Jubilees

After these things, in the fourth year of this week, on the new moon of the third month, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a dream, saying: "Fear not, Abram. I am your defender and your reward shall be very great."

And he said: "Lord, Lord, what will You give me, seeing that I go childless, and the son of Maseq, the son of my maidservant and Damascus Eliezer, he will be my heir, and You have given me no descendant."

And He said to him: "That one shall not be your heir, but he who shall come from your own bowels; he shall be your heir."

And He brought him outside and said to him: "Look to heaven and count the stars."

And he looked toward heaven, and beheld the stars. And He said to him: "So shall your descendants be."

And he believed in the Lord, and it was counted to him as righteousness.

And He said to him: "I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you the land of the Canaanites to possess it forever. And I will be God to you and to your descendants."

And he said: "Lord, Lord, how shall I know that I shall inherit all this?"

And He said to him: "Bring me a heifer three years old, and a she-goat three years old, and a ram three years old, and a turtledove, and a pigeon."

And he brought them all in the middle of the month, and they dwelt at the Oak of Moreh, which is near Hebron.

And he built an altar there, and sacrificed all these, and poured their blood upon the altar, and divided them in the midst, and laid them one opposite the other; but the birds he did not divide.

And birds came down upon the pieces, and Abram drove them away, and did not allow the birds to touch them.

And it came to pass, when the sun had set, that an ecstasy fell upon Abram, and behold, a dread of great darkness fell upon him, and it was said to Abram: "Know that surely your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and they shall lead them captive, and afflict them four hundred years.

And the nation that holds them captive I will judge, and after that they shall come out with great substance.

And you shall be gathered to your fathers in peace, and be buried in a good old age.

But in the fourth generation they shall return here; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete."

And he awoke from his sleep, and he arose, and the sun had set; and there was a flame, and behold, a smoking furnace, and a flame of fire passed between the pieces.

And on that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: "To your descendants I will give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates. The Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Pharoquites, the Hivites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.

And the day passed, and Abram offered the pieces and the birds and his fruit offerings, and his drink offerings, and the fire devoured them.

And on that day we made a covenant with Abram, just as we had made a covenant with Noah in this month. And Abram renewed the festival and the ordinance for himself forever.

And Abram rejoiced, and told all these things to Sarai his wife, and he believed that he would have an inheritance, but she could not bear it.

And Sarai advised her husband Abram, and said to him: "Go to Hagar, my Egyptian maidservant; perhaps I may bring you descendants through her."

And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai his wife and said to her: "I will go." And Sarai took Hagar, her Egyptian maidservant, and gave her to Abram, her husband, to be his wife.

And he went in to her, and she conceived and bore a son, and he called him by the name of Ishmael, in the fifth year of this week; and this was the eighty-sixth year of Abram's life.