The word and its force. The Hebrew word for covenant, berith, the ISBE links to the Assyrian biritu, which means a "fetter" and also a "covenant"; the root idea is probably "to bind." "If this root idea is 'to bind,' the covenant is that which binds together the parties" (ISBE, "Covenant, in the Old Testament," George Ricker Berry). A covenant, in other words, is a bond, and the everyday covenants between people in the Old Testament have the shape of an ancient agreement or treaty sworn between two parties.
The elements of a covenant. Drawing the accounts together, the ISBE lists the principal elements of such a covenant: (1) a statement of the terms agreed upon (Genesis 26:29; 31:50, 52); (2) an oath by each party to keep them, with God as witness (Genesis 26:31; 31:48–53); (3) a curse invoked upon oneself for breaking the agreement (explicit in the covenants with God, Deuteronomy 27:15–26); and (4) a formal ratification by a solemn outward act, a sacrificial meal, a sprinkling of blood, or the cutting of animals. That four-part shape, terms, oath, curse, ratifying ceremony, is the form a modern reader will recognise as the ancient Near-Eastern treaty: the agreement a great king made with a vassal, which scholars since the mid-twentieth century have compared closely with the Sinai covenant. (The ISBE of 1915 describes the elements; the explicit "suzerain–vassal treaty" comparison is the later scholarly term for the same shape.) (Source: ISBE 1915, "Covenant, in the Old Testament" [Berry].)
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