Q. Luke tells us in Acts that Saul of Tarsus, who later became known as the apostle Paul, “was breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples.” Why did he want to kill them?
Later in the book of Acts, as Paul is on trial before King Agrippa, he explains that before he became a follower of Jesus, “I was convinced that I ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And that is just what I did in Jerusalem. On the authority of the chief priests I put many of the Lord’s people in prison, and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. Many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished, and I tried to force them to blaspheme. I was so obsessed with persecuting them that I even hunted them down in foreign cities.”
So basically, as Paul himself describes here, he did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah. He specifically did not believe that Jesus had risen from the dead, which his followers claimed was proof that he was the Messiah. Paul felt that anyone who made these claims about Jesus was a threat to true religion, and he was so zealous for the Jewish religion that, as he describes, he hunted down followers of Jesus and persecuted them.
But Jesus revealed himself personally to Paul, and from then on Paul knew that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead. This made him a committed follower of Jesus. He always regretted how he had harmed believers, but he trusted that God’s grace could nevertheless make him an effective worker for Jesus. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “I am the least of the apostles, and I do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.”
Q. How many covenants are there in the Bible? If there are too many to list, what are the main ones?
Hebrews 8:7 talks about the first covenant and the second covenant. Is that the Mosaic Covenant and the New Covenant? If so, wouldn’t be more accurate to call the Abrahamic (or Adamic Covenant) the first covenant? How can the Mosaic Covenant be the first covenant and the New Covenant be the second covenant if there are other covenants before and after the Mosaic Covenant (and in between the Mosaic Covenant and the New Covenant)?
Why do we call the 39 books of the Hebrew Bible the Old Testament? Which covenant is the Old Testament a reference to? Is it the Mosaic Covenant or the Abrahamic Covenant? Is it the Mosaic Covenant because that was the main Covenant in those books?
Thank you for your excellent questions. I will answer them according to the way I understand the biblical covenants.
While various people make covenants with each other over the course of the Bible’s story (for example, Jonathan and David), there are five covenants between God and humans, and those provide the framework for the biblical narrative at its highest level:
First, the covenant between God and every living creature, mediated by Noah, in which God promises unconditionally that a flood will never again destroy all life on earth.
Second, the covenant between God and Abraham, unmediated, in which God promises unconditionally to give Abraham descendants, to give those descendants a land in which to live, and to make Abraham a blessing to all nations. God extends this covenant to Isaac and Jacob.
Third, the covenant between God and the Israelites, mediated by Moses, in which God promises, conditional on obedience to his law, to give the Israelites the land of Canaan in which to live and to show their “wisdom and understanding to the nations.”
Fourth, the covenant between God and David, unmediated, in which God promises unconditionally that a descendant of David will always be on the throne of Israel. (Christians believe that while Israel ceased to be a kingdom, this promise is nevertheless being fulfilled in the reign of Jesus the Messiah.)
Fifth, the covenant between God and people of all nations who believe, mediated by Jesus, in which God promises unconditionally to forgive their sins and put his law in their minds and write it on their hearts so that they will know him.
It is clear from the context in the book of Hebrews that when the author refers in 8:7 to “that first covenant,” he is referring to the covenant mediated by Moses and contrasting it with the covenant mediated by Jesus. The word “first” can be well translated as “former.” Many English Bibles say “another” rather than “a second.” So the author of Hebrews only has two covenants in view and is contrasting them. He is not saying that these are the only two covenants or that the covenant mediated by Moses was the first one that God made with humans.
The meaning is the same in the title Old Testament, which means Old Covenant. I like the title in other languages such as French, Ancien Testament, or Spanish, Antiguo Testamento. That suggests the idea of Former Covenant or Covenant of Antiquity. Such titles acknowledge this covenant as one step on the way towards the ultimate covenant between God and humans, the one mediated by Jesus. It is important to recognize, as the book of Hebrews particularly stresses, along with Paul’s writings, that believers are no longer bound to keep the law of that covenant as a law. In that sense it is “old,” meaning no longer in effect. But believers nevertheless keep the law as the Spirit leads them to live according to what God has put in their minds and written in their hearts. So in that sense, it is “of antiquity.”
I hope these responses are helpful.
A reader responded through the “Ask a Question” option:
I found your answer here to be very helpful. I just wanted to ask for clarification on one or two points. You said, ‘The meaning is the same in the title Old Testament, which means Old Covenant.’ So the meaning of Old Testament is the covenant mediated by Moses, correct? Also, does the Hebrew Bible have this name ‘Old Testament’ because the covenant mediated by Moses was the main Covenant in the Hebrew Bible?
