Covenant in the Torah

Overview

Recall questions on brit, the Abrahamic covenant, its ceremony, promises of land and chosenness and its sign, suzerainty and parity treaties, the Mosaic covenant at Sinai, its law and sign, what contemporary scholars say about both narratives, and whether chosenness is a privilege or a burden.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What does the Hebrew word brit mean, and what does a covenant actually do?

   Model answer

   Brit is usually translated covenant, and it denotes a binding agreement that creates a relationship with obligations on at least one side. Jews speak of cutting a covenant rather than making one, because the ancient ratification rite involved cutting animals in two. A covenant is more than a promise: it establishes a standing bond, it specifies what each party owes, and it is confirmed by a sign or ceremony so that the relationship has a visible marker.

2. 2

   What is promised to Abraham when he is first called in Genesis, and what is asked of him?

   Model answer

   He is told to leave his country, his birthplace and his father's household for a land he will be shown. In return he is promised that he will become a great nation, that he will be blessed and made famous, that those who bless him will be blessed and those who slight him cursed, and that all the families of the earth will find blessing through him. When he arrives, the land itself is promised to his descendants. What is asked of him at this stage is only that he go, so the initiative and almost all the obligation lie with G-d.

3. 3

   What happens in the covenant ceremony in which Abraham is told to divide the animals, and why do scholars regard it as unusual?

   Model answer

   Abraham is told to divide a set of animals and lay the halves opposite each other. After nightfall a smoking oven and a flaming torch pass between the pieces, and the covenant is declared, with the promise of the land and of descendants as numerous as the stars, together with a warning that his offspring will first be enslaved in a foreign land for four centuries. What is unusual is that only the divine party passes between the pieces. In the ancient rite the party walking between the halves invoked the animals' fate on themselves if they broke faith, so here G-d alone takes the self-imprecatory oath and the covenant is effectively one-sided.

4. 4

   What does the second, fuller statement of the covenant with Abraham add to the first?

   Model answer

   It restates the promise of descendants and land as an everlasting arrangement, changes Abram's name to Abraham and Sarai's to Sarah to mark the new status, and for the first time imposes an obligation on the human side: every male is to be circumcised at eight days old, including those born in the household and those bought into it. Failure to circumcise cuts a man off from the people. It also names Isaac, not Ishmael, as the child through whom the covenant line will run, while promising that Ishmael too will be blessed.

5. 5

   How does the theme of land work within the covenant with Abraham?

   Model answer

   The land is promised as a gift rather than earned, it is promised to descendants rather than to Abraham himself, who lives in it only as a resident alien and buys nothing but a burial plot, and its boundaries are given in expansive terms. This sets up a pattern that runs through Jewish thought: the land is held as a trust from its true owner, possession is always future or precarious, and the promise persists across generations of not yet having it.

6. 6

   What does it mean to call the Jews a chosen people, on the basis of the covenant with Abraham?

   Model answer

   It means that G-d selected one family and bound himself to it, with the stated purpose that blessing should reach all the families of the earth through it. Jewish thinkers have consistently read election as a task rather than a privilege: to be chosen is to be given obligations that others do not carry. Nothing in the text presents Abraham's family as superior; the choice is presented as divine initiative, and the prophets later use it to argue that Israel will be judged more strictly, not less.

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