The Covenant – Berit

Author’s Note – I was planning to write about Abraham in just one post … but there were too many traditions and therefore too many themes to unravel. It didn’t seem fair that I would dedicate 8 posts on the first 11 chapters but just one on Abraham which extended 14 chapters. So expect 6-7 posts on Abraham.

Personal Context

The Israelite ancestors, Abraham and Sarah, were greatly admired in our home.  My mother, whose Korean name was Ki Soon, changed her name to Sarah when she got her USA citizenship and tried to change my dad’s name to Abraham.  My father refused; he didn’t want an American name.  He was happy with his given name, Bong Jong. In all honesty, I kind of wished my father changed his name. It was difficult even for me to say, Bong Jong. Not that I would call him by his name but at times, when I had to introduce him or fill out forms for him, it was not a pretty name.

My mother imagined herself and my father as the first patriarch and matriarch of our clan.  Like the first generation of the covenant, she moved from South Korea to the Promised Land, the United States.  She left everything for the hope of starting anew, with the hope of achieving the American Dream.  Their story, her story, were meshed into one so that the Promised Land became America.  She and her family were coming into the land flowing with milk and honey … But she never thought it was going to be this difficult to establish her clan in a country that didn’t particularly care for immigrants.  So she treasured the stories of Abraham and Sarah more and more, because she knew what it meant for them to leave their home country for foreign land with the promise of a future that was uncertain.

The big difference, which didn’t make a difference for my mother, was that she wanted and therefore chose to come to America. Korea did not offer the opportunities that she imagined for her children so in her imagination, the possibilities were limitless in a rich land of opportunities. But Abraham and Sarah were commanded by God to leave Haran for the Promised Land.  They traveled with their possessions and extended family. My mother, on the other hand, landed in Cleveland, Ohio with a couple thousand dollars and her two youngest children; her husband, my father, stayed in Korea with their two oldest children. But none of the differences mattered; their story was her story.

What is it about the power of mythic stories to make our stories feel greater than just a personal triumph?  How does it transform our narrative to a myth so that we come to believe that we too are covered under the covenant?  We are the children of the promise; we too will receive descendants, blessings, and land.  Rather than just discuss the historical value of the stories, which is not promising at all, we need to understand how these stories help us transcend the mundane to the mythic dimension, where our stories coalesce with the stories of our biblical heroes.  It gives us meaning in a world of meaningless routines and personal victories that gets muddled with our personal defeats. In telling the story of Abraham and Sarah, their descendants, the Israelites, were doing just that, trying to transcend their reality to find meaning through their past.

Ancient Context

With Abraham and Sarah, we now enter into Israel’s history, or more specifically into the history of its patriarchs and matriarchs.  We know almost to nothing about this historical period, and therefore have very little to prove or disprove the historicity of the stories.  However, once we remove ourselves from the question of historicity or the historical value, the stories are actually timeless.  They trace the movements of the early ancestors of a nation/people who tried to legitimate their claim to the land and to the covenant with their creator God.  

While their journey appears to be interlaced with random stories of their adventures, one can trace a development, essentially a transformation of Abram to Abraham who comes into his own as a patriarch.  God commands Abram to leave Harran to receive God’s blessing.  But who is this man?  What did he accomplish to receive such a honor?  What was it about him that warranted God’s trust?  So the biblical authors set out to explain.  Abram is not a perfect person; far from it. Nevertheless, through a series of situations, he grows as a patriarch.  He becomes Abraham, the father of many nations. So we need to ask ourselves as we read the stories, what makes an Israelite patriarch?  Which character traits did the biblical authors believe made Abraham into a noteworthy ancestor?  How did these traits reflect the values of the culture, the values of the Israelites?

Covenant

Abram, the First Patriarch of the Covenant

In the previous section, Abram is introduced as the son of Terah who leaves the Ur of the Chaldeans, a bustling city for another trade and religious center, Haran.  Terah initially intended to go to Canaan but instead for some reason decided to settle in Haran:

Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot son of Haran and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Haran, they settled there. (Genesis 11:31)

We don’t know why Terah initially wanted to go into Canaan. He may have also been prompted by God to leave Ur or could have been motivated for financial reasons to seek a new trading route through Canaan. The tradition does not share much. Whatever the situation may have been, the biblical author is clear as to who heeds the divine command to finish the journey. Abram is to leave Haran so his descendants can receive the blessings:

Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. (Genesis 12:1-3)

Before I discuss the covenant, I want to point out exactly what Abram was expected to do. He is to leave his country (אֶרֶץ), kindred (מוֹלֶדֶת – “place of birth”), and father’s house (בַּיִת אָב). Based on the genealogy, Terah took Abram out of Ur and settled him in Haran. It is not clear at what age he moved but he was old enough to have married his half-sister, Sarai. And based on the wording of the divine command, Abram seems to have received the divine promise not in Haran but in Ur, which was the land of his birth. He joined Terah, his father, because of this promise. While he had the comfort of his father’s company (and it would appear his brother, Nahor and his wife, Milcah) for the first half of the journey, Abram had to finish the last leg with his wife and his nephew, Lot.

