Q&A: Covenant and Oath
Covenant and Oath
Question
Hello Rabbi. I wanted to ask: what is the legal status of a covenant? When I make a covenant with someone, is its status like that of an oath, or is it something in its own right (another kind of commitment)? And if so, I’d be glad if you could elaborate or bring sources on the topic for me to read.
Answer
There is no general answer to this, because the concept of a covenant is not unambiguous. There are covenants with an oath and covenants without one.
Discussion on Answer
I don’t know what “an example” would mean. If people make a covenant without an oath, then there is no oath. Do you mean from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)? I don’t know how one verifies that there was no oath. The concept of a covenant is not a halakhic one, and it has no halakhic definition.
I passed the request/suggestion on to the site editor.
It says, “that you may enter into the covenant of the Lord your God, and into His oath.” This can be interpreted to mean that it is a covenant with an oath, or alternatively that an ordinary covenant does not necessarily include an oath.
Thank you, Rabbi. It doesn’t really sound from the continuation of the verses or from the other commentators that “oath” here specifically means an oath, and perhaps at most it is the language of a certain type of oath, one whose violation incurs a curse. In any case, it seems to me from the fact that in a covenant it was customary to split something in two and pass through it, that a covenant is a kind of commitment (I don’t know whether it is necessarily bilateral, but that’s how it sounds) in which each side receives something in return for what the other receives from him. As if to say: here is a division of the obligations, equally balanced. Maybe that is also why the Tablets of the Covenant themselves are written in that way. It says later in the verse you quoted: “in order that He may establish you today as His people, and that He may be your God.” The first five commandments fulfill “and He may be your God,” and the latter ones fulfill that we will be His people, since by their nature they seem to be commandments for establishing the social order (although I agree with your view on the topic, that all the commandments are religious commandments, but that’s a longer discussion).
Or more precisely: an oath of cursing.
An oath of cursing is an oath (see Maimonides, Oaths 2:2 and 2:4).
To Oren: I think it’s already possible to log into the site using a WordPress user.
Great, thank you very much, and all the best!
Can the Rabbi give an example of a covenant that is without an oath?
By the way, it would be worth adding to the site an option to log in as a user, to make it easier to write questions and comments and so on.