her mistress. God also told her she would become the matriarch of the Ishmaelites.
    
    It was through Hagar's obedience, not Sarai and Abram's, that God's plan got back on track. Obeying God's instructions to go back and submit and telling of her experience with God was undoubtedly a reprimand to Abram and Sarai of their mistaken actions. Although Abram and Sarai submitted themselves once again to God's plan, the damage was done. The repercussions of this lapse in faith continues to plague Abraham's descendants in Israel through the descendants of Hagar.