How to Study the Covenants of the Bible (And Why They Hold Scripture Together)

Most of us read the Bible the way we read an anthology — sixty-six separate works bound together for convenience, each with its own author, era, and concerns. That reading is not wrong so much as incomplete. Beneath the narratives, the poetry, the law codes, and the letters runs a single structural thread: God binds himself to people by covenant, and he keeps doing it.

If you have ever wondered why Genesis 15 keeps echoing through Romans 4, or why Jesus reaches for the word covenant at the Last Supper of all moments, you have already sensed that thread without naming it.

Studying the covenants is not an advanced technique reserved for seminary students. It is one of the most accessible ways to move from reading verses to reading Scripture — and it can be done with an ordinary Bible, a notebook, and a few good questions.

What a Covenant Actually Is

A covenant is a binding relationship, formally established, with stated promises and stated obligations. It is closer to a marriage than to a contract. A contract exchanges goods and services and ends when the exchange is complete. A covenant creates a bond between persons and then spells out what that bond will mean going forward.

In the ancient world, covenants were often ratified with a sign — something visible that carried the memory of the promise — and sometimes with a sacrifice, a sober picture of what breaking the bond would cost. When you encounter these elements in the text, they are not incidental scenery. They are the architecture.

So when Scripture slows down to tell you who spoke, what was promised, what was required, and what sign was given, the narrative is handing you the outline of the passage. Most readers skim past those details on the way to the story. The covenants reward the opposite instinct.

The Covenants You Will Meet

Noah (Genesis 9). After the flood, God commits himself to creation itself. The scope is enormous — every living creature, all generations — and the sign is a rainbow, placed in the sky as a reminder for God, not merely for us. This covenant establishes a pattern the rest of Scripture assumes: God restrains judgment and preserves a world in which redemption can unfold.

Abraham (Genesis 12, 15, and 17). Here the promises narrow to a person and then widen again to the nations: land, descendants, and blessing that spills outward to every family on earth. Genesis 15 contains one of the strangest and most important scenes in the Old Testament, where God alone passes between the divided animals — taking the obligation entirely on himself. The sign is circumcision.

Sinai (Exodus 19 through 24). A rescued people receive a law, a priesthood, and a way of life. This covenant is national in scope and shapes almost everything that follows in the Old Testament: the prophets prosecute Israel on its terms, the historical books evaluate kings by it, and the Psalms sing about it with genuine delight.

David (2 Samuel 7). A promise of an enduring house and throne. Once you see this covenant, the messianic expectation running through the prophets stops feeling like a sudden new idea and starts feeling like a promise waiting to be kept.

The New Covenant (Jeremiah 31, Luke 22, Hebrews 8). Jeremiah announces something the earlier covenants anticipated but did not accomplish:

“But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.” — Jeremiah 31:33, KJV

Read that alongside Luke 22:20, where Jesus lifts the cup and calls it the new covenant in his blood, and the connection is unmistakable. The prophet and the upper room are speaking the same language.

A Five-Question Method for Any Covenant Passage

You do not need a technical vocabulary to study these texts well. You need a repeatable set of questions. Bring these five to any covenant passage and the structure will surface on its own.

1. Who are the parties? Is this between God and an individual, a family, a nation, or all creation? The scope determines how the promise applies later.
2. What is promised? List the promises plainly, in the order the text gives them. Resist the urge to summarize too quickly.
3. What is required? Some covenants place obligations on both parties; others place them almost entirely on God. Noticing the difference is one of the most clarifying moves in Old Testament study.
4. What is the sign? Rainbow, circumcision, Sabbath, bread and cup. Signs are memory devices with theology built into them.
5. How does the rest of Scripture pick this up? Follow the language forward. Covenant vocabulary tends to resurface at the most important moments in the biblical story.

A Worked Example: Genesis 17

Try the questions on Genesis 17 and watch the chapter open up.

The parties are God and Abram, though the text immediately widens to include his offspring. The promises are numerous: a multitude of nations, kings, an everlasting covenant, and the land of Canaan as a possession. The requirement is stated in verse 1 — walk before me and be blameless — and then given a physical marker. The sign is circumcision, applied to every male in the household, including servants and foreigners, which is a quiet hint that this family was never meant to be a closed system.

And the fifth question is where the chapter becomes explosive. Paul spends much of Romans 4 and Galatians 3 arguing about the sequence of events in Abraham’s life — specifically that he was counted righteous in Genesis 15, before the sign was given in Genesis 17. That argument only lands if you have read the chapters closely enough to notice the order.

This is exactly the kind of study that used to require three open books and a stack of sticky notes. Working through a passage inside Gabriel, you can sit in Genesis 17, ask about the covenant sign right there at the verse, and keep your observations attached to the text rather than scattered across a notebook you will not find again in March.

Where Christians Differ — and Why That Is Worth Knowing

Sincere believers who hold Scripture in the highest regard have long disagreed about how these covenants relate to one another. Some traditions emphasize continuity, reading the covenants as successive administrations of one unfolding promise. Others emphasize discontinuity, drawing sharper distinctions between the old and the new. These differences shape how churches practice baptism, how they read Old Testament law, and how they understand the church’s relationship to Israel.

You are not obligated to resolve that debate before you can study a covenant passage faithfully. But you are better served knowing that the debate exists, and knowing where your own tradition stands, than being surprised by it later. This is one reason study tools that flatten every question into a single generic answer tend to be unhelpful here. A study companion that responds within your own theological tradition can explain how your church reads the covenants and fairly describe how others read them — without pretending the disagreement is not there.

Scripture remains the authority. A study tool is a tool.

A Four-Week Plan to Get You Started

Covenant study can sprawl. A simple structure keeps it from doing so.

Week one: Genesis 9 and Genesis 12. Establish the pattern and the scope. Write down every promise you find.

Week two: Genesis 15 and 17. Slow down. This is the theological center of gravity for much of what follows.

Week three: Exodus 19–24 and 2 Samuel 7. Watch the covenant idea take national and royal shape.

Week four: Jeremiah 31, Luke 22, and Hebrews 8–9. Bring the thread to its conclusion and read the older passages again in that light.

If you would rather not build the schedule yourself, a structured study plan can lay out the readings, the questions for each session, and space for your own notes — which matters more than it sounds, because covenant study rewards the person who can look back at what they observed three weeks ago.

Why This Changes How You Read

The practical payoff is not trivia. It is confidence.

When you understand the covenants, the Old Testament stops feeling like a long detour before the good part. The prophets make sense because you know what agreement they are appealing to. The Gospels gain weight because you hear the promises being invoked. And the letters become arguments you can follow rather than conclusions you have to accept on trust.

More than that, you begin to see something about the character of God that is easy to miss verse by verse: he binds himself. He makes promises he does not have to make, and he keeps them across centuries and generations of human failure. That is not an abstraction. That is the ground you stand on.

Start Studying This Week

Open Genesis 17 and run the five questions. Write down what you find. Then read Romans 4 and see how differently it reads.

If you want a place to do that work where your notes, your questions, and the text itself all live together, you can start a free trial of Gabriel and begin your first covenant study today.