May He send your help from the Sanctuary and support you out of Tziyon. Psalms 20:3
ישלח-עזרך מקדש ומציון יסעדך
May He send your help from the eternal Sanctuary above and support you out of the eternal Sanctuary below.
Much confusion and destruction has come into the world due to guess-work readings of the words in the Bible that speak about the one eternal covenant - guess-work readings that have been taught with assumed authority, as if they were not guess-work readings at all but explanations of the truth. Virtually all of these guesswork readings are based on the idea that there is more than one covenant of God. This notion can arise when we listen to the sound of the language in the Bible about God's covenant making instead of listening first and foremost to what is said.
Especially in English and in other foreign languages, (much more than in Hebrew), the sound of the language can lead the natural mind to jump to the conclusion that because there is more than one covenant making event on the part of God there is therefore more than one covenant of God. Bible interpreters can easily assume that because the language sounds like God is making a covenant with Noah, a covenant with Abraham, a covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai, a covenant with David, and promising a new covenant by the prophet, Jeremiah, and because human beings will sometimes make various covenants, that God is just like human beings and makes more than one covenant. To come to this conclusion is to misunderstand the nature of the covenant of God.
In fact, it is possible to speak accurately of God making a covenant with Abraham on the one hand, and then to speak, say, of God making a covenant with David, on the other hand, but it is the act of making that is distinct and different, not God's covenant itself. Indeed, the nature of a covenant is that it is essentially a promise. It is essentially giving one's word to another.
If God had simply said to Noah, to Abraham, to Israel, to David, "I give you my word", we would not think that there was more than one eternal word of God. The only difference in God making a covenant is that in making a promise to someone God is saying to them, as it were, "I am not only giving you my promise, I am giving you myself, my whole person, in my promise. If my promise is not true, then neither am I true."
This is the meaning of God making a covenant. He illustrates this clearly in the form that He uses to make a covenant with Abraham. When God makes a covenant He is pledging His word, and His whole being with His word. It is not then that there is more than one eternal word of God, that God should pledge a different part of Himself to different parties on different occasions. God is one. His word is one. The promise of God is one.
What is different is what the promise of God means to different people at different times and on different occasions. For God to pledge Himself to Noah meant that Noah and his children did not have to fear that the end of the world would come through dissolution by water. The world would indeed end, but it would not end by being dissolved back to the condition where it was empty and formless. However it would end it would end with some of its characteristics still in place. God was pledging Himself to Noah to say that He was committed to redeem something of the world that He had preserved Noah and his family to live in. There was a reason to live and to try to build a better world. In the end, there would be something that would be saved.
When God pledged Himself to Abraham it was on a much higher order of revelation. He pledged Himself to Abraham as though He were a man pledging Himself to a spouse. As God had made the heavens His sanctuary in Creation, so Abraham and his offspring would be God's sanctuary on earth. This level of the revelation of God's word, His promise, His pledge of Himself, His covenant, was so high that it would require many generations and events and further expressions of His covenant in order to teach human beings the consciousness that they would require in order to fully receive it. Nevertheless, it was a pledge that was as certain as God's very existence. It was His covenant.
Still, someone will say, But was not the covenant at Mount Sinai different? Was not that covenant conditional, dependent on Israel keeping the commandments? Whereas God's covenants with Noah and with Abraham were unconditional. The appearance of conditions has caused anyone who asks this question to overthrow the revelation that God is one and His covenant, His word, is one. God is not a God who can give His word here unconditionally and there conditionally. At Mount Sinai God gives His word unconditionally, just as He gave it unconditionally to Abraham.
It is immeasurable grace that God should reveal, wholly and in great detail, the nature of His wisdom, His mind, His will to Israel in the form of His Torah. When they do and believe His commandments, if they believe and do His word, they will know that His covenant is one, unconditional and eternal. When they sin they will be corrected.
This is also the way the apparent conditions of God's giving His covenant to David and to his house are to be understood. This covenant that God is making with David and his house is, and can only be, the one covenant that He made with Abraham and with All-Israel. When any son of David serves God in the work of God keeping His word to Israel they will know that God's word is a word of unconditional grace. When any son of David sins and strays from this service they will be corrected.
Even so, someone will say, But does God not say to Israel by the prophet that they broke His covenant? If it is only one eternal and unconditional covenant, how could Israel be in a position to break it? Anyone who asks this question has allowed the sound of words to overthrow the understanding of those words in their mind.
If we know that God is one and that His word is one and that He has pledged His whole Self to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob, and to their offspring, then we must understand that this language is divine metaphor, like all language that seems to limit God, but does so only for the sake of our understanding. What, then, is this like?
What are we to understand when we read that God said to Israel, You have broken my covenant? We are to understand this as though it said, You have broken my heart. You have treated me as though my word was nothing, as though I did not exit, as though I were nothing. But all of this is metaphorical language. For we know that God's word cannot be broken.
Someone will still ask, But if there is only one covenant, why does Scripture speak of a new covenant? Again, the Scripture speaks with divine poetry, the poetry with which God is redeeming the world. It is as if to say, Because in your heart, My Israel, you did not believe My word, you made my word to be as if it were old. You made my covenant as if it were a thing of the past. Therefore, I will make my covenant forever new. I will write my Torah upon your heart. I will pledge of Myself to you to bring forth new heavens and a new earth, where no sin can enter in, where righteousness dwells alone.
There is no other help. There is no other support, than the one eternal covenant of God.
May He send your help from the Sanctuary and support you out of Tziyon. Psalms 20:3
ישלח-עזרך מקדש ומציון יסעדך
May He send your help from the eternal Sanctuary above and support you out of the eternal Sanctuary below.
