"Covenant" is the Bible's central way of describing the Lord's relationship to his people. In the Ancient Near East, a great king (suzerain) would rescue a smaller kingdom or city. On the basis of this deliverance, the lesser ruler would become the vassal (servant), part of the wider empire of the great king. As you can imagine, the vassal was in no position to negotiate the terms of the relationship. The treaty was simply imposed. Typically, it began with a preamble identifying the great king, followed by a historical prologue justifying his lordship, and then stipulations (commands) and sanctions (threats) for violation of the treaty.
It has long been observed that this pattern of suzerainty treaties is evident in the Bible, particularly in the covenant that Israel swore before Yahweh at Mount Sinai. For example, a compact version is found in the giving of the Ten Commandments. Exodus 20 begins with a preamble: "I am Yahweh your God," followed by a brief historical justification, "…who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." Therefore the stipulations follow, chief among them being the first: "You shall have no other gods besides me" (Exod. 20:1-3).
More than four centuries before the covenant at Sinai, God made a covenant with Abraham (Gen. 12-17). It contained two promises: an earthly land and seed (as many as the stars in heaven), and a heavenly land and blessing for the nations through the single seed of Abraham and Sarah, Jesus Christ. In Genesis 15, the Suzerain (YHWH) swears an oath and assumes the responsibility for its fulfillment. This is signified by the vision of the theophanic smoking fire-pot that walks between the pieces of animals cut in half. This would have been a familiar scene in Ancient Near Eastern politics, where the Great King would cause the lesser king to walk between the pieces, accepting the stipulations (and sanctions). Yet what is surprising here is that it is YHWH who makes all the promises and signifies it by walking alone through the pieces. Within the one covenant of grace, the Abrahamic covenant (Gen. 12-17), God makes two promises to Abraham: an earthly inheritance consisting of land and myriad descendants, and a heavenly inheritance of everlasting life for "the families of the world" through a single "seed" (see Paul's emphasis of this point and contrast with the Sinai covenant in Gal. 3:16).
Like Hamlet's play-within-a-play, the Sinai covenant plays out within the larger Abrahamic covenant of grace. However, it is thoroughly typological of the everlasting Sabbath. As for the earthly promise, the book of Joshua recounts in detail God's fulfillment of this pledge. Repeatedly we read that Yahweh conquered and delivered the idolatrous trespassers into Israel's hand. "Not a word failed of any good thing which the Lord had spoken to the house of Israel. All came to pass" (Josh. 21:45). Notice the absolute character of this report: everything that God swore to Abraham concerning the earthly land was fulfilled.
But this is just where some interpretations confuse the nature of the promise and its fulfillment. Nowhere does God promise unconditionally to preserve Israel in the land of Canaan. Getting in was all of grace, in fulfillment of the pledge to Abraham. The terms for remaining in the land as God's holy nation, however, were based on Israel's obedience to everything commanded at Sinai. This is why, after God fulfills his promise, the whole congregation of Israel renews its Sinai oath at the end of the book of Joshua. It is God's land, not Israel's, and if Israel proves disloyal to the covenant, he will drive them out just as he did the wicked nations. This is clearly a different covenant from the oath that God made to Abraham and Sarah.
On the one hand, we must not set the old and new covenants over against each other; the same Triune God is the author of both, and both serve the larger covenant of grace. On the other hand, we must not see the new covenant as a continuation of the old. The differences are spelled out clearly in the historical books and in the law and in the prophets, in the Gospels, and in the Epistles’which brings us to Hebrews.
In his remarkable book Sinai and Zion (HarperOne, 1987), the distinguished Harvard scholar of Jewish studies Jon Levenson points out that in the Old Testament itself this distinction is obvious. The Sinai covenant is clearly of a "suzerainty" type, he argues. Its conditionality makes Israel's future precarious. Yet beyond this, the constant proclamation of life beyond the exile’the "Zion" tradition’continues to be heard even in the rubble of exile. Somehow, somewhere, above the vicissitudes of human disobedience, there is an unconditional promise of grace. Yet with the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in AD 70, he argues, Judaism had no place for a continuation of Sinai. Instead, good works and repentance replaced the sacrifices. And this is precisely where Judaism and Christianity parted ways, he argues. While for Jews, Sinai has the last word, for Christians it is Zion, and Jesus himself is the end-time temple.
Levenson understands the "fork in the road" between old and new covenants better than many Christian’including Protestant’theologians today. In fact, he points to the Epistle to the Hebrews as the most decisive interpretation of the Christian divergence from Judaism. The contrasts Levenson identifies as "Sinai" and "Zion" serve as the basis for the apostolic contrast between "the law" (i.e., the terms of the Sinai covenant, sworn by the people, with Moses as mediator) and "the promise" (God's unilateral oath in Christ the Mediator).
When the prophets prosecute God's case against Israel as a national theocracy, the basis of exile is the Sinai covenant. Yet beyond this they look back to the promise that God made to Abraham, and they look forward to a new covenant that will be "not like the covenant" the people swore at Sinai (Jer. 31:32). God will unilaterally circumcise the hearts of his people and write the law on their hearts because he will forgive their sins. His people "will inherit the earth" (Matt. 5:5), not a sliver of real estate; in fact, the distinction between heaven and earth will disappear (Rev. 11:19; 21:22).
It is therefore because of God's pledge to Abraham and Sarah that there was any hope of God's saving presence rather than judgment. Looking to Christ from afar, as it were, the old covenant saints could actually enjoy the heavenly blessings only together with us’that is, with the dawning of the new covenant (Heb. 11:40). Justified through faith, they were preserved and kept by the Spirit. With the advent of the reality, the shadowy administration is gone. The covenant of law (Sinai) is now designated the "old covenant." "In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete" (Heb. 8:13). We have not come to Mount Sinai, but to Mount Zion’the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb. 12:28).
