Choice Word: “Berith” (Covenant)

Choice Word: “Berith” (Covenant).

CAUTION: SKIM AT YOUR OWN RISK. In this era of amazing advances in technology, there are sometimes unexpected consequences that turn out to be harmful to our Christian faith. One of these harmful improvements is the flood of believers who read scripture online, on the smart phone, on the computer screen. I’m convinced there should be a warning label on every one of the online Bibles… CAUTION: SKIM AT YOUR OWN RISK. So many of us now read the Word like we would read our emails or social media or the daily news. We skim the material hurriedly, superficially, carelessly. We skim the Scripture. Skim-reading the Bible doesn’t really bury the seed very deeply, of course. And in our skimming, we would be more likely to just skip over an important word or phrase without thinking, a word that could be vital to the whole passage. The fact is, the Bible is full of single words or short phrases that are too important to simply gloss over as if it wasn’t there. There are times in the Word when single words are intended to feed us, nourish our faith, stimulate us to think at a deeper level about the biblical text.

There are single words in Scripture that are like stop signs asking us to stop and consider carefully, to pause before moving forward in the reading. This series on my blog will try to unpack some of these power-packed words or phrases in Scripture… Words like: Behold; Rejoice; Truly; Woe; Blessed; Beware; Come; If. And I will attempt to also explore the meanings of some short phrases that are single words in the original biblical language, such as “Himeni” (Here I am); “Shema” (Listen and Do’); “Splagchnizonai” (deeply moved with compassion); “pistence” (believe), and “kal-v’chomer” (How much more).  If it is poetically possible to “see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wildflower, and hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour,” as William Blake once imagined, then certainly we readers of Scripture can find a world of meaning in a single word, we can grasp something profound in a simple phrase.

Berith (ber-eeth): The Hebrew word for “covenant” that is rooted in the word for “cut,” which is why the phrase “cutting a covenant” is so common in the Word. Berith occurs almost 300 times in the Jewish Bible (OT) and is a major theme through all of scripture. The simple description of a biblical covenant (if that’s even possible) is that it is a binding agreement between two parties, a solemn promise made permanent by an oath of commitment and a promise of faithfulness to the arrangement between them. Generally, a covenant results in a formal relationship of mutual respect. But covenant is more complicated than that. On the one hand, there wasn’t just one type of covenant in the Bible. Marriages were considered covenants, as well as peace treaties between communities, blood-brother friendships, political alliances, and many other types of formal agreements between two parties. So a covenant could be with or without conditions, between equals or not. The agreement could be relatively mutual involving two sides, or more unilateral that is more one-sided. A covenant could be seen as permanent regardless of loyalty to the agreement or more temporary if there are conditions that are broken. A covenant might even be arranged by someone who has the advantage over the other and “makes an offer he can’t refuse.” Covenants often needed to be sealed, to be made official in some way through a sign or ceremony. The term “blood covenant” came from the ceremony that was not uncommon during ancient times in that part of the world. In Scripture this was called “cutting a covenant” because it involved taking a selected animal to sacrifice, cutting it in half, and having the two parties of the covenant walking through the two halves. Other biblical signs that a covenant was completed included a rainbow (Noah), circumcision (Abraham), and Sabbath (Moses).

God’s covenants, on the other hand, were truly distinctive, to say the least. His binding agreements with Noah, Abram, Moses and David came solely at His initiative. They were His idea with no input from the other party involved. His covenants were motivated by His divine love for mankind, his eternal desire to establish a committed relationship with all people. The Lord wanted a permanent bond with all those made in His image, and so back in eternity He drew up the heavenly papers for a series of spiritual covenants. In the eternal mind of God before creation existed, He prepared an overarching covenant of love, of His own making and at His direction. The Lord planned the gracious process of redemption, fully aware that this process would finally be fulfilled by “cutting a covenant” with us through His Son on the Cross of sacrifice. With the Anointed One as the mediator of the New Covenant (Hebrews 9:15), God the Father and God the Son were at last able to complete the eternal covenant put into place that was motivated out of pure love.

Yahweh’s Blood Covenant with Abram. “Abram said to Yahweh, ‘O Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of this promised land?’ So the Lord said to him, ‘Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.’ Abram brought all these before Him, cut the animals in two, and arranged the halves opposite each other so that there was a path between them; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him… When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking fire pot and a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the Lord Yahweh cut a covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land….” (Genesis 15:8-12, 17-18).

