By_Oath_Consigned

BY OATH CONSIGNED: A REINTERPRETATION OF THE COVENANT SIGNS OF CIRCUMCISION AND BAPTISM

Meredith G. Kline

CHAPTER ONE

OATH AND COVENANT

Following the lead of the Scriptures themselves, Reformed theology has long prized the covenant as a structural concept for integrating all that God has so diversely spoken unto men of old time and in these last days.

A recent writer, comparing the relationship of law and gospel within the Lutheran and Reformed traditions, finds the genius of the Reformed position in this overarching status it accords to the covenant.' He acknowledges that in Lutheran thinking, especially when there is an insistence on the exclusively negative purpose of law to mortify and condemn, law and gospel remain in tension. And he grants that a relative harmony of law and gospel is achieved under the vault of the covenant concept in Reformed thought; in this setting law, like gospel, has a vivifying use, for law is here the obligation to covenant service that attends election to covenant privilege.

While recognizing indeed that privilege brings responsibility, Reformed theologians would want to trace the roots of law's demands in holy depths beyond covenantal election. They would also want to affirm that the compatibility of law and gospel-promise is discernible in more than the instructional, so-called third

Gustav Wingren, "Law and Gospel and Their Implications for Christian Life and Worship," Studia Theologica, 17, 2 (1963), 7789. Wingren observes that in the Westminster Confession of Faith the Covenant of Grace from one point of view stands above law and gospel. For an example of Lutheran utilization of tie covenant for the systematizing of biblical teaching see W. R. Roehrs, "Covenant and Justification in the Old Testament," Concordia Theological Monthly, 35 (1964), 583-602.

BY OATH CONSIGNED I

use of the law. Nevertheless, the observation is of course correct that in Reformed theology the covenant concept has figured conspicuously in the correlation of law and gospel. In fact, before the end of the sixteenth century a growing biblical insight within the movement of Covenant Theology had embraced all special revelation, pre-redemptive as well as redemptive, in the unity of a covenant framework.

It is the purpose of the present chapter to show that historical usage Justifies the meaning that necessarily attaches to the term “covenant” when applied in the comprehensive fashion just mentioned, and it will be the purpose of the second chapter to make proposals towards a more systematically coherent formulation of the theology of the covenant. Such a study might serve as an introduction to a general survey of the successive divine covenants of biblical history. Here, however, it will perform the more limited function of providing the necessary foundation fc~r an investigation of the covenant signs of circumcision and baptisrp.

I. OLD TESTAMENT USAGE

If we would preserve a substantial continuity between our theological use of terms and the biblical usage, we must inquire what kind of divine-human relationship was called “covenant” in the biblical world. To determine this is largely a matter of surveying the data of the Bible itself. For within the biblical world the conceptualizing of the relationship between a religious community and its deity as one founded on a covenantal engagement was confined (with perhaps certain inferentially supported exceptions) to the case of the God of the Bible and his people. But our historical survey will also take account of some extra-biblical covenants that exhibit parallels to the form of several biblical covenants and hence clarify our understanding of them.

Walther Eichrodt in his standard work on Old Testament theology (in which, as is ~vell known, he assigns the central and unifying position in the religious thinking of the Old Testament to the concept of the covenant) calls attention to the multiformity of arrangement that was known as “covenant.” Appealing especially to the Sinaitic transactions as evidence of bilateral relationship in the covenant-union between Yahweh and Israel, Eichrodt concludes: “The idea that in ancient Israel the bent was always and only thought of as Yahweh’s pledging of himself, to which human effort was required to make no kind of response (Kraetz

OATH AND COVENANT

scbmar), can therefore be proved to be erroneous.”2 Then, after tracing the history of the covenant concept, he summarizes: “One cannot help being aware that the term has to cover two lines of thought along which the meaning has developed. The first runs from ‘covenant’ through ‘covenant relationship’, ‘covenant precept’ and ‘legal system’ to ‘religion’, ‘cultus’ and ‘covenant people’; the other from ‘covenant’ through the divine act of ‘establishment’, ‘the relationship of grace’ and ‘revelation’ to the ‘order of redemption’, the ‘decree of salvation’ and the final ‘consummation of all things’ “~

Eichrodt’s reconstruction of the development of Israel’s theological thought is of course controlled by his modern approach to biblical revelation and the higher criticism of Scripture, but his twofold analysis does reflect an actual duality in the pertinent covenantal data of the Bible. The one-sided approach criticized by Eichrodt has continued to find advocacy.4 Among orthodox theologians, too, there has been a line of those who would frame the covenant concept in unilateral fashion with exclusive emphasis on the divine initiative and promise, without, however, deny-big the responsibility of the covenant recipients.5 Although we shall keep an eye on the various questions being raised in the numerous current covenant studies, our interaction here will be primarily with this development within the orthodox tradition in the hope of providing a corrective for its one-sided formulations of this fundamental biblical theme.

It is not necessary to examine more than a few of the biblical examples of divine covenants in order to demonstrate that there is precedential justification in biblical terminology for designating law administration and dispensation of promise alike as “covenant” and to vindicate thereby the comprehensive application

2 Theology of the Old Testament (Philadelphia, 1961), I, 37 (translation of Volume I of Theologie des Alten Testaments, 6th ed. [Stuttgart, 1959]). The critical reference in the above quotation from Eichrodt is to R. Kraetzschmar, Die Bundesvorstellung im AT (Marburg, 1896).

3lbjd., p. 66.

~ See, e.g., j. Begrich, “bent. Em Beitrag zur Erfassung einer aittestamentlichen Denkform” Zeitschrift fur die aittestamentliche Wissenschaft, 60

(1944), 1-11.

~ See, e.g., John Murray, The Covenant of Grace (London, 1954). Murray would define any and all covenants made by God with men by the restrictive formula: “a sovereign administration of grace and promise” (p.

31).

BY OATH CONSIGNED

of the term as representing a proper and natural systematization of biblical revelation. First, however, notice must be taken of a feature which law covenants and promise covenants have in common but which, nevertheless, being more closely analyzed, serves to distinguish clearly between the two. Every divine-human covenant in Scripture involves a sanction-sealed commitment to maintain a particular relationship or follow a stipulated course of action. In general, then, a covenant may be defined as a relationship under sanctions. The covenantal commitment is characteristically expressed by an oath sworn in the solemnities of covenant ratification.6 Both in the Bible and in extra-biblical documents concerned with covenant arrangements the swearing of the oath is frequently found in parallelistic explication of the idea of entering into the covenant relationship, or as a synonym for it.

It is this swearing of the ratificatory oath that provides an identification mark by which we can readily distinguish in the divine covenants of Scripture between a law covenant and one of promise. For it is evident that if God swears the oath of the ratification ceremony, that particular covenantal transaction is one of promise, whereas if man is summoned to swear the oath, the particular covenant thus ratified is one of law. In view of questions that have emerged in the course of the development of Covenant Theology, it is especially to be observed that precisely because it is sworn commitment that constitutes these particular transactions “covenants,” a relationship ratified by a human oath of allegiance is a “covenant” because of that human oath, and it is a “covenant,” therefore, quite irrespective of whether or not the arrangement happens to be at the same time an administration of divine grace and promise.

Genesis 15 provides an example of a covenant sealed by divine oath. The theophany-ritual described there symbolized the conditional self-malediction that inheres in the swearing of oaths. To his promise to Abraham God added a second immutable thing (Heb. 6:17, 18). Passing between the slain and divided beasts

6 Geerhardus Vos affirms in his Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids, 1948) that the reason for calling the relation established between God and Israel at Sinai a “covenant” is found “entirely in the ceremony of ratification” (p. 137). He concludes concerning the covenant concept that the “only common idea, always present, is that of a solemn religious sanction” (p. 277; cf. p. 33). In his valuable study, Treaty and Covenant (Rome, 1963), Dennis I. McCarthy states that the covenant was “the means the ancient world took to extend relationships beyond the natural unity by blood” (p. 175) and that the hasic idea of it was “a union based on an oath” (p. 96).

