As the army of the sky can't be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured; so will I multiply the seed of David my servant, and the Levites who minister to me.
The LORD brought him outside, and said, *Look now toward the sky, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.* He said to Avram, *So shall your seed be.*
that I will bless you greatly, and I will multiply your seed greatly like the stars of the heavens, and like the sand which is on the seashore. Your seed will possess the gate of his enemies.
Your seed will be as the dust of the earth, and you will spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south. In you and in your seed will all the families of the earth be blessed.
Out of them shall proceed thanksgiving and the voice of those who make merry: and I will multiply them, and they shall not be few; I will also glorify them, and they shall not be small.
Thus says the LORD: If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, then will I also cast off all the seed of Yisra'el for all that they have done, says the LORD.
But the Kohanim the Levites, the sons of Tzadok, who kept the charge of my sanctuary when the children of Yisra'el went astray from me, they shall come near to me to minister to me; and they shall stand before me to offer to me the fat and the blood, says the Lord GOD:
Yet the number of the children of Yisra'el will be as the sand of the sea, which can't be measured nor numbered; and it will come to pass that, in the place where it was said to them, 'You are not my people,' they will be called 'sons of the living God.'
In that day the LORD will defend the inhabitants of Yerushalayim. He who is feeble among them at that day will be like David, and the house of David will be like God, like the angel of the LORD before them.
and said to him, *Run, speak to this young man, saying, 'Yerushalayim will be inhabited as villages without walls, because of the multitude of men and livestock in it.
Therefore as many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as innumerable as the sand which is by the sea shore, were fathered by one man, and him as good as dead.