Justin Effler’s Reviews > The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross > Status Update

δαθήη, the sole function of the other party being to accept or reject what was determined by the dominant partner.

(Gn. 15: 17). There are some interesting features of this process of covenant-making, the outstanding one being that again we see Yahweh as taking on Himself all the obligations. He alone symbolically passes through the pieces, probably because Abram was not taking upon himself any obligation.

kārath in the expression ‘to cut a covenant’... The cutting of the animals in pieces seems more intelligible as an invocation of the same fate upon the partners should they be guilty of breaking their compact.

As Büchsel says: ‘The essential meaning of this freeing from the curse of the Law is that He gives not only an actual, but a legally based freedom.‘112 The law of God has no more claim on us.

They did not intend ransom to be taken as a full and sufficient statement of what the atonement was and did, but as far as it goes it gives a picture of one aspect of that great work.

There can be no reasonable doubt in view of Ephesians I : 7 and the context here that we are to think of the payment of a ransom.