OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY

VOLUME ONE

Israel’s Gospel

JOHN GOLDINGAY

InterVarsity Press

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Paternoster

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©2003 by John Goldingay

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Press® is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA®, a student movement active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept., InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at <www.intervarsity.org>.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are the author’s own translation.

Cover design: Cindy Kiple

Cover image: Réunion des Museés Nationaux/Art Resource, NY

USA ISBN-10: 0-8308-2561-4

USA ISBN-13: 978-0-8308-2561-5

UK ISBN-10: 1-84227-496-1

UK ISBN-13: 978-1-84227-496-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Goldingay, John.

Israel’s Gospel/John Goldingay.

p. cm.—(Old Testament theology)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8308-2561-4 (cloth: alk. paper)

1. Bible. O.T.—Criticism, Narrative. 2. Narration in the bible.

l.

Title.

BS1182.3.G65 2003

2003013828

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

CONTENTS

ABBREVIATIONS

PREFACE

1     INTRODUCTION Old Testament Theology as Narrative

1.1     Theology

1.2     Old Testament Theology

1.3     Old Testament Gospel

1.4     Old Testament Story

2     GOD BEGAN Creation

2.1     God Thought

2.2     God Spoke

2.3     God Birthed

2.4     God Prevailed

2.5     God Created

2.6     God Built

2.7     God Arranged

2.8     God Shaped

2.9     God Delegated

2.10     God Planted

2.11     God Relaxed

3     GOD STARTED OVER From Eden to Babel

3.1     Disobedience and Discovery

3.2     Expulsion and Loss

3.3     Violence and Curse

3.4     Fall and Ruin

3.5     Grace and Exemption

3.6     Realism and Pledging

3.7     Abuse and Strife

4     GOD PROMISED Israel’s Ancestors

4.1     God’s Charge and God’s Promises

4.2     God’s Blessings: Nationhood and Land

4.3     Being a Blessing

4.4     Abraham’s God and Other Peoples

4.5     Promise and Fulfillment

4.6     The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

4.7     God Who Acts

4.8     Relating to God

4.9     Marriage and Parenthood

4.10     Family Life

5     GOD DELIVERED The Exodus

5.1     God Who Creates and Delivers

5.2     God Who Remembers

5.3     God Who Works via People

5.4     God Who Does Signs and Wonders

5.5     God Who Insists

5.6     God Who Reigns

5.7     How God Is Revealed

5.8     How God Relates to Foreign Peoples

5.9     How God’s Resolve Relates to Human Resolve

5.10     How God’s Act Relates to the Future

6     GOD SEALED Sinai

6.1     Yhwh’s Covenant

6.2     Yhwh’s Expectations

6.3     Yhwh’s Presence: At the Mountain

6.4     Yhwh’s Presence: In a Sanctuary

6.5     Yhwh’s Presence: In Experience

6.6     Yhwh’s Dilemma: Punishment and Mercy

6.7     Facing Up to Infidelity

6.8     Models of Servanthood

6.9     Models of Peoplehood

7     GOD GAVE The Land

7.1     The People of God: Sustained, Disappointed and Protesting

7.2     The People of God: Bride and Rebel

7.3     The People of God: Chastised and Mercied

7.4     War, Its Nature and Its Rationales

7.5     War as the Means of Receiving God’s Gift

7.6     The Crusade for Holiness

7.7     The Acknowledgment of God

7.8     The Gift of God: The Land

7.9     The Giving of God: Fulfillment and Shortfall

8     GOD ACCOMMODATED From Joshua to Solomon

8.1     One People, One God?

8.2     Leadership

8.3     Monarchy

8.4     Temple

8.5     Israel and Other Peoples

8.6     Being Human

8.7     Being Men

8.8     Being Women

8.9     Yhwh’s Acting

9     GOD WRESTLED From Solomon to the Exile

9.1     Where Yhwh Is Active

9.2     What Yhwh Expects

9.3     How Yhwh Reacts

9.4     How History Works

9.5     How Yhwh Works

9.6     How Kings Exercise Leadership

9.7     Prophets as Men of God

9.8     Prophets as Seers and Sentinels

9.9     Prophets as Troublemakers

9.10     Is There a Future?

10     GOD PRESERVED Exile and Restoration

10.1     God Abandoned

10.2     God Returned

10.3     A Restored Community

10.4     A Worshiping Community

10.5     A Listening Community

10.6     A Distinct Community

10.7     A Subservient Community

10.8     A Priest and Theologian

10.9     A Man Who Prays and Builds Walls

10.10     A Wise Politician

10.11     An Intrepid Woman

11     GOD SENT The Coming of Jesus

11.1     Jesus: Herald of God’s Reign

11.2     Jesus: Prophet and Teacher

11.3     His Followers

11.4     Jesus: The Man Anointed as King

11.5     Jesus: Word Embodied

11.6     Divine Surrender

11.7     The Community of the Risen Lord

11.8     Jesus: Light of the World

POSTSCRIPT Old Testament Theology and History

1.     Narrative and History

2.     History and Criticism

3.     Creation and History

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abbreviations

ANET     Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Edited by James B. Pritchard. 3rd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.

ATANT     Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments

BASOR     Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research

b.     Babylonian Talmud

BDB     Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. London/New York: Oxford University Press, 1907; reprinted 1962.

BJRL     Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester

BWANT     Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament

BZAW     Beiheft zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

CBQ     Catholic Biblical Quarterly

CBQMS     Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series

ConBOT     Coniectanea Biblica: Old Testament Series

DCH     The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew. Edited by D. J. A. Clines. 8 vols. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993-.

DDD     Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible. Edited by Karel van der Toorn, et al. 2nd ed. Leiden: Brill/Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999.

EvQ     Evangelical Quarterly

EVV     English versions

FCB     The Feminist Companion to the Bible

GKC     Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar. Edited and enlarged by E. Kautzsch. Translated by A. E. Cowley. 2nd ed. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1910; reprinted with corrections 1966.

HBT     Horizons in Biblical Theology

HSM     Harvard Semitic Monographs

HTR     Harvard Theological Review

IBD     The Illustrated Bible Dictionary. Edited by J. D. Douglas et al. Leicester, U.K.: Inter-Varsity Press/Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1980.

IBHS     An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax. By Bruce K. Waltke and Michael O’Connor. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990.

IDB     The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. 4 vols. and supplementary volume. Nashville: Abingdon, 1962, 1976.

ITC     International Theological Commentary

JAOS     Journal of the American Oriental Society

JB     Jerusalem Bible

JBL     Journal of Biblical Literature

JES     Journal of Ecumenical Studies

JPSV     Jewish Publication Society Hebrew-English Tanakh

JR     Journal of Religion

JSOT     Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

JSOTSup     Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series

JSS     Journal of Semitic Studies

JTS     Journal of Theological Studies

K     Kethib, the written (consonantal) Hebrew text; contrast Q

KJV     King James Version

LXX     Septuagint

mg.     margin; marginal

MT     Masoretic Text

NCB     New Century Bible

NEB     New English Bible with the Apocrypha

NICOT     The New International Commentary on the Old Testament

NIDOTTE     New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis. Edited by Willem A. VanGemeren. 5 vols. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1996/Carlisle: Paternoster, 1997.

NIVI     New International Version, Inclusive Language Edition

NJB     New Jerusalem Bible

NPNF     A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. 2 series (14 vols. each). Reprinted, Edinburgh: T & T Clark/Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans.

NRSV     New Revised Standard Version

n.s.     new series

OBT     Overtures to Biblical Theology

OTL     Old Testament Library

Q     Qere, the Hebrew text as read out (i.e., with the vowels); contrast K

RSV     Revised Standard Version

SBLDS     Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series

SBLMS     Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series

SBTS     Sources for Biblical and Theological Study

SJOT     Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament

TDOT     Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. Edited by G. Johannes Botterweck et al. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1974-.

Tg(s).     Targum(s); Targumic

TLOT     Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament. Edited by Ernst Jenni and Claus Westermann. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1997.

TynBul     Tyndale Bulletin

UBT     Understanding Biblical Themes

USQR     Union Seminary Quarterly Review

Vg.     Vulgate

VT     Vetus Testamentum

VTSup     Vetus Testamentum Supplements

WBC     Word Biblical Commentary

WMANT     Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament

ZAW     Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

Preface

This is one of three volumes I hope to write on Old Testament Theology. The introduction explains why there will be three. This first volume amounts to a theological commentary on the Old Testament story. So, for instance, the contents of the “law,” the Prophets and the poetic books will not come into focus here. I hope that the detailed contents page may help readers locate material on themes that may interest them, such as, say, the significance of leadership or community or the land or the way God acts in history. One or two advance readers have also suggested that the volume might be useful to preachers. I do not object to that.

Translations of the biblical text are my own and follow the Masoretic Text ([1] ), except where otherwise indicated. Where MT incorporates more than one version of the text or where, for example, [2]  suggests an alternative Hebrew text, I have not reckoned that we must necessarily choose just one form, but I have generally avoided modern attempts to reconstruct the text. Where versification differs between English and printed Hebrew Bibles, I give the latter in square brackets, e.g., Psalm 89:12 [MT 13]. To preserve the distinction between yiqtol and qatal (imperfect and perfect) verbs when Hebrew poetry uses both in referring to the past, I have generally translated the yiqtol by verb forms such as “would pour down dew” (Prov 3:20).[3]  In referring to Israel’s God, I have used the term Yhwh, especially where the text does so, deferring to the fact that the text does not provide us with its vowels. I have not deferred to LXX and subsequent translations by replacing Yhwh in my written text by a word for “the Lord.” On the other hand, in light of the fact that this is a work of Christian theology, I use the politically incorrect terms B.C. and A.D. In transliterating Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, I have generally followed the Society of Biblical Literature academic system but have occasionally transliterated well-known words such as shalom in the familiar way. Where I give no page number in citing a commentary, the reference is to its discussion of the passage in question. Any italics are from the author I am quoting unless otherwise noted. In general, I assume a readership that has undertaken such study of the Old Testament as will have given them some understanding, for example, of the reasons for assuming that Moses did not write the Pentateuch or that several prophets contributed to the book called Isaiah.

I am grateful to students in OT 805 at Fuller Theological Seminary who worked through the material in this book and made valuable comments, some of which appear explicitly in the pages that follow. I am particularly grateful to my research assistant Benjamin Galan and to Joseph Henderson for compiling the subject index, and also to my editor Dan Reid for wise advice. And I am grateful to Fuller Seminary for encouragement to undertake this work, for sabbatical leave that hastened its completion, for the library and the enthusiasm of librarians to obtain works they did not have, and for its flexible scheduling that allowed me to write so much of the volume sitting on the patio with Ann, listening to CDs.

1

Introduction

Old Testament Theology as Narrative

The expression “Old Testament theology” suffers from a number of disadvantages and ambiguities, but I have retained it in the title for this book because of its value connotations with regard to my subject (though for some people these are negative value connotations). I do not care for the phrase “Old Testament,” which we inherit from some time in the patristic period, because it rather suggests something antiquated and inferior left behind by a dead person. But the politically correct term “Hebrew Bible,” as well as not being quite accurate (there is Aramaic in these Scriptures, too), from a Christian perspective moves too far away from the twin expression “New Testament.” “Tanak,” the Hebrew acronym for “the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings,” is more accurate, but as the Jewish equivalent to “Old Testament” it is close to being a confessional title that feels odd in Christian usage. From chapter two onward, I will normally use the phrase “First Testament.”

Meanwhile, what do we mean by “Old Testament theology,” and how should we go about it? Books on Old Testament theology commonly include substantial theoretical prolegomena. I have written at length on these matters elsewhere,[4]  and now want to get on with the task. But here are some theses that lie behind the chapters that follow or emerge from them.

1.1 Theology

In what sense can a work on Old Testament theology count as theology?

First, Old Testament theology is different from Israelite theology. It is illuminating to study what Israelites actually believed in Old Testament times, and even what was viewed as orthodox theology in Old Testament times. For instance, books such as Kings and Ezekiel suggest that mainstream Israelite faith often included worship of Yhwh with the aid of images and recognition of a consort alongside Yhwh, and archaeological discoveries also indicate this. But the Old Testament books do not approve of such beliefs and practices, and Old Testament theology concerns itself with the stance taken by the Old Testament books on the nature of “authentic” Israelite faith.

The raw material for this study of Old Testament theology is the Old Testament in the narrow sense—the books of the Hebrew Bible, or the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings. Many Old Testament theologies have gone on to take some account of other Jewish writings such as those included in the Greek canon (the “apocrypha” or deuterocanonical writings), the Qumran documents and other writings of this period, and then the Mishnah and the Talmud. On the basis of the ongoing nature of the process whereby the biblical tradition developed, Hartmut Gese argued that the Greek canon should be the resource for biblical theology because it includes the “missing links” between the two Testaments.[5]  But the narrower collection of books is the only one that (by a process we cannot trace) we know came to be recognized within Judaism as a definitive statement of God’s dealings with its forebears, and many Christian communities have followed Judaism in giving special status to this collection—including the community to which I belong.[6]  In this volume I make occasional reference to these other Jewish works, but I do not treat them as a source for a statement of Old Testament theology.

Old Testament theology can denote an attempt to give a purely descriptive account of the thought-world that lies behind the texts or of the faith held by the authors of the Old Testament—one that need carry no implications for what we ourselves might believe. One problem with this understanding is that no one in Old Testament times knew the whole Old Testament. Whereas studying the theology of Ezekiel might be quite like studying the theology of Calvin, formulating an Old Testament theology would be more like writing a theology of the Reformation—an attempt to describe Reformation thinking as a whole. We might thus more feasibly see the task as an attempt to describe the faith implied by the Old Testament or the faith that emerges from the Old Testament. We could see it as a statement of Old Testament faith as this might have been expressed by someone who studied the Old Testament in, say, 10 B.C., if we may imagine the Old Testament existing as a defined collection of Scriptures at that point.

Theology as an Analytical, Critical, Reflective Exercise

Yet the way we go about formulating this faith two millennia later is different from anything anyone would have formulated at that point. Our categories and structures of thought are different. We go about analysis, formulation and reflection in different ways. That is one reason why no one wrote an “Old Testament theology” until a century or so ago. Old Testament theology attempts not merely to describe the faith implied by the Old Testament but to reflect on it analytically, critically and constructively. By theology I mean such an analytic, critical and constructive exercise, a discipline or a set of disciplines that developed through the interaction between Middle Eastern and European thought in post-New Testament times, particularly after the Enlightenment. One reason Western thought has felt the need for such a critical and constructive exercise is our awareness that the Old Testament incorporates different, even clashing, theological convictions. Old Testament theology’s task is to see what greater whole can encompass the diversity within the Old Testament.[7]

The circumstances of Old Testament theology’s development do not mean it was an inherently misguided exercise, or one that tried to turn chalk into cheese. One evidence that it was not is the presence of material in the Old Testament that reflects something like analytical, critical and constructive thought: Isaiah 40–55, Job and Ecclesiastes are instances of this. Admittedly, most Old Testament books are not works of theology in the sense in which I have just used the word, and works such as those three are thus different from others. The development of theology was not a development required by the nature of the Scriptures, but an accidental result of the journey of the gospel into Europe.[8]  But the Scriptures as a whole belong on a continuum and the books that more clearly have this nature provide evidence that such reflection need not be alien to the collection as a whole. For the purposes of the present volume in which we will be focusing on the Old Testament narrative, it is especially noteworthy that Job, arguably the most “theological” book in the Old Testament, is a drama—not a narrative, but something quite like a narrative. Old Testament theology seeks to formulate the inherent nature of Old Testament faith in the analytic, critical and constructive categories that help us interact with it in our own age.

The interaction between the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean worlds may have been beginning within the Old Testament. It is certainly evident in books in the Greek Bible such as Wisdom, and it appears further in the New Testament. The discussion in the world of Greek thought regarding matters such as the trinitarian nature of the one God, the divine-human person of Christ, creation out of nothing, and the “Fall” is not in principle alien to the Scriptures as a whole, but it does take scriptural thinking further than the Scriptures do themselves or takes them sideways or backwards from them. Such discussion takes scriptural thinking itself a considerable distance further or sideways or backwards in relation to the Old Testament, and risks losing sight of the wisdom that appears there. If we are to learn from the Old Testament theologically, Old Testament theology will be wise to keep closer to the Old Testament’s own categories of thought in order to give it more opportunity to speak its own insights rather than assimilating it to Christian categories.

Other aspects of the categories of thought that we bring to the text have also made Old Testament theology reflect more (or less) than merely what we find there. People who aim to write descriptively are influenced by what they bring to the text. The greatest would-be descriptive work on Old Testament theology, by Walther Eichrodt, takes covenant as its organizing principle.[9]  This is an illuminating idea, but covenant is not as pervasive in the Old Testament as Eichrodt implies, or as his readers infer that he implies. One may guess that one reason why the idea appealed to Eichrodt and appeals to many other readers of the Old Testament is that covenant thinking is prominent in some Christian theological circles. Authors’ commitments, contexts, and presuppositions affect how and what they see. The much-reviled “biblical theology movement” of the mid-twentieth century[10]  illustrates that.

In principle I am not interested in Old Testament theology as a merely theoretical discipline. I am interested in it because I have found that the Old Testament has a capacity to speak with illumination and power to the lives of communities and individuals. Yet I also believe it has been ignored and/or emasculated and I want to see it let loose in the world of theology, in the church and in the world. I want to formulate a statement that is theological in the sense that it expresses what we can believe and live by and not merely one that restates what some dead Israelites believed.

Listening to the Whole Old Testament

Systematic theology involves a further level of one’s evaluative or critical stance in relation to Scripture. It does that in practice, whether or not it does in theory, in deciding what parts of Scripture are more or less important and/or more or less true. Even if it does not actually declare that Scripture is wrong, it omits scriptural material in a way that constitutes a practical declaration of this kind. Works on Old Testament theology do the same, and I expect I will do so, but my aim is to avoid it. Even if my effort to cover all the material may lead readers to conclude that the Old Testament’s theology is wrong, I want to state what its theology actually is. David Clines has made explicit something generally implicit in Old Testament study, that interpreters evaluate the Old Testament (or anything else) on the basis of what they believe already. In evaluating texts, “there are no absolutes, no universal standards, and so there is nothing wrong with using your own standards.… ‘Ethical’ can only mean ‘ethical according to me and people who think like me.’ ”[11]  In the past this was less obvious because, for example, modernity or pietism gave different reading communities a common evaluative framework that felt self-evidently true. The pluralism of postmodernity helps us to see “that there is no innocent or neutral scholarship, but that all theological and interpretive scholarship is in one way or another fiduciary.”[12]  Like Walter Brueggemann (I think) and unlike David Clines, I want to try to subject my framework of thinking to the Old Testament’s. I am betting that this is more likely to generate new insight than if I operate the other way round.

I identify with those Christians who affirm the entire trustworthiness and authority of Scripture, but I do not attempt to justify such convictions a priori, or to prove the truth of individual statements that emerge from the Old Testament. I doubt whether theology or ethics very often works like that. If a statement does not carry intrinsic conviction, it is unlikely that a priori arguments will convince many people to accept it. The exception might be that if we find that the Old Testament speaks with illumination ninety percent of the time, we may be inclined to reckon that the other ten percent also has something in it, if only we can find the key. I take it that this is part of what is implied by speaking of the Old Testament’s “entire trustworthiness.” Certainly my own reflection works thus.

That prejudice and my general passion for the Old Testament to be heard may well skew what I write, though I do not want it to do so. Readers will have to discern where this has happened. My conviction that one hundred percent of the Old Testament has theological significance has driven me to seek to work through all its books and ask after the theological implications of all of, for example, Judges and 2 Kings as well as, for example, Genesis and Exodus. I have still given more space to Genesis and Exodus. I hope that is because the tradition is right that there is more theologically significant material in them.

Let us imagine that God is like a lion, as the Old Testament says (e.g., Lam 3:10; Hos 5:14; Amos 3:8). Testimony is then like telling people you have met a lion. Preaching is like inviting people to come to meet a lion. Theology is like reflecting on your meeting with a lion. It will involve some distancing, though during the process of reflection the lion may suddenly pop its head round the door. This reflection will be open to conversation with scientists who have read books about lions and people who have watched nature programs on television, whether or not they have met a lion or are sure they exist. Indeed, there are many scientific ways to seek to understand a lion, and many angles from which to do so: there are the angles and the categories of the zoologist, the geographer and the economist. In a parallel way, there are many angles from which to seek to understand the metaphysical lion. There are the angles of the systematic theologian and the philosophical theologian, the New Testament scholar—and the Old Testament scholar. The nature of the beast is such that no one angle and no one set of categories will reveal everything. The conviction of this theologian is that there is insight to be gained by looking at the metaphysical lion from the angle of the Old Testament and focusing resolutely on that. Whether this is so must emerge a posteriori.

In studying Old Testament theology, I am seeking to formulate some convictions that all Christian theology should acknowledge. Yet even when combined with convictions deriving from the New Testament, the Old Testament’s theological insights do not form the whole of what Christian theology must affirm. There are issues that Christian theology appropriately addresses that biblical theology does not cover: for instance, the nature of science, or the significance of the Holocaust, or the development of feminism, or the nature and location of revelation, or the nature of religious language, or the significance of church history, or the development of worldviews from premodernity through modernity to postmodernity. It is intrinsic to dogmatic or systematic theology to take into account questions that have arisen in postbiblical times. Biblical theology focuses more on working out the theological implications of the biblical material itself. This material will need to inform the development of a Christian understanding of issues such as the ones just listed, but biblical theology may not itself do so.

1.2 Old Testament Theology

So this is a work of theology, written by a Christian who wants to heed the whole of Scripture. Yet I want to try to write on the Old Testament without looking at it through Christian lenses or even New Testament lenses. By “Old Testament theology” I mean a statement of what we might believe about God and us if we simply use the Old Testament or if we let it provide the lenses through which we look at Jesus. I am prepared to say that the Old Testament’s insights must be seen in light of those of the New, but only as long as we immediately add that it is just as essential to see the New Testament’s insights in light of those of the Old. Indeed, the latter is more important given that in practice the declaration that the Old must be looked at in light of the New is generally a euphemism for the conviction that the Old must be evaluated by means of the New and discounted when it says something different.

There are a number of points where Old Testament faith differs from New Testament faith. It is more interested in creation, the world of the nations and politics; it is more accepting of death and of the ambiguities of human life; it lacks a “positive” picture of life after death or a stress on the Messiah; it understands human sinfulness differently; it stresses reverence for God; it sees us as free to complain at God and to express doubt; it emphasizes enjoyment of everyday family life and food and drink; it values sacramental worship; and it enjoins detailed outward obedience to divine commands. My attitude to such differences is in principle to see them not as points where the New Testament surpasses the Old, but as points where Christians are especially likely to have something to learn.[13]  Even where the New may surpass the Old, the church will likely especially need the Old, especially now that the world has gone on for another two millennia since New Testament times, far longer than the period from Abraham to Christ. Over this time the church has not found it possible to live as if God had become incarnate or as if God’s son had been given for it or as if God’s reign had begun, and one can hardly maintain in the third millennium that it might be about to do so. If there is material in Scripture that starts from our stubbornness (so, e.g., Mk 10:5), we still need it. Indeed, only when people have learned to take the Old Testament really seriously can they be entrusted with the story of Jesus, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer more or less argued.[14]  The church has reversed that argument and turned Christian faith into a faith that is itself truncated.

The conventional wisdom derived from Jean-François Lyotard declares that the postmodern condition essentially involves “incredulity towards metanarratives,” that is, overarching narratives or statements about the nature of truth as a whole.[15]  Walter Brueggemann suggests rather that “our situation is one of conflict and competition between deeply held metanarratives.”[16]  Brueggemann’s postmodernism thus deconstructs: Brueggemann has his liberal Protestant metanarrative and his volume argues relentlessly for it.[17]  My application of his point is that there is a virtually unacknowledged conflict between the church’s metanarrative and that of the Old Testament (and the New Testament, actually, but that is another story). I refer not to churches that do not claim to stick too close to Scripture, but to churches that do so claim. The point is well illustrated by the nature of the creeds, which may (or may not) have been appropriate situational responses to the contexts in which they arose but do not form a reliable guide to the contents of biblical faith.

I therefore resist the principle that interpretation must recognize the limits set by the church’s creed, “within which it must work and beyond which it must not stray.”[18]  The church’s faith may function as a preliminary understanding, a way into theological study of Scripture, not least in the conviction that the Holy Spirit has been guiding the church in its understanding of Scripture over the centuries. But we know that in general the Holy Spirit’s success in conforming the church to God’s will and vision is somewhat partial. One would expect this also to apply to the church’s interaction with Scripture, and a look at the relationship between the Scriptures and the church’s faith and life makes it clear that this is indeed so.

I want to articulate part of the metanarrative that the church accepts in theory but ignores in practice. “Old Testament theological articulation does not conform to established church faith, either in its official declaration or in its more popular propensities. There is much that is wild and untamed about the theological witness of the Old Testament that church theology does not face.”[19]  But the church’s “incomplete conversion toward the God of Israel” is a broader and deeper matter. The conventional outline of the Christian story of salvation has four stages: creation, Fall, the coming of Christ and the final judgment. The church’s framework for reading Scripture thus jumps from the “Fall” to the birth of Jesus and enables it to contract out of God’s concern for the world, to forgo “creative theological engagement with the hard edges of human history” in favor of a focus on the personal and private.[20]

But I am not especially concerned about the tough aspects of the Old Testament or the aspects that the church might want to avoid. The Old Testament is not basically hard or demanding news to swallow, but good news that has not been heard.

The Pressing Imperative

Reading the New Testament in light of the Old is thus a more pressing imperative than reading the Old in light of the New because the church has systematically neglected the Old Testament. John Bright compared the two Testaments to the acts of a play.[21]  An audience cannot expect to show up during the interval and understand Act II, nor to leave at the interval with an understanding of the play based on seeing Act I. To adapt the analogy, when I watch later episodes of a television sitcom or drama without having watched episodes from earlier seasons, I get the basic idea but I miss what is taken for granted, and thus I watch the repeats, too, and also find them fun in their own right. My aim here is to help people watch the first episodes of the Scriptures. When I watch those repeats, my having already seen subsequent episodes makes a difference. I am aware of aspects of people’s characters that have now come out more fully. Yet if the writers have done their job well, it is fundamentally the same characters that get filled out in later episodes. So my understanding of the first episodes, and the understanding of someone who watched the programs in the right order, should not be so very different.

Another application of the analogy occurs to me. My wife and I went to see the rereleased film A Hard Day’s Night. Amongst my reactions were tears at the contrast between the joyous innocence of John, Paul, George and Ringo in 1964 and the toughness of the lives that have since unfolded. Those years have seen John’s murder, Paul’s bereavement, George’s death through cancer and Ringo’s divorce (they were tears at the tough aspects of my own life since 1964, too, no doubt). One also recognizes how postmodern this film was, even though postmodernity had not been invented. All that makes one look at the film in a new way. But the film also deserves to be appreciated by an act of imagination that puts one back into the personal and cultural context of the 1960s. The Old Testament is a collection of works that God was happy for the chosen people to live with for a while. Eventually they would come to know about Jesus, but God could relate to them without that. James Barr has suggested that when faith comes to be “centred in a person sent from God as mediator with humanity, who is crucified and risen,” this makes such a difference that a theology without this focus must be of a quite different character.[22]  I see the force of this argument in theory but do not feel it in practice. I hope that this is because there is more underlying unity in the two faiths than it implies, but it may be that either I read the Old Testament through Christian eyes, or that I fail to take the New Testament seriously enough. To adapt a phrase of Rolf Knierim’s, I want to give the Old Testament its own say in the conviction that it will tell us something that is in the spirit of Christ.[23]  I expect that Christian conviction will nevertheless sometimes skew what I see in the Old Testament, like my reluctance to decide that the Old Testament is simply wrong. I will be particularly interested to discover where, for instance, a Jewish reader—or an atheist reader—thinks this has happened.

From a Christian perspective, then, Old Testament theology is a truncated exercise, but a defensible one. In contrast, New Testament theology seems not only a truncated exercise, but also an indefensible one. It deconstructs. One of the New Testament’s own convictions is that the Old Testament is part of the Scriptures (indeed, is the Scriptures), give or take some questions about its boundaries, and that the Old Testament provides the theological framework within which Jesus needs to be understood. The New Testament is then a series of Christian and ecclesial footnotes to the Old Testament, and one cannot produce a theology out of footnotes.

The logic of these considerations is that I should write a biblical theology. A narrative approach to biblical theology, in particular, could hardly stop at the end of the First Testament.[24]  I have therefore included a chapter that reads the New Testament story forward in the light of the Old Testament rather than backwards in the light of Christian doctrine. In addition, to push the earlier metaphor, I occasionally provide the body of the work with some New Testament footnotes.

Following the Old Testament’s Own Agenda

In this volume I shall not pay much attention to the way the New Testament uses the Old Testament. That usage emerges from the New Testament’s distinctive concerns. It especially wants to understand the significance of Jesus and the significance of the church, and that determines the lenses it brings to the Old Testament. Its approach to the Old Testament therefore need not influence an attempt to work out the inherent theological significance of the Old Testament—indeed, we must resist its doing so. That is not what the New Testament is seeking to do.

A “biblical theology of the New Testament”[25]  has the potential to redress an imbalance in Christian understanding of the story of Jesus and the beginning of the church. It can help Christians in that task of reading the New Testament story in light of where it came from and not merely where it led (e.g., the doctrine of the Trinity), with the problem of reading subsequent Christian beliefs and experience back into the New Testament. But a biblical theology of the New Testament still works back from the New to the Old and feels free to “make distinctions in the same way New Testament authors themselves did.”[26]  We need a more systematic theological reading of the Old Testament in light of which to read the New. The agenda for Old Testament theology is set by the Old Testament as a whole and the agenda for biblical theology is set by the Scriptures as a whole, not just those parts of them that especially link with the New. One can see much of the New Testament as a collection of sermons on Old Testament texts. One does not use later sermons, even divinely inspired ones, as the privileged lens through which henceforth to read their text. It is inappropriate to describe the New Testament as the “authoritative interpretation” of the Old without adding that the Old Testament is the authoritative interpretation of the New,[27]  especially as the New shows more signs of recognizing the authority of the Old than of reckoning it has authority over it.

So my aim in this Old Testament Theology is to discuss the Old Testament’s own theological content and implications, working with the assumption that the Old Testament is Act I to the New Testament’s Act II (or Acts 1–9 to the New Testament’s Act 10!). We can use the opening acts to illumine the final act, and I will do that in chapter eleven, but we owe the divine dramatist the respect of paying close attention to the earlier acts and not just to the end. Even a cursory look at them shows that the dramatist had a broader range of interests than people think when they only watch the last act. It is quite logical that the Christian church ignores most of the Old Testament and then thinks that Jesus is all that matters, because a main significance of the Old Testament is to show us that God has a broader agenda than we think when we focus exclusively on Jesus. On the Emmaus road Jesus interprets to his companions things about himself in all the Scriptures (Lk 24:27), but there are many other things in those Scriptures that do not relate to him anywhere as directly.

I therefore do not focus, for instance, on the Old Testament as “witness to Christ.”[28]  The New Testament does occasionally speak in these terms (Jn 5:39; Acts 10:43; Rom 3:21), but the image is used only in a severely metaphorical sense. As the New Testament more often assumes, witnesses are people who have seen something happen and are in a position to talk about it to other people who have not. Jesus’ disciples are witnesses to Jesus more often than the Old Testament is. It antedates Jesus and never mentions him, and it more characteristically witnesses to Yhwh, especially in the narrative books (by their nature). It is this more central witness to Yhwh that I want to reflect on.

I do not focus on the way the Old Testament “points to Christ,” which is another way of saying the same thing. The one who pointed to Christ was John the Baptist, who could do so because Jesus was there to point to (e.g., Jn 1:29, 35–36). The Old Testament points beyond itself in the sense that it expresses hopes that are not fulfilled within its pages, but one cannot work out from the Old Testament who it points to—as is reflected in Jesus’ disciples’ difficulty in seeing how it pointed to him. He is over the horizon when one stands within the Old Testament. Yet in writing as a Christian, I do so as one who can see important ways in which Jesus is the person who fulfills its job descriptions or its promises, as Jesus sought to show his disciples that he did—even if others also fulfill those job descriptions or the promises. For instance, Paul sees himself and Barnabas as fulfilling the vision of the servant of Yhwh (Acts 13:47), and it seems churlish to deny that the Jewish people as a whole has also fulfilled aspects of this vision.

I do not focus on the Old Testament as prophesying or predicting Jesus. Again, the New Testament occasionally speaks in these terms, though not as prevalently as Christians do, nor with the same implications. According to 1 Kings 13, a man of God once declared that a descendant of David, “Josiah by name,” would one day defile the altar that the Ephraimite king had erected at Bethel. Three centuries later, a descendant of David called Josiah did so. There are no analogous prophecies that a woman called Mary would give birth to a baby called Jesus. Christians know that Jesus is the means whereby God began to fulfill the promise of a descendant of David who would live up to the Old Testament ideal of kingship, and that Jesus was the embodiment par excellence of the vision of a servant of Yhwh who suffers to put things right between people and God. But this does not make Isaiah 11 or Isaiah 53 prophecies or predictions of Jesus. If they become that, this happens only in light of their fulfillment.

I do not discuss the way what is concealed in the Old is revealed in the New.[29]  In declaring that the hidden things belong to Yhwh our God, but the things that are revealed belong to the Israelites and their descendants forever as they put Moses’ Teaching into effect (Deut 29:29 [[30]  28]), Moses suggests that his teaching, and the Old Testament by extension, is not a repository of concealment but a repository of revelation. The New certainly assumes that there are things that are revealed in the New, but that is not a basis for reading them into the Old. They are new. They add to the Old; they are not a basis for a de facto abandoning of the Old. What is concealed from the Old is revealed in the New. What is revealed in the Old is taken for granted in the New and then forgotten in the church.

I do not focus on the Old Testament as foreshadowing the New. Events such as the exodus and practices such as sacrifice indeed provided the New Testament with the means of understanding Jesus, but they thus came to be seen as “types” in light of their proving to have that capacity. In the Old Testament events such as the exodus and practices such as sacrifice have significance in themselves, and I want to focus on what we learn from that.

I do not see the Old Testament as law that is succeeded by the gospel. The dynamic of Old Testament faith and New Testament faith is similar. In both, God reaches out in grace to a people who in no way deserve such an initiative. In both, God sets up a relationship with this people for reasons that emerge from within God. In both, God acts with energy on this people’s behalf. In both, God’s gifts include teaching on the nature of the life God seeks from the people. In both, the possibility of living that life is both God’s gift and an obligation emerging from God’s reaching out to people. The contents of the life outlined by God in the two Testaments complement each other in a variety of ways, in the areas of life they cover and the allowances they make for the human failings of the people to whom the teaching is given. “Gospel” does not come into being only with the coming of Jesus. In speaking of Jesus’ story as “gospel,” the early Christians were thinking of his story in terms that had already applied to Israel’s story.

Narrative, Faith and Ethos

I divide my study of Old Testament theology into three parts and thus into three volumes, to reflect something of the Old Testament’s own literary and theological nature, and in the conviction that the literary and the theological are related.

Old Testament faith expresses itself initially in a narrative. The main bulk of the Old Testament is a narrative account of Israel’s story and of God’s involvement with it. Its narrative form corresponds to its substance, and theological reflection on its gospel needs to work with its narrative form. In the present volume, then, I treat the Old Testament as the story of God’s relationship with the world and with Israel. Volume one concerns the Old Testament’s gospel, or how things were, or what God and Israel have done. It is a work of narrative theology.

In reading the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings, when we come to the (Latter) Prophets we reach something more like the discursive thinking that has characterized theology since that meeting of Christian thinking with Greek thought. My second volume will start from these books and from the Wisdom Books and the Psalms, and will be the nearest to traditional theology in this work as a whole. It will concern the Old Testament’s faith and hope, or how things are and will be, or who God is and who we are.

In volume three, the Psalms and the instructional material in the Torah will then provide the starting point for considering people’s relationship with God and their lifestyle, their worship and their ethics, their spirituality and their community life. Volume three will thus concern the Old Testament’s vision of life or its ethos, or how things can be and should be, or what God calls us to.

The three volumes are not simply three separate theologies, of Narrative, Prophets and Writings. Gospel, faith and lifestyle or spirituality appear in all the parts of the Old Testament. Indeed, in beginning with creation in this volume, I will begin from material in Psalms, Job and Proverbs that talks about the beginnings of the cosmos (as opposed to its nature as it is), and subsequently I will consider allusions to Israel’s story that appear, for example, in the Prophets. I am writing a theological midrash, and midrash does bring together texts that have a relationship of substance if not a historical relationship. But the different parts of the Old Testament provide the framework and/or starting point for the three parts of the study.

1.3 Old Testament Gospel

Neither ancient nor modern books about theology and spirituality regularly work by telling the story of a people and God’s workings with it. Modern books about spirituality focus more on the inner life of the individual human being. Middle Eastern peoples in the ancient world were often inclined to tell stories about events in heaven rather than events on earth. The Old Testament itself utilizes various ways of doing theology—for instance, by overt personal reflection (Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes), by sharing ways of speaking to God (Psalms) and by overtly talking about the way God sees the present and the future (the Prophets). But the dominant way it expounds the nature of its faith is by telling Israel’s story. It might not have been the case that Israel had a story or that this story expounded the nature of its faith. Humanity might have accepted God’s commission to fill the earth and subjugate it, to serve God’s garden and guard it. As one of Christianity Today’s “What if …?” cartoons once imagined, suppose Eve had said “no” to the serpent? Linearity might then almost end with Genesis 2, the world might have lived happily ever after, and happiness might have had no story.

As it is, the Old Testament begins with a huge narrative extending from Genesis to Kings. Although this narrative presents itself to us as a sequence of separate books, none is complete on its own (except Ruth, to prove the rule, for it comes elsewhere in the Hebrew order). Genesis only half answers the questions it raises: it introduces a plot line that does not find completion in Genesis, issuing a promise of land to Abraham and Sarah and their family that does not come to fulfillment. Exodus continues that plot line without completing it, and also adds elements to the plot that do not find completion in Exodus: God gives instructions about the ordination of a priesthood, but this does not come about before the book ends. This process continues through the succeeding books. Jewish tradition separates off Genesis-Deuteronomy as “Moses’ Teaching” from Joshua–Kings as “The Former Prophets.” Even while thus emphasizing Moses’ fundamental status, this partitioning of the complete story in Genesis–Kings draws attention to the incompleteness of the story of Israel in Moses’ day. At the end of Moses’ story Israel stands poised at the edge of the promised land; perhaps this reflects the community’s position in the exile or afterwards, living outside the land or possessing only a foothold within it. Joshua gives some initial appearance of closure as it relates the fulfillment of that promise in Genesis, except that it does not conceal the ambiguity of its account. The people’s possession of the land is incomplete. The narrative continues into Judges, which again raises issues it does not resolve, for in its days people did what was right in their own eyes because there were no kings in Israel, but kings do not appear until 1 Samuel. So the story again continues without finding closure. Formally the narrative that began in Genesis comes to an end only with 1–2 Kings. When we open the next Hebrew scroll it turns out to be Isaiah; when we turn over the next Greek or English page it turns out to be 1 Chronicles 1. Instead of continuing the previous story, the Old Testament in its Greek order thus goes back to the beginning and opens a second version of the story from creation to the exile, which terminates in an analogous way to Genesis–Kings until Ezra-Nehemiah kick-starts it again. In the contrasting arrangement of the Hebrew Bible, Ezra-Nehemiah-Chronicles appear in that order at the end, so that the two narrative sequences Genesis–Kings and Ezra-Nehemiah-Chronicles form a bracket round the whole. More than half the Old Testament thus comprises long narrative works that form successive sequences in the Greek and English and embrace the whole in the Hebrew. It also includes short stories about Ruth, Esther, Jonah, and Daniel and his friends.

A People with a Story

It is of the essence of Israel to be a people with a story. In the Old Testament, a “people” may be a group with a common religion and/or covenant and/or territory and/or government and/or kinship and/or literature.[31]  Yet most of these visions deconstruct. The people does not adhere to its religion. It exists before it has a land, and then loses it. It breaks its covenant. It is ambivalent about its monarchy. It welcomes other people into its midst and undermines its kinship base. But irreducibly it is a group that has a common story, and the Old Testament story is the one that identifies Israel as Israel. It is a people defined by promise, deliverance, meeting, commitments and migration, and later by political development, political division, religious apostasy, geographical dislocation and the attempt to rebuild. The Old Testament tells us who God is and who we are through the ongoing story of God’s relationship with Israel.

Much twentieth-century Old Testament scholarship was concerned with establishing what was unique about the faith of Israel, with the implication that the Old Testament’s significance lay here. If particular Israelite beliefs were the same as Canaanite beliefs, they seemed less important. One of the ways scholarship articulated Israel’s uniqueness was by describing biblical faith as linear rather than cyclic. In reality, there are cyclic aspects to biblical faith as there are linear aspects to other faiths. A faith needs to combine the two if it is to resonate with human experience. The lives of individuals, societies and communities have a time line, a beginning and a middle and an end, but human experience also has cyclic or recurrent features such as the daily round of night and day and the yearly round of the seasons. Yet whether or not biblical faith is uniquely and thoroughly linear, it is certainly intrinsically and characteristically so. Linearity is an essential and central feature of it. It believes that certain events in the past were determinative for the present of the people who wrote and read the Scriptures and for the present and future of the world itself. Understanding the nature of these events is therefore of key importance for the people of God and the world.

The significance of the Old Testament’s story thus lies not merely in the fact that it is a linear narrative, whether or not this is a unique feature of Old Testament faith. It lies in the actual story it tells. The central feature of the Old Testament is that it tells Israel’s story. Along the way, if aspects of Old Testament faith are the same as aspects of Canaanite faith, that does not make them of questionable or limited significance. Indeed, we might turn this argument on its head and suggest we would expect God not to have left other peoples unaware of the basic truths about God. People such as Amos and Paul certainly make some such assumption. But the specific Old Testament story is of unique and decisive importance for the whole world, not least because it is the story that leads up to Jesus.

The New Testament thus follows the pattern of the Old Testament and again kick-starts its story. The explicit New Testament core story is its “gospel” or good news that “the time is fulfilled: God’s reign has drawn near” (Mk 1:15), or that “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16), though the latter is not actually described as a “gospel.” The explicit Old Testament gospel is that “your God is reigning.… Yhwh has comforted his people, restored Jerusalem, bared his holy arm in the sight of all the nations” (Is 52:7–10; it is from the Greek translation of this passage that the verb euangelizomai “bring good news” comes into Christian usage). Both are part of the biblical gospel, if we may use that term to refer to the macronarrative that may be inferred from the two Testaments as a whole. This gospel begins at the opening of the Old Testament and runs through its story into the New Testament. And “being a Christian or a Jew is not so much a matter of subscribing to one’s community’s core doctrines as of affirming its core story.”[32]  The biblical gospel is not a collection of timeless statements such as God is love. It is a narrative about things God has done.[33]

God Involved in a Particular Sequence of Events

The nature of the Old Testament’s faith is to be a statement about God’s involvement in a particular sequence of events in the world. It is for this reason that Old Testament theology has to be shaped by narrative. I have referred to one of the two great twentieth-century Old Testament Theologies, the work of Walther Eichrodt. In his own way the point about theology and narrative I have just been noting was an insight distinctively perceived by the other great twentieth-century Old Testament theologian, Gerhard von Rad. “Re-telling [Nacherzählung] remains the most legitimate form of theological discourse on the Old Testament.”[34]  The fact that more analytic forms of expression appear elsewhere in the Old Testament makes those forms of Old Testament theology also legitimate and necessary. The fact that the Old Testament opens with narrative and is dominated by narrative makes narrative form the appropriate starting point for Old Testament theology.

As a whole, this narrative tells how

God began

God started over

God promised

God delivered

God sealed

God gave

God accommodated

God wrestled

God preserved.

Christian theology has not regularly talked about God in narrative terms. The creeds, for instance, are structured around the persons of Father, Son and Spirit, and systematic theology has often taken God’s trinitarian nature as its structural principle. Before the revival of trinitarian thinking in the late twentieth century, systematic theology often emphasized the fundamental significance of attributes of God such as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and perfection. The Old Testament narrative does incorporate equivalent statements about God’s character, such as God’s self-description in Exodus 34:6–7. But the kinds of statement about God that emerge more directly from the narrative itself are ones such as those I listed above. It is this narrative that nuances for us who the Father is, for example, or what omnipotence is, or what grace is.

What makes this macronarrative a gospel? In a number of ways it might seem not obviously so. That outline draws attention to the wrestling that led to rejection, and the more positive headings conceal stories of rebellion and expulsion, failure and rebuke, unfaithfulness and chastisement. But the background to good news is often the possibility that there may not be any. In the Old Testament the densest concentration of occurrences of the term “good news” with its literal meaning comes in the story of Absalom’s rebellion, where men vie for the privilege of carrying the good news that the rebellion has been quelled (2 Sam 18:19–32). The background of good news is the threat or the actuality of bad news. This particular narrative also shows that the news itself may be more ambiguous than the messenger realizes, though that is another story. The background of the good news in Isaiah 40–55 is the bad news of rejection, destruction and exile. In Paul’s gospel the background of the revelation of God’s righteousness is the revelation of God’s wrath (Rom 1:16–18).

The good news is that bad news has neither the last word nor the first word. It stands in the context of a purpose to bless that was set in motion at the Beginning, and a purpose to create that persists to the End.

An Incomplete Story

We must be careful of speaking in terms of the macronarrative coming to an end, as it never quite does so. We will hardly be satisfied with the closure eventually achieved by 2 Kings, which leaves Judah in exile; its king is released from prison at the end, but that acts more as a tease than a substantial closure. More overtly than Genesis–Deuteronomy, Joshua–Kings reflects the situation of a people whose story seems to have come to an end, and not in a positive sense. While Ezra-Nehemiah takes the story further, it ends in a row of dots. Subsequently, Daniel promises completion with the downfall of the fourth empire, but that downfall does not come within the Old Testament story and anyway does not bring the End. Something similar is true in the New Testament. The Gospels once again set the story going and promise the End, but the story does not come to an end. One symbol of this is the way Mark originally terminated with its famous “they said nothing to anyone because they were afraid” (Mk 16:8) which anyone could see was not a real end—so people hastened to provide it with one (or rather, several). Another is Luke’s need to write a second volume. The church could separate it from his first, but could not suppress it, with its presupposition that the End still lies ahead. Acts then ends with Paul preaching for two years in Rome—so what happened next? Speculation that Luke intended a third volume testifies to the biblical story’s final lack of such narrative closure.

The biblical story comprises a beginning and a development but no end. That reflects and testifies to the location of the people who write, read and live within the story. They live after the exodus, or after Sinai, or after the occupation of the land, or after David, or after the signs that exile will end, or after the rebuilding of the temple, or after the achievements of Ezra and Nehemiah, or after the fall of Antiochus, or after Jesus’ coming, or after his resurrection, or after he has been proclaimed around the Mediterranean, but none of these events has turned out to be the End. Each brings an implementation of God’s rule and generates a proclamation of good news. Each generates a narrative in whose light people may live their lives. But none ultimately suggests that the story is over. The moments of achievement turn out not to signal consummation. The moments of calamity turn out not to preclude hope. The narrative invites its community to own the fact that the story has never (yet) come to an end, and it inexorably insists that its community lives within this story.

This links with the fact that it is in a broad sense a historical narrative.[35]  Novels and films commonly offer closure, and individual biblical stories such as Ruth or Job do that. Such “complete” stories assure us that there can be such a thing as closure and that there will be closure for the incomplete story of the world, of Israel, of the church, of our society, of our community, of our family, of our individual lives. The “historical” narratives provide the grounds for such a conviction, rescuing it from being a groundless leap of faith. It is the fact that God did bring Israel out of Egypt, seal a relationship with Israel at Sinai and so on, that provides the basis for believing that the story of which these events form part will reach closure. We can trust the story the more because it does not pretend that this end has been reached. When books such as Daniel or Revelation speak about the End, they too are open about the fact that it is an end not yet reached. It is part of the biblical macronarrative, but not part of the narrative.

Calling Israel’s Scriptures “the Old Testament” or “the First Testament” identifies them as a Part One that has a Part Two. The terms “Old Testament” or “First Testament” indeed presuppose a Christian theological judgment on the significance of Israel’s Scriptures. This does not imply that the New Testament story is the manifest or necessary continuation of the Old Testament. On the penultimate pages of his History of Israel, John Bright notes that Jews and Christians have different views regarding where Old Testament history finds its continuance, and as a Christian he describes Jesus as “the destination of Old Testament history.”[36]  This might seem to imply the belief that this history “moved in a natural and necessary course towards a fulfillment in the New.”[37]  But Bright’s view is more equivocal than that. His perception that Jesus is the destination of Old Testament history issues from the recognition that Jesus is the Christ. It is “after [the Christian] has said this” that Old Testament history gains a new meaning “as a part of the redemptive drama leading on to its conclusion in Christ.”[38]  Any conviction that the project God began at creation takes more decisive steps forward in Jesus than it does in rabbinic Judaism comes by considering the story of Israel in light of the story of Jesus rather than vice versa. Christian history provides evidence that the story of Jesus does not take forward the Old Testament story as well as evidence that it does take it forward—that is, the Christian church’s story often looks to be no advance on Israel’s story. The claim that it does take the story forward still awaits more conclusive justification. Perhaps it must await it until the End, or perhaps the End cannot come until Christian history becomes less equivocal.

Thus it is not the case that a story that is inherently incomplete in the Old Testament is complete in the New Testament. Judaism does not find the story in the Tanak incomplete in the sense of coming to a decisively unsatisfactory end. If it had ended with the people in exile, then it might indeed seem to be an account of the failure of God’s plan[39] —as Christians tacitly think of it. But the story ends with the people back in the land in covenant commitment to Yhwh, even if still under Persian authority, and the openings of the Gospels take up the positive side to this picture as well as the negative side.[40]  Further, insofar as the Old Testament story is incomplete, we have noted that the New Testament story does not bring it to an end. It too is incomplete.

1.4 Old Testament Story

So it is the nature of its faith that constitutes one major reason why the Old Testament is dominated by narrative. But the narrative is far longer than it needed to be in order simply to expound the significance of this sequence of events as a gospel. It is discursive and sprawling in nature. Further, it does not merely give a consistently relaxed, lengthy account of its gospel story. It is uneven in its discursiveness. Something similar is true of the New Testament. The Old Testament’s narrative discursiveness suggests further significances attaching to its narrative form.

Taking Humanity Seriously

First, it reflects the fact that God takes humanity with great seriousness. The Old Testament story is not merely God’s story. From the beginning it is the story of God and humanity, a story in which humanity has a key role to play in the achievement of God’s purpose in the world. It becomes in particular the story of God and Israel. It is a story that could not exist without God’s initiatives and responses (positive and negative) but also could not exist without Israel’s responses and initiatives (negative and positive). In its continuation in the New Testament, God’s concern with the whole world again comes into focus, and Israel again contributes in paradoxically complex ways to its frustrating and outworking.

The negative side to the human and divine acts makes the path toward the achievement of that purpose tortuous. The Bible could have been much shorter if God’s purpose in the world had found fulfillment by sovereign fiat, independently of humanity, but this was not God’s approach (because the nature of that purpose made this impossible?). Theological significance thus attaches to humanity’s role in the Old Testament story and not only to God’s role. While this human role is often negative, as when Eve says “yes” to the serpent, it is not always so. It had been designed to be positive, and often becomes so. God works through and with human beings as well as despite them. An account of the Old Testament’s plot thus needs to be augmented with the part the human beings play:

God began.

Humanity turned its back on God’s instructions, and God started over.

God promised, and a family grew.

Israel cried out, and God delivered.

God sealed, and Israel imperiled.

God gave, and Israel took.

Israel equivocated, and God accommodated.

Israel turned away, and God wrestled.

God preserved, and Israel turned back.

Portraying the Specificity of Life with God

Second, the stories of Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and his wives, Joseph and his brothers, or of Saul or David illustrate a significant form of this discursiveness in portraying the specificity of human beings living with God. They comprise stories about people facing the challenges, potentials, questions, achievements, ambiguities, puzzles, disappointments, demands and failures that are intrinsic to life with God. They thus invite their hearers to reflect on the equivalent specificities of their own lives in light of the stories’ implicit convictions about who God is and what human life is. Such reflection needs the help of narrative with its concreteness and specificity.

Understanding does require the direct, unambiguous affirmations of teachers, prophets, philosophers and systematic theologians. Such affirmations on the part of teachers and prophets provide the implicit framework for the Old Testament’s narratives. They are the framework that the storytellers took for granted, or that the people who came to treat their works as Scripture took for granted that they took for granted. Occasionally it is explicit that such statements are this framework—so for Abraham’s life (Gen 17:1) and for Yhwh’s self-revelation (Ex 34:6–7). But by their nature the direct, unambiguous affirmations of teachers, prophets, philosophers and systematic theologians cannot provide the means for reflection that appear in narrative. Nor can they have the authority that attaches to such narrative. The kind of claims the Old Testament implies about what it means to live before God cannot be made without the specific and concrete portrayal that books such as Genesis and 1 and 2 Samuel make possible. The direct affirmations are subordinate to the narrative, and require the narrative to give them their meaning.

In the Old Testament as a whole, the fact that narrative precedes the direct affirmations of prophets and teachers itself hints that “the particular is in some sense prior to general rules and principles.”[41]  Exodus 34:6–7 constitutes a retrospective systematic theological reflection on the narrative beginning in Exodus 32. Nor is the particular merely a means to the end of making general rules and principles, so that once the particular has yielded the generalization, it can be left aside. If anything, the opposite is the case. A framework is essential to a building, a skeleton is essential to a person, and a frame is an asset to a painting, but we concentrate on paintings not frames, on bodies not skeletons, on buildings not frameworks. The particular is posterior to the general as well as prior to it. The fact that the Old Testament in its Hebrew order ends in narrative (Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles) as well as beginning in narrative is a symbol of that. In the chapters that follow, I combine narrative reflection with systematic reflection, the particular with the general, but the usefulness of the chapters will hang on whether they take readers back to the narrative particularities of the Old Testament and of their own lives. The author of a standard treatment of the history of Israel’s religion comments that “in many Theologies little comes over of the lively religious life or the exciting theological disputes, and … they often have an effect that is remarkably static, lifeless, and at times also boring.”[42]  The Old Testament’s narrative particularity is one of the features that make it interesting and illuminating, and the reduction of it to generalities sacrifices these.

A further feature of these narratives is significant in this connection. The terms “omniscient author” or “omniscient narrator” suggest that a story’s author or narrator is in a position to tell us about all the inner workings of the minds of its various characters, even God. In the Old Testament, at least, authors or narrators do manifest out-of-the-ordinary knowledge—on occasions they tell us what people thought or what God thought or they make value judgments. And when they do so, I assume they know what they are talking about. But they do so relatively rarely. They give no indication of believing they know everything about what people thought or God thought. Indeed, they are rather reticent about such matters (actually writers in general are more reticent than talk of their omniscience implies). Often we might like to know what the narrator or God makes of particular acts of people such as Abraham, Moses, Ezra or Nehemiah, but the narrator does not tell us. The narrator does not even tell us what Abraham makes of his acts. Sometimes the narrative implies a judgment without making it explicit—it shows rather than tells. Again, I then assume the narrators know what they are talking about. But often they seem to tell their story without implying a judgment. They thereby drive us to do our own reflection on their story. The books of Kings sometimes point out how history works out in a fair way, but sometimes do not pretend to do so, and we are not surprised that they make no such pretense, because events do often seem to work out unfairly. And that reminds us that our own knowledge about such matters is also fragmentary, whether we are asking about Abraham or about ourselves. Abraham is something of a mystery to the narrator and to himself and to us (and to God?). We are something of a mystery to ourselves (and to God?).

Study of the Old Testament in the context of modernity often assumed that particular periods were high points and low points. The time of the ancestors, or the exodus and the time of Moses, or the premonarchic twelve-clan covenant community, or the “Solomonic enlightenment,” or the eighth-century prophets, or the Deuteronomists, or Second Isaiah might be high points, while the postexilic period was certainly a low point. I seek to avoid such assumptions. All these periods and all these stages in the story make it possible to see some things but also encourage us to miss others.

Doing Theology by Means of Narrative

A third further significance of the Old Testament narrative’s discursiveness emerges when we consider its treatment of the story of Israel itself. Like the Israelites’ own story, the Old Testament’s telling of that story does not take the most direct route from A to B. The narrative of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, for instance, sometimes proceeds quite briskly, as in the account of the people’s journey from Egypt to the Red Sea. But it sometimes gives us a much more detailed version of events: For example, the main story line does not require the account of Moses’ signs and portents in Egypt and the closing of the king’s mind, but the narrative provides such an account.

Much human interest attaches to these stories, but much human interest could also have attached to the account of the journey from Egypt to the Red Sea. The particular significance of the stories about signs and marvels in Exodus 4–14 is to provide a narrative discussion of theological issues that do not exclusively relate to the once-for-all sequence of events that takes Israel from Egypt to Sinai. Narrative makes it easier to discuss a complicated issue such as the interrelationship between divine sovereignty and human free will, especially an issue that seems to require us to make a number of apparently conflicting statements—as this one does.[43]  The account of events at Sinai in Exodus 32–34 (and Exodus 19–40 as a whole) brings this use of narrative to its apogee, not least because it uses narrative to interweave exploration of two such issues: What do we mean by talking of God’s presence with us? What stance does God take to the sin of Israel and how does God seek to handle that reality? Its focus on such questions makes it “more of a theological treatise than a literary narrative.”[44]

Exodus 32–34 is episodic and overlapping, and hard to interpret as a sequential narrative. Each scene may be coherent in itself but the links are missing and/or it is difficult to see how one scene follows from the preceding one. For instance, how is it that the people are “running wild” when Moses had just sobered them up by making them drink the powdered remains of the gold calf (Ex 32:20, 25–29)? How is it that there is a tent where Yhwh and Moses meet in the sight of all the people immediately after Yhwh’s declaration that Yhwh cannot stand being among the people (Ex 33:1–11)? There are ways of handling such questions (e.g., perhaps Ex 32:20 anticipates later events and Ex 33:7–11 recalls earlier ones), but they involve a tour de force—it can be done, but it requires an ingenuity that alerts us to the possibility that the story as a whole has a concern other than providing a coherent linear narrative. Source criticism provides one way of explaining jerkiness in the narrative, but it has produced no agreed account of the narrative’s prehistory, and it anyway leaves us with the task of interpreting the narrative Israel eventually compiled, accepted and read. I suggest that the main coherence of the chapters is thematic rather than linear. They represent a series of semi-independent but complementary discussions of the way God, leaders and people may handle the problem of the rebelliousness of leaders and people, with the series also interweaving reflection on what we mean by talking about God’s presence with us. Later, the account of the end of Israel’s stay at Sinai, in Numbers 1–10, suggests a number of models of what it means to be the people of God, and it is thus suggestive for our reflecting on what it means to be Israel or what it means to be the church.

There are modern understandings of the way the narrative in Exodus or Numbers incorporates a number of understandings of the closing of Pharaoh’s mind, or of the nature of God’s presence, or of the way God responds to sin, or of the nature of Israel. Thus Thomas Dozeman sees the complex insights on God’s presence expressed in Exodus as reflecting a series of redactions of this story. These expressed what we might call a sacral, a verbal and a sacramental understanding of God’s presence, associated with the names Zion, Horeb and Sinai. Exodus then combines these understandings without attempting to turn them into a single unified theology of divine presence. The biblical writers “talk round” the subject, because the shortcomings of language make it impossible to formulate a single view on the matter.[45]  Although we cannot know whether such redaction-critical theories are historically correct and we would be unwise to base theological construction on them, such study is of significant heuristic value in enabling us to perceive aspects of the text we have.

Rainer Albertz offers an attractive imaginative picture of the Pentateuch coming into being as a compromise conflation of the works of two theological commissions in the Jerusalem community after the exile, a lay commission and a priestly one. It is this process of compromise that generates the Pentateuch’s discursive and diverse picture.[46]  Perhaps it did, but in the context of postmodernity it is the result that is interesting. It is a characteristic of postmodernity to be aware (to put it most positively) that our insights are partial. Reality is complex, and the fact that Scripture is divine revelation does not make it less so. Rather the opposite—our theological statements tend to be more univocal than Scripture, and thus less true. Even God (especially God) cannot make truth less complex than it is. Like any cultural context, our postmodern setting blinds us to some aspects of Scripture, but it also opens our eyes to other aspects of Scripture, and one of these is the way scriptural narrative makes it possible to do more justice to the complexity of reality. It enables Scripture to make the variety of statements that need to be made about deep and complex questions. It can convey depth, complexity and ambiguity, as direct statement cannot.

While I am an enthusiast for investigating the historical context and process whereby the biblical documents came into existence, concerning such questions one can nowadays only rarely begin a sentence “most scholars agree that …” and by the time you read this volume even those few sentences may no longer be true. So I have generally not based theological inferences on scholarly theories concerning where, how and why biblical documents came into existence.[47]  I try to infer the theological significance of the Old Testament narrative itself, to analyze its discussions of complex theological questionings, and to see what the stories tell us of who God is and who we are.

Our task is to tease out their theological significance without totally abandoning their narrative way of doing theology.

2

God Began

Creation

The First Testament offers us a series of images for understanding how God brought the world into being. God acted like an executive thinking through plans and then implementing them. God acted like a king issuing commands that brought things into existence; they were life-giving commands. God labored and gave birth to a world, like a mother. God wrestled victoriously with the demands of the task and the forces that needed to be put under constraint in order to generate a stable cosmos. God created sovereignly like an artist or a craftworker making something amazing. God produced a universe that was structured and ordered. God built a house to dwell in and be at home. God planted a garden and shaped beings to look after it, enjoy it and represent God in it. And at the end of the work God sat back and also enjoyed it.

At the same time, the First Testament never actually says that God “acted” like a king or a mother or an artist but simply uses expressions that have those backgrounds. The effect is to underline a different fact. God is way beyond any such comparisons. God is just there, with no biography or defining features, and God simply starts creating the world through sheer thought and speech.[48]  God is wholly other. God is—God. Yet declaring that God did bring into being the heavens and earth and humanity “asserts that the whole reality distinct from God truly is.”[49]  If we leave God’s reality out of account, we cannot know whether we are real. But if we accept God’s word about that, we can know that we are. Conversely, that declaration affirms that the world does not exist in or of or for itself, independently of God, but only because God willed it.[50]

In traditional societies and in the modern world there are stories of beginnings, which speak of the world’s earliest history without referring to an agent that brought it into being, and there are stories of creation, which portray someone making something happen.[51]  In the Middle Eastern world, understandings of the world’s origins took for granted that the process involved the activity of already-existent divine beings who brought the world into being, and the First Testament likewise assumes an agency. Modern understandings are more inclined to take for granted that we came into being through processes within nature itself.

2.1 God Thought

In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth. But what happened before creation, and why did God decide to create the world, and what led up to creation itself? Genesis begins with a Hebrew bet, which is open only forwards. That suggests to Genesis Rabbah 1:10 (on Gen 1:1) that we may inquire about subsequent events but not about preceding events nor about the world above or the world below. The traditional less polite response to the question “What was God doing before creating the world?” is, “Devising Hell for people who ask impertinent questions like that.”[52]  Admittedly that bet does not stop Jewish midrash from offering a strange anticipation of the “gap theory,” which translates Genesis 1:2 “and the earth became empty and desolate” and refers Genesis 1:3–31 to its subsequent re-creation. The midrash declares that God established the present world only after destroying a series of previous creations.

Before Creation

In offering little guidance on what was happening before creation, the First Testament is more reticent than other Middle Eastern documents, which take us into the beginning of the life of the gods and tell us how they came into being, though they do not tell us the origin of the primordial raw material from which they emerged. These stories about what had been going on in the nonmaterial heaven before creation, and about creation and flood, developed over the millennia in Sumerian and Akkadian, and motifs from one became adopted by another. Enuma Elish (When on High) is the most famous, though we will also refer especially to Atrahasis, a more mainstream instance of the stories with closer parallels to Genesis 1–11 as a whole. The creation of humanity is an incidental theme in Enuma Elish, which more directly concerns how Marduk came to be chief god in Babylon. Atrahasis tells of the rebellion of junior gods who had the task of digging irrigation canals. This led to the creation of men and women from clay mixed with the flesh and blood of a dead god. The noise made by the human beings then disturbs the god Enlil, who eventually destroys humanity with a flood. Another god warns King Atrahasis and bids him build a boat in which he and his family survive.[53]

If there were Israelite equivalents to these stories about the background of creation, they appear within the First Testament only in fragmentary form. The First Testament tells us nothing about the origin of heavenly beings such as the seraphim or God’s aides (the “angels”)—for instance, whether they were formed from that primordial raw material whose existence is presupposed in Genesis 1, like most of the Babylonian gods. Other Jewish literature, such as 1 Enoch, offers much more “information” on the heavenly background to earthly life, but the First Testament’s gospel concentrates on events in our world. It certainly tells us nothing about the origin of God’s own being. Entitling this chapter “God Began” does not imply the pretence that we can say something about God’s own beginning. The beginning the First Testament relates is the beginning of God’s work in the world. If it could give an account of God’s own beginning, God as the First Testament understands God would surely cease to be God (cf. Ps 90:2).

Yhwh’s Insight

Other peoples described their gods working together (or working against each other!) in bringing the world into being. The First Testament assumes that Yhwh was quite capable of planning this undertaking without any help, though Yhwh did involve other heavenly beings as underlings. Yhwh had the requisite expertise (Is 40:13–14). A reflective poem at the end of the argument between Job and his three friends (Job 28) emphasizes God’s insight or know-how (ḥokmâ; [54] V “wisdom”). It closes with a comment on how human beings acquire insight, by revering God and departing from what is bad, but before this it describes God’s own relationship to insight. Perhaps part of the logic is that we can only be expected to accept the claim that reverence for God is the way to insight if we believe that God possesses insight. And God does. That was why God was in a position to think out how to bring the world into being.

Although the silver, gold, iron, copper and sapphires that lie deep within the earth are hard to find, humanity puts in extraordinary efforts to acquire them. Insight is much harder to acquire. We cannot force our way to where it resides, as we can determine to mine the earth. On the other hand,

God understood the way to it. He was one who knew its place.

For he is one who sees to the ends of the earth. He looks under all the heavens.

In making a weight for the wind, when he gauged waters with a measure,

As he made a decree for the rain and a way for thunderbolts,

Then he saw it and announced it, established it and also discovered it.

And he said to humankind,

“There, reverence for the Lord, that is insight. Turning from what is bad is understanding.” (Job 28:23–28)

The evidence and the fruit of God’s understanding the way to insight is the way God brought the world into being. At the beginning God gave the wind its weight, sometimes light, sometimes heavy. In the context this likely refers to the wind’s role in bringing storms of rain, for God also gauged the waters with a measure (cf. Is 40:12). God thus made a decree that set a limit for the rain and determined where the thunder would roll. In connection with setting up the arrangements for all that and ensuring that nature would not get out of hand, God made sure of working with insight, and thus explored insight’s potential to the full. If we may press the analogy with mining, whose language the poet picks up in the talk of exploration, God is like “an individual who has discovered a precious jewel.”[55]  In this connection “creation was thus a great adventure for God.”[56]

That might seem fine for God, though for humanity Job 28 rather implies that creation’s wonder could seem oppressive and terrifying, revealing the poverty of our resources.[57]  Yet God shares this adventure and its discoveries with human beings. So in turning to God we find the key to understanding something of how the world came into being—even though Job as a whole does remind us how much we can never understand.

Proverbs 3 and 8 similarly crown their attempt to persuade people to pay attention to insight by pointing out that, before forming the world, Yhwh made sure of possessing the insight to set about the task. Yhwh accomplished the task of world-forming in an effective way, making the heavens and the earth to form one cosmos, through the exercise of insight, understanding, and knowledge (Prov 3:19–20). That is why human beings would be wise to pay attention to insight, understanding and knowledge.

Insight Speaks

In Proverbs 8, Insight itself speaks.

Yhwh had me at the start of his way, the beginning of his acts long ago.

I was appointed of old, at the first, before the beginnings of earth.

When there were no depths I was birthed, when there were no springs heavy with water.

Before mountains were sunk, prior to hills, I was birthed,

When he had not made earth and open country, or the first of all the soil in the world.

When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,

When he firmed the skies above when the springs of the deep were strong,

When he laid down his decree for the sea so that the waters would not transgress his word,

When he drew up the foundations of the earth, 30 I was there, a child at his side.

I was there, full of delight day by day, rejoicing before him every moment,

Rejoicing in his inhabited world and full of delight in human beings.

(Prov 8:22–31)

The First Testament assumes there is only one being who is really entitled to be described as “God,” though it sometimes gives the courtesy title “gods” to other heavenly beings. But it can picture aspects of the one God as distinguishable from God’s own being, so that they almost seem to exist in their own right. Insight is here such an aspect of God. Part of the background is the portrayal of goddesses in other Middle Eastern religions, but in the First Testament context “Ms. Insight” is a personification of such an aspect of God rather than a separate person. But the image does suggest that God was not austerely alone while forming the world. Ms. Insight stood by Yhwh’s side during the execution of the great building project that brought the cosmos into being. This was not an expression of mere power but of insight. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” Genesis says. “And I was there,” Ms. Insight adds, “and I will tell you about a ‘beginning’ before that” (Prov 8:22). Behind the words God uttered to bring the world into being was the insight God possessed that made this possible.

“Depths” is the plural of the word “deep” in Genesis 1:2 (tĕhôm), while the springs of the deep reappear in Genesis 7:11; 8:2. In seeing water as the primordial element in the forming of the world, Proverbs corresponds to Genesis and to Enuma Elish, and also to some Egyptian and Greek understandings.[58]  It then goes behind the existence of deep, springs and water to a time when there were none of these. Its desire to glorify insight generates an assertion that satisfies our interest in where the raw material for creation came from. It thinks back to a time when there was no matter out of which the world might be formed, and declares that God’s being antedates that—rather than postdating it, like that of the Babylonian gods. Yet Ms. Insight was there then.

There were other respects in which the background work for creation had not yet been undertaken. The mountains and hills had not been sunk on their foundations, and the foundations of the earth as a whole had not yet been marked out. God had not yet made the earth and the open country, where in due course plants would grow and animals roam. Nor had God yet made the dirt that would provide the raw material for making a human being. God had not yet set the vault firmly in the sky and put the horizon in its place and thus established firm bounds for those potentially overwhelming waters. Before all that, before those long ago deeds, at the very beginning of the course of action that would bring the world into being, Yhwh possessed insight (Prov 8:22).

Here we listen to Ms. Insight’s testimony. When she speaks of herself and of her relationship with Yhwh, she often does so in an ambiguous and allusive fashion. When she tells us that Yhwh “had” her, the verb is qānâ. It is the verb Eve uses to describe “having” her first child, making a link with his name qayin, Cain (Gen 4:1), and the verb Melchizedek and Abram use to describe God as “owner” of the heavens and the earth (Gen 14:19, 22). The [59]  translates qānâ “create” in Proverbs 8 and Genesis 14, which produced an amusing moment in the history of Christian theological debate. Paul had already seen Christ, God’s Son, as the embodiment of God’s Insight, and on the basis of the LXX translation of Proverbs 8 the Arians were able to argue that the Bible describes God as having created Insight. So the Son is a created being.[60]  Even aside from that embarrassment, it would be odd for Proverbs to think of God’s insight being “created,” for God or by God.[61]  Perhaps qānâ means “bring into being” and could refer, for example, both to creation and to procreation.[62]  If we think of God “acquiring” insight, the church fathers would doubtless be able to argue that this was an “eternal” acquisition like the eternal generation of the Son of God. Or perhaps we should simply not press the verb. Proverbs’ point is that God made sure of having the help of insight before forming the world. During the entire process of this forming, “I was there,” Ms. Insight says twice in Proverbs 8:30. The word is ʾehyeh, so that she anticipates Yhwh’s own repeated ʾehyeh in the revelation to Moses, “I will be there with you,” “I am what I am”/“I will be what I will be,” “ ‘I am there’ has sent me to you” (Ex 3:12–14). She herself speaks like God.[63]  Given her importance to God, human beings will be well advised to make sure that they themselves acquire insight before undertaking their more trivial tasks.

The range of meanings that might be conveyed by the verb qānâ (create, acquire, possess, birth) is paralleled by the suggestiveness of the meanings that might be conveyed by some of the other words Ms. Insight uses. “I was appointed” (Prov 8:23 [64] ). The verb is nāsak, but there is probably more than one verb with this spelling. Usage elsewhere might thus invite us to imagine insight being installed like a king (Ps 2:6), or poured out like a cast image (Is 44:10) or like a drink (Is 29:10), or woven like a blanket (Is 25:7)—or like a baby in the womb (Ps 139:13). Indeed, Ms. Insight goes on to say that it was then that she was “birthed” (Prov 8:24, 25). The verb is now ḥûl, and its meaning is unambiguous. It is a bold word, etymologically suggesting the contortion involved in giving birth, though the polel puts the emphasis on the result of the laboring rather than the pain of it. Whether or not Ms. Insight was eternally generated, she was brought to birth before the events described in Genesis 1 and before the preparatory work that is not described in Genesis 1. We will shortly imagine the world itself coming into being in a way that resembles birth. God is the world’s mother or father. But before that, Proverbs thinks of Insight as God’s daughter.

Ms. Insight thus takes us behind the forming of the world and sets off the First Testament gospel story by telling us that this task involved God in thinking. She still does not tell us what God thought in the sense of why God decided to form the world. The thinking of which she speaks was more concerned with the “how” than the “why.” Careful thought and practical planning lay behind the powerful and systematic words that brought the world into being and the hands-on activity that shaped the first human beings and the animals, and planted the garden.

Given that biblical creation accounts are either poetry or parabolic history, in principle Christians have no vested interest in any particular scientific theory about how the world came into being. Yet the scientific theories often have theological implications that a biblical account of creation does confront. One is the idea that the world came into being by a chance process. Proverbs sees it as a thoughtful one. But the nature of a wisdom book such as Proverbs is to see God working behind empirical processes, so that its convictions about a purposefulness visible in creation emerge from looking at creation rather than bringing a theory to it. It starts from the conviction that it is obvious that someone designed the world.[65]  We might reckon that the world is obviously a majestic and precious place and therefore that its creator is a great artist. Proverbs might also imply the converse argument, that the creator is a great artist, and therefore the creation demands, for example, our reverence.

2.2 God Spoke

“In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God” (Jn 1:1). Read against a First Testament background as opposed to a Greek one, John makes Proverbs’ point in another conceptuality and thus amplifies it. Thinking involves words—if we do not have the words, it is hard for us to think the thoughts. As our human words begin inside our heads, as thoughts, so do God’s. God’s word is God’s thought. To associate speaking with God—before the act that brings other entities into existence, even other heavenly beings—might hint that there is communication within the Godhead in connection with creation. That will have further resonances when we know that God has three ways of being God, and when we overhear Father, Son and Spirit in communication with each other as John describes them.

In thinking, we are involved in speaking as we plan and communicate, though only with ourselves. In speaking out loud and expressing our thoughts, we are involved in communicating with someone else, and also in acting and implementing our plans. Words are both informative and performative—they communicate things and they do things. John is also reexpressing Genesis 1, where the divine initiative explicitly involves performative speech: “God said, ‘There is to be light!’ And there was light” (Gen 1:3).

It was once fashionable to speak of the power of words in First Testament thinking, and then to imply that this was a fallacy. The idea that words are inherently powerful is indeed fallacious. Many people’s words lack power. But certain people’s words are powerful, at least in certain circumstances, because of their position or their relationship to someone else. The words of a powerful person have power, and it is this fact that Genesis 1 reflects. The words of a king or commander or magician or director do make things happen. “There had better be some action,” declares the chief executive, and there is some action. “I pardon them,” says the king, and they are pardoned. An ordinary person speaks words of love, and another person who has neither been loved nor has loved is magically able for the first time to hear words of love and to return them. When God speaks, God speaks as a powerful person, and miracles therefore happen. Reality is under God’s authority as a business is under an executive’s authority. Executives do not spend all their time issuing imperative declarations, but at decisive moments this is what they do. The beginning of the world’s story is such a moment.

In speaking at the Beginning, God was involved in thinking, planning, communicating and acting. In due course God’s word will come to Moses and to prophets. It will be expressed in the teaching of Jesus and in the gospel message about Jesus (e.g., 1 Pet 1:25). Each expression of this word is in a sense as old as the world itself—it is consistent with or an outworking of thoughts God had before making the world. And insofar as Jesus Christ is the paramount expression of God’s mind, the paramount means by which God’s ultimate purpose is put into effect, and the paramount vehicle of God’s communication to the world, Jesus Christ is the word that goes back to the Beginning.

God’s speaking is another sign that God is indeed a person, for it is persons who speak (if we may ignore exceptional serpents and asses). There is nothing controversial about this assumption in its ancient context, for it was widely assumed that deities were persons like us and could speak. Like the Israelite story, but less explicitly, the Babylonian story describes deity making humanity in its own image, and speech is then part of that image. In some modern contexts deity has been identified with that which we take with utmost seriousness, or with some projection of human realities, so that the assumption that God is a person is a more controversial one. The Bible begins from this assumption, so one way God, like a human being, brings things into existence is by speaking.

There Is to Be …

God’s initial speech has a distinctive character. It will go on to take other forms such as naming, determining, commanding, bestowing, blessing, informing, reflecting, questioning and cursing, but the first divine speech in Scripture takes the form of a jussive—that is, a third-person imperative. There being no English equivalent, idiomatic translation is difficult. God does not say “Let there be light” in the sense of “Permit there to be light” but “There is to be light” or “There must be light” or “There shall be light.” Or God simply demands like a theater director, “Light!”

The third person imperatives carry further implications. We know from other parts of the First Testament that there are many other beings in heaven apart from the one God, and that many of these act as God’s agents. God could thus easily have addressed some of these, but does not do so. God’s speech in Genesis 1 is not like God’s speech in Isaiah 40, “Comfort, comfort my people,” where the imperative plural makes clear that God is addressing someone, though we are not sure who. In making the world, God could have spoken in the first person, as someone deliberating and making a decision, “I am going to make light.” That happens later in the plural when God says, “Let us make humanity.” But here God is not talking to himself.[66]  Here God speaks like a king or a general or a director, or most of all like a magician in a fairy story (precisely because such magicians do not exist, their capacity to do the magical gives us a useful metaphor for the activity of the God who does exist).

So God says, “There is to be light,” and that word is enough to make this happen: “And there was light.” The process involves supreme illogic. There is no suggestion that somewhere there is a dynamic source of light that can put forth light. In the same way, when God says “The waters are to gather together” or “The earth is to produce vegetation,” there is no implication that waters or earth already have the potential to obey these commands. It is the command that mysteriously generates them, as words can. Much later Jesus will address the dead Lazarus and bid him come out of the tomb (Jn 11:43): evidently the command then does have a magical power, because a dead man cannot hear the voice that bids him come forth, yet somehow Jesus’ word is able to break through this barrier of impossibility. But God does not address the not-yet-existent light in this way. All the emphasis lies on the magician’s power. God’s command does not galvanize already-existent light-makers into the action that will implement the royal command. Rather, the previously nonexistent light miraculously leaps into being.

The third-person form also implies that God did not delegate the task of making the world to some subordinate agent who might not have done the work too well. No, “all things came into being through the word. Not one thing came into being without him” (Jn 1:3). Speaking is thus life-giving—or it can be so (it can also be death-dealing). God’s speaking was focused in the word that eventually became flesh and brought renewed life to the world. But before becoming flesh, God’s speaking had already been the means of giving life to the world as a whole. After the varied ambiguity in Genesis 1:1–2, at last there came an unambiguously positive note. “God said ‘There is to be light’ ” (Gen 1:3). And light comes into existence.

Light

God is light (1 Jn 1:5), but the context makes clear that that is a moral statement. The First Testament does not say God is light but that God is clothed in light (Ps 104:2), “light” standing in parallelism with “honor and majesty.” It is the opposite of dullness or ordinariness, not of darkness nor of deception. When you see God, what you see is the dazzling, blinding brightness a prisoner sees when emerging from a dungeon, a brightness that makes it impossible to make out anything but light itself. The First Testament’s way of declaring that moral light is intrinsic to God’s being would be to say that God is faithful (ṣaddîq). So when God brings light into being, this no more emerges from within God’s own person than does the dome or the vegetation. This is the only aspect of creation that involves “creation from nothing.”[67]

Elsewhere, light is often an image for blessing in the midst of disaster. When we declare “in your light we see light” (Ps 36:9 [[68]  10]), the context makes clear that we refer to God’s generosity, not God’s illumination. Darkness suggests distress, gloom and anguish, all that counts as bad (Is 8:22 [MT 9:1]). Light suggests deliverance and security, all that counts as good (Ps 27:1; Is 45:7). Genesis 1 doubtless does refer to physical light illumining literal darkness. But given that darkness and light often denote more than merely phenomena of the physical world, and following on the talk of formless void, darkness over the deep, and mighty wind, “light” carries those other resonances. When God brought light into the world, this suggests introducing safety where otherwise there would be threat, meaning where otherwise there would be a void, order where otherwise uncontrollable tumult could develop. In Genesis, at the Beginning, God did not create darkness but did subject it to the rhythm of evening and morning, and it thus continues to have the same potential to be used by God but also to escape God’s sovereignty.[69]  Second Isaiah is more radical:

Shaper of light and creator of dark,

Maker of well-being and creator of bad,

I am Yhwh, maker of all these. (Is 45:7)

“Bad” (raʿ), suggesting calamity, is the antonym of “good” (tôb) in Genesis. Darkness has now become a reality that succeeds light, as adversity can succeed well-being. Yhwh can bring about both of these. The containing of darkness at the Beginning did not preclude its being allowed to fall once more when Yhwh deemed this necessary. Everything is created good, but Yhwh can go on to create something bad. Babylon is about to have that experience, as Israel already has.

God can act as creator of darkness as well as shaper of light, but at the Beginning it was not so. Genesis does not tell us “God said ‘There shall be darkness and light’, and there were darkness and light, and God saw that both darkness and light were good.” It presupposes darkness and has God introducing light.[70]  Israel was aware of the evidence that formlessness, darkness and tumult could characterize the world. It knew times when its own life descended into an empty void and entered the realm of darkness and tumult, times when the blast of God’s wind consumed it; this story probably comes from such a time. The beginning of its gospel assures it that this experience need not constitute God’s last word, because it was not God’s first.

Declaring that disaster as well as blessing comes from Yhwh reassures readers that there is no other power than Yhwh’s at work in the world. Isaiah 40–55 reassures the community that disasters that come upon it are within Yhwh’s sovereignty. Genesis reassures the community that such disasters are no more God’s first word than God’s last. All that God did at the Beginning looked good. The world was founded as something good. When it goes bad, it goes against its nature. Further, the founding of the world involved the streaming of light into darkness. While darkness and light are equally within God’s sovereignty, they are not equally God’s purpose or aim (Gen 1:3–4). God’s drive is toward light not darkness, and in founding the world God asserted that priority. Darkness and calamity are God’s work, but they are God’s “strange work,” alien to God’s central nature and purpose (Is 28:21). At the Beginning the reality of darkness was the background for God’s insisting that this reality should be succeeded by light. That indicates God’s purpose for Israel.

Indeed, it indicates God’s purpose for the world, which is primary. In the story of humanity the darkness of calamity has ever threatened the light of life but has never succeeded in quenching the light, in destroying life (Jn 1:5). All over the world and all through history, human beings have continued to live and to love, in continuity with the way God spoke at the Beginning.

Blessing

God’s speech is life-giving. This is expressed in three further forms of speech that God uses. One is that the first three acts whereby God brings the world into being involve God giving names to things. Naming may be a sign of authority, but it also gives identity and an assurance of definitive existence. According to Egyptian thinking as embodied in the “Memphis Theology,”[71]  for example, Ptah brought some of the other gods into existence by declaring their names. Being given names is one of the indications that day, night, heavens, earth and seas really came into being. They truly exist.

God also speaks words of blessing, to the creatures of sea and sky and to humanity (Gen 1:22, 28). The spelling out of the nature of “blessing” lies in the commission to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:22), consistently a key connotation of blessing in Genesis (e.g., Gen 1:28; 9:1). In blessing creatures, God conveys the capacity to reproduce (cf. Ps 107:38; 115:14–15). Once God’s word brings Lazarus back to life, he lives on in the same way as anyone else. It is by God’s gift, but it is by means of a liveliness that God has now relocated within him. Similarly, waters do not gather, sun does not shine, and earth does not produce because they always had the instinct or the capacity to do so. God created this capacity by the word that spoke of them or addressed them. But once God had created this capacity by that word, by God’s gift plants bearing seed and trees bearing fruit henceforth not only produce but also reproduce. Having been given their light, the lights in the sky now shine. “God’s word … now abdicates its creative power. That is, the word now allows what has just been created to be the origin of something new.”[72]

Thus blessing “is not simply a friendly wish” but “a bestowal of life-force … an act whereby the power-for-life monopolized by Yahweh generously is transmitted to Abraham and his descendants”[73] —and here to humanity as a whole and to other living creatures. God shares power-for-life with the animal world. The prominence of the blessing theme makes for a pointed contrast with the gloomy vision of other Middle Eastern stories of the origins of the world and humanity, as well as with the troubled experience of Israel in, for instance, the exile. Genesis Rabbah 1:10 (on Gen 1:1) sees here another significance in the fact that Scripture begins with a bet, not an ʾalep, the second letter of the alphabet rather than the first, since b is the first letter of the word for blessing (whereas ʾalep is the first letter of the word for curse). “Bless” has the first word in Scripture.

And in blessing the creatures, God addresses them. God’s previous commands have been in the third person. For the first time God speaks in the imperative, overtly speaking to someone. Apparently the animal world is able to hear God speak and respond to it, as the cosmos and the plant world cannot. The animal world is created, blessed and addressed.

An Act of Commitment and Faithfulness

Psalm 33 offers another description of the heavens and all their army as made by the word breathed out of Yhwh’s mouth. It adds that the making of the world was an act of uprightness, trustworthiness, commitment and decisive faithfulness:

Resound at Yhwh, faithful ones. Praise adorns the upright.

Confess Yhwh with a lyre. Make music for him with a ten-string harp.

Sing a new song for him. Play well, with a shout.

For the word of Yhwh is upright, and all his work in trustworthiness.

Devoted to decisive faithfulness, the earth is full of Yhwh’s commitment.

By the word of Yhwh heavens were made, by the breath of his mouth all their army.

Gatherer of the sea’s waters like a dam, one who puts the deeps in closets,

All the earth is to revere Yhwh, all the world’s inhabitants to stand in awe of him,

For this is one who spoke, and it came to be. He commanded, and there it stood.

Yhwh has spoiled the nations’ plan, frustrated the peoples’ intentions.

Yhwh’s plan stands permanently. The intentions in his mind stand through the generations.

The blessings of the nation for whom Yhwh is its God, the people he chose as his possession!

From the heavens Yhwh looked, saw all humanity.

From the place of his enthronement he watched all earth’s inhabitants—

The shaper of their minds altogether, the observer of all their deeds.

The king does not deliver himself by means of his great army.

The warrior does not rescue himself by means of his great strength.

The horse is an empty hope for deliverance. By its great strength it cannot save.

So: Yhwh’s eye is on people who revere him, who put their hope in his commitment,

To rescue their life from death and keep them alive in famine.

With all our being we waited for Yhwh. He is our help and our shield.

For our heart rejoices in him, for we trusted in his holy name.

May your commitment be over us, Yhwh, as we hoped in you.

Yhwh’s creative speaking is the speaking of someone committed to “decisive faithfulness” or faithful exercise of authority (Ps 33:5). These words, ṣĕdāqâ umišpāṭ, do not have English equivalents, and English translations usually follow [74] dering by a phrase such as “righteousness and justice,” but those are not very close equivalents to either word and in some ways are seriously misleading. The LXX renders ṣĕdāqâ by eleēmosunē “mercy,” which is actually closer than “righteousness,” because ṣĕdāqâ denotes doing the right thing by someone in light of your relationship with them. It is nearer “faithfulness” than “righteousness” or “justice.” Thus Second Isaiah sees the people’s deliverance from exile as an act of ṣĕdāqâ (e.g., Is 51:6, 8) when there was no justice about that act; Israel deserved nothing. Yhwh so acts in fulfilling an obligation to this people on the basis of a long-standing commitment that Yhwh cannot evade—and does not wish to. Similarly Paul associates God’s dikaiosunē (righteousness) with God’s pistis (faithfulness) and alētheia (truthfulness) (Rom 3:4–5).[75]  Hans Heinrich Schmid has argued that ṣĕdāqâ is a principle of world order that God wrote into the world in creating it.[76]  This understanding depends on starting from the Egyptian idea of maʿat and understanding ṣĕdāqâ in the light of that, which seems inadvisable. Understood against its First Testament background in the way we have suggested, ṣĕdāqâ is indeed part of the way God created the world. Creation is an act of commitment on God’s part.

The LXX then renders mišpāṭ by krisis (“decision/judgment”), reflecting the fact that mišpāṭ is a power word. A šôpēṭ, (EVV “judge”) is someone who acts decisively. Ideally, decisions, judgments, decisive acts, and the exercise of authority will be just, but we cannot assume that and have to take action to see that mišpāṭ is characterized by ṣĕdāqâ, as we have to make sure that ṣĕdāqâ receives concrete expression in mišpāṭ.

The connotations of ṣĕdāqâ umišpāṭ in Psalm 33:5 thus fit with those of the word in the parallel colon, ḥesed, another word with no English equivalent (EVV use expressions such as “steadfast love”). It refers to a self-giving that is remarkable for one of two reasons. Either it denotes a noteworthy commitment that someone makes when they are under no obligation, like Rahab’s protection of the Israelite spies (Josh 2:12)—so that it resembles grace or favor (ḥēn). Or it denotes a commitment that someone continues to make because of an awareness of obligation, even if it costs them or even if the other party has forfeited any right to expect it. It thus resembles trustworthiness (ʾĕmûnâ, Ps 33:4) or mercy (as LXX and Vg. translate)—or faithfulness. It is the Hebrew equivalent to Greek agapē. Speaking of such divine commitment in connection with creation fills a space left open by Genesis, which does not tell us why God created the world. It does not indicate whether or not this emerged from some necessity of God’s own nature,[77]  or specifically whether creation was an act of love.[78]  Genesis tells a gospel story, but its good news apparently constitutes something other than that. It may assume that creation was an instinctive act of God’s generosity and God’s instinct to share life, but in the Torah the first references to divine love come in describing God’s commitment to Israel (e.g., Deut 4:37; 7:8). Love (or talk in terms of love) becomes necessary only after sin has become a problem in the world. Psalm 33 fills this gap as it sees creation as a great act of ḥesed on God’s part.

The worship enjoined by Psalm 33:1–3, 8 is based on permanent truths about Yhwh’s acts and person and about life (Ps 33:4–5, 11–12, 16–19) that have been demonstrated in events in the past (Ps 33:6–7, 9–10, 13–15, 20–22). The point is made with precision through the repetition of words for faithfulness and uprightness. It is faithful and upright people who may with special appropriateness worship the God whose word is upright and who is committed to faithful exercise of power (Ps 33:1, 4–5). One would initially assume that the acts referred to are Yhwh’s acts in Israel’s life, though the way the point is made would raise one or two questions. Is the earth full of Yhwh’s commitment? Psalm 33:6–9 further undermines that initial understanding even as it handles those questions. It suggests that Yhwh’s work (maʿăśeh) is the work of making the world (as, e.g., Ps 8:3 [MT 4]; 102:25 [MT 26]; 103:22; 104:24). The cosmos is what was made (ʿāśâ) by Yhwh (Ps 33:6). The striking implication is that the making of the world was an expression of uprightness, trustworthiness, decisive faithfulness and commitment. The uprightness, trustworthiness, decisive faithfulness and commitment that one sees at work in Israel’s history were already expressed in the way God made the world—unsurprisingly, on reflection, for one would expect Yhwh to be consistent in the manifesting of personal characteristics.

Controlling Potentially Unruly Forces by Speaking

Making the world is thus an act of love and commitment, the kind of self-commitment that reaches out in generosity when there is no existent relationship that obligates this. The formulation in Psalm 33:6–9 suggests a further insight and a further link between Yhwh’s work in the world and in Israel’s own life. Forming the cosmos involved getting control of the potentially unruly and overwhelming forces embodied in and symbolized by the sea and its deeps. That is an act of uprightness and decisive faithfulness such as anticipates equivalent acts in Israel’s life.[79]  Unsurprisingly, Yhwh’s acts are a seamless whole. While Israel distinguished between Yhwh’s activity in the world and Yhwh’s activity in its own life, it did not separate these. It was the same Yhwh who acted in both contexts, with the consistency that one might expect. Israel can see in the pattern of Yhwh’s activity in the world features of that activity in its life, and vice versa.

And it was God’s word of command that brought things into being (Ps 33:4, 6, 9). The associated mention of God’s breath (Ps 33:6) hardly suggests the mere truism that uttering words involve expressing breath. At least, this truism does not appear elsewhere, for “breath” (rûaḥ) suggests dynamic power. Thus elsewhere that dynamic power means destruction (e.g., Job 15:30 MT; Is 11:4). In Enuma Elish breath or wind denotes a violence that destroys Tiamat but thereby prepares the way for the forming of the world. In Psalm 33, the sequence of word and breath suggests declaring an intention and thereby acting dynamically.

The psalm then pictures Yhwh gathering the ocean waters as in a dam, as happened at the Red Sea and at the Jordan (Ps 33:7; cf. Ex 15:8; Ps 78:13; Josh 3:13, 16). Once more the language thus muddies the distinction between God’s activity in the world and in Israel’s life. We should picture not a huge modern dam but the little rock-walls that people made in the wilderness to catch the meager rainwater to use it for irrigation. The contrast between the quantity and the receptacle is even more marked in LXX, Vg. and [80] d of “as [in] the dam” (kannēd), they have “as [in] the wineskin” (implying kannôd). Job also makes the point. At creation God acted as one who “binds up the waters in his clouds” like wine in a wineskin, in such a way as to make sure the clouds do not burst under the pressure (Job 26:8; cf. Job 38:37). In the context of Job’s speech, this is not so much a reassurance as a testimony to God’s awesome power, which extends even to the waters with their dynamic power. To Yhwh, all the water in the seas was only like a pool of water in a dam or a liter or two of wine in a bottle. Describing Yhwh putting the deeps (tĕhômôt) in closets (Ps 33:7) makes the same point. Like an executive with unquestioned authority, Yhwh had unquestioned control of the world’s raw materials. The ocean waters or the deeps were not a threat but a resource, stored and labeled, ready to be used when needed (cf. Ps 135:7; Job 38:22–23; Jer 10:13).

At the end of its look back at the making of the world, Psalm 33:6–9 once more affirms that it was because Yhwh spoke a word of command that the world came to be and stood forth. The appropriate response is an awed reverence, perhaps a terrified fear, on the part of the whole world.[81]

God’s Plan

Seamlessly the psalm then goes on to speak of Yhwh’s activity in political events (Ps 33:10–17). Talk in terms of the world’s being brought into being by the uttering of God’s word gives way to talk in terms of the world’s being governed by the implementing of God’s plan, but the difference is at least partly rhetorical. One could speak of the forming of the world as the result of planning (Is 40:12–14; also implicitly Gen 1), and one could speak of God’s word being effective in world events (e.g., Is 55:10–11). The psalm itself again makes clear that it does not separate Yhwh’s activity in bringing the world into being and in history.[82]  It is from the heavens, where Yhwh sits enthroned since establishing the heavens as a home and setting up a throne there, that Yhwh keeps an eye on the ongoing history of the world. It is the shaper who is the observer (Ps 33:13–15). As humanity’s creator, God can know everything about that creation if God decides to look. The act of commitment to the whole world expressed in making it constitutes an invitation to hope in connection with the course of the world’s ongoing life (Ps 33:5, 18, 22).[83]

Psalm 33 manifests the First Testament’s common ambiguity about the position of the peoples other than Israel, whom God formed. On one side, the whole world is called to revere Yhwh, its maker, the one who asserted control of the forces of disorder by a word of power. Those who do revere Yhwh, and who put their hope in Yhwh’s self-commitment expressed in the making of the world, are promised that Yhwh will keep an eye on them. That suggests in Hebrew, as in English, a caring regard that issues in active protection and provision (Ps 33:8, 18, 19). On the other side, Yhwh frustrates the intentions of the nations and insists on being the only one whose plan gets fulfilled, and this explicitly works for the benefit of Israel (Ps 33:10–12). Yhwh’s looking at the world can issue merely in noting—perhaps with a sense of satisfaction—the helplessness that contrasts with their fancied power (Ps 33:13–17). It is Israel that has proved how in reality Yhwh is help and shield (Ps 33:20).

The implication of the psalm as a whole is that as creator Yhwh had formulated and announced (and thereby implemented) a plan or a set of intentions for the whole world, which were expressions of uprightness, trustworthiness, the faithful exercise of authority, and commitment. Those intentions were that the life of the world should be in keeping with Yhwh’s intentions in making it and with the way Yhwh then put negative power under control. The problem is that the inclination of the world as whole is to formulate policies that do not embody those qualities. Instead the world’s policies themselves constitute a reassertion of that negative power. Nations like to lord it over one another and rely on military force to do so, and Israel itself has much experience of this. But Yhwh is committed to achieving that purpose that lay behind the making of the world. Yhwh intends to do this for Israel now, and thus to fulfill in its experience the purpose that lay behind the world’s making. The nations are implicitly invited to align themselves with that purpose voluntarily, rather than finding themselves treated like Leviathan or Rahab, embodiments of forces asserting themselves against God (e.g., Ps 74:12–14; 89:8–10).

The First Testament story never talks about God having a plan for the world or a plan of salvation or a plan for people’s individual lives, and the story it tells does not look like one that resulted from a plan. God certainly had an aim, a vision, some goals, and sometimes formulates a plan for a particular context, but works out a purpose in the world in interaction with the human beings who are designed to be key to the fulfilling of those goals. God is not a micromanager who seeks to make every decision for the company, but the wiser kind of executive who formulates clear goals but involves the work force in determining how to implement them, and also recognizes that the failure of members of the work force will require an ongoing flexibility in pursuing these goals. The story does not give the impression that from the beginning God had planned the flood, or the summons of Abraham, or the exodus, or the introduction of the monarchy, or the building of the temple, or the exile, or the sending of atworkings of God’s purpose and character. Our security lies not in the world’s actual story being the outworking of God’s plan (that would be scary) but in its unfolding within the control of an executive who will go to any lengths to see that the vision gets fulfilled—even dying for it. In this sense the lamb of God was slain before the world’s foundation. God has always been that kind of God.

When I go into a class, I have some lecture notes for the first forty minutes, but I decide as I am going along exactly what to say, in light of other things I have been reading, or things I have discovered are in students’ minds, or something in the opening worship that strikes me. Students spend the next thirty minutes in groups discussing their homework or whatever else they wish—I do not control that at all, unless there is a riot. For the last thirty minutes in plenary discussion they ask me questions, and I may well work in some points that I wanted to make, but the time is not planned—yet it too works toward fulfilling my goals. And sometimes I may abandon my plans for the whole class for some reason and go in a quite unplanned direction. God’s “plan” for the world is more like my class plan than like the schedule for the baseball season that determines when every game is to be played.

2.3 God Birthed

In the beginning, God birthed the heavens and the earth. Genesis 2:4 itself describes creation as “the generations of the heavens and the earth,” suggesting that they came into being by something like giving birth.[84]  Psalm 90:2 makes that explicit: “Before mountains were birthed, or you labored with earth and world, even from age to age you were/are/will be God.”

Any suggestion that the First Testament does not speak of God giving birth to the world, as some other creation accounts do, joins many other failed attempts to set the First Testament off from these other works. The boundaries usually turn out to be permeable. Yes, God gave birth to the world. Of course it is a metaphor, but then so are statements such as “God shaped” or “God created.” All such statements use the language of analogy. Birthing is an image that tells us something true about God’s relationship with the world, though like all images it has to be set in the context of other images so that we can guard against taking it too far.

First, birthing suggests wondrous mystery. It is stupefying that a fully alive being emerges from the body of its mother. It is extraordinary that mountains should exist, and human beings stand amazed before their majesty. The previous psalm has made the point that north and south, Tabor and Hermon, belong to Yhwh and resound at Yhwh’s name, because Yhwh made them (Ps 89:12 [[85]  13]). Hermon is a great mountain to the far northeast, visible for miles in Israel, and holy to Baal (e.g., Judg 3:3). Even little Tabor stands out attractively and impressively from the surrounding countryside, and it was also a place of (unorthodox?) worship (Hos 5:1). That would be enough to make recollection of them something that brought glory to Yhwh as their maker, father or mother. But “north” is Zaphon, another great holy mount, and “south” may conceal the name of yet another.[86]  Perhaps I look to the mountains because they frighten me or perhaps because they encourage me (Ps 121:1). Either way I testify to their impressiveness. And Yhwh gave birth to them.

Second, birthing involves pain. God labored to bring the world forth. Labor pains did not begin after the first human act of disobedience. Long before that, they were part of God’s experience in bringing the world to birth. It was a tough business. It is not surprising that God wanted a day off at the end of it. Even for God, making this wondrous cosmos was not a trivial task but one that involved effort. The image also suggests struggle.[87]  It hints at risk, because birthing is not bound to succeed and may bring death to the mother. But it also hints at joy, because of the monumental rejoicing of motherhood that succeeds the pain of birthing (Jn 16:21). And it hints that the experience will also give God the motivation to make sure that other potential mothers give birth (Is 66:7–9).

The idea of God birthing is too much for many translations, often a sign that the First Testament is saying something interesting. The text reads unequivocally “you labored with” (wattĕḥôlēl), using the verb ḥûl that can denote dancing or whirling but most often refers to the twisting and straining involved in giving birth. But [88]  and other early translations have the passive “it [the earth] was brought forth,” which implies only a minutely different Hebrew (wattĕḥôlal). That leaves nicely unclarified who was the mother who did this birthing (cf. Job 38:8). The [89]  apparently follows the Masoretic Hebrew but waters down the metaphor to “you formed.”

Such alteration and watering down of the text may reflect a desire to protect God’s transcendence. The First Testament offers much evidence that this is not a desire God shares, but human beings often prefer their God safely transcendent. Perhaps Yhwh is rather unsafely transcendent, for paradoxically the point about the description of God in Psalm 90 is to underline the truth of God’s transcendence. Before bringing the world to birth so extraordinarily and so painfully, the Lord (unusually, Hebrew does use this word, ʾădōnāy) had always been God (ʾēl). And the Lord always would be God. The Hebrew statement is a noun clause, declaring simply “from age to age you God.” While Hebrew’s characteristic stress on verbal statements fits with the predominant narrative nature of its theology, this syntactical form also helps Hebrew make statements that contain no time reference.

A Temporal Event in the Context of God’s Eternity

Giving birth is a markedly temporal event, but the psalm sets it in the context of God’s eternity. Hebrew lacks abstract expressions such as “eternal” or “eternity,” but the lack of particular words does not mean that people do not utilize the concepts that would be signified by such words. Hebrew ʿôlām denotes “age,” and in isolation lĕʿôlām need not mean “forever.” But the statement that before the world came into being “from age to age you [are] God” does looks like an unequivocal declaration of Yhwh’s eternity. Marduk became top god only just before bringing the world into being. Yhwh’s being God does not relate to bringing the world into being. Yhwh simply is God. The First Testament gospel story has a setting in the story of God, but we do not know how long the story of God had been proceeding before this gospel story began, or whether that is a meaningful question. Before that, God simply is/was.

To describe Yhwh as God from age to age implies that God lives in time without being limited to particular times. Plato declared that time came into existence with the heavens, “so that having been generated together they might also be destroyed together,”[90]  but whereas he thought it was better to be eternal than to be everlasting, the Bible portrays God as active in history and implies that it is better to be everlasting than to be eternal. Against Plato, Boethius, Thomas Aquinas and Schleiermacher, the First Testament suggests that God is not atemporal or outside time, though God is omnitemporal and not limited to particular times: “The life of God has unending duration both forwards and backwards in time.”[91]  The First Testament does not suggest that God created time, though neither does it exclude this possibility. If God did, then creating the world means that from now on “God has time and history on his hands.”[92]  But perhaps the First Testament rather implies that time is intrinsic to God’s being. God’s very “life and existence is temporal.”[93]  Arguably time is intrinsic to being a person at all, so that it is difficult to see how God could be a person and not be living in time, even if also able to transcend the limitations of time. Certainly the First Testament portrays God as living with people in time, living through its gospel story with humanity and with Israel. That aspect of deity God also shares with the gods of Enuma Elish. They too live in narrative sequence. In this sense God is not outside time. Perhaps God was outside time before creating the heavens and the earth. Perhaps God embraces all time. But that truth must not be allowed to take the edge off the gospel statement that as far as we are concerned, God lives in time, as a person like us. In speaking thus, we again anticipate the statement near the end of the first creation story in Genesis, that human beings are made in God’s image. Human beings live in time, like God who lives in time.

The psalm’s statement of God’s eternity is less of a theological abstraction than are translations such as “from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” Its point is also not to offer a contextless theological formulation. Like other statements about God’s making of the world that we will consider, it has a barb to it. Yhwh is supposed to be God from age to age. In every generation the Lord has been Israel’s dwelling-place or refuge (Ps 90:1).[94]  So why are things working out the way they are in Israel’s current experience (Ps 90:7–15)? The psalm is an appeal to Yhwh to behave like the God who is supposed to exist from age to age and to have wondrously birthed the mountains and successfully labored over earth and world. Stories about the making of the world, and portraits of the future, are told because of the way they relate to life in the present. They do not merely satisfy intellectual curiosity. The same is true of this psalm.

In Isaiah 45:9–12, Yhwh designs and shapes like a potter, begets like a father, travails like a mother, creates like an artist, stretches like a sheik and commands like a king (Is 44:24 has already pictured Yhwh beating out like a metalworker). Together these images suggest the precision, purposefulness, pleasure, pain, care, effort, sovereignty and effectiveness of the creator’s work.[95]

2.4 God Prevailed

In the beginning, God defeated other dynamic forces in bringing the world into being. Proverbs and Genesis portray creation as a thoughtful, rational, controlled process, but by its use of the birth image, Psalm 90 suggests there was struggle involved in that process.

Creation and Conflict

It is a common human experience for creative achievement and progress to emerge only out of conflict. While liberating change sometimes comes about through a consensual process, often it requires confrontation.[96]  Growth in a relationship comes about because two people have a fight with each other. Innovative ideas for new activities and novel solutions to old problems emerge from hard-fought arguments in committees or boards. Social and communal renewal issue from the determined opposition and resistance of one party to another, as happened once when Israel provoked a conflict with Egypt, and happened in the Civil Rights struggle and the antiapartheid struggle. The growth of an individual comes about through a process of internal conflict in which inner forces struggle with one another. We struggle to climb mountains and wrestle with problems and battle against obstacles. In each case, there would not have been creativity and growth without argument, struggle and conflict. Like anger, hatred and fear, argument, struggle and conflict are not inherently negative, as peace and quiet is not necessarily positive (cf. Zech 1:7–12). Only on a case by case basis can we discern whether a particular season of peace or conflict is a good moment or a questionable one.

This common human experience fits the way the First Testament depicts God as involved in conflict in connection with bringing the world into being. It is yet another aspect of our being made in God’s image.

Elihu asked who gave God charge over the whole earth (Job 34:13). It is and is not a rhetorical question. It is, insofar as Elihu has no doubt of the answer and has no doubt that Job agrees. No one gave God this authority. But in an ancient Middle Eastern context it is less of a rhetorical question than it would be in a modern Western one, because other Middle Eastern peoples also told stories that spoke of more or less conflictual discussions and events in heaven that resulted in the making of the world or of humanity. In Atrahasis, the forming of humanity follows from a rebellion on the part of junior powers, a rebellion that Enuma Elish locates before the forming of the cosmos. The very initiative for making the world issues from violence among the gods. Violence is intrinsic to Enuma Elish and inheres in the godhead. When humanity comes into being, it is through the recycling of bits of a heavenly warrior who was defeated in a heavenly battle. It might not be surprising if such a creature then went wrong. As human beings, “our very origin is violence. Killing is in our blood.”[97]

The First Testament agrees in seeing violence as a supernatural and not just a this-worldly problem, but it is less gloomy in how far it sees violence written into the fabric of reality. It does speak of conflict in heaven, but it gives no information on how such conflict came about.[98]  It is also often allusive over whether this conflict had any relationship with the making of the world,[99]  though Psalm 74 does set these events in narrative sequence. It describes God as one who crushed Leviathan, put the stars and planets in place and established the seasons:

But God, my king from of old, bringer of great deliverance throughout the earth/land,

It was you broke sea with your power, smashed the heads of the sea monsters on the waters.

It was you crushed the heads of Leviathan. You gave him as food for a company of wildcats.

It was you opened spring and torrent. You dried up perennial rivers.

To you belongs day, and to you belongs night, too. You established light and sun.

It was you erected all earth’s bounds. You shaped summer and winter.

God won a victory at the Beginning as one who effected great deliverance.[100]  “Deliverance” usually refers to God’s acts in Israel’s experience, and the next colon could suggest allusion to God’s act at the Red Sea. But reference to smashing the sea monsters’ heads would more directly suggest a conflict at the time of creation. That is confirmed by the subsequent reference to God’s establishing the planets.

The psalm emphasizes the decisiveness of God’s victory by describing Leviathan as not merely crushed (it might then be able to come back to life with that mysterious regenerative power possessed by alien creatures), but given as food for a company of ṣiyyîm, desert dwellers or wildcats, who may stand for demonic creatures.[101]  That would suggest the nice idea that the remains of Leviathan are fed to its own kind. Its defeat is definitely its end. The psalm continues to underline the decisiveness of God’s acts, though not quite as vividly. “You opened spring and torrent,” but “you dried up [what seemed to be] perennial rivers.” Either God cut open channels for these waters to drain away and thus dried up the tumultuous waters,[102]  or God demonstrated the power to turn things upside down in either direction (cf. the complementarity of Is 41:17–20 and Is 42:10–17). God also established ownership of day and night, as the one who put the light (of the moon) and the sun in place. God “erected” the boundaries of the earth—not merely the boundaries between peoples (Deut 32:8) but the boundary between land and sea (cf. Job 38:8–11; Ps 104:6–9; Prov 8:27–29; Jer 5:22). God thus ensured that the land as a whole was protected from encroachment, like a king protecting the land of a widow in her vulnerability (Prov 15:25). The verb “erect” (nāṣab, hiphil) makes another subtle link with the Red Sea event, for there the seas will duly stand erect away from the dry land (Ex 15:8; Ps 78:13). Finally, the psalm declares that God shaped summer and winter. The sun of summer will not prevail through the year and thus cause nature to wither, but neither will the rain of winter prevail through the year and thus overwhelm the earth. All this is guaranteed by God’s definitive shaping of summer and winter long ago.

Creation and History

Having acted as victorious deliverer at the Beginning, Yhwh is the people’s king “from of old” (Ps 74:12). Yhwh does not gain a position of superiority over a group of fellow gods through winning this victory, like Marduk in Babylon or Baal at Ugarit. Yhwh was already king, but Yhwh does thus demonstrate the kingly sovereignty that other peoples attributed to their gods. The act of deliverance at the Red Sea and the acts that recur in Israel’s story continue a sequence begun at the Beginning, when God by anticipation rescued the victims of the oppressive power of sea and sea monster. Of course in Psalm 74 (and similarly in Ps 77) the trouble is that the sequence has stopped. The people have been defeated, the city has been invaded, the sanctuary has been destroyed. Why does God stand inactive at such a time? Why does God let this happen when it stands in such contrast with the definitive victories God won long ago? Psalm 74 affirms that creation and history indeed belong together.

Creation and Israel’s own history are correlated under the aspect of Yahweh’s salvific actions. Creation out of chaos is seen as the first in a chain of salvific actions. Here, world order and Israel’s history are united under one purpose, liberation from chaos and oppression. Thus, it can be said that Yahweh is the creator of the world because he is its liberator from chaos, just as he is the creator of Israel because he is its liberator from oppression. Therefore, the notion of liberation belongs to both creation and Israel’s history.[103]

That underlines the contrast between Yhwh and other so-called gods.

The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth

Shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens.

Maker of the earth by his power, establisher of the world by his insight,

One who stretched out the heavens by his understanding,

When he gave voice, there was a roar of waters in the heavens,

And he made mists rise from the end of the earth.

He made lightning for the rain and produced wind from his stores. (Jer 10:11–13)

As in Genesis 1, making the world involves word and wind, power and insight, but here it is the activity of forces that oppose order that explains why God needed these capacities to bring into being an orderly world. And God possessed them.

Yhwh’s Supremacy Among the Beings of Heaven

Yhwh’s supremacy among the beings of heaven is expounded in a parallel connection in Psalm 89.

The heavens are to praise your wondrous deed, Yhwh,

Yes, your trustworthiness, in the congregation of the holy ones.

Because who in the sky compares with Yhwh?

Who is like Yhwh among the divinities?

A God feared in the assembly of holy ones, greatly,

And revered above all those around him.

Yhwh, God of armies, who is like you?

Yah is mighty. Your trustworthiness is around you.

You rule over the raging of the sea.

When its waves rise, you are the one who stills them.

You are the one who crushed Rahab [so that it was] like one slain.

With your powerful arm you scattered your enemies.

The heavens belong to you. The earth also belongs to you,

The world and what fills it, which you founded,

North and South, which you created,

Tabor and Hermon, which resound at your name.

You possess an arm with strength.

Your hand is strong. Your right hand lifts high.

Faithfulness and authority are the foundation of your throne.

Commitment and trustworthiness go before you.

Once more a psalm laments Yhwh’s puzzling failure to act in accordance with the power demonstrated in primeval events, and with specific commitments—here these are the commitments to David. Heaven acknowledges Yhwh’s wondrous deed, a deed of trustworthiness. But what was that deed? Psalm 89 started by affirming God’s trustworthiness. But where was this shown? The intervening verses went on to recall God’s declaration of commitment to David, but the question the psalm will raise is whether God has been faithful to this commitment. So where was it shown, to the astonishment of the powers of heaven?

The question has to wait, for the acknowledgment is first developed. Among the sons of the gods (ʾēlîm) in the sky who stand around Yhwh, who is Yhwh’s equal? These beings recognize that Yhwh is one who inspires awe and reverence among them as among human beings such as those offering this praise. For them Yhwh is so much more awesome than these other heavenly beings. Or is it terrified fear that is felt by Yhwh’s council and Yhwh’s worshipers? The description that follows might work either way. On the one hand, this is the God of armies, the strong one. On the other hand, the psalm confesses, “your trustworthiness is around you,” like the heavenly beings themselves (the word sābîb recurs). Perhaps they are themselves the embodiments of Yhwh’s trustworthiness, the ones through whom it is shown to people? God’s power and trustworthiness are not set up as an antithesis, as if one was good news, the other bad news. God’s power expressed with trustworthiness or God’s trustworthiness implemented with power is bad news for God’s enemies but good news for God’s own people. Yhwh is ruler over the sea’s tumult, and can still its waves when they rise up and threaten to engulf. The implicit grounds for the present statement and the modal statement are the matching pair of past declarations that follows: “You crushed Rahab [so that it was] like one slain. With your powerful arm you scattered your enemies.” More present statements follow, about heaven and earth belonging to Yhwh, this time in noun clauses. Once more these are grounded in a past statement, about the making of the world: Yhwh founded them. A further sequence declares that to Yhwh also belong “North and South, which you created, Tabor and Hermon, which resound at your name.” We have noted that “North and South,” “Tabor and Hermon” could all suggest mountains sacred to other gods that here resound with the confession that actually Yhwh is the God who created them.[104]

The implication of Yhwh’s victories and acts of creation is that Yhwh indeed possesses power and strength, faithfulness and authority, commitment and trustworthiness. Yhwh’s ongoing sovereignty is founded on those events. Yhwh will be able to keep that commitment to David all right. In due course this acknowledgment of Yhwh’s power, trustworthiness and concern for right, expressed in the victories that preceded the making of the world and in that act itself, will rebound on Yhwh (Ps 89:38–51 [[105]  39–52]).

Yhwh Asserted Sovereignty

Psalm 93 makes a similar set of affirmations:

Yhwh reigned, dressed in glory. Yhwh dressed, girded himself in strength.

The world indeed stands firm, not tottering.

Your throne stood firm from the past. You are/were from of old.

Yhwh, rivers lifted up, rivers lifted up their voice,

Rivers would lift up their pounding.

Above the voices of many waters, majestic ones,

The breakers of the sea, Yhwh in the height is majestic.

Your affirmations were established.

Holiness adorns your house, Yhwh, for long days.

The qatal verb “Yhwh reigned” points to something that happened, as is the case when the verb refers to a human king beginning to reign.[106]  Saying that Yhwh’s throne stood firm from the past (mēʾāz) makes the same point, for this verb (kûn niphal) is also used of a human king’s gaining firm control of his country at the beginning of his reign (1 Kings 2:12, 46).

We may compare the statement that “Yhwh established [kûn hiphil] his throne in the heavens. His kingship took control over all” (Ps 103:19).[107]  What follows in Psalm 103 does then make clear that the past act whereby Yhwh established authority in heaven has ongoing significance for the implementing of Yhwh’s will. It means that the variety of powerful beings in heaven, aides (malʾākîm), mighty warriors (gibbōrē kōaḥ), armies (ṣābāʾ), and officers (mešārĕtîm), all function as obedient agents of Yhwh’s will rather than as entities that might rebel against it (Ps 103:20–22). That past act with its present implications is thus the basis for all the earthly activity that the bulk of the Psalm describes.

So was there a time when Yhwh did not reign? Psalm 93:2 safeguards that point by declaring that Yhwh is/was from of old. The sentence has no verb, and we might either reckon that by its nature this is a timeless statement or that the context points to a past reference. But in the parallelism, the second clause typically goes beyond the first: Yhwh’s throne stands firm from the past, even the distant past, but Yhwh’s person has a much longer history. In other words, “from of old” (mēʿôlām) suggests a longer time frame than “from long ago.”[108]  So Yhwh is glorious “in the height” (bammārôm), the height of the heavens. It is there that holiness adorns Yhwh’s house—in the context, Yhwh’s house in the heavens. And it will continue to do that “for long days” (lĕʾōrek yāmîm). Yhwh’s sovereign holiness stands firm back to days of yore and forward as far as the mind can imagine. The psalm leaves no room for the idea that there has ever been a day when Yhwh did not reign or that there will ever be such a day.

Against the background of that affirmation, the psalm can then declare that there was a moment when Yhwh particularly asserted sovereignty, a moment in primeval history when Yhwh flexed muscles and demonstrated power in relation to the self-assertion of other cosmic or metaphysical powers, which are again symbolized as tumultuous waters. There was a moment when rivers asserted themselves in an attempt to overwhelm the heavens and/or the earth.[109]  And there was thus a moment in primeval history when God asserted sovereignty, put on majesty, demonstrated power.[110]

The World Stands Firm

That once-for-all demonstration of God’s sovereignty is a basis for conviction about the world’s ongoing security. The world indeed stands firm. As usual, the psalm’s covert agenda appears here. The world does not always appear secure. The psalm’s reference to the floods in the past doubtless conceals a reference to present floods that threaten to overwhelm the community. There may be an allusion to this at the third reference to the rivers “lifting up,” when the verb changes from qatal to yiqtol. The fact that God asserted sovereignty back then is the assurance that this sovereignty can still operate in the present. Tumultuous seas pound and threaten but cannot disturb a securely founded world. Yhwh’s affirmations (ʿēdôt), decrees Yhwh issued in making the world, were firmly established.[111]  At the beginning of his reign a king would often thus issue decrees for the regulating of his realm, and Marduk does so when becoming heavenly king in Enuma Elish. The psalm takes up this idea from earthly life and heavenly story and applies it to Yhwh. The security of the world issues from decisions Yhwh took and put on record back then. The First Testament shares “a set of worries” with other cultures that told stories about primeval times, such as “the fragility of the physical circumstances in which human life is possible,”[112]  and it asserts that Yhwh made the world secure.

Genesis 6–9 describes an occasion when flood indeed overwhelmed the world. God’s sovereign act turned out not to have had secure implications for the world. The story of the flood presupposes that human wrongdoing threatens the secure order of the world. It could lead to the dismantling of that order. But the exception turns out only to test the rule, for in the aftermath of the flood God affirms that the waters above and below will never again become a flood with the capacity to destroy all life. This commitment becomes the subject of a covenant on God’s part (Gen 9:15–16), and that covenant becomes a basis for trusting in Yhwh’s covenantal commitment to Israel (Is 54:9–10). Once again, in other contexts the logic might be reversed. God’s commitment to Israel and to the church might be a basis for believing that the earth really is secure.

To judge from Psalm 46, such talk is at least in part an allegory for the way international conflict threatens to overwhelm the little world of the city of God. Psalm 124 similarly puts it this way:

Had Yhwh not been Yhwh for us when people rose up against us

Then they would have swallowed us alive when their anger flamed against us.

Then the waters would have overwhelmed us, the torrent would have swept over us.

Then the seething waters would have swept over us.

Blessed be Yhwh, who did not give us over as prey to their teeth.…

Our help lies in the name of Yhwh, maker of the heavens and the earth.

The tumultuous waters seethe again in the person of the community’s attackers. More powerful nations ever threaten peoples such as Ephraim and Judah, but they are preserved by the one who is maker of the heavens and the earth.

Human Life Is Secure

The emphasis on this theme in Job presupposes that when people experience personal attack or illness, or when they are cast out of their community, forces of disorder again threaten to overwhelm them. But Yhwh’s prevailing over such forces at creation is their security.

He drew a limit on the face of the waters at the extremity where light and dark meet.

Heaven’s pillars would shake, be thunderstruck at his blast:

By his power he stilled the sea, by his insight he struck down Rahab.

By his wind the heavens became fair, his hand transfixed the fleeing dragon.

(Job 26:10–13)

God drew a boundary on the surface of the waters—that is, fixed the horizon, the place where light was assumed to give way to darkness. God stilled sea itself and/or transfixed the fleeing (or evil/dangerous/primeval) sea monster.[113]  Other passages picture Yhwh crushing Rahab so that it is nothing but a corpse (Ps 89:10 [[114]  11]) or subduing it and its allies (Job 9:13) or cutting it into pieces (Is 51:9). In another conceptuality, when the sea was forced to fall back and dry land was able to appear, in effect Sea died.[115]  The rest of reality convulsed as God thus acted assertive and rebuked the powers of disorder—resistant metaphysical powers and physical powers that represent or symbolize them (Job 26:11; cf. Ps 104:7).[116]  Winning this victory thus involved word and wind, and the manifestation of power and insight. The word of power active in making the world was not only the positive, commissioning word of Genesis 1, but also a word of rebuke that accompanied the power to still Sea and the insight to defeat Rahab. Alongside that, God’s wind calmed the heavens, according to the traditional understanding of the enigmatic line; whatever the meaning, it offers a suggestive contrast with the disturbing effect of the wind in Enuma Elish.

Yhwh also made sure that the sea with its tumultuous power was under control, its boundaries set by the shores and cliffs over which it cannot climb.

And [who] shut in the sea with gates when it burst forth, came out of the womb,

When I made cloud its clothing, storm-cloud its swathing,

Imposed my limit on it, placed a bar and gates,

And said “You can come so far, but no further.

Here it is set against the assertiveness of your waves.” (Job 38:8–11)

Confining the sea in this way was no more problematic for Yhwh than keeping a newborn baby under control is problematic for its mother (though the tricky side to that project may also help the analogy). Perhaps the breaking of the waters before a baby is born suggested the analogy. After the baby had emerged, yelling, from the womb, Yhwh confined it to its crib, provided it with its diapers and outer clothing, and made sure that in its self-assertiveness it could not crawl beyond the area that suited its mother. Yhwh thus set a decreed limit (ḥōq) for the waters (cf. Job 26:10; 28:26; Jer 5:22; 31:36).[117]  Whatever conflict Yhwh had been involved in did not imply that Yhwh experienced any insuperable difficulty in achieving or asserting sovereignty over primeval elements of the universe. But their needing to be confined implies they have the capacity to work in negative ways. Further, their being confined and not eliminated makes them available for God to use when something negative needs doing, as happens when God releases them to flood the earth. And this same fact means there might always be a risk that they will manage to escape constraint and bring flood when God has not designed that. Passages such as Psalm 93 and Psalm 124 reflect the awareness that this indeed sometimes seems to happen, an experience that drives people into urging God to assert control again (e.g., Is 51:9–11).

So God was “maker of peace in the heights of heaven” (Job 25:2). The context speaks of God’s sovereignty as something that arouses dread, and of God’s innumerable troops. This shalom is evidently peace after conflict. The verb is a participle, and I take it as one of the many examples of participles referring to God’s activity in the primeval past, when God replaced conflict by peace in heaven.

To put it another way, God defeated Sea, standing on its back like a victor standing with his feet on his enemy’s back (Job 9:8). God is the stiller of the roaring of the seas and their waves. In Psalm 65:7 [MT 8] this description appears in the context of people’s celebration of God’s stilling the peoples’ tumult and of God’s being establisher of the mountains. The verbs are participles but again they allude first to the primeval act of making the world. Yet the context also refers to the experience of God’s doing wonders in the people’s own experience and making nature abound in the present. The conviction that God so acts now and that God so acted at the Beginning are mutually supportive or form part of a whole. The point is made explicit by the subsequent segue as the people’s praise describes God as stiller of the seas’ roaring and also of the peoples’ tumult. If the bad news is that the victory God won at the Beginning does not mean the end of metaphysical conflict, the good news is that the victory God won then can be oft repeated.

The life of the world, the life of nations and communities and the life of individuals are characterized by ongoing conflict. The First Testament gospel sees in that a frustrating of God’s creative purpose. God won a victory at the Beginning. Things were not meant to be this way. They came to be that way through the course of events. But having determined to achieve something, and having determined to overcome forces of disorder, God stays involved with this story. The picture of God’s having defeated forces of disorder is a promise that the world actually is secure from such forces. One might demythologize the account by suggesting that it signifies God’s looking in the eye such potential collapse of order and determining that it would not happen. By a determination of God formulated in connection with bringing the world into being, forces of cosmic, political, personal and moral disorder will not overwhelm the order that God brought about in the world in forming it.

We like our theology to incorporate an account of the activity of evil in the world. There are three classic ways of doing so. One can locate evil within the godhead, and occasionally the First Testament hints at that, or at least at the awareness that God’s acts look inexplicable. One can attribute evil to human rebellion against God, and the First Testament does that. One can see supernatural evil asserting itself against God and God not always insisting on victory over it (as God does not put down human evil), and the First Testament does that. The profile of emphasis on these accounts varies in different parts of the First Testament, but all form part of its understanding. One significance of its declaring that God prevailed at the Beginning is that this is grounds for confidence that the power of supernatural evil will never be such as to win the victory over God. Israel’s task is to urge God to be assertive in relation to it, as it does in relation to human evil.

2.5 God Created

“In the beginning …” I imagine a smile on God’s face, for we are unsure how to translate the words that follow, and thus the first sentence in the Bible. The straightforward verb form bārāʾ suggests the traditional translation in the beginning God created: So [118] , [119]  [120]  [121]  But the preposition in “in the beginning,” bĕrēʾšît, has the vowel one would expect before a clause that said “in the beginning of God’s creating”: so [122]  [123]  [124]  [125] . Sometimes the Hebrew Bible combines two expressions because copyists had manuscripts that read both ways. We will go with their instinct in holding onto both.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” is an extraordinary opening for a gospel. In due course Chronicles follows Genesis’s example in requiring people to read its story against the background of the world’s beginnings; so does John, though only after Mark, Matthew and Luke have ignored the precedent. Genesis itself was in some ways following, in other ways ignoring the example of earlier creation stories. Having gone behind the forming of humanity to events among the gods that led to it, Enuma Elish goes on to the building of Babylon and of a house for Marduk there, and thus links its story with Babylon’s own existence and with Babylon’s understanding of its place in the world. It thereby accounts for Marduk’s leadership among the gods and thus for Babylon’s leadership among the nations of the day. When the story was first written, the idea of Babylonian world leadership would have been only a fancy. While Babylon became a great city in the second millennium, it took over from Assyria as the major power in the Middle East only in the seventh century. If Genesis 1 reflects knowledge of Enuma Elish gained as a result of the exile, Babylon’s world leadership was now a reality.

Genesis 1 fulfills a similar function for Israel, but does so in a different way. It, too, introduces a story that offers Israel some self-understanding, an account of its position in the world, and an account that might be reckoned wildly unrealistic. Its distinctiveness lies in its doing this by making creation the introduction to Israel’s own history as a whole. It thus also stands in contrast with other works in the First Testament. Whereas Job, Ecclesiastes and some Psalms treat the beginning of the world in its own right, with monumental boldness Genesis 1–2 treats creation as a preamble to the story of Israel. “The beginning” of Israel’s story was not David, or Joshua, or Moses, or Abraham (or Jesus), but creation.[126]

The terms Genesis uses to refer to the creator underline this dynamic about the relationship between the world and Israel. It begins with reference to “God.” It does not use a title for God of the kind Israel shared with its neighbors, such as Melchizedek’s term El Elyon, God Most High. Nor does it use Israel’s own distinctive name for God, Yhwh. It uses the ordinary Hebrew word for deity, ʾĕlōhîm. Elsewhere the plural can be a numerical plural, referring to gods. But applied to the one God, it is an honorific or intensive plural[127]  suggesting that this God embodies all the deity there is. So the creator God is very deity itself. The term emphasizes both the disjunction and the link between the creation of the world and the story of Israel. This gospel tells the beginning of Israel’s story, but the one who begins it is not merely a local Israelite God. The story of Yhwh and Israel is indeed set on the widest canvas.

As soon as we have got used to this idea, however, it is complemented in Genesis 2–3 through the use of that Israelite name for God, Yhwh. Even here the name appears in combination with the term that came in Genesis 1, in the distinctive phrase “Yhwh God,” which characterizes Genesis 2–3 but is rare elsewhere in the First Testament. The combination gives distinctive testimony to the fact that this maker we are talking about is indeed identical with the God who will appear to Moses and bring Israel out of Egypt. Admittedly Genesis does not tell us that. It does not start like a modern legal document, with a preamble defining key terms. “God” is a fully realized character. The actual readers of Genesis of course knew this God, so they were not starting from scratch in understanding God’s character, and the narrative takes for granted their knowledge. Yet it is through following the story that we discover what this character is like, as is the case with modern narratives or films that begin in the middle of things. At the end of the story we will thus be in a position to read “in the beginning God …” with more comprehension.

“Creation”

It would have fitted with theological tradition to call this entire chapter “God created,” but I avoided that verb in the title and in much of the text, partly for the sake of defamiliarization. Further, while “create” is the nearest English equivalent to Hebrew bārāʾ, the two words are overlapping in meaning rather than synonymous. “Creation” and “salvation” are theological technical terms with overarching reference, but this is not true of either bārāʾ or yāšaʿ and related words. The latter is a common verb to refer to Yhwh’s delivering people from one predicament or another. It does not especially refer to “spiritual” deliverance or to eternal life or even to a key act of deliverance such as the exodus. In contrast, bārāʾ has a narrower rather than a wider connotation than English “create.” It is not very common in passages about how the world came into being. In other words, in speaking of creation the First Testament does not talk about “creation” as much as we do. It is but one of the images for what Yhwh did in bringing the world into being, alongside, for example, giving birth, gaining control and building. It is not an overarching concept, as if it embraced images such as birth or fighting or building. Nor is it a superior concept, as if those other images were subordinate to it. Nor is it a literal expression, whereas those other expressions are metaphors. It is a metaphor alongside them.

In English, creation essentially denotes God’s activity in bringing the whole world into being. We may extend the word’s usage to refer to other aspects of God’s creativity (e.g., to new creation), but we know we are indeed then extending the use of the language. In contrast, the verb bārāʾ has no special link with the beginning of things. Amos makes this clear in the way it speaks of God’s acting as bōrēʾ (Amos 4:13; cf. Amos 5:8–9; 9:5–6). The Beginning was simply one of the moments when God acted as bōrēʾ. What was distinctive about the Beginning was the fact that it was the beginning. “Creation” suggests bringing something into being where there was nothing before, a point we make explicit by the gloss “out of nothing.” Bārāʾ is also used without any reference to raw material, but its emphasis lies elsewhere. The question it answers is not “where did anything come from?” Walther Eichrodt says it is “incontestable” that Genesis 1:1 refers to “creation from nothing.”[128]  Whether or not it is contestable, it is certainly contested. While a First Testament thinker who needed to handle the question “Where did matter come from?” would no doubt declare “Yhwh made it, of course,” as Proverbs 8 implies, First Testament thinkers had other questions to handle. In Jewish writings explicit reference to creation out of nothing first occurs in 2 Maccabees 7:28: God made everything ouk ex ontōn. The statement is an aspect of the book’s stress on monotheism and on God’s absolute sovereignty. But similar language occurs in other Greek writings without implying that creation did not start from preexistent matter, so 2 Maccabees need not have that implication. The more explicit conviction regarding this was first clearly formulated in the second century A.D.[129]

The emphasis of bārāʾ lies first on the sovereignty of what God achieves rather than on the nothingness from which God starts. The link of bārāʾ with sovereignty becomes especially clear in the context where the word is most common, not Genesis, where it comes ten times, but Isaiah 40–66, where it comes nineteen times. There it highlights God’s sovereignty over the powers of earth and heaven and God’s sovereign capacity to renew the community of Israel. The chapters use the word in a variety of connections, of which God’s activity at the Beginning is but one, and also use other terminology in this variety of connections. For instance,

As maker of the world, Yhwh can be sovereign in world politics (Is 40:12–17, 21–24).

As maker of the world, Yhwh cannot be represented by an image (Is 40:18–20).

As bōrēʾ of other heavenly forces, Yhwh is sovereign over them (Is 40:25–26).

As bōrēʾ of the world, Yhwh can be a resource to Jacob-Israel under pressure (Is 40:27–31).

As bōrēʾ, Yhwh is transforming the world now (Is 41:17–20).

As bōrēʾ, Yhwh cares about all humanity (Is 42:5–9).

As bōrēʾ, Yhwh brought Jacob-Israel into being (Is 43:1–2).

As bōrēʾ of Jacob-Israel, Yhwh protects the people now (Is 43:1–2).

As bōrēʾ of Jacob-Israel, Yhwh intervenes in the people’s history now (Is 43:14–15).

As one who makes things spring forth, Yhwh will receive honor from the transformed world (Is 43:19–21).

As bōrēʾ, Yhwh causes the disasters that indirectly bring restoration to Judah (Is 44:24–45:7).

As bōrēʾ, Yhwh bids the creation issue in the fulfilling of a right purpose (Is 45:8).

As maker of Jacob-Israel, Yhwh can exercise sovereignty in a way the people have to accept (Is 45:9–13).

As bōrēʾ, Yhwh does not lie low in tōhû [“a formless place”] playing hide and seek (Is 45:18–19).

As bōrēʾ, Yhwh is making new things happen now (Is 48:6b–8).

As the battler at the Beginning, Yhwh is acting to restore Israel in a way that reprises that pattern (Is 51:9–10).

As maker, Yhwh is also Zion’s restorer (Is 54:5).

“At no point in the whole of Second Isaiah does the doctrine of creation appear in its own right.… It provides a foundation for the message of redemption.”[130]  But neither at any point does Second Isaiah talk about, for example, Yhwh’s promise to Israel’s ancestors or Yhwh’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt for its own sake. They have the same significance or status as the story of creation. Each theme “stimulates faith” in Yhwh’s involvement with the people in the present. Each is “but a magnificent foil for the message of salvation.”[131]  Thus when needing to reflect anew on Yhwh’s relationship with it, Israel often found itself thinking about the fact that Yhwh was creator of the world.[132]  Israel’s story implies that it engages in ongoing recollection of the fact that Yhwh is creator and engages in reflection on this. It is Yhwh’s creation blessing that is fruitful when Israel increases in Egypt. It is the creator-victor over dynamic powers who delivers Israel from Egypt at the Red Sea. It is the blessing of creation that Israel enjoys on the way to the promised land and in the land, though it often fails to look to Yhwh as creator. It is the sovereign creator who exercises lordship over the nations, using them to attack Israel and defeating them again when the time for Israel’s restoration comes. In different situations of discomfort or comfort, the First Testament keeps inviting Israel to be mindful of the fact that its God is creator.

Bringing About Order

The emphasis on bringing things into being with sovereign authority conveyed by the verb bārāʾ suggests that this would be a difficult verb to apply to a Babylonian god. Even Marduk negotiates and bargains with other gods. In Genesis 1, God simply speaks, and things happen. That links with the significance of God’s acting as bōrēʾ, the bringing of newness and order out of chaos and disorder. “Throughout the ancient Near Eastern world, including Israel, the point of creation is not the production of matter out of nothing, but rather the emergence of a stable community in a benevolent and life-sustaining order,” and the affirmation of Genesis 1 is that God produced this order without being opposed by forces that could threaten the purpose to do so.[133]  Genesis’s focusing on ordering rather than creation out of nothing is not a shortcoming any more than is the modern concern to declare that God did create out of nothing. Both affirmations reflect reasonable concerns in particular cultural contexts. In Genesis 1, the medium or means of expression reinforces the message that God is bringing order to a situation where previously there was (at best) a void. In the Babylonian story, conflict, disorder and tumult characterize the lives of the deities themselves. In Genesis 1, God is unaffected by the tumult of the formless void.

This takes us to the alternative understanding of Genesis 1:1. “At the beginning of God’s creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was an empty void, and darkness covered the face of the deep.”[134]  The narrative indeed presupposes the existence of matter, of raw material for God to use. The point about God’s creative action is not to bring things into existence, matter being the first of them. Genesis 2 will similarly begin with a scene where the earth and its springs are there, but where nothing yet grows and there are no animals. In this respect, both stories parallel the Babylonian story and Homer’s Iliad, where it is from the primeval waters, whose existence is presupposed, that the gods themselves derive their being. The similarity to the beginning of the Babylonian story with its “when …” clause would thus again highlight the difference in the content of the story once it begins to unfold.[135]

There is another ambiguous aspect to the opening verses of Genesis. The backcloth to the ongoing acts of creation is an empty void, a darkness over the deep and a supernatural wind. Each of these can be understood negatively or neutrally/positively. Read against the background of the Babylonian creation story, they recall both the raw material from which the gods and in due course everything else was created, and also the conflict from which the creation of humanity issued.

In itself the onomatopoeic pairing “empty void” (tōhû wābōhû) could be a neutral or even a positive expression, analogous to “matter” or “raw material.” But its subsequent First Testament resonances are negative. It suggests something more like desolation, the meaningless chaos into which life has degenerated and the futile powerlessness of the religious images that people utilize in their worship (cf. Deut 32:10; Is 34:11; 40:23; 41:29). Given that Genesis 1 does not make explicit that God created the formless and empty earth, or the deep, the existence of both could be the presupposition for what follows, like the existence of the primordial waters in the Babylonian story. And this points us to those questions about order that people who heard this story needed answering. Genesis 1 speaks to a context where the community’s life had become an empty void. The Babylonians had ended Judah’s semi-independent existence, transported many of its people, devastated its capital and abandoned it as a shambles, and burnt Yhwh’s temple there. Judah’s life had become an empty void. Is this the end? Is it the natural state of things? Does entropy rule? The creation gospel declares that the cosmos came into being through an activity on God’s part that defied entropy. The background to God’s creative work was the existence of an empty void. The sovereign creativity of God consisted in turning empty void into meaningful whole.[136]

Our own world ricochets between two prospects, that nuclear war may turn the earth into an empty void or that global warming may do so. We might be tempted to reassure ourselves that we should not be too distraught at the prospect of such a calamity if God is someone who brought cosmos out of an empty void at the Beginning. Either God will not allow creation to return to that, or God’s reaction to this event will be to reaffirm and reimplement the original creative purpose. But we can hardly take that for granted. We are reading a gospel, a linear narrative. We cannot assume we can project the future from the past. Israel’s own story shows how God gives a second and a third chance, but that chance-giving may not go on forever. Only in the midst of the catastrophe will we be able to ask whether this is the End. It would be wiser to forestall having to ask the question by repenting of what we do in and with the world, and changing.

Darkness covering the surface of the deep carries similar ambiguous connotations to those of empty void. Darkness need not be a sphere where God does not reign: the bringing of darkness each evening is part of the rhythm of God’s own activity (Ps 104:30). But more often darkness stands for gloom and mourning, calamity and loss, so that here at the Beginning, darkness could be another negative image. In turn, the deep suggests the tumultuous and threatening dynamic energy of waters in flood (cf. Gen 7:11; 8:2). “Deep” (tĕhôm), a rare and poetic word in Hebrew as in English, resembles the name of Tiamat, the primeval saltwater deep in Enuma Elish.[137]  In that story there is conflict among the deities and Tiamat is leader of one side. Marduk defeats and slays her and uses her body in making the cosmos. But whereas other parts of the First Testament picture the waters in their tumultuousness and dynamism as resistant to God,[138]  there is no explicit indication here that they were a negative force that God has to tame. God’s prevailing can be taken for granted. If there was a battle, there was no doubt about the outcome.

There is a similar ambiguity about the reference to a supernatural wind/breath/spirit (rûaḥ) associated with the waters—presumably those of the deep. In this context with its references to physical phenomena, the supernatural rûaḥ is hardly the “spirit of God,” except in the sense that the tumultuous dynamic of the wind characteristically reflects and expresses God’s own tumultuous dynamic; the spirit/breath/wind of God blows with force and power, uprooting trees, withering vegetation and whirling prophets hundreds of miles. Perhaps this supernatural wind is simply a “mighty wind.”[139]  A reader might again catch a resonance from the Babylonian story, where it is a supernatural wind that tears Tiamat apart. The verb (rāḥap), usually rendered “was hovering/sweeping,” is less clearly a threatening one, but its meaning is uncertain.[140]  A supernatural wind sweeping over the face of the heaving waters is an image for power that adds to the potentially threatening atmosphere of formless void, bleak darkness and tumultuous deep. Perhaps it hints at a positive note, at the presence and activity of God in person, in all God’s power and dynamic that confronts the negative power of darkness and deep, but it is an ambiguous hint. It also recalls the wind of Yhwh in Isaiah 40:7, which sears nature and the people for whom nature there stands.

God’s Cool Controlling Initiative

The background of emptiness, darkness, the deep, with its capacity for tumult and disorder, and supernatural wind enhance by contrast the sense of God’s cool controlling initiative implied by the words that follow, “and God said.”

Positively, something similar is implied by the description of the world’s making in Jeremiah 10:12–13. There God’s voice engenders a roar of the waters of heaven, while God also makes a mist rise from the ends of the earth, makes lightning to accompany the rain and lets loose the wind from its storehouses (cf. also Job 38). Proverbs 3:19–20, too, speaks of deeps (tĕhômôt) breaking open below and clouds dropping dew from above through the exercise of Yhwh’s knowledge. In Genesis 1:9 the waters obediently gather together at God’s word, as responsively as any other entity commanded by God in this story, and thereby make space for land and thus for plants and trees, animals and human beings. Further, in the process whereby the sea creatures come into being the waters at least cooperate with God: God commands that the waters produce them, though then he goes on to create them (Gen 1:20–21).

So even the huge sea monsters (tannînim) come into being by God’s will and as part of God’s creating.[141]  Elsewhere these are embodiments of that tumultuous dynamic power that is independent of God or opposed to God, though Yhwh will defeat them and indeed has defeated them (Is 27:1; 51:9). Genesis makes the point more coolly and more radically. God created them! That implies irresistible sovereign power, and it reduces the tannînim to mere ordinary creatures. It is the first use of the verb bārāʾ since the introductory summary statement in Genesis 1:1. Genesis 1 does not envisage the possibly unruly waters producing possibly unruly monsters. Asserting that God “created” the latter makes a very strong assertion of God’s sovereign power. There are powerful entities in the world that look as if they might be independent of God and might have the power to oppose God’s purpose in the world. Like Psalm 104, with its turning of Leviathan into a plaything, or Job 40–41, with its questions about who can control Leviathan and the Beast, Genesis 1 with its declaration that God created the tannînim denies any such possibility.

These powers that assert themselves did not already exist before God began the work of creation, and they certainly do not have being or power independently of God. God brought them into being. And like sun and moon, further entities to which other people attributed supernatural power, they were only brought into being near the end of God’s week’s work. They belong neither to the beginning nor to the climax. They are just a subordinate stage. Their appearing near the end of Genesis 1 also parallels the appearing of Leviathan near the end of Psalm 104. God creates the tannînim as part of the family that includes other sea creatures and birds, and God likes the look of them, blesses them and bids them be fruitful and multiply. “From the amorphous deep in v. 2 to the rich bounty of sea life described in v. 21 … the waters are drained of all potential hostility before creation even commences,” not so that they become impotent or inert, but rather so that they bear a positive life force.[142]  And they can be drawn into praise, with the rest of creation (Ps 148:7).

2.6 God Built

In the beginning, God built a dwelling. While Enuma Elish might at first imply no other reason for making the world than a desire to do something with Tiamat’s remains, eventually it tells us how making the world issued in the building of a house for Marduk. The First Testament suggests an analogous rationale. God is like a lordly desert sheik, spreading out the heavens like a tent to live in (Is 40:22; cf. Is 42:5; 51:13; Job 9:8; Ps 104:2–3). To put it another way, God stretched out Zaphon over emptiness (tōhû) and hung the earth over nothing but Sheol and the waters that lie under the earth (Job 26:5–7).[143]  We have noted that Mount Zaphon was a Canaanite holy mountain, where Baal lived and the gods assembled (Is 14:13–14). In Psalm 48 the name is applied polemically to Mount Zion as the real place on earth where God lives. So God’s “stretching out” Zaphon refers to God’s making a home. In Job this imagery may come from the way a mountain can seem to float in the air over clouds or haze.[144]  In such a fashion, God indeed miraculously stretched out the sky as a dwelling tent or canopy under which to set a throne. The earth then comprises the suspended floor of this tent. So Yhwh’s holy palace is always in the heavens. Yhwh’s throne there is the place within creation from which Yhwh can keep an eye on events here on earth and take appropriate action (Ps 2:4; 11:4; cf. Ps 14:2; 20:6 [[145]  7]; 33:13–15). The disjunction between heaven and earth did not mean that the God who kept a holy habitation in heaven could not be expected to be involved with earthly ground, land and produce—rather the opposite (Deut 26:15).

In due course Israel will build God a splendid tent in the wilderness, and there are hints that this tent mirrors the nature of the universe itself. The same may be true of the solid, fixed palace Israel later builds for God. But God’s original home within creation was the cosmos itself. By no means could the heavens contain Yhwh, no matter how high they extended, any more than earth could (1 Kings 8:27). Yet Yhwh could make the heavens a dwelling place (1 Kings 8:30) from which to be aware of what happens on earth. And Yhwh could then even accept the gift of a second home on earth (the particular point of 1 Kings 8), like a British monarch keeping royal palaces in further parts of the realm so as to be able to stay there from time to time.

While working with the image of Yhwh’s home as a sheik’s tent, Psalm 104 also speaks of it as the fine two-story house of a well-to-do person such as a king (see Ps 104:3). It incorporates not only the regular first floor rooms but also a penthouse (cf. Amos 9:6) like that of the indulgent Judean kings, which was especially splendid (Jer 22:14). A feature of its prize-winning architectural design was its suspension over the waters, above the heavenly dome. Yhwh fitted the rooms with beams, presumably supporting the floor either horizontally or vertically. The rooms’ location makes them a convenient office space from which to manage the world below (see Ps 104:13). Other aspects of creation then form the means whereby God effects other aspects of this management. The clouds are Yhwh’s limousine, the winds its means of propulsion, both the winds and the lightning Yhwh’s aides and officers (Ps 104:3–4). Other passages make clear that Yhwh in person was the architect of this work (Is 40:12–13) and that in addition to its living accommodation, Yhwh’s palace incorporates extensive storerooms, where armory such as floodwater, storms, lightning and hail are kept (e.g., Ps 135:7), and also a meeting room for Yhwh’s cabinet (e.g., 1 Kings 22:19–22; Job 1–2).

The World as God’s Home

This actually suggests a different perspective from Enuma Elish and from traditional Christian thinking. The latter has taken the view that “this world is not my home; I’m just a-passing through.” There have been Christians such as African American slaves who have been entitled to sing such songs to reassure themselves that there is more to life than this world, but there has also been a more general Christian feeling of not being at home in the world. God apparently does feel at home in the cosmos and implicitly invites humanity to do the same. The heavens are God’s throne, the earth is the stool on which God’s feet rest. It is a telling fact that the word heaven refers both to the sky and to God’s home. Speaking of the cosmos itself as God’s home suggests that this is not merely a matter of analogical language, whereby we use a term from within creation simply because we have no direct way of speaking of God’s actual dwelling. While it is no doubt true that the incorporeal God has a metaphorical “dwelling,” the First Testament also implies that the physical heavens are God’s actual home. Yhwh is

Creator of the heavens—he who is God,

Shaper of the earth, its maker—he who is its establisher

(He did not create it an emptiness; he shaped it for living in). (Is 45:18)

Perhaps that also implies that Yhwh intended the earth, too, as a home to live in, not merely a place for human beings to occupy.

While executives act by speaking, they also have other ways of going about their work, and may well be involved hands-on in making things. That is true of God in Genesis 1 and in Genesis 2. God actually made the dome in the sky and the lights set into it, as well as commanding that they should come into being (Gen 1:6–7, 14–18). The dome (rāqîaʿ) is something beaten out (rāqaʿ), and Elihu explicitly describes God as beating out the sky like a metalworker (Job 37:18). Psalm 8:3 [MT 4] speaks of the heavens as the work of Yhwh’s “fingers”: Closely and intricately was Yhwh involved in the making of the cosmos.

This idea that God built the cosmos to live in is not merely (or at all) an invitation to intimacy. The arrangements in this home indicate that there is appropriate distance between humanity and God. The clouds that often cover the heavens are a means of hiding God’s throne, as they hid God when God appeared on earth (e.g., Ex 19:16; 24:15–16; 40:34–35). The cloud both marks and veils the presence of God. It signals the fact that human beings live with God in God’s home and it protects them from the threatening aspects of that. In Job, the latter has the emphasis. The same point is made by speaking of the heavens as God’s throne and the earth as God’s (mere) footstool (Is 66:1). Yhwh sits way on high and has to peer right down to see what is happening on earth (Ps 113:5–6).[146]  “The heavens are heavens for Yhwh, but the earth he gave to human beings” (Ps 115:16). Yhwh is like a seminary professor who welcomes some students to live in her house and gives them the first story to live in as they wish (within implicit constraints), but keeps a room or two for herself on the second story. But the students, like the servants in a great house, always have the freedom and security of looking to the professor in her private rooms when they feel the need to do so (Ps 123:1–2).

Humanity lives in God’s home as secure and welcome guests, invited to feel at home here as long as we live. One implication is that we might feel we should be respectful toward God’s home, to keep it looking nice and avoid damaging it.

A Well-Founded World

Our picture of the planet floating around the universe without visible means of support might make us wonder how safe it is. If the cosmos is like a building, the question is whether it is securely built. The ancient world similarly wondered how securely the earth was fixed on its underpinnings. The Psalms thus portray God as a builder who indeed set the world on firm foundations. The divine engineer undertook the work properly.

The earth and all it holds are Yhwh’s,

The world and the people who live in it,

Because he is the one who founded it on the seas,

Established it on the rivers. (Ps 24:1–2)

The picture of the cosmos that is presupposed is one observed from human experience. It is empirical and scientific in its way. Human beings (and animals) occupy the land of earth. The living occupy the upper side of this land, open to the sky, while the dead occupy the lower parts, where we put them when they die. The land as a whole is surrounded by water, and water comes through it to the surface in the form of springs and rivers. The implication is that the world is like an island floating on the seas. But actually it is set on pillars that reach down to the firm land beneath the waters. It stands firm because of acts God the builder undertook in the Beginning. The whole earth belongs to Yhwh as the one who built it secure over the waters below.

The “big bang” view of world origins might be compared with the Deist comparison of God to a clockmaker who wound up the world and then left it to work. God did not need to keep intervening in world events; God’s activity was confined to that one act at the beginning. This misconception contains an insight. Although the First Testament emphasizes God’s ongoing involvement in creation, it recognizes the epoch-making significance of what God did at the Beginning, which started the world on its journey. God is indeed the world’s founder. It is safe. Yhwh set the planets in their place, established them there as a permanency, and imposed a statute on them that would never pass away (Ps 148:6).[147]  Yhwh set them firmly and securely in the heavens (kûn polel, Ps 8:3 [MT 4]).

Yhwh’s eventual response to Job begins with a series of questions about God’s work of founding and controlling:

Where were you when I founded earth? Tell, if you have insight.

Who set its measurements, since you know, or who stretched the line on it?

Upon what were its bases sunk, or who cast its cornerstone,

When morning stars resounded together and all divine beings shouted?

(Job 38:4–6)

The response itself thus comes in the form of questions, though these are more rhetorical than Job’s. They affirm that Yhwh indeed made the world. The work did resemble the construction of a huge building. Like a master builder, Yhwh ensured that it had firm foundations, determined its dimensions with a measuring line, sunk its supporting pillars, and laid its cornerstone. Yhwh was architect, surveyor and engineer for this project[148]  and no more had human spectators than heavenly advisers in undertaking the work.

A Secure Home

Declaring that God founded the world and made it secure presupposes an appearance of insecurity. Part of the background in Genesis 1 is the fact that international conflict has overwhelmed Judah’s world. The links with Babylonian culture in Genesis 1 presuppose Babylonian hegemony and the deportation of the Judean leadership to Babylon. The defeats and deportations of 721 and 587 have shattered the people’s life. It is in this context that Genesis 1 declares that the God of Israel indeed securely founded Israel’s world and the world’s world. Formlessness and emptiness, darkness and the deep do not have the last word. Implying that conflict or even the existence of matter preceded the speaking of God in creation, far from compromising God’s sovereignty, implies the good news that this God once by a powerful word brought order out of conflict and world out of matter. By its nature, that first powerful act of speaking was a once-for-all act. The world does not need a new act of creation parallel to the first, however de-created it may seem to have become. It needs only its original createdness to be reasserted.

Nature itself can also threaten insecurity. Middle Eastern cultures often used waters as a symbol of overwhelming threatening forces. These waters are indispensable to earthly life, yet they also imperil it from time to time. Too much rain from above or flood from below can overwhelm humanity. This is so in one way in an area such as Babylon, the land of the two rivers, dominated by flat plain and vulnerable to the encroaching of the waters of the Persian Gulf. It is true in its own way in Israel, where flash floods can sweep all before them in the way the Psalms presuppose, and where the sea also pounds with awesome power on the Mediterranean shore. Flood threatens life in the Middle East as earthquake imperils life in California or hurricane in Texas. Proverbs declares that the heavens and the earth (whence these overwhelming floods come) were put firmly in place; they are not about to let waters engulf the world.

Yhwh founded the earth by means of insight,

Established the heavens by understanding.

By his knowledge the deeps burst open

And the skies would pour down dew. (Prov 3:19–20)

Yhwh’s control of the depths was not merely a matter of restraining them when they burst forth. Yhwh actually caused them to burst forth. In this context that happens not for destructive purposes, as at the flood (Gen 7:11), but for constructive ones. Even the apparently overwhelming forces in the cosmos play a part in a positive purpose. Perhaps the use of the noun daʿat (knowledge) nuances this, if it carries the connotations of recognition, acknowledgment and even commitment and choice (so, e.g., Prov 2:5; 3:6; Gen 18:19; Amos 3:2). Yhwh accomplished the task of world-forming in an effective way. The earth was given secure foundations; it is not about to collapse.

Yhwh’s insight ensures that the waters from above and below collaborate to provide the world in between with the water it needs, the depths below breaking open as rivers and the skies above dropping their dew. In isolation, “heaven” can denote the nonmaterial “place” where God lives, but combined with reference to earth it denotes the physical world above us—sky, sun, moon, stars and planets, the physical elements that Genesis 1 goes on to speak of. Like Genesis 1, Proverbs 3 concerns the creation of the cosmos as a whole, the universe. Heaven and earth are not simply separate entities that have in common that they were formed by the same hand. Yhwh made the heavens and the earth to form one cosmos.

But humanity should perhaps not assume that it can do whatever it likes without imperiling the whole. Since God gave it a role in contributing to the process whereby the whole “works” (Gen 1:26–28), it may have the potential to overturn the whole. Perhaps it is secure from everything but itself.

The Builder Is Our Help

Israel’s present confidence is buttressed by the assurance that as one clothed with might God had the strength to be establisher of the mountains (Ps 65:6 [MT 7]). God’s being the maker is grounds for confidence now:

The good fortune of those who have Yhwh as their help, whose hope is Yhwh their God,

Maker of the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them,

Keeper of trustworthiness forever, one who acts decisively for the oppressed. (Ps 146:5–7)

Psalm 136 makes the same point in describing God as the creator in a sequence of participles that lead into statements about God’s acts in Israel’s experience that interweave participles and finite verbs:

Acknowledge Yhwh, for he is good, for his commitment stands forever.…

Maker of the heavens with understanding …

Spreader of earth over the waters …

Maker of great lights …

The sun to rule the day …

The moon and stars to rule the night.

Each description links with the affirmation that “his commitment stands forever.” The link is an indirect but significant one. It is not that each of these acts arises from Yhwh’s commitment. This logic does not quite work. Nor is it that the kî (for) is merely asseverative, for even asseverative kî characteristically keeps some causal force. The affirmation recurs each time from the first verse, where it is part of the reason for acknowledging Yhwh as the one who is good. The subsequent lines are thus designed to build up conviction in the worshipers that the one who is good and whose commitment stands forever is one who has the extraordinary power expressed in the making of the world. That act is a basis for the conviction that God is not only good but also powerful.

2.7 God Arranged

In the beginning, God ordered the heavens and the earth. Having brought light into being as the first creative act, “God separated the light from the darkness,” and the next day similarly separated the waters above the sky from those on earth (Gen 1:4, 7). The acts of separation meant the definitive establishment of these aspects of the cosmos. The third day similarly involved dividing land from sea, though the verb “separate” does not occur. After each of these three events, God names the results of the acts of separation, “day” and “night,” “heavens” and “earth” and “seas.” Giving God-designated names to the products of these key acts is a sign of their incontrovertible and secure reality. The flood will test their security, but this exception will finally prove the rule as it eventually leaves them with an even more specific divine commitment to their permanency.

Later, as a distinguishable act, God also said, “There are to be lights in the dome in the heavens, to separate day from night” (Gen 1:14). Like earlier declarations, it is a form of command. Psalm 148:5 makes the point explicit in proclaiming that sun, moon, stars, planets, the highest heavens and the waters above them are to praise Yhwh’s name with uninhibited enthusiasm (the verb hallēl) “because he commanded and they were created.”

Sun, Moon, Stars and Planets as Signs

Israelites of course knew that the sun was their regular mediate source of light, though they also knew that there could be light when clouds covered the sun, and perhaps assumed that there was some source of light behind the sun (cf. Job 38:19). Yet their gospel began with God introducing light (ʾôr) into the world without reference to the lights (mĕʾôrōt) that give us light, sun and moon. Once more this affirmation gains significant resonance when read against a Babylonian background, for in Babylon sun, moon, stars and planets were the entities that ruled the world. They decided the destinies of nations and individuals, as popular religion has often believed. According to 2 Kings 23:5, there were priests in Judah whose task was to make offerings to sun, moon, stars and planets.

Genesis 1 naturally gives space to the origin of sun, moon, stars and planets, with their practical and theological significance for people. Yet in what it actually says, Genesis 1 demythologizes them and downgrades their importance. Yes, sun and moon rule, but all they rule is day and night. They decide when it is day and when it is night, and thus determine the distinction between day and night, but they do that merely as lampposts in the sky. Whereas other peoples regarded Sun and Moon as gods, Genesis does not even mention these lampposts’ names. They are merely elements in the material universe, and God does not get round to making them till day four of a week’s work (see Gen 1:14–19). They do not even require “creating,” like the creatures of sea and sky (Gen 1:21). That is how insignificant they are. Psalm 19:4 [MT 5] speaks picturesquely of God having pitched a tent in the heavens for the sun. After all, the sun needs somewhere to sleep at night if it is to rise in the morning with the freshness and energy of a bridegroom or a warrior. But the sun is only a metaphorical bridegroom or warrior. It is literally just—the sun. It is not a god, the object of the worship given to Sun in Babylonian hymns or in the Egyptian hymn to Aten.

Stars and planets appear only in an extraordinary throwaway phrase after the statement that God made the two great lights—“and the stars,” the author adds (Gen 1:16).[149]  The low-key nature of this affirmation contrasts with Enuma Elish’s systematic description of Marduk setting up the arrangements for sun, moon, stars and planets, and doing so at an earlier stage in the account. It also contrasts with modern interest in astrology and with modern science’s interest in cosmology. Great constellations such as the Bear, Orion and the Pleiades are spectacular evidence of their maker’s sovereign power (Job 9:9)—that is all. They had no role in Israel’s faith. Yet we might see Genesis as remythologizing sun and moon. It does not deprive them of any religious significance but redefines that significance. They distinguish day and night.

Making Distinctions

The making of distinctions is an important aspect of Israelite religion. It emphasizes the transition between day and night and marks it with ceremonies. Genesis affirms that such distinctions go back to God’s founding of the world. It agrees that sun and moon rule the world, but redefines the nature of that rule. They rule by marking signs and set times, days and years.[150]

To other peoples “signs” in the heavens were something to fear (Jer 10:2). For Israel the heavens offered the sign of God’s covenant commitment to humanity, the rainbow (Gen 9:12–17). The present context refers more directly to sun and moon’s offering the sign of God’s particular covenant commitment to Israel, because they mark evening and morning in such a way as to reveal when the sabbath arrives (Ex 31:12–17). In declaring that God is in covenant regarding day and night,[151]  Jeremiah 33:19–26 affirms that the covenantal commitment that makes night and day alternate is the guarantee of Yhwh’s covenantal commitments to David that his sons will continue to reign and to the Levites that they will continue in their ministry. These are not facts to be taken for granted in Jeremiah’s day, but God cannot choose which covenants to keep and which to abrogate, so if the day-night covenant stands, the covenants with David and Levi will also stand. There is a fixedness about this aspect of the created world. To put it another way, heaven and earth are subject to statutes (ḥuqqôt) that God long ago laid down. If Genesis 1 speaks to a context when people have forfeited any right to believe in a special covenant commitment to Israel, then this will be an aspect of the significance of its comment on the separating of light and darkness. The foundations of Judah’s life have collapsed, but each day people still see day and night alternating, and this actually provides a basis for believing that the foundations of their life remain intact. Things are still the way they were at the beginning.

Genesis speaks of no creation covenant, but some aspects of creation are thus destined to become covenant signs when covenants become necessary because things have gone wrong in the world. Indeed, talk in terms of a creation covenant does safeguard the assumption expressed in both Testaments that God is committed to the world and to humanity, that humanity has a reciprocal relationship with the rest of creation, and that all humanity is created with an awareness of God and an awareness of the fundamentals of right and wrong.[152]  It thus provides a basis for a call to all humanity to live by God’s standards in society and in personal life. Unfortunately the idea of a creation covenant came to be associated in “federal theology” with the idea that this covenant based the relationship between God and humanity on works rather than on God’s love and grace, as the Westminster Confession (chaps. 7 and 19) asserts.[153]  Ludwig Köhler’s contrasting comment is that “God’s first act of grace towards man was to give him at his creation, His command.”[154]  I am tempted to comment that there are only two things wrong with the idea of a creation covenant of works: It was not a covenant and it was not based on works.

Sun and moon will also mark “set times.” The [155]  renders “seasons,” but the word does not refer to times of year such as summer and winter—at least, not in a purely chronological connection. It refers to the set times of Israel’s annual observances, such as Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles (see, e.g., Lev 23). These great occasions happen at specified times each year, so movements of sun and moon signal when they are due to be observed.

The Structuring of the Cosmos

After separating light from darkness, God separated the waters above the sky from those around the earth. That also undergirds the security of human life. As well as the waters under the earth, above the dome comprising the sky there is evidently another vast reservoir from which come further supplies of water to earth, in the form of rain. Although both bodies of waters can assert their dynamic power against God, and although in due course God will turn them into a peril, they are under God’s cool control and are organized so as to benefit earth without threatening it. The one cosmos is clearly structured.

We presuppose some such structuring in the way we relate to creation. While people may hesitate to climb into a plane during a period of international guerrilla activity or over the transition from one millennium to the next, lest human initiative or failure makes the plane fall out of the sky, we do not hesitate on the basis of the possibility that the laws of physics may change mid-flight. Logically, the fact that these laws have operated consistently in the past is no evidence for the conviction that they will continue to do so, but Genesis buttresses that assumption by declaring that God made them so.

In reality, the waters above and the waters below are not separate. Within the First Testament itself, Ecclesiastes 1:7 may recognize that they all belong to one system (cf. also, e.g., Job 36:27–28). It is unlikely that the author of Genesis 1 would feel that the theological point is imperiled by this fact, any more than by the fact that at the earth’s poles there are times when light hardly gives way to darkness or darkness to light (contrast Job 26:10). Nor would the author be uncomfortable with the fact that elsewhere the sky is rather the roof of a sheik’s tent. We ourselves in turn would talk about the structuring of the cosmos in a different way, and one that would probably also be vulnerable to reformulation in light of new scientific theory in due course.

The Structuring of Nature

In Genesis the language of separation applies only to those two features of the inanimate world, light/darkness or day/night and land/sea or waters above/waters below, as the language of creation applies only to the animate world.[156]  But an analogous point is made about the different living elements within nature, which were made distinctive from one another. They belong to different “kinds” (mîn; Gen 1:11, 12, 21, 24, 25). Plants and fruit trees were given the capacity to reproduce themselves by means of the seed in plants or the seed within the trees’ fruit, which will imply that the “kinds” stay in being. The sea and sky creatures and the animals of the land were in turn commissioned to increase in the “natural” way that will perpetuate their different kinds.

The requirements of Moses’ Teaching will cohere with the manner whereby things came into being. Only in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 (plus Ezek 47:10) will the word for “kind” recur, there as here always combined with a preposition (lĕ) so that the expression denotes “by its/their kind.” Admittedly at creation there was no distinction between animals that were clean and animals that defiled. But Moses’ Teaching implies that the regulations about animals that Israelites may and may not eat derive from the nature of creation in its structuredness. Genesis 1 affirms that nature was indeed clearly structured. It is not very serendipitous. As the earth will not reverse the direction of its movement around the sun, and the cycle of precipitation and evaporation will continue to operate, so kangaroos will not give birth to sheep and apple seeds will not grow into orange trees. The idea of laws of nature thus suggests an equivalent to the idea that God created the forms of nature in a way that fixed the different species.[157]

Division and separation are priests’ business (e.g., Lev 10:10; 11:46–47). So in bringing the world into being, as well as thinking like a planner, speaking like a monarch, birthing like a mother and fighting like a warrior, Yhwh was involved in dividing like a priest. It is a task that affirms and undergirds the presence of structure and order in life. This is not to say that the language necessarily comes from priests. It also follows the language of Enuma Elish. But a priest would be able to rejoice in its links with the priestly system, as a modern can rejoice in the security it suggests about the structure of the universe.

The priestly system may presuppose that the human body offers a symbol of structure and order that is compromised. Bodily illness, particularly life-threatening illness, often involves parts of the body being out of kilter with one another. One part may assert itself excessively in relation to the rest (cancer) or may stop fulfilling its function in relation to the rest (heart disease). Further, while the body has boundaries, these are permeable. Viruses find a way into the body and make it malfunction. Blood and other discharges find their way out of the body in a fashion we cannot control. To Israel, the fundamental distinction between life and death seemed compromised by such emissions, and people had a hard time keeping that distinction clean in other connections—for instance, when someone in the family died and they had to care for his or her body and bury it. It was the business of priests to safeguard such distinctions, so as to safeguard the order they symbolized and safeguard people’s assurance about that order.

More broadly, the life of the world is dependent on death. In much of the animal world, there is no life without death, because creatures depend for life on eating one another. In its own way the rule that there is no life without death runs through the whole of nature—the glorious colors of autumn are the colors of death. As we are accepting of that death, so the First Testament is often accepting of our human death at the end of our threescore years and ten, though it sometimes senses an incongruity about it and senses questions it raises about life’s meaningfulness (see Ecclesiastes). In creating this cosmos God gave no explicit place to death, even though death is implicitly the background of the introduction of life, as darkness is explicitly the background of the introduction of light. Genesis 1 does not resolve the questions this raises about the way death is written into the cosmos, in the nature of humanity and of the animal and plant world. But in declaring that God created the cosmos in such a way as to make its elements distinct over against others, so that separation was one of its principles, it does undergird the distinctiveness (among others) of life over against death.

Temporal Structuring

After describing God bringing into being the living world by its “kinds,” Genesis 1 offers one more undergirding of the experience of the people of God. It could seem without order in the sense that the events of its life form part of no meaningful whole, no metanarrative. The seven-day temporal order of creation affirms that temporal sequencing is part of the order of human experience. One day is not just like another. The first week of world history provides a paradigm for the whole. History is not just one darned thing after another. God brought temporal order to a collection of disparate, unrelated elements, the raw material of creation, and this provides a paradigm for understanding experience.

The picture of God acting like someone with a week’s work to do and then having a day off thus also undergirds the orderly nature of the created world. It is one of the most striking distinctive marks of the creation story in Genesis 1 over against Genesis 2–3. It too issues from the theological reflection that perceives the nature of God’s good news for the context from which the account comes. This aspect of the account implies that God worked carefully and systematically. Creation did not emerge from the unplanned process that the Babylonian story describes. God’s working in linear time and reacting within time does not mean the work was unplanned. Admittedly there is no hint of planning at the beginning of the account of the week’s work. But as we look back from the end it is implicit that the creator had worked like a skilled craft-worker in dividing the tasks that needed doing into six logical areas, one for each day. Over days one, two and three, God lays the framework for the eventual picture, and over days four, five and six, fills out this picture. Paradoxically, an odd feature of the account underlines the organized nature of God’s work. There are actually eight stages in the process, days three and six each involving two of these. Picturing the eight stages underlines the systematic nature of the process, but the desirability of portraying the work being done according to a more balanced schedule was overruled by the necessity to portray it as spread over the six days of a week. Perhaps Israelites, like us, sometimes had the experience of having to do eight days’ work in six, and were encouraged by the fact that God also had that experience.

In Genesis 2, the picture of God as a worker planning out his work so that it spreads neatly over a week is complemented by the picture of God experimenting and finding the way gradually. Genesis 2 has more resemblance to the creation story science usually infers from evidence in the world, which suggests an immanent, trial-and-error process. We therefore need to combine its insights with those of Genesis 1 with its emphasis on sovereignty and planning. Genesis 1 declares that there is more to creation than meets the eye. Appearances could be deceptive, the appearances of science and the appearances of experiences such as the exile had brought to the community.

The experience of the people of God may be not so much fragmentation as disintegration. The fall of Jerusalem was one such moment, both for people deported to Babylon and for people left behind in Judah. When the creation story portrays God definitively bringing order out of unrelated pieces, this particularly encourages people whose life world has fallen apart in the way it had for Judah in the sixth century. God’s project from the beginning involved bringing order, and it promises that disintegration will not have the last word.

The Vulnerability of Structure

There are further experiences of disorder that the fall of Jerusalem especially brings home. Many people in the community experienced this event not as an inexplicable calamity but as a consequence of existent disorders in the community’s life. This response to it dominates the community’s Scriptures, in terms of prayers (Lamentations), narrative (Kings and Chronicles) and prophetic assessment (e.g., Jeremiah and Ezekiel). The community was in a state of social disorder: Instead of working as a harmonious whole, different sections of the community were at war with one another. It was in a state of moral disorder: This war had involved people with strength or power appropriating a disproportionate amount of the community’s resources. It was in a state of religious disorder: people had not been treating Yhwh as God, certainly not in the way Yhwh would understand that. It was in a state of ecological disorder: its relationship with its environment was awry through its not letting the land enjoy its sabbaths (2 Chron 36:21).

Whereas Israel is sometimes invited to infer its own security from facts about creation, on other occasions the argument may work the other way round. Whereas things in the world are supposed to be part of a whole, the whole can come to appear compromised. The cosmos can seem divided against itself, lacking in order. Different elements within it do not observe their place in the whole. Seas threaten to overwhelm land. Animals resist humanity’s rule. Humanity imperils the whole cosmos. We can attempt to classify and categorize the forms of created life, but these forms are resistant to our categories and will not fit into a pattern. Genesis 1 portrays God definitively creating the world in such a way as to give everything a place from which it may not imperil or overwhelm other elements. The structure of the cosmos may look imperiled, while the structure of God’s relationship with Israel (or the church) may look secure. Then it is the reality of the exodus or the deliverance from Babylon (or the reality of cross and resurrection) that makes it possible to keep confident that God created the world in such a way that it retains its integrity.

Humanity does seek to obscure some of the distinctions written into creation. In a number of ways we undermine the distinction between light and dark and between day and night. We crossbreed plants and animals. We mix materials to make composite fabrics. We abandon the distinction between Saturday and other days. Some of this abandonment of distinctions can be grounded on the coming of Christ. He himself subverted it in implying that all foods were clean (Mk 7:19), though the point at issue was a different one. God further subverted it in telling Peter to abandon the distinctions over food (Acts 10). Paul encouraged people not to be in bondage to sabbaths (Col 2:16). Such distinctions were designed to support a further distinction between Israel and other peoples, and the time had come for the Jewish good news to be shared with the Gentiles; the rules about distinctions hindered this.

Are there any distinctions that abide? On what basis can one distinguish between ones that abide and ones that can fall? If any fall, in what sense did God establish them as the permanent foundation of the life of the world and of humanity? Part of the answer may emerge from considering this question in the context of the related issues raised by talk of God’s having a change of mind. Sometimes Christians have been uneasy about the idea of God having a change of mind, as if it imperiled God’s sovereignty or consistency. But there are a number of occasions when Scripture speaks of God having a change of mind, and it is hard to explain away them all—e.g., as concessions to the way things look to us. The First Testament also denies that God has a change of mind, and when it does that, it is asserting that God is not fickle. God does not arbitrarily say one thing today and another tomorrow. On the other hand, God’s word is not like the law of the Medes and Persians, which is unchangeable even when stupid. When there is good reason, within the terms of other aspects of God’s purpose for the world, God can have a change of mind. There will then be consistencies about God’s policies even if flexibility about their outworking. In connection with God’s establishing of distinctions, we can similarly ask whether other principles underlay them as well as the desire for distinctions in itself. Were they arbitrary? What would be lost by their abandonment, apart from Israelite distinctiveness? Do other parts of the Scriptures suggest that other principles underlie them?

2.8 God Shaped

In the beginning, God formed human beings. After making the land animals by their kinds, on the same day God paused for an extra act of deliberation, then said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness” (Gen 1:26). It is not clear who is this “we,”[158]  but its significance is clear. It draws attention to the coming event. An act of deliberation precedes the making of human beings in God’s image, according to God’s likeness. The addition of the second expression contributes further to the emphasis on the event and on the human beings’ distinctive Godlikeness. If the second expression adds new meaning to the first, perhaps it does so by making explicit that humanity not only represents God but also resembles God.

The report of God’s implementing of the plan marks its importance in further ways. Whereas the land animals, unlike the sea creatures, were not “created,” Genesis three times describes the making of humanity thus, in each of three quasi-poetic four-word clauses. The first two repeat each other and the unexpected third brings an emphatic close:

God created humanity in his image.

In God’s image he created it.

Male and female he created them. (Gen 1:27)

Then, having also not blessed the land animals, God blessed humanity. The creation of human beings is a highpoint in the chapter.

Further, whereas the earth produces vegetation and is bidden to produce the animal world, God created the first human beings without their having a link with the earth. Their origin lies in their link with deity. Like light, indeed, they might be seen as created out of nothing. Their link with the earth follows on their creation rather than issuing from it: They are to gain control of it and fill it. Genesis 2 then complements Genesis 1 by recognizing the material link between humanity and earth. As well as being made in God’s image, the first human being had a physical nature shared with the rest of the world and a unique form of liveliness that came from God. It was in combining these that he became a living person (Gen 2:7). Human beings are not merely machines and not merely naked apes, but nor are they souls animating dispensable bodies. It is not surprising that what they do to the body affects the whole person (e.g., overeating, overworking, sex).

Making a human being is central to Genesis 2 to an extent that is not the case in Genesis 1, still less in Enuma Elish, where it is a marginal afterthought to a story about the gods. The focus on the creation of human beings finds a nearer Middle Eastern parallel in Atrahasis. Like Enuma Elish, it portrays human beings made from a dead god, along with clay and divine spit, though in this case the god is killed purely for the sake of providing some of the raw material for making the new creatures. More obviously than in Enuma Elish, this element in the story has the effect of positively accounting for the transcendent aspect to human nature. This element is these stories’ equivalent to the Genesis motif of God breathing into the human body so that it comes alive with God’s life. But with hindsight it also explains the human instinct to repeat the rebellion of the gods, for even in Atrahasis human beings are created to relieve gods who had the arduous duty of digging the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and who rebel against this task.

Not Just Kings, Not Just Israelites

It is human beings in general who are made in God’s image, not just kings. Other Middle Eastern peoples sometimes described the king as an image of the gods,[159]  and the First Testament will also describe the king as distinctively God’s son (e.g., Ps 2). The creation story asserts that from the Beginning it was humanity itself that embodies God’s image. Perhaps at a time not far from when Isaiah 40–55 democratizes Davidic kingship, Genesis 1 also does so. Further, whereas Babylonian thinking traces kingship back to the Beginning,[160]  Genesis traces only humanity itself back to the Beginning.

The same point emerges from Psalm 8. Yhwh created the heavens and the earth in such a way as to reflect the majesty and splendor of the divine king, then made human beings little lower than God, so that they share in glory and honor.[161]  The description is one that could apply to a human king (e.g., Ps 21:5 [MT 6]; 45:3–4 [MT 4–5]), who shares in the glory of the divine king (e.g., Ps 29:1–4; 96:6–7; 104:1, 31; 145:5). But Psalm 8, too, applies it to humanity as a whole. At creation there is no authority exercised by one human being over another, no hierarchy within humanity. The first human beings are themselves royal figures, living in a royal garden and exercising royal authority there (though they lack the vestments of royalty and are forbidden access to royal insight).[162]  While an emphasis on creation can buttress the monarchic status quo, it can thus also disturb it.

Further, these Godlike beings are human beings in general and not just Israelites. What has happened to God’s choosing a particular people?[163]  Genesis prefaces Israel’s story with the story of the creation of humanity, setting it in the context of God’s purpose for the world. The first sentence of the Bible forestalls any inclination on the part of Israel or the church to forget that its relationship with God relates to that purpose. It is an exaggeration to say that “the Old Testament story of creation does not answer the question ‘How did the world come into being?’ with the answer: ‘God created it.’ ” It surely does exactly that. But the creation story indeed also “answers the question ‘From where does the history of God’s people derive its meaning?’ with the answer: ‘God has given the history of His people its meaning through creation.’ ”[164]  “The all-important question” is then “whether the purpose of the creation of the world is the history and existence of Israel, or whether the purpose of Israel’s history and existence is to point to and actualize the meaning of creation.”[165]  Genesis Rabbah 1:4 (on Gen 1:1) asserts that six things were created (or at least predetermined) before the world: the Torah, Yhwh’s throne, Israel’s ancestors, Israel itself, the temple and the Messiah’s name. It thus makes a link between creation and Israel’s story, though it does not beg the question of the nature of that link. Does the world exist for Israel’s sake or does Israel exist for the world’s sake?

Standing at the beginning of the First Testament gospel, this account of God’s creation of humanity and God’s words of blessing remind the chosen people(s) that God’s choice of them is subordinate to a commitment to humankind as a whole. When God repeats the blessing to Abraham, Abraham inherits God’s blessing on humanity, but this blessing does not cease to belong to humanity as a whole. The people of God is always open to overestimating its own significance, and also to underestimating it. When it flourishes, it can forget that its raison d’être relates to Yhwh’s purpose for the world and can begin to think it is important in its own right. When it crashes, too, it can forget its place in Yhwh’s purpose for the world, and infer from its assumed insignificance that Yhwh could let it go out of existence. “In created things lies the forgiveness of sins,”[166]  but in the forgiveness of sins—and in Israel’s story—is an affirmation that God’s aims for humanity as a whole will find fulfillment. The forgiveness of sins is set in the context of the world’s story. Creation looks forward to the covenant,[167]  but the covenant serves the creation.[168]  Perhaps it is misleading that we name the two parts of the Christian Bible after the covenants or testaments they describe, resolving the tension between creation and covenant. While a move away from creation theology to a theology of history might have seemed a good idea in the context of National Socialism in Germany in the 1930s, it exposes us to the ecological crisis of the third millennium, which represents an overcoming of nature by history.[169]

The Image of God

Wherein lay God’s image in humanity? Neither the expression itself nor the immediate context spells out the phrase’s meaning, and answers to the question commonly reflect the prejudgments of the circles where they are propounded. That may also be true of what follows. We have to look beyond the passage for an understanding of what it means that humanity is Godlike. The situation parallels the one that obtains regarding the word God. We need to read the whole First Testament story to discover what that word means. We also need the whole story to tell us who human beings are, what it means to be Godlike. We cannot discover the answer from a more and more careful exegetical investigation of the phrase itself. We need to read the First Testament story of humanity. The expression is a stimulus to reflection as much as a deposit of reflection. Indeed, it invites us to look beyond Scripture at human beings in the various facets of their possible Godlikeness. The multiplicity of interpretations of the image of God can then have positive features. The expression does not circumscribe what it means to be human, but opens it up. When we become aware of some feature of what it means to be human (we are rational, we are religious, we are moral, we are emotional, we are relational, and so forth), each time that encourages us to ask about the nature of the God in whose image we are made and to look at each in light of the other.

The history of the interpretation of the image of God is “the history of the western understanding of humanity.”[170]  People who wished to emphasize humanity’s religious nature saw God’s image in humanity’s inner capacity for a relationship with God and for worship. People who wished to emphasize humanity’s capacity for rational thought saw it in humanity’s rationality. People who wished to emphasize humanity’s capacity for ethical reflection and decision-making saw it there.

Such theories have in common the assumption that God’s image lies in humanity’s inner nature, where intellectuals might be expected to locate it. Yet “image” and “likeness” suggest something more concrete and visible. An image is the visible representation of something, which suggests God’s image lies in humanity’s bodily nature. That would fit with Genesis 1’s portrayal of God as speaking, looking, making, setting—and creating. The First Testament will continue systematically to portray God as having the same personal attributes as human beings, such as the capacity to think and feel. God can be bodily enough to be seen (e.g., Ex 24:9–11) and specifically has, for example, eyes, a nose, a face, arms, hands and a womb—everything but genitals.[171]  The First Testament prohibition on images is based not on God’s spiritual nature but on their inadequacy to represent God’s fully personal nature as one who acts and speaks (Deut 4). Their mouths, eyes, ears, noses, hands and feet are not real enough (Ps 115:5–7).

To see this as “only anthropomorphism” and to note that elsewhere the First Testament says God cannot be seen, dismisses the significance of this language too easily and resolves the tension between the two forms of statement too easily.[172]  Whereas the First Testament only occasionally describes God in terms of an animal or something inanimate, and never as an abstract principle or the inner ground of our being, it systematically presupposes a correspondence between God and humanity in its bodiliness as well as its inner nature. There are qualifications to this correspondence. God does not fall short in realizing essential personal characteristics such as faithfulness and mercy as human beings do. The First Testament will come close to implying that God does sometimes so fall short, especially in the Psalms, or at least will be bold in the way it declares that God seems to do so. But it does that in order to challenge God to be God and thus to be one who has those characteristics.

If the image lies in or at least includes humanity’s bodily nature, this makes for a pleasing link with the New Testament gospel, where God becomes a human being. When theology drew a sharp distinction between humanity’s inner and outer nature (body and spirit), the notion of incarnation was difficult to comprehend. But if humanity’s likeness to God lay as much in its bodiliness as in its inner nature, this apparent difficulty is reduced. We might say that God would have had difficulty in becoming, say, a tiger, but not in becoming a human being, because human beings were already the kind of creatures that God would be if God were a physical creature. There was a moral cost involved in God’s becoming a human being (cf. Phil 2), but not a metaphysical difficulty.

Male and Female

If the image lies in humanity’s bodiliness and visibility, this may link with an aspect of the twentieth-century attempt to understand God’s image, which looked to the context in Genesis 1 for some spelling out of the idea. In creating human beings in the divine image, God created them male and female (Gen 1:27). The postmodern age responds to texts that might speak of relationship, and this statement has been read that way. Creating humanity male and female speaks of relationship, and associating this with God’s image presupposes that God is also a relational being. Humanity’s Godlikeness lies in this relational capacity.[173]

I would like to believe that this is what the story implies, but I do not. Male and female is a biological distinction related to reproduction and common to human beings and animals but not to God.[174]  The narrative hardly suggests that God combines male and female, nor is there anything in the context to point to a stress on relationality. Indeed, there are pointers in other directions. The reference to humanity’s being male and female leads into the account of God’s blessing humanity and encouraging it to be fruitful. Both are notes oddly missing from the creation of the land animals, but it is by means of their sexual differentiation that human beings are able to reproduce, like other animals, and unlike plants. Being in God’s image links to mastering the earth (Gen 1:27), and it is by reproducing and filling the earth that humanity will fulfill this commission. That idea reappears in Genesis 1:28, and thus comes both sides of the reference to sexual differentiation. It is thereby marked as a key idea. Genesis 2 has similar implications. The woman was formed to be a partner for the man and thus to fulfill a role that the animals cannot fulfill, the bearing of children.

This may not be what the reader of this volume wishes to be told, and it is not what I wish to tell you. I would rather tell you that Genesis 1–2 implies that men and women are partners in relationship, not merely partners as mothers and fathers. But I am interested in the First Testament because I want to get new insight, not merely because I want it to support what I believe already. And when it has something to say that is different from what I would have said, it may become especially significant. (Fortunately the Song of Songs does imply the point that Genesis does not.)

Genesis 1–2 presupposes that childbearing is intrinsic to the distinctive being of womanhood. This might be reckoned a self-evident fact, implicit in women’s anatomy and physiology. There might be contextual reasons for drawing attention to it. The early centuries of Israelite life in the mountains of Ephraim and Judah faced people with a demanding task in establishing a viable life. The clearing of rocks from areas where crops might be sown and the building of soil-retaining terraces on hillsides where fruit trees might then be planted were labor-intensive occupations. Allegorically put, the task of tilling and keeping the garden was a demanding one. The bearing of children to grow up as workers was thus crucial to the fulfillment of this task. While Genesis 2 gives us fewer concrete pointers to a date of origin than Genesis 1 does, the traditional critical dating sets it against this background.[175]  The exile raised analogous questions. Ephraim is gone and Judah is decimated, but God promises that the nation will multiply (see, e.g., Is 54). The childbearing of the literal daughters of Sarah is indispensable to the fulfillment of this promise. In Genesis 1 the blessing lies in fruitfulness, and women’s childbearing is indispensable to that. In other contexts the blessing may take other forms, and the way women’s calling complements men’s may also differ.

Eve’s collaboration with her man lies in her capacity to bear children. The stress on that capacity implies an equality of importance between the two. Men and women traditionally worked together with the home the focus of their work and lives. Urbanized cultures have often seen two developments in the differentiation of role and status between men and women. The locus of a man’s work and life moves into the city and the work he does there gains greater status than the work a woman does in the home. Genesis 2 presupposes neither of these developments. Implicitly, a woman’s contribution to the life of family and society is at least as significant as the contribution of a man. And men and women are to value the home as much as the city. With its bare statement that God made human beings male and female in connection with the commission to master the world, Genesis 1 makes more explicit that parenthood is the vocation of men as much as of women, and not one that the former leave to the latter once they have made their indispensable initial momentary contribution.

Behind and Beyond the Battle of the Sexes

Does Genesis 1–2 then imply a patriarchal view of men and women? By patriarchy I understand a hierarchical organization of humanity that privileges men over women. It does not imply that all men have superior standing to all women—free women have authority over male servants. But it puts men in general in authority over women and thus, for instance, privileges husbands over wives and brothers over sisters. It commonly grounds this hierarchy in differences between the two sexes—for example, suggesting that men are more rational while women are more emotional.

None of this derives from the way God created humanity according to Genesis. I assume that there are indeed differences between the sexes(!), though it is a controversial question whether these go beyond the anatomical/physiological and include, for instance, that men are by nature more rational and women more emotional. A better strategy is to grant that there may be such differences but to deny that they offer any indication that one sex is superior to the other and should have authority over the other. They rather indicate ways in which men and women have complementary roles. While neither Genesis 1 nor Genesis 2 suggests that one sex has authority over the other, in isolation I doubt whether we could be sure it implied an egalitarian understanding of the relationship, though the linking of hierarchy and authority with disobedience (Gen 3:16) retrospectively supports the view that the story’s implicit vision is an egalitarian one.

If the priestly authors of Genesis 1 wanted to tone down the emphasis on womanhood in Genesis 2 by abbreviating the story of human origins to the bare “male and female he created them,” they miscalculated, for their bare statement gives more explicit testimony to the intrinsic similarity of status shared by men and women. It may do more. The declaration that humanity intrinsically comprises male and female directly follows on that affirmation that humanity reflects the image of God. Whether the authors intended it or not, they imply that only when men and women are together do we have God imaged. The two have the same metaphysical status or role. Men do not embody normal humanity, with women being a slightly deficient variant on the norm. It is humanity, not just men as well as not just kings and not just Israelites, that images God.

Genesis 2 spells out some implications. Genesis is distinctive among Middle Eastern texts for making a point about the creation of female as well as male, and especially for telling a story about it. Greek stories about a primeval age parallel the Mesopotamian ones in a number of ways. They, too, speak of conflict among the gods, of the forming of the first human beings from dirt, and of a flood. But whereas Mesopotamian stories do not pay much attention to the origin of women as opposed to men or to the origin of marriage (or to the origin of culture), Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days do speak of the making of woman after man (and pay more attention to the origin of culture) and see the making of woman as a chief cause of trouble for men.[176]  There is a strand of thinking in both Testaments that has some parallels with this view, but Genesis declares that at the Beginning it was not so. It expresses a vision for the relationship of man and woman that looks behind and beyond the battle of the sexes.

After placing the man in the garden, God notes that the goodness of creation that Genesis 1 celebrates would not be complete as long as the man was on his own (Gen 2:18). The story separates out the event of woman’s making from the event of man’s making, and “That’s good” applies only to the end of the work. Part way through, it is not yet good. Having articulated the nongoodness of the situation when the man is on his own, God tries different animals on the man, but none would do as the kind of companion he needs. They could not help him beget other human beings. Eventually God makes another creature like the first yet not identical. The likeness is guaranteed by the fact that God takes a piece of the first creature and builds up the second from it. If Yhwh was a little like a potter in making the man, Yhwh is a little like a builder or a reconstructive surgeon in making the woman. The story points up the contrast between her and the animals. She is made from the same stuff as the man. She is a similar kind of creature. As Adam puts it, she is bone taken from his bone and flesh taken from his flesh. In underlying structure and fleshly covering, man and woman are the same.

All this takes place while the first human being is asleep. The origin of this partner is thus a mystery, but in her the man can recognize someone like him, while different from him. The fact that men and women have a homing instinct towards each other is explained by their ultimate origin in God’s intention. As in Genesis 1, humanity is complete only when men and women come together. A man thus cleaves to “his woman.”

Genesis 2 does not use the rare Hebrew word for “wife,” bĕʿûlâ (e.g., Gen 20:3), from the verb bāʿal “to own,” which presupposes a real estate understanding of marriage that makes a wife her husband’s property. Israelites no doubt made that assumption, like modern Englishmen passing a woman between one another (“Who gives this woman to be married to this man?”). But the account of the origin of the relationship between men and women does not encourage them in that direction. The union does not involve ownership. The relationship involves a mutual commitment of an ʾîš and an ʾiššâ, two people who are the male and female versions of the same kind of being and thus belong together. Men express that commitment in their willingness to leave the family in which they have grown up, to make a new start with a woman from another family (Gen 2:24). (Women do that too, but the story is told from the man’s perspective.) In an industrialized and urbanized society where ties between generations have broken down, that may not seem odd. In a traditional society with the strong ties that hold families together, it may seem an extraordinary fact.

A Mutual Commitment

Simply by acknowledging that the woman is the same bone and flesh as him, by implication the man is therefore committing himself to her (cf. the use of the phrase in Gen 29:14; 2 Sam 5:1; 19:12–13 [[177]  13–14]).[178]  This is someone with whom he can work in partnership (Gen 2:18) and to whom he is therefore prepared to make a commitment. The “cleaving” (dābaq) that results hardly refers merely to the physical act that unites a man and a woman. Indeed, it hardly refers to this at all, since sexual union does not involve sticking together for more than a few minutes. Nor does “cleaving” essentially have anything to do with romantic love or with intimacy. It denotes a personal commitment, the permanent sticking together involved in an ongoing relationship, like Ruth’s to Naomi (Ruth 1:14, 16–17). The point is implicit in the linking of leaving and cleaving. In combination, leaving and cleaving suggest giving up one set of mutual commitments and taking on another. “Cleaving” often refers to the attachment Yhwh expected of Israel (e.g., Deut 10:20). “Leaving” occasionally refers to the people’s giving up its commitment to other deities (e.g., Ezek 20:8), but occurs much more frequently in a negative sense, to refer to Israel’s leaving Yhwh (e.g., Deut 28:20). “Leaving” is a negative idea. That underlies Genesis 2:24. It is hard for a family to accept a son or a daughter’s departure, and hard for the person to make the break that this involves, but in practice, Genesis observes, people do so depart and make a new commitment. They follow on the commitment that Adam made when God presented Eve to him.

Jesus inferred from this story that we need to encourage people to keep that commitment rather than encourage them to sit fast and loose to it. Human beings should not tear apart what God put together (e.g., Mk 10:9). This is an exhortation rather than a law, like his other declarations on the imperiling of marriage (see Mt 5:27–32). Merely banning divorce would not fulfill it, and recognizing when marriages have fallen apart and rejoicing for people to start a new marriage would not necessarily resist it. In our own context, people might also want to ask Jesus questions about homosexual practice, polygamy or masturbation, and in response, Jesus might again refer back to Genesis. All these may fit ill with Genesis 1–2, which implicitly sets sexual expression within the context of a lifelong heterosexual marriage designed to image God in the world. But Jesus might note that, for instance, Western churches tend to be softer on divorce and masturbation than on same-sex partnerships and polygamy, and wonder why that is.

Other inferences have been famously drawn from the story, from the way the woman is made and from the order of the two creatures’ making. The woman is made from the man’s side rather than his head or feet. This might hint that she is made to stand alongside him rather than to rule him or be ruled by him. She is made second and made from the man. This might indicate her inferiority, because he is her origin and she is an afterthought. Or it might indicate her superiority, like the Mark II version of a car or a program, or because she is a help to him (in the First Testament helpers are usually more powerful than those they help). After all, the man was made from something else, the ground, which hardly implies his inferiority to it, and in Genesis 1 human beings are made after the animals, which hardly implies inferiority to them. On the basis of such logic, the woman’s creation is the climax of the story and she is the highpoint of creation (perhaps that was the misapprehension against which Genesis 1 wanted to safeguard). Or the man’s authority over the woman might be implied by his declaration that she will be called Woman and his later declaration that her actual name will be ḥawwâ, which resembles a word for alive or living or lively. But contexts need to determine whether naming is a sign of authority (Hagar names God). There are no such implications in the context of Genesis 2:23, though they might be there in the context of Genesis 3:20, given the talk of ruling in Genesis 3:16.[179]

Committing themselves to each other gives Adam and Eve a new confidence and security in the world. The two of them are naked, but they are not ashamed. References in the First Testament to nakedness link it not with sex but with poverty, vulnerability and humiliation (e.g., Job 22:6; Is 58:7). Before meeting Eve, Adam might well have felt vulnerable and overawed before the life that lay before him. Together with Eve, he can face the task God has for him. What is that task?

2.9 God Delegated

In the beginning, God put humanity in authority over the rest of the animate world. Human beings are “to master the fish in the sea, the flying creatures in the heavens, the cattle, all the earth, and all the creatures that creep on the earth” (Gen 1:26). This statement follows on the declaration that humanity was made in God’s image, and it suggests that mastering the world is the implication or outworking of being in God’s image. That coheres with the possibility that the image links with humanity’s bodiliness and visibility. In Enuma Elish, human beings are created to serve the gods. In Genesis, too, they are created to serve God, but they do so in a way that involves their own exercising authority. According to the Westminster Larger Catechism, humanity’s “chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.” Genesis 1–2 imply that humanity’s chief and highest end is to work for God in the world.

Subduing the Earth

But “master” (rādâ) is not a term for the regular “ruling” of a king over a people. It refers to mastery imposed by a foe, mastery exercised by one people over another against their will, the kind of mastery Cyrus came to exercise over Babylon (Is 41:2). It does not have to involve exploitation or harshness (see Lev 25:39–53), so it can be exercised in a way that combines power and love, but it does involve compulsion or force.[180]  Genesis 1 does not suggest that mastery over the animate world links with the eating of animals. God bids humanity to eat only plants, and Genesis 2 with its garden full of fruit trees has the same implication. God’s bringing the animals to the first human being for naming may imply he is in authority over them, though it may rather signify recognition of them in their own right and/or in their significance for the giver of the name.

When Psalm 8 expresses astonishment at Yhwh’s causing humanity to “have dominion” (māšal) over the animal world, it uses another verb that commonly denotes a rule that is imposed and may not be welcome (e.g., Gen 3:16; 4:7; perhaps contrast 1:18).[181]  Its connotations are confirmed by the parallel expression “you put everything under their feet” (Ps 8:6 [MT 7]). That indicates forceful subjection like that of a victor over opponents (cf. Ps 18:38 [MT 39]; 47:3 [MT 4]; Lam 3:34), though these expressions, too, convey no implication that dominion relates to eating animals, for which treading on them would be poor preparation. Nor do sheep, oxen, wild animals, birds, fish and “whatever travels the paths in the seas” (Ps 8:7–8 [MT 8–9]) look simply like a list of animals for eating.

So how and why is humanity to master wild animals, birds and fish? And why are humanity and animals to eat only plants? In some ways the two commands fit naturally together, in some ways they stand in conflict. As I would rather not have to tell you that Genesis 1–2 sees childbearing as the key feature of womanhood, so I would rather not have to tell you that God commissioned humanity to master the world, but again I suspect that this is part of the story’s importance. Noting that humanity is male and female draws attention to its oneness with animate nature, which may be what makes eating animals inappropriate. But asserting that humanity is destined to rule over the rest of nature indicates that it is different as well as similar. “Humans are situated on a cosmic frontier, between terrestrial and supernal realms of existence.”[182]  The man and his woman are made to be companions and coworkers in serving God and God’s world. They are unlike God but like animals in being male and female, but like God but unlike animals in being designed to rule.[183]  They have bodies made from dirt like theirs, though Yhwh did not breathe life into the animals and make them that strange combination of earthly and divine.[184]  They do not feel the need of clothing, a mark of culture and civilization in Israel’s world, as in most worlds, and a symbol of differentiation from those other creatures that do not feel that need.[185]  They have the advantages and disadvantages of being innocent and unsophisticated. They are like God but unlike God, like the animals but unlike the animals. Perhaps one point about the mysterious reference to ruling over fish and birds (let alone more threatening animals) is that this is a symbolic statement that defines humanity’s metaphysical position, “lower than God” but above the animate world.

There is likely a more substantial point. Genesis’s readers know that the animal world does not live in harmony but lives on the basis of dog eat dog. Genesis 1 implies this is not God’s intention, but neither is it simply the result of a human “Fall.” Animal inclination to kill and eat other animals is built into their nature as animals and is part of the “goodness” of creation, yet holding them back from doing that is part of humanity’s vocation. Job underlines the demand of this expectation in the way it speaks of humanity, the animals and mastery. In putting Job in his place, Yhwh points out that human beings are not the ones who look after lions, ravens, mountain goats, deer or wild asses, nor can they control the wild ox (Job 38:39–39:12). They certainly cannot master the crocodile/Leviathan, the real king of creation that in Yhwh’s speech occupies the climactic place occupied by humanity in Genesis 1. It fears nothing. No one has dominion (māšal) over it (Job 41:33–34 [MT 41:25–26]).[186]  But Genesis does see humanity as called to master creation so as to get it to function ecologically, to get wolves, leopards and lions to dwell with lambs and calves, knowing that this is God’s vision for them and that this vocation can therefore be fulfilled. A small child will then be able to lead or drive wild and domestic animals together, like a shepherd herding flocks (Is 11:6–9).[187]  Television films of human beings living with lions and snakes provide us with hints that Isaiah’s vision might be realizable.[188]

It is in this sense that “creation means peace—peace between the Creator and the creatures, and peace among creatures themselves.”[189]  The goodness of creation does not imply the perfection or completion of creation. Creation needs to be led toward that completion, and this is humanity’s task. Creation groans in travail and looks for its deliverance (Rom 8:19–23) as God created it, not merely as spoiled through human sin. The goodness of creation did not mean it lacked tension or conflict and that human beings just had to continue to enjoy a tension-free and conflict-free life that was built into the goodness of God’s creative work.

A Vocation for Now

Hebrews 2:6–9 uses Psalm 8 to illumine the significance of Christ (cf. also 1 Cor 15:27; Eph 1:22). We need therefore not to lose the point the psalm made before being reworked in this connection. The New Testament’s reuse of it is part of New Testament theology and is irrelevant to the psalm’s own meaning, which is nothing directly to do with Jesus. The psalm is neither explicitly nor implicitly eschatological or messianic.[190]  It rejoices in the actual sovereignty that God gave humanity over the world and that humanity exercises now. It implies that any spoiling of the world and/or of humanity’s relationship with the world that came about through human disobedience did not undo that bestowal of sovereignty. Genesis 9:1–7 affirms that the relationship of humanity and animals is indeed affected by what has happened to human beings since creation, but it also makes explicit that this does not mean God has withdrawn the commission to have dominion over the world. The fulfillment of this sovereignty does not have to await the coming of a messiah. Psalm 8 does not speak ideally of a world that could not become a reality in the psalmist’s day. It is a rejoicing in the nature of human experience now and it implies an accepting of a human vocation for now.[191]  Wolfhart Pannenberg comments that whereas human beings have not done justice to this task, any more than to the task of mastering the animate creation, according to the New Testament only the Spirit of Christ can enable them to fulfill this destiny.[192]  In practice one might ask whether humanity has moved further away from fulfilling this destiny since Pentecost.

When “master” is repeated in Genesis 1:28, it is accompanied by the even rarer and more forceful verb “subjugate” (kābaš), most familiar in connection with the Israelite conquest of Canaan (e.g., Num 32:22, 29), but also used for forcing people to serve out their time as slaves (Jer 34:11, 16), and for rape (Esther 7:8).[193]  The term recognizes that humanity’s control of the earth is no walkover. Perhaps it is significant that “subjugating” is what humanity is to do to the earth itself, not to the animals. In the context Genesis is hardly referring to mining for minerals (contrast Job 28). Perhaps it recognizes that the earth will have to be treated harshly if it is to realize the destiny that God immediately goes on to describe, of producing food. To this end, humanity has to attack the earth, break it up and thus make it usable.[194]  More explicitly, it implies that the way humanity is to go about subjugating the world is by procreation, not by violence—which Genesis abhors (Gen 6:11, 13).[195]  Instead of leading the animal world to a life of harmony, however, humanity joins it in a life of conflict (Gen 4). Genesis 1 no doubt presupposes that humanity will fail its commission (it knows where the story is going), but it implies that this is a failure to achieve rather than a failure to accept a limit, a sin of omission rather than of commission. Genesis 1 anticipates the subsequent action of the snake, when a creature masters humanity instead of being mastered by it.

Mastery and Exploitation

Historian Lynn White suggested that this First Testament gospel was actually responsible for the despoliation of the earth that has taken place over the past century or two.[196]  It encouraged humanity to take a radically anthropocentric view of the universe. Nature exists solely to serve us.

One plausible response to this suggestion is a historical rebuttal. If White were correct, why did it take two or three millennia for Genesis 1 to have this effect? White indeed notes that it was Western Christianity rather than Eastern Christianity that developed the attitude to nature that encouraged humanity to see itself as master of nature, and that within Western Christianity St. Francis models something quite different, a humility before creation. The very widespread study of this text over two millennia[197]  does not indicate that people read it as providing them with a warrant for what we would call exploiting nature. Some other explanation is needed, and the development of modernity seems more likely to provide it.[198]  If the idea that God’s image lies in relationship suits the postmodern age, the idea that it constituted a commission to master the world suited the modern age.

If in our spoiling of the earth we did claim the support of the commission to master the earth, we would have to face the question of whether we have mastered the earth in the Godlike fashion that Genesis envisaged, in the manner of people made in God’s image. Genesis 1 has portrayed God exercising sovereign power in a way that shares life and life-giving power, and human beings are in a position to master creatures in an appropriate way because they share these characteristics. It has implicitly described God as a king who fulfills the king’s vocation of exercising sovereignty in such a way as to bring life to his people. In being created in God’s image, humanity is to fulfill this royal role in the world on God’s own behalf.

Can we say that God did create the world in a way that reflects power and love? What we know empirically raises questions about this. As far as we can tell, God did not bring the animate world into being by a series of transcendent, supranatural acts but by an immanent process involving trial and error. Species came into being and became extinct through “chance” mutations and the survival of the fittest. Like the ecology of nature in the state in which we know it, it depended on strife, pain and death. At least this thesis about the manner of God’s original creation matches nature as we know it, which works via process and death. It also matches the nature of God’s work in “history” as the First (and Second) Testament describes it, and as we experience it. This suggests another example of the deconstructing of that separation of creation and history with which we are familiar. Power and love worked via process and death.

The heavens continue to belong to Yhwh, but Yhwh gave the earth to humanity (Ps 115:16), yet humanity is implicitly expected to live with this gift in the way Yhwh would. “Lynn White’s argument must be qualified to this extent, namely, that Christian doctrine sought to restrain man’s earthly ambitions by holding him accountable for his conduct to a higher authority.”[199]  Paradoxically, human mastery of nature must be in the service of “the liberation of nature,”[200]  as God’s authority over humanity works in the service of human liberation. As the exercise of God’s authority is designed to free human beings to be themselves, so the exercise of human authority is designed to free nature to be itself, even if this requires a restraint on the part of individual species of the kind we have considered.

Leiss notes that thinkers once assumed that altering social relationships was the key to the emergence of a better human order. The modern age came to see the key to this as rather lying in “the mastery of nature” that might be achieved through the development of science and technology. The seventeenth-century philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon urged what we would call the development of science on the basis of the conviction that this would be the proper means to reverse the loss of human dominion over nature that came about through “the Fall.” Implausibly, “the recovery of the divine bequest” thus comes about through scientific progress rather than moral progress.[201]  In fact, the growth of science seems to have hugely increased social instability and social problems rather than to have resolved these.

The human problem is not merely the problem of the Garden of Eden but the problem of the Tower of Babel. If the disobedience in the garden did affect humanity’s relationship with nature, the scattering at the tower affected humanity’s capacity to implement Bacon’s project. There is no single humanity to master nature, but only a divided humanity. “If the idea of the domination of nature has any meaning at all, it is that … through the possession of superior technological capabilities … some men attempt to dominate and control other men. The notion of a common domination of the human race over external nature is nonsensical.”[202]

What These Affirmations Might Be Denying

In a context where humanity assumes the right to master and subjugate the earth, Genesis 1 could provide ideological justification for this assumption. But in Israel’s world, no one thought that humanity had the right to master and subjugate the earth. On the other hand, several other implications of the commission to master and subjugate emerge from a consideration of what these affirmations might be denying. They extend the points made above concerning God’s image.[203]  First, in Israel’s world, mastering and subjugating is what kings do in forcing other peoples to submit to them (e.g., 2 Sam 8:11; Ps 72:8; 110:2). Genesis’s implication is then not that “human beings were designed to master and subjugate”—rather than, for example, to tend and protect. It is that “human beings were designed to master and subjugate”—rather than kings being the ones who had this power. Second, mastering and subjugating is what kings and others do in reducing people to serfdom and exercising authority over such serfs (e.g., 2 Chron 8:10; 28:10; Jer 34:11). Genesis then indicates that God’s creation design did include mastery and subjugation, of the earth and the other animals, but implies that the mastery and subjection of other human beings is not part of God’s original design. Third, George W. Bush rules the United States of America as I write, but is seeking to master and subjugate the forces of al-Qaida that attacked the World Trade Center in New York. The sun and moon rule the day and the night; humanity is commissioned to master and subjugate the earth. It is possible to rule with the compliance of the ruled (cf. Judg 8:22), but mastery and subjugation presupposes resistance or at least unwillingness. Genesis 1 might not exclude the rule of some human beings over others, but Genesis 3:16 implies that this comes about as a result of human resistance to God’s rule.

Fourth, in Israel’s world, the earth and other parts of the animate creation often exercised mastery over humanity. Genesis’s point is that this was not God’s design. Most peoples in traditional cultures, and thus most peoples in the ancient Middle East, have not been able to take for granted the fertility of the human creation and the capacity of the land to provide them with food. People in Palestine could take the sun for granted but could never be sure that the rain would fall at the right time in the right quantities and the crops thus grow. Mesopotamia, like Egypt, did not rely directly on rain but on its rivers and on irrigation, but it was vulnerable to the waters declining to stay in their courses. Farmers were vulnerable to wild animals raiding their farms and homesteads, to pests eating up their crops, and to snakes biting them (or leading them astray, apparently!). Genesis 1 promises that this is not human destiny as God envisaged it, and it thus gives a basis for hope and prayer. It moves gradually from the apparently more certain to the definitely less certain—the alternating of day and night and the movements of the planets (surely secure?), through the positioning of the sky (secure in people’s experience, but Gen 7:11 suggests not always so) and the separating of land from sea (not a problem in Palestine but sometimes a problem in Mesopotamia), to the fruitfulness of crops (not an issue in Egypt and perhaps not often so in Mesopotamia, but often an issue in Palestine) and the fruitfulness of the animate world (not in itself usually a problem for humanity, but becoming a problem as creatures of the water, the air and the land in different ways can all be a threat to humanity) and the fruitfulness of humanity. God thus declares that crops are to grow, gives the animate world the power to be fertile, and declares that humanity is also to control the rest of the animate world rather than be its victim.

2.10 God Planted

In the beginning, God planted a garden. The First Testament associates gardens with love (e.g., Song 4:12–5:1; 6:1–3, 11–12), and also with worship. In passages such as Isaiah 1:29; 65:3; 66:17, this is disapproved worship, but the temple with its garden-like court incorporates garden symbolism that is positively evaluated.[204]  The garden might thus remind readers of the temple, where something of the wonder of the original garden could be experienced (cf. the imagery of a passage such as Ps 36:8–9 [MT 9–10]).[205]  But gardens are especially places where the people, particularly their king, grow the produce they need (e.g., Deut 11:10; 1 Kings 21:2). Now that Genesis 2 follows Genesis 1, it builds on it. It, too, interweaves the destiny of the world and that of humanity. In the context of an existent but unfinished world, God molds the first human out of dirt like a potter shaping clay and then breathes life into the inert earthen model like a paramedic breathing life back into someone. The picture of God bending down, getting hands dirty, and giving mouth-to-mouth complements the picture of the exalted sovereign. Indeed, Genesis 1 itself suggests a trinity of models for God’s creative activity: the speech-act of the transcendent sovereign, the hands-on involvement of the craftworker and the use of the existent creation’s mediation, commissioned to bring other things forth.[206]

The account then returns to the unfinished world and portrays God becoming a gardener, planting fruit trees and commissioning the human being to look after the attractive and sumptuous orchard that resulted. The name Eden may link with an Akkadian word for a plain, but readers would be more aware that it looks the same as the Hebrew word for luxurious delight (see Ps 36:8 [MT 9]; Jer 51:34). That is the nature of this orchard with its lovely fruit trees.

Serving the Garden

Mastering and subjugating are characteristically male activities, and Genesis 1’s understanding of humanity’s relationship with the world is a male one, even if that relationship is one that male and female share.[207]  Creation needs order, and perhaps order need not imply hierarchy but can imply community,[208]  though Genesis 1 implies that order in creation did require hierarchy. Humanity was to exercise authority in the world. On the other hand, Genesis 2 speaks of humanity (specifically, the first man) caring for the garden, which looks like an image closer to nurture than mastery and closer to a stereotypical feminine role.

The garden is made for the man, and the man for the garden. Were it not for the man, the garden could not exist, for it is his task “to serve it and look after it” (Gen 2:15); fruit trees need looking after. Were it not for the man, the garden would have no reason to exist; fruit trees need someone to eat their fruit. Conversely, were it not for the garden, the man would not be able to exist, for it is his source of food. A symbiotic relationship holds between humanity and its environment, each dependent on the other.

In Enuma Elish, the human beings are created to serve God. Here they serve the garden. “In the first instance, humans image God as kings; in the second, they image God as ‘servants,’ as those who place themselves at the service of the good of creation.”[209]  The garden’s need of looking after or guarding suggests that strange forces will imperil it, and when the snake shows up, we will see the truth of this. There will be pressures on the garden even before humanity spoils things. Cattle will be in place there—the garden is more like a farm than merely an orchard—but God’s creation includes wild animals as well as domesticated animals. The man’s job is to ensure that the animals of the wild stay there. Perhaps one aspect of humanity’s forceful mastery of creation lies here.

Eden as a whole is apparently a wider area within which Yhwh’s garden is planted and from which a river flows to water the garden.[210]  By implication, one way the man serves and looks after the garden is by irrigating it. In this Paradise the absence of rain (Gen 2:5) is not a problem because human beings have the river as a source from which they can water the land.[211]  Paradise is like Egypt with its Nile, not dependent on rainfall (cf. Gen 13:10). Like other aspects of gardening, this means that the man’s task will involve hard work, but work that is resourced and can succeed, not work doomed to failure.

The river that miraculously emerges from the ground, like the Jordan, then becomes the headwaters of four rivers. Two are the well-known Tigris and Euphrates. Gihon is elsewhere the spring that waters Jerusalem, but is here a river in Sudan, implying the Nile. Pishon is otherwise unknown, though Havilah is probably in Arabia (cf. Gen 10:7, 29; 25:18). Perhaps the names suggest that the river in Eden is the source of water to the north/northeast (Mesopotamia), to the south (Africa/Arabia) and to Jerusalem itself. The geography is imaginary, but it makes a realistic point. God’s creation is the source of life for the entire world.[212]  The event described in Genesis 2 is not an imaginary one. God really did shape human beings and set them about their work. These are events that are so real they can in principle be located on the map.[213]  Genesis 2 is not a myth about how things always are, but a story about something that happened.

The Life Tree

Among the trees is one called “the living tree” or “the tree of life.” Its significance is not explained, though two subsequent passages may help us in different ways. In Proverbs “tree of life” is a metaphor for something that is a means of conveying fullness of life, and this makes sense here in Genesis 2. The tree is a sacramental means of conveying full life to people. As is the nature of a sacrament, doubtless it has no living power in itself, but if God declares that it can convey life, then it can do so. But what kind of life can it convey? Later we discover that eating from the tree of life would mean living forever (Gen 3:22). Humanity is not created immortal. In this respect the First Testament agrees with the Mesopotamian story about the ancient hero Gilgamesh,[214]  who after the death of his friend Enkidu sets off on a quest to discover how he might come to share in the immortality that the gods have. He eventually has to accept that he cannot do so. He seeks out a man called Utnapishtim who had been granted immortality after a great flood, who thus reminds us partly of Enoch and partly of Noah, but this leads nowhere. Immortality is in the gift of the gods and cannot be reached by human effort. The fact of death has to be accepted.

Genesis agrees that death is intrinsic to human existence, as it is to the existence of plants and animals. Life involves a development from childhood to maturity to middle age to old age, with birth and death at either ends of that process. There was not some qualitative difference between the bodies and minds of the first human beings and the bodies and minds that we know. In contrast to the conviction of the Gilgamesh story, Genesis implies that nevertheless there was available to the first human beings this sacramental means of transformation, of which the resurrection of our bodies is now an equivalent.

There is perhaps no need for the first human beings to eat of this tree immediately, but eventually they would need to do so. From the Beginning, humanity was destined for a lasting life with God. Perhaps an implicit theological undergirding of this notion is the argument that Jesus later uses: God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—not the God of the dead, but the God of the living (Mk 12:26–27). God is still the God of these people whom we call dead, so how can they really or permanently be dead? If you get into a relationship with God, that conveys life from God. It can hardly peter out. So it must be for humanity in general. But this would not come about automatically. In actual fact it would not come about at all, and Sheol would become humanity’s boring destiny until God did something else to implement Plan One.

There is another sacramental tree in the garden, a negatively sacramental tree. More of that later.

2.11 God Relaxed

At the opening of her story in Proverbs 8, Ms. Insight was rather serious in her claims. She agreed with other creation accounts in the First Testament that making the world was a momentous business, as it obviously was, especially if we wonder whether threatening forces within the cosmos are under effective control and whether the physical bases of the world are securely founded. But as her words unfolded, there developed something paradoxical or subtle, or perhaps teasing and playful—given that Ms. Insight explicitly owns her playfulness. During creation, she says, “I was there, a child[215]  at his side. I was there, full of delight day by day, rejoicing before him every moment, rejoicing in his inhabited world and full of delight in human beings” (Prov 8:30).

In anticipating the world that in due course Yhwh will create, initially Ms. Insight portrays it with little ambiguity, unless readers look very suspiciously between the lines. In a manner that corresponds to that of Genesis 1–2, she speaks of the way depths and springs will come into being, mountains and hills be sunk onto good foundations, the soil in cultivable areas and in the open country be made, the sky be established and made firm. But why should the sky need to be made firm? Because the springs of the deep are strong.[216]  They will need some restraining. Things are becoming more somber. The sea will need a limit decreed for it lest it overwhelm the world (Prov 8:29).[217]  There is no presupposition that it will gladly obey Yhwh’s command. In light of the way Ms. Insight’s words are unfolding, their opening also looks more somber. The fact that the springs are heavy with water seems more threatening. The need for the mountains and hills to be sunk on deep foundations makes one ask what cosmic earthquake is expected to threaten them.

Ms. Insight knows about the forces that will threaten creation, but at this point she intends not to be put off by them. In gradually making us face the fact of these forces’ existence, or gradually making clear that she is not at all blind to them, she has not told us where lies her special interest in creation. That has quite another focus. She has played a double rhetorical trick on us. First, it transpires that she wants us to see creation as more threatening than we first realize. Then, it transpires that she does not want us to see it as threatening at all. For she was there at creation all right, she says, and she was full of delight (šaʿašuʿîm, literally “[as] delights”)—full of delight in her own being, or full of delight to Yhwh. And she was playing or laughing or joking or having fun (śāḥaq) all the time before Yhwh during the process of creation.

Delight and Fun

Talk of delight and fun initially brings us up short, but it may have two links with the context. First, “delight” appears most often in the First Testament as an attitude to God’s instructions. This statistic reflects the fact that most occurrences of the noun and the linked verb come in Psalm 119, which delights in God’s teaching, commands, affirmations—and “statutes” (Ps 119:16). Whereas commands or statutes may seem to us limiting and restrictive, externally imposed restraints on freedom, the First Testament sees them as protective, liberating and offering entry to wise living. Ms. Insight assumes this applies to the statutes Yhwh laid down for creation (Prov 8:29). They are designed to keep the elements of creation in their place and thereby to free them to be what Yhwh designed and what will form part of a whole. No wonder Ms. Insight delights in what Yhwh does.

Another context of “delight” is the relationship of parent and child, parent delighting in child (Jer 31:20), child playing on its mother’s knee (Is 66:12), and Ms. Insight pictures herself as a child. Childhood is also of course a common context of fun and play (śāḥaq/ṣāḥaq) (Zech 8:5, and frequently in the story of Isaac, the child whose name refers to laughing). Here Ms. Insight plays in or with the world God created. It has become her playground or playhouse.[218]  Again, fixed framework and relaxedness complement each other. Within the circumscribed and ordered creation, relaxed and playful life is possible. In light of all that, the sages’ hearers can take the risk of attending to insight, knowing that this is the way to life, not to death (Prov 8:32–36). “As reciprocal virtues of moral conduct, play and discipline (mûsār) are the warp and woof of Wisdom’s ethos.”[219]

Ms. Insight’s delighted play “day by day” through the process of creation recalls the picture in Genesis 1 of God spending a working week bringing the world into being. Each of those six days that Genesis counts off, Ms. Insight is jumping and clapping at her father’s side as she watches God bring something new into being. God, too, evidently gains satisfaction out of contemplating the result of each day’s work and reflecting “That’s good,” and at the end “That’s very good,” and perhaps spends part of the subsequent day’s rest enjoying the sense of a job well done. The whole is “very good.” The fact that “good” is a common word does not imply that this is a trivial or superficial judgment. It is a most profound formulation, a fundamental theological statement about the world, one that in a sense says everything.[220]  Its contemplation with pleasure is less the act of a king or commander than that of a builder or gardener, or a magician or director. An executive will have a clear idea what should issue from the exercise of decisive authority, and presumably that is also true of God. But the executive will look interestedly if not anxiously to see what are the results of this intervention, and if they are good, will be pleased. That is certainly true of God, both as executive and as artist. Many things that happen in the world look unlikely to be events that reflect God’s desires. Presumably this is not because God’s magic does not always work, but because God commands things to happen somewhat rarely (like the pope, whose infallibility when speaking ex cathedra wisely hinders him from speaking ex cathedra). But having demanded that things come into being, they do, and God looks at the result and is pleased, and at the end of a week’s work, very pleased. Ms. Insight’s enthusiasm is less restrained than God’s sense of pleasure, but she, too, is full of delight at the end product, at the complete world that Yhwh forms. She has owned the objective facts of creation, the scientific facts if you will, and she has owned the dangerous facts about it, but she has done that only to prepare the way for the affective facts about it.

A Delight to God

Ms. Insight is also full of delight in human beings, or full of delight to them. The reference to humanity constitutes yet another surprise as Ms. Insight plays with us through Proverbs 8:22–31. One effect of it is to undergird the argument of the whole passage. Proverbs wants human beings to delight in insight, and portraying Ms. Insight delighting in human beings may encourage that. In Genesis 1 and in other Middle Eastern creation stories, the creation of humanity comes at the end of the story, so there is an appropriateness about its coming at the end of this recollection of creation. If Ms. Insight also hints that she is full of delight to humanity at the Beginning, there is further irony. One way of expressing the point of Genesis 2–3 would be to say that when humanity is overcome by the cleverness of a creature that encourages it to seek knowledge by a route that Yhwh has forbidden, it yields to Ms. Folly rather than Ms. Insight.

Proverbs itself does not quite make explicit that God was drawn into Ms. Insight’s rejoicing and laughter in the act of creation, though it inevitably hints at this. Thus [221]  assumes that Ms. Insight is a delight to God in Proverbs 8:30 (cf. [222] ) and not merely one who is delighted in her own self. Laughter is infectious, and if Ms. Insight laughs, then it is hard for God to withhold a smile, particularly given that God’s insight is actually part of God. So creation involved God in laughing as well as thinking. Ms. Insight’s laughter would soon be echoed in the harmonious resounding of Venus and Mercury, the planets that appear just before morning, and in the roaring shout of the heavenly beings as they applaud the founding of the world (Job 38:7). When God looked at each day’s work and liked the look of it, implicitly this involved more than a silent smile of satisfaction. Or if God’s response was just a relaxed smile, God’s insight responded with a laugh and a dance of joy. The creation was such as to draw forth a cry of wonder, a leap of appreciation, a guffaw of amusement, a dance of delight. If Proverbs does not make the point, Psalm 104:26 does so. Looking across the ocean, the psalmist comments with amusement, “there … is Leviathan that you formed to play with” (śāḥaq again).[223]  According to the Talmud, playing with Leviathan is what God does at the end of each day’s hard work studying Torah, judging the world and feeding the animals.[224]

Scripture is more explicit about what happened at the end of the original week’s work. Heaven and earth have their range of beings filling them, even if the creatures have a long way to go in implementing the commission to fill the earth. The creative, innovative work is over. God stops working, the job done, and takes a break. “On the seventh day God finished the work that he had been doing. On the seventh day he ceased from all the work he had been doing” (Gen 2:2). God has completed the task of making a home, with heaven as throne and earth as footstool, and sits on the throne, puts feet on the footstool, and sits back. Enuma Elish comes to an end with the building of a palace for Marduk. In Genesis 1, the world itself is Yhwh’s palace, and Yhwh relaxes there.[225]

A Finished Task

Enuma Elish, Atrahasis and other Middle Eastern works have the gods creating humanity so that they can rest while humanity works. The idea of gods resting may come from the observable fact that they did not involve themselves in the world in interventionist fashion. In due course Psalm 74 moves on from recalling the way Yhwh crushed Leviathan in days of old to urging Yhwh to arise now in similar fashion (Ps 74:14, 22; cf. Ps 94:2). At the moment Yhwh is in repose—indeed, asleep (Ps 44:23 [MT 24]). The implication of the Middle Eastern stories is that this had been the aim of creation, or at least an aim. Genesis 1 agrees. God undertook the work of creation in such a way as to hand over the ongoing work to the world itself and to humanity in particular. This theme has growing prominence through the account until it reaches the logical conclusion that God can now stop work. God acts like an executive whose special task is to be creative, to initiate something new. When that is finished, she can move on. Or God works like a car manufacturer whose product will function reliably without needing service every few months.

Initially, God had spoken, separated, made, named and seen how good things are (Gen 1:3–10). Yet God had also made some firm distinctions within this nascent creation that will make it unnecessary to keep intervening, especially distinctions that ensure that waters stay in their place. As the Psalms and Job put it, God set bounds for the waters. God will not have to appear twice a day at high tide like a superior version of King Canute to forbid the waters to overwhelm the land. Like a sensible executive, God put procedures in place that will ensure that this happens on an ongoing basis. Then, instead of personally bringing forth vegetation from the earth as the next stage in this drama, God commanded that the earth itself bring forth vegetation. The executive was practicing delegation and giving away power as this requires. Further, the vegetation is to contain within itself the capacity to generate further growth by producing seed or bearing fruit that contains seed (Gen 1:11–12). God thus spoke and saw, but did not make or name. The vegetation will soon be given over to entities that will have the power over it that is symbolized by naming. Indeed, God does no more naming.

On the fourth day (Gen 1:14–19) God again commanded, made and saw. But God commissioned sun, moon, stars and planets that resulted from these actions to share in the divine role of separating and ruling. Henceforth they will provide the light that God commanded forth at the very beginning. God will do no more separating. And on the fifth day (Gen 1:20–23) God once more commanded, created and saw. God commanded the distinctions of species between the creatures of sea and air, though without being personally involved in the acts of separation. God blessed these creatures, and the effect of that was to convey to them God’s own creative power. They are to be fruitful and increase and fill the sea and the world, and they will do so in such a way as themselves to preserve those distinctions as whales beget whales and doves beget doves. As we put it, they were given the responsibility and the power themselves to “procreate.” As with vegetation, God initiated something that could be self-perpetuating.

On day six, God similarly commanded that the earth (mother earth) should generate the land animals, though Genesis also says that God made them. Once more, these creatures will preserve distinctions. Once more, their creation suggests the process of God’s creating a self-sufficient universe. Then God created humanity to have a Godlike place in the world and thus to make it unnecessary for God to be involved. Specifically, human beings were to rule over the living creatures in the world and have power over its vegetation. God blessed them and gave them that power and responsibility to reproduce their kind, as God blessed the creatures of sea and air. God’s making of the world is subordinate to God’s blessing of the world. In making it God sets the world going, and in delivering it God restores it to what it was meant to be, but blessing is what the world was set going for and what it is destined to be restored to.[226]

A Continuing Activity

So God completed the work of creation and then handed the creation over to human beings. Genesis does not tell us what God did next—whether God’s sabbath lasts forever or whether God then resumed work. There is no evening and morning of the seventh day and no transition to the beginning of a new working week. Perhaps the background of the sabbath’s having no evening is rather that “evening” has the negative connotation of “darkness” (cf. Gen 1:2). Evening and darkness need not suggest active opposition to God, but they do suggest absence, nothingness or unformedness. The sabbath signifies the completion of creation. It therefore has no evening.[227]  It has been said that “creation in Old Testament theology is an eschatological concept.”[228]  The text sees it more as a this-worldly, this-age concept.

The First Testament can make the converse point to speaking of God’s ceasing to create. It portrays God as continuing to be active, as the divine court deliberates about events on earth and what needs to be done about them. This would imply that God indeed resumes work. God did not merely create the world at the beginning and then leave it to keep itself in being. God is involved with nature on an ongoing basis. Psalm 104 is the most systematic exposition of this perspective. Jesus will also comment that of course God has never stopped working altogether (Jn 5:17). If God did, the world would fall out of existence. In the same way, farmers cannot abstain for a day from feeding and milking, though agriculturists, craftworkers and business people can abstain from their work. Perhaps it is significant that Yhwh eventually gives people six days and not the seventh to “serve” (ʿābad). In Genesis 1–4 that verb suggests working the ground (Gen 2:5, 15; 3:23; 4:2, 12; cf. Deut 28:39; Prov 12:11; 28:19); Genesis distinguishes between working the ground and tending flocks (Gen 4:2). Later the word also denotes laboring for someone else, in the way Jacob works for Laban and the Israelite people work for the Egyptians. Such service on the seventh day is forbidden, the command thus becoming a deliverance (cf. Deut 5:12–15). The command goes on to require people to desist from “work” or “making” things (ʿāśâ), as God did (e.g., Ex 20:8–11). God even desists from making manna on the seventh day (Ex 16:22–30). Whereas “making” highlights the products of one’s activity and “serving” points to hard work rather than skill, “work” (mĕlāʾkâ) has the opposite implications. It especially applies to crafts such as tentmaking, woodwork, metalwork and tailoring (see, e.g., Ex 36:1–8).[229]  Everything but tending stops on the sabbath.

On the seventh day God “stopped” because the work was done. The verb is šābat, from which the word “sabbath” comes. The fact that God stopped work at the end of the week assures us that the world we live in is not a half-finished project. God could therefore cease from “all his work.” We have noted that the First Testament will speak of political events in the same terms it uses for originary events. Tumultuous waters threatened to overwhelm Israel on its escape from Egypt, and they threaten to do so again from time to time (e.g., Ps 46). Each year, floods may again threaten to overwhelm the world, or alternatively it may be threatened by death through the dryness with which the story in Genesis 2 begins. It might then not be clear that the creation of the world is an achieved fact. The portrait of God completing a week’s work and then stopping assures its readers that the work of creation is over. The world is a stable place. It will stay as it is. God is not about to have another bright idea that may turn our place in the world upside-down. God stops work not out of tiredness, but having completed the task. God’s rest is not a mark of divine effeteness, but of divine strength. It hints not at human insecurity, but at human security. God’s home and the world’s home is finished. It can now be enjoyed. There is continuity between creation and history and creation and providence, but also discontinuity. Genesis allows us to think in terms of continuity of creation, but not of continuous creation.[230]

The Sanctifying and Blessing of the Sabbath

Genesis does not speak of God “resting” (nûaḥ) on the seventh day, which might suggest being tired and needing refreshment. The object of the sabbath was not for God to find energy for another week’s work. God worked in order then to relax, not the other way round. The sabbath is not for the weekdays, but the weekdays for the sabbath.[231]  Nor does Genesis suggest that creation involved hard work, as new creation will.[232]  When the First Testament comes to make explicit that God’s pattern of behavior is one for human beings to follow, it indeed declares that God rested on completing the work of creation (Ex 20:11) and found refreshment (nāpaš niphal, Ex 31:17). Likewise Genesis does not quite make the point that the sabbath is a day of rest and refreshment that God expects humanity to share, though other parts of the First Testament do draw that inference from its story (e.g., Ex 23:12). In Babylon sabbath-like days may have been “unlucky” days, when it was wise not to do anything. In the First Testament, the sabbath is a day God especially claims. Human beings are therefore to keep off it. Yet whereas the “separating” of the sabbath from the other days will be important, Genesis does not use this verb of God’s marking off the sabbath. Rather, God “sanctified” the seventh day (Gen 2:3), made it holy. It is holy because it has special associations for and with God. It has been transformed in becoming more specifically a day commemorating the completion of God’s creative activity and providing for human rest and renewal. Blessing the day implies it has the same capacity to be fruitful that the living world possesses, “the power to stimulate, animate, enrich, and give fullness to life.”[233]

The sanctifying of the sabbath suggests another contrast with the Babylonian account of creation in Enuma Elish. That story comes to a conclusion with the building of a holy place. The First Testament creation story sanctifies some time, but no space. “When history began, there was only one holiness in the world, holiness in time.” That is the more striking insofar as the chapter anticipates the story of the building of the sanctuary in the wilderness. The sabbath is “a palace in time.”[234]

“On the seventh day God completed his work that he did” (Gen 2:2). Surely God completed the work on the sixth day? Genesis Rabbah 10:9 comments that on the seventh day God created tranquility, serenity, peace and repose. The seventh day is not a day of worship, or not much more so than the other days, as a holy place such as the place where God met Moses is not (necessarily) a place of worship, and as the firstborn who are holy to Yhwh are no more worshipers than anyone else. There are few indications that the sabbath was especially a time for praise, or seeking help or guidance from God, or teaching.[235]  The main point about it is that it is a day on which people stop being creative and acknowledge that their days belong to God.

The emphasis on the sabbath in passages such as Isaiah 56:1–8, which compares with the description of it in Exodus 31:12–17 as a perpetual covenant, may suggest the significance of the stress on the sabbath in the tabernacle story. Its mention at the end of Exodus 25–31 and the beginning of Exodus 35–40 puts the sabbath on the same level as the tabernacle (cf. Lev 19:30; 26:2; also Lev 23:3).[236]  Once more, it is not merely a day when people should stop working for practical reasons such as its taboo nature or their need of rest. It has ceased to be marked by a negative and has come to be characterized by a positive. It is a symbol of the mutual commitment between Yhwh and the community, whose neglect would thus imperil the life of the community (Neh 13:17–18).[237]  The sabbath is a sign or guarantee of Israel’s special relationship with Yhwh (Ex 31:12–17; cf. Ezek 20:12, 20). The gift of this day of relaxation and renewal renews a realization of this relationship in Israel’s experience and awareness. It fits with the playfulness of Yhwh’s creation that the work of creation does not go on forever, and it fits with the graceful generosity of Yhwh’s creation that its object is not only to draw humanity into work but also to draw humanity into relaxation and play.[238]

In having God observe the seventh day, Genesis 1 again affirms one of the foundations of Israel’s life. It marks the sabbath as more than a mere Jewish peculiarity. It was an idiosyncrasy of Israel’s faith that people ceased work for one day after working for six. The creation gospel declares that this rhythm reflects that of God’s work in bringing the world into being. In observing the sabbath, Israel alone is realizing the ideology of creation. The Israelite calendar makes no reference to New Year, the festival of such importance for other Middle Eastern peoples. Instead it puts at the head of the calendar the observance of the sabbath, “a weekly celebration of the creation of the world, the uncontestable enthronement of its creator, and the portentous commission of humanity to be the obedient stewards of creation.”[239]

3

God Started Over

From Eden to Babel

With hindsight, we are not surprised that things went wrong and that God had to start over. There was a tension built into the creation story. It issued from thought and it generated laughter, and it reflected a systematic week’s work that was especially pleasing when completed. But it gave its key players a demanding task of mastering a world that had a mind of its own. It left them naked and not ashamed, yet commissioned to look after an orchard with that negatively sacramental tree bearing deadly fruit. Now they find themselves under pressure from within nature and from heaven itself, and the consequences are devastating for the entire future of humanity. The story from Eden to Babel comprises a narrative analysis of what went wrong with humanity in its relationship with God, in people’s relationships with their spouses, their siblings, their parents and their children, and in the lives of communities, nations and cities, generating the characteristics we still experience. God does not give up and the story is not hopeless about these areas of life—at every point good news intermingles with bad news, and eventually God faces up to the bad news and determines not to destroy the world again. But it is not clear how God’s purpose to bless will be realized or whether curse will have its way.

3.1 Disobedience and Discovery

Disaster comes when a creature made by Yhwh God for the wild takes an interest in life on the farm. Possessing a mind of its own—a particularly fine mind—it suggests that the deadly tree could actually be life giving. The human beings live in this anomalous space between animals and deity, without being aware there is anything anomalous about it. They should regularize their position. Directly, the snake approaches the woman, who was not present when Yhwh gave the instructions about the tree, and suggests that Yhwh’s prohibition was much tougher than it was. Eve also makes the prohibition tougher than it was—we do not know if she is being careful or careless, or whether Adam has been so in passing on Yhwh’s words to her. Nor do we know why Adam stays quiet while his wife is having her tutorial with this strange theological professor.

The snake knows Yhwh too well. It knows that Yhwh has the instinct to be merciful and that Yhwh’s threats are inclined to be tougher than Yhwh’s acts. Yhwh is never going to let or make Adam and Eve die through eating the fruit of the tree. Adam and Eve do not have to live by listening to Yhwh. They can take risks. God will forgive. It is his business. Adam and Eve will gain the capacity to make decisions about good and bad one way or another, and the snake gets them to take it rather than wait for it.

The Knowledge Tree

We refer to that second sacramental tree as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the word raʿ can mean “evil” (e.g., Gen 6:5; 8:21; 13:13), but not usually in combination with “good” (e.g., Gen 24:50; 31:24; Lev 27:9–15; Num 13:19; 24:13; Deut 30:15). “Good and/or bad” can be a merism that implies “everything,” but that seems irrelevant here, as Adam and Eve did not gain knowledge of everything as a result of eating the tree’s fruit. But in any case, “knowledge of good and bad/evil” is a different matter. It is a common enough phrase that denotes not knowledge of everything but discernment between good and bad that enables someone to make proper decisions. It is thus a mark of maturity and insight (e.g., Deut 1:39; 1 Kings 3:9), and it is natural enough that God should have provided a way of gaining this knowledge, but very surprising that God should have prohibited access to it. How can this make sense?

It makes best sense when we look back much later. Genesis 22 will speak of God “testing” Abraham by requiring him to do something it is impossible to imagine God really wanting. When Abraham has shown that he will do it, God can give up the experiment. That story provides us with a key to the present one. God is testing Adam and Eve. If they pass the test, as Abraham will, then it can be terminated and they can be given the insight the tree conveys. But they cannot take it. They have to be willing to let God give it, as Solomon recognized when he asked for this insight that a king needs if he is to reign successfully. Ironically, his story then especially shows how a king’s policies need to remain in submission to Yhwh. Disaster follows if the king forgets that.

There is thus a negative version of the symbiotic relationship between humanity and the trees in the garden. Human beings can cut down trees and trees can be the downfall of human beings. There is something more natural about trees providing fruit for human beings and human beings looking after trees. But the alternative is a solemn possibility from the Beginning, a possibility inherent in the way God plants the garden. Limitations and temptations are built into it (or grown into it).

It is customary for Christians to emphasize the significance of God’s granting the human beings freedom in the garden in the sense that they are not compelled to obey God. God gives them a choice. At one level this is true enough, but the point can be misleadingly understood, and that in two respects. With regard to the garden in general, God indeed says, “Choose whichever fruit you wish. You make the decisions.” They have freedom. Implicitly, the same is true about the commission God gives Adam to serve and look after the garden, and about the commission to the first human beings to master and subjugate the world. God does not have a detailed plan for Adam and Eve’s life or for the way they go about their vocation. They are free to decide for themselves. Perhaps we should see this as a further aspect of their being made in God’s image. In Babylon, the planets and the stars decide destinies. In Genesis, God does that in person—or rather, commissions nations and individuals to shape their own destinies.

But there are constraints on this freedom. The human beings are to master the world and subjugate it; Adam is to serve and look after the garden. This rules out leaving the world or the garden to their own devices. They do not have that freedom. With regard to the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, God does not say, “You choose whether or not to eat.” God tells the human beings what to choose. They are not compelled to follow God’s words, but they are not left without instructions. To say they are given free will is to miss the dynamic of the story (metaphysically true though it is). Christians often appeal to the “free will defense” to explain the existence of evil in the world. The argument is that God wanted to create beings who would freely choose to live good lives, but this necessarily involved giving them the freedom to do the opposite. Whether or not this is a good argument, it does not appear in the Bible. The Bible refers to human freedom (e.g., here in Gen 2) and seeks to grapple with the problem of evil (e.g., in Job), but does not bring these two into relationship.

The Snake, the Dragon, the Accuser and the Devil

The story about the snake and the tree raises as many questions as it answers. We can see why God should have made the human environment a place with built-in tasks, challenges and temptations, whose handling will take humanity toward maturity (or not). We can therefore see why God might have wanted a testing of the first human beings, like the subsequent testing of Abraham or of Jesus.[240]  God’s words to the snake (Gen 3:14–15) seem to exclude the possibility that it was consciously acting as Yhwh’s servant, like the Adversary in Job 1–2. The snake acts more like Satan/the accuser (diabolos) tempting Jesus out of malicious motives when the Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness for that purpose. There is no explanation of the snake’s implicit exaggerating of God’s restraint or its impugning of God’s motives, unless an explanation lies in the fact that it was a snake. Perhaps readers are expected to understand what a snake is, as they understand who God is.

The snake (nāḥāš) is actually a complex figure in the First Testament, or is rather a series of figures, becoming more complex in the New. In Job 26:13 the snake is a being God pierced in the course of creation: Job has taken up a form of the Middle Eastern creation story, where the embodiment of resistance to God is a thrashing sea dragon or hydra rather than a tumultuous deep. In contrast, in Isaiah 27:1, God’s acting against Leviathan, the twisting snake or sea dragon (tannîn), lies in the future. Revelation 12:9 then declares that this moment has arrived. It identifies the “great dragon” and the “old snake” (presumably the one here in Genesis 3) with the “accuser” and Satan, so that there are four figures there. In Job 1–2 and Zechariah 3 the śāṭān is indeed the accuser, who slurs Job and Zerubbabel, and diabolos is the Greek translation of śāṭān. But the New Testament also follows contemporary Judaism in using these terms to refer to the Devil, as a prince of the power of evil. In role or attitude, the Devil or Satan is more like a quasi-personal version of the sea dragon than the accuser, a member of Yhwh’s court who gets too enthusiastic about his role.

Revelation thus invites readers to relate the activity of the snake, the dragon, the accuser and the Devil. The four ways of speaking bring out different aspects of the reality of evil, reflecting the fact that evil is a complex reality that requires a number of different images to give us the right impression of it. But we should not go about relating them too quickly or too unequivocally, or we will miss the point Genesis, for example, was making. In the context of Revelation’s collocation one is struck by both similarities and differences between the snake in Genesis 3, the hydra in Job and Isaiah, and the accuser in Job. This snake is one of the wild creatures Yhwh God made (Gen 3:1). Genesis 1:21 made an equivalent point about the sea monsters, the tannînim, which are merely impressive sea creatures created by God, not embodiments of dynamic power resistant to God. If anything, Genesis thus downplays supernatural involvement in humanity’s downfall. Mesopotamian and Canaanite stories told of subordinate heavenly beings rebelling against senior gods in the pantheon, but spoke little of rebellion against the gods by human beings. The First Testament gospel puts human beings into a position more like that of the junior gods than that of mere human beings in other Middle Eastern stories. Yes, God made us “little less than ʾĕlōhîm” (Ps 8:5), with significance, power, and responsibilities that other peoples did not dream of. The stories of people such as Abraham and Moses will show that the potential to stand up to God does not have to get you into trouble.

The snake is a snake. But it talks like a human being, by implication walks like a human being (cf. Gen 3:14), and tempts malevolently like the accuser. It is ʿārûm (clever) like a wise human being (e.g., Prov 12:16, 23), as well as being one of the ʿārûmîm (naked ones), which comprise human beings and animals (Gen 2:25; 3:1). The snake has the brashness of Tiamat, but also a subtlety she lacks. In the process of creation there was resistance to God taking the form of frontal attack, but it failed. There is now resistance taking the form of discrete innuendo. “Did God really say? God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will open.” Innuendo succeeds.[241]

When Human Beings Go Wrong

So why do the human beings go wrong? The story suggests various possibilities. They want insight, the ability to discern between good and bad, a gift God intends for human beings, but they disobey God in the way they seek to fulfill their desire and God’s intention. They decline to accept that reverence for Yhwh is the beginning of insight. They want to decide what counts as good, whereas Yhwh expects them to do what they are told even where they cannot see the reason. The First Testament is equivocal over whether this is always the case. It sometimes assumes human beings are designed to be able to discern between good and bad, as Eve wanted to here, and Moses’ Teaching will often tell people the rationale for its instructions rather than expecting obedience without reflection. On the other hand, the moral or other point of much of Moses’ Teaching may have been unclear to its original hearers, and is certainly unclear to most of the people who have subsequently lived in obedience to it. Does God command things because they are good, or are things good because God commands them? Genesis 2–3 points to the latter conviction, though Genesis 4 will point to the former. The same dual approach will appear in Genesis 18–19 (where Abraham presses Yhwh to do the right thing) and Genesis 22 (where the right thing is the utterly wrong-looking thing Yhwh requires). “Life before Torah is still shema,” listening and obeying.[242]

Through their act Adam and Eve indeed gain knowledge, the awareness that they are naked—naive, unsophisticated and uncultured, resembling the animals more than God. They determine to do something about that, making use of the big leaves of a fig tree.

What follows seems to reflect some regular habits. God would customarily take a stroll in the garden in the cool of the late afternoon, and usually meet Adam and Eve. Which being interpreted indicates that humanity is designed to enjoy a relaxed friendship with God. But this time Adam and Eve hide from Yhwh God. Yhwh God calls out to Adam, “Where are you?” Perhaps God knows, but anyway the question gives Adam and Eve the chance to decide to face God for themselves. When a child hides from its mother, she may ask “Where are you?” whether or not she knows the answer. It gives the child the chance to emerge freely. If it has done wrong, it has the opportunity to take a part in putting things right. Insofar as grace comes into operation only against the background of wrongdoing, Yhwh’s question is the first expression of God’s grace in this gospel story.

“I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked. So I hid” (Gen 3:10). It is not so much an answer to the question as a defensive explanation of an unstated answer. It thus does not sound much of a response to grace. “Naked?” Yhwh God said. “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree I forbade you to eat from?” (Gen 3:11). The tone is harsher. Perhaps Yhwh again knows the answer to this question, and to the further question pressed on Eve in a moment, but if so, the conversation is surely becoming artificial. This sounds like a conversation like any other, with a person asking questions in order to discover things they would otherwise not know. There is thus another implicit gospel note here. Asking questions to which one does not know the answer and thus discovering things about another person through their giving answers is a central feature of person-to-person relationships. Yhwh God has entered into such a genuine person-to-person relationship with Adam and Eve, and their disobedience has not terminated it.

God Who Asks Questions

God does not just have a monologue with us. He asks questions. He listens for answers (although it must be terrifying to be so questioned by God after one has disobeyed). He does not prejudge the whole thing, nor does he finish people’s sentences for them (as some people do). He limits his knowledge to be able to genuinely listen (those who know everything don’t listen well; they would rather talk and be listened to). There is a real mutuality in the relationship, including the potential for pain (the cry of anguish) and a capacity to change, if that is what is called for.[243]

Sometimes God manifests supernatural knowledge, and no doubt God could know everything, including everything about us, whether we are willing for this or not (cf. 1 Chron 28:9; 1 Jn 3:20). But even God’s supernatural knowledge of us comes about through discovery, through “searching out,” rather than because God possesses this knowledge automatically (e.g., Ps 33:15; 139:1–6). Stories about Babel and about Abraham (Gen 11; 18; 22) will concretely show God taking steps to come to know things. They will again show that God has extraordinary knowledge, but will incorporate no declaration that Yhwh is omniscient, and preclude that by the way they portray God acting so as to discover things: “I will go down to see whether they have acted altogether in accordance with the cry that came to me. If not, I will know” (Gen 18:21). “Now I know that you are one who reveres God” (Gen 22:12). To judge from Psalm 139, God could have looked into Abraham’s mind to discover whether he would be willing to sacrifice Isaac, but instead God tests Abraham in order to discover something about him—after which God can say, “Now I know.…” Talk of God acting to find something out is anthropomorphism, but like talk of God having a change of mind or loving or speaking, such anthropomorphisms presumably tell us something true about God’s relationship with the world.[244]

On the eve of the exodus God outlines to Moses a course of action if the people do not believe what he says on the basis of his first sign—and his second (Ex 4). Again, God does not seem to have looked into their minds to discover what their reaction will be, or to project forward into the future that is already present to God as the one who covers all time, so as to be able to witness their response as it happens. If some such possibility was open, God chooses not to take it. God’s knowledge of us comes about through having a relationship with us. Perhaps this is because his knowing everything without our ever revealing anything would severely qualify the mutual relationship between human beings and God. As a seminary principal I had access to confidential student files, but I exercised that freedom with some restraint because it changed the nature of the ordinary relationships I had with students. Perhaps God does the same. Perhaps there would be something abusive about looking into our minds all the time, like a parent reading a child’s journal. One would do that only in exceptional circumstances. Instead God lets people reveal who they are. God’s not knowing everything is thus another aspect of the gospel. In dialogue with Greek thinking, Christian tradition let God’s possession of supernatural knowledge turn into God’s possession of all knowledge.[245]  It thereby let that override the good news of the correlative evidence in Scripture that God does not always know everything and that God finds things out. Creation would not have been much of an adventure[246]  if God had known everything about how it would turn out. One of the angels in Wim Wenders’s film Wings of Desire wants to become a human being partly because he is bored with knowing everything. A life with no surprises is no life.

God’s relationship with knowledge, people and time in the world is analogous to the relationship that can obtain between a novelist and his or her story. In beginning a novel, a novelist may already have decided on the story’s plot and thus knows the story’s beginning and end and is omnitemporal in relation to it. Paradoxically, this does not mean that novelists know everything about what will happen, because characters have a way of gaining a life of their own, so that they do and say things that the novelist had not planned or even wanted. They find their own way to the end of the story. Novelists may thus also live in time with their characters as they write their stories. This human reality may give us a way of seeing how God could be sovereign over the whole story and omnipresent to it, yet also able to discover things, in the way the First Testament describes God to be.[247]

Those stories about Babel and about Abraham also make even more explicit another sense in which the fact that God finds things out is part of the gospel. Before acting, Yhwh investigates matters, rather than relying on hearsay or on what can be seen from the heavens or on what Yhwh inherently knows as God (Gen 11:5; 18:21).

When God pursues his investigation of what had happened in the garden, Adam’s response to God’s question is more another defensive explanation than an answer. God had asked, “Have you eaten?” (Gen 3:11). Eventually Adam comes out with the four-letter word of acknowledgment, “and I ate” (wʾkl), but that emerges only at the end of his response (Gen 3:12). First, Adam makes sure it is clear that the person really to blame is Eve, and behind her God. God gave him Eve; Eve gave him the fruit. That’s why he ate.

“What is this that you have done?” (Gen 3:13). It may be a third kind of question. If the first is designed to encourage self-revelation and the second to elicit information, then the third is a rhetorical question, more a statement than an inquiry, a statement about the terrible nature of what has happened. It is a cry of pain and/or anger—perhaps more likely the first, as Genesis is elsewhere explicit about God’s pain, but never about God being angry. Another aspect of the gospel thus appears. God is not a person who relates to the world with supernatural indifference or in cool rationality. If the world was created with laughter, it is wrecked with anguish.

As a cry of anguish, Yhwh’s question requires no answer, though it receives one. Eve works her way toward the same four-letter word as Adam’s, and by the same route, first making sure that someone else is to blame. “The snake tricked me” (Gen 3:13).

3.2 Expulsion and Loss

Yhwh God declares that three consequences will follow from the act of disobedience. First, there is a curse on the snake, Scripture’s first curse, a word that takes away the power for life rather than granting it. Henceforth blessing and curse will struggle for dominance in the story. In Genesis 1, God had blessed the creatures of sea and sky, and the first human beings, and the seventh day. Now God declares that the snake is cursed, and so is the land itself.

The blessing and the curse are correlative, though they are not expressed as exact antonyms. God actively blesses; God does not actively curse, but declares that snake and ground are cursed. At one level the distinction is purely syntactical. God is the subject of the verb that spells out the implications of the curse on the snake, “I will put enmity …” (Gen 3:15). If we ask, “Who does the cursing,” the answer must be “God.” The point may be clearer in connection with the subsequent curse on the ground, which Noah’s father at least will see as God’s act (Gen 5:29).[248]  Saying something “is cursed” is not merely a statement of fact but a statement of intent and commitment (cf. Gen 9:25; 49:7; Deut 27:15–26).[249]  Yet reticence over having Yhwh say “I curse you” is significant. Noah’s father assumes like a structural linguist that a passive verb can be turned into an active one without changing the meaning (Gen 5:29). The logic parallels that of theologians who infer that if God predestines to salvation God must also predestine to damnation even if Scripture does not say so. Scripture’s implications are more subtle and less rationalist. To describe God as blessing but not directly cursing suggests that blessing is Yhwh’s natural activity, while cursing is less so. It parallels the implication that light and mercy are nearer to Yhwh’s true nature than darkness or anger.[250]  While Genesis can imagine the possibility that Yhwh might curse or get angry (Gen 5:29; 18:30, 32), it sees that as not Yhwh’s first nature. In Yhwh’s nature blessing has priority over cursing, love over anger, mercy over retribution.

The Curse on the Snake

While Genesis never explicitly says Yhwh gets angry, its talk of the curse does parallel some New Testament talk of God’s anger. When Paul speaks of God’s anger being revealed against wickedness and of this issuing in God’s giving people up to the consequences of their deeds (Rom 1:18–32), it is his way of describing the same reality that is described in terms of curse in Genesis. It is a principle whereby acts get their reward. When the First Testament eventually speaks of God being angry (Moses is the first victim, in Ex 4:14), by God’s anger it will mean something more emotional and volcanic than the curse, or than the anger of which Paul speaks. It will also be more occasional. In the First Testament God’s anger explodes and then dies. It is a long time being aroused and it does not last a long time (Ex 34:6; Is 54:7–8), unlike the anger the New Testament speaks of. In the First Testament God’s curse, like God’s blessing, is less emotional but more long lasting than God’s anger, and it more characteristically works via ordinary processes of cause and effect.

The [251]  has the snake cursed “above” the other animals, but it is not clear why the other animals should be cursed at all, nor how they would be cursed; their way of life is not changed as the snake’s is. But the preposition (min) more often means “from”[252]  and recurs in Genesis 4:11 to indicate that Cain is cursed “from” the ground. Here the implication would be that the snake is cursed in such a way as to be banned from the rest of the animal world, by virtue of lacking the legs that characterize animals.[253]  Originally the snake was the cleverest of the creatures, but its cleverness has got it into trouble. Its humiliated and pathetic life will now form the contrast between it and the animal world in general. Of course, literally it always would have done so. The story does not imply that historically snakes originally had legs. The snake stands for dangerous, deceptive, dynamic power outside the realm of God’s sovereignty, or seeking to do so. The story suggests it was not content to do that on some macro scale or in some primeval context before the world’s creation. Within creation the dangerous, deceptive, dynamic power of disorder sought to win control of the beings God created to look after the world, and proved quite capable of doing so, while the human beings immediately proved not up to withstanding it.

Curses are not ordinary words but words that demote or destroy, and within this narrative following on the creation story, the curse on the snake is an equivalent to the defeat of the resistant powers in the victory Yhwh won before creation. The story’s good news is that the snake will no longer have the deceptive power it possessed over Eve through its capacity to adopt a humanlike stance and speak humanlike words. Yhwh has asserted authority over the snake. This is not to say that the snake will henceforth not trouble humanity, as Yhwh points out, just as Leviathan can still raise its head. There will be need of a more final victory one day. It is to say that the pressure on humanity will not be as great as it was for our first mother.

For the first human beings, failure to withstand the snake’s pressure is not to their great discredit. God does not criticize Eve for listening to the snake’s voice. There is no “because you have …” in God’s words to her. She is not subject to a curse, as the snake is and Adam indirectly is. When the snake set about deceiving her, the odds were stacked very high. But there is now a curse on the snake that may help humanity in the future. Human beings will have to do ongoing battle with the snake, but at least they will be able to recognize it, and there is a disparity between what humanity and snake can do to each other. The snake can hurt Eve’s offspring on the heel, but those offspring can hurt the snake on the head. The curse on the snake is part of the gospel. Humanity will be vulnerable to its deception, but not fatally so.[254]

The Implications for Eve and Adam

The curse on the snake is thus both good news and bad news for Eve. While there are no words of curse for her, the words that Yhwh God says to her do affect the nature of the blessing intended for her. Genesis 1 has established a close link between blessing and fruitfulness. One could imagine God declaring a curse on Eve that thus took the corresponding form of barrenness, but God does not do this. Yet a curse that means conflict between the snake and her offspring (Gen 3:15) does take place in the realm in which God’s blessing was due to be worked out for her. Her blessing is compromised by that conflict. Motherhood will thus not be the unalloyed joy that God intended. When God speaks of Eve experiencing pain in motherhood (Gen 3:16), this hardly denotes the mere physical pain of giving birth that is built into the process of giving birth. Even ancient Israelites might have worked out that pain-free birthing would be physiologically impossible and they need not have reckoned that the snake’s deception led to a change in women’s physiology any more than it led to a change in the snake’s own way of life. The context may rather suggest that the pain of birthing is a sign of the pain of motherhood that Eve will shortly experience when she hears that her first son has killed her second son.

Her temptation will be not to want to enjoy the “blessing” at all. Fruitfulness itself will seem like a curse. She might be tempted to wonder who would want to bring children into a world such as this. But there remains built into humanity the instinct to mate, and even if a woman can resist it, the declaration that Eve’s husband will rule over her (Gen 3:16) in this context may include the recognition that his desire will likely overcome her. She will find herself bearing children whether she likes it or not. And so begins that costly history of the wearing out of womanhood by motherhood. But male mastery means more than that. Here begins patriarchy, as the egalitarian relationship that God intended gives way to one in which men exercise authority over women. Presumably we are free to work against this, as we are free to try to make motherhood and work accord better with God’s creation intention, and all the more free now that Jesus has come to make it possible for God’s creation intentions to be realized.[255]

It was apparently understandable for Eve to have listened to the snake’s voice, but not for Adam to have listened to Eve’s. She had not heard God’s command not to eat of that tree, whereas Adam had. There is no curse on Adam, as there is no curse on Eve, but there is a curse on the ground, affecting its fruitfulness. It had been God’s intention that Adam should work in the garden God laid out, but he will now have to carve out his own garden. Our work in the world does not involve merely looking after an existent world. It involves the creating of a world. We start against the background of the “natural” existence of thorns and thistles as well as wheat and barley, apricots and olives. We have to work hard to bring about the victory of the latter over the former. Humanity will eat its bread all right, but it will be at the cost of pain. The same word (ʿiṣṣābôn) describes Adam’s toil in agriculture as describes Eve’s toil in motherhood. Whereas four rivers watered God’s garden, elsewhere cultivable land ever threatens to turn into fruitless desert that produces only thorns and thistles. Human beings will now work an area where desert and field compete. They will always have to worry about whether there will be enough rain for crops to grow next year.

And Adam will return to the dirt from which he was formed. In one sense that was a natural event. Human beings are born, they grow, they mature, they grow old, and they die. The process is built into their nature, like the pain of childbirth. Yet we have seen that coming into a friendship with God had the equally natural potential somehow to defy the logic of humanity’s creation. The tree of life stood for that possibility. Access to that is now ruled out. Yhwh God determines to expel Adam from the garden so that he cannot eat of its fruit and thereby live forever. At the gates of the garden Yhwh stations supernatural guardians, along with a whirling, flaming sword to guard the way to the tree. God does not allow humanity to get to a place where it can both be self-determinative and bring about the kind of transformation of itself that would constitute a life that never ends. Is God simply being mean? That fits ill with what we have read so far. Is God preventing something that would in the end not lead to blessing? Certainly the story will make clear that God is still committed to blessing humanity. Or is God preventing something that would be metaphysically inappropriate, the theme of the film Dogma?

Meanwhile, two other notes underline the ambiguity that henceforth attaches to humanity’s position. The man names his woman “Eve” (ḥawwâ), which resembles the word for “living” (ḥayyâ). It is an appropriate name for one who will be the mother of all living human beings. It suggests that the blessing will still operate. All is not lost. Yet what is the man doing naming Eve, as he named the animals? Why does she not think up her own name, or why do they not discuss together what she might be called? His naming looks like another sign that we are in a different place from the one these two occupied in Genesis 2, when the man exclaimed, “This is it!” Yes, patriarchy now rules. No doubt it ruled in the society that wrote these stories. Genesis 1–2 has shown that this society was able to portray something more egalitarian, but it lives with the reality of patriarchy, and God does the same.

And Yhwh God provides the two of them with proper clothes. It is a sign of mercy. Yhwh God continues with humanity in its brokenness and its cast-outness. The human beings have become like God. They are even nearer being like God than like animals. So they have the clothing that goes with their being different. It might remind them of their status. They are supposed to exercise authority over animals, not to listen to their beguiling.

A Once-for-All “Fall”

In Christian tradition the “sin” of Adam and Eve thus brings about the “Fall” of the human race. Genesis 3 does not speak of this event as “sin” or as a “Fall,” nor do any other First or Second Testament texts.[256]

If “sin” suggests falling short of a goal or failing, the negative counterpart of realizing a destiny or reaching a goal or succeeding, we could note that Genesis 1–3 is indeed a story about failure, the failure of human beings to realize their destiny and to realize God’s purpose, or the failure of a test. It is then a story more about loss than one about a fall: about loss of innocence, loss of relationship, loss of possibilities, loss of life. But the nearest it comes to implying a term for what happened is as the contravening of a command, as disobedience, refusal to listen. “Listening,” the positive antithesis of disobedience, is the central feature of the relationship with God that Genesis envisions. Genesis 3 is then a story about the way not listening to God affects relationships between people and God, between men and women, between human beings and their vocation, and between human beings and their world. It is Genesis 4 that will later tell of the first “sin,” and incidentally use the verb “fall” for the first time (Gen 4:5, 6), while Genesis 6 will introduce the “fallen ones” (hannĕpilîm). These facts are a parable of the way Genesis 1–6 portrays the frustration of God’s creation purpose. It does this by telling not just one but a sequence of stories that together portray how wrongdoing came to dominate the human story in ways that affect people’s relationship with God (Gen 3), with their family and society (Gen 4) and with supernatural powers (Gen 6).[257]

In Christian thinking, the image of “Fall” is often used in a rather unfocused way. Indeed, it has become a kind of “myth,” a “big idea” that has attracted all sorts of diverse ideas to itself and generated a whole that sometimes adds to Scripture, sometimes contradicts Scripture.

