Covenantide

Author: SJ Hatch

  • The Significance of Pentecost

    In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul tells the congregation there, “Now I will come to you when I pass through Macedonia (for I am passing through Macedonia).  And it may be that I will remain, or even spend the winter with you, that you may send me on my journey, wherever I go.  For I do not wish to see you now on the way but I hope to stay a while with you, if the Lord permits.  But I will tarry in Ephesus until Pentecost” (1 Cor. 16:5-8).  Paul probably wrote the letter from Ephesus in about AD 55, where he was based on his Third Missionary Journey, but he had to curtail his stay in that city in AD 57 because a riot broke out there opposed to the success his Gospel preaching and teaching had made.  In leaving Ephesus, Paul did make a circuit around the Aegean, checking in on churches he planted in Macedonia and Greece before heading toward Jerusalem.  In this circuit he made several stops on the coast of Asia Minor, but as Luke records in Acts, “Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus, so that he would not have to spend time in Asia; for he was hurrying to be at Jerusalem, if possible, on the Day of Pentecost” (Acts 20:16).  Paul’s haste to be in Jerusalem in time for Pentecost raises the obvious question as to why was this holy day so important to him and what would it have meant for him to observe it?

    The Old Covenant Antecedent to Pentecost: The Feast of Weeks

    The name “Pentecost” comes from the Greek rendering of Leviticus 23:16 referring to the fact that it occurs 50 days after Passover.  The Old Testament calls this festival day the “Feast of Weeks” (or alternatively, the “Feast of Harvest” or the “Feast of Firstfruits”), and it is described in Exodus 23:14-19, 34:22-28; Leviticus 23:15-21; Numbers 28:26-31; and Deuteronomy 16:9-12.

    The 50 days referred to are counted from the day after the Sabbath during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the broader celebration of the Passover, where a sheaf of grain was waved as a wave offering, an offering of particular dedication to the LORD (Exod. 23:9-14, Lev. 23:9-14).  This period also approximates the time it took Israel to go from Egypt to Sinai in the Exodus.  In Exodus 19:1, Moses notes that it was “In the third month after the children of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on the same day [as the Exodus], they came to the Wilderness of Sinai.”  Israel left Egypt in the middle of the month of Nisan, so including that month, Israel would have gone into its third month when it arrived at the foot of Sinai.  This passage is just before God’s giving of the Law in Exodus 20.  The agricultural and covenantal aspects of the Feast of Weeks laid the basis for the redemptive historical significance of Pentecost.

    Agriculturally, the sheaf that would have been waved (or more likely, simply lifted up) during the Feast of Unleavened Bread probably would have been a barley sheaf, as the barley harvest would typically have been in the March-April timeframe and the offering would have been a firstfruits dedication to the LORD.  The more significant cereal crop, though, was wheat, and the wheat harvest would only be just beginning in the April-May timeframe.  Thus, the Feast of Weeks was at a minimum the firstfruits of the greater blessing.

    The Feast of Weeks was more than just a harvest festival.  Deuteronomy 16:12 grounded the Feast in the remembrance of Israel’s deliverance from slavery.  It was one of the three high holy days on which all Israelite males were to appear before the LORD (Exod. 23:17), and the LORD promised to “cast out the nations before you and enlarge your borders; neither will any man covet your land when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times in the year” (Exod. 34:24).  All these things gave the Feast a covenantal significance.  Appearance before the LORD, therefore, would be tantamount to vassals coming before the suzerain king to pay homage and tribute (i.e., thanksgiving and honor).  It would inculcate in the Israelites a proper fear of the LORD if consistently obeyed with the right attitude, and it would bind the nation together; the shared experience and the contacts with others would get them beyond their tribal horizons.

    The Leviticus and Numbers passages mentioned above contain details on the rituals that are to be done on the Feast of Weeks: there are a burnt offering, a grain and drink offerings, a sin offering, a peace offering, and a wave offering.  Thus, included here were offerings for atonement, tribute, sanctification, and thanksgiving—almost the entire spectrum of offerings under the Levitical sacrificial system.  The scale of the offerings is larger than normal.  The sacrifices were freewill offerings offered in the spirit of thanksgiving in response to the great things God had done.  In sum, God in His covenant brings His people out, and gives them the first fruits of blessing, makes them into a nation, binds them together, blesses them, and calls them to image His name among the nations in thanksgiving.

