Lists online say six, seven or eight. Scripture names five by the word itself, and the New Testament says only one of them was built to last as the way God and people live together.
So how many covenants are in the Bible? Five major covenants between God and people are named as covenants in the text itself: with Noah, with Abraham, with Israel at Sinai, with David, and the new covenant in Jesus.
Some lists add an Edenic or Adamic covenant, a priestly covenant, or a land covenant, which is how you get counts of six, seven or eight. The count that actually shapes your faith is two: the old covenant from Sinai, which Hebrews says was fading away, and the new one, which stood alone once the temple fell in AD 70.
Each covenant is God binding Himself to people who had not earned it, and each one points forward to Jesus.
A covenant is not a contract in the modern sense. A contract is a deal between parties protecting their own interests. A covenant in the ancient world created a relationship and bound the parties to it with an oath, often sealed with blood.
The standard Hebrew word for covenant, also used for treaties and alliances between people. It first appears in Genesis 6:18, when God tells Noah He will establish His covenant with him.
Hebrew does not usually say someone made a covenant. It says they cut one. Genesis 15:18 uses the phrase right after Abraham cuts animals in half and a flaming torch passes between the pieces.
The Greek word the Septuagint uses for berit, and the word Jesus uses over the cup. Hebrews uses it seventeen times, more than any other New Testament book, and in Hebrews 9:16 to 17 leans on its second meaning, a will.
There is also a political background that helps. In the 1950s, George Mendenhall compared the Sinai covenant with Hittite treaties in which a great king, the suzerain, bound a lesser king to himself. Those treaties opened by naming the king, recounted what he had done for the vassal, laid out stipulations, provided for the document to be stored and read, listed witnesses, and closed with blessings and curses. Ernest Lucas, summarizing that work in Themelios, notes that “in the Old Testament this pattern is clearest in the structure of the book of Deuteronomy”. Scholars still debate how close the fit is, so hold it as a strong comparison rather than a settled blueprint.
Read Exodus 20 with that in mind. It opens with I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, before a single command. Rescue comes first. The terms come after.
After the flood God promises never again to destroy the earth by water, and makes the covenant with Noah, his descendants and every living creature. Nothing is required of Noah. The sign is the bow in the clouds.
A people from a childless couple, a land, and a blessing that reaches every family on earth. God alone passes between the pieces in Genesis 15, and circumcision becomes the sign in Genesis 17. More in our study of the Abrahamic covenant.
The covenant through Moses, with Israel alone: commandments, priesthood, sacrifices and calendar, kept in the ark of the covenant. It is the one with blessings and curses attached, and the one the New Testament calls old.
David offers to build God a house and God promises to build David one, a dynasty and a throne established forever. The chapter never uses the word covenant, but Psalm 89 and 2 Samuel 23:5 call it exactly that. See the Davidic covenant.
Promised through Jeremiah, not like the one made when Israel came out of Egypt. Jesus lifts the cup at Passover and says this is it, in His blood. Forgiveness, direct knowledge of God, and the law written inside a person.
“I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.”
Genesis 9:13Notice the direction the five travel. The first takes in the whole earth. The next narrows to one family, then one nation, then one royal line. Then the new covenant opens back out to every nation, which is what Abraham was promised at the start. The narrowing was the road toward one person, and through Him back to everybody.
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Search this question and you will find confident lists that disagree. They are counting different things, and most of the extras come from one system of reading the Bible.
The Scofield Reference Bible notes list eight covenants and begin with two for Adam, one before the fall and one after. Genesis 1 to 3 never uses the word covenant. The main text offered is Hosea 6:7, “As at Adam, they have broken the covenant,” and the NIV footnote allows Adam as a place or simply human beings.
This one does have the word. Numbers 25 gives Phinehas a covenant of peace and a lasting priesthood, and Jeremiah 33 and Malachi 2 speak of a covenant with Levi. It is real, and it sits inside the Sinai arrangement rather than beside it.
Scofield called it the Palestinian covenant, and later teachers renamed it the land covenant. It comes from Deuteronomy 29:1, the covenant made in Moab in addition to the one at Horeb. Most readers treat that as Sinai renewed for a new generation.
Covenant theology counts differently again. The Westminster Confession of 1646 speaks of a covenant of works with Adam and a covenant of grace running through all of history. Those are theological categories rather than named covenants in the text.
So the honest answer depends on what you are counting. Covenants that use the word and mark a turn in the story: five. Every covenant mentioned anywhere, including human ones like Jonathan and David: dozens.
It sees one God with one saving purpose from Genesis to Revelation, and reads the covenants as stages of a single story of grace. That instinct is right. Where it can go wrong is flattening the differences, so the law of Moses gets carried into the church as though the covenant change changed very little.
It takes seriously that God dealt with people differently at different times, which is plainly true. Where it goes wrong is keeping Israel and the church on separate tracks forever, and using covenants like the land covenant to schedule a future restoration of the old order. We have written about that fully in what dispensationalism is.
Most counting lists never get to the part that matters most. The New Testament does not treat the covenants as a stack that keeps getting taller. It treats one of them as temporary and says so.
“By calling this covenant ‘new,’ he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.”
Hebrews 8:13The Sinai system is on pause. One day a temple will be rebuilt, sacrifices will resume, and the old covenant arrangement with Israel will pick up where it left off.
