March 28, 2024

Covenant Maker

This entry is part 3 of 9 in the series A Father's Responsibility

There are two aspects to the idea of the father or husband being the covenant maker in the following passages.

Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them. – Deuteronomy 1:8

But if her husband disallowed her on the day that he heard [it]; then he shall make her vow which she vowed, and that which she uttered with her lips, wherewith she bound her soul, of none effect: and the LORD shall forgive her. – Numbers 8:30

In one case, we have God making a covenant.  Just like with Adam and Eve, God came to Abraham– not Sarah– to make the covenant.  He came to Isaac– not Rebekah– to confirm it.

He went to Jacob– not Leah, Rachel, or a handmaid.  He went to David– and I don’t have enough space to list all of those wives!  God chose his order, it’s not something that I or any other man selected.  He went to the man and made covenants with those men and their generations.  It is true that the Messiah would be born of a virgin woman, but in every other case, God dealt with the head of the house.

The second is in regard to covenants that people can enter into.  We find that in Numbers, there is a provision that an agreement that a wife entered into could be broken by the husband within a certain time limit if he decided that it was not wise.  In our culture today, there are laws in place that anything you sign (especially to go into debt or other purchases) have a fixed amount of time that you can choose to get out of the arrangement.  In this case, the sole responsibility for making sure that covenants were entered into responsibly was with the husband.

Although the Proverbs 31 wife did a lot, the husband was the one who was responsible for what she did and had to actively take that responsibility.  It was he that would have been the target if something went wrong, not her.

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3 thoughts on “Covenant Maker

  1. Very good. I would have liked to see more on this topic, but yes the point is right on.

    Mrs Meg Logan

  2. A man is responsible for the actions of his wife. Thats only one little tidbit of your post, but something that is very true and certainly often overlooked. We have this idea in todays day and age that we will not and should not be held responsible for the actions of others, even if they are under our authority. This is so far from the truth. I think a lot of people will be surprised at how much they are responsible for, despite all the “valid” excuses they think they have.

  3. Very true– we also have many people that want to pass the responsibility onto someone else when it’s rightly theirs. And it’s also something that we model to our children– if we refuse to take responsibility, then we shouldn’t be surprised when they do the same things.

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