Love: The Old Covenant and Ancient Israel

In the last blog we looked at what a THEOCRACY is. We said that ancient Israel’s theocracy came into existence through COVENANT. So let’s consider what a COVENANT is.

According to the Bible, Moses mediated the COVENANT which YHWH made with ancient Israel. Israel is nothing special. They’re simply the descendants of Abraham/Isaac/Jacob, and were the recipients of a promise God made to their ancestors. They still had to make their own choice in the matter. THAT DIVINE PROMISE, BACKED BY HUMAN CHOICE, IS A COVENANT. You can read about the deal God made with Abraham in Genesis 15. That’s a good example of how God made a covenant with Abraham. But that’s not the same covenant God made with Abraham’s descendants (Israel) at Mt. Sinai.

The covenant God made with Israel at Sinai was mediated by Moses. Part of that covenant was THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. The Ten Commandments is the LAW that God gave to the new nation Israel (Note: “Israel” is Jacob’s alternative name, whose meaning and purpose in shown in Genesis 32.). That LAW is only one part of the multi-faceted covenant. It’s the part that applies to the Nation Israel. It’s called THE STIPULATIONS  (their duties toward the Sovereign). See Mendenhall’s article: The section on “The Stipulations of the Covenant”. OBEDIENCE to these stipulations is MANDATORY for the covenant people as a whole, and for every individual within that national covenant. In other words, ALL THE PEOPLE OF THE NATION ARE REQUIRED TO OBEY ALL THE LAWS OF THE COVENANT. That is the key to understanding what LOVE is. You can read Mendenhall’s article.

Here’s how God defines LOVE in the 2nd Commandment:

“I, YHWH your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” (Exodus 20:5b-6)

Right in the covenant wording you can see the term LOVE. Its obvious contextual meaning is: “Keep My [God’s] commandments.”

God’s covenant love with Israel was a two-way street. It’s called “a bi-lateral covenant”. God provided blessings and protection through promises, and His subjects were required to obey what God demanded of them in the LAW He gave them. That’s how the covenant AGREEMENT works. It’s really that simple.

You may have already guessed that there’s a connection between the LAW of the covenant, and the BLESSINGS AND PROTECTION that the covenant Sovereign promises. Human experience teaches us that when a whole nation learns to be SELF-GOVERNING (which is the basis of the covenant with God, because WILLFUL SIN IS PROHIBITED), they also learn the mechanism by which blessings come to society (by social morality, which is created by everybody voluntarily choosing to obey all of God’s law). Human experience also teaches us the opposite: LAWLESSNESS LEADS A NATION TO RUIN. So you can see WHY God demands obedience to His Law: IT’S GOOD FOR THE NATION. It’s like gravity … you can’t beat gravity. If you walk off a skyscraper, you will splat on the concrete. But if you take the stairs or elevator, you will make it to the ground floor in good health. The stairs and elevator are there for your blessing!

Now in the OT, there are a number of covenants, one of which created the nation of ancient Israel. The NT talks about that covenant and another one, a NEW Covenant. The key to the NEW Covenant is JESUS CHRIST, which 1st Temple Israel did NOT have. More on this in the next blog entry.

In addition to Israel, the ancient secular world also had covenants. The covenants of interest occurred BETWEEN MONARCHS. They were usually bilateral covenants too. The way they worked is this: A powerful king solicited a lesser king to become his “vassal” (to be incorporated into his kingdom). The powerful king is THE GREAT KING in the covenant relationship. The VASSAL is the subordinate king/nation in the covenant relationship. This covenant circumvented warfare and destruction. Consider it CIVILIZED CONQUEST.

The VASSAL agreed to obey the dictates (“stipulations”) stated in the covenant. He was supposed to make sure that HIS ENTIRE NATION obeyed those dictates DOMESTICALLY as well as INTERNATIONALLY. OBEDIENCE is what the lesser king ‘signed-up for’, so THAT is what he took responsibility to do. And DO HE MUST, or his superior will penalize him.

Granted, most of these covenants were entered into by the lesser king under threat of destruction by the greater king. But “that’s life”. The greater king made the lesser king “an offer he couldn’t refuse”. So most kings became vassals in their nation’s best interests (or so it seems!). The greater king mostly wanted to collect tribute and use the lesser king’s military to help conquer other nations. It’s all about KINGDOM BUILDING. Beyond that, the greater king assigned envoys and bureaucrats to keep tabs on the goings-on in the lesser king’s kingdom. According to Immanuel Velikovsky, one example is Naaman the leper (2 Kings 5). For kings who refused to become vassals, the alternative was DEATH AND DESTRUCTION of their nation. Think about that: A great and mighty army invades your nation and destroys everything, shuts-down all social process, massacres most everybody, then takes what he wants as booty. That’s what we’re talking about here. Or else the victim nation can “sign on the dotted line”. Any of this sound familiar today?

Some examples of ancient covenant communications are found in the book, The El Amarna Letters. These were ancient letters discovered in the late 1800’s and translated into English. They are the letters that the vassal kings sent to the great king of their covenant. Note: These COVENANTS were also considered TREATIES. Reading The El Amarna Letters is like reading a factory manager or business executive soliciting provisions from corporate headquarters or complaining about some conflict with another franchise or subsidiary. These are all upper level issues, not any to which a common man or working class person would be privy to. Some of these letters are humorous. You can even read King Ahab’s communications in some of these letters. Boy did he whine! What a cry-baby he was!

There are other evidences of these covenants in other documents (such as the Bible), but the El Amarna Letters give you a good idea of the reality of it. I learned about this from reading Immanuel Velikovsky’s books. He’s got some of the best reading for OT background that I know of. He brings to light a number of historical facts that give context to the OT historical accounts. He did such good work that I rate him in my top 3 sources of historical information relevant to Bible study. The only book of his that I didn’t have a ‘taste’ for is Mankind in Amnesia. It’s a Freudian psycho-analysis of the human race. It’s a bit heady and abstract for me!

The point for saying all this is to let you know that COVENANT IS A HISTORICAL REALITY that is similar to what goes on today in the real world of government and business. Biblically speaking, covenant is THE LEGAL RELATIONSHIP YOU ENTER INTO WITH  GOD when you become a Christian. This historical information helps us to define, IN MEASURABLE TERMS, what it means to HAVE A RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD. Notice it’s NOTHING like what church people talk about. I’m not saying they’re wrong. I’m just saying that they never talk about the COVENANT aspect of “getting saved”, which is absurd. Nor do they connect the Biblical Covenants to their “relationship with God”. Just saying … There’s much more to COVENANT. But this should be a good introduction to get you interested.

So for me, God IS REAL. God’s covenant IS REAL. God’s theocracy IS REAL. The means for being in God’s theocracy TODAY is Jesus Christ (the foundation of the New Covenant), which he ratified so that you and I can CHOOSE to AGREE to the STIPULATIONS, which is called LOVE. More on the New Covenant and Christ’s role in it in the next blog entry.