October 28, 2012 0

Episode 14 – 2 Samuel: King David

By in Blog, Podcast

[TRANSCRIPT]

A super-ultra-mega-perfect-franken-storm is inching toward the east coast like an alien mothership, so this might be our last chance to talk about the BOOK…

[INTRO MUSIC]

Hello, and welcome to BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody, I’m Josh Way. Today we’ll wrap up our look at the Hebrew scrolls called “Samuel.” The first scroll introduced us to Israel’s prophets and kings, and the deep tension between those two offices. 2 Samuel focuses more on David’s rule and legacy, and as such it is more fundamentally about the king side of the equation. In light of that, it’s important that we say a few things about kings and the bible.

When we read about kings and kingdoms in the bible, we are at a peculiar disadvantage. Our European heritage stands between us and the ancient near-eastern world of the bible, and has undeniably colored our interpretation of these texts. Words like “king,” “shepherd,” and “wilderness” conjure up images of golden crowns, plush robes, tapestries, and rolling green hills and meadows. We easily forget that the world of the bible was quite a different place, and “kingship” itself was quite a different institution. The “wilderness” of the bible is more properly a barren desert, and a king is not so much a “king” as a governor or ruler. And in Israel, the king does not have unlimited power – he is hierarchically subservient to the Temple and the high priests, and he is regularly kept in check by prophets. His main duty is to be the chief law-keeper. In fact, according to  Deuteronomy 17, the first duty of Israel’s king was to write out long-hand a copy of the Torah, and then to study it every day so the covenant might live in his heart and mind. So while the kings of old from the great pagan cultures (like Mesopotamia and Babylon) were judged according to their great wealth and achievements, the kings of the bible were to be judged according to their loyalty to the covenant law.

With that rubric in mind, we turn to 2 Samuel and the reign of David. It took thirty-one long chapters of intrigue and conflict in 1 Samuel to clear a path for David to become the nation’s first great king. The first item of business for the anointed king, however, is not to assume power or make a decree. In 1 Samuel chapter one, David mourns Saul and his son Jonathan – his own close friend. And he does so as only he could, with a beautiful poem. Starting in verse 19:

19 Your glory, O Israel, Lies slain on your heights; How have the mighty fallen!
20 Tell it not in Gath, Do not proclaim it in the streets of Ashkelon, Lest the daughters of the Philistine rejoice, Lest the daughters of the uncircumcised exult.
21 O hills of Gilboa — Let there be no dew or rain on you, Or bountiful fields, For there the shield of warriors lay rejected, The shield of Saul, Polished with oil no more.
22 From the blood of slain, from the fat of warriors – The bow of Jonathan Never turned back; The sword of Saul Never withdrew empty.
23 Saul and Jonathan, Beloved and cherished, Never parted In life or in death! They were swifter than eagles, They were stronger than lions!
24 Daughters of Israel, Weep over Saul, Who clothed you in crimson and finery, Who decked your robes with jewels of gold.
25 How have the mighty fallen In the thick of battle — Jonathan, slain on your heights!
26 I grieve for you, My brother Jonathan, You were most dear to me. Your love was wonderful to me More than the love of women.
27 How have the mighty fallen, The weapons of war perished!

You would hardly guess that Saul had so mercilessly pursued David to kill him and preserve his own illegitimate claim to the throne. David’s sensitivity to his rival is part of his kingly character, as the prophet Samuel had called him, “a man after God’s own heart.” In the literary presentation, the author offers this as evidence that David came to power in innocence and legitimacy.

And so David, at last, takes the throne – but NOT the throne of all Israel. David is made king over Judah – the catch-all name for the collected southern tribes. But in the north – collectively and confusingly called “Israel” – a son of Saul named Ish-bosheth assumes his father’s throne. And so, David’s struggle continues, the houses of David and Saul go to war, and Israel is once again divided. After seven years of conflict, David’s top general Joab murders Ish-bosheth’s top general Abner, turning the tide and leading to Judah’s victory. David celebrates his triumph in his trademark manner, in 2 Samuel 3:32…

[32] And the king lifted up his voice and wept at the grave of Abner, and all the people wept. [33] And the king lamented for Abner, saying,

“Should Abner die as a fool dies?
[34] Your hands were not bound;
your feet were not fettered;
as one falls before the wicked
you have fallen.”

And all the people wept again over him.

David is re-anointed (for the third time, I think), and swiftly establishes his reign over all Israel. His first act is to capture a city called Jerusalem, where he builds himself a palace and sets up the tabernacle. Of course Jerusalem would remain the capital of Israel for its entire national life, and today remains geographically and symbolically central to those of Jewish heritage. Then – after winning a palpable victory over the Philistines and driving them out of the land – David has what is perhaps his most significant encounter with God in 2 Samuel 7.

David decides, having established a permanent home for himself in Jerusalem, that he should build a permanent “house” for God – a Temple. He is ready to order its construction when word comes through the prophet Nathan that God has different plans. Beginning in verse 5 of 2 Samuel 7:

5 “Go and say to My servant David: Thus said the LORD: Are you the one to build a house for Me to dwell in?  6 From the day that I brought the people of Israel out of Egypt to this day I have not dwelt in a house, but have moved about in Tent and Tabernacle. 7 As I moved about wherever the Israelites went, did I ever reproach any of the tribal leaders whom I appointed to care for My people Israel: Why have you not built Me a house of cedar?
8 “Further, say thus to My servant David: Thus said the LORD of Hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the flock, to be ruler of My people Israel, 9 and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut down all your enemies before you. Moreover, I will give you great renown like that of the greatest men on earth. 10 I will establish a home for My people Israel and will plant them firm, so that they shall dwell secure and shall tremble no more. Evil men shall not oppress them any more as in the past, 11 ever since I appointed chieftains over My people Israel. I will give you safety from all your enemies. “The LORD declares to you that He, the LORD, will establish a house for you.
12 When your days are done and you lie with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, one of your own issue, and I will establish his kingship.
13 He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish his royal throne forever.
14 I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to Me. When he does wrong, I will chastise him with the rod of men and the affliction of mortals; 15 but I will never withdraw My favor from him as I withdrew it from Saul, whom I removed to make room for you.
16 Your house and your kingship shall ever be secure before you; your throne shall be established forever.”

David will not build a house for God, but God will build a house – in this sense a “dynasty” – for David. Two significant things are happening here: 1) David’s household is being established and legitimized through a prophet of the LORD, and 2) the old covenant is being renewed and updated for Israel’s current circumstance. The covenant, first established with Abraham and then re-established with Jacob and Moses and Joshua, is the one about the OFFSPRING being blessed in the LAND. In previous iterations of the covenant, the OFFSPRING and the LAND have been contentious, elusive, in-danger. Now, God says “you’ve got the right FAMILY in the right PLACE,” and the blessing can commence. This is excellent news, but it does not come without a caveat.

Verse 14, the basis of much messianic speculation among Jews AND Christians, introduces a note of warning: “I will be a father to him, and he will be a son to me, and when he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, but I will never withdraw my favor.” Anyone who knows Israel’s history beyond this point knows that the “rod of men” has a particularly nasty sting to it. In fact, this tiny warning seems to overwhelm and endanger the entire promise – calling the whole thing into question. But we’ll deal with all of this in great detail in future podcasts.

And so, the crisis of Israel’s national period is – for the moment – resolved. The answer to the problem of civil war and muddled identity, is centralized government and religion. A good king ruling from the palace, and good priests serving in the tabernacle. As long as this system is staffed with worthy people, Israel will be blessed and God’s original purposes through Israel, going back to Genesis 12 (to “bless the nations”) will move forward. Unfortunately, the human element in Israel’s systems of government and religion continues to reveal its… humanness.

The immediate fallout of the Davidic Covenant is all kinds of success and warm feelings. Enemies are defeated and driven out, David grows in influence and renown, and he even seeks out the remnant of Saul’s family – a disabled young man named Mephibosheth – to show him kindness and love. But then, in chapter 11, Israel’s greatest king – and chief law-keeper – stumbles for the first time. And it’s a big stumble.

From the roof of his palace David spies a beautiful woman bathing and becomes fascinated with her. He arranges to meet the married woman, named Bathsheba, and impregnates her. Instead of admitting his trespass and seeking atonement through the priests, David attempts to cover up the deed. He sends for her husband Uriah, who is a grunt in one of David’s wars against Israel’s neighbor-enemies, hoping he will lie with his wife and no one will be the wiser. It doesn’t happen, so David arranges to have Uriah sent to the front lines, where he is killed. The king, in effect, murders his secret lover’s husband – a completely innocent man.

In 2 Samuel 12 Nathan the prophet confronts David in one of the juiciest prophet/king exchanges. Here it is:

1 But the LORD was displeased with what David had done, and the LORD sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said, “There were two men in the same city, one rich and one poor. 2 The rich man had very large flocks and herds, 3 but the poor man had only one little ewe lamb that he had bought. He tended it and it grew up together with him and his children: it used to share his morsel of bread, drink from his cup, and nestle in his bosom; it was like a daughter to him.
4 One day, a traveler came to the rich man, but he was loath to take anything from his own flocks or herds to prepare a meal for the guest who had come to him; so he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.”
5 David flew into a rage against the man, and said to Nathan, “As the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die! 6 He shall pay for the lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and showed no pity.”
7 And Nathan said to David, “That man is you! Thus said the LORD, the God of Israel: ‘It was I who anointed you king over Israel and it was I who rescued you from the hand of Saul. 8 I gave you your master’s house and possession of your master’s wives; and I gave you the House of Israel and Judah; and if that were not enough, I would give you twice as much more.9 Why then have you flouted the command of the LORD and done what displeases Him?”

It’s not simply that David broke the law. That’s bad enough, but the law itself provides means by which to own up and clean up after a misdeed. David’s offense is much worse: he acted in secret, in self-interest, and was willing to kill an innocent person rather than admit his sin. This behavior is more in line with a rejected king like Saul than a “man after God’s own heart.” Nathan declares that God will no longer spare Israel from its enemies, and David’s first child with Bathsheba becomes sick and dies. They have a second child, a son named Solomon.

The rest of the book is characterized by strife: strife at the national level, as Israel battles its enemies on every side, and strife at the family level as David’s household implodes. His son Amnon becomes infatuated with his half-sister Tamar, and he lures her into his chamber and rapes her. Her brother Absalom learns of the violation and murders Amnon. This type of perverted family trouble has become uncomfortably familiar in the bible, and is always the author’s way of indicating that Israel has continued to wander farther and farther from the covenant. Sexual politics and fratricide are inversions and mockeries of the basic human relationships which prove untenable for people looking after their own interests. We’re back outside the garden again.

Absalom must flee from Jerusalem, and in his time away becomes embittered and power-hungry. He returns later to challenge his father’s throne. Absalom’s threat is real enough that David must flee, a sad echo of his time as a fugitive from Saul years earlier. This time, the bad guy is his own son! Ultimately, David’s faithful officers defeat and kill Absalom, once more making the king very sad.

David reclaims his throne, and the final few chapters of 2 Samuel detail the turbulent times in which Israel finds itself. In addition to the ongoing wars, there are rebellions, and famines. As awful as it all is, we are mindful of the covenant promise in chapter 7 and the warning to the king who fails to be Israel’s chief lawkeeper. In the middle of all the bad news at the end of the Samuel scroll, we get two more poems from David: a prayer of thankfulness at the end of his life, and his “last words.”

We’ll close out this week’s podcast with those final words of David, found in 2 Samuel 23:

1 These are the last words of David: The utterance of David son of Jesse, the utterance of the man set on high, The anointed of the God of Jacob, the favorite of the songs of Israel:
2 The spirit of the LORD has spoken through me, His message is on my tongue;
3 The God of Israel has spoken, The Rock of Israel said concerning me: “He who rules men justly, He who rules in awe of God 4 Is like the light of morning at sunrise, a morning without clouds — Through sunshine and rain Bringing vegetation out of the earth.”
5 Is not my House established before God? For He has granted me an eternal pact, Drawn up in full and secured. Will He not cause all my success and my every desire to blossom?
6 But the wicked shall all Be raked aside like thorns; For no one will take them in his hand.
7 Whoever touches them Must arm himself with iron and the shaft of a spear; And they are consumed with fire.

A wiser, aging David, looking back on his life, burned by the “rod of men” as a direct result of his own ill deeds, still believes in the covenant. He still believes in the house that God established in Jerusalem, which will stand forever in an “eternal pact.” This is royal theology, often over against prophetic theology, two sides of the same coin – nationalized Israel. From here the literature will follow the descendants of David and the prophets who challenge them and their power. And ultimately, Israel will face its most unexpected and cataclysmic crisis, a historical rift which will produce some of the most remarkable literature ever known to mankind. And we’ll make some podcasts about it.

Until then, this has been BOOK, and I have been Josh Way. If you enjoyed this podcast, I urge you to share, blog, like, and tweet it to your online friends and family. If you have any comments, questions or constructive feedback, email me at book@joshway.com. You can also leave a voicemail at 801-760-3013, and maybe I’ll answer it on the podcast. Read the BOOK blog and find more content at BOOK.JOSHWAY.COM. That’s it for me, Bible pals. I’ll catch you next time.

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October 23, 2012 0

Episode 13 – 1 Samuel: Of Prophets and Kings

By in Blog, Podcast

[TRANSCRIPT]

In my left hand is a crumpled Target receipt detailing the purchase of Honest Tea Half & Half and disposable razors. In my right hand is a bible. Let’s do a show about… THE BIBLE

[INTRO MUSIC]

Hello, and welcome to BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. If you’re new to the show, the premise is simple: we are looking at the content of the Judeo-Christian Bible through the lenses of HISTORY and LITERATURE. That is – the people, places, and moments which produced the texts of the bible, with special attention to the genre, format, and meaning of the texts themselves. Sometimes we pore over individual chapters or small bits of text, and sometimes we cover lots of material in one swoop. Today we swoop. But first, a quick recap:

Judges made the case that Israel needed a king, and then Ruth dropped the name of a candidate – David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Ruth. The book of Samuel – a single work divided into two scrolls – gives us the goods on David and a whole lot more. So why isn’t the book called “David?” Because the story is first and foremost not about David himself, but about a prophet named Samuel. And so, before we can dive into this biblical literary smorgasbord, we need to talk about a new concept here on BOOK: prophets.

When most people think of biblical prophecy, if they do at all, they think of something mystical and predictive. Some guy goes into a holy trance and predicts some cataclysmic future event. And, to be sure, there is prophecy like that in the bible (though far less of it than you might think). In actuality, the prophetic tradition of Israel as represented in the bible is far more timely and nuanced. Perhaps a better way to describe this kind of prophecy is “inspired punditry,” as most prophets delivered urgent insights concerning current events.

At the most basic level, a “prophet” was one who delivered (or claimed to deliver) a message on behalf of Israel’s God. And, despite what we might imagine, these messages were not typically arbitrary, detached religious warnings, they were urgent and relevant, ripped from the headlines. The first biblical prophet to be identified as such was Moses, who didn’t predict future events, but did deliver words from Israel’s God to the people in the form of the law, directly addressing their deep identity crisis. And that’s the bottom-line requirement for a prophet: faithfully delivering a message which addresses a current crisis. Beyond that, prophets are far more diverse and mercurial than other biblical types. In fact, another defining characteristic of prophets is their lack of common defining characteristics. As we shall see.

So what does all of this have to do with King David? There is a particular and dominant strand of prophecy in the bible which emerged and developed at the same time as Israel began to seek a king. And this was not coincidence but an organic sort of check and balance, as the prophets would be the ones to challenge and humble the kings of Israel lest they be consumed by their power. We tend to imagine prophets wandering the streets, angrily confronting random citizens in their holy fervor, but it’s more appropriate to history that prophets would have directed their missives directly at thrones. Samuel is the first of these royal prophets, and his origin story (referred to in biblical tradition as a “calling”) is the subject of the first few chapters of the first of two books bearing his name.

The setting of Samuel builds on some familiar themes: Israel is still in the period of the Judges, civil and moral chaos rule the day, and the High Priest is a spineless old man named Eli with two “worthless” sons who pig out on sacrificial meat and fornicate with the women who work outside the tabernacle. A man from the tribe of Ephraim named Elkanah and his barren wife Hannah visit Eli to petition the LORD for a child. Their prayer is answered and her womb is “opened,” signaling to seasoned bible readers like us that this child will be noteworthy in Israel’s history. Hannah is so grateful for the gift of her son, named Samuel, that she dedicates him to service in the tabernacle. She actually gives him away to be trained as a priest.

That’s the setup: an ineffectual high priest, worthless sons, an opened womb, and a young boy training to be a priest. Then we read this in 1 Samuel chapter 3:

[1] Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the LORD in the presence of Eli. And the word of the LORD was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.

Samuel is “ministering to the LORD,” which simply means he is doing his job in the tabernacle tent – training under Eli to perform priestly duties. Then the author states the crisis of the book as clearly as possible: “The word of the LORD was rare in those days.” As we know from the Torah, disorder is the problem to which the “word of God” is the remedy. In Genesis 1, in the creation song, God speaks ten times and chaos gives way to order and life. In Exodus 20, Moses delivers the “ten words” from God to the lost and wandering Israelites. And now, here in Israel’s fresh crisis, it’s time for some new “words.” When the high priest himself can’t be trusted to get Israel back on track, something extraordinary must happen. This is where the prophet comes in.

What most distinguishes a prophet from any other Israelite “type” (priest, king, teacher, etc.) is the criteria and method by which they “become” prophets. A king, as we will soon observe, was subjected to a very rigorous and multi-faceted vetting process, and – not unlike our modern political environment – only certain people with certain connections were even eligible for the job. Prophets, on the other hand, were “called” out of some other life, often just for a brief season, and with no criteria other than whether or not what they said turned out to be true. Anyone could be a prophet, and in this case a young priest-in-training was about to find himself with a new vocation.

In chapter three, Samuel hears the audible voice of God giving him an urgent message for Israel. You might assume at this point in the literary presentation that the message would be “David is to be king!,” but you would be wrong. The “word” is this: God is going to cut off the house of Eli the high priest, and end their tenure in the tabernacle. And sure enough, this happens in the very next chapter. An army of Philistines – Israel’s chief enemy at this point in history, about whom we will say more soon – capture the ark of the covenant and slay the worthless sons of Eli, and the tragic news of these events shocks Eli who falls backward in his chair, breaks his neck, and also dies. Well, OK. Now we’re getting somewhere!

Samuel grows up and serves Israel as high priest and judge – all the while maintaining his status as a prophet, faithfully delivering the “word of God” for whatever Israel’s present crisis happens to be. In chapter 8, the crisis of Israel’s leadership comes to a head and the people demand a king. And the response of the prophet is a resounding “NO.” Samuel warns that a king would only exploit the people of Israel while inflating his own power. The people persist, Samuel speaks once more on behalf of the LORD, and the answer this time is “WELL, OK.”

This all might seem strange given the trajectory of the literature up to this point: Israel is in disorder, Israel needs a king, and David has already been named as the guy for the job. Why then is the prophet of the LORD – and by implication the LORD himself – so opposed to the idea? This is setting up the tension, to which we’ve already hinted, between prophets and kings which will characterize the rest of Israel’s national history. And before we move on to the gory details of Israel’s first kingdom, let’s take a moment to distill this prophet/king tension by means of a cheap and flimsy analogy. Think of kings as the conservatives of the ancient world, and prophets as the liberals.

Again, this is an imperfect and risky analogy because of the likelihood that you have already decided you hate one of those two groups of people. But it’s still a convenient shorthand for understanding this important biblical tension in familiar terms. So here we go: On the right, we have kings, primarily concerned with the establishment of authority and appealing to the old traditions and laws. On the left are prophets, primarily interested in ministering to the needs of the moment, appealing to new ideas and new understandings of old ideas. To the kings, God is personal and present, he’s here and he’s on our side. To prophets, God is elusive, transcendent, unwilling to be contained within any system. The god of the king is the source of his power and authority, while the god of the prophet is a challenge and threat to both.

So anyway, that’s the weak analogy. If it wasn’t helpful, go ahead and forget about it right away.

Moving on: God gives the greenlight to Israel’s king initiative, and it’s time to make a monarch. Easy, right? Go find David and give him the crown. Well, not quite… Israel picks their first king, and it’s not David. It’s a guy named Saul, a big fellow from the tiny tribe of Benjamin. What is going on? Who is Saul? Where is David? Just like in Ruth and so many other bible texts, this is story about subverted expectations. Saul is the king you would choose if you were judging by traditional standards and outward appearance, and David is the right one. Israel needs to make the mistake before they can get it right.

And here’s where we need to add a little historical yeast to this literary dough. To understand why Israel looks to Saul, we need to say a little bit about the Philistines. Unlike many of Israel’s other enemies from this period (Moab, Canaan, Edom, Ammon), the Philistines were not distant semitic cousins with Torah connections to the twelve tribes. The Philistines were true enemies, invaders from “beyond the sea” who had come to the land around 1200 BCE. They were physically large people, fierce fighters, and – at this particular moment in history – they were so aggressive and so numerous that they were actually ruling over the Israelites. 1 Samuel 13 says that their presence in the land was so overwhelming they had managed to outlaw Israelite blacksmiths, thereby robbing Israel of its weaponry. If an Israelite wanted his gardening tools sharpened, he had to go to a Philistine smithy.

And so Saul, who stood head and shoulders above the average Israelite, was a media-friendly candidate. In 1 Samuel 9, the prophet “anoints” Saul, the first of many steps in the kinging process, and perhaps the most significant. The protective anointing of the head with oil was and remains a common practice for people living in harsh desert conditions. In the case of a royal candidate, “anointing” symbolized the selection and protection of the throne-bound individual by god himself. Saul is anointed and celebrated as Israel’s first king, but it doesn’t take long for things to go sour. In particular, the new king commits two grievous errors in 1 Samuel chapter 13.

The first blunder might not look like a blunder at first glance, as it involves a victory against the Philistines on the battlefield. But after the small victory, Saul turns up the volume on his anti-Philistine rhetoric, provoking the enemy to amass an army of tens of thousands of chariots and troops against Israel in the Jordan Valley. The people of Israel are panic-stricken, they begin hiding in ditches and cisterns, and the text says that Saul’s actions made them a “stench” to the Philistines. That word “stench” is our literary clue to remember Genesis 34 and the incident at Shechem, where the murderous behavior of Jacob’s sons put a stain on Israel’s reputation that lasted for generations. Saul is mismanaging Israel’s reputation at a time when their very survival is in question.

The second blunder is more blatant. Saul, wracked with anxiety over the immanent Philistine attack, grows impatient and crosses the line between king and priest: he makes his own peace offering on the eve of battle in Samuel’s absence, a clear violation of Torah law. This is the last straw, and the prophet declares that God will “cut off” the household of Saul and give the throne to another. But as with most of these biblical events (and historical realities in general), there is no such thing as a smooth transition. Saul will stay on the throne for years, and only his death will clear the way for the new king.

And that new king, of course, is David. David is finally introduced and, perhaps in atonement for the delay, the author introduces the heck out of him. In 1 Samuel 16 and 17, we get three tales in a row in which young David, son of Jesse is introduced for the first time. Scholars have suggested that these represent three different traditions about David which have been edited together in the final document. That’s not outside the realm of possibility, but whatever the case I think the author (or editor) of Samuel has intentionally lumped these passages together for the three distinct insights they give about David’s character.

The first David intro is a kind of Cinderella story, and makes the themes of subverted expectations even more explicit. Samuel comes to the home of Jesse with his anointing horn in hand, expecting God to reveal the new king to him. One by one he considers David’s older, mightier brothers, but each one is passed by until David himself, the young shepherd boy, is revealed to be the chosen one, and he is promptly anointed. There’s a good reason this story should come first in David’s biography, as it allows for no question regarding his status as the chosen dude.

The second story sees Saul tormented and kept awake at night by a “harmful spirit,” some sort of sickness or depression. One of his attendants tells him about the young son of Jesse, a singer-songwriter named David who can soothe a troubled soul. Saul sends for the boy, who comforts him and enters his service as armor bearer. This tale accomplishes two things: it establishes David as a sensitive, creative soul, a man in stark contrast to Saul, and it puts David inside the halls of power, placing him that much closer to the throne.

The third David introduction is one of the most famous of all bible stories, David versus Goliath. Here’s the setup from 1 Samuel 17 and verse 4:

[4] And there came out from the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span. [5] He had a helmet of bronze on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail, and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of bronze. [6] And he had bronze armor on his legs, and a javelin of bronze slung between his shoulders. [7] The shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron. And his shield-bearer went before him. [8] He stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, “Why have you come out to draw up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not servants of Saul? Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me. [9] If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us.” [10] And the Philistine said, “I defy the ranks of Israel this day. Give me a man, that we may fight together.” [11] When Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid.

Goliath is a Philistine warrior, a giant man (anywhere from seven to nine feet tall, depending on which manuscript you choose), and an embodiment of the pagan threat to Israel’s survival. He steps out from the battle lines to bellow threats against Saul and the Israelites, daring anyone to answer his challenge and meet him in combat. Saul – still king and ultimately responsible to answer this kind of champion’s challenge – is too scared to act. Everyone is, except for the young errand boy David who is running supplies for his brothers’ military unit. David volunteers to face Goliath, and Saul is just desperate enough to let him take a shot. Armed with only a sling and five stones, David runs to the battlefield and knocks the giant down with a pebble to the forehead. While Goliath is down, David takes the Philistine’s own sword and chops off his head. Whee!

The three David prologues reveal three things about him: 1) he is anointed, meaning that God has chosen him despite his unworthy appearance, 2) he is a conduit of peace and healing through his music and poetry, and 3) his naive faith makes him an effective Philistine killer. At the same time, each of these attributes is in stark contrast to the character of Saul. Saul’s anointing (in chapter 10) was weird, rushed, and had to be hidden from his family, while David was anointed publicly in front of his dumbstruck father and brothers. Saul is gruff and boastful, while David is sensitive and prayerful. And lastly, Saul is paralyzed by fear in the face of danger while David gleefully rushes to face threats, confident that God will deliver him.

After the Goliath incident, David’s fame grows, but Saul remains king. Saul is understandable threatened by a slogan that becomes popular among the people of Israel (18:7):

“Saul has slain his thousands,
and David his tens of thousands”

Saul’s jealousy is inflamed and he becomes obsessed with killing David, and the rightful king becomes a hunted fugitive. Saul’s son Jonathan, a close friend of David, alerts him to the king’s plots and David manages to keep a step ahead. The rest of 1 Samuel is a series of intrigues as Saul hunts David and David escapes. At one point, the current high priest Ahimelech gives aid to David, and Saul orders the murder of the entire priestly family. Another time, David has the jump on Saul in a cave where he is sleeping, but chooses to let him live.

There are many more accounts in the first scroll of Samuel: the death of Samuel, David’s marriages, Saul’s (successful) attempt to communicate with the late Samuel through a medium, and Saul’s own bad death on the battlefield. All of this finally clears the stage for David to take his seat as Israel’s new and greatest king. How does he do? That’s what 2 Samuel is all about…

As literature, 1 Samuel is more than just a detailed historical record (though it is richly detailed and very long). It’s a persuasive text, a comparison between a worthy and an unworthy king, and it effectively gives voice to the central tensions of Israel’s national period, the time after the settlement and the judges. This time, much like the earlier time of Israel’s wandering, is a crisis of identity for Israel. Who may rule over us? Who will rule over us? How will we deal with our neighbors? How will we keep the covenant law? WILL we keep the covenant law? Only if we allow these questions and the sharp disagreements about them among the prophets, kings, and priests of ancient Israel to cast their light and shadow on the text will we learn to read it as a living testimony to human experience rather than some stale, decrepit religious artifact.

This has been BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. And I have been Josh Way. If you enjoyed this podcast, I urge you to share, blog, like, and tweet it to your online friends and family. If you have any comments, questions or constructive feedback, email me at book@joshway.com. You can also leave a voicemail at 801-760-3013, and maybe I’ll answer it on the podcast. Read the BOOK blog and find more content at BOOK.JOSHWAY.COM. That’s it for me, Bible pals. I’ll catch you next time.

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October 15, 2012 1

Episode 12 – Ruth

By in Blog, Podcast

[TRANSCRIPT]

Once upon a time there was a BOOK…

[INTRO MUSIC]

Hello, and welcome to BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. Well, we’ve come pretty far in eleven short podcasts, and today we’re looking at a unique and beloved bible text called “Ruth.” The scroll of Joshua resolved the storyline of the Torah, but introduced new issues and tensions which grew into full-blown civil war in the book of Judges. The situation at the end of Judges could not be more bleak, as the ancient nation of Israel sank deeper and deeper into chaos. That book made a sharp argument that Israel needed a king, but offered no specific plan of action.

The scroll of Ruth couldn’t be more different from Judges in tone, scope, and content, but it does pick up the same argument and follows it to some shocking conclusions. Ruth is a fan favorite bible book, celebrate as a tale of romance and redemption. We’ll discover that Ruth is a downright scandalous story, the story of Israel’s greatest king, by way of a pushy pagan woman who saved Israel when it couldn’t save itself.

Here are the first five verses of Ruth Chapter 1:

[1:1] In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. [2] The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. [3] But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. [4] These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, [5] and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.

There so much going on in these few verses, we need to make sure we keep track of all the threads. First, we have an explicit connection with Judges, so we immediately know the climate in Israel at this time: chaos, war, and – most important to the author of Ruth – no king. There is a famine, and a man from Bethlehem (a small town in the tribal territory of Judah) moves his family to Moab. Like many bible characters before him, this man is leaving the land of Israel in a time of trouble to find sustenance elsewhere. His name, Elimelech, is Hebrew for “God is King,” and his wife’s name Naomi means “sweetie.” Their sons’ names, Mahlon and Chilion, mean “sickness” and “failure,” which seem like highly unusual names, but may have been reflections of the troubled times into which they were born. Elimelech died, the boys married Moabite women, and then they died, leaving Naomi alone with her two daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth. So once again, we’re reading a story about LAND and OFFSPRING, or FOOD and FAMILY, or rather, the lack of BOTH.

In one sense this makes Ruth as familiar a story as anything in the Torah or the rest of the Hebrew Bible. But in the details we discover what an unexpected and subversive book this is. Not only are our main characters women, but the protagonist is a “Moabitess,” as the author repeatedly calls Ruth. Let’s refresh our memory about Moab, a most undesirable place and people in the eyes of Israel. Remember in Genesis, after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, when Lot’s daughters got him drunk and had sex with him in a cave? Moab was one of the children conceived on that magical night. And that fat king killed by Ehud in the book of Judges? He was the king of Moab. The Moabites were known as antagonists to Israel, and in particular their women were known as temptresses who lured Israel’s men into apostasy. Ruth isn’t just a woman, she isn’t just a foreigner, she’s an enemy and a whore (at least in the eyes of a good, mainline conservative Israelite).

So we have a problem: NO FOOD, NO FAMILY. Naomi and her daughters-in-law are starving, and now there are no men to navigate the ancient patriarchal world on their behalf. Naomi decides she should head back to Judah, to find Elimelech’s family and take her place as a needy widow in the covenant society of Israel. She assumes that Orpah and Ruth will simply return to their own Moabite families and remarry. Orpah takes off, but Ruth insists on accompanying Naomi on her return to Judah. Ruth’s persistence is remarkable, and her relationship with Naomi is celebrated as one of deep dedication and affection. In fact, Ruth’s declaration of her intention to follow Naomi back to Israel is very often read at Christian weddings as an example of biblical love and commitment. No doubt the words are beautiful, but I’m always a little weirded out when I remember that this is a young woman talking to her mother-in-law. Here’s the passage in question:

[15] And she said, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” [16] But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. [17] Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.” [18] And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more.

Ruth’s words are lovely and inspiring, and they’re also kind of crazy. Her adamant determination to wedge herself into Naomi’s world, Naomi’s homeland, and Naomi’s religion is remarkable. On one level, Ruth is the “persistent widow,” a character type in Hebrew literature which illustrates the tenacity of the oppressed and disenfranchised in the face of an uncaring society which should be going out of its way to take care them. This is Ruth to a T as we’ll see, but it’s even more peculiar for the fact that Ruth is not an Israelite. It’s one thing to see someone fight for their place within the Sinai Covenant, it’s quite another to see a powerless foreign widow trying to force her way into it. Traditional readings of this chapter usually just accept the fact of Ruth’s “conversion” to Israel’s faith and move on. But the fact of Ruth’s status as a pagan daughter of Israel’s enemies is the key to the book’s scathing message.

Anyway, moving on… The key word in Ruth chapter one is “return,” shuv in Hebrew. The verb is repeated twelve times, culminating in the return of Naomi – with Ruth the “Moabitess” in tow – to Bethlehem in Judah. Naomi announces to the townsfolk that she is no longer to be called by that name – “Call me Mara,” she says, “for Shaddai has dealt bitterly with me.” (Mara means “bitter”.) Now that they have a new home, Ruth and Naomi can set about solving their problems – the loss of FOOD and FAMILY. Solutions to both problems are in view in the first three verses of chapter two:

[2:1] Now Naomi had a relative of her husband, a worthy man of the clan of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz. [2] And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after him in whose sight I shall find favor.” And she said to her, “Go, my daughter.” [3] So she set out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers, and she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the clan of Elimelech.

The covenant law of Israel made provisions for the needy and disenfranchised, and here is where two of those provisions intersect. On the one hand, Ruth is destitute and hungry, and as such has the right under the Law to “glean among the ears,” collecting grain that has been intentionally left behind by the field workers as a donation to the poor. At the same time, Ruth is also a young widow from the family of Elimelech, and as such was in a position to be “redeemed” – that is, bought out of her poverty, married, and restored to her place within the family – by a close male relative with means and property. Naomi identifies such a man, named Boaz, and Ruth decides to show up at his field and glean. She is claiming the first provision, that of a starving citizen, but hoping to make herself visible and invite the second provision, redemption by Boaz. The text is coy about it, “she happened upon the field belonging to Boaz…” But this is not just happenstance. This Ruth being persistent again, sticking her foot in the door, trying to kickstart her own rescue.

And this raises the central question of the book of Ruth: are the Israelites so numb and self-interested that a powerless pagan widow has to kick the door down and demand justice? If the covenant makes clear provision for women in their circumstances, why do Ruth and Naomi need to plot and scheme to take advantage of it? This is the scandal at the heart of the book that modern interpretations often miss. If the people of Israel won’t keep the law, a female enemy will step in and keep it for them. The details of the story are about Ruth and Boaz, but ultimately – we will see – the story’s invective has a much broader target. Disconnecting Ruth from Judges is the first step in missing that.

But we’re getting way ahead of ourselves. Ruth gleans in Boaz’ field and makes herself known to his staff. When he arrives to oversee his workers, they introduce him to the girl who showed up to glean and hung around all day. Here’s their conversation, starting in verse 8:

[8] Then Boaz said to Ruth, “Now, listen, my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women. [9] Let your eyes be on the field that they are reaping, and go after them. Have I not charged the young men not to touch you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn.” [10] Then she fell on her face, bowing to the ground, and said to him, “Why have I found favor in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?” [11] But Boaz answered her, “All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told to me, and how you left your father and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before. [12] The LORD repay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge!” [13] Then she said, “I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, for you have comforted me and spoken kindly to your servant, though I am not one of your servants.”

Boaz is gracious, generous and protective toward Ruth, and this encounter is traditionally read as the flirtatious prologue to their romance. But given Ruth’s circumstances and her intentions in coming to the field this day, we can imagine that she is somewhat disappointed. Boaz gives her unlimited access to his fields, and even lets her eat a meal with him and his men. But at the end of this day, Ruth remains a destitute widow. Boaz’ kindness is palpable, but his intentions are somewhat sketchy. He tells Ruth that he’s heard about her plight. If that’s true, and if he is one of the designated family “redeemers,” then why did she have to finagle her way into a meeting with him? He’s not completely unsympathetic – Ruth’s Moabite heritage may be the reason for his hesitation – but to turn him into a romantic hero is simply to ignore the loud tension in the text.

That night Ruth returns home to Naomi with a huge quantity of grain, and their plotting resumes. Their first problem – loss of FOOD – is temporarily solved, but they’re no closer to any permanent remedies. So, in the next chapter, they turn up the heat. At Naomi’s direction Ruth bathes, anoints herself with perfumes, and heads back to Boaz’ threshing floor in the middle of the night. The “threshing floor” is a flat space adjacent to a field where grain can be processed into a usable product. Boaz and his workers are apparently working a night shift, and –
her first scheme having been only mildly successful – Naomi brings out the big guns. Here’s the text, in verse 7:

[7] And when Boaz had eaten and drunk, and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain. Then she came softly and uncovered his feet and lay down. [8] At midnight the man was startled and turned over, and behold, a woman lay at his feet! [9] He said, “Who are you?” And she answered, “I am Ruth, your servant. Spread your wings over your servant, for you are a redeemer.”

The midnight encounter of Ruth and Boaz on the threshing floor is one that religious readers of the bible have worked overtime to defang and sanitize. It’s usually presented as a romantic but sexless encounter between two righteous lovebirds. And where there’s no explicit hanky panky, there’s also no getting around the questionable nature of Naomi’s plan. She is sending Ruth to offer herself to be compromised, so that Boaz will have no choice but to redeem her or at least pay her off. And for Ruth’s part, she seems complicit, but her actions tell us that she has a plan of her own. Naomi is willing to offer Ruth up as a sexual object, but Ruth presents Boaz with a choice: take me in the easy way or be a man of Israel and redeem me. When Ruth “uncovers” his “feet,” this is very similar to a Hebrew idiom referring to a gentleman’s private parts. She’s putting two items on the menu: a fleeting sexual encounter, and a covenant-style redemption and marriage. She is subverting Naomi’s reckless plot and challenging Boaz to do the right thing. Which will he choose? Verse 10:

[10] And he said, “May you be blessed by the LORD, my daughter. You have made this last kindness greater than the first in that you have not gone after young men, whether poor or rich. [11] And now, my daughter, do not fear. I will do for you all that you ask, for all my fellow townsmen know that you are a worthy woman. [12] And now it is true that I am a redeemer. Yet there is a redeemer nearer than I. [13] Remain tonight, and in the morning, if he will redeem you, good; let him do it. But if he is not willing to redeem you, then, as the LORD lives, I will redeem you. Lie down until the morning.” [14] So she lay at his feet until the morning, but arose before one could recognize another. And he said, “Let it not be known that the woman came to the threshing floor.”

Ruth seems to have successfully embarrassed Boaz into making the noble choice. He acts flattered and makes some excuses – there’s this other guy who’s first in line to redeem you – but he ultimately commits himself to being her redeemer. After a secret night together, she returns home and waits for Boaz to make the arrangements. In chapter four, Boaz catches up with the other redeemer, and uses Ruth’s questionable status to convince him to step aside. Boaz and Ruth are to be married, and the tribe of Judah celebrates with some very interesting words. Chapter Four verse 11:

[11] “…May you act worthily in Ephrathah and be renowned in Bethlehem, [12] and may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the LORD will give you by this young woman.”

This allusion to the Torah – “the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah” – speaks volumes about both the significance of this marriage and the meaning of this book. We didn’t talk about Judah and Tamar on any previous podcast, but it’s a simple little story from Genesis 38 with some familiar themes. Tamar was a daughter-in-law of Judah, one of the sons of Jacob. When Judah’s son died, his second son refused to perform husbandly duties with her, and then he died. Worried that his other son might also die, he shut Tamar away. Alone and forsaken, she took her future and her fertility into her own hands and, disguised as a prostitute, slept with Judah. When the truth was discovered, Judah was shamed and declared, “She is more righteous than I.” Perez is one of the twins born of that union.

That’s a pretty twisted story, but it’s easy to see how it relates to the events of Ruth and how the author of Ruth invokes it to make sure we get it. Tamar was forsaken by the men in her family, and as a result the future of the family was in question. By taking matters into her own hands, indeed even by acting as a prostitute and copulating with her own father-in-law, she acted more “righteously” than anyone else around her. Perez represents the seed of the tribe of Judah – the tribe of Elimelech and the tribe of Israel’s future king (we’ll get there in a minute) – which wouldn’t exist but for a pushy female. In the same way, Ruth took her life and her fertility into her own hands, and the tribe of Judah is saved once more.

There are two endings to the book of Ruth, and neither is about Ruth. First, we see Naomi nursing Obed, the son of Ruth and Boaz, and he is called her “little boy.” This is the inclusio of Ruth, the bookend to an odd reference to Mahlon and Chilion as her “little boys” in chapter one. So this wasn’t Ruth’s story after all, it was Naomi’s. She got her FOOD, and now she’s got her OFFSPRING. But that’s not the real ending. The real ending is this, verse 18:

[18] Now these are the generations of Perez: Perez fathered Hezron, [19] Hezron fathered Ram, Ram fathered Amminadab, [20] Amminadab fathered Nahshon, Nahshon fathered Salmon, [21] Salmon fathered Boaz, Boaz fathered Obed, [22] Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David.

And now we see the real point of the book of Ruth: David of Bethlehem in Judah is to be king of Israel. This crazy, subversive, scandalous story about a pagan widow cum Israelite, is an argument for the legitimacy of David’s candidacy for king. Remember when we talked about Judges, and suggested that the tribe of Judah was behind that book and its plea for centralized rule in Israel? That becomes exponentially more plausible now that we see a more specific, Judah-centric plotline emerging. Now, how and why would the story of a “righteous pagan,” a pushy female interloper, be an appropriate argument for David’s kingship? That will become clear to us as we move forward and learn about the next big chapter in Israel’s history. The next few books will focus on David and his adventures. But that’s another podcast.

And so, the book of Ruth. A surprising love story on the surface, a scathing polemic at its heart. Such is the impact of Ruth on the history of Israel that she – along with Rahab the prostitute from Joshua – is mentioned by name in Matthew’s biography of Jesus. Women were not typically mentioned in Jewish genealogies, much less foreign women with questionable morals. The “righteous pagan” is a recurring thread in the Hebrew Bible, one that is seldom identified much less celebrated today. It challenges and undercuts lazy notions of “good guys vs. bad guys,” of ethnic, racial, or religious superiority, and most important – it reminds Israel of who they were and who they are supposed to be.

This has been BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. And I have been Josh Way. If you enjoyed this podcast, I urge you to share, blog, like, and tweet it to your online friends and family. If you have any comments, questions or constructive feedback, email me at book@joshway.com. You can also leave a voicemail at 801-760-3013, and maybe I’ll answer it on the podcast. Read the BOOK blog and find more content at BOOK.JOSHWAY.COM. That’s it for me, Bible pals. I’ll catch you next time.

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October 1, 2012 0

Episode 11 – Joshua and Judges

By in Blog, Podcast

[TRANSCRIPT:]

In my right hand is a VHS copy of An American Tail 2: Fievel Goes West. In my left hand is a bible. Let’s do a show about… THE BIBLE.

[INTRO MUSIC]

Hello, and welcome to BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. You might know me from right now when I’m talking. We’ve just completed our look at the Torah, the foundational document of the ancient nation of Israel, and the first five books of a modern Bible. Today we move on to the next two books in the Hebrew canon, Joshua and Judges. Joshua is a much needed epilogue to the story of the Torah, which left us hanging as to whether or not the Israelites would ever actually settle in the land of Canaan. We’ve talked about Judges before, but we’ll give it another look and pay close attention to its place in the ongoing story.

Joshua:

On the surface, Joshua is a simple narrative: the Israelites come at last to Canaan, and must fight with its current inhabitants before they can settle. However, the literary presentation of this conflict is not exactly what we might expect. We’ll unpack it as we go.

The first 11 verses establish the purpose of the book and its connection to the Torah:

[1:1] After the death of Moses the servant of the LORD, the LORD said to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ attendant, [2] “Moses my servant is dead. Prepare to cross this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to the people of Israel. [3] Every spot on which your foot treads I give to you, just as I promised Moses. [4] From the wilderness and Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites to the Mediterranean Sea on the west shall be your territory. [5] No one shall be able to resist you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you. [6] Be strong and resolute, for you shall apportion to this people the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. [7] But you must be very strong and resolute to observe faithfully all the law that Moses my servant enjoined upon you. Do not deviate from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have success wherever you go. [8] This Book of the Law shall not depart from your lips, but recite it day and night, so that you may observe faithfully all that is written in it. Only then will you prosper, and then you will have success. [9] I charge you: Be strong and resolute. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”

All of the themes of the Torah are reinforced here in the introduction: the OFFSPRING, the LAND, and the COVENANT that glues them together. And the time has finally come for Israel to cross the Jordan River and enter the land. Before crossing over, however, Israel sends spies into the nearest Canaanite city, called Jericho. The spies are aided and protected by a resident, a prostitute named Rahab. She hides them from the local authorities, and they promise to allow her and her family to escape before the imminent battle. This is not the last time a pagan woman with undesirable life circumstances will figure prominently in Israel’s national story. In fact, we’re gonna read a whole book about another such woman named Ruth in the next podcast. Such is the impact of these women that BOTH appear in Matthew’s subversive genealogy of Jesus in his New Testament gospel. [<–save for Ruth pocast]

The crossing of the Jordan River in chapter 3 plays out like a low-budget version of the Red Sea escape in Exodus. The waters of the river recede and the Israelites cross over “on dry ground.” The point of this is obvious given the material we’ve just read in Numbers and Deuteronomy. Remember, this group of people is not the same one which made that dramatic escape from Egypt. A generation has passed, and these new Israelites must have their own “Exodus event” on the eve of settlement. The river crossing is less sensational, but it is symbolically necessary in the story that is being told.

When Israel finally marches on Jericho in chapter 6, we encounter one of the strangest texts in the Bible. Here’s a few verses starting with verse 8:

[8] When Joshua had instructed the people, the seven priests carrying seven rams’ horns advanced before the LORD, blowing their horns, and the ark of the LORD’s covenant followed them. [9] The armed men marched before the priests who were blowing the horns, and the rear guard marched behind the ark, while the horns blew continually. [10] But Joshua commanded the rest of the people, “Do not shout or make your voice heard, and don’t let any sound go out of your mouth until the moment I tell you to shout. Then you shall shout.” [11] So he had the ark of the LORD go around the city, circling it once. Then they returned to the camp and spent the night in camp.

Instead of marching directly into battle, Israel circles the city walls carrying the “ark of the covenant” (an ornamented box containing the covenant laws) and blowing trumpets. They do this once a day for seven days, until this happens (in verse 16):

[16] On the seventh time around, as the priests blew the horns, Joshua said to the people, “Shout, for the LORD has given you the city. [17] And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live, because she hid the messengers whom we sent. [18] But you, keep yourselves from the things devoted to destruction, lest when you have devoted them you take any of the devoted things and make the camp of Israel a thing for destruction and bring trouble upon it. [19] All the silver and gold and objects of bronze and iron are consecrated to the LORD; they must go into the treasury of the LORD.” [20] So the people shouted when the horns were sounded. When the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted a great shout, and the wall collapsed. The people rushed into the city, every man straight before him, and they captured the city. [21] Then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword.

Territorial wars in ancient history don’t surprise us. And by the bible’s own logic, Israel has had a claim on this land since the days of Abraham. They might have just marched in, drawn their swords, and asserted their claim. Instead, we’ve got this strange, seven-day religious festival which culminates in the destruction of Jericho – and everything and everyone in it. To us, this sounds very much like “holy war,” like a bloody siege carried out in the name of God. Many sensitive modern readers are reasonably horrified by this, while some Christians have gleefully embraced the simplistic view of a glorious battle between the “good guys” and “God’s enemies.”

