PART THREE
\nISRAEL AT SINAI
\n(19:1\u201340:38)
\nI. The Advent of Yahweh\u2019s Presence and the Making of the Covenant (19:1\u201324:18)
\nII. Yahweh\u2019s Instructions for the Media of Worship (25:1\u201331:18)
\nIII. Israel\u2019s First Disobedience and Its Aftermath (32:1\u201334:35)
\nIV. Israel\u2019s Obedience of Yahweh\u2019s Instructions (35:1\u201340:38)
\nI. The Advent of Yahweh\u2019s Presence and the Making of the Covenant (19:1\u201324:18)
\nIsrael Prepares for Yahweh\u2019s Coming (19:1\u201315)
\nBibliography
\nBaltzer, K. The Covenant Formulary. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971. Bauer, J. B. \u201cDrei Tage.\u201d Bib 39 (1958) 354\u201358. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cK\u00f6nige und Priester, ein heiliges Volk (Ex 19, 6).\u201d BZ 2 (1958) 283\u201386. Buber, M. Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant. New York: Harper and Bros., 1958. Caspari, W. \u201cDas priestliche K\u00f6nigreich.\u201d TBl 8 (1929) 105\u201310. Driver, S. R. A Treatise on the Use of the Tenses in Hebrew. 3d ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. Fohrer, G. \u201c \u2018Priesterliches K\u00f6nigtum,\u2019 Ex. 19, 6.\u201d TZ 19 (1963) 359\u201362. Galling, K. Die Erw\u00e4hlungstraditionen Israels. BZAW 48. Giessen: Verlag von Alfred T\u00f6pelmann, 1928. Greenberg, M. \u201cHebrew segulla: Akkadian sikiltu.\u201d JAOS 71 (1951) 172\u201374. Klopfer, R. \u201cZur Quellenscheidung in Exod. 19.\u201d ZAW 18 (1898) 197\u2013235. Labuschagne, C. J. \u201cThe Emphasizing Particle Gam and Its Connotations.\u201d Studia Biblica et Semitica. Wageningen: H. Veenman & Zonen, 1966. 193\u2013203. McKenzie, J. L. \u201cThe Elders in the Old Testament.\u201d Bib 48 (1959) 522\u201340. Mendenhall, G. E. Law and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East. Pittsburgh: Presbyterian Board of Colportage, 1955. Also BA 17 (1954) 26\u201346, 49\u201376. Moran, W. L. \u201cA Kingdom of Priests.\u201d The Bible in Current Catholic Thought. J. L. McKenzie, ed. New York: Herder and Herder, 1962. 7\u201320. Muilenburg, J. \u201cThe Linguistic and Rhetorical Usages of the Particle \u05db\u05d9 in the Old Testament.\u201d HUCA 32 (1961) 135\u201360. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cThe Form and Structure of the Covenantal Formulations.\u201d VT 9 (1959) 347\u201365. Newman, M. L., Jr. The People of the Covenant. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962. Scott, R. B. Y. \u201cA Kingdom of Priests (Exodus xix 6).\u201d OTS 8 (1950) 213\u201319. Sendrey, A. Music in Ancient Israel. New York: Philosophical Press, 1969. Wildberger, H. Jahwes Eigentumsvolk. ATANT 37. Z\u00fcrich: Zwingli Verlag, 1960.
\nTranslation
\n1 In the third month of the exodus of the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt, on the very day they came to the wilderness of Sinai\u20142 they had journeyed forth from Rephidim and come to the wilderness of Sinai, where they pitched camp: indeed, Israel had pitched camp in sight of the mountain\u20143 Moses went up towards God. So Yahweh called out to him from the mountain, saying, \u201cThis is what you are to say to the family of Jacob and declare to the sons of Israel: 4 \u2018You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and that I then lifted you upon wings of eagles and brought you to myself. 5 So now, if you will pay very careful attention to my voice, and keep my covenant, then you will be my own special treasure from among all the peoples\u2014for to me belongs the whole earth\u20146 and you yourselves will be my own kingdom of priests and holy people.\u2019 These are the words that you are to repeat to the sons of Israel.\u201d
\n7 So Moses came and summoned the elders of the people. Then he established as authoritative for them all these words, just as Yahweh had commanded him. 8 All the people responded together, and they said, \u201cEverything Yahweh has spoken, we will do.\u201d Next, Moses brought back to Yahweh what the people had said.
\n9 Then Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cPay attention! I am coming to you in a thickness of cloud, to the end that the people will hear when I speak with you, and particularly so that they will have confidence in you from now on.\u201d Then Moses declared the words of the people to Yahweh.
\n10 So Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cGo to the people, and set them apart for holiness today and tomorrow. They are to wash their clothes. 11 They are to be completely ready by the third day, because on the third day Yahweh will come down, before the eyes of the whole people, onto Mount Sinai. 12 You are to establish boundaries for the people all around, warning, \u2018Be careful about going up onto the mountain, or even touching its outcropping: all who touch the mountain will certainly be executed\u201413 no hand is to touch him; rather is he to be stoned to death or mortally shot, whether beast or man he is not to live.\u2019 With the drawn-out signal of the bell-horn, they are to come up to the mountain.\u201d
\n14 So Moses went down from the mountain to the people. Then he set the people apart for holiness, and they washed their clothes. 15 Next, he said to the people, \u201cBe completely ready by the third day. Do not have intercourse with a woman.\u201d
\nNotes
\n1.a. \u05d1\u05d7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1 can mean \u201cin the new moon\u201d as well as \u201cin the month,\u201d and \u05d1\u05d9\u05d5\u05dd \u05d4\u05d6\u05d4 \u201cin that day, on the very day\u201d is sometimes understood in reference to \u05d1\u05d7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1 and so to specify that Israel reached the Sinai wilderness on the very first day of the third lunar month from the departure from Egypt: so rsv; Cassuto, 223\u201324; Childs, with some caution, 342. The more precise statement of such references as Num 1:1 and 1 Kgs 12:32 suggests, however, either that an exact reference has been deleted (so Driver, 169; and jb), or that none was intended. \u05d1\u05d9\u05d5\u05dd \u05d4\u05d6\u05d4 is taken above to refer to Moses\u2019 action in v 3. The reference to \u201cthe third month\u201d is thus read as a more general designation, v 2 is understood as an explanatory parenthesis (perhaps even an insertion), and \u201con the very day\u201d is an indication of Moses\u2019 understandable eagerness to have Israel experience at Sinai the revelation of the Presence he had experienced there.
\n1.b. \u05dc\u05e6\u05d0\u05ea \u201cwith the reference to the going out\u201d; translated \u03c4\u1fc6 \u1f10\u03be\u03cc\u03b4\u03bf\u03c5 by LXX, this is the verse from which the name Exodus has come, via LXX and Vg, into the English Bible. The only other use of \u1f10\u03be\u03cc\u03b4\u03bf\u03c5 in LXX Exodus, at 23:16, refers to the \u201cgoing out\u201d of the year.
\n2.a. MT has \u05d5\u05d9\u05d3\u05e0\u05d5 \u05d3\u05de\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8 \u201cand then they pitched camp in the wilderness.\u201d
\n3.a. LXX adds \u03c4\u1f78 \u1f44\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2, to give \u201ctowards the mountain of God.\u201d
\n3.b. LXX, Syr. have \u1f41 \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2 \u201cGod.\u201d
\n3.c. LXX reads \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03bf\u1f50\u03c1\u03b1\u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6 \u201cfrom heaven.\u201d
\n4.a. The person of the verb is made emphatic by the addition of \u05d0\u05ea\u05dd \u201cyou.\u201d
\n5.a. \u05d0\u05dd\u05be\u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05d5\u05e2 \u05ea\u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05e2\u05d5, lit., \u201cif listening you will listen.\u201d
\n5.b. LXX has \u03bb\u03b1\u1f78\u03c2 \u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03cd\u03c3\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 \u201cpeculiar people.\u201d
\n6.a. Piel impf. \u05d3\u05d1\u05e8 \u201cspeak, recount, even speak again and again\u201d; cf. GKC, \u00b6 52f, and BDB, 180\u201381.
\n7.a. The Cairo Geniza fragment has \u201cIsrael\u201d instead of \u201cpeople.\u201d
\n7.b. \u05d5\u05d9\u05e9\u05c2\u05dd \u05dc\u05e4\u05e0\u05d9\u05d4\u05dd, lit., \u201che set, fixed, determined in their presence.\u201d
\n8.a. LXX has \u1f41 \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2 \u201cGod.\u201d
\n9.a. \u05d4\u05e0\u05d4 \u201cwith ref. to the future \u2026 serves to introduce a solemn or important declaration \u2026 and is used esp. [so here] with the ptcp.,\u201d BDB, 244; cf. Driver, Hebrew Tenses, 168\u201369, \u00b6 135, (3).
\n9.b. \u05d5\u05d2\u05dd \u201cand particularly\u201d; on \u05d2\u05dd as such an \u201cemphasizing particle,\u201d see Labuschagne, Studia, 194\u2013201.
\n9.c. \u05e0\u05d2\u05d3 \u201cdeclare\u201d here parallels the use of the same verb at the end of v 3, and as this sentence is non sequitur following v 8 and the earlier part of v 9, it perhaps should be connected with that earlier sequence.
\n10.a. LXX has \u039a\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u03b2\u1f70\u03c2 \u03b4\u03b9\u03b1\u03bc\u1f70\u03c1\u03c4\u03c5\u03c1\u03b1\u03b9 \u201cgo down and instruct carefully.\u201d
\n11.a. Niph pl. ptcp of \u05db\u05d5\u05df \u201cbe firm, established, fixed, prepared\u201d: BDB, 465\u201366.
\n12.a. SamPent has \u05d4\u05d4\u05e8 \u201cthe mountain.\u201d
\n12.b. \u05e1\u05d1\u05d9\u05d1 \u201ccircuit, round about,\u201d in reference to the circumference of the base of the mountain.
\n12.c. \u05dc\u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u201cto say, saying,\u201d translated \u201cwarning\u201d in this context. SamPent reads \u05d4\u05e2\u05dd \u05e8\u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u05d5\u05d0\u05dc \u201cand to the people you are to say.\u201d
\n12.d. \u05de\u05d5\u05ea \u05d9\u05d5\u05de\u05ea \u201cbe put to a violent death\u201d; cf. BDB 559\u201360 \u00a7 2.a. & b.
\n13.a. \u05db\u05d9 is \u201coften used adversatively to denote a striking contrast\u201d: Muilenburg, HUCA 32 [1961] 139.
\n13.b. inf abs before the verb, intensifying the verbal idea (cf. GKC, \u00b6 113n), in this context indicating stoning\/shooting to death.
\n13.c. \u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05da \u201cdraw, drag, prolong, continue\u201d (BDB, 604), in this case the signal of the \u05d9\u05b9\u05d1\u05b5\u05dc, described by Sendrey (Music, 368\u201371) as a horn, perhaps even a \u05e9\u05c1\u05d5\u05e4\u05b8\u05e8 or a \u05e7\u05b6\u05e8\u05b6\u05d5, to which has been added a \u201cmetal sound bell\u201d to amplify the resonance of the horn\u2019s sound. Thus \u05d9\u05b9\u05d1\u05b5\u05dc is rendered \u201cbell-horn\u201d above. \u1f45\u03c4\u03b1\u03bd \u03b1\u1f31 \u03c6\u03c9\u03bd\u03b1\u1f76 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f31 \u03b1\u1f31 \u03c3\u03ac\u03bb\u03c0\u03b9\u03b3\u03b3\u03b5\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f21 \u03bd\u03b5\u03c6\u03ad\u03bb\u03b7 \u1f00\u03c0\u03ad\u03bb\u03b8\u1fc3 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u1f45\u03c1\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 \u201cwhen the sounds [prob. = \u2018thunder\u2019] and the trumpets and the cloud leave the mountain.\u201d
\n15.a. \u05d0\u05dc\u05be\u05ea\u05d2\u05e9\u05c1\u05d5 \u05d0\u05dc\u05be\u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05d4, lit., \u201cdo not approach, draw near a woman,\u201d is here a prohibition of sexual intercourse during a period of cultic purity, in accord with such requirements as those laid down in Lev 15:16\u201333 and 1 Sam 21:5\u20137 [4\u20136].
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThis section is the introduction to what may be called the Sinai narrative sequence. On the basis of what remains of that sequence in the compilation that is Exodus, we may assume a narrative beginning with Israel\u2019s long-awaited arrival at Sinai, then going on to include accounts of Yahweh\u2019s Advent there, the making of the covenant between Yahweh and Israel, Israel\u2019s first disobedience and Yahweh\u2019s subsequent judgment, and finally, the renewed covenant and the qualified relationship of the Presence of Yahweh. In analyzing what remains of such a narrative sequence in our canonical Exodus, we can posit, in broad terms, something like this: Exod 19:1\u20133a, 10\u201319a; 20:1\u201321; 24:1\u201318; 32:1\u201334:35.
\nThis narrative has been expanded by the accretion of explanatory and qualifying material and by the insertion of blocks of cultic material linked to Sinai for the purpose of establishing their authority. No doubt, the narrative that must originally have existed, even as an early composite, has been considerably pruned, for a variety of reasons. Some of the drama and tension of such an earlier sequence can be recovered by reading the narrative sections seriatim, without the cumbrance of the sections applying the covenant requirements and setting forth the media and practices of worship. There is much to be said, indeed, for writing the commentary on this narrative sequence in the order of the events it recounts, and for dealing with the materials that have so obviously been squeezed into it in a separate treatment altogether. Not least of the advantages of such an approach is the recovery of more of the excitement and some of the integrity of the original narrative: Exod 32, for example, just makes more sense read immediately following Exod 24, as does Exod 24 following 20:21.
\nThere are some disadvantages to such a procedure also. An obvious one is the difficulty created by such a disarrangement of the canonical text for the use of a commentary as a ready reference. This is surely an essential function of a commentary, and one considerably complicated by departure from the biblical sequence of a given book. The superb Anchor Bible Jeremiah by John Bright (ab 21, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965) is a case in point. Another disadvantage of course is the lack of any firm agreement about where any save the most obvious seams occur. The sections on the media of worship are far easier to detach from the narrative sequence than is the Book of the Covenant, or, even more, the expansions of the Decalogue.
\nThe greatest and most telling disadvantage is that posed by the compromise of the final form of the Book of Exodus. However disruptive that form may be, of whatever narrative sequences we can suppose, it is in fact the one sequence we know without speculation. Though it is an obvious compilation, it is a compilation based on a coherent theological intention, and any understanding of Exodus as a whole, or even in major sections and subsections, must keep the intention in view.
\nA still further complicating factor is posed by the nature of the narratives themselves: they too are obvious compilations, in some cases so often expanded and contracted that they can no longer be unraveled into the separate strands that made them up. Nowhere in Exodus is this more clearly the case than in the Sinai narrative sequence. The account of Yahweh coming to Israel at Sinai and entering into covenant with Abraham\u2019s descendancy is so much at the center of OT theology and faith that it received repeated attention and became perhaps the one most reworked passage in the Bible. This being so, all of the many attempts to dissect the Sinai narrative sequence, either on source-literary or traditio-analytical terms, have produced suggestions only, and in general each suggestion has been opposed by another of equal authority.
\nThis most important of the narrative sequences of Exodus is examined here with the following assumptions: (1) the Advent of Yahweh\u2019s Presence at Sinai is the formative event of OT faith; (2) such an event inevitably gave rise to multiple narrative accounts; (3) these accounts were combined and recombined across many years, to produce a series of narratives, of which the Sinai narrative of our Exodus is itself a composite; (4) that composite has a development of expansion and revision all its own, complicated most of all by the insertion and addition of large blocks of covenantal and cultic material authorized by reference to Sinai; and (5) any part of the narrative must be read as a part of the larger sequence, extending from the arrival at Sinai and the establishment there of one kind of relationship with Yahweh to the prelude to the departure from Sinai under a different and tempered kind of relationship with Yahweh.
\nThe key to the Sinai narrative sequence lies in its theological purpose, not in its narrative-source or traditio-historical roots. Indeed, the remarkable way in which those roots have been manipulated has created a quagmire of problems for the literary critic. Though many helpful observations may be harvested from the critical work of more than a century, the sum total of that work is a clear assertion that no literary solution to this complex narrative has been found, with more than a hint that none is likely to be found. Far too much has been done with and to this material on its way to the form in which we know it for any such solution to be any longer a realistic possibility. This accounts for the variety of source assignment among the critics, as it does for the failure also of the attempts to rearrange the narrative sequence to explain discrepancies in the movement of Moses up and down Mount Sinai, or to connect the people\u2019s reaction to the theophany in 20:18\u201321 with the theophany itself in 19:16\u201319a.
\nThe form of the entire Sinai narrative sequence has been determined by a single factor. That factor is also the reason for the attraction into and onto the Sinai narrative sequence of a variety of material having to do primarily with the requirements of the covenant and the media of worship, and secondarily, with the special role of Moses and those who extend Moses\u2019 contribution. This factor is of course the gift by Yahweh of his Presence to Israel. From beginning to end, and in both its positive and its negative features, the Sinai narrative sequence, and indeed the Book of Exodus of which it is the important center, is linked to the Advent of Yahweh\u2019s Presence to Israel at Sinai. And that central event, which clearly gave rise to an array of separate narratives, is here reflected variously in a compilation of at least several of them.
\nTo this larger narrative sequence, then, the compilation of Exod 19:1\u201315 is introductory. The usual source division of these verses is between J and E with an itinerary notice (vv 1\u20132a) from P and some redaction by D in vv 3b\u20138. The elaborate analysis of Klopfer (ZAW 18 [1898] 197\u2013217), for example, ascribes vv 1\u20132a to P, vv 2b and 3a to E v 3b\u03b1 to \u201can interpolator,\u201d vv 3b\u03b2\u00a7\u20137a to a Deuteronomistic redactor, vv 7b\u20138 to J, v 9a, b to J in close combination with E and vv 10\u201315 predominantly to E, with an admixture of J. Beer (96\u201397) gives vv 1\u20132a to P, vv 2b\u20133a to E1, vv 3b\u20138 in their present form to R, v 9 to J2, v 10 to E1, vv 11\u201313a to J2, vv 13b\u201314 to E1, and v 15 to J2. Noth (154\u201358) assigns vv 1\u20132a to P also, then v 2b to \u201cone of the older sources\u201d (\u201cmay be\u201d E, 154), v 3a to E, vv 3b\u20139 to \u201ca later addition,\u201d probably from Dtr, vv 10\u201315 to J. Newman (People of the Covenant, 39\u201351) attributes vv 2b\u20136, 10\u201311a, 14\u201315 to E; and vv 9a, 11b\u201313, 7\u20138, in this sequence, to J. Hyatt (196\u2013202) ascribes vv 1\u20132a to P; vv 9a, 10\u201316a to J; vv 2b\u20133a to E; vv 3b\u20138 to RD; and v 9b he calls a \u201clate addition.\u201d Childs (344\u201364) gives a good survey of literary-critical and traditio-historical work from Wellhausen forward, but wisely refrains from any specific source assignment.
\nThe form of Exod 19:1\u201315 is not determined by the emphasis of a single literary source, nor by the motif of a growing traditional emphasis. It is set rather by the supreme event of Exodus, the Advent of Yahweh, which in the Sinai narrative sequence bends everything else to its purpose and provides the magnet to which covenantal and cultic materials needing authority are drawn. The section at hand functions as a two-part introduction to that supreme event, and that is what determines the form it takes. The first part of that introduction (vv 1\u20138), the heart of which is the famous \u201cEagle\u2019s Wings\u201d speech of Yahweh, serves as a general prologue to the entire Sinai narrative sequence: thus it quite appropriately makes reference to the covenant and to Israel\u2019s role as Yahweh\u2019s special people in advance of the events of Exod 20 and 24. The second part of the introduction (vv 9\u201315) serves as a specific anticipation of the account of Yahweh\u2019s advent itself, in the instruction of the people of Israel to prepare themselves for the experience of the momentous event to come. To these introductory ends, material from several separate narratives may have been combined, but the determining force behind the combination is the great event being introduced.
\nComment
\n1\u20133a This beginning of the Sinai narrative sequence serves primarily to connect the events about to occur with those already past which were nevertheless always in movement toward Sinai and what would occur there. There is in \u05d1\u05d9\u05d5\u05dd \u05d4\u05d6\u05d4 \u05d1\u05d0\u05d5 \u201con the very day they came\u201d (v 1) \u2026 \u05d5\u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05d4 \u05e2\u05dc\u05d4 \u201cand Moses went up\u201d (v 3) a clear connection with the eagerness of Moses to bring Israel to Sinai and to the experience of Yahweh\u2019s Presence he had known there: Moses goes up toward God \u201con the very day\u201d of Israel\u2019s arrival at Sinai. The urgency of this completely natural narrative touch has been obscured by the insertion of what amounts to a parenthetic note designed to connect this sequence also with the geographic itinerary, of 12:37; 13:20; 14:2; 15:22\u201323, 27; 16:1; and 17:1. It is possible that this insertion has been made necessary by the relocation of the narrative of chap. 18 described above (Form\/Structure\/Setting on 18:1\u201312). The disruption of so carefully plotted (see Comment on 16:1) a movement toward Sinai prompted the compiler to insert a note reestablishing the sequence of the journey. He set it, appropriately enough, following the very next reference to the wilderness of Sinai, but in so doing created disruption and confusion of his own at the beginning of the Sinai narrative sequence by obscuring the reference of \u201con the very day.\u201d
\n3b Moses\u2019 eager and no doubt apprehensive rush up the mountain where he had experienced Yahweh\u2019s Presence is met immediately, in this narrative sequence, by an instruction from Yahweh, who calls out to him \u201cfrom the mountain.\u201d The impression the account leaves is that Yahweh is as eager for Moses and Israel to arrive at Sinai as they are to get there, and he gives Moses a message addressed quite formally to \u201cthe family of Jacob\u201d and to \u201cthe sons of Israel,\u201d that is, to the house and descendancy of Jacob = Israel. As Muilenburg (VT 9 [1959] 354) has pointed out, this address of Yahweh to the people via Moses is \u201cprobably\u201d of the provenance of \u201cthe royal message\u201d; more than a general connection with the pattern of the royal\/oracular patterns of Mari or the Hittite kings, however, is apt to be misleading.
\n4\u20136 The speech that follows this formal messenger-introduction is a poetic summary of covenant theology, and the careful economy and memorable phrasing of its language suggests that it was a set piece, composed for repeated use at covenant renewal ceremonies. It follows the standard direction of such pieces, both within (see the lengthy list of Muilenburg, VT 9 [1959] 355, n. 2) and without (see Mendenhall, Law and Covenant, 3\u201313, 24\u201335, and Baltzer, Covenant Formulary, 9\u201331) the OT, from the declaration of what Yahweh has done to the specification of the appropriate avenues of response by those for whom he has done it. These verses may very well have been taken from a standard covenant renewal liturgy and woven into the introduction of the Sinai narrative sequence to serve here the same summary purpose they had in their original setting, and to provide a familiar and theme-setting point of contact for the important sequence to follow.
\n4 Yahweh\u2019s reference to what he has done emphasizes that the people of Israel, for whom he has done it, have experienced it at first hand: They have seen for themselves (1) what he \u201cdid to the Egyptians,\u201d a summary of the entire proof-of-the Presence narrative from the first of the mighty acts through the deliverance at the sea; (2) that he \u201clifted them on eagles\u2019 wings,\u201d a summary of the proof of his Presence through the variety of guidance and provision in the wilderness; and (3) that he has brought them to himself, to the mountain of his special Presence, to Sinai\/Horeb. A fuller application of the eagles\u2019 wings metaphor is made in the \u201cSong of Moses\u201d at Deut 32:11\u201312. As Buber (Moses, 102) has so poetically shown, the image is one of the utter dependency of Israel and of the tender and protective care of Yahweh. The double emphasis of v 4 is that Yahweh has done what has been done for Israel and that the people have themselves seen and experienced his mighty work on their behalf.
\n5 \u05d5\u05e2\u05ea\u05d4 \u05d0\u05dd \u201cso now, if\u201d sets the frame for Yahweh\u2019s expectation of Israel in voluntary response. Yahweh is not forcing these people to serve him, as some conquering king might do; that is but one of the drawbacks of too close an equation of this and other OT covenant passages with ANE covenant formulary, both real and conjectured. This \u201cso now, if\u201d is not even the offer of a \u201cchoice between obedience or disobedience,\u201d as Muilenburg (VT 9 [1959] 353) has suggested. Yahweh is here offering Israel the means of appropriate response to what he has done for them, if they choose to make it. The correct comparison is with Josh 24:15, \u201cchoose for yourselves this day\u201d (also introduced by \u05d0\u05dd), rather than with the \u201cyou shall \u2026\u201d of those who have made a commitment to Yahweh. What Israel is to do if they choose to make a response to what Yahweh has done is to pay the most careful attention to his instruction concerning what is expected of them and then to \u201ckeep,\u201d that is, to abide by, the terms of his covenant.
\nAn affirmative response to Yahweh\u2019s \u201cif\u201d on the part of the people of Israel will mean the birth of \u201cIsrael\u201d as Yahweh\u2019s people. Without that affirmative response, indeed, there would have been only \u201csons of Israel,\u201d the descendants of Jacob. With the affirmative response, \u201cIsrael,\u201d a community of faith transcending biological descendancy, could come into being. That community, an entity new to the narrative of Exodus in its sequential development to this point, but the entity all the same because of whom and in a sense from whom Exodus originated, is described here by three separate but interrelated images. Israel\u2019s affirmative response will first of all mean the genesis of a people who will be Yahweh\u2019s own \u05e1\u05d2\u05dc\u05d4 \u201cspecial treasure.\u201d Greenberg (JAOS 71 [1951] 172\u201374) has linked this word to an Akkadian term, sikiltu, which refers to a personal collection or hoard. The image presented is that of the unique and exclusive possession, and that image is expanded by what appears to be an addition (\u201cfor to me belongs the whole earth\u201d) to suggest the \u201ccrown jewel\u201d of a large collection, the masterwork, the one-of-a-kind piece.
\n6 The second and third images are introduced, as was Yahweh\u2019s statement of his work for Israel, with an emphatic \u201cyou yourselves,\u201d a deft underscoring of the motif of uniqueness stressed by \u05e1\u05d2\u05dc\u05d4 \u201cspecial treasure.\u201d Such a people will be Yahweh\u2019s own \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05ea \u05db\u05d4\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd \u201ckingdom of priests.\u201d This phrase, since it is unique in the OT, has occasioned an array of interpretations, both in the ancient Versions (see Scott, OTS 8 [1950] 213\u201316) and among modern commentators. Scott (216\u201319) has proposed the meaning \u201ca kingdom set apart like a priesthood,\u201d and followed Galling\u2019s (Erw\u00e4hlungstraditionen, 27) statement that \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05ea \u05db\u05d4\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd is not a \u201cterminus technicus\u201d but a designation of Israel as those who worship or venerate Yahweh. Bauer (BZ 2 [1958] 284\u201386) reads \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05ea as an absolute rather than construct form, then links it to \u05db\u05d4\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd to get \u201ckings [who are] priests,\u201d or \u201cpriestlike kings,\u201d whose royalty is an extension of Yahweh\u2019s kingship: \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05ea matches the \u05d2\u05d5\u05d9 \u201cpeople\u201d and \u05db\u05d4\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd the \u05e7\u05d3\u05d5\u05e9\u05c1 \u201choly\u201d of the following phrase. Wildberger (Jahwes Eigentumsvolk, 80\u201395), arguing from 2 Sam 8:18 and 1 Kgs 4:5, takes \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05ea \u05db\u05d4\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd as an honorific title connecting the lordship of Yahweh over Israel with the lordship of Israel over the nations. Moran (Current Catholic Thought, 11\u201320), following and supplementing Caspari (TBl 8 [1929] 105\u201310), takes the view that \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05ea can mean \u201cking\u201d or \u201croyalty\u201d and \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05ea \u05db\u05d4\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd, \u201ca royalty of priests,\u201d leading the worship of Yahweh\u2019s \u05d2\u05d5\u05d9 \u05e7\u05d3\u05d5\u05e9\u05c1 \u201choly nation\u201d in \u201cthe pre-monarchical period.\u201d Fohrer (TZ 19 [1963] 359\u201362) agrees with much of Moran\u2019s argument, expanding it from ANE parallels and by reference to grammatical and syntactical arguments, but dating the usage somewhat later.
