Video Transcript: Judaism Lecture 2

Continue this now to talk about the, the idea of covenant and how that gets  developed. The very first people that receive one, or Adam and Eve, according  to Genesis, and I don't mean the very first contact with God that was pre  covenantal. They were put on probation. But then after that God did make a  covenant, he promised that there would be a descendant of theirs in the future  who would turn around and defeat the tempter defeat Satan on their behalf. And  so there's already the promise of a covenant hero to come. And they are placed  under covenant or restraints, they are still given duties to perform and things  they're not to do and so on. And so again, I said that the main ideas of the  Covenant actually, we're having some trouble here where God's demands and  God's promises. And the demands are love, faith, trust, and obedience. And the  main promises are God's love, forgiveness, and everlasting life. And I find that to be going on, even very early there with Adam, because of the way it's phrased  that God put His Spirit into Adam the spirit of real eternal life. And so that's what  we That's how I see the the Genesis 2 stuff unfolding. And then we get the story, that the descendants, the covenant people are were to pass the covenant onto  their descendants, and their descendants sort of multiply and become more  numerous. And the story as the story unfolds, that the covenant people, the men take wives from pagan sources, like, they don't marry within their faith. And they  bring pagan religion, they bring false religion in to their lives. And they mix it until these people who know the truth who had been handed it, because God gave it  to them, and they've been raised in it, turn their backs and practice live, live the  lives of practicing pagans, and God comes and is terribly angry with him for it.  And then he then decides to punish them. Since they were the people who knew that their lives depended on standing in right relation to him and they turned  their backs on him, he sends a flood and wipes them out. Again, the expression  the breath of life to comes from Genesis 2:7, and God breathed into him, the  neshamah his own spirit of life. Those are the people that have that, that get  wiped out by the flood. In other words, they're the people who have been given  God's Spirit and God's truth. And they were now to be punished and only Noah  survives. So the the custodian being custodian of the Covenant passes from  Adam, to Noah. And then we're told that the prophecy is that it's one son of  Noah, he has three sons, but his son Shem, is the one who will inherit custodial  care of the of the covenant to pass it on. And then the in the story, we're told  about a Shemite, we say now, Semite. Abraham, who is a descendant of Shem,  and the covenant is passed, torch is passed on to him. And God makes His  covenant with Abraham, and says, Your descendants, you and your  descendants will be my covenant people. And we can put this roughly in time,  because Adam sons are both one said to be a farmer and one shepherd. We  know that they had to live somewhere around 10,000, 8,000-10,000 years ago.  That's when farming and animal husbandry began to arise. We know from  archaeology, and and I don't think that the story means to suggest that they're 

the very first people in the world either because when their son is sentenced by  God for the murder of his brother It says he moves to another city, another land  and marries there and has a family. And the if if the writers of the story thought  

that they that Adam and Eve and their two sons were the only four people on  earth, they certainly would have felt compelled to explain how you could go to  another place and marry there and why he was worried about what the people  there would think of him and so on. They would have raised that, but they  weren't assuming that they were there were only four people in the earth. As I  read it, so now it passes to Noah, and then to Shem and then to Abraham. And  we can date roughly date Abraham is about 2000, before the birth of Christ, so  Abraham lived roughly as long before Jesus was born, as we live after. And the  the story then of Abraham and his sons and how the, the covenant is passed  down. To to them as well and to Joseph, and to the, the there his Abraham's  descendants, eventually becoming the tribes of Israel. Abraham, Isaac, his son,  and Jacob, his son. And Jacob has 12 sons, that become progenitors of the 12  tribes of Israel. And then it is they who, in a time of famine, traveled to Egypt, in  order to try to get food, and are taken under the protection of the pharaoh there,  because of the intercession of their brother. That's the story of the captivity is a  poignant one. And we have that in the Old Testament, as well. The third, a new  pharaoh takes the throne, and decides to oppress these foreigners living within  his the borders of his kingdom, and forced them into slave labor. And he also  gives makes a decree that they seem to be multiplying too rapidly for his  pleasure. So from now on, all baby boys born will be executed. And then you  have the story of the birth of Moses and Moses' mother. not obeying that law,  but putting him in a little basket boat and pushing it toward where the Pharaoh's  daughter takes her, her morning bath in the river. And then the, the Pharaoh's  daughter adopts him, and he becomes part of the Egyptian court. That's how he  knows the Egyptian language and, and lore he's educated as an Egyptian,  though he's a Jew. And that takes us down to the time of Moses. And this is  roughly 1250. Give or take. Nobody's exactly certain about these dates. But this  is important stuff, though. Because God reestablishes His covenant, and this  time with Moses, and part of the covenant promises the rescue of the people  from their slavery in Egypt. And this is what issues in the Passover, and this  great story. And again, it's absolutely supposed to be historical. And if, if it's not,  then it's not true. And in a way, that nothing becomes untrue in Hinduism and  Buddhism, if no historical event corresponds to it, but Moses, God appears to  Moses and Moses has run away from Egypt because He's wanted for murder.  He's hiding out in the desert. He takes a job as a shepherd. And while he's  watching these flocks, he sees a bush and it's blazing away, but it's not being  consumed, it's not being burned up. And so he goes over to see it. And the voice says, I'm the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of your fathers. Take  your shoes off, this is holy ground. And God issues to Moses a call to service, 