Here on BOOK, our job isn’t to justify or condemn the behavior and themes we find in the bible. We’re interested in how and why the text was composed, and how it would have “worked” for the original authors and recipients in their historical moment. To that end, it is possible to step back and understand the battle of Jericho in the sweep of the literary presentation of the whole Hebrew Bible. Let’s take a trip back to Genesis.

One of the defining characteristics of the patriarch stories – the tales of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – was the ongoing tension of their relationships with their neighbors. When God “called” Abram out of his nomadic lifestyle to settle himself and his family in Canaan, the plan was always peaceful coexistence. “I will make you a great nation, and you will be a BLESSING to all other nations.” Abram went out of his way to live at peace, even when conflict seemed to seek him out, and went so far as to intercede on behalf of his neighbors when they were in trouble. So far so good. But by the time we get to Jacob and his sons, things are much more messy and problematic for the whole “peaceful coexistence” initiative.

Remember the story in Genesis 34 about Jacob’s daughter Dinah and the prince of Shechem? When things went sour between the Israel family and the locals, Jacob wanted to avoid conflict and resolve the issue, but his sons had other ideas. They murdered the men of that city, and the text says that their actions made them “a stench” to the people of the land. Israel’s neighbors became their enemies, but this was never how it was supposed to be. Top this off with a 400 year sojourn in Egypt – also not part of the plan – and Israel comes crawling back to the land with a formidable problem on its hands. The land that was supposed to have been theirs by peaceful habitation is occupied by others, and these others happen to be their enemies. Not enemies in a simplistic, “good guys/bad guys” scenario, but enemies because of Israel’s own failure to carry out the covenant instructions to live at peace. This whole mess is the direct result of Israel’s sin. They have become the oppressors, when they ought to have been the blessers.

And this explains the religious language – creepy as it may sound to us – in which the Jericho episode is composed. It’s not generic religious language, as if to say, “God told us to destroy you, nothing personal.” It’s actually very specific religious language, it’s the language of SACRIFICE. The seven marches around the city, the blowing of the trumpets, the raising of voices, this is the activity of an Israelite worship festival. And the key to how this story works is the instruction to “devote” Jericho “totally” to “destruction.” This phrase comes from Israel’s animal sacrifice rituals. While some sacrifices were to be eaten and enjoyed as an act of thanksgiving, others were to be burned up completely, “devoted totally to destruction.” There was to be nothing left over or enjoyed, because these sacrifices were for the atoning of sin guilt.

The authors of Joshua, most likely from the same priestly class which compiled the Torah, look back on this ugly moment in Israel’s history, and the only way they can make sense of it is to re-imagine it in terms of an atoning sacrifice for the corporate sins of the Israelites – with innocent Canaanites substituting for an innocent bull or goat. That may not make the text any easier for us to stomach, but it explains the odd tone of the account and the internal logic. The point is made even more sharply after the battle is won, and the Israelites are strictly forbidden from taking anything from the spoils of victory for themselves. One man disobeys the order, Israel is defeated in their next battle, and the man is put to death.

It’s interesting to note, also, that the Israelites are depicted in Joshua and elsewhere in the bible as being wholly unmotivated to carry through on their task of driving out the inhabitants of Canaan. In fact, they never finish the job. The borders of the territory will never extend as far as the orders given here in the book of Joshua. And the rest of Israel’s national life will be spent in conflict with the pockets of neighbor/enemies that are left throughout the land.

In chapter 8 Joshua and the Israelites renew the covenant and begin to plant their roots in Canaanite soil. The rest of the book catalogs battles, describes the tribal allotments of land, the designation of “cities of refuge” – Israel’s answer to criminal justice – and the setting up of the tabernacle (the mobile tent-temple) in a place called Shiloh, the first religious “capital” of new Israel.

In terms of narrative, Joshua is a functional and necessary piece of the biblical puzzle. It is the transition between wandering Israel and landed Israel. It is the bridge between the foundational events and values of the Torah, which will then be stretched and tested throughout the rest of Israel’s historical experience. It is also the foundation for problems and tensions which will bubble up in the next book in the canon…

We talked about Shofetim (or “Judges”) in the first episode of BOOK. Its problematic, violent content made it a perfect entry point for our discussion of the bible. We observed the sharp political dimension of the often disturbing narrative, and the argument at the core of Judges, that Israel needs a king. But now we can appreciate even more how the argument of Judges builds on and subverts the themes and expectations of the Torah, and what a surprise it is given how we typically read the bible. This is perhaps the first time we hear a voice of dissent, of contradiction.

Debates about “inconsistencies” in the bible are usually focused around facts and claims. Secular atheists on one side, insisting the text is filled with “errors” and “contradictions”; Devout believers on the other side, insisting the text is “inerrant” and perfectly cohesive. Neither of those positions is particularly helpful, because neither is open to the real human voices behind the various texts. When we allow the bible to be what it is, a collection of human witnesses to the history of Israel, we discover that there are indeed disagreements and contradictions of perspective throughout the bible. Learning to listen to them – and giving them a hearing – is what brings the bible to life, and puts us in touch with something real and powerful.

Here in Judges, we encounter a distinct new voice. We don’t know who exactly wrote or compiled the Torah, but it is a solid historical bet that it was a priest or group of priests from Israel sometime after the settlement in the land. It’s a good guess that Joshua was a product of the same group or a similar group with the same interests. Judges, as we observed in the first podcast, was likely written by a group of radicals within Israel who opposed the priests, at least on the important topic of national leadership. After an introduction about the tribe of Judah and its many victories on the battlefield, the rest of the book is a catalog of failures and compromises as Israel sinks deeper and deeper into apostasy, all but forsaking the Mount Sinai covenant. The fact that Judah gets a big plug at the beginning of the text is perhaps a major clue that the authors of this book are members of that tribe.

After a list of battles lost and other epic fails, and after a quick account of the death of Joshua, we come to the “judges” themselves late in chapter two. Starting in verse 16:

[16] Then the LORD raised up judges who saved them from those who plundered them. [17] But they did not listen to their judges either, for they whored after other gods and bowed down to them. They were quick to turn aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the LORD; they did not do right. [18] Whenever the LORD raised up judges for them, the LORD was with the judge, and he saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge. For the LORD was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who afflicted and oppressed them. [19] But whenever the judge died, they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them and bowing down to them. They did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways.

The Hebrew word shofetim is translated “judges,” but a better rendering might be “chieftans” or “warlords.” These are ad hoc, one-shot saviors who rise up out of obscurity, deliver Israel from an urgent threat, and then die or otherwise disappear. On the one hand, apart from their context in the Hebrew Bible, these are gritty adventure stories, like an ancient version of the wild American west. The stories are exciting and bloody, and the “good guys” always manage to win despite the odds. But in proper context, Judges is a story of abject failure and chaos, of Israel once again failing to be Israel, forsaking the covenant. They’re still fighting with their neighbors, chasing after the gods of the Canaanite pantheon (the “Baals”), and the only leadership they have is disorganized and unstable.

The judges themselves are a ragtag group, representing some of the more undesirable elements of the Israelite citizenry – and notably, none of them are priests. Here’s the full roster:

  • The first judge is Othniel, a nephew of Joshua’s right-hand-man Caleb. The details in the text are sparse, we just know that he defeated the “king of Mesopotamia,” which sounds like a pretty big win.
  • We talked about Ehud in the first podcast. He’s the left-handed dude who killed the obese king of Moab.
  • Next up is Shamgar, who “killed 600 Philistines with an oxgoad.” Good for him.
  • Deborah is the first recorded female judge, and the text speaks of her actually sitting as a judge for the people of Israel, settling disputes and looking more like an actual leader than the previous judges. The story in this chapter (chapter 4) is one of the more feminist-friendly passages in the Hebrew Bible. A Canaanite general named Sisera marches against Israel. Deborah orders her top general Barak to organize a counterattack, believing that “YHWH will deliver Sisera into the hand of a woman.” They go to war, and Israel routes the enemy, but Sisera escapes on foot. He runs to an Israelite village where he believes he has allies, and is welcomed into the tent of a woman named Jael, who promptly pounds a spike through his temple. Deborah’s premonition was correct, it was a woman who won the day.
  • In chapter 6, another enemy rises up against Israel, their old cousins the Midianites (descendants of Esau). An angel of YHWH appears to a strong young man named Gideon and asks him to fight on behalf of Israel, but Gideon actually questions God asking, “Is he really with us, or has he forsaken us? Why did he let all of this happen to us?” It takes some convincing, but Gideon finally agrees and amasses an army of 30,000 men to march against Midian. YHWH tells Gideon to send most of the men home and keep only 300 with him. The 300 soldiers surround the Midianite camp, shouting and blowing shofars, which functions as a call to arms for the surrounding Israelite territories. Men from all around join the fight and the Midianites are defeated. Gideon wins a few more battles before he goes a bit mental and forges himself an ephod, a golden breastplate like the ones worn by priests. It becomes “a snare” for him, then he dies.
  • Next is the sordid story of Gideon’s son Abimelech, who conspires with Shechem, kills his own brothers, and installs himself as Israel’s first “king.” His reign is violent and brief, and he is killed (by a woman, sort of – see chapter 9).
  • Tola and Jair judge Israel for the next fifty years or so.
  • Next up is Jephthah, the “son of a prostitute” and kind of a loser, but he’s also big and strong, so when Ammon marches on Israel, the elders try to recruit him to lead the fight. He agrees on the condition that he be installed as Israel’s leader if he succeeds. Jephthah’s story takes a disturbing turn when he makes a stupid vow on the eve of a battle. He swears before YHWH that he will sacrifice “whatever comes out” from his house. His daughter comes out of his house, and he carries through on his tragic vow, despite the fact that it violates many of Israel’s covenant laws.
  • Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon are the next three to judge Israel, though little information is given about them.
  • Finally, we come to Samson, that famous biblical strong man who tears lions apart with his bare hands. In Sunday School he was always portrayed as a hero, a square-jawed adonis who pummeled the bad guys in the name of the Lord. The actual biblical details about him are far more ugly and sad. At a time when the Philistines are ruling over the Israelites, Samson marries a Philistine woman to gain a political advantage. That doesn’t go well, so Samson burns the Philistines’ crops and murders a thousand men with the jawbone of a donkey. This makes him famous and he becomes Israel’s latest judge. Samson’s taste for women lands him in trouble when a beautiful Philistine spy named Delilah tricks him into revealing his weakness: his long hair. Samson’s parents had dedicated him to the “Nazirite vow,” a devout custom which involved special dietary observances and a promise not to cut one’s hair or shave. When Samson’s hair is cut in his sleep, he loses his strength and is taken captive by the Philistines, who gouge out his eyes and throw him in prison. When he is trotted out at a gathering of Philistia’s best and brightest to be mocked and gawked at, he famously leans against the pillars and brings down the building, killing 3000 Philistines along with himself. The end.

Considered in isolation, some of these stories might work well as rough and tumble adventures. But taken together in context, this is a shocking litany of downright anti-Israelite behavior. And if the message wasn’t clear enough, the last few chapters of Judges are reserved for the ugliest stories of Israelite citizens (not just judges) doing outrageous and abominable things. A man called Micah recruits a Levite to act as his own personal priest in his home, completely bypassing the tabernacle in Shiloh. Then the tribe of Dan marches on Micah’s home, not to condemn him for his sin but to offer the priest more money to come and work for them.

The last and by far the most brutal story is about a Levite (that means a priest) who takes himself a concubine. When she is unfaithful, he chases after her and they wind up in an Israelite town called Gibeah. In a shocking and deliberate invocation of the Sodom and Gomorrah story, the population of the town surrounds the house where they are lodging and demands to have their way with the Levite man. Their host throws the man’s concubine out to the mob, and she is raped and abused all night long. The next day, the Levite man chops her corpse into twelve pieces and sends them throughout the twelve tribal territories, a desperate cry for help and a warning to all Israel. The Sodom and Gomorrah imagery throughout infuses the account with a dark and subversive message: Israel has become something as bad or perhaps worse than the legendary Sodom and Gomorrah, the bywords for oppression and depravity. By the end of the book, Israel is torn apart by civil war.

These disturbing stories at the end of Judges are punctuated by a concise and blunt articulation of the book’s central argument, a phrase repeated four times: “In those days there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” The authors of Judges – perhaps the tribe of Judah – make the case that Israel needs an organized, central government, and a king who will unite the people around the covenant. This was not a popular idea, as each tribe had its own ideas of how to do things, and the priestly tribe, the Levites, strongly opposed the idea of an earthly king in Israel. But the argument of Judges is strong, and not dissimilar to the argument of Exodus. Israel, left to her own devices, is lost. In Exodus, the problem was grumbling and in-fighting, and the answer was religion, “the Law.” Now, in Judges, the problem goes much deeper – Israel is eating itself alive – and the answer is a king. We might easily miss how controversial a statement this book made in its time. The book stops short of recommending any particular candidate for the job, but that is the primary function of the very next scroll in the canon, the book of Ruth…

This has been BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. And I have been Josh Way. If you enjoyed this podcast, I urge you to share, blog, like, and tweet it to your online friends and family. If you have any comments, questions or constructive feedback, email me at book@joshway.com. You can also leave a voicemail at 801-760-3013, and maybe I’ll answer it on the podcast. Read the BOOK blog and find more content at BOOK.JOSHWAY.COM. That’s it for me, Bible pals. I’ll catch you next time.

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September 26, 2012 0

Supplement – Torah Deleted Scenes: Babel! Zipporah! Sodom! Gomorrah!

By in Blog, Podcast

[TRANSCRIPT:]

Hey gang, it’s Josh here. We’re about to move on to some major new material here on BOOK, but before we do that I thought it might be fun to take a quick look at a few strange little bits and pieces from Genesis and Exodus that we omitted for time on our first pass. Consider these our “deleted scenes.” Remember, we read the Torah as a single, continuous and coherent work of literature, not a grab-bag of morality lessons or religious claims. These passages, while some of them are very problematic, all contribute to the story, themes and argumentation of the Torah, albeit in some strange ways to our way of thinking. Here they are for your consideration:

First up, there’s the story in Genesis 11 known as the “Tower of Babel.” It is the last of the “primeval” narratives in the beginning of the Torah, and it bridges the gap between Noah’s genealogy and Abraham’s. It’s a short little blurb, so let’s just read it:

[11:1] Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. [2] And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. [3] And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. [4] Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” [5] And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. [6] And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. [7] Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” [8] So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. [9] Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

The invention of bricks leads mankind to build “a city and a tower” as high as heaven to “make a name” for themselves. God seems threatened by their efforts, so he confuses men’s languages and disperses them around the world. On one level, it looks like a straightforward etiological myth. “Etiology” is a fancy word for stories which explain how something got to be the way it is. In this case, it explains why the cultures of the world are different and why language is a barrier. But there are several other things going on here, relating to both history and literature.

Let’s start with the literary aspect. For this, I turn to an observation from one of my seminary professors, Dr. R. Bryan Widbin. Widbin notes that this story comes right after the flood story, and puts a nice cap on a double cycle that has been running since Genesis 1. The first cycle goes like this:

  1. DISORDER (pre-creation chaos)
  2. GOD ORDERS (creation)
  3. MAN DISORDERS (Adam and Eve in the garden)
  4. MAN REORDERS (Cain’s descendants build cities)
  5. GOD DISORDERS (sends flood)

The second cycle follows the same stages:

  1. DISORDER (uncreation – flood destruction)
  2. GOD ORDERS (recreation – flood recedes)
  3. MAN DISORDERS (Noah and his sons in the vineyard)
  4. MAN ORDERS (Ham’s descendants build nations)
  5. GOD DISORDERS (dispersal at Babel)

This suggested literary structure is compelling for the way it gives unity to the seeming hodge-podge of material in Genesis 1-11. It also sets up the sorry state of the world out of which God will “call” Abram to be a “great nation” and a “blessing” to all the other nations. This is a world that needs a blessing, according to the literature.

