Question: I hear Dr Gileadi say the knowledge in the book Isaiah is part of the covenant blessing. So far I have not found a scriptural basis for that. Can you please kindly show where I can find it in the Bible? Isaiah 53:11 says “He shall see the toil of his soul and be satisfied; because of his knowledge, and by bearing their iniquities, shall my servant, the righteous one, vindicate many.” Dr Gileadi’s comments on this verse: The servant’s “knowledge”—which term defines an intact covenant relationship—thus consists of the terms of the Davidic Covenant under which he may “vindicate” or “justify” (yasdiq) Jehovah’s people before their God (APOCALYPTIC COMMENTARY OF THE BOOK OF ISAIAH). I think that Dr Gileadi’s idea on how covenant is linked to knowledge is a great idea.
Answer: A theological dictionary of the Old Testament will tell you that the term “knowledge” signifies a covenant relationship—as when Adam “knew” his wife Eve—and also a covenant blessing, because real knowledge comes with faith turned into knowledge as when you put God’s promises and covenants to the test by keeping their terms. With the doing, in effect, comes the understanding and a “sure hope” that is more than just hope but also an assurance. If a proxy savior—one who has a covenant relationship with God as under the Davidic Covenant—“knows” the terms of God’s covenant and fulfills them, he knows, or has the assurance, that God will do his part if he does his part. In other words, if he takes others’ burdens on himself by answering to God for their transgressions (of those who are weaker than himself in the faith), then he knows that God will protect them for his sake or deliver them in some way when they are mortally threatened so long as they follow his counsel.
That is the role of fathers toward their families on which patriarchy is based, and it is also the end-time mission of the 144,000 servants of God toward the house of Israel when they bring them home from exile and dispersion to Zion or the New Jerusalem in God’s Day of Judgment upon a wicked world. If we understood temple covenants more fully, we would realize that they are elements or manifestations of the Davidic Covenant, a proxy savior covenant patterned after the saving mission of Jesus Christ. Biblical covenants on the model of ancient Near Eastern emperor-vassal covenants held that if a vassal king such as David or Hezekiah answered for his people’s disloyalties to the emperor—to the Lord—then the emperor was bound under the terms of the covenant to deliver the vassal king and his people from a mortal threat. That arrangement could be counted on so long as the vassal king kept the law of the emperor—who was called his “Lord” and “Father”—and so long as the people of the vassal kept the law of the vassal, who was called the emperor’s “servant” and “son.”