    How the Feast Was Transformed Under the New Covenant

    After the Mosaic period, the Feast of Weeks is not mentioned in the rest of the Old Testament.  After the Exile, the Jews began rediscovering the Law, since their neglect of it earlier had resulted in the trauma of the Babylonian Captivity.  The Feast of Weeks was part of this rediscovery.  During the period between the Old and New Testaments, the pseudepigraphic Book of Jubilees stipulated (6:17) that the Feast was to be celebrated yearly as a covenant renewal.  In addition, certain exegetical interpretations emerged that highlighted God’s gift of the Law (Torah) at Sinai.  These were probably extant in the time of the New Testament and formed the background for how the Apostles understood the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost described in Acts 2.[1]

    The major passage in the New Testament is, of course, Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2:14-34.  On that day, the Holy Spirit came upon the people assembled in the Temple and everyone begins speaking in tongues, hearing their own languages despite their ethnic differences.  In Acts 2:3, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is described as “divided tongues, as of fire,” phraseology evocative of Psalm 29:7 (“the voice of the LORD divides the flames of fire”) and of Exodus 19:16, where the word typically rendered in English “thunderings” literally means “sounds” or “voices” in Hebrew.  Because of these connections, the early Christian Church often included Exodus 19 in Scripture readings for Pentecost.[2]

    When bystanders at Pentecost asked how it could be that people were understanding things in so many different languages and what explained the tumult, Peter then launched into his explanatory sermon.  To understand Peter’s explanation, we have to look first at two passages, Joel 2:28-32, which Peter preached in his sermon, and Jeremiah 31:31-34, which prophesied the changes that would come about as a result of the New Covenant.

    Joel’s prophecy highlights the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on God’s people, that they would be supernaturally empowered to speak God’s words for the salvation of many.  It also anticipated a day of judgment, a Day of the LORD.  It probably was one of the first written prophecies, and with Pentecost, it was partially fulfilled: the Spirit has come, but the Day of the LORD is still pending.

    Although not cited by Peter in his Pentecost sermon, Jeremiah 31:31-34 builds on the foundation set by Joel and is the foundational passage in the Old Testament for understanding the New Covenant. 

    Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord.  But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.  No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.

    The key part of this covenant is that the Lord says that He will, “put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts” (Jer. 31:33).  The question this raises is how would the Lord do this?  Paul in effect answers that question in his first letter to the Corinthians when he says, “But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit.  For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.  For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him?  Even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.  Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given us by God” (1 Cor. 2:10-12).  At Pentecost, God did not remove His law or change it, but gave His people His Holy Spirit to unite them to Himself so that they could know and obey His law.  Just as the Old Covenant was inaugurated with the Feast of Weeks, so the New Covenant is inaugurated with Pentecost. 

    The Significance of Pentecost Today

    In pulling together all these threads, what would Pentecost have meant to Paul?  Paul was not simply being an observant Jew by wanting to be in Jerusalem in time for Pentecost.  In Paul’s conversion account in Acts 9:1-19, there were three major touchstones which marked his preaching and teaching for the rest of his life: (1) the resurrection of Christ; (2) the union of Christ with His people; and (3) the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  It was the power of the resurrected Christ that confronted Paul on the road to Damascus.  Christ’s union with His people can be seen in 9:4-5 where He twice confronts Paul about Paul’s persecution of Him.  From Paul’s perspective, he was persecuting Jesus’s followers, assuming Jesus to be dead, yet Jesus so identified with His people that for them to be persecuted meant He was being persecuted.  And, after the encounter with Jesus, the Holy Spirit came upon Paul when Ananias laid hands upon him.  In light of this, Pentecost would have been central for Paul: the coming of the Holy Spirit occurred because the risen  Christ ascended to the Father; the Spirit was the One by whom God’s people are united to Christ; and the indwelling of the Spirit transformed His attitude to the Law which he had been so zealous for, from living by the works of the Law to living by the grace of the Spirit.  No wonder then that Paul was so eager to return to Jerusalem in time for Pentecost.  His journey to Jerusalem to observe Pentecost is the inverse of his journey to Damascus that effected his conversion years earlier.  Then, he had a mandate to crush the Christian faith before it could reach the nations, but in returning to Jerusalem for Pentecost, he was going to further the spread of the Gospel to the nations.