you are going to be the one who's going to lead the people out of slavery. And  Moses says, they're not going to listen to me, I don't even know who to say sent  me. And God says, You tell them and then he gives his sacred name. And for a  long time, we had no idea how to pronounce that. Because these are only  consonants in Hebrew in there were no vowels. And that's why he olders old  Hebrew was written till a group of scholars called the Masoretes, found a way to  add vowels by making little dots and squiggles lines to represent the vowels. But they never did fill the that in. And so no one knew how to pronounce it. And  some translators have the King James Bible guessed that this was a J, it's  Hebrews read right to left, this is an H. And and they guessed that this was a V,  and this was an H. And so they guessed it was pronounced Jehovah. And so  that's the way they translated it. And but since that time, we have found a  manuscript, I think it was in Arabic, which actually did supply the vowels, and  that guess was wrong. And the right way to pronounce it is Yahweh. And Jews  has a practice of respect since this was unpronounced, for so long, still don't  pronounce it. And when they read the writings when they read the scriptures in  the synagogue, and so when they come to this, they'll usually use the term of  Adonai, the Lord. But they won't pronounce God's sacred name. It's a form of  the verb to be. So in the English Bible, when God's Moses says to God, I don't  know who to say sent me, the translation is tell them that I am, had sent you.  And one, a scholar has said that the more exact way to read it would be the one  who causes to be that's equivalent to Creator, the one who causes to be. So it's  the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who of creation, who is calling  him calling Moses to this task, to lead his people out of slavery and captivity and into a land of their own where they can serve Him and not constantly be  surrounded by the Egyptian polytheism. Now, a lot of researchers, has turned up knowledge about what covenants were like, at this time. And there was one in  particular that was very popular, widely used between 2000 and 1000 years  before Christ and it was called a Suzerainty Treaty. This is a Suzerain is named  for a conquering king, the conquering king would make could could do anything  he wanted to the people he just conquered. He could enslave them, you could  execute them. But a Suzerainty Treaty was a merciful treaty. It was a treaty in  which he, he now appealed to the conquered people to become part of His  kingdom. And I tried to establish a better relationship merely then I was the guy  that beat the heck out of your army on the field. So a Suzerainty Treaty had  standard parts it ran like this. First there is the identity of the king. So it would, it  would start out with something like I'm King Rumpus O Bumpus and I met your  armies on the plains of whatever, and my chariots, smeared years and my guys  laid your army down low and we defeated you royally. And then there's a  command to loyalty one of them reads like this A you des pi test, who turn your  eyes to no other, don't serve any other and don't make any treaty with any other. See, but in those days, they tried to keep the opposing King alive, because he 

was going to keep on ruling his people, but he was going to be a puppet for the  Suzerain. So a lot of the commands. A lot of these Suzerainty treaties are with  the conquered King. Specifically, it's command to loyally and then following that  there's a list of threats and promises. Here's what's going to happen if you break this treaty. My guys are going to roll in. And we're going to make life so  miserable for you. You'll be sorry you were ever born. We're going to put you in  a vat of pus, we're going to fit force feed you. And I won't go on. The Ancient  Near Eastern guys had a vivid imagination when it came to punishments. But if  you keep My covenant, then you're going to be able to use our coinage and it's  worth more than yours, you'll have access to our ports, you're going to be  prosperous in a way you weren't before. Our army is going to protect your land  from the marauders that live in the hills and So on took a whole bunch of threats and promises. And there was a specific way that these treaties were made. The  conquering king, called the conquered King. To a meal, you had the conquered  King had to come in with all the nobility of that country, and sit at the conquering  kings table, accept his hospitality have this read. And then there's a swearing in  ceremony. It's ratified by them, hearing it and then they stand and swear to keep it forever. And to do that, it's always made in two copies. One copy is kept by the conquering king, one is given to the conquered king and his nobles, and they  take it home. And then there is a promise that the conquered King has to have a yearly reading of the Suzerainty Treaty to all his elders, all his nobles. And  again, they're to re swear every year, they reread it they re swear to keep it  that's the the what surrounds making a Suzerainty Treaty then. And I want to  point out to you why I've taken the time to explain all this. This is the way  Exodus starts, doesn't it with God saying, giving his law to Moses. I'm the Lord  God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I've dropped you brought you with dry shoes  across the Red Sea out of the land of Egypt. You shall have no other gods  before me, before me is a covenant expression. It means make no covenant  with any other god. When Moses is said to have eaten the meal on the sacred  mountain, and sworn to keep God's covenant ate the meal before the Lord that's good in covenant relation to him. So before doesn't mean before in the list of  your gods or in my sight means covenant, a covenant agreement. You're to have to have no other covenant with any other gods. And then what follows is such  things as Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in  the land that I give you. That's a veiled threat, right? If you don't honor your  father and mother, your days aren't gonna be long. And there are also promises  I visit the sins of the fathers, the first and second generation of those that hate  me, but I show mercy to the 1,000th generation of them that fear Me and keep  My commandments. So there are threats and promises in the rest of law. And  Moses in the elders of Israel were told to come into that mountain into into the  mountain and eat a meal before the Lord and swear to keep his covenant  forever. And the law was given in two copies, two stones, Deuteronomy says 

written, they reach written on both sides. So it isn't one to five and six to 10. It's  10 on each two copies. And there's a prescription, that every year it's to be  gotten out and read to all the, the elders and the nobility of Israel, and they are  all swear to rekeep it. In other words, it's a perfect match. what God did in giving the law to Moses was to give that in the form of a Suzerainty Treaty, and that  was clear to all the people that what this meant was that God was there,  Suzerain. God was their king, and that they were his subjects, and that they had this law to live by, and that they were his people. When we meet again, next  time, we'll talk about other re givings reiterations of the Covenant and the ways  in which they were they fared in Israel.