Lectio Divina
November 2007

The Covenant
Meditate on the meaning of your own Covenant agreement with Our Lord

The word “covenant” is not a word we use much today, but the idea of covenant is central to modern life. A covenant is a binding agreement between two parties. A treaty between two nations is a covenant. A commercial contract is a covenant. The marriage vow is a covenant. The whole basis of Israel’s life was the covenant God made with his people. It was God’s covenant that made Israel his people. Time and time again the psalmists appeal to the covenant as the basis of their prayer for God’s help for the nation and for the individual.

The psalms constantly allude to God’s covenant with Abraham and his covenant at Sinai. God’s covenant with Abraham marked the beginning of Israel as a nation. Genesis tells how the Lord appeared to Abraham and said to him:

Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you. And I will give to you, and to your descendants after you… the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God (Genesis 17:1-8

When Israel was under threat of invasion, when it looked as if her enemies would wrest the land from them, it was to this covenant with Abraham that Israel appealed.

God renewed this covenant with Jacob, Abraham’s grandson (Genesis 28:10-17), and when the psalmists refer to the nation of Israel as ‘Jacob’ it is Jacob as the heir of the covenant with Abraham that is in mind. To call Israel ‘Jacob’ or to refer to God as the ‘God of Jacob’ is to refer back to the covenant God made with Abraham and renewed with Jacob.

The next covenant God made with Israel was the covenant at Sinai. The covenant God made with Abraham promised him a lot and asked of him very little, just that he circumcise his sons as a sign of the covenant. But the covenant at Sinai (sometimes called the Mosaic covenant, although the covenant was not with Moses but with the whole nation) demanded much more of the people. Obedience to the Law enshrined in the Ten Commandments was Israel’s obligation under the covenant. At Sinai the Lord said to Moses:

Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all people; for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exodus 19:3-6).

At the making of the covenant the Lord revealed himself in words that are echoed on every page of the psalms:

The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty… (Exodus 34:6-7)

The psalms of praise praise the Lord because of his commitment to the covenant. The psalms of lament appeal to him on the basis of the covenant. The words mercy, grace, steadfast love, faithfulness, forgiveness are the notes out of which the music of the psalms is written. God’s mercy, love, and faithfulness all refer to God’s commitment to the covenant.

Israel’s failure to keep the covenant led to its collapse. Ezekiel and Jeremiah prophesied a new covenant made not of tablets of stone, as with the covenant at Sinai, but written instead on the hearts of the people. This new covenant came into effect with Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, his resurrection from the dead, and his gift of the Holy Spirit. The Lords’ mercy, grace, steadfast love, faithfulness and forgiveness have been poured out in superabundance through Christ in the new covenant, and as we pray the covenant language of the psalms it is the new covenant which is our praise and the basis of our prayer for help.

(Commentary on the Psalms: Introduction: The School of Prayer, An Introduction to the Divine Office for all Christians, by John Brook, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota)