The Abrahamic Covenant

THE ABRAHAMIC COVENANT

IN OUR STUDY of the preceding lessons, we saw that after man died spiritually, his need for a Mediator, Righteousness and Eternal Life, could be met only by the Incarnation of God’s Son. In our last lesson, we traced the working of the Grace of God from the time He gave to man the promise of the Incarnation, to the time of the flood, in His preserving a righteous line through which the Redeemer could come. We saw that Satan, in his effort to make the Incarnation an impossibility, corrupted humanity to the extent that the flood became imperative.

Noah, who knew God, was spared with his family. He preserved the true faith in Jehovah and handed it to his sons. We remember that there were two means Satan used to thwart the purpose of God in the Incarnation. They were:
(1) his seeking to destroy the knowledge of God upon the earth
(2) his seeking to destroy the righteous line.

The Tower of Babel

From the time of the flood until the building of the tower of Babel, there was worship of God. Not that all men accepted it, for many wickedly rebelled against it; but the knowledge and revelation of the true God was too fresh in their minds for them to set up other gods. We notice that in the ninth chapter of Genesis a command had been given to replenish the earth. In the eleventh chapter of Genesis, we see that the whole earth was of one language and one speech.

The unity of the race was untouched. The ark in which Noah and his family were preserved, had rested in Armenia. As men began to multiply, this barren tableland no longer sufficed. Men must either separate and fill the earth as God had told them to do, or a more fertile territory must be found if they are to keep together. The latter course was resolved upon, so they passed down into the rich, fertile lowlands in the plain of Shinar (Genesis 11:2).

They resolved upon a permanent settlement there in order to build a city and tower, that they might not be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth (Genesis 11:4).
Jehovah came down and confounded their language, which caused their being scattered over the earth (Genesis 11:7-9). From there the streams of population poured forth to all parts of the world: northwest to Europe, west to Asia Minor, southwest to Egypt and Africa, south to Arabia, southeast to Persia and India, and east to China. Of course, this was not the work of a day. It took ages and ages for the more distant lands to be settled.

After men had been scattered, the worship and knowledge of Jehovah passed into the worship of the powers of nature and then into idols. Sense knowledge took the place of God’s Revelation which had been given to spiritually dead man. The oldest sacred books and traditions of each nation bear witness to the account in the scripture (Romans 1: 18-32), that each nation originally possessed a revelation of God. From these ancient writings and traditions, with the aid of monumental inscriptions, we can get quite a clear picture of the passing from the worship of one God into the worship of many gods and of many idols.

The Call of Abraham

Three hundred and sixty-seven years after the flood, Abraham appears. Noah was alive for fifty years after the birth of Abraham. The world had lapsed into idolatry. Abraham lived among pagans and idolators until he was seventy-five years of age. He had been born and had lived in Ur of the Chaldees, one of the most splendid ancient cities, until he received his call from God. We can understand why God revealed Himself to Abraham. The Revelation of God was practically lost. If a righteous line were to be preserved through which God could send His Incarnate Son, He must choose one man who knew Him, and make of him a nation that would preserve the knowledge of Himself upon the earth.

Abraham’s countrymen and his father were idolators. If in him a nation was to be founded that would preserve God’s Revelation to man, and a knowledge of man’s Redeemer so that He would be recognized when He came, it was necessary for Abraham to be removed from these influences. There are many legends that tell of Abraham’s being persecuted for his refusal to worship idols. So, under a call of God, he set out in search of a land where a nation could be founded, free from idolatry (Genesis 12).

Twenty-five years after Abraham had received his call from God, the greatest event in human history until the birth of Christ, took place. It was the Blood Covenant into which Jehovah and Abraham entered. Before we can understand the significance of this Covenant which God cut with Abraham, we must know the meaning of the Blood Covenant. The Blood Covenant existed before Abraham. Proofs of the existence of this rite of Blood Covenanting have been found among primitive peoples of every quarter of the globe, and its antiquity is carried back to a date long prior to the days of Abraham.

The Blood Covenant

It is evident that God cut the covenant or entered into a covenant with Adam at the very beginning. A common revelation of the Blood Covenant from God must have been given to primitive man. We saw the scattering of man at the tower of Babel. Noah evidently must have possessed a knowledge of the significance of the Blood Covenant which he handed to his children, so that as the nations were formed, from the dispersion at the tower of Babel, each one possessed a knowledge of the Blood Covenant.

We believe this because of the following facts that are revealed in Dr. Trumbull’s book which is entitled, “The Blood Covenant.” “From the very beginning in every nation, Blood… seems to have been looked upon as preeminently the representative of Life; as indeed, in a peculiar sense life itself. The transference of blood from one organism to another has been counted as the transference of life with all that that life includes. The inter-commingling of blood has been understood as equivalent to the inter-commingling of natures. Two natures, thus inter-commingled by the inter-commingling of blood, have been considered as forming thenceforth one nature, one life, one soul. The union of
natures by the mingling of blood has been deemed possible between man and man, and Deity and man.”

A covenant of blood, a covenant made by the inter-commingling of blood, has been recognized as the closest, the holiest, and most indissoluble compact conceivable.
There are three reasons for men cutting the Covenant with each other. If a strong tribe lives by the side of a weaker tribe, and there is danger of the weaker tribe being destroyed, the weaker will seek to cut the covenant with the stronger tribe that they may be preserved. Or if two businessmen want to go into business, and one is going to leave the country and travel as a foreign representative, he will cut the covenant with his partner. Or, if two men love each other as devotedly as David and Jonathan, they will cut the covenant.

