Breathingbook

Archive for the ‘Word Studies’ Category

Hiya all! Here’s a little post on what a Covenant is. To put it plainly,

a “covenant” is a contract, testament or disposition of one’s mental outlook.

Covenants were first made between God and man, then man to man on down through the ages. Today, we just call them contracts or agreements.

First let’s look at the Hebrew word for covenant in the Old Testament which is beriyth (see below). This means the making of a compact. In the OT this word means to be in confederate with, in league, covenanted with, and so on (please note, the pop-ups will show scripture examples).

H1285. beriyth, ber-eeth’; from H1262 (in the sense of cutting [like H1254]); a compact (because made by passing between pieces of flesh):–confederacy, [con-]feder[-ate], covenant, league.

In the New Testament, we can get a little bit more information about the meaning since the Greek reveals more. The Gk. word for covenant is diatheke and it’s the word used every time you see the words “covenant” or “testament” used. Read the rest of this entry »