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In early August, Russia rolled into Georgia to defend the breakaway province of South Ossetia. South Ossetia is formally a part of Georgia. Half its citizenry, however, have responded to a Russian invitation to hold Russian passports.

The violence began when Ossetian separatists exchanged gunfire with the Georgian army. After attempting to negotiate with the Ossetians, Georgia moved to assert its political legitimacy. Russia invaded Georgia claiming to come to the defense of Russians in the province.

How are we to understand this war? Georgia lies on the southern border of Russia. Since asserting its independence from Russia following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Georgia has struggled economically and politically. South Ossetia and another province, Abkhazia, have agitated for their own independence.

Ossetians identify as a distinct race from their Georgian neighbors. They see themselves as having a unique cultural heritage. Their ethnic boundary crosses the Georgian-Russian line. They want autonomy.

This conflict seems to be a continuation of hundreds of years of European ethnic discontent, seen most recently in the Serbian unrest following the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The United States may have contributed to ethnic unrest way back in the days of Woodrow Wilson, the President of the United States during World War I. Preparing for the peace conference following the war, Wilson advocated for the principle of “national self-determination.” That people have the right to determine their own political authorities.

The problem with the principle of self-determination emerges when one stops to consider what might be appropriate boundaries of national identity. The United States struggled with this issue in 1860. Did South Carolina have the right of self-determination when it fired on Fort Sumter?

The early 19th century explored this issue calling it the principle of “Nullification.” As early as 1798, barely ten years following the ratification of the Constitution, Virginians Thomas Jefferson and James Madison argued that individual states had the right to interpret the constitutionality of a Federal law.

Many saw in the disputed principle of Nullification a justification for Civil War. Abraham Lincoln was one of many presidents who defended the United States Constitution as a binding covenant upon the states that transcended local and sectional interests.

This international and intra-national conflict is, of course, not new. We see it in today’s reading from the Book of Exodus. Even the casual reading can see the seeds of ethnic conflict.

Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.”

The Book of Exodus is about covenant making. Covenant-making requires the surrender of personal interest for the common good. But it must also be free, joyful, and binding, or it is meaningless.

If God’s promise to Abraham is ever to be fulfilled – that all the nation’s of the earth will be blessed – it is going to require the nations to learn something about the blessing of covenant-making.

The lesson begins with us.