The Covenant with the Many

Picture the scene the whole world has longed for across the decades, without ever daring to hope it would live to see it.

A great hall, bathed in light. The cameras of the entire planet. And at a long table the leaders of the nations, gathered around one charismatic figure at the center — the man who has achieved the impossible. On the table lies a document. And when the pens touch the paper, something happens that has been held impossible since living memory: peace in the Middle East. Real, signed, guaranteed peace. A second of silence — and then the hall erupts in a roar the centuries have not heard. The most celebrated signature in history. The world breathes out in relief.

And that, reader, is the moment the whole Bible has been pointing toward. It is the verse Daniel saw in exile, twenty-five centuries ago: a covenant, made with the many, for one final week. The cheering in the hall is the sound of a trap snapping shut.

The Rails Are Already Laid

For a covenant like this does not fall out of the sky. And the astonishing thing is that, at the moment I write this, the rails are already laid.

Look at what has been built these past years. The Abraham Accords of 2020, which for the first time brought Arab states and Israel together under the banner of a shared forefather. The Board of Peace — no longer an idea but a real, mandated body, established under a resolution of the Security Council, ratified at the world forum in Davos, with a permanent chairman at its head. The Saudi-Israeli normalization track. The great trade corridor from India by way of the Gulf and Israel to Europe. And a world that has by now grown accustomed to swift, plenary, all-encompassing deals, closed in weeks instead of years.

The figure who one day makes the Covenant strong therefore need not lay the rail line. He need only drive the train. Everything stands ready. It waits for a hand to knot the loose threads together.

Higbir: He Makes Strong, He Does Not Invent

And this is precisely what the ancient text says, exact down to the very verb. Daniel 9:27 does not speak of a prince who invents a covenant. The Hebrew word is higbir — to make strong with overwhelming power. He takes something that already exists, but is brittle and toothless, and he gives it force, authority, executive power. That power remains his. The word comes from gabar, the root of gibbor, the warrior, and the only other time the Bible uses this form, the arrogant speak: "with our tongue we will prevail [...] who is lord over us?" (Psalm 12:4). Whoever makes the covenant strong gains the upper hand by it. That it is an existing covenant, the verb itself does not say: it reads "a covenant," without the article. It is an expectation, fed by Daniel 11:23, where the league comes first and then the deceit.

Hear how brilliant that is. He does not come as a revolutionary who overturns everything; then the world would be on its guard. He comes as the man who finally completes what everyone had been working toward for years. He confirms the Abraham Accords. He gives the Board of Peace teeth. He turns a series of noncommittal arrangements into one binding, globally enforced statute. It does not look like a seizure of power. It looks like the logical, long-awaited next step — the fulfillment of the dream. And that is exactly why no one sees it coming. The counterfeit redeemer does not invent the counterfeit peace. He annexes it, as Babel will one day annex Jerusalem: he takes what is already built, and puts his name on it.

Something for Everyone

But here lies the masterstroke, and you must see it in all its devilish beauty, for it is the heart of the whole deception. The Covenant does not work by forcing anything upon anyone. It works by giving everyone precisely what he most deeply desires. The deception does not lie in a lie. It lies in a wish fulfilled.

For the secular Jew there lies on the table peace, security, equality, and prosperity — at last a normal existence, at last an end to the eternal threat. And he signs not out of fear but out of strength: he thinks, as the previous chapter showed, that he holds the cards himself, that he is using this deal for his own survival.

For the religious Jew there lies something still more precious: the right to resume the sacrificial service on the Temple Mount, the tamid that has been silent for nearly two thousand years. It looks like prophetic fulfillment, like the hand of God in history — but it is a restoration that bypasses the true Goël, the old sacrifice resumed while the one Sacrifice that fulfilled it is ignored.

For the leaders of the Middle East there lies stability, calm, shared prosperity, an end to the sectarian violence that tore the region apart — at last an order in which one may build instead of bleed.

And for the leaders of the world there lies the impossible itself: peace in the Middle East. What no president, no pact, no army achieved in a hundred years now lies signed on the table — the triumph, the recognition, the place in the history books.

Do you see it? Each of them signs for an entirely different reason. And precisely for that reason they all sign. This is the white rider with the bow but no arrow from the beginning of this book: conquest, not by force, but by offering exactly what every human heart already wanted. There is no weapon against an offer that fulfills your deepest longing.

