All right, well, I'll go ahead and kind of start my warm-up here so we can try to cover as much as we can. This session has to do with the Abrahamic Covenant. And I'll just, as a caveat, as sort of clearing my throat at the opening here, say that this is a work in progress. So I welcome feedback. And I'm going to try to allow time at the end for questions and thoughts that you might have about this. I was originally asked to write a journal article on the Abrahamic Covenant as the foundation for mission, and I really came to the conclusion I first need to wrestle with the Abrahamic Covenant. Because I had been reading books, it wasn't an area of specialty for me. Most of my work is in wisdom books, things like Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, and so I never really wrestled with how should we understand the abrahamic covenant other than having read many dispensational theologians that said things like uh... the abrahamic covenant is unconditional and we need to push back against reformed interpretations of the covenant uh... who see it as conditional and so i kind of was wrestling through that and then reading other things saying well we should really think rethink how we classify the covenant in the light of ancient Near Eastern writings and other things. And so this is the fruit of my study and wrestling with it, and you can let me know if you think it's persuasive or not. All right, so the title given was The Abrahamic Covenant as the Foundation of Old Testament Theology, and I've nuanced that. Now I feel bad about nuancing, but I've nuanced it. I know he wouldn't necessarily say what we're doing here is bad. But anyway, the Abrahamic covenant as the fulcrum of Old Testament theology. And what I mean by that is it's, I think, refracting creational intent through the agency of Abraham and his descendants. And so I'm going to make a case that that's, I think, what's going on. All right, so follow along. I'll try to make this as interesting as possible, given that it's a paper. And I'll pause here and there and try to make comments about it as we go along. All right, I note here I began, the significance of the Abrahamic Covenant for Old Testament theology is commonly recognized. And when I say that, nearly everyone would agree that the Abrahamic Covenant really is a centerpiece of the Old Testament and in fact of God's redemptive plan. I note in the footnote Paul Williamson says Genesis 12, 1 to 3 is one of the most important revelations in the whole of Scripture and I could have multiplied comments like that that I've come across in various books that I've read so nearly everyone recognizes it. You have Cleon Rogers who wrote a very good journal article on the Abrahamic Covenant in Bibsac in the 70s, agreeing with John Murray, who comes from a Reformed perspective, both saying that the Abrahamic Covenant is integral. So we don't really debate that, but there is a lot to debate about the Abrahamic Covenant in general. So the next sentence, and this is a unique sentence because I'm not going to have this many footnotes, I promise, as we go through, but I want to just give a taste for all these different categories. I say interpreters continue to debate its precise place in the unfolding revelation of the Old Testament, and questions remain. What kinds of questions? Questions about how best to understand its serial disclosure across Genesis. Let me just say a word about that. In a way surprised by how many books I've read that would say Abraham has one covenant in Genesis 15 and another covenant in Genesis 17. And so they see him as getting the recipient, if you will, of multiple covenants over the course of Genesis. Another common idea that's espoused is that the covenant is established in Genesis 12. And I'm going to argue that it's actually not established until chapter 15, but it's promised in 12, and 12 sets the trajectory for everything else that follows. So I'll try to make a case for seeing it that way. So I have a four-stage program that I'll get to as we go along. The second thing being its nature as conditional Unconditional, and this is an important point that I'm going to spend a little bit of time on. If you note on footnote three down there, it says, historically, dispensationalists have termed the Abrahamic covenant as unconditional insofar as it is designated an everlasting covenant. So three times in Genesis 17, it's said to be an everlasting covenant. Others would nuance this by saying that Yahweh's promises are unconditional, but its fulfillment with respect to timing and participants hinges upon faith and obedience. Walter Kaiser said this years ago in his Old Testament theology. Keith Essex wrote a very good article on the Abrahamic covenant where he says something similar. What I've come to conclude, though, is more or less reluctantly to agree with Daniel Bloch and others who have called for moving beyond a binary framework of conditional or unconditional. What Bloch and others would argue, and I've in the end come to agree with them, is that all biblical covenants between Yahweh and humans carry some measure of divine guarantee and some level of human responsibility. So this is where I would differ a little bit from some of the traditional dispensational treatments because I think to say it's unconditional misses some things happening in the text. So I'll try to unpack that and see if you would agree or disagree with that. All right, going on up above, its relationship to previous and successive biblical covenants. This is also a big interpretive issue today. A more recent system that has become popular is progressive covenantalism, really in a way spearheaded, its origins are in New Covenant theology, but it became popular through Gentry and Wellam's book, Kingdom Through Covenant, if you've heard of that. And essentially what they argue is that the New Covenant is the consummation of all previous covenants, so that when we reach the New Covenant, everything has essentially been fulfilled in Christ. And although they might qualify this, in some measure it invalidates the previous covenants. That is to say, the new covenant now supersedes the Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the Davidic covenant, even really in the person of Christ. Christ has fulfilled everything. So, I'm going to argue that that's from my mind, my perspective, not a good way to understand the covenants. I have a different approach, so I'll make a case for that. And then finally, the last sentence, it's connection to the, or clause, it's connection to the plan of redemption and a continued role, next page, for the nation of Israel. So this is another big, topic of debate, and that is, how do we relate the Abrahamic Covenant to the Gospel proclamation around the world? How do we relate the Abrahamic Covenant to a continued role for Israel? For instance, progressive covenantalism would say that because so much of the Abrahamic Covenant is essentially typological, it's been fulfilled by Christ and adjacently by the Church who is united to Christ, therefore even the