OATH AND COVENANT

beneath the threatening birds of prey (cf. vv. 9-11, 17), God invoked the Curse of the oath upon himself should he prove false to it. That curse, so effectively portrayed by the Combined ritual and natural features of the scene, was a common one among ancient treaty-curses. In an eighth-century treaty of Bar-ga’ayah with Mati’el the symbolic meaning of a rite like that of Genesis 15 is verbally set forth: “[And just as] (40) this calf is cut to pieces, so may Mati’el be cut to pieces and his nobles be cut to pieces” (Se fireh, I, A). And the sequel already threatening in Genesis 15 finds expression as a curse in the seventh-century vassal treaty of Esarhaddon: “[May Ninurta, chief of the gods]

feed your flesh to the eagle (and) jackal” (lines 425-427) .~ By undergoing this ritual God declared in effect that if he failed to fulfill the promises of the covenant (cf. vv. 5, 14, 16, 18ff.), he was like these creatures to be slain and devoured as a feast for the fowls. Thus, on that day the Lord ratified a covenant with

Abraham (v. 18), a covenant that was a dispensation of grace

and blessing guaranteed by twofold immutability.8

Exodus 24 contains the record of the ratification ceremony of another divine covenant. On this occasion, however, the oath was sworn by the people of Israel, not by the Lord. It was an oath of allegiance by which they devoted themselves to the service of their sovereign Lord according to all the law he had revealed to them (v. 7). Some have contested calling this affirmation made

by Israel an oath, but if due weight is given to all the factors present in the situation there need be no hesitation on that score.9 In any case, it is clear that the solemn commitment by which this covenant was ratified was not made by the Lord but by Israel.

7 Cf. Jer. 34:19f.; Deut. 28:26; I Sam. 17:44ff. See further D. R. Hillers, Treaty-Curses and the Old Testament Prophets (Rome, 1964), under the heading, “No Burial” (pp. 68f.).

8 Note the boundary survey in Cen. 15: 18ff. In several of the extra-biblical treaties there are geographical sections listing the cities and describbig the borders which the suzerain confirmed to the vassal. Cf. my Treaty of the Great King (Grand Rapids, 1963), p. 23 (hereafter abbreviated TGK); K. Baltzer, Das Bundesformular (Neukirchen, 1960), pp. 21f., 30; and McCarthy, op. cit., pp. 58f., 64. This feature of the land survey and grant constitutes an important element in other biblical covenants; for example, Deuteronomy and Joshua 24. In the latter case this covenantal feature has had a broad historiographical impact on the whole book in which it is recorded (ef. especially chaps. 12ff.). The roots of the biblical motif, it may be added, are found in Gen. 1:28.

~ Cf. TGK, pp. 15f.

BY OATH CONSIGNED

The systematic theologian must beware lest his proper concern for the unity and continuity of the divine covenants or for the sovereignty of God in the covenant relationship blur or even virtually obliterate in his thought the distinct identity of the Sinaitic Covenant as a particular administration with its own historical beginning in a concrete occasion of covenant making.10 It is true that even prior to the covenant making at Sinai the Israelites were in a covenant relationship to Cod by virtue of the terms of God’s covenant with Abraham and his seed. It is also true that a passage like Exodus 19:5, 6 with its explicit mention of the covenant indicates that it was the continuing or even consummating realization of the blessing sanctions of the covenant, not the original making of the covenant, that had to wait for Israel’s keeping of the stipulations. It is true, too, that the covenant administration of Exodus 19—24 must be understood as serving a purpose com~‘ patible with the on-going program of redemptive grace. The very

blood rite by which this covenant was ratified (Ex. 24: 5ff.) implicitly involved, according to the interpretation of it elsewhere in the Scriptures (see Hebrews 9: 18ff.), a divine promise of forgiving and purifying grace. Nevertheless, it is not true that the Sinaitic Covenant was conceived of as already formally dispensed and operative prior to the episode described in Exodus 19-24. Rather, these chapters are precisely the record of the process of dispensing or making that particular covenant by oath and sacrifice (cf. Ps. 50:5). And the decisive feature in the covenanting process at Sinai, the act of sworn commitment, was performed by Israel. Even the sacrificial ritual, which typologically conveyed the divine promise, must be understood in this historico-legal context as paradoxically serving the further function of dramatizing symbolically the curse sanction invoked in Israel’s ratificatory oath against the defaulter. We are bound to conclude, then, that the covenantal transaction of Exodus 19-24 cannot be defined in terms of a unilateral promissory commitment from the divine side. This particular engagement was, on the contrary, constituted a covenant by Israel’s formal pledging of obedience to God’s law.

ILwas. a law covenant.

The book of Deuteronomy is the documentary witness to an-

10 The observations at this point above take account especially of the discussion of the matter by John Murray; see op. cit., pp. 20ff. Though venturing to differ from Prof. Murray in this regard, I would like to acknowledge with appreciation indebtedness to him for illumination of the things of most import in our relationship to our covenant Lord.

OATH AND COVENANT

other such law, or vassal, covenant. In it Moses issued the solemn summons to Israel to swear the ratificatory oath: “Ye stand this day all of you before the Lord your Cod . . . that thou shouldest enter into covenant with the Lord thy Cod, and into his oath” (Deut. 29:lOa, 12a; ef. 29:14; 26:17-19; 27:15-26). It has been argued on the basis of one translation of Deuteronomy 26: 17ff. that the Deuteronomic Covenant was a contract based on a bilateral oath.” Verses 17a and 18a are construed as saying that Israel has caused Yahweh to pledge and Yahweh has caused Israel to pledge. If, however, the Massoretic text is allowed to stand, that interpretation is made difficult by the remaining content of these verses. For an oath taken by Cod would hardly consist in demands imposed on Israel (latter part of v. 17), and an oath taken by Israel would not likely stress the divine promise (vv. 18b, 19). Preferable, therefore, is an interpretation such as that reflected in the major English versions; thus, “You have declared this day concerning the Lord that he is your Cod . . . and the Lord has declared this day concerning you that you are a people for his own possession” (vv. 17a, 18a, RSV). These verses are to be understood, then, not as a description of the ratificatory oath ritual as such but as a summation of the general significance of this covenantal engagement.

Such a summation, it should be added, does remind us that the Deuteronomic Covenant, considered within its broader historical framework and even in terms of its own total contents, contains the element of divine promise. In fact, embedded among Deuteronomy’s prophetic prospects is a divine oath guaranteeing the promise (Deut. 32:40ff.). Thus, there is grace along with law, the Deuteronomic renewal of the Sinaitic Covenant being similar to the latter in this respect, as we should naturally expect. Nevertheless, when we have in view the particular verbal and ritual process of ratification that transpired on a certain day in the plains of Moab and by which the Deuteronomic Covenant was constituted a covenant, then we must say that this covenant was based on Israel’s oath of allegiance rather than on a bilateral oath. Certainly there is nothing at this point similar to the theophanic action of Genesis 15. Nor is the place occupied by the divine oath in Deuteronomy 32:40 the same as that of the central and constitutive divine oath in the covenant later given to David (see,

“So McCarthy (op. cit., p. 125; cI. p. 170), following M. Cazelles’ translation in La sainte Bible de J4rusalem.

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e.g., II Sam. 7:14ff.; Pss. 89:4[3]; 132:11). And, of course, even if analysis of the data led to the conclusion that the ratificatory procedure for the Deuteronomic Covenant did include a divine oath, the oath of Israel could not be ignored. This covenant would then be based on a bilateral oath, and any claim that the dispensing of this covenant was strictly a matter of divine promise would still be contradicted.

One further example of a covenant that is clearly constituted by Israel’s act of commitment will suffice. Joshua 24 describes the renewing of the Lord’s covenant with Israel towards the close of Joshua’s life. At the climax of the ceremony Israel responded to Joshua’s challenge by swearing their allegiance to the Lord thelr Cod. The oath sanctions and witnesses are prominent in the account (see verses 15b-24). The covenant-constituting nature of Israel’s oath is clearly suggested by the juxtaposition of the final words of that oath (v. 24) and the culminating declaration: “So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and set them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem” (v. 25).

