4. Then he heard the Lord speaking to him again: “This slave Eliezer will not inherit your property; your own son will be your heir.”
5. The Lord took him outside and said, “Look at the sky and try to count the stars; you will have as many descendants as that.”
6. Abram put his trust in the Lord, and because of this the Lord was pleased with him and accepted him.
7. Then the Lord said to him, “I am the Lord, who led you out of Ur in Babylonia, to give you this land as your own.”
8. But Abram asked, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that it will be mine?”
9. He answered, “Bring me a cow, a goat, and a ram, each of them three years old, and a dove and a pigeon.”
10. Abram brought the animals to God, cut them in half, and placed the halves opposite each other in two rows; but he did not cut up the birds.
11. Vultures came down on the bodies, but Abram drove them off.
12. When the sun was going down, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and fear and terror came over him.
13. The Lord said to him, “Your descendants will be strangers in a foreign land; they will be slaves there and will be treated cruelly for 400 years.