Its primary usefulness lies in its assertion that at the beginning of the human story something happened that brought about a once-for-all negative change to humanity’s situation. The Fall was a historical event that altered things in a way human beings could not reverse. The unsatisfactory state of human life and of our world is neither its natural state nor the result of its not having (yet?) evolved to a more satisfactory one, with or without God’s involvement. Human life and the world itself are neither in a steady state nor in a state of upward development, but in a worse state than when they first came into being. And that is so through human action back at the beginning—or rather, just after the beginning. The first human beings acted in a way that had decisive implications for everyone who would come after, who would not be able to undo what they had done. Human life is lived under the shadow of what might have been. It is not as it should be, not as God intended, and this not because of a failure on God’s part but because of a failure on humanity’s part.

Readers may well find the dynamics of their own lives reflected in Adam and Eve’s story. We too decline to fulfil the vocation God sets before us and decline to accept the limits God sets for us. We too prefer the knowledge tree to the life tree. We too yield to strange blandishments and lead one another astray. We too pay a price in our relationships with God and with our work, with our spouses and with our children. No doubt the storytellers’ experience of these realities shaped their telling of their story. But it is here that the image of a once-for-all Fall is of particular significance. These realities are not how it was meant to be and not how it need have been if people at the beginning had made different choices.

Disadvantages of Talk in Terms of a “Fall”

In this sense, the idea of the Fall fulfills a useful function. But in origin, describing what happened in Eden as the “Fall” had a more precise significance than this and has questionable connotations. The image derives from 2 Esdras, a Jewish apocalypse written after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.[258]  Esdras—that is, Ezra—comments on the fact that Adam alone sinned, but that his “fall” from the possibility of immortality affected us all (2 Esdras 7:118). The “fall” thus refers not to Adam and Eve’s act or to its general consequences, but to that particular consequence of the first human disobedience. The substance of Esdras’s observation corresponds to Paul’s comment in Romans 5 that through one person’s disobedience death came into the world, though Paul does not speak in “Fall” terms. But 2 Esdras was one of a number of Jewish works outside the Jewish Scriptures that the church eventually came to treat as Scripture, the works subsequently referred to as the Apocrypha. This process facilitated the acceptance of the language of “Fall” by early Christian writers. An opposite Jewish tradition sees human disobedience as leading to a kind of “fall upward,” a finding of a proper maturity.[259]

One disadvantage of “Fall” language is thus that it portrays human beings as in a position of splendor, prestige and exaltation, from which they “fell.” They were immortal, and they “fell” from immortality to mortality. We have seen that the motif of the life tree suggests a different perspective.[260]  Human beings were not created immortal, though God intended them to receive the gift of lasting life through eating the fruit of the life tree. Further, the “Fall” idea can suggest that human beings originally lived a life of heaven-like happiness and closeness to God, while as a result of the “Fall” their relationship with God was broken. But Genesis 1–2 itself does not say anything about how their life actually was before their disobedience. It does not describe them as living lives of obedience and bliss, only as having the opportunity to learn obedience and grow to moral maturity. The tragedy of Genesis 1–3 is not that human beings fell from a state of bliss but that they failed to realize a possibility, “fell short of the glory of God.” Further, the “Fall” idea suggests that whereas human beings could originally obey God, afterward they could not. But in Genesis 3 we find the same dynamics of temptation and disobedience on the way to the “Fall” as we ourselves experience after it, while Genesis 4 pictures Adam and Eve after their disobedience and expulsion from God’s garden still working together with God, worshiping and conversing with God. Their disobedience affected their relationship with God and it cut them off from the garden, but it did not cut them off from God.

In broader Christian usage, “Fall” describes not only the consequences of Adam and Eve’s yielding to temptation, but the act itself. In this connection, too, the usage looks questionable. On the basis of Genesis itself, Jonathan Magonet asks whether they fell or whether they were pushed,[261]  while Paul calls Adam and Eve’s sin a paraptōma not a ptōma (Rom 5:14)—not an accident or calamity, something that happened to them, but a transgression, a deliberate false step.

Further, we have noted that Genesis 1–3 only begins the narrative’s portrayal of the origins of human wrongdoing. It is Genesis 1–6 or Genesis 1–11 as a whole that offers the total portrait. Christian tradition has marked off Genesis 1–3 sharply from what follows. That is the story of “creation and fall” in a world rather different from ours. What follows is a series of stories about a world more like the one we experience, about life “East of Eden” where we live. This misconceives an important aspect of the dynamic of the story, since the book does not mark off Genesis 1–3 from what follows.[262]  Its own transition point is at Genesis 12:1–3. And if Genesis 1–11 subdivides, it comprises a story leading up to the flood and one leading from the new start after the flood to the Tower of Babel.

What happens in Eden begins a process or forms one description of humanity’s calamitous original wrongdoing, rather than in isolation bringing about a decisive change in humanity’s moral capacity. Cain will now find that sin is lurking at his door, but he is called to master it (Gen 4:7). It does not seem that originally people were able not to sin but now that cannot be expected.[263]  Even resentful Cain can pull himself together and obey God if he chooses. He fails to do so, and this becomes part of that portrait of wrongdoing that grows through Genesis 1–6. It is only at the end of this narrative that God concludes that human wrongdoing is not only pervasive (Gen 6:5, 11–12) but inevitable (Gen 8:21).[264]

A Fallen World?

“Fall” language can also imply that Adam and Eve’s disobedience had implications for the natural world. “We live in a fallen world,” people often say. Adam and Eve’s act did have implications for the natural world, but these need stating carefully. Genesis does not imply that before the “Fall” lions did not attack sheep. It does imply that human beings would in some sense have been able to control lions, but also that this would involve force. Lions would need mastering. While Genesis speaks of a curse on the snake and on the soil, which will therefore produce thorns and thistles as well as edible plants (because it now lacks water?), it does not suggest that before the “Fall” there were no earthquakes or volcanoes. Nor need Romans 8 imply that creation’s “groaning” began only after the “Fall.” When describing the world as subject to futility, Paul does not say when or how this came about, and it fits Genesis and Romans to see the world as by its nature subject to decay and death from the beginning. Humanity’s vocation was to master the world so that it would not need to groan, but Adam and Eve’s disobedience itself involved their failing to master nature. Henceforth outside Eden nature will resist their mastery.

Genesis 2–3 is a story full of irony and strange twists, of complications. It resembles a farce,[265]  or an episode of a sitcom in which a number of themes interweave in apparently random ways and come to an unexpected finish that brings a sort of resolution without necessarily tying up every end. God makes the earth, intending it to grow cultivated plants as well as wild plants, but the first human being’s task is only to tend a particular garden, and God does not at first allow for his needing help if he is to undertake this task. Having done so, God makes various animals without at first taking account of their not being up to the task, and without anticipating that one of them will cause much more trouble than it is worth. God then makes another human being, though in the short term she turns out to be a hindrance rather than a help. Once Adam and Eve are together in a garden (cf. Songs of Songs), we do not know why they fail to make love and do so only after leaving the garden—at least, that is when we are told they do. God says that eating from the tree of good and bad knowledge will bring immediate death, but it does not, and God does not explain why this is so. We are not told why the snake approaches Eve rather than Adam, or why Adam does not intervene in her tutorial. The snake rightly supposes that Eve knows she is not supposed to eat of the tree, but we do not know how, nor why her version of the prohibition is not quite right. Nor do we know why the snake is more accurate than God is in its account of the effects of eating from the tree. Nor do we receive any explanation of the snake’s concern for human beings to end up like God when God wants to avoid this, despite God’s words in Genesis 1:26. The snake expects that having their eyes opened will mean they are able to recognize good and bad, and this fails to come true. Instead they realize that they are naked, but we do not know why. And yet the story ends with a world that we know, and it explains some of its puzzling features. Snakes crawl. Motherhood brings pain. Marriage is fraught. Growing food requires hard toil. Human beings cover themselves, even in warm climates. Life ends in death and we cannot find our own way to the secret of eternal life.

3.3 Violence and Curse

Although the narrative does not mark off Genesis 1–3 from what follows in the way it marks Genesis 1–11 from what follows, Genesis 1–3 does come to a decisive end. It could form a complete story, if a disturbing one—no Hollywood ending here. If it were a recently discovered ancient text, no one would have suspected it was only a fragment.[266]  Yet it transpires not only that the story continues, but that the God who casts Adam and Eve out of the garden goes with them. They are not separated from God. We have Eve’s word for it in her expression of wonder that she and Yhwh have together got her a son, and Cain and Abel’s word for it as they come to worship Yhwh (Gen 4:1, 3–4a). We also have the narrator’s word for it: “Yhwh heeded Abel and his offering,” though not Cain and his, but Yhwh does then initiate a conversation with Cain about this (Gen 4:4b–7). Expulsion from Eden is a terrible event, yet it does not undo the whole purpose of creation. That purpose now begins to find fulfillment as Adam and Eve have their first two children. They take up two aspects of the work of looking after the world. Abel tends sheep; Cain tills the ground. After a while, they bring offerings to Yhwh. Apparently as human beings they had a natural human instinct to worship and to acknowledge Yhwh as the one who makes crops grow and flocks flourish.

Yhwh Accepts Young Abel’s Offering

When she gave birth to her first son, Eve exclaimed in rather self-congratulatory tones, “I have got a man” (Gen 4:1). His name spoke of that fact; “Cain” (qayin) links with the verb “got” (qānâ). She did add, “with Yhwh.” But what did that joyful but elliptical comment mean? Could she have meant that she brought a man into being as Yhwh did?[267]  Anyway, there was no such exclamation at Abel’s birth. He was given a name that merely means “breath” or “emptiness,” the word Ecclesiastes uses when exclaiming “vanity of vanities,” “everything is utterly empty, a mere breath.” (Later Eve will at last make Yhwh the subject of a verb, in naming her third son.) This shadowy, insubstantial second son, a mere puff of wind, has lived in the shadow of his big brother since the day he was born.

So Cain brings an offering of his produce, and Abel follows with an offering of the best of the firstlings of his flock. We might wonder whether he is trying to top his brother’s offering. But it is his offering that Yhwh accepts. A pattern that will run through the First Testament gospel makes its first appearance. The first son may be the one of whom his mother is most proud and to whom society gives the status and of whom the family expects most and to whom it therefore gives the best share of its assets. But Yhwh likes to go against the grain of societal and familial instincts and is therefore inclined to give a special place to the second son, or to a much later one (Joseph, David). It is Abel’s offering that Yhwh pays attention to. Yhwh has reason both to jerk the first son into some reflection and to embrace the second in his fragility.[268]  Yet the story does not make this explicit. It gives no reason for Abel’s acceptance and Cain’s rejection. It is simply that “Abel is elect and Cain is not elect.” The story goes on to show that this does not mean Cain is abandoned by God, a principle that runs through subsequent stories in Genesis of God’s choice of one person over another.[269]

But Cain is not used to this treatment. Again the story shows that this family stays in relationship with Yhwh, for Cain now finds Yhwh speaking to him as Yhwh had to his parents in Eden. He is angry and hurt: His face falls (it is at this point that Genesis talks of a “fall”). One can hardly blame him. He has taken the initiative in bringing an offering to God, and has been rejected. It is not fair. But Yhwh’s puzzling lack of interest in his sacrifice fulfills a function for him similar to that fulfilled for Eve by the puzzling event of the snake’s interest in what she ate. It is the first of a number of ways in which Cain’s story (in a way it is hardly the story of Cain and Abel) parallels Adam and Eve’s.

Again Yhwh asks a question. In first creating the world (Gen 1), God’s preferred form of speech had been a command, but once there are other people to relate to, questions seem to be God’s preferred form of speech. By their nature, we have noted, they are the most relational form of speech. The “where,” “who” and “what” of Genesis 3 give way to “why,” a more searching and potentially revealing interrogative than the ones Yhwh used with Cain’s parents. It is unnecessarily repeated, “Why are you angry and why has your face fallen?” But it fails to penetrate inside Cain and to get him to answer the question to himself or to Yhwh. Perhaps it is in any case another rhetorical question, because anyone can see what is the reason for Cain’s angry hurt. He has reached out to God and found that God has not responded. He and his brother have both prayed, and his brother’s prayer has been answered while his has not. He feels rejected. He was not imagining the feelings. He has been rejected.

Cain and Abel Both in Danger

The possibility that the questions were rhetorical is suggested by the way Yhwh continues without giving Cain chance to respond. Both Yhwh and Cain know why Cain is hurt and angry. The question is, what is Cain going to do with the experience? Yhwh’s words are ones Yhwh might have uttered to Eve as she contemplated the snake’s comments about Yhwh and the tree. Indeed, there is another link with that story. “If you do the good thing …” says Yhwh; the verb is related to the word “good.” A human being like Cain knows the difference between good and bad, even though this is a fruit that his mother should not have unilaterally seized. “If you do the good thing, there is [or there will be] lifting,” Yhwh says (Gen 4:7). It is an elliptical promise, but presumably Yhwh refers to a lifting of the face, for it is the face that has fallen and needs lifting. Perhaps it is a promise that Yhwh will lift Cain’s face in the sense of showing grace and acceptance, as Job is promised in Job 42:8–9. But in the context it is more likely a promise that Cain’s face will no longer remain downcast. Either God will lift up Cain’s face, or Cain will be able to lift up his own face, as Job is also promised (Job 11:15). On the other hand, if Cain does not exercise his capacity for knowing good and bad in such a way as to choose the former, he will find that “sin is lying down at the doorway.”

If Genesis 3 brings us up short by portraying a snake acting like a person and speaking, then Genesis 4 does the same by portraying the abstract reality “sin” acting like an animal and making its bed at the doorway of Cain’s life or of his home. Perhaps Cain is portrayed as a grown man who has already followed the principle in Genesis 2:24, left his parents’ home and got married, so that he lives in his own home with his wife. She will appear in Genesis 4:17, though of course we do not know where she came from. As long as Cain stays at home, there is no danger, but when he goes out he will find himself in his brother’s company. So sin lies there waiting to attack him like a snake when he leaves home. There is then another breathtaking reminder of the effect of disobedience on Adam and Eve. Eve would have an urge for her husband and he would have dominion over her (Gen 3:16). Cain’s relationship to sin is now to be like man’s relationship to woman. Its urge will be for him, it will seek him out, it will try to win him. But he is to control it, not to be controlled, to master and not be mastered, to exercise dominion, not be dominated (Gen 4:7).

The story thus incorporates many of the same elements as the story of Eve and the snake, though in a different configuration. There is a gift from God, a circumstance that tests, a divine warning and a creature that threatens. There is then an act that ignores the divine word, yields to the creature and fails the test. The act stimulates another searching divine question that receives a chilling response, an anguished “What have you done” and a terrible curse, an experience of expulsion, but also an act of mercy. The parallels in the motifs in these opening stories in Genesis is a pointer to their being formally sequential but substantially parallel, like the interwoven character studies in a film such as Magnolia. Cain stands before an analogous experience to his mother and father’s, but their failure does not mean he is incapable of acting responsibly when faced by sin. Whether we translate God’s yiqtol verb “you must master it” ([270] ) or “you can master it” ([271] ), the one implies the other.

Although engaging in this conversation with Cain, God does not warn Abel of his danger—as God will later warn Joseph and the Babylonian theologians of their danger from Herod, but not the Bethlehem mothers (Mt 2). God chooses who to have mercy on. Cain leaves the house and sin rises from its bed. Out in the open country where perhaps they were hunting and where there was no one to see Cain’s act or hear his brother’s cry, Cain attacks his brother and kills him.

Where Is Your Brother?

“Where is your brother?” asks Yhwh, presumably when Cain is back home. “I don’t know,” Cain replies. “Am I my brother’s watcher?” (Gen 4:9). The question is rich with overtone and ambiguity. It could imply “do you suggest I’ve been watching my brother in order to do harm to him?” (like Saul; 1 Sam 19:11). Of course Cain has. It could imply “I am a garden watcher, not a people watcher” (cf. Gen 2:15; 4:2). It could imply “I thought you were the one who was supposed to watch over people” (e.g., Ps 121:7–8). Apparently Yhwh does not know exactly what has happened to Abel, but has heard the cry of Abel’s blood and has worked out approximately what must have taken place (Gen 4:10). When people’s lives are imperiled or ruined or terminated by violence or fraud or deception, whether by the rule of law or outside the rule of law, recurrently the First Testament assures us that Yhwh hears their cry (e.g., Gen 18:21; Ex 2:23–24; Ps 34:17 [[272]  18]; Is 5:7). Vividly Yhwh expresses it as a cry that shouts out from the soil where their blood has been shed. It is the cry of Abel’s “bloods”: the word is plural, as is often the case with reference to blood shed violently.[273]  Perhaps it suggests blood flowing in a stream. Its cry demands investigation. Cain’s act has put the world out of kilter. It is no longer in harmony. Something has to be done to restore its balance. From the ground that received Abel’s blood will arise a curse that makes it impossible for Cain to grow anything. It will refuse to be fruitful for him.

Once more curse threatens to overwhelm God’s purpose to bless the world. Once again Genesis 4 continues Genesis 2–3 and goes further: for the first time a human being is said to be cursed. “Gen 2–3 has not yet said the last word about what ultimately constitutes created and limited humans; basic to this are the negative and positive aspects of existence together as brothers.”[274]  Humanity is not just Adam and Eve, but also Cain and Abel.[275]  Adam and Eve were explicitly created for a mutual relationship, though unity in disobeying God could fracture their mutuality. The brothers were not explicitly brought into being in order to be friends, though that is often parents’ hope for their sons. The dynamics of their relationship may more readily drive them into the rivalry that characterizes brotherly relationships in Genesis. The spoiled state of God’s world and of God’s humanity involves not only the individual realm but the realm of the family.

We noted that God did not personally or directly curse the snake or the ground, but declared that they were cursed. Equivalent words are now introduced by the solemn prophetic-judgmental “and now” as God makes the same declaration concerning a curse on Cain himself. But if we ask who effects the curse on Cain, it seems to be the very ground that received Abel’s blood, which cried out to God from there. The background lies in the role of the ground in the story as a whole. Humanity was formed from the dirt of the ground in order to serve the ground (Gen 2:5, 7; 3:23). Out of the ground Yhwh also made the trees grow, and formed the animals and birds (Gen 2:9, 19). Humanity and ground are then linked in their curse (Gen 3:17, 19). Cain thus fulfills humanity’s vocation in serving the ground (Gen 4:2). But this does not stop the ground being appalled at receiving his brother’s shed blood. In due course people will be blessed from Zion (Ps 128:5; 134:3), but in the meantime Cain is “cursed from the ground” (Gen 4:11). The ground will not yield its blessing to Cain but will frustrate his attempts to gain fruitfulness from it. It will be as if the ground has been rendered sterile for Cain by Abel’s blood.

The First Testament gospel affirms that there is a moral link between humanity and nature. Humanity was created to treat nature itself morally, and would find that things went wrong in its relationship with nature if it failed to do so. Genesis 4 makes a less obvious point, that there is a link between humanity and nature that makes nature react when relationships go wrong between human beings. It senses that things have gone wrong and reacts accordingly. If Cain will not be Abel’s watcher, then the ground will be. Creation does not “fall,” but it reacts when humanity’s face falls.

The Marked Man

Cain’s position is therefore like Adam’s, only more so. The disobedience in the garden led to Adam and Eve’s expulsion from there so that they would have to work hard to tame nature outside the garden, to create a garden of their own. The sin in the open country outside the garden again requires expulsion. It is remarkable that this is all the story presupposes. One might have expected the ground to cry out for the restoration of equilibrium that might come from Cain’s own blood being shed in return for his having shed Abel’s. But there is no indication that this possibility was considered. Capital punishment will be introduced only after things have gotten much worse (Gen 9:5–6).

But the ground will tolerate nothing less than Cain’s expulsion, though there is nowhere else Cain can go. Further, while the disobedience in the garden affected the relationship between Adam and Eve and Yhwh, it did not terminate it. Living outside the garden did not mean living outside Yhwh’s presence. The sin outside the garden means that Cain will have to hide from Yhwh’s face or presence. Yhwh’s face or presence suggests Yhwh’s caring and providing gaze, the look that observes what is happening to us and reacts accordingly. Ground and God are now against him. Cain cannot afford to have that gaze turn away. His vulnerability can only mean death at the hands of other people as ruthless as he is. To cast someone out of the community is effectively to sentence them to death. Not so, says Yhwh. As happened to Adam and Eve, Yhwh reaches out to him with a gesture that speaks of mercy even while it draws renewed attention to guilt. He will be a marked man. In the land of Wandering, East of Eden, away from Yhwh’s gaze, his mark (we do not know what it was) draws attention to his status as outcast even while protecting him (Gen 4:15–16).

Moreover, once again the blessing has its outworking there, even for this man under the curse. He has a son and begins a line, and his own son builds a city. In the land of Wandering and vulnerability, the city is a refuge for the man whom the earth will not serve. We might see this as a human attempt to evade the consequences of sin. Indeed, it is that. In thus locating the origin of the city after creation has gone wrong, the First Testament contrasts with Mesopotamian thinking, which traces the city back to creation. In failing even now to give any mention to nations and kings, the First Testament contrasts more sharply with, for example, the “Sumerian King List,” a listing of kings who ruled in a number of Babylonian cities before and after “the flood swept over the earth.”[276]  But Genesis does not condemn the city as such, unlike the Tower of Babel, and in due course in the Revelation to John the story that began in a garden will end in a city. Long before then, the acquisition of impressive cities that they did not build will be God’s gift to the Israelites entering Canaan (Deut 6:10).[277]  The city is viable but ambiguous.[278]  God’s starting over includes the adoption of the devices that human beings invent, so that they become part of the divine project. Cain’s line also produces people who develop music and metal tools as well as the herding of livestock. Humanity is mastering nature.

Blessing and Curse Work Themselves Out

Implicitly, God’s blessing is thus working itself out. Like the growth of the human family, this comes about through human action. God does not cause women to conceive in Genesis 1–11 (contrast Gen 12–50). God does not create instruments for human beings to play or tools for them to use, nor inspire them with the gifts of music or craftwork (contrast Ex 31; 35). God does not inspire their poetry (contrast Ps 45; 78). It is human beings who beget and bear the children, develop the tools and abilities, and learn to use them. Yet all this takes place in the context of the blessing and implicitly represents its outworking. The world of marriage and family, of art, work and music, is one that develops in that context. God is involved in this “secular” world.

But it is also affected by the curse. The father of these creative people is the first man to take two wives. It is perhaps less clear than is sometimes claimed that Genesis 1–2 requires monogamy,[279]  but the First Testament story portrays polygamy in such a way as to draw attention to the problems it raises as well as the problems it solves. Polygamy can encourage committed relationships and safeguard womanhood, manhood and family life, but it is not a problem-free way of doing so (but then, neither is monogamy). These implications emerge from this first reference to a man who takes two wives. As a result he is indeed notably fruitful, in more than numbers. But he is also a man whom we hear boasting to his two wives about the violence of his life: Some young guy punches him, so he retaliates by killing the man (Gen 4:23–24). His family’s achievements turn out to be as ambiguous as his marriages, if he uses his son’s tools to kill and his son’s music to glory in his killing.

God’s harsh-sounding rule that the punishment can be seven times greater than the crime, intended as a deterrent, is far exceeded by Lamech’s rule of thumb. Punishment can be seventy-seven times greater than the crime, and the aim is not to stop the crime but to avenge it. “Lamech was the first proponent of massive retaliation.”[280]  Testosterone rules. Alongside the hubris that glories in a punishment that far exceeds God’s is a machismo that reveals itself in classic forms, in the finding of identity and significance in the number of women you possess and the number of men you overwhelm. The story of Cain’s line and Abel’s nonline is thus one in which blessing abounds, but in which curse also threatens to overwhelm blessing.

Neither human beings nor God are content with that. Adam and Eve have another son. Genesis’s term for the act that leads to this is again that Adam “knew” Eve, and interpreters have sometimes inferred that their sexual union was a means or an expression of a deep interpersonal knowing. But “know” (yādaʿ) applies as easily to rape as to sex that involves deep personal knowing (Gen 19:5; Judg 19:22). Sexual union can be a means of gratification or self-advancement, or an expression of anger or hurt, or a response to physical stimulus or an evasion of loneliness. Perhaps Adam and Eve had a deep personal relationship expressed in their sexual relationship, or perhaps they did not.

Genesis does not tell us, because its interest lies elsewhere, in the link of sex and procreation, because this is key to the outworking of God’s blessing. Having children can seem a key to finding inner personal fulfillment, especially for women. Genesis does not suggest that it attaches this significance to children. Children are significant because they are key to the fulfillment of the blessing God has promised, because the blessing lies in increased numbers. That is so because this is what God needs if humanity is to master the world on God’s behalf, and it is what the nation will later need if it is to survive the demands of life in the hill country, or if it is to recover from the departure of Ephraim or the decimation of the Babylonian period.

People Begin to Call on Yhwh

Cain’s anger, Abel’s murder and Lamech’s machismo have not killed God’s plan. Adam and Eve’s third son is called Seth, another significant name. There are many words that Seth could have been linked with, but one is a verb that means “place” or “establish,” almost “provide” (šît). It can thus suggest that this is the son God “provided” for Eve in Abel’s place. She does not see him as taking Cain’s place, even though she has lost Cain almost as definitively as she has lost Abel. Again that offers a hint that Cain’s sin does not stop his being a means whereby God’s blessing is fulfilled.

So Seth begins a line that stands alongside Cain’s, and a pattern for the gospel story is introduced. In the way God works in the world, there is a line that experiences God’s commitment, faithfulness and blessings, and thus has the prestige, the achievement and the power. It is the line of Cain. But the way human life has worked out now means that God needs to set about other intentions than the original one, and this first line is not the one through which God’s special purpose is achieved. Alongside this first line is a second that looks less impressive but in the end counts for more. It is within Seth’s line that people begin “to call on the name of Yhwh” (Gen 4:26).

There are several puzzling aspects to this statement. Calling on someone’s name (qārāʾ bĕšēm, literally “call by/in the name of”) suggests acknowledging them and/or summoning them in their individuality. In relation to Yhwh it suggests acknowledging Yhwh rather than other gods (Jer 10:25) and/or calling on Yhwh to act (2 Kings 5:11). It suggests subordination, but at the same time potentially privilege (Is 43:1; 45:4). Names have meanings and sometimes reveal something of their owner’s nature or destiny. They convey knowledge of key truths about them, and thus put those who know the name in a position of some power in relation to them. Even in modern cultures the name indicates the person, as is indicated by the significance of using someone’s personal name and of remembering or forgetting it. This is more so in a culture where names have meaning as well as reference and thus more systematically suggest a definite distinctive individual. And all this is not only true of human names (Gen 32:29).

So far no one has named God, and no one will do that until Hagar does (Gen 16:13). God has not offered a revelation of the name Yhwh, and will not do so until the time of Moses (Ex 3). The snake has spoken of Yhwh, but it used the ordinary word God. Eve referred to Yhwh by name after the birth of Cain, but she used the word God of the one who “provided” Seth. The context would fit with the idea that Seth’s line worshiped Yhwh by name whereas Cain’s line did not, but Genesis does not actually say that. Factually, I assume that no one was calling on Yhwh by that precise name in the period before Moses, let alone before Abraham. To say that people were calling on Yhwh by name at this stage of the story is to say that they were worshiping the one God, the God who would be active and known in Israel, known as Yhwh. At the close of Genesis 4, it suggests that the world of religion accompanies the world of art and work as one in which God’s blessing of humanity comes to fruition. Yet its “then,” “at that time,” “thereupon,” perhaps implies that it is the development of this alternative line that leads to people coming to call on the one who brought it about by “providing” Seth. The next person to call on Yhwh by name will be Abraham, and it will be a response to having reached the promised land (Gen 12:8). Later Abraham will do the same at the southern extreme of the land, as will Isaac after having Yhwh’s promise reaffirmed (Gen 21:33; 26:25). Calling on Yhwh by name is a gesture of gratefulness for what Yhwh has done and of trust for what Yhwh will complete. Disobedience and sin will not have the last word.

The Knowability of God

How do we people come to be calling on Yhwh? How do know anything about God? Karl Barth calls revelation “the self-unveiling … of the God who according to His nature cannot be unveiled to Man,”[281]  and Maurice Wiles “the process whereby the normally hidden reality of God becomes disclosed.”[282]  Wolfhart Pannenberg similarly asserts that “the biblical God is a hidden God who may be known only by special revelation.”[283]  It is perhaps as well that his statement dies the death of a thousand qualifications in his subsequent discussion, because it does not seem to correspond at all to the dynamic of the scriptural story. While the story portrays the acknowledgment of God as a serious problem (that is the significance of passages such as Ex 14:31; Deut 4:35, 39; 7:8–9 to which Pannenberg refers),[284]  it does not identify a problem in God’s openness to being known. It might be true that God could not be known unless God willed to be known, but this is not a question that arises. The story simply presupposes that God wills to be known and it tells its story accordingly. God causes Cain to have a problem about knowing God, but the two remain on conversational terms, and there is no general problem about relating to God outside Eden, as the stories of Eve, Abel and Seth show. The characters in the story know God, know God is there, and know something of who God is.

The biblical God is not hidden, and reference to revelation in Scripture does not assume that God’s reality is normally hidden. People outside Israel such as Melchizedek or Pharaoh know the basic facts about God’s nature, God’s ways and God’s expectations of humanity, though it is a different question whether they acknowledge Yhwh as God. As God, Yhwh cannot be completely known by human beings, as adults cannot be completely known by children. As a person, Yhwh cannot be completely known by other persons, as no person can be completely known by another. But God is not inherently unknowable. The assumption that God is hidden and needs to be revealed comes from outside Scripture. It is a telling fact that the phrase Deus absconditus[285]  (the hidden God) depends on a misunderstanding of Isaiah 45:15.[286]  A strand of Greek thinking implied that God was beyond any reality that human beings can know, and Philo developed this conviction and passed it on to patristic theology.[287]  Modernity then wanted to go back to first principles in seeking to determine how we can know anything, but in the end failed to find a way of starting from nothing and getting anywhere. The Bible presupposes neither of these starting points. Its premodern starting point provides us with ways of thinking about revelation that sidestep modernity’s dead end.

Long Lives

So Adam becomes the father of Seth, Seth of Enosh, Enosh of Kenan, Kenan of Mahalalel, Mahalalel of Jared, Jared of Enoch, Enoch of Methuselah, Methuselah of (a different) Lamech, Lamech of Noah. They live to extraordinary ages: 930, 912, 905, 910, 895, 962, 969, 950. In the version of the Sumerian King List in Ancient Near Eastern Texts, the first eight kings reigned in five different cities for an average of just over 30,000 years each, though overall the figures reduce slightly by the time of the flood. After the flood, a longer sequence of kings ruled for an average of just over 1000 years each. The difference between the preflood and postflood figures thus compares with the difference between the figures in Genesis 5 and Genesis 11, while at the same time the Sumerian postflood figures are quite similar to the figures in Genesis 5.

The Sumerian list begins with the moment when “kingship was lowered from heaven”—it was lowered again from heaven after the flood. In the First Testament kingship is not lowered from heaven, at least not until human beings reach up there for it, and even then it is not traced back to the Beginning of things. Indeed, kingship has its origin in Edom, outside the line where Yhwh acts most purposefully (Gen 36:31). So the King List marks the significance of early times by attributing vast ages to its figures, and Genesis does the same (though the ages are much less extravagant), but these figures are ordinary people, not kings. They are ordinary people, but they are individuals with names, that great mark of individuality. The history Genesis sees as significant is not political history but everyday history. These ancestors’ significance is the “mere” fact that they live and have children. Each has a number of sons and daughters. The blessing is being worked out, though in a way that draws attention to discontinuity as well as continuity with the time of Genesis’s readers. Once again the figures reflect the coherence of Genesis 1–11 as a whole over against what follows. Not only the time in the garden but the whole primeval period were different days from the ones in which people such as Abraham and Sarah lived.

There are ambiguities in the account. The first human beings were created so that they resembled God, and male and female belonged together in this. But whereas Eve’s role has been emphasized in the story of Cain, Abel and Seth, the bearers of the children disappear from the account of these successive births. Only the men seem now to matter. And whereas the first human beings were created so that they resembled God, they have offspring who resemble their parents, not the creator (Gen 5:3). It is not clear how significant this comment is, but perhaps it links with the solemnity that accompanies the wonder of the length of their lives. They live to those extraordinary ages, but the account of each life ends with the ringing of a knell, “and he died.… and he died.… and he died.…” They come near to a millennium, but they die. Lamech lives to the ideal age of 777, but he dies. The allusion to each man’s death forms another contrast with the Sumerian King List, which does not contain this note.[288]  Originally Genesis sees death as an unnecessary and undesigned end to life, even though the story of Abraham then sees his death as a natural and acceptable end to a life that is full of years and comes to a good old age, after which one is gathered to one’s people (Gen 25:8).[289]  Now death is intrinsic to being human, however long you live.

The exception to the pattern in Genesis 5 is Enoch, who lives to 365, a life that resembles a year full of days. He could have died at the end of this strangely complete life, we might infer, but in fact he then simply disappears. He had walked with God (Gen 5:22, 24). The expression is otherwise used only of Noah and Levi (Gen 6:9; Mal 2:6; cf. also Mic 6:8), and suggests a relationship of mutuality and friendship (cf. 1 Sam 25:15; Prov 13:20). It marks off these three from Abraham, Isaac, David, Solomon and Hezekiah (Gen 17:1; 24:40; 48:15; 1 Kings 2:4; 3:6; 8:23, 25; 9:4; 2 Kings 20:3). They walked before God, a phrase suggesting a relationship of integrity, visibility, dependence and service (cf. 1 Sam 2:30; 12:2; Ps 56:13 [MT 14]; 116:9; Eccles 6:8; Mal 3:14). God took Enoch, in perhaps the way it was intended to be for everyone if his original ancestors had not reached out unilaterally for the forbidden fruit. It advertises that God’s ban on a lasting life might not be God’s irrevocable and invariable word, but it does so in an allusive way that simply gives a glimpse of a possibility. We are not told where God took Enoch. Later visionaries will adopt Enoch as their guide to discovering the mysteries of heaven, but the First Testament itself is very restrained in what it claims to know about such things. God does not reveal them.

The First Testament gospel’s concentration lies elsewhere, not on Enoch or even his especially long-lived son, but on his grandson and great-grandson. Lamech calls his son “Noah.” That might suggest a meaning such as “Restful” or “Soothing,” which will in due course be the nature of the sacrifice Noah makes (Gen 8:21). In the meantime Lamech comments, “This man will give us relief from our painful manual work, out of the ground that Yhwh cursed” (Gen 5:29). Or perhaps his words are a wish, of the kind that might often be embodied in the names that parents give their children: “May this man give us relief.” As usual, name and interpretation are related tangentially rather than directly. Lamech does not say that Noah will give us “rest,” or name his son “One-who-brings-relief.” But his comment nevertheless gives the game away. For all the fulfillment of the blessing, human beings live under the curse. Their work is indeed characterized by the “painfulness” of which the curse spoke (Gen 3:16–17: these are the only three occurrences of this word). Lamech sees it as a curse Yhwh actually inflicted.

At one level, perhaps it is by discovering how to make wine that Noah brings relief to humanity with its arduous involvement in manual work. But the story is more explicit on a down side to that discovery. In any case, before this he “brings relief” more profoundly through offering that “pleasing” sacrifice. It is this that prompts Yhwh to withdraw the curse on the ground or to promise not to extend it or repeat it (Gen 8:21–22).

3.4 Fall and Ruin

We have had two stories of wrongdoing, the disobedience in the garden and the murder by Cain. We now get a third, though it is allusively told. Jewish works such as 1 Enoch and Jubilees saw this story of the divine beings and the human women as recounting the origin of sin, and they were as near the mark as the later tradition of focusing exclusively on Genesis 3.[290]  The two form the opening and culmination of the account of how things went wrong back at the Beginning. Indeed, although we have already read of the deaths of the first ten human generations (Gen 5), most of that chapter is anticipatory and most of the figures who appear there should still be alive, so that Genesis 6:1–3 is apparently a flashback referring to events that took place “when people began to multiply on earth,” presumably before Genesis 5. It appears here because it brings the narrative to a grim climax as the last of three stories about the frustrating of God’s creative purpose, leading into the terrible conclusion that wherever God looks, there is wickedness.

Resistance from Heaven

As humanity began to multiply, “the divine beings” (literally, “sons of God”) saw the attractiveness of “the human women” (literally, “daughters of men”) and “took” as many as they chose (Gen 6:1–2).[291]  The judgment of the heavenly beings was not specifically that the women were good looking but simply that they were “good”—good for bearing children, the unfolding story implies (Gen 6:4). Similar language will recur when the Pharaoh’s staff see that Sarai is beautiful and she is taken into the royal harem (Gen 12:14–15). The language is even closer when David sees Bathsheba is good looking and sends men to take her (2 Sam 11:2–4). Seeing and taking come in primeval history, family history and political history.[292]  But the closest parallels pair Genesis 6 with Genesis 1–3. During the process of creation God kept noting that things were “good,” and now these divine beings come to a similar assessment of the human women in particular. Eve subsequently took from a tree that she saw was good but that was forbidden to her, and these beings take from a group of people who were evidently forbidden to them. While Genesis mentions no supernatural resistance to God’s creation of the world, there are indeed heavenly forces that oppose the ongoing fulfillment of God’s creation purpose and want a piece of the action on earth for themselves. If Eve can have a child “with” Yhwh, they can be more intimately involved.

The story seems bizarre and is often reckoned to be based on a fragment of myth, and most of its details are disputed and/or hard to understand, though there are many modern testimonies to the continuing involvement of supernatural beings (incubi) with human women. Heavenly beings appear in human form on other occasions (e.g., Gen 18), so this possibility can in principle be imagined, but it is assumed to be a transgression of God’s purpose in creation, which the heavenly beings were perhaps involved in executing (“let us make …”). Women were designed to be partners for men, not for supernatural beings. God designed the world to be a place where humanity would flourish, and sexual relationships were to be the means of that. And humanity has flourished. For over a thousand years human beings have been having sons and daughters. Even here in Genesis 6 that continues to be so, as these sons and daughters beget children. These are presumably to be identified with the nĕpilîm (Gen 6:4), though the text does not quite make the identification, and the point is unaffected if the nĕpilîm are a different group from the offspring of those marriages. They are still hugely impressive human beings, renowned warriors, people of magnificent stature, to judge from the comments on nĕpilîm in Numbers 13:33.[293]  Humanity is indeed flourishing. Children born of these unions might have a chance of sharing the destiny of the heavenly beings, who were designed to live forever. The limitation imposed by human beings’ separation from the tree of life could thus be overcome.

But there is something unnatural about these supermen. The union of heavenly beings and human women does not work. By default the event confirms that women and men were designed to be partners in procreation, as Genesis 5 has presupposed. The story of Lamech has shown that the regular relationships through which humankind has increased are themselves fraught, as God had warned Eve. But these other unions will not do as an alternative. From the beginning, sexual relationships were to be the means of life, but they have become a context in which death holds its sway, in the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and now these strange sons and daughters.

An Immediate Divine Decision

This time the act leads to no divine questions, but to an immediate divine decision. “My spirit will not govern in human beings forever because they go astray. They are flesh. Their time will be one hundred twenty years” (Gen 6:3). “Flesh” and “spirit” in antithesis stand for humanity in its weakness and Godhead in its strength (Is 31:3). The story has revealed the weakness of humanity. The heavenly beings were responsible for what happened, but it brought out the weakness of the human beings. To say they “go astray” or “err” (šāgag/šāgâ)[294]  makes the point more explicit. The verb means to stray in such a way that we go seriously wrong without realizing what we are doing, perhaps because we have been misled. That is the experience of the human beings in this story. They are involved in transgressing divinely established differences between heavenly and human beings, through being misled by the heavenly beings because they are flesh. God’s point may also (or may alternatively) be that their being flesh makes it impossible to allow their offspring to live on forever through their also being divine offspring. There was a route to that transformation but it got closed off, and this is no way to reopen it. Either way, this leads God to act in a way that takes account of their weakness. Once again God affirms that human beings will not live forever, though “120 years” is a puzzle. Very many other people in Genesis and Exodus live longer than that, so it hardly designates a new maximum for human life. Perhaps it is the number of years to elapse before the calamity that brings (virtually) all human life to an end with the flood, unless there is some change (cf. the Targum on Genesis). As is regularly the case, the immediate divine decision does not preclude repentance and divine reconsideration.

There is no change after Yhwh’s warning. Genesis describes the situation in three ways. First, Yhwh sees that the badness of humanity on the earth is great. All the “shaping” of plans in people’s minds (yēṣer; [295]  “inclination,” [296]  “imagination”) is entirely bad all the time (Gen 6:5). It is a grievous contrast with the “shaping” that went on at the beginning of the story, the shaping of human beings and animals (Gen 2:7–8, 19).

What can this devastating assessment mean? Is it literal truth, or hyperbole? Subsequently the First Testament does not describe things as this bad in the world. Genesis itself will later speak of the badness of the people of Sodom (Gen 13:13) and thereby imply that other peoples are not so bad. David uses the same words as Genesis both in an exhortation to Solomon to serve God with a focused “mind” and a willing spirit, because Yhwh knows “the plans that people shape,” and in a prayer that the people may be kept committed to Yhwh in “the plans that they shape in their mind” (1 Chron 28:9; 29:18). Evidently the shaping of plans in people’s minds is not inevitably or universally bad. So either that is more so at this point in the story of humanity than will always be the case, or Genesis 6 speaks hyperbolically, or both. Either way, this is not a straightforward description of how things always are. But either way, the similar but less radical words of Genesis 8:21 will also affirm that these words are saying something of ongoing significance.

In emphasizing how “bad” the situation has become, the passage uses the word raʿ, not the word “wickedness” (rešaʿ).[297]  The heavenly beings follow Eve’s example in coming to a view on what is “good” and taking what they see, but they bring to a climax a situation in which everything is “bad.” They assume the freedom to decide between good and bad and use it. God discerned that it was not “good” for the man to be alone and therefore acted to provide him with a partner, so that together these two could begin the process of fulfilling God’s purpose in the world through their fruitfulness. The heavenly beings made up their own minds about what counts as “good” partnership and (implicitly) produce offspring who are indeed impressive but are also “warriors,” which bodes ill. The result is that a world that was good, good, good, good … (the word came nine times in this connection in Gen 1–2) becomes one that is pervasively and comprehensively bad.

Violence and Ruin

Second, things are thus ruined, ruined, ruined (Gen 6:11–12). The verb (šāḥat) can denote moral ruin, but much more often signifies the ruin of a city, a crop or a land. Perhaps both connotations apply here. Given the contrast with the state of the earth when God created it, the verb restates the fact that everything on the earth has gone bad. But the last occurrence of the word emphasizes human responsibility: “All humanity had ruined its journey on the earth.”[298]  The human ideal is that God, who is on a journey that is whole and will reach its goal, should make one’s journey whole so that it also reaches its destination (Ps 18:30, 32 [[299]  31, 33]). God set humanity on a journey at the beginning of its story, but it has wrecked its prospects of completing the journey. It cannot get to the destination God had in mind back in Genesis 1–2. The plan shaped in humanity’s mind conflicts with the plan God shaped. God had planned that as God’s servants humanity should be fruitful and multiply and thus fill the earth and be able to subjugate it. God’s vision is now shattered.

Third, and more specifically, the earth is filled with violence, filled with violence (Gen 6:11–13). Perhaps there is an implication that the violence that offends God is animal violence as well as human violence. The “all flesh” whose life God is going to bring to an end includes the animal world, so perhaps that is part of the “all flesh” that has ruined its journey. Lions are eating lambs instead of lying down with them. If so, indirectly this also indicates that humanity has wrecked its prospects of completing its journey, because its vocation was to control the world in such a way as to take it on that journey.

But “violence” (ḥāmās) carries the overtones of lawlessness (cf. [300]  adikia). The word suggests “the violent breach of a just order.”[301]  It is “virtually a technical term for the oppression of the weak by the strong.”[302]  While this could apply to the killing of lambs by lions, we have had no explicit reference to animal violence, whereas we have had reference to human violence in the story of Cain and Abel and then of Lamech. The individual stories in Genesis 1–11 again combine to convey an impression of the characteristic features of human life. Human beings resist the limits God places on them and come to their own judgments, get involved in strife with one another and resist exhortation to control their inclination to violence. The reference to violence also confirms the hint in Genesis 4 that the essence of sin, in the sense that Genesis uses the word, lies in human violence. It is when there is violence that there is sin. Sin is lawlessness, and the law it flouts is the law of love, which Cain flouted (1 Jn 3:4, 10–18). The talk of violence also fits with the description of the nĕpilîm as gibbôrîm. Etymologically that word simply designates them as strong men, but the vast majority of the uses of this and related words link such strength with war-making (NRSV has a gloss to this effect). Where there are gibbôrîm, there will be violence and killing. The marriages between heavenly beings and human beings are associated with offspring that multiply violent conflict on earth.

Genesis sees humanity’s failure as both willful and tragic.[303]  Human beings are both guilty and unfortunate. Their life is not one in which it is easy to undertake their journey. They are put under pressure from within God’s creation by strange deceptiveness that leads them to make stupid decisions. They are put under pressure from within their religious life by strange experiences of God’s grace being withheld as well as granted. They are put under pressure from heaven itself by strange “choices” (Gen 6:2) for which they can hardly be held responsible and which only serve to underline that they are “flesh” with all its weakness. Yet they are expected to resist deceptiveness that opposes God’s voice and to resist the sin that lies down at the doorway waiting to trip them, and it is their failure to do this that leads to the terrible assessment in Genesis 6:5–13.

Many Middle Eastern stories relate how the gods become frustrated when the human beings they created fail to live up to the gods’ hopes and cause more trouble than they save. Whereas Enuma Elish offers a creation story to compare with Genesis 1, and Gilgamesh includes a flood story to compare with the Noah story, Atrahasis brings these two together. Genesis thus parallels Atrahasis in combining a number of stories that explore a variety of motifs and turning these into a whole, and the two agree on the outline of their account. Human beings were created to serve God or the gods, and over a period of centuries increased significantly in numbers. They then displeased God or the gods, who determined to destroy them in a flood. Acting on divine advice, one man and his family build a boat and survive the flood. God or the gods then set human life going once more, with new limits on human behavior. Both stories incorporate an explanation of the fact that human beings die.

It is more obvious that Genesis’s story about a flood has a Mesopotamian background than is the case with its creation story. Flood is an annual experience, and one can never be sure it will not get out of hand. But Genesis differs from Atrahasis in lacking any story of conflict among the gods that led to the original creation and to the forming of human beings from the corpse of a dead god. It lacks the plagues that precede the flood in Atrahasis. Atrahasis may give a more trivial explanation of the gods’ displeasure at human beings, attributing it to the noise they make as they increase in numbers. While this might imply rebelliousness and not merely disturbance,[304]  the gods’ desire to rest would be enough to make them object simply to noise, and otherwise the Middle Eastern stories do not describe human beings as willful in their relationship with the gods. In contrast, Genesis attributes God’s displeasure to intrahuman violence and divine-human intermarriage. The apparent implausibility of Atrahasis’s explanation of the flood links with its cynical account of the gods’ generally disorganized, disunited, cowardly, shortsighted and inefficient behavior, though Genesis also pictures God as caught out by human behavior and having to make a new plan. In Genesis, mortality issues from an earlier act of disobedience, not from a decision in connection with the flood, though the enigmatic 120 years (Gen 6:3) recalls this motif. In Genesis, the flood is followed by a renewed commission to fill the earth, rather than by a declaration that some women will not have children or will lose them, though again this motif recalls the imposing of pain on the woman in Genesis 3.

God’s Pain and Regret

In Genesis 6, even more terrible than the assessment of humanity in Yhwh’s eyes is Yhwh’s reaction, though it is also strangely encouraging. While Genesis never refers to God being angry, at this point we first hear of God’s explicitly having emotions, and these are pain and regret (Gen 6:6).

Once more the story takes up language from an earlier stage. Pain was to characterize a woman’s relationship with her children and a man’s relationship with his work (Gen 3:16–17)—a woman’s relationship with her work and a man’s with his children, no doubt, too. It now emerges that pain (ʿāṣab hitpael) also characterizes God’s experience. The curse also lands on God. Whereas God had originally looked at the earth and enjoyed the sight, now God is grieved at the frustrating of that aim in creation to achieve something good. It will not be the last time God experiences such pain. The forming of Israel as a people, too, will soon bring pain to Yhwh’s holy spirit,[305]  because that forming is followed by rebellion (Is 63:10). The story will repeat itself.

So God regrets, regrets (nāḥam niphal) making humanity (Gen 6:6, 7). If grief is one surprising emotion to attribute to God, regret is more surprising, though it is attributed to God much more commonly than pain (e.g., 1 Sam 15:11, 35). Perhaps “emotion” is the wrong word, because “regret” in Hebrew also suggests an act of the mind. Like the English noun, it denotes sorrow at something and a change of mind that issues in a change of plan. These two are related and the word thus commonly denotes both, though it can focus more on the one or the other. Both ideas belong here. The parallel reference to pain indicates the presence of emotion, and the decision to terminate human and animal life indicates the changing of plans (except that the nature of the change will turn out not to be obvious). Whereas Lamech had expressed the hope that Noah’s life would bring some “relief” (the same verb, nāḥam piel) for human beings, it turns out only to witness to God finding some “relief” for the feeling of pain in facing up to regret.

The further reference to emotion adds more explicit testimony to Yhwh’s nature. God’s feeling emotion suggests that possessing emotions is one of the respects in which God and humanity are fundamentally alike. God is not without passions, as Christian doctrine has sometimes reckoned. As the First Testament will go on to show, God has all the emotions human beings have, and has them in spades. The reference to pain and regret before anger again hints that such “soft” emotions are more intrinsic to God’s nature than “hard” emotions such as anger. Presumably the same is true of the beings made in God’s image.

God’s experiencing regret also makes even more explicit that God lives as well as works in time. God looked at elements within creation and concluded that they were good. God questioned Adam and Eve and their son partly in order to discover what was happening. Now God looks at creation once again, sees its badness, and regrets making humanity.[306]  Further, what happens in the world evidently involves a dialectic between God’s sovereignty and other sovereignties. In creating other beings with a capacity to make their own decisions, God accepted a limitation on sovereignty. God determined in general to let things work out in the world according to the will of other beings.

God’s Sovereignty

It is easy enough to see how God could have been more interventionist in the story we have read. God could have fenced off the good-and-bad-knowledge tree, or destroyed the snake, or appeared to Eve and contradicted the snake’s words. God could have intervened to protect Abel from Cain (and Cain from himself) and to protect the women from the heavenly beings (and from themselves). God declines to do any of these things and appears only after the damage has been done, in order to determine consequences. In describing scenes where God does not thus intervene, the narrative describes a world like the one we know.

It is easy enough to guess why God created a world that would not be characterized by such intervention, though this is merely a guess, for we are not told. This world is one where human beings have the chance to exercise responsibility, in something like the way God does. They make decisions for their lives and thereby grow in personal maturity. It has sometimes been suggested that angels do not have this capacity but are programmed to live in accordance with God’s purpose, but Genesis 6 suggests this is not the case. Heavenly beings other than God also exercise responsibility in this way. The difference between them and humanity is that (as Gen 6 says) all humanity make bad choices, whereas the heavenly world is divided into beings who work for God and beings who work against God. Creating other beings has thus compromised God’s sovereignty in heaven as on earth. What happens in heaven and on earth is not what God wanted or planned.

God has not wholly refrained from sovereign involvement in the world. The very description of God’s bringing the world into being as an act of “creation” affirms God’s sovereign power. The detailed picture in Genesis 1 makes the point in a series of other ways. The God of the First Testament has a control over events that the head of a Middle Eastern pantheon did not possess. When Adam and Eve, Cain, and the heavenly beings ignore the limits God placed on them, God indeed intervenes in their lives and destiny. God does not intervene to stop them making decisions involving rebellion, violence or transgression of boundaries, but does to set limits to the consequences of their acts.

God thus continues to exercise sovereignty, but it is not a sovereignty that makes everything or even most things that happen in the world into what God wants. God’s sovereignty is like that of a prison governor or a parent of teenage children. A prison governor remains in control of the prison during a riot, in the sense of being able to set limits to what happens there. Parents retain some power in relation to their teenage children, not in being able to force them to make decisions of which the parents approve, but in setting boundaries to the behavior they will tolerate or imposing financial sanctions on them or in the end requiring them to leave if they ignore these boundaries. Thus God expelled Adam and Eve from the garden and thereby made it impossible for them to go on to eat of the other sacramental tree. God marked Cain so that no one would kill him. And God now determines to destroy humanity.

It is the equivalent of throwing the children out of the house. Our default metaphor in speaking of such acts is to see them as God’s judgment, but this is not the First Testament story’s regular way of portraying such acts. In the prophets, the “and now” that God speaks to Cain will become more characteristic of the way God speaks, as a judge. But when the Torah explicitly speaks of God “judging” (šāpaṭ) it refers to adjudicating or acting in deliverance, not punishing. God is now feeling the pain and frustration associated with being a mother or a gardener.

The children have not turned out as their mother hoped, and their punishment is a devastating version of the punishment parents might inflict on children, not the kind a judge imposes with coolness and impartiality. If destruction seems too devastating an action, inconceivable for God as a mother (cf. Hos 11), then we may note the way the devastation is expressed. God will “blot them out” (māḥâ; Gen 6:7; 7:4, 23). Elsewhere this word suggests not merely “exterminate” but “obliterate from the memory” (e.g., Deut 9:14; 29:20 [MT 19]). That is what a mother might well feel she wants to do when her children have so hurt her. Obliterating the memory is to obliterate the pain.

To put it the other way, the garden has not produced the fruit the gardener looked for, and the gardener therefore decides to ruin, ruin it (Gen 6:13, 17). The world is ruined, because humanity has ruined it (cf. Gen 6:11–12), so God intends to ruin it. God’s action corresponds to what God finds in the world, confirming how things are. God makes the world go quickly to the new destination that humanity has inexorably set before it (but perhaps there is then the possibility of starting again).

Both the aggrieved parent and the disappointed gardener are images Isaiah uses for God’s relationship with Israel (Is 1:2–6; 5:1–7). Jeremiah 18 adds the suggestion that God is a potter who has tried to shape a pot but has found it did not turn out the way the potter hoped. In fact it was “ruined” (Jer 18:4). This image has appeared in Genesis in the description of God “shaping” Adam. The potter therefore destroys the pot and starts again. To put it yet another way, the sovereignty over the great deep that God exercised at the Beginning is now exercised in a destructive rather than a constructive way. The separating of the waters above from the waters below is reversed, and the confining of the waters so that they cannot threaten the land is undone (Gen 7:11; cf. Gen 1:2–10). The catastrophe is an act of un-creation. Yet it comes about by means of rain (Gen 7:12). There is nothing supranatural about this event. Human beings experienced extraordinary ordinary events and in them recognized God’s hand.

3.5 Grace and Exemption

“But Noah found favor in Yhwh’s eyes” (Gen 6:8). Again Yhwh acts in linear sequence. Excepting someone from the destruction was not part of the intention formulated in Genesis 6:5–7, the emotional response of a grieved spirit. God made a decision and then modified it in the direction of mercy. That fits a pattern that will recur in the story of Sodom, of Israel at Sinai, and elsewhere, often because an intercessor prevails on Yhwh to modify a tough decision. Here there is no intercessor, but having punishment as second rather than first nature makes Yhwh capable of modifying tough decisions without necessarily requiring pressure from outside. The fact that Yhwh responds to such pressure constitutes an encouragement to intercession, but the fact that Yhwh can generate such modifications without being urged to do so constitutes an encouragement not to feel constrained by possible limitations within Yhwh’s own character, as if Yhwh might be hard to persuade.

In analytic, nonnarrative terms, we might infer from Genesis 6 that theologically there was a need to take account both of the necessity to punish and of the necessity to pursue the original creation project. Destroying most but excepting a small number is a way of satisfying both considerations.[307]  But this could have been expressed in narrative terms without portraying God first as reacting and then as modifying the decision. It is thus by choice that Genesis makes the point in a linear narrative statement. In Gilgamesh, the exemption of Utnapishtim from death in the flood comes about because one god demurs from the decision of the other gods. In the First Testament, tensions within deity can and must be located within Yhwh, who could have a change of mind about creating humanity in the first place, and could then modify a decision about how to retain control of the situation. In Gilgamesh, discussion among the gods eventually leads to agreement about what ought now to happen. Later in the First Testament, human beings become part of this conversation, though not in Genesis 6.

Divine Grace and Human Faithfulness

“Now Noah was a faithful man, a whole man among his contemporaries. He walked with God” (Gen 6:9). “Faithful” (ṣaddîq) designates people who live in right relationship with God and with their community and in accordance with its standards. “Whole” (tāmîm) designates them as complete people, their whole lives lived God’s way. “Walking with God” spells out the implications of faithfulness and wholeness, in the kind of relationship of mutuality and friendship that Enoch enjoyed.

Since LXX, translations have rendered ṣaddîq by words such as “righteous” or “just,” but ṣaddîq is an essentially communal and relational word, like ṣĕdāqâ.[308]  When Yhwh is ṣaddîq to Israel, specifically in restoring the people from exile (Is 45:21), Yhwh is not being just but faithful. Translations have then rendered tāmîm by a negative, as suggesting “faultless” or “blameless.” In connoting wholeness or integrity it goes much beyond that in pointing to a positive virtue, not merely the absence of vices or shortcomings. This wholeness is a moral category, and even more a religious one, not a psychological or therapeutic one. Living whole with Yhwh implies living one’s entire life (e.g., one’s inner and outer life) Yhwh’s way. It is God’s expectation of Abraham (Gen 17:1), though ironically, it will be Abimelech who will claim such integrity in his relationship with Abraham when Abraham seems to lack this quality, and Abimelech will have his integrity affirmed (Gen 20:5–6). Given David’s far greater faults, it might seem even more ironic that David later claims to have lived with integrity in relation to Yhwh (2 Sam 22:24), but Yhwh does confirm that he was such a person (1 Kings 9:4). It is one of the ways David fulfils the Abrahamic vision. Seeing David as a man of integrity puts us on the track of a key element in the nature of the integrity Yhwh looks for, and establishes that it is indeed a religious category, a matter of serious commitment to Yhwh rather than to any other deity. For all David’s faults, he could hold his head high and be held up as an example in this realm. So Israel is called to be whole with Yhwh its God and not to compromise that integrity by following the ways of other religions (Deut 18:13; cf. Josh 24:14).

Do these qualities explain why Noah found favor in Yhwh’s eyes (Gen 6:8)? Genesis leaves unexplained the relationship between these statements, but a number of considerations make it unlikely that Noah’s exceptional character is the reason for his being exempted from the disaster. First, there is the word “favor” (ḥēn), often rendered “grace” (so [309]  here).[310]  “Favor” and “grace” have similar meaning but we use one in a secular context and one in a religious context. The First Testament holds everyday life and religious life together by using the same word with a secular and a religious meaning. The essence of favor or grace is that it cannot be explained by its recipient’s deserve. If Noah had “earned” God’s grace ([311] ), grace would not be what he had earned. Noah “found” grace; or as my teacher Alec Motyer liked to put it, “grace found Noah.” Subsequent occurrences of the phrase indeed suggest that when one experiences someone’s grace or favor, it arises out of the other person. It cannot be satisfactorily explained in terms of one’s own deserve (e.g., Gen 18:3; 19:19; 30:27). The exception that proves the rule appears in the thinking of Jacob (Gen 32:5 [MT 6]; 33:8, 10, 15). It is hardly surprising that he should fail to grasp this point. Perhaps he eventually does so (Gen 47:29), though the idea that grace can be earned does recur (e.g., Deut 24:1). Nevertheless, usage does not predispose us to reckon that Genesis implies Noah earned God’s grace.

Second, the sentence order suggests that if there is a causal link between finding God’s grace and being ṣaddîq, it is grace that issues in that moral character rather than the other way round. The further reference to Noah in Genesis 7:1 may have the same implication: Yhwh there bids Noah get in the box on the basis of having designated him to be the sole ṣaddîq in his generation.[312]  This fits the First Testament’s understanding of God’s relationship with Israel. God will remind Israel that there was nothing especially impressive that made Yhwh become attached to Israel. The attachment emerged from within Yhwh. Israel’s obedience to Yhwh is to result from that attachment. It does not generate it (Deut 7:7–11).[313]

God’s Covenant with Noah

To put it another way, at this moment God establishes a covenant with Noah (Gen 6:18). After the catastrophe God will establish a broader covenant (Gen 9:8–17), but here God speaks of a particular commitment to Noah that is the basis for his escaping the catastrophe and will enable God to extend this commitment to other beings on the basis of their association with Noah.

As with the notion of “finding grace,” it is just possible to read the covenant with Noah as issuing from Noah’s being an exception to the general rule about the badness of humanity. This would fit with God’s subsequent instruction to Noah to get into his floating box, if God does there base this on the fact that Noah is ṣaddîq (Gen 7:1). Perhaps we may say that his character constitutes a necessary though not a sufficient condition for God to make a covenant with him, though even that may be to say too much. When covenant is extended to creation as a whole, the background is the invariable badness of humanity (Gen 8:21), and the covenant requires no human response in order for it to become effective. Like the act of creation itself, it is an extraordinary commitment on God’s part that emerges from God’s own being. There will be later covenants of a more mutual kind that require a human response if they are to become effective, but the covenant that follows the flood is utterly one-sided. The same is likely true of this covenant before the flood. God does not even state the matter in such a way as to imply that building the box is a condition for the covenant to become effective, though in a formal sense that is true.

Yhwh thereby sets the standard for human covenants. We usually think in terms of human covenants providing the model for understanding divine covenants, and epistemologically this is right—as we understand divine fatherhood through the experience of human fatherhood. But substantially, divine fatherhood is prior (cf. Eph 3:14–15), and so is divine covenanting (see Gen 6:18; 9:1–17; 15:18; 17; for human covenanting, see Gen 14:13; 21:25–32; 26:26–31; 31:43–54). “Relationships between God and man prefigure the proper positions of ruler and ruled.”[314]

So for reasons that emerge from Yhwh and/or from Noah, Yhwh determines to exempt Noah from the punishment of the world as a whole, and tells him how to escape. The ruin of the world will come through a huge flood, so the escape will involve the construction of a floating box in which Noah and his family can take refuge. They and a cross section of all other living things can then become the beginning of a new attempt to fulfill the creation project. “Take plenty of food,” God adds, practically, and nuances this to make clear that eating meat is now allowed, for Noah is to take seven pairs of animals that may be eaten, in addition to the single pairs of animals that may not be eaten. Although the latter are ones that will subsequently be designated defiling (ṭāmēʾ), they are still part of God’s (once) good creation, to be preserved for the coming new start. Their belonging to the groups that defile does not mean they are somehow linked with sin.

So Noah goes into his box, and Yhwh shuts the door to keep him safe (Gen 7:16). Then, when the rain has covered the entire earth and killed all other living beings, “God thought about Noah” (Gen 8:1). Translations conventionally render zākar “remember,” but this has several shortcomings. The verb can apply to the future, not just the past; it suggests a deliberate act, rather than an apparently accidental one; and it implies that action will follow. When a person is said to think about someone or something, it implies they will then act, as Joseph hoped the cupbearer would (Gen 40:14). When God is said to think about someone or something, this is preliminary to acting on their behalf, preventing a flood from recurring, or rescuing Lot, or enabling Rachel to conceive (Gen 9:15; 19:29; 30:22). Conversely, thinking about people’s wrongdoing may be preliminary to acting against them (e.g., Hos 8:13; 9:9). Having thought about Noah, once more God acts extraordinarily but via nature, making a wind blow over the world and thereby causing the water to dry up with monumental speed. Again we recall the creation, this time the supernatural wind of Genesis 1:2. Once more the deep is contained and the waters of the heavens put back under constraint (Gen 8:2). The box comes to rest. Soon Noah has evidence that nature is beginning to recover. Again, a fresh olive leaf (Gen 8:11) is a natural sign, but an extraordinary one. Once more the creation project can begin. Noah and his family and the other living beings can begin to be fruitful (Gen 8:15–19).

Deliverance and Worship

Noah’s response is to worship. His sacrifice is a whole offering (ʿôlâ), all of which goes up (ʿālâ) to God in smoke. As such its focus lies neither on sin (it is not a sin offering) nor on fellowship (other sacrifices involved the offerer sharing the animal), but simply on giving to God. The scene is a happier version of that in Genesis 4, and makes us ask whether we might have expected some such scene in the garden, or whether the eating of the forbidden fruit short-circuited the sequence of events that might have unfolded there. When God has been good, the instinctive response is to worship, and the instinctive form worship takes is sacramental. We have seen that the living tree was designed to be God’s sacramental means of conveying life. Making offerings is the corresponding form of human response to God. In due course there will be worship putting more emphasis on words, but such worship does not involve the whole person like sacrament and sacrifice, which give expression to the physical nature of humanity as God created it.

The scene also anticipates one that will recur. When Abraham arrives in the land where the promise of blessing is to be fulfilled and Yhwh appears to him there, he builds an altar (Gen 12:7). When he reaches the center of the land, he builds an altar, naming Yhwh’s name over this land (Gen 12:8). He does the same when he reaches the southern part of the land and completes his symbolic entering into the fullness of the promise (Gen 13:18). When he has a son, he builds an altar, and it becomes a place where Yhwh reaffirms the promise of blessing (Gen 22:9–18). Isaac himself builds another altar even further south when God reaffirms the promise of blessing (Gen 26:25). When Jacob makes his safe reentry into the promised land, he builds an altar, and later another to commemorate Yhwh’s faithfulness to him (Gen 33:20; 35:1–7). There is a link between Yhwh’s blessing and Yhwh’s altar. The building of an altar recognizes Yhwh’s goodness in fulfilling the promise of blessing, names Yhwh’s name over the land Yhwh gives, and opens up the possibility of further fulfillment of the promise. All these associations belong to Noah’s altar-building. “Noah’s act of worship … marks the transition in God’s heart from pain to promise.”[315]

So the whole animal is roasted in order that the whole goes up to Yhwh, who likes the smell of it. It is the boldest of the many bold anthropomorphisms of the First Testament gospel story. It still contrasts with the account of the hungry gods swarming round the sacrifice like flies in Gilgamesh and Atrahasis. In this sense Genesis demythologizes the Middle Eastern way of thinking. Nevertheless Yhwh is indeed someone who plants a garden, shapes things like a potter, strolls in the evening breeze, asks questions to discover what has happened, gets hurt by people and likes the smell of roast meat. The First Testament’s understanding of God distances itself in some ways from that of other Middle Eastern peoples, yet it resists the temptation to ricochet too far from the latter. We are persons like God, and therefore God can be portrayed as a person like us. The First Testament does not regard being material as morally inferior to being ethereal, and does not see great risk in portraying God in physical terms. If grief can reach the core of God’s being (Gen 6:6), it is only fair that pleasure should do so too (Gen 8:21). All this will make incarnation possible and intelligible, when God appears as a human being and enjoys food and drink, weeps and gets angry, goes for walks with people and asks questions in order to discover what people think.[316]

3.6 Realism and Pledging

Yhwh goes on to decide never again to put the earth down and never again to destroy all that lives there.[317]  The verb (qālal) is not the one for “curse” used earlier (ʾārar),[318]  but in effect God is now withdrawing the curse uttered after Adam and Eve’s disobedience.

God does so on an odd basis. It is because from our youth onward the human mind is inclined toward what is bad (Gen 8:21). Human badness was implicitly the reason for imposing the curse, and explicitly for bringing the flood (Gen 6:5–7, 11–13), so how can it now be the basis for withdrawing the curse and making a commitment not to destroy the earth again? Some translations thus change “because” to “although.” But the word is the very common particle ki, which regularly means “because.” If it ever means “although,” that is a very rare usage. “Although” would make good sense here, but NRSV’s “because” makes more profound sense. The story has demonstrated both that humanity deserves to be cursed, and that cursing gets no one anywhere. God has tried cursing, and it has not worked. God therefore tries virtually destroying the world. But obviously that has the disadvantage of abandoning the entire project begun with creation, so it will not do as a long-term solution. God will have to think of something else. In the meantime, human wickedness just has to be accepted. Humanity will continue to be characterized by violence. “The change occurs in Yahweh’s heart, not in the human heart.”[319]

Once more narrative makes it possible to try out different solutions to a problem. One appropriate response to human wickedness is destruction. Another is to reconcile oneself to it. Neither can be faulted. Or rather, the first is justified and appropriate, but the second leaves open the possibility of fulfilling that project, so the story allows for both. Scarily (or not), the consideration that finally inclines God to the latter rather than the former is his thinking about Noah (and the animals) (Gen 8:1) and smelling Noah’s sacrifice (of the animals) (Gen 8:20–21).[320]  Noah has turned out to be a good guy, and he has responded to his deliverance with worship and symbolic self-offering. Perhaps all this happens only because Yhwh’s favor turned Noah into someone ṣaddîq. But if so, that shows that Yhwh’s project could come to fruition.

Jože Krašovec suggests that human righteousness is a key factor in causing divine forbearance to prevail over punishment in Genesis 1–11: Adam and Eve’s behavior after their disobedience suggests they repented; the same is true of Cain; it is “self-evident” that Noah found favor with Yhwh because he was righteous; and the Noah covenant is not an unconditional divine commitment but a summons to righteousness.[321]  But at each point this argument proceeds by taking points unstated in the text as key presuppositions. The story Genesis actually tells has the opposite implication. It is despite the bad inclination of the human heart, indeed because of it (Gen 8:21), that God “guarantees the intactness of the cosmic cycle on earth forever.”[322]

Original Sin

Yhwh’s description of the human mind as inclined to what is bad from youth justifies theological talk in terms of “original sin,” though the expression needs some nuancing. The expression reflects an awareness that sin is not just humanly universal but humanly inevitable. We are born into a sinful humanity, and that guarantees we are ourselves sinners. Genesis may hint that the point is better understood sociologically or environmentally than genetically. We are brought up in sinful families and sinful communities, and we are bound to share their characteristics and values. By the time human beings make decisions about right and wrong for themselves, whenever we think that happens, they have already been trained how to make them, and that “how” includes a sinful aspect as well as a right aspect (this is not to imply that we merely follow the example of others, so that in theory we might not have done so). Neither Genesis nor Romans implies that all humanity needs to have descended from one original pair of human beings in order for original sin to “work.” The Christian gospel will be spread by relationships and by word of mouth rather than by genetics, and sin can naturally have spread the same way. Nor does Genesis or Romans imply that original sin is something to do with sexual relationships, though the relationships of husbands and wives are affected by sin at least as much as other relationships.

By implication, perhaps, the inevitability of human badness is also the reason why God determines never again to attack all that lives on the earth. The verb is now nākâ (hiphil), the verb used of Cain’s being protected from attack (Gen 4:15). Yhwh will do much attacking in the story that follows, though not in Genesis; Egypt will be the first object of Yhwh’s attack (Ex 3:20; 9:15; 12:12–13, 29). Perhaps the restraint through Genesis is a sign of Yhwh’s commitment to nonviolence in recognition of the fact that it may get no one anywhere, even if Yhwh’s eventual resort to selective violence is a sign of the recognition that nonviolence may also get no one anywhere. Nevertheless, from now on Yhwh is committed to keeping the world going. There will be no more worldwide act of un-creation. The structure of cosmic order written into the creation will stand secure from God’s suspending it. The alternations of sowing and harvest, cold and warmth, summer and winter (i.e., dryness and rain), day and night will continue to the very End. We will need to consider the implications of the prophets’ declaring that the cataclysm will indeed then recur. But Genesis has no eschatology in the sense of an expectation that someday history will see some radical break, after which life will be very different if it continues at all. What the words of Genesis 8:22 expect from the future is “the absence of the abnormal.” The future will be an extension of the present.[323]

The Genesis flood story thus affirms that God has faced the monumental obstacle to the creation project constituted by the negative inclination of the human mind, has therefore thought of abandoning this creation project, but has determined not to do so.

The story offers another gospel promise, one related to a theme common to many flood stories. It starts from the question that also underlies the creation stories, the question how secure and stable the world is, and on what basis we can assume it is secure and stable. Even if the world was created stable, our place in God’s world might be vulnerable to a subsequent change of mind on God’s part. God could decide that creating the world was a bad idea. Natural catastrophes such as floods raise the question of the security of the world as our home. Films ask whether the kind of big bang that started off the world might also finish it: Perhaps a meteor will collide with it and shatter it or send it spinning catastrophically into some other orbit. Genesis dramatizes that possibility and declares that God has determined this will not happen.

When the Gilgamesh story relates how the gods bring a flood on the earth, it gives no reasons for their decision, and in due course implies there was no very good reason. Perhaps the possibility of the gods’ acting thus is simply the obverse of their creating the world. God has the power to give life and the power to take it away (cf. 1 Sam 2:6), and perhaps we can no more presume to know the reason for the latter than for the former. Against that background, the significance of the Genesis flood story is to acknowledge that God could decide to destroy the whole world, for one reason or another, and to affirm that actually God will not do so. There is not such a balanced relationship between the capacity to give life and to take it away. Yhwh indeed has equally the power to do either, but not the will. Giving life is natural to Yhwh, whereas killing is not.

The Reinstatement of Blessing

Withdrawing the curse, God therefore reinstates the blessing and repeats to Noah and his family the commission from Genesis 1. Atrahasis has the gods determining to control human population after the flood by making many women childless and making others go through the pain of losing their babies. Gilgamesh has its Noah figure, Utnapishtim, and his wife taken off to live a life of immortality. Genesis has God setting Noah’s family on the path of fulfilling the creation project in the world.

One way of fitting together the indications that the world is billions of years old with the Genesis story’s time scale of thousands of years involves hypothesizing a great catastrophe after the original creation. On this theory Genesis 1:2 tells of the earth’s becoming an empty void, and Genesis 1:3 onward tells of its re-creation.[324]  While this is an arbitrary translation of Genesis 1:2, Genesis does indeed say that an original creation was followed by a great catastrophe, after which God took up the creation project again. It is the flood that is the great catastrophe, and it is the blessing of and commission to Noah that constitutes God’s taking up the creation project again.

So once again God bids people be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. That is newly necessary. But the subsequent terms of God’s commission to Noah are different from those of Genesis 1, presumably because they take account of the reality of human inclinations. Instead of a commission to “master” and “subjugate,” there is a promise(?) that the animal world will be characterized by a “terrified fear” of humanity, into whose power it is delivered (Gen 9:2).[325]  If the subjugating mastery of Genesis 1 was less threatening than it might have sounded, this is not true of the terrified fear of Genesis 9. The reason presumably lies in what follows. The entire animal world is now to provide food for humanity. The story of life East of Eden has already probably presupposed that people ate meat. Such eating is now divinely permitted. Creation is renewed, but this does not involve a wholly clean start. The animals’ terrified fear is not an inner emotion. Many animals are not afraid of human beings, and the fear may work in the opposite direction. But they often behave as if afraid: They run or swim or fly away from human beings, as if recognizing their danger. And objectively, terrified fear would be an appropriate animal emotion, because human beings are a deathly threat to animals. From now on the shepherds of the world will indeed feed off the sheep and not merely feed the sheep (Ezek 34).

There is one qualification on God’s handing over of the animal world. Human beings are not to eat flesh with its life, its blood, in it (Gen 9:4). They are not to eat living animals, or animals that are barely dead, with the lifeblood still running from them. The point here is not that there is something inherently sacred about blood. It is that blood is a key symbol of life. God does not speak of “flesh with its blood, that is its life” but “flesh with its life, that is its blood.” When blood flows out, life departs. One of the basic distinctions God wrote into the nature of the world as Genesis 1 portrays it, and that God expects Israel to maintain, is the distinction between life and death. To eat a living animal or an animal whose blood is still running out is to eat something that in its own being at this moment inevitably obscures that distinction as it makes its journey from one state to the other. The act of eating such an animal particularly confuses this distinction, for eating is a means to life.

The need to allow for the bad inclinations of the human mind is even clearer in the final new comment. While human beings may kill animals, they may not kill each other. Cain and Lamech must not become examples for the rest of humanity. God will “require your lifeblood” from a person who kills another, or even from an animal that kills a human being (Gen 9:5). The last requirement shows that God’s framework of thinking is not the framework of justice. There is no thought for the degree of “responsibility” that can be attributed to the being that has shed blood. The problem about killing a human being is that it involves a serious disruption of the order of reality in the world, and that order needs to be mended. Balance has to be restored.

The words that follow put it another way (Gen 9:6). The problem about shedding human blood is not that this infringes the sanctity of human life. Human life is not intrinsically sacred. But it is indirectly sacred, because of the fact that human beings are Godlike. So attacking a human being is like attacking God, and it is because human beings are Godlike that attacks on human beings cannot go unnoticed. Evidently humanity is just as Godlike as it was when first created. God’s image in humanity is not lost, or even defaced (cf. Jas 3:9). Humanity is still called to represent God in the world by controlling it on God’s behalf.

Genesis does not explain how God will require a killer’s lifeblood.[326]  The point about these commands is not to set up something like a law. They are categorical commands. God will see to it that disobedience to them is appropriately treated.

A Covenant with Humanity

God’s extraordinary, irrational commitment is then taken further, in the establishing of a covenant with Noah, his descendants and the other living beings. A covenant (bĕrît) is a commitment undertaken with some formality. By not speaking of the relationship between God and the first human beings as a covenant,[327]  Genesis has perhaps implied that there was no need for formally binding commitments before the time of human disobedience and divine punishment. Those events have imperiled the relationship on both sides. God cannot trust human beings, and human beings cannot trust God. So now God makes a formal and solemn binding commitment to humanity.

This first covenant in Scripture is a pledge made by God. It is quite one-sided. Later, God and Israel will make mutual commitments. Covenants will be two-sided. Later still, human beings will make one-sided pledges of themselves to God. But here at the beginning the commitment is wholly God’s. God “establishes” it without human cooperation (Gen 9:9, 11, 17; cf. Gen 17:7, 19, 21). God simply “gives” the covenant (Gen 9:12; cf. Gen 17:2). Noah and the other recipients of God’s pledge contribute absolutely nothing to the covenant relationship. They do not even have to believe in it. It will still be a reality. Out of God’s own being comes the one-sided pledge that there will be no more world-denying catastrophes. It is a covenant that will stand forever (Gen 9:16). Given that Genesis 3:15 was not in origin the first gospel preaching in Scripture, arguably Genesis 9:12–16 is that.[328]  Barth’s comment coheres with this view, that the way the “new covenant” in Jeremiah 31:31–34 “becomes a perfect covenant” is by its coming to a climax with a promise of forgiveness.[329]

A covenant has a sign—a ring is the sign of a marriage covenant. It is the sign that constitutes the formal self-binding in a covenant. So God points to the rainbow that can appear in the clouds after rain and declares that it is indeed a bow, but a bow that has no arrow, so that it cannot function as a weapon, and it has been turned into a thing of great beauty. The image of a warrior god wielding a bow is common in the Middle East, and Habakkuk 3:9 describes Yhwh as the victorious warrior letting loose all the arrows in his quiver. The rainbow is the bow that God has laid down and will not pick up again. The bow will appear in the sky as a reminder of this commitment. Perhaps it will act as a reminder to earthly living beings, but certainly it will act thus to God, for it will remind God of this covenant (Gen 9:16).

The Noah covenant “restores and secures the creation for the benefit of the creatures, animal and human.”[330]  In Genesis’s day there was no prospect of human beings themselves destroying the cosmic order. That possibility has emerged only with modernity. One great threat is nuclear catastrophe, but now we are aware of more gradual ways of achieving it. Only today I have read a newspaper report of “the rapid disintegration of an Antarctic ice shelf” the size of a county, whose speed and size has “shocked” scientists from the British Antarctic Survey about the rapidity of global warming. The headline reads “Warm World Falling Apart.” God’s commitment to refuse to act in pointless punishment does not guarantee that God will stop human beings’ suspending the order of creation. While the promise that stands until the End may imply this, we would be unwise to rely on it. It would be better to give up action that imperils that order. More profoundly, it is an act of extraordinary perversity to be willing to risk ruining the earth to which God made this unequivocal commitment. God’s covenant does not guarantee that humanity cannot destroy the earth, but it promises that God will not, and it invites humanity to associate itself with God’s commitment.

The sign of the rainbow will in due course be the guarantee of that commitment. In itself Genesis offers no grounds for believing this promise. It is the story yet to unfold that will suggest some grounds. The people who read the story know that the God of whom Genesis speaks is one who intervened in the midst of cataclysmic terror in Israel’s life in Egypt and went on to take the people through a flood that overwhelmed many other people. That experience makes it possible to view as more than whistling in the wind this promise that flood will not overwhelm the earth.

3.7 Abuse and Strife

So how will things turn out this time? Immediately events proceed to justify God’s gloomy conclusion about how bad things are with human beings (Gen 8:21).

It is not merely that they willfully pervert things. Like Eve, Cain and the women in Genesis 6, Noah finds life trips him up. Like Cain, he is an agriculturist, “a man of the soil.” Like Adam in relation to the animal creation, he has the heady privilege of exploring the wondrous variety of the growing world that God brought into being. He is then the first man of the soil to grow grapes,[331]  and somehow comes not only to eat them but also to crush them and leave them for a while and then drink their liquor. Perhaps this is a way he comes to fulfill his father’s hopes that he will bring humanity relief from its toil (Gen 5:29; cf. Ps 104:15). Perhaps the translations have no business importing a negative value judgment in describing Noah as “drunk”; perhaps he was just “merry,” like Joseph’s brothers (Gen 43:34, where the verb šākar recurs).[332]

As Adam was invisible when Eve was having her tutorial with the snake in the garden before she tried its fruit, so Mrs. Noah is absent when Noah tries the results of his work in the vineyard.[333]  After drinking alone he lies naked in his tent. Perhaps there was nothing wrong in that, too. But enter his middle son, Ham. For the second time we are told he is the father of Canaan, and we know we are reading a story that speaks to later Israel. Ham “saw the nakedness of his father” (Gen 9:22). While that might have its literal meaning, elsewhere such phrases usually denote having sex (see esp. Lev 18; 20), so it more likely indicates an act of incest. Ham reported it to his brothers, who hastened to cover things up, but Noah tells the whole world by declaring a public curse on Ham’s son. It is the only humanly-imposed curse in the Torah, and one through which the sin of the father (if he had sinned) will be visited on the children. Further, this curse constitutes the first words we have heard this faithful and active man utter. It is an inauspicious way to enter the world conversationally.[334]

Family as a Troubled and Troubling Place

In allusive fashion the story raises a range of questions: questions about fatherly authority,[335]  male-male relationships[336]  and sexual abuse,[337]  as well as about relations between Israel and Canaan,[338]  and by tortuous logic it has been used to justify the domination of white people over black people.[339]  The story’s allusiveness indicates that its main interest does not lie in what actually happened. As in the stories of the snake and Eve, and of the heavenly beings and the human women, and even Cain and Abel, something odd and difficult to understand happens, and has terrible consequences.

The event takes place within the family. In keeping with preceding stories, the family is both a place of great potential blessing and a place of great potential trouble. Genesis declines to idealize or to demonize family, garden or city. All are contexts where God’s blessing can be worked out and where the curse also threatens to have its way. The nature of God’s blessing, with its focus on increase, makes the family of key importance to the working out of God’s project.

One might take a suspicious stance in relation to the requirement expressed elsewhere that people honor their parents, with the maledictions declared on people who slight them (e.g., Ex 20:12; 21:17; Lev 20:9; Prov 20:20; Ezek 22:7). It was fathers who wrote the books containing such texts. Yet the texts speak for mothers, too, who were not involved in this writing but were involved with fathers in the working out of God’s blessing. The relationship of parents and children is of crucial significance for the fulfillment of God’s purpose. Dishonoring parents and abusing children imperils the one structure upon which the fulfillment of that purpose depends. The content of Noah’s curse shows that. It comes on Ham not merely for the sake of some purely individual offense, but because the act imperils God’s purpose in a way parallel to Eve’s, and the same is true if part of the guilt, like the curse, is actually Noah’s own.

The event and the curse add an extra dimension to the spoiling of human relations that began with Eve and Adam. Their deed spoiled the relationship between wives and husbands, while their son’s deed spoiled relations between siblings. Noah and/or Ham’s deed spoils vertical relationships in the family, relationships between father and son, in a way that means this disruption will also have an effect on Ham’s son. (I presume we are to continue to see this series of parabolic stories as occupying parallel places in a montage. The story does not suggest that first the marriage relationship is spoiled, then the sibling relationship, then the parental relationship.) The spoiling of the marriage relationship will be further illustrated especially in the story of Abraham and Sarah, the spoiling of brotherly relationships in the story of Jacob and Esau, and the spoiling of family relationships as a whole in the story of Joseph, his father and his brothers.

The Curse on Canaan

Like the temptations that came from a strange creature in Yhwh’s garden, and the hurtful difference in Yhwh’s response to two men’s offerings, and the strange interest of heavenly beings in human women, experiences for which life has not prepared them bring trouble to Noah and Ham. But Ham is not a child (he is already married), and he is responsible for what he does with the experience, and he finds himself under a curse for his failure. It will not only consume his relationship with his father and affect his relationship with his son, who is hardly going to find it easy to honor his own father when he becomes aware of the price he has to pay for his father’s wrongdoing. It will also consume Ham’s relationship with his brothers, and his son’s relationship with his uncles and his brothers—his immediate family and his extended family. A man will now find himself the servant (ʿebed), indeed the lowest servant, of his brothers and his uncles (Gen 9:25). It is the first occurrence of ʿebed in the First Testament, and a marker that another aspect of patriarchy has arrived. In this context [340]  is doubtless right to assume that the word denotes a family servant rather than a slave or a state serf (a pais, not a doulos). It is the position the prodigal son would have settled for—but his father would not allow him to be confined to that position in his own family.

There may be a little good news for Canaan in the blessing that accompanies Noah’s curse. In [341]  this requires more inference, for Noah simply declares, “Blessed be Yhwh, God of Shem, and Canaan is to be a servant to them” (Gen 9:26). But at least Canaan lives in a realm where Yhwh is blessed, and that must place some limits on the gloom of the curse placed on him. His position is like that of Abraham’s servant in relation to his master (Gen 24). The [342]  perhaps extends the good news by repointing the line to read, “Blessed by the LORD my God be Shem.” Although Noah says Canaan is cursed and is to live as a servant, that nevertheless means he is to continue to live in the realm of the blessing, precisely because it is Shem whom he is to serve. He is not cast out, like Cain. The story will show how Canaan and his descendants do form part of the line in which the blessing continues to work itself out (Gen 10).

So the filling of the earth in accordance with God’s commission happens. A lengthy genealogy of Noah’s descendants parallels the earlier genealogies, another long list of names punctuated only by occasional glosses throwing light on individual entries in the list. But the reference to Canaan has prepared us for the fact that this list of individuals is also a list of peoples. Japheth’s descendants begin with Gomer and Magog, peoples to the north and northwest of Palestine. Ham’s descendants begin with Sudan and Egypt, peoples to the south. Shem’s descendants begin with Elam and Asshur, peoples to the north and east. While not naming every people in the Middle East, together the list embraces the world of the nations in its entirety as it would have been known to Israel. From Noah’s three sons the entire world is peopled (Gen 9:19), so in them the story takes a step nearer its hearers’ world as a whole. Noah’s three sons are the progenitors of the races of the world in their diversity: the word nations first comes in Genesis 10, six times.

The list makes no mention of Israel itself, as if Israel were the focal point of the nations’ story.[343]  The nations have significance in themselves. The story again hints that, if anything, Israel will exist for their sake rather than they for Israel’s.[344]  The list includes Israel’s immediate neighbors, countries a little further away, major world powers and mysterious peoples on a far horizon. All the peoples of the world have a common origin (cf. Acts 17:26). There is a family relationship between them. The strife that spoils their life is strife within the family. The drawing of distinctions that marginalizes or attempts to dehumanize some nations or peoples or races denies the reality of this family relationship.

The Development of Nations

So God’s blessing expressed itself not only in the private life and flourishing of families, but also in the public life and flourishing of nations. Genesis hints that the diversity of natures and cultures issues from the blessing of the restored creation, excluding both abstract internationalism and particularist nationalism.[345]  But this flourishing takes place within the skewed setting of Noah’s family, against the background of that grim event within a family’s life. It will not be surprising if this affects international history and international relations, and if God needs to take further action if the creation purpose for the whole world is to be fulfilled. Like art and technology, the life of nations thus has ambiguous theological and ethical status. The distinctive paragraph about Nimrod (Gen 10:8–12) points to that. He was a “first.”

Like modern progress, ancient progress is an ambiguous affair. The verb “to be first” (ḥālal hiphil or hophal) has appeared a number of times in Genesis. It was initially used not to refer to the people who first built cities and developed technology and art (Gen 4:17–24), but to the people who began the worship of Yhwh (Gen 4:26), which might seem a more significant “first.” Next were the people who first multiplied on the earth (Gen 6:1). It was a sign of blessing having its way, yet these people thus provoked the heavenly beings to take their daughters. It then referred to Noah as the first to cultivate grapes and make wine (Gen 9:20), with those very ambiguous results. It will soon refer to the builders of Babel: What else will they be the first to do (Gen 11:6)?

Here the verb refers to Nimrod as the first gibbôr, the first strong man or hero or warrior. There were gibbōrîm before the flood, of course, but those were primeval days. In Genesis 10 we are moving to the verge of known history, to a story about peoples within Israel’s world. Nimrod is the first historical hero. He is a hero “before Yhwh” (Gen 10:9). Does this mean he is under Yhwh’s regard, Abraham’s wish for Ishmael (Gen 17:18)? Or is he in Yhwh’s full awareness, like the coming flood (Gen 6:13)? Or is his life open to Yhwh, as Abraham was challenged to be (Gen 17:1)? Or is he at Yhwh’s disposal, like the land before Lot (Gen 13:9)? Or is he a hero in Yhwh’s estimation, like Noah as someone ṣaddîq (Gen 7:1)? Or is he a hero in Yhwh’s presence, like Isaac blessing his son (Gen 27:7)?

He is a hero at hunting (Gen 10:9). It is itself an ambiguous commendation. Is Nimrod brilliant at mastering wild animals, in keeping with God’s intention for humanity? Or is Nimrod brilliant at catching wild animals for food? Is he thus brilliant at doing something that human beings were not ideally supposed to do? That is the significance of the other references to hunting in Genesis, where Esau is the Bible’s other great hunter. After the flood people do have permission to hunt (cf. Lev 17:13),[346]  but it is a worrying focus for a man’s sense of achievement. Presumably not all the animals Nimrod caught were destined for the game park. Will Nimrod confine his killer instinct to wild animals? He is also the first king in the First Testament (Gen 10:10), which makes this unlikely. But he is perhaps also a man who can extend his power through diplomacy: Shinar was a base from which he developed an empire (Gen 10:11–12), and that is described without military terms.

The nation’s status is more intrinsically ambiguous than the family’s. God will soon urge Abram to leave the life of the great civilization of Ur for the unfashionable obscurity of Canaan where for generations the story will focus on family life. Admittedly this family is destined to become a great nation, but it will represent a new start in the history of nationhood. It is not destined to be a nation like other nations. Only after those generations during which it will demonstrate how God relates to a family will there come a transition to an experiment with showing how God relates to a nation. The call to leave Babylon will reflect how the filling of the earth by the world of nations indeed happens under the influence of Noah’s curse as well as under the sign of Yhwh’s covenant. As a result of that curse, some of the peoples of the Middle East and Africa, such as Babylon and Egypt, will struggle against the domination of other peoples of the Middle East, such as Assyria and Aram. Meanwhile, European peoples such as those to the north of Palestine and across the Mediterranean get on with their life on their own. But Canaan will find itself subservient both to Shem (in the person of Israel) and Japheth (in the person of Philistia).

The City with a Tower

There is one more story to tell before the horizon narrows and God starts over in a different sense. In Genesis 11 all the peoples still have one language. The world is one. Genesis 10 has portrayed them as ethnically and politically divided and having their own local languages, so perhaps like peoples in the modern world they also have an international language that enables them to work together. Or perhaps we should read Genesis 10 and 11 alongside each other rather than linearly, like the two creation stories.[347]  The nations are on the move as a group, “on the east” (miqqedem) (Gen 11:2): the expression is the same as that used to describe the place where Yhwh had planted the garden and had located the cherubim (Gen 2:8; 3:24). Were they seeking to find their way back to the garden? If so, they failed. They halted on a plain in Shinar in Mesopotamia (cf. Dan 1:2; Zech 5:11). The geographical reference shows how, like Genesis 9–10, the story “hovers between primeval and historical event.”[348]

There they determine to build themselves a city. It is perhaps a ramshackle affair, for they have to use mud brick instead of stone, and asphalt instead of proper cement, but it is also therefore a monument to human ingenuity. And that is one of the group’s aims. They want to build a city with a tower that reaches the sky, like a Babylonian ziggurat that suggests the accessibility of deity. There is nothing new about building a city, and Genesis 4 suggests there is nothing inherently offensive about it. What is new and offensive about this city is its tower. The builders may not be able to get back to God’s garden, but perhaps they can reach God’s dwelling some other way. But whereas the overt point about a ziggurat is to honor the deity, these builders want to make a name for themselves. And they want to make sure they can stay in this one place and not be scattered all over the world. But a plain is an odd place to build a city; a hill is much safer. So the people build themselves an artificial place of security. City and name will give them security from other peoples who might want to scatter them.

Yhwh comes down to have a look at their city and their tower. It is the first time Yhwh has “come down” to earth (Gen 11:5). Apparently it was not necessary to do that to investigate what had been going on in the garden, or to talk to Cain, or to talk to Noah. But the point about the expression is that the tower is evidently not so tall that it actually reaches anywhere near where Yhwh is. Yhwh has to indulge in some condescension to reach it.

Once again there is a flashback to the garden story. There Yhwh wanted to take action to stop people reaching the tree of life. Here Yhwh decides to take action in respect to a vaguer concern: If they succeed in building their city with its tower, there will be no stopping them. “Nothing they plan to do can be thwarted” (Gen 11:6): The words constitute the opposite to the confession that Job eventually makes about Yhwh (Job 42:2).[349]  With another reminiscence of creation, we share in God’s inner reflection: “Come, let’s go down and confuse their language” (Gen 11:7; cf. Gen 1:26). Yhwh thus frustrates their aim of building a city and tower and also causes them to scatter in something more like filling the earth.

They succeed in making a name for themselves, but it is a different name from the one they sought. Their city is called Babel, because it was the place where God made a babble of their language ([350] ). Retrospectively the story also thus causes the passage about Nimrod to unravel, for “the beginning of his kingdom was Babel” (Gen 10:10). Linguistically, Babel suggests “gate of god,” but as usual, the story is not making a statement about etymology but expressing a theological judgment in a comment on a name. Somehow, these people lose the ability to communicate across the boundaries of race, politics and language, and thus to work together. They are prevented from realizing the human dream of forming one people, and they are compelled to fulfil the divine dream of filling the earth with diversity. Nimrod begins with Babel, Erech, Accad, and then builds Nineveh, Reheboth-ir, Calah and Resen. Many an empire-builder has sought to follow his example, but no empire has ever become a permanency. “God’s intention is a diverse humanity that can find its unity not in the domination of one city, one tower, or one language but in the ‘blessing for all the families of the earth’ (Genesis 12:3).”[351]  It is the test for globalization and for the world’s one superpower.

God’s frustrating their attempt to build a tower with its top in the heavens prevents them from building a “gate of God,” a means of gaining access to God’s presence. In addition to suggesting a flashback to the account of Adam and Eve’s disobedience in Genesis 2–3 and the city-building in Genesis 4, the story’s position toward the end of the narrative from Noah to Abram makes it parallel the passage about the heavenly beings and the human women at the end of the narrative from Adam to Noah. The climax of the first came with heavenly beings refusing to acknowledge the line that divides heaven and earth. The climax of the second comes with human beings refusing to acknowledge the line that divides earth and heaven. God insists that this line be recognized. That is not to say there is no possibility of movement between earth and heaven. It is to say that such movement lies in God’s gift. In subsequent stories, God will speak in a way that can be heard on earth, and God will appear on earth and will send aides up and down a ramp that joins earth and heaven. But God will not be invaded.

Will God’s Creation Purpose Be Fulfilled?

At the end of this story of God’s starting over, God’s world exists in a state that partially guarantees that the aim of creation will be achieved. God underwrites the rhythm of the day and the rhythm of the seasons. The process of filling the earth is under way. The structures of marriage, the relationships of parents and children, and the broader network of the extended family are firmly established. The patterns of agricultural life, shepherding, arts and crafts are in place. Nations have come into being.

The way the human line extended itself from Adam to Noah might convey no implications for the way that line will extend for a subsequent period. Those were very different days before the flood, when people lived for hundreds and hundreds of years. The way Noah’s sons propagate the nations might likewise carry no implications for regular individual family life. But Genesis 1–11 closes with a line that stands much closer to ordinary human experience (Gen 11:10–26). The opening names in this line recur from the list that focuses on nations, but the list itself focuses on individuals and extends through further generations on its way to Abram. The ages of these figures still exceed those of subsequent human experience, but not by so much. And the genealogy takes us down to people of whose ordinary human lives we subsequently read—their movements, their marriages, their arguments, their pressures, their conflicts, their family life, their dealings with God and their deaths. We know these are real people living lives like ours. They link us with God’s purpose for the whole of humanity, to live the life God intended from the Beginning. The general human experience of birth, growth, marriage, procreation, maturing, wisdom, senescence and death is prior to the particularity of history. “Persons are not born and alive because they have individual names; rather they have names because they are born and alive. Furthermore, humans do not have the right to live because they are historical beings. Rather, they can be historical beings because they have the right to live.”[352]

Yhwh affirms “that realm which human history cannot pervert and which, at the same time, is the indispensable basis for the existence of all creatures throughout history.” At the same time, Yhwh “again makes clear that history truly belongs to creation, and not creation to history.” History is subordinate to creation in the sense that its task is to restore creation to what it was supposed to be. Thus “history cannot destroy creation and creation will not destroy history,” though “history can destroy both life and itself.”[353]  It is human violence that makes that possible (cf. Gen 6:11). There is then perhaps a link with the two decrees concerning the shedding of animal blood and human blood (Gen 9:5–6). Both have the effect of placing constraints around killing that offer some safeguard against humanity’s destroying the life of the world and destroying itself. They thus leave open the possibility of humanity’s still being the means of fulfilling God’s creation purpose rather than leaving God with an orderly cosmos but no agent by means of which to manage the world.

Yet the world exists in a parlous state that sharply contrasts with the hope implicit in its coming into being. Humanity is under attack from the animal world and in ongoing conflict with it. Even the plant world can lead it astray. Cultivation becomes hard work, and the development of crafts and skills can take humanity into acts of enmity and ventures that end in disunity and calamity. Marriage, parenthood, brotherhood and relations within the extended family become relationships fraught by authoritarianism, pain and strife. Patriarchalism now provides the structure for human relationships: between husbands and wives, within families and among races. If Atrahasis tells a story of human creation, emergence of culture, the great flood, and in the end the emergence of a stable relationship between God and humankind, then this again highlights differences from Genesis 1–11.[354]  While setting human creation against the background of world creation, Genesis keeps drawing attention to the way wrongdoing destabilizes the world. Immediately after the flood, the relationship between God and humanity might seem to have been put on a more stable footing, but this impression is soon subverted in a number of ways. Genesis 1–11 achieves no stasis. It had better not be the end of the story, and it is not, though this gives only qualified long-term comfort, for stasis is a will-o’-the-wisp up to the end of the scriptural story.

4

God Promised

Israel’s Ancestors

Indeed, Genesis 11 would be an odd conclusion to a story. Whereas we hear about the descendants of all Noah’s sons and about a general migration on the east and a calamitous corporate experience in Shinar, the story then suddenly becomes selective. It gives a much narrower account of the line that descends from just one of Noah’s sons via just one of his sons, and so on: Shem, Arpachshad, Shelah, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah (Gen 11:10–25). Each paragraph about these men notes that “he had other sons and daughters,” but does not say who these were. Most of the men were their parents’ firstborn, though Arpachshad, at least, seems to be an exception to this rule.

Equally suddenly the pattern reverses, and in Genesis 11:26 we hear of all three of Terah’s sons, Abram, Nahor and Haran, then of Haran’s early death that leaves his son Lot fatherless, of Abram and Nahor’s wives, Sarai and Milcah, and of Sarai’s childlessness. We hear of Terah’s decision to get the family to leave their home in Ur, the city of the Chaldeans.[355]  The family is on its way to Canaan, but it settles halfway, at Haran (the spelling is actually Ḥārān, different from that of the personal name), near the most northerly point of the arc one travels to get from Ur to Canaan. Perhaps the reference to Canaan as Terah’s destination simply reflects the narrator’s awareness that this journey will eventually take the family there, even though Terah had not planned to go that far, or perhaps Terah had planned it and something stopped him from going further. Certainly death made it impossible for him to pick up the journey.

In Enuma Elish, creation leads into the establishment of aspects of life in Babylon itself and of life lived in the service of Marduk, the creator. The story does not separate the origins of the world, of a people, of a culture and of a religion. In the First Testament, too, the story of world origins becomes the story of Israel’s origins. Enuma Elish moves straight from creation to the origin of the state, and Psalm 89 also does that—what God did in creation leads into what God did in relating to David. In Chronicles, too, the genealogical “story” from Adam onward leads quickly to David. But in Genesis–Kings it is a long time before we reach the monarchic state. Nearly half of Genesis–Kings takes place outside the country where Israel settles as a people, and more than half takes place before Israel has the state structures of monarchy, capital and temple, before the priestly kingdom of Yhwh’s people has a narrower priesthood in that temple, and before the extra-state phenomenon of prophecy has come into full being. The story concerns God’s work in creation, God’s commitment to Abraham, God’s deliverance through Moses, God’s speaking at Sinai, God’s disciplining through the wilderness, Moses’ sermon in Moab, Joshua’s leading the people into the land and so forth. Monarchy and temple come very late in the story. It may be that Israel’s first great history was an initial edition of Deuteronomy–Kings that began with the people coming into the land and thus gave a much more central place to David and the temple. Genesis–Numbers is then a prequel to this story that tones down the importance of David and the temple in the narrative as we have it.

All this raises the question of whether temple, capital, centralized structure, prophecy, priesthood, even land, even nationhood, are dispensable to being Israel. In some ways, Israel’s best days are the ones when it has no temple, no capital and no monarchy. In the time of Moses, the people never even live in the land, and Israel’s first great leaders, Miriam, Aaron and Moses, all end their lives outside the land. Before that, while the ancestors live with God in the land, they do not control it. God is involved in their life as families with its ups and downs. Indeed, they live with God without Moses’ Teaching (as Paul will point out), though they nevertheless do manage to keep Yhwh’s charge, commands, statutes and teachings (Gen 26:5). The possibility that Israel itself could live without temple, statehood, monarchy, prophecy, priesthood, even land, even nationhood (even Torah), will be an important insight for contexts when Israel has to do that.

Yet at the Beginning, God gave humanity a role in relation to land and gave it the promise of increase. This threatens the viability of the idea of Israel without secure land or flourishing peoplehood. In Israel’s own life these were often lacking, during much of the time before David, in the period after the fall of the Northern Kingdom, even more so after the fall of Jerusalem, and during the Second Temple period. Israel might well then apply to itself the story of the blessing of creation and see it as God’s promise for it as a people. God’s promise of land and people to Abram would even more obviously resonate with it.

4.1 God’s Charge and God’s Promises

Genesis begins a new section of its story at Genesis 11:27 with Terah, for the phrase “these are the descendants of” regularly marks new moments in the story. Yet the traditional Hebrew chapter divisions treat Genesis 11:10–12:9 as one section, while the synagogue lectionary opens a new reading with Yhwh’s words to Abram in Genesis 12:1, where the English Bible begins a new chapter. All these ways of dividing the text are illuminating. The book’s own structuring invites us to read the story of Abram as part of Terah’s family history. It will later see Jacob’s story as part of Isaac’s and Joseph’s story as part of Jacob’s. It thus puts us on the track of an important aspect of Genesis 12–50: It is a story about families. The Hebrew chapter arrangement encourages us to see Yhwh’s speaking to Abram in continuity with his father’s decision to set the family on their journey. The lectionary division draws attention to the newness about what happens at Genesis 12:1–3. It is the first reference to God’s speaking since Noah. The world’s blessing that became Noah’s is now becoming Abram’s.

Yhwh said to Abram, Get yourself from your country, your home, and your father’s household to the land that I will show you, so that I may make you into a great nation, bless you, and make your name great—be a blessing, so that I may bless people who bless you, and I will curse anyone who belittles you. So all the families of the earth will find blessing through you.[356]  (Gen 12:1–3)

Yhwh will reiterate a charge and speak the promise to Abram on further occasions, and subsequently repeat them for Isaac and for Jacob, though not for Joseph.

God’s Charge

In beginning with a charge, “Get yourself” (Gen 12:1), Yhwh’s words correspond to the first words to humanity at the beginning, words about ruling the world, and also set a pattern Jesus will follow in uttering his first words to some fishermen, “Follow me.” While Yhwh says “go,” not “come,” by implication Yhwh will be accompanying Abram to show him the land for which he is destined.

What is the relationship between Abram’s charge and Terah’s move? We are short of background information. Did Terah know about the charge? Or is the narrative seeing Yhwh’s activity behind the scenes? Did Yhwh “inspire” this move without Terah knowing its place in Yhwh’s purpose? Or did the charge happen in Haran?[357]  That fits the sequence of events as Genesis relates them, and fits Abraham’s later reference to the Haran area as his country and home (Gen 24:4, 7). Yhwh’s charge does fit the broader context in the story. God wanted humanity to fill the world and keep on the move in order to do so, and the charge to Abram coheres with that. Further, as humanity in general had given up journeying “and settled there” in Shinar, so Terah had given up his move from Ur to Canaan “and settled there” in Haran (Gen 11:1, 31). The charge commissions Abram to resume the journey his father began.

Abram apparently has no difficulty realizing who is addressing him, but we have heard nothing of the way God had related to Abram before this moment, and the story from Noah to Terah might have given us a gloomy impression about how this relationship is likely to have been. Indeed, Joshua affirms that Terah, Abram and Nahor worshiped other gods when they lived in Mesopotamia (Josh 24:2), and names such as Sarai and Milcah may suggest devotion to the moon-god, who was worshiped at Ur and at Haran. We are not told when Yhwh started relating to Abram.[358]  For many readers of the story, a significance of his having originally come from much further east is that this is where they find themselves in exile at the end of the narrative that begins in Genesis.

Joshua speaks of Yhwh “taking” Abram from Mesopotamia (Josh 24:3). The verb does not preclude his going along willingly, but it does not emphasize any exercise of free will. It is the term used for God’s taking Enoch, or Yhwh’s spirit taking Ezekiel from place to place, or Yhwh’s taking Elijah (Gen 5:24; Ezek 3:14; 2 Kings 2:3, 5). It is the kind of taking along that parents do to children or kings do to armies or victors do to prisoners (Gen 14:12; 48:1; Ex 14:6–7; Josh 8:1). Yet the story does not imply that Abram found the leaving hard, as he found it hard to believe he would have a son and would come to possess the land of Canaan (Gen 15:2, 8). The way his household travels around within Canaan and into Egypt and Philistia suggests they are a people who find it easy to be on the move—they build no houses, of course. Nor does it tell us they ever regretted leaving Haran, even though they remain aware that the rest of their family is back there.

God’s Promise

While Yhwh’s words thus open with a command, they go on to a series of undertakings. Yhwh’s promise depends on Yhwh’s charge (cf. Gen 17:1; 18:17–19; 22:1–18), though Yhwh’s commands are less prominent in the stories of Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, and even to Abram the repetition of the promises emphasizes the magnitude of what Yhwh will do compared with what is asked of Abram.

In speaking of a “promise” to Abram, we use New Testament language (e.g., Rom 4:13–21). There were promises, and it can even be claimed that “this utterance of promise is the distinguishing mark of Yahweh,”[359]  but there is no Hebrew word that means promise, and in Genesis 12 the promise is simply something God “says.” The verb has other implications. The words are, for instance, a statement of intent, made as much for God’s sake and—we will see—for the world’s sake, as for Abram’s.

A promise is a formalized statement of intent and commitment. If someone says they will do something, and we ask “Do you promise that?” we are asking whether they have thought about their undertaking and really mean it. A promise is a more explicit commitment than a mere statement. Covenants and oaths are even more formalized and explicit commitments, made with ceremony and solemnity, even more self-binding. Eventually God will seal, grant and establish such covenants (Gen 15; 17) and swear such an oath to Abraham about his offspring (Gen 22:16; cf. Gen 26:3–4). But initially he does not have a covenant or oath to go on; he only has a statement. He does not ask whether Yhwh really means it (contrast Gen 15:8). His immediate going is therefore the more noteworthy.

When Yhwh does formalize the promise, “By myself I swear” (Gen 22:16), the words constitute both a performative utterance, a statement that effects what it refers to, and an informative one, uttered for Abraham’s sake. It is the “oddest testimony” to Yhwh’s acts, “an utterance that comes from the very lips of Yahweh, whereby Yahweh speaks an obligation to Yahweh’s own self,” an odd form of utterance that recurs within the First Testament.[360]  Its oddness is highlighted by the fact that Jesus will attempt (in vain) to ban oaths and urge people to settle for straightforward assertions (Mt 5:33–37). God does not feel obliged to be bound by God’s own rules—for Abraham’s sake, of course.

Once Yhwh has sworn in this way, there is no way out of fulfilling the commitment. Moses will remind Yhwh of this at Sinai, and Yhwh will accept the necessity to be held to it (Ex 32:13). Psalm 89 likewise reminds Yhwh “you swore by your holiness,” by your own nature (Ps 89:35 [[361]  36]). Yhwh nevertheless often takes the risk of such serious self-binding (e.g., Is 45:23; Jer 22:5; 44:26; 49:13). Moses will remind Israel of Yhwh’s self-binding in Moab. He will thereby encourage them to believe they will enter the land (e.g., Deut 6:18–19; 9:5; 10:11; 31:7), to commit themselves in faithfulness to this oath-keeping God (e.g., Deut 7:8), to keep that characteristic of Yhwh in mind (Deut 26:3), to continue to press Yhwh to keep the oath (Deut 26:15), and also to believe that when they fail to be faithful, they can be forgiven (Deut 4:31). Yhwh will remind them of it, too—indeed, Yhwh’s reminders enclose Moses’ reminders (Deut 1:8; 31:20–23; 34:4). “It is this oath that gives Israel power to survive and prosper in demanding and debilitating circumstance.”[362]

Divine Initiative and Human Responsibility

Abram’s setting out on the journey from Haran to Canaan is an act of faith and obedience responding to a command and a promise. What is the relationship between these, between God’s initiative and human responsibility, between grace and works? For Paul, Yhwh’s making this promise is a key indicator that God’s relationship with people is based on God’s grace rather than on human acts (Rom 4:16). God’s relating to a family in this way is significant. If God related to people on the basis of whether they were seeking God or were seeking to live godly lives or would trust in God, this would base that relationship on human effort. Being born in a particular family is not an achievement that carries credit or blame.

Yet as there is no explicit “promise” in Genesis 12, it is not surprising that this promise does not explicitly rest on “grace.” Hebrew does have the perfectly good word for “grace” that Genesis used in connection with God’s excepting of Noah from the flood. But it does not describe Yhwh’s speaking to Abram as a moment when Abram found grace in Yhwh’s eyes. Curiously, as the narrative also does not speak of a “promise” to Abram, so it does not speak of Moses giving Israel ten “commandments,” even though Hebrew does have words for “commandment.” Those, too, are simply ten “words.” Perhaps this also has implications for our understanding of the relationship between God’s grace and human obedience. The First Testament subverts the distinction between Yhwh’s promises and Yhwh’s commands by calling both “God’s words,” and thus subverts the distinction between what we call faith and what we call obedience.

Thus, while Yhwh’s initial words to Abram constitute a charge rather than a gift, it would be misleading to emphasize that obedience to Yhwh’s charge is a precondition of receiving God’s blessing. God’s charge and God’s gift are more integrally related than that suggests. God intends to give Abram a home somewhere else, but Abram can only receive that gift by going to this new land. God cannot give Abram a home in Canaan if he stays in Haran. Yhwh gives gifts on the basis of trust, but trust has to open its hands to receive, or even to empty them to receive. Further, the trust element in the emptying involves emptying before seeing what one will receive instead. When God again says “Get yourself” to him later, that is a test (Gen 22:1–2), but this first “Get yourself” is also a test (Gen 12:1), like the command in the garden to refrain from eating from a tree whose fruit God surely intends people to enjoy. Abram’s “irrational” leaving thus makes us reconsider Eve’s “rational” taking. Adam had been charged with a restraint that would express trust in God’s being well disposed to humanity and therefore trustworthy even when asking something strange. Eve and Adam had disobeyed; it was an act of unfaith. Abram obeys; it is an act of faith. In due course Christian thinking will make a sharp distinction between grace and works, but in origin they are one.

Another fact makes clear that fulfilling God’s charge is not a condition of the promise coming true. God does not wait for a decade or a lifetime to see whether Abraham meets the qualifications—because they are not really qualifications. As the Noah story suggests, the relationship between God’s giving and human commitment is more subtle and complex than that. Perhaps God thinks, “you are going to be that kind of person, so I will relate to you on this basis now.” Or perhaps, “I want you to be that kind of person, so I will relate to you on this basis now so that you become that kind of person.” Or perhaps, “I want you to be that kind of person, so I will relate to you on that basis now, because that is the kind of way that someone who wants this would behave.”

Live Your Life Before Me and Be Whole

In reaffirming a covenant commitment to Abraham, Yhwh begins with a self-declaration, then again issues a charge and an undertaking: “I am ʾēl šadday. Live your life in front of me and be whole, so that I may make my covenant between me and you, and make you very, very numerous” (Gen 17:1–2). God again implies that fulfillment of the promise depends on fulfillment of a charge, but also implies that this charge, too, is itself in its way a promise, a piece of good news. Who would not want to live their life (more literally, to walk their walk) in front of God? Who would not want to be whole in their commitment?

There are two aspects to walking this walk in front of God. It suggests openness or transparency, the opposite of needing to hide anything from God or of thinking you could avoid living before God. It also suggests living in the place where God blesses, being watched over and cared for. The place that lies before God is the place where God acts to protect and prosper, the place of living light (Ps 56:13). “Live” or “walk” (hālak) is the same verb as began the charge in Genesis 12, though it takes its implications in a new direction. There God’s lek lĕkā (“get yourself,” more literally “walk for yourself”) set Abram on a one-way geographical journey from A to B, from Haran to Canaan. In Genesis 17 God’s hithallēk (“live your life,” more literally “walk about”) sets him on an ongoing journey of a different kind. It is not an inner journey as opposed to an outward one. That implies an antithesis alien to the First Testament, which sees our outer and inner journey as two sides of a coin. Seeing the inner as more important than the outer would contradict its vision of our human wholeness and of God’s creative involvement with our whole lives. Relating to a family also makes clear that God relates to the whole person, to a whole people that is to be committed to God in its entire being, specifically with its feet, and not just, or even primarily, in its spirit. Likewise, the sign of the covenant that God now makes is applied to the outward body, a sign of God’s involvement with people’s outward lives and not just their inner lives, and of their living their outward lives before God and not just their inner lives.[363]  The antithesis between the two journeys is more between a once-for-all expedition and the journey-like nature of each day Abraham lives. To play with words, etymologically a “journey” is the distance one can travel in a day (jour).

To be “whole” (tāmîm) is a related natural human aspiration. It is the word used of Noah (Gen 6:9),[364]  who lived his life with God and not merely before God. Perhaps we are to infer that those were different days, when an exceptional person could have an easier friendship with God than even the great Abraham could have. But Abraham is challenged and invited to be whole in his relationship with God, to be wholly committed to God, to be a person of integrity. If he does that, he can also live his life before God. The possibility of openness and the possibility of integrity go together, as obligations and as blessings. So a life of integrity and an attitude of openness are not so much (or not merely) quasi-legal conditions for a relationship with Yhwh, but more like moral or logical concomitants. The link is a variant on that between charge and promise. Two human beings cannot be in covenant unless both are committed to the relationship. Each needs to make an unconditional commitment. Neither can say “Well, I commit myself to you if you commit yourself to me.” Only on the basis of a commitment without such conditions can a genuine covenantal relationship come into being. A marriage may fold because one partner goes back on the commitment, and the other partner may then also give it up. A covenant has then broken down. But if people go into a marriage saying “I will keep my commitment only as long as he/she keeps his/hers,” a covenantal marriage never comes into being.

This covenant will be a permanency (Gen 17:7–8, 13, 19), like the Noah covenant and the gift of the land (Gen 13:15). Earlier (Gen 15) and at Sinai there is no talk of covenantal permanency. In Moses’ final address, permanency is only a possibility contingent on an obedience about which neither Moses nor Yhwh has any illusions (Deut 5:29 [MT 26]; 12:28), and a possibility also attaching to Yhwh’s curses (Deut 28:46). Moses’ fears will come true and the Sinai covenant will seem at an end. It is precisely at this point that the possibility of appeal to the Abraham covenant will be important. Although the covenant involves a walk before Yhwh with integrity, evidently it is not exactly dependent on it. It issues solely from Yhwh’s desire to make it, and the same dynamic makes the covenant a permanency. The logic is perhaps the fact that Yhwh is a permanency (Gen 21:33). Yhwh does not go in for temporary arrangements. Nor is Yhwh fickle. When Yhwh makes a commitment, it stands. Yes, Yhwh once had a change of mind and decided to flood the earth, but then promised not to do so again. Neither divine fickleness nor human perversity can imperil the covenant.

Judeans in exile who have failed to keep their side of the covenant and forfeited its promises, and have been decimated and exiled, have become a model of life under the curse instead of a model of life under the blessing. Genesis 17 implies this could only be a temporary interruption in a relationship that could not be terminated. Moses will remind Yhwh at Sinai that it is too late to think of casting Israel off (Ex 32:7–14). Christians have sometimes assumed that this covenant was abrogated after the coming of Jesus, but Paul’s parable about the olive tree (Rom 11) points in another direction. Even if most Jewish people did not recognize it, the renewing of the covenant in Jesus confirmed the existent covenant rather than abrogating it—as Genesis 17 did to Genesis 15 and as Sinai did to the Abraham covenant. Following on the birth of Ishmael, Genesis 17 implies that Yhwh’s covenant commitment extends to the descendants of Ishmael and thus to Arab peoples as well as Jews, and by extension it will also eventually apply to other Gentiles who come to believe in Jesus.

The Covenant Sign

In Genesis 17 God goes on at some length to underline the covenantal intention and then comes back to a requirement that is unequivocally a condition of the covenant, though a different sort of condition. Whereas humanity does not have to do anything to make the Noah covenant effective, Abraham’s family has to “keep” the covenant (Gen 17:9), but in an odd way. The males of the covenant community must all be circumcised. Circumcision is a covenant sign, like the rainbow in the Noah covenant, not simply a condition, but this sign differs from the Noah sign, which required no human cooperation. That story made explicit that such cooperation would not be forthcoming. The sign made clear that the covenant emerged purely from God and was guaranteed purely by God. It is purely God’s activity that ensures that overwhelming flood will not recur. This sign requires human cooperation.

A sign is not a random mark; it has symbolic meaning. The sign of the rainbow relates to rain and destruction. The sign given to Abraham relates to male sexual activity and thus to procreation, which is key to the fulfillment of God’s covenant. It symbolizes God’s completing the creation work of making Abraham someone who can do the work of procreation, and also the need for Abraham and his male offspring to dedicate their procreative activity to God. Circumcision is a sacrament, a rite that effects something. It makes a man a member of the covenant community. A male who does not receive it forfeits his right to be treated as a member of his covenant people (Gen 17:14). He puts himself into the position of a Gentile. The covenant stands forever for Abraham and Sarah’s people, but individuals can cut themselves out from it. Yet God does not quite say that they forfeit their place in the covenant people. God has a hard time being legalistic and is inclined to make tough-looking rules but then leave loopholes for the exceptional circumstances that arise in life.[365]

The Noah sign was given to all humanity. God made the covenant commitment to all Abraham’s offspring, but the Abraham sign applies only to Abraham’s family, and then only to half of it. It would have been quite possible to devise a sign that pointed to the fulfilling of women’s capacity to join in procreation and symbolized their dedication of that capacity to God, but God does not do so (at least God did not require female circumcision). The implication cannot be that women do not belong to the covenant people. If we may adapt Paul’s argument in Romans 4 and Galatians 3, it is too late for God to suggest that, having already made a covenant commitment to all Abraham’s descendants without this requirement (Gen 15:18). But it is only the males who bear the sign of this covenant. Male servants receive the sign; no females receive it.

There can be positive and negative implications to this fact. Giving males this covenant sign implicitly confirms their superior place in the patriarchal hierarchy,[366]  but it does draw attention to the need for their sexual activity to be disciplined and dedicated to God. The story of Abraham and Hagar may have already drawn attention to this need and to the likelihood of its not being met, if Abraham is mistakenly attempting to arrange for the fulfillment of God’s promise. But sexual activity does not relate only to procreation. We already know that there was something wrong with the divine beings’ sexual activity before the flood (Gen 6:1–7), with Ham’s sexual activity after it (Gen 9:20–27), with Pharaoh’s (Gen 12:10–20) and at least with the consequences of Abraham’s (Gen 16), and we will soon discover that Sodom’s wickedness embraces this realm (Gen 18–19). It will not be surprising if Abraham’s wholeness (Gen 17:1) needs to be embodied in the way he engages in sexual activity, and circumcision is thus a sign of sexual discipline. It suggests accepting limits set by God (Gen 6), putting family relations right (Gen 9; also Gen 19:30–36), ceasing to use people by making sex a key to status (Gen 12), putting man-woman relations right (Gen 16), and putting an end to sexual violence (Gen 18–19).

All this is to look no further than the near horizons of this covenant-making. The need for such discipline is illustrated in many subsequent episodes in the ancestors’ story, let alone the rest of Israel’s story and the world’s. Men fail in this realm of their lives. In this sense the sign does not work, and perhaps it is therefore a shame, or perhaps it is just as well, that Christianity abandons the practice of circumcision, for Christian men also fail here. Circumcision becomes a sign of male unfitness to be part of the people of God (not that women are fit, but that is another story). The covenant sign becomes the covenant indictment and the covenant shame upon men. It is a mark of failure as much as a mark of status.

Immediately after introducing the covenant sign, God declares the intention to give Abraham a son by Sarah (and thus not by Hagar). Abraham’s response is a mixed one. He falls on his face, which suggests humbled submission to God, but goes on to laugh, the first of a number of laughs that link with the name of Isaac (“he laughs”). Indeed, the verb form here is exactly that of the name Isaac. This is not a laugh of joyed amazement such as Sarah will eventually express (Gen 21:6). Understandably, Abraham cannot believe that a centenarian and a nonagenarian are about to make a baby, and he wonders why God will not settle for fulfilling the promise through Ishmael. He does not believe that applying the sign of circumcision to him can really bring to renewed fruition his capacity to procreate, neither has he repented of his efforts to see that God’s promise finds its fulfillment in another way. Without explanation, God’s response is simply to assert the wish to bring a special covenant purpose to fulfillment through a son who will be born to Sarah herself. At the same time God confirms that Ishmael belongs to the covenant people, for he is a son of Abraham and will indeed be the first to receive the covenant sign. God will also bless him and make him exceedingly fruitful and make him a great nation (Gen 17:20).

I Have Recognized Abraham

The complicated relationship between charge and promise recurs again in Yhwh’s reflections on the way to Sodom. In suggesting some of the charge’s implications, Yhwh takes further some of the nuancing in Genesis 17:1–2. For Abraham as head of a substantial family, experiencing Yhwh’s blessing implies living his life and exercising his power and responsibility in a fair and upright way, and thus teaching others to do so. “I have recognized him, so that he may instruct his children and his household after him, and they may guard Yhwh’s way by making faithful decisions, so that Yhwh may bring upon Abraham what he spoke concerning him” (Gen 18:19). There are three stages in the relationship between Yhwh and Abraham—recognition, then faithfulness, then fulfillment. In speaking to Isaac subsequently, Yhwh implies that the second stage did come about. “Abraham listened to my voice and kept my charge, my commands, my statutes, and my teachings”—so the promise can be fulfilled for Isaac (Gen 26:4–5). If making faithful decisions is a condition of having the promise fulfilled, Abraham fulfilled the condition.

But behind the fulfillment of the charge is the prior act of God’s “recognizing” or “acknowledging” Abraham (yādaʿ; cf. Amos 3:2). If the blessing issues from the faithfulness, the faithfulness issues from the acknowledgment. Indeed, before the reference to acknowledgment or “choosing” ([367] , [368] ), Yhwh already spoke in a way that showed it was absolutely certain that the promise would be fulfilled: “Abraham is definitely to be” (Gen 18:18).[369]  If the blessing is dependent on the faithfulness, then Yhwh implies that Abraham’s fulfilling the calling is also a certainty, as certain as Yhwh’s fulfilling the promise. Yhwh’s singling out of Abraham somehow ensures it.

Further, the faithfulness is again more than a condition of the promise’s fulfillment. It is a means of the fulfillment. The promise of increase will not find fulfillment without Abraham and Sarah playing their part—Isaac’s birth involves God’s miracle but it also requires their sexual union. Likewise the broader promise of blessing is not fulfilled without Abraham and his family playing their part through the way he heads up his family—in the first instance, in representing Sodom to Yhwh and urging Yhwh to be faithful in decision-making (Gen 18:22–33). Indeed, Abraham’s faithfulness is an aspect of the fulfillment itself. It is as Abraham’s family does the right thing that Yhwh’s promise to bless the world through him comes true.

The people of God always live in the context of the charge and the promise, but the way these work out vary with people’s situations, their context in God’s purpose, and what is going on between them and God. Living with promise and charge subsequently has a series of different significances, for example, for the people laboring in Egypt, journeying in the wilderness, standing on the edge of the promised land, experiencing the shortcomings of life in the land, initiating a monarchy, dividing into two peoples, falling under Assyrian and then Babylonian authority, being taken off into exile, beginning life in the land again and living under the Persians. What one cannot imagine is not living by the charge and the promise.

Yhwh’s relationship with the ancestors involves an interaction between three realities—Yhwh’s blessing of the world, Yhwh’s blessing of them and their commitment to Yhwh. These interrelate in a number of ways. Yhwh’s blessing of the world entails their being blessed by Yhwh. Their being blessed by Yhwh requires their commitment to Yhwh. Their commitment to Yhwh is a means to Yhwh’s blessing the world. Their being blessed by Yhwh is a means to Yhwh’s blessing the world. Yhwh’s blessing the world requires their commitment to Yhwh. Their commitment to Yhwh entails their being blessed by Yhwh.

4.2 God’s Blessings: Nationhood and Land

We know from Genesis 1 that blessing consists first in fruitfulness. For Abram, having a son or two like his father would be enough to count as blessing. Sarai’s infertility stands in the way of that, but not fatally—the culture has ways of overcoming that problem, through surrogate motherhood by means of a servant. In Genesis 12 it is the dimensions of the promised fruitfulness that would raise more questions. Abram will not merely have a son or two, but will become a nation. The tower builders had wanted to make a name for themselves, and had succeeded, but it was not the name they had in mind. Yhwh plans to fulfill their ambition for Abram, to “make you into a great nation, bless you, and make your name great” (Gen 12:2).

We think of Abraham as the beginning of the people of God and we might have expected him to be destined to become a people (ʿam) not a nation (gôy). But the language is in keeping with the national focus that preoccupied Genesis 10 and will continue to be characteristic of Genesis. Paradoxically, “people” language will not become dominant until Exodus, when the family has actually become a nation. Subsequently Yhwh refers to the fact that all the nations are due to seek Abrahamic blessings (Gen 18:17). Israel will be a nation and nations will seek its blessings as a nation “precisely because the nation is most remote from God and is therefore commanded to be the most proximate.”[370]  To believe that God could save individuals and ignore nations is like believing God can save souls and ignore bodies. By relating to Israel, sanctifying nationhood in it, and determining thus to draw other nations to God, the promise affirms God’s involvement in the corporate aspect to human life and in the historical order.[371]  Abraham’s becoming a great nation will constitute part of the ongoing fulfillment of God’s purpose for humanity that concerned Genesis 1–11 as a whole, like Javan or Cush or Elam becoming a great nation. In itself there is nothing distinctive there. To adapt some phrases in Amos 9:7, “Yes, I brought Abraham from Haran—and I brought the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir.” Abraham is to migrate to a new land, but any migration Israel’s ancestors undertook in the second millennium was part of a widespread movement in that period as well as part of the scattering through the world of which Genesis 11 spoke.

Genesis 17 underlines the point. The name Abram means “the exalted one is father.” The name pattern recurs in the First Testament. It implicitly declares his parents’ faith regarding what God will be for Abram: As the exalted one, God will be father to him. Perhaps it is because belief in God as Father was a common feature of popular faith, as is the case in the modern world and church, that the First Testament generally avoids talk of God as Father. Etymologically, the name Abraham probably has the same significance as Abram, but the variant spelling means it can also remind people of the Hebrew word for a crowd (hāmôn). So the name could suggest a statement about Abraham’s destiny, and not just about his God. He will become the ancestor of a crowd—not just an Israelite or ordinary crowd, but a crowd of nations and kings (Gen 17:6), including peoples such as the Midianites, Edomites, Kenizzites and Amalekites, with their kings (Gen 36). Sarai will similarly be renamed Sarah (Gen 17:15). Like Abram/Abraham, Sarai/Sarah look like alternative forms of a name with the same meaning, in her case “princess.” The change’s significance thus lies in the change itself as a sign of God’s doing something new, rather than in its specific nature. The same is probably true of God’s own new name ʾēl šadday.[372]  The giving of that new name is also a sign of God’s doing something new. That is expressed further in a promise going beyond earlier undertakings in specificity: Sarai herself will bear a child (Gen 17:16).

Two Nations

There is a background to that specificity. When the birth of a son to Abram had been delayed, God was doing nothing, and it was not clear how this birth would ever come about, Sarai had taken a tough initiative and encouraged her husband to beget a child through her servant Hagar. That had led to a family crisis that with hindsight one could have predicted, for which the servant pays the price. Hagar is soon pregnant, and Sarai becomes inferior in Hagar’s eyes (qālal; Gen 16:4–5).[373]  Sarai feels violated. Hagar has done “wrong” to her (ḥāmās, the word for violence in Gen 6:11, 13). She looks to God to take action: Sarai introduces us to the key verb šāpaṭ (decide, judge, act with authority). God has promised to curse people who belittle Abram (Gen 12:3, qālal piel), and Sarai assumes this applies to people who belittle her. Abram declines to attempt to take as creative action as he did when there was feuding among the men (Gen 13:5–12), though one might sympathize with him for not wanting to get into this complicated conflict between two women and God. “This web of human conflict leaves no innocent parties.”[374]  He leaves Sarai to do as she wishes to her servant, and Sarai ill-treats her (ʿānâ piel), in the way we have already been told the Egyptians will ill-treat the Israelites (Gen 15:13; Ex 1:11–12). Hagar runs away as the Israelites will, though in the reverse direction (Ex 14:5).

But God’s aide seeks her and finds her. As her son will be the first to receive the covenant sign, so she is the first person God seeks and finds. One’s joy when this happens is tempered by the instruction that she is to return to Sarai and “submit” to her (ʿānâ hitpael, Gen 16:9). The aide is virtually telling her to return and let her mistress ill-treat her (in another irony, Abram and Sarai’s descendants will want to return to the land where they were ill treated, but will be prevented). Fortunately, before we rise in protest, the aide applies to her the promise Yhwh had given Abram. “I will make your offspring so very many that they cannot be counted because they are so many” (Gen 16:10). Sarai and Abram had no business taking steps to see Yhwh’s promise was fulfilled, yet God makes this promise to the victim of Abram’s evasiveness and Sarai’s ill-treatment. For all the toughness of the instruction to go back to Sarai, Yhwh had paid heed to Hagar’s affliction (Gen 16:11). The promise about being a great nation (Gen 12:2) then especially marks Yhwh’s undertakings to her son (Gen 17:20; 21:13, 18).

So why must she go back? Might it be for a reason related to the one that will make it impossible for Israel to go back to Egypt? Egypt is Hagar’s homeland, but she has already made her exodus from there—presumably she left with Abram and Sarai as a result of the adventure related in Genesis 12. That very story was narrated as if were an anticipation of Israel’s own “going down” into Egypt and “coming up” from there.[375]  Hagar has taken part in an exodus, part of an ʿēreb, a group of people belonging to other peoples anticipating the one that will accompany Israel out of Egypt (Ex 12:38). The shortcomings of the people of promise, the exodus people, must not lead to her returning there. Even if life in Egypt is more comfortable, with Abram and Sarai she lives in the context of the promise. Even if she came close to cursing Sarai, God will make her a beneficiary of the promise that foreign peoples will find blessing through Abram.

Isaac’s arrival then means facing the complications introduced into the story by Ishmael’s birth. It is all too much for Sarah, who again takes the initiative when neither God nor Abraham is doing anything. Matters come to a head at the celebration of Isaac’s weaning. Like many a family party, it brings submerged family tensions to the surface. Sarah sees Ishmael enjoying himself, playing or laughing (again the verb ṣāḥaq that underlies Isaac’s name; Gen 21:9). What she sees is a boy behaving as if he were Isaac, the “laughing boy” through whose birth God has brought Sarah laughter (Gen 21:3, 6). He is threatening to share Isaac’s place. The celebration turns into a wake as Sarah insists that Abraham throw him and his mother out. Abraham shows more hesitation than he will when God says to offer up Isaac, but God is prepared to have them driven out and thus be tough (Gen 21:11–12), as will be the case over Isaac. Sarah is right, after all, on the theological point that Ishmael is not to be the means of Yhwh’s main promise being fulfilled, even if her proposal looks immoral. Isaac is of unique significance.

God solves the moral question separately. Hagar and Ishmael run out of water in the desert, Ishmael is about to die, and Hagar cries in distress (Gen 21:16). At the last moment another divine aide calls from the heavens, as will happen when Isaac is about to die. God heeds the boy’s cry and shows Hagar a well that did not seem to be there a few minutes ago. The promise that Ishmael will become a great nation still holds. There is also a hint of the way God solves the theological question, because driving out and sending out (Gen 21:14) is again exodus talk. It suggests a move from a place of servitude (which Hagar was in) to a place of freedom, where in the short term there may be thirst in the wilderness and the need to cry out to God, but where God will be with them and in due course will bring provision and increase.[376]  God’s presence, listening, seeing and provision are not limited to Isaac’s line. Ishmael has his own promise.

A Land

Alongside the gift of increase is the gift of land. In setting Abram on his journey, Yhwh refers to a land only in the preamble to the promises about being a nation and being a blessing. Land itself is not the subject of a promise. But once Abram has reached Canaan, Yhwh does promise to give it to his offspring (Gen 12:7), and subsequently repeats that promise with emphasis (Gen 13:14–17; 15:7–21). Does the story simply suggest some suspense and some vividness—it is when Abram has responded to Yhwh’s bidding and to the first undertakings, and when he has his feet on the ground in the land, that he is promised he will possess it? Or does it imply that moving to a new land was mainly a means to another end, that more importance attaches to the destiny that awaits there, of becoming a great nation, gaining a name and becoming a blessing?

One might then ask whether the land is essential to biblical faith. It is a topic of controversy among Jewish thinkers. Eugene B. Borowitz, for instance, stressing the centrality of the covenant, notes that the covenant itself makes the land of Israel very important, but not indispensable in the manner of God, people, covenant and Torah.[377]  Perhaps this links with some paradoxical facts about land and our relationship to it. One is that peoples regularly associate themselves with a specific land and define themselves by it, and reckon they have a variously-grounded inviolable claim to it. We do this despite the fact that “owning” a land is a rather odd notion, and that our capacity to be deprived of our land both shows that we do not really “own” it and that people-hood can survive loss of land. Humanity by its nature and by its name (ʾādām) links with earth (ʾădāmâ) rather than with land as territory (ʾereṣ).[378]

Abram’s response to Yhwh’s first promise of the land is to build altars to Yhwh, in the north, in the center of the land and in the south, and to call on Yhwh’s name. These two acts are a claim to Yhwh’s ownership of the land and a challenge to Yhwh to fulfill the commitment made to Abram. It is as owner of the land that Yhwh can grant it to one people or another, but any people that comes into possession of it has to remember that it in a sense it continues to belong to Yhwh.

The ancestors’ unfolding relationship to the land suggests some ambiguities. When famine drives Abram and Sarai to leave the land, they get into terrible trouble, but it is hard to see whether leaving the land in itself was wrong. Certainly Yhwh proves capable of acting for Sarai’s protection in the foreign land. So we already know that Yhwh can act in Egypt as well as in Mesopotamia and Canaan—in other words, in the entire world. Yhwh is not confined to one country. And Yhwh proves capable of bringing both Abram and Sarai out of Egypt back where they belong. Later, Abraham instructs his servant on no account to take Isaac back to Aram (Gen 24:1–9), and Yhwh instructs Isaac not to follow his father’s example in going down to Egypt when there is a famine (Gen 26:2). But Rebekah and Isaac send Jacob off to Haran to escape from Esau and find a wife, and Yhwh promises to protect him and eventually bring him back. A short exile becomes a long one, and Rebekah never fulfills her promise to tell him when Esau’s anger has subsided, but eventually Jacob wants to return (Gen 30:25) and matters are brought to a head when he gets into trouble with Laban as he had with Esau (Gen 31:1–2). Once again Yhwh assures him it is safe to run (Gen 31:3). Jacob then “settles” in the land where his father had been a resident alien—actually Abraham and Isaac have both settled in the land, but the formulation hints that the ancestors are getting more “settled” as the years go by. Yet in due course famine takes Jacob and his entire family out of the land with Yhwh’s encouragement (Gen 46:1–4). Settlement turns out to be temporary, and Genesis closes with the ancestors still outside the land.

Even when there, the ancestors live with that tension between being a resident alien (gēr) or sojourner (tûšāb) (Gen 23:4; cf. Gen 15:13; 35:27; Ex 6:4) and being a permanent settler, someone who lives there (yôšēb), to whom God has given the land (e.g., Ex 6:4). They were not really settled in Canaan, yet when they went elsewhere, they did so only to stay temporarily, not to settle. Genesis speaks more often of them thus staying elsewhere as resident aliens (e.g., Gen 12:10; 20:1; 21:23, 34; 26:3; 32:4 [MT 5]; 47:4; Deut 26:5), than it does of their being resident aliens in Canaan. But neither in Canaan nor outside do they own land.

An Ambiguous Relationship with the Land

The ancestors’ ambiguous relationship to the land remains important for Israel. They live in Egypt as resident aliens (gērîm), and they are to remember this to remind themselves to care about other resident aliens (e.g., Ex 23:9; Lev 19:34). Later Israelites also had the experience of having to leave the land and be resident aliens elsewhere (e.g., Ruth 1:1; 2 Kings 8:1–2). Worse, Israelites found themselves denied the status of gērîm, when they needed it (Lam 4:15). The exile was the experience of this kind. During times when Abraham’s offspring were not able to live in the land, the subordination of the land promise would remind them that the land was not essential to a relationship with Yhwh (which is perhaps part of Stephen’s point in Acts 7). But the articulation of the promise would also remind them that it was an integral part of Yhwh’s dealings with them, and remind them to live in hope that this promise was not dead. The ancestors’ repeated experience of leaving the land to sojourn elsewhere, but then of returning, could thus provide encouragement in exile. Subordinated to the other undertakings about nationhood and being a blessing, the promise of land would also have a significant place during times such as those of David and Solomon when Abraham’s offspring could take their land for granted more easily than those other possibilities. Its articulation might then encourage them to reflect on how marvelously that promise had been fulfilled, and to hope for the fulfillment of the other promises.

Whatever the significance of the original subordination of the land promise, this aspect of God’s undertakings soon becomes very important. On their arrival in Shechem, when Yhwh promises to give “this land” to Abram’s offspring, the dimensions of “this land” are not specified. As he apparently stands on the high mountain ridge between Bethel and Ai after agreeing with Lot that they will go their separate ways, Yhwh promises to give him all the land he can see (Gen 13:14–17), which the context implies extends at least from Shechem to Mamre. When Abram expresses his understandable doubt that he can ever possess the land, Yhwh turns a bare statement of intent into a formal covenant regarding the land, and also gives the land extraordinary dimensions. It will extend from “the river of Egypt” (El Arish or a western branch of the Nile itself) to the Euphrates, land currently possessed by ten peoples (Gen 15:7–21). That covenant commitment is later viewed as the taking of an oath (cf. Gen 24:7; Ex 6:8; 33:1; Lk 1:73). The certainty of Yhwh’s giving is underlined by the move from yiqtol verbs (Gen 13:14–17) to a qatal verb (Gen 15:18)—not now “I will give” but “I have given,” or (better) “I hereby give.” Like Yhwh’s earlier declarations “I hereby give” (Gen 1:29; 9:3, 13), it is performative utterance. Yhwh is not merely promising to do something but actually acting now, behaving like a king in a position to make a grant of land to a subject.[379]

Whereas Abram accepted the promise of a son (Gen 15:6), he asks how he can be sure of the promise of the land (Gen 15:8). The Yhwh who gives him credit for the expression of trust does not debit him for the subsequent expression of difficulty. Perhaps Yhwh can hardly tell him not to be afraid (Gen 15:1) and then punish him for speaking his mind boldly.

The raising of the “how?” question about the land promise would again be significant for readers at different stages in Israel’s history. Israelites in Egypt and Judeans in Babylon, for instance, might wonder what was the answer. The difference in Abram’s reactions to God’s promises also corresponds to a difference in the way the promises will work out within Genesis. The time will come within Abram’s lifetime when he has his son. Yhwh’s solemnization of the promise regarding the land makes explicit that it will be more than four centuries before the promise of the land comes true. His descendants will experience exile, bondage and oppression before they return to the land. If Abram believed God was giving him the land, he believed despite the fact that Yhwh was acting in ridiculous contradiction to what is visibly true. The Canaanites possess this land! (Gen 12:6). Yhwh provides no supporting evidence that this grant of land will ever become a reality, except a confirmation analogous to the later swearing of an oath, the implicit divine wish to be dismembered for failure to keep the covenant undertaking (Gen 15:9–17). It is arguably an even odder testimony than the oath, which turns the extraordinarily anthropomorphic sacramental action into a civilized metaphor.

The covenant promise in Genesis 17 once more takes the promise further. The land where Abraham now lives as a resident alien will become a permanent possession (ʾăḥuzzat ʿôlām, Gen 17:8), like the covenant itself. That version of the promise would come home even more vividly to Abraham’s offspring in times when they had lost the land.

What About the Land’s Present Occupants?

People migrating to a new land often find other people there and have to decide how to relate to them. This is so with great migrations such as those of European and Asian peoples to the Americas, of European peoples to what became the European empires, and of Chinese people to other parts of Southeast Asia. Genesis implicitly recognizes the moral questions involved in moving to another people’s land, as Europeans in the Americas or in their empires barely have. Behind a number of the stories in Genesis (Noah’s curse, Abraham’s covenant, Sodom’s destruction and the occasions when Abraham and Isaac imperil foreign rulers) one can see the troubled reflection of an uneasy Israelite conscience, like that apparent among some Australians and New Zealanders aware of the way their ancestors displaced their lands’ native inhabitants. In providing some rationale for the failure of Abram and Sarai and their immediate progeny to settle properly in the land, Genesis offers a further piece of reflection related to this moral question. The reason is that Amorite wrongdoing is not yet complete (Gen 15:16).[380]  As will be the case when Yhwh brings about the downfall of empires such as Assyria and Babylon, Yhwh affirms that the displacement of other peoples by Israelites is not merely an example of divine power overwhelming human power. Israel occupies Canaan because its peoples have forfeited the right to the land, like Britain forfeiting the position of world power it once held. In this sense the Amorites cannot complain, even if they are no more wicked than many other peoples—specifically than the Israelites, who will therefore themselves be cast out of the land in due course. If they experience less mercy than some other peoples, that shows that God claims the right to decide when to show mercy, in light of other considerations (Ex 33:19; applied to a question like the present one in Rom 9:14–18). But they cannot be deprived of their land without reason, and God’s promise of this land cannot find fulfillment independent of moral considerations.

Like the relationship of Ishmael, and later Esau, to Yhwh’s promise, this point about the promise of the land links with some questions in current Middle Eastern politics. Yhwh’s original promise and the consequent history of Yhwh’s activity in the land imply that Yhwh still wants Jewish people to be free to live in this land and to control their own destiny there. Yet Yhwh’s attitude to the moral rights of the Amorites suggests that this consideration would not override the moral rights of the Palestinian people as subsequent longtime occupants of the land. Further, as members of Muslim and Christian communities, the Arab peoples see themselves as members of Abraham’s household. As such, they have some claims of their own on Yhwh’s promises to the ancestors of Israel who are also their ancestors. A moral Middle Eastern settlement needs to find a way of respecting both peoples’ rights. It will be a more satisfactory settlement if they can first recognize each other’s.

4.3 Being a Blessing

In the latter part of the sixth century, Yhwh’s command and promises in Genesis 12 would have particular force. They invite descendants of Abraham who are a tiny subject people of Babylon and then of Persia, and are later derided by the peoples around them in Palestine, to hear command and promises as their own charge not to stay in Babylon but to get themselves to the land to which Yhwh took Abraham. Yhwh once more promises to make them into a great nation and give them the land that has again come to be largely controlled by other peoples. Most astonishingly, Yhwh promises to make them a blessing to the nations.

In some contexts, declaring that Abraham will be a blessing could simply mean he will be an embodiment of blessing (e.g., Is 19:24; Ezek 34:26). It is a way of saying “I will bless you with extravagance.” In Genesis 12 it would then restate what Yhwh has already said, and the succeeding words “so that I may bless people who bless you, and I will curse people who belittle you” would do so again. In other contexts, however, “being a blessing” implies being a standard to which people will appeal in prayers of blessing for themselves or for others (e.g., Ps 37:26; Zech 8:13). In Genesis 12 that idea occurs in the next line. Yhwh’s blessing of Abram (Gen 12:2–3) follows an a b a′ b′ format:

2a     so that I may make you into a great nation, bless you,

2b     and make your name great—be a blessing,

3a     so that I may bless people who bless you, and I will curse anyone who belittles you.

3b     So all the families of the earth will find blessing through you.

Using the imperative thus (“be a blessing”) can be a vivid way of conveying a promise[381]  and further fudges the distinction between grace and obligation.

Like the noun “blessing,” the verb in verse 3b can be understood in several ways. If the idea was that the world would “be blessed” ([382] ), one would expect a pual verb (as e.g., 2 Sam 7:29; Ps 112:2). The niphal occurs only in this formula, here and in Genesis 18:18 and Genesis 28:14, and would more naturally suggest a reflexive meaning. This fits the occurrence of the hitpael in the similar promises in Genesis 22:18 and Genesis 26:4. Elsewhere that also means to “bless oneself”—that is, reckon oneself blessed (cf. Deut 29:19 [MT 18]) or pray to be blessed (cf. Is 65:16). The “by you” points to the latter: people will pray to be blessed like Abram ([383] , [384] ) or perhaps through Abram (NIVI).[385]

The context on both sides of the promise also suggests that this promise does more than merely indicate the magnitude of the blessing Abram will experience. Following on Genesis 1–11, charge and promise constitute a reasserting of the purpose running through the world’s earlier history and make the link between the creation of the world as a whole and the destiny of Israel in particular. Blessing and curse have been wrestling for dominance in the world, and it has not been clear which would win. God declares that blessing will do so, first in Abram’s family, but then through Abram’s family in the wider world. “Yahweh is the liberating creator of Israel precisely because he is the liberating creator of the world.… The purpose of Israel’s history of liberation was to point to and to witness to the fundamental reality, to God’s liberation of the world into the just and righteous order of his creation.”[386]  Yhwh does speak of curse for anyone who belittles Abram, but curse and blessing do not have equal status in Yhwh’s intentions. Yhwh’s direct intent is blessing.[387]

The “Election” of Abraham

So talk about blessing indicates both a distinctive privilege and a concern for other peoples. The same double aspect applies to talk in terms of Yhwh’s “choosing” Abraham.[388]  But Genesis itself does not use the verb “choose” in this connection, a sign of the fact that “election” is not a theological technical term in the First Testament as it is in Christian theology. Unlike even Akkadian, Hebrew lacks an equivalent to that abstract noun,[389]  and bāḥar is just the ordinary verb for “choose” or “select.”

Choosing and associated motifs are especially prominent in Deuteronomy. God chose the descendants of Israel’s ancestors (Deut 4:37), chose Israel to be a distinctive personal possession over against other peoples, and thus sanctified Israel as God had once sanctified the sabbath (Deut 7:6–7; 10:15). Behind the choosing was the fact that Yhwh “loved” Israel’s ancestors and Israel itself (ʾāhēb, Deut 4:37). Like the English word love, ʾāhēb is a great verb, but a complicated and ambiguous one. It can denote love for food (Gen 27:4), for one’s children (Gen 37:3), or for one’s beloved (Song 3:1–4), but also love for foreigners (e.g., Deut 10:19). That implies something more like practical commitment than warm feelings. Among other peoples love can have political connotations—it describes the commitment of kings to each other.[390]  It was the commitment of love that made Yhwh turn Balaam’s curse into blessing (Deut 23:5 [MT 6]). But lest we should infer that no feelings attach to Yhwh’s love for Israel, Deuteronomy adds that Yhwh “fell in love with” or “fancied” Israel (ḥāšaq, Deut 7:7; 10:15). As the verb used of Shechem’s feelings for Dinah (Gen 34:8; cf. Deut 21:11), it “suggests an affair of the heart, with all the irrationality and unpredictability of such things.”[391]  Deuteronomy does ask why Yhwh chose Israel, though only in order to declare that there is no good reason, at least no good reason lying in Israel. Yhwh’s choice is a mystery. Deuteronomy does not describe Israel as nibḥār, “choice-worthy.”[392]  It was “not because you were more numerous than any other peoples” (Deut 7:7). This is a considerable understatement, since it was when Abraham was just “one man” (and his wife infertile) that Yhwh “called him” so as to “make him many” (Is 51:2; cf. Heb 11:12). This love is odd, but persistent. Perhaps it is only the love, and the awareness of the love, that has kept Israel going.[393]

Nehemiah 9:7 also describes Yhwh as “the God who chose Abraham,” in that context when Israel has been reduced to an embattled remnant in a tiny enclave within the land promised to Abraham. Believing in your special position when you have never been anything special is one thing, believing in it when you have been reduced to nothing may be another. Here “choosing” is language for people who need their status lifted up. The same was earlier true in Isaiah 41:8–9:

You are Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I chose, offspring of Abraham, my friend.

You are one I took hold of from earth’s furthest bounds, called from its corners,

And said to you, “You are my servant.” I chose you. I have not spurned you.

It might seem “that electing and rejecting … form an essential polarity”; paradoxically, earlier prophets made election the basis for a warning of rejection (e.g., Amos 3:2), and the exile suggested that their words might have come true (e.g., Lam 5:22).[394]  But on the other side of that experience Second Isaiah affirms that the original choice still stands. Yhwh chose Jacob-Israel, and as Abraham’s offspring Jacob-Israel is Yhwh’s friend (ʾōhēb). This might designate him as someone committed to Yhwh, but more plausibly in the context LXX takes it to describe him as one Yhwh is committed to.

Choosing in Order to Use

It was in Abraham that Yhwh took hold of Jacob-Israel: The verb (ḥāzaq hiphil) is even stronger than the one in Joshua 24:3. It was in Abraham that Yhwh called Jacob-Israel from a far off land to the land of Canaan, where Yhwh is located (at least rhetorically). The idea of Abraham’s “call” thus has different connotations from the ones it has for the modern reader. The call is not the commissioning of a prophet but the summons of a servant: “Come here,” Yhwh bids. Isaiah 41 focuses on the privileged position of the servant in his relationship with his master and does not work out the implications of servanthood in terms of Yhwh’s expectations concerning Israel, but they are implicit in the term, and Isaiah 42 will bring them out. After all, a servant is—a servant. Talk of choosing a servant in itself hints at something more than privilege and thus parallels the talk of blessing in Genesis. Such implications are inherent in any notion of choice or election. The very use of bāḥar in Genesis and Exodus shows how choosing someone or something does not issue out of concern for the one chosen but out of self-interest or a concern to fulfill some project (see Gen 6:2; 13:11; Ex 14:7; 17:9; 18:25). Election is rather like choosing which pan to cook with (Acts 9:15). If the chosen one benefits, that is not the main aim. “Election, as Israel presents it, means recruitment.”[395]

In Christianity “the difference between the chosen and the unchosen … often becomes … the difference between the saved and the damned.”[396]  However, Isaiah 40–55 also makes especially clear that “the election of Israel neither signaled YHWH’s renouncement of the other nations nor involved their rejection in any way.”[397]  The First Testament does not develop a doctrine of rejection to parallel its doctrine of election.[398]  One way of avoiding the scandal involved in the idea that God chose one people is to declare that in reality everyone is chosen.[399]  Genesis and Isaiah rather imply the link between God’s choice and the vocation that makes God’s choice of Israel a means of seeking to embrace the world. Paul’s discussion of election in Romans 9 has similar implications. The object of having mercy on some but hardening others is the proclaiming of God’s name throughout the world (Rom 9:14–18). In the context (Rom 9:13) that suggests the answer to Esau’s “profound” question, Why must there be only one blessing? (Gen 27:38).[400]  There is one blessing in order that there may be many. That is how God and the world work. People receive things so that they may share them with others.

Perhaps the human father, Jacob, gave too much away to be able to give his other son a very impressive blessing, but in blessing Isaac the heavenly father was not constrained from blessing Ishmael quite spectacularly. Blessing or love are not general, but they are differentiated. We do not fall in love with everyone; we do not love everyone in the same way. God’s individual love for Israel is not the barrier to God’s loving the world. It is a kind of paradigm, a promise that God can also love other peoples individually.[401]

Genesis 18:19, the passage where English translations of Genesis do have Yhwh “choosing” Abraham (though the word is yādaʿ, “I recognized”) makes clear that singling out Abraham had such a purpose behind it. Yhwh designates Abraham as someone to fulfill a task. He is not only to be a person of integrity himself (Gen 17:1). He has a calling in relation to his family that relates to this. On the way to investigating life in Sodom, for no apparent reason Yhwh incorporates a renewing of the promise that Sarah will have a son—indeed, that the time when the promise will come true is now near (Gen 18:10). But then Yhwh recalls the broader promise that Abraham is to become a great nation and that all the nations are to seek blessing by him (Gen 18:18). The specific promise relates to the broader one. It is not clear that “Israel’s existence, unlike that of the church, was not from the very first based on the breaking in of the universal rule of God over humanity.” Contrary to Pannenberg’s assessment, Israel is already “an anticipatory sign of God’s coming rule and its salvation for all humanity.”[402]  The church then comes to share in its significance.

How to Be a Blessing

Genesis 18–19 then suggests several means by which the promise of being a blessing may come about. Already Abraham is being a blessing by showing hospitality to three people whom he assumes to be strangers in need of it (Gen 18:1–8). So is Lot, whose hospitality initially looks slightly less extravagant, but subsequently is at least as extravagant in its appalling way (Gen 19:1–11). We are dumbfounded when he offers his own daughters instead of the men the Sodomites ask for. Perhaps he calculates that they will be refused; the Sodomites’ aim is to humiliate the visitors.[403]  But even risking such an offer raises the question whether he has come to share the sexual oppressiveness of his culture. It also draws attention to the pressure put on someone who is himself only a resident alien in Sodom, pressure analogous to those that led Abraham and Isaac into sexually oppressive acts (Gen 12:10–16; 20:1–2; 26:6–10). Lot wants to be viewed as a member of the family in Sodom and thus appeals to its menfolk as brothers, but they put him in his place and point out that he has forgotten his true status (Gen 19:7, 9).[404]

Then Abraham is to charge his children and his household after him and they are to guard Yhwh’s way by the faithful exercise of power. That will be the means whereby Yhwh “brings over Abraham” what Yhwh “said over Abraham” (Gen 18:19). We have seen that this is not so much a condition for the fulfilling of the promise as part of the actual fulfillment. As Abraham does this, the promise comes true.

It is in connection with Yhwh’s intention to bless the world through Abraham that Yhwh shares with him the purpose of the three visitors’ journey to Sodom. Abraham’s place in Yhwh’s purpose for the world, with its concern for active faithfulness, constitutes enough reason to tell him what has allegedly been going on in Sodom and about the need to investigate it. But as Yhwh’s two aides continue on the investigative mission, Yhwh stays with Abraham and lets Abraham stay with him. Abraham stands there before Yhwh, one version says, as if wondering what he is supposed to do with the information he has just been given. Yhwh stands there before Abraham, another version of the text says, as if wondering whether he wishes to say anything now that he knows about the mission the three are engaged on (Gen 18:22). Abraham can put two and two together, and goes in for some further arithmetical calculations in the subsequent conversation that the two of them have initiated—Abraham by speaking, Yhwh by waiting for him to speak. Yhwh has expressed a concern about doing right by the people whomSodom oppresses. Abraham is also concerned about people within Sodom who might not be associated with this oppression. Suppose the investigative mission uncovers a number of such people. Is it right to punish the whole city when some of its inhabitants are not guilty? No, it would not be right, Yhwh agrees. If there are only ten there, Yhwh will not destroy the city but will “carry” the wickedness for the place (Gen 18:23–32).[405]  It would be better to overlook the wrongdoing of many than to kill a small number of righteous people. By initiating the conversation about this, Abraham goes about being a blessing to the nations. To put it in more conventional terms, he becomes a blessing to people by praying for them. By his activity in intercession he exercises his responsibility for decisive action on behalf of what is right, and the promise is fulfilled.

At the end of the conversation Yhwh “goes,” presumably to follow the other two “men.” Yhwh has “finished speaking with Abraham” (Gen 18:33). Yhwh’s intention to converse with Abraham frames their conversation. Abraham’s boldness lays hold on Yhwh’s desire for him to fulfill his vocation. His assumption is that one purpose of getting into conversation with God or of intercession is to get God to have a change of mind about intentions that God has decided on. The object of prayer is not to discover God’s will in order to align oneself with it but to take part in the determining of God’s will. It is not clear that Yhwh had decided what to do in Sodom, and perhaps Yhwh would not do so till the fact-finding mission had done its work. So Abraham may be trying to change God’s mind, or may be just checking out God’s plans, or may be taking part in their formulating. Abraham’s apologies as he does so “express both the necessity and the absurdity of a person’s telling God what to do.”[406]  And all this takes place in the context of Yhwh’s waiting about for Abraham to initiate a conversation.

A variant on this pattern occurs in the story of Abraham and Abimelech in Genesis 20. Abraham has brought trouble on Abimelech instead of blessing, though God acts to protect Abimelech. But the members of his harem have ceased to be able to have children and therefore need some restoring. This comes about because Abraham the prophet intercedes (hitpallēl) for Abimelech. Like the English word intercede, other forms of the Hebrew verb and related nouns have a judicial significance. Intercession involves speaking on behalf of someone who has been wronged and asking that the court take action on their behalf, or speaking on behalf of a person guilty of wrongdoing and asking that the court show mercy on them.

Not all intercessors were prophets and not all prophets were intercessors; speaking on people’s behalf to God is not as integral to the role of a prophet as is speaking in God’s name to people.[407]  But the First Testament’s first reference to prophecy does presuppose that part of prophetic ministry is intercession in which someone identifies with the position of someone else in need and speaks in court on their behalf. A prophet is admitted to Yhwh’s cabinet where events on earth are reviewed and plans for earth are formulated, and that prophet has opportunity to take part in decision-making processes as well as eventually to leak their results on earth.

Material Blessing

Enjoying blessing and bringing blessing implies “stuff.” Karl Marx saw the existence of private property as humanity’s basic problem, the great spoiler of relationships within the human person, between human beings and between humanity and nature.[408]  A century or two of further human history and experience confirms he was onto something. Genesis 1–3 stops short of his conviction, but it does not include the possession of private property in the picture of how things were at the beginning. Humanity is created to control God’s world and to enjoy God’s garden and most of God’s fruit, but God remains the owner of these. Humanity’s relation to the world is not that the garden serves humanity but that humanity serves the garden (Gen 2:5, 15; 3:23; 4:2, 12). Even after the flood, the animals are “with” Noah rather than belonging to him (e.g., Gen 9:10). Meanwhile Eve had formed the first verb of possession, “I have acquired a man with Yhwh” (Gen 4:1), while Genesis has applied the second such verb to Lamech who “took for himself two women,” and to the divine beings who “took for themselves women, all they chose” (Gen 4:19; 6:2). Serfdom will then be a mysterious result of the mysterious abuse or affront to Noah that follows the flood. Canaan will be lowest serf, servant of both Shem and Japheth (Gen 9:25–26).

We are thus not prepared for the picture of Abram and his family taking to Canaan “all the property they had accumulated and the people they had ‘made’ ” (ʿāśâ, Gen 12:5). After his ill-conceived Egyptian escapade Abram has even more “sheep, oxen, asses, menservants, maidservants, she-asses, and camels” (Gen 12:16; the order is suggestive). He is “very rich in cattle, and in silver and gold,” too (Gen 13:2; cf. Gen 20:14, 16; 24:35; 30:43; 32:6). In English “blessing” is apt to suggest something religious and/or interpersonal, but bĕrākâ implies something concrete and material. One would expect Yhwh’s blessing (Gen 12:2) to issue in prosperity, and such possessions, material and human, would suggest the outworking of the blessing. The point is explicit in Isaac’s story, where God’s blessing expresses itself in material and human possessions (Gen 26:12–14;[409]  cf. also Gen 27:24–29; 30:27–30), though it is not clear why Isaac alone among the ancestors blesses his son in this way. Apparently everyone involved assumes that Isaac has the authority to declare God’s blessing on members of his family. Rebekah’s family bless her (Gen 24:60) and Laban blesses Jacob and his family (Gen 31:55 [[410]  32:1]). Jacob blesses Pharaoh (Gen 47:7, 10), blesses Joseph by blessing his two sons, and on his deathbed blesses all his sons (Gen 48–49).

The fact that Lot also has “sheep and oxen and tents” means they had so much property they could not but quarrel about their needs and had to part company, with the result that Lot ended up settling near Sodom (Gen 13:5–13). That causes trouble in the short term, as Lot with his property—which evidently includes the human beings—is too attractive a proposition for the four invaders (Gen 14:11–12, 16). Abram rescues Sodom’s property as well as his own, pays the priest-king of Salem a tithe on the whole, but insists on returning all the rest to the king of Sodom (less expenses)—he does not want to be enriched by Sodom as he was by Egypt (Gen 14:21–24). In return, Yhwh promises that his reward will nevertheless be great (Gen 15:1). Lot’s stuff-inspired move will subsequently have more tragic consequences.

Isaac’s wealth also causes trouble between him and the people of Gerar. In turn, Jacob’s depriving Esau of the blessing that means prosperity and power naturally makes his relationship with his brother impossible and drives him into exile (Gen 27). There, Jacob brings prosperity to Laban, and the two of them vie for possession of the best of the flocks when Jacob wants to return home, spoiling the good relationship they once had and souring the relationship between Jacob’s wives and their father (Gen 31:1–2, 14–16). So they leave for Canaan while their father is away, Rachel stealing Laban’s teraphim (Gen 31:19).[411]  On this occasion, however, Laban finally takes the initiative in putting conflict aside. He has to accept the loss of “his” daughters, “his” grandchildren and “his” flocks, but at least he wants the final parting to be amicable. So they join in a last family meal and a proper farewell (Gen 31:43–55).

When Jacob returns, one of his concerns is to avoid Esau being able to attack all his possessions—people and animals—though when he comes to talk to Yhwh about the situation he diplomatically shows more concern for women and children (Gen 32:8–9, 11–12). He also views his possessions as his possible salvation, if he can buy Esau off with them (Gen 32:13–21). With irony, Esau has forgotten about the stolen blessing and is bemused by the proffered male and female goats, sheep, cattle and asses, let alone the camels and colts: “I have plenty, my brother. Yours must remain yours” (Gen 33:9)—though he eventually accepts them.

When Jacob settles near Shechem, his property becomes the object of the Hivites’ envy, though their reaction is then the converse of Abimelech’s. Like Laban, they plot to absorb Jacob’s family and thereby acquire their property (Gen 34:23). Like Laban’s, the plot misfires, because Jacob’s sons are as skilled in deception as their father, and they are able to appropriate animals, people and other property (Gen 34:24–29).

People as Property

The Hebrew word ʿebed can suggest a slave, a servant or a state serf. “Slave” draws attention to the fact that a ʿebed is a piece of property, and property is totally at the disposal of its owner. It has no rights. Slaves may be people who have had to sell themselves because of poverty, or they may have been captured and enslaved by the victors in battle, but one way or another they have become property. They can then be bought and sold like any other commodity, as happened to Joseph—presumably Jacob’s sons exercised their honed skill in deceptiveness by claiming he was a slave they owned. Being treated as property and having no rights is a serious deprivation in itself, though perhaps no worse than the terms on which many people carry on their employment in modern Western nations.

The story of Hagar shows that being a maidservant (šipḥâ or ʾāmâ, equivalent terms for a woman) can involve abuse and ill-treatment. English “(man)servant,” however, draws attention to the possibility that a ʿebed can be entrusted with great responsibility and treated honorably by people who have a status more like his master’s. The stories of Abraham’s servant (Gen 24) and of Joseph in Egypt show how a servant can be deeply committed to his master and able to live a full and fulfilled life despite his status.

But no one wants to be a slave/servant/serf and everyone wants to be an owner/master/overlord. It is because Joseph dreams of being lord over his brothers that they plot to murder him, but instead eventually arrange for him to be sold into servitude. He becomes near-master in a household but then experiences a new servitude in a prison. He achieves some overlordship in the prison and then becomes lord over all Egypt. His brothers thus come to bow before him and relate to him as “servants” to “lord”—specifically Judah, author of the plot to sell Joseph.[412]

The question is, what do people do with their property? If you are a servant, it means you are at your mistress’s disposal, e.g., as a means of acquiring a child (Gen 16:1–4a; 30:4, 9). You had better not look down on your mistress or she may ill-treat you (Gen 16:4b–6) and you had better not run away from her or you may find Yhwh sends you back for more ill-treatment (Gen 16:7–9). At the same time, Yhwh recognizes your ill-treatment and makes a promise regarding your son (Gen 16:11–12). On the other hand, Yhwh’s covenant with the master applies to the servants and their children, so your association with your mistress and your master can also work in your favor (Gen 17:12–13, 23, 27).

More positively, possessions make it possible for people to show generous hospitality. Abraham instinctively shares extravagantly with complete strangers and gets his boy to help him do that (Gen 18:1–8), and Lot does the same (Gen 19:1–3).[413]  Their hospitality contrasts with the behavior of the Sodomites. Instead of welcoming strangers, like Abraham and Lot, the Sodomites expect to rape them (Gen 19:5). Rebekah is more like her great uncle and her second cousin, watering Abraham’s servant’s camels as well as giving him water, and willingly promising feed for his camels and a bed for the man himself, while her brother makes sure he and his companions have a meal, and water to wash their feet (Gen 24:19–20, 32–33).

There is a final terrible irony about the Genesis story. Joseph’s success as a slave who became a trusted servant reaches its apogee when he turns the whole of Egypt into ʿăbādîm or serfs, state-slaves. Like an inside trader, he uses his supernatural knowledge about a famine to enable his master to accumulate all the money in Egypt and Canaan that people have had to use to pay for the supplies from Joseph’s grain mountain. When people run out of money, they have to barter their livestock, their land and their own selves. As state serfs, they now rely on Joseph for seed corn and pay Pharaoh a double tithe for the privilege of farming their own land—or possibly some other land to which Joseph transports them (Gen 47:13–26). The Israelite ʿebed turning the whole of Egypt into ʿăbādîm might be judged a fulfillment of God’s promise to have the nations acknowledge Abraham and his family. But this brings terrible cost to the Israelites themselves. Joseph has turned Egypt into a house of ʿăbādîm for everyone (Ex 13:3, 14). There is a big gap between Joseph’s commitment to family reconciliation and his “pious rhetoric” about Yhwh’s activity in bringing him to Egypt, and the sociopolitical reality of the effect of his work in Egypt.[414]

4.4 Abraham’s God and Other Peoples

How does the relationship between Yhwh and the ancestors and the world around work in practice? The promise renewed after Abraham’s offering of Isaac contains both curse and blessing in the prospects that lie ahead, stated in a way that seems contradictory: “Your offspring will possess their enemies’ gate [i.e., city],” but “All the nations of the earth will pray to be blessed as your offspring are blessed” (Gen 22:17–18). There is a similar tension in Isaac’s blessing of Jacob. He is to have foreign peoples as his serfs, bowing low to him, but “blessed is the person who blesses you” (Gen 27:29). One could formulate a cynical reconciliation of these two statements: The defeated and slain can be seen as wishing they were their victors, at least rhetorically. But this hardly satisfies the demands of Genesis’s plot. The world is indeed destined to have opportunity to share in Abraham’s blessing. More likely, therefore, these statements offer alternative scenarios. People prepared to recognize Yhwh’s presence in Israel, like Melchizedek, Jethro and Rahab, may share in its blessing. People like the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, Jericho and Jebus, who stand against Israel, will find themselves defeated. Indeed, the story suggests a range of possibilities for viewing God’s way of relating to the world and for Israel to view its own relationships.

Who Counts as Yhwh’s People?

To begin with, who counts as Yhwh’s people? Does Lot count? He is not Abram and Sarai’s birth child, but he is with them because his father’s early death and his grandfather’s death make Abram his guardian, the nearest thing he has to a father. When Abram and Lot need to separate in order to have enough space, Abram does not imply Lot has no rights in this land, but invites him to choose whatever area he likes, and the land he chooses, in the Jordan Valley, counts as part of the promised land.

So are his descendants Moab and Ammon heirs to the promise? There are people to cast out of this land, but there are apparently also people to share it with. Israel was often in conflict with these near neighbors, and their relations had an unsavory beginning, which might seem to justify the negative attitude to them in subsequent parts of the First Testament—or the hostility might find its justification in the story. But the broader story includes their descending from Abram’s extended family. Their ancestor was someone who made the original trek from Ur and the further trek from Haran, was there when Abram built his first altars in the land, herded cattle with Abram, and split from him only because the two groups needed more pasturage. He was the beneficiary of Abram’s family commitment in action when he was caught up in a war affecting the area to which he moved, and (unbeknown to him) when Abram got to know of his further danger when God determined to bring disaster on Sodom, and prayed for him (Gen 19:29).

Presumably there is a link between Ammon and Moab’s story and the preceding story of Sodom. Lot and his daughters pay a further price for Sodom’s degeneracy (Gen 19:30–38). As happened after the flood, sexual abuse or the threat of it, alcohol abuse and sexual disorder within the family make clear that things are little better among the people God exempts from calamity than they are among people overwhelmed by calamity. For all his sharing in Abraham’s commitment to hospitality and to decisive action in protecting the aides, it is not because he deserves it that Lot escapes Sodom’s destruction. He escapes because Yhwh kept Abraham in mind (Gen 19:29). Yhwh had made a commitment to Abraham and his family, and would keep it whether they deserved it or not. God’s persistence in commitment (cf. Gen 19:16, 19) expresses itself further in the fact that the eventual fruits of these unions include the Moabite Ruth, and thus David, her great grandson, and Jesus their descendant (Mt 1:2–16).[415]

Ishmael’s position raises similar questions. He is Abram’s offspring, and when the land promise is reaffirmed after his birth, it is not qualified, as if applying only to some of Abram’s offspring. Ishmael receives a separate promise about becoming a nation, and receives the covenant sign of circumcision, which makes clear that he belongs within the promise to Abram, and he receives no separate promise about a land. He grows up to live in the wilderness, specifically in Paran, which sits significantly on the fuzzy southern border of the promised land. Ishmael has an ambiguous relationship to the land of promise that eerily anticipates that of his Palestinian descendants.

God speaks of making the actual covenant specifically with Isaac (Gen 17:19, 21), and repeats the promise of the land to him—Yhwh will give his descendants “all these lands” (Gen 26:4). Does it then apply to his descendants via Esau as well as via Jacob? Giving away his rights as the eldest son and being swindled of the eldest son’s blessing does not put him outside Isaac’s offspring. But Isaac’s blessing of Jacob includes Jacob’s having power over his brothers and their bowing low to him, and only Jacob is actually promised the land (Gen 27:29; 28:13). Like Lot and his daughters, Esau is ancestor of a near-neighbor of Israel’s that is also one of its running enemies. The prophets are very rude about Edom (e.g., Is 34; Obad). Yhwh loved Jacob and hated Esau, i.e., was for Jacob and against Esau (Mal 1:2–4).[416]  Paul affirms the point (Rom 9:13) and also affirms that this is not because Jacob had somehow earned this. For all the story’s ambiguities, it is hard to read it in a way that makes Jacob a nicer guy than Esau. He deserves to run for his life, but then falls from the frying pan of Esau into the fire of Laban, who plays a trick on Jacob as dastardly as Jacob’s trick on his father and brother (Gen 29). But Laban acknowledges Yhwh (Gen 24:31, 50–51), though he may also imply that his father’s god and Abraham’s can be distinguished (Gen 31:53). If Jacob does make moral progress as a human being, his character remains more ambivalent until the end than Esau’s,[417]  with the unexpected grace he shows to his returning brother. Esau’s story puts a question mark after unequivocally negative readings of an enemy. “No matter how severe the conflict, or how deeply rooted in past history, reconciliation between brothers remains a possibility, even if that does not finally eventuate in a close relationship.”[418]

Egyptians, Eastern Peoples, Canaanites

Outside Abraham’s people there is first Pharaoh, his household and his staff, who behave entirely honorably to Abraham and experience an epidemic brought about by Yhwh for their trouble (Gen 12:10–20). As far as we can tell, Egypt is no threat to Israel’s ancestors, though that is not what they thought, and as a result they become a curse instead of the blessing they are eventually destined to be to Egypt (Is 19:18–25). At the end of the ancestors’ story, Egypt becomes the key to the family’s survival. Whereas Joseph’s own brothers are a threat to him, some Midianites pull him out of the pit where the brothers have put him and sell him to a prominent Egyptian who treats him well until deceived by his wife. In due course Pharaoh also treats Joseph well and puts him in a position of great state responsibility, which enables him to facilitate his family’s moving to Egypt when there is another famine. The Egyptians recognize the significance of the way Yhwh is involved in Joseph’s life and work (Gen 39:3; 41:39). When Jacob dies, all Egypt mourns, and Egyptian officials accompany Joseph to Canaan to bury Jacob there. The perception of Egypt is very different from the one that obtains in the subsequent story.

Then there are the Middle Eastern kings in conflict with each other, exercising control by force and seeking freedom by rebellion (Gen 14). In charging the ancestors to leave Ur, Yhwh perhaps implicitly drew them out of the world of culture and politics, and they seek no involvement in that world. They do not write poetry, compose music, take part in government, or seek to bring about social reform in Sodom. But Abram becomes involved in this world when these invading kings kidnap Lot. Abram instinctively pursues them and fights to rescue Lot, along with other people who had got drawn into the conflict. In effect Abram finds himself being a blessing to the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, and to a lesser extent of Admah, Zeboiim and Bela/Zoar, winning back what the Mesopotamian kings have taken as plunder. Associated with them is the priest-king of Salem, who knows God Most High (Gen 14:17–24), and whose position David will in due course inherit (Ps 110:4).

There are the rest of the inhabitants of Canaan, who will find Noah’s curse (Gen 9:25) coming true in their experience. Canaan was the father of Sidon and Heth (and thus ancestor of the Sidonians and Hittites) and ancestor of the Jebusites, Amorites, Girgashites, Hivites and others. The Canaanite peoples were those who occupied the territory for which Israel was destined, from Sidon to Gerar and from the Mediterranean to the Jordan Valley—including Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 10:15–19). The ancestors coexist with these peoples. They are sometimes on good terms with them, sometimes in conflict with them, in the way that happens between peoples. Some are portrayed as more honorable than the ancestors, some as less so. In general, their wrongdoing is not yet especially marked (Gen 15:16), though by the time four generations have passed (Isaac, Jacob, his twelve sons, Moses), it will have filled itself out and Abram’s offspring will take their land. That will include the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaim, Girgashites and Jebusites (Gen 15:16–21), who are treated as subsets of the Canaanites/Amorites and implicitly share in their wrongdoing.[419]

The young Hivite Shechem—an individual, but one who in some respect stands for the men of Shechem—provides an example. Jacob’s daughter Dinah goes to visit the women in the area where he lives, and Shechem presses himself on this girl whom he fancies. He thus “violates” her. The focus of the terminology is not on whether or not Dinah welcomes his advances, but on the objective fact that he has sex with her. Moses’ Teaching will recognize that these things happen in Israel, and will prescribe how that needs to be handled (cf. Deut 21:14; 22:23–24, 28–29). Essentially Shechem’s action in asking his father to arrange for a marriage fits its prescription—perhaps it was an established social convention. Nevertheless, Shechem and his whole community pay Jacob’s sons a high price for the act. Jacob’s later comment is that the violence of the leaders in this, Simeon and Levi, deserves a curse—they will not survive as self-contained clans within Israel (Gen 49:5–7). As the blessing can operate outside his family, the curse can operate inside it.

Sodom and Gomorrah

That takes us to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, who are bad, people who have fallen short of God’s standards, and markedly so, the Bible’s first “sinners” (Gen 13:13). At that point we do not know how, though the fact that the only previous “sin” was Cain’s killing of Abel (Gen 4:7) might prepare us. Their victims’ blood cries out like Abel’s (Gen 18:20–21; cf. Gen 4:10). These may be people in the area who are oppressed by the city, or perhaps victims within Sodom itself, though there are apparently no such victims still in the city whose presence could warrant its escaping destruction.

In a number of ways, the account of the two aides’ time in Sodom constitutes an ironic replay of their time at Mamre. From Lot they meet with a scaled-down version of the hospitality they had received from Abraham. There follows the unheralded, astonishing and shocking pressure from the men of Sodom, who want to rape the two “men.” Pity the city that lacks even ten innocent people, as Sodom does: All its men gather at Lot’s door—indeed the whole people, to the last person (Gen 19:4). The story recalls that of the heavenly beings and the human women (Gen 6), except that—with further irony—the heavenly beings are now the intended victims rather than the offenders. Like Abraham, Lot accepts some obligation for taking decisive action in a situation such as this. The Sodomites testify to it, complaining that this alien should be doing such a thing (Gen 19:9).

The oppressiveness of Sodom requires that the city be destroyed. There is not a single man who deserves to be exempt (Gen 19:4). Sodom has become a small-scale version of the world itself on the eve of the flood, in the pervasiveness of its wickedness and in the nature of that wickedness as involving badness, failure, violence and specifically sexual violence (see esp. Gen 6:1–13).[420]  Yhwh’s recognition of the pervasiveness of human badness that will make it pointless to bring further destruction on the world as a whole (Gen 8:21) is apparently not reason for declining to destroy specific communities. Sodom’s wickedness embraces Lot’s two daughters’ fiancés, who are too stupid to accept a chance to escape (Gen 19:14).[421]  Indeed, Lot himself has to be manhandled, or rather aide-handled, out of the city, with his wife and daughters. In the end this does no good to his wife, who stops to watch what is happening to her city[422]  and is overwhelmed by the fallout from the cataclysm. In accordance with the usual pattern, the Sodomite men settle the fate of the women of Sodom. If they have already paid a price in their own beings for their men’s sexual oppression, they pay it again when the city is destroyed.

For Israel, the God-forsaken landscape of the Dead Sea basin with its weird salt formations stood as a lasting reminder of the fact that cities get destroyed and that wicked civilizations fall. God’s longsuffering toward the sinfulness of the world as a whole does not stop God’s bringing an end to the Assyrian or Babylonian or Roman or Turkish or European or American empires, usually a humiliating and/or violent end. In the weeks following the destroying of the World Trade Center, people asked why God did not prevent this event, but the alternative question is why such disasters do not happen more often. The answer implied here is that the presence of a small number of upright people may hold God back from bringing the disaster deserved by the community as a whole. That may help to explain the extraordinary continuance of cities of terrible wickedness and oppression like the one in which I live. As Israel’s story shows, from time to time God decides that enough is enough and that disaster will not now be held back; we may not be able to see why a particular occasion is one that sees this.

A Philistine King

Then there is the king of Gerar, who presumably counts as a Canaanite (see Gen 10:19), though this area is later part of Philistia and he is described as a Philistine. So stories about relations with him have resonances for Israel’s relationship with this great rival for control of Palestine.

God appears and speaks to him, to warn him of the moral and personal danger Abraham has got him into (!) in deceiving him about Sarah’s marital status (Gen 20:1–18). The foreign king is responsive to God and engages in a conversation with God like Abraham, again a conversation involving protest about whether God will be treating a nation fairly. He can claim to have innocent hands (cf. Ps 26:6; 73:13—the other two occurrences of this phrase): he has not actually touched Sarah. Indeed, he can claim to be a man of integrity as Abraham was supposed to be, even “integrity of heart,” of attitude or intention, like David (Gen 20:5; cf. Gen 17:1; Ps 78:72). He has neither done wrong nor thought wrong. That leads God in turn to respond to this foreign king and to reveal an involvement in Abimelech’s life. God has been protecting him and Sarah, knowing that his attitude is right and that it is therefore necessary and appropriate to protect him from a wrongdoing he would not want to commit. His response also leads God to show him his way of escape. In turn it leads to his pointing out to Abraham how he might have brought calamity on a people who were ṣaddîq, who acted in the right way—fulfilling Abraham’s own vocation. We may think Abimelech is rather restrained, gracious and merciful in confronting Abraham, and that Abraham would be better off acknowledging he was in the wrong rather than offering excuses that make things worse. Happy the believing community when the world puts it right so graciously! Abraham has assumed that there was no reverence for God in Gerar, but Abimelech shows the shoe is on the other foot. Abraham has led him to the verge of a sin he has no desire to commit and a danger he does not deserve, and has entailed for his womenfolk an affliction they also do not deserve. Abimelech nevertheless recognizes that God is with Abraham—that is, God makes him prosperous and successful—and that it will therefore be wise for Abimelech to be on good terms with him, and when there are conflicts between Abraham and Abimelech, they need to and can be resolved amicably (Gen 21:22–27).

Isaac’s experience in Gerar (Gen 26) reworks these themes. Isaac, too, thinks the people may kill him for his wife. Spotting Isaac and Rebekah canoodling, Abimelech points out that Isaac could have brought guilt (ʾāšām) on Gerar if someone had had sex with Rebekah—who would evidently have had no right to say “no.” Yhwh’s subsequent blessing of Isaac provokes a jealousy that pushes Abimelech away rather than draws him to his God. Isaac thrives and the people of Gerar envy him and stop up his wells—a speedy and effective way to make life impossible. Abimelech tells him his family has grown too numerous and bids him move away. There are more disputes about wells, but then on the basis of seeing how Yhwh has blessed Isaac, Abimelech proposes a sworn treaty between the two parties rather than the ongoing disputes. It is possible for communities to determine to live in covenant rather than in conflict (Gen 26:26–30; cf. also Gen 31:43–54).

4.5 Promise and Fulfillment

A key tension runs through the ancestors’ stories. Different aspects of God’s promise find fulfillment in their experience: Yhwh “blessed Abraham in everything” (Gen 24:1), and also blessed Isaac and Jacob (Gen 26:12; 35:9). Yet the fulfillment is never complete or visibly secure, and the ancestors always live with declarations that promise a future more splendid than the present. This makes living in the present possible and also underlines the importance of continuing to live with an eye to the future. The stories thus offer subsequent believing communities a key perspective on life. They too have declarations from God promising them a future, know some realization of those promises in their own lives, but never experience complete fulfillment. Relating to God means living in the present in light of the future and living for the future in light of the present.

All three elements in Yhwh’s promise, about gaining land, becoming a people and becoming a blessing, find partial fulfillment but are also imperiled.

Gaining Land

Abram’s father sets out for Canaan but settles half-way there and eventually dies there. Abram’s household do reach the land of Yhwh’s designation and name Yhwh’s name over it, but do not “settle” as they had at Haran (Gen 11:31)—which would be hard, as the Canaanites are occupying this land (Gen 12:6; 13:7). They continue “passing through,” “moving on,” “pitching their tent” and “journeying on” (Gen 12:6, 8, 9). That might be a sign of a gradual entering into possession of the land, or it might be a sign of being unable to settle down there. Either way, while they are still on the move within the promised land, a famine imperils their staying (Gen 12:10). This is no way to experience Yhwh’s blessing. As a consequence, they go and live in Egypt. That anticipates another move to Egypt because of a famine, one with oppressive consequences though eventual deliverance—which their experience also anticipates, for Yhwh sees that they get back (Gen 12:17–13:1). Abram thus abandons the promised land, but it was the famine that imperiled the promise first, and the Yhwh who later bids him surrender the son born in fulfillment of the promise might not disapprove of his willingness to sit loose to the promise of land rather than wait around for a miracle.

In due course they resume their journeying within the land (Gen 13:3). There is not enough empty land for Abram and Lot to settle, and they can only survive by separating. This broadens the area they occupy, but does so in dangerous fashion (Gen 13:12–13). It is at this moment that Yhwh makes a more explicit promise about the substantial dimensions of the land destined for Abram’s offspring. Abram now “settles” near Mamre (Gen 13:14–18). The generous scheme for enabling Abram and Lot with their households to live amicably in the land leads to Lot’s getting sucked into a war and Abram’s having to follow (Gen 14).

Abram has a hard time believing in Yhwh’s promise about the land (Gen 15:8). What evidence might have made believing easier? What Abram gets is actually a mere reaffirmation of the promise, now put in terms of a covenant. It may seem a strange idea that a word that God solemnly ratifies should constitute better grounds for belief than just a divine word, but we accept that on the part of human beings, so it may not be so odd for God to work with us that way. God’s second covenant parallels the one with Noah in placing all the emphasis on God’s commitment, with nothing required of Abram, even trust. But Yhwh acknowledges that possession of the land will be delayed for centuries, with tough experiences to intervene (Gen 15:13–16). Even after Abimelech’s comment on how Yhwh has been with Abraham—in other words, how Yhwh has blessed him—Genesis notes that nevertheless “Abraham resided as an alien a long time in the country of the Philistines” (Gen 21:34).

But at least they are there. The need to find Isaac a wife does not override the need that he stay in this land (Gen 24:6). Yhwh’s initial promise to Isaac begins with a charge, like the initial promise to his father, but a charge not to go anywhere. Famine has recurred, and Isaac is not to leave the land as his father did, though this does not stop him from getting into the same difficulty as his father had, nearer home (Gen 26:1–11). When Jacob’s deceit of Esau backfires, he does leave the land for the north, with the promise that Yhwh will be with him and will bring him back. That leaving, with its circumstances and its promise, would also resonate with Judeans who travel the same road. Then, after returning to “settle” in the land where his father had “sojourned” (Gen 37:1) Jacob eventually leaves it again for Egypt because of a famine, as his grandfather did, again with Yhwh’s promise that this does not mean the end.

Sarah’s death generates further confirmation of the land promise for Abraham, for all the sadness of this first account of the grief and mourning of death (Gen 23). In order to bury Sarah, Abraham at last becomes the actual owner of a tiny piece of the land. It is only a cave on the edge of a field, but it is not nothing. It might seem that Abraham has no business buying land that Yhwh has promised to give him. Is he again seeking to engineer fulfillment of Yhwh’s promise? But the story suggests no hint of disapproval in telling how Abraham insists on possessing a burial place rather than sharing one with friendly Hittites. Abraham and Sarah do come into secure legal possession of land in Canaan, even if it is a burial possession (ʾăḥuzzat-qeber, Gen 23:20). It is a mere foothold, or rather skeleton-hold, in the land, but it means that Sarah, and in due course Abraham, Isaac, Rebekah, Leah and Jacob, will be able to rest there forever in the land Yhwh promised (Gen 49:29–31). No one can disturb them. They will never leave the land. Jacob similarly buys a piece of land at Shechem that will be Joseph’s burial place, even though he has to wait years to be carried there (Gen 33:19; 50:25; Josh 24:32).

The end of the ancestors’ story raises the question of whether the promises to them can be trusted and can stay credible when they are long unfulfilled. It asserts that moments when we cannot see God do not mean God is not there, active behind the scenes.[423]  Yhwh’s promise can be endangered by circumstances, by the actions of its recipients, by the actions of other people and even by Yhwh. There may be a number of ways in which it can find fulfillment—will Abraham’s heir be Lot, or Eliezer, or Ishmael? Fulfillment comes about through circumstances, through the action of these same recipients, through the actions of others and also through the action of Yhwh. All that is an encouragement to the people of God who continue to live with fulfillment that is real but still partial and imperiled. Israel’s eventual occupation of the land had that nature. The time of David and Solomon saw the most complete realization of the land promise, but also sewed the seeds of the process that led to loss of the land by the majority of the clans and then by the survivors of that first loss. After these transportations the people live on occupying only a small part of the promised land. Over succeeding millennia, the land is never devoid of a Jewish population, but even today this people shares the land with others in a state of conflict.

Becoming a People

That earlier move to Egypt also involves Abram in imperiling the mother through whom the promise of progeny is to be fulfilled, who ends up in Pharaoh’s harem. But in any case, Sarai cannot have children. Abram has Lot as a kind of adoptive son, while the enigmatic Eliezer is a key figure in his household,[424]  but Abram has no actual son and no prospect of one (Gen 15:2–3). He simply has to believe God’s promise concerning this. Ten years in Canaan pass and there seems no prospect of Sarah bearing a child. There is an obvious way to remedy the situation: her Egyptian servant can be the surrogate mother of her child. Another decade passes, and God once again reaffirms the promise about becoming a great nation, and declares that Sarah herself is to bear Abraham a son (Gen 17:16).

Abraham’s trust in God is an up and down affair. At this point he can only laugh at this ridiculous idea (Gen 17:17). Sarah’s initial laugh is of the same kind (Gen 18:12–15). Why can God’s promise not be fulfilled through Ishmael, who is in a sense Sarah’s son as well as Abraham’s (Gen 17:18)? But for these purposes Ishmael does not count. And in due course “Yhwh dealt with Sarah as he had said. Yhwh did for Sarah as he had spoken. And Sarah became pregnant and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which he spoke” (Gen 21:1–2). So Abraham names him yiṣḥāq, “he will laugh,” and Sarah comments on the significance of the name. Fancy God giving her something to laugh about at her time of life! Indeed, everyone who hears of this event “will laugh” (yiṣḥāq). But the eventual gift of Isaac is complicated by the fact that Ishmael is now part of the picture, occupying a place Sarah wants to deny him after she made it inevitable. Indeed, God is “with” Ishmael before God is “with” Abraham or “with” Isaac (see Gen 21:20, 22; 26:24),[425]  fulfilling his promise of blessing as he grows, develops skills, and is found a wife through whom the promise can be fulfilled.

The promise of progeny is safeguarded in the final Abraham story, when Abraham makes sure Isaac has the proper wife. The story is the longest in the Abraham narrative,[426]  underlining the project’s importance. As it will not do to share a tomb with Hittites, so it will not do to take a wife from Canaanites. The question of intermarriage arises in most cultures, but Yhwh’s promise to the ancestors gives it extra significance. Subsequently, one of Isaac’s sons marries Hittite wives, who cause bitterness to his parents (Gen 26:34–35; cf. Gen 27:46). Shechem initiates a sexual relationship with Dinah and thus “defiles” her (tāmēʾ piel, Gen 34:5) because he is a foreigner.[427]  Shechem himself can see that intermarrying with Jacob’s family could make it possible to take over Jacob’s family’s possessions (Gen 34:23).[428]  There is another unease about intermarriage here. Part of the background to the grim story of Judah, his sons and his daughter-in-law is that the men had an Israelite father and a Canaanite mother and that their father had a close alliance with a Canaanite, Hirah from Adullam (Gen 38). On the other hand, Joseph marries an Egyptian, Moses marries a Kenite, and Caleb is a Kenizzite by birth.[429]  Apparently there are times when marrying out is acceptable and times when it is not, or occasions when it works and occasions when it does not.

The first generations of the story might be years when it was unacceptable, as was the early Persian period when it might have caused Judah to disappear. Abraham’s unique reference to Yhwh as God of the heavens (Gen 24:7) fits with other names in his story, but this title becomes common in the Second Temple period, and the stress on the relationship between the promise and marriage within the clan is also at home then. Ezra-Nehemiah indicate the temptation to look outside one’s own people for a wife, threatening the community’s disappearance through assimilation.[430]  The substantial narrative statement of trust in Genesis 24 that closes off the account of Abraham’s life is also a substantial narrative of that trust’s vindication, a story showing Yhwh is trustworthy in the extraordinary way Abraham’s servant is able to fulfill his commission. Genesis 24 hardly portrays in its specifics how every (male) believer must go about finding a spouse or offers an undertaking that God will provide every believer with a spouse. But against the background of the Second Temple period one can see ways it portrays the trusting obedience a man needs to show in such a situation and promises that God honors such trust and obedience. Within the story it is a statement and a promise about how Yhwh will see that the promise of progeny continues to be safeguarded.

So the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham is secure, at least until it transpires that Isaac’s wife also cannot conceive. Then Isaac “prayed on behalf of his wife” (Gen 25:21). Whereas other verbs for prayer are also used to refer to asking a human being for something, this verb (ʿātar) is only used for prayer, and nearly always for prayer for healing. Further, “on behalf of” (lĕnōkaḥ) is an odd expression, because it elsewhere suggests “in front of.” Is Isaac standing with Rebekah, pointing Yhwh to her, like Hezekiah laying out his correspondence before Yhwh (2 Kings 19:14)? If so, this ploy is effective. “Yhwh let himself be prayed to [the same verb, in the niphal] and his wife Rebekah conceived” and in due course bore twins. The one through whom God intends to fulfill the promises will in turn find himself with two wives and with access to their two servants, and will sire a substantial family. Yes, the promise of progeny seems secure.

Yhwh’s Testing

But we have omitted a key incident. “After these things God tested Abraham” (Gen 22:1). Indeed God did, though Abraham did not know it at the time, nor did Isaac, nor did the unmentioned Sarah. “These things” cover the way God’s promise has teased Abraham over decades but found several forms of fulfillment, including their having sons in whom the promise about becoming nations and kings can be fulfilled. It is after these things that God tests Abraham.

Testing will be a recurrent feature of Israel’s life. God discovers things about Israel by sending experiences such as lack of water or frightening cosmic phenomena or a long stay in the wilderness, and later by the presence in the land of peoples who might lead them in false ways of worship and by prophets who utter accurate prophecies but then encourage them in false worship. These are passages that expressly refer to “testing.” God also tests Job, though the story does not use the word (but cf. Job 23:10, bāḥan). The same is true of Genesis 2. The story of humanity began with a test; the story of Abraham draws near its end with one. Both times the story is a test of obedience: the question is, will Adam and Eve, will Abraham, do what God says when it makes no sense? Then, God forbade something that would have been granted in due course if Adam and Eve passed the test. Now, God requires something that will in due course be remitted if Abraham passes the test. Both prohibition and requirement are difficult to understand as serious long-term intentions, but intelligible as short-term trials. Having sent off one son, in obedience to Sarah and God, Abraham is now to offer his other son to God as a whole offering, the kind of sacrifice Noah made, the entirety of which goes up as a gift to God, with the worshiper partaking of none.

We might have thought the passing of God’s test would involve saying “No, that is monstrous.” Why did Abraham not protest this requirement, interceding for Isaac as he had once interceded for Sodom? But the story does not concern Isaac’s significance in himself but his significance in connection with the fulfillment of God’s promise. Of course, the idea of sacrificing your child was not an outrageous one. In surrounding cultures, people sometimes did that. It was no more unthinkable than that people should send their children off to death in the trenches of the First World War or the swamps of Vietnam or to blow themselves up as human bombs. Children have belonged to their fathers and are therefore at their disposal; they are, after all, their seed.[431]

On the other hand, Isaac’s question about an animal for the sacrifice implies he does not assume he is the victim (or does it imply that he does so assume?). And Abraham’s response, “God will provide the lamb,” is either a prevarication, or a hint that he too cannot believe that God’s words are to be taken at their face value (Gen 22:8). The event is testing Abraham, but it is also testing God. Perhaps Abraham knows, as we do, that a God who would go through with this could not be believed in. And Abraham of course is right—God does provide the lamb. Perhaps Abraham knows more about God than God knows about Abraham. God and Abraham are testing each other, seeing who will give in. In the event, it is God who does. God leaves it to the last possible moment—Abraham has the butcher’s knife raised—but cannot let Abraham continue, and does not need to do so. God’s aide again calls from the heavens, once more sent out from the cabinet meeting that is monitoring events.

The question lying behind the chapter is, does Abraham truly revere God (Gen 22:12)? In different words, that question has been answered before. Abraham trusted God (Gen 15:6). But that was a long time ago, and Abraham now has his son, the means of the promise’s fulfillment. He no longer needs to revere God. God wanted to know whether he still does so. God now knows. “By offering Isaac as a sacrifice, Abraham is offering himself on the altar. And, in so doing, Abraham enacts his complete dedication to the mission and, at the same time, destroys the possibility of the fulfillment of his mission.” Yet “when Abraham offers Isaac as a sacrifice, he ensures that his son will continue his mission after him.”[432]

So this promise, too, is imperiled by circumstances, by human action and also by Yhwh’s action. It comes true through Yhwh’s action and through human action, though human action complicates the way that happens. The beginning of the exodus story will affirm how spectacularly it is being fulfilled.

Being a Blessing

There are limits to the extent to which the ancestors become a blessing, as there are limits to their experience of the blessing. Abram’s initial adventure in Egypt also imperils this third element in the promise. Pharaoh’s absorption of Sarai into his harem provokes Yhwh to intervene and bring an epidemic on the palace. Somehow Pharaoh discovers that Abram and Sarai are the cause, rebukes Abram and withdraws his visa. This is no way to be a blessing. While there is no doubt Abram goes wrong, it is unclear where he goes wrong, and God does not focus on that question. These things happen. People have to make decisions about how to cope with crises, and these may draw them deeper and deeper into trouble. God’s focus lies on getting them out of it. In contrast, in the next story Abram is being a blessing to the king of Sodom (!) and the other kings of the Arabah, and the priest-king of Salem is blessing Abram.

Abraham also brings trouble to the king of Gerar, Abimelech, but then brings healing to him (Gen 20:17). The story of Abraham and Abimelech tells of events that constitute fulfillment of a number of aspects of Yhwh’s promise. Abraham makes a new confession of Yhwh as ʾēl ʿôlām, the king observes that God is with Abraham in all he does, and in due course Abimelech and Abraham enter into a covenant relationship (Gen 21:22–33). Yhwh’s original promise is thus fulfilled on a broad front in Abraham’s relationship with Abimelech, though not without hiccups and tensions. The covenant, hiccups and tensions recur in Isaac’s relationship with Abimelech (Gen 26:1–33). Subsequently Yhwh blesses Laban because of Jacob, who is in Paddan-aram only as a result of deceiving his father in order to rob Esau of the blessing (Gen 30:27, 30).

After Joseph was kidnapped, taken to Egypt, sold to an Egyptian courtier and put in charge of his household, “Yhwh blessed the Egyptian’s household because of Joseph, so that Yhwh’s blessing came on everything he possessed” (Gen 39:5). The collocation of the blessing and Yhwh’s being “with” someone reappears here. Joseph finds himself involved in Egyptian politics and gaining political and economic power, a process that starts as a result of his showing compassion to some politicians who have been the victims of politics’ unpredictabilities. This chance meeting leads to his being drawn into their world. “God will grant that things go well for Pharaoh” (Gen 41:16). God does that not only by enabling Joseph to interpret the dream in which “God has told Pharaoh what he is doing” (Gen 41:25), but also through the advice Joseph gives about how to act in light of the dream (Gen 41:33–36). It is not clear whether Joseph is consciously writing a job description for himself, but that is how the Pharaoh sees it (Gen 41:37–46). We might think that the man who can interpret dreams and infer what governmental changes are needed might not necessarily be the man to implement them, but a traditional culture might see things differently, and anyway when God is writing the script this consideration may be overridden.

As a result of Joseph’s achievements, the Egyptian people continue to have something to eat through the years of blight, and his father Jacob blesses Pharaoh (Gen 47:7, 10). The blessing also becomes a focus of Jacob’s dealings with Joseph himself, his sons and his brothers (Gen 47–49). But the way Joseph acts on Pharaoh’s behalf to ensure that the people have something to eat causes the Egyptian people to give up their land to Pharaoh.[433]  They become Pharaoh’s serfs. They are compelled to move into the cities from the countryside, away from the land they had farmed, which the state now owns (so MT; the versions have another reference to serfdom). And they must pay a fifth of their produce to Pharaoh (Gen 47:13–26). Joseph is thus a blessing to Pharaoh, but a mixed blessing to ordinary people. His treatment of them contrasts with his treatment of his own people (Gen 47:11–12, 27—on either side of the account of Egyptian serfdom), and the tears he sheds over his brothers when the famine brings them to Egypt contrast with his business-like enslavement of the ordinary Egyptians when famine reduces them to despair. It seems a strange action for a man who has himself been the victim of enslavement—or does it constitute a displaced expression of rejection and anger in relation to that experience? Does he want to lord it over someone, or over as many people as possible? None of his actions in reducing people to serfdom was presaged in the proposal he devised in light of Pharaoh’s dream. Joseph’s dream spoke of his family bowing down to him, and in seeking to avoid this, the brothers have unwittingly facilitated it. But Joseph (discretely?) makes no reference to Yhwh’s involvement in that, and instead refers to Yhwh’s having brought about a different lordship, a lordship over Egypt. This perhaps implies his justification for the reduction of the Egyptians to serfdom that reaches its apogee at the moment in the story when the unexpected deliverance and flourishing of his family reaches its own apogee. Instead of questioning the master-slave structure, Joseph accepts it and simply reverses it (indeed, extends its operation). Instead of being a blessing, his own blessing, the process whereby God turns him into a master and brings blessing to his own family becomes a curse for the Egyptians. And there is this irony that he thus puts in place the structures that turn his own people into Pharaoh’s victims when he is forgotten.

The Lack of Difference

Yhwh singled out Abraham’s line so that they would be a blessing to the world by modeling uprightness and fairness in the exercise of power (Gen 18:19). But in general, in their awareness and their practice of right and wrong the story does not suggest any great difference between his line and the people outside it. Men such as Pharaoh and Abimelech know one should not take another man’s wife, and people such as the Sodomites and Shechem are assumed to be responsible for knowing that their sexual oppressiveness is wrong. God gives Israel’s ancestors no special revelation concerning human behavior. In due course Israel is given systems of rules for making moral choices, in Exodus–Deuteronomy, but the ancestors have no such guidance—and anyway there is no particular correlation between how aware we are of what is right and wrong and how committed we are to doing right. By implication, the ancestors know about right and wrong because God made human beings that way. People such as Pharaoh, Abimelech, the Sodomites and Shechem are capable of behaving uprightly in light of their awareness of right and wrong, or of ignoring that awareness and behaving in reprehensible ways. People such as Abraham, Sarah, Jacob and Jacob’s sons are similarly capable of behaving with commitment, generosity and mercy, and with cowardice, deceit, oppressiveness and vindictiveness. “You have brought great sin/guilt on me and on my kingdom. You have done to me deeds that are not done,” Abimelech accuses Abraham (Gen 20:9)—which makes him not so different from Sodom or Shechem, or Aaron in making the calf image (Gen 13:13; 34:31; Ex 32:21).

This does not imperil Israel’s status as a people God summoned into being. The basis of God’s summons did not lie here. The point emerges clearly in a key feature of the Jacob story. In its earlier episodes there is little ambiguity about Jacob. He is a rogue.[434]  He is all deception. But Yhwh does not stand aloof from the deceiver and appears to him on the run out of the promised land because of his stupid deception, reassuring him that the promise of land, of progeny and of being a blessing still stands (Gen 28:10–22). The promise is then given specific application to him: God will be with him and will keep him wherever he goes and bring him back home in due course.

In Haran, Jacob finds his match as a sharp operator in Laban, but Yhwh keeps that commitment through the years there (Gen 29–31). The promise that he will be a blessing is fulfilled in Laban’s family (see Gen 30:27, 30). Eventually Jacob makes his getaway from Haran and almost reaches home before Laban catches up with him. With irony at the mutual expense, they have been set up for a showdown by Rachel. Her theft of her father’s teraphim and her manner of keeping the theft secret shows her to be a worthy daughter of Laban, a worthy wife of Jacob, and a woman who knows how to use her womanhood to get by in a man’s world. God colludes with this, warning Laban to hold back in his relationship with Jacob, and not telling him who has the teraphim. The two men talk straight with each other. Laban cannot find the teraphim, and Jacob has another rare opportunity to protest his innocence, which he milks for all its worth. Perhaps reckoning that he “doth protest too much, methinks,” Laban ignores his speech but proposes that they call a truce, indeed make a peace treaty that also obligates Jacob to be faithful to Laban’s daughters. Through a grieving father’s generosity, God’s promise to Jacob has been more than fulfilled.

Resolving matters with Laban only frees Jacob to face Esau, which drives him to take the initiative in prayer for the first and only time (Gen 32:9–12). God neither speaks nor appears in response. This is especially remarkable in light of the lament-like form of his prayer. Jacob acknowledges Yhwh, reminds Yhwh of the promises made to him, acknowledges his own feebleness and the wonder of who Yhwh is and what Yhwh has done for him, expresses his fear of his adversary, and asks Yhwh to deliver him. When Hannah or Hezekiah prays such a prayer, Yhwh answers, and when the psalmists pray such a prayer, they often incorporate an expression of continuing trust and before the end often turn to praise for Yhwh’s answer. Here Yhwh says nothing, and Jacob’s subsequent action looks more like an expression of continuing anxiety than an expression of trust and new confidence—though the further development of the story may imply that the God who said nothing did act in response to the prayer. So a sense of God answering is not a necessary preliminary to the experience of God acting. Perhaps. God (?) does appear to Jacob once more (Gen 32:24–32). Perhaps this is a response to that prayer, distanced from it to discourage Jacob from thinking he can manipulate God the way he manipulates other people.

The corporate life of the church and the life of individuals within it continues to manifest these dynamics of the ancestors’ story.

4.6 The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

In Genesis 17 God adds to previous undertakings the promise “to be God for you and your offspring after you” (Gen 17:7). The words recur when God appears to Moses (Ex 6:7). The formulation anticipates the commitment at Sinai to dwell among the people in the meeting tent, where “I will be God for them” (Ex 29:45). The commitment is renewed on the edge of the land (Deut 26:17). It is a promise that will extend into the far future, and even if they deserve to be cast off by God, and are cast off by God, that will not be a permanency. Yhwh will reflect on having taken them “so that I would be God for them” (Lev 26:45) and will renew them “so that I would be God for them and they would be a people for me” (Jer 31:33). Who is this God who is being God for them?

Genesis 1–2 used two expressions for God, the ordinary Hebrew word for deity, ʾĕlōhîm, and the distinctive Israelite name, Yhwh. The time of Israel’s ancestors adds two other ways of referring to God, each with a number of variants. These testify to God’s lordly authority, to God’s concrete involvement in the particularities of individuals’ lives and to God’s involvement with the heads of the family for the sake of the destiny of the family as a whole.

El Elyon, El Roi

One set of expressions involves the word ʾēl, usually combined with some other word. In other languages, equivalents to the word ʾēl are used both as a word for deity applicable to a number of gods and as a name for a particular god. As a specific deity, El is a senior god, a benevolent, kind deity, father of the gods and of humanity, creator, and known for wisdom.[435]  That matches many aspects of the nature of Yhwh in the stories of Israel’s ancestors.

Significantly, in the First Testament the word first appears on the lips of a non-Israelite king who worships ʾēl ʿelyôn, God Most High, as “owner[?] of heaven and earth.”[436]  Abram is apparently happy to assume that Melchizedek worships the same God as he does, but to be on the safe side glosses this God’s name, referring to him as Yhwh ʾēl ʿelyôn, Yhwh God Most High (Gen 14:18–22). There is sufficient overlap between Melchizedek’s knowledge of God and Abram’s for it to be safe to identify the two, but sufficient surplus in what God is doing with Abram for it to be necessary to add the gloss. Perhaps Joseph makes the assumption about overlap in marrying the daughter of the priest of On (Gen 41:45). At a point when Abraham needs Yhwh to be more than merely a God who operates in Canaan, he himself calls Yhwh “God of the heavens and God of the earth” or simply “God of the heavens” (Gen 24:3, 7), recalling Melchizedek’s title.

In shorthand terms we might say Melchizedek and Abram worship the same God, but the shorthand is misleading. Insofar as they are worshiping God at all, they can only be worshiping the same God, because there is, after all, only one God. The longhand version of the statement would be that they have similar understandings of God. They worship the same “God.” But the longhand is also misleading. It could suggest we are talking merely of the two men’s faith and not of the reality their faith is grasping. And it does not recognize the distinct significance of Abram’s knowledge about God. The relationship between Melchizedek and Abram is the relationship between creation and fulfillment or creation and redemption or natural and special revelation. Through creating them in the divine image, God enables human beings to know the basic truths about God as they know the basic truths about behavior. Melchizedek has that knowledge and has apparently responded in trust to God as known that way. He knows God’s reality as lord of the heavens and the earth. But he cannot know Yhwh as the one who has become involved with Israel’s ancestors in order to bring about the restoration of humanity and the fulfillment of the purpose of creation, with all the further implications for an understanding of God that this brings. He cannot know everything, but evidently can know something. He has a true knowledge of God, though a narrower one than Abram’s. The First Testament’s subsequent negative attitude to Canaanite religion implies that people may severely overlay the knowledge of God that they receive through being in God’s image, but its attitude to Melchizedek shows this need not happen. People who belong to other religions who do not know what God has done in Israel’s story are not cut off from any knowledge of God. They have a knowledge of God that needs filling out and building on.

After Melchizedek, Hagar addresses God as ʾēl rŏʾî. It is her own name for God. Hagar becomes the woman who names God, the first theologian,[437]  one who uses her own experience of God to enable her to engage in theological formulation.[438]  Literally the name means “El of my seeing.” Her enigmatic comment on the enigmatic name takes up one way of understanding it, as she marvels at the fact that she has seen God. The [439] ’s marginal notes also take up the other understanding, marveling that God has seen her. Indeed God had. The name the aide prescribed for her son already makes essentially the same point, for Ishmael (yišmāʿēl) means “El hears.” God hears her affliction and responds to it, not merely sending her back for more.

God hears again later (Gen 21:14–19). Sarah has again insisted that Hagar and Ishmael be thrown out, and Abraham and God have again agreed. Fortunately this is not God’s last word on the matter. Hagar and Ishmael’s rudimentary provisions are soon gone, and she sits a little way from where she has put her child under one of the scaly bushes of the desert landscape, unable to abandon him but unable to watch him actually die. There she lifts up her voice and weeps. God does not see her but God hears (wayyišmaʿ ʾĕlōhîm) the voice of yišmāʿēl. I guess she happily settles for that. God again acts in such a way as to recall and give new significance to being ʾēl rŏʾî, opening Hagar’s eyes so she sees a well from which she can give Ishmael a drink.

El Shaddai, El Olam, El Bethel

God’s own initial self-designation is ʾēl šadday (Gen 17:1; 35:11; cf. Gen 28:3; 43:14; 48:3). Already [440]  did not know the meaning of šadday and here translates “your God”; outside the Pentateuch it sometimes paraphrases but often translates with a word meaning “Almighty,” which looks like a guess. We still do not know the etymology or meaning of šadday, and its usage does not indicate what meaning it had for Israel, though we can tell its connotations: it was the revelation given to the ancestors when they did not know the name Yhwh (Ex 6:2–3). By its nature, ʾēl šadday is an archaic name suggesting the far off days when the ancestors knew God in a different way—the same God, but under a different name and a different dispensation. It is a name that marks Genesis as “the Old Testament of the Old Testament,”[441]  or (as I might prefer to put it) “the First Testament of the First Testament.”

Eventually, having experienced God’s fulfilling the promise to him, Abraham follows Hagar’s example and invents a name for God, ʾēl ʿôlām, “one who has been God from long ago/one who will long be God”—literally, “God age” (Gen 21:33). It was another characteristic of El that he was “father of years,” a god of age and experience, so perhaps what Abraham is doing is applying to Yhwh a Canaanite title for the creator god, as he had earlier (see Gen 14:19–22).[442]  Subsequently, in light of his next experience he invents another name that recalls Hagar’s, though its interpretation is more complicated.[443]  It is a Yhwh name rather than an El name, yhwh yirʾeh (Gen 22:14). In isolation its obvious meaning is “Yhwh will see,” but the verb form is the one Abraham used when he declared “God will see to the lamb for a whole offering.” The narrator comments, “as it is said today, ‘On Yhwh’s mountain it will be seen to.’ ” In isolation, again, one might have rendered that phrase, “On Yhwh’s mountain he will appear.” But in association the name and the comment more likely designate Yhwh as the God who sees to things. Providence involves God providing.[444]

In relating to Jacob, God offers the name hāʾēl bêt-ʾēl (Gen 31:13). Jacob’s version (Gen 35:7) is ʾēl bêt-ʾēl, without the article, which one could render “the God of Bethel.” The name derives from the place where God appeared to Jacob on the way out of the promised land. But God’s own version must signify “the God Bethel.” On the way to this modification of God’s name, Jacob’s own name for God is ʾēl ʾĕlōhê-yiśrāʾēl (Gen 33:20), El, God of Israel—“Israel” in the sense of the individual Jacob who has just been renamed Israel.

The God of Your Father

Whereas that first kind of title using the word ʾel reappears in the revelation to Moses in Exodus 6, the other kind reappears in the revelation in Exodus 3. The God there revealed as Yhwh is “the God of your father, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob” (Ex 3:6). Within Genesis, many of Israel’s ancestors—especially Jacob—had spoken of God as the God of my father (e.g., Gen 31:5). God also speaks to Abraham as his shield (Gen 15:1), while Jacob speaks of his father’s God as the Awe of Isaac, and of his own God as the Mighty One of Jacob (Gen 31:42, 53; 49:24),[445]  but these descriptions are not exactly names.[446]  The first and last descriptions do correspond to the ancestors’ frequent need of protection in danger, when they were on the move and in other situations. God is a protector, though generally in ways that sidestep conflict with more powerful groups.[447]

Calling God “the God of my father” first affirms that God enters into a personal commitment to individuals. Other Middle Eastern religions had many gods who could relate to individuals in this way. Among Israel’s ancestors there is only one God to do so, so that this God is both the high God, the awesome creator, and the personal God involved with individuals. Calling God “the God of the fathers” is a reminder that God is not merely a mighty and awesome (but kind) creator, but someone involved with people, as protector and provider. It affirms the way God has been involved with the family line, keeping the promise to take one toward becoming many. And it constitutes a recognition that the head of the family is of key importance to the fulfillment of God’s purpose. God is working via the family structure and the place of the family in society, and therefore relating especially to its head. But God does appear to and/or speak to and/or intervene for Hagar, Sarah and Rebekah, while people such as Leah and Rachel also implicitly relate to God for themselves (e.g., Gen 29:32–35; 30:6, 23).

The personal nature of the ancestors’ religion also links well with the particular nature of their life. They were on the move, in various senses. One should not exaggerate the significance of this, for settled cultures also conceive of deities as relating personally to the head of the family. David’s successors as king are encouraged to relate to and trust in “the God of their father” (e.g., 2 Kings 20:5). Similarly, the ancestors’ family-based religion likely continues in the family life of ordinary Israelites—as Christian personal piety has often resonated with the stories of the ancestors more than, for example, with Exodus–Deuteronomy. Conversely, the ancestors were not nomads. They settle in places such as Mamre for long periods. But they live in tents like Bedouin, can always be on the move, and from time to time are on the move, for the sake of their flocks as seasons change or other pressures require it.

At Bethel God promises to be with Jacob wherever he goes (Gen 28:15), yet Jacob infers that this particular place is one where God is present. It is God’s house, heaven’s door. Indeed, God later thus directs him back to Bethel and appears there, although also God speaks to him at Shechem (Gen 35:1–15). There is a rhythm about God’s relationship with the ancestors, a rhythm of place and journey. It involves both fixed places where God appears and they worship, and journeys where they decide to go and God accompanies them. Although they build altars in places where God appears to them, their relationship with God is not as closely linked to places in the manner of Israelite religion with its temple and high places and Christian religion with its sanctuaries and cathedrals. They can keep on the move, and God’s relationship with them is a personal one with the people who are their heads, so it can persist no matter where the family is located.

Meanwhile, to Isaac God says, “I am/will be with you” (Gen 26:24). God’s being with someone denotes not an inner religious experience but an empirically perceptible event, particularly in a context of pressure and danger. For Isaac it implies success against the odds and it thus supports the exhortation “Don’t be afraid” (Gen 26:24; cf., e.g., Gen 15:1; 21:17)—either of Yhwh or of the future. It may not be significant that the words “I am/will be with you” are never uttered to Abraham. The way his life works out evidences the reality to which these words refer. When he goes to Egypt because of a famine, he does so without any divine guidance or confirmation that this is the right move or promise that Yhwh will accompany him, though not without Yhwh following him to make sure no disaster happens (Gen 12:10–13:2). When Isaac faces the same dilemma as his father, Yhwh tells him not to adopt his father’s solution, though this does not stop him getting into the same trouble and requiring the same rescue (Gen 26:1–12).

God Who Speaks and Appears

“Yhwh said to Abram” (Gen 12:1). Subsequently Yhwh speaks (among others) to Hagar, Rebekah, Isaac, Jacob and Laban (e.g., Gen 16:13; 25:23; 26:2; 31:3, 24). Genesis 12 focuses on the content of Yhwh’s words to the exclusion of any statement about the manner or the means: Yhwh speaks to give charges (cf. Gen 15:1; 17:1; 22:2) and make promises (cf. Gen 12:7; 13:14–17; 15:1–21; 17:1–22), and on other occasions to ask questions (cf. Gen 18:13). To judge from subsequent accounts in the First Testament, and from other accounts of religious experience, such speaking can take several forms. Sometimes God speaks to a person inside their head, and may even take part in a conversation that happens there. Sometimes God speaks with an externally audible voice that other people may also hear, even if they cannot tell the actual words; again God and the human being may take part in conversation.

Yhwh’s speaking is not an everyday event or even an every-decade event for Abram. Later in Genesis 12 Yhwh does not speak to chastise Abram for his semi-deceit of Pharaoh. Pharaoh fulfills this role on Yhwh’s behalf, repeating Yhwh’s words to Eve (Gen 3:13). Yhwh has given up confronting people for their wrongdoing and now leaves human beings to do that (Gen 20:3 is the only exception). The normal human reality is for Yhwh to expect people to use their human discernment as they look at their own lives and at other people’s.

God’s communicating may be purely verbal and aural, or it may involve the visual. Thus subsequently “Yhwh appeared to Abram” and spoke further to him (Gen 12:7; 18:1), and later appears to Isaac and Jacob (e.g., Gen 26:2; 35:9). While God has often spoken to people in Genesis 1–11, Genesis 17:1 is the first report of Yhwh’s appearing to anyone. Again, visions can happen inside people’s heads, and this might be so in Genesis 12, but generally the stories suggest something externalized. When “Yhwh’s word came to Abram in a vision” (Gen 15:1) and Abram asks how he can know he is going to possess the land, Yhwh takes Abram outside, Abram fetches animals and birds for use in a ritual, and Abram falls into a supernatural sleep. Time passes until regular darkness as well as a supernatural darkness falls. A smoking fire pot and flaming torch pass between the pieces of the creatures Abram had killed and cut up in connection with Yhwh’s sealing (literally “cutting”) a covenant with him. Yhwh turns a bare verbal undertaking into a sworn covenant with an implicit self-curse if it fails to come true (Gen 15:7–20), an enactment of the fate one wishes on oneself in case of failure to keep the covenant (see Jer 34:18–20). While it is just possible to imagine all that involving only events inside Abram’s head, more likely something external happens here. That is also the case in Genesis 17, when God’s appearing is external enough to provoke Abram to fall on his face (Gen 17:3). At the end of this appearing God “goes up from over” the now-renamed Abraham (Gen 17:22), perhaps in a cherubim-powered chariot (cf. Ps 18:10 [[448]  11]) or perhaps on something like the ramp or staircase between the earth and the heavens that Jacob sees on God’s first appearance to him in a dream (Gen 28:10–17).

God speaks in dreams to Abimelech (Gen 20:3–7), Jacob (Gen 28:10–17; 31:10–13) and Laban (Gen 31:24). Joseph dreams about his future, a dream that seems to need little interpretation (Gen 37:5–11), while two Egyptian politicians dream about their futures (Gen 40:4–22) and Pharaoh dreams about future events in Egypt (Gen 41:1–32), dreams that needed interpreting. But we are not told that God inspired Joseph’s dreams, and whereas his father takes huge liberties with God, Joseph only rarely speaks of God and never speaks to God. Nor does God appear to Joseph or speak to him or act in perceptible ways. It is hardly his fault that his relationship with God is more belief and knowledge than encounter. Even in the midst of his story, when God speaks, it is to his father (Gen 46:2–4).[449]  Pharaoh reckons that Joseph’s ability to interpret dreams and work out what to do in light of them comes from the presence of God’s spirit in him (Gen 41:38–39), but Joseph says only that interpreting dreams belongs to God, who can reveal to Pharaoh what God intends to do (Gen 40:8; 41:16, 28). There are often ambiguities about God’s possible appearances and announcements in Genesis, though the ambiguity is different from the one that arises in a modern context. There is no doubt that something supernatural is happening, but its nature may be a matter of ambiguity—as is the case with the appearance of the three figures to Abraham, or the wrestler to Jacob (and see, e.g., 1 Kings 22:24).

God’s appearing and speaking feature recurrently throughout the First Testament gospel story, as they have been a recurrent feature of Christian experience.[450]  They are regular though not exactly normal parts of the way God relates to people. In the First Testament, most of the people to whom God appears and speaks are heroes and leaders such as ancestors and prophets, but the promise of Joel 2:28–29 [MT 3:1–2] reminds the stories’ hearers that God also relates to ordinary people in that way. Yet a vision of God is not something people seek. It is not an aspect of personal spiritual life to which one might aspire. One might indeed aspire to a real experience of God, but that takes other forms. It can involve walking before God and doing so with integrity, as Abraham is challenged to do. It can involve God being active in a person’s life to protect from the consequences of their folly, as happens to Jacob. It can involve God’s harnessing the hostile actions of other people and making them serve a positive purpose, as happens to Joseph. But it does not involve seeking a vision of God. If that comes, it comes by God’s initiative because God needs to say or reveal something special in connection with the project God is pursuing in someone’s life.

Yhwh’s Aide

A number of stories have God adopting human form in order to communicate and relate with the ancestors, in the way made possible theologically by the fact that human beings are made in God’s image. There may thus be nothing awesome or numinous about these manifestations, at least initially. They are very different from Yhwh’s appearances at Sinai, or to Isaiah or Ezekiel, and more like Yhwh’s involvement with Adam and Eve. And there can be an overlap between an appearance by Yhwh and an appearance by one of Yhwh’s “aides,” a malʾāk. The LXX translates angelos (“messenger”), but malʾāk links with a Hebrew word for “work” (Gen 2:2–3) and malʾākîm serve God by acting as much as by telling people things. Perhaps their activity is another enabler of God’s giving up work at the end of the six days of creation. As a king’s aides fully represent him, so that their acts and words are as effective as the king’s, so it is with Yhwh’s aides.

Such a figure first appears in Hagar’s story—another “first” for Hagar. Initially the story does call him Yhwh’s aide (Gen 16:7–10a), but subsequently has him speaking in the first person as if he were Yhwh (Gen 16:10b), then has him referring to Yhwh in the third person again (Gen 16:11–12). Afterward, it refers to Yhwh’s having spoken to Hagar, and she refers to having seen God (Gen 16:13). On the second occasion when Abraham and Sarah throw out Hagar and Ishmael, God’s aide does not appear on earth but calls from the heavens. Perhaps the cabinet is again in session there, so the boy’s cry reaches God and one of God’s aides is commissioned to take action. But having referred to God in the third person (“God has heard” Gen 21:17), the aide once more goes on to speak as God in reaffirming the promise that looks as doomed as the promise to Sarah had once seemed (“I will make a great nation of him” Gen 21:18). So speaking from the heavens may signify that it really is God who is involved here. The figure who speaks when Abraham is about to kill Isaac is again Yhwh’s aide and refers to God in the third person (Gen 22:11–12a), then speaks of Abraham’s not having withheld his son from me (Gen 22:12b), yet subsequently is again identified as Yhwh’s aide, who utters Yhwh’s words and clearly marks them to be such, speaking like a prophet (Gen 22:15–18).[451]  The appearing of an aide is as good as an appearance of God, though less threatening.[452]

Thus there is little to distinguish Yhwh and the two aides when the three of them appear to Abraham (Gen 18:1–2).[453]  The chapter begins by telling us that Yhwh appears to Abraham, but goes on to recount the story from the perspective of the way Abraham experiences events and/or the way we gradually perceive who is involved in them. Three figures arrive at his encampment at Mamre. As far as Abraham is concerned, they are simply “men” (Gen 18:2). With the politeness, generosity and hospitality upon which desert life depends, he offers them water, rest and (lavish) food. Mysteriously, one of the three then declares that in due course the aged Sarah is to have a child. It is at this point that Sarah laughs her first laugh. Who is the person who makes such a declaration? These are surely not just ordinary travelers. Then Yhwh asks why Sarah has laughed—as if Yhwh is not up to performing such a wonder. It is the first explicit reference to Yhwh’s being involved, yet it does not quite say that the person who makes the declaration is Yhwh. The voice might have intervened from the heavens. “The men” leave to continue their journey to Sodom. Then we hear of Yhwh’s internal deliberation: It would be inappropriate not to tell Abraham the journey’s significance. Then, it seems, Yhwh speaks out loud (for Abraham to hear), about the need to go to check out what truth there is in the cries about the Sodomites’ behavior that have reached the heavens, before taking punitive action. “The men” continue their journey toward Sodom in order to do this, and we would have thought this meant all three of them, but later it becomes clearer that it was only two, who are then identified as Yhwh’s aides (Gen 19:1). The “man” who stayed behind and stood there waiting to see if Abraham wanted to say anything is indeed Yhwh.

The final aide in Abraham’s story is the one Abraham envisages going ahead of his servant on the quest for a wife for Isaac (Gen 24:7, 40). Whether this is a promise or a wish,[454]  the story implies it comes true, though we never see this aide or hear directly about the aide’s work.

Jacob discovers that many aides busy themselves about Yhwh’s affairs, continually making the journey between the earth and the heavens (Gen 28:12), returning to Yhwh’s court to report on what they have been doing, to consult and to receive fresh commissions. Their appearing to Jacob the swindler on the run from his brother shows they are no more morally selective than Yhwh. Seeing a vision of angels is no indicator of holiness. Their using a ramp points up the fact that, being humanlike, they do not have wings like the angels of Christian tradition, who are a conflation of malʾākîm with winged figures such as the cherubim and seraphim. Touched by an Angel gets it right.

God’s aides meet with Jacob again on his way home not far from Bethel when he is descending from the Golan Heights into the Jordan Valley (Gen 32:1–2). He needs to be aware of them again as he prepares for his scary reunion with Esau. With further irony, a scarier encounter awaits him (Gen 32:22–32). Having sent his entourage on across the Jabbok, one of the key river crossings as he approaches the land, he remains alone and a man attacks him. It is not clear what the assailant is trying to do, but apparently he wrestles with Jacob all night and cannot defeat him even when Jacob strains his hip. Like Moses, whom God tries to kill and cannot, Jacob is a hard man to put down. No doubt at some level God could have defeated Jacob by means of superior firepower, but God apparently foregoes such possibilities, lays aside divine power and glory, and engages with human beings on something like level terms. As dawn breaks the attacker wants the match to stop, but now Jacob will not let go of him. Jacob knows this is not just a man—as he says later, he has seen God face to face, and lived to tell the tale. Perhaps the reason the “man” wants the match to cease, then, is the danger it will bring to Jacob for him to see his opponent in broad daylight.[455]  But Jacob insists on this mysterious wrestler’s blessing, and receives it. The “man” declares that Jacob will now be not yaʿăqōb (he grabs) but yiśrāʾēl. The new name means “God struggles/strives/persists,” which is what God has been doing all night, and all Jacob’s life. God has found him no easier to master than he has ever been—hence this new name. But typically the text interprets the name in a nonobvious way. Apparently the blessing is that the name is deemed also to indicate that Jacob has striven with God and with human beings and has won. The conflict leads to some disabling of Jacob, but his injury is a paradoxical witness to how hard he wrestled when God took him on. It is also a witness to the reality of the event, if Jacob ever needed one. This was no dream, no mere spiritual struggle. God becomes human in order to struggle with humanity.

In blessing Joseph, Jacob offers one final indication of the equivalence of Yhwh’s aide and an appearance of Yhwh in person (Gen 48:15–16):

The God before whom my ancestors Abraham and Isaac lived their life,

The God who has shepherded me all my life until today,

The aide who has restored me from all harm, bless the boys.

4.7 God Who Acts

God is seeking to ensure that blessing wins out over curse. How does God do that? How does God act? How does God’s acting relate to the acts of human beings and to other circumstances in the world? What is the difference between an event in which God is acting and one in which God is not acting? Can one event have two causes?

Does God control and guide all events in the cosmos? How does God carry out the divine will and purpose in human history? What does it mean to say that God is the Lord of history?… What is the relation of divine activity and creaturely activity? How is God’s action related to the finite causal nexus in nature and history? Is God active in all creaturely activity or does God intervene in this activity?[456]

How can we think of God directly acting in the world in a way that fits with our knowledge of regularity in the world? And how can we think of God acting in the world in a way that does not make God blameworthy for failing to act to stop, for example, the Holocaust? Theologians such as Augustine, Aquinas and Calvin developed complex accounts of the way God is active in the world and the way God’s activity relates to human activity.[457]  The First Testament narrative offers its own complex account, beginning with the stories of the ancestors.

Genesis does not suggest that God causes or is sovereign over all events in the world or is immanently active in all events. It probably assumes that God is sovereign in the sense that nothing can happen without God allowing it, and in this sense God is involved in all events. But this is a watered down idea of “involvement,” and the point the narrative makes explicit is God’s specific involvement in particular events. It suggests that God does cause some events, sometimes directly (e.g., creating the world), sometimes by secondary means (e.g., Isaac’s birth). Some such acts claim recognition as acts of God because the act follows on a word from God that declares an intention. Other acts of God are visible only to the eyes of faith that see God making use of human acts or see God reversing their effect. But not every unexpected pregnancy or unexpected victory is an act of God. Reverence for God (the First Testament way of speaking of “the eyes of faith”) may sometimes discern God’s hand behind “chance” events in the world or human deeds or unexpected events such as the pregnancy of an apparently infertile woman or the presence of a potential wife by the right well at the right moment. Genesis does not see God as necessarily the primary cause of events and humanity as the secondary cause. Sometimes human beings are the primary cause of events and God’s involvement is reactive. And God has no explicit relationship with many other events.

God’s intentions, worldly events and human decisions may thus interrelate in a number of ways. One cannot universalize any of these ways in which God relates to human actions. They suggest that God’s sovereignty is like a seminary president’s. The president is responsible for everything that happens in the seminary. This may include many things the president does not especially approve of, but the president does not go in for micromanagement. Though nothing happens except what he or she facilitates and allows, this does not tell us anything especially illuminating about either the president or the seminary. Sometimes the president acts directly, e.g., appointing a provost. Sometimes the president causes someone else to act, e.g., commissioning the provost to appoint a librarian. Sometimes the president allows an act, e.g., commissioning the provost to discover what developments the library needs and to take appropriate action. The president acts, like anyone else, by means of his or her limbs, and the world and human beings are like God’s body.[458]  Scripture’s own image is that they are like God’s tools. It is even possible to imagine the president achieving something through someone who was not seeking to work toward the president’s agenda.

Directly Acting

There are events that God directly brings about. Yhwh’s first direct act in the ancestors’ story is to hit Pharaoh and his household with a major epidemic (Gen 12:17). A supernatural terror falls on the people between Shechem and Bethel, so that they do not pursue Jacob’s sons (Gen 35:5). Yhwh destroys a whole city because of the cry of the people it wrongs (Gen 18–19). Yhwh kills Er when he behaves wickedly and kills Onan when he refuses to beget a child who would count as Er’s and thereby deprive Onan of the unexpected opportunity to be heir to the firstborn’s inheritance (Gen 38:6–10). There are occasions when community tragedies or family tragedies issue from God’s hand.

Yhwh brings the epidemic because Pharaoh has incorporated Sarai into his harem. Pharaoh did not know she was married, but this does not alter the fact that objectively a wrong was done or threatened—we are not told whether Pharaoh had sex with Sarai, and the contrast with Genesis 20 could be read either way. The focus lies on the objective wrong rather than the way it related to intentions in Pharaoh’s mind. “The workings of the moral order do not discriminate between those who commit sins knowingly or unknowingly.… People do experience great disasters in life ‘through no fault of their own’ ”—and great benefits.[459]  Smoking produced cancer in people who could not know about the link between these. While sometimes God works via the intrinsic links between deeds and their results, Genesis implies no such link here. Abraham deceived Pharaoh, Pharaoh thus did wrong, and Yhwh hit him. Subsequently Abraham similarly deceives Abimelech, Abimelech takes Sarah into his harem, but before he has had sex with her, Yhwh makes Abimelech ill (and thus unable to do so?) and makes all the women in Abimelech’s household infertile (Gen 20:17–18). There is no “natural” link between wrong and affliction. There is a kind of moral link, but not one that treats individuals independently of other people’s acts that have implications for them. Perhaps we are to infer that both kings’ afflictions are more a wake-up call than a punishment. God acts for Abimelech’s sake, because he is unwittingly risking his life by taking another man’s wife (Gen 20:3). Perhaps the earlier epidemic was also a wake-up call in the sense that Pharaoh was also risking his life by committing adultery (cf. Lev 20:10). The stories are not explicit on how far Yhwh was acting for Sarah’s sake. Nor do they suggest that God intervenes because of Sarah’s place in Yhwh’s purpose as the potential mother of Abraham’s children. Neither for the man nor for the woman is such an intervention a universal—most potential adulterers receive no such wake-up call, and there is no intervention for Tamar. Presumably we are to assume that the epidemic disappears when Pharaoh releases Sarai, as happens when Abraham as a prophet prays for Abimelech and his women. In general, whatever we mean by God’s omnipotence or sovereignty has to have room for God’s being open to being persuaded into a change of plan through conversations with people (e.g., Gen 18:22–33). And the prayer of a liar as well as the prayer of a righteous person can effectively bring healing (cf. Jas 5:16).[460]

As Joseph sees it, seven years of plenty and then of famine are something that “Yhwh is doing” or “is about to do” (Gen 41:25, 28, 32), though the narrative does not comment on whether Joseph is right. There are enough aspects of Joseph’s personality and actions that raise questions (the dream about his family’s bowing down to him, his treatment of his brothers, and his turning the Egyptians into state serfs) for us to be hesitant simply to assume that the narrative implies he is right. Further, Joseph’s statements raise questions in their own right. The idea that God brings plenty or famine recurs in the First Testament, but there is usually some moral significance about these events—they issue from faithfulness or unfaithfulness. Why should God bring a famine on Egypt? Is it more likely that this is “just one of those things,” though something God knows about? Yet Joseph’s view at least opens up another possibility about God’s acts. Genesis 15:13–16 might suggest that God simply foreknew the outcome of Joseph’s dream and the brothers’ action and worked these into the need to give the Canaanites some moral breathing space. But it might be that God decided to take the family there, to that end, so that Joseph’s dream and the brother’s action unwittingly fitted a more detailed aim that God had already formulated. Perhaps the reason for the famine is then to provide the means to bring the family to Egypt—even if this looks like a sledgehammer to smash a nut. By not telling us the answer to these questions, Genesis leaves possibilities open that we can utilize in reflecting on our own experience.

Working with Human Intentions

In other events, divine and human work together, the event requiring both. Yhwh announces the intention to act by making Abram a great nation, blessing him, making him famous and making him into a blessing. But this will involve Yhwh’s “attending to” the infertile Sarai, “intervening” in her life (pāqad, Gen 21:1).[461]  God also will do that for Jacob’s household to bring them out of Egypt (Gen 50:24–25). Such talk implies an extraordinary act that comes about after God has announced ahead of time the intention to act, and an act that is hard to explain as the result of ordinary this-worldly causes, but it requires human cooperation. Of course women who have long been infertile do unexpectedly have children, and oppressed peoples do sometimes find their freedom. It is not essential for the birth of a son to Sarai to be something medically inexplicable for it to count as God’s intervention to make something happen against all odds. There are marvelous births and deliverances that count as God’s intervention and ones that do not.

While Sarai’s infertility means Yhwh’s intervention is required to set going the process of fulfilling the promise, its further fulfillment might require no such act. Exodus 1 makes no comment on divine involvement in the extraordinary increase of the family, one of whose causes is Jacob and Laban’s shady or questionable marital practices (e.g., Gen 29:16–30:13). But God does act to make it possible for Rebekah and later Leah and Rachel to have children when they cannot. There are times when people need to draw Yhwh’s attention to a situation, as when Isaac prays for infertile Rebekah (Gen 25:21), and times when Yhwh notices independently: “Yhwh saw that Leah was rejected and opened her womb. But Rachel [whom Jacob loved] was infertile” (Gen 29:31). It is a subtle statement. There are events for which Yhwh is directly responsible, or for which the narrator knows Yhwh is responsible, and other situations for which Yhwh is not directly responsible as far as the narrator knows. Yhwh does not directly cause every case of infertility, and this is apparently not one Yhwh caused. It will transpire that Rachel cried out over her infertility, though, because eventually “Yhwh was mindful of Rachel. God listened to her and opened her womb” (Gen 30:22).

The Reformed affirmation that God’s choice of people is not conditional on human acts of faith fits with the First Testament emphasis that Yhwh’s choice of Israel was not dependent on Israel’s response, or on anything else about Israel. But the First Testament does not extend this principle to Yhwh’s entire relationship with humanity, and neither need Reformed theology do so. “Aristotle’s Absolute is the Unmoved Mover.… It hears no prayers.” But it is not the God of the Bible. Classical Reformed theology does not see God as planning human sin. It is a “conditional theology” in the sense that it sees God responding to human sin and to other events in the world, including people’s prayers.[462]

Abraham pictures Yhwh’s aide going ahead of his servant to enable him to find a wife for Isaac in Aram (Gen 24:7), as Yhwh’s aide will go before the Israelites to take them to their land (Ex 32:34). This does not mean the aide visibly guides the servant as God will visibly guide Israel through the wilderness. The servant finds his way to Abraham’s brother’s city and stops at the well outside the city. There he asks God to make it come about that the girl he asks for a drink of water, who not only gives him a drink but offers to water his camels, is the one for Isaac. A girl duly gives him a drink and offers to water his camels, though being a wise man, he takes nothing for granted but wonders whether Yhwh has made his journey successful. Then he discovers the girl is indeed Abraham’s great niece who is happy to offer him hospitality. Three coincidences are too many. They convince him Yhwh has answered his prayer and shown steadfast commitment (ḥesed weʾĕmet) to his master. The servant bows low and blesses Yhwh (who is evidently there in Aram). “When I was on the way, Yhwh led me” (Gen 24:27), the servant concludes, as a shepherd leads a flock (Ps 23:3; 77:20 [MT 21]; 78:53, 72), and as Yhwh will lead Israel toward its land (Ex 13:17, 21; Neh 9:12, 19; Ps 78:14)—except that this man could hear no shepherd’s voice nor see any cloud or fire, any more than see Yhwh’s aide. Yhwh works immanently and mysteriously via the decisions the servant takes and the coincidences he stumbles across. Rebekah’s father and brother also acknowledge that three coincidences are too many to resist: “The word/thing came forth from Yhwh.” Their opinion about whether the proposal is good or bad is neither here nor there. “Yhwh has spoken” (Gen 24:50–51). Rebekah’s opinion is not asked at this point, though next day, when her mother and brother want to keep her for ten days for some leave-taking, she declares that she indeed wants to go—perhaps she is also overcome by the coincidences. Abraham’s making his promise or expressing his hope and the servant’s praying his prayer supports the servant’s inference that these are not just coincidences. God has acted. More generally, Jacob testifies to God’s always having shepherded him, and God’s aide always having restored him from disaster (Gen 48:15–16). Yhwh has orchestrated everything for Jacob. Yet we cannot see God act or when God intervenes.

When Isaac assumes that he controls the blessing, and his younger son assumes he had better manipulate the old man to make sure it comes his way, God indeed blesses through Isaac’s blessing, and that effectively (Gen 27:27–40). The practice of blessing parallels that of ordination or absolution. If the right person says the right words in the right context, God uses these words to effect something. Isaac’s blessing works through the social conventions of the culture, accepted by Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob and Esau, and given part of its effectiveness through this acceptance, and God is committed to working through that. Contrary to Yhwh’s words to Jacob’s father, however, Jacob’s manipulation forces him to get out of the land, but Yhwh appears to him to promise presence and protection (Gen 27:41–28:22). In Joseph’s story, for the first time there is an indication that leaving the land can be within God’s direct purpose (Gen 45:4–11; 46:1–3), almost as much as Abraham’s first arrival in the land. While the explicit exhortation and its rationale will be extended to all Abraham’s people (Is 41:10), Joseph, too, is never promised this active presence of God, but the words are used to describe how Yhwh related to him. “Yhwh was with Joseph and he a was successful man”; indeed “everything he did, Yhwh made successful” (Gen 39:2, 3). His rise to a position of supreme responsibility in Potiphar’s house reflects not only innate ability but divine gifting. Yhwh is not only reactively using human acts but proactively making things happen. The same dynamic reappears in Joseph’s time in prison (Gen 39:20–23).

Using Human Acts

In bringing Abram from Haran to Canaan, Yhwh acts proactively and perceptibly by charging Abram to do something he would not otherwise do (Gen 12:1–4). Similarly Yhwh rescues Lot from Sodom by “sending him away” (šālaḥ piel) from there—not lifting him out, but bidding him get out (Gen 19:29). God acts by telling people to do things. If they do not respond, there is no divine act. So when Lot’s wife fails to respond to the aide’s charge to flee for her life without staring back, she turns into a salt column (Gen 19:15–26). Similarly, on Joseph’s account his release from prison and his meteoric rise to the top of Pharaoh’s staff come about as a result of God’s revealing things to him, in this case the significance of some people’s dreams (Gen 40–41). But neither he nor the narrative attributes to God Joseph’s proposals for dealing with the dreams’ implications, which are what actually lead to his elevation (Gen 41:33–36). Like Abram, Isaac and Jacob, Joseph receives key charges from God, but is then left to work out the consequences. So the ordeal he imposes on his brothers may join the peril Abram and Isaac impose on their wives and the way Jacob relates to Esau, in showing human bungling interweaving with the fulfillment of divine commissions.

Originally there was no suggestion that Yhwh was involved in Terah’s decision to set his family on the move from Ur to Canaan or in their halting at Haran, but later it transpires that Yhwh brought Abram from Ur (Gen 11:31; 15:7). Similarly, in Joseph’s mind, Pharaoh’s putting him in power over all Egypt becomes God’s putting him in power over all Egypt (Gen 41:41; 45:9). Perhaps the order of the statements implies that a human being such as Terah or Pharaoh can make decisions and act in a way that God can then utilize positively within the divine purpose. The story of Joseph as a whole could have similar implications. Joseph’s brothers sell him to traders who take him to Egypt, but there he ends up in a position to help his family survive the famine that afflicts the entire area. So looking back, one can see Joseph’s brothers’ wicked deed being used to further God’s purpose, which involves making sure Jacob’s family survives any threats to it. God puts that purpose into effect by utilizing the acts that human beings undertake for their own reasons. Indeed, perhaps Yhwh had no original plan to take Jacob’s family into Egypt. It would be possible to have them gain control of Canaan from a base in Canaan itself (as a prominent current theory suggests actually happened). There is no need to bring about the famine that drives them to Egypt, and no need to have Joseph there to facilitate this. But God chooses to work within the framework of the brothers’ decisions—not overriding these but reworking their results.

If “it seems morally necessary to play down any straightforward identification of an act like that of Joseph’s brothers with the action of God,”[463]  it may be significant that such identification only happens after the event. God does not inspire the brothers to their immoral deed, but makes creative use of desires and acts that were self-serving or destructive (though the First Testament itself is generally not so troubled at the idea that Yhwh inspires acts that look immoral). The acts of God include human actions whose results can be made to further God’s intentions in the world rather than working against them.[464]  The story thus abounds in ironies. While the Joseph story is especially characterized by God’s working via human acts, the difference from preceding stories is more one of degree than of kind.

God makes similar use of Joseph’s dreams implicitly portraying his brothers and parents bowing down to him (Gen 37:7, 9–10). Joseph is already alienated from his brothers through being treated as his father’s favorite son, and we may infer that the brothers also know that Joseph tells tales on them to their father. We might think Joseph was stupid to tell everyone his dreams, yet they provide an important perspective on events that are to transpire, as well as a pointer to the way God will in fact be involved in these. Yes, the brothers will all bow down to Joseph (Gen 42:6; 43:26, 28)—though apparently not the parents, in any literal sense—but that will actually be an aspect of what enables the family to survive a famine.[465]  One can hardly blame the family for their negative reaction to the dreams, yet the precise nature of the brothers’ interpretation of them gives a more pejorative slant to the notion of bowing down than it necessarily requires (Gen 37:8).[466]  Their resistance to the dream’s fulfillment is then the means by which it finds fulfillment. But whereas every preceding dream in Genesis has been identified as of divine origin (at least by the dreamer), neither Joseph nor the narrative says this of Joseph’s dreams. The most we know is that God uses them (expressions of Joseph’s natural ambition as one of the youngest children in the family?) to take Joseph into Egypt and eventually to a position of far greater lordship than he dreamed, and thus to preserve the family as a whole.

Working Against Human Intention

Joseph himself sees Yhwh’s involvement in his enslavement in a more radical way. After his father’s death, his brothers fear Joseph will now take vengeance on them, but he comments, “While you intended [ḥāšab] trouble for me, God intended it for good, so as to cause a numerous people to be alive today” (Gen 50:20). Their selling him into slavery in Egypt was a deed they truly undertook and for which they have to take responsibility. But God worked their deed into a different purpose. The event was the expression of two intentions, their own and God’s, and through the one event God achieved something much bigger than the mere enslavement of one person. In light of that, Joseph can overlook their acts, and he invites them to believe that he has done so. He speaks with the magnanimity of a king pardoning his subjects, which is practically what he is. His dream of his family’s subservience to him is fulfilled in the very act of his pardon and in the provision he has been making for them as he controls their destiny. He remains in a position of power: He pardons, he provides, he reassures, he comforts (Gen 50:21). If there is anyone he should be angry with, it is himself or God. But he never raises the question of whether he must accept some responsibility for his brothers’ hostility, and he accepts God’s act, too, because of its intention and its effect (never mind that question of whether God really needed to bring a famine and therefore make the family need to be in Egypt to escape its consequences).

Joseph’s words need not mean that God formulated that intention at the same time as the brothers formulated theirs, or before it; God might be taking their act and making it the fulfillment of another intention. But Joseph has already expressed the point even more radically. “I am your brother Joseph whom you sold into Egypt. But now, do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, because God sent me ahead of you to save life.… It was not you who sent me here but God” (Gen 45:5, 7). His exhortation contrasts with his apparent efforts to get them to own their guilt over preceding chapters, and his repeated statement about their having sold him makes clear that he recognizes they did send him here. His more radical point is that Yhwh’s planning and sending were not merely coequal with the brothers’, but were the decisive factor in events. That can take the edge off their sense of guilt. By means of their deeds, God was proactively at work. Again he speaks like the king or the head of the family or the firstborn—even telling the children not to misbehave (Gen 45:24). Joseph sees Yhwh’s hand behind events, though still by inference from them rather than through a divine revelation. Even the dreams in the story draw attention to that by default, because none reveals more than a fragment of what is going on. Joseph’s conviction about the overarching or encircling purpose of God is a reflection on events, rather than a revelation like that to Abram (Gen 12:1–3). This does not make God’s involvement less real or certain, but it means it is moral discernment and the discernment of faith that sees God behind the story. The emphasis on the brothers’ free actions in the narrative and in Joseph’s comments works against the suggestion that, having decided to take Jacob’s family into Egypt to survive the famine, God therefore somehow inspired the brothers to do a deed they would otherwise not have thought of—any more than later God had decided to have Jesus betrayed and therefore somehow inspired Judas to betray him. In such events, both God’s design and human design are involved, but the former is working against the latter.

Events in Which God Is Not Involved

When famine drove Abram to Egypt, the story likewise does not say Yhwh causes it, or uses it—for instance, to test Abram or to profit him, though both arguably happen. There are events in which God is involved neither reactively nor proactively. If these events are negative, there are times when for a while God is not with the person to whom they happen. God’s activity does not involve causing every event or even utilizing every event. Some things that happen have no significance in God’s purpose. They simply need reversing. Genesis’s account corresponds to regular human experience, which contains much that fits no pattern of meaning. Alongside the “natural” events, there are human acts that bring enslavement or liberation on which the story makes no comment on God’s involvement (e.g., Gen 14). And sometimes human beings take action toward the fulfillment of God’s purpose and God does not accept their act in this connection, but may work it into that purpose in some other way (e.g., Gen 16).

Likewise there are human acts that God overrides, as will happen when another Pharaoh seeks to keep Israel in Egypt. And there are human acts with whose results God interferes, as happens when Abram and Isaac try to pass off their wives as their sisters. Joseph’s being the person who experiences most undeserved human disfavor and most divine override gives paradoxical significance to the testimony to God’s involvement in his life by Joseph himself, by people who know him and by the narrative. God is not with him as protector as God was with his father. His brothers sell him as a slave—but Yhwh is with him in the house where he serves and makes him successful, thus reversing the effect of the brothers’ deed (Gen 39:2–3). His master’s wife frames him—but Yhwh is with him in prison making people favorably disposed toward him, making him successful, and giving him the opportunity to impress members of Pharaoh’s court (Gen 39:21–22). His fellow prisoner forgets him for two years—but then remembers him and gives him the opportunity so to prove himself (or to prove his God) that he ends up in a position of extraordinary authority (Gen 41:39; 45:8). All this makes for a contrast with the bad events out of which we see no good come, such as those involving Judah’s family (Gen 38). In each of these cases involving Joseph, the event is a negative, and one for which there is no need, for it would have been quite possible for God to take him to Egypt and make him successful without any of that. But at least God eventually reverses them and turns them into a positive. This again means that the stories resonate with the human experience of undeserved wrongdoing, and they promise the possibility of redemption.

Yet sometimes human beings act in a way that frustrates God’s intention and God does not overcome the results of their act. God’s intentions in Genesis 12:1–3 remain significantly unfulfilled, partly because of human recalcitrance. The claim that God makes all things work together for good (Rom 8:28) is not one we can see working out empirically, but one that will only be true at the End. In the meanwhile, it is a conviction of faith and hope made on the basis of a number of key instances of its embodiment.

4.8 Relating to God

More than other parts of the First Testament narrative, the story of Israel’s ancestors focuses on God’s dealings with individuals and the way they relate to God. Admittedly the ancestors are not just ordinary individuals. Their story appears because of their significance as the people’s ancestors. Yet they are these people’s ancestors, whose lives anticipate theirs. In particular, Jacob-Israel is the people’s eponymous forefather, so that, for instance, the ambiguity that runs through his story suggests that the special position of the people Jacob-Israel is not dependent on which way the ambiguity falls in its life. Further, much of the dynamic of the ancestors’ lives is that of the lives of ordinary individuals. The ambiguity that runs through Jacob’s story advertises the possibility that a person like him may change or may continue to be what he or she has always been.

The story of Abraham’s servant points in a similar direction. Yhwh’s being “the God of my master Abraham” (e.g., Gen 24:12) might suggest that the head of the family fulfills a quasi-priestly function for the rest of the family and that an ordinary person like the servant does not think of God as “his.” But he may simply speak this way because of the nature of the task he is undertaking. Abraham prays or promises that Yhwh’s aide will accompany his servant when he goes off to find a wife for Isaac—or rather will go ahead of him (Gen 24:7). And in due course the servant asks God to make it come about that the girl he asks for a drink of water, who not only gives him a drink but offers to water his camels, is the one for Isaac (Gen 24:12–14). He is extraordinarily specific and confident in his expectation regarding what Yhwh is to do. “It is as if he imagines himself to be dealing with a different kind of being than the august and imperious one we have seen in action with Abraham, the one who deals in vast territories and aeons of time and who, when offended, sends down fire and brimstone from the sky.” In the First Testament, the one God has to have both the characteristics of the awesome creator and those of the personal god who looks after an individual.[467]  And God does as the servant specifies. Yhwh’s being the God of the clan chief does not mean this ordinary person cannot relate to God. While the servant here does so in connection with his commission from Abraham, there is sufficient ease in his relating to God to imply that this was no new experience. He would talk to God the same way about a wife for his own son, or about his own wife’s difficulty in conceiving. This underlines the likelihood that the story of a family head such as Abraham points to dynamics of ordinary people’s relationship with God.

Abram is someone able to recognize a word from Yhwh and willing to respond to it: Yhwh spoke, and “Abram went as Yhwh said to him” (Gen 12:4). But Yhwh’s words do not tell Abram who to take with him from Haran or where exactly to go. They do not tell him what to do when there is a famine, or foreign kings seem a threat to his life, or there is conflict within his family, or his ward gets kidnapped, or God’s promise fails to come true, or the women in his life start fighting. He apparently discerns for himself that despite the command to leave his family it is all right to take Lot and an extensive further entourage as well as Sarai, and determines what is the land to which Yhwh directs him, and works out that it is right to leave the land when there is a famine, though in none of these cases are we are told how. Moving to where there is food is a reasonable response to a famine, to be repeated by his grandson with divine approval, but it is one Abram initiates before asking how he will cope with the consequent problems, and he finds himself drawn step by step into trouble. So the specificity of God’s summons and promise to Abram does not relieve him of the necessity to make decisions. In a way it increases the complexity of decision-making.

God’s moral or personal expectation of him is “live your life in front of me and be whole” (Gen 17:1).[468]  Eventually, Israel has Moses’ Teaching to aid them in perceiving how that works out, giving them a theological and moral framework for living their lives, though this, too, does not relieve them from the need to make decisions. Although Genesis assumes God could tell Abraham to sacrifice his son, which Moses’ Teaching will forbid, it does not assume that, for example, adultery is all right for Joseph because he lives before Sinai, any more than that it is all right for Pharaoh because he is not a Israelite. For Joseph to have an affair with Potiphar’s wife would involve failing God as well as breaching the trust Potiphar had shown in him (Gen 39:8–9). Yhwh’s standards bind the ancestors even though they live before Moses. It does not need a revelation to tell people that a relationship with God involves worship of Yhwh alone, trust, obedience and the honoring of marriage. What Sinai does is set these expectations in the context of the new relationship sealed there and spell out their implications.

Calling on Yhwh

On their arrival in Canaan, when Yhwh appeared to him and promised to give him this land, Abram “built an altar for Yhwh” at Shechem and another near Bethel (Gen 12:7, 8; cf. Gen 13:4, 18; 22:9; 26:25; 33:20; 35:1, 3, 7). On other occasions people mark other places where Yhwh appears, by planting a tree or setting up a commemorative pillar (Gen 21:33; 28:18; 35:14). An altar (mizbēaḥ) is a place for sacrificing (zābaḥ), and presumably Abram offers sacrifice there, though this is explicit only on Jacob’s part (Gen 31:54; 46:1; but see also Gen 22:1–13). Certainly “he called on Yhwh by name” there (Gen 12:8; 13:4; cf. Gen 21:33; 26:25). That can imply simply public worship, or public testimony, or publicly asking God for something (1 Kings 18:24–26; 2 Kings 5:11; 1 Chron 16:8; Ps 80:18 [[469]  19]; 99:6; 105:1; Is 12:4; 41:25; Zech 13:9). It provides the verbal accompaniment to sacramental worship, since the sacrifices have the same range of significances (see esp. Ps 116:4, 13, 17). The absence of words such as holy from these stories is a sign that there is no holy caste (priesthood), holy time (e.g., sabbath), or holy place (temple), as there is no holy book.

Abram knows how to combine openness to the faith of another people with testimony to Yhwh’s supremacy as owner of heaven and earth (Gen 14:17–20).[470]  On the other hand, although Jacob moves from speaking to his father of “Yhwh your God” to acknowledging Yhwh as his own God (Gen 27:20; 28:10–22), much later “his household and all who were with him” have alien gods in their midst (Gen 35:2). God has commissioned Jacob to build an altar at Bethel, the first time an altar is built by Yhwh’s commission (Gen 35:1), but given that his entourage came from Aram, it would not be surprising if they had been worshipers of other gods, though it may be a little surprising if there has been no cleaning out of their religion before now. Perhaps the alien gods were ones worshiped by the more recent Shechemite additions to his household (Gen 34:28–29). This might link with the requirement that the people are also to purify themselves (tāhar hitpael), for purification is the antonym of “defilement,” which had been an issue in the story of Jacob’s sons and Shechem (Gen 34:13). It is the only reference to purification in Genesis, but this links with this being the only time alien gods need to be disposed of.[471]  Changing their clothes will be another sign of a change of allegiance—the people will similarly wash their clothes before meeting Yhwh at Sinai (Ex 19:10).

While God speaks to Abram, God does not speak to Sarai, despite, for example, the moves, the infertility, the charge, the promises, the famine, the deceit, the joining of the harem, the expulsion, the family conflict, the parting, the kidnapping and the rescue, let alone the later threatened killing of her son. But Abram’s bravery in Genesis 14 stands in marked contrast with his fear in Egypt. Neither Sarai nor Abram speaks to God through Genesis 11:26–14:24, with the significant exception of Abram’s calling on God at the altars he built. This draws attention by contrast to the characteristics of what follows, when Abram learns to speak to God with boldness. He has a foothold in the promised land but no child to be heir to Yhwh’s promise, and Yhwh’s word to him begins, “Do not be afraid” (Gen 15:1). The verb yārēʾ often denotes a positive reverence, awe and submission in relation to God, such as Abraham demonstrates at Moriah (Gen 22:12). Elsewhere it denotes a negative fear of the future issuing out of a sense of being under threat (e.g., Gen 26:7) or a fear of God that recognizes the danger in being confronted by God (e.g., Ex 3:6). Sometimes it is difficult to discern which form of negative fear the story refers to.

In Genesis 15 there is no indication that Abram was afraid of circumstances or of God. Indeed, he behaves in a very bold fashion, though perhaps it is God’s reassurance that frees him to speak so boldly. But God’s promises about being a shield and guaranteeing a reward take up motifs from the previous chapter that might well suggest reason for fear. Abram has declined to profit from war-making, so how will he survive in the real world? But it was God Most High who had “shielded” his enemies to Abram (Gen 14:20: the verb there is derived from the noun for “shield,” māgēn). Yhwh reminds Abram that he has no reason for fear. Abram then enters into a conversation with Yhwh with a combination of submission (he knows it is the “Lord” he is addressing) and frankness concerning the plausibility of God’s promises. He fulfills his destiny to be a blessing to the nations by praying for Sodom (Gen 18:22–33), with the same boldness he showed in laughing at God’s promise. He fulfills it again by praying for Abimelech and his household, so that they can be healed of the sicknesses he had brought on them (Gen 20:17). So Abram finds his voice in relation to Yhwh, Sarai finds hers in relation to Abram, and Yhwh speaks to Sarai’s servant and eventually to her daughter-in-law—though still not to Sarai except for the rebuke about her laughter.

Isaac similarly prays—for Rebekah when she cannot have children (Gen 25:21). He alone of the ancestors does that: Is it because he loves her (Gen 24:67)? When his prayer is oversuccessful, Rebekah herself knows how to approach Yhwh directly (at one of those altars?) about the painfully excessive activity in her womb, asking a question and getting an answer (Gen 25:22–23).[472]  We never see Joseph at an altar, as we see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but we hear his confession expressed in the names of his sons (see Gen 41:51–52), his testimony to God’s acts in the past (Gen 45:5–9; 50:20), and his statement of conviction regarding what God will do in the future and his own part in that (Gen 50:24–25).

Doubt and Trust

Abram also knows about doubt and about trust. Leaving Haran is an act of faith that demands a somewhat irrational commitment. When God tells him to sacrifice Isaac, he does so without a murmur and with commitment (he gets up early to do it). He does so with hope—perhaps he reasons that Yhwh has made a promise regarding this son, so if Yhwh wants him killed, this must be followed by bringing him back to life. When it is time to find a wife for Isaac, he trusts God for the right wife.

Earlier, he had pointed out that Yhwh’s promise of a son seemed more than unlikely of fulfillment. All Yhwh did was project the promise onto an Imax screen, yet now Abram “trusted in Yhwh.” Implicitly Abram has been living by trust since leaving Haran, but this is the first time the point is explicit. And “he counted that as rightness/faithfulness” (ṣĕdāqâ; Gen 15:6). The idea is not that by a kind of legal fiction Yhwh decides to treat Abram as a righteous man when he is not, imputing righteousness to him. It is rather that Abram demonstrates the kind of attitude to God that makes a relationship possible, for relationships are based on trust. And ṣĕdāqâ is a relationship word.[473]  It signifies that things are right between two parties. The weaker party trusts the stronger party, and the stronger party does the right thing by the weaker party. Subsequently, Yhwh will take the idea further: on the basis of Abraham’s commitment to effective action in implementing ṣĕdāqâ, Yhwh draws him into intercession that involves a bold and far-reaching trust in Yhwh (Gen 18:16–33).

But the comment about “counting” is ambiguous (Gen 15:6). The context suggests Abram is the subject. Perhaps Abram “planned faithfulness for himself”—the active verb ḥāšab most often refers to planning. It is used to contrast Yhwh’s planning with Joseph’s brothers’ (Gen 50:20). Abram’s commitment thus stands in contrast to the planning of the wicked. Or perhaps Abram “counted it for himself as faithfulness/rightness”—realized that the promise meant God was treating him as a faithful person. More likely Abram “counted it for him [Yhwh] as faithfulness/rightness.” The promised son would be an expression of God’s doing the right thing by him in keeping the promise (cf. ṣĕdāqâ in passages such as Ps 24:5; Is 45:8, 23; 59:9).[474]  In due course the act of God in Christ will then be a crucial fulfillment of God’s promise of faithfulness (cf. Rom 1:16–17 and the wider argument of Romans).[475]

Nevertheless, Abram is soon taking his own initiative to see that the promise of a son comes true, and is once more discovering that this leads to unforeseen further problems (Gen 16). When Yhwh again reaffirms that Sarah will have a son, Abram collapses in laughter at the idea. Cannot Ishmael “live before Yhwh”—that is, live under Yhwh’s blessing? Yes, Ishmael can live under Yhwh’s blessing, but Yhwh is still set on Sarah being the means of fulfilling the promise (Gen 17:17–22). Sarah, too, finds the idea of having a baby laughable, though unlike Abraham she apparently tries to conceal her laughter (Gen 18:10–15). Also unlike Abraham, she explicitly laughs with joyful recognition rather than saddened disbelief when Yhwh’s promise comes true (Gen 21:5–7).