    For us today, Pentecost tends to be under appreciated.  It is a celebration of the new age ushered in by Christ, the radical change that had been wrought in redemptive history.  Writing in about AD 200—in the earliest post-apostolic reference to the day—the Latin church father Tertullian of Carthage (AD 155-220) described Pentecost in his treatise, On Baptism as a most joyous time given that the resurrection of Christ had been proven to be true.  One can add to Tertullian’s statement that this joyousness is also due to the coming of the Holy Spirit.  So, what is the significance of the coming of the Spirit?  First, we are joined to Christ through the Spirit, therefore the judgment Christ has borne is our judgment and the righteousness He possessed is our righteousness.  Second, Christ promised He would never leave us.  Because we are joined to Him in the Spirit, He never will.  Third, we are being conformed by the Spirit into the image of Christ.  This is a tie back to the Law, but also an advancement on it, as we, through the Spirit’s work, increasingly reflect the holy character of Christ that the Law foreshadowed.  Lastly, just as the firstfruits are brought in so to in this period between the first and second coming of the Lord, the nations are being gathered in.  This ties back to the promise made to Abraham, and reverses the curse imposed at Babel.  Where the nations were dispersed, they are now being drawn together.  For these reasons, Pentecost—arguably even more than Easter—brings into perspective the full scope of God’s redemptive work.

    [1] One such tradition surrounds the rabbinic interpretation of Ps. 68:17-18, which held that the Law which Moses received on behalf of the people was a gift from God.  This interpretative tradition was fairly consistent during the intertestamental period, even though it did not fit the details of the Psalm entirely.  There is a loose correlation between Ps. 68:18 and Peter’s explanation for the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2:33, which Peter interpreted in a Christological manner as the gift of the Holy Spirit rather than the Law.  Paul also quotes Ps. 68:18 in Eph. 4:8, similarly putting a Christological interpretation on the passage.  Both probably knew of the rabbinic interpretation, and their Christological interpretations better harmonize with the text of Psalm 68:18.  Thus, by correcting the rabbinic interpretation, they also are indirectly linking the Pentecost event with the giving of the Law at Sinai.  See F. S. Thielman, “Ephesians” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, edited by G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 819-825.

    [2] For a fuller discussion of the connections between the Jewish Feast of Weeks and the Christian Pentecost, see Oskar Skarsaune, In the Shadow of the Temple; Jewish Influences on Early Christianity (Downer’s Grove IL: Intervarsity Press, 2002), 393-397, and Paul F. Bradshaw and Maxwell E. Johnson, The Origins of Feasts, Fasts and Seasons in Early Christianity (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, 2011), 69-74.

  • Through the Levitical Desert

    Through the Levitical Desert

    Understanding the Ceremonial Law of Exodus and Leviticus

    For any Bible reading plan, the latter part of Exodus (chs. 25-40) and all of Leviticus (chs. 1-27) is the desert. There are a few narrative oases (i.e., Exodus chs. 32-34, 40, and Leviticus chs. 8-10), but by and large, these chapters are a slog. If you invest the time to pay attention to what is being described in these chapters, it will tremendously boost your subsequent reading of Scripture–but you do have to make it through them, and the likelihood of derailing one’s effort to read through the Bible is quite high.

    Moses Breaking the Commandments

    So, how do we make it through this desert? Well, first of all, some perspective is in order. It is common to think that in the Old Testament people were saved by keeping the Law, but in the New Testament, they were saved by Christ. That was never the case. Looking back in retrospect, God’s people in both the Old and the New Testaments were only ever saved by God’s grace in Christ Jesus. In the Old Testament, though the great salvific event was God’ drawing His people out of the bondage of slavery in the Exodus from Egypt. This would be a type or image foreshadowing the greater salvation to come of Christ drawing His people out of the deeper bondage of sin through His death on the cross, His resurrection from the grave, and through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. In the Old Testament, it was after God saved His people that He gave them His Law.

