Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 07:1 (Jul 1961)
Article: The Everlasting Covenant
Author: D. F. Payne

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TynBul 7:1 (1961) p. 10

The Everlasting Covenant*

D. F. Payne

* Being the substance of a paper read to the Tyndale Fellowship Old Testament Group, 1960.

THIS PAPER is a brief investigation into the relationship between the concepts of the ‘everlasting’ and the ‘new’ covenants of Scripture. The first term, בְּרִית עוֹלָם, occurs more than a dozen times in the Old Testament, and just once, διαθήκη αἰώνιος, in the New. The latter instance involves no real doctrinal teaching — it is merely a phrase in a benediction: ‘Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will . . .’ 1 The phrase is, then, distinctively Old Testament in character, however implicit in New Testament doctrine. On the other hand, the phrase ‘New Covenant’, בְּרִית חֲדָשָׁה, occurs once only in the Old Testament — Je. 31:31 — but is found several times in the New Testament, both in the Gospels, at the institution of the Eucharist, and also in the Epistle to the Hebrews. And of course the Greek phrase καινή διαθήκη, has given the New Testament its very name. There can be no doubt, however, that the New Testament references are all based on the passage in Jeremiah, and it is true to say that this concept too is Old Testament, at least in origin.

A glance at the Scofield Reference Bible indicates that to Scofield, at any rate, there was little distinction between the two ideas; the mention of an everlasting covenant in Is. 61:8, for instance, is classified under the heading ‘Covenant (New)’. It is of course true that Je. 31:31 must be taken together with Is. 61:8; Je. 32:37ff. and Ezk. 16:60. Clearly the Prophets of this period anticipated the inauguration of a new era in God’s relationship with Israel in which there would be a new covenant between the two contracting parties which would last for ever.

TynBul 7:1 (1961) p. 11

The everlasting covenants of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, then, lay in the future, and could be both new and eternal. But what of previous covenants styled ‘everlasting’? Surely the new era predicted by Jeremiah would render the ancient covenants outmoded and obsolete, or at an...

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