“Cutting” Deals

Ever wonder why we talk about “cutting a deal”?

“Hey! Let’s cut this deal and go home!”

“Those guys finally cut a deal!”

You will never see the story I am about to tell on the Hallmark Channel.

Long ago and far away, cutting was part of the process of creating a binding contract or “covenant.”

In fact, the Hebrew idiom for “making a covenant” is, literally, “cutting a covenant.”

If you wanted to have a binding agreement, even if with God, as far back as Abraham, you had to spill some blood.

It was downright Stephen Kingish.

To keep this in perspective, we have to understand that animal sacrifices were common in the Middle East and in India in those days, and downright humane when compared to the sacrifices of young virgin women among the Aztecs.

In Genesis, we learn that God instructed Abraham to bring him a three-year old ram, a turtledove, and a pigeon. “Abraham brought the animals, and cut them in half, with the halves opposing each other; then shooed away the scavenger birds inevitably drawn to the fresh kill.” To seal their covenant, God, in the form of smoke and fire (He seemed to have an affinity to smoke and fire back in those days), walked between the animal halves.

By the time we get to Moses (what’s that? About 500 years later?), we see Moses sealing the most famous covenant of all time – the Ten Commandments – by sacrificing bulls and using their blood like a priest would holy water, sprinkling it on the people to symbolize their covenant with God.

I have written several papers on the statutory requirements of mediated settlement agreements under recent versions of the Texas Family Code, but wouldn’t it be something, if the ritual of cutting up animals and walking through them had not fallen by the wayside at some point?

And, now kiddies, you understand why we still talk about “cutting a deal.” Perhaps, we should reevaluate that phrase.

Source: The Ten Commandments: A Short History of an Ancient Text by Michael Coogan, a noted Biblical Scholar.