The parallelism in Joshua 24:25 between “made a covenant” and “set them a statute and an ordinance” is a plain indication that the biblical author looked on the arrangement thus ratified as a law covenant.12 That other biblical authors regarded certain divine covenants as having been constituted by human oath of submission to the divinely imposed order of stipulations and sanctions, or, in short, as law covenants, is reflected in the virtual synonymity of “law” and “covenant” in relevant passages. Illustrative of a great volume of biblical evidence for this is the alternating designation of the contents of the two tables of stone as “the ten words (or commandments)” and “the covenant” (cf., e.g., Ex. 34:28; Deut. 4:13; 1O:4).~~

Further confirmation of the existence of a law type of covenant in antiquity and of the identification of the Mosaic and certain other biblical covenants as such law covenants is found in the extra-biblical international vassal treaties and the now familiar parallelism between them and these biblical covenants. A few

12 P. Victor has shown that the word * , “decree” (translated “statute” in Josh. 24:25, AV), at times stresses not obligation hut privilege (Vetus Testamentum, XVI, 3 [July, 1966], 358-361). In Josh. 24, however, the emphasis falls heavily on the demand for Israel’s fidelity.

18 See further Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology (New York,

1962), I, 131f. (translation of Vol. I of Theologie des Alten Testaments [Munich, 1957]); Eichrodt, op. cit., pp. 54, 63.

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scholars, restrained it would seem by an extreme kind of reactionary caution, refuse to follow the obvious direction of the accumulating evidence,14 but most would agree with the observation of Von Bad: “Comparison of ancient Near Eastern treaties, especially those made by the Hittites in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C., with passages in the Old Testament has revealed so many things in common between the two, particularly in the matter of form, that there must be some connection between these suzerainty treaties and the exposition of the details of Jahweh’s covenant with Israel given in certain passages in the Old Testament.”11

The Near Eastern vassal treaties were instruments of empire administration. They were law covenants, declarations of the lordship of a great king imposing his authority upon a subject king and servant people. Normally they were ratified by an oath of the vassal, although in some cases the suzerain added his oath, without changing, it need hardly be said, the fundamental law character of the arrangement. To enter into the oath meant for the vassal to come under the dual sanctions of the covenant, the blessing and the curse. The lordship of the great king might be exercised in the form of protection or of destruction. As long as the vassal remained a faithful tributary he might expect to enjoy a relationship of friendship and peace with his suzerain and to receive whatever measure of protection the latter could provide. If, however, the vassal would assert his independence or transfer his allegiance to a new lord he would have to reckon with the vengeance threatened in the treaty against such infidelity and indeed invoked by the vassal himself in his oath of allegiance.

Now since in certain notable instances, particularly but not exclusively in the Mosaic covenants, it pleased the Lord of Israel to describe his covenant relationship to his people according to

the pattern of these vassal treaties, no other conclusion is war- I ranted than that “covenant” in these insta’nces denoted at the

formal level the same kind of relationship as did the vassal covenants on which they were modelled. That is, “covenant” in these divine-human transactions denoted a law covenant and hence

~ A brief account of the situation will be found in the helpful survey article by D. J. McCarthy, “Covenant in the Old Testament: The Present State of Inquiry,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, XXVII, 3 (July, 1965), 224f. See, too, the trenchant ohservations of K. A. Kitchen in Ancient Orient and Old Testament (Chicago, 1966), p. 100, n. 51.

~ Op. cit., p. 132.

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was expressive of a lordship that could satisfy the terms of the covenant by stretching forth its sceptre in either blessing or curse.

II. NEW TESTAMENT USAGE

The conclusion towards which all the foregoing points is corroborated by the New Testament evidence. The Pauline usage is particularly pertinent, especially that in the Epistle to the Galatians.

Paul found the difference between two of the Old Testament covenants to be so radical that he felt obliged to defend the thesis that the one did not annul the other (Cal. 3: 15ff.). The promise of God to Abraham and his seed (cf. Cen. 13:15; 17:8) was not annulled by the law which came later (Cal. 3:17). The chronological details show that Paul was contrasting the promise covenant not to some general law principle but to the particular historical administration of law mediated through Moses at Sinai after Israel’s 430 years in Egypt. Incidentally, when Paul speaks of 430 years as the time between promise covenant and law (ef. Ex. 12:40ff.; Cen. 15:13), he evidently regards the entire era of the patriarchal triad as the time of the giving of the promise, a perspective found elsewhere, for example, in Psalm 105:9, 10:

“The covenant which he made with Abraham, and his oath unto Isaac, and confirmed the same unto Jacob for a statute, to Israel for an everlasting covenant” (ARV). Significant in this connection is the confirmatory promise in the final revelation of Cod to Jacob towards the close of the record of the patriarchal period (Cen. 46:2ff., especially v. 4).

The Sinaitic administration, called “covenant” in the Old Testament, Paul interpreted as in itself a dispensation of the kingdom inheritance quite opposite in principle to inheritance by guaranteed promise: “For if the inheritance is by law, it is no longer by promise” and “the law is not of faith; but, He that doeth them

shall live in them” (Gal. 3: 18a, F{SV, and v. 12, ARV; cf. Lev.

18:5). Calvin reflects the contrast in principle brought out by Paul when he says that although promises of mercy are found in the law taken as a whole (“the whole law”), they are borrowed elements there and “are not considered as part of the law when the mere natisre of the law is the subject of discussion.”16 But, as

16 Institutes (English translation by John Allen), II, xi, 7; cf. II, ix, 4 and II, xi, 9.

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noted above, according to Paul’s statements the concept of inheritance by law as over against promise did not find expression merely as a theoretical principle existing problematically within a formal covenant arrangement that was itself promissory, but rather as the governing principle of a particular covenant. Instead of distinguishing between “the whole law” and “the mere nature of the law,” therefore, we must distinguish between the entire Mosaic economy, or the total revelation mediated through Moses, and the Sinaitic Covenant as a specific legal whole. And we must recognize that, according to Paul, it was this specific covenantal entity, the Sinaitic Covenant as such, that made inheritance to be by law, not by promise—not by faith, but by works.

How did the apostle arrive at so radical an assessment of the nature of the Sinaitic Covenant as something opposite to promise and faith, an assessment that might seem to jeopardize his great theme of justification by faith alone? He obviously knew that the demands made by God’s covenant upon the individual could be construed in a way consistent with the promise principle. For in the theology of Paul the demands of covenant law both as stipulations and sanctions are met and satisfied for men in their faith-identification with the Christ of promise. Indeed, that was the burden of Paul’s teaching concerning the law, and he presented it in opposition to those who would construe the law’s demands in such isolation from the divine promises that the entire old economy would be reduced to a way of works and so of futility and death. But though Paul as a systematic, or at least biblical, theologian did not view the Sinaitic Covenant in Judaizing isolation from the totality of God’s revelation, he was able when it came to historical exegesis to view the Sinaitic Covenant as a separate entity with a character of its own. He did not allow his systematic interests, proper as they were when their turn came, to obscure the radical opposition of the law covenant of Sinai to the principle of inheritance by promise.

But what was there about the Sinaitic Covenant that compelled Paul to identify it so exclusively in terms of law? Elements of redemptive grace were present in and around the transaction. To cite just a feature or two, the historical prologue of the Decalogue-digest of this covenant reminded Israel that the Lord of the covenant was their Redeemer, who had fulfilled ancient promise by leading them forth from bondage; and among the law’s sanctions was the promise of mercy, a promise enhanced by the location assigned to the covenant tablets under the mercy

BY OATH CONSIGNED

seat of the ark of the covenant, a place redolent of atoning grace. Yet Paul identified it as a covenant of law in opposition to promise because there was in his thought, as in that of the Old Testament, a virtual synonymity of covenant and oath, and because the Sinaitic Covenant had been ratified by human oath alone. Promise was present as well as law in this covenant but it was only the law that had been covenantally solemnized. The elements of redemptive promise were not as such formalized by a divine oath of ratification. There was only the human oath, giving covenant form to the law which Israel swore to obey.

In contrast to his classification of the Sinaitic Covenant as law, y Paul placed God’s covenantal dealings with Abraham in the category of ~p~mi~e even though they included the ritual of an oath of allegiance sworn by Abraham and his household.” For in the course of God’s covenant making with Abraham there was another ceremony of covenant ratification, of which we have already taken note, this one involving a divine oath (Gen. 15). It was, moreover, by this ritual of the divine oath that God’s covenant relationship to Abraham was first formally established, or (stating it more precisely from the perspective of historical exegesis), that God’s relationship to Abraham was first formalized as a covenant. The Sinaitic Covenant, on the other hand, was ratified in the original instance and, indeed, exclusively by the oath of the Israelite vassal; and it was evidently by reason of this difference that Paul

identified the Sinaitic Covenant, in radical contrast to the promise given earlier to the patriarchs, as law.