\nWhile the notion of Beer (97) that the root of the idea of the priesthood of all believers lies in this passage goes too far, it is also excessive to claim that v 6 is a reference to a royal elite, whether among kings or priests. The phrases \u201cspecial treasure,\u201d \u201ckingdom of priests,\u201d and \u201choly people\u201d are closely related to one another, and although they each refer to the whole of the people who will pay attention to and follow the covenant, they are not to be taken as synonymous, either all three of them or the second two of them. Israel as the \u201cspecial treasure\u201d is Israel become uniquely Yahweh\u2019s prized possession by their commitment to him in covenant. Israel as a \u201ckingdom of priests\u201d is Israel committed to the extension throughout the world of the ministry of Yahweh\u2019s Presence. \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05ea here is exactly what it appears to be, a noun in construct relationship with \u05db\u05d4\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd, and it describes what Israel was always supposed to be: a kingdom run not by politicians depending upon strength and connivance but by priests depending on faith in Yahweh, a servant nation instead of a ruling nation. Israel as a \u201choly people\u201d then represents a third dimension of what it means to be committed in faith to Yahweh: they are to be a people set apart, different from all other people by what they are and are becoming\u2014a display-people, a showcase to the world of how being in covenant with Yahweh changes a people.
\nThe question of the date of this marvelous summary sequence is unanswerable. In concept, it began evolving with the birth of Israel as a people of faith in covenant with Yahweh. As a summary used in the cultic context of covenant renewal services, it certainly predates the Deuteronomistic period. Whether it also predates the monarchy is unlikely.
\n7\u20138 Moses\u2019 summons of the elders for his commanded report of Yahweh\u2019s words is consonant with their role as the representatives of the people. As McKenzie has shown (Bib 4 [1959] 523\u201324), often when the elders are gathered, the people are addressed. So here, the people, \u201call \u2026 together,\u201d respond following Moses\u2019 explanation (\u201che established as authoritative for them all these words\u201d) that they will do everything Yahweh has said, a statement that may imply more than is specified in the \u201ceagles\u2019 wings\u201d summary (\u201cpay very careful attention\u201d and \u201ckeep\u201d). Moses then reports the people\u2019s response to Yahweh.
\n9 The logical next step in the narrative is the anticipation of the Advent of Yahweh, in the instructions for the preparation of the people, but what we have instead is a statement of Yahweh to Moses concerning Moses\u2019 authentication as a leader in whom the people can have unwavering confidence in time to come. This verse, which includes also another reference to Moses\u2019 report to Yahweh of the people\u2019s response to his words, is best considered an addition to the earlier versions of this narrative, an addition designed to offset further the negation of the \u201cmurmuring\u201d narratives and to augment the role of Moses as the needed intermediary between Yahweh and the people. This theme is secondary, however, to the main concern of Exod 19, the Advent of Yahweh. Indeed it is attracted by the theophany, and by the emphasis throughout the narrative that the theophany was experienced by the whole people. This emphasis may account for the placement of the insertion, immediately before the instruction for the preparation of the people for their meeting with Yahweh. It is an insertion of a piece with the verses at the end of chap. 19, in which Aaron also is allowed a special nearness to Yahweh, and at 20:21; 24:1\u20132, 9\u201318; 33:11, 17\u201323; and 34:29\u201335, and one somewhat out of step with a sequence beginning and ending with the preparation of the people for an experience Moses has had already. The additional reference to Moses\u2019 report of the people\u2019s words to Yahweh, using \u05e0\u05d2\u05d3 \u201cdeclare,\u201d may possibly be displaced from the end of v 6, where it would fit better; or it may be, as Beer (97) wrote, a repetition of v 8b that should be deleted.
\n10\u201312 Following the agreement of the people to hear and keep the covenant of Yahweh and thus to commit themselves to becoming the people so special to him and for him, Yahweh next instructs Moses to prepare them for the theophany to come. He is to \u201cset them apart for holiness,\u201d for two days. Not all that this involves is specified, apparently, only that they are to wash their clothes (v 10) and refrain from sexual intercourse (v 15). Moses himself is to set boundaries for the people around the circumference of Sinai, with specific instructions regarding its approach and severe warnings concerning the observance of these boundaries. All preparations are to be made by \u201cthe third day,\u201d when Yahweh will come down onto Sinai, and\u2014on this the text is emphatic\u2014\u201cbefore the eyes of the whole people.\u201d J. B. Bauer (Bib 39 [1958] 354\u201358), who has examined biblical and extrabiblical references to \u201cthe third day,\u201d has come to the conclusion that the phrase is a general expression for an interdeterminate brief period of time, as in the contemporary saying \u201cein \u2018paar\u2019 Tagen.\u201d This interpretation does not, however, account for the persistence of the phrase through the whole range of the biblical narrative, in which nearly always it is used with a sense of rising anticipation.
\n13 The prohibition against touching Mount Sinai, like the prohibition against touching those who have violated that restriction, is based on the belief that holiness, like uncleanness, was infectious through physical contact (Durham, Touch, Taste and Smell, 108\u201322). With the Advent of Yahweh, Mount Sinai would become holy by virtue of his special Presence there, and that holiness would constitute a danger to all persons and everything forbidden contact with it (cf. 2 Sam 6:6\u20138 and 1 Chr 13:9\u201310; see Durham, 229\u201330). Thus any person or any creature touching any part of the mountain beyond the boundaries that Yahweh has commanded Moses to set is to be stoned or shot (presumably by archers or even by slingers, Judg 20:16) to death.
\nThe signal for the people to come up on the third day to the boundaries set by Moses is to be a sustained blast on the bell-horn, either a ram\u2019s horn or some other type of horn whose tone was amplified by the attachment of a metal resonance-bell. The sound produced by this arrangement would probably have been far more piercing and awesome signal than a musical tone.
\n14\u201315 Moses took these instructions from Yahweh to the people. He consecrated them for the momentous experience of the third day. As bidden, they washed their clothes. Moses then reminded them of the need to be completely ready by the third day, with the additional instruction that they were not to \u201ccome near \u05e0\u05d2\u05e9\u05c1 to a woman,\u201d a euphemism for sexual intercourse. This prohibition is parallel to the prohibition against touching the isolated area of Mount Sinai: a man\u2019s semen rendered both the man and the woman with whom he was having intercourse unclean and therefore cultically unacceptable for a specified period (Lev 15:16\u201318). The reason for this has to do with the holiness of what may be called a life-immanence connected with the Presence of Yahweh (Durham, Touch, Taste and Smell, 93\u201396). The people must take care to be cultically pure by the third day, so that they may have their own part in Yahweh\u2019s revelation of his Presence.
\nExplanation
\nThe twofold introduction to the most important event of Exodus, and even of the OT itself, is thus set forth. There is, first, a prologue to the entire Sinai narrative sequence, in the form of a summary of Yahweh\u2019s deeds for Israel and of his hopes for Israel if they choose to make a response to what he has done. There is, second, a narrative of the preparation of Israel for the experience of Yahweh\u2019s Presence, to be manifested to them on the third day following the arrival at Sinai. These two sequences are linked by the people\u2019s response to what Yahweh has done and said, a response that prompts his further instructions.
\nThere is without question clear evidence in these lines of multiple narratives in compilation. What is most important about them, however, is their focus, which overrides any inconsistencies apparent in them in its emphasis upon the great event about to take place. The first verses of this section suggest that this event is very much the act of Yahweh for which all else he has done has been preparatory and toward which all else has been moving. The following verses make plain that Israel has an important part in what Yahweh hopes to do beyond this great event, and beyond even Israel. And the concluding verses make it clear that the sole recipients of the great event to come are the people of Israel: not just to Moses or the elders or any elite company of priests is Yahweh coming on the third day, but to the people of Israel themselves. This emphasis is a studied one, repeated throughout this section, and it is in a way the essential point of a sequence introducing the great event of Exodus, Yahweh\u2019s Advent, by stressing the role and the preparation of the people to whom and for whom he comes, the people whose very being is to be related directly to the degree to which they receive or ignore his Presence.
\nYahweh Comes to Israel at Sinai (19:16\u201325)
\nBibliography
\nClifford, R. J. The Cosmic Mountain in Canaan and the Old Testament. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972. Jeremias, J. Theophanie. WMANT 10. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukitchener Verlag, 1965. Klopfer, R. \u201cZur Quellenscheidung in Exod 19.\u201d ZAW 18 (1898) 197\u2013235. Koenig, J. \u201cLe Sinai, montagne de feu dans un d\u00e9sert de t\u00e9n\u00e8bres.\u201d RHR 167 (1965) 129\u201355. Terrien, S. The Elusive Presence. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978. Vaux, R. de. \u201cLes Fouilles de Tell El-Far\u2019ah, pr\u00e8s Naplouse.\u201d RB 62 (1955) 541\u201389. Weiser, A. \u201cZur Frage nach den Beziehungen der Psalmen zum Kult: Die Darstellung der Theophanie in den Psalmen und im Festkult.\u201d Festschrift Alfred Bertholet. Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1950. 513\u201349.
\nTranslation
\n16 And so it was, on the third day, when the morning was breaking, that there were rumblings of thunder and flashes of lightning, and a heavy cloud upon the mountain. The sound of a ram\u2019s horn was very strong, so much so that all the people in the camp were terrified. 17 Then Moses led the people out from the camp to encounter God. They took a position at the bottom of the mountain, 18 The whole of Mount Sinai was smoking from the Presence of Yahweh, who came down upon it in the fire\u2014indeed, the smoke of it boiled up like smoke from the pottery-kiln, and the whole mountain shook violently. 19 The sound of the ram\u2019s horn meanwhile was moving, and growing very strong.
\nMoses spoke, and God answered him in a rumble of thunder.
\n20 Thus Yahweh came down upon Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain; Yahweh summoned Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. 21 Then Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cGo down, caution the people, to keep them from pushing through toward Yahweh to see: many of them then would fall dead. 22 And be sure the priests who approach Yahweh in ministry set themselves apart for holiness, to keep Yahweh from rushing upon them in punishment.\u201d
\n23 So Moses answered Yahweh, \u201cThe people are not permitted to go up Mount Sinai, because you yourself cautioned us, specifying, \u2018Establish boundaries for the mountain, and set it apart for holiness.\u2019 \u201d 24 But Yahweh replied to him, \u201cGet along, go down\u2014then you go up, and Aaron along with you: but the priests and the people are not to push through to go up toward Yahweh, else he will rush upon them in judgment!\u201d
\n25 Moses then went down to the people, and said to them.\u2026
\nNotes
\n16.a. \u05d1\u05d4\u05d9\u05ea \u05d4\u05d1\u05e7\u05e8 \u201cin the happening, being of the morning\u201d: note BDB, 90, \u201cFollowed by an inf constr, \u05d1\u05b0\u05bc forms a periphrasis for the gerund, though in English it is commonly rendered by a verb and conj\u201d Cf. also BDB, 224\u201325.
\n16.b. \u05e7\u05dc\u05ea, lit., \u201cvoices, sounds\u201d; see BDB, 877 \u00a7 2.a.b.
\n16.c. The sound is the amplified sound described above, n. 13.c., and is \u201cvery strong\u201d because it is near at hand. Here the instrument is called simply a \u05e9\u05c1\u05e4\u05e8 \u201cram\u2019s horn\u201d; in v 13 it is called a \u05d9\u05d1\u05dc \u201cbell-horn.\u201d
\n16.d. Special waw in this context.
\n17.a. \u05d4\u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05ea\u05dd. The definite form refers to the God, \u201cthe (true) God,\u201d BDB, 43\u201344 \u00a7 3. Cf. Deut 4:35, \u05db\u05d9 \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u05d4\u05d5\u05d0 \u05d4\u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd \u201cthat Yahweh he is the God.\u201d
\n18.a. The sequence of MT emphasizes Presence. Lit., it reads: \u201cfrom a Presence that came down upon it, Yahweh in the fire.\u201d Presence and Yahweh are brought together above to make this emphasis as plain in Eng. as it is in Heb.
\n18.b. LXX has \u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03b8\u03b5\u1f78\u03bd \u201cGod.\u201d
\n18.c. LXX has instead \u03ba\u03b1\u03af \u1f10\u03be\u03ad\u03c3\u03c4\u03b7 \u03c0\u1fb6\u03c2 \u1f43 \u03bb\u1f70\u03c2 \u03c3\u03c6\u0301\u03b4\u03c1\u03b1 \u201cand the whole people were utterly astonished.\u201d
\n19.a. See n. 16.d.
\n19.b. \u05d4\u05d5\u05dc\u05d3 \u201cmoving\u201d here needs to be taken literally; the warning sound of the amplified ram\u2019s horn is \u201cgrowing very strong\u201d because it is moving closer to the mountain and to the people to indicate the arriving Presence of Yahweh.
\n19.c. This sentence is not continuous with what precedes or follows it; see Form\/Structure\/ Setting below.
\n19.d. \u05d1\u05e7\u05d5\u05dc \u201cin thunder\u201d; see n. 16.b But cf. Terrien (Elusive Presence, 127): \u201cthe meaning of the word q\u00f4l (vs. 19b), used for the answer of God, is uncertain: it may refer to a thunderstroke or to an articulated voice.
\n21.a. LXX has \u1f41 \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2 \u201cGod.\u201d
\n21.b. \u05e4\u05df \u201cconj (averting or deprecating),\u201d BDB, 814\u201315.
\n21.c. \u05e0\u05e4\u05dc \u201cfall,\u201d but in this context, of death brought by judgment: note BDB, 657 \u00a7 2.a., \u201cEsp. of violent death (c. 96t.).\u201d
\n22.a. \u05d5\u05d2\u05dd \u201cand be sure\u201d; cf. Labuschagne, Studia, 200\u2013203.
\n22.b. LXX reads \u03ba\u03c5\u03c1\u03af\u1ff3 \u03c4\u1ff7 \u03b8\u03b5\u1ff7 \u201cYahweh God.\u201d
\n22.c. \u05e0\u05d2\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cdraw near, approach,\u201d + \u05d0\u05b6\u05dc \u201cto\u201d + Yahweh, as here, or \u05de\u05d6\u05d1\u05d7 \u201caltar\u201d as in 28:43, has reference to the approach of the priests to Yahweh\u2019s Presence in the ministry of worship.
\n22.d. \u05e4\u05e8\u05e5 \u201cbreak through, burst upon\u201d refers here and in v 24, as in 2 Sam 5:20 and 6:8; Pss 60:3[1] and 106:29, to the sudden and violent onslaught of Yahweh in a forewarned judgment.
\n23.a. LXX has \u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03bd \u201cGod.\u201d
\n23.b. \u05d9\u05db\u05dc \u201cbe able, have power,\u201d in this verse with \u201cability \u2026 dependent on external authority,\u201d BDB, 407 \u00a7 1.a. The authority here is of course Yahweh, who has forbidden the people access to the mountain.
\n23.c. \u05dc\u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u201cspecifying\u201d in this sequence.
\n24.a. Emphasis indicated by the independent pers pronoun \u05d0\u05ea\u05d4 \u201cyou\u201d in addition to the pronoun of the verb.
\n24.b. Or, \u201clet them not push through\u201d; the neg is \u05d0\u05b7\u05dc.
\n24.c. LXX reads \u201cGod.\u201d
\n25.a. See n. 19.c.
\n25.b. \u05d5\u05d9\u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05dd \u201cand he said to them,\u201d often taken as a reference to Moses\u2019 report of what Yahweh has just said (so rsv, \u201cand told them\u201d; cf. Cassuto, 234), is taken by Davies (157\u201358) as referring instead to \u201cthe instructions of chaps. 22f.\u201d Some translators (neb, \u201cand spoke to them.\u201d; jb, \u201cand spoke to them \u2026\u201d) understandably leave the matter as vague as the text does. BDB (56) notes: \u201cin all cases usually sq. dir. obj. of words said, Ex 19:25 Ju 17:2 being singular.\u201d Noth (160) calls this verse \u201ca fragment.\u201d Klopfer (ZAW 18 [1898] 230) connects it with vv 21 and 22. What is likely is that at least a summary of Moses\u2019 words to the people followed this verb and its indir obj. In the compilation of Exodus, that summary, or even a longer speech, was dropped.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThis continuation of the Sinai narrative sequence is, like the section preceding it, a compilation, and one that must be read also as a part of that larger sequence. This section, however, contains the beginning of that section of the narrative that is central to the entire sequence, the account of Yahweh\u2019s Advent and Yahweh\u2019s \u201cten words.\u201d To that central account, the narratives of the preparation of the people (19:9\u201315) for the theophany and the reaction of the people (20:18\u201321) to the theophany have been set as brackets. Preceding this bracketed central narrative, there is an introduction (19:1\u20138) to the Sinai narrative sequence as a whole; following it, there is an account of the aftermath of Advent, with narratives of Covenant-Making (chap. 24), Disobedience (32:1\u201324), Judgment (32:25\u201333:17), and Covenant Renewal (33:18\u201334:35). The energizing nucleus of this entire sequence, however, is the narrative of Yahweh\u2019s coming to Israel at Sinai, a narrative of which the ten commandments in their earliest and briefest form were an integral part. Everything preceding this narrative of Advent points to it, in one way or another, from the theophany of Moses\u2019 call in chap. 3. Everything following it stems from it: not only is the continuation of the Sinai narrative sequence a sequence turning on Presence and threat of Absence, even the covenant instructions and the symbols and personnel of worship are rooted in the assumptions of Yahweh\u2019s Presence. Even in its composite form, the Sinai narrative sequence can be seen to have Yahweh\u2019s Presence as a fundamental preoccupation (cf. Form\/Structure\/Setting on 19:1\u201315).
\nGiven the importance of Yahweh\u2019s theophany at Sinai, it is not surprising that the account of it in Exodus is a composite, and a multilayered one at that. What is surprising is that this account is not longer and even more convoluted than it is. The very awesomeness of what ultimately can only be an ineffable experience may help to account for this brevity. Despite an obvious layering of narrative material, the motif of Yahweh\u2019s coming to Israel permeates this section: only v 25 makes no reference to it. Onto this motif has been grafted the obvious theme of the exposure of Israel to Yahweh\u2019s Presence: vv 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, and 24 are concerned with Israels\u2019 experiencing Yahweh\u2019s Presence and being protected from it. But into these two unavoidably related themes has been worked a third motif, one in conflict, to a degree, with these two that preceded it. This conflict, indeed, accounts for much of the confusion of Exod 19, most of which comes at the end of this second section of the chapter.
\nThe standard source-critical summaries reflect the problem, but do not solve it. Generally, they have tended to complicate it. The elaborate rearrangement of Klopfer (ZAW 18 [1898] 231\u201335) is a somewhat extreme example of violence to the compilation that is Exod 19, but most literary critics have, like Klopfer, assigned the chapter, including these final ten verses of it, to J and E in all but inseparable quantities. So Beer (96\u201398): vv 16, 17, 19 go to E1; vv 18, 20, 25 to J2; vv 21\u201324 to R; Noth (158\u201360): vv 16a\u03b1, 18, 20 to J; vv 16a\u03b2b, 17, 19 to E; vv 21\u201325, \u201csecondary additions\u201d; Hyatt (199\u2013203): 16a, 18 to J; 16b\u201317, 19, 25 to E; 20\u201324 to Js, \u201cthe J supplementer.\u201d As is the case with vv 1\u201315, these verses also have been too many times overworked to permit any definitive source assignment, and attempts to resolve confusion by this method tend rather to multiply it.
\nA clearer understanding of the form of this complicated section may come from an identification of the third motif mentioned above, the motif added to the obvious pair of themes, Yahweh\u2019s Presence and Israel\u2019s experience of that Presence. The obsession of Moses, from his call forward, has been to get Israel to Sinai and to an experience of the Presence he knew there. Most of the narrative of Exodus from chap. 7 to this point has involved the proof to Israel of the Presence of Yahweh in the mighty acts in Egypt, the guidance through the wilderness, the deliverance at the sea, the provision and protection en route to Sinai, and the bringing of Israel to himself at Sinai. All the preparation of Israel, finally at Sinai, has been to the end that they, and no one else, might be \u201ccompletely ready\u201d to encounter Yahweh on that most important \u201cthird day.\u201d The boundaries that have been set up are for Israel\u2019s protection in the midst of an experience of rendezvous. Israel is made ready for holiness. Israel is commanded to ritual purification and cultic abstinence. Israel is brought by Moses from the camp to the perimeters of safety at the base of Sinai, there to meet and be met by Yahweh. Then, suddenly, just at the very moment when the experience of Yahweh so longed for has arrived, Moses, represented throughout the narrative as eagerly longing for Israel to know it, is suddenly thrust into the center as the sacerdotal\/prophetic intermediary between Yahweh and his people.
\nThis insertion, barely even anticipated before chap. 19, is one for which the narrative of Exodus to this point is ill prepared, and one which is a diversion of the main track of the narrative, continued with no further reference to Moses until the account of the people\u2019s reaction to the theophany of Yahweh in 20:18\u201321. There, Moses\u2019 role as intermediary makes sense, as it does also in the revelation of the special instructions for life and worship in the covenant relationship with Yahweh that follow 20:21 and the making of the covenant in chap. 24.
\nIt may be suggested, therefore, that the emphasis of this section on Moses as intermediary is dislocated; that it belongs more properly to the narrative sequences following 20:21; that the confusing disparity of Moses\u2019 trips up and down Sinai can be solved by the movement forward of this material to a setting following the people\u2019s request for an intermediary in the meeting of Yahweh; and that the narrative of Exod 19 is best ended at v 19a, to which then Exod 20:1\u201321 should be read in immediate sequence. The ten commandments (though certainly in a shorter form) belong to the narrative of Yahweh\u2019s Advent at Sinai; they represent, along with the thunder and the sound of the ram\u2019s horn, the auditory dimension of the Sinai theophany. The motif of Moses as sacerdotal\/prophetic intermediary belongs to a later sequence, one following the people\u2019s first and unique experience of Yahweh\u2019s Presence.
\nThe reason for the placement of vv 19b\u201325 with the account of Yahweh\u2019s Advent to Israel is obvious enough. It is the same motive by which Aaron has been added to the Exodus narrative: the glorification of sacerdotal prerogative, and in Moses\u2019 case, prophetic prerogative as well. Yahweh\u2019s warning about trespassing on the holy ground of Sinai may also belong to a later narrative context, as for example Exod 24:1\u20132 or even 32:29\u201335, relocated here because of its logical bearing on the narrative of the boundaries in 19:12\u201313. It would in such a case be more than \u201ca later gloss\u201d designed to deal with a question raised in Priestly circles about the approach to Yahweh, and attached here \u201cas a sort of midrash on vv. 12\u201313a\u201d (Beyerlin, Sinaitic Traditions, 8).
\nThus the key to this section, as also to the larger narrative sequence of which it is the foundational part, is Yahweh\u2019s Advent. A series of traditions reporting that awesome event have been compressed into a single compact, starkly eloquent, sequence. Then into and onto that account has been grafted a narrative designed more to glorify the offices of Moses than Moses himself. The location is perfect, from the point of view of the redactor who added these lines. But for once, the compilation is less than the sum of its parts.
\nComment
\n16\u201317 The Advent promised \u201con the third day\u201d begins right on schedule, at daybreak, the reason that Israel had to be \u201ccompletely ready\u201d by the third day (vv 11, 15), The thunder and lightning and the heavy cloud lowering over the mountain are not to be thought of as reflecting a tradition of Yahweh\u2019s appearance in the thick of a thunderstorm, separate from a different and somewhat conflicting account of his appearance in the fire and smoke of some kind of volcanic eruption (e.g., as Newman, People of the Covenant, 39\u201351, and Kuntz, Self-Revelation of God, 72\u2013100, suggest). Not only are the layers of the composite of Exod 19 virtually impossible to separate with any such precision, there is not the slightest reason to imagine some unusual thunderstorm or to look for an extinct volcano as a means of locating Sinai (so Koenig, RHR 167 [1965] 129\u201355). The storm and fire imagery of vv 16\u201319a is one part of an attempt to describe the indescribable experience of the coming of Yahweh. It is language recurrent in OT theophany accounts, and language rooted in Canaanite descriptions of the arrival of deity (cf. Clifford, Cosmic Mountain 107\u201320). The reference to the increasing sound of a ram\u2019s horn following each of the two verses using the storm and fire imagery (vv 16, 18) and the reference between those verses to the positioning of Israel binds the verses together into a unity of rising intensity.
\nAfter the first rumblings of thunder, the flashing lightning and the breaking day revealed a thick cloud hiding the mountain from view. Before the people could reach the conclusion that what they were hearing and seeing was an ordinary storm, the sound of the ram\u2019s horn, so strong as to indicate that it was near at hand, made it clear that the experience of the third day, for which they had prepared, was at hand. The sounding of the ram\u2019s horn was a signal that Yahweh was present in the worship of Israel (2 Sam 6:15; Ps 47:6[5]). Weiser (Festschrift A. Bertholet, 523\u201324) has suggested that the resounding trumpet may have been an \u201cintimation of Yahweh\u2019s voice\u201d in the cultic re-presentation of theophany, and Beyerlin (Sinaitic Traditions, 135\u201336, also 35\u201336) has argued that the account of the Sinai theophany \u201cwas obviously influenced by a definite cultic usage\u201d in the sounding of a trumpet to signal Yahweh\u2019s arrival. There is here no hint about who was sounding the ram\u2019s horn, a fact that adds to the awesome mystery of the narrative. The horn was sounded by no one belonging to Israel, not even by Moses.
\nWhether the sounding of the ram\u2019s horn is a feature added to this narrative from later cultic contexts, as Weiser and Beyerlin both suggest, or whether later cultic practice arose from the memory of a fearsome sound at Sinai, is of course now impossible to determine. Nor is the sound to be thought of as the howling of the wind \u201cwhich resembled the sound of the horn\u201d (Cassuto, 232) or as \u201ca liturgical imitation of the sound of the wind \u2026 or of thunder\u201d (Clifford, Cosmic Mountain, 111\u201312). The sound, quite explicitly described in v 13 and mentioned in very definite terms in vv 16 and 19, is clearly understood and reported as the signal of the arrival of Yahweh\u2019s Presence. Only on such an interpretation do the next two actions make sense: first, the people in the camp literally shake with fear, not a reaction one would expect from a thunderstorm on the mountain, however violent. Second, Moses immediately leads (\u05d5\u05d9\u05d5\u05e6\u05d0) the people forth to encounter (\u05dc\u05e7\u05e8\u05d0\u05ea) God, stationing them at the foot of the mountain before the boundaries designated by Yahweh, who has promised to come on the third day. This too is not an action a thunderstorm would have provoked.
\n18 With the people in place, the experience intensifies. The entire mountain smokes from the Presence of Yahweh descending upon it in fire, the most frequent of all OT symbols of theophany. The smoke boils forth \u201clike smoke from the pottery-kiln,\u201d a description that in itself sets aside any image of a volcano in eruption, since \u201cthe kiln\u201d is likely to have been a closed kiln with a fire chamber beneath it and with a number of flues to conduct both heat and smoke, much like a modern upright steam boiler (see CAH, Plates to I & II: 37a; and de Vaux, RB 62 [1955] 557\u201363). Furthermore, as Terrien notes (Elusive Presence, 153, n. 7), the fire, descending, is moving in the wrong direction for a volcano. The fire is the fire of Yahweh\u2019s Presence; the smoke is the thick blinding smoke of Isaiah\u2019s vision (Isa 6:4), the purpose of which is to obscure what man cannot look upon and live; and the violent quaking of the mountain is the upheaval of the natural world that always accompanies Yahweh\u2019s coming (Jeremias, Theophanie, 1\u201316).
\n19 The description of the intensifying phenomena surrounding Yahweh\u2019s Presence following the people\u2019s movement to their place calls for a second reference to the identifying signal. The second sounding of the ram\u2019s horn brings the reassurance, amidst the tumult of the mountain, that Yahweh is indeed coming. But that reassurance brings a greater fear of a different kind, for the sound is moving closer, growing ever more strong. The description is not of a stationary sound growing louder and louder, but of a moving sound, growing stronger as it comes closer. Yahweh has come. He now is close at hand. The purpose of this narrative is to present an atmosphere electric with Yahweh\u2019s Presence.
\nAs noted above (on v 16), the narrative of Yahweh\u2019s Advent is best read directly on from the second reference to the sounding of the ram\u2019s horn to Yahweh\u2019s self-declaration at the beginning of Exod 20. Vv 19b\u201325 belong to a later section of the larger Sinai narrative sequence, one having to do with the justification of the Mosaic offices. Such a justification, though obviously important to the priestly\/prophetic compilers of Exodus, has no part in the narrative of Yahweh\u2019s coming. The question of where these verses ought to go opens an array of possibilities, but none of them can be put forward as definitive.
\n20\u201325 The reference to Moses speaking and being answered by God in thunder, like Yahweh\u2019s summons of Moses up to himself on the mountain and the ensuing dialogue there, would fit more logically at a number of later points, two of which have already been suggested (p. 270). Since no suggestion is determinative, these verses are best left in their canonical location, even though they appear to belong elsewhere. The compiler\u2019s reason for placing them here must primarily have been a desire to avoid any impression that Israel might approach Yahweh without a priestly\/prophetic intermediary; secondarily, the repetition of the instructions about Sinai made holy by Yahweh\u2019s Presence helped to draw vv 20\u201324 into what is now chap. 19. Both v 19b and v 25 appear incomplete as they stand; v 19b is non sequitur with what precedes and follows it, and v 25 is clearly the introduction for an address of Moses that no longer comes after it. This has led some commentators (so Beyerlin, Sinaitic Traditions, 8\u20139) to propose that vv 19b and 25 belong together and are the introduction to a message to Israel now missing, but such a proposal has only a conjectural basis.
