10. It is now fitting to ask what kind of seal is YHWH’s Sabbath? This is because the use of the word “seal” is too weak, and needs other words to give strength to it. To understand this, we need to first understand that the Bible calls the Sabbath the Covenant. Ex. 31:16,17; Isa. 56:4,6.
11. What does the word “covenant” mean? We are told that it is not a proper translation of the Greek word “diatheke”, it should be translated “will” or “testament” (testimony).
“Perhaps the most necessary investigation still waiting to be made is that relating to the word diatheke, which so many scholars translate unhesitatingly “covenant.” Now as the new texts help us generally to reconstruct Hellenistic family law and the law of inheritance, so in particular our knowledge of Hellenistic wills has been wonderfully increased by a number of originals on stone or papyrus. There is simple material to back me in the statement that no one in the Mediterranean world in the first century A.D. would have thought of finding in the word “diatheke” [Greek letters translated] the idea of “covenant.” St. Paul would not, and in fact did not. To St. Paul the word meant what it meant in his Greek Old Testament, ‘a unilateral enactment,’ in particular “a will or testament.’” Adolf Deissmann, Light From The Ancient East, p. 337.
So we see, that although the word “covenant” is used, it should be “will” or “testament” (testimony). So God’s covenant is better rendered God’s will or “God’s testimony” of His Will.
“Thus Gesenius-Buhl derives b’rith form the root baraya as it is used in 1 Samuel 17:8, meaning “to decide” or “allot to”. These etymologies point toward the giving of an inheritance and favor the meaning “testament.”” J. Barton Payne, The Theology of the Older Testament, p. 79.
“Although there may at times appear certain mutually binding conditions so that we call the resultant arrangement a “covenant,” these conditions do not represent the essence of the b’rith [the word translated covenant in the First Witness].
It is still a sovereignly imposed, monopleuric injunction … Hence, God chooses the word b’rith, the available term for a legally binding instrument, to describe what is His sovereign pleasure … When the parties concerned are God in His grace and man in his sin, on whose behalf God acts, the b’rith becomes God’s self imposed obligation for the deliverance of sinners … Though essentially monergistic, effectuated by “one worker.” (God, not man and god), the b’rith required that men qualify .” Ibid, p. 81.
“one must conclude that “testament” is the meaning of diatheke …” Ibid, p. 84.
13. As the Sabbath is thus the “covenant seal”, it can be called the seal that is a testimony of God’s Will. Ex. 31:13.
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