3. Covenant with Israel
Covenant,
Temple, and Kingdom
Chief among the “tools” God
uses in the Old Testament to form a people through whom he may reveal himself
to the world are Covenant, Temple, and Kingdom. Here’s the chart I presented in
the first chapter tracing the fortunes of our three benchmarks of the biblical
story.
|
Covenant
|
Kingdom
|
Temple
|
|
Abraham
|
-
|
ad hoc altar
|
|
Moses
|
Israel becomes a nation
|
Tabernacle
|
|
David
|
United Kingdom under King David, Davidic
successor promised, low point in exile
|
Temple built by Solomon, destroyed by
Babylonians
|
|
New Covenant
|
New kind of kingdom promised
|
Temple rebuilt but not claimed by the glory
of God
|
These benchmarks, as
the chart shows are interrelated and mutually effect other through the course of
Israel’s history while each retain its own importance and focus. To remind
ourselves, I have argued that the focus of covenant is the family of God, that
of the kingdom is divine rule, and that of the Temple is the presence of God.
This latter is the main theme of the biblical narrative, which the other two
support and lead up to in their own ways.[1]
As we begin our journey through Israel’s history it will be important to keep
all this in mind.
God Begins Anew
A creation of world
and creatures. Pronounced “good” and “very good.” A catastrophe leads to a
flood of judgment (Gen.6-8). A creational restart under a covenant with Noah
with similar though not identical terms (Gen.9). God’s world is now broken. Humanity,
though, is broken and performs no better than before. Gen.3-11 ends on the sour
note of humanity’s arrogant striving to establish their own significance and
security rather than receive them as divine gifts (Gen.11:4). These issues
become icons for the struggle of the rest of the Old Testament story.
Both
are a matter, finally, of belonging. Either we huddle together, build walls
around us, provision ourselves with religion and all other good things we can
gather, and count on that for our significance and security, or we receive
these things from the Creator God who wants to graciously give us all that (and
more) as his creaturely children. So it is, to be more specific, a matter of
family.
What is a Covenant?
The note of Sarai’s barrenness at the end of Gen.11 stands
as an apparent epitaph to the dashing of God’s dream. He will not have his
family nor his rightful rule over his creation. He will not have a home with
his human creatures on which to abide with them forever. Or so it seems.
But appearances can be deceiving, none more so than in
dealing with the Bible’s God. This deity never accedes to his creature’s
revolt, never acquiesces in his creation’s damaging, and never stops loving
them or seeking his dream.
But how will he do it? Since humanity a whole (adam - generic term for humanity) has
turned away, God comes up with an audacious alternative approach.
-He will start small
with just one people.
-He will start new by
creating this people calling Abram and Sarai out of pagan Ur as its parents.
-He works slowly through
the history and development of the cultures and practices of this people.
-He works from the
future back to the present, from what this family will be and do to what they
are at any moment before then. That is, he works by promise.
-He works subversively,
from the bottom up, and counter-revolutionarily against the revolt of humanity
against him to accomplish his aims for the whole world.[2]
And
all of this – a small new family through whose history God promises to set the
world thrown upside-down by sin and evil right-side up again - leads us to
covenant. A widely used term in the ancient near east, covenant “use(s) . . .
