Every covenantal age of Biblical history has the same pattern of events. First God makes a covenant with his people. Next his people break the covenant. Since the covenants are legal contracts, when the covenant is broken, God institutes a lawsuit against the covenant breakers. The first stage of the lawsuit is that God sends covenant messengers to the covenant breakers to try to get them to repent. When the messengers are rejected and especially if they are killed, the lawsuit goes into its second phase, the bringing of judgment on the covenant breakers, frequently in a declaration of war against them.