THE
MOSAIC LAW
AND THE THEOLOGY OF THE PENTATEUCH
JOHN H. SAILHAMER
I.
Introduction
THE
purpose of this article is to raise the question of the role of the
Mosaic
Law in the theology of the Pentateuch. By "theology of the
Pentateuch,"
I mean the major themes and purposes that lie behind its final
composition.
1. The Final
Composition of the Pentateuch
Much has been written in recent years
about the final composition of the
Pentateuch.1
In an earlier paper, I attempted
to demonstrate the influence
of
prophetic hope and eschatology in its composition.2 The Pentateuch,
I
argued,
represents an attempt to point to the same hope as the later proph-
ets,
namely, the New Covenant.3 "The narrative texts of past events
are
presented
as pointers to events that lie yet in the future. Past events fore-
shadow
the future."4 Along similar lines, though working from quite
differ-
ent
assumptions, Hans-Christoph Schmitt has argued that the Pentateuch
is
the product of a unified compositional strategy that lays great emphasis
on
faith.5 According to Schmitt, the same theme is found within the
com-
position
of the prophetic books, like Isaiah, and ultimately can be traced
into
the NT, e.g., the Book of Hebrews.
Schmitt's approach differs from many
critical approaches in that he
treats
the Pentateuch as one would the later historical books, that is, as the
1 Erhard Blum, Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch
(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1990); Rolf E Knierim, "The Composition of the
Pentateuch," in SBLSP 1985, 395-415; Erhard Blum, Die Komposition der Vatergeschichte (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener
Verlag, 1984); RolfRendtorff, Das
Uberlieferungs-geschichtliche Problem des Pentateuch (BZAW 147; Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 1977).
2 John H.
Sailhamer, "The Canonical Approach to the OT: Its Effect on Understanding
Prophecy,"
JETS 30 (1987) 307-15.
3 This does not
necessarily imply that the final composition of the Pentateuch is later than
that
of the prophetic books. On the contrary, if the composition of the Pentateuch
were dated
before
that of the prophetic books, it would help explain the origin of the message of
those
books.
In the discussion which follows, the date of the final composition of the
Pentateuch as
such
is taken to be Mosaic.
4 Sailhamer,
"The Canonical Approach," 311.
5 Hans-Christoph
Schmitt, "Redaktion des Pentateuch im Geiste der Prophetie," VT 32
(1982)
170-89.
241
242
product
of an intentional theological redaction or composition. One must
start
from the final form of the book and ask what each part of the whole
contributes
to its theological intention. Schmitt argues that each major
unit6
of narrative in the Pentateuch shows signs of a homogeneous theo-
logical
redaction. A characteristic feature of this redaction is the recurrence
of
the terminology of "faith" (e.g. b Nymxh).7
At crucial compositional seams
throughout
the Pentateuch, Schmitt is able to find convincing evidence of
a
"faith theme," that is, a consistent assessment of the narrative
events in
light
of the rule of "faith" (b Nymxh).8
According to Schmitt, this redaction
represents
the final stages in the composition of the Pentateuch--later even
than
the so-called priestly redaction. According to Schmitt, it does not
reflect
an emphasis on keeping the priestly law codes (viz., the Mosaic Law)
but
rather on preserving a sense of trust in God and an expectation of his
work
in the future. It is in light of this eschatological expectation of God's
future
work that the redaction lays great stress on "faith."9
Schmitt's study goes a long way in
demonstrating an important part of
the
theological intention and orientation of the Pentateuch as a narrative text.
Put simply, Schmitt shows that the Pentateuch is intended to teach "faith"
in God.10
An important question raised by
Schmitt's study is whether the concept
of
"faith" in the Pentateuch is intended to stand in opposition to the
6 The largest
literary units (grosseren Einheiten) which are linked in the final redaction of
the
Pentateuch, according to Schmitt, are the Primeval History, the Patriarchal
Narratives,
the
Exodus Narratives, the Sinai Narratives, and the Wilderness Narratives. See
Rendtorff,
Das Uberlieferungs-geschichtliche
Problem,
19ff.
7 It is important
to note that, according to Schmitt, the terminology of "faith" (b
Nymxh)
occurs
only at the redactional seams. See n. 8.
8 The key texts
of that redaction are Gen 15:6, "And Abraham believed in [b
Nymxh]
the
Lord
and he reckoned it to him for righteousness"; Exod 4:5, "In order
that they might believe
[vnymxy] that the Lord,
the God of their fathers. . . has appeared to you"; Exod
they
[the people] believed in b Nymxh] the Lord and in Moses his
servant"; Num
long
will they [the people] not believe in b Nymxh] me"; Num
Moses
and Aaron, 'Because you did not believe in b Nymxh] me.' "
See also Deut
Schmitt
has not discussed Gen 45:26, the only occurrence of the term for
"faith" outside of
Schmitt's
redactional seams, because it does not show other signs of belonging to the
"Glaubens-Thematik."
9 "So steht
am Ende der Pentateuchentstehung nicht die Abschliessung in ein Ordnungs-
denken
theokratischen Charakters. Vielmehr geht es hier darum, in prophetischem Geiste
die
Offenheit
fur ein neues Handeln Gottes zu wahren und in diesem Zusammenhang mit dem
aus
der prophetischen Tradition entnommenen Begriff des “Glaubens" eine
Haltung heraus-
zustellen,
die spater auch das Neue Testament als fur das Gottesverhaltnis zentral
ansieht"
(Schmitt,
"Redaktion des Pentateuch," 188-89).
10 It is important
to note that such a reading of the Pentateuch, as a lesson on faith, can
be
found throughout the subsequent canonical literature. Pss 78 and 106, two
psalms that look
at
the meaning of the whole of the Pentateuch, both read the events of the
Pentateuch as
evidence
of the Israelites' faith or faithlessness (cf. Ps 78:22, 32, 37; 106:12, 24). A
similar
reading
is found in Nehemiah 9, which is a rehearsal of the pentateuchal narrative in
its
present
form (cf. Neh 9:8). The example of Hebrews 11 has already been pointed out.
THE MOSAIC LAW 243
Mosaic
Law or whether this faith is to be understood simply as "keeping
the
law."11 To say it another way, can we find evidence in the
composition
of
the Pentateuch that the author is concerned with the question of "faith
versus
works of the law"?
It is well known that this issue surfaces
a number of times in other OT
texts.
In Ps 51:18-19 (English vv. 16-17), for example, David says, "For
thou
hast no delight in sacrifice. . . . The sacrifice acceptable to God is a
broken
spirit" and in Mic 6:6-8 it says, "With what shall I come before the
Lord.
. . Shall I come before him with burnt offerings? He has showed you,
O
man, what is good . . . to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk
humbly
with your God?" Since such texts do, in fact, exist within the OT,
we
may, with some justification, look for similar ideas within the theological
macrostructure
of the Pentateuch.
In the present article, we will attempt
to show that the issue of "faith
versus
works of the law" was, indeed, central to the theological purpose of
the
Pentateuch. Specifically, we will argue that, among other things, the
Pentateuch
is an attempt to contrast the lives of two individuals, Abraham
and
Moses. Abraham, who lived before the law (ante
legem), is portrayed as
one
who kept the law, whereas Moses, who lived under the law (sub lege),
is
portrayed as one who died in the wilderness because he did not believe.
If
such a contrast between faith and works is, in fact, a part of the com-
positional
strategy of the Pentateuch, then we may rightfully conclude that
part
of the purpose of the book was to show not merely the way of faith, but
also
the weakness of the law.
2. The Genre of
the Pentateuch
In a recent article, Rolf Knierim has
focused attention on the question of
the
genre of the Pentateuch as a whole.12 Knierim has argued that the
Pentateuch
consists of two major generic sections: Genesis and Exodus-
Deuteronomy.
According to him, Genesis is to be taken as an introduction
to
the whole of the Pentateuch. The genre of the central section of the
Pentateuch,
Exodus-Deuteronomy, is not so much that of a narrative his-
tory
of
its
genre is that of a biography, specifically, a biography of Moses.
