bərît

Semantic range

1. 1a treaty between nations or persons
2. 2a solemn, oath-bound relationship established by God
3. 3the obligations and blessings that agreement carries

The verb ordinarily used with bərît is not "make" but kārat — to cut. One "cuts a covenant," a phrase that preserves the ancient rite behind the word: animals divided, the parties passing between the pieces, invoking on themselves the fate of the carcasses if they break faith. Genesis 15 preserves that ceremony almost intact, and it is the Lord alone — a smoking furnace and a burning lamp — who passes between the pieces while Abram sleeps.

That detail is the doctrine. In the Abrahamic covenant God takes the self-maledictory oath upon Himself. Latter-day Saints make and renew covenants constantly — baptism, the sacrament, the temple — and the Hebrew reminds us what kind of thing we are entering: not a contract to be renegotiated, but a bond ratified by blood, in which the greater party has already bound Himself irrevocably.

The Greek New Testament renders bərît as diathēkē, which is why the two halves of the Bible are called Testaments at all.

Where it appears

• Genesis 15:9–18The covenant ceremony; God alone passes between the pieces.
• Genesis 17:7"An everlasting covenant" — the phrase the Restoration reclaims.
• Jeremiah 31:31–33A new covenant written on the heart, not on stone.

See also

• חֶסֶדḥesed
• διαθήκηdiathēkē
• עוֹלָםʿôlām