    Having formed a people for Himself and delivered them from their bondage, it was God’s intention that His people reflect His character and image, and that image was fundamentally a moral one. So, what they needed, first, were the core principles that were to govern their moral conduct and their covenantal relationship with God. That is the Moral Law (the Ten Commandments or the Decalogue), found in Exodus ch. 20. This is still core to the ethical behavior of God’s people even under the New Covenant inaugurated by Christ. Second, as a newly freed nation, they needed civil case law applying these core principles to help them think through matters of civil justice simply to order and regulate their society. This was the Civil Law, found primarily in Exodus chs. 21-24. With the dissolution of the Israelite state as a result of the Assyrian and Babylonian invasions of the eighth and sixth centuries BC respectively, the Civil Law is no longer the formal laws of any state, but they do highlight principles of general equity that are useful for civil society, in terms of establishing justice and restraining evil. Lastly, the God’s people needed to know how to worship God rightly as part of their covenantal relationship with Him. This is the Ceremonial Law, which covers Exodus chs. 25-31, 35-40, and all of Leviticus. This pointed ultimately to the sacrificial work of Christ, whose work has subsequently superseded that the sacrificial system. The Ceremonial Law is no longer to be observed.

    So, why even bother to read all this sacrificial stuff if it has already been obviated by Christ? The Apostle Paul, in Galatians 3:19-4:11 describes this Law as a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ, and the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews talks about the superiority of Christ over the sacrificial system. As a tutor, what the sacrificial system was intended to do was to make concrete for God’s people through practice and habit some concepts that would have been otherwise abstract but nevertheless central for them to understand and anticipate that greater salvation that would later come through Christ Jesus. Three concepts would have central.

    Chief among these is the notion of God’s absolute holiness and the high standard of holiness that He is holding His people to. That also would have had the effect of highlighting how comprehensively and deeply entrenched sin is within us. In this regard, it would have provide a sense of conviction of guilt, but also the standard that God’s people were called to in their sanctification. Even for us under the New Covenant, we are all too inclined toward a casual attitude that does not take holiness seriously. As Christ teaches in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chs. 5-7), however, God’s standard of holiness has only increased, to get at our motives as well as our actions.

    Secondarily, the Ceremonial Law would have forced a separation between God’s people and the surrounding nations, calling them to absolute fidelity to Him. God’s people were to be a peculiar people, uniquely devoted to only Him. The incident of the apostasy with the Golden Calf (Exodus 32 and 33), the subsequent apostasies that led God to expel the people from the land and take them into Exile in Assyria and Babylonia, and even the various apostasies in the history of the Christian Church since our Lord’s ascension testify to the difficulty God’s people have had in really grasping this concept.

    Lastly, a third concept would be taught through the Ceremonial Law would have been that of atonement, or how are we made right with God. Such atonement would have been costly in terms of the animal sacrifices that were entailed, but that pales in comparison to the costliness of the Son of God being crucified on a cross by mankind. Such costliness would have shown by experience that people cannot earn their way into God’s favor and that salvation, if it comes at all, would only come ultimately by God’s grace, not man’s works. Even people today need to realize this, given the all-too-common view that somehow we can be “good” people.

    If this is what the Ceremonial Law was to have taught God’s People under the Old Covenant, studying these chapters in Exodus and Leviticus adds a tremendous depth in appreciating more fully what Christ Jesus has done for us in inaugurating the New Covenant. So, it is definitely still profitable for us to read this material on the Ceremonial Law. Moreover, it is probably the earliest material to have been enscripturated, coming as it were right after the Exodus, and indeed, directly from the revelation of God Himself at Sinai. That in itself makes it foundational.

