As I was studying my NLT chronological bible yesterday, it finally dawned on me what the significance of the split carcasses were in the covenantal promise given by God to Abram, before he bore Isaac. This is the scene whereby God promised Abram he would be the Father of offspring too numerous to count and would live in the Promised Land (after 400 years of slavery). See below:
The Lord told him, “Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” So Abram presented all these to him and killed them. Then he cut each animal down the middle and laid the halves side by side; he did not, however, cut the birds in half. Some vultures swooped down to eat the carcasses, but Abram chased them away.
As the sun was going down, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a terrifying darkness came down over him. Then the Lord said to Abram, “You can be sure that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign land, where they will be oppressed as slaves for 400 years. But I will punish the nation that enslaves them, and in the end they will come away with great wealth. (As for you, you will die in peace and be buried at a ripe old age.) After four generations your descendants will return here to this land, for the sins of the Amorites do not yet warrant their destruction.”
After the sun went down and darkness fell, Abram saw a smoking firepot and a flaming torch pass between the halves of the carcasses. So the Lord made a covenant with Abram that day and said, “I have given this land to your descendants, all the way from the border of Egypt to the great Euphrates River— ~Genesis 15:9-18
The significance of the split carcasses of the animal sacrifices was a foreshadowing given to the Patriarch Abram of the parting of the Red Sea by Moses which is how God led the Hebrews out of bondage in Egypt after 400 years of slavery. In his vision, Abram also saw a smoking firepot and a flaming torch pass between the halves of the carcasses. This corresponds to the pillars of cloud and fire that led the Hebrews through the divided Red Sea and continued to guide them in the Wilderness!
Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea into dry land, and the waters were divided. 22 So the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea on the dry ground, and the waters were a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. ~Exodus 14:21-22
And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so as to go by day and night. 22 He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day or the pillar of fire by night from before the people. ~Exodus 13:21-22
If we wanted to go even deeper, we could see that the animal sacrifices were an archetype for the coming Messiah (a perfected Abram and Moses), the sacrificial lamb of God Who would be the final blood offering for the sins of the people. And that the obedient water, fire, and cloud/smoke represent the Holy Spirit given by God to guide the people after the sacrifice has been accepted.
This story in the early pages of Genesis was showing that God would lead them out of bondage by animals and His own might, but that a Greater Sacrifice would come and there would be no more need for innocent bloodshed and clouds and fire for guidance.
The ultimate salvation of God would become something immaterial that requires belief in Jesus and faith in the Holy Spirit.
~Song of Mary~ 