In response, I would say yes, the title Old Testament refers to the covenant mediated by Moses, using the word “Old” in the same sense that the book of Hebrews uses the term “first” or “former.” We might also think of this as “old” in the sense of “the covenant that was in effect when Jesus brought the new covenant.” And yes, the covenant mediated by Moses is the main covenant in the Hebrew Bible. It is the focus of most of the writings in the Old Testament.
Q. Is the house of David good, and how is Jesus a part of it?
The expression “house of David” has several figurative meanings in the Bible.
It can mean, first of all, the descendants of David. That is what the expression means when the Bible says that “Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David.” Jonathan, David’s friend, made a covenant with him that he would always help and protect his descendants, and David promised the same thing to Jonathan. That is also what the expression means when Luke uses it to describe Joseph as a descendant of David: He says that Joseph “belonged to the house and line of David.”
The “house of David” can also mean all the people over whom David ruled as king. That is how the Bible uses the expression as it describes how David and his supporters fought against Ish-Bosheth, the son of Saul, to see who would be confirmed as king: “The war between the house of Saul and the house of David lasted a long time.”
But most often the expression refers to the royal dynasty of David, that is, the line of kings descended from David who succeeded him on the throne of Israel and then Judah. For example, a prophet said at one point, “A son named Josiah will be born to the house of David.” This meant, “A son named Josiah will be born in the line of succession in David’s royal dynasty.” God himself used the word “house” to mean “dynasty” when he told David, “The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you.”
At a certain point the kingdom that David ruled ceased to exist on earth. However, since God had promised to David, “Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever,” the people of God expected that God would send a descendant of David—the Messiah—to re-establish his kingdom.
And Christians believe that Jesus is that Messiah. He is part of the “house of David” specifically by being a descendant of David (reckoned through his legal father Joseph) who came to claim the throne of David and re-establish his kingdom. The angel Gabriel told Mary, the mother of Jesus, “The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David.” The crowds on the first Palm Sunday greeted Jesus by saying, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” They did not understand exactly how Jesus would renew David’s kingdom—Jesus did that in a spiritual sense, at least initially—but they understood correctly that he was the one would would do it.
So the house of David is good. It is ultimately the Messiah, the supreme successor of David’s dynasty, who will bring his rule of justice and peace to earth. And Jesus is part of the house of David by being that successor, the Messiah. He is already ruling in heaven with effects on earth, and we look forward to his return to establish justice and peace definitively throughout the earth.
Q. What does Messiah mean? What does it mean to say that Jesus is the Messiah?
The word “Messiah” comes from a Hebrew term meaning “anointed.” The Greek equivalent, “Christ,” also means “anointed.”
In the Old Testament, a person was anointed, that is, someone would pour oil on their head, to show that God had chosen them to fulfill a special purpose. Aaron, for example, was anointed to show that God had chosen him to be the high priest. David was anointed to show that God had chosen him to be king.
So while Messiah or Christ literally means “anointed,” it really indicates “chosen.” When Christians call Jesus the Messiah, they mean that they believe God chose him to be the Savior of the world.
This title has a close connection to the figure in the Old Testament known as the Servant of the Lord. God says of that figure:
Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations.
So, briefly stated, the Messiah is the one God chose to be the Savior.
Q. Did God give the information about not eating of the tree’s fruit to just Adam, or was it for Adam and Eve? Or did Adam give the information to Eve after God created her?
As I read the narrative in Genesis, it seems pretty clear that God gave the command just to Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and that Adam passed this command along to Eve.
Specifically, it was only after God told Adam not to eat from this tree that God then said to himself, “It is not good for the man to be alone, I will make a helper suitable for him,” and God created Eve. There is no subsequent record of God repeating the command to her. But when the serpent asks her what God said about this tree, she doesn’t respond, “This is the first I’ve heard anything about that.” She knows that they’re not supposed to eat from it. We can only infer that Adam told her this.
Significantly, it appears that Adam actually added something to what God said. God only told Adam, “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” But Eve tells the serpent that God said, “You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it.” This is admittedly speculative, but we may infer that Adam was so concerned about the consequences of disobeying God that he figured, “We better not even touch the fruit,” and so that’s what he told Eve.