This is not the place to enter into a
full discussion of Knierim's descrip-
tion
of the genre of the Pentateuch. It is enough to say that his general
observations
about the Pentateuch are convincing. The Pentateuch devotes
11 There are
indications in Schmitt's study that the notion of faith in the Pentateuch is
put
in
opposition to that of "obedience to the law." Schmitt has argued, for
example, that the
"faith"
seams overlay and reinterpret the narratives which have stressed obedience to
the law
(cf.
comments below on Num 20:12).
12 Knierim,
"The Composition of the Pentateuch," 395-415.
244
its
attention more to the individual Moses than to the nation of
Hence
its overall purpose in all likelihood should be understood in relation-
ship
more to the life of Moses, per se, than to the history of the nation. As
such
it is reasonable to conclude that the Pentateuch reads much like and
apparently
aims to be a biography.
Since the purpose of a biography is the
presentation or conceptualization
of
the work or life of an individual person, the Pentateuch can well be
viewed
generically as a presentation (conceptualization) of the work of
Moses.
The events of the life of Moses (Vita
Mosis) are not told entirely for
their
own sake but are intended as a narrative explication of the nature of
a
life lived within the context of the call of God and the covenant at Sinai.
The
Pentateuch seeks to answer the question of how well Moses carried out
his
calling, that is, his work under the Sinai covenant. It seeks to tell how
well
he performed his task.
There is room for doubt, however,
whether Knierim's description of the
whole
of the Pentateuch as a biography of Moses is entirely adequate. In the
first
place, the whole of the collections of laws which make up a major part
of
the final composition of the Pentateuch do not fit within the narrow limits
of
a biography. However, according to Knierim's reckoning, these laws,
e.g.,
the Sinai-pericope and Deuteronomy, make up 68.5 percent of the
total
text of the Pentateuch. Although Knierim treats these legal sections
as
part of the Moses texts, they clearly are not part of the Moses narratives
per
se. The course of the narratives is distinctively broken into and sus-
pended
until these large collections of laws are exhausted. It appears that
in
the final stage of the composition, the focus on Moses, the individual
lawgiver,
has been intentionally expanded to include a substantial portion
of
the law itself. This state of affairs raises the question of why, in light of
the
genre of the Pentateuch, these laws were placed in the midst of the
biography.
The traditional answer to this question
has been that they were put there
simply
as legislation, that is, as laws which were to be kept--thus the
Pentateuch's
reputation as a "Book of the law." In this view the Pentateuch
is
read as if it were a collection of laws intended to guide the daily living
of
its readers. This view of the purpose of the laws in the Pentateuch is so
pervasive
that it is often, if not always, merely assumed in works dealing
with
the problem of the law.
However, it is also possible that the
Pentateuch has intentionally in-
cluded
this selection of laws for another purpose, that is, to give the reader an
understanding of
the nature of the Mosaic Law and God's purpose in giving it to
tell
the reader how to live but rather to
tell the reader how Moses was to live
under
the law. To use an example from the Pentateuch itself, it is clear to
all
that the detailed instructions on the building of the ark in Genesis 6 were
not
given to the reader so he or she
could build an ark and load it with
animals,
but those detailed instructions were given to show what Noah was
THE MOSAIC LAW 245
to
do in response to God's command. Competent readers of the Pentateuch
easily
understand that God's instructions to Noah in the narrative is di-
rected
only to Noah and not to the readers. These instructions are included
as
narrative information for the reader. The message of the Pentateuch in
other
words, is not that its readers should build an ark like Noah.
The same may be true for the legal
instructions found in the Mosaic Law.
Though
the nature of the instructions to Noah and those to Moses (the
building
of the tabernacle in Exodus 25ff., for example) are similar in form
and
narrative function, we often read them entirely differently. We read the
instructions
to Noah as given for the reader, and
those to Moses as given to
the
reader.13 It is possible, however, that the two sets of instructions
within
the
Pentateuch are intended to be read in the same way. In other words,
to
put it in the terms introduced into OT studies by Mendenhall, the
inclusion
of the selection of laws (viz., the Mosaic Law) in the Pentateuch
was
not so much intended to be a source for legal action (technique) as
rather
a statement of legal policy.14
This understanding of the purpose of the
laws in the Pentateuch is sup-
ported
by the observation that the collections of laws in the Pentateuch
appear
to be incomplete and selective. The Pentateuch as such is not de-
signed
as a source of legal action. That the laws in the Pentateuch are
incomplete
is suggested by the fact that many aspects of ordinary commu-
nity
life are not covered in these laws. Moreover, there is at least one
example
in the Pentateuch where a "statute given to Moses by the Lord"
is
mentioned but not actually recorded in the Pentateuch.15 The
selective
13 "From the
earliest days of the church Christians have asked about the commands of the
Old
Testament: do they apply to us? The question, however, is ambiguous. It may be
a
question
about authority, or it may be a question about prescriptive claim. A
prescription, we
said,
instructs somebody to do, or not to do, something. We may ask in each case who
is
instructed
and who instructs. If, as I walk down the street, somebody in a blue coat says,
'Stop!',
I shall have to ask, first, 'Is he speaking to me?’--the question of claim--and,
then, 'Is
he
a policeman?'--the question of authority. And so it is with the commands of the
Old
Testament:
we must ask, 'Do they purport to include people like us in their scope?'--the
question
of claim--and, 'If so, ought we to heed them?’--the question of authority. In
the
patristic
church, after the rejection of the Gnostic temptation, especially in its
Marcionite
form,
the question of authority was not really open for discussion; Old Testament
commands
were
evaluated entirely in terms of their claim. Our own age, conversely, has been
so dom-
inated
by the question of authority that the question of claim has been obscured and
forgotten"
(O.
M. T. O'Donovan, "Towards an Interpretation of Biblical Ethics," TynBul 27 [1976]
58-59).
14 "That
common body of what might be called the sense of justice in a community we
shall call 'policy'. What happens in a law court, however, is usually much more
directly related to
the
technical corpus of specialized legal acts and tradition. These are
'techniques' " (George
E.
Mendenhall, "Ancient Oriental and Biblical Law," The Biblical Archaeologist Reader 3 [ed.
E.
E Campbell and D. N. Freedman;
15 The
"statute of the law that the Lord gave Moses," referred to by Eleazar
in Num 31:21, is not found elsewhere in the Pentateuch, though a part of what
Eleazar commands (the water of cleansing) was given in Numbers 19. This shows
either that the laws included in the
Pentateuch
are selective, that is, not every law given to Moses was included, or that any
law
246
nature
of the laws included in the Pentateuch is further illustrated both by
the
fact that the number of laws (611) is the same as the numerical equiv-
alent
of the Hebrew title of the Pentateuch, "Torah" (hrvt),16
and by the
fact
that within the structure of the collections of laws the number seven
and
multiples of seven predominate. The listing of 42 (7 x 6) laws in the
Covenant
Code (Exod 21:1-23:12), for example, equals the numerical value
of
the title of that section "And these (are the judgments)." This is
not to
suggest
that secret numerical codes were intended to conceal mysteries
within
these texts. The use of the numerical values of titles and catch
phrases
was a common literary device at the time of the composition of
Scripture.
The same principle of numerical selectivity may also be seen
within
the Book of Proverbs, where the total number of proverbs in chaps.
10:1-22:16
(375) equals the numerical value of the name "Solomon."17
This
suggests that, just as in the publication of law in the ancient Near
Eastern
world in general,18 the laws in the Pentateuch were not intended
to
be used in the administration of justice as a collection of laws to be
enforced.
In his study of law codes in the ancient
world, F. R. Kraus19 has provided
a
helpful analogy to the nature and purpose of the laws included in the final
composition
of the Pentateuch. According to Kraus, literary works such as
the
Code of Hammurapi were not intended to be used in the actual adminis-
tration
of law. They were not, in fact, associated with the systems of justice
in
the ancient world. According to Kraus, they were rather intended to tell
us
something about the lawgiver, viz., important people like Hammurapi
himself.20
For example, when the whole of the present shape of the docu-
given
by a priest could have been called a "statute of the law that the Lord
gave Moses" (cf. Deut 33:10). The former alternative appears more likely
because the text expressly says "the
Lord
gave [it] to Moses," The omission of “to Moses" in the Samaritan
Pentateuch is evidence
that
at an early period there was already a tendency to read the laws of the
Pentateuch as
complete.
