In religion, we talk about covenants. We talk about making covenants, keeping covenants, and breaking covenants. The Hebrew word for covenant is berith — meaning to cut, as in to cut a covenant.

A covenant is a personal, binding agreement to do something or not to do something — made between two or more people (or between God and a person or people.)  It can be written or oral. It can be accompanied by a seal or a sign, or an oath, even a ceremony. God is continually trying to help us return to Him — through various covenants. And it all began in the beginning. Probably even before the beginning.

Before the Fall, God Covenants with Adam and Eve

It seems that God made covenants with Adam and Eve — although the scriptures do not always call them “covenants.” Obviously, there is a pattern in covenant-making which involves a blessing such as a promised land and a cursing if not kept, such as the loss of a promised land. Therefore, we can surmise that God covenanted with Adam and Eve from the beginning. God gave Adam and Eve a Promised Land — the Garden of Eden– as long as they kept His laws — one of which was a commandment not to eat the fruit from that tree in the garden — the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. If they ate fruit from that one tree, then a curse would follow.

These details of blessings and curses follow the pattern of covenant-making. God also commanded them to take care of the garden and animals and to multiply. God gave them their agency, meaning they could choose to keep this covenant or not. But just as blessings follow covenant-keeping, curses follow covenant breaking.

But, there was a way back. There is a return to the garden and the presence of the Lord. And God made another covenant with Adam and Eve to provide for their return.

After the Fall, God Covenants with Adam and Eve

After they ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge and lost their glory and garden, God said He would deliver them from the devastatingly depressing telestial world and return them to their paradisiacal  Promised Land (garden of Eden — millennial type, terrestrial.) But, they had to wait five and one-half days. Well, as you can imagine, they thought of days as we call them here on earth. But not so. God’s time of 5.5 days is a lot longer for us in this world — try 5,500 years. Not too comforting. Too great a punishment. And Adam and Eve could not handle this. In fact, it hardly makes sense — they were going to die before that time. So, according to The First Book of Adam and Eve, here is a possible scenario of how this went down:

“God said to Adam, “I have ordained on this earth days and years, and you and your descendants shall live and walk in them until the days and years are fulfilled; when I shall send the Word that created you, and against which you have transgressed, the Word that made you come out of the garden, and that raised you when you were fallen.

Yes, the Word that will again save you when the five and a half days are fulfilled.” But when Adam heard these words from God, and of the great five and a half days, he did not understand the meaning of them. For Adam was thinking there would be only five and a half days for him until the end of the world. And Adam cried and prayed to God to explain it to him.

Then God in his mercy for Adam who was made after His own image and likeness, explained to him, that these were 5,000 and 500 years; and how One would then come and save him and his descendants. But before that, God had made this covenant with our father, Adam, in the same terms, before he came out of the garden when he was by the tree where Eve took of the fruit and gave it to him to eat. Because, when our father Adam came out of the garden, he passed by that tree and saw how God had changed the appearance of it into another form, and how it shriveled.  And as Adam went to it he feared, trembled, and fell down; but God in His mercy lifted him up, and then made this covenant with him. (Chapter III – Concerning the promise of the great five and a half days.The First Book of Adam and Eve.)”

I don’t think Adam and Eve were happy about this timeframe. And yet, it seems set in stone. As part of the covenant, there was no way of getting around the timing:

When Adam and Eve heard these words from God, they cried and sobbed yet more; but they strengthened their hearts in God, because they now felt that the Lord was to them like a father and a mother; and for this very reason, they cried before Him, and sought mercy from Him. Then God had pity on them, and said: “O Adam, I have made My covenant with you, and I will not turn from it; neither will I let you return to the garden, until My covenant of the great five and a half days is fulfilled.” (Chapter VII – The beasts are appeased.)

Because Adam and Eve had bodies of light and lived in a state of Paradise, similar to what the Millennium will be like, they were discouraged by the darkness of this current world.

Then Adam said to God: “O Lord, take You my soul, and let me not see this gloom any more; or remove me to some place where there is no darkness.” But God the Lord said to Adam, “Indeed I say to you, this darkness will pass from you, every day I have determined for you, until the fulfillment of My covenant; when I will save you and bring you back again into the garden, into the house of light you long for, in which there is no darkness*. I will bring you to it—in the kingdom of heaven.”

Jehovah explains the covenant He has made with Adam and Eve — how he will be born of the flesh and suffer to save them:

Again said God to Adam, “All this misery that you have been made to take on yourself because of your transgression, will not free you from the hand of Satan, and will not save you. But I will. When I shall come down from heaven, and shall become flesh of your descendants, and take on Myself the infirmity from which you suffer, then the darkness that covered you in this cave shall cover Me in the grave, when I am in the flesh of your descendants. And I, who am without years, shall be subject to the reckoning of years, of times, of months, and of days, and I shall be reckoned as one of the sons of men, in order to save you.” (Chapter XIV – The earliest prophesy of the coming of Christ.)

I find it so interesting that Adam and Eve were both so devastated by this earth. I guess we cannot compare terrestrial with telestial, having only knowledge of life here on earth. But for them, they could compare life in Paradise and life on mortal earth. The curse of the loss of their promised land was more than they could bear.

Then Adam and Eve went in search of the garden. And the heat beat like a flame on their faces; and they sweated from the heat, and cried before the Lord. But the place where they cried was close to a high mountain, facing the western gate of the garden. Then Adam threw himself down from the top of that mountain; his face was torn and his flesh was ripped; he lost a lot of blood and was close to death. Meanwhile Eve remained standing on the mountain crying over him, thus lying. And she said, “I don’t wish to live after him; for all that he did to himself was through me.” Then she threw herself after him; and was torn and ripped by stones; and remained lying as dead.

But the merciful God, who looks over His creatures, looked at Adam and Eve as they lay dead, and He sent His Word to them, and raised them. And said to Adam, “O Adam, all this misery which you have brought on yourself, will have no affect against My rule, neither will it alter the covenant of the 5, 500 years.“ (Chapter XXI – Adam and Eve attempt suicide.)