family categories for those who are not bound by ties of natural kinship.”[3]
That’s why, even though covenants are often political instruments or treaties
between countries, the chief focus of their significance is this establishment
of family ties.[4]
Gentry and Wellman provide some detail:
“Two types of
treaties in the ancient Near East are especially noteworthy: (1) the
suzerain-vassal treaty and (2) the royal charter or land grant. The first type
is a diplomatic treaty between a great king or suzerain and client kings or
vassals. The focus of these treaties was to reinforce the interests of the
suzerain by arguments from history and oath-bound affirmations of loyalty on
the part of the vassal states, backed up by divine sanctions. The second type
of treaty involves a grant of property or even a privileged position of a
priestly or royal office given as a favor by a god or king. The focus of these
treaties is on honor and the interpersonal relationship.”[5]
These
treaty forms are somewhat fluid and tend to fall on a continuum so it is not
surprising to find elements of both in biblical covenants. It is especially
significant that the land grant form of treaty can include the gift of a
priestly or royal office by the king or a god of the land granting entity. We
have seen that the Bible’s creation stories style humanity as God’s image-bearer
in what terms? Yes, that’s right, royal priests! And we will soon see that as
God makes the Hebrews into a nation on Mt. Sinai he describes this people in
very similar terms: “Now therefore, if you obey my voice and
keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples.
Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be
for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Ex.19:5-6).
God’s covenant with Abraham, previewed
in Gen.12:1-3 but formally laid out in Gen.15 and 17 is, Walter Brueggemann’s
helpful terms, unconditioned on God’s part but conditioned by its human
recipients. God, unconditioned by anything else but the love that he is,
unilaterally establishes a relationship with Abraham and Sarah. They have
-nothing
to do with it,
-nothing
by which to merit it or earn it,
-nothing
that makes them special or noteworthy.
In truth, as Paul tells us, it was
while we were at war with God, revolting against him, that he reached out and
laid loving hold of us in Christ (Rom.5:8-10). And that all begins to unfold
here in Gen.12.
This
covenant, unconditioned and unilateral on God’s part, while conditioned and
bilateral on Abraham and his family’s part, is also asymmetrical. God’s
unconditioned laying hold of us is decisive and generative; Abraham’s response
(either obedience or disobedience, covenant-keeping or covenant-breaking)
conditions the way this relationship plays out but not whether it remains
intact or not. That always remains with God and the witness of the Bible is
that God never gives up on us and does all things necessary and possible to
keep us his people, the people of his creation-dream. Here’s that “grace
super-abounding where sin increases” motif we saw in Gen.1-11 playing out in a
covenant key!
What
all this mean, I believe, is that our long-standing debates between God’s sovereignty
and human freedom, faith and works, grace and law, that seem to pit God’s
activity and human activity against each other are misplaced. Rather than
opposed these pairs should be seen asymmetrically related with each having a
positive function within that relation.
-God’s
sovereign action initiates and secures the life of his people/human freedom responds
to God’s action and expectation and the quality of the relation, though not the
relation itself, is governed by the people’s response.
-faith
and works are that by which we are saved and how we show we are saved
respectively. Overemphasis on one or the other to the degree that their
differing roles are obscured calls forth the differing polemics of Paul and James
in the New Testament.
-In
terms of covenant this means that God’s liberation of the people from slavery
in Egypt establish his relationship with this people. The Law he gives on Mt.
Sinai in its aftermath are the way the people were to show their gratitude and
demonstrate to the world what being this God’s people is all about.
As someone has well said: We are not
saved by our works, but we’re not saved without them either. Adopted into God’s
family, we will begin to evidence the family character in the world.
God’s Covenant with Abraham
Covenant
is implicit in the creation stories. Because all is well at this point there is
no need for a formal articulation of God’s relationship with his human
creatures. The first mention of covenant is in Gen.6:18 looking forward to the
covenant made with Noah on behalf of the post-flood world (Gen.9). The
covenants God makes after the catastrophe in the garden with this new people he
is creating to be his family and who will bear the hope of the whole world
begins in Gen.12. Abraham and Sarah are a new Adam and Eve and the land God
promises to them a new Eden, that is, a place where God may dwell with his
people. God is expanding the boundaries of his garden Temple!