But what did it mean for a man to leave the safety of his father or more specifically, his clan, his father’s household, in the ancient Near East? Well, it was extremely uncommon for a man to leave his father’s household which was patriarchal and patrilocal; therefore women were expected to follow their husbands and move into their household. Even if the son was to move out, they would reside nearby to help maintain the agricultural or pastoral duties of the patriarchal household. So what God commands Abram to do was outside of the expected practices. Without the protection of his extended family/clan, he was extremely vulnerable to the vicissitudes of a tribal society where centralized policing agency was lacking. God was basically asking Abram to take a huge risk, one without any guarantees.

So where was Abram expected to go? We know what he needed to leave. Both Ur of the Chaldeans and Haran were well-known prosperous trading hubs; they were bustling towns. But the land of Canaan? To the land where God will show Abram? It was a vast stretch of territory that was occupied by a diverse group of inhabitants, the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. So to which town or hub was Abram expected to go? And how was he and his descendants to become a blessing in a land that was already occupied? This was not clear.

Like the Aqedah story (Genesis 22) where Abraham was commanded to go to “a mountain I will show you,” here God commands Abram to go to “the land that I will show you.” In other words, Abram knows the general direction but it is unclear what specific location he needs to journey. Imagine leaving a place of everything that is familiar and secure and going to everything that is uncertain on the very word of a God, whose relationship with Abram is not completely clear! It is quite frightening and yet Abram goes “as YHWH had told him” (Genesis 12:4). But the Yahwist author does not explain who YHWH is to Abram; it is just assumed that the creator God, YHWH, had an established relationship with the patriarch.

Even the rabbis had to fill in the blank because at no point in the Yahwist source is Abram introduced to YHWH or provided an explanation as to who YHWH is to the patriarch:

And he [Abraham] was sitting alone making observations [of the stars] and a voice came into his heart saying, “All the signs of the stars and the signs of the sun and the moon are all under the Lord’s control. Why am I seeking [them out]? If He wishes, He will make it rain morning and evening, and if He desires He will not make it fall, for everything is under His control. (Jubilees 12-17-18)

This idea of Abram turning away from the worship of idols, Chaldean gods, or the stars, to worshipping one true God makes Abraham the first monotheist in Jewish tradition.

While Jews claimed a physical, biological ties to the patriarch, Christians spiritualized their ties to Abraham who was known for his faith:

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he set out, not knowing where he was going. (Hebrews 11:8)

And he received circumcision as a sign, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then, he is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them. And he is then also the father of the circumcised who not only are circumcised but who also follow in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. (Romans 4:11-12)

Christians claimed ties to Abraham by faith; they like Abraham believed in the Christ figure. But within Judaism, Abraham was not so much a person known for his faith but the patriarch, the father of the Israelites/Jews, who entered into a covenantal relationship with God. He is the one who separated his descendants, the chosen children, from other people through circumcision.

Types of Covenants

Here is this figure, who decides to act, i.e. leave his father’s household for an uncertain future, based on the divine covenant. Then what is a covenant, a word that is frequently mentioned in regards to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the people of Israel? Well, there are two types of covenant (berit) in the Bible, a contractual agreement between two parties and a promise.  Depending on the source, a covenant will look differently. The difference is not on what God will provide the Israelites but the conditions on which the covenant is based.

In the Yahwist source, the current section (Genesis 12), the covenant is essentially a promise, that is unconditional once Abram leaves Haran, to Abram and his descendants:

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. (Genesis 12:2-3)

Compare this promise to the covenant outlined in Genesis 13:

Raise your eyes now, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Rise up, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you. (Genesis 13:14-17)

As well as the promised outlined in Genesis 15:

To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites. (Genesis 15:18-21)

Based on the variations of the covenant in Genesis, Abram is to receive:

• Offsprings – many, many descendants 
• Land – Promised Land – land of the inhabitants of Canaan
• Nationhood – blessings as a nation

Aside from the specific wording, the blessing is similar – offspring and land that leads to nationhood. Yet the Yahwist source is more expansive. The nation stemming out from Abraham’s seed will become the source of blessing for all nations because it will be no ordinary nation but famous, perhaps referring to the United Kingdom under David and Solomon. This is what God wants to give Abram and his descendants but he needs to leave Ur and then Haran. Once he leaves, this is a promise, guaranteed to unfold for Abram’s descendants.

Compare this view of the covenant with the Priestly version which is unambiguously a contractual agreement between two parties:

I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.” Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring. Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.” (Genesis 17:6-14)

God promises to make Abraham into many nations in the land of Canaan but only if Abraham and his descendants keep the covenant. But what is their end of the agreement to receive this blessing? Their contractual agreement is dependent on circumcision, an identity marker that sets the Israelites apart from other groups of people. 

