Understanding Covenant
Investigating a Key Aspect of God's Dealing with Humanity
For those of you who reached out regarding the tardiness of this post, I do apologize. I wasn’t feeling the best earlier today, and it pushed back my ability to get this out.
No doubt you’re at least somewhat familiar with the term ‘covenant.’ It’s a major concept within Scripture. What I hope to accomplish in this week’s post is to present a fuller understanding of what a covenant really is, as well as providing some specific examples to illustrate why it’s so important to understand covenants when it comes to reading and understanding the Bible.
Covenants vs. Contracts
I think I need to begin by drawing a clear distinction between a covenant and a contract. While we’re pretty familiar with contracts in our twenty-first century world, we don’t really use the word ‘covenant’ very often. As a result, we tend to not fully understand what a covenant is or the significance of it.
A contract is essentially transactional in nature. Each party commits to give something of equal value to the other party, and if one party fails to hold up their part, the contract is dissolved and the other party is released from having to fulfill their obligations. Think of purchasing a car. If you want to buy a vehicle, you will enter into a contract with the seller of that vehicle, in which you offer money equal in value to that of the car. The money and the vehicle exchange hands, thus completing the contract.
A covenant, however, is relational in nature, not transactional. As a result, covenants are inherently long-term in orientation; the covenant exists to establish and maintain a relationship after all. Obligations are included in a covenant, but the distinction is that the obligations arise because of the relationship, rather than a relationship arising due to obligations. By way of example, think about marriage. Marriage is a covenant; it involves entering into a relationship with another person. There are obligations that arise from this covenant - “for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health,…” - but those obligations arise because of the relationship that has been formed. This is beyond the scope of my post today, but one of the reasons why we see so many divorces in our society today is because people treat the marriage covenant as a contract - they treat it as transactional (focused on what they can get out of the marriage) rather than relational (focused on what they can give to their spouse).
Covenants in Scripture
When we turn to a study of covenants in the Ancient Near East (ANE) and in a biblical context, we find that covenants are ratified by an oath and often invoke a deity as a witness to the covenant. In a strictly biblical sense, the covenants we’re concerned with are covenants made between God and His people.
Now, if I were ask Christians to give me a list of the covenants found in the Bible, I expect most would answer by either putting forth the Old and New Testaments, or perhaps mention “the Law” and the new covenant we have through Jesus. However, the terminology we use of Old & New Testaments1 hides the reality that there are multiple covenants found throughout Scripture - the Adamic covenant, Noahic covenant, Abrahamic covenant, etc. - in addition to the Mosaic covenant [also called the Sinaitic covenant or “the Law”] and the new covenant we have through faith in Jesus.
Investigating the Abrahamic Covenant
For us to gain some insight into covenants, I think the Abrahamic covenant is a really interesting one to dig into. We find this covenant made between God and Abraham in Genesis 15:
After these events, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision:
Do not be afraid, Abram.
I am your shield;
your reward will be very great.
2 But Abram said, “Lord GOD, what can you give me, since I am childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 Abram continued, “Look, you have given me no offspring, so a slave born in my house will be my heir.”
4 Now the word of the LORD came to him: “This one will not be your heir; instead, one who comes from your own body will be your heir.” 5 He took him outside and said, “Look at the sky and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “Your offspring will be that numerous.”
6 Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
7 He also said to him, “I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.”
8 But he said, “Lord GOD, how can I know that I will possess it?”
9 He said to him, “Bring me a three-year-old cow, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”
10 So he brought all these to him, cut them in half, and laid the pieces opposite each other, but he did not cut the birds in half. 11 Birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. 12 As the sun was setting, a deep sleep came over Abram, and suddenly great terror and darkness descended on him.
13 Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know this for certain: Your offspring will be resident aliens for four hundred years in a land that does not belong to them and will be enslaved and oppressed. 14 However, I will judge the nation they serve, and afterward they will go out with many possessions. 15 But you will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”,
17 When the sun had set and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch appeared and passed between the divided animals. 18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “I give this land to your offspring, from the Brook of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River: 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hethites, Perizzites, Rephaim, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.”
In terms of covenant making, there are some important details here that we might miss if we’re unfamiliar with covenants in the ANE. We have 2 parties - God and Abram [soon to be called Abraham], a sacrifice (vv. 9-10), and a promise exchanged. However, what makes this covenant so interesting is that only God exchanges a promise here (vv. 13-21). God puts Abram into a deep sleep when He “cuts the covenant,” moving between the pieces of the sacrificed animals. What this means is that Abram’s only obligation in this covenant is to believe (i.e., place his faith in) God [see v.6]. In this way, the Abrahamic covenant is a type of foreshadowing of the covenant God would make with us through the sacrifice of His one and only Son, Jesus. All that God asks of us in order to enter into a covenant relationship with Him is to believe in Jesus as our Lord and Savior.
