It was after Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of the Most High God, pronounced a blessing upon the militarily victorious Abraham that God brought Abraham into this formal covenant with Him over sacrifice. When giving Abraham strong assurance that the divine promise would be fulfilled upon Abraham’s descendants, God said to him: “You may know for sure that your seed will become an alien resident in a land not theirs, and they will have to serve them, and these will certainly afflict them for four hundred years. But the nation that they will serve I am judging, and after that they will go out with many goods. As for you, you will go to your forefathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age. But in the fourth generation they will return here, because the error of the Amorites has not yet come to completion.”—Genesis 15:13-16.

5. The long time that was to pass before Abraham’s seed would occupy the Promised Land allowed for what to take place?

⁵ Thus the taking over of the land by the natural seed of Abraham was put off for more than four hundred years. This long period of time would allow for the chosen natural seed of Abraham to grow to a people of many members, numerous enough to displace the Amorite occupants of Canaanland who were going from bad to worse in the “error” of their pagan ways. Although Abraham’s natural seed would grow to a people of great size in a land foreign to Canaanland, yet God would hold the land in reserve for them until the “error” of the promised land’s inhabitants had become so bad that they deserved to be purged out of the land. That God would give the territory to Abraham’s natural seed at the time ripe for it, Jehovah now guaranteed with a formal covenant.

“On that day Jehovah concluded with Abram a covenant, saying: ‘To your seed I will give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates: the Kenites and the Kenizzites and the Kadmonites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Rephaim and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Girgashites and the Jebusites.’”—Genesis 15:18-21.

6. Would the national covenant cancel out the Abrahamic Promise, and what purpose would it serve as regards Abraham’s descendants?

⁶ In contrast with that divine covenant with but one man, Abraham, the covenant that God had in view was to be with a great nation of descendants from Abraham through the chosen line of descent. That national covenant was to be added to the Abrahamic Promise, which became binding when Abraham crossed the Euphrates River to the north and entered the territory that was included within the boundaries stated in God’s formal covenant with Abraham over sacrifice. (Genesis 12:1-7) The making of the covenant with the nation of Abraham’s descendants did not cancel out the Abrahamic Promise but was merely added to it. Wisely so, for not all the fleshly descendants of Abraham would prove suitable to share in the Abrahamic Promise as regards its fulfillment for the blessing of all the nations and families of the ground. Hence, the added national covenant would serve well as an aid or means to prepare the worthy ones to receive and loyally follow the true Messiah, the promised “seed” of God’s heavenly “woman,” when God sent and anointed this one.

7. For what reasons would God not conclude the covenant with Abraham’s descendants before the end of those four hundred years?

⁷ The making of that additional national covenant would not take place before the passing of more than four hundred years from when God concluded this covenant with Abraham over sacrifice, because at that time Abraham did not have any offspring at all by his then barren wife, Sarah. Furthermore, God would not make a covenant with Abraham’s descendants when they were in servitude and being afflicted by a foreign nation. Especially so, when the making of the covenant called for that type of sacrifices that were detestable and objectionable to the nation afflicting them and enslaving them. (Exodus 8:25-27) First after God had judged adversely the oppressive nation and delivered his people and made them free to undertake a covenant with Him would God establish a covenant with them. This would be at the end of the foretold “four hundred years.” Thus we note that Jehovah God has marked off his own periods of time for the working out of his “eternal purpose” in connection with his Anointed One, Messiah.

8, 9. (a) What time period began at the weaning of Isaac, and how so? (b) The end of that time period was the time for what regarding Abraham’s natural seed?

⁸ Twenty-five years after Abraham entered the Promised Land, or at the age of one hundred years, he became father to his one and only son by his true wife, Sarah, this being, of course, by a divine miracle. This was in the land that did not yet belong to Abraham or to his son Isaac. It was when Isaac was weaned that affliction began upon the natural “seed” through whom the Messiah was to come. This was when Isaac’s nineteen-year-old half-brother Ishmael disrespectfully poked fun at the newly weaned Isaac. Such conduct showing jealousy could develop into a threat to the life of Abraham’s God-given heir, Isaac.—Genesis 16:11, 12.

⁹ According to time measurements, this beginning of the afflicting of the “seed” of Abraham in a land that was not theirs occurred when Abraham was one hundred and five years old and Isaac was five years old. That was in the year 1913 B.C.E. (Genesis 21:1-9; Galatians 4:29) Accordingly, the “four hundred years” of affliction upon the natural “seed” of Abraham would end in 1513 B.C.E. That would be the year for Abraham’s seed to go out from the land of the oppressive nation and start to return to the land of its forefathers, the Promised Land. That was the due time for God to establish the national covenant with Abraham’s “seed,” that he might bring them into the Promised Land as a nation in a binding covenant with Him. The time for this, at the end of the four hundred years, was also four hundred and thirty years after Abraham crossed the Euphrates River and the Abrahamic Promise took effect.—Exodus 12:40-42; Galatians 3:17-19.

ESTABLISHMENT OF A NATIONAL COVENANT

10. To what extent did Abraham’s natural seed grow in Egypt, but finally under what condition?

¹⁰ From when Abraham’s grandson Jacob moved with his household out of the land of Canaan, and down to the end of the four hundred years, Jacob’s descendants, the twelve tribes of Israel, found themselves in the land of Hamitic Egypt (not Arabic Egypt, as of today). As foretold by Jehovah God, affliction had come upon Abraham’s natural “seed” and had now grown very severe. The objective of this was to exterminate the people of God’s friend, Abraham. In spite of this, they had increased to become like the stars of the heavens and like the grains of sand on the seashore, innumerable, as God had promised. Finally, they were able to muster up “six hundred thousand able-bodied men on foot,” fit for military service. (Exodus 12:37) No, God had not forgotten his covenant with his friend Abraham. He also kept to his announced time schedule. So He was ready for due action at the due time.

14. What time periods ended on that first Passover day, and what did God order with respect to that night?

¹⁴ That eventful Passover night of the year 1513 B.C.E. brought to an end simultaneously a number of marked periods of time. The four hundred years of the afflicting of Abraham’s natural seed in a land not theirs ended.