When Jacob has to leave the land and Yhwh appears and promises to look after him and bring him back, his response may be typically self-serving, the act of someone who knows which side his bread is buttered (Gen 28:10–22). If Yhwh will look after him so spectacularly, as the beneficiary of the commitment to his father and grandfather, he will make Yhwh his God (so who was before this?), and the column he erects can be God’s abode(!), and Jacob will give God ten percent of everything God gives him(!). There is here some tension between the awareness “how awesome is this place” and the bargaining that follows. Or should his words be read more positively as an expression of faith? As a result of his flight, Jacob finds a wife whom he loves from his extended family’s city, like his father, and does so in a scene reminiscent of the one in which Abraham’s servant finds Rebekah—but Jacob prays no prayer for guidance. He prays again on arriving back on the borders of the land, for the first time taking an initiative with God in the manner of his mother and father and grandfather. It is at the same time a response to Yhwh’s earlier appearing to him to encourage him to return home, a response asking Yhwh now to fulfill the promise to protect him from Esau as Yhwh had fulfilled the promise to prosper him while he was outside the land (Gen 32:9–12).

Yet again Jacob may seem to be hedging his bets, not letting the prayer stop him from taking steps to mollify Esau, and his prayer meets with no immediate answer. What follows hints that the prayer was more effective than the gifts, though we do not know whether Esau’s welcome constitutes an answer to it or whether Yhwh had the matter in hand and Jacob’s anxiety was unnecessary.

4.9 Marriage and Parenthood

Many of these accounts of people relating to God focus on marriage and family life. In Eden and immediately outside it, marriage and family had considerable importance. This fits the purpose announced in Genesis 1, that humanity was to fill the earth. Individuals could not do that, and men could not do it alone as they could build a city or a tower on their own. The family was the context in which blessing and curse became effective. Marriage and family then became less prominent as the story in Genesis 1–11 unfolded. It is otherwise through Genesis 12–50 as the story makes its way from that of an undifferentiated humanity to that of a great nation. Family history mediates between these two. The names tell it: this is the story of Abram and Sarai, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, and of Jacob’s twelve sons. Even the fact that Yhwh never declares any expectations of Joseph nor promises him the blessing reflects the way Joseph’s story is part of the story of Jacob’s family (cf. Gen 37:1).

How Marriages Come About

Among the stories’ dissimilarities from the modern West are the ways marriages come about. In Genesis we have famously not learned where Cain’s wife came from but have learned that Lamech “took” two wives and that some heavenly beings also “took” human wives/women. Abraham and Nahor also “take” wives, though we do not know how this comes about. Abraham assumes Isaac should marry within Abraham’s old community, the extended family, and Yhwh at least goes along with the idea. Approving of marriage with cousins or second cousins correlates with the First Testament’s ambivalence about sexual relations with other peoples such as Hittites and also about sexual relations within the same household. The union of a man and his sister-in-law, for instance, will be forbidden despite the expectation that a man should have sex with his sister-in-law if his brother has died and she has had no child. It is a scandalous matter when Reuben has sex with one of his father’s secondary wives (pîlegeš, Gen 35:22; [476]  “concubine”).

Humanly speaking, Abraham (via his servant) and Nahor arrange Isaac and Rebekah’s match from start to finish, and the couple do not see each other until the fait is accompli. This way of arranging a marriage leads to Isaac’s loving Rebekah and emotionally leaving his dead mother as he cleaves to his wife. It is one of the few biblical marriages where love is said to feature. Yet the statement also contains some irony, for Isaac and Rebekah are soon divided in love for their twin sons and scheming against each other to get their way for the son each loves. One consequence is that Rebekah and Isaac end up leaving Jacob to find his own wife, as Esau had. They do agree at least that Jacob, too, should marry within the extended family, though there is no mention of Yhwh in the account of his doing so. Both Jacob’s and Yhwh’s interests seem to lie elsewhere (Gen 28:10–22). This may link with the fact that marrying within the old community is not undertaken for purely religious reasons. For Rebekah, ethnic instincts prevail: She does not get on with her Hittite daughters-in-law (Gen 26:34–35; 27:46). That Jacob chooses Rachel for her looks rather than her religious commitment is suggested by the way she makes sure she does not leave Aram without her father’s teraphim, which he calls his ʾĕlōhîm (Gen 31:19, 30).[477]  She sounds like someone worshiping other gods (on the way from the land) beyond the Euphrates (Josh 24:2). Further, although the fracas at home frees Jacob to marry for love, he discovers he has not actually escaped the conventions whereby marriages come about (Gen 29:18–26). And although Jacob’s marriage fits with the principle of marrying into the extended family, not too close and not too far, much of the succeeding story is about disputes over property within this family—flocks and women (see Gen 31:17–21, 43–55, with their personal pronouns).[478]  The story again ends up showing how difficult family relationships are, and specifically how difficult are questions about property within the family—as many people find at a parent’s funeral.

Androcentrism and Patriarchy

The stories are androcentric and take for granted a patriarchal understanding of marriage and parenthood. They are mostly stories about fathers and sons. Mothers and daughters do not even count among the seventy people who move to Egypt. This corresponds to the absence of women’s names between Genesis 4 and Genesis 11:29, when we meet Sarai. The stories are about men gaining wives (Gen 24; 28–29; cf. Gen 2:18–25), men using and risking wives (Gen 12:10–20; 20; 26:1–11), and men losing wives (Gen 19; 23; 35). They focus on the role of a woman as one who can bear her husband a child (rather, a son), the “help” he most needs (Gen 2:18), the role he cannot fulfill. That is the nature of her blessing (Gen 17:16). So the stories also concern what a man does when his wife cannot fulfill her key role (Gen 16; 25:19–21)—or even what a daughter does in that situation (Gen 19:30–38). Otherwise daughters are conspicuous by their absence in the stories, perhaps reflecting another male unease, about relationships with daughters.[479]

The description of Sarai supports the idea that women should be barefoot, naked, pregnant and in the kitchen. She is beautiful, and therefore a potential cause of male rivalry (Gen 12:11, 14)—like Rachel, which is why Jacob loves her more than Leah (Gen 29:17), though also like Joseph, who is therefore a temptation to Potiphar’s wife (Gen 39:6). Sarai is “taken” by Abram (Gen 11:29) and then by Pharaoh (Gen 12:15), who apparently pays a substantial price for her in some way (Gen 12:16). A woman is an appendage to a man, and a piece of his property. We have noted that Yhwh never speaks to Sarai except to rebuke her, not even by including her in the charge to Abram about moving from Haran, though Yhwh does tell Abram to rename her (Gen 17:15). While the usual word for a wife is simply the word “woman” (e.g., Gen 12:5), occasionally the First Testament uses expressions involving the noun baʿal and forms of the verb bāʿal, which imply ownership and control.[480]  So when Yhwh warns Abimelech of the danger he is in because he has unwittingly “taken” another man’s wife, the danger comes from her being a woman “owned by a master,” a woman who belongs to another man (EVV “a married woman”; Gen 20:3). The danger comes not from her husband, whose deception implies he is again scared of the king. It comes from Yhwh, who will act to punish even the unwitting taking of a woman who is already married. On each of the occasions when Abram or Isaac risks his wife, Yhwh acts to protect the woman, though this is because she belongs to the man to whom Yhwh is committed and she is destined to produce a son for him.

Thus when Sarah does bear a son, she bears him “for Abraham,” as Hagar did (e.g., Gen 21:2–3, 9; cf., e.g., Gen. 24:24; 25:2; 29:34). It is Abraham who names and circumcises the boy, in accordance with Yhwh’s instructions (Gen 17:12, 19; 21:3–4), as he named and circumcised Ishmael (Gen 16:15; 17:23), though it was Hagar who had been told the name (Gen 16:11). Actually there is no regular pattern of naming in the stories. Judah names his first son, but his wife names their other two (Gen 38:3–5); Lot’s daughters name their sons (Gen 19:37–38). Joseph names his sons, but Rachel and Leah name theirs and those borne by their servants, while Rachel and Jacob both name Rachel’s last child, but Jacob wins (Gen 29:32–30:24; 35:18; 41:51–52).[481]  That event symbolizes Rachel’s story with its unfulfilled yearnings. She who had cried out “give me children or I will die” (Gen 30:1) dies in childbirth, her naming “Son-of-my-sorrow” overruled.[482]

So women are important chiefly as wives, and wives as mothers, particularly mothers of sons. The stories do point to the importance of women’s religious experience within the context of the family. God is involved not just with men but with women and children, in the context of needs such as infertility, the danger of pregnancy and shortage of food and water. But “while the biblical narrative has much to tell us about motherhood as a patriarchal institution whose aim is to ensure patrilineal continuity, it has little to tell us about motherhood as experience or political privilege.”[483]

Its working with patriarchy need not imply it actively supports it, but it does little to subvert it. It does not treat patriarchy as the root of every evil or treat its abolition as the ultimate good. Either Yhwh does not think that abolishing patriarchy is the most pressing issue, or does not think anything can be done about it. The continuing prevalence of patriarchy in the church suggests that at least the latter is still true.

Loss, Grief and Pressure

The ancestors’ story opens with a God-commissioned family disjunction as Abram is charged to leave his father’s household (Gen 12:1). In emphasizing Abram’s “leaving,” Israel’s story begins by denying the significance of ties to country, home and family. Human beings treat these ties as having ultimate significance, and country, home, and family will be central to Israelite faith. Jesus’ charge to his disciples will also take up this note in denying the significance of family ties, which contrasts with regular Christian attitudes to country, home and family. Being involved in the fulfillment of God’s purpose means abandoning your parents, brothers and sisters, though not (in Genesis) abandoning dependents such as your wife and your dead brother’s offspring, nor servants and property (Gen 12:4–5). Abram is forming an independent household (bayit) of his own (cf. Gen 15:2–3; 18:19) and parting from the rest of the extended family (mišpāḥâ) in order to bring blessing to all the “families” in the world (Gen 12:3).

From the beginning, this family’s life involves bereavement, grief and the need to cope with the practical consequences of these. Haran dies before his father, and his son has to be looked after by his uncle. Terah dies halfway to Canaan, anticipating the deaths of Miriam, Aaron and Moses on the edge of the promised land. Jacob’s beloved Rachel dies in childbirth (Gen 35:16–20). The stories recognize the fact that human life often ends before it should. They do not ask why this happens. They are also naturally accepting of death in itself. “Abraham expired and died at a good age, old and content, and joined his people” (Gen 25:8; cf. Gen 15:15). Death is a logical and appropriate end for life, the moment when Abraham joins his people, and joins Sarah, as Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob and Leah will later join them (Gen 25:8–10; 35:29; 49:29–33). Sarah lives a mere 127 years, but that might also count as a good age, and in this sense her death, too, could be accepted. The stories do not ask where death comes from, but focus on the way God’s story continues.

This does not mean death does not cause grief. Abraham cries when Sarah dies (Gen 23:2). Isaac also grieves for her (Gen 24:67). Joseph cries when his father dies, as does the whole of Egypt, for seventy days (Gen 50:1, 3). Indeed, the stories are full of tears. Hagar cries as she thinks her son is dying (Gen 21:16). Esau cries when he learns how Jacob has swindled him (Gen 27:38). Jacob cries when he meets Rachel (Gen 29:11). Esau and Jacob cry when they are reunited (Gen 33:4). Jacob cries when he thinks Joseph is dead (Gen 37:34–35). Joseph cries when he realizes his brothers are coming to acknowledge the wrong they did to him (Gen 42:24), when he meets Benjamin (Gen 43:30), when he later makes himself known to the brothers (Gen 45:2, 14–15), and especially when he meets his father (Gen 46:29). Benjamin also cries when he meets Joseph (Gen 45:14). Joseph cries again when his brothers ask for his forgiveness (Gen 50:17).

Crying is not the only expression of emotion in the stories. Laban hugs and kisses Jacob on meeting him (Gen 29:13). Esau hugs and kisses Jacob (Gen 33:4). Joseph hugs Benjamin and his father (Gen 45:14; 46:29)—and again when he is dead (Gen 50:1). Jacob hugs and kisses his grandsons (Gen 48:10). Jacob kisses Isaac (Gen 27:26–27) and Rachel (Gen 29:11). Laban resents not having been able to kiss his sons and daughters goodbye, but eventually does so (Gen 31:28, 55 [MT 32:1]). Joseph kisses his brothers (Gen 45:15).

Infertility

In the world in general, many people experience difficulty in having children, or have children when they do not wish to do so. The ancestors were more aware than we are that we cannot control the “achievement” of parenthood as much as we might like or think, but are dependent on whether or not God chooses to open a womb. Perhaps this is one implication of Eve’s comment that she gets a baby “with Yhwh” (Gen 4:1). While inability to have children as likely issues from a man’s inability to produce sperm as from a woman’s infertility, this makes no difference to the principle here, though the fecundity of Abram and Jacob via other women apparently establishes where the problem lies in their cases. In Isaac and Rebekah’s case, Isaac’s prayer and Yhwh’s answer has the same implication—unless Yhwh heals Isaac in response to Isaac’s prayer for Rebekah.

Not being able to have children can seem one of life’s great deprivations, something that casts doubt on a person’s full humanity. Every month a woman is reminded that her body is designed to bear children but that she cannot do so. Her sense of her womanhood and her place in society may be imperiled by her inability: hence the tensions between Sarai who has first claim on Abram as husband and Hagar who has the functioning womb (Gen 16; 21). Childlessness brings shame on a woman (cf. Gen 30:23)—the first shame in the stories (cf. Gen 34:14; 38:23 for others). It also provides a justification for polygyny, if people felt justification was needed. In turn that links with the way patriarchy can put women in conflict with each other, as happens to Sarah and Hagar and to Rachel and Leah. Infertility is more common in traditional cultures, like other physical problems, but theologically it stands in tension with God’s commission to humanity and God’s commission to Israel to enter into full possession of its land. God says “fill the earth,” but closes the womb (Gen 16:2).

God’s promise of a son to a childless couple surfaces in a number of contexts in the First Testament. As well as the general background in the grief that childlessness can bring, this reflects a desire to have someone to keep the family and the family business going, and an anxiety about who will look after the couple in their old age. Men can have a particular fixation on sons—on having a son or the fear of losing a son. While most stories about the marvelous birth of a son concern someone who will have a significant role to play in God’s story (Judg 13; 1 Sam 1), this is not always so (2 Kings 4:8–17). The promise of a son to Abram and Sarai relates to God’s once-for-all purpose, but also speaks to everyday life issues in Israel.

So what do people do when they cannot have children? Pressing invocation of God is Isaac’s response (Gen 25:21). His own parents had arranged for surrogate motherhood, with equivocal results, as later did his daughters-in-law. Three wives thus get their husbands to beget a son by having sex with their servants, and each time it is a cause of further conflict or the means of fighting a battle. Abram and Sarai “complicate the plan of salvation” and bring much grief and conflict into their own lives and Hagar’s.[484]  More unequivocal blessing and fewer problems arise out of Rachel and Leah’s action, but Hannah’s story provides a suggestive complement to Rachel’s, since her infertility and her conflict with her cowife drives her not to turn to the husband who loves her nor to any other man (she bypasses the priest), but to God.[485]  When Yhwh does open the wombs of Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel, in each case the eventual arrival of children becomes a cause of conflict between husband and wife (e.g., Gen 21:1–14; 27:1–45; 30:1–2).

It is also scandalous when Judah fails effectively to provide Tamar with the brother-in-law who can father her child—more scandalous than her manipulating him into having what he thinks is casual sex, but is actually his vicariously fulfilling this duty himself (Gen 38). Their story illustrates varied pains of marriage and parenthood: the wickedness of a son and his death before he can become a father, the reluctance of another son to fulfill his responsibilities to his brother and sister-in-law, the death of this son, a father’s fear for the third son, the sentencing of a sister-in-law to years of widowhood, the death of a mother and the leaving of a father alone with his empty bed, and the pervading sense that the family lives under God’s wrath (Gen 38:6–12).

Conflict

The life of this household involves other pressures, troubles and conflicts. There are people occupying the land to which Yhwh takes them. A severe famine hits the land. Abram’s attempt to take responsible action to see that his household has food leads to the brink of disaster and to understandable conflict between Pharaoh and Abram. Lot gets captured as a result of a military conflict between the cities around the Dead Sea and the empire that controls them, and Abram knows how to initiate conflict with other people on behalf of the family when necessary. Conflict with other peoples dogs Isaac, especially over water supply (Gen 26:12–22).

The household also experiences internal conflict. The word “household” implies that its members could in theory live in one house or at least as one living unit, though when we include his staff, even Abram’s household is the size of a village, the more so when expanded through his misleading of Pharaoh (see, e.g., Gen 14:14; 15:2–3; 17:12–13). That eventually generates conflict within it. Is this a sign that Abram had no business bringing Lot to Canaan when he had been told to leave his extended family? Did “Abram set off as Yhwh had commanded him but [rather than “and”] Lot went with him” (Gen 12:4)? At least Abram knows how to offer a generous solution to the conflict, and Abram and Lot become two households (Gen 13:5–13), though the resolution has disastrous side effects (Gen 18–19). Attempts to bring about the fulfillment of God’s promise also generate conflict within the household (Gen 16:1–7).

For Jacob, conflict with Esau only gives way to eventual conflict with Laban, who ironically accuses him of succeeding by means of fraud, and Yhwh responds by telling him it is time to get back to Canaan. He panics at the prospect of facing Esau, but Yhwh encourages him to flee from Laban as he had once fled Esau, with Rachel and Leah happy to abandon their father and Rachel happy to steal the teraphim (Gen 31).

Most of the ancestors’ experiences of marriage and family are not distinctive to them but are the kind that make human life in general fall short of people’s dreams—inability to have children, shortage of food, conflict over water supplies, migration to strange countries in search of food, fear because of the growth of other communities, conflict in the family, conflict in the community, conflict between nations, the early death of family members, pain in pregnancy, death in childbirth, unwitting wrongdoing, failure to keep promises. While the stories pass few explicit moral judgments, they imply that these realities of marriage and family are not the way things are supposed to be. They imply a contrast with the ideal announced in God’s words in Genesis 1, echoed in the words of the narrative and of Adam in Genesis 2.

The ideal already stands in tension with subsequent stories in Genesis 1–11. It now stands in tension with the accounts of men marrying several wives, of the varying status these women have, of surrogate motherhood, wifely rivalry, parental favoritism, spousal deception and brotherly conflict. This negative portrayal constitutes the main negative element in the story of Abraham and Sarah and becomes even more prominent through the stories of Isaac and Rebekah and of Jacob’s own family, which are dominated by the conflicts between Jacob and Esau and between Joseph and his brothers. Once again the stories provide readers with a mirror in which to see themselves as they own the same realities in their own lives. And perhaps that can sometimes lead to things becoming more what they should be; certainly without that, this is unlikely to happen. Renita Weems, for instance, comments, “The similarity of our stories, as black and white women in America, to the stories of Hagar and Sarai warrants taking the enormous risk of opening up the deep festering wounds between us and beginning to explore the possibilities for divine healing.”[486]

Ambiguities About Relationships

The family’s life thus illustrates the pains that issue from having a number of partners (simultaneously if not sequentially) and at least invites the stories’ hearers to think long and hard before doing so. Jacob’s own family life develops motifs that have featured in earlier episodes. As well as begetting children by two other women, he marries two sisters. He loves Rachel more than Leah (but apparently Bilhah and Zilpah not at all). As their respective childbearing capacity (God-given or God-withheld) adds to the animosity between them, they are eventually reduced to bargaining over his sexual favors, and Jacob to colluding with their doing so (Gen 30:14–16). And that is how the ancestors of readers of these stories come into being. “Acrimonious competition over Jacob’s seed is reflected even in the names of his children,”[487]  along with envy, pain, shame and longing (see Gen 29:32–35; 30:5–8, 23–24). The pains will be felt in relationships between these partners and in the lives of the children of the various unions and in their relationships. Often the women pay the obvious price for involvement in these multiple unions, though the men pay a less obvious one. The good news is twofold: God may make a point of being involved with such victims, and God is shameless in achieving a positive purpose through whatever human beings do. The ancestors’ stories show spectacularly how this can be so in connection with the difficulties people get into in their marital and sexual relationships.

The family’s life illustrates further ambiguities about the marriage relationship. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob love their wives (Gen 24:67; 29:18, 20; in Abraham’s case, I infer it from Gen 23:2). But three times one of them risks his wife’s honor and her body out of fear for his own well-being. This fear is one reason why sex becomes a source of conflict between the people involved and between them and other people. The stories illustrate the way men can feel they have reason to fear other men in connection with sex, and can feel ambivalent about their wives’ sexuality, their relationship with them, and their wives’ relationships with other men, much of this without any self-awareness on the men’s part.[488]  Women have to decide whether or not to collude with them, as Sarah and Rebekah do. They may then do so with the encouragement that God watches over Sarah and Rebekah, suggesting the possibility (though it is no more than that) that God may also watch over them.

Alongside this ambivalence is men’s capacity to impose themselves sexually through their physical strength, which can put women in a vulnerable position. Jacob’s daughter, Dinah, goes to visit the local women and finds it is dangerous to be out on her own as, literally, “Shechem … saw her, and took her, and laid her, and violated her, and his heart was drawn to Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, and he loved the girl, and he spoke reassuringly to the girl” (Gen 34:2–3). The order of these events makes it unlikely that he rapes her in the manner the Sodomites might have raped Lot’s daughters (and see Judg 19–20)—such rapists do not fall in love with their victims—though it does suggest that he presses himself on this girl whom he fancies. Perhaps the story does not relate events in chronological order but he fell for her and then pressured her into having sex with him.[489]  But men may have an instinct for casual sex, and women may be driven to use sex to achieve their rights (Gen 38:12–26). Not that seeking sex outside marriage is an exclusively male matter, as Joseph discovers (Gen 39:7–20), along with the fact that foreign women may be a special temptation and that women’s incapacity to impose themselves physically may make them use other methods to bring trouble to a man and make it dangerous to be alone with a woman.

4.10 Family Life

The prominence of these family stories in Genesis affirms God’s involvement in family life and God’s working through it. Perhaps it implies that the family has priority over the nation. No doubt readers saw relationships with other peoples anticipated in these stories (cf. Mal 1:2–5), and also saw the interrelationships of the Israelite clans anticipated in the stories of their eponymous ancestors within Jacob’s family. But there is much in these stories that does not evidently relate to these levels of relationship and likely illumined Israel’s own experience of family, as is later the case with the stories of Elkanah, Hannah and Peninnah (1 Sam 1–2), and of David’s family. The portrayal of family dynamics, like that of marriage and of relationships with God, is one that recurs in different contexts, suggesting that its theological implications may not be confined to illumining one once-for-all stage in God’s dealings with Israel’s ancestors.

In this family, each generation’s children (actually, sons) stand in conflict or rivalry one way or another: Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers. In each case the sibling rivalry sees some resolution, through God’s intervention in connection with Isaac and Ishmael, through Esau’s generosity to Jacob, or through Joseph’s manipulation of and generosity to his brothers. A man’s willingness to fight and otherwise do the macho thing (Gen 29:10)—followed by kissing and crying (Gen 29:11)—can feed into this pattern of conflict. In the case of Isaac and Ishmael, the conflict issues in parting. The land is not big enough for both of them. In the case of Jacob and Esau, it issues in a temporary parting. Such conflicts can drive a person to relate to God over them. For Esau, the parting gives time during which the wronged party has time to forget his loss and anger until he is just looking forward to seeing his brother again (Gen 33:4). Reconciliation comes about because Esau is still laid back enough to be willing to pay its price and forget the past. His relationship with his brother is more important than the wrong his brother once did him. God’s purpose is thus fulfilled through Jacob’s drive to be number one and also through surprising human generosity of spirit on the part of his victim.

But as the party in the wrong, Jacob cannot believe this has happened and is still wondering how to fix things. The least ambiguous moment comes when Isaac dies and is “buried by his two sons Esau and Jacob” (Gen 35:29), though the prospering of Esau and Jacob means they still have to part, apparently amicably, because the land cannot support them both (Gen 36:6–43). Again Esau behaves in a more human way than his deceiver brother, moving away when there is insufficient land for the two clans to live in the same area. His prosperity suggests that his plea for a blessing has been answered, even if his destiny lies outside the promised land.

Jacob’s sons first show themselves to be their father’s offspring in devising a fiendish scheme to punish Shechem and his community for his rape of Dinah. Sexual politics is a reality within the family, too (Gen 35:22), as also appears in the subsequent story of Judah, Shua, Er, Tamar, Onan and Shelah (Gen 38). The sons are a study in conflict within the family, with its rivalry, foolishness, ambition, hatred, jealousy, deception, lies, violence and vengeance, all encouraged by Jacob’s showing Joseph the same favoritism his mother had once shown him. The wronged party then looks as if he is getting his own back on his brothers as, remembering his dream, he toys with them like a cat with a mouse (Gen 42–44). While he subsequently talks as if he, too, has abandoned any grudge, his brothers cannot be sure whether to believe this is so.

Whence the Sibling Rivalry?

From where does the sibling rivalry come? The problems can issue from Yhwh’s answering prayer (Gen 25:21–23) and from a prophetic dream that comes true (Gen 37:5). The answer to prayer is accompanied by a revelation from Yhwh that the struggling of the twins in Rebekah’s womb foreshadows the struggle that will characterize their lives. It does not quite say that Yhwh wills this struggle, though it does imply Yhwh will work through it, for the idea that the elder will serve the younger embodies a reversal Yhwh likes (cf. Gen 48). Similarly, the story implies God was involved in making Joseph’s dream come true. God works through the human weakness of the family.

The problems between brothers also issue from the personalities of the men involved. Jacob and Esau are already struggling in the womb, and when Jacob emerges he is reaching after Esau’s heel. Despite their being twins, they have very different personalities (e.g., Gen 25:27).[490]  While having the energy of a hunter, Esau is also apparently a laid-back person. He is not preoccupied by the rights of the firstborn and is happy to surrender his position when hungry and Jacob uses his cooking ability to bargain with him (Gen 25:29–34), and he is able to forget the past (Gen 33). In contrast, Jacob is an uptight person, with the restless anxiety of the second son who always wants to be first. Joseph in turn is at best stupid in the way he relates his dream to his parents and his brothers and provokes their increasing animosity toward him (Gen 37:5–11, 19–20).

The problems between brothers can issue from the way their parents relate to them. Isaac and Rebekah respond in different ways to their sons’ different personalities, Isaac more positively to the man’s man, Rebekah to the homeboy (Gen 25:28). Yhwh had spoken to the right parent in revealing that the older was to serve the younger. It is her action that brings this about, her unwise favoritism that puts Yhwh’s will into effect, as Sarah’s fear of Hagar put Yhwh’s will into effect in connection with Rebekah’s husband. While Isaac favors their elder son, Rebekah manipulates their second son into deceiving his way to the acquisition of the firstborn’s blessing, both mother and son taking Yhwh’s name in vain in the process (Gen 27:7, 20). Their attitudes thus encourage a deepening of the gap between the two men, issuing in a breakdown in relationships between them and in Jacob’s flight into exile. His mother’s pretext is that he can acquire a wife from there, though Esau soon demonstrates the possibility of meeting both racial and theological principle without leaving the land (Gen 27:46–28:10). Jacob in turn is more attached to Joseph than to his older brothers, and shows it (Gen 37:3–4). He is aware of the brothers’ animosity yet acts in a way that takes no account of it (Gen 37:11–14), manifesting more of the same fatherly ineptitude as had been shown to him and the same capacity for being deceived. In this family, parents are not very insightful in their bringing up of children, even if (like Isaac and Rebekah) they know how to love, to pray and to consult Yhwh.

God does not stand aloof from bumptious Joseph. Whatever the motivation for his manipulation of his brothers, this is the means whereby God brings the entire family to Egypt and thus enables it to survive in the short run even though Joseph’s own policies mean it finds itself eventually in serfdom. Jacob’s three oldest sons lose their place of seniority because of their instability, disgraceful behavior, violence and harshness. Jacob makes no comment on the other brothers’ deserve but promises them various degrees or forms of success (Gen 49). Judah will take the place of the first three as senior son—though we have his own confession of his shortcomings (Gen 38:26)—and this comes about as Judah becomes the location of the nation’s capital. But Jacob also blesses Joseph in a detailed and extravagant way—and this blessing comes about as Ephraim and Manasseh later flourish in the north.

The blessings thus anticipate features of the lives of the clans that will grow from these brothers. Issachar, for instance, will settle for a position of servitude that emerges from the pleasantness of its position in the Plain of Esdraelon. Gad, east of the Jordan, will be vulnerable to desert raiders, but will do its best to stand up to them. Asher, on the coastal plain, will be able to grow fine food. Naphtali will roam the Galilee mountains like the gazelles that are at home there. The future of the clans that will issue from the brothers will be shaped by the brothers’ own nature and acts, by the social convention that makes someone the effective eldest brother with special responsibility, by geographical factors and by the way people react to geographical factors. Within their lifetime their father’s death brings a crisis to relationships among the siblings, not least over unresolved issues from their past relationships. As happens in the lifetimes of parents, some siblings will continue to make father decisive in the relationship even when he is dead (Gen 50:15–21).[491]  The theological perspective Genesis offers readers is not a lesson in resolving conflict within families, but a promise that conflict is not the end of the world.

The Use and Abuse of Power

The Joseph story incorporates a range of material on the use and abuse of power in the family and elsewhere,[492]  by Jacob, Judah, Tamar, Joseph’s brothers, Potiphar’s wife, Pharaoh and Joseph in various roles. As a father, Jacob exercises power by favoring one of his sons, as he had been favored by his mother and Esau by his father, and then by blessing Ephraim and Manasseh and making declarations about the destiny of his own sons. Judah likewise exercises his power as father by getting a wife for his first son but delaying implementation of the levirate obligation for her after her husband dies. Tamar exercises her power as a woman by tricking Judah into implementing the custom, and shaming him.

As a group the brothers exercise their power by getting rid of Joseph and together fabricating a story about his death. Potiphar exercises his power first by giving Joseph responsibility in his house, then by having him put in prison. Potiphar’s wife exercises her power by having Joseph framed when he refuses to have an affair with her. Pharaoh exercises his power by jailing officials who displease him, by restoring one but executing the other, and later by giving Joseph authority in Egypt—and God exercises supernatural power in bringing that about and seeing that the brothers’ acts work for the good of Jacob’s family. The jailer exercises his power by giving Joseph responsibility for other prisoners.

Joseph makes use of his position as favored son and develops it in bringing bad reports of his brothers to his father. He dreams of power, of his brothers and his parents bowing down to him—reigning or ruling over them, as the brothers put it. He exercises his power by showing concern for prisoners who are distressed. When he knows who his brothers are but they do not know who he is, he exercises power by pretending to believe they are spies and giving them and their father reason to be petrified about what is going on. He does so by accumulating grain when there is a surplus, and distributing it when there is a shortage, and by accumulating all the money, livestock and land on Pharaoh’s behalf, so that all the Egyptian people become Pharaoh’s serfs and become subject to transportation around the land by Joseph. He does so by privileging his family over other victims of the famine and by reassuring his brothers that he holds no grudge against them.

Like other characters in Israel’s story, Joseph is a human being with strengths and weaknesses, and God works through both of these—and not merely despite them. As someone who knows how to operate in a foreign court, he embodies principles enunciated in Proverbs.[493]  He is a wise counselor to the king. He knows how to resist another man’s wife (Gen 39:7–12; cf. Prov 2:16–19). He attributes his success to reverence for God (Gen 42:18; cf. Prov 1:7). He proves that God’s intentions can frustrate other people’s (Gen 50:20; cf. Gen 45:5–8; Prov 19:21). It would be an exaggeration to say that he fulfills all the ideals of Proverbs. He seems not to see the moral implications of his political policies. The way he deals with his brothers involves no revenge that parallels their betrayal of him, but one wonders whether there is a streak of nastiness about it (contrast Prov 10:12). He is a man who can be overcome by emotion, even if he manages to hide the fact (Gen 42:24; 43:30–31; 45:1–2, 14–15; 46:29; contrast Prov 14:30 with its reference to “passion” [[494] ]). Indeed, “Joseph’s characteristic response to family matters is weeping.”[495]

What do his tears mean? Perhaps they imply he is doing what he does for his brothers’ sake—it is the way this “wise” man sets about seeking to bring them to own their wrongdoing and be open to reconciliation. He is not testing them in the sense he says (Gen 42:14–16), but he does want to discover whether there is any truth or trustworthiness (ʾĕmet) in them (Gen 42:16). And the test is effective, as it provokes Judah’s self-sacrificing offer to become a servant to Joseph rather than risk his father’s life in insisting that Benjamin stay as his servant because of his apparent wrongdoing (Gen 44:18–34). Joseph knows that Judah has come a long way since Genesis 37 (and we know he has come a long way since Gen 38). But perhaps Joseph’s tears mean he is remembering his own suffering, and perhaps he is at least ambivalent at having his tormentors at his disposal. In giving Manasseh his name, he expresses gratitude to God for enabling him entirely to forget his hardship and his home (Gen 41:51), but his statement deconstructs, for in making it he shows it is not true, and every time he sees his son he is reminded of his (non-)forgetting. And/or perhaps his tears relate to this being the moment when he is for the first time able to make sense of his suffering (Gen 45:4–11 in the context of the tears in Gen 45:1–2, 14–15).

Deceit and Trickery

The family stories are also stories of deceit. No one in Genesis is guilty of deception in the sense of fraudulence (ʿōśeq), the great subject of critique elsewhere in the First Testament (e.g., Lev 19:13; Ps 62:10 [[496]  11]; Prov 14:31; Is 30:12), nor of falsehood (šeqer), a favorite target of Psalms, Proverbs and Jeremiah. But deception and trickery are recurrent themes in the stories.

They are the resource of people in a position of powerlessness in relation to kings, older brothers, husbands or fathers.[497]  Abraham twice deceives a king about Sarai’s identity to safeguard his life at the expense of his wife’s sexual integrity (Gen 12; 20). He is an effective deceiver, but Yhwh intervenes to put the king on the track of the deception. In the similar story about Isaac, the deception is uncovered accidentally. The deception imperils God’s purpose, but God works through it to bring blessing. The ancestors may think deceiving foreigners is all right, but while the story does not pass an explicit judgment on this, it shows that in practice deceit gets them into trouble. Perhaps Abraham accidentally tricks Lot into choosing land that looks good but is actually destined for calamity, and/or Yhwh allows/encourages Lot to choose land that looks good and thereby leave Abraham with land that will be better in the long run (Gen 13).

While deceptiveness and trickery is a feature of the lives of this family as a whole, generally the women are better or more successful at it than the men. Perhaps they have learned from their foremother’s exchange with the first deceiver (nāšāʾ, Gen 3:13). And perhaps they have had to gain expertise in this skill because women have less opportunity to get their way by force. With irony, Sarah assumes she is the victim of deception when she is implausibly promised a child in her old age, and she herself tries to be deceptive about her own feelings (kāḥaś piel, Gen 18:15). With further irony, Lot’s daughters come to believe that after the holocaust at Sodom there are no men in all the world but their father, and trick him into fathering sons for them (Gen 19:30–38). Women in a weak position thus use trickery to open up a future when they think there is none. The story again offers no comment on whether they are right in their assessment of the situation or in their way of handling it. Sometimes women in a weak position think they need to exercise deception, and (humanly speaking) may be right. Rebekah assumes she needs to deceive Isaac into blessing her favorite son, Jacob, instead of Isaac’s favorite, Esau. Isaac shows he has learned everything but nothing from his father’s deceptiveness (Gen 26), not even how to watch out for other people’s deceptiveness (Gen 27). Rebekah’s deed is the means whereby Yhwh’s revelation to her (Gen 25:23) is fulfilled. The story does not quite declare that this is Yhwh’s intention, though it is an action Yhwh utilizes in expressing a commitment to Jacob and not to Esau (e.g., Mal 1:2–3). Again there are unforeseen results from the deception, and both the deceiver and God are involved to counteract them.

The Master Fraud

While Jacob accepts his mother’s proposal about the deceit, it is hardly from her that he learns to be a deceiver, for he is only living up to his name and nature. He was on the path of trickery as he left the womb. His name points to his being a master of fraud—[498]  translate ʿāqōb “deceptive” or “devious” in describing the human heart in Jeremiah 17:9. His reaction to his mother’s plot is to fear being exposed as a deceiver (tāʿaʿ), though apparently he does not fear being a deceiver (Gen 27:12).[499]  His father accuses him of deception (mirmâ), but his brother puts the point more sharply in noting he has been living up to his name (Gen 27:35–36). It is hardly enough to declare that he gained it from his genes, for he shared those with the transparent nonhero Esau.

In the Odyssey the capacity to trick and deceive is one of Odysseus’s unequivocal virtues.[500]  The First Testament is more equivocal in its attitude to Jacob as its great trickster. It portrays him with an affectionate acceptance of his deceptiveness and a sense of satisfaction that this brings deserved trouble to Laban, and Yhwh’s purpose finds fulfillment through his trickery. Yet this is combined with a sense that, for example, it is appropriate for Jacob to have to flee from the brother he deceived, and an implicit awareness that the deceptiveness of Laban and Rachel is a means whereby further trouble comes to him. When Laban and Leah collaborate to trick Jacob into marrying his elder daughter before the younger daughter whom he loves, he complains that his uncle has “deceived” him (rāmâ piel, Gen 29:25)—with irony, given that “deceit” is exactly what Isaac has already accused him of. In his comments on Laban, Jacob will also later introduce into the First Testament another of its verbs for deceit (hātal piel, Gen 31:7). There follows a running jealousy and conflict between the women and between them and Jacob. Laban again uses deception to skew the process whereby he and Jacob have agreed to divide up their flocks, though Jacob finds a way of reversing the results. Jacob sees God as responsible for that and thus for profiting him and fulfilling the promise of blessing.

When they leave Aram to go back to Canaan, Rachel reacts to her father’s duplicity by stealing his teraphim and subsequently deceives both Jacob and Laban over her theft, in the latter connection appealing to the fact(?) that she is menstruating. Fearful that Laban would not let him take his wives, Jacob had responded by “stealing his mind” (literally) in leaving without telling him (Gen 31:19–20). The verb “steal” (gānab) appears eight times in Genesis 30–31, easily the densest concentration in the First Testament. Laban implies that all he would have wanted is to farewell his daughters properly, but (like Jacob) we do not know whether this further illustrates his deceptiveness or whether it shows that Jacob’s suspiciousness has backfired.

When Jacob becomes Israel, while his continuing conduct does not clearly suggest any general change of character, we read of no more Jacob-ing on his part, though he again becomes the victim of deception. Perhaps any change comes too late, as his sons have learned well from their father and use his technique to solve a problem with the Hivites (Gen 34). Shechem attempts to use deception in order not only to win the woman he loves but eventually to get hold of all Jacob’s cattle and property. But Shechem’s people, too, find themselves defeated by the others’ deception. Jacob is hesitant about a plot that is worthy of him when he was younger and thinks this may later generate more trouble. His sons subsequently plot to deceive him (nākal hitpael, Gen 37:18) so that he all but loses his favorite son, who is stolen from their land (Gen 40:15)—and God uses the wrong deed to keep the whole family alive. Potiphar’s wife deceives her husband in accusing Joseph of attempting to rape her. Joseph deceives his brothers about his identity and plays tricks on them as he manipulates the whole family into coming to Egypt and perhaps manipulates them into repentance. He himself accuses his brothers of spying and frames them for stealing (Gen 42:8–12; 44:1–8).

The vocabulary of deception thus runs through the story. The vocabulary of truth is conspicuous by its relative absence. The major exception who proves the rule is the model servant of Abraham and God, who goes off to find a wife for Isaac and speaks three times of truth (ʾĕmet, Gen 24:27, 48, 49). Jacob himself does claim to have acted towards Laban with truthfulness (ṣĕdāqâ, EVV “honesty”; Gen 30:33). His subsequent conduct seems to involve economy with the ṣĕdāqâ, but Laban’s blatant duplicity more than offsets that (Gen 30:25–30). Joseph then nicely goes through the motions of doubting his brothers’ word when actually they are telling the truth (Gen 42:16). On his deathbed the great deceiver pleads to him for a promise to which he will be true, but will not rest without an oath to back up the promise (Gen 47:29–31).

God’s Involvement with Dysfunctional Families

The treatment of deception provides a particularly clear indication that the First Testament is not as interested in passing moral judgments on its characters as it is in seeing how God works out a purpose through them in their moral ambiguity. If anything, the storytellers are more inclined to relish the achievements of these heroes and mothers of heroes than to moralize about them.[501]  Another irony lies in the fact that the skill that Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel show in outwitting Isaac or Laban is not accompanied by any clear insight into the purpose of Yhwh such as the narrative implies in the telling of the story. While Isaac and Laban are unaware—perhaps temporarily—of particular events going on around them, the people who get the victory over them are the victims of a continuing unawareness regarding their place in the scheme of things. In a “Comedy of Errors”[502]  Tamar deceives Judah to manipulate him into doing the right thing by her when he has no intention of doing so, and Judah the deceiver and Tamar the deceiver become ancestors of Jesus, but they do not know that this will be the result God brings out of their action. Like the serpent, these characters are simultaneously people of great wisdom and of no wisdom.

The stories of relationships between people such as Jacob and Esau (and their mother—“Freud’s unholy trinity”)[503]  or between Jacob’s sons offer worked-out vignettes of the nature of family life with its traumas and moments of healing. These stories may offer Israelites strategies for survival that could be useful in the setting of conflict with foreign peoples (cf. the midwives in Exodus, Rahab, Jael, Esther) or gender prejudice (cf. Naomi, Ruth, Esther). In an ideal world, it might be good to be transparent in enabling people to survive or get their lives back together, but in the actual prejudiced and patriarchal world it is better to lie than let people die. The stories also then implicitly summon people to be wiser than their fathers, and even than their mothers. Yet while they may sometimes implicitly offer models to be followed or to be avoided, like the marital stories they do not overtly do that. We discover such “lessons” only by bringing priorities and criteria to the text and ignoring the dynamic of the stories’ interest. Our focus of concern does not overlap enough with theirs. The moral question does not open up their agenda. They are haggadah, not halakah.

Calum M. Carmichael has argued that some of the teaching in Deuteronomy is designed to ensure that events in the ancestors’ stories do not recur in the people’s lives.[504]  This possibility highlights the nature of the stories themselves. They do not tell people that they should avoid these difficulties, still less how to do so. If anything, they presuppose that they are inevitable. Nor do they tell people how to handle them, at least not with any consistency. None of these families provides models in this respect. Instead, the stories suggest some observations about how human life is and how God is involved in it. While family life works differently in, say, twenty-first century Europe and North America, the underlying dynamics overlap—perhaps more so in the twenty-first century than a century ago. The stories’ own nature emerges more fully if we let them hold up a mirror before us to help us see ourselves and reflect on the way God is involved in our lives in their skewedness and ambiguity. They are more interested in offering such encouragement than in offering strategies. They invite people to see Yhwh working even through the morally ambiguous actions of men and women coping with the power pressures of their day. Even Joseph’s brothers may come to see themselves aright through the deception of their brother that gets its own back on the deception that took him to Egypt. Even a Judah may come to see himself aright through a Tamar.

It is in these dysfunctional patriarchal families that God’s blessing works itself out. In their very growth, through and not merely despite their surrogate motherhood and their multiple wives, the promise of increase comes true. God is relaxed about working via human fallibility and human mistakes. God does not inspire the begetting of a child via Hagar, but works with it when it happens. Or perhaps God is relaxed about the moral means through which promises get fulfilled. God works through the rivalry between Joseph and his brothers that develops through Joseph’s dream. In some respects the reconciliation that comes about between Joseph and his brothers offers an encouraging model, and both the Jacob story and the Joseph story suggest not so much forgiving or atoning as forgetting the past and putting aside revenge.[505]  But deriving such edificatory insights from the stories requires us to isolate elements of them using criteria that do not come from the stories themselves. In themselves they just tell how things are. In the complexity and realism of this portrayal there are no heroes and no villains.[506]  Their hope and their gospel lie not in the moments when the human beings get things right, as they occasionally do, but in the fact that God is making promises come true through the whole story and not only through its acceptable features. There is very little sense of judgment over all this. It is how things are. If the stories have a moral implication, it is that readers need to accept each other with their human moral weakness. The absence of moral judgment from the stories draws readers into them to make their own judgments as they set these stories alongside the stories of their own lives.

5

God Delivered

The Exodus

Israel’s gospel concerns not just individuals and families, but also a people and a nation. It incorporates two paradigmatic experiences of the people’s temporary exile from their land. Exile in Babylon will be their own fault, though in due course they will find they can live there in freedom, flourish and turn exile into dispersion. Their first exile was the opposite. It was not because of their wrongdoing that they found themselves in a foreign land in Egypt.[507]  They went there with God’s encouragement because they needed to find food, and they initially flourished there, yet dispersion eventually became oppression. But God delivered them.

5.1 God Who Creates and Delivers

The God who delivers Israel from Egypt is the God who created the world.

Israel was capable of summarizing its story without reference to creation (e.g., Deut 26:5–9), and may have had earlier versions of its story that were more Israel-focused and did not go back to creation. This might imply that the conviction that Yhwh had delivered the people was older than the conviction that Yhwh had created the world, the former being also the origin of the latter. Israel then originally understood itself by reflecting on its story in isolation from the world’s story.[508]  Creation is then secondary to salvation in First Testament thought, “The Book of Exodus is the first book of the Bible,” and there “are more beginnings for faith” here than are to be found in Genesis, the book called bĕrēʾšît, “In the Beginning.”[509]  Israel’s deliverance from Egypt is the real beginning and essential content of the First Testament gospel. “The aim of creation is history.”[510]

There is an abiding insight here. Christian theology’s version of the scriptural metanarrative (e.g., as expressed in the classic creeds) jumps straight from Genesis 1–3 to Jesus, and thereby pays attention only to a preliminary stage in the First Testament gospel.[511]

Yet Israel hardly thought about itself as a people brought into being by God without thinking about the way the world itself came into being (its contemporaries thought about that),[512]  even if it did not link this with its story as a people. Further, even if its story once began with the ancestors or the exodus, Israel did not rest content with that, but came to preface it with an account of creation. Exodus is not the first book in the Bible and the story of Israel’s deliverance is not the beginning of its gospel.[513]  Its gospel has a plot, and to start reading its story by beginning with its deliverance from Egypt is like coming to the theater when the play has already reached scene 3. For individuals, too, deliverance is not people’s first experience, even in the case of newborn babies. Before they are delivered from oppression, they were born into the humanity created by God.

Reacting against the emphasis on the exodus, Hans Heinrich Schmid thus declared, “The belief that God created and is sustaining the order of the world in all its complexities” is “not a peripheral theme of biblical theology but is plainly the fundamental theme.”[514]  But the word “plainly” gives the game away, and in a third millennium context such either-ors seem inadvisable. After foundationalism,[515]  we may question whether biblical theology has “fundamental” themes. It is more like a network than a building. If anything, it works by polarities, of which creation and deliverance is one.[516]  They need to be seen in relation to one another. Neither can be understood apart from the other. Neither occupies the theological high ground.[517]  God’s acts embrace both, and Israel does not distinguish them as separate realms as sharply as we do.

So Israel’s story is the foreground against which it understands the world’s beginnings. One cannot think about creator or creation without regard for that creator’s subsequent acts. Creation is only the First Testament of the First Testament of the First Testament.[518]  God’s acting as deliverer enables Israel to understand God’s acting as creator.[519]  Conversely, God’s acting as creator enables Israel to understand God’s acting as deliverer.[520]

Creation Blessing Fulfilled

The story of deliverance thus begins with a report of creation blessing, of how “the Israelites became fruitful and prolific and numerous and strong—very much so—and the land became full of them” (Ex 1:7). The comment systematically interweaves notes from Genesis 1–11 and Genesis 12–50.[521]  The people’s life is working out in keeping with the intention and pattern of events at the Beginning. Its deliverance will match up with this creation purpose of blessing.

Exodus declines to specify whether the people’s spectacular increase involves divine fulfillment of a promise or human fulfillment of a commission. Yhwh works via both. The increase is set in the context of the commission both to humanity and to the ancestors that they should increase. But the commission implies a promise, for the people are surely commissioned to undertake something God knows to be possible and has designed them for, and as the fulfillment of a promise, it is God’s work (Deut 10:22; Ps 105:24).[522]  Conversely, we might reckon that the promise implies a commission, for the people do not become beneficiaries of the promise without their active involvement. The increase of Israel came about both by God’s blessing and by Israel’s vitality. Exodus also hints at the “naturalness” of a process whereby a young or oppressed people grow to threaten and replace an old, tired and oppressive one. Joseph may have died, but the destiny of his people is being worked out in the same way as happened in his story, by means of “ordinary” human processes through which God works.

Initially, the pleasant conditions of a well-watered, orchard-like land (cf. Gen 13:10) will have encouraged this flourishing. In Egypt, people do not have to worry about rain, even though the Joseph story shows that the harvest can fail. Amenophis’s Hymn to the Sun (Aton) pictures rain as a kind of ersatz Nile for other peoples and for the animals of the wild, while the real Nile comes out of the underworld for Egypt.[523]  It was such a source of pride that the king might understandably want to claim credit for it and/or power over it (Ezek 29:3). In these conditions it is not surprising that people should flourish. When people recall their time in Egypt, they will remember wistfully how they sat by a simmering casserole and spoiled their appetite eating fresh bread before their meat was cooked (Ex 16:3).[524]  If they are looking back through rose-tinted spectacles, their later recollection of fish they ate for free, and cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic (Num 11:5), may well refer to their actual diet even when they were serfs: Herodotus saw an inscription on one of the pyramids relating the quantities of garlic and onions provided for workers there.[525]  Neither does the recollection that Egypt was a land flowing with milk and honey(!) (Num 16:13) suggest too great culinary deprivation.

Extraordinarily, then, the old couple who could not have children have become a multitude, enough to fill a land. Unfortunately it is the wrong land. Yhwh therefore affirms, “I will bring you into the land that I swore to give Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession (Ex 6:8). To put it another way, I will bring you up out of that land to a good and broad land” (ʿālâ hiphil, Ex 3:8). In Genesis the journey from Canaan to Egypt and back was often termed a journey “down” and “up.” Any journey from the Judean heartland involves going down. But the “metaphors we live by”[526]  picture “down” as negative and “up” as positive. Down suggests insignificance, oppression, depression, death. Up suggests status, exaltation, encouragement, life. Sheol is down; heaven is up.

The literal geographic fact that Yhwh will bring the people up from Egypt makes a suggestive link with an elemental human metaphor. Israel’s ancestors go down to Egypt to leave the land of promise for what will turn out to be a land of affliction. God promises to bring them up from there to a land that is good (there is no doubt that their present land is bad) and broad (there is no doubt that their present land is constricting). It will be a land flowing with milk and honey—a land where there is grass for sheep to graze and palms whose dates can be made into honey. Shortly the story will suggest that the aim of their being brought out of Egypt is to serve and acknowledge Yhwh, but Yhwh’s first thought is of the relief and blessing they are destined to enjoy, expressed in concrete terms that suggest abundance and enjoyment of a new life. God’s act of deliverance is immediately provoked by the people’s oppression, but even if there had been no oppression, they would have had to leave Egypt some time. The more fundamental reason for their leaving is that God had promised them a different land and their occupying that land was built into the purpose for the world that Yhwh had announced.

They still have a skeleton-hold in the right land, but that is all. Indeed, from being resident aliens in the right land they have become in effect prisoners in the wrong one. At the end of the ancestors’ story, there is no antipathy between people groups in Egypt. But precisely through the fulfillment of God’s creation purpose, that ceases to be so as the Egyptians become afraid of the Israelites and seek to put them down. It is a long time since the days of Joseph, and the present administration knows nothing of the days when Jacob’s son was such a blessing to his adopted land. Anticipating the experience of their descendants in Germany and later in the USSR, they are neither free to enjoy a full life in Egypt nor free to leave for the land with which they identify. People with the qualifications to be brain surgeons, symphony conductors and architects of great buildings form labor gangs for great buildings where other surgeons will operate and other orchestras play.

Yet even as Israelites die in labor gangs working on construction projects, the people continues to grow (Ex 1:12). This may not be surprising. In our own world it is prosperous peoples that stop growing and poor peoples that continue to do so. Indeed, the narrative adds, they “broke out” (pāraṣ), ignoring the bounds of any ghetto where they had originally lived, and thus fulfilling another aspect of God’s promise (Gen 28:14). Although the commission to fill the earth (Gen 1) did not use this verb, the comment also recalls that commission.

The Israelites’ continuing growth makes the government oppress them the more. In a mirror-image anticipation of subsequent policy in China, their midwives are bidden to kill baby boys at birth. Perhaps the story laughs at the king’s failure to realize that keeping the baby girls alive opens up the possibility of further increase. Yet the fulfillment of the commission and/or promise going back to the ancestors and/or to creation raises the expectation that this cannot be the end of the story.

Does God Still Care About the World as a Whole?

The fact that the deliverer is the creator might merely have meant Yhwh was sovereign over the whole world and therefore capable of acting on Israel’s behalf against other peoples, in bringing Israel out of Egypt and taking it into Canaan. Has Israel replaced the world as a whole in God’s concern? Does Israel’s deliverance relate to humanity’s destiny or just to Israel’s? Three considerations suggest it relates to the former and not just the latter.

First, the story in Genesis has established that God is not concerned for Israel alone. World creation is the context against which Israel has to understand its particular experiences of history and of God. God’s deliverance gains much of its significance from its contributing to the fulfillment of God’s purpose in creation as well as God’s word of promise. Creation is not merely backdrop for God’s involvement in history. God’s involvement in history is designed to further the fulfillment of God’s creation purpose. It is when that is imperiled that God needs to act to deliver and restore, but the world’s blessing is the norm, and deliverance is the exception.[527]  Creation looks forward to deliverance; deliverance restores creation.

Second, while the strong affirmation of worldwide concern in Genesis 1–11 becomes more muted in Genesis 12–50 and even more muted in Exodus, it does not disappear. In Exodus, too, Yhwh is creator of the whole world and involved with the whole world, as well as creator and deliverer of Israel. Not only Israel but also Egypt in general and its king in particular is to come to acknowledge Yhwh through the event of deliverance “in my reaching out my hand against Egypt and in my bringing out the Israelites from its midst,” and as a result of signs Moses does in this connection (Ex 7:5, 17). Yhwh wants the leader of Israel’s oppressors to see Yhwh’s power and to come to acknowledge that Yhwh is in his land,[528]  that there is no one like Yhwh, and that the earth belongs to Yhwh (Ex 8:10, 22 [[529]  6, 18]; 9:14, 16, 29). Beyond Egypt, behind Yhwh’s appointing the king of Egypt or letting him stay in position[530]  is Yhwh’s purpose “to make my name resound in all the earth” (Ex 9:16).

Thus near the climax of the story, in bidding the Israelites to leave, Pharaoh also bids Moses, “but may you bless me, too” (Ex 12:32). There has been no talk of the curse in the story, but in effect Pharaoh has sat under the curse for bringing trouble on Israel. He now acknowledges that Moses and Israel are the key to blessing. At the Red Sea, too, Egypt will acknowledge Yhwh when Yhwh gets honor with them as they try to overwhelm Israel and fail (Ex 14:4, 18). We are not told whether Pharaoh’s request for Moses’ blessing was granted, though by implication his change of attitude was too short-lived. He committed himself and his army to a final curse at the Red Sea. But this need not be so for any people. And even if a people fails to respond to Yhwh, individual foreigners may do so. The story of deliverance ends with Moses’ Midianite father-in-law coming to hear what Yhwh did in defeating the Egyptians and delivering the people, and to acknowledge that Yhwh is indeed greater than all gods (Ex 18:8–11).

Third, the First Testament later takes up the assumption that Yhwh’s concern extends to the histories of all the nations and that the link between blessing and deliverance applies to peoples other than Israel. Amos declares polemically that Yhwh indeed brought up Israel from Egypt—and also the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir (Amos 9:7), one people who were long-standing rivals for possession of land in Canaan and another who were long-standing foes. Yhwh had been as involved in their migration as in Israel’s! Further, Amos had started with the Arameans and Philistines in his critique of other peoples in Amos 1–2. The peoples who had first been subject to critique and were in danger of exile or death are the peoples to whom Yhwh gave their home in the first place. If Genesis 1–11 implies they stood under Yhwh’s blessing, Amos implies they also stood under obligation to Yhwh.

By virtue of being the recipients of Abraham’s promise, Israel stands as a model of the way Yhwh works in the world as a whole, in deliverance, in obligation, in blessing and in danger. There is something distinctive about Yhwh’s involvement with Israel, but this distinctiveness does not lie in Israel’s being the only people Yhwh is involved with. Yhwh is ultimately no more concerned for Israel’s freedom and blessing than for other people. History itself shows this. While the continuing existence of the Jewish people is a remarkable fact, in its life in general the Jewish people has not been blessed more than other peoples. In the ancient world, peoples such as Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome were as blessed as Israel. In the medieval and modern world, Turkey, Japan, the United States and various European peoples, among others, have been so blessed. Yhwh’s distinctive involvement with Israel lay in what Yhwh was set on achieving through this people. It is through this people that God has wanted to bless the world, and has often done so.

Other peoples who may, for instance, have increased in numbers but feel oppressed by more powerful nations are entitled to find hope in this story, and the more powerful nations are entitled to be worried by it. God had said that the blessing of Abraham and Sarah’s people would provide a model for the nations’ blessing, and people groups oppressed by more powerful nations are entitled to turn to Yhwh and press for the kind of support and deliverance that Exodus describes.

5.2 God Who Remembers

In Exodus, Yhwh returns “with sudden, violent force, ending his relative absence from the last chapters of the Book of Genesis.”[531]  What leads to or stimulates God’s act of deliverance? The factors include Israel’s being in serfdom and under oppression, their crying out under their oppression, their cry reaching Yhwh, and Yhwh’s thinking about the covenant commitment to them.

Israel’s Serfdom

Israel is a people “whom Egypt is treating as serfs” (Ex 6:5). This did not involve chattel slavery, the experience of African people in the Americas whereby men and women are bought and sold by individual owners. Nor did it involve bond-service, the time-limited slavery that Moses’ Teaching will require, the experience of some early African Americans such as Anthony Johnson. Israel’s slavery was state slavery or serfdom. The state owned the land and allowed ordinary people to farm it on condition that they paid taxes and fulfilled the government’s requirements in terms of work on state projects from time to time. No doubt the conditions under which they worked varied and could be worse for foreigners than for natives, as in the modern world. At worst, the government could feel no need to treat them with any form of human dignity or as possessing any rights. And as the story in Exodus unfolds, Israel’s experience becomes like that. In origin, serfdom need not imply “burdens,” but it comes to do so (Ex 1:11; 2:11; 5:4–5; 6:6–7).

But Yhwh has observed the “oppression” (ʿŏnî) of these serfs (e.g., Ex 3:7, 17; 4:31), the affliction and suffering imposed on them as an ethnic group in fulfillment of Yhwh’s warning (Gen 15:13, cf. Ex 1:11–12, using the verb ʿānâ). Yhwh’s acting to deliver the people from the oppression of their serfdom is the paradigm instance of God’s “preferential option for the oppressed.”[532]  While Israel will later have responsibility for avoiding the oppression of the poor in its midst, the exodus story concerns oppression Israel cannot resolve. Pharaoh could solve it, but will not. Only God can. God may use political agents irrespective of their own desires, as happens when Babylon plays the part of Egypt and God arouses Cyrus the Persian to free the Judeans. Or God may get into conflict with the political agents, as happens in the exodus story. Either way, liberation requires God’s preferential option.

The exodus story may have inspired or been inspired by an Israelite exodus from Canaanite power structures. Perhaps there was a class struggle there and peasant groups living on state land and paying extensive taxes (in the form of crops, animals and labor) rose against their urban masters and set up independent but allied egalitarian communities in the less-populated mountain areas. Or perhaps that exodus was an escape from great powers that sought to impose themselves on peoples in Canaan.[533]  It could then serve not the interests of the poor but those of kings and priests, the people who would rule an independent nation.[534]  Ordinary people might view it as a matter of indifference whether they were ruled from Gezer, Lachish or Jerusalem or from Egypt, Assyria, Babylon or Persia. There are benevolent Egyptian kings (see the Joseph story) as well as oppressive ones, as there will be benevolent Israelite kings and oppressive ones, and benevolent imperial authorities such as Cyrus as well as oppressive ones such as Nebuchadnezzar.

But the exodus story speaks of no kings but Yhwh and the Egyptian king, and never actually refers to Aaron’s being a priest. Indeed, it describes the whole people as a kingship of priests (Ex 19:6), and in due course the story will appeal to the people’s beginnings for evidence that Israel should not have a monarchy. Insofar as Exodus sets a social vision before the later nation and its leaders, then, that vision is one in which the nation is independent, but not one in which its independence serves the interests of kings or priests. The movement Moses leads is designed not to transfer national power from one ethnic or social group to another, but to enable his group simply to leave the country and live as an independent community somewhere else.[535]  First World as well as Two-Thirds World peoples are inclined to reckon that a change of government is bound to solve their problems, but then find this is not so, and the exodus story works the same way. Yet one does not hear former colonies wishing they were still under the authority of their colonizers (though one does meet many citizens of “liberated” countries moving to live in the countries of the former colonizers: “Let us go back to Egypt”). It is better to be in charge of one’s destiny and free to face its problems than to be under the authority of some other people, even if relatively beneficent.

Bringing Out, Rescuing, Restoring, Redeeming, Acting Forcefully, Delivering

So Yhwh declares, “I will bring you out” from Egypt (Ex 6:6). The verb (yāṣāʾ hiphil) is an intrinsically geographical expression.[536]  Yhwh “brought out” Abraham’s family from Ur (Gen 15:7). Being brought out, coming out, being on the move from one place to another is a recurrent feature of Israel’s experience. In due course Yhwh will bring the people out again (e.g., Ezek 20:41).[537]  Yet yāṣāʾ also refers to more than merely a geographical move. It denotes being brought out “from under the burdens of Egypt.” The [538]  thus paraphrases, “I will free you from the burdens of Egypt” (Ex 6:6–7). Even if the king finds these burdens quite reasonable forms of labor (cf. Ex 5:4–5), Yhwh evidently agrees with Moses and the people that this is not so.

To put it another way, “I will rescue you from serfdom to them” (Ex 6:6). Like “bring out,” “rescue” (nāṣal hiphil) recurs from Exodus 3:8 and chimes with the more than merely geographical implications of yāṣāʾ. It pictures the people controlled or imperiled by an entity greater than themselves but marvelously delivered from their predicament by someone who is yet greater. Yhwh intends to act like Moses rescuing Jethro’s daughters from hostile shepherds (the same verb, Ex 2:19; cf. also Ex 5:23; 6:6; 18:8–10).

Yhwh goes on, “I will restore you” (Ex 6:6). The verb (gāʾal) is usually translated “redeem,” but that misses several aspects of the word’s significance. By etymology and usage “redeem” suggests buying something back. Yhwh indeed “redeemed you from the household of serfs,” but the verb is then pādâ (Deut 7:8). In doing that, Yhwh behaves like someone rescuing a slave by paying his master for him, though there are qualifications to the analogy: “God did indeed redeem Israel, but he paid nothing”[539]  (cf. Is 52:3). While gāʾal sometimes implies payment, two other notions are more intrinsic to it. One is relationship. A person who acts as a gōʾēl does so because of a family connection. If someone gets into debt because of poor harvests, for instance, their household will also be implicated in that, but within their extended family they may have a potential gōʾēl, a more fortunate member of their extended family who would be under moral obligation to take action to relieve their situation. The other idea is thus restoration. A gōʾēl acted to put the situation back to what it was before and what it should be.[540]  This promise, then, sees Israel as members of Yhwh’s family and sees Yhwh accepting the obligation to do whatever it takes to restore them to their proper position, no longer bearing the unreasonable burdens Egypt imposes. Because of this relationship Yhwh treats Israel very differently from Egypt (pālâ hiphil; e.g., Ex 11:7).[541]

In restoring the people, Yhwh will act “with arm extended” like a farmer wielding a scythe or a shepherd wielding a club or a warrior wielding a weapon (Ex 6:6). Yhwh will thus act with “great acts of authority” (Ex 6:6; 7:4), acts of sovereign power and decisiveness that demonstrate superiority over Egypt and its king as well as a commitment to Israel. Yhwh will act tough with Egypt (ʿālal) in performing signs in its midst (Ex 10:2). In dealing with Pharaoh, there is an iron hand within Yhwh’s velvet glove. But the iron hand is in the service of a people in need. The forceful kingship of Yhwh has a different motivation from the forceful kingship of Egypt, motivated by fear (Ex 1:9–10).

Moses later promises that Israel will see Yhwh’s deliverance at the Red Sea (Ex 14:13; cf. Ex 15:2). There Yhwh indeed “delivered Israel from the power of the Egyptians” (Ex 14:30). Whereas the idea of “rescue” communicates by applying to Yhwh a term that regularly applies to a human act like that of Moses, “deliverance” (yĕšûʿâ) is language largely reserved for Yhwh. “The king does not deliver himself by means of his great army and the horse is an empty hope for deliverance” (Ps 33:16–17). That is the term that comes at the climax of the story. It denotes an act that is especially characteristic of Yhwh.

Israel’s Sigh

In their oppression the Israelites “sighed because of their serfdom and cried out” (Ex 2:23). Michael Walzer suggests that the exodus required two realities: anger and hope.[542]  Anger would indeed have been a proper response to serfdom and oppression. The people’s suffering in Egypt was not a random misfortune; they had not simply been the victims of drought or earthquake. Nor was their suffering a God-sent punishment or a Satan-devised testing or oppression, from which there might be no escape. Their suffering had a moral character. They had something to be resentful and angry about, and these emotions can be forces for action and change. And perhaps anger motivated Moses’ killing of the Egyptian foreman in Exodus 2. But otherwise there is no indication that the Israelites felt the resentment and anger that can be a force for action and change. There is no conscientization here—no awareness that not only is their condition unreasonable, but that it might be changed.[543]  The good news is that God’s act is not dependent on that.

What they did do is cry out. Exodus does not say whom their cry for help addressed. If the oppressive king is the one who has died, perhaps it addressed the new regime (cf., e.g., Ps 72:12). If they worshiped Egyptian gods (e.g., Josh 24:14; elaborated in Ezek 20; 23), it would be natural if they cried out to these. In the story so far, we have heard nothing to suggest the Israelite community has a living faith in Yhwh. Perhaps, like Job’s cries, groans and appeals for help (e.g., Job 19:7; 23:2; 24:12), their cry was designed for God but seemed not to reach God. Perhaps it addressed no one in particular and was just an expression of hopeless grief. The variety of words used to describe it underlines the point—it is a sigh, a cry, an appeal, a groan (Ex 2:23–24). It recalls the cry of dead Abel and the cry against Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 4:10; 18:20–21). It anticipates the appeals for help that appear in the Psalms (Ps 5:2 [MT 3]; 30:2 [MT 3], 88:13 [MT 14]), the groan of Israel afflicted by the Canaanites and of Pharaoh broken by Babylon (Judg 2:18; Ezek 30:24), and the sigh of devastated Jerusalem (Lam 1:4, 8, 11, 21, 22). The repetition of the word for serfdom in connection with their cry (Ex 2:23) underlines the point in another way.

The people’s affliction had started before Moses was born and he is now a grown man—nearly eighty, to judge from Deuteronomy 34:7. This being the first reference to a cry on the people’s behalf may support the idea that Exodus 2:23–25 reprises the previous chapters. If it does not, the implication is that people had suffered for a generation or more and not cried out. Crying out does not necessarily follow from the experience of oppressive hardship. This can turn individuals and groups to hopeless mute acceptance of the way things are, or issue in denial, or make people insist on finding ways of fixing things themselves. Crying out hints at the conviction that even though they can do nothing about the situation, it need not continue, and therefore they can own it.

Moses’ initial approach to Pharaoh only makes the situation worse as it leads the oppressor to increase the level of oppression, as often happens; the contemporary Middle East illustrates these dynamics. Moses will subsequently find people declining any longer to listen to his talk of freedom “because of brokenness of spirit and cruel serfdom” (Ex 6:9). Their serfdom has done its natural work. Whereas at one stage they could cry out (even if we are not sure who they were crying out to), they have now so internalized and accepted their oppression that they cannot imagine the situation ever being otherwise. They are hopeless. José Severino Croatto compares Guatemalan Indians who externalize their own crushed identity in celebrating Holy Week without the resurrection.[544]

Further, the leaders of the people who were crying out are now attacking Moses. Moses, not Pharaoh, is the cause of the people’s oppression! Moses himself thus now cries out on the people’s behalf. His words concern the trouble the people are in, brought about by Yhwh and by the king (Ex 5:19–23; each time the noun raʿ or the verb rāʿaʿ). If it were not for Yhwh’s action, the king would not have acted the way he has, and the people’s situation would not have got worse. Moses wants to know why Yhwh has been bringing even more trouble to the people. He, too, has internalized the experience of oppression, or projected it onto Yhwh rather than Pharaoh.[545]  But at least he cries out.

Yhwh Hears, Looks and Acknowledges

Whether or not addressed to Yhwh, “their appeal for help because of their serfdom came up to God. God heard their groan” (Ex 2:23–24; cf. Ex 3:7). The new king does not hear the people’s cry, but God does. The reality of God’s hearing is emphasized by repetition: The appeal reached God and God heard the groan. How long has this taken? Exodus may imply there was no delay between the uttering of the cry and its reaching God. When a cry reaches God and God hears it, this issues in a response. Proper reaching and proper hearing are like that. When hearing does not issue in a response, there is something odd (šāmaʿ means “obey,” not just “hear”). And when cries from human beings do not meet with a response from human beings and from God, there is something odd. A central “oddity”—but also a central normality—of the First Testament is that “this community has a bold voice for hurt” and that “this God has an attentive ear for hurt.”[546]

On the other hand, if this change of king is one that happened decades before, that may imply some decades have passed since the Israelites began to cry out. Only when Moses is an adult and has spent some years in Midian does Yhwh take action. Perhaps Yhwh has been giving the Egyptians a chance to turn, as will continue to happen through Moses’ confrontation of them. Perhaps Yhwh has been waiting for a deliverer to be ready. Both immediate hearing and long delay have been the experience of God’s people at different times. The story invites hearers to look for response even if it does not come immediately.

Moses’ later question of why God is bringing calamity on the people (Ex 5:22) may be one that has an answer. Perhaps God has a strategy that involves things getting worse before they get better, for the sake of the people or the king or Moses or even the readers. We are not told whether this is so, because Yhwh knows that behind the question “why” is more a cry of pain than a request for information, and Yhwh gives priority to responding to the cry by dealing with its cause rather than by answering the question. What we do discover is that it is once again the cry that drives Yhwh to action. “Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh” (Ex 6:1). If there had been no “why?” there would have been no “now.”

If it is only now that they cry out, perhaps it is therefore only now that Yhwh takes action. It is when the clamor is loud enough that it reaches the ears of the palace. Yhwh may be sovereign in the world, but it is not simply Yhwh’s sovereignty that initiates events in the world. Yhwh waits upon people’s cry.[547]  In Atrahasis, the noise humanity makes disturbs the gods and provokes their wrath. In Exodus it provokes God’s intervention on their behalf.

Having listened, “God looked at the Israelites” (Ex 2:25). “I really have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt” (Ex 3:7; cf. Ex 3:9). The first stage in a response is that God looks at what is going on. The reality of God’s seeing is also repeated: The cry causes God to look. God is like a king sitting in his palace courtyard in one of the higher points of the city and hearing a cry in the street outside. His job is not to ignore that but to find out what is going on. So he goes out of the palace down into the city to see what causes the cry. Yhwh’s palace is in the heavens, the abode Yhwh constructed in creating the cosmos, so it is from there that Yhwh comes down to earth to see. God’s being the majestic one who dwells in the heavens, the holy one, does not mean God stands aloof from the world. Indeed, it is as the majestic and holy one that Yhwh looks, listens and comes down. This is the nature of the true majesty and holiness that Yhwh embodies. Sight confirms that the facts are what the cry says they are (cf. Gen 18:21) and makes more inevitable the further response of action. It was television footage of starving people in Ethiopia that generated a massive European famine relief effort there. Seeing, like hearing, is not merely the means of receiving information but the stimulus for acting on it.

And God acknowledged (Ex 2:25). “I have acknowledged their great suffering” (yādaʿ; 3:7). Looking means God now bears the burden of knowledge. That, too, has to be more than merely cognitive. Knowledge, recognition or acknowledgment is a key theme in the story of Israel’s deliverance, for integral to this story is Israel and Egypt’s coming to acknowledge Yhwh. But the background to that is two other acts of acknowledgment. The first is the king’s not acknowledging Joseph (Ex 1:8). The second is Yhwh’s acknowledging Israel and its situation, and specifically Israel’s suffering. God is not such a transcendent being as to be exalted above engagement with people. That does not mean God suffers with the people in the sense of sharing their suffering, any more than the king does. Knowing/acknowledging Israel’s pains does not in itself imply personal experience of them.[548]  It does mean God gets involved with their suffering. Insofar as knowing is more than an intellectual matter, it is more directly a matter of the will than the feelings. Acknowledging the reality of Israel’s affliction is a start to taking action to change things.

Yhwh Thinks

Further, “God thought about his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Ex 2:24; cf. Ex 6:5). In the heading to this section I have followed the conventional English translation of zākar as “remember,” but “think about” puts the point better.[549]

When Israel cries out, there is no suggestion that it is consciously appealing to Yhwh’s covenant promise to its ancestors, but Yhwh knows that theologically the cry appeals to the promise. Objectively speaking, the basis for Israel’s hope lies there, whether Israel knows this or not. It is the covenant that obliges Yhwh to respond to Israel’s cry.

God’s covenant commitment contains no promise concerning a rose garden, as if Abraham’s descendants would live lives free of trouble and oppression. Indeed, God told Abraham that his descendants would endure long serfdom and oppression in a foreign land. But God said this in the context of promising in due course to give judgment against the nation they served and bring them back to the land where Abraham resided as an alien (Gen 15:13–16). Such judgment is not merely a legal decision in a court (which might possibly make no difference in real life) nor even merely an act of judgment that brings punishment to a wrongdoer, but an act that puts wrong right for the sake of the wronged party. Thinking about this covenant would bring home the obligation that rested on Yhwh.

The second covenant with Abraham (Gen 17) focuses more on progeny than on land. It promises that Abraham and Sarah will have nations and kings among their descendants (Gen 17:4–6, 16; cf. Gen 18:18); later Yhwh also refers to the presence of two nations in Rebekah’s womb (Gen 25:23; cf. Gen 35:11; 46:3). Their spectacular increase has turned a family into a numerous people (ʿam; Ex 1:9, 20), but not into a nation (gôy), a people with political control of its own affairs and destiny. So the promise of increase has seen partial fulfillment, but demands more. And it is due to find fuller fulfillment “in Egypt” (Gen 46:3).

It is as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” that Yhwh then appears to Moses (Ex 3:6; cf. Ex 3:15–16). Yhwh had gotten attached to Israel’s ancestors, had come to love them and had chosen them. That is not just a fact of the past that binds Yhwh, like a wife who stays faithful to her husband because of the commitment she made on her wedding day long ago and because unfaithfulness would (perhaps) be unfaithfulness to herself. In the present, at this moment, once again Yhwh got attached to Israel, came to love Israel, chose Israel, reaffirming the feelings and commitments of long ago (e.g., Deut 4:37; 10:15). Further, this applies not just to the exodus generation. It applies to its descendants gathered in Moab. They were never in Egypt, yet in a sense can be identified with the people who had been there (e.g., Deut 7:6–8). And it implicitly applies to each succeeding generation (cf. Jer 31:3).

The Israelites thus have a basis for hope, though once again it is not clear how far they believe that. Their storytellers are convinced of it, but they have the advantage of hindsight. They know it was possible for things to be otherwise because they know God fulfilled the promise to give Israel a new life in land other than the one in which they were captives. They know the Israelites could hope not merely because they were hopeful people and were whistling in the wind. They had a basis for anger with a moral character, and a basis for a hope with a theological character. To put these two together, they would leave Egypt not because they did not like it there and wondered if they could find somewhere better, but because Egypt is a land under judgment and Canaan a land of promise. They did not have to accept their fate, like Jephthah’s daughter, who can envisage no way out of being the victim of her father’s vow to Yhwh (Judg 11:30–40). But all this is the storytellers’ perspective, with their twenty-twenty hindsight. The protagonists have reason for creative hope as well as creative anger, but they do not seem to have exercised either. The exodus does not happen because they summon up hope, except insofar as their groan is a sign of hope that motivates God to note their serfdom and to act on the old promise.

Yhwh Cares

Oddly, we might think, the exodus story does not tell us that Yhwh felt compassion toward Israel in its oppression, though it does show Yhwh exercising compassion. There are occasions when sympathizing with people in their pain and grief is important, but this is not one of them—or rather, God has more important things to do than sympathize with Israel. Sympathy is what we show people when we are in no position to do anything about their pain. The covenant imposes on God not sympathy but action. To put it another way, there are two connotations that can attach to the lament that Jerusalem “has no comforter”—that there is no one to sympathize or no one to take action against the causes of discomfort (e.g., Is 51:3; 52:9). Anticipating the situation at the end of the exile, the situation in Egypt looks for the second of these.

That Yhwh did act on the basis of love and act to bring comfort is explicit in Hosea 11:

When Israel was a boy, I loved him. Since Egypt I called him my son. [or: From Egypt I called my son.]

They called them. Thus they went their own way. [[550] : Whenever I called them, they went from me.]

They would sacrifice for the Baals and make offerings for images.

But I taught Ephraim to walk (taking them in his arms).

But they did not acknowledge that I healed them.

I would draw them with humane cords, with loving ropes.

I became for them like people who lift off the yoke on their jaws.

I bent down to him to feed him.

No. He will return to Egypt, with Assyria as his king

Because they have refused to return [to me].

A sword will whirl over his towns and consume his diviners

And feed on him, for their schemings.

My people—they are bent on turning from me.

They are called to the yoke, and no one will lift it at all.

How can I give you up, Ephraim, how surrender you, Israel?

How can I make you like Admah, treat you as Zeboiim?

My heart is changed within me, all at once my comfort kindles.

I will not implement my angry fury, I will not turn and destroy Ephraim,

For I am God, and not a man,

The Holy One in your midst. I will not come in rage.[551]

Ephraim is the child Yhwh delights in, the one who stirs up feelings inside Yhwh, the one for whom Yhwh feels a consuming compassion (raḥămîm, the word for the womb; cf. Jer 31:20). That is the reason Yhwh cannot finally throw this unresponsive son out of the house.

Or Jacob-Israel are the sons and daughters Yhwh loved and for whom Yhwh therefore willingly gave up Egypt to Pharaoh in return for having Israel:

I gave Egypt as your ransom, Sudan and Ethiopia in your place,

Because of the fact that you were valuable in my eyes,

You were important and I myself loved you. (Is 43:3–4)

The fact that Yhwh loved Israel and brought the people out of Egypt is reason for believing that Yhwh will not give up on the people in the context of its rebellion or exile.

Perhaps the serfdom, the cry and the covenant promise were necessary conditions for the act of deliverance, though none in itself was a sufficient condition. Yhwh’s commitment and the people’s special status were long-standing, but they do not lead to action until the people’s oppression by the Egyptians and the king’s refusal to recognize Yhwh’s ownership of Israel. The Egyptians oppressed a number of peoples and the king no doubt resisted Yhwh’s lordship in other areas of the nation’s life, but Yhwh did not intervene on behalf of those other peoples or in those other connections. The Israelites’ oppression lasted some decades, but might not have led to action unless they had cried out so that their cry reached up to God. The cry on its own would not generate Yhwh’s act of deliverance. Many peoples have cried out in such a situation and not been delivered. But somehow the juxtaposition of promise, serfdom and groaning does have this effect. And Yhwh’s promise that all nations were to find blessing like Abraham implies an encouragement to other peoples who live in serfdom to cry out like Abraham’s descendants and expect Yhwh to respond.[552]

5.3 God Who Works via People

Long ago, Yhwh went down to have a closer look at the building of the Babel Tower, and having perhaps meanwhile returned for a discussion in the cabinet, then went down a second time to do something about it (Gen 11:5, 7; also Gen 28:12; cf. Ps 18:10 [[553]  9]; 144:5; Is 31:4). Once more in Egypt God has both investigated and determined to act, this time to rescue as well as to be assertive. Appearing to Moses is an indication that God has now “come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land to a good, broad land” (Ex 3:8). The language again presupposes that God resides in the heavens, but that this does not stop God investigating matters on earth and acting there. God is like a social services agent in an office who seeks to make sure needy people get resources, but also like a social worker in the field who, having discovered what is happening to her clients and listened with empathy to their descriptions of their feelings, thinks about how to make the system work for them personally. God can leave the office, and now does so. This signals to the client that the person in the office cares, and it also guarantees that the act is effective. To take up the First Testament’s own image again, God is like a monarch leaving the palace to go down into the city to resolve affairs among the people or defend them from attackers.

The image expresses the fact that the story does not portray God as active in the world and with Israel on an uninterrupted basis.[554]  Life itself suggests the same, though a number of attempts to understand the notion of God acting have seen everything that happens in the world as God’s act.[555]  By First Testament standards, this seems too undifferentiated an account. Its understanding is more punctiliar or occasional, though no less difficult for modernity. There is of course a sense in which God is always with us and always acting, and a sense in which we experience that presence, but the presence and activity that the exodus story describes is a more dynamic and vigorous one that we do not experience continuously. There is nothing wrong with that: God’s calling is to live and rule in the palace, our calling is to live and work in the city. But sometimes the king has reason to come out of the palace. We do experience God’s active and dynamic presence periodically. If we overemphasize the significance of God’s permanent presence, we lose the ability to own God’s real absence and to think of and speak of and plead for an occasional more real experience of God appearing and acting. From time to time God does appear and act. The God who was absent becomes present. God comes down from the heavens.

By Means of Some Women and Some Political Circumstances

How does God act in bringing Israel out of Egypt? The act of deliverance stands in continuity with what has preceded and with the regular human experience of God’s ongoing unspectacular involvement in the world. God works through ordinary people. This way of working is open to being frustrated by human wills that work in the opposite way, increasing Israel’s suffering. In due course God will work through acts of dynamic power, like an all-powerful king using his sovereignty in a way that reflects his compassion for his people (e.g., Ps 72), though only when Israel urges that the degree of human suffering is intolerable. Initially God acts through ordinary men and women, in their ambiguity. God is not exactly risking anything. If the midwives, Moses’ mother, his sister, the king’s daughter or Moses himself had failed to play their roles, God’s intention to deliver Israel would not have been frustrated. God is quite accustomed to formulating a new plan when one plan fails. But perhaps events would not have happened quite as God wanted, in a way that works behind the scenes and uses ordinary people’s instincts and commitment.

So God acts via midwives who instinctively fulfill their calling and decline to render to Caesar what belongs to God. As the narrative offers no comment on God’s involvement in the increase of Israel, so it offers little comment on God’s involvement in the stupidity of the Egyptians (though it will do that later) or in the piety, disobedience, deception and bravery of the midwives. To be more accurate, it offers no indication that God was proactively involved in their acts. They do not so act because God appears to them. Perhaps God does not need to do so, because their feminine intuition could be trusted. They “revered God,” we are twice told (Ex 1:17, 21). We are not told that they revered Yhwh. Was their intuition a natural human religious awareness? The absence of divine pro-active involvement is highlighted by the report of divine reactive involvement. God did nothing to inspire or commission the women’s action, but in response to their brave lies “dealt well with the midwives” and “gave them families” (Ex 1:20–21).

God acts via a mother, a sister and a childless woman who also follow their women’s instincts. Frustrated by the midwives, the king orders boy babies to be drowned, but at least one woman declines and saves the boy Yhwh will use to bring about the deliverance. Moses is the boy who is available because he has a mother who thinks the sun shines out of his eyes and determines to do something about the situation, a spunky sister who is as good a liar as her people’s midwives, and an adoptive mother who is a soft touch when she sees a baby (Ex 2:1–10). Again there is no suggestion that any distinctively Israelite religious awareness lies behind their action, or any religious awareness at all. God gets involved in this story by using the results of human instincts and deeds, and specifically those of people who do not count. These frustrate the instincts and deeds of a king—indeed, they cause the latter to issue in results that are the opposite of what he seeks. “This is not the first time that oppressors have been encumbered with compassion in their own houses—nor will it be the last. And whenever it is found there it interferes with the implementation of death-dealing plans.… At the very heart of the den of death that was the royal palace, were to be found allies of life.”[556]

So women birth Israel’s deliverance, though they do so by playing safe stereotypical women’s roles in order that men such as Moses can do the real work. They will need to be careful about intervening in that (cf. Num 12).[557]

God acts via political circumstances. “After a long time the king of Egypt died” (Ex 2:23). The statement may be resumptive, referring back to the accession of a king who did not acknowledge Joseph (Ex 1:8) and to the oppression that followed that. Moses’ survival and his sojourn in Midian are then part of God’s response to the Israelites’ plea. But the usual view is that the dead king is the one who initiated the Israelites’ oppression and sought to bring Moses to justice for killing the Egyptian. The people may have hoped that a change of regime would again herald a change in Egyptian policy toward foreign peoples—this time, a more beneficent one. It will in due course become clear that the significance of the change of king lies elsewhere. God intends to use Moses as agent of deliverance, and it means that the state pursuers of Moses need now no longer be a danger to him (Ex 4:19). Either way, the political events affect the way God acts in the world. Sometimes they provide the means whereby God brings about calamity, sometimes the means whereby God brings about deliverance, sometimes the circumstances that press God to act. Sometimes calamity or deliverance may be delayed because the political agents are not yet in line.

By Means of a Man Whose Spirit Is Not Broken

God acts via a man whose spirit is not broken and who indulges his machismo. Grown up, one day Moses is aggrieved when he sees an Egyptian battering one of his fellow Israelites. Battering the Egyptian might be a way of assuaging his own guilt for escaping his fellow Israelites’ experience through being brought up in the palace, but the story implies it is also a way of identifying with them in their oppression and taking action for the cause of right. Perhaps the two are mixed up, in the common human fashion, but fellow countrymen testify to the second when they ask Moses who made him a šōpēṭ over them, someone who acts decisively in the cause of right. In looking this way and that, it is less likely that he is attempting to avoid being seen than that he is looking to see if anyone is coming to take action in the face of injustice. He is appalled to see no one doing so. Yhwh will look this way and that in a later context of oppression and determine to take similar action (Is 59:16, where the wording is the same as Ex 2:12; also Is 63:5).[558]

Whereas Moses’ people have had their lives made unbearable by the Egyptians’ ruthless treatment of them and all they can do is cry out under their oppression, the experience has no reverse image in Moses’ own spirit. He has not internalized the attitude of his adopted family. But while he acts out of concern for his fellow Hebrews, it is another natural human deed, like the disobedience and deceit of midwives and mother and sister. Perhaps Moses never meant to kill the Egyptian, but he attacked him with fatal ferocity.[559]  Attacking someone and killing them can be an moral act—God often attacks people and kills them, and commissions Israel to do so. The narrative expresses neither approval nor disapproval, though on a broader canvas it implies that Israel owes Egypt neither forbearance nor submission nor respect nor truth.

But when Moses next day finds an Israelite attacking another Israelite and seeks to stop him, this man describes Moses as “slaying” someone, and soon Pharaoh is seeking to “slay” him (Ex 2:13–15). The need to flee the country gives him a taste of his fellow Israelites’ experience of being a resident alien in a foreign land (Ex 3:22). Taking refuge in Midian, he comes to the rescue of some women who are being prevented from drawing water for their flocks. Again he may be both concerned for the young women and playing the macho hero—he does gain a wife out of the deed. But this time the story uses the verb yāšaʿ, the term for God’s “delivering” peoples (Ex 2:17). If this is an act of guilt or machismo, God spectacularly transforms its significance.

God thus acts via the man who was available. Initially there is little indication that Moses is someone outstanding, and much that points in the opposite direction. There is again no reference to his taking into account any religious considerations, for or against his actions. He was simply the boy who got exempted from the king’s variegated slaughter,[560]  and therefore the one Yhwh had to do something with. He is now a man on the run from the Egyptian authorities, living in a foreign country, married to a foreign girl and working as a shepherd for her priestly father.

As a result of such circumstances, Yhwh appears to Moses in the course of his work to tell him he is to confront the king in order to bring the Israelites out of Egypt. We are told nothing of whether this corresponds to longings in Moses’ own heart. The story makes much sense if we infer that Moses has grown entirely at home in Midian and is content to see out his days as shepherd and family man. He is reluctant to be drafted for a hazardous-looking commission and wishes God would use someone more obvious, but the really impressive Israelites who would have made more plausible leaders are unfortunately dead. This may matter little, because Yhwh is capable of working with unpromising material.

By Means of the Most Ordinary of Men

We might reckon Moses has a fine set of qualifications that he is being bashful about. He was born an Israelite but was brought up and educated at court. He has shown that he identifies with his people and with other people in need and has now had a further shaping experience in the desert. As Egypt was the setting for Israel’s growth to a people of significant size, and oppression was then the setting for such growth to continue, so Moses grew up in the Egyptian court, but grew up further in Midian and was confronted by God there.

There is then quite a gap between his “Here am I” and his “Who am I?” (Ex 3:4, 11).[561]  In response, Yhwh refers to none of those features of his vita. Whether Moses has appropriate qualifications is irrelevant. Yhwh does not deny that Moses is nobody to be seeking to bring Israel out of Egypt, but simply points out, “I will be with you” (Ex 3:12). Yhwh has been “with” people such as Ishmael, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Gen 21:20, 22; 26:24; 28:15), which has meant extraordinary protection and success. This will be what Moses needs, and what he will receive. The inadequacies of Moses’ personality profile matter no more than they did in the case of those earlier figures. It will be good if Moses is a person of faithfulness and wholeness like Noah, but this is good because it is important in its own right, not because it is essential to Moses’ leadership. Most people God uses as leaders have flawed characters. Most people of meekness and integrity are not leaders. Yhwh does not deny that Moses is no speaker (Ex 4:10)—Moses is not being too meek. Yhwh simply declares the intention to overcome this problem by giving Moses the words he needs, when he needs them. Moses is not a very good candidate for the role he is called for, but Yhwh will work to make up for this.

We will later be told that Moses was an utterly “lowly” person (Num 12:3). The word (ʿānaw) can occasionally mean “humble” or “meek,”[562] 2 and it would fit the possibility that Moses is being bashful here. But the vast bulk of the occurrences of this and related words denote the position of people who have been humbled or afflicted in one way or another. It suggests people who are weak in some respect. They lack resources or power. This is true of all the occurrences in Genesis–Kings (indeed, in Genesis–Job in the English order). And the story does portray Moses frequently under attack and put down by the people. Occasionally the context does suggest that the “lowly” have internalized their humbling and have the appropriate devotion to God (e.g., Zeph 2:3), but there is no hint of that in Numbers 12.[563]

The broader story does portray Moses as devoted to God, but more like a ḥāsîd than a ʿānaw person. And at the moment when God appears to him, we have no grounds for reckoning him a religious person. We only know he was committed to his people and prepared to be an activist.[564]  It has referred to the lowliness or affliction (ʿŏnî) that is at least claimed by Hagar, Leah, Jacob and Joseph, and is experienced by Israel as a whole (e.g., Gen 16:11; 29:32; 31:42; 41:52; Ex 3:7). It will go on to refer to the lowliness or affliction of Hannah and David (1 Sam 1:11; 2 Sam 16:12 LXX, [565] ay Moses was the lowliest person on earth puts him in the same category—indeed, at the head (or foot) of that category. Moses was just the most ordinary of men, one of whom Yhwh made extraordinary demands, and on whom his people put extraordinary pressures because of those demands Yhwh placed on him.[566]  He is wise to try to get out of Yhwh’s commission and perhaps realistic in suggesting there is nothing to make Yhwh settle on him as the ideal candidate for the task that needs fulfilling. Indeed, the contrast between the machismo of the young adult and the reluctance of the man in middle age raises the question whether now “slavery was inside him as well as outside in the land of Egypt,” among his people.[567]

By Commissioning Him to Speak

God acts by commissioning human beings to speak. We might wonder why God should decide to draft someone to confront the king. In the story of Israel’s ancestors, after all, God confronted kings directly (see Gen 12:17; 20:3). But even Genesis presupposes that it is through what happens to a particular man, Abraham, that God sets about implementing the intention to restore the world. Perhaps God was being realistic in confronting the king directly; Abraham was more inclined to behave like a wimp than is Moses. God’s then using Moses (or Joshua or Deborah, as the story unfolds) is of a piece with the intention implicit in the creation story that God likes to associate human beings with the divine project for the world. God always aimed to achieve things through people made in the divine image. Human leadership is involved in Israel’s deliverance, but this leadership is appointed and directed by God. Yhwh brings Israel out of Egypt (e.g., Ex 6:6; 7:4, 5; 12:17, 42, 51) and Yhwh will recall, “I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself” (Ex 19:4). But it is a much less supranaturalist event than this metaphor might suggest. The people actually walk, and Moses also brings Israel out of Egypt (Ex 3:10, 11, 12; 6:13, 27; each time yāṣāʾ hiphil). Yhwh brings the people out of Egypt by getting involved in a political process that makes a demonstration in the public arena. But God does not exactly work through the “deeds” of human leaders such as Moses and Aaron. They “do” nothing except speak and undertake symbolic acts that bring trouble to Egypt. One might have expected God to raise up a king to stand over against Pharaoh, or at least someone who would act like the “judges,” but Moses’ commission follows the pattern of a prophet’s commission.

Once God has overwhelmed Moses and he sets about fulfilling his commission to speak, a strange event follows. Yhwh tries to kill him (Ex 4:24). It is one of the most extraordinary statements in Scripture. Apparently the one who kills and enlivens (e.g., Deut 32:39) cannot slay at will. The Moses who unsuccessfully resists being drafted by Yhwh successfully resists being killed by Yhwh. This man’s meekness/ordinariness takes a strange form. It does not imply compliance with Yhwh. Yet when mortal danger threatens the man who killed on behalf of one man and intervened on behalf of another man’s daughters, he survives not because of his machismo, but because of the intervention of one of these daughters. The manner of her intervention may put us on the track of the event’s significance. Her circumcision of their son is apparently the sacramental act that turns Yhwh from deathly intent towards Moses. Perhaps it is Moses’ machismo that needs circumcising.[568]

Moses’ experience completes a sequence that begins with Abraham, who feared that God had put him into a situation that would lead to his death (Gen 12:12–13). God went through the motions of requiring that Isaac be offered as a sacrifice, though he relented at the last minute (Gen 22:1–14). God (or an aide) attacked Jacob, but again proved incapable of overwhelming him, or unwilling to do so (Gen 32:22–32). God (?) gave Joseph a dream whose reporting almost cost him his life (Gen 37:2–24). Only the threat to Isaac receives any explanation, and typically it relates not to him but to his father (Gen 22:12). Whereas the father almost brings death to the son there, here the son averts death from the father. We may be able to hypothesize regarding Yhwh’s purpose in attacking Moses, but we need to see this event as continuing the sequence that will continue in the life of Moses’ sister Miriam and his brother Aaron with his sons. Being drawn into the fulfillment of Yhwh’s purpose brings extraordinary privileges, but it is also a dangerous business, and the reasons for the cost it brings cannot necessarily be explained. Blessing and danger cannot be dissociated.

5.4 God Who Does Signs and Wonders

As well as working via human instincts, God works via nature and also works in supranaturalist ways. Yhwh’s deliverance of the people interconnects creation blessing and restoration promise. Yhwh uses the created world to deliver the people from Egypt and from the Egyptian army at the Red Sea. The latter involves a repetition of the victory over forces of disorder that Yhwh won before creation (e.g., Ex 15:8). It is a moment of new creation, when Yhwh creates or shapes Israel as a people (e.g., Is 43:1). Yhwh interprets the deliverance from Egypt with that image from nature: “I lifted you up on eagles’ wings and brought you to me” (Ex 19:4). Insight into the world’s creation makes possible an understanding of the people’s deliverance. Yhwh goes on to use nature in resourcing the people through their journey to Sinai.

At least one account of the exodus by a liberation theologian implies a naturalist understanding in which a key role is played by the initiative of human leaders such as Moses. An account of Yhwh’s calling Moses then comes to be attached to his name because he behaved like someone with a vocation, a destiny. God must have called him. The motivation to interpret the story thus comes from the sense that it would be “ingenuous” to expect a supranatural act of God today.[569]  Our own experience is of God acting through means, and we therefore reinterpret talk of God’s direct action as a metaphorical way of describing the other ways of working. In Exodus, God has several ways of working, and it seems unwise to reduce them to different ways of describing the same way. God does work by human instincts. When that is ineffective, God works via signs and wonders in nature. When that is ineffective, God works supranaturally.

Signs in the Natural World

God’s involvement in the world as creator is not only background to Israel’s deliverance. In the event of deliverance, Yhwh acts as creator and lord of the natural world. In bringing Israel out of Egypt, Yhwh gets Moses and Aaron to perform a series of signs (ʾôt) or portents (môpēt, [570]  “wonders”) in the realm of nature that expose the king’s stupidity and powerlessness. These signs and portents are extraordinary events that imply that some supernatural entity has been at work. Signs are more often encouraging, portents usually threatening. Turning a staff into a snake is a sign for the Israelites and later a portent for Pharaoh (Ex 4:8; 7:9). They are designed to convince a person such as Pharaoh that Yhwh is speaking, and to persuade him to do as Yhwh says and thus acknowledge that his own royal power pales into insignificance before Yhwh’s.

We already know a number of signs. Sun and moon are signs marking the arrival of sabbaths and festivals; the rainbow is a sign of God’s covenant that all creation will stay functioning; and male circumcision is a sign of the covenant between God and Abraham (Gen 1:14; 9:12–17; 17:11). There are the signs God set on Cain and promised Moses (Gen 4:15; Ex 3:12). Further signs occur later: the Passover blood, a sign in connection with unleavened bread, the sabbath, events in the wilderness and the censers and Aaron’s staff (Ex 12:13; 13:9, 16; 31:12–17; Num 14:11, 22; 16–17; cf. Deut 6:8; 11:18). So signs can be regular events in nature, can be implemented by God or by human beings or both, can have solemn or encouraging significance, and can have present or future significance.

The signs in Exodus 4–10 have overlapping features. They are events in nature like the signs in Genesis 1 and 9, but the latter are regular events designed to encourage people who are inclined to believe in God, whereas the Exodus signs are more remarkable happenings designed for people not so inclined. They are divinely commissioned like all signs, but can be described as effected by Yhwh or as effected by Moses and Aaron or even as simply happening. They are future-oriented like the covenant signs and the sign Moses will eventually see, but they are designed not to make a specific point but a general one—that Yhwh is indeed sovereign. To Israel they are of encouraging significance like most of those earlier signs, but to Egypt they are of warning significance like the sign on Cain, so that they can be described as epidemics or pestilences (deber, Ex 9:3, 15), or as blows or afflictions (EVV “plague”).[571]

The signs indicate that the God who delivers Israel from Egypt has sovereign power in the natural world and is prepared to exercise it. They suggest no disjunction between political events and events in the natural realm. Yhwh is sovereign in both. They also hold together the inanimate, the animal and the human realm. Yhwh’s signs and portents involve a snake, an illness and a restoration, water and blood, the death of fish and the pollution of a river, epidemics of frogs and insects, epidemics affecting livestock and human beings, hail, lightning and thunderstorms bringing destruction of crops, and uncanny darkness. They come to a terrible climax in the slaying of the eldest offspring in all Egyptian families and flocks, provoking an agonized cry like the earlier cry of the Israelites and even more like that of the people oppressed by Sodom (Ex 11:6; 12:30; cf. Ex 2:23; 3:7, 9; Gen 19:13). Even this is not the end, for the conflict between Yhwh and the Egyptians comes to a second climax at the Red Sea, when Yhwh again demonstrates a power over nature that can bring death to the Egyptians. Yhwh then goes on to show how to make poisonous water drinkable (Ex 15:23–25), promises to be a healer (Ex 15:26), provides quails and manna for a multitude, and makes a rock produce water (Ex 16; 17:6–7). Initially the Egyptian king and his religious staff can imitate the signs though not always quite equal them (Ex 7:8–12, 20–22; 8:5–7, 16–19 [[572]  1–3, 12–15]). Subsequently they do not attempt to imitate them and indeed get overtaken by the troubles themselves (Ex 8:20 [MT 16]–10:29; cf. Ex 9:8–12).

The story probably implies that only Egyptians experience their water turned to blood and the epidemics of frogs and gnats. In connection with later blows, Yhwh explicitly makes a distinction between Israel’s and Egypt’s land, livestock and people (pālâ, Ex 8:22 [MT 18]; 9:4; 11:7). Only Egyptians experience the epidemic of flies, the slaughter of cattle and the death of offspring, though even for Israel this last is an extraordinary and frightening experience (the similar verb pālāʾ).[573]  Further, pālâ also resembles pādâ (redeem), and Exodus speaks of “redemption” in describing the first occasion when God makes a distinction between Israel and Egypt. In making a distinction, God makes a redemption (Ex 8:22–23 [MT 18–19]).[574]  It was as if Yhwh were paying the price to keep them, in the way they would pay a price to keep their firstborn or to get someone out of slavery (e.g., Ex 13:13; 21:8). The distinction God makes is both marvelous and redeeming.

Signs of Power

While the signs bring natural processes in their train (when the Nile is turned into blood, the fish die), in themselves they are not described as involving natural processes. They do not issue from one another, as interpreters have hypothesized might have happened. They are not the “natural” result of Egyptian agricultural policies. The modern world is familiar with ecological disasters involving the corruption of water supplies, the death of species, epidemics of pests, illness among human beings and animals, unprecedented weather phenomena that destroy crops, and plague among human groups. Some of these result from human action such as cutting down trees and burning fossil fuels that pollute the atmosphere. Human action that spoils the world has an exponential effect in spoiling the world far beyond the human beings’ intention. The natural disasters in Egypt also result from human action that works against God’s creation purpose,[575]  though with discontinuities over against the modern phenomena. In modern ecological disasters, human actions have their “natural” outworking. God does not need to intervene to bring about disaster but gives us up to the natural consequences of our acts.

In Egypt, there is no “natural” link between human acts and divinely brought disaster. The link is historical, political, theological and moral. Indeed, while most of the events involve nature, only half are disasters; the other half are simply weird happenings. They are not acts of judgment whereby the punishment fits the crime—for instance, the frustrating of Yhwh’s purpose in the natural world or the wrongful oppression of the Israelites. What they have in common is simply that they are acts of Yhwh and of Moses. They are acts of power, designed to force the king to yield to Yhwh this people whom Yhwh claims. Nature is a means of God’s making a point. And the disasters parallel the events in a horror film as much as the footage in a documentary—indeed, the frog epidemic generated a running motif and a surreal scene in the film Magnolia. They amount to an act of uncreation.[576]  Basic elements of creation such as water are spoiled. The first creation gift, light, is withdrawn. The forces of disorder are no longer restrained. The distinctions between the divisions and realms of creation are unmade. This often involves nature operating in ways that are extraordinary yet are extensions of the ordinary—God makes a wind blow the seas apart. Negatively, it involves nature running to excess—nature goes ballistic, becomes “hypernatural.”[577]

The first sign indeed looks initially like a simple demonstration of strange power as Aaron turns his cane into a snake. The king’s experts can do the same, though Aaron’s snake swallows theirs. Yhwh, Moses and Aaron thus prove they have greater quasi-magical power than lies in the Egyptian court. But one sense in which this act is a sign is that the snake is now not merely a nāḥāš (Ex 4:3) but a tannîn (Ex 7:9–10), the word for a sea serpent, a symbol for powers that threaten to consume God’s people and God’s purpose. Egypt itself becomes a figure for such powers: it threatens to consume God’s people and God’s purpose (cf., e.g., Ps 74:13; Is 51:9). The sea serpent is a natural figure for Pharaoh, in particular, as the leader of the land of the Nile (Ezek 29:3–5). But Aaron’s cane swallows the Egyptians’, and in due course the thrusting of an Israelite cane will lead to the swallowing up of the Egyptians themselves (Ex 14:16; 15:12).[578]

The signs that follow demonstrate Yhwh’s power in the economic lives of king and people. The Nile is the key to life in Egypt, providing water for human beings and animals and making crops grow. The idea of water flowing with blood will have new meaning after the tenth sign and the Red Sea event. For the moment the emphasis lies on the Nile’s significance as the people’s water supply. If there is no water in the Nile, people have nothing to drink. Human life will not last long. In the next three signs, frogs, gnats and flies overrun the country. At one level, these are indeed simply odd experiences, but they also parallel the dynamics of cancer or multiple births. It is the next three signs that bring pain, damage and death to human beings, animals and crops, through epidemic, thunderstorms and violent hailstorms, and locusts, paralleling the excessive sunshine and heat, or rains and floods, or hurricanes and tornadoes, of climatic change in recent years.

All these unsettling events come to a people that has reason to think it is secure in its destiny. It is a California of the Middle Eastern world, except that it does not dream that “the big one” might be imminent. It is the kind of well-watered land that a man chooses, a land that reminds him of Yhwh’s garden (Gen 13:10). Suddenly its predictability and reliability collapse. Nature ceases to work in keeping with its own ecological order. Actually its usual ecological order has only the nature of a cease-fire, not a peace treaty. Nature is always “red in tooth and claw.”[579]  God subjected it to futility, and it groans with eager longing to be set free from its bondage to decay and to share in the freedom of God’s children (Rom 8:19–21). God inspires aspects of nature to break the cease-fire, to abandon the regular compromise whereby nature works. The river is no longer full of water for the benefit of fish, human beings and the growing of crops. Disease decimates livestock. Plague afflicts both livestock and human beings.

The next to last sign then pairs with the second. Egypt can rely on the sun as it can rely on the Nile, but Yhwh brings about three days of total darkness. The darkness before creation returns. It is the first reference to darkness since Genesis 1, though tellingly the word is one that comes in the First Testament most often in Job. Darkness suggests death (e.g., Job 3:5).

Signs Bringing Death

Thus finally, death lays hold of every firstborn child and adult, human being and animal. It is not explicit that this counts as a “sign” or “portent.” It looks more like a separate event, a terrible blow that is unique in kind rather than part of a series of events. The slaughter of the firstborn is initially described as a “blow” (negaʿ), like the illness that came on Pharaoh in Genesis 12. That would suggest another hypernatural event, an epidemic that decimates the population. But the deaths do not come from a mysterious disease; diseases do not confine themselves to firstborn. They come by God’s act. This “blow” more resembles a physical “assault” (e.g., Deut 17:8; 2 Sam 7:14). And God acts directly. It is Yhwh in person who strikes all the firstborn sons of Egypt (Ex 12:29). Yhwh sends neither heavenly aide nor epidemic nor human executioner. This act is not in continuity with the way God acts via human wills and “natural” processes. Similarly, when Israel leaves Egypt, “God guided the people” along a safe way (Ex 13:18), perhaps like a shepherd guiding a flock (so Ps 77:20 [MT 21]; and cf. Ps 23:3) in such a way as to ensure that it avoids danger and finds provision. Yhwh leads by means of a column of cloud and fire—apparently one column, visible as cloud or smoke by day, as fire by night (Ex 13:21–22; 14:24). Both elements suggest God’s presence. If what happened was that Moses worked out which way to go and had bearers carry a smoking brazier so that people could tell which way the people was moving, the story has removed such elements and told us about something that was supranatural.[580]

There is much violence in the exodus and Red Sea story, but God undertakes it all, without using human agents. Israel has not sought to bring about a revolution in Egypt, by peaceful or violent means. “The Exodus was not a program but a miracle.”[581]  There is an odd feature of the description of Israel leaving Egypt and making its way to meet Yhwh: It is an army, but it does not fight. From the beginning, the task for Moses and Aaron is to lead the Israelites out of Egypt “by their armies” (ʿal ṣibʾôtām, [582]  “company by company”; Ex 6:26; cf. Ex 7:4; 12:17, 51). It is “Yhwh’s armies” that leave Egypt, ṣibʾôt yhwh (Ex 12:41), the reverse of the expression translated “LORD of Hosts.” The people leave ready for battle (Ex 13:18).[583]  Their military organization is given greater stress on the other side of Sinai when the people set out for the promised land (see Num 1–2; 10), but even now that is their destiny. That column of cloud and fire by means of which Yhwh guides them does recall an earthly general’s means of showing his troops the way. In this context, even the description of them setting up encampment each night (ḥānâ; e.g., Ex 13:20) has military overtones (NRSV renders maḥăneh “army” at Ex 14:20).

They are thus equipped and organized to fight against people such as the Philistines who lie between them and their land,[584]  but Yhwh takes the view that they are by no means ready for battle. They are likely to turn tail and run if they have to fight, so it is wise to lead them a way that avoids immediate conflict (Ex 13:17). With apparent self-contradiction Yhwh then leads them toward a conflict with the Egyptian army that is expected to pursue them, and they indeed panic, but Moses promises not that they will be able to fight successfully but that Yhwh will fight for them. They will only have to watch. And so it is, as they walk through the Red Sea and the Egyptians are overwhelmed by it. God continues to act by making nature behave in ways that are more than natural, adding extraordinary movements of water at the Red Sea to the epidemics in Egypt. We might see these as interventionist acts, yet also not be surprised if they are explicable in natural cause-effect terms. It is an east wind caused by Yhwh that fills Egypt with locusts, and it takes all day and night to do it (Ex 10:13). It is by an east wind that Yhwh parts the Red Sea, and it takes all night to do it (Ex 14:21). These events do not come about by “a divine snap of the finger.”[585]  Yet they happen without human involvement except in announcing them or bidding them. Israel no more fights its way across the Red Sea than it fights its way out of Egypt.

5.5 God Who Insists

Yhwh is the God who acts in Israel’s history. What is Yhwh aiming to achieve? In rescuing the people from serfdom, Yhwh is claiming a son back, bringing him into a new service, and showing who is king.

Reclaiming a Son

Why does Yhwh’s chastisement of Pharaoh take the form it does? Yhwh gave the answer long ago (Ex 4:23). The king has taken Yhwh’s firstborn and will not give him back. Yhwh will therefore take Egypt’s firstborn and not give him back. The punishment will fit the crime. Or rather, Yhwh will prove possession of authority in the realm where the king pretends to authority. All life belongs to Yhwh, and the regular surrender of firstborn to Yhwh (or their ransom) makes recognition of that. If the king will not acknowledge Yhwh, Yhwh will take Yhwh’s own.

The context does not suggest that the status of firstborn son suggests warm feelings Yhwh has for Israel.[586]  Yhwh speaks in terms of rights. A father has the right to expect that his firstborn son will work with him and for him, and eventually will accept responsibility for the house and the fields or flocks, and if necessary responsibility for his father and mother and other family members who cannot look after themselves. As Yhwh’s firstborn, Israel is the person on whom Yhwh’s hopes and intentions center. Yhwh will not tolerate someone else pretending to the right or power to decide this son’s destiny. Such a person is playing with fire. So the declaration that Israel is Yhwh’s firstborn, while containing less warm feelings than we might assume, holds more reassurance and grounds for hope. Yhwh’s self-centered resolve and not merely Yhwh’s compassion is the guarantee that Israel will not be surrendered to the power of Egypt.

Yhwh could easily have delivered the Israelites without assaulting nature and without killing a significant proportion of Egypt’s human population. Yhwh could have carried the people out on eagles’ wings in a more literal sense (cf. Ex 19:4) or struck the Egyptians with temporary blindness while they escaped (cf. 2 Kings 6:18–23). The killing of Egypt’s firstborn sons (and not daughters) corresponds to the king’s requiring the drowning of Israelite baby boys (and not girls) (Ex 1:22); the Egyptian army meets its death by drowning, the fate the king had imposed on Israel’s baby boys. Yet Exodus again does not say that this event is an act of punishment for the nation’s wrongdoing. When Yhwh describes events as great sĕpāṭîm (Ex 6:6; 7:4), both etymology and context suggest that the emphasis lies on the exercise of decisive power rather than judicial punishment. Yhwh is showing who is really God and showing that the Egyptian gods lack real power (Ex 12:12; Num 33:4). Simply to pluck the Israelites from Egypt by supernatural means would have liberated Israel as effectively, though it would perhaps not have so impressed Yhwh’s power on either Israel or Egypt, or not impressed it in the same way. This is Yhwh’s way of getting honor by or with the Egyptians (kābēd niphal, followed by bĕ). It is by the demonstration of awesome power at the Red Sea that the Egyptians will thus come to acknowledge Yhwh (Ex 14:4, 17–18).

Yhwh’s signs thus do not observe the ethical priorities that modernity and postmodernity emphasize. There is no concern about responsibility for nature or for human beings—at least, these are assumed to be less important than the purpose Yhwh is prosecuting. Yhwh’s concern is with extraordinary and impressive evidences of being the one with real power in the land of Egypt, before whom the king must in due course bow and to whom he must yield. God and king are involved in a struggle for control over Israel: Whose servants will Israel be? Insofar as Yhwh is concerned with conservation, in the short term it is not the conservation of nature or humanity in Egypt but the conservation of Israel. In a postmodern context we are aware that ethical standpoints are not contextless universals, but relate to theological traditions. Jewish ethical reflection, for instance, takes into account “whether a given decision is likely to help the Jewish people endure the tests of history in holiness until the Messiah comes.”[587]  Yhwh’s concern works within analogous parameters. Yhwh is concerned to take the world to its destiny, and manifesting sovereignty over the world power is an aspect of moving to that goal.

Bringing Him into a New Service

The object of delivering the Israelites is thus that “you are going to serve God on this mountain” (Ex 3:12; cf. Ex 4:23; 7:16; 8:1 [MT 7:26]; 8:20 [MT 16]; 9:1; 10:3, 7, 26). Serve (ʿābad) is a common word in these chapters. At the moment the Israelites are obliged to serve the king and his people (Ex 1:14; 2:23; 5:9, 11, 18; 6:6, 9; 14:5, 12[!]). The exodus is the act whereby Israel leaves this service for Yhwh’s service. The [588]  and NRSV translate the verb “work” at Exodus 5:18, while it reappears in the sabbath command whose familiar version requires us to “labor” for six days. “Serving” means working for someone—a person such as an employer. The Egyptians served their monarch as if he were their boss, because Joseph had enabled him to make them all his serfs, and the Israelites did the same. Indeed, the exodus story is systematically told in terms of the release of slaves, using terms familiar from law and social custom.[589]  But Yhwh is a monarch like Pharaoh, and the people are about to become Yhwh’s people. “I will take you to me as a people and I will be as God to you, and you will acknowledge that I am Yhwh your God, your bringer out from under the burdens of Egypt” (Ex 6:7).

That is the first occurrence of the expression “your God,” and it could suggest Israel is not yet Yhwh’s people. We would then need not to be “confused” by the stories about Israel’s ancestors: “This your does not indicate a previous relationship independent of the liberation.”[590]  Yhwh is known as “your God” in delivering the people. But the self-declaration identifies the God who now appears as someone already known to the people’s ancestors. Perhaps they do not acknowledge Yhwh, but Yhwh acknowledges them. Yhwh’s declaration of intent and summons to Moses begins and ends with reference to Israel’s being “my people” (Ex 3:7, 10) and Yhwh is already “the God of the Hebrews” (Ex 3:18). Yet the relationship between these two parties is indeed moving to a new stage, even being set on a new footing. The act of deliverance brings a new revelation that this God who had a relationship with the people’s ancestors is to act as the people’s deliverer. Henceforth they will be not a people who live purely on the basis of a promise, but who live on the basis of an experience of God acting. Negatively, Yhwh will bring an end to their serfdom and take them into their own land, and they will become Yhwh’s people in reality and not merely in word. They will be a people under Yhwh’s authority, not Pharaoh’s authority.

In the covenant relationship, the Israelites are about to bind themselves to Yhwh as king. At Sinai they will begin working for Yhwh and henceforth will spend their whole life doing that. Yhwh does not speak of Pharaoh setting Israel free (e.g., pātaḥ or hāpaś), but of sending them away/letting them go (šālaḥ; e.g., Ex 4:23; 5:1–2), like an employer giving someone the sack. Pharaoh is like a master releasing slaves because he has no power to keep them. Pharaoh has no rights over Israel.[591]  When a master releases slaves, he is required to not send them away empty-handed, and so is Pharaoh. But Yhwh will continue to have rights over them—more so in light of enabling them to escape unreasonable burdens in order to take on reasonable ones.

Yhwh’s service is perfect freedom, we may reassure ourselves, but Exodus sees no need to make the point when it fails to describe Yhwh’s rescue of Israel as an act of liberation. The exodus does not take Israel from serfdom to the freedom of independence but from service of one lord to service of another. Indeed, in this case one employer is headhunting another employer’s workers, which naturally makes their present employer think that there must be reason to hold on to them. But he cannot do so. The way Exodus talks of freedom—or rather, fails to do so—confronts the Western preoccupation with freedom.[592]  Freedom in Scripture is the freedom to serve Yhwh. This dynamic suggests another direction in which we might need to reframe the emphases of liberation theology. “Freedom from slavery under Pharaoh took the form of becoming slaves of God.… Therefore, when Israel wishes to testify to deliverance and freedom, it points first of all to the Torah.”[593]

Drawing Acknowledgment, Worship and Testimony

The reference to their “acknowledging” Yhwh again indicates that “knowing” Yhwh (yādaʿ) involves will as much as mind and feelings. It overlaps with theology and piety, but it is not identical with either. Theology’s concern is right thinking about God—with an intellectual knowing. Piety’s concern is with a right relationship with God—with personal knowing. In Exodus, daʿat does involve facts and personal involvement, but it suggests more acknowledgment or recognition than those other two forms of knowing. It involves the spirit, the will and the life.

The NRSV sometimes translates ʿābad “worship.” This narrows down the meaning of the verb, but the story does refer to worship as one of the aims of Yhwh’s act. When Moses confronts the king, he is to tell him that Yhwh requires the people to go into the wilderness to sacrifice to Yhwh (zābaḥ, Ex 3:18; cf. Ex 5:3, 8, 17; 8:8, 25–29 [MT 4, 21–25]). And insofar as it involves a journey to a holy place, the worship can be termed a pilgrim festival to Yhwh (ḥag; the verb is ḥāgag in Ex 5:1; 10:9). Only later will it be termed an act of service to Yhwh (Ex 10:8, 11, 24, 26; 12:31). When they repeat their desire to offer sacrifices to Yhwh (Ex 10:25–26) they incorporate reference to whole offerings (ʿôlâ), and ingenuously Moses adds that they must take every single one of their animals, as they will not know which ones they need till they get there.[594]  The way the rhetoric works in this connection is suggestive. Intervening events have turned the story into an account of a battle between two kings who both seek to exercise authority over Israel. The call to worship has become a symbol of an assertion of ownership and authority.

The exodus asserts Yhwh’s ownership of Egypt, effects Israel’s departure from Egypt with its oppression, and makes possible Israel’s journey toward the land where Yhwh intends to work out its destiny. Once the Israelites have left Egypt, we breathe a sigh of relief with them. There is more story to follow, but we have come to the end of a stage. Deliverance is surely accomplished (Ex 12:40–42). It soon transpires that this is not so, and a pattern for the whole of Scripture makes an appearance. Not only is it not over until it is over; it is not even over when it is over. The king has set in motion a process he cannot terminate. Yhwh is set on a final showdown. Yhwh has delivered Israel from Egypt, but killing Egypt’s firstborn has not defeated Egypt’s army. So the sequence of events continues at the Red Sea. A king and a nation easily assume that their military capacity is of central importance to power and nationhood. The Red Sea event demonstrates this is not so. It puts military might in its place, stuck in mud and overwhelmed. It demonstrates that it is not armies that decide history.

The sea crossing thus establishes further points without which the exodus would be incomplete. It disables Egypt, terminating its capacity again to attempt to control Israel. It further demonstrates that Yhwh’s power exceeds Pharaoh’s, and specifically exceeds that of the military, with a view to making the Egyptians acknowledge who Yhwh is (Ex 14:4). It again demonstrates Yhwh’s control over the tumultuous forces of nature, which assert themselves only when Yhwh bids them do so, and serve Yhwh’s purpose of bringing freedom. It turns Israel into people who testify to what Yhwh has done.

Asserting Might and Strength

At the Red Sea, Yhwh makes the most spectacular redeeming distinction between Israel and Egypt. Between them, Moses and Yhwh divide the sea (bāqaʿ). More than the subsequent death of the Egyptians, this was a moment that especially impressed itself on generation after generation of Israelites (e.g., Neh 9:11; Ps 78:13; Is 63:11–13). It provokes a song of praise sung by Moses and the “sons of Israel” (Ex 15:1), but perhaps composed and led by Moses’ prophet sister, who saw that its singing was accompanied by the music and dancing of the daughters of Israel (Ex 15:20–21):[595]

I will sing to Yhwh, for he rose on high. Horse and its driver he shot into the sea.

Yah became my strength and song, and my deliverance.

This is my God and I will glorify him, my father’s God and I will exalt him.

Yhwh is a warrior; Yhwh is his name.

Pharaoh’s chariots and his army he threw into the sea.

The best of his officers were drowned in the Red Sea.

Deeps cover them. They went down into the depths like a stone.

Your right hand, Yhwh, magnificent in might, your right hand, Yhwh, shatters the enemy.

In your exalted greatness you throw down people who arise against you.

You send off your fury; it consumes them like stubble.

At the blast of your nostrils waters piled up. Torrents stood like a stack.

Deeps solidified in the heart of the sea.

The enemy said, “I will chase, I will catch, I will share spoil.

My appetite will have its fill, I will pour out my sword, my hand will dispossess them.”

You blew with your blast, sea covered them. They sank like lead in majestic waters.

Who is like you among the gods, Yhwh?

Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in great renown, doer of wonder?

You stretched out your right hand, earth swallows them.

In your commitment you are leading this people you restored.

You are guiding them by your strength to your holy abode.

Peoples are listening, they are shaking.

Pain seizes the inhabitants of Philistia.

Then the leaders of Edom are panicking.

The ministers of Moab—trembling seizes them. All the inhabitants of Canaan     are collapsing.

Terror and dread fall on them. At the greatness of your power they become like stone

Until your people pass by, Yhwh, until this people you acquired pass by.

You bring them and plant them on a mountain that belongs to you,

A foundation that you made to dwell there, Yhwh,

A sanctuary, Lord, that your hands founded.

Yhwh will reign forever and ever.

In its account of what happened at the Red Sea, the song puts the emphasis on the sheer power of what Yhwh did. It is a great assertion of might and strength. There is one initial reference to the act bringing the singer’s “deliverance” and to its being the act of “my God” and “my father’s God,” and thus an act of faithfulness in which Yhwh implicitly keeps a commitment made in the past. But the emphasis lies on majesty and power, a mighty hand and a violent blast,[596]  warlikeness and destructiveness, drowning and death, shattering and defeat. Here there is no statement that the Egyptians were acting immorally. Where they went wrong was in thinking they could win a victory when they did not realize who they were taking on. They miscalculated, with fatal results. Rather, they did realize who they were taking on, for they knew they were resisting Yhwh, and they got what was coming to them. Once again Yhwh was thus asserting power over them, not judging them or punishing them. The song is an act of praise at the power of God. That power is an encouragement to the powerless, though it will become a peril to Israel itself when it becomes powerful. It will be the same logic that demands the putting down of Israel in due course (see, e.g., Is 2). But in the meantime, the declaration that God destroys the ruler of Egypt and his tools of domination is good news. “God’s power for life is arrayed against, and victorious over, every enemy of human well-being in every present power arrangement.”[597]  Insofar as the story and its celebration have been shaped by the story of Baal’s victory over Sea,[598]  a concern with supernatural powers has become subordinate to a concern with political powers.

5.6 God Who Reigns

In winning the victory over Pharaoh, Yhwh thus acts as king, one who will indeed “reign forever and ever” (Ex 15:18).

In Genesis there was little conflict with other people’s religions and little sense that the god another people worshiped was a different person from the God Israel worships. That changes in Exodus. Yhwh proves to be a God greater than the Egyptian gods, acting decisively against all the gods of Egypt (Ex 12:12; Num 33:4). Significantly, their being and power are embodied in Pharaoh, who is thus a quasi- or semi-divine figure, and the emphasis in the story actually lies on Yhwh’s victory over Egypt’s human king. Although Israel’s flourishing, oppression and deliverance cover the reigns of several kings, none is named, because they appear as people playing a role rather than as individuals. The story does not concern the deeds of some individual human beings and the way God relates to them. They stand for an institution. The story is about Yhwh and Pharaoh, “a self-assertive sovereign and a sometime vassal who is now defiant,” as much as about the release of some Hebrew slaves,[599]  and it concerns the defiance of the institution as much as that of individuals. Human kingship is shown to be ambiguous (a resource and a peril), unwise, amoral, but finally helpless when Yhwh decides to act as king.

The king of Egypt first featured in the story of Abram and Sarai (Gen 12:10–13:2), and already showed the ambiguity that will consistently characterize these kings. Egypt and its king were simultaneously a resource and a peril, the means of Abram and Sarai’s family surviving a calamity but also of bringing on them another calamity at least as great. A direct result of their being a peril is that Yhwh strikes the king and his household a number of significant “blows” (negaʿ), leading the king to deport Abram and his entourage, but an indirect result is that the king enriches Abram. Many features of the exodus story are anticipated here: the going down to Egypt because of a famine, the Egyptians’ enriching of the people, the blows, the deportation, the going up. The actual word “blow” reappears at Exodus 11:1, a significant moment not least because of the link of the imperiling of children—the child Sarai has not yet borne and the children the Egyptians are about to lose.

The king of Egypt is then central to the Joseph story, the more immediate background to the exodus. The insecurity of the king’s service becomes clear there. Two of the king’s staff “fail” their boss in some way (ḥāṭāʾ) and find themselves in prison. As suddenly as that fate overtakes them, they find themselves out of prison—but one to be restored, the other executed. These minions are no improvement on the king himself, for the restored minister did nothing to fulfill an undertaking to plead for Joseph. Perhaps he thought this would be another risky deed, and perhaps he was right. Only when it might be in the king’s interests does he tell him about Joseph. With irrational energy, the king, liking the results of his consultation of Joseph, takes him in one move from prisoner to second-in-command over the entire realm. When another famine comes, this leads the king to promise to Joseph’s father and his household, and their flocks and herds, the best of the land of Egypt, and to provide them with royal transport to facilitate the move from Canaan. They become resident aliens, which hardly gives them less or more secure long-term status than the regular population who lose their livestock, their land and their personal independence to the king as a result of the famine and the royal famine policies masterminded by Joseph.

Kingship Without Insight

For “a new king arose over Egypt, who did not acknowledge Joseph” (Ex 1:8). It is now governmental policy to put these aliens down. The new king also seeks to execute Moses, though that might seem a reasonable response to Moses’ homicide. If it is this king whose death is later reported (Ex 2:23), that event leads to no change of policy regarding aliens.

The governmental policy issues from fear (Ex 1:9–12), which surely misconceives the situation the government faces. While the king is right that the Israelites will soon want to leave Egypt, the idea that the Israelites are more powerful than the Egyptians (Ex 1:9) is fanciful. Just as irrational is the idea that the Israelites may join with Egypt’s enemies (other minority ethnic groups?), fight against the Egyptians—and leave! The story is not even explicit that the Egyptians’ fear is that they will thus lose a labor force and have to do more menial work themselves; the imposition of forced labor issues from the king’s fear rather than being background to it.

The king recognizes what has happened to Jacob’s family, and thus unwittingly testifies to the fact that the people have fulfilled their commission and/or that God has fulfilled the first stage of the promise made to them. Yet his desire to forestall any possibility that they may escape from Egypt is a desire to see no fulfillment to the other stages of that promise. Recognition is thus combined with blindness and/or resistance. Either he cannot see that the fulfillment of one stage contains the implication that further stages will be fulfilled, or he desires to resist that possibility. He acknowledges what has happened, but not in the sense of submitting to its implications. His acknowledgment is thus like but unlike that of foreigners such as Jethro (Ex 18) or Rahab (Josh 2), and more like that of the king of Moab (Num 22) or the Philistines at Aphek (1 Sam 4). It does not extend to accepting God’s involvement in what has happened and facing the implications of that; this is just a political and sociological fact. God intended that fulfilling the promise should draw people like him (e.g., Gen 12:3). He hardly knows that God has also foreseen that a king like him will turn immigrants into objects of oppression, but his actions stand within this awareness and God’s intention regarding what happens next (Gen 15:13–14). And when he speaks of Israel going up out of the land, unwittingly he uses one of the verbs Yhwh will use to describe the event (Ex 1:10; cf. Ex 3:8, 17; 12:38; 13:18).

While the king talks of the need to act wisely with the Israelites (ḥākam hitpael; Ex 1:10), his successive policies turn out to be stupid ones. His attempt to ensure the Israelites cannot join in or even foment an insurrection on the part of minority ethnic groups ends up making the situation worse. There are many examples in history of ruthless authorities using oppressive measures to put down alien peoples, and many examples of this tactic failing. Very many of the inhabitants of the most powerful nation in the modern world are descendants of people who resisted attempts to subordinate them, in Europe and elsewhere. The irony running through Exodus 1–2 is not a mere literary device, but a testimony to the way the best(?) human wisdom can have unforeseen results. It cannot allow for the human factors that determine events, let alone for the way God may make these human factors produce the opposite result to the one intended by people in power.

Kingship Without Morality

The story shows how fear and stupidity take governments down a path of inexorable moral decline as it generates first harshness, then ruthless oppression, then murder. Like the story of David, Bathsheba and Uriah, or the story of America and Vietnam, or of Watergate, it shows how relentlessly one moral “mistake” can lead to another and another. Each involves a deeper wrong than the last, so that the perpetrator is eventually undertaking acts that might not have been imaginable at the opening of the story, even to the king himself. Initially he simply requires the Israelites to do labor that is hard and tiring. Then he imposes excessive work on them, treating them like state serfs who have no rights. Then he requires their midwives to kill their baby boys. Then he orders their baby boys thrown in the Nile. Thus he seeks to turn work, designed to be a means of human beings’ fulfilling God’s purpose in the world, into a means of frustrating that purpose; to turn midwives, called to be agents of life, into agents of death; and to turn the Nile, Egypt’s great natural source of life, into a place of death. The objects of oppression suffer in their bodies but have some choice about what the oppression does to their spirits, but the subjects of oppression by their very deeds impose a dehumanizing on themselves. The Egyptian government’s fear of the Israelites and its stupidity contrast with the Hebrew midwives’ reverence for God and their demonstration of the shrewdness the king could only aspire to as they prove that reverence for God is the first principle of wisdom (Prov 1:7).

When Yhwh determines therefore to bring the Israelites out of Egypt, it is not surprising that Yhwh also takes the view that the king will not let them leave unless forced to do so (Ex 3:19). Yhwh will soon be spoiling for a fight to demonstrate who has real power in political events, but the comment implies Yhwh is not intent on an unnecessary showdown. It because the king will only respond to force that Yhwh will exercise force. The king is intent on tying a noose around his own neck.

This also ties a noose around his people’s neck. It is Egypt Yhwh will hit, not merely the king. In a sense there is no need for this. Yhwh could have simply put pressure on the king, or on the king and his household. But the lives of peoples, their achievements and their losses, are bound up with their rulers’ policies. The people suffer when Yhwh puts pressure on their ruler and find themselves plundered by the Israelites when they leave, like a defeated army plundered by its victors. Indeed, the Egyptians volunteer for plundering. On both sides it is women’s business, Egyptian women showering goodbye gifts on Israelite women. There is nothing mysterious about a king taking a tough stance over a subservient people’s request to leave the country. There is hardly need to speak of Yhwh’s causing that. There is some mystery about the Egyptians’ cooperation in being plundered. It must be Yhwh who causes that (Ex 3:21–22).

The king’s amorality reappears in his reaction to Moses’ urging that the Israelites be let go to celebrate their festival (Ex 5:1–3). Far from agreeing, the king orders that their work be made harder. If they have time to think about religion, they need their time more fully occupied. They are lazy. They are not doing enough.

Their work as laborers involves making bricks, baking them from mud mixed with straw, which helps to hold the mud together. In archeological sites such as Beersheba, one can see the straw poking out of the bricks. Henceforth the Israelites will have to find their own straw. The oppressor characterizes the oppressed as threatening, lazy, underoccupied, using religion as a pretext for serving their own interests, and deceived by their leaders. If it were not so wicked, it would be ironic that they should thus be described by the characteristics of the oppressors themselves. The result is to burden the people more, to scatter them (divide and rule), and to disunite them (divide and rule). Israelite supervisors who work for the king (under compulsion or as willing collaborators?) are soon attacking Moses and Aaron. And the people who once had a voice (Ex 2:23) have lost it. Their silence is deafening.[600]  They do not speak through Exodus 5, though Moses does so, and gets a response (Ex 5:22–6:1).

The story is a comment on human power. We do owe the Egyptian authorities a little sympathy. As I write, ironically but solemnly the Israeli army is shooting people in order to keep control of land recently occupied by Palestinians whose population growth seems a threat to Israel. In California some Anglo people are wary about becoming a minority in their state and a presidential candidate is campaigning on the basis of an intention to keep the U.S.A. American. This is of course a paradox, because the U.S.A. by its nature comprises a people who came from outside (even “native Americans” started as immigrants). Or perhaps it is not a paradox, because the U.S.A. knows what immigrants do to a country’s native population. At the same time, nations in the Two-Thirds World have seen an analogy between the Egyptian king’s population control policy and North American insistence on birth control as a condition of aid.[601]

Yhwh as King

Yhwh’s self-assertion at the Red Sea makes possible the confession “Yhwh will reign forever and ever” (Ex 15:18). We already know that Yhwh is “the ever God,” the lasting God, God forever (yhwh ʾēl ʿôlām; Gen 21:33) and that Yhwh is this God’s name forever (Ex 3:15). The “forever” is not the novel element in this confession, though the second “ever” (ʿed) gives that expression extra emphasis. The novel statement is the declaration that reigning is what Yhwh will do forever.

In Genesis the dominant image for God was guide and provider. There were few occasions when God became involved with kings or peoples like a king, and few if any occasions when God acted as king or warrior, as there were few occasions when Abraham did that (see only Gen 14). So this is the First Testament’s first reference to Yhwh’s reigning (mālak) or being king (melek). Reigning as king is not an elemental biblical concept but a contextual one. Yhwh has been a figure with authority and power from the beginning of the story, making things happen and issuing behavioral directions to human beings, but not being described as king. That further puts the very notion of kingship in its place, rather than supporting it by providing it with a heavenly analogy. In Exodus, God becomes involved in politics in order to deal with the circumstances that have come to overwhelm the Israelites. A king confronts Israel, so Yhwh becomes a king in order to confront this king and play him at his own game, as king delivering Israel from Egypt with powerful decisive acts (šĕpāṭîm gĕdōlîm, Ex 6:6; 7:4). The declaration that Yhwh reigns follows on fourteen references to the “king of Egypt” in Exodus 1–14. Yhwh has dethroned that king. He no longer reigns over Israel as he did. Instead of being ruled by the king of Egypt, henceforth Israel will have the benefits of being ruled by Yhwh, the world ruler. Its destiny lies with this king. Talk of Yhwh’s kingship can refer to a reign over the world, or a reign over Israel, or a reign from Israel over the world. The last makes best sense here.

Exodus 15 suggests further insights on this idea of God’s reign or rule or kingdom. First, from the beginning, God’s reigning is a dynamic concept rather than a spatial one. Yhwh’s malkût is not a place or an area, as the English phrase “kingdom of God” can imply. It is an activity. Second, God’s kingship is punctiliar rather than continuous. Of course God does reign all the time; a person who is king is king all the time. In due course the First Testament will assert the idea of God’s kingship over Israel and that will look more like an ongoing position of authority. Something like kingship is implicit in the notion of a covenant such as the one sealed at Sinai, and even more that reaffirmed in Moab, for this covenant is a quasi-political relationship. But when the First Testament initially talks of God’s reigning, it does so to affirm that God asserts kinglike power in a particular context—namely, when another king asserts his power to oppress God’s people. The kingship image will never be a common one in the First Testament, and when it does occur, it is often set over against human kingship (see esp. 1 Sam 12). “Reigning” is not what God continuously does in the world. Yhwh will continue to play laissez faire through much of history in the manner of the story through Genesis, but Yhwh’s continuing (lĕʿôlām) involvement in the world will mean that Yhwh will always be able and willing to exercise authority in the world like a king when deciding to do so.

Third, from the beginning “God’s reign” is a power concept rather than an authority concept. God has a right to exercise authority in the world, but when God reigns this involves an exercise of power rather than an exercise of authority. Yhwh does not say to the king of Egypt “You must yield to me because I have legitimate authority over you”—though this would have been a quite feasible claim. Yhwh says, “You must yield to me because I am a greater power than you are.” This is implicit in describing Yhwh’s acts as šĕpāṭîm, not so much acts of judgment but decisive acts. After Yhwh’s victory at the Red Sea, all that is needed is the rhetorical question “Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in great renown, doer of miracle?” (Ex 15:11).

5.7 How God Is Revealed

The story of when, how and why Yhwh acts at the exodus suggests a framework for understanding what the First Testament means by “revelation.” Is revelation a matter of words (propositional revelation) or is it more personal than that might imply? Or is God revealed more in deeds than in words? Is all history an indirect self-revelation of God?[602]  Revelation has been a subject of controversy in theology since the Enlightenment. An understanding of revelation that has learned from the First Testament needs to let it set the framework for thinking about the question, not just suggest answers to a question formulated in light of the history of theology.[603]  The exodus story suggests that revelation involves person, words and deeds. It involves propositional statements about who God is and what God will do; the propositional content of this revelation will be significantly expanded when Moses returns to Sinai. But its content concerns a person, and the revelation comes in the context of a personal meeting. Further, the revelation refers to events that are about to happen. The revelation would not be complete without the words, but because it concerns God’s activity in events, neither would it be complete without the events themselves. There is yet more beyond the events. The process of revelation involves recognition of the God who has spoken and acted, and testimony to this God and these acts.

Personal Revelation

In Exodus, God’s revelation is personal in the sense that it involves the meeting of two persons. The reality of personal meeting is indicated by the phenomenon of conversation. God speaks; Moses responds. Moses asks questions; God responds. Later Moses and Aaron will declare explicitly that God has “met with” them (Ex 5:3: [604]  has “revealed himself,” but the verb is qārāʾ).

The personal nature of the revelation first becomes clear in the talk of Yhwh’s aide “appearing” or “being revealed” to Moses (rāʾâ niphal, Ex 3:2), for as usual Yhwh’s aide appears as a humanlike person, speaking and acting on Yhwh’s behalf and in a sense bringing Yhwh’s very presence. So Moses is standing on ground that is holy (Ex 3:5).[605]  Yhwh’s standing there turns an ordinary place, a place where a man is simply doing his work, into a holy place. Perhaps it is significant that his place of work becomes a holy place because Yhwh can find Moses there. It is in keeping with God’s summoning Abraham in a city in Babylon and meeting with Jacob in ordinary places on the way out of and back into the promised land. Yes, Yhwh has “appeared” or “been revealed” to Moses (Ex 3:16). Wolfhart Pannenberg once argued that we should not render such a term “revealed himself” because these events do not involve the revelation of God’s essence—people see only an outward form.[606]  But one of his partners in the “Revelation as history” program has now noted the supersessionist nature of the exegetically odd suggestion that Yhwh was not really made known in Israel—that is, in order to exalt Christian faith it casts doubt on the reality of Israel’s relationship with God.[607]

The reality of God’s presence is underlined by Moses’ hiding of his face. To look on God’s face would risk being blinded or immolated. A human being could not stand the sight. God is the holy one, transcendent and absolute, a dangerous person for a human being to have contact with or look directly at. Such contact or looking is like touching live electric cables or looking at a blinding light. God accompanies this warning with the reassuring reminder “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Ex 3:6), but this does not make looking at God a risk-free venture. That self-identification further indicates the actuality of personal meeting. It proffers no new propositional information, but it is a crucial revelation of the speaker’s identity as the one who has related to Moses’ people in the past. This is no new God, even if this is a new revelation for Moses and his contemporaries. To put it another way, revelation does not start from nothing but builds on tradition. It presupposes that the recipients of revelation have some awareness of God’s person and God’s acts. It is this that enables the new revelation to have meaning.[608]

The Revelation of a Name

In the past, this God has had a series of names or titles, such as El Elyon, El Roi and El Shaddai, God of Abraham, Awe of Isaac and Mighty One of Jacob. Moses is not satisfied to speak of God in these terms, and he asks how he is to speak of God. What is this God’s name? He is given a series of responses. God begins by saying “I am who/what I am or I will be who/what I will be” (Ex 3:14), which is not a name and might initially suggest to Moses that Yhwh declines to answer his question (cf. Gen 32:29).[609]  Yet the formulation recalls something this God has already told him, “I will be with you” (Ex 3:12). It might then imply that while there are no formulas for capturing this God in words, God will always be there for and with Moses and Israel and will be what they need God to be. Moses is told further to tell Israel, “ ‘I am/I will be’ has sent me to you” (Ex 3:14), which half answers his question (“What am I to say to them?”) though it again avoids the question about a name, or gives Moses a name that is not a name, and one that is even more enigmatic than the first response.[610]  Moses asks after God’s name so he can pass it on to the Israelites, and Yhwh responds by providing not a label but a theology. But at last Moses is further told, in what looks more like a straight answer to his question about God’s name, that the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is Yhwh (Ex 3:15).

We will consider these statements in reverse order. We have been familiar with the name Yhwh since Genesis 2, but the story implies that historically it is only now that it begins to be used (cf. Ex 6:3). One strand of Genesis therefore avoids using the name in Genesis, which corresponds to the framework of historical theology suggested by Genesis-Exodus. Another strand of Genesis is free with the name because it works more with the priorities of systematic theology than those of historical theology. The God of whom Genesis speaks is Yhwh, so the name can properly be used there even if the participants in the story did not use it. Names not unlike “Yhwh” were probably known before the exodus,[611]  so that the name-giving event in Exodus 3 resembles the renaming of Abram and Sarai as Abraham and Sarah rather than the radical renaming of Jacob as Israel. God reworks an existent divine name to produce the name Yhwh.

A person’s name is usually more or less unique. Names such as John Goldingay Jr. and John Goldingay III (though I believe there are no such people) prove the rule, for where two people bear the same name, we find ways of making clear that the name refers to different people. A name such as “John Goldingay” refers to a person in his or her uniqueness. Philo once observed that “no proper name can be assigned to the one who truly is”; in revealing the name Yhwh, God is giving people a title to use as if it were a proper name. “And if he is unnamable, he is also inconceivable and incomprehensible.”[612]  The logic in Exodus seems to work in the opposite direction. The name “Yhwh” implies that Yhwh is a person, with a unique individuality, and one that can be known.

The Revelation in the Name

Like some other Hebrew names such as Abraham, the name Yhwh is more than a mere label. It encapsulates something of the particular significance of the person. In that sense it is not like the name “John Goldingay.” The reshaped name “Yhwh” resembles forms of the verb hāyâ “to be,” or rather hāwâ, though it corresponds to no actual form of it,[613]  as the name Abraham does not actually mean “father of a multitude.” The verb covers a range of meaning that includes “become” and “happen” as well as “be.” It is the verb traditionally translated “come to pass.” But it is no coincidence that this verb occurred in the phrases involving the expression “I am/I will be.” The title or self-description “I am” (Ex 3:14) could sound to us like an abstract expression, and a profound one. God is the eternal, self-sufficient, all-sufficient one, not a god who comes into being or can die, like other Middle Eastern gods, but one who simply “is.” That is no doubt true, and it may be implicit in the First Testament’s understanding of Yhwh, but it is not the immediate implication of the declaration ʾehyeh, still less of ʾehyeh ʾăšer ʾehyeh. Indeed, the verb more likely means “I will be,” for Yhwh has just used the same verb form in telling Moses, “I will be with you,” ʾehyeh ʿimmāk. That takes up the words spoken to Isaac and to Jacob (Gen 26:3; 31:3). Yhwh will often use this verb form again (beginning in Ex 4:12, 15), and every time it means “I will be,” not “I am.”[614]  It is indeed “I will be” who has sent Moses to the people (Ex 3:14).[615]

“I will be who/what I will be” does not imply that God is a chameleon who can transmogrify into a variety of different entities. Expressions analogous to “I will be whatever I will be” can be a way of avoiding specifying how or where the relevant statements apply, perhaps because the speakers are in no position to be specific or simply prefer a generalization (Ex 16:23; 33:19; 1 Sam 23:13; 2 Sam 15:20; 2 Kings 8:1; Ezek 12:25). They need not constitute an evasion but do mean the statements might refer to anyone or anywhere, whatever is needed or appropriate. So Yhwh’s name suggests that Yhwh may or can or will be anything that is appropriate or needed, or that Yhwh decides to be. The giving of the name and the spelling out of its implication is thus both a revelation and a comment on the impossibility of offering a revelation. It is more like an open-ended promise. God has the capacity to be whatever Israel needs God to be. Whatever happens in the future, God will be there with Israel, and out of an infinitely resourced being, God will be what the situation requires.

Yhwh’s being cannot be summed up in a list of characteristics. After all, the being of an individual human being cannot be so summed up. But one way we see who a person is involves seeing them in action in different contexts. How much more, then, is that true of God. The statement is a promise that God will be there in those different contexts and will be known, active and sufficient. The revelation of the name “Yhwh” and of its “explanations” is thus a real revelation, even if (or precisely because) it also deepens the mystery of who God is rather than resolving it. It gives Moses an answer for the people (though we never read of his giving it) that challenges to trust.[616]

In a moment Yhwh will add that Moses is to tell the people that “Yhwh, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you” (Ex 3:15). At first this might sound like a new statement, but it is more a different formulation of the previous one. The God who was involved with each of those ancestors was the one who said to each of them “I will be”: “I will be your God” or “I will be with you” (Gen 17:8; 26:3; 31:3). What that meant for each of them was different, so that Yhwh proved to be for them “I will be what I will be.” Ironically, in a sense the new revelation in Exodus is not a new revelation at all. They do not actually need a new revelation, for the old revelation is enough, though they may benefit from a more explicit formulation of it. Moses and Israel only need Yhwh to carry on being the same God, which means being the God who can always be something new as new situations require it. When God goes on to promise to bring the people out of their miserable state in Egypt into the promised land, that is not really an extra revelation, but a spelling out of this first revelation in the concrete terms required by a particular situation.

How “I Will Be What I Will Be” Works

The Song of Moses offers a further formulation of what the name Yhwh implies: “Yhwh is a warrior; Yhwh is his name” (Ex 15:3). This surprising realization suggests a concrete instance of how “I will be who I will be” works. It is as a warrior that Yhwh delivers Israel from the Egyptian army at the Red Sea, giving the name Yhwh unexpected new connotations. It is as warrior that Yhwh is awesome in holiness and majestic in splendor (Ex 15:11). The creator (like El) who became a destroyer (like Tiamat) and then a personal god now becomes a warrior (like Baal).[617]

At Sinai Yhwh further declares, “I will proclaim before you in the name Yhwh and I will be gracious to the one to whom I will be gracious and show compassion to the one to whom I will show compassion” (Ex 33:19). The form of the sentence itself recalls the earlier self-description “I will be who I will be.” The context of this self-revelation at Sinai is the people’s rebellion, which incurs the wrath that earlier fell on Egypt but had never fallen on anyone in Genesis. So what is the relationship between grace and wrath? Yhwh’s subsequent self-definition is as one who is compassionate, gracious, committed, steadfast and forgiving, but one who does not clear the wrongdoer—presumably the person who persists in wrongdoing rather than repenting (Ex 34:6–7). This definition often recurs in the First Testament.

Yet further, Yhwh goes on to proclaim that “Yhwh, whose name is ‘passionate,’ is a passionate God” (Ex 34:14). English versions have Yhwh being “jealous,” but jealousy is only part of the passion, zeal, fervor or strength of feeling that Yhwh feels as ʾēl qannāʾ. It is a fervor expressed in love and—when warranted—in anger. The one thing it excludes is half-heartedness.

In a sense these formulations again simply spell out for us implications of who God has been for Israel’s ancestors (and by now for Israel itself), and thus tell us nothing we did not already know. Yet the nature of such theological reflection is to tell us something new, simply by articulating what was previously only implicit. In Exodus 3; 15; 33; 34 revelation and theology proceed by articulating the implications of events and words from the past.

When we are told someone’s name, we are implicitly invited to relate to them as a person. In modern cultures where names are used cheaply, this can paradoxically go along with less personal relationships. In more traditional cultures this is not so; calling someone by their personal name may seem to imperil a proper relationship with them. It is a bold act for Moses to ask God’s name; perhaps he needs to be able to blame the people as a whole for the need to do so (Ex 3:13). God could easily have said “no.” It is a risky act for God to reveal it, for once the name is “out there,” it can be slighted or misused (cf. Ex 20:7). But Yhwh welcomes being addressed by name.

In later times, Israelites stopped uttering the name Yhwh, perhaps for two reasons. They were required to be wary of attaching Yhwh’s name to something unworthy of it (Ex 20:7); it may have seemed safer not to speak the name at all. Further, Yhwh’s having a name distinctive to Israel, and thus a Hebrew name, could give the impression that Yhwh was merely Israel’s national god and not the God of the whole world. Out of such concerns, readers came to replace the name Yhwh with a common noun, usually “the Lord.”[618]  Replacing the name by the proper noun has a number of disadvantages. If Yhwh wants to be known by name and we decline and insist on referring to Yhwh by role, we refuse the personal revelation. And the particular role by which the believing communities have insisted they relate to Yhwh has introduced an extra pervasive gendered and patriarchal caste to First Testament faith that is alien to it. God asked to be known not as “Lord” but by a personal name. We relate to a person, not a mere authority figure.

It is already clear that revelation involves person, words and deeds. Specifically, talk of God’s revelation requires the language of promise[619] —hence the link with events. If God does not go on to bring the Israelites out of Egypt and into the promised land, it becomes questionable whether the revelation was actually a revelation. Revelation involves God declaring the intention to do something, then doing it, then being in a position to say, “you see, I did it, as I said, which shows that I am what I claim to be.” Events are seen as God’s acts not simply because people elect to see them as such by faith when there is nothing about the event in itself that requires or warrants this.[620]  The setting of events in the framework of announcements of intention provides the warrant—though of course a person has the alternative of seeing examples of the phenomenon as simply coincidence.

How can one know one has received a revelation before the events of which the revelation spoke? Yhwh anticipates that question but answers it in a way that may provide Moses little comfort. Moses will receive a sign that Yhwh is sending him, the fact that in due course the people will serve Yhwh on the mountain where Moses and Yhwh are now having their conversation (Ex 3:12). The catch is that this sign is no use to Moses when he most needs it. Typically, the point when it is withheld and when it is given contributes to the fulfilling of Yhwh’s agenda for Moses rather than Moses’ agenda for himself. For the moment Moses is reduced to trusting Yhwh without signs, as human beings in general and leaders in particular usually have to do.

Revelation and Acknowledgment

The people’s eventual arrival at Sinai in fulfillment of Yhwh’s declaration will provide evidence that Yhwh is indeed God. As a result of hearing and then seeing all that, “you will know/acknowledge that I am Yhwh your God, your bringer out from under the burdens of Egypt” (Ex 6:7)—and so will the Egyptians (e.g., Ex 7:5). It is an allusive acknowledgment. It does not seem much for people to acknowledge that Yhwh is Yhwh. Perhaps the confession is shorthand for acknowledging that the great and powerful one whose will has forced itself on Egypt is Yhwh. To put it another way, perhaps the name Yhwh has already come to carry some of the connotations that attach to it when readers and translators of the Scriptures substitute for it the word Lord. While the disadvantage of that practice is to dilute the personal nature of the God who has a name, the advantage is that it removes the possibility of misunderstanding the use of this name as implying that Yhwh is just one god among the many gods who have personal names to enable us to distinguish one from another. The name Yhwh refers to the only God.

To acknowledge “I am Yhwh” is to acknowledge that the God of Israel is the God who has imposed action on Egypt and has thus demonstrated the possession of all power. Ironically, it is the king of Egypt himself who announces the theme of acknowledgment of Yhwh. Moses and Aaron declare to him, “Yhwh, the God of Israel, has said this: ‘Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival to me in the wilderness’ ” (Ex 5:1). It is a provocative statement, because they speak to the king like messengers announcing a message from a king, and in due course it generates a message via the king’s own messengers that begins in the equivalent way, “Pharaoh has said this” (Ex 5:10). More immediately it provokes the question “Who is Yhwh that I should listen to his voice and let Israel go? I do not acknowledge Yhwh. No, I will not let Israel go” (Ex 5:2). They are frightening words, expressive of the common human instinct that rarely finds such explicit expression. Whether or not people will listen to Yhwh’s voice was the issue at the Beginning, where Eve paid heed to the serpent and Adam “listened to the voice” of Eve (Gen 3:17, šāmaʿ lĕ; here it is šāmaʿ bĕ). While Abraham was capable of making the same mistake (Gen 16:2, with lĕ), in general the distinction of Abraham lay in the fact that he listened to Yhwh’s voice (Gen 22:18; 26:5, with bĕ), and this will be Israel’s calling (e.g., Ex 19:5; 23:21–22, with bĕ). Even more frightening than the rhetorical question is the declaration “I do not acknowledge Yhwh.” The NRSV has “I do not know the LORD,” but the king is not owning lack of theological information or personal acquaintance. He is declining to recognize Yhwh’s authority. He is laying down his own gauntlet for the fight that Yhwh also wishes to have.

Thus the bare formula about acknowledgment is applied to him: As a result of the sign Moses performs, the king “will acknowledge that I am Yhwh” (Ex 7:17). To acknowledge “that I am Yhwh, in the midst of the land” (Ex 8:22 [[621]  18]) is to recognize that Yhwh is acting in Egypt as the only one with real power there. This implication is more explicit when Moses declares that the effect of the epidemic of frogs—or rather of its termination—will be “that you may acknowledge that there is no one like Yhwh our God” (Ex 8:10 [MT 6])—“in all the earth,” Yhwh in person later adds (Ex 9:14). Indeed, the ceasing of the thunder and hail will drive the king to “acknowledge that the earth is Yhwh’s” (Ex 9:29). The meaning of the expression is thus also not so different from the meaning of Jethro’s confession, “Now I acknowledge that Yhwh is greater than all gods” (Ex 18:11). The bare formula reappears as Yhwh’s aim with regard to Israel itself, that it should “acknowledge that I am Yhwh” (Ex 10:2). At one level Israel already acknowledges that its God is Yhwh and that Yhwh is its God. But perhaps it does not acknowledge that Yhwh is Yhwh—that the one who has this name is the all-sovereign one who possesses the power to impose actions on Egypt. Hence derives the participial qualification already noted, “and you will acknowledge that I am Yhwh your God, your bringer out from under the burdens of Egypt” (Ex 6:7).

In one sense nothing will be added to Israel’s theology by the exodus event. They have already been told who Yhwh is. But the idea will then become event, and the people will be able to experience another kind of knowing, based on event and not simply on self-description and promise. Reaching Sinai will also provide Moses with evidence that Yhwh has indeed sent him.[622]  We might imagine that this was also designed to impress Moses’ people, though actually they have become quite impressed by the time they reach the other side of the Red Sea, where “the people revered Yhwh and came to trust in Yhwh and in his servant Moses” (Ex 14:31). Yhwh’s point is that the arrival at Sinai will be the moment when Moses himself is in a position to see that a stage in Yhwh’s work has been completed and to reflect on its implications. Such evidence that it was Yhwh who was calling him at this earlier point might seem redundant then. On the other hand, if Moses were ever inclined to think that it was he who had brought about this achievement, it might also function to remind him that it was actually Yhwh who had sent him.

Events will reveal that such acknowledgments are not made once and for all. There can be an implied critique when Yhwh draws attention to the need for further acknowledgments. It is soon so in the Sin Wilderness (see Ex 16:6, 12). But there can also be implied promise. So it will be when Israel has constructed Yhwh’s meeting tent, for Yhwh will come to dwell there, “and they will acknowledge that I am Yhwh their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt so that I might dwell among them. I am Yhwh their God” (Ex 29:46). So it will also be through Israel’s keeping the Sabbath, which is required “so that you may acknowledge that I am Yhwh, the one who sanctifies you” (Ex 31:13).

Revelation and Proclamation

We have seen that revelation involves personal meeting, words, an act and some recognition of all that. On the other side of Yhwh’s act of deliverance two further aspects of revelation become reality. One is an immediate proclamation or testimony that Yhwh has spoken and acted (Ex 15:1–21; 18:1–12). The other is a further, ongoing proclamation or testimony to this fact, which is the purpose of the provision in Exodus 12 and is one reason the book called Exodus eventually comes into being. These two are witnesses to the fact of revelation.[623]  No doubt Israel tells this story in light of its ongoing experience of Yhwh’s recurrently leading it from the service of other sovereignties to the service of Yhwh. While it is an oversimplification to suggest that the story is only seen retrospectively to have involved God’s fulfilling promises, the story indeed “represents the event as it was reflected upon, pondered, and explored by faith and grasped in all its projections” and thus invites readers to continue the process of seeing it as not just news of a once-for-all past event but a promise for them.[624]

The Red Sea story establishes that there is no one among the ʾĕlōhîm like Yhwh (Ex 15:11). What does this imply about Yhwh and other ʾĕlōhîm? First, other ʾĕlōhîm do exist. The First Testament uses the word ʾĕlōhîm more broadly than English uses the word god. It covers subordinate heavenly beings as well as the incomparable God. Second, Yhwh is not merely unique in the sense that every human being is unique over against other human beings. It is not merely that Yhwh has a different character from other ʾĕlōhîm, for example; Yhwh possesses the attributes of deity in a way no other deity does. Yhwh is God and not merely a god. Third, while Israel owes a unique allegiance to Yhwh, this is not like the exclusive allegiance of a person to their spouse, which recognizes that there are many valid spouses for other people but makes an exclusive commitment to one person. Israel’s faith is not polytheistic in the sense of acknowledging a range of gods from which a people might choose. Israel could not worship Chemosh both because Yhwh had a particular claim on Israel and because Yhwh was God in a sense that Chemosh was not.

The First Testament assumes that this is the normative faith of Israel, the faith to which Israel is to be committed. Through most of the story of Israel’s life in Canaan it also assumes that the people regularly worshiped other deities, and archeological discoveries confirm this. But it does not assume that there was ever a time when Israel worshiped many deities because Yhwh had not told anyone anything different. If the belief that Israel is called to worship Yhwh alone has been retrojected from, say, the time of Elijah or Hosea, this fact has been eliminated from the story. Historically it is easier to believe that this notion that distinguished Israel from its contemporaries goes back to a defining event such as the exodus that could support the idea that Israel should be committed to Yhwh alone, as Hosea says (Hos 13:4), than to believe that it simply emerged in the creative theological imagination of a prophet.[625]  And theologically it is easier to believe that Yhwh laid this crucial charge on Israel at the beginning of its life as a nation than to believe that Yhwh left Israel to worship a number of deities for some centuries without making it possible for them to know any better.

5.8 How God Relates to Foreign Peoples

Corporately, Israel’s story has become one of conflict with another foreign people, and it will continue to be thus. But individually, the door is open for people to acknowledge what Yhwh has done with Israel.

The Israelites’ move from Egypt to Sinai ends with meetings with Amalek and Midian (Ex 17:8–16; 18:1–12). Both belong to the broader Abrahamic family. The stories foreshadow Israel’s ongoing relationship with such relatives (e.g., Moab, Ammon and Edom), and with peoples to whom they are not related, such as Canaanites, Philistines and Hittites.

A People That Attacks

Amalek was Isaac’s great grandson, but relations between Israel and Amalek become quite fraught (see, e.g., Num 24:20; Judg 3:13; 6–7; 1 Sam 30). As the First Testament tells the story, this clash between Amalek and Israel was the reason (Ex 17:8–16; cf. Deut 25:17–19; 1 Sam 15). The Israelites are making their innocent way from Egypt to Sinai.

Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some men for us and go out and fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will be standing on the hilltop with God’s staff in my hand.” Joshua did as Moses told him in fighting with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the hilltop. As long as Moses raised his hand, Israel would be winning; as long as he rested his hand, Amalek would be winning. When Moses’ hands were heavy, they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on each side, and his hands became steadfast until the sun went down. So Joshua disabled Amalek and his people by the mouth of the sword. (Ex 17:8–13)

The story surprises us in a number of ways. Why are other members of Israel’s extended family attacking Israel like this? The First Testament sees it as a mystery (Deut 25:17–18). Perhaps it is part of the mystery about human wrongdoing. It is an especially grievous fact that the members of the people of promise get into such hostile relations with each other. One recalls the killing of Catholics by Protestants and Protestants by Catholics at the Reformation, and more recently in Ireland, Uganda and Yugoslavia, as well as the verbal hatred between Christian groups in countries such as the United States.

Why is Yhwh letting such a thing happen? The story makes clear that escape from Egypt and the deliverance at the Red Sea does not mean Israel is being taken out of the world. The life of God’s people is set going by acts of miraculous divine deliverance, but it proceeds by the same kind of experiences as those of any other people living in the world.

Why does Yhwh say nothing when the crisis erupts? The sequence of events is very different from that at the Red Sea. The story shows there is no predicting or prescribing what God will do. Yhwh will be what Yhwh will be, and there are no rules. Experiences of God’s marvelous intervention are designed to inspire trust in God in new situations that arise, but they do not guarantee that God will approach the next crisis the same way as the last one.

Why does Moses take the action he does? First, why does he not talk to God about it? Perhaps actually there was a pattern about two previous events, which he has learned from. At the Red Sea when confronted by the Egyptian army and then at Rephidim when confronted by a waterless desert, God told Moses to use his cane to divide the sea and to bring water from the rock. Moses works out for himself that this is the right action when the next crisis happens. Perhaps there are times for consulting God and times for taking action with the power God has given you.

Why does Israel respond to violence with violence? Surely Yhwh is a God of peace? Indeed Yhwh once was, but Yhwh has now become a warrior (Ex 15:3). It is a price Yhwh pays for being involved with Israel as an ordinary people in the world. Eventually Yhwh will give up being involved with Israel in that way and be involved with Judaism and with the church in a way that does not involve their operating as a nation. From time to time the Jewish people will become a people like other peoples again, in the form of the Hasmonean state and later the State of Israel. Likewise, the church for the Constantinian period will become an empire like other empires—even if it calls itself the Holy Roman Empire. The church will march into bloody battle with the cross at the head of its armies. The period in Israel’s life from the exodus to the exile is such a period. In that period, how else can you live when Amalek attacks? What else is Israel supposed to do? Is it supposed to lie down and die, unless God intervenes miraculously?

Why does Moses need to keep his hand raised? Although Israel actively fights, as was not needed at the Red Sea, it does not fight alone. Heavenly forces fight alongside the earthly ones—or rather, fight above them. Indeed, the implication is that were this not so, Israel would lose the battle. Yhwh again acts through Moses, and specifically lets Moses’ cane become Yhwh’s cane. A cane is a support when walking, a weapon when fighting, and a means of discipline when exercising authority. Moses’ cane had become the means whereby he exercises a supernatural authority and not merely an earthly one (as when a king exercises his cane). He could do magic with it, turn the Nile to blood with it, multiply frogs or gnats with it, create hail, thunder and lightning with it, summon a locust storm with it, divide a sea with it—or defeat an army with it. Perhaps we are to imagine him directing heavenly forces even as Joshua is directing earthly forces.

A Priest Who Responds

One should not universalize the wickedness of foreign peoples in Moses’ day. Whereas the Israelites themselves resist and reject Moses when he attempts to deliver them from external oppression and intracommunity oppression, the Midianites welcome him and provide him with a home when he acts on behalf of a Midianite.[626]  The story of Israel’s deliverance closes with an illustration of foreign openness to recognizing Yhwh. Not long after the Israelites reach Mount Sinai, Moses’ Midianite father-in-law arrives, with Moses’ wife and children who had apparently been evacuated back to Midian.

Moses told his father-in-law all that Yhwh had done to Pharaoh and to Egypt for Israel’s sake: All the hardship that had come upon them meanwhile,[627]  and Yhwh had rescued them. Jethro rejoiced over all the good that Yhwh had done for Israel in rescuing them from the power of Egypt. Jethro said, “Blessed be Yhwh, who rescued you from the power of Egypt and from the power of Pharaoh, who rescued the people from under the power of Egypt. Now I acknowledge that Yhwh is greater than all gods, for in the matter that they acted willfully against them.[628]  Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, took a whole offering and sacrifices to God, and Aaron and all the elders of Israel came to eat bread with Moses’ father-in-law in the presence of God” (Ex 18:8–12).

It was fine for Moses and the Israelites to testify to Yhwh’s great deeds in Exodus 15, but no one was listening. One might therefore question whether this counted as valid testimony at the time, though it does work for readers of Exodus. Moses’ subsequent testimony to Jethro works at the time. There is a further contrast with Exodus 15. In the white-hot astonishment at the drowning of the Egyptian army, there the focus lies on the severity and violence of this act of power as it affects Egypt. According to a midrash, Yhwh’s aides want to join in rejoicing at the Red Sea event, but Yhwh asks, “The work of my hands has drowned in the sea, and are you to sing songs?” Yhwh does not rejoice in the downfall of the wicked ([629]  10b; b. Sanh. 39b). In a way the midrash brings out a point implicit in the Passover and Red Sea events themselves, where the death of Egypt’s firstborn is related in a sentence (Ex 12:29). There is no detailed account of or glorifying in the event, nor even the length of the account of one of the earlier epidemics.

In his report of the event to Jethro, Moses focuses on the way the exodus affected Israel, and so speaks of hardship and rescue. Jethro thus recognizes the “good” Yhwh has done, by which he apparently means simply this rescue. Four times we hear talk of power: Literally “hand,” the hand that came down in harsh treatment, the hand “under” which Israel cowered. Four times we hear of rescue. The emphasis thus lies not on the unpleasantness of what God did to Egypt but on the goodness of what God did for Israel. It is this that leads Jethro to acknowledge the supreme greatness of Yhwh. Yhwh had spoken of acting decisively against the gods of Egypt (Ex 12:12), and Jethro recognizes that Yhwh has done so, because they “acted willfully” against Israel.[630]  Can gods act willfully against human beings? ([631]  reorders Ex 18:10–11 so that it becomes the Egyptians who act willfully.) Yet these Israelites are not ordinary human beings but a people with the status of firstborn for the only being who truly counts as God. Willfulness over against this people is willfulness over against that God, on the part of the king (Ex 4:22–23) or the gods he worships.

Recognizing all this, Jethro expresses his acknowledgment of Yhwh not only in words but also in deeds, in a whole offering, (fellowship) sacrifices and a fellowship meal before Yhwh. He is himself a priest (Ex 2:16; 3:1; 18:1), and a scholarly theory has suggested that it was from him that Moses learned about Yhwh.[632]  If so, Exodus has concealed this fact well in portraying him learning about Yhwh from Moses and becoming the firstfruits of the nations’ recognition of Yhwh. Moses later urges his father-in-law to accompany the Israelites to their promised land, partly because he knows the way (Num 10:29–32). The Midianites do belong to the broader Abrahamic family (see Gen 25:2), but this was no guarantee of family feeling between Midian in general and Israel (see, e.g., Num 22:1–7; 25:6–18; 31; Judg 6–8).[633]

Abraham spoke about Yhwh to the Bible’s first priest, though we do not know how he reacted (Gen 14:22–24). Joseph married into the family of the Bible’s second priest, showing that the First Testament’s attitude to Egyptians individually is no more negative than its attitude to individual Midianites, Canaanites, Moabites or Hittites (Gen 41:45). Moses married into the family of the Bible’s third priest and now gives his testimony in such a way as to provoke his father-in-law’s acknowledgment and his worship.

Permeable Boundaries

Generally, corporate relationships with these peoples are hostile, but individuals from such foreign peoples are invited into Israel’s faith and life. The welcome to foreigners to commit themselves to Yhwh and worship at Yhwh’s holy mountain (Is 56:6–7) is extended to people such as Rahab the Canaanite (?), Ruth the Moabite and Uriah the Hittite. Already, a substantial ʿereb, a group of people belonging to other ethnic groups, has accompanied Israel out of Egypt (Ex 12:38).[634]  These are presumably other non-Egyptian peoples whose association with Israel parallels Israel’s recognition by ordinary Egyptian people (Ex 12:35–36). Already, one of the people who made Moses’ survival possible was the Egyptian king’s daughter. Before Yhwh saw what had happened to the Israelites and came down in response to their cry, this woman came down and saw what had happened to Moses and responded to his weeping. There were Egyptians who could be moved with compassion as there were Egyptians who had lost their compassion, and the former could contribute to the fulfillment of Yhwh’s purpose as could the latter. There were Egyptians who were prepared to act in a way that ignored the king’s edict as there were many who were not. The king’s subsequent intransigence is very different from the people’s favor (Ex 11:1–3). There is often a difference between the perceptions of people and those of their leader, even if the people pay the price for their leadership.[635]

The exodus story goes on to declare that foreigners who remain simply foreigners may not celebrate Passover. That would be a kind of contradiction, for Passover signifies a commemoration of what God did for Israel over against a foreign people. But foreigners who become full members of the congregation, the males being circumcised, become as good as natives (Ex 12:43–49). Passover then becomes their story, and they join in its celebration. They share in the celebration of Yhwh’s deliverance of the people from Egypt, in the round of sacrifices, in the celebration of Yhwh’s goodness to the community and in Yhwh’s forgiveness for the community’s failures (e.g., Num 9:14; 15:14–16, 26, 29; Deut 16:11, 14; 26:11). They have the same obligations and responsibilities as full members of the community and are liable to the same consequences for failure to fulfill responsibilities (e.g., Lev 16:29; 17:8–15; 18:26; 20:2; 24:16; Num 15:30; Deut 31:12).

While they do thus become full members of the congregation, they do not thereby exactly become Israelites—or at least do not necessarily do so. Ruth is still “the Moabite,” Uriah “the Hittite,” and part of the background of the Rahab story may be the question “how did that Canaanite family come to be part of Israel?” A resident alien who has been circumcised has the same religious status as a native of the land, but remains an alien. The fact that the Passover regulations are the same for native and resident alien (gēr; Ex 12:49) shows that the two categories continue to exist. Perhaps foreigners are adopted into one of the clans, itself a sign that they truly belong, but if so, an awareness is preserved that their origin lies with another ethnic group. The First Testament has a vision of the whole world coming to join Israel in acknowledging Yhwh, but no vision of the whole world becoming part of an expanded Israel.[636]

Apparently resident aliens may not gain their own land and they thus remain in a vulnerable position, so that the community needs to be reminded to treat them like full citizens, safeguard their position, and keep their needs in mind (e.g., Ex 22:21 [[637]  20]; 23:9; Lev 19:10, 33–34; Deut 10:18–19; but Deut 14:21 indicates an exception). Indeed, apart from Exodus 12 there are no other references to resident aliens being circumcised, and while this may be presupposed, it may be a sign that there were different practices at different times. Another pointer to this is the fact that Ezekiel’s new allocation of the land envisages treating resident aliens as Israelite citizens and thus giving them allotments in the areas of the clans where they live—yet they still remain resident aliens there (Ezek 47:21–23). Sometimes a resident alien might be like someone who has not taken out citizenship but lives in a country permanently or semipermanently. A man who has not been circumcised but joins in the full life of the community would be a little like someone who has not been baptized but shows up for church every week. The term tûšāb might designate such a person, a nonresident alien who was something like a migrant worker.[638]  The First Testament also implies that there were other foreigners in the country (nokrîm or zārîm) who may have been, for instance, traders, and who were further away from being members of the community. But no doubt the bounds between these groups were fuzzy, and one cannot press too strictly the references to different groups in different passages.[639]

So members of other ethnic groups are free to join Yhwh’s people. From the beginning Israel lives with permeable boundaries. The boundaries are important; if Israel becomes indistinguishable from other peoples, God’s purpose through Abraham cannot be fulfilled. Yet the permeability is also important, and for the same reason.

5.9 How God’s Resolve Relates to Human Resolve

Bidding Moses assemble the elders of Israel and tell them “I will take you up from the oppression of Egypt,” Yhwh adds that “they will listen to your voice” (Ex 3:17–18), and then that “I will give this people grace in the eyes of the Egyptians” so that they will give gifts to the people when they leave (Ex 3:21–22). These are interestingly unequivocal assurances. Yhwh subsequently grants that one or two or three attempts may be required to get Israel to listen. Apparently Yhwh will not know whether that is so until it happens, as was the case with testing Abraham. But the declaration “they will listen” is in any case not a mere prediction but something more like a declaration of intent, a promise that Yhwh will move heaven and earth to see fulfilled, and a statement of confidence about possessing the means to persuade people to listen. “I will give this people grace” is more obviously that. Once again, the God who has the capacity to be all-knowing and all-powerful evidently does not always choose to exercise abilities. It would be possible to manipulate people into doing what God wanted, as if hypnotized or subjected to subliminal advertising. But neither Israel nor Moses always takes the attitude that God looks for, so evidently God does not manipulate them.

Yhwh’s words about the Egyptian king (Ex 4:21–23) constitute a mirror image of those statements of confidence. Moses is to perform a series of signs before Pharaoh, “but I myself will strengthen his resolve and he will not release the people.” Then Moses is to tell Pharaoh, “I said to you, ‘Release my son so that he may serve me,’ and you refused to release him. Now I will slay your firstborn son.”[640] 0 Before Moses has returned to Egypt, then, Yhwh is envisaging a scene to take place only at the end of a process. The king will have resisted pressure to release Israel, Yhwh’s firstborn, and Yhwh will therefore slay his firstborn. To judge from the subsequent story of Moses’ dealings with the king, the process is in some sense or at some level an open one, yet this initial announcement indicates that in another sense or at another level its outcome is predetermined. Here, too, Yhwh is not merely predicting an outcome but choosing it. Yhwh will bring it about by causing the king to close his mind to the possibility of agreeing to release Israel. Yhwh is taking on the role of Pharaoh’s noose-tier or giver of folly. The strengthening of the king’s resolve will mean that the full series of signs and wonders can be unleashed; it would be a shame if the king gave in too soon and prevented this. It will also open the way to the terrible event that brings to a climax the series of blows that Yhwh rains on Egypt. Because the king refuses to release Yhwh’s son, Yhwh will slay the king’s son.

Yhwh’s mind is made up. Why should this be? The events in Exodus 4–15 constitute a demonstration of Yhwh’s authority. The exodus story is about sovereignty or mastery, about whether Israel serves the king or is free to serve Yhwh. Moses is not merely being sly in asking that Israel be allowed to go to serve Yhwh by celebrating a festival in the wilderness—after which, by implication, they will return. The request itself raises the key issue: whether they are ultimately Yhwh’s servants or the king’s servants. Is the king of Egypt the great sovereign, or is the God of Israel? The king responds with that frightening declaration “I do not acknowledge Yhwh” (Ex 5:2). Manifesting the capacity to maneuver the king into acting stupidly will lead to a demonstration that Yhwh is an incomparably greater power than the king of Egypt. That will happen, Yhwh explains to Pharaoh, “in order that you may acknowledge that there is no one like me in all the world” (Ex 9:14). And it will happen for the sake of Israel and also of the world, who read this story (cf. Ex 9:16; 10:2). By implication, Yhwh has a similar capacity to stage-manage any king or any ordinary human beings. But the specialness of the situation in this story means that what Yhwh does here is not necessarily a guide to what God regularly does—only to what God can do. A man pretends to be more than a man and refuses to acknowledge that Yhwh is God, and so Yhwh cuts him down to size. The story repeats the Eden story.[641]

“I will strengthen/toughen Pharaoh’s resolve” (Ex 4:21; 7:3) is more literally “I will strengthen/toughen his heart,” but this translation is misleading because in English “heart” suggests “feelings.” In the Bible feelings are more commonly located in the stomach, where we often also feel emotions. The heart stands for the center of the person more generally, and commonly suggests the locus of thinking and decision-making. The verb “be firm/stiff/tough” (qāšâ) and the related adjective are regularly negative expressions, terms for the stiff-neckedness of Israel itself (e.g., Ex 32:9; 33:3, 5; 34:9). Whereas a sensible animal will bend its neck to go the way its master directs, a stupid animal will not do so. “Strong” (ḥāzaq) is a more ambiguous word, but “strong-hearted/minded/willed” is always a negative characteristic, again suggesting someone who resists being taught sense. Exodus will also speak of the king’s mind becoming “heavy” (kābēd, Ex 7:14), another ambiguous word insofar as the verb can mean “honor,” but applied to the eyes or ears or mind it denotes weighed-down and sluggish. The three words suggest different images, but all refer to the same negative reality.[642]

Why does someone resist being taught sense? The story of the king and his tough-mindedness utilizes narrative’s potential to suggest a number of different answers to a difficult question. Yhwh does determine what will happen. But this does not mean Yhwh makes the king act against his own will. And the way God acts in this connection is repeated in Israel’s own life.

Yhwh Hardens

The first statement about the king is that Yhwh knows he will have to be compelled to let the Israelites leave his country (Ex 3:19). Perhaps Yhwh simply has enough insight about kings in general and this line of Egyptian kings in particular to work that out, or perhaps Yhwh has exercised the capacity to look into the king’s mind, or perhaps Yhwh has sent an aide to spy on the deliberations of his cabinet. Whichever way Yhwh knows, this opening comment is one about knowledge, not causality.

While knowing the king will have to be compelled does not imply Yhwh decided this, that point is eventually made in other ways. To say only that Yhwh knows what will happen puts Yhwh in a purely reactive position, whereas the First Testament reckons that a God worth calling “God” is more intentional about world history than this implies. Likewise the God of Israel is more intentional about Israel’s history. Not everything in world history or Israelite history emerges from God’s will; much of it happens against God’s will, though with God’s permission. As God could know everything but does not choose to do so, so God could ensure that everything happens in accordance with the divine will but does not choose to do so. But from time to time events happen because God specifically wants them to. Once again, God is thus like a CEO or a senior pastor. Some things happen in a company or a church by such a person’s direct initiative, but most things happen by virtue of the fact that he or she gives responsibility to other people to make things happen—and they may do that within the executive’s policy guidelines, or they may ignore these. The Egyptian king’s resistance to Moses is an example of something that comes about by God’s personal action rather than merely by God’s permission. It is Yhwh’s intention to strengthen or toughen the king’s resolve that the Israelites should not be allowed to leave Egypt. It is part of the fulfilling of Yhwh’s central purpose, and it therefore has Yhwh’s direct attention and reflects Yhwh’s personal involvement and executive initiative.

Declaring that Yhwh wills rather than merely knows safeguards another point. One can know that something is going to happen or that something is needed, yet not be able to bring about the outcome one desires. Declaring that Yhwh brings about the king’s resistance makes clear that Yhwh is not to the slightest degree caught out or threatened by it. Moses can go through the process of watching the king resist pressure to let Israel go, knowing that this is all within Yhwh’s purpose as well as Yhwh’s knowledge.

Further, it is often the case that change comes only when a situation has deteriorated so far as to make it no longer tolerable, for God and/or for the victims. The notion of “hardening the heart” suggests that God unleashes increasing injustice, stubbornness, and resistance to change, so that the old order must give way to God’s new intention. If a benign status quo can be maintained, nothing will ever change. Only when brutality escalates to an unbearable level can genuine public newness surface. The community that trusts this text is invited to think and notice again God’s “strange work” in the public process that makes newness possible.[643]

The down side of talk in terms of Yhwh making the king resistant is that it could suggest that the king is Yhwh’s toy, to be manipulated in such a way as to serve Yhwh’s purpose, without regard for his personal desires. Is Yhwh playing mind games, or working like a hypnotist who gets people to do something they would not otherwise do by planting ideas in their subconscious minds that they would not otherwise generate, or treating the king like a computer to be programmed at will? Paul raises a related question in Romans 9:14–24 (quoting Ex 9:16), which suggests this is not merely a modern reader’s question. Indeed, the narrative’s own unfolding implies an awareness of it and a response to it.[644]

Elsewhere the First Testament speaks of people’s hearts or spirits being soft or of Yhwh softening them (e.g., 2 Kings 22:19; Job 23:16). How does God go about softening or hardening? To soften or harden something impersonal such as butter or jelly, we use physical manipulation, heating or cooling it, but to soften or harden a person, we present them with facts or images or stories so that they can do their work in generating a response on the part of the person. Similarly, Yhwh’s softening or hardening need not involve some equivalent to physical manipulation, as if God reaches into the brain and directly changes the way it works. To judge from other aspects of God’s working with human beings, more likely God softens and hardens in the same personal way that human beings adopt in personal relations. God makes things happen by influencing people.[645]  To soften people, God presents them with facts or images or stories of divine love or power, or of human possibilities of action or achievement. These do not force them to a positive response, but give them, for example, extra stimulus and opportunity to trust or love or worship. To toughen people, God presents them with other facts or images or stories—for instance, perhaps, reminding the Pharaoh of the loss he will incur through letting the Israelites go. That, too, does not force or manipulate Pharaoh to decide to hold on to Israel. What happens depends on how Pharaoh responds to the facts or images or stories—on whether he himself toughens his resolve.[646]

Pharaoh Hardens

After Yhwh’s second declaration of intent to toughen Pharaoh’s resolve (Ex 7:3), Moses and Aaron appear before the king and do their trick with the staff that becomes a snake, but the king is insufficiently impressed. His resolve is “tough” or “heavy” (Ex 7:13, 14) and he will not listen to Moses and Aaron. The sequence of events recurs as Moses and Aaron cause the Nile to turn to blood and the king’s experts do the same. The king’s resolve remains “tough” (Ex 7:22).

So what is going on? Is it simply that Yhwh’s intent is being fulfilled and the king is reacting as Yhwh has determined? The narrative does not tell us that Yhwh caused the strengthening or toughening of the king’s resolve. It simply declares the empirical fact: the king’s attitude remained fixed. Such empirical statements reappear in Exodus 8:19 [MT 15]; 9:7, 35. The forms of expression do not involve the passive verbs that appear in English translations (“his heart was hardened”), which might make one ask who was the agent of the hardening. The statements involve intransitive verbs or adjectives declaring that the king’s resolve “was tough/heavy.” Indirectly they raise the question why this should be so. If the magicians can recognize the hand of God, why cannot the king?[647]  But they do not raise the question of causality. They do declare that Yhwh’s prediction is being fulfilled: things are turning out “as Yhwh said” (Ex 7:13, 22; cf. Ex 8:15 [MT 11]; 9:35). But in itself this need not imply “because Yhwh made it happen” rather than merely “as Yhwh foreknew.”

The narrative does broach the question of causality, but it does so in quite a different way in telling us that “Pharaoh … did not apply his mind to this” (Ex 7:23). There was a force operating on the king’s mind, but it was the king’s own force. He is in control of his mind, and can do with it as he will. Indeed, the next scene tells us, “he weighed down his mind” (kābēd hiphil, Ex 8:15 [MT 11]; cf. Ex 8:32 [MT 28]; 9:34). The king refused to allow his mind to rise and range free to consider new possibilities.

From time to time the king does seem to be getting the point. He asks Moses and Aaron to entreat Yhwh to end the epidemic of frogs, after which he will let the people go (Ex 8:8 [MT 4]). Moses “cries out” to Yhwh on the king’s behalf and Yhwh responds, but then the king has a change of mind (Ex 8:12–15 [MT 8–11]). Similar sequences follow in connection with the epidemic of flies, the destructive thunderstorms and the locust epidemic (Ex 8:25–32 [MT 21–28]; 9:27–35; 10:12–20). Sometimes he attempts to negotiate a compromise (Ex 10:7–11, 21–29). But Moses will have no compromise. Not only are the king’s staff able to see what he cannot see; he himself can see it for a while, but then he abandons his insight. Why is this so?

In reading the statements about the firmness of the king’s resolve in light of Yhwh’s declaration of intent, we should hardly infer that the king weighed down his mind only because Yhwh had determined he should do so. First, that involves making connections the narrative does not make. The fact that something comes after something else need not imply a causal connection (post hoc ergo propter hoc). The narrative’s simple juxtaposition of the two forms of statement without interrelating them is a significant feature of the way it handles its issue. Its own way of making the statements draws attention to the mystery about human stupidity. Second, we can perceive that mysterious stupidity elsewhere in the First Testament story—for instance, in David’s behavior, or in events that led up to the fall of Judah in 587. We can perceive it in our own lives, in political and personal events with which we are familiar, even in our own actions as we look back on them. The First Testament does not always see Yhwh’s will behind such perversity, and we may not (always) want to see it behind ours. Sometimes it is simply mystery. Third, in due course the story does declare that Yhwh strengthened the king’s resolve (Ex 9:12; 10:20, 27; 11:10), did weigh it down (Ex 10:1). Such statements appear in Exodus, but only in the latter part of the story. So the four kinds of statement come in a telling order:

(a)     Yhwh will strengthen/toughen the king’s resolve: Exodus 4:21; 7:3. The entire series of events takes place within the orbit of Yhwh’s intention.

(b)     The king’s mind was strong/heavy: Exodus 7:13, 14, 22; 8:19 [MT 15]; 9:7, 35. The immediately observable and dominant fact is a mysterious empirical event: the king’s stupid resistance.

(c)     The king weighed down his mind: Exodus 8:15 [MT 11], 32 [MT 28]; 9:34. That stupidity is to be attributed to the king’s willfulness.

(d)     Yhwh strengthened/weighed down the king’s mind: Exodus 9:12; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10. Yhwh kept the king firm in the stupidity to which he was naturally inclined. Toughening the king’s resolve is one of the ways in which Yhwh punishes the king.

Even after Yhwh weighs down the mind of king and officials, the officials argue for the people to be allowed to go and the king goes halfway to agreeing (Ex 10:1, 7, 8). That fits with the implication bound into Moses and Aaron’s challenge to submission (Ex 10:3–4). The king’s refusal is not brought about by some alien compulsion.

Relentless Divine Control and Relentless Human Stupidity

In the climax to the account of God’s deliverance, a further version of the sequence appears in brief compass but with a telling double introduction. The king who has shown repeated capacity for changing his mind no matter what troubles come to him and his people does so again after Israel has departed (Ex 14:5). Human power and stupidity do not give in. One might even wonder whether there is something more than human or less than human about his powerful stupidity—something demonic about it. So later Jewish thinking will come to reckon.

But Yhwh stands behind this process (Ex 14:4). Before the king’s change of mind, Yhwh had already decided that the death of the firstborn was not enough. It is not over, because it is not over. Once again Yhwh declares the intention to strengthen the king’s mind so that he will pursue the Israelites when they leave, and Yhwh does so strengthen it (Ex 14:4, 8). Then Yhwh again repeats that intention, so that the king follows the Israelites into the sea (Ex 14:17). If the beginning of the story emphasizes the king’s responsibility for his actions, the end of the story puts the stress on Yhwh’s. Yet the way Yhwh works is by making the Israelites follow a path that makes it look as if they have set a trap for themselves, when actually Yhwh is setting a trap for the Egyptians (Ex 14:1–3). There is indeed a kind of manipulation of the Egyptians, but it does not take the form of chemical interference or hypnotic compulsion. The king falls for Yhwh’s plan and shows himself a less intelligent military strategist than Yhwh because he has miscalculated the situation. He will not acknowledge that he is confronted by an opponent capable of enabling Israel to escape from a dead end. He cannot recognize a trap. He cannot resist the temptation to follow the Israelites into the sea. That is the kind of incapacity that decides battles. That is the process whereby the king and his staff change their mind about letting the people go and Yhwh strengthens the king’s resolve (Ex 14:4, 5, 8, 17).

In this story the sovereign God is always in dialogue with human beings in their sovereignty, and the God who is in ongoing dialogue with human beings in their sovereignty remains the sovereign God.[648]  When Israel or Egypt or their leaders think they are making decisions, they are not mistaken. God’s sovereign will can be imposed on them when God has had enough of their resistance to cooperate willingly, but when that happens, God does it openly. God can be annoyed and delayed but not in the end frustrated by human intransigence. When this farmer has put his hand to the plow, he does not look back.

In the course of events as a whole, then, Yhwh’s decision stands as the background to what happens, yet it does not force people to take a path they would not otherwise have taken. Even if Yhwh had done nothing, the opening of Exodus suggests that the king likely had quite enough stupidity to resist a change of policy. So Pharaoh is responsible for his acts, yet they take place within Yhwh’s purpose. Conversely, while they take place within the terms of Yhwh’s declaration of intent, they have their own integrity. And while declaring the intent to toughen the king’s resolve, Yhwh does not implement this intention until after the king weighs down his own mind. Yet this does not mean that only the king’s later acts are the working out of Yhwh’s direct will and so on. In understanding the relationship of divine sovereignty and governmental sovereignty, the narrative invites us to let each have its integrity and not pretend to resolve the relationship between them. It does this not because its insight falls short of resolving it, but because its insight includes the awareness that the only way to give an unsimplified account of the matter is to hold in tension a series of statements about how and why a person in authority makes decisions. The genius of the narrative is to do that in such a way as to imply some comment on the interrelationship of key factors without implying a claim to tie everything together neatly but oversimply.

The Hardening of God’s Own People

Similar expressions to these in Exodus reappear in Isaiah 6:9–10, where the prophet is told to make Judah’s minds dull, stop their ears and shut their eyes.[649]  The commission has several significances for the exodus story. First, this action on God’s part is an act of punishment. The people are to have their minds closed because they have been resisting God’s will. God’s stiffening of the Egyptian king’s resolve has the same significance. From the beginning, Yhwh’s dealings with the king stand under the sign of an intent to punish, and causing him to stiffen his resolve is an aspect of that punishment (see Ex 4:21–23). Second, once again the text speaks both as if options are closed and as if they are still open, though it does so in a different way. Why does Isaiah tell people God has bidden him close their minds? He does so in order to shake them out of their apparent intransigence. The declaration of punishment is designed to be self-frustrating. Third, Yhwh’s victim in Isaiah is Israel itself. Yhwh’s treatment of Egypt thus parallels Yhwh’s treatment of Canaan in the sense that both are capable of being repeated for Israel. If Israel behaves like Egypt or Canaan, it is treated like Egypt or Canaan.[650]  Yhwh is not hostile to Egypt simply because it is not Israel, and Yhwh’s favor of Israel is capable of being reversed. There is a moral aspect to Yhwh’s relationship with both peoples. While Israel’s account of Yhwh’s stance in relation to other peoples can initially seem harsh and self-seeking, the story actually undercuts any such appearance and introduces some irony into the account of the attitude taken by the Egyptian king and people. Other parts of the First Testament invite Israel to see itself mirrored there and to see Egypt mirrored in its own life, rather than contrasting itself with Egypt. When Paul thus sees God’s dealings with Egypt mirrored in God’s dealings with Israel in his own day, he is working with the grain of the broader First Testament story.

Moses himself is clear from the beginning that his problem will be at least as much the Israelite people as the Egyptian king. He raises a series of questions about the community, questions that move from the reasonable to the increasingly desperate. Yet at first things turn out quite well. Moses did not think they would believe or listen (Ex 4:1), but they do both:

Moses and Aaron went and assembled all the elders of the Israelites. Aaron spoke all the words that Yhwh had spoken to Moses and performed the signs in the people’s sight, and the people believed. They heard that Yhwh had paid attention to the Israelites and had seen their misery, and bowed and fell on their faces. (Ex 4:29–31)

The people see, believe, listen and bow. We might worry lest belief in Moses should soon dissolve when it is based on what happens to a snake or a hand or some Nile water, but the narrative’s subsequent comment induces more hope. The signs indeed have only a short-term significance, but they are designed to build a platform for a hearing. If the people do not believe in Moses, they will not listen to what he has to say. Once they have listened to what he has to say, the signs and their belief in him cease to be so important. It is their response to the message that now counts.

The response is that they bow down and fall on their faces. The verbs denote two stages in physical prostration, bowing the head and falling on the ground, and thus help us watch the stage-by-stage unfolding of the one act.[651]  The second verb is the one used in Genesis for Joseph’s family’s falling down to him (Gen 43:28). Indeed, nearly all its occurrences in Genesis refer to falling down to other human beings. Falling and thus lowering oneself before someone else can indicate respect, but can also suggest awed gratitude (see esp. Gen 24:26, 48, 52). Subsequently Israel will be required not to fall down before other gods (e.g., Ex 20:5): how could these deserve respect or gratitude from Israel? At this moment, Israel lowers itself before Yhwh, offering the respect and the gratitude due to the one who has paid attention and seen.

Of course Moses was right to be suspicious of whether they would believe in him or listen to what Yhwh intended to do. They will vacillate over both of these, before and after the deliverance from Egypt and the rescue at the Red Sea and the revelation at Sinai, and their descendants will continue to do so throughout their story. Within the Torah, the main location of this vacillation is a series of stories that dominate the center of Numbers and explain why Israel takes so long to get to the promised land. But the motif already appears in Egypt, and between Egypt and the Red Sea, and between the Red Sea and Sinai, and at Sinai.

Sometimes Responsive, Sometimes Resistant

The people of God is always a body that sometimes responds to God-sent leaders and listens to what God is doing, and sometimes ignores God-sent leaders and refuses to listen to what God is doing. The pouring out of the Spirit at Pentecost and the Spirit’s indwelling the church make no difference to this. The people of God is a body that responds only fitfully to signs and wonders and listens only fitfully to divine promises.

Israel and Moses can hardly be blamed for being discouraged by the fact that in the short term the Israelites’ challenge to the king makes their situation worse (Ex 5:4–23). Pharaoh’s reaction to the workers’ demands follows a standard pattern, familiar from the civil rights struggle in the United States, from the Middle East and from the Two-Thirds World: disparage their leaders, increase the pressure on the workers to show that rebellion makes matters worse, divide the people by recruiting foremen from among them to force them to do what the king says, and put monumental pressure on these foremen to divide them from the visionary leaders.[652]  But Moses knows what to do: Take the matter to Yhwh.

There is a “shortness” about their spirit (qōṣer, Ex 6:9). They cannot take the long view or extend their hope and their endurance. They can hardly be blamed, given that their serfdom is so tough (qāšeh, Ex 6:9). Tough serfdom produces toughness of attitude to Yhwh. Israel has more excuse for it than Egypt has. Yet we have few concrete vignettes portraying that tough experience. We get chapter after chapter about the blows Yhwh struck the Egyptians on the way to bringing Israel out from Egypt, and chapter after chapter about the Israelites’ rebellions after their escape. The people’s self-characterization is thus not as a crowd of understandably complaining serfs but as a crowd of irresponsibly complaining free people—not as people adjusted to their serfdom but people complaining endlessly about their liberation.[653]

J. H. Yoder argues that before there can be liberation there has to be an awareness of peoplehood. Following Moses out of Goshen “was a leap of faith, made in common by the Hebrew people … fully trusting in the transcendent intervention of Yahweh.” Thus “there are times and places where no liberation is possible because no peoplehood has been formed.… There is no possibility of constructing a new people on the other side of the Sea if peoplehood does not exist in Goshen.”[654]  Perhaps this last sentence is true, but contrary toYoder’s argument, Exodus gives the impression that peoplehood existed in Goshen only in name. Yhwh’s act of deliverance was no more dependent on the availability of a community than it was on the availability of a good leader.

5.10 How God’s Act Relates to the Future

Yhwh’s deliverance of Israel sets patterns and principles that promise the completion of Yhwh’s act, patterns and principles that Israel may challenge Yhwh to live by in the future, and patterns and principles that Yhwh challenges Israel to live by in the future.

The Frame of Prayer and Praise

The last part of Moses’ and Miriam’s song (Ex 15) for the first time describes God’s act as involving the people’s restoration (gāʾal), and thus as undertaken on behalf of people in God’s family, and in the same breath the song thus calls it an act of commitment (ḥesed). Tellingly this comes not in its account of Yhwh’s act at the Red Sea but in the anticipatory account of its aftermath in Israel’s journey to the mountain where Yhwh dwells.

Their song thus goes beyond celebrating Yhwh’s triumph at the Red Sea. It sets this event in the context of a story that needs to continue if it is to come to its goal. Yhwh’s assertion of power over Egypt makes it possible to believe that Yhwh could also be victorious over Philistia, Edom, Moab and Canaan. Philistia is the people that will invade Canaan from the south and west, as Israel does so from the south and east, and it has already been identified as having the capacity to demoralize Israel (Ex 13:17). Edom and Moab are among the peoples who belong to the same extended family as Israel but with whom Israel will be involved in family feuding. Canaan stands for the long-standing occupants of the land, whom Israel (and Philistia) wants to displace. Yhwh has decided to claim this land and to claim this people, Israel, and intends to put Israel in the land. The victory at the Red Sea is the guarantee that Yhwh has the power and the will to do so. In the short term in this narrative, Moses and Miriam’s song points to the certainty that Israel will reach its destiny to meet with Yhwh at Sinai. In light of a longer history, it points to the certainty that Israel will reach its destiny to meet with Yhwh at Zion.[655]

The song contributes to a framing of Israel’s deliverance by Israel’s calling on Yhwh in lament, commemoration and praise (Ex 2:23–25; 12:1–28; 13:1–16; 15:1–21). These parallel three forms of prayer that dominate the Psalms. The correspondence is not tight: The lament in Exodus 2 is not explicitly addressed to God, the commemoration of Exodus 12–13 is more sacrament than word, and the praise of Exodus 15 is as much thanksgiving as hymn. But between them they do fulfill the functions of the forms of prayer that characterize life with God in the Psalms. That has several significances.

It indicates that lament, commemoration and praise belong not merely in the people’s life of worship but also in their life in the world. They did not make a distinction between their religious life and their secular life. These were two sides of a coin. Prayer gives expression in the everyday world to the pressures that the people of God feel, and prayer leads to things happening in the everyday world because it stimulates God to take action there (Ex 2:23–25). Commemoration marks in the everyday world events that brought God’s answer to prayer there. Paradoxically, it is also necessary to the full experience of deliverance. If Israel had not celebrated the Passover in Egypt, there would still have been a demonstration of Yhwh’s power in Egypt in claiming the firstborn, but it would not have been an unqualified act of deliverance for Israel, because Israel’s own firstborn would have been among those claimed (Ex 12:1–28). Every family would have left Egypt as bereaved as an Egyptian family was. Praise likewise responds in the everyday world to an act of deliverance there; it is sung by the Red Sea before it is sung in a sanctuary.

The interweaving of worship in the story suggests that the story of Israel’s deliverance was preserved and retold in the context of Israel’s worship. Indeed, it is because this happened that we have the story. The converse is that the preserving and retelling of the story are what make that deliverance a reality for Israel’s ongoing life and identity. If the story had not been told, they would have been an exodus people, but they would not have known that they were an exodus people—and therefore in a sense they would not have been.

Yhwh the Bringer Out

“You will acknowledge that I am Yhwh your God, your bringer out from under the burdens of Egypt” (Ex 6:7). The participle (literally, “the one bringing”) suggests Yhwh is not merely one who once brought the people out from Egypt but is characterized on an ongoing basis by that act. The people is not merely one that was once brought out from under their burdens in Egypt, but is characterized by that experience. After they have left Egypt, it is the fact that Yhwh brought them out from there that continues to be the basis of their recognition of Yhwh. After they complain about lack of food in the desert and wish they had never left Egypt, Moses and Aaron declare that Yhwh will provide them with food and they will acknowledge Yhwh as the one who brought them out from Egypt (Ex 16:6, 12; cf. Deut 29:6 [[656]  5]). When they have built Yhwh’s dwelling, they acknowledge Yhwh as the one who brought them out from Egypt so as to dwell among them (Ex 29:46).

Yhwh links the people’s gaining of their own land with their release from Egypt (Ex 6:8). In keeping with Yhwh’s promise (e.g., Gen 15:7), they will no longer live there as resident aliens by the courtesy of the long-term inhabitants (cf. Ex 6:4) but as people to whom the land belongs. It will thus be a “possession” (môrāšâ, from yāraš). But here and elsewhere it is the release, not the gaining, that is specifically linked with recognizing Yhwh and thus with defining who Yhwh is.

It will always be significant that Yhwh is Israel’s bringer out from the overlordship of a foreign power. Israel will again experience oppression from superior political powers, though never of the same ferocity as the oppression in Egypt. If God acted thus in Egypt, there might be reason to expect God to do so in lesser situations. At least, Israel learned in its prayers to cry out and expect God to hear, look, know, put down and deliver.

Most people who will tell the exodus story will not live in an age of signs and portents (cf. Ps 74:9). But in Psalm 77 in some moment of crisis a petitioner urges Yhwh to help in a way that reflects Yhwh’s being the God of the exodus. The psalm’s eventual recollection of the exodus suggests this is a crisis for the people as a whole rather than for an ordinary individual. So perhaps the king speaks, recalling the days of old, the years of long ago, and “crying out” to Yhwh (Ps 77:1, 5 [MT 2, 6]), like Israel in Egypt and at the Red Sea (e.g., Ex 3:7, 9; 14:10). Things were very different then. People saw Yhwh act. At Sinai, Yhwh had spoken of commitment, grace, compassion and of being long-tempered, but bad temper seems to have overcome those other qualities after all (Ps 77:8–9 [MT 9–10]). The recollection of the exodus becomes more explicit as the petitioner declares the intention to think about or speak about[657]  Yhwh’s “wonders” (peleʾ, Ps 77:11, 14 [MT 12, 15]; cf. Ex 15:11) in the midst of trouble and a sense of abandonment. The lines that close the psalm combine recollections of the exodus, the Red Sea event, and Sinai:

You are the God who does wonders.

You made known your strength among the peoples.

You restored your people by your power,

The offspring of Jacob and Joseph.

Waters saw you, God. When waters saw you, they writhed.

Yes, deeps shook.

Clouds streamed water, skies gave voice.

Yes, your arrows would go about.

The sound of your thunder in a whirling, flashes lit up the world,

The earth shook and quaked.

Your way in the sea, your paths in mighty waters, your tracks—

They did not become known.

You led your people like a flock

By the hand of Moses and Aaron.

Such recollections in the Psalms are both painful and hopeful. They remind worshipers of what Yhwh is not doing now, but also of what Yhwh has proved capable of and therefore could do again—indeed, should do again if that original act of deliverance is not to turn out to be pointless. They remind Yhwh of those events at the beginning and implicitly urge this consideration on Yhwh. They model for us the nature and the basis of prayer for God to act as the deliverer, the bringer out.

A Pattern for a New Deliverance

The last talk of possibly miraculous signs in Israel’s story is the time of Isaiah (e.g., 2 Kings 20:8–11). Eventually Judeans will find themselves in another foreign land, though not one where life is as hard as it was in Egypt. In that context, Yhwh is still Israel’s bringer out from Egypt. To look at it another way, they once again stand between release from Egypt and possession of their land, and the fact that Yhwh brought them out of Egypt into their land implicitly promises that Yhwh will once again bring them into their land. Hope for returning to the land has a twofold basis: The awareness of Yhwh’s covenant commitment and the conviction that Yhwh does not leave tasks half-done. Prophets will promise future extraordinary acts of God that will take the community to its destiny, and its stories tell of such acts long ago. The wonder and apparent clarity of Yhwh’s acts long ago will make it possible to live in an age when it requires an act of faith to recognize Yhwh’s activity in events such as Cyrus’s taking control of the Babylonian empire and his commissioning of Judeans in Babylon to go and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. They will also encourage people not to abandon the possibility that God might act that way again, as prophets promised.

The Red Sea story thus constitutes more than an account of a once-for-all event that created Israel as a people. It sets a pattern that Israel could expect to see repeated. This assumption runs through Isaiah 40–55, but it is most explicit in Isaiah 51. The Canaanites told a story about Baal’s victory over Sea, and Israel elsewhere used a version of this story to illumine what happened at creation. Its motifs underlie Moses and Miriam’s celebration of what Yhwh did at the beginning of Israel’s history in Exodus 15. The sea crossing was a repetition of creation. Creation involved the formulating of a plan and then a struggle to implement it by defeating and/or harnessing the dynamic forces that opposed God’s creative purpose, and Egypt becomes the subsequent embodiment of those dynamic forces. Isaiah 51 then challenges Yhwh’s arm not to make that the last occasion of such creative and delivering assertiveness:

Wake up, wake up, put on strength, arm of Yhwh.

Wake up as in days of old, generations of long ago.

Are you not the very splitter of Rahab, slayer of the dragon?

Are you not the very dryer of Sea, of the waters of the great Deep,

Turner of the depths of Sea into a way for the restored to cross?

So Yhwh’s redeemed will return, will come to Zion

With ringing voice and eternity’s joy on their head.

Joy and gladness will overtake. Grief and sighing are fleeing.

Isaiah 51:10 refers quite prosaically to the sea crossing and makes clear that the previous lines also refer to that event. Physically the Red Sea (wherever it was) was indeed an obstacle to Israel’s journey to its promised land. That was so only because of the way Yhwh had guided them (Ex 13:17–18; 14:1–4). They did not have to go that way. The sea had always been there. It did not arise especially to hinder Israel or assert itself in threatening them. All unbeknown to itself it becomes a symbol of tumultuous dynamic powers. Understood in light of Egyptian, yam-sûp suggests Red Sea and/or Reed Sea, but understood in light of Hebrew it suggests Sea of End. It was the sea where Israel thought it was coming to an end, but where the Egyptian army did so. By a paradoxical process of transference, it becomes a symbol of that which Egypt itself actually embodied, so that the waters of the great Deep drown the embodiment of the great Deep. To put it another way, Egypt has come to embody the sea dragon, Rahab, another symbol of forces Yhwh overcame in the conflict that preceded creation and made it possible. The forces that oppose Yhwh’s creative purpose have been defeated in history. The Sea of End becomes the sea of beginning.

It was a once-for-all event, yet Isaiah 51 implies it was not. In the context of the exile, the community needs Yhwh to enter that conflict again. The people needs a new act of creation. So the prophecy urges Yhwh’s arm to arouse itself again and act as it did back then. The people need to repeat the journey to Zion through or out of the tumultuous forces of darkness.

Implications for Lifestyle

The story of the people’s oppression and deliverance also needs to underlie Israel’s own ongoing life. Yhwh has acted in fulfillment of promises made to the ancestors, making appropriate, possible and necessary a restatement of Yhwh’s expectations of the people. It is as “Yhwh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of a household of serfs” that Yhwh now says, “you will not have other gods over against me. You will not make yourself a sculptured image, any likeness.… You will not attach the name of Yhwh your God to something empty. Think about the sabbath so as to sanctify it” (Ex 20:2–8) and so on. What is the logic here? There are several links between preamble and commands.

First, Yhwh so acted because Israel had cried out to Yhwh out of its travail and Yhwh had responded. The least Israel could do is respond with enthusiasm and not merely compliance to Yhwh’s expectations of it.

Second, Yhwh utters these words as one in authority over Israel. Bringing Israel out of Egypt has shown that Yhwh is the supreme power in Israel’s world, and has specifically taken the people out of the authority of one sovereign into that of another. Yhwh’s act of deliverance establishes Yhwh’s sovereignty over Israel. The Ten Words are simply the requirements of Israel’s new sovereign. In their content, most of the Ten Words make no overt correlation with the act of deliverance; their connection lies in the simple fact that by the act of deliverance Yhwh earned the right to declare what Israel’s life should look like. They are a sign that the act of deliverance took the people from the service of Egypt to the service of Yhwh. The requirements in Leviticus will keep basing themselves on the declaration “I am Yhwh” (“so just do it!”). The commands do not involve a casuistic application of universal legal norms but an exposition of the claim laid upon people through the way Yhwh has laid hold on them.[658]  They bind people because Yhwh lays down this claim, not because they present themselves as the outworking of some principles. They are good because Yhwh commands them rather than being commanded because they are good.[659]  Yhwh’s commands characteristically address particular communities or individuals in contexts rather than stating general principles, while even the material that looks most universalizable is essentially set in the story of God’s activity in the world.[660]

On the other hand, third, in so acting Yhwh’s character had become manifest, in the way promised to Moses. The first three words do point to a substantial connection with the act of deliverance. Yhwh is the one who brought the people out of Egypt. That means they are to have no other gods but Yhwh; they are not to seek to represent Yhwh in a way that denies Yhwh is the kind of God that the acts of deliverance showed Yhwh to be; and they are not to attach to inappropriate causes the name that was revealed in connection with this deliverance. It is surely clear that no other deity has the right to Israel’s allegiance, indeed, that no other deity has the capacity to act that Yhwh has shown, and that Israel should not make images because an image cannot represent the kind of person who has acted as Yhwh has (Deut 4). The people’s worship needs to reflect Yhwh’s bringing them out of Egypt (cf. Ex 23:15).

Fourth, this revelation of Yhwh’s character as deliverer also needs to affect the Israelites’ attitude to their own life and to one another. “The theological intention of the Ten Commandments is to institutionalize the Exodus.”[661]  They will keep the sabbath because it is a godlike day, one when they themselves make sure they live in the manner of God the creator rather than in the way Pharaoh imposed. They will also make sure that their servants have the chance to join in its rest, because they know that Yhwh rescued them from serfdom (Deut 5:12–15; cf. Ex 23:12). While the regulations that follow in Exodus make little explicit reference to the exodus, it is noteworthy that the first of the specific judgments that follow up the Ten Words concerns the treatment of indentured servants, whose Deuteronomic version makes explicit the link with Israel’s own experience of serfdom (Ex 21:1–11; Deut 15:1–18; cf. also Ex 22:21; 23:9). But for the most part, the detailed rules for life that follow the Ten Words (Ex 20:22–23:33) contain little that makes a substantial link with the deliverance, though all stand under the sign of an authority deriving from that event. But some of Yhwh’s expectations do make such a link.

You are not to wrong or oppress a resident alien, because you were aliens in the land of Egypt. (Ex 22:21 [MT 20])

You are not to oppress a resident alien. You know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. (Ex 23:9)

The exhortation is especially telling in Europe and the United States where so many aliens gain from and contribute to the life of their host nation without enjoying the rights of citizens.

Remembering

Jewish people have become exercised over whether and how and why the memory of the Holocaust should be kept alive, and the possibility of Holocaust continues to haunt Jewish people in the context of the pressures of Middle Eastern politics. Exodus requires the people to keep alive the memory of oppression, not to prevent them from “moving on” because they always see themselves as the oppressed, but to prevent them from slipping into the role of oppressors because they have forgotten what it is like to be the oppressed. It would be odd if people who have been delivered from a household of ʿăbādîm (Ex 13:3, 14; 20:2) could treat people as ʿăbādîm with no right to observe the sabbath and no prospect of an end to their serfdom (Ex 20:10; 21:2). Yhwh does not move on. The Yhwh who heard Israel’s cry under its affliction and slew the firstborn of their oppressor nation (Ex 3:7, 9; 4:23; 13:15) will hear the cry of widow and orphan if Israelites afflict them, and slay the afflictors (Ex 22:23–24 [MT 22–23]). To put it in the terms of Leviticus 19, Israel is to learn to be Yhwh-like, to be holy as Yhwh is holy.

Deuteronomy 26:1–11 belongs a generation after the deliverance and focuses on life in the promised land. It prescribes an act of thanksgiving for the harvest of the new land, but it does not wholly focus on the gift of the land but requires the worshiper to tell the whole story of the people’s life, with a special focus on its experience in Egypt and on God’s deliverance from there.

My father was a wandering Aramean. He went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number. He became a great nation there, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us by imposing hard labor on us, we cried out to Yhwh, the God of our ancestors. Yhwh heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. Yhwh brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders, and brought us into this place. (Deut 26:5–9)

The people must keep alive the memory of oppression and deliverance because otherwise the wonder of their possessing the land may be lost. Samuel’s sermon in 1 Samuel 12 marks this as more than mere theoretical possibility. He sees the period between Joshua and Samuel as characterized by such forgetting, by failure to stay loyal to Yhwh, and thus by experience of Yhwh’s discipline. They need to keep keeping in mind this moment when Yhwh began to reign over them.

6

God Sealed

Sinai

Israel’s deliverance involved Yhwh’s being present with Israel as one who acts with and in the midst of the people. It leads into Yhwh’s being present with Israel as one who speaks with and in the midst of the people.[662]  Yhwh’s appearing at Sinai thus introduces a new element into Israel’s relationship with Yhwh. “In their liberation from forced labour in Egypt they had experienced Yahweh in a historical process. At the Mountain of God … Yahweh encounters [them] in his compelling power and immediate presence.”[663]

6.1 Yhwh’s Covenant

Yhwh outlines the agenda for Sinai in a message for the people gathered at the foot of the mountain.

“ ‘You yourselves saw what I did to Egypt, and I lifted you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to me. Now if you will really listen to my voice and keep my covenant, you will be for me a possession distinct from all the peoples. For all the earth is mine, but you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the things that you are to say to the Israelites.” Moses came and summoned the elders of the people and set before them all these things that Yhwh had commanded him. The whole people answered as one, “All that Yhwh has spoken we will do.” Moses took back the people’s words to Yhwh. (Ex 19:4–8)

“Covenant” has been a significant idea in theological discussion over recent centuries,[664]  and the idea has come to have a life of its own, relating only rather loosely to the specificity of the Scriptures’ talk about covenant. That was true in different ways of the covenant theology of the Westminster Confession and of Eichrodt’s Theology of the Old Testament. Yet the scriptural talk about a series of covenants did originally provide Calvin, Bullinger and Cocceius with a way of articulating biblical faith that worked more with scriptural categories than the Christian tradition as they inherited it, and specifically recognized its dynamic, narrative nature.[665]  It did something similar for Eichrodt, who also pointed out to his critics that for him covenant was “a convenient symbol” for the fact that Yhwh and Israel stood in a relationship that Yhwh had initiated in history, a relationship that continued as a living process—a reality often present when the word bĕrît is not used.[666]

Reworking the Covenant Arrangement

When Yhwh talks about “covenant” in Exodus 19, we are reminded of the words to Noah before and after the flood and to Abram in Genesis 15 and Genesis 17, but the words have new features. At each of those earlier moments Yhwh declared the intention to make a covenant and/or the narrative told us that Yhwh did so. Here Yhwh declares no such intention, and—tellingly—will not do so until after Israel breaks the covenant (see Ex 34). Nor does the narrative ever say that Yhwh has made a covenant. Moses comes nearest to speaking in these terms when splattering the people with “the blood of the covenant that Yhwh [has?] sealed[667]  with you” (Ex 24:8). The paucity of use of this language points us to the fact that a covenant between Yhwh and this people already exists. God’s covenant commitment to Abram was the basis for the people’s deliverance from Egypt (cf. Ex 2:24; 6:4–5). Exodus 19–24 is not an account of a covenant making, but of the sealing or reconfirming or renegotiating of a covenant.[668]  But the basis of the covenant has now changed. Whereas it was previously based on what God intended to do, it is now based on what God has actually done. Yhwh draws attention to three aspects of these acts: There is what the people saw Yhwh do to Egypt. There is the way Yhwh lifted the people on eagles’ wings, like a bird taking its young to the place where it can find the provision of its needs (cf. Deut 32:10–13), as Yhwh did in guiding and providing for the people on their journey. And there is the way Yhwh has brought them to Sinai itself.

The reworking of Yhwh’s requirements implicitly operates as if Yhwh has completely fulfilled those promises. Actually Israel is in the midst of a liminal experience, located between Egypt and Canaan, delivered from the first but not delivered into the second. Towards the end of its time at Sinai Yhwh will restate a covenant commitment in the most sustained piece of covenant argument since Genesis 17 and easily the most sustained piece of covenant argument in Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers. It promises that obedience to Yhwh will mean Yhwh blesses the people in manifold ways and thus fulfills the covenant (Lev 26:9). The verb (qûm hiphil) refers to doing what the covenant promised. It is in this sense that Yhwh “will confirm” ([669] ) or “will maintain” ([670] ) it. In the act of fulfilling the covenant, Yhwh will bring creation itself to its fulfillment: “I will make you fruitful and multiply you.” The land will produce spectacular yields and wild beasts will disappear from the land. “And I will make my dwelling among you.… I will walk among you. I will be your God and you will be my people. I am Yhwh your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from being their serfs, and broke your yoke-bars and let you walk upright” (Lev 26:9–13). The promise thus brings together creation, exodus, covenant and presence. In the covenant, Yhwh is bringing the purpose of creation itself to completion in the experience of blessing and of the very presence of God.

On the eve of arriving in Canaan, Israel will receive another reworking of God’s expectations that will take more overt account of the life that it is about to begin in the land. After its arrival in the land there will be another confirming of the covenant. Yet the expectations detailed at Sinai already relate to life in the land, and Israel is required to accede to them now. Indeed, in Exodus 19 it is required to accede to them before it knows what they are. Its praise has already been spoken as if Yhwh has completed the project of deliverance and not merely initiated it (Ex 15:13–17). Its commitment to obedience has to do the same. In its behavior as well as its worship Israel lives in hope, lives as if expectation has become actuality. We live as if God has already taken us to the place of our destiny. Perhaps this encourages God to take us all the way there.

Conditional and Unconditional

So God has now acted and done more than issue promises, making possible a reworking of the human side to the covenant. The Noah covenant neither required nor allowed for any human response. The Abram covenant required the mark of male circumcision and presupposed a broader commitment to a whole and open walk before God, but laid down no further specific expectations or requirements. The meeting at Sinai involves a renegotiating of these arrangements. Having begun to fulfill the promise to Abram, Yhwh looks for a series of more specific commitments from the beneficiaries of that act. Indeed, here the covenant is one-sided in the opposite direction. It is a commitment Yhwh requires of Israel. It must keep Yhwh’s covenant (Ex 19:5).

Yhwh’s words express the tension between an unconditional and a conditional commitment to Israel. We are familiar with the tension in a human relationship such as marriage. Marriage requires an unconditional commitment to another person, but it also requires that this commitment be reciprocal. Likewise in Christ God makes an unconditional commitment to people, but requires a responsive commitment—otherwise the relationship does not work. For Israel, too, on the one hand, the basis of the covenant lay wholly in Yhwh. There is nothing behind “I lifted you on eagle’s wings” that somehow qualifies Israel to be beneficiaries of Yhwh’s activity in Egypt (Ex 19:4). Here as elsewhere Scripture declares that everything depends on Yhwh, but that a responsive reciprocal commitment to Yhwh on Israel’s part is an absolute necessity (Ex 19:5).

The tension between conditional and unconditional will reappear as the story continues. Deuteronomy will emphasize the importance of Israel’s obedience while 2 Samuel will emphasize that Yhwh’s faithfulness to David’s line will continue even if his successors are unfaithful. If Israel breaks the covenant, Yhwh may punish this rebelliousness, but that does not mean the covenant is annulled (cf. the argument in Lev 26; Deut 28–29; 2 Sam 7). The tension reappears in the comments on faith and deeds that appear in Paul and James respectively. It receives its sharpest articulation in Romans 6, where Paul imagines people inferring from the grace-based nature of the gospel that they might as well sin some more so that grace may abound. That suggestion would mean this tension was resolved, but it would indicate a failure to understand God’s entire purpose.

The necessity for a response of commitment derives from God’s aim in delivering a people. Thus, “it is the proclamation of the Decalogue over her which puts Israel’s election into effect,” like the throwing of a net over her.[671]  Yhwh’s purpose meets its goal here. Consequently, “observance of the Mosaic Torah is the opposite of an obstacle to a loving and intimate relationship with God. It is the vehicle and the sign of just that relationship.”[672]  Dividing command from gospel “endangers the dynamic heart of early Yahwistic faith.… Deliverance originating in divine grace and obedience based on the human response of gratitude were indivisible aspects of Israel’s primal experience as a people.”[673]

People who have nothing or who are downcast because of their failure always need the reassurance that God is committed to them irrespective of their deserving. People who are encouraged by God’s goodness or are confident of God’s love always need the reminder that God expects a response from them. The relationship between Yhwh and Israel now intrinsically involves human response as well as divine determination. The two stand in unresolved tension, like the related tension between unconditional and conditional.

A Possession Distinct from All the Peoples

There is another sense in which the fulfillment of God’s promise does not mean that promise ceases to feature in the covenant. The (partial) fulfillment of one undertaking takes Yhwh to the making of a new one. If Israel will make its commitment to respond to Yhwh’s voice, it will gain a distinctive status and significance as “a possession distinct from all the peoples,” a “special possession” or “personal possession” (sĕgullâ). While the whole world belongs to Yhwh, in Yhwh’s mind special status will attach to Israel. It will be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. “Kingdom” and “nation” stand in parallelism, as do “priests” and “holy.”

Describing Israel as a nation reminds us of a way Yhwh’s promise has indeed been fulfilled (e.g., Gen 12:2). Israel is an entity that will henceforth function politically on the world stage. “Kingdom” follows on the declaration in Exodus 15:18 that Yhwh will reign permanently as king over Israel and over the world; Pharaoh is not allowed to exercise sovereignty over Israel. Yhwh is king for Israel and king over Israel. Israel is now being challenged to commit itself to Yhwh as king, to accept a king’s rule over its life. The people of God is the place where the kingdom is realized, in its internal life and in its destiny in the world.

Israel is a kingdom of priests. It has been brought out of Egypt to serve Yhwh, and it will do so by its worship (e.g., Ex 3:12; 10:8, 11, 24, 26). In origin, priesthood belonged to humanity as a whole (cf. Gen 4:3–4), then acts such as blessing and sacrifice became a father’s task (see, e.g., Gen 8:20; 9:24–27). Here, in keeping with God’s original purpose, the whole people is a priesthood, and this priesthood is prior to that of a particular group within the people who will first appear in Exodus 19:22 and will become the God-appointed means whereby God transmits blessing and receives humanity’s self-offering (e.g., Lev 1–7; Num 6:22–27). It will also survive the demise of that priesthood.[674]  The Bible’s first priest was also among its first kings (Gen 14:18), and priesthood and kingship naturally go together—though they are a dangerously powerful combination, so that within Israel priesthood and kingship will be separated. As Yhwh’s priesthood, Israel is no ordinary nation, but a holy nation—a nation distinctively called to serve Yhwh in this way, as well as in other ways. Describing Israel as a priesthood does not attribute to it a priestly role on behalf of the world or between God and the world. But the fact that Exodus 19:3–8 is a form of reworking of Genesis 12:1–3 reminds us that this designation links with Yhwh’s lordship over the whole world and works toward the world’s inclusion rather than its exclusion. The stretching of the royal priesthood to include other peoples (Rev 1:6) is in keeping with the Abrahamic vision.

Talk in terms of kingdom and nation presupposes that Yhwh is relating to a community, to whose elders Moses reports Yhwh’s words. Yet it is the whole people who reply, and the verbs are plural: “they,” “we.” In a sense 603,550 covenants were made at Sinai ([675]  37b). “The covenant introduces into the story a radical voluntarism.”[676]  It is not the case that Israel’s relationship with God is a wholly corporate matter, with individuals drawn in purely by virtue of belonging to the body, as it is not the case that the church is a body constituted purely through individual acts of faith. In Israel individuals affirm their personal commitment to Yhwh, and in the church the existence of the body is prior and posterior to the decisions by individuals to pay the price of membership in it.[677]  The relationship between Yhwh and Israel intrinsically involves corporate and individual, another polarity standing in unresolved tension.

Of course anyone other than a first-time reader sees a chilling irony in Israel’s agreement to the terms for its becoming a kingdom of priests and a holy nation and its brisk undertaking to do all that Yhwh has said. Although the community will repeat its undertaking in Exodus 24 after the more detailed exposition of Yhwh’s expectations in Exodus 20–23, only a matter of weeks will pass before it has fundamentally reneged on that commitment. It will be that covenant-breaking that necessitates some covenant-making. It will transpire that the people of God has a breathtaking capacity for self-deception and an ambiguous relationship with the kingdom of God. Arguably it is a more thoroughgoing embodiment of resistance to God than the world is.

The Resealing of the Relationship

In the meantime, Moses does reconfirm the relationship between God and people:

He started early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain and twelve columns for the twelve clans in Israel. He sent Israelite young men and they offered up whole offerings and sacrificed oxen as fellowship sacrifices to Yhwh. Moses took half the blood and put it in bowls, and half the blood he splattered on the altar. He took the covenant book and read it out in the people’s ears, and they said, “All that Yhwh spoke we will do and we will obey.” And Moses took the blood and splattered it on the people, and said “There is the blood of the covenant that Yhwh sealed with you on the basis of all these words.” (Ex 24:4–8)

Part of the altar’s purpose is to signify and symbolize the presence of Yhwh, as Yhwh’s name is proclaimed there, while the twelve columns similarly symbolize the twelve clans. God and people are both present. The people’s representatives are not priests but young men, and after the act of worship seventy elders also accompany Aaron and his sons, priests-designate, to see God. The whole offerings give further expression to the people’s commitment to Yhwh and to Yhwh’s acceptance of their commitment, while the fellowship sacrifices constitute the people’s sharing a meal with Yhwh. These acts that will be characteristic of Israel’s worship give expression to the fact that God and people are together.

But here the sacrifices are the preliminary to a once-for-all event. Anticipating ongoing practice, Moses splatters half the animals’ blood on the altar, and then once again leads the people into an act of commitment to the covenant requirements. Finally and extraordinarily—there is no later repeating of this—he splatters the rest of the blood on the people. Sacrificial blood is routinely splattered on the altar, but it is splashed on Aaron and his sons when they are consecrated as priests (Lev 8:30), and perhaps this splattering of the people links with their being designated a priesthood. It is as if they are being consecrated to their priestly office.[678]  And/or it suggests they are marked by their commitment and will imperil their life if they go back on it. On this unique occasion the splattering of the rest of the blood on the altar similarly does not suggest the giving of the blood to Yhwh as the one to whom the animals’ life belongs (its later meaning). It suggests that Yhwh is as solemnly bound to the covenant as the people are. It binds Yhwh, and on Moses’ initiative, not on Yhwh’s.[679]

This sacramental commitment on both sides forms a backdrop to events in Exodus 32–34. On the top of the mountain Aaron joined in eating and drinking before Yhwh. Yhwh has now been instructing Moses about the building of a place for dwelling among the people and for their acknowledging Yhwh afresh as the God who brought them out of Egypt. They will contribute gold and other valuable materials for the sanctuary, which will include an altar where Aaron will offer whole offerings and other sacrifices.

Meanwhile at the bottom of the mountain they feel abandoned by Moses and by Yhwh and contribute gold jewelry with which Aaron makes a calf image to represent the god(s) who brought them out of Egypt. Before it Aaron builds an altar where he sacrifices whole offerings and fellowship offerings and draws the people into eating and drinking and “reveling.”

The event manifests the recurrent ambiguity about whether worshiping by means of an image counts as worshiping another deity. Perhaps their image stood for the kind of god the Egyptians worshiped, which would fit the allegation that Israelites worshiped other gods in Egypt (e.g., Josh 24:14). Beneath the image’s description as the god who brought the people out of Egypt is a suggestion that it is the kind who could take the people back to Egypt if necessary. But Aaron claims the people were not worshiping another god, for having described the calf image as the deity that brought the people out of Egypt, he speaks of the subsequent festival as a festival for Yhwh. The fact that the God of Jacob was implicitly characterized as bull-like in strength, a characterization of El, would provide a basis for imaging Yhwh as bull-like. Yhwh takes the opposite view. This is worshiping other gods.

The Breaking of the Covenant

Either way, it is a fundamental breach of the covenant requirements that Israel has just accepted. The people have shown that there is no difference between them and the world in general or the king of Egypt in particular. Long ago, the flood came about because people had ruined their way on earth (šāḥat, Gen 6:12). Now Israel has ruined itself (Ex 32:7). The king of Egypt was a man of stiff resolve, unwilling to bend to Yhwh’s intention that Israel be free to leave Egypt to worship Yhwh. Now Israel is a people with a stiff neck (Ex 32:9), unwilling to bend to Yhwh’s will for the manner of that worship. When Stephen reviews Israel’s story as a whole, he sees it as dominated by such stiffness of neck (Acts 7:51). It began with the ancestors’ jealousy of Joseph, but then found expression in people’s resistance to Moses and in this making of the calf image. It is of a piece with their characteristic inclination to worship other gods, which eventually took them into exile (Acts 7:9–43).

The pattern is here shown to go back to Sinai, which is itself a story paralleling Genesis 1–3. God’s creative act is succeeded by an act of disobedience and resistance that threatens to undo the creative act and suggests that succeeding events are likely to tell a much more equivocal story than we might have hoped. To put it the opposite way, Exodus 32 explains why the story of Israel is the way it is, as Genesis 1–11 explains why the story of humanity is the way it is. Exodus 32 is the story of the original sin of the people of God, whose reality is clear in light of ongoing centuries of experience. That experience will have included Jeroboam’s making of gold calves in connection with worship at Dan and Bethel (1 Kings 12:25–33). But the story’s failure to exculpate Aaron from the wrongdoing suggests it also includes worship practices at Jerusalem in which the Aaronide priesthood was involved. As it goes back to Sinai, so human attraction for worship by means of images is a widespread phenomenon and has continued to be a widespread one in the church, which has continued Israel’s pattern in mingling terrible faithlessness with great acts of commitment. Like the expectation in Genesis that people should do what Yhwh said even when it made no sense, with hindsight the expectation in Exodus that people should worship without images was never likely to be met.

While Exodus did not refer to worship of other gods in Egypt, it did expose the people’s shortcomings there and on the journey to Sinai. In Egypt, they wavered in their belief in Moses and in Yhwh. At the Red Sea, they wished they had never left Egypt. On the way from the Red Sea to Sinai, they complained at lack of provision. Only in the last context was there any rebuke, and even there no punishment.[680]  Only after they have received a revelation regarding God’s expectations of them and have made a commitment to these is there punishment for ignoring them (Ex 32:34–35). Yhwh intends to treat the people the same way as the world of Noah’s day and as the king of Egypt were treated. The story spoke of no anger with the world or with Pharaoh, but in the context of the covenant relationship with Israel such an act of immediate faithlessness deserves that anger should find expression in destruction. Anger belongs in the context of relationship. Yhwh will start over with Moses as once Noah had been the beginning of a new creation (Ex 32:9). But Moses will not go along with Yhwh’s plan like Noah (Ex 32:11–14). One should perhaps not fault Noah. He was not appointed a mediator between God and people, like Moses. Moses’ terrible calling is to identify both with Yhwh and with Israel. In his riposte to Yhwh he manifests this double identification.

We have seen that the logic of the covenant changed at Sinai when a promise of divine commitment changed into a recollection of divine commitment that had been fulfilled. That made more specific expectations possible. On the other side of the people’s rebellion, the importance of God’s grace again needs reasserting. Yhwh’s relationship with Israel cannot be dependent on its commitment to Yhwh. Yhwh bids Moses bring two new stone slabs, signaling a repetition of the giving of the Ten Words (Ex 34:1). It was this giving that put Israel’s election into effect, that put the covenant into effect. Once again Moses climbs the mountain and Yhwh comes to meet him. Once again Yhwh proclaims that name. In other respects, Yhwh’s words are tellingly different. Instead of “I am Yhwh who brought you out of the land of Egypt” (with a list of expectations to follow), Yhwh says “Yhwh, Yhwh, a God compassionate and gracious” (Ex 34:6). An account of some expectations follows in due course—different expectations from those in Exodus 20—but they are set in a new theological context. Yhwh no longer speaks as a passionate God who is also faithful, but as a compassionate and forgiving God who is admittedly also prepared to be tough when necessary. That is the nature of “Yhwh, Yhwh,” the name repeated four times in the introduction to this theological statement (Ex 34:5–7). The name is here the people’s reassurance, not their peril.

Nevertheless, both Leviticus and Deuteronomy almost close with a look forward to the almost-complete collapse of the covenant. Disobedience to Yhwh amounts to breaking the covenant (pārak, Lev 26:15) and will cause Yhwh to bring correlative troubles. And persistent contrariness will cause Yhwh to bring more violent troubles that impose covenant punishment (nāqam, Lev 26:25). Yet more persistent contrariness will bring yet more troubles. But if the people then turn back, Yhwh will be mindful of the covenant with their ancestors (Lev 26:42, 45). Leviticus thus makes explicit that this covenant goes back to Abraham. It was based on Yhwh’s commitment, not theirs. And even in severely chastising them, Yhwh will not break the covenant, “for I am Yhwh their God” (Lev 26:44).[681]

6.2 Yhwh’s Expectations

In reflecting on Israel’s story we will not consider the detail of what Yhwh commanded in sealing a relationship with Israel, but we will consider the fact that Yhwh issued so many commands, and the way Yhwh did so.

Liberating Commands

In sealing the covenant Yhwh indeed issues many commands, yet the verb and noun “command” (ṣiwwâ, miṣwâ) are conspicuous by their virtual absence (Ex 19:7; 20:6; 23:15; 24:12). We have to take due account of both these facts.

On the one hand, Yhwh is “the God who commands.”[682]  That has been so since the Beginning. God’s first words were commands, in the third person and then in the second person, and God’s first words to humanity in particular were commands (Gen 1:28). The First Testament will subsequently encourage people to look on God as friend and lover, and friends and lovers do not issue orders to each other. But its images for God also include king and parent, figures that ideally combine sovereignty, goodness and wisdom. Such figures have the power to issue commands that people must obey, the moral quality to issue commands that can bring blessing, and the insight to issue commands that are effective in doing so. God’s opening commands in Genesis thus had a paradoxical nature (or perhaps not). There is no doubt of their authority; God’s words must be obeyed. But their function is to be life-giving. This is particularly clear when God turns from third person to the second person. It is God’s blessing of the creatures that is spelled out in a command: “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:22, 28). This does not leave people with a choice, or rather, it leaves them with boundaries for choice. They are not invited to decide whether or not to be fruitful and multiply, whether or not to look after the world on God’s behalf. They can choose not to do so, but they may not choose not to do so. Likewise, they may not decide to eat the fruit of the good and bad knowledge tree, though they can so decide. They may make their own decisions about how to go about running the world and which of the other trees to eat. While they do not have complete freedom or moral autonomy, they have choice within constraints that are imposed by authority but are life-giving and death-preventing.[683]

The talk of commanding earlier in Exodus is illuminating. Pharaoh gave commands about the death of the Israelite babies and the oppression of Israelite workers (Ex 1:22; 5:6–8). Yhwh commanded (NRSV “charged”) Moses with various signs to perform before Pharaoh (Ex 4:28; cf. Ex 7:10, 20). Yhwh commanded or charged Moses and Aaron with the bringing out of the people and with a challenge to issue to Pharaoh (Ex 6:13; 7:2, 6). Yhwh gave commands concerning the Passover (Ex 12:28). In various ways Yhwh’s commands are thus a means of rescuing Israel from Pharaoh’s commands. Pharaoh’s commands are bad news; Yhwh’s are good news. They are liberating. But they do make demands on their recipients, and this is why they are “commands.” Something gentler than a command (“here is an idea you might consider”?), and Moses and Aaron could be tempted not to do what Yhwh said, or Israel might have paid a terrible price for not observing Passover in an effective, life-preserving way. Yhwh’s commands at Sinai and in Moab, too, are designed to further Israel’s liberation and its service of Yhwh in a context where Israel could be tempted not to respond to mere suggestions or invitations.

Israel’s deliverance implied not a move from Pharaoh’s service to self-determination in freedom, but a move from Pharaoh’s service to Yhwh’s service.[684]  The Israelites are people who have been freed so that they may be servants bound in obedience to Yhwh. But again this is good news: if they are Yhwh’s servants, they cannot be anyone else’s. Their position is more like that of Abraham’s manservant than that of slaves (Lev 25:39–42), trusted members of Yhwh’s household staff. In a parallel way, people who believe in Jesus are freed in order to become slaves of God, of righteousness and of one another (Rom 6:17–22; Gal 5:1, 13).

Delightful Commands

At Sinai Yhwh “speaks” rather than “commands” and utters “words” rather than “commandments,” even when laying down expectations of Israel (Ex 19:6, 7, 8; 20:1; 23:22; 24:3, 4, 7, 8). Like covenant-making, “commanding” does become prevalent later in the Sinai account and in Deuteronomy, so perhaps it reflects the catastrophe that followed the original meeting on the mountain (Ex 19–24). Covenant-making and commanding then become necessary. Yhwh’s original design was a talking relationship. Yhwh would lay down the terms of the relationship, but would do so in the context of a conversation. And Israel would šāmaʿ (Ex 19:5, 9; 23:21, 22; 24:7). The verb nicely combines “listening” and “obeying.” In most of these occurrences the verb’s object is Yhwh’s voice, suggesting that the notion of “listening” (to someone’s voice) is at least as important as that of “obeying” (a command). The relationship Yhwh looks for is one in which Yhwh speaks and Israel listens responsively. The story carries a converse implication to that of Exodus 2:24, where Yhwh listens to (= obeys) Israel’s groaning. Yhwh was not seeking a quasi-legal relationship. It was the catastrophe that made the model of obedience to commands more important.

This coheres with the delight in God’s commands that is characteristic of Judaism and of the First Testament itself.[685]  Israel delights in God’s statutes, longs for God’s precepts, loves God’s commands, and takes comfort in God’s ordinances (Ps 119:16, 40, 48). There is no “legalism” about Israel’s attitude to God’s commands. In the New Testament, people have to be wary of legalism, but legalism is a Christian heresy, an attempt on the part of some Christians to make other Christians take on a body of commands that are not meant for them. While Jesus finds fault with the attitude of some of his fellow Jews to Moses’ Teaching, he does not imply that they have stopped loving God’s word and started being in bondage to it as mere “law.” Christian condemnation of Jewish people as legalistic may illustrate the way anti-Semitism can be the left hand of Christology: Christians portray Judaism as legalistic in order to portray Christ as the answer to legalism. It may also involve projection of our own legalism onto Jewish people. And it may imply collusion with Western insistence on our human moral autonomy, which makes it seem scandalous that anyone else should tell us what to do.[686]  It is strange for us to imagine that there is even obedience within the Godhead (e.g., Rom 5:19; Phil 2:8).[687]

Paul will comment on the secondary status of the law, given because of transgressions, against the moment when God’s promises would be fulfilled through angels and by a mediator (Gal 3:19). The story in Genesis has shown how the world in general and Abraham’s family in particular needs teaching about right and wrong, though God’s purpose is ultimately to inscribe a commitment regarding right and wrong into people’s inner being, so that they will fulfill the concerns of Moses’ Teaching without needing to be reminded (Deut 30:6). “The need for law expresses the imperfect state of human society in this world in which not all accept others and do what is right on their own.” In Christ “participation in the love and kindness of God … should trigger an impulse to do what is right.”[688]  Unfortunately the “should” gives the game away. In the Christian church there seems as much need to allow for the imperfection of humanity and for reminders of God’s expectations as there was in Israel.

An Ongoing Sovereignty

As well as reflecting the need to allow for Israel’s inclination to rebelliousness, the subsequent tracts of command material in Exodus–Deuteronomy testify that Yhwh has an ongoing relationship with Israel as sovereign. It is conventional to distinguish between a number of collections of commands, such as the Covenant Code, the Priestly Code, the Holiness Code and the Deuteronomic Code. In principle such a framework for looking at the material reflects boundaries and differences within the material itself. If we treat P and H together, each collection combines commands about religion and worship and about social and community life. Yhwh’s expectations of Israel embrace both. In Moses’ Teaching there is no religion without ethics and no ethics without religion.

Differences between the codes reflect differences of focus (e.g., material to guide priests in their work and material applying to the life of the people as a whole) and of social, geographical and historical setting.[689]  The material does not enable us with certainty to locate these codes in their specific contexts, but it does establish the principle that they issue from and speak to different contexts. They thus show how Yhwh’s expectations are framed in relation to situations, so that people know what to do in their own context and not only in some other faraway one. Yhwh continues to insist that Israel find liberation and live as Yhwh’s servant in the world, but has to do this in ever-changing ways. Yhwh’s word cannot be timeless and also pertinent. It has to be “completely non-negotiable, endlessly negotiated.”[690]

We can see this process reflected in Israel’s ongoing story and in the prophets. Canons for handling monarchy become a need when Israel decides it wants kings. The building of the temple necessitates new canons for worship, as is implicit in Leviticus and explicit in Chronicles. Ezra-Nehemiah show how the reestablishing of the community after the exile necessitates new canons for relations with surrounding people.

Within the story in Exodus–Deuteronomy we can perceive some ways in which the codes address varying social contexts and work with varying strategies.

Exodus 20:21–23:33 and Exodus 34:11–27 speak to some of the basic everyday needs of an agricultural society—both its religious life and its social life. It is not a revelation of a transcendent or ideal vision for society, but an affirming of some ordinary human priorities and strategies of the kind that also appear in other societies. It thereby makes it impossible for Israel to think of itself as simply a worshiping community; Yhwh has expectations of its community life. The succeeding codes take up and vastly develop elements of this Covenant Code.

Leviticus 1–7 and other sections of Leviticus and Numbers relate to the community’s worship from the perspective of ministers responsible for its maintenance. They presuppose that less can be left to chance than the Covenant Code assumed. Leviticus 11–15 and other sections of Leviticus concern themselves with the community’s purity and order, presupposing an element of precariousness about its life in the world and a need to safeguard its wholeness.

Leviticus 17–26 calls the community to be a holy people. That holiness expresses itself in the round of worship (Lev 23) and in a positive practical concern for one’s neighbors’ needs that goes beyond merely refraining from wronging them (Lev 19:18). It expresses itself in a similar practical concern for vulnerable Israelites and gērîm, people who lack land and thus a regular source of food, and in a vision of land reverting to its owners every fifty years if it has been ceded to someone else because of debt (Lev 25).

While Numbers then includes a series of regulations issuing out of the journey from Sinai toward the land and showing that the Sinai revelation was not Yhwh’s last word, Deuteronomy is overtly a large-scale restatement of the Sinai revelation for the sake of people who had not been there, who typify the position of every generation that will follow. Deuteronomy affirms that God relates to subsequent generations in a way corresponding to the revelation at Sinai, yet appropriately different. Moses’ address presupposes the needs of a settled society, not the wanderers that the people have been for a generation, and the needs of an urban society and a nation that has become a state. It works out the implications of a new vision for the life of society more than the Covenant Code does. It appeals more to the exodus and to Israel’s nature as a family writ large, which obliges Israelites in variegated connections to relate to each other like brothers and sisters.

Expressed via Human Discernment

All this material is attributed to Yhwh and to Moses, though in two ways. The two forms of statement have the same degree of authority, but at Sinai Yhwh speaks to Moses, so that the revelation comes direct from God, while in Moab Moses works out what to say and proclaims this as Yhwh’s teaching. The differences between Sinai and Moab and between Yhwh’s words and Moses’ are suggestive in the context of the critical view that historically the codes come from a much later period. Whatever the date of the material in Leviticus or Deuteronomy, for example, their authors were in agreement in attributing their work to the far off time of Moses, one way or the other.

In the subsequent time in which these authors live, God does not regularly speak in the same immediately authoritative way. After the entry into the land people no longer hear Moses’ living voice. The book of Joshua begins with the fact that “Moses, my servant, is dead” (Josh 1:2). Only after his own death is Joshua termed “Yhwh’s servant” (Josh 24:29). Moses is still “Yhwh’s/my servant” (seventeen times in Joshua), even after his death, and Joshua is still simply “Moses’ assistant” (mĕšārēt) (Ex 24:13; 33:11; Num 11:28; Josh 1:1). Joshua’s job is to help ensure that Moses’ job gets done in the way the people enter the land, and in this sense there is a strong continuity between Moses’ time and Joshua’s time; not for nothing does the story continue seamlessly from Deuteronomy into Joshua. But Joshua’s own time is not one when Yhwh (often) speaks in a revelatory way to the people. “The Red Sea and the Jordan constitute geographical boundaries which take Israel into and out of the desert but also signify the beginning and end of Israel’s constitution as a coherent people.”[691]

The time of revelation is the time of Moses. Joshua’s time is one in which the people look back to the time of revelation. Their calling is now to live in the light of that revelation. Not for nothing does the Torah come to an end with Deuteronomy. “Moses’ death will mean the transformation of Israel—from a community propelled by the energy of an original, unitary vision to a people now motivated by essentially conservative impulses (‘be careful to act in accordance to all the law that my servant Moses commanded you’).”[692]

Deuteronomy thus puts the monarchy in its place, subordinate to Moses’ Teaching. Even though it allows for Israel’s becoming a monarchic state (Deut 17:14–20), it denies normative significance to the state.[693]  This is the more striking in light of the fact that the codes recognize the place of the priesthood and the nature of its work, which historically issued from the monarchy. Further, they recognize that the priesthood can also go wrong, as events at Sinai twice demonstrate. Yet they emphasize that Israel’s worship stands under its supervision—and thus not under that of the monarchy, as was the case with Solomon’s temple.[694]  Exodus–Deuteronomy also contrast with Chronicles, which gives David huge significance as the person who determined the temple’s worship, though that contrast does hint at a point of agreement: Moses’ Teaching and Chronicles concur in leaving no space for a revived monarchy to exercise authority in the Second Temple community.

The time of Moses is the time of Yhwh’s key revelation. On the usual critical view, little of the teaching in Exodus–Deuteronomy goes back to Moses. In a traditional society teachers often prefer to attribute their work to the people they see as their mentors and inspirers rather than claiming it for themselves, and the codes are the work of Moses’ successors. Paradoxically, it is therefore a reassurance that, on the Pentateuch’s own account, the words of a human being such as Moses (in Deuteronomy) can be just as inspired, illuminating, reliable and authoritative as words directly spoken by Yhwh (at Sinai). Moses’ successors, the authors of these codes, were doing what Moses is pictured as doing in Moab, working out the implications of Mosaic faith in a new context under God’s inspiration.

Deuteronomy does envisage that Moses will not be Yhwh’s last spokesperson, though it pictures the Moses-like person who will follow him (perhaps a succession of them) as prophet rather than teacher (Deut 18:15–22). In Numbers 11 Yhwh takes some of the spirit that is on Moses and puts it on Israel’s elders, with the result that they “prophesy”—manifest the signs of being under supernatural influence. But they then do the work delegated to them by Moses in the “ordinary” way—as Moses himself does. Yhwh does not keep telling them how to do the work they share with Moses, but the coming of Yhwh’s spirit on them is a sign that they and their community can be assured that God can work through them as well as through Moses. Perhaps this provides a model for understanding the related process of the continuing of Moses’ work in teaching the people, whoever did that. Yhwh can speak directly (Sinai); Moses can speak (Moab); subsequent teachers can speak. Neither God nor Moses back at the beginning provided the answers to the new questions that would arise in the land, which would be odd. One might compare the promise of the Spirit to Jesus’ disciples and the way teachers such as Paul interpret Jesus’ message in radically new ways in new postresurrection situations, under that Spirit’s guidance. Historically the community will have to discern what Moses would say if he were still alive. And the vast bulk of the “unitary” Mosaic vision results from those acts of discernment over the centuries.

Perhaps everything Yhwh ever says is a working out of the implications of the covenant relationship sealed at Sinai. That would be another implication of bringing together biddings Israel received over centuries and incorporating them into the story from Sinai to the edge of the promised land. But in the people’s experience, Yhwh will not be one who merely laid the law down in the distant past. Yhwh will be one who keeps directing them in new situations of need.

6.3 Yhwh’s Presence: At the Mountain

The Sinai story is, among other things, a narrative theological discussion of what we mean by God’s presence with us or of our being in God’s presence, a discussion that preserves the paradoxes involved in describing the reality of God’s presence.

Can Israel Meet Yhwh on the Mountain?

Is Yhwh on Mount Sinai? Yes, and no. Yhwh is there when the people arrive—Moses can immediately go up to meet Yhwh there and can respond to Yhwh’s summons from there (Ex 19:3). The mountain is so affected by Yhwh’s holiness that nothing must touch it lest also it become affected by it. Yes, Yhwh is there. Yet Yhwh also speaks of coming down on the mountain, in/with/on a mass of cloud (Ex 19:9, 11)—cloud is both Yhwh’s means of transport and a means of veiling Yhwh’s presence (cf. Ex 24:15–18). Thus Yhwh later refers to having spoken from heaven (Ex 20:22). Talk in terms of a presence on Mount Sinai suggests that Yhwh is relatively accessible in this-worldly experience, in a concrete place. But the problem is that Yhwh’s presence would be too much for anyone to cope with. Talk in terms of Yhwh’s coming down on Sinai from elsewhere suggests that the world is generally protected from too dangerous a presence of God. It suggests that Yhwh is too big to be located in any place on earth—even a mountain. All earth could offer is a footstool for Yhwh. And the solemn aspect to Yhwh’s coming is underlined by its reverberations and accompaniments, the mass of cloud, the thunder and lightning, the frighteningly loud blast on a horn,[695]  the fire and the shaking of the ground. These phenomena point to the awesomeness of Yhwh’s presence and the impossibility of anyone seeing Yhwh.

Will the people want to come up the mountain to meet God? Yes, and no. The presupposition of Yhwh’s instructions to Moses is that they will be enthusiastic to do so and will need restraining (Ex 19:12, 21). But when they actually express an opinion on the matter, they articulate an understandable response of trembling and quivering at the sights and sounds that herald and accompany God’s descending (Ex 19:16; 20:18). Far from inclined to break through the bounds Yhwh has set, they wish to stand at a distance. Far from wanting God to speak directly to them, they would prefer just to have Moses speak to them. To have God speak to them is as dangerous as to behold God (Ex 20:19). Both their desire to meet God and their reluctance to do so suggest fitting responses to an understanding of God, appropriately combining trust and awe.

May the people go up the mountain to meet God? Yes, and no. They may indeed come to Mount Sinai and camp there. Coming here to serve Yhwh was the reason for Yhwh’s bringing them out of Egypt. They may go up on the mountain where Yhwh is or where Yhwh will descend before their eyes (Ex 19:11, 13).[696]  But initially they do not do so. They wait at the bottom while Moses goes up the mountain. And when they are to ascend, many conditions attach to Yhwh’s invitation. They must wait for the right moment, signaled by the supernatural trumpet blast announcing that the moment has come. Before it does so, Moses must make them holy—they are, after all, destined to be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. If people are to meet God or see God act, they must make sure they are pure from stain and wash their clothes, as one aspect of making sure no stain attaches to their persons, and be ready for the day Yhwh descends onto the mountain (Ex 19:10–11; cf., e.g., Num 11:17–18; Josh 3:5; 7:13–14).[697]  In the meantime, they must keep their distance, for touching the mountain will mean being affected by something of the explosive holiness that has come to affect the mountain because Yhwh is there. They would become too holy and too dangerous for anyone else to have contact with (Ex 19:12–13).

This holy danger also threatens the idea that they should climb the mountain. When they arrive there, it is Moses who does so, not they. Yhwh is on the top of the mountain, Israel at the bottom, and Moses mediates between the two parties by ascending and descending the mountain (e.g., Ex 19:2–3). They have no direct contact with God. They will hear the blast of the supernatural horn announcing Yhwh’s coming and they will see the supernatural mass of cloud and thunder and lightning, but the one to whom Yhwh will relate is Moses, and the special effects are designed merely to encourage them to trust in him (Ex 19:9). When God appears on the mountain, it is Moses who speaks to God and whom God answers (Ex 19:19). God now tells Moses to warn the people not to break through the bounds that prevent their access to the mountain to look, and Moses now accepts that they are not to do so (Ex 19:21, 23; 24:2). The people’s freedom to come to God’s mountain and their implicit invitation to ascend it speaks of God’s relationship with the whole people, but the requirement that they keep their distance and let Moses be their mediator testifies to the danger of their coming close to God. “Those who encroach upon the realm of the holy are liable to death.”[698]  God gives commands on the top of the mountain; they fulfill them at the bottom.[699]

Can Their Representatives Meet Yhwh There?

May the priests or the elders go up the mountain to meet God? Yes, and no. The priests may indeed come near to Yhwh (Ex 19:22). But they, too, must make themselves holy or Yhwh will break through on them (Ex 19:22). And then they, too, are forbidden to come up lest Yhwh breaks through on them (Ex 19:24). Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the elders, climb the mountain and see God (rāʾâ, then ḥāzâ; Ex 24:9–11). The Septuagint cannot believe this extraordinary statement, and corrects it to “they saw the place where the God of Israel stood … they appeared at the place of God.”[700]  It may be this occasion to which Moses later refers as a time when Yhwh appeared (rāʾâ niphal) “eye with eye,” in full sight (Num 14:14).[701]  They eat and drink there, taking part in a festive meal of the kind symbolized by the sacramental meal at the bottom of the mountain (Ex 24:11). That in itself is an indication that even though they see God (what a statement!), they do not die, but carry on with the elemental occupations of human life.[702]  Or they and the elders may come up, but they may not come near; they must bow down to Yhwh at a distance (Ex 24:1–2). Or they do not so much see God as see a dazzling sapphire platform upon which God’s feet rest (Ex 24:10). They risk their lives in getting so near to God (Ex 24:11). So perhaps it is better if only Moses and Aaron (Ex 19:24) come up, or only Moses comes near (Ex 24:2).

The invitation to the priests and elders, and the feast on the mountain, remind a later generation that it has people in its midst who may act as mediators between them and God, priests involved in sacramental worship and elders involved in decision-making for people (e.g., Num 11; Deut 27:1; 31:9). The denial of the invitation to priests and elders and its confining to Moses or Moses and Aaron carries a different implication for that later generation. At the beginning of the nation’s story, approaching Yhwh’s presence was possible for these two figures, or even for the original elders, but their successors—priests, judges, prophets and kings—neither can nor need so approach Yhwh themselves. The story in Leviticus 8–9 will suggest that the inclusion of Nadab and Abihu makes a further, solemn point about these later mediators. If climbing the mountain carries no implications about the subsequent faithfulness or subsequent security of these two, how much less does faithfulness or security necessarily attach to their successors? The critique of the seventy elders in Ezekiel 8:7–13 makes the same point for them.

May Moses go up the mountain to meet God on the people’s behalf? Yes, and no. Indeed, Yhwh has been present enough to Moses to speak already, but the story has not told us how this happened. When the people arrive at Sinai, Moses goes up to meet God. But immediately the narrative adds that Moses’ going is overtaken by Yhwh’s summoning of him. Source-critically, “Moses went up to God. Yhwh called to him from the mountain” (Ex 19:3) constitutes a classic illustration of the combining of two sources.[703]  In the text of Exodus as we have it, the two clauses combine to express complementary points. Even Moses, the leader Yhwh commissioned, cannot force himself on God on the people’s behalf. Even for Moses, this mountain is a dangerous place, affected by holiness. “We have trivialized ‘mountaintop experiences’ as though they are romantic opportunities for religious self-indulgence.… The mountain of holiness [is] a dangerous meeting place that will leave nothing unchanged.”[704]

Meeting with God is mediated by words. The bulk of the Sinai event is dominated by words. Yhwh’s self-presentation comes in the words, “I am Yhwh” (Ex 20:2). “The appearance of God within the thunderstorm … becomes the revelation of Torah.… Theophany is actually an experience of speech” (cf. further Deut 4–5).[705]  The same is true when God appears to Job (Job 38–41). Perhaps the Sinai meeting might have been a direct one between God and people, but even in connection with this form of meeting the people ask for Moses rather than God to speak with them (Ex 20:19). Yet that fits with Yhwh’s own initial instructions. It is through their leader’s words that the people are brought into contact with God (Ex 19:3–8). Moses mediates between Yhwh and Israel verbally as he does spatially. Indeed, these are two ways of speaking of the same phenomenon, for it was “from heaven that I spoke with you” (the people; Ex 20:22). Yhwh is in heaven, and it is Yhwh’s words through Moses that bridge the gap between heaven and earth. For the ongoing community, relationship with Yhwh likewise depends on attendance to the Torah as Moses’ words.

Insights on Meeting with God

The covenant sealing thus suggests several insights on how a meeting between Yhwh and people may come about. Yhwh may decide to stay for a while at some natural place such as Sinai, where people may therefore meet Yhwh, in the everyday world. At this mountain Yhwh will instruct Israel in the construction of a manufactured sanctuary, and it will be at such humanly made sacred places that henceforth Yhwh’s presence will be known in worship, but at the beginning it was not so. Yhwh’s appearing was an event in the world, like the event of Israel’s deliverance. It is not chance that Yhwh appears on a mountain rather than, say, in a vale or a canyon or a forest or a river. The way the sky towers above the earth and dwarfs it makes it an appropriate place to think of as a symbol for a transcendent deity, and the way a mountain towers up into the sky makes it an appropriate symbol for connection between deity and the world. Indeed, elsewhere Yhwh can be characterized as mountainlike, though the Sinai story hardly suggests that this mountain actually symbolizes Yhwh.[706]  Mountains link ordinary land and heaven: they have their feet on the ground but their top in the sky. They constructively blur the distinction between God in heaven and the people on earth: the two can be one.[707]  Yhwh is in the world, but not of the world.

There are also natural places such as Sinai that Yhwh may decide to visit. The same logic that makes a mountain the natural place for a stay makes it a natural place for such a visit. The occasional nature of the visit again makes clear that Yhwh is not of the world. And in another sense this mountain where Yhwh initially appeared, like the event of the people’s deliverance, does not belong to the everyday world. Egypt was a far-off foreign country few Israelites ever visited, and after the exodus Yhwh did not wait to appear on a mountain in Canaan that could then be the object of Israelite pilgrimage. Elijah managed to find his way to Sinai, but otherwise Israel kept no memory of its location. The fact that we cannot locate the mountain with any certainty is a sign that this particular visit is historically significant because of what happened there, but the place itself does not thereby gain intrinsic significance.

The status and significance of the Sinai events anticipate that of the historically crucial events involving Jesus. The site of his birth, death, burial and resurrection, too, are known in general, but not with precision or certainty. The same is true of the mountain locations of important events such as Jesus’ delivering a new Torah, his being transfigured and his ascension. God may visit people from time to time in ways that may be as terrifying as the event on Sinai, but there is no reason to think that the place of the last visit will be the site of the next. Yhwh’s location was not tied to a fixed place, even in the midst of the people, but to the people itself. Perhaps that encouraged the survival of the people’s relationship with Yhwh after 587, because the relationship was not intrinsically tied to a particular place.[708]

The location of God’s original meeting with the people in worship is not quite within their ordinary life. It does not happen in their camp “in front of the mountain,” but involves their leaving the camp for “the foot of the mountain” (Ex 24:4; cf. Ex 19:17). But neither is its location an already sacred place. Its stimulus is not a declaration of intent on Yhwh’s part to meet the people there, but an initiative on Moses’ part to establish the framework for such a meeting; one might compare the human initiative with which sacrifices began, in Genesis 4. But Yhwh responds to such an initiative, as happened in Genesis 4. Meeting can come about between humanity and God on God’s initiative or on ours.

So Moses builds an altar at the foot of the mountain (Ex 24:4). One significance of an altar is that it is a place where people proclaim God’s name (cf. Gen 12:8; 26:25; 33:20; 35:7; Ex 17:15), and Yhwh has recently described places where people build an altar as locations “where I cause my name to be mentioned” (Ex 20:24). As usual, the name encapsulates the person, and the mention of the name brings a form of the presence of the person. The altar thus stands for another form of Yhwh’s presence. It is a more manageable form of this presence than either the more full personal presence on the mountain, or the coming of Yhwh onto the mountain with those supernatural phenomena. It is a real presence sacramentally and aurally mediated, and thus even Yhwh’s name can become a danger when not taken seriously enough (cf. Ex 20:7). But it is a more sustainable form of that presence. Whereas the elders go up the mountain and see Yhwh, the youngsters represent the people in another way as they minister at an event suggestive of Yhwh’s drawing near in this manageable fashion to the people as a whole. The offerings sacrificed there make the point in another way. They include whole offerings going up to God in their entirety. They vividly concretize the congregation’s successful reaching out to God—the people can see the smoke ascending. The fellowship offerings have the same effect in another way, being shared by people and God. God’s presence is real enough for God to share in a meal. The sacrifices thus bring out the sacramental aspect to the events at the foot of the mountain.

In Exodus 24:15–18, Yhwh’s splendor (kābôd) comes to stay (šākan) on the mountain, in appearance like a devouring fire. At the same time, “the cloud” (ʿānān) covers the mountain, so that the people are separated from Yhwh’s splendor both spatially and visually. But the presence of Yhwh’s splendor is visible to them.

The idea that meeting Yhwh is dangerous and frightening is largely new. It did not seem so for people such as Adam and Eve or Abraham and Sarah. Exodus thus complements Genesis. Jesus’ unthreatening coming as a human being will parallel Yhwh’s appearing as a human being to those people in Genesis, though Jesus’ acting with divine power will provoke an awed reaction like that at Sinai (e.g., Lk 5:8). And if the earthly Sinai was so terrifying, the New Testament will go on to note, how much more terrifying for Christians who resist God is the prospect of meeting the God who speaks from heaven, who indeed “is a consuming fire” (Heb 12:25–29)?

6.4 Yhwh’s Presence: In a Sanctuary

The one-time events on the mountain and at the foot of the mountain do not provide a paradigm for ongoing meetings between the people and Yhwh. Sinai is not where the people are destined to live. Like the exodus, it stands for an event in the past. There are occasional ways that God meets us, meetings that cannot be regularized or guaranteed or made to happen, meetings that are not sacramentally mediated or liturgically enacted. There are also ways that God’s presence may be known on an ongoing basis, such as the sacramental worship Yhwh institutes at Sinai. Yet one-time events might suggest patterns for ongoing meetings. Conversely, regular liturgical practice may feature in the account of that one-time event, which observes conventions of meetings for worship.

The building of a dwelling for God continues the Sinai story because this dwelling is to play the ongoing role that Sinai has played on that one occasion. At Sinai, people and priests had to be in a holy state (Ex 19:10, 14, 22; the verb qādaš piel) and recognize holy space (Ex 19:12, 21, 23–24; cf. Ex 3:5 for the noun qōdeš in this connection). The event involved a holy caste, holy rites, and holy writings (Ex 19:22; 24:4–8, 12). Moses’ meeting with Yhwh recognized holy time: the cloud covered the mountain for six days, after which Yhwh summoned Moses on the seventh, and Moses then stayed there forty days (Ex 24:15–18). The dwelling similarly works systematically within the framework of holiness. Once Moses climbed Sinai, the elders ate with God near the top of the mountain, and the people gathered on the lower slopes where the altar was (Ex 24:1–14). Subsequently, the senior priest will go into the inner room of the dwelling once each year, the other priests enter the outer room where the incense altar is, the people gather in the courtyard where the sacrificial altar is (cf. Lev 16). Yhwh appeared in splendor on Sinai, with cloud and fire—the cloud apparently to mask the fire. Subsequently Yhwh will dwell in splendor in the tent, with cloud and fire—symbolized by incense (Ex 24:15–18; 40:34–38). The description of Yhwh’s appearing in the dwelling exactly corresponds to the description of Yhwh’s appearing on the mountain. The cloud covers the meeting tent as it previously covered the mountain. Yhwh’s splendor fills the dwelling as it previously came to dwell on the mountain. The cloud dwells on the meeting tent as Yhwh’s splendor dwelt on the mountain.

In delineating the specifications for a dwelling (miškān; [709]  “tabernacle”) or sanctuary (miqdāš, a holy place) or meeting tent (ʾōhel môʿēd), Yhwh provides Israel with a means of thinking about an ongoing presence of God, taking up some of the implicit patterns from Sinai and developing them. In Israel’s story, of course, this sanctuary is more than that: it is a means of mediating God’s presence. But that is an academic point for the readers of the narrative through the centuries who knew no mobile sanctuary. It was an object in their story, a means of thinking about God’s presence, of envisioning what God’s presence might mean.