Historically, or rather anthropologically, this is a story about humans and technology. Man develops an amazing new tool: the brick. He can build walls faster and higher, and his ambition can reach further. This is the stuff of heroes in a work like Mesopotamia’s Gilgamesh or the Babylonian Enuma Elish. (In fact, “Babel” is most likely a reference to Babylon.) Here in the Hebrew Scriptures, however, this kind of overreach is viewed as man’s folly, trying to counterfeit God’s accomplishments in creation. This is another critique of the pagan worldview. And that’s the “tower of Babel.”

Next up is a sub-plot from Genesis involving Abram’s loser nephew Lot. From a literary perspective, if Abram represents a faithful (though flawed) man after God’s own heart, Lot represents a dumb guy. When God calls Abram to settle his family in Canaan, Lot decides he’d rather hang his hat in the southern Jordan valley, in and around the charming hamlets of Sodom and Gomorrah. On more than one occasion, Abram must save Lot’s sorry tuchas from imminent danger, risking his own reputation and the future of the covenant in the process.

The first of these incidents involves a small war in Genesis chapter 14 in which Lot becomes a prisoner. Some local chieftains go to battle, including the mayor of Sodom. His army is defeated, and the people of Sodom are pillaged and carried away, including Lot and his family. Abram, who has tried his best to live peacefully among the locals, gathers an army of his own men (an indication of just how wealthy he was) and rescues them – not just Lot and family, but everyone. In the aftermath of the battle, there is a very strange little incident. Starting in verse 17:

[17] After his return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). [18] And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.) [19] And he blessed him and said,

“Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
Possessor of heaven and earth;
[20] and blessed be God Most High,
who has delivered your enemies into your hand!”
And Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

Melchizedek, the King of Salem, is also a “priest of God Most High” (El Elyon in Hebrew). He “blesses” Abram, and Abram tithes ten percent of the spoils from his victory in battle. Who is this king/priest? How does Abram recognize him as a priest of El Elyon? And why is he giving him a tithe? Where did he learn to tithe, for that matter? Remember, this is all long before the law and before Israel. Once again, a pre-Israelite Hebrew is acting very much like a future citizen of Israel. And the key to this might just be Melchizedek’s home city of “Salem,” which many historians believe will later be called “Jerusalem,” which will, of course, become the political and religious center of life in Israel.

This is the only appearance of Melchizedek in a narrative text, but he will be invoked later in one of King David’s worship songs (called Psalms), and then again in the New Testament book called “Hebrews.” According to Israel’s law, a king may not perform the job of a priest and vice-versa. But the odd precedent of Melchizedek will not be forgotten. File him away in the back of your minds and we’ll come back to him later.

Now we come to the delightful tale of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18 and 19. This is a notoriously “difficult” passage for modern Western readers, but once again we must carefully investigate the literary presentation to be sure we understand what is really going on.

In Genesis 18 word comes to Abram through two visitors that God is going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, where his nephew Lot is living. Abram intercedes, begging God to have mercy and spare the cities if he can find ten “righteous men” living there. God agrees, then in chapter 19 the two visitors head off to Sodom, where Lot welcomes them into his home. That night, every person of every age in Sodom surrounds Lot’s house and the mob demands that he hand over the visitors so they may “know them” sexually. Lot, bright as ever, offers his own daughters instead, but the crowd insists. By morning, the visitors (revealed to be angels) instruct Lot to escape with his family. He does, but his wife has doubts and looks back, and is turned into a “pillar of salt” (pillars of salt, it turns out, are a real geological feature of the southern Jordan Valley to this day). Then God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah with tar and fire from the sky, as he promised he would if no righteous men could be found within them.

What’s the deal with this story? Well, let’s talk a little bit about what is NOT the deal with this story. Here’s not how to read this as a modern reader: The people of Sodom and Gomorrah are not destroyed because they are homosexual, or even because they are simply breaking commandments. The people of Sodom are completely given over to violence and destruction, and are even raising their children to behave in this way. The text goes out of its way to set this up in terms of oppression and injustice, not as God randomly zapping sinners. Here’s chapter 18 verses 20 and 21:

[20] Then the LORD said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, [21] I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know.”

There’s that word “outcry” again, as when Abel’s blood cried out from the ground in Genesis 4, or when the cry of the oppressed Hebrew slaves rose up to God’s ears in Exodus. According to the text, God doesn’t randomly choose Sodom and Gomorrah for destruction because they violated his rule book. The offense of their behavior is so rank and the cry of their terrified neighbors so loud, that God has no choice but to step in and administer justice. And note that, despite the “fire and brimstone” imagery here, we’re still not talking about a heaven/hell situation. God doesn’t damn Sodom and Gomorrah to eternal suffering, he puts an end to their reign of terror and gives relief to their victims. For the moment, set aside what you believe or disbelieve or approve or disapprove of regarding the Bible. We’re just trying to get a glimpse of the internal logic of the literature. Sodom and Gomorrah is about justice and judgment. And in the Bible, judgment is just as much wonderful news for the oppressed as it is bad news for the oppressor.

In the charming epilogue to this story, Lot and his newly widowed daughters flee to a nearby cave, where his daughters get Lot drunk and have sex with him so the family line can continue. And – surprise, surprise – the children born of this backwoods union will be the fathers of the Moabites and the Ammonites, two more of Israel’s future enemies.

One more deleted tidbit, this one from Exodus. There’s a very strange little paragraph early in the scroll about Moses and his wife Zipporah that has baffled modern interpreters. It’s found in chapter 4, right after God gives Moses the three magic tricks at the burning bush, and right before he goes back to Egypt. It goes like this:

[24] At an encampment along the way, the LORD met [Moses] and sought to kill him. [25] So Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it, saying, “You are truly a bridegroom of blood to me!” [26] And when he let him alone, she added, “A bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision.”

Some aspects of these few verses are very elusive: the meaning of phrase “bridegroom of blood” is not well attested, for example. And the pronouns of the text are quite vague. It’s actually not completely clear who is being circumcised here, Moses or his son. Then there’s the question of why God suddenly wants to kill Moses, whom he’d just recruited to be his prophet in the previous verses.

However, with careful attention to some literary cues, we can at least begin to understand the point of this little interlude. It’s reasonably clear that the episode centers around circumcision, and that helps to explain a great number of things. Back in Genesis, when God prescribed circumcision as a visible sign of the Hebrews’ covenant, it was made clear that any son of a Hebrew who was not circumcised would be “cut off” from the covenant (Gen 15:). If Moses has failed to comply with this covenant requirement, and left his son un-circumcised, he will have to straighten that out before he heads off to Egypt as the people’s representative.

As for God wanting to kill Moses, it sounds a bit drastic but I think it makes literary sense as a foreshadow of the tenth plague, wherein God will kill the firstborn son in every Egyptian household unless there is lamb’s blood on the doorpost. In both cases a deadly threat looms, and blood functions as a deflection of the wrath. Before Moses can leave Midian for Egypt, he must comply with God’s demand. In the same way later on, Israel must comply before they can leave Egypt for Canaan. That’s just a suggestion. Your mileage may vary, consult your physician.

And those are our Torah “deleted scenes,” and now you know why I left them out.

This has been a supplement of the BOOK podcast, a bible podcast for everybody. I have been Josh Way. Find much more content at book.joshway.com, and I’ll see you next time.

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September 24, 2012 0

Episode 10 – Torah Wrap-up: It’s Leviticonumeraldeuteronomic!

By in Blog, Podcast

[TRANSCRIPT]

First of all, give yourself a pat on the back. You are going to listen to a podcast about Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. When this is over, you’ll surely have earned some kind of mindless, indulgent treat, like a deep fried Twinkie or an NBC sitcom. You have my admiration simply for showing up. Kudos, my friend. Here we go, BOOK!

[INTRO MUSIC]

It might seem foolhardy to undertake three whole books in one short podcast, but I think it will work out nicely and free us up to move on quickly to the next chapter in Israel’s history and the Bible’s literary pageant. We’ve already examined Genesis and Exodus in some detail, now here’s how the rest of the Torah breaks down: Leviticus consists of more covenant law, Numbers is the story of the generation that passes before Israel is ready to finally enter the land of Canaan, and Deuteronomy is a sort of theological recap of Exodus. They are all good reads, but more important, they are all foundational for the biblical literature that follows. Remember that, technically, we have only been reading a single book by a single author or group of authors so far. After today, we will move forward and discover new genres and new perspectives on Israel’s history, but the Torah will always be square one. Nothing else can make sense without it.

OK, here we go: Leviticus.

LEVITICUS

The Latin name “Leviticus” refers to the Israelite tribe of Levi, the tribe of Moses and his brother Aaron. The Levite tribe was unlike the other eleven tribes of Israel, as they were set aside or “consecrated” to be priests. Instead of selecting priests from among the various tribes by some standard of personal merit, the only way to become a priest in Israel was to be born into the family of Levi. Leviticus is a repository for laws and instructions that relate specifically to the work of priests: how to make the various types of food sacrifices, laws about “clean” and “unclean” animals and activities, and rituals for people who had become “unclean” by contracting a disease or touching something designated “unclean.”

This is the “cult” of Israel, or the daily religious ritual. It also details the various feasts and holidays which the priests will oversee, including Passover, which we studied in Exodus, and the Day of Atonement, when sacrifices are made on behalf of the entire nation of Israel to “atone” or “wipe away” the guilt of their corporate sin. The laws about acceptable and unacceptable sexual practices are the only bits from Leviticus which get any press these days, and the people preaching or condemning those passages rarely recognize that this is basically a handbook for ancient priests, and shouldn’t be removed that very specific context.

NUMBERS

The scroll we call “Numbers” is one of those long and tricky texts which at first appears to be an endless list of genealogies and names, but actually plays an important narrative and thematic role in the Torah. A quick summary of the structure of Numbers: First, a census of the people, including a breakdown of each tribe and some more details about the priests; then Israel’s departure from Mount Sinai and their adventures on the way to Canaan, including rebellions, battles, and a run-in with a pagan prophet named Balaam; then another census, and some more laws and instructions for the priests. On the surface it seems like a grab-bag of lists and little narrative pieces, but once we discover the literary structure, its purpose in the overall structure of the Torah becomes more clear.

Numbers is all about transition, the discontinuity of the people who will enter the land, but the continuity of the covenant and the leadership. It’s like this: the keys to the structure are the census at the beginning, and the census toward the end. An entire generation passes between them, so that (almost) none who were living at the time of the lawgiving at Mount Sinai are still alive when the group reaches Canaan. God states plainly in Numbers chapter 14 that this will be the case, a punishment for the peoples’ grumbling and rebellion.

However, by breaking the people down into tribes as part of that first census (in Numbers chapter 1), and organizing them by the names of Jacob’s twelve sons (Judah, Simeon, Levi, etc.), the tribal identities will survive and in that way the people will be the “same” when they enter the land. The scroll of Numbers moves the story along, but more importantly does so with all of the covenant trappings in place. Israel’s identity is now big enough and strong enough to live on beyond that first particular group of people who fled from Egypt. Israel is now an idea, ready to plant itself in the ground and become a nation. That’s the scroll of Numbers.

DEUTERONOMY

“Deuteronomy,” or devarim in Hebrew, is the last of the five sections of Torah. It starts and ends with narrative bits, but the bulk of the book consists of laws and admonitions to the people of Israel, presumably from the priests. There is a lot of new material, but also much that is recycled and expanded from earlier in the Torah: the Ten Commandments are repeated in a slightly different configuration, the feasts and holidays are revisited, and some of the laws from Exodus and Leviticus are restated. However, it is hard to ignore the very different tone and presentation of the laws in Deuteronomy. While the legal bits in the previous books were written down as literature, the material in Deuteronomy appears to have been designed to be read out loud. A repeated refrain throughout the book is “Hear, O Israel…” followed by some instruction, blessing, or warning.

And speaking of blessing and warning, this is perhaps the main innovation of Deuteronomy. While the laws of Exodus and Leviticus are presented as statements of identity, as simple boundary markers, Deuteronomy introduces the idea of reward for obedience to the law, and punishment for breaking the law. Not rewards or punishments doled out by the priests (though these do come up from time to time), but rather blessings and curses poured out on the people by God himself. If you obey the law, life in the land will go well, you will be victorious in battle and your crops will be healthy. If you disobey and follow another path, things will be rough for you. Your enemies will defeat you, and perhaps even – worst case scenario – carry you off into exile (file that one away for later). Note, however, that we’re still talking about very earthbound blessings and curses. This is not heaven versus hell, it’s success versus failure in this life, in this land, here and now.

Deuteronomy makes more sense if we think about the social-religious reality of Israel at this stage in its development. The first generation, the generation that left Egypt and received the law first-hand from Moses at Mt. Sinai, is gone. They’re dead. The new generation has inherited the covenant and the mission to settle the land. They didn’t experience the Red Sea or Sinai for themselves, so like any generation which inherits religion from the old folks, it needs to be retold, re-explained, expanded and supported, or it’s just not going to stick. The often passionate, sermon-like tone of the teachings in Deuteronomy – combined with the “read-aloud” format – reflects this dynamic.

One more thing about the text of Deuteronomy, and this takes us in a very different direction and a new kind of conversation here on BOOK. There is a formidable scholarly hypothesis that suggests portions of Deuteronomy were written later in Israel’s history – much later – and edited back into the scroll. Specifically, the business about blessings and curses and exile all sounds very much like theology that would have developed a thousand or so years later when Israel actually found itself threatened with imminent exile. The second book of Kings describes how King Josiah – one of the last kings of Israel before the great exile that altered their national destiny forever – discovered the long-lost “scroll of the law,” presumably Deuteronomy, and how the Israelites rejoiced and read it out loud. The redaction theory suggests that at this point the scroll was edited and updated to reflect Israel’s contemporary situation.

On the one hand, I’m always rather cautious and skeptical when it comes to hypothetical Bible redactions. Scholars have had a field day, explaining that every passage that strikes them as odd must have just been added by someone “after the fact.” These theories are fascinating, but they are ALWAYS just theories, and many times they reflect a willful ignorance of the way the literature was originally designed to work. HOWEVER, religious readers who shudder and balk at the idea of biblical redaction in general need to calm down and understand how ancient authorship worked. It is not at all unthinkable that any Bible text might have been edited, updated, or otherwise redacted – even heavily so. This is how ancient texts were developed and put together. Authorship and ownership of literature did not work then as it does now. Communities forged texts, often through oral transmission and “contemporization” to their own time and place.

We’ve already suggested that the Torah was compiled out of existing material by Israel’s priests upon the settlement of the land. That makes the whole thing a work of editing and redaction, so there’s really no reason that a later redaction would be a big problem. I’m not completely convinced by the Josian redaction theory about Deuteronomy, but I don’t see it as a problem or threat. It’s just an historically reasonable theory, and I wanted to at least introduce the notion of redaction into our study.

Deuteronomy ends with Moses pronouncing a blessing on Israel, and then breathing his last. Before he dies, Moses passes the banner of leadership over to his right-hand-man Joshua who, along with his partner Caleb, are the only two witnesses of Mount Sinai who will enter into the land. That narrative is picked up after the Torah by the book bearing Joshua’s name. We’ll look at that controversial text next time.

But that’s a wrap on our examination of the Torah. Take a deep breath. We covered a lot of material in ten short podcasts, picked apart some very complex and very old pieces of writing, and tried to wrap our brains around some very big, very foreign ideas. There is a LOT of Bible left, but the events, themes, and literary tropes of the Torah are now the currency and medium with which the later Bible authors will weave their stories. Creation and covenant, blessings and curses, offspring and land. These are the keys to connecting the biblical dots.

That’s gonna do it for today. Next time we’ll look at the first two books of the Bible after the Torah: Joshua and Judges. Very different books that are stages in the same argument. They set up a problem which is solved in the following books, Ruth and Samuel. But before any of that, I think we’ll do a fun supplement with a few “deleted scenes” from Genesis and Exodus, some juicy bits we had to leave out for time. Look for that soon.

