It is worthy of note that when the Lord enters into covenant with Abraham by means of a prescribed sacrifice (Gen. 15 : 7-18), it is said that the Lord “cut a covenant with Abram”; but when the Lord calls on Abraham to cut a covenant of blood-friendship, by the rite of circumcision (Gen. 17 : 1-12), the Lord says, for himself, “I will make [or I will fix] my covenant between me and thee.” In the one case, the Hebrew word is _karath_ (כָּרַת) “to cut”; in the other, it is _nathan_ (נָתַן) “to give,” or “to fix.” This change goes to show that the idea of cutting a covenant includes the act of a cutting--of a cutting of one’s person or the cutting of the substitute victim--as an integral part of the covenant itself; that a covenant may be made, or fixed, without a cutting, but that the term “cutting” involves the act of cutting. Thus, again, in Jeremiah 34 : 18, there is a two-fold reference to covenant-cutting; where the Lord reproaches his people for their faithlessness to their covenant. “And I will give [to destruction] the men that have transgressed my covenant, which have not performed the words of the covenant which they made [literally, ‘cut’] before me [in my sight] when they cut the calf in twain, and passed between the parts thereof.” In this instance, there is in the Hebrew, a pun, as it were, to give added force to the accusation and reproach. The same word _’abhar_ (עָבַר) means both “to transgress” and “to pass over” [or, “between”], so that, freely rendered, the charge here made, is, that they went through the covenant when they had gone through the calf; which is another way of saying that they cut their duty when they claimed to cut a covenant.