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NASB | Jeremiah 34:18 'I will give the men who have transgressed My covenant, who have not fulfilled the words of the covenant which they made before Me, when they cut the calf in two and passed between its parts-- |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Jeremiah 34:18 'The men who have violated My covenant, who have not kept the terms of the solemn pledge which they made before Me when they split the [sacrificial] calf in half, and then afterwards walked between its separated pieces [sealing their pledge to Me by placing a curse on themselves should they violate the covenant--those men I will make like the calf]! [Gen 15:9, 10, 17] |
Bible Question:
As I read this passage vv 18-20, and compare it to the reference given (AMP Gen 15:9,10 17), in Gen it is the LORD who is confirming His covenant and yet in Jer, the AMP indicates that walking between the cut calf was Israel's pledge to the Lord. Are there any other instances in Scripture where something like this took place? Something about this situation - a human attempt to re-create a God-thing - bothers me. (Do we do this?) Reading Jer 34:13-16 I see a parallel between Israel's release from the bondage of Egypt - the Lord had them walk between the parted waters of the Red Sea! Yet notice the serious result of Israel's failure to keep their commitment to the Lord in veerse 16 - the Lord declared: "you turned and profaned My name." Comments? |
Bible Answer: The Importance of the Covenants by R.D. Brinsmead ... "Abrahamic Just as God rescued Noah from a doomed world, so He rescued Abraham from an idolatrous environment and separated him for covenant partnership with Himself. The covenant was made with Abraham when the patriarch was seventy-five years old (Gen. 15) and renewed to him when he was ninety-nine-the year before Isaac was born (Gen. 17). The covenant consisted of a divine promise (confirmed by an oath) that Abraham would have a seed and an everlasting inheritance. There were a temporal and an eternal dimension to this promise. In its immediate prospect it promised a son to Abraham and Sarah in their old age and the land of Canaan for his descendants. But it was also a redemptive covenant. It promised that in Abraham's Seed all nations of the earth would be blessed (Gen. 12:3; Gal. 3:6-8, 16) and that through Him they would inherit the redeemed earth (Rom. 4:3; Heb. 11:8-16, 39; 2:5; Gal. 3:15-19, 29). The covenant was the gospel of Christ in promise (Gal. 3:6-8,16,19). The immediate temporal promises would serve the purpose of being the vehicle of carrying forward the unfolding drama of salvation-history. Abraham's response to God's promise was that "he believed in the Lord; and He [God] counted it to him for righteousness" (Gen. 15:6). Paul seizes on this to prove that it was a covenant of justification by faith (see Rom. 4; Gal. 3). The inheritance, Paul argues, was given to Abraham by promise and not because of his achievements in keeping the law. Abraham was justified by faith alone, but the faith which justified him was not alone. At a later time God said that "Abraham obeyed My voice, and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws" (Gen. 26:5; see also 18:19; 22:18). Abraham was not justified before God by faith and works but by a faith which worked (see Gal. 5:6). The Abrahamic covenant was formalized by a ceremony which apparently was a well-known ancient custom. Abraham took several sacrificial beasts and birds. He divided the animal sacrifices into pieces and placed them in two rows, forming an aisle.2 According to the ancient custom of covenant making, the covenant partners were to walk together down the aisle between the divided sacrifice. As they did so, they would bind themselves under oath to be true to the terms of the pact. The dismembered animal portrayed the cursed fate which would befall the covenant breaker. The Hebrew form of oath, "God do so to me and more also," probably connects with such ceremonies. This is probably supported also by the threat of Yahweh, "And the men who transgressed my Covenant . . . I will make like the calf which they cut in two." (Jer. 34:18 R.S.V.)-Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, p.69. In the Abrahamic covenant God passed through the parts of the sacrifice while Abraham was in a deep sleep or prophetic trance (Gen. 15:17). The Lord hereby staked His own existence on His promise to Abraham. While the covenant promise was not given to Abraham because he fulfilled the law or the covenant conditions, the Bible is also clear that the covenant would not operate apart from obedience on the part of Abraham and his descendants. The covenant fellowship imposed upon him the responsibility of being devoted and upright (Gen. 17:1 ; see also l8:19; 22:18; 26:5). Subsequent history demonstrated that this covenant would not work automatically-that is, without the appropriate response of the human party. Not all of Abraham's descendants became heirs of the covenant promise. Ishmael and Esau were disqualified from being children of the covenant, and so were the unbelieving Jews in the time of Jesus and Paul. Until Christ came as the promised Seed, however, there were always some unbelieving Jews who were incorporated in the nation which was covenantally related to God. It is clear that many in the nation were not real children of Abraham, for they were "children in whom is no faith" (Deut. 32:20). As strangers to divine grace, they could not be heirs with Abraham of the redeemed world (Rom. 4:13; Gal. 3:6-8). But by being associated in nationhood with the covenant people, they received many of the benefits of life in the theocracy - just as unbelieving sinners live in the same world with God's people and receive the temporal advantages of the Noahic covenant. Circumcision was given by God to be the sign or seal of the Abrahamic covenant (Gen. 17:10, 11). By metonymy the covenant became known as "the covenant of circumcision" (see Acts 7:8). According to Paul circumcision was the sign or seal of righteousness by faith (Rom. 4:11), for Abraham was given the promise of justification and salvation by Christ before he was circumcised. The Judaizers, however, perverted the sign and turned it into a means of obtaining the inheritance." The Importance of the Covenants by R.D. Brinsmead http://www.salvationhistory.com/articles/scholarly/brinsmead/covt.cfm#Names |