A Home for Yhwh

The dwelling is a veritable palace, a luxurious residence far superior to the ordinary homes of ordinary people, analogous to the mobile palace of an Egyptian king.[710]  Yet unlike the house that will be built in Jerusalem, it is not referred to as a “palace” (hêkāl).[711]  the king’s palace and Yhwh’s palace will be built of stone, not mud brick like ordinary people’s homes, but this dwelling of Yhwh’s is made of the same stuff as the people’s. It stands in their midst, in the center of their encampment, not up above or far away from their homes, protected by high walls. Yhwh lives among them. Its description as a miškān, a place to “stay,” marks it as less permanent than a bayit, a “house.” It is a mobile dwelling. Its carrying poles were never to be removed.[712]  While it constitutes an ongoing equivalent to Yhwh’s coming down to stay on the mountain, as a structure it does not fix Yhwh’s location in one place in the manner of a building, as Yhwh later points out to David via Nathan. It does not stop Yhwh from being on the move. Nor does it stop Israel from being a people on the move, or require that their moving takes them away from Yhwh’s dwelling.

The establishment of a such a sanctuary brings possibility, confidence and freedom. It is a place where people can be sure to find God when they come to worship and seek guidance. It is not merely a natural location like a mountain where tradition says God once appeared. Nor are people expected to be able to find God in their inner beings, as if they were not flesh and blood. Israel’s gospel sees that people are bodies as well as spirits, and in God it gives them means of expressing their relationship with God that are not merely spiritual. The dwelling is a physical construction, one that people can see and walk through and where they can hear, smell, touch and do things, and watch things happening.

The dwelling also involves constraints. It will be the one place where people can find Yhwh in worship. The freedom of Genesis, where there was no restriction on where people could build altars and offer sacrifice, has come to an end. The dwelling carries further constraints equivalent to ones that applied to the mountain. Ordinary people may not simply enter it. Encroaching on the realm of the holy continues to mean death, so that one of the Levites’ tasks is to guard the dwelling to protect people from such encroaching (e.g., Num 1:51–53; 8:19). The ordination of priests (Lev 8) gives these representatives the task of approaching God on the people’s behalf and provides them with sacramental rites that ensure they can approach God without themselves being overwhelmed (cf. Num 3:38; 17:12–18:32 [[713]  17:27–18:32]).

The sanctuary again combines divine initiative and human response in ways we might not have predicted. As it was God who brought Israel to Sinai, so it is God’s commission that Israel should build a sanctuary. But God’s instructions begin with a bidding to provide the wherewithal for it. The sanctuary does not come into being by a human initiative, like the altar at the foot of the mountain, but neither does it come down from heaven without human assistance, as Yhwh did on the top of the mountain. Nor will it be provided by the state, like Yhwh’s temple-palace in Jerusalem. It issues from Yhwh’s desire to dwell in the people’s midst, but the desire is to be implemented through the generosity of the people as a whole, an expression of their own desire to have Yhwh dwell in their midst.

Something Beautiful for God

The instructions for the sanctuary and for the priests’ robes go into great detail, like architectural drawings or sewing patterns, though they resemble assembly instructions with which we are familiar in seeming to leave ambiguous a number of aspects of the way they need to be implemented. They require that the sanctuary and the robes be made of the best materials that would be available.

Walter Brueggemann suggests that the dwelling serves three functions intrinsic to the nature and purpose of art.[714]  Art involves excess, a moving beyond what is managed, sensible and practical to what goes beyond these; it is a way of making oneself at home in the world, where one is homeless; and it draws isolated individuals into a unity, making them into a body. Here a crowd of escaped serfs has left one “home” and completed only part of their journey to a home of their own. Historically, the people who imagine this dwelling may be a crowd of defeated imperial subjects who have been transported from their homes to the four quarters of the earth. The making of this dwelling is an absurdly extravagant act on their part, even if it is only a thought. A crowd of people that makes a home for God thereby also turns its own camp into a home for itself. The dwelling forms a focus for this gang of escaped serfs and thus contributes to their becoming a body. In a context of wilderness or exile, where there is little that suggests order or beauty, the creation of something that embodies beauty and order implies a statement of faith in the goodness, beauty and order of what God is committed to, or a promise of that. Of course, in a context of power and achievement with their almost-inevitable concomitant unfairness to people who do not have power or do not achieve, such creation comes to be part of the empty wilderness. In that context, the creation of beauty and order involves “creating something beautiful for God” in the sense Mother Teresa gave to these words when working among the poor in India.

While human beings construct the dwelling, they do so following instructions from God. The First Testament does not assume that human beings in general, or the people of God in particular, know by intuition how to worship, or that they bring to God the best they can devise or the expressions that form in their own hearts. God lays down what counts as proper worship. The making of the gold calf will suggest one problem Yhwh anticipates in commissioning the people to build this dwelling, and Israel’s subsequent story will elaborate on it. The problem will become sharper when the people are in their promised land among other peoples who do not worship Yhwh as the one God and who use images in worship.

Yhwh’s ban on images points up the fact that there is a particular as well as a general question about the divine presence: a question about the presence of any god and a question about the presence of Yhwh in particular. Other gods were believed to make their presence available by means of images of wood, stone or precious metal. Yhwh did not do that. Perhaps Yhwh thereby attempted to resist the human inclination to feel we have God’s presence guaranteed by something more tangible than God’s word and our mutual commitment, or to have God under control or within our comprehension. Images thus parallel institutions within Israel about which Yhwh also feels ambivalent, such as priesthood, sacrifice and temple, and they parallel the church’s doctrinal formulations, its sacramental rites such as baptism and Eucharist, and its historical traditions such as forms of ministry (the “historic episcopate,” the papacy).

An Equivalent to Yhwh’s Home in the Heavens

In declaring that the dwelling is to follow the prescribed pattern (tabnît, Ex 25:9), Yhwh likely refers to more than merely a set of architectural drawings. The plans correspond to the nature of God’s already existent dwelling in heaven. As human beings are the kind of physical beings that God would be if God were a physical being, so the sanctuary is the kind of dwelling heaven would be if it were a physical place. As Genesis 1 pictures creation proceeding by means of systematic declarations from God (“There is to be light,” “There is to be a dome”) that met with immediate response, so the building of the dwelling proceeds by means of systematic instructions from God and detailed obedience to these. As creation concluded with a satisfied look at the whole and a blessing, so does the building of the dwelling (Ex 39:43). As creation led into the sabbath, so the instructions for this dwelling end with the sabbath and with a reference back to the sabbath’s origin at creation (Ex 31:12–17).[715]  As the rûaḥ ʾĕlōhîm (“spirit of God”) was involved at the beginning of creation (Gen 1:2), so it is here, in a man called Bezalel.[716]  He is “filled with the spirit of God, with skill, with insight, and with know-how in every craft, and in drawing up designs in working in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting and in carving wood, in working in every design craft,” and there are others to whom Yhwh has given similar abilities (Ex 31:1–6). Is Bezalel a man especially made in the image of the creative God?

As well as continuing the Sinai story, the building of the sanctuary thus resumes the creation story. While the whole world (heaven and earth) is God’s home, the sanctuary represents God’s home in microcosm. Though built as a dwelling for God, the cosmos often looks more like the dwelling of other forces. The sanctuary can be a place where these do not crowd God out or cause God to withdraw. God will dwell in this microcosm of what the cosmos was designed to be and what it therefore is in its essential nature, a place where everything has its place and is in order, in keeping with God’s intention for the whole cosmos. Here there is one world, with everyone and everything in their place. The order God wrote into creation is and/or can be implemented here without the compromises that people experience in the world outside the dwelling.

Affirming Creation Order

At the priests’ ordination the “pleasing smell” of the whole offerings in the sanctuary will rise to Yhwh as it did after the flood, when it encouraged Yhwh to determine never again to suspend the creation order (Gen 8:21–22; Ex 29:18, 25; Lev 8:21, 28). It will continue to do so through their ministry (Ex 29:41; frequently in Lev 1–7; Num 28–29). The dwelling also provides the setting for the priests to fulfill other aspects of their work, specifically to “make a distinction between the holy and the common and between the defiling and the clean” (Lev 10:10).[717]  The purpose of the subsequent instructions about defilement and cleansing (Lev 11–15) is to enable the priesthood to fulfill this role, and part of their point is to avoid defiling Yhwh’s dwelling (Lev 15:31). The priests’ task is to ensure that things are in their place, and that there is no place for things that should have no place. “Make a distinction” is the exact verb form (bādal hiphil infinitive) used in connection with God’s acts of creation (Gen 1:14, 18; see also Gen 1:4, 6–7).[718]  Creation had its ordered distinctions, and in the dwelling the order of creation is realized.

The distinction between defiling and clean overlaps with the distinction between death and life. Some concerns about defilement relate to the desire to keep the realms of death and life properly separate and to give death no place in the dwelling—at least, human death. Concern with menstrual blood, semen and skin diseases that make someone look deathly, and the ban on cooking a kid goat in its mother’s milk may be examples. Ordination involves daubing blood on a priest in a way paralleled only in the rite for restoring someone who has had a skin disease. This in itself may point to the priests’ involvement with issues of life and death and with the boundary between these, not least in their very calling to approach God on the people’s behalf.[719]

The sanctuary’s dealings with time also observe the making of distinctions that was a feature of creation.[720]  Its building keeps the creation distinction between the six days of regular time and the sabbath, and its offerings will mark that distinction (Ex 31:12–17; 35:1–3; Num 28:9–10; cf. Gen 2:1–3). Its morning and evening offerings mark the transition from night to day and from day to night that came about at the beginning of creation and were reaffirmed after the flood (Ex 29:38–42; Num 28:3–8; cf. Gen 1:4–5; 8:22). The liturgical calendar also undergirds the bipartite division of the year. As the daily offerings mark the transition from day to night and from night to day, so the celebrations of the first month mark the transition from rainy season to dry season, and the observances of the seventh month the transition from dry season to rainy season (see Lev 23; Num 28–29).[721]  As well as marking days, the planets thus mark set times each year (Gen 1:14), and again, God reaffirmed after the flood that these seasons will continue to follow one another (Gen 8:22). Israel does not have to devise the temporal structuring for life, though it could imperil it for itself. In observing the set times, it sets itself within the structure of the ordering of time and life that God wrote into creation for its security and its blessing, and by its modeling invites the world to set itself within these daily, weekly, and yearly contexts of a chronological order that corresponds to God’s creation.

Features of the Sanctuary

The first prescription for the sanctuary concerns a chest (ʾărôn, [722]  “ark”) for locating in its inner, more private room, into which Moses is to put the “declaration” (ʿēdût), the solemn statement of God’s will in the Ten Words (Ex 25:10–16; cf., e.g., Ex 31:18; Deut 10:1–5). These begin from Yhwh’s act of commitment in bringing the people out of Egypt and they incorporate promises about its future, but their emphasis lies on Israel’s obligation to keep its side of the covenant.[723]  The terms laid down for their relationship with God are thus central to the place where the people meet with God.[724]  Over the chest stand two winged creatures covered in gold, the cherubim. These are later described as constituting a carriage (1 Chron 28:18), like the living cherubs in Ezekiel 10 (cf. Ps 18:10 [[725]  11]), but standing over the chest, they might also function as its guards, like the living beings in Genesis 3:24. Middle Eastern iconography offers parallels to both functions.[726]  The inner room expresses equivalent symbolism to that of the altar, the columns and the meal at the foot of the mountain. God is there and the people are there, bound in mutual commitment. Outside in the more public room are a candelabrum, an incense altar, from which the people’s prayers would symbolically ascend to God, and a table for the “presence bread” and for drink offerings, suggestive of Yhwh’s sharing of refreshment with the people.

In the vast court outside the dwelling itself are the laver and sacrificial altar where priests will be ordained for service in succession to the “young men” who officiated at the foot of the mountain. The senior priest will stand before God representing the whole people, bearing the names of each of the clans on his shoulders and on his chest (Ex 28:9–30). Each day the priests will offer whole offerings, grain offerings and drink offerings on the people’s behalf (Ex 29:38–42; cf. Lev 1–2), expressions of the self-offering each day requires. They will offer the fellowship sacrifices that the young men offered at Sinai, when people have a desire or need to offer these, and the sacrifices that form part of the way one handles defilement and wrongdoing (see Lev 3–7), which have not yet been needed but soon will be.

Once more Exodus makes clear that the people’s commitment and Yhwh’s commitment belong together in a two-sided relationship:

I will meet you [plural], to speak to you [singular] there. I will meet the Israelites there, and it will be sanctified by my splendor. I will sanctify the meeting tent and the altar, and I will sanctify Aaron and his sons, as a priest to me. And I will dwell in the midst of the Israelites and I will be God for them. They will know that I am Yhwh their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt so that I might dwell in their midst. I am Yhwh, their God. (Ex 29:42–45)

The Israelites left Egypt not merely to meet with God at the mountain, but to meet with God on an ongoing basis. The sanctuary is where this meeting takes place.

The text believes that, done well and carefully, meeting is possible. Such a way of understanding guards against both worship that is moralistic, didactic, and instructive and worship that is excessively therapeutic and narcissistic. Both didactic and therapeutic tendencies tend to talk about the meeting, rather than to enact such a meeting with this one who is profoundly holy and yet genuinely present.[727]

The story that moves from Yhwh acting, in Egypt and at the Red Sea, to Yhwh speaking, on the mountain, closes with Yhwh being, in the midst of the Israelite encampment.[728]

Dwelling or Meeting Place?

When the sanctuary is finished, Yhwh’s splendor comes to fill it (Ex 40:34–35), as will later happen when people bring the covenant chest to Yhwh’s house (1 Kings 8:10–11) and again in Ezekiel’s vision (Ezek 43:4–5). It is unclear whether this is a punctiliar event and the splendor is there only for a time, or whether it comes to stay permanently unless the people’s affront to Yhwh causes it to withdraw. This ambiguity is a symbol of two ways of thinking about God’s presence that are implicit in the promise just quoted.[729]  Both are needed to do justice to the complexity and the mystery of the subject.

On the one hand, the sanctuary is a dwelling. Yhwh lives there, where the priests regularly make their offerings “before Yhwh,” keep the lamps burning permanently “before Yhwh,” and the basket of bread stands “before Yhwh” (e.g., Ex 27:21; 29:23). Yhwh is always there. “Yhwh sits/dwells [over?] the cherubim” (e.g., 1 Sam 4:4; 2 Sam 6:2; 2 Kings 19:15). It is this that makes the chest a symbol of Yhwh’s presence that, for instance, might be carried into battle (see Num 10:33–36; 14:44; 1 Sam 4:1–7). Balaam will later acknowledge that “Yhwh their God is with them, the acclaim of their king is in their midst” (Num 23:21)—literally, “the roar of a king is in their midst.”[730]  A roar addressed to Yhwh is usually an acclamation in worship (see esp. the acclamation of Yhwh as King in Ps 98:4–6), and Balaam may be confessing that Yhwh dwells in the meeting tent in the midst of Israel. Or it would fit the context of his confession if the roar were one associated with battle. Yhwh’s moving presence with Israel, symbolized by the dwelling, is represented by that cloud hovering over the dwelling, visible as fire by night, and apparently identical with the column of cloud and fire that has accompanied, guided, protected and acted on the people’s behalf (Ex 13:21–22; 14:19–24). It will continue to accompany, guide, protect and act, on a regular basis (e.g., Num 9:15–23; 10:11–12, 33–34; 14:14; Deut 1:33). Either way, Yhwh is always there.

But the sanctuary is also a meeting tent. Yhwh comes there from time to time to meet with Moses or the people (yāʿad niphal) and speak with them (e.g., Ex 25:22; 29:42–43). Yhwh descends (in the cloud) to the meeting tent (e.g., Num 11:17, 25; 12:5), as happened at Sinai (e.g., Ex 19:11, 18, 20; 34:5). Yhwh comes and “takes up a position” (yāṣab hitpael) there (1 Sam 3:10) as happened at Sinai (Ex 34:5). Such “meeting” is new—there are no applications of this verb to Yhwh before the building of the dwelling. Yhwh also continues to “appear,” as had happened before the building of the sanctuary. Yhwh’s appearing or showing up (e.g., Lev 9:4) is thus correlative to the people’s appearing or showing up (e.g., Ex 34:24; Deut 31:11); they are not always there, but come there on these occasions, and so does Yhwh. Yhwh’s splendor appears there (e.g., Lev 9:6, 23; 16:2; Num 14:10, 14; 16:19; 16:42 [MT 17:7]; 20:6), as it had before the dwelling was built (Ex 16:10). That is always dangerous and scary, and often portends rebuke. Paradoxically, when Yhwh comes in splendor to the dwelling and the cloud settles on the meeting tent, Moses is therefore unable to enter (Ex 40:35). When the one Moses wishes to meet is there, the tent ceases to be available for meetings. Catch-22. Once more, the paradox reflects the nature of the issue.

In distinguishing between different forms or experiences of God’s presence, a regular presence and an occasional, extraordinary coming, perhaps the story is distinguishing between the fact of God’s presence and the experience or sense of God’s presence. Both ways of speaking represent insights on the nature of God’s relationship with the people. They correspond to aspects of the nature of Christian experience and of regular human experience. Two people may be in the same room, but there can be different senses in which they are present with each other. They may be appropriately focusing on different things and not consciously be with each other. Or they may both be focusing on some third person. Or they may both be asleep. Or they may be focusing on each other. Or one may do something for the other. And these two people will move between these different forms of mutual presence. Similarly, Christians know God is present everywhere, but we also talk about going into God’s presence or drawing near to God in prayer or having the experience of God being present at particular times. Presence and meeting are variegated matters. Israel explores their nature in this story.

The whole world is destined to be filled with Yhwh’s splendor (Num 14:21). In its prayers Israel prayed for this to be so (Ps 72:19; cf. Ps 57:5, 11 [MT 6, 12]; 108:5 [MT 6]). In its praise Israel sometimes spoke as if this were indeed already so (e.g., Ps 97:6; 113:4), and Isaiah 6:3 echoes that conviction. Isaiah 40:5 promises a day when it will be so (cf. Ezek 39:21; Hab 2:14). It is another sign that Yhwh’s earthly dwelling is a microcosm of the world as a whole. The point almost becomes explicit in Numbers 14, where the revelation of Yhwh’s glory at the meeting tent is brought into connection with the revelation of Yhwh’s glory that is destined to fill the world. What Yhwh intends for the whole world is already a reality here. But that means that where this revelation is belittled, it becomes the trigger of calamity (Num 14:21–23).

Even now, Yhwh is not confined to this dwelling, but fills the whole world, and must not be cut down to someone small enough to be contained by a sanctuary or not to be involved with the whole world. But conversely, Yhwh must not be portrayed so large as to be inaccessible to ordinary people. Like a monarch who has a vast palace but also a country cottage, Yhwh is not confined to the whole world but can focus so as to be wholly present with Israel in this dwelling.

6.5 Yhwh’s Presence: In Experience

Before the revelation about this meeting tent, apparently Israel already possessed a simpler meeting tent outside the encampment (Ex 33:7–11). There people could “seek Yhwh”—that is, seek Yhwh’s response to prayers for personal needs—in a way anticipating the sacrifice of fellowship offerings in the later meeting tent. There Yhwh would speak with Moses, again anticipating the speaking in the later meeting tent. Much of the teaching in Exodus–Numbers apparently issues from revelations in the meeting tent rather than from revelations on the mountain. The meeting tent not only ensures that the people’s relationship with Yhwh takes account of Yhwh’s past commands, the declaration made on Sinai; as Yhwh continues meeting with the people there, so also Yhwh continues issuing commands to them via Moses there. While one could imagine Moses going to the tent and meditating about what God might have to say to the people, the story portrays it as a more supranatural process. The column of cloud comes to stand in front of the tent, and inside it “Yhwh would speak with Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Ex 33:11).

So there Moses asks who will accompany the people on their journey to the land (Ex 33:12–17). It is a superficially strange question, because Yhwh has already told Moses that a heavenly aide will accompany the people. Moses also asks to have Yhwh’s “way” made known to him. Yhwh knows Moses (Ex 33:12, 17); Moses wants the knowing to be reciprocal. In this connection, Moses several times appeals to the fact that he and the people have “found favor in Yhwh’s eyes” (Ex 33:12–13, 16). Moses wants some assurance of Yhwh’s presence with the people, and Yhwh agrees to do what Moses has asked, yet never specifically responds to the request for knowledge, implicitly determining to remain the subject of knowledge, not the object.[731]  In appealing to his having found favor in Yhwh’s eyes, Moses has given too much away. His appeal is not one with some intrinsic theo-logic like the one in Exodus 32:11–13. It casts Moses in the position of the helpless suppliant who can make no claim on the one whom he implores, and Yhwh’s response implicitly says “yes, you’re right, you have no right.”

On the other hand, in the midst of this talk of favor and knowledge there is a wholly different exchange. Apparently in response to the plea for knowledge of Yhwh’s way, Yhwh says “my face will go and I will give you rest” (Ex 33:14). The [732]  and [733]  have “my Presence will go with you,” but there is no “with you” in the Hebrew. Yhwh’s words are rather spare.[734]  Further, Yhwh’s face seems distinguishable from Yhwh in person—it is as if Yhwh’s face can go off to do something while Yhwh does not go.[735]

Yhwh with Israel

As well as paraphrasing the verbal expression, for pānay NRSV and NIVI have “my presence,” obscuring the way the motif of God’s “face” runs through Exodus 32–34. At the beginning of this sorry story, after the people’s rebellion, Moses seeks to “mollify the face of Yhwh” (Ex 32:11). We have seen just now how Yhwh speaks with him “face to face” (Ex 33:11). Now Moses receives the promise that Yhwh’s face will take part in the journey, to which his robust response (worthy of the Moses of Ex 32:11–13) is approximately “It had better.” Moses glosses that comment by adding that a key thing that marks Israel is that “you go with us”; evidently Yhwh, Moses and the reader know that “your face” is after all in effect the same as “you.” And the significance of talk in terms of God’s face becomes clear. God’s face accompanying the people does not merely mean they have a sense of God’s presence. It means that God shows an active interest in what happens to them and takes action in the light of that.

Moses will later spell out the implications. Yhwh’s face shining on the people is the means of their being blessed and kept, of their experiencing God’s favor and of their lives being characterized by well-being (Num 6:24–26). Thus in the present context the accompaniment of God’s face means Moses will be brought to his rest (Ex 33:14). The dynamic of the situation now recalls that of Exodus 3:12, even though we are a stage further on. There Moses found it hard to believe Yhwh had sent him, and he was promised the sign that eventually the people would serve God on this mountain. The event would establish that God had been involved. Now that promise has been fulfilled and sign has become reality, Moses would like to start living another way, but there is no other way. Yhwh’s face will go with him, but/and the sign of that (Yhwh could have said) will be Moses actually reaching his rest.

Ironically, this time the promise refers to Moses personally (it is his rest), whereas the sign related to the people as a whole serving Yhwh at Sinai. He will not personally enter his rest in the land. But “rest” has a broader application than to the rest that will come when people arrive in the land, and perhaps the promise assures Moses of the rest he will need during the journey, just as the covenant chest will need its rest (Num 10:33). Yhwh’s face will not be a miraculous or sacramental or mystical presence but an active presence bringing about the fulfillment of Yhwh’s undertaking. Again there is a parallel with Yhwh’s explicit promise of a sign. It was only when Moses reached Sinai that the promise of a sign was fulfilled, but Moses had not lived since Exodus 3 without signs; he had had signs of several kinds. So now he will experience God’s provision stage by stage on the journey that is starting, and when he looks at the land will finally know that the goal has been reached. Faith will continually be needed but will continually be vindicated and encouraged. Yhwh’s face will make this happen on the way and in taking the people to its goal. Moses will indeed get to know Yhwh’s way, for Yhwh’s way (as opposed to Yhwh’s ways) is Yhwh’s way of acting in the world, fulfilling promises and proceeding to a goal (e.g., Ps 18:30 [MT 31]; 27:11; Is 40:3).

But making that promise to Moses alone raises the question whether God is thinking of abandoning the people and relating only to Moses. We know Yhwh relates to Moses face to face, but what of the people? Does their worship from a distance turn out to signify a true distancing from Yhwh? Is God not with them as with Moses? The absence of the phrase “with you” hints at distancing. In his response to God, Moses therefore asks about Yhwh’s stance toward the people. He talks not just of “I,” but twice of “I and your people,” and asks about “your going with us” (Ex 33:15–16). Moses wisely reverts to theological arguments and notes that it is God’s being with them that marks the people off from other peoples (Ex 33:16). This again underlines that God’s being with them or God’s face being with them signifies not a mere sense of God’s presence or inner religious experience, but a presence that expresses itself in action. It is God’s doing extraordinary things for Israel that draws the world’s attention (e.g., Ex 15:13–16; 18:8–11). It is in this sense that the accompaniment of God’s face marks Israel off from other peoples.

Yhwh’s Splendor

Moses then asks to see Yhwh’s splendor (Ex 33:18–23). Again, this is an odd request, because Moses has already been present on at least two occasions when Yhwh’s splendor was manifested (Ex 16:10; 24:16–17); perhaps we are to infer that Moses had seen Yhwh’s splendor only veiled by cloud and/or fire. The [736]  has Yhwh granting Moses’ request: “I will pass my splendor in front of you.” It thereby hints at the suggestive theological insight that Yhwh’s splendor consists in the grace and compassion that Yhwh goes on to speak of. But MT has Yhwh declining the request, which is odd but fits better with what subsequently happens. If there is some sense in which worship brings a seeing of God’s splendor (Ex 24:16–17), the refusal reflects the fact that there is another sense in which this is not so.

There might be various reasons for God’s declining to let the divine face or splendor be seen. Human leaders have often been invisible to their subjects; to be seen is to lose one’s mystique and something of one’s power. But in Israelite thinking, knowledge of someone’s name brings knowledge of the person and makes the person vulnerable rather than master, and Yhwh here draws attention to the fact that the people do know the name “Yhwh” (Ex 33:19). It is not for reasons of power that Yhwh declines to let people see the splendor or the face. Nor is it (theo)logically impossible to see God, in Exodus’s understanding. But it is too dangerous. As looking at the sun destroys a person’s sight, so looking at God in full divine splendor would destroy the person. “You cannot see my face,” Yhwh says to Moses personally, “because no one can see my face and stay alive” (Ex 33:20). It is entirely intelligible that Yhwh’s face should be the locus of Yhwh’s splendor. The splendor of the sun shines out from the sun’s face. The face reveals the majesty of the person. Therefore, it is too dangerous to see the face.

The odd thing is that we might also have thought that Moses has already seen Yhwh’s face on more than one occasion. With other leaders he saw God (Ex 24:10–11). He spoke with God face to face and mouth to mouth, not just once on Sinai but on an ongoing basis (Ex 33:11; Num 12:8).[737]  He used to look at Yhwh’s form (tĕmûnâ; Num 12:8)—unlike the people, who saw no form, even at Sinai (Deut 4:12, 15). He received that promise that Yhwh’s face would accompany the people (Ex 33:14–15). Yes, Moses sees God’s face in the sense of truly approaching God on the people’s behalf so that there is real meeting between them and God, and in the sense of truly hearing God speak, and in the sense of truly having God accompany the people to provide for them and protect them. But he does not see God’s face in the sense of setting eye on the blinding divine splendor, and that will not happen on this occasion when Yhwh’s splendor passes by.

Yhwh’s face will accompany the people, but they will not see it. They will see only the results, in a life full of grace and compassion that witnesses to the loving and powerful turning of God’s face in their direction—but in a way that cannot be directly perceived. “Hunger for transcendence is displaced by an affirmation of election.”[738]  Yhwh will protect Moses from seeing the divine splendor by hiding him in a cleft of rock. Moses will be covered by Yhwh’s hand until Yhwh has passed by. Then Moses will be able to see Yhwh’s back as Yhwh disappears. It is a suggestive image for the way we sometimes see the results of Yhwh’s acts and feel the aftershock but do not see the event itself. It will be thus when Jesus rises invisibly from the dead and the disciples are urged to follow him as he disappears off to Galilee.

Yhwh’s Goodness and Grace

Moses is offered two or three alternatives to seeing Yhwh’s splendor or face, though in reality they are variants of the same undertaking. Frustrated in the quest to “know,” Moses embarks upon a quest to “see,” and Yhwh’s response is a teasing one. Initially Yhwh avoids “see” language,[739]  yet promises “I will pass all my goodness in front of you and I will make proclamation in the name Yhwh before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and I will show compassion to whom I will show compassion” (Ex 33:19). Moses will see all Yhwh’s goodness or bounty. The good that God will display is like the good that God did in delivering Israel from Egypt (Ex 18:9) or that Moses expects in God’s future workings with Israel (Num 10:29–32).[740]  The enjoyment of that bounty will be an experience of Yhwh’s grace and compassion. The context may further suggest reference to the goodness of Yhwh’s character and of Yhwh’s stance in relation to Israel. As happens in Psalm 147, goodness is associated with grace and compassion. Yhwh’s goodness is the nature of Yhwh’s “way.” Yhwh declines to let Moses see the outer splendor, yet offers instead to manifest the inner splendor. Or rather, Moses will hear of all God’s goodness, for in a moment he will hear it proclaimed, not see it. His life and the people’s life will continue to be based on hearing what Yhwh claims to be. In an indirect sense they will then see that Yhwh’s being does conform to the claim, but they will never directly “see” the goodness. That is the nature of the quality. We never “see” a person’s goodness or grace or compassion. We see the expressions of it and trust that these reflect the reality. So Moses will see Yhwh’s goodness through seeing Yhwh act in a good way toward himself and toward Israel as he sees Yhwh being good to Israel through its journey.

Paul utilizes Yhwh’s words to suggest the sovereign limits of God’s grace and compassion (Rom 9:14–18). God says, “I will be gracious to those to whom I will be gracious and will show compassion to whom I will show compassion [and only them, and I will decide who they are].” The point is in keeping with the story in Exodus, though it is hardly the implication of Yhwh’s words at this point. Here the stress is on the great generosity of God’s grace and compassion. The form of words recalls that at the original revelation of Yhwh’s name, “I am who/what I am” or “I will be who/what I will be”—which declines to state who or what Yhwh is or will be but makes a promise without limit: God has infinite capacity to be who or what each situation requires. The same is true of this further revelation to Moses. Whoever God determines to treat with grace and compassion, that grace and compassion will become reality. And God has determined to act thus with Moses and his people.[741]  It is this that makes God’s generous and effective grace and compassion into expositions of the nature of Yhwh’s goodness and the significance of Yhwh’s name. On their journey, the people will “see” God’s goodness expressing itself in grace and compassion.

The Effect of Meeting God

The story offers one final take on the mystery of divine presence (Ex 34:29–35). When Moses returns from speaking with God on the mountain or in the meeting tent, EVV have his face “shining.” He is like someone who has been out in the sun and returns suntanned, or someone who has spent time in the company of their loved one and returns with new light in their eyes and a new sheen on their face. He is so redolent of God that people hesitate to come near him. He looks as dangerous as the mountain itself. The story more literally says that the skin of Moses’ face develops horns (Ex 34:29, 30, 35).[742]  Perhaps the brightness shining from his face takes the shape of hornlike rays, though the language is allusive.[743]  But elsewhere in the First Testament horns are a symbol of strength and majesty (e.g., 1 Sam 2:1, 10; 1 Kings 22:11), and elsewhere in the Middle East they are a symbol of deity.[744]  So horns on Moses’ face would suggest strength, power and majesty—derived from an audience with God. The hornedness, whatever its nature, frightens people, but Moses encourages them to come near so they can hear what he says in God’s name. The passage particularly emphasizes the speaking in God’s name that issued from Moses’ experience. Subsequently Moses covers his face, removing the covering only when he goes for his next audience.[745]  The motif signifies the possibility of the people’s representative speaking with God face to face (Ex 33:11); this affects his face. It is not possible for the whole people to do that, to their relief. If even Moses did not enter the inner sanctuary (Ex 40:34–35), perhaps his hearing took place in the outer sanctuary, protected by the intervening curtain from contact with Yhwh in splendor. In a formal sense this again contradicts the statement that Moses and God spoke face to face and that Moses saw Yhwh’s form, but once more that helps to underline the subtle points that need to be made. Moses could truly meet with God, but not in such a way as to be annihilated. Talk in terms of the face and the splendor, like the name and the aide, are all forms of “spiritualization of the theophany,”[746]  ways of avoiding naivety in speaking of God’s self-manifestation, but keeping an awareness that there is something real here.

6.6 Yhwh’s Dilemma: Punishment and Mercy

The Sinai story also discusses another fundamental theological question: What stance does God take to the sin of the people of God, and what does the sin and the stance imply about the ultimate basis and security of the people’s relationship with God? The question implicitly arises as soon as the Sinai story opens, as Israel camps before the mountain and Yhwh outlines new terms for their mutual relationship and introduces into the nature of that relationship a stress on Israel’s response. It becomes explicit through the making of the gold calf: How is Yhwh to respond to the people’s unfaithfulness? The question runs through the whole history of Israel and the church’s history. Once again one simple answer is insufficient to do justice to these questions, and Exodus 32–34 comprises a series of vignettes suggesting a number of contrasting but complementary approaches. Like any relationship, the relationship between Yhwh and Israel cannot be governed by formulas. Like an unfaithful husband, when Israel imperils that relationship, it cannot predict what effect that will have on the relationship. Like a wife, Yhwh has good reason for a number of possible responses. Israel cannot predict what Yhwh’s response will be.

Divine and Human Dilemma

Greek tragedy and Greek philosophy discuss the way we are sometimes torn between two different ethical commitments, both making legitimate demands upon us.[747]  Is it possible to resolve “Euthyphro’s dilemma,” removing the sting from this experience in the conviction that in any situation there must be only one finally-binding demand?[748]  There is indeed such a thing as the right action, yet this does not take away from the reality and sadness of its involving our having to do the “lesser evil.” We cannot avoid doing something wrong. The First Testament incorporates no tragic human stories like those of Agamemnon, Cleon or Antigone faced with such ethical choices, but it does portray God in ways that recall such stories.

A theological factor may account for both the absence of the human stories and the astonishment of the divine story. The First Testament knows that Yhwh is the only God. Agamemnon’s dilemma involved deciding whether to obey Zeus or Artemis, while Socrates sought to resolve Euthyphro’s dilemma by declaring as obligatory only the duties on which all the gods agree; such considerations cannot arise in the First Testament. The occasion when we may feel dilemma should arise is the moment when Abraham is bidden to sacrifice Isaac, but it does not do so because the entirety of deity bids the act. The only tension that could arise is that between the divine will and the human will.

The fact that Yhwh alone is God also means that Yhwh can and does feel the tensions human beings do not have reason to feel. There are a number of occasions when the story overtly reflects this dynamic, and a number of others where it is unmentioned but where an awareness of it helps us understand why the story works the way it does. It is overt when the First Testament refers to Yhwh having a change of mind, in response to prayer or to other events on the human plane, and when it explicitly talks of tension within Yhwh (see Hos 11) or speaks of Yhwh’s “alien” work (Is 28:21) or describes Yhwh acting “not from the heart” (Lam 3:33). These link with the two-sided nature of Yhwh’s self-characterization in Exodus 34:6–7, taken up in other passages, and with the story of Abraham’s arguing with God in Genesis 18:16–33 as we rather think he should subsequently argue in Genesis 22. Awareness of such inevitable tension within the one God helps us understand the apparent volatility and unpredictability that feature within God’s character in the First Testament story.

The First Testament’s lack of stories about human beings trying to handle situations of ethical conflict may seem a shortcoming, but then it never implies that the stories of people such as Abraham and Sarah or Moses and Miriam are there to provide us with ethical example or instruction. It does portray human beings challenged to live as people made in God’s image, and it bids Israel be holy like Yhwh (Lev 19:2). It is Yhwh, not Moses or Miriam, whom people are to imitate. And Genesis 1–Leviticus 18 has given us an interim impression of what Yhwh’s holiness is like; the rest of the First Testament will fill out the picture. It tells us that in particular it is the holiness of one who lives with tensions such as those between punishment and mercy, between commitment to the world and commitment to Israel, between a vision for how things should be and an allowance for how things are.

The story of Israel’s deliverance revealed something of Israel’s shortcomings as it complained about its lot in Egypt and during the journey to Sinai, and the instructions in Exodus 20–23 presuppose some of the problems that will arise in its community life. Yet the events at the bottom of Sinai and the instructions about the sanctuary from the top of Sinai did not draw attention to either of these or attempt to provide for them. No sacrifices for sin were offered at the bottom of the mountain, and the instructions for the sanctuary do not link it with the need for the people to find forgiveness. The instructions allow for shortcomings that will attach to the people’s worship, but they imply that God may be trusted to be forgiving with regard to these—they require no offering (Ex 28:38). In the New Testament, Hebrews makes sin its focus of attention on the sanctuary and its rites, in providing a theological interpretation of the significance of Christ’s death in terms of atonement, but concern with sin and atonement is not central to the sanctuary itself. The sanctuary will be the place where God deigns to dwell and speak, where Israel expresses its commitment and its desire for fellowship with God, and also where Israel seeks forgiveness. But the revelation is not preoccupied by the last of these. Israel is confident of God’s mercy in a way that Christians often are not.

The dynamics do change when at the foot of Sinai point-by-point Israel is doing the opposite of what God specifies on the top. It is then that the story offers its series of possible responses to the sin of the people of God.

Destroy, Devastate, Abandon, Draw Back?

God might simply destroy them and start again with Moses, who has not been implicated in their infidelity (Ex 32:7–14). The facing of that possibility makes “the dialogue between God and Moses atop Mount Sinai about whether Israel will live or die … the climactic episode in Hebrew history.” They have escaped Pharaoh, but will they survive to make history?[749]  God says to Moses, “I will make you into a great nation” (Ex 32:10). The words repeat words in Genesis 12:2, except that “you” is emphasized.[750]  Yhwh will turn Moses into a new Abraham. Moses points out the objections to this ploy. It will mean surrendering rather quickly, letting the effort of bringing the people out of Egypt turn out to have been a waste, bringing discredit on Yhwh before the Egyptians and going back on the commitment to Israel’s ancestors.

Is this not to flee from God to God, to appeal from God to God? And is it not the case that in this flight, this appeal of Moses, God finds Himself supremely and most profoundly understood and affirmed, that in a sense Moses has prayed, or rather demanded, from the very heart of God Himself?[751]

Yhwh agrees that starting over is not a serious option. The story thus promises that there is nothing that can make Yhwh cast Israel off. The worst imaginable sin is to go back on the most fundamental requirement of one’s relationship with God within moments of having accepted these requirements, so if this cannot make God cast Israel off, surely nothing can. A Christian might think that refusing to acknowledge the Messiah is a worse sin; Paul’s argument in Romans 9–11 implies that neither can this make God cast Israel off.

That would also implicitly exclude a second possibility to which Moses points in his subsequent prayer, that God might include in the people’s destruction the person who was not implicated (Ex 32:30–33). “If you could carry their sin.… If not, do erase me from the book that you wrote” (Ex 30:32). If the people must perish, Moses wishes to die with them. But Yhwh cannot grant that prayer. “Whoever has sinned against me, I will erase him from my book” (Ex 30:33). Yhwh punishes only people who are guilty and will not involve other people in the punishment for wrongdoing they were not involved in. Yhwh is affirming the point Abraham pressed (Gen 18:23). This unwillingness either raises questions about some Christian theories of atonement or indicates that God’s self-treatment is tougher than God’s treatment of us.

Yhwh might take action against an entire generation if an entire generation were guilty. In a moment Yhwh does send an epidemic on the people as a whole (Ex 32:34–35), and the principle of acting against a generation but keeping faith with the people as a whole will be taken further in Numbers 13–14 and in Romans 9–11. It is a fact of experience that whole families, communities and nations do get sucked into an action. At the same time, notwithstanding Yhwh’s words to Moses, it is a fact of experience that whole families, communities and nations pay the price for wrongdoing from which they might personally disassociate themselves. Here the possibility of there being people other than Moses who disassociated themselves from the making of the calf is ignored. Exodus sees God involved in such facts about how life works.

Yhwh might decide not to go with the people and to give up on the people where they are. In his first prayer Moses envisages the possibility that God might give up on the intention to take them to their land (Ex 32:13). But what God wants to do is forget the whole business and proceed with taking the people on (Ex 32:34a). Essentially God thus agrees to Moses’ plea for God to carry the people’s sin. God indeed intends to fulfill the purpose for which Israel came out of Egypt. Yhwh’s aide will lead the people, as promised before the sin (Ex 23:20–23). The aide is the embodiment of Yhwh’s name (Ex 23:21), and thus of Yhwh’s nature as the one who is there with the people as their help, deliverance and means of success in any situation in which they need it. The presence of Yhwh’s aide means the presence of Yhwh.

Yhwh might decide to take a step back from Israel. Immediately after reaffirming the intention to take them on to their land, Yhwh makes a contrary point about leading them via the aide, that this implies withdrawing from the previous close degree of association with Israel (Ex 33:1–3). Now Yhwh’s aide is seen as an inferior replacement for Yhwh in person. It was always the case that the manifestation of Yhwh’s holiness and splendor is an awesome and potentially dangerous affair. That holiness has something of the dangerous power of nuclear energy or electricity.[752]  We cannot mess with them. After the act of rebellion, that danger is doubled. There is not only a metaphysical gulf between God and humanity, the gulf of which both parties were aware in the early days at Sinai. The people’s turning their backs on Yhwh and Yhwh’s responsive turning from the people has created a religious gulf between the parties. Yhwh will fulfill the purpose formulated long ago to take the people to their land, but will do so through an aide rather than being personally involved. Yhwh will go with the people (Ex 33:14–16), but not in the same way as had been intended.[753]  This declaration even raises the question whether the making of the calf undoes Yhwh’s proposal for a mobile dwelling by means of which Yhwh will accompany the people on their journey. Perhaps Yhwh intends to stay at Sinai, after all, and leave the people with the presence of an aide.

The difficulty is not exactly that Yhwh no longer wishes to associate so closely with the people. Yhwh more resembles a mother who bids her children to get to their rooms or she will thrash them: she does not want to do that, but it is what she will find herself doing if she continues to be confronted by them in their rebelliousness. The gold calf incident has exposed the people as “stiff-necked.” Further resistance and rebellion is bound to follow—as events will comprehensively demonstrate. The response Yhwh showed in Exodus 32:10 (where the description of the people as stiff-necked previously came) is also bound to follow. It cannot be assumed that Moses will always be able to prevail on Yhwh not to “consume” the people (Ex 33:3; cf. Ex 32:10) during their journey toward their land. Even if Yhwh never consumes them all at once, a series of chastisements like the epidemic would eventually have the same effect. And Yhwh does not want to have to act in that way. So both people and Yhwh need some distance from each other, as a disobeyed mother or a betrayed wife may need some distance from the children or husband whom she still loves, especially when she has the kitchen knives at hand. Paradoxically (or not), the reality of a special commitment to Israel on Yhwh’s part puts Israel into an especially dangerous position before Yhwh (Amos 3:2). Israel has to keep reflecting on this fact in the course of its ongoing life, and it also provides a clue to some of the vicissitudes of the church’s experience.

Love and Toughness

The opposite impression is conveyed by the declaration, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion” (Ex 33:19). The context confirms the assumption suggested by other occurrences of this idiom, that the words do not imply that Yhwh reserves the right to limit the expression of grace, but that Yhwh insists on being gracious to “everyone to whom/on whom I will be gracious.”[754]  Their declaration is embodied in the act that follows. Having watched Moses shatter the stones bearing the Ten Words, which were central to the basis of the covenant, Yhwh instructs him to cut two more stones on which Yhwh will reinscribe them (Ex 34:1–4). As happened after the flood, Yhwh makes a commitment that issues from realism in grace and compassion and takes account of human perversity, rather than depending on human commitment.

The Ten Words themselves emphasized the punishment that would follow on wrongdoing (Ex 20:2–6), and near the end of the instructions in Exodus 20–23 Yhwh warned that the aide who accompanies the people on their journey would not carry their rebellions. Yhwh then chillingly added “because my name is in him” (Ex 23:21). The words would seem to imply that notwithstanding any merciful inclination Yhwh’s aide might have, Yhwh’s character as revealed and reflected in Yhwh’s name rules out any possibility of forgiveness. If so, things now change. The situation is worse than any envisaged by Exodus 20–23, in that the people have breached the very first of the Ten Words, and have done this in Yhwh’s actual presence and before they have even begun that journey in the company of Yhwh’s aide. Yet Moses has successfully challenged Yhwh to be more merciful than had been threatened. This other aspect to Yhwh’s name or character now receives emphasis in a formulation that reverses the order and the balance of Exodus 20:5–6. Yhwh had promised to make proclamation in the name Yhwh (Ex 33:19), and now does so.

Yhwh, Yhwh, God compassionate and gracious, long-tempered and big in commitment and trustworthiness, extending commitment to thousands [of generations], carrying wrongdoing, rebellion, and failure, but certainly not acquitting, attending to the wrongdoing of parents on children and grandchildren, on those of the third and fourth [generation]. (Ex 34:6–7)

God is not only able to be active, decisive, self-sufficient, controlling, tough and unchanging, but also to be acted upon, relational, flexible, sensitive, vulnerable and risk-taking.[755]  Yhwh combines love and toughness. The first part of this self-characterization develops the exposition of what Yhwh’s goodness looks like (Ex 33:19), making explicit that it includes the willingness to carry the people’s wrongdoing. When Moses had raised the question whether Yhwh would do that (Ex 32:32), Yhwh had not explicitly responded, but now does so. Both the renewed commitment to taking the people on to their land and the reinscribing of the Ten Words reflect a willingness to carry the people’s wrongdoing. More commonly the verb is translated “forgive,” though that translation obscures the idiom. If we decide not to retaliate when someone has done wrong to us, it involves our “carrying” their wrongdoing, like a lender carrying their debt or a pack animal carrying a load they impose. It is not clear whether the idea is that God takes the wickedness away with him or bears the burden of it. The compassion and grace that are willing to carry wrongdoing are the foundation of the people’s renewed relationship with God.

Yhwh Seals a Covenant

Yhwh further seals a covenant in this connection (Ex 34:10). Although Yhwh has implied that the people’s relationship with Yhwh depends on their keeping Yhwh’s covenant (Ex 19:5) and Moses has implied that in some sense covenant-sealing was going on earlier (Ex 24:8), only now does Yhwh speak of sealing a covenant. A covenant was unnecessary in Eden and became necessary only after the reality of human rebelliousness had emerged. To maintain a commitment to humanity in that situation was more complicated than was previously the case and required Yhwh to resolve an internal tension in one way rather than the other, to let compassion win out over toughness. The covenant in Genesis 9 represents a dedication to doing that. The covenant in Exodus 34 similarly comes about after the reality of the rebelliousness of the people of God has emerged. Once more Yhwh has to handle equivocal feelings toward Israel. There are reasons to be compassionate and reasons to be tough. God is again resolved to let compassion win out over toughness, because the former is nearer the heart of God’s character. Once again the making of a covenant represents a commitment to do that.

As the people were already in a covenant relationship with Yhwh on the basis of Yhwh’s commitment to their ancestors (Ex 2:24; 6:4–5), this might be termed a “new covenant.” It represents a reworking of the covenant with the ancestors. If we do think in terms of a covenant in Exodus 19–24, then the sequence is as follows: In Genesis 17 God makes a covenant that says, “I will fulfill promises for you; I look for you to respond by being wholly committed to me, though I make no specific requirements except the circumcising of male children.” In Exodus 19–24 God makes a covenant that says, “I have begun to fulfill my promises to you; I look for you to respond by revering me alone, in the way I determine, and your relationship with me now depends on your keeping my covenant.” In Exodus 34 God makes a covenant that says, “Although I have begun to fulfill my promises to you, it is evident that I am not going to get the response I hoped for, and therefore the basis of the covenant will simply be my act of commitment to you. I still charge you to live in accordance with the teaching I give you. But I reaffirm the arrangement that obtained with your ancestors. The covenant consists in my making promises to you.”

The covenant is thus remade, but there is thus no further ceremony whereby Israel signifies its commitment to the covenant, any more than was the case with Noah or Abraham. The covenant is made by the act of Yhwh’s undertaking the commitment, when Yhwh says “I am sealing a covenant” (Ex 34:10). Yhwh does not even say “I am making a covenant with you” (so NIVI). There is no covenant partner in this covenant. Yhwh simply says, “I hereby make a covenant” (NRSV; though contrast Ex 34:27). The covenant is Yhwh’s bare declaration of intent.

The building of the sanctuary in Exodus 35–40 implies the same emphasis on God’s grace and compassion. The detailed repetition of material from Exodus 25–31 could look redundant, but it might seem likely that God’s desire to dwell in Israel’s midst had evaporated after the making of the gold calf. Despite having shattered the two stones, Moses does not tear up the architectural plans for the sanctuary, but rather begins now to pass them on to the people, and the sanctuary is built. The end of the account recalls the end of the story of creation, when God speaks day by day, and day by day the world comes into being in response. At the end God then looks at everything and likes it. Having blessed the human beings who came at the end of the process, God closes off the process with a blessing, on the sabbath—the gift/obligation whose importance was emphasized by Yhwh at the end of giving instructions for the dwelling, and by Moses before Israel implemented them. “Then the cloud covered the meeting tent and Yhwh’s splendor filled the dwelling. Moses was not able to go into the meeting tent, because the cloud dwelt on it and Yhwh’s splendor filled the dwelling” (Ex 40:34–35).

The instructions about offerings in Leviticus 1–7 imply related points. In Exodus 25–31 Yhwh commissioned the building of the sanctuary and the inauguration of its priesthood, but Exodus 35–40 have related only the former, while the latter comes in Leviticus 8–9. Yhwh’s instructions about the offerings that priests superintend appropriately precede that narrative. The instructions indicate that Yhwh still welcomes the whole offerings, fellowship offerings and grain offerings of which Genesis and Exodus spoke. The people’s rebellion does not make Yhwh unwilling to receive and welcome their offerings or unwilling to join in celebration with them.

Sacramental Cleansing

The instructions for these offerings do add a new note: Yhwh provides sacramental means for dealing with the people’s failure. A whole offering is now accepted “to cleanse/atone for you” (Lev 1:3–4). Previously there has been no link between whole offering and the need for forgiveness and restoration, but now it is more explicit that people come to worship as sinners. The instructions for the whole offering take that into account and work its implications into their formulation. An analogous significance comes to attach to the burning of incense. Previously there was no link between incense and atonement. Subsequently Moses will instinctively realize that burning incense, a form of enacted intercession, can be a means of making atonement, of prevailing on Yhwh not to punish people’s wrongdoing (Num 16:46–48).

The instructions also make provision for purification offerings and reparation offerings (Lev 4–5). These are not designed to cope with an act of fundamental rebellion such as Israel undertook at Sinai. They do indicate a recognition that failure and infringement will form part of the people’s life, and an intention that this should not become a barrier between Israel and Yhwh. Failures and infringements can be owned, acknowledged and handled as part of this relationship, and one way this can be effected is the sacramental. The offering gives external expression to the people’s recognition of failure and constitutes a symbolic way of making up for what has happened. Yhwh’s providing the way to do this shows that Yhwh does not wish these events to become an obstacle between people and God, while the people’s making the offerings provides the way for them to show they share this desire.

The instructions for the annual Atonement Day (Lev 16)[756]  have analogous implications. While emphasizing adherence to Yhwh’s biddings about worship, they recognize that as the original creation was marred through events in the garden, so the microcosm of creation is marred through events in the dwelling. This will not be a one-time problem. There will be other acts like those of Nadab and Abihu. But Yhwh does not leave matters there. The annual purifying is “a ritual of restoration—it serves to restore the community to its prescribed and founded state. Thus, restoration will include in this context the idea of refounding—a return to the founded order of creation.”[757]  This fits with the fact that the purifying comes at the beginning of the calendar year in autumn. Each year people and dwelling will need a comprehensive purifying, and Yhwh provides the sacramental means for handling failure and infringement there.

6.7 Facing Up to Infidelity

So Israel’s infidelity raises the question, what response will come from Yhwh? From the range of possible reactions, Israel and its leaders can never be sure what that response will be. But that draws attention to another question about response that Israel’s infidelity raises. Given that it cannot second-guess Yhwh’s response, what is Israel itself to do? What is its leadership to do when the people goes back on its commitment? Events at Sinai again suggest a number of possibilities.

Pleading, Shattering, Destroying, Sidestepping, Executing

The first response of a leader to the sin of the people of God is to plead for the people along the lines suggested by Moses’ prayer, expecting to change God’s mind if it needs changing (Ex 32:11–14). Moses’ vocation involves arguing with the people and also arguing with God. “He is rather more successful with God than with the people.”[758]

Getting God to rule out the people’s destruction does not mean their unfaithfulness has no devastating implications for the relationship between God and Israel. Moses’ next action recognizes that. He shatters the stones bearing the Ten Words (Ex 32:15–19). He shares Yhwh’s burning anger and allows this to express itself in another way than destroying the people. “Seeing the children of Israel threatened with genocide, Moses finally chooses leadership. In what appears foreshortened into a single, breathless action, he identifies with his people, refuses to be separated from them, offers to die with them, rejects the opportunity to found his own line, and, by punishing Israel, accepts the responsibility of self-government.” Moses takes the law into his own hands.[759]  The Ten Words are the Declaration to be put into the chest in the sanctuary, the symbol of the people’s commitment and of the mutual relationship between them and Yhwh. Shattering the stones symbolizes the shattering of the relationship. This need not mean it is terminated. It does recognize how fundamentally it is at risk.

Moses goes on to destroy the image (Ex 32:20), rather dramatically burning it, grounding it, scattering it on water and making the people drink it. There is no doubt that if the relationship is to be mended, the cause of its shattering must be removed.

Aaron’s response to events is to sidestep responsibility (Ex 32:21–24), though he begins with an exhortation to Moses not to give in to his burning anger that ironically echoes Moses’ exhortation to Yhwh. Moses assumes that the people must have put terrible pressure on Aaron. His questioning recalls God’s questioning of Adam, Eve and Cain (Gen 3–4), and Aaron condemns himself by his answer in the same way as those original sinners did. Moses knows (because of what God told him) that the calf did not emerge from the fire unbidden, and the reader knows that Aaron was more involved in its casting than he implies with his disingenuous “I threw [the gold] in the fire and this calf came out” (Ex 32:24).

Moses’ next response is to have a number of the people killed (Ex 32:25–29). Perhaps the story was preserved to show how the Levites’ enthusiastic willingness to slaughter their sons, brothers, friends and fellows made them—somewhat paradoxically—fit people to be ordained to the ministry. But in the context of this narrative theological discussion, it suggests another response to the faithlessness of the people of God. The story implies that the people killed were involved in the rebellion and in this sense were liable to punishment, but it gives no indication that they were distinctively flagrant offenders or leaders in the affair. It thus rather suggests that the people may be cleansed by a kind of pruning. A catastrophe such as the exile (like the fall of the Tower of Siloam or the Twin Towers) did not affect people who were distinctively sinful. The representative punishment of some people can avail for the whole. The action makes clear that punitive action is necessary without requiring the entire people to be destroyed.

In a later story Aaron’s grandson takes similar action. God is already burning with anger at Israelite worship of Moabite deities, through involvement with Moabite women, when an Israelite publicly brings a Midianite woman into the camp and takes her into his tent. Phinehas kills the couple in bed and thereby atones for the people and brings an end to the epidemic affecting it (Num 25:1–15). The form of execution, by sword or spear, suggests a link with the ritual of covenant-making. If it should break the covenant, Israel has asked that it should be cut up as the animal in a covenant-making was cut up (Gen 15:17–21; cf. Jer 34:18). That happens.

Admittedly, Exodus 32:25–29 does not say whether the pruning was God’s commission. We have only Moses’ word for it. Like the shattering of the stones and the destruction of the image and, for that matter, the prayer for the people and the further prayer that now follows, this is Moses’ own initiative. Some of those parallels, at least, suggest that in itself the lack of divine commission does not imply critique of Moses’ action. Perhaps they suggest that on occasion leaders have to pray or act on the basis of their convictions or hunches, and may never know whether they did right in doing so. Phinehas, too, acts on his own initiative, but he is commended by Yhwh for turning away Yhwh’s wrath and making atonement (Num 25:10–13).

Embodying Repentance

On Israel’s part, a proper response to awareness of its rebellion includes embodying in its own life its grief at what it has discovered about itself (Ex 33:3–6). At the Red Sea, dressing in finery was an appropriate sign of celebration. After the event at the foot of the mountain, mourning is more appropriate. So Yhwh bids the people remove their finery, and they willingly do so. That offers a hopeful sign of their owning what has happened. Perhaps the point is taken further in the immediately subsequent story: everyone who sought guidance from Yhwh used to go out to do so at the meeting tent outside the camp, and all the people would bow down when Yhwh came down to speak with Moses there (Ex 33:7–8). The building of the sanctuary in Exodus 35–40 emphasizes human obedience as it emphasizes divine grace and compassion. The detailed repetition of material in Exodus 25–31 indicates how the people did exactly as Yhwh prescribed: The obedience contrasts with the events at the bottom of the mountain while Yhwh was dictating these instructions. First, the people offer the materials for building with such generosity that they have to be told to stop (Ex 36:2–7). It is the best sign of hope they have themselves provided. Time after time the story notes how the people did “as Yhwh had commanded Moses” (e.g., Ex 39:1, 5, 7, 21, 26, 29, 31). The process comes to a climax with the repeated conclusion, “the Israelites did it in accordance with everything that Yhwh had commanded Moses—that was how they did it” (Ex 39:32, 42). For all Yhwh’s continuing commitment, the sanctuary would not come into being without this. It embodies a response to Yhwh’s words of commission and promise that quite contrasts with their act of rebellion in making the gold calf. Yhwh has not made obedience a condition of their keeping their position as Yhwh’s people, and now they make the free response of obedience. That functions to inspire readers to a like obedience—not because their relationship with Yhwh depends on it, but because it is the right thing.

Christian readers are inclined to wonder whether such an external obedience issues from the heart. Is the story a typical embodiment of a focus on the externals of religion when the real issues lie in the heart? First Testament faith confronts that stance and says we are spirits and bodies. The external is as important as the internal. God is not interested in what we feel inside independently of its finding expression in externals. But the story also notes that the people’s external obedience indeed corresponds to their attitude of heart and spirit. Men and women came with the offerings the work needed, “everyone whose heart carried them and everyone whose spirit volunteered them” (Ex 35:21). In case we think this might be quite a small number of people within the community, the narrative spells out that this actually meant everyone (e.g., Ex 35:23, 24, 25). And “Moses saw that they had done all the work as Yhwh had commanded—that was how they had done it. And Moses blessed them” (Ex 39:43).

Yet that is all the story suggests by way of a coming to terms with what has happened. There is no indication that Israel has deeply repented and no account of a renewed commitment to Yhwh. The commitment expressed in the sanctuary construction, too, will turn out to be short-lived. The pressures of the journey will bring out a different response of heart (cf. Deut 1:28). Moses’ words underline the ambiguity of the situation, taking further the parallel with the flood story: “Because this is a stiff-necked people, forgive our wrongdoing and our failure” (Ex 34:9).[760]  Moses is picking up Yhwh’s own description of the people, but inverting its implications.[761]  After they made the gold calf, their being stiff-necked was Yhwh’s reason for annihilating them (Ex 32:9–10)—as human wickedness had been the reason for the flood in Genesis 6. Further, even if they were to stay in existence and continue on their journey, in Exodus 33:1–5 Yhwh made it a reason for keeping some distance from them. On the basis of Yhwh’s own self-revelation (Ex 34:6–7), Moses now challenges Yhwh to treat the people in accordance with the precedent established after the flood in connection with humanity in general—for Israel is no better. Moses knows it is no use offering the people’s commitment as a basis for Yhwh’s commitment. Yhwh’s commitment has to be independent of that.

Offering Atonement

The day after the making of the calf, Moses pleads for the people’s forgiveness. The passage is elliptical.

“You have committed a great sin, but now I will go up to Yhwh. Perhaps I may atone for your sin.” So Moses returned to Yhwh and said, “O, this people has committed a great sin and made for themselves gods of gold. But now, if you could carry their sin … If not, do erase me from the book that you wrote. (Ex 32:30–32)

Moses is vague about what he means by atoning for the people’s sin. All he does is ask God to forgive the people, more literally to “carry” their sin.[762]  Perhaps the implication is that Moses atones simply by persuading Yhwh to carry sin. If Yhwh will not do so, the relationship will be permanently shattered, and if that happens, Moses has no interest in continuing the relationship on his own. He is not asking that Yhwh may forgive the people on the basis of erasing him from the book, as if offering himself was a means of atoning for the people. His point is rather that God might as well erase him from the book along with Israel. In his previous prayer, he identified with God and pleaded with God on the basis of God’s purpose and God’s reputation. Here he identifies with Israel and argues with God on that basis. His proposal actually reverses Yhwh’s earlier one that Yhwh should abandon the people and start again with him (see Ex 32:10). In his response to that declaration of intent he had made no reference to this feature of it. Now he declares he will have nothing to do with it. If Yhwh will not have Israel, Yhwh cannot have Moses.

Moses does not succeed in changing God’s mind and getting God to do what he urges, as he did earlier. Yet God’s subsequent commitment to taking the people on with the guidance of an aide may be Yhwh’s alternative decision, a response to Moses’ urging. If so, though Yhwh does not agree to Moses’ proposal, his prayer again makes a substantial difference to Yhwh’s action. That might parallel Abraham’s prayer for Sodom, which does not get Sodom released from destruction, but may get Lot and his family delivered (cf. Gen 19:29).

The self-revelation in Exodus 34 made clear that there is another side to the divine nature that makes Yhwh attend to people’s wrongdoing. It is a subordinate side, but it is still part of who Yhwh is. How can Yhwh both carry wrongdoing and punish wrongdoing? Presumably it is people who acknowledge their wrongdoing and turn from it whose wrongdoing is then carried. Persisting in wrongdoing carries terrible consequences extending beyond the present generation. If a later generation turns from those patterns of life, it will doubtless find forgiveness, but the implication is that Yhwh may not be inclined to draw it to such change. The story of the generations from Manasseh through Josiah to the fall of Jerusalem illustrates the dynamics of this process. Yet the story of Yhwh’s restoration of Judah from exile shows that Yhwh is not locked into requiring repentance before people find forgiveness, for there Yhwh declares, “I am wiping away your acts of rebellion like thick cloud, your failings like thunder cloud. Now turn to me, because I am delivering you” (Is 44:22). Forgiveness is there the basis for repentance, not the other way round. A people that does repent will certainly find Yhwh carries its wrongdoing (see Jonah); a people that does not repent cannot assume Yhwh will do that, but doing so may be one way Yhwh draws it back.

Dependence on Yhwh’s Wonders

After the self-revelation, Yhwh spells out the content of another promissory covenant. It again refers to the people’s coming into possession of a land (Ex 34:11), but first it speaks of wonders that will unfold as Israel moves to its promised land and as it lives its life there (Ex 34:10). The talk in terms of “wonders” (niplāʾôt) is both familiar and innovative. Yhwh had promised wonders in Egypt (Ex 3:20) and Moses has praised Yhwh as one who “does a wonder” (peleʾ, Ex 15:11). The renegotiating and reaffirming of the covenant in Exodus 19–24 was thus based on the fact that Yhwh was not merely a wonder-promiser but an actual wonder-doer. But this covenant has already proved ineffective. The covenant cannot be based on wonders Yhwh has done and commitment Israel offers. It can be based only on wonders Yhwh will do in the future, irrespective of Israel’s lack of commitment. These will astound the people among whom Israel lives (Ex 34:10).

The wonders do demand that Israel commit itself to Yhwh, in ways newly restated (Ex 34:11–27). This restatement warns Israel of some aspects of the consequences of disobedience. They need to keep in mind the fact that Yhwh is a passionate God, one who looks for exclusive commitment and is prepared to take action when it is not forthcoming. Such passion is part of Yhwh’s nature, part of what the name Yhwh means (Ex 34:14; cf. Ex 20:5). It underlies both the commitment and compassion as well as the intolerance of unfaithfulness. There is a danger that the people will be ensnared into forms of worship that have already antagonized Yhwh (Ex 34:12, 15–16). But it was not because Yhwh had not been specific enough in the Ten Words or what followed that Aaron and the people found themselves going wrong in what they could claim was a gray area. Yhwh had made things clear, and the likelihood is that more clarity will simply mean more guilt, as Paul will later note (Rom 3; 5:12–21; 7). Any hint of conditionality that might have appeared in Exodus 20–23 has disappeared, and its place is taken by further promises of Yhwh’s commitment, of what Yhwh will do (as well as Ex 34:10, see Ex 34:11, 24). Obedience is still absolutely required, but it is required because it is the right thing, not because it is a condition for the covenant relationship continuing.[763]

Indeed, the talk of wonders precedes the challenge to obedience. Reading it in light of what precedes as well as what follows would suggest that among the wonders that will unfold and astound the people among whom Israel lives is this very combination of the expectation that they obey Yhwh with the fact that their failure to do so does not lead to their being cast off. Micah 7 may have read the exodus-Sinai story thus: “As in the days when you came out of Egypt, I will show them wonders,” and the nations will see and acknowledge, Yhwh says. And the people respond, “Who is a God like you, one who carries wrongdoing and passes over rebellion for what remains of his possession,” who does not stay angry but prefers to show commitment and compassion? (Micah 7:15–20).[764]  The flood story shows that the world stays in being on this basis. Israel’s life will embody before people’s eyes this fact about being human. It would be in keeping with this that Yhwh’s promise is actually to do wonders that have never previously been created (bārāʾ) anywhere (Ex 34:10).[765]  It is a promise that will be taken up in another context arising out of Israel’s rebelliousness: Exactly the same verb form recurs in Isaiah 48:7 as the prophet speaks of “new things” being created. Yhwh is committed to taking the people on to their destiny in recognition of the fact that they are constitutionally inclined to rebellion, and he will take them with a commitment to “carry” that rebellion. This is an act of creation, one of extraordinary sovereign power that refuses to be frustrated by the intransigence of the raw material with which it works. It should indeed astound the peoples among whom Israel lives.

Priestly Infidelity

The point is made in a new way by the account of the fatal failure of Aaron’s older sons and by the instructions for the annual Atonement Day. The priests’ ordination already drew attention to the fact that they as well as the people need cleansing. It involved purification offerings for priests and people, and even the purifying of the altar. In their own persons they cannot be sure of preserving the distinctions that are their responsibility. But the story of their ordination concludes with mysterious “fire” emerging from Yhwh’s presence and consuming the elements in the offerings that distinctively belong to Yhwh, the whole offering and the fat. It is an awesome moment (Lev 9:24). But the next event about which we are told involves Aaron’s two sons burning incense before Yhwh’s presence in such a way as to offer “alien fire” (ʾēš zārâ). Yhwh had warned that “alien incense” should not be offered on the incense altar (Ex 30:9) but Nadab and Abihu offer such “alien fire” before Yhwh (Lev 10:1). That term does not occur elsewhere, but the context indicates the idea that there is proper fire, fire that is in place in the dwelling, and fire that does not belong there (cf. the instructions in Lev 16:12–13). Fire that is quite proper in ordinary contexts is improper in Yhwh’s dwelling, as work that is quite proper on ordinary days is improper on the sabbath. The two priests have not observed this distinction.

The offering of alien fire shows how original sin applies to the priesthood in particular as well as to the people in general. From the beginning the priesthood is affected by rebellion, as from the beginning the people is affected by rebellion. As much has been implied by those rites whereby the priesthood can be purified for its role in mediating worship and ministering to Yhwh, but the matter is underlined by the fact that the two priests immediately ignore one of Yhwh’s specific instructions for worship. Once more, there is no point in Yhwh simply casting off the priesthood, any more than is the case with the people. At the same time, the event cannot simply be ignored. Fire comes out from Yhwh’s presence and consumes them before Yhwh’s presence. Moses comments that this is what Yhwh meant by warning that “in people who are near me I will show myself holy and to the face of all the people I will show myself glorious” (Lev 10:3). The dwelling is designed to be a place where Yhwh’s holiness would be manifest on earth, but now Moses sees a new meaning in that declaration. Yhwh will achieve that in a positive way through their fulfilling their duties, or if necessary in a negative way through making them an example. The two priests pay the ultimate price for their infringement. Yhwh thus manifests holiness and splendor.

In response to that piece of theologizing, the boys’ father “was silent” (Lev 10:3 [766] ). It is a noise-some silence, a “resonant silence.”[767]  To judge from other occurrences of the verb dāmam, it is hardly the silence of resistance.[768]  Perhaps it suggests that Aaron “cannot defend his sons, but he certainly cannot disown them.”[769]  Given the way the scene reenacts the gold calf episode, perhaps he recognizes the afterlife of his own sin.[770]  Indeed, perhaps Aaron was not silent at all. Perhaps he wailed.[771]

Among other effects, such a story will stand as a warning not to treat ministers as if they are exempt from the rebellious inclinations of the people as a whole. It will be a warning that Israel has to heed in contexts such as the time of Eli or the building of the first or second temple, and one that the church has to heed.

6.8 Models of Servanthood

The exodus is God’s achievement, in the Passover Haggadah there is no mention of Moses, and the First Testament is not interested in Moses in his own right. “The life of Moses … is presented entirely in terms of the concerns and destiny of the people.” It is “a convenient historiographic form” for presenting the story of the people’s origins.[772]  Yet in Exodus–Deuteronomy Moses plays a crucial role. Yhwh brings the people out of Egypt, but Moses also brings the people out of Egypt. What theological implications emerge from his story?

Servanthood as Overarching Category

In the modern world the natural overarching category for considering Moses’ role would be “leadership.” But Moses is a prophet, a priest and a teacher, as well as a leader, and these roles are not subsets of leadership but parallels to it. If the First Testament has an overarching category to describe Moses, it is as Yhwh’s servant, which is much more commonly its actual term to describe him. It appears at key points, after the deliverance at the Red Sea when the people to come to trust Yhwh “and his servant Moses” (Ex 14:31) and at his death when it sums up his significance (Deut 34:5). It is his own self-description (Ex 4:10; Num 11:11; Deut 3:24), Yhwh’s description of him (Num 12:7, 8), and a frequent description in subsequent books (e.g., Josh 1:1, 2; 1 Kings 8:53; 2 Chron 1:3; Neh 1:7, 8; Ps 105:26; Dan 9:11; Mal 4:4; cf. Rev 15:3). It would be insufficiently radical to describe Moses as exercising servant leadership, but it is as Yhwh’s servant that Moses acts in leadership (e.g., Josh 1:1, 2) and in teaching (e.g., 2 Kings 21:8; Neh 1:7). Before Moses’ day, the term “Yhwh’s servant” was used once of Abraham and once of Jacob (Gen 26:24; 32:10 [[773]  11]), but as this is the First Testament’s overarching category for describing Moses, so Moses is the archetypal embodiment of a servant of Yhwh. He is servant first, leader or prophet or priest or teacher second.

There are several implications to the use of the category of servanthood. First, it draws attention to Moses’ subordination to Yhwh. One can make ideological use of the claim to be God’s servant, turning it into the basis for a self-serving pressure on people, but this process contains the seeds of its own deconstruction. Calling oneself God’s servant invites the test: Does this person’s activity look like service of Yhwh or does it look self-serving? The test for “leadership” is whether it is decisive, authoritative and effective, and such questions may then override other considerations. The test of servanthood is different. Moses does not speak of himself as Yhwh’s servant when he is trying to get the people to do as he says. In fact, he only describes himself as Yhwh’s servant in conversation with Yhwh, when he is trying to motivate Yhwh to do what he wants when he feels desperate. One might call this another form of ideological appropriation of the notion of being Yhwh’s servant, though again the process deconstructs. It is as servant of Yhwh that Moses eventually fails, when he does come to see himself as a leader, as responsible for his people. He thereby fails to maintain trust in Yhwh, to continue to sanctify Yhwh. To rebel and break faith is the opposite of being a servant.

Moses is not described as a servant of the people, but the description “servant of Yhwh” hints that he is on the same level as other Israelites, for all Israelites are servants of Yhwh. Admittedly the noun is applied to the people as a whole only once in Exodus–Deuteronomy, also on the eve of Moses’ death (Deut 32:36, 43), though the idea that the people’s vocation is to serve Yhwh is one that runs through the story.[774]  And we might compare the description of Moses as the most lowly or ordinary person who ever lived (Num 12:3).[775]

Nevertheless the term does exalt Moses. The servant of an important person becomes an important person by virtue of that relationship (cf. Is 41:8–10). Without using the term “servant,” Yhwh says “I am making you God/god to Pharaoh” (Ex 7:1). Moses represents Yhwh in a very strong sense. Elsewhere Yhwh uses it in rebuking Miriam and Aaron for questioning Moses’ position, and there too suggests an emphasis on the exalted status implied by the expression (Ex 12:7–8). It also has this implication in its many occurrences after Moses’ death, which far outnumber the occurrences within his life. Moses needs to be regarded as an important person after his death (when it is safer?).

In acting as Yhwh’s servant, Moses fulfills all four roles referred to above, though there is admittedly some arbitrariness involved in dividing his functions among them.

Leader

Moses is indeed a leader. When he kills the Egyptian on his first appearance as a grown man and next day tries to stop two Israelites fighting, one asks “who made you into a ruler and a leader over us?” (Ex 2:14). “Leader” is šōpēṭ, the term for the “judges” in the Book of Judges—but “leader” would be a better rendering. “Ruler” is śar, which suggests being the head or authority over somebody.[776]

Like the “judges,” Moses is somewhat like a king in authority and role, though not in constitutional position. A king’s vocation is to take decisive action to see that his people’s life is characterized by fairness and faithfulness. He has responsibility for mišpāṭ and ṣĕdāqâ. Moses shows some key qualities for such a vocation when he instinctively acts to rescue the victims of violence. He acts first on behalf of someone attacked by a person in authority, then on behalf of someone attacked by one of his fellows and later on behalf of people (specifically women) who are nothing to do with him and who are attacked by others (men) who are nothing to do with him. “Moses’ sense of justice transcends boundaries of nationality, gender, and kinship.”[777]  He is put in his position of leadership to confront outside powers that threaten Israel and to see that the people can live a life free of oppression and free to serve Yhwh. Within the people, he is responsible for seeing that the community’s life is lived in a fair and faithful, and thus united, fashion, though he has to be weaned from too much personal involvement in being a šōpēṭ (e.g., Ex 18:13–26). Commitment to decisive action toward fairness and faithfulness is the heart of leadership.

On the other hand, as there is a kind of randomness about God’s choice of Israel (Deut 7:7–8), it would not be surprising if the same were true of God’s choice of Moses. Perhaps if Moses had been better qualified, he would have had a less painful experience as leader, though this might not have meant—Yhwh would have had the task fulfilled better. Moses is not a Messiah, a larger-than-life figure. In due course he will need his father-in-law to make the obvious point that he cannot do the job he is trying to do, and needs to involve other people in it (Ex 18:13–26).

He does have the right parenthood: Yhwh was the God of his father (Ex 3:6; cf. Ex 15:2), and he had devout women who birthed him, took risks for him, loved him and took more risks for him. His life has been endangered and he exercises leadership only because he has been delivered from peril. As well as having a similar experience to that of his people, he later knows what it is to be a resident alien in a foreign land. He has experiences that make him open to other peoples, in that his upbringing is Egyptian and he is married to a Midianite, but he preserves his distinctiveness over against other peoples. When he took that action that led to his flight, he was in the midst of acting in a morally ambiguous way, as leaders often have to do. Perhaps he was indulging his machismo. Perhaps he never knew whether or not he acted rightly, though God certainly worked his personality and his act into the tapestry God was weaving. It is thus not clear whether all Moses’ instincts are exactly what God wants in a leader, but even if they are, they are not enough. Only years after his first acts as self-appointed leader does God actually commission him. His experiences in Midian play a significant role in shaping him, but his leadership also requires his proper drafting into Yhwh’s service.

The Exodus 3–4 account has features of a prophet’s designation as well as a leader’s commission, but Yhwh’s “appearing” to him (Ex 3:2, 16; 4:1, 5) is the mark of a leader rather than a prophet (e.g., Judg 6:12; 1 Kings 9:2).[778]  It is the basis on which he will appeal to the people to follow him. Moses has no doubt of being confronted by God and does not ask for a sign that God has been speaking to him—his experience has given him that. His summons is the summons of a prophet, but his task is the task of a leader, to bring the people out of Egypt (Ex 3:10–12). As a leader he is aware of having stood on holy ground and realized it is dangerous to look at God, and found that the attempt to say “no” to God does not work. God does not invite Moses to be involved in the work of deliverance.[779]  God’s mind is set on that central point.

Two images in Numbers suggest further facets of Moses’ leadership. Overcome by the people’s complaints at the hardships of their life on the way from Sinai to the promised land, Moses complains at the burden they are to him, as if he were a pack animal—or rather, the foster father or nurse or guardian who has to carry a child (Num 11:11–12). That is leadership. Subsequently, in connection with Joshua’s designation as his successor, Moses describes his role as that of the people’s shepherd (Num 27:15–23). As shepherd his task is to see that the flock has grass and water, by going out from the fold ahead of them in the morning and coming home ahead of them in the evening, and thus leading them out and leading them back home. His responsibility is to know where grass and water are, and to protect them from danger during their journey and their sojourn (cf. Ps 23; also Is 40:11).

English etymology suggests that a “leader” is someone who takes people somewhere by going in front of them, but we use the word to denote more specifically someone who sees where to go and inspires people to follow, and also to denote someone who makes decisions for people on the basis of having been appointed to do so. Moses’ leadership does not overlap very much with these understandings. Moses does have “authority” in connection with his shepherding, but the word for “authority” in Numbers 27:20 is hôd, which denotes personal prestige or status or honor rather than constitutional position. People obey him because of who he is rather than because of a position he holds. In Numbers 27 authority in the sense of mišpāṭ ([780]  “decision”) rests with Yhwh (Num 27:21). It is almost as if leadership actually belongs to God, not Moses. A symbol of this is the requirement that Joshua consult Yhwh through the senior priest about when the flock is to go out and when to come back. Another linguistic symbol of it is the fact that Yhwh is the one who exercises šĕpāṭîm, “decisive acts,” on Egypt and its gods (Ex 6:6; 7:4; 12:12; Num 33:4).

Yhwh’s Leadership and Moses’ Leadership

Yhwh’s leadership and Moses’ leadership are interwoven or are two sides of a coin. Yhwh personally takes on the task of bringing Israel out of Egypt, but also makes it Moses’ task (Ex 3:8, 10). Yhwh’s hand is stretched out to strike Egypt with wonders and bring Israel out and deliver them at the Red Sea (e.g., Ex 3:20; 7:4–5; 13:3, 9, 14, 16), but it is Moses’ hand that is visibly so stretched out (e.g., Ex 7:19; 9:22; 10:12, 21–22; 14:16, 21, 26–27). It is by the exercise of Moses’ hand that Yhwh’s hand is exercised. It is when Yhwh gives the visible indication of when to set out and when to come to rest that Moses leads the people on each stage of their journey, yet they take Hobab with them because he knows where to camp (Num 10:29), and it is Moses and Aaron who thus lead the people on their journey stage by stage (Num 10:11–13, 33–36; 33:1). Later, Yhwh goes before the people across the Jordan, and Joshua also does so (Deut 31:3). God does nothing except by means of Moses, but as leader, Moses never exercises any initiative.

Oddly, before he becomes a leader this was not so. Like the king’s daughter rescuing Moses from the Nile, Moses acts like God before God does—to put it the other way, God eventually acts as Moses has acted.[781]  First Moses sees the people’s oppression, then God does (Ex 2:11, 25). First Moses strikes the oppressor and kills him; then God does (Ex 2:12; 3:20; 9:15; 12:12–13, 29). First Moses delivers and rescues the shepherds (Ex 2:17, 19); then God delivers (Ex 14:13, 30; 15:2) and rescues (Ex 3:8; 6:6; 12:27; 18:4, 8–10). So perhaps God involves Moses in bringing Israel out of Egypt because Moses had the idea first. But once God gets involved, Moses does only what he is told. He then acts more as commander than agent, but without Moses giving the orders, nothing happens. Divine leadership and guidance and human leadership and insight are not mutually exclusive.

Why does Yhwh involve human leaders instead of bringing Israel out of Egypt without using Moses? God could have brought the people out on eagles’ wings, or at least on quails’ wings since there were evidently enough quails available (Ex 16:13; 19:4). God could have annihilated the Egyptian government and army without going through the process described in Exodus 3–15 (cf. 2 Kings 19). Indeed, God could have brought the people out without engaging in a conflict with the Egyptian government and without killing anyone (cf. 2 Kings 6:8–23). A little child could then have led Israel out of Egypt (cf. Is 11:6). There was no need for a leader like Moses. The story gives us no rationale for God’s procedure, though we might guess some reasons. Perhaps God simply likes to give human beings significant roles in the achieving of a purpose in the world: It is in keeping with the rationale for creating humanity. Perhaps God prefers not to work in supranaturalist ways. Perhaps it fits God’s aim, not that Israel should be utterly unlike other peoples but that it should demonstrate what peoplehood or nationhood could look like; peoplehood involves human leadership. Perhaps God wants to give the king opportunity to accede willingly to the divine insistence, and so tries to avoid overwhelming him by direct divine firepower. It is open to him to agree to let Israel go to celebrate their festival to Yhwh in the wilderness, which would be to acknowledge Yhwh’s lordship.

Working via a human leader does introduce complication and vulnerability into God’s achieving of anything. It is easier to do things oneself than to work via other people. Human leaders have to work that difficult way because of their own finitude—if they try to do everything themselves, they will not achieve much. Yhwh does not have that limitation. But human leaders also work the difficult way for the sake of the people through whom they work, out of respect for them and for their potential and out of a desire that they may have the same sense of achievement as the leader has when completing some task. Perhaps God works the difficult way for that reason. But working the difficult way risks other people not doing things as well as one would have done them, or not doing them at all.

The converse is that leadership is not fun. People who do not want Moses to act confront him, questioning his right to intervene in the life of the community and questioning his own actions (Ex 2:14). The political powers of his day attack him and he has to flee for his life. Finding that his leadership makes matters worse in the short term, people ask for God’s punishment on him (Ex 5:21). Broken in spirit and crushed by their experience of servitude, people cannot believe God has appeared to him to announce their deliverance (Ex 6:9). Perceiving that he has brought them to a dead end, people wish he had never led them anywhere (Ex 14:10–12; 16:1–3; 17:1–4). Even after people allegedly come to trust in Moses as well as in Yhwh (Ex 14:31), trust collapses quickly (as soon as Ex 15:24).

The rebellion at Sinai brings out further aspects of leadership. It is the people who initiate the rebellion, not their leaders, but the rebellion issues from leadership questions. It issues from Moses’ being away up Sinai with God. It issues from the people’s then being in a crisis of anxiety because they do not know what has happened to him—this is one of the ways in which people come to view human leadership as a God-substitute. And it issues from Aaron’s collaborating with the people.

As the people can become too dependent on him, so it is possible to think that the people God really cares about are leaders. Ordinary people do not matter in the same way. So God might become attached to a leader and prepared to abandon the rest of the people (Ex 32:10). Moses will have nothing to do with that and declares that God cannot have Moses without also having the people. If the people cannot be forgiven then Moses also wishes to be blotted out of God’s book (Ex 32:32). God speaks of giving Moses rest; Moses wants to make sure God associates the people with him and is not still thinking of abandoning the people as a whole (Ex 33:12–17).

The time at Sinai and then the years in the wilderness put continuing pressure on him and eventually break him. As leader he does not take the people into the promised land, and does not even get there himself. People pressed into leadership are thus wise to seek to evade it like Moses. If they fail to do so, they have to keep reminding themselves of these dynamics and reminding themselves of the feet of clay that the people’s recalcitrance will expose, so that at least they will not be surprised at the cost of their service to themselves. “Mosaic leadership … does not offer a series of successful solutions but rather a set of perennial problems that may be mitigated from time to time but can never be resolved.” Difficulty and disappointment, not triumphant success, punctuate his entire career.[782]  It cannot even be said that he learns from them.

Prophet

Moses is a prophet. While the main prophet in Moses’ story is Miriam (Ex 15:20), at the end of his life Moses is also described thus, and the story makes up for the delay by declaring that there will never be another prophet like him (Deut 34:10), though Moses himself also speaks of future prophets like him (Deut 18:15–22). His uniqueness as a prophet lies in Yhwh’s acknowledging him face to face, Yhwh’s sending him to confront a king with signs and portents, and his demonstrating unequaled might and power before Israel. As a prophet, he is a man of God (Deut 33:1; Josh 14:6), a phrase suggesting he exercises supernatural power.[783]

Yhwh’s acknowledgment of Moses begins with his drafting in Exodus 3–4 and the conversation that ensues, which anticipate features of the stories of Yhwh’s draft of prophets.[784]  He is like Jeremiah (though also like a leader such as Gideon or Saul) in his resisting Yhwh’s commission to go and confront the king. He does this on a number of bases, mostly concerning whether God is wise to be drafting him. He is personally inadequate: he is not a successful politician like Joseph or a priest like his father-in-law (Ex 3:11). He needs to be able to say more about who God is (Ex 3:13). He knows that people will not believe him or listen to him or accept that God has appeared to him (Ex 4:1). He is not especially gifted for the task Yhwh has in mind, lacking the ability to speak (Ex 4:10). He simply wishes God would send someone else (Ex 4:13). And his initial efforts are counterproductive; the situation gets worse and God does not act (Ex 5:22–23). The king will no more listen to him than the people have done so (Ex 6:12, 30).

Moses has no ambition to serve God, and when he attempts simply to say “no,” God gets angry. Moses apparently has no option in the matter (Ex 4:14). Yet God responds to Moses’ more specific objections. God gives him a promise of the divine dynamic presence, a revelation of who God is, a series of signs to perform before the people and a promise to provide the words to speak (Ex 3:12, 14–15; 4:2–9, 11–12). Subsequently God gives him a renewed promise to force the king to release the people, and words to speak to the king (Ex 6:1, 13; 7:1–5). God is set on using Moses, but is prepared to be flexible about how to get him to go about his task, and a prophet is someone who is free to protest and object to God, and can expect to receive a response. Indeed, the objections lead to promises and a revelation that Moses and Israel would have regretted not receiving. “Simple deference or passivity in the presence of God would close down the revelatory possibilities,” while a prophet is called to stand firm, resist pressures, and in doing so trust his or her insights. What Moses practices in relation to the divine king is what he will need to practice before the human king.[785]

It is as a prophet that Yhwh “sends” Moses (cf., e.g., Is 6:8; 48:16; Jer 1:7; 26:12, 15; Ezek 2:3–4; 3:5–6; Hag 1:12). Sending is what a superior does to a subordinate, and specifically what a king does to a messenger, the representative sent to act on his behalf and specifically to deliver his message.[786]  It is thus as a prophet, a courier sent with a message, that he goes to see the king (Ex 3:10, 12) and confronts him, declaring “Yhwh has said this” (e.g., Ex 5:1; 8:1 [MT 7:26]; 11:4) like a prophet confronting an Israelite king. He thereby makes clear that another King confronts the human king. It is as a prophet that he issues Yhwh’s demand to the king and warns him of the trouble that will come if he resists Yhwh’s word. It is as a prophet that he declares that this will lead the king to acknowledge that it is Yhwh (e.g., Ex 7:17; 8:10 [MT 6]). As a prophet he offers, or rather imposes, signs on the king that confirm the source and truth of his message (e.g., Ex 8:23 [MT 19]). He is told to do all the portents Yhwh has put in his power (Ex 4:21). Yhwh’s acts and Moses’ acts stand in symbiotic relationship. These are portents that God alone can do; it is God who puts them into Moses’ power. But it is Moses who has to do them; God does not act except via Moses. The king will see no miracle that comes direct from heaven, but Moses cannot act except by God’s gift. Kings are identified with the agents they work through. Their own aims and reputation become dependent on their actions. So it is for Yhwh.

Yhwh’s Speaking and Moses’ Speaking

It is also as a prophet/messenger sent by Yhwh that he comes to his own people (Ex 3:13–15). When necessary, his task is then to confront the people and also his fellow leader. He mediates between Yhwh and the people by listening to Yhwh’s voice on their behalf, not least when they are afraid of Yhwh’s voice (Deut 18:16).

When the exodus-Red Sea story is over, people “came to have faith in Yhwh and in his servant Moses” (Ex 14:31). One might have thought there was a difference between believing in a human being and believing in God, but both are the object of the same occurrence of the verb ʾāman (hiphil). Much later, King Jehoshaphat will use the same verb in urging, “Have firm faith in Yhwh your God and you will stand firm. Have firm faith in his prophets and you will succeed” (2 Chron 20:20). The words echo Isaiah 7:9 (though strictly these words have not been uttered yet). Isaiah had been urging King Ahaz to trust in Yhwh rather than in human resources and had utilized the wide potential of the verb ʾāman, which in the niphal means “stand firm” and in the hiphil “believe/trust.” Jehoshaphat urges his army in the same way, but brings out a telling implication in Isaiah’s words. Isaiah did want Ahaz to believe in a human being—Isaiah himself. Jehoshaphat wants his people to believe in prophets such as the Levite Jahaziel, who has just delivered an encouraging Isaiah-like message to the people. Believing in human beings is all right as long as they are the right human beings, people through whom Yhwh is speaking. Then people can believe in Yhwh and in Isaiah or Jahaziel. And it is as a prophet that people will also believe in Moses—and as a prophet that he struggles with their unbelief.

Indeed, people must believe in Moses as well as in Yhwh, because Moses represents Yhwh in a very strong sense. For Israel as well as for Egypt, Yhwh and Moses come to be identified with each other. Yhwh brings Israel out of Egypt; Moses brings Israel out of Egypt. Yhwh speaks to the king; Moses speaks to the king. Yhwh speaks to Israel; Moses speaks to Israel. Faith involves believing in Moses, on the basis of believing in a sign (Ex 4:1, 8, 9). It involves thus believing that Yhwh has sent him (Ex 4:5). It involves—well, just believing (Ex 4:31; the verb has no object). Indeed, there is no explicit reference to simply believing in Yhwh in Exodus 4; the only explicit object of belief is Moses, Moses’ signs and Moses’ having been sent. It is via believing in Moses that people believe in Yhwh.

Similarly, it is by listening to Moses that the people listen to God (“listen” accompanies “believe” in Ex 4:1, 8, 9, 31). The people will listen to Moses’ voice (Ex 3:18); that is the way they listen to Yhwh’s voice (cf. Ex 19:5), as it is the way the king listens to Yhwh’s voice—or not (e.g., Ex 5:2; 6:12, 30). When the word of God comes to people, it usually comes via a human voice in which they have to be prepared to recognize a divine voice.

When the story tells us that, as well as believing (no object), they bowed and fell prostrate (no object) (Ex 4:31), it may thus be an open question whether they are doing obeisance before Yhwh or before Moses, like Joseph’s brothers before Joseph (Gen 43:28). Perhaps we should again infer that the one is the expression of the other. Something similar applies to the description of the people’s eventual show of reverence. In Exodus 14:31 it is Yhwh whom they come to revere (yārēʾ; “fear” is a misleading translation). But we later discover that they did revere Moses (Josh 4:14). Their awe before Yhwh is expressed in awe before Moses.

Priest

Moses is a priest. He was born into the clan that would provide Israel with its ministry and the family that would provide its priesthood. While it is his brother who will initiate the priestly succession as Israel’s first regular priest, Moses himself can be called a priest (Ps 99:6). A priest’s task is to consecrate, make offerings, minister (šārat, a more general term for officiating in worship) and bless. Moses builds an altar at Sinai, superintends sacrifices there and splatters altar and people with the blood (Ex 24:4–8). As a priestlike person, he blesses the Israelites before his death (Deut 33).

When Psalm 99 describes him as a priest, it as someone who calls on Yhwh’s name, which implies reference to his role as intercessor, which we have seen is also a prophetic role. As he represents Yhwh to the people, so he represents the people to Yhwh. Pharaoh knows it is appropriate to ask him to intercede for God’s punishment to be withdrawn, Moses does so, and Yhwh grants the prayer (e.g., Ex 8:8–13). When Aaron is appalled at Miriam’s being struck with skin disease because of their attacks on Moses, Moses prays for her (Num 12:13). When God threatens to abandon the rebellious people, Moses’ task is to confront God with a challenge to stop being angry and with arguments for having a change of mind. God’s attachment to him can also become a basis for a prayer for others. “If I have really found grace in your eyes, Lord, then the Lord really must go in our midst” (Ex 34:9). God’s forgiveness emerges from God’s own character: it is God who pays the price for it, not Moses. But it is Moses who urges God to act in accordance with God’s own character. It is thus by listening to Moses that Yhwh listens to the people (Ex 5:22–6:1). Moses’ job as intercessor is to shout “why?” on behalf of his people.

The conversations at Sinai introduce a further feature of the story that unfolds through Exodus to Deuteronomy. Moses pays a price in his life and his relationship with Yhwh for serving Yhwh. While this may relate to his machismo, his reluctance and his neglect (of the rite of circumcision), it also relates to the fact that the Israelites are characteristically not very good at listening to him or to God. One way or another, this ultimately means that neither the exodus generation nor Moses himself enters the promised land.

The narrative does not describe Moses as passionate for Yhwh (qānāʾ), like Phinehas, Elijah and Jehu (Num 25:11; 1 Kings 19:10, 14; 2 Kings 10:16; cf. also Ps 69:9 [MT 10]; 119:139). Yet there is an energy about Moses’ concern for Yhwh’s name that would make “passionate” an appropriate description of him.

Teacher

Moses is a teacher. Traditionally he is the great mediator of torah, of teaching: as we might see intercession as a prophetic role, so we might see teaching as a priestly one.[787]  There are instructions from Yhwh that the First Testament associates with David, and historically the teaching incorporated in Exodus–Deuteronomy accumulated over many centuries and emerged from many different contexts. It is therefore remarkable that nearly all the divine ordinances passed on in the First Testament are associated with Moses.[788]

It is as a teacher that Moses is more than a prophet. Yhwh inspires Israel’s elders to prophesy to show they are equipped to support Moses, and Moses has no desire to constrain prophesying (Num 11:24–30). But its existence will also raise the question of the relationship of Torah and prophecy, and it will be necessary to assert the priority of Torah. Miriam and Aaron ask, “Is it only by means of Moses that Yhwh has spoken? Has he not also spoken by means of us?” (Num 12:2). Miriam is a prophet (Ex 15:20), a term that has not been applied to Moses, and Aaron is the priest who was given to Moses as his “prophet” (Ex 7:1). Yhwh’s response asserts that there is a difference between the significance of Moses’ words and those of any prophet. As the story will go on to make clear, the real issue here is between Moses and Miriam. Yhwh speaks to a prophet via visions and dreams, but speaks to Moses mouth to mouth and without ambiguity. That makes him more than a prophet (Num 12:6–8). To put it another way, God speaks with him as with a friend, face to face (Ex 33:7–11). The result of spending time talking with God is that something of God’s brightness or strength comes to affect Moses (Ex 34:29). While that is not something the people want to live with all the time, it is allowed, or even required, to come home to them when Moses is telling them what God has said. In Moses’ case, at least, this manifestation testifies to the reality of Moses’ having been with God and, more importantly, to the origin and authority of his words.

Moses is Yhwh’s servant, one who is neʾĕmān in all Yhwh’s household, trusted or deserving of trust or trustworthy throughout the people,[789]  because of the way Yhwh relates to him and the straightforwardness of Yhwh’s communication through him (Num 12:7–8). The comment points to the question concerning the relative authority of the teacher who received God’s word from Sinai and the prophet who receives it in other contexts.[790]  The prophet’s communication is less direct and more enigmatic than that of Moses (cf. Deut 30:11–14). And for readers of the story, talk in terms of face-to-face and mouth-to-mouth and straightforwardness affirms Moses’ special authority over against prophets whose words might come from God or might not and have the disadvantages as well as the advantages of being figurative, symbolic, allusive and mysterious. Moses’ established teaching must have authority over the words of prophets. Neither prophets nor priests must assert themselves above Moses’ Teaching or escape its control.

Traditionally (in another sense), Moses’ ministry of mediating torah has been understood as that of a lawgiver, but that gives a misleading impression of his role. The relationship between Yhwh and Israel is not fundamentally a legal one, and law is not fundamental to it. But the concept of law helps us understand aspects of Moses’ work as a teacher. The teaching in Exodus–Deuteronomy holds together Yhwh’s ideals and the practicalities of situations it needs to address. Moses’ teaching is designed for people who tend to be tough-minded in their attitude to God and to each other (see, e.g., Deut 9:6, 13), as Jesus will later note (e.g., Mk 10:5). The nature of law is to make compromises. It has some implicit ideals such as fairness and the importance of marriage and the family, but it has to take into account the way things are in a society as it sets the bounds for unfairness and protects marriage and the family. In a context where many marriages break down, for instance, it cannot simply refuse to recognize divorce. In a context where many people get into debt and find themselves in temporary servitude, it cannot simply ban such servitude; it has to seek to regulate it.

Like his other roles, his role as teacher also links with his not reaching the promised land. “The leader disappears into the book.” At the end of his life he gives himself not to the crossing of the Jordan but the task that he alone can accomplish, the delivery of a gargantuan address or sermon. “What is the book of Deuteronomy … but an eloquent effort to make memory live for a new generation.… Moses teaches his people by leaving them” and thus showing he is not God but just a dispensable leader.[791]  They must make their own journey into the land, but they must make it with his teaching to keep passing on.

6.9 Models of Peoplehood

The account of Israel’s preparations to leave Sinai to undertake their journey to the land (Num 1–10) suggests a number of models for understanding what Israel is.

A Family

Numbers takes its name from the significance of the census with which it opens and the further census marking the end of the wilderness journey. The first census involves counting the people by their clans, named after their ancestors who were brothers; their father was “Israel.” The sense of a common origin as a family is one factor that unites the people, especially in the absence of, for example, a king who holds the people together. Israel’s archetypal festival, Passover, is a family occasion, celebrated by households in their homes and supervised by the clan elders (Ex 12).

The implications of Israel’s thus being one body become more overt at the second census. Its purpose is to establish the dimensions of the people and of each clan, so that land can be allocated in light of the size of the different clans (Num 26:52–54). Being a family does not mean that everyone is the same: Some family members are bigger, stronger, prettier or brighter than others. Some clans will be more numerous or more powerful than others, though the identity of the more powerful clans may not be fixed. In Numbers 1, the clan named after Jacob’s eldest son, Reuben, comes first, but in Numbers 2 Judah, the clan that will give birth to David, comes first, while Ephraim is located opposite Judah, as it will twin with Judah as the most powerful of the northern tribes. “Numbers 2 illustrates God’s periodic tendency to reshuffle the deck of authority among God’s people.”[792]  The allocation of the land takes account of differences of size, though it is done by lot (Num 26:55–56), so that a clan cannot take better land because it is big and powerful. A family does not work that way.

In theory, the people has four structural levels.[793]  The most fundamental is the household (bêt-ʾāb, literally “father’s house”). That could comprise a couple, some of their married offspring, their grandchildren and perhaps their great grandchildren. Sometimes they would be able literally to comprise a household, living in one house, but more often would require two or three houses. The household was the unit that possessed a tract of land (a naḥălâ). Members of a household do not marry one another. A number of households comprise a local community tied together by blood and living in close proximity in a village (mišpāḥâ), a kind of much-extended family. Its members would be committed to being involved with each other in times of difficulty, such as hardship, murder or the death of a father who had no male descendant. Its elders would take the lead in resolving difficulties within the community and would represent it in relationships with other communities. Members of a community usually marry members of other households within their community. A number of these communities then comprise a clan (šēbeṭ or maṭṭeh). Formally a clan is also relationship-based as the twelve clans trace their descent to twelve brothers. In practice it becomes also a geographical entity and thus a political one, and individual clans can divide or merge with another. The twelve clans then comprise the people Israel as a whole.

The people’s shared involvement with one God encourages it to live as one family. Yhwh is more like the tribal leader who marches at the head of the people on their journey (e.g., Num 14:14) than the king of a nation.[794]  Because they belong to one family, the clans that will eventually settle east of the Jordan may not do so before they have joined the others in conquering the land west of the Jordan (Num 32; Josh 22). They have obligations to their kindred (Num 32:6; cf. Deut 3:18, 20). When the clans fall apart, as happens after Solomon’s death, this resembles the disintegration of a family. Divisions among those who trace their ancestry back to the family of Israel resemble occasions when members of a family will not talk to one another. The vision of Israel as a family invites people who divide the community or want to keep it divided to consider what they are doing.

An Assembly

This description first came in the Passover story (Ex 12): The assembly (ʿēdâ) is the entire people gathered for such a celebration, in the proper fashion—so might be hinted by the link between this word and yāʿad, “appoint,” and môʿēd, “appointed time/meeting.” Subsequently the “assembly” can be the people gathered for a variety of purposes, including making political decisions or deciding legal cases.

The census with its careful preserving of the results (there are 46,500 Reubenites; 59,300 Simeonites; 45,650 Gadites …) affirms that everyone belongs to this assembly (Num 1:2, 18). There are no second-class citizens in Israel—at least, among the adult men. Everyone counts. Each person is named in these records, as they are named in that book that God has, from which Moses was willing to be excluded if God cancels the membership of the rest of Israel. Counting the people who belong to Israel also implicitly involves noting those who do not belong. This is explicitly true of the numbering recorded after the exile (e.g., Ezra 2). By its nature a census is both inclusionary and exclusionary. You count within the numbers only if you clearly belong to a particular household, community and clan.[795]

By definition, an ethnic group is aware of itself over against other such groups. Anglo-Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans are aware of belonging to one nation, but also aware of the significance of their belonging to their subgroup. They preserve this distinctiveness in matters such as their food, culture and religion; in a church, the large majority of members will usually come from one of these groups. In a parallel way, peoples such as Israelites, Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites were aware of a distinctiveness over against each other, though their distinctiveness was not ethnic; as Israel saw it, they all belonged to a yet wider family. Yet Israel understood itself as having a marked degree of distinctiveness over against such other peoples. It projects this awareness onto Balaam, who describes Israel as “a people that lives in isolation, that does not reckon itself among the nations” (Num 23:9). That awareness is confirmed by the subsequent history of the Jewish people and provides part of the excuse for the phenomenon of anti-Semitism. The census presupposes, affirms and buttresses this awareness. The total assembly comes to 603,550, the same number as emerged from the census taken a few months previously (Ex 38:26), implying several million when we add women and children. This is out of all proportion to the actual size of peoples in Moses’ day. The population of Palestine may have reached these numbers only in the twentieth century. In First Testament times, it may never have reached a million.[796]  Perhaps numbers that were originally more realistic have been misunderstood.[797]  Perhaps the numbers are symbolic.[798]  Perhaps they are a concrete way of saying “it was a huge company,” and they have come to glorify the increasing of a mere seventy people to a multitude, in keeping with God’s promise (cf. Ex 1:5).[799]  Perhaps they invite us to link this people with the nation in its heyday: The numbers are midway between those given for Saul’s time and for the time of David and later kings (e.g., 1 Sam 11:8–9; 15:4; 2 Sam 24:9; 2 Chron 13:3; 14:8). Perhaps they constitute a declaration that it was not only the Sinai generation that constituted the Sinai people. Many more people belong to the Sinai people than the ones who were actually there. God did not just make the covenant with the Sinai generation “but with us, us here today, all of us, alive. Face to face Yhwh spoke with you at the mountain” (Deut 5:2–4).

An Organization

The assembly of Numbers 1–2 has a very different ethos from that presupposed by the Passover regulations. There was no need of a register for the holy disorder of a Passover celebration. Counting is also a sign of bureaucratization. Indeed, this assembly is not only counted but also choreographed, three clans on each side of the meeting tent. The people of God has become an institution. And some bureaucratization is necessary if a large company is to make progress on a journey. The people now has officials (šōṭĕrîm) to tell it what to do (e.g., Num 11:16; Josh 1:10; 3:2), as it had when the Egyptians needed to organize it (e.g., Ex 5:6).

Each clan has a head (rōʾš) or leader (nāsîʾ), but the congregation apparently chooses these leaders (cf. Num 1:16, 44; also Ex 16:22) and their responsibilities are more representative than decision-making. They include counting and enrolling (e.g., Num 1:4–19, 44; 4:34–37, 46–48) and representing their clan in leading worship (e.g., Num 7:2, 10–88; also Ex 34:31) and in other connections (Num 13:1–16; 27:2; 32:2; 34:16–29).[800]  The organization of the people is thus formal, institutional and bureaucratic, but egalitarian rather than hierarchical, and all clans have the same status. The point is vividly made by the account of the people’s offerings (Num 7), which allocates vast space to describing the way each of the tribes made exactly the same offering, each on a different day. This description counteracts the recognition in the positions allocated to the clans that de facto special significance will attach to tribes such as Judah and Ephraim (Num 2). Each clan appoints one person to the team who will explore the land (Num 13:2). Each clan sends a thousand troops to join in the action against Midian (Num 31:3–6). Each clan appoints a representative to join in establishing a memorial to the wonder of Yhwh’s taking them across the Jordan (Josh 3:12; 4:1–7). The presence of the leader then symbolizes the presence of the clan.

An Army

Israel is an assembly on the march. When the covenant chest sets out, Moses says, “Arise, Yhwh. Your enemies must scatter, your opponents flee.” When it comes to rest, he says, “Return, Yhwh, ten thousand thousands of Israel” (Num 10:35–36).

Yet to speak of an assembly on the march is to use an odd combination of words, and it compromises the declaration that God’s people is an inclusive and egalitarian assembly. The Passover assembly certainly embraces people of both sexes and all ages.[801]  But the census with which Numbers begins is described as a census of the whole assembly of Israel, yet takes account only of the adult men, the men over 20 who are old enough to go war. They are numbered by their “companies” (Num 1:2–3).

While taking the census relates to the people’s being an army, its aim is hardly to discover what military resources are available for the coming battles. The first reference to war in the story that follows (Num 13–14) will make clear that the size of an army is the least decisive factor in battles in which Yhwh is involved. This follows the model of Exodus 14 and anticipates that of Joshua 6. The second reference will come in the context of an account of how the people make a point of avoiding getting involved in war (Num 20:14–21). There will be circumstances in which Israel gets drawn into fighting and has to fight because that is the way it will enter into possession of its land (Num 21:1–3, 21–35), though even then the decisive factor may indeed be Yhwh’s involvement (Num 21:2, 34). The census more likely relates to the ordering of the army, which is the preoccupation of the context. But when God’s people is thought of as an army, then children and women are excluded from the fighting force and are thus marginalized in the people of God.

Yet the matter is more complicated and more subtle than that. Talk of the people as an army organized by companies[802]  also came in the account of the Passover and earlier (Ex 6:26; 7:4; 12:17, 41, 51). The whole people, including its women and children, is pictured as an army. The same must be so in Numbers. The whole people camps and marches by companies, and that again includes the women and children. In this connection the whole people is understood as an army on the march.

There is a further enigmatic element in this arrangement. Except for this original generation, through its history Israel as a people was not going to be doing any marching as an army. Such talk makes a theological point. Yhwh is yhwh ṣĕbāʾôt, “Yhwh [of] armies.” The description takes for granted that Yhwh is the leader of vast heavenly forces whose might guarantees Yhwh’s victory in achieving a purpose and putting down opposition in heaven or on earth. Describing Israel as an army associates it with Yhwh’s heavenly forces and presupposes that it fights on the same side as Yhwh for the achievement of that purpose. As well as making a theological point, the description functions as a metaphor, like “Onward Christian Soldiers.” That does not detract from its meaning. It is not “mere” metaphor, for there is no such thing as “mere” metaphor. The metaphor suggests that God’s people has a task to fulfill that involves overcoming significant obstacles and opposition. It signifies the commitment and aggressiveness that need to characterize the community, the determination and assertiveness that characterize an army.

A Congregation

The assembly marches in a configuration alien to the nature of an army, for it marches in blocks that center on the meeting tent. It marches as a religious assembly (qāhāl; e.g., Ex 12:6; Num 10:7), as it meets for Passover as a religious assembly. The presence of Yhwh’s meeting tent at the center of the people is an even more powerful bond that holds the people together. As the image of the people as an army compromises that of the people as an assembly, so the image of the people as a congregation compromises that of the people as an army. To say that it marches with God at the center could simply provide religious ideological support for the battles it wishes to fight. The way the story unfolds suggests it does not do this. It is almost the rule rather than the exception that the God at the center of the people requires the people to fight battles it does not wish to fight and prohibits its fighting battles it wishes to fight.

It is as a congregation that the Israelite army marches across the Jordan into Canaan. It follows the covenant chest, and in that connection needs to sanctify itself. The situation parallels that at Sinai, though there Yhwh tells Moses to sanctify the people because they are going to meet with God. Here they are to sanctify themselves because next day they are going to see God do wonders in their midst (Josh 3:1–5). Like the Passover, these wonders must always be remembered. Remembering is a fundamental congregational activity. Twelve rocks are taken from the riverbed before the waters return. They are to be a sign, like the rainbow, circumcision, the eating of unleavened bread, the gift of the sabbath, Korah’s censers and Aaron’s staff (Gen 9:12–17; 17:11; Ex 13:9, 16; 31:13, 17; Num 16:38 [MT 17:3]; 17:10 [MT 25]). They are the signs of a sign, for the word refers to the wonder that points to God’s activity as well as to the observance that preserves awareness of this wonder (e.g., Ex 7:3; Num 14:11, 22; Deut 4:34).

As a sign, the rocks are a permanent memorial (zikkārôn; Josh 4:7), like Passover, the eating of unleavened bread, Yhwh’s written intent regarding Amalek, the twelve precious stones in the high priest’s ephod, the half-shekel ransom money, the new year trumpet-blowing, Korah’s censers and the Midianite gold (Ex 12:14; 13:9; 17:14; 28:12; 30:16; Lev 23:24; Num 16:40 [MT 17:5]; 31:54). A memorial is a sign, or it commemorates a sign (cf. Ps 111:4; zēker). The First Testament includes many other exhortations to remember or keep in mind (zākar) Yhwh’s deeds (e.g., Ex 13:3; Deut 8:2, 18), laments at failure to do so (e.g., Neh 9:17), and expressions of awareness that this can be encouraging or discouraging (e.g., Ps 137:1; 143:5). (It includes even more references to Yhwh’s remembering, exhortations to Yhwh to remember, and laments that Yhwh has not done so.) This feature is natural to a faith that is a gospel. If this gospel is foundational to the people’s life, it must be kept in mind. Israel must continue to see itself as brought into its land by a wonder accomplished by Yhwh, and therefore must keep reminding itself of that event. Memory, reflection and awareness are encouraged not only by stories, but also by practices and reenactments; hence the significance of practices such as Passover and the eating of unleavened bread.

Placing the twelve rocks in the Jordan and/or by the Jordan at Gilgal (see Josh 4:1–24) may imply that Israelites made pilgrimage there. In the place where it happened, they retold the story, saw the rocks and relived the events that led to their being set in place, “from Shittim to Gilgal” (Mic 6:5). Gilgal is certainly a significant sanctuary in a later period (e.g., 1 Sam 10:8; 11:14–15; Hos 4:15; 12:11 [MT 12]; Amos 4:4; 5:5). One way or another, children need to have the opportunity to ask their parents about the significance of the rocks, as they will ask about the meaning of Passover and other practices (e.g., Ex 12:26; Deut 6:20). It is in this way that the congregation will also keep alive its awareness of the people’s deliverance at the Red Sea, which is too far away for pilgrimage (Josh 4:23). It is a means by which Yhwh may attempt to make sure that the people reveres Yhwh as long as it lives (Josh 4:24). The Red Sea and Gilgal are thus allowed to merge in order to keep memory alive.[803]

A Hierocracy

It would have been quite possible for representatives chosen from each clan to service the meeting tent, as happened in other connections. Instead, one of the clans represents the others, and by God’s choice rather than the peoples’.[804]  Paradoxically, it is its violence that qualifies Levi (Ex 32:25–29). Its violence goes back a long way (Gen 34:25) and forfeits its inheritance in the land (Gen 49:5–7),[805]  but it became something God used, and Levi’s loss of an inheritance found compensation in its distinctive position. More specifically, the Levite males take the place of the firstborn males of every family, to whom God would claim a right (Num 3:11–13).

It is appropriate enough for God to decide who should undertake this service. This is, after all, God’s meeting place. But associating Levi more directly with God has the result of distancing the clans from the work to which Levi is called. Levi does that quite literally as it camps between the people and the meeting tent (Joseph now becomes two clans, Ephraim and Manasseh, to keep the number twelve). Whereas God had called the whole people a priesthood, the appointment of Levi to ministerial duties compromises that designation. The Levites are separately enrolled (Num 1:48–54; 3:1–4:49) and specially cleansed and dedicated (Num 8:1–26). Whereas it was once fathers who blessed people, it is now the members of a particular clan who are the channels of blessing (Num 6:22–27). It may seem odd, or rather hopeful, that the clan that qualifies for special service by its violence thus gets turned into the clan that mediates God’s shalom. Moses’ later blessing of the different clans unconsciously draws further attention to the paradox: The clan that so qualified itself now has the task of teaching in the community (Deut 33:8–11).

The account of the Levites’ enrollment (Num 3–4) begins “This is the lineage of Aaron and Moses,” the phrase that marked different stages in the Genesis story: “This is the lineage of Adam … Noah … Shem … Terah … Isaac … Jacob,” gradually narrowing down Yhwh’s focus. This might imply that Yhwh’s focus has now narrowed to Levi, that Yhwh is less interested in the whole people, that the clergy now constitute the real people. Both the clan itself and the community as a whole need to keep in mind the symbolic and representative nature of Levi’s dedication to God. The community offers them to Yhwh as a living sacrifice, but they thus symbolize the obligation of the whole people to be a living sacrifice (cf. Rom 12:1–2).[806]

This matter is the first issue raised in the story of a rebellion led by Korah, Dathan, Abiram and On, which appeals to the fact that the whole people is holy (cf. Ex 19:6). Moses and Aaron therefore have no business exalting themselves above the people (Num 16:1–4). Moses declares that God must be allowed to decide who is holy and who must therefore be allowed to approach God. Korah himself is a Levite, and behind Korah’s complaint on behalf of the people as a whole Moses sees a desire on the part of Levi as a whole to exercise full priestly responsibilities. The other three belong to Reuben and more plausibly speak on behalf of the people as a whole, though they may also be advocating from their position as members of the “senior” clan (cf. Num 1). Elsewhere the First Testament offers significant critique of Israel’s priesthood, but here it affirms the priests’ position: they are indeed God’s means of protecting the people from the dangerous holiness of God. The people learn the lesson well, and are soon lamenting the possibility that anyone who goes near the sanctuary will die (Num 17:12–13).

The Levites themselves protect the people as a whole by occupying the danger zone around God’s dwelling. The people already know how dangerous it can be to come too close to God; the flame may burn you up. Before Yhwh’s magnificent new meeting tent was constructed, the old meeting tent stood outside Israel’s encampment, and people went outside the encampment to seek Yhwh’s guidance there. Now Yhwh’s dwelling stands in the people’s very midst, which is a new privilege, but also a new danger. That was implicit in the awareness of danger involved in approaching Yhwh on Sinai, a danger recognized both by Yhwh and by Israel. How much more danger as well as privilege lies in having Yhwh living in the midst of the people. When the priests carry the covenant chest across the Jordan, the people are to follow, but not too close—indeed, they stay a thousand yards behind (Josh 3:4). Aaron’s own family knows the danger of coming too close to God, to their cost (Num 3:4; cf. Num 4:15, 20). Ordination is not some privilege that marks the clergy as especially favored by God. It is a frightening, risky responsibility. But as long as they live with the protection of their own rituals, the Levites protect the people from the fiery danger that attaches to having God in their midst.

A Cult

The tasks of Levi are described in great detail, underlining the importance of their work. It is this that justifies the focus on the lineage of Levi. It is in this sense that the people of God is now a cult—not in the sense of a deviant religious group, but a group whose life focuses on religious observances.

In its entirety the building of the sanctuary pushes Israel in that direction. Once more this qualifies the idea that God’s people is an army. It also qualifies the idea that it is a people designed to live its life in the world. A stress on cult separates its people from the world by its being not of the world and not in the world. Israel will get into trouble when it wants to cope with being in the world by being exactly like the world, but it will also risk trouble by turning its attention away from the world. It needs to be in the world if God is to fulfill the vision for it to be an alternative community. On the other hand, the world might have the opportunity to perceive that Israel’s focus on worship of Yhwh is key to its enjoying the fullness of Yhwh’s blessing.

It might also be worrying that the lineage in Numbers 3–4 is that of “Aaron and Moses.” Although (or because) Aaron is the elder brother, Moses is the one Yhwh summoned to leadership in Israel, and he is the one whose leadership is less compromised (see Ex 32). The order “Aaron and Moses” could suggests the priority of priesthood over Torah. The question is analogous to that concerning the relationship of Torah and prophecy.[807]  But Moses is senior to Aaron and after Moses’ death, in this respect Joshua becomes a new Moses for the people. He will see Moses’ promise fulfilled and will know the active presence of God that Moses knew. He must do what Moses’ Teaching specified and must receive the allegiance Moses received (Josh 1). There is no doubt that he gives the priests their orders as they prepare to cross the Jordan (Josh 3:7–8). There is risk involved in the people of God being run by priests.

The nature of the people as a cult is suggested by the events that then follow, circumcision and Passover (Josh 5:2–12). Israel’s very first acts in the promised land are to give all the males the sacramental mark of their truly belonging to the people of the promise and to celebrate the meal that commemorates its deliverance. To put it in Joshua’s own terms, their circumcision “rolled the shame of Egypt” from them (Josh 5:9). The expression takes up the name of the place that commemorates the event, Gilgal, which recalls the verb “roll” (gālal). The story does not tell us why circumcision had not been practiced in the wilderness or why it speaks of the shame of Egypt. It does set up a link between deliverance from Egypt and arrival in the promised land, the two aspects of one event that have been strangely separated by forty years of wandering and death. The rite that was in abeyance in the wilderness is now reinstated. Arrival in the land means God is bringing to completion the mighty acts of faithful commitment that fulfill the promise to the ancestors. The celebration of Passover makes the same point, because it is inherently a commemoration of the deliverance from Egypt but it is being celebrated in the land of promise. This particular celebration especially does so because it marks the move from the wilderness to the land. It marks the moment when the supranatural food supply of the wilderness ceases and the supernatural supply that issues from being in the land starts (Josh 5:11–12).

The people’s taking of Jericho is also a cultic event (Josh 5:13–6:27). It comes about as the fruit of a daily religious procession around the city, with the priests carrying the covenant chest. The procession happens in silence except that some of the priests blow horns. This sound has been so far associated only with Sinai (though that story referred to no human horn blower) and with the instructions for the jubilee (though no celebration has yet happened). At the climax the entire people shouts, another sound that belongs to worship as much as, for example, to war (e.g., 2 Sam 6:15; Ezra 3:11–13; Ps 47:1, 5 [MT 2, 6]; 89:15 [MT 16]; and for the combination, see Num 10). But the cultic triumph is then spoiled by a cultic failure analogous, for example, to the wrongdoing of Nadab and Abihu, though it is described in other terms. It is an act of unfaithfulness (maʿal), which involves taking something that belongs to Yhwh (Josh 7:1). The term is one used for Israel’s sparing of Midianite women who were due to be devoted to God (Num 31:16). What Achan takes was also due to be devoted to God and had become holy by virtue of its association with Yhwh, and therefore Achan and the people involved in his act now need to be devoted to God (Josh 7:12). The matter is resolved in a cultic gathering for which the people have to sanctify themselves as the priests had at Sinai and the people had before crossing the Jordan (Josh 7:13).

A Whole

An emphasis on the need for Israel as a whole to be a people of integrity perhaps counters the danger of compromising the significance of the priestly people by giving a special position to Levi. Three rules make this point (Num 5). First, the community would be spoiled by the presence of people defiled by the various causes that have been identified in Leviticus, such as skin disease and other discharges and contact with corpses. The people is to embody wholeness and life, and people whose beings or experience at the moment compromises that witness should leave the camp temporarily to safeguard it. Second, the community’s integrity is morally compromised when one member wrongs another. Wrongs that divide the members of the community from each other must be resolved. They affect the community’s relationship with God. Third, sexual unfaithfulness or the suspicion of it compromises the community’s integrity and its relationships in another way. The issues raised by unfaithfulness and by false suspicion need resolving. A fourth rule later seeks to handle the tension between a commitment to celebration and a commitment to bodily integrity (Num 9:1–14).

All these rules reinforce the implication that the wholeness of the people depends on the wholeness of all its members. Even though Levi has a special role and Judah and Ephraim have special positions, the rules about purity do not attribute intrinsic defilement to particular clans or groups or to one sex. There is no caste system; men have their way of becoming defiled as women have theirs so that the community has to treat both sexes the same (Num 5:3), and all defilement can be purified by ritual washings and other rites and/or by the passing of time. Moral demands also apply to everyone. Both women and men are morally responsible (Num 5:6). In these two ways the marginalizing effect of the militarization of the people of God is again counterbalanced. Admittedly the third rule offers a sexist treatment of the suspicion of adultery between a husband and a wife, though its humiliating ritual at least gives an innocent woman a means of establishing her innocence and protects her from the penalty of death that is elsewhere required for adultery.[808]  The fourth rule further makes explicit that the people’s integrity does not require it to separate itself from other ethnic groups. The same rules about observing Passover with integrity apply to foreigners as apply to native Israelites (Num 9:14). It is not even the case that purity and defilement is a principle for separating Israel from other peoples. “Defilement is not caused by contact with other people; it comes out of the body, or it comes out of moral failure. Everybody is liable to be defiled or to defile. This should be totally unexpected to the anthropologist used to purity codes in other religions.”[809]

A Movement but Also a Settlement

The entire account of the community’s ordering belongs in the context of its preparing for the journey from Sinai. This community is on a journey. This people of God has not settled in one place, though it is destined to find its rest in its promised land. It is on the move. Talk of the cloud and fire covering the sanctuary (Num 9:15–16) thus immediately gives way to talk of the cloud’s lifting from the tent as the sign for the people to set out on its journey. The cloud’s settling down will then be the sign for the people to make camp (Num 9:17–23). However short or long it settles, the people must follow suit. On this journey it will continue to be guided by God and to hear God speak as it faces new needs (Num 7:89). The question posed by the daughters of Zelophehad (Num 27:1–11) will provide a noteworthy example. While Yhwh has spoken definitively at Sinai, Yhwh did not speak comprehensively or finally there. The community will be one that knows Yhwh speak to it on its journey. The material in Exodus–Deuteronomy is itself the deposit of Yhwh’s fulfilling this promise over the centuries.

Yet Israel is not intended to live in the wilderness forever. From the beginning, its journey has a goal. It is designed to come to an end. The people will reach the land that is to be allocated to the clans. Joshua 13–21 gives massive space to this allocation and thereby speaks to every later reader, because every member of every clan can find himself or herself in this account. Every clan has its place. Every town receives its mention. Every member can hear the account of the places they see in their day-to-day life. Yet their experience at this stage of their life is not untypical. It might even be that “on balance, Israel’s identity is tied less to possessing the land than to desiring to possess the land. They are not the ‘people of the land,’ but the ‘people of (frustrated) desire for land.’ ”[810]

These ten models for the people of God significantly complement each other. Each makes an important positive statement about the people. In isolation, each could carry dangerous implications that are safeguarded by its association with the others.

7

God Gave

The Land

Yhwh’s commitments to Abraham concerned land, increase and blessing. The fulfillment of these commitments turns out to be more complicated than we would have anticipated. There was originally no mention of liberation from foreign domination, but in actuality the narrative does need to put “I will bring you out” before “I will take you in/take you up.” After the affirming of mutual commitment at Sinai, we are ready for the story to move to its conclusion with the people proceeding to the land. Yhwh’s review of that journey presupposes that this movement from sealing to gift, from Sinai to Canaan, was in turn designed to be a straightforward one:

You have had a long stay at this mountain. Get set and journey, go to the Amorite hill country and to all its neighboring region.… Look, I have set the land before you. Go and take the land that Yhwh swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and to their descendants after them. (Deut 1:6–8)

In reality, the way to that destination once more turns out to be circuitous as Israel unexpectedly spends a whole generation in the wilderness between Sinai and Canaan. Nothing is straightforward in the story of the people of God.

Like the boundaries between Genesis and Exodus and between Exodus and Leviticus, the boundary between Leviticus and Numbers is permeable; Numbers 1–10 is the conclusion to the Sinai story. But it focuses on the journey to the promised land that the people are about to resume. It encourages a great hopefulness about what will follow, with its account of the systematic ordering of the people for a triumphant, divinely guided march to the land. But it turns out to comprise one long raising of suspense. Numbers 11–21 sets alongside it another macroperspective on the people of God as the expectations that Numbers 1–10 encouraged are suddenly, coldly and catastrophically dashed. Ten chapters of preparation for a straightforward march from Sinai to Canaan are undone by eleven chapters dominated by accounts of let-down, protest, rebellion and chastisement. The macroperspective in Numbers 1–10 envisions Israel in positive theological terms as a people under the blessing (Num 6:22–27; cf. Deut 2:7). In Numbers 11–21 it looks more like a people under the curse.

7.1 The People of God: Sustained, Disappointed and Protesting

At one level, there is nothing mystical about the wilderness experience. Only an accident of geography required Israel to pass through a wilderness to reach its promised land. But this accident of geography did mean that wilderness came to provide an ongoing image for the life of God’s people, traveling through an in-between place on its journey within the context of God’s purpose for the world. Perhaps a “wilderness experience” is a sort of spiritual necessity and a people does not grow to maturity without it, though the First Testament shows it is possible to have the wilderness experience in spades without growing to maturity.

In due course Jesus was driven to spend forty days in the wilderness, and the fourth century saw a whole movement of individual Christians seeking God in the wilderness. But the First Testament has no wilderness image for the life of the individual, and Jesus’ time in the wilderness relates to his vocation to offer Israel’s obedience to God. Yet wilderness is a suggestive image for the church’s theology and spirituality. In the West the church has been pushed out into the wilderness from the center of the nations’ life, but often refuses to face the fact that this is its position. Wilderness can become an image for particular groups or whole societies: for instance, in their relationship to American society, African Americans may see themselves as having left the slavery of Egypt but not yet experienced the promise of full incorporation in life in the land. Hispanic peoples have seen California and other parts of the United States as the promised land, but find themselves living there only geographically, with a place in the society more like that of Gibeonites confined to cutting wood and drawing water for Israel. Asians may thrive economically but still feel in an in-between position as they suffer from racist attitudes in the present and unresolved pain over past racism. Wilderness can become an image for the experience of a whole culture, for people left wandering and lost in a world where traditional structures for giving meaning to life have disappeared, with their developed urban environment having become a wasteland.[811]

Wilderness: A Positive and a Negative Image

In the First Testament, “wilderness” does not have inherently negative connotations, any more than it does in American English. It is not the same as desolation. When Isaiah 34 describes the terrible effects of God’s bringing disaster on a country that once sustained farming and a significant population, it does not describe it as turned into wilderness (though passages such as Jer 4:26 do that). Wilderness is simply a type of country that provides pasturage for sheep but cannot support much resident human life. If you want to be alone, you go into the wilderness, though if you have to spend much time there, you need provision. And the wilderness was a place where Yhwh looked after Israel. Yhwh was

Our leader in the wilderness, in a land of steppe and gully,

In a land of drought and deathly darkness,

In a land no one passes through, where nobody lives. (Jer 2:6)

The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness. (Jer 31:2)

He would find him in a wilderness land, in a howling desert waste.

He would surround him, attend to him, guard him like the pupil of his eye.?

Like an eagle that rouses its nest, hovers over its young,

He would spread his wings and take him, carry him on his pinions.

Yhwh alone would guide them. There was no foreign god with him.

(Deut 32:10–12)

He would split rocks in the wilderness, and he gave them much to drink, like the depths.

He brought out streams from the cliff, caused water to flow down like rivers.…

An ordinary person ate the food of heroes. He sent them provision to savor.

(Ps 78:15–16, 25)

It was a “great and terrible wilderness,” but “Yhwh your God carried you through it like someone carrying their child, all the way that you went, as one who goes ahead of you on the way to scout a place for you to camp … to show you the way to go.” Yhwh provided, so that “you have not lacked a thing” (Deut 1:19, 31, 33; 2:7).

At the beginning, Israel had journeyed into the wilderness for three days apparently without problem (Ex 15:22), and on the way from Sinai they again journey for three days apparently without problem (Num 10:33–11:1). Although stories of crisis dominate the subsequent narrative of the wilderness journey, this does not imply that crisis dominates the journey itself, as the narrative from time to time makes clear (e.g., Ex 15:27; Num 21:16–20). But the series of stories about such crises running through Numbers 11–21 does form the characteristic mark of the narrative of the journey from Sinai to the promised land.

Stories of crises are not a new motif in the wider narrative. They did also feature in the journey from Egypt to Sinai, and for that matter their dynamics had already surfaced in the account of the people’s deliverance from Egypt. The Israelites left Egypt “with their hands high” (Ex 14:8),[812]  but their confident exuberance soon collapsed when the Egyptians pursued and cornered them. After the deliverance from that crisis they ran out of water, and when they found water, it was undrinkable (Ex 15:22–23). The promise that Yhwh is one who heals is thus set in the context of the contrary experience. When they had been on the march for six weeks, they seemed destined to die of hunger (Ex 16:1–3). Yhwh provided marvelously, but then they again ran out of water (Ex 17:1). The other side of Sinai, bad things (raʿ) continue to happen to the people on their wilderness journey and lead them to object (ʾānan) to the way things are turning out (Num 11:1). Yhwh’s presence with the people does not mean their progress is uneventful or crisis-free. The journey the people of God take from the initial fulfillment of God’s purpose to its consummation is strewn with disappointments. Indeed, revolution is commonly followed by crisis and disillusion and a suspicion that it was all a mistake.[813]  No wonder conscientization is never complete.[814]

The Response of Protest

The Psalms will show that in principle the appropriate response to such experiences is to protest to God about them, and the account of the wilderness journey comprises a journal of protest that could be instructive for the people’s ongoing life as they continue to find experience falling short of what they might have expected. There is a “profound originality” about

a divine-human pact in which both parties complain endlessly about each other.… Israel complains about Moses, Moses complains about Israel, God complains about Israel, Israel complains about God, God complains about Moses, and Moses complains about God. That such a narrative should have been preserved and elevated to the status of sacred scripture and national classic was an act of the most profound literary and moral originality.[815]

It anticipates the nature of prophecy and of prayer as the First Testament understands them and witnesses to the resolutely personal nature of the relationship between God and Israel. “Total strangers do not complain about each other as Israel and the Lord do.”[816]  Or they may complain about each other but not directly to each other.[817]  That implies some trust and confidence in the relationship. On the other hand, a relationship is in deep trouble if it gets dominated by mutual complaint to the exclusion of acceptance and trust.

While there is a broad pattern to these stories, their variations are as significant as their consistencies, as is the case with the psalms of protest. Israel’s experience sometimes involves blessing, sometimes trouble. There is variety in the reasons why trouble comes, how Israel responds to it, how its leaders handle it, and how Yhwh responds to people and leaders. Sometimes calamity leads to protest, sometimes protest to calamity. The variety of stories forms a resource to the people in shaping their attitude to this aspect of experience and enabling them to reflect on it. With the stories’ help, people and leaders may be able to perceive what response to their experience is appropriate or unwise, and/or to reflect on the response they instinctively make.

It is understandable that the people cry out in protest (ṣāʿaq) at the bad things that happen (e.g., Ex 14:10; Num 11:2), but one implication of their need to cry out is chilling. They had to cry out in Egypt; this suggests they might as well still be there. On the edge of the Red Sea, instead of keeping their hands high, they ricochet into wishing Moses had let them stay in Egypt and eventually die as serfs there, rather than dying sooner as free people in the wilderness (Ex 14:11–12). In Egypt they had plenty to eat (Ex 16:3); only a few weeks’ distance has given a rosy hue to their experience in the slave house. Their subsequent protest about lack of water is that it shows Yhwh is not really present among them, and they ask why Moses brought them out of Egypt (Ex 17:1–7). The “fear of freedom”[818]  that they felt in Egypt reasserts itself and makes bondage strangely attractive. On a later occasion they cry out in protest because their diet compares ill with the resources they had in Egypt: the meat and fish, with cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. Manna has become boring (Num 11:4–6). This might seem a little childish. The plaint recurs later and they again ask why Moses brought them out of Egypt (Num 20:2–5).

From the beginning, the object of the people’s complaints is more often Moses, or Moses and Aaron, than Yhwh. They object (rîb) or protest (lûn),[819]  impugning Moses’ motives and insight. But often implicitly, and sometimes overtly, their protests concern Yhwh’s acts, so they are really protesting against Yhwh (see esp. Num 14:1–3, 26–29). Their grief at what they miss about Egypt implies a rejection of Yhwh (Num 11:20), but protesting at leaders is easier than protesting at God.

The appropriate response for Moses is then a cry to Yhwh, the cry Israel itself uttered in Egypt. The cry the people utter for themselves becomes the cry of an intercessor (Ex 15:25; 17:4). Or the people may cry to him, and Moses may make appeal for them to Yhwh (Num 11:2; cf. Num 21:7). Moses may fall on his face, a gesture of awe or horror and submission to Yhwh (Num 16:4; cf. Gen 17:3; Lev 9:24; Num 14:5; 16:22, 45 [[820]  17:10]; Josh 5:14; 7:6). Or he may go to the meeting tent to fall before Yhwh (Num 20:6). In Exodus 16 Yhwh does not wait for a cry but intervenes to speak directly to Moses. The people have referred to Moses’ having brought them out of Egypt. What happens will confirm that it was Yhwh who did so. They have no business to be protesting at Moses and Aaron. It is Yhwh who should be the object of their protest. On a subsequent occasion when Yhwh is angry at the people’s crying, Moses is put out because Yhwh seems not to be taking account of the implications the people’s crying has for him (Num 11:10–15). No one behaves in a very adult fashion in Numbers 11. The event pushes Moses into objecting to the fact that he has to carry this people like a mother carrying the children she bore, and to provide meat for them. Moses would rather Yhwh kill him now than insist that he carry on bearing this burden.

Yhwh’s Reaction

Yhwh’s initial reaction is simply to deal with the bad thing that has happened and put things right. This is broadly so when the people cry out about the advancing Egyptian army, and about lack of water at Marah, lack of food in the Sin Wilderness, and lack of water at Rephidim at a place that therefore comes to be called Test or Quarrel (Ex 14–17). It is also so when the people subsequently protest about lack of water at a second place that comes to be called Quarrel, a protest that offends Moses and Aaron more than Yhwh and leads to their rebellion (Num 20:2–13).

So at the Red Sea, Yhwh tells Moses to quit praying and start holding his cane over the sea to make it divide so that Israel may cross, and then to make it fall back to destroy the Egyptian army (Ex 14:15–16, 21, 26–27). At Marah, Yhwh shows Moses a piece of wood to throw into the water to make it drinkable (Ex 15:25). In the Sin Wilderness, Yhwh promises to “rain bread from heaven” for the people, and for good measure adds meat from heaven (Ex 16). At Rephidim, Moses is told to strike a rock, from which water will then come out (Ex 17:1–7), and at the second Quarrel to speak to a rock, with the same effect (Num 20:2–11). After their final experience of Yhwh’s chastisement in the wilderness, the people do acknowledge wrongdoing in speaking against Yhwh and against Moses, and Yhwh provides the sacramental antidote to the snakebite Yhwh had earlier caused (Num 21:7–8).

Often God thus solves a problem in nature by means of the resources of nature.[821]  Yet God hardly just points Moses to resources that were present but unrecognized, such as the restorative potential of certain plants to purify water or the water resources within a rock. Manna and quails belong naturally to the area, but their quantity does not—just enough manna and no more, with double quantity on Fridays, and quails a yard deep. Yhwh uses natural resources, but heightens their potential or capacity or significance. The people are invited to look to the natural but to expect God to do something supernatural through it. The process will be repeated when Jesus feeds thousands of people with a few examples of the resources available by a lake, some bread and some fish.

In Numbers 11, Yhwh suggests bringing some of the elders into a fuller share in the burden of carrying the people. Yhwh will take some of the spirit that is on Moses and put it on them. It is not a permanent endowment relating to the role that they have to fulfill but a sign for the people that they are to accept these elders into a share in Moses’ work, but prophecy does thus become associated with the seventy elders, Israel’s body of institutional leadership. Perhaps this implies that the elders’ position through the centuries is validated by the outbreak of prophesying in the wilderness. It is a corporate equivalent to the way churches often look for a prophetlike sense of vocation to validate appointment to an institutional ministry as pastor or priest. This exalts prophecy, though it also institutionalizes or trivializes it. Here prophecy sidesteps institutionalizing by taking root in Eldad and Medad, who missed the meeting when the gift of prophecy came to the other elders. Moses in turn goes on to democratize prophecy, expressing the wish that all Yhwh’s people might prophesy. Prophecy, like priesthood, ideally or theoretically belongs to the whole people. That both exalts prophecy and trivializes it.

Leaders Drawn into the People’s Disappointment

While the stories about events between Sinai and Moab are broadly similar to those about events from Egypt to Sinai—they concern manna and quails, water from a rock and the pressures put on Moses[822] —on the journey from Sinai to Moab Yhwh’s servants are more and more sucked into the disappointment of their people. On the way to Sinai Moses seemed able to shoulder the burden of his servanthood, and at the moment of crisis at Sinai, able to challenge Yhwh to keep faithful when Yhwh is inclined to give up on Israel. Now he cannot bear the burden Yhwh places on him and is inclined to give up on life (Num 11:11–15). Anticipating Jesus Christ Superstar, he laments “Once I was inspired, now I’m only tired.” Once, Miriam the prophet led the people in praise and Aaron stood firm alongside Moses. On the way from Sinai, Miriam and Aaron take Moses’ marriage to a Cushite as a basis for questioning his special status as one through whom God uniquely spoke (Num 12:1). Then, at the end of the decades of wandering in the wilderness, Moses and Aaron’s response to a later protest issues in Yhwh’s declaration that they are not to enter the land (Num 20:1–13).

After Moses’ death, Joshua soon demonstrates his own fallibility. The people have broken faith with Yhwh (Josh 7:1), though Joshua does not know, Yhwh’s wrath falls on them, and they are defeated at Ai. Like Moses, Joshua falls on his face, tears his clothes as he had done at the people’s reaction to the explorers’ report (Josh 7:6; Num 14:6), and for good measure also becomes the first person in Scripture to smear his head with dirt as a further sign of grief. But all this carries overtones of irony, presaged by his actual words, which resemble the earlier words of the Israelites.

Oh, Lord Yhwh! Why did you bring this people across the Jordan in the way that you did in order to give us into the power of the Amorites so as to destroy us? If only we had been willing to settle the other side of the Jordan! Lord! What am I to say now that Israel has turned its back before its enemies? The Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear, and they will surround us and eliminate our name from the earth. And what are you going to do for your great name? (Josh 7:7–9)

It is an updated version of the people’s own plea in the wilderness. Instead of regretting leaving Egypt and/or expressing a desire not to go on to enter the land, it regrets entering the land and thus corresponds to a plea the story’s readers might utter, suggesting how questions that arose in the wilderness indeed also arise in the promised land. Joshua, too, regrets the fact that Yhwh had brought the people thus far, wishes they could go back on their place in Yhwh’s purpose, and is (irrationally?) afraid that they are about to die—or as he puts it, that their name is about to be eliminated from the earth. It is only as he speaks of their name that this triggers concern for Yhwh’s own name, so that his words come to parallel Moses’ words in his appeals to Yhwh. Even if we had not been told that the people had broken faith, we might not be surprised that Yhwh’s response to Joshua’s cry is to tell him to get up off his knees and start finding out what has happened.

When the people are living in the land, the negative experiences of the wilderness will not cease. Epidemic, enemy attack, shortage of water and lack of food through bad harvests will recur in the life of Yhwh’s people, but this life will also be characterized by experiences of Yhwh’s provision. A table will be spread in the very presence of the enemy, in the wilderness (Ps 23:5; 78:19). “Death is transformed into life from within a death-filled context.”[823]  Any such individual experience needs to be looked at in the light of the composite pattern that emerges from these stories. The people of God then have to ask whether theirs is an experience of unexplained disappointment or deserved chastisement, and how it tests them and their leadership, and how the stories of God’s provision draw them to come to God over this particular experience.

7.2 The People of God: Bride and Rebel

There is something worse than protesting. The object of leaving Egypt was to go into the wilderness to meet Yhwh, and there Yhwh and Israel confirmed a relationship with one another. Sinai demonstrated more about the nature of the God who will always be present with the people and is characterized by commitment, compassion and forgiveness, though also by a willingness to punish. God pronounced in detail on many features of life that need to characterize Israel, Israel made a correlative commitment to shape its life by God’s revelation, and Numbers 1–10 emphasizes how people do just what Yhwh commands as it prepares to depart from Sinai (e.g., Num 1:19, 54; 2:34; 3:42; 4:49; 8:20).

At the beginning of Israel’s journey through the wilderness, Yhwh had promised to be faithful to it on that journey if it did what was upright in Yhwh’s eyes (yāšār, Ex 15:26). That was the first occurrence of the word “upright” in the First Testament. The second comes at the end of the journey, in Balaam’s description of Israel (Num 23:10). Even if there is something honorific about the description,[824]  it implies Yhwh looks on Israel as a people who fulfill Yhwh’s expectations, as Yhwh fulfills Israel’s. Yhwh can thus recall the time in the wilderness as a honeymoon period in the relationship:

I remember your commitment and love as a young bride

In following me in the wilderness, the land not sown.

Israel was holy to Yhwh, the firstfruits of his produce.

Anyone who ate of it was liable to punishment. Trouble would come on them.

(Jer 2:2–3)

And when the relationship needs a new start, Yhwh can imagine drawing Israel into the wilderness for a second honeymoon (Hos 2:14 [MT 16]).

Rebellion on the Journey

But the sealing of the relationship at Sinai was immediately succeeded by an act of profound disobedience and unfaithfulness on Israel’s part, and the obedient preparations for the departure from Sinai were immediately succeeded by a series of acts of rebellion on the journey. So Yhwh can also recall the time in the wilderness as a period of rebellion, when Israel refused to live by Yhwh’s ordinances (Ezek 20:10–26). A much later generation sees the very beginning of the journey that way, reflecting in a midrash on the narrative speed with which the account relates the people’s three-day journey from Sinai after the narrative slowness of the Sinai story. It imagines the people getting up early, folding their tents, packing their belongings, and marching as fast as they can for three days to get as far away as possible as quickly as possible from Sinai and any possible further law-giving[825] —though of course this ploy does not work. And at the journey’s end the motif recurs when the desire of some clans not to cross the Jordan raises the question whether they are repeating their parents’ rebelliousness (Num 32:6–15).

The defining moment comes at the center of the series of stories about events in the wilderness (Num 13–14).[826]  From Qadesh in the Paran Wilderness, fifty miles south of Beersheba and thus tantalizingly near the people’s destination, Yhwh tells Moses to send men to explore the land, so that they can formulate a plan for the whole people’s move into it (Num 13:1; cf. Deut 1:22). The advance party brings back evidence that the land is good, but also reports that its occupants are strong and its towns well-fortified. The land itself is one that “devours its inhabitants” (Num 13:32). Their unrealistically negative anticipation of the land lying ahead of them is the obverse of their rose-tinted memory of the land lying behind them, which becomes a “land flowing with milk and sweetness” (Num 16:13).[827]  The people cry out and weep, cannot face the idea of proceeding toward the land, and seek to implement a proposal to return to Egypt. When Yhwh declares that they will indeed not enter the land, they turn round and attempt to do so, and fail. The two sides of this stance, the refusal to proceed and then the insistence on doing so, especially mark the wilderness period as one of rebellion (Num 14:9; Deut 1:26; 9:23–24; more generally, Ps 78:17, 40; 106:43). Alongside the regret that they had ever left Egypt is a correlative desire not to have to continue to the destiny God had set in front of them, or alternatively, to make their way there under their own steam. At the midpoint of the stories the people are thus condemned to die in the wilderness. The journey from Egypt to Canaan thus has Sinai as its first, planned marker, but Qadesh as its second, unplanned one.

The path from promise to fulfillment thus turns out to have another unannounced cleft built into it. The first was the people’s sojourn in Egypt, which made deliverance necessary. The second is the people’s failure in the wilderness, which makes it necessary to exclude the generation that experienced the deliverance from enjoying the land. The second cleft comes through parallel experiences to the ones that drove Jacob’s family into Egypt, such as a lack of water and food, but it also involves the people’s own rebelliousness. The First Testament gospel story is a long story because of clefts carved out by God’s letting natural disaster have its way and letting human rebelliousness have its way.

The dynamic of commitment and rebellion recurs in Deuteronomy, which constitutes one long challenge to the people on the edge of the land to commit itself to a detailed obedience to Yhwh. The need for this emerges from the way the events at Qadesh break up the story of the people’s journey from Sinai to Canaan, calling into question the seriousness of the people’s commitment at Sinai. “The journey in the wilderness indicates that the torah that the Lord set before the people at Horeb was not enough.… Before the people enter the land, the teaching of the past must be reiterated and reinforced by further instruction.”[828]  Deuteronomy is not a legalistic document. It sees the gift of Moses’ Teaching as an aspect of the great blessing intended by Yhwh for Israel (Deut 4:7–8).[829]  But Deuteronomy closes with repeated challenges to make a covenant commitment to Yhwh. Moses issues the challenge, the elders of Israel do so, the priests do so, the Levites are to do so, Moses does so again, then he does so again, and so on. Moses implies that the people are as stubborn as the king of Egypt was (e.g., Deut 9:6, 13), which would make us wary of ascribing too much value to any undertaking they may now make in response. In fact, in Deuteronomy Israel never replies to Moses’ challenge. It never makes any commitment. That leaves the ball in the readers’ court, like the question at the end of Jonah.[830]

Leaders Drawn into Rebellion

From time to time individuals from the clans take the lead in rebellion, but there is little to emphasize the guilt of particular groups or clans. If this were an aim, one might at least have expected some stories about wicked Ephraimites, given Ephraim’s later downfall. It is more characteristic of the stories to see the whole people as rebellious. The spies include members of all the clans, and the whole assembly infers that there is no way the people can win the land (Num 13–14). The spies who produce the minority report represent both Judah and Ephraim, later the two most prominent clans whose names suggest the rival southern and northern kingdoms, each of which saw themselves as guardians of the true faith. The stories give little encouragement to particular clans to see themselves as faithful to Yhwh and/or to demonize or excommunicate other clans. They remind Christian groups to take the same stance in relation to each other.

On the other hand, the rebelliousness of the people as a whole does draw their leaders into rebellion. Miriam and Aaron issue a challenge to Moses. They begin from the propriety of his marriage to a Cushite (Num 12:1), but this is only a starting point for a different matter. Prophet and priest are in rebellion against Moses’ authority as teacher. The focus thus lies not so much on the individuals and on what is fair to them (nor on their gender), as on what they stand for. One might have expected Yhwh’s anger at Miriam and Aaron to issue in their death, but instead it issues in a visible (temporary) chastisement imposed on Miriam, who especially represents prophecy.[831]

Moses is a distinctively lowly, ordinary person who has more experience of being put down than anyone else,[832]  and the pressure this puts on him eventually breaks him. The basis for the death sentence on Moses and Aaron is their particular failure to trust in Yhwh and to show Yhwh’s holiness before the Israelites (Num 20:12). How had they done that? It might seem that there must be far more egregious actions that could have offended Yhwh than Moses’ striking the rock (twice) rather than merely addressing it. Perhaps there are sinister implications in the striking and the associated question “shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” Are Moses and Aaron behaving as if they are Egyptian magicians, as if they rather than God can and must do the miracle for the people?[833]  Perhaps they are behaving like Pharaoh himself, as if they have responsibility and power to act like leaders. Perhaps by “we” Moses means “Yhwh and I” and that makes this a moment when Moses and Aaron break faith with Yhwh (Deut 32:51). Perhaps they have turned themselves into God.

The story portrays the ease with which leaders can slip from handling protests with trust to sharing their people’s failure. Leaders and people must not take leaders too absolutely. Leaders are made of the same stuff as their people and fall into the same sins.

Rebellion as Israel Enters the Land

As Israel is about to enter the land, Yhwh challenges Joshua to be careful to do exactly as Moses said. Initially he also does not reply, but he does begin urging the leaders to get the people ready to cross the Jordan and reminds the clans who were to settle east of the Jordan of their obligation to the other clans. Then there is a reply:

All that you have commanded us we will do, and wherever you send us we will go. In just the way we obeyed Moses, we will obey you. Certainly Yhwh will be with you as he was with Moses. Anyone who rebels against your voice and will not obey your words, anything that you command, is to be put to death. (Josh 1:16–18)

But what is the cash value of this undertaking? Who speaks? The leaders? The eastern clans? Or the people as a whole? To what does the undertaking apply? To the work of the leaders? To the eastern clans’ short-term commitment? Or to the whole people’s whole life? And “in just the way we obeyed Moses”? Whoever speaks in whatever connection, that precedent is hardly encouraging. Though we might be tempted to think that the presence of the Canaanites is the great obstacle to the fulfilling of Yhwh’s promise to give the land to Israel, the opening of Joshua suggests otherwise. Yhwh is quite capable of giving Israel this land—the verb comes eight times. The real obstacle to fulfillment is not any resolve of the Canaanites to hold on to their land but Joshua and Israel’s potential lack of resolve to do what Yhwh says.[834]

Nor is there encouragement in the story that immediately follows. Joshua sends two men to check out Jericho. Such an action has precedent (Num 13–14), but there it was Yhwh’s idea, and the result might make one conclude it was not a precedent to be repeated. Here Joshua receives no equivalent instruction, and it is difficult to see what was to be achieved by the venture—especially in the light of the technique Yhwh intends to use for the city’s capture. Is Joshua assuming that the basis for working out how to win a victory is an assessment of the relative size of the forces involved—which was also the general assumption at the time of the first “spy” venture (Num 13–14)? While the uncommissioned reconnoiter produces a testimony from a Canaanite prostitute(!) that Yhwh is indeed giving Israel the land, it almost issues in disaster for the men themselves.

The people do then exactly follow what Yhwh says in crossing the Jordan, erecting memorial stones, circumcising the men, celebrating Passover and taking Jericho, and in due course at Shechem Joshua reads out the entire book of Moses’ Teaching in accordance with Moses’ instructions. But before and after that come the debacle at Ai and the different debacle of Israel’s deception by the Gibeonites. In taking some of the spoil from Jericho, Achan, and thus the people, broke faith with Yhwh, fell short, broke the covenant and did something morally and theologically stupid (māʿal, hāṭāʾ, ʿābar, nĕbālâ; Josh 7:1, 11, 15, 20).[835]  The event has a similar place in the story to the people’s wrongdoing at Sinai and their rebellions in the wilderness. Each time we might hope and think that at last the people of God are now to respond to God with the commitment that God’s grace and power deserve, but each time we are disappointed.

The Tension Between Obedience and Disobedience

The first half of Joshua thus embodies further tension over whether Israel is characterized by obedience to Yhwh or not. Rahab and Achan muddle the distinction between Canaanites and Israelites.[836]  Rahab talks more like an Israelite, Achan behaves more like a Canaanite. The collapse of Israelite morale mimics the collapse of Canaanite morale reported by Rahab (Josh 2:11; cf. Josh 5:1)—indeed, it exceeds that, for (literally) the Israelites’ hearts not only melt, but melt so thoroughly that they turn into water (Josh 7:5). Achan’s name (ʿākān) makes the point, for while it represents no known Hebrew root, it does represent the letters of the name “Canaan” (kĕnaʿan) in a hidden form. Achan signifies the presence of Canaan hidden within Israel.[837]

What defines the people of God is not merely possession of the land, for some people who possess the land do not belong. It is not merely obedience to Moses, for some people who belong do not obey Moses. It is not merely kinship or separation from other peoples, for kinship does not save Achan or exclude Rahab. The people who are referred to as Canaanites (unlike, e.g., Philistines) were close to the Israelites in background and language and thus (paradoxically) were a particular threat to Israelite identity. That the distinctiveness of both peoples was thus further muddied deepens the problem of identity. Israel is designed to be the embodiment of wisdom, but its performance is mixed, and so is that of the Canaanites. Achan embodies one form of religious stupidity—he does not recognize that reverence for Yhwh is the first principle of wisdom. In the interaction between the spies, Rahab and the king of Jericho, Rahab is the only wise person. The “stupidity” with which Joshua then lets himself be taken in by the Gibeonites’ “ridiculous swindle, contains a forthright comic element, as well as a considerable measure of self-mockery” (Josh 9).[838]

The tension between obedience and disobedience is encapsulated at a central point in Joshua:

Joshua took all the cities of those kings, and all the kings, and struck them with the edge of the sword. He devoted them, as Moses the servant of Yhwh had commanded. On the other hand, Israel did not burn any of the cities that stood on their tells, except Hazor. Joshua burned it alone. The Israelites took for themselves all the spoil of these cities and the cattle, as spoil. On the other hand, they struck all the people with the edge of the sword, until they had destroyed them. They did not leave anyone breathing. (Josh 11:12–14)

So did Joshua and the people do what Yhwh had said via Moses (Josh 11:15)? Yes. Well, no. Well, yes. Well, no. Well, yes.

The tension reappears at the close of the story, in Joshua 22–24. The clans that want to settle east of the Jordan are now free to do so because they have done all Moses commanded and all Joshua himself required, joining with the rest of the clans in taking possession of the land west of the Jordan. They have carefully kept Yhwh’s charge (Josh 22:1–3). But in settling east of the Jordan, they build themselves an altar there, which to the western clans looks like a repetition of the rebellion that featured during the people’s time just before and after their original crossing of the Jordan (Josh 22:10–34). Then at the end of his life, Joshua issues a dying challenge to the people to commit themselves to a life of obedience that will lead to their entering into full possession of the land (Josh 23). But it is the same challenge (and promise) that he issued at the beginning of the book. So the situation has not moved on. Further, Joshua follows it with another final challenge with the same message, and an extraordinary exhortation to decide now whether they are going to serve Yhwh or the gods that their ancestors had once worshiped, or the gods of the peoples around (Josh 24:1–27). If they wish to serve Yhwh they must now give up allegiance to other gods. They agree to do so. But we have heard nothing of such allegiance before. Not only has the situation not moved on since the beginning of the book. It has deteriorated.

So the opening, the center, the close and the individual stories in Joshua describe the people as wholly committed to Yhwh and to a life of obedience to Yhwh’s directions, but also see them as continually falling down on such commitment. The portrait is the one familiar from Exodus and Numbers.

A Pattern to Learn From

Psalm 78 systematically portrays the wilderness journey as a period of ongoing rebellion from which the subsequent community needs to learn, so that

They should not be like their ancestors, a refractory, rebellious generation,

A generation that did not make its mind firm, whose spirit was not faithful to God. (Ps 78:8)

The psalm’s opening heralds a simple rejoicing in Yhwh’s wondrous acts for the people (Ps 78:1–4), but its marveling turns out to have a more complicated focus. First, alongside “the praises of Yhwh and his might and his wonders,” it sets Yhwh’s establishing of a declaration or teaching (ʿēdût, tôrâ) in Jacob-Israel and recalls the people’s charge to pass on to their descendants both the story of Yhwh’s deeds and the challenge of Yhwh’s commands (Ps 78:4–7). But it then keeps wondering at the fact that a people that had seen so many marvels of Yhwh’s activity in Egypt, at the Red Sea and on their subsequent journey could have put these out of mind (Ps 78:11). It is characterized by a sense of the inexplicable. It repeatedly comes back to marvels Yhwh did at different times, recalling them in no logical order but thereby suggesting it cannot get them out of mind—as the people were quite able to do. Yhwh had done so much, so spectacularly, for the people. When they did put those experiences out of mind, Yhwh had been merciful to them, though also incorporating warnings and chastisements within their experience (e.g., Ps 78:30–31, 33, 38). Yet they had failed to learn. The psalm begins by characterizing itself as a poem about mysteries or enigmas (ḥîdôt, Ps 78:2). It wonders at the mystery of Yhwh’s gracious mercy and Israel’s willful rebelliousness.

It then makes explicit that the pattern set in the wilderness repeats in the people’s subsequent life. Ephraim’s treacherous bow is the pattern for their religious and moral lives (Ps 78:57; cf. v. 9).[839]  Between Joshua and David the people’s local sanctuaries and their images were their equivalent to their ancestors’ rebellions, and their experience of defeat was equivalent to their ancestors’ (Ps 78:56–64). But they also then experienced the compassion extended to their ancestors, which came to a climax with Yhwh’s choosing of Zion and David (Ps 78:65–72). With that for a moment the story ends, but its nature is to face the community with whether it intends to continue the pattern. Enigmas are there for people to learn from.

From the beginning of Israel’s story, each generation stands before Yhwh responsible for its own commitment and open to the possibility of entering the promised land, but also open to the possibility of being condemned to wander for its lifetime rather than entering into God’s blessing.[840]  The Sinai covenant is made not only with the exodus generation, but also with the generation born on the way to the land, and the Moab covenant is made not only with the people who were actually there, but “with the people who are not here with us today” (Deut 5:2–4; 29:15 [MT 14]). There will be later moments of crisis and the making of a new start (Jehoiada, 2 Kings 11:17; Hezekiah, 2 Chron 29:10; Josiah, 2 Kings 23:3) when people formally renew their commitment to the covenants at Sinai and in Moab. Each generation is invited into covenant relationship but has to respond to the invitation. As immigrants to the United States, for instance, commit their offspring to loyalty to their new country, so people who committed themselves to Yhwh at Sinai and in Moab committed their descendants, who can therefore themselves enjoy the benefits of the deliverance, the sealing and the gift. But the offspring can decide to go back on their parents’ commitment, and so could subsequent generations of Yhwh’s covenant people, though in the latter case, at least, they are ignoring the way they have benefited from Yhwh’s kindness shown just as truly to them as to their ancestors.[841]

First Corinthians 10 takes up the insight on the nature of the people of God suggested by Numbers 11–21 and draws the church’s attention to the way it faces the same temptations. In that letter and elsewhere Paul demonstrates that this is not a mere theoretical possibility. The church needs to “consider its present destiny in the light of Israel, and that includes categories like exile, rivenness, shortcoming, and even, as Ezekiel saw at one dark moment, a bride tragically become a whore.”[842]  As Avery Dulles notes in his standard text Models of the Church, from which I adapted the title of section 6.9, the church is both holy and sinful. It continually needs repentance and reform.[843]  Thus to the statement that “under the leading of the Holy Spirit, the Church constantly works to purify men from their sins, to induce conversion and repentance,”[844]  one needs to add a reverse statement: the church also persists in sin, so that under the leading of the Holy Spirit, men and women (within the church and outside it) need also constantly to work to purify it from its sins, to induce conversion and repentance. If a theology of the church emphasizes the first at the expense of the second, it risks being a triumphalist doctrine that fails to take account of the church’s real nature. The church is, in Luther’s famous statement, “at the same time right with God, and sinful.”[845]  If it does not own the second facet of its nature as well as the first, it risks behaving as if its own publicity were true and then becoming an agent of sin and oppression rather than of freedom—as it has indeed been.

7.3 The People of God: Chastised and Mercied

Rebellion leads to chastisement, and experience of trouble raises the question whether we deserve it. We may not deserve it, and protesting when let down by God is not inherently out of order. But prophets often affirm that experiences such as those that came to Israel on the way to the land—drought, famine and defeat—constitute chastisement for unfaithfulness. Yhwh rejects a protest by Jeremiah voiced on the people’s behalf when they need rather to change their attitude toward God (Jer 14) and Second Isaiah disputes the validity of such protests in the context of the exile (e.g., Is 40:27). Lamentations has already granted that the community has no grounds for objecting to the trouble that has come to it (Lam 3:39).[846]  Trouble can be the deserved consequence of rebellion.

There were hints in Numbers 1–10 that the journey to Canaan might not turn out as unequivocally straightforward as its main story line suggested. Death already reared its head through those chapters. For instance, why is there so much talk of contact with corpses (Num 5:2; 6:6, 11; 9:6–7, 10)? Where were all these corpses coming from?[847]  The opening of Numbers 11 then summarizes the dominant features of the story from Sinai to Moab: trouble, protest, chastisement, plea, remission.

It came about, when the people were objecting in Yhwh’s hearing at bad things, that Yhwh heard and his anger flared. Yhwh’s fire burned them and consumed part of the edge of the camp. The people cried out to Moses and Moses appealed to Yhwh, and the fire abated. (Num 11:1–2)

Testing

Trouble can lead to rebellion too. The wilderness is a place of testing. Thirst and hunger are a test: how will the people react? Having one’s thirst and hunger met is also a test, a challenge to obedience (Ex 15:25; 16:4; cf. Ex 20:20; Deut 8:2, 16; 13:3 [MT 4]; 33:8). Drinking polluted water would cause illness and death, and purifying the water therefore safeguards people from illness and death. If they then live in obedience to Yhwh’s commands they will be free from disease, says Yhwh the one who heals. The gift of bread tests their obedience to a key command. On the sixth day they will receive enough bread for two days and they are not to look for any on the seventh day. Terrible punishment comes to a man who forgets such a requirement (Num 15:32–36). Keeping the sabbath is a fundamental expectation that people cannot ignore without imperiling their very identity as Yhwh’s people.

While Yhwh consciously tests the people by putting them into threatening situations to see how they react, they also unconsciously test Yhwh by questioning whether Yhwh is really with them or can really look after them (Ex 17:2, 7; Num 14:22; Deut 6:16; Ps 78:18, 41; 95:9; 106:14). The journey to Canaan involves a mutual testing. It is apparently fine for Yhwh to test Israel but not for Israel to test Yhwh. Perhaps Yhwh’s testing of Israel shows Yhwh takes Israel seriously and indicates a kind of respect—Yhwh does not unilaterally look into Israel’s heart but gives it opportunity to show what it is made of. Israel’s testing of Yhwh indicates a lack of respect or trust when Yhwh has given Israel ample reason for these.

The fire of Yhwh’s anger burns again when the people protest at how much better things were in Egypt (Num 11:10). On this occasion, as on some others, the solution to their plea is also itself a chastisement. If they miss meat so much, Yhwh will stuff them so full they will be sick of meat (Num 11:18–20). An epidemic then follows (Num 11:33). Near the end of the journey through the wilderness, Yhwh sends poisonous snakes among the people, and many die (Num 21:6). In Joshua 7, Yhwh’s anger burns and issues in defeat and death.

At the turning point in the series of stories in Numbers, after the rebellion following the spies’ return, Yhwh proposes the same possibility that had arisen at Sinai, to annihilate the people and start over with Moses (Num 14:12). Moses responds with the classic arguments (Num 14:13–19): Yhwh cannot cast the people off and fail to take them into the land because of the disrepute this will incur. It will look as if Yhwh was incapable of bringing the people into the land. Further, Yhwh must live by the self-revelation following on the rebellion at Sinai, which made commitment and forgiveness primary in the divine nature, even if that nature also secondarily embraces the need to chastise people for their wrongdoing and the capacity to get angry. As usual, Yhwh is unable to resist these arguments for keeping commitment to the people, but some action is necessary (Num 14:20–21). Yhwh will cast off this generation that has persisted in testing, disobedience and contempt (Num 14:22–23). The census in Numbers will turn out to have a frightening extra significance. It will become a register of people who must die (except for the two who had encouraged the people to believe Yhwh could take them into the land) before the next generation enters the land.

The next event, Korah’s rebellion (Num 16), reworks the same question. Yhwh again threatens to destroy the whole congregation, but again agrees not to punish all for wrongdoing inspired by one. But the rebels and the 250 who offer incense do die. Once again the people protest, and once more Yhwh threatens to destroy the whole people, and begins to do so, but Aaron makes atonement for them and the epidemic stops. The story vindicates the priests, though in doing so sets before them Aaron’s example in fulfilling his priestly ministry by burning incense to atone for the people in their rebelliousness and their protests against himself and Moses. Even when under attack, they are called to fulfill their ministry, not to make the people’s false accusations come true.

As the people’s rebelliousness draws in their leaders, so the people’s chastisement comes on the leadership. It might seem that the death of Miriam, Aaron and Moses was implied by the declaration that the whole generation that came out of Egypt should die before a new generation enters. And by the time of the crisis in the Sin Wilderness, Miriam, the first prophet, has already died (Num 20:1). Moses and Aaron then break faith with Yhwh in that not-very-egregious-looking way, and the story perhaps illustrates how people get away with things before God sometimes but not at other times. God is not predictable, and we can never be sure when God will look the other way and when not. The death sentence on Moses and Aaron parallels the rejection of Saul for trivial wrongdoing, and people might also look back to it when Josiah dies for one mistake that surely should not undo his great acts of courageous faithfulness. Miriam, Moses and Aaron do share the fate of the wilderness generation as a whole, because they do share in its rebelliousness. But the fact that the leaders do not reach the land also makes it clear that leaders are dispensable. The edge is taken off the story’s sadness by the reminder that each of these leaders thus goes to join his people, and the danger of their going is removed by the measures taken to ensure that their leadership passes on to appropriate successors (Num 20:22–29; 27:12–23).

Blessing Reasserted

After the rebellion at Qadesh, the people do nothing but wander about until staying there again decades later. Narrative time moves very quickly in Numbers 11–20, especially as most of the intervening material is actually not teaching narrative, and this obscures the fact that real time moves very slowly until the death sentence on the wilderness generation has been implemented. Real time can then speed up once more as narrative time slows down. The people will spend almost as much narrative time in the Plains of Moab (from Num 22 to the beginning of Joshua) as they spent at Sinai, as the new generation has the implications of Sinai brought home to it.

The last stories about Israel’s protests and chastisement appear in Numbers 20–21, which also include the first stories about Israel’s victories on the way to taking the land. These two are interestingly interwoven, as if to associate the two processes. God does not wait till the protests are over before giving the victories, nor do the victories terminate the protests. After the second sojourn at Qadesh, Israel evades fighting the Edomites, responds successfully to an attack by the Canaanites of Arad, and defeats two hostile Amorite kings whose land east of the Jordan it thus comes to control. This scares the Moabites, understandably but ironically, because Israel has no business seeking to dispossess Moab any more than Ammon or Edom (see Deut 2). But it is a sign that Israel’s rebelliousness does not drive God into abandoning the intention to take it to its destiny, a sign confirmed by what happens when Moab attempts to use supernatural means to stop the Israelite juggernaut. Yhwh causes this to have the opposite effect. Moab tries to get Balaam to put Israel under a curse, but Balaam knows this would involve God being deceptive, like a spring that fails to produce its “promised” water or a human being who commits to an undertaking and fails to follow through with it (Num 23:19; cf. Is 58:11). God’s promise had taken the form of an oath that God swore. There is no calamity or trouble in sight for Israel. Yhwh their God is present among them, acknowledged as king and strong enough to make sure that they triumph as promised (Num 23:21–24; 24:5–9). All Balaam can do is reassert Israel’s blessing.

In the broader context the declaration of blessing forms an inclusion with Genesis 12, or rather forms the beginning of an inclusion that will continue in Deuteronomy. The theme of blessing and curse was prominent in Genesis but less so in the bulk of Exodus–Numbers. Recurring here, it reasserts that the purpose to bless is about to find fulfillment. Yhwh had promised that Abraham’s family would become as numerous as the grains of sandy soil in the land (Gen 13:16; 28:14); Balaam testifies that this has come about (Num 23:10a). Yhwh had promised that people would pray for blessing like Abraham’s (Gen 12:3); Balaam does so (Num 23:10b).

The reappearance of the theme also advertises that the story needs to make the transition back from deliverance talk to blessing talk. Israel’s story (the world’s story) is not ultimately about deliverance but about blessing. When things have gone wrong (e.g., the people are slaves in Egypt), then God needs to take some emergency measures to put them right by delivering them. But normal life is then about blessing.

Not that the renewed declaration of blessing means the new generation will experience Yhwh’s blessing if it turns away from Yhwh. If some of the clans settle east of the Jordan and implicate the whole new generation in an act of rebellion parallel to their parents’, that could lead to a parallel divine abandonment (Num 32). Yet the stories reassure readers that Yhwh will never give up on the purpose to be achieved through this people (at least, if they keep reminding Yhwh of it), though any generation can forfeit its place in this purpose (cf. Rom 9–11).[848]  Andrew Tunyogi suggests that the fact that the people of God continually rebel against their God from the time they become this God’s people, yet are never utterly cast off, but continually kept in the covenant relationship, is unique to the First Testament.[849]

A Pattern for Life in the Land

Life in the land will also involve testing. In future centuries, if the community fails to learn from its ancestors’ negative example, it can learn from their subsequent experience of God’s deliverance and pray to repeat it. Psalm 106 begins as a hymn of praise that acknowledges the blessedness of people who are committed to mišpāṭ and ṣĕdāqâ. But an irony in this acknowledgment soon surfaces. Israel is not such a community. The psalm is dominated by an extensive recollection of events in Egypt, at Sinai, in the wilderness and after the people’s arrival in Canaan—again recollected in a serendipity sequence. What they have in common is that Yhwh’s wonders never succeeded in winning Israel’s commitment. Many times they would rebel, and many times Yhwh would chastise them.

Many times he would rescue them,

But they would be rebellious in their planning, and they fell through their perversity.

But he looked at the distress that came to them, when he heard their cry.

He thought about his covenant and relented in accordance with his great commitment.

He made them objects of compassion to all their captors. (Ps 106:43–46)

“The entire history of Israel, which expresses itself in craving, oblivion, disobedience, and thoughtless exchange of gods, according to the message of the psalm is already basically present before the occupation of the land.”[850]  People who live through that history can therefore find themselves in that earlier story. So the psalm closes with a plea that the people who now sing the psalm may benefit from the same pattern:

Deliver us, Yhwh our God, and gather us from among the nations,

To give thanks to your holy name and glory in your praise. (Ps 106:47)

In turn it may later be in a position to give that acknowledgment because it has had the experience of deliverance from hunger and thirst, darkness and gloom, or sickness and distress. So the next psalm:

Give thanks to Yhwh, for he is good, for his commitment lasts forever,

The people Yhwh restored must say, those he restored from the power of oppression[851]

And gathered in from countries, from east and west, from north and sea.

They wandered in the wilderness, in wasteland. They found no way to an inhabited city.

Hungry, thirsty, their life faded within them.

Then they cried to Yhwh in their oppression that he would rescue them from their troubles.

He led them by a direct way so that they came to an inhabited city.

They must give thanks to Yhwh for his commitment, his wondrous acts for people,

For he satisfied the thirsty, filled the hungry with good things. (Ps 107:1–9)

The psalm goes on to recall experiences of oppression by enemies, sickness or epidemic, and danger on a sea voyage, each with this pattern of crying out and having Yhwh respond and act. Oppression and sickness come because of rebellion against Yhwh. Wandering and danger at sea are simply experiences that just happen. Either way, trouble, crying out and experiencing Yhwh acting form the pattern of Israel’s experience over the centuries: the reference to gathering in from other countries and to risky journeys by sea suggest the psalm looks back from the Second Temple period.

A Pattern for the Ongoing Life of the People of God

The entire period from the united monarchy through the Judahite monarchy and the Babylonian period into the Persian period is thus a context against which we can see people reading the stories of rebellion, chastisement and deliverance in the wilderness. Historically, one or other of these periods or all of them may have been ones in which the stories were being formulated and reformulated until they reached the form in which we have them. The experience of living between Egypt/Sinai and Canaan runs through the entire First Testament story, as it continues to run through the life of the church. It is intrinsic to being the people of God.

Today, if only you would listen to his voice.

Do not close your minds as at Meribah, like the day at Massah, in the wilderness.

In that your ancestors tested me, tried me, though they had seen my deeds,

Forty years I would loathe a generation

Of which I said, “They are a people of erring mind, who do not acknowledge my ways.”

I swore in my anger, “If they come to my place of rest …” (Ps 95:7–11)

The stories about events in the wilderness are told for people who live in the promised land, the resting place Yhwh found for them (see Num 10:33; Deut 12:9; cf. 1 Kings 8:56). The psalm implies they may forfeit their enjoyment of this resting place (cf. Mic 2:10). It may even imply they have not really come to Yhwh’s place of rest at all. Though in the land in a physical sense, they do not yet experience what entering the land stands for. They still live between Sinai and Moab (cf. Heb 3–4). “Today” they are in the same position as people then, as the generation to whom Moses preached in Deuteronomy was in the same position as the people at Sinai (e.g., Deut 4:40; 5:3).

If the church shares Israel’s vocation, wilderness suggests for its theology and spirituality that its life in the world involves an oppression that can make it forget who it is and even fail to recognize oppression as oppression. But God has brought it out of the world, and from time to time people in the world recognize the nature of God’s deliverance of it. Its wilderness experience tests the nature of its own commitment to God and reveals it to be a people characterized by rebellion and thus often subject to discipline, so that a whole generation or whole churches may be allowed virtually to die out (Turkey, north Africa, Europe). But God never casts off the people as a whole. It is on a journey to a land of promise, and one that exists on an earthly plane, not an ethereal one, because God is intent on fulfilling a purpose on the earthly plane. Its experience now is one of extraordinary provision, and the fact that it survives the wilderness is itself a miracle. At the same time, the wilderness is a place that is neither one thing nor the other, “in between,” an uncomfortable place to live your whole life. And it remains a stage, not an end. Yhwh is committed to taking the people into its land of promise.

7.4 War, Its Nature and Its Rationales

Through its flourishing in Egypt, Israel became a nation, and for its departure from Egypt, became an army. Perhaps nationhood necessarily involves territory,[852]  implies becoming a country, and possessing territory necessarily involves the means of protecting it, but at this stage being or having an army links with Israel’s destiny to conquer “its” land. It is a fact of Realpolitik that peoples take away land from each other by force. The United States exists because of this. Israel’s witness to God takes place in history with its ambiguity: “Landed life committed Israel to military, political, and economic activity, with all the possibilities of injustice that follow from such involvements. One people’s gain is another people’s loss.”[853]  Yhwh’s giving land to Israel involves taking it from other peoples. It is quite possible to imagine Yhwh finding an empty land to give Abraham, or providentially ensuring that some land would remain empty so that it could be given to Abraham. Indeed, an influential current theory declares that Israel did come into being by moving into empty land, withdrawing into the mountains from the Canaanite lowland.[854]  But the dominant First Testament account portrays Yhwh taking a land from its occupants. The story makes the point very strongly by the verbs it uses to describe the process.[855]  It involves effacing (kāḥad hiphil), tearing down (hāras piel), expelling (gāraš qal and piel) and confounding (hāmam) (e.g., Ex 23:23–31). It involves clearing out (nāšal), striking down (nākâ hiphil), breaking down (nātaṣ), shattering (šābar piel), cutting up (gādaʿ piel), burning (śārap), dispossessing (yāraš qal and hiphil), devoting by killing (ḥāram hiphil), finishing (kālâ piel), destroying (šāmad hiphil), eliminating (ʾābad piel and hiphil) and cutting off (kārat hiphil) (e.g., Deut 7:1, 2, 5, 17, 20, 22, 24; 12:2, 3, 29).

War Is Not One Thing

But in the First Testament story (as in the modern world) war is not one thing, and we have to beware of generalizations about its ideology or ideologies, except the generalization that these have little in common with “just war” theory that dominates Western discussion. In the First Testament war must be just, but justice as ṣĕdāqâ, Yhwh’s active faithfulness in the context of a commitment to people, is very different from justice as iustitia. Further, God makes war with gusto, not restraint, pending the turning of swords into plowshares, and like Rome, shows a concern for justice in the world by seeing that oppressors are put down and vulnerable people delivered.[856]

The variety of First Testament stories about war suggests various perspectives and frameworks for thinking about war that in their variety offer to readers who make war material with which to reflect on their own war-making. My birth nation’s empire was based on war, and my foster nation’s history has been dominated by war, as the movie Bowling for Columbine hilariously points out. Both have seen themselves as Christian nations whose life was based on Scripture, but neither has reflected seriously in the light of Scripture on the place of war in their own being. They have often given their energy in this connection to criticizing ancient Israel’s ideology of war and in critiquing people such as modern Israelis or Palestinians for making of war against each other, but this looks like a form of displacement that needs to be succeeded by self-critical reflection. Even people who believe Jesus wants them to be peace-makers may never succeed if they avoid getting their people to face this displacement.

The United States has had a number of reasons for making war. It made aggressive war against the previous inhabitants of its land, as these peoples had previously done to win this land for themselves. It engaged in liberative war, to throw off British control. It engaged in civil war. It engaged in wars to support allies under pressure, in Europe. It has engaged in aggressive war on foreign territory. Only recently has it been subject to attack on its own territory and has thus undertaken a “war against terrorism.” In modern Western societies “politics is dominated by the economy” and “warfare is thinkable and justifiable if it can be argued to be in defence of ‘national interests’ understood in terms of the political-economic ideology.” Yet “North Americans are willing to go to war to defend capitalism against communism, as in Korea, Vietnam and in Central and South America.”[857]  That suggests there is something of a crusade about these wars, a desire to defend a way of life, as well as a desire to safeguard power. In its story as the United States tells it, “every great problem from independence to slavery to totalitarian threats is finally resolved by the ultima ratio of war” in a way epitomized in the Western.[858]

Israel, too, made war for a variety of reasons, and the stories of these might aid modern nations in evaluating their own involvement in war. It is not that Israel’s war-making might provide justification for the war-making of other peoples. No other people has the place in Yhwh’s purpose that Israel had, so no other people (even the modern state of Israel) can justify its actions by saying that they imitate Israel’s. Rather, these stories provide mirrors in which nations might see themselves and ask whether they are justified in doing so, or whether they need to provide other accounts of their war-making than these stories offer.

Liberative, Passive

1. There is liberative war-making. In the regular course of his life Abram had no reason to initiate wars, but he became involved in war because the invasion of four foreign kings led to the capture of Lot (Gen 14). It was apparently not Abram’s job then to take a pacifist stance in relation to the four aggressors and (perhaps) to enter into lengthy political negotiations to procure the captives’ release. It was his job to rescue Lot by bravery and by force. This was Entebbe, not Beirut. Subsequently, Judges tells a series of stories about liberative war-making. Yhwh gives (part of) Israel into the hands of Aram Naharaim, or Moab, or the Canaanites of Hazor, or Midian. After a while, in response to Israel’s cry, Yhwh raises up a deliverer who can lead Israel in defeating its overlord so that Israel can be free.

2. There is passive war-making. Israel had no business fighting to get out of Egypt, or fighting the Egyptians at the Red Sea. It had no call to bravery or to military action through which Yhwh would give it the victory. Yhwh would win the victory through purely supernatural means. Moses’ actions in confronting the king of Egypt, and then in calling on the sea to part and later to return, are the exceptions that prove the rule. It is paradigmatically significant that these first great acts of deliverance involved no other human action at all. Yhwh is the warrior (Ex 15:3). Israel leaves war-making to Yhwh. Yhwh makes war as a means of putting down the mighty, the successful, the aggressive and the oppressive, and of rescuing the lowly and the vulnerable. Yhwh thus follows Abram’s example, but goes much further than Abram. Yhwh is not satisfied with rescuing the “son” in need. The victory involves the annihilation of the Egyptian army as a demonstration that it did not have the significance it attached to itself.

Defensive-Punitive, Aggressive-Punitive

3. There is defensive, punitive war-making. Israel similarly had no business fighting Amalek, but neither had it any business lying down and letting itself be annihilated by a people who had no reason to be attacking Israel in its vulnerability (Ex 17:8–16). So Israel fights. As at the Red Sea, it is not enough merely to rescue the needy. Yhwh wishes to punish Amalek comprehensively for its act of aggression—not that Israel will gain from this. In “just” wars, armies are expected to minimize killing and where possible to avoid killing civilians. There is no such instinct in the First Testament. Yhwh has already killed many civilians in Egypt and unnecessarily annihilated a whole army at the Red Sea. When Amalekite attack involves Israel in its first battle, “Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword,” while Yhwh goes on to declare, “I will utterly blot out Amalek’s memory from under the heavens,” and Moses comments that “Yhwh will be at war with Amalek throughout the ages” (Ex 17:13–16). Only one of these statements can be true, but the tension between them points to aspects of the significance of First Testament stories about war.

Amalek is the only people in the Torah whom Israel “fights” (lḥm niphal, Ex 17:9–10). The exceptions that prove the rule are the self-directed fighting after the rebellion at Qadesh (Deut 1:41–42) and the instructions about fighting once Israel is in the land (Deut 20). “Fighting” is something Israel’s enemies do (e.g., Num 21:21–26) and Yhwh does (e.g., Ex 14:14; Deut 1:30; 3:22). Here Israel fights on Moses’ initiative, but in accordance with the pattern elsewhere, the fighting is started by Amalek and the story closes with the note that Yhwh will henceforth keep being involved in “fighting” with Amalek (milḥāmâ) (Ex 17:8, 16). In Joshua, Israel does not “fight” in Joshua 1–9 but suddenly starts doing so in Joshua 10 (six occurrences of the verb).[859]  Notwithstanding its application to Yhwh, “fighting” is a two-sided activity (the verb is niphal), and Israel’s war-making is designed to be one-sided. It involves Israel striking people down, not engaging with them. Further, talk of “fighting” conveys the impression that this is an ordinary human activity. Like the conflict between Yhwh and the king of Egypt, battling is an activity Yhwh has taken out of Israel’s hands.

The first battle between Israelites and Canaanites also comes about because people attack Israel and take some Israelites captive (Num 21:1–3). When Moses then makes as if having no designs on Amorite territory but Sihon of Heshbon and Og of Bashan take a tough-minded stance and attack Israel, they similarly end up defeated and the object of ḥērem (devoting something to God by annihilating it; Num 21:21–35). Israel’s acquisition of territory east of the Jordan thus looks unplanned, though Moses later sees Yhwh’s purpose behind Sihon’s action (cf. Deut 2:26–3:11). The story of Sihon and Og constitutes virtually the first appearance of the Amorites as a group on the First Testament stage. [860]  They have come in lists of peoples and in Jacob’s words to Joseph in Genesis 48:22, and we are already prepared to discover that that they are characterized by wrongdoing (ʿāwôn, Gen 15:16). This comment applies to the inhabitants of the land in general, but it is specifically suggestive with regard to Amorite belligerence toward people who are not a threat to them, which leads to their loss of their land, at one level by a “natural” process of cause and effect, at another by God’s determination. The same pattern of events recurs when an attack by “Amorite” kings on Israel’s ally Gibeon leads to their defeat by Joshua (Josh 10).

4. There is aggressive, punitive war-making. After the Midianites lead the Israelites into worship of their god (Num 25), Yhwh bids Moses impose their punishment on Midian, which Moses himself then speaks of as Yhwh’s punishment (Num 31:1–3). Because Israel is doing Yhwh’s work, only a tiny representative force is needed, a thousand from each of the twelve clans. They annihilate a people large enough to include 32,000 virgins, without one of the Israelite 12,000 soldiers dying in the course of killing a dozen or twenty men each. The Israelites’ subsequent attacks on Canaan are similarly a larger-scale divine punishment of that Amorite wrongdoing. It is one aspect of the way God often acts via human beings. This does not imply that Israel is righteous or upright, which it is not (Deut 9:4–7)—any more than people such as the Assyrians whom Yhwh uses as a means of imposing punishment. It is because the Amalekites are “sinners” (ḥaṭṭāʾîm, 1 Sam 15:18) that Saul is commissioned to be the means of Yhwh’s “attending to” them (pāqad). The punishment is to match the crime. Agag (in the person of his predecessor long ago) made women childless. Now his mother will have the same experience (1 Sam 15:33).

Israel can be the victim of aggressive, punitive war-making as well as its agent. When Israel behaves like the Canaanites, Yhwh treats it like the Canaanites. “Yhwh gave them into the power of plunderers” as they once had people given into their power (Judg 2:14). The aggression of people such as Moabites, Canaanites, Midianites, Ammonites and Philistines becomes Yhwh’s means of punishing Israel. Even more chillingly, aggressive, punitive war-making can be a feature of Israel’s internal life, as happens when the atrocity done to a woman provokes Israel as a whole to make war against Benjamin, and Yhwh (eventually) defeats Benjamin before Israel (Judg 19–21).

Pacifist

5. There is a pacifist stance. Israel has no business fighting Edom, Moab or Ammon. God is distinctively involved with Israel and is giving Israel its land, is also involved in these people’s destiny and gave them their land, and has no reason for taking it back from them now (Num 20–21). Perhaps modern nations should see their relationship with God in light of that of peoples such as these, rather than Israel’s. Yhwh chose Israel, Israel is Yhwh’s people and Yhwh is Israel’s God, yet Israel’s job is to coexist with its neighbors, remembering that these people are family (Deut 2:4–5, 8–9, 19). Family or brotherhood is a key ethical value in Deuteronomy (see, e.g., Deut 15), but such terms are used for relationships with people other than Israel before they are used for relationships within Israel.[861]  Edom indeed seeks confrontation with Israel, and presumably Yhwh could have given Israel victory over Edom, but Israel sidesteps the confrontation (Num 20:14–21).

Throughout the First Testament Israel lives uneasily with these neighbors, sometimes in alliance with them but often in conflict with them, and according to the prophets, Yhwh intends to put them down (e.g., Amos 1–2), but the story gives no license for turning that intention into a basis for a political and military stance. Indeed, Amos reminds Israel that Yhwh has been positively involved in the stories of the Philistines and the Arameans. Yhwh gave them their land too (Amos 9:7). It is especially striking that Edom, Moab and Ammon are the main peoples mentioned in these stories and that they are realities in the time of the authors and readers of these stories—and the stories emphasize that Israel sought to avoid fighting them. Talk of annihilating the Canaanites or the Amorites was not a question that affected practical politics. What politicians needed to discuss was Israel’s stance in relation to peoples such as Edom, Moab and Ammon, who still existed. If the stories about Israel’s occupation of its land were brought into such discussions, they gave no warrant for putting the nation on a war footing. They justified only a stance that sought to avoid war and trusted Yhwh for the consequences.

The First Testament may assume it would be nice if there were no wars and may eventually invite the inference that war gets no one anywhere, but it does not explicitly make that point. Visions about peace come in the writings of people who are not involved in the realities of national and political life.[862]  War is a pervasive reality in ancient Middle Eastern history, as it is in the history of Europe and America, and the First Testament does not usually talk as if refraining from war might be an option. It does rejoice in the fact that when Israel reaches Canaan, it will reach a place to rest (nûaḥ, Josh 1:13, 15; 21:44 [MT 42]; 22:4). This rest is not rest from wandering (though it is also that) nor rest from work, like the rest of the sabbath, but rest from fighting (Josh 23:1; cf. Deut 12:9–10; 25:19). It does not view war-making as an ideal state of affairs, but it does assume it is a necessary way of reaching stasis. It looks forward to a day when Yhwh will bring war to an end, and twice includes a promise of this, in different versions (Is 2:2–4; Mic 4:1–4), though that is no more the First Testament’s last than it is its first word on the subject of war and power.[863]

Solomon’s distinction as temple-builder will be one that Chronicles can link with his name. Yhwh’s promise to David is that “a son born to you: He will be a man of rest. I will give him rest from all his enemies around him, because his name will be ‘Solomon’ and I will put peace and quiet over Israel in his days” (1 Chron 22:9). The formulation reflects the fact that shalom can suggest a wide-ranging well-being and not merely peace in the sense of the absence of war. The English word “peace” is closer to the meaning of mĕnûḥâ, “rest,” and šeqeṭ, “quiet,” though these also have more nuanced implications. The former suggests freedom to rest in the land; it is the opposite of being unsettled, wandering and vulnerable. The latter suggests being free from attack or invasion or insecurity. But Solomon’s name makes it appropriate to speak of shalom in referring to the absence of war. Chronicles’ ideal is that Israel should not be fighting wars. In a sense David at last completes the conquest of the land, and Solomon can enter into the rest this makes possible.[864]  David’s son, not David himself, builds a house for Yhwh’s name, because David shed so much blood.

Susan Niditch suggests that, compared with other parts of the First Testament, “1 and 2 Chronicles provide a more extended critique of human participation in the violence of war and a potential for an ideology of non-participation.” They constitute “a breakthrough toward an ideology of peace.”[865]  I would like to believe this, but the subsequent story in the rest of Chronicles will suggest that this does not imply a general pacifist commitment.[866]  The books’ stance is similar to that taken by modern war-making nations such as the Britain or the United States, which see peace as the ideal and see themselves as peace-loving but fight many wars in order to ensure that they have peace and have shalom in the broader sense. War may be an evil, but it is a necessary evil, and so we must “sin boldly.”[867]  David did that, and Solomon is the beneficiary. He can be a man of peace because his father has been a warrior.

Subversions of ḥērem

The story of Israel’s occupation of Palestine gives a significant place to the practice of ḥērem, the annihilation of the human and animal population of a city (and the surrender to God of its possessions) as an act of devotion. Joshua 1–12 itself may offer one pointer toward a different vision. The most spectacular victory credited to Joshua happens at Hazor in the north, “the head of all those kingdoms” (Josh 11:10).[868]  Instead of commissioning the ḥērem or devoting of Hazor, the annihilation of everything as a kind of offering, Yhwh prescribed that after the promised victory over the king and his allies, “you shall hamstring their horses and burn their chariots with fire” (Josh 11:6). Joshua goes on to devote Hazor and other cities with their populations in keeping with Moses’ instructions, but Yhwh’s novel commission at Hazor works within a different frame of reference. Hazor’s possession of horses and chariots is a mark of its paramount military might.[869]  Disabling horses and destroying chariots is the ancient equivalent of disabling tanks and destroying missiles.[870]  It takes weapons of war out of action. It hints at a distinctive theology and ethic that we shall not come across again until we reach Isaiah 2 and Micah 4.

The First Testament story does subvert the practice of ḥērem in other ways. Judges closes with an implementation of the kind of annihilation commended by Deuteronomy 13, applied to fellow Israelites. Moses’ instructions in Deuteronomy and Joshua’s practice at Hazor involve terrible severity and are more brutal than, for example, the practice of the Assyrians with their reputation for brutality,[871]  yet “they cannot match those describing the treatment of fellow Israelites” in Judges.[872]  The practice of ḥērem recoils on those who practice it. This happens again in the prophets, where ḥērem language is a way of depicting Yhwh’s slaughter of other nations (Is 34:2; Jer 25:9),[873]  but also a way of depicting Yhwh’s slaughter of Israel (Is 43:28; Jer 25:9).

Further, ḥērem does not solve problems. That story at the end of Judges tells how a woman gets raped and killed in Gibeah, in Benjamin, after which her husband summons all Israel to join in punishing Gibeah in a ḥērem-like action, but the Benjaminites kill 40,000 Israelites before the latter kill 25,100 of the 26,000 Benjaminites. Aware that Benjamin is thus in danger of dying out, on the basis of the failure of Jabesh in Gilead to respond to the summons to attack Benjamin, the Israelites devote Jabesh, except for its unmarried girls (Judg 21:11). But even this does not produce enough wives for the surviving Benjaminites, who end up kidnapping wives from nearby Shiloh. The story as a whole is bracketed with the observation that all this happened when there was no king in Israel, and adds at the end that all the people did what was right in their own eyes (Judg 19:1; 21:25).

Subsequently Saul, having failed to devote Amalek, ironically engages in ḥērem-like slaughter of the priesthood at Nob (1 Sam 22:14–19). Both the failure and the slaughter hint that having kings does not guarantee people give up doing what is right in their own eyes, and the slaughter shows that ḥērem is a dangerous tool in the hands of someone like Saul. Jehu’s coming to the throne involves a ḥērem-like slaughter of Ahab’s household, commissioned by Elisha (see 2 Kings 9–10). Yhwh commissions Jehu’s anointing, but not directly the slaughter (though see 2 Chron 22:7–9), and a century later another prophet is condemning Jehu’s blood-shedding (Hos 1:4).

In any case, for the average Israelite these events are long ago. The First Testament locates Israel’s wars, and in particular its application of ḥērem, to the distant past. From the later monarchy to the Maccabean period, the Judean people call for violence from God and tell stories about wars but indulge in no wars themselves. The events in Exodus-Joshua belong to the supranatural marvelous beginnings of the people and are not a pattern for repeating. In that period, however, the First Testament does portray people involving themselves in war with gusto, sinning boldly.

Forms of Yhwh’s Involvement

Correlative to the varied logic of Israel’s war-making, there is variation in the way Yhwh is involved in war.

1. The defeat of Egypt is entirely Yhwh’s achievement. Israel does not even pursue a miraculously panic-stricken enemy. Yhwh drowns the Egyptian army, and Israel simply looks on. Yhwh fights for Israel; its task is simply to be still and watch (Ex 14:14, 30–31). It is Yhwh who is the warrior.[874]  That is all Jehoshaphat’s army has to do later (2 Chron 20).

2. But Yhwh’s fighting for Israel does not always exclude Israel’s fighting (e.g., Josh 10:8–14, 40–42). Sometimes war involves Yhwh commissioning a battle and promising victory (e.g., Num 21:34; Josh 6; 8; 11; Judg 5; 7). “Yhwh gave into your power” is a key expression in stories about war. It becomes a key encouragement before a battle, sometimes defensive (e.g., Num 21:1–3), sometimes offensive (e.g., Josh 8:1; 10:8).[875]  It presupposes Yhwh’s involvement, but also a need for Israel to exercise the power Yhwh is giving it. A key means whereby this process works itself out is by the effect of such convictions on the morale of either side. Yhwh’s having given its enemies into its power means Israel need not and must not be afraid (e.g., Josh 8:1; 10:8). It also means its enemies are put into a state of terror that contributes to their defeat (e.g., Josh 5:1), and/or such a panic comes over them in the midst of battle that they flee and/or attack each other (e.g., Josh 10:10).[876]

3. And sometimes Yhwh’s involvement is not referred to at all. Attacked by Sihon, Israel simply fights back, wins and appropriates his territory (Num 21:21–24). Yet Moses later emphasizes Yhwh’s involvement (Deut 2:26–37): it was Yhwh who inspired Sihon to make his inexplicably stupid decision not to let Israel pass through the territory in peace, and Yhwh who then “gave” Sihon and his people into Israel’s power (the verb comes four times). The incident turns out to instance the “synergism”[877]  of the activity of Yhwh and of Israel. With hindsight, it is Yhwh’s being involved in this way that explains that otherwise surprising decision and victory. The pattern parallels that in Genesis 14, where Abram takes the initiative and wins a famous victory, which Melchizedek then credits to God Most High. On the other hand, Joshua’s version of the events in Numbers 21 does not involve the Israelites defeating Sihon and Og at all but gaining this land through Yhwh’s sending “the hornet” ahead of them (Josh 24:12).

4. The synergism can take different, more overt forms. The battle against Amalek seems to be one in which Yhwh is also involved: while Joshua leads the Israelite forces on the ground, Moses raises his hand to the heavens—praying, or directing heavenly forces—or are these the same thing? He holds Yhwh’s staff and apparently his hand rests on Yhwh’s banner (Ex 17:8–16). At Mount Tabor, Yhwh draws out Jabin’s army to surrender it to Barak’s forces, but they have to use their swords to win the victory, and a woman has to use her hammer to finish it off (Judg 4). Deborah and Barak’s song then rejoices in the way Israelites volunteered for the battle and thus came to Yhwh’s help(!), expressing the synergism neatly as it puts in parallelism Yhwh’s doing the right and faithful thing and Yhwh’s peasantry(?) doing the right and faithful thing (ṣĕdāqôt, Judg 5:11).

Gideon is then commissioned to go in his own might (though the picture of him surreptitiously treading wheat in a winepress suggests an irony there), yet in due course to reduce the size of his army to make clear that Yhwh wins the victory. Charging from the Harod spring, his army shouts “A sword for Yhwh and for Gideon” (Judg 7:20)—one for Yhwh to wield, one for Gideon to wield, the two working together? On occasions such as this when the Israelite forces are numerically inferior, victory may depend on some stratagem, and Yhwh’s involvement lies in making the stratagem work. Or it lies in making factors such as weather work the right way (if we are to be literal in interpreting Judg 5:19–21).

In a thanksgiving looking back on his experiences, David later describes the process by means of a number of images.

Yhwh would thunder from heaven, the Most High utter his voice.

He let loose arrows and scattered them, [let loose] lightning and scattered them. (2 Sam 22:14–15)

With you I can rush a wall, with my God I can scale a barricade. (2 Sam 22:30)

One who trains my hands for battle so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. (2 Sam 22:35)

You would give me firm footing under me; my feet did not slip. (2 Sam 22:37)

You would make my enemies, my foes, turn tail before me, and I wiped them out. (2 Sam 22:41)

To be prosaic, Yhwh causes conditions such as the weather to work in David’s favor, inspires David with superhuman strength, makes sure that other natural conditions such as the terrain also work in his favor and mysteriously inspires his enemies to flee. Yhwh thus fights Israel’s battles—or Israelites fight Yhwh’s battles (1 Sam 18:17; 25:28; cf. also 1 Sam 17:47).

7.5 War as the Means of Receiving God’s Gift

As the First Testament tells the story, military action was the key factor in the formation of Israel in the land of Canaan. It was the means whereby Yhwh gave Israel the land at the beginning.

A Complex Historical Question

In general in this Old Testament theology I do not discuss historical questions, but here I make a large exception. I write in a context when discussion of the process whereby Israel became Israel in the land is particularly convoluted, and it would seem unreal simply to ignore that when considering the story’s theological implications. Further, this discussion differs from that relating to the ancestors, the exodus and the early monarchy in that the scholarly world has more of a worked-out alternative account of this process (indeed, several such accounts). And discussion of the theological questions concerning this process can take a different form according to one’s view of the historical questions, though there are links in the text with all the main theories, so that text and historical study are mutually illuminating.

Discussion of the process has been convoluted since its beginnings in the nineteenth century and seems certain to remain so. From time to time in different places some consensus has prevailed, but has then changed, and this also seems likely to continue. Both the evidence within the biblical material and the archeological evidence are complex, so that a large role has to be played by convictions and constructs that scholars bring to the evidence. This is then complicated by the fact that most scholars have more personal, religious and political investment in their convictions and constructs than may usually be the case in historical research. The question matters to them. So it is unlikely that there will ever be a broadly agreed account of how the Israelite people came to be in possession of the land. Over recent decades there have been four sorts of view regarding the matter, and it may be that a true picture would involve elements from each. The disagreement is then about how one balances the four factors over against each other.

The impression one could get from a face-value reading of the general drift of Joshua, as if it were a newspaper report, is that Israel came to its position in the land through a three-stage military campaign that brought about the speedy conquest of the center, the south and the north. This was the dominant view in the United States and in Britain in the mid-twentieth century.[878]  It well fits some aspects of the results of archeological work, particularly the history of Hazor in the north, and the strong emphasis elsewhere in the First Testament that the Israelites’ origin did not lie in the land but elsewhere, in Mesopotamia and/or Egypt.[879]

The impression one could get from Genesis, from between the lines of Joshua and from the introduction to Judges is that Israel indeed came from outside Canaan but came to its position there through a much longer and relatively peaceful process whereby people gradually migrated, infiltrated and became the dominant group. This was the prevailing view in Germany in the mid-twentieth century.[880]  It fits the results of archeological work at sites where there is no evidence of occupation in the period Joshua is usually reckoned to have lived, into which the Israelites could have moved without conflict.

An impression one might get from Judges as a whole and from 1 Samuel is that Israelite society in its origins is distinctively democratic and relatively egalitarian rather than monarchic, hierarchical and stratified. It has no kings “like all the other nations” (1 Sam 8:5, 20). This fits with the idea that its origins lie not in its coming from outside the land, by conquest or by infiltration, but in its distinguishing itself from the peoples around it. Israel came into being by a revolutionary declaration of independence from the oppressive Canaanite city-state system and a commitment to a more liberative society.[881]  This might fit with the challenge to commitment in Joshua 24. It also compares with 1 Chronicles 1–9, which tells Israel’s story without referring to its having ever come from elsewhere.[882]

The impression one could get from subsequent parts of the First Testament might be that this process of differentiation was more gradual. According to Judges and Kings, it was a long struggle to get Israel to differentiate itself from Canaanite religion in fundamental matters such as recognition of Yhwh as the only God and worship that did not use images. This fits the indications from archeology that Israelites and Canaanites were similar in culture and in forms of religion.[883]  The faith the First Testament itself affirms utilizes Canaanite patterns (e.g., in the design and worship of the temple) and theological ideas (e.g., in the understanding of the significance of Zion) even while rejecting Canaanite theology and forms of worship.

Four Current Models

The complexity of the evidence means that no one of these models in isolation provides a satisfactory account of the matter. Indeed, further models will doubtless be formulated over coming decades—in the 1950s one would not have anticipated the third model,[884]  nor in the 1970s the fourth.[885]  This will change the profile of the debate, but it is likely to complicate rather than resolve the question of how Israel came to be a people in Canaan.

On the other hand, the four models form a grid:

Military campaign:

Israel came from outside.

The process was abrupt.

Migration:

Israel came from outside.

The process was gradual.

Social revolution:

Israel came from inside.

The process was abrupt.

Cultural differentiation:

Israel came from inside.

The process was gradual.

With hindsight, we can see that the development of the fourth model was not surprising once we have the third. The introduction of further models would involve generating a new grid.

Our theological interpretation of how Israel came to be Israel in the land needs to work with all four of these models with some basis in the First Testament. Migration and cultural differentiation suggest God working through immanent, gradual, nonconflictual processes. It is migration that God first commissions in Genesis 12. Perhaps God prefers such a nonconflictual process. It is subsequent circumstantial factors that require God and the ancestors to be involved in conflict.

The migration model further reflects the ambiguity of peoples’ relationship with land and with their own people groups. As ethnic groups, we are attached to our peoples, and as landed peoples, we are attached to our countries. Yet migration shows that neither is an absolute. It may be the rule rather than the exception that the current occupants of a land have not occupied that land from the beginning of time. A thousand or five hundred years ago they came from outside. They may then feel a dual identity, allegiance or attachment to the land where they now dwell and to the people group from which they or their ancestors came. That has the potential to make us less determined or exclusive in our attachment, to our land or our ethnic group. These relationships are not timeless universals. And God works through groups being flexible over their relationships to a people and a land, as Genesis 11 suggests.

The cultural differentiation model suggests a similar ambiguity about our social and cultural distinctives. Differentiation is a process whereby individuals come to exist in a full sense. We have to differentiate from our parents in order to come to exist as ourselves and not just as shadows of our parents. Yet maturity also involves our eventually owning the good in what our parents are and accepting what we and our parents have in common. Analogously, God took Israel through a process of differentiation that made it distinct from other peoples, but not absolutely so. The question is how to maintain differentiation at the points that are important.

The social revolution model puts that point sharply. It sees God working through conflictual and not just consensual processes, and it suggests there are times or issues that require sharp-edged and sharply committed action. Insofar as the Israelites gained control of part of Canaan by violent action of the kind Joshua 1–12 describes, the theological and ethical rationale of this action lies in the claim that the Canaanites were liable to trouble for the nature of their lives. One might see partial analogies in the calamity that came to countries such as Britain in the 1914–1918 and 1939–1945 wars, or to the United States in the Civil War and the Vietnam War.

While all four models are thus theologically and ethically suggestive, we must give prominence to reflection on the story of military invasion, which dominates the First Testament’s own story. “All of these historical versions of Israel’s taking the promised land turn out to be less violent, less oppressive, and less morally repugnant than the version in the biblical narrative,”[886]  and it is that narrative that stands and continues to influence people. “History is no longer with us. The narrative remains.”[887]

A Current Political Issue

One indication of this emerges from another consideration. As I write, Israelis and Palestinians have been fighting and killing each other in Jerusalem, Hebron, Nablus (Shechem in the First Testament) and elsewhere, as they have been doing from time to time for a century. Without necessarily condoning all Israeli policies, many Christians and Jews in the United States in principle support Israeli sovereignty in the area, including places such as Jerusalem, Hebron and Nablus, because these are part of the land God gave Israel in First Testament times, and Israelis naturally use the same argument. Without necessarily condoning all Arab policies, many Christians in Europe are more inclined to support Palestinian rights to a greater sovereignty in the area. They are inclined to think there must be something wrong with an argument that shapes contemporary political policies on the basis of selected statements in Genesis and Joshua in a way that apparently ignores contemporary rights and wrongs. If the displacement of Palestinians is justified by the account of how Israel once violently displaced the Canaanites, this must raise questions about the religious and theological status of the book of Joshua.

This is not the first context in which the conquest story in Joshua and the promise to Abraham that lies behind it has been so used. They were used, for instance, to support the Crusades and the European conquest of the Americas and southern Africa. This use of the story raises a hermeneutical question and an exegetical one. The former concerns the basis for taking the conquest story in Joshua as a model or justification for the acts of conquest just noted, or for contemporary Israeli actions. As soon as one asks the question regarding the European conquests, the answer seems clear. There was no justification for claiming that native Americans or Africans were in the position of Canaanites or that European conquerors were in the position of Israelites. Something similar is true about the Crusades and the modern state of Israel. Neither the medieval Muslims nor the modern Palestinians are in the position of the Canaanites.

Yet unlinking the conquest story in Joshua from the medieval or modern Middle East does not resolve the theological and ethical questions raised by the Joshua story. Even if we can undermine claims for its contemporary application, the possibility of making such claims raises the question of what theological account we can give of it. The common Christian maneuver is effectively to decanonize the story, by typologizing or spiritualizing or ignoring it, or by seeing the First Testament as an amalgam of divine insight and human error and judging this aspect of books such as Joshua in the latter category. The principle for doing this is the message and ethic of Jesus and of the rest of the New Testament.

One difficulty with this maneuver is that there are no grounds for reckoning that Jesus disapproved of the story in Joshua. While he never refers to this book in particular, his general stance in relation to the Scriptures is the same as that of other Jews, who would not be critical of it. According to Acts 1:6–7, when his disciples wanted to know whether the moment was imminent for restoring the kingdom to Israel, he did not tell them this was the wrong question, only that it was the wrong time to ask it. It seems likely that his stance would have been that of the saintly hero Stephen. He emulated his master in letting himself be killed by his compatriots, yet did so after speaking with enthusiasm of the way “our ancestors … brought in [the tent of testimony] with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations that God drove out before our ancestors” (Acts 7:45). In the New Testament’s other reference to Joshua, Hebrew 3–4 emphasizes the limited nature of what he achieved but conveys no hint of disapproval of the way he went about his work. It goes on to enthuse over the fall of Jericho and over First Testament heroes such as Barak who “conquered kingdoms … became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight” (Heb 11:30–34). Appeal to the New Testament for a critical principle that would make it possible to dismiss Joshua thus deconstructs. Appeal to the New Testament leads to approval of Joshua, or disapproval of Joshua leads to disapproval of the New Testament.

The Joshua narrative is present in the canonical Scriptures of Judaism and Christianity. It would be preferable to see how it can be understood in a way that recognizes its status but reexamines the implications that have been drawn from it.

A Story About God’s Giving the Land

When the conquest model becomes a warrant for displacing Palestinian occupants of the land, few people take the argument to its logical conclusion and believe Israel could appropriately kill all the Palestinians. That is itself an indication that the story is being used selectively to justify stances that have other grounds, as was the case with the European peoples’ appeal to Joshua in connection with their conquest of the Americas and southern Africa. Appeal to Joshua by or on behalf of the State of Israel also deconstructs.

This reflects the fact that this appeal has not yet asked the right question of the text. Conventional twentieth-century wisdom on hermeneutics suggested that interpretation involves seeking to let one’s horizon merge with that of the text. One seeks to look at reality from the text’s angle (one might then return to one’s own angle and decide it is a better one). In doing this, devising questions is a key technique. The text is assumed to be the answer to a question, and understanding depends on having formulated the question the text answers. Our first questions may arise from our own needs, but we may then find there is more in the text than is needed to answer our question. This realization is a decisive moment in interpretation. We may be satisfied with what we have heard back from the text because it answers our question and may then not take up the fact that there is more in the text than our question allows to emerge. We thereby show we are really interested only in our question and not in the text. We are engaged in prooftexting, albeit of a sophisticated kind. If we are serious about understanding the text, the realization that our question has not yielded all there is in the text will stimulate the exercise of imagination and reason to attempt to formulate another question that will yield more. Our eschatological aim is that eventually our questions and the text’s answers form concentric circles rather than merely overlapping ones. Then we will need no more questions.

So why did First Testament Israel tell a story about its ancestors’ speedy conquest of the land under Joshua? The past and present application of the text presupposes that Israel’s acts are precedents for similar acts on the readers’ part. But there is no indication in the text that this is so—any more than is the case with an act such as Abraham’s offering of Isaac. The point about the stories is not to provide warrant for human action but to testify to divine action. They indicate that Yhwh gave Israel the land. This is one significance of ḥērem.

Jewish sensibilities came to be offended by the practice of ḥērem, which reflected a different practice of war from that of later days. The rabbis’ discussions thus “circumvented the plain meaning of the Scripture” in portraying Joshua offering peace terms to Canaanite cities and giving the Canaanites chance to leave (cf. Deut 20:10).[888]  It is not just Christian or modern sensibilities that are offended by ḥērem. The [889]  was fortunate to have the word anathēma to render ḥērem, but [890] ed this by more secular expressions for killing or destroying, which obscure the idea. There are things that belong inalienably to Yhwh, and the practice of ḥērem recognizes this, as emerges clearly from the Torah’s first references to ḥērem (Ex 22:20 [[891]  19]; Lev 27:21, 28–29; Num 18:14). These do not relate to war; the application of ḥērem to warfare may then be secondary.[892]  But “devoting” is a recurrent feature of the story of the conquest, a recognition that it constitutes Yhwh’s giving of the land.

Admittedly, at Arad on the first occasion when ḥērem is applied to a defeated enemy, this happens on Israel’s initiative, not Yhwh’s, and the offer relates to cities rather than people (Num 21:1–3). Devoting people is an afterthought not agreed with Yhwh, as Joshua’s action at Hazor does not correspond to Yhwh’s bidding on that occasion. Yhwh’s commissioning of ḥērem comes only later, in Deuteronomy, which is also most explicit in describing ḥērem as a sacrifice, a whole offering (kālîl, Deut 13:16 [MT 17]). If ḥērem starts as a human instinct but Yhwh then affirms it, this makes it parallel to sacrifice in general (Gen 4) and to the instinct to build a temple (2 Sam 7). It also fits with all these being practices Israel had in common with other Middle Eastern peoples and with the Greeks. The instinct to devote enemies, like the instinct to sacrifice, acknowledges God’s sovereignty and God’s giving, and God works with these practices as God works, for example, with the acceptance of divorce. God does not simply prohibit it, which will get no one anywhere, but seeks to circumscribe it, control it and even harness it to projects God wishes to prosecute (if Ezra and Nehemiah are right, in connection with divorce).

Jericho

The theme of God’s giving Israel the land is central to the story in Joshua 1–12. It is not clear whether the Israelites had actually fought at Arad, and certainly they do not fight at Jericho, the next city to which ḥērem is applied. Yhwh’s involvement in events is reflected in the extent to which the whole story suggests an act of worship. The crossing of the Jordan (Josh 3–4) is a liturgical procession in which priests carry the covenant chest ahead of the people who follow at a respectful, safe distance behind them. During the crossing Joshua sets up twelve stones in the middle of the dry river and then another twelve on the west bank, which will have an ongoing liturgical significance. People will ask their parents about the stones, implying they come here to commemorate the event, giving parents the chance to tell the story of the crossing in the context of a liturgy. The crossing leads into a double ritual event, the circumcision of male Israelites and the celebration of Passover (Josh 5:2–12). The males need to be circumcised if they are to take part in the Passover and the procession that follows.

Then Joshua meets a “man” with a drawn sword who turns out to be “commander of Yhwh’s army” (Josh 5:13–15).[893]  Is the warrior on Israel’s side or their adversaries’? He declares that this question misconceives the situation.[894]  Israel is subordinate to Yhwh in matters of war. They have been formulating plans and taking initiatives regarding the taking of Jericho (Josh 2), and perhaps this is what Joshua is doing now as he stands “at Jericho” (Josh 5:13). He has to see that such decisions are out of his hands. As happens in other stories of heavenly appearances (e.g., Gen 18–19; Judg 13), the identity of the warrior who appears becomes explicit gradually in the telling of the story, as presumably happens in Joshua’s awareness. This is not merely a man, nor merely an angelic commander, but someone whose presence makes the ground holy. It is Yhwh in person as commander who now gives Joshua instructions about what is to happen.

The procession recommences on the holy ground near the city (Josh 5:13, 15), the people walking in silence followed by priests carrying the covenant chest, some blowing horns. They circle the city each day for six days, and on the seventh do so seven times. Once more the priests blow their horns, and in addition this time the people shout—the way people shout in worship (e.g., Ps 66:1; 95:1–2; 100:1) as well as in war (e.g., 1 Sam 17:20, 52). The city’s walls fall by God’s direct act and the people simply walk in and devote it to Yhwh by destroying the city, killing the people and livestock, and putting the precious objects in the sanctuary (Josh 6:17–21). The fact that the event is so extraordinary is no indication that it never happened, though the story’s nature as an account of a religious procession marks it out from other stories of extraordinary but literal victories.[895]  Likewise Jericho differs from Hazor, for example, in that we have no archeological indication that Jericho was occupied in Joshua’s day.

We know Gilgal was subsequently a place of pilgrimage (e.g., Hos 4:15; Amos 4:4), and it is a plausible hypothesis that Israel regularly commemorated the entry into the land there near Jericho (cf. Josh 4), perhaps at Passover (cf. Josh 5:10–12),[896]  making a procession round the ruins of the nearby city. God could then have inspired Israelite storytellers to turn this liturgical event into a story that gave concrete, parabolic form to the fact that God gave Israel the land. This would account satisfactorily for the data we have, the story with its distinctive form and the archeological evidence, which is not true of the assumption that the story is simply a factual report of a once-for-all event. But whether this is right or not makes no difference to the theological significance of the story. Whether it is a literal or a parabolic account, its significance is to testify to the fact that God gave Israel the land. The point is underlined if an alternative thesis is correct, that the basic form of Joshua 1–12 follows the form of a Middle Eastern king’s report of a military campaign.[897]

Joshua 24:11–13 speaks as if the whole conquest was physically accomplished at Jericho.[898]  If there was no city there at the time, indirectly the story might imply that actually Yhwh displaced no one in giving Israel the land. Given that Joshua and Judges are explicit that Israel by no means annihilated the Canaanites, the point about the accounts of devoting them to Yhwh is to express an acknowledgment that the land belongs to Yhwh and constitutes Yhwh’s gift to Israel. Israel did not come into possession of the land by its own effort. Yhwh handed it over to Israel, through leasehold rather than freehold, or lending it rather than giving it, and therefore Israel may not appropriate the contents of the land, which it must give back to Yhwh. The devoting of Jericho resembles the offering of firstfruits. It constitutes an acknowledgment that the whole land is Yhwh’s once-for-all gift.

7.6 The Crusade for Holiness

There are other significances to ḥērem, in particular its link with a concern to maintain Israel’s purity or distinctiveness.

There are in fact variant forms of the practice, which might imply varying rationales. At Ai the people must devote the human beings but are allowed to keep the spoil and livestock (Josh 8:2)—despite the fact that Achan and his family have just lost their life for doing that. Perhaps the difference links with the fact that Ai’s capture is a more down-to-earth process than Jericho’s. Yhwh again gives Israel the city but does so by commissioning an ambush, not a procession, and there is no reference to the presence of priests or of the covenant chest. Israel is much more involved in the victory; soldiers capture the city. Perhaps they receive something for their effort. But at Jericho Israel had to annihilate every living thing (except Rahab’s family) and give the spoil to Yhwh (Josh 6:17–19), and when practiced in this severe form (also applied at Arad?), ḥērem severely reduces what people gain from war and thus reduces the incentive for making war. It cannot be done merely to gain resources. The point emerges negatively from Saul’s getting into trouble for sparing the best of the animals when he devotes Amalek (1 Sam 15:9).

Susan Niditch links ḥērem with the need to cope with the guilt involved in war. We do not see killing in war as murder, except when we want to make a polemical point, and neither did Israel. The Ten Words forbid murder (raṣaḥ), unlawful slaying, not killing in general. Yet even when people are fighting a war that they believe is prosecuting a right cause, they are aware of guilt for killing people. The Israelites kill the Midianites at Yhwh’s bidding, yet when they come home, Moses requires that people who have been involving in killing go through a purification rite. “War necessarily is a defiling activity,” which is “an ethical perception of sorts. The enemy is after all human; the shedding of human blood tears the whole fabric of the cosmos.”[899]  The attitude here compares with the idea that it is inappropriate for David to build the house for Yhwh’s name because he is a warrior and has shed blood (1 Chron 28:3). “In killing one becomes part of the abomination, the enemy one seeks to eliminate.”[900]  If the dead become an offering to God, their death gains absolute significance. Instead of demonizing them, ḥērem recognizes they are human beings like oneself. Instead of allowing death in war to be meaningless, it allows it to be significant and gives the deaths transcendent meaning. That offers another clue to the wrong in Saul’s failure to devote the whole of Amalek. He devotes only the ordinary people, not the king, as well as only the property that is worthless, not the better animals. But sacrifice demands what is best if it is to be worthy of God, and before God ordinary people have the same value as the king. When Samuel eventually kills Agag, he does so not as an execution but as a sacrifice, cutting him into pieces before Yhwh at Gilgal, the location of the sanctuary where he offered sacrifices before Yhwh when confirming Saul’s kingship (1 Sam 11:14–15).[901]

Ḥērem and Separation

Niditch’s words also hint at that further significance of ḥērem, that devoting things relates to questions about separation, distinctiveness and defilement. This seems nearer the surface of Israelite awareness.

The first reference to ḥērem (Ex 22:20 [MT 19]) applies to Israelites who, for example, sacrifice to a god other than Yhwh. The subsequent instructions in Deuteronomy 13 extend that to a town that turns to worshiping other gods, and the Achan story involves devoting an Israelite family that had been unfaithful (māʿal) in appropriating something that was itself for devoting—like the men in the Second Temple community who have been unfaithful in taking foreign wives (Ezra 9–10). Anything due for devoting is “holy to Yhwh” (cf. Lev 27:21, 28–29) and that applies, for example, to the things in Jericho that were not killed or destroyed (Josh 6:19). Achan’s taking some of the spoil, like any attempt to rebuild Jericho (Josh 6:26–7:1), thus constitutes an attempt to appropriate or reappropriate what belongs to Yhwh.[902]  Paradoxically, once things are set apart for devoting to Yhwh, they become defiling. Like blood or semen or the Scriptures themselves, they defile people who are affected by them or touch them. Their holy quality makes them dangerous, and it is necessary to take action to neutralize the danger. At Jericho, the people’s task is to take the city and give it to God rather than be contaminated by it. When Achan takes some of the material set apart for devoting, he and his family become affected by these things’ devotedness, as by extension does the whole people. As preparation for resolving the matter, they must sanctify themselves as one does when about to meet Yhwh or see Yhwh act (Josh 7:13; cf., e.g., Ex 19:22; Josh 3:5; 2 Chron 30:3, 15, 17, 24). The object due for devoting is then to be “removed” from their midst (sûr hiphil)—the verb commonly refers to an act in the context of religious reform (e.g., Josh 24:14; 2 Chron 30:14; 33:15).[903]  The people gather as a congregation. Joshua calls on Achan to give splendor and acknowledgment (kābôd, tôdâ) to Yhwh (Josh 7:19). The people immediately involved must be devoted to Yhwh to end the process whereby they defile Israel as a whole. The sins of the parents are not only visited on the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren in a process that unfolds over time; they are so visited instantaneously as an entire household pays the price for the wrongdoing of its head.[904]

Deuteronomy 7 applies the concern about unfaithfulness to Israel’s treatment of native peoples. We are told nothing wrong about the people of Arad except that they attacked the Israelites, nor about the people of Jericho or Ai except that they lived in the wrong place at the wrong time.[905]  Those stories work within the other frameworks we have noted, especially the recognition that the land belongs to Yhwh and that Yhwh gives it to Israel. But when Deuteronomy 7 speaks of applying ḥērem to the native peoples, it introduces this new rationale. Devoting the native peoples will ensure that they do not turn Israel away from worship of Yhwh (Deut 7:4). That fits with an aspect of Israel’s punishment of the Midianites for drawing them into worship of their gods (Num 31). Israel kept the spoil but got into trouble with Moses for killing only the adult males.[906]  Moses requires them to kill the young males and the women, who have already proved a snare to Israel, but the young girls are exempted. They are undefiled and therefore undefiling, and open to being incorporated into Israelite families. That story about the defiling nature of contact with Midian in turn links with a later one, when the spoil Gideon wins from Midian becomes the means of making a religious object that leads people astray from Yhwh. The motif underlying these regulations and narratives is that devoting things plays a role in avoiding the negative influence of other religions.

An Odd Tension

Yet there is an odd tension in Deuteronomy 7. Moses first tells Israel they must devote the peoples in the land (Deut 7:1–2). Then he tells them they must not intermarry with them (Deut 7:3–4). Then he has another run at the question, telling Israel that the way to deal with the peoples in the land is to destroy their places of worship and their images (Deut 7:5). How do these three instructions fit together? “Had the command here [in Deut 7:1–2] been carried out or had it been intended that it should be put into practice, the following verse would be superfluous.”[907]  But we know from other parts of the First Testament that intermarriage, use of the traditional places of worship and use of images are issues in Israel’s later life. All this suggests that the instruction to eliminate indigenous peoples is a statement of a theological principle, while the instructions about intermarriage and about the sanctuaries are more directly behavioral ones. The passage as a whole bids Israel have nothing to do with the people of the land or their artifacts, specifically their religious artifacts.

Conversely, the exclusion of Rahab and her family from ḥērem shows that the defilement of Canaan can be overcome by confessing Yhwh. Rahab is a woman and a prostitute as well as a foreigner. She embodies “otherness” in the fullest sense, in ethnicity, gender and social status. It is thus the more significant that “hers is the first story which treats the issue of Israel’s social definition.”[908]  She is apparently the head of her household, whose structure thus models an alternative to the patriarchal norms that have operated elsewhere in Israel. She is not the only woman of her kind. Achsah does not sit down quietly under the patriarchal treatment of her father, Caleb’s brother, and Zelophehad’s daughters will tolerate no slippage in the redemption of Yhwh’s instruction to Moses that they should receive an allocation of land in Manasseh (Josh 15:13–19; 17:3–6). That presupposes that “Israel” cannot be identified fundamentally in solely male terms and destabilizes the essential structures that define and organize the clans, local communities and households; it does not dismantle patriarchy, but it does demonstrate that it is not intrinsic to the identity of Israel.[909]

Similar considerations about defilement emerge from Deuteronomy 13, where ḥērem directly relates to Israelite involvement in worship of other gods. Israelites certainly were frequently so involved, yet as far as we know Israel never implemented those instructions. Likewise, as far as we know, Israel never treated the Achan story as a precedent for its treatment of individuals or families. Indeed, the story is another told in the terms of a worship event rather than a historical one. Perhaps the ruin there was the site of another liturgy, one designed to bring home the importance of avoiding appropriating what belongs to Yhwh. At any rate, the story functions to make the same point. Christian parenetic reflection on it is inclined to emphasize this aspect of the story and glide over the death of Achan and his family, as it does with the similar story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. It may thus instinctively offer the response the stories look for.

When the great hero Josiah implements the reforms in the Torah scroll discovered by his staff, in circumstances like those envisaged by Deuteronomy 13, he likewise does not implement ḥērem. He does slaughter priests in Ephraim and depose many religious personnel in Jerusalem, but it is not clear that he has any killed in Jerusalem. The language, practice and framework of thinking are different from that of ḥērem: a prophet has declared that this punishment will come, and it comes in fulfillment of Yhwh’s word (1 Kings 13:1–2; 2 Kings 23:20). Again, the account of Midian’s punishment emphasizes the scale and thoroughness of its annihilation, which makes it surprising that Midian is the power that it is in Gideon’s day, attacking and controlling part of Israel’s land. It had evidently not been annihilated somewhat earlier. Perhaps the story implies it would have been a good idea if the earlier annihilation had happened, because Midian is subsequently a means of leading Israel astray. This links with the fact that the story of Israel’s arrival in the land specifically especially associates ḥērem with Arad, Jericho and Ai, all of which seem actually to have been unoccupied in Moses’ and Joshua’s day.[910]  Joshua is also said to have devoted the entire population of Canaan (Josh 10:40), but elsewhere the book shows that to be at best an oversimplified account. An epoch-marker in 1 Kings 9:20–21 relates how Solomon makes a conscript labor force out of the survivors of the nations that earlier occupied the land (cf. Judg 1), presupposing both that ḥērem was not applied to these nations and that it does not apply in Solomon’s day.[911]  Pragmatically speaking, a strong state with an empire has less need to eliminate defeated foes and can use them. Indeed Deuteronomy 20 allows that, though hardly of the people whom Israel displaced.

The Need to Maintain Distinctiveness

Similar implications emerge from another odd tension. The First Testament talks as often about dispossessing the Canaanites as it does about annihilating them, and talks about that first. Yhwh’s promise on top of Sinai was, “I will dispossess nations before you” (yāraš hiphil, Ex 34:24). At the bottom of Sinai Yhwh declared the intention to throw out the land’s inhabitants and to get the land to cooperate by throwing them up (šālaḥ piel, qôʾ qal and hiphil; Lev 18:24–28; 20:22–23). In the plains of Moab when the people are about to cross into the land, Yhwh commissions them to dispossess the inhabitants and destroy their places and objects of worship (Num 33:50–52). Only Deuteronomy 7 and 20 commission the devoting of these people, and even then it is Moses, not Yhwh, who does so. Moses’ words implicitly have Yhwh’s approval (Josh 11:20 makes that explicit with reference to ḥērem), but Yhwh is still distanced from the command that contrasts with the previous declarations and commands. Yhwh goes along with ḥērem rather than initiating it, as in Numbers 21. Even in Deuteronomy, Moses’ opening exhortation closes with a promise that Yhwh will dispossess the local peoples—not annihilate them (Deut 11:23). Similarly, the report and critique of the Israelites’ failure in Judges 1 relates to their not dispossessing the local peoples, not to their failing to devote them. Deuteronomy 9:1–5 mixes talk of dispossessing with talk of annihilating in a way that brings out the tension. One can dispossess a people, driving them out of their land or getting the land to throw them up, or one can annihilate them; one cannot do both.

Of course Israel did neither. Specifically, it did not implement ḥērem in gaining possession of the land, nor in the time of the author and readers of Joshua. This likely implies not that Israel failed to respond aright to instruction and story but that it realized that instruction and story were not a law for implementing and a precedent for following. They comprised reminders to Israel to keep separate from the religion of other peoples, and to be wary of terrible consequences that may follow for individuals, families, communities and the whole people if they fail to do so. The ḥērem was always a theological principle rather than a practice. It constituted an assertion that Israel must not allow itself to be led astray by the traditional religion of the land. The situation was not that devoting things plays a role in protecting Israel from defilement. Rather, quasi-regulations about devoting things and stories about devoting things play a role in encouraging Israelite wariness of the traditional religion of the land.

The passages’ setting in the instructions given on the eve of entry into Canaan and in the story of the beginnings of that entry presuppose a context in which Israel cannot take for granted its capacity to maintain its identity and its distinctiveness. It therefore needs to pay serious heed to such instructions and stories, though that does not mean literalistically following them. Most plausible historical contexts for the writing of Deuteronomy and Joshua (e.g., from the seventh century to the fifth in Judah) have the same implication. The idea of ḥērem safeguards the community’s identity by declaring that the traditional worship of the land is terminally off-limits, to encourage the community to avoid contamination, to avoid temptation and to safeguard against the possibility of its being religiously overwhelmed. This links with the fact that the peoples to whom ḥērem especially relates are the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Girgashites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites (see, e.g., Deut 7:1). These are peoples that no longer exist in the period during which people read Deuteronomy and Joshua, not real peoples like Edom, Moab and Ammon that feature in the rest of the First Testament story. Individual Israelites and even groups within Israel might be aware of ancestry among those peoples, but Israel did not need a stance over against them as groups. Whatever had happened in the past, there was no question of going to war with them now.

The story in Kings shows how in the monarchic period Israel is by no means committed to worship of Yhwh alone or to worship of Yhwh without making images. It is still coming to define itself religiously and socially, and doing so very slowly, often taking two steps back after taking one forward. In this connection the point of exhortations and stories about annihilating other peoples is to remind readers not of a political-military stance it needs to take but of a religious and social stance it must adopt. There needs to be a “crusade” to bring Israel to loyalty to Yhwh, and one way of encouraging that is to portray it as a “crusade” against forces from outside that would hold people back from this commitment (Num 25; 31). Portraying matters thus makes clear that forces that resist loyalty to Yhwh and draw people into traditional ways are “alien” to the true Israel.

The Canaanites: A Different People

Joshua 1–12 dramatizes the fact that the Israelites are a quite different group of people from the Canaanites, as well as the fact that Yhwh gave Israel the land. If historically and ethnically the distinction between Israelites and Canaanites is actually more fuzzy, that explains the instinct to tell the story in such a way as to emphasize the distinction between the two peoples. The descriptive is prescriptive. If by birth they were partly one but by history have become two, then the story gives vivid expression to this by telling how the whole Israelite group came from outside in one dramatic movement. What the Israelites who are actually “ex-Canaanites” have in common with people who came across the Jordan is more significant than what they have in common with people to whom they are ethnically related. They have a different religious system and a different social system. The old religious system imperils their new Israelite faith, and the old political system imperils Israel’s social ethic. The way the narrative uses the term “Canaanites” as a general term for the many people groups in the land supports the suggestion that the stories in Joshua are concerned with the establishing of Israel’s own identity. The Canaanites as an amalgam of the inhabitants of the land aid that process of self-definition. The Israelites know who they are by distinguishing themselves from this other people. As an amalgam, the Canaanites can have the profile they need in order to mirror the identity that Israel affirms for itself. “The names ‘Canaanites’, ‘Amorites’ and ‘Hittites’ all serve as symbols of primordial opposition to YHWH” more than “ethnological designations.”[912]  They thus make it possible to think about issues such as relationships with traditional religions.

It may also be significant that Israel sees itself as a unit and portrays the Canaanites as divided into a number of peoples.[913]  Spread over the land are Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites and Jebusites (e.g., Josh 3:10), led by many kings (e.g., Josh 5:1) and worshiping a number of gods. Corresponding to the oneness of Israel’s God is the oneness of Yhwh’s people, and this people as a whole has responsibility for the occupation of the whole land in one campaign (e.g., Josh 10:40–42). Any people may feel the need to characterize itself over against other peoples; for Israel that has a theological rationale. “Breaking social boundaries goes hand in hand with breaking theological boundaries. Intermarriage with the peoples creates a pluralistic society and leads to a pluralistic theology. And should this happen the nation will suffer the same fate as the diverse inhabitants of the land.” When Israel comes to be affected by Canaanite ways, the people involved must also be eliminated: “whether inside or outside, the heterogeneous must be destroyed.”[914]

When Israel splits and some of the clans settle east of the Jordan, that imperils the oneness of the people. Their construction of an alternative altar is a symbol of this peril, and its story functions to clarify that there can be only one place for the making of offerings to the one God (Josh 22). The story implies a warning about the division between Ephraim and Judah and the alternative places of worship devised for Ephraim, about the mixing of Israel with “Canaan” and with Assyria in subsequent Judah, about the need to maintain identity in Babylon, and about the importance of the Second Temple community not letting itself be swallowed up among the local peoples.

Yet the succeeding story does not therefore excommunicate Ephraim (even in the Chronicles version), and the story in Joshua shows a similar ambiguity. Rahab and the people of Gibeon live in Israel, Canaanites continue to control much of the land of Israel, and the people serve other gods as well as the God of Israel—indeed, Joshua disputes whether Israel can serve Yhwh (Josh 24). But Israel remains in existence as Yhwh’s people. The theoretical markers of the people of Israel do not determine its actual identity.[915]  Perhaps the account of how things are brings about the deconstruction of the account of how things must be. In the end what counts is Yhwh’s peremptory decision to take hold of Israel and give gifts to it and the people’s responsive decision to choose Yhwh (Josh 24).

In the end, we discover that Israel is a people defined by decisions, in the reciprocal choosing of YHWH and the nation.… By placing ideologies of land, ethnic separation, and religious practice at the forefront, and allowing them full expression, Joshua confronts the reader with their powerful influence on the people of God. But by refusing them unequivocal expression, the book reveals them to be derivative and relative.[916]

The Midianites: On the Margin

The Midianites are a different matter from the Canaanites, but a complicated one, for the Torah’s attitude to Midian is complex, and this further illustrates the complex questions about identity and distinctiveness. Midian is a son of Abraham by Keturah (Gen 25:2). Already that designates the Midianites a marginal people—they belong to Abraham’s line, but not to the same line as Israel. They worship Abraham’s God, but not Isaac’s and Jacob’s God. They do not even share in Ishmael’s promise, though Midian’s descendants share responsibility with Ishmael’s descendants for facilitating Joseph’s journey to Egypt (Gen 37:28). That brings about Joseph’s exile, yet it is associated with an act of deliverance (the alternative was death) and it eventually makes possible the survival of the whole family.

Subsequently, Moses takes refuge in Midian, which is apparently east of Egypt, works as a shepherd for a Midianite priest, and marries one of his daughters (Ex 2). Moses thus has an experience of being an outsider. In Egypt he was neither one thing nor the other (neither truly Israelite, nor truly Egyptian), and the situation is the same here. The point is reflected by an ambiguity in the story. He calls his son Gershom, because he has been a resident alien (gēr) there (šām). But where? Is he is at home in Midian in a way he was not in Egypt, or is he a foreigner here in Midian? The ambiguity of his words mirrors that of his position.

It is during his time with this Midianite family and in the course of working for his father-in-law that Yhwh meets with him. When Yhwh tries to kill Moses, his Midianite wife, the priest’s daughter, saves his life by circumcising their son. After the deliverance at the Red Sea, his father-in-law comes to recognize that Yhwh is greater than all other gods and to worship Yhwh.[917]  He also advises Moses on how to cope with the pressure brought by the number of people who ask him to resolve disputes for them (Ex 18). Despite having Yhwh’s presence in the cloud as their guide, Moses similarly asks “Hobab the son of Reuel, the Midianite, Moses’ father-in-law,” to accompany the people on their journey from Sinai to Canaan to act as guide for them (Num 10:29–32).[918]  Moses promises that the Israelites will do good to Hobab as Yhwh does good to Israel.

The Midianites are thus a marginal group who facilitate the Israelites’ passage from Egypt to Canaan through the wilderness, the marginal place. But the Midianites in general then join the Moabites in seeking to get Balaam to curse Israel (Num 22) and in getting the Israelites to worship the Baal of Peor (Num 25). In this context an Israelite also draws down wrath on himself for bringing into his family the daughter of a Midianite leader, perhaps as a sacramental act designed to halt the epidemic (Num 25:6–18).[919]  Yhwh thus bids Israel punish Midian (Num 31).

It is impossible to produce a coherent picture of the First Testament’s stance in relation to Midian, and that is part of its significance. Midian, too, has disappeared from the First Testament narrative by the time Israel is a state. For the readers of these stories it is not a “real people.” Its function is to illustrate the inherent ambiguity that may attach to a people, especially a marginal one.[920]  Even the changing name of Moses’ father-in-law makes the point, as may the changing references to Moses’ wife herself, if the Cushite woman about whom Miriam and Aaron protest (Num 12:1) is again Zipporah rather than a new wife Moses has taken.[921]  An Israelite may take a Midianite wife and implicitly meet with approval, or he may bring a Midianite woman into the camp and pay for it with his life, or Israelites may take young Midianite women for themselves.

Such close association with Midianites may lead to Midianites coming to worship Yhwh or may lead to Israelites coming to worship Baal. Midianite spoil can be used to glorify Yhwh in Israel or can be the means of Yhwh’s honor being compromised in Israel. Thus there are contexts for accepting Midianite hospitality, accepting Midianite advice and even seeking Midianite guidance, and contexts for seeking to annihilate Midian. There is thus also a case for expecting Yhwh to offer supernatural guidance on every aspect of the community’s life and on every detail of its journey to its land, and a case for accepting and even seeking the human wisdom of people who stand at some distance from Yhwh. To put it another way, the community has to seek Yhwh’s guidance concerning whether Yhwh wishes to guide it through human wisdom, and perhaps also to use its human wisdom to discern when it has to rely on supernatural wisdom. Midian also epitomizes the ambiguity attaching to the wilderness itself as both a place of supreme revelation and a place of supreme rebellion. Midian encourages and mediates wisdom and encourages and mediates rebellion.

The ambiguous literary presentation of Midian gives readers opportunity to think about such issues. The religion and wisdom of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece and even Canaan can be a danger to be avoided with rigor and a resource to be mined with discernment. Corporately or institutionally Israel may need to take a confrontational stance over against such peoples, but Israel may expect individual members of these peoples to come to recognize what Yhwh has been doing with Israel. Even whole communities may do that, as the Gibeonites once did.

7.7 The Acknowledgment of God

Defeat and destruction are thus not the only option open to other peoples. At the beginning of the story of God’s deliverance, the Egyptian king and his people modeled a stupid response to Yhwh’s self-assertion at the exodus, but at the end, Jethro modeled a wise response. As the people approach the promised land, the Moabite king and his people model a stupid response to this self-assertion, while Balaam (sometimes) models a wise response. As the Israelites enter the land, the Canaanite kings model a stupid response, while Rahab and the Gibeonites model a wise response, showing the shrewdness required by the marginal or weak when confronted by a crisis.

A Mesopotamian Seer Who Has the Power to Bless

As the Israelites draw near their destiny, Moab feels a sickening awe (Num 22:3). Awe (gûr) is an attitude that can be negative or positive, one people are invited to take to God (Ps 22:23 [MT 24]; 33:8) as well as to dangerous enemies (Deut 32:27). Sickening (qûṣ) is more a feeling, one the Egyptians had about the multiplying Israelites and the Israelites had about their limited wilderness diet (Ex 1:12; Num 21:5).[922]  Sickening awe is a response the Jewish people have often aroused, partly because of their mysterious ability to survive when they ought to die and to flourish when they ought to wither. It stimulates to action, but it is an open question what action this will be. In the form of its action, Moab is no wiser than Egypt or many subsequent peoples who seem stronger than the Jewish people yet somehow feel threatened by them and are now long gone.

Moab consults with Midian, which might not have seemed a smart move given the Israelites’ link with the Midianites,[923]  but this is the moment when Midian turns from friend to foe. Balak, king of Moab, sends for a priest-prophet-seer from Mesopotamia. While we do know Balaam’s father’s name, in other respects he is a mysterious figure like Melchizedek. He too has the power to bless, and also to curse, which is what interests Balak. It is this that makes it appropriate to call him a priest, though Numbers itself does not use this word (or any other) to describe his status or role. As Melchizedek’s story also shows, blessing and offering sacrifice are not limited to priests in the line of Abram and in Israel. God works through others in relation to other peoples.

Balaam says he will wait to see what Yhwh says to him (Num 22:8). Perhaps a historical Balaam would not have put it that way, and the narrative more often refers to “God” than to “Yhwh.” But the former way of speaking makes clear that the God of Israel speaks to the pagan priest. This guarantees nothing about his personal relationship with Yhwh, any more than is the case with other priests or prophets (see, e.g., Mt 7:22–23). The story of Balaam’s blessing comes to a glorious end, but within the wider story it is but an interim end, for within moments this blessed people is effectively under Yhwh’s curse. The transition from Numbers 22–24 to Numbers 25 parallels that from Exodus 25–31 to Exodus 32 as people worship the Baal of Peor, apparently at Balaam’s instigation (Num 31:16). What Balaam does not achieve by his prayers on the top of the mountain he achieves by his influence at the bottom of the mountain. As happened at Sinai, people are challenged to show their own commitment to Yhwh by acting to punish people involved in the worship of Baal, and 24,000 people die in an epidemic (Num 25:7–9).

But in the meantime Yhwh intervenes to ask Balaam what is going on (Num 22:8–9). Once more Yhwh perhaps chooses to find things out in the way human beings do, by asking them, so that once more Yhwh’s “control” works relationally. Yhwh works with Balaam in the same way as Moses or later Israelite prophets, and works through him. If Yhwh has given Balaam power to curse or bless, presumably he could use that power in whatever way he determined, like other gifts God gives people, and if he chooses to use it in a wrong way, God would then have to decide whether to intervene to frustrate it. But being given this power does not make Balaam assume he can use it as he likes, nor does it mean Yhwh simply lets him go off to utter words of cursing as he sees fit (e.g., in accordance with who pays the best fee). Balaam knows he must wait on Yhwh, and Yhwh declares that Balaam is not to curse Israel because Israel is destined for blessing.

When Balak leans harder on Balaam and Balaam reopens the question with God, God lets Balaam go, but nevertheless confronts him in such a way as to demonstrate that his donkey has more insight than he has. He now knows even better that it would be stupid to say anything Yhwh has not said to him. Balak’s insistence on Balaam’s coming is about to backfire on Balak. Balaam offers sacrifices, as an acted prayer for meeting with God and for a word from God, and he gets these. God “meets” Balaam (qārâ niphal; Num 23:4); the expression is elsewhere used with this meaning only of God’s meeting Moses (Ex 3:18). Yhwh puts a word in Balaam’s mouth: only of Balaam is this ever said. Balaam thus utters his māšāl or poem.[924]

Balak brought me from Aram. The king of Moab brought me from the eastern mountains.

“Come on, curse Jacob for me. Come on, denounce Israel.”

How can I damn one God has not damned? How can I denounce one God has not denounced?

For from the top of crags I can see it. From hills I can look at it.

There is a people that lives alone and does not count itself among the nations.

Who has counted the sand of Jacob or the number, the dust-cloud of Israel?

May I myself die the death of the upright—may my end be like it. (Num 23:7–10)

One look at Israel shows it to be a people under the blessing, not under the curse. They are as numerous as the grains of sand in the desert whose abundance comes home when one is enveloped in a sandstorm. The readers of course know, as Balaam did not, that this was exactly what Yhwh had promised (Gen 13:16). Once more, a pagan voice gives testimony to what Yhwh has done for Israel.

A King Who Will Not Give Up

Displeased with the results of his investment but not wise enough to stop throwing good money after bad, Balak takes Balaam somewhere else where he cannot see how impressive Israel looks, but this earns him only another theological lesson.

Get up, Balak, and listen. Pay attention to me, son of Zippor.

God is not a man, so that he might lie. He is not a human being, so that he might change his mind.

Has this God said it but will not do it? Has he spoken but will not make it happen?

There, I received a command to bless. He has blessed. I cannot reverse it.

He has not looked at trouble in Jacob. He has not seen sorrow in Israel.

Yhwh its God is with it. The acclamation of a king is in it.

God, their bringer out from Egypt, is like the horns of a buffalo for it.

For there is no enchantment against Jacob, no spell against Israel.

Now it will be said of Jacob-Israel, “What has God done!”

There, a people that gets up like a lioness, that rouses itself like a lion!

It does not lie down until it has eaten prey, drunk the blood of slain.

(Num 23:18–24)

Moses’ various prayers have presupposed that Yhwh does relent and have a change of mind, but Yhwh does not do so randomly, as a human being might. Both having a change of mind (about abandoning) and not doing so (about blessing) reflect the same fact: God’s commitment to Israel. And those prayers also pressed the reminder that Yhwh made a commitment to Israel that cannot now be evaded. Balaam knows enough about Israel’s story to work this out. No hostile forces can work against this people. It is quite a claim against the background of the hostile forces that have indeed worked against it within First Testament times, let alone subsequently. But it again fits the comments on Israel’s security in, for example, Romans 9–11.

Balak has still not learned his lesson, and tries again. This time God’s spirit comes on Balaam, as it would come on the leaders in Judges (e.g., Judg 3:10), and Balaam makes even more explicit a pagan recognition that God has fulfilled those promises to Abram: “Blessed is the one who blesses you; cursed the one who curses you” (Num 24:9). This is clearly bad news for Balak. Abraham had been promised that as well as experiencing God’s blessing, he would come to be a standard for blessing. People would pray to be blessed as he was blessed (Gen 12:3). The words are the precise ones Isaac uttered to Jacob, though in reverse order.

At last Balak has learned his lesson and seeks to send Balaam off home, but unfortunately Yhwh has another statement of intent for him to deliver:

I can see what is not yet. I can look at what is not near.

A star is marching from Jacob. A scepter is rising from Israel

It will smash Moab’s brow and tear down all the Sethites.

Edom will be a possession and Seir will be a possession—of their enemies,

While Israel is achieving strength.

One will rule from Jacob and destroy the survivors of Ir.…

Amalek was a leader of the nations, but its end is to perish forever.…

Your dwelling is secure, your nest is set in the rock—

Except that Cain will be for burning when Assyria captures you.…

Ah, who will live on apart from God’s ordaining it?

Ships from the coast of Kittim will subject Assyria, subject Eber.

It will also perish forever. (Num 24:17–24)

Moab and Edom were secure until this moment, but now Balaam is inspired to speak of their long-term vulnerability. Israel is to leave them alone at the moment, but there will come a time when a star from Jacob crushes them. Beyond that will come the time when these little Middle Eastern peoples are subjected by a great empire. And then this empire will be crushed by another. And that by another …

A Prostitute and Some Kings Whose Hearts Melt

When Israel invades Canaan, the first response it meets parallels the earlier responses of Jethro and Balaam. When Joshua sends spies into the land, perhaps ill-advisedly, the result of their mission is that the prostitute who saves them has chance to give her extraordinary testimony:

I know that Yhwh has given you the land, and that a dread of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land have collapsed before you. For we have heard how Yhwh dried up the water in the Red Sea before you when you left Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites the other side of the Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you devoted. When we heard, our hearts melted. There was no spirit left in anyone before you. Because Yhwh, your God, is God in heaven above and on earth below. (Josh 2:9–11)

Rahab’s confession gives the spies encouraging news of morale in Jericho and further evidence that Yhwh really is at work, which they can take back to the Israelites (Josh 2:24). In its contrast with the earlier spies’ fear, this confession challenges Israelites regarding their own convictions about Yhwh. From the mouth of babes, sucklings and a prostitute, God has founded strength (Ps 8:2 [MT 3]). And it gives them another reason to take a flexible approach to the implementation of the ḥērem rule, for ḥesed (commitment) and ʾĕmet (trustworthiness) (Josh 2:12, 14) take priority over ḥērem. Rahab implies that any other inhabitant of Jericho might have given her testimony, and might then have been treated the same way as she is. Yet committing herself to the spies, showing them ḥesed and calling on theirs, could easily have led to her death. Admittedly, doing that is easier for her than for some people. As a prostitute she is on the margin of her society. Like prostitutes who come to believe in Jesus, in following the logic of her realization that Yhwh is the real God, she has less to lose than full members of the society. And it is easier for a marginal person like Rahab and an inherently marginal people like the Israelites to make common cause. Her status gives her something in common with the Israelites and her action involves a confession that Yhwh is the real God. If one might have expected the First Testament to see a prostitute as even more marked by defilement than the average inhabitant of Jericho, this is not so. Rahab is spared because of the act that issues from her status and gives expression to her confession, her welcome of the spies (Josh 6:25). The story notes that she has lived in Israel ever since. Her presence is a continuing witness to the fact that the Israelite occupation of the land involved an openness to welcoming and being welcomed by the people of the land. It is perhaps a more vivid and compelling witness than the pile of stones that people saw only if they made the trek down to the Jordan valley.

There is a similarity and a contrast between Rahab’s reaction and that of the leadership in the society.

When all the kings of the Amorites west of the Jordan and all the kings of the Canaanites near the Sea heard how Yhwh had dried up the water in the Jordan before the Israelites until they crossed over, their hearts melted. There was no spirit left in anyone before the Israelites. (Josh 5:1)

In part the kings’ reaction is the same as Rahab’s, but they fail to work out what would be an appropriate response—not recognition and an attempt to put the relationship with Israel on the basis of ḥesed, but either defense or attack (cf. the further formulas in Josh 9:1–2; 10:1–5; 11:1–5).[925]  The king of Jericho in particular embodies un-wisdom in his response to the arrival of the Israelite spies. His naive staff are defeated by Rahab before they are defeated by Joshua. As if paralyzed, the king waits for his city to fall and for his death. The king of Ai makes a futile attempt to resist Joshua. As a group the kings then ally to fight Joshua and Israel.

A City That Sees Sense and Makes a Choice

The people of Gibeon, who have also learned from the story of the exodus and of what happened on the other side of the Jordan, work out a wiser response (Josh 9:3–13). A more specific group of kings ally to bring Gibeon into line, and pay the price, as do the northern kings when they hear of Joshua’s exploits in the south and ally to defend themselves against him (Josh 10–11).

Gibeon’s experience as a city parallels Rahab’s as an individual. These stories indicate that choice plays a role in including people in Israel and in excluding them. The ḥērem placed everything Canaanite permanently off limits, and destroying it was a means of ensuring it would stay so. Yet Rahab’s decision for Israel and for Yhwh takes her out of the realm of ḥērem. She joins the resident aliens who abide “within Israel” but commit themselves to Moses’ Teaching and thus illustrate the way such commitment overrides questions of ethnic background. This also comes to be true not just of a family but of a whole large city. Its people, too, are “within” Israel (Josh 10:1). Their story also shows how native peoples who come to recognize Yhwh may indeed join Yhwh’s people, despite Moses’ strict injunctions. In exempting Rahab and the Gibeonites from ḥērem, the Israelites make decisions of their own in the light of facts available to them and get in trouble for their action in relation to Gibeon, though not in relation to Rahab, even though there is no teaching in the Torah on exempting from the ḥērem a person such as a prostitute who welcomes the Israelites.

Admittedly the Gibeonites are simply self-serving and deceptive, and we can easily imagine a tougher theologian taking the view that Rahab’s (self-serving?) recognition of Yhwh is no reason for her exemption. Deuteronomy 7:1–5 has required that Israel make no covenants and show no grace (ḥēn) to the inhabitants of the land. The word “covenant” comes only in the Gibeon story, but it is hard to claim that swearing mutual oaths and promising ḥesed and ʾĕmet to Rahab (Josh 2:14) are in keeping with Deuteronomy’s prohibition. Exodus 23:33 had required that none of these people carry on living in the land (yāšab), as Rahab does (Josh 6:25). If it was acceptable to take Rahab at face value, why was it so wrong to take the Gibeonites at face value? The one story suggests the assumption that God’s people must of course use their common sense in working out when Yhwh’s instructions have exceptions. The other suggests they can be treated as culpable for making an exception when they did not think they were doing so.

In principle Canaanites must be eliminated, but Canaanites who behave like Israelites may take their place within the people of God. Israel’s national boundaries are critically important, but flexible. The point emerges again in the story of Caleb, who is a model Israelite, yet by origin a Kenizzite—i.e. (of all things), an Edomite. Joshua’s final exhortation (Josh 24) will generalize the point. For people of unquestionable pedigree, too, real membership of Israel involves choice, the decision to serve Yhwh rather than the gods of Canaan. Israel is “a people who chooses the God who has called them into being.”[926]

7.8 The Gift of God: The Land

Moshe Weinfeld opens his book on the land by observing that “the fate of the land is the focal point of Biblical historiography,” at least of Genesis–Kings (there is a “shift from land to city” in the Second Temple period).[927]  W. D. Davies similarly notes that “much of the theology and history of Judaism … points to The Land as of its essence,” though “the history of Judaism … seems also to offer serious qualifications of this.”[928]  In some latter scenes the First Testament story recognizes that people maintain commitment to Yhwh and to Yhwh’s people while living voluntarily outside the land, but the land hardly ceases to matter to them, as the stories of Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah show in different ways. Naim Ateek suggests that “obsession with the land has had disastrous consequences for the Jews at different times in their ancient history. For it is not the land that carries a blessing to the people, but faithfulness to the God of justice, righteousness, and mercy.”[929]  But Yhwh chose to create humanity in bodily form and thus relates to Israel in a way that involves land and is not merely a matter of the spiritual, moral or theological.[930]  The story of Yhwh’s involvement with Israel thus intrinsically involves the land. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when Britain was seeking to find a way to provide the Jewish people with a national home, it was suggested they might be offered Uganda.[931]  Apart from questions about the opinions of the Ugandan people, this presupposes that any old land will do. But Israel had been promised and given a specific land. It was not interested in the land of Edom, Moab or Ammon and had no plan to conquer those. Their land is theirs to possess (yāraš). Israel fights Midian and Amalek, but to avoid being overwhelmed by them or to punish their wrongdoing, not to take over their land.

One way the First Testament unsuccessfully seeks to safeguard against obsession with the land replacing obsession with faithfulness and mercy is by linking the land theme with Yhwh’s purpose for the world as a whole. The theme links to a theology of creation and leads to one.[932]  The land (ʾereṣ) to which Yhwh directed Abram and which Israel comes to occupy is a particular segment of the land (ʾereṣ) God created. God had formed the land, put humanity in authority over the land, watched the land be spoiled, brought calamity on the land, recommissioned humanity to fill the land, watched humanity spread over the land, and then sent Abram to a particular land. The completion of the occupation of the land is the completion of the creation project of subjugating the land. It is described in terms that recall God’s own completion of the work of creation (Josh 18:1; 19:51; cf. Gen 1:28; 2:2).[933]

A Land for Settled Life

The land is now a place where Israel can settle, or more accurately a place where Yhwh will settle them (šākan piel; Num 14:30). Israel has been unsettled for a long time. Indeed, it has never been a settled people. Abram and Sarai had been settled in Babylon, but since they abandoned their settled life there, they and their descendants have never had a truly settled home. They have lived in Canaan and in Egypt as resident aliens rather than settlers.[934]  This land has been “the land where you are staying,” as resident aliens (gûr, Gen 17:8; 28:4; cf. Gen 36:7; 37:1).[935]  They had no legal right to be there. They did come to own a skeleton-hold in it (Gen 23), as “an earnest of the remainder. In their death they were no longer sojourners in ‘Hittite’ territory, but had already a share in the fulfilment of the promise.”[936]  But otherwise, it was not their land. It belonged to the Canaanites. The land was thus neither one thing nor the other, not simply a foreign land, a land where the ancestors do not live, but neither was it a land whose destiny they controlled. Now Yhwh will give them the land in which they lived as resident aliens (Ex 6:4). There are human beings and human groups who seem attached to being unsettled, but the norm is to long for homecoming, and for Israel this will be the land’s significance.

To put it another way, Yhwh is now planting Israel in this land like a tree, specifically a vine (e.g., Ex 15:17, Ps 80:8–15 [MT 9–16]). The image connotes security. A tree is firmly rooted in its land; it cannot be simply lifted out from it. Planting itself implies settling (2 Sam 7:10). The settlement Yhwh intends for Israel is the one Yhwh has personally taken within Israel and will take within Canaan. Yhwh has settled among Israel (e.g., Ex 25:8; 29:45–46) and will settle in Canaan in the dwelling tent, the settlement tent (Josh 22:19) and later in a house (1 Kings 6:13; cf. references to settling the name “Yhwh,” e.g., Deut 12:11). As they leave Sinai they are a people on a journey, but the journey will find its goal in settlement. With this in the narrative, the land becomes especially prominent once Israel does leave Sinai and set off for Canaan. The “land” for which Israel is bound is mentioned only twice in Numbers 1–10 (four times “the land of Egypt” is mentioned), but nearly a hundred times in Numbers 11–31 and Joshua, and almost twice as many times in Deuteronomy. The food of the journey, the manna, is now to give way to the food of an inhabited land (Ex 16:35).

Earlier references to the land have implicitly recognized a problem about God’s promise. The fact that the land is not empty but is occupied by other peoples raises ethical questions as well as logistical ones. More than force is needed to justify the taking away of a people’s land. As the claim to a long history of involvement with the land features in contemporary Israeli and Palestinian arguments about rights to the land, so perhaps the stories of the ancestors functioned in analogous ways to assure ancient Israel that its relationship with the land did not begin with Joshua’s arrival there. These ancestors had not only received promises from Yhwh about eventual possession of the land but also moved there, traveled around there, lived there, built altars suggesting Yhwh’s claim to the land there, named Yhwh’s name there and bought burial land there. They remained sojourners, but they were there.

The First Testament also argues that the land can be given to Israel because it needs to be taken away from the people who currently occupy it, who are characterized by wrongdoing (ʿāwôn, Lev 18:25; cf. Gen 15:16) or wickedness (rešaʿ, Deut 9:4–5). It is throwing up its inhabitants because of the way they treat one another and the way they treat their children, and if Israel adopts the same familial patterns, the land will also throw up Israel (Lev 18:24–30). The First Testament’s claims about the moral nature of the conquest correspond to the claims of other Middle Eastern kings[937]  and of modern war-makers, who routinely claim that right is on their side. We do not have the Jebusites’ account of their loss of Jerusalem as we have the Palestinians’ account of theirs.[938]

A Land Yhwh Gives

The land now becomes Yhwh’s gift to Israel. Moses describes it so at the transition point in Numbers 10:29–32, where he urges his father-in-law to come with them “to the place of which Yhwh said, ‘I will give it to you’ ” (Num 10:29). The giving is future. After the declaration that the present generation will not themselves see the land, the description graciously reappears, where Yhwh refers to it as “the land I am giving to you” (Num 15:2). Although they are far from the land, Yhwh’s giving is so certain it can be spoken of as already in process. The verb then recurs again as a qatal: “I have given” (Num 20:12, 24; 27:12). The giving is so certain it can be spoken of as having already happened. Yhwh’s giving of the land is then a key motif in Joshua 1, a chapter that is “strangely unmilitaristic, given that it introduces a book full of war and bloodshed.”[939]  Much more focus lies on God’s giving of the land (Josh 1:2, 3, 6, 11, 13, 14, 15a, 15b; three participles, performative qatal, infinitive, and waw-consecutive plus qatal; also two further qatal verbs referring to the literally past gift of the land east of the Jordan; cf. Josh 2:9, 14, 24). This links with the suggestion that stories about ḥērem are a way of affirming that the land is God’s gift.

The land is given in fulfillment of an oath to Israel’s ancestors and a word to Moses (e.g., Josh 1:3, 6). Perhaps it is because Hebrew has no word for “promise” (so that the expression “the promised land” does not appear in the First Testament) that the First Testament speaks of God “swearing” when it wants a stronger expression than “speaking.”[940]  The statement that God would give them the land was one that seemed extremely unlikely to find fulfillment; if God swore to give this gift, that gave something extra for hope to hold on to over decades and centuries. It would continue to encourage the people through periods when the land they occupied became more and more exiguous, especially in the Second Temple period. Yhwh could not allow this situation to obtain forever. The gift of the land was the subject of an oath.

Yhwh’s giving the land to Israel parallels a king’s granting of land to his subjects.[941]  There might then be other claimants to the land, but the king’s grant guarantees the recipients secure possession over against other people’s claims. The point is made more explicit by describing Yhwh as giving the land to the people to “possess” and of the people thus coming to “possess” the land (yāraš, Josh 1:11, 15). The one occasion when Yhwh simply speaks of giving Israel its land as a môrāšâ, “possession” (Ex 6:8), is accompanied by a number of occurrences recognizing that this word suggests something one people took from another. Possession results from dispossession (cf. the use in Ezek 25:4, 10; 36:1–5). But in itself the notion of grant and possession of a land need not imply the dispossession of another people (yāraš hiphil).[942]  Yhwh’s grant means no one can deprive Israel of this land—if the people are obedient to the teaching of Yhwh’s servant Moses, the other central emphasis in Joshua 1. As the subjects of this King, the people can look to the future with confidence rather than fear.

That links with the fact that the land is designed to be the place where Israel can rest (e.g., Deut 12:9–10; Josh 23:1). The land, too, can then be quiet and undisturbed by war (Josh 11:23; 14:15). Admittedly this may not work out, as is suggested by the later recurrence of statements that God gives kings or people rest (e.g., 2 Sam 7:1, 11; 1 Kings 8:56; 1 Chron 22:9; 2 Chron 15:15; 20:30). It is not achieved once and for all with the people’s entry into the land. Israel’s story involves periods of strife and periods of rest. Indeed, Yhwh declares that this rest is “my rest” and that people who rebel against Yhwh cannot enter it (Ps 95:11).[943]  If Israel conforms its life to Yhwh’s instructions, that will have correlative positive effects on the land: the rains will come, the land will yield its increase, and the people will live in the land with a sense of security (Lev 26).[944]  Yhwh will bar the land to violent human beings and free the land from dangerous animals, and the people will have nothing to fear there. On the other hand, if they do not conform their life to Yhwh’s instructions, that will have negative results. The land will not yield its produce, Yhwh will devastate the land and make it a desolation, and it will then be free to enjoy the sabbath years of which it has been deprived.

Yhwh’s giving of this land to Israel is but one instance of Yhwh’s giving all peoples their land (see Deut 32:8–9): Elyon fixed the boundaries of all the peoples.[945]  It is another link between land and creation. As king, Yhwh made grants of lands to other peoples, which therefore become their possession (yĕruššâ, see Deut 2:5, 9, 12, 19).[946]  But Jacob was Yhwh’s particular possession, Yhwh’s share, allocation and entitlement (hēleq, ḥēbel, naḥălâ),[947]  and a special significance must then attach to Jacob.

A Land Yhwh Owns

“Share,” “allocation” and “entitlement” are all used to denote the people’s relationship to Yhwh, the land’s significance for the people and the significance of a particular segment of the land for a family or clan. Thus the people who are Yhwh’s naḥălâ have Canaan as their naḥălâ (see esp. Deut 4:20–21). Israel will thus possess the land as its own (cf., e.g., Josh 1:6, nāḥal). Yhwh commissions the dividing of the land among the clans so that each has its own possession (naḥălâ) within it, and Joshua thus “shares” the land to the clans (ḥālaq, e.g., Josh 13:7). The land becomes Israel’s property—it is given “as a possession” (laʾăḥuzzâ, Deut 32:49). While theologically the whole people’s possession of the whole land as its naḥălâ is the prior idea, historically things may have been otherwise.[948]  The description of the land as the people’s naḥălâ then derives from the more immediate application of the word naḥălâ to the land belonging to a household, community or clan as its naḥălâ. It is the latter that comes first in the Torah (Gen 31:14; 48:6; cf. Num 18:20–26; 26:52–62; 36:1–12). Applying the term to Israel as a whole (e.g., Deut 4:21, 38) suggests that Israel will possess the land as its own as inalienably as a household, community or clan possesses its tract of land, and that Yhwh will also so inalienably possess Israel. Similarly, hēleq refers to the land belonging to a group (e.g., Gen 31:14; Num 18:20; Deut 10:9) and hardly ever to the land of the people as a whole (Amos 7:4?). In Deuteronomy 32:9, Moses also refers to Israel as Yhwh’s “allocation” (ḥēbel)—the term is the word for “[measuring-]cord” and thus suggests careful, deliberate, specific and fixed division. The land of Canaan is then the people’s “allocation” (Ps 78:55; 105:11) within which different clans have their “allocation” (Josh 17:5, 14).

Yet that is compromised by the fact that the land continues to belong to Yhwh. The capture of Jericho and Ai opens up the way to the land as a whole, and in particular to the region of Shechem, arguably the natural center of the land. There Joshua builds an altar on Mount Ebal, within sight of the altar Abram built on his arrival in the land (Gen 12:6–7), which among other things would suggest the naming of Yhwh’s name over the land as its owner. From time to time the First Testament continues to emphasize that the land belongs to Yhwh, and the idea of gift and possession carries no implication of absolute rights to the land over against Yhwh. Thus Yhwh prohibits the land’s being sold in perpetuity, as opposed to mortgaged, because “the land is mine.” In relation to God, the Israelites remain in the position of resident aliens or migrant workers (Lev 25:23). This statement comes in the context of the instructions about the sabbath year, whose logic is that the land is Yhwh’s, rather than that people should be concerned for the needy and for wild animals (contrast, e.g., Ex 23:10–11). Leaving it uncultivated for one year in seven constitutes an acknowledgment that Yhwh still owns the land, as people recognize Yhwh’s ownership of their time, their crops and their children by substantial and symbolic offerings of part of these.

