Covenants of the Bible. Covenants of God. Chasing the Seed.

Podcast Program Transcript
Episode 5: The Adamic Covenant. Covenants of the Bible. Covenants of God. Chasing the Seed.
Heather M R Olsen

Welcome back!

I decided to embark on a covenantal journey in the Bible. It’s not exhaustive, but hits 6 important ones, three which are critical in the messianic narrative. That being said, I wonder how many of you are considering skipping these Covenant podcasts. Perhaps, they sound irrelevant, old, boring or maybe too Bible-y?

Let me give you a quick snapshot of why they are important and why I am including them in the beginnings of my podcasts. If I am honest, I didn’t pay any attention to God’s covenants before one of my classes in my Master’s degree. I grew up in the church, and in the church, we only mention the “Old” Covenant and the “New” Covenant. I’m here to say there are many, many covenants in the Bible, and they intertwine and build.

Furthermore, they are paramount in understanding God’s promises to humanity, and Jesus’ fulfillments, proving that God keeps His promises.

To summarize several Bible scholars, God’s covenants are the backbone of the Hebrew scriptures. The New Testament stands on the foundation of the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible. Succinctly, our Bible is founded on God’s Covenants.¹

Let me take this one step further, if we discount God’s covenants, or worse, rewrite them to fit into our beliefs, we are not believing God’s promises and bluntly, calling God a liar.

Harsh, but once we are done with this 6-part series, hopefully you will understand why I say that.

Let’s quick define covenants and the six that we will unpack in this podcast.

Do you remember the kid promise some of us would make?
“Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.”
Who wrote that anyway?
The Bible is full of promises; God’s promises.
There are not human heart crosses or needle in the eye moments.
Rather, many are lasting and everlasting Covenants.²
We will explore and see how long these lasting covenants actually do, well, last.

I’d like to organize them around 5 Interrogatives: What, Who, Why, Where, How long?

WHAT: What is a covenant?
WHO: Who is this covenant between?
WHY: is this covenant important?
WHERE: Where does this covenant take place
HOW long does it last?

WHAT is a covenant?
The word for covenant in HEBREW B’Rit בְּרִית
Remember when I gave you one name for the New Testament, the B’rit Hadasha? “Hadasha” is “new” or “to make new” and B’rit is “covenant.”

Generically, a covenant is a binding agreement between 2 parties.

Those of us who are married, technically entered into a covenant of marriage, before God, family, and our closest friends. We often use covenantal language in this sense.

Biblical covenants are promises God made with individuals and groups of people, carrying stipulations, often accompanied by a “sign.”³ We will circle around this sign as it is very important. But these biblical covenants, unlike a legal contract, are relational and personal.⁴

Covenants are all over the Bible:
o Personal ones between individuals; like David and Jonathan,
o Political ones – kings and nations,
o Legal covenants.

Covenants were a common practice in the ancient near east. Consequently, God used this familiar covenantal language for humanity to enter into relationship with Him.⁵

Let’s pause, name some covenants in the Bible.
We’ll go over the major ones that pertain to the Seed, but more on this later.
Adamic, Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, Shabbat, Circumcision, New (& many more). You could do a “covenant” word search on BibleGateway.com and see how many you can come up with!

This 6-part podcast will cover only 6 covenants that all outline God’s story of Redemption for humanity.

Within these 6 covenants, there are 2 parties. So if we go back to our interrogatives, we have the WHO of the Bible. This Who is always God and _______.
o God and Adam/Eve in the Garden of Eden
o God and Noah
o God and Abraham
o God and Abraham & males in household in the covenant of circumcision
o God and Moses, the Israelites
o God and the Israelites in the covenant of Shabbat or the Sabbath
o God and David
o God and all who believe in Jesus; New Covenant, the final and best!

There are 2 kinds of covenants: Conditional and Unconditional.
• Conditional (“if you do A, then I will do B”); obligatory
• Unconditional (“I will do this regardless of what you do”); promissory.⁶

This series will dig into 6 covenants…
Adamic, Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, New.
In review of each covenant, I will summarize the covenant by answering five questions.
• Who is the covenant between? GOD and ______.
• Are there stipulations?
• Is there a sign of the covenant?
• Is the covenant conditional or unconditional? Other?
• How long will this covenant last?

But that’s not it. There is one more layer to this story of Redemption.
As we tackle these covenants, we can’t miss that we will also be Chasing the Seed.

What does “Chasing the Seed” mean?
The Bible doesn’t contain an exhaustive genealogy, or storyline. It also doesn’t focus on one family.
The Bible starts with how the world came to be. God in prefect relationship with humanity, humanity gets into mortal trouble.
HOW do they (we) get out of this mortal trouble?

It’s a perfect setup for a great epic.

The answer to this question, how do we get out of this trouble actually begins with a spoiler alert, if you know the clues. This spoiler is the Need for the Seed.

Genesis 3:15 “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” NIV

“I will put animosity between you and the woman- between your seed and her seed.
He will crush your head, and you will crush his heel.” TLV

Romans 16:20 “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.
The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.” NIV

And so this epic story begins.

Let’s begin our first covenant.
It isn’t actually named a covenant in Genesis but has covenantal language and is called a covenant in later scripture.

The Adamic Covenant:

Bible readers, please read Genesis 1-3. We have the creation story in 2 different narratives.
God takes the universe from chaos – then creates order by speaking each element into being – then in Genesis 3 Adam and Eve, by their poor choice, take us back to chaos.
Chaos, order, chaos.⁷

One theme we come across throughout the Bible is the element of water:
Before Creation, the waters or in Hebrew “maim” are deadly and chaotic, over all of the earth, with the Spirit of God hovering over the waters.

Biblically, water is both life giving and life taking. Similarly, today.
*Noah and the flood, Noah’s family was saved, the earth died.
*Moses floating in a basket on the Nile, infant Moses was saved, the other male babies of his time died.
*Crossing the Red/Reed Sea, the Israelites walked on dry ground, the pursuing Egyptian army drowned.
*The Israelites crossed the Jordan to enter the Promised Land, Canaan.⁸
*In the book of Revelation, there is no more sea.
*Yet, Jesus, God in the flesh here on earth, controlled water.
***He turned water into wine.
***He walked on water.
***He calmed the storm.
***He was baptized in water and commanded believers to be baptized.
***He also taught that, “whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:13

Back to the beginning, God separated the land and the waters, creating order out of chaos.

The Adamic Covenant (and Evic, if we are going to be fair):

Adam is Hebrew for “man, mankind, humankind” אדם. We can find “haadam” with the definite article, translated as “the man” and then finally in Gen 3:30 Adam is without the definite article, translated from “the man” to a name, “Adam.”⁹

Eve is named in that verse, Gen 3:20 in Hebrew “chavah”¹⁰ which is “life or living” חוה. We can read in Genesis 3:20, “because she would become the mother of all the living.” Im kal chai – “the mother of all life” (in modern Hebrew, “Ima” = “mom/mother”).

Eve’s name in English is not even close to the Hebrew name, as related to the verb, Chaya חיה which in the biblical Hebrew Qal verb stem, can mean “To live, to be alive, revive, restore to life.”¹¹

If you’ve seen the musical Fiddler on the Roof, you would have heard a song, L’chaim? To life! n fact, in modern Hebrew, if you are cheers-ing, you would say L’Chaim!! Like in English we say Cheers, or Norway you would say Skol, or German would be Prost, Italian Cin Cin, Spanish Salud.

Chai חי in Hebrew is life.

Chabad.org is a great resource for Jewish information & rabbinical thought. On Eve’s name, one can read, “The idea of “mother of all life” expresses not only the ability to physically give birth, but also to create, nourish, and enhance all facets of life.”¹² Ladies, that’s quite a compliment!

