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287 the word of Yahweh came unto Abram in an envisioning" (Genesis 15:1). "Fear not, Abram," the Lord said, "I am thy shield, [and] thy reward shall be exceedingly great." But Abram answered that in the absence of an heir, what value would any reward be? So "the word of Yahweh came to him," assuring him that he would have his own natural son, and offspring as many as the stars of heaven, who shall in- herit the land on which he stands. To leave no doubt in the mind of Abram that no matter what this Promise would come to pass, the deity speaking to Abram revealed his identity to the childless Abram. Until this point we had to take the word of the biblical narrative that it was Yahweh who had spoken or appeared to Abram. Now, for the first time, the Lord identified himself by name: "Tam Yahweh who had brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land, to inherit it." And Abram said: "My Lord Yahweh, By what shall I know that I shall inherit it?" Thereupon, to convince the doubting Abram, Yahweh ' ‘cut a covenant with Abram that day, to wit: To thy seed have I given this land, from the Brook of Egypt to the River Euphra- tes, the great river." The "cutting of the covenant" between Yahweh—"God Supreme, Possessor of Heaven and Earth"—and the blessed Patriarch involved a magical ritual whose likes are not men- tioned anywhere else in the Bible, either before or afterward. The Patriarch was instructed to take a heifer, a she-goat, a ram, a turtledove, and a pigeon and cut them apart and place the pieces opposite each other. "And when the sun went down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a horror, dark and great, fell upon him." The prophecy—a destiny by which Yahweh declared himself bound—was then proclaimed: After a sojourn of four hundred years in bondage in a foreign land, the descendants of Abram shall inherit the Promised Land. No sooner did the Lord pronounce this oracle than "a burning The Greatest Theophany