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God in His good pleasure makes the arrangement which man receives, though he is not passive (2 Kings 11:17). Such a covenant is a ‘disposition,’ an ‘ordainment,’ an expression of the divine will which they to whom it is made reverently welcome.

2. In classical writers, on the other hand, from the time of Plato, diaqhvkh generally means ‘a testament,’ ‘a will,’ a ‘disposition’ (of property, &
c.) to take effect after death; though the more general sense of ‘arrangement,’ ‘agreement,’ is also found (Arist.
Av. 440).

3. PHILO ( de nom. mut. §§ 6ff.; 1.586f. M.) refers to a treatise of his on ‘Covenants’ ( diaqh'kai ), which has unfortunately been lost. But in the same context he states the general idea which he attached to a Divine diaqhvkh . ‘Covenants’ he says ‘are written for the benefit of those who are worthy of bounty. So a Covenant is a symbol of grace, which God sets between Himself Who extends the boon and man who receives it’ ( l. c. ). And directly after he presents God Himself as ‘the highest kind of Covenant, the beginning and source of all graces.’ In another phrase of the passage he shews how easy it was to pass from the sense of ‘covenant’ to ‘will’: ‘[God] acknowledges that He will leave to the sinless and blameless an inheritance by terms of a covenant ( kata; diaqhvka" ), which it is fitting for God to give and for a wise man to receive. For He says: I will place My Covenant between Me and thee’ (Gen. 17:2). Comp. de sacr. Ab. § 14 (1.172f. M.).

JOSEPHUS uses the word several times for ‘will’ ( Ant. 17.3, 2; 9, 7; B.
J.
2.2, 3), and he appears to avoid the phrases of the LXX. hJ kibwto;" th'" diaqhvkh" and the like, using kibwtov" only.

4. In the N. T. the sense of ‘covenant’ is unquestionable, except in two passages: Gal. 3:15; and the passage under consideration (Heb. 9:15 f.). For the former passage see Bp. Lightfoot's note, who defends the sense ‘covenant.’ Compare Matt. 26:28 and parallels; Acts 3:25; 7:8; and notice the plural: Rom. 9:4; Gal. 4:24; Eph. 2:12 (Wisd. 18:22; Ecclus. 44:11; 2 Macc. 8:15).

5. The Latin renderings of diaqhvkh are instructive. In the N. T. the rendering is uniformly testamentum , even where the sense of covenant is unquestionable (Lk. 1:72; Acts 3:25 (d. dispositionis ); 7:8 (d. dispositionem ); Rom. 11:27) and in quotations from the O. T. where foedus stands in the Vulgate rendering of the O. T. itself: Jer. 31:31 (Heb. 8:8). The rendering is undoubtedly due to the Old Latin translation which Jerome in his cursory revision left untouched. The first translators naturally gave the ordinary equivalent of diaqhvkh . It is, however, not unlikely that in the common language testamentum was not restricted to the classical sense of will but had the wider meaning of charta testium subscriptionibus firmata , which is not uncommon in later ecclesiastical documents. See Du Cange s. v.

Even in the O. T. the Old Latin rendering had such authority that the phrase arca testamenti occurs four times (Ex. 30:26; Num. 14:44; 2 Kgs. 6:15; Jer. 3:16) for the common rendering arca foederis ; and so in Mal. 3:1 we have angelus testamenti ; comp. Zech. 9:11 and Dan. 3:34 (Vulg.); 11:28, 30, 32; Is. 14:13.

Elsewhere (except in the version of the Psalms taken from O. L. where

Jerome has pactum ), the rendering of tyrIB] , H1382 by foedus appears to be

universal.


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