The actual expressions “Yhwh’s naḥălâ” and “Yhwh’s land” do not come in the Torah, though we have reckoned that in Exodus 15:17 it is the land that is described as “the mountain country that is your naḥălâ.”[949]  Describing the land in these terms asserts that it belongs to Yhwh rather than to some other god, which implies the land is holy, though the expression “holy land” also does not occur.[950]  Worshiping other gods therefore defiles the land and renders the worshipers liable to be cast out into a land where such worship belongs, a land that is inherently defiled (Jer 2:1–8; Hos 9:1–3; cf. Amos 7:17; 1 Sam 26:19). Defilement also comes upon people and land if the people indulge in certain practices in the realm of sexual relationships. It was such practices that defiled the land and caused it to throw up its previous inhabitants, and they will have the same implications for Israel (Lev 18–20). Neither is the land called “the land of Israel” in the Torah; that term is rare in the First Testament and does not appear until 1 Samuel 13:19 and 2 Kings 5:2, 4. Indeed, the land has no name. The nearest one can find to a term to describe it is the double expression “the land of Canaan” and “the land of Gilead” (cf. Josh 22:9, 32).

A Broad Land

It is a broad land (Ex 3:8). There are at least three ways of determining its extent, suggesting some flexibility about the matter. Canaan, the land west of the Jordan, is Israel’s heartland. It was this land that had been promised to Israel’s ancestors (e.g., Gen 11:31; 12:5; 17:8; Ex 6:4; Lev 14:34; 25:38; Num 13:2, 17) and this land that Moses was bidden to view (Deut 32:49). Yhwh’s giving of the land thus begins with the crossing of the Jordan (Josh 1:2). It is Canaan that is Yhwh’s own land (ʾereṣ ʾăḥuzzat yhwh, Josh 22:19). Living east of the Jordan implies living in a defiled land and risks surrendering a “share” (hēleq) in Yhwh (Josh 22:19, 25, 27). It is the land west of the Jordan that is reallocated in Ezekiel 48.

But the first land that the people actually take is east of the Jordan. The “Amorites” who live there are unwise enough to attack the Israelites, who are encouraged to read this as reflecting Yhwh’s intention to give them this land and thus enter into possession of it (yāraš, Num 21:24, 35). Some of the clans like the look of it (see Num 32), and a third of the area that Joshua allocates to the clans is there. Loosely referred to as Gilead (e.g., Num 32:29; Josh 22:9, 13, 15, 32), it includes the Golan and land extending halfway down the Dead Sea that comes to be part of the land Yhwh gives to Israel, even though it is not part of the land once promised. Thus when Moses actually looks over the land as a whole, he sees Canaan plus Gilead, and that is now identified as the land Yhwh swore to give to Abraham’s descendants (Deut 34:1–4).

The third vision of the land’s extent sees it as yet broader. While Israel is not to occupy the land of peoples such as Moab and Edom, it is destined to win victory over them (Num 24:17–19). Indeed, Deuteronomy 11:24 and Joshua 1:4 pictures Israel’s territory as extending from the wilderness of the Negeb to Lebanon, south to north, and from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, west to east (cf. Ex 23:31; Deut 1:7). Similarly, Numbers 34 and Joshua 13 envisage a land that approximately corresponds to the old Egyptian province of Canaan. But Joshua does not distribute the further vast tracts to the east, nor is there any comment on the people’s failure to occupy them. Perhaps it is significant that this area is Israel’s “territory” (gĕbûl) rather than its land.[951]  In due course, for a short period, the land to the north and east will be part of the area that Israel controls, but not part of its actual land.[952]  The land’s boundaries in the First Testament thus reflect political realities of different periods rather than having significance in their own right.

A Good Land

The fact that it is a good land was established by the ill-fated visit by representatives of the clans who went to “explore” the land (ḥāpar, Deut 1:22). To speak of them as spies gives a wrong impression. While they were to report on the strength of the land’s occupants, Moses’ emphasis lay on discovering what kind of land it was:

See what the land is like, and what the people who live on it are like, strong or weak, few or many, and what the land they live in is like, good or bad, and what the cities they live in are like, open or fortified, and what the land is like, rich or poor, with trees or without them. Be bold, and take some of the land’s fruit. (Num 13:18–20)

In Numbers 13, the verb often translated “spy out” is ṭûr, which nicely does as a verb for “touring” in modern Hebrew, while the giant bunch of grapes that the explorers brought back with them provides the Israeli tourist authorities with their emblem. The “spies” are the first tourists. They report that the land flows with milk and sweetness (Num 13:27; 14:8)—it has good pasturage for sheep, and naturally grows fruit trees such as the date palm from which sweet syrup can easily be gained. It is a land of field and vineyard (Num 16:14). As Moses will later put it, it is a land of grain and wine, where the heavens drop the dew that is required to bring the grapes to maturity (Deut 33:28). Two of the explorers, Joshua and Caleb, thus emphasize that “it is a very, very good land” (Num 14:7). Its vineyards and olive groves are ones that Israel does not even have to plant—though there is evidence that the people did much such work in the terracing of hillsides. It has cities they do not need to build, houses full of stuff they do not have to make, and water cisterns they do not have to create (Deut 6:10–11; there is some tension with the idea of ḥērem here). It has good water supply, good crops and good mineral resources (Deut 8:7–10). If the Egyptians thought their land rather superior because of the Nile’s reliability as a source of water, Moses takes the view that a water supply available all over the country in the form of springs, streams and rain is superior to one that entails irrigation. This is “a land that Yhwh your God looks after. The eyes of Yhwh your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year” (Deut 11:10–12).

When the people come into the land Yhwh is giving them as their own possession and have harvested its produce, individually the heads of households are to bring some of their produce to the particular place where Yhwh has settled. There they are to testify to the way they have shared in the story of the people as a whole, the story that took people from wandering to bondage to deliverance to settlement. There they are to bow down to Yhwh and celebrate with their household the gift of this good land (Deut 26:1–11).

A Land for Implementing Torah

At Sinai, in the course of the sealing of its relationship with Yhwh, Israel received copious instructions for its life as Yhwh’s people. As it receives the gift of the land it now receives copious instructions for its life there. The instructions at Sinai gave a key place to the building of Yhwh’s dwelling, the worship offered there and the safeguarding of the dwelling’s purity. They also concerned people’s everyday lives, but even the instructions for everyday life worked largely within the categories with which the personnel in the sanctuary were familiar and with which they were especially concerned—the categories of holiness and purity. One might reckon that this was quite apposite for a people who would spend the next forty years camped around this dwelling.

After their entry into the land, things will be very different. They will be spread over the land learning to live ordinary lives in the context of the lives of nations around and other ethnic groups in their midst. Yhwh’s dwelling will be far away and life will be less shaped by the sacral. The instructions they receive on the edge of the land focus less on the world of worship and much more on the practicalities of ordinary life. People will be free to kill and eat animals for food without bringing them to the sanctuary, which may be far away (Deut 12:15–16).[953]  They will be free to convert tithes to cash before making the journey to the sanctuary, so that they can then reconvert the cash to food and drink when they get there (Deut 14:24–26). Deuteronomy is sympathetic to human need, more relaxed, more humanitarian, more practical and happy to reduce the extent to which the people’s life is overseen from the sanctuary.[954]  But the land is a place where the people are to live the life Yhwh prescribes, in contrast to the life lived by its previous occupants (Deut 5:31). They are bidden to “set up the blessing and the curse” on the two mountains near Shechem, and they duly do so (Josh 8:33; cf. Deut 11:29; 27:11–13). Joshua writes on stones a copy of the torah that Moses had written and reads the entire torah to the people, native and resident alien.

Although no foes can willfully take away the land from Israel, if Israel fails to keep up its covenant relationship with Yhwh and instead serves other gods, Yhwh can take away the land. Making images will have that result (Deut 4:23–26), but the whole of Moses’ final sermon needs implementing in their lives if they are to live long in this land (Deut 5:31–33; 11:8–25). They may take over the cities, houses and orchards in the land, but they must destroy its religious life (Deut 7:5; 12:2–3). They must pursue ṣedeq, do absolutely the right thing by Yhwh, if they are to possess the land (Deut 16:20). If Yhwh is to bless them in the land, they must not charge interest on loans to a fellow Israelite in need (Deut 23:19–20 [[955]  20–21]). If they are to avoid bringing sin or guilt or punishment on the land (ḥāṭāʾ hiphil), they must not allow a man to remarry his former wife (Deut 24:4). Putting Yhwh out of their mind and serving other gods in Yhwh’s place will mean forfeiting the land that is Yhwh’s gift (see, e.g., Deut 6:10–12; Josh 23:15–16). Or it will mean that they do not see the rain and thus the crops that the land is capable of, and they will die in the land (Deut 11:13–17). Or they will share the fate of their predecessors and build houses but not live in them and plant vineyards but not enjoy their fruit (Deut 28:30; see Deut 28 as a whole). Or they will see the good and fruitful land turned into one devastated and burnt out, like Sodom and Gomorrah (Deut 29:23).

Yet that will not be the end. If they turn to Yhwh when they have been cast off the land, Yhwh will restore them to possession of it (Deut 30:1–5). Precisely because the land remains Yhwh’s and Yhwh remains theirs, there can again be hope.

7.9 The Giving of God: Fulfillment and Shortfall

Soon after Balaam’s reaffirmation of the blessings, another census marks the end of the time that needs to pass before the purged people can enter the land of promise (Num 26). This census, and the entire sequence of events in the last part of Numbers, is set “in the plains of Moab, at the Jordan, by Jericho” (Num 26:3; 36:13). Every chapter now has Canaan within its sights. There are renewed preparations for a future when Moses will be gone (Num 27:12–23) and renewed instructions about offerings and festivals (Num 28–29). There are now no more difficulties over water or food and therefore no more provocations to rebellion and no more protests about the leadership. There are therefore no more acts of chastisement.

This is not to imply that there are no more problems. The position of the daughters of a man called Zelophehad raises some questions about the inheritance of the land (Num 27:1–11; 36:1–12), but these are voiced in a different way from the protests that characterized the earlier period. The event shows it is possible for people to raise an issue with Yhwh and get a change in the social structure. There are questions raised by women’s taking vows, which are also resolved, though in a less egalitarian way (Num 30). After the battle designed to punish Midian on Yhwh’s behalf, there is the crisis over the application to Midian of the requirement about devoting things, but the crisis is resolved (Num 31). There are questions raised by Gad and Reuben’s desire to settle east of the Jordan, but these are resolved amicably (Num 32). There is reflection on the way the people have come (Num 33) and anticipation of the fulfillment that lies ahead (Num 34–35). The chapters uniformly raise expectations that the time of waiting and of chastisement are over. The people have completed their journey and the time of fulfillment is at hand.

A Human Walk and Divine Wonders

The journey through the wilderness and the occupation of the land involve a human walk and divine wonders. When the people stand poised on the edge of the Jordan, Yhwh promises that they are about to see Yhwh’s “wonders” (niplāʾôt, a part of the verb pālāʾ)—extraordinary and amazing acts (Josh 3:5). Such acts are humanly incomprehensible, not in the sense of defying scientific explanation (though they may do that) but in surpassing imagination or expectation. At one level we may understand how someone loves us, how rain comes, how political change happens, how the cosmos works, how a storm is marvelously stilled, how Yhwh’s precepts work or how a baby is formed in the womb (2 Sam 1:26; Job 5:9–16; 9:4–10; 37:14; Ps 107:24; 119:129; 139:14). Yet these do not cease to be wonders that are at another level inexplicable.

Isaac’s birth was a wonder (Gen 18:14). Apart from that, the story of Yhwh’s wonders in Israel’s life began with the blows Yhwh brought on Egypt and the Egyptian army’s destruction at the Red Sea (Ex 3:20; 15:11–12; cf. Judg 6:13; Neh 9:17; Ps 78:11; 106:7, 22). The events in the wilderness were wonders—chastisements and provisions (Ps 78:4, 32). The expulsion of the occupants of Canaan will be a wonder (Ex 34:10–11). If Joshua is to be taken literally when he says that the people will see Yhwh’s wonders “tomorrow” (māhār, Josh 3:5), then he must be referring to the wondrous crossing of the Jordan. But māhār can be used in a looser sense (cf. Josh 4:6, 21), and the plural “wonders” and the other allusions to Yhwh’s wonders point to a broader reference. The wonders that the people will see begin at the river and go on to the victories they will experience and the reversal Yhwh will also bring about. There is no hint that the river stands erect upstream because of an explicable landslide or that Jericho’s walls fall because of a regular earthquake. It is the presence of Yhwh’s covenant chest on the riverbed that causes the waters to stand off in respect (see Josh 3:17).

Psalm 114 juxtaposes the crossing of the Sea and the crossing of the Jordan. If Israel celebrated the crossing of the Jordan at the river itself, it would naturally also recall there the crossing of the Red Sea, which happened too far away for pilgrimage. Though the Red Sea story and the Jordan crossing story may be significantly shaped by the Canaanite story of Baal’s victory over Sea and River,[956]  the psalm does not speak of Sea and River but juxtaposes “sea” and “Jordan” and thus illustrates a feature of the First Testament gospel. “Jordan” affirms that this gospel relates to events that happened in a concrete, this-worldly place, at a river Israelites knew very well, not in an otherworldly realm. Perhaps the same point emerges from the parallel with reports of Assyrian military campaigns, which often begin with the safe crossing of a river in flood, a sign of divine protection.[957]  The Jordan is not a very imposing river, and Israel would not have needed God to take it across in a literal sense, but it needed what that stood for, Yhwh’s taking it safely into the land on the other side of the Jordan. “Sea” then affirms that these events did have supernatural connotations. Israel told its story in a way that held together this-worldly events and otherworldly realities.

The prayer in Habakkuk 3 speaks in related terms, but less concrete ones. It asks for Yhwh to act now in accordance with Yhwh’s acts of old:

God would come from Teman, the holy one from Mount Paran.

His majesty covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise.

His brightness was like light. He had horns coming from his hand.

There was his power’s hiding place.

Before him epidemic would go, behind him flame would go forth.

He stood still and shook the earth. He looked and made nations start.

Age-old mountains crumbled. Ancient hills bowed down. Ancient ways belong to him.

I saw the tents of Cushan under affliction. The dwellings of the people of Midian would shake.

Did you rage against the rivers, Yhwh? Was your anger with the rivers?

Was your wrath against the sea, when you drove your horses, your chariots in deliverance? (Hab 3:3–8)

The prayer recollects Yhwh’s journey (and implicitly the people’s journey) from Sinai to the edge of the promised land, and finally thus presumably refers to the crossing of the Jordan. But at this point the concreteness of the reference to Midian gives way to the otherworldly talk of “rivers” and “sea.” The relatively unthreatening River Jordan, which people such as the Israelite spies and Ruth and Naomi were able to pass over without great trouble, becomes a figure for dynamic powers asserted against Yhwh. The rivers and the sea play the role they play in the Canaanite story of Baal’s victory over Sea and River.

Chronicles portrays the matter rather differently in order to underline the reality of Yhwh’s irrevocable gift of the land to Israel. The picture of the ancestors living in the land temporarily, then living in exile in Egypt, then occupying the land under Joshua, then losing it to the Babylonians, then returning to it under Cyrus, could give the impression that Israel had a rather extrinsic relationship to the land. Chronicles underplays the significance of the exodus, the subsequent occupation of the land and the exile, emphasizing the continuity of the people’s occupation of the land and thus the intrinsic nature of their relationship to it. It is God’s gift, but the giving happens for every generation (cf. 1 Chron 28:8; 2 Chron 6:25; 20:11).[958] 3

Yhwh’s giving Israel the land is symbolized in the marvelous way the former occupants’ courage gave way before Israel (Josh 2:11; 5:1), and in the way Yhwh takes Israel across the Jordan and gives Jericho to the people (cf. Josh 6:16). It is expressed in the land’s distribution to the clans by lot (e.g., Josh 14:2), “before Yhwh at the entrance of the meeting tent” (Josh 19:51). Yhwh oversees the land’s distribution. Negatively it is symbolized in the pejorative associations attached to the idea of reconnoitering the land and calculating what human resources are needed for the conquest of a city (Josh 2:1; 7:2). That presupposes that the taking of the land is a human achievement, and each time it leads to trouble.

A Tension in the Portrait of Yhwh’s Action

All of that emphasizes the reality of Yhwh’s fulfilling the commitment to give Israel this land. Yet alongside that is another motif. As the story of this journey has portrayed the people with systematic ambiguity, as committed to Yhwh but inclined to worship other gods, sometimes obedient to Yhwh but sometimes failing to do what Yhwh says, so the story incorporates a tension in the portrait of Yhwh. Yhwh completely fulfills the promise to bless Israel by giving Israel the land vouchsafed to it, but Yhwh does not wholly give this land to Israel, and Israel thus does not enter into full enjoyment of Yhwh’s blessing.

Joshua opens with a commission and a promise to Israel’s new leader: “Now, set off, cross this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the Israelites. Every place that the sole of your foot treads, I am giving to you, as I said to Moses” (Josh 1:2–3). Joshua himself promises that “the living God is in your midst. He will definitely drive out from before you the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the Girgashites, the Amorites and the Jebusites” (Josh 3:10). And after the conquest of Jericho and Ai, the occupation of the land is apparently over, because the priests and the covenant chest reappear as Joshua builds the altar at Mount Ebal.

Surprisingly, there then follows a continuation of the conquest account (Josh 9–12), which unfolds in a similar way to the Ai story. Gibeon and its allies deceive Joshua into a peace treaty with Joshua. A group of allies attack Gibeon for its treachery and Joshua defeats them. Another group of allies in the north gathers to attack Israel and Joshua defeats them. At the center of the book comes a summary of the way Yhwh’s promise has been fulfilled.

So Joshua took this whole land—the hill country, the Negeb, all the land of Goshen, the lowland, the Arabah, and the hill country of Israel and its lowland.… He took all their kings, struck them down, and put them to death.… Joshua took the whole land, in accordance with everything that Yhwh had spoken to Moses (Josh 11:16, 17, 23; cf. Josh 10:40–42; 21:43–45).

A spectacular list of the kings Joshua defeated follows in Joshua 12.

Yhwh’s words to Joshua in Joshua 13 then open in extraordinary fashion: “You are old, advanced in years, and there remains very much land to be possessed.” The distribution of the land among the tribes in Joshua 13–21 is thus punctuated by notes on the many towns and peoples that the Israelites have not defeated (e.g., Josh 15:63; 16:10; 17:12–13). Our eyebrows therefore rise even higher at Joshua 21:43–45:

So Yhwh gave Israel all the land he swore to give their ancestors. They took possession of it and settled in it. Yhwh gave them rest on every side in accordance with all he had sworn to their ancestors. No one of all their enemies had stood before them. God had given all their enemies into their hand. No word failed of every good word that Yhwh spoke to the house of Israel. Everything came about.

Our eyebrows rise once more when the promises are reaffirmed in Joshua 23 in recognition of the considerable task that remains ahead of the people.

The people have won spectacular victories, but the promise and the report of complete success in taking the land set up this second central tension in the story. The people are obedient, but they are not; they take the land, but they do not.[959]  Middle Eastern campaign reports often involve such hyperbole,[960]  but this does not take away the theological significance of the two sides to this story. As the two-sided account of the people of God makes an important theological statement about its nature as committed and as disobedient, another important theological statement emerges from the parallel two-sided account of its experience of the fulfillment of God’s promises as total and as incomplete.

What God Has Done and What God Has Still to Do

Much later, the New Testament will declare that God’s reign has arrived or that God has sealed the new covenant or that people have been born anew through God’s act and therefore do not commit sin. It will also describe such people indulging in sins analogous to Israel’s and will refer to the plaint that, for all the talk of fulfillment, nothing has changed and everything continues as it always did. Its response to that plaint is not that it is untrue, but that the time of fulfillment will indeed soon come (2 Peter 3).

Why is it the case that the First Testament gospel already interweaves declarations that God’s promises have been fulfilled and that there remains much for God to do? There is a simple answer, implicit in Numbers 13–14, but it constitutes only a half-truth. It is that the promises have found fulfillment insofar as Israel has kept its commitment to Yhwh, while incompleteness of fulfillment issues from Israel’s rebellion. Joshua does not appeal to this explanation and is more inclined to a teleological understanding of Yhwh’s not completely fulfilling the promises, an understanding with several facets. Yhwh has a positive purpose in not enabling Israel to take the whole land. It would make life too easy. The continuing presence of the Canaanites will act as a test for Israel. Further, although other peoples continue to occupy much of the land, Joshua is to allocate the whole land to the clans in the conviction that Yhwh will keep the promise to drive out its present occupants in due course (Josh 13:6). This suggests a further significance in the incompleteness of fulfillment. It means Israel is called to live in trust and in hope—or rather, in trust in Yhwh and hope in Yhwh. The very portraying of the occupation of the land as complete constitutes a statement of hope. It indicates that completion is certain. Judges combines the punitive and teleological explanations. Because of their entering into relationships with the local peoples, Yhwh will leave the latter there as adversaries through whom they may learn to fight, and leave their gods as tempting snares to test their commitment to Yhwh (Judg 2:1–5; 3:1–6).

The incompleteness of the occupation fits with a feature of the wilderness stories. Sometimes trouble comes to Israel because of its rebellions, but more often it has no such explanation. The people simply have no water, or their water is undrinkable. The problem then becomes a means of testing the people. The nature of Yhwh’s promises is such as not to find complete or immediate or trouble-free fulfillment, for reasons we are not given. Conversely, fulfillment of the promises is not earned by obedience. Obedience is vital, but fulfillment issues from God’s purpose and God’s faithfulness. Fulfillment when people are disobedient and failure of fulfillment when they are obedient highlight the fact that ultimate significance does not attach to human obedience. Numbers and Joshua illustrate well the lesson that Job’s friends had a hard time acknowledging.

Israel Did Not or Could Not?

The story suggests another, related tension. The East Bank clans are allocated the lands they ask for, “but the Israelites did not dispossess the Geshurites or the Maacathites, so that Geshur and Maacath have lived in the midst of Israel to this day” (Josh 13:13). Similarly, “the Ephraimites did not dispossess the Canaanites who lived in Gezer, so that the Canaanites have lived in the midst of Ephraim to this day and became a conscript labor force” (Josh 16:10). These statements are later extended to western Manasseh, Zebulun, Asher and Naphtali, and the fact that the Canaanites end up as a labor force for several of the clans suggests that they could have dispossessed them but failed to do so (Judg 1:27–33). Caleb asks for land around Hebron with its impressive occupants, and makes a comment that can be understood in two ways (Josh 14:12): Is it “If Yhwh is with me, I will dispossess them, as Yhwh said,” or “Perhaps Yhwh will be with me and I will dispossess them, as Yhwh said”?[961]  It turns out that Caleb indeed drives them out by another very human process, implying some human aggressiveness and bravado, not to mention incentive (the promise of a wife), in words as well as in deeds (Josh 15:14–19). But the ambiguity encapsulates the issue that runs through statements about this matter.

This ambiguity reappears in the alternative formulation relating to Judah and Manasseh, who “could not dispossess the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the Jebusites have lived with the Judahites in Jerusalem to this day” (Josh 15:63) and “could not dispossess these cities, so that the Canaanites have continued to live in this land. When the Israelites got strong they made the Canaanites into a labor force, but they did not actually dispossess them” (Josh 17:12–13). Joseph asks for more land on the basis of its size and the fact that “there are iron chariots among all the Canaanites who live in the Vale, the ones in Beth-shean and its villages and the ones in the Vale of Jezreel” (Josh 17:14–16). Joshua’s tough response is that Joseph can indeed have more land, but nevertheless for all the Canaanites’ chariots and their strength, Joseph “must/will dispossess the Canaanites” (Josh 17:17–18). Is it a challenge or a promise?

What is the significance of the difference between the statement that some clans “did not” and the Judahites “could not”? What does the first say about the clans? What does the second say about Yhwh? Does Yhwh’s involvement fall short of what is required? Why is that? The later report has Yhwh commissioning Judah to initiate the process whereby the clans occupy the heartland of Israel. Yhwh declares, “I hereby give the land into their power” (Judg 1:2). Thus “Yhwh was with Judah, and they took possession of the mountains, but they could not dispossess the inhabitants of the plain, because they had iron chariots” (Judg 1:19). To judge from other events, Yhwh could have enabled them to defeat these enemies (cf. Judg 4–5) but did not do so. Does their declining to do so issue in inability to do so?

For Israel’s ongoing life, the tensions embodied in the narratives provide mirrors in which they may find themselves. They invite people to consider how far their experience is one of fulfillment and how far of nonfulfillment or shortfall. Awareness of fulfillment invites them to trust God for complete fulfillment. Awareness of nonfulfillment invites them to look for its reasons or for what God wishes to achieve through it. Awareness of their own commitment invites them to challenge God to fulfill the promises. Awareness of their failure of commitment invites them to change.

8

God Accommodated

From Joshua to Solomon

The next stage in the story focuses on Israel’s gaining a monarchy and a temple. These were not part of Yhwh’s plan, but were incorporated into it as an accommodation to human desires and needs.

There is an odd difference between the gospel stories in the First Testament and in the New. The New Testament relates events that happened over two-thirds of a century, whereas the period from Abraham to the Maccabees covers a millennium or two. The church’s story has continued for longer than the time from Abraham to the Maccabees, but the New Testament relates only its beginnings—logically enough, because in Christ God did the ultimate act of deliverance. Church history is simply the outworking of that act’s implications; it does not feature within the gospel story.

Israel could have understood the First Testament gospel story in an analogous way and ended with Joshua. It has spoken of God’s failed creation project and of God’s intention to draw the world by blessing Abraham’s family and giving it a land, and that promise has now come true. But it turned out that the end was not the end. After Joshua, Israel did not simply live happily ever after.

The same is true of church history since the A.D. 60s, which has unfolded in an ambiguous way. The widespread acceptance of the gospel through the world was an astonishing event, even if facilitated through being harnessed to the political agenda of empires such as Rome, Britain and the United States. Since from a Christian perspective it is only to be expected that the gospel should spread through the world thus, what is more astonishing is the up-and-down nature of the process. From the New Testament, one could not have imagined that the church in the eastern Mediterranean countries, and later in Europe, would virtually die out, or that it would now be dying out in the United States. One could not have imagined that a post-Christian religion, Islam, would grow to be the force it is. One could not have imagined that Christian history would have been so characterized by dissension and war. (Or perhaps one could have imagined it, since the life of a congregation such as that at Corinth previews it, as the story in Genesis-Joshua previews the rest of the First Testament story.) One could not have imagined that the story would go on so long.

First Testament history and Christian history thus turn out to be analogous. Both involve a story whose beginning looks triumphant. All God’s promises have come true; God’s reign has arrived. Both stories subsequently show that matters are much more complicated than that, and a further look at the beginnings of their story enables one to see that the initial, naive reading was oversimplified. It remains an interesting difference that the Christian community did not include in its New Testament the doctrinal conflicts and achievements of the second to fourth centuries, the Constantinian revolution, the split of East and West, the Reformation, the missionary movements and the decline of the church in the West. In contrast, its elder sibling let its Scriptures keep expanding, so that the First Testament incorporates a more overt recognition that its story unfolds into ambiguity. Israel’s story after Joshua recalls humanity’s story at the beginning. The words blessing and curse are not used very often, but blessing and curse are again wrestling for dominance in the story.

8.1 One People, One God?

Israel moves to another new stage in its life. The family became a people, the people became a nation, the nation became a country, and now the country is on the way to becoming a monarchic state.

All the way along it continues to be a religious community. The model it suggests is not one that separates church and state, but one that integrally combines them. It does not make a success of the attempt to be both, but its story does not imply that state and church are chalk and cheese. Being a state without having a religious commitment is less complicated, but the story does not suggest that setting the state free from the resource and constraint (the easy yoke) of being God’s servant is likely to produce a happier story. Being a church without being a state is also less complicated, but it imperils or evades God’s concern to reign in the world and not just in the religious realm.

One People

The opening of 1 Chronicles 1–11 reminds Israel that it is still a family that became a people. While Judah and David, and Levi, have the prominence, the lists of members of the clans assume that all twelve matter. The exile of the eastern clans is noted, and the chapters close with a list of people who returned from exile in Babylon—including members of Judah, Benjamin, Ephraim and Manasseh, and priests and Levites with their various tasks (1 Chron 9). As the story in Exodus-Joshua anticipates what follows, so the backdrop to the monarchic state is its destiny to lead to exile, but not to end there.

As well as being still a people, Israel is still a nation, but its life in Canaan involves an inevitable tension over the way the nation can be one when spread over hundreds of square miles. Previously, its life gained part of its significance from its being one people centered on a common sanctuary and sharing a common history. It is now scattered over the land. There is little suggestion that its people are aware of sharing a common sanctuary; wherever the wilderness sanctuary now is, people who live in Dan or Beersheba cannot visit there often, and by implication, the clans worship at a number of sanctuaries. Through chance references we are aware of Yhwh altars across the Jordan (Josh 22) and at Ophrah (Judg 6:24), a Yhwh sanctuary at Shechem (Josh 24), a place of worship with a Levite minister at Dan (Judg 18:27–31), a bāmâ (“high place”)[962]  in Zuph where Samuel officiated (1 Sam 9), a meeting “before Yhwh” at Mizpah (1 Sam 10:17), and a preeminent bāmâ at Gibeon (1 Kings 3:4). Communities and clans would need a number of such centers if Yhwh worship were to be a reality.

The nation also no longer shares a common history. Crises affect clans or groups of clans rather than the whole nation. The story from Genesis to Joshua thus functions to remind the nation of its common past. Perhaps this is one reason for the story’s selectivity and for the slant with which it tells it. The nation’s earlier history means it is one, and it needs to see itself thus. Thus Joshua 1–12 emphasize how “all Israel” conquered the land (see Josh 3:1; 4:1–9; 10:15, 28–39), though Joshua 13–22 then describe how the land was allocated to the clans individually and thus set the scene for the divided history that must now follow. Joshua marks the dividing line between unity and diversity, the transition from Israel’s being one to its being separate clans spread over a land, whose life can never have the same focus. The settling of some clans east of the Jordan symbolizes that division. The Jordan is the natural frontier for a people centered in Canaan, and simply by settling east of the Jordan those clans were electing to live a history distanced from the other clans. When Moses urged them to take part in the occupying of the whole land and they did so, that reminded them and everyone else that the nation is one, and specifically that they belong to this whole. The point is underlined by being repeated several times (see Num 32; Deut 3; Josh 22).

Judges 1 presents a different side of the picture. Whereas Joshua emphasized that “all Israel” entered the land, Judges describes the occupation as undertaken by individual clans, though sometimes more than one clan works together (Judg 1:3, 17). In some instances the chapter concerns the same towns whose capture Joshua 10 attributed to the people as a whole. As it unfolds, however, Judges goes on to emphasize the essential oneness of Israel by the same means as Joshua. Events that literally involve individual clans or combinations of clans implicate the whole nation. The pattern begins with the book’s outline of the framework within which it will tell the individual stories, which relates to “the Israelites” as a whole. It is they who offend Yhwh, worship the Baals, experience affliction, cry out, experience Yhwh’s deliverance and eventually relapse into unfaithfulness. The individual stories directly concern particular clans or areas such as Ephraim (Judg 4–5), Gilead (Judg 10–11) and the southwest (Judg 13–16), and one may infer that something similar is true of an event such as the oppression by Cushan-rishathaim (Judg 3:7–11). Yet the framework for each story sees these as experiences of “the people of Israel” (e.g., Judg 3:7, 8, 9; 4:1, 3). Acts of unfaithfulness and deliverance involving part of the people are part of the whole people’s experience. If one group sins, all are affected, as the Achan story showed. If one suffers, all suffer. If Yhwh delivers one, all rejoice.

Acting Together

Calling up a community or clan militia would require the inspiration of a compelling leader such as Deborah who could win the support of community or clan, or even of neighboring clans, convincing them that they should “offer themselves” to fight (Judg 5:2, 9). One might suspect that people would be unlikely to respond to such a call unless they could see what they had to gain from it—specifically, their own freedom from oppression or the threat of it. Although the clans implicitly have obligations to each other, in practice it might be hard to involve clans in military action that did not directly concern them (cf. Judg 5:15–17). They would also be unlikely to have a vision for invading another nation to extend an empire.

Like the framework, the stories nevertheless do assume that the suffering of one imposes demands on others. Deborah’s song rejoices in Israel’s self-offering and the participation of Ephraim, Benjamin, Machir, Zebulun, Issachar and Naphtali in the battle against Jabin. At least as significantly, it protests the absence of Reuben, Gilead, Dan and Asher,[963]  though it makes no mention of the southern clans. Gideon similarly summons a number of clans, subsequently also calls on Ephraim to help with mopping up, finds this stimulating a strong protest that he had not involved them earlier, and himself takes offense at receiving no support from the people of Succoth and Penuel (Judg 6:35; 8:1, 4–9). As the clans who settled east of the Jordan were expected to support the others in occupying the rest of the land, subsequently other clans are expected to support individual clans in trouble—taking geography and practicalities into account. Indeed, clans that are not summoned to help have a right to feel aggrieved, which underlines the conviction that the identity and destiny of the whole nation hang together.

This positive conviction goes wrong as Gideon kills people from Succoth and Penuel, while its importance highlights the degeneracy of the situation in the book’s later chapters, beginning with violence in Gideon’s own family that brings the death of his seventy sons and then of people in Shechem and Thebez (Judg 9). Subsequently the west bank Ephraimites threaten to take similar action against Jephthah for not involving them in his battle against the Ammonites, so he calls the Gileadites to arms again. Many of them also belong to Ephraim, so this is an intraclan battle and not even merely an intra-Israelite one. They kill 42,000 Ephraimites on the basis of their west bank accents (Judg 12).

Then in the last story in the book, having accepted extended hospitality in Judah, a group of travelers on the way home to Ephraim hesitate to seek hospitality from a Jebusite town, but from fellow Israelites in Gibeah experience rape and murder instead of hospitality. There is the most magnificent chilling unity about the clans’ response to this closing event. The Levite sends his wife’s dismembered body round the entire territory of Israel, and an assembly gathers from the territory from Dan to Beersheba, including Gilead. The leaders of all the people, all the clans, assemble. The people of Israel arise as one person to act, agreeing to form an army from all the clans. But the Benjaminites close ranks with the people of Gibeah and will not listen to “their brothers, the sons of Israel” (Judg 20:13). So the collaboration of the entire people is now invoked against one of the clans. They inquire of Yhwh about the strategy for action against their “brother” (Judg 20:18, 23, 28). The Benjaminites kill 22,000 Israelites the first day and 18,000 the second. This double defeat after Yhwh twice approves their strategy might have made them ask a question or two about whether they could have asked Yhwh a more open question, but all they do is weep before Yhwh, offer sacrifices and ask whether they are to try again—not whether there is anything behind their defeat. When they do eventually ask a question (Judg 21:3), it looks a rhetorical one. In the third engagement, the Israelites kill over 25,000 Benjaminites and slaughter the inhabitants of Gibeah.

Israelites are thus killing each other on a huge scale, treating each other the way they were supposed to treat the Canaanites, and a whole clan has been virtually eliminated from Israel. The story of the battle is told with great detail and no great comment, as happens in the film Black Hawk Down, on which a reviewer observed critically that it told us the what of the battle but not the why. That was its limitation, but also its strength. The detail of the battle corresponds to the distasteful detail of the account of the rape and its aftermath. It requires no comment. Perhaps the battle is self-evidently as much of a willful depravity (zimmâ ûnĕbālâ) as the rape and the murder were (Judg 20:6). Yet how else should the clans be handling willful depravity?

All the Benjaminite civilians have been killed, but some of its warriors have survived. Now the task is to ensure that one of the twelve clans does not simply cease to exist. The people are caught by a vow but are also provided with an excuse by another vow (Judg 21:5, 7), which leads to more slaughter. The Benjaminites are furnished with wives from a city that failed to respond to the callout and are encouraged to kidnap other women from Shiloh. Could Israel not have asked Yhwh to be released from its vow to withhold wives to the Benjaminites, as Saul later asks to be released from a vow? Indeed, “in those days when there was no king in Israel, everyone did what was right in their own eyes” (Judg 21:25).

Israel Abandons Yhwh

A pattern characterizes the relationship between Yhwh and Israel during the period covered by Judges, though there is some variety about the pattern. A composite version comprises the following elements.

1. The generation after Joshua has not seen Yhwh act and “did not acknowledge Yhwh or the work he had done for Israel” (Judg 2:10). The narrative is hardly saying that they did not “know” Yhwh (so [964] ). The point concerns their commitment rather than their awareness or their experience. This is a particularly ironic description because the acknowledgment of Yhwh had been the object of the exodus. “They put Yhwh their God out of mind” (šākaḥ, Judg 3:7). It is just what Deuteronomy warned Israel not to do, and it is the precise opposite of its repeated exhortation to keep in mind what Yhwh had done in bringing them out of Egypt and into their land (zākar, e.g., Judg 6:7–10; 10:6–16; cf. Judg 8:34).

2. Instead “they abandoned Yhwh, the God of their ancestors who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who surrounded them. They bowed down to them and vexed Yhwh. They abandoned Yhwh and served Baal and the Astartes” (Judg 2:11–13). The beginnings of unfaithfulness to Yhwh and adherence to the traditional religion of Canaan is their failure to demolish the altars in the land to discourage any process whereby the gods worshiped there become a “snare” to Israel (Judg 2:2–3). It is this that causes many of the troubles of the period that follows. Again, there is an irony in the “serving” of Baal because the exodus was designed to remove Israel from the service of Pharaoh to the service of Yhwh, and the question of serving Yhwh was a key one in Deuteronomy and in Joshua’s challenges (Josh 24).

In most of the stories the people’s wrongdoing is described only in the most general terms—they acted wrongly, they were unfaithful, they worshiped the Baals. Only Gideon’s story refers to this worship more concretely. Gideon’s first task is to attack it but it reemerges at the end and it continues to be the background for the Abimelech story (Judg 8:33–35).[965]  But after Abimelech the Baals disappear from Judges and, apart from a note in 1 Sam 7:3–4, do not reappear until the time of Elijah. Yet this heightens the spiritual and theological disorder of the unfolding story. Indeed, it is the leaders Yhwh uses who give us more concrete pictures of religious shortcomings. Gideon’s own “ephod” becomes a “snare” that traps Israel into the same unfaithfulness that he had been commissioned to lead them out of. Jephthah’s vow obliges him to sacrifice his daughter. Going back on a vow and sacrificing a human being are equally forbidden, but that no one questions giving the first priority over the second is a sign of Israel’s decline (Judg 11:30–40), and specifically of its conforming to the religion of people around who did sometimes sacrifice human beings (more often sons?).

The final stories in Judges, abandoning the framework that previously shaped the book with its background in political oppression and its talk of leaders or deliverers, open with a man stealing eleven hundred silver pieces from his mother, who makes a point of letting him know that she is laying a curse on the thief (Judg 17–18). That has a galvanizing effect in eliciting confession and restoration. They agree to use the silver to make an image of Yhwh, even though the son’s name is Micah, “Who is like Yhwh,” implying a recognition that this is not a god who can be imaged. They then use only two hundred silver pieces for the image—apparently some people do not assume that vows need be kept too precisely. Micah already has a “house of God,” and he installs as its priest his son, though only pending the acquisition of an out-of-work Levite who agrees to be their chaplain. Micah concludes that Yhwh will now bless him as he has a Levite as priest, in his chapel with its image and with ephod and teraphim. Unfortunately his plan misfires when some passing Danites make the Levite an offer he cannot refuse and steal the image and other accoutrements so they can install them in the new center in the north that Yhwh is in the midst of giving to them. So they believe, on the basis of the Levite’s assurance—though the narrator makes no comment on what God is actually doing. There they come upon some quiet, unsuspecting local people who have had no need for military alliances with other peoples and are therefore easy prey. So the Yhwh image ends up in the Yhwh worship center at Dan. The spread of Yhwh worship around the land means this worship can be offered in a variety of ways, some staying closer to the essentials of Yahwism than others.

The beginning of 1 Samuel suggests that people attending Yhwh’s festival at Shiloh will more likely get drunk there than be moved in prayer. While the Baals have disappeared, that does not stop Israelite worshipers being characterized as sons and daughters of bĕliyyaʿal, for whom worship is a matter of self-indulgence (1 Sam 1:16). The ministers, too, are sons of bĕliyyaʿal who do not acknowledge Yhwh (1 Sam 2:12).[966]  It is as if they were going after Baal, or refusing to lend to the needy (Deut 13:13 [[967]  14]; 15:9), or raping and killing (Judg 19:22; 20:13). In supervising offerings, they are only interested in what they get out of them. They treat Yhwh’s offering with contempt (nāʾaṣ) and their failure is very great in Yhwh’s sight (1 Sam 2:17). They have sexual relations with women ministers, despise Yhwh rather than honoring Yhwh, and belittle Yhwh (1 Sam 2:22, 30; 3:13). Their father warns them about the greater consequences of failing God. If we fail another human being, Yhwh may intervene for us (MT) or people may intervene with God for us ([968] ), but either way, if we fail Yhwh, who will intervene for us (1 Sam 2:25)?[969]  If you offend human beings, there is a higher authority that can sort matters out. If you offer affront to the higher authority, there is no one to do that (though people such as Moses and Jeremiah try hard, sometimes successfully). But Eli is also implicated in his sons’ wrongdoing (ʿāwôn), and offerings do not avail when people persist in wrongdoing or do not restrain it (1 Sam 3:13–14).

Yhwh Abandons, Israel Cries, Yhwh Raises Up, Israel Is at Peace

3. Yhwh thus burns with anger and gives the people over to loss and defeat (e.g., Judg 2:14, 20–21; 3:8). As Yhwh is now more inclined to use Israel’s initiatives in fulfilling a purpose for them against other peoples, so in chastising Israel Yhwh gets surrounding peoples to plunder them, and makes them no longer able to stand against their enemies. Yhwh strengthens Moab against Israel: the way this works is that Moab allies with Ammon and Amalek and together they defeat Israel (Judg 3:12–13). Yhwh sells Israel into the power of Jabin: the way this works is through Jabin’s having nine hundred iron-reinforced chariots (Judg 4:2–3).

4. Israel is in distress, and groans or cries out and turns to Yhwh. “Groaning” (naʾăqâ, Judg 2:18) is familiar from the exodus story (Ex 2:24; 6:5; otherwise only Ezek 30:24), as is “crying out” (zāʿaq, Judg 3:9, 15; 6:6–7; 10:10, 14; cf. Ex 2:23). A positive expression of returning to Yhwh is to cry out to Yhwh when trouble comes, in the way people had in Egypt. It implies a recognition that Yhwh is sovereign to bring oppression and deliverance (Judg 3:9, 15; 4:3). A negative expression of such returning is to demolish a Baal altar and the sacred column that stood by it and build a Yhwh altar in its place (Judg 6:25–26). When the people later cry out to Yhwh under Ammonite oppression and turn from their worship of other gods, Yhwh is not interested and invites the people to go and cry to the gods they have been worshiping (Judg 10:10–14). But the people are not put off; they remove the alien gods, and serve Yhwh, “and his spirit [nepeš] became short because of Israel’s misery” (Judg 10:16). The verb (qāṣar) implies that Yhwh could put up with it no longer, either because of hurt (cf. Ex 6:9) or because of anger—the more usual meaning (e.g., Prov 14:29). The people’s refusal to be put off overlaps with that of Moses at Sinai and of the Phoenician woman who would not take no for an answer. Even more does it anticipate a prominent Israelite reaction to the exile, expressed at length in Kings: Yhwh has cast the people off and all they can do is refuse to give in to the possibility that this is Yhwh’s last word.

5. Yhwh produces a leader (šōpēṭ) or deliverer (môšîaʿ) on whom Yhwh’s spirit comes so that he or she delivers them from the power of their attackers. When one might have expected Yhwh to grant Israel victory, this did not always happen: Yhwh was with Judah but did not enable them to dispossess the inhabitants of the plain with their iron chariots (Judg 1:19). Paradoxically, when the people are under deserved oppression from Jabin, Yhwh enables them to defeat him (Judg 4–5). The victory comes about because Yhwh acts to “confound” (hāmam, Judg 4:15) Jabin’s army before Barak’s: Yhwh instills an extraordinary panic into the Canaanites so that they become easy picking for the Israelites. Grace thus involves God’s treating people with generosity or mercy when they have deserved nothing. Sometimes God takes an initiative that one could not have expected, such as the astonishing long-term commitment to David and his household, even less qualified in 1 Chronicles 17 than in 2 Samuel 7. Sometimes God holds back from punishing people who deserve punishment. Sometimes God restores people after punishing them.

Deborah’s song emphasizes the commitment of the Israelite forces, but both story and song perhaps imply that this would have been insufficient to bring the victory about. Yhwh marches out at the head of Israel’s army; heavenly forces support Israel. Deborah’s poem perhaps implies this took the form of a storm at the crucial moment, making the Canaanites’ chariots a liability instead of an asset. Such an event might have seemed a happy coincidence, but this victory is the first in Judges to be initiated by a word from Yhwh, and the event follows the pattern of Exodus: divine word, resistant leader, extraordinary event, hymn of praise. God’s insistence on downsizing Gideon’s army from 22,000 to 10,000 to 300 also makes the point that deliverance does not depend on human resources (Judg 7:1–8).[970]  God then gives Israel victory through a silly stratagem that unaccountably sets the Midianites against each other and leads them to panic and flee. This victory is not one that issues from human bravery and insight, on an individual or corporate scale.

6. After God’s act of deliverance the land is quiet for a period. The people turn back to Yhwh as long as this leader is alive but then revert to the service and worship of other gods.

Egalitarian but Disorderly

There is thus some paradox or ambivalence about the common life of Israel in its early years in the land. This is the period in which Israelite society is most egalitarian[971]  in the sense that it has no centralized state structure and thus no means whereby the center can dominate the clans and, for example, establish a regular national army or pull in resources in other ways. There is little by way of specialized trades or of trading beyond the local community, and therefore little for cities to do and no opportunity for them to gain outside resources. The center of gravity in Israelite life is the local village community (mišpāḥâ) composed of a number of related households (bêt-ʾāb). These communities are aware of belonging to a clan (šēbeṭ or maṭṭeh) and when necessary can come together as a clan and join with one or two other clans, but the center of gravity lies in the household and local community. Regular leadership in the community lies with its elders, who represent it when necessary in negotiation with other communities and in clan decision making.[972]

Doubtless some people are better off than others because they have good land or good luck or work harder, but there is no class structure. There is no body of permanent slaves or people who work for employers. There is no sanctuary with a professional priesthood except at Shiloh with its “palace of Yhwh” referred to in 1 Samuel 1–4. It will have some national status through the presence of the covenant chest there, but on a regular basis it will be chiefly significant for people such as Elkanah, Peninnah and Hannah who live in the area, and it is not clear that it was a monumental building.[973]  Other worship centers will have been bāmôt, open air sanctuaries on elevated sites, where communities and individuals could celebrate the harvest, bring offerings to Yhwh, give thanks for significant events such as a birth, pray for healing, seek a word from God or lament a loss. Relationship with Yhwh is thus accessible to the people as a whole and is not controlled by a priesthood, walled off from ordinary people, or appropriated as an adjunct of the state.

Israel’s social structure and theology correspond.[974]  There is one God and one people instead of a pantheon with a king among the gods and a hierarchical society with a king and his nobility of the kind known in Egypt with its Pharaoh or Canaan with its monarchical city-states. Perhaps this is deliberate rather than fortuitous, though the texts offer no explicit pointers in this direction, and monotheism could also buttress oppressive monarchy. Etymologically, the very name Israel may imply “El rules” and suggest this is a people ruled by God rather than by a human ruler (cf. Judg 8:23; 1 Sam 8). But if Israelites were aware of that significance of the name, it is surprising that the First Testament connects the name only with śārâ, “contend” (Gen 32:28; Hos 12:4–5), and not with śārar, “rule,” and uses verbs such as māšal and mālak when it speaks of Yhwh “ruling” Israel.

The trouble is, the egalitarian arrangement does not work, internally or externally. Religious freedom means freedom to worship Yhwh however people like, or to worship other deities. Politically, Israel lives in a world dominated by monarchic states. “The state is a relationship of domination of human beings by human beings, supported by legitimate violence (that is, violence viewed as legitimate).”[975]  States are artificial constructs and need such buttressing. The precariousness of their identity makes it necessary to defend them, and even to attack other states. Treating the other as other shores up our own precarious sense of identity—or rather, our precarious identity. Thus “acts of identity formation are themselves acts of violence.”[976]  It is the nature of such states to be in dispute with other groups over land and to seek to resolve such disputes by fighting (e.g., Judg 3:12–14). It is their nature to take advantage of one another’s weakness and make their life tough. It was monarchic states that drew Abraham into fighting (Gen 14) and a major monarchic state that was the original “oppressor” of Israel as a vulnerable people in strange country (Ex 3:9; Deut 26:6–7). Another monarchic state, Jabin’s Hazor, is now able to “oppress” Israel because it has superior military resources (Judg 4:1–3; cf. Judg 2:18).

For the sake of survival, this presses Israel itself toward being not just a people, a nation and a country but also a monarchic state with an increasingly urban focus and the same capacity for oppression. And Yhwh goes along with that. The story from Judges to Solomon displays the perils of disorder and the perils of order.

8.2 Leadership

The title “Judges” designates this a book about leaders. The word “leader” is rare in English translations of the Bible—oddly, because the Bible talks much about the exercise of leadership. The [977]  and [978]  use “leader” especially to translate nāśîʾ ([979]  “prince/captain,” [980]  “chieftain”), which refers to the heads of the clans, not to people who lead Israel as a whole. The word šôpēṭ, usually translated “judge,” is a near equivalent to “leader,” and NIVI and JPSV sometimes translate it thus or translate the verb šāpat “lead.”[981]  A “judge” is someone who leads the people by acting decisively on their behalf, and while not appointed on the people’s initiative, often needs to win their recognition and acts by inspiring them to follow his or her lead. In due course Samuel reckons to appoint his own sons as leaders, but is hard to imagine leadership coming into being that way. Otherwise there are various patterns about the mutual involvement of divine initiative, human gifting and community commission.

Not Very Predictable People

The leaders are not the people one would anticipate. They are anything other than graduate white males. God delivers Israel by means of people one might not have expected God to use but who play their part with élan (Judg 3:7–5:31). Othniel is a man of little social standing, merely the little brother of someone famous. Ehud is handicapped, unable to use his right hand (Judg 3:15).[982]  Shamgar son of Anat belongs to the wrong race, to judge from his Canaanite-looking name and background. Then the greatest of the leaders turns out to be a woman who “leads” Israel as a prophet, by commissioning Barak to play the part in the drama she says is now God’s way of defeating Jabin. Yhwh’s using such people suggests the instinct to resist social convention and resist eldest-ism, able-ism, racism and sexism. Subsequent leaders include people from unfashionable communities or one-parent families, or whose birth takes place against all the odds.

Leaders emerge when God’s people fails in its commitment to God, does not experience the fulfillment of God’s promises and cries out in pain to God. Their vocation then is to be “deliverers” (from yāšaʿ hiphil; e.g., Judg 3:9, 15, 31; 6:14; 8:22; 10:1; 13:5; cf. 1 Sam 9:16; 23:2). They are God’s means of rescuing the clans from people who are afflicting them. As Yhwh brought Israel out of Egypt and Moses brought Israel out of Egypt, so Yhwh delivers the people and the leaders deliver the people (Judg 2:16, 18). Yhwh delivers “by the hand of” a leader (Judg 6:36–37; cf. Judg 7:7; 2 Sam 3:18). They are people Yhwh “raises up” or causes to arise (qûm hiphil; Judg 2:16, 18), though that expression is specifically applied only to the first two leaders (Judg 3:9, 15) and Tola and Jair simply “arise” (qûm qal; Judg 10:1, 3). The evidence that Yhwh has caused them to emerge is the decisive action these leaders take: Othniel goes to war to defeat Cushan-rishathaim; Ehud works out how to assassinate the king of Moab. The story of Shamgar shows more explicitly how Yhwh works through human instincts and abilities. Slaying six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad, “he delivered Israel, too” (Judg 3:31). In each case these are fine victories won against the odds by human bravery, shrewdness or energy through which Yhwh can be seen to be acting.

The leaders are often people on whom Yhwh’s spirit/breath/wind comes (rûaḥ, Judg 3:10; 6:34; 11:29; 13:25; 14:6, 19; 15:14; 1 Sam 10:6, 10; 11:6; 16:13; 19:20, 23). They then do amazing things, acts beyond ordinary human capacity. It is as if they are driven by the wind with its remarkable, invisible, dynamic power. This involves a less direct, relational or personal involvement on Yhwh’s part than that characteristic of earlier stages in the First Testament gospel. God speaks personally to Gideon and Samuel as God had to Moses and Joshua, but uses others without explicitly relating to them thus. The coming of Yhwh’s rûaḥ replaces such experience. Parts of the New Testament will reckon that if a person’s spirit is present (at least, if God’s spirit is present), then the actual person is present. The First Testament works the logic the other way round. The presence of a person’s rûaḥ is like the presence of their hand, face, arm or eyes. The person is there in part, but not in whole. What we experience is the kind of presence that would be expressed in that particular facet of the person. So the presence of Yhwh’s rûaḥ brings the dynamism of the wind, which can pluck up a person or tree and carry them somewhere. Yhwh’s rûaḥ comes on a leader, and he or she is inspired to undertake extraordinary ventures for the sake of the people’s freedom and well-being, and to succeed. There can be a close personal relationship between a leader and God, but leadership does not require it, and it is not God’s rûaḥ that mediates it. Being overwhelmed by God’s rûaḥ has other effects. It makes a person, for instance, tear a lion apart with his bare hands or kill thirty men to pay a gambling debt (Judg 14:6, 19).

Not Very Relational People

The leaders are thus people who behave like men. They are not very relational people. Violence is of the essence of their leadership, and they are comfortable with that. It may be this that inspires people to follow them (e.g., Judg 3:27–28). Even Deborah illustrates the point, for she is the best man in her day. As men, they do not know how to relate to women, who become status symbols (Judg 8:30–31) or sex objects (Judg 14–16). Further, they are people who mostly lack spiritual insight or moral principle. The achievements reported in Judges 3–5 may illustrate this, but it is more overt as the stories continue their downward path. This is a story with no heroes.[983]

Yhwh has to lean hard on Gideon to get him to act as leader (Judg 6), and this may be the significance of Yhwh’s aide being involved in his emergence. While Yhwh’s aide fully represents Yhwh, Yhwh in person does not appear in Judges. Perhaps this fulfills the declaration that the people’s resistance means Yhwh relates to them via an aide rather than directly (Ex 33:1–3). But neither the appearance of Yhwh’s aide nor Yhwh’s speaking guarantees anything. They do not turn Gideon into a man of faith, hope or courage. In Gideon, God chooses someone who lacks insight, commitment, faith or courage, and shows with him the same merciful persistence as Moses received, refusing to be put off from using him. Gideon is a man who does not understand why trouble has come to Israel and thinks seeing Yhwh’s aide is dangerous when its point is to protect from the genuine danger of seeing Yhwh in person. He requires Moses-like persuasion before he lets himself be drafted into Yhwh’s plan, and does not move, Moses-like, from hesitation to confidence. He lacks the courage to act openly and needs his father to defend him from his neighbors, though he later takes harsh vengeance on fellow Israelites in Shiloh and Peniel. Using someone so feeble demonstrates that deliverance issues from God’s action, not human heroism.

Having put in so much effort to draft Gideon, Yhwh takes no initiative in relation to Jephthah. He had learned his warrior craft through having to live on his wits as an outlaw, and it is on this basis that he is commissioned by the Gileadites. The people have abandoned Yhwh again, Yhwh has used other peoples to oppress them, and this has drawn them to see sense and acknowledge their wrongdoing. Gilead being east of the Jordan, their oppressors are east bank people, the Ammonites. Politically, this is a battle over disputed territory there. But returning to Yhwh does not lead to Yhwh’s acting to deliver the people. Yhwh has had enough of this pattern (Judg 10:11–14). The people repeat their confession, cast themselves on Yhwh’s mercy, plead for rescue, put away their other gods and serve Yhwh, and Yhwh grieves at their hardship (Judg 10:16),[984]  but does nothing by way of arousing a deliverer or sending an aide. The Ammonites again take up battle formation. What is Israel to do? Sit there and wait to be slaughtered? Having begun to “serve” Yhwh, they now determine to appoint Jephthah their “head” (rōʾš) or “ruler” (qāṣîn) (Judg 10:17–11:11). Are they turning to him because turning to God does not work? Like Yhwh, Jephthah is not enthusiastic about their sudden change of attitude to him because of their predicament. As they did to Yhwh, they cast themselves on his mercy. Implicitly Jephthah recognizes he cannot be God for them. Success will depend on whether Yhwh is involved (Judg 11:9). Evidently banishment has not made him go back on his commitment to Yhwh.

His first act is to challenge the Ammonites about the propriety of their war-making. They argue that they are just trying to get their own land back. Amusingly Jephthah treats them to a lesson in theological history that provides more evidence that his being cast out of the Israelite community has not made him give up his place in Israel’s story (Judg 11:12–27). The land in question had belonged to the Amorites, not the Ammonites, and Yhwh had given it to Gilead because the Amorites had attacked Israel rather than letting them pass through their territory peaceably. Yhwh had given Israel its land, and Chemosh had given Ammon its land, and Ammon should stick to that, and also recognize the statute of limitations (Judg 11:24–26). Is the reference to Chemosh an ad hominem argument or an indication that there are gaps in Jephthah’s theology as well as insights—like the very interest in being “head”? But he believes Yhwh can decide the claims of Gilead and Ammon to the land. The story will eventually conclude that Jephthah indeed “led” Israel (Judg 12:7). Yhwh’s spirit comes on him and he vows that if he defeats the Ammonites he will sacrifice to Yhwh whoever or whatever first comes out of his house to greet him, not expecting it to be his only child (Judg 11:29–35). But it is Yhwh’s spirit’s having come on him that guarantees he will win the victory. Far from causing him to make the vow (nowhere else is there a link between Yhwh’s spirit and vows), it makes the vow unnecessary.[985]

Not Very Insightful People

This man who makes an unwise vow (the root nādar) is followed by a Nazirite (the root nāzar), a man expected to keep a vow of dedication to Yhwh’s purpose.[986]  Yhwh is more radically involved in bringing into being this last leader in Judges, Samson, and after him the great Samuel, neither of whom would have been born without Yhwh’s special intervention. Yet the touching scenes between the aide and Samson’s parents set us up for grave disappointment in their son. Whereas Jephthah keeps the vow we wish he would break and brings death on his daughter, Samson breaks all his vows and lives a life of violence, stupidity and sexual indulgence, brings death on other people and on himself, and still fulfills his vocation. The vow of dedication carries no moral or spiritual connotations, any more than the concepts of ḥērem or qōdeš (holiness). It is the outward sign of a dedication to being Israel’s first deliverer from the Philistines (Judg 13:5). This ignores Shamgar (Judg 3:31), but it makes a further link with Jephthah, for the oppression of his day had involved both Ammon and Philistia (Judg 10:7), and Jephthah has defeated only the former.

Samson does deliver Israel from the Philistines, of whom we then hear nothing between Judges 16 and 1 Samuel 4, though usually the work of leaders fails to survive their own day (Judg 2:17–19). The leaders God raises up constrain the disorder of Israel’s international affairs, but only in partial ways and for short periods as Israel is subject to attack from Aram, Moab, Philistia, Midian and Ammon and is delivered from them all, but never with finality. And the leaders’ influence on their own people generally looks decisively negative. The stories of Gideon, Jephthah and Samson especially show how leaders as often share in and encourage religious, social and moral disorder as they restrain it.

The story of these leaders follows on the accounts of Moses’ and Joshua’s leadership through which the people’s deliverance from Egypt and their entry into Canaan came about, yet they were not called leaders but servants (e.g., Josh 22:2, 4, 5; 24:29; Judg 2:8). Conversely, the leaders are never called servants. After Joshua there is no further servant of Yhwh until Samuel as prophet (see 1 Sam 3:9–10). It is suggestive that 1 and 2 Samuel bear this prophet-servant’s name, not, for example, David’s.[987]  The story from Exodus to 2 Samuel thus subverts all theology of leadership in two ways. It offers the positive suggestion that we abandon the idea of leading people for the idea of serving Yhwh, and the negative suggestion that we recognize the true nature of leadership just outlined and, for instance, expect people designated and equipped by God for leadership in churches, seminaries, companies and countries to be people who lack moral and spiritual insight. The New Testament confirms both these suggestions.

The Need for Kings

Nowadays we are disillusioned with the idea that history focuses on the doings of kings and their battles. The preceding stages of Israel’s story have not had this focus, but the next stages do. Judges’ story of ongoing and deepening disorder in religious, international, moral and social affairs provides the background and rationale for the introduction of strong centralized government into Israel in the conventional form of a monarchy. Historically other factors may have been involved in the introduction of the monarchy, such as socioeconomic ones.[988]  The First Testament’s account issues from later reflection and focuses on the monarchy’s theological, religious, political and socioethical significance.

The closing chapters of Judges especially point up the advantage of such an arrangement as they paint their devastating portrait of religious, moral and social collapse in Israel, with its particular implications for women. The implication of these sickening stories is that people were able to do what they liked because “at that time there was no king in Israel” (Judg 17:6; 18:1; 19:1; 21:25). Thus “everyone did what was right in their own eyes” (Judg 17:6; 21:25). For all the subsequent international, religious and social disorder of the monarchy, few scenes in its history match the horror of Judges 17–21, which implicitly suggests that kingship did have a restraining effect on disorder. Perhaps leaders such as Gideon can look after Israel’s recurrent security problems, but this does not prevent moral and social collapse, accompanied by rape. Negatively, then, Judges 17–21 makes us long for kings, who can commit themselves to repainting that picture. And the appointment of kings indeed leads to victories over Israel’s troublers in Judges, to the completion of the occupying of the land and the other triumphs of David’s and Solomon’s reign, and later to the achievements of Hezekiah and Josiah.[989]

The vocation of monarchy according to Judges, then, is to work against the dynamics that appear in its stories and instead to see that the people expresses its faithfulness to Yhwh in a way that recognizes the true dynamics of relationship with Yhwh and to see that these dynamics affect the rest of life. It is to mediate between the clans and see that they live in harmony rather than in conflict (live as family), and thus see that the clans can all flourish. It is to encourage integrity in the individual family, to ensure that men and women live in freedom rather than being vulnerable to the domination of others, and in particular to protect women from violence.

Where are kings to find their models? One possible answer is Moses,[990]  whose kinglike task is to shepherd Israel and see that its life is characterized by fairness. But his role is rather broad to provide specific precedent for kingship, and it has a one-time character. There is no one like Moses. He lays the foundations for the people’s life and for the king’s role by establishing the nature of the relationship between Yhwh and Israel. The question for a king is not whether he has a Moses-like role but whether he leads the people in following what Moses said. In contrast, Joshua[991]  is not a foundational figure nor an innovative teacher, and he is a person who comes into power on his predecessor’s death, like a king. Like Israelite kings such as Saul, David and Solomon, he is commissioned both by Yhwh and by Yhwh’s human agent (cf. Deut 31; 34; Josh 1). His challenge is to do exactly what Moses taught, and therefore to make a habit of reflecting on that teaching (Josh 1:7–8), which corresponds to the king’s challenge (Deut 17:14–20). He and his sons after him can then reign long in Israel. If Joshua does that, he has the right to expect that people will obey him as they obeyed Moses (Josh 1:16–18). Further, it is Joshua’s task to see that the people know what Moses’ Teaching says (Josh 8:30–35; cf. Josh 24). He is not Moses’ son, in the dynastic fashion that eventually obtains in Judah, but his designation by Yhwh follows the pattern that obtained for Saul and David and many later northern kings. Joshua possesses “a spirit of wisdom” (Deut 34:9), a characteristic attribute for a king, especially associated with Solomon. David’s commission to Solomon particularly corresponds to Yhwh’s commission to Joshua, more so in the expanded version in 1 Chronicles 22 (but cf. 1 Kings 2). David “charges” Solomon (ṣiwwâ) as Yhwh charged Joshua and urges him to “be strong and courageous; do not be afraid or dismayed” (1 Chron 22:13), as Yhwh bade Joshua. He urges on him a precise following of Moses’ Teaching and promises that Yhwh will be with him and that he will succeed (cf. Moses’ charge to Joshua in Deut 31). If the kings follow Moses and Joshua in these different senses, things will be well.

The Problem About Kingship

Yet Judges and 1 Samuel are aware of a contrary point about kingship. It first emerges when people want Gideon to “rule” over them (māšal). They do not talk about him “reigning” as king (mālak). Ruling is a broader category: not all rulers are kings. Joseph was a ruler over all Egypt but under a king’s authority (Gen 45:8, 26). So Gideon could have ruled Israel under Yhwh’s kingship. But he refuses even to do that, taking the strong line that Yhwh is the one to rule over the people (Judg 8:23). It is Yhwh who fulfills the role in Israel that a king fulfills in other nations.[992]  The people perhaps think that having a human ruler is compatible with having God as king; Gideon thinks otherwise. The fact that the people incorporate the hope that his son and grandson would follow him (Judg 8:22) supports his stance. Even though they do not refer to “kings,” if the “ruler’s” position is hereditary, it conforms to one of kingship’s standard features.

After Gideon’s death, one of his sons reverses his father’s policy and suggests that he himself becomes the people’s ruler, and his people indeed cause him to reign as king (Judg 9:6, using both the verb mālak and the noun melek). Do you want seventy brothers ruling over you, Abimelech asks? The question reminds us both of the seventy elders who are a traditional decision-making body for the people and of the emphasis on brotherhood in Deuteronomy—not least in connection with kings. Both brotherhood and corporate, representative leadership have become negatives rather than positives. This provokes one of Abimelech’s brothers to relate a telling fable about the trees who want to “anoint” a “king” to “reign” over them as lord of the forest. Olive, fig and vine point out that they have more productive things to do. Only a thorn bush would be interested in the post because it does not, and it is just interested in power. Appointing a king will mean tears before bedtime—trouble before the story is over (Judg 9:7–20). So it is for the people of Shechem, and eventually for Abimelech himself. The story of Gideon and his son thus issues a number of warnings about kingship.

Gideon’s refusal coheres with the people’s declaration at the Red Sea that Yhwh will reign over Israel forever (Ex 15:18). But Moses had subsequently envisaged the Israelites wanting to appoint a human king and agreed that they might do so, subject to a series of safeguards (Deut 17:14–20). The king must be the person Yhwh chooses. He must not be a foreigner, but someone from inside the family, “one of your brothers,” not so much as an expression of xenophobia as of a concern that the king treat the members of the community as members of his family. He must not accumulate horses, wives or wealth, which imply a literal and a metaphorical return to Egypt, a mind that turns away. He must be a student of Scripture, acquiring a copy of Moses’ Teaching to keep by him and study all his life so that he reveres Yhwh in living by this teaching and making it the framework for his reign. Specifically, he is thus to learn not to exalt himself over the rest of the community. Once again he is reminded that they are his brothers. Members of a family are not supposed to exalt themselves over each other.

Having radically opposed kingship and then seen it work, Samuel similarly hedges kingship around (1 Sam 12). He calls the whole community to revere Yhwh, live by what Yhwh says and follow Yhwh rather than turning to follow other, useless gods. If community and king fail to keep that commitment, Yhwh’s hand will be against them. They are hedged around by more than moral and religious exhortations. They are hedged around by Yhwh’s commitment to them. “Yhwh will not abandon his people, on account of his great name, because Yhwh resolved to make you his own people” (1 Sam 12:22). They are also hedged around by Samuel’s commitment to prayer on their behalf, for which they ask, and to keep haranguing them, for which they do not ask. “Far be it from me to fail Yhwh by stopping praying for you, and I will teach you about the way of life that is good and upright” (1 Sam 12:23). The commitment of Yhwh and of Samuel does not absolve the people from responsibility. If they give up on their own commitment, they and their king can be swept away. The commitment of Yhwh and of Samuel does mean it is possible for them to keep their own commitment. They are not left on their own.

Despite the safeguards, there is some tension between the affirmation that Yhwh is king and the allowance for human kings. “The deuteronomic treatment of monarchy is a classic example of talking around a contradiction”—not a contradiction to be resolved but one “that Israel should go on living within.”[993]  “While the elevation [of Saul] corresponds to the sinful desire and demand of the people, it also stands in very marked contradiction to it. Everything that took place has a double aspect, the form of discord and harmony between a human and a divine will and activity.”[994]  The tension is developed in the story from Joshua to Solomon and over succeeding centuries when Hezekiah and Josiah are preceded and followed by kings who show the wisdom in Samuel’s opposition.

Foremothers of Kings

Two other stories beyond Judges have their background in the time before the monarchy but anticipate it. Ruth invites us, among other things, to recall what kind of people David’s great-grandmother, great-great-grandmother, great-grandfather and grandfather were. Obed was physically born to Ruth, but also born to Naomi, and he stands in a genealogy that names Boaz (Ruth 4:13, 15, 16–17, 21). This draws attention to the kind of genes David and all the rulers of Judah had. Their background surely predisposes them to be people who know what commitment (ḥesed) is and what kinship implies (gōʾēl), both being key motifs in Ruth.

The story’s next hero, Hannah, also heralds the prospect of a king. Perhaps the story carries the same implications as the end of Judges, as it continues to portray religious disorder and the collapse of family life. But Hannah stands out as Ruth does and prepares the way for the coming of a king by acting like Naomi in protesting at the way Yhwh treats her and driving Yhwh into behaving differently. She also does so by doing what a woman alone can do, bear a child. Like Ruth, she does this against the odds, as First Testament heroines often do. Unlike Ruth, she explicitly looks forward to the coming of a king, hinting at Saul in describing her son Samuel as someone she has “asked” from Yhwh (1 Sam 1:20), for Saul’s name could suggest he was “asked for.”[995]

That is a veiled allusion, like possible earlier First Testament promises (e.g., Gen 49:10). But Hannah is also the first prophet to speak unequivocally of a king, as she goes on to rejoice in the fact that Yhwh “lifts up a poor person from the dirt … to sit him with princes” and “will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed” (1 Sam 2:8, 10). Yhwh certainly does that for David. Hannah says nothing directly about a vision for kingship, though she perhaps implies that the king’s task is to be the means of implementing the vision for the people and for the world that her prayer expresses. That involves a multifaceted reversal of human priorities and practices whereby people confident in their position, strength, resources and wealth find that these disappear, while people lacking status, strength, resources and wealth find themselves changing place with them.

But when the Israelite elders petition Samuel to appoint a king for them, his reaction coheres with Gideon’s, and so does Yhwh’s. Asking for a king involves rejecting Yhwh as king, and they will regret their request (see 1 Sam 8:11–18). Their king will bring a whole new structure in which the court replaces the family as the key unit in Israelite society. They will lose their sons and their daughters to its needs. The people’s life will no longer be based on the farming of the land by the family. The court will appropriate the people’s best land for the needs of the state, along with their servants, their cattle, their donkeys and their flocks. It will require an extra tithe, a 10 percent tax(!) on the produce of the land that the people retain (or is it that the king will appropriate the regular tithes—in which case, what happens to people whose needs the tithes normally meet?). Indeed, they will end up as the king’s servants. Yes, there will be tears before bedtime.

8.3 Monarchy

A modern history of Israel might not give as much prominence to Saul (or even David and Solomon) over against some later kings as the First Testament does. References, for example, in Assyrian records to subsequent kings of Ephraim and Judah show that kings such as Omri would be regarded as very significant, much more so than the brief accounts in Kings and Chronicles imply. The first three kings are significant because they come first, because they rule the whole people, and because kingship’s inherent ambivalence comes out clearly in their stories.

All are destroyed by leadership. Saul and David might have lived happy and honorable lives as farmer and shepherd if they had not been made king. Saul is wise enough to try to hide from the summons to leadership, though he does so only half-heartedly. It is difficult to determine whether he or David pays the bigger moral and religious price for being king. In each case, the second half of their story is one of religious and moral collapse, with a terrible price paid in family relationships. The same is true of Solomon. We have less information on his earlier life as an individual, but we know enough about the ménage in which he grew up to guess that it cannot have been happy. We do not know if he was being groomed for kingship and, if so, whether he was aware of that, nor what were the dynamics of a household in which he had older brothers with ambitions to be king. Saul, David and Solomon were all drafted into the kingship by divine intent and human maneuvering, and in each case the people might have had cause to regret their action. But there is no indication that any other course was open to God or people.

Saul—and the Beginnings of Ambiguity

Saul’s monarchy constitutes Israel’s attempt to begin to have some of the advantages of centralized government without the disadvantages. His authority is more like that of a prime minister than a president-for-life. It is Israel’s elders, a kind of House of Representatives, who conclude that Israel must have a king and before whom Saul continues to need some credibility (1 Sam 8:4; 15:30). He is more than once personally designated by a prophet. According to the “Sumerian King List,” kingship “was lowered from heaven” in primeval times, before the Flood and again after the Flood.[996]  This is not so in the First Testament. But neither does kingship come about without Yhwh’s involvement, which would leave it dangerously self-sufficient. In Samuel’s anointing of Saul there is therefore no allusion to the possibility that kingship is being introduced against Yhwh’s will or with Yhwh’s unwilling acquiescence (1 Sam 9–10; contrast 8:19–22). Saul has the looks for the job, even if he lacks some of the personal qualities: his servant seems to know more about relating to Yhwh and to prophets than he does, his own response to Samuel is uncomfortably analogous to Gideon’s, and he gets signs like Gideon. But Samuel seems to have no hesitations about him.

Although Saul is designated king in more than one way, the designation becomes effective only when he demonstrates leadership in the same fashion as the leaders in Judges. The Ammonites besiege an Israelite city on “their” side of the Jordan, Jabesh in Gilead, which agrees to submit to Ammonite authority if the people can then be in a proper treaty relationship with the Ammonites—rather than, for example, being serfs. The Ammonite king agrees, on condition that everyone’s right eye is gouged out. The Jabeshites get news through to Saul’s city. He is out plowing—so much for the practical effects of having been designated king—and hears the news when he gets home.

God’s spirit gripped Saul when he heard these things, and his anger really blazed. He took a yoke of oxen, cut them up, and sent by means of messengers throughout Israel’s territory, saying, “Anyone who does not come out to follow Saul and Samuel—this will be done to his cattle.” And awe for Yhwh fell on the people and they came out as one man. (1 Sam 11:6–7)

The phrase “to follow Saul and Samuel” draws attention to the need to keep monarch and prophet in step. The former has no authority independently of the latter. Saul will be driven into taking action independently of Samuel when Samuel seems to have stood him up and will find reason for not being ruthless enough in slaughtering the Amalekites, and thus will find Samuel twice involved in de-designating him (1 Sam 13:1–15; 15). At the end of his life he will desperately seek prophetic guidance on the eve of his last great battle but will receive only a third rebuke from the dead prophet (1 Sam 28:4–19).

Saul controls Israel’s first standing national army (1 Sam 13:2) but has little by way of royal trappings or staff. He still lives in Gibeah, apparently in the same house as before (cf. 1 Sam 10:26), without the support of a system of taxes. He has only one wife. He does seem to accumulate some land (cf. 2 Sam 9), and the narrative perhaps implies he has distributed some to loyal servants too (1 Sam 22:7). While he is referred to as king, Yhwh and Samuel originally designate him nāgîd (1 Sam 9:16; 10:1). The term elsewhere means “ruler” in various connections, and it would be convenient to have a term we could use to indicate something more like a chief than a king.[997]  But in the story the word seems not so much to denote the nature of the position but to emphasize Yhwh’s involvement in designating the person, who would not attain his position if God were not involved.[998]

Saul’s monarchy is only moderately successful in achieving its ends. He is neither a sufficiently impressive leader nor a big enough man for the role that needs fulfilling. He does embody the monarchy’s ambiguity. It is God’s way of delivering Israel from the Philistines, yet asking for a king implies rejection of Yhwh as king. Although Saul wins the spectacular victory over the Ammonites that resolves any doubts in people’s minds about whether he is the right person, from then on his story is all downhill. His victory over the Amalekites is compromised by lack of rigor in the aftermath. He is still fighting the Philistines at the end of his reign—indeed, he is doing so less successfully than he was earlier. Overall Israel’s military situation is no better than it was at the beginning, and the conflict between him and David and the rise of David’s outlaw militia introduces a new form of turmoil into national life. He has combated the religious disorder described in Judges by banning mediums and spiritists[999]  from the land, and there is no mention of people worshiping other gods, but he does not subordinate himself to Samuel, and by implication thus to Yhwh, and is himself reduced to seeking out a medium before his last battle.

How David Comes to Power

David has no more of the personal qualities that a nation needs in its leadership, but he has the leadership ability. The drive that underlies his achievements also generates ambiguities. He achieves much more than Saul and also lays the foundation for much more terrible further developments. Yhwh designates him as king on the basis of having looked at his heart (1 Sam 16:7). To judge from what follows, this hardly means Yhwh has seen that he is, for example, a man of spiritual or moral principle. Perhaps it designates him as a man who has the inner potential to get the job done, like Samson, for instance. The point is that Samuel is not to be put off by David’s just being the little brother of the more impressive-looking sons of Jesse. Yhwh knows he has the gifts to lead Israel in defeating the Philistines. Thus, on his anointing, Yhwh’s spirit comes on him (1 Sam 16:13)—the spirit that will turn him into a fighter, like the leaders in Judges. Personal qualities, circumstances and the coming of Yhwh’s spirit drive him in the direction of becoming a great killer.

His potential as a fighter emerges in the next three stories about him (1 Sam 16:14–19:8). He is first commended to Saul as (among other things) a warrior (1 Sam 16:18). His first words in the Bible are “What will be done for the man who kills this Philistine?” and his case for being allowed to fight Goliath is his experience in killing animals (1 Sam 17:26, 34–36). His eventual body count in war may come to 140,000, while he personally killed fifteen people.[1000]  As a skilled warrior he finally disposes of peoples such as the Philistines who were inclined to attack Israel, and also wins spectacular wars of conquest over peoples east of the Jordan. He thus carves out a small empire of states that will henceforth pay for the privilege of being his vassals—his, not Israel’s (e.g., 2 Sam 8). One of the ironies of his testimony in 2 Samuel 22 is that it witnesses to Yhwh’s deliverance from attack by enemies, for David is now one who goes on the attack and makes enemies. He is not a leader for whom men volunteer to turn themselves into an emergency fighting force because they see Yhwh’s spirit has gripped him. He is one who maintains a standing army and gets his army officers, against their better judgment, to undertake a census, perhaps so he can know how many potential extra troops he has for his campaigns of expansion (2 Sam 24). Exodus faith stood for liberation from conscripted labor and the state’s oppression of other peoples; Davidic faith stands for the domination of other peoples and puts Israel back under conscripted labor.[1001]

Like Saul, he starts off as nāgîd, one designated as ruler by God against the grain of the present arrangements (2 Sam 5:2; cf. 1 Sam 13:14; 25:30; 2 Sam 6:21; 7:8). He was appointed “in accordance with Yhwh’s word through Samuel,” and his position consolidated “in accordance with Yhwh’s word concerning Israel” (1 Chron 11:3, 10). Israel again has a leader who can be called Yhwh’s servant (2 Sam 3:18; and twelve times in 2 Sam 7). He is Yhwh’s son (2 Sam 7:14). He is “the man lifted up high” or “lifted up by the Most High” or “the man God lifted up” (2 Sam 23:1).[1002]

But after 2 Samuel 7, only once in his lifetime is David called Yhwh’s servant, and that on his own lips (2 Sam 24:10). He actually becomes king on the initiative of the people, first Judah, then the other clans, responding to God’s designation, but after long conflict between his household and Saul’s (which naturally wishes to put one of Saul’s sons on the throne) and through a long process of fighting and negotiation. While Yhwh had commissioned his anointing as a young man and Yhwh’s spirit had gripped him “from that day on” (1 Sam 16:13), there is no specific talk of Yhwh’s spirit coming on David in connection with his behaving as leader and gaining recognition as king. He becomes king of Judah through a threefold collocation of wills: he has the idea of moving back to Judah after Saul’s death; Yhwh agrees with the proposal and specifies Hebron, the most important town in Judah; and the Judahite people come and anoint him. So it involves human political initiatives on the part of his own clan and eventually the others—a human anointing and a human covenant-making (2 Sam 2:1–4; 5:3). Further, as he is able to reach his position through having gathered a mercenary militia and a power base, so it is his personal troops that enable him to survive when people attempt to remove him. The elders support Absalom (2 Sam 17:4), but in due course “the people of Israel was defeated by the servants of David” (2 Sam 18:7), who will have included or been accompanied by the Cherethites and Pelethites, apparently soldiers of Cretan and Philistine background(!), and his forces from Gath, presumably also Philistines (2 Sam 15:18).

Developments David Encourages

David creates a state administration and delegates responsibility for defense, the civil service and worship, and sets going developments that encourage a process whereby Israel is only too like other nations. So is his monarchy, in its accumulation of wives and other marks of a prestige that make him not at all like “his brothers” (Deut 17:14–20). It is this that comes to its apogee and leads to his downfall as a person in the affair involving Bathsheba and Uriah, which leads his family and his life to fall apart. The events are generally less gory than the ones in Judges, but they are as unsavory and bring some irony to that refrain at the end of Judges: Now we have kings and their families doing what is right in their own eyes, so what further safeguard for the people is there?

One of the finest moments in his story links with David’s development of a state administration. Internally he has consolidated his position as king, and externally he has established that he is a leading player in Middle Eastern politics. “Yhwh delivered David wherever he went, the story comments.”[1003]  “So David reigned over all Israel, and David became one who exercised authority with faithfulness [mišpāṭ ûṣĕdāqâ] for his entire people” (2 Sam 8:14–15). His development of an administration further marginalizes people such as the elders, but at least it could leave him free to focus on mišpāṭ ûṣĕdāqâ. Although this has not previously been mentioned as the king’s responsibility, it was so elsewhere in the Middle East and was thus arguably an aspect of having a king like other nations. The expression suggests the authoritative formulation and implementation of policy (mišpāṭ) in such a way as to honor the mutual relationship of the members of the community (ṣĕdāqâ). It is taken up in a hortatory prayer in Psalm 72 and emphasized by prophets such as Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who see the kings’ failure as lying here. Indeed, David is the only king who is ever said to give himself to mišpāṭ ûṣĕdāqâ. Yhwh’s commitment to David’s line implies not merely keeping a Davidic king on the throne but ensuring that he exercises authority with faithfulness (e.g., Jer 22:1–23:6; Ezek 34:1–24; 37:24–25). The terms are not prominent in the Torah, though they correspond to its concerns, and first appear in the story of Abraham. Yhwh commissioned him to see that ṣĕdāqâ ûmišpāṭ come to characterize his household, and set up a link between that and the experience of Yhwh’s blessing (Gen 18:19). David is showing himself to be a true son of Abraham as he sees that mišpāṭ ûṣĕdāqâ characterizes his “household”—not only his immediate family (e.g., 2 Sam 7:29) but “his entire people,” “the household of Israel” (e.g., 2 Sam 6:15).

In telling Israel’s story, Genesis–Kings puts the emphasis on Moses. His life and teaching get the most space, and his teaching is henceforth the canon for Israel’s life. Yet the time of David is also of crucial importance. David is a point of unity for Israel as a whole. All Israel comes to commission David as king and all its elders join in anointing him (2 Sam 5:1–3; 1 Chron 11:1–3; 12:38). Chronicles even has all Israel joining in the subsequent military campaign to capture Jerusalem (1 Chron 11:4). David involves all Israel in bringing the covenant chest to Jerusalem (2 Sam 6; and with more emphasis, 1 Chron 13; 15). Yhwh chooses David, and also chooses Jerusalem as Yhwh’s city. Chronicles does not dispute the authority of Moses—indeed, in telling the story from David to the exile, it refers to Moses much more often than Samuel–Kings does. It recognizes Moses’ Teaching as Yhwh’s Teaching (see, e.g., 1 Chron 16:40; 22:12–13; 2 Chron 34:14; 35:6). But David becomes almost a second Moses. As Yhwh gave Moses detailed instructions for the wilderness dwelling and its worship, Yhwh gives David detailed instructions for the Jerusalem temple and its worship (e.g., 1 Chron 23–25; 28:19; cf. the double reference back in 2 Chron 35:1–15). Indeed, compressing the story from the Beginning to David into the genealogies that occupy 1 Chronicles 1–9 means Chronicles begins its actual narrative with David and thus gives David even more paramount importance.[1004]  Even the Israelite genealogies themselves focus on David, beginning with Jacob/Israel’s son Judah, his son Perez and the line that goes on to David and covers his descendants well into the Second Temple period (so there is a line to come to the throne again). David is as significant a figure as Moses, and people who turn from David are turning from Yhwh’s provision and expectations.[1005]

At the same time, even the genealogy warns against exalting this family too much. It is, after all, the family that included Er, and it began with Judah’s begetting a son by Tamar, and it included Achan (1 Chron 2). And David’s story sounds a loud warning concerning the fallibility of monarchs, as the stories in Judges sound a loud warning about leaders in general.

Worship and War

Like other Middle Eastern kings, David is thus involved in the direction and administration of Israel’s worship. He provides the nation with a strong religious center at Jerusalem, strengthens the nation’s commitment to Yhwh and thereby makes it harder for worship of local gods to continue. While he is a deeply flawed man who behaves wickedly, he does stay faithful to Yhwh in religious matters, making him a standard by which later kings can be measured (e.g., 1 Kings 15:3–5; 2 Kings 16:1–4; 18:1–6). His reinstatement of the covenant chest as a religious symbol recognized by the whole people after its apparent disregard through Saul’s lifetime contributes to the symbolizing of that commitment in the people’s life, and his locating it at the capital encourages the perception that Yhwh is at the center of the nation’s life. He initiates the process for building a permanent home for the covenant chest, a house for Yhwh, though Yhwh does intervene with some personal thoughts on this idea. He offers sacrifices, the act that had first led to Saul’s rejection (1 Sam 13)—though it may be that he does not actually perform the ritual but brings sacrifices that priests then offer.[1006]  He blesses the people, and his sons are priests (2 Sam 6:18; 8:18): it is such a scandalous idea that 1 Chronicles 18:17 turns them into officials and [1007]  into stewards. Yet he does not wholly domesticate or tame Israel’s religion, and perhaps does not wish to do so. The clearest indication of this is Nathan’s eventual opposition to David’s plan to build a temple and his confrontation over David’s murder of Uriah, which show that David did not silence prophecy or draw its teeth. Yhwh has become an ideological support for the monarchy, but is not confined to being that.

Chronicles[1008]  emphasizes two roles David fulfills as king, fighting and making arrangements for worship, and interweaves these. He is appointed as a man who has already been a military commander—his first deed is to capture Jerusalem—and after that 1 Chronicles 11–12 gives us long lists of his warriors; his second deed is then to bring up the covenant chest from Kiriath-jearim. Next he defeats the Philistines and then completes the task of installing the covenant chest in Jerusalem, makes arrangements for the priests and Levites to lead the worship there, and formulates his proposal for building a more permanent house for Yhwh (1 Chron 14–17). After that he wins a series of victories over Philistia, Moab, Zobah, Aram, Hamath, Edom and Ammon, then determines where Yhwh’s house is to be, commissions Solomon to build it and makes the arrangements for its ongoing worship and care and its actual building (1 Chron 21–29). His activities in the two spheres of war and worship thus interlink, yet with unease. “You are not to build a house for my name, because you are a warrior. You have shed blood” (1 Chron 28:3).

David’s two activities interweave in their aims. Both contribute to the state’s security and stability. In establishing Jerusalem as his capital, David provides the fledgling state with a strong political and religious center. There is a telling development in the way Jerusalem is described. In Joshua and Judges it is just one of many cities in Canaan that resist Israelite occupation, with no special significance (see, e.g., Josh 10). It is the Jebusites’ city, located in territory that formally belongs to Judah but has not been occupied. Suddenly in 2 Samuel 5 David is attacking it, taking it and turning it—or at least its fortress—into “David’s city,” the center for an administration of the state that depends on him rather than on any traditional structures. In effect he inherits the position of the king of a Canaanite city-state, like Melchizedek. He builds an impressive palace there with paneling and beams of cedar, moves the covenant chest into “David’s city” (2 Sam 6:10, 12, 16), and initiates arrangements for a permanent temple there. It is not the only city that comes to belong to the king rather than to a community and a household within a clan (cf., e.g., 1 Sam 27:6), continuing a process begun by Saul.

David and Jerusalem as the Objects of Election

David is a king “according to Yhwh’s heart” (e.g., 1 Sam 13:14). Other occurrences of such phrases imply this need not suggest he is a king who shares Yhwh’s priorities or way of thinking. It simply identifies David as the king whom Yhwh personally chose and made a commitment to.[1009]  For theological as well as practical reasons the people will thus have a hard time removing this king whom they anointed. He is more like a lifetime president than one who needs periodic reelection. Yhwh is committed to David independently of commitment to the people as a whole. Yhwh becomes David’s rock and deliverer and refuge, the one who responds to David’s cry and defeats David’s enemies, one who makes a covenant with David (2 Sam 22–23)—instead of the people as a whole. “All the essential aspects of the relationship between the wider group and God, creaturely, political and cultic, run through the king.… But what would then become of the immediate relationship between Yahweh and Israel?”[1010]  The nature of this commitment is expounded more systematically in the Psalms, and historically it may have been used to provide theological undergirding for aggressive wars like David’s.[1011]  But 2 Samuel tells the story without such theological undergirding, except that implied in those testimonies of David with their ironies, while the Psalter puts this aspect of royal theology in a set of other contexts that modify the significance it might have in isolation.

The conversations between David, Nathan and Yhwh about a house (2 Sam 7) no doubt presuppose that that this house will be in Jerusalem/David’s city, though that location is strangely unmentioned. The first mention of Jerusalem in a theological context comes when Yhwh’s aide stretches out a hand to destroy Jerusalem and Yhwh has a change of mind and intervenes to stop this (2 Sam 24:16). The second comes in Solomon’s gloss on Yhwh’s words to David: “Since the day that I brought my people Israel out of Egypt, I have not chosen a city from any of Israelite clans in which to build a house, so that my name might be there” (1 Kings 8:16). We wait for Yhwh to continue, “but I have now chosen Jerusalem,” but these words never come; instead, Solomon speaks of Yhwh’s choosing David to be over Israel. In substance, indeed, Solomon is thus faithful to the words in 2 Samuel 6. But by the end of his prayer Solomon is referring to Jerusalem as “the city you chose” (1 Kings 8:44, 48; 2 Chron 6:34, 38). And the Chronicles version of this prayer puts that reference back near the beginning of the prayer: “Since the day that I brought my people Israel out of Egypt, I have not chosen a city.… But I have chosen Jerusalem in order that my name may be there” (2 Chron 6:5–6). Thus when Yhwh is declaring that Solomon’s kingdom must be decimated, the reason why it will not simply cease to exist is “for the sake of my servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, which I chose” (1 Kings 11:13; cf. 1 Kings 11:32, 36). It is “the city Yhwh chose to put his name there” (e.g., 1 Kings 14:21; 2 Chron 12:13; cf. 2 Kings 21:7; 23:27; 2 Chron 33:7). A similar implication emerges from the arrangement of the genealogies in 1 Chronicles 2–9. They cover the clans in a circular order: the south, the east in south-north order, Levi, the far north, the nearer north in north-south order, then the people who live in Jerusalem itself.[1012]  Levi stands at the center, with notes on the tasks of the different families in relation to temple worship, and on where they lived.

Earlier, Yhwh’s “choosing” had the people as a whole as its object (Deut 7:6; 14:2; cf. 1 Kings 3:8; behind that Abraham, Neh 9:7). It might also seem regrettable to narrow this “choice” to Levi, Saul, Judah, for example, and specifically David and his successor—or to Jerusalem. Yet the city stands more unequivocally for the people as a whole than these clans or individuals do. Thus the reminder of Jerusalem’s chosenness often features in contexts where the people are under pressure and/or Yhwh has been bringing trouble on the people. It is a reassurance that Yhwh will remain faithful.

Yhwh’s Commitment to David

After intervening to make a different proposal about houses, Yhwh gives David a series of promises (2 Sam 7:8–17). He will have extraordinary fame. Israel will attain a position in its land that is no longer under pressure from other peoples. David’s son will sit on the throne after him as an outworking of Yhwh’s making a household for David—and the way Yhwh speaks about the permanence of his offspring’s reign suggests reference to the line that will continue, not just to David’s immediate successor. The father-son relationship between Yhwh and this king will mean Yhwh may punish him for wrongdoing, but not cast him aside as Yhwh did Saul. Yhwh eventually makes explicit the permanence of David’s household, reign and throne. Kingship in Israel is not retrospectively eternal—it does not go back to the Beginning. But it is now prospectively permanent—it will go on to the End.

Yhwh’s words incorporate two declarations that stand in tension, in the same way as they do in Yhwh’s relationship with Israel as a people. Yhwh is unconditionally committed to David’s line. David’s successor must be uncompromisingly committed to Yhwh if the promise is to be fulfilled. Yhwh’s commitment must not be allowed to take away from the reality of human obligation, and the necessity of human obligation must not be allowed to take away from the reality of divine sovereignty. The absoluteness of the promise is relativized by the requirement of obedience, and the requirement of obedience is relativized by the absoluteness of the promise.[1013]

Chronicles takes the affirmation of kingship much further. Second Samuel 7:16 promises, “Your household and your kingship will stand firm forever.” The equivalent promise in 1 Chronicles 17:14 is “I will establish him in my household and in my kingship forever.” David’s son will exercise Yhwh’s kingship. He will be the means of Yhwh’s sovereignty being implemented in Israel. Solomon will “sit on the throne of Yhwh’s kingship over Israel” (1 Chron 28:5). And he indeed “sat on Yhwh’s throne as king” (1 Chron 29:23; cf. 2 Chron 9:8; 13:8). Yhwh’s sovereignty is not exercised directly, but via the Davidic king. In Chronicles, this happens when the king fights battles or reforms the people’s religious life. In Psalm 72, it happens when the king implements government that defends and exalts the needy. In Psalm 2, it happens when the king exercises sovereignty over other nations, in keeping with the declaration in 1 Chronicles 29:11 that the kingship belongs to Yhwh (if that refers to worldwide kingship).

This vision of Yhwh’s sovereignty exercised by means of the king belongs to days when there is no king. Perhaps Chronicles expects a day when a Davidic king will again sit on Yhwh’s throne in Jerusalem, but the point is never explicit. Indeed, the fact that the writer teaches by means of a (very creative) narrative, not by other means, implies the view that the determinative acts of God lie (secure) in the past, not in the future. Further, the narrative’s stress on the continuity of the community’s story from the ancestors through to David, and then onward past exile, invites its readers to base their own confidence on their links with this past. That is the foundation for joy and the basis for obedience in the present, and the grounds for confidence for the future—whatever form the future takes. David’s having set up the worship arrangements in Jerusalem offers the readers a reassurance regarding their own significance. Whatever may happen in the future in fulfillment of God’s promise to David, the promise is still being fulfilled in the present as God relates to the people in their worship in line with David’s establishment. Elsewhere, of course, it is explicit that Yhwh’s commitment to David and his line not only undergirds the history of the kings in Jerusalem for four centuries and undergirds the worship of the Second Temple community but also encourages the conviction that the deposing of the last Davidic king in 587 cannot be the end of the story. The drive of messianic expectation in Israel issues from Yhwh’s promise to David.[1014]  But neither Samuel–Kings nor Chronicles is explicit on that.

How Solomon Comes to Power

The transition from David’s reign to his son’s sounds its own ambiguous note. It is a chilling story of scheming, lies, stupidity, ambition and brutality, like David’s own accession and many that will follow, told without ethical or theological comment. We learn of the convictions of many participants concerning matters of theology and ethics, but the narrator and God stay silent. Yhwh does not appear at all in the account of this accession. It is all humanly devised—by Nathan and Bathsheba (1 Kings 1:11–27), by David himself (1 Kings 1:28–37; 1 Chron 23:1) and/or by the people as a whole (1 Kings 1:38–40; 1 Chron 29:22), though the people take no initiative in the king’s appointment. Which of David’s sons will succeed David is a matter for parties at the royal court to decide. “Yhwh made Solomon exceedingly great in the eyes of all Israel and put upon him royal majesty such as had not been on any king before him over Israel” (1 Chron 29:25). Perhaps Yhwh was doing that behind the scenes, or perhaps the statement described the events that follow, but Yhwh is not perceptibly involved in the unfolding of events.

Whereas Yhwh designated David and the people took the initiative in offering him the kingship, Yhwh has not given any indication who is to succeed David, and none of the priests or prophets involved in events thinks to consult Yhwh about the question. David is old and pathetic, and we are reminded of the incompetence of his bringing up of his children (1 Kings 1:6). A priest and a politician support one son’s bid for the throne, and a priest and a politician support another son. There is not much to choose between them. Adonijah was David’s eldest, though Yhwh is famously disinclined to take much notice of that consideration. David’s prophet, Nathan, and Solomon’s mother, Bathsheba, say David had indicated that Solomon would succeed, but we have not been told that,[1015]  and it looks as if they are taking advantage of the king’s forgetful dotage for the sake of their own skins (1 Kings 1:35). Solomon wins as a result of their plotting, deception and manipulation. The story resembles the story of many a failed or successful coup.

On his deathbed David exhorts his son to be faithful to Yhwh and to Moses’ Teaching, and also to make sure he kills people by whom David feels wronged (1 Kings 2:1–9). Kingship needs to reflect Moses’ Teaching, but also the pragmatism of power and violence. Solomon more than fulfills David’s second exhortation (1 Kings 2:13–46). Adonijah stupidly asks to marry David’s companion Abishag, which Solomon understandably takes as an indication of a continuing ambition for the throne. So he has his brother killed. In keeping with David’s bidding, he has Joab killed. Shimei makes an understandable but ill-advised trip to Gath, and Solomon has him killed. The participants provide impressive reasons for the various killings, but these look like defensive rationalizations; Solomon protests excessively.

“So the kingship grew secure in the hand of Solomon” (1 Kings 2:46), and one way or another these events contribute to the process. The man whose name speaks of shalom believes that by acting violently he contributes to ensuring that shalom comes to the Davidic throne forever (1 Kings 2:33). And he is not far wrong. His violence is an expression of wisdom (1 Kings 2:6)—a very different form of wisdom from the one for which he will go on to ask God, but the latter does not displace the former. Solomon says to Yhwh, “you have made your servant king” (1 Kings 3:7), but neither Yhwh nor the narrator confirm this opinion. The story leaves us with the messiness of human politics and the division it brings to families and communities. It does not explicitly tell us what anyone should have done instead of what they did. It rather invites us to be realistic about how things are. Solomon’s story presupposes an interweaving of divine promise and historical event, with the historical event not at all the kind we might have expected to fulfill a divine promise. It is a sordid tale, yet through the sordid tale Yhwh’s promise finds fulfillment. Yhwh leaves space for humanity to work out what fulfillment of the promise will look like—as human beings do in the story of the monarchy that unfolds over the following centuries—and goes with the results. It is not that by a synergism human beings do precisely what Yhwh wants but that Yhwh leaves them to do what they want and works that into the pattern.

8.4 Temple

Through Judges we hear little of regular worship of Yhwh but much of worship that follows the traditional ways of the land or repels Yhwh for other reasons, or that acknowledges the wrong in this and seeks to put it right (e.g., Judg 2:1–3:6; 6:25–32; 11:34–40; 16:23–30; 17:1–13; 18:14–31). Occasional proper worship of Yhwh is presupposed by the Song of Deborah and Barak (Judg 5) and by dealings with Yhwh’s aide (Judg 6:19–24; 13:2–23), but only with the story of Hannah do we learn something of regular devout worship of Yhwh. Once a year—admittedly not the three times prescribed by Moses’ Teaching—Elkanah and his family go Yhwh’s house at Shiloh for the feast. Even there the worship offered to Yhwh is capable of being as irregular as anywhere else. Eli has reason to expect that worshipers may be the worse for drink, and priests abuse their position and get involved in sexual relationships with women ministers.[1016]  Perhaps Eli has no reason to be expecting someone to come to pray at the sanctuary—it is not thought of as a house of prayer (nor is a woman expected to take such an initiative?).[1017]  Yet Hannah’s appearance shows all is not lost with Israel’s religion. She is a layperson who knows how to pray, knows how to make promises to God and how to keep them, knows how to respond when God answers and knows how to give thanks when God’s answer becomes deed as well as word.

The Temple as a Royal Project

The Shiloh sanctuary is one of a number of worship centers and one of the places where the narrative locates the wilderness sanctuary after the Israelites reach the land. It can be designated by the regular words for a temple building, “house” and “palace” (bayit, hêkāl; e.g., 1 Sam 1:7, 9), though Yhwh later speaks of always having lived in a tent rather than a house (2 Sam 7:6). While the Israelites might have adapted a Canaanite temple at Shiloh, there is no archeological evidence for such, so the terms may be a retrojection of later language.[1018]  David pitches a tent for the covenant chest in Jerusalem but goes to Yhwh’s “house” to worship (2 Sam 6:17; 12:20). In this sense we should be wary of drawing too sharp a distinction between Solomon’s temple and previous places of worship. Yhwh has had houses and palaces before, and this is simply a new one.[1019]

Nevertheless there is something novel about it. Although David says he received the plans for the temple from Yhwh (1 Chron 28:19), the narratives emphasize David’s initiative and make no reference to Yhwh’s involvement in the project. Yhwh’s relationship with it is very different from that with the wilderness dwelling. After David and Nathan first devise a building plan, Yhwh intervenes to express an opinion on the matter and to outline some hesitations (2 Sam 7:4–7). Back at Sinai it was Yhwh who took the initiative in commissioning a place to dwell among the Israelites and a place to meet with them, and the place Yhwh commissioned was emphatically mobile. Yhwh was not the God of Sinai in the sense of having a permanent dwelling there, making it necessary to keep returning to that place. The wilderness tent contrasted with the gold calf Aaron built while Yhwh was giving the specifications for the tent, but it also contrasts with the city palace for Yhwh that David now plans. The temple fixes Yhwh in one place. Yhwh had never lived in a house with a fixed location, but had kept on the move: “I never said anything about a house of cedar.” Even after the people’s arrival in Canaan, the sanctuary where the covenant chest was located seems to have changed location from time to time. Yhwh’s critique implies the same uneases regarding the temple that apply to worship by means of images. Neither can truly represent the nature of Yhwh as a living and active person.

Yhwh’s other implicit hesitation is that David’s proposal reverses the relationship between Yhwh and David about houses, and about life in general. In response to the temple-building plan, Yhwh issues a long list of reminders of things Yhwh had done for David (2 Sam 7:8–16), whose import is not “therefore I expect the following things from you” but “so why are you trying to reverse the relationship?” Is David trying to control it now? Specifically, Yhwh wants to be the one who builds a house (hold) for David. The first person who embodies the fulfillment of that promise can then be the person who builds the house for Yhwh.

But building a temple is a natural act for a Middle Eastern king. Israel’s central place of worship is the “royal sanctuary”—to use Amaziah’s term for the Bethel sanctuary (Amos 7:13). It is part of the complex of buildings associated with the king’s own palace. “Solomon said he would build a house for Yhwh’s name and a house for his own kingship” (2 Chron 2:1 [[1020]  1:18])—of which the former took seven years to build, the latter thirteen years (1 Kings 6:38–7:1). Living in a palace symbolically distances the divine king from the people, while geography would also make the temple an adjunct to the life of the human king more than to the life of the people as a whole. The temple dedication closes with the people’s blessing of the king and rejoicing in what Yhwh has done for David and for them (1 Kings 8:66).[1021]  Solomon subsequently takes a lead in the round of worship in the temple (1 Kings 9:25), for which Moses’ Teaching made no allowance. On the other hand, despite its political significance, the temple gives no further special position to the king and no special place to people such as the ministers of state in Solomon’s extensive administration.

The Ambiguity of the Project

While himself contributing huge amounts of resources, David encourages the whole people to give, which they do with a will (1 Chron 29:1–9). His final prayer (1 Chron 29:10–18) then begins by acknowledging Yhwh, Israel’s magnificent king, who surely deserves an impressive, beautiful, extravagant and expensive palace that contrasts with the simplicity of the local worship centers:

Blessed are you, Yhwh, God of Israel our ancestor, from of old and forever. Yours, Yhwh, are greatness, strength, glory, victory, and majesty, because everything in the heavens and on the earth is yours, Yhwh, kingship and exaltation over everything as head. Riches and honor come from you. You rule over everything. In your hand are power and strength—it is in your hand to make great and give might to anyone. So now, our God, we are acknowledging you and praising your glorious name. Because who am I, and who are my people that we hold the resources to contribute in this way? Because everything comes from you, and we have given you what came from your hand. Because we are aliens and migrants before you, like all our ancestors—our days are like a shadow on the earth, and there is no hope. Yhwh our God, all this abundance that we have provided to build you a house for your holy name—it comes from your hand and it is all yours. I acknowledge, my God, that you scrutinize the heart and delight in uprightness. In the uprightness of my heart I myself have contributed all these things, and now I have seen your people who are present here contributing to you with joy. Yhwh, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, our ancestors, guard this as the shape of the intentions of your people’s heart, and make firm their heart to you.

While the Jerusalem temple is humanly devised and politically significant, its planning by David is eventually divinely validated, and its construction by Solomon results from Yhwh’s gift of wisdom (1 Kings 5:12 [MT 26]). Yet as Yhwh was not obviously involved in that very human process whereby Solomon came to the throne, so the drive in Solomon’s subsequent relationship with Yhwh comes from Solomon. Solomon seeks Yhwh at Gibeon, and the building of the temple is all Solomon’s idea, as it had originally been all David’s idea: “I intend to build a house for the name of Yhwh my God” (1 Kings 5:5 [MT 19]; cf. 2 Chron 2:1 [MT 1:18]). When the work is finished, it is because Solomon “was successful in all that had come into Solomon’s mind to do in Yhwh’s house and in his house” (2 Chron 7:11; cf. 1 Kings 9:1).

Yhwh’s response both to his request for insight and to his proposal regarding the temple is similar. While pleased with his request and granting it in fullness, Yhwh challenges him to walk in Yhwh’s ways (1 Kings 3:14). On the temple-building project, Yhwh comments, “This house that you are building: If you live by my statutes, effect my decisions, and keep all my commands, living by them, then I will keep my words with you that I spoke to David your father, and I will dwell in the midst of the Israelites and not abandon my people Israel” (1 Kings 6:12–13).

Zion and its temple are a place God chose (2 Chron 7:12, 16; Ps 132:13), the specific fulfillment of Yhwh’s intention to choose a place (e.g., Deut 12:5). It is a place God desired or fancied (ʾāwâ, Ps 132:13–14),[1022]  a place God loves (Ps 78:68). When the temple is finished, Yhwh pays a royal visit to it, as had happened when Moses finished building the wilderness dwelling: “The cloud filled Yhwh’s house. The priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, because Yhwh’s splendor filled Yhwh’s house” (1 Kings 8:10–11). Presumably this is a visit rather than a coming to stay—otherwise the priests would never be able to take up their ministry again. But in some other sense this temple is now God’s permanent home on earth. God had created the world as a splendid, several-story home, then decided to locate a home within the world in the wilderness tent, and has now agreed to relocate that home on Mount Zion (see Ps 132:5, 7–8, 13–14).

In his dedication prayer, Solomon recalls that Yhwh had never taken the initiative in choosing somewhere to have a house built and that building a house for Yhwh was David’s idea. He then pushes the logic of what Yhwh had said to David: “Yhwh said to David, my father, ‘In that it was in your mind to build a house for my name, you did well’ ” (1 Kings 8:18). That is the first we have heard of this. Yhwh’s words in 2 Samuel 7 were much more equivocal. At the temple dedication everyone has a great time (1 Kings 8:65–66), but Yhwh’s response to Solomon’s gargantuan theological reflection, blessing/address, prayer, further blessing/prayer/admonition and offerings (1 Kings 8:12–64) is, in the immediate term, nothing. Nor do we learn anything of what Yhwh thinks of the week of celebration.

But subsequently Yhwh appears to Solomon again, as at Gibeon. His prayer had been heard. In response to the prayer, Yhwh has chosen this house. Yhwh’s name is indeed there in the house that Solomon has built. Yhwh will hear prayer there. But Yhwh’s emphasis is the same as it was before: on walking before Yhwh with integrity, doing what Yhwh said and avoiding turning aside to ignore Yhwh’s commands and serve other gods—because that will mean disaster for this house (1 Kings 9:2–9; 2 Chron 7:12–22).

The Temple Building

The building occupies a strategic place in the story of God’s dealings with Israel, coming exactly twelve generations after the exodus (1 Kings 6:1). It is a magnificent architectural structure, luxuriously appointed. It is made of stone, with beams and paneling of cypress and cedar rather than the acacia of the wilderness dwelling, more in the manner of a palace—indeed in the manner of Solomon’s palace. Like the wilderness dwelling, its wood is overlaid with gold and its accoutrements are made of bronze. It is decorated with carvings of plants, trees, flowers, fruit, animals and heavenly figures. No noise of stonecutting disturbs its building: this is no conventional noisy, chaotic construction site. The building corresponds to regular Middle Eastern temples, as do other aspects of its design, construction, furnishings and adornment.[1023]  One might compare the way church buildings reflect the design of the Roman basilica, or that of the temple itself.

Symbolically, its key craftsman has an Israelite mother and a Tyrian father from whom he gains much of his skill (1 Kings 7:13–14). This man of skill, insight and knowledge reminds us of Bezalel (Ex 31:3), but there is no talk of his being filled with God’s spirit as Bezalel was, or of God being involved with him and his work in other ways. The temple’s timber comes from a foreign country, not from the world Israel knew and from its own resources. David’s own words (2 Sam 7:1–2) testify to a bad conscience about the fact that he is living in a palace decorated with cedar; his conscience can be assuaged if Yhwh is doing the same. Perhaps he might rather have asked whether he himself should really be living in such a palace (cf. the comments about palaces in Jer 22:13–16). But how then could he be a real king?

We may assume that the temple is designed to be beautiful, but also to be symbolic, though we can only guess the significance of some of the symbolism. Its being a palace rather than an ordinary home, or even a splendid home like the wilderness dwelling, emphasizes Yhwh’s kingship, sets Yhwh’s kingship over against human kingship and assures Israel that its God is capable of exercising sovereignty in its history. Two columns in the narthex called Jachin and Boaz stand in some way for the establishment and strength of Yhwh and of Yhwh’s commitment to the temple, to the Davidic line and to the people. The molten sea may suggest the dynamic power embodied in the sea, here contained and under Yhwh’s control (cf. Ps 46:2 [MT 3]; 65:7 [MT 8]; 93:4). The huge cherubim represent attendants to Yhwh, or creatures that transport Yhwh or bear the throne on which Yhwh sits, or even constitute that throne. They thus affirm the invisible and uncontainable presence of Israel’s heavenly king, who towers above the sanctuary and whose mere garment-hems would fill the temple (Is 6). The covenant chest could then be thought of as Yhwh’s footstool (cf. 1 Chron 28:2), though elsewhere the temple itself has this significance.

The presence of the footstool is the sign of the real presence of the one whose feet rest there. It was in the conviction that the chest signified Yhwh’s presence that the Israelites had once taken it with them when they battled against the Philistines, though they found this did not work. Eli was so appalled at news of the chest’s capture that he died of shock, and his daughter-in-law so appalled that she died in childbirth, repeating the inconceivable implication, “Splendor has gone away from Israel into exile.… Splendor has gone away from Israel into exile because God’s chest has been captured” (1 Sam 4:21–22).

Exodus and Zion Influences

The temple thus combines novelty and new magnificence with some continuity with Israel’s past, with the exodus, Yhwh’s instructions at Sinai and Israel’s relationship with God there. The outline of the wilderness dwelling also reappears in its structure, with narthex, nave and sanctuary suggesting a gradual move from the outside world toward the separate presence of the God who is other. The three-part structure embodies or implies or encourages some convictions about Yhwh’s accessibility and transcendence and about divine coming and presence. The temple provides a new home for the covenant chest with its stone tablets recording the Ten Words and for the other accoutrements of that dwelling (1 Kings 8:9). And it is where Yhwh will see that people in the wrong are exposed and people in the right are vindicated (1 Kings 8:31–32). Its altar, its table for the presence bread and its lamps correspond to ones in the wilderness dwelling. The elders and the clan heads take a leading part with the king in its inauguration, also suggesting a link with the past.

At the same time, whether or not it is built on the site of the former Jebusite sanctuary,[1024]  building it on Zion links it with a different religious tradition. If there is anything in the suggestion that Zadok, the priest alongside Abiathar, was a Jebusite priest adopted into the Israelite priesthood as a consequence of David’s conquest of Jerusalem,[1025]  it is significant that Abiathar’s support of Adonijah leads to his being expelled by Solomon, leaving Zadok alone in supreme control of worship in Jerusalem. This would dissolve any creative tension between the traditions of the exodus and of Zion in favor of the latter. Whereas there are no stories about image worship in Yhwh’s wilderness tent, there are many stories about image worship in Yhwh’s urban palace.

Further, preparing the wood and cutting the stone require Solomon to conscript a labor force of Israelites and/or resident aliens and/or “Canaanites” (1 Kings 5:13–18 [MT 27–32]; 2 Chron 2:17–18; 8:7–9).[1026]  Setting non-Canaanites to employed work in this way is authorized by Deuteronomy 20:11 (cf. Deut 15:3), but even in connection with them there is some irony in the king of Israel putting Israel’s underlings into a similar position to the one the king of Egypt had made the Israelites occupy in Egypt (cf. Ex 1:11). Has he learned the lesson the Torah presses (e.g., Deut 15:15)? It also makes for an unhappy contrast with the building of the wilderness dwelling through the enthusiastic volunteering of the Israelites.

The extraordinarily extravagant sacrifices that accompany the temple’s construction (1 Kings 8:5, 62–64) raise further questions, for these are ultimately provided by ordinary Israelites who pay taxes and ordinary foreigners who pay tribute. They thus likely place the kind of burdens on them that Nehemiah seeks to relieve (Neh 5).[1027]  And Solomon’s own prayer recognizes that Yhwh’s dwelling among the people depends on king and people’s walking in Yhwh’s ways—not on their offering the right sacrifices in the right building.

While the temple gives no special place to the king, like the wilderness dwelling it does give a special place to the clan of Levi. Its worship needs to be overseen by the right people to safeguard its proceedings and to pay heed to the danger involved in approaching Yhwh. By focusing on that role, Levi can make sure it keeps the safeguards that will protect it and protect the people. That is key, for instance, to bringing up the covenant chest to Jerusalem in a way that avoids the calamity that came upon the first attempt (1 Chron 15). Within Levi, Zadok’s family constitutes the actual priesthood, responsible for sacrifices and for blessing the people. The rest of the Levites look after the “work” of the temple (e.g., keeping things clean and looking after the storehouses and the treasuries), exercise authority and give judgment, guard the temple’s security and make sure that people who should not come into the temple do not do so (1 Chron 23–26). They also act as music ministers, in prophesying, playing instruments, shouting, singing, blowing horns, calling on Yhwh, giving thanks to Yhwh and praising Yhwh. At the installation of the covenant chest the content of their worship is expressed in words that correspond to Psalms 96; 105; 106, suggesting pointers to the ongoing nature of their worship.

That worship begins by telling the story of Yhwh’s activity in keeping in mind the covenant with Israel’s ancestors that gave them their land, and preserving them on their wanderings. It goes on to praise Yhwh as the God of all the nations and the God of all power. Then it brings those two themes together in calling on Yhwh to deliver and gather and rescue the people from the nations. “A theology which saw Israel’s existence in the eyes of Jahweh as so strongly conditioned by praise” could hardly have “strayed so very far from the proper road.”[1028]  In David’s context that suggests gathering the people like a flock and protecting them from peoples around, but for Chronicles’ readers it suggests bringing scattered Israel back to its land. David’s utilization of Psalm 105 closes with the people not yet in the land.

Yhwh’s Presence There

Solomon’s prayer-sermon at the temple dedication begins with a profound but ambiguous piece of theology:

Yhwh said he would dwell in the storm cloud.

I have indeed built a lofty house for you,

A place for you to live in forever. (1 Kings 8:12–13)

How much irony do the words contain? When did Yhwh think to dwell in the cloud, the thick darkness that mercifully obscures the awesome divine presence? Is this a reference to Yhwh’s ongoing dwelling or to Sinai in particular (e.g., Ex 20:21; Ps 97:2)? Is Solomon seeking to frustrate Yhwh’s intention, or to provide some alternative way for God’s presence to be realized?

Solomon himself, courtesy of his Deuteronomistic script writers, explains his pithy lines in the prayer that follows. “But will God really live on the earth? Indeed, the heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built.” Yet Yhwh has said, “My name will be there” (1 Kings 8:27, 29). Solomon’s words recognize the paradox involved in the suggestion that Yhwh can be known in an earthly building, can have a home on earth, and he seeks to resolve it by one of the means mentioned in connection with the wilderness dwelling. Yhwh’s name is there in the house—it is regularly proclaimed there. Yhwh’s name embodies who Yhwh is, so there is a sense in which Yhwh in person is there. When a prophet speaks “in Yhwh’s name,” it is as if Yhwh in person speaks—which means the words will certainly be effective. When a priest blesses “in Yhwh’s name” (e.g., 1 Chron 23:13), it is as if Yhwh in person utters the blessing—which means the blessing will certainly come about. To pray where the name lives is to pray in a place where you are certain to be heard. Yhwh’s eventual response to Solomon’s prayer includes the promise that Yhwh’s mind will also be in the temple, which makes the same point in another way (1 Kings 9:3): Yhwh will think about the people who gather and pray there.

So Yhwh is there, though not in such a way as to deny that the idea of Yhwh in person being there is actually nonsense. The reality of Yhwh’s presence makes the house a kind of extension or outpost of the heavens, so that when people pray there, it is realistic to ask Yhwh to “listen in the place where you live, in the heavens, listen” (1 Kings 8:27–30). Solomon initially speaks of Yhwh’s “dwelling” (šākan) in the heavens but “living” (yāšab) on earth, despite the fact that “living” suggests more permanency than “dwelling.” Perhaps he then implies a recognition that there is something impossible about such usage, and speaks rather of Yhwh’s living in the heavens but from there looking at and listening to what people say in this temple where Yhwh’s name is proclaimed—or where it “dwells” (e.g., Deut 12:11). Yhwh will not entirely submit to the domestication that David’s temple project implies. Looking back and recalling how David found favor with God and asked to find a dwelling for the household of Jacob,[1029]  Stephen comments, “but the Most High does not dwell in something humanly-made,” and notes how Isaiah 66 also subverts such a notion (Acts 7:48–50). Perhaps he implies that God only agreed to the building of the temple because his love for David meant he could not resist his request, despite the theological incoherence of his desire. God is accommodating to Israel, all right.

Solomon’s prayer celebrates the temple as a place where Yhwh will show mercy to the people, responding to their penitence when they experience defeat, drought, famine, invasion or epidemic that results from their sin (1 Kings 8:33–40). There people can acknowledge their failure and pray for forgiveness. There Yhwh will listen to the prayers of foreigners who hear what a great God Yhwh is. The people may pray toward this place if they are in battle far away and need Yhwh’s help, or even if their sin leads Yhwh in anger to let them be taken off into exile, so that they come to their senses and turn back to Yhwh (1 Kings 8:41–53). Given where this story is headed, this last strikes an important note. If people fail to keep Yhwh’s commands, and specifically if they have recourse to other gods, “I will throw” this house “out from before my face” (1 Kings 9:7). It transpires that this temple toward which they will pray is one that has been cast off by God. It will have become a heap of ruins (so 1 Kings 9:8 in the [1030] d Latin text). They will truly be throwing themselves on God’s mercy if they pray toward this ruin.

Solomon hopes Yhwh will live there forever, but then the Shiloh sanctuary had a priesthood that Yhwh actually said “would go about before me forever” (1 Sam 2:30). But when Yhwh summoned Samuel there, it was particularly because of the degeneracy of Eli’s priesthood.

I indeed said that your [Eli’s] household and your ancestor’s household would go about before me forever. But now (Yhwh’s oracle) far be it from me, for I will honor people who honor me, but people who despise me will be belittled. So: A time is coming when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your ancestor’s household, so that there will be no old people in your household.… And I will raise up for myself a steadfast priest. He will do as is in my mind and heart. I will build him a trustworthy [or lasting] household, and it will go about in front of my anointed always (1 Sam 2:30–31, 35).[1031]

Undertakings bearing the label “forever” may not hold forever. They signify a commitment that Yhwh desires to keep and will not have a change of mind about. Yhwh is not a fickle person who might wake up one day with another idea and abandon the first one. But the commitment is always part of a reciprocal relationship that presupposes (in this case) that the priesthood walks before Yhwh in faithfulness and commitment—or as Yhwh here puts it, honors Yhwh. Yhwh’s commitment may graciously persist beyond human commitment, but it cannot be assumed to do so. In the absence of human response, the relationship may collapse. And Eli accepts that. “He is Yhwh. He will do what is good in his eyes” (1 Sam 3:18). It is a suggestive fact that the building of the temple also marks the halfway point from exodus to exile.

8.5 Israel and Other Peoples

First Chronicles reminds its readers that God’s story with Israel in David’s day is set against the background of God’s involvement with the whole world. It begins with a list of people that goes from Adam to Jacob and Esau, ancestors of the peoples Israel knows in the world as a whole. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob appear in the midst of these lists, but one would hardly guess that they are the individuals who matter. They are set in the context of the world as a whole, though with a concentration on Israel’s near neighbors—especially Edom. The relationship between God and Israel does not go back merely to David (whom Chronicles goes on to emphasize), to Sinai, to the exodus or to God’s promise to the ancestors (to all of which Chronicles pays little or no attention), but back to creation. “ ‘Adam, Seth, Enosh’—that is where Israel, the true Israel, begins.”[1032]  The story from the “judges” to Solomon takes place against this background, but this has a variety of implications that stand in tension with each other. The nations are Israel’s destiny, temptation, problem, threat and victims.

Strife and Coexistence

“After Joshua’s death, the Israelites asked of Yhwh, ‘Who is to go up first for us against the Canaanites to fight them?’ ” (Judg 1:1). Judges 1 tells us nothing we could not have read in Joshua, but it tells us of these realities in strikingly new ways. In Joshua 1–9 Israel rarely opened up hostilities against other peoples. It was Yhwh and Israel’s enemies who usually did that. Even in Joshua 10 Yhwh did not commission Israel to take military action, but did grant Israel success when Joshua responded to the Gibeonites’ plea to rescue them from the five kings. Likewise in Judges 1, Yhwh does not commission fighting, but does prove willing to answer a rather closed question about the matter (we do not know how). The question is not “shall we go and fight?” but “who is to go and fight first?” Yhwh responds to the question and thereby agrees to be implicated in Israel’s way of thinking and action, and again grants them success, though having God with them in their battles does not actually guarantee this success (Judg 1:19).

More often they battle on their own say-so, succeed by their own might or fail because of their own incapacity, use the methods they see fit and treat their victims as they see fit. Joseph, for their part, go up to Bethel, and Yhwh is with them—but they take the city by getting someone to betray it (Judg 1:22–25). Yhwh works via human deeds and specifically via human violence. Judah captures a king and cuts off his thumbs and big toes, the incapacitation and humiliation he had inflicted on many others. He knew the rules of the game: “As I acted, so has God repaid me” (Judg 1:7). Judges does not tell us if he is right, but Yhwh’s willingness to be implicated in human actions and ways of thinking suggests he is not wholly wrong. The story works with a different framework from that of Genesis-Joshua. It is the first account of men treating men the way men do. Judges announces that it will tell a story of violence. It is by means of violence that Israel enters into possession of the land, that other peoples bring deserved trouble on Israel and that deliverers bring an end to this trouble.

Judges 1—with its talk of initiating action against the Canaanites—is a weird beginning to the narrative for another reason. Joshua has told us that Israel has dealt with the Canaanites already, though it has also hinted that this is an oversimplification. Judges 1 collects a series of acknowledgments of how incomplete was Israel’s occupation of the land, and thus brings into focus that series of footnotes in Joshua. Joshua twice described the clans as unable to drive out the Canaanite inhabitants of their areas (Josh 15:63; 17:12), three times as simply not driving them out (Josh 13:13; 16:10; 17:13—the last being implicitly covered by the “could” of the previous verse). Once Judges 1–2 describes them as unable, because the Canaanites are better-equipped; eight times it describes them as simply not doing so. They do win great victories, taking cities and burning them, but do not usually then slaughter their population—so it is not such a story of violence.

Israelites and Canaanites in fact coexist, in varying ways. Judah gives up the attempt to control the coastal plain; likewise Dan, which has nowhere else to go (Judg 1:19, 34; cf. Josh 19:40–48). Near the end of Judges the weirdness of its opening will recur as Dan is still looking for somewhere to live (Judg 18:1). Benjamin allows the Jebusites to continue to live among them in Jerusalem (Judg 1:21). Manasseh, Zebulun and Naphtali initially do not attempt to eliminate Canaanites from towns in the Sharon plain, the central plain and the north, but later turn them into laborers, while Ephraim and Asher live among the Canaanites of Gezer and the northwestern towns (Judg 1:27–33, 35). To judge from later references (e.g., Prov 12:24), requiring these people to work for them (mas) need not mean they become state serfs or are treated with the oppression Egypt imposed on the Israelites, or even that they are forced to work in this way (though this did happen in connection with getting the temple built). But having lost their own land, if they want to eat they have no alternative to accepting such work.

Yhwh’s aide then accuses Israel of failing to observe Yhwh’s command to avoid relationships with the peoples of the land and tear down their altars. In entering into covenant relationship with native peoples, they fail to recognize Yhwh as the king who has laid down the terms for their relationships with other peoples. Yhwh therefore goes back on the undertaking to drive out the Canaanites. Living in tension with them will mean future generations of Israel learn to make war, while living peaceably with them will test Israel’s commitment to Yhwh as they have to resist the temptation of their religion (Judg 2:1–3; 3:1–6). So the “Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites” (Judg 3:5) remain a significant feature of the land. But except for Jabin of Hazor in the far north, Judges is then oddly quiet about them. It speaks more of the Moabites, Midianites, Amalekites, Ammonites and Philistines as Yhwh’s means of chastening Israel.

Appreciation and Openness

Further, there is another side to the story’s attitude toward people such as the Moabites. A Judahite couple whose life begins to fall apart moves to Moab to begin a new life, and their sons find wives there. Neither fulfills the image of Moabite women that the First Testament has previously offered. The story of Naomi, Orpah and Ruth indicates that questions about right and wrong in Moab or in Judah are more complex than we might have thought. While Judges 11:25 has suggested a more positive take on Balak, the king of Moab, than Numbers 22–24, the story of Naomi and Ruth is more much radical in its revisionist assessment of Moabite womanhood. Is there such a thing as a good Moabite wife? There is, spectacularly so. Indeed, Orpah and Ruth are embodiments of ḥesed or commitment (Ruth 1:8). The word hangs in the air as Ruth makes an extraordinary act of commitment to her mother-in-law when she returns to Judah: “Wherever you go I will go, wherever you sleep I will sleep. Your people will be my people, your God my God. Where you die I will die, and be buried there” (Ruth 1:16–17). And Yhwh responds to Ruth’s commitment to Naomi by showing such commitment to Ruth and Naomi, and also to their dead husbands (Ruth 2:20). Conversely, the story’s male hero, David’s great-grandfather, is one who shows ḥēn to a Moabite, the grace or favor that reaches out to someone to whom one has no obligation, irrespective of who they are (Ruth 2:2, 10, 13). He recognizes the commitment embodied in her life and the way she has come to take refuge under Yhwh’s wings, comforts her and encourages her, and goes beyond Moses’ Teaching in the way he shares the harvest with her (Ruth 2:12–16; 3:10).

In the main story line the Philistines take the Canaanites’ place, succeeding where Israel did not in becoming rulers of many of the areas occupied by the Canaanites and wresting them from Egyptian control. The Philistines can then envisage only two relationships between themselves and the Israelites. Either they serve the Israelites or the Israelites serve them (1 Sam 4:9). Coexistence is not an option. They do come to acknowledge Yhwh (1 Sam 5–6), but it does not seem to do them any good. Eventually David overcomes them, and also thus succeeds them as sovereign of the local peoples, on a very different basis from that envisaged in Joshua. We do then hear of individuals with those ethnic backgrounds, in some significant connections. Uriah the Hittite is a prominent member of David’s army and lives near David’s palace. Araunah the Jebusite still owns the best threshing floor in Jerusalem, and therefore presumably owns land for growing wheat. Indeed, he may be the ex-king of Jerusalem, if [1033] tands 2 Samuel 24:23 aright: “Araunah the king gave all this to the king” (i.e., David). A Philistine, Obed-edom from Gath, lives near Jerusalem and looks after the covenant chest. There are still Amorites in Gibeon—more precisely Hivites, or perhaps rather Horites (2 Sam 21). David has an officer in charge of (foreign) labor (2 Sam 20:24), though we discover nothing about the people he supervises until the account of urban building projects on which Solomon requires them to work (1 Kings 9:15–22).

Developments and Achievements

By origin and/or vision, Israel is a landholding and local community/village-based society, perhaps in conscious antithesis to the urban society of Canaan. Solomon decisively encourages the use of employment, rather than having people working their farms or businesses, as an aspect of the development of Israelite society, and specifically of its urbanization, making it much more like Canaanite society. While 1 Kings 11 will be explicitly critical of the way Solomon introduces into Israel forms of worship from Phoenicia, Ammon and Moab, the subsequent prevalence of the traditional worship of Canaan suggests that at least as far-reaching results issued from the absorption of the “Canaanites” into Israel through the achievements of David and the acts of Solomon.

In Solomon’s day Israel enjoys new security and new standards of living. “Judah and Israel … ate and drank and were happy.… Judah and Israel lived in security, everyone under their vine and under their fig tree, from Dan to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon” (1 Kings 4:20, 25 [MT 4:20; 5:5]). They enjoy shalom. Solomon completes extensive state building projects, develops a central administration independent of the traditional structures of Israelite life, accumulates vast quantities of gold, builds a merchant shipping fleet and creates a more sophisticated army with an array of chariots and horses. It is all wonderful—and worrying. Someone has to pay the human cost of such developments. State projects and consumerist prosperity imply a price being paid by ordinary people who make it possible but may not benefit from it. As in modern societies, these people belong to two groups: other nations and ordinary people within Israel. Disposing of the Philistines made Israel the undisputed major power of the region and enabled Israel to develop a sizable empire. Solomon rules over the greatest empire Israel ever knows. That gives new significance to the confession that Yhwh is lord of all the earth, and it gives Israel control of a number of trade routes, bringing income from taxes and tribute (cf. 1 Kings 10). Statements about Solomon’s achievements interweave with accounts of his extensive administrative and taxation system that makes sure his court is well provided for and his vast standing military force well equipped; Israelite prosperity is thus dependent on drawing resources from its empire (1 Kings 4:1–28 [MT 4:1–5:8]).

Ultimately ordinary people in other countries thus subsidize Israel, like Third World peoples subsidizing people in the West. All this does not necessarily stop the administration’s projects outreaching its resources, generating a crisis over its balance of payments (1 Kings 9:10–14). Even within Israel, not all the people experience shalom, and Solomon’s tough treatment of ordinary people plays a significant role in causing the eventual partition of the state (1 Kings 12). He continues the process initiated by David of transforming the state into one just like any other, fulfilling Samuel’s warnings regarding the cost the monarchy will bring to ordinary people.[1034]  In the two sides to Solomon we can see the two sides to government as these emerge in Romans 13 and Revelation 13. Government is a divinely authorized means of safeguarding order, and a means of oppression that recalls the beast and is inspired by the dragon.[1035]

Recognition

The best moment in Solomon’s story is his conversation with Yhwh at Gibeon, where Yhwh asks him what gift he would like. “Give your servant a listening mind so as to govern your people, so as to discern good from bad, for who would be able to govern this vast people of yours?” (1 Kings 3:9; cf. 2 Chron 1:10). “Govern” is šāpaṭ, which covers the leadership involved in making decisions for the people in different realms. Solomon needs to be able to distinguish between good and bad decisions, and to that end is granted the knowledge of good and bad that humanity had reached for at the beginning (Gen 3). Even in connection with serving Yhwh, that is not to be reached for unilaterally, but it can be requested from Yhwh, and granted. It is immediately illustrated in Solomon’s capacity to expose who is in the right when two women dispute possession of a baby. But Solomon’s insight extends far beyond the demands of government and conflict resolution, and his reign sees a kind of “enlightenment.”[1036]  He wins a reputation throughout the Middle East (1 Kings 4:29–34 [MT 5:9–14]).

The king of Tyre to the north and the queen of Sheba to the south praise Yhwh for blessing Israel with this wise king—a response that seems to glorify Solomon more than Yhwh. For Hiram, the wisdom lies in the commitment to building Yhwh a house. Indeed, the project emerges in part from the arrival of this friendly embassy from Tyre, which leads Solomon to ask Hiram for two forms of help: supplies of timber and a senior craftsman or designer (1 Kings 5; 2 Chron 2). Its building thus helps to cement good relations between the two, and its resemblance to other Middle Eastern temples might contribute to its accessibility to other peoples. It could thus be a means of Yhwh’s reaching out to the nations in fulfillment of the vision that goes back to Abraham, “so that all the peoples of the earth may acknowledge your name and revere you” (1 Kings 8:41–43). Proverbs 1:1–7 outlines the “Solomonic” pattern for such learning: possible insight from elsewhere needs to be set in the context of faithfulness, judgment and uprightness, and of reverence for Yhwh. The question is whether this happens with the vision for the temple.

The queen of Sheba focuses rather on the king’s responsibility for faithful decision making in Israel (mišpāṭ ûṣĕdāqâ), though she does not say he accepts that responsibility. Psalm 72, which assumes that a king is called to be so committed, is a psalm lišĕlōmōh (a psalm for Solomon?). But Solomon’s achievements radically undermine mišpāṭ ûṣĕdāqâ to a much greater extent than David’s did. The queen’s words thus undermine the possible ideological implications of the glorying in his building and trading achievements that appear on either side—or vice versa. They also point to the insight that real insight and leadership relate to the implementation of mišpāṭ ûṣĕdāqâ—as the story of Solomon’s meeting with two earlier woman suggested (1 Kings 3:28).

Faithless Love

The way Kings tells Solomon’s story, it falls apart when “King Solomon committed himself to many foreign women, as well as Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, Hittites, from all the nations that Yhwh told the Israelites, ‘You are not to join them and they are not to join you, because they will turn your inclination after their gods.’ To these Solomon did adhere with commitment” (1 Kings 11:1–2). Solomon follows—indeed, vastly exceeds—his father’s example in the accumulation of wives, but the point is that his are foreigners. He takes politically motivated marriage into new directions.

His marriages make sense in the context of internal and external politics. They demonstrate to his own people that he is a world-class ruler, and significantly his first wife is the daughter of the Egyptian king, so that his marriage cements good relations with a major nearby world power. But prophets such as Isaiah will see alliance with Egypt as undermining the trust relationship between Israel and Yhwh, and Solomon’s other marriages imperil the commitment to Yhwh that David safeguarded. Marrying Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian and Hittite wives has the potential to encourage peaceful relations with these local peoples, but it also subordinates religion to politics as these marriages carry with them the obligation to make it possible for these women to continue their religious allegiance in Jerusalem. There is no necessary implication that Israelites start worshiping these other deities, but the mere existence of such worship within sight of Yhwh’s house has a defiling effect on Yhwh’s city. “Solomon committed himself to many foreign women” stands in some tension with “Solomon committed himself to Yhwh” (1 Kings 3:3; 11:1).

The language could elsewhere be the language of love. The words translated “commit oneself/commitment” (ʾāhēb, ʾahăbâ) can mean “love,” and the expression for “join” (bôʾ bĕ) is similar to the one for having sex with someone. The word for inclination (lēbāb) refers anatomically to the heart and can refer to emotions, and “adhere” (dābaq) is the word for a man attaching himself to his wife (Gen 2:24). But here all these terms are the language of politics and religion. For Solomon, both his religion and his thousand marriages serve politics. His wrongdoing does not lie in his polygamy or sexual indulgence in itself but in what it served and what it led to. In the First Testament, marriage and politics are subordinate to religion. Solomon’s commitment to Yhwh is compromised by the commitment to these international and interreligious marriages. The listening and discerning mind of 1 Kings 3:9 has become a mind that wanders and listens without discernment. Solomon has emphasized Yhwh’s covenant with David and thus with himself, but knows it requires him and Yhwh staying in step (1 Kings 8:22–26). Yhwh’s covenant with him is imperiled if he himself does not keep Yhwh’s covenant. The covenant with David means Yhwh’s back will not be totally turned on Solomon, but Yhwh will go as near that as possible (1 Kings 11:11–13).

1 Kings arranges Solomon’s story so that the achievements come first and the terrible mistake comes at the end of the story, which leads well into what follows. The transition from the achievements to the wrongdoing is effected by the account of his building a force of chariotry and horses (1 Kings 10:26–29), which looks like a positive achievement until one recalls the warnings concerning horses and chariots (Deut 17:16; 1 Sam 8:10). The account of his wrongdoing then focuses on the international marriages and their religious implications. But the narratives have made clear that chronologically both the chariots and horses and the marriages featured much earlier in Solomon’s reign (1 Kings 3:1; 4:26; 2 Chron 1:14–17). Indeed, the unraveling makes us reconsider the questions raised by the beginning with its violent wisdom and its foreign marriage (1 Kings 2:6, 9; 3:1–2). We thought the commitment and the gift of insight had changed everything, but perhaps people do not change like that. From the beginning, Solomon combines an attempt to serve Yhwh with a yielding to the expectations of kingship, and the story about him conveys a mixed message.[1037]

8.6 Being Human

The narrative from the “judges” to Solomon contains the Scriptures’ most harrowing sequence of stories about humanity’s inhumanity to humanity. It also explores the tragic dimension to human experience, the ways we can be victims of drives within ourselves and forces from outside that bring dissolution and death to others and to ourselves. It leaves readers with a discouraging understanding of human nature and human experience—or gives them the opportunity to face facts about human nature and human experience. The stories of Jephthah and Samson illustrate the point, but, rather oddly, the stories of the first two kings (along with those of supporting players in the drama such as their children Jonathan and Michal and Tamar and Absalom) comprise the First Testament’s most profound wrestlings with questions about what it means to be a human being.[1038]  The gloom is only slightly alleviated by the portraits of people such as Ruth and Hannah.

An Outsider and His Vow

Like Abimelech, Jephthah stands outside the “proper” family, and in his story family is the locus of sin or the place where sin plays havoc, as happens in the stories of Abimelech, Samson and Eli. Like Gideon, Gilead has sons by more than one woman, and the story has reason to focus on the one son who is an outsider. Gideon had many wives and one secondary wife. Gilead has one wife, but has at least one extramarital relationship. Abimelech was Gideon’s son by a secondary wife; Jephthah is also Gilead’s son by “the other woman,” a prostitute. Abimelech killed his half-brothers; Jephthah is thrown out of the family by his half-brothers, without inheritance, so that he flees and becomes an outlaw. Both gang up with other men: Jephthah collects a group of outcasts or outsiders—literally “empty” or “empty-handed” men (rêqîm, Judg 11:3). Both are powerful fighters; Jephthah is “an effective warrior,” like Abimelech’s father. Both want to rule their people—Abimelech perhaps to make up for his secondary status, Jephthah to make up for his earlier rejection. Jephthah thus gets recalled to defend Gilead from the Ammonites and knows how to make the most of his usefulness (Judg 11:4–11). He is willing to come in out of the cold to become his people’s ruler, in the classic fashion of the exiled potential leader. Yhwh’s spirit then comes on him as it had on Othniel and Gideon and as it often will on Samson—so that does not bode unequivocally well.

And he makes his vow to Yhwh—and that, too, does not bode unequivocally well. It is people such as Jacob, Saul and Absalom who make vows (though also people such as Hannah), people who feel the need to lean on Yhwh. Making a vow is a very solemn thing. It is important not to make vows you may not want to keep or be able to keep. The longest First Testament passage on vows (Num 30) points out how fathers and husbands need to speak up if daughters and wives make unwise vows. Jephthah has no one to question the wisdom of his vow to offer to Yhwh whoever or whatever first comes out of his house if he comes home safely from the battle (Judg 11:31).

Evidently he does not expect this to be his daughter, his only child (Judg 11:35). When the President returns to the White House, he does not expect his daughter to be the first person he sees. What does Jephthah expect? The participle hayyôṣēʾ (who/what comes out) could refer to an animal, but Israelites do not have pet dogs that rush out to greet them. Perhaps he is expecting one of his staff: Jephthah is, after all, “head and commander” over Gilead. But it would have been no moral improvement if the person Jephthah sacrificed were one of the people who worked for him. Indeed, there is a frightful appropriateness about the way that fulfilling the vow becomes a punishment by turning it into something costly for Jephthah himself. The sacrifice of any human being would have been an act illustrating the way people were doing what was right in their own eyes. Sacrificing a daughter and being unable to see that one might reconsider a stupid promise illustrates that more powerfully. Jephthah thinks he can make the promise of a human life at no personal cost, but he cannot. He is a shrewd negotiator and manipulator, which gets him where he wants in dealing with human beings, but leads to disaster when applied to God.[1039]

A Fool and His Vows

Samson’s story is also the story of a fool who brings death to other people, but in the end also to himself. Samson’s distinctiveness, too, arises from Yhwh’s interest in using him in connection with broader concerns. From the beginning, Samson is destined to be the means of delivering Israel from the Philistines. That is why he was born (Judg 13:5). He grows to be bigger and a greater show-off than anyone else in the village because “Yhwh blessed him,” and he behaves in extraordinary, daredevil ways because “Yhwh’s spirit began to drive him” (Judg 13:24–25). His machismo is something Yhwh utilizes, or anticipates, or creates. His insistence on the Philistine girl from Timnah “was from Yhwh, because he was seeking an opportunity [‘make my day!’] from the Philistines—at that time they were ruling over Israel” (Judg 14:4). His machismo generates two or three famous victories (Judg 14:19; 15:8, 14–15). For much of his life he makes other people pay the price of it and arouses no sympathy in us, but then in his stupidity he surrenders the sacramental symbol of his strength, his hair, and thus breaks the last of his Nazirite vows. As suddenly the story goes poignant: when he thinks to reassert his strength again, “he did not know [or acknowledge] that Yhwh had departed from him” (Judg 16:20). The invincible is vincible and does not realize until it is too late.

But it is not over until it is over. He is now “eyeless in Gaza,”[1040]  but his hair begins to grow again, and it still functions as a sacramental sign. There is a service in the Gaza temple, and Samson is paraded before the worshiping crowd as living proof of their god’s power to act in history. It will not be surprising if Yhwh is driven into acting. But first, Samson is driven into praying. As we are told the story, it is the first actual petition of his life (Judg 15:18 implies a petition, though does not quite record one). “Lord Yhwh, think of me, do, give me strength, do, just this once, God, so that I can take revenge, revenge for one of my two eyes, from the Philistines” (Judg 16:28). Theologically it is not much of a prayer (though rhetorically it is rather fine), but evidently that does not bother Yhwh. What counts is the achievement of Yhwh’s purpose to deliver Israel. Samson reaches out for the characteristic double central pillars of the Philistine temple and leans against them, one with each hand, crying, “I myself can die with the Philistines” (Judg 16:29–30). In doing so, he kills more by his death than by his life: we hear no more of the Philistines for some decades. His family comes to collect his body and take him home to rest next to his father.

A King and His Vow

Saul has often been described as the nearest thing to a tragic figure in the Bible.[1041]  Like Moses or Gideon, he is an ordinary guy, except for being notably tall and good looking. He is working happily for his father and has to go searching for some straying donkeys, and out of the blue finds Samuel telling him he is the one designated to rule over Israel (1 Sam 9). Given the distaste Samuel and Yhwh share for the very idea of kingship, this might look like a poisoned chalice, but there is no escape.[1042]  He receives a series of signs that this is not just a bright idea Samuel has dreamed up (1 Sam 10:1–16). When the moment comes for publicly designating the man chosen to be the king whom the people want instead of Yhwh(!), Saul wisely goes into hiding, but not determinedly enough (1 Sam 10:17–25). He goes back to plowing, but when a threatened atrocity signals the moment for action against one of Israel’s oppressors, Yhwh’s spirit impels him to take that action (1 Sam 11:6). Israel wins a famous victory, and there is now even less escape. Even people who had doubts before have been silenced, and he insists there be no reprisals against doubters. The people go to Gilgal to inaugurate the monarchy and to worship, and everyone joins in a joyful celebration. It is the high point of the story (1 Sam 11:12–15).

After that Saul’s life falls apart as a result of a series of decisions he takes under the pressure his calling places on him. Long ago Samuel had told him to go to Gilgal and wait seven days for Samuel to come to lead the people’s worship (1 Sam 10:8). Saul does so, Samuel fails to show up, the army is melting away, and Saul expects the Philistines to attack any moment. No sooner has he offered the sacrifices than Samuel arrives and declares that this is enough to put him on notice. He has disobeyed Yhwh’s command. This looks a severe reading of the situation (1 Sam 13:1–15).

Saul wins a fine victory against the Philistines, but the edge is taken off it in a number of ways as a result of a vow by Saul (vows again!) (1 Sam 14). Saul binds everyone to fast all day against the victory. When the battle is won, people start ravenously barbecuing the spoils without observing proprieties. Saul can resolve that issue, though Jonathan points out that an army marches on its stomach; it would have won an even greater victory if the men had not been weakened by hunger. More complication emerges from Jonathan’s having snacked during the day, in ignorance of Saul’s vow. Saul is willing to impose the death penalty on Jonathan, but the people can see what neither Jephthah nor Saul can, that you can at least raise the question whether there is a way round the problem, and they ransom Jonathan—we do not know how.

Samuel now declares it is time to complete the devoting of Amalek for its long-past attack on Israel on its way to Sinai (1 Sam 15). Saul does that, except that he takes the Amalekite king alive (to parade back home?) and also spares the best of the animals. He claims to have done what Yhwh says, but he has not quite done so, and now blames the people for preserving some of the animals—for sacrifice later. That prompts Samuel’s poetic declaration:

Does Yhwh have as delight in whole offerings and sacrifices

As in listening to Yhwh’s voice?

Now. Listening is better than sacrifice

And heeding than the fat of rams.

For rebellion [is the same as] the sin of divination

And defiance [as] the wickedness of teraphim.

Because you spurned Yhwh’s word

He has spurned you as king. (1 Sam 15:22–23)

Saul attempts to repent, but finds no acceptance.

Saul’s acts involve going against God’s word or Samuel’s or his own, but doing so in circumstances that put him under huge pressures and in contexts where his mistakes might seem excusable. The story has a hard time demonstrating that Saul is at fault and an even harder time demonstrating that the magnitude of the wrongdoing justifies the magnitude of the price he pays. This question seems all the more pressing when we reconsider his story after reading David’s, for Saul never commits acts as grotesquely wrong as David’s sin against Bathsheba and Uriah, with its horrendous consequences for his family and his people.

A Life Unravels

His rejection is only the beginning of his tragedy. Yhwh leaves Saul and sends a bad spirit or a bad temper (rūaḥ-rāʿâ) in the place of Yhwh’s spirit (1 Sam 16:14). “Evil spirit” is probably misleading: a spirit of fear, depression and paranoia overcomes Saul. But just because he is paranoid does not mean they are not all against him. He is right that his throne is under threat. Yhwh designates a new king, and Saul unwittingly introduces him to court and soon perceives the threat he is. Once again Saul has to make a decision. The Saul who hid in the baggage could have settled for early retirement, but perhaps he has become attached to power and certainly can hardly have an easy time accepting rejection. Instead he makes ineffectual attempts to kill David. As David’s successes increase, so does Saul’s fear of him. His daughters become means of luring David to his death, but again unsuccessfully. He tries to get his son and his servants to kill David, but instead Jonathan becomes David’s protector against Saul. Some days Saul can be argued out of his paranoia, but other days it returns. Saul’s daughter becomes her husband’s protector against her father and his murderers. So does Samuel, the prophet who had once anointed Saul. Even the spirit of God joins in: this spirit that once overwhelmed Saul as an evidence that God really was commissioning him now overwhelms him once more to stop him apprehending Samuel or David. Soon Saul is even trying to kill Jonathan, who has looked in the eye the fact that David is on his way to the throne that he himself might have occupied and is untroubled by the fact. Surely there is hardly a wiser man in the First Testament, one whom Jotham would have applauded (Judg 9:7–21). Hounded by his paranoia, Saul brings about a massacre of the priesthood at Nob that has given David a little help, an event about which David has a right to some guilt (1 Sam 22:22).

The moment comes for his last great battle. For all his achievements, the Philistines are still intent on winning control of the country. Samuel is dead. David can get Yhwh’s guidance (e.g., 1 Sam 23:1–5), but “when Saul asked of Yhwh, Yhwh did not answer him, either by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets” (1 Sam 28:6). Saul has banished mediums and psychics (he is a man who is loyal to Yhwh), but now in desperation gets his men to find a medium in the borderlands between Philistine and Israelite territory so that he can consult the dead Samuel about what to do.[1043]

Death has not mellowed Samuel. He says the same things about disobedience and rejection as he said when he was alive, but he does answer Saul’s question. The next day Yhwh will give the Israelite army over to the Philistines, and Saul and Jonathan will join Samuel. Not unreasonably, Saul is overwhelmed, but maybe then pulls himself together, eats a last meal, and goes out to face his destiny. His army is defeated and his three sons are killed. Rather than himself becoming directly the Philistines’ victim, he takes his own life. The Philistines decapitate him, put his armor in their god’s temple, and hang his body and those of his sons on the walls of Beth-shan. But the men of Jabesh in Gilead, who owed their freedom and their right eyes to him, march all night to take the bodies down, cremate them, take the bones back to Jabesh for burial and there sit shiva for Saul (1 Sam 31). It is not a Hollywood ending, and not even a death like Samson’s with its triumph, but at least Saul has faced his destiny and come to rest among people who remember his best moment.

Saul’s story represents a reprise of issues raised by Moses’ story, which comes to its end with Yhwh’s depriving Moses of the chance to set foot in the promised land because of what looks like a marginal sin committed under increasing pressure. Yhwh has grounds for abandoning Saul, but a decent Adversary in the heavenly court would have a field day in exposing their thinness. The punishment seems out of proportion to the crime, especially in the context of the ambiguity of events such as Samuel’s failure to show up at Gilgal within the time frame he had set. When we go on to read the stories of David and Solomon, the unease increases. Their ambiguity and wrongdoing far exceed Saul’s. What are the real reasons why Yhwh abandons Saul and stands by them? The First Testament may seem curiously untroubled when it tells stories about people such as Moses or Saul that implicitly portray them as the victims of pressures that they lacked the resources to withstand or as paying a terrible price for a single act of folly. The reasons are ones we may find triply scandalous.

Part of Yhwh’s Story and Israel’s Story

First, Yhwh’s dealing with these leaders is subordinate to Yhwh’s purpose for their community. Why does Yhwh’s spirit come on Jephthah so as to inspire his victory over Ammon, but not so as to protect him from his vow, or inspire him to reconsider it, or inspire his daughter to be somewhere else at the moment when he returned or to refuse to be bound by it? Perhaps the answer is that Yhwh rations intervention and gives priority to matters that affect the destiny of the people as a whole. Postmodern readers are inclined to reckon that paramount importance attaches to the individual’s rights and destiny, but in the First Testament the individual is part of a people and part of humanity as a whole, and human beings are part of a larger picture comprising reality as a whole (cf., e.g., Gen 1; Job 38–39). When Yhwh says “I will be gracious on whom I will be gracious and compassionate on whom I will be compassionate” (Ex 33:19), this is a statement about generosity. But when Paul appeals to it as a statement about God’s sovereignty, his reworking of its significance is not alien to the First Testament’s understanding of God—as he is able to show in his comments on God’s stiffening of Pharaoh’s will (Rom 9:14–18).[1044]

Pharaoh, Moses, Jephthah and Saul are chiefly significant in the story not so much as individuals, but as people who play a part in the purpose Yhwh is pursuing through the negative experiences that come to them. They are not mere puppets who have no opportunity to make real decisions, nor are they people who go through negative experiences when there is no reason for them to do so. They are people who do not get away with what other people get away with, and that because of the position they are in.

So the individual Saul is not the person who matters in this story. It concerns God’s purpose in the world and the achievement of this purpose in Israel’s story. Saul’s story is subordinate to those stories. That is true of someone who stands under the curse, but also of someone who stands under the blessing. Indeed, in part Yhwh’s commitment to David (which he does not deserve) retrospectively explains Yhwh’s rejection of Saul, but both the rejection and the commitment are part of a broader picture, part of the story of Yhwh’s dealings with Israel that handle the tension between Yhwh’s disapproval of kingship and Yhwh’s affirmation of it. Saul “is just the person and ideal which the nation has foolishly imagined, and can only imagine, as its king. And it is this which is made evident in the double sinning which is microscopic to human eyes, but gigantic and absolutely decisive in God’s eyes.” In two situations he acts “with what was humanly a thoroughly respectable conviction and method. But in both he is an exact portrayal of the monarchy which has made itself independent of the kingdom of God.”[1045]

In the 1880s and 1890s William Minor made a very substantial contribution to the development of the monumental Oxford English Dictionary. Minor would today be diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia, an affliction perhaps brought from potential to actuality by experiences as a surgeon in the Civil War. Having then committed a murder, he was incarcerated for thirty years in a notorious asylum for the criminally insane, and it was there that he undertook his work in connection with the Dictionary. A century later he might have been treated with more compassion and with appropriate drugs, and he would then have had a more dignified and settled life, but would hardly have been driven or able to do his work on the Dictionary. “The agonies that he must have suffered in those terrible asylum nights have granted us all a benefit, for all time. He was mad, and for that, we have reason to be glad. A truly savage irony, on which it is discomfiting to dwell.” His life was “singular, astonishing, memorable, and laudable—and yet at the same time wretchedly sad,” and his story “strange, tragic, yet spiritually uplifting.”[1046]  The story of Saul is such a story.

A Unique Story

Second, these stories perhaps presuppose that human maturity or goodness develop in response to contingent experiences and pressures that come to us. They develop in response to blessings and troubles we experience, challenges and losses we go through, and good and bad relationships in which we find ourselves involved. The experiences, pressures, blessings, troubles, challenges, losses and relationships differ, and so therefore do the issues they raise for our human maturing and goodness. They vary in the way they encourage or threaten these. Sometimes the hand that life deals people may place such monumental pressures on them that we cannot see how they could survive. That is true about the things we do. Some such awareness lies behind John Bradford’s comment as he saw a group of criminals being led to their execution, “But for the grace of God there goes John Bradford.”[1047]  It is true about the people we are, the people who do the things we do and are constituted by those deeds.

As human beings we are called to be good, but life presses us not to be so. A concern of Greek literature is to wrestle to bear boldly the burden imposed by this fact.[1048]  Saul’s story raises questions about Yhwh’s dealings with Saul, which have some parallels with the story of Job, but it no more answers them than Yhwh answers Job’s questions. This does not mean there are no answers. It means that the answers are between Saul and Yhwh, and we have no alternative but to leave them there. Saul has to handle the hand God deals him, and it is his handling of it that shapes him as a person, but the story is reticent about telling us how he did so.

The third scandal is that Saul is therefore useless to readers for the purpose that readers often assume such stories are designed to fulfill, though no more so than most biblical stories. Saul does not provide us with an example for our own lives, any more than, for instance, Abraham and Sarah or Isaac and Rebekah do. The First Testament narrative does provide us with a moral portrait of God, and if it offers us someone to imitate, it is God, who relates to these characters with generosity, forbearance, compassion and the other characteristics that God claims in a passage such as Exodus 34:6–7. In stories such as Saul’s, however, even God’s character is too enigmatic for us to take as exemplary. What they rather do is give us raw material for reflecting on our own lives in the light of these lives. Like us, people such as Jephthah, Samson and Saul do battle with a tug between mind and emotions. They are challenged to do the sensible thing, but they are also people with (God-given) instincts and feelings—ambitions, regrets, sexual desires, fears. Their sensibility battles with their sense. Watching them do so has the capacity to enable us to monitor the way we do so. We customarily decline this invitation.

8.7 Being Men

The stories also offer a series of studies of men doing what men have to do. They give women pictures of what they need to know about men and give men raw material for reflection on their masculinity.

Violence

It is unsurprising that the “leaders” in Judges behave like men. Perhaps that is so from the beginning, with Othniel, who sets the story going (Judg 3:7–11). He is Caleb’s little brother, and he behaves like a little brother making his mark to get out of his elder brother’s shadow. Othniel goes out to fight and wins, though we get no gory details, but when Ehud assassinates the king of Moab, he does so in a particularly macabre fashion (Judg 3:12–30). Part of the story’s gruesomeness lies in the way he makes an asset out of a handicap, his inability to use his right hand. Shamgar kills six hundred Philistines with a goad, the long sharp stick used to urge on an ox (Judg 3:31). Does he kill them all at once, flaying with superhuman forcefulness, or creep from tent to tent stabbing them one by one?

Machismo then gradually but comprehensively collapses. Next comes the best man in these stories, who turns out to be—a “mother in Israel,” Deborah (Judg 5:7). Her story presupposes the framework of stereotypes that make men the military heroes, so she warns Barak that he may lose the glory of being the great hero. But it also subverts it as Israel’s victory over Jabin comes about through a man who neither requires nor manifests bravery, shrewdness or energy. Barak does not want to go and fight like a man, he insists that this woman accompany him, and he acts on instructions mediated by a woman rather than by his own insight. After the battle he loses his opposite number, the Canaanite general Sisera, then arrives too late to see him off and forfeits the credit to a woman who dispatches Sisera with a gruesomeness rivaling Ehud’s (Judg 4).

Then there is Gideon (Judg 6–8). “Yhwh is with you, mighty warrior,” declares Yhwh’s aide (Judg 6:12). Gideon first questions the supernatural reassurance, or sidesteps it by raising (reasonable enough) questions about whether Yhwh is really with Israel. The aide reformulates the ironic compliment, “go in this strength of yours and deliver Israel from the power of Midian,” but at the time Gideon is so scared he is beating out wheat in a winepress, which suggests that he is no hero but just an ordinary guy, and his Moses-like argument is not empty modesty (Judg 6:11–14). His insistence on a sign or three—to which Yhwh graciously adds a fourth—points in the same direction. When Yhwh bids him demolish the Baal altar in his village, he notes that the time of day is not specified, so in his fear acts under cover of darkness, but he is not clever enough to remain undetected and escapes only because his father speaks up for him. In due course he wins a fine victory with the aid of some trumpets, jars, torches, a loaf of bread, the Midianites’ divinely inspired ability to kill each other and the more macho Ephraimites’ willingness to decapitate the Midianite leaders. Eventually the rebukes of the Ephraimites, the taunts of the people of Succoth and Penuel, and the reluctance of his own firstborn who takes after his father goad him into being willing to kill and destroy, and we miss the likeable, fearful Gideon of the earlier scenes.

Perhaps Gideon is also ambivalent about power. He refuses to rule over Israel; ruling, like killing, is Yhwh’s business. But he accumulates one or two of the standard marks of power, a harem of wives and thus seventy sons, an example that will be followed (Judg 10:3–4; 12:8–15). He accompanies his refusal of the commission to rule with a request that the people should give him some of the spoil from their victory, from which he makes an ephod (a gold vestment?) that becomes a “snare” to the people and leads them astray religiously (Judg 8:22–27).

Family Affairs

In the first part of Judges the victims of violence are the community as a whole or its male leaders, while the perpetrators of violence are communities as a whole or some individuals—both male and female (Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Sisera, Deborah, Barak, Jael, Gideon, Abimelech, the woman of Thebez). In later parts the violence becomes violence within the family, violence against brothers, daughters and wives.

Gideon’s son Abimelech marks the transition (Judg 9). He radically subordinates family to ambition in killing all his seventy brothers to remove rivals from the throne he intends to occupy. At the same time, in conspiring with the men from his mother’s city, he uses kinship as the basis for his bid for the throne. His action is perhaps made easier by the fact that all his brothers were apparently the offspring of other mothers. Further, his mother is a secondary wife (Judg 8:31), the only one described as such.[1049]  The brother who escaped the family massacre dismisses her as Gideon’s “servant” (ʾāmâ), like Hagar, forfeiting some of the regard earned by his fable (Judg 9:18). The story emphasizes the family context of the event, an intrafamily conflict between the household of Gideon and the extended family of his secondary wife. In Judges 9:1–6 the words “brothers/family members” (ʾāḥîm) and “son(s)” come four times each, along with reference to being “your bone and your flesh,” and to his mother (three times), her household and her extended family (mišpāḥâ), and to his father and his household (see further Judg 9:16–25). But they are brought into juxtaposition with the power words “masters” (bĕʿālîm) and “rule.” Abimelech’s massacre is a thoroughly family event, but manhood is more important than family. The alliance built on violence falls apart, but Abimelech survives a conspiracy to kill him and takes terrible vengeance on Shechem. Then for some reason he attacks Thebez, where a woman throws a millstone down and hits him fatally on the head. His last protection of his manliness is to get his armor-bearer to kill him before he dies anyway, so no one can say he died at a woman’s hand. But we are saying it, nevertheless, as does 2 Samuel 11:21. Twice the story assures us that the wrong done to Abimelech’s brothers rebounds on the wrongdoers.[1050]

Violence and sex come together powerfully in Samson’s story, along with a stupidity that contrasts with his cleverness (Judg 14:12–18). When Yhwh’s aide appears to his mother and then his father, his father is even less insightful than his mother in dealing with the experience, though both manifest more piety than their son will show (Judg 13:22–23). The birth of a son to Manoah and his wife recalls the stories of Abraham and Sarah or Isaac and Rebekah and their sons, but it leads into a story that looks more like a parody of such stories. Indeed, “we seem everywhere to be asked to read Judges as a parody of Genesis and Exodus”[1051] —though in Genesis arguably the resultant stories of Ishmael and Isaac and of Esau and Jacob with their aftermath make those parodies of themselves. The stories of the wife at Timnah, the prostitute at Gaza, and the love of his life, Delilah, show Samson also as a man for whom the opposite sex is his downfall. Never mind if the girl he fancies is a Philistine or a whore. Other people’s cleverness can therefore turn his cleverness into stupidity and he cannot learn from his experiences. He fancies a woman (she does nothing to beguile him), and out of loyalty to her community she entices him into telling her a secret that will merely cost him a bet. Then he falls for another woman and she accepts a bribe to entice him into telling her a secret that will cost him his life. His capacity for violence several times enables him to escape the consequences of his stupidity, but eventually his luck runs out. But he kills more people in dying than he had killed in living.

Judges closes with the story of a brutalized and brutalizing Levite.[1052]  In the English Bible it is a relief to turn over the page and find the story of Boaz, who behaves toward Ruth with uncalculated chivalry and honor. When Ruth went to glean, “her chance happened upon the portion of land belonging to Boaz,” a relative of her father-in-law (Ruth 2:3). Chance is an important word in Ecclesiastes, but there it refers to the random way death comes to us. The Philistine priests likewise allow for the possibility that epidemic results from Yhwh’s action or just from chance (1 Sam 6:9). Otherwise, statements about chance making a decisive difference to human life are hard to parallel in the First Testament. But by chance Ruth comes across a man of grace (ḥēn), someone who comforts (nāḥam piel), a family member prepared to be a restorer (gōʾēl), and a man who does not even take advantage of a woman he finds lying next to him in the hay in the middle of the night. Elkanah (1 Sam 1) is also a man of honor, though not very insightful in the way he relates to his wife in her pain. He and Boaz contrast with Eli’s dishonorable sons who make their work the means of their abuse of ordinary people and the context of their sexual indulgence (1 Sam 2:12–25). They are “the sons of bĕliyyaʿal,” utterly worthless people who “did not acknowledge Yhwh” (1 Sam 2:12).[1053]  Hannah had thought Eli saw her as a daughter of bĕliyyaʿal (1 Sam 1:16). It would be a devastating indictment, for the original sons of bĕliyyaʿal were the men of Gibeah, just down the road (Judg 19:22; 20:13), and future sons of bĕliyyaʿal will be people such as Nabal, the accusers of Naboth, and the opponents of anointed kings such as Saul and David.

Politics and Sex

In these stories, politics and sex interweave, as they often do. “Politics and sexuality, in a macho society, represent twin possibilities for domination.”[1054]  This is especially so in the story of David, who manifests a deep ambiguity running through all his life and achievements. We learn both more and less about him than we do about any other First Testament character. We learn much about his actions and words, but often do not know what to infer from these. We know Yhwh has looked inside him (1 Sam 16:7), but we are not told what Yhwh saw. When David is first commended to Saul, he is characterized as a skilled musician, a brave fighter and a warrior, insightful in speech and handsome—and Yhwh is with him, which implies he is successful (1 Sam 16:18). Perhaps Yhwh also saw that for all his faults he would stay committed to Yhwh rather than following other gods. His skill at music is the reason for introducing him to Saul, but the other qualities might have been a warning to Saul rather than an encouragement to make him part of the court. They are the characteristics desired of a king. Saul had the looks by nature, had the military skill by Yhwh’s gift, and once had Yhwh with him, but Yhwh’s spirit has left him now (1 Sam 16:14).

David’s bravery, trust in Yhwh, way with words, fighting skill and conviction that Yhwh is with him all emerge in his victory over Goliath. He speaks words of courage and faith, and his actions match them. All these characteristics may have contributed to his winning the undying allegiance of Saul’s son, Jonathan, who arguably has more of the qualities of kingship than either Saul or David. Not surprisingly, David also wins the adoration of the Israelite women (1 Sam 18:6). And Saul knows he is a rival for the throne. Eventually David is driven to flee and become a refugee and an outlaw, and driven into strange alliances and compromises. Perhaps part of the story’s motivation is to defend him from the charge of treachery. Certainly he never answers Saul in kind.

He responds appropriately when Saul offers him his daughters in marriage (1 Sam 18:18, 23). He inveigles Ahimelech into providing him with (sacred) food and weaponry when he is on the run (1 Sam 21:1–9 [[1055]  2–10]). He accepts responsibility for the slaughter at Nob (1 Sam 22:22). He makes a point of consulting Yhwh about campaigns (e.g., 1 Sam 23:1–5). He says the right thing about respect for Yhwh’s anointed (1 Sam 24; 26). He inveigles people such as Achish into treating him as friend when he is actually still a foe (1 Sam 27; 29). He puts in their place troops who want to penalize those who were too exhausted to follow him in pursuit of the Amalekites (1 Sam 30:22–25). He manifests the signs of deep grief at the death of Saul and Jonathan and composes a moving lament (2 Sam 1). He describes father and son as loved and dear (nāʿîm, 2 Sam 1:23). He speaks shrewdly and straightly to the people of Jabesh in Gilead who were so committed to Saul (2 Sam 2:4–7). He is scrupulously honorable in his dealings with Saul’s potential successors, his commander-in-chief Abner and Saul’s sons Ish-baal (Ish-bosheth) and Meri-baal (Mephibosheth) (2 Sam 3–4). He is receptive, submissive and self-effacing in responding to Yhwh’s rebuke and promise about the idea of building a house (2 Sam 7). With Uriah he loses his touch to influence events or to influence Yhwh, and he is hopeless with his children. Only with his flight from Jerusalem does the gift of words return, in the way he speaks to or of Ittai, Zadok, Ahithophel, Hushai, Ziba, Shimei and Abishai. They are words that lay the foundation in events and with Yhwh for a return to Jerusalem. Absalom’s death means he loses his touch again for a moment, but then he knows how to get himself welcomed back to Jerusalem (2 Sam 19:11–15).

Feelings

We are told much of the feelings and commitment of the people around David. There is much talk of ʾahăbâ in his story, but much ambiguity about it. It is the attitude of Saul to David, and that of Saul’s daughter Michal, and indeed of all Israel and Judah (1 Sam 16:21; 18:16, 20). Does it denote liking or commitment or love? It is the attitude of Saul’s son Jonathan, who also gets deeply attached to David and is very fond of him (qāšar niphal, ḥāpēṣ; 1 Sam 18:1; 19:1). Other feelings for David surface elsewhere in the story. Saul gets angry about him, is afraid of him and hopes for his death (e.g., 1 Sam 18:8, 12, 17). Saul and Jonathan get angry with each other over David, and Jonathan grieves over this (e.g., 1 Sam 20:30, 34). Achish trusts David (1 Sam 27:12).

We know much less of David’s own feelings and commitments. He likes the idea of being the king’s son-in-law (1 Sam 18:26). He agrees to enter into a covenant with Jonathan (1 Sam 18:3; 20:8). He and Jonathan hug and cry, and David cries more (1 Sam 20:41).[1056]  He is very fearful of the king of Gath (1 Sam 21:12 [MT 13]).[1057]  He reproaches himself for harming even Saul’s clothes (1 Sam 24:5). Later he makes merry as the covenant chest ascends toward Jerusalem, then gets angry at Yhwh’s hitting Uzzah and gets afraid of Yhwh (2 Sam 6). On hearing of Absalom’s death, “the king shook. He went up to the room above the gate and wept” and wished he had died instead (2 Sam 18:33 [MT 19:1]).

Does David ever love? Does love matter to David? When David wants Michal back, it is as Saul’s daughter and as someone for whom he killed a hundred Philistines, not because he loves her—as her new husband apparently did—or she him (2 Sam 3:13–16). What about Jonathan? “Jonathan … adjured David, by/in his love for/commitment to him, because he loved/was committed to him as a person like himself” (1 Sam 20:17). When Jonathan talks about ʾahăbâ, is he referring to an emotional attachment or a committed loyalty? And whose ʾahăbâ is he referring to? It would make sense if Jonathan refers to David’s ʾahăbâ for him, but we have not been told of David’s having such ʾahăbâ, whereas exactly these terms have been used of Jonathan’s attitude to David. More likely, then, Jonathan refers to his own ʾahăbâ for David—as [1058]  makes more explicit by reading “Jonathan swore to David.” Jonathan doubtless believed David liked/cared for/was committed to him, but perhaps neither the narrator nor David himself knew whether this was so.

On Jonathan’s death, David declares:

I am distressed because of you, my brother Jonathan,

You were so dear to me [nāʿam]. Your ʾahăbâ for me was wonderful,

More than the ʾahăbâ of women. (2 Sam 1:26)

Did David appreciate Jonathan’s affection or his commitment? The ambiguity is a symbol of the ambiguity of the overall portrait and of the relationship between the two men. There is one occasion when David is definitely the subject of the verb ʾāhēb (2 Sam 19:6 [MT 7]), and even this occurrence doubly proves the rule. The words are “You love/are committed to those who hate/attack you and you hate/attack those who love/are committed to you,” and the words are Joab’s, not David’s or the narrator’s or God’s.

Consequences

The one-afternoon stand with Bathsheba is the great turning point in David’s story, but we still discover nothing of his feelings. Presumably he fancied Bathsheba, but we are not actually told this, and certainly not told he ever loved her.[1059]  It is the first stupid act in his life. Before that he had never put a foot wrong. Many wicked deeds have benefited him, but he has never been implicated in them. He has been Mr. Clean. Now a moment of indulgence leads to a murder. How monumental is the move between 2 Samuel 7 and 2 Samuel 11! While there are people who know, most do not, but the decisive consideration is that “the thing David had done was bad in Yhwh’s eyes” (2 Sam 11:27). As we have learned nothing of David’s feelings and little of his inner working so far in his story, so we have learned little of Yhwh’s attitude toward David. We know Yhwh saw inside him, chose him, spoke to him and delivered him: but what actually did Yhwh make of him? Now for the first time we know.

Trapped by Yhwh and Nathan into condemning himself for his deed, momentarily we discover what David feels—anger at a deed that turns out to be his own (2 Sam 12:5). “I have failed Yhwh,” he grants (2 Sam 12:13). Yes, David, but what is your attitude to that? Ambiguity soon returns. His son is ill. He prays and fasts. His son dies and he returns to normal life.[1060]  He comforts Bathsheba and sleeps with her again, and she bears another son, and “Yhwh loved/made a commitment to him and he was called Yedidiah,” which means “adored by Yhwh” (2 Sam 12:24–25). The name is reminiscent of David’s own. Perhaps it implies that his parents adored him, but they also projected their adoration onto Yhwh or hoped for it as Yhwh’s attitude to the child born to the man after Yhwh’s heart.[1061]

Taking up Patrick Moynihan’s words after J. F. Kennedy’s death, Walter Brueggemann comments that “David and his company will laugh again, but they will never be young again.”[1062]  I am not sure they even laugh again. In the short term, David is to pay a price in the two areas where he has offended. The sword with which he has struck Uriah will never leave his own house, and neither will the sexual sin he has committed (1 Sam 12:9–12). When he owns his sin, Yhwh makes it go away (ʿābar hiphil; 1 Sam 12:13), and David does not die for his murder. But the rest of the story shows that this does not cancel out the punishment or the effects of his sin. While David will not die, the son born to Bathsheba will die. It is a prospect unmentioned before and apparently thought up only as a consequence of David’s confession and the commuting of his punishment, as if the death penalty due to the father falls on the son.

The Price the Family Pays

In the medium term, David’s deed exacts a terrible price elsewhere in the family. Another of David’s sons falls in love with one of David’s daughters, probably a half-sister (2 Sam 13:1). Other people can see Amnon is smitten, but David cannot or will not, and unwittingly aids Amnon in implementing a plan formulated by one of David’s brothers for Amnon to proposition and then rape Tamar. Then, perhaps in a reverse movement to Shechem’s (Gen 34:1–4), after the rape Amnon’s love turns to rejection (2 Sam 13:15). David is angry, but does nothing. It seems that he never hurt any of his sons by asking “Why did you act like that?” (1 Kings 1:6). So eventually Absalom kills his brother Amnon and runs for his life (2 Sam 13:20–38). If “under the surface of this tale of incestuous rape is a deeper Freudian theme of sibling rivalry, an enmity that rests on the child’s assumption that paternal love is scarce,”[1063]  does this indicate that David no more loved any of his sons than corrected them?

But David mourns Amnon and lets Absalom stay in exile, then lets him return to Jerusalem on condition that he stays away from David. When later David receives him fully back, Absalom, like his father, wins the hearts of the people, and eventually gets himself proclaimed king in Hebron. At last David takes decisive action—by fleeing, leaving behind the secondary wives who he has been told are to be the means of his punishment (2 Sam 12:11; 15:16; 16:21–22). He deserves to lose his throne, but Yhwh still favors him and arranges things so that he has time to regroup rather than that Absalom should press home his advantage (2 Sam 17:14). When David’s own forces defeat the army loyal to Absalom and kill Absalom himself, David is so distraught over his son’s death that he again risks the disaffection of his troops and has to be shaken into a reaction that takes more account of the balance between family and political concerns (2 Sam 19:5–8 [MT 6–9]).

David’s story continues to fall apart. There is a long famine and the sacrifice of seven descendants of Saul, an act worthy of Jephthah or Saul, renewed battles with the Philistines and even another need to kill Goliath, and a somewhat inappropriate recollection of his life (2 Sam 21–22). There is another experience of Yhwh’s anger that makes Yhwh give David the idea of taking a census and makes him fail to yield to the contrary but wise advice of Joab (of all people), so that he eventually bring a disaster on his people (2 Sam 24).

And there are the pathetic scenes from his old age (1 Kings 1–2). David cannot get warm and needs a girl to warm him up. His oldest surviving son, one he had certainly let do as he liked, makes a bid for the throne that sets going an alternative plot on the part of people such as Nathan and Bathsheba. They succeed in manipulating David into designating Solomon, with the implication that he had done nothing previously about the crucial question of succession. With some irony, on his deathbed David urges Solomon to live by Moses’ Teaching and offers him some tips about disposing of Joab and Shimei that deconstruct the gentle stance he earlier took to enemies. Because Solomon knows how to apply that wisdom to Adonijah, too, David’s sons are still dying violently even after his death.

David’s story comprises the most realistic and poignant family story in the First Testament. Not only does it take up the family focus of Genesis, with its tales of childlessness, rebellion, conflict and forbidden sexual relationships, but its realism takes this much further in its portrayal of the inexorable way people’s private actions have their outworking in the life of the family—and in the life of the state. If “the myth of masculinity inscribed in the David story … reflects the cultural norms of men of the author’s time,”[1064]  the story also does much to subvert that construction of masculinity. It has the potential to cause some discomfort to men whose culture constructs masculinity in ways that overlap even if they are not identical.

8.8 Being Women

The story from Joshua to Solomon offers a series of portraits of women living in a man’s world—and sometimes dying there.

Within the Stereotypes, Pushing the Boundaries

The first woman in Judges is Caleb’s daughter Achsah, whom Caleb promises to the man who will conquer Kiriath-sepher or Debir. This turns out to be Achsah’s uncle, Othniel. Achsah is a feisty woman who challenges her father to give her land with a water supply if she must go and live in the Negeb (Judg 1:12–15). She is one of the few women in Judges to be named, though this is counterbalanced by her being treated as the property of one man, to be given as a bribe to another and perhaps also by the meaning of that name: “bangle.” She is “a toy given to the bravest man around.”[1065]  But she shows herself to be more and to know how to use her position as wife and as daughter. She is the first of a sequence of women in Judges whose stories do not serve the stories of men as do the women’s stories in Genesis, Exodus and Ruth.[1066]  The second woman is Deborah, who also declines to be bound by gender expectations (Judg 4–5). She is a prophet as well as a šōpēṭ in both senses: she makes decisions for Israelites who seek her judgment, and she acts as a leader in devising a plan for the people’s deliverance from oppression and functioning as commander in chief when Barak will not accept final responsibility for the battle. The third is Jael, who joins with Deborah in taking the glory that Barak forfeits. She does not wait for Barak to arrive before using her womanly wiles and her womanly equipment, the tent peg she hammers through Sisera’s skull. The fourth is Sisera’s mother. She vainly awaits her son’s return from battle and is vainly encouraged by her ladies-in-waiting: his delay is caused by the quantity of spoil that he needs to count—a girl or two for every man and some fabric and embroidery for the girls at home (Judg 5:28–30). There is no doubt that they have assimilated the macho ideal. So that was how “God subjected Jabin, king of Canaan” (Judg 4:23), through the insight and wiles of women who are leaders in their own right but who also know how to act like men when the men lack the will or the energy.

Women appear in similar positions in Gideon’s story. His accumulation of wives is a mark of his status. Their seventy sons clearly count for something; presumably they had daughters, but they do not appear (Judg 8:30). A woman sees to the death of Gideon’s son Abimelech by means of a deed that makes her a sister of Jael (Judg 9:53–54). Yes, the women in Judges can match the men in violence, as well as in feistiness. But as the story in Judges further unfolds, and as manhood unravels, that has devastating consequences for women. The destiny of women embodies that of the society as a whole, in a chillingly literal sense, and violence against women becomes “an extended hyperbole symbolic of the disintegrating social order.”[1067]

When a cruel chance makes his daughter the first person to greet Jephthah after his victory over the Ammonites, he also then terribly blames her for the terrible thing he has done to her and to himself. “Oh, my daughter, you have cast me down to the ground” as Jael cast down Sisera (kāraʿ, Judg 11:35; 5:27). “You have become my destroyer” as Achan was to Israel, and as Ahab will be (ʿākar, Judg 11:35; Josh 6:18; 7:25; 1 Kings 18:18). And she accepts his entire framework for looking at the situation: the propriety of the vow, the impossibility of escaping it and even the appropriateness of her death as a thank offering for Yhwh’s punishing Jephthah’s enemies (Judg 11:36). Jephthah’s daughter does not protest or decline to walk to her death, and neither does her community intervene for her as Jonathan’s will. She simply asks for a chance to think and grieve with her friends. Thus she spends her last two months, and we wonder how her father spends that time, and why her mother has no part in this story, and what God is doing. For her story is not like Isaac’s, but like other human stories of mistaken religious zeal and parental abuse in which God does not intervene, and we wonder how God can resist the temptation to do so, because we ourselves want to do that each time we read the story. And if we were in a position to stop Jephthah by sending the aide who stopped Abraham, we would do so. But Abraham and Isaac had a particular part to play in God’s drama. Jephthah’s daughter does not, or if she has, it is a more negative one, like Pharaoh’s. Is she subordinate to Yhwh’s purpose, like Isaac and Saul to their loss, and Jacob, Samson and David to their gain? She pays a terrible price to demonstrate to us how people were doing what was right in their own eyes.

Mother, Wife, Whore, Lover

Four women revolve around Samson narratively: the mother, the wife, the whore and the love of his life. Like Jephthah’s unnamed daughter, Manoah’s unnamed wife lives her life in the shadow of the man who is her overlord. Manoah’s wife, though, is the person with insight in this story. When Yhwh’s aide appears to her, she rushes to tell her husband and leaves it to him to ask Yhwh for more help with the task to which they have been commissioned. Once more the aide appears to his wife, and once more she rushes to fetch Manoah so he can ask the questions. Perhaps she is hesitant about getting drawn into a conversation with a strange man, though she seems nearer than her husband to realizing that this figure is Yhwh’s aide (Judg 13:6, 16). At the end of this opening scene she certainly shows more theological and common sense than her husband: when he thinks they are done for because they have seen God, she points out that God would hardly be going to all this trouble in order then to kill them (Judg 13:21–23). Manoah in his obtuseness compares with Sarah in her skepticism. Evidently neither sex has a monopoly on insight or folly when it comes to entertaining divine aides with implausible promises of offspring.

The unnamed girl Samson wants to marry is likewise destined to pass from the lordship of one man to another: “Get her for me as wife.… Get a wife.… Get her for me”; she is Yhwh’s victim too (Judg 14:2–4). At his bachelor party he engages in a bet and the other men lean on her to enable them to win: “Coax your husband to tell us the riddle or we will set fire to you and your father’s household” (Judg 14:15). So she does, loses her husband when he walks out on her in fury and gets given to one of the other men. We do not know whether she minds. We do know that when he discovers, he takes revenge that eventually costs her life, along with her father and maybe his household (manuscripts vary). Family then disappears for the rest of Samson’s story, until the coda when his relatives come to collect his body and put him to rest with his father (Judg 16:31). The story does not tell us whether Delilah was an Israelite or a Philistine, but either way she is the victim of the Philistines who is in a position to make Samson her victim. “The story of Samson and Delilah is … a story about power,”[1068]  a classic account of the way political powers can use a woman to bring about the downfall of a man who loves her. It invites us to note how male power can take advantage of women and how male stupidity can make oneself the victim of them.

Men stereotypically see women as sexually dangerous and unstable. A standard way of referring to Israel’s honoring gods other than Yhwh involves speaking of Israel as being promiscuous (zānâ). The verb refers in general to sexual activity outside marriage, whether undertaken by men or women, but translations often render this verb “prostituting themselves” (e.g., Judg 2:17; 8:27, 33), which fits with the usage of the noun zōnâ to refer to a female prostitute (so presumably Judg 11:1; 16:1). Readers might infer that zĕnût is a characteristically female activity, and most English translations imply this inference (contrast [1069]  “go astray”) and thus affirm such a male perception of women. The suspicion that the translations of Judges are affected by sexism is heightened by the fact that when the verb explicitly applies to men in Numbers 25:1, it is rendered “indulge in sexual immorality” ([1070] ) or “have sexual relations” ([1071] —an undertranslation, indeed).

Offered for Gang Rape and Killed

In the last appalling story in Judges, a woman from Bethlehem becomes a secondary wife to a Levite living in Ephraim. For reasons we are not told, she leaves him and returns to her father’s household. After a while he comes to persuade her to return to him. The men spend several days drinking and then the Levite, his wife and their servant set off home to Ephraim. At Gibeah in Benjamin an old man offers them hospitality, but the men of Gibeah want to have sex with the Levite. The old man offers them his own young daughter and the Levite’s wife instead, but they refuse, whereupon the Levite pushes out his wife. She spends the night being raped and abused. Rape, of course, “is not so much a sexual crime as it is a means of physical, mental, and spiritual domination.”[1072]  Near dawn she collapses at the door of the house where her husband was. “Husband” is now not the usual ʾîš, “her man” (Judg 19:3), but ʾādōn, her “lord” (Judg 19:26)—indeed he is treating her as property. He gets up to resume the journey and finds her outside the door. (What has he been doing all night? What are his thoughts about her now? Has he simply written her off?)

“He said to her, ‘Get up. Let’s go,’ but there was no answer. So he put her on the donkey. Then the man set off and went to his home” (Judg 19:28). The LXX makes explicit that she was dead, though MT might imply that she dies through her husband’s subsequent callous treatment, or even that she is still alive when he subsequently dismembers her body and sends her round the whole territory of Israel as an implicit summons to punitive action against Gibeah. So “she is raped (almost?) to death by a horde of Gibeah men, after which her husband reduces her to the status of a mere sign, or symbol.”[1073]  The entire people agrees that “nothing like this has happened or been seen from the day the Israelites came up from the country of Egypt until this day” (Judg 19:30)—which might be a relief. But what is “this”? The woman’s surrender to the men of Gibeah? Their treatment of her? Her husband’s subsequent treatment of her? Or his dismemberment of her? His subsequent account of what happened is a rather sanitized version: “The citizens of Gibeah … meant to murder me and they raped my wife and she died” (Judg 20:5). The men of Gibeah no doubt deserve to have an Israelite revenge force called out against them, but the Levite’s account of what happened has encouraged it to cast the blame too unequivocally. He is right that “they have committed an act of willful depravity” (zimmâ ûnĕbālâ, Judg 20:6), but he is implicated.

In due course, out of pity for their brother Benjamin and to enable the clan to increase again, the Israelites slaughter all the inhabitants of Jabesh in Gilead, except for its four hundred virgins, who are taken off to provide wives for the Benjaminites (Judg 21:6, 12)—and we know how they treat women. They also encourage these same Benjaminites to get further wives by kidnapping girls from Shiloh who are unwise enough to take part in a dance at the annual Yhwh festival, which solves the problem of how Benjamin can be preserved without the Israelites going back on a vow not to give the Benjaminites their daughters as wives (vows again) (Judg 21). So the story ends as it almost began, with rape, perhaps less horrific in its individual nature (but perhaps not), but more horrific in its involving six hundred women.[1074]  “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone would do what was right I their own eyes” (Judg 21:25). Or is it “Every man would do what was right in his own eyes”?

Yhwh does not intervene on behalf of the Levite’s wife any more than on behalf of Jephthah’s daughter. Subsequently Yhwh indeed “routed Benjamin before Israel” (Judg 20:35), but that led to the death of many more men, women and children and the kidnapping of women from Shiloh as wives for the surviving Benjaminites, making Israel as a whole hardly morally superior to the men of Gibeah. “The story of the brutal assault of the Levite and his concubine” is “a story of meaningless suffering. God neither ordains their brutalization nor does it serve any higher purpose. The cruelty of the text shocks and forces the reader to confront the absurd destructiveness of violence.”[1075]  The violence is not only that of men on a woman; indeed, at the beginning it is ethnically based rather than gender based, and the male Levite is the victim of the Benjaminites’ dehumanization as his wife is of their assault. The torment through which both are taken “does not lead to divine blessing or transformation but to retribution, more death, rape and abduction.” By acknowledging this, “one keeps the chilling voices of individual sufferers alive and raw.” Rather than seeking to “explain” their suffering or make sense of it, “their betrayal and senseless anguish compels us to engage in protest, lamentation, and mourning.”[1076]

Women’s Love in a Men’s World

The introduction to Ruth invites us to read it in association with Judges, which it follows in the Greek Bible. The story of Naomi, Ruth and Boaz offers a restorative counterpoint to that deeply discouraging narrative. Admittedly it takes its time over doing so. It begins with another discouraging story, of another woman from Bethlehem whose marriage takes her on a long journey to terrible loss. It is a tale of famine, displacement and exile—in Moab. Naomi has no alternative but to follow her husband there, and the story becomes one of bereavement and intermarriage (cf. Judg 10:6!). To think that these Judahite boys are marrying girls descended from Lot’s daughter (Gen 19:30–37) and from the women who beguiled Israelite men when they were making the journey in the opposite direction (Num 25), people who were therefore never to be admitted to Yhwh’s congregation (Deut 23:2–6). Then there is more bereavement: have the young men paid the price for their wickedness, like the men in Numbers 25? Naomi is left on her own, having lost her husband and the sons who would then have the responsibility for her. “Yhwh’s hand reached out against me,” she will later say. “Shaddai has dealt bitterly with me.… Yhwh has brought me back empty.… Yhwh has afflicted me. Shaddai has brought calamity upon me” (Ruth 1:13, 20–21).

But Yhwh is “the God who extends mercy to the bitter”[1077]  and the famine in Judah is over. “Yhwh had attended to his people and given them food” (Ruth 1:6). We do not know what Yhwh was doing in that earlier part of the story—whether the famine was an act of chastisement or the move an act of unfaith or whether the intermarriage met with Yhwh’s disapproval or the deaths were an act of punishment. We know what Naomi makes of one aspect of these events, but we do not know whether she is right. The story’s silence portrays people without knowing the answers to such questions, as Job never knows why his affliction came to him. In this respect the story contrasts with the ones in Judges. What the nonomniscient narrator does reckon to know is that the end of the famine means that Yhwh has attended to Israel (pāqad). Sometimes it is possible to know what Yhwh is doing; sometimes not.

So the three bereaved women set off for Judah, but Naomi bids her daughters-in-law return to their mothers’ households and find new lives with new husbands. Naomi believes Yhwh can show commitment to her daughters-in-law (in Moab!) and enable them to find security there (mĕnûḥâ; cf. the “secure waters” of Ps 23:2)—security like that which Israel found in its own promised land (e.g., Josh 22:4; 23:1) but which it could imperil (Ps 95:11). She presupposes they will do that in the house of a husband. Orpah agrees to stay in Moab, but Ruth will not be put off from staying with Naomi, her people and her God. In effect the two of them form a new household, but it is a vulnerable one, and Naomi continues to assume she needs eventually to marry Ruth off (Ruth 3:1–2).

Fortunately Ruth gets involved with a rich, honorable and generous relative of Naomi’s, and Naomi recognizes that Yhwh’s commitment may still be operative in Judah as well as in Moab (Ruth 2:20). She also recognizes Boaz as the potential key to Ruth’s security. Boaz’s own instinct on meeting Ruth is to ask which man she belongs to (Ruth 2:5), and he reminds her that a single woman needs to be careful, especially when the drink flows as it does at harvest (Ruth 2:8–23). Like the woman in the Song of Songs, she can take the initiative in the relationship but has to be wary of what other people may think (Ruth 3:2–14). She throws herself at Boaz’s feet as their near relative who is morally obliged to use his position to restore them to their place in the community—their gōʾēl. The gōʾēl custom reinforces the family’s position as a safeguard for the needy and vulnerable. There is nothing wrong with being a wealthy man, as Boaz is (Ruth 2:1), if you are prepared to use your wealth for the benefit of such people—as the nearer gōʾēl is not (Ruth 4:6)?

Boaz makes that act of commitment. Having disposed of the other potential gōʾēl, he takes on obligations to Elimelech and his sons, including their land and their name—and their womenfolk. So in the end Ruth comes to him as an appendage to a piece of land belonging to a dead man, bought in order to perpetuate his name (Ruth 4:1–10). She finds her fulfillment in becoming a wife and a mother—of a son, the ancestor of a great male monarch. Naomi, Ruth and Boaz have brought Ruth and Boaz together, but it is Yhwh who causes her to conceive (Ruth 4:13). And her child is David’s grandfather. Ruth has made a commitment like Abraham’s (Ruth 2:11; cf. Gen 12:1) and she too is blessed and sees kings come forth from her. The story turns out to contribute to the patriarchal agenda, but its closing scenes hardly rob the opening scenes of their significance.[1078]  The story still expresses male awe at female bonding and a reassurance that such bonding need not hinder the continuation of the line.[1079]

Women Relating to God

In the Hebrew Bible, after Judges 19–21 the next scene also involves an Ephraimite family and takes place at the annual festival for Yhwh at Shiloh (1 Sam 1). Elkanah has two wives, one who cannot have children, one who can—perhaps that is the reason for the second marriage. If a woman cannot have children, she cannot be a help to her husband by bringing children into the world to share in the work on the farm, look after the parents as they grow older and carry on the family business. But two wives is often a recipe for conflict, whether both can have children or only one can. Elkanah does his best to console Hannah, though perhaps not very insightfully.

Bitter like Naomi, she nevertheless entreats Yhwh and weeps and vows that if Yhwh will look at her affliction and think about her rather than putting her out of mind (the words recall the exodus) and give her a son, she will give him to Yhwh and his hair will never be cut, like Samson’s. She reminds us of Manoah’s wife, except that Manoah’s wife had apparently come to terms with her childlessness (or was living in denial) and was not asking for anything. So Samson comes into being by Yhwh’s initiative and must be something of a disappointment, whereas Samuel comes into being by his mother’s initiative and lives up to his calling. And whereas Jephthah took the initiative over his vow and it brought disaster to his daughter, and Yhwh took the initiative over Samson’s vow and it fails, a mother takes the initiative over this vow and it works.

Hannah’s treatment at the hands of Eli the priest also lacks insight, but he shows himself able to get his pastoral act together and promises Yhwh’s favorable answer. In keeping with the pattern of the Psalms, the answer in the form of a promise changes her. Yhwh does think about her, she conceives, and she bears her son. Like Naomi and Ruth, Hannah works within the framework of patriarchy, androcentrism and assumptions about gender roles but also does something to subvert them.

On the other hand, Eli’s failure to bring up his sons in the right way issues, among other things, in their pressing their sexual advances on the women ministers at the Shiloh sanctuary (1 Sam 2:22). The women have only a subordinate role, which suggests that once again sex and power interweave, as often happens when pastors have affairs. Eli blames his sons for their dishonoring execution of their ministry but has to hear that as their father he bears some of the responsibility for it (1 Sam 2:22–36; 3:10–14). One of his daughters-in-law dies in childbirth there at Shiloh (1 Sam 4:19–20). In other contexts, women exercise a more significant ministry of offering spiritual guidance and insight, but only in extraordinary situations does their ministry get opportunity for expression in a way that receives any kind of affirmation (1 Sam 28; 2 Sam 14).

Women Around Kings

The introduction of the monarchy exacts a cost from the women around kings. Saul uses his daughters as marriage bait in trying to lure David to his death (1 Sam 18:17–29). The one who falls for David and does get married off to him saves his life but thereby also loses him (1 Sam 19:11–17; 25:44). On the run he acquires two other wives, including the spirited Abigail (1 Sam 25), and as king a number of secondary wives (2 Sam 20:3). We first hear of Rizpah, Saul’s secondary wife, because Ish-bosheth and Abner are having an argument about who ought to have sex with her (2 Sam 3:7–11). Similarly we next hear of Michal because David insists on having her back, because she is Saul’s daughter, before he comes to terms on the “votes” Abner can bring him (2 Sam 3:12–16). We learn that her new husband is distraught at this, but there is no mention of Michal’s feelings. Such mention does come later, when she sees David making an exhibition of himself and comes to despise him (2 Sam 6:16). “And Michal, Saul’s daughter, had no child till the day of her death” (2 Sam 6:23). What pain does that conceal—the fact that she never wanted to sleep with David, or he with her, or the fact that Yhwh also turned away from her, or the fact that life just continued to be unfair? Later we hear of the death of two of Rizpah’s sons, and five of Michal’s whom she bore to Adriel—or are they Merab’s (2 Sam 21:8–9)?—who pay the price for Saul’s violence and/or the Gibeonites’ sense of offense and/or David’s toughness and/or Yhwh’s severity. The Gibeonites leave their bodies hanging through the late summer weeks, but Rizpah determines to keep vigil, Antigone-like, so that birds or animals cannot attack them, which eventually shames David into giving proper burial to their remains and to the remains of Saul and Jonathan, all together in the family tomb in Benjamin. And then God heeds supplications for the land (2 Sam 21:10–14).

After his fracas with Michal, the next reference to David and a woman is the account of his taking Bathsheba. David moves seamlessly from one woman to another, and as the victim of the king’s desire, Bathsheba moves seamlessly from possession by one man to possession by another. David’s daughter Tamar is the victim of one of his son’s instincts, which are too like the father’s. She too is beautiful, but that seems to be her only sin. We learn more of her perspective on her experience than we do of Bathsheba’s. There is nothing to suggest that her conduct offers Amnon any excuse for his action, and she protests his advances. “ ‘No, my brother, don’t force me. That kind of thing is not done in Israel. Don’t do such villainy. I—where will I take my shame? And you—you will become like one of the scoundrels in Israel. Now, do speak to the king, because he will not withhold me from you.’ But he would not listen to her. He was stronger than her and forced her to sleep with him” (2 Sam 13:12–14). Amnon then throws Tamar out. “Tamar put dirt on her head and ripped the decorated tunic that she had on and put her hand on her head and went, crying out as she went” (2 Sam 13:19). Her brother Absalom urges her to quiet down and try not to think about it, “but Tamar lived desolate in her brother Absalom’s house” (2 Sam 13:20). Perhaps that made it impossible for Absalom to heed his own advice, and eventually he takes action on her behalf. But Tamar disappears from the story, because it really concerns the men.

Near the end of David’s story another girl is allowed a cameo appearance on the basis of her good looks (1 Kings 1:1–4), and even nearer the end Bathsheba takes an initiative. Amnon and Absalom are both dead, and she wants to see that David’s successor is Solomon rather than Adonijah. “You yourself swore to your maidservant by Yhwh your God, ‘Solomon your son will reign after me’ ” (1 Kings 1:17). Had he so sworn? We have not been told so. “My life and Solomon’s will be in danger if Adonijah becomes king” (1 Kings 1:21). Would they be? It is a fair inference: Adonijah’s life certainly comes to be when the shoe moves to the other foot and he makes an unwise move. It is Bathsheba who sends him to his death: does she do so unwittingly or knowingly?

Is there any hope for women in the context of a patriarchal society like Israel’s? Judges 11–21 might seem to have closed the book on that question. Violence-mongers such as Deborah, Sisera’s mother, Jael and Abimelech’s killer might seem to be the dominant role models, though Susan Ackerman notes how Deborah, Jael, Jephthah’s daughter, Manoah’s wife and Micah’s mother are all assumed to play roles in the community’s religion and worship.[1080]  Naomi and Ruth would have more to talk about with Samson’s mother and his lover. They are women who know how to get around in a man’s world. In traditional societies, women may be confined to the roles of seeing that the family gets fed, educating the children, and caring for the sick, the dying and the dead.[1081]  One wonders whether most of the women in this segment of Israel’s story might have welcomed the chance to fulfill those roles.

8.9 Yhwh’s Acting

The stories manifest further variety in the way Yhwh’s activity interacts with human experiences and decision making, comparable to the variety we have seen at earlier stages.[1082]  They thus again open up possibilities for our thinking about how Yhwh acts and why Yhwh acts, about the relationship between God’s acts and human acts or “natural” causation, about the distinction between events that are especially significant and the general run of events, and about the moral implications of Yhwh’s involvement in human acts.

When the Prominence Lies with the Human Act

1. People do things or things happen without Yhwh being involved. So it is with Shamgar’s act of deliverance (Judg 3:31). Admittedly the very fact that it is called an act of deliverance suggests that what he does contributes to Yhwh’s agenda, but the point is quite understated. Initially the bare statement “Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children” (1 Sam 1:2) offers no indication of Yhwh’s involvement. Shortly the narrative emphatically attributes Hannah’s infertility to Yhwh (1 Sam 1:5–6), but it makes no comment on Yhwh’s involvement with Peninnah. The bare statement is characteristic of negative events such as Jephthah’s daughter’s death (Judg 11:39), the appalling happenings in Judges 17–21, or the famine that causes Elimelech and Naomi’s emigration. These events just happen. Yhwh is absent. Yhwh’s involvement in history does not explain everything. The comment that Michal had no children all the years that followed her fight with David (2 Sam 6:23) is particularly tantalizing in its refraining to infer that this results from Yhwh’s act. When Samson asks God to attend to him and punish the Philistines (Judg 16:28), does God respond?

2. People act and it transpires that Yhwh was behind the deed, even though it was one they undertook for their own reasons. Samson’s fancying a Philistine girl fits with Yhwh’s desire to pick a fight with the Philistines (Judg 14:4): “It was from Yhwh.” The event issued both from Samson’s desire and from Yhwh’s. The story affirms the integrity of both but puts the emphasis on the “freedom” of Samson’s deed by mentioning it first. Elsewhere in the Samson story it might seem that “everything is determined by God without the knowledge (or consent?) of those involved,”[1083]  yet not without their deciding for themselves what to do.

Subsequently Eli’s sons “did not listen to their father’s voice, because Yhwh wanted to put them to death” (1 Sam 2:25). Here the negative act has a divine level of explanation. The sons had gone too far psychologically and theologically/morally. It is not that they have gone so far as to make it impossible to get them to turn. Saul of Tarsus had surely gone too far, but he had Stephen praying for him, and God had something in mind for him. It would have required a special act of Yhwh to make them heed their father, but it is possible for people’s wrongdoing to become so reprehensible that Yhwh does not want or feel able to respond to prayers and offerings made on their behalf (cf. 1 Sam 3:14). So whether God intervenes may depend on a variety of factors. How far have people gone? Are there people pressing Yhwh to turn them round? How does their destiny fit into Yhwh’s purpose? Does punishment further that purpose, in order to put things right and demonstrate the significance of the difference between right and wrong? Or does mercy further Yhwh’s purpose, in order to express the priority of mercy and to demonstrate Yhwh’s power to transform? Always punishing would frustrate Yhwh’s purpose; so would always intervening in mercy. At this point Yhwh wants to put Eli’s sons to death to restore the imbalance caused by their wrongdoing and to demonstrate the importance of doing right.

3. People act and Yhwh make things work out in accordance with their aims. One people attacks another and Yhwh “gives” or “sells” one into the power of the other (Judg 3:10; 4:7). Both images imply the sovereignty of ownership and suggest the victim’s helplessness, while “sell” adds the suggestion of cold calculation or unexpected betrayal (Judg 2:14; 3:8; 4:2, 9). Both imply that the attacker’s initiative was intrinsic but not decisive. Circumstances of some kind make things work out the way they do. Sisera had grounds for reckoning he was safe with Jael, but he became the victim of her deception, inhospitality and violence. Yhwh had sold him to her.

4. People act and Yhwh “strengthens” them (Judg 3:12; 16:28)—used with a personal object, the verb (ḥāzaq piel) usually refers to the conveying of inner strength. Or Yhwh may take away people’s strength, demoralizing them, throwing an army into confusion and disarray (hāmam, Judg 4:15). Or Yhwh may fail to move people so that they fail to act, as was the case with Eli’s sons. Perhaps the implication is that sometimes people summon up from somewhere the instinct to turn back to Yhwh, or other people pray and make offerings for them and ask Yhwh to intervene in their lives to draw them toward flexibility rather than inflexibility and draw them to turn back to Yhwh, and Yhwh does so. But there are times when Yhwh will not. Following on Yhwh’s summons of Samuel, the Philistines trounce the Israelites in battle. The Israelites infer, “Yhwh has routed us today before the Philistines,” and ask “Why?” But before waiting for an answer, they fetch the covenant chest to the battlefield, because that will involve Yhwh, won’t it (1 Sam 4:1–4)? The Philistines work with the same theology and comment, “God has come into the camp.”[1084]  The chest’s arrival inspires the Israelites, but nowhere near as much as it inspires the Philistines, who defeat Israel again, kill Eli’s sons and capture it (1 Sam 4:5–11). The next time the Philistines attack the Israelites, there is no doubt that Yhwh gets involved and sees to the Philistines’ defeat, without the covenant chest being present. Samuel prays and offers sacrifice, and the good old pattern recurs: Yhwh thunders from the heavens and makes the Philistines panic and collapse before the Israelites, who do not need to fight, only pursue (1 Sam 7:10–11).

When Yhwh’s Initiative Is Important

5. Yhwh may act to make the “natural” thing happen, so that the “natural” outcome works out Yhwh’s intention. If the Shechemites have acted truly and honorably (beʾĕmet ûbĕtāmîm) toward Gideon and his household, says Jotham, fine, but if not, “may fire come out from Abimelech and consume the citizens of Shechem and Bet-millo” and vice versa (Judg 9:16, 19–20). After three years “God sent a bad spirit between Abimelech and the citizens of Shechem.” And they broke faith with him (bāgad), “to the end that the crime against Jerubbaal’s seventy sons might come and the bloodshed might rest on their brother Abimelech who had slain them and on the citizens of Shechem who had supported him slaying his brothers” (Judg 9:23–24). In principle there is nothing remarkable about such an event, for alliances made for the sake of violence have a habit of imploding. Events have their natural and just outworking. But talk of Yhwh’s sending a bad spirit, like talk of Yhwh’s spirit coming on someone, implies an event that one would not have predicted, one that suggests God’s initiative. An event can be the “natural” outworking of people’s acts but also reflect God’s hand. So events lead to a massacre in Shechem and the death of Abimelech, and thus “God brought back Abimelech’s bad deed,” and that of the Shechemites (Judg 9:56–57).

Solomon comments to Hiram on Yhwh’s having given him rest from every adversary, but Yhwh then got angry when Solomon was unfaithful and “raised up an adversary against Solomon, Hadad the Edomite,” and later another, Rezon (1 Kings 5:4 [[1085]  18]; 11:14, 23, 25). The word “adversary” (śāṭān) may simply denote a political or military opponent, but it more often refers to a supernatural opponent (Num 22:22, 32; 1 Chron 21:1; Job 1–2; Zech 3:1–2), so that later readers, at least, might see Hadad and Rezon as figures through whom supernatural forces were at work. If so, this makes it more striking that the events involving these adversaries are entirely explicable on the human plane, but in them Hadad is a member of the Edomite royal house who escaped a massacre of Edomites by David (1 Kings 11:15–17; cf. 2 Sam 8:13–14). David’s death gives him a chance to return home and claim his throne. The years of Israelite control of Edom are over. Israel begins to pay the price for the massacre, an ongoing enmity with Edom that will last through First Testament history. Rezon escaped another Davidic massacre in Syria (Aram) but has now become a king in Damascus and leader of Syrian enmity to Israel (1 Kings 11:14–25; cf. 2 Sam 10:15–19). While each time “Yhwh raised up an adversary against Solomon,” politically and morally these events might have been predictable, and they are entirely explicable on the human plane, and in them Judah pays the moral price for David’s violence as well as the religious price for Solomon’s unfaithfulness. The supernatural, natural and moral work together.

6. Yhwh may take an overt initiative, for example, drawing out an opponent who then initiates a battle (Judg 4:7, 12–13). Like Samson in relation to the Philistine girl, while they act for their own reasons, Yhwh’s initiative lies behind that. But the form of expression interrelates divine and human in the opposite way to that in Samson’s case. When Yhwh slaughters Israel before the Philistines (nāgap, 1 Sam 4:3), Yhwh decides on the slaughter, then the Philistines effect it. When Yhwh’s hand is against Israel to bring trouble to them (Judg 2:15), they fight battles and lose.

7. Yhwh’s spirit may come on someone to make them act in a way they apparently had not otherwise intended (Judg 3:9–10, 15). Or Yhwh may commission someone such as Deborah, Gideon or Samuel to act or speak. This does not mean they deserve to be summoned to Yhwh’s service. We do not know how the man who brought Yhwh’s message to Eli (1 Sam 2:27–36) knew what Yhwh has said, but we do know that Samuel has a very vivid experience of Yhwh’s speaking, as audible as Eli’s speaking. Yet Samuel does not even acknowledge Yhwh and cannot tell Yhwh’s voice from Eli’s (1 Sam 3:4–7). He is just a lad who fulfills practical tasks in the sanctuary, and is now to be simply a means of Yhwh’s speaking to Israel. Nor is there anything to suggest he now becomes a person of deep spirituality or openness to God. He will always be a tough, confrontational character. But he does what he is told, and “Yhwh was with him and [thus] did not let any of his words fall to the ground” (1 Sam 3:19). Yhwh tells him things, he passes them on, and Yhwh makes them happen.

When Yhwh Acts Directly

8. Yhwh may act directly. Yhwh makes Ruth conceive (Ruth 4:13). Does Yhwh not make every mother conceive? “Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children” (1 Sam 1:2). That we can understand. But “Yhwh had closed her womb” is a tougher statement, repeated as “Yhwh had closed off her womb” (1 Sam 1:5, 6 with the extra prepositional expression bĕʿad). Conversely, Hannah assumes that Yhwh could look at her affliction and think about her and not put her out of mind (1 Sam 1:11). All three verbs imply more than merely mental activity. Hannah is not asking that Yhwh should share in her suffering, but asking for the kind of thinking that issues in action, as is explicit in her following words, “that you give your servant a baby boy” (cf. 1 Sam 1:19–20; 2:21). When Eli gets his pastoral act together, he shows he makes the same assumption about Yhwh’s involvement with people: “The God of Israel will give/May the God of Israel give what you asked,” he says. “Go into peace/well-being/fullness of life” (1 Sam 1:17).[1086]  Hannah can have a new peace now (cf. 1 Sam 1:18), but shalom in the fuller sense depends on Yhwh bringing about the answer to her prayer.

When Hannah conceives, in her testimony song she generalizes from her experience and establishes motifs for the broader story that will follow:

Yhwh puts to death and brings to life. Yhwh sends down to Sheol and brings up.

Yhwh dispossesses and makes rich. He brings low—and lifts up.

He raises the poor from the dirt. He lifts the needy from the rubbish heap.

(1 Sam 2:6–8)

Perhaps Hannah implicitly confirms Naomi’s view that Yhwh brought trouble on her in the form of her bereavement (Ruth 1:20–21), though that might also reflect a sense that there was something outlandish about the loss of a husband and two sons—it requires an explanation. Perhaps at some level Yhwh is responsible for those deaths and, say, the death of Jephthah’s daughter, yet these do not have the intentionality about them expressed in the involvement of Yhwh’s spirit in driving Jephthah to do battle with the Ammonites (Judg 11:29). Likewise, perhaps Yhwh is responsible for all epidemics, but a special intentionality applies to the epidemic in 1 Samuel 5. Perhaps at some level Yhwh was responsible for those deaths (and for the death of Jephthah’s daughter), yet it did not have the intentionality that attaches to the end of the famine when Yhwh attends to his people and gives them food (Ruth 1:6). Perhaps Yhwh is responsible for all birth and infertility, but some conceptions are remarkable because they happen against the odds, or because of the significance of the baby who is born. Hannah eventually conceives because Elkanah makes love to her and Yhwh thinks about her and gives her a son—in that order (1 Sam 1:11, 19–20). Later Yhwh attends to her and she bears five more children (1 Sam 2:21).

We might be inclined to infer that fetching the covenant chest to the battle (1 Sam 4) does not stop Yhwh keeping well away, but that distinction is less natural to Yhwh and to Israel than it is to us. Subsequent events imply that Yhwh indeed arrives with the chest and submits to defeat and capture, for the Philistine god bows down before Yhwh’s chest, then mysteriously loses his head and hands, and that epidemic strikes the Philistine people. “Yhwh’s hand was heavy” on them (1 Sam 5:6; cf. 1 Sam 5:7, 9, 11; 6:3, 5; 7:13). And Yhwh is no respecter of persons. When people from Beth-shemesh look inside the chest, Yhwh hits them, making them want to have nothing to with the chest (1 Sam 6:19–7:1).

There is thus variety in the ways Yhwh is active, and also variety in the intelligibility of Yhwh’s acts. If we accept Naomi’s assessment, why does Yhwh bereave her? Is it because of what Yhwh intends to do with her and Ruth? If the story has an implicit answer, it is that there is no answer in terms of antecedent cause but there is one in terms of what Yhwh now intends to do. Why is Boaz blessed with a new wife and family? Is it because of his kindness to Ruth, or his willingness to do the right thing by Naomi and Ruth (or by Elimelech and his sons) as gōʾēl, or because of the blessing prayer upon him, or because of that thing Yhwh intends to do? And why does Yhwh cause Ruth to conceive? Is that because of Ruth’s commitment to Naomi or to Boaz, or because of the blessing prayer of the Bethlehem women upon her, or because Yhwh wants to provide David with a Moabite great-grandmother, or all of these, or what?

The story of David’s census presses the question further. “Yhwh’s anger again burnt against Israel, and he incited David against them in saying, ‘Go and count Israel and Judah’ ” (2 Sam 24:1). The “again” presumably refers back to 1 Samuel 21, but we do not know why Yhwh was angry with the people. Perhaps we are to infer that this time Israel never got to know because no one ever asked the question—partly because it got overtaken by events. Nor do we know why taking a census was wrong—we may guess that it implies inappropriate delight or trust in human resources, though it might be preliminary to a scheme to tax the people. Nor do we know how David comes to see the census was wrong. Chronicles’ version of the story begins “An adversary arose against Israel and incited David to count Israel.” Only later does Yhwh show displeasure at David’s action and attack the people (1 Chron 21:1, 7). By involving such an adversary, a member of Yhwh’s court whose actions are under Yhwh’s control but may not be Yhwh’s direct desire, Chronicles distances Yhwh slightly from what happens to David.[1087]  Is Yhwh angry with Israel, and does Yhwh incite David to undertake the census, and are Yhwh’s actions intelligible? Yes, and no. Maurice Wiles sees progress in Chronicles’ distancing itself from the idea that Yhwh instigated an act that was sinful, though not in its having recourse to the figure of the adversary in doing so.[1088]  The presence of both versions of the story invites us to see insight in both. Kings reassures readers by affirming Yhwh’s sovereignty even behind events that have negative consequences. Chronicles reassures them by affirming Yhwh’s fairness even behind events with negative consequences.

We need to know how to understand God’s relationship to events such as the United States’ defeat in Vietnam or global warming or the fall of the Twin Towers or the decimation of the church in Europe or the weakening of the church in the United States. These stories offer us resources for thinking about such questions.

9

God Wrestled

From Solomon to the Exile

“Israel” designates a body with which “God struggles,”[1089]  and God does so especially during Israel’s time as a state. In this wrestling match, kings often take the lead in frustrating Yhwh’s purpose, while the prophets through whom Yhwh struggles for the people’s future generally fail to win the battle. At the end of the story of the nation-state, Yhwh indeed overwhelms it, and thus seems to have won but also to have lost, like soldiers liberating Vietnamese villages by destroying them. Morning dawns, and Israel limps off into exile. The biblical story is thus “the history of God’s disappointments.”[1090]  It could seem destined to be the end of the story, though Israel’s divine opponent has not actually given up the fight.

9.1 Where Yhwh Is Active

Yhwh is wrestling to be recognized as the one God, lord in the realm of religion and politics, work and family life, social life and personal life. It is a rather unpostmodern claim.[1091]

The prophetic books in the First Testament concern themselves with Israel’s religious life, its social life and its political life, giving them a broader focus than either Moses’ Teaching or the narratives from Joshua onward. When Moses’ Teaching lays out the nature of the life Yhwh expects Israel to live, it emphasizes religious matters and community matters, both the people’s life with Yhwh and its members’ life with one another, both the object and the nature of Israel’s worship and the generosity and care of its life, but it talks little about politics. In the narratives about the people’s life in the land, while religious matters are again prominent, there is less treatment of community or individual life, and more focus on national and political life. Kings emphasizes religious policies and programs, with an interest especially in whether people worship Yhwh alone and worship in Jerusalem alone. Chronicles also talks much about building projects, military developments and administrative matters. The two works are thus suggestive for reflection on national and political life, not least on the basis of their assumption that religious faith is interwoven with national and political life. That is commonly the case even in a country such as the United States that constitutionally separates church and state, but the two books would confront a genuinely secular state with the question of whether there was something odd or incomplete or subhuman about this separation.

In Israel, Moses’ Teaching and the prophets’ living ministry are supposed to be the decisive resources and authorities for the nation’s politics and worship. In neither case does this come naturally. By instinct rulers shape politics by pragmatic considerations, such as whether a nation needs alliances when it is under pressure, whether it might get away with rebellion against a superior power, or whether war will suit its economic interests. By instinct people likewise shape worship by their natural impulses and/or their long-standing traditions and/or their cultural context, which in Israel’s case are such as appear in the traditional worship of the land with its concern for ensuring fertility. These instincts regarding politics and worship easily form a demonic alliance, as Jeroboam I uses traditional religious impulses to buttress his monarchy or Ahaz uses them to demonstrate allegiance to Assyria. Positively and negatively the reigns of Hezekiah, Manasseh and Josiah are paradigmatic for a portrayal of these dynamics. Hezekiah lives by Moses (2 Kings 18:6), but even more by Isaiah. Josiah shapes his reign by Moses, but also looks to Huldah. Manasseh ignores Moses and receives the indictment of the prophets (2 Kings 21:1–18).[1092]

Sinai and Zion

The key questions in Israel’s story concern the complex relationship of the Teaching of Moses, the words of prophets, the authority of kings, the significance of Jerusalem, the demands of politics and the traditions of the land, as each of these is allowed to influence questions about how the people of God live and worship. Moses’ Teaching sets itself forth as “the fundamental test of Israel’s obedience and at the same time the vehicle of divine promise.”[1093]  It provides the principles for understanding success and failure. Moses and the prophets are then designed to be mutually supportive. The prophets urge people to heed Moses, and Moses’ Teaching looks to the prophets to explain its significance (cf. 2 Kings 22:14). Admittedly, that relationship can involve some creative tension. The words of prophets need evaluating, and lack of match with Moses’ Teaching would not stand in their favor. Conversely, the content of Moses’ Teaching is subject to further revelation through prophets, notably in the form of promises concerning David and Zion that set it in a new context and make a marked difference to its significance. The well-being of the people is tied up with its kings, but the monarchy is not an absolute: the story “sees the main problem of the history of Israel as lying in the question of the correct correlation of Moses and David.”[1094]  Sinai and Zion, Moses and David always stand in tension in Judah, though not in necessary opposition. The Sinai covenant is celebrated on Zion. Indeed, historically “Moses’ Teaching” was developing through the period when the Zion-David covenant would have been in the front of people’s awareness in Judah, partly under prophetic influence. Further, specific references to the Zion-David covenant in the narrative are oddly rare if it had overlain the Moses-Sinai covenant.[1095]  But that is the temptation.

Yhwh’s commitment to David and Zion provides the criterion for critiquing the northern clans’ declaration of independence of Jerusalem when they set up their own state. “All Israel” was involved, for example, in recognizing David, conquering Jebus, bringing up the covenant chest, fighting the Syrians, recognizing Solomon, consecrating the temple and initially recognizing Rehoboam (e.g., 1 Chron 11:1, 4; 13:5). Ephraim[1096]  now cuts itself off from Yhwh’s government and fights against Yhwh, and cuts itself off from Yhwh’s presence and devises its own worship arrangements. In abandoning Jerusalem and David, Ephraim opens itself to being treated as a foreign people. “Yhwh the God of Israel—he gave kingship over Israel to David forever.… Yhwh’s kingship” is “in the hand of David’s descendants.” Judah has the Aaronide priesthood and the Levites in their supporting ministerial role. “We are keeping the charge of Yhwh our God” (2 Chron 13:5, 8, 11). Yet when Rehoboam first plans to attempt to bring the northern clans to heel, Yhwh forbids the Judahites to go and fight against their “kin” (2 Chron 11:4), though his son Abijah gets away with such military intervention in Ephraim. Ephraim is in an ambiguous position. It is both family and enemy. Violence is not commissioned against Canaan alone, but operates against the people of God. Fighting in Yhwh’s name with Yhwh’s marvelous aid, as Joshua did against the Canaanites, becomes the technique for conducting civil war. Something analogous will happen in the American Civil War. On April 14, 1861, Henry Ward Beecher preached a sermon on Exodus 14:31 in which he retold the exodus story, commented that God’s people have often been in the position of Israel before the Red Sea, and declared: “Now our turn has come. Right before us lies the Red Sea of war.… And the Word of God to us to-day is, ‘Speak unto this people that they go forward.’ ”[1097]

Time after time Chronicles describes worship as carried out in accordance with what Moses said and with arrangements David made for the building of the temple and for aspects of its worship not covered by Moses. From time to time it also pictures arrangements being prescribed by the current king. All three feature in the account of the activity of Solomon, Hezekiah and Josiah (2 Chron 8:12–15; 29–30; 35). Admittedly, some details in Chronicles do not correspond to Moses’ Teaching when it says they do,[1098]  suggesting we should not be too literal in interpreting references to what Moses or David prescribed. Attributing worship arrangements to Moses or David need not be so much a historical claim as a reassurance that the temple’s worship truly does link with what it was in the past, truly does reflect God’s intentions and truly does embody what Moses and David would have desired.

Yhwh and Other Deities

Worship in Israel must be offered to Yhwh alone in the way Yhwh prescribes—specifically, without the use of images and in the place(s) Yhwh designates.

So who is Yhwh? In Genesis Yhwh had a similar profile to El, the fatherly creator god at the head of the Canaanite pantheon. In Exodus Yhwh came to behave more like Baal, an aggressive, warrior figure. When the Israelites settled in Canaan, they needed a deity involved with nature, and Baal was also such a god. Strictly, baʿal is an epithet meaning “lord” that could therefore be applied to Yhwh, but to describe Yhwh as “Lord” the First Testament generally uses the word ʾādôn and, in keeping with the Canaanites’ own usage, confines baʿal to refer to a Canaanite god, perhaps to be identified with Hadad. Plural “Baals” strictly suggests the various local manifestations of Baal(-Hadad) but could also denote Canaanite gods in general. Baal’s concern with the flourishing of nature links with his being a son of the grain god Dagan, and/or with his being god of rain and thus of fertility in nature, and/or with his annual(?) victory over Death.

To say that Yhwh first behaved rather like El, and then more like Baal, implies that there is considerable overlap between First Testament religion and Canaanite religion. Over against much modern and postmodern thinking, both acknowledge a heavenly realm distinguishable from the earthly realm. Both recognize that deity needs to embrace, for instance, responsibility for creation and concern for individual human beings, both involvement in history on the basis of the drive to be an aggressive warrior and also the capacity to make the crops grow and enable human beings to have children, both capacity to give life and also sovereignty in the realm of death. Yhwh acts in all these realms.

So what is the difference between Yhwh and El, Baal and other gods? One difference is that Yhwh is one, whereas it is intrinsic to Canaanite theology that there are a number of gods, with some ranking between them but no totally stable pecking order. The First Testament can itself assume the existence of a number of ʾĕlōhîm, but it also asks, “Who is like you among the gods, Yhwh?” (Ex 15:11), asserts that Yhwh is God of gods (Deut 10:17) and declares that all gods bow down to Yhwh (Ps 97:7). Thus when it applies ʾĕlōhîm to beings other than Yhwh, these are subordinate entities whom we might term heavenly beings rather than divinities.[1099]  Yhwh has an unqualifiedly supreme position in relation to them. Yhwh’s power cannot be overcome. Yhwh’s sphere of activity covers all reality; divine activity in the world is not divided among various powers. An implication is that there is some unity about this activity. Conflicts on earth may be reflected in conflicts in heaven or may reflect conflicts in heaven, but there is never any doubt that Yhwh will win in such battles. Yhwh is the top God—indeed is in a whole different league of deity. Historically we do not know when this became general conviction in Israel. The First Testament regards it as incontrovertible truth.

El had a consort, Athirat, of whom Asherah seems to be the Israelite equivalent. The word is used both for the goddess and for the treelike or womanlike image representing her (e.g., 2 Kings 23:4, 6), while the plural is also used as a generic term for goddesses. It seems likely that Astarte, in turn (see, e.g., 1 Kings 11:5, 33), was Baal’s consort and is the “Queen of heaven” revered in Jeremiah’s day (e.g., Jer 44:17–19), though the First Testament also uses this word, too, as a generic for goddess (e.g., Judg 2:13).[1100]

A number of considerations might attract Israelites to the worship of such a goddess. Personally, both women and men might appreciate being able to relate to a female deity. Politically, she could provide a model for the Israelite queen mother, as the king was Yhwh’s son and representative. Socially and culturally, goddesses provided a way to discuss the roles and nature of women and to reinforce cultural understandings of womanhood.[1101]  In some ways the exclusion of worship of a goddess alongside Yhwh might seem a deprivation, in others a release. No doubt the average Israelite, like the average Christian, thought of God as a supermale, and the fact that in Hebrew as in English the masculine is the default gender will have encouraged this. On the other hand, the First Testament occasionally describes Yhwh in motherly terms. Thus Moses’ Song upbraids Israel:

You disregarded the rock that begat [or bore] you,[1102]

You put out of mind God who labored with you. (Deut 32:18)

So Yhwh has female as well as male characteristics. Yhwh gives birth, nurses and comforts like a mother.[1103]  The combination of male and female ways of speaking could encourage Israel to think of Yhwh as without gender, unlike El or Athirat who belong to one sex or the other. There does not seem any evidence that worshiping only one God, and that one conceived in mainly male terms, generated either less liberation for women, or more.[1104]  Nor is it wholly easy for men.[1105]

Mono-Yahwism

Whereas the entire First Testament story presupposes recognition of Yhwh alone, prophets such as Elijah make more of an issue of it. Something similar is true of the prohibition on images, which is explicit in the Sinai story but becomes more important in the prophets’ time.

The first thing we learn about Elijah is that he proclaims a drought and thus a famine (1 Kings 17). This is not a random calamity, as if an earthquake would have done just as well. The Baals and the Astartes specialize in bringing rain and making crops grow, and Israelites are apparently inclined to accept the need to pay heed to them in order to have this provision. The drought, and the provision for Elijah and for the widow of Zarephath, are the evidence that Yhwh operates in the realm of nature as well as the realm of politics.

On Mount Carmel, Elijah challenges the people to choose whom they will serve (to put it in Joshua’s words in Josh 24:15). The location perhaps reflects the fact that Carmel is border territory between Yhwh’s land and the Phoenician Baal’s territory. The changing destiny of its worship center, sometimes with a Yhwh altar, sometimes with a Baal altar, reflects that, but it also symbolizes Israel’s own changing stance. “If Yhwh is God, follow him—if Baal, follow him” (1 Kings 18:21). By implication, Elijah is a monotheist (like any other First Testament hero), but this statement sees him as answering a different question from the one that actually concerns him. The question is not whether there is one God or many gods, but whether Yhwh or some other entity is God. Elijah’s passion is not that people should be monotheists, but that they should be mono-Yahwists.

Mono-Yahwism is not a primitive stage of development on the way to monotheism. It is the sophisticated, radical affirmation needed in Elijah’s context (and perhaps most others?), when an affirmation of monotheism would be a piece of irrelevant rationalism.[1106]  It is a declaration that the God who acted in bringing Israel into being is also the God who brings rain and thus makes crops grow. Greek thinking will eventually reckon it an important principle that there is one God as opposed to there being many. The First Testament’s point is a more specific one, that Yhwh, not Baal, is God and that Yhwh is the sole locus of deity as opposed to deity being spread round a number of beings such as El and Baal or Marduk and Nebo. If there were movements in the Middle East to focus deity in one God,[1107]  Yhwh, not Marduk or Asshur, was that God. The specificity of the point links with the specificity of the relationship of deities to people. It is again a narrative point. As a matter of fact the real God is the one who has become involved with Israel and is part of its story—hence the paramount importance of its story. Yhwh is also involved with other peoples and is part of their story, even if they do not recognize the fact (Amos 9:7). Jephthah’s more postmodern theology (Judg 11:24) contrasts with that. But Yhwh’s involvement with Israel is the means whereby they are destined to come to recognize Yhwh (Gen 12:3).

The people recognize the sharpness of Elijah’s challenge: “They did not answer him a word” (1 Kings 18:21). They will have assumed it is quite possible to combine two sets of commitments. They do not wish to go back on faith in Yhwh, but neither do they wish to stop recognizing the Baals. They do not see why they must choose between the two. This view reflects that of Ahab, who recognizes both Yhwh and Baal. The story does not portray the acknowledgment of Yhwh alone as a new requirement, though if king and people should have known they were to acknowledge Yhwh alone, they show no sign of this, and archeological evidence indicates it is in effect a new idea.[1108]  “It must have come as a great surprise to his fellows that Elijah views the matter as a case of ‘either-or.’ ” The people’s silence “argues lack of understanding of the question rather than any feeling of guilt.”[1109]

The Impossibility of Compromise

In Israel’s world as in ours, leaders often have to compromise over social, moral and religious questions. Moses’ Teaching makes allowance for people’s stubbornness, and Abraham Lincoln compromises over slavery. Leaders settle on an interim basis for what they can get, rather than insist on everything and lose everything. But over the fundamental question of whether Yhwh alone is God, there is no scope for compromise. People have to choose (1 Kings 18:21).

Why is this? Why can Elijah not begin from the creative overlap between the characters of Yhwh and Baal, in the way Abraham began from the creative overlap between Yhwh and Melchizedek’s God, and affirm (like Abraham) that there is more that needs to be said about God but that Jezebel’s insights provide a starting point for discussion? We have no basis for reckoning that Jezebel’s religion would be objectionable in a way that Melchizedek’s was not—e.g., that it was more inclined to identify gods and nature, or to imply that nature is subject to human manipulation (“magic”), or to be socially oppressive. Some of her fellow religionists could have deplored her engineering of Naboth’s death. We cannot answer this question regarding Elijah’s thinking, but his stance does fit with the narrative point just noted. As a matter of fact, the First Testament affirms, there was a single specific supernatural being who brought Israel into being and did that in such a way as to show that this deity’s being cannot be represented by an image. That is why the distinctive claims of Yahwism are that Yhwh alone is God and that Yhwh is not to be imaged. Perhaps Elijah’s subsequent journey to Horeb/Sinai hints at an awareness that his theological stance links with the story of Yhwh and Israel.

Perhaps Abraham could take his open attitude to Melchizedek because he felt secure enough in his family’s relationship with Yhwh, while Elijah had no such sense regarding Israel’s relationship with Yhwh—like the prophets of the exile and Ezra and Nehemiah after the exile. Both Kings and Chronicles speak to contexts that challenge the people’s commitment to Yhwh alone. In the exile people have every freedom and every temptation to worship gods other than Yhwh or to worship Yhwh in ways other than those Yhwh approves. Indeed, these temptations may be stronger than they have been before (see, e.g., Is 40:12–31; Jer 44:24–30). In Judah in this period and in the centuries that follow, the problem of relations with the other inhabitants of the land is stronger and the ease of being swallowed up by them greater. The story is told in such a way as to warn people off from continuing in the ways of their forebears in such connections. We cannot with hindsight reopen the question whether Elijah or Ezra took the more advisable of the two stances in their context. Our responsibility is to seek to discern which stance is appropriate in ours.

Yhwh and Politics

The immediately succeeding Elijah story (1 Kings 19) illustrates the second main concern of Kings and Chronicles, the way Yhwh is involved in people’s political affairs. Their emphasis warns against undervaluing the importance of politics, and also against absolutizing this realm. “Everything is politics but politics is not everything.”[1110]  After Elijah’s demonstration that Yhwh has power the Baals do not have, Ahab’s queen threatens to kill him and he flees for his life. While it might be that Elijah could cope with a powerful man but feels threatened by a powerful woman, it is likely that Jezebel is not merely personally powerful but has distinctive authority as queen and high priestess.[1111]  When Ahab cannot work out how to swindle Naboth out of some land that would more logically form an extension of the royal estate, Jezebel has no trouble doing so (1 Kings 21). No one can stand up to Jezebel until Jehu does so, because he is not threatened by people in power.

It has been the destiny of 1 Kings 19 to be treated the same way as, for example, Psalm 139 and Isaiah 6. Its first part, telling of the courageous prophet’s depression and flight at the threat of a woman, has been treated as containing its main message, whereas actually it is the preliminary backdrop and introduction to a commission—as Psalm 139:1–18 and Isaiah 6:1–8 are significant chiefly for what they introduce. Elijah is convinced that his life is over. Rather than assuring him he is wrong, Yhwh implicitly accepts this perspective and acts accordingly. Others must do the work Elijah might have done. “Go.… You are to anoint Hazael as king over Syria. You are to anoint Jehu ben Nimshi as king over Israel. And you are to anoint Elisha ben Shaphat, of Abelmeholah, as prophet instead of you. Whoever escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu can kill. Whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha can kill” (1 Kings 19:15–17). As Ahijah intervened in Israel’s politics to commission Jeroboam to sever the bulk of the kingdom from David’s line, so Elijah is to intervene in Ephraim’s politics to commission Jehu to terminate the line of Omri and Ahab, and to intervene in Syria’s politics to commission Hazael to terminate Ben-hadad’s line. Yhwh is thus involved not only in Israel’s affairs but also in Syria’s. As it turns out, Elijah himself only fulfills the third of Yhwh’s commissions, and that only metaphorically (1 Kings 19:19). It is Elisha who anoints Hazael, likewise metaphorically, but in full awareness of the trouble he will bring to Ephraim, and who commissions someone else to anoint Jehu (2 Kings 8–9).

Although it is years before Yhwh’s commission to anoint Hazael is fulfilled, the next story illustrates Yhwh’s involvement in relations between Ephraim and Syria, and its reason. Ephraim inflicts a surprising defeat on the Syrian army when it is besieging Samaria. The Syrians attribute this to the fact that Yhwh is a God of the mountains, with the implication that Yhwh is not a God of the lowlands (1 Kings 20:23). Yhwh determines to demonstrate that this is not so, and thus to deepen Ephraimite conviction about Yhwh’s being God—the only God, the God who operates in all realms (1 Kings 20:28). Elijah and Elisha stand for the fact that Israel’s destiny does not rest on visible resources but on “the chariotry of Israel and its steeds” represented by the prophet (2 Kings 2:12; 13:14). That was recognizably so at the beginning of Israel’s story. It needs again to be acknowledged.[1112]

Ruler Over All the Kingdoms of the Nations

International political affairs no longer point as directly to Yhwh’s worldwide sovereignty as they did in David’s day, but Yhwh is evidently still capable of acting sovereignly in international affairs. In Chronicles that is also the basis for Jehoshaphat’s appeal for Yhwh’s intervention when forces from beyond the Jordan invade Judah. Yhwh acted sovereignly in relation to such peoples before, and could surely do so again. “Are you not indeed God in heaven? Are you not ruler over all the kingdoms of the nations?” (2 Chron 20:6). It is as one who dwells in heaven that Yhwh can be expected to act on earth—hence the importance of the fact that prayers uttered at Yhwh’s footstool on earth reach Yhwh in heaven (e.g., 2 Chron 30:27). Pharaoh Neco tells Josiah, “God told me to make haste. Get yourself away from God, who is with me, so that he will not destroy you” (2 Chron 35:21). Thus far, Pharaoh speaks like Sennacherib (2 Kings 18:25).[1113]  In saying that God is with him, he speaks as beneficiary of the kind of promise Yhwh makes to Moses (Ex 3:12). God’s being with someone implies acting in power on their behalf. The narrative confirms his claim in declaring that Josiah “did not listen to the words of Neco from the mouth of God” (2 Chron 35:22). God speaks and acts via an Egyptian king.

The conviction that Yhwh rules in heaven and on earth links with a number of convictions regarding the life of God’s people as a nation. It is designed to have strong physical defenses, a sizable army of brave warriors, success in aggressive war-making, and a secure, respected and prosperous government (e.g., 2 Chron 11:5–12:1; 14:6–8 [[1114]  5–7]; 17:1–5, 10–19; 26:6–15; 27:3–4). Yet it is to recognize that the size of an army is not the decisive factor in winning battles (e.g., 2 Chron 13:8). A king going into battle with nearly six hundred thousand troops (against a million) reminds Yhwh (somewhat incoherently), “There is no one apart from you to help between the numerous and the powerless. Help us, Yhwh our God, because we rely on you and in your name we have come against this horde. Yhwh, you are our God. Human beings must not hinder against you” (2 Chron 14:11 [MT 10]). This people is designed to enjoy secure possession of its land and a life of peace and quiet (šāqaṭ and nûaḥ, e.g., 2 Chron 14:1–7 [MT 13:23–14:6]; 20:30; cf. 1 Chron 17:10; 22:9; 2 Chron 15:15; 23:21). That ideal contrasts with the portrait of a situation of disturbance and distress in which people could not go about in safety (šālôm, 2 Chron 15:5; cf. 2 Chron 19:1). In such times of crisis, Yhwh listens to Israel’s cry (e.g., 2 Chron 20:9; 30:20), helps (ʿāzar, e.g., 1 Chron 5:20; 2 Chron 14:11 [MT 10]; 18:31; 32:8) and delivers (yāšaʿ hiphil, 2 Chron 20:9; 32:22), so that the people triumph (šālēah, e.g., 2 Chron 18:11, 14; 20:20). A result is awe before Yhwh on the part of other peoples (2 Chron 14:14 [MT 13]; 17:10; 20:29).[1115]

9.2 What Yhwh Expects

Corresponding to Yhwh’s being the one God is the expectation that Israel should give an exclusive commitment to Yhwh, like that involved in marriage to one person.

Wholehearted Reliance on Yhwh

David had set the standard in having a heart that was “whole with Yhwh his God” (šālēm, 1 Kings 15:3): The heart suggests the center of the person (not especially the feelings, as in English), and commitment of heart implicitly involves the entire person, inward and outward. Chronicles then especially emphasizes the need for Israel to be whole in its adherence to Yhwh, so that people are of one heart and not divided between commitment to Yhwh and to other deities (e.g., 2 Chron 25:2, 14). So David urges Solomon to “serve Yhwh with a whole heart and fervent spirit” and thereby live up to his name by being šālēm, and prays for this to come about (1 Chron 28:9). Some Ephraimites have “given their hearts” to turn to worshiping Yhwh in Jerusalem (2 Chron 11:16, as do Asa’s people “with their whole heart and with their whole self [nepeš] … their whole desire” (2 Chron 15:12, 15, 17; cf. 1 Chron 22:19; 2 Chron 34:31). Jehoshaphat is someone whose “mind was high in Yhwh’s ways” (2 Chron 17:6)—evidently in a good sense (contrast, e.g., 2 Chron 26:16). Proper response to Yhwh thus involves a new orientation of heart—indeed, sometimes the inner attitude is enough when outer conformity is impossible (2 Chron 30:19). It may need God to bring about the inner change (2 Chron 30:12; cf. David’s prayer in 1 Chron 29:18–19). The involvement of the inner being in people’s acts is often accompanied by reference to people’s joy in doing what they are urged or required to do.[1116]  It is an attitude that characterizes events such as the reforms of Asa, Jehoiada, Joash or Hezekiah, which often cost the people (2 Chron 15:15; 23:13, 21; 24:10; 29:36; cf. also 1 Chron 12:40; 29:9, 17), and it characterizes occasions such as Passover (2 Chron 30:21–26) and other worship events.

Exclusive commitment means Yhwh is the only one of whom the people seek direction or help in crises or need (dāraš, or sometimes bāqaš piel—the English translation “seek God” is misleading). Yhwh’s chest and altar are the means of asking after Yhwh’s help or direction in this way (1 Chron 13:3; 15:13; 21:29–30; 2 Chron 1:5). It is what people from Ephraim do if they are truly turning to Yhwh (2 Chron 11:16); contrast Ben-hadad (2 Kings 8:8). Asa consults Yhwh rather than having recourse to other means of guidance, and leads the people in doing so with unqualified commitment until his final illness (2 Chron 14:2–7 [MT 1–6]; 15:1–15; 16:12). Jehoshaphat has recourse to Yhwh and not to the Baals (17:3–4; 19:3; cf. 2 Chron 22:9). He does compromise himself by associating with Ephraim, but then insists on inquiring for a word from Yhwh (2 Chron 18:4–7), and on the occasion of a threatened invasion “set his face to inquiring of Yhwh [dāraš] and proclaimed a fast for all Judah, and Judah assembled to seek help from Yhwh [biqqēs min]. People also came from all the cities in Judah to seek help from Yhwh [biqqēs ʾet]” (2 Chron 20:3–4). So do Uzziah, Hezekiah and Josiah (2 Chron 26:5; 31:21; 34:3, 21, 26; 2 Kings 22:13, 18), whose “mind was sensitive” (2 Chron 34:27; rak). People thus “call on Yhwh” in crises (qāraʾ, the term for calling on Yhwh in worship, 2 Chron 14:11 [MT 10]). They “cry out to Yhwh” (zāʿaq/ṣāʿaq, the term for crying out in pain, 1 Chron 5:20; 2 Chron 13:14; 18:31; 20:9). They “rely on Yhwh,” which is the real key to victory (šāʿan, 2 Chron 13:18; 14:11 [MT 10]). People who seek Yhwh’s help in this way prove that Yhwh can be found (1 Chron 28:9; 2 Chron 15:2, 4)—that is, Yhwh acts on their behalf (cf. 2 Chron 15:15). They are with Yhwh seeking help and Yhwh is with them acting (2 Chron 15:2). Yhwh delivers people from undeserved crises, and these thus become an opportunity to prove Yhwh’s power and faithfulness (2 Chron 16:7–9; cf. 2 Chron 14:9–15 [MT 8–14]; 20:1–34; 32:1–23).

Yhwh’s guidance comes in words of prophecy that instruct the king on policies to implement—for example, which battles to fight and how (e.g., 2 Chron 11:4). A large-scale invasion by Moab and Ammon provides a particularly systematic account of how to fight a battle (2 Chron 20:1–30). King Jehoshaphat leads the people in fasting and seeking help from Yhwh. He reminds Yhwh (and no doubt himself) of Yhwh’s great power, of the way Yhwh gave the people the land the invaders now threaten, and of the people’s helplessness. He asks Yhwh to act decisively (šāpaṭ) against the attackers. Yhwh’s spirit comes on a Levite in the assembly who passes on Yhwh’s bidding not to be afraid, because Yhwh will fight for the people; they only have to watch. The people prostrate themselves before Yhwh and the Levites lead them in praise. Then, while a group singing Yhwh’s praise marches ahead of the Judahite army, Yhwh causes the opposing armies to destroy each other, to a man. All the Judahites have to do is collect the vast quantities of spoil, then return home rejoicing in Yhwh.

Proper Worship in the Temple

The broader context of the nation’s seeking help from Yhwh is its maintaining its regular life of worship in the temple. When Solomon speaks of a life lived by Yhwh’s teaching (2 Chron 6:16; contrast 2 Chron 12:1), in Chronicles the context suggests this refers specifically to that life of worship under the supervision of the Aaronide priesthood—the morning and evening offerings, the praise and the music (1 Chron 16:37–42; cf. 1 Chron 22:10–16; 2 Chron 23:18; 31:3). More broadly, it refers to the proper worship of Yhwh without the use of aids such as images (e.g., 2 Chron 14:2–5 [MT 1–4]; 31:21; 33:1–9). It is the priests and Levites who especially have responsibility for making known Yhwh’s teaching (e.g., 2 Chron 17:7–9; 19:8–11; 31:4; cf. 2 Chron 15:3), and the people’s life needs to give the priests and Levites their proper place in ensuring that Yhwh’s order is observed in the temple (e.g., 2 Chron 23).

Where necessary, this involves restoring the temple and its worship. After Rehoboam forsakes Yhwh’s teaching, his grandson Asa restores Yhwh’s altar and leads the people in covenanting to seek Yhwh (2 Chron 12–15). Indeed, the life of God’s people is punctuated by covenant-making, especially when things have gone wrong between people and God. After the reign of Athaliah, Jehoiada and Joash make a covenant with the people to be Yhwh’s people and act to restore the temple (2 Kings 11; 2 Chron 23–24). It is a three-sided covenant, between king, people and God, initiated by the priest. It implies that each party accepts commitments to the other two, and it gives the people new status in relation to the king. Earlier there has been a covenant between Yhwh and the people at Sinai, and then a covenant between king and people and a covenant between Yhwh and king (2 Sam 5:3; 23:5). The risk is (as Samuel in effect long ago warned) that the third would overwhelm the first and second. This three-sided covenant is an extraordinary and creative innovation. The people make a commitment to the king, but the king also makes a commitment to them—and to Yhwh. The arrangement perhaps implies that the people stand in covenant-like relationship with one another. Priests mediate the covenant but are not party to it. The three-way covenant provides a suggestive model for the life of communities. It need not be a model confined to the people of God, but neither need it be declined as a model for the people of God.

Subsequently, Hezekiah determines to solemnize a covenant with Yhwh to eliminate the forms of worship encouraged by Ahaz (2 Chron 29:10). After the time of Manasseh and Amon, Josiah solemnizes a covenant between the people and Yhwh that they would live by the terms of the newly discovered covenant scroll, and leads them in eliminating the worship of Baal and Asherah and the heavenly army, and other forms of worship that are now disapproved (2 Kings 23; 2 Chron 34:30–33). This focus of covenant-making corresponds to that in the Joshua covenant (Josh 24:23–25). As was the case with God’s own earlier covenants with Noah and Abraham, the background of covenant-making is that for some reason there is cause to wonder whether people will follow through on their undertakings. Will Yhwh really not destroy humanity again? Will Yhwh really fill the long-delayed and implausible promises to Abraham? Will people really commit themselves to worshiping Yhwh alone? By solemnizing a covenant, people provide a basis for believing they will keep their commitment.

Liturgical Innovation in Ephraim

Interwoven with descriptions of the attitudes and practices Yhwh approves are descriptions of attitudes and practices that antagonize Yhwh. From the beginning, Israel had been in trouble for entering into covenant relationships with the people of the land and failing to destroy their places of worship (Judg 2:1–2). These peoples were traps and snares for Israel and would continue to be so. Presumably their religion was attractive to Israel because of its practical focus on the need for the rain to fall, the crops to grow and flocks and human families to have offspring. Kings and Chronicles emphasize the religious reasons for Yhwh’s displeasure with Solomon, and subsequently Hosea and other critics speak systematically about Israel worshiping Baal or the Baals.[1117]

At one level, it is Solomon’s social policies, reaffirmed by his son, that cause the break up of the state. Encouraged by a prophet, a former officer of Solomon’s acts rather like Moses in campaigning for mercy for the people and leads the northern clans to their freedom.[1118]  Indeed, Jeroboam appeals to a theology that centers on Yhwh as one who brought Israel out of Egypt (1 Kings 12:28). “The national cult of the North” thus has a claim to being “the real heir of the old Yahweh traditions as opposed to the Jerusalem innovations.”[1119]  Yhwh is now bringing (northern) Israel out of another “Egypt” ruled by another Pharaoh—the Davidic king in Jerusalem! But even if he might claim that his victory over Rehoboam was religiously and morally deserved, like the average ruler Jeroboam falls into the traps he was designed to rescue people from.

There is a subtlety about how this comes about. When Jeroboam rescues the people from the social wrongs of Solomon, he then falls into the same religious wrongs, and for the same reason. For Jeroboam, too, religion is a means to a political end, though of a slightly different kind. Obviously people must be discouraged from continuing to worship in Jerusalem or they will be won back to allegiance to Rehoboam, so Jeroboam establishes worship centers within Ephraim, in the south at Bethel and in the north at Dan. These have the Israelite background lacked by Jerusalem. Bethel has Jacob associations (see Gen 28) and perhaps an Aaronide priesthood (see Judg 20:26–28, and the link with Aaron’s gold calf), while Dan has a Mosaic priesthood (cf. Judg 18:30). Further, unlike Solomon’s temple, neither of these worship centers is in the city where Jeroboam has his capital, though they are state sanctuaries (cf. Amos 7:13). Jeroboam also introduces an equivalent to the Festival of Booths in Judah and assumes the right to appoint priests (1 Kings 13:33). Critique of Jeroboam’s worship arrangements emphasizes the fact that he devises them; they are not God-given (1 Kings 12:25–33). When the government devises worship occasions, this suggests that worship is again subordinate to politics. The point is underlined by Jeroboam’s personal leading of the worship, like a Canaanite priest-king. The story does not reflect on the possible relationship between religious unfaithfulness and social oppression. General considerations suggest there must be a theological link, but there have been many occasions when people of impeccable religious commitment have acted in socially oppressive ways (beginning with David) or socially committed reformers and communities have had no religious commitment.

So Jeroboam combines a Moses-like deliverance with an un-Moses-like decision to set up images in the two northern worship centers (1 Kings 12:28–30). Perhaps these images seem no more theologically questionable than the magnificent Jerusalem temple, a place that—equally per impossibile—fixes the location of God. Perhaps Jeroboam sees them as objects on which Yhwh would sit enthroned, like the cherubim, or on which Yhwh’s feet would rest, like the covenant chest, or as images of strength that properly represent Yhwh, conceptualized as people conceptualize El or Baal. But they form a basis for condemning Jeroboam rather than appreciating him as one who reminds Israel of the theology that goes behind Jerusalem to the exodus. If the gold calves represent the God who brought the people out of Egypt, their making is a replay of Aaron’s act at Sinai. The narrative implies there can be no such thing as an image associated with Yhwh. In effect these must be images of other gods—which is the way Hosea implies they came to be treated (cf. 1 Kings 13:1–9; Hos 8:4–6; 10:5; 13:1–2).

Local Sanctuaries, Columns and Totem Poles in Judah

Although Rehoboam has no need to buttress a new state and still has the temple, Judah is soon subject to one of the criticisms applied to Ephraim: “They too built for themselves worship centers [bāmôt], columns, and totem-poles” (1 Kings 14:23). Perhaps the same general critique of liturgical innovation is implicit in the story of Ahaz’s later building of an altar like one he saw at Damascus and his other innovations in the temple, but the point that eventually becomes explicit in a telling closing phrase is that he did this “because of the king of Assyria” (2 Kings 16:18). Together, 2 Kings 16 and 2 Chronicles 28 speak both of defeat by Syria and submission to Assyria and perhaps imply some conforming of forms and objects of worship to both powers’ religious practice, though it is a matter of dispute how far the Assyrians required that.[1120]  Even when Ahaz is formally honoring Yhwh, effectively Yhwh has been dethroned in Judah.

Other kings before and after Ahaz and Manasseh reform Judah’s religion but leave the local sanctuaries, whose worship was apparently reckoned reasonably orthodox. Thus “the attitude of Asa was whole with Yhwh all his life” (1 Kings 15:14) even though he did not decommission them. Moses’ Teaching does not directly forbid people to establish or worship at local sanctuaries. Numbers 33:52 requires Israel to destroy the worship centers used by the non-Israelite inhabitants of the land, but does not exclude the building of such centers for worship of Yhwh, and the building of a new sanctuary in place of a pre-Israelite one might not seem excluded by this requirement. Deuteronomy confines worship to the “place” (māqôm) Yhwh chooses and instructs Israel to destroy the “places” where the non-Israelite inhabitants worshiped (e.g., Deut 12). But it could be understood to refer to “any place Yhwh chooses,” and it does not use the word bāmâ. Samuel worshiped at a bāmâ (1 Sam 9:12–14, 19, 25), and 1 Kings 3 implies that such worship was acceptable before the building of the temple. The first person to remove the local sanctuaries is Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:4). After Manasseh’s rebuilding of them, Josiah also demolishes them. Attitudes to the traditional sanctuaries are thus complex.[1121]  They may stand for proper worship of Yhwh, or for humanly devised worship of Yhwh, or for worship of Yhwh that involves images, or for worship of other deities. It is on the basis of changing usage, changing meaning and changing contexts that sanctuaries that once were acceptable can become unacceptable—and vice versa.

Worship aids such as columns and totem poles, too, were once acceptable but cease to be so. Perhaps they are guilty by association with Canaanite practice or bring Canaanite connotations into worship of Yhwh. Like images, in theory these aids can enrich worship, not least if they encourage Israel to associate Yhwh with nature and with the fertility of land, of animals and of human beings, rather than leaving that realm to the Baals. The dissociation of God from sex in Christian faith has not been much of an improvement on its overassociation in some other religions.[1122]  But if columns originally stood for gods and these totem poles for goddesses, this may link with the prevalence of worship of a goddess alongside Yhwh (cf. 1 Kings 15:13).[1123]  Other features of Israelite religion that once caused no difficulty can also come to be used in unacceptable ways. The clear overt example is the bronze snake made by Moses, which Hezekiah destroys when the people start making offerings to it (2 Kings 18:4). There is no doubt of the unacceptability of some other specific practices. Both Ahaz and Manasseh “made his son pass through the fire” (2 Kings 16:3; 21:6), presumably thereby killing them as an offering (cf. 2 Kings 3:27).

Worship of Other Deities

We cannot always be sure which passages refer to worship of Yhwh in ways the books disapprove and which refer to recognition of other deities. One way or the other, unlike David but like Solomon, in Judah as in Ephraim kings such as Abijam and Amaziah fail to keep their heart whole with Yhwh their God and do recognize other deities (e.g., 1 Kings 11:4; 15:3; 16:31–33; 2 Chron 25:2). This is the focus of Elijah’s confrontation of Ahab (e.g., 1 Kings 17:1–18:46), though like Judah, Ephraim goes through periods of faithfulness to Yhwh, while still subject to critique for continuing Jeroboam’s worship arrangements (e.g., 2 Kings 10:28–31). Ahaz and Manasseh reintroduce worship of other deities into the temple and elsewhere (2 Kings 21; 2 Chron 28; 33).

One of the ways Manasseh’s reign becomes the height of apostasy is that it brings not only worship of Baal but also worship of the heavenly army. Israel’s God could be known as yhwh ṣĕbāʾôt, Yhwh [of?] armies—the armies are the assembly that surrounds Yhwh, in their military role.[1124]  Israel had demoted the members of this assembly from being deities, but Manasseh gives them back their divinity. People thus become involved in the planetary religion of Assyria and Babylon. The planets, or the gods they embody, become their means of guidance; sanctuaries on roofs are signs of this recourse to planetary guidance (e.g., 2 Kings 17:16; 21:3, 5; 23:4–5, 12; cf. Jer 19:13; 32:29; Zeph 1:5).[1125]  Manasseh’s most damning condemnation is that he does this in the city and house of which Yhwh had said, “In Jerusalem I will put my name” (2 Kings 21:3, 7). The critique regarding the heavenly army may underlie Manasseh’s condemnation for practicing soothsaying and augury and dealing with mediums and spiritists. Yhwh might have used such techniques in guiding and acting toward Israel, as Yhwh worked through analogous practices such as the offering of sacrifice and the use of Urim and Thummim. But the practices Manasseh encourages are not part of what Yhwh has encouraged Israel to use, which distinguish Israel from other peoples, so that recourse to them constitutes an abandoning of Israel’s special means of discovering what God is saying and of prevailing on God to act.

So people are seeking guidance and help from sources other than Yhwh. Saul began that process (1 Chron 10:13–14). Rehoboam and Amaziah continue it (2 Chron 12:14; 25:14–20). The Judeans “have not set their hearts on the God of their ancestors” (2 Chron 20:33). Ahaz sacrifices to other deities because they seem able to help people (2 Chron 28:23). People thus “abandon” Yhwh and Yhwh’s teaching (e.g., 2 Chron 12:1, 5). Illness is a particular context when it is tempting to have recourse to other gods (2 Kings 1; 2 Chron 16:12; cf. 2 Chron 17:3). Military pressure likewise makes it tempting to rely on other human resources rather than on Yhwh (2 Chron 16:7–8). Hiring Ephraimite mercenaries implies that it is the size of one’s army that is decisive and ignores the fact that Yhwh is not “with” Ephraim—i.e., active in support and giving victory (2 Chron 25:1–10).

Contempt (Both Ways)

Such acts involve maʿal, contempt or disdain or sacrilege or slight ([1126]  “faithlessness” or “treachery”). Israel fails to treat God as God or God’s as God’s and declines to acknowledge Yhwh’s rights, like people trespassing on a person’s land or pushing their way into a person’s life or encroaching on someone’s space or taking away what belongs to another. Its action is an offence against who Yhwh is, a refusal to recognize any boundaries. This began with Moses (Deut 32:51), continued when Achan appropriated things to which Yhwh claimed ownership (Josh 7:1; 22:20; 1 Chron 2:7), and at first seemed to continue further in the action of the western clans (Josh 22:16, 22, 31). For Chronicles, maʿal sums up Saul’s failure and accounts for his defeat by the Philistines and his replacement by David (1 Chron 10:13). It is the people’s failure in Rehoboam’s day (2 Chron 12:2) and causes the demise of Ephraim (1 Chron 5:25). It is Uzziah’s failure, Ahaz’s and Manasseh’s (2 Chron 26:16, 18; 28:19, 22; 29:19; 33:19). It characterizes the period Hezekiah looks back on and the last years of Judah (2 Chron 29:6; 30:7; 36:14). And it causes the exile (Lev 26:40; 1 Chron 9:1; Neh 1:8; Ezek 14:13; 15:8; 17:20; 20:27; 39:23; Dan 9:7).

Religious symbols carry great power and it is therefore of symbolic significance when, for example, Jehoiada fails to keep Yhwh’s temple under repair (2 Kings 12). Josiah does see to the repair of the temple, which indirectly leads to cleansing it from the accoutrements of the worship of gods other than Yhwh, including those that went back to Solomon’s day, and removing the qĕdēšîm (holy people!)[1127]  and the women who did weaving for Asherah (2 Kings 23:7). His reform means defiling the sanctuary where people could sacrifice a child, putting away mediums and spiritists, closing down the worship at the other sanctuaries and deposing their clergy. Indeed, Josiah ventures into the former territory of Ephraim to remove sanctuaries, kill priests and defile altars. In particular he demolishes the Bethel sanctuary with its altar and defiles it, in keeping with the prophecy at the beginning of Ephraim’s story (2 Kings 23:15–18).

The narratives assume it is appropriate to be rude about objects and means of worship of which it disapproves, and that it is appropriate to humiliate them in the way one implements reforms. It employs both words and actions to downgrade them in people’s minds and eliminate them from the options they might consider. These are not aspects of the culture of ethnic minorities that Judah should respect, even if they are forms of religion Yhwh allocated to other peoples (see, e.g., Deut 32:8–9). When they come to influence Judah, they are abominations (tôʿēbôt) and gillulîm (e.g., 1 Kings 15:12)—terms that designate them as disgusting without making explicit how. The ministers of these forms of religion are kĕmārîm, not kōhănîm. When the objects used in such worship are put out of use, they are not put in a geniza or museum. Jehoiada’s reform, for instance, involves the “popular” destruction of the Baal temple with its altars and images (2 Kings 11). These religious symbols, too, carry great power, and their destruction is thus as significant as their original building.[1128]

9.3 How Yhwh Reacts

It would be strange if Israel’s failure met with no reaction from Yhwh. Actually, Yhwh’s reactions are rather complex.

Anger

The correlative to maʿal is anger. When the people in the person of Achan disdained Yhwh, “Yhwh’s anger burned against the Israelites,” but Yhwh turned from anger when the matter had been resolved (Josh 7:1, 26). Joshua warned the people that Yhwh’s anger would burn again if they broke the covenant and got involved with other gods, and they would perish from the land Yhwh was giving them (Josh 23:16). Judges saw such a pattern in the trouble that came on the people in its day (see Judg 2:12–14, 19–21). Two terrible events in David’s day were expressions of Yhwh’s anger (2 Sam 6:7; 24:1). The story of the divided nation begins with Yhwh’s getting angry with Solomon for giving his allegiance to other gods. Yhwh announces the intention to tear away sovereignty over the nation from Solomon the way one might tear a garment or the way a wild animal tears its prey (1 Kings 11:9–11, 31). Tearing the nation apart is an extraordinary indication of how radical God is prepared to be in responding to the king’s wrongdoing. But the split and the conflict between South and North is only a hint of the more terrible calamity that God will eventually bring with the fall of Ephraim and then of Judah. In the ongoing story of the divided monarchy, only Jehoahaz makes Yhwh angry (2 Kings 13:3) until the last days of Judah, when the fall of Jerusalem happens because Yhwh’s anger again burns (2 Kings 23:26; 24:20). Yhwh more often gets vexed (kāʿas, e.g., 1 Kings 15:30; 16:2, 7, 13, 26, 33), a feeling that combines anger with jealousy and frustration.[1129]

Anger can be a good personal response to evil (see 1 Sam 11:6; 2 Sam 12:5—with irony)—though of course, it may not be that (e.g., 1 Sam 17:28; 20:30). Talk of anger burning suggests deep feelings, of the kind that can motivate action (cf. 1 Sam 20:30–34). Admittedly in speaking of God’s anger the First Testament may sometimes work backwards from events to causes. It is terrible events such as the deaths at Ai or the death of Uzzah or the fall of Jerusalem that make people infer that Yhwh is angry, and we are being told something about heat in events rather than something about Yhwh’s emotions. But this is not to deny that such anger is there, even if at the edges of God’s being rather than at the center.[1130]  The relationship between Yhwh and Jerusalem is like a marriage, and Yhwh is a passionate and therefore jealous and angry lover.

In the patriarchal context, the image is worked out with Yhwh as husband and Jerusalem as wife (see, e.g., Ezek 16), but it does not become unworkable in an egalitarian context. We could reverse it. A pagan city by background, long unconquered by the Israelites, Jerusalem is like a boy abandoned by his parents who has grown up without love. A girl befriends him at school and comes to love him, he blossoms under her love, and they marry. He belongs to her. But the very blossoming makes him attractive to other women, and he has a series of affairs, made possible by the love she has had for him. In jealous rage she exposes him to each of these other women and plots with them how they can hurt him best. The she-devil joins forces with fatal attraction.[1131]  She also exposes him to the community, but refuses to divorce him and tells everyone she wants to have him back and start afresh. Yet in her eyes he is defiled, and remains so. No matter how often he showers, it is as if the sweat of other women stains his body. She can still smell their perfume on his neck. She has a hard time imagining she could ever let him come near her physically.

Being interpreted: Jerusalem has affairs with a series of deities and/or countries—Egypt, Philistia, Assyria, Babylon and so on. And they will be the means whereby Jerusalem is exposed and its life falls apart. To put it another way, the people have polluted the land, and the land itself is disgusted and will throw them up into another land so as to have time for its pollution to be cleansed (e.g., Lev 18:24–25). For that will not be the end, and Yhwh does not intend to pull out of the relationship just because Jerusalem has been unfaithful, but at the moment Yhwh is so offended as to be especially looking forward to the look of shame on Jerusalem’s face when it owns up to its wrongdoing and finds forgiveness.

Continuing Commitment

Periodically in Israel’s story, and not just with the exile, Yhwh’s anger thus receives expression, and wrongdoing receives its reward. Yet the people often experience deliverance, restoration and blessing when on this basis one would not have expected it. The principle that wrongdoing receives its reward has standing alongside it other principles that work in different directions.

