Exodus 34:10 ¶ And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation: and all the people among which thou art shall see the work of the LORD: for it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee. 11 Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite. 12 Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee: 13 But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves: 14 For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God: 15 Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice; 16 And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods. 17 Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.
There are
some significant words in this passage that bear defining Biblically before you
run off to some nineteenth century dictionary or a modern one and get confused.
A covenant, we will see upcoming, is an
agreement between God and man. The Hebrew agrees to obey the ten commandments
and that seals the agreement that God has written. In the following verse in
Leviticus we can see the synonyms to a covenant,
which are statutes, judgments, and commandments.
Leviticus
26:15 And if ye shall despise my statutes, or if your soul abhor my judgments, so that ye will not do all
my commandments, but that ye break my covenant:
The agreement
is pretty one-sided. God, typically, is the only one able to meet the demands
of a covenant. Just as it is impossible for man to keep God’s commandments
without the Holy Spirit’s involvement and it is impossible for man to offer up
worship that is pleasing to God or even to pray without God’s help so the
expression of this covenant of commandments will show that mankind is incapable
of obedience without the Holy Spirit’s invisible hand on mankind’s heart.
God made a
covenant with Noah to deliver him and his family from the destruction of life
in the great Flood. This was something God did and required only Noah to
receive it by obedience.
Genesis
6:17 And, behold, I, even I, do bring a
flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under
heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die. 18 But with thee will I establish my covenant;
and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy
sons’ wives with thee. 19 And of every
living thing of all flesh, two of every sort
shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them
alive with thee; they shall be male and female. 20 Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle
after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of
every sort shall come unto
thee, to keep them alive.
21 And take thou unto thee of all food
that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it
to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them.
22 ¶
Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.
God made a
covenant with all flesh that there should be no more flood destroy life on
earth.
Genesis
9:8 ¶ And God spake unto Noah, and to
his sons with him, saying, 9 And I,
behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you; 10 And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the
cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the
ark, to every beast of the earth. 11 And
I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any
more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to
destroy the earth.
12
¶ And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I
make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: 13 I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be
for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. 14 And it shall
come
to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the
cloud: 15 And I will remember my
covenant, which is between me
and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more
become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16
And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may
remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all
flesh that is upon the earth.
17 And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I
have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.
God made a covenant with Abram
to give his descendants a grant of land.
Genesis
15:18 In the same day the LORD made a
covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the
river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:
So it is with eternal life. It
is something God does that can only be received.
John
1:12 But as many as received him, to
them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: 13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the
will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
This is an everlasting
covenant.
Hebrews
13:20 Now the God of peace, that brought
again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through
the blood of the everlasting covenant, 21
Make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that
which is wellpleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
It is again,
something that God does and we receive by obedience in faith, to trust and
declare that Christ rose from the dead, was God in the flesh, and by faith in
those facts of history we have eternal life.
Marvels are something that one is
amazed at, something that causes you to wonder. To marvel is to be amazed.
Amazement is to be filled with wonder.
Acts
2:7 And they were all amazed and
marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak
Galilaeans?
Acts
3:10 And they knew that it was he which
sat for alms at the Beautiful gate of the temple: and they were filled with
wonder and amazement at that which had happened unto him.
Terrible is another interesting
word which carries with it the idea of something so great as to be frightening
and overwhelming in its power, like God, of instance. Think of the word,
terrifying.
Deuteronomy
7:21 Thou shalt not be affrighted at
them: for the LORD thy God is
among you, a mighty God and terrible.
Deuteronomy
10:21 He is thy praise, and he is
thy God, that hath done for thee these great
and terrible things, which thine
eyes have seen.
Daniel
7:7 After this I saw in the night
visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful
and terrible, and strong
exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and
stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.
God warns
them about making any agreement with the Canaanites. The danger is that they
will become a snare to the
Israelites if that is allowed. A snare
is a trap.
Job
18:10 The snare is laid for him in the ground, and a
trap for him in the way.
Psalm
124:7 Our soul is escaped as a bird out
of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped.
In verse 13
the Israelites are told to break down the altars, images, and groves of the
people of the land they’ve been given. Images includes the renditions of birds
and animals the Canaanites worshipped.
Numbers
33:52 Then ye shall drive out all the
inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their pictures, and
destroy all their molten images, and quite pluck down all their high places:
This is in keeping with the
commandment.
Exodus
20:4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any
graven image, or any likeness of any
thing that is in heaven
above, or that is in the earth
beneath, or that is in the
water under the earth:
Sacred groves
of trees and even particular types of trees were common in the ancient world’s
religions as has been noted by several authors in history.
By calling
Himself a jealous God the Lord makes
it clear that He will tolerate no idolatry. The idolatry the ancient world was
steeped in made mankind an enemy of God. The very God who causes our hearts to
beat, our blood to flow, and our lungs to inhale and exhale is not glorified or
understood when mankind attributes his well-being and even his life to an
imaginary god, little g, or to a devil.
It is clear
by the Biblical text that the Canaanites were immoral, child-sacrificing,
bestiality-practicing, idolaters so the curse placed on Canaan at Ham’s
disgrace was well-justified.
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