Later in the Bible there are warnings not to add anything to what God commands, and we can understand why. God gives us the grace to obey all of his commands so that they are not burdensome. But anyone who tries to require people to do more than God commands is asking them to do something they aren’t being given the grace for. Then it’s only too easy for someone else to come along and persuade them that they don’t have to do that. This was actually the serpent’s strategy—to persuade Eve that God had asked too much of her and that she didn’t need to obey. He just had a different version of “too much,” initially. He asked whether God had really said, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden.” Eve knew that God hadn’t said this, but she didn’t realize that He hadn’t actually said that they couldn’t even touch the fruit. And this gave the serpent something that could legitimately be contradicted, with tragic results.
So one lesson we can take from the story is that those who have the responsibility to communicate God’s commands to others need to be careful not to add anything to them. We may have a good motive, to keep people as far as possible from disobedience. But God’s grace can keep willing hearts obedient without that kind of assistance.
Q. I noticed in the Genesis account of the Fall that God didn’t clothe Adam and Eve with animal skins until they said, “I did eat the fruit.” This reminded me of what John wrote in his first letter: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Can we conclude that Adam and Eve repented, and that God forgave them?
To be honest, as least I read the account of the Fall and its aftermath, I don’t see Adam and Eve really making the kind of “confession” that John seems to be talking about. Rather, they each try to blame somebody else for what they did. God asks Adam, “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” He replies, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” (Adam is practically blaming God for what he did!) And Eve, for her part, says, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” These are confessions of a sort, but they’re definitely trying to spread the blame around.
We would want to see people take much more responsibility for their own actions if they expected to be forgiven.* Nevertheless, after explaining what the consequences of their actions would be, God clothes Adam and Eve in animal skins. Many Christian interpreters note that this required the animals to be slaughtered, that is, sacrificed. They hold that this sacrifice, like others in the Old Testament, looked forward to the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, which would have been the ultimate basis on which Adam and Eve were forgiven for their sin. But how could they be forgiven if they didn’t really repent and confess, but instead tried to blame somebody else?
I think there’s a clue in the passage. God had told them earlier, “You shall not eatof the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” But they didn’t actually die on this same “day.”
Many interpreters account for this by explaining that the Hebrew phrase “in the day” can refer to a period of time beginning with a named event. For example, after Jacob returns safely to Canaan after twenty years of exile, he dedicates an altar at Bethel, where he encountered God as he was first fleeing. He wants to do this, he says, because God “answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went.” The “day of my distress” isn’t just the one day on which he had to flee; it’s the whole twenty years that began with that event, “the way which I went.” Similarly, for Adam and Eve, “the day that you eat of it” could mean “the period of time beginning with when you eat the fruit.” (Accordingly, some versions translate the command, “When you eat from it you will certainly die.”) Since part of Adam’s curse was that he would be expelled from the Garden of Eden and have to work himself to death just to survive, that could be the meaning.
However, there’s another possibility. God may simply have shown mercy to Adam and Eve by sparing their lives on this day. And the passage tells us that right after God announced the consequences of their disobedience without including immediate death as one of those consequences, “Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.” Previously he had named her ishshah, “wife,” and at the same time given himself a new name, ish, “husband,” when he recognized a new aspect of his own identity in relationship to her. But now, by giving her this proper name, Adam may be expressing the realization, “We’re not going to die—at least not right now—we’re going to live on! We’re even going to have many generations of descendants!”
In other words, Adam (and presumably Eve with him) was accepting God’s mercy, which ought to mean that he was also accepting the judgment that was tempered by this mercy, and thereby acknowledging his own fault. And right after this, the passage tells us, “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.” This would be forgiveness—what some traditions call “assurance of pardon”—on the basis of their repentance.
Now I admit that the passage doesn’t say this explicitly, and that other interpretations are possible. Celebrating receiving mercy may not always be the same thing as accepting the judgment that may come with that mercy. This may simply be a description of Adam and Eve being spared, rather than forgiven upon repentance and confession. Still, I think that all the specific details in the passage are important and potentially significant, and so I believe we do have a basis, in the naming and the clothing, on which we could conclude that Adam and Eve did repent and were forgiven—even if their verbal “confessions” were not all that one might hope for.
A medieval illustration of Adam and Eve dressed in animal skins as they are expelled from the Garden of Eden. The Latin text at the top is a paraphrase of the statement in Genesis that the first pair left the Garden, which was then guarded by an angel with a flaming sword.
