What are the covenants with Israel?

Question 10068.

The covenants with Israel are the backbone of biblical prophecy, and if you get them right a great deal else falls into place. There are five of them, and four are unconditional promises that God binds Himself to keep regardless of the nation’s behaviour.

A covenant in Scripture is not a contract between equals. The Hebrew word berith describes a solemn bond, cut rather than signed, sealed with blood and sworn before witnesses. When God enters one, He stakes His own name on the outcome.

Conditional and unconditional

The first thing to sort out is the difference between two kinds of arrangement. A conditional covenant contains an if. Blessing follows obedience and is withdrawn by disobedience. An unconditional covenant contains a shall. God announces what He will do, and the fulfilment rests on His character rather than on the other party’s conduct.

Of the covenants with Israel, only the Mosaic covenant is conditional in that sense. The Abrahamic, Land, Davidic and New covenants are all unconditional. Israel’s obedience affected whether a given generation enjoyed the benefits, but never whether the promise itself would finally be kept.

That distinction is doing enormous work. Once you grant that four of these covenants rest on God’s oath, the idea that Israel’s unbelief cancelled them becomes very difficult to sustain, which is why I part company with the view I discuss in my answer on replacement theology.

It is also worth saying that the covenants with Israel are cumulative rather than competing. Each later one develops a strand of the first. The Land covenant expands the land promise, the Davidic covenant expands the seed promise into a royal line, and the New covenant delivers the blessing promise inwardly. Nothing is retracted along the way.

The Abrahamic covenant

Everything begins here. “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great” (Genesis 12:1-2). Land, seed and blessing are the three strands, and the rest of the covenants with Israel unpack them.

Genesis 15 ratifies it in an unforgettable way. The animals are divided, and in the ordinary practice of the day both parties would walk between the pieces, invoking the same fate on themselves if they broke faith. Abram is put into a deep sleep, and God alone passes through as a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch.

Genesis 17 adds the sign of circumcision and the word everlasting, applied to the covenant and to the land. An individual could be cut off for refusing the sign, but the covenant itself is described as everlasting, and God repeats it to Isaac and to Jacob rather than transferring it elsewhere.

The Land covenant

Sometimes called the Palestinian covenant, this is set out in Deuteronomy 29 and 30, and it is easily missed because it sits inside a long sermon. It anticipates that Israel will disobey, will be scattered among the nations, and will then be regathered and restored.

The key promise is this: “the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you” (Deuteronomy 30:3). Then comes the inward work: “the Lord your God will circumcise your heart.”

What this covenant establishes is that exile is not the end of the story. Among the covenants with Israel, this is the one that guarantees a final and permanent tenure of the land, and it explicitly builds in the expectation of failure beforehand. God signed knowing exactly what they would do.

The Mosaic covenant, the exception

At Sinai the arrangement changes character. “If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples” (Exodus 19:5). There is the if. Deuteronomy 28 spells out the blessings for obedience and the curses for disobedience in painful detail, and Israel’s history is the working out of that chapter.

The Mosaic covenant was never a means of salvation. It governed the national life of a redeemed people, exposed sin, and pointed forward through its sacrifices to the Lamb who would take sin away. Paul calls the law a guardian until Christ came.

Because it was conditional, it could end, and Scripture says it has. The believer is not under the Mosaic covenant, and Hebrews speaks of the first covenant as obsolete and passing away. Notice, though, that Hebrews says this only of the conditional one. The unconditional covenants with Israel are never described that way.

The Davidic covenant

God’s word to David through Nathan is astonishing in its scope. “And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:16). A house, a kingdom, a throne, and each of them permanent.

Psalm 89 grapples with the tension when the monarchy collapses, and it concludes that God’s covenant faithfulness outlasts the failure of David’s sons. “I will not violate my covenant or alter the word that went forth from my lips.” The punishment of individual kings was foreseen; the annulment of the promise was not.

Gabriel picks it up in Luke 1:32-33, telling Mary that God will give her son “the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever.” That is a literal throne over a named house. I take it as written, and it is one reason I expect a literal reign from Jerusalem.

Jeremiah 33:20-21 puts it as strongly as it can be put. God says that if you can break His covenant with the day and His covenant with the night, so that day and night do not come at their appointed time, then His covenant with David may also be broken. Sunrise is the guarantee.

The New covenant

Jeremiah announces something genuinely new. “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah” (Jeremiah 31:31). It is expressly not like the covenant made at the exodus, which they broke.

Its terms are inward: the law written on the heart, a personal knowledge of God from the least to the greatest, and forgiveness of sin. “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” Ezekiel adds the gift of a new heart and God’s Spirit placed within.

Jesus inaugurated it at the last supper: “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” Believers today genuinely partake of its spiritual blessings, and the writer to the Hebrews argues the point at length. Its national application to Israel, promised to the houses of Israel and Judah, still awaits the day when the nation turns.

Why the covenants with Israel still matter

They matter first because they are the ground of prophecy. Almost everything the prophets predict is an expansion of one of these promises, which is why a reader who has grasped the covenants with Israel can find their way around Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel without a map.

They matter second because they establish God’s character. Paul argues in Galatians 3:15-17 that a ratified covenant cannot be annulled or added to, and that the law given four hundred and thirty years later did not cancel what had been promised. If God’s oath can lapse, no promise anywhere is safe, including the ones addressed to you.

And they matter third because of where they are heading. Every covenant terminates in Jesus. He is the seed of Abraham, the son of David, the mediator of the new covenant, and the one who will rule the land promised to a wandering Aramean four thousand years ago. My answer on how the covenants relate to eschatology traces that further.

One further thing. Reading the covenants with Israel carefully will cure you of a shallow view of grace. God bound Himself to a people who would spend centuries breaking faith with Him, and He did it with His eyes open, knowing every failure in advance. That is the God who has made promises to you.

So, now what?

Read the covenant passages themselves rather than summaries of them, mine included. Genesis 12, 15 and 17, Deuteronomy 30, 2 Samuel 7 and Jeremiah 31 will take you under an hour and will reshape how you read the prophets for the rest of your life.

Then let the logic land where Paul puts it. The covenants with Israel show a God who keeps His word to people who did not keep theirs. If He has held to promises made to Abraham for four millennia, through slavery, exile, occupation and dispersion, what makes you think He will lose His grip on you?

“For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.”

2 Corinthians 1:20, ESV