16 The traditional
number of laws in the Pentateuch (613) is obtained by treating both Deut 6:4 (the
"Shema") and Exod 20:2 ("I am the Lord your God") as
"laws,"
17 Barry J.
Beitzel, "Exodus
Trinity Journal 1 NS (1980) 6.
See also J. M. Sasson, "Wordplay in the OT," IDBSup, 968-70,
18 "Das grosse
Gesetzgebungswerk des Konigs our Representation geblieben und niemals Rechtswirklichkeit
geworden sei" (W. Eilers, Rechtsvergleichende
Studien zur Gesetzgebung Hammurapis [1917] 8, quoted in R. E Kraus,
"Ein zentrales Problem des altmesopotamischen Rechtes: Was It der Codex
Hammu-rabi?" Genava 8 [1960]
283-96).
19 Kraus,
"Ein zentrales Problem."
20 "In seiner
Selbstdarstellung sind Gerechtigkeit und Klugheit die Eigenschaften, die er
sich,
von den ublichen Cliches abweichend, immer wieder zuschreibt, . . . emqum, 'klug', ist
ein
typisches Pradikat des Schreibers. . . nur Hammu-rabi, gleichzeitig gerechter
Richter
und
gelehrter Autor, hat seine Rechtsspruche aufgezeichnet und der Welt zur
Verfugung
gestellt
genauso, wie die Autoren der Eingeweideschaukompendien ihre Erfahrungen und
Erkenntnisse
zu Nutz und Frommen der Welt in ihren Werken niederlegen. Zu Nutz und
Frommen
der Welt hat auch Hammu-rabi seinen Codex verfasst und offentlich aufstellen
lassen"
(Kraus, "Ein zentrales Problem," 290-91).
THE MOSAIC LAW 247
ment,
including the important but often overlooked prologue of Hammu-
rapi's
Code, is taken into consideration, it becomes clear that a text such as
Hammurapi's
was not to be used to administer justice, but was rather
intended
to promote the image of Hammurapi as a wise and just king.21
What
Kraus has argued for the Code of Hammurapi suits the phenomenon
of
law in the Pentateuch remarkably well. It explains the existence of the
relatively
large collections of laws strategically placed throughout the penta-
teuchal
narratives dealing with the life of Moses. Applying the analogy of
the
Code of Hammurapi helps confirm the judgment that the selection of
laws
in the Pentateuch is not there as a corpus of laws as such (qua lex), but
was
intended as a description of the nature of divine wisdom and justice
revealed
through Moses (qua institutio).
An inter-biblical example of this is
found in the Book of Proverbs, with
its
prologue and selection of wise sayings of Solomon. The Book of Proverbs
was
not intended to be read as an exhaustive book of right actions but as
a
selective example of godly wisdom.
In the narratives of Exodus-Deuteronomy,
then, we are to see not only
a
picture of Moses, but we are also to catch a glimpse of the nature of the
law
under which he lived and God's purpose for giving it. Along with the
narrative
portrait of Moses we see a selected sample of his laws. Returning
to
Knierim's thesis of the genre of the Pentateuch, what emerges from a
genre
analysis of the Pentateuch in its present shape is that it is a biography
of
Moses, albeit a modified one. It is a biography of Moses, which portrays
him
as a man who lived under the law
given at Sinai. It is a biography of Moses
sub lege.
A second difficulty in Knierim's
assessment of the genre of the Penta-
teuch
is the fact that although Knierim treats Genesis as an introduction to
the
life of Moses, there are significant problems in accounting for this sec-
tion
of the Pentateuch within the genre of Biography of Moses. According
to
Knierim, Genesis adds the dimension of "all of human history" to the
biography
of Moses. But it is self-evidently clear that not all of Genesis is
about
"all of human history." It is only the first eleven chapters of the
book
which
have all of humanity specifically in view. Though the rest of Genesis
is,
in fact, drawn into the scope of "all humanity" by means of the reit-
erated
promise that in the seed of Abraham ”all the families of the land will
be
blessed," the narratives in chaps. 12-50 focus specifically on the family
of
Abraham. In fact, the three major sections of Genesis 12-50 appear to
consist
of genres nearly identical to that of Knierim's view of the whole
21 "Eine Welt
trennt diese sehr deutlich formulierte Denkweise von der ungerer heutigen
Gesetzgeber
und unserer modernen Konzeption von der Geltung der Gesetze. Die Gultigkeit,
welche
Hammu-rabi fur sein Werk erhofft, ist grundstzlich anderer Natur als die unserer
Gesetze,
und seine Hoffnung ruht auf anderen Voraussetzungen als der Geltungsanspruch
moderner
Gesetzbucher. Seine sogenannten Gesetze sind Musterentscheidungen, Vorbilder
guter
Rechtsprechung" (ibid., 291).
248
Pentateuch,
namely, biographies of Abraham (chaps. 12-26), Jacob (chaps.
27-36)
and Joseph (chaps. 37-50).
Knierim rightly makes much of the fact
that the whole of Genesis, cover-
ing
some 2000 years, takes up only about 25 percent of the total text of the
Pentateuch,
whereas Exodus-Deuteronomy, which covers only the span of
the
life of Moses, takes up the other 75 percent. "The extent of material
allotted
to each of the two time spans is extremely disproportionate, a factor
that
must be considered programmatic."22 However, when the Moses-
narratives
(Exod 1-18 and Num
the
laws (Deuteronomy and the Sinai-pericope), they make up only about
20
percent of the whole of the Pentateuch. The material in Genesis devoted
to
the Patriarchs (Genesis 12-50) is also about 20 percent, making the
narratives
about Moses and those about the Patriarchs appear of equal
importance
within the final text.
It thus is not satisfactory to group the
patriarchal narratives together
with
Genesis 1-11 and consider them both as the introduction to Moses'
biography.
It appears more probable within the framework of the whole of
the
Pentateuch that the patriarchal material in Genesis is intended on its
own
to balance off the material in the Moses narratives. The biographies
of
the patriarchs are set over against the biography of Moses.
The early chapters of Genesis (1-11)
play their own part in providing an
introduction
to the whole of the Pentateuch, stressing the context of "all
humanity"
for both the patriarchal narratives and those of Moses. The
Moses
material, for its part, has been expanded with voluminous selections
from
the Sinai laws in order to show the reader the nature of the law under
which
Moses lived.
If this is an adequate description of
the Pentateuch, then its genre is not
simply
that of a biography of Moses but rather it is a series of biographies
similar
perhaps to those in Kings or Samuel where the life of Saul, for
example,
is counterbalanced to that of David. Within this series of biog-
raphies
in the Pentateuch a further textual strategy appears evident.
The chronological framework of Genesis
(periodization) and the virtual
freezing
of time in Exodus-Deuteronomy (a single period of time only, viz.,
the
lifespan of Moses) suggests that there has been a conscious effort to
contrast
the time before and leading up to the giving of the law (ante legem)
with
the time of Moses under the law (sub lege).23
Abraham lived before the
giving
of the law and Moses lived after it
was given.
With this background to the
compositional strategy of the final shape of
the
Pentateuch, we can now turn to its treatment of Abraham and Moses.
22 Knierim,
"The Composition of the Pentateuch," 395.
23 Though it is
not part of our immediate concern, one could also note indications within
the
final shape of the Pentateuch of a time "after the law" (post legem). Deuteronomy 30, for
example,
looks to a future time quite distinct from that of Moses' own day. There are
close
affinities
between this chapter and passages in the prophetic literature which look to the
time
of
the New Covenant, e.g., Jer 31:31ff.; Ezek 36:22ff.
THE MOSAIC LAW 249
Specifically,
we wish to raise the question of what the Pentateuch intends
to
say about the lives of these two great men that contributes to our under-
standing
of faith and keeping the Mosaic Law?
