by C. A. Gray
Copyright and Disclaimers
Blood Covenant Origins: Biblical Retellings
By C.A. Gray
Copyright 2021, C.A. Gray
All Rights Reserved
No Portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including, but not limited to, audio recordings, facsimiles, photocopying, or information storage and retrieval systems without explicit written permission from the author or publisher.
Published By:
Wanderlust Publishing Tucson, AZ
Also by C.A. Gray:
Piercing the Veil Trilogy:
Intangible
Invincible
Impossible
The Liberty Box Trilogy:
The Liberty Box
The Eden Conspiracy
The Phoenix Project
The Uncanny Valley Trilogy:
Uncanny Valley
The Silver Six
Jaguar
Dreamscape Adventures, Inc.
The Atlantis Bloodline
The Kairos Makers:
Christmas Night 1776
Jamestown’s Deliverance
The Tunguska Asteroid
Messiah: Biblical Retellings
Daughters of Zion: Biblical Retellings
Introduction
The Old and New Testaments of the Bible could just as easily have been called the Old and New Covenants. The word is the same for both ( beriyth in Hebrew, and diatheke in Greek). Because of this, an understanding of both the concept of covenants, so foreign to our modern world, as well as of the specific covenants in place at any given point in scriptural history can offer tremendous context for how and why God dealt with mankind as He did—and why it changed, though God Himself has not.
Covenants in ancient times were like contracts, but much stronger and far more personal. The closest thing we have to a covenant in Western culture is marriage. Yet even marriage, as understood in the modern world, doesn’t carry nearly the same weight. To the ancients, a covenant is a bond broken only by death. It is made between at least two parties, though those parties are called covenant heads and can stand on behalf of a larger group of people. For example, God’s covenant made with Abraham still extends to his offspring. Covenants were also made between individuals. David and Jonathan cut a covenant between each other. After Jonathan’s death, King David searched for any of Jonathan’s offspring to bless based upon that covenant. Parties in covenant with one another, depending upon the terms, are often completely united, sharing assets, liabilities, and responsibilities in common. A covenant involves a sacred oath, in which the terms of the agreement are stated. Most require blood, as a symbol of life and death against betrayal.
The Western mind tends to think of contracts as legal documents enforced by law if one side fails to uphold his end of the bargain. Therefore, it may help to think of Biblical covenants through this analogy. When God pledges Himself to a man in a covenant, His word is at stake—the same word that holds the universe together by the integrity of that word (Psalm 119:89-90, Hebrews 1:3). God cannot lie (1 Samuel 15:29)—this is the very reason that we can trust that He will fulfill every promise He has ever made (1 Kings 8:56). But that cuts both ways: His word stands, and justice must be fulfilled, even when under certain circumstances in His mercy He might have wanted to bend the rules in our favor. God can’t break His own law, and our enemy knew it.
Satan did everything he could to exploit God’s own integrity to our destruction. Several times, it looked like he might even manage it. Even when Satan’s attempts failed, though, in many cases he succeeded in maligning God’s character in the eyes of mankind. The Hebrew mind made no etymological distinction between the concepts of permission and causation, and the Old Testament only mentioned Satan and his demons on rare occasions. Because of this, Satan was able to inflict wanton destruction and blame it on God, so long as it was permitted in the loopholes of the covenants in place at the time. In this way, even to this day, the God of the Old Testament gained the reputation of being capricious and vindictive—when all the time, Satan was the real enemy. The retelling of Job highlights this idea. Satan was the author of Job’s troubles, but God is often blamed even today when the story of Job is preached. How many times do we hear modern catastrophes called ‘acts of God’? Jesus came to give abundant life. It is the thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10).
God, meanwhile, worked behind the scenes to restore and redeem all mankind who would receive His provision (2 Peter 3:9). But He still had to abide by His own rules in the meantime. Again, to the Western mind, it helps to think of this in terms of a courtroom. Lawyers try to find loopholes within the law as written to achieve their clients’ ends. Judges must rule according to law and precedent; they cannot simply throw out a law because they don’t happen to like how it’s applied. In America, though, we can (with great difficulty) amend our foundational law, the Constitution. Think of God’s successive covenants with mankind as constitutional amendments, refining the rules surrounding how God interacted with His people over succeeding centuries. God knew from the beginning what His end game would be, but He couldn’t jump straight to it; He had to get us to a point in history where it was possible, without violating the covenants already in place at each successive stage. God found and exploited the ultimate “legal” loophole, the only possible way to balance perfect justice and perfect mercy. It was so radical, so daring, so unprecedented that even though His prophets stated it plainly for thousands of years, Satan didn’t understand it until it was too late (1 Corinthians 2:8). The Creator of the Universe Himself became a man, perfectly fulfilled the terms of the Mosaic covenant on our behalf, and then sacrificed Himself in our place.