The moment the blood covenant is solemnized, everything that a Blood Covenant man owns is at the disposal of this blood-brother; yet this brother would never ask for anything unless he were absolutely driven by want to do it. Another feature is that as soon as this covenant is cut, they are called by others “the blood brothers.” That blood covenant goes down through the generations; it is an indissoluble covenant that generations cannot erase. If a man cuts the covenant with his friend, the children of the two families are bound to observe it.

If two men in Africa cut the Covenant, Mr. Stanley tells us and Livingstone bears witness – and one man should break the Covenant, his nearest relatives would seek his death, for no man can live in Africa who breaks the Covenant; he curses the ground. There is nothing that is absolutely sacred with us, but in Africa, the Covenant is sacred. Mr. Stanley and Dr. Livingstone both testify to the fact that they never knew the covenant to be broken.

The method of cutting the covenant is practically the same the world over. In some places, it has degenerated into a very grotesque rite, but it is the same blood covenant. The method which is practiced by the Africans, Arabians, Syrians and Balkans is this
Two men who wish to cut the covenant come together with friends and a priest. First, they exchange gifts. Then they bring a cup of wine. The priest makes an incision in the arm of each man, allowing the blood to drip into the wine. Then they mingle the wine and drink it. Now they are blood brothers. (Read our book, The Blood Covenant.)

The Abrahamic Covenant

The seventeenth chapter of Genesis takes on new meaning for us now. We see that when God appeared to Abraham to make a covenant with him, that Abraham knew what it meant. God was coming into a covenant of strong friendship with him. (The Blood Covenant was called the Covenant of Strong Friendship.) That is why Abraham was called the friend of God (James 2:23; Isaiah 41:8 and II Chronicles 20:7).
Abraham is the only human being who was called the friend of God in the Old Testament.

The Covenant that God cut with Abraham was to bring the Israelitish nation into being as a Covenant people (Genesis 17:7). Then God gave to Abraham the method of cutting the Covenant (Genesis 17:10-14). The seal of the Covenant was Circumcision. Every male child was circumcised at the age of eight days, and that circumcision was the entrance into the covenant. Genesis 17:26, in the selfsame day, Abraham was circumcised; and thenceforward he bore in his flesh the evidence that he had entered into the Blood Covenant of friendship with God. To this day, Abraham is designated in the East as the “friend of God.”

After the formal covenant of blood had been cut between God and Abraham, there came a testing of Abraham’s fidelity to that Covenant. This testing would also give evidence to the future generations of the fact that the cutting of the covenant on the part of Abraham in the rite of Circumcision had not been an empty ceremony, but that in that he had pledged his very life to Jehovah. Genesis 15:6, “He believed in Jehovah, and He reckoned it to him for righteousness.” The Hebrew word, “Heemeen,” here translated, “believed in,” carries the idea of an unqualified committal of one’s self to another. Abraham so trusted Jehovah that he was ready to commit himself to Jehovah as in the rite of the Blood Covenant.

Therefore, God counted Abraham’s spirit of loving and longing for trust as ready for a blood covenant friendship between them. Genesis 22:1-19, the testing came when Isaac, a blood covenant child that God had miraculously given to Abraham, was eighteen or twenty years old.

Abraham’s Testing

Genesis 22:1, 2, “And it came to pass that God did prove Abraham and said unto him, Abraham; and he said Here am I. And He said, Take now thy son, thy only son whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I tell you of.” And Abraham rose instantly to respond to the call of his Divine Friend.

Just here, it is well to recognize the Oriental thought in a transaction like this. An Oriental father prizes an only son more than he prizes his own life. For an Oriental father to die without a son is a terrible thought, but with a son to take his place, he is ready to die. For Abraham to have surrendered his own toil-worn life, now that a son of promise had been born to him, would have been a minor matter, at the call of God; but for Abraham to surrender that son and to become again a hopeless, childless old man, was a different matter.

Only a faith that would neither reason nor question, only a love that would neither fail nor waver, could meet an issue like that. All the world over, men in the covenant of blood-friendship were ready to give that which was dearer than life itself to their Blood-Covenant brothers or their gods. Would Abraham do as much for his Divine Friend as men would do for their human friends? Would Abraham surrender to his God all that the worshippers of other gods were willing to surrender in proof of their devotedness? These were questions to be answered before the world.

Genesis 22:3-10, Abraham showed himself capable of even such friendship as this in his Blood Covenant with Jehovah. And when he had manifested his spirit of devotedness, he was told to stay his hand (Hebrews 11:17-19). Genesis 22:15-17, then it was that the “angel of Jehovah called unto Abraham a second time out of heaven and said, By myself have I sworn (by my life).” Here is the foundation of that covenant, Godward. There was nothing that God could swear by except Himself. To the Oriental, it meant: “I swear by myself. Now if this fails, I become your slave; you own me. I put myself in bondage to you.”

They are bound together; all that God is belongs to Abraham, and all that Abraham is or ever will have belongs to God in this Covenant Relationship. Now you can understand why so many times He said, “I am Jehovah, who keepeth covenants.” He is the Covenant-keeping God. Back behind Israel was this solemn covenant that God had sealed on His side by putting Himself in utter, absolute bondage to that Covenant.

QUESTIONS

1. Why did God confuse their languages at the building of the Tower of Babel?
2. Why was the call from God (that is recorded in Genesis 12:1-2) given to Abraham?
3. Tell of the significance of the Blood Covenant as it existed among primitive peoples.
4. What were the three reasons for cutting the covenant?
5. Why was Abraham called “the friend of God”?
6. What was the seal of the Abrahamic Covenant?
7. What does the Hebrew word in Genesis 15:6 translated as “believe” really mean?
8. What was the test that was given to prove Abraham’s fidelity to the Covenant?
9. What did his obedience to God’s command reveal?
10. What did the phrase, “By myself have I sworn,” in the promise God gave, mean?