The covenant with the Jews is a central concept in Judaism, representing a special, binding agreement between God and the Jewish people, beginning with Abraham and solidified with Moses at Sinai, where God promised to make Israel His chosen people and, in return, the people promised to follow His laws (mitzvot), including the Ten Commandments, establishing a relationship of mutual loyalty and responsibility for bringing the Messiah and fulfilling God’s plan.
God never promised the Israelite’s that their lives would be free from trouble. Four hundred years after Abraham, Israel is enslaved to the Egyptians. But God “remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob” (Exodus 2:24). After the Exodus from Egypt, God makes a covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai. Through the mediation of Moses, God enters into a fresh covenant relationship with Israel. This covenant does not supersede the Abrahamic covenant; it elaborates upon it.
The principal stipulations of the covenant are the “ten commandments,” which may be seen to follow as consequences of the prologue. For example, one could read it this way: “[because] I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt…you shall have no other Gods before me.…” The commandments are phrased as future indicative verbs, not imperatives. The idea here is that obedience to God should be a natural outworking of gratitude to him for deliverance.
God’s covenant with Israel is really the expression of his love for a particular people and his desire to receive their love in return. He binds himself to the destiny of Israel, even though we as a people continue to disobey him. What other leader would continue to reiterate his promises to people who have displayed such a penchant for breaking their word?
The relationship between Judaism and Jesus involves God’s everlasting covenant with Israel, initiated with Abraham, which Judaism maintains, while Christianity sees Jesus as fulfilling this covenant and establishing a “new covenant” for all believers (Jews and Gentiles) through his death and resurrection, a concept not accepted by mainstream Judaism. Judaism views Jesus as a historical Jewish figure but not the Messiah or divine, believing the true Messiah will bring a different era of peace, whereas Christians believe Jesus’s coming fulfills Old Testament prophecies and offers universal salvation, superseding older rites.