On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: “To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates — the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.” (Gen 15,18-21)

When Abram heard God and accepted Him as his own, he perceived His all-surpassing power. The neighborhood, however, did not worship this God, and so it remained more or less his personal matter. He therefore practiced his religion within the circle of his family and "farm." Gradually, however, he became more and more aware that this God was not different from others in name only, but that he surpassed all others in power. This knowledge continued to grow and reached a climax when God made the first covenant with him and told him that he would remain the God of his offspring forever, and that all this would only fully begin in 400 years! God will give Abram's descendants the territory from the Nile to the Euphrates, because of the iniquity of its inhabitants. Abram knew most of these nations and was a minority among them - he could not imagine where they would go from there? (So it must have sounded a bit of science-fiction for him.)

The Euphrates formed a natural boundary, literaly or imaginary, for the inhabitants of that time; they perceived the world as "here" or "there" beyond the River. Yet the vast majority of them had never been to Zaeuphrates - they knew the area only from stories when caravans, filled with goods from the Far East, arrived from there. Abram, however, had lived beyond the River before, so he had specific knowledge of the extent of the promised territory and what it might look like, inhabited by foreign tribes.

Compared to before, something fundamental has now changed: this God is no longer his private God, an internal affair of his tribe, but speaks to him as the ruler of the world and of time. As the one who can decide about the nations, about their being and non-being, about the times in history when this or that can take place here on earth. Let us note that the Scripture does not teach that everything that happens on earth is directly controlled by God, only that everything is permitted. Man plays a decisive role in world events - many of them would have played out in other ways if the actors had acted differently (Gen. 15:16). Moreover, Scripture reveals that the enemy of God actively enters into history - but all that would be a topic of another account...

As a memento, however, we must remember that Israel never occupied the entire territory God entrusted to them here. It is roughly the size of Poland, and today's Israel, for example, does not occupy even a tenth of it. Even at the time of its greatest glory it reached perhaps half that size. We know from Scripture why - because of their failure. However, we must learn from this that our journey is not written down to the last dot somewhere on the parchment of destiny - whether we cover the fullness of it or only a part is largely up to us.