The power of blood covenants

I’ve said this before in an article and today, I’m saying it again: The Bible is a bloody book. In our modern-day, Western culture, blood is considered gory or unsanitary, but in Eastern cultures and in the Bible, blood is considered life (Leviticus 17:11 AMP). It is sanctifying, it is healing, it is powerful. Understanding the significance of blood to God will make us appreciate the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross in a new way. So, with Easter around the corner, there is no better time to continue our discussion on covenants.

Last week, I shared that there was a powerful type of covenant spoken of in the Bible called a Threshold Covenant. If a guest came to your home and you invited them inside, allowing them to cross the threshold, you were agreeing to care for and protect them. Now, if this person was especially important and you wanted to show them distinguished honour, the owner of the house would sacrifice an animal and pour its blood at the threshold of the door. This would make the covenant even more powerful.

When the house owner pours the blood at the threshold, the guest would step over it, enacting the covenant. The house owner pledges to provide, protect, and care for the guest – giving all they have, even their very lives – while the guest pledges to submit to that host’s authority and never step across the threshold with the intention to harm the host. If they did, it would bring a curse on them.

This was so significant in a covenant culture that even a thief would not step across the threshold to steal. He would become a covenant-breaker and curse himself, so he would find another way of breaking into the house. Do you understand how serious a covenant this was? A man would rather die before he’d break this covenant.

But what was even more important was the blood used in this agreement. The level of the sacrifice determined the degree of honour you were displaying. For guests who weren’t very important, maybe pigeon’s blood would do. For those of greater significance, the blood of a goat was used; and for the equivalent of a celebrity, then the blood of a bullock. Now, for kings and royalty, it would be the blood of the fattened calf.

In fact, most people who could afford it, kept the fattened calf just in case a king would come to town.

When the king came into a town, those with the blood poured out were considered his loyal people who intended to serve him and honour him as their king. Where there was no blood poured out, that was a rejection of the king’s authority. Now, where no blood is poured out, the king would send the army in and kill the entire family of that household because they’re his enemies.

With this in mind, let’s look again at the Passover story in Exodus we began discussing last week. Recognise that God did not create something new when He told the Israelites to put the blood of the Passover lamb upon their doorposts, so that the death angel would pass over them (Exodus 12). He was using a custom already familiar to them. It might not have been an expensive calf, but the principle was the same. It was their way of declaring that they were loyal to the King of Kings.

It was their way of inviting the King into their homes and allowing Him to pass over the threshold to enter into Covenant with them. Similarly, those without the blood were openly declaring that they were not loyal to this King and putting themselves at risk of death. Now, if this was all there was to learn from blood covenants, it would already be so powerful. But next week, we’re going even deeper to see how this makes the sacrifice of Jesus so significant. See you on Easter Sunday!