Gen 1:27 – 30
Adam & Eve are created as the pinnacle of God’s creation, both in His image.
Neither Adam nor Eve is more or less important in God’s eyes.

In fact, our identity is given to us by God.
NOT culture, education, socio-economic status, size, experience. Nothing here on earth gives us our identity but God.

And to God, Adam vay Chavah, or Adam and Eve, were Tov meod! תוב מאוד. Very good.

In the garden there were all kinds of trees pleasing to eye and good for food. The had every green plant for food.

All of you meat lovers, does this include animals for food? Or are Adam & Eve plant-based?! Food for thought!
In the middle of Garden, there were 2 TREES.

Genesis 2:9
• Tree of Life, which is a theme throughout the Bible indicating relationship with God.
• Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and should they eat from this tree, God said, “from this you will certainly die.”
They did. And we do. Die that is.

The COVENANT
Adam got to work the Garden; to have dominion over it, to live in and enjoy it! He even got to name all the animals.
The stipulation? Obey God and he may live in Eden, disobey God and he will be cursed & die.

Was the garden & the privilege of living there, the sign with Adam?
Was the Tree of Life and the ability to eat from it freely the sign?
Was walking and talking with God the sign of the covenant? Or a privilege of obeying the covenant.

The sign isn’t spelled out.

They got to eat from any tree or green plant for food, except for one.

They needed to obey God or be kicked out of the land, which spells out an anticipation of being in the land of God as a sacred space.

God granted free will to Adam and Eve. If there wasn’t a prohibition, how would we know if we would actually obey God?

With OBEDIENCE, Adam and Eve received,
o Relationship with God.
o Relationship with each other as man & woman
o Dominion over animal kingdom

I wonder how much time passed before Genesis 3?

DISOBEDIENCE:
Along comes the serpent. The serpent is often recognized as the devil or Satan in Genesis, but it is not named yet in Scripture. In fact, a serpent is present in many world religions: standing for evil, death, rebirth, power. But in the Bible, evil has not been introduced yet, which is the origin of human sin and guilt.¹³

The Hebrew word, “satan שׂטן” means “adversary.”
This adversary is not introduced by name until 1 Chronicles 21 in the days of King David.

Rev 12:9 Identifies the ancient serpent as the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.
Satan is the great accuser of all who love God.

This crafty serpent, doesn’t outwardly lie, rather challenges Eve’s pride.
This was followed by the Blame Game: Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the Serpent, the humans feel shame, try to hide from God, made excuses.

Out comes God’s command: “You must not eat from it.” Pertaining to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. (Gen 2:17, 3:3, 3:17)

Because of disobedience, here comes the curse(s):

To the SERPENT: Gen 3:14-15
“Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring [SEED] and hers; he (Eve’s offspring) will crush [STRIKE] your head, and you (serpent) will [CRUSH] strike his heel.”

To EVE: Gen 3:16
“To the woman He said: “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.””

This is the beginning of female subjugation.

To ADAM: Gen 3:17-19
“To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you (WEEDS), and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you will return.”

WHAT WAS ACTUALLY CURSED?
• Both the serpent and the ground were cursed.
• Not Adam & Eve

Adam & Eve were pronounced a death sentence, but in reality, the death sentence would be Jesus Himself (but that’s getting ahead of ourselves).
• Pleasure replaced by pain.
• Abundance by toil.
• Harmony with God by alienation and conflict.¹⁴

FINAL CURSE: Gen 3:21
This is the first shedding of blood in the Bible, the first death. A tree or the fig leaves wouldn’t do to cover or clothe Adam & Eve permanently.
“The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.”

In my Hebrew Bible, the words for the “garments of skin” are literally “shirt-like tunic” and “animal skin.”¹⁵
They disobeyed God. This is called sin.
Sin required a shedding of blood, not the picking of leaves.
Sin changes their relationship with God, and our relationship with God. Sin requires an intervention.¹⁶

A further punishment:

Gen 3:22-23
“He [Adam] must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the Tree of Life.”

