Genesis 15 · a question people ask
Why cut animals in half and pass between the pieces?
Genesis doesn't explain the ceremony. Jeremiah describes the same act: people who made a covenant "when they cut the calf in two and passed between its parts", and God says he will give them into the hand of their enemies for breaking it (Jeremiah 34:18-20). Protestants read the fire passing between the pieces in two main ways, often together.
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
God binds himself
In Jeremiah, those who passed between the parts were held to what they had promised. Here the text names only the fire passing through, after a deep sleep has fallen on Abram, so God alone takes the promise on himself.
Genesis 15:12 · Genesis 15:17 · Jeremiah 34:18-20
God's presence in fire and smoke
The smoking furnace and flaming torch show God himself, as smoke and fire later mark his presence at Sinai: the mountain "smoked, because the LORD descended on it in fire" (Exodus 19:18).
Genesis 15:17 · Exodus 19:18
The verses
“He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” He brought him all these, and divided them in the middle, and laid each half opposite the other; but he didn’t divide the birds.”
“It came to pass that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold, a smoking furnace and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.”
“I will give the men who have transgressed my covenant, who have not performed the words of the covenant which they made before me when they cut the calf in two and passed between its parts: the princes of Judah, the princes of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, the priests, and all the people of the land, who passed between the parts of the calf. I will even give them into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their life. Their dead bodies will be food for the birds of the sky and for the animals of the earth.”