Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
berit
Covenant. A binding arrangement, and in Hebrew you cut one rather than make one.
Genesis 15:18, in every translation this tool compares.
They struck a deal. English keeps a physical verb in the idiom for making an agreement, and nobody is striking anything.
Because English covenant is a legal term most readers have never used in ordinary speech, and the Hebrew idiom tells you what the ceremony involved.
Every version reads covenant. Some render treaty or agreement in political contexts.
בְּרִית berit · H1285
Berit is a binding arrangement with obligations, sanctions and often a ceremony. Hebrew says to cut a covenant, which refers to the animals divided at Genesis 15. The ancient Near Eastern treaty form sits behind Deuteronomy's structure.
English covenant survives only as a legal or religious word, so the physical ceremony behind the idiom is invisible.
When the original uses an unexpected verb with a noun, the verb is usually a fossil of a practice.
Covenant is universal in English versions; treaty appears in political contexts.
- karat berit, to cut a covenant: Genesis 15:18; Jeremiah 34:18
- The divided animals at Genesis 15:9-17
- ANE treaty form behind Deuteronomy; see Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament
