Blood Covenant Origins

by C. A. Gray

  The Lord added, “But I will establish My covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you at this season next year.”

  This last and most remarkable pronouncement took my breath away. This season next year . The Lord had first spoken to me about this child of the promise twenty-four years ago. I waited a decade after that until Ishmael’s birth. When Sarah’s monthly flow ceased, my heart sickened, and it had been thirteen more years since then. Was it really so? No more waiting?

  The Lord God ascended to heaven then, leaving me still lying prostrate on the ground. When I recovered myself, I stood, brushed off my robes, and went to assemble the men of my household. I had a job to do. I explained the relevant part of the Lord’s visitation to me, and it was a credit to the men that despite their dismay, to a man they submitted willingly to my knife. I personally circumcised every one of them until the sun went down that day. The cries of pain throughout the household drew dismayed stares from every female servant as well, but I had no time to stop and explain to them. Hagar attempted to intervene on behalf of Ishmael, but I put her off, and so did Ishmael. “This is man’s business!” he said to his mother, and I was proud of him.

  Last of all, I gritted my teeth and circumcised myself. None of the men upon whom I had performed the procedure were in any condition to do it for me, and I did not wish to call upon even Sarah to perform such a task.

  Ten days later, when I was recovering at the door of my tent beside the oaks of Mamre, I looked up and saw not one, but three glowing men walking together. One was clearly the Lord, but who were the other two? Were they all three the Lord, somehow, or were two the Lord’s angels? Regardless, when I saw them, I leapt up and ran, heedless of the slight lingering ache in my groin, and bowed before them.

  “ My Lord, if now I have found favor in Your sight, please do not pass Your servant by. Please let a little water be brought and wash Your feet, and make Yourselves comfortable under the tree; and I will bring a piece of bread, so that you may refresh yourselves; after that you may go on, since you have visited your servant. ”

  They stopped walking, and lingered under the oaks of Mamre. “Go do as you have said,” one said to me.

  I ran back to my tent to Sarah. “ Quickly, prepare three measures of fine flour, knead it, and make bread cakes. ”

  “Three measures?” Sarah exclaimed. I knew she was reacting to the amount—enough to feed an army. But I would far prefer to offer the Lord too much than too little. I did not stop to reply to her, but hastened on to my herd. I selected a young, spotless calf, and guided it to one of the young herdsmen.

  “Quick! Slaughter and prepare the meat for our distinguished guests!”

  The young herdsman asked no questions, but did as he was told. Conscious of how long my guests were forced to wait, I prepared the curds myself, and squeezed fresh milk. When all was at last finished, a feast for a kingdom, I brought it before the bright visitors, watching anxiously as they tasted the food. Was it good enough? Was it fit for a king?

  Sarah had withdrawn to give me privacy with our guests, but she was inside the tent. I knew she too was listening with curiosity and awe, and perhaps a little skepticism. This was the first time that the Lord had appeared to me in close enough proximity that she too could hear. After I’d circumcised myself and the hundreds of men in my household, I had explained to her some of what the Lord had said to me. I told her that circumcision was a sign of the Lord’s covenant. I also told her that the Lord had changed my name and hers, but I did not yet tell her why. Since she too knew the meanings of the new names, though, I hoped she had been able to guess, or at least suspect. That would make it so much easier when at last, I did tell her the rest.

  As it turned out, though, I did not have to. When the three men finished eating, one of them said to me, “Where is your wife Sarah?”

  This did not surprise me—this was the Lord, after all, who had been the one to change her name little more than a week ago in the first place. But I knew it would startle Sarah, that they knew her name. Especially her new name.

  “There, in the tent,” I said. Clearly that meant she could hear every word.

  The one who was the Lord replied, “ I will certainly return to you at this time next year; and behold, your wife Sarah will have a son. ”

  Inside the tent, all four of us heard a sharp female laugh. I sucked in a breath, and looked back at our visitors. All of them frowned, and the Lord said, “ Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I actually give birth to a child, when I am so old?’ Is anything too difficult for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, at this time next year, and Sarah will have a son .”

  There was silence for a long moment. Sarah had said no such thing aloud, but I knew that the Lord had verbalized her innermost thoughts. At last, Sarah’s tentative voice called from inside the tent, “I did not laugh.”

  “No, but you did laugh,” was the Lord’s disapproving reply. Then the three men rose to go, on their way to the Jordan Valley, toward Sodom, the land my nephew Lot had chosen. I went with them, leaving Sarah behind me to meditate on what she had heard.

  Months passed, and apparently, nothing had changed. Sarah had no monthly flow to begin with, so she had not even that to indicate that she had conceived. But as time passed, and Sarah got used to saying my new name, and got used to hearing her own, I saw the change in her. The hardness around her heart began to soften, and the sharpness of her tongue grew tentatively kind. She seemed shy in her hope mixed with fear. I took her outside to show her the stars of the heavens—now a promise for her as well as for me. I pointed out the sand in her sandals and all around us, another symbol of the land that would belong to our descendants. She cried when I showed her these things, and for the first time since Ishmael’s birth, I felt again that she was fully mine, body and soul. Those precious months were like a second honeymoon for us. She still had moments of doubt and fear; so did I. But we strengthened each other with our visions of the future. We spoke of Isaac as if he already were. We made plans.