*I’m speaking here of forgiveness in the sense of reconciliation, that is, the wrongdoer admitting fault and taking responsibility, so that it’s safe to begin rebuilding and restoring the relationship. However, as I explain in this post, it’s actually possible for someone to forgive another person internally, and so be set free from anger and bitterness, even if that person doesn’t admit their fault.
The Bible doesn’t answer this question directly, but I personally feel that the narrative in Genesis gives us some good reasons to believe that Adam was saved.
The most important is the announcement God makes that Eve’s descendant will crush the serpent’s head. Like most Christian interpreters, I see this as a statement that can be recognized, in light of later redemptive-historical developments, as a prophecy of the coming of Jesus and his victory over Satan at the cross. This “bad news” for the serpent was “good news” for Adam and Eve, and I personally believe that they trusted in it.
One significant reason why I say this is that the two of them accepted and wore the “garments from animal skins” that God made for them. Again like most Christian interpreters, because these required the death of the animals, I see them as foreshadowing the blood sacrifices that would come later under the covenant with Moses, which themselves foreshadowed Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. In other words, accepting the garments was a way of “looking forward” to the cross, as believers did for salvation in the First Testament (just as we, under the New Covenant, “look back” to the cross).
I personally don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to see these “garments from animal skins” in Genesis as the equivalent of the “white robes” that believers are symbolically portrayed as wearing in the book of Revelation: “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb”; “The one who is victorious will be dressed in white. I will never blot out the name of that person from the book of life, but will acknowledge that name before my Father and his angels.”
So I don’t think Adam was lost. Paul does say about him in Romans, “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.” But Paul goes on to say, “If the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!” In other words, the same people—the whole human race—who were affected by the sin of Adam are also recipients of grace through Jesus. And that would include Adam himself, so long as he “looked forward” to the cross—as I believe he did.
William Blake, “The Angel of the Divine Presence clothing Adam and Eve with coats of skins,” watercolor, 1803, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England
Q. Your most recent post comparing the God of the OT and NT made me think of a question. What do you see as the relationship between the Mosaic covenants and the new covenant? As far as I can tell from Jeremiah, the new covenant has the same information, it is just that all the previous terms of the Biblical covenants were written on stone and scrolls, where in the new covenant, they will be written on one’s heart. Therefore the new covenant will be better, as we will want to do the stipulations in it.
I think this is basically right. The covenant with Moses had some things that I believe were identity markers for God’s people at the time, such as keeping kosher, observing certain days, etc. The New Testament makes clear that these are no longer obligations for followers of Jesus.
But certainly the ethical imperatives of the covenant, summed up by Jesus as “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself,” remain. As you say, under the new covenant, we now want to fulfill them, as we are given new hearts. Our identity markers as covenant people are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—the fruit of the Spirit.
As I believe you’re saying, when seen from the perspective of the character and actions that God wanted to produce all along in His people, there is more continuity than discontinuity between the Mosaic covenant and the new covenant.
Q. For years I’ve been struck by the stark contrast between how God’s judgment is portrayed in the Old Testament and how it is portrayed in the New Testament. Even before Jesus’s death, God seems to have a gentler spirit with his people. I pondered this for a long time but never came up with an explanation that seemed to make sense until the other day.
Let me run a hypothesis by you. Do you think God changed after Jesus walked on the face of the earth, because he experienced first-hand some of the struggles we face? This may seem like a pretentious suggestion, and I really don’t mean any disrespect to our sovereign God who created the universe and is all-knowing. But I do see a an inexplicable difference between the Old and New Testaments. Would love to hear your thoughts.
I think you may actually be on to something here, but let me offer a couple of qualifiers first.
We should observe, for one thing, that God actually shows mercy as well as judgment towards people in the Old Testament, and judgment as well mercy to people in the New Testament.
For example, there’s a beautiful passage in Hosea that speaks of God’s love for the wayward nation of Israel: “Therefore I am now going to allure her;I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. . . . I will betroth you to me forever;I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion.” And then there are the words that open the second part of the book of Isaiah: “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem . . . He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.” And so forth, in the Old Testament.
On the other hand, in the New Testament, along with all the grace and mercy, we find passages like this one in 2 Thessalonians: “God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you. . . This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels.He will punish those who do not know God . . .They will be punished with everlasting destruction.” Even from the lips of Jesus himself we hear things like this, spoken to the Pharisees: “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?” (I won’t even get into all the plagues and destruction in the book of Revelation.) So it seems there’s plenty of both mercy and wrath to go around in each testament.