Yhwh’s commitment to David is still at work (cf. 2 Sam 7:15). This explains the postponement of the united nation’s collapse despite Yhwh’s anger, and explains David’s descendants’ retention of a rump kingdom (e.g., 1 Kings 11:9–13). The secession of most of the clans and their adoption of the actual name Israel would not mean the end for the promise to David. Yhwh promised that David and his successors would always hold authority in Jerusalem (nîr, 1 Kings 11:33–39; 2 Kings 8:19; 2 Chron 21:7).[1132]  Indeed, Yhwh’s merciful attitude to the Judahite monarchy reflects not only Yhwh’s commitment to David but David’s to Yhwh (1 Kings 15:4–5). Whereas the deeds of Jeroboam and Manasseh have far-reaching negative consequences, David’s deeds have far-reaching positive consequences. In any declaration of David’s faithfulness the Uriah affair is a big “except” (1 Kings 15:5; calling it the Uriah affair slights Bathsheba but at least makes clear that the adultery’s aftermath is at least as problematic as the adultery). But “the ‘except’of Uriah-Bathsheba does not trump the ‘nevertheless’ of Yahweh’s fidelity.… In the end, the fidelity of Yahweh is decisive. And yet the ‘except’ continues to loom.” The “rhetorical juxtaposition of ‘nevertheless’ and ‘except’ ” maintains an important tension.[1133]  Nor does this “except” trump David’s keeping of his commitment to Yhwh and his repudiating of the other deities worshiped in Canaan, which enable his stance to provide the standard against which subsequent monarchs can be evaluated (1 Kings 3:3, 14; 9:4; 11:4–6, 33–39; 14:8; 15:3–5, 11; 2 Kings 14:3; 16:2; 18:3; 22:2). Because of Yhwh’s commitment to David and because of David’s commitment to Yhwh his line will continue.

Yhwh’s word concerning Jerusalem has the same implication. Yhwh chose Jerusalem and put the name Yhwh there (see 1 Kings 11:13, 32, 36; cf., e.g., Ps 132:13). Bringing trouble on it thus brings discredit on Yhwh’s reputation, and Yhwh sometimes acts to vindicate that reputation. “I will defend this city and deliver it for my own sake” (2 Kings 19:34).

It is commonplace of human experience that the wrongdoing of one generation has a continuing effect in individual and community contexts. One can see, for instance, how European and white American involvement in slave-trading and in slavery still exacts a price from the African American community in the United States, and the white community still benefits from its ancestors’ wrongdoing and thus shares in its ancestors’ guilt. As David’s right-doing has positive consequences for subsequent days, Jeroboam’s wrongdoing has various negative consequences for future days even though it does not lead to trouble in his own day. It means disaster for his household, for his son Abijah in particular, for Ephraim as a whole and even centuries later, for priests in the order he establishes (1 Kings 13:2, 34, 14:7–16). The sins of the parents are visited on the children because events have an afterlife, continuing to influence people and situations long after they theoretically belong in the past. Perhaps Jeroboam’s sin is such as to be inevitably imitated by generations that followed. Sometimes the influence of acts cannot even be terminated when they are faced and owned. Human actions and events can have such devastating and far-reaching effects that turning becomes impossible unless God specially intervenes. Jeroboam’s sin thus makes Yhwh’s eventual abandonment of Ephraim inevitable (see1 Kings 14:16; 2 Kings 17:21–22) and in this sense Jeroboam’s sin must eventually be punished. Yet Chronicles reassures people that a change of heart can still make a decisive difference. “If … my people who bear my name submit themselves, pray, have recourse to my face, and turn from their bad ways, I myself will listen from the heavens, pardon their failures, and heal their land” (2 Chron 7:13–14). Such submission (kānaʿ) and recognition that Yhwh is in the right (ṣaddîq Yhwh) can bring mitigation of punishment (2 Chron 12:1–12), postponement of punishment (1 Kings 21:27–29; cf. 2 Kings 20:1–7; 2 Chron 32:24–26; 34:27–28) or restoration after punishment (2 Chron 33:12–13). The trouble is that people will not actually turn or submit (e.g., 2 Chron 30:6, 9–10; 33:23; 36:12–13).

Rejection Tempered by Grace

Whereas Kings focuses on Ephraim more than Judah, Chronicles underlines the radicality of God’s rejection of Ephraim by marginalizing Ephraim in its narrative and focusing exclusively on Judah. Converse to the mercy shown to Judah for David’s sake is the toughness of Yhwh’s stance toward Ephraim even when reform comes about there. Thus Yhwh lets Hazael take control of Ephraimite territory east of the Jordan immediately after Jehu’s spectacular elimination of Baal worship, in the context of continuance in “the sins of Jeroboam” (2 Kings 10:28–33). This toughness to Ephraim can work in Judah’s favor when Judah does not deserve it (2 Chron 28:8–15).

That does not mean the people of Yhwh is now confined to Judah and Benjamin. The people of the north can still be called “all Israel” (2 Chron 13:4; 30:1), as can Judah and Benjamin itself (e.g., 2 Chron 12:1; 24:5). They are still the “kin” of people in the south (2 Chron 11:4; 28:8), “descendants of Israel” (2 Chron 13:12), even if on occasions Yhwh is not “with” them (2 Chron 25:7). Yhwh is still involved in their life as the God of their ancestors—even if in wrath—and still sends prophets to admonish them (2 Chron 28:9–13). They can keep reaching out to Yhwh and Yhwh keeps reaching out to them.

Northern priests, Levites and laypeople committed to Yhwh come to live in Judah (2 Chron 11:13–17; 15:9; 30:11). Asa reforms worship in cities in Ephraim and gathers Ephraimites for worship and covenant-making in Jerusalem, though he later bribes Syria to help him in resisting Ephraimite aggression, but is rebuked for it (2 Chron 15–16). Jehoshaphat gets into trouble for allying with Ephraim but brings people in Ephraim as well as Judah back to Yhwh (2 Chron 19:1–4; 20:37). Hezekiah summons Ephraimites as well as Judahites to his Passover, and Josiah breaks down altars in Ephraim as well as in Judah (2 Chron 30; 34:3–7). In Jehoahaz’s day “Yhwh’s anger burned against Israel” and Hazael and his son Ben-hadad afflicted Ephraim (2 Kings 13:3), yet although the people continue to worship by the arrangement that Jeroboam had established, “Jehoahaz assuaged Yhwh” (ḥālâ), like Moses at Sinai. The reason “Yhwh listened to him” is not that the people repented, but that Yhwh “saw Israel’s oppression” (2 Kings 13:5–6).

After Exodus 3, the main context for talk of people “oppressing” Israel is the time of the “judges” (e.g., Judg 4:3), where Yhwh goes on to provide Israel with a “deliverer” (e.g., Judg 3:9, 15), and Yhwh does that here. The link with the exodus is made more specific when the narrative explains that “Yhwh was gracious to them and had compassion on them, and turned his face to them for the sake of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He did not want to destroy them, nor has he thrown them out of his presence, until now” (2 Kings 13:23). It is the only reference to Yhwh’s grace or compassion in the story of the divided nation. Further, the comment takes up the fact that behind the exodus was Yhwh’s commitment to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Unlike the promises about David and Jerusalem, that also contains good news for Ephraim.

But what is the meaning of “until now”? One would have thought that Yhwh threw them out when the Assyrians took them into exile in 721, but 2 Kings was written long after that. Understandably, important [1134]  manuscripts omit the expression “until now” and redaction critics achieve the same end by deeming this an unassimilated phrase from a pre-721 source. Yet we have noted that after Samaria’s fall, Hezekiah and Josiah continue to get involved in the north, as Abijah, Asa and Jehoshaphat did earlier.[1135]  Ephraim is no more given up for dead after 721 than Judah will be after 587. Ephraim still stands before Yhwh’s face at the time Chronicles was written—as Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah hint in other ways.

Pity

There is a further recollection of the exodus story and a further indication of Yhwh’s ongoing commitment to Ephraim in the account of Jeroboam II’s reign (2 Kings 14:23–27). Jeroboam does what is bad (raʿ) in Yhwh’s eyes, but this does not issue in calamity (raʿ) for him. Yhwh “saw Israel’s distress, very bitter” and sends a prophet to promise restoration of its borders, so that they reach their ideal Solomonic extent. Again it is the only reference to such a seeing and acting on Yhwh’s part, which recall Yhwh’s “seeing” Israel’s “distress” in Egypt and acting to relieve it (Ex 3:7; cf. Ex 1:14; 4:31). Against that background, the talk of Yhwh’s “delivering” Ephraim also recalls Yhwh’s “delivering” Israel at the Red Sea (Ex 14:30), and talk of Ephraim having no “support” recalls Moses’ naming his second son Eliezer, “My-God-Is-a-Support,” after that deliverance (Ex 18:4). Further, the story notes the word in whose context Israel’s story is not set: “Yhwh had not spoken about wiping out Israel’s name from under the heavens” (2 Kings 14:27). In this context, “Israel” presumably still means Ephraim, but the comment recalls Yhwh’s talk at Sinai of “wiping out Israel’s name from under heaven” (in the broader sense of “Israel”), but not going on to do it (Deut 9:14; cf. Ex 32:32–33). Ephraim still counts as Israel in this connection. But does it remain the case that Yhwh has not spoken about wiping out Israel when Manasseh provokes Yhwh into determining, “I will wipe out Jerusalem as one wipes out a dish, wiping it out and turning it upside down. I will cast off the remnant of my possession” (2 Kings 21:13–14)?

The statement that Yhwh saw that Ephraim was “without bond or free” (2 Kings 14:26) carries further resonances, though the phrase’s precise meaning is uncertain. It was part of a warning regarding the dynasties of Jeroboam I and Ahab (1 Kings 14:10), and it might have seemed an appropriate destiny for Jehu’s dynasty. That consideration is overcome by the fact that on “seeing” that their strength is gone, that they are “without bond or free,” and that they have no “support” among the gods they have turned to, Yhwh is committed to coming to Israel’s aid (Deut 32:36–38). Yhwh was then Ephraim’s support and “delivered them by means of Jeroboam ben Joash” (2 Kings 14:27) as Yhwh delivered Israel from Egypt by means of Moses, despite Jeroboam’s failure to put right the wrongdoing of his namesake. So although it is a principle of life and of Israel’s story that good leadership tends to mean a people prospers and bad leadership that it suffers, a king may escape what he deserves for the sake of his people. But Jeroboam II’s long and successful reign is reported with pointed brevity, like Omri’s, as if his achievements deserve to be underplayed, even though they are expressions of Yhwh’s mercy to Ephraim as still part of Israel. And some irony attaches to the fact that the prophet—Jonah—becomes the model for a story about a person who (unwillingly) warns Nineveh of the calamity threatened by its wrongdoing, sees it respond by turning from its wrongdoing, and objects to Yhwh’s subsequent show of mercy to the city. The Sinai story promises that Yhwh’s stance in relation to Israel is dominated by mercy rather than punishment. Jonah’s story presupposes that Yhwh takes the same stance in relation to the archetypal foreign oppressor as to Israel.[1136]  It shows that there is no sin that cannot be forgiven. Further, Jonah’s story suggests a feedback mechanism. If Nineveh can be forgiven its willful sin if it turns to Yhwh, then a fortiori that applies to Ephraim, Judah or Israel as a whole. The declaration that people who sin willfully must be cast out of the community (Num 15:30–31) does not preclude their finding forgiveness if they turn.

The sending of prophets is an expression of Yhwh’s commitment to Israel, while also a means of bringing punishment. The time of a king who “did more to provoke Yhwh, the God of Israel, than all the kings of Israel who were before him” (1 Kings 16:33; like his father! 1 Kings 16:25) sees the activity of a prophet of new authority. Yhwh and Elijah battle with Ephraim and with Ahab for the soul of both, and Yhwh’s enabling Ahab to win miraculous victories over the Syrians (1 Kings 20) seems to have no basis but generosity. Compared with earlier stories, “in the story of Ahab we are much more clearly in the context of the covenant of grace,” even here in the history of Ephraim.[1137]  But that particular story does end with a rebuke for making a treaty with the Syrian king rather than killing him. Sending a long sequence of prophets to Judah indicates how Yhwh “pitied his people and his dwelling” (2 Chron 36:15)—this is similarly the only occurrence of “pity” (ḥāmal) in the story. The trouble is, people often kill prophets, or at least seek to silence them (2 Chron 24:20–22; 25:15–16).

Long-Temperedness

Yhwh’s dealings with Ahab also affect subsequent generations. Yhwh declares that disaster is to come on Ahab’s household—the king himself, his wife Jezebel and his sons (1 Kings 21:20–24). Ahab responds and submits to Yhwh, accepting Yhwh’s assessment and Yhwh’s decision, and therefore Yhwh declares that it need not be implemented. Evidently Yhwh’s decision is not necessarily final and the right response can avert a calamity. Yet calamity is only postponed and will come in his son’s lifetime, Yhwh says. Presumably this decision can also be changed if his son gives Yhwh the right response, but such change as there is (2 Kings 3:1–3) is evidently not enough. Instead of dying with him, Ahab’s household thus lives on and two of his sons reign after him, though one then dies because of his own wrongdoing (1 Kings 21:27–29; 2 Kings 1:16).

Alongside the dynamic of the relationship between Yhwh and Israel that makes punishment avoidable are other interrelated dynamics. The sins of the father are visited on the son as Ahaziah “naturally” follows his father’s example, to be succeeded by his brother Joram/Jehoram. In due course Elisha commissions Jehu, one of Joram’s generals, to kill him and his seventy brothers in fulfillment of his declaration about Ahab’s household (2 Kings 9–10). In turn, for fulfilling this commission Jehu is rewarded with the promise that his descendants will reign after him for four generations (2 Kings 10:30). Humanly speaking this is an achievement; dynasties in Ephraim were not known for their longevity. Jehoahaz, Jehoash/Joash, Jeroboam II and Zechariah thus followed Jehu. Zechariah seems no worse than his predecessors, but he is assassinated after six months for no reason other than that the promise has run out (2 Kings 15:8–12).

The extreme examples of the principle that events may affect future generations are the eventual fall of both Ephraim and Judah. Ephraim’s last king, Hoshea, is less of a wrongdoer than his predecessors (2 Kings 17:2), but it is his reign that sees Ephraim reduced to a vassal of Assyria, then sees Samaria fall and its people transported. Initially, his experience is related without initial comment. Shalmanezer invades Ephraim, for reasons that are not stated—it is just one of those things. Hoshea “became his servant and paid him tribute”—it is just one of those things. Then Hoshea withholds tribute and makes overtures to Egypt about the possibility of rebellion. The narrative again offers neither positive nor negative comment—it is just one of those things. The Assyrians capture Hoshea and imprison him, then invade Ephraim, persist in a three-year siege of Samaria and take its people to Assyria and Media to join people from the northern and eastern clans already deported there in Pekah’s day (2 Kings 17:3–6). Only after relating the facts does Kings go in for explanation, and it is explanation at another level (2 Kings 17:7–23). It transpires that unknowingly Assyria is Yhwh’s agent in bringing about the demise of Ephraim because it has failed in its relationship with Yhwh. Assyria thinks it is simply pursuing policies that will provide greater security in its western empire, but it is unknowingly acting as Yhwh’s servant (the rod of Yhwh’s anger, to use Isaiah’s expression)—ironically, when a servant of Yhwh such as Ahaz is choosing to behave as if he is a servant of Assyria (2 Kings 16:7). The historian would reckon that Assyria finally lost patience with the Ephraimites and removed them from their land. Second Kings 17:8 reckons that “Yhwh was very angry at Israel and removed them out of his presence.”

The explanation begins with another irony that brings together politics and religion. Hoshea sends envoys to “the king of Egypt.” It is the first reference to the king of Egypt since the beginnings of the divided nation, and perhaps the first reference to Egypt itself (if 2 Kings 7:6 refers to Musru in Turkey). The explanation of Ephraim’s demise then begins with Yhwh’s freeing Israel from Egypt, and specifically from the power of “the king of Egypt” (2 Kings 17:7). Ephraim has gone back on the most basic fact about its life, which we have noted Yhwh keeping in mind. Israel’s story led from Egypt to Canaan, where Israel was destined to take the place of the nations that lived there and to worship a different God in different ways. But instead it worships the gods of the peoples there. Events in this land in turn lead to Yhwh’s making David king and accepting a dwelling in Jerusalem, but Ephraim cut itself off from David and worships at sanctuaries all over the land. This worship contrasts with the terms of the covenant made with their ancestors between Egypt and Canaan, and it persists despite the ongoing warnings of prophets and seers. Israel’s story was designed to be an account of Yhwh’s dealings with Israel granting blessing and, where needed, deliverance, which would manifest Yhwh to the world, and an account of Israel’s responsive deciding for Yhwh, its life of obedience, which would also contribute to the manifesting of Yhwh to the world. Instead it has become a story of disobedience and therefore of disaster—an Unheilsgeschichte. Its end is inevitably the loss of the land, because life in the land is part of the positive story and of the blessing that cannot appropriately continue. At point after point, Ephraim has declined to behave as Israel. It has ceased to be Israel. It then appropriately ceases to be.

Mercy That Eventually Runs Out

The Assyrians indulge in one more action with unintended ironic significance. In the manner of other powers ancient and modern, it cynically transports peoples from other parts of its empire to replace the Ephraimites in their former territory. This is presumably another move calculated to buttress unity in its empire by depriving the regions of any identity except as entities within the empire. But it involves treating Ephraim as if it were part of any old land instead of part of Yhwh’s land, and the new inhabitants soon learn that Yhwh expects to be worshiped here. The Assyrians are driven to send a priest to instruct them in Yhwh’s ways, and they have the opportunity effectively to become members of Yhwh’s covenant people. But like the people deported in their favor, these new inhabitants combine worship of Yhwh with worship of other gods and worship that takes forms of which Yhwh does not approve. So the land’s last state is the same as its first.

It is the last Ephraimite generation that experiences this severe punishment for the unfaithfulness that has characterized the people since Jeroboam’s day (2 Kings 17:7–41). In other words, the trouble of one day may be less than deserved, and the trouble of a later day greater because there is accumulated punishment to be exacted or accumulated feelings to be expressed. Subsequently, Manasseh’s reign unaccountably fails to see calamity fall on Jerusalem, but it was in that reign that the city’s fate was sealed. “I will stretch over Jerusalem the measuring line for Samaria, and the plummet for Ahab’s household” (2 Kings 21:13). It is the people’s life of wrongdoing and provocation since the exodus that will finally be punished (2 Kings 21:10–15). Thus Josiah’s reform only postpones the inevitable (2 Kings 23:26–27). Although there might be an implicit link between Jehoiakim’s wrongdoing and a first visit from the Babylonians, more explicitly there is a link between the wrongdoing of Jehoiakim’s great-grandfather and attacks on Judah by the Babylonians, the Syrians, the Moabites and the Ammonites (2 Kings 23:36–24:6). For all Josiah’s reforms, “yet Yhwh did not turn from his deep, blazing anger, his anger that blazed against Judah because of all the acts Manasseh did to infuriate him” (2 Kings 23:26). Mere confession of wrongdoing by an unfaithful husband does not make his wife free to resume the relationship as if nothing had happened. Anger takes time to subside. That is a positive feature of anger, a protection for the wife, because it provides time to test the genuineness of her husband’s turning. So Yhwh stays angry, and succeeding kings fail the test. There is a frightening contrast between Josiah and his sons, for instance in their attitude to Yhwh’s word (see, e.g., Jer 36). Judah continues to worship other gods alongside Yhwh.[1138]

We might analyze the problem of Judah in terms of structural sin. Wrongful attitudes and practices in the realms of power and religion are embedded in the society in ways that go beyond what an individual king or prophet can change. The structures themselves have to be demolished in order to build new ones. But the narrative’s way of seeing the situation is more personal. Like a deeply wounded wife, “Yhwh was not willing to pardon” (2 Kings 24:4). Sometimes people get pardoned because they have repented and the powers that be decide to pardon them. Sometimes they get pardoned for reasons that have nothing to do with them, as when a prisoner such as Barabbas gets released because the governor always releases someone at Passover. There have been times when Yhwh has lived with the people’s wrongdoing and times when Yhwh has rejoiced to see their repentance. Presumably Yhwh might have been willing to pardon Judah now if there had been repentance, but there is not, and Yhwh has decided that enough is enough. This is a moment when there is to be no more overlooking, no more mercy.

9.4 How History Works

Both Samuel–Kings and Chronicles trace the way Yhwh ensures that right-doing and wrongdoing have their proper outcome in the nations’ lives. On the large scale this concern more dominates Kings as it focuses on why the nation came to split, why Ephraim fell to Assyria and why Judah fell to Babylon, though in detail Chronicles expounds the concern more consistently than Kings does, showing how it works out in each reign. Whereas Kings allows for the way one generation’s wrongdoing affects future generations, Chronicles agrees with Ezekiel that “the person who sins is the one who dies. A child does not carry the parent’s wrongdoing and a parent does not carry the child’s wrongdoing. The rightness of the person who is in the right is on them and the wrong of the person who is in the wrong is on them” (Ezek 18:20). Between them, the two narratives offer complementary perspectives.

Kings closes off simple answers to questions about Yhwh’s relationship to history but offers multiple resources for theological reflection. David Noel Freedman suggests that the principle that Yhwh makes history work out in a moral way is qualified by at least three other principles: sometimes faithless nations thrive because Yhwh is using them, sometimes punishment is simply delayed, and sometimes the relatively less sinful get away with wrongdoing—otherwise Yhwh would be punishing everyone all the time.[1139]  One cannot say that Yhwh’s will is always being done. Nor can one say that Yhwh is not involved in events at all. One cannot say that Yhwh’s work is always clear, or that it is never so. One cannot say that it is characteristically miraculous, or that it is never so. One cannot say that Yhwh always sees that wrongdoing gets punished, but neither does the narrative suggest insight on why mercy operates in some contexts and not others. It thus recognizes the untidiness in history. The stories offer a range of insights on possible interpretations of events but rule out any inference that they offer formulas by means of which history can be infallibly explained or the outcome of events be predicted. The serendipity of human and divine freedom plays a role in events.

Alongside that, Chronicles safeguards against the possible inference that Yhwh is not really involved in events in a fair way and assures readers that Yhwh behaves in a way that is honorable and trustworthy, and it challenges every generation to assume it has responsibility for its destiny. In Chronicles, “Any ideology of ‘the sins of the fathers’ or ancestral merit … has no place,”[1140]  and “each generation stands immediately before Jahweh.”[1141]  Kings thus helps the exilic generation to understand the calamity that has come on it; Chronicles gives hope to the Second Temple community that it is not locked into the destiny of its forebears.

So how does the link between act and outcome work?

Acts Produce Results

Sometimes it is quite straightforward. Solomon’s unfaithfulness causes the nation’s partition and Rehoboam’s unfaithfulness brings about Shishak’s invasion (1 Kings 11; 2 Chron 12:1–8). Much of Asa’s reign is characterized by religious reform, reliance on Yhwh and responsiveness to the voice of prophecy, and the people enjoy victory and peace. Then in his latter years he relies on military alliances and is warned that there will be wars, he imprisons a prophet who confronts him and he becomes the victim of ill health, and he has recourse to healers rather than to Yhwh and dies (2 Chron 14–16). Because Jehoram abandons Yhwh, Edom and Libnah throw off Judahite rule, Philistines and Arabs invade Judah, and a fatal disease afflicts Jehoram himself (2 Chron 21:4–20). Because Joash abandons Yhwh in his latter years, Judah is invaded and defeated by a small Syrian force into which Yhwh delivers a large Judahite army, Joash is wounded, and he is later assassinated (2 Chron 24:17–27). Because Amaziah introduces Edomite worship in Jerusalem, he is defeated by Ephraim (2 Chron 25:14–24). As long as Uzziah seeks Yhwh he prospers, but when he becomes strong and arrogant, Yhwh strikes him with skin disease (2 Chron 26:5, 16–21). Ahaz’s worship of the Baals leads to his defeat by Syria and Ephraim (2 Chron 28). Manasseh’s worship of the Baals leads to Assyrian invasion and captivity in Babylon (2 Chron 33:11).

Sometimes this point is made explicit through the reporting of a prophetic word. It may not be this prophetic word that actually brings about the event, but the uttering of it indicates that Yhwh is bringing the trouble that comes (e.g., 1 Kings 13:1–14:18; 16:1–4; 2 Chron 12:5–8; 21:12–15). The recurrence of the same prophetic word suggests a pattern about Yhwh’s response to human wrongdoing, analogous to the pattern about the wrongdoing itself. The punishment pronounced on Jeroboam’s household applies to its destroyer, Baasha, and to Baasha’s eventual successor, Omri (1 Kings 14:9–11; 16:1–4; 21:20–24; 2 Kings 9:7–10).

Sometimes the story offers us opportunity to make a link between event and outcome, without itself quite doing so. Trouble comes to Solomon through two people who escape Israelite massacres in Syria and Edom (1 Kings 11:14–25). The implication might be that it results from those massacres—or that massacres should be more thorough. The description of Judahite unfaithfulness in Rehoboam’s time is followed by the account of Shishak’s invasion, but 1 Kings 14:21–28 does not make the link explicit as 2 Chronicles 12 does. Violent destruction comes on Baasha’s household in line with the violent destruction Baasha had brought on Jeroboam’s household (1 Kings 16:7). Baasha’s son is assassinated while on a drinking bout (1 Kings 16:9–10). Jehoram/Joram of Judah behaves like Ahab, in his time Edom rebels, and he fails to bring Edom back to subservience (2 Kings 8:16–24). His namesake, Jehoram/Joram of Ephraim, undertakes some reform, but not enough, and he gets wounded in battle and then assassinated by Jehu (2 Kings 3:1–3; 8:28–29; 9:1–26). Ahaziah of Judah is a wrongdoer and dies at the hands of Jehu after only a year on the throne through being in the wrong place at the wrong time (2 Kings 8:25–27; 9:27–28). Amaziah of Judah attacks Jehoash of Ephraim, who urges him not to have too high an opinion of his own potential, and Amaziah is defeated and humiliated. We might infer from 2 Kings 14 that Amaziah pays the price for his stupidity and that his subsequent assassination makes him the victim of a culture of violence that he has encouraged, though 2 Chronicles 25:17–27 links both with unfaithfulness to Yhwh.

Menahem reigns in a way that displeases Yhwh, and Assyria invades Ephraim (2 Kings 15:17–22). Ahaz engages in various disapproved religious practices, is then attacked by Syria and Ephraim, and loses territory to Edom (2 Kings 16:1–6). Amon does what was wrong in Yhwh’s eyes and is assassinated (2 Kings 21:19–23). Judah’s last four kings do what is wrong in Yhwh’s eyes and are deposed and/or invaded and/or transported, the last having his sons killed in front of his eyes before he is himself blinded (2 Kings 23–25).

Sometimes the narratives make a link between event and outcome without being very convincing. The declarations that Yhwh will punish the households of Jeroboam I and Baasha have no direct effect on these wrongdoers (1 Kings 13–14; 15:33–16:6). Zimri dies in a fire he starts because he follows the ways of Jeroboam and causes Israel to sin—but he reigns only seven days and so does not have huge opportunity to do that (1 Kings 16:15–20).

Acts and Events Look Less Related

When it looks hard to make a link between a king’s policies and the way his reign works out, Kings more often does not do so, though Chronicles often fills the gap. Despite his wrongdoing, Jeroboam I reigns twenty-two years and dies peacefully (1 Kings 14:20): Chronicles adds that Yhwh struck him (2 Chron 13:20). Alongside his reformism, Asa experiences invasion from a huge Sudanese force and also pressure from Baasha of Ephraim, which leads him to send silver and gold from the temple to persuade the Syrian Ben-hadad to join him in fighting Ephraim (2 Chron 14:9 [[1142]  8]; 16:1–6). Omri’s reign sees considerable internal and international achievement, but this is reported with notorious brevity, like Jeroboam II’s, as if these achievements count for little (1 Kings 16:23–28). His dynasty comes to an unexpected end with Jehu’s coup, but no prophet declares his punishment. Moab rebels against Israel after Ahab’s death (2 Kings 1:1; 3:5). It would have been easy to make a link with events that further unfold later when the allies are in trouble in their campaign against Moab, but the narrative does not do so, and in fact leaves the question more enigmatic. The allies consult Yhwh, and Yhwh responds for the sake of Jehoshaphat, but there is no rationale for the promise that they will win a great victory. Everything would have pointed in the opposite direction (2 Kings 3:1–19). Then the victory falls short of the promise because of the Moabite king’s sacrifice of his son, whereupon “great wrath came on Israel and they withdrew from him and returned to the land” (2 Kings 3:27). The subsequent ups and downs of relations between Syria and Ephraim (e.g., 2 Kings 5–8) seem unrelated to Ephraim’s stance toward Yhwh. Nor is there any moral or religious explanation of Elisha’s involvement in Hazael’s killing of Ben-hadad, the king of Syria (2 Kings 8:7–15).

Despite the faithfulness of their long reigns, both Joash of Judah and his son Amaziah end up assassinated (2 Kings 12:20; 14:19). Amaziah accedes to a prophetic exhortation to dismiss the Ephraimite mercenaries from his army, and in their resentment they attack Judahite cities on their way home and kill three thousand people as well as taking spoil (2 Chron 25:5–13). As for Amaziah’s son Azariah/Uzziah, “Yhwh touched the king and he had skin disease until the day of his death, and lived in a separate house” (2 Kings 15:5). His long and successful reign is inexplicably blighted by this affliction that requires him to withdraw from public life and let his son Jotham rule on his behalf—though Chronicles provides an explanation (2 Chron 26:16–21). Zechariah reigns for six months in Ephraim and is assassinated, and his assassin, Shallum, reigns only one month before he is assassinated (2 Kings 15:8–13). Yet his assassin, Menahem, who “ripped open all the pregnant women” in Tiphsah because it resisted him, and “exacted money from Israel” to get the Assyrian king to back him, reigned ten years (2 Kings 15:16–22). In the time of Pekah of Ephraim and Jotham of Judah, Tiglath-pileser took control of the northern and eastern part of Ephraim and transported its people to Assyria (2 Kings 15:29). The story’s failure to comment on this is underlined by the subsequent observation that “in those days Yhwh began to send against Judah King Rezin of Syria and Pekah ben Remaliah” himself (2 Kings 15:37). Why would Yhwh do that, in the reign of a faithful king such as Jotham? Perhaps the implication is that Yhwh’s sovereignty does somehow lie behind all events, even where they look odd. Perhaps Yhwh intends Rezin and Pekah to test Jotham, as Isaiah implies they test Ahaz. Conversely, Manasseh is subsequently guilty of more systematic wrongdoing than any other king of Ephraim or Judah but reigns fifty-five years and dies in peace to be succeeded by his own son—though Chronicles provides some explanation of this. The process whereby Josiah comes to the throne is a messy one (2 Kings 21:23–24), like that which took Omri to the throne—though the beneficiaries of these processes are evaluated very differently. On the other hand, the promise that Josiah will be gathered to his grave in peace is hardly fulfilled by his death in battle at thirty-nine (2 Kings 21:19–20; 23:29)—again 2 Chronicles explains this by Josiah’s refusal to listen to God’s word from the mouth of the Egyptian king (2 Chron 35:20–24). In contrast, Jehoiakim “deserves” punishment but dies in peace (2 Kings 23:36–24:6).

The Sovereignty of God

A dominant image for God in Christian theology and piety is that God is Lord—sovereign, king, emperor, president. The First Testament does refer to Yhwh as king or lord or ruler, but is more guarded in the use of such terms. Such use does not sit comfortably with widespread suspicion of and resentment toward rulers nor with the story the First Testament tells, which does not describe the reign of a sovereign, king or emperor of the kind who continuously exercises executive power. At the beginning God was absolutely sovereign in creating the world, even if having to overcome dynamic forces that could have frustrated the project. But earthly wills were defying God’s lordship by the second page of the story, and “the sons of God” were doing the same a few pages later, and God was letting them do so. It is customary to explain that God acts in this way out of a desire that there should come into being a people that willingly lives for God and with God rather than doing so under compulsion. That may be true, though the Bible does not make the point and does not seem aware of an issue here. The explanation reflects the agenda of modernity. Indeed, for all the story’s references to God’s activity, for example, by raising up kings, as a whole it is actually sparing in such statements. It mostly proceeds without reference to God’s acts and gives no impression that all that happens issues from God’s will. Most events take place because people such as Ephraimite or Judahite kings initiate them. Perhaps God is involved in this entire story in some way, but “acting” would be an odd way to speak of this involvement, and the story does not speak thus.

Rather than comparing Yhwh’s relationship to the world with that of a Middle Eastern monarch, we might compare it with the relationship of parents to children or presidents to companies.[1143]  Parenthood may provide a good model for God’s relationship with Israel, presidency for God’s relationship with other peoples. In some sense parents and presidents are responsible for all that their (small) children and their employees do, but it would be odd to say that all the children’s or the employees’ acts were their parents’ or their presidents’ acts. Nor are parents or presidents necessarily sovereign in the lives and activity of children and employees. Presidents may presuppose this should be so, but employees may use their free will (as we say) to pursue policies the president does not approve. In modern cultures, at least, parents may not wish to be sovereign in their children’s lives. While they may wish their children to affirm their values, they recognize that this comes about only as the children exercise their own sovereignty in doing so. And sometimes both parents and presidents may find they can harness the free choices of children or employees to a purpose that the children or employees did not have in mind.

If Israel’s history is “a course of events shaped by the word of Yahweh, continually intervening to direct and to deliver, and so steadily pressing these events towards their fulfilment in history,”[1144]  we would expect more sense of working toward a goal than is actually there. The idea of God’s sovereignty suggests that Israel’s story has been the outworking of God’s will, even the outworking of a plan God formulated before the world began. The First Testament has not described it in these terms—wisely, as the story we have been reviewing does not look like one that issued from a plan or reflected anyone’s sovereignty. It has been the story of a wrestling match with one of the partners having absolute power to overwhelm the other, but fighting with one arm tied behind his back, refraining from exercising that absolute power. It has taken up the wrestling match God fought with the original Israel, with whom God also fought in that self-restraining way.

Perhaps this is indeed because the kind of victory God wants to win cannot be won by overwhelming the other party by force. God wants to be acknowledged as lord with a recognition that involves the whole person and not a mere enforced submission. Like a parent trying all means to encourage a child to grow to maturity and wisdom, God uses all means to win this recognition but experiences the vexation and feels the anger of a parent who cannot get the child to see sense or behave sensibly. God exercises sovereignty in letting humanity in general and Israel in particular have their own sovereignty whether or not they exercise it God’s way. God thus accepts human frustration of the divine purpose and accepts being pushed out of the world. Perhaps God’s hope is that eventually the world will see sense and will be drawn back precisely by God’s carrying its willfulness. God thereby pays the price for humanity’s willfulness in order to bring it to an end. That is the First Testament story, finding its logical conclusion at the cross (cf. the argument of Rom 3:21–26), though God still waits for the world and for God’s own people to see sense and respond.

9.5 How Yhwh Works

Insofar as Yhwh does act in these stories, how does Yhwh do so? How does Yhwh effect any moral link between the behavior of Israel or its monarch and the way life works out for them? Yhwh works by direct action, uses heavenly forces, speaks via prophets, inspires human decision making, makes independent human decisions work to this end, harnesses “chance” events and utilizes the “natural” way human decisions can have an outworking beyond their original context. The narrative gives people the opportunity to take the marks of God’s footsteps traced in this story as an aid to seeing what God may be doing in their own day.

Using Natural and Human Processes

Yhwh works via natural and human processes in bringing about the breakup of Israel. Jeroboam had shown himself an able supervisor of a construction project, Solomon promoted him to oversee all his labor force, and this apparently made him entertain designs on Solomon’s throne (1 Kings 11:26–40). Yhwh works by producing results from events that are understandable even if unexpected and unpredictable, humanly speaking. But there is more than ambition making Jeroboam act. As he is leaving Jerusalem one day, a prophet meets him and in Yhwh’s name commissions him to take ten of the clans from Solomon. It is this that directly leads to his attempting a coup, though he flees to Egypt when Solomon sets about seeking to eliminate him. So Yhwh makes use of a man’s desires, though it is not clear that these desires would ever have found expression if Yhwh had not commissioned it. Yhwh works by charging a person such as a prophet to act so as to change the course of events. It is part of the process that also later takes a violent revolutionary to reign over the bulk of Solomon’s kingdom (1 Kings 19:15–18; 2 Kings 9–10).

After Solomon’s death Jeroboam returns from Egypt to lead the people in a request to his successor to alleviate the Egypt-like servitude Solomon imposed on them. Instead Rehoboam follows the advice of the young Turks and threatens to make things tougher, “because it was a turn of affairs that came from Yhwh to fulfill his word, which Yhwh had spoken by means of Ahijah” (1 Kings 12:15). In later years Rehoboam will perhaps ask, “Why didn’t I take the elders’ advice? What possessed me to be so stupid?” He will not imply that he is forced to take a different decision from the one he would “naturally” take. He knows he makes his own decisions. Yet it is as if he is possessed, the converse of the experience of saying or achieving something wiser or better than you would have believed you were naturally capable of. The mysterious stupidity of his free decision comes about as Yhwh’s way of bringing about the fulfillment of Ahijah’s word.

Yhwh thus works through events that have no natural links, though we might see a moral link. Solomon’s son’s stupid insistence on continuing Solomon’s oppressive social policies is the means whereby Yhwh punishes Solomon’s religious unfaithfulness, by making the nation break up. It would have been easy to imply that Yhwh punishes oppressive social policies by letting them bring about the collapse of the society, or punishes religious unfaithfulness by letting it bring about the collapse of one nation into two with different religious loyalties. But Kings does not do that, as it makes no link between the religious and social wrongdoing of Solomon and his son. Similarly, Jeroboam’s household falls from power in Ephraim because of religious unfaithfulness (e.g., 1 Kings 13:33–34), but there is no intrinsic link between the wrongdoing and the manner of the fall. Yhwh’s purpose finds fulfillment by another aspect of serendipity, without Yhwh needing to act. Later, it is Ephraim’s religious unfaithfulness that brings about its fall (2 Kings 17:7–23), but again there is no intrinsic link between these events unless it is that the nation would have been protected and preserved if it had turned to Yhwh. The stories thus display the interplay of the free determination of human beings and the free decision of God.[1145]  In political situations human beings make their decisions and put their policies into effect, and God gets things done according to a different agenda through or despite these deliberate human acts.

Over the household of Jeroboam there stands, as well as the commission and promise of Abijah, the warning of the nameless man of God and then the warning of Ahijah. Over Baasha there stands that same warning of Ahijah, which Baasha is the means of executing (1 Kings 14:14; 15:29–30). But while Yhwh is vexed (1 Kings 15:30), the story of Baasha’s coup makes no reference to that; humanly speaking it is simply a coup he effects (1 Kings 15:27–28). We are told nothing of Baasha’s own reasons for it. Yhwh raises him up and makes him leader over Ephraim (1 Kings 16:2), but we are told of no divine commission, as we are regarding other kings, and Baasha is no better than his predecessors; Yhwh is behind the scenes of a humanly devised plot (1 Kings 15:27–34). Over Baasha there then further stands a warning via the prophet Jehu (1 Kings 16:1–4). Yhwh raised him from the dirt to make him leader over Ephraim, but he continues in the same ways as Jeroboam, and he too therefore vexes Yhwh. So his household will go the same way as Jeroboam’s. Indeed, one of the reasons is the very fact that he struck down the household of Jeroboam (1 Kings 16:7)—as Yhwh wished! Zimri likewise put into effect Yhwh’s warning to Baasha (1 Kings 16:12), but again the assassin acted for his own reasons. When Zimri takes the throne in Tirzah, the army makes Omri king and besieges Tirzah, and Zimri dies in a fire he starts—because of his wrongdoing (1 Kings 16:18–19). Omri is a king of huge national and international significance, but the story ignores that: apparently Yhwh is not at work here.

Taking Initiatives Behind the Scenes

Tiglath-pileser’s invasion of Ephraim doubtless forms part of a concerted Assyrian policy of gaining control of the trade routes to the Mediterranean and Egypt, but he is the means whereby Yhwh brings trouble to Ephraim for its rebellion against Yhwh. Sennacherib likewise plans his campaign in Palestine, but unwittingly does that as Yhwh’s agent. Yhwh planned the campaign Sennacherib undertakes, and now Yhwh will lead him back home like a farmer leading an ox back home after a day’s plowing (2 Kings 19:22–28). Yhwh’s promise through Isaiah about Sennacherib perhaps implies he will behave as oddly as Rehoboam for a similar reason: “I am putting a spirit in him. He will hear news and will return to his own country, and I will make him fall by the sword in his own country” (2 Kings 19:7). News of an alleged attack by Sudan (2 Kings 19:9) might not have caused the king to react by retreating to Assyria, but it does so, and ironically he will thus meet his death there rather than on a campaign.

Subsequently Yhwh “sent off” Babylonian, Syrian, Moabite and Ammonite forces against Jehoiakim (2 Kings 24:2), as Ahaziah once sent forces to arrest Elijah (2 Kings 1:2, 9, 11, 13)—except that these forces did not realize they had been sent. The paradox is highlighted by the use of the piel verb, which has even more peremptory implications than the qal in 2 Kings 1. The events that then lead to the fall of Jerusalem (2 Kings 25) are entirely explicable politically: Judah makes a series of political decisions for which it pays a political price. But the story sees Yhwh working through this process. “Because of Yhwh’s anger it happened in Jerusalem and in Judah, until he sent them out of his presence. And Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon” (2 Kings 24:20). Yhwh’s anger lies behind the sequence of events that has already unfolded: Jehoiakim’s rebellion, Nebuchadnezzar’s deposing of Jehoiachin and the transportation of 597, and his imposing of the unwise and hapless Zedekiah. In the understanding implied by MT’s division of the verses, Zedekiah’s rebellion also results from Yhwh’s anger—as of course does the city’s second fall and its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar’s forces.

Chronicles makes the point by speaking of Yhwh “stirring” (ʿûr hiphil) the spirit of Tiglath-pileser or of the Philistines and the Arabs (1 Chron 5:26; 2 Chron 21:16). Perhaps this involves a similar process to the toughening of Pharaoh. Yhwh, for instance, holds before the Philistines’ eyes the advantages of invading and pillaging Jerusalem, as Yhwh will later cause Cyrus to see the advantages of restoring the temple (2 Chron 36:22). Or Yhwh “brings” (bôʾ hiphil) against Manasseh the Assyrian officers who take him to Babylon (2 Chron 33:11), as if they are themselves conducted by an invisible leader. Or Yhwh “brings up” (ʿālâ hiphil) against Judah the Babylonian king himself (2 Chron 36:17), as if led by an invisible superior officer. Or conversely, Yhwh “gives” (nātan) Ahaz into the power of the king of Syria (2 Chron 28:5). On the other hand, Yhwh “relieved Asa” and his people, and later Jehoshaphat, through the awe before God that came on other peoples when they heard that Yhwh had fought with Israel’s enemies (nûaḥ qal or hiphil, 2 Chron 14:6–7 [MT 5–6]; 15:15; 20:29–30; cf. 2 Chron 17:10).

Sending Prophets with Bewildering Commissions

Yhwh works through prophets who are overly committed to telling the king what he wants to hear as well as through prophets who tell the truth. In 1 Kings 22 we have been prepared to treat Micaiah as a prophet who truly brings Yhwh’s word, unlike the other four hundred prophets. Warned by the king’s aide to speak favorably to the king like the other four hundred, he swears to say only what Yhwh says to him. He then gives the same message as the other prophets. Oddly, the king is wise enough to recognize that he does not mean this message. So Micaiah gives a very different message, though still an enigmatic one. Again the king is wise enough to recognize that Micaiah is now bringing the kind of statement he would expect, though he is not pleased. Micaiah then utters a third, even more unexpected and scandalous message. Yhwh has decided Ahab should die in the battle with Syria and therefore asked for a member of the heavenly cabinet who will bring this about. Yhwh sent the false message that has come from the other prophets via a spirit that offered to deceive Ahab by giving his prophets an untrue promise about the prospect of success in battle. It is Yhwh’s way of bringing calamity on the kings. The orthodox theologian reels.

Micaiah offers to be evaluated on the basis of how things actually turn out, and they vindicate him. But the recipients of a prophet’s words do not have the luxury of waiting until they see how things turn out before making a decision about whether to treat the prophet as faithful. And that chimes with the fact that this decision has to be made on moral and theological grounds. It is thus by their making of their decision that the kings offer an evaluation of themselves, of their moral and theological insight.

When Amaziah silences a prophet who rebukes him for resorting to other gods, the prophet stops and says, “I know that God has counseled that you be terminated because you have done this and not heeded my counsel” (2 Chron 25:16). While he might mean that the decision to terminate Amaziah results from Amaziah’s resistance, more likely he means that Amaziah’s resistance results from Yhwh’s decision to terminate him. The situation is analogous to that in 1 Kings 22. Here 2 Chronicles 25 gives us more explanation of an event that 2 Kings 14 left more enigmatic. When Amaziah goes on to challenge Jehoash of Ephraim to battle, Jehoash invites him to see he is bound to be defeated, but perhaps the victory over Edom has encouraged Amaziah to come to enjoy war, and such enthusiasm makes him take on another war that reflection might have confirmed was an act of folly. He is indeed defeated and captured, and Jehoash reduces Jerusalem, pillages it and takes hostages back to Samaria. It is a piece of stupidity “from Yhwh” (2 Chron 25:17–20). Yhwh’s purpose lies behind Amaziah’s heedlessness, though 2 Chronicles does not say Jehoash actually speaks a word from God like Pharaoh Neco warning off Josiah, still less that he himself claims to speak a word from God.

As well as the talk in Exodus of Yhwh toughening Pharaoh’s attitude so that he acts in a way that brings disaster, Micaiah’s declaration that Yhwh determined to deceive Ahab also parallels Ezekiel’s attribution to Yhwh of bad laws and requirements that would bring people death rather than life, such as the idea that they should sacrifice children (Ezek 20:25–26). It matches Isaiah’s reference to Yhwh’s making Judah unable to see or hear (Is 6:9–10), Jesus’ application of that text to his own ministry (Mark 4:10–12), and Paul’s declaration about God sending a powerful delusion on people to make them believe what is false (2 Thess 2:11). A number of considerations underlie such statements. First, they presuppose a strong understanding of God’s sovereignty. While the story does not suggest Yhwh is behind all events, Yhwh is behind some events with great purposefulness. Micaiah, Ezekiel and Paul would not be afraid in principle to declare that God brought about the fall of the Twin Towers. Second, they constitute a form of elucidation of events that are otherwise inexplicably extraordinary. Why does someone such as Ahab behave so stupidly? Third, they are acts of punishment on people who have already shown themselves determined to resist Yhwh. But fourth, the prophets’ statements, including Micaiah’s, are nevertheless designed to lead people to turn back to Yhwh, and the extravagance of their statements is designed to shock people in that direction. The talk about deception or blinding is in the service of a deeper commitment to show mercy. Yhwh will do anything, even tell lies, to get people to turn back.

It is years before Yhwh’s words to Elijah in 1 Kings 19:17 come about (see 2 Kings 8–9). We are given no reason why these are the moments to implement Yhwh’s commission. Perhaps events come about through the interaction of a divine word and human decisions that affect or decide the moment for its implementation.

Using the Chance and the Inexplicable

Through much of the story of the kings and Micaiah (1 Kings 22), Jehoshaphat behaves as if he is several credits short of wisdom, especially when he agrees to go into battle in his royal robes while Ahab dons disguise. The Syrians’ priority is to kill Ahab, and they assume Jehoshaphat is their target. However, closer inspection reveals he is not, and they let him go. Then an incompetent Syrian soldier shoots at random and not only hits Ahab by chance, but by chance hits him at a tiny weak point in his armor. Yhwh works through “chance” events, on this occasion bringing about the personal disaster announced through Elijah and Micaiah (1 Kings 21:19; 22:23, 28, 34). On another occasion Ahaziah of Judah goes to see Joram of Ephraim when Joram is sick, but this is the moment when Jehu shows up at Samaria: thus “Ahaziah’s downfall was from God through going to Joram” (2 Chron 22:7, 8–9).

The next battle story in Kings involves Jehoshaphat and Ahab’s successor, Jehoram, and the king of Edom (2 Kings 3:4–27). The Moabites have rebelled against Israelite control, the three armies set off to put Moab in its place, run out of water in the wilderness and seem doomed. Jehoram concludes, “Yhwh summoned these three kings to give them into the hand of Moab” (2 Kings 3:10, 13). Yet the story has made no reference to Yhwh’s having initiated or approved the expedition. Perhaps Jehoram too easily assumes that plans he makes have Yhwh’s approval; governments generally make such claims. Or perhaps he implies that Yhwh was indeed involved in the expedition, but with a different aim from the one he will have originally assumed. Yet he also presupposes that the future is still open: Yhwh’s prophet may know how to change Yhwh’s purpose. Perhaps Jehoram has come to his senses, as Ahab did not, so that his sending to Elisha implies a form of turning or repentance.

Initially Elisha suggests they consult the Baal prophets; they then acknowledge that it is Yhwh who has put them into difficulties. Elisha asks for a musician and receives a message from God: we are surprised to hear Elisha implicitly affirming that Yhwh was indeed involved in the expedition in the way Jehoram would have claimed rather than the way he now feared. God will provide them with plentiful water. They are then to defeat Moab and ruin their trees, land and water supply (despite, e.g., Deut 20:19–20). The promise is all but fulfilled and the armies are on the way to their final victory, the taking of the Moabite capital, when the Moabite king sacrifices his son. In Moab, as in Europe and the United States in twentieth-century wars it is the sons who make “the supreme sacrifice” at the behest of the government. And as sometimes happens in our own wars, this works: “Great wrath came on Israel and they withdrew from him and returned to the land” (2 Kings 3:27). So Elisha’s prophecy does not entirely come true. The word and the wonder of the prophet turn out to be insufficient, not wholly reliable.[1146]  Although Yhwh is involved in his receiving the oracle, does he mishear Yhwh? Does his need of music hint that there is something wrong here? Or is Yhwh involved in giving the prophecy, but is it a deceptive one, like the one in 1 Kings 22:23? Is it designed eventually to take the kings back home with their tails between their legs? Is this because the Moabite god to whom Mesha sacrificed his son acted in wrath against Israel and overcame Yhwh? Is that because Yhwh submitted to such defeat by an underling who was allowed to exercise responsibility within Moab? Or is the wrath Yhwh’s wrath? Does Israel never know whose wrath it is, but simply experience a defeat signifying that someone is working against them? Is this rather a way of expressing the conviction that there must be some supernatural explanation for the way the allies snatched defeat from the jaws of victory? The story leaves more questions than it answers, presumably because this is how matters often are for Israel, as for us.[1147]  “What Israel knows is that history has its own untamed quality”—as the United States experienced in Vietnam.[1148]  We can no more be sure of the answers to these questions than Israel was.

Acting Through Supernatural and Natural Force and Violence

Yhwh works through supernatural force and violence, as well as earthly force and violence. One image to express Yhwh’s involvement in some political events is the presence of an army of fiery chariots and horses. These first appear meeting Elijah when the whirlwind is about to take him (2 Kings 2:11). Subsequently, Elisha and his assistant are in Dothan when the assistant discovers that the Syrian army is surrounding the city with horses and chariots (2 Kings 6:15–17). Apparently Elisha can see the fiery horses and chariots around him and he prays for his assistant to be able to see them. It is perhaps the sound of the same fiery army that later frightens the Syrian army and causes it to lift the siege of Samaria (2 Kings 7:6). The size of the Syrian forces is not what decides the outcome of battles—because, for instance, Yhwh can know where they are and can reveal this to a man of God, who can reveal it to the Israelite king (2 Kings 6:8–12). Whereas we thought kings had power, they turn out not to be the real actors in the historical process. The strong turn out to be the weak, and vice versa.[1149]

Subsequently Yhwh’s aide kills 185,000 soldiers in Sennacherib’s army (2 Kings 19:35). In the early years of the two nations Yhwh makes it possible for Judahites to kill half a million Ephraimites (2 Chron 13:17) and causes the death of huge armies of Sudanese, Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites (2 Chron 14; 20). Later Amaziah fights the Edomites, for reasons that are unstated but with the promise that God has the power to help him, and captures the key border town of Sela, and the Judahite troops throw ten thousand enemy captives from the top of Sela so that they are battered and disfigured (2 Chron 25:8, 12). Violence is a feature of religious as well as political affairs: Elijah personally slaughters four hundred Baal prophets at Mount Carmel and sets in process a chain of events that comes to a climax in Jehu’s slaughter (1 Kings 18).

Yhwh thus works by extraordinary or miraculous means. When Judah, Ephraim and Edom are campaigning against Moab and are in danger, Yhwh produces a plenteous supply of water without sign of wind or rain. This both meets the allies’ needs and deceives the Moabites because they think the water is running with blood (2 Kings 3:16–25). Chronicles tells a series of stories of extraordinary victories. It offers no explanation of the way a threatened victory of Jeroboam over Abijah was turned into the reverse, except that “God defeated Jeroboam” and his army inexplicably fled from Judah’s (2 Chron 13:15–16). Perhaps the priests’ blowing of their horns or the army’s raising the battle shout are of key significance, and perhaps a mysterious panic seizes the Ephraimite army—but Chronicles does not quite say so. A similar story of Asa’s victory over a Sudanese army refers to the activity of “Yhwh’s army,” which suggests heavenly forces whose involvement explains the reversal (2 Chron 14:12–13 [MT 11–12]). Subsequently, Yhwh sends mysterious ambushers against Jehoshaphat’s attackers from Moab, Ammon and Mount Seir, causing them to turn on each other (2 Chron 20:22–23). These, too, may be heavenly forces, but again the point is made only allusively. Solemnly, Yhwh can bring inexplicable defeat to Judah itself as well as to its enemies (see 2 Chron 24:24). In all these events, human armies fight, and otherwise there would have been no victories. But Yhwh also fights; otherwise the battle would have gone the other way.[1150]  Each time the narrative knows there is more involved in the battle than meets the eye, but it does not pretend to know precisely how things work—which is noteworthy because in other connections Chronicles is confident about knowing how Yhwh works.

9.6 How Kings Exercise Leadership

Kings and prophets play a key role in this story of Yhwh’s struggle with Ephraim and Judah. The kings have institutional power, but that does not give them religious or moral authority. Their responsibility is to see that religion and politics are shaped by the teaching of Moses and the prophets. Toward the end of the story of the monarchy, Hezekiah, Manasseh and Josiah become paradigms of the exercise of this responsibility. The first and last show how the king can shape the nation’s religious life for good; Manasseh demonstrates how he can shape it for evil. All three illustrate the interweaving of politics and religion, as does the whole story. The religious reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah cohere with and support their asserting of political independence from Assyria, while Manasseh’s religious policies cohere with and support his subservience to Assyria. Critiques in the Latter Prophets suggest that other groups such as the royal court, elders, priests, prophets and their wives share responsibility with the kings for Israel’s social, religious and moral malaise, but the story puts the responsibility on the kings with whom the buck stops.

The Constraints on Royal Power

While prophets may have huge religious and moral authority, they do not have institutional power, as Amaziah points out to a prophet who rebukes him: “Did we make you into an adviser for the king?” (2 Chron 25:16). But as leaders, the kings’ obligation is to listen to prophets, to speak prophetically and to pray prophetically (2 Chron 12–14), and to submit to prophets (2 Chron 36:12). The earthly king thus submits to the supreme sovereignty of the heavenly king (e.g., 1 Kings 21:29; 2 Kings 22:19; 2 Chron 12:6–7, 12; 32:26; 33:12, 19, 23; 34:27). It is the opposite to a king’s attitude becoming high (2 Chron 26:16; 32:25–26). Such submission excludes recourse to earthly political powers as well as to other deities. That makes kings the servants of Yhwh, though the kings of Ephraim and Judah are not described thus. Only the prophets are servants of Yhwh; the kings are the servants of the superpower (e.g., 2 Kings 17:3, 13, 23; 24:1–2). To be leaders and to be servants of Yhwh are mutually exclusive. It is hard to serve two masters.

Moses’ Teaching, too, has more authority but less power than king or temple. Both king and temple have their origin in human initiatives about which Yhwh was equivocal. Yhwh’s subsequent commitment to them still leaves them subordinate to Moses. Deuteronomy 17:14–20 requires the king to keep alongside himself a copy of Moses’ Teaching, and David challenges Solomon to live by it (1 Kings 2:3). The terms of that exhortation recall the description of Joshua’s leadership. Joshua as servant of God sets a standard for the kings to follow. The narrative thus manifests “philosophic underpinnings that permitted a cautious embrace of the monarchy on the basis of the possibility of Torah obedience.”[1151]  But there is no further reference to Moses’ Teaching until the latter years of the divided nation, when “Jehu was not careful to walk by the teaching of Yhwh the God of Israel with all his heart” (2 Kings 10:31). The narrative adds that he “did not turn from the sins of Jeroboam.” Previously, this concrete statement has been enough, but now reference to the Teaching of Yhwh or of Moses is added (cf. 2 Kings 14:6). Part of the indictment of Manasseh is that instead of encouraging his people to live by Moses’ Teaching, he leads them aside from the right path into the wrong path or the pathless waste (tāʿâ hiphil), into worse wrongdoing than the previous inhabitants of the land (2 Kings 21:8–9). Having then apparently been given up and thus “lost” in Manasseh’s day, Moses’ Teaching is rediscovered and heeded in Josiah’s (2 Kings 22:8–11; 23:24–25). Josiah initiates a program of repair work in the temple, in the course of which the senior priest finds a scroll of Moses’ Teaching. Narratively, the repair program is then forgotten. We hear no more of it. The reforms the scroll engenders gain all the attention. Indeed, Josiah himself is of interest chiefly because of his submission to Moses’ Teaching.[1152]

In general, the kings’ recurrent characteristics are unfaithfulness in religion and specifically an inclination to follow the traditional religion of the land, conspiracy and violence toward present and past leaders and their households, reliance on resources of strength and guidance other than Yhwh, oppression of the people, and resistance to confrontation from people outside the leadership structure. They are often successful in the exercise of their leadership in building cities, creating empires and winning wars, but they lead the people in such a way as to ignore the central tenets of Israelite faith. In most cases we do not know what would have happened to this or that man if he had not been king, but the story continues to illustrate how a position of leadership can destroy a person who might well have lived in trust and commitment if he had not been a leader. It is frightening to find yourself in a position of leadership. This imposes overwhelming religious and moral demands.

Serving Their People?

At the beginning, Rehoboam takes the stance leaders often do, reckoning he needs to exercise firm leadership when he comes to the throne. It would be risky to give people the impression he will always yield to their pressure by reducing the burdens on them. Further, if he does so, he may have to scale down the nature of the Jerusalem monarchy. Even if the country does not need any more gargantuan building projects like Solomon’s, once the economy is geared that way, the arrangement tends to gain a momentum of its own.

Anyway, Solomon’s extravagant arrangements will need maintaining unless they themselves are scaled down. But this involves Rehoboam in persisting with oppressive policies, and he pays for that. Rehoboam’s father and grandfather had seen themselves as Yhwh’s servants, and his senior advisers urge him also to “become a servant to this people,” by treating them less oppressively than his father had and by talking about beneficence (tôb) to them. It was indeed customary in the Middle Eastern world for a new king to bolster his position by making some appropriate promises to ease his way into power, like a Western politician before an election.[1153]  If Rehoboam follows this pattern “today,” the people will be his servants “all the days” (1 Kings 12:7). Rehoboam rather takes the view that such concessions would be a dangerous display of weakness. It would be nice to think that people wish to be leaders because they want to serve their people or to serve God, but there is little evidence that this is so.

Jeroboam is the person who urges the easing of Solomon’s oppressive policies, but it is not clear whether he does so to curry favor with the people. His urging was in keeping with fundamentals of that mutual commitment within the community, but his religious policies ignore fundamentals of Israelite religious faith in the way they seek to shore up the stability of the new northern state. Further, he is the first of the line of kings who seeks to silence a prophet and thus sets prophecy and leadership on a confrontational course (1 Kings 13:1–10). His dividedness is illustrated by the way he subsequently consults a prophet at Shiloh, but seeks to do so secretly (1 Kings 14:1–18). The story concerns an event such as happens in any family, the sickness of a child and the anxiety of a father and mother wondering whether the child will recover. Typically, we do not know the name of this anxious mother, but we do know that her being the king’s wife complicates the situation, and that the child’s being the king’s son does the same for him. The story does not quite say that he might otherwise have been healed and that he pays the price for his father’s wrongdoing, but it raises the question whether this is so.

The same questions are raised by the story of Ben-hadad and Ahab, when Ben-hadad demands Ahab’s best wives and children in return for lifting the siege of Samaria (1 Kings 20:1–28). Ahab agrees, but Ben-hadad then increases his demand and a prophet promises Yhwh’s rescue—for the sake of Yhwh’s reputation, not for the sake of the women and children. In the king’s view, Elisha is somehow responsible for a situation during a later siege in which women are arguing over whose dead baby should be eaten next (2 Kings 6:28–31). This might seem the bottom, but it is not. “At that time Menahem sacked Tiphsah … and ripped open all the pregnant women there” (1 Kings 15:16).

Amenable to Queenly Pressure

In line with Solomon’s policies, Ahab marries a princess from Sidon and she brings her religion with her (1 Kings 16:31). Royal patronage of the Phoenician Baal could easily instill new life into the traditional Baal religion of the land.[1154]  This indeed unleashes systematic persecution of Yhwh prophets (1 Kings 18:4; 19:2). We have noted that the narratives do not major on moral and social issues as prophets such as Amos and Micah do, but more on the two nations’ religious unfaithfulness. It is the books of these prophets rather than the narratives that show how Samuel’s warnings about monarchy get fulfilled. One of the Elisha stories does relate the king’s restoration of her land to the woman from Shunem (2 Kings 8:1–6), but the social or moral significance of this event is incidental to the interest in the relation between prophet and king.

The same concern with the relation between prophet and king may motivate the great exception to the narrative focus on religious rather than moral and social questions, the affair of Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings 21). It stands near Ahab’s palace and would make a sensible location for the palace vegetable garden, but Naboth will not give up his vineyard. He takes the traditional view that land belongs permanently to the families to whom it was long ago allocated, while Ahab takes the more modern view that land is a commodity that can be bought and sold. Neither Ahab nor Jezebel assumes that the government simply has a right to control ownership of land, so that the king can just appropriate Naboth’s land and impose compensation on him. Jezebel therefore has Naboth found guilty of wrongs he has not committed, such as will entail his being executed. Perhaps this also means his property becomes forfeit because his family were also killed (if we are to interpret 2 Kings 9:26 literally).[1155]  Yhwh’s reaction parallels that to David’s wrongdoing and is again conveyed through a prophet whose person stands for Yhwh’s sovereignty over human sovereignty. There the wrong lay more in the killing of Uriah than in the affair with Bathsheba; here it lies more in the killing of Naboth than in the appropriation of his vineyard (compare 2 Sam 12:9–10 with 1 Kings 21:19). It will lead Yhwh to bring disaster on Ahab and his household, as Yhwh brought an end to Jeroboam’s household. “The destruction of one peasant evokes total dismissal of the dynasty.”[1156]

Ahab is much too amenable to Jezebel’s strong-arm approach to acquiring land that belongs to an “ordinary Israelite,” though easily swayed into self-humbling before Yhwh (1 Kings 21:17–29). Jezebel is one of a sequence of women who stand alongside or behind Israel’s male leaders. Many are impressive characters, with strengths and weaknesses that parallel the men’s—or mirror them. As in European monarchies, however, a woman rules only in the absence of an eligible man. In Israel’s case, this is perhaps because the male heir is too young to reign unaided, and thus it applies only until he is of age. The first is Maacah, the Judahite queen mother (gĕbîrâ, “strong woman,” 1 Kings 15:13) in the time of Abijam and Asa (1 Kings 15:1–15). A queen mother is capable of being a powerful figure,[1157]  and Asa deposes her as part of his Yahwistic reform because she had made an image for Asherah. Some Judahites also term Jezebel queen mother in Ephraim after Ahab’s death (2 Kings 10:13), and Jehoiachin’s mother is later so described (Jer 13:18; 29:2). Even in Ahab’s lifetime, Jezebel behaves as a person with much political power—a queen in all but name. Perhaps the background is her status as a Tyrian princess who would also be a high priestess and thus patron of Baal worship in Samaria (cf. 1 Kings 18:19). Athaliah, daughter of Ahab (and Jezebel?), herself occupies the throne after her son Ahaziah’s death, to be deposed by people who again want a Yahwistic reform (2 Kings 8:16–27; 11:1–20). Perhaps she learned from Jezebel how to be a woman in power.[1158]  But the story uses no term such as “queen mother” or “queen” to describe her.

Not Too Amenable to Prophetic Pressure

Ahab himself is sometimes amenable to prophetic counsel, but not radically enough (1 Kings 20). Both Ahab and his southern contemporary, Jehoshaphat, illustrate the dividedness that can characterize leaders who do not know how to render to Caesar and to render to God.[1159]  When Ahab asks Jehoshaphat to join him in attacking the Syrians to recapture territory, Jehoshaphat makes two responses: (a) he is one with Ahab, and their human and military resources form one force for this project; (b) they should consult Yhwh about the matter (1 Kings 22:4–5). The two statements are juxtaposed without their interrelationship being clarified ([1160]  and [1161]  add “also”; even their “but” is an interpretation of the simple copula). Jehoshaphat at least recognizes something of key importance about politics and war. Whereas Ahab treats the regaining of land from Syria as purely a question about military capabilities, Jehoshaphat asks the revolutionary and embarrassing question “But what does Yhwh think?” The question “invites us immediately to a radically different notion of public power. Yahweh is a key player in international affairs!… The mobilization of state power is made penultimate by his awkward insistence.”[1162]

Ahab and Jehoshaphat duly consult four hundred prophets and are assured that Yhwh will grant them success. One might have thought this was clear enough guidance, but Jehoshaphat can smell a rat and asks if there are any more prophets they should consult. Ahab knows there is another prophet and can guess what he will say. When Micaiah initially confounds his expectations with a positive message, Ahab’s extraordinary riposte is “How many times must I make you swear that you will not speak to me anything but truth in Yhwh’s name?” (1 Kings 22:16). I doubt whether we should dismiss this as mere rhetoric, yet when Micaiah tells him what he really thinks, Ahab complains that things have turned out exactly as he said. He wants the truth, but wants it in order to evade it. If he knows what Yhwh intends, he can set about stopping this coming about. Ahab has opportunity to turn back to Yhwh, knowing at some level of his mind that what Micaiah says is true, but chooses instead to seek to evade the fulfillment of Yhwh’s word.

The next time Jehoshaphat agrees to ally with Ephraim in battle, it occurs to him to consult Yhwh only after the army is in perilous straits. Part of Elisha’s response is that the Ephraimite king ought to be consulting Ahab’s or Jezebel’s prophets—which might mean deceptive prophets, or might mean Baal prophets, or might mean dead prophets (2 Kings 3:11–13). He is equally scathing when the Syrian king sends his general to see if Yhwh can heal him of his skin disease. The Ephraimite king’s response is “Am I God, to give death or to give life, that this man is sending to me to cure a man of his skin disease? You have to acknowledge that he is up to something with me!” (2 Kings 5:7). As Elisha points out, it is odd that he is unaware that there is a prophet in Israel. The same king (perhaps) subsequently asks Gehazi to tell him about “all the great things that Elisha has done” (2 Kings 8:4).

Vulnerable to Plotting

Other stories about the interaction of prophets and kings read more like excerpts from a movie portrayal of a revolution in a modern nation. Jehu’s coup (2 Kings 9–10) is undertaken with the encouragement of Yhwh’s emissary and demonstrates his commitment to Yhwh as he eliminates the service of the Baals from the nation, if not the worship involving the gold calves. Perhaps he takes these as images of Yhwh. Yet Yhwh also condemns Jehu and declares that his own household will be punished for his bloody deeds (Hos 1:4–5). Being the means of implementing Yhwh’s will carries no immunity from critique. While the narrative portrays Jehu’s violence without comment, it may assume it speaks for itself. After having Jezebel killed, Jehu “went in and ate and drank” (2 Kings 9:34), and then gave orders for Jezebel’s burial. After commissioning the slaughter of Ahab’s sons, he asks, “Who struck down all these?” (2 Kings 10:9). In gathering the worshipers of Baal for (self-)sacrifice, he “was acting with insidiousness” (2 Kings 10:19), like Jacob (the word is ʿoqbâ). Jehu “conspires” (qāšar) against Joram (2 Kings 9:14). In such political contexts the verb always implies a reprehensible activity, even if it is one in which Yhwh is involved. Having brought about the death of Ahab’s seventy sons and potential heirs, in keeping with Yhwh’s word (2 Kings 9:8), Jehu himself sets his “conspiracy” over against the people’s being “in the right” or innocent (ṣaddîq, 2 Kings 10:9).

The language contrasts with that in the next story, when the priest Jehoiada conspires (we might say) to depose Athaliah in favor of her grandson Joash. Here the narrative uses the theologically freighted words “covenant,” “swear” and “declaration” (bĕrît, šābaʿ, ʿēdût; 2 Kings 11:4, 12, 17) to describe the act. Athaliah is the one who calls it a “conspiracy” (2 Kings 11:14). It is perhaps significant that only the usurper queen and the (one) Baal priest are killed (2 Kings 11:16, 18). Likewise, when Joash is killed and his son Amaziah executes the assassins, the narrative notes that in keeping with Moses’ Teaching he does not kill their children (2 Kings 14:6). This is very un-Jehulike, though Jehoiada’s coup is prepared to be more violent if necessary. Usurper queen and Baal priest stand for the disruption of proper order, a human embodiment of the disorder embodied in the crashing of the seas with their frightening rage. Is the paradoxical implication that only by force can such disorder be put down and proper order reestablished?[1163]  Thus the city is quiet (šāqaṭ) after Jehoiada’s coup (2 Kings 11:20). Order returns, order that does not prevail when a usurper rules and Baal is worshiped.

No such statement follows Jehu’s story, which is just one of violence, violence, violence and is not succeeded either by proper Davidic order or by proper Yahwistic order. For Jehu, for Yhwh, for the narrative and for Hosea, a number of principles need to be taken into account in deciding what to do in this situation in Ephraim’s life. They include the importance of human life, of religious faithfulness to Yhwh, of order in society and of respect for the government (especially the Davidic line). These principles point in different directions and generate a conflict that affects Jehu, Yhwh, the narrative and Hosea.

The whole story of the monarchy in Judah and Ephraim is a violent one. Ephraim never develops a stable dynasty. Of the nineteen kings who rule over two centuries, seven lose their thrones and their lives in coups and are succeeded by their assassins as one violent coup encourages another. Its last six kings reign for an average of about five years each, three of them for no more than two years. Four are assassinated, the last deposed and imprisoned. The people’s original hope in asking for kings was to buttress the nation’s external stability, but its effect is to undermine internal stability—first between Ephraim and Judah, then within Ephraim itself, then also in Judah. The decades before those last six kings of Ephraim see the assassination of two successive Judahite kings, Joash and Amaziah. The aim of neither assassination is clear, and each time the son who is the constitutional heir succeeds the king. Perhaps there are significant policy differences between these individuals and their supporters, but by saying nothing of these, the narrative rather gives the impression of simple power struggle and the rule of violence.

Serving the Empire

Matters become more complicated for the kings of Ephraim and Judah when the era of small Middle Eastern nations gives way to the era of empires. In the modern Middle East, groups such as the Bedouin and the Druze accept a marginal political position and accede to the sovereignty of whatever nation-state happens to govern in their area from decade to decade, and they live a quiet life compared with that of people more intrinsically identified with Israel, Palestine, Syria or Egypt. In Saul’s day, becoming a monarchic state enabled Israel to stand up to other peoples of similar size or status. From the eighth century onward, even until the present day, being a nation-state has a more ambiguous effect on Israel’s capacity to live in a world dominated by great empires: Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, Turkey, Britain, the United States. When Assyria determines to control trade and international relations as far as the Mediterranean and Egypt, that comes into conflict with the natural desire of monarchies in Ephraim and Judah to keep control of their nations’ own affairs. In due course this contributes to the fall of both states and their governments, which might not matter so much. It matters more that it contributes to the deportation of many of their people, the virtual demise of most of Israel’s clans and the destruction of temple and city in Jerusalem.

The Ephraimite king unfortunate enough to be on the throne when Assyria first appears in the West is Menahem. He gained power not only by killing his predecessor but also by demonstrating a willingness to act extremely toughly with people who resist him. This gives a leader’s position both strength and vulnerability; he always has to watch his back. Menahem thus buttresses his own position by gaining Assyrian support for his reign through paying Assyria large tribute (2 Kings 15:13–22)—levied from wealthy Ephraimites. Perhaps Menahem believes his rule is in the best interests of the people, but taxing them in order to pay a foreign power to bolster his own position is an implausible way of demonstrating that.

The pressure of the empire subsequently puts the two Israelite states in renewed conflict with each other. Ephraim, indeed, allies with Syria to lean on Judah to join it in resisting Assyria, and Syria cuts down the size of Judah’s territory (2 Kings 16:5–6). The more isolated position of Judah in the mountains away from the main trade routes gives Assyria less reason to bother with Judah and might have allowed it the luxury of keeping its head down and staying uninvolved. Ahaz rules out this policy option and rules out joining the alliance (no doubt as a junior partner), and deems it wisest to appeal to Assyria for help against Ephraim and Syria. There are times when Yhwh approves of rebellion and times when Yhwh approves of submission—either can be an expression of trust in Yhwh. Isaiah’s view is that this is a moment for doing nothing and trusting in Yhwh to keep it safe, but Ahaz cannot handle that idea. His appeal to Assyria leads Tiglath-pileser to take action against Syria, leaving Ephraim even more exposed. It costs Ahaz his independence, too: “I am your servant and your son,” he says, in appealing to Assyria to “deliver me” (2 Kings 16:7). The Davidic king is supposed to be Yhwh’s servant and Yhwh’s son (e.g., Ps 2:7; 89:3 [MT 4]), and Yhwh is the one from whom Israel is supposed to appeal to “deliver” (cf. 2 Kings 19:19).[1164]  Hence Isaiah’s address to Ahaz as “David’s household” (Is 7:13) and the repeated references to deliverance in Isaiah 12. It also costs Ahaz tribute, paid by pillaging the temple of its gold and silver.

The attempt by the elites in power in Israel and Judah to safeguard this power by skillful maneuvering between the great powers of their time and if possible even exploiting them thus proved quite ruinous. It led not only to an undermining of political morality (regicide, the breaking of treaties) but also to immense burdens for the population in the wake of wars (devastation, tribute, deportation) and, in the case of the northern kingdom, even the complete collapse of the state.[1165]

Trusting Yhwh

Ahaz’s son Hezekiah takes a different stance. A further new note appears in his story. “He did what was right [yāšār] in Yhwh’s eyes” (2 Kings 18:3), and he goes beyond predecessors of whom that was true in removing the local sanctuaries and in other reforms. “He adhered to Yhwh” (dābaq, 2 Kings 18:6): no one else’s insistence on following Yhwh’s way is expressed by that image. The even more significant new note is that in addition, “he trusted in Yhwh the God of Israel. There was no one like him” before or after (2 Kings 18:5). Indeed, talk of trust has hardly appeared before in Kings and will hardly appear again, but verb and noun come ten times in 2 Kings 18–19. Hezekiah is brave and radical in his commitment to Yhwh and proves the effectiveness of trust in Yhwh: “Yhwh would be with him; wherever he would go, he would be successful” (2 Kings 18:7). In this context, and followed by the account of his apparently successful attacks on Philistia, the report that “he rebelled against the king of Assyria and would not serve him” (2 Kings 18:7) does not look like a criticism; after all, we know who Israel is supposed to serve. Indeed, it implies that the rebellion is one of his acts of trust in Yhwh. Ironically, it is Sennacherib’s minister who puts it that way (2 Kings 18:19–20).

Admittedly it could be an act of trust in other political options, such as alliance with Egypt (2 Kings 18:21). This is not a mere theoretical possibility, at least in connection with the king’s response to the threatened invasion (see Is 28–31). Although Sennacherib’s general claims Yhwh sent him (2 Kings 18:25), the narrative itself does not repeat the comment it made on Rezin and Pekah (2 Kings 15:37). Yet Isaiah’s message about Sennacherib eventually declares that Yhwh indeed determined he should come (2 Kings 19:22–26). The puzzling divine sovereignty at work in Jotham’s reign is apparently at work again. We might infer that Yhwh intends Sennacherib to test Hezekiah, as Rezin and Pekah test Jotham and Ahaz, and more ambiguity attaches to Hezekiah than the opening assessment might make one expect. Sennacherib exacts a high price for the rebellion as he invades Judah, takes “all the Judah-ite fortified cities” (2 Kings 18:13), all but takes Jerusalem itself and imposes a huge tribute, though he does not absorb Judah into his empire or replace Hezekiah as king. Either Hezekiah is unambiguously faithful to Yhwh and the way the politics work out does not unambiguously vindicate his trust, or he combines some trust in Yhwh with some compromise and finds his political fortunes are as mixed as his own stance. Both pictures suggest instructive insights.

Hezekiah’s ministers underline the questions about Judahite leadership as they try to avoid the city’s inhabitants’ knowing what the Assyrians are threatening (2 Kings 18:26–27). Paradoxically, the Assyrian minister meanwhile unwittingly testifies to the religious strength of this leadership (2 Kings 18:28–35). He also underlines the link between Hezekiah’s trust in Yhwh and his religious reforms, though naturally putting a negative spin on the matter (2 Kings 18:22). Both are aspects of a proper following of Yhwh. Perhaps there is a political link, if religious reform is also an act of political independence. Certainly the minister clarifies the issues at the end of his speech when making the claim that Yhwh is in any case incapable of delivering Judah (2 Kings 18:32–35; the claim recurs in 2 Kings 19:10–13). That is exactly the possibility that Judah dare not utter. Hezekiah knows how to respond to such a claim on the minister’s part: he puts on sackcloth. Is this because he has heard Yhwh blasphemed or because he has heard threats against the beleaguered city that are unanswerable, humanly speaking? He gets himself to the temple and also sends word to Isaiah, who promises that Yhwh will deliver, and Yhwh does (2 Kings 19:1–8). In the second stage of the story, again he gets himself to the temple to show Yhwh the communication from Sennacherib (2 Kings 19:14–19), Yhwh promises the scorn will soon move from Sennacherib’s face to Ms. Zion’s, and it does (2 Kings 19:21–28).

Hezekiah’s ambiguity is underlined by the subsequent stories about him. Asking for a sign (2 Kings 20:8) is an act of unfaith, though Isaiah and Yhwh collude with it. Showing off all his resources to the king of Babylon—the collaboration suggests another rebellion against Assyrian rule—earns the warning that Babylon will be the eventual destiny of his household (2 Kings 20:12–18). For Hezekiah, it is the word “eventual” that counts, and he disappears under a cloud of cynicism: “Why not, if there will be well-being and faithfulness in my days?” (2 Kings 20:19). By the way, he dug the tunnel to bring water into the city, the narrative adds (2 Kings 20:20). It was a monumental achievement, but apparently counts for little.

Responding Aright to Moses and a Prophetess

Manasseh stands as a counterbalance to Hezekiah and also as counterpart at the end of the story to Jeroboam at the beginning (2 Kings 21:1–18). In addition he manages to emulate and exceed the wrongdoing of Ahab. His shedding of innocent blood parallels that of Ahab in relation to ordinary people such as Naboth, and the children who were sacrificed (cf. Ps 106:38), and the many prophets who were killed in Ahab’s day (cf. Jer 26:15).

Josiah then compares with Hezekiah. Indeed, whereas one might have thought it impossible to exceed Hezekiah, Josiah does so. “He walked in all the way of David, his ancestor” (2 Kings 22:2). He out-Davids David, because “he did not turn off, right or left”—which could not be said of David. The expression suggests the resolute, unwavering, fanatical pursuit of a goal, like that of an athlete running a marathon or an army walking a path in a minefield (for the literal usage, see 2 Sam 2:19).

In the course of remodeling in the temple the high priest finds a teaching scroll. He gives this to Josiah’s aide, who reads it to the king. Josiah justifiably panics when he hears the warning it gives about the consequences of ignoring its prescription for the people’s life. The prophet Huldah confirms his reading of the scroll. Her words make clear that the worship of other gods introduced by Manasseh is continuing. But, she adds, “because your heart has softened and you submitted before Yhwh when you heard how I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants … and tore your clothes and wept before me—yes, I have heard you (Yhwh’s oracle)” (2 Kings 22:19). Like Hezekiah, he will not see the trouble to come on his realm but will die in peace. Josiah “turned to Yhwh [as Jeroboam did not—1 Kings 13:33] with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might in accordance with all Moses’ Teaching” (2 Kings 23:25)—specifically Deuteronomy 6:5. The way he reforms the temple’s worship has the potential to postpone the calamity, though not ultimately to avert it. There was never a king like him, but he is not enough to persuade Yhwh not to punish the people for the wrongdoing of Manasseh’s day (2 Kings 23:25–27).

Josiah behaves like Joshua in leading the people in solemnizing a covenant with Yhwh on the basis of what is now “the covenant scroll” (2 Kings 23:2). He also in due course orders a celebration of Passover that follows the scroll’s prescription, again such as had not happened since Joshua (2 Kings 23:21–23). The context is different, however, and the event likely has different implications. In Exodus 12, Passover is intrinsically a family festival. Centralizing it at the one sanctuary (Deut 16:5) solves one possible problem in ensuring it is celebrated in orthodox fashion but compromises its essential nature as a family event celebrated at home. When the people had just arrived together in the land, it would be both natural and symbolic to hold a joint celebration of their first Passover, before the people spread out over the land (Josh 5:10–12). Centralizing the Passover in Jerusalem after centuries of observance at home would be a different matter. Further, even Deuteronomy does not envisage the Passover being overseen by a king, and along with the reforms that follow, Josiah’s Passover might even have been designed with at least one eye to the improvement of the king’s and the city’s economic position.[1166]

As Huldah implies, it transpires that Josiah is a reformist interlude in a drama set to continue to unfold like a tragedy. Three of his sons and one of his grandsons occupy the throne after him, and all four gain the narrative’s opprobrium. They are more typical leaders. The consequences of having no central government were horrendous, but monarchy is as fundamentally flawed.

9.7 Prophets as Men of God

Prophets occasionally appear through the story from Abraham to Solomon and after the exile, but the story of Yhwh’s wrestling gives them most prominence. They are, indeed, a chief means of Yhwh’s wrestling.

Prophesying

We do not know the background of the words for prophet or prophesy (nābîʾ and nābāʾ niphal or hitpael). In their first extended appearances in the First Testament story they do not suggest a form of speech whose content is the important thing but a form of behavior (see, e.g., Num 11:24–27; 1 Sam 10:1–13; 19:18–24). The [1167]  renders the verb “speak in ecstasy,”[1168]  but expressions such as that bring misleading baggage with them. They do refer to a form of behavior that seemed unusual, like speaking in tongues, and perhaps one that might have seemed weird. Jehu’s associates describe Elisha’s assistant as a mĕšuggāʿ, a crazy man (2 Kings 9:11; cf. 1 Sam 21:14–15; Jer 29:26; Hos 9:7), and people perhaps described Elijah and Elisha thus when they were out of earshot.[1169]  Positively viewed, “prophesying” is a sign that God is at work in the person. The sign may be of importance for the person, who is encouraged to be committed to Yhwh’s service in the conviction that Yhwh is at work. It may also be of importance to other people, for when someone “prophesies,” people will be wise to take serious notice of whatever this person subsequently says. But that does not imply that their words are likely to involve either social critique or revelations about the future.

In Numbers, such prophesying comes about because Yhwh determines “I will withdraw some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them” (Num 11:17, 25). Elsewhere, the verb “withdraw” (ʾāṣal) has a restrictive meaning, which would fit the context in Numbers: Moses has complained that Yhwh has treated him badly, and perhaps he is to “lose” some of Yhwh’s spirit. But the passage may assume that Yhwh can extend the application of this spirit to other people without Moses’ losing any of his endowment. Either way, Yhwh puts it on them (śîm, nātan) and they prophesy when it thus “alights” on them (nûaḥ, Num 11:25, 26).[1170]  They thus become prophets (cf. Num 11:29), though their endowment with Yhwh’s spirit is not a permanent one to enable them to undertake the task they are given but a temporary one to offer evidence that Yhwh is indeed commissioning them.

Yhwh’s spirit similarly “grips” or “surges on” Saul (ṣālaḥ) to make him prophesy. On the way home from a breakfast meeting with Samuel he meets a “band” (ḥebel) of “prophets” who are “prophesying” on their way home from a service, and he is caught up in their prophesying (1 Sam 10:6, 10–11). The NRSV renders ṣālaḥ “possessed,” but this suggests the spirit enters into people to control them from the inside. Here Yhwh’s spirit comes on a person outwardly, like the wind lifting them up. It thus brings about extraordinary outward, not inward, events. While Saul is thus “turned into another man,” this surging need not cause people to act against their nature or will. It may rather enable them to do things that would otherwise be impossible. The temple worship leaders subsequently “prophesy” with lyres, harps and cymbals, under direction (1 Chron 25:1–3). Although Chronicles doubtless reflects the worship of its own day, its connecting “prophesying” with making music corresponds to 1 Samuel 10. The Baal “prophets” on Mount Carmel similarly “prophesy” all day (NRSV “raved”) in worship, jumping about their altar, shouting and cutting themselves (1 Kings 18:29). For all its evidential value, then, “prophesying” does not clinch the question whether a person serves or worships God truly.

The Sons of the Prophets

The picture in 1 Chronicles 25 also suggests a link with “the sons of the prophets.” The NRSV renders the expression “the company of the prophets”; Rad, “disciples of the prophets.”[1171]  It might mean simply “prophetic people,” as “sons of the gods” means “divine beings” and “sons of the insightful” means “insightful people.” Perhaps people learn to prophesy in these groups—learn to praise, pray and offer guidance. To judge from the similarity of their role to that of the Levites, the expression “sons of the prophets” might indicate that prophecy works on a kinship basis, like priesthood and other skills.[1172]  The phrase appears chiefly in connection with Elisha, who apparently teaches these people and in general exercises authority among them. There are groups of them learning and/or ministering together at Bethel, Jericho (over fifty) and Gilgal (2 Kings 2; 4:38; 6:1). Obadiah hides a hundred Yhwh prophets from Jezebel, and four hundred can be gathered for consultation when Ahab is contemplating a war (1 Kings 18:4; 22:6).

When we first meet Elijah, he is characterized as “one of the sojourners in Gilead” (1 Kings 17:1).[1173]  Apparently he has left his own family and community, as Elisha later leaves his, and the stories of the sons of the prophets hint at the hardship to which this can make them vulnerable, dependent on people’s generosity or on what one can earn as a prophet (cf. 1 Sam 9:7–8; Amos 7:12). The group becomes a substitute family, but they seem a strange and not very impressive group, about whom nothing very positive is said. Why do they not support the widow and family of one of their number, why can they not make a stew without Elisha’s suggesting it, why can they not recognize good herbs from poisonous ones, and why can they not look after their equipment, especially when it belongs to someone else (2 Kings 4:1–7, 38–41; 6:1–7)? Are they so heavenly minded as to be no earthly use? Are they people of disadvantaged background, driven by need to form an alternative community (cf. 2 Kings 4:1)? Or are they people who might have been well-to-do but have withdrawn from mainstream society like monks? Is this their way of standing for a rigorous commitment to Yhwh alone in a context where mainstream society does not do so? There is no indication that their experience of hardship turns them into critics of the way society worked. Insofar as they were critics, their criticism relates to religious affairs. More consistent social criticism arises from people such as Amos whom the “system” serves.

Men with Mysterious Power

If prophecy implies behaving in an extraordinary way, that suggests a comparison with being a “man of God.” That expression has different resonances from the ones associated with it nowadays. A man of God is an austere and frightening figure with mysterious powers. He is one who utters words of fearful significance that may be followed by signs that can be both destructive and constructive, someone who can control the weather, cause healing or illness, bring death and restore life, multiply food, part rivers, call down fire, purify water and see things happening far away. The use of the term elsewhere to refer to Moses (e.g., Ezra 3:2), Samuel (1 Sam 9:6, 10) and David (e.g., Neh 12:24) is somewhat conventional, though even then it may suggest the awesomeness of the fact that these are men through whom God’s word is spoken and God’s will implemented. More tellingly, it was the term Manoah’s wife used for the awe-inspiring divine aide who appeared to her (Judg 13:6), and the narrative’s term for the man who confronted Eli with a harsh message about the termination of his household’s priestly position and the death of Eli and his sons (1 Sam 2:27).

On his first appearance, Elijah declares on his own initiative that there will be no rain except when he says so—and for two or three years he does not say so (1 Kings 17:1). A Phoenician widow is down to her last handful of meal and her last cup of oil, but he says these supplies will never run out—and they do not. Then the death of her son suggests to her that he has brought God’s punishment on her, but he brings her son back to life. All that makes her infer that he is a man of God (1 Kings 17:18, 24). Subsequently Ahaziah sends an army unit to Elijah, sitting at the top of a hill. The captain bids him, “Man of God, the king himself has spoken: Come down” (2 Kings 1:9). Elijah points out that the command deconstructs. If he is a man of God, it is inappropriate and unwise to attempt to order him about. “If I am a man of God, may fire consume you and your unit.” Fire from the heavens does that. A second captain infers a need to underline the urgency of the king’s bidding (!): “Man of God, the king has said this: Come down immediately.” Again fire consumes the unit. While the king is too slow to learn the lesson, as he can afford to be, the third captain cannot and is wiser than his master. He goes up to Elijah rather than bidding him come down, kneels before him rather than giving him orders, and asks for grace and mercy from him and his unit as Elijah’s servants rather than treating him as the king’s servant (2 Kings 1:11–13). Men of God indicate openness between the earth and the heavens. This greatest of the men of God does not die but is taken off into the heavens by a whirlwind (2 Kings 2:1–11).

There are two references to Yhwh’s spirit in the Elijah and Elisha stories, in connection with its carrying off Elijah from one place to another (1 Kings 18:12; 2 Kings 2:16). There are also two references to Yhwh’s hand coming on them. It comes on Elijah (again, to transport him; 1 Kings 18:46) and on Elisha, when Jehoram has called on him for help because the allied army is desperate for water. Elisha gets a musician to play, and he then announces marvelous provision (2 Kings 3:15). But in general men of God such as Elijah and Elisha are not people like the leaders in Judges, ordinary people who become capable of extraordinary acts because Yhwh’s spirit or hand comes on them. Rather, they are men with mysterious powers of their own that they could dedicate to various ends.

Thus Elisha asks for a double share of Elijah’s spirit, not of Yhwh’s spirit (2 Kings 2:9; contrast Num 11:25–29; Is 11:2). As the person who is now to head up the “sons of the prophets” he is asking for the firstborn’s inheritance (cf. Deut 21:17) in connection with exercising a responsibility like that of the head of a household after the father’s death. It goes with Elijah’s finery, the robe that suggests the splendor of his position (ʾadderet, 2 Kings 2:8, 13–14; the word links with words for glory and magnificence). The initial evidence that Elijah’s spirit has indeed alighted on Elisha is that he sees fiery chariots and steeds around Elijah when he is about to disappear (2 Kings 2:6–12). Subsequently such fiery forces protect Elisha himself (2 Kings 6:17). Perhaps another implication of his having the “double share” is that Elisha has twice as much of his power (see 2 Kings 2–8). He not only parts the Jordan, curses mockers, multiplies oil and raises a dead child but cleanses the water supply, provides water for an army dying of thirst, promises a son to a childless woman, purifies a poisonous meal, multiplies food and heals a foreign general with skin disease. In mind (lēb) he goes with his assistant when he tries to make money out of that event and transfers the disease to him (2 Kings 5:26–27). He recovers a lost ax head. He passes on the Syrian army’s campaign plans to the Ephraimite king. When the Syrians seek to capture him, he gets God to blind them and leads them into Samaria. When the Ephraimite king determines to kill him, he knows in advance. When the king shares his despair at Samaria’s fate, he promises relief the next day but warns an unbelieving captain that he will not share in its benefits. He knows when the Syrian king will die, knows who is to succeed him and knows what trouble he will bring on Ephraim. Even on his deathbed and after his death he is still doing marvels (2 Kings 13:14–21).

Elijah and Elisha use their powers to confront the king about moral and social wrongdoing and to bring down one king and appoint another, with the predictably bloody consequences that follow. They use them to protect their people from enemies and to intervene in international affairs as these affect their own people. They also use them to meet ordinary needs for good water and food and to solve trivial problems. A number of the stories open a window on the lives of ordinary people with their pressures and pains and on the involvement of Yhwh and man of God with them. Sometimes these deeds constitute generous, extravagant provision to meet human need. There is a profligacy about the stories, like the New Testament accounts of stilling storms or multiplying food supplies or killing people who have been deceptive about their giving. They have a dream or nightmare quality, and/or a Wild West quality.

Powerful Men Whom God Sends

No doubt the mysterious powers of a man of God are ultimately God-given, but the stories do not focus on that point. Elisha’s extraordinary knowledge of the Syrian army’s movements is simply his, and when the Ephraimite king is confronted by a horrendous example of the consequences of a subsequent conflict with Syria, he assumes that executing Elisha will solve the problem (2 Kings 6:12, 31). Yet the stories do see an interaction between the power of the man of God and the activity of God, which can take various forms.

Sometimes Yhwh does take the initiative in commissioning Elijah to act and speak, and he more or less exactly follows (see 2 Kings 1:1–8). On the other hand, sometimes the way the story unfolds may imply that Yhwh leaves the working out of the command to him (so 1 Kings 17:8–13; 18:1–35; 21:17–29)—unless subsequent reference to Yhwh’s word (1 Kings 17:14–16; 18:36) means this is just a feature of the dramatic way the narrative works.

The first story in which the term “man of God” recurs is the scary narrative in 1 Kings 13, when “by the word of Yhwh” a man of God comes from Judah to Bethel when Jeroboam is leading worship there. He warns of calamity to come upon this place of worship and its priesthood, and even names the agent of this calamity. When Jeroboam orders his arrest, the hand he stretches out withers. When Jeroboam bids him pray, his hand is healed. The king asks him to stay, but he says God has told him to go straight back to Judah. Word reaches a prophet there in Bethel, who persuades him to go home with him by falsely claiming a word from Yhwh. Perhaps we are to assume that the Bethel prophet is identified with the sanctuary there and with Jeroboam, and hopes somehow to undo his declarations. Yhwh intervenes and does speak through this prophet, declaring that the man of God will pay for his disobedience with his life—which he does. Perhaps the story assumes that there is a special seriousness about this failure at such a crucial moment in the story, a moment when black and white have to be seen as such and when the man of God has let them become muddied.[1174]  The Bethel prophet then collects his body, mourns him and acknowledges the truth of his prophecy.

In a subsequent similar story where the term “man of God” does not occur (1 Kings 20:35–43), “by the word of Yhwh” a prophet bids another to assault him. It will eventually emerge that this is part of a strategy to bring a message home to the king in Yhwh’s name. The second prophet refuses to assault his brother and is killed by a lion. A third prophet does assault him, and the first prophet then sits in wait for the king, apparently injured. He says he failed to guard a prisoner properly, and the king declares he deserved his injury. The king has condemned himself, because he has just let Ben-hadad live instead of having him killed.

Powerful Men Who Take Initiatives

Conversely, sometimes it is the man of God who takes the initiative, and Yhwh subsequently intervenes to speak. “As Yhwh the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, if there is dew or rain these years, except by my word” (1 Kings 17:1). The story may assume that Elijah goes to confront Ahab because Yhwh summons him to do this, but it does not say so. Rather, it gives prominence to Elijah’s initiative. Perhaps the story presupposes that rain is a sign of Yhwh’s blessing, that as such it issues from obedience to Yhwh and that the king is responsible for leading the people in such a recognition of Yhwh, so that the king’s action also determines whether rain falls and crops grow (cf. Ps 72 for this complex of ideas). Withholding rain is then both a chastisement and a demonstration that power lies with the prophet and his God, not the king and his god. But again, none of that is stated, though later Elijah indicates recognition that it is actually Yhwh who sends the rain, despite his own apparent ability to determine this (1 Kings 17:14; 18:42). Yhwh’s intervention concerns how Elijah is to cope with the consequences of his initiative (1 Kings 17:2–4, 8–9). As he seems to exercise his own initiative in declaring there will be no rain, so he does not wait for Yhwh’s instructions before beginning the process of seeking to bring new life to the son of the Zarephath widow (1 Kings 17:19–21). After he twice takes the initiative in calling for fire from the heavens on the army company, when that has done its work Yhwh’s aide intervenes to assure him he can go with the third company (2 Kings 1:9–16).

The interweaving of the acts of the man of God and those of Yhwh continues in Elisha’s story. The purifying of the water supply at Jericho comes about because Elisha takes action, “in accordance with the word of Elisha, which he spoke”—though also because (he says) Yhwh declares, “I am healing these waters” (2 Kings 2:21–22).[1175]  “Yhwh’s word is with him,” Jehoshaphat comments (2 Kings 3:12). Elisha declares that the Shunammite woman will have a child, but then asks Yhwh to restore him when he dies—yet the child comes back to life as Elisha lies on the child’s dead body (2 Kings 4:8–37). When a man comes with firstfruits, Elisha bids him feed a hundred people with his produce but then declares that Yhwh has said that there will be “eating and having more than enough”—and so there is, “in accordance with the word of Yhwh” (2 Kings 4:42–44). In the Naaman story, it is the prophet (not Yhwh) who will “remove him from his skin disease” (ʾāsap, 2 Kings 5:3). When the Ephraimite king cannot imagine how he can offer Naaman healing, it is as man of God that Elisha bids him send the Syrian to him and as man of God that he receives the cleansed Naaman (2 Kings 5:8, 15). Naaman, indeed, expects Elisha to pray to his God for him, but instead Elisha sends him off to the Jordan, and eventually he goes, “in accordance with the word of the man of God” (2 Kings 5:11, 14).

When Elisha asks Yhwh for something, Yhwh acts “in accordance with the word of Elisha,” as the Shunammite woman acts “in accordance with the word of the man of God” (2 Kings 6:18; 8:2). Elisha knows the movements of the Syrian army, but asks God to open his assistant’s spiritual eyes and to close the army’s physical eyes for a while (2 Kings 6:8–23). The Ephraimite king wants to kill Elisha but knows that “this trouble is from Yhwh. What/how/why could I hope in/for Yhwh any more?” (2 Kings 6:31, 33), and Samaria’s deliverance from the Syrian army comes about through a word Elisha says comes from Yhwh (2 Kings 7:1, 16). A captain at the gate of Samaria assumes there are no windows in the heavens through which God might rain meal and barley to satisfy the starving city, but the presence of a man of God means he is wrong (2 Kings 7:2, 19). Elisha subsequently goes to Damascus apparently on his own initiative but then refers to a message Yhwh has given him (2 Kings 8:7–15)—beforehand or in the midst of the situation?

The Human That Embodies the Divine

A variety of significances attach to these marvels. The use of their powers can mean Elijah and Elisha drive people to recognize Yhwh alone (1 Kings 17–18; 2 Kings 1), and specifically they demonstrate that Yhwh indeed has power and puts earthly kings in their place (2 Kings 1; 5; 6:8–7:20; 8:7–15). They can also demonstrate that the human agents of these marvels are indeed the agents of Yhwh (2 Kings 2:1–15, 23–25). Elijah challenges Ahab to assemble the people as a whole on Mount Carmel and to bring the prophets of Baal and Asherah. There they call on their gods to bring fire on a sacrifice, but they fail. He calls on Yhwh, and fire comes. Elijah first states the issue as establishing whether Yhwh or Baal is God, but nearer the climax of the story, he appeals to Yhwh, “Today may it be known that you are God in Israel, that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word” (1 Kings 18:24, 36). The event establishes that Yhwh is God and that Elijah is Yhwh’s servant. Elijah kills the other prophets and bids rain to fall. He has the power to bring about rain as well as drought and thus famine, and the miraculous lasting of resources that were about to run out. He has the power to bring death and to bring life. Further, he has that power (and Yhwh has that power) in Phoenicia, the realm of Jezebel and of Baal, as well as in Israel. Yhwh is lord there too. “It is as though this is a counterthrust on the part of Yahweh against the incursion of Jezebel into Israel.”[1176]

The aim of Naaman’s healing is not to make him recognize Yhwh’s power but to make him acknowledge that there is a prophet in Israel (2 Kings 5:8). It is this fact that brought Naaman here; it is only kings who do not recognize that for these purposes it is prophets, not kings, that count (2 Kings 5:3–4). “Kings reign, prophets heal.”[1177]  Yet even if as a whole Elisha’s ministry involves more of him and less of Yhwh,[1178]  this event leads to the recognition that “there is no God in all the earth except in Israel” (2 Kings 5:15). Thus his reaction when Naaman offers him a gift is that this is inappropriate to one who serves Yhwh, and Naaman commits himself to worshiping Yhwh alone henceforth—even if he has to go through the motions of worshiping Rimmon in Damascus. He will at least have some genuine Israelite earth, land from Yhwh’s land, on which to do so.

It is because Elijah is a man of God, the Phoenician widow implies, that Yhwh’s word and his word are the same thing, and the appropriate response to Elijah’s ministry is the dual recognition that “you are a man of God and Yhwh’s word in your mouth is truth” (1 Kings 17:24). The prophet’s person and fate are thus of considerable theological significance. The prophet may assume this, opponents may, the narrative may, and Yhwh may. At the Red Sea, the people had “been firm in faith in Yhwh and in his servant Moses” (Ex 14:31). Isaiah reminds Ahaz when confronted by Ephraim and Syria, “If you are not firm in faith, you will not stand firm” (Is 7:9). Is the object of this faith Yhwh or Isaiah or both? Jehoshaphat makes it explicit when he urges Judah, “Be firm in faith in Yhwh your God so that you may stand firm; be firm in faith in his prophets and you will succeed” (2 Chron 20:20).

Elijah does not confuse himself and Yhwh. He is “merely” a member of Yhwh’s court, a divine aide. He stands before Yhwh (1 Kings 17:1), as a servant. But he is a member of Yhwh’s court, a divine aide. His words really are Yhwh’s words. They have the effectiveness that attaches to Yhwh’s words. Yhwh’s instruction to him to hide presupposes that Ahab will try to silence him and thus frustrate his word, and Yhwh’s provision for him conversely presupposes that he needs to be sustained so that his word can be effective (Yhwh is not providing for him for his own sake). Elijah assumes this is so, and Yhwh’s words support that (1 Kings 17:2–16). The words of Ahab’s minister, the godly Obadiah, give amusing testimony to the dynamics of this. The trouble with Elijah is that you can never find him. More specifically, when you do find him, Yhwh’s spirit then carries him off somewhere else so no one has chance to apprehend him, or Yhwh’s hand can come on him so that he runs from Carmel to Jezreel faster than Ahab can drive (1 Kings 18:7–12, 46). A later king assumes a similar connection between Elisha’s words and Yhwh’s acts during the siege of Samaria (2 Kings 6:30–33).

The Significance of Their Acts

Something new comes into Israel’s story with the appearance of these men of God. Yhwh has always been someone people could not mess with, but the profile of this feature of Yhwh’s relationship with people now changes. It is embodied in some individuals in a new way, in the context of the focusing of human power in some other individuals, the kings. These men of God come on the scene with the advent of the monarchy; even Judges 13 and 1 Samuel 2 hardly count against this statement, for both are in different ways part of the introduction to the monarchy. For the first century of the monarchy’s existence there are no “men of God” confronting it. Perhaps the variegated way in which the kings vindicate Samuel’s warnings about monarchy eventually provokes Yhwh into intervening in a more confrontational way. In 1 Kings 13, the man of God who appears at Bethel, the old prophet who then beguiles him and the prophet Ahijah who can see through the disguise of Jeroboam’s wife represent an incursion of destructive and frightening divine power, set over against the destructive and frightening power exercised by the kings. Yhwh is involved in a struggle for the life and soul of Israel and will continue this struggle for three centuries or so before recognizing defeat and giving up.

The Elijah stories especially recognize the conflictual nature of this struggle. It is not a matter of interreligious debate or interfaith discussion or modern or postmodern liberalism. Nor is it a developmental stage in Israel’s gradual progress toward recognizing the truth about monotheism. It is a fight to the death in which Yhwh wins occasional battles but loses the war. On Elijah’s part, it expresses itself in his killing of hundreds of prophets, like Moses encouraging the Levites to kill thousands of people at Sinai or Joshua having Achan stoned. In each case, it is one of the surreal aspects of the story as a whole.

Although they do not confuse themselves and God, Elijah and Elisha are not only Yhwh’s representatives but almost Yhwh’s embodiments. They exercise Yhwh’s power, execute Yhwh’s decisions, manifest Yhwh’s insight and reveal Yhwh’s plans. Thus people’s attitude to them is their attitude to God. A corollary is that they suggest the mysterious, unpredictable and frightening, as well as consistent, reassuring and encouraging nature of their God. This is a God who made generous, gracious and reassuring promises to David, but also on either side of that made David angry and afraid by killing Uzzah and acted angrily in inspiring David into an act that would bring calamity in giving him the idea of the census (2 Sam 6; 7; 24).

Men of God? The exodus story opened with women’s resistance and closed with women’s dancing, though men have the prominence in between. In the story from Israel’s conquest of the land to its exile from it, the first and the last prophets are again women, Deborah and Huldah (Judg 4:4; 2 Kings 22:14). The prophets in between are all men, but women have the first and last word. One might have expected that Jeremiah would be the prophet Josiah consulted. Does he guess what Jeremiah might say and hope to hear something less gloomy from Huldah? However that may be, in the case of previous women prophets—Miriam, Deborah and Isaiah’s wife—something is made of their sex, but in Huldah’s case this is not so. It just happens to be a woman that the king consults. Her prophecy could as easily have been delivered by a man if he had the courage, and Josiah has no hesitation about accepting it. Perhaps the implication is that women prophesying is nothing very extraordinary. But like Elisha’s promise about total victory over Moab, her promise that Josiah will go to his grave in peace is not fulfilled (2 Kings 23:29).

9.8 Prophets as Seers and Sentinels

By etymology and usage the English word “prophet” suggests someone who speaks out, and the First Testament does use nābîʾ thus. A prophet is someone who sees things and in particular announces what Yhwh intends to do, especially calamity Yhwh intends to bring. Yet one cannot always be sure how to take a prophet’s word (and anyway the prophet may ignore God).

Seeing Things

One of the ways a man of God manifests supernatural capacities is by showing an extraordinary awareness of facts, insights or truths about the past, the present or the future. That makes him a seer (ḥāzēh/rōʾeh), someone who can see things invisible to other people. These insights may relate to the present but invisible world, such as the location of some lost donkeys (cf. 1 Sam 9:6–20; cf. 1 Kings 22:15–23; 2 Kings 2:9–14; 6:15–23). Or they may concern the visible but still future world. A man of God can see a disaster coming upon Bethel three centuries in the future (1 Kings 13). Jeroboam’s son is sick and he sends his wife to inquire of Ahijah whether he will recover. Jeroboam knows he has not fulfilled Ahijah’s prescription regarding how he is to be king, so he gets his wife to disguise herself. This is not very logical, as a seer who could not penetrate a disguise would not be a very impressive prognosticator, and anyway Ahijah is old and has lost his sight. It is also not very effective, because Yhwh tells Ahijah who is coming and Ahijah tells his wife of the calamity hanging over Jeroboam and his family (1 Kings 14:1–19). King Ahaziah has a fall and sends to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, whether he will recover. Yhwh’s aide reveals this to Elijah, who intervenes to send the king’s aides back with Yhwh’s message—Ahaziah will die (2 Kings 1). Asked by a Syrian king whether his illness is fatal, Elisha speaks of Yhwh revealing to him that it is not but that he will nevertheless die, though Hazael only tells the king the former fact (2 Kings 8:7–15). So the words of a seer may concern ordinary personal needs, or major life questions for an individual, or issues significant for the nation as a whole; and these flow into each other.

While the participants in the story of Saul and the donkeys call Samuel a seer, as does Samuel himself, the term is not used of figures such as Ahijah, Elijah and Elisha, though it would have been appropriate. An editorial comment in the story about the donkeys suggests that the word went out of use and was replaced by the word prophet (1 Sam 9:9), though it appears alongside prophet in the summary of Ephraim’s history (2 Kings 17:13). It reappears in Chronicles, where “seers” can function just like “prophets” in confronting a king (2 Chron 16:7–10; 19:2–3; cf. Is 30:10). Amos and Amaziah seem to use the two terms as equivalents, though differing over their evaluation (Amos 7:12–17). We cannot certainly trace the history of the terms’ use, but they draw attention to different aspects of roles. “Seer” points to its visual side.

There is nothing distinctively “orthodox” or even Yahwistic about having the insight of a seer or about speaking out like a prophet. When Ahaziah goes to consult Baal-zebub about the future, Elijah’s reaction is not to say this will not work (2 Kings 1:3). Micah warns of the disgracing of seers and diviners (qōsĕmîm, Mic 3:7). Centuries before Israel existed, prophetlike spokesmen for different gods could operate in the court at Mari on the Euphrates and remind the king, for instance, that the god who put him on the throne can also put him down.[1179]  Indeed, seers and prophets, like priests with their sacramental focus, diviners working on the basis of manuals and precedents, and preachers working on the basis of texts, are a common phenomenon in human societies in general. Thinking in terms of Israel being influenced by prophecy in other Middle Eastern cultures may therefore not be very illuminating, any more than is the case with kingship or priesthood (or marriage or parenthood), though comparing them may still be illuminating.

Announcing Yhwh’s Intention

Although the verb prophesy did not originally denote speaking, announcing or proclaiming, within the First Testament that is its most common meaning; it is most frequent in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. In a parallel way, talk about Yhwh’s spirit acting on a person originally related to their deeds as leaders, but in Chronicles it comes to relate to their speaking a message from Yhwh. “So the spirit/the spirit of God put on Amasai/Zechariah” as if they were clothing (1 Chron 12:18 [MT 19]; 2 Chron 24:20). People saw Amasai or Zechariah, but heard Yhwh. Or, to reverse the image, “the spirit of God/Yhwh came upon Azariah/Jahaziel” (lit. “became upon”; 2 Chron 15:1; 20:14). Now it is more as if the spirit is the clothing by which the prophet is covered. A prophet’s person is there in the background, but what people are immediately aware of is words that come from God.

At the end of Ephraim’s story, “Yhwh removed Israel out of his sight as he had spoken by means of all his servants the prophets” (2 Kings 17:23). That summarizes a conviction running through the story. From time to time through a prophet Yhwh declares an intention about the future, and that intention is bound to find fulfillment.[1180]  Other words also function as quasi-prophecies that shape history, such as Joshua’s curse on the rebuilder of Jericho—the very first example of this pattern (Josh 6:26 → 1 Kings 16:34; cf. the unattributed word in 2 Kings 10:30 → 2 Kings 15:12). Israel’s story is punctuated by a series of words from Yhwh that reflect and unveil the nature of Yhwh’s involvement with the people and implement Yhwh’s initiatives and Yhwh’s responses to events in Israel’s life. Kings portrays “a course of history which was shaped and led to a fulfilment by a word of judgment and salvation continually injected into it”; prophets “change the gears of history with a word of God.”[1181]  As Solomon put it, “You spoke with your mouth and with your hand you have implemented it” (1 Kings 8:24). Yhwh thus “fills” (mālēʾ piel) a promise or warning, or establishes/ratifies/effects it (qûm hiphil; 1 Kings 2:27; 8:20; 12:15).

Things happen “as Yhwh said” or “according to the word of Yhwh that he spoke” or that a prophet spoke (1 Kings 8:20; 15:29; 16:12, 34; 22:38; 2 Kings 1:17). Josiah defiles the Bethel sanctuary “according to the word of Yhwh that the man of God proclaimed who proclaimed these events” centuries previously (2 Kings 23:16). The NRSV and JPSV have “predict” or “foretell” for qārāʾ, but this gives a misleading impression. Rather, Yhwh declared an intention and now fulfills it. In another spectacular example Elijah tells Ahab, “In the place where the dogs licked up Naboth’s blood, the dogs will lick up your blood, too” (1 Kings 21:19). Ahab receives his fatal wound in battle, miles away, but he survives for a while, bleeding in his chariot. After his death they wash his chariot in Samaria and the dogs duly lick up his blood (1 Kings 22:38). Then in due course his son’s death in its way also fulfills the warning given to his father as his body is thrown from his chariot onto the plot of ground that belonged to Naboth (2 Kings 9:25–26; cf. also 1 Kings 21:29).

A word that thus comes true does not thereby become a mere reality of the past. The warning that “anyone belonging to Jeroboam who dies in the city the dogs will eat, and anyone who dies in the open country the birds of the air will eat” is later reapplied to Baasha and then to Ahab (1 Kings 14:11; 16:4; 21:24). A word that comes true is capable of coming true again. It was not an arbitrary statement, but one that expresses Yhwh’s ongoing intentions, so a recurrence of the same circumstances can generate a reapplication of the same word. There is such a vitality about a word of God,[1182]  both promises and warnings. Prophetic messages thus reuse existent words of prophecy. The words of Hanani the seer (2 Chron 16:7–9), for instance, start from Isaiah’s emphasis on relying on Yhwh (e.g., Is 31:1) but go on to quote from Zechariah 4:10 virtually word for word, “Yhwh—his eyes range over all the earth.” They then repeat Samuel’s judgment on Saul, “you have acted foolishly” (1 Sam 13:13). When Jehoshaphat’s exhortation (2 Chron 20:20) takes up Isaiah 7:9, “Be firm in faith in Yhwh your God and you will be kept firm” and adds, “Be firm in faith in his prophets and you will triumph,” his words suggest reference to Isaiah as well as to Jahaziel, who has just brought Yhwh’s message.

Yhwh’s commission to Elijah in 1 Kings 19 still “looms in the background” in 2 Kings 8–9 as “a prophetic force that endlessly destabilizes royal power.”[1183]  First it brings trouble to Israel through the coup it generates in Syria. Assyrian records confirm that Hazael, the man Elisha commissions, is a nobody, as he himself claims,[1184]  but over four decades this commission will bring not only destruction but also mutilation and death to young people, children and pregnant women, and then a coup to Israel itself and a bloodbath.

Unreliable

The words of prophets do not always come true, and the prophets may stumble in their ministry. The word Yhwh sends to Ahab does not come true; Yhwh never meant it to, and uses the way most of Ahab’s prophets give false advice (1 Kings 22). Huldah’s promise to Josiah does not fully come true (2 Kings 22:15–20); perhaps he forfeits its doing so. Elisha’s promise about victory over Moab does not fully come true (2 Kings 3); the reasons for that are less clear. Apart from recognizing that prophets can simply be mistaken, the stories make clear that their words may be anything but straightforward, though they put a positive spin on this. The man of God who brings Yhwh’s word to Jeroboam heeds the word of another prophet and loses his life—yet the second prophet honors him and notes how he will be vindicated (1 Kings 13; cf. also 1 Kings 20:35–43).

Elijah comes to believe he is the only Yhwh prophet left (1 Kings 18:22) and thus the only person who stands between Yahwism and its demise. When Jezebel threatens his life, he panics, runs for his life and wants to die, but Yhwh meets with him and provides for him. Elijah’s perception of the situation implies he is afraid not merely for his own life but for the entire future of the people’s relationship with Yhwh. He makes the monumental journey to the place where it all started, the place where Israel first met Yhwh after the exodus, where he repeats his conviction. There Yhwh recommissions him and bids him gird up his loins and take some more decisive action in the conviction that Yhwh will see to it that the nightmare that he thinks is reality will never become so (1 Kings 19:8, 10, 14, 15–18). Elijah is important, but everything does not rest on him.

The great stumbling prophet is Jonah. He is summoned by God in the manner of a prophet such as Jeremiah and given the kind of message that Jeremiah declaimed about God’s coming action against the capital of the empire, but Jonah has to go there in person as Jeremiah did not—a much more dangerous commission. Jonah declines to do so. Is he scared, or too nice to want to deliver a negative message, or does he already fear that he will end up as the means of Nineveh’s deliverance? He begins to manifest the theological and religious cluelessness that characterizes his entire story, thinking he can escape from God by running in the opposition direction from Nineveh and sleeping in the midst of the subsequent storm when everyone else is praying. He acknowledges to the sailors that he caused the storm, and he is thrown overboard but rescued by a huge fish, yet when he thanks God for his rescue he shows no insight into the dynamics of what has brought him there. The next time he is commissioned to go to Nineveh to tell them of the imminent calamity he has the sense to do so, but he has his worst fears fulfilled. It is “the most stupendously successful mission in the history of prophetic preaching.”[1185]  The Ninevites (and their animals) turn to Yhwh in the hope that Yhwh will have a change of mind, though Jonah has not encouraged them with such a possibility, and Yhwh does so. They understand Yhwh better than Jonah does and also understand prophecy better. They know that Yhwh is one who is more inclined to mercy than punishment and will seize any opportunity to be merciful, and they know that Yhwh is quite relaxed about having a change of mind. Yhwh is not inflexible. And they know that the point about prophecy is to make that possible. Jonah also knows that is the point about prophecy (hence his flight) and knows Yhwh is that kind of God. Yet he himself would rather die than see the Ninevites forgiven (it makes for another oddity about his psalm of thanksgiving from the midst of the fish after Yhwh had treated him on the same basis). “But should I not care about the great city of Nineveh where there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and many animals?” (Jonah 4:11). Beware of the desire to see the nations punished, says Jonah’s story; think of them as children. And this parody of a prophet says beware of prophets.[1186]

Warning of Danger

A prophet thus resembles the sentinel on a city’s walls warning of danger approaching (Ezek 3:16–21; 33:1–9). A prophet’s task is to admonish the people or testify against them. The verb (ʿûd hiphil) suggests the bringing of a formal charge or the giving of a formal warning, such as someone might issue in court (cf. 1 Kings 21:10). In a sense Yhwh is the admonisher speaking by means of prophets and seers (2 Kings 17:13, 15; cf. Neh 9:29, 30, 34; Jer 11:7; 42:19), but in another sense the prophets are the admonishers (2 Chron 24:19; cf. 1 Sam 8:9; Neh 9:26; Jer 6:10; Amos 3:13). Their task is to point out the wrong the people have done and to urge them to turn from their wrong ways and to Yhwh (šûb) (e.g., Zech 1:4). So the point about prophecy is not to declare an inevitable fate but to turn people round so that warnings need not come about—hence the misleading effect of introducing English words such as “predict” or “foretell.” “Yhwh charged Israel and Judah by means of every prophet and every seer, ‘Turn from your evil ways and keep my commands and my statutes’ ” (2 Kings 17:13).

The story of Jonah shows that Yhwh can be doing this when the prophets omit any explicit exhortation to turn as well as when they include one. Shemaiah simply offers Rehoboam an explanation of why trouble has come, but when Rehoboam submits and grants that Yhwh is in the right, he is promised deliverance (2 Chron 12:5–8). Azariah urges Asa to look to Yhwh for guidance, and he duly removes the images from Judah and restores the altar, while Hanani upbraids Asa for relying on an alliance with Syrian forces (2 Chron 15:1–8; 16:7–9). Jehu simply declares that wrath has gone out against Jehoshaphat from Yhwh because of his alliance with Ephraim, and for similar reasons Eliezer warns him that his navy will be wrecked (2 Chron 19:1–2; 20:37). Sometimes prophets are explicit in offering advice (e.g., 2 Chron 25:7–8; 28:9–11). But often they do not make explicit that their announcements are an invitation to change and that their warnings can thus be averted, though it is often evident that this is so.

A prophet asks Amaziah a question that contains an implicit challenge and Amaziah stops him: “Did we make you a counselor for the king?” The prophet replies, “ ‘I know that God has counseled that you be terminated because you have done this and not heeded my counsel.’ Then Amaziah king of Judah took counsel and sent to Joash … king of Israel” to challenge him to a confrontation (2 Chron 25:16–17). Amaziah knows that the prophet has been behaving like a royal counselor, and that is exactly what the prophet is—but it is a higher king who appointed him in a higher court. A prophet comes with counsel that reflects the workings of God’s own counsel. But Amaziah shows how firmly he insists on his independence by immediately taking counsel elsewhere. Needless to say, this counsel will not work out so well. How people react to a prophet thus has a decisive effect on their lives.[1187]

It is because they fail to respond to such implicit and explicit biddings that Yhwh expels first the northern clans, then Judah (2 Kings 17:13–20). Turning and keeping could have made it unnecessary for Yhwh’s word to be implemented. It does not have to find fulfillment. But “the people of Israel continued in all the sins that Jeroboam had committed. They did not move away from them, until Yhwh removed Israel out of his presence, as he said by means of all his servants the prophets” (2 Kings 17:22–23). Perhaps the implication is that Yhwh’s word to a person such as Jeroboam takes into account Yhwh’s awareness of the far-reaching implications of Jeroboam’s wrongdoing, so that messages that reflect that knowledge must come true. Or perhaps the implication is that the two alternatives hang over the whole story. Either people respond and find restoration or they persist and eventually experience exile. Similar dynamics affect Judah’s subsequent story. Josiah’s reforms postpone calamity and Josiah does not see it, but even they cannot undo Manasseh’s wrongdoings, and Josiah’s successors follow in Manasseh’s ways (see 2 Kings 23:32; 23:37–24:4; 24:18–20). So the fall of Jerusalem happens “in accordance with the word that Yhwh spoke by means of his servants the prophets” (2 Kings 24:2). The implication is hardly that Josiah’s successors follow him but get punished anyway because the prophets had said so. Perhaps it is that the prophets’ words had long presupposed that they would fail to follow Josiah and would have to be punished, or perhaps it is that Yhwh’s word stands over the whole story offering the alternatives of blessing or calamity.

“The Lord Yhwh does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). Why is that so? We may guess that it makes it possible for people affected to live through events and for later readers to learn from words and events, but in the context in which the word is uttered, this uttering has two significances that stand in paradoxical relationship. It is the means whereby Yhwh acts: events come about through Yhwh’s speaking. But it also issues a challenge or an invitation before the people affected, whose response will determine whether it comes about. The prophets’ authority and power depends on their being able to carry conviction with people, by their words and/or their acts. Generally they fail. Their exercise of religious and moral power is ineffective. They do not get people to follow them. So it is by means of them that Yhwh puts into effect the intention to destroy Samaria and Jerusalem. And at the same time the fall of Samaria and the fall of Jerusalem issue from their failure. But the subsequent survival and renewal of the community is also a fruit of their work.

9.9 Prophets as Troublemakers

Prophets are Yhwh’s aides and Yhwh’s servants. Often they are also servants of the human king. As servants of two masters, they stand in an unenviable position.

Servants of the King

Perhaps servants of the king is the regular position of prophets,[1188]  the basic form of prophetic saying in Israel and elsewhere then being an encouraging declaration of God’s intention to deliver or to bless people. Certainly there are prophets who work within the structures of politics and worship and speak to support the king or the community or the individual, prophets such as Jonah, Nahum, Obadiah and Ahab’s four hundred. Humanly speaking, the last bring the message they do because it is the message the king wants to hear (1 Kings 22). We do not know if they are actually in the king’s employ, or whether they are scared because they know what happens to a prophet who opposes the king’s policies (or the queen’s: see 1 Kings 19:2), or whether they assume it is appropriate to be deferential to kings who rule in Yhwh’s name. Something like the last is suggested by the picture of the two kings enthroned in splendor, with the four hundred “prophesying” before them, emphatically and dramatically encouraging them to believe they will succeed. But Ahab knows Micaiah will not feel bound to bring the message the king wants to hear, presumably because he has heard Micaiah prophesy before. “He will not prophesy good for me, only bad” (1 Kings 22:8).[1189]  If the four hundred are scared, they are sensible. When Micaiah brings the message the king does not wish to hear, he ends up in prison on a diet of bread and water (1 Kings 22:27). Although Elisha chides the king of Israel when he comes seeking help, he then provides the kings with a message and a miracle to encourage them to defeat Moab (2 Kings 3). Subsequently he gives the Ephraimite king supernatural intelligence in his war with Syria and a message of deliverance when Samaria is in dire straits (2 Kings 6–7). King Jehoash/Joash, a man who walks in the ways of Jeroboam, comes to regard Elisha as a spiritual father, and on his deathbed Elisha promises him more victories over Syria (2 Kings 13:14–25).

The story shows that there is little to choose between the insight of Israelite kings and that of foreign kings. An Ephraimite king may consult a prophet about the outcome of an illness, and so may a Syrian king (1 Kings 14; 2 Kings 8:7–9). Yhwh’s involvement with them and the prophets’ involvement with them is similar. Elijah is commissioned to bring about a coup in Ephraim and one in Syria, and Elisha in due course does so. It causes no more surprise in Damascus that Elisha shows up there than it does in Samaria that he shows up there (2 Kings 8:7).

There are other prophets who work within the structure of the institution but sometimes distance themselves from the king or the leadership or the individual as well as offering support, prophets such as Ahijah, Isaiah, Haggai and Zechariah. They do not confine themselves to speaking when the king (or someone else) sends to consult Yhwh, but speak on their own initiative. In connection with the origins of the monarchy and the lives of the three kings who rule over Israel as a whole, prophets function from the context of close involvement with the designation of the kings. Samuel designates Saul and David; Gad and Nathan offer counsel to David; Nathan designates Solomon. Their function could easily become simply “to stabilize the institution of the monarchy,” like the prophets who support the king of Ephraim in 1 Kings 22 (cf. 2 Kings 3:13).[1190]  Prophets who serve at the king’s court inevitably have difficulty living with its pressures. When David announces his plan to build a house for Yhwh, his prophet Nathan gives him the response he wants to hear and needs then to be tapped on the shoulder by Yhwh to discover what the prospective occupant of the house thinks about the matter (2 Sam 7:1–17). Nathan does subsequently show that a prophet can learn to distance himself from the perspective of his employer. He does so again over the affair of Uriah and Bathsheba. Samuel has similarly already confronted Saul and designated his successor, and Ahijah will designate the man who will remove most of the kingdom from Solomon.

Then there are prophets who stand outside those structures and characteristically stand against them, like Elijah, Micaiah, Amos and Jeremiah.[1191]  The more the religious situation becomes unfaithful and the social situation oppressive, the more marginalized the prophets then become. While standing in opposition and being the vehicles of protest is not intrinsic to the nature of prophecy, in response to a set of circumstances the basic form of prophet speech as it appears in the First Testament comes to be critique and a warning of punishment.[1192]

In principle, a “seer” can likewise be in the service of the institution. Gad was “David’s seer” (e.g., 2 Sam 24:11; cf. 2 Chron 9:29; 29:25, 30; 35:15). TheBethel priest Amaziah treats Amos as a seer who can be told by the authorities where and when to ply his trade, where his message will be welcome rather than where it must lead to arrest. The link between seers or prophets and court lies behind Amos’s desire not to be treated as a prophet or not as the kind of prophet Amaziah is used to (Amos 7:12–17).[1193]  There is therefore some irony in the fact that prophet comes to be the standard word to describe the likes of Amos himself.

Yhwh’s Aides

Whether or not Malachi is actually a name, it means “my aide,” and it constitutes another description of a prophet, as well as a term for an angel. As Yhwh’s aides, prophets are agents who stand under and execute the heavenly King’s authority (2 Chron 36:15–16; cf. Is 44:26; Hag 1:13). Like Yhwh’s supernatural aides, prophets operate as people who have been admitted to Yhwh’s court in heaven, and they return to earth to give promises and warnings about what that court has determined and thus to implement those decisions. The story of Ahab and Micaiah (1 Kings 22) provides a particularly vivid picture of this court’s procedures. Chronicles takes up from Jeremiah (e.g., Jer 7:13) a vivid image to describe Yhwh’s energetic involvement in sending these aides. It is as if Yhwh gets up early to send them—to follow the regular meaning of the verb (šākam hiphil; [1194]  “sent persistently”). Or—to look behind the verb to the noun from which it comes—it is as if Yhwh is behaving like a farmer putting his shoulder to a task.

The term aide draws attention to the prophets’ characteristic form of speech, “Yhwh has said this …” It adapts the introduction a king’s aide uses when passing on the king’s words, not least words that warn about the trouble that will come from noncompliance (e.g., 2 Kings 18:19, 28–29, 31). Prophets are people Yhwh sends to tell someone what to do—even to tell kings which battles to fight and which not to fight, because of their place in Yhwh’s purpose (2 Chron 11:1–4). If you respond appropriately to the admonitions of the king’s aides, you can expect to escape the fate of which they warn (so, e.g., 2 Chron 12:5–8; 15:1–15). But in general the people “would mock God’s aides and despise his words and scoff at his prophets” (2 Chron 36:16; see, e.g., 2 Chron 16:10). The fact that they are God’s aides makes this attitude fatal. You do not ignore the king’s aides with impunity. Eventually the king’s wrath will fall (2 Chron 36:16). Prophets are not the only aides of whom this is true. Malachi speaks of the priests as Yhwh’s aides, and Yhwh’s wrath falls on king Uzziah when he is indignant with priests for rebuking him (Mal 2:7; 2 Chron 26:19). It also falls on Ephraimites who scorn Hezekiah’s couriers and on Josiah when he ignores the warnings of a foreign king (2 Chron 30:10; 35:22).

The issues surface again in a confrontation at a distance between Elijah and Ahab’s son (2 Kings 1). A divine aide tells Elijah that Ahaziah is consulting Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, about whether he will recover from a fall (here Yhwh’s “aide” is a supernatural figure, not the prophet himself). Elijah sends word to forbid the king’s aides to continue with their mission and tells them the (unwelcome) answer to the question the king is asking. Elijah thus stands between Yhwh and Yhwh’s aide on the one side and Ahaziah and Ahaziah’s aides on the other ([1195]  have the words “angel” and “messenger” for the two occurrences of malʾāk). Two kings and their servants confront each other, with Elijah as the go-between. Elijah behaves as if he is in a position to give the king’s aides their orders and to contradict the king’s orders. Ahaziah then behaves as if he is in a position to give orders to Yhwh’s servant, the man who implements Yhwh’s purpose, and sends a force to arrest Elijah. Only when the king’s aide recognizes the mistake in this way of looking at the situation does Yhwh’s aide allow Elijah go with him. He has recognized the true relative significance and power of king and prophet.

Hezekiah is a more positive model than most kings regarding his relationship with a prophet. When Sennacherib’s minister mocks Yhwh’s ability to deliver Judah, Hezekiah knows he has crossed a line and refers the matter to Isaiah, who promises Judah’s deliverance and Yhwh’s vindication (2 Kings 18:31–19:34). Isaiah himself resembles Nathan and Ahijah in his relationship with his king. Evidently Hezekiah can expect to call on Isaiah—there is not the mutual antipathy between them that there is between Elijah and Ahab. They do not see each other as troublemakers. The Isaiah of these stories is supportive of the king, though able to be confrontational. He can be expected to pray for the people and to seek a word from Yhwh for the king, like Elisha (2 Kings 19:4; cf. 2 Kings 3:14–19), to offer a word from God when the king is ill, though not necessarily an unequivocally encouraging one (2 Kings 20:1–7; cf. 2 Kings 1:2–4; 8:7–10), and to give the king a sign that Yhwh’s word will come true (2 Kings 20:8–11).

A Systematic Clash of Perspectives

The confrontation between Amos and Amaziah illustrates how there can develop a systematic conflict of perspectives between prophet and priest, between state and church:[1196]

Amaziah’s perspective

Amos’s perspective

Jeroboam is king.

Yhwh is king.

“Amos has said this”:

“Yhwh has said this”:

“Jeroboam will die by (bĕ) the sword”

Yhwh “will rise against Jeroboam’s household with (bĕ) the sword”

“Amos has conspired against you”

“Yhwh took me”

“household of Israel”

“my people”

“Amaziah said to Amos the seer,

‘Go … prophesy’ ”;

“to the land of Judah”

“Yhwh said to me,

‘Go, prophesy …”;

“to my people Israel”

“this is the king’s sanctuary, a royal house”

this is Yhwh’s sanctuary and house

Amaziah threatens Amos.

Amos threatens Amaziah.

It is not only a priest or king who may be misled by the assumption that a man may earn his living by prophecy. When Elisha refuses to accept a present from Naaman in appreciation of his cleansing, his assistant views this as very odd and asks for something in Elisha’s name. “Is this a time for accepting money and for accepting clothing, olive groves, vineyards, sheep, cattle, and male and female servants?” Elisha asks (2 Kings 5:26). Evidently not.

In general, the period during which Yhwh wrestles with Ephraim and Judah, the heyday of prophecy, is one in which prophecy and kingship have a distant and a predominantly confrontational relationship, especially in Ephraim. That begins with the appearing of a Judahite prophet at Bethel to confront Jeroboam (1 Kings 13). Prophets and kings belong together in the sense that the position and role of neither is viable or understandable without the other.[1197]  If there had been no kings, there would have been no prophets in the form that we know them, and if there had been no prophets, the kings would have had an incomparably easier time. The way the First Testament portrays the matter, confrontational prophecy comes to be a key force in Israel in connection with the monarchy and fades when the monarchy fades out. This is no coincidence. The prophets represent a claim to speak for God that is not under the control of state power structures and that assumes the authority to confront these.

Yhwh’s word can be the means of continuity in government in Judah, but it is the means of ongoing disruption in Ephraim, for Yhwh can work via both. Even for Judah, the narratives’ closing judgments on the story of God’s wrestling note the way Yhwh has kept sending prophets or aides whose confrontational warnings king and people have resisted. The king is the son of God. Prophets face king and people with a claim about another form of divine involvement with them that disputes the king’s implicit assumption of unquestionable authority and supreme power. They introduce instability into the politics of the realm by virtue of their capacity to take initiatives within the framework of the king’s reign and initiatives that dissolve that framework by designating a new king. They do so especially in order to affirm the sole authority of Yhwh in relation to other earthly powers and in relation to other alleged heavenly powers that may receive the courtesy title “god” but have nothing like the authority and power of Yhwh. For the eighth-century prophets, “the power of God becomes a critical, destabilizing element which puts the existence of their own state in question.”[1198]

During the drought Elijah proclaims, even the perennial stream where he takes refuge dries up, and even the widow in Sidon to whom Yhwh directs him is down to her last handful of flour and her last drop of oil. The cost of this to the people can only be imagined; it is not surprising that Ahab calls him a “troubler of Israel” (1 Kings 18:17). He is not wrong. That is a prophet’s calling. More consistently, however, prophets are troublers of kings. Ahab thus calls Elijah “my enemy” (1 Kings 21:20). While a prophet such as Elijah might fear for his life at the hands of the king (or at least the queen), a king such as Ahab might also fear for his life at the hands of the prophet (see 1 Kings 19).[1199]  But Elijah responds by declaring that Ahab is Israel’s real troubler (1 Kings 18:18). It is quite something to designate the king a “disturber of the peace.”[1200]  In theory the king upholds the social order, and implicitly he claims that role. In practice he is imperiling this order.

One of the most chilling scenes in the First Testament is the account of Jehoiakim fearlessly and systematically cutting up the scroll of Jeremiah’s prophecies so that they fall, snip, snip, snip, into the fire, as if this could frustrate them (Jer 36:20–24). It is a kind of parody of the scene when another scroll was read to Jehoiakim’s father, Josiah, and a prophet’s reaction sought (2 Kings 22). This time the king orders the arrest of the prophet and his hapless secretary. “But Yhwh hid them,” and in hiding, Jeremiah dictated all his prophecies once more, “and many similar words were added to them” (Jer 36:26, 32); and one shudders for Jehoiakim and his people.

9.10 Is There a Future?

“The lion has roared,” evidence that it has prey in its grasp (Amos 3:4, 8). Ms. Israel has collapsed and there is no one to lift her back to her feet (Amos 5:2). Yhwh’s day has come, and it has turned out to be a dark rather than a bright one (Amos 5:18–20). “The end has come upon my people Israel” (Amos 8:2; see [1201] ). And what brings about the end is not Yhwh’s absence: “No, it is his undesired but inescapable coming.”[1202]  So Ephraim is taken into exile. “This expulsion from their country is far more than just some historical misfortune,” or even some random way of effecting a punishment that could as easily have been expressed in some other way. “It means the cancellation of the gift of the land that … was the seal of Yahweh’s goodness and his election. So banishment from the land means the end of salvation history.”[1203]

Yet in other senses it does not. While 2 Kings 17 portrays Assyria transporting the whole of Ephraim, and links this especially with the sin of Jeroboam, Chronicles speaks only of Assyria’s transporting the transjordanian clans, for their own unfaithfulness (1 Chron 5:25–26), though it also recognizes that the western clans are but a remnant of the former northern kingdom (2 Chron 30:6–9).[1204]  Subsequently, reforming Judahite kings continue to take an interest in the north and do not confine their work to the south, for there are many Israelites to appeal to in Ephraim, even if it is also necessary to reform the worship of other people who now live there (2 Chron 30:1–10; 34:6–7, 21, 33; 35:17–18).[1205]  The end is not actually the End.

Once little Judah has sole occupancy of the stage, it occupies it with panache. Drama becomes melodrama and the story careers wildly. Hezekiah manifests unprecedented trust in Yhwh and proving of Yhwh in the midst of frightening crisis and humiliating pressure. Manasseh undoes all his father did during an undeservedly long reign in which he manages to exceed in wrongdoing all the wrongdoers who have preceded him in either kingdom. Josiah resolutely reforms Judah and even ventures into the former northern kingdom, celebrates a dream Passover, but dies an untimely death. Suddenly Judah is fighting for its life against the Babylonians, and losing. Yhwh’s words are chilling. “Judah, too, I will remove out of my sight, as I removed Israel. I will reject this city that I chose, Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, ‘My name will be there’ ” (2 Kings 23:27). The image is a different one from that in Ezekiel, who speaks of Yhwh withdrawing from Jerusalem because of not being able to bear being there anymore. But whether one speaks of Yhwh expelling or leaving, the implication is the same.

Can the End Be Evaded?

Is there a future for this community with which God has been wrestling? Suppose we freeze the film in the time of King Josiah. King, priests and people come to recognize the unfaithfulness that has characterized the previous half-century. Reading the scroll containing Moses’ Teaching, they recognize the nation’s peril and do something about it. They turn to a prophet to see what she says about their predicament and in light of that restore Judah’s relationship with God to what it was designed to be. Before Josiah “there was no king like him who turned to Yhwh with all his mind and all his spirit and all his energy, in accordance with Moses’ Teaching, and after him there arose none like him” (2 Kings 23:25). The story thus offers a promise that taking God’s word seriously opens up a future. When the people turn to Yhwh and put their life right, they find that God’s commitments still hold. There is a standing promise of compassion for people who turn and obey (Deut 30), and a promise of forgiveness for people who turn and pray (1 Kings 8:46–53). Freezing the story at this point enables it to issue a challenge to its hearers: Will you turn and take seriously Moses’ Teaching and the word of the prophets? If you will, there can be hope. Subsequently hearers could even infer that “the judgment of 587 did not mean the end of the people of God; nothing but refusal to turn would be the end.”[1206]

The trouble is that freezing the story there is artificial. While a first edition of Kings may have come out then, with this implicit challenge and invitation, no version of the story known to us ends there. As we have it, the story continues with Josiah’s early death and with the reigns of three of his sons and one of his grandsons, Judah’s last four feeble kings, and with the fall and devastation of the city and the exile of much of its population, in 597 and again in 587. The context of this edition of the story is the time soon after the fall. It is a story about unfaithfulness to Yhwh and foolish rebellion against imperial authorities that were actually Yhwh’s servants whom people such as the Judahites ought therefore to be serving (e.g., Jer 27:6, 12–14), about the failures of the parents and grandparents thus continuing to haunt the children for three or four generations. Telling it as it was makes it an act of praise at the justice of the judgment of God.[1207]  Yhwh’s word has come true. Isaiah had warned Hezekiah, and Jeremiah has more recently warned Zedekiah, that all the treasures of the temple and the palace would end up in Babylon (2 Kings 20:16–17; Jer 27:16–22) and it happens, “as Yhwh spoke” (2 Kings 24:13).

It might seem that the people who are deported in 597 must be people who are especially guilty and thus distinctively cast off by God, while the people who escape this calamity belong to God’s chosen. Jeremiah 24 turns that idea on its head. The people left behind in Jerusalem are figs that have gone bad. The people in exile are the good figs. It might seem that the removal of king and leadership to Babylon in 597 is only temporary. Surely Yhwh’s faithfulness to David and to the temple will mean the king and the accoutrements from the temple will return to Jerusalem? So prophets such as Hananiah argued. Not so, says Jeremiah. The exiles will be wise to settle down. They can afford to build houses and plant fruit trees. They will be in exile long enough to live in the houses and see fruit from the trees (see Jer 28–29).

Is the End “the End”?

So once more, is there a future? The hope the story offers is based on assumptions about the love and compassion of Yhwh, on which the people casts itself in acknowledging its wrongdoing and hopelessness. The story’s challenge is, will you acknowledge this way of looking at your story and accept responsibility? Solomon’s prayer at the temple’s dedication explicitly envisaged the people’s being defeated by enemies and even taken off into exile because of their failings, and envisaged their then praying in it or toward it (1 Kings 8:33–34, 46–53). It is the dwelling place of God’s name, “the spiritualization of the theophany.”[1208]  That prayer has already looked beyond this moment of disaster and asked that there might be pardon on the other side of the calamity brought by such a refusal to overlook wrongdoing (1 Kings 8:50). Once again, the people can turn to Yhwh. The warnings of Moses’ Teaching and of the prophets have come true, but that means their promises can also come true. The end of monarchy and temple, at least for a while, symbolizes their dispensability, whereas Moses’ Teaching and the words of the prophets survive as authoritative resources. But the accoutrements of the temple that have been taken off to Babylon might still be available for use in a rebuilt temple, and the Davidic line has not been eliminated.

Do the fall of the line and of the city mean that the power of Yhwh’s promise is finally inferior to the power of the people’s rebellion? Had “the sure mercies of David … lost their protective power in the face of a growing weight of human guilt”?[1209]  Just after the credits, when many of the audience have left the theater, the story comes to its actual end with a coda. It tells of an event twenty-five years later, the release of King Jehoiachin from prison in Babylon after being there for thirty-five years. The exile is actually half over because in another two decades the Persian king Cyrus will be knocking on the doors of Babylon—but we do not know that yet. For Judahites in Palestine and in Babylon it is still not clear what the future holds. The last chapter of Lamentations and the opening of Isaiah 40–55 suggest that the people have lost faith and hope, not surprisingly, and think exile may go on forever. The close of the story offers a hint of hope for the future, taking up hints that have come through the story. The point is understated, but it offers an indication that Yhwh may not have finished with the people yet. Yhwh has not finished with David’s line. We know that should be so—Yhwh had promised to stand by David’s household and had kept saying “forever,” “forever,” “forever” (2 Sam 7:13, 16). The story has kept noting reaffirmations of that promise, not least in the context of the failure of kings (e.g., 1 Kings 11:12–13, 36; 2 Kings 8:19; 19:34). Jehoiachin’s release might be a small sign that Yhwh has still not forgotten this commitment. The story’s challenge is then, will you keep hoping in Yhwh’s promise? Surely calamity will not be Yhwh’s last word for this people?

The church in Europe lives in exile; it may not yet have seen the release of Jehoiachin. The church in the United States lives in the time of Josiah, assimilated to the culture that surrounds it. The question is whether it will turn or whether it must follow the church in Europe into exile.

10

God Preserved

Exile and Restoration

If the First Testament story ended with the exile, it might seem to relate the failure of God’s plan for the world and its salvation. Israel’s history has led to a dead end.[1210]  But neither the First nor the Second Testament sees Israel’s story as a whole coming to a dead end or sees it as an account of the failure of God’s plan. The story does not end with the fall of Jerusalem but continues in the account of a series of returns from exile and a series of acts of rebuilding and renewal in Jerusalem as well as new forms of life and new experiences of God elsewhere. The exile and the period that follows then play as creative a role as any in making the First Testament what it is, in the growth of the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings, and thus in the shaping of Old Testament theology. The community that eventually gives birth to Jesus emerges from the developments of this period, as Luke 1–2 and Matthew 1–2 make clear in different ways.

In tracing the history of Israel or of Israel’s religion, then, the period from the exile onward deserves as much space as the period up to the exile.[1211]  Yet within the First Testament there is an oddity here. Israel’s move from Egypt to Canaan is a narrative of gargantuan length and significance, though its historical nature is hard to establish. The move of members of a later generation from Jerusalem to Babylon and the community’s subsequent history stimulates at least as wide-ranging reflection on the nature of Israel and its relationship with God, yet it does not stimulate the telling of a connected story of the period. There is an initial narrative lacuna in the First Testament story between 587 with its aftermath and 539 with its aftermath.

Perhaps this period has no story. The appropriate response to an event such as the exile may seem to exclude the telling of its story, which would involve dignifying it with a meaning that it lacks. The story it inspires is that of the time up to the exile. That narrative seeks to satisfy a longing for understanding (because what has happened seems so inexplicable) and to offer an expression of pain (because the story has come to a grievous conclusion), repentance (because it implies acceptance of responsibility for the life the community has lived that brought the story to this conclusion), faith (because it is still possible to pray) and hope (because Yhwh’s deeds and words suggest that the story might not be at a final end). Indeed, the exile and the period that follows is one for looking back and writing about the past on a grand scale, in Chronicles as well as Genesis–Kings, telling the story of the distant past as well as more recent events. During the monarchy we have evidence for literacy but no evidence for literary creativity. The great narrative from Genesis to Kings that ends with the exile may well begin with the exile too. That is not surprising, for loss can stimulate creativity, and telling the story of the past is a mechanism for coping with exile and disruption. Perhaps there were earlier written versions of parts of the story from the beginnings of the people down to the monarchy, but if so, the community did not preserve these unless they are incorporated within Genesis–Kings. Perhaps the common critical theory is correct that the exile is the setting in which much of the First Testament came into being—e.g., beyond Genesis–Kings, the turning of the oracles of the prophets into books. The two great narratives both answer the question, what went wrong? and also illustrate lessons the people of God continue to need to learn if our story is not to go the same way as Israel’s when it led to exile (or they explain why our story does go the same way).

The people’s experience back in their land does stimulate an account of the building of the Second Temple in Ezra 1–6, but this account is followed by a further lacuna. Nearly sixty more years pass under the rubric “after this” in Ezra 7:1 (yet more years if historically Ezra followed Nehemiah). The community’s commemoration of the whole period from the early sixth century to the latter part of the fifth is thus episodic. The self-standing nature of Esther and the stories in Daniel are another indication of that. Further, the First Testament incorporates no narrative account at all of the period after Ezra and Nehemiah. The community of subsequent centuries apparently does not formulate a connected story of these times, at least in a form that became Scripture for people. “How could the Jewish community have lived through a period when the conflict between Persia and Greece was at its height and have produced a biblical literature which so completely ignores what was happening?”[1212]  The Antiochene crisis does see the expression of an understanding of this period, but in the visions in Daniel, not in a regular narrative form. After this crisis and the vindication of the visions, the community once more comes to treasure narrative accounts of God’s activity and of the people’s experience, in the books of Maccabees. Perhaps Greek culture was (ironically) influential. But even these did not find their way into the community’s Scriptures, though they did become part of some forms of the church’s version of the First Testament.

An incidental result of the First Testament’s lack of a narrative account of this period has been to enable Christians to think as if the fall of Jerusalem and the prophets led more or less straight into the New Testament story. The dynamics of God’s story with Israel and Israel’s story with God thereby go awry. While the community does little narrative theology on the later centuries, they do preserve their theological reflections on their story in forms other than narrative. Apart from Daniel, these appear in the plaints of Lamentations and Psalm 137 (no doubt elsewhere in the Psalter, too, but not so explicitly identifiable) as well as in Isaiah 40–66, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi (no doubt elsewhere in the Prophets, too, but again not so explicitly identifiable). I shall supplement the explicit First Testament narratives by means of these to write a theological midrash on the narrative Judahites never wrote.

10.1 God Abandoned

As the Babylonians walk through Jerusalem’s front gate in 587, King Zedekiah and his forces wisely leave via the back gate, but do not run fast enough. The Babylonians catch up with them and take Zedekiah to Nebuchadnezzar at his military base in Riblah. There Nebuchadnezzar kills Zedekiah’s two sons, terminating any prospect of Zedekiah’s family ever reigning in Jerusalem, and blinds Zedekiah himself before taking him to Babylon, perhaps as a hostage. His forces burn the palace and other buildings, demolish the city walls and also take off to Babylon the surviving inhabitants of the city who have not escaped. Jeremiah 52 and 2 Kings 24–25 give a series of figures between 4,600 and 10,000, but we do not know which of the different transportations these refer to, and wives and families would need to be added to such figures. Certainly most of the royalty, the nobility and the priesthood have died, gone into exile or abandoned the city, and much of the army had defected. Estimates vary on the total number who were exiled, from 20,000 to 100,000.[1213]  Whatever the numbers, Jerusalem probably seems a ghost town, even if the Babylonians do not bother to transport ordinary people, and many people escape transportation one way or another, and others leave the city before the end but subsequently return, and some people from outside the city come to live there. Gedaliah’s making his gubernatorial base at Mizpah may imply that Jerusalem is barely habitable (see Jer 40), but evidently in the surrounding areas there were enough people left (šāʾar—the verb from which the word “remnant” derives; e.g., Jer 42:2) to need a governor, and they were people with enough energy to assassinate this governor.

The Aftermath of Disaster

Ironically, the commander in chief, Nebuzaradan, acts like someone who has read Moses or the prophets and redistributes the land to people who long ago lost it (Jer 39:10). With further irony, he is also commissioned by Nebuchadnezzar to fulfill Yhwh’s promise to Jeremiah by freeing him from being chained up with the captives who are being taken to Babylon. After all, Jeremiah has long been advocating acceptance of Babylon’s authority. Nebuzaradan lets Jeremiah choose whether to go to Babylon with state privileges or stay in Judah under the authority and/or patronage of the man Nebuzaradan has appointed as Babylonian governor, Gedaliah ben Ahikam—the Ahikam who had saved Jeremiah’s life before (Jer 26:24). It might have been logical to go to Babylon to the community to which he has promised a future and a hope (Jer 29), but it is at least as logical to stay in Judah whose restoration he has not only promised but invested in (Jer 32). Perhaps Judah might also seem safer than Babylon. There are more people in Judah sympathetic to his theological position, while there may be more people in Babylon who resent him all the more now he has been proved right and/or may put on him part of the blame for their exile. If such considerations enter his head, they may turn out to be mistaken—unless his fate in Babylon would still have been worse than his fate in Judah.

With his base at Mizpah, Gedaliah begins the task of rebuilding the community as a Babylonian province out of the ordinary people who have not been taken into exile and the people who have had the initiative and resources to avoid that fate (cf. Jer 43:5). There is a great harvest that year, and it may have seemed like a new beginning, almost the new beginning Jeremiah himself had promised (Jer 40:12). But Gedaliah turns out to be naive. He ignores warning of a Davidic-Ammonite plot and is assassinated, along with some of the other Judahites, the Babylonian garrison and, for good measure but no particular reason, most of a group of grieving pilgrims from Ephraim(!) on their way to present offerings at the temple site. The leader in the plot, the potential Davidic ruler Ishmael, attempts to take off to Ammon the rest of the Mizpah community, including Jeremiah and the king’s daughters, but forces loyal to Gedaliah intercept them and “rescue” them from Ishmael. Given the governor’s assassination, understandably these nevertheless fear for their future at the hands of the Babylonians and wonder about self-imposed exile in Egypt (Jer 40:13–41:18). They turn to Jeremiah and promise to do whatever Yhwh says. The answer is consistent with Jeremiah’s previous words and actions. If they submit to the Babylonian yoke and stay in Judah, Yhwh says, “then I will build you and not demolish, plant you and not uproot, because I regret the disaster I caused to you. Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon.… because I am with you to deliver you and rescue you from his power. I will grant you compassion and he will have compassion on you and restore you to your land” (Jer 42:10–12). There follows at much greater length a devastating warning of what will follow if the group goes off to Egypt.

Regret need not mean one would act differently next time, and the context suggests that here Yhwh is regretting the necessity to take the action that had to be taken. But Yhwh is always ready to do the tough thing if necessary, and will do it again. The length of the warning invites us not to be surprised that the scared people resolve to implement their plan to hasten to Egypt, taking Jeremiah with them. Even here Nebuchadnezzar and Yhwh can pursue you, Jeremiah reminds them. Their response indicates a more chilling contrast with their solemn commitment to do whatever Yhwh said. They are not merely ignoring Yhwh but turning to the Queen of Heaven, Astarte, and they have a rationale for doing so. As Jeremiah, Lamentations and 2 Kings see it, the disaster that has come on Judah issued from the people’s unfaithfulness to Yhwh, but there is nothing inevitable or self-evident about this understanding. Those accounts argue or presuppose that the calamity came because of Judah’s recourse to planetary deities and Baal-like deities, which Josiah had outlawed. Josiah’s action should have meant blessing rather than disaster for him and for the people as a whole, but instead the end of his life and the subsequent decades had been a story of unmitigated calamity. Things went much better for Judah when it turned to the Queen of Heaven. It is time to so do again (Jer 44).

In Babylon the temptation would be different. We know from Isaiah 40–55 that people need to be convinced that Yhwh is greater than the gods of Babylon and that images are stupid. We do not know whether Judahites there actually acknowledge Babylonian gods or make images of Yhwh, but the volume of the prophet’s polemic suggests these are not merely theoretical questions.

With the temple devastated and (most of?) its ministry taken into exile, we do not know what form of regular temple worship might continue. People come from elsewhere to express their grief for the temple, bringing cereal offerings and incense offerings (Jer 41:5), and they keep a series of fasts each year that perhaps mark stages in the city’s demise (Zech 7:2–3; 8:18–19). It would not be surprising if the poems in Lamentations were used on such occasions. Lamentations does not explicitly refer to the fall of Jerusalem in 587[1214]  and, like the Psalms, expresses itself sufficiently allusively and metaphorically to be open to reuse in the context of other disasters to the city. But 587 was the destruction of Jerusalem in First Testament times and the traditional assumption makes sense, that this event formed the stimulus to these poems.

Lamenting the Collapse of a Theology

According to Lamentations, the people still in Jerusalem have found no relief. The city has been devastated by fire. Its walls and gates have been demolished. Its young men have been crushed. The temple has been invaded by foreigners and devastated. There are no crowds flocking to the city for the festivals or flocking to the market to buy and sell. It is hard to find anything to eat, and the people still there are dying of starvation—not least the children dying in their mothers’ arms. The event has had a dehumanizing effect on the people who are left: when a baby dies, its flesh becomes food (Lam 4:3, 10). The last of the laments (Lam 5) perhaps presupposes that the desolation has lasted some time. They can now get water and fuel, but they have to pay for it from the occupying power. They have no proper government.

The city that held its head high, at least on the local stage, is now a woman who has lost all social standing and security. The city that had once been the capital of an empire is now a slave—a proper serf, not a family servant or a person who has to work for six years to pay back a debt. Its treasures and its majesty are all gone. Jerusalem was Israel’s splendor; it is now cast down from heaven to earth. It was the place where Yhwh’s feet rested; no longer so. Its former allies are no resource to it now; if anything, they have yielded to the inevitable and become loyal underlings of Babylon, and/or seized the chance to take control of parts of the area Jerusalem once controlled. Its foes gloat over it—or perhaps they are the projection of the people’s own shame. Their affliction is hardly worse than that of many a defeated people, but it feels uniquely terrible. The city is avoided like a woman whom a man would avoid during her period. It is despised like a woman who has exposed herself. It resembles a woman going about with her menstrual blood visible on her clothes. It feels like a woman trampled in a wine press.

The woman cries and cries—which presumably means the people left in her do that, as do the people in the countryside around, for whom the big city meant so much, and the people transported from her. She groans. Rampart and wall lament and languish. “She has no one to comfort her,” the laments repeatedly declare (e.g., Lam 1:2). Passersby ask with scorn, “Is this the city that was called ‘Perfect in beauty, joy of the whole earth’?” (Lam 2:15). This too looks like a question projected onto passersby, because Jerusalem is not on a main road and lacks passersby. The same consideration applies to the statement that “the kings of the earth and all the world’s inhabitants did not believe that foe or enemy would enter Jerusalem’s gates” (Lam 4:12). The people thought the city was physically secure (like the Jebusites before them) and protected by Yhwh’s commitment. The point is more explicit when they recall how “Yhwh’s anointed, our life breath, was caught in their traps, the one of whom we said, ‘We will have life among the nations in his shade’ ” (Lam 4:20). They trusted in Yhwh’s commitment to the anointed king and have been disappointed.

The event has thus discredited two theological principles that undergirded Judah’s life for four centuries, conveniently encapsulated in Psalm 132. One is that Yhwh had sworn a commitment to David regarding the permanency of his dynasty: one of his sons would always reign in Jerusalem. It is no longer so. The other is that Yhwh had chosen Zion as a permanent abode. Now Yhwh has abandoned it.[1215]  Or rather, Yhwh has continued to stand watch over the city, but has now been doing so not to guarantee its protection but to supervise its devastation. In furious anger and without pity Yhwh has personally destroyed palaces and strongholds, “scorned his altar and disowned his sanctuary” (Lam 2:7), terminated feast and sabbath. Yhwh has behaved like the city’s enemy and assailant instead of its powerful defender, and seems to have permanently abandoned it. The actual Day of Yhwh has arrived, as prophets such as Ezekiel said it would (Ezek 13:5), a day of anger not joy (Lam 1:12; 2:1, 22), of darkness not light, as Amos said (Amos 5:18–20). It is impossible to tell what Yhwh now intends for the community or expects of it.

But the commitments in Psalm 132 stood on either side of a massive “if”: “if your sons keep my covenant” (Ps 132:12). Lamentations knows that the people have failed to keep the equivalent “if” that stands over their own life. “Yhwh is in the right, because I rebelled against his word” (Lam 1:18); “Yhwh has afflicted her because of her great rebelliousness” (Lam 1:5); “Jerusalem failed grievously” (Lam 1:8); “She did not think about her end” (Lam 1:9). It came about because of the wicked failure of prophet and priest who failed to stand up to actions that brought about the death of innocent people and whose garments are thus soaked in blood (Lam 4:13–16). Prophets such as Isaiah had been right.

Praying with Incoherence

Owning responsibility does not rule out crying to Yhwh. The poems urge the city’s wall to become a wailing wall, to give itself no rest in doing so. And they express the poet’s own urging to Yhwh, asking, what have you been doing? (Lam 2:20–22).

By implication, there is an incoherence about the response to disaster expressed in these poems, as often happens when people go through loss and bereavement.[1216]  Logically, if they acknowledge their wrongdoing and acknowledge that Yhwh was thus in the right in bringing disaster, there is no reason to be asking what Yhwh was doing. Within the same prayer, the people can lament the calamity as brought on by their own sin and also declare that they have been carrying their forebears’ sins (Lam 5:7, 16). Elsewhere another lament that seems to have its background in the exile presses logic by reckoning Yhwh responsible for the people’s sin—Yhwh had made them wander or let them wander, had hardened their resolve or failed to soften it. They need to turn to Yhwh, but Yhwh needs to turn to them (Is 63:17). Lamentations declares,

Yhwh’s great commitment has not come to an end. His compassion has no run out.

They are new each morning. Your trustworthiness is great.

“Yhwh is my portion,” I say inside. Therefore I will hope in him. (Lam 3:22–24)

Yet on either side of this statement of trust come statements of hopelessness:

I said, “my strength has failed, and my hope from Yhwh.”

“You have wrapped yourself in cloud so that no prayer can pass through.”

(Lam 3:18, 44)

The laments’ incoherence mirrors Yhwh’s, for we have seen that Yhwh regrets bringing the disaster without implying that another time things would be different (Jer 42:10). The pressure on Yhwh is complicated and the pressure on the people is complicated. Acknowledging they had rebelled does not remove the hurt of Yhwh’s response. When one of the partners in a relationship asks for some space, they may still be hurt when the other partner copes with that request for space by having a relationship with someone else. So Judahites may naturally feel a combination of grief at their loss, guilt because they recognize they have done wrong, at-a-loss-ness because events have belied their trust in Yhwh’s commitment to Zion and to David, and fear that the failure of Josiah’s renewal movement to avert disaster means that reform was a huge mistake—perhaps they need to restore the position of other deities alongside Yhwh.

Nor does it rule out affirming that Yhwh’s compassion and faithfulness are not finished (Lam 3:22–23). Therefore one can submit to Yhwh’s affliction. That trouble does not come from Yhwh’s heart (Lam 3:33)—that is another way of speaking of an event that Yhwh simultaneously affirms and regrets. One can commit oneself to tears without ceasing, until Yhwh looks at what has happened to the city and does something about it (Lam 3:49–51). Lamentations itself presupposes the conviction of Rabbi Eleazar that even when the gates of prayer are closed (cf. Lam 3:8), the gates of weeping are still open.[1217]  Logically it should be that the destruction of the temple and the suspension of sacrifices mean the impossibility of forgiveness. But “instead of plunging into despair because there were now no means of cleansing the people’s sins, it turned to its father in heaven and remembered that it is he who forgives sins and he can do so with or without the Temple,” because it issues from love.[1218]

As time goes on, all that seems harder. Yhwh sits enthroned forever, but/so “Why do you put us utterly out of mind, forsake us so long?… You have finally rejected us. You are so massively angry with us” (Lam 5:20, 22).

Learning to Live with Exile

Psalm 137 suggests the corresponding feelings of the people transported to Babylon. Like Lamentations, it recalls with grief the “Songs of Zion” that speak of Jerusalem as the perfection of beauty and joy of the whole earth. These people can no longer sing, and they have put their instruments into storage. They, too, project their grief onto their captors as taunts. Yet precisely in doing that, they insist on keeping the memory of Jerusalem alive, and insist that God fulfill Isaiah’s promise that in due course Babylon’s children will be dashed to pieces as theirs had been (see Is 13:9–22). That is all they can do. Their “wild cries” for such retribution reflect their sense of impotence, their inability to change the political situation.[1219]

Ezekiel may imply that they also project their suspicions onto their fellow Judahites who have not had to go into exile, though if so, Yhwh colludes with their projection. People in Jerusalem could indeed be convinced that the exiles have gone forever like the Ephraimites, cast off by Yhwh and forced to cede the land to people who have not been subjected to God’s punishment: “Keep away from Yhwh. This land has been given to us to possess” (Ezek 11:15). These are frightening words, for they tell the exiles they are no longer heirs to the promise Yhwh made to the people as a whole in Egypt (Ex 6:8, the only passage outside Ezekiel where this phraseology comes).

Indeed, the exiles cry out, “Our rebellions and failures have overwhelmed us. We are wasting away because of them. How can we survive?” (Ezek 33:10). Or worse (perhaps), they infer, it is our parents’ and grandparents’ rebellions and failures that have overwhelmed us: “Parents eat unripe grapes, but the children’s teeth grate” (Ezek 18:2). Either we are being punished for their wrongdoing, or their wrongdoing made it inevitable that we walked in the same way. Isaiah 40 later reports them as feeling like their forebears in Egypt, unable to believe that Yhwh would ever act on their behalf. They cannot see Yhwh now being involved with their life or exercising any initiative on their behalf, and they feel like wildflowers or grass wilted and withered by the hot desert wind (Is 40:6–7, 27). They are not wrong. This is just the awareness they need to come to, just the awareness the story in Kings is designed to express. But Ezekiel is encouraged to face these facts because there are other more encouraging ones to set alongside them (Ezek 11:14–20; 18:1–32; 33:10–16) and Second Isaiah is reminded that there is another fact to take into account alongside the fact of the people’s witheredness (Is 40:8).

Jeremiah has encouraged people to settle down in exile—to build houses and plant gardens (Jer 29). They are to identify with the community where they now live, seeking its well-being by interceding for it. They are not to believe the prophets who promise a short exile and encourage rebellion in Babylon, as their colleagues did in Jerusalem. So people used to being in positions of leadership in Jerusalem start emptying their own trash as their former servants farm their land as sitting tenants. But they are people who built up a position in society before, and they have the ability to do it again. They live and gather together, under the leadership of elders, priests and prophets (Ezra 2; 8:17; Jer 29:1; Ezek 8:1; 14:1; 20:1–4; 33:30–31).[1220]  We know from Babylonian documents that they learn trades that they had hardly followed in Jerusalem, such as fishing, but Ezra-Nehemiah and Daniel suggest they also come to follow successful careers in government service. They thus integrate into Babylonian society, but do so without losing their Judahite identity or their community identity. The latter would make them keen to return to their land. The former would make them happy to stay. At different times or for different groups, their position might parallel those of Native Americans or Japanese Americans or Arab Americans or Latinos living in the United States with or without papers.

Abandonment

Did Yhwh really abandon the people? From Lamentations or the Psalms one could infer only that this is what they believed and what they said to Yhwh. Such convictions reappear, for example, in Ezra’s prayer: Because of our wrongdoing, “we, our kings, and our priests have been handed into the power of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to pillage, and to abject shame” (Ezra 9:7). It was Jeremiah and Ezekiel who talked most about these four fates (e.g., Jer 2:26; 9:16 [[1221]  15]; 15:2; 20:5; Lam 1:4–5; Ezek 5:12; 7:15–18; 12:11). But the terms are a standard expression of how things seem to a later generation (Neh 1:3; Dan 9:7, 8). The presence of these books in Scripture might simply indicate that it is all right for people to accuse God of abandoning them, without implying that Yhwh has actually done so. For us to know how Yhwh looks at the matter might require a reflection from a narrator or a word from a prophet. And we have that. Yhwh grants that the people’s perception is right. They do not just feel abandoned. They are abandoned. Yhwh had threatened that if they turned to other gods and abandoned Yhwh, “I will abandon them and hide my face from them” so that disasters will follow (Deut 31:16–18). The prophet Shemaiah had confirmed that Yhwh had done that in Rehoboam’s day: “you have abandoned me so I have also abandoned you into the power of Shishak” (2 Chron 12:5; cf. 2 Chron 24:20). Yhwh says the same in the context of the exile: “I abandoned you” (Is 54:7).

The fact that Yhwh had abandoned the people means that the fall of Jerusalem and the transportation of many Judahites were not accidents. Yhwh had declared the intention to bring about this calamity and had done so. Is there ever a calamity that happens to a city—this city, at least—that is not brought about by Yhwh (Amos 3:6)? That is a frightening conviction, but also a conviction with some pointers toward reassurance.

First, the destiny of people and city is not out of control. Events are not without meaning or rationale.

Second, what happens reflects more than bare sovereignty as opposed to chance. It issues from moral and relational principles. Yhwh’s abandoning the people is a reaction to their abandoning Yhwh. What else could Yhwh do? Would it be relationally appropriate to act as though their abandoning Yhwh did not matter, made no difference to the relationship? The exile is a time and a means of restoring the relationship because it is a period of acknowledging or calling to mind, of acknowledging what has happened, and of turning and obeying (Deut 30:1–2; 1 Kings 8:47–48).

Third, the image of abandoning points to the nature of what happens. It involves a withdrawing of protection, including protection from ourselves. We are given up to what we chose. People want to make images, so in exile they find themselves serving humanly made gods of wood and stone that cannot see, hear, eat or smell. That in turn opens up the possibility of seeing their feebleness instead of their attractiveness and therefore turning to seek help from Yhwh with utter seriousness, instead of from these other gods and their images (Deut 4:25–29).

Fourth, being abandoned is not the end. Yhwh had threatened, “I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. I will cast off the remnant of my possession” (2 Kings 21:13–14). Fortunately God’s threats and warnings are often worse than God’s deeds. God turns from jealous fury and anger (Deut 4:24–25) to great compassion and everlasting commitment: Yhwh grants that “for a little moment I abandoned you,” yet then adds, “but with great compassion I will gather you together” (Is 54:7). “The ʾēl qannāʾ has become the ʾēl raḥûm.”[1222]  The God who speaks of calamity also speaks of restoration. With some illogic, this opens up the possibility that God might not annihilate the people who have perished and been utterly wiped out (Deut 4:26, 31). Yhwh abandons them but does not drop them or let them go (rāpâ hiphil; Deut 4:31; cf. Deut 31:6, 8). Instead of wiping them out, Yhwh could wipe out their wrongdoing (Is 44:22). This opens up the possibility of Yhwh’s holiness now manifesting itself in restoration rather than punishment, not least because abandoning the people imperils Yhwh’s reputation. Their putting out of mind their covenant relationship with Yhwh sealed at Sinai can be trumped by Yhwh’s keeping in mind the covenant relationship with their ancestors that goes behind that, and the covenant relationship with Noah that is even less dependent on their cooperation (Deut 4:23, 31; Is 54:10).

Israel resists any temptation to turn its story into a superficial, escapist, feel-good narrative that does not face facts. It recounts the facts of the exile in their harshness, willfulness, tragedy and stupidity. It extends that realism to the theological interpretation of events. God had abandoned the people, almost as radically as had been threatened. But that is not all that needs to be said.

Exile stands alongside exodus as a paradigm experience in Israel’s story. While exodus provided the initial paradigm experience for liberation theology, exile provides an alternative paradigm for peoples who for one reason or another are destined to continue to live as powerless minorities or permanent refugees. “For the Fourth World (as well as earliest Christianity) Babylon is the most meaningful image for a contemporary theology.”[1223]  It is also a most meaningful image for the church in Europe and the coming church in the United States. It does not imply the church has distanced itself from the culture or needs to do so, true though that may be.[1224]  Exile is not voluntary withdrawal. It implies that the culture has cast it out and God has let the culture do so in act of judgment on both church and culture.

10.2 God Returned

“For a little moment”? Perhaps it is short compared with the permanent commitment that will follow (Is 54:8). But it is long enough to be a period of waiting and of a keen looking for signs, such as Jehoiachin’s release from prison. In Babylon it is long enough to be a period of testing whether people will now be faithful and testing what will happen when their learning comes into close contact with that of a more sophisticated culture. Jeremiah and Ezekiel urged the first generation of exiles and the people still in Jerusalem to accept that the exiles were in Babylon for a long time. When Zedekiah led a rebellion against Babylon, this was not a divinely inspired liberation movement. But the time for another exodus would come. Yhwh would again put down the king who lorded it over Yhwh’s people in their foreign land, and would again bring them out through the wilderness to Canaan. There are words from Yhwh that give grounds for such expectation (Deut 30:1–10), but the people have to await Yhwh’s moment.

Chronicles’ account of the city’s fall finds the possibility of restoration hinted both in Moses’ Teaching and in the prophets. Moses required that the land enjoy a sabbath every seven years and then spoke of its eventually enjoying accumulated sabbaths if its people renege on this obligation (Lev 25–26). In practice there had been no sabbaths, so now it is enjoying them. But Moses also makes clear that this does not have to last forever. Jeremiah spoke of an exile lasting seventy years, not forever (Jer 25; 29:10), and these seventy years give the land chance to enjoy those sabbaths (2 Chron 36:21). We should hardly be prosaic in interpreting the figure—as if we should find a period of four hundred ninety years without sabbath years or an exile of seventy rather than sixty-nine or seventy-one years—any more than in asking how exactly the people’s punishment was twice their deserve (Is 40:2). Seventy years is a human lifetime, and in various senses such a period passes from the time Babylon starts controlling Judah, with the several stages of that domination (e.g., 604, 597, 587) to the several stages of Judah’s restoration (e.g., 539, 538, 516). Indeed, while Chronicles sees 538 as the end of the seventy years, Zechariah sees them as lasting till 520 and then until 518 (Zech 1:12; 7:5).

God of Our Ancestors, God of Heaven, God in Jerusalem

The exile comes about because the community is one with its ancestors in its sin. Its hope is that it is also one with its ancestors in God. Three times Ezra refers to the fact that Yhwh is “the God of our/your ancestors” (Ezra 7:27; 8:28; 10:11). It is this God who inspires Artaxerxes to commission Ezra to implement Yhwh’s Teaching in Jerusalem; the commission is an expression of God’s ancient faithfulness and consistency. It is to this God that Ezra’s party will offer the silver and gold they take to Jerusalem; their ministry is a continuation of the ministry long offered in Jerusalem. It is to this God that people in Jerusalem who have not lived by Moses’ Teaching must make their confession; it signals both the depth of their failure and the basis of their hope. This title that Ezra uses is especially characteristic of Chronicles (e.g., 2 Chron 34:32–33), confirming the hint that it is characteristic of the Second Temple period.[1225]

The title “God of heaven” is also characteristic of the community’s references to God. Yhwh is not merely God of Israel’s ancestors and God of the community itself, but God of the whole of heaven and earth and thus capable of making heaven and earth work for the benefit of this little community. As God of heaven, Yhwh is, for example, the one who gave Cyrus all the kingdoms of the earth, gave Judah into the power of Nebuchadnezzar, receives prayers on behalf of Darius, can control Artaxerxes’ response to Nehemiah, and will frustrate the opposition of a Horonite, an Ammonite and an Arab (Ezra 1:2; 5:12; 6:9–10; Neh 1:4–5; 2:4, 20). The tiny size of the community by no means reduces its conviction concerning the worldwide power of its God. But the title “God of heaven” occurs especially on the lips of foreigners and in address to foreigners. It is a way of speaking of God that would be familiar to other peoples, like Abram’s describing God as El Elyon. There is enough commonality between the view of God presupposed by people who follow (some?) other religions for Judahites to be able to use the same designation as they did. But alongside the fact that Yhwh is the God of heaven is the fact that far from having finally abandoned Israel and abandoned Jerusalem, Yhwh is the God of Israel and “the God who is in Jerusalem” (Ezra 1:2, 3). One wonders what Cyrus and the narrator respectively made of the blessing upon each who should return, “his god be with him” (Ezra 1:3). Does each person have a patron god? Chronicles expresses the blessing more safely as “Yhwh his God be with him” (2 Chron 36:23).

The conviction that Yhwh is God of the whole cosmos, of the whole heavens and the entire earth, is also the starting point of the prayer in Nehemiah 9. Nehemiah’s own earlier prayer starts from the fact that Yhwh is “God of heaven, the great and awesome God” (Neh 1:5). Each prayer soon goes on to the fact that this God made a special commitment to Israel. The characteristic understanding of Yhwh that emerges from the exodus story—or rather the Sinai story—is that Yhwh is by nature gracious and compassionate, but is also capable of being tough (cf. Neh 9:17). The characteristic emphasis in the Persian period is that Yhwh is great and awesome, but also faithful to the covenant and committed (Neh 1:5; 4:14 [MT 8]; 8:6; 9:32; cf. Ezra 3:11; 7:28). Yhwh does the right thing in relation to Judah, both in punishing and in showing faithfulness and mercy.

A Rupture Bridged

The exile constitutes a mammoth rupture in Israel’s story. Its people lose control of its land, most of its leadership and its thinkers are expelled from it, the temple is destroyed, and Davidic kings cease to rule. The continuing story affirms that this rupture has been bridged. People return to the land. They can trace their descent from the old families and clans or their relationship with the cities where people lived before the exile. They bring the accoutrements from the temple. They restore the altar, set it up in its proper place and resume proper worship, in accordance with Moses’ Teaching and David’s adaptations of that to the temple. They rebuild the house that was originally built many years ago by a great king of Israel (Ezra 5:11). In all this, promises through the prophets about the continuity of David’s line and of the Levites’ ministry come true. The worship that results follows Moses’ Teaching (Ezra 6:18).[1226]

Further, the people’s return follows the pattern of their ancestors’ leaving Egypt, their journey to Canaan and their story in the land (or it betters that pattern). Yhwh causes the foreign king to bid them leave the country where they do not belong. Their neighbors give them gold and silver vessels to take with them, not even needing to be instructed by Cyrus or asked by them (Ezra 1:6). Their number includes animals and female as well as male singers (Ezra 2:65–66; cf. Ex 12:38; 15:20)—even though female singers had no official role in temple worship. The community is numbered and knows its ancestry. In the land, the people settle in their various towns, as they settled in their clan lands under Joshua (Ezra 2:1, 70)—though the towns are confined to the area around Jerusalem. They set up the place for worship of Yhwh (cf. Josh 18:1), as David had in assembling all the people to bring up the covenant chest from Kiriath-jearim and in offering sacrifices at the site of the temple before it was actually built (1 Chron 13; 21:29). They celebrate the fall festival, Booths, as Solomon had at the temple’s original dedication (2 Chron 5). They are then involved in conflict with the people who are already there, which also follows the earlier pattern. Their first endeavors to establish worship in Jerusalem fail, but they eventually succeed. The arrangements follow those at the time of the building project under David and Solomon. Like David and Solomon, they commission masons and carpenters, and help from Sidon and Tyre in bringing cedar from Lebanon. Eventually the foundations are laid.

And the entire people raised a great shout in praise to Yhwh because Yhwh’s house was founded, though many of the priests and the Levites and the heads of the families, the old men who had seen the first house, at the founding of this house were crying loudly at the sight, while many raised their voice with a shout of joy. There was no one of the people who could distinguish the sound of the shout of joy from the sound of the people’s crying, because the people were raising a great shout and the sound could be heard from afar (Ezra 3:11–13).

Nothing so far has suggested that the new temple will be inferior to the old. It is not even clear that the later perception referred to in Haggai 2:3 does so. So perhaps crying rather suggests a continuing grief that the first temple had been destroyed and has been in its disheveled state for so long, or perhaps these are tears of joy at the wonder of this event, the tears Jeremiah promised would flow when the people returned (Jer 31:9; 50:4).

As well as recapitulating the story in the Torah and the Former Prophets, the restoration of the community fulfills the promises in the Latter Prophets. “In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, so that Yhwh’s word by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, Yhwh stirred the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, and he made a proclamation through his entire realm” (Ezra 1:1). Jeremiah had declared that “Yhwh has stirred the spirit of the kings of Media [the people to which Cyrus’s mother belonged], for his intention regarding Babylon is to destroy it. For this is Yhwh’s revenge, his temple’s revenge” (Jer 51:11; cf. also Jer 50:9; 51:1). In vision the prophet had seen Yhwh stirring, and he spoke as if it had actually happened. In 537, it has. Not only has Babylon fallen to Cyrus, but Cyrus also makes possible the rebuilding of the temple that Babylon destroyed.

While the words came out of Jeremiah’s mouth, Ezra 1 confirms that Jeremiah had not dreamed them up, maybe because he longed for Yhwh to do the kind of things other prophets promised. They were Yhwh’s statement of intent, not Jeremiah’s wishes. And Yhwh has now fulfilled that statement of intent. Literally it is “complete” (kallâ)—this is the only occurrence of the verb with this sense, though the New Testament will use comparable verbs, such as teleō, in this way (e.g., Acts 13:29). It is also the only time an intention announced in one of the prophetic books is said to be fulfilled within the First Testament, as will often happen in the New Testament, though there are references in Kings and Chronicles and elsewhere to the words of other prophets being fulfilled. Ezra 1 assumes that the people’s return from exile is a time of the fulfillment of Yhwh’s word. It is another indication that the exile is not a cataclysmic break in Israel’s story. The bond between promise and fulfillment that held within the story in Kings and Chronicles and gave some unity to the period of the kings continues to hold across the apparent chasm of exile. The exile does not mean the story is over. And the words of the prophets provide one clue to understanding what is now happening to the people.

Promises Fulfilled

Prophecies in Isaiah, too, envisage Yhwh stirring the Medes or stirring an individual from the north and east (Is 13:17; 41:2, 25; 45:13), and Cyrus with his armies is one of the figures who embody these words. Indeed, it is Second Isaiah who envisages Cyrus commissioning the refounding of the temple in Jerusalem and sees part of the purpose of all this as to drive Cyrus to “acknowledge that it is I, Yhwh, who summon you by name” (Is 45:3; cf. Is 41:25; 44:28). Cyrus does acknowledge that “Yhwh the God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth” (Ezra 1:2), which constitutes an implicit fulfillment of Second Isaiah’s words, though an incomplete one—if one can speak of fulfillment that is not full. Again, Second Isaiah commissions the people who carry Yhwh’s vessels to leave Babylon (Is 52:11–12), and Cyrus duly passes on the vessels to the people who will take them from Babylon to Jerusalem. Historically, it seems likely that some time passed before Persian control became very effective in the western provinces, and politically Cyrus’s commission was perhaps designed to achieve something of that in Judah, while the troubles that met Judahite efforts may be an indication of the troubles the Persians had to handle.[1227]

Yhwh’s spirit is also involved in stirring the Judahites to accept Cyrus’s commission (Ezra 1:5). The implication need not be that wanting to return did not come naturally, though admittedly Yhwh’s spirit will need to do more such stirring later (Hag 1:14). Yhwh’s stirring Cyrus to take Babylon does not mean he was naturally disinclined to do so. But Jeremiah had told the Judahites to build houses and gardens and settle down (Jer 29), and that makes it hard to leave. The dynamics will have been comparable to those that have affected Jewish return to the land since the end of the nineteenth century. People’s willingness to do so is marvelous enough to make one see Yhwh’s special purpose behind it, as is the case with Cyrus’s remarkable commission to rebuild the temple.

The people’s restoration and the temple’s restoration is a fulfillment of Yhwh’s promises. They will see Yhwh fulfilling other promises in the period after the exile. The words Ezra 1 explicitly takes up come from an extensive collection of declarations about the coming fall of Babylon that closes Jeremiah’s prophecies (Jer 50–51). In broader terms Cyrus has also brought about a fulfillment of these. An enemy from the fabled north has come and taken the city and shamed its gods (Jer 50:1–3)—in actuality, shamed them into changing sides and throwing in their lot with Cyrus, at least on his account.

The concern of Jeremiah 50–51 overlaps with that of the broader collection of promises in Jeremiah 30–33. Those begin with the general declaration, “days are coming (Yhwh’s oracle) when I shall restore the fortunes of my people Israel and Judah (Yhwh has said) and I will restore them to the land I gave their ancestors, and they will take possession of it” (Jer 30:3). Jeremiah’s day was one of unprecedented distress, of panic and terror, in which men looked as apprehensive and pale as women who were about to give birth to their first child and did not know whether they would survive the experience (Jer 30:6). “It is a time of tribulation for Jacob, but he will be delivered from it” (Jer 30:7). The moment of deliverance has come. That is the day—not a day in Jeremiah’s own time, as other prophets said—when “I will break his yoke from upon your neck and tear off your shackles. Foreigners will no longer get their service done through him but they [Jacob or the foreigners?] will serve Yhwh their God and David their king, whom I will set up for them” (Jer 30:8–9). The moment of freedom has come—or rather, the moment has come when service of a foreigner is once again replaced by service of Yhwh, as happened at the exodus. Hopes of “David their king” may seem dangerous or doomed, but such possibilities are not unthinkable.

Here I am, delivering you from far away, your offspring from a land where they are captives. Jacob will again be peaceful and safe, with no one causing anxiety. For I am with you (Yhwh’s oracle) to deliver you. For I could make an end of all the nations among whom I have scattered you, yet I will not make an end of you. I will discipline you with judgment, but I will certainly not acquit you (Jer 30:10–11).

The Judahites do experience punishment but do survive in exile and do have the chance to go home. Ms. Jerusalem is like a woman who has been attacked and beaten; she has been abandoned by her lovers and has no one to treat her wounds. But the God who attacked her will heal her and cure her wounds (Jer 30:12–17). To be more literal, Jerusalem will be rebuilt and its worshiping community reestablished (Jer 30:18–22; 31:38–40). And the Persians are making that possible—there will be a worshiping community, and in due course the city itself will be rebuilt.

A New Covenant

The story so far shows that more is needed. Yhwh has related to Israel like a parent seeking to take a child toward maturity. Presumably Yhwh could have acted more often to bring images, facts and stories before Israel’s mind to soften and stir it so that it would be more responsive, but Yhwh did not do so. When parents want to focus a child on a particular challenge, they may offer him or her special rewards, but they will not want to “intervene” to do this on a regular basis. Human maturity does not grow that way. Perhaps it is for this reason that Yhwh takes the same stance toward Israel. But the result of this policy was that Israel did not grow to maturity. Its story carries the same implications as the world’s story. The inclination of its mind works inexorably the wrong way (cf. Gen 8:21). Yhwh has been defeated by the history of Israel as previously (and on an ongoing basis) by the history of the world. The summons of Abraham was designed to deal with that earlier problem, but it has not worked. Something more is needed. It is contained in another promise in Jeremiah:

There: days are coming (Yhwh’s oracle) when I will seal a new covenant with the household of Israel and the household of Judah, not like the covenant that I sealed with their ancestors when I grasped them by the hand to bring them out of the country of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was husband over them (Yhwh’s oracle). For this is the covenant that I will seal with the household of Israel after those days (Yhwh’s oracle). I will put my teaching inside them and write it on their minds. Then I will be God for them and they will be a people for me. No more will people teach their neighbors and their brothers and sisters, saying, “Acknowledge Yhwh,” for they will all acknowledge me, from the least of them to the greatest of them (Yhwh’s oracle). For I will pardon their iniquities. I will no more be mindful of their failures. (Jer 31:31–34)

Yhwh needs to write Moses’ Teaching on the people’s mind, or circumcise their mind, or give them a new, fleshly mind (Deut 30:6; Ezek 36:26). Yhwh needs to soften their minds, or as [1228]  paraphrases Deuteronomy, “open up” their hearts. Once more we may perhaps understand this to involve presenting them with images, facts and stories that will at last call forth a response of trust, love and obedience. The promises hint that it is the magnitude of God’s restoring compassion that will have this effect. Israel will recognize it has no claim on Yhwh, but will find that Yhwh restores its fortunes, shows compassion to it in its exile, brings the people together again, restores them to their land, and makes them even more numerous and prosperous than before—and thus Yhwh will circumcise their minds so that they respond in commitment (Deut 30:3–6). In Jeremiah 31, the promise about Yhwh’s Teaching being written on their minds is preceded by the promise of a new covenant, of the relationship their God-my people, and it is followed by the explanation “because I will pardon their wrongdoings and not think about their failings any more” (Jer 31:34). In Ezekiel 36, Yhwh will take them back to their land and cleanse them from their moral and religious stain, and thus, “I will give you a new mind … and cause you to walk by my laws” (Ezek 36:26–27). Yhwh’s compassion, restoration, forgiveness and cleansing will be the wonders that inspire a change in the people’s lives.

This promise of a new covenant will turn out to illumine what Christ will do, not least for that Gentile world with its mind inexorably inclined to work the wrong way. God holds before it the facts about a God willing to die for it as the logical conclusion to the way God has carried Israel’s sin through the First Testament story and offers this as an image to win a response of heart, mind and will, a means of renewal of heart, mind and will. This has brought about some renewal of the world, though only in limited form. Perhaps there is nothing else God can do. The New Testament itself makes clear that there is not a simple one-to-one relationship between Jeremiah 31 and the Christ event, because it looks to a coming fulfillment as well as seeing a fulfillment in Christian experience (Rom 11:25–27). Nor did the Christ event produce a situation in which people no longer teach each other to acknowledge God. Christians still do that and know that in this sense God’s truth is not inscribed on their inner beings. But they do experience a partial realization of this promise.

Before this partial realization through Christ, the promise of a new covenant in which Yhwh’s Teaching was inscribed in people’s minds found some fulfillment in the Second Temple community with its new commitment to Yhwh, as the people eventually abandon their inclination to worship other deities and make images. Before the exile, prophets had to keep urging the people to keep their commitment to Yhwh, put aside worship of other gods and abandon worship by means of images. After the exile, they eventually accepted those commitments. Christians have pictured the Jewish people’s relationship with God after the exile as increasingly legalistic. There is no evidence that this was so; rather, there was evidence that on the whole they lived in relationship with Yhwh rather more consistently than had been the case in earlier centuries. But it is a while before it comes about, at least the other side of Third Isaiah,[1229]  Malachi,[1230]  Ezra and Nehemiah. Morton Smith argues that the Jewish community’s exponential growth over the Persian, Greek and Roman periods presupposes that the faith of the more rigorous “Yhwh-alone” party eventually overcame that of the more assimilationist groups, perhaps as a result of the triumphs of the Maccabees.[1231]

But an Agenda Not Complete

The number of people who return from Babylon to Judah is small, and when they get there, they do not find their lives characterized by peace, safety and freedom from anxiety, let alone the more glorious features of the prophets’ vision. Initial enthusiasm in beginning the work of restoring the temple soon dissipates. Haggai and Zechariah are key to its rekindling, perhaps in the context of the tumultuous political events of 522–520 that see turmoil in the Persian empire and the death of Cyrus’s successor, Cambyses. Darius I eventually secures the throne and takes firm action to restore Persian control of the empire, though of course it is only with hindsight that we know he succeeded in doing this and that he is in fact introducing a more settled period. The less settled atmosphere may have made Judahites more open to the idea of returning to Palestine than they had been. Might these events be the means whereby Yhwh is bringing about something more like the glorious restoration of Israel promised in Ezekiel and Isaiah 40–55?

But the story in Ezra-Nehemiah indicates that at all levels Yhwh’s promises have seen only partial fulfillment. Whereas an earlier stage in the people’s story saw Yhwh active “with mighty hand and outstretched arm” when they were recalcitrant, now they are relatively devout and Yhwh is relatively quiet.[1232]  “For a little moment” (bĕregaʿ qātōn) Yhwh abandoned them (Is 54:7). Now “for a brief moment [kimʿ at regaʿ] there has been an act of grace from Yhwh our God to preserve for us a remnant” (Ezra 9:8). If the magnitude of the abandonment can be minimized, so can that of the restoration. The people’s ongoing situation involves guilt, punishment and shame, though it also involves grace. But that grace expresses itself only in the preservation of a remnant (lĕhašʾîr lānû pĕlêṭâ). In size, the province of Judah is the size of a county, thirty miles square. Jerusalem sits at its center, but the province does not extend, for example, either to Hebron (in Idumea) or Joppa (in Ashdod). The people are but leftovers. The verb šāʾar and the related nouns started off as purely bad news—when Yhwh brings about the great calamity, only leftovers will remain, little more than the evidence that there once was a people. But prophets also promised that this image’s significance could be turned round. Yhwh could turn mere leftovers into the raw material for a renewed people, and the existence of leftovers is thus an act of grace. But it is still only leftovers.

The people have been able to establish themselves (literally, they have been given a stake) in Yhwh’s holy place, which has brought some light to the people’s eyes and some renewal of its life (miḥyâ) (Ezra 9:8). “We are serfs” still, under the Persians as once under the Egyptians, and obviously the people will wish they had their political freedom, but they are not forsaken in their serfdom, and they experience the commitment of their master to them, which is how the master-serf relationship is supposed to work. As a result they have been able to rebuild the temple, and they have a wall (gādēr) in Judah and Jerusalem (Ezra 9:9). Nehemiah has not yet built Jerusalem’s literal wall, and anyway the reference to a wall “in Judah and Jerusalem” suggests this is a metaphorical wall to replace the one Yhwh broke down (Ps 80:12 [[1233]  13]; Is 5:5). The people are back within Yhwh’s protection (cf. Zech 2:5 [MT 9]) through being under Persia’s protection. And yet, Ezra goes on to acknowledge, so far the people are not behaving much better than their forebears in intermarrying with people from the surrounding communities.

Ezra’s theology of history thus involves several elements. As far as the people are concerned, their story continues to be one of guilt. There is not so much to choose between their conduct before the exile and after it. Ezra does not imply that the community is paying the price for its ancestors’ wrongdoing. It has taken up that wrongdoing for itself. It cannot blame anyone else for what it is. So the community has been consistent in its unfaithfulness. But God’s reaction to that has varied. In Nebuchadnezzar’s time God gave them up, surrendering them to the power of enemies. Then God acted in grace (ḥēn) in keeping a remnant in being and restoring it to Judah, inspiring the foreign king to act favorably toward it and enable it to rebuild the temple. God was thus less hard on the community than it deserved. There was no basis in Judah for that act of grace. This was what made it an act of grace. God simply turned from punishment to mercy. But God is capable of both punishment and mercy, and it is not possible to know which will emerge at any given moment. The people are therefore living risky lives. There is no moral reason why God should not revert from mercy to punishment. The community will be well-advised to accept the unvarying invitation of the prophets to turn back to Yhwh in order to find mercy.

When Nehemiah receives a report from his brother about the state of the city, it underlines the negative side to Ezra’s account. Second Isaiah had said it was now possible to hear people announcing news of good (ṭôb), that Jerusalem would now be able to forget its disgrace, that its walls were continually before Yhwh as if graven on Yhwh’s palms, and that its gates would be made into sparkling precious stones (Is 49:16; 52:7; 54:11–12). A century later the situation is still one of trouble (raʿ, antonym of ṭôb), indeed “great trouble,” and disgrace. Whatever the state of the metaphorical wall, the stone wall (ḥômâ) is broken down and its gates have been destroyed by fire (Neh 1:1–3). The report presumably concerns some more recent event than the catastrophe of 587, perhaps related to that referred to in Ezra 4:7–24. The rebuilding of the wall is thus an occasion of great rejoicing (Neh 12:27–43), but there are still few houses in the city and thus few people actually living there (Neh 7:4). Eventually the people look for volunteers and draw lots to decide who should come and live there (Neh 11:1–2).

When the prayer in Nehemiah 9 looks over the people’s history before Yhwh, it sees the present as a time of hardship, weariness and distress (Neh 9:32, 37). The last chapter of Ezra-Nehemiah tells not of a joyous commitment to obedience or the joyous dedication of the city wall but of intermarriage, conflict, the Levites’ need to work for their living, remonstration, profanation of the sabbath and encroachment of foreigners with designs on Jerusalem’s independence. It thus closes in the manner of most books of the First Testament—and some of the New (e.g., Mark). It does not believe in Hollywood endings. But it invites its readers to live in hope. This cannot be the end of the story. The people’s restoration recapitulates its ancestors’ experience and fulfills Yhwh’s word. The God who abandoned the city has returned to it. At the same time, its story parallels the earlier story in that the fulfillment is always real but partial.

10.3 A Restored Community

What is the nature of this community?

A Reconstitution of the Twelve Clans

While it is the heads of the families of Judah and Benjamin with the priests and Levites who set off to rebuild the temple (Ezra 1:5), the list of people who return begins with a broader list of “Israelites”—laymen, though in terms of clan, only people from Judah and Benjamin. “The first to live again in their possessions in their towns were Israelites, priests, Levites and temple servants” (1 Chron 9:2). While the long list that follows gives particular space to the latter groups, it opens with laypeople living in Jerusalem and closes with Benjaminite material concerning Saul. Further, Chronicles prefaces this list of the Second Temple community with a long account of the various clans and behind them of the ancestral families. The account of the clans begins with Judah, with a focus on David and his family, and later gives considerable space to Benjamin, the most prominent of the “regular” clans after the exile. It then gives special prominence to Levi, again bringing in David as the person who gave some of the Levites a new role.

Some aspects of the community’s identity come from its ancestry and from its awareness of that ancestry. People know who they are by knowing who they came from. The disjunction caused by the exile does not cut them off from their ancestry, from the people of Israel. They are the contemporary embodiment of the twelve-clan people that goes back to Abraham. The census list (they number 42,360, plus 7337 servants and 200 singers) recalls the census in Moses’ day and hints that the people as a whole are entering into possession of the land again. The number of its leaders, Sheshbazzar (Ezra 1:11) and the eleven named in Ezra 2:2, comes to the number of the twelve clans (Sheshbazzar is missing from Neh 7:7 but the slightly different list of leaders itself comes to twelve).

The building of the temple is the task of the community as a whole. The whole community assembles “as one person” to set up the altar (Ezra 3:1). The resources for building do not come from a king such as David or Solomon, and at this point we do not even discover that Cyrus provided for the construction materials (see Ezra 6:4), which another theology might have seen as a proper task for Yhwh’s anointed (see Is 44:28–45:1). The stress here lies on provision through the extremely generous gifts of the heads of the families (Ezra 2:68–69). This temple is no royal chapel but a community sanctuary, more like the wilderness meeting tent built and furnished through the generous gifts of the people as a whole. “The Israelites, the priests, the Levites and the rest of the exiles, performed the dedication of this house of God,” offering among other things “twelve goats, corresponding to the number of the clans of Israel,” and soon afterward “the exiles performed the Passover … and the Israelites who had returned from exile, and all who had separated themselves from the pollution of the nations in the land and joined them, ate of it” (Ezra 6:16–21).

In Ezra’s time people and priests again offer generously for the needs of the temple (Ezra 7:16–17). Ezra, too, brings up heads of families with the numbers of people registered as belonging to these families (Ezra 8:1–14). Before the exile, living on their family land would identify people as belonging to the community, and perhaps the exile has thus made it more important to be able to trace one’s ancestry. Knowing one’s family background is important for membership of this community (cf. Ezra 2:2–35, 59–61).[1234]  On their arrival in Jerusalem Ezra’s group, too, among other sacrifices, offers twelve bulls, twelve goats and twelve times eight rams (Ezra 8:35).[1235]

A Priestly Community

The initial account of the return and the list of the community emphasize the presence of priests and Levites and other temple ministers (Ezra 1:5; 2:36–58, 70). Jeshua, the high priest, with his fellow priests takes the lead in building the altar (Ezra 3:2; cf. Ezra 3:8; 4:3; 5:2; Hag 1:1, 14; 2:2, 4; Zech 3–4). Jeshua is a son of Jozadak and thus a descendant of Zadok (1 Chron 6:1–15 [MT 5:27–41]). The community has Aaronide as well as Davidic leadership. The figures in Ezra 2 include thousands of priests but only 74 Levites—very few, even if we add the 128 musicians and the 139 guardians (literally, “gatemen”) whose task was to safeguard against the temple’s contamination through supplies or through people; these groups elsewhere count as Levites (e.g., Ezra 3:10; 1 Chron 9; 23). Perhaps only a small number of Levites want to return because they are now more limited in their role in the ministry of the temple, and their position is insecure (cf. the provisions of Deut 12:19; 14:27, 29). Perhaps it reflects Ezekiel’s charges about their degree of unfaithfulness to Yhwh (Ezek 44:9–31).

On the other hand, there are 392 “temple servants” (nĕtînîm) and descendants of Solomon’s serfs in the list in Ezra 2, who apparently now fulfill menial tasks in the temple (cf. Ezra 8:20; earlier Josh 9:23–27; 1 Kings 9:20–21). Both groups are of foreign origin—many of the former group have foreign names. In Ezekiel Yhwh criticizes the community for involving uncircumcised foreigners in the work of the temple (Ezek 44:4–9); we do not know whether these two groups of temple servants were circumcised and whether or not the community would therefore now be subject to Ezekiel’s critique.

The group that returns with Ezra also comprises Israelites, priests, Levites, musicians, guardians and temple servants, and Ezra also initially has trouble finding Levites willing to join (Ezra 8:15–21).

When a high priest’s grandson marries the daughter of the governor of Samaria (cf. Neh 13:28), presumably this means both sides see political gain from it, which opens a window on the political significance now attaching to the high priesthood and the potential tension that raises for a governor or for other lay leaders in the community. The high priest is anointed like a king (e.g., Lev 8:12; 21:10–12), and his garb (e.g., the turban) may have royal associations. Indeed, Yhwh commissions Zechariah to crown the high priest in his day (Zech 6:9–13). That at least implies that the high priest stands alongside the “Branch,” so that in the latter’s absence he might exercise a very significant authority.

The postexilic community has been called a theocracy on the basis of its being governed by priests, but government by priests no more implies government by God than does government by a group such as kings or elders. It would be better to call government by priests a hierocracy. But in any case, the priesthood does not govern the community. While it no doubt governs the temple, the council of elders would be more significant for other aspects of the community’s life. The significance of being a priestly community is that the worship of the temple can be offered in the proper way so as to bring glory to Yhwh day by day.[1236]

A Davidic Community

Eventually Judah will have (non-Davidic) kings again, and the First Testament gives various hints that interest in the monarchy is not dead. Gedaliah rules like a king; he is assassinated by a descendant of David; 2 Kings notes Jehoiachin’s release from prison; and Nehemiah is accused of wanting to be king. Cyrus formally passes over the accoutrements of the temple to “Sheshbazzar the leader of Judah” (Ezra 1:8). The word “leader” (nāśîʾ) can be used in quite general ways (and Sheshbazzar is also called “governor”), but two very frequent uses of the term are noteworthy. It often refers to the leader of a particular clan (see, e.g., Num 2; 7)—so that here Sheshbazzar would be designated the senior person in the clan of Judah, and thus a David-like leader. It is also Ezekiel’s term for the present and future king of Judah (e.g., Ezek 12:10–14; 34:24; 37:25; 44:3; 46:1–18). Describing Sheshbazzar as “leader of Judah” hints to readers that he is the David-like leader of the clan, and thus of the new community as a whole. If he actually belongs to David’s family, it is strange that the story fails to make that explicit, and more likely the point is that he is playing a David-like role. Ezekiel assumes that the “leader” has some responsibility in providing for the temple offerings (e.g., Ezek 45:17), and it would be appropriate for this leader to have the temple accoutrements entrusted to him.

In Ezra 2, the first of the returning Judahites to be named is Zerubbabel, the “governor” of Judah (Hag 1:1), and he is Jehoiachin’s grandson (1 Chron 3:17–19) and therefore certainly someone with a claim to David’s crown—though no stress is laid on that.[1237]  Haggai 2:20–23 promises him a day when Yhwh will overthrow the kingdoms—and that will be a day when “I will take you, Zerubbabel ben Shealtiel, my servant (oracle of Yhwh) and make you like a signet ring, because I have chosen you (oracle of Yhwh Almighty).” Even more enigmatic is that crowning of the high priest Joshua (Jeshua), who is called “Branch” (Zech 6:9–13). The prophecy also speaks of a priest standing alongside “Branch,” and the priest is Joshua. Who then is “Branch”? We cannot tell whether this is Zerubbabel or someone other than him. But in any case, Chronicles’ understanding of the role of David puts the emphasis on his relationship to worship, and the significance of having a David-like leader is that the people are in a position to order their worship on the basis of David’s vision.

A Family

The people is a family community, to be marked by care for one another, though capable of failure here as in other ways. “There was a great outcry on the part of the people and their wives against their fellow Judahites” (Neh 5:1). Once again we hear that word ṣaʿăqâ, the word for the outcry from Sodom (Gen 18:21) or the cry of the people in Egypt (Ex 3:7). Here it is the cry of one member of the family against another (cf. the verb in Gen 4:10; 2 Kings 4:1). There are people who do not have enough food—perhaps the implication is that they have no land. There are people who are having to mortgage their fields, vineyards and houses to get food—probably the implication is that poor harvests mean they have no prospect of repaying the loans. There are people who are having to do the same in order to pay the king’s taxes, are having to sell their children into indentured service for the same reason and to watch their daughters be ill treated or humiliated (or does the word mean raped?—so [1238] , Neh 5:5), and who have actually lost their fields and vineyards. That means they have no way out of the poverty trap. They are powerless (Neh 5:2–5). People in power are making loans to people and charging interest. Yet they are people of the same flesh and blood (Neh 5:5).

There is some irony about the fact that this problem arises not long after Ezra comes to Jerusalem from Babylonia as an expert in Moses’ Teaching. Moses’ Teaching contains more than one practical provision to cover the kind of problem described here, based like these provisions on the fact that the members of the community are each others’ brothers and sisters (see Lev 25; Deut 15).[1239]  It seems unlikely that either the sabbath year or the jubilee year provision have not yet been formulated, but the First Testament includes no accounts of either being observed and several references to the sabbath year’s not being observed—though the original ruling (Ex 23:10–11) might not have required everyone to observe it in the same year, only to make sure they did let the land lie fallow one year in seven, and this might explain some of the lack of reference to a corporate observance. The first reference to its being implemented relates to the second century (1 Macc 6:49). Further, we may misunderstand the nature of Moses’ Teaching in expecting such provisions to be implemented as if they were statutes in a law book. They may be more like visions or ethical statements. But whatever their function, Nehemiah makes no appeal to them, even though they are evidently having no effect on the way the community lives.

Instead, Nehemiah points out the paradox in the people’s behavior. They have expended resources on reestablishing the community; now the haves are treating the have-nots as a commodity to be bought and sold. Their action demonstrates no reverence for God. It risks the taunts of the community’s enemies—that is, the people among whom they live. What is needed is a willingness to lend money to relieve need, not to make money, a return of interest that has been paid or a waiving of interest, and a return of fields, vineyards, olive orchards and houses that have been forfeited (Neh 5:6–13). It is not clear whether Nehemiah is demanding cancellation of debts or debt rescheduling, but either way he is urging an arrangement that takes more account of the needs of the less well off and requires the well off to act in a way that makes their own self-interest less central. Perhaps he is being more radical than Moses’ Teaching, in a way that the context somehow makes both feasible and necessary, in the manner of a prophet (and cf. the polemic of, e.g., Is 58–59). Other contexts might have to make more allowance for the way self-interest normally shapes believers’ behavior. Those provisions in Moses’ Teaching seek to compromise between need and self-interest. As a wealthy person, Nehemiah himself has been involved in lending money and grain (Neh 5:10), though it is not clear whether he is admitting involvement in oppression.

In the central section of Israel’s story from the exodus to the exile, God relates to a nation and acts in once-for-all historical events that bring it into being and deliver it from crises—and also take it into crises and bring about its downfall. At the beginning and end of Israel’s story in the First Testament, in its prehistorical and posthistorical phases, God relates to families and clans and to religious communities, causing them to develop—and to decline—through ongoing processes of growth and decay. “In the Bible the family-oriented form of community is coordinated with creation, but not with the state.”[1240]

The family orientation of life in the restoration community extends to emphasizing the place of wives as well as husbands and of children as well as adults. Now the total number in the community exceeds the numbers of the different groups of men by 25 percent, which may mean that the total number includes the women. That in turn means women are a disproportionately small number, perhaps because the volunteers who returned were mainly single men and married men who left their wives and families behind. But the assembly in Ezra 10 includes women and children. The outcry in Nehemiah 5 comes from “the people and their wives.” The assembly in Nehemiah 8 gathers men and women and all who could listen with understanding. The pledge-making in Nehemiah 10 involves wives and sons and daughters, all who know enough to understand what they are doing (Neh 10:28 [MT 29]). At the dedication of the wall the women and children join in the rejoicing as well as the men (Neh 12:43). All this is in keeping with the instruction in Deuteronomy that women and children are to be included in the assembly that listens to Moses’ Teaching (Deut 31:10–13) and more generally that mothers, wives and daughters share in the responsibilities and the privileges of membership of God’s people and that children are brought up to know their people’s story and the obligations that flow from it. It is also in keeping with the picture of Jehoshaphat’s assembly (2 Chron 20:13). This emphasis on marriage and family within the community stands alongside the willingness to break up marriages with women from outside and the families that issue from these.

City-Focused, World-Aware

Paradoxically, the Second Temple community may be more city-focused than the First Temple community, and that in two senses. The Persian province of Judah is a much smaller entity than the Judah of the period before the exile, with one major urban center. If it were a state, we might almost call it a city-state, though more like Andorra than Monaco. But the city’s reduced significance would mean there is less reason for people to live there—there is not the administration and military of earlier centuries when it was the capital. Most people who sustain themselves by farming and shepherding could not live in Jerusalem. It is now “the holy city” (Neh 11:1). But that does mean Jerusalem is in a position to dominate the community as a whole in a way it could not dominate the Judah of previous centuries, let alone the earlier, larger Israel. On the other hand, when the people return from exile, they return to cities. When people first entered the land, there were no cities to settle in—or rather, they were not a people who could dispossess the current occupants of the cities. Although Ezra 2 initially refers to people returning to Jerusalem and Judah, it speaks of people being settled in their cities, from which they come to Jerusalem to begin the work there (Ezra 2:1, 70; 3:1). It seems that for decades few people actually live in Jerusalem (Neh 7:4). Thus eventually a scheme is devised whereby a tenth of the people agree to come to live in Jerusalem, in addition to administrators and temple staff for whom it was obviously convenient to do so (Neh 11). Those who move are people on whom the lot falls and people who offer themselves; it is not clear whether the second group is in addition to the tenth or part of it, or whether with superficial contradiction the two groups are the same. The need to have more people living in Jerusalem may reflect a need to make sure it is defended from attackers.

The genealogies in 1 Chronicles 1–9 go back behind the clans to the very beginnings of humanity. The first name in Chronicles is actually Adam. Little Judah holds its head high in the story of the nations. If we read this story in the light of Genesis itself, they are the people destined for God’s blessing and destined to be a means of blessing for the nations. This is quite a claim for the little Second Temple community. Further, these lists point up the continuity of the story from Adam through Abraham and Jacob via the exile to the contemporary community. The relationship between Yhwh and Israel “was not established by one specific historical act; this relationship, an integral part of Creation itself, is renewed from generation to generation.” There is no appeal to the exodus in Chronicles: the basis for the people’s response to Yhwh is just the fact that they are in relationship.[1241]

10.4 A Worshiping Community

What we speak of as the return from the exile in 537 is misnamed, in a variety of senses. It is not the return from the exile because Kings and Jeremiah have made it clear that most Judahites never went into exile. It is not a return because most people who did go into exile died there. It is not a return because most of the people that make the journey have never been to Jerusalem before—they are more like the ancestors moving to the land or the Israelites moving there under Joshua. It is not the return because there are several subsequent returns, not least that under Ezra. And it is not a return from exile because it is primarily an expedition to rebuild the temple. Cyrus’s declaration is that “Yhwh, the God of heaven … has charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his kingdom—Yhwh their God be with them.” That is why “they may go up” (2 Chron 36:23). The task is not the rebuilding of a people, but the building of a new house. The account of preparations for the journey keeps referring to the house of Yhwh (Ezra 1:2, 3, 4, 5), to vessels and voluntary offerings for it (Ezra 1:4, 6), and to the accoutrements from the first Temple, in huge, impressive and encouraging numbers (Ezra 1:7–11). The return of these is a significant marker of continuity between the first temple and the second.[1242]  The focus on the temple appears also in the list of people who return from exile (Ezra 2). The number of priests, Levites and other temple workers is not especially out of proportion in relation to the whole, but the list gives them disproportionate space and thus emphasizes the significance of their work.

If people are tempted at different points to hope that Jehoiachin, Sheshbazzar or Zerubbabel might again reign on David’s throne, the story in Ezra 1–6 does not identify with such hopes. “It is the rebuilding of the temple … which marks the real revival of the Davidic hope,” which fits with the emphasis in David’s portrait in Chronicles.[1243]  Although David theology and Zion theology were discredited by the fall of Jerusalem, at least in any form that dissociates them from a responsive commitment of monarch and city to Yhwh, both survive and revive. But they do so in different ways. Yhwh makes possible the restoration of city and temple, but not directly that of monarchy. Perhaps there is no theological reason for this, or perhaps it implies that the monarchy is more fundamentally flawed. Monarchy, city and temple were all human ideas rather than Yhwh’s ideas, but there was a difference between Yhwh’s original responses to each of these human ideas. Yhwh was much more offended by the idea of monarchy than by that of city or temple (see 1 Sam 8; 2 Sam 5; 7). In part, at least, temple was once designed to serve monarchy. Now monarchy serves temple.

The more central need after the exile is the rebuilding of the temple. In fact, the story does not talk about re-building the temple, as it does not speak of the people re-turning. They go to “build” (Ezra 1:2–3; contrast NRSV). But they also take with them the captured accoutrements from the First Temple. They would be building, but they would be rebuilding: “we are building the house that was built many years ago” (Ezra 5:11). There is continuity between their temple and the one that was destroyed. It was possible to undertake some offerings during the exile (see Jer 41:5), so “building” the altar (Ezra 3:2), like “founding” or “building” the temple itself, may imply refounding, rebuilding and refurbishing rather than starting from scratch. It would not be surprising if some of its stones were torn apart, and “setting it in its place” (Ezra 3:3) may thus suggest its reerection. Both aspects of the work are important. It is important that the altar and the temple are restored from the disorder that has obtained for half a century. It is also important that they are restored to what they were before, so that the worship life that is resumed is in continuity with that which was offered before. On the other hand, we hear nothing of the making of a new covenant chest (cf. Jer 3:16), and if we may assume that the cherubim had also been destroyed and were not replaced, the inner sanctuary now seems to be quite empty.

The Renewed Temple

Later descriptions of the Second Temple (e.g., 1 Macc 1:21–22; 4:47–51) suggest that in a number of respects it corresponds to the description of the wilderness dwelling rather than to the description of Solomon’s temple in 1 Kings. In general this involved a move in the direction of greater simplicity—for instance, curtains rather than doors now separate the inner sanctuary from the nave. That might imply a theologically based desire for greater simplicity or it might simply mean that the community lacks the resources for a building as ornate as its predecessor, with the wilderness dwelling providing a reassurance that this will be all right with Yhwh. The building of the mobile desert sanctuary, planned before Israel’s rebellion but built after it, is a type for the reestablishment of worship life after the disruption. Its story provides a pattern embodying the fact that everything need not be over when it looks as if it is over. It embodies the necessity and the actuality of God’s grace and the necessity and the actuality of human obedience—people whom God has inwardly renewed do the work. Their hearts carry them into it and their spirit makes them volunteer (Ex 35:21). In the context of their journey from Egypt to Canaan, this renewal was evidently a short-lived phenomenon. In the context of the disruption, it constitutes a narrative promise, a narrative equivalent to the explicit promises about heart and spirit in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, a kind of anticipation of a work of renewal that God still had to do. The moment for this renewal has now come.

There is some delay caused by opposition from “the people in the land,” then the prophets Haggai and Zechariah urge the people to recommence the work (Ezra 5:1–2). It is an unusual role for prophets—one cannot imagine Amos prophesying thus. Even Nathan had only done so after David had taken an initiative, and then he made a mistake. On the other hand, Ezekiel had seen the people’s attitude to the temple as an index of its attitude to God, and Haggai and Zechariah see it the same way. It would not be surprising if most Judahites in Babylon fail to see the commission to rebuild the temple as heralding the accomplishment of the multifaceted prophetic vision of restoration—a reestablishment of the Davidic monarchy and/or a gathering of scattered Israel by nations that now acknowledge Yhwh and/or a glorious rebuilding of Jerusalem and/or a reconstitution of the twelve-clan people in a newly allocated land. That would require an extraordinary leap of faith. The fact that the builders are soon put off from their task may be a sign that rather few people can make this leap, as well as a sign that the obstacles to its fulfillment are very great. For this monumental project the community does not have the resources Solomon could call on in Israel’s heyday. Instead they experience famine and food shortages, the returners need to build places to live, and Zechariah’s vision about theft and perjury hints that the returners and the people already in the land are understandably drawn into conflict over ownership of land and buildings. They are challenged to another leap of faith that reverses their natural assumptions: rebuilding the temple is the key to having food to eat and places to live, rather than the latter being preconditions of the former.

Having kept the Feast of Booths and made the offerings prescribed by Moses’ Teaching, in beginning the actual building the community follows the arrangements David prescribed for the temple, and their last act in completing the work is to set up the ministerial arrangements “in accordance with what is written in the Scroll of Moses” (Ezra 3:10–11; 6:18). Theologically, the reason for the first temple’s destruction was a failure to frame its worship by Moses’ Teaching; it is as well to put that right. This is the right kind of new start. The work is completed without any ambiguity in the feelings of the people who celebrate the event (Ezra 6:16–18). Joy is one of the features of worship among the returned exiles. It characterizes the beginning of the work, the dedication of the completed house and the great Passover festival that follows that, “because Yhwh had made them joyful by inclining the heart of the king of Assyria toward them” (Ezra 3:12–13; 6:16, 21–22). This celebration belongs in the sequence begun by Hezekiah and continued by Josiah.

Occasions for Rejoicing

Ezra’s own mission also links closely to the temple. He comes as a priest and brings with him priests and Levites and other temple ministers, and he brings offerings from the people and from the king for the temple, and more vessels for it (Ezra 7–8). His reading of Moses’ Teaching, with the exposition by Levites (Neh 8), is a worship occasion, with liturgy and ceremony, blessing, raising hands, bowing low and prostration, though it takes place in a city square rather than in the temple. The reading and exposition issue in tears and grief on the community’s part—perhaps in awareness of their share in Israel’s sinfulness, perhaps in awareness of the price they have paid for that. The leadership’s reaction is not to be pleased at this response but to assert that this is again a time for rejoicing, not crying and mourning. Paradoxically, it is because “this day is holy to Yhwh your God” that these are out of place. They compromise the fact that “rejoicing in Yhwh is your strength” (Neh 8:9–10). Grief needs to give way to joy, perhaps because the reading happens in the seventh month, September/October, a time of rejoicing in God’s giving in the harvest and of recollecting God’s acts at the exodus. For such a day the appropriate activities are eating something rich, drinking something sweet and sharing with people who have nothing prepared—many of the people do not live in Jerusalem and may not have brought such food and drink with them, but the joy of this occasion has to be an inclusive one. There is further irony in the fact that it falls at the beginning of the “High Holidays,” only ten days before the Day of Atonement, according to the calendar in Leviticus 23.[1244]  That highlights Nehemiah and Ezra’s stress on rejoicing.

The next day they come to the instructions for keeping the Feast of Booths in the seventh month, which they set about implementing with very great rejoicing in keeping with the emphasis in Deuteronomy 16 but going well beyond its expectation. Not since Joshua’s day had Booths been celebrated thus—perhaps in the sense that it involves the whole community living in Booths in Jerusalem in a way that is newly practicable given the community’s size, so that everyone lives within a few miles of Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Ezra continues reading from the teaching scroll. The feast comes to an end with a closing assembly (ʿăṣeret).[1245]  The week will have ended as it proceeded, with joy rather than staidness, though there are hints that the particular focus of this ceremony would be a plea for mercy and blessing (see, e.g., Joel 2:15).[1246]  The subsequent assembly (Neh 9–10) also involves worship, occupying another three hours each day. Once again the Levites lead the people, though this time in crying out to Yhwh and blessing Yhwh, then in praise and confession (Neh 9:5–37).[1247]  The praise tells how Yhwh made heaven and earth, made a covenant with Abraham, delivered the ancestors from Egypt, met with them at Sinai, provided for them and led them to the edge of the land. At that point it makes its transition to more focus on their waywardness. The ancestors were presumptuous and resistant to Yhwh’s instructions and not mindful of Yhwh’s wonders—yet Yhwh was gracious and merciful. They made a molten calf and addressed it as God—yet Yhwh continued to guide and sustain them and enabled them to take Canaan. In the land they rebelled, ignored Yhwh’s Teaching and killed Yhwh’s prophets, and Yhwh therefore gave them into the power of their enemies—but then delivered them. The pattern continued, and Yhwh eventually gave them into the power of “the peoples in the land”—but did not make an end of them.

The subsequent dedication of the city walls is also an occasion of great rejoicing, requiring the presence of all the Levites in their capacity as musicians and singers (Neh 12:27–43). That rejoicing ends in the temple, though it begins with a joyous march around the wall. If we read Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah in that Greek/English order, “the joyful worship of God runs like a silver thread” from David’s ark procession to the procession around Nehemiah’s wall. In this work “the joy which finds expression in worship is … of the essence of religion.”[1248]

Occasions for Confession

On the other hand, three prayers in Ezra and Nehemiah manifest a significant understanding of sin, guilt and punishment, and of their corporate nature. Ezra’s first prayer (Ezra 9) recognizes this in both its “horizontal” and its “vertical” form. Many members of the community (apparently people who were there before Ezra’s group arrived), including leaders, priests and Levites, have married women from other peoples in the land. They are thereby continuing in the “trespass” (maʿal) of the community before the exile. Ezra’s prayer thus identifies with the sin and guilt that belong to the past. “From the days of our ancestors to this day we have been in deep guilt, and because of our wrongdoings we … have been handed over to the kings of the lands” (Ezra 9:7; cf. Neh 9:33–37). The ancestors’ sins bring trouble on their descendants, but this does not leave the latter helpless. Their bondage can be broken. The means of doing so is their turning from their wrongdoing. It is in such turning that Ezra leads the people (Ezra 9–10; Neh 9–10). The sins of the earlier generation are still affecting the people of Ezra’s day, as they had continued to affect people in Judah after Josiah’s heroic effort at reform. But alongside the power of this dynamic is the promise that people need not be bound by it (see Ezek 18). If the cycle is to be broken, it requires that the generation affected by an ongoing pattern of sin turn from it in the way that their spiritual ancestors did not.

Ezra prays this prayer as “I,” and thus illustrates the nature of confession and intercession, putting himself in the people’s place and acting as their representative, praying the prayer they need to pray. But he prays his prayer at the time of the evening offering, and it would be natural for him to be in the temple area for such a prayer (Ezra 9:5). That assumption is supported by the talk of his prostration and spreading his hands to God—though these also appear as the posture for prayer in the public square (Neh 8:6). Certainly there are gathered with him “all who were concerned at the words of the God of Israel because of the exiles’ trespass” (Ezra 9:4). In due course the story makes explicit that he is indeed praying in front of God’s house—presumably in the temple courts, which would be a natural place for him to spend time as a leader of the community. It is thus not surprising that his public prostration, prayer of confession and crying draws a crowd who join him in crying (Ezra 10:1). Another implicit significance of public individual confession is thus that it draws other people to join in. While individual confession on the people’s behalf might succeed in laying hold on God’s mercy, a confession that has drawn in other people is more likely to do so. If these are the people who are themselves directly guilty, this will be the more compelling. Nehemiah’s prayer (Neh 1) manifests parallel dynamics, as Nehemiah confesses his own sin and that of his family in the course of asking Yhwh to have mercy on Judah and Jerusalem, where the people are in great trouble and the city’s walls are broken down.

The point about the Levites’ confession in Nehemiah 9 becomes overt when, having acknowledged that Yhwh has related to the people fairly, it nevertheless pleads for Yhwh to consider how hard is the people’s current situation (Neh 9:36–37). It thus differs from Ezra’s confession (Ezra 9), which relates to the discovery of wrongdoing and confines itself to owning this failure. It forms a corporate equivalent to Nehemiah’s confession (Neh 1), which arises out of an awareness of the people’s tough circumstances in Judah and wants God to do something about them. Such prayer has to start with an acknowledgment of wrongdoing and a confession that Yhwh is in the right (Neh 9:33). Once again Yhwh’s being in the right includes acting faithfully when the people have done wrong (cf. Ezra 9:15). But the prayer does not stop here. Once more there may be a parallel with the account of the previous assembly, if the closing ceremony is an occasion to plead with God for mercy and blessing.

The Significance of Worship

One of the commitments emerging out of the assembly described in Nehemiah 9–10 concerns the resourcing of the temple offerings and supporting the ministry there, though it is not long before we are also reading of people failing to keep up these commitments (Neh 13:10–14). The First Testament includes various indications of difficulties in this connection (see, e.g., Malachi); when there are no longer Judahite kings to support the temple, it would not be surprising if this was a burden for the small Judahite community, notwithstanding imperial subventions. One significance of these commitments is that the people as a whole are accepting responsibility for the maintenance of worship. This perhaps also implies that the temple and its worship “belong” to the people to a greater extent than previously.

The centrality of the temple project reflects the centrality of temple worship for a major strand of religion and life after the exile. That centrality appears further in the way Chronicles tells the story of the monarchic period and in the very fact that this is often called the Second Temple period. Describing it as the postexilic or restoration period (as Deuteronomy might have suggested) points to a structuring of Israel’s life as a whole. Describing it as the Persian period and then the Greek period (as Daniel might have suggested) relates it to external political realities. Describing it as the Second Temple period implies a distinctive assessment of the centrality of temple worship to Judah’s life. Worship at a central sanctuary had never previously had this significance, but it would retain it (within Judah, but not so much for Jews in the Dispersion) until the Second Temple is destroyed and Jewishness perforce gains a new focus.

In some respects Judah might thus indeed be called a worshiping community. The tiny community represented by Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles occupies only a small area around Jerusalem and can focus on city and temple as the preexilic community could not, even when reduced in size toward the end of Judah’s independent existence. It contrasts even more with the earlier nation, spread over a much more extensive area. It also contrasts with the exilic community in Babylon, which as a whole hardly saw itself free to worship in the manner of the temple even if some groups thought that was possible, or with the exilic community in Judah when the temple was a shambles. Further, the postexilic community lacks political independence. It can therefore not see God’s activity in making it flourish in numbers or power. That encourages the community to focus on the worship of the temple, because it can see God reaching out to it there and can respond to that grace.

Circumstantial factors thus encourage the giving of this new significance to temple worship. In the context of the demise of the church in Europe in the twentieth century, many Christian communities came to attach a similar significance to their worship. The story of the Second Temple community justifies that, though it also reminds us that this is a theological strategy for survival rather than for triumph.

10.5 A Listening Community

Ezra-Nehemiah as a whole stresses the shaping of the community’s life by the word of God. The people’s return to the land is possible because Yhwh’s requirements about sabbath years for the land have been fulfilled, with the result that Yhwh’s promise about an end to the exile can also now be implemented (2 Chron 36:21). The altar is reestablished so that offerings can be made “as it is written in the Teaching of Moses,” and the people keep the Feast of Booths “as it is written” and make offerings “in accordance with the prescription” (Ezra 3:2, 4). Temple building is restarted as a result of the prophesying of Haggai and Zechariah (Ezra 5:1). The work is finished “by the decree of the God of Israel” (and “by the decree of Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes”), and then the people set the priests and Levites to work “as it is written in Moses’ scroll” (Ezra 6:14, 18).

While Ezra’s mission links closely to the temple, his broader and more specific concern is the implementation of Moses’ Teaching as the basis for life in Judah (cf. Neh 8–10), apparently both in the temple and in other aspects of the community’s life. The community is a theocracy: it is defined by its commitment to shaping its life by Moses’ Teaching, which now also becomes state law. The Persians would no doubt have banned any law that went against their interests but would support laws that encouraged order in their provinces. Possibly this is the context and the purpose of the Torah’s formulation as we have it, if Ezra’s scroll brings together various traditions (e.g., the Priestly and the Deuteronomic) about matters such as worship and social life. Like the accoutrements from the temple, among other functions the observing of this teaching marks the community as in continuity with that around the First Temple. Artaxerxes implies the assumption that Moses’ Teaching is familiar to many people in the province though not necessarily properly implemented, but that it is unfamiliar to others so that they need to hear of it for the first time (Ezra 7:25–26). That will reflect the fact that it is old and yet also new. And it hints at an ambition to extend this teaching to communities beyond the one closely identified with the Judean community in Babylon.

Preaching

The significance of the words of God appears in another form in Ezra’s prayer for the community. It rather turns into a sermon, as prayers do, or it at least models the shaping of prayer by God’s own words. It attributes its “text” to “Yhwh’s servants the prophets” (Ezra 9:11), though the phrases that follow come mostly from Deuteronomy. Among the occurrences of the phrase “Yhwh’s servants the prophets” Ezra’s phrase thus especially recalls Jeremiah’s reference to an unbroken succession of such prophets ministering from the time of the exodus to the exile (Jer 7:25) and the idea that Yhwh’s Teaching was given through these servant prophets (e.g., Dan 9:10). Of course Deuteronomy likely does reflect the teaching of prophets. “Prophets” thus suggests figures who challenged the people about commitment to Yhwh and warned them about the consequences of not heeding this challenge. But the content of these challenges is expressed in words from Deuteronomy.

The First Testament incorporates some possible collections of reworked sermonic material. One appears in Deuteronomy, especially chapters 4–11. The form of these contrasts with the concise, concrete and poetic form of the oracles of the prophets. Here someone speaks “so forcefully yet so lovingly, admonishing and making promises, taking for granted the goodwill of his hearers, repeating what is already well known, giving at the same time both moral and spiritual instruction.”[1249] 6 This suggests that the exhortations reflect preaching. The concern of Deuteronomy 4–11 is to confirm, strengthen or reestablish the links between the present generation and the generation that experienced Yhwh bringing it out of Egypt and heard Yhwh speaking at Sinai (cf. Deut 4:9–20; 6:20–25). The rhetorical position of the generation gathered in the plains of Moab is the actual position of the generation that heard these sermons, whenever that might have been.

Another collection is spread through Chronicles, though material in Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi has overlapping features.[1250]  Whereas Deuteronomy is presented as a message given by Moses, these are presented as messages given by Yhwh. They are more concise and concrete than the material in Deuteronomy, and they make explicit how they relate to the circumstances to which they are addressed. Further, they take up Scripture and apply it to these new circumstances. Actual scriptural words appear in 2 Chronicles 15:2–7 (Is 55:6; Jer 29:13–14; 31:16); 2 Chron 16:7–9 (Zech 4:10); 2 Chron 19:6–7 (Deut 10:17; Zeph 3:5); 2 Chron 20:15–17 (Ex 14:13; 1 Sam 17:47); 2 Chron 20:20 (Is 7:9); 2 Chron 32:7–8 (Josh 10:25). Many other such passages in Chronicles incorporate shorter phrases that we know from elsewhere in Scripture. The messages are not expository in the modern sense—the scriptural text is not the preacher’s starting point. The reference to the “text” comes nearer the end, at the message’s high point, providing support for a point that is made in its own right. In this respect the reference to Scripture corresponds more to usage in the New Testament, the difference then being that here the texts are not formally quoted. Chronicles does not use the phrase “as it stands written” that it uses for quotations from Moses’ Teaching (e.g., 2 Chron 23:18; 25:4; 31:3). Perhaps the texts have a difference in status—or rather, a difference in function. The regulations of the Torah have regulative authority for the practical life of the community. Prophetic material has spiritual power to shape attitude and life. Indeed, we might follow Chronicles in seeing this “sermonic” material as itself prophecy, reworking existent Scripture as prophecy can. We do not know how far an audience would recognize the preachers’ quotations. It may be hard to imagine that entire congregations would do so without being prompted, but perhaps it was enough for the preacher to know that these sayings carried not merely the preacher’s own authority but an authority that came from their being earlier words from God.

Expounding Moses’ Teaching

Ezra and Nehemiah’s appearance together is the occasion when Ezra, acting as the scholar or theologian, reads out to the people the scroll containing Moses’ Teaching that is God’s gift to it (Neh 8:1). Deuteronomy 31:9–13 prescribes a septennial reading of Moses’ Teaching in the seventh month, and this assembly may have been a regular event. That may explain the reference to a wooden pulpit and the other indications that a liturgy is being enacted. The one-time event is a special version of a familiar practice or initiates a practice that became familiar.

It is a community event: once again the people gather “as one person” (cf. Ezra 3:1). Further, the people gather on their own initiative in the public square, in the city rather than the temple court (Ezra 8:1). That might symbolize the independence of Moses’ Teaching in relation to the temple and/or might draw attention to the claim the teaching made on the whole of life and/or might ensure no one was barred from hearing that teaching and/or might simply be a practical way of ensuring that everyone could gather and listen. The gathering involves men, women and children who are old enough to understand, though it emphasizes the responsibility of the people’s lay leadership (Neh 8:2–4, 13; 10:28 [[1251]  29]). It requires the people’s attentiveness (Neh 8:3). They stand to listen, as one would to a king (Neh 8:5). The listening takes place in the context of worship (Neh 8:6). Ezra also acts as a priest, with Levites explaining the teaching to the people in continuity with the description of them as people who “taught” all Israel (Neh 8:2, 7–8; cf. 2 Chron 35:3). Biblical exposition begins with this gathering at which ministers expound the word of God to the people. Ezra reads “from” the scroll (Neh 8:3), but the account implies the need to pay heed systematically to Moses’ Teaching as a whole, not just to selections that Ezra deems significant.

The people’s response to the preaching consists in tears and grief (Neh 8:9–11). That reaction recalls the earlier disturbing effect of the words of God (Ezra 9:4; 10:3), itself reminiscent of Josiah’s reaction to the reading of a scroll. But here there is no specific reason for the reaction, which rather parallels Nehemiah’s prayer (Neh 1) in constituting another indication that the community in the Persian period had a strong awareness of its failure and its sorry state, and (to judge from such prayers) its place in the history of a community characterized by such failure. Paradoxically (or not), such awareness goes along with a commitment Israel has not shown before to the fundamentals of a relationship with Yhwh. As we have noted, the leadership’s reaction is not to be pleased that the people are thus expressing their sorrow for their sinfulness but to assert that this is no time for crying and mourning. Listening to Moses’ Teaching is supposed to be a joyful activity. It makes solemn demands and arouses a sense of failure, but it also encourages hope because it speaks about God’s grace and power and about forgiveness and restoration. There will be enough talk of sin and commitment in a moment (see Neh 9–10). Indeed, a proper facing of the demands of God’s expectations and a proper facing of one’s failures will be more likely when people have been grasped by God’s goodness to them and have rejoiced in that.

Pledging Obedience

There follows the account of another assembly (Neh 9–10). There is no agreement on the critical and historical problems it raises, but it does offer another take on the interrelationship of public assembly, reading from Moses’ Teaching, mourning, worship and commitment.[1252]  Once again the whole community has assembled, including men, women and children who could take part with understanding (Neh 10:28 [MT 29]).

Once again “the offspring of Israel have separated from all foreigners,” as the community that assembled earlier was a people who could prove their Israelite descent (see esp. Neh 7:61), and as Joshua’s community separated itself from the peoples in the land and from foreign gods for its great assembly (Josh 24:20, 23). It is this whole Israelite community that solemnizes its response to the reading of the scroll (Neh 9:38–10:39 [MT 10:1–40]). At first sight this seems to imply that the assembly gathers on a purely ethnic basis, but it turns out to include “all who have separated from the peoples in the land to Yhwh’s Teaching” (Neh 10:28 [MT 29]; cf. Ezra 6:21). They are among the number who swear to commit themselves not to intermarry with the peoples in the land nor to buy from these people on the sabbath (Neh 10:30–31 [MT 31–32]). Once again there is sobriety, here described in terms of outward observances comprising fasting, wearing sackcloth and dirtying the head with soil (Neh 9:1). These complement the preceding account of mourning, crying and grief. The observances give outward expression to mourning because they involve taking up the position of people who have died—it is as if they can no longer eat or drink, as if they are wearing a shroud, as if they are returning to the dirt from which we came. On this occasion it is explicit that the reason for grief is the people’s awareness of their own failures and of their ancestors’ wrongdoings, which they need to confess. The Levites’ loud cry (Neh 9:4) is another cry for help (zāʿaq).

Once again the people listen to the scroll of Yhwh’s Teaching, for three hours each day. This second occasion gives considerable space to the people’s response to the reading (Neh 9:38–10:39 [MT 10:1–40]). They seal a pledge (ʾămānâ) or a “curse and oath,” an oath with self-imposed sanctions, to live by the scroll (Neh 9:38; 10:29 [MT 10:1, 30]). Whereas Chronicles might have called this a covenant, that word does not occur, which highlights the difference between this human pledge and covenants initiated by God.[1253]  Specifically, the people undertake to abjure intermarriage, to observe the sabbath and the sabbath year, and to support the offerings and the personnel of the temple.

The sabbath year commitments (Neh 10:31b [MT 32b]) relate to the confrontation in Nehemiah 5. The other commitments relate to issues that surface again in a series of confrontations in Nehemiah 13, when things collapse while Nehemiah is back in Susa. Tobiah is occupying a room in the temple area that was supposed to be used for offerings; the Levites are no longer receiving their share of tithes and offerings and have gone back to farming; people are selling and buying on the sabbath; and Judahites are again marrying people from Ashdod, Ammon and Moab. Historically, it is easier to see that as the background to the present commitments, like the sabbath year question, but this requires rather a subtle reading of the book. The effect of the arrangement in the book is to put the emphasis on the pledge-making of the people as a whole rather than on Nehemiah as an individual, though also to imply that the people’s commitment is very short-lived, so that Nehemiah needs to take further individual action. Some irony then attaches to the itemizing of their resolution here, given the way the issues arise again later. Another effect of the repetition in the narrative is to underline the importance of these issues and also to imply that they are difficult to handle. That coheres with other indications of this fact, for we know from Ezra-Nehemiah that intermarriage was a recurrent issue. The other reference to the sabbath (Neh 9:14) also draws attention to its importance to the community in this period.

Once again the Levites lead the people in worship, which occupies another three hours each day. While this time their role does not lie in direct exposition of Yhwh’s Teaching, their prayer, praise and confession does form indirect scriptural exposition as well as praise as it summarizes the story of Yhwh’s dealings with Israel and the people’s dealings with Yhwh.

Making Obedience Specific

The community’s pledge “to be careful to keep all the commands, judgments, and rulings” (Neh 10:29 [MT 30]) begins with reference to intermarriage. When the leaders came to talk to Ezra about intermarriage in the community (Ezra 9:1), they presupposed an equivalence between people such as Canaanites, Jebusites and Perizzites, who appear in Moses’ Teaching, and contemporary peoples such as Ashdodites and Edomites/Arabs (e.g., Neh 4:7 [MT 1]) who do not. They assume a warrant to bring the latter under the rubric referring to the former. Ezra 9–10 and Nehemiah 10 presuppose overlap if not identity in the situations addressed by Moses and themselves. The people are in a similar position to the earlier community, surrounded by neighbors who worship other deities. In between these two groups (Canaanites, Jebusites and Perizzites; and Ashdodites and Arabs) are the Ammonites and Moabites, who appear in Moses’ Teaching (e.g., Deut 23:3) but not in lists of peoples to be annihilated. Indeed, it might be dangerous to include people who actually exist in a list of people to be annihilated. The story is taking up not the question of annihilation, but its underlying concern with avoiding intermarriage and the concern that underlies that, avoiding recognition of other deities and other influence by alien religions. In this connection Ammon and Moab can and must be included, along with other peoples who do not appear in Moses’ Teaching at all, because there is again a danger that the religion of local peoples will encourage people to have recourse to other gods as well as Yhwh. The similarity is overlap rather than identity, for in Ezra-Nehemiah we may detect the additional problem of political pressure, not present in Deuteronomy.[1254]

There is a broader issue here. Although the story emphasizes obedience to Moses’ Teaching, the people’s acts do not correspond to Moses’ Teaching as a whole, nor to any particular part of it (e.g., Leviticus or Deuteronomy in isolation from other parts). For instance, Nehemiah 8 quotes Moses’ Teaching as requiring people to collect the branches of certain trees in making their booths, but the requirement does not correspond to that in Moses’ Teaching as we have it (Lev 23:33–43). In Nehemiah 10 the community bans buying things on the sabbath or on holy days. Moses does not require this, perhaps because a prohibition on work implicitly ruled out trade. It might only be when the lives of Judahites are more interwoven with those of other peoples that the question arises whether people are free to buy from foreigners, who are not bound by the sabbath command. The people now agree to this extension of Moses’ ruling, which they see as an implementing of Moses’ ruling.

The community’s commitment covers the remitting of debts and the sabbath year, which do appear in Moses’ Teaching. But in Exodus 21:2–11 and Exodus 23:10–11 the year for freeing indentured servants and the sabbath year for the land are two separate requirements, and Exodus does not imply that they coincide, or even make explicit that everyone observes either of them in the same year. Leviticus 25 probably implies that everyone observes the same sabbath year for the land but requires a year of release every fifty years. Deuteronomy 15 presupposes that everyone observes the year for remitting debts in the same seventh year; it does not explicitly mention the sabbath year for the land. Jeremiah 34 implies that the king had declared an occasion for release, the freeing of indentured servants, as Middle Eastern kings sometimes did, which bore no relationship to a calendar, though Jeremiah then links it with the Mosaic year for freeing indentured servants. Second Chronicles closes with the note implying that the sabbath year was never observed (2 Chron 36:21), while Nehemiah 5 has made clear that the same was true of the year for remission of debts (cf. Jer 34). Nehemiah 10 seeks to implement both and for the first time brings the two together in doing so.

The commitment also covers a number of aspects of the support of the temple and its worship (Neh 10:32–39 [MT 33–40]). The one-third shekel tax to finance offerings involved in the service of the temple recalls aspects of the arrangements for the building of the wilderness dwelling (see esp. Ex 30:11–16): The one-time half-shekel tax for the service of the wilderness dwelling suggests or provides the warrant for an annual one-third shekel tax. The resolution about a wood offering provides a way of implementing the regulation concerning the altar fire (Lev 6:8–13 [MT 1–6]). The resolution about firstfruits, firstlings and tithes starts from the need to support the ministry (cf. Neh 13:10–13, 31) and attempts to formulate a comprehensive resolution that takes account of the rulings on these matters scattered through Moses’ Teaching[1255] —though these themselves may also have been developing in the context of these same needs.

Seeing What Moses Would Say Now

Both the emphasis on precise obedience and the lack of precise correspondence to Moses’ Teaching are thus recurrent features of this story. What Moses’ Teaching says and how the leaders apply it to their situation are not kept distinct. Ezra and Nehemiah are not legalistic in their attitude to Moses’ Teaching. The community’s commitments resemble “a set of halakot,” exegetical and practical judgments on the way Moses’ Teaching needs to be applied to the community. They thus include attempts to detail how a ruling should be applied, how current application of a ruling should be revised, how a ruling can be extended so as to apply to a new situation, how rulings can be extended so as to be more comprehensive and how separate rulings can be integrated.[1256]  Obeying Moses’ Teaching does not simply mean adhering to its specific content, but perceiving what Moses would say if he were here now—perceiving what is the appropriate new equivalent to Moses’ injunctions. We may hypothesize that the development of “Moses’ Teaching” involved the expression of such insight, as people sought to identify Yhwh’s expectations of them in different contexts over the centuries. If the entities we know as the Book of the Covenant, the Deuteronomic Code, the Holiness Code and the Priestly Code ever existed, it was such a process that produced them.

The profile of conviction regarding what we might call the authority of Scripture is thus instructive. Serious commitment to the authority of Moses’ Teaching goes along with a freedom in rewriting that Teaching. We might compare two New Testament phenomena. One is a parallel combination of commitment to the authority of the Scriptures with a confidence in declaring a word from God that contrasts with that existent word (“you have heard it said …, but I say …; Paul does this too). The other is the combination of commitment to the Scriptures’ authority with a relaxed attitude regarding the fixedness of the scriptural text. Authors quote from the Hebrew text or the Greek, even when the latter has a rather different meaning from the former. They modify the text to bring out its application to their own situation, for example, to generate a closer link between prophecy and fulfillment. The text is quoted in a legal but not a legalistic way. The development of a written Torah, the bringing together of different bodies of teaching and their linking with the period of Moses did not mean that they became “frozen by traditionalist hardening” and incapable of being applied to new circumstances—or of being utilized as one seeks to discern the will of the one God for all people.[1257]

10.6 A Distinct Community

From the exile onward, the life of the Judean community is interwoven with that of a number of other peoples and groups in a way that leads to a greater stress on its ethnic, political, linguistic, cultural and religious integrity and distinctiveness. It seems likely that this would be the case for the exilic community in Babylon itself, but it is more explicitly so for the later Judahite community whose perspective is represented by Ezra-Nehemiah.

From the image of the land being desolate and free to enjoy seventy years of sabbaths (2 Chron 36:21), one might infer that no one lives there. But from the beginning, the story of the Second Temple shows that the land is not empty and that conflict with other people there will be a fact of life for the community. Politically a number of other Persian provinces surround Judah. The question of the religious or ethnic identity of the groups in the land is even more complex.[1258]

Judahites Who Return, Judahites Who Stay, Judahites Elsewhere

There are the people who “return” from Babylon to rebuild the temple. Most will have been born in Babylon, but they come from families whose ancestors lived in Judah. After the commissioning of an expedition, it is surprising to find in Ezra 2 the long list of people who returned to Jerusalem and Judah (Ezra 2:1) numbering all but 50,000 people. The description of the company as a congregation (qāhāl, Ezra 2:64) indicates its link with the temple project, and historically the list looks like the membership of the temple congregation, presumably comprising people who return over a number of years and others who have not been in exile but belong to the congregation. In context it provides the story with a parallel to the exodus, where the implication that the people number two million or more magnifies the nature of the event and perhaps invites later Israelites to see themselves as part of the exodus people. Though much lower than that figure, the number in Ezra 2 exceeds the number said to have gone into exile and hints that the people has flourished under affliction as it did in Egypt. Giving prominence to the exiles may have some political significance in undergirding, for example, the land claims of returning Judahites over against people already resident in the land.

For the ongoing community, however, the emphasis on the exiles also makes a theological point. In this connection, too, the story parallels that of the people’s original arrival in the land. Israel in Palestine perhaps included many worshipers of Yhwh whose families had never been in Egypt, but Israel’s story emphasizes the decisive importance of the exodus for an understanding of Yhwh and of Yhwh’s purpose with Israel. Ezra 1–6 now emphasizes the analogously decisive theological importance of the exile and the return. For instance, it tells of how Yhwh has indeed exercised the sovereignty over foreign kings of which prophets spoke. Further, if the community is one whose identity is determined by the exile, it is clear that the land has indeed enjoyed its sabbaths and that city and community have indeed gone through quite enough chastisement for their wrongdoing (Is 40:2). It also encourages the community to stay aware of the wider Dispersion community; the people who return from exile form a link between the Dispersion and the community that never left the land.

Ezra-Nehemiah presupposes the ongoing existence of Judahite communities hundreds of miles away in Babylon and elsewhere to the east, for whom exile has now become dispersion, and Esther and Daniel tell us more of their story. Artaxerxes’ commission also indicates that others live in other parts of the broader province Beyond the River than Judah (Ezra 7:25). The First Testament has mixed feelings about such people. Its vision is that Yhwh will bring everyone back to Judah, yet Cyrus’s edict accepts that not everyone will return to build the temple, though it expects people who do not return to associate themselves with the project. “All who remain behind,[1259]  from all the places where they [the people who return] live as resident aliens—the people of their place are to support them with silver and gold, with goods and livestock, together with the gifts for the house of the God who is in Jerusalem [or the house of God that is in Jerusalem]” (Ezra 1:4). Even if it is a matter of choice whether you stay or return, it is not a matter of choice whether to help with the temple building and thus with the support of the community in Judah.

There are further Judahites who moved to other countries such as Egypt. Jeremiah 41–44 tells of such a move, though disapprovingly. Records concerning the ongoing life of the Judahite community at Aswan show that its religion differs from anything affirmed within the First Testament—notably in assuming the existence of Yhwh’s consort, Astarte.

Judahites Who Never Left and People in the North

The population of Judah itself also includes people who never went to Babylon but stayed in Judah or returned there after taking brief refuge elsewhere. We know from Kings and Jeremiah that they existed, but Ezra-Nehemiah is strangely (or not) silent about them. They share a mutual antipathy with the returned exiles. Perhaps these Judahites are the “people in the land” who “weakened the hands of the people of Judah and made them afraid to build” and later “bribed officials to frustrate their plan throughout the time of Cyrus King of Persia and into the reign of Darius King of Persia,” and thus stopped the work until the time of Darius (Ezra 4:4–5, 24). Elsewhere the expression “the people in the land” refers to a group within Judah that is difficult to define, but 2 Kings closes with a distinction between the people taken into exile and “the people in the land” who were left behind (2 Kings 24:14; 25:3, 12, 19). So readers might naturally infer that “the people in the land” who oppose the exiles in Ezra 4 are such Judahites. Plural “peoples in the land,” on the other hand, refers to foreign peoples, especially in Ezra-Nehemiah. By using the similar expression, Ezra 4 thus invites readers to see these other Judahites in the same category as foreign ethnic groups. Political considerations may enter into the exiles’ dissociation from them, but it would be a plausible view that this Judahite community was also deeply affected by recourse to gods other than Yhwh. It had been so before the fall of Jerusalem, and that event encouraged people’s turning to other deities as well as encouraging their turning to Yhwh alone. Presumably not all the worshipers of the Queen of Heaven went to Egypt (Jer 44). People who really wish to belong to Yhwh’s community have to choose to associate themselves with the exiles rather than with such other Judahites or the Samarians or the other ethnic groups.

In the area there are also people from the territory of the northern clans, perhaps several groups. First Chronicles 9:3 speaks of people whose ancestors had moved from Ephraim to Jerusalem during the last centuries before the fall of Jerusalem. Jeremiah 41:5 speaks of people who still live in northern cities but have been bringing cereal offerings and praying in the temple during the exile. These might be birth members of the northern clans or descendants of people transported there by the Assyrians. Such people speak of wanting to join in building the temple, “for we will have recourse to your God like you. But we have not been sacrificing [[1260]  have been sacrificing to him [[1261] he time of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria, who brought us here” (Ezra 4:2). They are thus doing just what people in Ephraim were supposed to do in seeking to associate themselves with the worship in Jerusalem. The returners’ overt basis for refusing them is their need to do the work themselves, as Cyrus commissioned them. We may suspect other reasons alongside that: ongoing conflict over subsequent years perhaps “suggests a political motivation for both the offer and the rejection”—the northerners want to discourage the emergence of an independent, imperially backed entity in Judah, and the exiles want to resist the risk of being overwhelmed politically.[1262] 6 But Cyrus’s commission is itself a theological consideration. Yhwh is working through Cyrus and his commission to the exiles. The description of these other people as Judah and Benjamin’s adversaries (Ezra 4:1) may be anticipatory—the refusal of their wish to join in building will at least have added to animosity between the two communities.[1263]

Other Peoples

The exiles put the altar on its (proper) site “because they were in dread of the peoples in the land” (Ezra 3:3). Plural “peoples” suggests that the groups the exiles see as a threat are more than merely Judahites who had not gone into exile and/or northerners whose standing the exiles did not accept.[1264]  At its next occurrence the phrase is spelled out as referring to earlier occupants of the land such as the Canaanites and Jebusites (Ezra 9:1), which hints that “the peoples in the land” is a mythic notion, a generic Other.[1265]  The literal equivalents would be the peoples of the surrounding Persian provinces.[1266]  Nehemiah 13 thus refers with less anachronism to non-Judahites from Ashdod, Moab and Ammon (though Moab, at least, may be only a stylized inclusion), and Ezra’s pejorative terms likely refer to such people.[1267]  Such groups may have had designs on Jerusalem or may have been thought to have such designs or may have recognized that a renascent Judahite community was a threat to their own position. Nehemiah’s mission to rebuild the city’s walls and gates at first amuses but then antagonizes Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official, and Geshem the Arab, and the Arabs, Ammonites and Ashdodites (Neh 2:10, 19; 4:1–3 [[1268]  3:33–35]; 4:7–8 [MT 1–2]; 6:1–19).

It is from these “peoples in the land” that members of the community take wives for themselves and for their sons (Ezra 9:1–2). It has been suggested that these women are not really foreigners but Judahites whom Ezra does not regard as true members of the community, people who had not been in exile.[1269]  We cannot test that hypothesis, though if Ezra wanted to exclude marriage to “the peoples in the land,” there were other ways to do so—Ezekiel’s polemic would offer approaches to that. In any case, the marriages the story is concerned about are marriages with foreigners. The story of Ruth illustrates the possibility of “no fault” marriage to a Moabite in the context of the latter’s making a commitment to Yhwh.

While it is the exiles who undertake the temple building, they celebrate the Passover that follows along with “people who had separated themselves from the pollution of the nations in the land to have recourse to Yhwh the God of Israel” (Ezra 6:21).[1270]  These might be any of the three groups just noted. They might be the Judahites who had not been in exile. And/or they might be the people in the north who had come to worship Yhwh through being transported there by the Assyrians, whom 2 Kings 17:29–41 sees as combining worship of Yhwh with worship of their earlier gods; that would fit with the reference here to their act of renunciation. And/or they might be people such as Edomites or Ammonites. The pledge-making in Nehemiah 9–10, too, includes other people who “separated themselves from the peoples in the land to God’s Teaching” (Neh 10:28 [MT 29]). Although the community mostly comprises returned exiles, then, other Judahites, other “Israelites” and people of non-Israelite descent who are prepared properly to join the community in its commitment to Yhwh might be able to do so. Israel’s holiness does not imply an ethnic principle. A “mixed group” came out of Egypt with the “holy nation” (Ex 12:38; 19:6) without there being any sense of impropriety. It would have been easy to attribute the unfaithfulness of the people in the wilderness to the influence of this group, but the story never does so. The community’s distinctiveness in relation to other peoples relates to recognition of Yhwh, not to questions of ethnicity in themselves (see, e.g., Lev 20:7; Deut 7:6; 14:2, 21, in their context). Conversely, although Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7 imply that the community basically comprises people who have come back from exile, such people can forfeit their membership in the community (Ezra 10:7–8). It is not clear whether other Judahites or northerners were seen as insiders who needed to cleanse themselves or outsiders who needed to become converts.

Among the returned exiles are assistant ministers, many of whom have foreign names and seem likely to be of foreign origin (Ezra 2:43–58). There are also people who claim Israelite descent but cannot prove it (Ezra 2:59–60). Mention of them indicates that while they are in some state of suspended animation, they are not excluded from the community. On the other hand, priests who are in the same position are reduced to lay status until their status can be clarified (Ezra 2:61–63).

It may be that the Second Temple period was characterized by a tension between a more pragmatic priestly party who were exercising power and a group or groups that were excluded from power and looked to the future for God to put that right, but the narrative gives little hint of that.[1271]

The Nature of Separation

The account of the Passover celebration in Ezra 6:21 shows how separating themselves from other peoples is a key principle for the Second Temple community. Nehemiah’s pledge involves a similarly defined people, initially described as “the stock of Israel” who had “separated themselves from all foreigners” (Neh 9:2). Yhwh had distinguished Israel from the people around to belong to Yhwh; that is symbolized by the distinction Israel makes between different kinds of creatures (e.g., Lev 20:24–26). Yhwh intends this particular land to be the one that Israel enjoys. They are not called to pray for other peoples’ well-being and prosperity in this land (Ezra 9:12). But they take no action to attempt to eliminate other peoples from it, nor does their separation mean avoidance of contact, any more than separation means this for Levi, which Yhwh separated from the other clans (e.g., Num 16:9). They are not required to live as a separate community, but to avoid sharing in the other peoples’ religious observances. Seeking help from other gods as well as Yhwh was a central reason for the exile, and the restored community defines itself as one that excludes that possibility. It needs to take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that, which will vary in different contexts. But the community lives in the land intermingled with the other peoples, in a way Martin Buber, for instance, once dreamed Arabs and Jews (Palestinians and Israelis) might.[1272]

Ezra-Nehemiah is concerned about purity, and that relates to separation. The priests and Levites purify themselves before the Passover following the temple dedication (Ezra 6:20) and do the same at the dedication of the city wall, also purifying the people and the gates and the wall (Neh 12:30). They purify the rooms that had been occupied by Tobiah before returning temple vessels and supplies there (Neh 13:9). The Levites purify themselves before taking up the sabbath guard on the city gates (Neh 13:22). Nehemiah claims to have purified the priests and Levites from everything foreign (Neh 13:30). These words indicate that there is a substantial aspect to purification; it involves removing everything foreign. There is also a sacramental aspect; the foreign elements leave their stain, so that purification involves symbolic acts. It will be by means of such rites (e.g., sprinkling with water) that the Levites purify the gates and walls, as well as themselves and the people. Such a concern with purity can have various aims. In Ezra-Nehemiah it links with the awareness that Israel is called to keep itself distinct from other peoples and their religion, as was the case at Hezekiah’s reform and Passover (2 Chron 29:15–18; 30:17–19). It thus follows up the emphasis in Ezekiel that the people can be purified from the stain of their involvement with images (Ezek 22:24; 36:25, 33; 37:23).

Observance of the sabbath relates to separation. It is a specific way Nehemiah’s pledge-making commits the people to God’s Teaching (Neh 10:30–31). The sabbath is a distinctive marker of Judahite life over against that of other peoples, and it will henceforth have a key emphasis in Jewish life. It is the only specific requirement in the Sinai revelation mentioned in the prayer in Nehemiah 9 (cf. the exhortation in Is 56:4–8). Keeping the sabbath is not so much an individual observance as a part of the city’s and the community’s relationship with God (cf. Neh 13:15–22). When there are people in Judah treading grapes on the sabbath, Nehemiah confronts the community leadership not about working but about trading. One would have expected a more direct riposte if these were Judahites ignoring the explicit sabbath prohibition on work, but people belonging to the other communities naturally do not suspend work or trade on the sabbath. Nehemiah’s concern is that there should be no trade in the city on the sabbath. The city shares the holiness of the temple (cf. Neh 11:1) and is guarded by the Levites accordingly (Neh 13:22).

Intermarriage

Intermarriage also threatens the people’s identity by imperiling their commitment to Yhwh, though in a different and more far-reaching way. Israel’s ancestors such as Abraham, Judah, Joseph and Moses married foreign wives with impunity, though foreign wives were disapproved for other ancestors such as Isaac and Jacob (see Gen 24; 27:46–28:9). It is only in Moses’ Teaching that marriage with the peoples now described as the peoples in the land became forbidden, explicitly because it will lead to Israel’s coming to acknowledge the partners’ gods (Ex 34:12–16; Deut 7:1–4). Perhaps the difference in circumstances could make intermarriage have different results from ones it might have had in the time of the ancestors. Perhaps the ethos of the ancestral family was strong enough to absorb foreign women without being affected by their faith. It would likely be assumed that they converted to their new family’s faith, as would war captives (Deut 20:10–18). In theory the monarchic state ought also to have had the strength to absorb foreign women, but the political motivation for those marriages would mean that they did not convert and that the king made more accommodation for them. Perhaps the people involved in intermarriage, who included priests and Levites, looked to the example of Abraham, Joseph and Moses and appealed to the exodus story for a more open-minded view of “mixing,” since that “mixed group” came out of Egypt with Israel.[1273]

Ezra and Nehemiah assume that the little Second Temple community living among other peoples is too weak to risk the loss of its identity by absorption into the wider group through intermarriage. In a more individualistic culture we can imagine a husband and wife from different ethnic backgrounds simply following different religions, though we know that conflicts arise over what happens to their children. Traditional societies are more aware of the family as a unit, so that the stain that comes from relying on other gods affects the whole family and each individual—as Solomon’s facilitating his foreign wives’ worship affected the whole nation in his day. Two chapters after the great celebration of the temple dedication, Ezra discovers people have given up their marital separateness, and two chapters after the pledge-making, Nehemiah makes the same discovery (Ezra 9; Neh 13). The holy offspring have mixed (ʿārab hitpael) with other ethnic groups instead of keeping separate (Ezra 9:1–2). That compromises the principle that Yhwh alone is the one from whom the community must seek help and guidance for its life concerning matters of a moral and religious kind and concerning the future (dāraš, Ezra 6:21; cf. 2 Chron 18:7; 34:26). The abominations (tôʿēbâ, Ezra 9:1) of the other peoples lie in their seeking help from other deities and their use of images, which might be acceptable for them but not for Israelites. The mixing has brought pollution (ṭumʾâ) to the people, ignoring the need to keep separate from the stain (niddâ) brought on the land by its earlier inhabitants (Ezra 9:11). It thus involves maʿal, an offensive faithlessness in relation to Yhwh (Ezra 9:2, 4; 10:2, 10; cf. Neh 13:23, 27), the kind of thing that caused the exile.

Perhaps intermarriage implies a Judahite man having to allow for his wife’s worship of other deities in their home, a family equivalent to the accommodation to his wives required of Solomon. The families involved will be praying to the wife’s gods or praying to Yhwh in the way the wife worships her gods (cf. Ps 106:35–39, the only other occurrence of ʿārab hitpael with this meaning). Perhaps the close union of marriage means that the man’s wife brings upon him the pollution of her religion. On the part of priests, intermarriage could result in the work of the temple passing to people whose family background had not encouraged them to being committed to Yhwh alone. On the part of laypeople, intermarriage could result in possession of a family’s tract of land passing outside Israel.[1274]  Ezra does not refer to such concrete results of the action, but confines himself to those emotionally laden value terms. His people are involved in trespass. The ancestors were covered in wrongdoing and guilt. The peoples in the land are characterized by disgusting practices that conveyed pollution and stain (Ezra 9:10–15). The references to holiness and mixing are framed by references to abomination and trespass, again making clear that any ethnic separation that is required to safeguard holiness is secondary to the call to maintain a religious distinctiveness in the form of an exclusive reliance on Yhwh.

Breaking Up Marriages

In Ezra 10, Shecaniah ben Jehiel of the family of Elam therefore proposes that people should “send away” their wives and children (yāṣāʾ hiphil). To judge from the list that follows, he is not one of the people who married out, and thus his stance parallels Ezra’s in identifying with actions in which he is not directly implicated. There is an uncomfortable irony about the use of the verb “send away,” which is most familiar as the term for bringing out the Israelites to freedom from Egypt. But perhaps it would have been worse if the story had used the verb sometimes translated “divorce” (gāraš), which is used for throwing out the former inhabitants of Canaan and for Abraham’s throwing out Hagar. Nevertheless, the experience of these women and children is more like that of Hagar and Ishmael than that of Israel finding deliverance from Egypt, though there are encouragements for them in the story of Hagar and Ishmael.

It is not clear why the children are intrinsically affected by pollution. Perhaps they are seen as the gifts of the gods to whom their mothers prayed. The story neither implies nor excludes the possibility that in breaking up their families the men take responsibility for the needs of their wives and children. Its not doing this indicates that its agenda lies elsewhere, in the resolving of this matter that imperils the being of “Israel.” First World readers are inclined to be appalled by Ezra’s action, though they need to allow for the fact that “a commitment to identity requires a commitment to the internal maintenance of identity.”[1275]  Further, one of the people who had married out was one Jehiel from the family of Elam (Ezra 10:26). It would be a big coincidence for there to be two Jehiels in this family. This seems to be Shecaniah’s father, so that Shecaniah speaks as the (grown-up) child of one of these unions. There is some poignancy and further courage in his proposing that these marriages be dissolved and the families broken up. His involvement also draws our attention to the possibility that most of the children of these marriages would be adults. Indeed, perhaps the proposal only has adults in mind. Further, it presumably implies that where the children of these marriages affirm their commitment to Yhwh, like Shecaniah they can be members of the community in their own right (cf. Ezra 6:21). In this sense, the story’s stance is not so different from that of the story of Ruth or the declaration that foreigners need not say, “Yhwh will definitely separate me from his people” (Is 56:3). “One must be surprised not that the sinners are punished but that they are punished so mildly” compared with, say, the story in Numbers 25.[1276]

In Nehemiah 10 and 13 there is no explicit talk of dissolving existent marriages, only of not undertaking them (Neh 10:30 [MT 31]) or stopping undertaking them (Neh 13:23–27). Nehemiah 10 relates more directly to membership of the congregation of God (qāhāl), which Ammonites and Moabites may not enter (Neh 13:1; cf. Deut 23:3). Ammonites in particular are now a threat for a different reason from any that obtained in Israel’s early history, as one of the four surrounding provinces that threaten Judah. With its neighbor Moab, it is the one most directly referred to in Moses’ Teaching. So the regulation regarding Ammon and Moab provides a convenient scriptural basis for a policy over against inhabitants of the four provinces (Neh 13:1–3). The people therefore separate from Israel (bādal hiphil) all the “mixed group” (ʿereb). The parallel with Solomon (Neh 13:26) suggests that Nehemiah may have been attacking political intermarriage.[1277]  This coheres with the fact that a priest called Eliashib gives Tobiah (the Ammonite!) a base in the temple courts while Nehemiah was back at court reporting to Artaxerxes, and the high priest Eliashib[1278]  marries one of his grandsons to the daughter of Sanballat. Other Judahites have married women from Ashdod as well as Ammon and Moab—so that half their children spoke only the language of Ashdod and not Hebrew (Neh 13:23–27). That says something significant, given that language plays a significant role in the development and sustaining of a community. Intermarriage really does threaten the community.