land provisions in the Abrahamic Covenant were typological of the new creation rather than anticipating a, what we would say, literal fulfillment or historical fulfillment in time and space during the millennial kingdom, which is what traditional dispensationalists would argue for. All right, so there are a lot of questions that surround this. So what I want to try to do is unpack what I think a covenant is and how I think the Abrahamic covenant is revealed, and then try to draw implications for how we should think about it and how we should apply it as we think about its importance in Scripture. Page 2, the nature of the Abrahamic Covenant. In the following, I argue that the development of the Abrahamic Covenant follows a linear progression across Genesis that incorporates four covenant stages. promise, ratification, sign of attestation, and oath sacrifice of confirmation. This understanding follows the contours of the Noahic covenant and supports the development of the land, seed, and blessing promises, with special focus in the succeeding passages on land in Genesis 15, seed in Genesis 17, and blessing in Genesis 22. So essentially what I'm going to argue for is that promises are made in chapter 12 that guarantee land, seed, and blessing, and then in each of the successive passages dealing with the Abrahamic Covenant, one aspect is developed. So land in 15, seed in 17, and blessing in 22. I go on to say this outline differs from interpreters who, on the one hand, understand the Abrahamic covenant as already established in Genesis 12, or who, on the other hand, propose multiple covenants with Abraham. This also cautions against typological readings of the Abrahamic covenant that undermine the reality of its land provisions, for example. And this is what Gentry and Wellham essentially do, take a typological reading of the land provisions. Second, and in this section I'm also outlining the flow of the paper, if you will. Second, I offer more precise terminology with respect to the Covenant's nomenclature. How should we talk about the Abrahamic Covenant? How should we understand its development within Scripture? Now, here's where this might get a little controversial, but if you stay with me, hopefully I'll make a good case and you can tell me what you think. I say, dispensational interpreters have argued historically that the covenant is unconditional in contrast to their covenantalist interlocutors who counter that the covenant is conditional. So I have some sources in the footnotes, John Walvard, Roland McCune wrote his THM thesis on this, and then some amillennial proponents who argue it's conditional. I go on to say, more comprehensive study of the available ancient Near Eastern sources, however, indicates that the situation is more complex. And I've read through most of the extant treaties from the ancient world that are available to come to this conclusion. So I'm not just necessarily, this isn't just necessarily my opinion, but I think having surveyed the sources, I think we can come to this conclusion. I go on to say no ancient covenants were truly unconditional in the sense of omitting all obligations upon the covenant parties. This wasn't really a category that existed in the ancient world. You didn't make a covenant, but thereby have no responsibility or obligation as a covenanting partner. In other words, I think in every covenant in the ancient world, both parties had something that was expected of them, some kind of intention upon their conduct, if you will. I go on to say further, bottom of two, the frequent distinction between royal grant, next page, covenants, and suzerainty vassal covenants misses the reality that royal grant covenants often presupposed a suzerainty vassal relationship. All right, so let me explain this. Essentially what happened is dispensationalists said over the years, the Abrahamic covenant is unconditional because it's a royal grant covenant, The Mosaic Covenant, on the other hand, is conditional because it's a suzerainty vassal kind of covenant. And they were tapping into categories that had been proposed by Moshe Weinfeld, who was a Jewish scholar. And he wrote an article and a couple monographs, and he has a lot of helpful information. I think the problem, though, is if you look at what he would call a royal grant covenant, the categories aren't so neatly distinct, as he suggested. What I mean by that is, in every case, I think, where there's a royal grant, there's also a great king, suzerain, who's making a pact with a lesser king, vassal. So it's somewhat disingenuous to say, well, this is a royal grant and this is a suzerainty vassal treaty. I think we have to nuance that to say they often conceptually overlapped. It's analogous to how we designate certain genres. We say, well, this is this kind of writing, this is this kind of writing. But often ancient people didn't think in the same categories that we have, so sometimes we impose those on the tax. So we have to be careful about doing that. So I think in creating this dichotomy, it unwittingly suggested that these were distinctive in the minds of ancient people, and I'm not convinced that it really was so clear cut. Does that make sense so far? So I think they would have seen it as more of a hybrid. All right, going on then. My proposed understanding modifies the terminology in a more nuanced and historically consistent direction. I argue that the Abrahamic covenant is best identified as a unilateral irrevocable, albeit regulated, royal grant covenant. So I'm not completely jettisoning that category, but I'm qualifying it to some degree. And specifically, I'm arguing that it follows the contours of a covenant from Allah-Lak. I'm going to have a section where I compare the Abrahamic covenant to this treaty that was made in the ancient world. And there are some pretty intriguing and remarkable parallels that I think help us shed some light on the Abrahamic covenant. I go on to say Yahweh adopts a similar cultural pattern to ensure land, lasting progeny, and life protection blessing to Abraham and his physical descendants while expecting certain norms of conduct. All right, number three, these are the main points I'm making. I argue that the Abrahamic covenant carries both continuity and discontinuity features with other biblical covenants. Now, I won't be spending as much time on this because the lion's share will be point one, but I do want to at least touch on this. I argue the covenant refracts earlier creational promises and stands in a hierarchical relationship to the succeeding Old Testament covenants. This connection hints at both direct and indirect relationships. This is where, you know, I'll say more about this, but I think where progressive covenantalism goes off the rails is failing to see how the new covenant specifically links back to the Mosaic covenant in particular. That is, whenever biblical writers are talking about a new covenant, they compare it to the failings of the Mosaic covenant. They don't compare it to the Abrahamic covenant. So that's a point I'm going to try to make. So