    Still, while it may be profitable for us to read all this material on the Ceremonial Law, that does not deny the fact that it is tedious reading. So, how can we read this to actually get through it? A few helps are provided. First is an outline of Leviticus itself. More so than even most books of the Bible, this is a necessary roadmap for navigating the terrain. Second is a compendium of charts covering most of Leviticus. In reading through the text, the charts help to summarize what you are reading. In reading through the sacrificial system of Leviticus chs. 1-7, pay particular attention to what each of the sacrifices represent, what that would have meant for you if you were in the place of the ancient Israelites, and what specific ways might Christ fulfill those sacrifices as our high priest.

    outline-of-leviticusOutline of Leviticus
    leviticus-chartsCharts for Leviticus
  • Joseph, the Bridge Between the Abrahamic and Mosaic Covenants (Gen. 37-50)

    Joseph, the Bridge Between the Abrahamic and Mosaic Covenants (Gen. 37-50)

    The Joseph narrative is the longest in Genesis, occupying nearly a quarter of the book by itself.  The length may be due to the fact that this narrative would have been the most relevant to God’s people as they came out of Egypt, connecting the covenant promises God gave to the patriarchs with the fulfillment that Moses’ generation experienced in the Exodus.  For the delivered Israelites, the Joseph narrative explains why the nation went down to Egypt in the first place and the covenantal basis for God’s delivering them.  It does not evidence direct revelatory engagement between God and His people, but both Joseph and his brothers come see God’s providential working in the events that unfold.  In the New Testament, while the Apostle Paul does not refer to the Joseph narrative directly, his statement in his letter to the Romans is apropos of the account: “And we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28).  In seeing God’s working, the discernment of divine providence requires a higher level of faith than that which comes from direct engagement, and it is this level of faith that God’s people are called to even to this day.

    The Joseph narrative starts and ends in Canaan, the land of God’s covenant promise.  Joseph, probably a teenager at the outset of the narrative, receives two dreams, the import of which is that he will be exalted over his brothers and parents.  Joseph’s dreams and his ability to interpret them are indications that would eventually show that he is indeed a prophet of the true God, even more so than his patriarchal forefathers were.  Coming as it were on the heels of being the favored son of Jacob’s favored wife, however, this caused no small degree of resentment among his brothers, who sold him into slavery in Egypt after first considering murdering him outright.

    Following in the promise originally given to Abraham about making him a blessing to others, God’s covenantal blessing is definitely upon Joseph: he is a blessing to Potiphar’s house (39:3, 5), to the warden in prison (39:23), to the cupbearer, whose life was spared by Pharaoh, and then ultimately to Egypt and his own family in guiding them through the famine and preserving their lives.  That Joseph has heard the covenant can be seen in his response to Potiphar’s wife in rejecting her sexual advances: it is not just that he would disgrace Potiphar if he were to lay with her, but he would sin against God (39:9).  He gives glory to God in the interpretation of dreams (40:8, 41:16, 25, 28).  He gives glory to God as well in the naming of his sons.  He names Manasseh (“making forgetful”) that because “God has made me forget all my toil and all my father’s house.” Similarly, he names Ephraim (“fruitfulness”) because “God has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction” (41:51-52).  Most visibly, he gives glory to God and acknowledges God’s providence in his brothers selling him into slavery (45:5-8).  Joseph is able to endure all the hardship that he went through because he looked forward to and held fast to God’s covenantal promises.

    No doubt, Joseph learned of God’s covenant from his family.  This is most clearly evident at the very end of Genesis when Joseph tells his brothers, “I am dying; but God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land to the land of which He swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” The passage then concludes by saying, “Then Joseph took an oath from the children of Israel, saying, ‘God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here’” (Gen. 50:24-25).  In this, Joseph follows the example of Jacob.  On the eve of Jacob and his family going to Egypt, God appears to him and says, “I am God, the God of your father; do not fear to go down to Egypt, for I will make of you a great nation there.  I will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also surely bring you up again; and Joseph will put his hand on your eyes” (46:3-4).  Why would Jacob have been afraid to go to Egypt?  Because the promise of the covenant was in Canaan.  Jacob remembered that God’s covenantal promises were tied to the Promised Land, and for this reason he made Joseph solemnly swear to him that when he died, he was not be buried in Egypt but where his fathers are buried (47:29-30).  Joseph honored this vow (50:4-9), and expected fulfillment of God’s covenantal promise to Abraham (ch. 15) that He would bring the nation out of Egypt to the land of promise.  The people fulfilled this in the Exodus and they in turn brought Joseph’s bones with them when they came out of Egypt (Exod. 13:39).  In the New Testament, Stephen recounted this how Israel brought Joseph’s bones with them in the Exodus as part of his description of the covenantal expectations of God’s people (Acts 7:4-16).

