A compact (because made by passing between pieces of flesh)
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בְּרִית (berit) is the Hebrew Bible's primary word for covenant — the formal relational bond that establishes binding obligations between parties. The local Hebrew index currently counts about 284 occurrences, spanning human covenants (treaties, alliances) and the central theological reality of God's binding commitment to His people.
Reader summary
Full entry for בְּרִית (H1285) · Open the biblical lexicon
בְּרִית (berit) is the Hebrew Bible's primary word for covenant — the formal relational bond that establishes binding obligations between parties. The local Hebrew index currently counts about 284 occurrences, spanning human covenants (treaties, alliances) and the central theological reality of God's binding commitment to His people.
The BSB source-word alignment has 284 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include of the covenant (65), a covenant (45), My covenant (35), covenant (32), the covenant (27).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 6:18. Its strongest book concentrations include Deuteronomy (27), Genesis (27), Jeremiah (24), Joshua (22).
בְּרִית (berit) is the Hebrew Bible's primary word for covenant — the formal relational bond that establishes binding obligations between parties. The local Hebrew index currently counts about 284 occurrences, spanning human covenants (treaties, alliances) and the central theological reality of God's binding commitment to His people. The word's etymology is debated, but its usage is consistent: a berit is a sworn, binding relationship that reshapes the entire future of those who enter it.
The covenant structure of the OT is the spine of the entire biblical narrative. God's covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and the promise of a new covenant (Jeremiah 31) are not independent events but a single, developing story of God's commitment to restore creation through a particular people. Each covenant adds to and builds on what preceded it: the Noahic covenant is cosmic (with all creation); the Abrahamic is particular (with one family for the sake of all); the Sinaitic is constitutive (the covenant community's life and worship); the Davidic is royal (the king through whom the covenant's promises will be mediated); the new covenant is consummating (the inner transformation that all the others pointed toward).
Genesis 15 is the most dramatic covenant-making scene in Scripture: God passes through the divided animals as a smoking firepot and flaming torch, taking on Himself the covenant curse if the covenant is broken. In the ancient Near East, both parties to a treaty would pass through divided animals, invoking the curse on the breaker. God alone passes through — making the covenant unilaterally His own responsibility. This is the theological heart of biblical covenant: God binds Himself to His promises in a way that goes beyond mere promise to the assumption of the covenant's consequences.
Jeremiah 31:31-34 prophesies the new covenant that addresses the old covenant's failure: 'I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts... they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest... for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.' The new covenant resolves what the Sinai covenant exposed: that external law-giving cannot produce internal covenant loyalty. The new covenant writes what the old could only command.
For the preacher, בְּרִית is the word that names the non-negotiable relational commitment at the center of the biblical story — God's binding of Himself to His people, which reaches its fullest expression in the blood of Christ, 'the blood of the new covenant' (Mat 26:28).
בְּרִית is counted at about 284 occurrences in the local Hebrew index, concentrated in the Pentateuch, Joshua-Kings, Psalms, and the prophets. The covenant structure of the OT — Noahic, Abrahamic, Sinaitic, Davidic, new covenant — is the backbone of the entire biblical story. The word covers both human alliances and God's formal, binding commitments to His people, regularly carrying the sense of a solemn, oath-bound relational commitment.
On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land—from the river of Egypt to the great River Euphrates—
The Abrahamic covenant ratified: God cutting the covenant with Abram after the vision and the divided animals. The Hebrew idiom is karath berit — 'to cut a covenant,' reflecting the cutting of the animals through which the parties passed. The promise is specific: land, seed, and the scope of what will belong to Abram's descendants. This covenant is the pivot of the entire OT — everything from Genesis 12 forward is the story of God keeping what He promised here.
Now if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, you will be My treasured possession out of all the nations—for the whole earth is Mine.
The Sinaitic covenant's offer: my voice, my covenant, my treasured possession. The conditional structure ('if you obey... you shall be') is not a different kind of covenant from the Abrahamic but its specification — the form in which the Abrahamic covenant's promise is worked out within history for a particular people at a particular moment. The 'treasured possession' (segullah) names the intimacy of what is being offered: not merely a political relationship but a uniquely prized belonging.
Is not my house right with God? For He has established with me an everlasting covenant, ordered and secured in every part. Will He not bring about my full salvation and my every desire?
The Davidic covenant as 'everlasting' (berit olam) — a covenant that does not have a temporal limit but is ordered and secured by God. David's last words ground his hope in the covenant God made with him — not in his own achievements but in God's binding commitment to his house. The 'ordered in all things and secure' names the character of a covenant whose reliability comes from its maker, not from the human party.
Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
The new covenant announcement: hadashah (new) does not mean replacing but renewing and fulfilling. The problem of the old covenant was not the covenant itself but the covenant people who broke it (v. 32: 'my covenant that they broke'). The new covenant addresses the problem at its root: inner transformation (v. 33: 'I will put my law within them'), universal knowledge of God (v.
