Genesis Chapter 15 verse 12 Holy Bible
And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, a horror of great darkness fell upon him.
read chapter 15 in ASV
Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep came on Abram, and a dark cloud of fear.
read chapter 15 in BBE
And as the sun was just going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, a horror, a great darkness, fell upon him.
read chapter 15 in DARBY
And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him.
read chapter 15 in KJV
And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and lo, a horror of great darkness fell upon him.
read chapter 15 in WBT
When the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. Now terror and great darkness fell on him.
read chapter 15 in WEB
And the sun is about to go in, and deep sleep hath fallen upon Abram, and lo, a terror of great darkness is falling upon him;
read chapter 15 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 12. - And when the sun was going down. Literally, was about to go down (cf. Gesenius, § 132). The vision having commenced the previous evening, an entire day has already passed, the interval being designed to typify the time between the pro-raise and its fulfillment (Kalisch). A deep sleep - tardemah (cf. Adam s sleep, Genesis 2:21); ἔκστασις (LXX.); a supernatural slumber, as the darkness following was not solely due to natural causes - fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness - literally, an, horror, a great darkness, i.e. an overwhelming dread occasioned by the dense gloom with which he was encircled, and which, besides Being designed to conceal the working of the Deity from mortal vision (Knobel), was meant to symbolize the Egyptian bondage (Grotius, Calvin, Rosenmüller, Keil, Aalisch), and perhaps also, since Abram's faith embraced a larger sphere than Canaan (Hebrews 11:10, 14, 16), and a nobler seed than Sarah's son (John 8:56), the sufferings of Christ (Wordsworth, Inglis) - fell upon him.
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(12) When the sun was going down.--The time described was the evening following the night on which he had received the assurance that his seed should be countless as the stars. He had then, in his trance, also asked for some security that Canaan should be the heritage of his posterity, and in answer had received the command to arrange, upon a large scale, the ceremonial of a solemn treaty-making. The morning had been spent in the performance of the command, and after wards he had watched, probably for several hours, by the side of the divided bodies, uncertain what would happen, but occupied in driving away the vultures, which gathered from all quarters round the abundant feast. At sunset the revelation came to him, not in a waking trance, as on the previous night, but in "a deep sleep," and with those accompaniments of terror so powerfully described in Job 4:12-16, and which the creature cannot but feel when brought near to the manifest presence of the Creator (Daniel 10:8).Lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him.--Heb., lo, a terror, even great darkness, falling upon him. The terror was not mental so much as bodily, caused by a deep gloom settling round him, such as would be the effect of an eclipse of the setting sun, and shutting all mortal things away from his view.
