To communicate best with God, one must speak his language—the language of covenants. All that God conceives, declares, and creates, he does within the context of the covenants he makes. Indeed, his covenants’ sole purpose is to bless and elevate his children. The fact that God appears to bless some persons more than others isn’t because he is a partial God but because of many factors known to himself that include ancestral covenants, the state of souls before this life, and their spiritual growth in this world.
Constituting the terms of God’s covenants are his commandments. These form the conditions upon which God blesses his children. To the degree that they keep his commandments, to that degree he blesses them in the short or long term. And its opposite: to the extent that they break his commandments, to that extent they suffer adversarial effects in the short or long term. Called covenant blessings and curses, these effects of covenant keeping or breaking form an essential ingredient in all covenants God makes.
The sacred scriptures are replete with the language of God’s covenants. We recognize much of their terminology from ancient Near Eastern emperor–vassal covenants whose model Moses and the prophets used to define God’s relationship to his people and to individuals. In his covenants, God assumes the role of emperor, and his people or individuals play the part of vassals. Such collective and individual covenants not only bless directly those with whom God makes them but also indirectly humanity as a whole.
Ancient Near Eastern emperor–vassal covenants help to define many terms and expressions we encounter in the scriptures or language of God. The emperor, for example, is known as the “lord” of his vassals, and they are known as his “servants.” They are said to “love” the emperor when they keep his commandments that are the terms of his covenant. As a lord of “hosts” or “armies,” the emperor protects his vassals and their offspring in the event they are mortally threatened and he blesses them with a “promised land.”
In instances of a vassal’s proving loyal to the emperor under all conditions, the covenant between them changes from a conditional covenant—one whose blessings are conditioned on the vassal’s loyalty to the emperor—to an unconditional one. As the emperor comes to “know” the vassal, in the sense of knowing of his loyalty to him, he adopts the vassal as his own “son” while he acts as the vassal’s “father.” From that point on, the emperor’s blessing of the vassal continues in perpetuity to his descendants.
We additionally observe the scriptures’ underlying covenant theme in God’s “marriage” to his “wife”—his covenant people Israel. In the past, God provided for her and protected her and her children until she rebelled and played the “harlot.” At that point, he let her go. However, when she finally comes to herself and again seeks him out, he remarries her by an unconditional or “everlasting covenant”—a permanent contract God makes with his people after they have proven loyal to him under all conditions.
Because no covenant God makes is temporary, his covenants remain in force down the generations even when those with whom he made them broke their terms. At the end of the world, when descendants of those with whom he covenanted in the past turn to him and again keep their terms, God renews his covenant relationship with them. Having been coopted by religious institutions which made them beholden to themselves for salvation instead of to God, his people are once again restored to his covenant.