Noah’s Thank Offering, by Joseph Anton Koch [1803]
When we speak about the concept of “covenant” in the Old Testament, essentially we are talking about romance. It’s a romance that includes the making of promises and giving tokens of pledge, symbolic gestures of love and faithfulness, and in some cases, even threats of punishment for infidelity. A “covenant” in the Bible is rather like what we today call “marriage” –– with sexual overtones even if the specific covenant does not include sexual privileges. One of the major narrative threads of the entire OT is God making a series of covenants with the Israelites, covenants that find their ultimate expression and fulfillment in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
Lecture: An Overview of the Biblical Covenants [39 mins]
Eventually, I hope to begin an actual “podcast” (on iTunes and such) to stream audio content from this blog, but in the meantime, I will begin posting a series of lectures I gave in 2016. These lectures cover major plot points and some literary features of the biblical narrative from Genesis through Nehemiah. In this first episode, I offer a brief overview of the covenants of the OT and how they are fulfilled in Jesus. This series of lectures was given to students at the Zion Evangelical Bible School in Khayelitsha, South Africa, as part of a four-year training program for pastors and church leaders.
Reading the Old Testament 