By Philip Parnham

There is a way of reading Hebrew words that does not start with a dictionary, but with a story.

For the Hebrew script did not begin as an abstract code but as a versatile image-carrier. Each letter has a pictorial ancestry. For example, I understand aleph (א), the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, is widely understood to derive from an earlier Northwest Semitic sign 𐤀 representing an ox, probably an ox’s head. 

While Hebrew has never been read this way in practice, you can still place those images side by side as an act of reflection and glimpse a kind of narrative compressed into a handful of strokes. 

The Word for “Covenant”

Now take the word often translated “covenant” (berit / בְּרִית), which is the subject of this short blogpost. It actually contains a mini-story in a word.

However, before we get carried away, do remember that what I am about to sketch is closer to poetry than proof. It is subjective and can become fanciful if overplayed. But used lightly, and kept under the authority of Scripture’s actual usage, I believe it can still be fruitful. 

That is because sometimes, this kind of reading does not define a word but echoes it. So, if you lean into your pictographic imagination (and I stress: lean, please do not build a doctrinal system on it), you get this:

• Bet (ב) – a house
• Resh (ר) – a head, a person, a leader
• Yod (י) – a hand, an action
• Tav (ת) – a mark, a sign

And that might mean something like this:

The one who represents the house establishes the bond and orders the household by a sign 

Obviously, that is not a dictionary entry. But you might agree it resonates with the story Scripture tells about covenant. A covenant is an agreement, a binding agent or a glue. 

Think of the biblical pattern. Scripturally speaking, God’s covenant with his people is not an abstract contract. It does not primarily represent a set of legal terms but functions more like a marriage agreement. It is a relational attachment initiated by a head—supremely, by God—who brings people into His household and marks that relational bond and sense of belonging in some tangible way.

• With Noah, the sign is in the sky (Gen 9:12–13).
• With Abraham, it is in the flesh (Gen 17:10–11).
• With Israel, it is woven into life (i.e. Sabbath, Torah and shared practices (Exod 31:13))

The New Covenant

Again and again, the Bible makes clear that belonging is enacted, then marked. And if you stand in that stream and look towards the new covenant enacted by Yeshua / Jesus, the pattern does not disappear; it intensifies.

The “head” becomes visible. The “household” is reconstituted around Him. The “act” becomes His own self-giving. And the “sign”… well, here I cannot help but see the wounds on his hands and feet.

But if we are being more textually anchored, I would suggest the decisive sign of the new covenant is the giving of the Spirit. “The promise is for you… and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38–39; cf. Jer 31:33; Ezek 36:26–27).

Relevance Today

Therefore, the mark moves from skin to Spirit and from external sign to internal presence. We go from external boundary markers to indwelling life. What is more, in the new covenant the household, the binding agent and the sign all become one. They blend into a beautiful trinitarian picture. 

So, in a Yeshuaic sense, God’s new covenant with his people is something you receive and inhabit. It is our relational bond with the Father through Christ by the Spirit. It binds us together in Jesus. The new covenant is initiated by Jesus Christ acting as the representative of the Father’s house in and through his ministry, the cross and the resurrection; and it is now marked by the presence every Christian carries in the form of the Holy Spirit. You do not wear the sign. We are indwelt by it as a temple, as God’s house. 

In summary, then, if my interpretation of the pictogramme helps you visualise “covenant” and our relational bond with God and others, then I would say it has done a good enough job.