  And then, about six months after the Lord had visited, we noticed the first signs of Isaac in Sarah’s belly. She beamed when she showed me, but she did not cry, because by then she was not surprised. It was merely the confirmation of what she had already known.

  A year to the day from when the Lord had first appeared to me and told me of the covenant of circumcision and given me the promise of Isaac, Sarah brought him into the world—our child of laughter. He was born when I was one hundred, and Sarah ninety years old. Both his parents had laughed when we heard of his coming, but now Sarah declared, “ God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me. Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have given birth to a son in his old age.” She was the happiest I had ever seen her, nor could I recall any time in my life when my heart was so overflowing. Isaac was the culmination of twenty-five years of heartache, yet those years were now forgotten in joy.

  I circumcised Isaac on the eighth day, this child who symbolized God’s covenant. From him would come nations and kings, the Lord said, and through him, somehow, all the nations of the world would be blessed. He was literally the promise made flesh: impossible in every way, yet here he was, sleeping in my arms.

  The Lord was faithful, all the time.

  Afterword

  The story of Isaac’s miraculous birth spans twenty-five years, and eight chapters in Genesis. It’s also inextricably linked with God’s promise to Abraham that he would inherit the land which would ultimately become Israel, but God reveals His plan to Abraham in stages.

  By Genesis 13, God has already called Abram (this was his name at first) to leave his father’s house and go to the land that God would show him. But it isn’t until after Abram and his nephew Lot separate that God specifically promises the childless Abram, then in his seventies, that his descendants will be like the dust of the earth. The word used here for descendants
in Hebrew is zera , which means seed, or semen. This is significant because in Genesis 15, still childless, a heartsick Abram starts to wonder if the child will be from his own body after all, or whether perhaps it might be an adopted servant. God corrects him then, and tells him that yes, the child will be his biological son. He also gives Abram a new image to cling to: that of the stars in the heavens as a symbol of his numberless progeny. Now Abram can meditate on God’s promise to him day and night: both the dust of the ground and the stars in the heavens are a symbol of the promise. This is the first time that we’re told “Abram believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness,” later quoted in Romans 4:3 as an example for us all.

  At the same time that God gives Abram this new word picture, He promises him the land for his possession. Abram asks God for a sign, which elsewhere in scripture indicates lack of faith—but since the writer of Genesis just got finished saying that “Abram believed God,” that can’t be what it was in this case. Perhaps Abram was asking for something to cling to, like the image of the dust of the ground and the stars of the sky, to help him continue in faith for the land during the long years he expected to elapse between the promise and its fulfillment. In response, God tells Abram to gather animals and to cut them in half. Abram at once knows what this means: as we’re told in Jeremiah 34:18-19, this is the preparation for what the ancients called “cutting a covenant.” In this ritual, both parties walked between the pieces of the animals in a figure eight as they made their vows, in effect saying, “so be it done to me as it was done to these animals, if I break my end of this agreement!” Abram understands that God is going to make a covenant with him. But rather than God and Abram walking between the pieces, God puts Abram to sleep and gives him a vision of a flaming torch and a smoking fire pot passing between the pieces instead, as God tells him the terms of the covenant. This is significant, because Abram doesn’t have to do a thing—the covenant is between God and Himself! Fire is often used as a symbol of the Lord throughout scripture. The flaming torch—the light—has been compared to the Word of God (“The word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path,” Psalm 119:105), and Jesus is the Word made flesh (John 1:1). One alternative interpretation I have heard is that the smoking fire pot is a furnace or crucible, and because the covenant God speaks includes the bondage of Abram’s descendants in slavery for 400 years, perhaps this is a symbol of God’s covenant with the people of Israel, and the fire pot is a symbol of their suffering (Deuteronomy 4:20). Regardless, Abram himself does not pass between the pieces, which means he does not have to do anything in order to bring about the promises. As far as he’s concerned, they’re automatic!

  It’s also interesting to me that God includes both the blessing and the 400 years of slavery in this original covenant. Otherwise, the Israelites could have justly claimed that God had not kept up His end of the bargain when they found themselves in bondage—but He put it in the original contract, so to speak.

  But God has not yet specified that the child of the promise will also be Sarah’s. This is why Sarai (as her name then is) suggests to Abram in Genesis 16 that he take her Egyptian servant Hagar as a wife, which is how Ishmael comes to be. It seems like Abram could have asked God for clarification at that point, but he doesn’t.