“Israel”

As a listening community, the people are defined by their commitment to Moses’ Teaching. But they do not become a religious community in the sense that the church would understand that expression in the context of modernity, as if constituted through the decision making of a series of individuals who commit themselves one by one and bring the community into being by their individual decisions. The clan community corporately committed to living by Moses’ Teaching is theologically and existentially prior to the membership and commitment of individuals. And that community still needs to protect its integrity by people marrying within its number. Criteria for community such as ethnicity, geography, political status, language and religion are more difficult to separate in traditional societies than in modern ones, or are more significant than modern societies sometimes acknowledge. Even the story of Ruth interweaves questions about ethnicity, religion and geography. Paradoxically, the pressures of geography and politics lead to more emphasis both on questions of ethnicity and also on the importance of the community’s commitment to Yhwh’s Teaching, which in turn points to the possibility of outsiders joining the community if they affirm that commitment. This paradox relates to another. The Second Temple community assumes that Yhwh is God of the entire world and pictures the great world leaders recognizing that this is so, yet in its own life believes it needs to stay distinguishable from other peoples who might imperil its distinctiveness. It has to hold on to that distinctiveness but also hold on to a vision for other peoples coming to acknowledge Yhwh.[1279]

Ezra-Nehemiah speaks of the Second Temple community as “Israel” (e.g., Ezra 7:7, 10, 11, 28; Neh 9:1–2). In earlier books Israel referred to the ancestor Jacob, then to the clans who traced their descent from him, then to the majority clans who comprised the northern kingdom. But the majority of people who identify themselves as “Israel” in the exilic and Second Temple periods trace their descent to the clan of Judah (or Benjamin; e.g., Ezra 10:9). They can thus be referred to as yĕhûdîm, which ceases to refer to Judahites as opposed to Ephraimites and comes to have similar connotations to the word Jews. When Nehemiah tells the beginnings of his story, he moves unself-consciously between talking about “Judah” and “Israel” (Neh 1:2, 6). Israel has become a more predominantly theological term. It identifies its referents as the people of Yhwh, the (only) spiritual and theological descendants of the Israel that Yhwh brought into being in the story from Genesis to Joshua—and also in some sense their legal descendants. The community’s self-designation as “Israel” is an attempt to build up its morale by affirming that it truly is the ongoing embodiment of a people with a history that goes back centuries and has a place in the purpose of God. If the narrative from Genesis to Kings reached its final form in the Second Temple period, it would then give concrete form to the community’s instinct to identify itself as this Israel with a long history. This self-designation may constitute a claim over against other worshipers of Yhwh in geographical Israel (cf. Ezra 4:1–4). But more fundamentally it constitutes an attempt to build up the community’s morale in a way that would be necessary even if there were no other claimants to the land or no other worshipers of Yhwh. Tiny Second Temple Judah could easily become politically subservient to and/or ethnically absorbed into the wider population of the area, as had happened to most of the peoples listed in Ezra 9 such as the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites and Jebusites. That would terminate the story of Yhwh’s involvement with it and terminate the possibility of its being a means of Yhwh’s blessing the world.

10.7 A Subservient Community

“What must the community be if it is to be true to its ancestral faith and tradition when it finds itself quite evidently on a more permanent basis under the aegis of an imperial power?”[1280]  Does it accept its position and concentrate on being faithful in its community life, as Ezra-Nehemiah as a whole might imply? Does it look for opportunities to rebel and gain its independence, as Sanballat alleged it did (Neh 6:6–7)? Does it look to God to bring that independence about, as the prayer in Nehemiah 9 might imply? Does it expect such a deliverance only as part of events that brings about the End, as Daniel implies? How does it relate to the surrounding provinces? How can Judah stay alive if such peoples aim to swallow it up?

Yhwh Stirs the Spirit of the Emperor

The people’s story in the Persian period begins with Yhwh stirring the spirit of a Persian king (Ezra 1:1). Once Yhwh had stirred Jerusalem’s former “lovers” such as Babylon to attack the city in fulfillment of Ezekiel’s warnings (Ezek 23:22–24). Now Yhwh stirs the Medes against Babylon, as promised (e.g., Is 13:17; Jer 51:11). Yhwh holds before Cyrus’s eye the advantages of conquering Babylon and of implementing a different policy for subject peoples from Babylon’s, and in such ways encourages him to conquer Babylon and commission the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple. Behind the decisions he takes regarding what is best for his empire is a purpose of Yhwh he is unwittingly serving. Indeed, Cyrus explicitly acknowledges that “Yhwh the God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and has charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem” (Ezra 1:2). On his own terms, in taking responsibility for rebuilding the temple, he is doing just what someone who claimed to be king should do. And at one level, in so acknowledging Yhwh, Cyrus is doing just what Second Isaiah envisaged (e.g., Is 45:3), behaving as Yhwh’s shepherd and Yhwh’s anointed (Is 44:28–45:1), acting as a kind of Gentile David. King and prophet could agree that he was David’s successor as king over Judah.

There is an irony about all this, though the report and the irony are not new. Sennacherib once claimed to be attacking Jerusalem because he had been commissioned by Yhwh (2 Kings 18:25). Admittedly, Sennacherib is two stages behind this claim—his commander has written his speech, and the author of 2 Kings has written the commander’s speech. Isaiah’s reaction makes explicit that any claim to be Yhwh’s agent was made only as an ad hominem argument or did not come near the top of his list of motivations for his action (see Is 10:5–11). In the same way, we have only Cyrus’s scriptwriters’ account of his motivation for letting the Judahites go home, and among these scriptwriters were the worshipers of the Babylonian god Marduk who elsewhere say that Cyrus recognized it was Marduk’s initiative that had made it possible for Cyrus to conquer Babylon.[1281]  Any recognition of Yhwh by Cyrus was less than a commitment to the absolute truth of the words in the decree. Indeed, the Judahites were probably not the only ethnic group who were allowed to go home, as their religious artifacts were not the only ones returned to the temples from which they came.[1282]  Yhwh’s will works itself out via imperial policies undertaken because they are deemed best for the empire. It would be important to have stability at its western edge, the gateway to the Mediterranean, the frontier with the region dominated by Greece, and also the frontier with the uppity Egyptians.

There is another irony. Taking a god’s image, or in this case the accoutrements of Yhwh’s palace, and placing them in one’s own god’s temple is a declaration of the defeat of one deity and the victory of another. Nebuchadnezzar thought he and Marduk had defeated Yhwh. The return of the vessels is a sign that Yhwh and Jerusalem have outlasted Babylon and Marduk, whatever Cyrus’s theological diplomacy may say.

When Judahites are preparing to leave on the expedition to rebuild the temple, “all the people living around them aid them” with gifts for the work and the worship (Ezra 1:6).[1283]  This coheres with Artaxerxes’ talk in terms of contributions of silver and gold from all Babylonia as well as from the administration and from Judahites—presumably the community that continues to stay behind in Babylonia (Ezra 7:15–16). Yet when the first returners set about the work Cyrus commissioned, they encounter opposition that stops the work for a while. And God does not force their opponents or manipulate them or lean on them to yield. Is this then a very different story from that of the exodus? If Yhwh stirs the Persian king’s spirit to inspire him to commission the building of the temple, why does Persian opposition stop their completion of the task?[1284]  Or do the returners bring this frustration on themselves by their response to “the people in the land”?

Yhwh’s Lordship over the Superpowers

“Yhwh … has given me all the kingdoms of the earth” (Ezra 1:2) is a more unequivocal statement of Yhwh’s sovereignty in the affairs of the nations than has appeared at previous stages of Israel’s story (though not than statements in the Prophets). No doubt the authors of the earlier narratives could have made such statements about Assyria or Babylon. Their not doing this does not reflect a lack of conviction about Yhwh’s sovereignty. The appearance of this explicit statement in Ezra 1 reflects a conviction about the positive significance of Cyrus. Yhwh has given him power not for reasons that are inscrutable (as was originally the case with Assyria) nor because he is Yhwh’s servant in bringing trouble to Judah (like Nebuchadnezzar), but because he is the means of fulfilling Yhwh’s positive, gracious purpose.

In Daniel this theology of Yhwh’s lordship over the superpowers expresses itself differently again. Here God is one who removes kings and sets up kings (Dan 2:21) and thus gave kingly power to Nebuchadnezzar. But the three regimes after him will simply arise. Daniel does not comment on how God relates to them. After them, however, God will definitively set up another regime (Dan 2:36–45). As a watcher puts it to Nebuchadnezzar, the Most High, who controls human sovereignty, gives it to whomever he wishes (Dan 4:17 [MT 14]). But Nebuchadnezzar needs to acknowledge that, as does his “son” Belshazzar, otherwise either may be cut down (Dan 4:25, 32 [MT 22, 29]; 5:21).

In his own first dream, Daniel sees four animals that stand for four superpowers. In context I take these to be Babylon, Media, Persia and Greece, though an earlier version of the scheme may have begun with Assyria, and a later reinterpretation closes the scheme with Rome. The four animals arise from the sea, which suggests that they come from a locus of energy that is not especially subservient to God, yet they are aroused by the four winds of heaven, which suggests that God controls their arising (Dan 7:2–3). In earlier chapters it was the first of the regimes that had rather ambiguous significance, in keeping with the attitude that Jeremiah takes to it, for example, and with its significance in Judah’s experience in the sixth century. In later chapters it is the last of the superpowers that is treated most negatively, in keeping with the significance of the Greco-Syrian empire in Israel’s experience in the second century, or that of Rome subsequently.

In Daniel’s next vision, there is no comment on God’s involvement in the rise of the Medo-Persian and Greek empires; the vision shows only how the latter is put down “by no human hand” (Dan 8:25). The last two visions (Dan 9–12) tell Daniel nothing about heaven’s involvement in either the rise or the demise of the superpowers, but confine themselves to asserting that they are under control, insofar as God can declare ahead of time how matters will turn out under and for them. Building on the stories, the visions declare that subservience will not be the end. Daniel outlasts Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar and Darius (Dan 1:21), who themselves acknowledge Daniel’s God with increasing seriousness (Dan 2:47; 3:29; 4:34 [MT 37]); 6:26–27 [MT 25–26]) and give increasing power to Daniel and his three colleagues. That offers some grounds for believing the outrageous claim that subservience to human superpowers will cease when God gives power to a holy people on high forever (Dan 7:27).[1285]  Underprivileged groups in the third millennium might reflect on the implications of this promise for them as the victims of the current superpower.

A New Setting

The nominal land of Israel now comprises four Persian provinces. Centered on Jerusalem is Judah (Yehud in Aramaic). Though Judah lacks independence and lacks a monarchy, it is still a political entity, occupying a particular geographical area and ruled by a governor. To the north, the province of Samaria covers much of the area of the old northern kingdom and comprises people who give at least some allegiance to Yhwh, even if many of them also recognize other gods. We do not know whether the Babylonians appointed a successor to Gedaliah in Judah, but under the Persians the governor of Samaria initially seems to have Jerusalem within his jurisdiction (cf. Ezra 4:7–23). Subsequently Nehemiah is appointed governor of Jerusalem, and we know from his words that he was not the first governor (Neh 5:14–15).[1286]

To the west, the province of Ashdod corresponds to the old area of Philistia. To the south and east is the province of Idumea, the old Edom, now also occupying much of the southern part of what was once Judah—even Hebron is in Idumea. Geshem the Arab (Neh 2:19) is its semi-independent monarch, whose people are referred to in Ezra-Nehemiah as the Arabs (e.g., Neh 4:7 [MT 1]). Also to the east is Ammon, already involving itself in Judahite affairs soon after the fall of Jerusalem (Jer 40–41). The polemic of a prophet such as Ezekiel regarding Ammon, Moab, Edom and Philistia (Ezek 25) coheres with the idea that such pressures from the other provinces began in the Babylonian period. We do not know how Ammon fitted into the Persian administrative structure. Perhaps Tobiah the Ammonite was a provincial official of some kind there, though the way he is referred to may indicate rather that he was a member of Sanballat’s staff, while his marriage relations with Jerusalemites (Neh 6:18) may suggest he had had particular authority for Judah. When Sheshbazzar, Zerubbabel, Ezra or Nehemiah arrive in Jerusalem, all these neighbors would have reason to be displeased that anyone was trying to improve conditions there and opening up the possibility of the emergence of a renewed center of power in Judah (cf. Neh 4:7–9 [MT 1–3]). It would be understandable that relations between the various local imperial authorities, several weeks’ journey away from the capital, could become conflictual.

Nehemiah’s relationship with the local administration is especially tricky. The governor of Samaria, Sanballat, has cultivated links with the city (cf. Neh 6:10–14; 13:28) and will lose power through Nehemiah’s arrival. The officials whom Nehemiah initially keeps in the dark about his plans (Neh 2:16) are presumably Sanballat’s appointees, whose loyalty could not be predetermined. Indeed, Nehemiah could not count on the support of Judahite community leaders (see Neh 3:5; 6:10–14, 17–19). In the light of the king’s commission, Nehemiah can afford to be confrontational in relation to the three foreign leaders: “you have no share or rights or commemoration[1287]  in Jerusalem” (Neh 2:20). They have no civic, legal or religious status.[1288]  Nehemiah’s point is hardly that as private individuals they could not take part in the life of the city and the temple (though he might also say that), but that city and temple are not within these other powers’ authority. It would be quite reasonable for his fellow governors to propose gubernatorial meetings in Ono, the intersection of Judah, Samaria and Ashdod, but quite reasonable (though possibly paranoid) for Nehemiah to smell a plot against him in this location some distance away from Jerusalem. It would also be quite reasonable for the other governors to suspect a Judahite plot to rebel against Persia and to have Nehemiah declared king. After all, Judah has a record of such rebellions and of prophetic encouragement to expect to have kings again, even from not so many decades previously (see, e.g., Hag 2:23). Nehemiah’s return to the Persian court provides the rival governors and their sympathizers in Jerusalem with opportunity for moves to reestablish their position there (Neh 13:4–9; cf. Neh 13:28–29).

Relating to the Authorities

Back at the beginning of the story of the restoration from exile, when work on building the temple is taken up at the behest of Haggai and Zechariah, the provincial governor’s investigation leads to some further affirmation of the imperial authorities’ attitude. The governor’s inquiry is reasonable and courteous and “the eye of their God was on the elders of the Judahites” so that they are left free to continue building while the governor writes to the emperor (Ezra 5:5). “God’s eye” suggests God’s awareness and God’s consequent care, protection and provision (e.g., Ps 33:18; 34:15 [MT 16]). And Darius decides to pay for the daily sacrifices in the temple, so that the people may pray for him (Ezra 6:9–10). Thus the temple is “completed by the decree of the God of Israel and by the decree of Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes, king of Persia” (Ezra 6:14). The celebrations that follow reflect the fact that Yhwh has “inclined the heart of the king of Assyria toward them” (Ezra 6:22). Whereas the other local peoples weakened their hands and made them afraid to build (Ezra 4:4), the effect of the king’s action is “to strengthen their hands in the work on the house of God, the God of Israel” (Ezra 6:22). The temple building is thus completed because God wills it, because Haggai and Zechariah urge the people on and because the imperial authorities (Cyrus and Darius) support them. The stress on action in accordance with Yhwh’s word in Ezra 1–6 as a whole is accompanied by a recurrent emphasis on action in accordance with the written word of the king.

In the meantime, however, the story fast-forwards to other moments when the local authorities campaign against Judah, giving most space to an occasion when they succeed in getting the king to stop the rebuilding of the city and its walls (Ezra 4:7–23). The Persians do not always support the Judahites (cf. Dan 6).

When Ezra undertakes his trek, he declines to ask for imperial protection because he has told the king that Yhwh’s hand is on people who look to Yhwh for their needs rather than forsaking Yhwh—and to rely on resources other than Yhwh implies such forsaking (Ezra 8:22). Yet this hesitation seems odd, because Ezra has not hesitated to ask the king for provision and has seen God’s hand in his generosity, and Nehemiah will later have such support (Neh 2:9). But Yhwh’s hand is indeed on the travelers (Ezra 8:31). It has been so in making the king so generous, and it is so in protecting them on their journey. On arrival, Ezra finds the provincial administration as supportive as the king in aiding the people and the house of God (Ezra 8:36).

The Law of the King and the Law of God

Ezra goes to Jerusalem out of a concern to see that life there is lived in accordance with Moses’ Teaching; he is able to do so because this is also the king’s concern (Ezra 7:10, 14). It suits the empire to exercise some control of what happens there. So “the king gave him everything he asked in accordance with the hand of Yhwh his God on him”; that is, the king’s generosity to Ezra is an expression of Yhwh’s lavishness to him (Ezra 7:6; for the expression, cf. 1 Kings 10:13; Esther 1:7; 2:18). To put it another way, “Yhwh put into the king’s mind” the idea of beautifying Yhwh’s house and inspired in him and his staff this extraordinary act of commitment to Ezra (Ezra 7:27–28). Yhwh can influence a king’s resolve negatively or positively. The return from exile is greater than the exodus, for Yhwh influences the king to be generous rather than tough. Koch suggests that Ezra himself sees his trek as a second exodus and a partial fulfillment of prophetic expectations.[1289]

The emperor’s generosity presumably includes the further silver and gold and worship vessels contributed by Artaxerxes and his administration (Ezra 7:15, 19). These contributions would finance offerings in the temple but also leave resources for Ezra and his colleagues to use at their discretion—they could even ask for more if necessary (Ezra 7:17–20). Beyond that, the local administration is to provide a subvention in the form of silver, wheat, wine, oil and salt, and to grant tax exemption to the temple staff (Ezra 7:21–24). The resourcing of offerings reflects a second rationale for the imperial generosity, matching Darius’s: it is to safeguard the king against the wrath of heaven, if worship should be neglected (Ezra 7:23). In such contexts “wrath” implies defeat in battle (see, e.g., Josh 22:20; 2 Kings 3:27).[1290]  Again there is a happy convergence between the interests of the empire to control affairs in the province and Ezra’s desire to see Moses’ Teaching implemented in the province’s worship.

Artaxerxes requires submission to “the law of God” and to “the law of the king,” and Ezra has power to require both submissions (Ezra 7:26). But their interrelationship is not specified. Are they the same thing, so that state law and religious law are identical? Does Artaxerxes simply require Judah to be governed by Moses’ Teaching, with the full weight of imperial discipline thus supporting its implementation? The identification of state law and church law is dangerous if it means the state can interfere with the church. It is also dangerous if it means that the weight of stately authority supports church policies that may themselves be constricting, as happened in Britain in the sixteenth century. In the United States, opinion differs regarding whether the separation of church and state is designed to protect state or church. Are God’s law and the king’s law two separate laws, one governing religious life, one governing other aspects of life—almost like a separation of church and state? Either of these—identifying state and religious laws or regarding them as two separate laws—would be different from the arrangement presupposed by Moses’ Teaching itself, which seeks to cover all of life and leaves no place for its own implementation by the authority of a foreign king, even one who (nominally) recognizes Yhwh. Nor does it envisage a foreign governor paying for offerings or envisage prayer on behalf of such a foreign emperor.

Nehemiah’s relationship with the king is quite different from Ezra’s. Nehemiah is neither priest nor theologian but layperson and a man who has gained a significant position at the royal court. Yet like Daniel he has not let Jerusalem slip out of his mind, even if he has never been there. He knows he can bring these two parts of his life together and try to utilize his position at court for the sake of his people’s needs, though he also knows there is risk in that—your job at court is to cheer the king up, not to look gloomy. He knows he can pray for success with the king and compassion from him, though that does not stop him from being scared stiff (Neh 1:11; 2:2). His hesitation and fear may also be based on the fact that any expression of concern for Jerusalem will be in tension with Artaxerxes’ assessment of Jerusalem, his attitude to it and his policy regarding it, which were reported in Ezra 4. But he duly asks for a commission to rebuild the ruined city and for provision of the requisite timber, and in addition receives the military escort that Ezra would not request.

Longing for Freedom

There is not so much difference between the degree of practical freedom the kingdoms of Ephraim and Judah experienced during much of their history and the degree of practical freedom Judah has under Persia, nor between the degree of benevolence shown by the different superpowers.[1291]  The First Testament sees the Assyrian and Babylonian kings as Yhwh’s agents as readily as it so sees the Persian kings. Indeed, the narrative can present Persia more positively because it happens to be the agent of Yhwh’s restoration rather than Yhwh’s punishment, and because Judah benefits from Persian willingness to support its religion. On the other hand, the fact that Egypt, Assyria and Babylon allowed Judah and Ephraim their own monarchies for centuries contrasts with the situation under Persia. The two monarchies are portrayed as free, perhaps precisely because they had these symbols of self-government. Second Temple Judah is under Persian authority without even the symbols of control of its destiny. Whatever the precise implications of the portraits of the four regimes in Daniel 2 and 7 (or for that matter the vision in Dan 8), they picture a history that degenerates rather than improves as superpowers pass.

Ezra’s subsequent prayer of confession acknowledges a less sanguine side to the people’s situation under the Persians. The fact that they still exist reflects God’s grace, but they live in subjection. “We are serfs” (Ezra 9:8–9). Like any people under alien government, however benevolent, they miss their freedom. The dissatisfaction Ezra expresses at Judah’s situation under Persia works against the suggestion that he is nothing more than the agent of the empire’s interests in Judah, and the very fact that the community has such need of imperial permission for what it does is a sign of its subjection.[1292]

Once more the positive attitude to imperial authorities has set alongside it the more gloomy implications of the people’s cry in Nehemiah 5. There are several factors behind the poverty and hardship in the community. Some people apparently lack land, perhaps because other people have appropriated it, and the community experiences the occasional problem of poor harvests. But there is also the burden of imperial taxation (Neh 5:4). One way or another, ordinary people have to bear the administrative and military costs of running the empire. Perhaps people could have made ends meet if they only had to look after themselves, but the burden of imperial taxation tips them over the edge. Arguably the situation remains the same as it was under the monarchy, where the same factors caused poverty and hardship. The difference is only that taxes now have to be paid to Susa, not to Jerusalem (and in silver, not in kind).[1293]

It also has set alongside it the more gloomy account in the prayer in Nehemiah 9. “Here we are, serfs today. The land you gave our ancestors to eat its fruit and its good things—here we are, serfs in it, and its abundant produce goes to the kings you have set over us because of our failures. They rule over our bodies and our livestock as they please. We are in great distress” (Neh 9:36–37). Judah speaks just like the people in some British colony. They would like their freedom and resent the fact that so many of the good things they produce get siphoned off to finance prestigious building projects, the maintenance of the imperial army and a good life for the Persian court. Judah is not content to be a mere province of an empire. By implication, it looks forward to the day when Yhwh’s fulfilling promises of its restoration include its political independence, as is presupposed by promises in the Prophets.[1294]  It is only because of the people’s sin that they are under the authority of foreign overlords; that is not their “proper” state (Neh 9:33–35). And even if Nehemiah has no monarchic ambitions for himself, the desire for political independence points to a restoration of the monarchy. The stance is very different from that expressed in Ezra 1.

Israel’s story starts with Yhwh leading the people out of subservience to find independent life and nationhood. In Ezra-Nehemiah, it closes with the community in Judah a chastened remnant living in subservience. In a sense the story is a disappointing one, though the people are able to live a tolerable life before Yhwh without being a sovereign state.

10.8 A Priest and Theologian

“In the days of Abraham, Moses, Joshua, and David, the Lord took mighty action on behalf of Israel. In the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, Israel takes energetic action on behalf of the Lord. They become covenant partners again, but on a distinctly different basis.” The fact that Nehemiah opens and closes with first person narrative forms a nice symbol of this fact.[1295]  Through what sort of people does this come about?

A Man Who Fasts and Prays

Ezra is first a priest (Ezra 7:1–5). His genealogy perhaps suggests a claim to the high priesthood,[1296]  though his family’s staying in Babylon rather than moving back to Jerusalem with any of the waves of returners does not suggest it was a very observant one. In addition, Ezra is a scholar or theologian, an expert in “Moses’ Teaching which Yhwh the God of Israel gave,” and a man committed to living by it and teaching it (Ezra 7:6, 10, 11; Neh 8). His prayer of confession (Ezra 9) reflects his expertise. Further, Ezra is an administrator with the insight required to function as an imperial agent (Ezra 7:25). Thus the king gives him all he asks; he is able to prevail on a reasonable group of Levites and temple servants to come; and they complete the trek to Jerusalem in reasonable time (Ezra 7:6, 9, 28; 8:18).

He is a man who fasts and prays. His own words in the story begin with a prayer that blesses God for working through the king, on the basis of which he can take courage and set about gathering people to go with him (Ezra 7:27–28). The story continues with a fast and with asking God for protection on the journey (Ezra 8:21–23). The fast involves the people afflicting themselves in seeking a straight way for their journey. Perhaps it simply backs up the prayer by showing that the people mean business; perhaps it puts them into the kind of afflicted position that the trek might impose on them, so that it relates to the particulars of their prayer.

Ezra is a man who grieves and prays on his people’s behalf. Discovering intermarriage in the community, “I tore my clothing and my coat, tore at the hair of my head and beard, and sat desolate” until the time of the evening sacrifice, which provides an opportunity for prayer of confession on the community’s behalf: “I fell on my knees and spread my hands to Yhwh my God” (Ezra 9:3, 5). Ezra feels a personal sense of shame at what has happened, which makes him unable to look God in the face (Ezra 9:6). Of course, not only is he not personally guilty of intermarriage; the problem does not even lie with the group he led from exile, but with the people who were already in Jerusalem and with the community’s ancestors before the exile. But his instinct is to associate himself with and to identify with fellow members of God’s people in the present and in the past. It is not “they” who are guilty, and not only “we,” but “I.” And he grieves not just as a private individual but as a senior leader in the community and a priest, offering God the response the community itself owes.

He behaves all day like someone grieving the death of a loved one. Indeed, he does so all night; it is then explicit that he is mourning (Ezra 10:6). So who has died? The community has done so, or soon will have done so, because it has behaved in a way that threatens it with God’s sentence of death. “By enacting mourning, as it were, for the death of the community, Ezra shows that he and they accept this verdict upon them.”[1297]  A prophet such as Amos bewailed the death of the community in order to shake it to its senses so that his “prophecy” did not need to come about. Ezra’s grief acts this out to God on the people’s behalf in the hope that it may forestall God’s implementing the sentence of death to which the community has laid itself open (cf. Ezra 9:14). Such a hope will be encouraged by the fact that the leaders have reported the situation to him, along with their concern about it, and by the fact that during the day there gathers around Ezra a wider group of people “disturbed by the words of Israel’s God, because of the exiles’ trespass” (Ezra 9:4). The note of disturbance (ḥārēd) reappears (Ezra 10:3; Is 66:2, 5) in the same context of people’s involvement in other religious practices. The people’s response (and Ezra’s) also recalls Josiah’s reaction to the scroll found in that same place in his day (2 Kings 22:11).

A Man Who Identifies

Ezra’s words are in the purest sense “confession”; Ezra confines himself to confessing facts about the people and facts about God. As we may speak in English of confessing one’s faith as well as confessing one’s sins, so the Hebrew words (yādâ, tôdâ) may be used to acknowledge both what Yhwh has done and what we have done (cf. also Ezra 10:11). Either way, it constitutes testimony to facts. Ezra’s prayer contains no overt request, such as one for forgiveness or mercy. This may reflect the awareness that there are no grounds for asking for mercy. “Here we are before you in our guilt, because there is no way we can stand before you because of this” (Ezra 9:15)—“stand” in the sense of hold our head high as if we were in a position to ask things from God. The confession recalls the great act of narrative recognition of the justice of God’s judgment comprised by 2 Kings, which simply tells the story of what God has done and of what the people have done and thus implicitly owns the people’s wrongdoing and implicitly appeals for mercy—but only implicitly.[1298]  Naturally, it does take that confession forward into Ezra’s own day, and in this connection makes explicit the implication of its confession, which was only implicit in 2 Kings: “Yhwh, God of Israel, you are in the right [ṣaddîq]” (Ezra 9:15). The confession explicitly acknowledges that the people are in the wrong (e.g., Ex 9:27; 2 Chron 12:6; Lam 1:18; Dan 9:14).

There is another implication to Ezra’s declaring that Yhwh is ṣaddîq. He goes on to comment on the grounds for his confession: “Because we have survived as a remnant.” His argument is not merely that Yhwh was in the right in reducing them to a remnant but that Yhwh’s true nature has also been reflected in not letting them cease to exist altogether (cf. Neh 9:8, 33; Ps 129:4). This understanding of Yhwh’s being in the right corresponds to the meaning of the idea in Second Isaiah: “Yhwh is a righteous God and a deliverer” (Is 45:21). Hence the fact that ṣaddîq often means something like “faithful.” The people continue in being at all because Yhwh continues to treat them as a special people who in a sense have “rights” because Yhwh made a commitment to them. Perhaps the closing paragraph of 2 Kings has the same implication.

Ezra is a man who knows how to help people change (perhaps). His reaction to discovering that people have married women from Ammon, Moab and elsewhere is to pray. When Nehemiah makes the equivalent discovery, he tells us “I contended with them, reviled them, attacked some of the men, and tore out their hair” in getting them to change (Neh 13:25). There might be good reasons for the difference in Nehemiah’s response from Ezra’s. In the order of events in the books themselves, at least, people are now going back on the covenant made in Ezra’s day. Ezra already has the support of the people who reported the problem to him; further, Ezra has the capacity to turn his praying hands into an iron fist (see Ezra 10:8). As his prayer recalls Moses’ at Sinai, so his handling of the practicalities (Ezra 10:9–17) also recalls Moses (see Ex 18:13–26). He does not attempt to undertake the entire task himself, but shares it with the heads of the families (indeed, according to 1 Esdras 9:16 he gives it over to them).

A Man Who Confronts

A comparison of his confession with 1 and 2 Kings suggests another insight. Insofar as that story was addressed to anyone, it was to the author’s community in Judah or Babylon. If it was indirectly an act of worship, it was more directly a piece of teaching. It was an account of the people’s story that sought their acquiescence, so that it became their act of confession. Conversely, Ezra’s confession is directly a prayer, but it is indirectly a prophecy, like that of Amos. As much is hinted by the public context in which he prays (Ezra 9:3–5), by the drawing affect of his prayer (Ezra 10:1). He is not praying and grieving just in order to affect the people—he continues fasting and mourning overnight in private (though the fact that we are told makes this a public matter). But letting people overhear his prayer is a way of confronting them, even if a less confrontational one than Nehemiah’s, and the aftermath of his prayer is twofold.

First, “a very great congregation of men, women, and children gathered about him from Israel, because the people were crying and wailing” (Ezra 10:1). By his show of grief he wins the involvement of the people as a whole. And second, he draws a response (ʿānâ) from one Shecaniah, the son of Jehiel, of the family of Elam (Ezra 10:2–4).[1299]  It is an impressive response. Shecaniah acknowledges, “We trespassed against our God in bringing home foreign women from among the peoples in the land.” Shecaniah thus makes Ezra’s vicarious response his own. But he does not despair. Ezra’s prayer expresses no hope: all it is proper to do is acknowledge wrongdoing. Shecaniah dares declare, “But now there is hope for Israel in connection with this.” He can say that because he goes on to propose some action: “So now, let us seal a covenant with our God to send away all the women and those born to them.” And he speaks as if representing the rest of the people involved: “we are with you.” He thus urges Ezra himself to take the necessary action.

The notion of covenant implied here contrasts with the covenant talk in Genesis-Deuteronomy, but it fits the covenant talk in the story from Joshua to the exile.[1300]  These covenants constitute acts of commitment by the people to God, not by God to the people or by God and people to one another,[1301]  and made by the whole people in a context when many in the community may be or may have been inclined in another direction. Blenkinsopp calls it quasi-sectarian.[1302]  John H. Yoder describes Ezra and Nehemiah as “thinking through ritual purity to renew a nation without political sovereignty but with the coercion of a centralized cult backed by the authorization of the Persian empire.”[1303]  The emperor does give Ezra power to coerce (Ezra 7:26), but what the narrative describes him actually doing is leading the community in covenant making.

Ezra is a man who does it his way. There are many aspects of Moses’ Teaching on which he might focus, but he decides what is important. As far as we know he never attempts to make sure that Judahites outside Judah are living by Moses’ Teaching. He has decided to focus on strengthening the Judahite community itself.[1304]  Judahites who live elsewhere will have to look after themselves, like the wives and offspring of the men who break up their marriages.

10.9 A Man Who Prays and Builds Walls

Nehemiah is not a priest or theologian, but he is a servant of God—at least, that is how he sees himself (Neh 1:6, 11). He too comes from a family that has not taken the opportunity to return to Judah before, and he illustrates the way Judahites could come to thrive in the Dispersion, fulfilling a position of some prestige in the Persian court as an imperial official involved in the king’s personal service. Perhaps that marks him as a member of the Judean royal family (cf. Dan 1:3–5), which would provide further reason for his opponents to accuse him of having aspirations to being king of Judah (Neh 6:6–7), and for Judean messianic hopes to focus on him whatever the truth about that.[1305]  Indeed, his capacity to avoid drawing the governor’s allowances in Jerusalem and personally to support his substantial entourage and make loans to the less well-off (Neh 5:10) implies he has done very well indeed in Susa. This would give him every reason not to think of returning to Jerusalem to the western backwoods of the empire, yet also put him in a unique position to do something about the situation there if he chooses. He comes to Jerusalem with a commission from the king to see to the city’s rebuilding, and with resources for rebuilding walls and gates (Neh 2:5, 8)—perhaps because the king intends Jerusalem to have a new status in the region.[1306]  The trouble is that there is no such thing as a free lunch; the community has to pay for imperial government (Neh 5:4). Presumably by not accepting the rewards of governorship (Neh 5:14–19), Nehemiah reduces the tax burden on the people. They do not have to pay local taxes as well as imperial taxes.

Nehemiah is a man of passion. First he is crying and mourning and fasting, and looking sad in the king’s presence (Neh 1:4; 2:1–2). Then he is scared stiff (Neh 2:2). Then he has the drive to get the city walls built (Neh 2–4). Then he is furiously angry (Neh 5:6). He enacts a curse on any who fail to keep the oath they agree to. Perhaps this links with his defensiveness when he describes his conduct as governor and contrasts himself with his predecessors, like any decent politician—but (he says) it derived from his reverence for God (Neh 5:15). It is in this description that he speaks of not drawing the governor’s allowances and personally supporting his entourage, and of declining the opportunity to acquire land. And the account closes with his appeal to God to note all he has done for the people and to reward him (Neh 5:19). Later he is furiously angry again (Neh 13:8). Then he is contending with the temple staff, with the city leadership and with people who have intermarried (Neh 13:11, 17, 25). Then he is threatening bodily harm to merchants who try to do business on the sabbath (Neh 13:21). Then he is throwing out the high priest’s grandson, Sanballat’s son-in-law (Neh 13:28).

In some respects Nehemiah looks like a prophet. His story begins, “the words of Nehemiah the son of Hecaliah” (Neh 1:1), just like the book of Jeremiah, and he goes on to tell of his “call,” as does Jeremiah. He prays for his people and identifies with them in their need, like Jeremiah, crying and mourning (Neh 1:4). He has to confront people and battle to get them to do the right thing, like Jeremiah. He has to battle with other prophets, like Jeremiah. In the context of his struggle and his isolation he appeals to Yhwh in a frankly selfish way and also appeals for Yhwh’s action against his enemies, like Jeremiah.

His Prayer for Jerusalem

His prayer response to news of the sorry state of Jerusalem (Neh 1:4–11) treads a delicate line. It is not a psalm of lament that challenges Yhwh to take action on the basis of the people’s innocence and of Yhwh’s commitment to faithfulness. But neither is it a psalm of confession that assumes that responsibility for the situation rests with the faithless community. It does open like a lament, recognizing Yhwh as, on the one hand, “the God of heaven, the great and awesome God,” and on the other, one who keeps covenant commitment with people who dedicate themselves to him and keep his commands.” Further, it subsequently appeals to Yhwh’s specific undertaking to Moses to restore the people after scattering them, if they turn back to Yhwh and keep Yhwh’s commands (see, e.g., Deut 30). In between these, unexpectedly it acknowledges the people’s long-standing failure to live in accordance with Yhwh’s expectations, with which Nehemiah identifies. That undermines the implicit logic of the appeal on either side. Nehemiah seems to paint himself into a corner in laying out the implicit tension between the basis for Yhwh’s faithfulness and the faithlessness of the community. It would be easy for Yhwh to offer a defense for not fulfilling undertakings such as those in Isaiah 40–55, as implicitly happens in, for example, Isaiah 56–66. But there are several other aspects of the confession’s significance.

First, it acknowledges sinfulness only in general terms, and thus anticipates confessions that appear in Christian liturgies. While its having no specific bite gives Yhwh no purchase on the community and requires no commitment to change on the community’s part, its implication is also that God’s people never have any claim on God. They always come to God as people who have failed God. They can still appeal to God’s nature and God’s promises. The confession thus corresponds to those in Nehemiah 9 and Daniel 9 and differs from the more concrete confession in Ezra 9 relating to a situation where there is specific wrongdoing that needs acknowledging. It also parallels the acknowledgment of sinfulness that accompanies Israel’s sacrifices even when these focus on self-giving, fellowship, prayer or thanksgiving (Lev 1–3).

Second, despite his personal and familial identification with the people’s guilt, in speaking of the community’s wrongdoing Nehemiah may be referring to acts of the distant past such as caused the exile. It is therefore possible to claim that this wrongdoing has been punished for long enough. Further, Nehemiah acknowledges that people need to turn to Yhwh and keep Yhwh’s commands if they want Yhwh to restore them (Neh 1:9). He can hardly be implying they have not fulfilled this requirement. Yet further, he explicitly describes the people as desiring to hold Yhwh’s name in awe (Neh 1:11). This would constitute an overt clash with an acknowledgment that they are living in disobedience in the present.

All this suggests that there are several forms of confession. There is confession for present sin—confession for personal sin, confession that identifies with one’s people and confession that implies we are now turning from that sin. There is confession for past sin that still has an effect in the present, which may also be one’s own past sin or may identify with one’s people’s past wrongdoing; that, too, implies that we have now turned from wrongdoing. And there is confession for one’s own and one’s people’s general sinfulness, which is not incompatible with a commitment to obedience and a desire to hold God’s name in awe.

What His Prayer Does

Nehemiah prays in a way that reflects Scripture yet also puts things in his own words. He prays to “the great and awesome God,” the one “who keeps covenant commitment with people who dedicate themselves to him and keep his commands” (Neh 1:5), Moses’ description of God (Deut 7:9, 21). In asking, “may your ear be attentive and your eyes be open to listen to the prayer of your servant that I am praying before you today, day and night” (Neh 1:6), he prays like Solomon (2 Chron 6:19–21, 36–40). In acknowledging that people have not kept the commands, statutes and decisions that Yhwh gave Moses, he again picks up Moses’ own language (e.g., Deut 5:31). His recollection of Yhwh’s warning about disobedience and scattering, and Yhwh’s promise about gathering outcasts from the uttermost parts of heaven if the people turn to Yhwh and obey his commands, explicitly takes up such warnings and promises through Moses (e.g., Deut 4:25–31; 30:1–4). The reminder that they are a people whom Yhwh redeemed by great power and a strong hand recalls descriptions of the exodus (Deut 9:26, 29). In this sense the prayer is a quasi-liturgical one that expresses present needs in the light of phrases from the tradition. On the other hand, it is adapted to the context. The phrase “the God of heaven” usually appears in communication between Judahites and foreigners, but here it underlines the more liturgical “great and awesome God.” Talk of assailing Yhwh (Neh 1:7) is distinctive to Nehemiah.[1307]  Describing the people’s wrongdoing as trespass (maʿal, Neh 1:8) is a feature this prayer shares with the prayer in Daniel 9 and the accounts of intermarriage in Ezra 9–10 and Nehemiah 13. The desire to revere Yhwh’s name (Neh 1:11) parallels Malachi’s talk of revering Yhwh and esteeming Yhwh’s name (Mal 3:16).

Several results follow from this way of praying. They affect God, Nehemiah and the readers of his prayer.

The prayer makes clear to Yhwh that Nehemiah, on his people’s behalf, recognizes who Yhwh is and in this recognition identifies with the faith expressed in Moses’ Teaching. It reminds Yhwh about characteristics that relate to the prayer: Yhwh has the power to act in response to it and the moral nature to do so. In its plea, the prayer focuses on getting Yhwh’s attention; only at the end does it make a specific request for success in the plan he is forming and for compassion from the king. The prayer owns the wrongdoing of the people of God and thus invites Yhwh to accept the penitence of a servant as availing for the people. It also challenges Yhwh not to be locked into a pattern of chastisement that treats the people as incurably resistant. It recalls Yhwh’s promises and leans on Yhwh to keep them. It then leans on Yhwh specifically to see a particular request in the light of these promises and to act accordingly. The general request is to be mindful of the commitment to restore the community. The specific one is to grant Nehemiah success in a conversation with the king, which implicitly could contribute to the fulfilling of that commitment.

A secondary function of prayer is to build up the conviction of the pray-er. The prayer reminds the person praying of Yhwh’s character. By articulating the conviction that Yhwh is powerful and faithful, Nehemiah’s own conviction about that is built up. By recalling the qualities of the people to whom God is faithful, his commitment to love and obedience is reinforced. By focusing on gaining Yhwh’s attention, the pray-er owns the natural human uncertainty about whether this awesome God can really be concerned with the down-to-earth details of our lives. By offering a confession on the people’s behalf, the pray-er is shut off from distancing or from an attitude of superiority in relation to his people as a whole. By recalling Yhwh’s promises, Nehemiah has his own hopes built up and is emboldened to take action in the conviction that Yhwh has heard his prayer.

Third, the report of the prayer (like that of Ezra’s) has an effect on the people who read it. From this prayer they are invited to learn how to pray, to identify with its statements about Yhwh’s power and faithfulness, which are a basis for confidence about their own future, and to reaffirm their commitment to love and obedience. They are invited to focus more on gaining God’s attention than on drawing up a detailed account of what they want God to do and to identify with the general wrongdoing of the people of God without being paralyzed by it. They are invited to claim the promises of God that they find in Scripture, to look at their own needs in the light of patterns of deliverance they find there and to bring concrete requests to Yhwh in the light of these.

His Prayer Against His Opponents

On other occasions, Nehemiah also prays more briefly in the midst of events—for instance, when Artaxerxes asks what he wants to request in the light of the state of things in Jerusalem and when he believes the other governors are plotting against him (Neh 2:4; 6:9). He asks God to keep in mind the acts of commitment (ḥăsîdîm, Neh 13:14, 31) that have characterized his life. He prays for trouble for his attackers: “Listen, our God, because we have become a mockery, and turn their reproach onto their heads. Give them over for plunder in a captive land and do not cover up their waywardness. Their sin must not be erased before you, because they uttered provocation in the presence of the builders” (Neh 4:4–5 [[1308]  3:36–37]; cf. Neh 6:14; 13:29). Comparing this prayer with a psalm of lament is again instructive. The opening plea (“Listen”) and the invocation (“our God”) are to be expected. The prayer for trouble for the attackers is also to be expected, but the length of it is noteworthy, particularly in such a short prayer. It dominates the prayer as a whole, as sometimes happens in a psalm of lament. Conversely, the actual lament, usually the main feature that gives such prayers their name, is confined to the words “we have become a mockery” and perhaps the closing words “they uttered provocation [against God?] in the presence of the builders.” Like his prayer in Susa, this prayer both indicates that Nehemiah follows regular patterns of speaking to God and also indicates that he prays in a way that adapts these to his context and needs.

The close of the prayer sets it in a context that may mitigate its offensiveness to modern readers. The opponents’ jibes (Neh 4:1–3 [MT 3:33–35]) are uttered at the men building the wall and are designed to make them abandon it, and the prayer is designed to stop their attacks. In its content it parallels many psalms, and the presence of these in the Psalter implies that Yhwh is happy for them to be prayed—perhaps Yhwh takes the view that it is better to pray against people than to take up arms against them. But we do not know what Yhwh actually thought of Nehemiah’s prayer. Apparently Yhwh does not do what the prayer asks for, since Sanballat and company are not taken off into exile, but they are not allowed to stop the building. Later Nehemiah also asks God to keep in mind the deeds of the various prophets who try to intimidate him and the high priestly family that has defiled the priesthood (Neh 6:14; 13:29).

He is a man who needs God to be mindful of him. He pleads for this four times (Neh 5:19; 13:14, 22, 31). It is a characteristic plea in First Testament prayer by people who feel under pressure (e.g., Ps 25:7; 106:4), not least in the context of the pressures of being Yhwh’s servant (Jer 15:15). Nehemiah is a man of drive, but a man always having to face people with challenges and always having to turn to God because of the demands of the task. Three of these pleas follow on the discovery that his reforms have not worked; he only has to turn his back and the old ways have reasserted themselves.[1309]  And like Ezra, Nehemiah experiences Yhwh’s hand on him in the sense that Yhwh provides lavishly for him (Neh 2:8, 18).

Prayer and Action

As Exodus holds together the liberation of the oppressed and a life of worship, so Nehemiah holds these together in his ministry. Further, Nehemiah both issues moral challenge like a prophet (Neh 5) and recognizes the need for hierarchical structures of governance such as are presupposed by the recurrent lists of people who had official positions as heads, governors, priests and Levites (Neh 3; 7; 10–12).[1310]  In building the wall, he is a man who combines the “spiritual” and the practical: he prays, and he sets guards and arms his builders (Neh 4:7–23 [MT 1–17]). He believes that the people must be prepared to fight, but also that Yhwh fights for the people (Neh 4:14, 20 [MT 8, 14]). These actions at the same time set Nehemiah and the people in the context of their ancestors’ relationship with God and their involvement in history. As his prayer in Susa takes up the Scriptures, and specifically Deuteronomy, so does his exhortation in Jerusalem. He invites the builders to see this as a moment like the one when Israel stood before the people in the land on the way into Canaan: “Do not be awed by them. Think of the Lord, the great and awesome one” (Neh 4:14 [MT 8]). “Awesome” is a form of the verb used at the beginning of the sentence (yārēʾ), usually translated “fear” when applied to human beings. The implication is that people who are overwhelmed by Yhwh’s might do not need to be overwhelmed by human might. Both the description of God and the exhortation come in Deuteronomy (e.g., Deut 7:18–21). “Fight for your brothers, your sons and daughters, your wives and homes” (Neh 4:14 [MT 8]). “Our God will fight for us,” he later adds (Neh 4:20 [MT 12]). The juxtapositions take up Deuteronomy further (see Deut 1:29–30; 3:22). Strangely, these preparations for battle turn out to be unnecessary. The Judahites do not fight. Their experience thus corresponds to that great earlier occasion when Moses told the people not to be afraid, at the Red Sea (Ex 14:13), and to the first great victory in Canaan, at Jericho, when Yhwh fought for them and therefore they did not have to fight. The people of God may always expect that Yhwh will fight for them, but they do not know whether their task is then to watch a victory or win a victory or watch threats melt away.

Sometime during the Second Temple period, the Judahite community generated a new version of its story from David onward, the work we call Chronicles. While it focuses on questions of worship and religion, by no means does it abandon the story of God’s involvement in political events. Indeed, in this story the people’s battles and victories are more spectacular.[1311]  What implications would this narrative have for its readers? In due course Judahites will envisage a last great battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, and the early Christians will adapt this vision, but the story does not read eschatologically. It might simply encourage people to remember how Yhwh worked with their ancestors in their glory days, without conveying any direct practical implications for their own day. It might encourage them not to feel fearful in the context of pressure from the Samarians, Arabs, Ashdodites, Ammonites and Moabites, the contemporary equivalents of Ephraim, Edom, Philistia, Ammon and Moab. It might encourage them to look at Persia, the contemporary “Assyria” (Ezra 6:22), in the light of stories about old Assyria as a resource or a threat. It might encourage them to look forward to a day when they will again have an army and be in a position to take military initiatives—as happens in the second century when they raise an army and fight against Antiochus; Christian armies later do the same. It might encourage them simply to be faithful to Yhwh and rigorous in eliminating expressions of unfaithfulness, taking battle as a metaphor for their religious life, as Christians also will.[1312] 4 Perhaps the authors of Chronicles, like Nehemiah, do not know how things will be for their community but do know that it needs to be built up by such stories so as not to be afraid but then to be open to whatever happens.

The story of Nehemiah is a story of “cultural revitalization”: Nehemiah faces facts and sees a vision, communicates the vision, formulates practical machinery for implementing it, handles resistance to his project, moves from bricks-and-mortar work to the building up of the community and encourages the development of a new “steady state” phase in the community’s life.[1313]

The rebuilding of the wall and the peopling of the “holy city” (Neh 11:1), brought to completion amid great hardships, ensured that this community, an insignificant component of a vast empire, would survive to face other challenges even after that empire had passed from the scene. It was to Nehemiah, with his remarkable combination of idealism and political realism, that early Judaism owed its ability to survive these challenges.[1314]

10.10 A Wise Politician

Once involuntary exile becomes voluntary dispersion, the Judahite community is committed to a schizophrenic self-understanding. For the people in Judah itself, the community there is the Judahite community, but the story in Ezra and Nehemiah also presupposes the existence of an ongoing living, faithful, caring and listening community in Babylon and Susa, from which forces for renewal come to Judah. We also know that there are ongoing Judahite communities in Egypt and in other parts of the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean world. The Dispersion community is committed to keeping Jerusalem in mind (Ps 137:5), but not to such an extent that it goes to live there again. There are certain things God achieves through having the Judahite people living around Jerusalem and certain things God achieves through having it scattered over the world.

Living in the wider world raises new questions about what it means to be Yhwh’s people. Whereas a community in Judah can be focused on the temple, to a greater extent than Israel as a whole could be before the exile, people in other countries must be less so. Further, the Judahite community in other countries is no longer a political entity but an ethnic and religious community. They cannot control their political destiny either as individuals or as a community, nor take for granted their ethnic distinctiveness, and they will also have to be more intentional about their religious distinctiveness, in both their understanding of God and their patterns of life. Like the community in Judah, they have to make a point of maintaining their distinctiveness if they do not wish to lose it.

Ezra and Nehemiah use their position in relation to the imperial power to build up Judah’s religious life and to strengthen its position in relation to its neighbors. But whatever the shortcomings of life back in Judah, they are nothing compared with the possible pressures of life in the imperial capital. The stories in Daniel describe the pressures on individuals, though they then suggest that it is possible to flourish in dispersion without compromise. Daniel and his friends have learned well the exhortation Jeremiah pressed on the first generation of exiles, to settle down firmly enough to build houses, plant orchards, marry and marry off their children, and seek God’s blessing for their city, because its blessing was their blessing (Jer 29, though Jeremiah was envisaging an exile that would last decades rather than centuries). Hero stories like those in Daniel and Esther form a characteristic resource for minorities under pressure.[1315]

Daniel starts like Ezra by picking up from the story in Kings and Chronicles that ends with the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple and the exile of the Judahite leadership to Babylon, but it then takes this story in a whole new direction. It raises three issues about the destiny of this leadership.

Confronted by Foreign Learning

The story portrays the young Judahite leadership quite able to take the risk of exposing themselves to foreign learning. They are people who are already “proficient in all insight, have acquired knowledge, and possess understanding” (Dan 1:4). This is not merely a comment on their native intelligence, but a testimony to their training in their own tradition’s insight, knowledge and understanding, built on the secure foundation of reverence for Yhwh (see Prov 1:1–7). Ironically, by specifying that Judahites receiving a Babylonian education must be people of insight, knowledge and understanding, the king has subverted the authority of his own tradition of learning. When the story later tells us that “God gave the four young men knowledge and proficiency in all forms of learning and insight” and that “Daniel had understanding in all kinds of vision and dreams” (Dan 1:17), it adds extra factors. God was involved not merely in giving these sources of insight to Israel long ago but in gifting these particular individuals. And this involved not only experiential insight of the kind that appears in the Wisdom books but also the revelatory insight needed to interpret visions and dreams. The four young men acquire these two forms of learning because God is involved in their lives, which results in their being miles better than all Nebuchadnezzar’s experts. The young men’s exposure to foreign insight results not in their abandonment of the insight of their tradition, nor even in the broadening of their insight, but in a demonstration that their tradition has nothing to fear and nothing to learn from foreign insight. (This claim somewhat deconstructs, of course, if foreign writings influence at least the form of Judahite wisdom and apocalypse.) There is insight about life, politics and history that Israel’s tradition alone conveys and that God alone endows.

God’s involvement is not even merely a matter of endowing them with insight. The superiority of their Judahite learning derives from the fact that God is personally involved with them now. With some poignancy, the Babylonian experts do not pretend to such an involvement on their gods’ part. If they were so involved, they could reveal the contents of a forgotten dream (and then the advisers could interpret it with the aid of their dream books), but everyone knows they are not (Dan 2:11). The king’s Babylonian advisers have only earthly techniques that are no heavenly use (in the absence of data) and heavenly beings that are no earthly use (because they do not get involved with affairs in this world).

Daniel assumes God is involved, instinctively undertaking to tell the king not only the meaning of his dream but its contents, then going home to tell his friends they had better pray for God to reveal this—which God does. God can do so because “to him belongs insight.… He knows what is in the darkness and light resides with him” (Dan 2:20, 22). That is a necessary condition for making a revelation to Daniel, though not a sufficient one. Beyond that, God shares this knowledge. “He gives insight to the insightful and knowledge to the people who have understanding. He reveals things that are deeply hidden” (Dan 2:21–22). As Daniel puts it to the king, “There is a God in heaven who reveals secrets” (Dan 2:28). That is not just a theoretical principle applying in places and times other than one’s own but one applying here and now: “You have given me insight.… You have now made known what I asked of you” (Dan 2:23).

There is further theological and practical significance in the giving of this revelation. The revelation concerns current and future political events, and God is in a position to grant it because God is in control of these events. God has supernatural knowledge because God has supernatural power. Once more, the title “God of heaven” is a significant one. While Daniel will use this title in addressing Nebuchadnezzar (e.g., Dan 2:37, 44), the story first has him using it in speaking with his fellow Judahites and with his God (Dan 2:18, 19). The fact that his God is God of heaven is of importance to them. It is not just a concession to a foreign addressee. The fact that Daniel’s own words (Dan 2:20–23) do not incorporate this phrase underlines the point, if anything, because they do underline its theological implications. Daniel’s praise actually begins, “to him belong insight and power. He changes times and eras. He removes kings and sets up kings” (Dan 2:20–21). Conversely, in making this revelation to Daniel, “you have given me insight and power.” In [1316] , God has insight and greatness but gives Daniel insight and understanding. In Theodotion, God has insight and discernment but gives Daniel insight and power. In [1317] , God has wisdom and might but gives Daniel wisdom and strength. But in MT the divine characteristics are the very ones God gives Daniel. Having access to God’s insight, which derives from God’s power, gives Daniel insight and therefore gives him power.

Similar dynamics appear in the stories of Nebuchadnezzar’s further dream, which requires little interpretation but some bravery to declare it, and of Belshazzar’s portent (Dan 4–5). Here the Babylonian experts are again helpless to pronounce on what the portent says, let alone what it means.

Faced with a Foreign Lifestyle

There are broader aspects to the pressure of this foreign environment. The men have imposed on them not only foreign learning but also foreign food and foreign names. It is not explicit why Daniel makes the particular stand he does over food, but a culture identifies itself in a foreign environment by its food, and Moses’ Teaching often emphasizes the importance of what people eat, so it is not surprising in principle that Daniel makes a stand over food. It may be more surprising that the book accepts the four men’s new names (see esp. Dan 3), not least because they probably all involve the substitution of names incorporating reference to Babylonian gods for names that include reference to the God of Israel. But in accepting these, the book also passes judgment on them by making fun of them, removing or changing the divine names in each name (for instance, “Abed-nego” would really have been called “Abed-nebo,” “Servant of Nebo”). The stories do not portray the forming of a wholly separate ghetto community, but neither do they portray assimilation to the wider culture. They envisage an involvement in the culture of a kind that keeps a separate identity. Judahites are citizens of two worlds, as Jews will continue to be over the centuries. What matters in this connection may be not where people make their stand but that they make their stand somewhere.

Daniel’s story gives them an example of someone daring to take a stand in a dangerous situation and heartens them by portraying how his God honors that commitment. It cannot claim that God always does that, and the second half of the book will acknowledge this with its awareness of people giving their life for their commitment, but it can encourage them by noting that God sometimes does that. As Daniel will later offer to tell the king his dream and only afterward get his friends to pray about the question, so he does not wait to consult God before he bids his overseer to test the four men by letting them live on an vegetarian diet to see if they stay healthy (Dan 1:12–13). He behaves as one who knows that people do not live on bread alone but on whether God says they will live or die (Deut 8:2–3). And the young men pass the test, and so does God, who apparently speaks the word, though we are not told so, and we see no miracle.

There is miracle enough in the stories that follow. The pressure of living in a different religious context becomes more serious in connection with the expectation that everyone who works in the government bow down to a statue Nebuchadnezzar erects. Elisha had allowed Naaman to bow to an image (2 Kings 5:18–19), but one can see reasons for the difference of stance. Naaman was a foreigner, and the expectation that he bow to the Assyrian god is not a challenge to Israel’s witness and identity. Nebuchadnezzar asks whether any god can rescue the young men from his power. His challenge recalls the one Sennacherib’s field commander issued to Hezekiah. It makes it even more impossible for these Judahites to yield to the pressure to bow to his image. “If our God, whom we honor, exists [of course the possibility that this God might not exist is only granted for the sake of argument], he is able to rescue us from the red-hot blazing furnace, and he will rescue us from your power, your majesty. Even if he should not, your majesty may be assured that we are not going to honor your gods or bow down to the gold statue that you have set up” (Dan 3:17–18).[1318]  Of course, God does, but equally “of course,” readers know that God does not usually do so. For them, it is at least as significant that the four men look in the eye that latter possibility and affirm their adherence to the basic Israelite commitment to acknowledge no god but God and to bow down to no images. To keep that is more important than life.

Whether this is a statue of a god or of the king, it will support and be supported by both religion and state, so that refusal to bow involves both impiety and disloyalty. The problem is brought to a head by a common Dispersion experience, the hostility of people in the majority community. That hostility is especially inclined to recur when members of the minority community do well for themselves. Daniel thus has the opportunity to model the same attitude as the other three when political rivals set him up by getting a king to put a thirty-day ban on people asking guidance or help from any quarter except the king (Dan 6). Daniel carries on publicly putting his requests to his God and looking to Jerusalem (despite Jer 29), and God delivers him from execution.

At the Mercy of Foreign Authorities

The four young men would have good reason to be apprehensive about involvement in Babylonian politics. They start with the handicap of belonging to a people who have been defeated and humiliated. They might expect to find themselves gainfully employed dredging the Babylonian canals, fulfilling the usual role of immigrants in doing the jobs not relished by the dominant group. Like such immigrants they might be glad of the opportunity to disappear from public view in this way and might therefore have mixed feelings about being hauled out of obscurity into training for political service. They would have a basis for even more equivocal feelings once they discovered something of the ethos of Babylonian political life.

What they discover is that God is involved in this realm. First, “God gave Daniel commitment and compassion before the chief official” (Dan 1:9), so that he wants to agree to excuse the four men from eating the regular royal supplies. But he is himself scared of the king’s wrath if the men look as if they have not been fed properly, which opens up the frightening side to court life (Dan 1:10). The king has absolute power in his realm and is inclined to use it in just the way the official fears. Men have lost their life for less. The official is not exaggerating, for the king is soon issuing an outrageous demand of his advisers. They must not only tell him what his dream means, but first tell him what it was, because he has forgotten it. If they fail, they will be torn limb from limb (Dan 2:5). Life at court is full of potential, but also full of danger, vulnerable to the whim of unreasonable, petulant, scared, powerful monarchs. Political life, and other forms of fame and power, can seem attractive to minority groups who are not part of the power structures, but they can also seem (and need to seem) alien and frightening in their capacity for contention, betrayal, scandal, humiliation and moral pressure.

But the God of heaven, the God of Daniel and his ancestors, a great God, the supreme God, the sovereign Lord (Dan 2:18, 19, 23, 28, 37, 44, 47) is involved in Babylonian politics, and that for the king’s sake. Revealing things to Daniel is the means of revealing them to Nebuchadnezzar (Dan 2:28–30). Nebuchadnezzar’s dream concerns the political present and future of the Babylonian empire. His dream is not merely an indication of subjective fear and insecurity within the king himself, but a sign of the fearful objective insecurity of his worldly empire, which seemed so secure to his Judahite subjects. The dream affirms that the present government of Babylon was put in place by that God, who thus gave Nebuchadnezzar his power and his honor and made him a ruler who realizes the authority over the world that was destined for humanity as a whole (Dan 2:37–38). The regimes after Nebuchadnezzar will not be God-appointed. No doubt Daniel would assume that in some sense God is sovereign in their history, too, and certainly God permits them to arise, but they apparently have a lesser place in God’s intentionality. God has nothing as spectacular to do through them as God had through Nebuchadnezzar. They will be theologically insignificant. They will also be more feeble; it is perhaps no coincidence.

The following regime will be more powerful again, yet with a hidden weakness. It will thus not be difficult for God to replace it by a regime that will lack the vulnerability of all those that have preceded it and that will stand permanently. Daniel’s own visions (Dan 7–12) may offer retrospective clarification on what these regimes are, but their identity is not the point when God gives Nebuchadnezzar his first revelation. The point of the story lies in Nebuchadnezzar’s astonished and astonishing response to Daniel’s revelation. The Babylonian king falls on his face and does homage to a Judahite captive, acknowledges his God as supreme God and sovereign Lord, and puts the four young men in a position of high authority in Babylon (Dan 2:46–49). Not only is it possible to survive in Babylon. It is possible to triumph. And paradoxically, by acknowledging Daniel’s God and putting the four men into a position of power, the implementing of divine rule that the vision associates only with the future becomes a present reality.

Imperial Recognition

Nebuchadnezzar’s response to the deliverance of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego goes a step further. Recognizing that there is no other who can deliver in this way, he blesses their God, forbids any blaspheming of this God and promotes the three men (Dan 3:28–30). His recognition subsequently goes beyond that. He has a dream that really needs little interpretation, but it would be hard to face its obvious implications (Dan 4). The government is like a tree under which the country shelters, but this tree is going to be wasted in order to drive him(!) to “acknowledge that the Most High rules over human kingship and that he can give it to anyone he wishes.” Daniel then for the first time speaks like a prophet in adding, “break with your sins by doing justice, break with your errors by showing favor to the needy, in case there might be a prolonging of your success” (Dan 4:25, 27 [MT 22, 24]). All Daniel is saying is “behave like a king,” because doing justice and favoring the needy are the key First Testament expectations of a government.

Nebuchadnezzar does none of that, but carries on justifiably rejoicing in his achievements in other areas such as his building projects, and he is afflicted with a form of madness. When his sanity returns he gives his testimony to the signs and wonders God has shown him (Nebuchadnezzar is giving his testimony!) and gives the acknowledgment of which God spoke: “His kingship lasts through the ages, his rule through all generations” (Dan 4:2–3 [MT 3:32–33]). The king of Babylon is obviously a particularly compelling person to tell readers who is the real king and to put their assumptions about political power into perspective. Of course the historical Nebuchadnezzar would never have said what the story Nebuchadnezzar said. The historical Nebuchadnezzar had no respect for the Judahites’ God. “In its confrontation with the historical Nebuchadnezzar, the Israelite community was impotent. But years later a member of this once impotent community played a joke on the infamous king of the exile by creating a new memory of Nebuchadnezzar” and thus showing how “the human imagination is able to overpower human history.”[1319]

One of Nebuchadnezzar’s eventual successors fails to learn from his “father’s” experience and pays the price (Dan 5). He provokes Daniel into speaking like a prophet again, this time condemning Belshazzar’s sacrilegious contempt and declaring that his downfall is coming. Like Nathan or Jonah, Daniel offers the king no explicit chance to repent of the kind he gave Nebuchadnezzar, but like the Ninevites responding to Jonah or David responding to Nathan, Belshazzar will be assumed to know that repentance always opens up the possibility of averting calamity. His failure to respond makes the portent come true. Or rather, his response once again recognizes that Daniel’s God is Lord, in his recognition of Daniel and in the coup that follows.

Darius the Mede comprises another study in leadership (Dan 6). He shows himself quite inept in his capacity to be manipulated by his staff, thus disproving the divinity they cynically attribute to him as they bring the law of the state and the law of God into unnecessary but deliberate conflict. Strangely, they want to stop politicians praying, showing that they care nothing for state, God or truth. Perhaps they implicitly recognize that prayer is the most revolutionary act. “Rebellion simply acknowledges the absoluteness and ultimacy of the emperor’s power, and attempts to seize it. Prayer denies that ultimacy altogether by acknowledging a higher power.”[1320]  The inept king will not change his own stupid law (too much flexibility with laws does risk the stability that law safeguards), but he does not want Daniel to die and hopes his God might be able to rescue him. And events demonstrate “the emperor’s powerlessness to impose his will even by death.”[1321]  Daniel has put loyalty to God above loyalty to the state, but thereby in his way has been loyal to the state by not letting it be more than it truly is. Darius ends up with the most extravagant recognition of Daniel’s God in the book: “He is the living God; he endures through the ages. His realm will suffer no injury; his rule will persist to the end” (Dan 6:26 [MT 27]).

10.11 An Intrepid Woman

In the English order, the First Testament narrative ends with another story set in the midst of the period covered by Ezra-Nehemiah. But whereas Ezra and Nehemiah “returned” to Judah, this story is located in the capital they left. Further, whereas Daniel keeps his eyes open to Jerusalem (Dan 6:10), Esther indicates no interest in the land.

The Stupid King and the Radical Feminist

The background is a magnificent, extravagant, six-month-long party for the princes, nobles, generals, governors and imperial staff in Susa, followed by a week-long party for ordinary people—or rather, one party for men and one for women. At the end of the men’s party, Ahasuerus (Xerxes) wants to parade his queen, Vashti, in front of the drunken gathering, but she refuses to come. Perhaps she has put up with enough and finally breaks. There is no right or wrong about this, or wisdom or stupidity. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do. But her refusal to accept her husband’s headship portends a feminist revolt affecting all the marriages in Persia (Esther 1:1–18). It is necessary that male authority be protected.

Ahasuerus agrees to make a law that every man should exercise authority in his own house—the only declaration of male headship in the First Testament except the one that follows on the disobedience in the garden. Further, Vashti is deposed from her position as senior wife and queen. We may guess that this is fine with Vashti, who in her retirement becomes patron of the radical feminist movement in Susa. By her action she opens up the possibility that a more liberal feminist, one prepared to compromise, can use her position at court to rescue her community as a whole from extermination by the Persians. Esther does start off as an apparent bimbo who says only what Mordecai or Hegai tell her to say and wins the stupid king’s adoration by means of her looks (Esther 2:8–20), but learning of Mordecai’s distraught state turns her into a woman who takes an initiative, opens her mouth and starts giving orders (Esther 4:4–5). Soon Mordecai is going off to act “just as Esther commanded him” (Esther 4:17), and she takes the leading role until the closing scene (Esther 10:1–3). The book does thus end with Mordecai, though his “ultimate victory in the sexual politics of the Book of Esther” comes in the longer Greek version of the book, which opens and closes the whole story with narratives about Mordecai.[1322]  While the Hebrew version is more briefly framed by powerful men, it is dominated by audacious women.

Vashti’s deposition is less than fine with Ahasuerus once he comes down from the ceiling, because he realizes he needs a queen (Esther 2:1–2). Like the kings in Daniel, Ahasuerus shows how foreign kings tend to be stupid and easily manipulated by their staff. Maybe they are no more stupid than anyone else, but authority makes stupidity more public and more dangerous. The story suggests an understanding of the people who direct the affairs of nations—monarchs, advisers, governors, senates, councils. To judge from the opening, for instance, they are people who combine power, self-indulgence, insecurity, stupidity, excess, tetchiness and a tendency to overreact. The way ordinary people relate to the royal court has to take account of that. The Esther story starts from the realities of power in the world, not from how things should be but from how they are. In politics, who you know is as important as what you know, and a sexy woman can achieve things that a man cannot. For the king’s staff propose a round-up of all the beautiful girls in the empire, and among them is a Judahite whose looks push her to the front of the line. Two more extravagant, six-month-long events follow, two courses of beauty treatment. Then Esther has her one night with Ahasuerus, who falls for her and makes her queen in Vashti’s place. From now on she may have his ear. As a woman she may be in the same position of power as a man, or even a position of greater power. A man’s job may then be to encourage her to take action, to use her power. But the kind of power she exercises may be different from the kind that men more characteristically exercise. Women have to work within a system that puts them in a subordinate position. And that makes Esther a useful model for Judahites in Dispersion, because they have to do that.[1323]

The Woman Who Takes a Risk

Being a Judahite orphan doubles the vulnerability of Esther’s position, but Esther and Mordecai have foreign names, and names linked with foreign deities, like people such as the men in Daniel, which helps to conceal their Judahite identity. The story assumes there is no need to flaunt this identity—indeed, it emphasizes the disadvantage of flaunting it and the advantage of hiding it. But it also assumes that Judahite identity matters and that there is a line to be drawn. By having Esther join Ahasuerus’s harem, it ignores a line drawn by Ezra and Nehemiah. By having her join in royal feasts, it ignores a line drawn by Daniel. Like Daniel, it makes no reference to the sabbath, a key marker in Judah (see, e.g., Neh 13:15–22) which one would have expected to be a key marker in Babylon or Susa, as it has been in subsequent Dispersion communities.

In having Mordecai and Esther use foreign names, it agrees with Daniel. By having Mordecai refuse to obey the king’s requirement to bow down to his senior minister, Haman, it draws a line at the same place as Daniel, and this is what provokes the crisis and imperils the existence of the entire Judahite community (Esther 3:1–6). Haman proposes to the king the execution of all the Judahites in the empire, on the basis of the difference in their laws and specifically their ignoring of imperial edicts such as the one that concerns Haman. While the king is gullible and stupid (what would you expect of a king?) and Haman is heinous (what would you expect of an Agagite?), ordinary people in Susa are bemused (Esther 3:15). The Judahites cannot allow themselves the luxury of confining themselves to perplexity. The story accepts the domination of a foreign authority and the framework of patriarchy,[1324]  but points to the way Judahites may survive and even thrive in the context of Dispersion life and in the context of the threats that may bring.

On one hand, they give themselves to mourning, crying, weeping and fasting, like Nehemiah and Daniel and like their forebears in Egypt. Indeed, the king signs Haman’s edict on the thirteenth day of the first month (Esther 3:12), the day before Passover, the occasion when the reality of death and the people’s cry of pain once made its move from the Israelites to the Egyptians (Ex 12:18, 30). Surely Haman’s edict cannot be implemented? It would deny the deliverance from Egypt. Mordecai’s own confidence compares and contrasts with that of the three Judahites in Daniel 3. They were committed to standing firm whether or not God rescued them. Mordecai is convinced that “relief and rescue will arise for Judah” (Esther 4:14)—the only question is how. When Mordecai’s faith proves justified, the Judahites replace mourning with festivity in which the rest of the community joins, the precedent for an annual celebration of this rescue from their enemies at Purim.

On the other hand, Esther gives herself to brave action, taking responsibility for her people’s destiny like Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah, taking the risk of using her position at court, and trusting she will get a positive response when she does so. Mordecai strengthens Esther’s arm to take this action by pointing out that her position at the palace will not exempt her from the coming bloodbath. If she does nothing, deliverance will come “from another quarter,” but she will not share in it: “And who knows whether it was for a time like this that you came to the throne?” She commits herself to joining with the community in fasting, and she will go to see the king: “And if I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:14, 16). Esther emphasizes our human responsibility for history. Here, people make history. Esther plays Moses’ role in pushing the king to take action. With more directness than one might have thought necessary, Esther arranges for Haman to be present when she confronts the king with the stupidity of his plan, and Haman finds himself hanged on gallows on which he had hoped to hang Mordecai. Taking advantage of his monarch’s stupidity, Haman has played the role of the conniving schemer whose cleverness is eventually his downfall.[1325]

A New Act of Deliverance

In a number of respects Esther’s story reminds us of other First Testament stories of God’s deeds, especially the story of Joseph and the exodus.[1326]  It combines motifs from these in a new kind of story. The Judahites are rescued as happened at the exodus, but this comes about by the dynamics that characterize the Joseph story, where God works behind the scenes via chance coincidences and human actions, though once more the deliverance could never have been achieved except by the bold commitment of some women.[1327]  Esther is just a girl, just an orphan. Mordecai is a descendant of Kish, not of Jesse (Esther 2:5; contrast the four men in Daniel). In Esther “the survival of the Jews, even their successful accommodation to diaspora life, results from their own actions. The responsibility for saving the Jewish people rests with the queen who must decide whether to risk her own life. The Book of Esther suggests that each individual Jew who is in a position to do so must use his/her power and authority to assist the people of Israel,” as the book closes by noting Mordecai also does in his Joseph-like position (Esther 10:3).[1328]

Yet there is a difference from both the Joseph and the exodus story. Esther makes no mention of God or of faith. Esther finds favor and commitment from people (Esther 2:9, 15, 17; 5:2), but God is not mentioned as the cause, as happens in the Joseph story and in Daniel (Gen 39:1–4; Dan 1:9). Haman notes that the Judahites live by a distinctive set of laws (dat, Esther 3:8), but these are not referred to as, for example, “the laws of their God” (cf. Ezra 7:25), still less as “Moses’ Teaching” or “Yhwh’s Teaching.” God commissioned Moses, but Mordecai commissions Esther. Elsewhere prayer accompanies fasting, but prayer is unmentioned here. Esther, like Daniel, is to do some seeking of favor (hitḥannēn, Esther 4:8; cf. Dan 6:11 [MT 12]) and asking for help (biqqēš, Esther 4:8; cf. bĕʿah/bĕʿaʾ in Dan 6:7–13 [MT 8–14]), but Esther intercedes with the king, not with God. Her action thus contrasts with the stress in Chronicles on asking for help from God and not from anywhere else.

Mordecai knows that “relief and rescue will arise for Judah” from some quarter, whether or not God intends to use Esther in this connection, and Esther rises to the occasion, but Mordecai omits to mention God. He even omits to speak of deliverance or redemption and refers only to relief and rescue (Esther 4:14). Nor does the narrator, in reporting the people’s escape, mention God’s involvement (contrast Gen 39:21–23; Dan 6). Haman’s wife knows that if Mordecai belongs to the Judahite people, her husband will certainly fall to him, but she omits to mention the theological grounds for this fact that were recognized by people such as Rahab (Esther 6:13). Ahasuerus behaves as foolishly as the Egyptian king once did, but in this story there are no signs and wonders such as natural disasters or the parting of the sea. He takes action like Cyrus, bringing about the new exodus, but does so without God “stirring” him. The reversal of his edict leads many to declare themselves Judahites out of awe for the Judahites, rather than awe for Yhwh (Esther 8:17–9:3).[1329]  As the fasting early in the book omits reference to any prayer accompanying it, so the feasting later in the book omits reference to praise and thanksgiving accompanying it. The omissions are so pointed they cannot be missed, though there can be argument about their significance.

God Behind the Scenes

The Esther story in the First Testament thus contrasts with the longer version in the Greek Bible. Like the Joseph story, there the text begins with a dream revealing to Mordecai “what God has planned to do.” The people’s cry “to God” plays a key role (Esther 1:1h, 1). It closes with further reference to this dream and to God’s involvement in events (Esther 10:3a–i; cf. Esther 5:1e). It incorporates Mordecai’s and Esther’s prayers, which refer to Esther’s dislike for her Gentile marriage and to her avoidance of dietary impropriety (Esther 4:17a–z; also Esther 5:1a). Like the Joseph story, it is also much more positive in its portrayal of the king. Hebrew Esther contrasts further with the story of Judith in the Greek Bible, with its explicit concern for the temple, its description of fervent prayers and of God’s listening and responding, its account of the relationship between God and Israel over its history, its reference to Judith’s observance of sabbath and festivals, her challenge to a more radical trust in God and her prayer, her concern to keep the dietary rules, and her praise of God after she kills Holofernes and after the Assyrian army’s flight.

In Hebrew Esther, the pointed nature of the series of passages where God and faith lie between the lines means that “God, as a character of the story, becomes more conspicuous the more he is absent.”[1330]  The references to religious observances mean that the effect is not to secularize Judahite life, but to refer to that life in a way that leaves God and faith under the surface of the story. Fasting and festivity certainly imply prayer and praise, but the latter are unmentioned. The First Testament pattern whereby God acts to reverse fortunes is visible here, but the deus ex machina pattern appears without the deus. God’s intervention is implied but veiled.[1331]  The narrative pushes readers to see God behind Esther’s story, and behind their own, but they choose whether to do so.

Esther thus gives expression to the way God often works in history. It allows for the role chance plays in history. Vashti happens to turn Ahasuerus down, Esther happens to win Hegai’s favor, the king happens to fancy Esther, Mordecai happens to discover a plot against the king’s life and so on. “Coincidence takes the place of miracle as a signal of divine activity.”[1332]  Irony plays a related role in the story. Ahasuerus deposes one assertive queen to replace her with another whose assertiveness has much more effect on imperial policy. Haman has to honor Mordecai in the way he would like to be honored, welcomes the invitation to a dinner at which he is to be robbed of the chance to execute his plan, throws himself on Esther’s mercy and is thought to be trying to rape her, and finally hangs on the gallows he built for Mordecai. Mordecai takes over Haman’s house and his position, and the king permits the Judahites to slaughter their enemies rather than being slaughtered. The casting of lots (purîm) that Haman intended should bring the Judahites’ annihilation becomes the commemoration of their deliverance.

The Wisdom books also emphasize both the role of God in the working out of events in human experience and the correlative importance of trust in God (e.g., Prov 3:5–6; 16:3, 9). The presentation in Esther is more radical in omitting both of these. It does not thereby imply that God is remote and uninvolved, but like Ecclesiastes, it speaks of what can be seen “under the sun.” Esther and Mordecai experience political events in the same way as most Jews and Christians do. Their story provides at least as significant a model or warrant or pattern for liberation theology as Exodus does.[1333]  Their story would not work without the exercise of faith expressed in fasting, crying and hoping; it would not work without the exercise of human responsibility; and it would not work without the coincidences. People involved in political affairs need to fast and cry, and to undertake the right action, and to recognize that the effectiveness of their action depends on an interaction with events and circumstances that could not have been foreseen or arranged. Mordecai’s combination of bold acts with a cautionary “who knows?” (Esther 4:14) provides them with their model. In the absence of supernatural revelation of the kind God gave Moses, Mordecai and Esther are more illuminating models for the believing politician than Moses and Aaron.[1334]

The Archetypal Account of Anti-Semitism

Richard E. Friedman has suggested that the First Testament story relates the gradual withdrawing of God’s face. At the beginning of this story God was known in miraculous deeds; by the end, human beings are on their own.[1335]  The same suggestion has been made on a narrower front about the story of Israel’s ancestors in Genesis 12–50,[1336]  but there turning over the page into Exodus introduces us to God’s renewed speaking and activity. In an analogous way, the stories of Esther and Daniel represent both poles in the First Testament’s gospel in connection with the pressures that come on the Jewish people. There are times or contexts when God multiplies signs and wonders,[1337]  and times when God acts via coincidences and human decision-making processes.

In due course the king promotes Mordecai and gives the Judahites full power to defend themselves with all necessary violence against people who attack them in accord with his previous edict. The account of the subsequent slaughter offends modern readers. One of our problems is that we lack a sense of humor. The story assumes that people who want to survive had better learn to laugh at other people and at themselves.[1338]  Its larger-than-life tale has invited us to laugh from the beginning, with its outrageously extravagant and stupid king, his six-month-long party, its year-long beauty treatments, the men’s desperate concern for their headship, Haman’s seventy-five-feet-tall gallows and so on and so on. The Judahites have no power to attack other people and the only people who are in danger from the king’s edict are those who actually attack the Judahites: so more than seventy-five thousand do so. That comes about because Ahasuerus is so struck by the fact that more than five hundred people have been killed in Susa that he actually offers Esther the chance to ask for another day of killing (Esther 9:12). So the story invites the audience to cheer as they do in a pantomime, when the Judahites’ attackers get their comeuppance on a vaster scale as seventy-five thousand die (but the Judahites seize no plunder!). Of course, humor has dark sides. People may not see the joke, and they may not see when it rebounds on them. Perhaps the story invites laughing Judahites to see themselves as just as bad as their persecutors if they behave in the same way as them when they have the opportunity.[1339]

Esther offers the archetypal account of an experience that has often characterized Jewish history, especially in modern times. It is the biblical treatment of anti-Semitism. “The central issue of the book” is “the survival of the Jewish people in the face of the threat posed by anti-Semitism,” and the book assumes that anti-Semitism makes it necessary to put in place political measures to ensure this survival.[1340]  Events here turn out differently from the way they will when Hitler undertakes the last great attempt to find a “final solution” to the “Jewish problem.” “Haman’s spiritual descendants proved more successful in attaining their goal of genocide. Their success was due, in part, to the silent acquiescence and passivity of those who were not themselves active in the Nazi movement.… One message of the Book of Esther, with its emphasis upon Jewish solidarity and human responsibility and action, remained unheard by Mordecai’s and Esther’s descendants.”[1341]  Yet one must be wary of implicitly blaming the victims of the Holocaust. God did play mind games with Pharaoh, and Ahasuerus was a man who could be prevailed on to be flexible. God neither softened Hitler’s mind nor defeated him, at least not for a long, long time.

The Distinctive Theological Significance of the Jewish People

That omission on God’s part is a puzzle because of the distinctive theological significance of the Jewish people, to which Esther draws attention. The presence of the book in Scripture witnesses to the fact that “the Jewish question” or the question of anti-Semitism has to have a place in Christian thinking. Haman’s attempt to annihilate the Judahites is part of the story that leads to Jesus. There is this people mingled among others yet standing apart from them, and the world does not like that, but as a result of prayer and faith, human bravery, circumstantial coincidence and the hand of God, this people remains in being, because “God has connected Himself indissolubly with Israel’s history.”[1342]  If Christians need that confirmed by the New Testament, Romans 9–11 provides that confirmation and shows how the survival of the Jewish people is vital to the hope of Christians. The deliverance of the Jewish people in the story of Esther is part of the Christian gospel story.

Like the story of an escape from Egypt, the story of this escape in Persia is to be celebrated forever. The book begins with Persian festivity and Judahite fasting, but it ends with Judahite festivity. It begins in the context of Passover, but ends by providing Dispersion Judahites with their own equivalent to Passover. If Ezra 1–6 tells of a second exodus, Esther tells of a deliverance that leaves the Judahites to enjoy a secure and successful life in their foreign land. For the Israelite/Judahite/Jewish community in the land of Israel, the First Testament story ends rather ambiguously. Ezra-Nehemiah rejoices in the reform and revitalization of that community, but the close of the books leaves us uncertain how successful it has been. They thus close with a challenge regarding the readers’ identification with Ezra and Nehemiah’s reforms. The quasi-prophecies in Daniel’s visions give a gloomy account of the community’s political and religious destiny into the Greek period and close with an implicit challenge to faithfulness as well as an explicit promise of a deliverance that will come, but it has not done so yet. (That era will see magnificent acts of human courage and divine deliverance that lead into a period in which the people of Yhwh flourish numerically and spiritually over the promised land as they have not since First Temple times, though then into the discouragement of losing their freedom to a new fourth empire, Rome. But it will be a further indication that God is still at work among the Jewish people.)

For the Dispersion community, the close of the First Testament story is more positive. God’s deliverance is present reality and not merely future promise. The pressures on the community are real, but God is involved in its life, enabling it not merely to survive but to flourish. At the end of the stories in Daniel, King Darius decrees that “in all my royal dominion people are to tremble with awe before the God of Daniel, because he is the living God, the one who endures forever” (Dan 6:26 [MT 27]). And at the end of Esther, “Mordecai the Judahite was second to King Ahasuerus, great in the eyes of the Judahites and popular with his vast number of kinfolk, seeking the good of his people and speaking for the well-being of all his family” (Esther 10:3). In this respect the First Testament story comes to an encouraging close and can invite its readers to live within it. It has seen the future, seen the leaders acknowledging the God of Israel and seen the Judahite community enjoying God’s rest.

11

God Sent

The Coming of Jesus

The New Testament story focuses on Jesus of Nazareth, the herald of God’s reign, the prophet and teacher, the king repudiated by his subjects, the Word of God embodied, the light of the world.[1343]  It begins by advertising its continuity with the First Testament story. Priests and prophets minister in the temple. Women who could not have children bear children. Parents have their firstborn circumcised, name him and make the offering for him that Moses’ Teaching requires. Men and women break out in praise like that of the Psalms and in the manner of people such as Miriam, Moses, Deborah, Hannah and David. The shortest and perhaps oldest Gospel announces itself as “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mk 1:1) and thereby suggests its own continuity with the original “beginning” (Gen 1:1) and the original proclamation of “good news” (Is 52:7–10).

The story picks up from the several ambiguities of the experience of the Jewish people (as we will now call them) in the Second Temple period. God had restored them after the exile, yet they still live in servitude and longing. Jerusalem continues to be their focus, but they are also spread around the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean worlds and are content to live their life thus. They have spread belief in their one God in these worlds, but have also come to share with them an awareness that a variety of negative powers can trouble individuals. The Jewish people’s corporate significance continues to be of the essence of its faith, but increasing importance also now attaches to individual commitment to that God. They continue to affirm God’s involvement in their this-worldly life, but many of them now believe in a more positive form of afterlife than the First Testament describes. They are now a people of the book—or a people of the scrolls—and Jews who come to believe in Jesus understand him with the essential aid of these scrolls.[1344]  As Judah’s exile and its ending by Cyrus filled (mālēʾ) or completed (kālâ) words of Yhwh spoken through Jeremiah (2 Chron 36:21, 22), Jesus’ story fills or fills out or gives new significance to (plēroō) a range of Scriptures. But the community reads these scrolls via the tradition that has carried on growing as the scrolls have been developing into the form that we know, and it also generates visionaries and dreamers whose imagination and intuition continue to see what God is saying to it now.

11.1 Jesus: Herald of God’s Reign

Jesus’ task is to bring Israel the good news that God’s reign has again drawn near (Mk 1:14–15). That presupposes God is not reigning in Judah in Jesus’ day, as God was not reigning in the 540s B.C. (and is not reigning in, say, Los Angeles, London or Jerusalem today). In fulfillment of Second Isaiah’s proclamation, God’s reign had arrived as God terminated Babylonian rule over Judah through the Persians and made it possible for Judeans in exile to go home. But this involved only a limited assertion of sovereignty, and Judah continued to be a mere remnant, a shadow of its former self. Its situation deteriorated until the temple’s desecration in the 160s by the Greek-Syrian emperor Antiochus IV, the last event to which the First Testament explicitly refers, but the visions in Daniel 7–12 promised an end to this desecration and to Antiochus’s rule. This came about. Once again, God’s reign thus drew near, the Jewish people gained their independence, and they soon had their own kings on the throne. But less than a century later they were back under imperial control, this time Rome’s. When Jesus was born, a Jewish king ruled Judea, but it was Rome that had given him the title, and anyway Rome soon replaced this line of kings by governors such as Pontius Pilatus. Overlords change (Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome) but Israel remains a subservient community. God is not reigning but letting Satan reign over the world (cf. Mt 4:8–9; Jn 12:31), even if subject to constraints.

God Is Doing the Right Thing by Israel

John the baptizer and Jesus declare that God is terminating that arrangement and again asserting sovereignty.[1345]  God’s righteous purpose will thus be fulfilled. The calling of John and Jesus is to “fulfill all righteousness” (Mt 3:15). “Righteousness” (dikaiosynē) in the Gospels, as in Romans 1–3, usually takes its meaning from Isaiah 40–55 (ṣĕdāqâ) and refers to God’s doing the right thing by Israel, rather than to Israel’s doing the right thing by God. It denotes God’s bringing about Israel’s restoration and renewal. The good news is that Israel’s political life and its relationship with God is being restored. Like Israel at the exodus, it is being freed to serve God in holiness and righteousness (Lk 1:74–75).

In preparation for that, John’s vocation is “to turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God” (Lk 1:16). Jesus similarly offers encouragement to people who hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness, for God to do right by Israel—that is, people who seek God’s rule and God’s righteousness—even though they may get persecuted for that (Mt 5:6, 10; 6:33). The idea of God reigning is good news for ordinary people who have no place in the political power structures, people who hunger for the moment when God delivers Israel, people who weep for the oppressed state of the people. Their hunger will be satisfied, their weeping changed to joy. But it is bad news for the entities that rule at present, for people who are doing well and have no reason to grieve over the state of the nation, because the reversal brought by God’s sovereignty will terminate their time of enjoyment (Lk 6:20–26; cf. John’s message in Mt 3:7–12).

Unlike a Deuteronomist, Jesus does not seek to bring about change in Israel by formulating new social policy, and unlike a prophet, he does not seek to bring about change by confronting the leadership in the capital. John has set him his example in being very rude to the leadership when they show an interest in his ministry (Mt 3:7–12). Although Jerusalem is his destiny, Jesus focuses on Galilee, where he concentrates on teaching ordinary people, setting himself against the interpretation of the scholars on matters such as sabbath observance, and encouraging people to refocus their lives on God and on one another’s needs. He heals the sick, resuscitates people who have died before their time, releases people from negative supernatural powers, purifies people stained by ailments that cut them off from the community, associates with wrongdoers and declares people forgiven. Little of this obviously links with the scriptural idea of God reigning, though some of it corresponds to the Scriptures’ vision of a renewed community (e.g., Is 35:3–10; 65:19–20). Jesus’ deeds might therefore be an indication that the moment of fulfillment is here and thus be evidence that God is indeed acting sovereignly in Israel.

God’s Sovereign Reign Is Coming

John and Jesus use the vivid past tense (“God’s reign has come”) used by prophets such as Amos and Second Isaiah in speaking of a future event as if it were already here (Is 52:7; Amos 8:2). As the “curious” Johannine expression puts it,[1346]  “the hour is coming and is now here” (e.g., Jn 4:23). We use an analogous form of speech when we say “I’m coming” as we are putting on our shoes but have not actually left. Thus Mary speaks in the present tense of God “scattering the proud … bringing down the powerful from their thrones … coming to the help of his servant Israel” (Luke 1:51–55), acting in relation to Rome as once in relation to Babylon.

God’s reign is here. When Jesus demonstrates authority over Satan, “God’s sovereignty has overtaken you” (Mt 12:28). There are realities that belong to a later time, to an age to come, that are proleptically present in Jesus’ person and ministry. Yet Jesus warns his disciples that God’s reign is not going to appear immediately—for instance, when they reach Jerusalem (Lk 19:11). They cannot know when sovereignty is to be restored to Israel (Acts 1:7). In what sense, then, is God’s reign among or within them (Lk 17:21) or can people enter God’s reign (e.g., Mt 23:13)? It is an important question, because the alternative to entering God’s reign is being thrown into Gehenna (Mk 9:47). In John, Jesus declares that, through the activity of God’s Spirit, people can get such a new start to their lives now that it is like being born again. They can thus have an anticipatory experience or sight of God’s reign in their own life that will naturally lead into experiencing and entering God’s reign when it comes (Jn 3:3, 5). The one event we cannot influence is our birth, so it takes God to bring about this turnaround, rather than leaving us with our blindness (Mk 4:11–12).

“There are some of the people standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his sovereignty/see God’s sovereignty coming in power/see God’s sovereignty” (Mt 16:28/Mk 9:1/Lk 9:27). We do not know what kind of event Jesus was referring to, and perhaps neither did he (cf. Mk 13:32), for he was simply repeating scriptural promises and linking them to his own person. In the First Testament such declarations often receive a partial short-term fulfillment, which has an ongoing long-term effect, yet leaves complete fulfillment for the future. Perhaps that is also so with Jesus’ words.

Thus (1) some of these disciples shortly see him in a glorified form, his face shining like the sun, his clothes dazzling white. They later see him crucified, see him raised from death and see the Holy Spirit poured out on them and on other people as a result of that. They see the news about him starting to be fruitful in Palestine and around the Mediterranean, and they see calamity come on Jerusalem. In all these events, Jesus comes in his sovereignty, or God’s sovereignty comes. And (2) all these events have ongoing significance, permanently changing the situation of the Jewish people and the world as a whole. One evidence is the very fact that two millennia later and eight thousand miles away a Gentile is writing this book about the Jewish people in the conviction that this story is the most important story in the world, and in the awareness that the Gentile world continues to be vitally interested in this story.

But (3) God’s assertion of sovereignty in Jesus turns out to be limited and/or short-term and/or to take very paradoxical form. After Jesus the world continues its merry way living by the fool’s conviction that for practical purposes there is no God, and God does not stop its doing so. Although God acts sovereignly in, for example, not accepting the human decision that Jesus should be cast permanently into the realm of death, in general God does not act sovereignly in the world any more than was the case before Jesus’ day. God continues to behave more like a leader seeking to persuade people to follow than like a sovereign compelling people to bow down to authority. Sovereignty continues to be something that is coming rather than present. The difference Jesus makes is that he provides even more incontrovertible evidence that God is in a position to assert sovereignty when wishing to do so. God intends to rule sovereignly one day, and Jesus provides evidence that this day will come.

From time to time, then, God insists on reigning in Israel’s life, as happened in an event such as the fall of Samaria in Amos’s day, the release of the exiles in Second Isaiah’s and the fall of Antiochus in the 160s. Each of these might look as if it is designed to be the final such assertion but it turns out to be interim, and soon things are carrying on as they did before (cf. 2 Peter 3). They are nevertheless signs that God will reign. The assertion of God’s sovereignty in Jesus’ story, with its paradoxical form (incarnation, ministry, death, resurrection, giving of the Spirit) is the most powerful so far, though it also turns out to be interim—temporary and incomplete. It leaves the actual implementing of God’s sovereignty still future and leaves the world substantially as it was before. Yet the interim is a clue to the ultimate. God does intend to assert authority in a final and complete way. And that certainty opens up the possibility that the Jewish people (and others who join that community) can live a new life now, the kind of life Jesus portrays, a life lived in the light of that certainty.

The God Who Is Coming to Reign

Who is the God who comes to reign? In the Gospels, God is not a person with a name, as is the case in the First Testament, but God has the same key characteristics.

The replacement of the name Yhwh by the expression “the Lord” surrenders the personal aspect to God suggested by God’s having a name, and instead emphasizes God’s exaltedness. At Jesus’ baptism, it is “a voice from heaven” that speaks; in Matthew the periphrasis “heaven” often replaces reference to God, and in Luke, God is often “the Most High” (e.g., Lk 1:32, 35, 76). The stress on God’s exaltedness accompanies a stress on the activity of heavenly aides, which could seem to distance God from personal involvement in the world, though it is unlikely that it was felt to imply that. It suggests a real involvement of God, but it does that in way that avoids the conceptual difficulties involved in talking simply of God in person appearing in the world. It thus recalls First Testament talk in terms of Yhwh’s name, face and splendor, as well as of Yhwh’s aides.

The stress on God’s lordship and exaltation is reinforced by the way the Gospels speak of God as Father. The idea is a commonplace of spirituality in Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East, as it is in popular spirituality generally (cf. names such as Abijah, Abiathar, Abigail, etc.). It can be a cheap form of spirituality (e.g., Jer 3:4; Mal 1:6), and First Testament faith generally avoids referring to God as father.[1347]  Mark follows the First Testament. Only four times is God “Father,” with solemn connotations (Mk 8:38; 11:25; 13:32; 14:36), and God’s last appearance in Mark is a disappearance, a failure to respond to Jesus’ cry to “my God” during his execution (Mk 15:34). The other Gospels make the same point by emphasizing that God is a heavenly Father, an authority figure like the father to whom a family owes obedience (e.g., Mt 7:21).

Thus “Father” is not “Daddy.” Yet a mature father is one who can be trusted to provide for his children and to notice when they are in trouble (Mt 6:25–32; 7:7–11; 10:29), and “Father” is the one to whom disciples may pray (Lk 11:2). Their prayer then depends throughout on the two sides to fatherhood. Given that God has the authority of a father, the opening jussive petitions of their prayer concern God’s name and God’s reign (and God’s honor, in Matthew’s version). Given that God has the love of a father, subsequent imperative petitions concern the disciples’ needs: something to eat each day (they have abandoned their sources of provision in following Jesus), forgiveness (communities like theirs especially need that) and protection (they will share in Jesus’ testing).

In the First Testament the father-son relationship of Yhwh and Israel is theologically prior to that between Yhwh and David. Israel was the firstborn son upon whom Yhwh had a special claim and to whom Yhwh made a special commitment (Ex 4:22–23; Hos 11:1). In the New Testament, Jesus’ relationship with the Father is theologically prior to that of his disciples; they are sons because they become his brothers.

The Spirit of God

Like talk in terms of God’s aides, talk of the activity of God’s spirit is a First Testament way of describing God’s activity in the world, but the New Testament uses it more systematically. The human person is by nature embodied and is unimaginable without a body, and it thus contrasts with the God who “is spirit” (Jn 4:24). But that description does more than merely set God over against matter. It implies that God is dynamic rather than feeble (see, classically, Is 31:3). God’s spirit stands for God’s dynamic energy and freedom. In Hebrew and Greek the word for spirit also means breath or wind, and describing God as spirit suggests that God has the freedom and power of the wind and the liveliness of breath (cf. Jn 3:8; 6:63; 7:38–39). Since God is spirit and God is the essence of the holy, the expression “holy spirit” is arguably a tautology; it comes in only two passages in the First Testament, Psalm 51:11 [[1348]  13] and Isaiah 63:10–11. The human spirit can be called a “spirit” because it represents the dynamism of the human person that (faintly) reflects the dynamism of God’s spirit. The human spirit is the natural point of entry for the divine spirit operating on and energizing the human person. The powerful spirit or the spirit-energized power of Elijah or of John thus represents the powerful spirit of God. It is the activity of this spirit that will produce an extraordinary turning of people to God, to each other and to wisdom through John’s ministry (Lk 1:15–17). John will go ahead of the Lord, the God of Israel, like a herald announcing the king’s coming, “in the spirit and power of Elijah” (Elijah’s powerful spirit/his spirit-energized power) as Elisha had as Elijah’s successor (2 Kings 2).

In Joel 2:28 [MT 3:1] Yhwh promised to “pour out my spirit on all flesh” so that ordinary people will prophesy, dream dreams and see visions. This does not imply that Yhwh’s spirit was no longer present and active in Israel, but it does set before people the prospect of a great new outpouring of God’s spirit. The opening of Jesus’ story pictures that beginning. “Even before his birth John is to be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Lk 1:15). That explains the way he jumps in the womb on hearing Mary’s voice (Lk 1:41). His own parents are filled with the Holy Spirit and speak like prophets in declaring God’s blessing on Mary and at the birth of their own son (Lk 1:41–45, 67–79). Zechariah, Joseph, Anna and even foreign scholars dream dreams, see visions and prophesy (Mt 1:20; 2:12, 13, 19, 22; Lk 1:22, 67; 2:36–38). The Holy Spirit is to come on an ordinary young girl such as Mary and rests on another apparently older man such as Simeon, revealing the future to him and guiding him to the temple (Lk 1:35; 2:25–27).

God’s spirit is thus involved in the birth of Jesus as spirit and power are again conjoined not only to enable Mary to conceive but to bring it about that her child is himself holy, the Son of God (Lk 1:35)—someone who brings the presence of God and exhibits God’s power in action. It makes her child God-with-us, one who can deliver his people from their sins (Mt 1:18–23). The Holy Spirit comes on him as a man, fills him and drives him, as it had Elijah (Lk 3:22; 4:1). Surprisingly, it drives him into the wilderness for forty days to be tested by the devil in the manner of Job. In the power of the spirit he then returns to Galilee, and declares that “the spirit of the Lord is on me” as it had been on the prophet who gives the testimony in Isaiah 61. It is the means of his being able to teach, bring good news, proclaim and talk about grace (Lk 4:14–22). Because God gives the spirit without measure, the one God has sent speaks God’s words (Jn 3:34). The role of the Holy Spirit, then, is not to enable Jesus to do wonders such as heal people, but to make words possible, as Joel said. To blaspheme against the Holy Spirit is to refuse to believe this proclamation that the Holy Spirit inspires and thus to refuse to accept the good news (Lk 12:10).

The promise in Joel and the beginnings of Jesus’ story make clear that the gift of the Holy Spirit is for people in general. People need to worship God in spirit and truth, and they will. Even Samarians will find God’s spirit welling up inside them (Jn 4:10–14, 23–24; 7:37–39). The Father will give the Holy Spirit to the disciples and the Holy Spirit will then give the disciples the words to say when they are on trial (Lk 11:13; 12:12; Mt 10:20). The Spirit of truth will be the disciples’ advocate or helper by teaching them and reminding them of Jesus’ own words and testifying for them, speaking to them and for them in the way Jesus had when he was physically with them (Jn 14:16–17, 26; 15:26–27; 16:13–15). The Holy Spirit will enable them to share the gospel of forgiveness with people as Jesus has (Jn 20:21–22). This link between the Holy Spirit and words will be important in the story of the church’s beginnings.

The Opposition

The declaration that God is beginning to reign in the world implies that at present the world has a different ruler. His rule makes havoc of the lives of many individuals.

After his baptism, Jesus is driven into the wilderness to be tested/tempted by ho diabolos/satanas (Mt 4:1; Mk 1:13; Lk 4:2). The first word is the origin of the English word “devil,” but in itself it means “slanderer.” It is thus equivalent to Hebrew sāṭān where that denotes an adversary in a legal setting, the figure in the heavenly cabinet who accuses Job and Joshua (Job 1–2; Zech 3:1–2) and tests David and Job (1 Chron 21:1; Job 1–2). In the First Testament sāṭān is thus not a proper noun but a common noun, “adversary” (cf. [1349]  [1350]  the New Testament transliteration ho satanas presumably implies that sāṭān has become this being’s name.[1351]  The adversary is not an embodiment of evil working in necessary opposition to God, but a being subordinate to God, so when God wants Jesus to be tested, the slanderer/adversary is God’s means of effecting that testing. The adversary does so by trying to get Jesus to treat him as if he were the president of the cabinet rather than an ordinary member. Sometimes, however, the figure referred to as ho diabolos can also be referred to as “the evil one,” ho ponēros (compare Mt 13:19 with Lk 8:12; cf. also Mt 25:41; Jn 13:2). Likewise, contemporary Jewish writings use the name Satan to refer to a supreme power of evil of almost equal power to God, who can be identified with Baal-zebul, the ruler of the demons (Mt 12:24–27). One can see the crossover to this significance in his attempt to get Jesus to treat him as God. The rest of the New Testament continues the mixed usage of satanas.

Demons or unclean spirits (the terms are interchangeable) are nonphysical beings that have less power than deities but are active in the world in a way that makes them a threat to human beings. The First Testament hardly refers to demons,[1352]  but it does occasionally refer to hostile nonphysical beings as “spirits.” It makes no mention of people who are demonized, though incidents such as Saul’s tormenting with a bad spirit could be understood this way. It does not make clear how demons relate to Yhwh’s sovereignty, but it makes explicit that bad spirits are under Yhwh’s control and direction. In the New Testament story, in contrast, demons and unclean spirits, subordinates of Satan, are prominent, at least in the first half of the Synoptics and in Acts. As their activity links with Satan’s reigning in the world, so their submission to Jesus and his disciples links with Satan’s falling from heaven (Lk 10:17–18). That difference from the First Testament might indicate that Jesus’ ministry and the opening years of the church saw a marked but temporary outburst of demonic activity at the moment of conflict between Jesus and the power of evil. But writings such as Tobit and Baruch also refer to demons, suggesting rather that the idea of demons, along with the idea of Satan, had become a common one in the culture by Jesus’ day.

The presence of demons or unclean spirits can explain the presence of illnesses and disabilities such as blindness, muteness, seizures and general weakness (Mt 9:32–33; 12:22; Lk 9:38–42; 13:11–16). But not all illnesses are associated with the activity of demons (Mk 1:32–34), and people could speak of mental illness as distinguishable from being demonized, though when they say Jesus “has a demon” they go on to imply that this is a way of saying he is crazy (Jn 10:20). Talk in terms of demons can also provide people with cheap explanations of weird phenomena when they do not wish to recognize the activity of the Holy Spirit (Mt 11:18), and can provide disciples with tempting grounds for rejoicing (Lk 10:20). It is not clear how one avoids becoming home to a demon or how one knows that a person is home to a demon as opposed to simply being physically ill.

To say that this way of conceptualizing, for example, the causes of illness and disability was distinctive to the culture is not to imply it was wrong, but to allow that there are a number of ways of thinking about and responding to weird experiences that come to us, and the activity of demons is one of them. The fact that it does not come naturally to most modern and postmodern theologians makes it especially valuable for us to reflect on because of its possible significance for us, though we might reckon there is no need to introduce the conceptuality of demons in a context where it is not already present. The story of Legion shows vividly how demons are associated with the realm of disorder embodied by death, characterized by violence and symbolized by the sea into which the pigs indwelled by them subsequently plunge (Lk 8:27–39). For the demons, pigs might make an acceptable alternative to a human being if necessary, and as unclean creatures they would be an appropriate home for unclean spirits. But for Jesus their leaving the man for the pigs is not an act of mercy but the means whereby they join the powers of disorder to which they belong, the abyss to which they do not wish to return (Lk 8:31; cf. Mk 1:24). These demons parallel the goat-demons of the First Testament and other instances of an identification of extra-natural power with scary natural beings associated with the sea or the desert, such as snakes, crocodiles, hippopotami and whales.

Reign Called Off

Jesus’ proclamation (even though backed up by his teaching, healing, purifying and releasing) does not meet with much of a response. Although he can force demons to submit to him (it is not supernatural forces that stop him), he cannot force human beings to do so.[1353]  He cannot do many marvels in Nazareth because of people’s unbelief (Mk 6:5–6). God has been like a farmer sowing seed, but much of the seed has fallen on the path, or on rocky soil, or on soil full of thorns (Mk 4:3–20). While some has fallen on good soil and is bearing fruit, and the disciples see with their eyes and hear with their ears, the people in general do not understand the “mystery” of God’s reign, and the leadership is correctly apprehensive about its implications for them. As usual God’s intention has to be put on hold. There is no implementation of God’s reign, no fulfillment for Zechariah’s vision of the people being delivered from their enemies and able to serve the Lord all their days (Lk 1:71–75). “Nothing will be impossible with God” (Lk 1:37; cf. Gen 18:14)—unless people choose to make it so and God chooses not to overwhelm their resistance. God’s plan has to be reworked.

What, then, is the new plan? “The children of the reign” (that is, its rightful heirs) are going to be replaced by others (Mt 8:11–12). One might infer that this is a permanent and complete casting off of the Jewish people, though that would be hard to fit with God’s longstanding permanent commitment to Israel. Daniel’s vision about the Son of Man promised that one day “the sovereignty [malkût] … will be given to the people of the holy ones of the Most High” (Dan 7:27). The apostles evidently assume this promise still stands when they ask whether Jesus’ resurrection and exaltation might herald its fulfillment: “Lord, at this time are you going to restore sovereignty to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). Jesus’ answer is not that they are asking the wrong question or that this will never happen, but that their question is not the right one at the moment. In his second address, Peter is thus speaking of “the restoration of everything,” of which the prophets spoke (Acts 3:21) and even near the end of Acts (Acts 28:20) Paul is speaking about “Israel’s hope.” But the apostles cannot know the answer to “When?” (cf. Mk 13:32). Their task is to get on with witnessing “to the world” to Jesus’ death and resurrection, in the power of the Spirit that is about to come on them (Acts 1:7–8; cf. Lk 24:46–48).

Talk of God’s reign thus becomes much more muted. Perhaps the execution of Jesus makes the implementing of God’s reign morally impossible, as disbelief made healing people morally impossible. Yet God also turns all that round so that the execution of Jesus makes things possible. While it exposes the depth of the problem with the sin of God’s people, it also constitutes the resolution of that problem as God accepts the people’s rejection. And that changes the slant of the gospel message. Yes, God’s reign is coming, and yes, people therefore need to repent. But the killing of Jesus has given a new expression to their sinfulness and points to a new focus for their repentance—and opens up a new understanding of the depth of God’s grace (cf. Acts 2). God has turned their sin into the means of their forgiveness by being unwilling to be overcome by their resistance. All the options are open again.

Heralds of God’s Reign

Talk of God’s reign is thus where Acts starts and where it ends (Acts 1:3; 28:31). Its proclamation is now the task of Jesus’ followers. As was the case with Jesus, the relationship between their Spirit-inspired activity and the implementing of God’s sovereignty is not clear. They have to fulfill their task; God’s reign will become a reality (Acts 1:3–8). We do not know whether their fulfillment of their commission is a sufficient or even a necessary cause of the implementation of God’s reign. The disciples go through an experience analogous to that of Jesus: the Holy Spirit comes on them, and they act in the power of that. Like Jesus, they go about “proclaiming the good news about God’s sovereignty”—but now also about “the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 8:12; cf. Acts 28:23, 31).

Of course this plan has also had mixed results (see Acts 28:23–31). Jesus’ resurrection makes the Jewish people little more inclined to believe in him than they were before, though the good news makes more headway in the Gentile world. Paul’s inspired hunch is that God may be intending to win the Jewish people’s belief by a feedback process (Rom 11), but there has been little about the church to win the Jewish people, and the arrival of God’s reign has still not become a reality. Nothing new has happened for 2000 years, perhaps because there is nothing else God can do. Perhaps God will eventually decide that enough is enough (maybe before this book is published), or perhaps the Christian community will come to embody its vocation, or perhaps God will think of something else to do in order to begin to reign in the world. After all, in 10 B.C. one could never have imagined what God was about to do.

11.2 Jesus: Prophet and Teacher

In response to people’s pleas, or because spirits assail him, Jesus casts out spirits, heals people and cleanses lepers, but what he does on his own initiative alongside proclaiming the message about God’s reign arriving is summon some individuals to join him and teach people (Mk 1:16–2:14). Perhaps the logic of his ministry is that if God’s reign is arriving and people are to be freed to serve God, he needs to teach them about what serving God looks like. They will get ready for God’s reign by starting to live God’s way now. It is part of preparing the way.

Teacher

“Teacher” is a characteristic description of Jesus (e.g., Mk 4:38; 5:35; 9:17, 38). In the First Testament, teaching (tôrâ) was the business of Moses, the prophets, the priests and the scholars whose work appears in books such as Proverbs. The Gospels return to the pattern of Exodus–Deuteronomy in presenting us with a life in which teaching interweaves with deeds. Jesus climbs a mountain like Moses and there takes up motifs from Moses’ Teaching in light of the way it was interpreted in his day and adds his own teaching to it. Like Moses, Jesus focuses on the life that should characterize God’s people, on attitudes to the future, to other people, to God and to possessions. Moses made much allowance for human limitations, but on the whole the prophets took a tougher stance and made more radical demands, and it is this example that Jesus follows. His parables about the dynamics of God’s reign illustrate the allusive way he teaches. He speaks like Ms. Wisdom (Mt 11:29–30). In John, his teaching similarly proceeds with the use of irony and misunderstanding (e.g., Jn 3:1–9; 4:1–38). Like a prophet, he also teaches parabolically in another sense, by deeds as well as by words. Putting a curse on a fig tree is a sign of what is happening to the current generation of his people, and washing the disciples’ feet is a sign of the stance he wants them to take to each other (Mk 11:12–14; Jn 13:12–17).

The implication of the attention he gives to teaching is not to define God’s reign as a realm where people get their behavior right, still less to suggest that when people get their behavior right God’s reign will arrive, still less that getting their behavior right will cause God’s reign to arrive or make it possible. The distinguishing features of God’s reign are not determined by human actions. God’s reign is a matter of God deciding this is the moment to exercise sovereignty, with the result that God’s people will enjoy God’s blessing—hence the fact that God’s reign is good news (e.g., Mt 4:23; 9:35). But getting behavior right is a necessary feature of preparing for God’s reign, and in the absence of that, people cannot share in the blessings of God’s reign or “enter” it (e.g., Mt 5:20; 7:21; 19:23; cf. Mt 16:19). Jesus’ teaching is an exposition of the life to be lived in light of the fact that God intends to reign and that this reign is on its way.

His teaching builds on the Scriptures. On the mountain, he first summarizes a spirituality of blessing by taking insights from the Scriptures (mostly from Psalms and Isaiah) but creating a new whole from them (Mt 5:3–12). He goes on to relate his mission to the Scriptures, which he “did not come to annul but to fill” (Mt 5:17). He fills out the meaning of their promises and warnings and is himself the confirmation of these. He fills out the meaning of their expectations and looks for an even deeper commitment to the Torah than the scholars and Pharisees prescribed or exemplified (Mt 5:18–20). If his hearers want to be people who have a natural place in a world where God reigns, they need to be whole, like God (Mt 5:48).

Handling Scripture and Tradition

As a teacher, Jesus is involved in the application of the Scriptures to people’s lives. The interpretation of Scripture is usually a controversial question, and in the Gospels the interpretation of the scriptural teaching about cleansing and about the sabbath are matters of special controversy. Jesus sometimes encourages people to keep the scriptural instructions about cleansing and about sabbath, but he and his disciples ignore the traditions about cleansing and sabbath observance that the Pharisees accept. The Pharisees take Scripture with absolute seriousness and do their best to see how it applies to everyday life. Jesus behaves as if he is in a position to cut through their patterns of interpretation.

The Pharisees believe in following the tradition of the elders. In principle, this is a plausible position. Like subordinating ourselves to Scripture, it enables us to learn from the wisdom of the past rather than having to start from scratch in gaining insight, and it frees us from the limitations of our own narrow perspective on things. But like our own views, tradition must not be absolutized, and in particular it is Scripture’s handmaid, not its equal. While reckoning to interpret Scripture and make it more applicable, in practice tradition can frustrate it. The Pharisees accuse Jesus of breaking with tradition; he accuses them of breaking with Scripture (Mt 15:1–9). There is a tragic aspect to the controversy concerning the traditional customs about cleansing one’s hands before eating. Its presupposition is that a meal is like a sacrifice and its participants are a kingdom of priests. Cleansing the hands recognizes the privilege of this position and the sacredness of people’s lives. But such a rule can become an end in itself, as happens with Christian rules such as fasting, keeping Sunday as the sabbath, abstaining from liquor or having a “quiet time” for prayer.

Jesus confronts this particular tradition by asserting what is (he implies) a self-evident truth. “It is not what goes into the mouth that stains a person, but what comes out of the mouth—this is what stains a person.… The things that come out of the mouth emerge from the heart, and those things stain the person. For from the heart emerge wrong intention, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, perjury, and slander” (Mt 15:11, 18–19). His assertion implies a contrast with much material in the Torah itself, and it is striking that he does not justify it by other Scriptures such as Hosea’s comment on the relative importance of mercy and sacrifice (contrast Mt 12:1–14) which would have made his point quite nicely. Instead he makes his assertion simply on the basis of his own authority. His “Not …, but” expresses sharply an antithesis that means “Not so much …, but more.” But the declaration will explain why the Torah is not binding on Gentiles and why it need not be so even when Gentiles come to believe in Jesus. Indeed, it will imply that Jews will be free to give up observance of such elements in the Torah to reach Gentiles with the gospel.

Jesus is an enthusiast for the sabbath. It is a day for involvement in the synagogue, and thus for learning and prayer (e.g., Lk 4:16; 6:6; 13:10). He perhaps delights in making the sabbath the day for expelling spirits and healing people, because the sabbath is a day for being free, not for being bound (e.g., Mk 1:23–34; 3:1–6; Lk 13:10–16; Jn 5; 9). The fact that the circumcision command overrides the sabbath command suggests the possibility that healing should also do so (Jn 7:22–23). The sabbath is thus the beginning of amazement at Jesus’ teaching and power. He also emphasizes that the sabbath is given to fulfill human need, so that human need overrides its demands—as indeed does the need of animals. When some Pharisees criticize the disciples for plucking heads of grain on the sabbath, Jesus does not defend them on the grounds that this does not count as work, but on the grounds that the sabbath command, like other commands, is subordinate to human need (Mk 2:27). It is also subordinate to requirements that issue from association with Jesus. It has always been subordinate to the temple’s requirements, and he is more important than the temple. The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath (Mark 2:28). Indeed, Jesus may properly work on the sabbath day because God does so (Jn 5:16–18).

Prophet

Jesus’ teaching was like a prophet’s as well as like Moses’. Announcing good news was the business of the prophet whose testimony appears in Isaiah 61, which drew motifs from Isaiah 40–55 into a new combination for the sake of people living a few decades later. Jesus’ sermon at Nazareth in turn takes up that testimony as a key to understanding his ministry:

The spirit of the Lord is on me,

Because he anointed me to bring good news to the poor,

He sent me to proclaim release to captives and renewed sight to blind people,

To let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Lk 4:18–19)

This testimony spells out what it means that God’s reign is arriving. The poor, captives, blind, oppressed, imprisoned are the people of Israel under Roman domination and in no position to serve God in accordance with their vocation. Jesus declares that God is about to alter that.

As prophets, John and Jesus preach for a response. God has resolved to forgive the people and deliver them from their enemies, and thus to start reigning in their experience, but all that will get them nowhere if they do not turn to God as God turns to them. John thus proclaims a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Mk 1:4). Forgiveness and turning are both needed. Repentance involves people leaving their homes in city and countryside and making a long journey into the wilderness. Long ago, the object of leaving Egypt was to go into the wilderness to meet Yhwh, and there Yhwh and Israel sealed a relationship with one another. It was a honeymoon period in the relationship, as the wilderness was a place people found grace (Jer 2:2–3; 31:2). Going to meet John there living the life of one who has turned his back on Jerusalem implies dissociating oneself from the life of the city with its pollutedness and going back to the place that suggests beginnings, purity and grace. The notion of preparing Yhwh’s way in the wilderness suggests a related idea, that Yhwh had abandoned Jerusalem because of its pollutedness but now wishes to return. In Isaiah 40, a voice commissions the constructing of a freeway whereby Yhwh may return to the city. Who are the contractors? In the Gospels they are the people themselves. Their repentance constructs this freeway.

In John’s and Jesus’ day, the people of God are an averagely faithful and caring community, as they were in the time of Second Isaiah and as they are in the church today. While John and Jesus critique their religious leadership, who are especially brought to the test by Jesus’ coming, they do not indict the community for its faithlessness in the manner of Jeremiah. Most people would belong between the extremes of remarkable piety and generosity on the one hand, and noteworthy wickedness on the other. But the Day of the Lord or the moment when God takes up sovereign reign imposes on the community the need to identify with one group or the other. They have to decide which way to move. Jesus’ coming brings a crisis to them. It divides people into sheep and goats. They have to decide to which flock they belong. Getting things ready for the time when God reigns involves turning the community into something that realizes God’s vision (Lk 3:1–6).

Baptism

Both forgiveness and repentance are symbolized by baptism, a sacramental purification rite introduced by John. People would be familiar with such rites, not least in the Qumran community nearby, but John’s baptism has distinctive features. Unlike some such practices, it involves the immersion or splashing of the whole person, suggesting that people need cleansing all over in order to start a new life and that God indeed washes the whole person. Further, it is a one-time event, preparing for the imminent coming of God’s reign. As a one-time expression of repentance and cleansing it parallels that required of a proselyte and thus hints that its recipients are not truly within Israel and need to join again. Being descendants of Abraham is not enough (Mt 3:9).

Being overwhelmed or immersed in water also suggests drowning. Paul will make more explicit that baptism is a kind of death, but John’s analogy with being consumed by the Holy Spirit and fire implies the same point (Mt 3:11). Baptism suggests immersion in a river of fiery spirit (cf., e.g., Is 4:4; 43:2). Accepting death sacramentally constitutes an anticipatory undergoing of the calamity that will fall on people when God comes to reign and makes it unnecessary to go through that punishment substantially. The systematic ambiguity of Holy Spirit and fire can then work to one’s favor. Baptism symbolizes and expresses submission to God’s wrath, but also God’s raising the person to a new life.

Jesus does not baptize people. That might partly be because he focuses on the good news—he can build on John’s proclaiming of bad news. More explicitly, as the sign of death, baptism is something for him to receive, not to administer, both as a rite and as the reality to which the rite points (e.g., Lk 12:49–50). After that, he can speak of it again as a promise. The fiery baptism of his death drains the danger from baptism for people who are baptized into him, specifically into his death (Rom 6:3; 1 Cor 12:12–13). Baptism in the Holy Spirit can then be unequivocally a promise rather than a warning, and spirit and fire can be positive ideas (Acts 1:5; 2:1–4; cf. Mk 1:8; Jn 1:33).[1354]

The logic of sovereignty, repentance, forgiveness and right living is important. The logic is not “you repent, then God will forgive you, then you live rightly, then God’s reign will come.” It is “God’s reign is coming and God is forgiving you, therefore you must repent and live rightly.” God has turned to forgive and they therefore need to turn and repent so they can receive this forgiveness and start a new life. Dealing with sin involves the human act of repentance inspired by the promise of forgiveness and the divine act of forgiveness responding to the fact of repentance. The two are reciprocal. It is after Jesus announces the intention to come to his house that Zacchaeus, the toll supervisor with no status in the community, declares his intention to share his resources and pay back people he has defrauded, and after this that Jesus declares that deliverance has arrived at Zacchaeus’s house (Lk 19:1–10).[1355]  To the “sinner” who bathes him in perfume out of her love for him because she knows herself forgiven, he says, “Your faith has delivered you,” and he says the same to the woman with the hemorrhage (Lk 7:50; 8:48). When ten men with a skin disease find cleansing and only one comes back to thank God, Jesus again says, “your faith has delivered you,” and he says the same to a blind man who has asked him to restore his sight and who then follows him (Lk 17:19; 18:42). Deliverance includes forgiveness or cleansing or healing, but it means more than one of these in isolation. It suggests the whole of life is put right.

While some of Jesus’ activity aims at changing individuals such as Zacchaeus, he does not suggest that acts such as those of Zacchaeus bring about God’s reign, though one can imagine that they offer pictures of how things will look when God implements that reign. Perhaps preparing for the time when God reigns and people serve God in faithfulness means living that way now, in anticipation. Perhaps that is why, for instance, “none of you can become my disciples unless you give up your possessions” (Lk 14:33), and this is a way they are to “strive for God’s reign” or for “God’s doing right” (Mt 6:33). The Jewish community is designed to be one where such giving and giving up is practiced, in trust that the Father will look after our needs. But the New Testament does not talk of John or Jesus or their disciples bringing in God’s reign or establishing it or furthering it or working for it. It is their task to do outrageous things, to go in for crazy gestures, to make wild statements, to tell outlandish stories. It is the further task of Jesus’ disciples to testify to what Jesus did and leave questions about sovereignty to God (Acts 1:6–8).

Healer

Whereas Jesus thus focuses on proclaiming and teaching, what people want him to do is heal people of their illnesses (Mk 1:21–2:12). In the Scriptures, healing was also often associated with prophets, not least as intercessors (e.g., 2 Kings 20:1–11; cf. Gen 20:17), so that the addition of healing to announcing and teaching further marks Jesus as a prophet. But the occasional ministry of Abraham, Moses or Elisha becomes much more extravagant in Jesus. He acts in a way that corresponds to the Scriptures but goes beyond it. He cures every disease and every illness; people brought all those who were ill, with all sorts of diseases, and he cured them (Mt 4:23–24). “He took our weaknesses and carried our diseases” (Mt 8:17), not merely by sharing them or putting up with them instead of us (so Is 53:4), but by removing them. Like Elijah and Elisha, he brings people back from death (Mt 9:18–26)—even someone four days dead and rotting (Jn 11).

People’s turning to Jesus in this way resonates with the prayers for healing in the Psalms (e.g., Ps 6:2 [MT 3]; 41:4 [MT 5]), and Jesus follows the Psalms in the way he relates sin, sickness and forgiveness. He puts much more emphasis on healing than on forgiveness, seeing people more as needy than as offenders. Indeed, in general he talks rather little about forgiveness, unlike John. He can declare a sick person forgiven and imply a link with their sickness in one case (Lk 5:17–26), but deny a link in another case (Jn 9). It is wiser to take news of a disaster as a stimulus to repentance than as reason to speculate on its victims’ sinfulness (Lk 13:1–5). I have heard it suggested that there is a development within Scripture whereby people once believed that calamity issues from sin but eventually came to realize that these are not linked. Actually, the First Testament, Jesus and the New Testament allow that sometimes sin and calamity are linked and sometimes they are not.

There are more hints that Jesus takes the initiative in casting out demons (Mk 1:39) than he does in healing. Casting out demons constitutes a direct indication that God is reigning and Satan is not. Certainly he does not want healing to come to dominate the agenda. When everyone is looking for him to get him to heal people, he wants to get on to the next town to proclaim the message, because that is what he came for (Mk 1:38), and he does not want people going around talking about his healing activity (e.g., Mt 9:30). His response to a royal official concerned for his son is to mutter about people insisting on signs and wonders; the official has to hold him to the point, “Sir, come down before my little boy dies” (Jn 4:49).

Jesus’ healings and other extraordinary acts are indeed “signs” (e.g., Jn 4:54; 6:2), in at least three senses. His initial sign involves producing the best wine at the end of the wedding (Jn 2:10–11). One might have thought that the best days of Israel’s story were past, but his extraordinary act is a sign that they are actually beginning. Feeding the people with such superabundance that there is enough left for all twelve clans of Israel—that is a sign (Jn 6:14). Second, his signs recall the signs in Israel’s own story, notably the signs in Egypt that preceded, anticipated, pointed to and promised the coming deliverance from Egypt and the further deliverance at the Red Sea. Jesus’ signs are anticipations of the deliverance to be effected through his death and resurrection. Third, they are symbols of the significance of that coming deliverance. Taking water for Jewish purification rites and turning it into such wine when the supply has run out stands for his implementing the grace and truth that Moses did not manage to implement (Jn 1:17; 2:6, 10). Resuscitating a dead person is a sign of new life his resurrection will bring (Jn 12:18).

If Jesus’ healings are signs that the fulfillment of God’s purpose is coming, that helps us see why some people get healed but most people do not. The healing of some people is a sign that the End is coming, but the nonhealing of most people is a sign that the End is not here. To expect none to be healed is to ask for no signs, but to expect all to be healed is to ask for the End now, to collapse the difference between now and the End. “Jesus is not the end, but its prophet.”[1356]

Martyr

The gospel story is broken-backed. For the first half, Jesus strides the stage like Elijah or Elisha in their heyday, but in the second half, mighty works virtually cease. Jesus is now acted on rather than acting, suffering rather than relieving suffering, abandoned by God rather than working with God. There is a deep illogic about the need for this transition. Why should anyone want to oppose a man who brought people healing, cleansing, deliverance and teaching about questions such as prayer? But that is regularly the destiny of prophets.

The crowds explicitly call Jesus a prophet, not a messiah, and it is as a prophet that he expels traders from the temple, welcomes blind and lame there, and cures them (Mt 21:11–14). It is as a prophet that he curses the fig tree that bears no fruit, a miracle of destruction like those of Moses, Elijah and Elisha.[1357]  The tree is a symbol of a fruitless people and specifically of a fruitless leadership, people who say they serve God but fail to do so and would even kill the son of the landowner to whom the vineyard belonged (Mt 21:28–46; earlier, Mt 3:8, 10). It is risky talk and action. His commission to his immediate disciples to share in his ministry is full of warnings, though it is only after this that we first hear of plots to eliminate him (Mt 12:14). Meanwhile, Herod Antipas has had John the baptizer killed, and Jesus’ response is to withdraw from the limelight (Mt 12:15; 14:1–13). The subsequent story will make clear that he is quite ready for martyrdom and willing in due course to provoke it, but he is not seeking it—certainly not yet. There is other work to be done.

It is Peter’s voicing the conviction that Jesus is the Messiah (Mt 16:13–20) that marks the transition from a proclamation about God reigning to a journey toward martyrdom (Mt 16:21). At a Passover meal he offers yet another prophetic sign of the way events will turn out. He thanks God for the bread and breaks it, as one does, but then turns the breaking into an acted parable of the event that is to follow: “this is my body” (Mt 26:26). He is to be broken as the bread is. And in taking a piece of this bread and eating it, the disciples are now saying yes to Jesus’ declaration of what must happen. And perhaps they are indicating their willingness to “internalize” his acceptance of martyrdom, not only accepting that he must die but accepting that they must.

11.3 His Followers

Jesus’ teaching, his exorcisms and his healings cause his fame to spread, and crowds “follow” him from all over (e.g., Mt 4:25). People are amazed and awed, and glorify God (e.g., Mt 7:28; 9:8). But there are other reactions. People laugh at him or beg him to leave (Mt 8:34; 9:24). A crowd honors him on his ride from Bethany to Jerusalem, but this crowd or another then calls for his crucifixion, follows him to his place of execution and eventually goes home beating their chests. They indeed behave the way people usually behave toward prophets. They do not follow him in the deeper sense.

Jesus’ attitude to the crowds is thus ambivalent, like their attitude to him. He feels compassion for them and feeds them, but they are never satisfied. They do not like John because he lives such a strange life, and they do not like Jesus because he parties (Mt 11:16–19). When he gets back from being transfigured before three of his disciples and finds that the other disciples have failed to expel the demon from an epileptic boy despite the authority they had been given (Mt 17), he is like Moses coming down from the mountain to rejoin “an unbelieving, perverse generation” like Moses’ Israel (Deut 32:5). He wishes to be away from them as quickly as possible (Mt 17:14–17). He upbraids the great Galilean cities where he meets no serious response and tells them they will be treated like Sodom and Babylon—again speaking like Isaiah, only more so (Mt 11:20–24; see Is 1:9–10; 14:13–15). They cannot interpret the times (Lk 12:54–56).

The aim of Jesus’ coming can thus be expressed in two superficially contradictory ways. He comes into the world to bring about a judgment. Sightless people will gain their sight and blind people lose theirs (Jn 9:39). But his own (and his Father’s) more specific aim or hope is that this judgment will mean people’s acquittal rather than their condemnation. Any condemnation that comes will be self-inflicted (Jn 3:17–19).

The two sides to Jesus’ attitude to his own people issue a challenge to Jewish and Gentile readers of the Gospel, who have to decide which set of descriptions marks them. Reference to “the crowd” or “the Jews” as people involved in Jesus’ death reassures Jewish and Gentile readers that they are not the first to be persecuted for their faith, but also puts them on the spot as they have to decide what sort of people they themselves are.

Training Disciples

As well as making proclamation to the people as a whole, Jesus summons particular individuals to abandon their present lives, their work and their families: “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people” (Mt 4:18–22; see also Mt 9:9; 19:16–30). Jesus again behaves as a prophet, like Elijah summoning Elisha, who then left his oxen and yoke—indeed, made them into the raw material for a farewell sacrificial feast after which there could be no going back to plowing—and “followed Elijah,” going where Elijah went (1 Kings 19:19–21). Like that earlier prophet, eventually Jesus will ascend to heaven, but not without giving his followers a generous endowment with his own spirit (cf. 2 Kings 2:9, 15). The object of his summons is that the one(s) summoned may continue the summoner’s ministry and do what the summoner cannot do.

Learning to share in Jesus’ ministry does not involve studying in Jerusalem schools to be an expositor of a long-standing tradition of interpretation like that of the Pharisees with their scholarship, nor withdrawing from life in Jerusalem into the wilderness like the Qumran community.[1358]  It involves a process of ongoing learning through spending time with Jesus in the course of his work and everyday life. It is more like joining the sons of the prophets to learn from a master. His followers become his disciples when he starts teaching (Mt 5:1; cf. Mt 11:1). He sees the crowds and starts teaching the disciples. They are in a position then to pass on this teaching, like the leaders in Exodus 19. As they learn to do his Father’s will, they become Jesus’ new family (Mt 12:48–50). Jesus chooses the Twelve “to be with him, and to be sent out” (Mk 3:14). It is for their sake that he takes some of them when he goes to meet with Moses and Elijah (Mk 9:2), and for their sake as well as his own when he takes some of them to watch with him in Gethsemane (Mt 26:37–38).

Like talk of overwhelming people with God’s spirit and with fire, talk of fishing for people is a frightening image. Being caught in a net is not a positive experience for the fish. It means death. It is Jeremiah’s image for the role of Babylon in bringing God’s punishment to Judah (Jer 16:16–18). These disciples are to be the means of doing that once more. Fortunately Jesus eventually suggests other images for their work. They are like shepherds, or like farmers at harvest time. There are too many sheep to shepherd and too many crops to pick. He therefore commissions these twelve to begin a ministry like his: “Proclaim the good news that the reign of heaven has arrived, heal sick people, raise dead people, cleanse people with skin diseases, expel demons” (Mt 10:7–8). As he was “sent” by God to do God’s work, so he “sends” them as his representatives to do his work (apostellō, Mt 10:5, 16, 40; 15:24). They become his “apostles” (Mt 10:2).

Following Jesus is also a frightening image. He is on his way to crucifixion, which involves carrying the cross bar to the place where it will be fixed to its upright and he will be fixed to it. They must walk the same way. “If any wish to come after me, they must say an absolute ‘no’ to themselves and lift up their cross and follow me” (Mt 16:24). Indeed, they must do that every day (Lk 9:23). Like Jesus, they will thereby forfeit their lives in the short term but will be rewarded when the Son of Man comes with his aides in his father’s glory (Mt 16:27; cf. Mt 19:27–30). Thus delivering and losing life are not ways of referring to fullness or emptiness in one’s experience of this life. They denote the alternatives of staying alive or accepting martyrdom. The reason for Jesus’ taking up his cross is his commitment to serving them by giving his life for them. In a parallel way they are called to relate to each other as if they were servants or slaves of one another. They are not to be called teacher, father or mentor. In their relationships, there is no place for their occupying positions of authority over one another, as if they were each other’s masters, except that strange form of authority that comes from dying for someone (Mt 20:25–28; 23:7–10).

Jesus could sound as if he were implying that martyrdom inevitably follows from following him; his consequent declaration shows this is not so (Mt 24). He foresees a pattern of events paralleling the one Daniel 12:1–2 speaks of. That was an earlier context in which some faithful servants of Yhwh were martyred, but others lived to see Antiochus Epiphanes’ defeat. “Everyone whose name can be found written in the book of life” (Dan 12:1) was to escape from the crisis—but some would do so by finding their lives preserved, others by waking from their sleep in the tomb. So it will be here.

In the context of Jesus’ lifetime, his disciples did not accept that vocation, though they sometimes did so the other side of Pentecost. Over the subsequent two millennia this mixed pattern has continued.

Putting Up with Disciples

The men Jesus summons are people such as fishermen and collectors of tolls on trade and agriculture. There is no indication that he looked for particular qualities such as religious depth, commitment, courage, theological insight or maturity, nor do they have their position because of the clans they belonged to. They are “not from the world.” As was the case with Israel as a whole, it is the Lord’s choice of them rather than their qualities that are decisive (cf. Jn 6:70; 13:18; 15:16, 19). They have their position simply because Jesus summoned them. It was as if God had opened the eyes of mere children and left the wise without understanding (Mt 16:17; cf. Mt 11:25–27). This does not guarantee a better success rate—after all, Israel itself was chosen out of the world, and look what happened with it.

Yet disciples are supposed to be people who understand. Mark and Matthew make this point in different ways: Matthew by making it explicit that they understand better than others do, Mark by faulting them for failing to understand.[1359]  The men Jesus summons do prove capable of massive obtuseness and can seem not much improvement on the official leadership of the community. Jesus remains an enigma to them. They have a particularly hard time understanding either the necessity that he should die or the calling to follow him to death. Sometimes their main preoccupation seems to be prosperity, prestige and power, like other leaders (e.g., Mk 9:33–37; 10:35–37).[1360]

Disciples are also supposed to be people of faith or trust, which is not so different from being people of understanding. But Mark likewise faults them for lacking faith, Matthew for being of small faith (e.g., Mt 8:26) that contrasts with the large faith of some ordinary people. They combine commitment to Jesus with capacity to let him down and a continuous facility for failing to see the point (e.g., Jn 6:60–71; 11:7–16; 13:1–11; 14:5, 8, 22). They will come to see the significance of Jesus’ deeds and words and of the Scriptures only after Jesus has been glorified and has breathed the Holy Spirit onto them (Jn 2:22; 12:16; 13:7; 14:25–26; 16:12–15; 20:9).[1361]  Even this will not work too well—perhaps because it still has to allow for human resistance. Even God still cannot force the blind to see.

When Peter declares that Jesus is the Anointed and Jesus follows that with the corrective that he is on his way to martyrdom, Peter rebukes him. If the Pharisees are the embodiment of snakes, Peter is the embodiment of Satan. Through Peter, at this turning point in Jesus’ ministry, Satan brings the same temptation that he brought Jesus on the eve of his ministry. Peter is a stone that can trip Jesus. He thinks in a human way, not God’s way (Mt 16:23). It was Second Isaiah’s critique of the community in his day, which could not believe that God’s purpose would be accomplished in the scandalous way the prophet envisages (Is 55:8–9). Peter will not be the only disciple who thinks in a human way rather than in God’s way. There will be few hands unsullied by the unsavory tale that is to unfold.

Forming a Community

There is another significance to Jesus’ summons of disciples. His aim is to prepare Israel as a whole for the coming of God’s reign, but he has to face the fact that not all Israel responds. So he is driven to forming an Israel within Israel, a church within the church over which “the gates of Hades will not prevail”—people will soon be bursting out of them (Mt 16:18; 27:51–53). Like expressions such as “Lord” and “son of God,” “church” will have new resonances in the light of the existence of the church, but in the context of Jesus’ ministry it refers to that nucleus of a renewed Israel that Jesus establishes. Like Isaiah, he calls the whole people to respond to his words but also has a smaller group who become the embodiment of what Israel as a whole is called to be, an embodiment of the remnant, the beginning of a renewed Israel. In due course the “twelve disciples” will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve clans of Israel (Mt 19:28).

The standard set by his teaching on the mountain is the standard for the whole people, but it presupposes that the whole people will not accept it—otherwise there would be no false prophets and no majority walking the broad road (Mt 5:11–12; 7:13–23). Similarly, Jesus speaks in story form to the people as a whole, but does so knowing that only his disciples will respond to his stories—and even they will do so only patchily and will need them explained (Mt 13:1–53). In telling the people unintelligible stories as a sign that God has rejected them, but trusting that a few people may respond, he is again taking up Isaiah’s ministry.

Yet for all their faults, the disciples are people who, when he summoned, left their boats and desks and followed him. For all his faults, Peter recognizes who he is. “On this rock I will build my church,” Jesus comments (Mt 16:18). What is this rock? Is it Peter, or Jesus himself, as the Anointed, or Peter’s recognition of him? The comment is allusive, but there is truth in all three understandings. Jesus is of course the church’s foundation, but Peter and his testimony will be the beginnings of the church’s witness (see Acts 2). Peter is the “Abraham” of the renewed community (cf. Is 51:1–2).[1362]  In its foundational significance, Peter’s confession resembles Abraham’s leaving Ur.

The twelve disciples are all men, but women also feature prominently in the story. Key moments in the First Testament story involved women such as Sarai, Jochebed, Zipporah, Miriam, Deborah, Manoah’s wife and Hannah—mothers, prophets, servants of God and people of initiative. It is thus not surprising that this new moment involves spectacular mothers, prophets, servants of God, and women of initiative—Elizabeth as well as Zechariah (and with less ambiguity), Mary as well as Joseph (and with less dispensability), and Anna as well as Simeon. Jesus’ genealogy unexpectedly includes five women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Uriah’s wife and Mary. There are no women in the genealogies in Genesis, and these are no ordinary women. Tamar is a prostitute, or someone who acts like one, and perhaps a foreigner. Rahab is a prostitute, and presumably a Canaanite. Ruth is a Moabite, and a woman whose sexual conduct might also raise an eyebrow. Uriah’s wife is named as another man’s wife rather than by her own name, and this other man is a Hittite. And Mary is an unmarried girl at the time of her pregnancy. The presence of the first four women in the line up to and including David makes it unsurprising that Jesus as the Anointed should be born of someone of questionable sexual status, and both these facts cohere with Jesus’ own open-minded attitude toward women. Later in the First Testament story, an important part is played by foreign women such as the Queen of Sheba and the Sidonian woman with whom Elijah lives, and by Esther, a woman in a foreign setting. The woman from Sidon in Matthew 15:21–28 recalls these.

To his disciples’ surprise, when Jesus needs a drink in Samaria he engages a woman in conversation (Jn 4:27). That is a socially risky move, but she becomes a witness to him among her own people and provides the evidence of a harvest to be reaped here. A number of women whom he had healed or freed from demons (Lk 8:1–3) accompany Jesus and follow him to Jerusalem. On the eve of his betrayal by one of his male disciples to the male leadership of the Jewish community, a woman pours a jar of very costly perfume on his head. The disciples are annoyed because this anointing is such a waste; the perfume could have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor. But for him it is as if she were anointing him for burial—there will be no anointing when his burial comes (Mt 26:6–13). His women followers keep watch as he meets his death there when most of the men flee, continue to watch for where he is buried so they can return to anoint his body and find more than they bargained for, though they cannot convince the apostles about what has happened (Lk 23:49–24:11). It is a woman who hears Jesus’ voice addressing her by name and recognizes it (Jn 20:16). The story of the men and women around Jesus explodes any suggestion that there is something about men that provides a positive qualification for their being the exclusive leaders of the renewed Israelite community,[1363]  though it might suggest that men should be excluded from this leadership.

11.4 Jesus: The Man Anointed as King

Proclaiming that God’s reign is here presupposes that God is king, but the New Testament also speaks in terms of Jesus being king.

There were various options for envisaging leadership in Israel. A leader could be a Messiah and enable Israel to regain its rightful independence and its authority over the nations. He could be a Zealot and lead a violent revolutionary movement to that end. He could be a Pharisee and encourage people to apply Scripture to their lives and in this way live lives of dedication to God. He could be a Sadducee and give himself to the worship of God in the temple. He could be a Herodian and accept the necessity for realistic compromise with the Gentile powers in order to leave the people of God relatively free to live its life with God and for God. He could be an Essene and withdraw from the corrupt life of Jerusalem to found an alternative community elsewhere. Each of these models has some appropriateness. Like the Messiah, Jesus is concerned to be the leader of the Jewish people. Like the Zealots, Jesus believes in God’s violent overthrow of the foreign powers oppressing Israel. Like the Pharisees, Jesus encourages individual righteousness—a righteousness that exceeds the Pharisees’. Like the Sadducees, he loves the temple as God’s house. Like the Herodians, he believes in rendering to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and he wants to live in this world. Like the Essenes, he sets up an alternative community. But none of these models matches his vocation, and you could be sure he would offend everyone. He is the person God intends should rule Israel in succession to his ancestor David, but from the beginning God shows him that this will be a much more complicated matter than it sounds, and he also has to try to show his disciples that this is so. His exaltation as king will be a different process from what one might have expected.

The Destiny

Matthew’s way of showing how Jesus’ story continues the First Testament narrative involves a beginning that recalls Genesis, Chronicles or Ezra-Nehemiah, a genealogy taking Jesus back to Abraham via the exile and David (Mt 1:1–17). “David” speaks of the unexpected focusing of the Abrahamic promise on a king. “Exile” speaks of the failure of that promise as the line of Davidic kings comes to an end. The Jesus story indicates that the broader and the narrower promise still hold. Jesus is a new David as well as a new Moses. Moses had a one-time position at the beginning of Israel’s story, whereas Yhwh made David the beginning of a line and undertook a commitment to his descendants as well as to him. But since the exile—that other major transition point in Matthew’s genealogy—this commitment has been in abeyance. One might wonder if Yhwh has had a change of mind about how to achieve the aim of the commitment: Second Isaiah sees it worked out in part through Cyrus, in part through the whole people. But other prophets imply that in due course Yhwh is bound to put a Davidic king on Israel’s throne once more.

Jesus’ genealogy establishes both his Jewishness and his qualification to be the next Davidic king, to be “the Anointed” (Hebrew mĕšîaḥ, “Messiah;” Greek christos, “Christ”). Whereas “anointed” had been a description of actual kings (and priests), in Jewish thinking it has become a description of a coming king, a significance it never has in the First Testament. Jesus is destined to be that person (e.g., Lk 1:32–33; 2:11, 26). Thus it is vital that Joseph marries Mary and accepts Jesus into his family, because this is how he becomes a son of David (Mt 1:18–25; cf. Lk 1:27; 2:4).

That makes Jesus a threat to the actual king, as he recognizes when some scholars apprise him of this rival’s birth (Mt 2:1–12). To categorize Jesus as the Anointed is to put him on a collision course with kings and others who hold power over the Jewish people. Herod speaks of bowing down in submission to this child, like the scholars, but in fact he immediately seeks to dispose of him. He then plays the part of Pharaoh, an ironic role for a Jewish king, in being prepared to kill a whole community’s babies to keep its people in their place and dispose of the baby God intends to use as Israel’s deliverer. He does that deliberately, whereas Pharaoh did not know he was threatening the child whom God intended to use. God intervenes to protect Jesus, whereas God had been able to use other people in protecting Moses, and thus privileges Jesus over the other babies in Bethlehem who die because Jesus escapes. It provides a spectacular example of the scandalous specificity of God’s acts. Some people escape death when others do not, and it has nothing to do with deserving it or not but rather with having a destiny subordinate to God’s wider purpose to deliver the world. These babies give their lives for the world, as Jesus later will. In the assumptions of modernity, the individual has absolute significance. In the Scriptures, the destiny of the community sometimes has priority over that of the individual—or rather, individuals gain some of their significance from their relationship with a community, so that if, for instance, they suffer loss for the sake of their community, even involuntarily, that enhances their own significance rather than detracting from it. A terrible atrocity can thus have some meaning.

It is as the Anointed that Jesus will be a deliverer (Lk 2:11).[1364]  He is to be called “Jesus,” “because he will deliver his people from their sins” (Mt 1:21). He shares his name with Joshua, but he is also like one of the deliverers in Judges whose arising signified that God was turning from wrath to forgiveness, from withdrawal to sovereign action. Deliverance means things that are not okay become okay, in a whole host of connections. Preparing the way for him, John is destined

To give knowledge of deliverance to his people

By the forgiveness of their sins

Through the merciful compassion of our God

By which the dawn from on high will break on us

To bring light to those who sit in darkness and deathly shadow

To guide our feet in the way of peace. (Lk 1:77–79)

Ultimately, Jesus is to deliver the world from its sins in the sense of delivering it from God’s judgment (Jn 3:17; 12:47), but the Anointed’s more immediate business is to deliver his people from the more immediate consequence of their sins, their oppression by enemies (Lk 1:69, 71), like the deliverers in Judges. In effect the people are still in exile, suffering the consequences of the sins that took them there, and Jesus will deliver them from this.

Forgiveness and deliverance go together as the two aspects of the people’s restoration. Isaiah 40–55 made that point in declaring that God had forgiven the people and was therefore in the midst of acting to take them home. So it is once more. Again God intends to forgive or has actually forgiven, and thus there can be deliverance from oppression and darkness.

The Commissioning and the Testing

Metaphorically speaking, Jesus is anointed when he submits to baptism and God’s spirit comes down on him (Mt 3:16–17). We have noted that John’s talk of the Holy Spirit and fire has threatening implications, but on Jesus, God’s spirit comes like a dove, unthreatening and harmless (Mt 10:16; cf., e.g., Song 2:14), a sign of new beginnings and of life rather than death (Gen 8:8–12). Speaking of God’s spirit being on or in someone is one of the ways the First Testament conceptualizes matters when human beings do things that imply an involvement of some power that is not innate in them. It explains Saul’s acting with uncharacteristic decisiveness (1 Sam 11). When Israel misses the signs of God’s involvement with its actual kings, it looks for the coming of God’s spirit as an endowment God must some day grant (e.g., Is 11). God’s spirit comes to endue Jesus for the tasks of the Anointed.

A voice from heaven then offers him three ways of seeing himself and his vocation. “This is my son/you are my son” comes from God’s first declaration concerning the king in the Psalter (Ps 2:7). When there are no kings, such psalms become (among other things) descriptions of the king God must surely give back to Israel one day; they become messianic. There had been a special father-son relationship between God and the Davidic king (cf. 2 Sam 7:14), and God’s special father-son relationship with Jesus stems from Jesus’ being the heir to David’s position (Lk 1:32; and see, e.g., Mt 16:16; 26:63; Acts 9:20–22). “Holy one of God” (Mk 1:24), too, is apparently a messianic title ultimately deriving from Psalm 16:10 (cf. Acts 2:27; 3:14), and “servant of God” is another Davidic title (Acts 3:13, 26; 4:25, 27, 30; 13:35). God’s quoting Psalm 2 confirms that “Anointed” is a valid way to look at Jesus. He is God’s son because he is David’s heir.

But God goes on, “my son, the beloved” (Mt 3:17), and makes a link with a story that was particularly important for Jews, when God bade Abraham, “take your son, your only son, Isaac, the one you love” and offer him as a sacrifice (Gen 22:2). This allusion has further implications for the father-son relationship between God and Jesus. It is not merely like that of God to a king but like that of a birth father to his only son. Yet that description of Isaac also underlines the pathos of the requirement that Abraham give up this son to death. Naturally, the father loves the son (e.g., Jn 3:35; 5:20). But the son has to submit to his father’s will. He can question it, but in the end must accept it (Mt 26:39–42). In dying, he can commit himself to his father (Lk 23:46). It might seem worrying that the father loves the son because he lays down his life (Jn 10:17), though that is not the original reason. But God’s designating Jesus his beloved son clearly has a solemn side.

God’s third scriptural allusion confirms the need to hear God’s words as both encouraging and solemn. Jesus is “the beloved, in whom I delight.” While expressing delight, this description of God’s servant (Is 42:1) designates a figure who will be put under pressure by his ministry. If we may read Isaiah 42 in the light of what follows (see esp. Is 52:13–53:12), he will end up accused, condemned, afflicted and giving himself up to death. The second and third of the heavenly voice’s scriptural allusions make us return to the first, to Psalm 2. That designates the king as God’s son, but it does so in the context of acknowledging that other earthly powers are plotting against him (cf. Acts 4:25–28). The acts of foreign rulers, the resistance of his own people and God’s willingness to sacrifice him will all threaten Jesus’ life. The attitudes of the scholars and of Herod in Matthew 2 foreshadow two sides to Jesus’ destiny. But only after his death and resurrection will his followers be able to begin to understand how “the Anointed had to suffer, and then enter into his glory” (Lk 24:26, cf. Lk 24:46). In his lifetime, this will seem a statement that deconstructs.

Then after his baptism, “Jesus was driven up into the wilderness by the spirit to be tested/tempted by the slanderer” (Mt 4:1). The notion of God testing Jesus is not a surprising one. God tested Abraham and tested Israel—in the wilderness (Gen 22:1; Deut 8:2, 16). The notion of a supernatural accuser tempting Jesus is not a surprising one. Such an accuser allured David (sût) into counting Israel (1 Chron 21:1). Here the two notions combine in one event and raise the question whether this is another sentence that deconstructs; each time one gets to the end of it, one goes back unable to believe the beginning. Yet the alluring of David was attributed to Yhwh as well as to the accuser (2 Sam 24:1), and here a single event comes as God’s testing of Jesus designed to vindicate him, and the slanderer’s tempting of Jesus designed to cause him to fall. James uses the verb (peirazō) with both implications (James 1:2–16; translations alternate between “test” and “tempt”).

The tests/temptations focus on Jesus’ position as God’s son and heir to David’s promise. If Moses, Elijah or Elisha could produce food for people miraculously, the Anointed, the son of God, should be able to turn stones into bread. If God protects the person who lives in the Most High’s shelter (so Ps 91, which may have applied especially to the Davidic king), let Jesus as son of God try it out. If the Anointed is to rule over the nations (so Ps 2), let Jesus bow down and worship the slanderer, who is in a position to deliver them to Jesus—all Jesus needs do is ask.

In responding, each time Jesus refers to Scriptures that rule out the suggestions. But the passages make a link not with David or Moses but with Israel itself. In effect, Jesus implies, the slanderer has invited Jesus to fail at points where Israel failed, in the wilderness and/or subsequently. It did not want to let Yhwh decide when it had food. It tested/tempted Yhwh. It turned to other deities—we have noted that bowing down to the slanderer implies acknowledging him as if he were the president of the heavenly cabinet rather than just an ordinary member. He has made the mistake of suggesting courses of action that anyone familiar with the Scriptures can see through. Long ago, Second Isaiah had been challenged to be the embodiment of Israel in a context where most of Israel could not live up to being Israel (Is 49:3). The New Testament does not explicitly apply Isaiah 49:1–6 to Jesus, but it might have done so. He lives up to Israel’s vocation at points where Israel as a people had failed to do so.

Does He Act Like a King?

But even people who are sympathetic to him find that he does not do what one would have thought a king would do. Just after his baptism and testing (in Luke’s version of the story) Jesus makes the claim to be one whom God has “anointed” (Lk 4:18). We have noted that the words he takes up from Isaiah 61 are a prophet’s testimony, but that prophet thus speaks as someone commissioned like a king (prophets were not usually anointed), with a kingly equipping (Yhwh’s spirit) and a kinglike vocation in relation to the afflicted. It is a king who proclaims amnesty and debt remission on coming to the throne, like modern election candidates promising tax cuts and other benefits.

In Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Jeremiah, for example, the “afflicted” or “poor” are the needy within the people, but in Isaiah 61 they are the people as a whole (cf. Is 41–54), and both usages appear in the Gospels. Jesus does teach about obligation to the poor within the community (e.g., Lk 14:13; 18:22; 19:8) but he does not especially focus his ministry on them. He is concerned for the mass of “ordinary” people. When he addresses the disciples as “you poor” (Lk 6:20), this does not designate them as materially impoverished. As far as we can tell, they were middle-class people—for instance, people who had a fishing business they could go back to or who worked as toll collectors. But Isaiah 40–66 addressed a whole community under the sovereignty of foreign overlords, unsure of Yhwh’s relationship with them and in no position to manifest Yhwh’s power and love to the world. The people as a whole were poor, captive, blind and oppressed. In Jesus’ day things are similar. In Isaiah 61, the year of release to benefit the needy within the community becomes an image for a release that benefits an entire needy community. In the manner of a king, then, as well as that of a prophet, Jesus declares that this moment of release has arrived. He is concerned for the needs of people’s spirits and bodies—not either rather than the other. He speaks “words of grace,” a message about God’s gracious act favoring this needy people (Lk 4:22).

But if the Anointed was to bring needy Israel release from its bondage, Jesus’ deeds do not look much like what one might have expected. So John asks, “Are you the one who was to come, or are we to look for another?” (Mt 11:2). Despite his taking up Isaiah 61, Jesus perhaps recognizes there is a question here. “Go tell John what you hear and see. Blind people see again and handicapped people walk. People with skin disease are cleansed and deaf people hear. Dead people are raised and the poor are given good news” (Mt 11:4–5). Jesus is not doing the kind of thing God had promised the anointed king would do (see e.g., Is 9:1–7; 11), but these facts imply evidence that Jesus is the means of other promises being fulfilled (see Is 25:6–8; 35:5–6; 56:3–5). His ministry does correspond to one that emerges from the latter part of Isaiah. This also coheres with the way Isaiah 40–55 transferred the title and the task of “anointed” from an Israelite king to a foreign one (see Is 44:24–45:7) and left Israel to focus on the kind of role that Jesus now sees as his own (cf. Is 42:1–9). As Cyrus’s early victories heralded God’s reigning that would free Judeans to go home, Jesus’ acts are signs that God is indeed about to begin reigning. His healings of individuals are a sign that he is bringing healing to the people as a whole.

Jesus’ words have three degrees of relationship with the First Testament—correspondence, overlap and novelty—and they indicate that his ministry forms a new whole that could not have been anticipated from the First Testament. A person who insisted on Jesus being a simple fulfillment of scriptural prophecies could easily be offended at his failure to correspond to them with precision, and Jesus declares a blessing on the person who resists that temptation (Mt 11:6). People have to work backwards from the fulfillment to the promises as well as forward from the promises to the fulfillment. It will be fun to see all this recur at Jesus’ final Appearing.

Is He Really a King Then?

When Jesus asks the disciples what they make of him (Mk 8:27), they report the common view that he is some kind of prophet returning, such as John, Elijah or Jeremiah. There is insight in this assessment, but it is evidently not the right answer. Jesus is indeed a prophetic herald announcing that Yhwh’s day or God’s assertion of sovereignty is coming (see, e.g., Mal 4:5; 2 Esdras 2:18). But Peter knows that Jesus is more than that. He is the very means of this sovereignty being asserted. He is the Messiah, the Anointed.

That confession also receives a mixed assessment. Yes, Jesus is the Anointed, and he knows it. He is the descendant of David destined to rule Israel on God’s behalf and destined to bring it freedom from its oppressors. Yet God’s words at his baptism gave new connotations to his being the Anointed. So his recognition as the Anointed by Peter is something to be welcomed, something not to be talked about and something to be qualified (see Mt 16:13–21). It is that confession that makes it possible and necessary for Jesus to introduce the disciples to the other side of God’s revelation to him at his baptism. He is the son who rules on behalf of his father, but he is also the son whom his father surrenders and the servant who suffers. “He has to go to Jerusalem and undergo much suffering from the elders, senior priests, and scholars, be killed, and be raised on the third day.” Jesus sees Satan’s activity in Peter’s attempt to stop him from walking this road (Mt 16:22; Mk 8:33).

In John, it is as the Anointed and as king of Israel that his first followers acknowledge Jesus (Jn 1:41, 49). But the opening of the Gospel has already portrayed him in quite other ways (Jn 1:1–18), and John the baptizer has designated him not as the Anointed but as God’s lamb (Jn 1:20, 29). In itself, “I am the good shepherd” (Jn 10:11) need not seem so different from saying “I am the Anointed,” though it sounds less like a claim to a defined role, and it can be taken in directions that are different from the ones attaching to the idea of the Anointed: “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (Jn 10:11).

It is not so much that Jesus is the Anointed but wishes to keep this a secret, nor is it that people misunderstand what the Anointed will do. It is that he is the Anointed but that this is not the most helpful designation. When asked, “Are you the Anointed?” he can hardly say no, but neither can he say an unequivocal yes without giving another false impression—yet his hearers know he has acknowledged that “Anointed” is a way to see him, so that in effect he has said yes (see Mt 26:63–67). To Pilate he does not deny being king of the Jews, but he does declare that his kingship “is not of/from this world” (Jn 18:33–36). He is hardly denying that his kingship has any implications for this world, including the political arrangements of which Pilate is the symbol. It would be devious for him to imply that Pilate need not worry about him because his kingship works only in the religious sphere. Herod was right to be troubled. Jesus does threaten the stability of the political arrangement in Palestine (cf. Jn 11:48). Jesus’ point is implicitly clarified by his further explanation, “if my kingship were of/from this world, my subjects would be fighting, so that I might not be surrendered to the Jews” (Jn 18:36). The presupposition of such action would be that Jesus’ kingship is established by worldly means—that it was “from this world.” But it is not, like Jesus himself (Jn 8:23). Conversely, any power Pilate has over him is not “from this world”: “It has been given you from above” (Jn 19:10–11). The religious leaders are right that Jesus’ kingship is one that will ultimately put Rome in its place (Jn 19:12), but this will not come about through his engaging in a struggle that uses its methods. Only to a Samarian woman does he unequivocally claim to be the Anointed (Jn 4:25–26)—perhaps because she would mean something different by the term, something more like a prophet or teacher.[1365]  That is how he wants Pilate to look at him. And that lets Pilate off the hook. A mere teacher is hardly a threat to the Empire (Jn 18:37–38).

In Conflict with the Leadership

There are indeed unexpected events to take place before Jesus is enthroned as king. By no means does the Gospel story unfold in the way one would have expected. In announcing the birth of her son, Gabriel had told Mary that “the Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the household of Jacob forever. There will be no end to his reign” (Lk 1:32–33). In the short term, Gabriel could hardly have been more wrong. Whereas David had managed skillfully to displace the previous leadership of Jacob’s household and win the people’s permanent allegiance, Jesus fails to do so. His leadership is naturally not welcomed by any of Israel’s current leaders, and he finds that as usual leadership exacts a terrible price. With hindsight one can see the hints that things will be much more complicated than one would have guessed. Pain and death stand interwoven with life and joy in Jesus’ story. We have noted that within weeks of his birth he is in danger of death, and his escape means the death of scores or hundreds of other babies. Even after Herod’s death, the child does not seem safe (Mt 2:22). Nearer the end of his life, his arrival in Jerusalem continues the ambiguity that characterizes the entire story. He comes as a king, as the son of David, in the manner of the king whose triumph Psalm 118 relates and of the king whose coming Zechariah 9:9 promises (Mt 21:4–9). Yet arriving on a donkey marks Jesus as humble rather than messianic. This story that is often called the triumphal entry “contains not a hint of triumph.”[1366]

In the First Testament, the senior priests, the elders and the scholars were often heroes. The senior priests were people such as Hilkiah, Joshua and Eliashib, who took a lead in restoring the temple, rebuilding it after the exile and rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. The elders were the informal moral leaders of the community. The scholars included people such as Baruch, who worked with Jeremiah, Levites who worked in the temple in Josiah’s day (2 Chron 34:13), Zadok in Nehemiah’s day, and most notably, Ezra.

The elders are now the guardians of tradition (Mk 7:3, 5). Some of them willingly approach Jesus to ask him to heal a centurion’s slave (Lk 7:3–5). A synagogue leader pleads with Jesus to bring his daughter back to life (Mk 5:21–43). The only person in the Synoptics whom Jesus loves is a rich young leader who has really sought to live God’s way but is held back by his wealth (Mk 10:17–22). When the scholars (who will include priests and laymen) first appear in Jesus’ story (Mt 2:4), they perhaps have a neutral position, and Jesus accepts their teaching that Elijah had to come before God’s reign would be implemented and offers them as models for the disciples’ future role (Mt 13:52; 17:10–11). There are individual scholars who respond to his teaching and are “not far away from God’s reign” (Mk 12:34)—unlike the body of people (see Is 46:12). There are Pharisees who invite him to dinner, apparently without hostility, though they end up earning rebuke (Lk 7:36; 11:37; 14:1), who warn him he is in danger, though they also do not receive a grateful response (Lk 13:31) and who recognize him and come out of the night to the light (Jn 3:19–21). Indeed, one of their leaders declares, “We know that you have come from God as a teacher, because no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him” (Jn 3:2). It is quite an acknowledgment, also remarkable for the “we.”

Admittedly God has apparently not yet quite brought about the turnaround for Nicodemus. It will be Jesus’ execution that brings it about (Jn 3:10–15). Thus his secret coming pairs with the action of Nicodemus and Joseph after Jesus’ death, when the two Pharisees see to Jesus’ burial (Jn 19:38–41). Although Nicodemus had originally come to Jesus under cover of darkness and Joseph had been a secret disciple, there would be no hiding this act of commitment after they have stood by the cross. They have surely entered God’s reign and have now begun to enjoy the life of the age to come—“eternal life” (Jn 3:15). The conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus foreshadows one between the church and the synagogue. It is possible for Jewish leaders to be attracted to Jesus, and they are invited to look harder at and think harder about the story of Jesus’ execution and to let God make that the means whereby interest and openness are turned into belief. People who are already believers are invited to be open to that rather than writing off the Jewish people.

But as Jesus expects, it is the senior priests, the elders and the scholars who engineer his arrest, trial and execution (Mk 9:31; 10:33; 14:1, 43, 53; 15:1, 31).

The Exalted “Son of Man”

Jesus has another approach to reformulating the question he addressed to Peter. His preferred way of speaking of his glory and authority is to refer to himself as that Son of Man who is destined to come riding on the clouds in power and glory—even if it will transpire that there are other unexpected events to take place first (Mk 8:38; 13:26; 14:62). “Son of Man” and its Greek equivalent sound stranger than the Hebrew and Aramaic phrases that they literally translate, which are simply poetic expressions for “human being.” In Ezekiel and the Psalms “son of man” suggests humanity in its humility and frailty over against God’s might and transcendence. Jesus makes a more explicit link with Daniel 7, where the “humanlike figure” stands for the Israelite people, though another Jewish work, Enoch, uses the term to refer to an individual superhuman figure. Peter and the woman who anoints Jesus, with their explicit or implicit theology of exaltation, are ultimately right. In due course “the Son of Man is to come in the glory of his father with his aides, and then he will render to each person in accordance with what they have done” (Mt 16:27), fulfilling Psalm 62:12.

Jesus’ exaltation begins with his resurrection. After his execution “God raised him, having freed him from the pains of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it” (Acts 2:24). That would have contradicted the kind of thing that God had said about David: “You will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your holy one see corruption” (Acts 2:27; cf. Ps 16:10). It would be out of keeping with God’s commitment to David that one of his descendants would sit on his throne (Acts 2:30).

God thus “exalted” Jesus. His execution involves a literal lifting up, and that is a sign that it actually implies a paradoxical form of metaphorical exaltation, but in another sense, after his execution Jesus is exalted to heaven from where he can bestow the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:33). Again that fits a “Davidic” promise, concerning God’s setting the Davidic king in a position of authority as God subordinates his enemies to him (Acts 2:34–35; cf. Ps 110:1). As Jesus himself puts it, he is given all authority in heaven and on earth, and he promises from now on to continue to be with his disciples as they go about making the nations his disciples (Mt 28:18–20). The pouring out of the Spirit is the evidence that Jesus is Lord and Anointed (Acts 2:36). But the bestowing of this particular gift fulfills a longstanding promise of God (Acts 1:4), one open to Jews all over the world as God fulfills his promise to summon them back to their land and back to their God (Acts 2:38–39). Joel’s version of that promise (Joel 2:28–32 [[1367]  3:1–5]) is presumably especially in mind (see Acts 2:16–21), but so perhaps are passages such as Isaiah 32:15 and Ezekiel 36:27. Indeed, talk of God’s promises recurs through Acts—promises of land, of a deliverer and of resurrection life for his people (Acts 7:5, 17; 13:23; 26:6–8). The promise of the Spirit is the beginning of this sequence, which asserts that God’s acts in the Anointed bring to completion what God had been doing over the centuries with Israel. Further, it brings to completion what God had been doing in John’s work. That initiated the fulfilling of God’s purpose, but as a result of the Spirit’s coming, what God goes on to do takes that much further (Acts 1:5, 22; 10:37; 13:24; 18:25; 19:3–4).

11.5 Jesus: Word Embodied

As herald, prophet and king, Jesus is a human figure. He has a genealogy like any other human being, is born in the ordinary human way, and develops in body and mind, in relationship with God and with other people (Lk 2:40, 52), like other human beings. As an adult, he experiences hunger, tiredness and temptation. He asks questions, engages in argument and changes his mind, shows surprise, love, compassion, joy, anger, distress, consternation and frustration. He weeps, prays, engages in agonized dialogue with God about his destiny and cries out to God in abandonment. He dies. After coming back to life, he makes a point of drawing attention to his continuing humanness: he is not a spirit but a being with flesh and bones that can be touched, with hands and feet that have particular evidences of continuity with the body that was crucified. He still eats (Lk 24:39–43). But there is more to him than that.

Divine Acts

While prostrating oneself to Jesus or calling him Lord does not imply worshiping him as if he were God, some of his followers do end up worshiping him as “my Lord and my God” (Jn 20:28). What marks Jesus as God as well as a human being?

At the beginning of the gospel story, there is nothing to suggest he is divine, but when his acts and deeds point people to that conclusion, they also suggest extra significance in the circumstances of his birth. Isaiah had promised an act of deliverance so spectacular that a girl who was probably at present unmarried, or at least childless, would commemorate the event by naming the baby she had not yet conceived “God-is-with-us.”[1368]  The way Jesus is conceived means “God is with us” in a whole new sense. His actual name, Jesus, is the same as Joshua’s, but Joshua’s name means “Yhwh is deliverance.” And the common name Joshua/Jesus does not designate the bearer himself as deliverer but points away from its bearer to God. In the case of this Joshua/Jesus, he himself is the deliverer. God is active in him and not merely through him.

Like Moses, Jesus exercises authority over the sea and the wind (Mt 8:27; 14:24–33). Like Moses and Elisha, he feeds people in miraculous ways—so profusely that there are twelve baskets of food left, enough for all twelve clans of Israel (Mt 14:15–21). Like Elisha, he manifests extraordinary knowledge (e.g., Mt 12:25; Jn 2:24–25) and does extravagant-looking tricks such as telling expert fishermen where to find an extraordinary catch of fish (Lk 5:1–11; Jn 21:1–11) or telling one of them that in the mouth of the first fish he catches he will find money to pay his temple dues (Mt 17:24–27). As Elijah and Elisha multiplied oil, he multiplies wine—quality wine too (Jn 2:1–12). He is like Moses, Elijah or Elisha, but he is more than they were. He goes beyond Moses in walking on the sea despite the strength of the wind (Jn 6:16–21). He behaves more like God at the Red Sea than like Moses (see Ps 77:19 [MT 20]; also Ps 29).[1369]  In manifesting sovereignty over creation, Jesus manifests a characteristic of divinity.[1370]

Like other exorcists (cf. Lk 11:19), he has authority over spirits, but he has a distinctive authority in this realm (Mk 1:27)—otherwise his exorcisms would not be an indication that God’s sovereignty had overtaken people (Lk 11:20). “Never has anything like this been seen in Israel,” the crowd comments (Mt 9:33). He can do exactly what the Father does. He can work on the sabbath, as God does (e.g., when God gives people life at their birth). He can bring people back to life as the Father does. He can judge people as the Father would. He is equal to the Father in power and authority. The New Testament hardly ever actually calls Jesus “God” because (in our terms) “God” would imply the first person of the Trinity and/or would imply that Jesus was a second God (cf. Mk 10:18; Eph 4:5–6). But it does suggest the divinity of Jesus “by describing his activities in the same way as it described the Father’s activities.”[1371]

When Moses and Elijah appear to talk with him, Peter offers to make shelters for the three figures, perhaps so that they can continue conversing more easily in the heat while sitting like Jonah under his qiqayon plant. But God interrupts with words that recall the words at Jesus’ baptism and implies that Peter is suggesting Jesus is no more significant than Moses or Elijah(!): “This is my son, the beloved, in whom I delight.” God goes on, “Listen to him” (Mt 17:5). He is more than the ultimate teacher or the ultimate prophet.

Divine Speech

Jesus speaks with a distinctive authority. “My teaching is not mine but his who sent me”; he does not speak “out of himself,” seeking his own glory, but “from God” (Jn 7:16–17). He thus claims to pass Jeremiah’s test for true prophecy (Jer 23:9–40). His capacity to declare ahead of time what will happen is something that will lead the disciples to believe that “I am” (Jn 13:19). The argument follows that in Isaiah 40–55, where a key evidence of Yhwh’s unique deity is the capacity to declare what will happen and then do it (e.g., Is 41:21–29). Jesus passes that test for deity.

Jesus’ words are spirit and life; they are the means of God’s giving their hearers new life (Jn 6:63). Isaiah 54:13 had promised that all Zion’s children would be taught by God, and Isaiah 55 had gone on to invite people to come and listen so as to receive water and wine and milk to drink, and bread to eat that would truly satisfy. Coming to Jesus, people are not merely taught by him, but taught by God (Jn 6:45). His teaching is even more spectacularly satisfying, like welling water and like the real bread from heaven (Jn 4:7–15; 6:27–35).[1372]

And his teaching is presented on his own authority. “He taught them like one who had authority and not like their scholars” (Mt 7:29). There is nothing wrong with the scholars’ not claiming an authority like Moses’—arguably that is a strength. Jesus does claim such authority. When the senior priests and elders ask who gave him his authority to teach in the temple courts, he declines to say—but implicitly claims an authority that comes from God (Mt 21:23–27). Before finally leaving the world, he claims that “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me”—presumably by God (Mt 28:18). His words thus have authority as commands, even during his ordinary life, whether addressed to the devil (Mt 4:10–11), to potential followers (Mt 4:18–22; 9:9), to illness (Mt 8:5–13), to demons (Mt 8:16), to natural elements (Mt 8:23–27) or to a dead man whom he summons back to life (Jn 5:25–29; 11:38–44). He has the authority to share his authority over unclean spirits (Mt 10:1) and his authority to forgive sins (Jn 20:23). Indeed, he does not merely speak like Moses or a prophet who receives dictation from God and passes it on to the people. Instead of saying, “Yhwh has said this,” he declares, “but I say to you.”

He is only a short way into his ministry before he is being accused of blasphemy, because he declares someone’s sins forgiven (Mk 2:7). Blasphemy can have a stronger or a weaker meaning. It can imply he behaves as if he were God or that he behaves in a way that trespasses onto God’s territory. When he is again accused of blasphemy at his trial, he has merely(!) implied that he is the Son of Man who will be seated at God’s right hand and will come with the clouds of heaven (Mk 14:62–64). Blasphemy involves slighting God by deed or act, and one can do that by associating oneself too closely with God as well as by usurping God’s place. Jesus turns the charge of blasphemy on his accusers (Mk 3:28–29). The irony of their charge is that it is actually they who are slighting God by the way they speak to and of Jesus, and by the way they treat him. But that strong response implies that the scholars are not far wrong in seeing his attitude as amounting to blasphemy in the stronger sense—unless, of course, he is more than a man. “You are making yourself God” (Jn 10:33). While a confidence in declaring someone’s sins forgiven could be simply another sign of his behaving as a prophet (cf. 2 Sam 12:13), the scholars imply something beyond that, perhaps a claim to the authority to forgive, not merely to declare forgiven.

At the beginning of the First Testament story God thought and then spoke (Prov 8:22–31; Gen 1). Thus “in the beginning was the word,” a word uttered within God and then a word uttered outwardly. “The word was with God, and the word was God” (Jn 1:1). The story of humanity is the story of God’s thought and speech in the world. “The darkness did not comprehend/overcome” the light that this brought (katalambanō, Jn 1:5), but the world did need to have the light explained and to have its resistance to that light overcome. So eventually in an attempt to achieve that, God’s insight and God’s word became a human being, without ceasing to be God’s insight and God’s word. Thus Jesus’ human birth is not the beginning of his story. His story goes back to a beginning before the beginning of Genesis 1. Although he appears after John the baptizer, John declares that “he was there before me” (Jn 1:30).

“Before Abraham was I am” (Jn 8:58). “I am” is the Septuagint’s rendering of ʾănî hûʾ, “I am the one,” the declaration of unrivaled deity made by Yhwh (e.g., Is 41:4; 43:10, 13). Jesus’ statement is therefore a scandalous one. It makes people step back and fall prostrate, appalled and expecting intervention from heaven, or momentarily submissive (Jn 18:5–6). When the religious leadership reckon that such language implies equality with God, they are not far wrong, as Jesus’ words elsewhere make clear (see Jn 5:18–30). Jesus did not come into being when conceived or born, but existed before that, and existed not, for example, as an angel but as God’s only Son. He already lived with God, at the Beginning before all beginnings. The Word thus made a dwelling among us for a while. The verb translated “dwell” recalls both God’s “dwelling” in the wilderness and the temple as God’s dwelling. It is localized and real. The fact that John goes on to speak of our seeing his “glory” makes the verb skēnoō also reminiscent of the Hebrew word for “dwell,” šākan, and the derived expression for God’s glory, šĕkînâ. It is the glory of God that dwelled in the wilderness sanctuary and in the temple, which no one saw with impunity, that people have now seen in the face of Christ (Jn 1:14).

Divine Qualities

Jesus’ acts and speech are demonstrations not merely of divine power but of God’s particular personal qualities. God is “compassionate and gracious, long-tempered, abundant in commitment and truth/steadfastness, keeping commitment for the thousandth [generation], carrying wrongdoing, rebellion and failure, yet certainly not acquitting, attending to parents’ wrongdoing on children and grandchildren to the third and fourth [generation]” (Ex 34:5–7). In line with that, John comments that “the word became flesh and stayed among us, and we saw his splendor, splendor like that of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth/faithfulness” (Jn 1:14). When a man has a son, the son inherits the honor of the father—especially if he is the father’s only son. Admittedly it is possible for a son to lose the honor that comes because he is his father’s son. A son will need to be like his father to keep his honor. This Son is just like his Father and shows that he is this Father’s Son. He manifests divine splendor by embodying divine grace and truthfulness. The Greek words (charis kai alētheia) are John’s equivalent to the Hebrew words for commitment and faithfulness (ḥesed weʾĕmet) in Yhwh’s classic self-definition.

Thus the principle on which Jesus operates is reaching out to people in giving and generosity. One of the first stories in Mark characterizes him as a person moved by compassion (splanchnizomai, Mk 1:41); it is the reason why he cleanses the man with a skin disease. The next story has Jesus telling a disabled man that his sins are forgiven (Mk 2:5), which is again a Godlike act in its instinct as well as in its power. “Compassion” also underlies his teaching of the crowds, his healing, his resuscitating a widow’s son, his providing people with food and his sending out his disciples to extend his work (Mt 9:36; 14:14; 15:32; 20:34; Mk 6:34; Lk 7:13). He has the motivation as well as the capacity to meet the needs he perceives—extravagantly. People do not always have to come and find him; he goes to find them. They do not just have to give themselves to him; he gives himself to them. Indeed, when they prove themselves undeserving and unresponsive—resisting him, letting him down, betraying him, crucifying him, deserting him—he continues to stay faithful to them. His coming was itself an expression of such divine faithfulness, and he continues to be the embodiment of it.

The First Testament has often affirmed the qualities of commitment and faithfulness in Yhwh, which characterize all Yhwh’s ways (e.g., Ps 25:10). When John 1:17 declares that grace and truthfulness came through Jesus Christ, it hardly implies that they came only through Jesus, but it does imply that Jesus is the supreme manifestation of these qualities. Moses’ Teaching was a gift of God and was surely an expression of those qualities, but God did not grant Moses’ request to see God’s splendor; in this sense Moses could not see God’s face (Ex 33:17–23). God’s commitment and faithfulness appear more spectacularly in Jesus, as God’s Son in whom God in person is manifest (Jn 1:18).[1373]  He comes as an expression of God’s extraordinary love (agapaō). If linguistically there is little in the Septuagint any more than in profane Greek to illumine this verb,[1374]  substantially it is simply the New Testament equivalent of ḥesed. By its nature ḥesed denotes an extraordinary expression of commitment. Jesus is a supreme expression of something that is extraordinary by nature.

At the same time, in keeping with the second part of that self-definition in Exodus 34 that speaks of attending to wrongdoing, through the First Testament story Yhwh has not simply been lying down, submitting to being trodden on, but has been continually confrontational. Jesus is similarly confrontational, and he encourages conflict rather than seeking to avoid it. At the beginning of his ministry he is acting provocatively rather than making concessions to his opponents’ principles, as he insists on publicly declaring someone forgiven or dining with toll collectors or making allowance for other interpretations of the sabbath command. He moves from appeal to evidence, to appeal to logic, to appeal to Scripture, eventually to anger at people’s stubbornness. The groups he antagonizes grow ever wider: the (local?) scholars, the scholarly Pharisees, the Pharisees in general, the Pharisees and the Herodians (Mk 2:1–3:6).[1375]  At the end, he is interfering violently with the arrangements for sacrifice in the temple (Mt 21:12–17). The system for selling animals is hardly inherently oppressive, and it was no doubt designed to facilitate the people’s worship, since it is more practical to buy pigeons in Jerusalem than to bring them from Galilee. But there are downsides to the arrangement, and a prophet’s task is to spot such downsides without troubling about practicalities. In Elijah’s or Josiah’s day it was the religious allegiance of the temple that needed reform; in Jesus’ day perhaps it is the power of money that needs overturning. But Jesus refuses to talk with the leadership about the source of his authority for his acts, tells them that God is going to destroy them and replace them, and tells the Sadducees they are completely misguided. He delights the crowds with the way he can expose the inadequacy of the scholars, declares them on the way to greater condemnation than most people and proclaims a poor widow’s small gift of greater worth than the offerings of people who give much more to God (Mk 11:27–12:44).

Neither the positive nor the confrontational characteristics that Jesus shows are wholly distinctive to God. Human beings are, after all, made in God’s image. Indeed, paradoxically the intensity of Jesus’ emotions sometimes makes him seem other than us rather than human like us, as is the case with Yhwh’s passion. As human beings we are called to be people who manifest mercy, grace, long temperedness, commitment, faithfulness and forgiveness, and also toughness with wrongdoing. God supremely manifests these, and Jesus mirrors God’s manifestation of them.

11.6 Divine Surrender

At first, Jesus’ submitting to execution looks like a denial of divinity. Given the definition of divinity (or rather, of the distinctive divine nature of Yhwh) in the First Testament, submitting to execution is actually an expression of Jesus’ sharing in the identity of Yhwh as the compassionate God who would go to the uttermost lengths for Israel but will not compromise over right and wrong.[1376]  Yhwh has been submitting to death through the First Testament story, persisting in a relationship that continually involved rejection and hurt, yet without ceasing to stand up for what is right. Yhwh has been paying the penalty for utilizing Israel in seeking to implement a plan to restore the world to what it was meant to be. Yhwh has been bearing the cost of a relationship with Israel. Jesus’ execution is the logical conclusion to that story of paying the penalty and bearing the cost of the world’s restoration.

Divine Surrender

“Surrender” or “deliver up” or “hand over” (paradidōmi) is a key verb in the Gospel story.[1377]  Initially it expresses good news: everything has been handed over to Jesus by his Father (Mt 11:27). But it is the handing over of John that triggers the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (Mk 1:14). Jesus comes to see that his exercise of that ministry will eventually lead to his own being handed over to human beings for execution (Mk 9:31)—to his people’s own leaders, and by them to Gentiles (Mk 10:33; cf. Mk 14:18, 21). So he is handed over to the chief priests by Judas (Mk 14:10–11, 41–44), by them to Pilate (Mk 15:1, 10), and by Pilate to the executioners (Mk 15:15). The disciples are to expect that this will be the pattern of their own experience (Mk 13:9–12; cf. Acts 8:3; 12:4; 15:26; 22:4; 27:1; 28:17). They will achieve things for God by following Jesus actively, but they will also achieve things for God by letting events happen to them (cf. 2 Cor 4:11).

No one can evade a share in responsibility for Jesus’ death. Jesus himself does not refer to the people but to its leadership, the “elders, leading priests, and scholars” who form the community’s governing body, the Sanhedrin. But the Jerusalem crowd as a whole eventually wants Jesus killed and agrees with Pilate that it will bear responsibility for his death (Mt 27:25). Jesus’ disciples share in responsibility, too, betraying him and abandoning him. Ordinary foreigners, in the persons of the governor’s soldiers, indulge in quite unnecessary humiliation of him. The foreign governor himself lacks the courage to make the morally right decision or the skill to manipulate the crowd to make it for him. And/or more paradoxically, he fails to recognize that Jesus is a genuine threat to the empire, so that politically it would be quite the right decision to execute him—but this is not the reason he does so. And/or he fails to recognize that it would be better to keep him alive because a dead hero is more of a problem than a live hero, and/or because a resurrected hero is even more of a problem, and/or because acquittal might even suggest the empire’s submission to Jesus and mean it finds a new future for itself. In a way he does the right thing for the wrong reason and also the wrong thing for the wrong reason.

Jesus’ surrender or betrayal to human hands (Mk 9:31) suggests we should not make too much of whose hands crucify him (e.g., whether they are Jewish or Gentile). The clash between Jesus and his killers is not merely a clash with either the Jewish people or the Roman Empire. They stand for humanity. Everyone is guilty. It is as well that Jesus asks his Father to forgive them on the grounds that they do not know what they are doing (Lk 23:34). Peter later makes clear that such mercy extends to the people’s rulers as well as the people themselves: they had surrendered God’s servant, “rejected the holy and righteous one” and “killed the source of life,” but they had not recognized that this was what they were doing (Acts 3:13–17).

Peter also expresses the point thus: Jesus, “handed over by the fixed purpose and foreknowledge of God—you crucified and killed by means of lawless people” (Acts 2:23). Jesus knew and God knew that the Jewish leaders would reject Jesus and that the nomikoi (law experts) would use the anomoi (lawless ones) to get rid of him. And God made that part of the plan, so that one could even speak of Jesus’ destiny as fixed before the world’s founding (1 Peter 1:20). Humanly speaking, Jesus’ rejection was designed to frustrate God’s purpose, but God had already seen how to make it part of the way whereby to bring about a renewing of Israel and a revelation to the world. The people act “in ignorance” in having Jesus killed, but this is God’s way of fulfilling the expectation announced through the prophets, that the Anointed would suffer (Acts 3:17–18). Foreign and Jewish leaders and ordinary people unite against Jesus “to do whatever your hand and plan had predetermined should happen” (Acts 4:27–28). “Not comprehending him, or the words of the prophets that are read every sabbath, they fulfilled them by condemning him” (Acts 13:27).

Each of Jesus’ statements about suffering ends with the declaration that he will be raised on the third day. There is no but introducing this last clause. The statements are not warnings followed by promises, negatives followed by positives. The whole sequence of events forms one coherent whole that Jesus initiates. At the same time, the declarations about suffering, death and resurrection are also linked by the passive nature of the experience Jesus expects. Events will begin with Jesus’ one initiative: he will go up to Jerusalem. There he will be surrendered, mocked, flogged, crucified, killed and raised. Although he initiates the sequence of events, he then surrenders control of them, overtly to human beings, but covertly to God. When he says “the Son of Man must undergo great suffering” (Mk 8:31) he indicates an awareness that this is the direction in which God’s will points. There are human agents of his surrender, but some allusions mention none, and given that he eventually asks why God has abandoned him, it seems that the hidden agent of his being handed over in, for example, Mark 9:31 is also God, who “did not spare his own son but delivered him up for us all” (Rom 8:32).

Divine Self-Giving

There is a divine necessity for Jesus to walk the way described. He has a cup to drink and a baptism to undergo (Mt 20:22; Mk 10:38). The cup is a cup of poison, like the one Jerusalem drank when it underwent Yhwh’s punishment at the hands of Babylon (e.g., Is 51:17; Jer 25:15–29). The cup sits in God’s hand (cf. Ps 75:8 [MT 9]) waiting for Jesus to drink it. His baptism likewise involves letting himself be drowned in the waters of death or be consumed by God’s fiery breath (Mt 3:11; cf., e.g., Is 4:4). But it is also true that Jesus “delivered himself up” for us (Eph 5:2, 25) and “delivered himself” to God (1 Peter 2:23).

After a Passover dinner with its reliving of the Passover event and its singing of Passover psalms, Jesus and his disciples go out of the city down into the Kidron Valley and up the hill covered in olive trees that faces the city. Jesus is grieved, distressed and agitated (Mk 14:33–34). He expresses himself in the terms of Psalm 42:6, “Why are you distressed, my soul, and agitated within me”—except that he omits the “Why.” Instead, to the words about distress he adds “even to death.” Nor does he go on to tell himself to hope in God because the time will come when he will give God thanks for delivering him. No doubt he still believes that, but this is a moment for expressing distress and agitation. He does not wish to die, and he asks whether he might avoid drinking the poison cup that confronts him. Yet he does not waver in his commitment to doing that if it is what his Father wants.

Why should it be necessary? One level of answer is that Scripture said it must be so (e.g., Mt 26:54). That does not merely imply that Scripture forecast certain events and that its forecasts must come true simply because they are forecasts—as if they could have been different, but this is what they happen to have been. It rather implies that there are theological and moral patterns in Scripture that lay out how God’s sovereign purpose needs to be implemented. And they are different from what one might have expected. God’s way of thinking differs from human ways of thinking about such matters (for instance, people might not expect God to be as merciful in relation to human wrongdoing, or as rigorous in confronting it, or as self-giving in handling its consequences). Jesus’ rebuke of a disciple for attacking the high priest’s slave is based on the illogicality of that act (Mt 26:52–54). If there is to be a battle, Jesus can easily win, as the deceiver pointed out in the wilderness. There are vast resources on which he can call. But it would be a Pyrrhic victory. He would not achieve what he is called and wants to achieve.

Jesus’ healing ministry has involved bearing people’s pain in the sense of taking it away (Mt 8:17). The talk of cup and baptism implies that he also bears it in the sense of sharing it with people and in the sense of bearing it in their stead. He must undergo something like Jerusalem’s experience when it went through the pain of attack and defeat. The necessity does not yet derive from a kind of historical or political inevitability. It is not too late for him to withdraw from a confrontational stance in relation to his people’s leadership. But he cannot do so because of his vocation or vision. It is these that impose a necessity on him. His going up to Jerusalem—where he will provoke a final showdown that will issue in his death and then be raised from the dead—will make a decisive contribution to the renewing of Israel that is his vocation and vision.

The moment in the Gethsemane garden when he is handed over to the power of sinful human beings is the moment when “the hour has come” (Mk 14:41)—not merely the hour of his arrest but the hour of decisive confrontation with sin. It looks like his executioners’ hour (Lk 22:53), but actually it is his hour. It is an hour he could have wished to avoid (Mk 14:35). It is the moment from which he might seek deliverance but will not, because it is the hour for which he has been living (Jn 12:27). It is an hour that means pain and scattering for them—and thus means he will be alone (Jn 16:21, 32). It is an hour that he has resisted people anticipating or forcing on him before it was due, and that was not allowed to arrive before it was due (Jn 2:4; 7:30; 8:20).

The reign of God is at hand when this hour is at hand, for this is the moment when “this world’s ruler is thrown out” (Jn 12:31). From his place of authority in the heavens, the devil has been ruling over the world, but Jesus’ ministry has already presaged his being cast out from there (Lk 10:18), and Jesus’ execution effects that (cf. also Rev 12:9–12). That is so because his acceptance of execution is an extraordinary demonstration of God’s love and of his own love, which will go to the very limits (Jn 13:1). It thus means his glorifying, as it draws the world to acknowledge him rather than the devil (Jn 12:23, 32). It is thus that the devil ceases to rule. It brings “the judgment of this world” (Jn 12:31). That judgment has been taking place through Jesus’ ministry. In their reaction to Jesus, people passed judgment on themselves. The cross brings to consummation the negative side to that judgment. In executing Jesus and thus pretending to pass judgment on him, the world passes judgment on itself.

His hour has come in a positive sense. The arrival of some Greeks indicates that “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (Jn 12:23; cf. Jn 17:1). It is the hour for him to go to the Father (Jn 13:1). He has an exodus to accomplish—an escape to enjoy (Lk 9:31). He knows that “the Father had given everything into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God” (Jn 13:3).

Divine Victim

Another way Jesus understands what is going on when he dies is by seeing it as a kind of sacrifice. Indeed, there are several ways of doing that.

As Jesus breaks the Passover bread he makes the extraordinary declaration, “This is my body” (Mt 26:26). The breaking is a sign of his imminent martyrdom. The varying longer readings of his words[1378]  make explicit that the breaking of his body is significant for the disciples—it is “for you.” It will benefit them in some way. The words concerning the cup explain more how that might be. Like breaking bread, sharing cups of wine was a regular feature of a Passover meal, but Jesus gives it more specific new significance. One might have expected some continuity with his earlier talk of a cup of poison that he has to drink, but he now takes the imagery of the cup in a different direction, making a link between the wine and blood, so that the wine becomes a parallel sign to the bread. At Passover, the blood of lambs that were killed for the feast was daubed on the door as a sign that this house belonged to Yhwh’s people. No more blood needed to be shed here. The people here were not liable to God’s punishment, because they did not belong to the nation that was insisting that Israel stay as its slaves rather than leaving to be Yhwh’s slaves. Drinking the cup is a gesture analogous to daubing one’s house with blood. It identifies the disciples with Jesus. Because the bread and the wine stand for his body and blood, partaking of them is the means of a new kind of oneness with Jesus. It makes Jesus part of our life in the most concrete way and makes us part of Jesus’ life (Jn 6:52–57).

Yet there is an ellipse in Jesus’ actual words about the wine and blood. He makes the link not with the Passover event but with the subsequent covenant-making at Sinai. “This is my covenant blood” or “this cup … is the new covenant by my blood” (Mt 26:28; Lk 22:20). At Sinai, Israel offered sacrifices in connection with the confirming of the relationship between Yhwh and the people and let themselves be spattered with blood as a sign that this relationship applied to them. Now Jesus’ martyrdom is a metaphorical sacrifice that reseals the relationship between God and Israel. At Sinai, the people brought whole offerings and fellowship offerings as signs of their commitment to Yhwh and their desire to be in relationship with Yhwh. Jesus’ death will be the ultimate act of commitment on his part, one with which Israel as a whole is invited to identify. Drinking the wine that stands for Jesus’ blood then has a parallel significance to the spattering of the blood at Sinai. It signifies their identification with that self-offering and their acceptance of their identity as the renewed people of Yhwh in a renewed covenant relationship.

There is another ellipse. Jesus adds that his blood is poured out “for the forgiveness of sins” (Mt 26:28). There is no close link between Passover and sin.[1379]  Passover concerned deliverance from bondage and oppression. Nor is there a strong link between sacrifice and sin. Sacrifice is a many-faceted concrete expression of worship—a symbolic expression of joy, fellowship and commitment, though also sometimes a symbolic means of dealing with wrongdoing. But Matthew 26:28 spells out the significance of Jesus’ death by seeing it as the means of implementing the new covenant of which Jeremiah 31:31–34 spoke. Centuries of history and the imminence of exile had brought into focus the problem of the sin of the people of God, and thus Jeremiah’s promise of a new covenant includes the promise “I will forgive their wrongdoing and will keep their sin in mind no more.” The purpose of the sin offering and the reparation offering is to offer sacramental cleansing and symbolic restitution in connection with the fact of sin. They thus link with forgiveness. So Jesus’ death is also a metaphorical sin offering or reparation offering that removes what causes defilement and compensates for wrong done.

Before going up to Jerusalem, he had said that “the Son of Man came … to give his life as a recompense for many” (Mk 10:45). The word lutron can mean ransom or atonement as well as recompense or reparation, but Isaiah 53 lies in the background of Jesus’ words, and there, at least, recompense is a key idea. Isaiah 53 envisages a servant of God undergoing persecution and possible death. Then, “if his person should lay down a reparation offering, he will see offspring.… By his knowledge my servant will show many that he is indeed faithful, because he bears their wrongdoing” (Is 53:10–11).[1380]  The servant has the opportunity to turn his martyrdom into a kind of offering to God as well as a witness to other people. This offering might compensate for his people’s rebelliousness and thus make a key contribution to the restoring of the relationship between them and God. It will be as if the affliction he experiences takes the place of theirs. And it might stimulate a breakthrough in insight for them—not least through the vindication that will follow.

Jesus is thus “the lamb of God that takes away the world’s sin” (Jn 1:29). In John’s words, too, the idea that Jesus was killed as the Passover lamb is combined with the idea that Jesus’ death brought about people’s forgiveness. In this case, the link may be with Isaiah 53:12, which speaks of Yhwh’s servant taking not only Israel’s sin but that of the “many.”[1381]  As a result of Jesus’ acceptance of martyrdom, people who identify with him are cleansed from their sin as if it were a form of defilement. His washing their feet is thus a sign of what his martyrdom will accomplish for them (Jn 13:10). Perhaps we should rather say it is a sign of what his execution will accomplish, because part of the sign is the humiliation involved in washing someone’s feet.

Divine Powerlessness

During the main years of his ministry Jesus is in control of his destiny. There are occasions when the crowds or the leadership want to arrest or kill him, but by some mysterious power he prevents them from doing so: “He passed through their midst and went on his way” (Lk 4:30). At the end he lays aside that power, hands over control and becomes the object of other people’s control—priests, Judas, soldiers, governor, crowd. It is a symbol of this process that, as we move on from Gethsemane through the scenes that follow, the camera moves further and further away from Jesus and focuses more on other people—Peter, a servant girl, Caiaphas, Pilate, Herod. Less and less can we look at Jesus’ face or know what he is thinking. Instead we look in the faces of Barabbas, the notorious criminal who gets released against all the odds, and Pilate, impressed by Jesus but unable to find a way to release him or to find the courage to do so. We look in the faces of the religious leaders, jealous of Jesus, the crowd, letting themselves be manipulated, and Pilate’s wife, troubled by a dream about him. Jesus all but disappears. He is heaved from one person to another. He is out of control, being acted on by forces working in different directions coming together to the same end.

In the garden he can walk out of the situation as he had at Nazareth when they tried to kill him, and maybe after his death he can bring himself back to life (so Jn 2:19 implies). But while he is on the cross, it is not clear he can come down. It is not only a moral impossibility but also a metaphysical one, as the movie Dogma presupposes. His true assumption of humanity makes it impossible. The only way he can get off the cross is if God takes him off. Hence the other aspect to the leaders’ mocking and the barb in their final comment, “He trusts in God: Let him deliver him now, if he wants to” (Mt 27:43). That leads into “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46). Only God can save him now, and God will not do so.

He can accept this because he knows that on a broader canvas he is in control—or rather, God is. There is a beneficent control around the maleficent one. “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father …?” (Mt 26:53). “From now on you will see the Son of Man …” (Mt 26:64). If things get out of control, this will be only on the small scale. In the wider context, things remain in control, and another way of telling the story brings that out (see Jn 18:1–19:37). Jesus goes to Gethsemane, where he knows Judas knows where to find him. He asks the soldiers who they are looking for. He asks the high priest questions. He asks Pilate questions. He declines to answer Pilate’s questions when it suits him. From his cross he commissions the disciple to whom he was closest to look after his mother. He decides when to die: the one who has been given up to others in the various ways we have noted finally decides when he will give up his life (Jn 19:30).

Understandings of the atonement sometimes infer (partly on the basis of speaking of God’s abandonment) that the cross is a moment when Father and Son are separated, when God’s face is turned away. There is indeed a sense in which the Father’s face is turned away. In the sense in which the psalms use that expression, the turning away of God’s face means that God does nothing. But in our own sense of the expression, there is no reason to reckon that this is so. Indeed, this is the moment when God is in Christ reconciling the world, and to that end the Father needs to be in association with the Son. The Father is watching as the Son suffers. The Father thus goes through a different form of suffering from the Son’s, but one that is just as real and at least as painful.

The bystanders’ misunderstanding of his cry from Psalm 22, which would be funny if the context did not exclude humor, highlights the complete isolation of his death—God abandons him to the human beings who have abandoned him.

Divine Glory

Becoming a human being is itself an act of self-humbling on Jesus’ part, yet simultaneously a revealing of God’s glory, a paradoxical kind of glorification (Jn 1:14; Phil 2:6–8).[1382]  More paradoxically, his execution is the occasion of his being glorified (Jn 12:23; 13:31; 17:1). While his subsequent resurrection is a more obvious form of glorifying, in due course it is the execution itself that wins people to glorify him—as the Greeks’ arrival hints (Jn 12:20–24). The form of his execution provides a symbol of that. Crucifixion means a literal lifting up on high. It was designed as a form of public shaming, but it will turn out to draw attention to Jesus in a different sense and to lead to people coming to believe in him (Jn 3:14–15). Jesus’ redefining of the significance of messiahship is thus accompanied by a redefining of glory and exaltation. His execution turns out to be a sign of how far God will go in self-giving for the sake of the world, and thus a means of drawing the world to acknowledge Jesus. It is when the seed dies that it multiplies. It is indeed Jesus’ execution that is his exaltation.

From noon till three darkness comes over the whole land (Mt 27:45)—or is it the whole earth? It is as if the world has gone back to its precreation state when darkness covered the face of the deep. In a parallel way, Jesus’ breathing out his breath at the end (Mt 27:50) is his own experience of the undoing of the moment of human creation when God breathed life into the first human beings. Or it is as if the dark Day of Yhwh has arrived, with the accompanying convulsions of earth shaking and rocks splitting (Mt 27:51; e.g., Amos 5:18; 8:9). Yet that turns into a sign of grace. Dead members of the holy people come out from their tombs (Mt 27:52–53). Jesus’ death is the moment when their bodies are raised from death to life. It is as if death overreaches itself in attempting to swallow Jesus, and it cannot even hold on to those it already possesses.

The convulsions extend from the world of God’s creation in general to the specifics of God’s relationship with Israel. As he dies, the temple veil tears into two (Mt 27:51). It is as if God is destroying the gift of the temple with its arrangements for worship, as if wishing to have nothing more to do with the system whose supervisors have organized Jesus’ execution. Or it is as if this act of destruction is another promise, that God is setting up a new arrangement that takes into account the wickedness of the supervisors of the old. This is a moment like the flood when a calamity brought by God will be followed by a new act of grace that recognizes human wickedness and takes it into account but refuses to be beaten by it.

After Jesus’ death, blood and (something that looks like) water flow from his side (Jn 19:34). The blood is a sign that a death has occurred. The water is a sign that Jesus’ death is a means of bringing people ever-flowing refreshment (cf. Jn 4:10–15; 7:37–39). And the convulsions that accompany Jesus’ dying open the eyes of the soldiers watching over him, who acknowledge that he is in truth what they had mockingly acknowledged him to be, “son of God” (Mk 15:39)—though it is difficult to be sure how much they mean. Jesus’ execution is the ultimate revelation of his love and thus of God’s own nature, and it is recognized as such by people; it is his execution that wins people to believe in him.

In another definition, the First Testament suggests that deity embraces power and commitment (Ps 62:11–12 [MT 12–13]). These have characterized Jesus’ ministry. They are eventually expressed in his double exaltation, the exaltation involved in his execution and that involved in his resurrection. When the risen Jesus appears to Thomas, his words are confrontational: “Put out your finger.… Put out your hand.… Do not be disbelieving but believing,” but they also express mercy or commitment—after all, Jesus could have left Thomas in his unbelief (Jn 20:27–28). And Thomas’s response suggests he heard them that way. When he confesses Jesus as Lord and God, it is because he sees that Jesus embodies in himself both execution and resurrection, both power and commitment.

11.7 The Community of the Risen Lord

Jesus did not come to create a community but to bring good news to an existent one. But he finds himself bringing into being a new community within the old, one that witnesses to God’s having raised him from death to a position of exaltation from which to pour out the Holy Spirit and eventually to judge the living and the dead (e.g., Acts 1:8; 2:32; 10:39–42).

Jesus Alive Again

To first appearances, the time from Friday evening to Sunday dawning is a time of rest, almost like God’s rest at the end of the work of creation—appropriately so, because it is the sabbath. When a person dies, their body goes to the physical grave to join earlier members of their family, and their inner person goes to a nonmaterial equivalent of the grave, joining other people in Sheol. It is a place where one can imagine conversation as new residents arrive—conversation that, for instance, underlines the way death puts the great in their place (Is 14:9–11). But it is also a place where proclamation can begin. Jesus goes to Sheol as he goes to the tomb, not as permanent resident but as short-term sojourner, to proclaim to the people of God there that they too are not to reside there forever. Thus “the good news was proclaimed even to the dead, so that although judged in the flesh like human beings, they might live in the spirit like God” (1 Peter 4:6).

There was always something natural about death, but also something odd about it. In taking the Pharisees’ side in an argument with the Sadducees about resurrection, Jesus indulged in a brilliant ad hominem argument involving the proposal that death could hardly be the end if someone was in relationship with God—how could such a relationship end in death (Mk 12:26–27)? But if the lives of people such as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob could hardly end in death, a fortiori how could Jesus’ life end in death? It is hardly possible that death should hold on to him. And it cannot. In turn, that is a promise that other people’s human life need not end in death. Jesus is the firstfruits of the resurrection of the entire humanity that is in relationship with him. And that speaks to the way death has become a problem by Jesus’ day, as it generally was not in First Testament times.

So where is Jesus now? The story has two sorts of answers. One is that he is on his way to Galilee (Mk 16:7). He is resuming his earthly life and doing what a Galilean would naturally do after the Passover (though not quite this early). He is going home and will see them there. Yet why is he not making the journey with them, as he had come there with them? And where was he when he was not in the tomb and had not yet appeared to the women? He is going off to be with his Father, like Enoch or Elijah (Jn 20:17). There is no body in the tomb; Jesus would not exist if he did not have a body, any more than any other human being would. And having a body is no bar to going into God’s presence, as the stories of Enoch and Elijah show. The Son of Man, too, has ascended to heaven, the place from which he came (Jn 3:13). But from time to time Jesus will now appear to his disciples, like Yhwh appearing in human form to Abraham, or Moses and Elijah appearing with Jesus. His human body is then recognizably the body he had before. He is no ghost, but a person of flesh and bones, still capable of eating (Lk 24:39–43). His raised body is not visibly transformed, as happened when he met with Moses and Elijah (Mk 9:2–4). It can do things other bodies cannot do (Jn 20:19, 26)—but then so it could before, and so could Elijah’s.

So it is as the already ascended Lord that he periodically appears during the weeks that follow his resurrection. Then there is a moment marked as the final departure. As a cloud brought God’s presence at Jesus’ glorification on the mountain (Lk 9:34) and as a cloud will bring the Son of Man at the End (Lk 21:27), so a cloud carries Jesus off for the last time (Acts 1:9). The supernatural bystanders’ comment implies that there is an ending here (Acts 1:11). There is a difference between the appearances that close the story of Jesus’ life and work and the subsequent experience of God in the Holy Spirit that is characteristic of Christian living. There is also a difference from the subsequent activity of Jesus in the life of the churches (e.g., Acts 3:16) and from Jesus’ appearing to unbelievers or believers from time to time. Although Paul links Jesus’ appearing to him with the resurrection appearances (1 Cor 15:8), Jesus appears to him from the heavens (Acts 9:3), where he now abides, so that he calls this a heavenly “vision” (Acts 26:19) or “revelation” (Gal 1:12, 16; cf. 1 Cor 14:6; 2 Cor 12:1, 7; Gal 2:2). These are not expressions used of Jesus’ resurrection appearances. That is not to compromise the objective reality of these experiences. When Jesus addresses Saul, other people hear something, even if they are not party to the whole event (Acts 9:7). Like Jesus and Saul, Jesus and Ananias also then have a conversation, in which Jesus answers Ananias’s objections to his commission like God dealing with Moses (Acts 9:10–16).

Taking Up Where Jesus Left Off

Restoring life to Jesus also restores life to his followers. Indeed, the beginnings of this new community are almost like those of a new creation. The God who breathed into the first human beings breathes onto the first brothers and sisters (Acts 1:14–16; 2:4). They live the life of a family, sharing assets, meals, worship and prayer (Acts 2:42–47; 4:32–37). Their life embodies the Torah’s vision for Israel with its generous concern for other members of the family, and it embodies Jesus’ own teaching better than they did in his lifetime, even as the community increases in numbers (cf. Acts 11:27–30).

The story of Jesus’ resurrection starts as an act of proclaiming. The Gospels do not describe the event itself. No one sees Jesus rise. When the earth shakes, as it did at Sinai, this seems to be not an aftershock of the resurrection but a preshock to the appearing of a divine aide who rolls back the stone that seals the tomb’s entrance. The women who have come to anoint the body can thus see that the tomb is empty. Jesus left it while it was still sealed. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He was raised. He is not here. Look at the place where he lay” (Mk 16:6). The first human proclaimers are thus the women who had cared about Jesus, who run to tell the men what the divine aide had said, “with awe and great joy” (Mt 28:8)—eventually (Mk 16:8).

The Gospels have related “all that Jesus began to do and teach” (Acts 1:1). Acts then relates what he continues to do and teach. Sent with the endowment of the Spirit as he was, his followers continue his work. Like him, they focus on the Jewish people; unlike him, they focus on Jerusalem. Like him, they play a regular part in the people’s worship life, but whereas he had been involved in the synagogues of Galilee, they are involved in the worship of the temple (e.g., Acts 2:42; 3:1). Like him, they proclaim and teach, especially in the temple precincts (Acts 5:20–21, 42; 8:4–5). They bring healing to people and raise people from death (Acts 3:1–10; 5:15–16; 8:7; 9:33–41; 14:8–10; 20:7–12; 28:8–9), even through their shadow or some material they have touched (Acts 5:15; 19:11–12). A disabled man not only walks but jumps, and praises God (Acts 3:8)—once again Isaiah 35:6 finds fulfillment (cf. Lk 7:22). They bring people freedom from unclean spirits/demons (Acts 5:16; 8:7; 16:18; cf. Acts 19:11–17). Great grace is on them, as it had been on Jesus (Acts 4:33; cf. Lk 2:40), and people react with the awe and the wonder with which they reacted to Jesus (Acts 2:43; 3:10; cf., e.g., Lk 4:36). Like him, they abandon any hesitation about associating with sinners—which now means Gentiles (Acts 10–11).

In the Gospels, “signs and wonders” had negative associations, but in Acts their significance is more mixed. Peter sees Jesus as having been attested by God by wonders and signs (Acts 2:22), and many are performed by the apostles and others (e.g., Acts 2:43). They have the resonances of the signs and wonders in Exodus. They can impress people and play a part in drawing people to faith in Jesus, though people can be more interested in the signs and wonders than in the gospel, sometimes in ways that rebound on them (e.g., Acts 8:4–24). Acts does not sharply distinguish the means God uses in working through the apostles from the methods that other people use in healing and exorcism (see, e.g., Acts 8:9–19; 9:17; 19:6, 11–14), nor does it imply that these experts were magicians or conjurers in the modern sense, operating by sleight of hand—any more than Jesus did (e.g., Lk 11:19).[1383]  The difference is rather that these experts are second rate and only semi-effective compared with the apostles, because they do not have access to the power of Jesus.

The apostles act “in/by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth” (e.g., Acts 4:10, 12, 30). The name stands for the person. One can be delivered by Jesus or delivered by Jesus’ name. To act in someone’s name implies acting on their behalf, as their legitimate representative; their authority lies behind what one does. Acting in/by Jesus’ name presupposes that he is alive, and the apostles’ proclamation presupposes that the risen Jesus is now the key to understanding the fulfillment of God’s purpose in the world. To Gentiles, then, the prospect of resurrection is a distinctive element in Paul’s message (Acts 17:18, 32). To Jews, it means he is taking a Pharisaic rather than a Sadducean stance, which he claims is the Jewish stance (Acts 23:6–10; 24:15–16, 21; 26:6–8; 28:20).

As the apostles’ work parallels that of Jesus, so does their experience as many ordinary people respond to their preaching; and in due course many priests come to believe (Acts 6:7). Initially, Pharisaic opposition is noticeably unmentioned—indeed, Gamaliel, a leading Pharisee, successfully urges moderation in handling the apostles (Acts 5:34–39), and a number of Pharisees become believers (Acts 15:5; 23:6).

The New Community

This infant community comprises the Twelve Jesus appointed, along with others, including his mother and brothers. It is now defined as a group of people who believe in Jesus. Believing in someone who has died is an odd idea, which points to the first significance of this belief: these are people who believe in Jesus as someone who came back to life.

They are a “company” (ochlos, e.g., Acts 1:15; 11:24, 26) who become a “great number” (plēthos), but they stay of one mind and spirit (Acts 4:32). Implicitly this great number includes people from varied backgrounds (see Acts 2:5–11), and their continuing increase (plēthunō, Acts 6:1) issues in some division, but they remain at peace despite the threat of division over Saul and the pressure of persecution (Acts 9:31). As a company of 120 (Acts 1:15) they can be a community with their own council.[1384]  They are also a “people” (laos), a term for Israel as the people of God: God has taken a people for his name from the Gentiles (Acts 15:14) and has a substantial people in Corinth (Acts 18:10). They are an “assembly” (ekklēsia). The word refers to Israel in the wilderness (Acts 7:38) and to a political assembly (Acts 19:32–41). In Christian usage it usually denotes a local congregation (e.g., Acts 11:22, 26), but it can denote the body of believers as a whole (most clearly in Acts 9:31). They are a “flock” (Acts 20:28), another First Testament term for Israel.

For both Jews and Gentiles, the implications of God’s raising Jesus from death are similar to those that issued from the proclamation of Jesus and John. People must repent in the sense of turning their thinking upside down, in particular their thinking about Jesus (e.g., Acts 2:38; 11:18; 17:30). They must turn to God or to the Lord, reorienting their lives as well as their thinking (e.g., Acts 3:19, 26; 15:3, 19; 26:18). Gentiles thus turn to the true God for the first time, while by implication Jews have turned away and must turn back. The most spectacular turning is Saul’s, though the word does not appear in any of the accounts of the event. That saves us from the misapprehension that at this moment Saul converts from Judaism to Christianity, any more than the other Jews who turn in Acts. Unwittingly (1 Tim 1:13) Saul has turned away from God, and this is the moment when Jesus turns him back.

People who repent and turn must be baptized. They are baptized into the Father’s name, but their baptism is also now on/in/into the name of Jesus, the Anointed, the Son of God, in whom people now believe and whose disciples they become (e.g., Acts 2:38; 4:4; 8:12–13). Their baptism has a new focus that John’s baptism and other baptisms did not have. And it is a baptism into the name of the Holy Spirit, whose baptism is symbolized by water baptism. Baptism is the new equivalent of circumcision as the sacrament of entry into the expanded Jewish community. It has the advantage over circumcision that women as well as men can receive it, and it is applied to entire households as the Spirit comes on a household as a whole (e.g., Acts 10:44–48; 16:15, 31–33)—women as well as men, servants as well as masters and perhaps children as well as adults.

Jews and Gentiles thus receive pardon or escape from punishment. Acts’ images for forgiveness are all more or less legal ones. It is like the remission of offenses, an escape from being found guilty for a crime despite the fact that one is guilty, the erasing of a record or an escape from punishment (e.g., Acts 2:38; 3:19; 13:38–39). Forgiveness is understood legally, as pardon, because the exalted Jesus is “the one designated by God as judge of living and dead,” who is thus in a position to pardon (Acts 10:42–43). The basis for forgiveness is thus Jesus’ authority. It lies in his resurrection rather than his death. Acts does not deal with the question of why he should want to undertake such an outrageous act as pardoning so many wrongdoers. It just assumes he does. Perhaps this is another way in which he shows himself to be divine, for it is instinctive for God to prefer pardoning to punishing.

Jews and Gentiles thus become Jesus’ “disciples” (e.g., Acts 6:1–7; 21:4, 16). The term does not appear in the opening chapters of Acts, but comes more frequently in connection with the spread of the gospel outside Jerusalem. It thus specifically applies to people who had not been Jesus’ direct disciples. The term is a sign of their full incorporation in the community—being born in the wrong place at the wrong time by no means condemns them to being second-class believers. It is also a sign of the nature of the community. It is a company of people who learn from Jesus.

The Jesus Party

The Christian faith starts off as a movement within Judaism. The believers in Jesus who form a family of brothers and sisters still view their fellow Jews as brothers and sisters, and are so viewed by them, till the very end of the story (e.g., Acts 2:37; 3:17; 7:2; 28:14–22).[1385]  With them they thus also view people such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and his sons, the Israelites in Egypt, at Sinai and in Joshua’s day as “our [common] ancestors” (pateres, e.g., Acts 3:13; 5:30; 7:11, 19, 38, 45). So the gospel goes first to their Jewish brothers and sisters who have committed themselves to coming to Jerusalem from all over the world, either for the festival or to live there (Acts 2).

The people who believe in Jesus are eventually called christianoi, “Anointed-people,” or “Nazoreans” (Acts 11:26; 24:5), people who are always going on about the alleged Anointed from Nazareth. They are a group who belong to “the way” (e.g., Acts 9:2). The First Testament lays out the way of God before people, and some scholars described Jesus as one who truly taught the way of God (Lk 20:21). The Jesus movement is one way of living for the God of the Jewish people, in accordance with its belief and its expectation of the resurrection (Acts 24:14–15). The christianoi are thus a “party” (hairesis) within Judaism, like the Pharisees and the Sadducees (Acts 5:17; 23:6–9; 24:5, 14; 26:5), and Saul’s conversion is a conversion from one party within Judaism to another.[1386]  The christianoi reject the Pharisees’ interpretation regarding matters of behavior, but agree with them regarding matters of belief such as resurrection, angels and spirits (cf. Acts 23:6–9). Their forms of leadership and government (e.g., elders, teachers) are similar to those of the rest of Judaism.

But the believers see what God has done in Jesus as so important that they describe their way as the way, and implicitly make an exclusive claim over against other groups who seek to follow God’s way—which will be one reason for their meeting with opposition (Acts 28:22). It also fits with Acts’ speaking of “the Jews” as if they were a separate group from the believers (e.g., Acts 9:22–23), though that form of speech also suggests the church’s eventual separation from the Jewish community. Peter’s Pentecost sermon already anticipates this. John and Jesus were concerned with the renewing of Israel as a whole, but only part of the people gave them a positive response, and Peter assumes that will continue. People must therefore “deliver themselves from this twisted generation” (Acts 2:40). Conversely, the regular Jewish leadership opposes them (Acts 4). Once again an aspect of Second Isaiah’s work reproduces itself. The prophet’s aim was to win the whole people, not merely to win a remnant, but when the people as a whole were unresponsive, for a while the prophet has to settle for a remnant.

In theory or in principle the Jesus party accept the authority of the Jewish leadership, but in practice they judge it to be misguided over a fundamental issue, the significance of Jesus, and they know they have to obey God rather than human authorities. This is not merely a matter of following their conscience but of following what they have seen and heard (Acts 4:19–20). The leadership is called to exercise oversight in the temple, but the apostles are called to teach about Jesus even though they have no official authority to do so, and the leadership apparently has no effective power to stop them.

Relating to Jewish Faith

So how do the believers relate to their Jewish faith? They continue to be identified with the worship of the temple, as does Paul (e.g., Acts 2:46; 3:1; 21:26; 22:17), and the apostles undertake a teaching and preaching role there (Acts 5:20–21, 42). But Stephen follows another strand in the Scriptures’ attitude to the temple in declaring it to be an institution with a fatal theological flaw (Acts 7:48–50), and he is accused of “saying things against this holy place,” namely that Jesus is going to destroy it (Acts 6:13–14).

Whereas a key issue in Jesus’ story was the contemporary application of Moses’ Teaching, the cause near the Pharisees’ hearts, initially the believers apparently do not antagonize anyone by sitting loose to Moses’ Teaching (cf. Acts 10:14). But people also accuse Stephen of “saying things against the law” and declaring that Jesus “is going to change the customs that Moses handed over to us” (Acts 6:13–14), though his speech gives fewer grounds for that charge. The accusation probably implies more what we would call a dispute about the interpretation of Moses’ Teaching and about the status of the traditions that had grown around Moses’ Teaching, though people arguing about the interpretation of Scripture often see their opponents as rejecting the authority of Scripture itself. The strict version of Moses’ Teaching puts a protective hedge round it to help people be sure of obeying God’s word properly, but this forms a burden to ordinary people from which they needed releasing by the grace of the gospel (e.g., Acts 15:10–11).

Are the believers to seek to live by Moses’ Teaching itself? The Jerusalem church as a whole does so with enthusiasm (Acts 21:20; cf. Acts 18:18; 21:21–26; 22:12), and there is no (theo)logical reason why it should not. Living by Moses’ Teaching was Israel’s response to God’s grace, and people do not cease to be part of Israel on believing in Jesus, so there is no reason to give up that response. But the way God’s people respond to God’s grace has changed before—most spectacularly, when the people were given Moses’ Teaching itself, which the ancestors did not have. It then saw many changes over the centuries as the content of what eventually became “Moses’ Teaching” developed into the form we know. It would not be surprising for the content of that response to change again after God’s climactic act of grace in Jesus that brings in the last days and leads to the pouring out of the Spirit on the Gentiles. Both Jesus’ own teaching and the teaching in the Epistles indicate that this indeed happens. Moses’ Teaching as a whole may thus seem to have lost the significance it previously had.

Specifically, are they to give up circumcision, Moses’ food regulations and similar aspects of Moses’ Teaching? Peter’s vision (Acts 10) pictures him abandoning the food regulations, and acceptance of Cornelius’s hospitality might have involved this, though Peter seems to take the vision parabolically rather than literally. But in due course this issue will arise, and Jerusalem believers understand Paul to have been encouraging Jewish believers to abandon circumcision and other Jewish practices (Acts 21:21). While nothing is inherently polluting (Mk 7:19; Rom 14:14), from the time Israel came into being God expected it to make such distinctions as a way of preserving its own distinctiveness and thus witnessing to its distinctive God. But this is a moment when God’s missional strategy is changing. The God who set up the boundary between Jewish people and the Gentile world is breaking it down. In this sense, Paul is indeed teaching against his people (Acts 21:28)—though of course he is seeking to enable his people to fulfill its destiny.

A Community with Problems

In its early days the community might well seem to be the embodiment of the Torah and of Jesus’ own teaching. But the story soon makes clear that it has its flaws and difficulties.

The first problem arises in Jerusalem, when Ananias and Sapphira only pretend to share sacrificially and Peter sees Satan behind their deception, as he had been behind Peter’s own attempt to sidetrack Jesus and Judas’s betrayal of Jesus—it is Satan’s one appearance in Acts (Acts 5:3). Each of these two people drop dead when Peter confronts them. The [1387]  assumes that the phobos that marks the community and the people who view it from outside has the character of fear as well as awe (Acts 5:5, 11; contrast 2:43). The story does not tell us how Peter knew about the deception, or whether his confrontation caused their death (and if so, whether he was at fault), or whether God did. It does make clear that membership of this community of believers is scary business. It recalls stories such as the deaths of Aaron’s sons or of Achan or of Uzzah, which make later readers glad not to have lived in those exciting but dangerous days. And it implies that the congregation has an awesome holiness similar to the wilderness tent or the covenant chest.

The birth of a believing community in Samaria is marked similarly when one member wants to buy the capacity to convey the Holy Spirit to people (Acts 8:19). Peter expects Simon, too, to pay for this enormity with his death, but urges him to repent and to see whether he can find forgiveness (Acts 8:20–24), and perhaps we are to assume that his words to Ananias and Sapphira implicitly allowed for such possibilities, in the manner of a prophet such as Jonah addressing Nineveh.

Problems are not limited to one or two individuals. The community comprises two main ethnic or cultural groups, Jews from a traditional Hebrew- (or Aramaic-)speaking background and Jews more at home with the international Greek-speaking world. The former will be people who have always lived in Palestine and will be believers who are “full” Jews (that is, the men will have been circumcised), while the latter will also include Jews who have returned from abroad and men who have not been circumcised. Both groups may include people who keep the Pharisees’ rule of life as well as people who do not, and people who continue to value the religious life of the temple as well as people who are becoming more distanced from it. Holding together such groups, the church as a whole is characterized by unity and diversity, and by tension and efforts at resolution. Acts itself seems relaxed about the inevitable tensions; the point is to do something about them and let God work through them. The Greek-speaking community comes to feel its widows are not being treated fairly in the distribution of resources (Acts 6:1)—it is probably a minority within the church, perhaps looked down on as compromised and dangerous (cf. Phil 3:5). So the apostles get the church as a whole to appoint people to oversee this distribution. Their names are all Greek, and most, at least, are presumably members of the community that feels aggrieved. If they are already leaders in the Greek-speaking church (they are “full of the Spirit and of wisdom”), it would be natural that they are then the means whereby the gospel advances into Judea and Samaria, then to Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, and also comes to be shared with Gentiles.

Another tension emerges in Acts 15. Some believing Pharisees expect Gentile believers to live by Moses’ Teaching—which was evidently not the Antioch church’s stance. This leads to fierce argument in the Antioch church, which commissions Paul and Barnabas to go and discuss the question with the apostles and elders. More debate follows, though we hear only the arguments of the radical party represented by Peter and Paul, and the compromise proposed by James that has no explicit logic but reflects the complexity of the situation and the strength of feeling on both sides (Acts 15:19–20). Thus Antioch and Jerusalem manage to stay in step over the question rather than dividing into two denominations. The compromise does not solve the problem in Jerusalem, where there continues to be sharp division over Moses’ Teaching and thus over Paul’s attitude to it—actual and alleged (see Acts 21:17–26).

During their time in Turkey, John Mark had left Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13:13), and Paul is now unwilling to take him with them on their return visit to the area, though Barnabas is keen to do so. Thus Paul and Barnabas part company, the one going to Turkey, the other to Cyprus (Acts 15:36–40). It would not be surprising if the split was encouraged by their conflict about eating with Gentiles (Gal 2:11–14). No doubt both disagreements reflected Barnabas’s caring nature and Paul’s toughness. Paul later voices the expectation that within a congregation such as that at Ephesus, and presumably others, there will arise people who distort the truth. It is important that the elders are on the watch for that (Acts 20:28–31).

Repeating Jesus’ Experience

When Peter and John heal the handicapped man (Acts 3), the council acknowledges that they have performed a remarkable “sign” (Acts 4:16)—what they asked of Jesus. But a key issue now is the fact that the apostles are “proclaiming resurrection from the dead in Jesus” (Acts 4:2). The senior priests, temple officials, rulers, elders and Sadducees (presumably the impetus comes especially from the Sadducees) thus have Peter and John arrested and appearing before a council. Jesus had warned that they would be arrested and had promised that the Holy Spirit would then give them the words to say, and the Spirit does (Acts 4:8). Like Jesus, they speak and argue with puzzling force and confidence despite lacking theological education—and it seems no coincidence that they had spent time with him (Acts 4:13). Like Jesus, they manifest an assurance and a sense of being in control, and they are of one mind and spirit, while the people who theoretically hold power seem laughably perplexed, frustrated and disunited.

Later the Sadducees again have the apostles arrested, but Gamaliel, a leading Pharisee, intercedes for them (Acts 5:17–42). There is no such break for Stephen when he is arrested, accused and killed with the compliance of Gamaliel’s best-known pupil (Acts 6:9–8:1)—though Jesus soon turns him round. Stephen is more open to an accusation that brings the Pharisees out against him. His death corresponds to that of Jesus, even to his dying prayer (Acts 7:60) and to his burial by devout Jews rather than by disciples (Acts 8:2). He himself sees the killing of Jesus as the logical climax in a story of willful resistance to God that runs through his people’s story and surfaces in the stories of Joseph, Moses, the prophets—and maybe even David, who wanted to build a house for God despite the evident theological incoherence of the idea.

Stephen’s death is the beginning of a broader persecution that makes believers flee from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria, and thus proclaim the good news there (Acts 8:1–5), though any scattering of the Jerusalem church must have been temporary; there is a body of disciples or believers there for Saul to meet (Acts 9:26–30). Such experience of trouble is now part of the “natural” experience of the church, symbolized by the way the word for witness, martus, generates the word martyr. This was not so for Israel in the First Testament; generally, when it was in trouble with other peoples, this was deserved. But it was so for prophets (cf. Acts 7:52), and suffering is part of the church’s destiny by virtue of its forming a prophetic entity within Israel. But the pattern of Jesus’ story repeats itself; human resistance to God facilitates the fulfillment of God’s purpose in encouraging the gospel’s advance. Later, Herod Agrippa has James killed and arrests Peter with a view to executing him, but his failure to kill Peter, and his own death, contrast with the gospel’s triumphant progress. The Lord may allow some odd events but proves able to intervene at the moments he chooses and to see that the broad line of events fulfills his purpose.

When Jesus appears to Saul in order to draft him, he describes him as “an instrument of choice for me, to take my name before Gentiles and kings and Israelites,” and adds, “because I will show him the kind of things he has to suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:15–16). After almost dying of stoning, Paul reminds believers in Pisidian Antioch that “it is through many persecutions that we must enter God’s reign” (Acts 14:19, 22). In Philippi he is flogged and jailed (Acts 16:19–24). He knows that imprisonment and persecution await him in Jerusalem, but he also knows he has to proceed with the journey of testimony that the Holy Spirit keeps guiding him on (Acts 20:22–24). He warns the Ephesian congregation that wolves will attack the church as a whole and not just its leadership (Acts 20:29). His commitment to going to Jerusalem despite the trouble that awaits him there and the account of the attacks on his life as he is falsely accused and tossed between Jews and Romans repeats the experience of Jesus without issuing in actual execution. The triumph of God’s message and the suffering of its messengers go hand in hand.[1388]  But the trouble that eventually leads to his claiming the right to appear before the Roman emperor leads to his living in Rome, apparently with freedom, “proclaiming God’s sovereignty and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ quite openly, unhindered” (Acts 28:30–31).

11.8 Jesus: Light of the World

The First Testament story begins with God’s creating the whole world. It thus always has the world as its horizon. The Second Testament affirms that Jesus is the light of the world and not just the light of Israel. “What is this movement, which we now call Christianity? It is the extension of Israel, … of Israel’s commission to be a light to the Gentiles.”[1389]

Jesus’ genealogies hint at his significance for the whole world. His appearing is part of a process unfolding since Abraham, through whom God was aiming to bring blessing to the world (cf. Mt 1:1–17) and thus to fulfill the aim of the original creation (cf. Lk 3:23–38). Jesus’ foremothers include notable foreigners, who give him a physical link to the world outside Israel. Among the first people to respond to his birth are foreign scholars (Mt 2:1–2). Second Isaiah had envisioned the nations coming to see what God had done for Israel and responding to it, and Simeon declares that through him God is bringing about deliverance “in the presence of all the peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles” as well as “glory for your people Israel” (Lk 2:30–32). John the baptizer prepares the way whereby “all flesh shall see God’s deliverance” (Lk 3:6; cf. Is 40:5).

You Are the Light of the World

Jesus himself focuses on the Jewish people and rarely concerns himself with the wider world, though like the First Testament he has the world as his horizon. That becomes explicit from time to time. While the first person responding to his ministry is bidden to give testimony to Israel’s own priesthood (Mt 8:1–4), the second person is a Roman centurion of astonishing faith who heralds a pattern that will recur (Mt 8:1–13). In foreshadowing the offering of the good news to Gentiles as well as Jews, he also anticipates its receiving a better reception there. “The children of the reign,” its legitimate heirs, “will be thrown into outer darkness,” where “there will be crying and grinding of teeth” as people realize how stupid they have been (Mt 8:12). The First Testament often warns of the loss that comes from failing to respond to God’s summons, but never in terms as hellish as the ones Jesus uses.

When some Greeks show up wanting to see Jesus, this is a sign: “The hour has come when the Son of Man should be glorified” (Jn 12:23). It is the moment when Jesus is going to draw all humanity but when he should accept the Jewish leaders’ rejection of him and stop trying to win their adherence (Jn 12:32, 36–40). God remains committed to the Jewish people, yet is abandoning this generation. Jesus is looking to the wider world. Perhaps the intention to do that lies behind God’s inspiring his rejection (cf. Rom 9–11). Not that this implies Gentiles will respond in a way that Jews do not. When he confronts demons on the other side of the lake, apparently in Gentile territory where the demons do not expect to be troubled yet, in general the inhabitants of the area do not respond like the Roman centurion or the Phoenician woman (Mt 8:28–34). Jesus receives a mixed reception in the Gentile world that mirrors his reception in the Jewish world. In this respect, too, he foreshadows his followers’ experience.

The community that acknowledges the risen Jesus is commissioned to proclaim this Jesus to the nations, not just to the Jewish people. Judaism was always open to people coming to know its God, and on the completion of his ministry, in Jerusalem Jesus bids his disciples proclaim repentance and forgiveness to all nations (Lk 24:47–48), while in Galilee he gives a commission to the eleven disciples that extends to all the world (Mt 28:16). “All authority in heaven and on earth is given to me,” he claims (Mt 28:18). The appropriate response is to become his disciple, and the task of his present disciples is to go and disciple the nations. His commission thus corresponds to his own action—it requires proclaiming, teaching and making disciples—but requires the extension of this beyond the Jewish people. After all, the apostles know the nations are waiting for Yhwh’s teaching and that Yhwh intends this teaching to reach them (e.g., Is 2:2–4; 42:1–4). Gentile Galilee is again a suggestive place for this to begin (cf. Acts 10:37). So is Jerusalem, as the place Isaiah 2 designated in this connection. The teaching of which Isaiah spoke is now supplemented or refracted through Jesus’ own teaching. The Sermon on the Mount as well as the revelation on Sinai and the teaching of the Prophets is now to shape the life of the nations. As Yhwh promised to be with Jacob-Israel as servant (Is 41:8–10), so Jesus promises to be with the disciples. There is no reason to hesitate. From there the witness will go to Judea and Samaria and then to the furthest corners of the earth (Acts 1:8). Jesus has already subverted the distinction between food that may be eaten and food that defiles (Mk 7:19), and that will facilitate the sharing of the gospel with Gentiles (see Acts 10).

Pouring Out the Spirit

At the next festival after the Passover when Jesus was killed, people from all over the world gather in Jerusalem and are present to witness extraordinary experiences on the part of some members of the Jewish people. John had spoken of a baptism in spirit and fire, Jesus has been overwhelmed by God’s wind and God’s fire, and the apostles now go through an experience in which the threatening aspect of these realities is subsumed under the encouraging. Instead of a stormlike roaring wind sweeping them away and flamelike tongues consuming them, they find themselves “filled with the Holy Spirit,” bursting with something that was not there before and cannot be explained as having its origin within themselves.

When the Spirit first comes, the disciples find themselves speaking in other languages—so realistically that Jews from other nations hear them speaking in their own language (Acts 2:11). Although Peter interprets what is going on with the help of Joel’s promise concerning Yhwh’s spirit, the event differs markedly from that, as it differs from the threatening declaration of John the baptizer. Joel speaks of no fiery tongues or foreign languages (though he mentions fire), no witnessing to God’s powerful acts and no speaking to Jews from all over the world. Pentecost sees no prophecy, visions, dreams or portents on the part of sons and daughters, old and young, slave and free, though some of these features appear later in Acts. This is another typical piece of prophetic fulfillment where there is overlap rather than identity between word and event. The event both falls short of the word and exceeds it. Further, there are other prophecies that the event fulfills—not of the nations flocking to Jerusalem (Is 2) or Israel becoming a light to the nations (Is 42:6), for these are not foreigners, but of a gathering of Jews scattered over the world (e.g., Is 49). While the apostles will witness to the nations and the gospel will spread from Jerusalem to Rome, Pentecost makes clear that God has not forgotten scattered Israel.

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). There is an integral relationship between the pouring out of the Spirit and the spreading of the message about Jesus, and in particular its spread beyond the Jewish people.

To modern readers it is obvious that Acts 1:8 implies a Gentile mission, but to Jesus’ hearers this might not be obvious. It need imply only a witness to Jews all over the world, or some witness that would be supernaturally achieved rather than organized by the disciples. It need not imply a project they must undertake. As it turns out, witnessing to Gentiles comes about by a series of accidents. It is encouraged by the persecution begun by Stephen’s death, which scatters believers, and the gospel with them, through Judea and Samaria (not necessarily in that order), and to Phoenicia, Cyprus and Syria (Acts 8:1–40; 9:19–22, 29–43; 11:19).

Thus James comments, “God intervened to take from the Gentiles a people for his name.” They are thus a people over whom God’s name is called (Acts 15:14–17, quoting Amos 9:11–12). God takes this people as once God took hold of Abraham in Babylon or took hold of Israel as a people to be a special possession, known by Yhwh’s name (e.g., Ex 6:7; Deut 4:34). The context shows that James does not mean the new people replaces the old people, though he leaves unexplained the relation between the old and the new. The pronouncing of God’s name over them is an indication that they belong to God. This new people is also taken from the nations, in a new sense, but repeating that earlier pattern. They are given an inheritance among the people who are made holy (Acts 20:32).

They are Jesus’ “holy ones” (Acts 9:13, 32, 41; 26:10), people who have been made holy in the sense of set apart for God and brought into association with God (Acts 20:32). The congregation of Israel as a whole is Yhwh’s holy ones (e.g., Ps 34:9 [[1390]  10]), but the greatest concentration of allusion to the holy ones comes in Daniel 7, so the phrase links the believers with the Son of Man associated with the holy ones. It thus designates them as the people destined to reign with Christ (cf. 1 Cor 6:2; 1 Thess 3:13). They are people who call on his name (Acts 9:14, 21). Israel is a people that calls on Yhwh’s name, that is, it recognizes that Yhwh is its sole source for help in trouble, and the only such resource it needs (e.g., Ps 18:3, 6 [MT 5, 8]; 50:15; 145:18; Is 55:6). The believers are people who recognize that Jesus is the one upon whom to call for deliverance (Acts 2:21, cf. Joel 2:32), that is, for cleansing (Acts 22:16).

Relating to Gentiles

How do believers remain loyal to their Jewish commitment to God as they go about sharing the message about Jesus with Gentiles?

Do they avoid eating with Gentiles, as an expression of their commitment to living safely? At an early stage in the sharing of the message with Gentiles, Peter is told to abandon such carefulness (diakrinomai, Acts 10:20; 11:12; 15:9). The believing community is not one to be divided into groups that cannot break bread together. Admittedly Peter apparently later compromised on this question (cf. Gal 2:1–14).

Do they require male Gentile believers to be circumcised? If the good news means Gentiles may now share in the promises given to Israel, one might expect that they would receive the sign of the covenant promise. But the people who press the need for circumcision, and Peter himself, see circumcision as a kind of synecdoche for a commitment to keeping the whole of Moses’ Teaching (Acts 15:1–11). That compromises God’s evident way of relating to the Gentiles by grace and faith. Paul takes the same line (Gal 5:3), though he is prepared to be contextually flexible over the question (Acts 16:1–3).

Do they expect Gentile believers to live by other aspects of Moses’ wondrous Teaching (cf. Deut 4:8; Acts 15:5)? This raises the same problem. It can give the impression that people have to keep Moses’ Teaching if they are to be delivered from condemnation at the End. The good news about Jesus reasserts the fact that this deliverance comes by God’s grace, not on the basis of human deeds, whether you are Jewish or Gentile, and the gift of the Holy Spirit to Gentiles shows that this is the basis on which God is operating. The other problem is the fact that as interpreted, Moses’ Teaching has become a burden to many people (e.g., Lk 11:46). So it should hardly be loaded onto anyone else (Acts 15:8–11).

Do they distinguish between aspects of Moses’ Teaching that Gentiles should follow and aspects they need not? That was the conclusion of the consultation reported in Acts 15. It determines that they should just be asked to commit themselves to abstaining from meat from animals killed with the accompaniment of prayer to other gods (as the meat in the market would regularly have been) and from wine from which a libation had been poured to other gods (as regularly happened at a dinner party). They are also to abstain from sexual relationships forbidden by Moses’ Teaching (and/or from the sexual license that could characterize such parties, where the wine flowed), from the meat of animals that had not been slaughtered so that the blood drained, and from consuming blood itself. These expectations have some overlap with those laid on humanity as a whole after the flood (Gen 9:1–7) and with the instructions in Leviticus 17–18 that apply to resident aliens (i.e., Gentiles) as well as Israelites. And they safeguard some areas that Jews in pagan contexts felt especially strongly about and avoided forcing Jewish believers either to give up eating with Gentile believers or to go against their convictions (cf. Rom 14–15; 1 Cor 8–10).

Do they maintain the Jewish commitment to acknowledging only God as God? The message about the one God, the creator of all, is part of the gospel message in the Gentile world (Acts 14:11–18; 17:16–34). Yet what about the relationship between the one God and the human Jesus who embodies that God? The question is raised sharply by the way Acts speaks with systematic ambiguity about “the Lord.” In scriptural quotations, the passages will have originally referred to Yhwh, but they may now be taken to refer to Jesus (e.g., Acts 2:20–21). Certainly by the end of Peter’s first sermon, “the Lord” is the exalted Jesus (Acts 2:36). In due course, acknowledgment of Jesus will require a radical rethinking of the nature of belief in the one Yhwh.[1391]

Turning to Gentiles

The fact that Paul became the apostle to the Gentiles makes it obvious to the modern reader that Jesus’ appearing to him has this in mind. Yet Paul apparently took some time to work this out from his being commissioned to bring Jesus’ name before Gentiles and kings or to be a witness to the entire world (Acts 9:15; 22:15). He does speak of being sent to open the eyes of the Gentiles, but he also sees Jesus as proclaiming light to the Gentiles (Acts 26:17–18, 23), so we must again be wary of reading later events back into these Isaianic phrases. It is not even clear that the preaching in Antioch (Acts 11:20) targets Gentiles,[1392]  but Antioch is the Los Angeles of the Eastern Mediterranean, a huge, cosmopolitan port city. It would not be surprising if the Jewish community there was particularly Hellenized and also incorporated many full converts and even more other people who worship the God of Israel without “converting.” The church there would thus be more dominated by Greek than the church in Jerusalem. All this would take the preaching of the gospel one further step toward the Gentile world.

Paul and Barnabas’s further proclamation in Cyprus and their journey on to Turkey (Acts 13) again focus on the synagogues and thus reach Jews and converts but also, incidentally, thereby reach “Greeks,” that is, the substantial numbers of people who worship the God of Israel but are not full converts. Sometimes they get a better response among people who have no contact with the synagogue than they get in the synagogue itself (see Acts 13–14), encouraging them to focus more on Gentiles in keeping with God’s vision in Isaiah 49. But things work out in the opposite way elsewhere (Acts 16). It is not simply Jewish rejection of the message that leads to its proclamation to Gentiles. Further, Paul continues to start in each town at the synagogue. “To the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Rom 1:16) is a continuing pattern, not a once-for-all move (cf. Rom 9). And it is not the case that all Jews respond negatively and all Gentiles positively. Paul can get in big trouble in Gentile communities. Both Jews and Greeks reject Paul’s gospel, for different reasons (1 Cor 1:22–23). So a number of patterns occur. Where there is a Jewish community, Paul begins there, and may win substantial success among born Jews, converts and Gentile worshipers, or moderate success, or no success at all; and one way or another he also makes his presence felt in the Gentile community and wins some success or experiences general rejection. In both communities, quite often opposition from the unbelieving Jewish community turns initial success into violent opposition.

We have seen that Jesus’ story had to unfold as it did, dei (“it is necessary”) being a significant word (e.g., Mk 8:31), implausible and unpredictable though it seemed. The rejection of the prophets had to continue in the rejection of Jesus. The story from Jerusalem to Rome is part of the same divine necessity and works out the same divine purpose as the story from Bethlehem and Galilee to Jerusalem. God’s promise to Abraham was that “in your posterity all earth’s families will be blessed,” and God sent Jesus to the Jewish people “first” (Acts 3:25–26), but that is not the end of God’s intention. The point is even more explicit in Peter’s words at the meeting in Jerusalem described in Acts 15. God’s object in commandeering Saul the Pharisee and turning him into an apostle is indeed that the good news owed to the Jewish people “first” can also be taken elsewhere (Acts 13:46–47; 26:16–18). Thus the gospel goes to the center of the world (Acts 28:30–31).

Acts then ends as it began[1393]  with the proclaiming of God’s coming reign (Acts 28:31; cf. Acts 1:3; 8:12), which Paul has consistently proclaimed (Acts 14:22; 19:8; 20:25; 28:23) with the courageous openness that the Jerusalem apostles showed at the beginning (Acts 4:13, 29, 31) and that Paul has always showed (Acts 9:27, 28; 13:46; 14:3; 19:8; 26:26). He experiences none of the restraint that Jews and Gentiles previously sought to place on him. But in another sense, Acts ends a long way from where it began. Its beginning set up the expectation that the news about Jesus should be proclaimed through the world, and the end denotes that this has come about.

In the modern age, countries such as Britain and America have seen themselves as the places from which the gospel goes out to the world, but in reality Galilee and Jerusalem are the only places where the gospel is at home and from where it has gone out. Britain and America have the same status as Korea and Kenya in this connection. It is important that the Jerusalem church directs itself to the world and that the church throughout the world sees itself as birthed by the Jerusalem church. Thus Barnabas takes action to enable Saul to be recognized there as a true believer, he joins in proclaiming the message there, and eventually it is the Jerusalem brothers who ensure his escape when the Greeks determine to kill him (Acts 9:26–30). The Jerusalem apostles send Peter and John to look into what has been happening in Samaria, and the Samarians receive the Spirit through the ministry of these Jerusalem apostles (Acts 8:14–17). It is through a Jerusalem apostle that Cornelius comes to hear the gospel and receive the Spirit, and the Jerusalem church discusses the propriety of what has happened there (Acts 10:1–11:18). The Jerusalem church also sends Barnabas to investigate when Greeks turn to the Lord in Antioch (Acts 11:19–26). The Antioch church sends famine relief to Jerusalem (Acts 11:27–30; 12:25), and after Paul and Barnabas’s return from Turkey, the Antioch church sends them and others to Jerusalem to discuss the claim that Gentile believers have to live by Moses’ Teaching (Acts 15:2). The Jerusalem church in turn sends its resolution back to the churches in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia (Acts 15:22–30). After his years around the Aegean, Paul returns to Jerusalem to report on the success of his work and is warmly welcomed (Acts 21:17–19). He again brings relief to Jerusalem (Acts 24:17; Paul gives much more information on this in, e.g., Rom 15:25–33). It was from Jerusalem that the word of Yhwh was to go out to the nations, and it has done so.

Conclusion

So the gospel reaches the political center of the Middle Eastern/European world, yet not the end of the world, even of that world. The New Testament story thus stops rather than finishes. A number of the individual stories in Acts do the same. What finally happens to Gamaliel? The story leaves open the possibility that such Jewish leaders come to believe in Jesus, and it invites such leaders to do that and the church to be open to it. What finally happens to Simon, the expert in the paranormal? The story leaves him asking the apostles to pray for him, and thus invites the church to keep praying for believers who have needed to be confronted about their commitment—not least people who have not wholly separated themselves from their former beliefs. What happens to the Jews and converts at Pisidian Antioch who “follow” Paul and Barnabas and have responded to the gospel message of God’s grace (Acts 13:43)—do they stand by it as Paul and Barnabas urge, or are they drawn into the opposition of the body of the Jewish community? What happens to the Jews at Ephesus who want to talk more with Paul (Acts 18:19–20) and to the people (Jews and Gentiles) whom Paul teaches for two years in Rome (Acts 28:30–31)?

Publishers like their books to have conclusions, and a writer living ten miles from Hollywood knows that movie companies think that conclusions are important to people. One of my weaknesses as a writer is finding it hard to write a conclusion (I like open-ended movies too). At least I can claim that in this volume a conclusion would betray the subject. The Bible story has no conclusion. Individual self-contained stories such as Ruth, Esther and Jesus’ parables achieve closure, but the First Testament story does not, and neither does the New Testament story. It resembles a television series that ends with a cliffhanger.

The New Testament story affirms that God indeed intends to reign in the world and to bring to an end the domination of the Jewish people by a foreign power. It brings to a climax the process whereby God gives everything in order to carry the sin of the people of God and the sin of the world. It invites people to live in the assurance that God’s reign will come and to behave as if it is here. It offers them the story of Israel, the story of Jesus and the story of the early church to inspire their doing so.

Postscript

Old Testament Theology and History

The First Testament story is Israel’s gospel story. It brings good news about the way Yhwh has been active in Israel’s story, keeping it going, severely chastising Israel, but never finally abandoning them. But what kind of story is this? Is it fact or fiction or something in between? Strictly, this question is not part of “Old Testament theology,” but the message of the First Testament is in part a message about historical events, and therefore writing an Old Testament theology implies a position on the nature of the story.

1 Narrative and History

Much of the scriptural story might be described as midrash—Chronicles is in part a midrash on Kings, and Matthew on Mark and Chronicles. As midrash it constitutes a retelling of a people’s story designed to show its people what that story now means for it, in light of other Scriptures and other convictions regarding God’s word to the people now.

A more familiar description of the First Testament story is as history. In the context of modernity, that is also a theological description, perhaps even more so than “gospel” or “midrash,” because in the context of modernity history is the unquestioned locus of truth. History replaces canonical text as the locus of revelation. “History is God nowadays.”[1394]  The context of postmodernity does not mean simply abandoning an interest in history, for biblical studies would have had a harder time conforming the First Testament to Enlightenment expectations if the First Testament had not possessed some overlap with Enlightenment convictions. Nevertheless, we now live in the era of the “collapse of history.”[1395]  The First Testament attaches theological significance to some historical events, and does that in a way that distinguishes both Testaments from, for example, Buddhism or the New Age movement. But simply adopting modernity’s understanding of history as the lens through which to look at the First Testament narrative has skewed the perceptions of both critical and conservative study.

To use traditional categories, I believe in the inspiration and authority of the First Testament narratives; they are part of God’s revelation.[1396]  But this does not prejudge what kind(s) of narratives they are. To judge from a comparison of, for instance, psalms, proverbs, love songs, prophecies and other forms of writing in the Middle Eastern and the Mediterranean world with those in the First Testament, God did not inspire Israelite writers to write in whole new genres, but inspired them to bring a new message in familiar genres. One would expect the same to apply with narrative. We would therefore need to be careful about deciding ahead of time what biblical narrative must be like—for instance, in assuming it is the kind of history we might write. We need rather to see what narrative in its world was like.

The etymology of the words “history” and “story” tells an instructive tale. Both ultimately derive from a Greek root that provides parts of the defective verb oida, “to know” (e.g., iste “you know”). A histor is a man who knows, a wise man; historein refers to learning by investigating something and then to narrating what one has learned; and historia is an inquiry or its results, specifically a narrative. The biblical narratives are thus instances of historia. They offer insight in narrative form that results from inquiry. That in itself might imply that the material their authors have investigated includes factual material but need not be confined to that. And this corresponds to the nature of history writing in the ancient world.

Ziony Zevit defines history as “a true story about the past” of the kind that a law court seeks to establish, concerned with facts.[1397]  The definition fits the history Zevit seeks to write. But for works such as Genesis–Kings and Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah themselves, Jan Huizinga’s often-quoted definition is more illuminating: “History is the intellectual form in which a civilization renders account to itself of its past.”[1398]  That definition points up the potential link between these narratives and the doing of theology. These are works of intellectual endeavor. They more likely came into being by deliberate effort than by the chance accumulation of traditions.[1399]  And the civilization on whose behalf they rendered account in this way did so as a religious community. The intellectuals whom God inspired to write these stories were writing for God and community. When the community made them part of their Scriptures, they were not doing something that went against their nature.[1400]  But like other history, they do constitute self-reflection on the part of a civilization.

While we use the word history in other connections, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries history often seemed essentially concerned with nations; it focused on political events and specifically on governmental action. Within this framework, the books of Kings have seemed the most satisfactory “history” in the First Testament, and it is striking that the First Testament includes no “history” of the “posthistorical” phase of Israel’s story when the nation has become a province of an empire and/or a religious community. But a focus on politics and monarchy is not inherent even in national history. Such history’s concern is a people, a civilization or a culture. Within the First Testament story, nationhood and kings have their place, but they are not intrinsic to the notion of “Israel.” Israel did not believe that kingship was lowered from heaven at the Beginning, as other Middle Eastern peoples did, and even nationhood begins only with Genesis 10–11.[1401]  Genesis as a whole comprises world history and family or clan history, but it forms part of the account the Judean people gives of itself by telling its story—for this people reckoned it could only give that account by relating itself to its prehistory and to humanity as a whole. Israel itself becomes a nation (gôy) in Egypt and a state with David, then ceases to be a state with the exile—but the First Testament does not reckon this is the end of Israel’s story. Indeed, one might argue that “biblical history is centered on law and not on royal personages.”[1402]

The fact that these narratives give prominence to God’s involvement in events does not imperil their right to be designated history. A civilization has the right to decide how to give itself an account of its past, and specifically whether to include God in its account. Likewise, in this understanding of history authors are not bound to confine themselves to events that can be understood within the terms of regular cause and effect.

Just the Facts?

Huizinga’s definition implies that there is some relationship between history and actual events, even though not all relating of events counts as history and the definition does not require that history involve the relating of events and nothing else. E. A. Knauf declares that ancient historiography “is not concerned with what actually had happened,” but with “what should have happened in order to construct a ‘correct’ world.”[1403]  That sounds like an overstatement. If the story from Abraham to David were created from scratch in the Second Temple period, for instance, it would hardly count as rendering account of the past. It would not “work.” On the other hand, a civilization’s “past” includes more than the events in which it has been involved, and “giving account of the past” has naturally included the passing on of its traditions in general, which have varied relationships to actual events. Indeed, ancient historians focused more on reworking existing literary versions of their culture’s story than on researching in archives in order to retell the story wholly from scratch in a way that confined itself to undoubtedly “authentic” historical material.[1404]  The books of Kings direct people to the royal archives for that. Like many films, the “history” of the ancient world is at home including material of a “fictional” kind even when telling the story of historical events—both traditional material (“legends”) and material newly created by the author.

In its conscious willingness to include other than factual material, premodern historiography differs from modern historiography. Conservative and critical study has treated the premodern historiography of the First Testament as if it were or should be modern historiography, but in writing its history, a civilization gives account “to itself.” Twentieth-century historians used the canons of modern historiography in writing history for themselves, twenty-first-century historians use postmodern canons in writing history for themselves, while First Testament historians used premodern canons in writing history for their peoples. Modern history did not approve of premodern history’s canons, postmodern history does not approve of modernity’s, and premodern history would not have approved of those of either modernity or postmodernity.

On the usual critical view, in the First Testament the story of the conquest of Jericho illustrates the passing on of traditional material that is not based on fact in the narrow sense. The form of the story with its humor and its liturgical nature makes readers wonder whether this is something other than factual history, and the archeological evidence that Jericho was unoccupied in Joshua’s day underlines the question. I infer that God inspired the author to use traditional material to create a story that comprises a concrete, vivid representation of the fact that Yhwh gave Israel the land. That natural inference may be wrong and archeological discoveries next year may reveal that Jericho was occupied after all, which might make us reconsider the judgment that the Jericho story does not have the form of a factual narrative. But on present evidence that is a logical approach to take to the story.

We can see from books in the First Testament such as Job, the Psalms and the Song of Songs that their authors wrote with inspired creativity. These poets wrote poetry and prayers that came from their own hearts or imaginations, but God inspired their writing. The work of the First Testament writers as ancient historians also involved inspired creativity as they used their imaginations to generate material. Like other ancient historians, they composed speeches, conversations, sermons and prayers that were not uttered by the people to whom they are attributed but show the kind of thing they could appropriately have said, and/or offer a theological assessment they could appropriately have offered. Speeches and prayers such as those in Joshua 1, Joshua 24, 2 Samuel 7 and 1 Kings 8 are instances—as is the whole of Deuteronomy.

Genesis 1 is an example of a narrative that comes from the writer’s imagination. No human witnesses could have testified to most of the process whereby the world came into being, and the author of Genesis does not claim to be passing on a revelation regarding the nature of this process. There is neither reason nor need to suppose that the author had available any traditions about creation other than Genesis 2 (assuming the usual critical view that the latter is the older story). It was an author’s imagination that produced the story of God’s bringing the world into being by doing a week’s work and then having a day off. Factually, the world was probably not created over six days. This is not to say that Genesis 1 is an unreliable account of the world’s beginnings. As a matter of fact, the world was brought into being carefully and sovereignly by God, as something whole and good, and as designed for humanity to steward. But Genesis 1 makes these points by means of a work of imagination. The inclusion of such imaginative stories in the First Testament fits with the nature of history-writing in the ancient world. God’s inspiring the biblical historians did not make them write as if they were modern historians, but made them write as really good ancient historians.

History as Passing Judgment

Beyond passing on traditions and creating new material, “giving account” suggests evaluating oneself and passing judgment—to oneself, to God, to other people, to future generations. This likely implies a vision of what the civilization was called to be. People tell the story of their origins in such a way as to delineate that vision. The vision then provides the background and the criteria for evaluating the story the narrative tells and for evaluating the ongoing life of the community. In this connection Huizinga’s definition also illumines the Gospels and Acts, which at first it seems not to fit so well. The Gospels outline the vision by which the church agrees to evaluate its own story.

To judge from the First Testament, this giving of account could include utilizing story’s capacity to address questions that demanded reflection, questions such as the ones discussed in Exodus and Numbers. In other words, the narrative would seek to be meaningful for the community. It would need the capacity to help it face tragedy and cope with calamity, to understand itself with less distortion, to own its own weaknesses and temptations, to live faithfully, and thus to see its way to a creative rather than a destructive future.[1405]  In “giving account,” we tell the story in such a way as to indicate where responsibility lies.[1406]  We do that not as neutral observers but as participants or as the descendants of participants. Giving account may involve assigning and accepting responsibility, but it does that in a way that hopes to receive a sympathetic hearing from listeners who respond by saying, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

“Giving account” thus presupposes selection and reworking. In this sense history is an inherently critical enterprise. It involves reflecting critically on traditions and narratives. It is not bound to the content and vision of the traditions and the existent narratives it receives. Indeed, it characteristically involves working at a new vision on the basis of these and/or justifying the way in which a new vision has emerged. Civilizations change. History presupposes the reality of change and tells its story in such a way as to claim that the new form of the culture is the valid descendant of the old. Strong historians have to rewrite boldly, like strong poets.[1407]  If the Pentateuch came about through a process of rewriting Israel’s story by people such as a “Yahwist,” a “Deuteronomist” and a “Priestly Writer,” then they illustrate this creative and critical process at work. The same is true about the way the Chronicler’s history came into being on the back of its predecessor (perhaps something close to our Samuel–Kings) and about the way the different Gospels came into existence.

We might make this point by describing biblical history-writing as ideological in aim and function, though this may not be saying very much. All history-writing, in traditional cultures and in modern cultures, has an ideological aspect in the sense that it reflects moral and political considerations as well as purely intellectual ones.

So the historians who formulated Israel’s account of its past were involved in reflection in the manner of Israel’s sages, in formulating a vision in the manner of Israel’s prophets and even in worship in the manner of Israel’s psalmists. They were working out what God had been doing and who God was. They were formulating God’s vision for Israel. They were owning what God had done and what they had done. Unlike sages, prophets and psalmists, they did this by producing a narrative, which had the various forms of appropriateness and advantage that we have already noted. Like sages, prophets and psalmists, they did it within the embrace of the Holy Spirit’s work.

2 History and Criticism

In the aftermath of the Enlightenment, history and story with their common etymology came apart. History came to refer to the facts, the events that (might) lie behind a narrative. Story came to refer to a narrative, with an implication that a narrative had little value except insofar as it spoke of events that had actually happened. It was history that now came to count, so that Thucydides and Exodus were valued only for the factual material they contained. Liberals and conservatives were agreed that if Exodus is not factual, its authenticity or value disappears.

It can sometimes seem that premodern readers of Scripture read its narrative in a quite naive fashion, assuming that every event it related happened exactly as it said. On the other hand, at some stage someone knew they were putting speeches on the lips of characters or creating stories about events that did not happen, and it is hard to believe that all this creativity involved ideologically based attempts to deceive. Perhaps premodern reading of Scripture was not so different from our own. Some readers would assume that narratives indeed always related what actually happened, as some viewers assume in connection with a film such as Chariots of Fire. Other readers would know that there was probably some difference between the narrative and the actual events and might sometimes be able to guess where it lay, but would mostly focus on the narrative, like a theatergoer watching a Shakespeare play or a film based on facts.

Modern historical study has presupposed that we are in a better position to determine where the facts lie than the authors of premodern narratives were, as well as having the motivation to do that. The trouble is that the results of a historical approach to the First Testament narratives are disappointing.

Coping with the Collapse of a Consensus

First, in the 2000s we know much less than we knew in 1900 or 1950 about the origin of most of the narratives.

Does an attitude of skepticism about whether we can write the history of Israel issue from postmodern convictions?[1408]  I might like to believe that this is so and that in a decade or two things will have settled down. But I cannot wait that long, and in any case I think it more likely that First Testament study went through a kind of loss of (false) innocence at the end of the second millennium. The twentieth century consensus was always just a consensus, without sufficient basis. Once the little boy has commented that the emperor has no clothes, those clothes can never be restored.

I like historical-critical interpretation; I would very much like to interpret the First Testament narratives against their historical background and in light of the relationship between their story and the actual historical events. And sometimes I do that, where I retain some confidence that we can do so. The trouble is, for the most part we do not have the information that would enable us to do it. We know when Lamentations and Daniel were written (or at least, I think I know).[1409]  We do not know when Genesis and Exodus were written. Or rather, we know (or we think we know) that Genesis and Exodus reached their final form in the exile or subsequently, but it is unlikely that they were written from scratch then, and we do not know what process lay behind their coming into being, nor what earlier contexts the material in them was seeking to address. We only have conflicting theories about the matter, and no prospect of these ever reaching resolution.[1410]  It seems unwise to base theological exposition on any particular theory about the absolute or relative dating of the material, because we can be sure that these theories will change. I have profited from books that work with the currently popular view that the Persian period is the context against which to read, for example, Genesis–Kings, but I reckon it hazardous to base interpretation on this theory. There is no more evidence for it than there was for the older theory that dated J in the time of Solomon, and it will eventually seem as passé as that theory. Similarly, only speculation produces, for instance, George Pixley’s reading of the exodus story in light of a hypothetical reconstruction of Israel’s revolutionary and counterrevolutionary history.[1411]

I assume that if we needed information on the origin of the material in order to interpret the narratives theologically, God would have made sure that we have it. Actually, the communities that preserved the Scriptures not only declined to incorporate the kind of data that would have helped us locate the texts historically but also removed such data when they were there because they believed doing that would help us in interpreting them![1412]  And they did this so well that the historical-critical task can never succeed. “The pious hope that the quest for concrete historicity would ultimately serve the contemporary actualization of the text is belied both by the realities of historical-critical practice and—the crucial theoretical point—by the fact that this practice begins by ignoring or destroying precisely the vehicle which mediates between situations of origin and subsequent actualization, that is, the canonical form.”[1413]

So I have bet on the feasibility of working with the material theologically without having the historical information we would like to have. Perhaps “ ‘wilderness’ is regularly reciphered as ‘exile’ ” in the retelling represented in Numbers,[1414]  but there is no textual indication of this as there is of the formulating of, say, 1–2 Kings (or Genesis 1) in the context of the exile or Daniel’s visions during the Antiochene crisis. We can have no confidence that the exile is the background of Numbers, and in such circumstances I have focused on the narrative itself rather than on the putative historical context in which it was written.

In bringing together passages from the First Testament, I have tried not to base arguments on their relative dating. I have worked as much with the framework of intertextuality as that of historical criticism. I assume that setting passages side by side may illumine each of them whichever way any relationship between them worked historically. Thus, for instance, in chapter two I imagined a conversation between Proverbs 8 and Genesis 1. I am not certain that historically Proverbs 8 followed Genesis 1 or that it was consciously taking up its language. Rather, I start from the fact that these two books eventually became part of one set of Scriptures. It is this that is the locus of such a conversation. Something partially analogous applies to the relationship of the First Testament to material from other ancient Middle Eastern cultures.

Partly as a consequence of our not knowing when the First Testament narratives were written, we cannot come to any conclusions on critical grounds regarding their historical value. Now Christians, like other theatergoers, enjoy fictional or semifictional plays or films and have their perceptions and attitudes shaped by them, without being very aware that this goes on. In this sense they continue to react to them in a premodern way. But when they consciously reflect on the basis for their convictions, they may put great emphasis on the importance of history. That is equally true of conservative readers of the Bible (laypersons or scholars) who believe that the narrative loses its value if it is not wholly factual, and of more liberal readers who assume that we need to look below the level of the narrative for any facts it can yield. In this respect both layperson and scholar, liberal and conservative, belong to modernity. It was the context of modernity that made Rad, in another often-quoted observation, describe the substantial divergence between the First Testament narrative and the actual course of Israel’s history as a grievous burden.[1415]  In a postmodern context, that seems an understandable but extreme view. The considerations about the nature of history-writing I have outlined reduce the burden in such a way that it becomes bearable, though they do not eliminate it, particularly for an exercise in Old Testament theology such as mine.

Why History Matters

In general the First Testament talks about history because the events that happened matter. There are at least three senses in which this might be so.

First, narratives can be the embodiment of convictions that may stand independently of the historicity of the events they relate. I assume this is true of some First Testament stories, including short stories such as Ruth and Jonah.

Second, narratives can provide the basis for theological convictions. It is the report of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt and their subsequent victories that leads Jethro and Rahab to declare that Yhwh is supreme God. If Yhwh did no such deeds, this does not prove that Yhwh is not God, but it affects the plausibility of such statements.

But third, narratives can indicate the specific content of theological convictions. One reason why the first half of each Testament takes narrative form is that its key convictions concern events that actually happened and the meaning of those events. God became involved in the life of a particular family, brought its descendants out of serfdom, sealed a covenant relationship with them, brought them into a land of their own and so on, and did all this with the intention that these events should also be of key significance for the whole world. This gospel “works” only if these events happened. Their actuality is a necessary, even though not a sufficient, requirement to Old Testament theology’s being a viable enterprise. The nature of the First Testament’s narrative theology is to define Yhwh in terms of acts. Yhwh is, for instance, the God who brought Israel out of Egypt. If Yhwh did not do so, we do not know who Yhwh is or what Israel is, because such statements about God’s acts are not only the basis for belief in Yhwh but also constitute the content of belief in Yhwh. Yhwh tells Moses that the Israelites will come to acknowledge Yhwh as the one who freed them from the burden of the Egyptians (Ex 6:7). They will not only come to this acknowledgment of Yhwh because Yhwh freed them; they will acknowledge Yhwh as the one who freed them. If God did not do so, the theology disappears. In this connection, “the category of fiction appears strangely inappropriate when applied to the Bible.”[1416]

It would therefore be nice if we could establish that the events probably did happen, in the same way as we can establish an event such as the Babylonian takeover of the Assyrian Empire in the seventh century. Indeed, this means that an Old Testament theology might appropriately include substantial treatment of the history of Israel, because positive results from such a treatment would both illumine and undergird its theological statements.