    In this overarching account of Joseph, the narrative takes a seemingly odd diversion in chapter 38, with the story of Judah and Tamar, and this requires some explanation.  Judah marries a Canaanite woman, something previously discouraged in the history of God’s people to this point (see Gen. 24:3-4, 27:46-28:2 & 6), and has three sons by her.  Two of his sons are killed, and he tells his widowed daughter-in-law, Tamar, to wait until his third son comes of age before he will give him to her as a husband.  Yet when Shelah is grown, Judah effectively reneges on his promise.  Since marriage and child-bearing would have provided for Tamar’s security, to have been denied this was an injustice to her.  She responds by disguising herself as a prostitute, having intercourse with Judah, and conceiving a son by him, without him realizing that it was with her that he had sex.  When she becomes pregnant, he is ready to kill her for harlotry until she confronts him with evidence that it was by him that she became pregnant.  At that point, he acknowledges his sin and her righteousness (38:26).

    Tawdry as this account is, it serves a few different purposes in the Joseph narrative.  First, it highlights by way of contrast, the godliness of Joseph in subsequent chapters.  Where Judah had sex with who he thought was a harlot by the roadside, Joseph rejected the lustful advances of his master’s wife, only to be falsely accused of rape and thrown into prison; he would only be delivered from this by rightly interpreting Pharaoh’s dream about the impending famine.  Second, it marks a turning point in Judah’s life and the emergence of his leadership of the family.  When reference to Judah resumes in chapter 43, it is Judah who exhibits leadership in saying that he and his brothers needed to return to Egypt for food and it was Judah himself who was willing to be a surety for the life of Benjamin, to fulfill the stipulation that the vizier (actually Joseph in disguise) laid down during their first trip to Egypt.  Moreover, it is Judah that acts as an intercessory mediator between his family and Pharaoh’s court in chapter 44.  This change in Judah lays the basis for the extensive blessing he receives from Jacob on his deathbed in 49:8-12, becoming the leader of the nation, since Reuben, Simeon, and Levi disqualified themselves by disgrace.  Looking forward, it is from Judah’s line by Tamar that David, Israel’s greatest earthly king, would come, and from that same line that humanity’s ultimate king, Christ Jesus, also would come.  Repentant and redeemed Judah foreshadowed the mediatorial role Christ Himself would exhibit in fullness.

    God’s covenantal love is also manifest in the Joseph narrative.  Joseph himself recognized this, both when he revealed his true identity to his brothers (45:3-8) and after his father died (50:15-21).  In both cases, his brothers repented of the evil they had done to him in selling him into slavery, but he saw their actions in the broader context of God’s providential working to save people—and specifically the covenant people—through the famine.  Moreover, this recognition of God’s overarching grace enabled Joseph to extend forgiveness to his brothers who had truly wronged him.  Although in the early chapters of the narrative, there was much evidence of sibling rivalry, jealously, and strife, by the narrative’s conclusion self-sacrificial (covenantal) love can be seen in in the attitude of Judah towards Jacob, and in the reconciliation, grace, forgiveness, and covenantal solidarity between Joseph and his brothers. Such love was to be marks of God’s people and were to mark God’s people.  This fact would have been particularly poignant as the Israelites came out of Egypt, but subsequent Israelite history shows they often failed at this.  As a New Covenant people, such love is to mark us as well.

    Joseph Makes Himself Known to His Brothers (Gen. 45:1)
  • The Covenant with Jacob (Gen. 28:10-36:43)

    The Covenant with Jacob (Gen. 28:10-36:43)

    The Jacob narrative is bookended by his time in Bethel.  It is in Bethel, when he is fleeing from his brother Esau that he receives a vision of a ladder between Heaven and Earth on which angels of God were ascending and descending (Gen. 28:12).  Most commentators understand this not as a ladder as we would typically think of it today, but rather as a ziggurat, like the people of Babel tried to build.  Christ would later use such an image to describe Himself when He says, “Most assuredly, I say to you, hereafter you shall see Heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man” (John 1:51).  This is a curious image, but its meaning is straightforward: It is the sole gateway between Heaven and Earth, the sole connection between God and Man.  Jacob did not realize it when he first came to the place, but he was in the presence of the Holy; we often do not think about it, but in coming to Christ we too are coming into the presence of the Holy.  Such a realization should spur one to fear, awe, and worship, just as it did Jacob.

    It is at Bethel where the LORD reiterates His covenant promise to Jacob: “I am the LORD God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants.  Also your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south; and in you and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.  Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you” (Gen. 28:13-15).  Notice the similarities here with God’s promise to Abraham in Gen. 12:1-3.  There is not only the land promise and the promise of numerous descendants, but also the promise that God will be with Jacob wherever he goes.  It is God’s presence that is the final fruit of the covenant relationship.  Jacob responds by setting up and consecrating a memorial pillar and taking a vow that if God does indeed stay with him, provides for him, and brings him home safely, then he will make the LORD his God (28:20-21).

    Commentators make much of the fact that Jacob is turning an unconditional promise on God’s part to a conditional bargain, but the fact of the matter is that God works with His people where they are at; the chapters that follow show how God fulfilled Jacob’s vow.  While there is strife in Jacob’s family between his wives and concubines, God nonetheless blesses Jacob with twelve sons and a daughter and makes him successful in his work in Laban’s household.  God’s protection is manifest in three incidents after Jacob and his family flee from Laban.  First, God intervenes directly with Laban who is in hot pursuit of Jacob and his family and warns Laban in a dream not to harm Jacob (31:24).  The subsequent covenant Jacob makes with Laban secures his freedom from Laban’s household (31:43-58).  Second, as Jacob returns to the Promised Land, he is met by the same angels he saw earlier at Bethel (32:1), and God protects him from the wrath of his brother Esau (ch. 33).  Third, once Jacob returns to Canaan, the LORD protects the covenant family from assimilation with the surrounding peoples through the incident with the rape of Dinah.  In that case, Simeon and Levi wrought brutal vengeance on Shechem for their sister’s rape placed God’s people at enmity with the inhabitants of the land, yet Jacob’s fears that they would be killed did not materialize (34:30, 35:5).

    Jacob learned hesed, covenantal love during his sojourn in Padan Aram.  Laban’s deceitfulness was not only a rebuke to Jacob’s own earlier deceitfulness, but became the means by which he came to develop covenantal faithfulness to the LORD.  That Jacob has indeed learned hesed can be seen in how he attributed blessings and protection he has received to the LORD in his argument with Laban (31:41-42), in his confession of faith to the LORD and prayer for deliverance (32:9-12), and in his wrestling with God (32:22-32). Moreover, Jacob’s faithfulness to God is based not only on what he has seen God do, but also who he has learned that the LORD is.  One way ancient kings exercised authority was to rename their vassals, and here we Jacob renamed Israel (“Prince with God”) in 32:28.  The LORD is sovereign.  In addition, the LORD possesses real power, unlike Laban’s household gods impotent to do anything and sat upon by a deceitful, menstruating woman (31:19, 26-35).  The fact that Laban could not find his household gods was God’s protection to his covenant people.  The LORD is superior to all other gods.  It should not be surprising then to see Jacob return to Bethel, where he made his original vow, build an altar to the LORD, and bury the idols among his family and entourage (35:2-4).  God’s fulfillment of Jacob’s vow is confirmed by God’s covenant renewal: “Your name shall not be called Jacob anymore, but Israel shall be your name… I am God Almighty.  Be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall proceed from you, and kings shall come from your body.  The land which I gave to Abraham and Isaac I give to you; and to your descendants after you I give this land” (35:10-12). The LORD would be known henceforth as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

    The Prayer of Jacob by the Jabbock River (Gen. 32:11)