Hi Jayhawker Soule.
"Covenant" is just a fancy name for a "contract."
The ancient world operated, based upon contracts.
Look at any ancient Law Code (e.g. Code of Hammurabi). All laws (even criminal laws) are framed in terms of contracts. Jurisprudence by rulers involved settling disputes based upon the logic of Contract Law, even when addressing violent crimes (e.g. "eye for an eye").
For marginal herding peoples (like the early Israelites or Moabites), the contracts/covenants were few. Contracts between one clan and another establishing mutual grazing territory, marriage contracts (between one family and another, not between one person and another person as marriage vows are worded today), and contracts of military alliance between related clans when faced with a mutual threat. Simple tribal contracts.
But in large citystates, the contracts could run into the hundreds, head onf one family dealing with a variety of merchants and craftspeople and neighboring farmers and foreign traders and corvee agreements with public officials, etc. Important contracts were usually enacted in or near a temple to insure the deity's involvement and sanction of the agreement. Because in early days the city's principal temple was the place where surplus grain was stored (maybe 5 years worth, in case of future drought) and often where next year's seed grain was stored (last season's best grain was not eaten, but sorted out and "sacrificed" to the temple god/goddess, i.e. saved as seed grain for the next season), the city's main temple remained the chief locus for the larger social contract (tying one's family's destiny to the destiny of the city) with the temple's deity as chief guarantor of the ethics underlying this social contract. The temple's role changed over time, but the number-one covenant remained between each family and the citystate's patron deity.
When these ancient contracts were made, whether tribal or civic, there was always a ceremonial element to it. Called "cutting a curse" in ancient languages (see below).
Contracts might involve cutting a sacrificed animal in half and each party to the contract walking between the animal's severed halves. Before literacy, parties to an agreement did not sign a written contract plus adding signatures by two witnesses, as today. But they swore aloud an oath to each other, an oath witnessed before others. "Bad things will happen to the clan or to the head-of-the-clan if the oath/covenant is broken" (the flip side of the oath being a "curse").
With tribal peoples, they designated their mutual "god of the father" (e.g. the Israelites' Yahweh, the Moabites' Shamash, etc.) as party to - and guarantor of - this oath (as well as the one who would enforce the curse, if necessary). Tribal people regularly reaffirmed their covenant at seasonal ceremonies jointly held at one of the sanctuaries for their mutual "god of the father."
Civic populations also held large seasonal ceremonies which all citizens were expected to attend. But the local priesthood would frequently go door to door, like tax collectors, if a family had been remiss and not sacrificed recently at the local temple. "You wouldn't want to anger our Patron god/goddess, would you?" Going regularly to the temple and praising/thanking the deity, loudly and publically, then offering a grain or burnt-offering sacrifice was considered a civic obligation, part of the family's covenant with its city which ("remember?") provides a major source of your family's prosperity. Contractual piety or devotion was thus ethical in nature - the temple cult linked everyone to each other within the local society, as mediated by and witnessed by the Patron deity. This temple cult was thus the central covenant of agrarian citystates. If this contract with the Patron deity is not honored, the deity (it is thought) might abandon the city - prosperity ends, and the city may be sacked by marauders as your deity's punishment for impiety. (The oath/curse two-sided coin is applied - and magnified - here in civic society, as well.)
Both tribal contracts and civic contracts were seriously put to the test after the arrival of kings as rulers.
(Before kings came onto the scene, both tribal and civic people were ruled by holy-individuals - prophets or priests/priestesses - or their secular representatives, judges or ensi.)
Prior to the arrival of secular kings, the holy-persons who ruled came from the upper strata of tribal or civic society (affluent families). Kings arrived in times of great turmoil, and were probably thought of as an expediency, "a temporary fix." These "men" were strong-men (some former mercenaries) who either came from the lower strata of society (often from a minority racial group) or were very popular with the lower classes. That was their power-base (many lower-classmen becoming soldiers in the king's army), and once a king had been given the power he wouldn't let go.
Thereafter there would be continued strain between these secular kings (on the one side) and his kingdom's rich/religious landowners and temple-officials and merchants (on the other side).
Kings often tried to twist the ancient contracts into a form to serve their needs. And they often gave very pious-sounding lipservice to the ancient cult, to legitimize their position. (Make their position as ruler seem god-ordained.) But, under kings, much of the ethical basis of the old covenants fell by the wayside. And later rebellions from the countryside would largely be based upon a (somewhat nostalgic but ethically genuine) social need for a return to the ancient covenants.
{ references in the next post }
Jane.