\n20\u201322 This additional reference to Yahweh\u2019s descent onto Mount Sinai has the appearance of a summary introduction to the dialogue between Yahweh and Moses that follows. There is not evidence in chap. 19 or anywhere else in Exodus or in the OT to sustain the theory that there are two traditions of Yahweh\u2019s relation to Sinai, in one of which he is somehow \u201centhroned\u201d on the mountain, and in the other of which he lives in the heavens and must come down to the mountain (so Newman, People of the Covenant, 46\u201348; Hyatt, 202). Yahweh moves where he will, and places become holy, as in Exod 19, because of his Presence. The composite of Exod 19 reflects the OT theology of Yahweh\u2019s Advent at its foundation, and the emphasis is on coming, not on residence, and not even on direction of coming (there is likewise no clear evidence here for the \u201cMarch in the South\u201d theory of Clifford, Cosmic Mountain, 114\u201320).
\nThe reference to Yahweh coming down on Sinai connects the dialogue with Moses to the Sinai\/theophany sequence. Moses must then be summoned \u201cto the top of the mountain,\u201d that is, to a place beyond the boundaries, where the people of Israel are forbidden to go. This move establishes the uniqueness of Moses\u2019 role, a uniqueness immediately reinforced by the repetition of the warning that the people are not to cross the boundaries, even in the excitement of the visit of Yahweh, in an understandable desire to see. The result of such a disobedience would be an immediate and fatal judgment. Even the priests whose ministry requires that they draw near to Yahweh\u2019s Presence are not to do so with impunity; they must set themselves apart for the holiness of such a context, just as the people of Israel have had to do in preparation for the third day. The introduction of the necessity for priests to respect the holiness of Yahweh\u2019s Presence, attached to the Sinai narrative as an illustration of the seriousness of the restrictions made necessary by that holiness, is anachronistic even to the sequence of Exodus. It is thus another indication that this narrative, or at least this verse, belongs at a later point.
\n23\u201324 Moses\u2019 reaction to Yahweh\u2019s repeated warning about the boundaries provides a further means of emphasizing both the restrictions regarding the boundaries and the uniqueness of Moses\u2019 role. Moses reiterates Yahweh\u2019s instruction of v 12, with two shifts: the boundaries are for the mountain rather than for the people, and the mountain, rather than the people, is to be set apart for holiness. The result is the same in either case. Yahweh\u2019s reply underscores the special position of Moses; this time Aaron is added, and the priests are included with the people in the ban of any approach beyond the boundaries. Thus Moses and Aaron, and the special intermediary r\u00f4les they represent, are made more special still: Moses and Aaron are permitted to come where not even Yahweh\u2019s priests, at this point in the Sinai narrative sequence yet non-existent, can go.
\nExplanation
\nAt last Israel comes to the experience Moses had known on Mount Sinai, the experience toward which he has led them and for which not even what they had seen in Egypt or in their journey could have prepared them. The scene having been laid dramatically by the \u201ceagle\u2019s wings\u201d summary and by the instructions and the acts of preparation, Yahweh comes at daybreak on the third day. All the awesome accompaniment of that Advent\u2014the thunder, the lightning, the heavy cloud, the fire, the thick, obscuring smoke and above all the resounding ram\u2019s horn moving closer through the opaque covering on the mountain\u2014is a dramatization of the event of Exodus and of the OT: Yahweh\u2019s coming to his people, gathered by his instruction at the edge of a boundary set for their protection.
\nThis coming is told with the engaging directness of most biblical narrative: Yahweh comes down upon the mountain in the fire. More space is given to the preparation for his coming, and to the listing of the audible and visible effects of his coming, than to the announcement itself. That is without elaboration, for what more can be said than that God, who is holy, comes to his people, who are wholly other than holy? Indeed, the simplicity of the announcement may help to explain the insertion of the additional but misplaced material glorifying Moses\u2019 offices by repeating the instructions about the boundaries of holiness and permitting Moses and Aaron to pass them.
\nThat material, however, disrupts a dramatic sequence in which Yahweh comes to his people, then speaks to them. As exciting as is his Advent onto the mountain, more amazing still is his address to all the people waiting, an address in which he gives himself to them more fully still by trusting them to enter into covenant with him. Exod 19 holds but half the theophany; the other half, the completing half, is in Exod 20.
\nYahweh\u2019s Principles for Life in Covenant (20:1\u201317)
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Das apodiktische Recht im Deuteronomium und im Heiligkeitsgesetz. Berlin: Heimat-Dienst Verlag, 1948. Rabinowitz, J. J. \u201cThe \u2018Great Sin\u2019 in Ancient Egyptian Marriage Contracts.\u201d JNES 18 (1959) 73. Rad, G. von. Old Testament Theology, vol 1. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1962. Reicke, B. Die Zehn Worte in Geschichte und Gegenwort. BGBE 13. T\u00fcbingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1973. Reventlow, H. G. Gebot und Predigt im Dekalog. G\u00fctersloh: G\u00fctersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1962. Robinson, G. \u201cThe Idea of Rest in the Old Testament and the Search for the Basic Character of the Sabbath.\u201d ZAW 92 (1980) 32\u201342. Rodorf, W. Sunday. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968. Rowley, H. H. \u201cMoses and the Decalogue.\u201d Men of God. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1963. 1\u201336. Schmidt, H. \u201cMose und der Dekalog.\u201d Eucharisterion. Festschrift H. Gunkel. G\u00f6ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1923. 78\u2013119. Schmidt, W. H. Das erste Gebot. Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1969. Schulz, H. Das Todesrecht im Alten Testament. BZAW 114. Berlin: Verlag Alfred T\u00f6pelmann, 1969. Stamm, J. J. \u201cDreissig Jahre Dekalogforschung.\u201d TRu 27 (1961) 189\u2013239, 282\u2013305. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cSprachliche Erw\u00e4gungen zum Gebot \u2018Du sollst nicht t\u00f6ten.\u2019 \u201d TZ 1 (1945) 81\u201390. Stamm, J. J. and M. E. Andrew. The Ten Commandments in Recent Research. SBT 2d ser. 2. London: SCM Press, 1967. Staples, W. E. \u201cThe Third Commandment.\u201d JBL 58 (1939) 325\u201329. Stoebe, H. J. \u201cDas achte Gebot (Ex 20:16).\u201d Wort und Dienst 3. Bethel: Verlagshandlung der Anstalt Bethel, 1952. 108\u201326. Watts, J. D. W. \u201cInfinitive Absolute as Imperative and the Interpretation of Exodus 20:8.\u201d ZAW 74 (1962) 141\u201345. Weidmann, H. Die Patriarchen und ihre Religion. FRLANT 94. G\u00f6ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1968. Wellhausen, J. Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der Historischen B\u00fccher des Alten Testaments. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1963. \u2014\u2014\u2014. Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel. New York: Meridian Books, 1957. Zimmerli, W. \u201cDas Zweite Gebot.\u201d Gottes Offenbarung. TB\u00fc 19. Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1969. 234\u201348. \u2014\u2014\u2014. Grundriss der alttestamentlichen Theologie. 2d ed. ThW 3. Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1975. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cIch bin Jahwe.\u201d Gottes Offenbarung. TB\u00fc 19. Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1969. 11\u201340.
\nTranslation
\n1 Then God spoke all these words, saying,
\n2 \u201cI am Yahweh, your God, who brought you forth
\nfrom the land of Egypt,
\nfrom the non-status of slaves.
\n3 You are not to have other gods in my presence.
\n4 you are not to make for yourself a shaped image,
\nwhether in the form of something
\nin the heavens above,
\nor in the earth underneath,
\nor in the waters below the earth.
\n5 You are not to prostrate yourself to them,
\nor be enticed to serve them,
\nbecause, I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God,
\none who will keep in mind the fathers\u2019 guilt
\nagainst the sons of the third and the fourth generations
\nof those who hate me,
\n6 yet one who will act with unchanging love
\ntowards the thousands who love me,
\nand who keep my commands.
\n7 You are not to employ the name of Yahweh
\nyour God to empty purpose,
\nbecause Yahweh will not leave unpunished
\nanyone who employs his name
\nto empty purpose.
\n8 Remember the sabbath day,
\nto set it apart for holiness.
\n9 Six days are you to work
\nand do all your customary labor:
\n10 the seventh day is a sabbath of Yahweh your God\u2014\u2014\u2014
\non that day, you are to do
\nnone of your customary labor,
\nneither you, nor your son, nor your daughter,
\nyour servant, nor your maidservant,
\nnor your work-animal,
\nnot even the foreigner who is living with you.
\n11 Indeed, in six days Yahweh made
\nthe heavens and the earth,
\nthe sea and everything in them:
\nthen he rested on the seventh day.
\nFor this reason, Yahweh blessed the sabbath day.
\nand set it apart for holiness.
\n12 Give honor to your father and your mother,
\nin order that you may surely prolong your days,
\nyour days on the promised land that
\nYahweh your God is giving to you.
\n13 You are not to kill.
\n14 You are not to commit adultery.
\n15 You are not to steal.
\n16 You are not to give against your neighbor
\na lying testimony.
\n17 You are not to desire for yourself
\nthe house of your neighbor;
\nyou are not to desire for yourself
\nthe wife of your neighbor,
\nnor his servant, nor his maidservant,
\nnor his ox, nor his he-ass,
\nnor anything that belongs to your neighbor.
\nNotes
\n1.a. LXX has \u03ba\u03cd\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 \u201cYahweh.\u201d
\n2.a. The words set in bold type represent a suggestion of the early form of the ten commandments. See below, Form\/Structure\/Setting.
\n2.b. \u05de\u05d1\u05d9\u05ea \u05e2\u05d1\u05d3\u05d9\u05dd lit., \u201cfrom the house of slavery\u201d; see above, Comment on 13:3.
\n3.a. The commandments are addressed to each Israelite individually; the pronom subj are sg throughout the sequence.
\n3.b. LXX, Syr., Tg. Onk., Tg. Ps.-J. have \u201cin addition to me\u201d instead of \u201cin my Presence.\u201d This verse is not ended by soph pasuq in L, though soph pasuq is supplied in a number of mss.
\n4.a. \u05d5\u05b0 \u2026 \u05d5\u05b0 connecting \u201calternative cases, so that it = or\u201d and \u201cwhether \u2026 or\u201d: BDB, 252 \u00a7 1.d.
\n4.b. See the 2d sentence of n. 3.b.
\n5.a. Hoph \u05e2\u05d1\u05d3 \u201cserve\u201d; cf. BDB, 713.
\n5.b. \u05e4\u05e7\u05d3 \u201cattend to, give heed to, observe, seek out with interest\u201d; see n. 4:31.c.
\n6.a. \u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d4 \u05d7\u05e1\u05d3 \u201cone who does, makes unchanging love.\u201d
\n7.a. \u05e0\u05e9\u05c2\u05d0 \u201clift, carry, raise, take up\u201d; \u201c= utter,\u201d BDB, 670 \u00a7 1.b (7), but far more than just the utterance of Yahweh\u2019s name is intended, as important as that is. See Comment below.
\n7.b. \u05dc\u05e9\u05c1\u05d5\u05d0 \u201cto the vain nothingness,\u201d i.e., the cause that is inconsequential.
\n7.c. \u05e0\u05e7\u05d4 \u201cbe clean, empty, exempt from punishment\u201d; here piel; cf. BDB, 667.
\n8.a. SamPent has \u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05d5\u05e8 \u201ckeep, guard.\u201d MT\u2019s \u05d6\u05b8\u05db\u05d5\u05b9\u05e8 \u201cremember,\u201d a qal inf abs, is taken here as an \u201cemphatic imperative,\u201d GKC \u00a7\u00a7 113y, bb. Note also Watts (ZAW 74 [1962] 144\u201345), who suggests \u201ca kind of gerundive force\u201d for \u05d6\u05b8\u05db\u05d5\u05b9\u05e8 to give \u201cRemembering \u2026 to hallow \u2026, you shall labour.\u2026\u201d
\n8.b. Soph pasuq is missing in L, but supplied in a number of mss.
\n9.a. \u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05db\u05d4 \u201ccustomary labor\u201d refers to the daily work of one\u2019s occupation, and also to what might be called the labor of sustenance. Soph pasuq is missing again in L.
\n10.a. The Nash Papyrus reads \u201cin the seventh day.\u201d
\n10.b. This phrase is added above for clarity, since the restrictions listed obviously apply only to the sabbath day. Cf. Nash Papyrus \u05d5\u05d1\u05d9\u05d5\u05dd \u201cand in the day\u201d (Burkitt, JQR 15 [1903] 395); LXX \u1f10\u03bd \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u1fc7\u03bd \u201cin it.\u201d
\n10.c. \u05d5\u05d2\u05e8\u05da lit., \u201cand your foreigner.\u201d On \u05d2\u05e8, see n. 12:19.b.
\n10.d. \u05d1\u05e9\u05c1\u05e2\u05e8\u05d9\u05da \u201cwho is within your gates.\u201d The sense is \u201cunder your protection, supervision.\u201d Cf. LXX, \u1f41 \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03bf\u03b9\u03ba\u1ff6\u03bd \u1f10 \u03c3\u03bf\u1f30 \u201cthe one dwelling with you.\u201d This verse is also without soph pasuq in L.
\n11.a. \u05db\u05d9 \u201cindeed,\u201d taken in its emphatic usage, as \u201ca word of motivation\u201d; see Muilenburg, HUCA 32 (1961) 150\u201357.
\n11.b. Nash Papyrus (Burkitt, JQR 15 [1903] 395), LXX, Syr. read \u201cthe seventh day.\u201d
\n12.a. Nash Papyrus (Burkitt, JQR 15 [1903] 395\u201396) adds here \u05d9\u05d9\u05d8\u05d1 \u05dc\u05da \u05d5\u05dc\u05de\u05e2\u05df \u201cit may go well with you and in order that\u201d; so also LXX.
\n12.b. Hiph \u05d0\u05e8\u05da = \u201ccause to be long,\u201d + nun paragogicum, expressing \u201cmarked emphasis\u201d; see GKC \u00b6 47m.
\n12.c. \u05d4\u05d0\u05d3\u05de\u05d4 \u201cground, land, territory\u201d; \u201cesp of land as promised or given by \u05d9\u05b7 to his people = Canaan \u2026 in all c. 41 t.\u201d (BDB 9\u201310). LXX reads \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u03b3\u1fc6\u03c2 \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u1f00\u03b3\u03b1\u03b8\u1fc6\u03c2 \u201cthe good land.\u201d
\n13.a. Nash Papyrus (Burkitt, JQR 15 [1903] 394\u201397) and LXX follow a different order of commandments 6\u20138, so: vv 14, 15, 13. Luke 18:20 orders commandments 5\u20139 so: vv 14, 13, 15, 16, 12. Rom 13:9 orders commandments 6\u20138 and 10 so: vv 14, 13, 15, 17.
\n16.a. Nash Papyrus (Burkitt, JQR 15 [1903] 395) reads \u05e2\u05d3 \u05e9\u05c1\u05d5\u05d0 \u201cempty testimony\u201d instead of \u05e2\u05d3 \u05e9\u05c1\u05e7\u05e8 \u201clying testimony.\u201d
\n17.a. \u05dc\u05d0 \u05ea\u05d7\u05de\u05d3 \u201cyou are not to lust for, desire obsessively.\u201d The clear implication of this use of \u05d7\u05de\u05d3 is desire for one\u2019s own possession or use; thus \u201cfor yourself\u201d is added above. See Comment below.
\n17.b. LXX has \u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b1\u1fd6\u03ba\u03b1 \u201cwife\u201d first, \u03bf\u1f30\u03ba\u03af\u03b1\u03bd \u201chouse\u201d second.
\n17.c. SamPent, LXX and apparently Nash Papyrus (Burkitt, JQR 15 [1903] 395) add \u201chis field\u201d before \u201cservant.\u201d
\n17.d. LXX adds \u03bf\u1f54\u03c4\u03b5 \u03c0\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03cc\u03c2 \u03ba\u03c4\u03ae\u03bd\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u201cnor any of his livestock.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nIn some ways the single most important point about the canonical form of the Decalogue is not what this section contains but its location. The commandments are given as an integral part of the Sinai narrative sequence, and as an essential segment of the account of Yahweh\u2019s presentation of himself to Israel within that sequence. The Decalogue has so often been taken out of this sequence, for liturgical reasons, didactic reasons, and scholarly reasons, that this point has become all too easy to miss. Some literary critics (McNeile, 1vi\u20131xiv, e.g., or Hyatt, 196\u201397, 217, or Harrelson, Ten Commandments, 43\u201345), indeed, have even suggested the relocation of the Decalogue, assessing it as an uneasy insertion disruptive of the narrative sequence of which it now is a part. Such suggestions are mistaken, however, not alone for the violence they do to an Exodus carefully planned and arranged, for very definite reasons, into the form in which we have received it. The ten commandments must first of all be seen as Exodus presents them, words addressed by Yahweh himself to Israel gathered by his command at the perimeter of holiness about the base of Mount Sinai. They form an essential part of Israel\u2019s experience of Yahweh\u2019s Advent, and to detach them from the narrative preceding and following them compromises our understanding of both that narrative and the commandments themselves.
\nWith such a point clearly in mind, better consideration can be given to the form of the Decalogue, especially the question whether that form may have been dictated in part by the original purpose of the commandments and in part by continuing application of the principles set forth by them to life lived out in Israel in covenant with Yahweh. At least five aspects of the form the Decalogue has taken need to be considered: (1) the ANE covenantal\/legal form to which the commandments are obviously related; (2) the \u201coriginal\u201d form of the commandments in relation to the \u201cexpanded\u201d form that some of them now have; (3) the connection between the commandments and other OT covenantal\/legal collections, in particular the Book of the Covenant in Exod 20:22\u201323:33; (4) the arrangement of the commandments into a sequence coincident with the sequence of the larger narrative of which they are a part; and (5) the \u201cage\u201d of the commandments and the hand by which they have been brought into Exodus.
\n1. The ANE covenantal\/legal form has been the subject of extensive and continuing research almost since the birth of OT literary criticism in the last half of the nineteenth century. An earlier sensationalism which sought connections of topic and theme between the OT and the literature of Israel\u2019s neighbors gave way to a more careful analysis of the material at hand, both within and without the OT, first of all in relation to source-literary questions and then in connection with form-critical inquiry. Of special importance here is the work of Anton Jirku (Das weltliche Recht, passim, but see especially 12\u201316, 150\u201360), who sought to isolate ten separate kinds of legal formulary in the Pentateuch and proposed that Moses could have put together the ten commandments from a considerable inventory of legal material; Sigmund Mowinckel (D\u00e9calogue, 114\u201360), who argued for an old literary form behind the Decalogue and a cultic origin and provenance (his \u201cEnthronement of Yahweh festival\u201d) for the Decalogue; Albrecht Alt (Essays, 87\u2013132), who divided OT laws into case-laws of the \u201cif-clause\u201d type and apodictic laws of the unconditional \u201cthou shalt\u201d type, the former common to the ANE, the latter uniquely Israelite; George Mendenhall (Law and Covenant, 5\u201341) and Klaus Baltzer, (Covenant Formulary, 9\u201393), both of whom, independently of each other (Baltzer, xi), paralleled the covenant formulary of the Hittites to that of the OT and proposed the derivation of the OT version from Hittite state treaties; and Erhard Gerstenberger (Wesen, 23\u201388), who has shown the casuistic-apodictic categories of Alt to be far too great an oversimplification, has joined other scholars (Gevirtz, VT 11 [1961] 137\u201358; Gese, ZTK 64 [1967] 121\u201338; Kilian, BZ 7 [1963] 185\u2013202; Schulz, Todesrecht) in pointing out that the apodictic legal form is by no means uniquely Israelite, has introduced a category of \u201cprohibitive\u201d legal statement (Prohibitivgattung) closely linked to the curse formula, and has connected OT commandments to the circles of the wise and to the family instead of to the priests and prophets of the cultus (cf. Gerstenberger, JBL 84 [1965] 46\u201351).
\nHelpful surveys of the work of these scholars and others who have implemented and reacted to their proposals have been made by McCarthy (Treaty and Covenant and Old Testament Covenant) and Boecker (Law and Redeformen). The most valuable applications of this research to the Decalogue have been made by Stamm (TRu 27 [1961] 189\u2013239, 282\u2013305) and Nielsen (Ten Commandments). The work goes on along both form-literary and comparative lines, and the discovery and continuing decipherment of the treaty and legal materials of Ebla (Pettinato, Archives 103\u20135), added to the considerable material already in hand, provides the resources for additional research for some time to come.
\nSeveral lessons are clear already, however. One is that Alt\u2019s contribution, as valuable as it remains, was far too great an oversimplification of the complexity of both OT and ANE legal material. Another is that Mendenhall\u2019s application of Hittite treaty patterns to the covenant passages of the OT was far too rigid, in some instances misleadingly so, despite the obvious value of some of the comparisons made, both by Mendenhall and such scholars as Beyerlin and Baltzer, who followed him closely. Yet another is that too fixed an association of OT law with a single group, whether one has in view the priests (Wellhausen, Prolegomena, 392\u2013401), the prophets (Mowinckel) or the wisdom teachers (Gerstenberger) is far too great an oversimplification.
\nWe must view the legal material of the OT against an ANE background of vast proportions, yet known to us still only in a very fragmentary representation. We must think of OT law as the concern of all Israel, of all the leaders of Israel as well as of all Israelites whose commitment in covenant to Yahweh was to live according to his standard and his instructions. We must consider a variety of literary forms in which the legal material was set, along with a variety of support-devices such as the authorizing prologue and the warning curse, without allowing any of the forms or the support-devices or overarching patterns to become rigid and binding. Our fault so far in the history of the study of OT law has been to see parts of a very fragmented picture as the whole picture and to magnify details of various patterns into a single pattern which then becomes determinative. Most of all, we have to keep in mind the special nature of OT law as liberating law, law as revelation instead of law as restriction, law given by Yahweh to a people wanting to be guided in his way.
\nQuite apart from their relation to other ANE law, the laws of the Decalogue show a development of their own, the details of which we can only surmise. The references to the commandments as \u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05e8\u05ea \u05d4\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u201cthe ten words\u201d in Exod 34:28; Deut 4:13; 10:4 should be taken as an indication of both the number of the commandments and the brevity of the foundational covenant list at a very early stage. Nielsen (Ten Commandments, 6\u201334) has pointed out the tension between a consistent \u201cten\u201d numbering and the various lists of laws in the OT, and Gerstenberger (JBL 84 [1965] 47; Wesen, 70\u201376) has proposed original \u201cgroupings of two and three,\u201d but these proposals and others like them are highly speculative and do not take seriously enough the OT emphasis on ten as the foundational number.
\n2. An array of attempts has been made to \u201creconstruct\u201d the original form of the commandments; see, for example, Schmidt (Eucharisterion, 79\u201382, 100\u2013107), Rabast (11 commandments, Das apodiktische Recht, 35\u201338), Nielsen (Ten Commandments, 84\u201386); and Harrelson (Ten Commandments, 41\u201342, 207, n. 37). All such attempts are of course speculation; even though the assumption of an original list of very brief commands is probably a correct one, any precise recovery of such an Ur-form is not possible, given the information available to us. A principle that should be kept firmly in mind in the study of the development of OT law is that expansion answered specific need: the longest commandments and the most often repeated laws are the ones with which Israel had the greatest difficulty. We may posit as reasonable theory that each of the commandments in the Decalogue should be as brief as the briefest of them, and that any additional length beyond the most succinct possible statement is the result of a special need.
\n3. A survey of the OT with the Decalogue in hand reveals additional versions of and references to the Decalogue: Deut 5:6\u201321, of course, but so also Exod 34:17\u201326; the \u201cSchechemite Dodecalogue\u201d of Deut 27:15\u201326 (see von Rad, OT Theology 1:190\u201393, and Harrelson\u2019s comparison-table, Ten Commandments, 32\u201333); Ps 15:2\u20135 (see Mowinckel, Psalmenstudien V, Segen und Fluch [Amsterdam: Schippers, 1961] 55\u201360; and cf. Ps 24); Lev 19:1\u20134, 11\u201319a, 26\u201337 (cf. von Rad, Studies in Deuteronomy, SBT 9 [London: SCM, 1953] 27\u201331); Ezek 18:5\u20139 (cf. K\u00f6hler, TRu 1 [1929] 165\u201360; Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 375\u201377). There are a number of additional law-lists and some longer collections of legal material that can be linked to the Decalogue: for example, the ten commandments prohibiting sexual abuse in Lev 20:10\u201321 (cf. von Rad, Studies, 31\u201333, and Harrelson, 35\u201336, who adds also Lev 18:6\u201318); the instructions regarding clean and unclean animals, fish and birds in Deut 14:3\u201321; and above all the entire Holiness Code of Lev 17\u201320 and the Book of the Covenant of Exod 20:22\u201323:33.
\nThe designations \u201cethical Decalogue\u201d and \u201ccultic Decalogue\u201d as applied by earlier commentators (e.g, Wellhausen, Die Composition, 329\u201335, and L\u2019Hour, Die Ethik 90\u201391) to Exod 20:2\u201317 and 34:17\u201326 respectively should now be dropped as misleading generalizations, along with the opinion that the first of these two lists is the later of the two (because of a supposed dependence upon the ethical teaching of the great prophets of Israel). The distinction is foreign to the OT and at best irrelevant to the analysis of OT law, and the chronological sequencing is a reflection of the evolutionary synthesis of the Wellhausen school, and so both an oversimplification and an error.
\nThe question of the relationship between the Decalogue and the Book of the Covenant can be answered only in the most general terms, not least because of the differences in form that are readily apparent and the complexity of the arrangement of the Book of the Covenant. That the Book of the Covenant is a disruption of the Sinai narrative sequence, and that many of its laws are more appropriate to the settled life in Canaan than to the nomadic life of the wilderness of Sinai, cannot reasonably be doubted. Even so, the compilers of Exodus have placed this collection where it now stands, between the account of Yahweh coming to Israel and the account of Israel entering into covenant with Yahweh. There must have been some reason for such a placement: what was it?
\nAnswers to this question have ranged from the opinion that the placement of the Book of Covenant was purely arbitrary, even accidental, to the opinion that this material is Mosaic in origin and so falls where it does inevitably. Neither of these extremes is acceptable, however. The first does not take seriously the final form of Exodus as a deliberate arrangement; the second does not take seriously the real contribution of Moses. Some parts of the Book of the Covenant could easily be as old as the Decalogue in its earliest form; other parts reflect periods obviously later. Hillers (Covenant, 89\u201394) has suggested an equivalence between most of the commandments and specific situations covered in the Book of the Covenant or elsewhere in the OT, and some of his connections are undeniable. It may be suggested that what became the Book of the Covenant may have been begun by Moses as an application of the principles for life in covenant with Yahweh given in the Decalogue. To such a collection, the steadily cumulative body of precedent decisions applied by the \u201cmen of ability\u201d whom Jethro had counseled Moses to select (Exod 18:21\u201326) would readily have been drawn. The combined laws, steadily being expanded, reapplied, and supplemented, may very well have been circulated along with the Decalogue they were designed to clarify and apply. Among other things, such a theory would explain the location of the Book of the Covenant at a point following the Sinai theophany and its revelation of the Decalogue (see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 20:22\u201323:33, and cf. Phillips, Criminal Law, 39\u201340).
\n4. The arrangement of the ten commandments into a sequence giving priority to Yahweh before humankind and emphasizing throughout the importance of relationship may well be more than a coincidental parallel to the narrative sequence of which the commandments are now an essential and climactic part. The Sinai narrative sequence also begins with Yahweh, in the one account to which he is most central in the OT, the account of his Advent; and it ends with Israel, attempting to salvage what they can of a covenant shattered by their failure to keep their promises and hoping that Yahweh will fail to keep some of his promises\u2014the statements of penalty for disobedience. The binding motif of the Sinai narrative sequence, similarly, is relationship: Yahweh gives himself in a unique relationship to Israel; the people pledge themselves in unique relationship to Yahweh in return. Indeed, the narrative moves forward on what brings this relationship about, what happens to it, and what saves it when it seemed sure to be lost forever.
\nMore than a suggestion is obviously impossible, but perhaps the sequence of the commandments that stand at the dramatic center of the Sinai narrative sequence is a reflection of, and perhaps even determined by, the order of that narrative. Not alone the principles set forth by the Decalogue, but even the order of those principles may have been shaped by the narrative that now contains them.