Whatever the explanation, however, the unquestionable fact emerges in Galatians 3 that Paul saw in the Old Testament alongside the covenant of promise another covenant which was so far from being an administration of promise as to raise the urgent question whether it did not abrogate the promise. In the Galatians 3 passage Paul calls only the revelation of promise by the name of “covenant.”18 It would, however, be indefensible to assume that Paul repudiated the propriety of the terminology of the Old Testament according to which that administration of law which Paul here distinguishes so sharply from the covenant of promise was itself known as a “covenant.” Moreover, in the fol17 Cf. Ceo. 17. On this, see further Chapter Three.

18 Elsewhere in the New Testament the term “covenant” is found on occasion as the name of what is distinctly an administration of promise and divine oath; for example, Lk. 1:72, 73; Acts 3:25.

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lowing chapter of Galatians Paul himself applies the designation “covenant’ to the Sinaitic administration. In Galatians 4:24 Paul says that Sarah and Hagar, according to the allegorical illustration he constructs from their history, “were two covenants.” One of these is the Sinaitic Covenant and the other is the covenant of promise, as in the preceding chapter. The contrast between these “two covenants” is, if anything, even more sharply drawn in this passage. The promise covenant is characterized by freedom and the Sinaitic Covenant by bondage. And the thing we are concerned with at present is that in the vocabulary of Paul the Sinaitic administration as such, that is, the administration of law, bondage, condemnation, and death (cf. II Cor. 3:6ff.) was a “covenant.”

Paul, of course, taught that the Mosaic revelation of law made its contribution within the history of redemption to the fulfillment of the promises (Gal. 3: 15ff.). The law covenant did not make the promise covenant of no effect. Somehow the law was administratively compatible with the promise. We have already had to say something about this compatibility, and it will be necessary to say more presently. But even when this compatibility has been affirmed the difference between the two covenants is not denied but rather assumed. The Sinaitic law covenant was consistent with the earlier promise, but as a covenant it did not consist in promise.

Historical exegesis, therefore, contradicts any claim that might be made for the exclusive propriety of the use of “covenant” for divine dispensations of guaranteed promise.’9 The evidence from all sides converges to demonstrate that the systematic theologian possesses ample warrant to speak both of “promise covenant” and, in sharp distinction from that, of “law covenant.”

15 “Thus, using only the word ~ itself, that is, employing the method of investigation of terminology, it becomes more and more difficult to write a history of all the ideas which now and then may have made use of it” (Von Rad, op. cit., p. 133).

CHAPTER TWO

LAW COVENANT

There have been some in the history of Covenant Theology, especially in the earliest stage of its development, who have not formulated in specifically covenantal terminology the pre-redemptive special revelation given to Adam as federal head of the race. As we now shift gears from the method of historical exegesis to that of systematic synthesis it is, therefore, first of all to be observed that historical exegesis, by establishing the warrant for speaking of law covenant, invites systematic theology to include the pre-redemptive relationship of God and man within its covenantal formulations .~

PRE-REDEMPTIVE COVENANT

The mere absence of the word “covenant” from Genesis 1 and 2 does not hinder a systematic formulation of the material of these chapters in covenantal terms, just as the absence of the word “covenant” from the redemptive revelation in the latter part of Genesis 3 does not prevent systematic theology from ana -

It is difficult at best to distinguish between the functions of biblical

theology and systematic theology in the treatment of the divine covenants. To analyze these covenants is to trace the history of revelation and divine-human relationship, which is precisely the domain of biblical theology. Certainly, too, biblical theology involves the systematization of the covenantal data under relatively broad historical epochs. The task of systematic theology is hardly distinctive if it consists merely in the summary of the results of biblical theology; and if systematic theology were to dehistoricize its treatment of covenant, distilling from the data general truths of divine-human relationship, it would radically misrepresent the object it was defining.

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lyzing that passage as the earliest disclosure of the “Covenant of Grace.” Obviously the reality denoted by a word may be found in biblical contexts from which that word is absent.2 So it is in the present case. For the divine administration to Adam at the beginning corresponds fully with the law type of covenant as it appears in the later history. In fact, the biblical theologian discovers that the standard features of ancient law-covenant treaties and administration make most satisfactory categories for the comprehensive analysis of the pertinent data of Genesis 1 and 2. Our claim is not that the literary structure of these opening chapters of Genesis is patterned after the legal form exhibited in the ancient treaties, but simply that the various components of the relationship between God and man found in these chapters correspond to the more significant aspects of the lord-servant relationship attested to by the treaties. In brief, the original relationship of the Creator and man was an administration of God’s lordship in the form of a divine protectorate, which God sovereignly established and within which his suzerainty over his human servants was expressed in a revelation of law, including both service obligations and dual sanctions.8

There are other biblical perspectives favorable to the formulation of the creation order as covenantal. The postdiluvian ordering of the world revealed in the divine disclosures to Noah (Gen. 8:21—9:17) was in effect a reinstituting of original creation arrangements, and it is designated a “covenant.” This administration falls, to be sure, within the era of redemptive history, but it was not itself concerned with the redemptive community as such. Also, though the Noahic Covenant contained certain divine guarantees of blessings, the temporal extension assigned to those very guarantees (ef. “while the earth remains,” Gen. 8:22) was tantamount to a temporal limitation, and latent in that limitation was the threat of the ultimate vengeance of the covenant Lord against a vassal world that would have despised beyond further divine

2 Replying to critics of the overall orientation of Old Testament theology to the covenant, Eichrodt observed: “The crucial point is not—as an all too naive criticism sometimes seems to think—the occurrence or absence of the Hebrew word berrt.” The latter was “only the code-word” for something more far-reaching than the word itself (Theology of the Old Testament, I, 17f.).

~ See L. Alonso-Schokel, “Motivos sapienciales y de alianza en Gn 2-3,” B:blica, 43 (1962), 305-309, for an interesting attempt to trace parallels in technical vocabulary and theme between the Genesis 2 and 3 narrative and covenantal accounts within the subsequent history of salvation.

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forbearance the benefits assured to it in this covenant. The close, broad, and basic correspondence between this later order, specifically called a “covenant,” and the original order founded by God’s work of creation favors a covenantal construction of the latter. To the same effect is the recurring exposition of the covenantal process of salvation as a new work of creation. In Isaiah 43, for example, the history of Israel’s election and redemption, the great revelation of God as Yahweh, Lord of the covenant, and the prelude to his formalizing of covenantal relationship with Israel as its King, is described as a creating of Israel. “Thus saith Yahweh, who created thee, 0 Jacob, and he that formed thee, 0 Israel (v. 1) . . . I am Yahweh, your Holy One, the creator of Israel, your King” (v. 15). Evidently, Isaiah regarded the Creator’s establishment of his kingship over man at the beginning as a prototype of his later covenant making with Israel. Certainly the major elements of the law-covenant structure are present in God’s administration of his sovereignty over Adam in Eden. This being so, systematic theology is led by its very nature and purpose as a coordinating and synthesizing science to include the original Edenic administration within its total covenantal framework.

Moreover, the apostle Paul has prepared the way for this step by unifying pre-redemptive and redemptive revelation under the schema of the two Adams. Adam, he tells us, was “the figure” of Christ (Rom. 5:14), meaning that Adam’s representative status in God’s original government of man is of a piece with the second Adam’s representative position in the redemptive administration of the kingdom. Now inasmuch as this position of Christ as representative of his people is inextricably bound up with the administration of the redemptive covenant, it is difficult in the extreme to forbear from construing the position of Adam, “the figure” of Christ, in terms of covenantal arrangement. Romans 5 and I Corinthians 15 are not without their indications of how closely the two-Adams schema and the divine covenants were intertwined in Paul’s own thought patterns.

As Paul traces the reign of death from Adam to Christ in Romans 5, he introduces the Mosaic law between those two representative heads, interpreting the law’s design as the aggravation of the offense upon which death was the judgment. “Moreover the law entered, that the offense might abound” (v. 20; ef. vv. 13, 14). In the covenant context of Galatians 3 there is a significant parallel to this pattern. Once again the law is introduced

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as occupying an intermediate historical position, this time between the covenant promise to Abraham and its fulfillment in Christ. The purpose of the law, too, is interpreted as in Romans 5:20, such being the force of verse 19: “It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made.”