Adam & Eve lost the privilege of eating from the Tree of Life.
They lost the privilege of perfect relationship with God.
They lost the privilege of living in the Garden.

The Great Reversal:
o The animal kingdom (serpent) now had dominion over humanity
o Peace and Harmony between Adam and Eve became dominance of man over woman, marital strife
o Walking and talking with God became broken relationship with God
o The Need for the Seed is established. Though most of our Bible translations give us the word “offspring,” the Hebrew word is ZERAH זרע “seed” (masculine singular) is the literal translation for Genesis 3:15. This Need for the Seed, or the Offspring, Jesus, would be set into motion.
o Cliffhanger…. This great reversal will one day be re-reversed. We could call that the GREATEST Reversal? The Final Reversal, when Jesus sets all things right again.

• DISOBEDIENCE = CHAOS = DEATH

We can find the Adamic covenantal designation in the book of Hosea.

Hosea 6:6-7 For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings. As at Adam, they have broken the covenant; they were unfaithful to me there. NIV

Hosea 6:6-8 For I delight in loyalty (or covenant love and mercy) and not sacrifice, knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. But like Adam, they transgressed a covenant. There they dealt treacherously with Me. TLV

Hosea 6:6-9
4-7 “What am I to do with you, Ephraim? What do I make of you, Judah?
Your declarations of love last no longer than morning mist and predawn dew.
That’s why I use prophets to shake you to attention, why my words cut you to the quick:
To wake you up to my judgment blazing like light.
I’m after love that lasts, not more religion. I want you to know God, not go to more prayer meetings.
You broke the covenant—just like Adam! You broke faith with me—ungrateful wretches! The Message

After Adam and Eve disobeyed God, in the one thing they couldn’t do amongst everything else they could do in the Garden of Eden, because they believed the adversary in the form of a serpent.

One other aside that will be a different podcast: The words translated as, “mercy, loyalty, covenant love” are one very all-encompassing attribute of God, that no single English word can describe: חסד Chesed .

Back to our covenant: Adam vay Chavah, Adam and Eve, are expelled from the Garden to the EAST.

“To the EAST,” language in the Bible most often indicates “away from God.”
• Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden to the east.
• Cain would flee to the east.
• The Tower of Babel was in the east.
• Lot departed from Abraham to the east.¹⁷
• The tabernacle door faced east.
• The temple entrance faced east.

Away from God.

CURSES:
• The serpent was to crawl and eat dust, his offspring/seed would strike the heel of the woman’s.
• The woman would be subjugated with marital, there would be pain in childbirth and her offspring/seed would crush the head of the serpent’s offspring/seed.
• The man would work the soil with sweat and difficulty.

Within this serpent curse, is the first Messianic prophecy.

Genesis 3:15 “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” NIV

“I will put animosity between you and the woman- between your seed and her seed.
He will crush your head, and you will crush his heel.” TLV

The biblical Hebrew word, shoof – שׁוף means to “Grip someone hard, bruise, strike, crush.”¹⁸

Honestly, the word “shoof” in the original translation is used for both the serpent and Eve’s seed. Some translators like to help the story along and use “strike” over “crush” for the heel.

What we need to remember is this. A blow to the heal is painful, and temporarily debilitating but survivable. A blow to the head, being crushed, is finite.
The Seed will crush the serpent’s head.
But, we have to get through the entire Bible to see the final crushing! The book of Revelation.

The serpent’s seed is not just the adversary, or satan, but anyone who is against God.
Jesus accused the Pharisees who opposed him.

John 8:44-47 “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.” NIV

Jesus delivered a crushing admonition to these religious leaders.

The woman’s seed is ultimately Jesus. Though she would have pain in childbirth, Eve’s and Adam’s deaths would not be the end of it all as Eve would produce more living.
This is one sign of God’s grace.

The stage is set for the rescue mission – Jesus.