\n5. The question of the \u201cage\u201d of the ten commandments has been given many answers, ranging from the time of Moses (Gressmann, Mose, 471\u201374, an opinion he later modified in Die \u00e4lteste, 237; Driver, 413\u201317; Schmidt, Eucharisterion, 85\u201391) to the exilic (Beer, 103\u20134) or even the postexilic (H\u00f6lscher, 129) periods. The trend in recent years has been to date the Decalogue at an earlier rather than a later time, and to argue the \u201cpossibility\u201d or the \u201cprobability\u201d of a connection with Moses (cf. the extensive review of Rowley, Men of God, 1\u201336, who proposed \u201ca high degree of probability\u201d). This trend is the result of an increasing interest in (a) the Decalogue in its cultic\/covenantal setting in ancient Israel (Mowinckel, for example); (b) the form-literary analysis of the Decalogue in relation to the legal forms employed in the OT (so Alt and his followers); (c) the analysis of the Decalogue against the background of ANE treaty patterns (so Mendenhall, Beyerlin); and (d) a move towards a greater acceptance of the narratives and heroes of Israel\u2019s early history as historically based (Martin-Achard, Weidmann, e.g.). Any establishment of a precise date for the origin of the ten commandments, or for that matter their successive expansion into the form in which we know them is of course impossible\u2014but we can now be confident of an earlier rather than a later dating.
\nEqually difficult is the determination of the source from which the Decalogue came into Exodus. The earlier assured opinions that the commandments are from E (Morgenstern, HUCA 4 [1927] 1); E + R (Driver, 192\u2013200); J2 + (R) R (Beer, 12, 98\u2013103) have given way to the view that the Decalogue developed as a unit independent of the standard sources, probably preceding them (at least in its earlier forms), and was incorporated either by them or by the compilers of Exodus into the location it now occupies (so Noth, 153\u201355; Beyerlin, Sinaitic Traditions, 11\u201312; Hyatt, 197, 207; Childs, 397\u2013401).
\nComment
\n1 As noted above (Form\/Structure\/Setting on 19:16\u201325), this verse and all that follows it through v 21 is best read in direct sequence to 19:19a, so: \u201cThe sound of the ram\u2019s horn meanwhile was moving, and growing very strong. Then God spoke all these words, saying, \u2018I am Yahweh, your God.\u2026\u2019 \u201d The people, duly prepared, have been brought by Moses to the place appointed for them at the bottom of Sinai, amidst the sounds and sights of Yahweh\u2019s impending Advent. This accompaniment to Yahweh\u2019s coming is pierced from time to time by the sound of an amplified ram\u2019s horn, which is nearer and louder with each successive signal. Then, when the sounding of the ram\u2019s horn has reached its most intense level, Yahweh speaks, addressing all the people assembled at the perimeter of holiness around the mountain\u2019s base.
\nThis memory of Yahweh speaking from Sinai in the hearing of all the people is common to every account of the Sinai theophany in the OT (see especially Exod 19:9 and 20:18\u201320; Deut 4:10\u201314, 32\u201340; 5:4, 22\u201327, 9:10; Neh 9:13; cf. Greenberg, \u201cDecalogue,\u201d EncJud: 1435\u201338). It is an emphasis integral both to the Sinai narrative sequence and to the larger narrative sequence, which consistently sets Yahweh at the center and leaves no doubt that his proof of his Presence and then his climactic revelation of himself is first and foremost to the people of Israel. Though the tempering of this emphasis began even before Exodus was compiled, specifically in the attempt to emphasize the intermediacy of Moses (see above, on 19:19\u201325), and has been carried on since by an array of commentators for a variety of reasons, the clear assertion of the basic narrative is that Yahweh\u2019s first words to Israel at Sinai were spoken directly by himself to all the people, assembled for that very purpose. To deny this emphasis of the Exodus narrative is to make nonsense of some of it and to do great violence to the theological concept set forth by its arrangement, as by its report. Exod 19\u201320 presents an excellent case, indeed, for what Alter (Art, 131\u201354) has instructively called \u201ccomposite artistry,\u201d a \u201cfullness of statement\u201d that transcends for its own purposes what we may think of as \u201clogical coherence.\u201d
\n2 The autokerygmatic phrase \u05d0\u05e0\u05db\u05d9 \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u201cI am Yahweh\u201d is a basic phrase of OT theological rhetoric. It has been carefully studied by both Elliger and Zimmerli, who have referred to it respectively as a \u201cprimary formula\u201d (einfachen Formel, Elliger, Kleine Schriften, 214) and a \u201cself-presentation formula\u201d (Selbstvorstellungformel, Zimmerli, Gottes Offenbarung, 14). This phrase functions here as it does in Exod 6:2 (see above, and cf. Phillips, BR 16 [1971] 36\u201345), primarily as an assertion of the authority of Yahweh, the \u201cOne Who Always Is\u201d (see Comment on 3:11\u201320). Elliger (213\u201316, 221\u201323) has suggested that the addition of \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05da \u201cyour God\u201d to \u05d0\u05e0\u05db\u05d9 \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 makes a \u201choliness or sublimity formula\u201d into a \u201csaving history or grace-formula.\u201d The objects of that salvation-grace, the people of Israel, are reminded by Yahweh\u2019s opening words (1) who Yahweh is, by the use of the self-confessional phrase \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u05d0\u05e0\u05db\u05d9; (2) who they are, by the addition of the self-giving phrase \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05da since Yahweh can only have become their God by his act of giving himself; and (3) that these assertions are validated by their completely discontinuous new situation, as a people brought forth from Egypt, and from the non-status of slaves to the status of a people to whom Yahweh has given himself.
\nThis prologue verse thus introduces the ten commandments, a series of principles concerned with relationship with Yahweh and with humankind, by reference to what that relationship has meant, thus far, for the people of Israel. Yahweh, who is speaking to them, has given himself to them. He has brought them out from Egypt. He has made them who were no people a people; he has given freedom to those who were slaves. What follows is what the relationship, if it is to be continued, must have from the people of Israel. The connection of this verse with the formal prologues of Hittite (or any other) treaty formulary (Beyerlin, Sinaitic Traditions, 49\u201355; Hillers, Covenant, 48\u201352) should be made, if it is made at all, only in the most general terms. Far more is being declared here than any treaty ever claimed, above all in Yahweh\u2019s self-revelation and self-giving, neither of which appear to have been motives of any Hittite king. As Muilenburg put it, these \u201cfirst words\u201d of Yahweh to Israel, \u201cindispensably prior to all that is to follow,\u201d are \u201cthe center and focus of the whole Pentateuch\u201d and \u201cthe very heart of the whole Old Testament,\u201d and in connection with what follows them, \u201cthe association of proclamation and teaching: kerugma kai didache\u201d (Harvard Divinity Bulletin 28 [1964] 39\u201342).
\n3 The first of the ten commandments is basic to the nine that follow it and to the relationship the Decalogue is designed to insure. It sets forth an expectation of absolute priority, a first and fundamental requirement of those who desire to enter into the covenant relationship with Yahweh. MT reads, literally, \u201cIt (or There) is not to be to you (singular) other gods in my Presence.\u201d The singular verb and the singular subject and indirect object, along with the plural direct object, \u201cgods,\u201d make the application of the command unmistakably clear. There is not to be even one other god (Exod 34:14 even reduces \u201cother gods\u201d to the singular \u05d0\u05dc \u05d0\u05d7\u05e8), each single member of the covenant community is specifically involved, and there is no place where this expectation is invalid, since there is no place from which Yahweh\u2019s Presence is barred (so Ps 139).
\nZimmerli (Grundriss, 100) has contrasted the use in the first commandment of \u05d4\u05d9\u05d4 \u201cbe\u201d as opaque and overarching (\u201cunanschaulichen, weitgespannten\u201d) alongside the other commandments in which more specific verbs are used to describe the deeds prohibited or commanded. He compares this \u201cunusual\u201d mode of expression with the \u201cabsolute commands\u201d of the creator in Gen 1:3, 6, and 14, and suggests that it \u201cobviously represents a final condensation of a foundational proposition.\u201d \u05e2\u05b7\u05dc has variously been rendered (cf. Knierim, ZAW 77 [1965] 25; Stamm and Andrew, Ten Commandments, 79\u201381) as expressing preference, defiance, proximity, exclusion, opposition, and the like. It is taken above in connection with Yahweh\u2019s \u201cface\u201d or \u201cPresence\u201d to refer to Yahweh\u2019s Advent to Israel. He has given himself to them, and they are therefore no longer to have any other gods save him. It is possible that \u201cin my Presence\u201d is an expansion of a briefer earlier form; if so, it could be an expansion especially appropriate to the Sinai-Theophany context.
\nAs a survey of other forms of this prohibition (see Knierim ZAW 77 [1965] 23\u201325, for a helpful listing) makes clear, the first commandment is not an assertion of monotheistic conviction, that Yahweh is the only God, and hence the sole choice. The OT makes very clear that such was not the case in the world of ancient Israel. The first commandment, in a sense, was called for by the many gods who demanded of Israel the allegiance Yahweh alone had the right to command. The commandment does not specify that no one is to have \u201cother gods,\u201d but that Israel is to have no other gods. It is connected with Yahweh\u2019s \u201cjealousy\u201d or \u201czeal\u201d (cf. W. H. Schmidt, Das erste Gebot, 18\u201321, 30\u201333; Brongers, VT 13 [1963] 269\u201370, 279\u201384), described more fully in the expansion of the second commandment.
\nThis first of the commandments, in sum, is the essential foundation for the building of the covenant community. Yahweh had opened himself to a special relationship with Israel, but that relationship could develop only if Israel committed themselves to Yahweh alone. Yahweh had rescued them and freed them, delivered them and guided them, then come to them. The next step, if there was to be a next step, belonged to them. If they were to remain in his Presence, they were not to have other gods.
\n4 As the first commandment forbids any association with other gods to those who would be Yahweh\u2019s, the second commandment and the two that follow it set special dimensions of their relationship with him. The people of Israel are not to worship other gods at all. Following this most fundamental of requirements are three specifications of how Yahweh is to be worshiped. The first of these specifications is a prohibition, of the use of images in the worship of Yahweh. \u05e4\u05e1\u05dc means to \u201ccut or shape\u201d something, stone in particular, and the noun \u05e4\u05b6\u05bc\u05e1\u05b6\u05dc refers to an image, of whatever likeness and involving a variety of materials, made for use in the worship of diety. As Bernhardt (Gott und Bild, 17\u201368) has shown, such images were used throughout the ANE as a means of suggesting the presence of deity, not as objects of worship: the image \u201cwas much more something corporeal that the divine influence (das g\u00f6ttliche Fluidum) possessed\u201d (67).
\nGutmann (HUCA 32 [1961] 161\u201368) has laid to rest the false notion that the second commandment forbade visual art of any sort to the ancient Israelites and their Jewish descendants. He reckons the second commandment their \u201cearliest pronouncement about art,\u201d the purpose of which \u201cseems to have been to assure loyalty to the invisible Yahweh,\u201d who \u201cprobably remained\u201d even with the construction of Solomon\u2019s lavishly symbolic temple \u201cthe unseen God of the desert experience.\u201d The question is, whose image is being forbidden to Israel, Yahweh\u2019s, or those of the gods rival to Yahweh? Obbink (ZAW 47 [1929] 264\u201374) has suggested that the second commandment forbade the making of images of any kind, that it meant that Yahweh\u2019s worship was to be kept pure of defacement with \u201call kinds of heathen material,\u201d that it referred specifically to images of Anu, Enlil, Ea, etc. and so is a kind of elaboration of the first commandment. Von Rad (Theology, I, 216), similarly, has noted: \u201cHere the commandment is drafted wholly with reference to the commandment forbidding the worship of other gods,\u201d and he describes it as a late and specialized prohibition against representing Yahweh by \u201can image belonging to another deity.\u201d
\nThese theories do not, however, allow for the difference between the first and the second commandments (indeed, Obbink, Dutch Reformed, and von Rad, Lutheran, may reflect the confessional traditions that treat vv 3\u20136 as a single commandment; see Reicke, Die Zehn Worte), or for the differences between the essential statement of the second commandment (v 4a) and the lengthy and layered expansion of it (vv 4b\u20136; cf. Zimmerli, Gottes Offenbarung, 236\u201342). The first commandment states definitively that each individual who would enter the covenant with Yahweh is to have no other gods. Only disobedience of that command would allow the use of images of foreign gods, a point von Rad recognizes in his connection of the two commandments. Further, the emphatic \u05dc\u05b0\u05da\u05b8 \u201cfor yourself,\u201d surely unnecessary if v 4a is only an extension of v 3, may be a clue to the direction the second commandment is taking: the worshiper who has made a commitment to worship only Yahweh must not compromise that worship by making it easy, that is, by adopting for his own use shaped images to provide a concrete center for worship, a practice common to all of Israel\u2019s neighbors. The personal reference of this and indeed all the commandments must be kept clearly in mind. A paraphrase of the commandment might even be, \u201cNot a one of you is to have a shaped image for the worship of Yahweh.\u201d
\nThe amount of attention given to the second commandment in the layered expansion following it shows that it, like commandments four and ten, was a difficult one for the people of Israel to keep. And the nature of the expansion shows that what is really at stake is not the worship of other gods by the use of idols and images connected with them, though that may often have been a result of the violation of this prohibition. The second commandment has to do with Yahweh himself and his gift of his Presence to Israel. Israelites are forbidden to make images for the worship of Yahweh because he is Yahweh, as Lev 19:4 says. Nothing created can serve to represent him, not even in the whole range of the created order, from top to bottom, and even in the realms of the mythopoeic creatures, in the heavens above and in the waters below the earth, because Yahweh has made every thing and every being. He is in a way in them all, but, what is more important, he is beyond them all. He is \u201cThe One Who Always Is\u201d (see Comment on 3:13\u201315), Yahweh, the \u201cI AM\u201d who is present with them. No image conceivable to them could serve to represent him. They must worship him as he is, not as they can envision him or would like him to be.
\n5 The plural pronoun \u201cthem\u201d brings together the range of possibilities suggested by v 4b and may well refer also, as Zimmerli (Gottes Offenbarung, 235, n. 3, 236\u201338) has proposed, to the \u201cother gods\u201d of v 3. If so, it is because of what Childs (405) has aptly called an interpretation \u201cin the later redaction\u201d which puts the second commandment \u201cwithin the shadow of the first.\u201d To shaped images representing Yahweh (at least), Israel is not to bow down or to succumb before them to any enticement to service. A still fuller redactional explanation of the second commandment is given, however, in the appositional phrase in which Yahweh describes himself as \u05d0\u05b5\u05dc \u05e7\u05b7\u05e0\u05b8\u05bc\u05d0 \u201ca jealous God.\u201d \u05e7\u05b7\u05e0\u05b8\u05bc\u05d0 refers here and five other times in the OT to a justified jealousy of Israel\u2019s God. The adjective \u05e7\u05b7\u05e0\u05bc\u05d5\u05b9\u05d0 is used twice, the noun \u05e7\u05b4\u05e0\u05b0\u05d0\u05b8\u05d4 is used twenty-four times, and the verb \u05e7\u05e0\u05d0 six times in reference to this jealousy (cf. Sauer, THAT 2:647\u201350), always in contexts where the promised loyalty of Yahweh\u2019s (= Elohim\u2019s) people is in question. The phrases \u05e7\u05b8\u05e0\u05bc\u05d5\u05d0\\\u05be\u05b5\u05dc \u05e7\u05b7\u05e0\u05b8\u05bc\u05d0 and \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u05e7\u05b7\u05e0\u05b8\u05bc\u05d0 (both of which occur in Exod 34:14) are used only in passages in which other gods are mentioned.
\nThe basis for this jealousy of Yahweh is the expectation of undiluted loyalty specified by the first commandment (cf. Brongers, VT 13 [1963] 280\u201384). This reference to it in the explanatory expansion of the second commandment underscores both Yahweh\u2019s demand to be worshiped as he is and also the insight that any compromise of such worship leads inevitably to a divided or even a redirected loyalty that Yahweh has every right, even every obligation, to punish. Yahweh\u2019s jealousy is a part of his holiness (Exod 34:14) and is demanded by what he is. It is justified by the fact that it comes only upon those who, having promised to have no God but him, have gone back on that promise. Those who do so show that they \u201chate\u201d him, that they hold him in contempt: upon them in result must come a deserved judgment, across four generations. The language of the covenantal threat may be present in these words; but even more, the insight that indifference to commitment is contagious, in a family or in a society.
\n6 In vivid contrast to this specific limitation of judgment is the unlimited response of Yahweh to those who love him, who keep their promise to set him in first place, and so keep his commands. \u201cThousands\u201d might better be read \u201can innumerable descendancy,\u201d as the emphasis is upon the progeny of faithfulness and Yahweh\u2019s unending goodness to them all.
\n7 The third commandment must be read against the background of the extended meaning of \u201cname\u201d in the OT (see van der Woude, \u201c\u05e9\u05b5\u05c1\u05dd Name,\u201d THAT 2:935\u201363; Pedersen, Israel 1\u2013II, 245\u201359), and in particular, in the light of the importance of the extensive theology of the \u201cname\u201d and the \u201cnames\u201d of God (Grether, Name und Wort Gottes, esp. 1\u201358, 159\u201385). Such texts as Exod 20:24, 33:18\u201334:8; Num 6:27; Deut 6:13; 10:8; 12:5, 11; 16:2, 6, 11; 2 Sam 6:18; Pss 69:31[30]; 72:19, 105:3, and Isa 50:10, out of a long and intriguing list, only begin to suggest the considerable extent of the rhetoric and the theology connected with Yahweh\u2019s name and the other names that are related to it. The name \u201cYahweh\u201d occurs some 6828 times in the OT (by the count of Jenni, \u201c\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 Jahwe,\u201d THAT 1:704; BDB, 217, has \u201cc. 6823\u201d); \u201cElohim\u201d occurs 2600 times (W. H. Schmidt, \u201c\u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd Gott,\u201d THAT 1:154). \u201cYahweh\u201d is used exclusively in reference to Israel\u2019s God in the OT, and most of the occurrences of \u201cElohim\u201d refer to Israel\u2019s God. When the variety of other names, titles, and epithets and the usages of \u05e9\u05b5\u05c1\u05dd \u201cname\u201d in reference to Yahweh\/Elohim are added to the occurrences of Yahweh and Elohim, an impressive total suggests how important the use of the divine names in the confession and worship of ancient Israel actually was, and how necessary therefore was some instruction regarding their use, in particular the use of \u201cYahweh.\u201d
\nYet far more than the utterance of the divine name is intended in the third commandment. \u05e0\u05e9\u05c2\u05d0 means \u201clift up, raise, carry, even wear.\u201d \u05e9\u05b8\u05c1\u05d5\u05b0\u05d0 suggests \u201cnothingness, insubstantial thing,\u201d even \u201clie.\u201d In general terms, this commandment prohibits a lack of seriousness about Yahweh\u2019s Presence in Israel, demonstrated through a pointless, misleading, or even false use of his name. \u05e9\u05c1\u05d5\u05d0 has been assigned a wide and somewhat ambiguous range of meaning (cf. Klopfenstein, Die L\u00fcge, 315\u201320), and has also been taken quite specifically (1) to be equivalent to \u05e9\u05b6\u05c1\u05e7\u05b6\u05e8 \u201clie,\u201d and so equivalent here to false swearing or witness-giving (see the summaries of Klopfenstein, Die L\u00fcge, 18\u201321, and Childs, 410\u201311); and (2) as \u201ca noun for an idol,\u201d to form with \u05dc\u05b0 + \u05e0\u05e9\u05c2\u05d0 an idiom meaning \u201cgive to an idol.\u201d On this view, the third commandment becomes a prohibition against giving Yahweh\u2019s name to a \u201cnon-god,\u201d a temptation of syncretism (Staples, JBL 58 [1939] 327\u201329).
\nThe meaning of the third commandment probably lies beyond these opinions, though its range is broad enough to cover even the magical usage argued by Mowinckel (Psalmenstudien I [Amsterdam: Schippers, 1961] 50\u201358) and adopted more tentatively by Klopfenstein (Die L\u00fcge, 316\u201321). This commandment is couched in language deliberately chosen to permit a wide range of application, covering every dimension of the misuse of Yahweh\u2019s name. Yahweh had not withheld his name but had freely given it to Moses and so to Israel as both a summary and an extension of the revelation of his Presence. His sovereignty is such that he was not subject to the manipulation of his worshipers, and thus he opened himself to his people with as much fullness as they could stand. Not surprisingly, there are no incantation texts in the OT. Yahweh could not be controlled, or even altered in his set purpose, by men.
\nThe third commandment is directed not toward Yahweh\u2019s protection, but toward Israel\u2019s. Yahweh\u2019s name, specifically the tetragrammaton but in principle all Yahweh\u2019s names and titles, must be honored, blessed, praised, celebrated, invoked, pronounced, and so shared. To treat Yahweh\u2019s name with disrespect is to treat his gift lightly, to underestimate his power, to scorn his Presence, and to misrepresent to the family of humankind his very nature as \u201cThe One Who Always Is.\u201d So serious was such an abuse, and apparently also so widespread, that the third commandment was expanded at some point in its history by a warning. Any member of the covenant community who dishonors Yahweh\u2019s name, and so Yahweh\u2019s Presence, will not be left unpunished by Yahweh. What this punishment is to be is not specified. That it will be is stated as a solemn certainty.
\n8\u201310 The fourth commandment is the longest in the Decalogue, because it is the most expanded of all the commandments. No other commandment has received as much reapplication and as many defining and justifying clauses as this one. The probable reason for its expansion is the difficulty the people of Israel had keeping it, a difficulty attested by the attack of Amos (8:4\u20138) on the greedy merchants fidgeting for the sabbath to pass. Much work has been done toward the recovery of the original, or beginning, form of the fourth commandment, both by deleting what may be supposed to be additions (Stamm, TRu 27 [1961] 200\u20131; Harrelson, Ten Commandments, 41\u201342, 207) and also by the conversion of the positive form of MT to an assumed negative form (Rabast, Das apodiktische Recht, 35\u201338; Nielsen, Ten Commandments, 84, 88\u201389). Any such reconstruction is of course hypothetical, though the proposal of a shortened form of the commandment has far more to commend it than does conversion to a negative form.
\n\u05d6\u05b8\u05db\u05d5\u05b9\u05e8, a qal infinitive absolute, is the equivalent of an emphatic imperative. It means \u201cremember,\u201d as always in contexts of covenantal obligation, in the sense of \u201cobserve without lapse\u201d or \u201chold as a present and continuing priority.\u201d SamPent reads \u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05d5\u05d3 \u201ckeep,\u201d as does the parallel version of the commandment in Deut 5:12; Nash Papyrus (Burkitt, JQR 15 [1903] 395), however, has \u05d6\u05db\u05d5\u05e8, and LXX also reads \u201cremember\u201d (\u03bc\u03bd\u03ae\u03c3\u03b8\u03b7\u03c4\u03b9). Some scholars (Keszler, VT 7 [1957] 9\u201310; Childs, Memory, 52\u201355) argue the priority of \u05d6\u05db\u05d5\u05e8; others (K\u00f6hler, TRu 1 [1929] 180\u201381; Hulst, Studia, 153\u201359) contend for \u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05d5\u05e8. Noth (164) and Andreasen (OT Sabbath, 83) argue that both verbs, in this usage, come to mean about the same thing; Childs (Memory, 55) has suggested that the Deuteronomist \u201csubstituted\u201d \u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05d5\u05e8 for \u05d6\u05db\u05d5\u05e8 \u201cbecause of a particular theology of remembrance.\u201d This distinction, if it is present, is a very precise one.
\nConsiderable attention has been given to the word \u05e9\u05b7\u05c1\u05d1\u05b8\u05bc\u05ea \u201cSabbath,\u201d particularly as regards its etymology and its possible cultic and calendrical associations. This work, which is helpfully reviewed by de Vaux (Ancient Israel 2:475\u201380; cf. also Meek, JBL 33 [1914] 201\u201312) and Andreasen (OT Sabbath, 94\u2013121), has produced no firm conclusions. There is a wide agreement that the institution of the sabbath is an ancient one in Israel, and that the noun \u05e9\u05b7\u05c1\u05d1\u05b8\u05bc\u05ea belongs to the semantic field of \u05e9\u05c1\u05d1\u05ea \u201crest, cease.\u201d The OT clearly uses \u05e9\u05b7\u05c1\u05d1\u05b8\u05bc\u05ea as a term denoting a day of cessation, for religious reasons, from the normal daily routine. \u05e9\u05b7\u05c1\u05d1\u05b8\u05bc\u05ea is a day of \u201cstopping,\u201d a day designed to interrupt the normal activity of work, and a definite and fixed day. Robinson has argued that both \u05e0\u05d5\u05d7 and \u05e9\u05c1\u05d1\u05ea have nothing to do with \u201crest\u201d as relaxation, but refer instead to \u201cstopping for settlement\u201d and \u201ccoming to an end\u201d of something (ZAW 92 [1980] 33\u201342). The theory that \u05e9\u05b7\u05c1\u05d1\u05b8\u05bc\u05ea originally occurred once a month rather than weekly (Meinhold, ZAW 48 [1930] 122\u201328) or on some other nonweekly schedule (see Andreasen, OT Sabbath, 96\u2013100) simply does not fit the OT usage (cf. Cannon, ZAW 49 [1931] 325\u201327; North, Bib 36 [1955] 187\u201389, 193\u201396).
\nQuite apart from the set days of religious festivity or solemn assembly, none of which is referred to in the Decalogue, the sabbath day is to be thought of as extraordinary in the week instead of in the year. It is to be remembered without exception, set apart from all other days as a day for holy purposes, and kept free of the customary labor of sustenance of the other six days, precisely because it belongs to Yahweh. The six days alloted for the \u201cbusiness as usual\u201d (\u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05db\u05d4) of life must be made to suffice. On the sabbath day, nobody is to undertake such \u201cusual work.\u201d The singular pronoun \u201cyou\u201d is supplemented by a list of six potential sources of labor, taking in the family, the employees, the work-animals and even the visitor stopping temporarily with the Israelite. The detailed specification of this expansion is sometimes attributed to humanitarian concern (so Menes, Vorexilischen Gesetze, 37\u201340; Rodorf, Sunday, 12\u201317; cf. Mathys, TZ 28 [1972] 242\u201355). More likely, it is an attempt to plug obvious loopholes: not only is the Israelite not to work on the sabbath, neither is anyone else, or even any animal, that might conceivably be doing his work for him.
\n11 A still further justification of this requirement, beyond the assertion that the sabbath day belongs to Yahweh, is added. Yahweh himself respects this day as a day of surcease from the labor of the other six days: his work of creation was accomplished in six days, and then he rested. This justification of the sabbath-rest by reference to the P account of creation in Gen 1:1\u20132:4a may be less \u201can etiology for the sanctification of the sabbath\u201d by tying it to the \u201cvery structure of the universe\u201d (Childs, 416) than another attempt to persuade the sons of Israel to keep the fourth commandment. Yahweh himself kept the sabbath, and blessed it: Israel therefore could hardly do otherwise.
\nThe Deuteronomists make still another (and no doubt still needed) attempt; adding \u201cas Yahweh your God commanded you\u201d (Deut 5:12) to what is the end of Exod 20:8, they give as a reason not Yahweh\u2019s rest after his work of creation, but the exodus from the slavery of Egypt (Deut 5:15, which begins with \u05d5\u05d6\u05db\u05e8\u05ea \u201cand remember,\u201d the verb of Exod 20:8). Keeping the sabbath, for them, is a testimony of Israel\u2019s election and deliverance: in Egypt there was no day of interruption of the unending round of forced labor; Moses\u2019 requests for time to worship were met by Pharaoh with scorn; but Yahweh \u201cbrought them out from there\u201d and so commands them to celebrate the sabbath day as a \u201cstopping day\u201d proclaiming not only their dependence upon Yahweh but also their independence of all other peoples and powers.
\n12 With the fifth commandment, the second basic direction of the commandments as the fundamental principles of life in covenant with Yahweh is taken. The first four commandments set forth the principles guiding Israel\u2019s relationship to Yahweh; the last six commandments set forth the principles guiding Israel\u2019s relationship with the covenant community, and more broadly, with the human family. As the second, third, and fourth commandments are in many ways extensions of the first commandment, the first four commandments are the foundation for the final six commandments. And all of the commandments, as principles governing covenant relationships, are founded on the ultimate OT statement of relationship, which stands as prologue to the ten commandments: \u201cI am Yahweh, your God\u201d (see above, on v 2). Because Yahweh is, and is Israel\u2019s God, Israel both is and must become a certain and special people. What Israel is and is to be is determined by Yahweh\u2019s gift of himself to them first, and second, by their gift of themselves to him in response. That response involves Yahweh first (commandments one through four) and all humankind second (commandments five through six).
