Covenant Identity and the Work of Gathering Israel
This page is our own summary. The original belongs to BYU Religious Studies Center; please read it there.
A BYU professor outlines Israel's Old Testament story to help students understand what it means to be a child of the covenant.
Hank R. Smith, an associate teaching professor of Religious Education at Brigham Young University, wrote this article for the Religious Educator (vol. 27, no. 1, 2026). The BYU Religious Studies Center publishes it free to read online. It is written for teachers in the Church Educational System but is useful for anyone studying the Old Testament.
The gap he sees
Smith starts with President Russell M. Nelson's 2022 devotional for young adults, which named three unchanging identities: child of God, child of the covenant and disciple of Jesus Christ. Students often explain the first and third readily, he observes, but far fewer feel confident saying what it means to be a child of the covenant.
An outline of Israel's story
To fill that gap, the article gives teachers an outline of the Old Testament narrative of the people of Israel. The goal is to help students understand their covenant role as members of the house of Israel today, rather than treating the phrase as a familiar label with little meaning behind it.
Identity through participation
Smith explains a pattern he says the Lord follows: God does His work through His covenant people, and He develops His people through that work. In other words, he says, the Lord gets His work done through His people and gets His people done through His work. Covenant identity, then, is not only descriptive but participatory. The article connects this to the gathering of Israel as the work in which Latter-day Saints share.
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