He Gave Us Prophets: The People Of The CovenantSample

Abrahamic Covenant: Genesis 15, 17

God’s covenant with Abraham was special because it was the first to identify Israel as the one family chosen to bear God's gracious redemption to the entire world. How were they going to do this? By living in a redemptive covenant with Yahweh. We should look first at the central concerns of this covenant with Abraham, and then we’ll be able to explore the ways in which Old Testament prophets depended on the covenant with Abraham. 

We may summarize the Abrahamic covenant as one in which God chose a special nation. The establishment of Israel as God’s chosen people involved two major blessings from God to this nation. God promised Abraham many descendants and a special land. In Genesis 15 and 17, God’s covenant with Abraham showed the way for Israel to multiply many descendants and to take possession of a bit of land. Now, this multiplication and possession of a special land was to be a starting point for extending God’s kingdom throughout the world. From this point on the descendants and the land of Abraham took center stage in the history of the Bible.

We have seen that Abraham was promised many descendants and a special land. And now we must ask, how did Old Testament prophets depend on this covenant with Abraham? What did they believe about this covenant? Time and again the prophets of the Old Testament draw upon the principles of the covenant between God and Abraham. The abiding importance of this covenant is assumed throughout all the prophets. They spoke frequently about the promise of land and the promise of a multitude of descendants.  For example, in Isaiah 41:8 the prophet Isaiah refers to the nation of Israel in this way: 

[O] seed of Abraham my friend (ASV).

In Isaiah’s thinking, the nation of Israel, even in his own day, was the rightful heir of Abraham’s covenant. In a similar way, Hosea alludes to the covenant with Abraham. In 1:10 he says that after the exile, 

The number of the sons of Israel will be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered (NASB). 

Allusions like these demonstrate that the prophets depended heavily on the covenant with Abraham. Whenever they spoke about God giving land to His people or multiplying their numbers, they recalled the covenant God made with Abraham. Abraham was mentioned by name only seven times in the prophets of the Old Testament, but the theology of Abraham’s covenant permeated their ministries.