The Gate That Registers Everything

And to guard all of it — for the shared use of the holiest place on earth demands management — the technology comes in, on stockinged feet, as the most innocent servant you could imagine.

The Covenant knots itself, as the seventh chapter showed, precisely around the Temple Mount. Shared access, a marked-off place where the Jews may sacrifice, the dome that remains standing. And to preserve the delicate balance: gates, passes, biometrics — "neutral" systems that regulate the streams of pilgrims and safeguard fairness. It is presented as a utility, as self-evident as a traffic light. But it is the Trojan horse. For that same gate which "safeguards fairness" registers every face, every fingerprint, every soul that enters. The infrastructure that guards the peace is the infrastructure that will one day decide who may still buy and sell. And as a reward beneath it all: the corridors open — the oil and trade lines through Jordan and Israel, the prosperity that only a real peace can release. The carrot dangles before the nose of everyone who signs.

Iron That Will Not Cleave to Clay

But now, straight through all the cheering, one thing must be seen that the Scripture foresaw long ago: this covenant is doomed. Not despite its success, but in its very essence.

For of what is it built? Do you remember the feet of the statue from the fourth chapter? "They shall mingle themselves with the seed of men, but they shall not cleave to one another, even as iron does not mingle with clay" (Daniel 2:43). The "iron" is the rigid, crushing character of the power that ultimately wants everything under itself; the "clay" is people — nations taken in without becoming one. This covenant already carries that nature within it. At the signing the parties come together — in one document, one handshake. But they do not cleave. It is a marriage of convenience in which each party believes it is using the other: the technocrats believe they have finally tamed the old passions with bureaucracy, and the other side believes it is using the technocrats to win strategic ground. And that you can already see it coming is plain even now: even at the moment I write this, the Saudi-Israeli normalization lies frozen. The illusion is not a thing of the future. It is showing its cracks today.

The Hudna: A Covenant Made to Be Broken

And with this comes the deepest truth about this Covenant, the truth this whole book has announced from its second page. It is no true peace. It is a hudna.

In the Islamic tradition a hudna is no lasting peace, but a temporary truce — made with the unbeliever when one is not yet strong enough, and to be revoked unilaterally the moment the balance tilts. The great example is the treaty of Hudaybiyya, which the Prophet made for ten years and broke after not even two when the time was ripe. It is, in the words of Daniel 11, the prince who "acts deceitfully" — who enters into a covenant as a weapon, not as a promise. And precisely in this lies the asymmetry no one sees at the signing: the one side keeps in reserve a legal way out that the other does not have. The leverage shifts, year by year, toward the side of the iron. Israel thinks it has signed a shield; in reality it has laid its neck in a noose that is slowly being drawn tight.

That is the signature of the anti-Goël, and it is the perfect inversion of the true Goël from the second chapter. Christ sealed His covenant in His own blood, unbreakable, forever. The counterfeit seals his in ink, and makes it precisely with the intention of breaking it — "in the midst of the week," says Daniel, exactly at the moment the world believes itself safest. The cheering in the hall is the applause for a peace that already bears its own expiration date upon it, written in invisible ink.

Two Covenants, Two Peaces

Here, finally, is why this touches you, long before a single pen touches the paper.

The world will call this the dawning of peace. It will take upon its lips the words Paul wrote down two thousand years ago as the last sign: "when they shall say, Peace and safety" — and he finishes the sentence in a way that makes you shudder — "then sudden destruction shall come upon them" (1 Thessalonians 5:3). The most loudly cheered moment of peace in history is, in the forensic dossier of heaven, the last signal before the storm.

For there are two covenants, and there are two peaces, and you will have to know to which you belong. There is the peace the world gives: a treaty, with signatures and guarantees and biometric gates, that glitters on the day of the signing and is torn to shreds in the midst of the week. And there is the peace the Goël gives, and of that other peace He Himself said: "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you; not as the world gives, give I unto you" (John 14:27). The peace of the world is a hudna — a truce made to be broken. The peace of the Goël is a bill paid — a price that has been settled and that no one can ever undo.

So when you see the great Covenant signed, and hear the hall erupt, and hear the whole earth sigh with relief — do not cheer along. Ask yourself the only question that matters on that day: in which covenant does my name stand? In the one that breaks, or in the one that bleeds? For the one is written in ink, and the ink will tear. The other is written in blood, and that blood will never fade.

The pressure cooker bursts, the figure is transformed, and the grip closes over the earth. And then — just before the darkest hour — the true Goël returns.