It is unnecessary to labour the point that there were many nations in existence before

Israel. There were the Egyptians who oppressed them, and the ancestors of Abraham

himself, as well as the seventy nations mentioned by name in Gen. 10: Israel was the

firstborn by adoption, chosen by God for special favours and privileges "above all nations

upon the earth" (Deut. 14: 2). To such pertain "the promises".

These promises were largely those made by God to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Out of

the nine occurrences, in addition to Rom. 9: 4, of "promise" and "to promise" in

Romans, seven refer to the promises made to Abraham, one to the "fathers", and one to

the "gospel" (Rom. 1: 2). The reader will discover that there are few references to

"promises" in the N.T. that do not refer to Abraham and his seed. In the O.T. the

promises include "the land" and "the throne", and Rom. 15: 8 declares that the ministry

of the Lord Jesus was at the first "to confirm the promises made unto the fathers". In the

Prison Epistles there are no "promises".  Instead we have "the promise", entirely

unconnected with "the fathers", and going back to a time "before the overthrow of the

The next pair of privileges mentioned by the apostle are connected with "the glory"

and "the service". In the second of these cases the A.V. translators have felt constrained

to add the words "of God"; and, in the first case also, we might well read: "the glory of

the Lord." The "glory of the Lord" was spoken of by the Rabbinical writers as "The

Shekinah", the word being derived from shaken, "to dwell", and referring to the visible

glory of the Lord that dwelt between the Cherubim above the Mercy Seat. While this

was the peculiar privilege of Israel--no other nation had the visible presence of the Lord

in their midst--they like the rest "came short of the glory of God", and their failure was

all the more marked by reason of the greatness of their privileges.

"The service" that corresponds to "the glory" is referred to in Hebrews:

The central pair in the structure consists of "the covenants" and "the giving of the

law".  That Israel alone, of all the peoples of the earth, received "the law" is so

abundantly attested by Scripture that there is no need to give actual quotations. That the

"covenants" also, with one exception, are exclusively the prerogative of Israel is not so

generally accepted. The exception, of course, is the covenant made with Noah and with

all flesh, in the days of the flood, and is God's pledge that never again will He destroy

the earth by water. With this exception,  all the covenants of Scripture belong to

Abraham and his seed. This includes the "new covenant", as a reference to Jer. 31:

and Heb. 8: will show.

There is only one reference to a covenant in the Epistles of the Mystery, and that is in

Eph. 2: 12: "Strangers from the covenants of promise." In the flesh, no Gentile could

hope to stand on the same level as Israel. If he became a proselyte, he was admitted into

the favoured circle, but never attained equality. In the days to come, when Israel enter