It seems strange that a primitive rite like the blood-covenant, with
its world-wide sweep, and its manifold applications to the history of
sacrifice, should have received so little attention from students of
the latter theme. Nor has it been entirely ignored by them; although
its illustrations have, in this connection, been drawn almost entirely
from the field of the classic writers, where its religious aspects
have a minor prominence; and, as a result, the suggestion of any real
importance in the religious symbolism of this rite has been, generally,
brushed aside without its receiving due consideration.
Thus, in The Speaker’s Commentary,--which is one of the more recent,
and more valuable, scholarly and sensible compends of sound and
thorough biblical criticism,--there are references to the rite of human
blood-covenanting in its possible bearing on the blood-covenanting
of God with Israel before Mount Sinai,[666] after this sort: “The
instances from classical antiquity, adduced, as parallels to this
sacrifice of Moses, by Bähr, Knobel, and Kalisch, in which animals
were slaughtered on the making of covenants, are either, those in
which the animal was slain to signify the punishment due to the party
that might break the covenant (Hom. _Il._, III., 298; XIX., 252; Liv.
_Hist._, I., 24; XXI., 45); those in which confederates dipped their
hands, or their weapons, in the same blood (Æsch. _Sept. c. Theb._,
43; Xenoph. _Anab._, II., 2, § 9); or those in which the contracting
parties tasted each other’s blood (Herodot. [_Hist._] I., 74; IV., 74;
Tac. _Annal._, XII., 47). All these usages are based upon ideas which
are but very superficially related to the subject; they have indeed no
true connection whatever with the idea of sacrifice as the seal of a
covenant between God and man.”[667]
When the entire history of man’s outreaching after an inter-union of
natures with his fellow-man and with his God, is fairly studied, in the
light thrown on it by the teachings of the divine-human Being, who gave
of his own blood for the consummation of the longed-for divine-human
inter-union, it will be more clearly seen, whether it were the relation
of the primitive rite itself to the idea of sacrifice, or the study of
that relation, which was “very superficial,” as a cause of its popular
overlooking.
The closest and most sacred form of covenant ever known in the
primitive world, was that whereby two persons covenanted to become one,
through being partakers of the same blood. At Sinai, when Jehovah would
covenant with Israel, a common supply of substitute blood--proffered
by Israel and accepted by Jehovah--was taken; and one-half of it was
cast upon the altar, Godward, while the other half of it was cast
Israelward, upon the people.[668] The declaration of Moses to Israel,
then, was: “Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made
with you;” or, as that declaration is repeated, in Hebrews: “This is
the blood of the covenant which God covenanted to you-ward.”[669] And
from that time forward, the most sacred possession of Israel,--above
which hovered the visible sign of the presence of Jehovah,--was the
casket which contained the record of that blood-made covenant; and it
was toward the mercy-seat cover of that Covenant Casket, that House of
the Covenant, that the symbolic blood of atonement through new life
was sprinkled, in the supreme renewals of that covenant by Israel’s
representative year by year.
Even the Speaker’s Commentary says, of this mutual blood-sharing by
Israel and Jehovah at Sinai: “The blood thus divided between the two
parties to the covenant signified the sacramental union between the
Lord and his people.”[670] Of the blood which was to be poured out on
Calvary, Jesus said: “This is my blood of the [new] covenant, which
is shed for many.”[671] And of the sacramental union which could be
secured, between his trustful disciples and himself, by tasting his
blood, and by being nourished on his flesh, he said: “Except ye eat
the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life
in yourselves. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath
eternal life.”[672] It really looks as if there were more than a
superficial relation between the fact of an absolute inter-union of
two natures through an inter-flow of a common life, in the rite of
blood-covenanting, and the sacramental union between the Lord and his
people, which was typified in the blood-covenant at Sinai, and which
was consummated in the blood-covenant at Calvary.
Herbert Spencer, indeed, seems to have a clearer conception than the
Speaker’s Commentary, of the relation of human blood-covenanting,
to the inter-union of those in the flesh, with spiritual beings. He
perceives that the primitive offerings of blood over the dead, from
the living person, are, in some cases, “explicable as arising from
the practice of establishing a sacred bond between living persons by
partaking of each other’s blood: the derived conception being, that
those who give some of their blood to the ghost of a man just dead
and lingering near [and of course, the principle is the same when the
offering of blood is to the gods, thereby] effect with it a union,
which on the one side implies submission, and on the other side
friendliness.”[673] This admission by Mr. Spencer covers the essential
point in the argument of this entire volume.