der His protection:
God at this time stipulates only one commandment, and makes only one promise. The commandment is that all males must be circumcised on the eighth day after birth, or, of converted into the faith, then circumcised upon conversion. The promise is the land of Canaan (Dimont 31).
This covenant was a new conception and marked a turning point in human history:
The notion of the covenant is an extraordinary idea, with no parallel in the ancient Near East. It is true that Abraham's covenant with God, being personal, has not reached the sophistication of Moses' covenant on behalf of an entire people. But the essentials are already there: a contract of obedience in return for special favor, implying for the first time in history the existence of an ethical God who acts as a kind of benign constitutional monarch bound by his own righteous agreements (Johnson 17).
The covenant with Moses on Mt. Sinai involved the delivery of the Decalogue, which would be "the basis of the covenant with God, first made by Abraham, renewed by Jacob and now renewed again, in a solemn and public manner, by Moses and the entire people" (Johnson 35). The Mosaic covenant is simple and unique because it is not a treaty between states but an alliance between God and a specific people:
In it, in effect, the ancient Israelite society merged its interests with God's and accepted Him, in return for protection and prosperity, as a totalitarian ruler whose wishes governed every aspect of their lives (Johnson 35).
The progression of the idea of the covenant through these three instances is clear.
2. An understanding of the lives of the patriarchs and matriarchs in Hebrew tradition helps explain the development of that tradition and so explains the nature of the Hebrew people, the derivation of their beliefs, events that took place in their history, and so on. The Jewish people of today are also explained through such a study, given t...