Scripture Commentaries

Covenant: Ancient and Ever New
Irene Nowell, OSB

Originally published in God’s Word Today
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“ Covenant” is not a word we use in daily conversation. In fact, it is not much used by the three prophets we are reading this month (see Hos 2:20; 6:7; 8:1). Yet the idea of covenant is central to the message of Amos, Hosea, and Micah. It is also central to our Christian faith. What is a covenant? It is a bond of personal relationship, a solemn promise sealed by a ritual ceremony. How does covenant affect our lives? Read on!

Making a Covenant
Our covenant story begins with Abraham, our father in faith. We know the story. God called Abraham to leave his home and family and go to a place God would show him. There God promised to give him land and descendants (Gen 12:1-3, 7). But the covenant is more than promises. God also made a commitment to remain in a special relationship with Abraham: “I will be your God and the God of your descendants after you” (Gen 17:7). The covenant was marked by a sign, circumcision (Gen 17:11), and sealed in a special ritual ceremony. The ceremony seems strange to us. Abraham was asked to slaughter several animals, to split them in half, and to arrange the pieces so there was a passageway between them. After sunset God, symbolized by a flaming torch, passed between the pieces (Gen 15:9-18). What does this strange ceremony mean? Whoever passed between the pieces of the split animals was saying: May I be split like these animals if I do not keep this covenant. The ceremony that seals the covenant is a way of laying one’s life on the line. This covenant is my life!

At Sinai the covenant is extended to all the people who claim descent from Abraham. God renews the promise of a special relationship with the people: “If you listen to my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my special possession, dearer to me than all other people, though all the earth is mine” (Exod 19:5). The covenant is sealed by another ceremony of laying one’s life on the line. Moses took the blood of sacrificed animals and sprinkled it on the altar, which stood for God, and on the people (Exod 24:5-8). God and the people thus became blood relatives, responsible for each other’s lives. Moses and Aaron, with seventy-two elders, also went up Mount Sinai and ate a sacrificial meal in the presence of God (Exod 24:9-11). (I admit this meal is hard to find in those verses. Trust me!) The meal too symbolizes a bonding of lives. To eat the same food is to share the same life; to share food with another is to become responsible for the other’s life. The sign of this covenant is the Sabbath day, the day dedicated wholly to sharing life with God (see Exod 31:13, 17; Ezek 20:12, 20).

Maintaining a Covenant
Like all relationships, the covenant relationship requires care. A marriage is not completely worked out and trouble-free from the day of the wedding. A friendship will only last if there is communication between the friends. This is true of the covenant also. God tests Abraham to see if he is really committed to the relationship or just wants the reward of the promises. “Take your son Isaac and offer him as a holocaust” (Gen 22:2). Abraham passes the test with flying colors. God says, “Now I know how much you love me” (Gen 22:12). The people test God at Sinai, making a golden calf to be their god (Exod 32:1). They have already broken the covenant, because God said, “You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below” (Exod 20:4). God is angry enough to destroy them (Exod 32:10). But Moses pleads with God who relents and renews the covenant (Exod 32:11-14). This is the first “new covenant.”
But the people break the covenant again, and the covenant keeps being in need of renewal. Joshua renews the covenant with the generation that came into the Promised Land (Josh 24:1-27). Hosea talks about yet another renewal when Israel has turned away from God: “I will make a covenant for them on that day . . . and I will let them take their rest in security” (Hos 2:20; see also Jer 31:31-34).

The Three Prophets: Implications of Covenant Relationship
What are the implications of this covenant relationship with God? What does it mean to share life with God?

First of all, the covenant transforms the identity of both parties: “I will be your God and you will be my people” (Lev 26:12; Jer 7:23; 31:33; Ezek 37:27). God is now named the “God of Abraham” or the “God of Jacob” or the “God of Israel” (Exod 3:6; 5:1). The people are now forever known as God’s people (Ps 28:8-9). So when Hosea is told to name one of his children “Not-My-People,” it is a shattering statement that both God and the people have lost their identity. God says, “You are not my people and I will not be your God” (literally, “I will not be your I AM”; Hos 1:9). As covenant people we are either God’s people or we are no one. Even more amazingly, God is either our God or not God! Can we believe it?

