Drafted by Grok 4.7 on 8 October 2026. First draft. Not independently reviewed. Leningrad Codex, through the Open Scriptures Westminster Leningrad Codex. The written consonants are printed. A Masoretic reading is footnoted when it differs. No Dead Sea reading was substituted unless it was read from a fragment. The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Greek, Syriac, and Latin versions are witnesses, not the default.
1After these things the word of Yahweh came to Abram in a vision: “Do not fear, Abram. I am a shield to you. Your wages are very great.”
2Abram said, “My Lord Yahweh, what will you give me? I go on childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus.”
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- Translation
The Hebrew piles the words: ben mesheq beiti hu dammesek eliezer. Mesheq is not a common word. “Heir of my house” is the sense printed, and “of Damascus” follows the name in the sentence. The exact title is uncertain.
3Abram said, “Look, you have given me no offspring, and a son of my house will be my heir.”
4And look, the word of Yahweh came to him: “This one will not be your heir. One who comes out of your own body, he will be your heir.”
5He brought him outside and said, “Look toward the sky and count the stars, if you can count them.” He said to him, “So will your offspring be.”
6He trusted Yahweh, and he counted it to him as right standing.
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- Translation
He’emin is “he trusted,” “he held it firm.” Tsedaqah is right standing, the status of being in the right. “Righteousness” is the older English word for the same noun, and it is not printed.
7He said to him, “I am Yahweh, who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.”
8He said, “My Lord Yahweh, how will I know that I will possess it?”
9He said to him, “Take for me a three-year-old cow, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”
10He took all these, cut them in two down the middle, and set each piece opposite its other. The birds he did not cut.
11Birds of prey came down on the carcasses, and Abram drove them off.
12As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram, and look, a dread, a great darkness, was falling on him.
13He said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be strangers in a land that is not theirs. They will serve them, and they will oppress them four hundred years.
14But the nation they serve I will judge, and afterward they will come out with great goods.
15You yourself will go to your fathers in peace. You will be buried at a good old age.
16The fourth generation will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.”
17The sun had gone down and it was dark, and look, a smoking fire-pot and a flaming torch passed between those pieces.
18On that day Yahweh cut a covenant with Abram: “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates,
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- Translation
“Cut a covenant” is the verb the Hebrew uses. The pieces in the previous verse are what the cutting is done with.
19the Kenite, the Kenizzite, the Kadmonite,
20the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Rephaim,
21the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Girgashite, and the Jebusite.”