What is happening when God moves between the pieces of the sacrifice as “a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch” is essentially a statement of, “If I violate or fail to hold up my part of this covenant, may what happened to these animals happen to me.” In other words, when God binds Himself in a covenant relationship with humanity, He backs up His part of the covenant with the totality of who He is. If you’ll meditate on that for a while, I guarantee you your faith will grow. God’s covenant promises are ironclad because He backs them with the fullness of His nature and character.
Understanding Covenants Helps Us To Better Understand God & His Actions
Moving beyond the example of the Abrahamic covenant, I also want to give some biblical examples to show why understanding covenants is so important in understanding the Word of God and how God interacts with people. I’m going to use 3 biblical examples to illustrate this.
Cain
Cain has the infamous label as the first murderer, killing his brother, Abel, in a fit of rage and jealousy (Gen. 4:1-16). If you know this story, then you know that God doesn’t kill Cain; in fact, God protects the life of this first murderer, but providing a punishment that he will no longer be able to grow food from the ground, and he will be a wanderer for the rest of his life, never being able to settle in one place.
Yet, we also know that the 5th Commandment of the 10 Commandments, the foundation of the Mosaic covenant, is “Do not murder” (Ex. 20:14 CSB). In fact, God talks more about this just a little bit later, stating, “Whoever strikes a person so that he dies must be put to death” (Ex. 20:12). What gives here? Is God playing favorites?
Not at all. We know that God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34, Rom. 2:11). Instead, what we’re seeing is God operating according to different covenants. The covenant that existed in Cain’s day was what we call the Adamic covenant, which goes back to the creation account in the beginning of Genesis. While murder is clearly wrong even back when Cain does it, and there is indeed a punishment that follows from it, God extended mercy and grace to Cain. However, under the Mosaic Law, since murder is expressly included in the agreement made between God and the people of Israel, there must now be what is called the lex talionis, or “an eye for an eye,” in which the punishment matches the sin/crime.
Abraham
If we look at Abraham, the father of our faith, and as we’ve just seen from Gen. 15 above, someone whom God called “righteous,” we nevertheless see 2 examples in which Abraham lies. And these aren’t “little white lies.” In 2 separate cases, Abraham lies about Sarah being his wife in order to save his own skin (Gen. 12:10-20; 20:1-18). What is fascinating about both of these cases is that Abraham, in spite of lying and causing harm to first Pharaoh and his household and then Abimilech and his household, God never condemns or punishes Abraham. Instead, Abraham actually becomes richer in both cases!
Now, once again we see a violation of the 10 Commandments here. The Mosaic Law is clear that lying is a sin. If we don’t understand covenants and how they inform us of how God operates, we can very easily come away thinking that God acts arbitrarily. But when we read Scripture with an understanding of what covenant God is operating within in His dealings with people, His actions become clear.
Jacob
We’ll wrap up with a look at Jacob, Abraham’s grandson. If you’re familiar with the rather messed up life of Jacob, you’ll know that he ended up becoming married to two sisters at the same time, Leah and Rachel. The twelve sons provided by Leah, Rachel, and their 2 concubines would become the 12 Tribes of Israel. Now there’s plenty of lying and deception in Jacob’s story, both as the offender and the victim, and once again, God never condemns or punishes Jacob for any of this.
What’s interesting, however, is what God says when making the covenant with Moses and the people of Israel hundreds of years later: “You are not to marry a woman as a rival to her sister and have sexual intercourse with her during her sister’s lifetime” (Lev. 18:18 CSB). Here for a third time, we see the impact that covenants have in God’s dealing with humanity.
Wrapping Up
As I close this week’s post, I would encourage you to consider the concept of covenants when reading the Bible, especially when reading in the Old Testament. I think you’ll find that as you come to better understand and recognize these covenants, a lot of the questions we have concerning why God did what He did (or didn’t do what we perhaps think He should have done) becomes clearer when we understand this concept.
I also wanted to share on covenants in this week’s post because where I’m going with next week’s post is going to require a basic level of understanding of covenants in order to track with some of what I’m going to share. It’s already going to be potentially controversial, so I thought it would be wise to “prime the pump” this week. :)
Testament comes from the Latin testamentum, a kind of, sort of transliteration of the Hebrew word for covenant. Personally, I’m not a fan of the terminology as it muddies the waters of what a covenant really is, but I won’t get into that.