consent. Importantly too, this incident is the earliest and weightiest example of the notion that is vital to free societies—“the consent of the governed.” Second, the covenant was a matter of a morally binding pledge. It is this moral dimension that makes a covenant different from a contract, a political covenant stronger than a social contract, and a covenant of marriage before God deeper and more lasting than a civil marriage. (The Old English term wedlock was far from what it sounds like—a relationship