This has been BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. And I have been Josh Way. If you enjoyed this podcast, I urge you to share, blog, like, and tweet it to your online friends and family. If you have any comments, questions or constructive feedback, email me at book@joshway.com. You can also leave a voicemail at 801-760-3013, and maybe I’ll answer it on the podcast. I would seriously love to hear from you. Read the BOOK blog and find more content at BOOK.JOSHWAY.COM. That’s it for me, Bible pals. I’ll catch you next time.

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September 17, 2012 0

Episode 09 – Exodus Part 2: The Law of the Covenant of the Lost Ark of Curly’s Gold

By in Blog, Podcast

[TRANSCRIPT]

This is the one. This is the podcast you’ve been waiting for, admit it. This is the one where we finally get to the big Bible question on everyone’s mind and give a definitive answer: DOES THE BIBLE REALLY SAY IT’S WRONG TO BOIL A GOAT IN ITS MOTHER’S MILK? Patience, my friends, we’ll get there. For now, just sit back, relax, and let’s crack open THE BOOK.

[INTRO MUSIC]

Hello, and welcome to BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. Many well meaning first-time bible readers start at the beginning, sail along through the adventures of Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Jacob and Moses, and then hit Exodus chapter 20 like a brick wall. Things were going so well! There were families and floods and murders and plagues, but now all of a sudden it’s all laws and feasts and rules and stonings. The “Law of the Covenant,” to our modern sensibilities, kills the momentum of the Bible’s storyline and can even make us uncomfortable with its details. What are we to make of all the legal material in the Bible? Are these God’s universal laws for all humanity? Are they just relics of an ancient society? Do they have anything to do with history or literature or the storyline of the Bible? Should we even bother reading them, and if so, HOW should we do it?

We’ll deal with all of these questions as thoroughly as we can. But as always, the first work is to catch up on the story and read some text. When we last left the Israelites, they had just escaped from Egypt in a spectacular action sequence with high production values and thousands of extras. Free from bondage and newly united as a people, Israel now embarked on what should have been a month-long journey to their new home (which was their old home, according to the boundary markers set up by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in Genesis). The trip takes a little longer than expected, however. About forty years longer.

And this is where the story slows down and begins to lose us. The Israelites – now anywhere from 50 to 500 thousand people, depending on your reading of the Hebrew in Exodus 12:37 – embark on a series of misadventures in the desert and don’t seem particularly motivated to get on with the task at hand. In fact, listen to this bit from Exodus chapter 16, just two chapters after the dramatic passage through the Red Sea. Starting in verse 2:

[2] And the whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. [3] The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by pots of meat and ate our fill of bread! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to starve this whole congregation to death.”

So unhappy are the Israelites with their experience in the desert that these ex-slaves are daydreaming about being back in Egyptian bondage, where water was abundant and at least they had meals every day. This grumbling continues and God responds with some “miraculous” acts of provision, including a bread-like substance called “manna” which appears each morning with the dew, and an infestation of quail, but the overall reaction of the people continues to be a resounding “MEH.”  (“Manna,” by the way, like burning bushes and locusts and blood in the Nile, turns out to be based on a known natural phenomenon native to the deserts of the Near East. Once again the “miracle” involves extraordinary timing and volume, but a mundane medium.)

After several of these episodes and lots of seemingly aimless wandering, the Israelites come to Mount Sinai, and some spectacular things begin to happen. But what was the point of all that hanging around and complaining? Let’s keep in mind that the Bible, whatever else it may be, is foremost a work of composed literature. There are no wasted bits, no “boring parts” that don’t contribute anything to the story. They only seem that way to us because of our cultural distance and unfamiliarity with this form of storytelling.

Do you remember back in the first podcast when we read a weird, kind of ugly story from the book of Judges about the gruesome murder of an obese king? We observed that it was part of a polemic meant to embarrass the old guarde of Israel and to make a strong case that the nation needed a king. The story was ugly and uncomfortable because it was supposed to be. It wasn’t just a report, it was part of an argument. This is how ALL Bible texts work, not just the “political” or “religious” ones. They are all religious, they are all political, and they are all artful and persuasive.

This is also the key to appreciating the structure of Exodus. Israel’s wandering between Egypt and Sinai is a necessary part of an argument. It’s the answer to our question, “why does Israel need all of those weird laws and feasts and holidays?” It shows us exactly why Israel needs a law and a calendar, just as Judges showed us in brutal detail why Israel needed a king. And the law – which we’ll delve into in just a moment – isn’t just necessary, it’s the BIG FAT HAIRY DEAL of the whole Exodus story. If God had simply rescued the Israelites from Egypt to be free and left to their own devices, they would never have kept the band together. The stories of wandering and grumbling show that a single, dramatic, shared experience wasn’t enough to give them the identity they needed to survive as a unified nation. The argument is: the law is good, the law is life. The law is the only hope for these lost, wandering people. Now, to the law itself…

Israel comes to Mount Sinai, also known as Mount Horeb, which – according to the text in chapter 3 – is where Moses originally met God in the “burning bush.” This kind of cyclical storytelling is also very common in the Bible. Check this out: Moses, vulnerable and unsure of himself, comes to the mountain and encounters God, who gives him a new identity, a new task, and seals the deal by disclosing his own name. Now Moses returns with all the Hebrews in tow, grumbling, vulnerable and unsure of themselves, and they all “meet” God on the same mountain once again, where he gives them all a new identity. He gives them the Ten Commandments.

Here is Exodus chapter 20:

[20:1] God spoke all these words, saying,

[2] “I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of slavery.

[3] “You shall have no other gods besides me.

[4] “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth. [5] You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am an impassioned God, visiting the guilt of the parents upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, [6] but showing kindness to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

[7] “You shall not swear falsely by the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not clear the one who swears falsely by his name.

[8] “Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. [9] Six days you shall labor and do all your work, [10] but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male or female servant, or your livestock, or the stranger who is within your settlement. [11] For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth and sea and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.

[12] “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

[13] “You shall not murder.

[14] “You shall not commit adultery.

[15] “You shall not steal.

[16] “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

[17] “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”

[18] All the people witnessed the thunder and flashes of lightning and the blare of the horn and the mountain smoking, and when the people saw it, they fell back and stood at a distance. [19] “You speak to us,” they said to Moses, “and we will obey; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” [20] Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come only to test you, that the fear of him may be with you, so that you won’t go astray.” [21] The people remained at a distance, while Moses drew near to the thick cloud where God was.

In a spectacular theophany (or “divine special appearance”) Israel’s God delivers ten commandments to his people. Actually, in this text they are called “devarim,” “words.” They won’t be referred to as “mitzvot” or “commandments” until later in the Torah. The ten words (ten being the number of perfection or completeness) are more than just a list of rules one must avoid breaking in order to find favor with God. In fact, the Hebrew words here are notably unusual. English translations say “thou shalt not” or “you shall not,” but the actual sense of the Hebrew is a little bit different. Instead of “thou shalt not,” it really should say something like “you do not…”  “You do not murder.” “You do not steal,” and so on. What’s the difference? These are statements of fact, of identity, rather than just rules or obligations or entreaties. Like the strange ritual instructions we looked at during the Exodus story, these are boundary markers that show Israel how to go about being Israel. It’s all about identity.

The big question on our minds is, “Were the Ten Commandments just for Israel, or are they for everyone, and are they for today?” Of course the scope of that question is a little bigger than this humble podcast, but let’s just look at the text and gather some clues to point us in the right direction. First off, we need to recognize that these “words” are presented in a very specific ancient format. They are presented as COVENANT STIPULATIONS. Remember all those little agreements, the treaties made between God and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Well now God is pictured making a huge covenant with the whole people of Israel, but this time there are stipulations attached to the treaty. He says, “I’ll be your God, and you’ll be my people, and here’s what my people are like…”

The “preamble” to the devarim is the typical opening of an ancient treaty, wherein the king identifies himself and the authority by which he is making the agreement. “I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt.” That’s a pretty context-specific opening for a “universal” set of laws. The first three stipulations are all about how Israel is to regard their God. In a world full of religious options and regional gods, they will focus all of their attention on this one. They will also avoid making carved religious images and swearing frivolous oaths in the name of this god. Outside of the context of Exodus, these might sound like universal tenets of monotheism, but within the biblical story they are clearly a boundary marker for the Israelites, who are historically prone to wandering off with neighboring gods.

The fourth commandment, about observing the Sabbath, is also remarkably specific to Israel. Note the appeal to creation in this commandment. “Observe the Sabbath because God made the world in seven days…” Later, in Deuteronomy, when the Ten Commandments are repeated, the order is different and this commandment has a new rationale: “Remember the Sabbath because you were slaves in Egypt and God delivered you.” This reinforces the connection between CREATION and EXODUS as well as the specifically Israelite context of the commandments in general.

But in particular, our biggest clue about how to read the commandments is the very specific list of who should not be working on the Sabbath, in verse 10: “you or your servants, or your livestock, or the sojourner at your gate.” Having servants, owning livestock, welcoming sojourning visitors at the gate… All of these activities have a very specific context for a very specific time and place. These are all features of life in ancient Canaan, the life that lies immediately in store for Israel after the Exodus. And then look at the commandment about honoring your father and your mother: “that your days may be long in the land the Lord your God is giving to you.” Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Ten Commandments were – like the Passover feast, and the seven-day calendar – designed for Israel in this moment in history, to be a foundation and a definition of who they were and where they were headed. This is not to say the principles presented in the commandments have no value beyond Israel’s borders, but I think it does begin to answer our questions about how we should read them today.

Of course, if the ten commandments were the only feature of the covenant arrangement made at Mount Sinai, there might not be such confusion for modern readers like us. But the stipulations continue, and the next several chapters are full of laws and rules. There are over 600 laws in all described throughout the rest of the Torah. Here are just a few from Exodus:

[20:25] If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool on it you profane it.

[21:22] “When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose, and he shall pay as the judge determines. [23] But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, [24] eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

[28] “When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox shall not be liable. [29] But if the ox has been accustomed to gore in the past, and its owner has been warned but has not kept it in, and it kills a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.

[22:16] “If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price for her and make her his wife.

[18] “You shall not permit a sorceress to live.

[19] “Whoever lies with an animal shall be put to death.

[21] “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. [22] You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. [23] If you do mistreat them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry, [24] and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless.

[23:19] “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.”

The law goes on like this, addressing many common aspects of daily life in the ancient Near East. Many of the details are foreign or even shocking to us, but in the world of the Bible they are familiar and even mundane. The relationship between the Ten and the rest of the laws is unclear in the text. Some have argued that the ten devarim are the foundational principles, and the rest of the laws are the contextualization. This may be the case, but it is not obvious in the text. Others have tried to organize all of the laws into categories: “moral law,” “civil law,” “religious law,” and so on. This is handy when you want to suggest that some of the laws are binding, universal precepts while allowing others to fade into obscurity, but again – the categories are nowhere to be found in the text. That approach just doesn’t hold up.

My point is not that we should just dismiss all of this legal material as irrelevant and pretend it’s not there. Whether you believe devoutly in the Bible or think it’s regressive and outdated, the important thing is to get all the pieces in the right place and appreciate it for what it is, not what we imagine it to be. To read the Exodus story without the Law in place is to miss the point entirely. Likewise, to pull these laws out of their ancient context and preach them at your neighbors is interpretively dishonest and hypocritical. The irony of both practices is that they take a legal corpus firmly rooted in history and literature and turn it into something ugly and arbitrary.

Let’s sum it up like this: The Covenant Law is the founding document – the Constitution – of ancient Israel, and as such it reflects their lifestyles, their social structures, their economy and their environment. Its tells Israel how to be Israel and make the most of the reality of life in Canaan. And for modern Jews who consider themselves heirs of this covenant, the Law remains a central pillar of their identity. For the rest of us, it offers a glimpse, an insight into a unique ancient society with a very pronounced and specific notion of what it means to be human, and what it means for different types of humans to live together in a land as “the people of God.”

There is much more we could say about the Torah Law. We could inspect each rule and compare them with ancient parallels such as Hammurabi’s Code. We could look at the surprisingly distinctive sense of justice and debt-forgiveness found in some of the laws, and struggle with those principles which seem diametrically opposed to our modern notions of right and wrong. But I think we’re at least pointed in the right direction, and ready to quickly move on through the rest of the scroll of Exodus.

After the giving of the Law, Moses and his newly established team of elders and priests (headed up by his brother Aaron) begin to plan the design and construction of a “tabernacle,” a moveable temple in which to make sacrifices to God. Artists and engineers from among the Israelites will draw up the designs, and gifts given to the people by sympathetic Egyptians will furnish the materials. Not unlike the interminable chapters of law, the descriptions of the tabernacle and its furnishings are long and repetitive. But once again the literary structure of the last section of Exodus is very telling. The long accounts of the planning of the tabernacle on the one hand, and the building of it on the other, are separated by an outrageous and seemingly unrelated little story which is, of course, absolutely related.

Here’s the story, from Exodus 32:

[32:1] When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” [2] So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” [3] So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. [4] And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” [5] When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD.”

And jumping down to verse 15:

[15] Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written. [16] The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. [17] When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” [18] But he said, “It is not the sound of shouting for victory, or the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing that I hear.” [19] And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. [20] He took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and scattered it on the water and made the people of Israel drink it.

The people grumble, and in Moses’ absence they convince his brother Aaron – Israel’s first priest – to make them a “golden calf” to worship. When Moses comes down the mountain with the commandments and discovers what was most likely a fertility festival, he loses it and smashes the stone tablets on the ground. The thing to note here is that Israel is indeed breaking the second commandment – the one about carved images – but they are not necessarily breaking the first. According to the text they are not worshiping a different god, they are worshiping YHWH, the LORD, but they are doing so in an unacceptable way. God has already told Moses to build the tabernacle so he can visit his people and “live” among them, but the impatient Israelites opt instead for the easy fix of a pagan fertility idol.

And this is the point of the story and its placement between the designing and building of the tabernacle. It’s the same theme that has been running through the entire scroll: Left to her own devices, Israel is lost. Israel needs the law, they need the priests, and they need the tabernacle, or else they will fall into old habits and ultimately into “apostacy.” This message makes even more sense when you remember who the likely authors of the Torah are: Israel’s priests. This is their reminder to the people of what the alternatives are. Exodus ends with the construction of the tabernacle, the tent-temple in which Israel’s prayers and sacrifices would be offered until they would settle in the land, at which point a permanent temple might be built.

And with that, our journey through the scroll of Exodus is complete. I may not have answered all of your burning questions about the Bible and its commandments, but I hope we did establish some of the historical and literary reality surrounding them. It’s no understatement to say that  understanding Exodus is a key – perhaps THE key – to understanding the rest of the Bible, even the New Testament. The themes of LAND, OFFSPRING, CREATION, COVENANT, REDEMPTION and JUSTICE come together in Exodus to form a template which will be the basis for how Israel looks at the world for the rest of their history. And it’s still true today that Exodus is the defining rubric of the Jewish worldview. Every Passover, Jews around the world gather to celebrate that same old feast, and when they open their haggadah, their Passover Scripture book, they all read together. And they don’t say, “A long time ago, God rescued our ancestors from Egypt.” They say, “Tonight is the night, THIS is the night that Hashem brought us out of Egypt!” For them, Exodus isn’t just ancient history. It’s a present and shared reality. It’s who they are, and the biblical scroll of the same name is how we can discover who they are.

This has been BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. And I have been Josh Way. If you enjoyed this podcast, I urge you to share, blog, like, and tweet it to your online friends and family. If you have any comments, questions or constructive feedback, email me at book@joshway.com. You can also leave a voicemail at 801-760-3013, and maybe I’ll answer it on the podcast. Read the BOOK blog and find more content at BOOK.JOSHWAY.COM. That’s it for me, Bible pals. I’ll catch you next time.

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September 10, 2012 1

Episode 08 – Exodus Part 1: Moses and the Amazing Titular Exodus

By in Blog, Podcast

[TRANSCRIPT:]

Charlton Heston, Burt Lancaster, James Whitmore, Val Kilmer, Ben Kingsley and Jim Varney. Five of those men played Moses in a movie, and one of them was denied the opportunity by an ungrateful world that wasn’t ready for his genius. And now it’s too late. We have to live with ourselves. Anyway, welcome to BOOK.