I'm going to say, for example, the preceding Noahic covenant and succeeding Mosaic covenant carry an indirect relationship with the Abrahamic covenant. The Noahic and Mosaic covenants chiefly concern the restraint of sin so as to allow for human flourishing within a certain period of a time or economy, while the Abrahamic covenant concerns God's intention to bring land, seed, and blessing provisions to the nation of Israel and through them to convey blessing to the nations of the earth. These covenants thus carry discontinuity features. In that, for example, the Mosaic Covenant has temporal and material limitations that the Abrahamic Covenant does not. So for instance, I would see the Mosaic Covenant being completely fulfilled in Christ and that believers are no longer under the Mosaic Covenant in any sense. So I don't really see this threefold use of the law holding validity because I think the New Testament clearly sees it as a whole. And so if Christ has fulfilled some of it, he's fulfilled all of it. And so it's no longer binding upon us. So that's why I say it has material and temporal limitations. while the Noahic Covenant, as a generic covenant with living creatures in the created order, lacks the specificity that the Abrahamic Covenant has with its distinctive land and seed provisions. With respect to other biblical covenants, such as the Davidic Covenant and New Covenant, the latter covenants particularize provisions of the Abrahamic Covenant. These covenants thus specify the manner in which the seed, Davidic covenant, or land blessing, new covenant promises will come to fruition. So then these covenants carry a more direct relationship to the Abrahamic covenant, as the latter serves as the spring from which they emerge, but do so without abrogating the former covenant. And so I'll have a chart that tries to explain how that looks and what that means. Let me skip to the next paragraph, fourth. Fourth, I contend that the Abrahamic covenant furnishes the foundation or basis for God's unfolding plan of redemption and the rest of Scripture. The promised Abrahamic blessing comes to fruition through Abraham's seed and is inaugurated by the initiation of the new covenant in which the church encompassing all nations participates. There is some debate among traditional dispensationalists about our relationship to the new covenant. I essentially follow Dr. Compton's position here that sees us as participating in the blessing aspect, and so that's how I would understand that. Going on, the Abrahamic covenant's nature as unilateral and irrevocable means that Israel has a continued place in God's redemptive plan and will occupy a mediatorial role vis-à-vis the nations, a role that she failed to fulfill originally due to the disobedience of the Mosaic Law. Alright, so in other words, don't hear me saying that I'm somewhat skeptical of the unconditional terminology. Don't hear me saying that I think Israel can be replaced or has fulfilled her purpose. I still see a future for Israel that is irrevocable. Where the failing came, I think, is that the Mosaic Law was given to regulate specifically how Israel was to act as the mediator nation, and the Mosaic Covenant didn't actually lead to a successful outcome because of its limitations. The New Covenant takes its place by internalizing Torah specifically in the form of the Torah of Christ, the law of Christ, which is internalized now. And so where the Mosaic law failed, the new covenant or law of Christ will succeed, but that doesn't abrogate the Abrahamic covenant because it still means Israel has a role. So, I go on to say, the Abrahamic covenant guarantees that Israel will realize her land, seed, and blessing promises, and that the blessings promised to all nations will certainly come to fruition. The covenant may thus rightly be termed the fulcrum or keystone, that's Merrill's word, of Old Testament theology occupying a formative place in the storyline of Scripture. So having outlined the progression of my argument, that's just the introduction, I'm going to turn now to an examination of the biblical and historical context. So this is where I dive in a little bit more to what's going on. All right, the concept of covenant and the progressive revelation of the Abrahamic covenant on page four. Most biblical interpreters concur that the notion of covenant plays an integral role in the unfolding revelation of scripture. The first mention of covenant, Berit, appears in Genesis 6, 18, with reference to the future Noahic covenant. So, just to anticipate myself, I would argue that the first covenant in history and scripture is the Noahic covenant, and so I'm also skeptical of the idea of a covenant with creation. There's room for a covenant with creation within the traditional system, I'm convinced, but I just don't see enough evidence to persuade me of that. And so I'll treat that a little bit more as we go along and you can tell me what you think about that. All right, I go on to say the word appears nearly 300 times in the Old Testament with semantically linked terms such as oath, Allah, and Shevua. and loyal love, chesed, occurring another 350 times. While various proposals have been offered for the etymology and meaning of berit, the most likely conclusion is that it relates to an Akkadian cognate beritu, which means link, clasp, or fetter, and hence bond. I define covenant, and this is my own definition on the basis of lots of stuff and trying to put it together. D.A. Carson was once critiqued for his definitions being too long, and he said, yeah, but they included everything that's right. So I'm trying to fit everything in here, if I can, to try to cover the bases. All right, so he goes on to say, I go on to say, I define covenant as the formal codification of a mutually obligatory relational commitment. between non-kin members so as to establish and structure the union for the good of the community and for protection against potential threats. Now, the reason I say all that is I see it as mutually obligating. It's formalizing a relationship that's there, but it's formalizing in the sense of establishing it and structuring it. It involves a relational commitment. It brings together non-kin members. This is why I would say, you know, you don't necessarily need a covenant with your own children. per se, there's a natural family relationship there. This is what Gordon Hugenberger argues in his book, Marriage is Covenant, that natural relationships don't need a covenant. It's chosen or elected relationships, is how he would term that. So these are non-kin members. This is another reason why I'm a little skeptical of the covenant with creation before the fall, because my Counter to that would be, why would we need a covenant if sin and the sin curse hadn't yet been introduced? In other words, everything had a natural relationship with God. There was no threat to the created order at that point. All right, going on. The covenant has a formal ceremony. including witnesses, human and divine. Witnesses are not passive, but are expected to act in the case of