Evolution of Covenants

 

A common theme in the Old Testament that has repeatedly caught my eye is the concept of God making covenants with humans. It is rather ironic to me that God makes these deals with people when, assuming that He is truly omniscient, He knows that people will not hold up their end of the deal, or at the very least, won’t do so well.

Part of the answer to this seemingly contradictory theme in the Old Testament comes from his very first covenant with Noah. After God wipes out all life on Earth except that present on Noah’s Ark, he promises Noah that He will never again wipe out all life in such a destructive manner. He also instructs Noah to repopulate the Earth with humans and gives man dominion over all of the Earth’s resources, including the right to eat meat which God had previously denied man. God does all of this knowing full well that humans are not perfect and will keeping messing up, so He does not even bother to make Noah do anything in return for His covenant. At this stage in the game, it appears that God only wants for humans to once again thrive on the Earth even if they will never perfectly walk in the ways of God.

After God’s covenant with Noah, the covenants begin to become more interesting. For instance, the next covenant is with Abraham, promising Abraham descendants as numerous as the “stars of Heaven” as well as land for his descendants in Canaan. Additionally, God says that the rest of humanity will be blessed through Abraham and his descendants, creating a division between the children of Abraham (the future Israelites) and the rest of mankind marked outwardly by circumcision. This division follows another pattern that God creates within the Old Testament in which he divides his ‘chosen ones’ from the rest of mankind. Perhaps most blatantly, He solely spares Noah and his family when He wipes out all of humanity, allowing only for Noah’s descendants to repopulate the world. With Abraham, his descendants will be God’s chosen people, and it is only through them that the rest of humanity can be blessed and walk in the way of God. The decision to spare Noah and his family was a thoughtful decision made on God’s part due to Noah’s undying faith and how he “walked with God” (Genesis 6:9). Abraham seems to be chosen in a similarly thoughtful manner due to his obedience. Even at the ripe old age of seventy-five, he moves from his father’s home in Haran into Canaan at God’s request. Additionally, he is ready to sacrifice his only trueborn son Isaac at the stake for God, an incredibly important scene whose main purpose is to demonstrate the importance God places on obedience and Abraham’s willingness to obey God unconditionally. 

However, what does not make sense to me is how God promises that the rest of humanity will be blessed through Abraham’s descendants who will eventually become the Israelites. While Abraham was a very obedient servant of God, the Israelites by comparison are complete turds who definitely don’t seem deserving of their division from the rest of Earth’s people as God’s chosen ones. They constantly worship idols and figures other than God, including a rather disturbing instance where they get impatient for Moses to return with God’s commandments in a mere 40 days and start worshiping a golden calf (Exodus 32:1-6). This scene comes after God makes a covenant with the Israelites to have them obey his commandments and become a kingdom of priests to spread God’s grace to the rest of the world, but we see them immediately break their half of the deal. Later on, they demand that God chooses a king over Israel with little more reasoning than every other nation has a king. What makes this fact in particular incredibly intriguing is that Samuel details a long list of reasons that they won’t actually like a king when they have one, but the Israelites won’t listen (First Samuel 8:11-22). Despite God separating the Israelites from everyone else and expecting them to be better, they want to be exactly like everyone else at the cost of seemingly everything that would make their nation better than other nations.

God very much dislikes this demand for a king because He feels and knows that He should be enough of a guiding figure for the Israelites. Despite this, God gives in exactly for the reason that the Israelites have been disobedient since He led them out of Egypt. It is almost as though God is learning that humans will always be imperfect, but He maintains his resolve to not give up on humanity. He goes on to promise King David that his name will be great, and he will have a descendant whose kingdom and throne will last forever, marking God’s fourth and final covenant of the Old Testament (Second Samuel 7:12-16). He also promises mercy with David’s lineage which He even honors later on when David practically commits murder, adultery, and deceit with Uriah the Hittite and his wife.

It just seems interesting to me that God keeps choosing such unqualified and flawed people with whom to establish his covenants and grants his blessings. It reminds me of the above picture of the VV191 galaxy pair as if God was the beautiful spiral galaxy on the right and each character he establishes his covenant with is the bland elliptical galaxy on the left obviously blemished by a distant and gravitationally lensed red galaxy representing the imperfections of those characters. Perhaps the flaws of the human sides of these covenants are intentional in order to show how inherently flawed people are. The Bible does explicitly recognize this fact on multiple occasions, so it would make sense for God to purposely establish covenants He knows will go awry as a way of demonstrating His own faith to humanity and His unwillingness to give up on man. After all, we were made in “His own image”, so even if we can never truly be a perfect replica, He seems to want to help us get as close as possible no matter what (Genesis 1:27).

Works Cited

Woollard, Whitney. “The Five Key Covenants God Makes with Humans in the Bible: Bibleproject™.” BibleProject, 2018, https://bibleproject.com/blog/covenants-the-backbone-bible/.