A complete answer to this question
cannot be given within the scope of
this
paper. We will limit ourselves to two strategically important penta-
teuchal
texts from the standpoint of its final composition, Gen 26:5 and
Num
20:12. Both texts are similar in that they offer a reflective look at the
lives
of Abraham and Moses respectively and give an evaluation that stems
from
the final stages of the composition of the Pentateuch. Furthermore,
both
texts evaluate the lives of these two great men from the perspective of
the
theology of Deuteronomy. We will see that in Gen 26:5 Abraham is
portrayed
as one who "kept the law," whereas in Num
portrayed
as one who "did not believe."
II. Abraham and the Mosaic Law (Gen 26:5)
In Gen 26:5, God says, "Abraham
obeyed my voice [ylqb. . . fmw] and
kept
my charge [ytrmwm rmwyv], my
commandments [ytvcm], my statutes
[ytvqH], and my laws [ytrvt]." Though
on the face of it, the meaning of this
verse
is clear enough, it raises questions when viewed within the larger
context
of the book. How was it possible for Abraham to obey the com-
mandments,
statutes, and laws before they were given? Why is Abraham
here
credited with keeping the law when in the previous narratives great
pains
were taken to show him as one who lived by faith (e.g., Gen 15:6)?
There
has been no mention of Abraham's having the law or keeping the law
previous
to this passage. Why, now suddenly, does the text say Abraham
had
kept the law?
The verse is recognized as
"deuteronomic" by most biblical scholars,
both
critical24 and conservative.25 Earlier biblical scholars
went to great
lengths
to explain the verse in view of its inherent historical and theological
difficulties.
For those who saw the verse as a description of Abraham's legal
24 See Erhard
Blum, Die Komposition der Vatergesckickte
(Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1984) 363, for a discussion of the
critical views.
25 F. Delitzsch
says of the verse, for example, "Undoubtedly verse 5 in this passage is
from the hand of the Deuteronomist" (A
New Commentary on Genesis [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1888] 137ff.). C. F.
Keil also recognized that these same terms were later used to describe the
Mosaic Law: "The piety of Abraham is described in words that indicate a
perfect obedience to all the commands of God and therefore frequently recur
among the legal expressions of a later date [in der spateren Gesetzessprache
]" (Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament
[Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971] 270). Cf. Benno Jacob, "Aber diese Ausdrucke
besagen, dass er auf den
verschiedensten
Gebieten sein Leben ahnlich den spateren Ordnungen des Gesetzes nach den
speziellen
Weisungen Gottes, wie sie ihm erteilt wurden oder er sie sich selbst
erschliessen
mochte,
eingerichtet hat" (Das erste Buck
der Tora Genesis [Berlin: Schocken, 1934] 548). Since,
throughout
the Pentateuch and especially in Deuteronomy, these terms denote the Mosaic
Law
(e.g., Deut 11:1; 26:17) this passage says, in no uncertain terms, that Abraham
kept the
Mosaic
Law.
250
adherence
to the law, the major problem was how Abraham could have had
access
to the Mosaic Law. Early rabbinical approaches, for example, at-
tempted
by word associations to identify each of the terms used here with
a
specific act of obedience of Abraham within the patriarchal narratives. In
that
way it could be demonstrated that Abraham knew the Mosaic Law
and
thus kept it.26 This approach, however, did not gain wide acceptance
because,
apart from a remote link to circumcision, none of the terms in Gen
26:5
could be associated with events or actions of Abraham within the
biblical
narratives.27
Another, and more common, rabbinical
explanation of 26:5 made use of
the
Talmudic teaching of the "Noahic laws."28 This approach
was also
accepted
among the early Protestant scholars.29 Thus the deuteronomic
terms
for the law in Gen 26:5 were identified by some as those general laws
given
to all men since the time of Noah.30 However, because these specific
terms
are, in fact, used later in the Pentateuch to represent the whole of the
Mosaic
Law, it proved difficult to limit them only to the concept of the
Noahic
laws. Thus for this particular passage (Gen 26:5) the Talmud itself
rejected
the notion of Noahic laws and took the position that, in his own
lifetime,
Abraham was given the whole of the Mosaic Law.31
26 The terms ytrmwm and ytvcm, for example,
were related to Abraham's obedience in
circumcision
since, according to Gen 17:9, Abraham was to "keep" (rmwt) God's covenant
in
circumcision and 21:4 records that Abraham circumcised Isaac ''as God had
commanded
[hvc] him."
27 The terms ytvqH and ytrvt, for example,
could not otherwise be associated with
Abraham's
piety in the patriarchal narratives and no amount of midrashic attempts to do
so proved successful. Another, but similar, attempt to demonstrate that Abraham
had the law of Moses is that of Walter Kaiser: "In spite of its marvelous
succinctness, economy of words, and
comprehensive
vision, it must not be thought that the Decalogue was inaugurated and promul-
gated
at Sinai for the first time. All Ten Commandments had been part of the law of
God
previously
written on hearts instead of stone, for all ten appear, in one way or another,
in Gen.
They
are: The first, Gen 35:2: 'Get rid of the forbidden gods.' The second, Gen
31:39: Laban
to
Jacob: 'But why did you steal my gods?' The third, Gen 24:3: 'I want you to
swear by the
Lord'
" (Toward Old Testament Ethics
[Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983] 81-82).
28 The Talmud
teaches that all descendants of Noah who did not follow the practices of
idolatry
were given seven divine laws. See Der
babylonische Talmud (ed. L. Godschmidt;
Judischer
Verlag, 1930) 2.373.
29 ". . . observantia
Sabbati et Circumcisionis, esus Sanguinis, cultus unius Dei, et multa
hujusmodi"
(Munster Sebastian [1489-1552], Critici
sacri: annotata doctissimorum virorum in Vetus ac Novum Testamentum [ed. J.
Pearson et al.;
30 E.g., Sefomo, Hn
ynb vvFcnw
(Torat Chaim Chumash [Jerusalem:
Mossad Harav Kook, 1987] 13).
31 Yoma 28b (Die babylonische Talmud 3.75). See Str-B 3.204-5 for further
examples. Jacob suggested that this Talmudic interpretation was an attempt to
counter the argument of Paul
in
Gal 3: 17ff. (“polemisch gegen Paulus," Das erste Buch, 549). Andreas Rivetus specifically
rejects
this view as "false" (Opera
theologica [
balah
the laws mentioned in this verse are those of the Decalogue because the verse
contains
THE MOSAIC LAW 251
As to how Abraham would have known the
law, the assumption was that
God
had revealed it to him.32 It was also held by many that Abraham
derived
the laws of Moses from his own observations,33 or even from written
tradition,
which could be traced back to Enoch.34 In Jub.
21:10, for ex-
ample,
when explaining the various laws for sacrifice, Abraham says, "for
thus
I have found it written in the books of my forefathers, and in the words
of
Enoch, and in the words ofNoah."35 The tractate Nedarim 32a
states that
Abraham
was three years old when he first began to obey the law. By means
of
gematria, the rule that permits deriving significance from the numerical
value
of the consonants of a word, the first word, bqf, is read as the
number
172
(years).36 Thus 26:5 was read as ifit said "For 172 [bqf] years Abraham
obeyed
me." Since Abraham lived for 175 years, it would have been at the
age
of three years that he first began to obey God's law.37
It is difficult to see in these early
rabbinical attempts a convincing explana-
tion
of the Genesis passage. They are rather attempts at harmonization. If, in
fact,
to keep the "commandments, statutes and laws" meant to keep the
saic
Law as the rabbis had understood these terms in Deuteronomy, then what
other
explanation remained? Abraham must have known the Mosaic Law.
As is always the case in the reading of
a text, their understanding of the
sense
of the whole determined their interpretation of this part. What was
clearly
not open to these commentators was the possibility that this verse
was
intended as an interpretation of the life of Abraham from another
perspective
than that of the law.38
10
words and the Decalogue has 172 words, the same number as the Hebrew word bqf in Gen
26:5.
See Baal Hatturim, Chumash (New York:
Philipp Feldheim, 1967) 81.