Still, we have the impression that there’s more wrath in the Old Testament. What creates that impression? For one thing, in that period God was using the law to govern His relationship with His people. The New Testament itself says that the law has a positive purpose, to restrain and to teach. But laws need to specify what the consequences will be if they’re broken. That’s one reason why we hear so much about punishment in the Old Testament.
If teenagers found themselves constantly threatened with punishment, or actually being punished, they might marvel at how different their parents seemed from the days when they used to cuddle them and coo over them as babies. But the parents haven’t necessarily changed. The teenagers have actually moved into a life stage where they need the guidance and restraint of enforceable rules to help them become more mature and eventually independent adults. In the Old Testament, that’s the stage the people of God are in. Things do change in the New Testament, where God’s relationship with His people is governed instead by the Holy Spirit living in them. “The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”
One more consideration is that the Old Testament is the story of how the original chosen people kept disobeying the covenant through which they were supposed to be God’s instruments to reach the rest of the world, and how they needed to be corrected as a result. Ultimately, a new kind of covenant was promised. The New Testament is the story of how Jesus came to earth to live out perfect obedience, inaugurate that new covenant, and fulfill the intentions of the original covenant, to bring all peoples in. So the story of disobedience in the Old Testament is going to feature a lot more judgment and punishment than the story of obedience in the New Testament. It’s not so much God’s “learnings” as a human being that lead Him to be more merciful in the New Testament as the unfolding of a plan by which God, in Jesus, supplies the obedience that He was looking for from humans all along.
All of that said, however, let me return to your hypothesis and explain why I think you may still be on to something. The book of Hebrews says, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.” As a result, “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
This seems to suggest that there was some kind of “learning” as a human being on Jesus’ part that has resulted in Him being a more effective intercessor for us in heaven. Should we therefore conclude that when Jesus intercedes for us, since God is talking to God (that is, God the Son is addressing God the Father), God is now more able to “sympathize with our weaknesses” in His own self-reflections? If so, this would reflect no prior deficiency in objective knowledge on God’s part, but rather a gain in God’s subjective or experiential knowledge. It makes sense to me, at least, that even if God knew everything from the beginning, He hadn’t necessarily experienced everything. Something to think about, anyway!
This would not account for any difference in God’s dealings with us “before Jesus’s death,” however, because Jesus had not yet taken His place back in heaven as our intercessor at that point. So I wouldn’t appeal to this to explain how justice and mercy work in the Old and New Testaments. But I would still marvel, and worship, at the thought that Jesus came and shared our humanity to such an extent that He could bring an experiential appreciation of it back to share with the Father in heaven.
I don’t know that this has necessarily changed God’s character, to make Him more merciful. Even as God is first giving the law through Moses, He describes compassion as His primary and outstanding characteristic, at length, before describing justice as well: “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness,maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished . . .” Still, I recognize that God in His graciousness has identified with us in an amazing way through Jesus, and this must give a very special quality to His compassion.
“Christ in Gethsemane” by Michael D. O’Brien. “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears.”
God gave Moses the power to turn his staff into a snake as a sign to authenticate his ministry before the Israelites. But I’m not sure that the snake itself represented the authority and power of God, or of Moses as God’s emissary. We find out shortly afterwards in Exodus that this was the kind of sign that Pharaoh’s magicians were also able to do, and when they pitted their arts against Moses, his snake consumed theirs, showing that God’s power was greater. But once again, I don’t think we need to look for symbolism in the snake itself.
I also don’t think there’s necessarily a connection between God giving Moses the power to turn his staff into a snake and God commanding Moses to make a brazen (brass) snake and put it on a pole. The simple purpose of this was to provide a visual focal point for those who wanted to turn from their rebellion against God and trust Him for healing from the poison of the snakebites.
If there’s any connection between the two incidents, it’s that venomous snakes are dangerous and potentially deadly; that’s why the magicians chose to produce them–to make a memorably scary impression on their audience–and that’s why God used them to send a plague among the people.
In other words, at least as I see it, just because there are snakes involved at two different points in Moses’ ministry, there’s not necessarily a symbolic significance to them, or connection between them, beyond their plain role in the narrative.
There are other places in the Bible where snakes do have a symbolic significance, but this is pointed out clearly in the text, for example, in the book of Revelation, “The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.”
A good interpretive principle to apply is not to look for symbolic significance in, or attribute it to, an element in narrative unless the text itself points you clearly in that direction.
Nicolas Poussin, “Moses Turning Aaron’s Staff into a Serpent”
Good Question 