\nThe transition from Yahweh\u2019s expectation of his people in relation to himself to his expectation of his people in relation to the human family is this commandment establishing a norm for the relationship with father and mother. Just as the relationship with Yahweh is the beginning of the covenant, so this relationship is the beginning of society, the inevitable point of departure for every human relationship. The first relationship beyond the relationship with Yahweh, who according to the OT is the giver of life, is the relationship to father and to mother, who together are the channel of Yahweh\u2019s gift of life. No other human relationship is so fundamental, and none is more important. The fifth commandment is thus both as foundational to commandments six through ten as the first commandment is to commandments two through four, and also is the logical link from the relationship of Israel to Yahweh to the relationship of Israel to humankind.
\nThis commandment, like the one preceding it, is stated positively, and like that one, has been \u201creturned\u201d by some commentators (Nielsen, Ten Commandments, 115\u201318; Harrelson, Ten Commandments, 92\u2013105; cf. H. Schmidt, Eucharisterion, 78\u201382, who omitted the fourth and fifth commandments altogether) to a supposed negative original form. To date, no convincing evidence for such an alteration has been put forward (see Gerstenberger, Wesen, 43\u201350; A. Phillips, Criminal Law, 66, 80), or for the suggestion of Andrew (Stamm & Andrew, Ten Commandments, 96) that the fourth and fifth commandments were handed down in both positive and negative forms.
\nThe piel imperative singular \u05db\u05d1\u05d3 means \u201chonor, give weight to, glorify, esteem,\u201d in the sense of giving a place of precedence, of taking someone seriously. This verb is so used both of human beings, as here, and of Yahweh, as in 1 Sam 2:30, Isa 24:15, Ps 22:24 [23], or Prov 3:9 (cf. also Gamberoni, BZ 8 [1964] 169\u201372). To \u201cgive honor\u201d to father and mother means more than to be subject to them, or respectful of their wishes: they are to be given precedence by the recognition of the importance which is theirs by right, esteemed for their priority, and loved for it as well. As Yahweh is honored for his priority to all life, so father and mother must be honored for their priority, as Yahweh\u2019s instruments, to the lives of their children. Lev 19:3, in the chapter of the Holiness Code that gives special application of the Decalogue, even uses \u05d9\u05e8\u05d0 \u201chave reverence for, stand in awe of,\u201d instead of \u05db\u05d1\u05d3 in the repetition of the fifth commandment.
\nAs Gamberoni (BZ 8 [1964] 175\u201384) has demonstrated, the fifth commandment is foundational to a considerable body of parent and progeny material in the OT in both legal and wisdom collections, and Harrelson (Ten Commandments, 92\u201395) is correct in his insistence that adults are the ones to whom the commandment is primarily directed. Certainly, the whole range of filial relationship is generally involved, but the focus is upon those who are responsible and \u201cin charge,\u201d those who follow their parents and precede their children in shaping Israel\u2019s responsibility in covenant. There is no reason to argue, as Kremers (EvT 21 [1961] 156\u201361) does, that the parents here are the \u201crepresentatives (Stellvertreter) of God,\u201d on a par with preacher, teacher and priest. In a sense, they are more than that, representing only themselves. The parents represent Yahweh no more nor less than does any other member of the covenant community, and Israel is commanded to honor them not to provide social security or because they are proxy to Yahweh, but because Yahweh requires it of those who would enter into covenant with him.
\nThe equal status of the mother in this and other versions of the fifth commandment (MT of Lev 19:3 even puts \u201cmother\u201d before \u201cfather\u201d) is significant. The OT world was predominantly a male world, yet here as at other points in the OT (e.g., the Deuteronomists\u2019 introductions of the kings of Israel and Judah), the woman is given appropriate recognition. Nearly always, it is the woman in her all-important role as mother who is accorded such recognition (cf. Boecker, Redeformen, 75\u201376, esp. n. 5) but even so, such an emphasis is exceptional in the ANE.
\nThe promise and the implied warning that follow the fifth commandment are unique in the Decalogue. The Deuteronomistic tone of the language of this addition has often been noted and has been cited as evidence for dating the promise in the exilic or the postexilic periods (cf. Lohfink, BZ 9 [1965] 25\u201332). These words must be read in the light of such texts as Exod 21:15, 17; Lev 20:9; and Deut 21:18\u201321; 27:16. Disrespect for one\u2019s parents was a serious offense in the covenant community, and rebellion against them was punishable by death, precisely because such disrespect and rebellion constituted disobedience of Yahweh. The addition to the fifth commandment thus has a double meaning: while appropriate honor accorded father and mother could contribute for a number of reasons to the length of one\u2019s days in Yahweh\u2019s promised land, a lack of respect for them could just as certainly mean an abrupt end to those days.
\n13 The sixth commandment and the two commandments following it are recorded in MT with just six consonants each (the negative particle \u05dc\u05d0 plus a four-letter verb form). These three commandments may well give us our best idea of the original form of each of the \u201cten words.\u201d They are also the three that have been transmitted in a different order in the Masoretic and the Old Greek traditions (see above,n. 20:13.a). While it is not possible to determine with certainty which order is precedent, the Masoretic order appears to have been the more influential (Flusser, Textus 4: 223\u201324). It is at least possible that the brief form of these commandments had some bearing on the shifts in their sequence.
\nThe precise meaning of the sixth commandment depends on the definition of \u05e8\u05e6\u05d7. This verb occurs just over forty times in the OT, far less frequently than the more general terms \u05d4\u05e8\u05d2 \u201ckill, slay, destroy,\u201d (more than 160 times) and the hiphil of \u05de\u05d5\u05ea \u201ccause to die, kill\u201d (more than 200 times). Stamm (TZ 1 [1945] 81\u201390) has made a thorough study of the usage of \u05e8\u05e6\u05d7 in the OT, and A. Phillips (Criminal Law 83\u2013109) has considered the sixth commandment against its ANE context. \u05e8\u05e6\u05d7 plainly refers to killing that can be understood to be murder (so Ps 94:6b or 1 Kgs 21:19), and some translators so render it (see neb, for example); but \u05e8\u05e6\u05d7 can also refer to unintentional killing, \u201cmanslaughter,\u201d as in Deut 19:3, 4, 6, and Josh 20:3, and to the legal execution of a convicted killer, as in Num 35:30. Stamm (TZ 1 [1945] 87\u201390) concluded that \u05e8\u05e6\u05d7 is a verb of specialized application, referring to killing that brought illegal violence into the covenant community. Reventlow (Gebot und Predigt, 71\u201377) refined Stamm\u2019s theory, arguing that the Decalogue emerged from concrete situations and that the concrete situation of the sixth commandment involved the killing of the blood-feud (Blutrache).
\nNeither of these specialized definitions, however, is borne out fully by the usage of \u05e8\u05e6\u05d7 in the OT, a difficulty Childs (420\u201321) attempts to solve by proposing a continuing shift in the meaning of \u05e8\u05e6\u05d7 from its earlier technical sense (\u201ca type of slaying which called forth blood vengeance\u201d) to later and broader applications (\u201cacts of violence against a person which arose from personal feelings of hatred and malice\u201d). The problem posed by such a solution is that it presents a degree of ambiguity to the understanding of a commandment which cannot, for obvious reasons, be dated with any certainty: is \u05e8\u05e6\u05d7 here to be understood in its earlier, \u201ctechnical\u201d sense or in its later, \u201cbroad\u201d sense? Schulz, commenting that Reventlow\u2019s \u201csupposition\u201d is based on false assumptions (Das Todesrecht 9\u201315, esp. 11, n. 20; note also his remark about Stamm\u2019s \u201crisking\u201d), connects the sixth commandment to Exod 21:12: \u201cThe one who strikes a man, killing him (\u05d5\u05de\u05ea), will certainly be put to death.\u201d This connection has the advantage, if it can be sustained, of giving a firm point of reference for the sixth commandment. Whatever broadening of application it may have had in later years, its basic prohibition was against killing, for whatever cause, under whatever circumstances, and by whatever method, a fellow-member of the covenant community.
\nSuch a general understanding of \u05e8\u05e6\u05d7 fits its pattern of usage in the OT: the verb refers only to the killing of persons, never to animals; it can refer to capital punishment (once in the OT, Num 35:30: \u2026 \u05d9\u05e8\u05e6\u05d7 \u05d0\u05ea\u05be\u05d4\u05e8\u05e6\u05d7 \u05db\u05dc\u05be\u05de\u05db\u05d4\u05be\u05e0\u05e4\u05e9\u05c1 \u201canyone striking dead a person \u2026 the killer shall be killed\u201d) but not to killing in war; and it describes no specific means of killing. Both Hosea (4:2) and Jeremiah (7:9) use \u05e8\u05e6\u05d7 in lists of abuses of covenant commitment obviously based on the Decalogue. And it is important to understand this commandment, along with all the rest, as one in a series of Yahweh\u2019s expectations of those who would enter into covenant with him. \u05e8\u05e6\u05d7 is an act of killing, premeditated or not, related to vengeance or not, that violates the standard of living Yahweh expects of those who have given themselves to him. The primary reference of the commandment is religious, not social. Stamm\u2019s emphasis (see also Stamm and Andrew, Ten Commandments, 99) on \u05e8\u05e6\u05d7 as a verb describing killing that occurs primarily within the covenant community may be a correct one. What is certain is that \u05e8\u05e6\u05d7 describes a killing of human beings forbidden by Yahweh to those who are in covenant with him. The use of such a specialized term in the specific context of the Decalogue leaves the way open for the killing of the Yahweh-war or capital punishment, both of which are of course permitted by the OT, and also sets apart other uses of \u05e8\u05e6\u05d7 by relating them inevitably to the obligations of the covenant with Yahweh.
\n14 The ANE attitude toward adultery has been surveyed by Kornfeld (RB 57 [1950] 92\u2013109). Rabinowitz (JNES 18 [1959] 73) and Moran (JNES 18 [1959] 280\u201381) have commented, respectively, on texts from Egypt and Ugarit in which, as in the OT (Gen 20:9; cf. Exod 32:21, 30, 31; 2 Kings 17:21), adultery is referred to by the discreet euphemism, \u201cthe great sin.\u201d Moran describes texts published by Nougayrol (Palais Royal 4:125\u201348) involving what appears to be an adulterous liaison by the foreign wife of Ammi\u0161tamru, a king of Ugarit, which led to the lady\u2019s flight to her father Bente\u0161ina, extradition from her country, Amurru, and eventual execution. In each case, the lady\u2019s crime against Ammi\u0161tamru is called a \u201cgreat sin.\u201d
\nThe Hebrew verb for this \u201cgreat sin,\u201d and the verb of the seventh commandment, is \u05e0\u05d0\u05e3 \u201ccommit adultery.\u201d It is used in the OT with both men and women as subject, though far more frequently of men, and, by analogy, as a designation of idol worship, the violation of the bond of covenant relationship with Yahweh. \u201cGreat sin\u201d is used in the OT of both these betrayals.
\nThe literal reference of the seventh commandment is shown by such passages as (1) Lev 18:20; 20:10; and Deut 22:22 to have been sexual intercourse of a man with the wife of another man; (2) Deut 22:23\u201327, sexual intercourse of a man with the fiancee of another man; and (3) Hos 4:13; Ezek 16:32, sexual intercourse of a wife with a man, probably a married man (cf. \u05d6\u05b8\u05e8\u05b4\u05d9\u05dd \u201cstrangers\u201d of Ezek 16:32; and Humbert, R\u00c9tS\u00e9m 27 [1937] 49\u201364), other than her husband. That the fianc\u00e9e of a man was considered and treated insofar as sexual fidelity was concerned just as she would be when she became the man\u2019s wife is made clear by Deut 22:23\u201329.
\nThat adultery was considered a serious breech of the covenant relationship with Yahweh is shown both by the bluntness of the references to it and by the severity of the penalties inflicted for it. Jeremiah (5:7) includes adultery along with the worship of \u201cno-gods\u201d and \u201cbunching up at the whore house\u201d among sins that make Yahweh\u2019s forgiveness difficult. Hosea (4:2) includes adultery with swearing a curse falsely, deceitful lying, killing (\u05e8\u05e6\u05d7, as in v 13), stealing (\u05d2\u05e0\u05d1, as in v 15), destruction and piling one bloody deed onto another as a part of an inclusive charge against Israel (Hos 4\u20138). Job (24:13\u201317) lists the adulterer along with the murderous thief as a creature of the dark. The penalty for adultery was death, by stoning (usually, Deut 22:24) or by burning (Gen 38:24; Lev 20:14, 21:9), depending apparently upon the specific circumstances. Though a milder punishment was specified for other sexual offenses, as for example the seduction (Exod 22:16\u201317) or rape of a virgin (Deut 22:28\u201329), adultery, in any of the liaisons by which it was possible, was punishable by death.
\nThis attitude toward adultery is fully understandable only in view of the fact that more than the integrity of marriage and the home and more than the integrity of personal honor were at stake in the covenantal setting of Yahweh\u2019s \u201cten words.\u201d The integrity of the Israelite\u2019s relationship with Yahweh himself was at stake. Everywhere in the ANE, Israel included, adultery was a crime against persons; but in Israel it was first of all and even more a crime against Yahweh (Gen 20:9; 39:9; Jer 3:1, and cf. Kornfeld, RB 57 [1950] 100\u2013109, A. Phillips, Criminal Law, 117\u201318). Most telling of all in this connection is the use of adultery as a description of Israel\u2019s obsession with idolatry (Isa 57:1\u201313; Jer 3:6\u20139; Ezek 23:36\u201349, and all the references to Israel\u2019s \u201cgreat sin,\u201d predominant among them Exod 32:21\u201334, which may involve, in the light of \u05dc\u05e6\u05d7\u05e7 \u201cto play\u201d of 32:6, a double entendre). Adultery with the husband or the wife or the betrothed of another was, like idol worship, a turning away from commitment to Yahweh.
\n15 Critical analysis of the Decalogue has tended generally to suggest a shortening of the longer commandments to a form more like the terse expression of the sixth, seventh, and eighth commandments in the order of MT. A number of scholars, however, have favored lengthening the eighth commandment by the addition of a direct object believed to have been omitted from the original form of the commandment in the interest of giving it a broader application. The scholar generally credited with this suggestion is Albrecht Alt (Kleine Schriften, 333\u201340), though this interpretation appears to have been anticipated by rabbinic expositors, in both the Tannaitic midrash on Exodus (Petuchowski, VT 7 [1957] 397\u201398) and also the Babylonian Talmud (Gottstein, TZ 9 [1953] 394\u201395).
\nAlt\u2019s concern was to establish a clear difference between the eighth and the tenth commandments, to justify the inclusion of a commandment against stealing with commandments against such more serious offenses as killing and adultery by demonstrating a reference to stealing of a very special kind, and to establish a sequence of commands \u201cprotecting the God-given basic rights of each individual Israelite\u201d\u2014life (v 13), marriage (v 14), liberty (v 15), and reputation (v 16); in whatever order they were handed down, these \u201cGrundrechte\u201d were each of equal importance (Alt, Kleine, Schriften 338). To achieve these purposes, Alt proposed that the eighth commandment originally had an object, as does its verb \u05d2\u05e0\u05d1 \u201csteal\u201d in Exod 21:16 and Deut 24:7, and that it therefore prohibited, though not stealing in general, the kidnapping of a free Israelite man (on Alt\u2019s interpretation, 339, only the man was a nondependent, and so free; everyone else is provided for, in a list excluding the free man, by the tenth commandment).
\nA number of scholars have followed Alt\u2019s suggestion (for example, Nielsen, Ten Commandments, 85, 91; Stamm, TRu 27 [1961] 298\u201399; Keszler, VT 7 [1957] 11\u201312; A. Phillips, Criminal Law, 130\u201332); others, for a variety of reasons, have found it unconvincing (so Andrew, Stamm and Andrew, Ten Commandments, 106; Hyatt, 215; Gerstenberger, Wesen, 63\u201364, 77\u201381; Harrelson, Ten Commandments 135\u201336). \u05d2\u05e0\u05d1 means \u201csteal\u201d; if the verb has any special connotation beyond this fundamental idea, it would be \u201csurreptitious stealing\u201d (Judg 17:2\u20135; Prov 29:24), stealing under cover of darkness (Job 27:20) or confusion (2 Kgs 11:2) or even trust (Gen 31:19, 32). Such a sense of duplicity and of stealthiness cannot be said to fit the majority of the OT usages of \u05d2\u05e0\u05d1, however, and so \u05d2\u05e0\u05d1 is best defined as a verb depicting stealing of any kind to which the meaning \u201cstealing in secret or by duplicity\u201d can also sometimes apply.
\nHorst (Gottes Recht, 173\u201375) referred to the inclusion of stealing in a list of three or four OT \u201cdeeds of jealousy\u201d (Neidingswerke): \u201cmurder, stealing, adultery and perjury.\u201d While it is clear that each of the commandments five through ten describes deeds breaching human relationship and therefore compromising the relationship with Yahweh that is the purpose of the entire Decalogue, perhaps too much has been made of the interconnectedness of the commandments themselves. What binds them together is not their supposed comprehensiveness or their listing of social problems of equal weight with equal penalties or their progressive development of the essential problems of organized society, but the fact that they are commanded by Yahweh as his ten principles for those who would live their lives in relationship, first of all, with him. These are the commands, according to Exodus, that Yahweh himself made \u201cin person\u201d to Israel at Sinai. That is what gives the commandments their special place, and not the seriousness of the penalties inflicted when they were broken, or their place in a comprehensive legal system. Too much has been made of the relation of the ten commandments to other laws in the OT and beyond it. Not enough has been made of the way in which virtually all of the OT legal system is rooted in the ten commandments.
\nThe eighth commandment is best understood perhaps as a prohibition of stealing of any kind under any circumstances. We need look no further than our own experience of life to know how disruptive of relationships stealing can be. But we must keep firmly in mind that Yahweh is represented as requiring that those in covenant relationship with him are not to steal. As with each of the commandments, the ultimate penalty for stealing is not the penalty of the community but the penalty of Yahweh. What Israel faces for breaking the commandments, as chaps. 32\u201334 so dramatically show, is not the loss of life, but the far worse loss of Yahweh\u2019s Presence.
\n16 The language of the ninth commandment connects it to the judicial process in the covenant community, a process described in broad terms by K\u00f6hler (Hebrew Man, 127\u201350). \u05e2\u05e0\u05d4 means \u201canswer, give reply, testify,\u201d especially when, as here, it is followed by \u05d1\u05b0\u05bc \u201cfor, against, in the case of.\u201d The noun \u05e8\u05b5\u05e2\u05b7 \u201ccompanion, neighbor, friend, fellow-citizen\u201d refers always in the OT to a person with whom one stands in a reciprocal relationship, and in legal contexts, to a fellow member of the covenant community (cf. Fichtner Wort und Dienst 4:23\u201331). \u05e2\u05b5\u05d3 \u201ctestimony, evidence\u201d appears to be derived from \u05e2\u05d5\u05d3 \u201cdo again, repeat,\u201d and refers to what amounts to a repeated account, an answer given as evidence.
\n\u05e9\u05b8\u05c1\u05e7\u05b5\u05e8 which qualifies the \u05e2\u05b5\u05d3, means \u201clying, deceiving, false, fraudulent.\u201d \u05e2\u05b5\u05d3 \u05e9\u05b8\u05c1\u05e7\u05b5\u05e8 occurs in the OT in reference to a lying testimony in a judicial context in Deut 19:18; Ps 27:12; and Prov 6:19; 12:17 (\u05e9\u05c1\u05e7\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd); 14:5; 19:5, 9 (\u05e9\u05e7\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd); and 25:18 (cf. also, variously, \u05e9\u05c1\u05d1\u05e2 \u201cswear\u201d plus \u05e9\u05c1\u05e7\u05e8, Lev 5:22 [6:3]; Jer 5:2; Zech 8:17). In Deut 5:20, \u05e9\u05c1\u05e7\u05e8 is replaced by \u05e9\u05b8\u05c1\u05d5\u05b0\u05d0 \u201cnothingness, emptiness, worthlessness, something vain,\u201d to form a phrase found only there and intended apparently to broaden the application of the ninth commandment to include any evasive or worthless testimony. Klopfenstein (Die L\u00fcge, 21) has suggested that the Exodus version of this commandment refers more to the relationship of the witness towards a neighbor against whom he has given a perfidious report, while the version in Deuteronomy tends more to describe the malicious character of the witness himself. This distinction however is more precise than the evidence in the OT will allow.
\nThat the whole matter of the responsibility of the individual Israelite for the integrity of the legal process was taken quite seriously in the covenant community of Israel is shown by a number of OT texts (e.g., Exod 23:1; Num 35:30; Jer 7:8; Ps 24:4; Prov 25:18; and Job 31:30). The testimony of at least two witnesses was required to sustain a charge (Deut 19:15; Num 35:30), and the penalty for false accusation was severe (Deut 19:16\u201321). In fact, there was even provision for punishing those who frustrated or defeated justice by refusing to come forward to give needed testimony. The ninth commandment provided an obvious and no doubt needed protection of the legal process at the crucial point where the evidence of wrongdoing within the covenant community was given.
\nIn addition to the obvious application of this commandment to the maintenance of justice in the covenant community, however, there is also a wider implication of the requirement of truthfulness, reflected not only in the broader statement of Deut 5:20 but also in the fact that the truthfulness in legal testimony is presented not as a requirement of a system of jurisprudence but as a requirement of Yahweh. This commandment, like all the others, describes what the life of the Israelite obedient to Yahweh\u2019s expectation is to be like. That he is not to give a lying testimony in a legal proceeding is at the root of the ninth commandment, but the testimony the Israelite gives before the elders in the gate is not to be considered something separate from his witness under less formal circumstances.
\nAndrew (Int 17 [1963] 427\u201333), in his helpful review of the broader implications of the ninth commandment, has stressed the \u201cemphasis on persons\u201d (\u201cyou \u2026 your neighbor\u201d; even \u201cwitness of falsehood\u201d instead of \u201cfalse witness\u201d) by linking the commandment to a series of OT passages dealing with lying and deception and by stressing the \u201cemptiness of falsehood\u201d and the \u201cpositive, even violent and vindictive harm\u201d it does, bringing \u201cpointlessness and harm into \u2026 relationships with God and people.\u2026\u201d The false witness was inimical to the relationship with Yahweh, upon which everything, including the very being of the Israelite, was dependent. The reputation of the neighbor was important, just as the Israelite\u2019s own reputation was important, of course. But however important these reputations were within the community, they were important to Yahweh most of all, for these people, as his people, were to be his witness to the world.
\n17 The tenth commandment, like commandments two, three, four and five, has been expanded in the definition and application of the principle it sets forth. As suggested already, such expansion was probably the result of need: these five commandments were the ones with which the covenant community had the greatest difficulty. Like the ninth commandment, this one too is directed specifically to relationship within the covenant community. Like each of the commandments, this one too is addressed to each individual member of the covenant community, and like the second, third, fifth and ninth commandments, it includes also a singular possessive personal pronoun, \u201cyour neighbor.\u201d
\nThe application of the tenth commandment is determined by the exact meaning of the verb \u05d7\u05de\u05d3. At base \u05d7\u05de\u05d3 means \u201cdesire, yearn for, covet, lust after\u201d someone or something, specifically for one\u2019s own use or gratification. The question whether the verb may also suggest action as well as desire, particularly since the other nine commandments appear to command specific actions, has complicated the understanding of the tenth commandment. Herrmann (Beitr\u00e4ge, 69\u201372) and Nielsen (Ten Commandments, 101\u20135), for example, have taken the view that \u05d7\u05de\u05d3 means both the desire and the scheming and actions impelled by it, an argument they sustain by reference to such passages as Exod 34:24; Deut 7:25; Josh 7:21; Mic 2:2; and Ps 68:17. Coates (ZAW 52 [1934] 238\u201339), Stoebe (Wort und Dienst 3:108\u201315), and Moran (CBQ 29 [1967) 543\u201348), on the other hand, argue for the more subjective basic definition, on the grounds that there are ample examples of the prohibition in the ANE of such subjective longings and that such a definition better fits all the OT occurrences of \u05d7\u05de\u05d3 and its derivatives, including the texts cited in support of the \u201cdesire and take\u201d definition.
\nHyatt (Encounter 26 [1965] 204\u20136), listing parallels in Egyptian literature, suggested an \u201coriginal form\u201d of the tenth commandment that was an injunction against someone \u201cin a position of authority\u201d opening himself to bribery through \u201cinordinate desire\u201d; so this commandment was connected with the ninth commandment and \u201cthe integrity of the judicial system of the desert period.\u201d A. Phillips (Criminal Law, 149\u201352) goes much farther in the same general direction with his argument that \u05d7\u05de\u05d3 \u201cdesire\u201d is a replacement for an original verb that referred to the seizure of the house (taken in its literal meaning) of the local elder, who would then, by the loss of his status as a property-owner, lose also his authority as a judge. Such a theory is made necessary by Phillips\u2019s assumption (1\u20132 and passim) that \u201cthe Decalogue constituted ancient Israel\u2019s preexilic criminal law code given to her at Sinai.\u201d
\nBoth sides in this debate have taken the use in Deut 5:21 of \u05d0\u05d5\u05d4 \u201cdesire, incline towards, long for, lust over\u201d instead of the second \u05d7\u05de\u05d3 \u201cdesire\u201d of Exod 20:17 as support for their respective cases. The two verbs are however very close in meaning, so close that A. Phillips (Criminal Law, 150) and Childs (426\u201327) can say that the Deuteronomists used \u05d0\u05d5\u05d4 to emphasize the subjective nature of \u05d7\u05de\u05d3, while Stamm (Stamm and Andrew, Ten Commandments, 104) and Nielsen (Ten Commandments, 43) propose that the Deuteronomists were attempting with this change to tone down the objective action implied by \u05d7\u05de\u05d3, and move the commandment towards what Stamm calls \u201cmental coveting.\u201d The two verbs are much too nearly synonymous, however, to justify the distinctions these scholars have proposed, and in any case, the expansion of the commandment in Exodus repeats \u05d7\u05de\u05d3 instead of using \u05d0\u05d5\u05d4 or any other verb meaning \u201ccovet.\u201d In every OT passage in which \u05d7\u05de\u05d3 leads to actual possession, a second verb is supplied to make that additional meaning clear. If \u05d7\u05de\u05d3 had meant \u201ccovet and seize,\u201d such a second verb would have been unnecessary.
\nAnother possibility is that \u05d7\u05de\u05d3, as a verb meaning \u201cdesire obsessively, covet or lust after for oneself\u201d and describing a mental and emotional process interior to a person\u2019s being, was the deliberate and careful choice of a verb for the commandment that ends the ten words. Just as the first commandment, \u201cYou are not to have other gods,\u201d provides the foundation for covenantal relationship, so this tenth commandment, \u201cYou are not to desire for yourself \u2026,\u201d describes the foundation for the severance of covenantal relationship. \u05d7\u05de\u05d3 is by choice a reference to an obsessive covetousness that could be the gateway to the violation of every other principle in the Decalogue. Thus coveting for oneself the gold and silver with which idols are decorated leads to idolatry, the violation of the first commandment. Desiring the \u201cfree love\u201d of the fertility cults leads both to the worship of other gods and to sexual irresponsibility, the violation of the first and the seventh commandments (Isa 1:29). Yearning after the possessions of others may lead to stealing, a violation of the eighth commandment (Mic 2:2; Josh 7:21\u201326, which includes also a violation of the third commandment, since Achan had apparently sworn the oath of Yahweh-war loyalty).
\nBefore Ahab\u2019s obsessive desire for Naboth\u2019s vineyard was satisfied, the ninth and sixth commandments had been broken (1 Kgs 21). Before David\u2019s lust for Bathsheba was sated, the seventh, eight, and sixth commandments were broken (2 Sam 11\u201312). The coveting merchants of Amos\u2019s day broke the fourth and the eighth commandments in their fever to possess (Amos 8:4\u20136). The citizens of Judah in Jeremiah\u2019s time, deifying their desires and longing after a material and local security, violated the first, third, sixth, seventh, and ninth commandments, and above all, by making Yahweh\u2019s temple into a fetish, the second commandment as well (Jer 7:1\u201315). And the son whose determined desire for his own way led him to strike (Exod 21:15) or abuse (Exod 21:17) his father or his mother was guilty of breaking the fifth commandment.
\nThe tenth commandment thus functions as a kind of summary commandment, the violation of which is a first step that can lead to the violation of any one or all the rest of the commandments. As such, it is necessarily all-embracing and descriptive of an attitude rather than a deed. It was perhaps set last in the Decalogue precisely because of this uniquely comprehensive application.
\n\u05d1\u05d9\u05ea \u201chouse,\u201d in accord with this broad application, is used in its collective sense, in reference to the \u201cneighbor\u2019s\u201d entire family and his entire property, as for example in Gen 7:1 or Deut 11:6. LXX reverses the sequence of \u201chouse\u201d and \u201cwife\u201d in the text of Exod 20:17, as also does MT in the parallel version of this commandment in Deut 5:21, thus making \u201chouse\u201d a more specific term and setting up a descending sequence from a man\u2019s most valuable possession in the OT view, his wife (Prov 31:10\u201331), to his least valuable ones. This change may be regarded as a later shifting of emphasis within the form of the expanded tenth commandment. In its original form, the commandment must have been deliberately comprehensive, with the reference to the neighbor\u2019s house taking in all that belonged to any fellow member of the covenant community.
