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, in 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[8]).
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.[9]
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.[10]
God requires circumcision for all the males of the community as a sign of their
belonging to him.[11]
An identity-marker, 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.
And
what is the identity of the community which circumcision signifies membership
in? You will by this point, perhaps, not be surprised to learn that
circumcision marks out it bearers as priests. Drawing on the Egyptian
background with which Abraham was familiar, Gentry and Wellum point out that
-in
Egypt circumcision was an initiation rite for priests, demonstrating the complete
devotion of those circumcised to the service of their gods.
-the
king-priest in Egypt was believed to be the son of the god, and in circumcision
was consecrated to him. Thus, Israel as the firstborn son of Yahweh (Ex.4:22–23)
undergoes circumcision as a sign of their total consecration to their God.
-while
in Egypt only the priests had to be circumcised, in Israel every male underwent
the ritual cutting on the eighth day. They and their women and children were
all priests.[12]
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. In this
regard it is important to note that here in vv.7-8 we have the first instance
of the “covenant formula” in the Old Testament: “I will
establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you
throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you
and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you,
and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the
land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God.”[13] This formula reminds Israel of whose they are, who they are,
and what they are to be about in the world.
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.[14]
Such a relationship, marked with hesed and emeth, comes to
God’s people in Christ too.
“Though we are unworthy,
the Lord has made us his own in Christ.
God has chosen us as his servants for the sake of the world
and destined us to be his daughters and sons,
giving us love and life,
calling us to worship and honor him.”[15]
the Lord has made us his own in Christ.
God has chosen us as his servants for the sake of the world
and destined us to be his daughters and sons,
giving us love and life,
calling us to worship and honor him.”[15]
The
thread of this covenant runs throughout the rest of the Old Testament like
Ariadne’s Thread. Nehemiah’s great confession of the people in Neh.9:6-8
launches from it. The people in Babylon are encouraged by the prophet to “Look
to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I
called him, but I blessed him and made him many” (Isa.51:2). And perhaps most
strikingly, in a psalm praising God’s rule over the nations, we read, “The
princes of the people gather as the people of the God of Abraham.” Hear that? The
pagan princes gather together as the people of the God of Abraham. Remember
that part of God’s promise to Abraham that “in him” all the nations will be
blessed? This psalm pushes us to include this universalistic horizon within our
sense of what God is up to with Israel.
God’s
covenant with Abraham became the foundation stone for the people of Israel. It
was the non-negotiable commitment of God to this people that gave them (and the
world with them) a future, a destiny; it was the faithful response of these
royal priests that gave them a duty of freedom and a delight in knowing and
serving God in the world.
[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] Notice that, in
Genesis 17, the usual expression for initiating a covenant is not used in
Gen.17 but rather an expression that Gen.17 is reaffirming a covenant already
initiated (Gen.15). Gentry and Wellum. God's
Kingdom through God's Covenants (Kindle Locations 2130-2132).
[9] Even though hesed does not occur in this passage.
[10]
“. . . 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).
[11] The obvious
patriarchal bias here must be acknowledged. Females were members of the
community by virtue of their relationship to circumcised males. But when this
sign of membership becomes baptism in the New Testament males and females both
received this mark and operated as equals in the community. This is the way the
New Testament “transfigures” the good news found in the Old Testament in the
light of Christ.
[12] Gentry and Wellum, God's Kingdom through God's Covenants,
(Kindle Locations 2225-2231).
[13] See 2 Cor.6:16 and
Rev.21: 3 for uses of this covenant formula in the New Testament.
[14] More on this can be
found in Gentry and Wellum, God’s Kingdom
through God’s Covenants, ch.6.
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