The Lord made a covenant. — Heb., Jehovah cut a covenant. Abram had divided the slaughtered animals, and Jehovah, by passing between them, made the whole act His own.
The river of Egypt. — That is, the Nile. In the Hebrew the Wady-el-Arish, on the southern border of Simeon, is always distinguished from the Nile. though the distinction is neglected in our version. Thus in Numbers 34:5; Joshua 15:4; Isaiah 27:12 (where alone an attempt is made at accuracy by translating stream), the Hebrew has, the torrent of Egypt, that is, a stream full after the rains, but dry during the rest of the year. For a description of these torrent-beds see Isaiah 57:5-6, where in Genesis 15:5 the word is translated valleys, and in Genesis 15:6 stream. The word used here signifies a river that flows constantly; and Abram’s posterity are to found a kingdom conterminous with the Nile and the Euphrates, that is, with Egypt and Babylonia. If these bounds are large and vague, we must also remember that they are limited by the names of the ten nations which follow. Between the Nile and the Euphrates, the territories of these ten tribes is alone definitely bestowed upon Abram.