32 "God
disclosed to him the new teachings which He expounded daily in the heavenly
academy"
(Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of The Jews
[
of
obselvationes,
praesertim circa divinum cultum ex speciali Dei revelatione, et majorum qui ea
acceperant
imitatione, ut de mundis animalibus offerendis et talia, praeter
circumcisionem, et
alios
mandatos ritus" (Opera theologica
1.457). According to rabbinic teaching God himself was
guided
by the Torah in creating the world, but he hid the Torah from mankind until the
time of
Abraham:
"bqf rmxnw Mhrbx dmfw df hrvth tx h”bqh
Npc Mlvfh xrbn xlw ylvqb Mhrbx fmw rwx (Yalkut
Shemoni [Jerusalem, 1960] 972).
33 Str-B 3.205.
34 Ibid., 205-6.
35 APOT 2.44.
36 The number 172
is derived from f = 70; q = 100; and b = 2. See
Wilhelm Bacher, Die
exegetische
Temzinologie der judischen Taditionsliteratur (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1965)
127.
37 Midrash Rabbah (
apparently
to deal with the problem of idolatry in Terah's household (Josh 24:2.). If
Abraham
had
received the Mosaic Law already at age three, he could not have been influenced
by his
father's
idolatry.
38 Although Calvin
is not clear in his comments on this passage, he appears to follow the
same
line of interpretation as that reflected in the rabbis. He writes, “And
although laws,
statutes,
rites, precepts and ceremonies, had not yet been written [nondum erant
scriptae],
Moses
used these terms, that he might the more clearly show how sedulously Abraham
reg-
252
The view of the later medieval Jewish
commentaries, on the other hand,
was
that these' 'laws" were merely a form of general revelation of moral
and
ethical precepts.39 A similar interpretation is found in many
Christian
commentaries.40
The difficulty with such an interpretation is not merely the
fact
that elsewhere in the Pentateuch each of these terms is used specifically
ulated
his life according to the will of God alone--how carefully he abstained from
all the
impurities
of the heathen" (Commentaries on the
First Book of Moses Called Genesis [trans. John
King;
interpretation,
". . . under these three particulars, the whole charge or custody
forespoken of, is
comprehended;
as afterward by Moses God gave the ten Commandements, or morall preceps,
Exod
20. Judgements, or judicial lawes for punishing transgressors, Exod. 21,
&c. and statutes,
or
rules, ordinances and decrees for the service of God, Lev. 3.17. and 6.18.22.
Exod. 12.24. &
27.31.
& 29.9. & 30.21. All which Abraham observed, and is commended of God
therefore"
(Annotations upon the Five Bookes of Moses, The
Booke of the Psalmes, and the Song of Songs, or Canticles [
39 Jacob, Das erste Buck, 549. Rashi, for example,
says, " 'my commandments' are those
things
which even if they had not been written [in the Law] it is evident [Nyvxr] that they are
commanded
[tvvFchl], such as stealing and murder" (Torat Chaim Chumask, 13). Regarding the last
two terms, however, "my statutes" and "my laws," Rashi held
that they were unobtain-
able
by reason alone but were given as a command from God.
40 The Belgic
Confession (1561), for example, takes the tvcm here to be the
moral law
(praecepta),
the tvrvt as
doctrine (leges) necessary to be
believed, and the MyFqwm as political
law
(judicia). Thomas Cartwright (1535-1603) follows Nicholas of Lyra (1270-1340),
who
follows
Rashi, "Lyra ait, ea esse, quae sunt
de dictamine rationis rectae et servanda etiamsi nulla lex esset posita"
(Critici sacri, 632). Lyra, however,
did not follow Rashi on the last two terms, much to Cartwright's surprise,
" . . . a quo mirum est Lyram dissentire." Lyra understood these
terms
as follows: "tvqH cerimonias, seu statuta, ea esse, quae
pertinent ad modum colendi Dei;
trvt leges esse ista, quae non obligant,
nisi quia sunt a Deo, vel homine instituta, vel prae-
cepta"
(ibid.). Ultimately the dependency on Rashi and innovations (see previous note)
go
back
to Lyra, "cerimonias meas, seu statuta mea, et leges meas," and the
Vulgate, "praecepta
et
mandata mea et caerimonias legesque." Johannes Drusius (1550-1616) defined
these terms
thus:
"[ytrmwm]
quaecunque mandavi ut custodiret . . . [ytvcm] praecepta
moralia quae post
decalogo
comprehensa sunt . . . [ytrvt] forenses, sive quae ad judicia
pertinent" (Critici sacri,
622).
Johannes Mercerus distinguishes sharply between each of the five terms: (1) the
first term
refers
generally to Abraham's obedience in such cases as the command to leave
Chaldeans
and the binding of Isaac; (2) the second term refers to general religious
practice
which
Abraham carried out diligently as God had prescribed; (3) the third term refers
to
general
moral principles, such as the Decalogue, and are posited in the natural mind;
(4) the
fourth
term refers to rituals by which God is worshiped as well as statutes whose
rationale is
not
immediately obvious, such as the red heifer; and (5) the fifth term refers to
documents by
which
one is instructed in doctrine. "Sic Dei voluntatem partitur Moses hoc
loco, ut postea
in
Lege tradenda divisa est [but the Jewish view that Abraham had the whole of the
Mosaic
Law
is to be rejected]. . . . Non est quidem dubium quin ante Legem multa
seruarint, quae
postea
in Legem sunt redacta, ut de mundis animalibus immolandis, aut edendis, et
alia. Sed
non
sunt minutiis astringendi. . . . Sed nondum haec in legem certam abierant, ut
postea sub
Mose,
ubi sacerdotium certa familia, et certis ritibus est institutum, etc. . . . Cum
ergo hic
Moses
in Abrahamo, hac legis in suas partes distributione utitur, significat eum
absolutissime
Dei
voluntati paruisse, et per omnia morigerum fuisse, ut nihil omiserit eorum quae
tunc
praescripserat
Dominus agenda aut seruanda" (In
Genesin Primum Mosis Librum, sic a Graecis
Appellatum,
Commentarius
[Genevae, 1598] 458).
THE MOSAIC LAW 253
to
describe an aspect of the Mosaic Law, but, more importantly, elsewhere
in
the Pentateuch the same list of terms denotes the whole of the Mosaic
Law.41
Thus there seems little room for doubt that this passage is referring
to
the Mosaic Law.
Literary critics, on the other hand, are
virtually unanimous in assigning
the
verses to a "deuteronomic redaction."42 Gunkel assigned it
to a later
(more
legalistic) period, though he agreed that the terms are deuteronomis-
tisch.43
Westennannassociated the verse with the "post-deuteronomic" inter-
pretation
of
(Gesetzesgehorsam).44
Though such responses are predictable of
critical methodology, they
serve
better as illustrations of the nature of the problem than they do its
solution.
What critical scholarship is unanimous in affirming is that at some
point
in the composition of the Pentateuch, this statement about Abra-
ham's
piety was inserted to show that he kept the Mosaic Law. Critical
scholarship
has also affirmed that the verse stems from the same process of
composition
that resulted in the addition of Deuteronomy to the Pentateuch.45
Ultimately, we should attempt to find
the meaning of this verse in the
larger
strategy and purpose of the Pentateuch.46 Did the author of the
Pentateuch
intend to depict Abraham as a model of faith or as a model of
obedience
to the law? Curiously enough, the overwhelming majority of
biblical
scholars have read this passage as if the verse intended to show
Abraham's
life as an example of obedience to the law (Gesetzesgehorsam).
However, several considerations make
this assumption unlikely. The first
is
the fact that the final shape of the Abrahamic narratives is closely aligned
with
the faith theme that forms the larger structure of the Pentateuch. This
same
faith theme is also part and parcel with the "deuteronomic compo-
sition"
of Gen 26:5. That being the case, it is unlikely that the same author
would
want to stress "faith" at the expense of law at one point in the
composition
of the Pentateuch and law at the expense of "faith" at another.
41 E.g., Deut 11:1.
42 H. Holzinger, Einleitung in den Hexateuch (Freiburg:
J. C. B. ;Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1893) 3, Tabellen uber die Quellenscheidung;
Otto Procksch, Die Genesis ubersetzt und
erklart (Leipzig: A. Deichert, 1913) 151.
