I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies (Genesis 22:17, NIV)
Here's a curious thing: the number of stars in the universe might be around the same number as the number of grains of sand on earth. That's a few billion billion. [it must be said that estimates vary widely]. Don't tell the literalists, though, because in the whole history of the world, there have been many fewer than a billion descendants of Abraham.