Similarly, I Corinthians 15 is thematically interrelated with Galatians 3 by the subject of kingdom inheritance. The former passage teaches that only those who are in Christ and thus bear the image of the second Adam can inherit the kingdom of God (vv. 42-50). The latter likewise teaches that it is those who are Christ’s who are heirs according to the covenant of promise (vv.

18, 29).

Surely it does not become systematic theology to unravel what has been thus synthesized to a degree even in the Scriptures. Systematic theology ought rather to weave together the related biblical strands yet more systematically. Failure to develop the concept of the pre-redemptive covenant as the foundation for redemptive covenant administration will, it may be added, deprive dogmatics of the conceptual apparatus required for a satisfactory synthesis of the work of Christ and the redemptive covenant.

II. THE PRIORITY OF LAW

Once it has been determined that there is law covenant as well as promise covenant and that systematic theology must recognize that the pre-redemptive revelation of law falls within the boundaries of divine covenant administration, we may undertake the construction of a general definition of covenant for use in biblical and systematic theology. This definition must correspond in its formal structure to one of the actual types of arrangement historically called “covenant” and at the same time be serviceable as a unifying formula for the totality of divine-human relationship from creation to consummation. The problem here reduces to the question of the historical, theological, and formal qualifications of law covenant and promise covenant.

Historical priority belongs incontestably to law covenant since pre-redemptive covenant administration was of course strictly law administration without the element of guaranteed, inevitable blessings. By the same token promise covenant is disqualified from the outset as a systematic definition of covenant because it

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is obviously not comprehensive enough to embrace the pre-redemptive covenantal revelation. It remains, however, to show that law constitutes the ground structure oL redemptive covenant administration and thus that a definition of covenant as generically law covenant would be applicable over the whole range of history as is necessary in a systematic theology of the covenant.

This leads us back to the subject of the compatibility of law and promise. Giving a turn to Paul’s question whether the covenant of promise was annulled by the subsequent promulgation of a covenant of law, the question of whether the law was against the promises of God, let us now pose the theological issue involved in its earliest historical form: Was the covenant of law established by God at the beginning (Gen. 1 and 2) made of no effect by the subsequent introduction of the promise (Gen. 3:15)? Was the promise against the law of God? No one should hesitate to answer this question, as Paul did his, with a “God forbid.” For if there were an annulling of the Edenic law covenant after it had been established by God and later broken by man, then the justice of God would be mutable and his threats vain. God remains just when he justifies the ungodly through his administrations of promise. Herein is the depth of his redemptive wisdom revealed, that in the very process of securing for his chosen the covenant’s blessing of life, God honors his original covenant of law in its abiding demand for obedience as the condition of life and with its curse of death for the covenant breakers.

In Romans 3:31 Paul similarly maintains that law is not made void by the promise-faith principle (cf. also, Rom. 6). However, it is the regulative character of law as norm of conduct that is in view in Romans 3:31, whereas law in our present discussion is the demand of the justice of God according to which he so declares his righteousness in the salvation of men “that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26). Our concern is with law as a principle of inheritance. Moreover, we distinguish between law-inheritance through human works (the inheritance principle as expressed in the Mosaic Covenant viewed as a covenant ratified exclusively by human oath and by which, as Paul affirms, man cannot actually secure the inheritance) and the expression of the law-inheritance principle that centers in the work which Christ, the covenant mediator, performs in declaration of the inherent righteousness of God as he justifies believers.

It is in Christ that the principles of law and promise co-operate

LAW COVENANT

unto the salvation of God’s people. Ordinary suzerains of antiquity were not able to implement their administrative purposes by 5overeign exercises of election, propitiation, and irresistible grace such as would result in the reconciliation and the subsequent perseverance in loyalty of their offending subjects. Consequently, they were unable in their covenants to guarantee to the vassals the perpetuity of those benefits which were contingent on a continuing display of loyalty. But because the Lord of Adam, Abraham, Moses, and Paul is the God of sovereign election and grace, the God who gives Christ as a covenant to his people, he is able to guarantee an everlasting realization of the beatitude of this covenant to his covenant-breaking vassals even while he reaffirms that the fulfillment of the holy demands of his law is the prerequisite of the promised blessings.

Galatians 3:18 must be stressed in Covenant Theology, but so too must Romans 5:18-21. It is by the obedience of the one that the many are made righteous unto eternal life. Though the many ~ibherit the blessings not by law (in the Gal. 3:18 sense) but by promise, they are not heirs at all except they are heirs in and through Christ, joint-heirs with Christ. For the promises of the covenant are yea and amen only in Christ. And therefore the promises are made secure to the many according to the principle of inheritance by law after all. For Christ himself enters upon the inheritance as the forerunner, surety, and head of the many only when by his active and passive obedience he has fulfilled the constant Hauptgebot of the covenant and submitted to the demand of the curse sanction voiced in the- covenant from the beginning. Now if it is the obedience of the one that is the ground of the promise-guarantee given to the many, then clearly the principle of law is more fundamental than that of promise even in a promise covenant.4

The difference between pre-redemptive and redemptive covenant is not, then, that the latter substitutes promise for law. The difference could be stated in terms of the substitution of promise for law only if regard were had exclusively for that aspect of redemptive administration dealt with in Galatians 3:18. Offered as

‘~ All blessings that come to fallen mankind, not exclusively those of salvation, come through Christ and depend on his obedient execution of his Father’s will. Common grace belongs within the domain of Christology. Accordingly, the promises of the covenant of Cen. 9, too, involve the principle of blessing contingent on works.

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a general or basic analysis of the matter, such a statement of the difference would be deceptively deficient. The difference is rather that redemptive covenant adds promise to law. Redemptive covenant is simultaneously a promise administration of guaranteed blessings and a law administration of blessing dependent on obedience, with the latter foundational.

The weakness of the traditional designation, “Covenant of Works,” for the pre-redemptive covenant is that it fails to take account of the continuity of the law principle in redemptive revelation and therefore is not a sufficiently distinctive term. The principle of “works” continues into redemptive-covenant administration, not only in the sense already stressed, that the blessings of redemption are secured by the works of a federal head who must satisfy the law’s demands, but in the sense, too, that none of the many represented by Christ attains to the promised consummation of the covenant’s beatitude unless he attains to that holiness without which man does not see Cod. With respect to this aspect of the matter the observation is in order that the law’s stipulation is compatible with the guarantee of the promise because of the compatibility of human responsibility with the divine sovereignty that is glorified in the immutable decree of election and its irresistible execution by the Holy Spirit.

Furthermore, while the two-Adams schema is not to he divorced from a systematic conception of the covenant, it does not exhaust the latter. Or to put it in other terms, election is not coextensive with redemptive covenant. And the law principle appears in yet another way in the experience of the non-elect within the covenant; for their judgment unto greater condemnafion is according to their works, works the more evil because they are in violation of stipulations enhanced by their context of redemptive covenant.

The enunciation of the law principle in the Sinaitic Covenant did not annul the promise given 430 years earlier because this law principle did not come alone or as a substitute for promise. The Sinaitic Covenant in itself, as a covenant ratified by Israel’s oath, made law obedience by the Israelites themselves the way of life-inheritance, and yet in the Mosaic revelation as a whole, law was accompanied by promise sealed by divine oath and offering an alternative way of inheritance. Thus the Deuteronomic law covenant mediated through Moses, though not ratified by divine oath in the covenant-making ceremony itself, contained a divine oath sealing the promise of ultimate and eternal

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restoration of a remnant by the grace of God.5 Far from being annulled by the covenants mediated through Moses, the promise was renewed in them. And the administrative compatibility of the law and promise principles of inheritance, as joint elements within a single covenant, is explained by the fact that they were alternates to one another.

But our main immediate concern is to observe that even the promise alternate was itself ultimately a way of law—not the way of individual obedience to the law which was explicitly enunciated in the Mosaic covenants, but one which was implicit in the promise itself, the way of vicarious law obedience and satisfaction by the Christ of promise. The Mosaic ritual of atonement gave dramatic symbolic expression to the law basis of the promise, and it is this line of continuity between the Mosaic economy and the New Covenant that is stressed in the book of Hebrews. In the blood of Christ, by which the New Covenant is ratified— for the New Covenant is not ratified by oath ritual, whether performed by men or by God, but rather by a decisive inbreaking of God in an esehatological act of judgment—we witness the faithful fulfillment of the altar promise presented in the old covenants and, by the same token, the inexorable enforcement of the divine law that is basic in all God’s covenants.

