“The dead stood round us, while I spoke that vow,
Their blue lips echo’d it. I hear them now!
Their eyes glared on me, while I pledged that bowl,
’Twas burning blood—I feel it in my soul!”
Although this is Western poetry, it had a basis of careful Oriental study in its preparation; and the blood-draught of the covenant is known to Persian story and tradition.
One of the indications of the world-wide belief in the custom of covenanting, and again of life seeking, by blood-drinking, is the fact that both Jews and Christians have often been falsely charged with drinking the blood of little children, at their religious feasts. This was one of the frequent accusations against the early Christians (See Justin Martyr’s Apol., I., 26; Tertullian’s Apol., VIII., IX.) And it has been repeated against the Jews, from the days of Apion down to the present decade. Such a baseless charge could not have gained credence, but for the traditional understanding that men were wont to pledge each other to a close covenant by mutual blood-drinking.
COVENANT-CUTTING.
It is worthy of note that when the Lord enters into covenant with Abraham by means of a prescribed sacrifice (Gen. 15 : 7-18), it is said that the Lord “cut a covenant with Abram”; but when the Lord calls on Abraham to cut a covenant of blood-friendship, by the rite of circumcision (Gen. 17 : 1-12), the Lord says, for himself, “I will make [or I will fix] my covenant between me and thee.” In the one case, the Hebrew word is karath (כָּרַת) “to cut”; in the other, it is nathan (נָתַן) “to give,” or “to fix.” This change goes to show that the idea of cutting a covenant includes the act of a cutting—of a cutting of one’s person or the cutting of the substitute victim—as an integral part of the covenant itself; that a covenant may be made, or fixed, without a cutting, but that the term “cutting” involves the act of cutting.
Thus, again, in Jeremiah 34 : 18, there is a two-fold reference to covenant-cutting; where the Lord reproaches his people for their faithlessness to their covenant. “And I will give [to destruction] the men that have transgressed my covenant, which have not performed the words of the covenant which they made [literally, ‘cut’] before me [in my sight] when they cut the calf in twain, and passed between the parts thereof.” In this instance, there is in the Hebrew, a pun, as it were, to give added force to the accusation and reproach. The same word ’abhar (עָבַר) means both “to transgress” and “to pass over” [or, “between”], so that, freely rendered, the charge here made, is, that they went through the covenant when they had gone through the calf; which is another way of saying that they cut their duty when they claimed to cut a covenant.