Why Does God Threaten to Cut People in Two if They Break Covenants?

The Know

When calling the people of Judah to repentance, the Lord through his prophet Jeremiah states, “And those who transgressed my covenant and did not keep the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will make like the calf when they cut it in two and passed between its parts” (Jeremiah 34:18, NRSV). The next verses explicitly connect this violation of the covenant to impending death: “The officials of Judah, the officials of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, the priests, and all the people of the land who passed between the parts of the calf shall be handed over to their enemies and to those who seek their lives. Their corpses shall become food for the birds of the air and the wild animals of the earth” (Jeremiah 34:19–20).1 Although cryptic at first, an examination of Genesis 15 helps to explain Jeremiah’s comments and shows how important covenants are to God.

In Genesis 15:7, the Lord promises to Abram that he will inherit land or a kingdom, but when Abram asks in verse 8 how he will know the inheritance will be given, God does not simply say “because I said so.” Rather, He tells Abraham, “Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” Abram brings these animals and cuts the animals in half (except for the birds) and lays each half opposite the other. And when the sun went down, fiery symbols of the Lord, a smoking firepot and flaming torch, passed between the pieces (Genesis 15:9–10, 17–18).2

In the ancient Near East, it was common for people making covenants with each other to cut an animal in half and then walk between the two pieces.3 The fate of the animal becomes symbolically tied to the binding promise. It is as though one party is saying to the other party in the covenant, “If I do not live up to my side of this covenant, may I be cut in half as this animal has been cut in half.”4 This kind of thing was so common that the Hebrew term generally translated as “to make a covenant” is more literally translated as “to cut a covenant.”5

Some texts are very clear about the threatening nature of this kind of covenant. A treaty from Syria from the 8^th century BCE states, “Just as this calf is cut up, so may Matiel be cut up,” if he breaks his oath. One also finds texts like this: “Abba-AN swore to Yarim-lim the oath of the gods and cut the neck of a lamb, (saying): If I take back what I gave you. . . .”6 Or even, “As this calf is cut into two so may Mati'el be cut into two” if he were to violate the covenant.7

The Why

The visceral nature of covenant-making in the ancient world impressed upon those involved that their covenant was a serious and binding agreement which would not be broken lightly. Such an act assured Abraham that he would indeed inherit the land, because God almighty, astonishingly, allowed Himself to be bound under such a covenant to give Abram and his seed the land. As He said, “I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise” (Doctrine and Covenants 82:10). Ironically, it is mortals, not God, who break covenants, and “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), as the cut animals and the threatening words of the Lord recorded in Jeremiah remind the reader. As deadly serious as this is, it becomes so much more astonishing to recognize that God, in an act of loving kindness, agrees to take the consequence of our broken covenant and suffer death for us, if we will but repent.

For members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, covenants bind us to God in an everlasting relationship that He will never violate. As President Russell M. Nelson has said, “Because of our covenant with God, He will never tire in His efforts to help us, and we will never exhaust His merciful patience with us.”8 Genesis 15 effectively tells us that God would rather die than violate his covenant. Obviously God cannot die, which means that he is never going to violate his covenant with Abraham and his posterity. With this in mind, Jeremiah 34 becomes even more poignant. God swore that He would never break His covenant, but the people at the time of Jeremiah broke theirs and would not repent, leading to terrible results for the inhabitants of Judah. Knowing how seriously God takes his covenants can help us to take our covenants even more seriously as we walk along the covenant path back to him.