Word studies · Hebrew · Strong's H1285
בְּרִית · bᵉrîyth · appears 284 times in the Old Testament
In one line: A bond God cuts and swears to keep.
I will establish My covenant as an everlasting covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.
Genesis 17:7
Berith is covenant — a bond God cuts and swears to, binding Himself to a people by oath rather than by contract.
Berith frames the whole Old Testament story: with Noah, Abraham, Israel at Sinai and David, God binds Himself by promise and calls a people to live inside that bond. Its obligations are real, but its foundation is God's oath, which is why the prophets can announce a new covenant after Israel breaks the old one.
Berith is usually connected to a root meaning “to cut,” and the idiom bears it out: Hebrew does not make a covenant, it cuts one. Genesis 15 shows why — animals are divided and God alone passes between the pieces, taking the self-curse of the ceremony on Himself.
English “covenant” sounds like a signed agreement between parties who each bring something. The Hebrew ceremony says otherwise: the one who walks between the pieces is saying “may it be done to me if I break this,” and in Genesis 15 the one walking is God.
Berith (H1285) appears 266 times in the Hebrew Bible, and the Hebrew idiom for making one is literally “to cut a covenant.”
Covenant is what makes the God of Israel knowable and approachable: He binds Himself in words that can be quoted back to Him. The New Testament's “new covenant in my blood” is not a change of method but the fulfillment of this one, sealed the same way — by a death.
Rest your standing with God on His oath rather than on your consistency. Write down one covenant promise of God and read it back to Him this week when your performance argues otherwise.
a compact (because made by passing between pieces of flesh)
But I will establish My covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you.
Genesis 6:18So God heard their groaning, and He remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Exodus 2:24And you shall season each of your grain offerings with salt. You must not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offering; you are to add salt to each of your offerings.
Leviticus 2:13So they set out on a three-day journey from the mountain of the LORD, with the ark of the covenant of the LORD traveling ahead of them for those three days to seek a resting place for them.
Numbers 10:33He declared to you His covenant, which He commanded you to follow—the Ten Commandments that He wrote on two tablets of stone.
Deuteronomy 4:13and commanded the people: “When you see the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God being carried by the Levitical priests, you are to set out from your positions and follow it.
Joshua 3:3Press and hold covenant in any chapter and this study opens on the verse you are reading, with the lexicons, every occurrence and the commentaries beside it. The Bible is free to read.
Scripture quoted from the Berean Standard Bible, public domain. Strong's definitions are public domain. Counts come from The Pillar's own tagged text.