The conclusion may now be stated that a truly systematic formulation of the theology of the covenant will define covenant generically in the terms of law administration. For there was covenant administration in Eden without the feature of guaranteed promise (i.e., of inevitable and ultimate beatitude), hut the principle of inheritance by law has been at the foundation of covenant administration in every age of divine revelation. The Great King of the covenant is unchangeable in his holiness and justice. Merciful he may be according to his sovereign will; but all his works are in righteousness and truth. The satisfaction of the divine law underlies every administration of divine promise.

A systematic definition of covenant in terms of law covenant will have the necessary formal as well as historical and theological qualifications. For law covenant with its duality of sanctions, curse threat as well as offer of blessing, will be formally comprehensive enough to accommodate promise covenant within its generic framework. The addition of the principle of election and guaranteed blessing by which redemptive covenant is distin

Deut. 32:40. Cf. TGK, pp. 38f., 132f., and 142ff.

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guished from pre-redemptive covenant will not amount to an addition to the formal generic structure, but to a new functional mode for one element (i.e., for the blessing sanction) in the existing law form. This new principle can and must then be treated in the systematic classification of the data not as a generic but as a specific and special covenantal feature.

It is true, as we have seen, that in historical exegesis particular covenants emerge which are in themselves promise covenants (e.g., Gen. 15). Moreover, in systematic formulation we will want to distinguish, within the totality of purpose and achievement that constitute the redemptive covenant, the proper purpose of that covenant, namely, the salvation of the elect. But when we recognize this proper soteric purpose we are not to reduce the redemptive covenant to that proper purpose. The mission of Christ offers an analogy, or better, another way of looking at the same thing. The Scriptures declare that the Son of God entered the world to destroy all the works of the Devil (I John 3:8). Surely, too, his coming actually issues in the condemnation of those who believe not (John 3:18). Accordingly, when John 3:17 says that Christ’s coming was not to condemn but to save the world, it must be interpreted not as a statement of the total design of the messianic mission but as an indication only of the proper purpose of Christ’s coming.

If, then, redemptive covenant is not to be reduced to its proper purpose of grace, much less are we to equate the proper purpose of the redemptive covenant with the generic nature of covenant systematically defined so as to cover both pre-redemptive and redemptive covenant administrations. Unfortunately, Covenant Theology has exhibited a strong bent towards such a reduction of covenant to election. To do so is to substitute a logical abstraction for the historical reality and to shunt systematic theology from its peculiar end of synthetic summation. The covenantal data of historical exegesis which the dogmatic theologian has failed to do justice to in his definition will eventually have to be dealt with somehow or other, but the treatment of them will be problematic and awkward. In fact, it will be impossible to incorporate elements like correlative promise-threat or actual divine vengeance against the disobedient as covenantal elements. This impossibility may be obscured by means of a distinction made between an internal and external covenant, but what that manifestly amounts to is the use of the word “covenant” for what is by prior definition

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the contradiction of covenant.6 Other symptoms of the inadequacy of such an approach to the definition of covenant appear in the history of Covenant Theology. Among them are the separation of the so-called “Counsel of Redemption” from the “Covenant of Grace” and not a little of the debate over whether or not the covenant is conditional.

Coherence can be achieved in Covenant Theology only by the subordination of grace to law. Election must be subordinated to covenant, the representative headship of the two Adams to the lordship of God, redemption to creation. Rejection of the equation of covenant with the election-guaranteed promise principle is necessary to avoid the conceptual fragmentation of the theology of the covenant. Covenant conceived of as guaranteed promise cannot assimilate conditional promise. But the covenant concept that has law as its foundation and makes its promises dependent on the obedience of a federal representative can accommodate guaranteed promises. For if the federal representative is the Son of God the prerequisite fulfillment of the law is assured. Moreover, the subordination of grace to law will prove the best way to develop a full-orbed and biblically focused formulation of gospel. For in the broader framework of law covenant Christ’s total activity as at once Lord and Servant of the covenant, second Adam and Judge, can be fully integrated in one comprehensive and unified synthesis. And redemption will then be seen for what it is, a two-sided judgment in which the blessing of the covenant comes always through the covenant curse.

6 Herman N. Ridderbos’ comments on the section of Galatians that has figured in the foregoing discussion may be cited as a recent and typical example (The Epistle of Paul to the Churches of Galatia [Grand Rapids, 1953], pp. 130f., n. 2). Ridderbos states that “the essence of the covenant-idea” is the idea of “validity,” that is, of “a one-sided grant” or “one-party guarantee.” “God’s unconditional promise” is the “heart and kernel” of the redemptive covenant. When, therefore, Ridderhos turns to the Sinaitic Covenant with its promises conditicned by stipulations, he must acknowledge that there is “a structural change in the covenant-relationship” and resort to the notion of “a wider and more external meaning” of the covenant in distinction from the covenant as he would define it. But to use the word “covenant” for this external relationship is a tour de force after one has committed the fallacy of equating the “covenant-idea” by definition with the proper purpose of redemptive covenant. Ridderbos is more consistent with his own definition when he says: “But, however closely the law is bound up with the promise in the Sinaitic covenant, the fulfillment of the Promise is not dependent upon a human fulfillment of the law as attendant condition. Then God’s covenant would no longer be a covenant” (ibid., pp. 13Sf.; italics ours).

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III. COVENANT AND KINGDOM

If it is recognized that law covenant must provide the formal generic pattern, a systematic definition of covenant may be ventured with assurance that it is at least pointing in the right direction. God’s covenant with man may be defined as an administration of God’s lordship, consecrating a people to himself under the sanctions of divine law. In more general terms, it is a sovereign administration of the kingdom of God. Covenant administration is kingdom administration. The treaties are the legal instruments by which God’s kingship is exercised over his creatures.7

Congenial to Reformed theology surely is the centrality of God, the Great King of the covenant, in this definition. It is God’s lordship that is the core and constant of the covenant. That covenantal sovereignty of the Lord is manifested in his law, in his imposition of the stipulations of the law and in his infallible declarations respecting the certain execution of the law’s dual sanctions, promise and threat. The eventual visitation of either sanction, or of both curse and blessing as in the redemptive judgment that consummates the New Covenant, further reveals the divine lordship and so confirms the covenant.

The theocentric focus of the definition on the divine lordship ought to be continued in the designations for the individual covenantal administrations of the kingdom. The desirability of changing the traditional term, “Covenant of Works,” was urged above on the ground that it was not sufficiently distinctive. The other traditional designation, “Covenant of Grace,” is also somewhat deficient in the same respect, but not so seriously. Grace, in the specific sense that it effects restoration to the forfeited blessing of God, is of course found only in redemptive revelation. But in another sense grace is present in the pre-redemptive covenant. For the offer of a consummation of man’s original beatitude, or rather the entire glory and honor with which God crowned man from the beginning, was a display of the graciousness and goodness of God to this claimless creature of the dust. In addition, as over against the theocentric terms suggested below, the orientation of both the traditional terms is anthropocentric, their concern being with the way in which man attains to the covenant blessings.

The overall unity of the covenants will be provided by the con

~ “The foedus iniquum of the Sinai covenant, therefore, in fact created a domain with an overlord and subjects; henceforward the idea of the Kingdom of God is in the air” (Eichrodt, op. cit., p. 40).

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cept of the kingdom of God, of which they are so many manifestations. If a general unifying term were desired it might then be Covenant of the Kingdom. For the two major divisions of the Covenant of the Kingdom our suggestions would be Covenant of Creation and Covenant of Redemption. Since the terms “creation” and “redemption” call attention to God’s position in relation to his covenant people as their Maker and Owner-Possessor, they effectively unfold the concept of God’s lordship. Moreover, these terms point to a fundamental distinguishing feature of each covenant in the distinctive kind of divine action by which each covenantal order was established.

Inclusion of the idea of consecration in the definition reminds us that the concern of covenant is to establish a special relationship between two parties. At the same time, characterizing this relationship as one of consecration, the consecration of man to God, maintains the theocentric emphasis on the divine sovereignty and glory. It is this absolute sovereignty of God in the reciprocal relationship which, when recognized, prevents the legalistic distortion of the religious-covenantal bond into a mercantile qutd pro quo contract.8

The close association of consecration with law serves to distinguish this law as covenant law. For there is a difference between covenant law and a mere legal code. A law code like Hammurapi’s regulates the relationships of the law promulgator’s subjects to one another. Covenant law regulates the relationship of the covenant maker’s subjects to himself. Covenant law does, to be sure, deal with the mutual relations of the suzerain’s vassals but always as an aspect of their allegiance and obligations to the suzerain. The stipulations of the covenant sometimes begin with the declaration of this central and controlling demand for personal allegiance to the overlord; all other additional stipulations are so many specifications of the vassal’s primary allegiance. We may point up this fundamental difference between covenant stipulations and ordinary laws by the observation that Moses was note a lawgiver but a covenant mediator.9 He was not an Israelite

8Cf. ibid., p. 44.

~ In the rich mercies of God’s covenant with Israel the King of heaven makes this vassal people of the earth his own kingdom proper, as it were. Hence, motifs characteristic of accounts of the relationship of ancient oriental kings to their own people are also found in the total biblical portrayal of God’s royal relationship to his earthly subjects. For example, God’s reign through Messiah, his Son-King, is depicted as one of establishing

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Hammurapi but the agent through whom the Great King of heaven bound a people to himself in a relationship of service. The covenantal commandments revealed through Moses were first and last concerned with the duty of the covenant people to Yahweh their Lord, the duty to walk before him in perfect loyalty.’0

The mention of consecration also suggests the important oath ritual of the ratification ceremony; it hints, too, at the climactic issue of the covenant in its final consummation to the praise of God. The possible or actual issue of the covenant in a consummation involving both blessing and curse sanctions is not contradicted when covenant is defined in terms of consecration. That is, there is no inconsistency in the combination of consecration and dual sanctions. For the devotion of a doomed Jericho in flames to the satisfaction of God’s offended sovereignty is a form of consecration, even if quite different from the consecration of, say, the Nazirites to God’s service and favor. Either way man’s consecration is the manifestation of God’s lordship and so the fulfillment of the covenant.

justice for the poor and needy and of being a light to the people, even as the Prologue-Epilogue of Hammurapi’s Jaws claims that he fulfilled the call of the gods to make justice prevail in the land that the strong might not oppress the weak, to rise like the sun over his people and to light the land, and in general to be a savior-shepherd of his people.

10 The arrangement of the Decalogue with its primasy demand to observe Yahweb’s exclusive lordship illustrates the peculiarity of covenant law. McCarthy (Treaty and Covenant, p. 161) must acknowledge that the Decalogue suits perfectly as the stipulations of a covenant even though he will not grant that the Decalogue exhibits the documentary pattern of ancient treaties. His failure to recognize the treaty form of the Decalogue more fully stems from his acceptance of a fragmenting source analysis of the text which eliminates the sanction formulae from the reconstructed “original” text and otherwise obscures the force of the relevant data from the broader context. It is strange that McCarthy should follow such a method, for, as he is well aware, the kind of interspersing of sanction reminders among stipulations that is found in the Decalogue is attested in a variety of specific ways in many ancient treaties (ef. ibid., pp. 34f., 66, 71, 75). His formcritical study should have led him to abandon the obsolete conclusions of a subjective literary criticism. Instead, he has allowed the pronouncements of literary criticism to warp his interpretation of the objective texts bearing on the Sinai episode and thereby to distort seriously his reconstruction of the history of covenant forms in Israel (cf. ibid., pp. 172ff.).

CHAPTER THREE

CIRCUMCISION: OATH-SIGN

OF THE OLD COVENANT

Recent progress in the recovery of the detailed form of ancient Near Eastern covenant ceremony calls for a fresh study of the corresponding covenant rituals of Israel and of the New Testament church. Perhaps, re-examined in a more authentic historical context, these familiar symbols of our religious life may break through their traditional incrustations and emerge in something closer to their pristine shape and significance. Our concern in the investigation that follows will be particularly with the rites of circumcision and baptism, the signs employed in connection with incorporation into the covenant community, old and new.

I. MALEDICTION

Genesis 17 contains the record of the institution of circumcision as a sign of God’s covenant with Abraham and his house. This chapter is not, like the Decalogue or Deuteronomy, the text of a treaty but an historical narrative describing the ratification ceremony of the covenant. The narrative, however, consists largely of the words that God spoke to Abraham on that occasion, and those words comprise the standard elements found in ancient vassal treaties.’ Although the account in Genesis 17 does not include the customary historical prologue, the somewhat earlier

‘In his doctoral dissertation, Zur Datierung der “Genesis-P-Stucke”

(ICampen, 1964), Samuel 11. Kulling argues from the treaty pattern in

Genesis 17 to the unity and early date of the chapter. He indicates the

Wider implications of his conclusions for documentary theories that regard

Genesis 17 as part of the supposed P-source. On the treaty pattern

generally see TCK.

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covenant revelation to Abraham recorded in Genesis 15 contains a Decalogue-like combination of titulature and history: “I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees” (v. 7) ·2 Only if the unity of Genesis were first destroyed by a divisive source criticism could the partial incompleteness3 of the treaty pattern in Genesis 17 be urged with any plausibility at all as grounds for hesitation in identifying this transaction with the international treaty form.

Corresponding to the usual preamble with its introduction of the speaker is the Lord’s declaration to Abraham: “I am God Almighty” (v. lb). Prominently featured are the stipulations of this covenant, including the so-called Grundsatzerkliirung, a general statement of the nature of the covenantal relationship: Yahweh will be a God to Abraham and his descendants (v. 7) and Abraham is to walk before him in true loyalty (v. ic). The special obligation laid upon the covenant servants is that of circumcision (vv. 9-14). The communal performance of this rite on that very day served to consummate the ratificatory proceedings of this particular covenantal engagement (vv. 23-27). But the obligation of circumcision was to continue beyond that day as a permanent duty of the Abrahamic community. Certain specific obligations are assumed by the Lord of the covenant also, as is the case in some of the extra-biblical treaties, though rarely. These are appropriately expressed in the form of promises (vv. 2, 4-8). Since in this covenant the Suzerain is also the divine Witness, the promissory obligations which Yahweh undertakes as Suzerain are also a blessing sanction which he will honor as the divine Witness when he beholds faithfulness in the covenant servant. Another element of the treaty pattern, viz., the sanctions, is thus included here among the stipulations.~ Curse sanction appears too, appended to the stipulation regarding circumcision (v. 14). Also in the category of divine promise or blessing sanction is the further revelation centering in the role of Sarah (vv. 15-21).

2 Cf. Josh. 24:2ff. for another version of this in a later historical prologue.

~ The absence of the historical prologue would not constitute incompleteness according to the analysis of McCarthy, who maintains that this historical section was not indispensable even in second-millennium treaties. See his Treaty and Covenant, pp. 30, 31 and his discussion in The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, XXVII, 3 (July, 1965), 227ff., especially n. 23. But cf. further Kitchen, Ancient Orient and Old Testament, pp. 93-95.

‘~ See above, Chapter Two, n. 10.

CfflC1JMCLSION:

OATH-SIGN OF THE OLD COvENANT 41

In short, the transaction recorded in Genesis 17 may be identifled as a covenant of the vassal type, an administration of the lordship of the covenant Giver, binding his servant to himself in consecrated service under dual sanctions, blessing and curse.

Attention has already been called to the special importance of the oath in the establishment of the international treaties. In parity covenants the ratificatory oath was taken by both parties, but in other covenants the sworn commitment was ordinarily unilateral. It was by an oath that the vassal expressed his incorporation within the sphere of the lord’s jurisdiction. This oath invoked the covenant sanctions, more precisely, the curse, so that curse became a synonym for oath. And this oath-curse was customarily dramatized in symbolic rites, the ritual actions portraying the doom that was verbally specified in the self-maledictory oath.5 An interesting example of such an oath-rite is found in the eighth-century treaty of Ashurnirari V and Mati’ilu:

This ram is not brought from his herd for sacrifice, nor is he brought out for a garitu-festival, nor is he brought out for a kinitu-festival, nor is he brought out for (a rite for) a sick man, nor is he brought out for slaughter a[s. . . .] It is to make the treaty of Ashumirari, King of Assyria, with Mati’ilu that he is brought out. If Mati’ilu [sins] against the treaty sworn by the gods, just as this ram is broug[ht here] from his herd and to his herd will not return [and stand] at its head, so may Mati’ilu with his sons, [his nobles,] the people of his land [be brought] far from his land and to his land not return [to stand] at the head of his land.

