Covenant

Historically, the word “covenant” has both political and religious antecedents. Its earlier usage has been linked more to the ancient Near Eastern treaty traditions which go back to the Hittites and remained central in neo-Assyrian imperial politics (Schaper 2015). Such treaties, especially the vassal treaties, have been shown and/or argued in contemporary literature to have deeply influenced the Israelite concept of berith (Schaper 2015; Douglas and Tenney 1987). The biblical word berith often translated covenant which formed large part of the book of Deuteronomy “oscillates between the notion of the contractual and that of obligation or self-obligation” (Schaper 2015, p. 365). In the Hebrew Bible, there are four kinds of covenants, namely: the Noahic, the Abrahamic, the Mosaic, and the Davidic (Gn 8–9, 12:1–3, 17:1–14; Ex 19:5–6; 2 Sm 7:12–16). As argued by Schaper (2015, p. 365) “The notion of covenant is central to the Hebrew Bible and became the focus of the Jewish...