Gods covenant
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In ancient times, being in a family was essential for survival — it meant provision, protection, and everything in between — and being in an important family was even better. But how did you join a family if you weren’t born into the right one? Scripture recognizes four doors in: marriage, birth, adoption, and covenant.
Historical covenants
Historically, there were two types of alliances. The first was between equals, providing military alliance and mutual support; the members of this kind of covenant could also be called brothers. The second was between the strong and the weak — a covenant of conquest, in which the stronger party was called master or father, and the weaker one slave or son.
It’s this second type that matters most for understanding Israel’s relationship with God, since it was the pattern generally used whenever one country conquered another. The stronger nation had authority over the weaker land and people — a puppet king might be installed, and the conquered nation was forced to pay tribute. But at the same time, the stronger nation was obliged to provide military support to protect the weaker nation against its enemies. Why? Because the weaker party was now their property, effectively family, and you defend your own family.
We see this dynamic play out when the Gibeonites deceived Joshua into making a covenant with them: once the covenant existed, Joshua was bound by it, so later, when they were attacked by the Amorites, Joshua was obliged to protect the Gibeonites even though he did not like them.
This structure also explains the rules around multiple covenants. The weaker party was not allowed to make covenants with anyone else — you can only have one father — whereas covenants between equals could multiply freely, since you can have several brothers. A father, meanwhile, could have many sons, so a strong nation could hold several treaties with several weaker ones at once. If the weaker party broke the covenant — typically by refusing to keep paying tribute — the consequence was losing the land and going into exile.
The Bible is full of covenants between peoples along these lines: Abraham and Abimelech, Isaac and the Philistines, Jacob and Laban, the men of Gilead, and Ahab.
The phrase “making a covenant” literally means “cutting a covenant,” a term drawn from the practice of offering a sacrifice during the covenant ceremony. That sacrifice did two things at once: it celebrated the covenant, and it showed what would happen if the weaker party broke it. The animals, cut in half, were lined up in two rows, and the weaker party walked between the pieces — a vivid, deliberate act of intimidation, illustrating exactly what would happen to him if he broke his word.
The covenant with Abraham
In Genesis 15, this same pattern of sacrifice and intimidation is clearly present, yet God’s covenant with Abraham turns it on its head compared to how covenants were normally made between nations at the time. God promised Abraham land and heirs, and the story includes the same scene of sacrifices cut in half and arranged in two lines. But the odd thing here is that it is not Abraham — the weaker party — who walks between the carcasses. It is God Himself.
At that moment, fire representing God passes between the pieces: God takes Abraham’s place under the curse. So when Abraham later breaks the covenant — by impregnating Hagar, for instance — it is God’s own son who dies instead of Abraham’s son.
The covenant with Abraham is then defined in more detail through the inclusion of circumcision.
The covenant with Israel
To understand the covenant God made with Israel, it helps to know the standard format such treaties followed in the ancient world.
A conquest covenant of this kind typically had five parts. First came the preamble, often long and detailed, giving the title and name of the stronger party — the kind of self-glorifying language you’d find in something like “I, Emperor Nero, head of the Roman Empire, most worthy of rulers…” Second came the prologue: dominant in Hittite treaties of the second millennium B.C., though covenants from the first millennium tended to skip this softer approach in favor of a blunter “accept our rules or else.” Where it appears, the prologue recounts the faithfulness and kindness the stronger party has already shown, precisely to encourage the weaker party to enter the covenant willingly. Third came the demands — what the weaker party had to do. Fourth came blessings and curses: as long as the weaker nation kept the rules, it received the stronger party’s military protection, but breaking those rules brought the curse — “my god(s) will strike you with illness, remove your kings, and exile you.” Behind this lay the assumption that the god of the conqueror was stronger than the god of the conquered, and that during exile, a people’s god remained behind in the homeland (hence the significance of Israel being exiled to Babylon rather than staying put). Fifth, witnesses were called at the time of the covenant — usually the gods of the stronger nation — to guarantee it would be kept. The covenant text itself was then stored in the house of the gods of both parties and read aloud regularly.
This exact pattern shows up in the covenant God made with Israel. The preamble is I am the Lord your God …. The prologue follows immediately: … Who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery (look at all I have done for you and know that I will do even more for you). The demands begin with the first and, in a sense, foundational commandment: Have only one God, from which the rest of the Ten Commandments follow. The blessings and curses appear in Blessing and Curse — consequences that only fully landed once the Israelites were in exile, though the warnings escalated gradually well before that, each stage designed to make Israel reconsider its choices (“if you still do not listen, I will…”). God used this escalation to keep reminding His people of the covenant’s terms. Finally, the witnesses called to the covenant were heaven and earth themselves.
The covenant also came with an ongoing requirement: it had to be read again and again — the king had to do this when he was crowned, and every seven years it was read aloud to the whole people. Each reading was accompanied by a communal meal, and each party kept a copy of the commandments. This is why Moses received two tablets at Sinai: one stayed with God in the temple, and the other represented Israel’s copy — so, in effect, both copies ended up in the temple.
Crucially, the terms of God’s covenant were never impossible, unlike many earthly covenants that set the weaker party up to fail. God’s people could have kept the terms. They simply chose not to.
Through all of this, God calls himself the Father of Israel — a father who, even bound by covenant terms, remains merciful. The Bible captures that combination in the word “hesed,” usually translated “covenant loyalty,” a word rich enough to be rendered as “love,” “goodness,” “mercy,” or “faithfulness” depending on context.