The first covenant was already obsolete when the letter was written and was about to disappear. It did. In AD 70 Rome destroyed the temple and the whole sacrificial system stopped for good.
At Sound of Heaven we hold that covenant is the key to reading the end of the age. The Sinai covenant was given to one nation for a season, fulfilled by Jesus, and brought to its end in the first century. The cross ratified the new covenant. The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 removed the last structure of the old one. From that point the new covenant stood alone, and it is the only covenant through which anyone now comes to God.
That is why we read Jesus in Matthew 24 the way we do. When He says this generation will not pass away until all these things happen, He is talking about the end of the covenant age His hearers lived in, not the end of the planet. We walk through that in Matthew 24 explained. Paul makes the same move in Galatians 4, where Hagar and Sarah represent two covenants and the slave woman is sent away.
Two corrections cut the other way. First, the old covenant ending does not mean the Old Testament stops mattering. It still teaches and still witnesses to Jesus. Second, it does not mean the Jewish people were cast off. The new covenant was promised to Israel and Judah first, the first believers were all Jewish, and Paul insists in Romans 11 that God has not rejected His people. What ended was a system, not a people.
And not every covenant shares Sinai's fate. The promise to Noah still holds over every rainstorm. The promises to Abraham and David are not cancelled either. They are fulfilled in Jesus, the seed of Abraham and the son of David on the throne. Only one covenant was built to expire, and Galatians 3:17 explains why: “The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise.”
According to Jeremiah 31, which covenant is the new covenant explicitly not like?
Jeremiah 31:32 names it directly: not like the covenant made with their ancestors when God took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt. That is Sinai, which is why Hebrews quotes Jeremiah and then calls the first covenant obsolete.
Which covenant you think you are standing in shapes how you pray, how you handle failure, and how you read the Old Testament.
Sinai came with blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. The new covenant rests on Jesus' faithfulness and His blood, and God says He will remember sins no more. You are not waiting to see whether this week's performance keeps you in.
The standard did not drop. It moved from stone to hearts, which is what the prophets called circumcision of the heart. Our study of which Old Testament laws still apply works this out in detail.
Jeremiah says they will all know Me, from the least to the greatest. No priestly class, no access list. The gifts of the Spirit are for every believer and still active today.
If the new covenant is mostly future, you spend your life waiting for the real thing. It is not future. The Kingdom of God is here, the covenant is in force, and every promise in it applies to your ordinary Tuesday.
Every time a church takes communion, it repeats the words that announce which covenant it lives under. This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Noah's promise protected the world long enough for the story to continue. Abraham's promise needed a seed, and Paul says the seed is Christ. Sinai showed that nobody could keep faithfulness from the outside. David's promise needed a son on the throne, and Peter says at Pentecost that God put Him there. The new covenant is not a sixth item on the list. It is what the first four were reaching for.
So when somebody asks how many covenants are in the Bible, the most useful answer is the one Jesus gave at a Passover table. One cup, one covenant, one mediator, and it has been in force ever since.
For related reading, see what a covenant is, the new covenant, the law of Moses, who wrote Hebrews and what we believe.
Scripture names five major covenants, with Noah, Abraham, Sinai, David and the new covenant, other lists add Adamic, priestly or land covenants, and the New Testament says the Sinai covenant was temporary, ended with the temple in AD 70, and left the new covenant in Jesus standing alone.
If you grew up on prophecy charts or a rulebook faith, send your questions in and somebody at Sound of Heaven will work through it with you.
Five major covenants between God and people are named as covenants in the text: with Noah, with Abraham, with Israel at Sinai through Moses, with David, and the new covenant in Jesus. Some lists count six, seven or eight by adding an Edenic or Adamic covenant, a priestly covenant, or a land covenant from Deuteronomy 29. The Scofield Reference Bible notes list eight. The difference comes from what is being counted, not from different Bibles.
The Noahic covenant, God's promise to every living creature never again to destroy the earth by flood, with the rainbow as its sign. The Abrahamic covenant of land, descendants and blessing to all nations. The Mosaic covenant at Sinai, the law given to Israel. The Davidic covenant of a lasting throne and dynasty. And the new covenant promised in Jeremiah 31 and inaugurated by Jesus at the last supper in His blood.
Not by name. Genesis 1 to 3 never uses the word covenant for God's dealings with Adam. The case for one rests mainly on Hosea 6:7, which the NIV renders as at Adam, they have broken the covenant, with a footnote allowing like Adam or like human beings, and Adam is also a town in Joshua 3:16. Covenant theology and dispensationalism both describe an Adamic covenant, but it is a theological inference rather than a named covenant.
The new covenant is the one through which anyone comes to God now. The promise to Noah still stands over creation. The promises to Abraham and David are fulfilled in Jesus rather than cancelled. The Sinai covenant is the one Hebrews 8:13 calls obsolete and about to disappear, and it came to its end when the temple was destroyed in AD 70. Its law still teaches and points to Jesus, but it no longer governs believers.
Covenant theology reads the Bible as one covenant of grace unfolding through history, stressing continuity between Israel and the church. Dispensationalism divides history into distinct eras, keeps Israel and the church on separate tracks, and expects future fulfillments for national Israel. Both see real structure in the covenants. We think covenant theology is closer on the unity of God's purpose, and that both miss how decisively the old covenant ended in the first century.