Saturday, 7/27/ 13
Our first reading today is a key Old Testament passage in
that it describes the covenant ceremony by which the Israelites became God’s
people.
A covenant is a contract, but it is more. A contract is a
formal way of sealing the agreement parties make to exchange things of value.
We sign a contract to give a fixed amount of money in exchange for an auto or a
condo. In the super-contracts that we call covenants the parties exchange their
very selves. In Matrimony that exchange is expressed when the parties say “We
have,” in answer to the priest’s question, “Have you come here freely, without
reservations to give yourselves to each
other in marriage?”
In ancient times when knights gave themselves to their lords
there was an added requirement that the underling conform himself to the model
of the lord. He was required to wear the lord’s livery and to live by the
lord’s laws. With the old name for a lord being a suzerain, the contract binding an inferior to his lord was called a
suzerain covenant. At Sinai the Israelites entered into a suzerain covenant
with God.
Setting up the covenant ceremony, Moses built an altar in
front of Mt. Sinai. The altar was to represent God. Then, he had the young men
slaughter young bulls, saving all the blood in big brass bolls.
Moses set the young men to weaving their way through the
assembled nation, sprinkling blood on every individual, then pouring the
residue from each bowl on God’s altar.
The Israelites believed that blood was life itself, so they
felt that the invisible energy between the separated drops of blood united
everyone there along with God in one living entity.
Since that was a suzerain covenant, it required that the
lower party, the people, agree to keep the laws of the Lord. So, while the
blood was being sprinkled, Moses called out each of the commandments, demanding
that the people announce they were committing themselves to living by it.
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