The Sleep of Adam and Abram

So the Lord God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. The Lord God then built the rib that he had taken from the man into a woman. When he brought her to the man, the man said:

“This one, at last, is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
This one shall be called ‘woman,’
for out of man this one has been taken.”

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body.

Genesis 2:21-24

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Some time afterward, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: Do not fear, Abram! I am your shield; I will make your reward very great.

But Abram said, “Lord God, what can you give me, if I die childless and have only a servant of my household, Eliezer of Damascus?” Abram continued, “Look, you have given me no offspring, so a servant of my household will be my heir.” Then the word of the Lord came to him: No, that one will not be your heir; your own offspring will be your heir. He took him outside and said: Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can. Just so, he added, will your descendants be. Abram put his faith in the Lord, who attributed it to him as an act of righteousness.

He then said to him: I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land as a possession. “Lord God,” he asked, “how will I know that I will possess it?” He answered 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. He brought him all these, split them in two, and placed each half opposite the other; but the birds he did not cut up. Birds of prey swooped down on the carcasses, but Abram scared them away. As the sun was about to set, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a great, dark dread descended upon him.

Then the Lord said to Abram: Know for certain that your descendants will reside as aliens in a land not their own, where they shall be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation they must serve, and after this they will go out with great wealth. You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace; you will be buried at a ripe old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will return here, for the wickedness of the Amorites is not yet complete.

When the sun had set and it was dark, there appeared a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch, which passed between those pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the Great River, the Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.

Genesis 15:1-18

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Life From Death

The deep sleep (tardemah) of Adam and Abram in Genesis foreshadows Christ’s life-giving death and the birth of his covenant people. God’s sovereign action emerges during their divinely induced sleep, pointing to the cross as the ultimate fulfillment of creation and covenant.

While Adam sleeps, God forms Eve from his rib, prefiguring the birth of the Church from the pierced side of Christ (John 19:34). Rendered wholly passive, Adam undergoes bodily division as God fashions his bride. Jesus’ “sleep” of death generates a new humanity as blood and water flow from his side (John 19:34). Sacrifice and birth go hand in hand: as the birth of Eve cost Adam his rib, the birth of the Church cost Christ his life.

Similarly, Abram’s deep sleep, accompanied by “great terror and darkness” (Genesis 15:12), foreshadows the darkness that descended upon the earth as Christ hung on the cross (Matthew 27:45). In a unilateral covenant with the sleeping patriarch, God alone passes through the divided animals as a smoking firepot and flaming torch, pledging his own life to secure his covenant people and land. In ancient Near Eastern covenants, both parties, walking between the pieces, solemnly pledged their lives if they failed to uphold their promise. Foreshadowing Christ’s death on the cross, God alone assumes the curse of covenant-breaking, symbolized by the split animals. Jesus seals the New Covenant in his blood as both sacrifice (man) and covenant keeper (God), extending salvation to all nations (Galatians 3:16).

Both stories illuminate the centrality of divine grace in the human drama of salvation. From the sleep of Adam and Abram to the death of Christ, humanity abandons itself into the hands of God. Christ alone, as the unique God-man, divinely bestows and humanly receives. His death is an active surrender: “ No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again” (John 10:18). Christ transforms the passivity of sleep into the triumph of resurrection. Out of the darkness of Abram’s vision and the darkness of crucifixion arises the glorious bride of Christ who is the new Eve and the New Israel—the Church. 

This acrostic poem (SLEEP) encapsulates the movement from human surrender to divine communion in the promised land.

Surrender
Life from Death
Eve, Israel, and the Church
Eternal Covenant
Promised Land

Abraham your father
rejoiced to see my day;
he saw it and was glad.

John 8:56