43 "The
thought that Abraham had fulfilled so many commandments does not suit the
spirit
of the ancient narratives [Sage], but
betrays that of a later (legalistic) piety" (Hermann
Gunkel,
Genesis [
44 Claus
Westermann, Genesis (BKAT 2;
Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1981)
518.
45 On the “deuteronomic
redaction of the Pentateuch," see Rolf Rendtorff, Das uberlieferungs-geschichtliche Problem, 164; Erhard Blum, Die Kompositim der Vatergeschichte,
362ff.; C. Brekehnans, "Die sogenannten deuteronomischen Elemente in
Gen.-Num. Ein Beitrag zur Vorgeschichte des Deuteronomiums," in Volume du Congres. Geneve 1965 (VTSupp
15; Leiden: Brill, 1966) 90-96.
46 Such an
approach follows from the observation that, on most reckonings, the verse
belongs
to the work of the author in shaping the final form of the Pentateuch.
254
The chronological setting of the
patriarchal narratives offers further evi-
dence
that this text (Gen 26:5) intends to teach Abraham's faith and not
his
obedience to the law as such. It is well known that the early chapters
of
the Pentateuch are governed by an all-embracing chronological scheme.
This
scheme runs throughout the patriarchal narratives up to the time of
the
giving of the law at Sinai. At that point, the linear chronology broadens
out
into a literary present. Thus the events of the Pentateuch are divided
between
those events before and those events during the giving of the law.
Within
this scheme, then, the patriarchs are necessarily portrayed as those
who
lived before the law (ante legem).
They are chronologically separated47
from
those who lived under the law (sub lege).
Thus any statement about
Abraham
would likely be intended as a contrast to life under the law. Further-
more,
the very existence of such a wide range of "explanations" of Abra-
ham's
"living under the law" (sub
lege), so common in rabbinical and
Christian
exegesis, testifies to the difficulties of reading Gen 26:5 as a state-
ment
about Abraham's obedience to the Mosaic Law.48
It appears reasonable to conclude,
therefore, that the importance of Gen
26:5
lies in what it tells us about the meaning of the deuteronomic terms it
uses.
It is as if the author of the Pentateuch has seized on the Abrahamic
narratives
as a way to explain his concept of "keeping the law." The author
uses
the life of Abraham, not Moses, to illustrate that one can fulfill the
righteous
requirement of the law. In choosing Abraham and not Moses, the
author
shows that' 'keeping the law" means “believing in God," just as
Abraham
believed God and was counted righteous (Gen 15:6). In effect the
author
of the Pentateuch says, "Be like Abraham. Live a life of faith and
it
can be said that you are keeping the law."
We turn now to a consideration of the
Pentateuch's portrayal of Moses.
We
will not attempt a survey of the whole of the life of Moses, but rather,
we
will look only at the assessment of Moses that lies within the composi-
tional
seams.
III. Moses and the Faith of Abraham (Num 20:1-13)
According to Schmitt, Numbers 20
contains an original account of the
rebellion
of Moses and Aaron that has been secondarily reworked into the
47 For "change
of time" as a segmentation marker in narrative, see Elisabeth Gulich and
Wolfgang
Raible, "Uberlegungen zu einer makrostrukturellen Textanalyse: J. Thurber,
The
Lover
and His Lass,"in Untersuchungen in
Texttheorie (
1977)
132-75.
48 Moreover, the
"Glaubens-Thematik," which is central to the Abrahamic narratives, is
also
related to the assessment of the life of Moses. The Pentateuch tells us that at
the end of
his
life, Moses died in the wilderness, not entering into the good land, because he
"did not
believe"
God (Num
Moses
as "faithlessness." Within such a scheme it would follow that the
Pentateuch would also
view
Abraham's "faith" as obedience to the law.
THE MOSAIC LAW 255
faith
theme. He argues that the narrative of Num 20:1-13 was originally a
self-contained
unit which, apart from v. 12, formed a coherent whole. Verse
12,
however, intrudes into this original narrative and gives it a specific
theological
interpretation ("Glaubens-Thematic"). The original theme of
the
passage was the rebellion of the people. This theme, however, was
replaced
in v. 12 by a focus on faith--an idea that had not hitherto played
a
part in the narrative.49 As chapter 20 opens, the Israelites were
encamped
at
Kadesh (20:1) but had begun to contend (bryv) with Moses on
account
of
the lack of food and water. When the Lord told Moses to take a rod and
speak
to the rock to bring forth water, he did “as [the Lord] commanded
him"
(20:9). This statement gives an initial impression that Moses and
Aaron
were obediently following the Lord's commands. At least so far.
Then
Moses, saying to
the
rock twice and water came out for both the people and their animals
(20:11).
Though in popular exposition the nature
of Moses' sin is emphasized, it
is
not, in fact, immediately clear from the text why the Lord says Moses
(and
Aaron) "did not believe" (
are
retained in the narrative.51 Nevertheless attempts to find the error
of
Moses
and Aaron and relate it to their lack of faith are numerous.52
Moses'
sin
has generally been related to three aspects of the narrative, (1) his
striking
the rock with the rod (
(
(1) There are those who argue that
Moses' lack of faith is exhibited in his
striking
the rock rather than merely speaking to it. However, as the nar-
rative
presents it, the Lord certainly intended Moses to use the rod in some
way
since it was the Lord who told Moses to get the rod and, according to
49 In Deut
rebellion
of the people--an idea consistent with Num 20:10-11, 13. The presence of the
theme
of
rebellion underlying the present text is betrayed by several wordplays
throughout the
narrative
between the people's rebellion (e.g., bryv, Myrmh, vbr) and the place
name Meribah
(hbyrm). Also, the
fact that later allusions to the Meribah incident (Num
32:51)
speak of the people's rebellion there and not the "unfaithfulness of Moses
and Aaron,"
further
supports Schmitt's argument that originally that was the central theme of the
story.
See
below.
50 The difficulty
of determining the nature of Moses' sin because of the brevity of the
narrative
was already acknowledged by early biblical scholars. Regarding this problem
Mun-
ster
said, "Et quidem verba Mose sunt tam succincta ut nemo facile ex illis
advertere possit
in
quo peccaverit" (Critici sacri
2.323).
51 At the
conclusion of the story the place of the waters is called Meribah (hbyrm), which
is
linked by means of a wordplay to the Israelite's rebellion (vbr) in 20:3. The
last statement,
20:
13b, "and he was sanctified [wdqyv] among
them," links the narrative to the location of the
people
at the beginning of the story, Kadesh (wdq), and to the
next section (
location
is again Kadesh.
52 Drusius,
"De peccato Mosis variae sunt interpretum opiniones, quas omnes recensere
longum
esset" (Critici sacri 2.328).
256
the
narrative, Moses is commended for doing ''as he commanded" (20:9).
The
narrative, however, does not recount the Lord's instructions concern-
ing
how or why Moses was to use the rod. Keil, like many, thus supposed
that
the Lord's instructions to "speak to the rock" meant that Moses was
merely
to hold the rod in his hand while he spoke to the rock.53 In this
way
it
is inferred from the narrative that Moses erred in striking the rock.54
That such a meaning is not likely a part
of the author's intention is clear
from
other narratives where Moses was explicitly commanded to strike
(hch) an object with
his rod to work a sign demonstrating God's power. In
Exod
17:6, for example, the Lord told Moses, "I will stand before you there
on
the rock at Horeb; and you shall strike [tykhv] the rock, and
water shall
come
out of it, that the people may drink." Moreover this explanation has
frequently
met with the additional argument that if God told them to take
the
rod, what else would have been expected but to use it to strike the
stone?55
In response, some have argued that the rod was the budding rod
of
Aaron and hence should not have been used for striking.56 This, for
example,
was the position of Jamieson who argued that the error of Moses
consisted
of his striking the rock "twice in his impetuosity, thus endangering
the
blossoms of the rod."57 Some have laid stress merely on the
fact that
Moses
struck the rock twice.58
(2) Another line of explanation of
Moses' faithlessness in Num 20:7-13
focuses
on what he said when he struck the
rock. The Septuagint translators
apparently
attempted to resolve the problem by translating Moses' words
53 Keil, Biblical Commentary 3.130.
54 This, for
example, is the interpretation of the passage given by Rashi. Rashi states,
"God did not command him to strike the rock but to speak to it."
