'Covenant' in the Bible

In those days, your population will greatly increase in the land. At that time," says the Lord, "people will no longer talk about having the ark that contains the Lord's covenant with us. They will not call it to mind, remember it, or miss it. No, that will not be done any more!

Just as ritual circumcision cuts away the foreskin as an external symbol of dedicated covenant commitment, you must genuinely dedicate yourselves to the Lord and get rid of everything that hinders your commitment to me, people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. If you do not, my anger will blaze up like a flaming fire against you that no one will be able to extinguish. That will happen because of the evil you have done."

"Hear the terms of the covenant I made with Israel and pass them on to the people of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem.

Tell them that the Lord, the God of Israel, says, 'Anyone who does not keep the terms of the covenant will be under a curse.

The Lord said to me, "Announce all the following words in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem: 'Listen to the terms of my covenant with you and carry them out!

But they did not listen to me or pay any attention to me! Each one of them followed the stubborn inclinations of his own wicked heart. So I brought on them all the punishments threatened in the covenant because they did not carry out its terms as I commanded them to do.'"

They have gone back to the evil ways of their ancestors of old who refused to obey what I told them. They, too, have paid allegiance to other gods and worshiped them. Both the nation of Israel and the nation of Judah have violated the covenant I made with their ancestors.

For the honor of your name, do not treat Jerusalem with contempt. Do not treat with disdain the place where your glorious throne sits. Be mindful of your covenant with us. Do not break it!

The answer will come back, "It is because they broke their covenant with the Lord their God and worshiped and served other gods."

"Indeed, a time is coming," says the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah.

It will not be like the old covenant that I made with their ancestors when I delivered them from Egypt. For they violated that covenant, even though I was like a faithful husband to them," says the Lord.

"But I will make a new covenant with the whole nation of Israel after I plant them back in the land," says the Lord. "I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts and minds. I will be their God and they will be my people.

I will make a lasting covenant with them that I will never stop doing good to them. I will fill their hearts and minds with respect for me so that they will never again turn away from me.

"I, Lord, make the following promise: 'I have made a covenant with the day and with the night that they will always come at their proper times. Only if you people could break that covenant

could my covenant with my servant David and my covenant with the Levites ever be broken. So David will by all means always have a descendant to occupy his throne as king and the Levites will by all means always have priests who will minister before me.

But I, the Lord, make the following promise: I have made a covenant governing the coming of day and night. I have established the fixed laws governing heaven and earth.

The Lord spoke to Jeremiah after King Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people in Jerusalem to grant their slaves their freedom.

All the people and their leaders had agreed to this. They had agreed to free their male and female slaves and not keep them enslaved any longer. They originally complied with the covenant and freed them.

"The Lord God of Israel has a message for you. 'I made a covenant with your ancestors when I brought them out of Egypt where they had been slaves. It stipulated,

Recently, however, you yourselves showed a change of heart and did what is pleasing to me. You granted your fellow countrymen their freedom and you made a covenant to that effect in my presence in the house that I have claimed for my own.

I will punish those people who have violated their covenant with me. I will make them like the calf they cut in two and passed between its pieces. I will do so because they did not keep the terms of the covenant they made in my presence.

They will ask the way to Zion; they will turn their faces toward it. They will come and bind themselves to the Lord in a lasting covenant that will never be forgotten.