God promised that Abram and Sarai would become the “mother and father of many nations”, as their descendents would last through time thanks to God’s blessing and, despite mass oppression, would one day rise to become kings and rulers of the land of Israel. However, due to the age of Abram and Sarai, they were skeptical, which eventually led to them distrusting God to the point that their lives were filled by sin for a time. During this period Sarai had their servant, Hagar, go to Abram, who impregnated her with what would become Ishmael, blessed by God to last through the generations despite the hate he would face from his family and outsiders. When Abram and Sarai returned to the path of God, God asked Abram to perform a blood sacrifice of animals - a three-year old calf, goat, ram, dove, and pigeon, of which he cut all the animals but the birds in half and laid them side by side - as part of a ritual to bind them to a covenant. This covenant promised that Abram, now Abraham’s blood would last, although they would be enslaved for four hundred years as the sins of the Amorites were not to their fullest potential, but in the end the Amorites would receive punishment while his descendants would rise to power and receive riches and such. As a token of this, all future male descendants were to be circumcised by the eighth day of life to ensure that it stayed “within the flesh” of Abraham’s descendants. Within a year of sealing the covenant, Sarah conceived a child, beginning the start of the birth of “many
God promised that Abram and Sarai would become the “mother and father of many nations”, as their descendents would last through time thanks to God’s blessing and, despite mass oppression, would one day rise to become kings and rulers of the land of Israel. However, due to the age of Abram and Sarai, they were skeptical, which eventually led to them distrusting God to the point that their lives were filled by sin for a time. During this period Sarai had their servant, Hagar, go to Abram, who impregnated her with what would become Ishmael, blessed by God to last through the generations despite the hate he would face from his family and outsiders. When Abram and Sarai returned to the path of God, God asked Abram to perform a blood sacrifice of animals - a three-year old calf, goat, ram, dove, and pigeon, of which he cut all the animals but the birds in half and laid them side by side - as part of a ritual to bind them to a covenant. This covenant promised that Abram, now Abraham’s blood would last, although they would be enslaved for four hundred years as the sins of the Amorites were not to their fullest potential, but in the end the Amorites would receive punishment while his descendants would rise to power and receive riches and such. As a token of this, all future male descendants were to be circumcised by the eighth day of life to ensure that it stayed “within the flesh” of Abraham’s descendants. Within a year of sealing the covenant, Sarah conceived a child, beginning the start of the birth of “many