This collection of retellings traces the various covenants God made with the patriarchs of Genesis, each ushering in a new age and explaining subsequent changes in the way He related to Israel, and the way Israel related to Him. The book was too long to also include the Mosaic covenant and the New Covenant, so those will appear in a second volume. As in earlier books in this series, each will start with a fictionalized retelling, followed by an afterword explaining the significance of what took place and why I made the choices I did in the retellings. Each retelling ends with the actual texts from scripture.
I hope this helps you to understand some of the stranger stories in the Old Testament, and to see God for who He truly is, and has always been: a perfect, loving Father, who wants nothing more than to have His family restored. No matter the cost.
Creation and the Fall of Man, from God’s Perspective
We are .
We call ourselves Elohim. We are three in one, so entirely that we call ourselves I .
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I am perfection, completion, harmony, unity. I don’t just have love… I am love. It bursts out of Me, seeking an object, longing to bless.
And so in the beginning, I pondered the vast deep potential around Me. It was without form, but it was not nothing. It was anything, everything—infinite potential. My Spirit hovered over it, considering.
My ultimate goal was to make a man like Myself in many ways. One who would reproduce himself, to become a vast people. They would be My children, My friends, the apples of My eye. But what would he need, this man?
First I had to create worlds, and for worlds I had to create a universe. I saw the vast regions of space. With a thought, that vast potentiality coalesced into a formless void, but with substance, giving Me something concrete to work with. Waters above mingled with water beneath, a continuum of vapor and liquid.
From there, I imagined all the possible worlds I could create, from the far
-flung galaxies to the subatomic particles that would flicker in and out of existence. I considered the concept of seeds, by which every living thing I would make would reproduce after its own kind. I envisioned the plants that would bear fruit and roots for man to eat, and the animals that would give him a kingdom to rule. I considered how food would break down into man’s fuel, combining the nutrients with oxygen to make energy. I was so pleased with this process that I thought I would use the same one for the animals, and a modified version of it for the plants, except that those would make oxygen, and breathe in the carbon dioxide that man exhaled in an elegant symbiosis. Every part of the world would be dependent upon every other part, perpetuating itself in the same way that seeds of each living thing perpetuated the original life I gave them.
Once I had answered every practical question for the habitat and comfort and reproduction of man and the earth and universe in which he lived, I came back to My original purpose. If he was to be My child, he must be free to love Me in return. Love compelled is no love at all. It would not be worth the effort. But if man was not compelled to love Me—
An ache bloomed deep inside My chest as history, as I knew it would be, unfolded before My eyes. Most men would not choose Me. Most of them would reject Me. No matter what I did for them, no matter how I loved them, they and their progeny would break My heart in every generation, and would perform unspeakable acts against one another. If I created them as eternal beings like Myself, and then gave them the choice of whether or not to choose Me, most of them would not. They would not understand that it is through Me that all good things flow. They would reject Me, and in so doing would choose eternal darkness. And there would be nothing I could do to stop them. Not if I gave them that choice.
Is it worth it? I asked Myself. To gain a remnant who would choose Me and love Me and let Me love them in return, would it be worth the endless pain?
Yes, I decided.
I saw in a flash how brief My communion with mankind would be. I saw how he would damn himself, and all his progeny after him. I saw the epochs of time that would elapse until I would be able to redeem them.
I saw the cross. I saw the agony. After all of that, most would still reject Me, and there would be nothing more I could do to save them from themselves. Not if I gave them that choice.
Again. Is it worth it?
Yes . Because I saw that remnant, and I swelled with joy and love so great that it must, it must, it must express itself. It burst out of Me in a booming declaration.
“Light, be!”
Potential energy coalesced into photons, bursting forth from Myself. I used the light to mark time. The light would be called Day, and the darkness, Night. After twelve hours of daylight, the light waned into twelve hours of darkness.
Twelve. That number would recur, for those who had ears to hear and eyes to see, I decided. Twelve and twelve together, twenty-four, would be a number of completion. Twelve tribes. Twelve apostles. Twenty-four elders. I smiled.
Light dawned on the second day, illuminating the formless waters.
“Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters,” I declared.
And so the thick vapor separated, some coalescing into liquid and falling down below with an almighty roar. The rest ascended into Heaven, creating a canopy of water outside the atmosphere, and white clouds below the atmosphere. In a flash, I saw the day, thousands of years hence, when that canopy above would fall to the earth, and the depths would spring forth in a great deluge.
But right now, I surveyed the work of My hands, and it was good. Then there was darkness again, beginning the third day.
It was too silent, I decided. I wanted witnesses . I wanted those who would sing for joy and praise with Me as the earth and the universe I envisioned took shape in all its glory. So that night, in My own dimension and in the regions I had called Heaven, I created legions upon legions of angels. They had physical substance, but not of the kind upon the earth—and they were glorious. I gave them many wings, many faces, and many voices. As each of them presented themselves before my throne, I named them, and tasked them with a purpose. The loveliest of all, the one with the most melodious voice, I called Lucifer, meaning Light Bringer or Morning Star. I set him over all the other angels, with this command:
“Sing for joy and praise, and lead the rest of the angels to worship, as the heavens and the earth take shape.”
