The Noahic covenant was made with the house of Noah and his offspring (Gen. 9:9). The Abrahamic covenant was made with the house Abraham and his offspring (Gen. 17). The Mosaic covenant was made with the house of
Nor did the Old Testament scriptures give any indication that this pattern would change in the age to come. In fact, the prophets who announced beforehand the days of Messiah clearly proclaimed that God would follow this same principle when he established the New Covenant.
"And as for me, this is my covenant with them," says the LORD: "My Spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouth of your offspring, or out of the mouth of your children's offspring," says the LORD, "from this time forth and forevermore." (Isaiah 59:21)
I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. (Jeremiah 32:39-40).
They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children's children shall dwell there forever, and David my servant shall be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. (Ezekiel 37:25-26)
4 comments:
i'm tired and it's late, so i have not looked up children in those verses. but could they simply mean "descendants" and not necessarily be a reference to while your decendant was still a child? again, i don't know. did you look it up?
as for noahic, abrahamic, mosaic and davidic covenants...while they were made to the man and his offspring, you and i would both agree they ultimately point to THE OFFSPRING (Christ), correct? could this be why the covenants were secured to a man and future generations?
1) Could this language refer merely to descendants of covenant members and not to their children as children?
It seems to me that this could only be so if the words used in these prophecies of the new covenant mean something completely different than they mean when used in the context of the previous covenants.
I think it's quite clear that the promises and duties of the previous covenants applied directly to children as children (if it seems less clear to others, I'd be happy to go deeper into this).
We know how the previous covenants worked with respect to children. we see the same words used to describe how the new covenant would work. It seems that the burden of proof is on anyone maintaining that children are now treated differently.
Again, I think the New Testament scriptures will make this burden even heavier.
2)Were the promises made to the fathers and their offspring to carry on the line from which Christ would spring? (I hope I'm getting at the crux of your question and not misconstruing it).
Absolutely. However, if that were the only reason for doing so, there would be no reason to continue this pattern in the new covenant which looks back to Christ.
but how could the abrahamic covenant mean isaac "as a child specifically" when isaac did not exist?
how old were noah's sons?
david's?
my point is not that it couldn't apply to children, but to the fact that assuming these covenants are only referring to the age of a child (when some did not even exist yet) seems a bit presumptuous.
and if it is not specifically speaking to the child-age, why try to add weight to that issue, as if it is.
But we do know specifically that the Abrahamic covenant applied to the chld-age. Every male child born into his house was required to receive the sign of the covenant on the eighth day. A child who did not receive this sign was cut off from his people, not because he had not been brought into this covenant, but because he had broken that covenant (Gen 17:14). how could he have broken the covenant unless he had been born into it?
How did God make a covenant specifically with Isaac even before he was Isaac born? Of course, we both know that this is no obstacle to God. But even humanly speaking, it poses little difficulty.
I could set up a trust fund that entitled each of your descendants, at birth, to 100 dollars out of my bank account. Now--overlooking the fact that my account would be exhausted just by your present children,--to do this, I would not need to know who your descendants would be, what they would be named, or even how many there would be. As soon as they were born, and as long as the resources remained, they would be entitled to this money on the day they were born.
I think we see plenty of indications that this was how God(whose resources thankfully are much more extensive than mine) administered these past covenants. As I've said before, and as I'll cover in more detail later, these children were born automatically entitled to the promises and bound to the duties of these covenants.
Why does this strike us as so horribly odd? I think the idea of God declaring a covenant relationship with someone yet to be born gives us such trouble because, growing up in American Evangelicalism, we're accustomed to thinking of a relationship with God as something that we initiate as individuals, or perhaps as something that God initiates but only with our permission.
God has not historically been in the habit of seeking individual permission to establish such relationships.
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