55 "Quorsum
virga sumenda erat, nisi ut percuterent (T. Malvenda, Commentaria in sacram Scripturam una cum nova de verbo ad verbum ex
hebraeo translatione, variisque lectionibus, 1650, quoted in M. Pol, Synopsis criticorum [
56 Franziscus
Junius, 1587, quoted in Pol, Synopsis
1.689, "At
si
verba educenda erat aqua, cur jussus est accipere virgam?
res
transigi debebat" (Critici sacri
2.328).
57 Robert
Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, A
Commentary Critical, Experimental and Practical on the Old and New Testaments
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1945) 564. 58 Also Ainsworth, "the doubling of
his stroke shewed also the heat of his anger" (Anno-
tations,
127). Jamieson writes, "Hence some writers consider that his hasty smiting
of the rock
twice
was an act of distrust-that such a rebellious rabble would be relieved by a
miracle; and
that
as the water did not gush out immediately, his distrust rose into unbelief, a confirmed
persuasion
that they would get none" (Commentary,
564). Keil turns Moses' striking the rock
into
an evidence of lack of faith by suggesting that striking the rock was an
exercise of human
works
rather than trust in God: "He then struck the rock twice with the rod, 'as
if it depended
upon
human exertion, and not upon the power of God alone,' or as if the promise of
God
'would
not have been fulfilled without all the smiting on his part' " (Biblical Commentary, 131).
Rashi
suggested that the first time Moses struck the rock only a few drops (NypF) came out
because
God had told him to speak to it.
THE MOSAIC LAW 257
to
the people (v. 10) by "Hear me, you faithless ones [oi[ a]peiqei?j]."59 This
was
a convenient solution to the passage in Greek because it took advantage
of
the semantic range of the Greek word a]peiqei?n, used elsewhere
in the
Pentateuch
to render the Hebrew word "to rebel" (hrm).60
The Greek
a]peiqh<j can mean either
"disobedient" or "unbelieving."61
For some the sin of Moses consisted
simply of his speaking to the people
rather
than to the rock.62 Some have argued that the source of Moses' error
lay
rather in the harsh words he spoke to the people. Rather than speaking
to
the rock, as the Lord had commanded, Moses spoke harshly to the people.63
Some
have read the Hebrew hrvm (Num
and
thus said Moses sinned in calling God's people fools.65 According to
Jamieson,
"his speech conveyed the impression that it was by some power
or
virtue inherent in him or in the rod that the miracle was wrought."66
Jamieson
is apparently dependent on Sebastian Castellio (1515-1563) who
understood
the sin of Moses and Aaron to consist of their saying “shall we
draw
water?" Such words, according to Castellio, showed that they were
taking
credit for doing that which only God could do.67 Others have argued
that
when Moses struck the rock the first time no water came out and at
that
point the people began to murmur and doubt that God would give
them
water. Thus Moses called the people "you rebellious ones" and struck
the
rock a second time.68 Several early biblical scholars69
have read the
interrogative
in flsh Nmh in the sense of "whether" (num )70 and hence
rendered
Moses' words as "Are we really able to bring water out for you?"
59 The Vulgate
follows the Septuagint with the conflated rebelles
et increduli.
60 Deut 1:26; 9:7,
23, 24.
61 LSJ 182. It is
also possible that an attempt has been made to associate the word hrm with hRS or RRS, which was
translated with a]peiqh<j in Deut
62 Paul Fagius, Critici sacri 2.324. According to
Fagius, this was a view known inter
Hebraeos.
63 "Instead
of speaking to the rock with the rod of God in his hand, as God directed him,
he
spoke to the congregation, and in these inconsiderate words. . . . which, if
they did not
express
any doubt in the help of the Lord, were certainly fitted to strengthen the
people in their
unbelief,
and are therefore described in Ps. cvi.33 as prating (speaking unadvisedly)
with the
lips"
(Keil, Biblical Commentary, 130-31).
64 Matching the
Hebrew consonants m", to their Greek equivalents, m = m,
v
= w, and r =
r, with the nominative ending oj.
65 Critici sacri 2.323.
66 Jamieson, Commentary, 564.
67 "In eo
peccatum est quod dixerunt, Eliciamus,
quod Dei erat, sibi tribuentes" (Critici
sacri 2.326).
68 See Drusius, Critici sacri 2.328. Drusius was
probably referring to Rashi when he attributed this view to the antiquissimi Ebraei.
69 Fagius,
Vatablus, Drusius, Grotius (Critici sacri
2.324ff.), and Cornelius a Lapide (1567-1637). See Pol, Synopsis 1.689.
70 Following the
Vulgate.
258
In
so doing, they are able to show Moses' words to be an expression of
doubt.
An equally ingenious solution noted by Drusius, though hardly
possible,
was that the verb Mtrbd (rbd) in v. 8,
"you shall speak [to the
rock],"
was to be derived from the noun rbd,
"pestilence, plague," and
hence
should be translated' 'you shall destroy [the rock]."71
(3) Finally, the sparsity of the
narrative itself, that is the lacunae,
has
provided
the occasion for various explanations of Moses' error. Jamieson,
for
example, suggested that there were perhaps circumstances “unrecorded
which
led to so severe a chastisement as exclusion from the promised
land."72
one
particular rock and Moses wanted to give them water from a different
rock,
saying, "We are not able to give water from that rock are we?" Thus,
Munster
argued, Moses caused the people to think that God could give
them
water from some rocks but not others.73 Lightfoot argued that the
miracle
of the water from the rock, having been given already at the be-
ginning
of the wilderness wanderings, implied to Moses that a still longer
time
of waiting m the desert was to follow. The sin of Moses, then, lay in
“discrediting
God's promise to lead the people into
Another major element of uncertainty in
the story is the nature of the sin
of
Aaron. Because the story itself is silent about the actions of Aaron, the
common,
but implausible, explanation is that he sinned in remaining silent
and
not correcting Moses.75
These many and varied attempts at
explaining v. 12 illustrate that which
is
already obvious from the text itself, that is, the passage does not explicitly
tell
us the nature of Moses' (or Aaron’s) lack of faith.76 Judging from
the
passage
alone, the faithlessness of Moses does not appear to have consisted
in
his striking the rock or in his harsh words but rather lies just out of reach
somewhere
in the numerous "gaps"77 of the story. We should stress
that this
71 Critici sacri 2.328. Drusius rejected
the view because the verb did not have a direct object with tx but rather an
object with lx.
72 Jamieson, Commentary, 565.
73 Critici sacri 2.323.
74 See Jamieson, Commentary, 565.
75 Pol, Synopsis 1.689.
76 Gray's comment
has merit, "The sin which excluded Moses and Aaron from
described
in v.12 as unbelief, in v.24 [and] 2714 as rebellion. But
in v.8-11, as they now stand,
neither
unbelief nor rebellion on the part of Moses and Aaron is recorded; either the
one or
the
other has often been read into the verses, but neither is there" (George
Buchanan Gray,
A Critical and
Exegetical Commentary on Numbers [ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark,
1903] 261).
77 "From the
viewpoint of what is directly given in the language, the literary work consists
of bits and fragments to be linked and pieced together in the process of
reading: it establishes a system of gaps that must be filled in. This
gap-filling ranges from simple linkages of elements, which the reader performs
automatically, to intricate networks that are figured out con-
sciously,
laboriously, hesitantly, and with constant modifications in the light of
additional
information
disclosed in later stages of the reading" (Meir Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical
Narrative [
THE MOSAIC LAW 259
is
not a result of a deficiency in the story.78 It rather appears to be
part of
the
story's design. It is just at the point of recounting the nature of their sin
that
the author abbreviates the narrative and moves on to the divine speech
(Num
20:12). Moreover, it is just this divine speech that "fills the gap” with
the
word about faith, giving the story a sense far larger than that of its own
immediate
concerns. Thus Schmitt concludes, the reason the exact nature
of
the error of Moses is not immediately clear from the passage is because
the
author has deliberately suppressed it in
order to stress the divine pronouncement of Moses' lack of faith.79
Though we may not want to follow Schmitt's line of
78 Critical
scholarship shows little patience with the story as it now stands. "The
truth is,
the
story is mutilated" (Gray, Numbers,
262). The classic critical study of Num 20:1-13 is that
of
Hugo Gressmann in Mose und seine Zeit.