\nThe basic form of the tenth commandment thus prohibits an obsessive desire for any property belonging to any other person bound to the covenant with Yahweh. The expansion of the basic form specifies five categories of the most valuable possessions the neighbor could have: wife, male slave, female slave, ox, and ass. Moran (CBQ 29 [1967] 548\u201352) has reviewed an extensive series of similar lists from Ugaritic legal texts and established a fairly consistent formula for the listing of an owner\u2019s total property (\u201c \u2018house and field\u2019 + specifications [buildings, various forms of cultivation, personnel, livestock] + generic formula, \u2018everything else belonging to him\u2019 \u201d). One of the texts Moran lists (550\u201351) is an almost word-for-word parallel (cf. Nougayrol, Palais Royal 3:111, 115\u201316) to Exod 20:17.
\nAs the apparent function of such lists is to set forth a comprehensive statement of the ownership of property, this expansion of the tenth commandment gives support to the view that it is a summary commandment prohibiting the kind of thinking and feeling that might lead, in turn, to the violation of the other commandments of Yahweh. In the list of Exod 20:17, only the living resources are actually named. The rest of the neighbor\u2019s possessions, his material goods, are provided for both by the collective term \u201chouse\u201d and by the catch-all phrase at the end of the addition to the commandment, \u201canything that belongs to your neighbor.\u201d Whoever expanded the tenth commandment may thus be said not only to have sought to make specific what covetousness meant in the context of covenant community; he also reinforces the comprehensive summary nature of the commandment itself.
\nExplanation
\nWhatever the time origin of the Decalogue, and whatever the Ur-form of the individual commandments that make it up, whatever the provenance of the \u201cten words\u201d in Israel\u2019s worship and in Israel\u2019s legal practice, this most influential of all law codes must be seen in Exodus as the center of the narrative that is at the very heart of the OT. By location as by content, the Decalogue is set forth in Exodus as the single address of Yahweh himself directly to his people, stating the fundamental principles for living in relationship with him. It is possible that the Exodus setting of the Decalogue may give us information not only about the covenant community\u2019s belief concerning the origin and the authority of the commandments, but also about the biblical interrelation of revelation and law and the biblical view of law as liberation. If this is even partially true, we should take the Exodus location of the commandments far more seriously than we have done.
\nYahweh\u2019s Advent to the people of Israel at Sinai amounts to the primal experience of Israel\u2019s faith. Throughout the narrative of Exodus, from the revelation to Moses forward, Yahweh has demonstrated, by one mighty deed after another, the reality of the claim made in his special name, \u201cthe One Who Always Is.\u201d Unlike other gods, for whom claims were made, Yahweh is represented over and over again making his claims for himself; through deeds and through interpreting words, Yahweh has presented himself to the people of Israel, establishing a relationship between himself and the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
\nThen at last Yahweh comes to these people at Sinai, in an awesome experience for which they were carefully prepared, and defining his relationship with them (\u201cI am Yahweh, your God, who brought you forth from the land of Egypt\u201d), he then gives them the basic outline of their response to what he had become to them, his directions for what might be called their covenant of being, his definition of the standards of their relationship to him. The first four commandments set forth the principles guiding Israel\u2019s relationship to Yahweh. The last six commandments set forth the principles guiding Israel\u2019s relationship to the covenant community and, both indirectly and directly, to the whole family of humankind because of the prior relationship with Yahweh. The order of these principles of relationship is significant, because it moves from Israel\u2019s first priority, Yahweh, to Israel\u2019s second priority, family and neighbor, all of course in the larger context set by the introduction to the Sinai narrative sequence (summed up especially in Exod 19:4\u20136; see Comment above) which has in view Israel\u2019s relationship, as Yahweh\u2019s witness, to all men and women everywhere.
\nThe Decalogue begins with Yahweh\u2019s all-embracing statement that he has made himself Israel\u2019s God. The autokerygmatic \u201cI am Yahweh, your God, who brought you forth from the land of Egypt\u201d describes Yahweh\u2019s relationship with Israel as a gift of grace. The first commandment follows this statement, requesting of those who will make a response to Yahweh\u2019s gift an undivided loyalty. This undivided loyalty is the foundation for the nine commandments that follow. The tenth commandment, then, with its emphasis on the attitude of mind and heart that opens the way to compromise, is a summary commandment, a prohibition of an attitude that precedes the violation of any or all of the other commandments.
\nThe ten commandments thus present the foundational layer of Yahweh\u2019s expectation of those who, in response to his gift of himself, desire to give themselves to him. This foundational layer, in turn, is woven carefully into the primary OT account of Yahweh\u2019s giving of himself, the Advent at Mount Sinai. And in some ways most important of all, this foundational layer describing what Israel was to become and how, is set forth not as the expectation of Moses or Aaron or any collection of leaders, but as the expectation of Yahweh, delivered to the people in person when he came to them at Sinai.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s Response to Yahweh\u2019s Coming (20:18\u201321)
\nBibliography
\nBecker, J. Gottesfurcht im Alten Testament. AnBib 25. Rome: P\u00e4pstliches Bibelinstitut, 1965. Greenberg, M. \u201c\u05e0\u05e1\u05d4 in Exodus 20:20 and the Purpose of the Sinaitic Theophany.\u201d JBL 79 (1960) 273\u201376. Roberts, B. J. The Old Testament Text and Versions. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1951. Wolff, H. W. \u201cThe Elohistic Fragments in the Pentateuch.\u201d Int 26 (1972) 158\u201373.
\nTranslation
\n18 And all the people were experiencing the rumblings of thunder and the bolts of lightning and the sound of the ram\u2019s horn and the mountain smoking: and as the people took it in, they trembled and drew some distance back. 19 Then they said to Moses, \u201cYou speak with us, and we promise we\u2019ll hear\u2014but don\u2019t let God keep speaking with us, lest we die!\u201d 20 But Moses replied to the people, \u201cDon\u2019t be afraid, for it is with the purpose of giving you the experience that God has come, so that reverence for him might grip you and prevent you from sinning.\u201d 21 So the people took a position at a distance, while Moses approached the thick cloud where God was.
\nNotes
\n18.a. \u05e8\u05b9\u05d0\u05bc\u05d9\u05e1, masc. pl. qal act ptcp \u05e8\u05d0\u05d4; lit., \u201cseeing,\u201d but given the succession of obj, the verb is taken above in BDB\u2019s (907) sense of \u201c5. see = perceive\u201d and \u201c7. of mental observation.\u201d The ptcp indicates the action of the people during Yahweh\u2019s theophany, from the moment the people took their place at the foot of Sinai through the speaking of the \u201cten words.\u201d Cf. Cassuto, 252.
\n18.b. \u05dc\u05e4\u05d9\u05d3\u05e1 \u201ctorches,\u201d i.e., \u201cflames, flashes,\u201d in this context, of lightning. SamPent has \u201cAnd all the people heard (\u05e9\u05de\u05e2) the rumblings \u2026 and the sound \u2026 and were seeing (\u05d5\u05e8\u05d0\u05d9\u05e1) the bolts \u2026 and the mountain smoking, and all the people were afraid.\u2026\u201d
\n18.c. SamPent, LXX, Tg. Ps.-J. have \u201call the people.\u201d
\n18.d. \u05d5\u05b7\u05d9\u05b7\u05bc\u05e8\u05b0\u05d0 \u201cand so, as they saw.\u201d \u05e8\u05d0\u05d4 taken here also as in n. 18.a. SamPent, LXX, Syr., Vg, other versions read instead \u05d5\u05b7\u05d9\u05b4\u05bc\u05e8\u05d0\u05d5\u05bc \u201cand so they were afraid.\u201d MT makes perfect sense if \u05e8\u05d0\u05d4 is not read literally. Cf. Barth\u00e9lemy, Preliminary and Interim Report, 115\u201316.
\n18.e. \u05d5\u05d9\u05e2\u05de\u05d3\u05d5 \u05de\u05e8\u05d7\u05e7 \u201cand they took up a position from a distance.\u201d
\n19.a. The impv., \u05d3\u05b7\u05bc\u05d1\u05b5\u05bc\u05e8 \u201cspeak\u201d is made emphatic by the addition of the pers pronoun \u05d0\u05ea\u05d4 \u201cyou.\u201d SamPent begins at this point the much more elaborate version of the people\u2019s plea recorded also in Deut 5:24\u201327. The sequence from Deuteronomy is inserted verbatim into SamPent\u2019s version of Exod 20:19, between \u05d5\u05d9\u05d0\u05de\u05e8\u05d5 \u05d0\u05dc \u05de\u05e9\u05d4 \u201cthen they said to Moses\u201d and \u05d9\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8 \u05e2\u05de\u05e0\u05d5 \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05e1 \u05e4\u05da \u05de\u05bb\u05d5\u05ea \u05d5\u05d0\u05dc \u201cbut don\u2019t let God keep speaking with us, lest we die,\u201d an addition dictated apparently by the other additions following the Decalogue and designed to legitimize Mount Gerizim as a place where Yahweh was to be worshiped. Cf. Roberts, Text and Versions, 189.
\n19.b. \u05d5\u05b0\u05e0\u05b4\u05e9\u05b0\u05c1\u05de\u05b8\u05e2\u05b8\u05d4. The addition of the \u201ccohortative \u05d4\u201d to \u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05e2 gives the sense of \u201cself-encouragement \u2026 a resolution or a wish\u201d (GKC, \u00b6 48e), rendered above \u201cwe promise we\u2019ll hear.\u201d
\n19.c. \u05d9\u05b0\u05d3\u05b7\u05d1\u05b5\u05bc\u05e8, the piel impf. \u05d3\u05d1\u05e8 \u201cspeak,\u201d taken in this context in its \u201citerative\u201d sense (GKC \u00b6 52f).
\n20.a. \u05d1\u05e2\u05d1\u05d5\u05e8 \u201con account of, for the sake of, in the interest of, in order that.\u201d
\n20.b. \u05e0\u05b7\u05e1\u05bc\u05d5\u05b9\u05ea, piel inf constr \u05e0\u05e1\u05d4 \u201ctest, try, attempt, even get accustomed to\u201d; see BDB, 650, and esp. Greenberg (JBL 79 [1960] 274\u201376), who argues from the \u201cexpanded version of the Sinai story in Deut 4\u20135\u201d that the purpose of the Sinai theophany, according to both Exod 20:20 and Deut 4:10, was \u201cto give Israel a direct, palpable experience of God,\u201d and that piel of \u05d1\u05e1\u05d4 in this verse has the \u201cfactitive\u201d meaning \u201cgive X experience of.\u201d
\n20.c. \u05e2\u05dc \u05e4\u05d9\u05db\u05e1 \u2026 \u05ea\u05d4\u05d9\u05d4 \u201cbe upon your faces,\u201d i.e., \u201cbe always before you, on your mind.\u201d
\n20.d. \u05dc\u05d1\u05dc\u05ea\u05d9 \u05ea\u05d7\u05d8\u05d0\u05d5 \u201cin order that you might not sin.\u201d Cf. BDB, 116 \u00a7 4.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThese verses, as noted already (Form\/Structure\/Setting on 19:1\u201315 and 19:16\u201325), are the closing bracket of the central narrative of the Sinai narrative sequence. The account of the preparation of the people of Israel for Yahweh\u2019s Advent is given in Exod 19:9\u201315, the opening bracket of the central narrative. That central narrative is given in 19:16\u201319a and 20:1\u201317, the account of Yahweh\u2019s Advent and Yahweh\u2019s ten words, best understood as a unit disrupted in the composite of Exodus by the insertion of material dealing with the sacerdotal\/prophetic intermediacy of Moses (19:19b\u201325; cf. above). This account of the people\u2019s reaction to the awesome theophany and its pointed revelation thus serves as the conclusion, or closing bracket, to a central narrative sequence moving from 19:9\u201315 to 19:16\u201319a and 20:1\u201317 to 20:18\u201321. The larger Sinai narrative sequence to which these verses are central includes a general introduction, 19:1\u20138, and an account of the solemnization of the covenant, 24:1\u201318; it is concluded by an account of covenant breaking, redefinition of the relationship with Yahweh\u2019s Presence, and the renewal of the covenant, in 32:1\u201334:35.
\nThe connection of 20:18\u201321 with the account of Yahweh\u2019s theophany must not be made exluding the Decalogue (as for example Noth, 168, or Hyatt, 217, do). The reaction of the people is presented in the composite of Exodus as reaction not only to the phenomena surrounding the theophany and to the theophany itself but also to the revelation of the Decalogue, presented as an integral part of the theophany. The usual source-assignment of these verses has been to E (so Beer, 104, E1; Noth, 168; Hyatt, 217), but the reasons given are not determinative and the composite Sinai narrative sequence has been too many times expanded and reworked to make precise source-analysis either possible or much of a help to an understanding of the passages constituting it. The form of the composite of which these verses are an integral part is determined not by the influence of sources but by the governing theme, the Advent of Yahweh.
\nComment
\n18\u201319 The experience of the people through the whole of the theophany of Yahweh, from the first sounds and sights presaging it through the intensification of those phenomena with Yahweh\u2019s arrival and even through the giving of the \u201cten words,\u201d is summed up in the \u05e8\u05d0\u05d9\u05dd \u201cexperiencing\u201d and the \u05d5\u05d9\u05e8\u05d0 \u201cthey took it in\u201d of this verse. \u05e8\u05b9\u05d0\u05b4\u05d9\u05dd, a qal active participle, summarizes the continuity of the people\u2019s experience, along with a list of the phenomena accompanying the theophany in precisely the same order in which they occur in 19:16\u201318: thunder, lightning, the sounding of the ram\u2019s horn, and the mountain smoking. This summation is then confirmed by the qal imperfect of \u05e8\u05d0\u05d4 with special waw, a verb form suggesting narrative continuity and the next step in the people\u2019s experience: having experienced the phenomena of Yahweh\u2019s Advent and then Yahweh\u2019s own voice, the people became more and more frightened. As they \u201csaw\u201d what was happening to them, \u201crealized, took in\u201d the experience of which they were a part, the people trembled, and drew back even from the perimeter of safety set about Sinai for their protection.
\nSuch an interpretation of \u05e8\u05d0\u05d9\u05dd and \u05d5\u05d9\u05e8\u05d0 is confirmed, both by the people\u2019s panic-stricken request of Moses and also by the statement by Moses of the purpose of the theophany. The people plead with Moses, \u201cYou speak with us.\u201d The imperative is made doubly emphatic by the addition of the personal pronoun, as it is by the \u201cpromise\u201d that they will \u201chear, listen attentively\u201d to whatever Moses has to say to them (see nn. 19.a, b.). \u201cYou speak\u201d implies by its emphasis as by its context the awesome speaking of Yahweh which the people want now to avoid, as their further plea says: \u201cDon\u2019t let God keep speaking (piel imperfect of \u05d3\u05d1\u05e8) with us, lest we die!\u201d
\n20 Moses\u2019 comforting reply further encompasses the whole experience the people have had, particularly in the use of \u05e0\u05e1\u05d4 \u201cexperience.\u201d The people must have no fear, he says, because God had come for the purpose of giving them the experience of his Presence. \u05e0\u05b7\u05e1\u05bc\u05d5\u05b9\u05ea, the piel infinitive construct of \u05e1\u05bb\u05d4, has generally been translated \u201ctest, prove,\u201d with varying implications: a test of faith (Rylaarsdam, IB 1:990), a test of obedience (Cassuto, 253; Hyatt, 217), a test of proper respect (Beer, 105), even a test of whether they would disregard the boundaries of holiness around Sinai (Noth, 168). Previously in the narrative of Exodus, at 15:25 (see Comment above); 16:4; 17:2, \u05e0\u05e1\u05d4 is used in exactly such a manner, in the first two instances in reference to Yahweh putting the people to a test of their trust in him to provide for their physical needs, in the third in reference to the people putting Yahweh to a test of patience with their complaint against Moses (and so against Yahweh) about the provision of water.
\nHere, however, \u05e0\u05e1\u05d4 has a meaning consonant with the two usages of \u05e8\u05d0\u05d4 \u201csee, experience\u201d in v 18. As Greenberg (JBL 79 [1960] 274\u201375) has shown, \u05e0\u05e1\u05d4 also means \u201ctest, prove\u201d in the sense of trying something on (1 Sam 17:39), of getting used to something (Deut 28:56), of experiencing something or someone in depth and at first hand (2 Chr 32:31). And though his theory of a piel factitive meaning for \u05e0\u05e1\u05d4 and certain other verbs is not entirely convincing (cf. Childs, 344), Greenberg makes a convincing case, with his comparison of the Exodus sequence with its interpretative parallel in Deut 4 and 5, for \u05e0\u05e1\u05d4 having the sense \u201cgive \u2026 a direct, palpable experience of,\u201d in this verse as in Eccl 2:1 and Judg 3:1\u20133. The Samaritan Pentateuch\u2019s expansion of Exod 20:19 by the insertion of Deut 5:24\u201327 (see n. 19.a.) lends at least general support to Greenberg\u2019s proposal, in that it underscores Israel\u2019s experience of the Advent of Yahweh with the verbs \u05e8\u05d0\u05d4 (hiphil, \u201ccause to see\u201d), \u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05e2 (\u201chear\u201d) and \u05e8\u05d0\u05d4 (qal, \u201csee,\u201d followed by \u201cthat God speaks\u201d) in sequence.
\nThis awesome firsthand experience of the Presence of Yahweh and the speaking of Yahweh, Moses continues, is for the further purpose that Israel might have reverence (\u05d9\u05e8\u05d0\u05d4) for Yahweh always before them as a constant preoccupation of mind and so might not sin. Having reverence for Yahweh is a basic emphasis of Israel\u2019s teaching tradition (Becker, Gottesfurcht, 125\u2013209; St\u00e4hli, \u05d9\u05ea\u05d0 f\u00fcrchten,\u201d THAT 1:774\u201378); Wolff (Int 26 [1972] 158\u201373) has claimed this \u201cFear of God\u201d as \u201cthe most prominent theme of the Elohist.\u201d What is meant by such \u201creverence\u201d or \u201cfear\u201d is a respect for Yahweh\/Elohim that will give a constant emphasis to his way for living and relationship, and so avoid the missing of the way (\u05d7\u05d8\u05d0) that is sin. The use of \u05d0\u05dc\u05be\u05ea\u05d9\u05e8\u05d0\u05d5 \u201cyou must not be afraid\u201d followed by \u05d5\u05e2\u05d1\u05d5\u05e8 \u05ea\u05d4\u05d9\u05d4 \u05d9\u05e8\u05d0\u05ea\u05d5 \u05e2\u05dc\u05be\u05e4\u05e0\u05d9\u05db\u05dd \u201cin order that there might be reverence (fear) of him before your face\u201d is a deft touch of didactic narrative. Yahweh\/Elohim comes to Israel at Sinai to give them so vivid and unforgettable an experience of himself, including his own statement of his principles for life in relationship with him, that they will not only not forget but will follow his way as a first priority of life. Such, at any rate, is the emphasis of the composite that is Exodus and the memory of Sinai that permeates much of the teaching of the OT.
\n21 The people, still frightened, make no response to Moses. How consoling they found Moses\u2019 words, we are not told. They remain in a position removed from the perimeter to which Moses led them for the experience of the theophany, and Moses, crossing that boundary, moves toward the thick cloud that protects the people and Moses as well from the mysterious and powerful Presence of Elohim (= Yahweh).
\nExplanation
\nThe essential point of this brief conclusion to the central theophany narrative of the Sinai narrative sequence is Israel\u2019s experience of the Advent of Yahweh on Sinai. The compilers of Exodus have gone to great lengths to make unmistakably clear that Israel experienced at Sinai what Moses had experienced there, and what he had brought Israel there to experience. \u201cAll the people\u201d heard the thunder and saw the lightning, heard the ram\u2019s horn and saw the mountain smoking. All the people, nearly overwhelmed by their unique and awesome experience, shook with fear, drew back from the foot of the mountain, and pled with Moses to take their place in proximity to the Presence of Elohim (= Yahweh), hear by himself the fearsome voice of God, and then report the words to them. This request, to which Moses does not accede either here or elsewhere in Exodus or the OT, may well be the beginning of what developed into a tradition of Mosaic intermediacy.
\nMoses\u2019 attempt to allay the fear of the people is a pointed repetition of the emphasis of this brief section. The people did hear and see all that had them so scared, but they have been given the experience deliberately, as a gift, not that they might be afraid of Elohim (= Yahweh), but that they might have reverence for him, and so take seriously his way of living in relationship both to him and with one another.
\nThat all the people took seriously what they had experienced at the boundary of the mountain of the Presence, this passage leaves no doubt. How seriously they took Moses\u2019 interpretation of what they had experienced is made clear first by the account of the making of the covenant, which must originally have followed this passage immediately, but second, by the account of the breaking of the covenant, which must originally have followed immediately the account of its making. Thus the compilation of Exodus becomes not only a theological history but a theological biography\u2014an account of faith, but an account also of the compromise of faith, the neglect of faith, the loss of faith and the renewal of faith.
\nYahweh\u2019s Application of His Principles: \u201cThe Book of the Covenant\u201d (20:22\u201323:33)
\nBibliography
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Kaiser Verlag, 1961. 292\u2013324. Also in EvT 17 (1957) 366\u201384. Humbert, P. \u201cLes adjectifs \u2018z\u00e2r\u2019 et \u2018n\u00f4kri\u2019 et la \u2018femme \u00e9trang\u00e8re\u2019 des proverbes bibliques.\u201d M\u00e9langes Syriens offerts \u00e0 Monsieur Ren\u00e9 Dussaud, vol. 1. Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1939. 259\u201366. Jackson, B. S. \u201cThe Problem of Ex. xxi 22\u201325 (Ius Talionis).\u201d VT 23 (1973) 273\u2013304. Jepsen, A. Untersuchungen zum Bundesbuch. BWANT 41. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1927. Kapelrud, A. S. Baal in the Ras Shamra Texts. Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gad-Publisher, 1952. K\u00f6hler, L. \u201cHebr\u00e4ische Vocabeln I.\u201d ZAW 54 (1936) 287\u201393. \u2014\u2014\u2014. Hebrew Man. New York: Abingdon Press, 1946. K\u00f6nig, E. \u201cStimmen Ex 20:24 und Dtn 12:13f. zusammen?\u201d ZAW 42 (1924) 337\u201346. Kosmala, H. \u201cThe So-Called Ritual Decalogue.\u201d ASTI 1 (1962) 31\u201361. Kraus, H.-J. Worship in Israel. Richmond: John Knox Press, 1966. Lehmann, M. R. \u201cBiblical Oaths.\u201d ZAW 81 (1969) 74\u201392. Lewy, I. \u201cDating of Covenant Code Sections on Humaneness and Righteousness.\u201d VT 7 (1959) 322\u201326. Lewy, J. \u201cOrigin and Significance of the Biblical Term \u2018Hebrew.\u2019 \u201d HUCA 28 (1957) 1\u201313. Loewenstamm, S. E. \u201cExodus xxi 22\u201325.\u201d VT 27 (1977) 352\u201360. Loretz, O. \u201cEx 21,6; 22,8 und angebliche Nuzi-Parallelen.\u201d Bib 41 (1960) 167\u201375. McKay, J. W. \u201cExodus xxiii 1\u20133, 6\u20138: A Decalogne for the Administration of Justice in the City Gate.\u201d VT 21 (1971) 311\u201325. Mendelsohn, I. \u201cThe Conditional Sale into Slavery of Freeborn Daughters in Nuzi and the Law of Ex 21:7\u201311.\u201d JAOS 55 (1935) 190\u201395. Morgenstern, J. \u201cThe Book of the Covenant.\u201d HUCA 5 (1928): 1\u2013151 (pt. 1); 7 (1930): 19\u2013258 (pt. 2); 8\u20139 (1931\u20131932): 1\u2013150 (pt. 3); 33 (1962) 59\u2013105 (pt. 4). Neufeld, E. \u201cThe Prohibitions Against Loans at Interest in Ancient Hebrew Laws.\u201d HUCA 26 (1955) 355\u2013412. North, R. \u201cFlesh, Covering, and Response, Ex. xxi 10.\u201d VT 5 (1955) 204\u20136. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cSeparated Spiritual Substances in the Old Testament.\u201d CBQ 29 (1967) 419\u201349. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cThe Derivation of Sabbath.\u201d Bib 36 (1955) 182\u2013201. Noth, M. The Old Testament World. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1966. Patrick, D. \u201cThe Covenant Code Source.\u201d VT 27 (1977) 145\u201357. Paul, S. M. Studies in the Book of the Covenant in the Light of Cuneiform and Biblical Law. VTSup 18. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970. Pfeiffer, R. H. \u201cThe Transmission of the Book of the Covenant.\u201d HTR 24 (1931) 99\u2013109. Ploeg, J. van der. \u201c\u0160p\u0331at et Mi\u0161p\u0101t.\u201d OTS 2 (1943) 144\u201355. Rabinowitz, J. J. \u201cExodus xxii 4 and the Septuagint Version Thereof.\u201d VT 9 (1959) 40\u201346. Radin, M. \u201cThe Kid and Its Mother\u2019s Milk.\u201d AJSL 40 (1923\u20131924) 209\u201318. Rendtorff, R. Studien zur Geschichte des Opfers im Alten Israel. WMANT 24. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1967. Robertson, E. \u201cThe Altar of Earth (Exodus XX, 24\u201326).\u201d JSS 1 (1948\u20131949) 12\u201321. Robinson, G. \u201cThe Idea of Rest in the Old Testament and the Search for the Basic Character of Sabbath.\u201d ZAW 92 (1980) 32\u201342. Scharbert, J. \u201c \u2018Fluchen\u2019 und \u2018Segnen\u2019 im Alten Testament.\u201d Bib 39 (1958) 1\u201326. Snijders, L. A. \u201cThe Meaning of \u05d6\u05e8 in the Old Testament.\u201d OTS 10 (1954) 1\u2013154. Speiser, E. 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\nTranslation
\n22 So Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cHere is what you are to say to the sons of Israel: \u2018You yourselves have seen that from the heavens I have spoken with you. 23 You must not make rivals with me: gods of silver and gods of gold you are not to make for yourselves. 24 An altar of earth you are to make for me, and you are to offer upon it your wholly-burned offerings, your completion-offerings, your flock-animals and your herd-animals. In every place in which I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you, and I will bless you. 25 If you make me an altar of stones, you are not to build it of cut stone; when you dress the stone with your cutting-tool, you render it unfit for holy use. 26 And you are not to go up stairs against my altar, so that you will not expose your genitals upon it.\u2019
\n21:1 \u201cThese are the guiding decisions that you are to establish in their presence: 2 \u2018When you acquire a Hebrew slave, six years he is to serve; in the seventh, he is to go out a free man, without payment to you. 3 If he comes by himself, he is to go out by himself; if he is husband of a wife, his wife shall go out with him. 4 If his owner gives him a wife, and she presents him sons or daughters, the wife and her children belong to her owner, and the slave is to go out by himself. 5 If, however, the slave says earnestly, \u201cI love my owner, my wife, and my sons\u2014I will not go out free,\u201d 6 his owner is to bring him near to God, and bring him near to the door or to the door-post; there his owner is to pierce his ear with the piercing-tool: then he shall serve him without release,
\n7 \u201c \u2018When a man sells his daughter into slavery, she is not to go out as the male slaves go out. 8 If she is unsatisfactory in the opinion of her owner, who has set her apart for himself, he is to permit her to be bought free. He has no right to sell her to a strange family, because he has severed his relationship with her. 9 If he sets her apart for his son, he is to treat her as he would treat daughters. 10 If he takes for himself another woman, he is not to cut back on her right to food, her right to clothes, or her right to intercourse, 11 If he does not provide for her these three rights, she is to go out a free woman, without any payment of money.
\n12 \u201c \u2018One who strikes a man a fatal blow is certainly to be put to death, 13 unless he did not pre-plan the blow, and God allowed him into his power: then I will establish for you a place to which he may escape. 14 But when a man has seethed with contempt against his neighbor, to kill him by crafty plotting, you are to take him from the place of my altar, for execution.
\n15 \u201c \u2018One who strikes his father or his mother is certainly to be put to death. 16 One who abducts a man and sells him or is found confining him is certainly to be put to death. 17 One who curses his father or his mother is certainly to be put to death.
\n18 \u201c \u2018When men are struggling furiously, and one of them strikes his fellow with a stone or a tool, so that he does not die but is confined to his bed, 19 if he can rise and walk about outside leaning on his staff, the one who struck is to be exempt from punishment, except that he is to take responsibility for his victim\u2019s incapacity and for his complete recovery. 20 When a man strikes his male slave or his female slave with a stick and the slave dies from the beating, he is certainly to suffer the punishment for it, 21 though if for a day or two days the slave lives, he is not to suffer punishment, because the slave is his capital investment.
