What Was the Ark of the Covenant?

Question: Ever hear of the Ark of the Covenant? Of course, everyone has. But what was the covenant that was kept in the Holy Ark?

Answer: It was the Abrahamic Covenant.

Question: What’s the Abrahamic Covenant?

Answer: It’s the covenant God made with the Jewish People. A covenant is an agreement between two parties. There are two types of covenants: conditional and unconditional. A conditional or bilateral covenant is an agreement that is binding on both parties for its fulfillment. Both parties agree to fulfill certain conditions. If either party fails to meet its responsibility, the covenant is broken and neither party has to fulfill the expectations of the covenant. An unconditional or unilateral covenant is an agreement between two parties, but only one of the two parties has to do something. Nothing is required of the other party.

The Abrahamic Covenant is an unconditional covenant. God made promises to Abraham that required nothing of Abraham. Genesis 15:18-21 describes a part of the Abrahamic Covenant, specifically dealing with the dimensions of the land God promised to Abraham and his descendants.

The actual Abrahamic Covenant is found in Genesis 12:1-3 where “The Lord said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse him that curses you; and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you.’”

The ceremony recorded in Genesis 15 indicates the unconditional nature of the covenant. Among other things it says, “The Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your offspring I assign this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates: the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.” By-the-way, this could be the reason the Arabs are scared shitless by the Jews, obsessing day and night over how to destroy them. They think God really gave all that land from the Nile to the Euphrates to the Jews. That’s probably why Mohammed came up with that cock’n'bull story about the Arabs being directly descended from Abraham’s son. That way the Arabs were able to sweep in and take all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates, plus some, and say it’s all God’s gift to them, not to the Jews.

In the end, fulfillment of the covenant fell to God alone.

God determined to call out a special people for Himself through whom He would bring blessing to all the nations. The Abrahamic Covenant is paramount to a proper understanding of the kingdom concept and is foundational to Biblical theology. (1) The Abrahamic Covenant described in Genesis 12:1–3 is an unconditional covenant. There are no conditions attached to it (no “if” clauses, suggesting its fulfillment is dependent on man). (2) It is also a literal covenant in which the promises should be understood literally. The land that is promised should be understood in its literal or normal interpretation—it is not a figure of heaven. (3) It is also an everlasting covenant. The promises that God made to Israel are eternal.

There are three main features to the Abrahamic Covenant:

1. The promise of land (Genesis 12:1). God called Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees to a land that He would give him (Genesis 12:1). This promise is reiterated in Genesis 13:14–18; the land and its parameters are geographically described in Genesis 15:18–21 (precluding any notion of this being fulfilled in heaven). The land aspect of the Abrahamic Covenant is also expanded in Deuteronomy 30:1–10, where it says, “Even if your outcasts are at the ends of the world, from there the Lord your God will gather you, from there He will fetch you. And the Lord your God will bring you to the land that your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will make you more prosperous and more numerous than your fathers…The Lord your God will inflict all those curses upon the enemies and foes who persecuted you…And the Lord your God will grant you abounding prosperity in all your undertakings, in the issue of your womb…For the Lord will again delight in your well-being, as He did in that of your fathers, since you will be heeding the Lord your God and keeping his commandments and laws that are recorded in this book of the Teaching–once you return to the Lord your God with all your heart and soul.”

2. The promise of descendants (Genesis 12:2). God promised Abraham that He would make a great nation out of him. Abraham, who was 75 years old and childless (Genesis 12:4), was promised many descendants. This promise is amplified in Genesis 17:6 where God promised that nations and kings would descend from the aged patriarch. This promise (which is expanded in the Davidic Covenant of 2 Samuel 7:12–16) would eventuate in the Davidic throne with the annointed one’s rule over the Jewish people.

3. The promises of blessing and redemption (Genesis 12:1-3), where God says go “to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great” and so on, are amplified in the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31–34; cf. Hebrews 8:6–13). Jeremiah 31:34 is about the unconditional and eternal nature of the covenant that was reaffirmed to Isaac (Genesis 21:12; 26:3–4).

The “I will” promises suggest the unconditional aspect of the covenant. The covenant is further confirmed to Jacob (Genesis 28:14–15). It is noteworthy that God reaffirmed these promises amid the sins of the patriarchs, which fact further emphasizes the unconditional nature of the Abrahamic Covenant.

God’s method of fulfilling the Abrahamic Covenant is literal, inasmuch as God partially fulfilled the covenant in history: God blessed Abraham by giving him the land (Genesis 13:14–17); God blessed him spiritually (Genesis 13:8, 18; 14:22, 23; 21:22); God gave him numerous descendants (Genesis 22:17; 49:3–28). The important element of the Abrahamic Covenant, however, demands a future fulfillment with Messiah’s kingdom rule:

(1) Israel as a nation will possess the land in the future. Numerous Old Testament passages anticipate the future blessing of Israel and her possession of the land as promised to Abraham. Ezekiel envisions a future day when Israel is restored to the land (Ezekiel 20:33–37, 40–42; 36:1–37:28).

(2) Israel as a nation will be converted, forgiven, and restored (Romans 11:25–27).

(3) Israel will repent and receive the forgiveness of God in the future (Zechariah 12:10–14). The Abrahamic Covenant finds its ultimate fulfillment in connection with the return of Messiah to rescue and bless His people Israel. It is through the nation Israel that God promised in Genesis 12:1–3 to bless the nations of the world. That ultimate blessing will issue in the forgiveness of sins and Messiah’s glorious kingdom reign on earth.

-largely borrowed from The Moody Handbook of Theology by Paul Enns, also largely borrowed verbatim from William Blumenthal’s Jewish Question and Answer Book. Some of the Biblical English translations are from Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (JPS).