34: 'They shall all know me'), and complete forgiveness (v. 34: 'I will remember their sin no more'). These four marks are what the Sinai covenant pointed toward and could not produce from the outside.
You said, “I have made a covenant with My chosen one, I have sworn to David My servant:
God's sworn commitment (berit with an oath — shebua) to David. Psalm 89 is the great meditation on the Davidic covenant and its apparent failure: the king is defeated, the crown is in the dust (vv. 38-45). But the psalm ends in appeal to the sworn covenant: if God's oath is real, then the failure is not final. The Davidic covenant becomes the ground of hope precisely when circumstances suggest it has been abandoned — a pattern that the NT reads as pointing toward Christ, the Son of David who was crowned in humiliation and vindicated in resurrection.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Covenant sealed through ritual blood sacrifice; God's binding commitment to His people, foundational to redemptive history
Covenant sealed through ritual blood sacrifice; God's binding commitment to His people, foundational to redemptive history
a compact (because made by passing between pieces of flesh) BDB: covenant Usage: confederacy, (con-) feder(-ate), covenant, league.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 6 selected witnesses from 284 lexical occurrence verses.
בְּרִית is built from these roots:
The adulterous woman forsakes covenant, framing immorality as theological betrayal. Hosea 6:7-11
Nehemiah’s prayer is covenant-conscious from beginning to end. He interprets both the exile and the hope of restoration through God’s berît with Israel. This helps believers today read their own situation through the lens of God’s covenant in Christ rather than through vague spirituality or national narratives. Hosea 8:1-7
The written covenant underscores the seriousness and structure of renewed obedience. Isaiah 49:7-13
Shows the Servant as mediator of covenant restoration. Nehemiah 1:1-11
Explicit legal framework of Israel’s relationship with Yahweh. Nehemiah 10:1-39
Legal framework of indictment. Proverbs 2:12-22
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
בְּרִית is one of the structural words of the Bible. The Scripture is divided into two Testaments — Old and New — which are two English translations of the Hebrew berit and the Greek diatheke (covenant). The Bible is not a collection of stories, laws, and wisdom sayings; it is the covenant document of God's binding commitment to His people, and every part of it either establishes, develops, applies, breaks, or fulfills that covenant.
The preacher who does not understand berit does not understand one of the Bible's organizing structures. The most important thing to say about God's covenant with His people is what Genesis 15 demonstrates so vividly: God passed through the divided animals alone. He took the covenant curse on Himself. He made the covenant's keeping His own responsibility — and when the covenant was broken, He did not abandon it but fulfilled it in Christ: 'the blood of the new covenant, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins' (Mat 26:28).
The new covenant (Jer 31:31-34) is not a replacement of the biblical story but its goal — the point toward which all the preceding covenants were moving, the inner transformation that could not be produced by external law, fulfilled through the blood of Christ, who secures what the covenant story anticipated.
Gen.15.18
בְּרִית (berit) is a feminine noun whose etymology is debated: some derive it from barah (to eat, perhaps reflecting the covenant meal), others from a root meaning to bind or fetter. What is consistent across all uses is the sense of a binding, formal, relationship-establishing commitment, typically ratified by a solemn ceremony (cutting, oath, meal, or sign).
The Hebrew idiom for making a covenant is karath berit — 'to cut a covenant' — which likely reflects the ancient practice of cutting animals in the ceremony (as in Gen 15 and Jer 34:18-19). The sign of the covenant (ot ha-berit) is always an external, visible marker: circumcision for the Abrahamic covenant (Gen 17:11), the Sabbath for the Sinaitic (Exod 31:13-17), the rainbow for the Noahic (Gen 9:13).
The covenant's parties (the Lord and Israel; the Lord and David; the Lord and all creation) are always described in terms of relationship, obligation, and promise — the berit creates a new relational reality that did not previously exist.
The OT's berit is the direct antecedent of the NT's diatheke (covenant, testament). The NT's use of diatheke is almost entirely shaped by the OT covenant tradition: the new covenant of Jeremiah 31 (quoted in Heb 8:8-12 and 10:16-17), the blood of the covenant ratified at Sinai (Exod 24:8 echoed in Mat 26:28 and Heb 9:20), the Abrahamic covenant and its fulfillment in Christ (Gal 3:15-18).
Hebrews 8-10 is the most extended NT exposition of covenant theology, arguing that the Mosaic covenant was a shadow pointing to the better covenant (Heb 8:6) established by Christ as mediator (Heb 8:6; 9:15; 12:24). The Lord's Supper is the covenant meal of the new covenant — just as Israel ate the covenant meal on Sinai (Exod 24:11) and the parties to ancient covenants ate together to seal the agreement.
Every celebration of the Lord's Supper re-enacts the covenant ratification: 'this is my blood of the new covenant' — the blood that God shed to keep His own covenant, the price He paid to honor the commitment He made in Genesis 15.
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