The first birthed sons, Abel and Cain already represented godly and ungodly. Abel is murdered by a jealous Cain, though Abel had done what was right in the sight of the LORD (Yhwh).

Why did God prefer Abel’s sacrifice to Cain’s?

Cain was cursed by God yet protected with a mark and sent “East” of Eden to the Land of Nod (Gen 4:10-16).
God’s promises will always come to fruition – and another featured son, Seth, is born to Adam and Eve. (Gen 4:15-16) (I say “featured” because there are many more unnamed children, but remember we are “Chasing the Seed” in the Bible).

Is this actually a covenant?

• This Adamic Covenant is between whom? **Between God and Adam/Eve but it became consequences for the world.
• Are there stipulations?  **Obey God or get kicked out of the garden, away from God, indicating broken relationship.
• Is there a SIGN? **Pain in childhood, struggle to earn living,¹⁹ the Garden, The Tree of Life, Relationship with God?
• Is it conditional or unconditional.  **Unconditional, but will be reversed.
• How long will it last? **The Adamic Covenant is not done away with, but one day, Jesus will completely reverse the curse.

Genesis 5 allows us to FF in history as we don’t know how long ago Adam lived or when Creation had begun, and we don’t have a year and date for Noah. Genealogies enable this fast forward, as in this case, we begin to trace the line of Jesus or the Seed, to Noah.
Let’s Close Adam and Eve out.
If you want, you can find the write up of my podcasts with sources, footnotes, and the Hebrew spellings on my website:

IlluminationHebrewInsights.com

Next covenant? Noahic Covenant
Shalom, Friends!

**Heather!

©2024 Heather M R Olsen, Illumination: Hebrew Insights. All rights reserved.  

ENDNOTES:

1. Heather M R Olsen. Doctrine Talk, “Covenants.” Bible Study Fellowship, 2023. ↩︎
2. Heather M R Olsen. Doctrine Talk, “Covenants.” Bible Study Fellowship, 2023. ↩︎
3. Michael Gabizon. “The Adamic Covenant.” The King’s University. 15 Sept. 2021. ↩︎
4. “Covenants.” BibleProject.Com, bibleproject.com/. Accessed 12 Aug. 2024. ↩︎
5. “Covenants.” BibleProject.Com, bibleproject.com/. Accessed 12 Aug. 2024. ↩︎
6. Gabizon. “The Adamic Covenant.” The King’s University. 15 Sept. 2021. ↩︎
7. Gabizon. “The Adamic Covenant.” The King’s University. 15 Sept. 2021. ↩︎
8. Gabizon. “The Adamic Covenant.” The King’s University. 15 Sept. 2021. ↩︎
9. John D. Hannah. “Hannah Genesis Commentary.” Bible Study Fellowship, June 2020, pg 27. ↩︎
10. Hebrew-English dictionary, New Bantam Megiddo, pg 107. ↩︎
11. Gary D. Pratico and Miles V. Van Pelt. Basics of Biblical Hebrew: Grammar. Zondervan, 2007. ↩︎
12. Sara Esther Crispe. “Judaism, Torah and Jewish Info – Chabad Lubavitch.” The Jewish Woman, www.chabad.org. Accessed 12 Aug. 2024. ↩︎
13. Hannah, “Hannah Genesis Commentary,” pg 29. ↩︎
14. Hannah, “Hannah Genesis Commentary,” pg 30. ↩︎
15. A Philip Brown and Bryan W. Smith. A Reader’s Hebrew Bible: Torah Neviʼim u-Ketuvim. Zondervan, 2008, Genesis 3:21, pg 5. ↩︎
16. Hannah, “Hannah Genesis Commentary,” pg 32. ↩︎
17. Hannah, “Hannah Genesis Commentary,” pg 33. ↩︎
18. Pratico and Van Pelt. Basics of Biblical Hebrew: Grammar. Zondervan, 2007 ↩︎
19. Life Application Study Bible: NIV. Zondervan; Tyndale House Publishers, Inc, 2021, pg 468. ↩︎