covenant violation by bringing to fruition the pronounced sanctions, whether the curses, that's usually the divine role, or punishments, the human role. The covenant is often represented by a physical token and usually includes an oath and sometimes a communal meal by the covenanting partners. So these are various things that were part of the ceremony in the ancient world. Going on a covenant, By nature, page five, thus formalizes and governs a relationship, thereby making outsiders insiders and non-family members family members through the establishment of blood kinship. So you're essentially, through a lot of these ceremonies in the ancient world, you're ritually slaughtering an animal that's intended to establish blood kinship between the covenanting partners as they come together. All right, going on. In the creation narrative, prior to the introduction of the covenant concept, Yahweh creates humanity in His own image and blesses them, charging them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. So this is the intentional design that God has originally for creation. Following the fall and the flood, the promised blessing and dominion mandate are imperiled This is because God has chosen to, outside of Noah and his family and the animals preserved on the ark, essentially wipe out the created order and start over. And so there's a threat now to the relationship between God and his created order. The Noahic Covenant bears only an indirect relationship, I say, to the Abrahamic Covenant in as much as it encompasses God's purposes for curtailing evil within the created order, specifically by creating boundaries, and we would often connect this to human government, for the life and flourishing of its creatures. Okay, so that's the Noahic covenant. The Abrahamic covenant particularizes God's redemptive and doxological purposes for the created order through the agency of an individual, Abraham, and ultimately his descendants, the nation of Israel. In this way, we may speak of the Abrahamic covenant as refracting the original divine intention to bless humanity, and by implication, the whole created order, after the intended blessing had been threatened by the fall and flood, showing the dire consequences of sin and the resulting curse. Going on then, questions remain, nonetheless, as to the timing and process by which the Abrahamic covenant is implemented. I've noted already some see it as implemented in Genesis 12. Most, however, recognize its official cutting ceremony to take place in Genesis 15, where Abraham severs animals and Yahweh passes through the carcasses in the form of a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch. This is one of the proof texts usually given to say the covenant is unconditional, and I think They're not entirely wrong, but I would, again, add some context there. Yet, references to the covenant or to covenantal language continue in the later chapters. The term berit, covenant, occurs 13 times in Genesis 17, mostly in the future sense, or veketal, I will give my covenant, I will establish my covenant. And allusions in the divine oath of Genesis 22 to blessing evoke Abraham's initial call in Genesis 12, thus forming a frame around his entire storyline. In other words, from 12 to 22, the whole narrative of Abraham is sort of framed in such a way that you might wonder, where exactly does the covenant fall in his life and in his story? This leads some interpreters to conclude Yahweh enacts separate covenants with Abraham over the course of his life, such as one in Genesis 15 and one in chapter 17, given the alleged differences between the accounts. So this would be Williamson, he wrote one of those books in the New Studies in Biblical Theology, which are generally pretty good, but I disagree with him on this. He argues there's two separate covenants. T.D. Alexander argues this, and Thomas Comiskey are some that argue that. They see Genesis 15, as what they would term a unilateral, eternal, promissory, national covenant, and Genesis 17 as a bilateral, temporal, regulative, international covenant. So, in other words, I can sense the tension that they're showing, and that is, when you come to 17, it seems like God is really expecting Abraham to do certain things. But if you read Genesis 15 alone, it seems that the Lord has taken all the initiative. He's the one passing through the parts. So, clearly, he intends to bring this covenant to fruition no matter what Abraham does. So, in that sense, it seems unconditional. So, how do we balance those together? That's the rub that I'm trying to wrestle through. An important point, though, is the last sentence here. that such a schema is unlikely in that Scripture refers always to a singular covenant with Abraham, the covenant with Abraham, later confirmed with Isaac and Jacob. So, in other words, Scripture doesn't, I don't think, attest to multiple covenants with Abraham and it just sort of muddles the situation and it leads to a lot of confusion. All right, so going on the next page, six there, a preferable approach sees the singular Abrahamic covenant as unfolding in four stages. So as far as I can tell, this is original to me, but not everything is original to me, but I haven't really seen it laid out like this in a four stage process. So this is the part that's a work in progress and you can tell me what you think. So, as I said, the promise aspect, where land, seed, and blessing are promised, 15 land-focused, Genesis 17 seed-focused, and then 22 blessing-focused. The promise stage anticipates the enactment of the covenant but remains prior to it. The ratification stage involves the actual cutting of the covenant and includes the ritual slaughter of animals, just as Noah does in Genesis 8.20 when he offers sacrifices. The sign of the covenant, in this case circumcision, is the physical token that attests to the covenant now ratified. And then the oath sacrifice consummates the covenant with divine and human confirmation and sanction. This follows the Noahic covenant. I think the Noahic covenant similarly is promised in Genesis 6.18, ratified 8.20 to 9.11, attested by a sign, the rainbow in this case, 12 to 16, and then confirmed by a divine statement It ends with God saying one more time, I will establish this covenant with Noah. This understanding finds support, too, in the development of the land, seed, promise, blessings. All right, so let's get into the meat of what I'm suggesting. Promise, land, seed, and blessing. In Genesis 12, Yahweh calls Abraham to leave his kith and kin and traverse to a land that he would show him. Part and parcel of the call are God's comitant promises to bless Abraham. Now, I know he's Abram at this point. I'm just going to call him Abraham throughout the whole paper, so I'm intentionally doing that just for consistency's sake. Interpreters differ as to how many promises Yahweh conveys, usually ranging from five to as many as fourteen. For our purposes, there are roughly seven. Abraham would become a great nation with numerous offspring. He would receive the land of Canaan. He would be