This article is part of the Covenants series. The previous article introduced the five covenants and the distinction between unilateral and bilateral agreements. This article goes deep on the Mosaic covenant - what it was, what it was for, and why it ended.
The Hebrew Roots Movement rests on a foundational assumption: that the Mosaic covenant - the Torah given at Sinai - remains binding on all of God's people, including Gentile believers. Pull that assumption out and the whole structure collapses. This article examines whether the assumption holds.
Two Kinds of Covenant
Not all biblical covenants are structured the same way. Some are bilateral - both parties have obligations, the covenant can be broken by either party's failure, and the conditions are explicit. Others are unilateral - God binds himself by oath, the promises flow from his commitment alone, and they are not conditioned on the human party's continued obedience.
The distinction matters enormously, because the Hebrew Roots Movement consistently collapses it.
Exodus 19:5 states the conditionality plainly: "Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples."
The word if is doing critical work. This is not the language of the Abrahamic covenant, where God simply declares and promises while Abram sleeps (Genesis 15). This is the language of mutual obligation. The Mosaic covenant is a bilateral agreement - both parties are bound, both parties have obligations, and the covenant can be broken from the human side.
Compare this with the Abrahamic covenant. In Genesis 15, God passes between the animal pieces alone - Abram is in a deep sleep. The covenant oath is entirely one-sided. God is binding himself. There is no if attached to the promise of land, seed, and blessing. The covenant is unconditional from the human side by design.
This is not a minor structural detail. It determines the entire character of each covenant.
Deuteronomy 28: Blessings and Curses
Deuteronomy 28 makes the bilateral structure of the Mosaic covenant unmistakable. Verses 1–14 catalogue the blessings for obedience: rain in season, fruitful land, victory over enemies, abundance in every area of life. Verses 15–68 catalogue the curses for disobedience - in exhaustive and devastating detail. Exile, disease, military defeat, famine, foreign domination, and ultimately the reversal of the Exodus itself.
Both outcomes are real possibilities. Both depend on Israel's faithfulness. The covenant can be broken - and the curses make clear what breaking it looks like. This is not symbolic language. It is the enforceable terms of a bilateral agreement.
The Hebrew Roots Movement tends to speak of Torah as though it is simply God's good instructions for all people in all times - timeless moral wisdom that anyone who loves God should want to follow. But Deuteronomy 28 is not written in that register. It is the language of a national covenant with specific parties, specific conditions, and specific consequences. You cannot lift the blessings and obligations out of that covenant structure and apply them universally without doing violence to the text.
They Broke It
Jeremiah 31:32 does not leave room for ambiguity. God describes the Mosaic covenant as "my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband." This is God's own verdict on the covenant's fate. Israel did not merely struggle to keep the covenant. They broke it. The bilateral agreement was violated from the human side - exactly as the bilateral structure made possible.
This is the same Jeremiah 31 that the Hebrew Roots Movement appeals to when it argues that the New Covenant is simply the Mosaic Torah written on the heart. But they cannot use Jeremiah 31:33 (the law on the heart) while ignoring Jeremiah 31:32 (the covenant that was broken). The verse immediately before their proof-text declares the old covenant broken.
The HRM's most common response to Hebrews 8 is to argue that the "new covenant" language means the Sinai covenant is now internalised - written on the heart instead of on stone tablets, but the same covenant. But this reading requires them to ignore Jeremiah's explicit contrast: "not like the covenant that I made with their fathers." The word not like demands discontinuity. If the new covenant were simply the old one internalised, the contrast would make no sense.
Three Purposes the Mosaic Covenant Served
Understanding why the Mosaic covenant ended requires understanding what it was for. Paul's letter to the Galatians addresses this directly.
First, the Mosaic covenant separated Israel from the nations. The food laws, Sabbath, circumcision, and purity regulations created a visible boundary between Israel and the surrounding peoples. This served God's purpose of maintaining a distinct covenant community through which the Messiah would come. Once the Messiah came, the boundary markers that pointed to that distinction had fulfilled their purpose.
Second, the Mosaic covenant exposed sin. Paul writes in Romans 7:7 that he would not have known covetousness was sin except through the law. The law does not produce righteousness - it reveals the impossibility of righteousness by human effort, and in doing so drives the covenant people toward the need for something better. As Paul says in Galatians 3:24, the law was a paidagogos - a guardian, a household slave whose job was to escort the child to school. The role was temporary and preparatory by design.
Third, the Mosaic covenant pointed forward to Christ as shadow to substance. Hebrews develops this at length - the sacrificial system, the priesthood, the tabernacle were all copies of heavenly realities (Hebrews 8:5), shadows of the good things to come (Hebrews 10:1). Shadows are not the substance. When the substance arrives, the shadow has served its purpose.
Galatians 3:19 asks: "Why then the law?" And answers: it was added "because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made." The word until is doing decisive work. The Mosaic covenant was not a permanent addition to the Abrahamic promises. It was a temporary administration that ran from Sinai until Christ.
Galatians 3:24–25 follows: "the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian." The guardian's role has ended. This is not incidental to Paul's argument - it is his central point.
Hebrews 8:13 confirms it: "In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away."
Even Within the Old Testament
It would be a mistake to think that the Mosaic covenant was ever the deepest foundation of Israel's relationship with God. Even within the Old Testament, Habakkuk 2:4 declares: "the righteous shall live by his faith." Paul quotes this verse three times across Romans, Galatians, and the letter to the Hebrews quotes it again. Righteousness before God was always by faith - the Mosaic covenant was never designed to be the mechanism of justification.
Leviticus 26 - the very chapter that catalogues the curses of Mosaic covenant unfaithfulness - ends with the ground of restoration in verses 42–45: "then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham." When God describes ultimate restoration, he reaches back past Moses to the Abrahamic promise. Even inside the Mosaic covenant's curse section, the final word is the older, unconditional covenant. The Mosaic covenant cannot be the last word even within its own text.
What the HRM Must Answer
The Hebrew Roots Movement must give an account of Jeremiah 31:32 - not just verse 33. If the old covenant was broken and the new covenant is explicitly described as "not like" the old one, the claim that the new covenant is simply internalised Sinai cannot stand.
They must give an account of Galatians 3:19 - the law was added until the offspring came. What does until mean if Torah observance continues unchanged after the arrival of the one the promise pointed to?
They must give an account of Hebrews 8:13 - the old covenant is described as obsolete by the author of Hebrews, quoting Jeremiah 31. The author of Hebrews is not an antinomian. He is a deeply Torah-formed Jewish Christian writer making a careful argument from the Hebrew scriptures themselves.
The Mosaic covenant was real, good, and holy. It served its purposes. It separated, exposed, and pointed. But it was bilateral and breakable, it was broken, it was temporary by design, and the one it pointed to has come. The shadow has given way to the substance.
This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. - Luke 22:20
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