This head is not the head of a ram; it is the head of Mati’ilu, the head of his sons, his nobles, the people of his land. If those named [sin] against this treaty, as the head of this ram is c[ut off,] his leg put in his mouth [. . .] so may the head of those named be cut off [. . . .] This shoulder is not the shoulder of a ram, it is the shoulder of the one named, it is the shoulder of [his sons, his nobles], the people of his land. If Mati’ilu sins against this treaty, as the shou[lder of this ram] is torn out, [. . .] so may the [shoulder of the one na]med, [his] sons, [his nobles,] the people of [his land] be tom out [. . .] (col. 1:lOff.) ~6

Oath-curse was, moreover, practically synonymous with cove

~ Some of the sirniles used in prophetic threats of judgment in the Old Testament are found to reflect the formulae recited at these substitution rites depicting the curses of the covenant oath. Cf. Hillers, Treaty-Curses and the Old Testament Prophets, pp. 19ff.

6 The translation is that given in McCarthy, Treaty and Covenant, p. 195.

BY OATH CONSIGNED

nant (cf., e.g., Deut. 29:11 [12]) and the substitution rites symbolizing the oath-curse coalesced with the rites which ratified the covenant. In the treaty just cited, for example, it is the ram which is brought out for the explicit purpose of making the treaty that serves at the same time expressly to represent the vassal people suffering the curse of the oath of allegiance sworn by Mati’ilu. The ram cut off from the herd never to return, the ram with its head and other members severed, symbolized the curse fate of the covenant breaker. But it was this same cutting off of the ram that made the covenant.’ The practice of slaying an animal in the ceremony of covenant ratification is widely attested,8 and out of this common rite arose the familiar biblical and extra-biblical terminology of “cutting a covenant” and the synonymous “cutting a curse.”9

It is generally recognized that a dismembering ritual like that described in Genesis 15 is to be explained by reference to the complex of concepts and ceremonies we have just described.’0 But here, too, is the historical-juridical context for the understanding of the vassal covenant of Genesis 17 and, more particularly, for the interpretation of its cutting-off rite of circumcision. This means that circumcision was the rite by which the covenant of Genesis 17 was “cut.” It means further that circumcision symbolized the oath-curse by which the Abrahamic community confessed themselves under the judicial authority and more precisely under the sword of God Almighty.”

‘McCarthy (op. cit., pp. 55ff.) rightly rejects the interpretation that sees in the cutting up of an animal to make a covenant the idea of an association of life effected through the mystic force of the sacrfficial blood. He defends the common view that the ceremony is a Drohritus, an enacted curse threat against the swearer of the oath lest he dare violate it.

8 The kind of animal used varied; sheep, ass, and pig are among those mentioned in extra-biblical texts. For a discussion of covenant ceremonies, including Greek and Roman, which involved a young animal and an herb, and of the possible relevance of this for the Hebrew Passover lamb and hyssop, see C. E. Mendenhall, “Puppy and Lettuce in Northwest-Semitic Covenant Making,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 133 (Feb., 1954), 26-30. Cf. F. C. Fensham, “Did a Treaty Between the Israelites and Kenites Exist?”, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 175 (Oct., 1964), 51-54.

9 See Gen. 15:9ff., 18; Jer. 34:18. Cf. McCarthy, op. cit., pp. 53ff., and Hillers, op. cit., p. 20, n. 27.

10 See further below and cf. above, Chapter One, pp. 16f.

“Cf. Josh. 5:13; Rum. 13:4; Rev. 19:15, 16. The Joshua 5 theophany account follows the record of the circumcising of the generation of the

CIRCUMCIsION:

OATH-SIGN OF THE OLD COVENANT 43

What is suggested by the broad structure of Genesis 17 is confirmed by the particulars about circumcision given in verses 9-14. circumcision is called God’s covenant, his covenant in the flesh of his people (vv. 9, 10, 13). This identification of covenant with circumcision reminds us at once of the coalescence of the covenant with its oath-curse in the extra-biblical treaties. Moreover, the meaning of circumcision as symbol of the oath-curse is actually expressed in so many words in verse 14. There the threat of the curse sanction sounds against the one who breaks the covenant by not obeying the command of circumcision: “(he) shall be cut off.” The use of the verb karat in this specific description of the curse clearly echoes the idiom of cutting a covenant (karat bent), and it is an unmistakable allusion to the nature of the rite of circumcision. So in this, the primary passage for the interpretation of circumcision, the general and specific considerations unitedly point to the conclusion that circumcision was the sign of the oath-curse of the covenant ratification. In the cutting off of the foreskin the judgment of excision from the covenant relationship was symbolized.’2

II. CONSECRATION

The oath whose curse sanction circumcision symbolized was an oath of allegiance. It was an avowal of Yahweh as covenant Lord, a commitment in loyalty to him. As the symbolized curse which sealed this pledge of allegiance, circumcision partook of the import of the oath. It was, therefore, a sign of consecration. Hence Israel is commanded: “Circumcise yourselves to the Lord” (Jer.

4:4).

wilderness wandering (Josh. 5:2ff.). It is as if the sword of the captain of the host of the Lord had been turned away from the uncircumcised nation by their cutting the covenant-allegiance oath anew through circumcision, and only then could be directed against the Canaanites to cut them off from the land. Cf. Ezek. 28:10; 31:18; 32:lOff. for the association of the death of the uncircumcised with that of the victim of the sword. On this usage in Ezekiel, cf. 0. Eissfeldt, “Schwerterschlagene bei Hesekiel” in Studies in Old Testament Prophecy, ed. H. H. Rowley (New York, 1950), PP. 73-81. Cf., too, the cutting-off curse of the hypocrite in lQS, II, 16, 17, and the appeal made to it by 0. Betz to interpret Matt. 24:51 and Acts 1:18 iii “The Dichotomized Servant and the End of Judas Iscariot,” Revue de Qumran, 17, 5 (Oct., 1964), 43-58.

12 A more precise analysis of the implications of the circumcision of the foreskin for the curse significance of circumcision will be found below in

Chapter Six.

BY OATH CONSIGNED

Circumcision’s consecratory import appears in the figurative use made of the idea in the law of the fruit trees in Leviticus 19:23-25. For the first three years the fruit was regarded as “uncircumcised” and might not be eaten. The fruit of the fourth year was to be consecrated in joyful praise to the Lord, and then Israel might eat of the fruit of the fifth year.la According to this pattern it was the act of consecrating the tree in its firstfruit to the Lord that terminated the state of uncircumcisiOfl and so constituted the circumcision of the tree.

For Abraham the consecratory purpose of circumcision was brought home in another cutting ritual he was afterwards required to perform. When Isaac the son of promise was born, Abraham had circumcised him on the eighth day as God had commanded (Gen. 21:4). But later God summoned Abraham to take up the knife again and to perfect Isaac’s circumcision by cutting him off altogether from among the living (Gen. 22: 1ff.). The identification of this cutting off of Isaac as “a burnt offering” (v. 2), the form of sacrifice expressive of total consecration, illuminates the meaning of these knife rituals. Circumcision, whether partial or complete, was an act of consecration.

With this demand laid upon Abraham to perfect the circumcision of his son, he was confronted with the dilemma of circumcision-consecration. The son of Adam who would consecrate himself to God in the obedience of covenant service can do so only by passing through the judgment curse which circumcision symbolizes. Isaac must be cut off in death at the altar of God. In the circumcision of the foreskin on the eighth day he had passed under the judgment knife of God apart from God’s altar in a merely symbolic, token act of conditional malediction. But this cutting off of the whole body of Isaac’s flesh to be consumed in the fire of the altar of God was a falling under the actual judgment curse. This was an infliction in reality of that curse which was but symbolized by the ordinary circumcision made with hands. How then can there be a realization of the proper purpose of the redemptive covenant administered to Abraham? How can Isaac be consecrated to living service in the favor of God if he must be consecrated in death as an object of divine condemnation? And how can there be a fulfillment of the decree of election

sa Law 60 of the Code of Hammurapi also specifies the fifth year as that in which the produce of the orchard began to be shared by the owner and gardener.

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OATH-SIGN OF THE OLD COVENANT 45

if the whole redempfive program aborts here and now in the damnation of Isaac?