Vox Community Podcast

Genesis 12 explains the historical backdrop to the phrase from John 3:16, “that he gave”, with the story of Abraham and Sarah. God promised Abraham ‘a great reward of land and descendants’. Abraham, in turn, was to promise that he and his descendants would remain blameless before God. God then called Abraham to perform a blood covenant, an Old Testament custom of slaughtering five animals lengthwise and laying the halves across from each other in a ditch where the blood pooled. The greater and lesser of the covenant parties walked the blood path, demonstrating that if either broke the covenant, this was their outcome. Abraham was terrified to be part of this covenant, knowing that being blameless before God would be impossible. At dark God walked the blood path as smoke and then again as a blazing firepot, signaling that Jesus will die a bloody death in fulfillment of the covenant. Over many years the Jews recreated this ceremony in the temple until the time of Jesus’s death. When Jesus called out tha