Godbey(i)
13 For God having promised Abraham, since he had no greater one by whom to swear, swore by himself,
14 saying, If indeed blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee:
15 and thus having waited long, he received the promise.
16 For men swear by the greater: and an oath of confirmation is to them an end to all controversy:
17 but God, in this wishing more abundantly to show forth to the heirs of the promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath:
18 that through two immutable things in which it was impossible that God should lie, we who have fled may have a strong consolation to lay hold of the hope set before us,