The New Covenant rests upon prior Biblical covenants or contracts which form its historical, social and legal context. The first clearly explicit Biblical divine-human contract is the Noahic covenant. It provided the basis for civil authority to use lethal force to execute some of God’s judgments to protect human life (Gen 9:5–6); it defined the variability limits of the post-flood geophysical environment (Gen 8:21–22, 9:11–15; Isa 54:9–10); and it laid out the biological