A Smoking Furnace and Burning Lamp Went Between Divided Animal Pieces – Genesis Chapter 15
by Sabrina Dawkins
After Abram asked God how he could be sure that he would inherit the land given to him, God told him to take a turtledove, a young pigeon, and a three-year-old heifer, she goat, and ram. Abram cut the three beasts in half, but he did not divide the birds. When the fowls came down to eat the carcasses, Abram scared them away. In Deuteronomy 28:26 Moses told the Israelites that if they would not listen to the voice of God and instead disobeyed his statutes and commandments, they would be cursed; and among the curses, their carcasses would be food for the birds and the beasts and no man would scare them away. And in Jeremiah 34:18-20 God said that the eunuchs, priests, princes, and all the people of Judah and Jerusalem who went between the parts of the calf and then broke his covenant, he would give them to their enemies and their dead bodies would be food for the birds and the beasts.
So the carcasses of the animals Abram has prepared actually symbolize what will happen to his flesh offspring if they break the covenant, decide to disobey God, and go and worship other gods. And father Abram would not be there to drive the birds away from their corpses. Birds of the air can represent evil spirits. In Matthew 13:4 the fowls and in verse 19 the wicked one, is said to snatch away the word of the kingdom from hearers who don’t understand it. And in Genesis 15:11 the fowls attempted to eat the sacrificed creatures.
From a purely spiritual perspective, the divided beast carcasses represented Abram’s flesh offspring who had received the mark of the beast, who had rejected guidance from God and now were dead in their sins and completely open to demonic possession. But Abram, as a follower of God, as the good father, drove away the evil birds, the evil spirits, from his seed.
As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and terrible darkness befell him. God foretold of Abram’s offspring being slaves in Egypt. He told him that he would die in peace and at an old age, and that his offspring would return to the land in the fourth generation. And during the darkness, a smoking furnace and burning lamp went between the divided parts of the beasts. This was God’s covenant with Abram to give him the Promised Land. And in Isaiah 48:10 God said that he would refine Israel in a “furnace of affliction.” Jesus described himself as being the light and that those who follow him will not walk in darkness, they will have the light that gives life (John 8:12). So in passing through the corpses of beasts as a furnace and lamp in darkness, God’s refining process and his light transform our corrupt flesh, created on the same day as the beasts’ flesh (Genesis 1:24-27), into vessels that can hold in between the light and refining process of the Holy Spirit.