When the sun went down on the covenant between the pieces, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 15:17 turns the Hebrew's smoking furnace and flaming torch into something far more vivid. Abraham, the Targum says, saw Gehinnam itself rising — smoke, flaming coals, and burning flakes of fire, the place wherewith the wicked are to be judged.
And through that fire, the glory of the Lord passed between the divisions of his offering.
The imagery is meant to unsettle. The covenant is not being sealed in a gentle cloud. It passes through the future itself — through the fires of judgment, through the smoking furnace of empires and exiles and moral accounting — and emerges on the other side unbroken. The Lord is the One who walks between the pieces. The Lord is also the One who walks through Gehinnom's smoke.
The Maggid hears the message Abraham received that night. Your descendants will pass through terrible fires (Genesis 15:12). Empires will try to harvest them like birds of prey (Genesis 15:11). A furnace is coming. But the same Presence that sets the flame is also walking through it, from your side to the far side, on behalf of your children (Genesis 15:17). You are not alone in the fire. The covenant is exactly what stays lit when everything else burns.