The time of saints’ sacrifice amidst their troubles may be the season of God’s making covenant with them.
2. Not only promise but covenant hath God made to His Church for their consolation.
3. Word and sign, promise and pledge, make up God’s covenant.
4. God’s promise of good to come is as sure as if done already.
5. Lower mercies God may give as tokens of greater blessings--this land.
6. The Church hath had its place and portion designed in this world, for being here (Gen_15:18).
7. God’s bounds to His Church were large under the law, much more under the gospel. The ends of the earth now (Gen_15:19).
8. All peoples shall be driven out to make room for the Church of God. Multitudes can be no hindrance of making good God’s covenant to them (Gen_15:20-21). (G. Hughes, B. D.)
The river of Egypt
As the traveller pursues his weary way from Egypt to Palestine, he crosses the broad channel of a river, bounded still by its well-marked banks, but destitute of water. When the rivers of Judah flowed with water, this was the southern boundary of the country, dividing it from the land of Ham, and hence it is often alluded to as the “River of Egypt.” On one side is a parched desert of sand, spotted here and there with little verdant patches, where a few bushes of palm trees grow, and flowers show their smiling faces to the scorching rays of the sun that pour down as if from a glowing furnace; but, in general, dreary, waste, and bare, with nothing to relieve the eye, almost blinded by the glare of the white sand, but occasional heaps of stones, that tell of ruin and desolation. Here and there the flat sands are covered with an incrustation of fine salt, the very symbol of barrenness. The wild ass, whose “house” God has “made the wilderness, and the barren land (Hebrews, the salt places) his dwellings,” here ranges, far from the haunts of men, “searching after every green thing.” On the eastern side of this ancient channel the country changes. Low sand hills running in ranges parallel to the shore of the Mediterranean for a while struggle for supremacy with the verdure of grassy slopes. (P. H.Gosse.)