Ein Kommentar zu den Mose-Sagen (
denhoeck
& Ruprecht, 1913) 150-54. Gressmann divided the account into two separate
stories.
One, the Elohist, is an "Ortssage" explaining the abundant oasis at
Kadesh. The
other,
the later Priesterkodex, is only partially preserved and attempts to explain
why Moses
and
Aaron did not go into the land. Cornill treated Num 20:1-13 as an original
unity but saw
it
largely "mutilated" (verstummelt) by a later redactor (see H.
Holzinger, Einleitung in den
Hexateuch [
79 The importance
of the divine word about Moses' lack of faith in Num 20:12 can be seen all the
more in the fact that it abruptly breaks into a narrative that appears to be
primarily
concerned
with
be
seen "in the fact that at the close of the chapter (
recounted,
there is a back-reference to the earlier failure of Moses and Aaron.
Surprisingly,
according
to the narrative of
entering
into the land, as in
ence
to their rebellion (Mtyrm) in
waters,
"Waters of Meribah" (hbyrm). Then again,
later in the book, as the death of Moses
approached
and he was reminded that he could not enter the land with the people (Num
27:14),
there is another back-reference to Num 20:1-13. It is recalled that Moses could
not
enter
the land because, the Lord said, "You rebelled [Mtyrm] to sanctify me
[ynwydqhl] . . . at
the
waters of Meribah [tbyrm]." Similarly, in Deut 32:51
the Lord states that Moses (and
Aaron)
"acted treacherously [Mtlfm] with me not
sanctifying me [Mtwdq xl] in the midst of
the
Israelites at the waters of Meribah [tbyrm]." In each
case the Numbers 20 passage is read without reference to the lack of faith of
Moses and Aaron (
argues,
that the terms for rebellion (e.g., Mtyrm, 27:14; Mtlfm, Deut 32:51)
have been inter-
preted
by the term “faith" (Mtnmxh xl) in Num
of
faith forms the motif of the completed version of the Pentateuch, the account
of the rebellion
of
Moses and Aaron at the waters of Meribah has become an example of the theme of
faith
found
throughout the Pentateuch. A similar type of interpretation can be seen in the
reading
of
Psalm 95 in Heb 3:7-18. After an extensive quotation of the psalm, which does
not make
reference
to the faithlessness of Moses, the writer of Hebrews proceeds to interpret the
psalm
in
light of the theme of faith. The crucial statement in Psalm 95 is v. 10,
"They always go
astray
in their hearts" (Mh bbl yft). It is just
this statement that the writer of Hebrews then
interprets
as, "Take care, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving
[a]pisti<aj]
heart,
leading you to fall away from the living God."
260
argument
fully,80 we believe his analysis points the way to the central
message
of the narrative. The rebellion of Moses and Aaron (Mtyrm,
which
appears at some point to have been an important feature of the narra-
tive,
has been replaced with the focus on their faithlessness (Mtnmxh
xl,
in
the narrative to a higher level of theological reflection--the issue of faith
versus
obedience to the law.81 Their actions epitomize the negative side of
the
message of faith. Moses and Aaron, who held high positions under the
law,
did not enjoy God's gift of the land. They died in the wilderness
because
they did not believe.82
IV. Conclusion
The narrative strategy of the Pentateuch
contrasts Abraham, who kept
the
law, and Moses, whose faith was weakened under the law. This suggests
a
conscious effort on the part of the author of the Pentateuch to distinguish
between
a life of faith before the law (ante
legem) and a lack of faith under
the
law (sub lege). This is accomplished
by showing that the life of God's
people
before the giving of the law was characterized by faith and trust in
God,
but after the giving of the law their lives were characterized by
faithlessness
and failure. Abraham lived by faith (Gen 15:6), in
Israelites
lived by faith (Exod 4), they came out of
after
the giving of the law, no longer was the life of God's people marked
by
faith.83 Even their leaders, Moses and Aaron, failed to believe in
God
after
the coming of the law.
80 We need not,
however, work from Schmitt's premise regarding the priestly material or
draw
the same conclusion regarding the time of this redaction. Verse 12, in fact, is
linked to
the
rest of the narrative by means of the repetition of the notion of “sanctifying
God," ynwydqhl
(
Illegitimacy
of a Literary Tool," in Scripture
and Truth (ed. D. A. Carson and J. D. Woodbridge;
81 Schmitt has
argued that this "Glaubens-Thematik" can be traced to the influence
of
Deuteronomy.
This is not without significance for those who hold to a Mosaic authorship of
the
Pentateuch. Given the fact that in Deuteronomy it is Moses who is the speaker,
Schmitt's
"Glaubens-Thematik"
is, narratively at least, Mosaic in origin. In Deut 9:23, for example,
Moses
tells the Israelites, "And when the LORD sent you from Kadesh-barnea, . . .
you
rebelled
[vrmtv]
against the commandment of the LORD your God and did not believe
[Mtnmxh
xlv]
him or obey [Mtfmw xlv] his voice." The view which
Moses expresses here in Deuteronomy is precisely that of the Glaubens-Thematik.
82 An identical
interpretation can be found in Num
rebellion
(ddm,
v. 9) of the people, "how long will this people despise me? And how long
will
they
not believe [vnymxy xl] me?"
83 This strategy
of the author of the Pentateuch can be seen clearly in the vocabulary of
faith
(Nymxh)
which he employs in the Pentateuch. For example, throughout the Pentateuch,
each
use of the word "faith" as part of the "Glaubens-Thematik"
before the giving of the law
at
Sinai is positive: Abraham believed,
THE MOSAIC LAW 261
If we have accurately described this
aspect of the compositional strategy
of
the Pentateuch, then we have uncovered an initial and clear indication
of
the Pentateuch's view of the Mosaic Law. The view is, in fact, remark-
bly
similar to that of Jer 31:31ff. Just as Jeremiah looked back at the failure
of
the Sinai covenant and the Mosaic Law which the Israelites had failed
to
keep, so the author of the Pentateuch already held little hope for blessing
sub lege. Jeremiah
looked forward to a time when the Torah would be
internalized,
not written on tablets of stone (cf. Ezek 36:26) but written on
their
heart (Jer 31:33). In the same way the Pentateuch holds up the ex-
ample
of Abraham, a model of faith, one who did not have the tablets of
stone
but who nevertheless kept the law by living a life of faith. At the same
time
it offers the warning of the life of Moses, who died in the wilderness
because
of his lack of faith. In this respect it seems fair to conclude that the
view
of the Mosaic Law found in the Pentateuch is essentially that of the
New
Covenant passages in the prophets.84
2065
Half Day Rd.
however,
the positive statements of faith disappear. The statements about
negative,
that is, after
believe."
Thus, standing between the narratives that stress the faith of God's people and
those
that
stress their faithlessness is the account of the giving of the law at Sinai.
The last positive
statement
of faith in the Pentateuch is Exod 19:9a, the prelude to the giving of the law.
It is
significant
that in Heb
he
ends his examples from the Pentateuch with the crossing of the
immediately
to the Book of Joshua. He is clearly following here the line of argument of the
"Glaubens-Thematik"
in the Pentateuch.
84 This view of
the nature of the Pentateuch and its view of the law is similar to that of
Walther
Eichrodt who argued that in the Pentateuch the law is presented in such a way
that
it
is "impressed on the heart and conscience. Application to individual
concrete instances is
then
left in many cases to a healthy feeling for justice" (Theology of the Old Testament [2 vols.;
:
2960
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