greatly blessed, including material wealth, life, and a relationship with God. His name would be great. He would be a conduit of blessing. He would be a watershed figure, bringing blessing to those who bless Him as well as curse to those who curse Him. And blessing would extend to every nation or family group through Him. There's some discussion that's involved in that. I don't get into it too much about how do you take the Nifal and Hithpayel uses of Barak, if you're familiar with the arguments there. Essentially, is it the nations get for themselves blessings or are they blessed? Is it a passive sense? I tend to prefer the passive sense that they're blessed, which focuses more on agency. I think agency is what the critical thing is that Abraham will be an agent in that sense, he and his seed. All right, going on. Interpreters suggest different ways of distilling the essence of the divine promises. Some prefer rubrics such as personal, national, and universal, or land, people, and blessing. I follow the traditional triad of land, seed, and blessing. Integral to these promises is the notion of blessing. The nominal and verbal forms of blessing occur five times in Genesis 12, one to three, mirroring the five occurrences of the verb to curse up to this point in the narrative. So the word curse has occurred five times up to Genesis 12, and then in Genesis 12, in the first few verses, the word bless occurs five times. The correspondence thus anticipates how the blessing of Abraham will begin to reverse the effects of the curse. In reality, up to this point in the narrative, each theme occurs five times. The word blessing occurs five times and the word curse occurs five times. But after Genesis 12, blessing will occur more often than curse by a ratio of nearly 25 to 1. So something significant has happened with the call of Abraham. While including a host of benefits, blessing in the Old Testament sense encompasses total well-being, that is, shalom, wisdom, God's presence, divine protection and provision, fertility, wealth, and triumph over enemies. The nature of the promises suggests the covenant is best seen as anticipated in this context, but not yet enacted or cut. And that's when we come to Genesis 15, ratification. The covenant is enacted, or cut, in Genesis 15. Here, the formal ceremony takes place. While each of the promised elements of land, seed, and blessing are evident in the covenant-cutting ceremony, I would suggest there's a special focus on the promise of land. The chapter begins with Abraham expressing some doubt that he will, in fact, have numerous offspring as God had promised. In his doubt, Abraham suggests that his servant Eliezer become his heir, mirroring the ancient practice evident in Mari and Nuzi of adopting a male servant if the head of a household were childless. God responds by denying that Eliezer will be his heir, but rather that his own son will be. Yahweh takes him outside, asking him to number the stars if he can, as this will equate to the number of his offspring, in verse 5. Abraham, who descends from ancestors who served foreign gods beyond the river, as Joshua says in Joshua 24, hails from Ur of the Chaldeans, a city whose patron deity was the moon god, Nana or Sene. Abraham is to look to the sky, not to gaze at the moon, but to count the stars. Yahweh essentially conveys to Abraham that he is not to look for help to the moon god of his ancestors, the god who in their theology regulated fertility and the seasons, but to look to Yahweh's own power and provision. In this crucial moment, not only for Abraham's story, but for the trajectory of the entire Pentateuch, Abraham believes in Yahweh and he is credited with righteousness, Genesis 15.6. This is clearly an important text because both Paul and James cite this in their letters in the New Testament. It's instrumental in Abraham's life. An important correlation is that Abraham's faith and justification precedes the actual cutting of the covenant. As John Sailhammer notes, the syntax of Genesis 15.6 indicates that the verse is to be read as the background for the rest of the chapter and for the covenant ceremony. The ensuing covenant, which will serve as the basis for God's future dealings with Abraham and his descendants, does not produce faith and righteousness, but rather flows from these realities, a point the Apostle Paul is keen to make in presenting Abraham first and foremost as a man of faith who believed in God in anticipation of the promised blessing that would extend to the nations. Yahweh then turns Abraham's attention to the reality of the land promise, reminding him that He called him out of Ur of the Chaldeans so as to give him the land he was standing on for a possession. Abraham, in turn, questions how he will know for sure that he is to take possession of the land. The covenant cutting ceremony that follows is essentially God's answer to Abraham's question. The phrase, this land, frames the ceremony appearing at its inception in verse 7 and conclusion in verse 18. The term land appears three times overall in the passage, the most of any of the passages having to do with the Abrahamic covenant outside the initial promise to give Abraham the land in Genesis 13, where it appears four times. According to God's instructions, Abraham is to ritually slaughter five animals. a three-year-old heifer, three-year-old female goat, three-year-old ram, a turtle dove, and a pigeon. These are animals each associated with later priestly sacrifices in the Torah. The three large mammals he severs, but not the birds, again anticipating priestly sacrifices in which the birds are not entirely torn asunder, as in Leviticus 5. In contrast to the slain birds, birds of prey descend on the carcasses as night falls, but Abraham drives them away. These would be unclean birds, such as ravens or vultures, which have no place in priestly sacrifices. It's difficult to know if more meaning than this is involved, although some interpreters take the animals to represent Abraham's posterity and the birds of prey to represent foreign nations that will harass and threaten them. Abraham falls into a deep sleep and a great terror and darkness descends. This is the same word for deep sleep, tardemah, that earlier describes the deep sleep into which God puts Adam to remove his bone. It's elsewhere used of dreams and visions. This slumber and terror sets the stage for the dire prophecy about the enslavement of Abraham's descendants to be followed by their eventual deliverance and possession of the land, verses 13 to 16. In a pivotal moment in the covenant cutting ceremony, Yahweh alone passes through the carcasses in the form of a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch. As I will develop below, the action is to be seen as indicative that the covenant is a royal grant, as similar ceremonial practices in the ancient Near East indicate. An analogous ceremony occurs in Jeremiah 34, where the human covenant partners pass through the carcasses of slain animals, an act that appears to ritually symbolize the fate that awaits covenant