Again the Lord made a new beginning for the race, in his start with
Abraham, as the father of a chosen and peculiar people in the world.
And again the covenant of blood, or the covenant of strong-friendship
as it is still called in the East, was the prominent feature in this
beginning. The Apostle James says, that “Abraham ... was called
the friend of God.”[439] God himself, speaking through Isaiah,
refers to Abraham, as “Abraham my friend”;[440] and Jehoshaphat, in
his extremity, calling upon God for help, speaks of “Abraham, thy
friend.”[441] And this application of the term “friend” to any human
being, in his relations to God, is absolutely unique in the case of
Abraham, in all the Old Testament record. Abraham, and only Abraham,
was called “the friend of God.”[442] Yet the immediate narrative of
Abraham’s relations to God, makes no specific mention of this unique
term “friend,” as being then applied to Abraham. It is only as we
recognize the primitive rite of blood-friendship in the incidents of
that narrative, that we perceive clearly why and how God’s covenant
with Abraham was preeminently a covenant of friendship.
“I will make[443] my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply
thee exceedingly,” said the Lord to Abraham.[444] And again, “I will
establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee
throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a
God unto thee; and to thy seed after thee.... And as for thee, thou
shalt keep my covenant, thou, and thy seed after thee throughout their
generations.”[445] And then there came the explanation, how Abraham
was to enter into the covenant of blood-friendship with the Lord; so
that he might be called “the friend of God.” “This is my covenant,
which ye shall keep, between me and you, and thy seed after thee;
every male among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall be circumcised
in the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of a covenant
betwixt me and you.”[446] The blood-covenant of friendship shall
be consummated by your giving to me of your personal blood at the
very source of paternity--“under your girdle”;[447] thereby pledging
yourself to me, and pledging, also, to me, those who shall come after
you in the line of natural descent. “And my covenant [this covenant
of blood-friendship] shall be in your flesh for an everlasting
covenant.”[448]
So, “in the selfsame day was Abraham circumcised,” and thenceforward
he bore in his flesh the evidence that he had entered into the
blood-covenant of friendship with the Lord.[449] To this day,
indeed, Abraham is designated in all the East, as distinctively,
“Khaleel-Allah,” “the Friend of God,” or “Ibrâheem el-Khaleel,”
“Abraham the Friend”[450]--the one Friend, of God.
When a Jewish child is circumcised, it is commonly said of him,
that he is caused “to enter into the covenant of Abraham”; and, his
god-father, or sponsor, is called _Baal-bereeth_,[451] “Master of
the covenant.”[452] Moreover, even down to modern times, the rite of
circumcision has included a recognition, however unconscious, of the
primitive blood-friendship rite, by the custom of the ecclesiastical
operator, as God’s representative, receiving into his mouth, and
thereby being made a partaker of, the blood mingled with wine,
according to the method described among the Orientals, in the rite of
blood-friendship, from the earliest days of history.[453]
It is a peculiarity of the primitive compact of blood-friendship,
that he who would enter into it must be ready to make a complete
surrender of himself, in loving trust, to him with whom he covenants.
He must, in fact, so love and trust, as to be willing to merge his
separate individuality, in the dual personality of which he becomes
an integral part. Only he who believes in another unreservedly and
fearlessly, can take such a step intelligently. The record concerning
Abraham stands: “He believed in the Lord; and He counted it to him
for righteousness.”[454] The Hebrew word, _heëmeen_ (הֶאֱמִין)
here translated “believed in,” carries the idea of an unqualified
committal of self to another. It is from the root _aman_ (אָמַן)
with the two-fold idea of “to be faithful” and “to trust.”[455] Its
correspondent in the Arabic, (_amana_, امن) carries the same double
idea, of a confident and an entire committal of self to another, in
trust and in trustworthiness.[456] Lane’s definition[457] of the
substantive from this root is: “The becoming true to the trust,
with respect to which God has confided in one, by a firm believing
of the heart.”[458] Abraham so trusted the Lord, that he was ready
to commit himself to the Lord, as in the rite of blood-friendship.
Therefore the Lord counted Abraham’s spirit of loving and longing
trust, as the equivalent of a spiritual likeness with himself; and
the Lord received Abraham, by his circumcision, into the covenant of
blood-friendship.[459] Or, as the Apostle James states it: “Abraham
believed [in] God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness;
and he was called the friend of God.”[460] Here is the doctrine of
“imputation,” with real life in it; in lieu of a hard commercial
transaction, as some have viewed it.
The recognition of the covenant of blood in the rite of circumcision,
throws light on an obscure passage in the life of Moses, as recorded in
Exodus 4 : 20-26. Moses, himself a child of the covenant, had neglected
the circumcision of his own first-born; and so he had been unfaithful
to the covenant of Abraham. While on his way from the Wilderness of
Sinai to Egypt, with a message from God to Pharaoh, concerning the
un-covenanted first-born of the Egyptians,[461] Moses was met by a
startling providence, and came face to face with death--possibly with
a bloody death of some sort. “The Lord met him, and sought to kill
him,” it is said. It seems to have been perceived, both by Moses and
his wife, that they were being cut off from a farther share in God’s
covenant-plans for the descendants of Abraham, because of their failure
to conform to their obligations in the covenant of Abraham.
“Then Zipporah took a flint, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and
cast it at [made it touch] his [Moses’] feet; and she said, Surely a
bridegroom of blood [one newly bound through blood], art thou to me. So
He [the Lord] let him [Moses] alone [He spared him, as one newly true
to the covenant of Abraham, and newly safe within its bounds]. Then she
[Zipporah] said [again], A bridegroom of blood art thou, because of the
circumcision;” or, as the margin renders it: “A bridegroom of blood
[art thou] in regard of the circumcision.”[462]
The Hebrew word, _khathan_ (חָתָן), here translated “bridegroom,” has,
as its root idea, the binding through severing, the covenanting by
blood;[463] an idea that is in the marriage-rite, as the Orientals
view it,[464] and that is in the rite of circumcision, also. Indeed,
in the Arabic, the corresponding term (_khatan_, ختن), is applied
interchangeably to one who is a relation by the way of one’s
wife, and to one who is circumcised.[465] Hence, the words of Zipporah
would imply that, by this rite of circumcision, she and her child were
brought into blood-covenant relations with the descendants of Abraham,
and her husband also was now saved to that covenant; whereas before
they were in danger of being covenanted with a bloody death. It is
this idea which seems to be in the Targum of Onkelos, where it renders
Zipporah’s first word: “By the blood of this circumcision, a _khathna_
[a blood-won relation] is given to us;” and her second speech: “If
the blood of this circumcision had not been given [to us; then we had
had] a _khathna_ [a blood-won relation] of slaughter [of death].” It
is as though Zipporah had said: “We are now newly covenanted to each
other, and to God, by blood; whereas, but for this, we should have been
covenanted to slaughter [or death] by blood.”