A Realistic Promise

The people who wrote these stories were very realistic, and they knew that even if things turned out well for you, it wasnt gon to be some fantasy. And so it's a realistic promise, in a sense. The oven of smoke and lamp of flame symbolize the smoke of destruction and the light of salvation. Their passing, passing through the pieces of the sacrificial victims and probably consuming them as an accepted sacrifice, are the dification of the covenant on the part of god. In the same day, the lord made a covenant with abram, saying, unto thy seed, i have given this land from the river of egypt, unto the great river....