violators who fail to uphold the covenant stipulations. Now, there's some debate about whether you can apply Genesis 34, because the argument is that's much later than the Abrahamic covenant, and I would concede that, but I think there probably is a consistency of practices that would suggest that they're envisioning the same thing, understanding the same thing. Going on, this divine act is usually taken to indicate that the covenant is unconditional. However, my preferred terminology would be that the divine act signals the covenant is unilateral and irrevocable. God who cannot lie or change guarantees the successful outcome of the covenant practices or promises hereby codified. Following his passage through the carcasses, God makes one more promise to give Abraham's descendants the land, including the implied ouster of the ten nations that currently inhabit, symbolic of the certainty that no adversaries can stand before the fulfillment of God's promises. So I would say at this point, the covenant has been enacted. So then what happens in Genesis 17? So then we go to the sign of attestation, circumcision, and seed. Yahweh appears to Abraham when he is 99 years of age to reiterate his promises concerning the covenant. This appearance takes place 13 years after the covenant cutting ceremony of Genesis 15. This is one of Williamson's arguments. These have to be two separate covenants because this is 13 years later in Abraham's life. But again, my response would be, we really see the covenant as unfolding, I think, across the spectrum of his life. So that's kind of how I would answer that. Here the focus is on the proliferation of Abraham's descendants with the accompanying sign of the covenant circumcision. Yahweh tells Abraham to walk before Him and be blameless. Walking before someone carried the notions of representation and mediation. As Walton demonstrates, when God commands someone to walk before Him in the Old Testament, this charge clarifies particularly how kings or priests were to conduct themselves as His emissaries or representatives. The imperatival form of the verbs walk and be blameless indicate these actions are to be viewed as regulatory for the covenant partner. This does not signal that the covenant is conditional or that this is a separate covenant from the one ratified in chapter 15. Rather, as a covenant beneficiary, Abraham is to conduct himself in such a way that honors God who initiated the covenant. Abraham must meet expectations placed upon him by his divine covenant lord as the representative and emissary of the great king. And as evidenced later in Genesis, Abraham, in fact, does fulfill these covenant obligations. That's stated in 22 and in 26.5 where the Lord says that he fulfilled his statutes and laws and decrees. The covenant sign phase carries a special emphasis on the seed promise. This stage begins with Yahweh's stated intention to greatly multiply Abraham's descendants. Yahweh identifies the covenant as my covenant, a phrase that shows the divine initiative in establishing the covenant. This phrase occurs nine times in the chapter and only here with respect to the Abrahamic covenant. For the first time in the unfolding covenant, the term multiply appears, a term which means in the field to make many increase or multiply. Also appearing here for the first time with respect to Abraham is the term make fruitful, which means to make flourish or cause to increase by causing one's offspring to grow. in number and in strength. Beyond this, the term exceedingly, repeated twice for emphasis, amplifies and guarantees the proliferation of descendants six times in the chapter. Moreover, God promises Abraham that he will be the father of a multitude of nations, ensured by his name change from Abram, exalted father, to Abraham, father of a multitude. The renaming signifies that Abraham has been honored by coming formally under the headship of and into the family of a master or covenant lord who has the prerogative to assign a new name. If you look at the footnote there, this actually happened several times in the Old Testament. The most famous example might be Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael, whose names are changed once they get to Babylon. So this was a common ancient practice. I go on to say here, Abraham is already a covenant partner as demonstrated by the earlier covenant cutting ceremony, but here he is formally recognized and appropriated by means of the covenant sign through the name change and the physical token of circumcision. Also indicative of the seed focus in this stage is the repetition of the term seed occurring seven times in the chapter. With respect to seed, Yahweh emphasizes that Abraham's posterity will also be beneficiaries of an everlasting covenant, that they will inherit the land, that they too must keep the covenant through the sign of circumcision, that the right of circumcision extends beyond natural seed to any male within the household, and that the covenant will be confirmed through Abraham's own natural seed, that is his biological son. Within this chapter two, the covenant is marked as an everlasting covenant for the first and only time in Genesis. Abraham and his descendants must perform the rite of circumcision with every male in the flesh of the foreskin, which is amputation of the prepuce, and on the eighth day after birth, and with the inclusion of both domestic and foreign-born males. As to the significance of the rite of circumcision, Mead argues that the Israelite practice relates conceptually to the Egyptian practice of circumcising kings and priests. Although Egyptian circumcision differed in some details with respect to the technique, subjects, and age, certain parallels suggest that similar perceptions may lie behind the rites. Mead concludes that Egyptian circumcision practiced among the priestly and royal classes, he says, functioned as a specific voluntary and initiatory rite to identify and affiliate the subject with the deity and to signify devotion to the same deity. Drawing parallels to Israelite circumcision, Mead contends, for several implications. Circumcision signals that the nation of Israel is to be devoted to Yahweh as its God. Circumcision identifies the nation as Yahweh's firstborn son consecrated for service. And circumcision marks the whole nation as a kingdom of priests and holy people mediating God's intended blessing to the other nations. The sign of circumcision solidifies the seed promised through a physical token that is emblematic of the covenant between God and Abraham's posterity. It's to be a physical reminder to Yahweh and the people of their covenant status. Then this brings us to chapter 22. Now, chapter 22 isn't always included in discussions of the covenant, but I think that it is helpful to read it in this light. So that's what I would do. So going on here, the fourth and final stage of the Abrahamic covenant follows on the heels of God's charge to Abraham to offer his son Isaac on Mount Moriah. Having received the promised son, Abraham is now tested by Yahweh to