THE TWO COVENANTS by Uriah Smith

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 16, 1878

THE TWO COVENANTS.

By Uriah Smith

"For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah." Heb. 8:8.

It may be asked, how the ten commandments can be called "the covenant." We answer, That is just where the people are misled. They are never called "the" covenant, referring to the first or old covenant. That the ten commandments are called "a" covenant, we admit; but what kind of a covenant? and in what sense are they so called? Please read again Ex. 19:5: "Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant," &c. Then God had something which he called his covenant, which antedated the covenant made with Israel. It was already in existence, before any formal agreement whatever was made with that people. And this explains Deut. 4:13. Those who read that verse should be critical enough to observe that Moses does not call the ten commandments the covenant, nor a covenant, but his (God's) covenant. "And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments." These, then, are what God referred to in Ex. 19:5, in the words, my covenant; and these were already in existence when the covenant was made with Israel. It should be noticed, further that the covenant of Deut. 4:13, is not a covenant made; but a covenant commanded; and surely any one can see the difference between an arrangement established upon the voluntary and mutual promises of two parties, and that which one party has power to enjoin with authority upon another party. But the covenant here mentioned, God did thus enjoin upon them without regard to any action on their part.

It is now easy to be seen why the ten commandments are called a covenant, and what kind of a covenant they were. They were simply the basis of that agreement recorded in Ex. 19:3-8. For the very first condition God proposed was, "If ye will keep my covenant." In this sense, and this only, are the ten commandments ever called a covenant.

And this brings us to the secondary definition of the term covenant; which is, "a writing containing the terms of agreement between parties." Thus the conditions upon which an agreement or covenant rests, are in a secondary sense called also a covenant. This may be illustrated by the relation which all good citizens sustain to their respective States. They are all in covenant relation with the State. The State says, If you will obey the laws of this commonwealth, you shall be protected in your life, liberty, and property. The citizens respond, We will obey. This is the mutual agreement, the covenant, virtually existing everywhere between the citizen and the State. But when we speak of the State alone, its covenant would be its laws which it commands its citizens to perform. These are the conditions of the agreement, and hence may be called the covenant of the State, because upon obedience to these are suspended all the blessings which it proposes to confer.

Such was the relation established between the Lord and his people. He had a law which the very circumstances of our existence bind us to keep; yet he graciously annexed a promise to the keeping of it. Obey my law, and I will secure you in the possession of certain blessings above all people. The people accepted the offer. The matter then stood thus: The people said, We will keep God's law. God said, Then I will make you a kingdom of priests, a peculiar treasure unto myself. This was the agreement or covenant made between them. But so far as God was concerned his law was his covenant, because it was the basis of the whole arrangement, and upon the keeping of that by the people, all the blessings were suspended which he proposed to confer.

1 Kings 8:21, may still present a difficulty to some minds. Does not Solomon here say that in the ark, where the ten commandments alone were, was the covenant which God made with the fathers when he brought them out of the

land of Egypt? The key to the explanation of this passage lies in the antecedent of the word wherein. Solomon, speaking of the temple, says, "And I have set there a place for the ark, wherein is the covenant of the Lord." Does the word, wherein, mean in which ark, or in which place? Hebraists tell us that the grammatical construction refers it unquestionably to the place. "I have set there a place for the ark, in which place, not in the ark, is the covenant of the Lord," &c. Was the covenant always in the place where the ark was? See Deut. 31:26: "Take this book of the law, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God." That this book of the law is the same as the book of the covenant, see 2 Kings 22:8, and chapter 23:2. And the expression, in the side of the ark, means in a coffer or receptacle expressly prepared for it and placed by the side of the ark. See Prideaux, vol. 1, p. 152. Wherever the ark was there was this book of the covenant by its side. Hence Solomon could say, referring to the place where the ark was, that there, in that place, was also the covenant which the Lord made with that people when he led them out of Egypt.

Thus the strongest texts claimed to prove that the ten commandments constituted the old covenant, are found to contain not one shade of evidence in that direction. We have found in what sense the ten commandments are called a covenant, simply because they are God's covenant, the basis of the agreement which he entered into with Israel. In the same sense the tables are called the tables of the covenant, and the ark, the ark of the covenant, because they contained this covenant; but none of these expressions refer to the covenant made with Israel by the mutual pledges to each other of the Lord and that people, as recorded in Ex. 19.

We now return to that chapter and resume the examination of the covenant then made. When the people agreed to obey God's voice, verses 5, 8, they had not heard his voice, and knew not what conditions it might impose. But on the third day after this, the Lord came down in fearful majesty, and with a voice that shook the solid earth from pole to pole declared the ten commandments. Here for the first time the people heard God's voice which they were to obey. Then the Lord took Moses into a private interview with himself and gave him some instructions which the people were to follow in civil and religious matters, under this arrangement. This instruction is found in the latter part of Ex. 20, and chapters 21, 22, and 23 entire, and is an epitome of the civil and ceremonial laws given to that people.

In chapter 24 is resumed the narrative of the steps taken in the formation of this covenant. Moses appeared before the people a second time, and rehearsed in their hearing all the words which the Lord had communicated to him. And here the people, after having heard for themselves God's voice, and being told all that he had said to Moses, had an opportunity to answer again whether they would enter into this arrangement or not. At their first answer, Ex. 19:8, they did not know what would be required of them; now they understood all the conditions; and what will they answer now? Ex. 24:3: "And all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the Lord hath said, will we do."

