Covenant

The Eng. word covenant (from Lat. convenire) means a convention, agreement, compact, etc., and may thus embrace a variety of agreements, from a treaty or league between two nations down to a contract between two persons. The Heb. term is used with the same latitude, though properly birith is employed only of the more important class of conventions, at the forming of which a religious rite was per- formed, by which the Deity was involved as a party to the covenant, or as the guardian of it.

Other uses are derived, and are either less strict or metaphorical. The term bfrith occurs well on to 300 times in OT, ana is rendered ' covenant ' in AV with a few exceptions, e.g. 'league,' Jos 9"'-, 2S 3'^-, and some other places ; ' confederacy,' Ob', cf. Gn 14". The word is used in a variety of signifi- cations, appearing to mean not only covenant but also appointment, ordinance, law ; and opinions differ on the question what its primary meaning is.

Some have assumed that the word i)roperly means a bUateral covenant with reciprocal obligi tions or undertakings, and that tlien being applied to the conditions of the covenant, which were of the nature of binding ordinances, it thus came to have the general sense of ordinance or law.

Not very difl'erent from this idea is the other, that, seeing among the Shemitic peoples no authority existed from which law could emanate, the only idea they had of a binding law was that of a contract or agreement on the part of those who were to be bound by it.

Others have supposed that the original meaning of birith was ordmance or apiiointment laid down by a single party, but that, as in all such cases a second party necessarily existed, the term came to have the sense of a reci|irocal arrangement. The transition from the primary to the derived sense would on this last supposition be much less natural than it is on the other. The derivation of the word is uncertain. Ges. assumed a root n^j to cut, after Arab.

, suppos- ing the term derived from the i)rimitive rite of cutting victims into pieces, between which the contracting parties passed (Gn 15", Jer 34"- '"). It is probable that the early phrase to make a covenant, viz. ' to cut ' (nnj) a covenant, was derive<l from this usage ; but it is more natural to suppose that both the idea of birith and the term itself existed independently of the rites employed at its formation in particular instances (cf. Lat. firdus iccre, etc.)

More recently it has been suggested that the word may be connected with the As-syr. birtu 'a fetter,' bcritu a fettering, enclosing. It does not quite appear, however, whether the 8ui>- posed verb from wliich ' fetter' is derive<l meant ' to enclose' or ' to bind ' (Del. Assyr. llll'll).

At any rate, the word bund woulil api)roximat« more nearly towards expressing the various usages of bfrith than any other word, for the term is used not only where two parties reciprocally bind them 510 COVENANT COVENANT selves, but where one party imposes a bond upon the other, or where a party assumes a bond upon himself. There are two classes of covenants mentioned in