\n22 \u201c \u2018When men are scuffling with each other, and they hit a pregnant woman, resulting in the premature birth of her children, but without harm, the man who struck the blow is certainly to pay damages in the amount fixed against him by the husband of the woman: he is to give in accord with an objective evaluation, 23 If, however, there is harm, he is to give life in place of life, 24 eye in place of eye, tooth in place of tooth, hand in place of hand, foot in place of foot, 25 burning in place of burning, bruise in place of bruise, wale in place of wale. 26 When a man strikes the eye of his male slave or the eye of his female slave and blinds it, he shall send out the slave free, in place of his eye. 27 If he knocks out the tooth of his male slave or the tooth of his female slave, he shall send out that slave free in place of his tooth.
\n28 \u201c \u2018When a bull gores a man or a woman fatally the bull is certainly to be stoned to death, and his flesh is not to be eaten; the bull\u2019s owner is exempt from punishment. 29 If, however, the bull is habitually belligerent, and its owner has been plainly warned and yet has not confined it and it kills a man or a woman, the bull is to be stoned to death, and its owner also is to be put to death, 30 If an indemnity has been set for him, he is to give the indemnity-payment for his life, in the full amount set for him. 31 Even if a bull gores a son or gores a daughter, this same guiding decision is applied to him. 32 If the bull gores a male slave or a female slave, he is to give the slave-owner thirty shekels of silver, and the bull is to be stoned.
\n33 \u201c \u2018When a man opens a pit, or digs a pit and does not cover it over, and a bull or an ass falls into it, 34 the owner of the pit is to give compensation: he is to give money in payment to the animal\u2019s owner, and the dead animal is to be his. 35 When a man\u2019s bull attacks his neighbor\u2019s bull and it dies, they are to sell the surviving bull and halve the money; they are also to halve the dead animal. 36 If, however, the bull is known from experience to be habitually belligerent, and its owner has not confined it, he is certainly to give compensation: a bull for the bull killed; the dead animal is to belong to him. 37[22:1] When a man steals a bull or a flock-animal and butchers it or sells it, he is to give the compensation of five herd-animals in place of the bull, and four flock-animals in place of the one flock-animal,
\n22:1[2] \u201c \u2018If the thief is discovered in the act of breaking and entering and is struck a fatal blow, there is no guilt of bloodshed for him 2[3] unless the sun has risen upon him: then there is guilt of bloodshed for him.
\n\u201c \u2018He is certainly to give compensation: if he has nothing, he is to be sold to compensate for what he has stolen. 3[4] If the stolen animal is actually found in his possession alive, whether it is a bull, an ass, or a flock-animal, he is to give double compensation.
\n4[5] \u201c \u2018When a man allows a field or a vineyard to be eaten over, or lets his cattle out and they eat over the field of another, he is to give compensation from the best crop of his own field and from the best fruit of his own vineyard. 5[6] When a fire gets out and sets aflame the stubble of a mown field and destroys stacked sheaves or the standing grain or the entire crop, the one who caused the burning is certainly to give compensation.
\n6[7] \u201c \u2018When a man gives his neighbor money or anything valuable for safekeeping and it is stolen from the man\u2019s house, if the thief is caught, he shall give double compensation. 7[8] If the thief is not caught, the owner of the house is to be brought into the Presence of God, a to determine whether he has reached out his own hand to his neighbor\u2019s property. 8[9] For every report of transgression, whether it involves a bull, an ass, a flock-animal, a garment, or any missing thing about which someone says, \u201cThis is it,\u201d the report of both parties involved is to come to God. The one whom God blames as guilty is to give double compensation to his neighbor.
\n9[10] \u201c \u2018When a man gives his neighbor an ass or a bull or a flock-animal or any animal for safekeeping and it dies or is maimed or is carried away, and there is no witness, 10[11] an oath in Yahweh\u2019s Presence is to be between the two of them whether either reached out his hand to his neighbor\u2019s property: and the owner of the animal is to be content with the oath and the man is to give no compensation. 11[12] If the animal has certainly been stolen from him, he is to give compensation to its owner. 12[13] If it has plainly been mauled by predators, he is to bring it as evidence:for the mauled animal, he is not to give compensation. 13[14] When a man asks a loan from his neighbor, and the borrowed animal is maimed or dies in the absence of his neighbor, he is certainly to give compensation, 14[15] though if its owner was with it, he is not to give compensation. If it was hired, the loss is the owner\u2019s risk.
\n15[16] \u201c \u2018When a man seduces a virgin maid who is not engaged to be married and has intercourse with her, he is to pay the marriage price for her and take her for himself as a wife. 16[17] If her father is adamant in his refusal to give her to him, he is to pay a sum equal to the marriage price of virgin maidens.
\n17[18] \u201c \u2018A sorceress is not to be allowed to live. 18[19] Anyone who couples with an animal is certainly to be put to death. 19[20] One who sacrifices to the gods is to be destroyed under ban (except to Yahweh by himself alone).
\n20[21] \u201c \u2018You are not to maltreat a newcorner?, nor are you to oppress him, because you were newcorner?s in the land of Egypt. 21[22] You must not take advantage of any widow, or an orphan. 22[23] If you do take advantage of such a person, if he cries out in distress to me, I will certainly hear his cry to me, 23[24] and I will be furious, and I will kill you with a sword, so that your wives will be widows and your sons will be orphans.
\n24[25] \u201c \u2018If you cause my people to borrow money, the poor among you, you are not to relate to them as a money-lender; you must not set interest for them to pay. 25[26] If you actually take as collateral your neighbor\u2019s coat until the sun goes down, you must return it to him then, 26[27] because it is his sole covering\u2014it is his coat for his bare skin: in what else is he to sleep? So it will be when he cries out to me that I will pay attention, for I am compassionate.
\n27[28] \u201c \u2018You are not to show disrespect for God, and you are not to curse a leader of your people. 28[29] You are not to hold back your bumper crop and your vintage wine and richest oil. You are to give me the firstborn of your sons. 29[30] You are to do the same with your bull and your flock-animal: seven days it is to remain with its mother; on the eighth day you are to give it to me. 30[31] You must be men set apart for me; so you are not to eat meat torn by predators in the field. You are to throw it out to the dog.
\n23:1 \u201c \u2018You are not to pass on a report without foundation. You are not to lend your influence to a wicked man, to sustain a wrong testimony. 2 You are not to follow the crowd into wickedness. You are not to give testimony in a contested matter that confirms a distorted account of the crowd. 3 You are not to give an unfair advantage to the poor in a contested matter.
\n4 \u201c \u2018When you chance to meet the bull of your enemy, or his ass wandering loose, you must return it to him. 5 When you see the ass of one who hates you lying down under its load, you are by no means to leave it there: you must help him rearrange the load.
\n6 \u201c \u2018You are not to manipulate the case-decision given to your needy in his contested matter. 7 Have nothing to do with a lying complaint. Do not ruin the innocent and the righteous, because I will not let the wicked off. 8 You are not to accept a bribe, because the bribe blinds people with perfect vision and turns the case of the ones who are actually right upside down. 9 You are not to oppress a newcorner?. You know by experience the life of the newcorner?, because you were newcorner?s in the land of Egypt.
\n10 \u201c \u2018Six years you are to sow your land, and gather in its harvest; 11 the seventh year, you are to rest the land and leave it undisturbed. The needy of your people are to eat its volunteer crop, and their leftovers, the wild animals are to eat. So you are to do also with your vineyard and your olive orchard. 12 Six days you are to do your work, and on the seventh day you are to rest, in order that your bull and your ass may be at rest, and that the son of your female slave and the newcorner? may catch their breath.
\n13 \u201c \u2018With regard to everything I have said to you, you are to be on your guard. You are not to bring to mind the name of any other gods; such is not to be heard from your mouth.
\n14 \u201c \u2018Three times in the year, you are to keep a sacred feast to me. 15 You are to keep the sacred feast of unleavened bread cakes: for seven days you are to eat unleavened bread cakes, just as I instructed you, at the set time in the month of the green grain; because in that month, you went out from Egypt. You are not to appear in my Presence without an offering. 16 You are to keep the sacred feast of the early crop-harvest, the firstfruits of your work, that you have sown in the field. You are to keep the sacred feast of the ingathering harvest at the end of the year when you gather in your work from the field. 17 Three times in the year all your males are to appear in the Presence of the Lord, Yahweh.
\n18 \u201c \u2018You are not to combine with anything leavened the blood of my sacrifice. The fat of my sacred feast is not to be kept through the night until morning. 19 The very first of the first-fruits of your ground you are to bring to the house of Yahweh your God. You are not to cook a kid in the milk of its mother.
\n20 \u201c \u2018See, I am sending out a messenger in front of you to look after you on the way and to bring you to the place which I have made ready. 21 Pay close attention in his Presence and listen to his voice. You are not to resent him, because he will not let your transgressions pass\u2014for my Presence is with him. 22 If you pay careful attention to his voice and do everything I say, then I will treat your enemies as my enemies and I will show hostility toward those who are hostile to you. 23 When my messenger goes in front of you and brings you to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites and I destroy them utterly, 24 you are not to worship their gods, you are not to serve them, and you are not to do their will: instead you are to throw them down completely, and you are to shatter into bits their sacred pillars.
\n25 \u201c \u2018You are to serve Yahweh your God, and he will bless your bread and your water. I will remove sickness from your midst. 26 No woman will miscarry or be barren in your land, and I will guarantee the full measure of your days. 27 I will send out in front of you my dreading-fear, and I will plunge into disarray all the people you come up against and present you with the back of all your enemies\u2019 necks 28 and send out in front of you the panic-terror so it will drive headlong before you the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites. 29 I will not drive them headlong before you in a single year, lest the land become a wasteland and the wild animals outnumber you. 30 Gradually I will drive them headlong before you, until you shall have become numerous and occupy the land as your possession, 31 I will fix your borders, from the \u201csea of rushes\u201d to the \u201csea of the Philistines,\u201d and from the wilderness to the River, when I give into your power those who dwell in the land and you drive them headlong before you. 32 You are not to covenant with them or with their gods. 33 They are not to dwell in your land, else they may cause you to sin against me: when you serve their gods, that will entrap you.\u2019 \u201d
\nNotes
\n22.a. The phrase is identical to the beginning of 19:4; see n. 19:4.a.
\n23.a. \u05ea\u05b7\u05e2\u05b2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d5\u05bc\u05df \u201cyou must make\u201d with \u201cparagogic nun\u201d; see GKC \u00b6 47m, and n. 4:15.b. above.
\n23.b. The lit. reading \u05dc\u05d0 \u05ea\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d5\u05df \u05d0\u05ea\u05d9 is \u201cyou must not make with\/beside me.\u201d MT marks the major pause in the sentence with \u05d0\u05ea\u05d9 \u201cwith me,\u201d a division ignored by some translators (e.g., rsv, neb), who move forward an object from the second half of the sentence. As Davies (173) says, however, \u05d0\u05ea\u05d9 is parallel to the \u05e2\u05dc\u05be\u05e4\u05e0\u05d9 \u201cin my presence\u201d of 20:3, and the division of MT (followed also by SamPent) is better taken at face value. The meaning clearly is that Israel is not to set up rivals to Yahweh, making him by forbidden iconography something he is not. For clarity, the word \u201crivals\u201dis added above. Cf. Barth\u00e9lemy, Preliminary and Interim Report, 116\u201317, and, contra, Childs, 446\u201347; Cazelles (Code de l\u2019alliance, 39\u201340), after a careful review of alternatives, concludes that \u05d0\u05ea\u05d9 is the key to a correct reading of the verse, and notes, \u201cElle d\u00e9signe alors une simple relation. Il faut donc traduire: \u2018En ce qui me concerne, \u00e0 mon sujet,\u2019 autrement dit: \u2018Dans mon culte.\u2019 \u201d [\u201cIt thus designates a simple correction. It is necessary therefore to translate: \u2018In that which concerns me, in my sphere,\u2019 or in other words: \u2018in my cult.\u2019 \u201d]
\n24.a. \u05d6\u05d7\u05d1, lit., \u201cslaughter for sacrifice,\u201d comes to mean \u201csacrifice,\u201d and more generally still, as here, \u201coffer.\u201d
\n24.b. \u05e9\u05b0\u05c1\u05dc\u05b8\u05de\u05b4\u05d9\u05dd were \u201cpromised offerings,\u201d made in fulfillment of a vow to Yahweh; see Rendtorff (Geschichte des Opfers, 123\u201333), \u201c \u2018Schlussopfer\u2019 oder \u2018Abschlussopfer\u2019.\u201d
\n24.c. SamPent has \u05d1\u05de\u05e7\u05d5\u05dd \u201cin the place\u201d instead of \u05d1\u05db\u05dc \u05d4\u05de\u05e7\u05d5\u05dd \u201cin every place.\u201d
\n25.a. \u05e0\u05d5\u05e3 \u201cmove to and fro,\u201d here of the motion of a chisel over native stone; \u201cthe stone\u201d is added above for clarity. Cf. BDB, 631\u201332.
\n26.a. SamPent reads \u05d0\u05dc\u05d9\u05d5 \u201cto it.\u201d
\n21:1.a. \u05d4\u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05e4\u05d8\u05d9\u05dd \u201cguiding decisions\u201d; see van der Ploeg, OTS 2 [1943] 151\u201355, who describes the range of meaning of \u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05e4\u05d8 as extending from \u201cjudgment\u201d to \u201ccustom\u201d to \u201cright\u201d and even to \u201creligion.\u201d
\n2.a. SamPent, LXX, Vg add \u201cyou.\u201d
\n4.a. \u05d0\u05d3\u05d9\u05bb\u05d5 \u201chis lord, master\u201d; see BDB, 10\u201311.
\n4.b. SamPent, LXX, Vg read \u201chis.\u201d
\n4.c. \u05d5\u05d4\u05d5\u05d0 \u201cand he,\u201d of which the slave is the clear antecedent.
\n5.a. \u05d1\u05e0\u05d9 here is generally read \u201cchildren\u201d (see BDB, 121 \u00a7 2), but there is no clear reason it should be; v 4, which mentions \u201csons and daughters,\u201d uses the more appropriate \u05d9\u05dc\u05d3\u05d9\u05dd for \u201cchildren\u201d; the same term might be expected here if \u201cchildren\u201d were intended.
\n6.a. LXX reads \u03c0\u03c1\u03cc\u03c2 \u03c4\u03cc \u03ba\u03c1\u03b9\u03c4\u03ae\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u03bd\u0342 \u201cto the place of God\u2019s decision.\u201d
\n6.b. \u05dc\u05e2\u05dc\u05e1 \u201cforever,\u201d i.e., as long as the slave lives.
\n8.a. L notes a Q here, \u05dc\u05d5 \u201cto him\u201d for the \u05dc\u05d0 \u201cnot\u201d of the text; that reading is followed above. If K is taken, the owner does not designate the girl for himself because she has proven unsatisfactory. The difficulty of that reading led neb to emend \u05d9\u05b0\u05e2\u05b8\u05d3\u05b8\u05d4\u05bc \u201cto set apart\u201d to \u05d9\u05b0\u05d3\u05b8\u05e2\u05b8\u05d4\u05bc \u201cknow\u201d following the reading of the Peshit\u0325t\u0325a (Brockington, Hebrew Text, 11), and thus to the translation \u201cIf her master has not had intercourse with her.\u2026\u201d Hoftijzer VT 7 [1957] 388\u201391) has suggested that the text be taken as it stands and translated \u201cwho is not taking the decision about her to let her be redeemed,\u201d i.e., by her own family. Hotftijzer has not, however, demonstrated his case, particularly in the light of the provisions that follow. The L text with its Masoretic Q correction of \u05dc\u05d0 to \u05dc\u05d5 makes better sense. Cf. LXX, Vg.
\n8.b. \u05e2\u05dd \u05db\u05e8\u05d9, lit., \u201ca foreign people,\u201d indicates here a family outside the circle of the girl\u2019s biological family, outside the circle of her family by purchase, and perhaps even outside the covenant community of Israel. Cf. Humbert, M\u00e9langes 1:262\u201363; de Boer, Orientalia, 162; Snijders, OTS 10 (1954) 66; Hoftijzer, VT 7 (1957) 390\u201391; Cazelles, Code de l\u2019alliance, 48\u201349.
\n9.a. \u05db\u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05e4\u05d8 \u05d4\u05d1\u05d5\u05ea, lit., \u201caccording to the right of the daughters.\u201d
\n10.a. \u05d0\u05b7\u05d7\u05b6\u05e8\u05b6\u05ea \u201canother\u201d (fem.).
\n10.b. North (VT 5 [1955] 204\u20136) has suggested that each of the three rights, expressed by \u201cthe unusual words\u201d \u05e9\u05c1\u05d0\u05e8 \u201cflesh,\u201d \u05db\u05e1\u05d5\u05ea \u201ccovering, clothing,\u201d and \u05e2\u05e0\u05d4 \u201ccohabitation,\u201d refers to the wife\u2019s marital rights: \u201cher physical satisfaction, her honorable standing in the harem [harem\u2014\u2018protection\u2019 or \u2018accommodation\u2019 from \u05db\u05e1\u05d5\u05ea as \u2018covering\u2019] or her right of parenthood.\u201d The first two terms are probably more generally intended, but the third does appear to refer to the woman\u2019s right to have her sexual needs met; cf. BDB, 773, and KB, 720. LXX has \u03c4\u03ae\u03bd \u1f40\u03bc\u03b9\u03bb\u03af\u03b1\u03bd, a term used in classical Greek of sexual intercourse (LSJ, 1222).
\n13.a. \u05dc\u05d0 \u05e6\u05d3\u05d4 \u201che did not lie in ambush.\u201d
\n14.a. \u05d6\u05d9\u05d3 \u201cboil up, seethe, act presumptuously\u201d is used also of the Egyptian gods, acting with insolent attitude toward Israel, and so toward Yahweh; see n. 18.11.a BDB, 267.
\n16.a. \u05d5\u05e0\u05de\u05e6\u05d0 \u05d1\u05d9\u05d3\u05d5 \u201cor he is found in his power.\u201d
\n18.a. \u05e8\u05d9\u05d1 \u201cstruggle\u201d plus paragogic nun; see n. 20.23.a.
\n18.b. \u05d0\u05d2\u05e8\u05e3 is apparently from \u05d2\u05e8\u05e3 \u201csweep, scoop away\u201d (BDB, 175). The term occurs only here and in Isa 58:4, and though it is generally read \u201cfist\u201d (cf. Cassuto, 272), there is no good reason why some kind of tool may not be intended. Such a reading fits both the context and the apparent etymology better: see KB, 10. Cazelles (Code de l\u2019alliance, 53) favors a more general sense, poing: \u201cforce.\u201d SamPent omits \u201cwith a stone or a tool.\u201d
\n19.a. \u05e9\u05c1\u05d1\u05ea\u05d5 \u05d9\u05df \u201chis time off he is to give.\u201d \u201cVictims\u201d is added for clarity. Fensham (VT 10 [1960] 333\u201335), following Hittite parallels, proposes by some reconstruction \u201cbut he shall provide someone in his place.\u201d The effect being the same, the reconstruction is neither necessary nor justified.
\n20.a. SamPent omits \u201cwith a stick.\u201d
\n20.b. \u05ea\u05d7\u05ea \u05d9\u05d3\u05d5 \u201cunder his power,\u201d i.e., under the owner\u2019s abuse while remaining a responsibility of the owner.
\n20.c. SamPent has \u05de\u05d5\u05ea \u05d9\u05d5\u05de\u05ea \u201che is certainly to be put to death.\u201d
\n21.a. SamPent reads \u05d9\u05d5\u05de\u05ea \u201cto be put to death.\u201d
\n21.b. \u05db\u05e1\u05e4\u05d5 \u201chis money.\u201d
\n22.a. \u05d5\u05d9\u05e6\u05d0\u05d5 \u05d9\u05dc\u05d3\u05d9\u05d4 \u201cand her children go out, are born\u201d; see BDB, 423. Premature labor and birth as a result of accidental blow are clearly the point here; the question of the survival of the child or children is ambiguous, though the context, which makes allowance even for bruises and wales, must surely imply penalty also for the loss of, or injury to, the child or children being carried by the woman (cf. Jackson, VT 23 [1973] 291\u201393; Cassuto, 275). Cf. LXX, SamPent.
\n22.b. \u05d0\u05e1\u05d5\u05e3 occurs only 5x in the OT: here and in the next verse and 3x in reference to the \u201charm\u201d Jacob fears may befall his youngest son, Benjamin. The term thus seems to imply either death or serious injury. BDB (61\u201362) derive it from \u05d0\u05e1\u05d4, having to do with sorrow, and Jackson (VT 23 [1973] 274\u201377, 290\u201393, 302) argues that the term means \u201ccalamity\u201d to \u201csome person other than the direct victim\u201d and therefore refers in this verse to the fetus.
\n22.c. MT has simply \u05e2\u05e0\u05d5\u05e9\u05c1 \u05d9\u05e2\u05e0\u05e9\u05c1 \u201che is certainly to pay damages,\u201d but the reference is clearly to the one who inflicted the blow.
\n22.d. \u05d5\u05ea\u05bb\u05df \u05d1\u05e4\u05dc\u05dc\u05d9\u05dd \u201che is to give in accord with an objective evaluation.\u201d Speiser (JBL 82 [1963] 301\u20136) has suggested the meaning \u201cto assess, reckon,\u201d for \u05e4\u05dc\u05dc, and \u201cestimate, assessment, calculation\u201d for \u05e4\u05dc\u05dc\u05d9\u05dd, in part on the basis of a Hittite parallel fixing sums of money and the attachment of property as restitution in such cases. Cf. ANET, 190 \u00a7 17.
\n25.a. SamPent has \u05de\u05db\u05d5\u05d4 \u201cburn-mark, blister\u201d instead of \u05db\u05d5\u05d9\u05d4 \u201cburning.\u201d
\n28.a. SamPent adds \u05d0\u05d5 \u05db\u05dc \u05d1\u05d4\u05de\u05d4 \u201cor any animal.\u201d
\n28.b. SamPent has \u05d9\u05db\u05d4 \u201cstrikes.\u201d
\n29.a. \u05e0\u05d2\u05d7 \u05d4\u05d5\u05d0 \u05de\u05ea\u05de\u05dc \u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05e9\u05c1\u05dd \u201che is a gorer for some time back.\u201d
\n29.b. LXX has \u1f00\u03c8\u03b1\u03bd\u03af\u03c3\u1fc3 \u201cdestroyed.\u201d
\n31.a. MT has only \u201che\u201d; the antecedent is clear, however, and so has been added above.
\n33.a. See n. 28.a. above
\n35.a. See n. 28.a. above
\n35.b. The emphasis is indicated by nun paragogicum, perhaps because inequity in the division of the bull\u2019s carcass was a common abuse.
\n36.a. See n. 29.b. above
\n37.a. The instruction of this verse is continued by 22:2b\u20133 [3b\u20134]; 22:1\u20132a [2a\u20133] appears to have been inserted into the sequence at an inappropriate place. Some translators (so rsv, neb) rearrange the text, to present a more logical sequence. Cassuto (281\u201383) suggests that the order of MT is intentional, with vv 1\u20132a [2\u20133a] serving as \u201cdirectives\u201d called for by the beginning of the laws dealing with theft. (Cf. also Cazelles, Code de l\u2019alliance, 63).
\n22:4[5].a. \u05d1\u05e2\u05e8 means \u201cburn, consume\u201d so as to devastate, even to destroy (BDB, 128\u201329). The problem addressed here is not a simple grazing of a planted crop or a vineyard, but the destruction of a crop or a season\u2019s grape harvest through the negligence of allowing animals to roam freely.
\n4[5].b. LXX expands the verse considerably, as does SamPent (see also 4Q158:10\u201312, DJD V), but without changing its basic meaning.
\n5[6].a. \u05d5\u05de\u05e6\u05d0\u05d4 \u05e7\u05e6\u05d9\u05dd \u201cand finds thorns.\u201d \u05e7\u05d5\u05b9\u05e5 is probably from a root that means \u201ccut off\u201d (BDB, 881) and so \u201csharp, spikey.\u201d In this verse the reference is to the sharp stubble left in the field after the ripe grain has been cut. It is, along with the weeds and dry grass surrounding it, highly inflammable.
\n5[6].b. \u05d4\u05e9\u05c2\u05d3\u05d4 \u201cthe field.\u201d
\n7[8].a. \u05d0\u05dc\u05be\u05d4\u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd + \u05e7\u05e8\u05d1 \u201ccome near to God\u201d always suggests in the OT coming near to a place of God\u2019s Presence, usually, as here, for some cultic purpose. Cf. Durham, Touch, Taste and Smell, 111\u201313, and Fensham, VT 26 (1976) 263\u201366, 271. LXX adds \u201cand is to affirm by oath.\u201d
\n8[9].a. SamPent has \u201cYahweh.\u201d
\n8[9].b. MT has \u05d9\u05b7\u05e8\u05b0\u05e9\u05b4\u05c1\u05d9\u05e2\u05bb\u05df \u201cthey must blame as guilty,\u201d a 3d masc. pl. hiph impf. with nun paragogicum. SamPent has \u05d9\u05e8\u05e9\u05d9\u05e2\u05e0\u05d5 \u201che blames him as guilty,\u201d a 3d masc. sg hiph impf. plus the 3d masc. sg pronom suff. MT\u2019s form is noted as hapax legomenon by the Masora parva, and LXX also reads the verb as a sg.
\n9[10].a. SamPent has \u05d0\u05d5 \u05db\u05dc \u201cor any\u201d instead of MT\u2019s \u05d5\u05db\u05dc \u201cand any\u201d; cf. LXX.
\n10[11].a. \u05e9\u05c1\u05d1\u05e2\u05ea \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u201cthe oath of Yahweh\u201d refers to the solemn oath, sometimes involving a self-curse, sworn in Yahweh\u2019s Presence. No more serious and consequential an oath was possible. Cf. Horst, Gottes Recht, 294\u201397; Lehman; ZAW 81 (1969) 86\u201391.
\n10[11].b. MT has only the pronoun; the antecedent is supplied for clarity.
\n10[11].c. \u05d5\u05dc\u05e7\u05d7 \u201cand he is to take\u201d; BDB (543 \u00a7 4.f) translates \u201creceive, accept \u2026 shall accept the oath as satisfactory.\u201d
\n11[12].a. See n. 10.b above.
\n12[13].a. \u05d8\u05e8\u05e3 \u05d9\u05d8\u05e8\u05e3 \u201cplainly been mauled.\u201d
\n12[13].b. LXX (cf. Tg. Ps.-J., Vg) reads, instead of MT \u05e2\u05b5\u05d3 \u201cwitness,\u201d the prep \u05e2\u05b7\u05d3 \u201cto,\u201d implying the bringing of the owner to the mauled animal, rather than vice versa. See the detailed discussions of Fensham, VT 12 (1962) 337\u201339, and Le D\u00e9aut, VT 22 (1972) 164\u201375.
\n13[14].a. See n. 10.b. above.
\n13[14].b. LXX adds \u1f25 \u03b1\u1f30\u03c7\u03bc\u1f00\u03bb\u03c9\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u201cor is taken away.\u201d
\n14[15].a. \u05d1\u05d0 \u05d1\u05e9\u05c2\u05db\u05e8\u05d5 \u201cit comes in his rental fee.\u201d
\n19[20].a. \u05dc\u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05e1 \u201cto the gods,\u201d to which SamPent adds \u05d0\u05d7\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u201cother\u201d; so also LXX. See Cassuto (Genesis I [Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1961] 166\u201367) for a detailed discussion of the pointing of the -prep(s) before \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd.
\n19[20].b. This final phrase, awkwardly placed in MT and absent altogether from SamPent, appears to be a qualifying addition. See Cazelles, Code de l\u2019alliance, 76\u201377, and Comment below.
\n21[22].a. Piel of \u05e2\u05e0\u05d4 \u201cafflict, humble, bow down, weaken\u201d + nun paragogicum.
\n22[23].a. MT has \u05d0\u05ea\u05d5 \u201chim\u201d; the Versions generally have a pl., in agreement with the apparent double antecedent.
\n23[24].a. \u05d7\u05e8\u05d4 \u05d0\u05e4\u05d9 \u201cand it will kindle my anger,\u201d an OT idiom for intense divine anger.
\n24[25].a. LXX has \u03c4\u1ff7 \u1f00\u03b4\u03b5\u03bb\u03c6\u1ff7 \u201cthe brother.\u201d
\n24[25].b. MT has \u05ea\u05e9\u05c2\u05d9\u05de\u05d5\u05da \u201cyou (pl.) must set\u201d; LXX, Syr., Vg have a sg verb.
