The Abrahamic Covenant

The Abrahamic covenant is the second covenant God made with a specific person that held ramifications for other people to come, the first being the Noahic covenant (Genesis 9); it precedes the existence of Israel as a society in a covenant with God.  It predicts the formation of the Jewish theocracy, as well as the advent of Christ.  Is understanding the Abrahamic covenant vital to understanding Christian theology as a whole?  No.  Key Biblical knowledge about ethics, soteriology, and God’s nature does not hinge on understanding this covenant at all.  Grasping the Abrahamic covenant can, however, deepen one’s appreciation for the broader narrative of Scripture as a whole.  For this reason, it can still be quite profitable to become familiar with this covenant.

When God made his covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12, he promised several things: 1) Abraham’s descendants would one day form a great nation, 2) God would bless people who bless him, and 3) God would curse those who curse him.  Though it is not immediately clear whether God means that he will bless or curse those who respectively bless or curse Abraham himself, his general descendants, or both, later divine actions in the Bible suggest the third option.  There are two primary ways that Abraham's descendants would bless others--the Messiah would emerge from a Jewish bloodline, and the later moral revelation to the Jews that would accompany the Mosaic covenant was intended for other nations to follow, since it is intrinsically just (Deuteronomy 4:8).

Later, in Genesis 15, God specifies the land that Abraham's line would receive, adding that although his descendants would serve a foreign nation as slaves for a time, they would "come out with great possessions" (the Exodus is clearly foreshadowed in Genesis 15:12-16).  In Genesis 17, God mandates that the sign of the Abrahamic covenant is circumcision.  For this sign to be visible to others, public male nudity would be necessary [1].  It is no surprise that conservative theologians either fail to recognize this or do not make this fact known.  These subsequent details provide clearer information about the outcome brought about by the Abrahamic covenant and about the means by which Jewish males were expected to demonstrate they were a part of Yahweh's society.

There is an important thing that the Abrahamic covenant can illuminate, though it is even more evident from other passages.  Because of the fact that God would later focus on relating to a particular social-ethnic group, Yahweh is described by some as racist or xenophobic.  It is odd that people would claim that God choosing Israel as the focal point of his eventual theocracy is racist, since the objective of the Abrahamic covenant was to bless all other nations through the lineage that would become Israel.  Yahweh never consigned all non-Jews to damnation or extermination simply for not being Jews.  On the contrary, all Gentiles who wanted to align themselves with Yahweh could do so (Isaiah 56:3).  From the beginning, the Abrahamic covenant was about restoring representatives of all peoples to God.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/07/a-fact-about-circumcision.html