the sun · definite article + noun, common both genders singular absolute
down
לָב֔וֹאla.Vo'
H935
to go or come (in a wide variety of applications) · preposition + verb, qal infinitive construct
sleep
וְתַרְדֵּמָ֖הve.tar.de.Mah
H8639
a lethargy or (by implication) trance · conjunction + noun, common feminine singular absolute
fell
נָפְלָ֣הna.fe.Lah
H5307
to fall · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person feminine singular
Abram
אַבְרָ֑ם'av.Ram
H87
Abram · proper noun, a man's name
horror
אֵימָ֛ה'ei.Mah
H367
fright · noun, common feminine singular absolute
great
גְדֹלָ֖הge.do.Lah
H1419
great (in any sense) · adjective, feminine singular absolute
darkness
חֲשֵׁכָ֥הcha.she.Khah
H2825
darkness · noun, common feminine singular absolute
fell
נֹפֶ֥לֶתno.Fe.let
H5307
to fall · verb, qal active participle, feminine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Genesis 2:21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
Job 33:15 In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed;
Daniel 10:8-9 Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned in me into corrupt…
1 Samuel 26:12 So David took the spear and the cruse of water from Saul’s bolster; and they gat them away, and no man saw it, nor knew it, neither awaked:…
Job 4:13-14 In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men,
Psalms 4:3-5 But know that the LORD hath set apart him that is godly for himself: the LORD will hear when I call unto him.
Acts 9:8-9 And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man: but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus.
Acts 20:9 And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep: and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down w…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Genesis 15:12-16
We have here a full and particular discovery made to Abram of God's purposes concerning his seed. Observe,
I. The time when God came to him with this discovery: When the sun was going down, or declining, about the time of the evening oblation, Kg1 18:36; Dan 9:21. Early in the morning, before day, while the stars were yet to be seen, God had given him orders concerning the sacrifices (Gen 15:5), and we may suppose it was, at least, his morning's work to prepare them and set them in order; when he had done this, he abode by them, praying and waiting till towards evening. Note, God often keeps his people long in expectation of the comforts he designs them, for the confirmation of their faith;…
Take me an heifer, &c.--On occasions of great importance, when two or more parties join in a compact, they either observe precisely the same rites as Abram did, or, where they do not, they invoke the lamp as their witness. According to these ideas, which have been from time immemorial engraven on the minds of Eastern people, the Lord Himself condescended to enter into covenant with Abram. The patriarch did not pass between the sacrifice and the reason was that in this transaction he was bound to nothing. He asked a sign, and God was pleased to give him a sign, by which, according to Eastern ideas, He bound Himself. In like manner God has entered into covenant with us; and in the glory of the…
A deep sleep - תרדמה tardemah, the same word which is used to express the sleep into which Adam was cast, previous to the formation of Eve; Gen 2:21.
A horror of great darkness - Which God designed to be expressive of the affliction and misery into which his posterity should be brought during the four hundred years of their bondage in Egypt; as the next verse particularly states.
John Gill on Genesis 15:12
The Church Fathers
(Verse 12) But when the sun was setting, a deep sleep fell upon Abram. The word for deep sleep in Hebrew is Thardema (), which means a descending, and we translated it as a deep sleep.
But what is added: When the sun was setting, a deep sleep fell on Abram, and a great and dark dread fell upon him, signifies the great distress and tribulation of the faithful that will occur near the end of this age. About which the Lord says in the Gospel: For then there will be great tribulation such as has not been since the beginning (Matthew 24:21).
ON THE TROUBLE OF ABRAHAM. — The text of the Scripture reads: And about sunset a trance fell upon Abram, and, behold a great dark terror fell upon him . It is a question to be addressed, because there are some who claim that the soul of the wise man is distant to these frights. We can ask ourselves if it is true what counts A. Gellius in his books of the Attic Nights (A. Ulo Gellio, Noct. Att. 19, 1.). He was a philosopher who had lost his calm, found himself in a ship during a great storm at sea, and was rebuked by a dissolute young man, who insulted him, after having passed the danger, by the fact that the aforementioned philosopher would have lost his calm so soon-while he had neither feared nor faded. The philosopher replied that the young man had not lost his calm precisely because he had nothing to fear for his perverted soul, for he was not even worthy of fearing anything. The others, worried that they had been with him on the ship, and awaiting a reply, presented them with a book of the stoic Epictetus, in which it was said that it had not pleased the Stoics to assert that no such disturbance affects the soul of the wise man, as if nothing similar were found in their feelings. For they say that there is a disturbance when reason yields to such sensations. When it does not yield, there is no need to be called a disturbance. But we must take into account how A. Gellius says this and discuss the question with caution. [
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Chronology — Is the arrangement of facts and events in the order of time. The writers of the Bible themselves do not adopt any standard era according to which they date events. Sometimes the years are reckoned,…
Covenant — A contract or agreement between two parties. In the Old Testament the Hebrew word berith is always thus translated. Berith is derived from a root which means “to cut,” and hence a covenant is a…
Trance — (Gr. ekstasis, from which the word “ecstasy” is derived) denotes the state of one who is “out of himself.” Such were the trances of Peter and Paul, Acts 10:10; 11:5; 22:17, ecstasies, “a…
Abraham · General references — General references
Condescension Of God · Enters into covenant with Abraham — Enters into covenant with Abraham
Covenant · By offering a sacrifice — By offering a sacrifice
Covenant, The · Made with: Abraham — Made with: Abraham
Covenants · Made by passing between the pieces of the divided sacrifices — Made by passing between the pieces of the divided sacrifices
Darkness · Degrees of, mentioned: Great — Degrees of, mentioned: Great
Sacrifices · The covenants of God confirmed by — The covenants of God confirmed by
Sign · .Abraham — .Abraham
Vision · .Concerning his — .Concerning his
And when the sun was going down,.... Just setting, descending below the hemisphere; or "about to enter" (m) into his chamber, as Piscator observes, from whence he went forth in the morning, as a strong man to run his race; which at sunset is finished according to human appearance, and the common apprehensions of men, who have thought it goes under the earth, or drops into the ocean, see Psalm 19:5,
a deep sleep fell upon Abram: through the great fatigue he had had the preceding day, in doing what is before related; or rather through a more than ordinary influence of God upon him, which bound up his senses, and cast him into an ecstasy or trance, when he had the following prophecy and vision…
A deep sleep fell upon Abram. The vision is now mingled with a dream. Thus the Lord here joins those two kinds of communication together, which I have before related from Numbers 12:6, where it is said,
When I appear unto my servants the prophets,
I speak to them in a vision or a dream.'
mention has already been made of a vision: Moses now relates, that a dream was superadded. A horrible darkness intervened, that Abram might know that the dream is not a common one, but that the whole is divinely conducted; it has, nevertheless, a correspondence with the oracle then present, as God immediately afterwards explains in his own words, "Thou shalt surely know that thy seed shall be a stranger,"…
"And when the sun was just about to go down (on the construction, see Ges. 132), and deep sleep (תּרדּמה, as in Gen 2:21, a deep sleep produced by God) had fallen upon Abram, behold there fell upon him terror, great darkness." The vision here passes into a prophetic sleep produced by God. In this sleep there fell upon Abram dread and darkness; this is shown by the interchange of the perfect נפלה and the participle נפלת. The reference to the time is intended to show "the supernatural character of the darkness and sleep, and the distinction between the vision and a dream" (O. v. Gerlach). It also possesses a symbolical meaning. The setting of the sun prefigured to Abram the departure of the su…
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