It would seem that this was all-sufficient. But the Lord moved very carefully in the matter, so that the people might have no opportunity to plead in after years that they did not know what they were doing in entering into this covenant with him. So he caused Moses to write out in a book all the words he had told him, that all points might be again carefully considered, and then to read it all over to the people. Verse 7: "And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people." Here they had opportunity for the third time to reconsider the matter and change their decision if they so desired. And what was their answer this time? "And they said, All that the Lord hath said will we do and be obedient."

Moses then took blood which had been offered for the purpose, verses 5, 6, and sprinkled it on the people and said, "Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words." Verse 8. Here the covenant was closed up, sealed and ratified, by the shedding of blood.

Keep this scene in mind while we pass down fifteen hundred and fifty-five years to the days of Paul, and notice his remarks upon this event. Heb. 9:17-20: "For a testament is of force after men are dead; otherwise it is of no force at all while the testator liveth. Whereupon neither the first testament was dedicated without blood. For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you."

Paul here plainly states that the first covenant was dedicated with blood, the words testament and covenant meaning the same thing, being from the same original word. And to what scene does Paul refer? To the very recorded in Ex. 24:8, just described. Moses says, Behold the blood of the covenant; and Paul says that the covenant then and there ratified was the first, or old covenant.

Now to settle the fact, once and forever, that this covenant was not the ten commandments, we have only to remark that neither Moses nor the people had a copy of the ten commandments of any kind in their hands at that time. This will appear from the further record of Ex. 24. In verse 12, we read, "And the Lord said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there, and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law and commandments which I have written, that thou mayest teach them." The idea that God had already caused Moses to write out a copy of these commandments, and that he had begun to teach them by having spoken them and read them in the ears of the people, verses 3 and 4, is utterly inconsistent with this statement, that God was about to put into his hands a law containing commandments that he had written, in order that Moses might teach them. But before Moses was called to receive this law of ten commandments which God had written, the first covenant had been made, closed up, finished, and ratified by the shedding of blood.

These facts throw a fortification around this point which it is not possible either to break or scale. The first covenant was dedicated with blood. But when that dedication took place, the ten commandments, in visible form, had not been put into the possession of the people; they had no copy of them; hence they were not dedicated with blood. Therefore, the ten commandments were not the old covenant.

Another line of thought showing just as clearly that the ten commandments were not the first, or old, covenant, is based on Deut. 5:2, 3, a passage to which our opponents appeal with such seeming assurance: "The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day." Having assumed that the ten commandments were the old covenant, these verses are appealed to, to show that these commandments were here for the first time introduced, and hence came to an end with that dispensation. But the quotation is fatal to the assumption; for the ten commandments did exist before this time; hence they were not the covenant at that time made.

The book of Genesis, though so brief in its record that its fifty short chapters cover a period of over 2300 years; nevertheless abounds with indications that the principles of the ten commandments were well understood and acted upon, even from the creation down. Why was Cain condemned for killing his brother, if the law against murder did not exist? "Where no law is, there is no transgression;" and, "sin is not imputed when there is no law." By what standard was it shown that Noah and his house alone were righteous, while the rest of mankind were only evil and that continually, if there was no law for a standard in such matters? To be righteous is to be living in conformity with a standard of righteousness or right doing. "By the law is the knowledge of sin." On what ground were the inhabitants of the wicked cities of the plain given over to the vengeance of eternal fire on account of their vileness, if there was no law against unchastity? There was such a law; and Peter makes a statement which shows that it was as well understood then as now. He says that those cities were made an ensample unto all that should after live ungodly. This covers all time from that day to this, and onward to the end. And the ungodly of to-day may look back to Sodom, and learn how God will deal with them unless they repent. Are there moral principles binding on them now? So there were then, if their case is an example. Do men understand these laws now? So they did then. Is it an acknowledged principle now that a man cannot be justly punished who does not know or has not had an opportunity to know, the law? So it was then. It is heard of tyrants who posted their laws so high that no one could read them, and then struck off the head of every transgressor; but God does not so deal with his creatures. No; the law of God was in existence and understood in ancient Sodom, as well as in the numberless Sodoms of to-day.

But some may be ready to suppose that even if the principles of the other commandments were known, surely the Sabbath was neither known nor regarded before the time of Moses. We answer that if it can be shown that any other commandment was known, tenfold more proof can be given that the Sabbath was known, and a commandment given for its observance. In proof of this it is only necessary to refer to the record of Genesis 2:2, 3, which records the origin of the Sabbatic institution in Eden. God rested on the seventh day. He then blessed the day; not the day past, but the day for time to come. Then he sanctified it. Sanctify means to set apart to a sacred or religious use. This could not refer to past time, but to the seventh day for time to come. And it was to be used in this sacred or religious manner, not by the Lord; for he does not need it; but by man, for whom, says Christ, the Sabbath was made. Mark 2:27.

How, then, we ask, could the Sabbath be thus sanctified for man's use, or be set apart to be used in a holy or sacred manner by him? Only by telling man to use it in this manner. But just as soon as the Lord had told Adam to use the Sabbath in a sacred or religious manner, he had given him a command for its observance. The record in Genesis is therefore plain that a Sabbath commandment was given in Eden. And we should do no violence to the text if we should read it, And God blessed the seventh-day, and commanded Adam to sacredly observe it. But a command given to Adam under these circumstances, was a command through him to all his posterity.

No more need be said to show to all who respect the testimony of God's word, that the ten commandments were known through all the ages before the time of Moses, and that men were held under obligations to obey them. Therefore, these commandments were not the covenant made with Israel at Horeb, which covenant had no existence previous to that time.

U. S. (To be continued.)