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Summary
- A covenant is a solemn promise that binds the one who makes it, and the Bible never says how many God made, though a common list names five: Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and the new covenant.
- In Hebrew the ordinary way to say someone made a covenant was to say he “cut” one.
- Again and again God gives something to look at, from the bow in the cloud to the cup at the last supper, and for David, who is given no token in these passages, Scripture points to the sun and the moon.
- The King James Bible has “covenant” 292 times and “covenants” three times more, and the first is God speaking to Noah in Genesis 6:18.
- Irenaeus counted four covenants, the Westminster Confession counts two and the Scofield Reference Bible eight, while the Catholic Catechism gives no number where it tells the story and Dallas Theological Seminary gives none in its doctrinal statement.
- The Jewish Encyclopedia calls God’s covenant with the seed of Jacob eternal, and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote of the idea that “God might bind Himself to human beings.”
- Christian and Jewish readers understand Jeremiah’s new covenant differently, and the Jewish statement Dabru Emet says, “Such differences must always be respected.”
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Bible: King James Version (public domain). Passages quoted: Genesis 6:17–18, 9:8–17, 15:9–10, 15:17–18, 17:1–14; Exodus 19:3–8, 24:3–8, 31:16–17, 34:28; Numbers 25:12–13; 2 Samuel 7:12–16 and 23:5; Psalm 89:3–4 and 89:34–37; Jeremiah 31:31–34, 33:20–21 and 33:25–26; Luke 22:20; Romans 9:3–5 and 11:25–29; Ephesians 2:12; Hebrews 8:6–13. Word counts from the Project Gutenberg King James text.
- Kohler, Ginzberg, Hirsch, McCurdy and others, “Covenant,” The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 4, 1903–1906.
- Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Book of the Covenant, Covenant & Conversation, The Rabbi Sacks Legacy.
- Dabru Emet: A Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity, 10 September 2000, Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies.
- Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book III, chapter 11 (Ante-Nicene Fathers translation).
- Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 7, “Of God’s Covenant with Man”, Orthodox Presbyterian Church edition.
- C. I. Scofield, Scofield’s Reference Notes, Genesis 1:28 (1909).
- Doctrinal Statement, Dallas Theological Seminary, Articles V, XIII and XX.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 54–66 and 121, Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
- Second Vatican Council, Nostra Aetate, 28 October 1965, section 4.
- George C. Papademetriou, The People of God: An Orthodox Perspective, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, 17 August 2008.
- BibleProject, The Five Key Covenants God Makes With Humans in the Bible.
- James Strong, Hebrew and Greek dictionaries (entries H1285, H3772, G1242), Open Scriptures edition.
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