The Bloodpath

The Bloodpath:

After my previous blog post, “Why The Blood?” a friend asked me if it was about God understanding the depths of human depravity -or- was it simply “how God set things up?”

If we go back several generations before Israel was even a nation… long before the exodus from slavery in Egypt and subsequent establishment of the Levitical system of perpetual bloody sacrifices... We read about Abram (who later becomes Abraham) and a covenant ceremony in Genesis 15.

Abram was not a Jew because Jews didn’t exist as a people or a religion yet. The Jews are descendants of Abraham’s grandson Jacob (whose name is later changed to Israel from which the word Ee-u-di-ah comes, which means an Israelite - Ee-u then became Jew - slang for an Israelite).

The point is that Abram was part of a pagan people group that existed long before the nation of Israel came to be as God’s chosen people - i.e. the nation chosen to proclaim God’s love and fidelity to the entire world.

In these Ancient Near Eastern pagan cultures they had a way of doing things. The covenant ceremony was one that would be used to demonstrate what would happen to the offending party if a covenant was broken. This wasn’t established by God, but God used it to communicate to Abram to answer his question, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?” i.e. the promises that God has made to Abram.

God’s response was in a language that Abram understood - a bloody mess of a contract. God simply asked Abram to bring the animals. Abram was the one who chopped them into pieces because that was the covenant language of his day. It was not something God had ordained.

With Ancient Near Eastern covenants both parties typically walked through the pieces to demonstrate their understanding of what they were “signing up for” if they broke the covenant. But here in Genesis 15 even though God didn’t tell Abram to cut the animals up and make a blood path - God was the only one to walk through the bloody mess.

Abram wanted to know how he could trust God’s fidelity to fulfill His promises - because being God isn’t enough for us. God answered in a way that Abram understood - by walking through the bloody mess alone (as a smoking fire) thus telling Abram in NO UNCERTAIN LANGUAGE that regardless of which side broke the contract - humanity or God - (knowing full well that God cannot break fidelity because of His perfect character and love) God Himself would pay the penalty by being torn to pieces, which is exactly what happened leading up to and culminating at the Cross.

The Lamb slain before the foundation of the cosmos...

God understood our violent language of sinful vile depravity and responded with the language of His perfect character and walked the bloodpath alone to foreshadow His perfect payment of the ultimate price for our debt in trespassing against the Sovereign Creator.

And when the time had come Jesus said from the Cross, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

Blessings,

-Kevin