demonstrate the genuineness of his faith. The final stage of the covenant emphasizes the blessing component. Genesis 22 is a finely crafted narrative structured in two major parts, Abraham's test and Abraham's blessing. The parts exhibit a bifid structure, that is, there's a parallelism there. God's address to Abraham in verse 1 is mirrored by the angel's address in verse 11. In the first part, Abraham lifts up his eyes and sees the place from afar. In the second part, he lifts up his eyes and sees the ram and the thicket. Verses 9 and 10 form the center of the narrative with the peak of the drama. The confirmation of the covenant occurs in the second part of the narrative following Abraham's successful obedience to Yahweh's command. The angel of the Lord, most likely the pre-incarnate Christ, stops Abraham from following through with the act by calling out his name twice for emphasis. Abraham is told indirectly that the required act was a test. Typically, the phrase, now I know, occurs in the context of a joyful cry from someone who has experienced God's deliverance. Here, however, it relates to God's joyful knowledge that Abraham fears God. The fear of the Lord in the Old Testament is equated with saving faith, as I think Proverbs demonstrates. So, the confirmation that Abraham fears God should be related to his earlier trust in Yahweh, now confirmed. Abraham then spies a ram caught in a thicket and he offers the ram as a burnt offering. Offering sacrifices was a common feature of covenant ceremonies in Israel and the broader ancient Near East, which is one of the reasons I'm inclined to see this as a covenant text. The only other occasions in which a ram is offered as a burnt offering outside the ram as the gilt offering in Leviticus 5 take place when the priests are ordained or on the day of atonement by the high priest. Both occasions are highly significant acts of atonement and hint further, as in the covenant cutting ceremony of Genesis 15, that Abraham functions as a proto-priest in anticipating certain cultic regulations. of the Mosaic Law. As part of his own burgeoning mediatory role as God's king-priest covenant partner, Abraham renames the mountain to reflect Yahweh's provision. The angel then calls a second time to communicate significant further revelation about the covenant. The various texts which promise blessing to Abraham, only here are the blessings presented as the outcome of Abraham's obedience as he has done this word and heeded God's voice. As a result, God swears by himself as the highest authority. Verse 16, oaths were typically taken by both covenant partners in the ratification ceremony to signify the binding validity of the covenant obligations. Here, Yahweh alone, through the person of the angel, takes the oath to signal his intention to make good the provisions. This is the first and only divine oath in the patriarchal accounts and therefore serves as a guarantee of the solemnity and irrevocability of the covenant. Moreover, God promises to surely bless Abraham. The only time in Genesis the idea of certainty is added. These blessings call to mind God's original promises with an escalation in force. Earlier, Yahweh promises Abraham that his descendants will inherit the land, but here they will possess even the gates of their enemies. Earlier, Yahweh promises Abraham that he will have many descendants, but here he guarantees a multiplication of descendants. And for the first time, he compares their number to the sand on the seashore. Earlier, Yahweh promises blessing for all the families of the earth. It's a Hebrew word, mishpacha. But here, whole nations come into view. It's the word goy, which has to do with a nation or state, and so it seems to encompass even an escalation in this case. The verb bless occurs three times in the final verses as a point of emphasis. Yahweh ensures that the Abrahamic covenant will certainly come to pass. Alright, so having surveyed its disclosure across Genesis, we turn now to unpack the nomenclature of the Abrahamic Covenant. Alright, so I've gone 45 minutes and I've gotten through my first point. So obviously I'm not going to get through everything, but I do want to highlight some things on the second part and I'll I'll summarize a little bit toward the end here and try to leave a little bit of time for questions. The good news is we're up against lunch, so we do have some flexibility. I'm not going to keep you late for something per se. I think there will still hopefully be food by the time we get down there. All right, so the nomenclature of the Abrahamic Covenant. As mentioned earlier, much debate surrounds whether the Abrahamic Covenant should be labeled as unconditional or conditional, or whether these categories themselves are too restrictive. Dispensational interpreters have preferred to see it as unconditional. Covenantalists have argued that it is conditional. A corollary with this debate turns upon how to classify the covenant in its ancient Near Eastern context. Dispensational interpreters usually distinguish the Abrahamic covenant from the Mosaic covenant by identifying the former as a royal grant or promissory covenant, and the latter as a suzerainty vassal obligatory covenant, categories first proposed by Weinfeld. More comprehensive study of the available ancient Near Eastern sources, however, indicates that additional factors add complexity. While the categories proposed by Weinfeld carry some legitimacy, at the same time, no ancient covenants or treaties were truly unconditional in the sense of omitting obligations upon one or both of the covenant parties. Further, the distinction between the royal grant and suzerainty vassal overlooks the reality that royal grant covenants usually presuppose the suzerainty vassal relationships. Critics were thus right to point out that bifurcating covenants into stringent categories of unconditional or conditional is anachronistic and incomplete. My proposed understanding modifies the terminology in what I suggest is a more nuanced and historically consistent direction. One may refer to the promises that will be codified in the Abrahamic covenant as unconditional, inasmuch as God is the guarantor, yet the covenant itself is best identified as a unilateral, irrevocable, albeit regulated, royal grant covenant. that the covenant is in fact unilateral and irrevocable and divinely guaranteed is evident in each stage of the covenant program. For instance, God takes the initiative in calling Abraham during the promise phase. God alone passes through the severed animals during the ratification phase, taking full responsibility for its fulfillment upon himself. God refers to the covenant as my covenant nine times during the sign of attestation phase. demonstrating that the covenant originates from his prerogative, and God alone takes the oath in the oath-sacrifice-confirmation phase, again taking full responsibility for its fulfillment. Yet the covenant also carries stipulations to govern the conduct of Abraham. Yahweh commands Abraham to follow certain patterns of behavior with 14 imperatives over the course of the covenant stages. Furthermore, Yahweh expects Abraham to keep the covenant by faithfully implementing the right of circumcision for his household and all his descendants. Any male who fails to do so is a covenant violator who is to be cut off from his people. Moreover, the covenant confirmation comes after Abraham has demonstrated fidelity and obedience by heeding the voice of Yahweh. Yahweh highlights the significance of Abraham's faithful conduct in his later covenant affirmation with Isaac. And this is the passage I was talking about. He says to Isaac, I will be with you and bless you for to you and your offspring, I will give all these lands and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham, your father. I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and will give to your offspring all these lands. And in your offspring, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. These tensions highlight the difficulty of the unconditional versus conditional framework. To say the covenant is conditional minimizes the divine guarantee that the covenant will certainly come to fruition, a reality evident at each stage of the covenant implementation. However, to say that the covenant is unconditional minimizes the clear expectations given to Abraham specifying how he must act. in light of his covenant status. Rather, a more nuanced approach seeks to balance these tensions while assessing the covenant in its ancient Near Eastern context. All right, this is the part I wanted to get to, and I'll probably summarize the other parts, and you can look those over with a copy of the paper. But I wanted to at least establish this corollary. To place the covenant in its ancient Near Eastern context, the preferred analog for the royal grant covenant pattern is a similar covenant extant from Alalakh that offers intriguing parallels. The covenant partners in this covenant are Abba An of Aleppo, the suzerain, and Yarim Lim of Alalakh, the vassal. The date of the covenant in the 18th to 17th centuries falls between Abraham and Moses later than the historical date of the covenant, but earlier than the composition of Genesis. The language of the covenant is Old Babylonian and its provenance is ancient Alalak in northern Syria. The covenant begins with a historical prologue listing various cities that Yairim-Lim once happily ruled. A rogue governor named Zitadru, however, incited rebellion, leading the cities to revolt against Yairim-Lim and, by implication, the overlord Abaan. The latter responded militarily by killing the insurrectionists and by razing certain rebel towns, particularly Iridi. In exchange for the destroyed cities, Aba'an offers a royal grant to Yerim Lim consisting of other towns to be donated in the place of the destroyed Iridi. To ensure the legitimacy and permanence of the grant, Abba An imposes upon himself a self-maledictory oath, together with the ritual slaughter of animals, elements that correspond to the ratification and confirmation of the Abrahamic covenant. This is the language of the covenant. Abba An swore to Yirim, Liam, the oath of the gods, and cut the neck of a lamb, saying, May I be cursed if I take back what I gave you. The covenant also carries stipulations for how Urim-Lim must conduct himself in remaining loyal to Abba-an as the lead king. He says, if ever in the future Urim-Lim sins against Abba-an or if he gives away any word that Abba-an confides to him, giving it away to another king, if he, Urim-Lim, lets go of the hem of Abba-an's garment and takes hold of the hem of another king's garment, he shall for forfeit his cities and territories. These regulations pertain not just to Yairim Lim, but also to his descendants who must adhere to the same covenant stipulations. They will keep the donated territory in perpetuity if they remain faithful to Abba An and his descendants. The pact concludes with a list of covenant witnesses who attest that Yairim Lim has sworn oaths pledging fealty to the covenant statutes. Similarities to the language, provenance, and protocols of the Abrahamic covenant suggest a common cultural background. There are several implications. These correlations indicate that the land promise should be foregrounded as integral to the Abrahamic covenant, the very provision that modern covenantalist interpreters are often quickest to deny. Further, the self-maledictory oath should be seen as equivalent to Yahweh's passing alone through the severed animal parts and his unilateral oath in chapter 22. This is a divine guarantee for the land provision as well as the other promises. Yet the regulations of the covenant hint that Abraham too would be expected to, in the words of that covenant, take hold of the hem of Yahweh's garment, meaning that he and his descendants would be devoted and faithful servants of the great king. Understood in these ways, both covenants function analogously as royal grants with stipulations guaranteed by the suzerain, but insured with regulations governing the conduct of the servant kings. We may then extrapolate that hereto Yahweh is granting territory, progeny, and life protection blessing in perpetuity to Abraham and his descendants, but also that he expects Abraham and his posterity to conduct themselves faithfully to Yahweh as God and king. Alright, so that's the case I make for a comparative covenant in the Ancient Near East. In the final sections, I trace a connection between the Abrahamic covenant and the other biblical covenants. This also is a work still in progress. There's a chart that I made on page 17 that tries to illustrate this, how I see the various covenants interacting with each other, a dotted line. signals an indirect relationship and a solid line signals a direct relationship either to provisions or to subsidiary covenants. So you can look that over and see what you think. And then in the final section, I tie the Abrahamic covenant to God's redemptive plan. And in this part, I'm pushing back a little bit specifically on interpreters who read the Abrahamic Covenant as undergirding gospel mission but almost in a way that sidesteps Israel. I say here that in some ways she's merely treated as the midwife for the Messiah. I'm thinking of Christopher Wright in particular where he basically says, well, the church has inherited the Abrahamic Covenant and so they're the ones that are extending blessing to the world and Israel no longer has a place in God's redemptive plan. I would stand opposed to that view in the sense that I see the covenant as irrevocable, unilateral, everlasting, and so there's no danger that it somehow will be nullified because God has taken upon himself the initiative and the guarantee that he will fulfill it. So I'll just go to my last sentence here on page 19 at the bottom, last sentence or two. to all nations will too certainly come to fruition. The covenant may thus rightly be termed the fulcrum or keystone of Old Testament theology, occupying a formative place in the storyline of Scripture. The importance of the Abrahamic covenant can thus hardly be overstated.