So why is circumcision the deciding factor or the marker of the covenant?  Does it mean that the Israelite men just had to circumcise in order to receive the promise? Within the Priestly worldview, circumcision is the physical symbol of the covenant between God and the Israelites.  It was the way in which the Israelites separated themselves from non-Israelites, which was an existential concern for the Judean community that was ruled by their overlords, the Babylonians and then the Persians.  But it was more than just separating from others, the circumcision pointed to what would happen to an Israelite if they failed to keep the divine commandments, all of them.  The Israelite will be cut in half should they disobey.  It was a reminder.

The contractual concept of the covenant is very much in line with the Elohist source, which is a precursor to the Deuteronomist school. While we have not yet discussed the Elohist source, their contribution to the Hebrew Bible will become more evident in the book of Exodus. However, their voice lingers in the book of Genesis which is the reason why I have included a section on the Elohist below.

How or why did the unconditional promise become a conditional contract or did the two expressions of the covenant co-exist?  It is difficult to say but one could reasonably argue that the unconditional covenant reflected a historical period in which the Israelite monarchial kingdom was flourishing, one in which God seemed to favor the people and their leader.  And the conditional covenant would most likely reflect a period when times were uncertain and the people questioned God’s promises.  Why has God forgotten God’s people? Why have we been abandoned so that we have lost our land, our nation, and many of our people? And the answer would have been, it is not God but the people and their leaders who have failed to live up to their side of the contract. It was not unconditional but a conditional covenant.

Some have described these two types of covenant as Abrahamic (unconditional) and Mosaic (conditional) covenants. However, the unconditional and conditional stood side-by-side whether it was established between Abraham, Moses, or David and Solomon. It is not specific to any particular figure but reflects a distinct historical background of the biblical author/source/editor – what socio-historical background lend itself for the writer to present an unconditional or conditional covenant? This is NOT to say that there were no differences between the Abrahamic from the Mosaic covenants. The distinction was based on the conditions, “what were the stipulations that the patriarchs and Israelites needed to observe/keep in order to keep their end of the contractual agreement?” After all, there is a distinction between a ritual, i.e. circumcision, and the laws that Moses introduces to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai.

Elohist (E)

So far, the Yahwist and the Priestly sources have been introduced but the Elohist source does not appear really appear until Genesis 20 though some would argue that the Elohist hand can be detected in Genesis 15.  Who is the Elohist and what are their agendas?  And why do we only see their hand so late in Israel’s self-understanding?  Is there an actual source, a continuous narrative like the Yahwist or the Priestly source?

The Elohist, as it is reflected in the Hebrew Bible, is most likely a supplement to the Yahwist. It is not a continuous narrative but contains fragmentary bits, reflecting on and contributing their thoughts on some of the stories in the Yahwist source.  This would mean that the Elohist, which primarily used Elohim to refer to God, was dated a little after the Yahwist.  Since most scholars would date the Yahwist to 1000-900 BCE, the Elohist is usually dated to 900-800 BCE.  However, as I have argued before, it is somewhat difficult to date the Yahwist. But if the content of the Yahwist source lends itself to the United Monarchy background, then it would make sense that the Elohist source was written about a century later.

If the Elohist is just a ‘supplement’ or ‘fragmentary’, can we even discuss their theology or agendas?  Yes, there is a distinct theology which is reflected in the language and how they conceptualize the relationship between God and the people.  While their theology is not as comprehensive as the Yahwist or the Priestly sources, the Elohist wanted to share their perspective on Israel’s past, which is the reason why they added their own version of the Yahwist stories. 

So what are some of their cultural and theological perspective? Here is a brief preview which will be highlighted within the analysis of specific passages:

• Northern perspective (the kingdom of Israel) as opposed to the southern perspective of the Yahwist – Judah.
• Elohim is transcendent – communicates through dreams, visions, and angels
• Fear of God – emphasis on testing people
• Emphasis on prophets (‘man of God’)
• Emphasis on Horeb – site in which God gives laws to the people 

To help us better understand the differing perspectives on Abraham, the following chapters (Genesis 12-25) have been divided into the three sources (Yahwist, Priestly, and Elohist):

Themes

• Covenant – Berit
• Abraham – Monotheist
• Abraham – Faith
• Unconditional Vs. Conditional
• Elohist

Questions

• Explain why Abram leaves Ur/Haran for the land of Canaan.
• Who is Abraham to the Israelites, to the Jews, and to the Christians?
• What is a covenant? What is the difference between unconditional and conditional covenant?
• Who is the Elohist? Did you see any traces of the Elohist in Genesis 1-12?

Personal Reflections

• If the concept of the covenant depends on the author’s context, then what is the universal truth behind the covenant? Does God give us a conditional or unconditional covenant? Can we ever know?
• Why is how we imagine Abraham important to later religious communities? Why do we need our ancestral heroes to reflect our values/theologies?
• Does the covenant apply to us today? If so, what elements of the covenant is current?