[INTRO MUSIC]

Hello, and this is BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. Last time we wrapped up our look at the biblical book of Genesis, which is really the Hebrew scroll of “Bereshit”, the first of five-parts of the Torah. Now we turn our puzzled gaze unto the second scroll, called “Shemot” or “Names” in Hebrew, but you may know it as EXODUS. The driving themes of the Torah continue to be OFFSPRING and LAND. Here in Exodus, we’ve got the OFFSPRING – a growing people group descended from the family of Jacob and his twelve sons, but as the story begins they are in the wrong LAND, namely Egypt. Remember that Egypt, as far back as Abraham, has represented a fertile alternative to the land of Canaan which turns out to be a trap. Exodus is the story of how the people of Israel made their dramatic escape.

Historically speaking, the events of the Exodus scroll are THE foundational, identity-shaping cataclysm for the people of Israel (and for modern Jews by inheritance). Remember what we observed earlier – this is not history being written down frantically as it is witnessed. This is literature, this is art. These are the oral traditions, songs, laws, and genealogies of Israel, skillfully woven together to paint a vivid portrait of a nation being born. It’s all about identity, answering the basic human questions about origin and destiny.

We’ll look at Exodus in two parts. Today will be a little easier, as we read the story of Moses and the amazing titular Exodus, the rescue. Next time we’ll deal with the second half of the scroll, the stuff about commandments and laws and tabernacles and such. That one promises to be challenging and provocative. But for now, here are the opening words of Exodus, chapter one:

[1:1] These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household: [2] Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, [3] Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, [4] Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. [5] All the descendants of Jacob were seventy persons, Joseph already being in Egypt. [6] Joseph died, and all his brothers, and all that generation. [7] But the Israelites were fertile and prolific; they multiplied and increased greatly, so that the land was filled with them.

[8] A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. [9] And he said to his people, “Look, the people of Israel are much too numerous for us. [10] Let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” [11] So they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor.

The brief genealogy at the beginning is our tether to the previous scroll, at which point we jump generations (apparently many generations) into the future. Jacob and his sons are dead, but their descendents still live in and around Egypt. The current Pharaoh has no special relationship with the Hebrew sojourners, and fosters suspicion and discrimination against them. Eventually they become slaves, and the rest of the chapter details the harsh conditions under which they live, and the attempts by Pharaoh to curb their numbers.

Then in chapter two we have the birth of Moses, our main character for rest of the scroll. Here’s the text:

[2:1] A certain man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. [2] The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw how beautiful he was, she hid him for three months. [3] When she could hide him no longer, she got a wicker basket for him and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child into it and placed it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile. [4] And his sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. [5] The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe in the Nile, while her maidens walked along the Nile. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave woman to get it. [6] When she opened it, she saw the child, a boy crying. She took pity on him and said, “This must be a Hebrew child.” [7] Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a Hebrew nurse to suckle the child for you?” [8] And Pharaoh’s daughter answered, “Yes.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. [9] And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse him for me, and I will pay your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him. [10] When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, who made him her son. She named him Moses, explaining, “I drew him out of the water.”

Moses’ origin story is a little different from the “significant birth” narratives we encountered in Genesis. Instead of a “closed” womb being “opened” by God, we have a baby in a basket. More on that in a moment. Verse 1 tells us Moses’ parents are “Levites.” This means they are part of the tribe – the family group within the Israel family group – which identifies itself with Jacob’s son Levi. There are twelve tribes, one for each of Jacob’s sons, and Levi is a special kind of tribe for reasons we will observe later on. Moses must be hidden, because of a decree from Pharaoh in the previous chapter that all male Hebrew babies must be killed.

If you’re learning to pick up on the subtle and not-so-subtle ways the Bible often recycles its own imagery and motifs, you may have noticed something vaguely familiar about the description of Moses’ basket, covered with “pitch,” set afloat on the water. It’s more than a little reminiscent of the flood story. Like Noah’s ark, the basket floats aimlessly toward a destiny that only God can determine. This is not the last time that the flood narrative – and its themes of creation and un-creation – will be invoked. Not only does this Hebrew child survive, but he ends up being raised in the house of Pharaoh with his own mother as a caretaker. Not a bad deal.

This arrangement gives grown-up Moses a unique perspective. He is raised a member of both Egypt’s most powerful household AND his own Hebrew family. This tension comes to a head when he defends a Hebrew slave from an abusive Egyptian overseer, whom he fights and kills. Moses flees to a nearby region called Midian, where he settles down and marries Zipporah, the daughter of Jethro, a priest (of which religion is not entirely clear).

There’s a short bit at the end of chapter two which provides an important preface to the events in the rest of the scroll. Starting in verse 23:

[23] A long time after that, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under bondage and cried out for help. Their outcry rose up to God. [24] God heard their moaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. [25] God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.

The rest of this book is going to be rather grim for the Egyptians. Lest the reader misunderstand and think Israel’s God cruel or impetuous, unleashing his wrath upon Egypt out of spite or on a whim, the authors of Exodus remind us that the Hebrew slaves have been oppressed and mistreated. The picture of their “outcry” rising up and catching God’s attention is a common biblical image of injustice. It’s like Abel’s blood “crying out from the ground” in Genesis 4. Biblical literature may be vague about the origins of evil, but it insists that God pays close attention to it, particularly when the innocent are made to suffer. The Bible’s sense of justice is not – as is often imagined by modern readers – God zapping sinners who break his arbitrary laws. It has much more to do with the plight of the oppressed and helpless.

Back to the story. One day in Midian, Moses has a rather extraordinary encounter with some flammable foliage. Exodus chapter three:

[3:1] Now Moses, keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, led his flock into the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. [2] An angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire out of a bush. He looked, and the bush was burning, but it was not consumed. [3] Moses said, “I must turn aside to see this incredible sight. Why doesn’t the bush burn up?” [4] When the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” [5] And he said, “Do not come closer. Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground.” [6] He said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

[7] And the LORD continued, “I have noted well the plight of my people in Egypt and have heard their outcry because of their taskmasters. Yes, I am aware of their sufferings. [8] I have come down to rescue them from the Egyptians and to bring them out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the region of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

Like Abraham and Jacob before him, Moses has a run-in with “the God of his fathers,” who personally instructs him to return to Egypt and lead the oppressed Hebrews to freedom. The format of his vision is a “burning bush,” which may sound random and weird but is actually a fairly common sight in the deserts of the Near East and Northern Africa. Dead, brittle foliage will occasionally spontaneously ignite in the dry, hot sun. The “miracle” here, if there is one, isn’t that a bush is on fire, but that it burns without being consumed. Something modern readers tend to overlook about biblical “miracles” or “signs and wonders” as they’re called, is that they are usually grounded in some sort of natural phenomenon. We’ll come back to that idea in a minute.

God (or is it an angel? the identity is intentionally obscured by the text) gives Moses a message, basically the same one he gave to Abraham and Jacob, updated to reflect current events: I’m going to give the LAND (“a land flowing with milk and honey”) to the OFFSPRING (which he now calls “my people”). That bit about the land “flowing with milk and honey” is typically assumed by modern readers to refer to an abundant, fertile land with a surplus of good stuff to eat. That’s not the reality of the phrase OR the land. The promised land itself is arid and unpredictable. “Milk and honey” refers to a land that can potentially support both herders and farmers (“honey” here referring not to bees’ honey, but date syrup, an agricultural product). This means that descendents of both Cain AND Abel can coexist in Canaan.

Moses is reluctant, assuring God that he isn’t the right guy for the job. God insists, and goes so far as to reveal his personal name in confidence to Moses. (This is “Yahweh,” or “Adonai,” the unpronounceable name that is rendered “LORD” in the English text.) This is symbolic of the whole story of Exodus, wherein God lends his identity to Israel to unite and then rescue them from their slavemasters. That sounds a little weird, but we’ll unpack it later. To equip Moses for the task ahead, God gives him three “signs” to perform in front of Pharaoh: 1) Moses’ staff will turn into a serpent and then back again, 2) Moses’ hand will become diseased and then healthy again, and 3) water taken from the Nile River will turn to blood.

Again, these “signs” are all based in natural phenomena, they’re not random supernatural miracles for their own sake. The “magic” is not the point – in fact, Pharaoh’s own sorcerers are able to replicate all three tricks. The point is the message they send. All three are deeply “Egyptian” in meaning. One of the many symbols for Pharaoh and his godlike power was the serpent, and a Hebrew shepherd turning his staff (another ancient symbol of power) into a snake and back again is a jab at Pharaoh’s claim to deity and authority, and a reminder that his power could and would be taken from him at any moment. The hand is another well-known ancient symbol for power, but it may also be that God is sending a message to Egypt about their pride in their world-renowned physical beauty. And the Nile was the spine of Egypt’s fertility and thus its economy. Blood in the Nile (already an Egyptian description of a recurring problem with pollution) means the money will dry up. In the world of ancient polytheism and regional gods, the implication of these “wonders” is startling: the god of the Hebrews knows everything about the Egyptians and holds them to account, even though they don’t acknowledge him.

Pharaoh is not moved by Moses’ magic tricks, in fact he “hardens his heart” (according to the text) and refuses to let the Israel family go. So ultimately, God sends ten “plagues” against Egypt in a famous episode beginning in chapter seven. The first nine plagues are, in order: The water of the Nile turned to blood, swarming frogs, swarming gnats, swarming flies, death of livestock, painful boils, destructive hail, swarming locusts, and complete darkness.

I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but the Egyptian plagues are all grounded in natural phenomena familiar to the Egyptian population. And, in fact, it’s in the description of the plagues that we discover the underlying point of all the nature-imagery swirling around in this book. The language of the plagues account draws heavily upon motifs from CREATION. There are ten plagues, corresponding to the ten words of God in the creation song. Each plague is introduced “in the morning,” reminiscent of the days of creation. And the “media” of the plagues are the elements of creation: water, darkness, and “creeping” animals. Israel’s God is exerting his power over the order of nature, threatening Egypt with “uncreation” unless they release the family of Jacob.

The tenth plague is the darkest and most dramatic, and brings this story to its climax. While the first nine plagues involved climate and animals, the last involves a true “plague” that will sweep through Egypt and take the lives of the firstborn sons, the most honored of offspring in Egypt and most of the ancient world. The Hebrew slaves are given instructions from Moses: sacrifice a lamb for a meal, and spread the blood on your doorpost. This gesture will cause the household to be “passed over,” and the plague will not strike. At the same time, the slaves are told to make a quick, unleavened bread called matzah to take with them in case they need to leave Egypt in a hurry. These two practices, the lamb feast and the matzah, come together into one observance, the feast called pesach or “Passover,” which is celebrated by Jews to this day. Then, in the midst of all this action and baking, God tells Moses to institute the weekly observance of a Sabbath, a “rest” on the seventh day of the week.

It strikes us as very odd that amid the dramatic escape of the Hebrews – now called Israelites – from Egypt, there are all these ceremonial and ritual instructions. It feels counterintuitive to the way we read stories, but in truth it’s the key to understanding the whole thing. In the intense heat of the cauldron of Egyptian captivity, God is forging Israel’s identity. Or rather Israel, in writing this story centuries later, recognizes that this was more than a dramatic rescue – it was the singular event which made them a people. The Passover holiday combines the meat of a lamb and bread baked from grain, another “milk and honey” scenario bringing shepherds and farmers together. And “sabbath,” and with it the seven-day week, distinguishes Israel from Egypt and its ten-day cycle, while also establishing a celebration of the order of creation in the very rhythm of daily life. All of it comes down to IDENTITY. This is who we are, these are the signs of who we are, and this is the amazing story of how it all came together.

You probably know the rest of the story. If you don’t, it’s there starting in Exodus 14. Pharaoh releases the Israelite slaves, only to change his mind at the last moment and pursue them with his army of chariots. God, through Moses, parts the waters of the Red Sea so the people can pass through on dry land, after which the waters come crashing back together around Pharaoh and his army. This is yet more CREATION and FLOOD imagery, as God once again tamps back the chaos of the ocean to provide land for his people, but allows the waters to crash back upon the wicked in an act of UNCREATION.

That’s a pretty climactic resolution, but of course there’s much more to be done. There’s land to be settled, and a nation to build. And, well, don’t hold your breath. Next time we’ll examine what exactly happened to Israel after its dramatic escape, and why it took so long to get anywhere. We’ll also do our best to make sense of all that boring (and often creepy) “Law” material. We’ll see how it fits in with the history and literature of the Torah, and we’ll even tackle the difficult question: is any of it still relevant today?

But that is plenty for today! This has been BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. And I have been Josh Way. If you enjoyed this podcast, I urge you to share, blog, like, and tweet it to your online friends and family. If you have any comments, questions or constructive feedback, email me at book@joshway.com. You can also leave a voicemail at 801-760-3013, and maybe I’ll answer it on the podcast. Read the BOOK blog and find more content at BOOK.JOSHWAY.COM. That’s it for me, Bible pals. I’ll catch you next time.

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September 3, 2012 0

Episode 07 – Jacob Goes A-Wrasslin’

By in Blog, Podcast

[TRANSCRIPT:]

In my left hand is a hideous off-brand Looney Tunes mousepad. In my right hand is a bible. Let’s do a show about… THE BIBLE

[INTRO MUSIC]

Hello, and welcome to BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. Things are moving very quickly now as we continue our journey through Israel’s family album, the ancient scrolls known as the Torah, the Pentateuch, or the Book of Moses. Today we will finish our tour through the book we call Genesis, the first of five scrolls which comprise the Torah.

Last time we explored the life of Abraham, the “big daddy” of Israel and of the Jewish faith. Historically, his life was the foundation for Israel’s identity and national hope. As a literary character he embodied that identity. He was no great hero, but a man who learned to “fear” God, which is a Hebrew way of saying he relied on God’s provision instead of his own cunning. And, by the way, that’s not merely a universal religious platitude, it’s a deeply practical observation about life in Israel, where rain was scarce and relations with neighbors contentious. The easy fertility of Egypt to the south and the religious alternatives of Mesopotamia and Canaan were a constant temptation.

The climactic events of Abraham’s life were the birth of his son Isaac, which gave him the OFFSPRING he needed to extend his legacy, and the burial of his wife Sarah in a field in Canaan, which gave him a claim on the LAND his family was to inhabit. Given all the drama surrounding the conception and birth of Isaac, we would expect his biblical story to be more substantial than it is. But as it stands, he’s really just the means by which the family line is extended so the next generation can come into their own. I guess Isaac is a sort of the maguffin of the Abraham story.

The rest of Genesis is the story of that next generation, of the offspring of Isaac. Here’s an introductory bit from chapter 25, starting in verse 19:

[19] These are the generations of Isaac, son of Abraham. Abraham fathered Isaac. [20] Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-aram, the sister of Laban the Aramean, to be his wife. [21] Isaac pleaded with the LORD on behalf of his wife, because she was barren, and the LORD granted his plea, and his wife Rebekah conceived. [22] The children struggled in her womb, and she said, “If so, why do I exist?” So she went to inquire of the LORD, [23] and the LORD said to her,

“Two nations are in your womb.
Two separate peoples shall issue from your body;
One shall be stronger than the other,
the older shall serve the younger.”

[24] When her time to give birth was at hand, there were twins in her womb. [25] The first one came out red, all his body like a hairy cloak, so they named him Esau. [26] Then his brother came out with his hand holding Esau’s heel, so they named him Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when they were born.

[27] When the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the outdoors, but Jacob was a mild man who stayed in the camp. [28] Isaac favored Esau because he had a taste for game, but Rebekah favored Jacob.

