Traditionally we call these 'covenants', but there's no distinction that I can see: deals, covenants, treaties, contracts-- all about "We'll do this and You'll do that."

There's sort of an implied deal in a sacrifice; we eat some of it, the god eats some of it, and we hope relations will stay friendly, because a god on your side can't hurt, but one who's against you is bad news...

But we make a 'covenant' when we'd like to negotiate and make the details explicit.  This is about as old a practice as one can find, short of sacrifices, and the oldest of foreign policies, next after thumping our chests and puffing ourselves up bigger...

Long before there were cops... it just didn't work to fight with everyone. Even with superior weapons, the Viking settlement in Newfoundland died out, according to Jared Diamond, having learned nothing from either their Indian or their Eskimo neighbors, who he says had observed and learned techniques from them.

Trade was always an iffy business. If either side just takes the goods by force, or cheats in such a way that nobody catches on until the traders are halfway home... it could poison relations for a long time. When people started building temples-- these were incidentally places where a foreigner could go, make an appropriate donation, have the temple oversee and guarantee his deals.The gods would punish anyone who violated a 'covenant' made under their auspices.

And eventually, we find the Canaanites making covenants directly with their gods. The Hebrews might have thought of the idea first, or not; in any case it's an idea with advantages.

But there are sinister echoes in those folktales of magicians making deals with demons. Such stories presume that there are rules a contracting spirit has to follow; that for some reason actual fudging Just Isn't Done-- but the human making such an agreement had better consult a good lawyer, because the devil will have the very best, as Christian legend has it.

In the Bible, the Covenant is God's idea. He urges Abraham to travel to Palestine, then offers the land for his descendants, if they'll all do right and chop their foreskins off. Presumably they don't behave altogether well, because a drought sets in and Abraham's grandson is forced to take the family to Egypt for food. When their descendants return, generations later, the new rental agreement is much more specific: not just "ten commandments"-- but over 600 of them.

Spelling everything out proved just as unsatisfactory as leaving things unsaid. Israelites were visiting the neighbors for those notorious roast pork & fertility church socials... not listening when their own priests wanted a chunk of lamb in the collection plate. The neighbors' gods were just a little too obliging, a little too flexible; a king could play one god against another and get approval for any nasty thing he wanted to do. It was chic, in some circles, to sacrifice a child or two.

The prophets warned, and warned, that God was more real than the gods next door, and didn't want His people turning away. Jeremiah even got the aristocracy to release everyone they'd enslaved for debt... until the Babylonian army turned away, the slave owners took back their slaves-- and Jeremiah could see this wasn't going to work. When the Babylonians came back again, they captured and exiled the leaders of the nation.

And now (as God must have known) the nation-in-exile became devout. Unable to practice, without a Temple, a religion of temple sacrifices, they produced a religion of readings, songs, study. And returned to Palestine with a thoroughly ingrained story: "We'd had a deal with the Creator, that we'd keep this land and live here under His care and rule. But we were sinful, and violated the arrangement. Now we've been forgiven for our ancestors' sins, returned and built a new Temple, but we aren't yet enjoying the benefits we're supposed to get from the deal." By the time of Jesus, they'd continued for hundreds of years oppressed by foreign, pagan overlords. They'd managed, once, to drive out the foreign rulers, only to be oppressed by the dynasty those wonderful Maccabees had established, until the day that someone solved a succession dispute by calling for Roman aid...

and so by the First Century, as NT Wright has it, most Jews considered themselves to be exiles in their own land:

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"If the creator had entered into covenant with this particular nation, then why were they not ruling the world as His chosen people should? If the world had been made for Israel's sake, why was she still suffering? What was the creator and covenant God now up to? And within this, a further question: What should Israel be doing in the present to hasten the time when He would act on her behalf? How should one, how could one, be a faithful Jew in the time of present distress, in the time of puzzling delay? ... These questions gave characteristic form to the articulation both of Israel's hope and of the requirements of the Covenant....[ which involved both] the divine intention to remake and restore the whole world, through Israel... [and] His intention to remake and restore Israel itself....

"Most Jews of this period, it seems, would have answered the question 'Where are we?' in language which, reduced to its simplest form, meant, We are still in exile... In all the senses which mattered, Israel's exile was still in progress. Although she had come back from Babylon, the glorious message of the prophets remained unfulfilled. Israel still remained in thrall to foreigners; worse, Israel's God had not returned to Zion... Israel clung to promises that one day the Shekinah, the glorious presence of her God, would return at last... [but] Nowhere in second-temple literature is it asserted that this has happened; therefore it still remains in the future. The exile is [therefore] not yet really over. This perception of Israel's present condition was shared by writers across the board in second-temple Judaism. We may cite the following as typical:

     Here we are, slaves to this day-- slaves in the land that you gave to
     our ancestors to enjoy its fruits and its good gifts. Its rich yield goes
     to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins; they
     have power also over our livestock at their pleasure, and we are in
     great distress."

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In a highly mysterious way, Jesus was God's response to that condition. He was rejected by many of his contemporaries, because they were looking for a return to the old covenant, which had been broken. What he had to offer, in view of that failure, was like what Jeremiah (31.31) had spoken of: "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord.

"But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor, saying 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord."

This is the kind of religion that's been slowly soaking into the collective human consciousness, since Jesus. Quite likely before Jesus, because he met people who were starting to recognize it. But for many of his followers, it had to be seen as literally "a Second Covenant"-- yet another contract, still with subclauses for the lawyers to play with, only different.

But there's a difference, an utterly significant difference, between signing a contract with your landlord... and asking for something from your Father.