There are several reasons why I have not incorporated such treatment. It would take a long time to do and it would occupy vast space when I had done it—it would need to be a volume in itself. And (as I have already hinted) actually the results would be unsatisfactory. The study would deconstruct. On critical grounds one can suggest a variety of possibilities regarding how Israel came to be Israel in the land, but one cannot establish that one view is clearly correct. Indeed, the First Testament story itself includes material that coheres with several understandings of how Israel became Israel in the land. That implies that all these understandings have some theological as well as historical significance—precisely because First Testament theology is a theology of history. If the conquest model is an oversimplification historically, it is also an oversimplification theologically. But if it is part of the picture in the First Testament, it needs to be taken into account theologically however far it is questioned historically. I have assumed that a theological interpretation of the First Testament’s story of how Israel came to be Israel in Palestine needs to work with the variety of ways of understanding that process.

We can establish that the events involving Israel’s ancestors and the exodus from Egypt could have happened, but on critical grounds we cannot establish that they did happen. It is necessary to the viability of this theology that, for example, a view of the historical value of Genesis 12–50 such as that expressed in the work of Walter Moberly (who concludes that these chapters reflect the actual lives of people in the time of the ancestors)[1417]  is more appropriate than that expressed in the work of John Van Seters (who sees them as reflecting the lives of people who lived much later).[1418]  I think there is good reason to follow Moberly, but the world of scholarship is divided on the question, as it is not over the Babylonian defeat of the Assyrians.

Living with this difficulty becomes a matter of living by faith, though not of a leap of faith without a basis. I am aware of a number of reasons for my seeking to let the First Testament shape my beliefs and life. For most of my life I have been a participant in a community that does that (in theory). I know that Jesus encouraged it. I find it continually illuminating; and I can seek to check the First Testament’s apparent historical claims. None of these considerations is watertight—my community is not sure whether to recognize the Hebrew canon or the Greek canon; we cannot be sure that Jesus would have recognized all the books in the Hebrew canon; I do not always find the First Testament illuminating, and often I cannot prove the historical accuracy of its “history.” But while four arguments with holes do not make one argument without holes, neither do they make one argument with so many holes that it sinks. The four considerations form a mutually supportive network. Where one argument does not work, another usually will. For instance, there is no doubt that Jesus recognized Genesis and Exodus, and I take his recognition as a basis for believing that these books must have whatever historical value they need—otherwise his Father would not be letting him use them and pass them on to me.

There is a case for writing a theology of the First Testament and a case for writing a theology of the history of Israel, but the First Testament does have the virtue of existing and therefore being accessible to theological reflection. We cannot found an understanding of the First Testament gospel or a conviction of its truth on an investigation of the historical events that underlie it. This is so not as a matter of principle but for apparently accidental reasons arising from considerations such as the survival of historical evidences, which make the actual history uncertain—though as I have implied, I am prepared to infer that God thought that preserving the text mattered in a way that preserving the external evidence did not.

Indeed, I can see why divine providence (rather than divine compromise or oversight) gave us, in the First Testament, Israel’s stories, hymns and poems about creation and about Israel’s origins rather than a purely factual account of these, and I have moved in the opposite direction in this volume from an attempt at a theology of actual history. I have accepted the invitation to look at the events through the lenses provided by the story in Genesis-Joshua and also by the psalms and other expressions of First Testament faith. All these offer material that enables us to understand what Yhwh did and therefore who Yhwh is. There are disadvantages to our uncertainty about the precise historical value of the First Testament, but if we cannot establish what actual events lie behind the text, that pushes us to focus more on the text itself. Indeed, even if we could establish exactly what actually happened in these events, and even if this were identical with the text itself, the proper subject of Old Testament theology would still be the story, not the history. It would still be the text with its selectivity and arrangement. I shall be surprised if we discover in heaven that the text does entirely correspond to the events, because it fulfills part of its theological function by being larger than life, in order to show us that reality is greater than these events, while reflected in them. The narrative gives us the truth and not merely the facts, and this is another reason to focus on the text and not merely the events that lie behind it.

Sociological Interpretation

Partly because of dissatisfaction with the results of historical study of the First Testament, interest has grown in the sociological background of the First Testament. Like any texts, the books that became the First Testament will reflect the realities of power and conflict in the societies from which they came. These books are timeless truth in the sense that they have the capacity to speak to every century and context, but they do not set forth divine truth in neat form, independently of contexts. Their statements reflect material and social realities such as structures and constructions of class, gender, family and religious life. It would therefore aid us in understanding important aspects of these texts if we could read them against their social background and attempt to judge how they are shaped by the community’s ideological needs.

Unfortunately, we are as ignorant about the texts’ social background as we are about their historical background. The problem increases if we do follow the trend to see the Persian period as decisively important for the development of the First Testament, because we know so little of the social context of the Judean community/ies in the Persian period.[1419]  We can use models for hypothesizing the relationships between text and social reality, but the process of interpretation is circular. The social theory provides the preunderstanding with which we approach the text, but the text has no way of speaking back to the preunderstanding, only of confirming it. “Texts don’t have ideologies.”[1420]  We may confidently guess at sociocritical factors unmentioned by the text that contributed to the generating of two or more stances to the introduction of monarchy in Israel, but we cannot have the same confidence about the sociocritical factors that generated Isaiah 40–55, and the hypotheses that do so have to create their own evidence.[1421]  Interpreters who emphasize the social function of the story of Israel’s occupation of the land have seen the story as generated in the seventh century, or the exile, or the beginning of the Persian period, or subsequently in the Persian period, but have recognized that we do not have the evidence to decide between these.[1422]  Yet the story’s social function would be very different in these different contexts. So my venture of faith with regard to this aspect of the text is the same as that with regard to its historical value. In letting the Jewish community recognize these books divorced from their social context and largely incapable of sociocritical investigation, I assume that God reckoned that the books need not mislead us in that state.

The real sociocritical question then relates to us and our communities with our needs and prejudices. It concerns what we do with these texts. Fortunately or unfortunately there is no doubt about the sociocritical placing of their interpreter and thus of some of the issues they raise for him. I write as a white, Oxbridge-educated, middle-aged, Episcopalian priest. I write as a professor who now earns a larger salary doing an easier job in Southern California than I did in the U.K., as a result of the United States’ capacity in the context of its economic domination of the world to attract whomever it wants to work here. I sit writing these lines in the warm November sun on the extensive patio of our large condo, beyond which Latino gardeners sweep up the leaves for a much more paltry salary than mine, though one they may be even more grateful to receive for doing a job they may be even more grateful to have. I write as the much-loved child of parents who left school at fifteen, as the colleague of many professors who resent the fact that their salaries seem paltry by American standards and as the husband of someone confined to a wheelchair by multiple sclerosis. My reading of the First Testament is shaped by all these facts, among others of which I am less aware. It has a decisive effect on what I see and what I cannot afford to see. (Admittedly one should add that alongside Latin American theologians, a number of North American Old Testament professors sitting in the tenured comfort of endowed chairs like mine have essayed bold ventures in sociocritical interpretation of the First Testament that imperils their social location. This either shows that our context does not determine what we see or reflects the fact that it does not matter in which direction you say something new as long as you say something new.)

The liturgical background of the First Testament is a subset of its sociological background that has been of special interest in the study of the First Testament, but we also know little about this matter. It is against their hypothetical liturgical background that commentaries commonly interpret the Psalms, the densest theological text in the First Testament. I accept that in general terms the background of the Psalms is Israel’s worship, but the diversity of scholarly views on the subject suggests that we lack the information to be more specific about this background.

The uneases about various forms of critical study that I have enunciated do not mean I abjure critical study. A spirit of criticism is at least as important for theological study of the First Testament as for any other study of it. In origin, critical study declined to be bound to what the church had said the First Testament meant and insisted on reading it on its own terms. Criticism was better at that in theory than in practice, being affected by prejudices of its own, and the prejudices of the church and its tradition, for instance, may now enable us to see those. Our own cultural context will also affect the way we go about reading the texts. Thus Brevard S. Childs has reminded us that Scripture is not just concerned with the faith (or doubts) of some dead Israelite men, which is the way criticism has read it. It is concerned with a faith in the sense of what may surely be believed. Biblical theology is about truth and about God.[1423]  Our study of what the First Testament says about God must let it have its own say, and criticism helps us do that.

But the uneases I have enunciated do suggest that we are not in a position to know much about, for example, how near the events the narratives are. We do not know to what extent they relate historical events, whether there were other illuminating historical or nonhistorical traditions that they failed to include, and how far they were affected by the ideological needs of the writers and their communities. I assume that the communities that accepted these narratives believed they had a reasonable basis in fact, found illumination in the nonfactual traditions and the creative insights of the narratives’ authors, found themselves addressed by the whole, and inferred that they were God’s gift to them. But it is now impossible for us to replicate the process whereby a community came to evaluate and accept the narratives it did preserve. We are shut up to reading the narratives and seeing how far they also address us. Instead of interpreting the First Testament on the basis of one hypothesis or another about its background, I have sought to understand it as its own textual world and in the context of our own world, in the conviction that it truly reflects God’s world.

Theological Fictions?

The question of the relationship of narrative to events arises again in connection with scandalous stories later in the First Testament, and in the New. These include the stories of the deaths of Nadab and Abihu (Lev 10), of a man collecting firewood on the sabbath (Num 15:32–36), of Uzzah while the covenant chest was being transported to Jerusalem (2 Sam 6), and of Ananias and Sapphira for falsifying their pledges (Acts 5:1–10). Many readers find these narratives troublesome.

To judge from the ongoing First Testament narrative, such events did not happen in Israel’s regular experience, despite the fact that over the centuries, for example, Yhwh’s house was subject to defilements that look much worse than the one described in Leviticus 10, and Israel’s life was characterized by much worse transgressions than that in Numbers 15. Indeed, whether these books were written in the monarchy, the exile or afterward, they were written in the midst of or after the defiling acts recorded in Kings and in the prophets’ protests about sabbath practices and other failures. Once more, I am not clear whether their authors believed they were writing about events that actually happened. I assume most of their readers presupposed this was so if they thought about the question, even though the events had no analogue in their own lives, as would have continued to be the case throughout premodernity. In contrast, when modernity perceives no analogue between such an event and our own experience, it infers that such events did not happen, but we have no way of knowing whether we are right in that inference. Postmodernity may enable us to bypass some of the problems this raises by getting inside the mindset of premodernity, without pretending that we can simply identify with it. Perhaps suspending judgment on the question of these stories’ historicity will make it easier for us to attend to their significance.

If premodernity assumed that these events happened, it was not scandalized by them as modernity is. In killing Nadab and Abihu and requiring the execution of the wood-gatherer, God acted in a way that does not correspond with the theological and moral principles that operate in premodernity’s own experience of God. But instead of inferring that the events did not happen, premodernity infers that “things were different in those days.” This is not to affirm the Scofield Bible’s scheme for identifying different dispensations in human history or Reformed theology’s conviction that charismatic gifts were confined to the apostolic period. But both started from some genuine data in Scripture that imply that God acted in distinctive ways in the days at the Beginning. People were often larger than life, and the significance of their acts was often larger than life.

The narrative world Leviticus and Numbers portrays is a different world from that of its readers. Readers enter its narrative world and think within its framework—one that overlaps with their own but one in which, for instance, it is all right for God to kill two priests for offering the wrong kind of incense or to require the death of a minor sabbath-breaker. They then return to their own world and maximize the potential of the overlap. For instance, they have learned that in order to sustain the creation order of God’s dwelling, they need to make sure offerings work within the categories God has devised, and that it is important to take the sabbath really seriously as a sign of Israel’s special relationship with Yhwh. As far as we can tell, premodern readers were not then paralyzed by a fear that the priests of their own day might make some mistake analogous to Nadab and Abihu’s, commit some small transgression and find themselves also forfeiting their lives. The stories function to remind them of the importance of proper observance, without implying that the same things might happen again.

We might draw a parallel with the many regulations in Moses’ Teaching that require death as the punishment for disobedience. The First Testament offers no accounts of such punishment being imposed when the offenses occur. A likely implication is not that Israel simply disobeyed a regulation intended for straightforward implementation, but that such passages comprise statements about theological ethics in the form of regulations. God and Israel both understand that these are not “laws.”

These narratives, then, may have similar significance. The point about stories of people dying for offering the wrong kind of incense or for breaking the sabbath is to declare that getting the form of worship right and keeping the sabbath are really fundamental expectations that Israel must not ignore. Analogous issues are raised by the story of punishment for Israelites’ involvement with Midian (Num 25) or for Achan’s theft of plunder that was to be devoted to Yhwh (Josh 7). The point about these stories is to declare that involvement with the religion of Israel’s neighbors and marrying the adherent of another religion involves a fatal compromise of their very identity as the people of Yhwh, or that taking what belongs to Yhwh fundamentally compromises the whole people’s relationship with Yhwh. A postmodern stance in relation to the story assumes that whether or not modernity is right in questioning whether the story happened, we can maintain premodernity’s way of relating to the story as portraying the vital importance of certain principles. In these cases we might reckon that the stories are more like Jesus’ parables in being stories that embody promises or warnings. Reckoning that a story is more like such a parable than like history does not mean ceasing to ask about its theological significance. Such stories do express truths about God and about Israel’s or the church’s relationship with God.

3 Creation and history

We have seen that the first pages of the First Testament story already comprise narratives that are something other than history in the modern sense and that they bring out sharply the questions about history and criticism.

They do that simply by beginning with God. Modern narratives about the world’s origins do not do so, as modern narratives about history refrain from referring to God. They see themselves as concentrating on empirical statements and avoiding faith statements. An Israelite might comment that faith statements are also wise statements, because reverence for Yhwh is the first principle of insight (e.g., Prov 1:7). While there are insights on the world that we gain by declining to introduce too readily into our understanding an interventionist, supranaturalist God, there are insights on the world that we lose by leaving God out of the picture. Either tactic involves a faith statement or a faith commitment. For someone in a modern society, leaving God out of the picture is natural. For someone in a traditional society, treating God as part of the picture is natural, as natural as treating ourselves as part of the picture (as if we could prove that we exist, or that anything outside of ourselves does). Leaving God out of the picture would be a perverse form of faith statement. It is fools who tell themselves there is no God.

There is another sense in which the very beginning of the story involves a faith statement. The First Testament does not speak explicitly of faith in God as creator,[1424]  but it does imply a recognition that faith is involved in our relationship with the creator—faith in the sense of trust. This faith is not only a mental exercise but also a commitment of the whole person. Trust in God as creator and trust in the world as created by God are key implications in statements about creation. Israelites could wonder whether the world could be trusted. It sometimes threatened to betray their trust. They made their statements about creation to reassure themselves that the creator could be trusted and that therefore the world God created could be trusted.

In doing so, these inspired accounts of creation in Genesis 1–2 are no more (though also no less) historical statements than the declaration elsewhere that at creation God dismembered Rahab or pierced the dragon (Is 51:9). The First Testament may seem implicitly to invite us to read Genesis 1–2 as the biblical account of creation. If that is so, it later issues further invitations that deconstruct the first, when it gives much more space to accounts of creation in Proverbs, Job, the Psalms and the Prophets. Furthermore, in the Wisdom books and the Psalms, creation appears more as a theme in its own right than it does in Genesis. The balance between the length of Genesis 1–11 and that of the rest of Genesis–Kings shows how this great narrative’s interest in creation lies in its being the backcloth for the story that follows. It is thus odd that Genesis 1–11 has been treated as the biblical account of God’s relationship with the world as its creator, when that relationship in its own right is less in focus here than it is elsewhere in the First Testament. In general, theological understanding has accepted the first of these two invitations but not the second. It has perceived that there is more than one complementary perspective on the creation process within Genesis 1–2 without noticing the more horizon-broadening perspectives on the creation process that feature in those other books.

Although Genesis 1–2 itself has a well-known background in Middle Eastern myth, interpretation has buttressed the beguiling effect of the place of Genesis 1–2 in the Scriptures by emphasizing the way much of the material on creation in those other books takes Middle Eastern myth as its starting point and uses its mythic images to speak of Yhwh’s involvement with the world. Passages in Isaiah 51 and Psalms may not be myths, but they involve mythic motifs. Their references to creation are mythic or literary “residues,” and it is the relatively less mythic Genesis 1–2 that is “the normative Hebrew creation tradition.”[1425]  Implicitly the supposed mythic presentations elsewhere contrast with a more literal presentation in Genesis. There is a hangover here of the assumption that Genesis 1–2 provides us with a historical account of the process whereby God brought the world into being. But God did not actually create the world over a six-day period and then have a day off. God did not create the first human being by taking some dirt and shaping it into something that had the external form of a man and then doing mouth-to-mouth on it. God did not create the second human being by giving the first an anesthetic and taking a part of its body to build up another from it. Genesis as much as Isaiah 51 is a divinely inspired metaphorical or parabolic statement that gives us true information about the process of creation, but not information that opens up the possibility of formulating the kind of historical account that a camcorder could have captured. In this respect the prose of Genesis 1–2 and the poetry of other books have similar status. Genesis 1–2 is not the repository of First Testament thinking about how things began (and whereas Genesis 1–2 has been theology’s default source for understanding the First Testament perspective on creation, I have tried to pay appropriate attention to the other works).

Parable and Creation

Myth is a confusing word because it has a range of meanings, some more positive, some less so.[1426]  We can set myth over against history in a way that is not negative. History-writing concerns events in which human beings are the primary players and which occur in places that are in principle locatable on the map and datable in time. Myths concern events in which heavenly beings are primary players or which occur in heaven or in other places that cannot be located on the map or which are not subject to being dated. History and myth are then ideal types, which hardly occur in “pure” form. A classic myth such as the Babylonian creation story When on High (Enuma Elish) explicitly relates to history in Babylon, and history-writing in Scripture includes mythic material, especially in Genesis 1–11. Myth can also suggest a story about events in this world that have paramount significance for the self-understanding of a much later community, and in this sense we might call the exodus story a myth. Myth can be a theologically serious way of expressing theological truth or giving account of the significance of events for later readers. But the word is used in such diverse ways in biblical study that its use can only be confusing. Further, in everyday usage it commonly carries the implication that a mythical story is a human fabrication with no trustworthy content—the connotation of muthos in the New Testament. For the ordinary person it is too late to rehabilitate the word.

Rather than calling Genesis 1 and 2 myth, we might say they are imaginative parables about the way God created the world, expressing true insights about world origins. By parables we usually mean fictional stories that embody some truth and do not imply they relate something that happened historically. There need have been no single good Samaritan who inspired the parable about a good Samaritan. And preachers often treat the story of Eve and the serpent as a parable in the sense of a timeless portrayal of how temptation and sin work in human experience. But Genesis as a whole and the books that continue its story move seamlessly toward more and more factual narrative, and this suggests that the opening chapters of this work are unlikely to be simply portrayals of how human experience regularly works out.

Thus when I call the creation stories parables, I mean they are imaginative ways of narrating something that actually happened. That is, they are like Nathan’s parable. When Nathan told his parable about a rich man with many flocks and herds and a poor man with one lamb, it referred to a historical event (see 2 Sam 12:1–9). Derek Kidner suggests that the opening of Genesis may be analogous. It comprises parables with a once-for-all historical reference, rather than parables like the good Samaritan.[1427]  It does not announce ahead of time that it is a parable or tell us so at the end, the same as many of Jesus’ parables (e.g., Lk 10:30–37; 14:16–24; 15:11–32; 16:1–9, 19–31). It leaves us to infer that.

Now we could not work out from Nathan’s parable what the investigative journalist might have reported in the Jerusalem Post before he got beheaded, and we cannot work out from Genesis or other passages how the process of creation actually unfolded. No microphone could have recorded the snake’s words to Eve and no paparazzo could have captured Adam and Eve’s hasty covering of their nakedness. Perhaps the newspapers did report the murder that lies behind Genesis 4 and perhaps the television news led with a weather report on the storms that lie behind Genesis 7, but if so, the account they gave has been turned into a story of much greater significance.

So Proverbs 8:22–31 and Genesis 1–2, and other creation accounts such as those in Job or the Psalms, are divinely inspired but humanly created imaginative parables embodying human reflection and divinely inspired intuition about the way God created the world. Barth calls them “an intuitive and poetic picture of a pre-historical reality of history which is enacted once-and-for-all within the confines of time and space.”[1428]  While doubtless God could have revealed a scientifically conceived account of how the world came into being, this would have been unintelligible to most readers and would not have expressed as clearly the important truths about creation that appear in the parabolic version.

Genesis 1 tells us that God created the world over a working week of six days, setting out a framework during the first three and filling in this framework during the second three. It does not imply that historically God created the world over six days. This is a parabolic way of making the point. The picture of God doing a week’s work and then having a day off is a metaphor. But the point made by means of the parable is, among others, that God created the world in an orderly, systematic way. That is itself a historical statement, a statement about something that happened. In this sense, Proverbs, Job, Psalms and Genesis need to be historically true. Within the First Testament and among the documents of other Middle Eastern cultures there are writings that focus on the world’s and humanity’s current relationship with God, and there are also writings that give a narrative account of how those relationships came to be what they are. The latter are not simply a disguised version of the former. Reading them in this way involves an allegorical reading of the narrative texts, a reading that introduces ideas from outside them in order to take them for something other than what they are.

Using, among other material, chronological data in the First Testament, Archbishop Ussher inferred that the world was created in 4004 B.C., and on the basis of a slightly different computation, the Jewish year 5760 (counting from creation) began in the year otherwise known as A.D. 2000. Neither calculation is based on a false premise in assuming that Genesis portrays the world coming into being at a moment that was in principle datable. The narrative locates this event at the beginning of a series of events, and on any theory these become datable at some point before the narrative reaches the deportation to Babylon, an only-too-datable event for Judeans there. The narrative implies that God’s activity in relation to the world had a beginning.

This point also emerges from a comparison of Israel’s creation stories with Babylon’s. That most famous Babylonian creation story begins in a way paralleling both Genesis 1 and Genesis 2:4, “When on high …” As the story unfolds it manifests many differences in its vision of deity, cosmos and humanity, but here we are particularly concerned with where it ends. It focuses on the establishing of Marduk’s sovereignty among the gods and closes with the building of Marduk’s temple in Babylon. But it does not lead into the history of the world or of Babylon itself in the way Genesis 1 leads into the history of the world and of Israel. It contains no chronological information on the basis of which someone could attempt to date the creation of the world. It is not clear that in Babylonian thinking the world came into being at a datable moment in that way. Genesis’s “In the beginning” has connotations that will only emerge with the astonishing fact that its narrative leads on into world history and into Israelite history. It designates God as initiator of world history.

Proverbs, Job, the Psalms and Genesis tell true stories about God, the world and humanity, and in some sense in order to be theologically true, they also have to be historically true. They are not “scientific” accounts of creation, but neither are they stories without historical reference. They make some claims about the way the world came into being. These are controversial claims, not in the sense that usually preoccupies debate over Genesis and science, but in a more crucial sense. The evidence that emerges from the world itself does not unequivocally suggest that it came into existence by a logically planned process of the kind that Genesis 1 portrays, though the “intelligent design” thesis coheres with this aspect of Genesis 1.[1429]  Indeed, the evidence is, for instance, that many species fell out of existence as nature developed toward the form in which we know it—though that in turn does fit the impression of a more serendipitous process that we receive from Genesis 2.

The Basis for Faith

But trust requires some basis, even if it involves an act of commitment going beyond what can be proven. So what do all the past tense verbs in accounts of creation refer to when they speak of God thinking and smiling, planting a garden and shaping the first human being out of dirt and the second out of a part of the first? And how did the author of Proverbs 8 know that God thought and smiled and that Ms. Insight laughed and danced? How did the author of Genesis know that God created the world in a planned and systematic way (Gen 1) or a serendipitous and experimental way (Gen 2)?

The two Testaments as a whole do not suggest that God’s involvement in producing scriptural narrative takes the form of directly giving people hard historical information. Luke’s account of how he went about writing his gospel (Luke 1:1–4) shows how he undertook this task the same way as other historians do. He got the facts from other people, not from God. More surprisingly, perhaps, the prophets rarely show any extraordinary hard knowledge of the future. The fall of Assyria, the fall of Jerusalem and the fall of Babylon all happened in fulfillment of prophecy, but in no case can an account of the event claim that it happened in accordance with very concrete predictions. The same is true of the coming of Christ, as is reflected in the nature of the links between events and prophecies in a passage such as Matthew 1–2. We have noted that there are no First Testament prophecies that refer to “Mary” or “Jesus.” The nature of prophecy is to work in images, not in hard facts.

In the same way, the creation stories in Genesis and the creation “story” in Proverbs 8:22–31 do not look as if they came into being because God gave their authors hard information on the practical process whereby the world came to exist. Like prophecies in Isaiah, they are God-given, but like narratives in Luke, they came into being through the creativity of human imagination working on material that was naturally available. This does not make them less likely to be true. Many people who think they receive divine revelations are wrong, while many products of the human imagination are true. In the case of the First Testament accounts of creation, these are God-given true accounts of the manner in which God went about creating the world, in the way they speak, for example, of God’s acting in systematic and also in serendipitous fashion, of God’s designing humanity to gain control of the world in its not-yet-orderliness, and of God’s planning for men and women to be partners in this task.

So what is the basis for the First Testament’s descriptions of the nature of creation? Are they simply statements of faith—it must be the case that God acted in a way that supports the observance of the sabbath and reflects method and system? Yet in First Testament terms that declaration may seem to deconstruct. Statements of faith come from somewhere, and the “somewhere” is not merely human reflection or intuition. They are part of a gospel. They respond to things that have happened to Israel. Once again, they involve a leap of faith that goes beyond what can be empirically proven, but it is not a leap in the dark. The statements depend on something empirical. The statement that God created the world in an orderly way and in a way that fitted with Israel’s covenant faith is implicitly based on the way God has spoken and acted in Israel’s life over the centuries. The relation between a gospel about creation and a gospel about events in political history turns out to be more complex than at first it looks. The creation gospel affirms to people in exile that their covenant gospel is true. Overtly it bases itself on the very nature of God’s creative activity, but covertly it is a restatement of the covenant gospel itself.

To broaden the point, Israel’s story tells of Yhwh’s power and graciousness expressed in creation, in Israel’s escape from Egypt, in subsequent events when Israel was rescued from other overwhelming powers and also, for example, in providing them with food and healing them from illness. One or other expression of Yhwh’s grace and power is not epistemologically prior to the others. Conviction about the original creation, conviction about a great act of deliverance at the beginning of Israel’s history, current political experience and current experience of nature may all buttress one another, and/or when one or another was harder to believe, the others might keep it alive. They form a web or network, like the arguments for acknowledging the First Testament described above.

To broaden the point yet further, trust in the God described in this creation story involves a leap of faith that finds its justification in what follows from it, in where it leads. The transition from Babylonian power to Persian power opened up a new life for the community for which Genesis 1 was written. It provided another form of evidence, though not proof, that both Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 were true. God was sovereign and had the capacity to formulate a purpose and implement it (Gen 1). In addition, God worked via an immanent process and by trial and error (trying out the animals on Adam and then deciding that another initiative was needed) and through events that meant death for some even as they meant life for others (Gen 2). The creation stories told people that God was like that and invited them to a leap of trust in such a God that was then vindicated by where it led. It made it possible to reaffirm the stories’ picture of a process of creation that involved sovereignty and planning even if it works itself out immanently via something that looks like trial and error and involves life for some as well as death for others.

Determining whether an author was seeking to write fact or to write fiction is one of the most difficult of the acts of interpretation. I do not mean it is hard to tell whether an author who was seeking to write accurate history has succeeded; I mean it is hard to tell what the author’s aim was—partly because a writer of works of the imagination often tries to be as realistic as possible. Our judgments on whether and when biblical writers were writing factually or imaginatively are inevitably therefore provisional. Nevertheless, we do have grounds for trusting God that the story they wrote was one that God meant us to have and from which God meant us to learn.

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———. The Suffering of God. OBT. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984.

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———. Theological Diversity and the Authority of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1987/Carlisle: Paternoster, 1995.

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———. The Land Is Mine. OBT. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995.

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———. Temples and Temple Service in Ancient Israel. Corrected reprint. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1985.

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———. Joshua. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2000.

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———. “A Symbol of Salvation in the Passover Haggadah.” Worship 53 (1979): 519–37. Reprint, pp. 109–31 in Passover and Easter. Edited by Paul F. Bradshaw and Lawrence A. Hoffmann. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 1999.

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———. The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought. Frankfurt/New York: Lang, 1989; 2nd ed., 1997.

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———. In Search of God. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988.

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———. “The Social Background of the Book of Malachi.” In New Heaven and New Earth, pp. 171–79. Anthony Gelston Festschrift. Edited by P. J. Harland and C. T. R. Hayward. VTSup 77. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 1999.

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———. Gerechtigkeit als Weltordnung. Tübingen: Mohr, 1968.

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Talmon, Shemaryahu. “The Understanding of Creation in the Bible and in Jewish Tradition.” Ex auditu 3 (1987): 98–119. (The volume gives three different titles for this paper; the above comes from the running heads.)

———. “ ‘Wisdom’ in the Book of Esther.” VT 13 (1963): 419–55.

Tamez, Elsa. “The Woman Who Complicated the History of Salvation.” In New Eyes for Reading, pp. 5–17. Edited by John S. Pobee and Bärbel von Wartenberg-Potter. Quezon City, Philippines: Claretian, 1987.

Tate, Marvin E. Psalms 51–100. WBC. Dallas, Tex.: Word, 1990.

Terrien, Samuel. The Elusive Presence: Toward a New Biblical Theology. New York: Harper & Row, 1978.

Tertullian. Against Marcion. In The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 3:269–429. Reprint, Edinburgh:T & T Clark/Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1989.

Thomas, Owen C., ed. God’s Activity in the World. Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1983.

Thompson, Leonard L. “The Jordan Crossing.” JBL 100 (1981): 343–58.

Tollefson, Kenneth D., and H. G. M. Williamson. “Nehemiah as Cultural Revitalization: An Anthropological Perspective.” JSOT 56 (1992): 41–68.

Tollers, Vincent L., and John Maier. Mappings of the Biblical Terrain: The Bible as Text. Cranbury, N.J./London: Associated University Presses, 1990.

Tracy, Thomas F., ed. The God Who Acts. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994.

Trible, Phyllis. God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality. OBT. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978.

———. Texts of Terror. OBT. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984.

Tunyogi, Andrew C. The Rebellions of Israel. Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1969.

Van Buren, Paul M. The Burden of Freedom. New York: Seabury, 1976.

———. A Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality. Vols. 1–3. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980, 1983, 1988.

Van Seters, John. Abraham in History and Tradition. New Haven, Conn./London: Yale University Press, 1975.

———. In Search of History. New Haven, Conn./London: Yale University Press, 1983.

———. “Joshua’s Campaign of Canaan and Near Eastern Historiography.” SJOT (1990): part 2, pp. 1–12.

———. The Life of Moses: The Yahwist as Historian in Exodus–Numbers. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox/Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1994.

———. Prologue to History. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1992.

Vanstone, William H. The Stature of Waiting. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1982/New York: Seabury, 1983.

Vischer, Wilhelm. “The Book of Esther.” [1465]  11 (1939): 3–21.

———. Das Christuszeugnis des Alten Testaments, I: Das Gesetz. Munich: Kaiser, 1934. The Witness of the Old Testament to Christ. London: Lutterworth, 1949.

———. Das Christuszeugnis des Alten Testaments, II, 1: Die früheren Propheten. Zollikon-Zürich: Evangelischer, 1943.

Vriezen, Theodorus C. Die Erwählung Israels nach dem Alten Testament. [1466] NT 24. Zurich: Zwingli, 1953.

———. An Outline of Old Testament Theology. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell/Newton, Mass.: Branford, 1970.

Wakeman, Mary K. God’s Battle with the Monster. Leiden: Brill, 1973.

Waldow, H. Eberhard von. “The Concept of War in the Old Testament.” HBT 6, no. 2 (1984): 27–48.

Walzer, Michael. Exodus and Revolution. New York: Basic Books, 1985.

———. “Exodus 32 and the Theory of Holy War.” HTR 61 (1968): 1–14.

Watson, Francis. Text and Truth. Edinburgh: T & T Clark/Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997.

———. Text, Church and World. Edinburgh: T & T Clark/Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994.

Weems, Renita J. Just a Sister Away. San Diego, Calif.: LuraMedia, 1988.

Weinfeld, Moshe. “The Covenant of Grant in the Old Testament and the Ancient Near East.” [1467]  90 (1970): 184–203.

———. Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.

———. The Promise of the Land. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Weir, David A. The Origins of the Federal Theology in Sixteenth-Century Reformation Thought. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Weldon, Fay. The Life and Loves of a She-Devil. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1983/New York: Pantheon, 1984.

Welker, Michael. “What Is Creation? Rereading Genesis 1 and 2.” Theology Today 48 (1991–92): 56–71.

Wenham, Gordon J. Numbers. Leicester, U.K./Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1988.

Westermann, Claus. Blessing in the Bible and in the Life of the Church. OBT. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978.

———. Creation. Philadelphia: Fortress/London: SPCK, 1974.

———. Elements of Old Testament Theology. Atlanta: John Knox Press,1982.

———. Genesis. 3 vols. Minneapolis: Augsburg/London: SPCK, 1984, 1985, 1986.

———. The Old Testament and Jesus Christ. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1971.

———. What Does the Old Testament Say About God? Atlanta: John Knox Press/London: SPCK, 1979.

Westermann, Claus, ed. Essays on Old Testament Interpretation. London: SCM Press, 1963. Published as Essays on Old Testament Hermeneutics. Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press 1963.

Whedbee, J. William. The Bible and the Comic Vision. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

White, Hugh C. Narration and Discourse in the Book of Genesis. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

White, Lynn. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” Science 155 (1967): 1203–7. Reprint, pp. 15–31 in Ecology and Religion in History. Edited by David Spring and Eileen Spring. New York: Harper & Row, 1974.

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White, Vernon. The Fall of a Sparrow. Exeter: Paternoster, 1985.

Whitelam, Keith W. “Israel’s Traditions of Origins.” JSOT 44 (1989): 19–42.

Wildavsky, Aaron. The Nursing Father. Tuscaloosa/London: University of Alabama Press, 1984.

Williamson, Clark M., ed. “Process Philosophy and Biblical Theology.” Encounter 36 (1975): 281–432.

Williamson, Hugh G. M. Ezra, Nehemiah. WBC. Waco, Tex.: Word, 1985.

Williamson, Paul R. Abraham, Israel and the Nations: The Patriarchal Promise and Its Covenantal Development in Genesis. JSOTSup 315. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000.

Wilson, Robert R. Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980.

Winchester, Simon. The Professor and the Madman. New York: HarperCollins, 1998.

Wink, Walter. Naming the Powers. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984.

Wolff, Hans Walter. Confrontations with Prophets. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983.

Wolfson, Harry A. Philo. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947.

Wright, N. T. Jesus and the Victory of God. Minneapolis: Fortress/London: SPCK, 1996.

———. The New Testament and the People of God. Minneapolis: Fortress/London: SPCK, 1992.

Wyschogrod, Michael. The Body of Faith: God in the People Israel. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989.

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———. For the Nations. Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1997.

———. The Politics of Jesus. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans/Carlisle: Paternoster, 1994.

Younger, K. Lawson. Ancient Conquest Accounts: A Study in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical History Writing. JSOTSup 98. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990.

Zakovitch, Yair. “And You Shall Tell Your Son …” Jerusalem: Magnes, 1991.

Zevit, Ziony. “The Priestly Redaction and Interpretation of the Plague Narrative in Exodus.” Jewish Quarterly Review 66 (1975–76): 193–211.

———. The Religions of Ancient Israel. London/New York: Continuum, 2001.

Zimmerli, Walther. The Old Testament and the World. London: SPCK/Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1976.

———. Old Testament Theology in Outline. Edinburgh: T & T Clark/Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1978.

Author Index

Ackerman, Susan, 590, 597, 606, 618, 620, 642, 660, 715

Ackroyd, Peter R., 572, 614, 681, 697, 712, 721, 725, 751, 759, 764, 867

Albertz, Rainer, 38, 40, 222, 245, 343, 347, 369, 370, 384, 390, 439, 504, 538, 553, 555, 558, 568, 627, 629, 630, 659, 665, 687, 690, 696, 704, 760, 866

Albrektson, Bertil, 702

Allen, Leslie C., 86

Alt, Albrecht, 196

Alter, Robert, 425

Anderson, Bernhard W., 35, 56, 77, 139, 182, 289, 433

Andreasen, Niels-Erik A., 129

Ateek, Naim S., 512

Athanasius, 47

Aufrecht, Walter E., 440

Augustine, 27, 43, 137, 147, 252

Aukerman, Dale, 155

Bailey, Randall C., 594

Balentine, Samuel E., 118, 175, 207, 220

Barr, James, 15, 24, 38, 110, 289, 872

Barrett, C. K., 792, 829, 836, 850

Barth, Christoph, 298, 323

Barth, Gerhard, 811

Barth, Karl, 42, 92, 101, 104, 112, 118, 119, 128, 150, 157, 158, 171, 182, 187, 188, 244, 289, 335, 366, 370, 381, 411, 548, 586, 639, 661, 673, 879

Bartholomew, Craig R., 22

Barton, Stephen C., 809

Batto, Bernard F., 111, 124, 167, 444

Bauckham, Richard, 785, 787, 825, 830

Beardslee, William A., 31

Berg, Sandra Beth, 782, 783, 784, 787

Bergen, Wesley J., 654, 674, 676

Bird, Phyllis, 104, 111, 118

Blenkinsopp, Joseph, 396, 513, 722, 729, 736, 743, 748, 760, 764, 772

Bloom, Harold, 864

Bluedorn, Wolfgang, 535

Blum, Erhard, 288

Boer, Roland, 487, 872

Boff, Clodovis, 296, 322

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 21

Borowitz, Eugene B., 209, 321

Braun, Roddy, 481

Brenner, Athalya, 184, 218, 236, 270, 285, 308, 542, 597, 599, 600, 621, 661, 683, 786

Brett, Mark G., 94, 98, 215, 348, 744, 747

Brichto, Herbert Chanan, 140, 176

Bright, John, 23, 34, 35, 486, 487

Broshi, Magen, 440

Brown, Raymond E., 821, 825, 826

Brown, Walter E., 183

Brown, William P., 52, 54, 83, 119, 121, 122, 135, 177, 183, 276

Brueggemann, Walter, 19, 22, 54, 108, 196, 197, 233, 280, 282, 289, 297, 300, 301, 326, 327, 353, 366, 381, 382, 389, 394, 399, 402, 405, 482, 564, 576, 591, 594, 614, 632, 634, 655, 657, 660, 661, 663, 676, 681, 691, 707, 867

Buber, Martin, 613, 746

Büchman, Christina, 562, 582

Burnett, Joel S., 617

Burrell, David B., 864

Calvin, John, 16, 43, 252, 369

Camp, Claudia V., 277, 579

Carmichael, Calum M., 286

Carroll, R., 594, 747

Carter, Charles E., 105

Cassuto, U., 149

Cherry, Conrad, 616

Childs, Brevard S., 16, 18, 26, 216, 217, 353, 357, 861, 867, 869, 873

Clements, Ronald E., 35, 112, 560

Clifford, Richard J., 66

Clines, David J. A., 19, 100, 165, 312, 354, 553, 596, 739, 780, 784

Coats, George W., 312, 455, 545

Cogan, Morton, 629

Cohen, Jeremy, 100, 111, 114

Cohn, Robert L., 786

Colson, Charles, 25

Costas, Orlando E., 785

Craigie, Peter. C., 100, 113

Crenshaw, James L., 226

Croatto, José Severino, 300, 314, 331, 342, 454

Cross, Frank M., 336, 504

Crüsemann, F., 225, 382

Dalley, Stephanie, 44, 120

Daube, David, 298, 322

Davies, Margaret, 807, 822

Davies, Philip R., 594

Davies, W. D., 512

Day, John, 244, 568, 618, 620

Day, Peggy L., 612, 781

Dembski, William A., 881

Dever, William G., 440, 566, 866

Douglas, Mary, 449

Dozeman, Thomas B., 40, 387, 389, 412, 440

Drury, John, 807

Duggan, Michael W., 736

Dulles, Avery, 467

Dumbrell, W. J., 92

Dunn, James D. G., 844, 850, 855

Durham, John, 288, 369, 399

Edelman, Diana V., 862

Eichrodt, Walther, 18, 32, 77, 369, 370, 408, 436, 694

Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard, 103, 184, 618

Ellul, Jacques, 650

Emerton, John A., 66

Exum, J. Cheryl, 276, 308, 579, 607

Fackenheim, Emil, 704

Felder, Cain Hope, 184, 462

Fewell, Danna Nolan, 778

Finkelstein, Israel, 440, 545, 551

Flanagan, James W., 551

Flannery, Austin, 467

Fowl, Stephen, 872

Fox, Michael V., 787

Franke, John R., 289

Freedman, David Noel, 642, 643

Freire, Paulo, 300, 455

Fretheim, Terence E., 208, 225, 226, 243, 251, 253, 280, 290, 293, 294, 302, 316, 317, 320, 331, 345, 348, 356, 420, 423, 427, 428, 433, 456, 458

Friedman, Richard E., 785, 786

Frymer-Kensky, Tikva, 161, 282, 618, 619

Fuchs, Esther, 271, 274, 603

Fuchs-Kreimer, Nancy, 35

Fung, Yiu-Wing, 223, 238

Gaston, Lloyd, 266

Gebara, Ivone, 207, 606

Gerbrandt, Gerald Eddie, 545, 546

Gerleman, Gillis, 782

Gerstenberger, Erhard S., 21, 248, 613, 618, 723

Gese, Hartmut, 16

Ginzberg, Louis, 460

Gnuse, Robert, 487

Goldberg, Michael, 31, 351

Goldingay, John, 64, 158, 306, 313, 754, 776, 836

Goldman, Stan, 786

Gorman, Frank H., 387, 396, 397

Gottwald, Norman K., 438, 482, 487, 539, 872

Graham, M. Patrick, 481, 692, 771

Grenz, Stanley J., 289

Grosby, Steven, 474

Gunn, David M., 354

Gutiérrez, Gustavo, 64, 299

Habel, Norman C., 45, 84, 87, 94, 516, 576

Hallman, Joseph M., 168

Hamilton, Victor P., 98, 184, 189

Hanson, Paul D., 24, 372, 745

Haran, Menahem, 408, 563

Harrelson, Walter, 433

Hartley, John E., 45

Hauerwas, Stanley, 864

Hawk, L. Daniel, 384, 463, 464, 492, 493, 498, 502, 511, 526

Herberg, Will, 878

Herodotus, 291

Heschel, Abraham, 128

Hill, David, 812

Hillman, Eugene, 155

Hobbs, T. Raymond, 476

Hoglund, Kenneth, 750 765

Holmgren, Frederick Carlson, 770

House, Paul R., 602

Houston, Walter, 425

Houten, Christiana van, 349

Howe, Imogen, 633

Hübner, Hans, 16

Humphreys, W. Lee, 582

Hunter, Alastair G., 594

Irwin, William A., 47

Ishida, Tomoo, 568, 630

Jacobsen, Thorkild, 619

Japhet, Sara, 487, 524, 558, 616, 623, 624, 637, 643, 656, 684, 692, 709, 725

Jenson, Robert W., 23, 57, 72

Jobling, David, 548, 872

Johnson, Mark, 292

Jones, Bruce William, 786

Jones, L. Gregory, 864

Jónsson, Gunnlauger A., 102

Josipovici, Gabriel, 590

Joyce, Paul, 703

Kaufman, Gordon D., 306

Kearney, Peter J., 396

Kellermann, Ulrich, 765

Kermode, Frank, 425

Kidner, Derek, 879

Kim, Wonil, 21, 289

Kloos, Carola, 326, 523

Knierim, Rolf P., 21, 24, 59, 67, 101, 123, 177, 191, 214, 217, 288, 289, 475

Knight, Douglas A., 16, 225, 334

Knohl, Israel, 112, 129, 382

Knoppers, Gary N., 494, 546, 607, 634, 658

Koch, Klaus, 152, 743, 757, 760

Köhler, Ludwig, 92, 93, 101, 126, 733

Kraus, Hans-Joachim, 62, 472, 494

Kuitert, H. M., 621

Kushiner, James, 881

Lakoff, George, 292

Lambert, Wilfred G., 44, 46, 167

Landes, George M., 290

LaRocca-Pitts, Elizabeth C., 629

Levenson, Jon D., 22, 52, 58, 80, 83, 126, 130, 215, 216, 219, 267, 296, 348, 372, 615, 867

Levison, John R., 190

Lightfoot, R. H., 811, 838

Linafelt, Tod, 35, 425, 601

Lind, Millard C., 483

Loader, J. A., 783, 784

Lohfink, Norbert, 113, 634

Long, Burke O., 654

Long, V. Philips, 723, 860, 861

Longenecker, Bruce W., 31

Luther, Martin, 101, 468, 481

Lyons, William J., 249

Lyotard, Jean-François, 21, 22

Magonet, Jonathan, 146

Maier, John, 284

Major, Wilfred, 44

Marshall, I. Howard, 843, 850

Marx, Karl, 220

Mason, Rex, 734

May, Gerhard, 78

Mayes, A. D. H., 498

McBride, S. Dean, 119

McClendon, James W., 476

McComiskey, Thomas Edward, 92

McConville, J. Gordon, 494, 546, 607, 634, 658

McCoy, Charles S., 92

McKay, John W., 629

McLelland, Joseph C., 168

McNutt, Paula M., 504

Meinhold, Arndt, 784

Mendenhall, George E., 504, 546

Mettinger, Tryggve N. D., 630

Meyers, Carol, 105, 225, 487

Michie, Donald, 798, 811, 829

Mickelsen, Alvera, 109, 142

Milbank, John, 872

Miles, Jack, 51, 149, 248, 250, 262, 265, 295, 319, 338, 454, 716, 749, 753, 760, 785

Milgrom, Jacob, 388, 440, 449, 462

Millard, A. R., 44, 167

Miller, Patrick D., 101, 154, 182, 195, 214, 218, 338, 461, 480, 618, 638, 685, 687, 689, 691

Miranda, José Porfirio, 306

Miscall, Peter D., 287

Mitchell, Gordon, 482, 494, 496, 499, 515, 519

Moberly, R. Walter L., 244, 403, 423, 870

Moltmann, Jürgen, 15, 57, 92, 101, 114, 118, 128, 333, 339

Moltmann-Wendel, Elizabeth, 814

Moran, William L., 215

Mosala, Itumeleng J., 781

Mouw, Richard J., 378

Murphy, Nancey, 476

Murphy, Roland E., 48

Murray, Robert, 92

Nakanose, Shigeyuki, 668

Nelson, Richard D., 515

Neuhaus, Richard John, 25

Newsom, Carol A., 39, 872

Nicholson, Ernest W., 369, 375, 388

Niditch, Susan, 481, 495, 496

Noth, Martin, 486, 679

Nussbaum, Martha C., 37, 409, 414, 587

Oblath, Michael D., 627

Oden, Robert A., 167

Oeming, Manfred, 266

Ogden, Schubert M., 253

Ollenburger, Ben C., 563

Olson, Dennis T., 438, 445, 449, 452, 457, 467, 468, 597

Origen, 144, 168

Orlebeke, Clifton, 63, 129, 256

Pannenberg, Wolfhart, 57, 78, 94, 113, 114, 157, 158, 217, 218, 333, 334, 342, 366, 374, 381, 740

Pardes, Ilana, 149, 271, 603

Parker, Simon B., 66

Patrick, Dale, 378

Patton, Kimberley C., 124

Payne, David, 64, 836

Penchansky, David, 133, 226, 425

Perdue, Leo G., 113, 438, 859

Petersen, David L., 668

Peterson, David, 850

Philo, Judaeus, 158, 168, 335

Pike, Nelson, 63

Pixley, George V., 296, 308, 311, 322, 359, 454, 867

Pleins, J. David, 296, 657, 770

Pope-Levison, Priscilla, 190

Porter, J. Roy, 545, 546

Preuss, Horst Dietrich, 39, 172, 186, 214, 217, 372, 480, 771

Provan, Iain W., 700, 866

Rad, Gerhard von, 32, 45, 48, 54, 79, 165, 178, 186, 266, 267, 281, 288, 335, 372, 398, 400, 465, 484, 512, 513, 516, 569, 577, 615, 647, 733, 868

Radday, Yehuda T., 683, 786

Rashkow, Ilona N., 184, 270, 286, 595

Redditt, Paul L., 226

Rendsburg, Gary, 47

Rendtorff, Rolf, 288, 334

Reumann, J., 859

Reventlow, Henning Graf, 114, 289

Reviv, Hanoch, 538

Rhoads, David, 798, 811, 829

Rice, Gene, 184

Ricoeur, Paul, 65, 144, 166

Roberts, Jimmy J. M., 84

Rogerson, John W., 715, 878

Runia, David T., 158

Sanders, John, 103, 136, 158

Sarna, Nahum M., 660

Schild, E., 337

Schmid, Hans Heinrich, 56, 289

Schmidt, W. H., 54

Schmitt, Götz, 475

Schults, F. LeRon, 289

Schwartz, Regina M., 30, 184, 209, 217, 269, 450, 489, 539, 743

Seitz, Christopher, 311, 467

Seow, Choon-Leong, 559, 579

Sherwin, Byron L., 103

Shiloh, Yigal, 440

Smedes, Lewis, 63, 129, 256

Smith, Daniel L., 438, 698, 705, 740, 772

Smith, Mark S., 66, 618, 620

Smith, Morton, 715

Smith-Christopher, Daniel L., 707, 749, 750, 759

Soggin, J. Alberto, 494, 568

Soulen, R. Kendall, 23

Spiegel, Celina, 562, 582

Spiekermann, Hermann, 629

Steinmetz, Devora, 237

Stone, Lawson G., 510

Stordalen, Terje, 117, 119, 148, 192

Stuhlmacher, Peter, 16, 25, 56, 873

Sugirtharajah, Rasiah S., 489

Talmon, Shemaryahu, 397, 782, 877

Tamez, Elsa, 273

Terrien, Samuel, 47, 121, 388

Tertullian, 144

Thomas, Owen C., 252, 339, 353

Tollefson, Kenneth D., 771

Tollers, Vincent L., 284

Tracy, Thomas F., 157, 258, 612, 647

Trible, Phyllis, 243

Tunyogi, Andrew C., 472

Van Buren, Paul M., 63, 216, 217, 267, 323, 366, 373, 380, 475, 512, 514

Van Seters, John, 100, 106, 319, 425, 432, 493, 494, 523, 860, 862, 864, 870

Vanstone, William H., 830

Vischer, Wilhelm, 26, 787

Vriezen, Theodorus C., 217, 370

Wakeman, Mary K., 73

Walzer, Michael, 299, 309, 360, 374, 377, 417, 467

Watson, Francis, 22, 118, 224, 867

Weems, Renita J., 275

Weinfeld, Moshe, 211, 492, 512, 515, 521, 658

Weir, David A., 92

Weldon, Fay, 633

Wenham, Gordon J., 495, 469

Westermann, Claus, 11, 42, 126, 128, 147, 152, 154, 162, 173, 184, 189, 696, 723, 861, 876

Whedbee, J. William, 150, 240, 285, 683

White, Hugh C., 287

White, Lynn, 114, 115

White, Sidnie Ann, 781

White, Vernon, 306

Whitelam, Keith W., 486, 872

Wildavsky, Aaron, 174, 310, 312, 411, 418, 432, 437, 613

Williamson, Hugh G. M., 710, 719, 739, 756, 758, 761, 771

Wilson, Robert R., 668, 687

Winchester, Simon, 586

Wink, Walter, 65, 779

Wirst, Shirley, 94

Wolff, Hans Walter, 691

Wolfson, Harry A., 158

Wright, N. T., 23

Wyschogrod, Michael, 17, 200, 205, 215, 217, 704

Yoder, John H., 297, 319, 360, 707, 764

Younger, K. Lawson, 482, 494, 514, 526, 860

Zakovitch, Yair, 207, 288

Zevit, Ziony, 317, 860, 866

Zimmerli, Walther, 215, 436, 461, 497

Subject index

ANE parallels

anthropomorphisms, 176

creation, 42–44, 75–76, 79, 81–85, 124–25, 128

crossing of sea, 523

exodus, 364–65

flood, 166–67, 171, 179

love of God, 215, 301

military hyperbole, 526

monarchy, 550

names of God, 241–42

origin of nation, 193

prophecy, 679

Sumerian King list, 159–60

temple, 564, 566

Baal(s),

Israel, 659

worship, 534–35

blessing

creation, 54–55

flood, 179–81

fulfillment, 290–93

life, 54

creation

ANE creation accounts, 42–44, 75–76, 79, 81–85, 124–25, 128 bārāʿ, 77–79

birth, 48, 61–62

conflict and chaos, 64–68, 81

ʾereṣ, 513

exodus, 364–65

history, 191, 288–90

humanity, 98–101

insight, 120–24

intrinsic order, 396–98

Israel’s history, 76

as ordering, 79–81, 91, 95–96

priestly structure, 94–95

relationship to salvation, 288

rûaḥ, 58

ṣĕdāqâ, 56

spoken words, 49–50, 58

tĕhôm, 46, 58, 81

tent of meeting, 84

theology of history, 101

Daniel

Belshazzar and, 778

Darius and, 779

dreams, 754

God and, 774

Nebuchadnezzar and, 778

prophets, 778

scholar, 773

David

consequences on the family, 595–96

feelings, 593–94

genealogy, 548–49

God’s commitment with, 559–60

God’s Spirit, 552

household, 564

Jerusalem and, 557

Josiah and, 667

Moses and, 555, 615

nāgîd, 553

personal army, 554

point of unity, 555

politics and, 591–93

postexilic community and, 721

as warrior, 556

worship and, 556

Yhwh and, 556, 557, 560

demons, 797–98

disciples

baptism, 843

Gentiles, 854

God’s Spirit, 849, 852–53

Israel and, 843

Jesus and, 841

Jews and Gentiles, 844

Judaism and, 844–47

martyr, 849

Moses, 846

new community, 843

Paul, 846–47

Gentiles, 855

suffering, 850

Peter, 846–47

problems, 847–48

Second Isaiah, 845

task, 851

temple, 846

Stephen, 849

Torah, 847

Elijah

Elisha and, 622

God’s aide, 676

God’s representative, 677

man of God, 671

mono-Yahwism, 618–20

Enlightenment, 17, 859

Esther

archetypal experience, 786

exodus and, 782–83

feminism, 780

God and, 783

God’s absence, 784

Greek version, 784

irony, 785

Joseph and, 782

model, 781

responsibility in history, 782

sense of humor, 786

evil, 75

exile,

ancestors in, 210

Genesis 1, 88, 96

exodus

anticipated, 207–8

Jesus and, 834

story of, 536

Ezra

confession, 762

covenant and, 764

intermarriage, 761

Moses’ teaching, 722, 732, 763

prayer, 729–31

preaching, 733

priest, 728, 760

prophets and, 733

temple, 732

theologian, 734, 761

faith

of the authors of the OT, 16

Christian church, 22

differences between the OT and the NT, 21

Israel’s story, 29

fall

animal world, 112

humanity, 145–48

world, 148

First (Old) Testament

Enlightenment and, 859

faith, 870, 873, 881–83

history and, 859–60, 868–71

myth and, 877

definition, 878

history and, 878

narrative, 860, 868

New Testament, 103–112

postmodernism and, 859

science and, 880

social background, 871

violence, 65–66

God (Yhwh)

actions

direct, 610–12

immanent, 883

in Israel and cosmos, 58, 59

in political arena, 312, 662–63

means, 648–56

purpose, 625

tensions, 525–28

through Assyria, 640

through Jesus, 825

through people, 306–13, 606–8, 623, 752

through nature, 313–20, 456–57, 608

anger, 140, 877

anthropomorphisms, 137, 176, 493

Baal, 617

blessing

Israel, 471

material, 221

through ancestors, 237–39

through Israel, 757

triumph over curse, 214

Canaanite pantheon, 616–18

character, 828

compassionate, 378

Israel’s rebellion, 466

covenant, 173–74, 181–83, 302–3, 369–78

ancestors, 415, 451

Israel, 625

Sinai, 370–78, 467

curse, 139–43

Cyrus and, 752

David

commitment, 559–60

household, 564

day of Yhwh, 691, 838

dwelling, 393–96

election,

love, 215

nations, 216–17

rejection, 216–18

emotions

anger, 536, 632–34

pain and regret, 167–68

pity, 637–39

Ephraim

rejection, 636

expectations, 624–626

faith, 876

forgiveness, 805

gods and goddesses, 46, 67, 68, 742

bĕliyyaʿal, 536

goodness, 406–7

grace, 537

guidance, 625

hidden vs. knowable, 157–58

hidden face, 785–86

holiness, 412

human imagination and, 879

human suffering, 300

image, images, 102–4, 367–77, 395, 618–20

Yhwh’s, 568

inspiration, 859, 861, 863

Israel’s King, 373

Jerusalem, 635

king, 301, 327, 331–32, 515–16

through David, 560

knowledge, 137, 138

land

covenant, 232

owner, 209, 497, 517

lies, 653

light, 53

love

election, 215

nations, 217

metaphors of, 42, 64, 298, 633

monarchy and, 665–66

mountain, 385–91

names

ʾēl ʿelyôn, ʾēl rŏʾî, 76, 241–43, 334

ʾēl šadday, ʾēl ʿôlām, ʾēl bêt-ʾēl, 243–44

ʾēlōhîm, 76, 342–43

narrative, 869

nations, the, 59, 187–88

New Testament and, 793–94

opposition, 364–65

plans, 59–61

change of mind, 98

commitment, 508, 634, 692, 768

conflict, 75

divine reconsideration, 163

for the world, 586

fulfillment, 340

future, 360–61

human opposition, 116–17

infertility, 273

in light of humanwickedness, 176–77

New Testament and, 799, 833

obstacle, 463

power, 325–26, 300

prayer, 768

preferential option for the oppressed, 296

presence, 385–86, 392, 400–404

temple, 570

promises,

acting, 233

ambiguity, 526

fulfillment in history, 231, 233, 562

obedience, 527

punishment, 537, 639, 691

relationship with ancestors, 245–46, 262–63

relationship with humanity, 136, 246–48, 343–49

relationship with Israel, 408, 459

through the land, 512

relationship with pagan prophets, 507

restoration, 417

revelation, 333–44, 384, 402, 860

rûaḥ (Spirit)

baptism, 844

Jesus and, 792, 824

leaders, 537, 541

New Testament and, 794–96, 852–53

prophets, 669

sacrifices, 375

salvation, 77

sovereignty

bārāʾ, 78, 79

concept of, 646–48

creation, 863

history, 567, 612, 642, 753, 776–71, 880

human stupidity, 355, 356–57

in all realms, 622

in creation, 293, 315

interventionism, 168–70

New Testament period, 793

over events, 837

over Israel, 366–67

over kings, 741

over Pharaoh, 320, 351–57

reversals, 791

security of cosmos, 71–72, 87

surrender, 830–32

taking human form, 248–51

teaching (torah)

of Moses, 435–37

testing, 237, 468–70, 818

time and eternity, 63–64

warrior, 338–345, 477, 483

wonders, 522–25

Word

vitality, 681

worship, 616

Yhwh worship, 535, 562

ḥērem, 478, 492, 520

and land, 515

a means of separation, 496, 500–501

a means to purity, 495

not applied, 499–501

subversion, 482–83

as worship, 493

hermeneutics

modern, 491

ḥesed, 360, 510, 769

creation, 56–57

Greek equivalents of, 828

Jesus and, 829

history

definition, 860

fiction and, 862

First Testament and, 859–60

modernism, 865

story and, 860, 865

ḥokmâ (insight)

creation, 44–48, 120–24

Daniel and, 773

human acquisition, 44–45

humanity

cities, 154

creation, 98–100

curse, 141–43

death, 120, 160

divided, 115–16

domination, 116

empires, 664

environment, 118

failure, 416–17

faith, 198–99

faithfulness, 204

fall, 144–45

family, 184

freedom, 132–33

genealogy, 186

God’s image, 102–6, 114

hospitality, 225

integrity, 172

Israel,

promise to Abraham, 234–35

relationship with ancestors, 239

kingship, 327–30

land, 194, 208–10

original inhabitants, 212, 227–28

life’s pressures and, 587

male-female relationship, 105–7, 109, 269–71, 597–98

obedience, 198, 423

oppression

Egypt, 300, 316

Sodom, 228–29

relationship to animals, 180

relationship with God, 136, 199–201, 203–4, 507

relationships, 185

response to God

stupid, 505–6

wise, 505–6

royal figures, 100

sanctity of life, 181

sexism, 599–603

sin, original, 424

slavery, 222–24

sons of God and, 161–63

suffering, 202, 302

tree of knowledge, 132

violence, 165

ethnic and gender, 601

in the family, 589–91

of leaders, 588–89

religions and politics, 655

sex and, 590

vows, 579–83

weakness, 163

Israel

ancestors

conflict, 271–287, 477

intermarriage, 747

anti-Semitism, 786–87

Baal, 659

Babylon and, 741

complains, 454–56

delivered from Egypt, 324

egalitarianism, 538, 539

Ephraim and, 615

exile, 613

Exodus, 741

a family, 721

God’s army, 319

God’s enemy, 613

God’s instruction, 516

God’s special possession, 373–74

identity, 498, 501–3, 740–51

God and, 745

nature of, 745

purity, 746

intercessor

Moses, 411, 421, 455

Jesus and, 818

kings and priests, 373–74

leadership

Jesus and, 822, 831

Joshua, 458

Moses, 457

New Testament, 814

rebellion, 462

sopet, 540

unexpected, 540–541

legalism, 380–81

light of the world, 850

marriage

ancestors, 268–69

intermarriage, 235, 497–98, 502, 730, 737–38, 744, 747–50

means of God’s blessing, 757

monarchy

ambiguity, 552

empires, 664

family structure and, 549

flawed, 668

God and, 665–66

introduction, 545

Moses and, 546, 657

oppression, 553, 658

power, 656

prophets and, 551, 659–63, 685–87, 690–91

postexilic, 720, 725–26

requisites, 547

subordinated to Moses’ Law, 384, 546

a nation, 530–32

other gods

worship, 499, 630–31

Baal, 534

pattern of obedience-disobedience, 465, 473, 533–38

church, 467, 473

a people, 437–50, 530–32

under the blessing, 508

political life

Moses and, 614

religion and, 614

postexile

in Babylon, 781

conflict, 743

in the land, 742–43

priestly community, 720

priests, 719–20

prophecy, background for, 668

prophets

God’s aides, 687–89

kings, 690–91

king’s servants, 685–87

like sentinels, 683

power, 656

reuse of prophecies, 681

seers, 678–79

sons of, 669–70

spokespersons, 680–81

unreliable, 682

women, 678

Purim, 782

Rahab, 509–10

rebellion, 464, 468

in the wilderness, 459

Red Sea, 324–26

relationship

with Canaanites, 464, 471, 500, 501, 526, 755

with foreigners, 347–49, 480

with God, 459, 512

with Midianites, 503–505

repentance, 692

resident aliens (gûr), 513

sacrifice, 375

to God, 835

serfdom

Egypt, 295–96

God, 323

sins, 411

social code, 382–83

story

beginning, 233–35

blessing, 471

Christian story, 529

content, 882

fiction and, 862

humanity’s role, 35

ideology and, 864

Kings–Chronicles, 642

liberation,

macronarrative, 34–35

modern historiography and, 862

narrative, 560, 860

OT theology, 31

positive end, 788

reworking of, 863–65

testing, 468–70

theology

social structure and, 539

Torah, 846

under empires, 759

unity, 555

wilderness journey, 454

Word of God

shaped by, 732

worship

centers, 627–30

Israel, 616, 625

of Yhwh, 535, 562

politics, 628

Second Temple, 731

Jerusalem

chosen by God, 558

David and, 557

gospel and, 857

temple

rebuilding, 756

royal project, 563

Second, 718, 724–28

symbols, 631

Jesus

Abraham and, 814

and aim of acquittal and judgment, 809

ascension, 840

authorities and, 791

baptism and, 804

and community, 839

crowds and, 808

crucifixion, 831

God’s love, 839

David and, 814–15

death, 840

forgiveness, 835

sacrifice, 835–36

deliverer, 825

disciples, 841

divinity, 825–30

Elijah and, 806, 809, 825

exalted, 823–24, 838

followers and, 799–800,

a community, 812–14

training of, 809–10

forgiveness, 805, 806, 816, 844

genealogy, 850

gentiles, 851

God’s servant, 817

God’s Son, 817

God’s Spirit, 792, 817, 824

God’s word, 827

healer, 806–7, 819

signs, 807

humanity, 824

interpreting Scripture, 801

Israel, 818

Jews and, 843

John the Baptist and, 803

king, 815, 819–21

leaders and, 822, 831

light of the world, 850

martyr, 807–8

mĕšîaḥ, 815, 838

Moses and, 800, 808, 815, 825

name, 842

Nicodemus and, 822

Passover and, 834

Pharisees and, 801

power, 836–37

prophet, 803–6

prophets and, 771–73

teaching, 800

relationship to Scriptures, 790

resurrection, 840, 841

Satan and, 792, 796, 820

Second Isaiah and, 812

son of man, 823

taking human form, 840

teacher, 800–803

tests, 818

tradition and, 802

women and, 813

Josiah

David and, 667

God and, 667

kappōret, 398

land

to be conquered, 475, 494

boundaries, 519

contemporary conflicts, 489–91

defilement, 518

God-given, 515

God’s gift, 494–95, 512–13, 515

God’s instruction, 516

ḥērem, 515

idolatry, 521

Israel, 524

naḥălâ, 517

occupied, 514

process of acquisition, 485–91

leadership, 425–37, 540–44

in God’s plans, 586

violence and, 542

light

darkness, 52

God, 52

malʾāk, 249

mišpāṭ

and ṣĕdāqâ, 56, 554–55

Moses

David and, 555, 615

Jesus and, 800, 808, 815, 825

prophets, 614–15

Yhwh’s servant,

king, 546

leader, 425–31

priest, 435

prophet, 432–34

teacher, 435–37

môšîaʿ 537, 815

mountains, 61–62

narrative

modernity, 38, 40

OT theology, 28

particular and general, 37

Nehemiah

cultural revitalization, 771

forms of confession, 767

God’s servant, 764

prayer, 766

effects, 768

prophets, 765

New Testament,

focus on Jesus, 789

God’s kingdom, background of, 790

God’s Spirit, 794–96

relationship to First Testament, 21, 23

Satan and, 796

Old Testament theology

agenda, 25–27

analytical, critical, reflective, 17–18

and the Christian church, 26

descriptive, 16

historical criticism, 41, 865–68

history, 866

ideologies, 503

interpreter’s context and, 872–73

interpretive stances, 25–28

intertextuality, 867–68

Israel’s story, 30–31

like a network, 289

modernity and, 868

narrative, 28, 560

postmodernism and, 868, 874

relationship to the NT, 21, 23, 24–25, 34–35

and systematic theology, 20

pāqad, 255, 479, 602

postmodernism, 104, 114

First Testament and, 859

metanarratives, 21–22

scholarship, 19, 40

remythologization, 91

ṣaddîq (ṣĕdāqâ)

creation, 56

dikaiosynē and, 791

God and, 762

humanity, 171–73

human behavior, 230

land, 521

light, 52

mišpāṭ, 56–57, 554–55

relational word, 266

salvation

creation, 77

Satan

First Testament and, 796

New Testament and, 796, 847

Saul

nāgîd, 551

rejected by God, 583–85

shalom, 74, 481, 562

Sheol, 839

Solomon

rise to power, 561

temple, 481, 564

states, nature of, 539

temple

exile and, 571

functions of, 568

God’s presence and, 570

materials for building, 566–67

royal project, 563

symbolism, 567

worship, 569

Torah, 436–37, 521

war, 475–81

defensive, aggressive, 477

a defiling activity, 495–96

just-war theory, 476, 477

liberative, passive, 477

necessary evil, 481

pacifist, 479–81

Western societies, 476

wilderness

experience

anticipating prophecy and prayer, 454

continued in promise land, 458

as image, 452

place in between, 474

yāraš, 500, 512, 515, 516

1. Masoretic Text

2. Septuagint

3. See the discussion of “A Secure Home” in section 2.6 below.

4. See the bibliography and also the postscript to this volume. I am astonished to find James Barr declaring that “the question … of ‘methodology’ in writing a work on biblical theology is … a relatively unimportant one” (The Concept of Biblical Theology [London: SCM Press/Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999], p. 59), but I am willing to shelter behind it, and behind Jürgen Moltmann’s comment, “At a time when so many colleagues are concerned solely with questions of method, what interests me are theological ideas” (The Coming of God [London: SCM Press/Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996], p. xiii).

5. See Hartmut Gese, Vom Sinai zum Zion (Munich: Kaiser, 1974), pp. 11–18; “Tradition and Biblical Theology,” in Tradition and Theology in the Old Testament, ed. Douglas A. Knight (Philadelphia: Fortress/London: SPCK, 1977), pp. 301–26; see pp. 317–24; cf. Peter Stuhlmacher, Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments, 2 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1992, 1999), 1:6–9; 2:288–91; Hans Hübner, Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments, 3 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1990, 1993, 1995), 1:37–70.

6. Cf., e.g., Brevard S. Childs’s arguments in Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress/London: SCM Press, 1979), pp. 661–69.

7. See my Theological Diversity and the Authority of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1987; Carlisle: Paternoster, 1995).

8. Cf., e.g., Michael Wyschogrod, The Body of Faith: God in the People Israel (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), pp. 53–58.

9. See Walther Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, 2 vols., OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961, 1967).

10. See, e.g., Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology in Crisis (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1970).

11. David J. A. Clines, Interested Parties: The Ideology of Writers and Readers of the Hebrew Bible, JSOTSup 205 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), p. 109.

12. Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), p. 18. I take it that in this context “fiduciary” denotes “based on faith.”

13. Rolf Knierim expresses this point trenchantly, e.g., in “On Biblical Theology,” in Reading the Hebrew Bible for a New Millennium, ed. Wonil Kim et al., 2 vols. (Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity, 2000), 1:11–20. Cf. also Erhard S. Gerstenberger, Theologies in the Old Testament (Edinburgh: T & T Clark/Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), pp. 283–84.

14. See the “Letter to a Friend of Advent II, 1943,” in Letters and Papers from Prison (London: Collins Fontana, 1959), p. 50.

15. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. xxiv.

16. Brueggemann, Theology of the OT, p. 712.

17. So, e.g., Jon D. Levenson, “Is Brueggemann Really a Pluralist?” HTR 93 (2000): 265–94; Craig R. Bartholomew, “Reading the Old Testament in Postmodern Times,” TynBul 49 (1998): 91–114.

18. Francis Watson, Text, Church and World (Edinburgh: T & T Clark/Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994), p. 6.

19. Brueggemann, Theology of the OT, p. 107; Brueggemann puts the first clause in italics.

20. R. Kendall Soulen, The God of Israel and Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), pp. 109, 17. N. T. Wright suggests that the biblical story comprises five acts: Creation, Fall, Israel, Jesus and a final act for which he does not have a title (The New Testament and the People of God [Minneapolis: Fortress/London: SPCK, 1992], p. 141). This is a significant improvement on the framework of the creeds, though under the influence of Paul even it may yield too much to the importance of “the Fall” (on which see section 3.2 below). I suggest Beginnings, Israel, Jesus, the End. Contrast Robert W. Jenson’s discussion of “The Works of God” in his Systematic Theology, vol. 2 (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), which moves with breathtaking directness from “Creation” and “Creatures” to “The Church,” though he does then bewilderingly describe the church as “an event within Israel” (p. 182).

21. John Bright, The Authority of the Old Testament (Nashville: Abingdon/London: SCM Press, 1967), p. 202.

22. Barr, Concept of Biblical Theology, p. 186.

23. Cf. Rolf P. Knierim, The Task of Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1995), p. 310. Knierim says “in the hope that it will tell us …,” though I suspect he may agree that this is a matter of conviction and not just hope.

24. Cf. Paul D. Hanson’s comment in connection with his more historical approach, The People Called (San Francisco: Harper, 1987), p. x.

25. See, e.g., Peter Stuhlmacher, Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments, 2 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1992, 1999); How to Do Biblical Theology (Allison Park, Penn.: Pickwick, 1995).

26. Peter Stuhlmacher, Reconciliation, Law, and Righteousness (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), p. xiv.

27. Contrast the Evangelical-Catholic statement Your Word Is Truth, ed. Charles Colson and Richard John Neuhaus (Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2002), p. 4.

28. So classically, e.g., Wilhelm Vischer, The Witness of the Old Testament to Christ (London: Lutterworth, 1949); cf. Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Minneapolis: Fortress/London: SCM Press, 1992), pp. 74, 91.

29. So Augustine, e.g., On the Catechising of the Uninstructed, chap. 4, section 8.

30. Masoretic Text

31. Cf. Regina M. Schwartz, The Curse of Cain (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 6.

32. Michael Goldberg, Jews and Christians: Getting Our Story Straight (Nashville: Abingdon, 1985), p. 15. Cf. William A. Beardslee’s comments, “Narrative Form in the New Testament and Process Theology,” Encounter 36 (1975): 301–15; see p. 301.

33. The narrative form of the Gospels makes this point evident, but a “narrative bedrock” also underlies the nonnarrative form of Paul’s writings: See Bruce W. Longenecker, “The Narrative Approach to Paul” Currents in Biblical Research 1, no. 1 (2002): 88–111; see p. 89.

34. Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: Harper, 1962, 1965), 1:121.

35. In this book’s postscript “Old Testament Theology and History,” I consider the broadness of the sense in which this is so.

36. John Bright, A History of Israel, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1959), p. 452 (emphasis added).

37. See Ronald E. Clements, “Messianic Prophecy or Messianic History?” HBT 1 (1979): 85–97; see p. 96; cf. Patricia K. Tull, “ ‘Isaiah ’Twas Foretold It’,” in Strange Fire, ed. Tod Linafelt (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press/New York: New York University Press, 2000), pp. 192–207; see p. 193.

38. Bright, History of Israel, p. 453.

39. Cf. R. Bultmann, “The Significance of the Old Testament for Christian Faith,” in The Old Testament and Christian Faith, ed. Bernhard W. Anderson (New York: Harper, 1963/London: SCM Press, 1964), pp. 8–35.

40. Cf. Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer, “Christian Old Testament Theology,” JES 18 (1981): 76–92; see p. 90.

41. Martha Nussbaum’s comments regarding the novel in Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 165; see also p. 139 and elsewhere in the book. The following paragraph similarly adapts comments on pp. 141–45.

42. Rainer Albertz, “Religionsgeschichte Israels statt Theologie des Alten Testaments!” in the symposium Religionsgeschichte Israels oder Theologie des Alten Testaments? Jahrbuch für Biblische Theologie 10 (1995): 3–24; see p. 12, as translated in Barr, Concept of Biblical Theology, p. 118.

43. Cf. Carol A. Newsom’s discussion of “Bakhtin, the Bible, and Dialogic Truth,” JR 76 (1996): 290–306.

44. Horst Dietrich Preuss makes this as a comment on the J element in Ex 19, but his subsequent comments indicate that he would extend this description (Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. [Louisville: Westminster John Knox/Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995, 1996], 1:66).

45. See Thomas B. Dozeman, God on the Mountain, SBLMS 37 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), p. 174.

46. Rainer Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), p. 480.

47. Again, see this volume’s postscript, “Old Testament Theology and History.”

48. Berel Dov Lerner, in a personal comment.

49. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1936–1969), III/1:5.

50. Ibid.; see further pp. 3–10.

51. See Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11 (Minneapolis: Augsburg/London: SPCK, 1984), p. 25.

52. Cf. Augustine Confessions 11.12; John Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1948), 2:61.

53. See, e.g., Wilfred G. Lambert and A. R. Millard, Atra-ḫasīs (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1969); Joan O’Brien and Wilfred Major, In the Beginning: Creation Myths from Ancient Mesopotamia, Israel, and Greece (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1982), pp. 69–87; Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 1–38.

54. V English versions

55. Norman C. Habel, The Book of Job, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985).

56. John E. Hartley, Job, NICOT (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1988).

57. Cf. Gerhard von Rad, “Some Aspects of the Old Testament World-View,” in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 144–65; see p. 158. He sees Job 28:28 as an addition designed to provide a way out from the gloomy implications of the original poem (p. 159).

58. So Wilfred G. Lambert, “A New Look at the Babylonian Background of Genesis,” JTS n.s. 16 (1965): 287–300; see p. 293.

59. Septuagint

60. See, e.g., Athanasius’s lengthy argument in Four Discourses Against the Arians 2.16–22.

61. Indeed, no First Testament texts require qānâ to mean “create” nor do texts using the cognate verb in other languages: See, e.g., the discussion of qnh in TLOT, though it concludes that qānâ does mean “create” in Prov 8 and some other passages; also William A. Irwin, “Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?” JBL 80 (1961): 133–42. Contrast, e.g., Samuel Terrien, The Elusive Presence (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), pp. 355, 383.

62. Cf. Johannes C. de Moor, “El, the Creator,” in The Bible World, C. H. Gordon Festschrift, ed. Gary Rendsburg et al. (New York: Ktav, 1980), pp. 171–87; see pp. 172–77.

63. Roland E. Murphy, Proverbs, WBC (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998). Gerhard von Rad avoids the idea of God’s insight being created by having God create insight in the world as a structured rational orderliness that underlies the nascent cosmos and speaks to human beings, inviting them to believe in an order in their lives (see Wisdom in Israel [London: SCM Press/Nashville: Abingdon, 1972], pp. 153–57). But this underplays the emphasis on insight’s existing before any of the primeval realities from which the cosmos was made and also loosens the passage’s links with its context, which argues that people should take insight seriously and make sure they possess it. Proverbs 8:22–31 buttresses that argument by declaring that God set an example in possessing insight and taking it seriously (as well as joyfully, we shall see). If the insight the verses describe is placed within the cosmos, the argument of the chapter seems not to work. The insight is one God possesses. Ms. Insight’s pointed (and unnecessary) use of this quasi-divine ʾehyeh is another indicator that she is an aspect of God rather than an aspect of the world.

64. New International Version, Inclusive Language Edition

65. Cf. the comment on “intelligent design” in the discussion of “Parable and Creation” in the postscript below.

66. Against Jack Miles, God: A Biography (New York/London: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 26.

67. William P. Brown, The Ethos of the Cosmos: The Genesis of Moral Imagination in the Bible (Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1999), p. 40. See further the comments on the word creation in section 2.5 below.

68. Masoretic Text

69. Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil (Princeton, N.J./Chichester, U.K.: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 122–23.

70. Ibid., p. xxiv.

71. See ANET, p. 5.

72. W. H. Schmidt, Die Schöpfungsgeschichte der Priesterschrift, WMANT 17 (Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 1964), p. 106; English trans. from Brown, Ethos of the Cosmos, p. 41.

73. Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), p. 165; cf. Gerhard von Rad, Genesis, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961; 3rd ed., 1972), p. 54.

74. e

75. Peter Stuhlmacher, Gottes Gerechtigkeit bei Paulus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1965), p. 86; cf. Scott Hafemann’s “Introduction” to Stuhlmacher, How to Do Biblical Theology (Allison Park, Penn.: Pickwick, 1995), pp. xv–xli; see p. xxii.

76. Hans Heinrich Schmid, Gerechtigkeit als Weltordnung (Tübingen: Mohr, 1968); cf. “Creation, Righteousness, and Salvation,” in Creation in the Old Testament, ed. Bernhard W. Anderson (London: SPCK/Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), pp. 102–17.

77. See the comments in, e.g., Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans/Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991, 1994, 1998), 2:19.

78. So, e.g., Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation (London: SCM Press/San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985), pp. 75–76. Robert Jenson describes any emphasis on this as an aspect of “late modernity’s degradation of deity into a servant of our self-help” (Systematic Theology, 2 vols. [New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 1999], 2:18).

79. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, p. 105.

80. (s); Targumic

81. “Awed” represents the verb gûr, which usually suggests being terrified, but it has a more positive sense in parallelism with yārēʾ (revere) in Ps 22:23 [MT 24].

82. See Rolf P. Knierim, The Task of Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 208–9.

83. While some of the Hebrew statements use yiqtol verbs, noun clauses and participles, many of the verbs are qatal, like the verbs referring to the making of the world. They thus draw attention to events of history. While there is no indication that these are specific recent events and the nature of a hymn is not to refer to these, the verb forms do draw attention to the concreteness of God’s actual acts.

84. If the genitive is objective, referring to the process whereby they were generated, rather than subjective, referring to the process whereby they generated the rest of the cosmos.

85. Masoretic Text

86. If yāmîn refers to the Amanus, another mountain in Syria (cf. ʾămānâ in Song 4:8): see Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 60–150 (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1989). The LXX implies yām (sea) for yāmîn, which suggests other interesting resonances.

87. See further section 2.4 below.

88. Septuagint

89. New Revised Standard Version

90. Timaeus 38b.

91. See Nelson Pike, God and Timelessness (London: Routledge, 1970), pp. 189, 184.

92. Paul M. Van Buren, A Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality, vol. 2 (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), p. 63.

93. Nicholas Wolterstorff, “God Everlasting,” in God and the Good, ed. Clifton Orlebeke and Lewis Smedes (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1975), pp. 181–203; see pp. 181, 183.

94. One tradition has māʿôn, another māʿôz.

95. See John Goldingay and David Payne, Isaiah 40–55 (forthcoming) on 45:12.

96. Cf. Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1973/London: SCM Press, 1974), p. 48.

97. Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), p. 15, following Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil (reprint, Boston: Beacon, 1969), pp. 175–210.

98. On the “fall of Satan,” see the comments on “A Once-for-All ‘Fall’ ” in section 3.2 below.

99. Likewise, although Enuma Elish describes the world as coming into being as a result of a conflict in heaven, as themes the two events are separate. On the Baal and Anat poems from Ugarit in Syria, see, e.g., the survey of opinion in Richard J. Clifford, Creation Accounts in the Ancient Near East and the Bible, CBQMS 26 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association, 1994), pp. 117–33; Mark S. Smith, “The Baal Cycle,” in Ugaritic Narrative Poetry, ed. Simon B. Parker (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), pp. 81–180; see pp. 83–86.

100. I take yĕšûʿôt as a plural that intensifies the idea.

101. In Is 34:14 ṣiyyîm appear in the company of śāʿîr (NRSV “goat-demons”) and the demon Lilith.

102. See John A. Emerton, “ ‘Spring and Torrent’ in Psalm 74:15,” Volume du Congrès: Genève 1965, VTSup 15 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966), pp. 122–33.

103. Knierim, Task of OT Theology, pp. 209–10.

104. See section 2.3 above.

105. Masoretic Text

106. For the translation, cf. LXX and Vg. If the psalm wanted to make a timeless statement such as “Yhwh is king” (NRSV) or “Yhwh reigns” (NIVI), there are ways in which it could have done so more clearly, with a noun clause or a yiqtol verb.

107. The second verb (māšālâ) is also qatal, and the parallelism suggests a past reference, to a time when Yhwh asserted dominion.

108. For this expression, see Is 44:8; 45:21; 48:3, 5, 7. Thus NRSV has “from of old” and “from everlasting.” The two expressions appear together with similar implications in Prov 8:22–23.

109. “Rivers” can denote the streams of the waters under the earth (see, e.g., Ps 24:2; 74:15).

110. Perhaps Yhwh was reckoned to do that each year at a celebration of Yhwh’s kingship in Israel’s worship, but there is little specific evidence of such an event in Israel’s calendar. The First Testament thus does not seem to suggest that such a celebration is an illuminating context in which to try to understand the significance of this talk of Yhwh’s kingship. Parallels in Job, the Psalms and elsewhere rather suggest that we relate the psalm more specifically to this moment in primeval history.

111. Yhwh’s “affirmations” would often be requirements expressed in Moses’ Teaching, but in this context that seems irrelevant; rather cf. the comparable use of ḥōq (statute/limit), on which comment follows shortly.

112. Jenson, Systematic Theology, 2:11.

113. See DCH on possible meanings of the adjective bārîaḥ.

114. Masoretic Text

115. Cf. Mary K. Wakeman, God’s Battle with the Monster (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973), p. 126.

116. Although its verbs are yiqtol, in the context presumably Job 26:11 also refers to a response at the time of the primeval events otherwise referred to in Job 26:7–13, or perhaps to an ongoing such response.

117. The word is especially common in Deut (e.g., Deut 4:1–8) and in Ps 119 to refer to the decrees that Yhwh gives human beings to regulate their lives (again, the resistance Yhwh meets in setting limits may give food for thought).

118. Septuagint

119. Vulgate

120. Revised Standard Version

121. New International Version, Inclusive Language Edition

122. New English Bible with the Apocrypha

123. New Revised Standard Version

124. New Jerusalem Bible

125. Jewish Publication Society Hebrew-English Tanakh

126. We consider the significance of this further in the comments on “Not Just Kings, Not Just Israelites” in section 2.8 below.

127. Cf., e.g., GKC, par. 124. It is treated as singular: e.g., it governs a singular verb.

128. Walther Eichrodt, “In the Beginning,” in Creation in the Old Testament, ed. Bernhard W. Anderson (London: SPCK/Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), pp. 65–73; see p. 72.

129. See Gerhard May, Creatio ex Nihilo (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1994); cf. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2:13–14.

130. Gerhard von Rad, “The Theological Problem of the Old Testament Doctrine of Creation,” in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 131–43; see p. 134.

131. Ibid., p. 134. Von Rad seems to conflate deliverance in the past (from Egypt) and deliverance in the present (from Babylon), but for the hearers the first belongs in the past, while the second belongs in the present or imminent future. It is at least as appropriate to associate past events (creation and exodus) over against present and future events (new exodus).

132. I formulate this statement reworking von Rad’s comment that Israel undertook this reflection on Yhwh’s relationship with it by rewriting its history; see “Some Aspects of the Old Testament World-View,” in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 144–65; see p. 144.

133. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, pp. 12, 122.

134. Actually there continues to be uncertainty about how to construe the sentence, and we might render it “when the earth was an empty void, and darkness covered the face of the deep.” The subsequent declaration, “God said ‘There is to be light,’ ” then becomes the first main clause in the Bible. But this makes little difference to the implications of these lines.

135. On the other hand, it alienates later readers who expect Genesis to make a definitive statement about the ultimate origin of things. This might suggest that this second way of understanding Genesis 1:1 is the original one and that “In the beginning God created” is a rewriting to make the text say more what later readers might like and expect.

136. Cf. the link with the destruction of the temple made by Genesis Rabbah 2:5.

137. The -at ending being simply a common ending for a feminine word, there is more likelihood that people would be aware of a similarity than might at first appear.

138. See section 2.4 above.

139. So NEB; cf. Jonah 3:3, where Nineveh is literally “a city of God.”

140. It occurs only here, at Deut 32:11, and perhaps Jer 23:9. In Syriac it could mean “brood,” but this provides doubtful warrant for seeing that meaning here.

141. See Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, pp. 54–55.

142. Brown, Ethos of the Cosmos, p. 42.

143. Habel suggests that the earth is portrayed as hanging suspended in space. That corresponds nicely to the way we picture it, but it would be an unfamiliar idea, and it ignores the context (The Book of Job).

144. So Jimmy J. M. Roberts, though he refers the name to the earthly mountain itself rather than to the heavens (“Ṣāpôn in Job 26,7,” Biblica 56 [1975]: 554–57).

145. Masoretic Text

146. I render Ps 113:5–6, “Who is like Yhwh our God (who sits on high, who looks down low) in the heavens and in the earth?” They do not suggest that Yhwh looks down on the heavens (which would be an odd notion). Cf. Leslie C. Allen, Psalms 101–150 (Waco, Tex.: Word, 1983).

147. Cf. LXX, Vg., NIVI, NRSV mg. The NRSV has “he fixed their bounds, which cannot be passed.” But only the waters required “bounds.” The NRSV also seems to need to emend the verb yaʿăbôr, or to take it (less naturally) as singular impersonal.

148. So Habel, The Book of Job.

149. I assume throughout that kôkābîm would cover what we distinguish as stars and planets.

150. A pair of terms denoting literal chronology (days and years) follows on a pair denoting the significance of this chronology. “Signs” then links with “days,” “set times” with “years.”

151. Literally, “my covenant the day” and “my covenant the night.” These are odd expressions: It would be a strange way to refer to covenants made “with” day and night (so, e.g., NRSV, NIVI, JPSV). “Day and night … define what the covenant is about, not those with whom God has made it” (Robert Murray, The Cosmic Covenant [London: Sheed & Ward, 1992], p. 4; cf. NEB).

152. See, e.g., Jürgen Moltmann, History and the Triune God (London: SCM Press, 1991/New York: Crossroad, 1992), p. 129, wondering why Barth separates creation and covenant so emphatically; also W. J. Dumbrell, Covenant and Creation (Exeter: Paternoster/Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1984), pp. 41–42.

153. See David A. Weir, The Origins of the Federal Theology in Sixteenth-Century Reformation Thought (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); also Charles S. McCoy. Fountainhead of Federalism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox); Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/1:54–66; and Thomas Edward McComiskey, The Covenants of Promise (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1985), pp. 213–19.

154. Ludwig Köhler, Old Testament Theology (London: Lutterworth, 1957/Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1958), p. 201.

155. New Revised Standard Version

156. Cf. M. Brett, “Earthing the Human in Genesis 1–3,” in The Earth Story in Genesis, ed. N. C. Habel and Shirley Wirst (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press/Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim, 2000), pp. 73–86; see p. 76.

157. So Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2:119.

158. While the whole Trinity was doubtless involved in creation, this would be lost on Genesis’s audience. Perhaps the “we” includes Yhwh’s heavenly aides, which would fit with the fact that God and God’s aides all have human form when they appear on earth (see esp. Gen 18–19). Perhaps the collaborative “let us” contrasts with the anarchic dynamics of creation among the Babylonian gods; cf. Brett, “Earthing the Human in Genesis 1–3,” p. 75. But if the subsequent “his image” points away from “us/our” being a numerical plural (so Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis 1–17, NICOT (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990), it may be the “let us … our …” of royalty or authority or of self-deliberation (the same dynamics then recur in Gen 11:7–8).

159. See, e.g., David J. A. Clines, “Humanity as the Image of God,” Clines, On the Way to the Postmodern, 2 vols., JSOTSup 292–93 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 2:447–97; see pp. 478–80, 487–89.

160. See further the comments on “Long Lives” in section 3.3 below.

161. For ʾělōhîm, LXX has “angels” (cf. Heb 2:7) and NIVI “the heavenly beings,” but the normal meaning of ʾělōhîm fits the context and coheres with the idea of the creation of human beings “in God’s image” (Gen 1:26) and with the commission to rule God’s world (Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1–50, WBC [Waco, Tex.: Word, 1983]).

162. Cf. John Van Seters, Prologue to History (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992), pp. 121–22.

163. On this recurrent question in the history of Jewish and Christian interpretation of Gen 1:28, see Jeremy Cohen, “Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It” (Ithaca, N.Y./London: Cornell University Press, 1989).

164. Köhler, OT Theology, p. 87.

165. Knierim, Task of OT Theology, p. 181.

166. I owe this formulation to my former colleague Charles Napier, who presented it as a summary of comments in Luther; cf. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/1:29–30, where Barth himself comments that “creation … is already the work of the free, fatherly grace and mercy of God” (p. 30). Moltmann declares, “in the light of the cross of Christ, creatio ex nihilo means forgiveness of sins through Christ’s suffering” (God in Creation, p. 91).

167. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/1:42–329.

168. Barth himself does express the significance of the two more dialectically (e.g., Church Dogmatics, III/1:63).

169. Cf., e.g., Patrick D. Miller, Israelite Religion and Biblical Theology, JSOTSup 267 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), pp. 471, 485; Moltmann, History and the Triune God, p. 125.

170. So Emil Brunner, according to Gunnlauger A. Jónsson, The Image of God, ConBOT 26 (Stockholm: Almqvist, 1988), p. xiii (Jónsson gives no reference).

171. Cf. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus (Boston: Beacon, 1994). Byron L. Sherwin surveys more orthodox Jewish recognition that the divine image includes bodiliness (“The Human Body and the Image of God,” in A Traditional Quest: Essays in Honor of Louis Jacobs, ed. D. Cohn-Sherbok [Sheffield: JSOT Press], pp. 75–85).

172. See further sections 6.3–5 below; on anthropomorphism, see John Sanders, The God Who Risks (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998), pp. 19–23.

173. See especially Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/1:182–206.

174. Cf. Phyllis Bird, Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities, OBT (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), p. 158.

175. Cf. C. Meyers, “Procreation, Production, and Protection,” in Community, Identity, and Ideology, ed. Charles E. Carter and Carol L. Meyers, SBTS 6 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1996), pp. 489–514.

176. Cf. Van Seters, Prologue to History, pp. 78–103.

177. Masoretic Text

178. So W. Brueggemann, “Of the Same Flesh and Bone,” CBQ 32 (1970): 532–42. Brueggemann sees the connotations of “weakness/strength” in the polarity of bāsār/ʿeṣem, but the evidence for the second of these connotations is indirect.

179. The argument of 1 Tim 2:12–14 does appeal to Adam’s being created first, but I take it that this is an instance of the New Testament’s using First Testament material to make its own point and that we need not assume that its use of the text need, should or can determine the meaning of the First Testament text. See further, David M. Scholer, “1 Timothy 2:9–15 and the Place of Women in the Church’s Ministry,” in Women, Authority and the Bible, ed. Alvera Mickelsen (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1986), pp. 193–219.

180. Barr suggests that the word rādâ is “not at all necessarily a ‘strong’ one” used quite generally of ruling, including God’s rule (“Man and Nature—The Ecological Controversy and the Old Testament,” BJRL 55 [1972–1973]: 22). I cannot see this borne out by the texts.

181. Only rather infrequently does māšal refer to an ordinary Israelite king’s “rule” over his people (e.g., Jer 22:30).

182. Cohen, “Be Fertile and Increase,” p. 6.

183. Cf. Bird, Missing Persons, pp. 142–44. She adds, “the second statement adds to the first; it does not explicate it.”

184. Of course all life comes from God, and other passages thus imply that animals share in God’s breath (see Ps 104:29–30), but Gen 2 uses this way of portraying a distinction between human beings and animals.

185. Other Middle Eastern stories also incorporate the idea that in their unsophisticated early days human beings went naked like animals (cf. Bernard F. Batto, Slaying the Dragon [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992], pp. 55–56).

186. Cf. Israel Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1985), p. 167. The reference to fear (cf. Gen 9:2) and the description of the beast as “king” supports the view that the verb here is māšal iii in BDB’s classification (cf. JPSV), as in Ps 8.

187. See Ronald E. Clements, “The Wolf Shall Live with the Lamb,” in New Heaven and New Earth, ed. P. J. Harland and C. T. R. Hayward, VTSup 77 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 1999), pp. 83–99.

188. Unlike Gen 1, Is 11 may not be directly concerned about animals and humanity’s relationship with them. On both sides the context concerns the realities of conflict and peace among human groups, within the people of God and over against other nations. The visionary harmony of nature looks like a figure for the harmony of humanity.

189. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/1:209.

190. Is 11 does imply that its vision will find fulfillment only in connection with God’s keeping the promise about a shoot growing from the stump of Jesse. Presumably this should bolster Christian conviction that the vision can now be fulfilled.

191. The verb forms that appear in Psalm 8:5–6 [MT 6–7] are noteworthy in this connection. Two qatal verbs bracket two yiqtol verbs, though translations commonly render all four by past verbs, and Hebrews interestingly follows. Craigie has “you have made … you will crown … you will make … you have set …” (Psalms 1–50), which makes it possible to combine reference to creation and to future destiny. But the parallelism within each verse makes it difficult to reckon that each is referring both to a past event and to a future event that is not yet a reality (nor does Craigie mean that). At most, Ps 8:5 [MT 6] refers to a past event and its present implications, and Ps 8:6 [MT 7] to a present reality and its past grounds. One might then render “you made … you crown … you give dominion … you placed.…”

192. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2:116.

193. Thus Norbert Lohfink’s attempt to rehabilitate kābaš (and rādâ) is unconvincing (Great Themes from the Old Testament [Chicago: Franciscan Herald/Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1982], pp. 176–79).

194. Cf. Odil Hannes Steck, World and Environment (Nashville: Abingdon, 1980.), p. 107.

195. Cf. Leo G. Perdue, Wisdom in Revolt: Metaphorical Theology in the Book of Job, JSOTSup 112 (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1991), pp. 64–65.

196. Lynn White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” Science 155 (1967): 1203–7. See discussion in e.g., Henning Graf Reventlow, Problems of Old Testament Theology in the Twentieth Century (London: SCM Press/Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), pp. 143–46.

197. See Cohen, “Be Fertile and Increase.”

198. Cf., e.g., Moltmann, God in Creation, pp. 23–32; Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2:204.

199. William Leiss, The Domination of Nature (New York: Braziller, 1972), p. 34.

200. Ibid., pp. 167–98. But Leiss uses the phrase to denote the liberation of human nature from its irrationality and destructiveness.

201. Ibid., p. 53.

202. Ibid., p. 123. Leiss notes (pp. 195–96) that C. S. Lewis makes this point in The Abolition of Man, new ed. (London: Bles, 1946), pp. 39–41.

203. Cf. section 2.8 above.

204. See Terje Stordalen, Echoes of Eden (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), pp. 111–38.

205. The First Testament also twice refers to burial in a garden (2 Kings 21:18, 26). A garden is a nice place to be buried. This would add an ironic note to Gen 2–3 and fits where the story will go. But the kings buried in gardens are Manasseh and his equally idolatrous son, and it seems that this motif is a subset of “garden as a place of worship.”

206. Francis Watson, Text, Church and World (Edinburgh: T & T Clark/Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994), pp. 140–45.

207. Bird, Missing Persons, p. 162.

208. Moltmann, History and the Triune God, p. 135, against Barth.

209. Samuel E. Balentine, The Torah’s Vision of Worship, OBT (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), p. 88.

210. See Stordalen, Echoes of Eden, p. 274.

211. Brown, Ethos of the Cosmos, pp. 139–40.

212. Cf. S. Tuell, “The Rivers of Paradise,” in God Who Creates, ed. William P. Brown and S. Dean McBride (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 171–89; see p. 179; he sees Eden as implicitly identified with Zion.

213. Cf. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/1:252–53.

214. See Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, pp. 39–153; earlier translation in ANET, pp. 72–99.

215. ʾāmôn (so most manuscripts) or ʾāmûn (so the Aleppo Codex). The NRSV and NIVI render “master worker,” but that understanding of this enigmatic word ill fits the context. There is a master worker in Prov 3 and 8, but it is Yhwh. Yhwh is the one who marks out plans, lays foundations and makes sure the whole is a structure that will stand the natural forces that may threaten to tear it down. ʾāmôn/ʾāmûn could alternatively designate Ms. Insight as a guardian and thus teacher: so Genesis Rabbah 1:1, on Gen 1:1a; cf. Num 11:12. Genesis Rabbah’s very first comment thus makes a link between Gen 1:1 and Prov 8:30–31, and infers that God consults Torah in planning the creation. Or ʾāmôn/ʾāmûn could denote a craftworker or artist (cf. Song 7:2) or someone who is faithful (cf. 2 Sam 20:19). But it could also describe Ms. Insight as a child brought up by someone who cares (so NRSV mg.; cf. Lam 4:5), and it is this sense that best fits the context. Ms. Insight’s activity was joying and delighting, not making. Cf. Terrien, Elusive Presence, p. 356, 384; Brown, Ethos of the Cosmos, p. 274.

216. For MT baʿăzôz (when they were strong) LXX apparently read bĕʿ azzĕzô (when he strengthened). This expresses the fine conviction that Yhwh is the origin of the fabled self-assertive power of the deep. It can hardly denote that Yhwh “stabilized” the deep (Brown, Ethos of the Cosmos, p. 273).

217. Whether we translate ḥōq “limitation” or “decree,” the context (cf. the parallelism with “his command”) suggests that the suffix refers to Yhwh who lays it down, not to the sea that is bound by it; cf. Job 38:10 rather than Job 14:5.

218. Brown, Ethos of the Cosmos, pp. 276–77.

219. Ibid., p. 283.

220. Knierim, Task of OT Theology, p. 199.

221. Septuagint

222. New Revised Standard Version

223. The EVV understand “play in it”—but there is no recent antecedent for “it,” and śāḥaq is the expression in Job 41:5 [MT 40:29] in connection with Yhwh’s denial that Job can “play with” Leviathan. Cf. Ps 104:26 JPSV.

224. So b.ʿabodah Zarah 3b; cf. Kimberley C. Patton, “ ‘He Who Sits in the Heavens Laughs,’ ” HTR 93 (2000): 401–34; see 401–2.

225. See Batto, Slaying the Dragon, pp. 78–79.

226. See various works of Claus Westermann, e.g., Genesis 1–11, p. 17.

227. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, p. 123.

228. Köhler, OT Theology, p. 88; in the original the sentence is in italics for emphasis.

229. In the context, the ban on lighting a fire (Ex 35:3) likely relates to fire’s relationship to work rather than implying that lighting a fire is itself work. The work to which it is a preliminary will then not be cooking (to be completed before the sabbath in Ex 16:23) but craftwork (see the account of the making of the tabernacle that follows). Negatively, in Israel’s subsequent history the kind of sabbath activity that generates protest is the conducting of business, as early as Amos (Amos 8:5) and as late as Nehemiah (Neh 13:15–22).

230. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/3:8.

231. Cf. Abraham Heschel, The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1951), pp. 13–14, with his quotations from Jewish sources.

232. Cf. Moltmann, God in Creation, p. 91.

233. Westermann, Genesis 1–11, p. 172.

234. Heschel, The Sabbath, pp. 9, 15.

235. Is 1:13–14 perhaps implies worship on the sabbath and the vision in Is 66:23 certainly does so, while there are regulations regarding special sacrifices on the sabbath (e.g., Lev 23:38; Num 28:9–10), and Ps 92 came to be a special psalm for the sabbath. See further Niels-Erik A. Andreasen, The Old Testament Sabbath, SBLDS 7 (Missoula, Mont.: Society of Biblical Literature, 1972), pp. 141–48. To reverse the argument here, Charles W. Kiker (among others) apparently argued that the sabbath started off as a festal occasion at the end of an annual seven-day festival (see “The Sabbath in the Old Testament Cult” [D.Th. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1968], as quoted in Andreasen, OT Sabbath, pp. 114–16. If so, it is significant that the First Testament itself gives so little prominence to the worship significance of the day.

236. So Knohl, Sanctuary of Silence, pp. 16–17.

237. So Andreasen, OT Sabbath, p. 138.

238. Cf. Lewis B. Smedes, “Theology and the Playful Life,” in God and the Good, ed. Clifton Orlebeke and Lewis Smedes (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1975), pp. 46–62; see p. 59.

239. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, p. 120.

240. Gen 2 does not say Yhwh God is testing Adam and Eve, but this hardly proves that this is not the case (against David Penchansky, What Rough Beast [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999], p. 7); any understanding of Gen 2–3 involves “filling in the gaps.”

241. After Gen 3, the First Testament’s main story about snakes comes in Num 21, though like Gen 3 that causes ripples later. Similar motifs emerge to those in Gen 3 (food, rebelliousness, danger, punishment, death, forgiveness, temptation), though in a different configuration. As a punishment for the people’s complaints against God and against Moses, poisonous snakes bite Israelites, with some fatal results. The people acknowledge they were wrong and ask for the snakes to be taken away, but instead Yhwh tells Moses to make a snake of bronze and put it on a pole. Henceforth anyone who gets bitten can look at this bronze snake and be healed. The after-ripple comes in the story of Hezekiah’s religious reform in 2 Kings 18:4, which includes breaking up this bronze snake because people had been making offerings to it. There were many snake deities in the ancient world, and the fact that the bronze snake was called Nehushtan may mean it was treated as a deity. Once more a snake is a danger and becomes a temptation, though it also becomes a symbol of healing.

242. William P. Brown, The Ethos of the Cosmos: The Genesis of Moral Imagination in the Bible (Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1999), p. 160; he notes how prominent is the verb šāmaʿ in the story.

243. Athena Gorospe, in a seminar contribution. See further John Sanders, The God Who Risks (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998).

244. See further the discussion of God’s image in section 2.8 above.

245. See, e.g., Augustine City of God 5.9; 11.21; 12.18.

246. See the comments on “Yhwh’s Insight” in section 2.1 above.

247. I owe this point to Joseph Fickus, in a seminar contribution.

248. He would thus not be able to share Bernhard W. Anderson’s view that Gen 3:17 means human actions have contaminated the soil (From Creation to New Creation, OBT [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994], p. 145).

249. Num 22:6 uses a passive form of the finite verb to make the statement of fact.

250. See the comments on “Light” in section 2.2 above.

251. New International Version, Inclusive Language Edition

252. Cf. LXX here; Vg. has “cursed among the animals.”

253. The same preposition did describe the serpent as clever “above” the other wild creatures, but it will not be surprising if min after a verbal form (“cursed”) has a different meaning from min after an adjective. Herbert Chanan Brichto renders ʾārûr “banned” in Gen 3:14; 4:11 but notes that it has to mean “cursed” in Gen 3:17 (The Problem of “Curse” in the Hebrew Bible, SBLMS 13 [Philadelphia: Society of Biblical Literature, 1963; corrected ed., 1968], 82–86). More likely the expression presupposes an ellipse: the snake and Cain are cursed (in such a way as to be banned) from the animal world and from the ground.

254. The NIVI translates Gen 3:15b “he will crush your head and you will strike his heel.” In using these two different verbs, like Vg. (cf. JB, NJB), it suggests that the first striking is more final than the second striking. Further, the translation “he/his,” which follows LXX rather than Vg., can suggest that the woman’s “offspring” is an individual rather than her offspring in general. This opens up the possibility of seeing the verse as a promise of a final victory that a particular offspring will win, a promise fulfilled in Jesus. But it is the same verb, šûp, that is used to describe the attack on the snake and the attack on the woman (cf. LXX, KJV, NRSV). Further, the passage offers no pointer to the “offspring” being singular rather than collective; hence KJV “it” rather than “he.” The conflict the line refers to is an ongoing one between the woman’s offspring and the snake’s offspring. The understanding of the promise as “the first gospel” (protevangelium) in the sense of a first messianic promise is a reinterpretation of it in light of the coming of Jesus, which reads a new meaning into the text—though the LXX already gives it an individual and thus implicitly messianic reinterpretation.

255. I cannot here discuss the NT’s use of these texts, which takes them in a different direction; see, e.g., Alvera Mickelsen, ed., Women, Authority & the Bible (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1986). Part of our problem is the application of a modern framework to the NT’s use of them, when premodern use of Scripture works in a different way. It would be better to compare the use of these texts in the Epistles with, for example, the use of Scripture in Mt 1–2.

256. Cf. Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil (reprint, Boston: Beacon, 1969), p. 233.

257. The similarity between nĕpilîm and nāpal (“fall”) invites readers to understand the noun to mean “fallen ones” and to link them with “fallen angels,” creatures who fell from heaven to earth and/or from earth to Sheol, though they are not actually said to fall or be thrown down. Some talk of angels being cast down is based on the references to the “fall” of a “heavenly” being in Is 14 and Ezek 28, where Middle Eastern stories about the attempts of junior gods to usurp a senior position in the heavenly hierarchy have been turned into parables of the political aims of the kings of Babylon and Tyre. The second-century theologians Tertullian and Origen argued that these referred to the “fall of Satan” (see Tertullian Against Marcion 2.10; Origen Fundamentals 1.5), which gave the church information on the origin of Satan to satisfy human longings for that when Scripture provided none. This interpretive tradition follows the original meaning of the Middle Eastern myth rather than its use by the prophets. Satan thus became Lucifer (“lightbearer”), Vg.’s translation of hêlēl (shining one) in Is 14:12, an epithet of Venus as the morning star which shines brightly but soon “falls.” The word Lucifer thus comes in the KJV translation of Is 14:12, and the idea of Satan’s fall is memorably embodied in Milton’s Paradise Lost. When Jesus speaks of Satan’s “fall” (Lk 10:18), he seems to be referring to the defeat that came about through his ministry and that of his disciples, anticipating the victory of cross and resurrection. Passages such as 2 Pet 2:4 take up the Gen 6 story, as amplified in books such as Enoch.

258. The reflection on Genesis’s story of sin in the Judaism of Roman times, in the NT and in subsequent Christian writings contrasts with the lack of parallels with its themes within the First Testament itself, which refers much to creation but not (outside of Gen 3–11) to the events whereby things then went wrong.

259. Cf. Jonathan Magonet, A Rabbi’s Bible (London: SCM Press, 1991), pp. 111–22.

260. See section 2.10 above.

261. Magonet, A Rabbi’s Bible, p. 115.

262. Claus Westermann has especially emphasized this point; see, e.g., Genesis 1–11 (Minneapolis: Augsburg/London: SPCK, 1984), pp. 2–3.

263. Contrast Augustine, e.g., Rebuke and Grace 33, where he speaks of being “able not to sin” only before the “Fall.”

264. While Rom 5 emphasizes Adam’s wrongdoing, this relates to Paul’s concern with death. That indeed issues from Adam and Eve’s disobedience, which did set going the process whereby everyone came to be sinners.

265. Terje Stordalen, Echoes of Eden (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), p. 218.

266. Jack Miles, God: A Biography (New York/London: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 40.

267. So Ilana Pardes, Countertraditions in the Bible (Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 43–53; following U. Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, 2 vols. (reprint, Jerusalem: Magnes, 1978).

268. Cf. J. William Whedbee, The Bible and the Comic Vision (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 43.

269. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1936–1969), II/2:355.

270. New Revised Standard Version

271. Jewish Publication Society Hebrew-English Tanakh

272. Masoretic Text

273. Westermann, Genesis 1–11, following Klaus Koch, “Der Spruch ‘Sein Blut bleibe auf seinem Haupt’ und die israelitische Auffassung vom vergossenen Blut,” VT 12 (1962): 396–416.

274. Westermann, Genesis 1–11.

275. Ibid.

276. See ANET, pp. 265–66.

277. Westermann, Genesis 1–11.

278. Cf. Patrick D. Miller, Israelite Religion and Biblical Theology, JSOTSup 267 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), pp. 115–41.

279. See, e.g., Eugene Hillman, Polygamy Reconsidered (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1975), pp. 139–78.

280. Dale Aukerman, Darkening Valley (New York: Seabury Press, 1981), p. 5.

281. Church Dogmatics, I/1:362.

282. Maurice Wiles, “Divine Action,” in The God Who Acts, ed. Thomas F. Tracy (University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), pp. 13–29; see p. 27.

283. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans/Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991, 1994, 1998), 1:190.

284. Ibid., 1:192.

285. E.g., Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1:368.

286. See Goldingay, Restoring Sion (forthcoming), on the passage. Sanders notes a similar misapplication of Is 55:8 (God Who Risks, pp. 21–22, 36).

287. See Harry A. Wolfson, Philo, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1947), 2:110–26, and the quotation from Philo that follows; David T. Runia, Philo in Early Christian Literature (Minneapolis: Fortress/Assen: Van Gorcum, 1993), p. 338.

288. This may be because it is royal annal rather than human history. It also does not tell us when the kings were born or how long they lived.

289. The accounts of subsequent figures do become less expansive, eloquent and elegiac (see Gen 35:29; 49:33; 50:26; Deut 34:7; Josh 24:29).

290. On this development, see Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddess (reprint, New York: Ballantine, 1993), p. 109 and her references.

291. Later Jewish interpretation took the sons of God to be the righteous or the line of Seth, and the daughters of men to be the wicked or the line of Cain, but there is no basis in the text for understanding the phrases in this way. Singular “son of a god/son of God” can refer to a heroic or royal figure, but this usage does not elsewhere occur for the plural, and elsewhere in the First Testament and in other Middle Eastern writings, the sons of God/gods are heavenly beings (e.g., Job 1–2; 38:7; Ps 29:1; 82:6; 89:6 [MT 7]). This is the earlier Jewish interpretation in 1 Enoch 6–11 and in LXX (angeloi tou theou), and it is presupposed by 1 Pet 3:19–20; Jude 6.

292. Westermann, Genesis 1–11. His comparison with Jacob and Rachel is less compelling because the latter lacks the parallels in expression. Jacob “sees” Rachel, but it is the narrator who later comments that she is beautiful, and Jacob never actually “takes” her, though that is what he had gone to Paddan-aram to do (Gen 27:46–28:6; there and elsewhere translations sometimes render lāqaḥ “marry” rather than simply “take”). Joseph and Potiphar’s wife (Gen 39) offer a better further parallel, with the genders bent. See also Gen 24; and Deut 21:11!

293. The LXX translates both nĕpilîm and gibbōrîm (warriors) there by the word gigantes.

294. There are two textual traditions for Gen 6:3. I have followed the pointing of many editions of the Hebrew Bible in including the phrase “because they go astray.”

295. New International Version, Inclusive Language Edition

296. New Revised Standard Version

297. Cf. section 3.1 above, on the good-and-bad-knowledge tree.

298. The word for “journey” or “way” is singular, not plural as in NRSV.

299. Masoretic Text

300. Septuagint

301. Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: Harper, 1962, 1965), 2:157.

302. David J. A. Clines, “The Theology of the Flood Narrative,” in Clines, On the Way to the Postmodern, 2 vols., JSOTSup 292–93 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 2:508–23; see p. 514.

303. Cf. Ricoeur, Symbolism of Evil, p. 311.

304. So Bernard F. Batto, Slaying the Dragon (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992), p. 30, following Robert A. Oden, “Divine Aspirations in Atrahasis and in Genesis 1–11,” ZAW 93 (1981): 197–216; contrast Wilfred G. Lambert and A. R. Millard, Atra-ḫasīs (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. vi.

305. Translations sometimes render “Holy Spirit,” but in the context of the First Testament this phrase is not a technical term as it becomes in the New Testament.

306. Philo’s treatise The Unchangeableness of God is actually an exposition of Gen 6:4–12. The discussion of vv. 5–7 begins (# 21) with the assurance that of course the creator did not repent (metaginōskō): How could the unchangeable one change? That would contradict fundamentals of Greek thinking. Philo’s attempt to interweave Greek thinking about God (unknowable, immutable, impassible) with the account of God gained from Scripture continues in the work of great Christian theologians such as Justin, Athenagoras, Clement and Origen (see Joseph C. McLelland, God the Anonymous [Cambridge, Mass.: Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1976]). Joseph M. Hallman describes Philo as “the single most important resource for early Christian philosophical reflection on God’s nature” (The Descent of God [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991], p. 23).

307. Cf. Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/1:413.

308. See the comments on creation as “An Act of Commitment and Faithfulness” in section 2.2 above.

309. King James Version

310. Cf. Horst Dietrich Preuss, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox/Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995, 1996), 1:29.

311. Jewish Publication Society Hebrew-English Tanakh

312. For the construction with rāʾâ, see, e.g., 1 Sam 16:1.

313. The flood narrative is usually reckoned to interweave earlier J and P versions of the story. If we de-interweave the narrative and assume that we have the whole of two earlier versions, as Westermann does (see Genesis 1–11), J and P may then both imply that Noah’s ṣědāqâ is the basis for Yhwh’s exemption of him. If so, it is the interweaving of the two in the actual text of Genesis that has produced a story that is more open and/or points in another direction.

314. Aaron Wildavsky, The Nursing Father (Tuscaloosa/London: University of Alabama Press, 1984), p. 93.

315. Samuel E. Balentine, The Torah’s Vision of Worship, OBT (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), p. 82.

316. See further the discussion of the image of God in section 2.8 above.

317. The Masoretic verse division introduces an odd logic here, which the translations follow. Gen 8:20–21 comprise a sequence of verbs, literally “Noah built … and took … and offered … and Yhwh smelled … and Yhwh said.…” The MT’s verse division implies that deciding never again to curse the ground stemmed from smelling the savor of the meat, which seems odd. The first clause in Gen 8:21 (and Yhwh smelled …) makes more sense as the climax of the previous sequence than as a circumstantial clause introducing what follows, and thus really closes Gen 8:20. “Then Yhwh said …” begins a new sentence. The repetition of the divine name is more intelligible if the clause is a new beginning than if it follows on “Yhwh smelled.”

318. It might mean “abuse” (physically as well as verbally) rather than “curse” (so Brichto, Problem of “Curse,” pp. 119–20).

319. Brown, Ethos of the Cosmos, p. 178.

320. Subject to the point made in n. 68 above about verse division here.

321. Joz̆e Kras̆ovec, Reward, Punishment, and Forgiveness, VTSup 78 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 1999), pp. 29, 34, 37, 38, 45.

322. Rolf P. Knierim, The Task of Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1995), p. 207.

323. Rad, OT Theology, 2:102.

324. Cf. the reference to such a Jewish midrash in the introduction to section 2.1 above.

325. “Fear” might have suggested a healthy respect of the kind human beings themselves show to God. God therefore adds another word to make it clear that henceforth animals will be scared of human beings.

326. Even the words that follow in Gen 9:6 probably do not explain this. The NRSV has “whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be shed.” But “by a human” is bāʾādām, the b corresponding to the one in the phrase “an eye for an eye.” For “by a human being” one would have expected bĕyadʾādām, by the hand of a human being (see, e.g., Ex 16:3). The LXX has anti tou haimatos autou: NEB thus more plausibly has “for that man his blood shall be shed.” In other words, Gen 9:6 constitutes an emphatic poetic underlining of Gen 9:5.

327. See the comments on making distinctions in section 2.7 above.

328. Anderson, From Creation to New Creation, p. 150.

329. Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/1:33.

330. Miller, Israelite Religion, p. 486.

331. Not the first man of the soil at all (KJV, RSV), which honor goes to Cain if not Adam.

332. Cf. Walter E. Brown, “Noah: Sot or Saint?” in The Way of Wisdom, Bruce K. Waltke Festschrift, ed. J. I. Packer and S. K. Soderlund (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2000), pp. 36–60; see pp. 37–44.

333. Brown, Ethos of the Cosmos, p. 181.

334. Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis 1–17, NICOT (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990).

335. See Regina M. Schwartz, The Curse of Cain (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1997), pp. 108–9.

336. See Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus (Boston: Beacon, 1994), pp. 81–97.

337. See Ilona N. Rashkow, “Daddy-Dearest,” in A Feminist Companion to Genesis, ed. Athalya Brenner, FCB 2/1 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), pp. 82–107.

338. See the discussion in Westermann, Genesis 1–11.

339. See, e.g., Schwartz, Curse of Cain, pp. 103–6; Cain Hope Felder, Troubling Biblical Waters (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1989), pp. 38–42. Gene Rice offers a historical-critical refutation of this interpretation, “The Curse that Never Was,” Journal of Religious Thought 29 (1972): 5–27.

340. Septuagint

341. Masoretic Text

342. New Revised Standard Version

343. Cf. Rad, OT Theology, 1:162; also Preuss, OT Theology, 2:285.

344. See the comments in section 2.8, “Not Just Kings, Not Just Israelites,” above.

345. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/4:312–3.

346. If there is only one root ṣûd, hunting is even a context in which God’s blessing is declared (Ps 132:15). But BDB and TDOT assume there are two.

347. So Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/4:311–20.

348. Westermann, Genesis 1–11.

349. Hamilton, Book of Genesis 1–17.

350. New English Bible with the Apocrypha

351. J. Míguez Bonino, “Genesis 11:1–9: A Latin American Perspective,” in Return to Babel, ed. Priscilla Pope-Levison and John R. Levison (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999), pp. 13–16; see pp. 15–16; the author italicizes the sentence.

352. Knierim, Task of OT Theology, p. 207.

353. Ibid. I take the last clause to mean that humanity could destroy itself, but that the promise of Gen 8:22 is that it cannot destroy the cosmos itself.

354. Contrast Stordalen, Echoes of Eden, p. 215, who suggests that Genesis 1–11 compares with Atrahasis.

355. So it will be known much later, though the Chaldeans are not there yet.

356. On the translation, see Patrick D. Miller, Israelite Religion and Biblical Theology, JSOTSup 267 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), pp. 492–96.

357. Cf. NRSV “Now the LORD said to Abram.”

358. Yhwh will later affirm responsibility for bringing Abraham from Ur (Gen 15:7; cf. Neh 9:7), and Stephen’s address in Acts 7 locates Gen 12:1–3 there. The NIVI apparently follows, in having the story tell us what Yhwh “had said” to Abram—before he got to Haran.

359. Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), p. 166; he offers this as a summary of Albrecht Alt’s monograph “The God of the Fathers” in Essays on Old Testament History and Religion (Oxford: Blackwell/Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), pp. 1–77.

360. Brueggemann, Theology of the OT, pp. 164, 165. I am not sure why Brueggemann is hesitant to term it a performative utterance (on which see IBHS 30.5.1d, esp. note 17).

361. Masoretic Text

362. Brueggemann, Theology of the OT, p. 168 (italicized in the original).

363. Michael Wyschogrod, The Body of Faith: God in the People Israel (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), pp. 57, 67.

364. See the comments in section 3.5, “Divine Grace and Human Faithfulness,” above.

365. This characteristic reappears in the flexibility of God’s administering the other great sacrament of Passover to people who cannot take part at the usual moment or cannot keep the cleanness rules (Num 9:1–14; 2 Chron 30). The ambiguity of Genesis 17 reappears much later in the declaration in one of the later endings to Mark’s Gospel, “the one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned” (Mk 16:16).

366. Cf., e.g., Lawrence A Hoffman, Covenant of Blood (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 26.

367. New Revised Standard Version

368. New International Version, Inclusive Language Edition

369. Yhwh uses the infinitive absolute construction wĕʾ abrāhām hāyô yihyeh.

370. Wyschogrod, Body of Faith, p. 68.

371. Ibid.

372. See section 4.6 below.

373. The NRSV says Hagar “looked with contempt,” NIVI that she “began to despise.” That is no doubt Sarai’s interpretation, but the paraphrase makes the text more explicit than it is.

374. Samuel E. Balentine, The Torah’s Vision of Worship, OBT (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), p. 107. Cf. Ivone Gebara’s comments on “women weaving the cloth of evil,” with her example from Laura Esquivel’s novel Like Water for Chocolate, in Out of the Depths (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), pp. 96–98.

375. Cf. Yair Zakovitch, “And You Shall Tell Your Son …” (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1991), pp. 18–30. Zakovitch sees the oppression of Hagar as one of the reasons for the Israelites’ oppression in Egypt.

376. Cf. Terence E. Fretheim, “The Book of Genesis,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 1 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), pp. 488–89.

377. Eugene B. Borowitz, Judaism After Modernity (Lanham, Md./Oxford: University Press of America, 1999), p. 213.

378. See Regina M. Schwartz, The Curse of Cain (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1997), pp. 43–44.

379. See the comments on “God’s Promise” in section 4.1 above; and Moshe Weinfeld, “The Covenant of Grant in the Old Testament and the Ancient Near East,” JAOS 90 (1970): 184–203.

380. “Amorite” is here a general term for the inhabitants of the land that Israel will later occupy, though a few verses later the Amorites are one of a list of ten such peoples (see Gen 15:19–21).

381. See IBHS 34c; GKC 110c.

382. Septuagint

383. New English Bible with the Apocrypha

384. Jewish Publication Society Hebrew-English Tanakh

385. See further the discussion in TDOT. The idea recurs in Ps 72:17: through Israel’s king’s commitment to decisive action on behalf of the needy, people will pray to be blessed as he is blessed. It is then renewed as a promise when that condition is not met (Jer 4:2).

386. Rolf P. Knierim, The Task of Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1995), p. 210.

387. See Miller, Israelite Religion, pp. 492–96.

388. Horst Dietrich Preuss takes this as the central motif around which to structure his Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox/Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995, 1996).

389. Cf. Ibid., 1:28; on the semantic field of “election,” see pp. 31–33.

390. See William L. Moran, “The Ancient Near Eastern Background of the Love of God in Deuteronomy,” CBQ 25 (1963): 77–87.

391. J. D. Levenson, “The Universal Horizon of Biblical Particularism,” in Ethnicity and the Bible, ed. Mark G. Brett (Leiden/New York: E. J. Brill, 1996), pp. 143–69; see p. 156.

392. Walther Zimmerli, Old Testament Theology in Outline (Edinburgh: T & T Clark/Atlanta: John Knox Press 1978), p. 44.

393. So Wyschogrod, Body of Faith, p. 12.

394. Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Minneapolis: Fortress/London: SCM Press, 1992), p. 427.

395. Paul M. Van Buren, A Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality, vol. 2 (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), p. 117.

396. Levenson, “The Universal Horizon of Biblical Particularism,” p. 159.

397. Preuss, OT Theology, 2:285.

398. Theodorus C. Vriezen, Die Erwählung Israels nach dem Alten Testament, ATANT 24 (Zurich: Zwingli, 1953), pp. 98–108; cf. Childs, Biblical Theology, p. 427.

399. Cf. Knierim, Task of OT Theology, p. 549.

400. Schwartz, Curse of Cain, p. 81.

401. So Wyschogrod, Body of Faith, pp. 58–65. Cf. Van Buren, A Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality, 2:125.

402. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans/Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991, 1994, 1998), 3:32.

403. See Lynn M. Bechtel, “A Feminist Reading of Genesis 19.1–11,” in A Feminist Companion to Genesis, ed. Athalya Y. Brenner, FCB 2/1 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), pp. 108–28.

404. Cf. Miller, Israelite Religion, pp. 553–56.

405. The KJV’s “spare” is difficult to justify for the expression nāṣāʾ lĕ (lift/carry/remove for). On the idiom, see the comments in sections 6.6–7. The ellipse of a word for wickedness is not unparalleled (see BDB).

406. Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil (Princeton, N.J./Chichester, U.K.: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 151.

407. See Samuel E. Balentine, “The Prophet as Intercessor,” JBL 103 (1984): 161–73.

408. See Private Property and Communism, “Karl Marx: Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844” at <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm>.

409. The EVV “household” represents Hebrew ʿăbuddâ, suggesting a body of servants.

410. Masoretic Text

411. It was once common to see the teraphim as some kind of proof of property rights, but they usually have religious significance—Laban calls them his gods (Gen 31:30). Rainer Albertz plausibly sees them as “heirlooms,” possessions that had emotional value as signs of family continuity and solidarity between generations—like the family possessions over which siblings in the West fight after the death of a parent (A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, OTL [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994], p. 37). See T. J. Lewis in DDD, pp. 844–50; he notes B. B. Schmidt’s comment in his dissertation Israel’s Beneficent Dead that it is “anyone’s guess” what they represented (the comment does not appear in the published version of the dissertation).

412. On the tension between servitude and lordship in Gen 37–50, see Yiu-Wing Fung, Victim and Victimizer: Joseph’s Interpretation of his Destiny, JSOTSup 308 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), pp. 21–22.

413. The same point emerges from the story of the Shunammite woman’s generous hospitality to Elijah (2 Kings 4).

414. Francis Watson, Text, Church and World (Edinburgh: T & T Clark/Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994), p. 70.

415. So Fretheim, “Book of Genesis,” p. 476. Cf. Frank Crüsemann, “Dominion, Guilt, and Reconciliation,” in Ethics and Politics in the Hebrew Bible, ed. Douglas A. Knight and Carol Meyers, Semeia 66 (1994): 67–77.

416. I think Paul L. Redditt focuses insufficiently on action over against emotion in connection with the verb śānēʾ (EVV “hate”) in his critical study of Mal 1:2–3 (“The God Who Loves and Hates,” in Shall Not the God of All the Earth Do What Is Right, J. L. Crenshaw Festschrift, ed. David Penchansky and Paul L. Redditt [Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2000], pp. 175–90).

417. Cf. the discussion of “The Lack of Difference” in section 4.5 below.

418. Fretheim, “Book of Genesis,” p. 573.

419. Many seem to be simply examples of peoples who died out or lost out as Israel came to occupy Canaan.

420. There is no suggestion that Sodom’s sin lies in promiscuity or homosexual behavior in general.

421. When Lot warns them, they assume he is joking (meṣaḥēq): Once again it is the verb that referred to Sarah’s laughing and anticipates the name of Lot’s cousin.

422. The verb (nābaṭ hiphil) implies a careful look rather than a glance.

423. Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament Theology: Essays on Structure, Theme, and Text (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), pp. 205–6.

424. Eliezer is ben-mĕṣaḥēq bêtî, for which NRSV guesses “the heir of my house.”

425. The Hebrew prepositions vary, but this does not seem significant.

426. Chapters 18–19 are longer, but several stories interweave there.

427. Extramarital sex is not in itself defiling, like adultery (though the Genesis accounts of adultery—near or attempted—also involve foreigners). Jacob’s sons go on to describe Shechem’s act as wickedly stupid (nĕbālâ), something no Israelite would dare do (Gen 34:7) (unless he were a son of King David). That might also reflect its contravening the boundary between Abraham’s family and the Canaanites (cf. Josh 7:15?), though the comment may indicate that the brothers are overreacting.

428. In the event the direction of appropriation turns out to be the reverse (Gen 34:28–29).

429. Subsequently, David has a Hittite companion in his exile and another among his “Thirty” crack troops, and he buys a threshing floor from a Jebusite to build an altar on its site (1 Sam 26:6; 2 Sam 23:39; 24:18).

430. See further section 10.6 below.

431. See Carol Delaney, “Abraham and the Seeds of Patriarchy,” in A Feminist Companion to Genesis, ed. Athalya Y. Brenner, FCB 2/1 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), pp. 129–49.

432. Devora Steinmetz, From Father to Son: Kinship, Conflict, and Continuity in Genesis (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991), pp. 38, 86.

433. For the paragraph that follows, see Fung, Victim and Victimizer.

434. J. William Whedbee, The Bible and the Comic Vision (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 94.

435. See, e.g., DDD, “El.”

436. On the word “owner,” see the discussion of qānâ in the comments on “Insight Speaks” in section 2.1 above

437. Cf. Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror, OBT (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), p. 28.

438. Fretheim, “Book of Genesis,” p. 454.

439. New Revised Standard Version

440. Septuagint

441. See R. Walter L. Moberly, The Old Testament of the Old Testament, OBT (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992).

442. See, e.g., John Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan, JSOTSup 265 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), pp. 17–19; DDD, “El-olam.”

443. It is actually Abraham’s name for the place of offering rather than the God to whom he made the offering, but it works by being a statement about God.

444. See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1936–1969), III/3:3–4.

445. “Mighty [One]” (ʾăbîr) differs only in spelling from another word for “mighty [one]” that can refer specifically to bulls (ʾabbîr). El was commonly characterized as bull-like (in strength), and this term could characterize Jacob’s God thus. But Ugaritic uses a quite different word in this connection, and Hebrew ʾabbîr more often means “strong” without any bull-like connotations.

446. See Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, p. 27; DDD on “Fear of Isaac,” “Mighty One of Jacob” and “Shield of Abraham”; TDOT on paḥad. The actual names of “the God of the fathers” are presumably the El compounds we have already considered.

447. Cf. Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, p. 36.

448. Masoretic Text

449. Jack Miles, God: A Biography (New York/London: Simon & Schuster, 1995), pp. 67, 78–79.

450. I must meet different theologians from Erhard S. Gerstenberger, who says that “no modern theologian makes comparable claims to have had a personal vision of God (perhaps that is a mistake?). All present-day talk of God is based on ancient texts, not on the experience of the presence of God” (Theologies in the Old Testament [Edinburgh: T & T Clark/Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002], p. 273). Modern theologians of course grant that their alleged experience of God may have to be tested by ancient texts.

451. A prophet can of course be called an aide (Hag 1:13; and the name Malachi, which may indeed rather be a designation, “my aide”).

452. It may not seem much less threatening, at least to a not-very-intelligent man, precisely because the presence of God’s aide is not very different from God’s own presence (see Judg 13:21–22).

453. Unless all three figures represent Yhwh: see William J. Lyons’ discussion, Canon and Exegesis, JSOTSup 352 (London/New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), pp. 151–57.

454. Cf. Miles, God, p. 61.

455. So Fretheim, “Book of Genesis,” p. 566.

456. Owen C. Thomas in God’s Activity in the World, ed. Owen C. Thomas (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1983), pp. 1–2.

457. Cf. ibid.

458. See, e.g., Schubert M. Ogden, The Reality of God and Other Essays (New York: Harper, 1966/London: SCM Press, 1967), pp. 174–87.

459. Fretheim, “Book of Genesis,” p. 431.

460. Ibid., p. 484.

461. The verb is often translated “visit,” and the Mafia connotations make this a happy translation when it refers to bringing trouble, but in the story of the ancestors and of the exodus, the verb is used only with positive significance. The epidemic in Pharaoh’s household (Gen 12) could have been described in terms of God’s “attending to” Pharaoh, but it is not. Nor is God’s raining sulfur on Sodom. Even Lot’s wife “becomes a salt column” rather than “being turned into” one (by God). Perhaps this is another sign that God’s beneficent acts are nearer to God’s heart than acts of punishment.

462. James Daane, “Can a Man Bless God?” in God and the Good, ed. Clifton Orlebeke and Lewis Smedes (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1975), pp. 165–73; see esp. p. 167.

463. M. Wiles, “Divine Action,” in The God Who Acts, ed. Thomas F. Tracy (University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), pp. 13–29; see p. 24.

464. Cf. ibid., p. 25.

465. Perhaps Gen 47:31 indicates that Jacob does bow down to Joseph and thus fulfills the dream, though Gen 48:12 may then record that the final bowing is Joseph’s to Jacob.

466. Reigning as king over them (mālak) is far more than the dream implies. Bowing down need not even imply that Joseph has authority (māšal) over them, though they will in due course be excited to report that he does have authority throughout Egypt (Gen 45:8, 26), which implies authority over them when they find themselves in Egypt.

467. Miles, God, pp. 62–63.

468. See the comments on “Live Your Life Before Me” in section 4.1 above.

469. Masoretic Text

470. See the comments on “El Elyon” in section 4.6 above.

471. Purification relates to the effect of spending time in an alien land and being stained by alien worship (e.g., Josh 22:17; 2 Chron 30:18; Ezra 6:20).

472. Miles, God, pp. 67–68.

473. Cf. Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: Harper, 1962, 1965), 1:370–73, following the work of H. Cremer.

474. Cf. Lloyd Gaston, “Abraham and the Righteousness of God,” HBT 2 (1980): 39–68; Manfred Oeming, “Ist Genesis 15 6 ein Beleg für Anrechtung des Glaubens zur Gerechtigkeit?” ZAW 95 (1983): 182–97.

475. Cf. Van Buren, A Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality, 2:146–48. Ironically, the argument of Romans is thus in keeping with this text, though Paul’s specific use of it takes it in another sense. Conversely, those inspired expositions (Rom 4; Gal 3; see also Jas 2) correspond to aspects of the theology of Genesis but not directly to the meaning of Gen 15:6. They follow LXX in assimilating the expression here to the different one in Ps 106:31, ḥāšab niphal plus l. Von Rad (“Faith Reckoned as Righteousness,” in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays [Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966], pp. 125–30) similarly takes the verb to mean “count” in a priestly sense (count something as right in the sense of constituting a proper offering). This usage, too, is instanced only in the niphal, accompanied by a preposition. Here there is no preposition and the context suggests Abram is the subject of the qal verb. On the theological context of von Rad’s understanding, see Jon D. Levenson’s comments in The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), pp. 57–61.

476. English versions

477. On their possible significance, see the comments on material blessing in section 4.3 above.

478. See Schwartz, Curse of Cain, pp. 84–85.

479. Cf. I. N. Rashkow, “Daughters and Fathers in Genesis,” in A Feminist Companion to Exodus to Deuteronomy, ed. Athalya Brenner, FCB 6 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), pp. 22–36.

480. Contrast Gen 2 and the comments in section 2.8, “Behind and Beyond the Battle of the Sexes.”

481. “They” name Esau, while “he” names Jacob (Gen 25:25–26): I take both these expressions as impersonal. That parents should jointly name a child would be unparalleled; parental agreement on names is a hard act to achieve.

482. See further Ilana Pardes, Countertraditions in the Bible (Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 60–78.

483. Esther Fuchs, Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative, JSOTSup 310 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), p. 44.

484. Cf. Elsa Tamez, “The Woman Who Complicated the History of Salvation,” in New Eyes For Reading, ed. John S. Pobee and Bärbel von Wartenberg-Potter (Quezon City, Philippines: Claretian, 1987), pp. 5–17.

485. Cf. Fuchs, Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative, p. 58.

486. Renita J. Weems, Just a Sister Away (San Diego: LuraMedia, 1988), pp. 1–2.

487. William P. Brown, The Ethos of the Cosmos: The Genesis of Moral Imagination in the Bible (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999), p. 194.

488. Cf. J. Cheryl Exum, Fragmented Women, JSOTSup 163 (Sheffield: JSOT Press/Philadelphia: Trinity Press, 1993), pp. 148–69.

489. But perhaps it is just we moderns who have problems with the narrative order of sex followed by love: see Claudia V. Camp, Wise, Strange and Holy, JSOTSup 320 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), p. 287.

490. Admittedly the difference is expressed here in a puzzling way. Jacob is described as tam. The word usually comes in wisdom literature to mean “having integrity,” but elsewhere the word for that is tāmîm (cf. Gen 6:9; 17:1). As a description of Jacob one would have to take this as a redactor’s conventional epithet rather than the obvious implication of his story. Even then, one would have expected the usual tāmîm. But it is difficult to imagine how the most respectful of redactors could have offered this value judgment in the context of the story in Gen 25–27. On the basis of the description being set over against that of Esau as the outdoor type, a man of the wild, traditionally it has been taken to mean “plain” (KJV) or “quiet” (NRSV).

491. Brueggemann, OT Theology, pp. 207–8.

492. Fretheim, “Book of Genesis,” p. 594.

493. Cf. Gerhard von Rad, “The Joseph Narrative and Ancient Wisdom,” in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 292–300.

494. New Revised Standard Version

495. Brueggemann, OT Theology, p. 210.

496. Masoretic Text

497. See, e.g., Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses (New York: Ballantine, 1993), pp. 136–39.

498. English versions

499. The NRSV renders the verb “mock” (cf. BDB), but the context suggests “trick”: see NIDOTTE on tāʿaʿ. The similarity to the verb tāʿâ (“err”; hiphil “mislead”) will likely have suggested this connotation.

500. See Ann W. Engar’s study of “Old Testament Women as Tricksters,” in Mappings of the Biblical Terrain, ed. Vincent L. Tollers and John Maier (Cranbury, N.J./London: Associated University Presses, 1990), pp. 143–57, though I have come to different conclusions regarding this comparison.

501. Cf. Athalya Brenner, The Israelite Woman: Social Role and Literary Type in Biblical Narrative (Sheffield: JSOT, 1985), p. 108.

502. Whedbee, The Bible and the Comic Vision, p. 108.

503. Ilona N. Rashkow, Taboo or Not Taboo (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), p. 117.

504. E.g., Calum M. Carmichael, The Laws of Deuteronomy (Ithaca, N.Y./London: Cornell University Press, 1974), pp. 61–62, 159–63, 186–88, 205–7.

505. Cf. Peter D. Miscall, “The Jacob and Joseph Stories as Analogues,” JSOT 8 (1978): 28–40; see p. 38.

506. I generalize Hugh C. White’s comment on Gen 37:1–4 (Narration and Discourse in the Book of Genesis [Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991], p. 242).

507. But Yair Zakovitch argues that the First Testament offers various hints that the Israelites were in Egypt as a result of their sin (“And You Shall Tell Your Son …” [Jerusalem: Magnes, 1991], pp. 15–45).

508. See, e.g., Gerhard von Rad, The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 1–78; esp. 63–67; more recently, Erhard Blum, Die Komposition der Vätergeschichte, WMANT 57 (Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 1984), pp. 359–60; Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch, BZAW 189 (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1990), pp. 107–8. On the historical background to this emphasis, see, e.g., Rolf Rendtorff, Canon and Theology, OBT (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), pp. 92–113.

509. John Durham, Exodus, WBC (Dallas, Tex.: Word, 1987), p. xix. Cf. the references in Rolf P. Knierim, The Task of Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1995), p. 179.

510. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1936–1969), III/1:59.

511. Cf. section 1.2 above.

512. See, e.g., the references in Knierim, Task of OT Theology, p. 179.

513. Cf. James Barr, Old and New in Interpretation (London: SCM Press/New York: Harper & Row, 1966), pp. 18–19, 74–76.

514. Hans Heinrich Schmid, “Creation, Righteousness, and Salvation,” in Creation in the Old Testament, ed. Bernhard W. Anderson (London: SPCK/Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), pp. 102–17; see p. 111. See the discussion in Henning Graf Reventlow, Problems of Old Testament Theology in the Twentieth Century (London: SCM Press/Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), pp. 138–54. R. Knierim comments, “Creation theology has become a trend, and even a yardstick for professorial legitimacy these days” (“On the Subject of War in Old Testament and Biblical Theology,” in Reading the Hebrew Bible for a New Millennium, ed. Wonil Kim et al., 2 vols. [Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity, 2000], 1:73–88; p. see 79).

515. See, e.g., F. LeRon Schults, The Postfoundationalist Task of Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1999); Stanley J. Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001).

516. See, e.g., Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament Theology: Essays on Structure, Theme, and Text (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), pp. 1–44, 95–110.

517. I have discussed their relationship in Theological Diversity and the Authority of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1987/Carlisle: Paternoster, 1995), chap. 7.

518. See section 4.6 above.

519. See section 2.8 above.

520. Cf. George M. Landes, “Creation and Liberation,” USQR 33 (1977–78): 79–89. See further section 5.5 below.

521. Being fruitful (pārâ) is God’s commission in Gen 1; 8–9; 35:11. It is God’s promise in Gen 17:6, 20; 48:4—something God will bring about: Compare also the expectation in Gen 26:22, the prayer in Gen 28:3, and the experience in Gen 41:52; 47:27. Being prolific (šāraṣ) is a rarer word, confined to commissions in Gen 1–11 (see esp. Gen 9:7). Being numerous (rābâ) is also God’s commission in Gen 1; 8–9; 35:11, and God’s promise in Gen 16:10; 17:2; 22:17; 26:4, 24; 48:4 (cf. also the experience in Gen 47:27). Being strong (ʿāṣam) is another rarer word, this time one that does not occur in Gen 1–11, but does come as a recognition of what has happened to Abraham’s offspring in Gen 26:16, while the adjective appears alongside “numerous” in reference to God’s promise in Gen 18:18. Being full (mālēʾ) is again God’s commission in Genesis 1 and 9, though this underlines the ambiguity of the word ʾereṣ. In Genesis 1 and 9, humanity is commissioned to fill the earth, but in Exodus the people fill the land. In Gen 48:19, Ephraim is to become a “fullness” of nations.

522. Cf. Terence E. Fretheim, Exodus (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991), p. 25.

523. See ANET, pp. 369–71.

524. Exodus Rabbah is hardly right that the passage suggests they sat by the casserole but could merely smell the meat and had only bread to eat, though this may have been the case once oppression started. In a sense Ex 16 is presumably portraying the people with some irony as they recall their life in Egypt as through rose-tinted spectacles. But the irony may be that they are looking behind the later experience of oppression to a time when they were enjoying a good life in Egypt.

525. Histories, 2.25.

526. See George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

527. Fretheim, Exodus, p. 25.

528. Or that Yhwh is in the earth—but this would be a slightly odd way to make the point (contrast Ex 9:29).

529. Masoretic Text

530. Cf. Fretheim, Exodus, p. 13. Rom 9:17 takes the hiphil heʿĕmadtîkā in the first, stronger sense. The NRSV and JPSV take it in the latter, permissive sense. BDB has “maintain.”

531. Jack Miles, God: A Biography (New York/London: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 85.

532. Clodovis Boff and George V. Pixley, The Bible, the Church, and the Poor (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis/Tunbridge Wells: Burns & Oates, 1989), p. 20. They go on to infer that God exercises a preferential option for the poor, and there is a basis for this elsewhere in the First Testament, but the exodus story concerns a people oppressed by another rather than an economically disadvantaged status class within an ethnic group or within the world as a whole (p. 25). Cf. J. David Pleins, The Social Visions of the Hebrew Bible (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), p. 171; and Jon D. Levenson’s critique of liberation theology, The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), pp. 127–59.

533. So, e.g., George V. Pixley, On Exodus (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1987), pp. xviii–xix, 3–4.

534. Cf. Pleins, Social Visions of the Hebrew Bible, p. 174.

535. John H. Yoder, “Exodus and Exile,” Cross Currents 23 (1973–74): 297–309; see p. 300.

536. Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), p. 174.

537. If the Israelites were never in Egypt and never undertook a geographical move from one land to another, the frequency of this verb in the story is odd, even though one might apply it to the Israelites’ hypothetical departure from the world of Canaanite society (see section 7.5 below).

538. New Revised Standard Version

539. Christoph Barth, God with Us (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1991), p. 59.

540. Cf. David Daube, The Exodus Pattern in the Bible (London: Faber, 1963), pp. 28–29; he uses the verb “recover.”

541. See section 5.4 below.

542. Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1985), p. 22.

543. See Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1973/London: SCM Press, 1974), pp. 91–92, 113–4.

544. José Severino Croatto, Exodus (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1981), p. 17, comparing Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Herder, 1970), pp. 49–51.

545. Croatto, Exodus, pp. 21–22.

546. Brueggemann, OT Theology, p. 47, his emphasis.

547. Cf. Brueggemann, Theology of the OT, p. 414.

548. Against Fretheim, Exodus, p. 60.

549. See section 3.5 above.

550. Septuagint

551. Almost every line of this passage contains uncertainties of translation: see, e.g., G. I. Davies, Hosea, NCB (London: Marshall/Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1992). Most translations assume that the text has been miscopied, but they differ on how to restore it. I have therefore tried to translate it as it stands, though noting LXX’s alternative version of Hos 11:2a. Much of the passage’s allusiveness derives from the way it works with words. Sometimes it uses the same word in changing ways—see the different uses of “call” (qārāʾ), “turn/return” (šûb), “feed/feed on” (ʾākal), “give up/make” (nātan). I have assumed it uses at least one pair of homonyms—“town” and “rage” are both (ʿîr, introducing ambiguity. Ambiguity also emerges from the use of other words that could have different meanings—there is more than one word baddîm, one meaning “diviners,” the other “limbs.” And the word for “yoke” is differently spelled the second time, and may be a word for “child.”

552. Cf. José Porfirio Miranda’s argument from the juxtaposition of Ex 3 with Gen 4 and Gen 18–19 (Marx and the Bible [Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1974/London: SCM Press, 1977], pp. 88–99); also John Goldingay, “The Man of War and the Suffering Servant,” TynBul 27 (1976): 79–113.

553. Masoretic Text

554. Cf. the opening to section 4.7 above.

555. Cf. Vernon White’s survey and critique, The Fall of a Sparrow (Exeter: Paternoster, 1985), pp. 56–95; cf., e.g., Gordon D. Kaufman, “On the meaning of ‘Act of God,’ ” HTR 61 (1968): 175–201.

556. Pixley, On Exodus, pp. 6, 7.

557. See J. C. Exum, “ ‘You Shall Let Every Daughter Live,’ ” in A Feminist Companion to Exodus to Deuteronomy, ed. Athalya Brenner, FCB 6 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), pp. 37–61; J. Siebert-Hommes, “But If She Be a Daughter,” in the same volume, pp. 62–74; J. C. Exum, “Second Thought about Secondary Characters,” in the same volume, pp. 75–87.

558. See Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, p. 44, and his references.

559. For the Egyptian’s act, for Moses’ act and for the act of the Israelite whom Moses rebukes, Ex 2:11–13 use hikkâ, which means “hit” but can refer both to fatal and nonfatal attacks. The three occurrences of this verb are balanced by three occurrences of hārag, “slay,” in Ex 2:14–15.

560. Admittedly we are not told that the king’s edict was ever implemented, any more than the babies’ killing at birth. Perhaps every family found its own equivalent to Moses’ mother’s stratagem.

561. Aaron Wildavsky, The Nursing Father (Tuscaloosa/London: University of Alabama Press, 1984), p. 32.

562. 2 BDB cites Prov 3:34; 16:19, though even in these K actually has the variant form ʿānî.

563. The LXX and Vg. take the word to mean “gentle.”

564. Cf. Pixley, On Exodus. Christopher Seitz suggests that the reason he asks after God’s name is that whereas his people know Yhwh, understandably he does not (Word Without End [Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1998], pp. 235–38).

565. e

566. Or does ʿānāw link rather with ʿānâ i (to answer) not ʿānâ iii (to afflict)? Is Moses the man who carries most responsibility on earth? See the discussion in George W. Coats, “Humility and Honor,” in Art and Meaning, ed. David J. A. Clines et al., JSOTSup 19 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1982), pp. 97–107.

567. Wildavsky, Nursing Father, p. 31.

568. See John Goldingay, “The Significance of Circumcision,” JSOT 88 (2000): 3–18.

569. So Croatto, Exodus, pp. 15, 22.

570. English versions

571. maggēpâ, Ex 9:14; negaʿ, Ex 11:1; negep, Ex 12:13; cf. the verb nāgap, Ex 8:2 [MT 7:27]; Ex 12:23, 27.

572. Masoretic Text

573. A participle from this verb and the noun peleʾ form a bracket round this story in describing the “wonders” God does to Egypt (Ex 3:20; 15:11).

574. The LXX and Vg. translate as if the word were “distinction” (pĕlût) not “redemption” (pĕdût) (cf. NRSV mg.), and may have had this word in their Hebrew text.

575. Cf. Fretheim, Exodus, p. 108.

576. Ziony Zevit has suggested many detailed links with Gen 1–2 (see “The Priestly Redaction and Interpretation of the Plague Narrative in Exodus,” Jewish Quarterly Review 66 [1975–1976]: 193–211).

577. Terence E. Fretheim, “Suffering God and Sovereign God in Exodus,” HBT 11, no. 2 (1989): 31–56; see p. 36.

578. Fretheim, Exodus, p. 113.

579. Alfred Tennyson, “In memoriam A. H. H.,” canto 56.

580. “Nothing in nature looks like cloud by day and fire by night except a volcano” (Miles, God, p. 126).

581. Yoder, “Exodus and Exile,” p. 299.

582. New Revised Standard Version

583. We do not know the meaning of ḥămušîm, but it always refers to men equipped and ready to fight (Josh 1:14; 4:12; Judg 7:11). The link with Joshua supports the idea that the description here is an anticipation of the Jordan crossing story—the people are armed for the entering of Canaan; battle is more integral to Joshua (cf. John Van Seters, The Life of Moses [Louisville: Westminster John Knox/Kampen: Kok, 1994], p. 144). Yet there, too, the first great “battle” will be one in which they do not fight (Josh 6).

584. Strictly this is an anachronism, but the people would have to travel through an area later occupied by the Philistines.

585. Fretheim, Exodus, p. 159.

586. See the comments in section 5.2, “Yhwh Cares,” above.

587. Eugene B. Borowitz, Judaism After Modernity (Lanham, Md./Oxford: University Press of America, 1999), p. 243.

588. King James Version

589. See Daube, The Exodus Pattern.

590. Boff and Pixley, Bible, the Church, and the Poor, p. 19. They are actually referring to Ex 20:2.

591. C. Barth, God with Us, p. 60.

592. See Paul M. Van Buren, The Burden of Freedom (New York: Seabury Press, 1976), pp. 57–85.

593. Paul M. Van Buren, A Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality, vol. 2 (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), pp. 157, 161–62, noting that this also places a question mark by the idea that the State of Israel can be a Jewish state on the basis of ethnicity and occupation of the promised land without commitment to the Torah.

594. Through this story, are God and leaders telling the truth? When they get to Sinai, it is Moses’ father-in-law who offers sacrifices and whole offerings (Ex 18:12), though eventually Israelites also do so (Ex 24:5). They do not explicitly keep a pilgrim festival to Yhwh at Sinai—or only one that arouses Yhwh’s anger (Ex 32:5). But in any case, when people go off on a pilgrimage, they come back and resume their normal lives. Was that ever envisaged? Further, do Moses and Aaron really believe that Yhwh will fall on them with epidemic or sword if they do not go to offer sacrifice in the wilderness (Ex 5:3)? Yhwh did not say so. Perhaps we are to think of them as keeping a festival before they leave, given that Passover/Unleavened Bread is the first great Israelite festival celebrating the people’s deliverance from Egypt (Ex 12:14; 13:6; cf., e.g., Ex 23:14–15). It is an occasion of sacrifice (Ex 12:27) and an expression of service (Ex 12:25, 26; 13:5). Admittedly their actual observance of Passover in Egypt is not described as an act of service or a pilgrim festival (it of course does not require pilgrimage) or as involving sacrifice. Yet the implication may be that the people celebrate a quasi-festival in Egypt faute de mieux, because the king will not let them go. And perhaps the request to the king is a kind of test. If he had responded positively to Moses’ demand, the relationship between Israel and Egypt would have been very different, and the need to leave Egypt much reduced.

595. In this poem (Ex 15:1–18) I have translated qatals as aorist or present continuous (to represent instantaneous qatal) and yiqtols as future or present (though they may well refer to past events).

596. Even the references to fury and anger (Ex 15:7–8) refer to the empirical phenomena (the “furious” blast of the wind) rather than to feelings of anger on God’s part. While the First Testament has no hesitation about attributing feelings of anger to God, there is no other reference to these in Ex 14–15.

597. Walter Brueggemann, “The Book of Exodus,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 1:804.

598. Cf. Carola Kloos, Yhwh’s Combat with the Sea (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986).

599. Walter Brueggemann, “Pharaoh as Vassal,” CBQ 57 (1995): 27–51; see pp. 32–33.

600. Fretheim, Exodus, p. 83.

601. Cf. Croatto, Exodus, p. 18.

602. See Wolfhart Pannenberg, ed., Revelation as History (New York: Macmillan, 1968).

603. Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope (London: SCM Press/New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p. 95. See the comments on “The Knowability of God” in section 3.3 above.

604. New Revised Standard Version

605. Gen 1 referred to God “holifying” the seventh day, and Gen 38 referred to a prostitute as a “holy woman,” so this is but the third occurrence of a “holiness” word in the First Testament. When Genesis referred to places where the ancestors met with God or built altars and offered sacrifice, it did not describe them as holy places, and we have no explicit reason to think that Horeb/Sinai is already holy in such a connection. The story calls it “God’s mountain,” presumably because that is what this mountain will become, as the place where the people will come to serve God (Ex 3:12; cf. later Ex 4:27; 18:5; 24:13). If it had already been “God’s mountain,” Moses would have had less need to be told it was holy ground.

606. Pannenberg, Revelation as History, p. 9.

607. Rendtorff, Canon and Theology, pp. 114–24.

608. Cf. Douglas A. Knight, Tradition and Theology in the Old Testament, ed. D. A. Knight (Philadelphia: Fortress/London: SPCK, 1977), pp. 164–74.

609. So, e.g., Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1:365

610. Neither of the expressions in Ex 3:14 ever reappears in the First Testament except in Hos 1:9 where Yhwh threatens “I will not be for you” (cf. Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. [Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: Harper, 1962, 1965], 1:181).

611. See, e.g., DDD on “Yahweh.” One might compare the form Yah, which comes in Ex 15:2, though that may be a later shortened form.

612. Philo On the Change of Names 11–12, 15.

613. It may once have represented a causative form, “he causes to be/creates” (e.g., Frank M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic [Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard University Press, 1973], pp. 60–75; TDOT). But Exodus gives no indication of being aware of this.

614. Ps 50:21 is the only possible exception. Further, Hebrew syntax makes it natural to say “I am with you” or “I am Yhwh” or to make other similar statements by means of a noun clause in which Yhwh says literally “I with you,” “I Yhwh,” etc. (e.g., Ex 6:2; Is 41:10). The frequency of this usage for a present statement makes it even more likely that the yiqtol verb implies a future reference.

615. “I will be with you,” Yhwh repeats to Joshua and Gideon (Deut 31:23; Josh 1:5; 3:7; Judg 6:16). “I will be a father to him,” Yhwh says to David regarding his son (2 Sam 7:14; 1 Chron 17:13; 28:6). “I will be your God,” Jeremiah has Yhwh saying at Sinai (Jer 11:4), and repeating as a promise for after the exile (Jer 30:22; cf. Jer 24:7; 31:1; 32:38; Ezek 11:20; 14:11; 34:24; 36:28; 37:23; Zech 8:8). It undoes the terrible reversal of “I will not be yours” (Hos 1:9), undone in Hosea itself as “I will be like dew to Israel” (Hos 14:5 [MT 6]) and in Zechariah as “I will be a wall of fire round it … and I will be glory within it” (Zech 2:5 [MT 9]). A number of similar statements are made with the use of the waw-consecutive construction using the form wĕhāyîtî (e.g., Gen 17:8; Ex 6:7; 29:45), which is semantically the same but may be rhetorically different.

616. The same implications emerge from an alternative way of construing Yhwh’s explanation, that it means “I am the one who is,” if “being” again has the dynamic implication of “being there” (see E. Schild, “On Exodus iii 14,” VT 4 [1954]: 296–302).

617. Cf. Miles, God, p. 93. Patrick D. Miller urges that El was also a warrior (Israelite Religion and Biblical Theology, JSOTSup 267 [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000], pp. 24–44).

618. The name’s falling out of use bequeathed to us an uncertainty about its exact form, though references in the church fathers suggest that this was “Yahweh.” The “name” Jehovah represents the consonants of the name Yhwh (J replaced Y because Greek lacked Y) and the vowels of the Hebrew word for “the Lord,” the expression that people read out in place of the name when reading from Scripture.

619. Cf. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 42; further, pp. 95–120.

620. Cf. David R. Griffin, “Relativism, Divine Causation, and Biblical Theology,” in God’s Activity in the World, ed. Owen C. Thomas (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1983), pp. 117–36; see p. 121.

621. Masoretic Text

622. For the dynamic sequence of promise (words), act/sign, recognition, cf. 1 Sam 2:34; 2 Kings 19:29 = Is 37:30; Jer 44:29.

623. Cf. Pannenberg’s thesis that “the Word relates itself to revelation as foretelling, forthtelling, and report” (Revelation as History, p. 152).

624. Croatto, Exodus, pp. 14–15.

625. Cf. Rainer Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), p. 62.

626. Cf. Fretheim, Exodus, pp. 38, 44

627. The EVV usually have “on the way” for badderek, but the context suggests a reference to the hardship in Egypt from which Yhwh had rescued them. The “way” is thus the people’s experience since Moses left Jethro. Cf. derek in, e.g., Ps 37:7; 102:23 [MT 24]; Prov 3:23; Is 40:27.

628. I have left the incoherence of Ex 18:11b as it stands.

629. lonian Talmud

630. The verb is zîd, literally “seethe,” conventionally rendered “act presumptuously,” but passages such as Ex 21:14 suggest that deliberateness is the point.

631. New Revised Standard Version

632. See, e.g., Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, p. 52.

633. See the comments on the Midianites in section 7.6 below.

634. In itself the word ʿereb is neutral in meaning, and the context here suggests no negative connotations (contrast Neh 13:3).

635. Fretheim, Exodus, p. 131.

636. Cf. Jon D. Levenson, “The Universal Horizon of Biblical Particularism,” in Ethnicity and the Bible, ed. Mark G. Brett (Leiden/New York: E. J. Brill, 1996), pp. 143–69; see pp. 161–65.

637. Masoretic Text

638. Etymologically one might have expected that tûšāb (from the verb yāšab) would suggest a resident, and gēr (from gûr) a nonresident, but the words seem to be used the other way round (cf. Ex 12:45; Lev 25:40; see BDB).

639. On the changing designation or position of aliens, see Christiana van Houten, The Alien in Israelite Law, JSOTSup 107 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991).

640. 0 LXX: “should you not be willing to release them, look, I will then slay your firstborn son” (cf. RSV). Yhwh is then putting a warning before the king and affirming that it is an open question whether he heeds it; if he does so, his son will live. And this is indeed the situation. The situation is open. But Vg. presupposes a more obvious construction of the sentence in reckoning that Yhwh is here anticipating the end of the process that will unfold.

641. Cf. Michael Goldberg, Jews and Christians (Nashville: Abingdon, 1985), p. 83.

642. kābēd is J’s term, ḥāzaq is E and P’s synonym, while qāšeh/qāšâ in these chapters is also P’s term.

643. Brueggemann, “Book of Exodus,” pp. 730–31.

644. I therefore doubt Brevard S. Childs’s assessment that “the motif [of hardening] has been consistently over-interpreted by supposing that it arose from a profoundly theological reflection” (The Book of Exodus, OTL [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974], p. 174).

645. Cf. John B. Cobb, “Natural Causality and Divine Action,” in God’s Activity in the World, ed. Owen C. Thomas (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1983), pp. 101–16.

646. Ps 105:25 applies the point about the king to the Egyptians in general: Yhwh “turned their heart to be against his people” (cf. NRSV). But it may be more plausible to take it to declare that “their heart turned to be against his people” (The Book of Common Prayer … Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David [reprinted from the Great Bible of 1539; London: Collins, n.d.]).

647. Cf. David M. Gunn, “The ‘Hardening of Pharaoh’s Heart,’ ” in Art and Meaning, ed. David J. A. Clines et al., JSOTSup 19 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1982), pp. 72–96; see p. 76.

648. Cf. Fretheim, “Suffering God and Sovereign God,” p. 45. Fretheim antithesizes sovereignty and suffering; I am not clear that God suffers except in this sense of letting plans and purposes be vulnerable to complications that emerge from human sovereignty (see Fretheim’s definition of suffering, p. 53). See the discussion “Yhwh Hears, Looks and Acknowledges” in section 5.2 above.

649. So it is not quite true that “the problem of hardening is unique in Exodus. It emerges as if from nowhere and then vanishes” (Childs, Exodus, p. 170).

650. While the image of heaviness is especially used of Egypt, Moses describes himself as heavy of speech and tongue (Ex 4:10). Zechariah will confirm that the fate of which Isaiah warned Judah has overtaken them (Zech 7:11–14). The strength attributed to Pharaoh’s resolve can also be attributed to Israel (e.g., Jer 5:3, “strong faces”; Mal 3:13, “strong words”). The image of toughness or stiffness is used in Exodus itself of Israel in its stiff-neckedness (cf. also, e.g., 2 Kings 17:14; Neh 9:16–17; Jer 19:15), as well as of Egypt.

651. English translations have them bowing down and “worshiping,” which no doubt they did, but both verbs are body words. The first (qādad) is the rarer one, and only occurs in combination with the second (hištaḥăwâ).

652. Pixley, On Exodus.

653. Cf. Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, p. 50.

654. Yoder, “Exodus and Exile,” pp. 301, 303.

655. The description of Yhwh’s abode to which the people are being led (Ex 15:13, 17) does not closely match descriptions elsewhere of either Sinai or Zion. While “your holy abode” (Ex 15:13) might be Sinai, Exodus 15:14–17 suggests the purview of Israel’s subsequent journey to Canaan. “The mountain that belongs to you” is then the hill country of the promised land, and the sanctuary Yhwh will build there will turn out to be in Jerusalem.

656. Masoretic Text

657. In K the verb is qal ʾzkwr (I will think about), in Q hiphil ʾezkîr (I will speak about).

658. Cf. Barth’s comments on “apostolic direction,” Church Dogmatics, III/4:1–31; cf. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans/Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991, 1994, 1998), 3:89.

659. Cf. Van Buren, A Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality, 2:158–59.

660. Cf. Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/2:672–702.

661. Brueggemann, Theology of the OT, p. 184.

662. Cf. John Durham, Exodus, WBC (Dallas: Word, 1987), p. xxi.

663. Rainer Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), pp. 55–56.

664. For the discussion in First Testament scholarship, see Nicholson, God and His People (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

665. Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1936–1969), IV/1:55.

666. Walther Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, 2 vols., OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961, 1967), 1:15. Cf. Theodorus C. Vriezen’s use of the word communion (An Outline of Old Testament Theology, 2nd ed. [Oxford: Blackwell/Newton, Mass.: Branford, 1970], pp. 153–75).

667. Literally “cut” (kārat); see “God Who Speaks and Appears,” section 4.6 above.

668. Some current opinion questions whether we should call the Sinai relationship a covenant. Albertz describes it as “a special personal relationship between Yahweh and the Exodus group which had grown out of the experi[e]nce of liberation and was consolidated by theophany and worship” and which “furthered the social integration of the group, and … embodied elementary norms of conduct within the group” (History of Israelite Religion, p. 66). But it may seem odd to decline to call this a covenant (cf. Eichrodt’s comment noted in the previous paragraph).

669. Revised Standard Version

670. New Revised Standard Version

671. Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1962, 1965), 1:192; cf. Horst Dietrich Preuss, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox/Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995, 1996), 1:87.

672. Jon D. Levenson, Sinai and Zion (Minneapolis: Winston, 1985), p. 45.

673. Paul D. Hanson, The People Called (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986), p. 57.

674. Cf. Paul Van Buren, A Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality, vol. 2 (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), p. 165.

675. onian Talmud

676. Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1985), p. 80.

677. Against Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans/Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991, 1994, 1998), 3:113.

678. Cf. Nicholson, God and His People, pp. 172–74.

679. Cf. the language of “cutting” a covenant, on which see “God Who Speaks and Appears,” section 4.6 above.

680. Exodus Rabbah 14:3 does imply that Yhwh punished the people in Egypt, and Walzer suggests that Ezek 20 implies that (Exodus and Revolution, pp. 74–75), but I do not think this is so.

681. Thus the making of a new covenant (Jer 31:31–34) need not imply that the previous covenant is already annulled, but that Yhwh recognizes the necessity to improve how the covenant works in order to achieve the aim of having a people that does keep its side of the relationship.

682. Cf. Richard J. Mouw, The God Who Commands (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990); also Dale Patrick, The Rhetoric of Revelation in the Hebrew Bible, OBT (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), pp. 51–87.

683. Cf. the comments on the knowledge tree in section 3.1 above.

684. See the comments in section 5.5, “Bringing Him into a New Service.”

685. Cf., e.g., Van Buren, A Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality, 2:210–30.

686. Cf. Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), pp. 198–200.

687. Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/1:193–94.

688. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:95.

689. Two illuminating treatments from very different angles are F. Crüsemann, The Torah (Minneapolis: Fortress/Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996); Israel Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1985).

690. Brueggemann, Theology of the OT, p. 187.

691. L. Daniel Hawk, Joshua (Collegeville: Liturgical, 2000), p. 53.

692. Ibid., p. 5.

693. Cf. Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, p. 480.

694. Cf. ibid., pp. 484–85.

695. Even if the horn is a retrojection of the blowing of the horn in worship, one wonders how the narrative understands this isolated nonnatural element in the context. Perhaps it implies an extraordinary howling of the wind.

696. Perhaps the subject of the verb here is implicitly a subgroup such as the priests or the elders, not the whole people; but the text does not actually say so and thus leaves the tension between the two statements.

697. Moses adds that they should not go near a woman, which Yhwh had not specified. But refraining from sex might be thought implicit in the notion of ensuring that the people were clean, for the emission of semen would bring stain on men and women and there would not be time for the process of cleansing. It may be more significant that Yhwh had also not indicated that only men were to ascend the mountain. To judge from Ex 19:14–15, Moses and the narrator, at least, may have assumed that only men comprise the people. This fits with the fact that only men were circumcised, though it stands in tension with the participation of the whole people in the Passover as well as with the creation of men and women in God’s image and from the same raw material.

698. Frank H. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual, JSOTSup 91 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), p. 134.

699. Cf. Thomas B. Dozeman, God on the Mountain, SBLMS 37 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), p. 25.

700. Cf. Samuel Terrien, The Elusive Presence (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), p. 135.

701. The EVV have “face to face,” but on this occasion the expression is ʿayin bĕʿayin which recurs only in Is 52:8. The NRSV has “in plain sight” there; JPSV has this translation at Num 14:14. Construing the sentence is difficult, as is determining what occasion Moses refers to. The past tense of the verb suggests a specific occasion such as that in Ex 24 (so Jacob Milgrom, Numbers [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990]), though the words also recall God’s speaking to Moses (“face to face”!) in Ex 33:7–11.

702. Cf. Nicholson, God and his People, pp. 127–32.

703. Perhaps E and a D redactor, though this is disputed.

704. Walter Brueggemann, “The Book of Exodus,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 1:837.

705. Dozeman, God on the Mountain, pp. 49, 50.

706. Against ibid., p. 30.

707. Cf. ibid., pp. 31–32.

708. So Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, p. 60.

709. English versions

710. See IBD “Tabernacle.”

711. temple”; Hebrew does not have a word that only means “temple.”

712. The building instructions also emphasize the need to be able to move the key elements in the dwelling without touching them.

713. Masoretic Text

714. Brueggemann, “Book of Exodus,” p. 898, also p. 907, referring to Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

715. Peter J. Kearney notes detailed links between Ex 25–40 and Gen 1:1–2:3 (“Creation and Liturgy,” ZAW 89 [1977]: 375–87); cf. also Joseph Blenkinsopp, “The Structure of P,” CBQ 38 (1976): 275–92.

716. The expression “spirit of God” has come only once in the intervening story, in Gen 41:38. In the First Testament as a whole, the more common expression is “spirit of Yhwh.”

717. See, e.g., Gorman, Ideology of Ritual.

718. The verb reappears in Lev 11:47; 20:24–26; Num 8:14; 16:9; Deut 10:8; 1 Kings 8:53; Ezek 22:26; 42:20; but note the worrying occurrence in Deut 29:21 [MT 20].

719. See Gorman, Ideology of Ritual, pp. 131–35.

720. See ibid., pp. 215–27.

721. Different Jewish traditions associate creation with the first month and with the seventh month. See Shemaryahu Talmon, “The Understanding of Creation in the Bible and in Jewish Tradition,” Ex auditu 3 (1987): 98–119; see p. 98.

722. English versions

723. The “declaration chest” appears as the “covenant chest” from Num 10 onwards, but in Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus “covenant” (bĕrît) more often refers to a commitment on God’s part.

724. The top of the chest is puzzlingly called its kappōret; NIVI has “atonement cover,” a suitably opaque term. The NRSV keeps the traditional translation “mercy seat,” but this is not something on which anyone sits, even Yhwh, who sits on the cherubim (1 Sam 4:4; 2 Kings 19:15). If the covenant chest was once thought of as Yhwh’s throne (cf. Gerhard von Rad, “The Tent and the Ark,” in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays [Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966], pp. 103–24; see p. 108) this has been quite obscured in the First Testament. The word for “throne” (kissēʾ), used frequently for Yhwh’s throne in heaven (e.g., Is 6:1) and twice for Jerusalem or the visionary temple as Yhwh’s throne (Jer 3:17; Ezek 43:7), never appears in the accounts of the meeting tent or the temple (cf. von Rad, “The Tent and the Ark,” p. 112). If the chest has a function for Yhwh, it is as a footrest. The JPSV translates kappōret “cover,” and by its nature it is indeed that, but it is doubtful whether kipper means “cover,” and neither etymology nor usage supports the idea that kappōret has this simple down-to-earth meaning. 1 Chron 28:11 refers to “the room [strictly “house”] for the kappōret,” and a mere lid does not need a room or house of its own. Otherwise the word comes only in the account of the sanctuary. There the emphasis on it (see esp. Ex 25:17–22) also suggests it is more than the mere lid of a chest, but we do not know exactly what. Functionally, the cover is the place over which Yhwh appears and speaks with Moses (Ex 25:22; Lev 16:2; Num 7:89), but that does not explain why it should be called a kappōret.

725. Masoretic Text

726. Cf. Rad, “The Tent and the Ark,” pp. 110–12.

727. Brueggemann, “Book of Exodus,” p. 908.

728. Cf. Durham, Exodus, p. xxi.

729. Cf. von Rad, “The Tent and the Ark,” pp. 104–6.

730. To judge from what precedes, this would be the blast of trumpets (e.g., Num 10:5–6), though to judge from what follows, it might be the shout of the people (e.g., Josh 6:5, 20).

731. Cf. Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament Theology: Essays on Structure, Theme, and Text (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), pp. 156–58.

732. New Revised Standard Version

733. New International Version, Inclusive Language Edition

734. The LXX attributes more straightforward words to Yhwh, “I myself will precede you and give you rest.”

735. This hint is taken up in one of the Hebrew texts of Is 63:9, which talks about Yhwh’s face-aide (EVV “the angel of his presence”) delivering the people. The other Hebrew text of Is 63:9 (which also underlies LXX there) seems to deny this idea: “not a messenger or aide—his face delivered them.” Of the two readings that MT combines, NRSV chooses one, altering ṣār to ṣir and redividing the line. The NIVI chooses the other, altering lōʾ to lô (cf. Q) and keeping the odd expression “his face-aide.” The difference in the Isaiah texts provides another illustration of the need to talk in ways that on the surface look contradictory but help to make a theological point. It was not God’s face—that would be too dangerous; it was an aide. It was God’s face—God did not give up on accompanying them and delivering them. It was not some substitute for God. Cf. R. Walter L. Moberly, At the Mountain of God, JSOTSup 22 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1983), e.g., pp. 65–66.

736. Septuagint

737. The verbs are yiqtol or w plus qatal.

738. Brueggemann, OT Theology, p. 169.

739. This is even so in Ex 33:19 and 21, where NRSV has “show mercy” and “see”—contrast NIVI “have mercy” and “there is” (hinnēh).

740. ṭôb may have had covenantal associations, as cognate words in Aramaic and Akkadian do; see, e.g., NIDOTTE. BDB assumes that ṭûb here means “beauty” (cf. Hos 10:11). If Moses were to see Yhwh’s face, this might fit, but the context does not suggest this. More likely the word has its common, more down-to-earth sense.

741. Paul’s broader point, indeed, is the same—indeed, he is explicitly concerned to declare that its truth extends to the whole world—as Exodus’s broader context fits with Paul’s usage of this statement.

742. The verb is qāran, which otherwise occurs only at Ps 69:31 [MT 32] (hiphil). But the noun qeren is common.

743. The possible link in Hab 3:4 is really too obscure to help.

744. See “Horns of Moses,” in IDB, supplementary volume.

745. Traditionally this covering has been assumed also to prevent Moses’ face being a threat to people, but the story does not encourage this assumption (see Menahem Haran, “The Shining of Moses’ Face,” in In the Shelter of Elyon, G. W. Ahlström Festschrift, ed. W. Boyd Barrick and John R. Spencer, JSOTSup 31 [Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984], pp. 159–73; see pp. 160–63]. The idea that the veil was designed to conceal the fading of the glory (2 Cor 3:13) is not present in Ex 34 but helps Paul to make his point. It is not clear how to compare the sense in which all Christians “see the Lord’s glory with unveiled face” (2 Cor 3:18) with the sense in which Moses saw this and the people did not. Paul is overtly speaking in metaphor, while it is more difficult to discern what literal reality the story in Exodus refers to. Literally, Christians do not see the Lord’s face at all.

746. Eichrodt, Theology of the OT, 2:23–45.

747. See esp. Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

748. Euthyphro’s father was responsible for a foreign servant’s death; Euthyphro ought to press charges out of his obligation to the defenseless servant, but ought not to do so out of his filial obligation to his father.

749. Aaron Wildavsky, The Nursing Father (Tuscaloosa/London: University of Alabama Press, 1984), p. 92.

750. In Gen 12:2 “you” is suffixed to the verb. In Ex 32:10 it is separated out with the aid of the object marker as ʾôtĕkā.

751. Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/1:426.

752. Thomas B. Dozeman, “The Book of Numbers,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 2 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1998), pp. 25, 40.

753. See the discussion of God’s presence in sections 6.3–5.

754. See section 5.7 above.

755. Compare the list of human qualities, according to one Greek ideal, in Nussbaum, Fragility of Goodness, p. 20.

756. The precise meaning of the verb kipper and associated words is uncertain: See, e.g., TDOT; NIDOTTE. The actual expression yôm kippurîm comes from Lev 23:27–28; 25:9; BDB describes the usage as abstract plural. Singular yōm kippur does not come in the First Testament.

757. Gorman, Ideology of Ritual, p. 61.

758. Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, p. 67.

759. Wildavsky, Nursing Father, pp. 92, 104.

760. The EVV have Moses pleading, “Although this is a stiff-necked people.” Translating kî as “although” raises logical and semantic questions. We noted in discussing Gen 8:21 that it is doubtful whether kî ever means “although,” and if Israel were not a stiff-necked people, they would not be needing Yhwh’s forgiveness. The RSV and JPSV solve this problem by associating the “although” with what precedes, against MT.

761. Terence E. Fretheim, Exodus (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991), p. 304.

762. On this idiom, see the comments on love and toughness in section 6.6 above.

763. See the discussion “Conditional and Unconditional” in section 6.1 above.

764. Cf. Moberly, At the Mountain of God, p. 94; Fretheim, Exodus, p. 308.

765. The only other occurrences of the verb in Genesis 12–2 Kings 25 are Num 16:30; Deut 4:32.

766. New Revised Standard Version

767. David Penchansky, What Rough Beast (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999), p. 62.

768. So Tod Linafelt in Strange Fire, ed. T. Linafelt (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press/New York: New York University Press, 2000), pp. 16–17 (also the quotation from Elie Wiesel, p. 23).

769. Walter Houston, “Tragedy in the Courts of the Lord,” JSOT 90 (2000): 31–39; see p. 35.

770. So D. Damrosch, “Leviticus,” in The Literary Guide to the Bible, ed. Robert Alter and Frank Kermode (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 66–77; see p. 71; cf. Houston, “Tragedy in the Courts of the Lord,” p. 37.

771. See BDB and NIDOTTE on dāmam ii, though neither consider this possible example.

772. John Van Seters, The Life of Moses (Louisville: Westminster John Knox/Kampen: Kok, 1994), p. 3 (Van Seters is referring to J in particular).

773. Masoretic Text

774. See the comments in “Bringing Him into a New Service,” section 5.5 above.

775. See the comments in “By Means of the Most Ordinary of Men,” section 5.3 above.

776. The JPSV thus renders the two words “chief and ruler.” Both words can also have legal connotations, and BDB infers that the man who uses them is asking who made Moses a judge or a magistrate over them. The NRSV and NIVI mix the connotations with “ruler and judge.”

777. Fretheim, Exodus, p. 45.

778. Yhwh does not “appear” to prophets. Samuel (1 Sam 3) is the exception who proves the rule, as he is leader as well as prophet.

779. Contrast Fretheim, Exodus, p. 58.

780. English versions

781. Cf. Ibid., pp. 42–43.

782. Wildavsky, Nursing Father, p. 6.

783. See section 9.7 below.

784. See, e.g., Van Seters, Life of Moses, pp. 55–61.

785. Fretheim, Exodus, pp. 53, 58.

786. See, e.g., J. F. Ross, “The Prophet as Yahweh’s Messenger,” in Israel’s Prophetic Heritage, James Muilenburg Festschrift, ed. Bernhard W. Anderson and Walter Harrelson (New York: Harper/London: SCM Press, 1962), pp. 98–107.

787. Cf. Eichrodt, Theology of the OT, 1:289.

788. Cf. Walther Zimmerli, Old Testament Theology in Outline (Edinburgh: T & T Clark/Atlanta: John Knox Press 1978), pp. 109–10.

789. Cf. NIVI, JPSV. The NRSV “entrusted with all my house” requires a usage of b unparalleled in the First Testament, and in this context Yhwh’s house (hold) (bayit) is not the physical structure but the people (cf. 1 Chron 17:14; Hos 8:1; 9:15).

790. Aaron’s presence perhaps reflects the exercise of a prophetlike ministry by priests.

791. Wildavsky, Nursing Father, pp. 152–53, 174.

792. Olson, Numbers (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1996), p. 23.

793. I schematize the structure and the vocabulary, which changed in reaction to different situations: see, e.g., Norman K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1979/London: SCM Press, 1980; reprinted Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 235–341; Daniel L. Smith, The Religion of the Landless (Bloomington, Ind.: Meyer Stone, 1989), pp. 93–126; Leo G. Perdue et al., Families in Ancient Israel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997).

794. Cf. Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, p. 63.

795. On the resident alien, see the comments on “Permeable Boundaries” in section 5.8 above.

796. See, e.g., Yigal Shiloh, “The Population of Iron Age Palestine,” BASOR 239 (1980): 25–35; see pp. 32–33; Magen Broshi and Israel Finkelstein, “The Population of Palestine in Iron Age II,” BASOR 287 (1992): 47–60; see p. 56; W. G. Dever, “Archaeology, Urbanism, and the Rise of the Israelite State,” in Aspects of Urbanism in Antiquity, ed. Walter E. Aufrecht et al., JSOTSup 244 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), pp. 172–93; see p. 182.

797. E.g., because ʾelep, the word for a “thousand,” could also denote a sub-division of the clan apparently identical with mišpāḥâ (see Num 1:16).

798. See, e.g., Dozeman, “Book of Numbers,” pp. 35–36, for possible symbolic interpretations.

799. The story of King Keret reports an army of three million men (see ANET, p. 143; “three hundred myriads”; cf. Milgrom, Numbers, p. 339).

800. Sometimes “leaders” denotes a larger representative group (e.g., Num 16:2).

801. Subsequent references to the assembly (e.g., Ex 16; 35; Lev 8) could denote only males, but this point is not explicit.

802. The word ṣābāʾ is usually plural when applied to the people as a whole, singular when applied to the individual clan.

803. Bernard F. Batto offers some guesswork regarding the way this might have happened in the development of Israelite traditions (Slaying the Dragon [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992], pp. 128–52).

804. For the verb “choose,” see 1 Chron 15:2; 2 Chron 29:11. Deut 10:8 has “set apart,” bādal hiphil.

805. The passages also mention Simeon, whose numbers and thus whose land allocation drastically reduce at the second census.

806. Cf. Olson, Numbers, pp. 25, 49.

807. See the comments in “Teacher,” section 6.8 above.

808. Cf. Milgrom, Numbers, pp. 348–50.

809. Mary Douglas, In the Wilderness, JSOTSup 158 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), p. 25; cf. Olson, Numbers, p. 33.

810. Regina M. Schwartz, The Curse of Cain (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 55.

811. Dennis T. Olson, Numbers (Louisville, Ky.: John Knox Press, 1996), p. 2.

812. The NRSV reads “boldly.” This appears to be a positive statement here (cf. Micah 5:9 [MT 8]), though elsewhere it implies an exaltation that really belongs to God and will need to be put down (e.g., Num 15:30; Deut 32:27; Is 26:11).

813. Cf. George V. Pixley, On Exodus (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1987), p. 82.

814. Cf. José Severino Croatto, Exodus (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1981), p. 24.

815. Jack Miles, God: A Biography (New York/London: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 133.

816. Ibid., p. 138.

817. I owe this point to Linda Haney in a seminar contribution.

818. E.g., Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Herder & Herder, 1970), p. 31.

819. The word lûn is effectively a technical term, occurring only in Ex 15–17; Num 14–17; and Josh 9:18. See George W. Coats, Rebellion in the Wilderness (Nashville: Abingdon, 1968), pp. 21–24.

820. Masoretic Text

821. Terence E. Fretheim, Exodus (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1991), p. 177.

822. Olson, Numbers, pp. 61–62.

823. Fretheim, Exodus, p. 172.

824. The JPSV describes it as a play on the name Jeshurun (cf. Deut 32:15). Perhaps it states Yhwh’s hopes of the new generation that stands before Balaam.

825. Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (reprint, Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins, 1998), 3:242.

826. Not the center of Num 11–20 but much of Num 15–20 is instruction rather than story, and the actual stories form a chiasm with Num 13–14 at the center.

827. The traditional understanding of dĕbaš is as honey, but it can refer more generally to any sweet substance such as syrup made from dates or grapes, which would be more common than bee honey (nōpet). See TDOT on dĕbaš.

828. Patrick D. Miller, Israelite Religion and Biblical Theology, JSOTSup 267 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), p. 575.

829. Cf. Walther Zimmerli, Old Testament Theology in Outline (Edinburgh: T & T Clark/Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1978), p. 112.

830. I owe this point to Roger Nam in a seminar paper.

831. Cain Hope Felder suggests that Miriam is turned white with a skin disease because of her and Aaron’s attack on her black sister-in-law (Troubling Biblical Waters [Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1989], p. 42).

832. On ʿānāw (EVV “meek”), see the comments on “By Means of the Most Ordinary of Men” in section 5.3 above.

833. See Jacob Milgrom, Numbers (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990), pp. 448–56.

834. L. Daniel Hawk, Joshua (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2000), p. 2.

835. The word nĕbālâ is especially used for unsavory sexual acts (cf. Gen 34:7; Deut 22:21; Judg 19:23–24; 2 Sam 13:12).

836. L. Daniel Hawk, Every Promise Fulfilled: Contesting Plots in Joshua (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1991), p. 79.

837. Hawk, Joshua, p. 120.

838. Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: Harper, 1962, 1965), 1:301.

839. The puzzling reference to Ephraim’s turning back (Ps 78:9) may take that as an initial example of this treachery, or may allude to an aspect of the people’s initial occupation of the land that manifested similar dynamics to those of Num 13–14 and Josh 7 (and cf. 1 Chron 7:20–29). Ps 78 refers to the story from the exodus to the building of the temple in a free way and presupposes some embellishing compared with the version of the story in Exodus–1 Samuel (e.g., the reference to Zoan in Ps 78:12).

840. Cf. Dennis T. Olson, The Death of the Old and the Birth of the New (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985), p. 97.

841. See Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1985), pp. 85–87, with his quotation from the medieval Jewish scholar Isaac Abravanel.

842. Christopher Seitz, Word Without End (Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 8–9.

843. Avery Dulles, Models of the Church, 2nd ed. (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1988), p. 53. Dulles suggests that this is the conviction of the Vatican II document Lumen gentium (chap. 8; see Austin Flannery, ed., Vatican Council II, rev. ed. [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1992], p. 358), but I think he has enhanced its recognition of the point.

844. Dulles, Models of the Church, p. 133. This corresponds more to the emphasis of Lumen gentium.

845. Simul iustus et peccator, a description of the individual person in Luther. See Luther’s comments on Gal 3:6 in “Lectures on Galatians 1535,” in Luther’s Works, vols. 1–30 (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia, 1955–), 26:232.

846. This is the only occurrence of the verb ʾānan apart from Num 11:1.

847. Cf. Olson, Numbers, p. 59.

848. See section 6.6 above.

849. Andrew C. Tunyogi, The Rebellions of Israel (Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1969), pp. 11–12.

850. Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 60–150 (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1989), p. 322.

851. There are two words spelled ṣār, one meaning “enemy,” the other “distress.” In Ps 106:6, 13, 19, 28 the word must mean “distress,” and the meaning here is hardly unrelated. But “the power [lit. hand] of distress” personalizes “distress” in an unparalleled way. Perhaps Israelites would not distinguish the two words as sharply as a modern dictionary would, and Ps 106:2 refers to the power of distress-bringing enemies.

852. Cf. Steven Grosby, Biblical Ideas of Nationality: Ancient and Modern (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2002).

853. Paul M. Van Buren, A Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality, vol. 2 (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), p. 186.

854. See section 7.5 below.

855. Cf. Götz Schmitt’s study of Ex 23 and Deut 7, Du sollst keinen Frieden schliessen mit den Bewohnern des Landes, BWANT 91 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1970), pp. 3–24; cf. Rolf P. Knierim, The Task of Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1995), p. 313.

856. Cf. Virgil Aeneid 6.847: Parcere subiectis et debellare superbos (to spare the subjugated and wage war on the proud); I am grateful to Mark Linder for this quotation in a seminar contribution.

857. T. Raymond Hobbs, A Time for War: A Study of Warfare in the Old Testament (Wilmington, Del.: M. Glazier, 1989), pp. 22–23.

858. James W. McClendon with Nancey Murphy, Witness, vol. 3 of Systematic Theology (Nashville: Abingdon, 2000), pp. 361–62.

859. The noun does recur (e.g., in Num 31), with regard to Israel’s war-making, and this chapter and others also use the noun ṣābāʾ in this connection. Judg 3:2 uses the noun in arguing that Yhwh left the other nations in Canaan to give the Israelites experience of “fighting,” for fighting will be necessary in the course of the nation’s ongoing life.

860. The designation “Amorite” is used in broader and narrower ways, like “American.” Here the Amorites are people east of the Jordan like the Edomites, Moabites and Ammonites.

861. Cf. Miller, Israelite Religion, pp. 581–82.

862. See, e.g., Deuteronomy Rabbah 5:15, commenting on Deut 20:11 concerning the power and wonder of peace.

863. See Horst Dietrich Preuss, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox/Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995, 1996), 1:138.

864. Roddy Braun, “Solomon, the Chosen Temple Builder,” JBL 95 (1976): 581–90; see pp. 582–86.

865. Susan Niditch, War in the Hebrew Bible (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 139, 148.

866. Cf. J. W. Wright, “The Fight for Peace,” in The Chronicler as Historian, ed. M. Patrick Graham et al., JSOTSup 238 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), pp. 150–77; see p. 151.

867. Cf. Martin Luther’s “Letter to Philip Melanchthon, August 1, 1521,” in Luther’s Works, vols. 31–55 (Philadelphia: Fortress/Muhlenberg, 1957–), 48:277–82; see p. 282.

868. Any settlement at Jericho in Joshua’s day is unevidenced by archeology and must have been very small. Joshua’s conquest of Hazor would thus involve a bigger miracle than a victory at Jericho.

869. Cf. K. Lawson Younger, Ancient Conquest Accounts, JSOTSup 98 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), pp. 255–56.

870. Cf. Walter Brueggemann, A Social Reading of the Old Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), pp. 285–318; Norman K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1979/London: SCM Press, 1980; reprinted, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 542–43.

871. See H. W. F. Saggs, “Assyrian Prisoners of War and the Right to Live,” in 28. Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (Horn: Berger, 1982), pp. 85–93; cf. Gordon Mitchell, Together in the Land: A Reading of the Book of Joshua, JSOTSup 134 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), p. 54.

872. Mitchell, Together in the Land, p. 74.

873. In Micah 4:13, the ancient versions have Yhwh declaring that Ms. Zion will devote the resources of the nations to Yhwh, though the Hebrew text has Yhwh doing that in person.

874. This is Millard C. Lind’s emphasis in Yahweh Is a Warrior (Scottdale, Penn.: Herald, 1980).

875. Gerhard von Rad, Holy War in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1991), pp. 42–43.

876. Ibid., pp. 45–48.

877. Ibid., p. 49.

878. See esp. John Bright, A History of Israel, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1959).

879. Keith W. Whitelam has attempted to subvert appeal to this, but it remains hard to believe that Israel simply invented a story about having come from Egypt (“Israel’s Traditions of Origins,” JSOT 44 [1989]: 19–42).

880. See esp. Martin Noth, The History of Israel, 2nd ed. (London: Black/New York: Harper, 1960).

881. See esp. Norman K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh. For some discussion of whether we should talk about it as egalitarian, see Carol Meyers, “Tribes and Tribulations: Retheorizing Earliest ‘Israel’,” in Tracking The Tribes of Yahweh: On the Trail of a Classic, ed. Roland Boer, JSOTSup 351 (London/New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), pp. 35–45, and elsewhere in that volume.

882. Cf. Sara Japhet, “Conquest and Settlement in Chronicles,” JBL 98 (1979): 205–18; also The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought (Frankfurt/New York: Lang, 1989; 2nd ed., 1997), pp. 374–86.

883. See, e.g., Robert Gnuse, “Israelite Settlement of Canaan,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 21 (1991): 56–66, 109–17.

884. See, e.g., John Bright’s Early Israel in Recent History Writing (London: SCM Press, 1956).

885. See, e.g., Gottwald’s discussion of the three models, The Tribes of Yahweh, pp. 189–227.

886. Regina M. Schwartz, The Curse of Cain (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 61.

887. Robert Allen Warrior, “A Native American Perspective,” in Voices from the Margin, ed. Rasiah S. Sugirtharajah, new ed. (London: SPCK/Maryknoll: Orbis, 1995), pp. 277–85; see p. 280; cf. Schwartz, Curse of Cain, p. 62.

888. Moshe Weinfeld, The Promise of the Land (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 92; cf. pp. 210–13, commenting on Leviticus Rabbah 17:6 and Deuteronomy Rabbah 5:14. What actually happened, Weinfeld reckons, is indeed a partial expulsion of the pre-Israelite inhabitants of the land. He does not note that this parallels the fate of the Palestinians.

889. Septuagint

890. e

891. Masoretic Text

892. Hawk, Joshua, p. 100.

893. In the Hebrew Bible the “chapter” comprises the equivalent of Josh 5:9–6:11; there are paragraph breaks after Josh 5:12 and Josh 6:1, but nothing after Josh 5:15. This makes clear that the appearing of the commander is a preamble to the Jericho event. The English Bible obscures the continuity by introducing a chapter division at this point. Hawk notes that Josh 5:13–15 seems truncated when compared with the account of Yhwh’s appearance to Moses in Ex 3 (see Every Promise Fulfilled, pp. 21–24), but it is the English chapter division that produces this effect. It is what follows in Josh 6:1–7 that provides the closure to Josh 5:13–15. Cf. John Van Seters’ comments, The Life of Moses (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox/Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1994), pp. 38–40.

894. The commander thus says lōʾ, “No”: thus MT. LXX evidently reads lô and thus has the commander saying “to him,” which is more predictable. Vg. agrees with MT, which confirms that this is a reading of respectable antiquity.

895. There was no “house of Yhwh” at this time to which to take the city’s assets: Josh 6:24 is the First Testament’s first reference to the house of Yhwh. (Ex 23:19 and Deut 23:18 [MT 19] refer to the house of Yhwh in connection with some instructions for Israel’s life, but many of the instructions in Exodus-Deuteronomy presuppose later conditions in which they will need to be implemented.) The meeting tent is never referred to as Yhwh’s house. Gen 28:10–22 refers to a house of God, though not as a literal building. When “the land lay subdued” before Israel, the meeting tent was set up at Shiloh (Josh 18:1); on the references to a house or palace of Yhwh there (Judg 18:31; 1 Sam 1:7, 9), see the comments on “The Temple as a Royal Project” in section 8.4 below.

896. Cf. Hans-Joachim Kraus, “Gilgal,” in Reconsidering Israel and Judah: Recent Studies on the Deuteronomistic History, ed. Gary N. Knoppers and J. Gordon McConville, SBTS 8 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2000), pp. 163–78; J. Alberto Soggin, Joshua, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972), pp. 50–67.

897. Cf. John Van Seters, “Joshua’s Campaign of Canaan and Near Eastern Historiography,” SJOT (1990): part 2, pp. 1–12; Younger, Ancient Conquest Accounts.

898. Mitchell, Together in the Land, p. 50.

899. Niditch, War in the Hebrew Bible, p. 87; she refers to Gordon J. Wenham, Numbers (Leicester, U.K./Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1988), p. 212, commenting on Num 31:19–24.

900. Niditch, War in the Hebrew Bible, p. 88. Cf. the comments concerning David under “Pacifist” attitudes to war in section 7.4 above.

901. Ibid., pp. 50, 61–62.

902. Cf. Mitchell, Together in the Land, pp. 61, 65–66.

903. Ibid., p. 70.

904. Cf. Zimmerli’s comment on Ex 34:7, OT Theology in Outline, p. 111, referring to L. Rost, Studien zum Alten Testament, BWANT 101 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1974), pp. 66–71.

905. See, e.g., Wenham, Numbers, p. 155. Of course they are covered by the comment in Gen 15:16.

906. This actually compares with the requirement in Deut 20:10–18.

907. A. D. H. Mayes, Deuteronomy (London: Oliphants, 1979).

908. Hawk, Joshua, p. 200.

909. Ibid., pp. 32, 209.

910. The first occurrence of the verb ḥāram relates to Arad, and more than half the occurrences of ḥērem with reference to slaughter come in Joshua 6–7.

911. Cf. Mitchell, Together in the Land, p. 60.

912. Ibid., pp. 130–31.

913. See Hawk, Joshua, pp. xxviii–xxix.

914. Ibid., p. xxx.

915. Ibid., p. xxxi.

916. Ibid., pp. xxxi–xxxii.

917. Perhaps Jethro leads the worship, but Ex 18:12 says he “brings” sacrifices (lāqaḥ). This is an ordinary worshiper’s act that precedes the actual offering of a sacrifice (e.g., Lev 12:8). The text does not say who “offered” the sacrifices Jethro brought (e.g., zābaḥ or ʿālâ hiphil), which would be more explicitly a priestly act, nor does it say Jethro “presided” over the sacred meal on this occasion (so, e.g., Paula M. McNutt, “The Kenites, the Midianites, and the Rechabites as Marginal Mediators in Ancient Israelite Tradition,” Semeia 67 [1995]: 109–32; see p. 126). If the meal had a human president, Exodus leaves unstated who this person was. If Moses first got to know of Yhwh from Jethro (cf., e.g., Rainer Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, OTL [Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1994], p. 52), this story remarkably reverses the facts.

918. The phrasing leaves it unclear whether Moses’ father-in-law is Hobab (as in Judg 4:11) or Reuel (as in Ex 2:18), Hobab then being Moses’ brother-in-law. Moses’ father-in-law is most often called Jethro (Ex 3:1; 4:18b; 18:1–12), though Jether in Ex 4:18a.

919. So George E. Mendenhall, The Tenth Generation: The Origins of the Biblical Tradition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), p. 115.

920. See McNutt, “Kenites, Midianites.”

921. Cushan stands in parallelism with Midian in Hab 3:7 (see the comments on “A Human Walk and Divine Wonders” in section 7.9 below), and Cushite might be another term for Midianite. See, e.g., Frank M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 204.

922. In Ps 95:10 the by-form qûṭ expresses the sickening feeling Yhwh had toward Israel in the wilderness.

923. See the comments in section 7.6, “The Midianites: On the Margin,” above.

924. The NRSV and NIVI have “oracle,” but see, e.g., BDB.

925. Cf. Lawson G. Stone, “Ethical and Apologetic Tendencies in the Redaction of the Book of Joshua,” CBQ 53 (1991): 25–36.

926. Hawk, Joshua, pp. 102, 134, 156, quote p. 260.

927. Weinfeld, Promise of the Land, pp. xv, 201.

928. W. D. Davies, The Territorial Dimension of Judaism, new ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), p. 79.

929. Naim S. Ateek, Justice, and Only Justice (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1989), p. 110.

930. Van Buren, Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality, 2:187.

931. Weinfeld notes rabbinic traditions about the Amorites’ voluntary abandonment of the land, to whom God therefore gave Africa, a strange inverted anticipation of this British plan (Promise of the Land, pp. 210–11).

932. Against Gerhard von Rad, “The Theological Problem of the Old Testament Doctrine of Creation,” in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 131–43; see p. 132.

933. Cf. Joseph Blenkinsopp, “The Structure of P,” CBQ 38 (1976): 290.

934. Admittedly the verb šākan was used of their position in Canaan in Gen 14:13; 26:2; 35:22—though in the middle of these three passages it is immediately qualified by the verb gûr, to live as a sojourner, so perhaps these references only prove the rule.

935. Ironically, the land of their exile becomes “the land where they are staying” in Ezek 20:38.

936. Gerhard von Rad, “The Promised Land and Yahweh’s Land in the Hexateuch,” in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 79–93; see p. 90.

937. See, e.g., Younger, Ancient Conquest Accounts, pp. 236–37.

938. Cf. Van Buren, Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality, 2:186.

939. Richard D. Nelson, “Josiah in the Book of Joshua,” JBL 100 (1981): 531–40; see p. 537; cf. Mitchell, Together in the Land, p. 36.

940. See the comments on God’s promise in section 4.1 above.

941. Cf. Weinfeld, Promise of the Land, pp. 222–64.

942. On this distinction, see TDOT on yaraš.

943. Gerhard von Rad, “There Remains Still a Rest for the People of God,” in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 94–102.

944. The EVV render labeṭaḥ “securely,” but in keeping with the meaning of the verb bāṭaḥ, the expression often means “confidently,” and the context supports this meaning here.

945. In a polytheistic context, it would be natural to read Deut 32:8–9 as seeing Elyon as God over all and Yhwh as Israel’s particular god, but that cannot be the implication of the text in the context of Deuteronomy.

946. See TDOT, 6:384–85.

947. The traditional translation “inheritance” for naḥălâ is misleading; the word does not intrinsically refer to land as passed down within families, but to land as the rightful possession of those who live on it (see, e.g., Norman C. Habel, The Land Is Mine, OBT [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995], pp. 33–35).

948. Cf. Rad, “Promised Land and Yahweh’s Land,” pp. 80–81.

949. Other subsequent passages also call the land “Yhwh’s naḥălâ” (e.g., Ps 68:9 [MT 10]; cf. Jer 2:7). Only Hos 9:3 speaks of “Yhwh’s land,” though “my land” also comes in, e.g., Jer 2:7.

950. Zech 2:12 [MT 16] does have ʾadmat haqqōdeš; cf. Ex 3:5.

951. Admittedly “territory” is elsewhere used to refer to the bounds of Israel’s own land (e.g., Num 34).

952. On the land as extending to Lebanon and the Euphrates, see Mitchell, Together in the Land, pp. 34–35.

953. Leviticus may be read either way on this question.

954. See Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1972).

955. Masoretic Text

956. So Carola Kloos, Yhwh’s Combat with the Sea (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986).

957. Cf. Van Seters, Life of Moses, pp. 144–45.

958. 3 Japhet, Ideology of the Book of Chronicles, pp. 363–93.

959. See Hawk, Every Promise Fulfilled.

960. See Younger, Ancient Conquest Accounts.

961. For these different understandings of ʾûlay, contrast DCH (cf. JPSV) and BDB (cf. NRSV).

962. On the bāmôt, see the comments in this section under “Egalitarian but Disorderly,” and also in section 8.2.

963. Not to say Meroz, but we do not know the background to this reference.

964. English versions

965. See Wolfgang Bluedorn, Yahweh Versus Baalism, JSOTSup 329 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001).

966. On bĕliyyaʿal, see, e.g., DDD, “Belial.”

967. Masoretic Text

968. Septuagint

969. Eli looks to be reminding his sons of a saying that plays with two usages of the verb pālal, the qal and then the more familiar hitpael. The meaning of the qal, at least, is uncertain, but the point of the saying is clear. See, e.g., NIDOTTE.

970. The basis for choosing the 300 is unclear, but the point is the small eventual number.

971. For what follows, cf. Rainer Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, OTL (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1994), pp. 67–91.

972. On the elders, see Hanoch Reviv, The Elders in Ancient Israel (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1989).

973. See further section 8.4 below.

974. Cf. Norman K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1979/London: SCM Press, 1980; reprinted, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 608–21.

975. Max Weber, “Politik als Beruf,” in Gesammelte politische Schriften (1921), p. 507; translated from The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, rev. 4th ed. (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 724.

976. Regina M. Schwartz, The Curse of Cain (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 5.

977. New Revised Standard Version

978. New International Version, Inclusive Language Edition

979. King James Version

980. Jewish Publication Society Hebrew-English Tanakh

981. See the comments on “Leader” in section 6.8 above.

982. “Restricted as to his right hand” (ʾiṭṭēr yad-yĕmînô) could simply mean “left-handed” (cf. EVV, and Judg 20:16), but more literally suggests a disability.

983. Ilse Müllner, “Lethal Differences,” in Judges, ed. Athalya Brenner, FCB ii, 4 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 126–42; see p. 139.

984. Lit., “and his spirit was short at Israel’s suffering.” The NRSV “he could no longer bear to see Israel suffer” implies that Yhwh therefore took action, but the Hebrew leaves Yhwh’s reaction and involvement more open.

985. I owe this point to a seminar contribution by Athena Gorospe.

986. On the relationship of these, see, e.g., TDOT on ndr, §I.1.

987. I owe this point to a seminar contribution by Benjamin Galán.

988. See, e.g., Israel Finkelstein, “The Emergence of the Monarchy in Israel,” JSOT 44 (1989): 43–74.

989. Cf. Gerald Eddie Gerbrandt, Kingship According to the Deuteronomistic History, SBLDS 87 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986); he takes these heroes as his starting point for understanding kingship in the Deuteronomistic History.

990. Cf. J. Roy Porter, Moses and Monarchy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1963); George W. Coats, Moses, JSOTSup 57 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988), pp. 197–98.

991. Cf. J. Roy Porter, “The Succession of Joshua,” in Reconsidering Israel and Judah: Recent Studies on the Deuteronomistic History, ed. Gary N. Knoppers and J. Gordon McConville, SBTS 8 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2000), pp. 139–62; Gerbrandt, Kingship According to the Deuteronomistic History, pp. 116–23.

992. Cf. George E. Mendenhall, The Tenth Generation: The Origins of the Biblical Tradition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), pp. 28–29.

993. David Jobling, The Sense of Biblical Narrative: Structural Analyses in the Hebrew Bible, II, JSOTSup 39 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1986), p. 46.

994. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1936–1969), IV/1:440.

995. The etymological meaning of Samuel’s name is uncertain; it may denote “El is his name,” or it may be a variant of a name such as Ishmael meaning “El hears,” which would fit the context very well. Hannah’s explanation is thus odd. The very verb form šāʾûl comes when she fulfills the vow that renders Samuel šāʾûl (lent), to Yhwh (1 Sam 1:28).

996. See ANET, p. 265.

997. Cf. James W. Flanagan, “Chiefs in Israel,” JSOT 20 (1983): 47–73; Israel Finkelstein, “The Emergence of the Monarchy in Israel,” JSOT 44 (1989): 43–74.

998. See NIDOTTE and TDOT on nāgîd.

999. yidʿōnîm; NRSV “wizards” is misleading (see NIDOTTE on qsm).

1000. So David J. A. Clines, “David the Man,” in Interested Parties, JSOTSup 205 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), pp. 212–43; see p. 217.

1001. Cf. Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, p. 122.

1002. The first two renderings represent MT, the last 4QSama (and cf. LXX).

1003. Modern translations have “gave David victory,” but yāšaʿ suggests Yhwh’s preserving of David in the midst of danger and threat.

1004. Chronicles perhaps does this partly because Judah had Moses in common with the people of Ephraim/Samaria and thus was distinguished by its adherence to David.

1005. Cf. Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, pp. 546–49.

1006. Cf. the language in Deut 12:13–14; 27:6; Jer 14:12; Amos 5:22.

1007. Septuagint

1008. I take Samuel–Kings and Chronicles as two parallel theological expositions of the monarchic period and utilize both in seeking to discuss theological issues. Traditionally Samuel–Kings has been thought to contain more factual material than Chronicles, but both are theological expositions and in principle have the same theological status. Where both narratives refer to events, I often give the reference just to one.

1009. This is the implication when David refers to the way Yhwh has acted in relation to him, “according to your heart” (kĕlibbĕkā, 2 Sam 7:21; “according to his heart” [EVV “after his own heart”], is kilĕbābō).

1010. Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, p. 121.

1011. Cf. ibid., pp. 119–20.

1012. Benjamin oddly appears among the far northern clans where one would expect Zebulun, as well as in its expected place, and Asher oddly appears among the nearer northern clans. Cf. Sara Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought (Frankfurt/New York: Lang, 1989; 2nd ed., 1997), pp. 353–54.

1013. Cf. Choon-Leong Seow, “The First and Second Books of Kings,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 3 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1999), pp. 35–36.

1014. Cf. Ronald E. Clements, “The Messianic Hope in the Old Testament,” JSOT 43 (1989): 3–19.

1015. In 2 Samuel; I take it that David’s designation of Solomon in 1 Chron 22 backdates later events.

1016. See the comments in section 8.1, “Israel Abandons Yhwh,” above.

1017. Cf. Cynthia Ozick, “Hannah and Elkanah,” in Out of the Garden, ed. Christina Büchman and Celina Spiegel (New York: Ballantine, 1994/London: HarperCollins, 1995), pp. 88–93; see p. 89; also Margaret Anne Doody, “Infant Piety and the Infant Samuel,” in the same volume pp. 103–22; see p. 109.

1018. See, e.g., Ben C. Ollenburger, Zion, the City of the Great King, JSOTSup 41 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987), pp. 39–41. Jer 7:12, 14 refer to the destruction of the Shiloh sanctuary, but refer to a place there and a house in Jerusalem.

1019. Cf. Menahem Haran, “The Divine Presence in the Israelite Cult and the Cultic Institutions,” Biblica 50 (1969): 251–67; see pp. 253–58.

1020. Masoretic Text

1021. Cf. Walter Brueggemann, 1 & 2 Kings (Macon, Ga.: Smith & Helwys, 2000), pp. 108, 116.

1022. The word is often used of food, but also of a woman’s beauty, and it is the word for coveting someone else’s home or belongings (Deut 5:21 [MT 18]).

1023. See, e.g., William G. Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? (Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2001), pp. 144–55.

1024. See, e.g., Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, pp. 129–30.

1025. But see, e.g., John Day’s critique, “The Canaanite Inheritance of the Israelite Monarchy,” in King and Messiah in Israel and the Ancient Near East, ed. John Day, JSOTSup 270 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), pp. 72–90; see pp. 75–78.

1026. On the nature of this conscripted labor, see J. Alberto Soggin, “Compulsory Labor under David and Solomon,” in Studies in the Period of David and Solomon and Other Essays, ed. Tomoo Ishida (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1982), pp. 259–68.

1027. Cf. Albertz’s comments, History of Israelite Religion, pp. 128.

1028. Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: Harper, 1962, 1965), 1:354.

1029. Or “for the God of Jacob”; manuscripts vary.

1030. (s); Targumic

1031. This might at first seem to be Samuel himself, who does act as priest, then it might be Eli’s descendant Abiathar, but eventually it is Zadok, whom 1 Chron 6 places in a different branch of Aaron’s line from Eli. Likewise it might at first seem that “your ancestor” is Aaron himself, so that Yhwh is abandoning the declaration committing the priesthood to Aaron and his sons (Ex 29:9), but Aaron’s household is not cut off, unless the words presuppose that Zadok belongs to the line of Aaron by adoption rather than by birth.

1032. Peter R. Ackroyd, The Chronicler in His Age, JSOTSup 101 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), p. 265.

1033. e

1034. Cf. the comments by Norman C. Habel, The Land Is Mine, OBT (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), pp. 21–22.

1035. Cf. Brueggemann, 1 & 2 Kings, p. 69.

1036. Gerhard von Rad, “The Joseph Narrative and Ancient Wisdom,” in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 292–300; see p. 293.

1037. On the ambiguities in the portrait of Solomon, see Claudia V. Camp, Wise, Strange and Holy, JSOTSup 320 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), pp. 144–86, and her references; also Seow, “First and Second Books of Kings.”

1038. J. Cheryl Exum’s Tragedy and Biblical Narrative (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), covers Saul, Samson (though she does not reckon his story can be read as a tragedy), Jephthah, Saul’s household and David.

1039. I owe this point to Athena Gorospe in a seminar contribution.

1040. John Milton’s phrase in his poem Samson Agonistes.

1041. See, e.g., W. Lee Humphreys, The Tragic Vision and the Hebrew Tradition, OBT (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), pp. 23–66.

1042. Cf. Deirdre Levinson, “The Psychopathology of King Saul,” in Out of the Garden, ed. Christina Büchman and Celina Spiegel (New York: Ballantine, 1994/London: HarperCollins, 1995), pp. 123–41; see p. 123.

1043. The First Testament reckons that consulting the dead is wrong but not impossible. After all, dead people go to Sheol; they do not cease to exist.

1044. See further section 6.5 above.

1045. Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/2:371.

1046. See Simon Winchester, The Professor and the Madman (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), pp. 214, xiii, 223. Winchester notes that there is less to mitigate the sadness of the story of the man Minor killed.

1047. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, p. 139.

1048. Cf. Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986). She notes, for example, how Immanuel Kant strove to avoid its implications (pp. 31–32).

1049. The EVV have “concubine,” but this can misleadingly suggest that a pîlegeš had no legal status.

1050. Cf. Susan Ackerman, Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen (New York/London: Doubleday, 1998), pp. 48–49.

1051. Gabriel Josipovici, The Book of God (New Haven, Conn./London: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 121.

1052. See section 8.8 below.

1053. See the comments in section 8.1, “Israel Abandons Yhwh,” above.

1054. Brueggemann, 1 & 2 Kings, p. 21.

1055. Masoretic Text

1056. If we follow Vg.’s interpretation of the enigmatic ʿad-dāwid higdîl.

1057. The NIVI has him “distressed” in 1 Sam 30:6 (ṣārar), but NRSV and JPSV have him objectively “in danger.” The subsequent verb (ḥāzaq hitpael), can refer to gaining inward or outward strength (e.g., 2 Sam 3:6).

1058. Septuagint

1059. Randall C. Bailey sees a political motivation behind his interest in Bathsheba, the wife of a Hittite (David in Love and War, JSOTSup 75 [Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989]).

1060. On the ambiguity of 2 Sam 12:18–23, see Hugh S. Pyper, “Reading David’s Mind,” in Sense and Sensitivity, ed. Alastair G. Hunter and Philip R. Davies, Robert Carroll Memorial, JSOTSup 348 (Sheffield/New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), pp. 73–86.

1061. See TDOT on dwd and ydyd.

1062. Walter Brueggemann, David’s Truth (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), p. 65.

1063. Ilona N. Rashkow, Taboo or Not Taboo (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), pp. 148–49.

1064. Clines, “David the Man,” pp. 215–16.

1065. Lilian R. Klein, “Achsah,” in Judges, ed. Athalya Brenner, FCB ii, 4 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 18–26; see p. 21.

1066. Cf. Ackerman, Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen, pp. 4–5. Ackerman notes that the stories are nevertheless ambivalent about the women and their significance (pp. 291–92).

1067. Athalya Brenner, ed., Judges, FCB ii, 4 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), p. 13. Cf. Dennis T. Olson, “The Book of Judges,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 2 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1998), pp. 782–83, 835.

1068. Carol Smith, “Delilah,” in Judges, ed. Brenner, pp. 93–116; see p. 114.

1069. Jewish Publication Society Hebrew-English Tanakh

1070. New International Version, Inclusive Language Edition

1071. New Revised Standard Version

1072. Alice Bach, “Rereading the Body Politic,” in Judges, ed. Brenner, pp. 143–59; see p. 143.

1073. Müllner, “Lethal Differences,” pp. 126–42; see p. 137.

1074. See Bach, “Rereading the Body Politic,” pp. 143–59.

1075. K. von Kellenbach, “Am I a Murderer?” in Strange Fire, ed. Tod Linafelt (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press/New York: New York University Press, 2000), pp. 176–91; see p. 178.

1076. Ibid., pp. 179, 191.

1077. Paul R. House, Old Testament Theology (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998), p. 458.

1078. Contrast Esther Fuchs’s reading of Ruth, Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative, JSOTSup 310 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), pp. 73–90.

1079. Ilana Pardes, Countertraditions in the Bible (Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 107.

1080. Ackerman, Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen, pp. 89–127.

1081. Cf. Ivone Gebara, Out of the Depths (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), pp. 17–21.

1082. See sections 4.8, 5.3–4 and 5.9 above.

1083. J. C. Exum, “The Centre Cannot Hold,” in Reconsidering Israel and Judah: Recent Studies on the Deuteronomistic History, ed. Gary N. Knoppers and J. Gordon McConville, SBTS 8 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2000), pp. 578–600; see p. 593.

1084. Or “a god,” or “their god”—so LXX. The verb is singular so it is hardly “gods”—despite NRSV.

1085. Masoretic Text

1086. lĕšālôm and bĕšālôm often have the same meaning, but the former sometimes implies a more dynamic expectation.

1087. See DDD on “Satan”; cf. Peggy L. Day, An Adversary in Heaven, HSM 43 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), p. 144. In later parlance the word for “adversary,” śāṭān, will become the name of Yhwh’s chief supernatural opponent, but the first clear instance of this usage is in the second century. Chronicles has in mind a figure like “the adversary” in Job 1–2.

1088. “Divine Action,” in The God Who Acts, ed. Thomas F. Tracy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), pp. 13–29; see p. 19.

1089. See the discussion of “Yhwh’s Aide” in section 4.6 above.

1090. Martin Buber, Israel and the World (New York: Schocken, 1948), p. 127; cf. Aaron Wildavsky, The Nursing Father (Tuscaloosa/London: University of Alabama Press, 1984), p. 6.

1091. Erhard S. Gerstenberger comments, “We are and remain born polytheists”; “it is a basic human insight that our discourse is always limited and conditioned and cannot be universal” (Theologies in the Old Testament [Edinburgh: T & T Clark/Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002], pp. 275, 280).

1092. Walter Brueggemann suggests that the narrative prioritizes Moses’ Teaching over prophecy, noting that this fits the exaltation of Moses’ Teaching after the exile (1 & 2 Kings [Macon, Ga.: Smith & Helwys, 2000], pp. 549–50). Kings seems to me to put Moses’ Teaching and prophecy alongside each other, which might stimulate different reflections on attitudes to prophecy after the exile.

1093. Peter R. Ackroyd, Exile and Restoration, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968), p. 75.

1094. Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: Harper, 1962, 1965), 1:339.

1095. Cf. Jon D. Levenson, Sinai and Zion (Minneapolis: Winston, 1985), pp. 207, 215.

1096. The First Testament uses “Israel” to refer both to the people as a whole and to the majority northern clans, but it also refers to the latter as “Ephraim,” and for clarity I will follow that usage.

1097. Conrad Cherry, God’s New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971), pp. 162–65.

1098. See, e.g., Sara Japhet’s discussion of 1 Chron 15:15; 2 Chron 30:15–16 in The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought (Frankfurt/New York: Lang, 1989; 2nd ed., 1997), pp. 239–44.

1099. See Joel S. Burnett, A Reassessment of Biblical Elohim, SBLDS 183 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001)

1100. On these gods, see, e.g., DDD, “Asherah,” “Astarte,” “Baal,” “Hadad,” “Mot”; Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990); John Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan, JSOTSup 265 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), pp. 42–150; Susan Ackerman, Under Every Green Tree, HSM 46 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992).

1101. Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses (reprint, New York: Ballantine, 1993), p. 14.

1102. The word yālad usually means “bear” but can mean “beget,” so the two cola may be combining masculine and feminine descriptions of Yhwh’s bringing Israel into being. Or the second colon may resolve the ambiguity of the first and make clear that both refer to Yhwh’s giving birth to Israel like a mother.

1103. Cf. Patrick D. Miller, Israelite Religion and Biblical Theology, JSOTSup 267 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), pp. 197–207.

1104. See Erhard S. Gerstenberger, Yahweh the Patriarch (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), pp. 36–37.

1105. See Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus (Boston: Beacon, 1994).

1106. “An Enlightenment invention” according to David Tracy, “God as Trinitarian,” in Christianity in Jewish Terms, ed. Tikva Frymer-Kensky et al. (Boulder, Colo./Oxford: Westview, 2000), pp. 77–84; see p. 78.

1107. Cf. Thorkild Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness (New Haven, Conn./London: Yale University Press, 1976), pp. 234–36. But this, too, is mono-Mardukism or mono-Asshurism, not monotheism for its own sake.

1108. Again, see, e.g., Smith, Early History of God; Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses; Ackerman, Under Every Green Tree.

1109. Rad, OT Theology, 2:17.

1110. See H. M. Kuitert, Everything Is Politics but Politics Is Not Everything (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans/London: SCM Press, 1986).

1111. See Athalya Brenner, The Israelite Woman: Social Role and Literary Type in Biblical Narrative (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985), pp. 20–28.

1112. Cf. Rad, OT Theology, 2:29.

1113. In saying “God” rather than “Yhwh,” the narrative hardly implies that Neco refers to his own god (against Japhet, Ideology of the Book of Chronicles, p. 51); compare the references to “God” in, e.g., 2 Chron 34:27; 36:13.

1114. Masoretic Text

1115. On the implications all this might have for Chronicles’ readers, see the end of section 10.7 below.

1116. Cf. Japhet, Ideology of the Book of Chronicles, p. 253.

1117. Rainer Albertz suggests they are protesting the way Baal theology shapes people’s understanding of Yhwh—they are worshiping Yhwh as if Yhwh were Baal or as if merely worshiping Yhwh in the right way will make life work out (A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, OTL [Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1994], pp. 172–74). This is a suggestive notion, but many references to people worshiping other gods and not being exclusively committed to Yhwh (e.g., in the Elijah story) must surely mean what they say.

1118. Michael D. Oblath, suggests further links between the stories in Exodus and 1 Kings (“Of Pharaohs and Kings,” JSOT 87 [2000]: 23–42).

1119. Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, p. 145.

1120. See Hermann Spiekermann, Juda unter Assur in der Sarginidenzeit, WMANT 129 (Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 1982); John W. McKay, Religion in Judah Under the Assyrians (London: SCM Press/Naperville, Ill.: Allenson, 1973); Morton Cogan, Imperialism and Religion, SBLMS 19 ([Missoula, Mont.]: Society of Biblical Literature, 1974).

1121. Cf. Elizabeth C. LaRocca-Pitts, “Of Wood and Stone,” HSM 61 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2001), pp. 127–59.

1122. Cf. Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, p. 87.

1123. Perhaps the qĕdēšîm (1 Kings 14:24; 15:12; 22:46 [MT 47]; 2 Kings 23:7; cf. Deut 23:17 [MT 18]; the feminine alone comes in Hos 4:14) also come to be guilty by association, since the only occurrence in Genesis (Gen 38:21–22), does not condemn Tamar for being a qĕdēšâ.

1124. See, e.g., Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, “YHWH SABAOTH,” in Studies in the Period of David and Solomon and Other Essays, ed. Tomoo Ishida (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1982), pp. 109–38.

1125. See Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, pp. 189–95.

1126. English versions

1127. See discussion “Local Sanctuaries, Columns and Totem Poles” in this section above.

1128. Cf. Brueggemann, 1 & 2 Kings, p. 415.

1129. See NIDOTTE on the word.

1130. See section 6.6 above and (on the relationship with God’s anger in the New Testament) the comments on “The Curse on the Snake” in section 3.2 above.

1131. See Fay Weldon, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1983/New York: Pantheon, 1984); Imogen Howe, Fatal Attraction (New York: Dell, 1982).

1132. Since LXX, translations have taken nîr as a byform of nēr, “lamp” (for which see 2 Sam 21:17; Ps 132:17). This does not fit well in these contexts. I take it as a different word cognate with Akkadian niru and/or Egyptian nir-w: see, e.g., N. Lohfink, “Which Oracle Granted Perdurability to the Davidides?” in Reconsidering Israel and Judah: Recent Studies on the Deuteronomistic History, ed. Gary N. Knoppers and J. Gordon McConville, SBTS 8 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2000), pp. 421–43; see p. 423.

1133. Brueggemann, 1 & 2 Kings, pp. 188–89.

1134. Septuagint

1135. See Japhet, Ideology of the Book of Chronicles, pp. 355–56.

1136. Cf. Miller, Israelite Religion, p. 489.

1137. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1936–1969), IV/1:455.

1138. Cf., e.g., Ackerman, Under Every Green Tree, pp. 213–14.

1139. David Noel Freedman, “The Biblical Idea of History,” in Divine Commitment and Human Obligation, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1997), 1:218–32.

1140. Japhet, Ideology of the Book of Chronicles, p. 162.

1141. Rad, OT Theology, 1:349.

1142. Masoretic Text

1143. J. M. Gustafson notes other First Testament models in whose light we might consider God’s involvement in this story as actor, including creator or founder, controller, commander, lawgiver, judge, speaker, avenger, warrior, restorer and deliverer (“Alternative Conceptions of God,” in The God Who Acts, ed. Thomas F. Tracy [University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994], pp. 63–74; see p. 65).

1144. So Gerhard von Rad, “The Deuteronomic Theology of History in I and II Kings,” in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 205–21; see p. 221.

1145. See Jacques Ellul, The Politics of God and the Politics of Man (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1972); Ellul sees this as a distinctive contribution 1 and 2 Kings makes to Scripture.

1146. Cf. Wesley J. Bergen, Elisha and the End of Prophetism, JSOTSup 286 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 72–83.

1147. Cf. Burke O. Long, “Ambitions of Dissent: Biblical Theology in a Postmodern Future,” JR 76 (1996): 276–89; see pp. 286–88.

1148. Brueggemann, 1 & 2 Kings, p. 317.

1149. Walter Brueggemann, Interpretation and Obedience (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), pp. 32–34.

1150. Cf. Japhet, Ideology of the Book of Chronicles, pp. 126–32.

1151. J. David Pleins, The Social Visions of the Hebrew Bible (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2001), p. 101.

1152. Cf. Brueggemann, 1 & 2 Kings, p. 548.

1153. See M. Weinfeld, “The Counsel of the ‘Elders’ to Rehoboam and Its Implications,” in Reconsidering Israel and Judah: Recent Studies on the Deuteronomistic History, ed. Gary N. Knoppers and J. Gordon McConville, SBTS 8 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2000), pp. 516–39.

1154. Cf. Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, pp. 149–50.

1155. See Nahum M. Sarna, Studies in Biblical Interpretation (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2000), pp. 271–80.

1156. Brueggemann, 1 & 2 Kings, p. 261.

1157. See, e.g., Susan Ackerman, Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen (New York: Doubleday, 1998), pp. 128–80.

1158. See Brenner, The Israelite Woman, pp. 20–31.

1159. See Barth’s exposition of Ahab, Church Dogmatics, IV/1:453–58.

1160. New Revised Standard Version

1161. New International Version, Inclusive Language Edition

1162. Brueggemann, 1 & 2 Kings, p. 268.

1163. See Brueggemann’s comments, ibid., p. 413.

1164. Cf. ibid., p. 468.

1165. Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, p. 163.

1166. So Shigeyuki Nakanose, Josiah’s Passover (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1993).

1167. Jewish Publication Society Hebrew-English Tanakh

1168. Cf., e.g., David L. Petersen, Prophecy in Israel, ed. David L. Petersen (London: SPCK/Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), pp. 10–12.

1169. But Robert R. Wilson argues that it simply means “act like a prophet” and conveys no negative implications (Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980], e.g., p. 177).

1170. The word nûaḥ is usually rendered “rests,” but this makes poor sense when the point is that Yhwh’s spirit does not stay on the elders, and the meaning “alights” is well justified by the usage of the hiphil.

1171. Rad, OT Theology, 2:26.

1172. Calling a senior prophet your father (e.g., Elisha, after leaving his birth father; 2 Kings 2:12; cf. 1 Kings 19:20) might indicate that the phrase is then stretched to provide a general metaphor for the relationship of prophets to one another—though the son-father language is also used in other connections (e.g., 2 Kings 5:13; 6:21; 13:14). The group Saul meets are not called sons of the prophets, but Saul’s transformation does cause someone to ask the enigmatic question “Who is their father?”

1173. The LXX has “from Tishbe in Gilead.”

1174. See further Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/2:393–409.

1175. Bergen notes that we are never actually told that Yhwh spoke to Elisha; we only have Elisha’s word for it (Elisha and the End of Prophetism, p. 13).

1176. Brueggemann, 1 & 2 Kings, p. 210.

1177. Bergen, Elisha and the End of Prophetism, p. 114.

1178. Cf. Bergen, Elisha and the End of Prophetism.

1179. See, e.g., Martin Noth, “History and Word of God in the Old Testament,” in The Laws in the Pentateuch and Other Studies (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966), pp. 179–93.

1180. See 1 Sam 2:27–36 → 1 Kings 2:27; 2 Sam 7:12 → 1 Kings 8:20; 1 Kings 11:29–39 → 1 Kings 12:15; 1 Kings 13:1–3 → 2 Kings 23:16–18; 1 Kings 14:6–16 → 1 Kings 15:29; 1 Kings 16:1–4 → 1 Kings 16:12; 1 Kings 21:19 → 1 Kings 22:37–38; 1 Kings 21:20–22, 27–29 → 2 Kings 9:1–28; 1 Kings 21:23–24 → 2 Kings 9:30–37; 2 Kings 1:6 → 2 Kings 1:17; 2 Kings 21:10–15 → 2 Kings 24:2; see also 2 Kings 14:25, a fulfillment whose promise is not recorded. Cf. Rad, “The Deuteronomic Theology of History in I and II Kings,” pp. 209–12.

1181. Rad, OT Theology, 1:344, 342.

1182. Cf. Peter R. Ackroyd, Studies in the Religious Tradition of the Old Testament (London: SCM Press, 1987), pp. 61–75.

1183. Brueggemann, 1 & 2 Kings, p. 371.

1184. See ANET, p. 280.

1185. J. William Whedbee, The Bible and the Comic Vision (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 205.

1186. On Jonah as parody, see J. T. Miles, “Laughing at the Bible,” in On Humour and the Comic in the Hebrew Bible, ed. Yehuda T. Radday and Athalya Brenner (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990), pp. 203–15.

1187. Cf. Japhet, Ideology of the Book of Chronicles, pp. 176–91.

1188. Cf. Miller, Israelite Religion, p. 511.

1189. Translations have Ahab describing this as Micaiah’s invariable practice, which no doubt it was, but Jehoshaphat responds by questioning Ahab’s assumption, which suggests Ahab expresses a hunch relating to this particular occasion.

1190. So Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, p. 151.

1191. Wilson distinguishes simply between central and peripheral prophets (Prophecy and Society, e.g., pp. 86–88).

1192. Cf. Miller, Israelite Religion, p. 512.

1193. It is not clear whether Amos’s loʾ nabiʾ ʾanoki (Amos 7:12) means “I am not a prophet” or “I was not a prophet.”

1194. New Revised Standard Version

1195. English versions

1196. Based on Miller, Israelite Religion, p. 531.

1197. Cf. ibid., p. 526.

1198. Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, p. 176.

1199. Cf. Miller, Israelite Religion, p. 526.

1200. Cf. Brueggemann, 1 & 2 Kings, p. 222.

1201. New Revised Standard Version

1202. Hans Walter Wolff, Confrontations with Prophets (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), p. 18.

1203. Ibid., p. 17.

1204. Cf. J. W. Wright, “The Fight for Peace,” in The Chronicler as Historian, ed. M. Patrick Graham et al., JSOTSup 238 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), pp. 150–77; see p. 155.

1205. Cf. Japhet, Ideology of the Book of Chronicles, p. 332.

1206. Rad, OT Theology, 1:346.

1207. Ibid., 1:343; cf. “Gerichtsdoxologie,” in Gesammelte Studien zum Alten Testament, 2 vols. (Munich: Kaiser, 1965 and 1973), 2:245–54.

1208. Walther Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, 2 vols., OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961, 1967), 2:23.

1209. Rad, “The Deuteronomic Theology of History in I and II Kings,” p. 219.

1210. So R. Bultmann, “Prophecy and Fulfilment,” in Essays on Old Testament Interpretation, ed. Claus Westermann (Richmond, Va./London: John Knox Press/SCM Press, 1963), pp 50–75.

1211. Cf. Rainer Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, OTL (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1994).

1212. Peter R. Ackroyd, The Chronicler in His Age, JSOTSup 101 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), p. 11.

1213. See Daniel L. Smith, The Religion of the Landless (Bloomington, Ind.: Meyer Stone, 1989), p. 32.

1214. See Iain Provan, “Reading Texts Against an Historical Background,” SJOT (1990): part 1, pp. 130–43.

1215. Cf. Bertil Albrektson, Studies in the Text and Theology of the Book of Lamentations (Lund: Gleerup, 1963), pp. 219–30.

1216. Cf. Paul Joyce, “Lamentations and the Grief Process,” Biblical Interpretation 1 (1993): 304–20.

1217. b. Berakot 32b (referring also to Ps 39:12 [13]); cf. Emil Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History (reprint, New York: Harper, 1970), p. 27.

1218. Michael Wyschogrod, The Body of Faith: God in the People Israel (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), p. 17; he refers to the Roman destruction of the temple, but the issues are the same.

1219. Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, pp. 412–13.

1220. On their development of new social structures, see D. Smith, Religion of the Landless, pp. 93–126.

1221. Masoretic Text

1222. Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament Theology: Essays on Structure, Theme, and Text (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), p. 191.

1223. D. Smith, Religion of the Landless, p. 10.

1224. Contrast, e.g., Daniel Smith-Christopher, A Biblical Theology of Exile, OBT (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), pp. 189–203; and many of the works of John H. Yoder, e.g., For the Nations (Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1997), pp. 51–78.

1225. Cf. Sara Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought (Frankfurt/New York: Lang, 1989; 2nd ed., 1997), pp. 14–19.

1226. Actually the organization of the Levites, too, corresponds more to prescriptions ascribed to David, while Moses does not require the Levites’ slaughter of the Passover lambs (see Ex 12:6; Deut 16:2). See Hugh G. M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, WBC (Waco, Tex.: Word, 1985), p. 85.

1227. Cf. Peter R. Ackroyd, Exile and Restoration, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968), pp. 140–44.

1228. Jewish Publication Society Hebrew-English Tanakh

1229. Cf. Susan Ackerman, Under Every Green Tree, HSM 46 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), pp. 101–217.

1230. Cf. John W. Rogerson, “The Social Background of the Book of Malachi,” in New Heaven and New Earth, Anthony Gelston Festschrift, ed. P. J. Harland and C. T. R. Hayward, VTSup 77 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 1999), pp. 171–79.

1231. Morton Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics that Shaped the Old Testament (New York/London: Columbia University Press; 2nd ed., London: SCM Press, 1987), pp. 71–72.

1232. Cf. Jack Miles, God: A Biography (New York/London: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 11.

1233. Masoretic Text

1234. Cf. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, p. 36.

1235. According to 1 Esdras 8:63 they also offer 72 (twelve times six) lambs, but MT has 77, not 72.

1236. See section 10.4 below.

1237. Cf. Ackroyd, Chronicler in His Age, pp. 270–71.

1238. New Revised Standard Version

1239. In general, Ezra-Nehemiah implies the most links with Deuteronomy. It also has links with P, but there are points at which it seems unaware of P’s regulations. See, e.g., Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988), pp. 152–57.

1240. See C. Westermann, “The Old Testament’s Understanding of History in Relation to that of the Enlightenment,” in Israel’s Past in Present Research, ed. V. Philips Long, SBTS 7 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1999), pp. 220–31; see pp. 223–24, 230; also see the emphasis on family and local community in Erhard S. Gerstenberger, Theologies in the Old Testament (Edinburgh: T & T Clark/Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002).

1241. Japhet, Ideology of the Book of Chronicles, p. 199.

1242. See Peter R. Ackroyd, Studies in the Religious Tradition of the Old Testament (London: SCM Press, 1987), pp. 46–60.

1243. Ackroyd, Chronicler in His Age, p. 271.

1244. It may be that Leviticus 23 had not yet reached the form in which we have it and that the ritual for or simply the date of the Atonement Day was not yet fixed, but it may be that it is unmentioned precisely because the story wants to put the emphasis on rejoicing at this stage. But in any case, we are also told that Booths had not been celebrated since Joshua(!) in the way the people now celebrate it. This reminds us again that what people do does not provide us with a basis for inferring what parts of Moses’ Teaching were in existence—even when some emphasis is placed on worship in accordance with the canons, as happens in Ezra-Nehemiah. The history of Anglican worship in England in the twentieth century also illustrates this point. Like the Book of Common Prayer, Moses’ Teaching was not treated as a kind of law, which had literally to shape what people did.

1245. Some EVV call it a “solemn assembly,” etymologically following Vg. sollemnitatem, but the Latin expression denotes a “religious” or “festive” occasion, not one that is “somber, grave, serious, sober, sad, glum, formal” (Microsoft Word’s synonyms for “solemn”). The LXX plausibly takes ʿăṣeret to denote a closing ceremony (exodion).

1246. See TDOT, 11:314–5.

1247. The LXX attributes this to Ezra, but MT to the Levites.

1248. Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah, p. 348.

1249. 6 Ludwig Köhler, Hebrew Man (London: SCM Press/Nashville: Abingdon, 1956), p. 168, but as translated in Gerhard von Rad, “The Levitical Sermon in I and II Chronicles,” in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 267–80; see p. 267.

1250. See Rad, “Levitical Sermon”; Rex Mason, “Some Echoes of the Preaching in the Second Temple,” ZAW 96 (1984): 221–35; Rex Mason, Preaching the Tradition (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990). See also the comments on Chronicles in sections 9.7–8 above.

1251. Masoretic Text

1252. Michael W. Duggan emphasizes the transition from third-person (Neh 7:72b–9:5) to first-person narrative (Neh 9:6–10:39), which does not correspond to the substantial transition between chapters 8 and 9–10 and thus helps to bind the whole (The Covenant Renewal in Ezra-Nehemiah [Neh 7:72b–10:40], SBLDS 164 [Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001], pp. 76–77).

1253. So Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah, p. 312.

1254. Historically the preaching in Nehemiah 8 may have antedated the raising of the intermarriage question in Ezra 9. That might give the background to the interpretive process whereby references to Canaanites and to Moabites and Ammonites are brought into association, and Ashdodites and Arabs elsewhere brought into the equation.

1255. On the details, see Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, pp. 336–39.

1256. So David J. A. Clines, “Nehemiah 10 as an Example of Early Jewish Biblical Exegesis,” in Clines, On the Way to the Postmodern, vol. 1, JSOTSup 292 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), pp. 88–94; quotation p. 89.

1257. So Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans/Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991, 1994, 1998), 3:59.

1258. See, e.g., D. Smith’s sociological analysis in Religion of the Landless, pp. 179–200.

1259. The NRSV and NIVI take hanniššār to refer to each person who has survived, each member of the remnant (cf. Neh 1:3). The people who are to support these returners are then their non-Judean neighbors. Rather cf. the use of hanniššār in, e.g., 2 Kings 25:11, 22 (cf. JPSV). Ezra 1:6 then more likely refers to their neighbors.

1260. the written (consonantal) Hebrew text; contrast Q

1261. e Hebrew text as read out (i.e., with the vowels); contrast K

1262. 6 Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah, p. 107.

1263. But Klaus Koch argues that Ezra did not attempt to break up marriages with people from Samaria because he wanted to give people from the north their place within Israel—which explains the Samaritans’ acceptance of the Torah (“Ezra and the Origins of Judaism,” JSS 19 [1974]: 173–97; see pp. 193–95).

1264. “Land” is also plural (cf. RSV), but this likely follows from the plural of “peoples” (see GKC 124pq) and is simply a stylistic variant for the singular, which comes, for example, in Ezra 10:2.

1265. Cf. Regina M. Schwartz, The Curse of Cain (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1997), pp. 86–87.

1266. See the comments in section 10.7, “A New Setting,” below.

1267. Against Daniel Smith-Christopher, “Between Ezra and Isaiah,” in Ethnicity and the Bible, ed. Mark G Brett (Leiden/New York: E. J. Brill, 1996), pp. 117–42; see pp. 126–27.

1268. Masoretic Text

1269. E.g., J. E. Dyck, “The Ideology of Identity in Chronicles,” in Ethnicity and the Bible, ed. Mark G. Brett (Leiden/New York: E. J. Brill, 1996), pp. 89–116; see pp. 103–4, with his references.

1270. “Nations [rather than peoples] in the land” comes only here, but gôyim is used for the other local peoples in Neh 5–6.

1271. See, e.g., Paul D. Hanson, The Dawn of Apocalyptic (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975); he bases his understanding primarily on prophetic rather than narrative texts.

1272. E.g., Martin Buber, Israel and the World (New York: Schocken, 1948), pp. 231–32.

1273. Cf. M. G. Brett, “Reading the Bible in the Context of Methodological Pluralism,” in Rethinking Contexts, Rereading Texts, ed. M. Daniel Carroll R., JSOTSup 299 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), pp. 48–74, with his references.

1274. Cf. Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah, pp. 176–77.

1275. Smith-Christopher, Biblical Theology of Exile, p. 198. An earlier section in the book is subtitled “Ezra as an Amish Elder” (pp. 160–62).

1276. Miles, God, p. 379.

1277. So Smith-Christopher, “Between Ezra and Isaiah,” pp. 117–42; see pp. 126–27.

1278. He is probably a different person, but the point is not affected and the coincidence is a nice one.

1279. Perhaps there were also imperial political concerns behind the action on intermarriage; see Kenneth Hoglund, Achaemenid Imperial Administration in Syria-Palestine and the Missions of Ezra and Nehemiah, SBLDS 125 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), pp. 226–40.

1280. Ackroyd, Chronicler in His Age, p. 13.

1281. See the “Cyrus Cylinder,” e.g., ANET, pp. 315–16.

1282. Ibid.

1283. See the comments in “Judahites Who Return, Judahites Who Stay, Judahites Elsewhere,” section 10.6 above.

1284. Cf. Miles, God, p. 375.

1285. On the translation and interpretation, see Goldingay, Daniel, WBC (Dallas, Tex.: Word, 1989).

1286. Indeed, Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel have been designated peḥâ, but the word could also refer to officials other than provincial governors—for instance, a local administrator appointed from Samaria.

1287. zikkārôn: H. Eising suggests it indicates that “a commemoration was held for princes in the Jerusalem temple or even that they were symbolically present there in a symbol of sovereignty” (TDOT, 4:78).

1288. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, pp. 192–93.

1289. Koch, “Ezra and the Origins of Judaism,” pp. 184–89.

1290. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, p. 103.

1291. Cf. Ackroyd, Chronicler in His Age, pp. 189–95.

1292. Cf. Smith-Christopher, Biblical Theology of Exile, pp. 24–25, 38–45.

1293. Cf. Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, pp. 495–96.

1294. Cf. Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah, p. 307.

1295. Miles, God, pp. 372, 382.

1296. Cf. Koch, “Ezra and the Origins of Judaism,” p. 190.

1297. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, p. 133.

1298. See the comments in “Can the End Be Evaded?” section 9.10 above.

1299. See the comments on breaking up marriages in section 10.6 above.

1300. See the comments on proper worship in the temple in section 9.2 above.

1301. Cf. the comments, in section 10.5 above, on pledging obedience in Neh 9–10.

1302. Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah, pp. 188–89.

1303. John H. Yoder, For the Nations (Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1997), p. 141. The context suggests that that Yoder’s anti-Ezra-ism is the left hand of his Christology.

1304. Cf. Ackroyd, Chronicler in His Age, pp. 51–53.

1305. Cf. Ulrich Kellermann, Nehemia, BZAW 102 (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1967), pp. 179–82.

1306. Cf. Hoglund, Achaemenid Imperial Administration, pp. 208–26.

1307. On the verb ḥābal, see TDOT.

1308. Masoretic Text

1309. Cf. Frederick Carlson Holmgren, Israel Alive Again, ITC (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans/Edinburgh: Handsel, 1987), pp. 157–58.

1310. J. David Pleins, The Social Visions of the Hebrew Bible (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2001), p. 185.

1311. Cf. Horst Dietrich Preuss, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox/Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995, 1996), 1:132.

1312. 4 Cf. J. W. Wright, “The Fight for Peace,” in The Chronicler as Historian, ed. M. Patrick Graham et al., JSOTSup 238 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), pp. 150–77; see pp. 176–77.

1313. See Kenneth D. Tollefson and H. G. M. Williamson, “Nehemiah as Cultural Revitalization: An Anthropological Perspective,” JSOT 56 (1992): 41–68.

1314. Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah, pp. 327.

1315. Cf. D. Smith, Religion of the Landless, pp. 153–78.

1316. Septuagint

1317. Revised Standard Version

1318. On the translation and on other comments on Daniel here, see Goldingay, Daniel.

1319. Danna Nolan Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty (Sheffield: Almond, 1988; 2nd ed., Nashville: Abingdon, 1991), p. 80.

1320. Walter Wink, Naming the Powers (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), p. 111.

1321. Ibid.

1322. David J. A. Clines, “Reading Esther from Left to Right,” in On the Way to the Postmodern, vol. 1, JSOTSup 292 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 1:3–22; see p. 15.

1323. Sidnie Ann White, “Esther: A Feminine Model for Jewish Diaspora,” in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, ed. P. L. Day (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), pp. 166–77; see pp. 166–67.

1324. Cf. Itumeleng J. Mosala’s critique, “The Implications of the Text of Esther for African Women’s Struggle for Liberation,” Semeia 59 (1992): 129–37; see p. 135.

1325. See Shemaryahu Talmon, “ ‘Wisdom’ in the Book of Esther,” VT 13 (1963): 419–55; see p. 441.

1326. Cf. Sandra Beth Berg, The Book of Esther, SBLDS 44 (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1979), pp. 124–42; Gillis Gerleman, Esther (Neukirchen-Vluyn, Germany: Neukirchener Verlag, 1973), pp. 11–23.

1327. J. A. Loader, “Esther as a Novel with Different Levels of Meaning,” ZAW 90 (1978): 417–21; see p. 421.

1328. Berg, Book of Esther, p. 176.

1329. Cf. Arndt Meinhold, “Theologische Erwägungen zum Buch Esther,” Theologische Zeitschrift 34 (1978): 321–33; see pp. 325–26; cf. Berg, Book of Esther, p. 180.

1330. David J. A. Clines, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther (London: Marshall/Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1984), p. 269.

1331. Loader, “Esther as a Novel with Different Levels of Meaning,” p. 419.

1332. Richard Bauckham, The Bible in Politics (London: SPCK/Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1989), p. 124.

1333. Cf. Orlando E. Costas, “The Subversiveness of Faith,” Ecumenical Review 40 (1988): 66–78.

1334. Bauckham, Bible in Politics, p. 126.

1335. See Richard E. Friedman, The Hidden Face of God (reprint, San Francisco: Harper, 1997). Cf. Miles, God: A Biography.

1336. See Robert L. Cohn, “Narrative Structure and Canonical Perspective,” JSOT 23 (1983): 3–16.

1337. Friedman downplays the “miracles” in Daniel; see Hidden Face of God, pp. 26, 57.

1338. Cf. Bruce William Jones, “Two Misconceptions About the Book of Esther,” CBQ 39 (1977): 171–81; see p. 181. See further Yehuda T. Radday, “Esther with Humour,” in On Humour and the Comic in the Hebrew Bible, ed. Yehuda T. Radday and Athalya Brenner (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990), pp. 295–313.

1339. Cf. Stan Goldman, “Narrative and Ethical Ironies in Esther,” JSOT 47 (1990): 15–31; see p. 25.

1340. Bauckham, Bible in Politics, pp. 122, 129.

1341. Berg, Book of Esther, pp. 183, 184. Cf. also Michael V. Fox’s comments, Character and Ideology in the Book of Esther, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2001), pp. 11–12.

1342. Wilhelm Vischer, “The Book of Esther,” EvQ 11 (1939): 3–21; see pp. 8–10.

1343. The length of the New Testament narrative (never mind its significance) would justify a much longer treatment than the one that appears here. I do not pretend to do complete justice to that, much less to the secondary literature, but to convey the flavor of its significance as one reads it in light of where it came from rather than where it led (in Christian doctrine). I assume the New Testament invites us to form a composite picture of Jesus from the four Gospels, though not to do so in a way that would be analogous to cutting and pasting a composite picture from different paintings. References to the Gospels are selective, not least where the same incident or statement recurs in different Gospels.

1344. We do not know how many people, if any, would have recognized the precise collection comprising the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings, and of course they would not have called it the First, or Old, Testament. When thinking of it from the perspective of people in New Testament times I will sometimes refer to “the Scriptures.”

1345. I avoid the word “kingdom” to translate basileia because it receives misleading connotations both from its everyday usage to describe a country ruled by a king and from its theological usage where the expression “the kingdom” has gained a life of its own.

1346. C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John (London: SPCK, 1955), p. 198.

1347. The term gōʾēl (restorer) fulfills something of the same function as “father” (see the comments in section 5.2, “Bringing Out, Rescuing, Restoring, Redeeming …”).

1348. Masoretic Text

1349. New Revised Standard Version

1350. n; marginal

1351. Unlike Hebrew, Greek uses the article with names (it says literally “the Jesus,” “the Peter”), though the use of the article adds to the parallelism with ho diabolos.

1352. The word comes twice in the NRSV to translate šēd (Deut 32:17; Ps 106:37). The NRSV sometimes has “goat-demon” for śāʿîr (Lev 17:7; 2 Chron 11:15; Is 13:21; 34:14), which commonly means “goat.”

1353. Cf. David Rhoads and Donald Michie, Mark as Story (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), p. 78.

1354. The talk of “baptism in spirit and fire” in Mt and Lk may thus be more original, Mk and Jn assimilating the words to the postresurrection situation. But “spirit” is systematically ambiguous and would be enough to make the same point, and Mt and Lk may be spelling out the implications of Jesus’ words. Conversely, “fire” can be encouraging as well as threatening because it purges as well as destroys (Is 1:25; 4:4; 6:6–7).

1355. Jesus did not treat toll collectors as belonging to the category of the rich and powerful or as oppressors. While a toll supervisor such as Zacchaeus might be rich, his offer to restore fraud fourfold would be too risky if he had regularly involved in fraud.

1356. John Drury, Tradition and Design in Luke’s Gospel (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1976), p. 9.

1357. Margaret Davies, Matthew (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), p. 147.

1358. Cf. Stephen C. Barton, The Spirituality of the Gospels (London: SPCK/Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1992), p. 17.

1359. Cf. Gerhard Barth, “Matthew’s Understanding of the Law,” in Tradition and Interpretation in Matthew, ed. Günther Bornkamm, Gerhard Barth and Heinz Joachim Held (London: SCM Press, 1963), pp. 58–164; see pp. 105–12.

1360. Cf. Rhoads and Michie, Mark as Story, pp. 91, 94.

1361. Cf. R. H. Lightfoot, St. John’s Gospel (Oxford/New York: Clarendon, 1956), pp. 71–73.

1362. Cf. David Hill, The Gospel of Matthew (London: Marshall/Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1972), p. 261.

1363. See, e.g., Elizabeth Moltmann-Wendel, The Women Around Jesus (London: SCM Press, 1982/New York: Crossroad, 1987), pp. 109–13; A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey (London: SCM Press/New York: Crossroad, 1986), pp. 82–83.

1364. The EVV often use the words save, savior and salvation for sōzō, sōtēr and sōtēria, but these English words carry broader theological connotations, so I use the words deliver, deliverer and deliverance.

1365. Cf. Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John, 2 vols. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966/London: Chapman, 1971), pp. 172–73.

1366. Davies, Matthew, p. 142.

1367. Masoretic Text

1368. It is not clear whether ʿalmâ in Is 7:14 means “virgin” or simply “young girl,” but this does not affect the meaning of the passage. Even if Isaiah refers to a girl who is at present a virgin, he will be assuming that she conceives her child in the regular fashion.

1369. Cf. Brown, Gospel According to John, p. 255.

1370. Cf. Richard Bauckham, God Crucified (Carlisle: Paternoster/Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 25–42.

1371. Brown, Gospel According to John, p. 24.

1372. Cf. ibid., pp. 273–74.

1373. See ibid., pp. 16, 35–36.

1374. So Barrett, St. John, p. 180.

1375. Cf. Rhoads and Michie, Mark as Story, p. 86.

1376. Cf. Bauckham, God Crucified, pp. 45–69.

1377. See William H. Vanstone, The Stature of Waiting (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1982/New York: Seabury, 1983).

1378. E.g., “This is my body, which is for you” or “which is broken for you” (different mss. of 1 Cor 11:24); “This is my body, which is given for you” (most mss. of Lk 22:19, though this seems to be a later addition).

1379. Or if there is, it is not a link with which Christian doctrine would be very comfortable, for Passover marks Israel as the people who belong to Yhwh and are relatively innocent over against Egypt, which deserves to be put in its place for its desire to hold on to Israel when Yhwh wants the people.

1380. On the translation and the exegesis, see John Goldingay and David Payne, Isaiah 40–55 (forthcoming); Goldingay, Restoring Zion (forthcoming), on the passage.

1381. See Barrett, St. John, p. 147.

1382. See Lightfoot, St. John’s Gospel, p. 62.

1383. The word magos (EVV “magician”) is the term for the “wise men” who come to acknowledge Jesus in Mt 2.

1384. So I. Howard Marshall, The Acts of the Apostles (Leicester, U.K.: Inter-Varsity Press/Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1980), p. 64.

1385. Cf. James D. G. Dunn, The Acts of the Apostles (Valley Forge, Penn.: Trinity Press International/Peterborough: Epworth, 1996), p. 18.

1386. So ibid., p. 120.

1387. New Revised Standard Version

1388. I. Howard Marshall, in Witness to the Gospel, ed. I. Howard Marshall and David Peterson (Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 13, summarizing C. K. Barrett, “Theologia crucis—in Acts?” in Theologia crucis—signum crucis, E. Dinkler Festschrift, ed. Carl Andresen and Günter Klein (Tübingen: Mohr, 1979), pp. 73–84.

1389. Dunn, Acts of the Apostles, p. 356.

1390. Masoretic Text

1391. See further section 11.5 above.

1392. Most manuscripts have the disciples preaching to Greek speakers, not actual Greeks (i.e., Gentiles), and the aftermath (Acts 11:21–30) makes no reference to their being Gentiles or to the question of circumcision (contrast Acts 10:45; 11:1).

1393. Cf. Dunn, Acts of the Apostles, p. 278.

1394. J. Reumann, “Oikonomia-Terms in Paul in Comparison with Lucan Heilsgeschichte,” New Testament Studies 13 (1966–67): 147–67; see p. 147.

1395. Cf. Leo G. Perdue, The Collapse of History, OBT (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994).

1396. I have argued in Models for Scripture (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans/Carlisle: Paternoster, 1994) that these are neither very helpful nor very biblical categories, but I let them stand here.

1397. Ziony Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel (London/New York: Continuum, 2001), p. 27.

1398. Jan Huizinga, “A Definition of the Concept of History,” in Philosophy and History: Essays Presented to Ernst Cassirer, ed. R. Klibansky and H. J. Paton (Oxford: Clarendon, 1936), pp. 1–10; see p. 9; as quoted by W. W. Hallo, “Biblical History in its Near Eastern Setting,” in Israel’s Past in Present Research, ed. V. Philips Long, SBTS 7 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1999), pp. 77–97; see p. 83. I do not think it matters if the way people use Huizinga’s definition does not exactly correspond to its meaning in the context of his work, as K. Lawson Younger implies (Ancient Conquest Accounts, JSOTSup 98 [Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990], pp. 26–27).

1399. Cf. John Van Seters, In Search of History (New Haven, Conn./London: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 4. This section reflects Van Seters’s work at a number of points.

1400. Cf. Childs’s arguments regarding the form of different books in Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress/London: SCM Press, 1979) and The New Testament as Canon (London: SCM Press, 1984/Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985).

1401. See C. Westermann, “The Old Testament’s Understanding of History in Relation to that of the Enlightenment,” in Israel’s Past in Present Research, ed. V. Philips Long, SBTS 7 (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1999), pp. 220–31; see pp. 223, 230.

1402. H. Cazelles, “Historiographies bibliques prébibliques,” Revue Biblique 98 (1991): 481–512; see p. 493, as translated in V. Philips Long, ed. Israel’s Past in Present Research (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1999), p. 109.

1403. E. A. Knauf, “From History to Interpretation,” in The Fabric of History, ed. Diana V. Edelman, JSOTSup 127 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), pp. 26–64; see p. 46.

1404. Cf. Van Seters, In Search of History, pp. 3–4.

1405. Cf. in part Stanley Hauerwas and David Burrell, “From System to Story,” in Truthfulness and Tragedy (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 1977), pp. 15–39; see p. 35; reprinted in Stanley Hauerwas and L. Gregory Jones, Why Narrative? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1989), pp. 158–90; see p. 185. They add “room to keep us from having to resort to violence,” which reflects their own agenda, but makes for an interesting juxtaposition to the Old Testament narrative (see sections 7.4–6 above).

1406. Cf. Van Seters, In Search of History, p. 2.

1407. See Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).

1408. So Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, pp. 1–80; William G. Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? (Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2001), pp. 245–62.

1409. That is, I “know” that Lamentations was written in the exile and that Daniel reached its final form in the second century. But, e.g., Iain W. Provan argues against that usual critical view of Lamentations (“Reading Texts Against an Historical Background,” SJOT [1990]: part 1, pp. 130–43), while conservative scholarship remains convinced that Daniel was written in the sixth century.

1410. Compare Rainer Albertz’s attempt to discover the significance of the promise to David in 2 Sam 7 on the basis of tracing its tradition history (A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, OTL [Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1994], pp. 117–18): he begins by commenting that this tradition history, “like almost all the central texts of the Old Testament (!)” is “so complicated that a generally accepted literary and chronological context for it has yet to be found” (my chief problem with this sentence is the word “yet,” whose implicit hopefulness has been exposed as empty by 150 years of rigorous Old Testament study). His study of 2 Sam 7 thus has to proceed by building “could be” on “could well be” on “could well belong” (there are more coulds in the notes) into a structure with the stability of a house of cards. Writing a history of Israelite religion cannot avoid this dilemma. Writing an Old Testament theology can do so, and needs to.

1411. See George V. Pixley, On Exodus (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1987), with Jon D. Levenson’s critique, The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1993), pp. 127–59.

1412. So Childs, e.g., Introduction to the OT, pp., 325–27.

1413. Francis Watson, Text, Church and World (Edinburgh: T & T Clark/Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994), p. 40.

1414. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), p. 75. Cf. Peter R. Ackroyd, Exile and Restoration, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968), p. 101.

1415. Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd/New York: Harper, 1962, 1965), 1:108.

1416. Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Minneapolis: Fortress/London: SCM Press, 1992), p. 20.

1417. See e.g., R. Walter L. Moberly, Genesis 12–50 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1995).

1418. See John Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven, Conn./London: Yale University Press, 1975), and subsequent works.

1419. Cf. James Barr’s remarks in History and Ideology in the Old Testament (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 86, and Norman K. Gottwald’s in his “Response to the Contributors,” in Tracking The Tribes of Yahweh: On the Trail of a Classic, ed. Roland Boer, JSOTSup 351 (London; New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), p. 178.

1420. Cf. Stephen Fowl, “Texts Don’t Have Ideologies,” Biblical Interpretation 3 (1995): 15–34.

1421. See e.g., the discussion of Isaiah 40–55 by Norman K. Gottwald, John Milbank and Carol A. Newsom in Ideological Criticism of Biblical Texts, ed. David Jobling and Tina Pippin; Semeia 59 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1992).

1422. See, e.g., Keith W. Whitelam, “Israel’s Traditions of Origins,” JSOT 44 (1989): 19–42; see p. 32.

1423. See, e.g., Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah, OTL (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2001), pp. 17, 307, on Is 1:2–31 and 40:12–31; Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments, p. 20. Cf. Peter Stuhlmacher, Reconciliation, Law, and Righteousness (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), p. x.

1424. See Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11 (Minneapolis: Augsburg/London: SPCK, 1984), p. 42.

1425. So Shemaryahu Talmon, “The Understanding of Creation in the Bible and in Jewish Tradition,” Ex auditu 3 (1987): 98–119; see p. 106.

1426. See John W. Rogerson, Myth in Old Testament Interpretation, BZAW 134 (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1974); briefly, Will Herberg, Faith Enacted as History (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), pp. 139–48.

1427. See Derek Kidner, Genesis (London: Tyndale/Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1967), p. 66.

1428. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1936–1969), III/1:81 (Barth calls this Sage, by which he means something more like “story” than “saga”); see further pp. 76–94.

1429. See, e.g., William A. Dembski and James Kushiner, eds., Signs of Intelligence (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos, 2001).

1430. d Semitic Monographs

1431. urnal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series

1432. stament Library

1433. iblical Commentary

1434. Overtures to Biblical Theology

1435. ety of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series

1436. A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. 2 series (14 vols. each). Reprinted, Edinburgh: T & T Clark/Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans.

1437. Journal of Biblical Literature

1438. Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester

1439. Tyndale Bulletin

1440. Catholic Biblical Quarterly

1441. senschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament

1442. eft zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

1443. minist Companion to the Bible

1444. iety of Biblical Literature Monograph Series

1445. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research

1446. tanding Biblical Themes

1447. es for Biblical and Theological Study

1448. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

1449. Horizons in Biblical Theology

1450. us Testamentum Supplements

1451. holic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series

1452. New International Commentary on the Old Testament

1453. ational Theological Commentary

1454. iectanea Biblica: Old Testament Series

1455. Harvard Theological Review

1456. Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

1457. Vetus Testamentum

1458. Journal of Semitic Studies

1459. Journal of Theological Studies

1460. eries

1461. Union Seminary Quarterly Review

1462. Journal of Religion

1463. Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament

1464. NT Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament

1465. Evangelical Quarterly

1466. NT Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments

1467. Journal of the American Oriental Society

Table of Contents

Abbreviations

Preface

1     Introduction Old Testament Theology as Narrative

1.1     Theology

1.2     Old Testament Theology

1.3     Old Testament Gospel

1.4     Old Testament Story

2     God Began Creation

2.1     God Thought

2.2     God Spoke

2.3     God Birthed

2.4     God Prevailed

2.5     God Created

2.6     God Built

2.7     God Arranged

2.8     God Shaped

2.9     God Delegated

2.10     God Planted

2.11     God Relaxed

3     God Started Over From Eden to Babel

3.1     Disobedience and Discovery

3.2     Expulsion and Loss

3.3     Violence and Curse

3.4     Fall and Ruin

3.5     Grace and Exemption

3.6     Realism and Pledging

3.7     Abuse and Strife

4     God Promised Israel’s Ancestors

4.1     God’s Charge and God’s Promises

4.2     God’s Blessings: Nationhood and Land

4.3     Being a Blessing

4.4     Abraham’s God and Other Peoples

4.5     Promise and Fulfillment

4.6     The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

4.7     God Who Acts

4.8     Relating to God

4.9     Marriage and Parenthood

4.10     Family Life

5     God Delivered The Exodus

5.1     God Who Creates and Delivers

5.2     God Who Remembers

5.3     God Who Works via People

5.4     God Who Does Signs and Wonders

5.5     God Who Insists

5.6     God Who Reigns

5.7     How God Is Revealed

5.8     How God Relates to Foreign Peoples

5.9     How God’s Resolve Relates to Human Resolve

5.10     How God’s Act Relates to the Future

6     God Sealed Sinai

Table of Contents

Abbreviations

Preface

1     Introduction Old Testament Theology as Narrative

1.1     Theology

1.2     Old Testament Theology

1.3     Old Testament Gospel

1.4     Old Testament Story

2     God Began Creation

2.1     God Thought

2.2     God Spoke

2.3     God Birthed

2.4     God Prevailed

2.5     God Created

2.6     God Built

2.7     God Arranged

2.8     God Shaped

2.9     God Delegated

2.10     God Planted

2.11     God Relaxed

3     God Started Over From Eden to Babel

3.1     Disobedience and Discovery

3.2     Expulsion and Loss

3.3     Violence and Curse

3.4     Fall and Ruin

3.5     Grace and Exemption

3.6     Realism and Pledging

3.7     Abuse and Strife

4     God Promised Israel’s Ancestors

4.1     God’s Charge and God’s Promises

4.2     God’s Blessings: Nationhood and Land

4.3     Being a Blessing

4.4     Abraham’s God and Other Peoples

4.5     Promise and Fulfillment

4.6     The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

4.7     God Who Acts

4.8     Relating to God

4.9     Marriage and Parenthood

4.10     Family Life

5     God Delivered The Exodus

5.1     God Who Creates and Delivers

5.2     God Who Remembers

5.3     God Who Works via People

5.4     God Who Does Signs and Wonders

5.5     God Who Insists

5.6     God Who Reigns

5.7     How God Is Revealed

5.8     How God Relates to Foreign Peoples

5.9     How God’s Resolve Relates to Human Resolve

5.10     How God’s Act Relates to the Future

6     God Sealed Sinai