Blood Covenants

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Blood Covenants

Did you know that marriage is a “blood covenant?” We don’t honor it as such now days. Even when you are feeding one another a piece of the wedding cake, you’re saying, “I’m coming into you and you into me.” The blood covenant part is completed when the two become one in the physical part of the marriage. Here you can see why YHVH says not to have physical relations with anyone before marriage. You would be making a blood covenant with someone whom you may not stay with for life. The reason the ring is worn on the third finger is because man believed that the third finger had a nerve leading to the heart. Since the heart is what keeps the blood flowing, it became the symbol of life.

The Hebrews had a blood covenant they entered into which was considered a very serious matter. The first thing they would do is to take off their coat or robe and give it to you. To a Hebrew their robe represents their person, so in giving you the robe, they were giving you their entire being. The next thing they would do is to take off their belt and give it to you.

Now the belt wasn’t seen as holding up your pants, but rather as holding your armor together, the dagger, bow, sword, and arrows. So symbolically, you were giving the other person all your strength and protection. You would be saying, “if anybody attacks you, he attacks me.” After that, you would actually “cut” the covenant by taking an animal and splitting it down the middle, walking between both halves. Each half of the animal representing what should happen to you, if you broke that promise. Next they raised their right arms and cut the palms of their hands and brought them together. This symbolically shows the intermingling of blood is the intermingling of two lives to become one. Then as they stood there with the blood intermingling, they exchanged names. Remember in the scriptures how it says we will receive “a new name?” Then they stand before a witness and declare all their assets.

This meant the other person was entitled in a time of need to anything you owned. However, so was the liability yours also. Then they sat down to a memorial meal. Instead of meat however, they had bread and wine. They broke off a piece of bread and fed it to each other. They would say the bread was symbolic of the one person’s body being put into the other. The same with the wine. Last they would plant a tree sprinkled with the drops of blood from the covenant animal. Then it was finished. Didn’t Yeshua die on a blood splattered tree? This should sound familiar not only in human marriages, but in what Yeshua did for us! Shalom.