1. There is no doubt whatsoever that Abram fully believed Yahweh and took Him at His word, but Abram did what most would have done at that time… Let’s seal the deal and make it official! So God lowered Himself to finalize the agreement in a language known to Abram as the blood covenant ceremony. This formal ceremony would be putting the covenant promises of God on record, sealing the deal. Out of sheer love for Abram and His posterity, and out of His zeal to continue His eternal plan of redemption, the Lord confirmed the covenant with Abram in the way Abram could best understand it. During the ceremony, when he wasn’t asleep, I wonder if Abram was nodding his head and thinking, “Yahweh is serious about His promises here, isn’t He? Now that this is all official, I can hold Him to it!”
2. The copious amounts of blood in this ceremony represents the life that was sacrificed, the blood that is the source of all life and therefore needed in any covenant relationship that is life-giving. The scarlet thread that is sewn into Holy Scripture from beginning to end is unmistakable. There is no doubt whatsoever that the Bible is blood-centric, that there is an overriding theme of blood wherever we look. We don’t need to be super-detectives to discover blood patterns in the Word. The Scripture seems practically preoccupied with blood, and one could be excused for observing that God seems to be out for blood. We find out why this is the case in Leviticus 17:11 and 13… “The life of all flesh is in its blood. The life is in the blood.” The Word of God seems preoccupied with blood only because God is preoccupied with life. God is out for blood only in the sense that He is out for Life. The Bible is blood-centric only because God is life-centric. In fact, the term “scarlet thread” is not strong enough. Instead, the Bible has a powerful crimson tsunami flowing through its pages from Genesis through Revelation, from before creation to the New Creation.
3. God’s blood covenant with Abram is unique when compared to other covenants. God completed the ceremony without any mutual agreements with Abram. Abram might have helped prepare the sacrifices, but it was the very presence of God who walked the path of promise between the slaughtered pieces. It appears that Abram was actually asleep during most of the ceremony! Out of His grace, God astoundingly pledged to fulfill both sides of the agreement. It was God who signed for both parties on the dotted lines of the contract. There was no bargaining, no negotiating, no discussion back and forth that eventually arrived at the covenant agreement. God dictated the terms, God made the promises of His faithfulness, God made the commitments. It was the Shekinah Glory presence of God in fiery array that walked through the cut animals while Abram was evidently on the sidelines watching. Isn’t it amazing that God assumed the full costs of this covenant, implying that if He breaks the covenant, may what has happened to the animals happen to Him! There appeared to be no particular obligation on Abram’s part in this agreement. All he had to do was take God at His word, believe Him in His promises, and simply receive the covenant as gospel truth. Nothing depended on Abram in this covenant, and everything depended on God. The full burden of this so-called mutual agreement was borne by Yahweh who gave His solemn promise to be faithful. The promised commitment to Abram and his descendants was based on God’s character of grace and loyalty, not Abram’s. God loves the world so much that He was willing to put it all on the line for the sake of His chosen people and by extension the entire world. God is zealous for a relationship with us through his blood covenant without our deserving it in the least. God’s promised faithfulness comes to us at His initiative. He loved us first before we were aware even of the possibility of a love covenant with the Creator of the universe.

“… the Lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world.” (Revelation 13:8). 

1. The “Cutting of the Covenant” in which the sacrificial Lamb was slaughtered was a process that was cooked up by God long before the world was even created. God’s plan to redeem humanity and restore a spiritual relationship with us was established before the need was even evident. The eternal Lord knew there would be the need for a redemptive covenant, He knew sin was going to raise its ugly little head before it did. God is outside of time and perceived the inevitable need for the covenant process that would finally result in the Cross and the cutting of His covenant for all time. God’s timeless blood covenant was predetermined by the Father and the Son, and it guaranteed to restore His relationship with humanity and break the chains of slavery to sin which imprisoned everyone.
2. God solved the sin and brokenness problem before it started by beginning the process of redemption before time and then giving hints through time that would point to the Cross. The first hint was in the Garden of Eden when God slaughtered an innocent animal to provide clothing for the fallen Adam and Eve. We can go from there to Abel’s acceptable sacrifice, then the Passover lamb, to Tabernacle/Temple sacrifices and onward through biblical history.
3. When God makes a plan, it can be spoken of in the past sense. His plans are such a sure thing that it is as if the plan has already been accomplished. When God intends for something to be done, such as the redemption covenant, it is as good as done, even if it has not actually been done. “… God calls those things which do not exist as though they already did!” (Romans 4:17). So is it so surprising that God’s plan to sacrifice Jesus, to cut a covenant, was starting to happen before the world was created?
4. God fulfilled both sides of the covenant agreement for all eternity. One dotted line of the irrevocable contract has the Father’s signature. The other dotted line has the Son’s signature. By following Jesus Christ, we climb into His side of the covenant and are included in His faithfulness. Those who are “in Christ” are children of the covenant, sealed by His blood, recipients of God’s promised faithfulness forever. So once again, true to His nature, God does all the heavy lifting in this binding agreement by graciously agreeing to both sides of the covenant relationship. Followers of Jesus are included in all the benefits of the heavenly contract with the Lord, even when we in fact do not deserve to be even at the table for the signing. We don’t deserve to be a part of the proceedings, but “in Christ” we actually do. We didn’t earn our part in the covenant, and so all is grace, God’s grace.