Lucifer bowed low before My throne. “As You command, Lord God.”
Did I know then? Of course I knew. But had I chosen any other angel in Lucifer’s place, the same result would have occurred. The only way to prevent what would transpire would have been to make the angels automatons. And if I gave them no choice, then I would inherently give mankind none, either. A choice without an alternative is no choice at all.
I determined to enjoy him, for as long as I had him.
When the third day dawned, I commanded, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” In response, the molten metals in earth’s core churned, and the energy of their convection caused the plate tectonics all across the globe to shift. The sea floor rose and rose, and thunderous tsunamis reaching almost up to the heavens swelled and crashed while in other places, the water rushed down into the depths of the enormous chasms opened up in the earth. Lucifer led the angels in a great chorus, filling the heavens with a song of such tumultuous praise that it brought tears of joy to My eyes.
The waters receded, the ground rose, and the volcanic eruptions from the deep settled, hardening into mountains and valleys, hills, rivers, streams, and waterfalls where the water had been trapped inland. Most of the earth was now land, when all was said and done. Beneath the soil, enormous reservoirs of water that had rushed down below the earth’s crust had been trapped, bubbling up to the surface to nourish the fertile soil. The host of the angelic voices faded into a gentle hum, reflecting the settling calm upon the earth.
But I was not yet done today. I commanded, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth.”
At once the soil burst into lush greens of every shade, shooting up skyward and thickening into roots and trunks of great magnitude: in some places the forests reached halfway up to the atmosphere above. Then the vegetation sprouted forth fruits and flowers in a myriad of shapes, sizes, and colors. The angelic voices sang a cheerful bright melody. I created in rhythm with their song, clustering the vegetation according to climate in various regions of the globe. I shaped canopies of rainforests near the equator, and evergreen forests toward the north and south poles. Each type of vegetation came forth with the seed in itself for its own reproduction, so that it would self-perpetuate according to the life in the seed. The waters below would nourish the soil; the soil would nourish the plants; the plants would nourish the rest of the creatures I had yet to make. In the deep waters, I brought forth seaweed and grasses, and the angel song resolved in sweetest harmony.
I hid My light again, and there was evening for twelve hours. It was time to give the light and the darkness a life in themselves, also. The next morning, I commanded, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth.” The photons which had previously radiated from Myself separated, just as the waters had separated above from below, and the heavenly host sang praise. The light had a kind of seed in itself too: at its core, simpler elements combined to form heavier ones, letting off an enormous burst of heat and radiance in the process. I set this light at just the right distance from earth: too close and it would scorch the plants; too far and it would freeze the waters, turning the land into a tundra. I called this light the sun. The angels’ triumphant song i
n a major key compelled Me to dance along with them.
Then I hung another tiny light near the earth to govern the seas, to mark the months, and to rule the night. It would not have its own energy source, but would instead reflect the greater light of the sun, as would all the other planets of the solar system. I called this lesser light the Moon. Its gravity drew the waters of the earth toward itself. The praise song of the angels sank into a minor key, what would one day be called a waltz in its steady rhythm. I set the earth spinning so that the pulling of the tides would be uniform across the globe, drawing ever in and out, waltzing in time with the angels’ chorus.
With a burst of My fingers, I flung many more lights like the sun all throughout the universe, clustering them in galaxies. These I called stars. I placed them precisely in the places I wanted them. The earth was already spinning around its own axis; now I set it to orbit around the sun. Its own spin would determine day and night for each part of the earth now, while the orbit around the sun would determine years. Depending upon the earth’s position in its orbit around the sun, the seasons on earth would change, and different stars would appear in the night sky. These I would call constellations. The minor song of the angels hinted of mysteries, as I impregnated the constellations with signs I would reveal to those who sought understanding. I knew many would see the glory of the stars and the power of the signs they hid, and would mistakenly worship them instead of Me—but mankind would find no end of created things to worship. I would not refrain from creating what was good, because some might use it for evil.
The angels crept closer to watch, humming as I set the constellations and the other planets in earth’s solar system exactly where they would need to be to herald pivotal events of the earth.
My earthly incarnation would one day be called the Lion of Judah. So within the constellation man would call Leo, symbolized by a lion, I placed a star that would be called Regulus, or king. Thousands of years in the future, at the very time I Myself was conceived in a human womb, Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, would pass by Regulus three times: the king planet, crowning the king star. The constellation called Virgo, or the Virgin, would follow Leo with the sunrise, symbolic of the rise of the Son of Man upon all mankind. Nine months later, at My birth, the two largest planets in the solar system, Jupiter and Saturn, would align, combining their reflected light from the sun and appearing as the brightest star in the heavens. The retrograde motion of the planets would cause them to stop over a town that would then be called Bethlehem, serving as a sign to those with eyes to see.