  Twenty four years have elapsed from the time of the original promise in Genesis 17. God visits Abram again, and this is where he changes his name to Abraham, and Sarai’s name to Sarah. I’ve heard two explanations for this: one is that God added -ah to both of their names, taken from His own name: Jehov- ah . In Hebrew, ah means breath or spirit. God has breathed on them, and in the breath of God is life (which is how Adam and Eve came to be). Another explanation is that Abram means ‘exalted father,’ while Abraham means ‘father of many nations.’ Likewise, Sarai means ‘my princess,’ whereas Sarah means ‘princess of a multitude.’ Again, God is bringing the promise front and center for them: now, every time they call one another, every time they hear someone speak their new name, they are hearing the promise. “God calls those things that are not as though they were” (Romans 4:17), and “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (Romans 10:17).

  In this same encounter, God gives Abraham the first sign of the covenant in which he has a part to play: every male in his household must be circumcised. Covenants in the ancient world always involve the shedding of blood. This will be a permanent physical sign, though a personal one, that these men belong to God. Circumcision also occurs on the organ of reproduction, which may make it a symbol that their fruitfulness (spiritually speaking) would now come as a result of their partnership with God. Jesus later says, “The one who remains in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

  One more very significant thing comes out of this encounter: finally, God tells Abraham that the child will be Sarah’s too. Sarah is the one who always gets the bad reputation of laughing when she hears the promise, but Abraham laughs too, and it’s the same word in Hebrew as when Sarah laughs! This might be why God says that his son will be called Isaac—which means laughter. Ouch. God doesn’t directly rebuke Abraham like he does Sarah, but maybe this is the rebuke.

  In my retelling, I put the next encounter with the Lord ten days later in Genesis 18, because Abraham and the men of his household are recovering from circumcision, and this takes about ten days on average. It seems that God isn’t even intending to talk to Abraham this time—the three men, one of whom is apparently the Lord and the other two who presumably are angels, are on their way to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham happens to see them passing by. God reiterates the promise, and now Sarah hears it. This is where she laughs, and the Lord rebukes her. But we know from Hebrews 11:11 that she eventually does come to believe the Lord’s promise, even though she’s eighty-nine years old at this point! And she must have come around pretty quickly too, because the promise is for “this time next year.” So she must have gotten on board in at least three months. God’s promises must be mixed with faith to receive them (Hebrews 4:2).

  Then there’s this weird interlude that I didn’t put in my retelling. Once before, when Abram was seventy-five and Sarai was sixty-five, she was apparently so gorgeous that he told Pharaoh as they passed through Egypt that she was his sister, and not his wife—lest Pharaoh try to have him killed so that he could take Sarai into his harem. (This was sort of true: she was his half sister. They did that back then.) Then in Genesis 20, after God has already given the promise that Isaac will be born within a year, Abraham does it again! As he passes through Gerar, he tells King Abimelech that Sarah (who is eighty-nine at this point) is his sister! Apparently she is still stunning, because Abimelech takes her into his harem. How God responds to this is very interesting: He closes the wombs of all the women in Abimelech’s household, and then tells him in a dream that Sarah is actually Abraham’s wife. Then, even though the fault is totally Abraham’s, because God made a covenant with Abraham, Abraham has to pray for Abimelech so that the curse is lifted. But this isn’t just any curse. It’s a curse of reproduction. Could it be that God was jealous of His promise, twenty-five years in the making, and now on a very tight deadline? At this point, it’s days to months at most from when Sarah is scheduled to conceive. I suspect God really didn’t want anyone to think Sarah’s child was anyone’s other than Abraham’s.

  And then in Chapter 21, at long, long last, Sarah is pregnant, and Isaac is born.

  Why twenty-five years? Was all that really necessary? Is it possible that Abraham and Sarah could have shortened the wait, or was it always destined to be so long? No idea. But (despite his bizarre lapses here and there), I definitely think Abraham deserves the title, “Father of Faith.”

  The Scriptures

  Genesis 13-21

  Genesis 12-21:7

  12:1 Now the Lord had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, From your family And from your father’s house, To a land that I will show you. 2 I will make you
a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” 4 So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5 Then Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they departed to go to the land of Canaan. So they came to the land of Canaan. 6 Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, as far as the terebinth tree of Moreh. And the Canaanites were then in the land. 7 Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” And there he built an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. 8 And he moved from there to the mountain east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; there he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. 9 So Abram journeyed, going on still toward the South. 10 Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to dwell there, for the famine was severe in the land. 11 And it came to pass, when he was close to entering Egypt, that he said to Sarai his wife, “Indeed I know that you are a woman of beautiful countenance. 12 Therefore it will happen, when the Egyptians see you, that they will say, ‘This is his wife’; and they will kill me, but they will let you live. 13 Please say you are my sister, that it may be well with me for your sake, and that I may live because of you.” 14 So it was, when Abram came into Egypt, that the Egyptians saw the woman, that she was very beautiful. 15 The princes of Pharaoh also saw her and commended her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken to Pharaoh’s house. 16 He treated Abram well for her sake. He had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female servants, female donkeys, and camels. 17 But the Lord plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. 18 And Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? 19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’? I might have taken her as my wife. Now therefore, here is your wife; take her and go your way.” 20 So Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him; and they sent him away, with his wife and all that he had.