Another typical Hebrew birth story, complete with the barren mother’s womb being opened and the children having puns for names. This is also yet another instance of Israel’s enemies being revealed as relatives. Esau is the father of the Edomites, and his description as “red” and “hairy” is a pun on some geographical references to Edom that Israelite hearers would have understood immediately. As for Jacob, his name means “he cheats” or “he deceives,” a rather unflattering name considering who he will turn out to be…

The brothers are already in conflict before they are born, and we are reminded of the fraternal strife between Cain and Abel several chapters earlier. To make things worse, Isaac and Rebekah play favorites, each honoring one son over the other. The family trouble escalates in chapter 25. Beginning in verse 29:

[29] Once when Jacob was cooking stew, Esau came in from the field, and he was famished. [30] Esau said to Jacob, “Give me some of that red stew to gulp down, for I am famished!” [31] Jacob said, “First, sell me your birthright.” [32] Esau said, “I am at the point of death, so of what use is a birthright to me?” [33] But Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So he swore to him and sold his birthright to Jacob. [34] Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank and rose and went his way. Thus Esau spurned his birthright.

Esau sells his “birthright” for some Dinty Moore. What is a “birthright,” anyway? This concerns a common ancient practice called “primogeniture,” by which the eldest son inherited the full estate of a family. Esau was technically born first, so all of Isaac’s wealth and possessions are legally his. Jacob takes advantage of his brother’s man-sized hunger and questionable intelligence to cheat him out of this privilege. This tells us a lot about the brothers’ characters, but it also carries a message. Just as the Bible goes out of its way to portray polygamy as disastrous and wrong, it also subverts primogeniture at every opportunity. The older son always loses his right to a younger brother. Despite human attempts to manage fertility and order society, Israel insists that their God alone is the director of their lives and their fates. This is an extremely controversial line of thinking for our day and age, but it is essential to understanding these ancient stories.

Chapter 27 is a familiar episode which takes the Jacob/Esau feud to a point which will change things forever. Isaac, blind and dying of old age, is ready to administer the “blessing” to Esau. Even though Jacob stole his brother’s birthright when they were young, Isaac seems determined to follow tradition and bestow his estate – and with it the “blessing” promised by God to Abraham – to the elder son. Jacob and his mother Rebekah hatch a plot to fool the old man, and Jacob steals the whole lot – estate, blessing, and all. Esau finds out and is determined to kill Jacob, so Rebekah cooks up an excuse for Jacob to go to Haran, in Mesopotamia, to stay with his Uncle Laban and find himself a wife.

Jacob’s sojourn in Mesopotamia is productive, as we’ll see, and the literary structure of the episode is noteworthy. The journey is bookended by two very strange visions wherein Jacob seems to encounter God himself. The first experience comes to Jacob as a dream on the road to Haran. This is Genesis 28, starting in verse 12:

[12] He had a dream; a ramp was set up on the ground, and the top of it reached to the sky. And angels of God were going up and down upon it. [13] And the LORD stood by him and said, “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. The ground on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. [14] Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south. All the families of the earth shall be blessed by you and your offspring. [15] Remember, I am with you, I will protect you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” [16] Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it!” [17] Shaken, he said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and that is the gateway of heaven.”

[18] Early in the morning Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. [19] He named that site Bethel, but previously the name of the city had been Luz. [20] Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God sticks with me and if he protects me on this journey I am making, and gives me bread to eat and clothing to wear, [21] and if I return safe to my father’s house, then the LORD shall be my God. [22] And this stone, which I have set up as a pillar, shall be God’s house. And I will set aside a tenth for you.”

This strange dream – “Jacob’s ladder” – has an unexpected format, but a familiar message. God wants to give LAND to Jacob’s OFFSPRING. The vision of angels moving up and down on a stairway to the sky has been interpreted in many ways, and there are many theories as to where this specific imagery might come from. But at a basic level it’s clear what is happening here: Jacob is given a glimpse of “heaven.”

We’ll talk about this more on a future show, but this is a good opportunity to address this odd topic. In the Bible, despite what Western Christianity has imagined, “heaven” is not a far off kingdom beyond our atmosphere where God lives. The Hebrew words shamayim and eretz are translated “heaven” and “earth,” but this can be understood in two ways. In one sense, they simply describe “sky” and “land,” the physical reality of our world. In another sense, they are the two dimensions of creation. “Earth” being the realm of humans, and “heaven” of God and his reality. (I don’t pretend that this makes perfect sense to me, but still this is closer to the biblical idea than what medieval artists dreamed up and the church has embraced.)

Jacob has discovered a place where the curtain dividing the two realities is pulled back, just for a moment, and he sees “heaven.” God identifies himself as the God of Jacob’s fathers and reiterates the promise of the old covenant. Jacob’s response is in one sense typical – he sets up a boundary marker and claims the territory. But his own personality creeps in and he does what neither Isaac nor Abraham had done: he makes a promise back to God, and a rather pathetic and conditional one at that. IF God will provide for him and protect him, he will perpetuate the family covenant. Jacob names the place “Bethel,” which means “house of God.” Bethel will be one of the earliest centers of religious activity in national Israel many generations later. This explains why Jacob is pouring out oil and talking about a ten percent tithe. Once again we’ve got Israelite behavior long before Israel.

Jacob’s stay at Laban’s in Mesopotamia, beginning in chapter 29, is a complicated series of romantic and parental entanglements. Here’s an abbreviated rundown:

  • Jacob “accidentally” becomes a polygamist and marries two sisters, Leah and Rachel.
  • Surprise, surprise, they are both barren.
  • God “opens” Leah’s womb, and she bears three sons: Simeon, Levi, and Judah.
  • Rachel still cannot conceive and so hatches a familiar plan – she gives Bilhah her maidservant to Jacob and she bears two sons: Dan and Naphtali.
  • Leah wants in on this action, so he gives Jacob her own maidservant Zilpah. She bears two more sons: Gad and Asher.
  • Jacob and Leah get their groove back and have three more children together: Issachar, Zebulun, and a daughter named Dinah.
  • God “opens” Rachel’s womb and she gives birth to her first son: Joseph.
  • This brings the total to eleven sons and one daughter.
  • Jacob strikes it rich breeding sheep, and when it’s time to go back to Canaan, Laban doesn’t want to let him go.
  • After a kerfuffle regarding the “household gods” (another clue that these Hebrews aren’t done being polytheists yet), he rounds up his new family and flees from his uncle.

On the way back to Canaan, Jacob has another strange experience, the defining incident of his life. It is detailed in Genesis 32. We’ll start in verse 24:

[24] Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn. [25] When the man saw that he did not prevail against him, he touched Jacob’s hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was strained as he wrestled with him. [26] Then he said, “Let me go, for dawn is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” [27] Said the other, “What is your name?” He replied, “Jacob.” [28] He said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with man, and have prevailed.” [29] Jacob asked, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “You must not ask my name!” And there he left him. [30] So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, meaning “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved.” [31] The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. [32] That is why the children of Israel to this day do not eat the thigh muscle that is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip at the thigh muscle.

Jacob encounters a “man,” and they wrestle all night long. Jacob dominates the man, but the man touches him in a certain area and disables him. The man is revealed to be God himself, though the text keeps that detail somewhat vague. A detail that is not so vague in the Hebrew text is the location of the man’s touch. He doesn’t touch Jacob on the “hip” as most English translations say, but rather on the “groin.” And whatever the nature of this “touch,” it’s enough to leave Jacob limping. What on earth is going on in this story? Like Abraham before him, Jacob is having his fate and his identity altered by an encounter with God, or at least with an agent of God. The name change, to “Israel,” is a play on the struggle between the two men. Jacob has “struggled” with men and with God. And the touch on the groin – the “seat of fertility” – is another reminder of who is in charge of that particular aspect of life.

Jacob returns home and fears an encounter with Esau, but in chapter 33 the brothers are reunited and reconciled. Then we come to chapter 34 and a very interesting account, indeed. This is traditionally known as “the rape of Dinah,” and is usually read as a simple revenge story, but it’s not nearly that easy. A local Canaanite prince, Shechem, rapes Jacob’s daughter Dinah and her brothers exact revenge by killing every man in the city. That’s the traditional summary, but the text itself tells a different story. First off, the “rape” is not a rape in the sense that we might think, but more of an inappropriate pairing. Dinah and Shechem shack up together, and this forces Jacob to seek a deal with the Shechemites.

His sons, however, are outraged and don’t want Jacob to make peace. They make a duplicitous gesture and invite the Shechemites to join with them symbolically through circumcision. They comply, and while all the males in the city are still sore from the procedure, they swoop in and kill them. It’s hard to imagine that anyone could read this as a case of righteous revenge, but I have encountered strong resistance on this point. In the end, the story interprets itself as Jacob bemoans his sons’ brutal behavior. Chapter 34 verse 30:

[30] Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me, making me odious to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites. My numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.”

From the beginning, Israel was supposed to be a “blessing” to their neighbors, not a bully.

In chapter 35 Isaac dies, and then Rachel. But before she goes she bears one more son, Benjamin, bringing the grand total of male offspring to twelve. From this point on that number is officially “symbolically significant.” Then, in chapter 37 the focus of the story shifts from Jacob to Joseph – at least on the surface. As with Isaac, Joseph is really a maguffin for the Jacob story, and his adventures are really about his dad.

The story of Joseph is well known, so all that remains is to summarize it and try to discover its place in the ongoing story. Joseph is the second-youngest son of Jacob, and he is his father’s favorite. His famous “coat of many colors” was most likely a coat of one color, blue, with lots of ornamental tassels and long sleeves. Joseph’s brothers already resent him before he starts interpreting dreams, particularly his own dreams about one day ruling over his brothers. They plot to kill him but end up selling him into slavery to a band of Ishmaelites (their cousins, remember?).

Joseph winds up a slave in Egypt, where his ability to read dreams opens doors and eventually lands him a gig as Pharaoh’s right-hand man. A Hebrew slave becomes the second ranking leader of the world’s biggest superpower. A famine hits Canaan, his brothers come to Egypt to find food, and they are happily reunited. A classic rags-to-riches success story if there ever was one. Except, it’s not supposed to be happy. In fact, it’s a horror story. Even as the text says that God is “blessing” Joseph and his fortune improves, any Israelite hearing the story would know that this is all wrong, wrong, wrong. Egypt is the wrong place. Joseph’s wife – the daughter of a pagan priest – is the wrong girl. And when Jacob finally moves down to join them, the whole family of Israel is displaced and on the wrong track.

We miss all of this when we take the Joseph story in isolation and use it for simple inspiration. The details of the story are very exciting and inspirational, on the surface, but the undercurrent is dark and hopeless. Since this is really Jacob’s story, it ends with the old man blessing Joseph’s sons Manasseh and Ephraim (once again, the younger son is given the blessing of the firstborn), and then Jacob dies. There is a glimmer of hope for the future as his body is carried back to Canaan and buried in the same field as Abraham and Sarah (and Isaac, Rebekah and Leah). But the final detail of the Genesis scroll is an unhappy one. Joseph dies in Egypt and is embalmed and buried there in a coffin. By Israel’s traditions, this is an unacceptable way to be put to rest. The future looks grim for the family of Israel…

And that’s a classic cliffhanger if I ever saw one. This has been BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. If you enjoyed this podcast, I urge you to share, blog, like, and tweet it to your online friends and family. If you have any comments, questions or constructive feedback, email me at book@joshway.com. You can also leave a voicemail at 801-760-3013, and maybe I’ll answer it on the podcast. Read the BOOK blog and find more content at BOOK.JOSHWAY.COM. That’s it for me, Bible pals. I’ll catch you next time.

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August 29, 2012 0

Supplement – A Myth Understanding

By in Blog, Podcast

[TRANSCRIPT]

Hello, I’m Josh Way, and welcome to a BOOK Podcast Supplement.

I want to talk a little bit about MYTHS today. Myths in the Bible, myths in general, and contemporary myths about myths. Please remember that this show isn’t about apologetics or “proving,” “defending,” OR “debunking” the Bible. We’re just looking at the content of the Bible in the light of HISTORY and LITERATURE. And that’s the context in which I want to talk about mythology. Unfortunately, modern usage of the word “myth” is so far from its literary and cultural heritage that I feel a few remarks are in order.

Today, a MYTH is typically understood to be a demonstrably false assertion which is believed by some section of the population. This is how the popular media uses the term, for example. “Ten Myths About Nutrition,” or “Debunking Exercise Myths,” or something like that. So as soon some part of the Bible is identified as a “myth,” the response from many is to immediately dismiss it, burn it with fire, and expunge it from memory. Meanwhile, reactionary Christians hear the word “myth” in relation to the Bible and immediately take up arms, ready to defend the sacred book against the attacks of the heretics.

Both reactions are misguided and somewhat hypocritical. The automatic rejection of anything identified as “mythological” reveals a narrow-minded modernism, as if “facts” and “data” had the exclusive corner on truth, or as if human imagination had been silenced by the Enlightenment. Meanwhile the religious counterattack is little more than a power play, revealing a superstitious view of scripture and a willful ignorance of the literary heritage of the Bible and the cultural reality of the world which produced it.

This, friends, is my humble plea for reason and thoughtfulness.

Myths are stories. Stories shared, told, and retold by a particular group of people which express common beliefs or assumptions. They may – or may NOT – be “true” in the modernist sense of a verifiable fact. But they are all an attempt to get closer to some “truth,” something fundamental and basic and unifying. All of us, without exception, believe in myths. Our view of our own history, (hopefully) grounded in facts but inevitably projected through a lens, is a myth. Some myths are smokescreens for otherwise unbearable realities, like the so-called “war on terror,” or “drugs,” or “poverty.” Our political affiliation, our social views, our understanding of where we came from, biologically and spiritually. We have all chosen to participate in the stories which make the most sense to us out of the chaos of the world.

Other kinds of myths bypass the “real world” altogether, yet still manage to get at something true. Spider-man, a work of fantasy, nevertheless communicates basic truths about the experience of becoming an adult. Hollywood movies have become the great recycling bin of world mythology. Myths are humanities way of telling our own story.

Biblical myths are no different. Some use fantastical images and events to express shared beliefs and worldview (like the Adam and Eve story). Others appear to be based on historical realities but are viewed through a particular prism (like the book of Judges, Kings, and Chronicles, and in a different sense the gospels of the New Testament). Others are somewhere in between (such as the flood story which builds a fantastical/theological story on top of a world event).

My point is not to identify this or that passage of the Bible as mythological or non-mythological. Scholarly debate will continue in that vein, to be sure. My point is that to dismiss and deride an ancient text for being mythological is just as obtuse as insisting that it must be “literally true” when such a thing cannot be easily known. Whether the Bible is a collection of mere “myths” or an utterly original and factual work of literature, or some kind of hybrid, so what? What does it say? What are the stories? What did they mean? What do they mean? Why are they collected together in this way? Identifying a myth is only the beginning of our work.

Consider for a moment the popular claim that the New Testament biographies of Jesus are just a “clone” of the ancient Egyptian myth of Horus. You may have seen this on Facebook or in the movie “Zeitgeist.” Basically, Jesus and Horus are compared via a dozen or so carefully worded bullet-points, the conclusion being, “Look! The Bible ripped off Egypt! Christianity is a lie!” The premise and execution of this comparison are insulting to the rich of traditions of both Egypt and the Bible. Details have been cherry-picked and mangled from many different Egyptian sources to make the comparison with the Bible appear more stark, the result of which is a neutering of the Horus figure and a loss of the story’s distinct “Egyptianness.” As for the Bible, the gospel authors and Jesus himself actually did call heavily upon mythological material, but it is distinctly, essentially, undeniably JEWISH material. Jesus’ story and his words make no sense outside of the shared story of Israel, and Christian interpreters are largely to blame for screening that out. (Much more on this later!)

The point is simply this: myths have a great deal to say about the humans who tell, share, and believe them. They are powerful, and whether we embrace or reject them, it should be on the basis of what they tell rather than what they are. The post-enlightenment “debunking” of myths is, in its own way, a myth which we have bought into. Perhaps the biggest myth we all share is the one that says we’re too smart for mythology. We haven’t really moved beyond the need for myths, we’ve just privileged some over others.

That’s really all I wanted to say today. This has been a supplement of BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. Check out more content and get in touch with me at book.joshway.com. I’ll catch you later, pals!

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