Secondly, this identity that we have as covenant people can only be described through relationships. God is our God; we are God’s people. The prophets begin to describe this life-sharing covenant bond in terms of the two most intimate relationships we know: husband and wife, parent and child. Hosea is the pioneer here. In the first three chapters of his book, God is described as the husband of Israel. In chapter 11, the parent-child metaphor appears. God says, “When Israel was a child I loved him; out of Egypt I called my son (Hos 11:1). What can this mean? We are God’s beloved, as close to God as a husband is to a wife, a parent to a child. We are called in turn to love God with our whole heart and soul and strength (see Deut 6:5).

Through the covenant we are also called to be what we were created to be: images of God, like God as a child is like a parent (see Gen 1:27). We share life with God, and therefore we must live like God. Therefore we must love one another and all creation as God loves (Lev 19:1, 18, 34)! The prophets insist on this. Almost every time they accuse the people of sin, the sin is a failure to love one another: “They trample the heads of the weak into the dust and force the lowly out of the way” (Amos 2:7). They say, “We will buy the lowly for silver and the poor for a pair of sandals” (Amos 8:6). “They all lie in wait to shed blood, each one ensnares the other” (Mic 7:2). Thus they break the covenant bond.

When God renews the covenant with Israel, God says: “I will espouse you to me forever: I will espouse you in right and justice, in love and in mercy” (Hos 2:21). God insists: “It is love that I desire, not sacrifice” (Hos 6:6). Hosea exhorts us: “sow for yourselves justice, reap the fruit of piety” Hos 10:12). Amos says that we must “hate evil and love good, and let justice prevail at the gate” and “let justice surge like water, and goodness like an unfailing stream” (Amos 5:15, 24). But perhaps Micah sums it up best: “You have been told, O mortal, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: Only to do right and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Mic 6:8).

God too is bound to the covenant, thus bound to love us with faithful love. On this the prophets base their hope: “You will show faithfulness to Jacob, and love to Abraham, as you have sworn to our ancestors from days of old” (Mic 7:20). Like a parent, God cannot abandon the beloved child: “How could I give you up, O Ephraim, or deliver you up, O Israel? . . . My heart is overwhelmed; my pity is stirred. I will not give vent to my blazing anger” (Hos 11:8-9).

New Testament: Christian Covenant
Just as the covenant is central to the message of these prophets we are reading, so it is at the heart of the New Testament and Christian commitment. The images of covenant relationship abound. God is our father; every day we pray “Our Father.” The bond of love between husband and wife symbolizes the life-sharing between Christ and the church (Eph 5:28-32). The kingdom of heaven is like a wedding banquet (Matt 22:2). The final covenant renewal will be a wedding: “I saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them as their God’” (Rev 21:2-3).

The demands of the new covenant are the same: to love God and each other with all our hearts and souls and strength. Jesus declares this the great commandment (Matt 22:34-40). Paul says, “love is the fulfillment of the [covenant] law” (Romans 13:8-10). In the Gospel of John, Jesus says this is a new commandment: “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (John 13:34). We are to be like God, to be like Jesus. We are to love one another as Jesus loved us. This covenant demand is truly a demand to lay down our lives: “Greater love than this no one has, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). This love is the sign of the new covenant: “This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

This covenant too needs renewal. Weekly, sometimes daily, we celebrate a covenant renewal ceremony. It is a ceremony of sharing food, of sharing life-blood. It is a ceremony in which we say again, “We are all one body; we are the Body of Christ.” Eucharist is our covenant renewal: our commitment to be like God in Christ, our commitment to love one another as Christ loves us.

God still speaks to us through words of the prophets Amos, Hosea, and Micah. They warn us of the danger of breaking the covenant, of forgetting to love God and one another. They warn us that to lose the covenant relationships is to lose our very identity. They also remind us of God’s fidelity to the covenant, of God’s tender love for us. They show us again: This is our God and we are his people.