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You have given me no children, and one of my slaves will inherit my property."
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Then he heard the Lord speaking to him again: "This slave Eliezer will not inherit your property; your own son will be your heir."
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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."
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Abram put his trust in the Lord, and because of this the Lord was pleased with him and accepted him.
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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."
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But Abram asked, "Sovereign Lord, how can I know that it will be mine?"
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He answered, "Bring me a cow, a goat, and a ram, each of them three years old, and a dove and a pigeon."
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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.
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Vultures came down on the bodies, but Abram drove them off.
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When the sun was going down, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and fear and terror came over him.
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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 four hundred years.
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