“To the world in its rebellion and alienation God
promised blessing and restoration. The
Lord chose Abraham and his descendants as
bearers of that promise for all peoples.”[6]
N. T. Wright echoes this: “Abraham emerges within the
structure of Genesis as the answer to the plight of all humankind. The line of
disaster and of the ‘curse’, from Adam, through Cain, through the Flood to
Babel, begins to be reversed when God calls Abraham and says, ‘in you shall all
the families of the earth be blessed’.”[7]
This
covenant is made a formal covenant in Gen.15 (reaffirmed in Gen.17). The
striking thing in the Genesis 15 covenant is its emphasis on the unconditional
and unilateral commitment of God to Abraham and his family. The strange ritual
God arranges in vv.7-21 makes this point in a most memorable way. At the Lord’s
direction Abraham arranges halved carcasses (except for the birds) of a variety
of creatures to form a path between them. At sundown Abraham falls into a deep
sleep with the promise of God to be with Abraham’s people even through a 400-year
sojourn in a foreign land before he brings them back to the land of promise. In
the darkness a “smoking fire pot” and “flaming torch” pass through the
carcasses. This ritual has been identified as the making of a “self-maledictory”
oath. Making this oath carries the death penalty on its transgression. The Lord
is taking on his shoulders alone the making good of the promises he has made to
Abraham. Abraham does nothing but sleep through the whole thing!
This
episode epitomizes one of two great “covenant” words in the Old Testament, hesed.[8]
No one English word suffices to translate this word, so we have to make several
words do duty. For my money “unquestionable loyalty” gets at it. And in Israel’s
world, as in ours, loyalty, genuine loyalty is a chief mark of true love. So we
have to color “love” in there too. The ritual of the “self-maledictory oath” carries
all of this in its performance and import.
Gen.17
is a reaffirmation of the covenant that emphasizes the conditioned response of
the people. God bids Abraham to “walk before me and be blameless” (v.1) and this
clues us into its emphasis – identity. Abraham is to live out his identity as
God’s representative for the new creation promised to him.[9]
God requires circumcision for all the males of the community as a sign of their
belonging to him. A mark of identity – that’s what circumcision is (and why
baptism, the mark of entry into and belonging the church, is it corresponding
reality in the New Testament. Thus God renames Abram as Abraham and Sarai as
Sarah as symbols of the new identity of the community. A further indication is
God’s intent to use only the child of promise, Isaac, as the promise-bearer and
not Ishmael, a child of Abraham and Sarah’s inability to wait. Ishmael will indeed
be blessed but not the promise-bearer because that is not his identity.
Identity is crucial. Integrity can only come from identity.
We can only be who we are if we know who we are. This leads us to the second
great word in the Old Testament which captures what covenant is all about, emeth, “truth” or “faithfulness.” This
seems clearly what the covenant reaffirmation in Gen.17 is about.
Thus, hesed and emeth, as pictured in God’s undertaking
the “death march” in the ritual of the “self-maledictory oath” and in God’s
command to Abraham (and his people) to “walk” in the world as who they are
called and equipped to be, give vivid expression to key dynamics in the
covenant life of God’s family.[10]
[1] We could say that
that Temple is the number 1 goal of the story while Covenant and Temple are 1A.
[2] As we will see later on, Jesus’ parables about the
Kingdom of God echo many of these themes.
[3] Peter J. Gentry and
Stephen J. Wellum, God's Kingdom through
God's Covenants: A Concise Biblical Theology (Crossway. Kindle Edition.)
Kindle Locations 814-15.
[4] As we move into the
New Testament the language of “adoption” so prominent in Paul picks up this covenantal
theme of the establishment of non-natural family ties.
[5] Gentry and Wellum, God's Kingdom through God's Covenants. Kindle
Locations 820-825.
[7] N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 262.
[8] Even though hesed does not occur in this passage.
[9]
“. . . when
people walk before God, it means that they serve as his emissary or diplomatic
representative.” Gentry and Wellum, God's
Kingdom through God's Covenants (Kindle Locations 2085-2086).
[10] More on this can be
found in Gentry and Wellum, God’s Kingdom
through God’s Covenants, ch.6.
Comments
Post a Comment