As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured: so will I multiply the descendents of David my servant, and the Levites that minister unto me.
And I will make your descendents as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall your descendents also be numbered.
And he brought him forth outside, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if you be able to number them: and he said to him, So shall your descendents be.
That in blessing I will bless you, and in multiplying I will multiply your descendents as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is on the sea shore; and your descendents shall possess the gate of their enemies;
And your descendents shall be as the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in you and in your seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
Your children also would have been like the sand, and the offspring of your body like the pebbles thereof; his name would not have been cut off nor destroyed from before me.
And 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, I will also cast off all the children of Israel for all that they have done, says the LORD.
But the priests the Levites, the sons of Zadok, who kept the charge of my sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from me, they shall come near to me to minister to me, and they shall stand before me to offer unto me the fat and the blood, says the Lord GOD:
Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said to them, You are not my people, there it shall be said to them, You are the sons of the living God.
In that day shall the LORD defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he who is feeble among them at that day shall be like David; and the house of David shall be like God, like the angel of the LORD before them.
And said to him, Run, speak to this young man, saying, Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls for the multitude of men and cattle therein:
Therefore sprang there even from one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable.