Abrahamic Covenant Research Paper

The Alternating Relationships between the Abrahamic and Mosaic Covenant
Shelsea Lopez-Massella

Abraham and Moses, each his own patriarch who lived within his own covenant, and led Israel, the people of God, with a contrasting relationship to God. The “Father of Nations”, Abraham, develops an undivided, and unwavering relation to God, contrasting with Moses, whose covenant began with doubt but progressed to become as faithful as that of Abraham. Each Israelite leader is his own, and one may come to conceive the idea that the differing relationships served a purpose in teaching the peoples of Israel and their future generations vital lessons in both faith and religious law.
The relationship between God and each of these men was of a different
Much like a father to his heir, the Lord places great responsibility into the hands of his son. The affiliation Abraham held to God as a friendship, giving not only the promise of the Holy Land, but showing their relationship as one of nurture and giving to his people since he was in total agreement with his creator. This contrasts to the laws of Moses, which were necessary to the work ethic and duty of man. This may be tied back to his initial lack of faith in the powers of the Lord.
Both leaders differ in their means of communications with God; true, they received similar covenants, however one was through direct speech and the other through prayer. Abraham from the beginning always spoke with the lord through his prayers; take for instance when he asked God for advice on what to do about Hagar and her son, the wicked city of Sodom, on the matter of the ritual of sacrifice with his son, Isaac, he prayed to the Lord. Moses similarly communicated to God through prayer, but he also got a visual and bodily form when God took on the form of the burning bush apart from direct speech. When Moses was tending to his flock, “An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire out of a bush. He gazed and there was a bush all aflame, yet the bush was not consumed.” (Exodus 3:2) Again, when Moses was to part the Red Sea on his escape from the land of Egypt, he talks to directly to God rather than indirectly through prayer. God responds “Why do you cry out to me? Tell
When he first encounters God in the form of a fiery bush, Moses questions God’s will by asking, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11). Although he meets God in a physical form, he still questioned him with doubts of his own abilities, claiming he was unfit to fill such a role. Moses started out his relationship with God with a deficiency of trust, daring to question God’s wishes; “But Moses spoke up and said ‘What if they do not believe me and do not listen to me, but say: The Lord did not appear to you?...Please, O Lord, I have never been a man or words either…I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” (Exodus 3:1, 10) Eventually, Moses does develop the same undoubting faith that Abraham processed, however unlike the outcome of the latter, his doubt does not let him see Canaan. Such can be assumed with his audacious act of enquiring “Why