The one idea that runs from Genesis to Revelation, and why the two halves of the Bible are named for it
The Thread: Covenant
The words Old Testament and New Testament are on the spine of nearly every Bible, and few readers know what they mean. Testament is an old word for covenant. The Bible is named for a promise, and the whole library, law and story and psalm and letter, is shelved along it.
Lesson 11 of 12 · The thread
One thing runs through the whole shelf: God binds himself to people by promise, and asks to be trusted. The Bible calls that a covenant, and its two halves are named for the old one and the new. Every page stands somewhere along that thread, and reading a page well means knowing where: which promise it comes after, which it comes before, and what God had already bound himself to when it was written. The kinds of writing this series has walked through are the kinds of things people say inside a covenant. The covenant is why they were kept.
What a covenant is
A covenant is a bond made by promise and sealed by a rite, and the Bible’s first great one is made in the dark. Abram is told to cut animals in two and lay the halves apart, and he falls asleep, and something passes between the pieces.
It came to pass that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold, a smoking furnace and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. — Genesis 15:17 · WEB
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In that day Yahweh made a covenant with Abram, saying, “I have given this land to your offspring, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates: — Genesis 15:18 · WEB
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In the ceremony of that age both parties walked between the halves, and the walk meant: so let it be done to me if I break this. Here only God walks. Abram is asleep. The covenant is made by one party binding himself, which is the pattern for everything that follows, and the reason the word promise keeps turning up where the word contract might be expected.
בְּרִית bᵉrîyth H1285
from בָּרָה (in the sense of cutting (like בָּרָא)); a compact (because made by passing between pieces of flesh); confederacy, (con-) feder(-ate), covenant, league.
The word may come from a root meaning to cut, which is why the Bible does not make a covenant but cuts one, and why animals are divided when one is made. It is used of treaties between kings, of marriage, of friendship between David and Jonathan, and of God’s bond with Noah, with Abraham, with Israel and with David. The Greek Old Testament rendered it with a word that also meant a will, a testament, which is how that word reached the spines of Bibles. What the word never means is a bargain between equals.
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The covenants, in order
The Bible does not have one covenant but a series, and each takes up the last. Read them in order and the shape of the whole book appears.
“I will establish my covenant with you: All flesh will not be cut off any more by the waters of the flood. There will never again be a flood to destroy the earth.”” Genesis 9:11 · WEB
With Noah and every living thing: the world will not be drowned again. A bow is the sign.
“I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God to you and to your offspring after you.” Genesis 17:7 · WEB
With Abraham and his descendants, forever: I will be their God. Circumcision is the sign.
“Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession from among all peoples; for all the earth is mine;” Exodus 19:5 · WEB
With Israel at Sinai: keep my covenant and you will be my treasured people. The Sabbath and the law are its signs.
“Your house and your kingdom will be made sure forever before you. Your throne will be established forever.”’”” 2 Samuel 7:16 · WEB
With David: his house and his throne will stand forever.
““Behold, the days come,” says Yahweh, “that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah,” Jeremiah 31:31 · WEB
A new covenant, promised to a people who had broken the old one, written not on stone but on the heart.
Notice what each one does with the one before. Abraham’s does not cancel Noah’s; Sinai does not cancel Abraham’s; David’s is a promise inside Israel’s; and the new covenant is promised in the words of the old, to the same people, about the same law. The thread is continuous. It is also going somewhere, and the prophets say where.
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Why the Bible has two testaments
On the night before he died Jesus took a cup and named it.
Likewise, he took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. — Luke 22:20 · WEB
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This cup is the new covenant in my blood. He is quoting Jeremiah, and every disciple at the table knew it. From that night the church understood itself to be living inside the covenant Jeremiah had promised, and when it came to name its scriptures it named them for the two: the books of the old covenant and the books of the new. The letter to the Hebrews draws the conclusion in one sentence.
In that he says, “A new covenant”, he has made the first obsolete. But that which is becoming obsolete and grows aged is near to vanishing away. — Hebrews 8:13 · WEB
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In that he says new, he has made the first old. What that sentence means for the old covenant is genuinely contested, and has been for as long as there has been a church. Some read it as replacement, the old set aside entire. Some read it as fulfilment, the old carried into the new the way a promise is carried into its keeping. The same New Testament that calls the first covenant old also says that God’s gifts and calling are without repentance (Romans 11:29), and that the promise to Abraham was not annulled by anything that came after it. This lesson does not settle the question. It points out that the question is about the thread, and can only be argued by people who have read the whole of it.
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Reading a page by its covenant
Paul reads the Bible this way, and says so. Arguing with the Galatians about the law, he does not argue about the law. He asks when it came.
Now I say this: A covenant confirmed beforehand by God in Christ, the law, which came four hundred thirty years after, does not annul, so as to make the promise of no effect. — Galatians 3:17 · WEB
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A covenant confirmed beforehand by God, the law, which came four hundred and thirty years after, does not annul. That is a reader placing a page on the thread and drawing a conclusion from where it sits. The promise came first; the law came after, inside it; therefore the law cannot cancel the promise. The whole argument of Galatians is a lesson in reading by covenant order, and it is the way the apostles read everything.
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How to read by the thread
Of any page, ask which covenant it stands under: the one with Noah, with Abraham, at Sinai, with David, or the new. Ask what God had already promised when it was written, since the page assumes it. Ask what it looks forward to, since almost every page does. And ask what the people in it were trusting God for, because a covenant is a promise held to, and the Bible’s whole story is people holding to one, and failing to, and being held anyway.
Take a page you have read this week, from any part of the Bible, and place it on the thread: which covenant it stands under, what had already been promised, and what it looks forward to. Write down whether that changes what the page seemed to be about.
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