Promises of the Covenant

Thought provoking and impressive. This is a joy to read, thank you for posting.

Maybe "of" in place of "for" but I am surely NOT making a correction, just an impression.

Great stuff!

Thanks for the comment. I'm glad you liked it.

I guess you meant "for" in place of "of" rather than vice versa because currently it has "of" (if you mean the title). And yes, I think it would make sense to put "for" there. Can't say offhand which one I would prefer. The title was almost like an afterthought when the poem was 99% finished.

Usually there are smaller details that kind of bug me after posting. Fore example, when I wrote "To great multitudes of sandy grain below " I think it was a purposeful stylistic choice to use a bit unconventional and ambigous expression "sandy grain" rather than "grain of sand" even though it obviously means grains of sand. But afterwards I became less certain whether this works or not. And then again, perhaps "sandy grain" is better because it carries the meaning well enough while at the same time creating connotations to certain other Biblical metaphors and images.

I'll just add some commentary on this poem. I'll try to keep it reasonably brief and will mainly focus on the overarching idea (or a major aspect of it) that I find very interesting. Some parts of it are kind of speculative regarding a possible meaning below the surface of the relevant Biblical texts. Let me know what you think.

As cloudless night falls in the desert
Abraham looks at the glory of starry sky
Feeling the weight of his earthen vessel
Already filling of the years gone by

The glory of the starry sky makes already old Abraham contemplate his remaining years in light of God's promises.

Remnants of light from the fiery stars above
Reach down as rays form their crown
The diadem of illumination carries soft glow
To great multitudes of sandy grain below
Fistful of earthly tokens of promise
Slowly running down from his hand
Like hourglass of his remaining years
Hope from above becoming one with fears
Lying in the sand of the promised land

Both stars and grains of sand were used as metaphors when God told Abraham about the multitude of his descendants. Here they are combined as the light from the stars reaches the sand of the ground that Abraham is taking into his hand when thinking. Letting that sand flow back to ground then becomes a metaphor of the limited time he felt he had left. The yet unfulfilled promises would have created a sense of worry.

Thinking of the puzzling covenant once more
No doubt its maker has been trustworthy before
The promise is as its giver
Present when unseen and truly unbroken
Yet in his soul he senses a shiver
Feeling of doubt still left unspoken
He now finds himself inwardly debating
Oh, how long have been the years of waiting

He feels that God has already proven himself to be trustworthy. Yet he can't help but feel some frustration and doubt.

Abiding is the memory of the night
In vividness of its haunting sense of fright
Animals cut in half and left to lie
Lord moving between them in darkness as light
Known ceremonial symbol of death in sight
Yet the thought blocks breath and shocks the eye

The ceremony associated with God's covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15 seems to imply that death is the consequence of breaking the covenant. I haven't studied this extensively but some commentators seem kind of baffled by what it could mean for such a consequence to be (hypothetically) applied to God. One plausible interpretation could be that this means something like "the consequence of breaking this covenant would be death, but God can't die, so it must be impossible for the covenant to be broken from God's part". I tried to express a somewhat similar thought in this section of the poem:

A covenant as unbreakable as its father
Surely the ever-truthful one can't lie
The Living, Immortal One would rather
Lay down his own glorious life and die

But there could be an interesting twist in the plot. I'll return to that later in this post.

The waters of time passed
But before passing on with their stream
He got to see beginnings of his dream
Of promises coming to fruition
Saving the most precious inheritance
Left to every coming generation
Promised blessing of coming deliverance

God had multiple promises to Abraham (land, multitude of descendants, his offspring being a blessing to the nations). He did see elements of them already fulfilled, but it makes sense to think that their ultimate fulfillment was still to come.

As stream of time consumed earth's basin
Finally the child of promise was found
The one to whom the covenant was bound
Not one to pass forward in generation
The torch of the coming blessing
Lord's promise and his reputation
Seemed tied to his life progressing

It makes sense to see Jesus as the ultimate fulfillment of these promises. And in that case, it looks like what happens to Jesus also determines what happens to these promises.

In wisdom and stature did he grow
No sin's blemish did he ever know
Yet came to pass a sight so fateful
A dying remnant of one faithful
The great shepherd struck down
Was there no righteous heir left now
For the long-promised crown?

The death of Jesus became as a shock to his followers. For a while, it looked like his life ended in a failure. And given the idea that the ultimate fulfillment of the promises was in him, what happened to the promises?

Keep in mind that Jesus is both God and man, how does this situation look? As a man he's the one on whom the fulfillment of the covenant promises depend. As God he is on the other side of that equation as the giver of the promises of the covenant. This is the moment where those promises seemed to fail, and as was noted, there is a sense in which the expected consequence is the death of the giver of those promises. So the moment when it seemed the covenant was broken was also the moment when it could be said that in some sense God died (God the Son died on the cross). So in a sense, the death of the child of promise is at the same time the death of the promise's giver.

They had yet to see meaning from the image
The rule of true servant-king's lineage
When others were scattered or defiant
But one of power made perfect in weakness
His shoulders carried the weight of covenant
Bringing forth the pain of grace in meekness

What was yet to be understood was that in fact Jesus' death was the means by which the promises came to fulfillment. He became the blessing for the nations as he died for our sins, and through faith in him, people from all over the world can become Abraham's spiritual descendants (Galatians 3:7).

Death of promise in strife was seeming
Yet one laid down in shame now did in victory stand
Eyes finally opened to words' truest meaning
"God will provide for himself a lamb"

Death by crucifixion was considered a great shame. But although Jesus was "laid down in shame" he "stood in victory" in his resurrection. The words "God will provide for himself a lamb" come from another interesting episode from Abraham's life (Genesis 22) where the symbolism of substitutionary atonement prefiguring Christ's atonement on our behalf is hard to miss once it's seen.

Thanks for the comment. I'm glad you liked it.

I guess you meant "for" in place of "of" rather than vice versa because currently it has "of" (if you mean the title). And yes, I think it would make sense to put "for" there. Can't say offhand which one I would prefer. The title was almost like an afterthought when the poem was 99% finished.

Usually there are smaller details that kind of bug me after posting. Fore example, when I wrote "To great multitudes of sandy grain below " I think it was a purposeful stylistic choice to use a bit unconventional and ambigous expression "sandy grain" rather than "grain of sand" even though it obviously means grains of sand. But afterwards I became less certain whether this works or not. And then again, perhaps "sandy grain" is better because it carries the meaning well enough while at the same time creating connotations to certain other Biblical metaphors and images.

Thanks for the comment. I'm glad you liked it.

I guess you meant "for" in place of "of" rather than vice versa because currently it has "of" (if you mean the title). And yes, I think it would make sense to put "for" there. Can't say offhand which one I would prefer. The title was almost like an afterthought when the poem was 99% finished.

Usually there are smaller details that kind of bug me after posting. Fore example, when I wrote "To great multitudes of sandy grain below " I think it was a purposeful stylistic choice to use a bit unconventional and ambigous expression "sandy grain" rather than "grain of sand" even though it obviously means grains of sand. But afterwards I became less certain whether this works or not. And then again, perhaps "sandy grain" is better because it carries the meaning well enough while at the same time creating connotations to certain other Biblical metaphors and images.

Thanks for sharing your poem.
I envisioned "sandy grain" as sand in a desert/sand in an hour-glass & running through his hands like water does.
Just those two words evoke many Scripture accounts - the valley of dry bones, for example.

I listened to the video and found reading and listening to the poems gave it a much greater depth.
I'm just about to plunge into the commentary above.
You have been blessed with an extraordinary talent, praise the Lord!