a covenant with them. The terms and laws of the covenant covered their whole existence. Israel understood their identity as Yahweh’s covenantal people. “Yahweh your God” meant he was their covenantal Lord. The Sinai covenant, though, was not the only covenantal tune to which Israel danced. The Abrahamic covenant was the bass line on which the treble of Sinai was played. But what is a covenant? In the ancient Near East, a covenant at base was a promissory oath to do something sealed in a name of a