\n24[25].c. \u05e2\u05dc\u05d9\u05d5 \u05e0\u05e9\u05c1\u05d3 \u201cupon him interest.\u201d \u201cPeople\u201d and \u201cpoor\u201d are taken here as collective terms, and so the sg pronom suff (\u05dc\u05d5 and \u05e2\u05dc\u05d9\u05d5) are read as pls, \u201cthem.\u201d
\n27[28].a. Brichto (Problem of \u201cCurse,\u201d 150\u201365, 176\u201377) has demonstrated that piel of \u05e7\u05dc\u05dc in reference to \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd \u201cGod\u201d refers not to blasphemy, but to \u201cthe lack of fear or respect for the ethical standards which the Deity expects of man.\u201d
\n28[29].a. \u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05d4 and \u05d3\u05de\u05e2 are, lit., the \u201cfullness\u201d and the \u201cdripping\u201d of the crops of field, vineyard, and olive grove.
\n29[30].a. LXX adds \u03ba\u03b1\u03af \u03c4\u03cc \u1f51\u03c0\u03bf\u03b6\u03cd\u03b3\u03b9\u03cc\u03bd \u03c3\u03bf\u03bd \u201cand your beast of burden.\u201d
\n30[31].a. SamPent has \u05d4\u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05da, hiph inf abs of \u05e9\u05dc\u05da \u201cthrow\u201d instead of \u05dc\u05db\u05dc\u05d1 \u201cto the dog\u201d and omits paragogic nun from the verb.
\n23.1.a. The idiom, \u05e0\u05e9\u05c2\u05d0 \u201clift up\u201d plus \u05e9\u05c1\u05d5\u05d0 \u201cvain nothingness\u201d is the one employed in the third commandment, Exod 20:7. See nn. 20.7.a, b, and Comment above.
\n1.b. Lit., \u201cYou are not to set your hand with a wicked man to be a witness to wrong.\u201d \u05d9\u05d3 \u201chand\u201d is read above in its connotation of \u201cpower\u201d = \u201cinfluence.\u201d
\n2.a. There is a play on the verb \u05e0\u05d8\u05d4 \u201cstretch out, bend, incline, even accommodate to\u201d (cf. BDB, 639\u201341). \u05dc\u05e0\u05d8\u05ea \u05d0\u05d7\u05e8\u05d9 \u05e8\u05d1\u05d9\u05dd \u05dc\u05d4\u05d8\u05ea is \u201cto bend after many to cause bending.\u201d
\n3.a. \u05d4\u05d3\u05ea is \u201cswell up, adorn, honor,\u201d even by exaggeration, and hence in this case to give an unjust edge to a poor man in a legal proceeding. This instruction calls for an impartiality so remarkable that some critics (BHS) propose an emendation of MT\u2019s \u05d5\u05d3\u05dc \u201cand poor\u201d to \u05d2\u05d3\u05dc \u201cgreat\u201d or even (HALAT, 213) to \u05d3\u05dc \u05d5\u05d2\u05d3\u05d5\u05dc \u201cpoor and great\u201d with reference to Lev 19:15. There is no satisfactory justification for such alteration of this text.
\n4.a. See n. 21.28.a.
\n4.b. This special emphasis is indicated by the inf abs preceding the verb.
\n5.a. See n. 4.b.
\n5.b. There appears to be a play on two roots \u05e2\u05d6\u05d1, one meaning \u201cleave off, abandon,\u201d used first in the verse, and one meaning \u201crestore, repair,\u201d used 2X here for emphasis. See BDB, 736\u201338; Cassuto, 297\u201398; and cf. Driver, JQR 28 (1937\u201338) 126. LXX has \u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b5\u03b3\u03b5\u03c1\u03b5\u1fd6\u03c2 \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03cc \u201chelp him lift it\u201d; Vg sublevabis \u201cyou will lift up.\u201d
\n7.a. \u05de\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8\u05be\u05e9\u05c1\u05e7\u05e8 \u05ea\u05e8\u05d7\u05e7 \u201cfrom a word of lying you are to be distant.\u201d
\n7.b. \u05d4\u05e8\u05d2 \u201ckill,\u201d used here in its figurative sense, in reference to the conviction through false evidence of the innocent.
\n7.c. LXX has \u201cand you \u2026\u201d and adds \u1f15\u03bd\u03b5\u03ba\u03b5\u03bd \u03b4\u03ce\u03c1\u03c9\u03bd \u201cfor bribes.\u201d
\n8.a. SamPent, LXX, Tg. Ps.-J., Tg. Onk. add \u201ceyes of.\u201d
\n9.a. \u05d5\u05d0\u05ea\u05dd \u05d9\u05d3\u05e2\u05ea\u05dd \u201cand you know by experience.\u201d
\n11.a. MT has no object; \u201cits volunteer crop\u201d is clearly implied, however, by \u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05d8 \u201cdrop, let fall = rest, leave fallow\u201d and \u05e0\u05d8\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cleave alone, forsake = leave uncultivated.\u201d The land is to be permitted to produce what it will, without attention, and the poor are to be free to harvest such a \u201cvolunteer\u201d crop.
\n12.a. SamPent reads this sequence differently: \u05e2\u05d1\u05d5\u05da \u05d5\u05d0\u05de\u05ea\u05da \u05db\u05de\u05d5\u05da \u05d5\u05db\u05dc \u05d1\u05d4\u05de\u05ea\u05da \u201cyour male slave and your female slave like yourself, along with all your animals.\u201d
\n12.b. Niphal \u05e0\u05e4\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cbreathe for oneself = take a break, be refreshed.\u201d See BDB, 659, 661.
\n17.a. SamPent has \u05d0\u05ea\u05d5\u05df \u201cark\u201d instead of MT\u2019s \u05d4\u05d0\u05d3\u05df \u201cthe Lord,\u201d both here and at 34:23. LXX reads here \u03ba\u03c5\u03c1\u03af\u03bf\u03c5 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03c3\u03bf\u03c5 \u201cthe Lord your God.\u201d See Fensham, VT 26 (1976) 267.
\n18.a. \u05dc\u05d0\u05be\u05ea\u05d6\u05d1\u05d7 \u05e2\u05dc\u05be\u05d7\u05de\u05e5 \u201cyou are not to combine with anything leavened.\u201d LXX has here also the additional words found in MT only in 34:24. On \u05d7\u05de\u05e5 \u201cthat which is leavened\u201d see BDB, 329.
\n19.a. SamPent adds \u05db\u05d9 \u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d4 \u05d6\u05d0\u05ea \u05db\u05d6\u05d1\u05d7 \u05e9\u05c1\u05db\u05d7 \u05d5\u05e2\u05d1\u05e8\u05d4 \u05d4\u05d9\u05d0 \u05dc\u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9 \u05d9\u05e2\u05e7\u05d1 \u201cfor it would make a sacrifice of forgetfulness and would pass along to the God of Jacob.\u201d
\n20.a. SamPent, LXX and Vg have \u201cmy messenger.\u201d
\n20.b. LXX reads \u03b3\u1fc6\u03bd \u201cland.\u201d
\n21.a. \u05d4\u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05e8 \u05de\u05e4\u05e0\u05d9\u05d5 \u201cguard yourself or be guarded from his presence.\u201d The messenger comes with divine authority, and so is an extension of the Divine Presence. The command has about it a sense of urgent tension, as the end of the verse shows.
\n21.b. \u05d0\u05dc\u05be\u05ea\u05de\u05e8 \u05d1\u05d5, lit., \u201cdo not be bitter against him.\u201d LXX has \u03bc\u03ae \u1f00\u03c0\u03b5\u03af\u03b8\u03b5\u03b9 \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u1ff7 \u201cdo not disobey him.\u201d
\n21.c. \u05db\u05d9 \u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05d9 \u05d1\u05e7\u05e8\u05d1\u05d5 \u201cfor my name is with him\u201d; see Comment on 3:13.
\n22.a. SamPent and LXX have \u201cmy voice\u201d (\u05d1\u05e7\u05d5\u05dc\u05d9, \u1f10\u03bc\u1fc6\u03c2 \u03c8\u03c9\u03bd\u1fc6\u03c2).
\n23.a. LXX adds here \u201cthe Girgashites.\u201d SamPent has a different order and also adds \u201cthe Girgashites.\u201d
\n25.a. LXX and Vg read \u201cI will bless\u201d (\u03b5\u1f50\u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03ae\u03c3\u03c9, benedicam).
\n25.b. LXX adds \u03ba\u03b1\u03af \u03c4\u03cc\u03bd \u03bf\u1f30\u03bd\u03cc\u03bd \u03c3\u03bf\u03bd \u201cand your wine.\u201d
\n25.c. LXX has \u1f00\u03c6\u02bc \u1f51\u03bc\u1ff6\u03bd \u201cfrom you.\u201d
\n26.a. The subj is indicated by the 3d fem. sg form of the verb.
\n26.b. \u05de\u05b0\u05e9\u05b7\u05c1\u05db\u05b5\u05bc\u05dc\u05b7\u05d4, the fem. sg piel ptcp of \u05e9\u05c1\u05db\u05dc \u201cbe bereaved,\u201d suggests bereavement because of the loss of a child; so \u201cmiscarry,\u201d a tragedy in some ways even more frustrating than barrenness, listed next in this verse.
\n28.a. LXX lists first \u03c4\u03bf\u03cd\u03c2 \u0391\u03bc\u03bf\u03c1\u03c1\u03b1\u03af\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 \u201cthe Amorites\u201d and then follows the same list and sequence as MT.
\n31.a. Cairo Geniza fragment adds \u201call\u201d before \u201cthose.\u201d
\n33.a. SamPent has \u05d9\u05d4\u05d9\u05d5 \u201cthey will\u201d instead of MT\u2019s \u05d9\u05d4\u05d9\u05d4 \u201che will.\u201d Cf. LXX, Tg. Onk..
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThe lengthy collection of laws extending from Exod 20:22 through 23:33, varied in form and reflecting an array of contexts, presents a unity only as a composite made necessary by the setting into which it has been placed. The title \u05e1\u05e4\u05e8 \u05d4\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9\u05ea \u201cThe Book of the Covenant\u201d occurs outside the collection itself, at 24:7, and though that title, along with \u201call Yahweh\u2019s words and all the guiding decisions\u201d in 24:3, is commonly applied to Exod 20:22\u201323:33, there is no way to determine exactly how much of this collection was suggested by the title at any given point in Israel\u2019s history. That the collection expanded with the passage of time and with the emergence of new contexts of need is suggested by the range of application of the laws contained in it, as also by its somewhat layered and often arbitrary organization. The many attempts to find unifying motifs in it, or a logical or a theological sequence, have been generally unconvincing.
\nForm-critical analysis of the laws in this collection has produced an array of helpful studies which have described both the OT legal forms and the ANE forms to which in many cases the OT laws are quite similar (see Cazelles, Code de l\u2019alliance, 147\u201368). Here again, however, there has been sometimes a tendency to press both the patterns and the contexts from which they are held to have emerged somewhat farther than the OT evidence will justify. With regard to such collections as the one at hand, or the \u201cHoliness Code\u201d of Lev 17\u201326 or the broad range of laws in Deut 12\u201326, the search for a single pattern of organization, or for the uniform linking of several patterns, is futile. The success of an array of scholars in pointing out different patterns within the same collections should have shown us long ago that what we have in the legal collections of the OT are compendia, legal anthologies, lists of precedents, the application to every dimension of living of the principles of the covenant with Yahweh. As noted above, (Form\/Structure\/Setting on 20:1\u201317), the first such applications of the principles of living in covenant with Yahweh may well have been made by Moses and by the \u201cmen of ability\u201d appointed by him to aid him in such a task. This is exactly the picture presented by Exod 18:13\u201326 (see above) and no telling reason has yet been presented why it should not be taken seriously.
\nThe results of form-critical study can thus be taken as illuminative of recurring patterns, wherever they may occur, both within and beyond the OT, but not as necessarily determinative of either context of application or context of origin. A \u201ccasuistic\u201d or \u201capodictic\u201d law, a \u201cwhen\u201d form or a participial form (Cazelles, Code de l\u2019alliance, 103\u201329, presents a detailed survey) are not in themselves sufficient evidence to fix the situation of a given law or sequence of laws, insofar as application, provenance, development, or origin are concerned. Alt\u2019s (Essays, 123\u201332) famous oversimplification of the origin and application of the apodictic form should alone be enough to have convinced us of this fact.
\nWhat we must keep in mind as we consider the law-collections of the OT is that they are cumulative in their organization. Their uniformity consists in their single purpose, the explanation and the application to life of the principles laid down by Yahweh for life in covenant with him. The subject of the origin and original provenance of the individual laws and the forms in which they are expressed does not of necessity have a primary bearing on the use of a given law and law-form in a given collection. The laws and the forms in which they are set forth are as varied as the problems that arise whenever life is attempted according to a specific set of standards. With each new problem, a new application of the standards must be made, and that gives rise to another interpretation that can be added, no doubt in successively revised statement, to a steadily growing accumulation of such applications. It may be misleading to think of such a cumulative body of precedent decisions as a \u201ccode\u201d of laws, particularly in the somewhat formal and official sense that term implies.
\nThe insights of form-critical study of the \u201cCovenant Code\u201d are best utilized therefore in a nonformal and so nonrestrictive manner, and attempts to subdivide this collection into a series of source codes, each set forth in a single pattern (as Jirku did, Weltliche Recht, 32\u201342), or into a series of five \u201cten commandment\u201d collections pieced together (so Auerbach, VT 16 [1966] 255\u201365), must be seen as both highly speculative and in any case largely beside the point. What is important about these laws in their present setting is their meaning for Israel in attempting to live in covenant with Yahweh. The characterization of these laws as \u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05e4\u05d8\u05d9\u05dd \u201cjudgments\u201d of various kinds (Jepsen, Bundesbuch, 55\u201356, 82\u201396), as \u05d3\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u201cwords,\u201d \u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05e4\u05ea\u05d9\u05dd \u201cjudgments,\u201d \u05d7\u05e7\u05d9\u05dd \u201cstatutes,\u201d and \u05de\u05e6\u05d5\u05ea \u201ccommandments\u201d (Morgenstern, HUCA 7 [1930] 20\u201334, 56\u201363; 8\u20139 [1931\u201332] 1\u2013150, esp. 140\u201350), as casuistic and apodictic (Alt, Essays, 91\u2013103, 125\u201332, with a considerable following), as casuistic, participial, unconditional, and conditional specifications, \u201cyou will\u201d and \u201cif you\u201d (Cazelles, Code de l\u2019alliance, 109\u201314), as casuistic and \u201cprohibitive\u201d (Gerstenberger, \u201cApodiktischen Rechts\u201d 23\u201330, 42\u201354), or as commands, prohibitions, and \u201cIf-You formulations\u201d (Gilmer, If-You Form, 25\u201326, 113\u201315) is instructive as a means of understanding the possible types of OT legal formulary; but these characterizations, all dealing with the same basic material and yet presenting vastly differing possibilities, must not be taken as determinative in the establishment of the meaning and application of the laws preserved in the OT. These laws, whatever their point of origin and their form, must be seen first in the context of their present setting, as specific attempts to focus Yahweh\u2019s principles for those who are struggling to bring their living into conformity with Yahweh\u2019s covenant.
\nThe same, of course, can be said of the relation of the laws of the OT to their ANE parallels. As instructive as these comparisons inevitably must be (see ANET, 159\u2013223; Cazelles, Code de l\u2019alliance, 147\u201368; Paul, Book of the Covenant, 43\u2013105; Boecker, Law, 135\u201375; David, OTS 7 [1950] 149\u201378; Falk, Hebrew Law, 73\u2013151; Driver and Miles, Babylonian Laws, passim, see references, 2:516), they cannot be permitted to displace the OT laws as uniquely important in their own setting. The very fact that these laws are in the OT, and in contexts that link them to Yahweh\u2019s expectation of his people, should suffice to make clear their uniqueness in an OT setting, whatever importance they may have elsewhere as well. The chief value of the ANE parallels for the study of the OT laws is the light they may shed upon meaning. The establishment of the dependence of \u201cMosaic law\u201d upon the laws of Hammurapi, a popular exercise in the first quarter of the twentieth century, is now recognized for the misleading oversimplification it always was and should warn us against an overzealous pressing of ANE collections as source and parallel versions of such OT collections as the \u201cCovenant Code.\u201d The theory that some of the laws in the \u201cCovenant Code\u201d were taken by the Israelites from their Canaanite neighbors (Alt, Essays, 97\u2013103; Jepsen, Bundesbuch, 101; Hyatt, 220\u201324) remains unsubstantiated (cf. Cazelles, 166\u201368) because no Canaanite collection of laws has yet been uncovered, though such borrowing is certainly probable. S. M. Paul (esp. 99\u2013105) has plausibly suggested that we should think of the legal material of the Book of Exodus as \u201can eclectic adaptation of native and fringe Mesopotamian legal traditions\u201d gathered by the Israelites in Canaan, \u201cwhich probably served as a \u2018melting pot for cuneiform law.\u2019 \u201d
\nA great deal has been made of the marked difference in form between the first part of the \u201cCovenant Code,\u201d with its predominantly casuistic form, and the second part, with its predominantly apodictic form (Beyerlin,Gottes Wort, 19\u201329; Boecker, Law, 138\u201341; Halbe, Das Privilegrecht Jahwes, 391\u2013413; Paul, Book of the Covenant, 34\u201345; Wagner, ZAW 81 [1969] 176\u201382). The division between the two halves is usually made between 22:16 [17] and 17 [18], though this division is not universally accepted (Halbe, 418, makes the separation between vv 19 [20] and 20 [21]). 23:20\u201333 is clearly not a part of the legal collection, and it is often regarded as a kind of \u201ccoda\u201d (Paul, 34\u201336), \u201cepilogue\u201d (Childs, 486\u201387), collection of \u201cClosing Promises and Exhortations\u201d (Hyatt, 250\u201352), or \u201cperoration in the manner of Deut 17f. and Lev. 26\u201d (Beyerlin, Sinaitic Traditions, 5). Some scholars (e.g., Noth, 192\u201394; Beyerlin, Sinaitic Traditions, 4\u20135) consider 23:20\u201333 a Deuteronomistic composite, perhaps based on material from an earlier source or sources (cf. Wellhausen, Prolegomena, 28\u201338; S. R. Driver, xxvii, 247\u201351; R. H. Pfeiffer, HTR 24 [1931] 100\u2013101). Paul (27\u201342, 101\u20132) argues that the Decalogue serves as a prologue to the \u201cCovenant Code,\u201d 23:20\u201333 as an epilogue and an integral part of a structure analogous to early Mesopotamian legal compilations. Intriguing though this theory is, it presses the ANE material a bit hard. General correspondence is clear; precise patterns are too much in the eyes of the beholder.
\nWhat the \u201cBook of the Covenant\u201d does present is a wide-ranging collection of laws, drawn no doubt from Canaanite-Mesopotamian and perhaps also Egyptian and Hittite and any other available reservoirs, set deliberately into the narrative of Yahweh\u2019s Advent and Israel\u2019s response at Sinai. Whatever the respective origins of the individual laws, whatever the history of the subcollections and layers that lie behind the collection in its present form the \u201cBook of the Covenant\u201d must be understood primarily as an integral part of the Sinai narrative of the coming of Yahweh and the birth of Israel (cf. Patrick, VT 27 [1977] 145\u201357). Wherever these laws originated, and whenever, they stand now as an exposition and an application of life lived in relationship with Yahweh. The composite presented by Exodus thus makes an essential point, one that must not be overlooked in the separation of these laws from their setting, either individually or as a collection: these laws are Yahweh\u2019s requirements for those who would be his special people. As Paul (Book of the Covenant, 36\u201342; cf. Greenberg, Y. Kaufmann Jubilee, 11\u201312) has correctly pointed out, \u201cthe ultimate source and sanction\u201d of this law is Yahweh, and its purpose, as Exod 19:4\u20136 makes clear, is the formation of \u201ca holy nation.\u201d
\nIt is therefore a mistake to consider the \u201cCovenant Code\u201d wholly apart from its setting; or to juggle and relocate the verses reporting Israel\u2019s response to Yahweh\u2019s theophany (20:18\u201320) or the verses that close and apply the collection (23:20\u201333); or to apply the verses that open the account of the solemnization of the covenant with Yahweh (24:1\u20138) to the Decalogue alone. The \u201cCovenant Code\u201d is Yahweh\u2019s application to the context of daily living of the fundamental requirements of those in covenant with him. The range of context to which those requirements obviously apply makes clear the cumulative nature of the collection, as does the hodge-podge arrangement of the individual laws and their expansion into paragraphs. The \u201cCovenant Code\u201d is held together not by a consistent literary form or style, not by the organization of a single compiler or a single historical setting, but by the theological assertion that these laws, as different as they are in form and application and origin, are all Yahweh\u2019s, and so are all expected of the people who reckon themselves to be his.
\nComment
\n22 The instruction of Yahweh to Moses, clearly set in place as a means of connecting the \u201cguiding decisions\u201d of the \u201cBook of the Covenant\u201d to the Sinai theophany and hence of course to divine authority, is linked by its opening phrase to the beginning of the \u201cEagle\u2019s Wings\u201d address in 19:4. This emphasis on the theophany as experienced by Israel is an important authentication of the instructions as given by Yahweh, in contrast to any that might originate with men. These are not Moses\u2019 \u201cguiding decisions,\u201d but Yahweh\u2019s, just as the commandments are the ten words of Yahweh\u2019s expectation, not Moses\u2019 expectation. This attempt to authenticate the laws that interpret and apply the ten commandments is far more important than the reference to Yahweh speaking \u05de\u05df\u05be\u05d4\u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05d9\u05dd \u201cfrom the heavens,\u201d though this phrase has attracted more attention because of the references in chaps. 19 and 20 to Yahweh\/Elohim speaking in the vicinity of Mount Sinai. The contrast is more supposed than real, however. Yahweh\/Elohim is not said to speak from the mountain, and Deut 4, which makes repeated reference (Deut 4:12, 15, 33; cf. also 5:4, 22, 24, 26) to Yahweh speaking \u05de\u05ea\u05d5\u05d3 \u05d4\u05d0\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cfrom the middle of the fire,\u201d refers in a single verse (4:36) to Yahweh causing Israel to hear his voice \u05de\u05df\u05be\u05d4\u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05d9\u05dd \u201cfrom the heavens\u201d and to Israel seeing \u201chis great fire upon the earth\u201d and hearing his words \u05de\u05ea\u05d5\u05d3 \u05d4\u05e1\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cfrom the middle of the fire.\u201d The point of Exod 20:22 is not where Yahweh was when he spoke his instructions, but that the instructions are unequivocally his.
\n23 The opening verse of the law-collection proper is appropriately a variation on the first two of the ten commandments. Whether this verse originally began the Book of the Covenant is a matter of some speculation, since 21:1 has the appearance of a superscription. If 21:1 is a superscription, the questions of how much of what follows is introduced by it and of why it does not follow 20:22 are raised (see Childs, 464\u201367; Boecker, Law, 144\u201346). What is certain, once again, is the order of the received text, and that order is begun with an emphatic command against setting idol-gods in rivalry with Yahweh. Such a command is in logical sequence to the authentication of the instructions that follow as Yahweh\u2019s instructions: these are his guiding principles for Israel, and he is to be Israel\u2019s only God. So obvious a summary of the first two commandments may have been placed at the beginning of the Book of the Covenant precisely because it was such a loosely organized miscellany.
\n24\u201326 The three verses setting forth an ancient instruction about the building and use of altars are not so appropriately a beginning to the Book of the Covenant. These verses, along with vv 22\u201323, are sometimes referred to as a \u201cprologue\u201d (Boecker, Law, 144\u201350) or an \u201cintroduction\u201d (Noth, 175\u201377) to the Book of the Covenant, but these altar instructions are not appropriate prologue to what follows them, nor is there any reason why they should be linked to the two verses preceding them (so Childs, 465\u201366) any more than any other group of verses in the collection of laws in 20:24\u201323:19 should be so linked. The attempt to find a logical sequence in such covenantal-legal collections is at best frustrating, and at worst misleading. The location of these verses having to do with the altar preceding the sequences of \u201cguiding decisions\u201d (\u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05e4\u05d8\u05d9\u05dd) in 21:1\u201323:19 is probably to be understood on two bases: (1) the altar instructions are not \u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05e4\u05d8\u05d9\u05dd, but commands similar to the commands concerning the media of worship in chaps. 25\u201331, and (2) the emphasis here, as in that sequence, is on the Presence of Yahweh in the midst of his people, Israel; so there, the sequence on the media of worship is begun with a reference to a \u05de\u05e7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1 \u201choly place\u201d where Yahweh is to \u201cdwell, settle down\u201d in their midst (25:8), and here, the sequence of the \u201cguiding decisions\u201d is begun with a reference to the altar, the place where Israel came into closest contact with Yahweh, the source of the guiding decisions.
\nThe specifications of an earthen altar and an altar of undressed stones has generally been taken as an indication of the antiquity of these instructions (Wellhausen, Prolegomena, 29\u201330; Noth, 176\u201377). What is more important, even if these instructions are quite old, is the statement that Yahweh himself will choose the place where such altars are to be built and that he will come in person to his people assembled at these places and there bless them. The discussion as to whether the earthen altar (\u05de\u05d6\u05d1\u05d7 \u05d0\u05d3\u05de\u05d4) was simply soil carefully piled (and specially absorbent of the blood of the sacrifice, Cazelles, Code de l\u2019alliance, 40\u201341) or clay brick (Conrad, Altargesetz, 21\u201324), or a combination of field soil and field stones and even boulders (in which case a single altar, rather than two, is intended by vv 24 and 25; see Robertson, JSS 1 [1948\u201349] 18\u201321) is also secondary to the main point of the instruction of v 24 that has served as a lodestone for several commands involving altars and has drawn the collection of them to the beginning of the Book of the Covenant. That main point, of course, is linked to the Presence of Yahweh, established as a given in the places of his choice, many places, all places (cf. K\u00f6nig, ZAW 42 [1924] 337\u201340) where his blessing is given, and in the midst of his special people.
\nThe command against the carving or sculpting of stones used in the construction of an altar is not to be taken as a primitive or anti-iconic instruction. The older view, that undressed stone possessed a \u201cspecial numinous quality\u201d (Galling, \u201cAltar,\u201d IDB 1:97) is also probably a false trail; Conrad (Altargesetz 43\u201350) has argued persuasively that the restriction is anti-Canaanite. The command against mounting steps by an altar may also be directed against Canaanite practice (so Conrad, 123\u201324), despite the stated reason, though the exposure of the nakedness of the priest leading worship is reflected at other places in the OT (cf. Lev. 6:10 and Exod 28:42\u201343).
\n21:1 The \u201cguiding decisions\u201d (\u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05e4\u05d8\u05d9\u05dd) that Moses is to \u201cestablish\u201d (\u05e9\u05c2\u05d5\u05dd) to the people of Israel as authoritative are, in the broadest application of the term, all the case-decisions or precedent-decisions within the composite we now call the Book of the Covenant. The longest sequence of these, of course, is to be found in 21:2\u201322:16. Additional \u201cguiding decisions\u201d are found in the Book of the Covenant, however, at 22:24\u201326 and 23:4\u20135, and these too may be understood as included in the reference of 21:1. Beyond these \u201cguiding decisions\u201d of 21:2\u201322:16, and alongside those in chaps. 22 and 23, there are commands like those in 20:23\u201326: they represent, as do the ten commandments, the stated principles of life in relationship with Yahweh. The \u201cguiding decisions\u201d are the application of those stated principles, themselves an expansion of the still more generally stated principles set forth by the ten commandments. (see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 20:1\u201317).
\n2 The first extended section of \u201cguiding decisions\u201d has to do with the ownership of slaves. Vv 2\u201311 are a kind of miscellany under the general topic \u201cthe treatment of one\u2019s slaves,\u201d with guidance concerning the treatment of both male (vv 2\u20136) and female (vv 7\u201311) slaves. The reference to a \u201cHebrew slave\u201d (\u05e2\u05d1\u05d3 \u05e2\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9) has been taken both as a designation of a \u201cnative\u201d slave, an Israelite slave (Hyatt, 228), and also as indicating an underprivileged social group, disadvantaged persons who might easily fall into the oppression of slavery (Cazelles, Code de l\u2019alliance, 44\u201345). The term \u201cHebrew\u201d is used in Exodus as the kind of word the Egyptians employ in reference to the Israelites, but not as a name the Israelites apply to themselves (so also is the term used in 1 Samuel by the Philistines: 4:6, 9; 14:11, 21; 29:3). De Vaux (Early History, 212) has described the \u05e2\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9 slave of Exod 21:2 as a temporary slave who might or might not have been an Israelite. In Deut 15:12\u201318 and Jer 34:8\u201322, the same phrase clearly does apply to an Israelite, and the paraphrase of Exod 21:2 in Jer 34:14 at least suggests the possibility that the deliberate use of \u05e2\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9 may be a more specific designation than some commentators have been willing to accept, though the argument of Lewy (HUCA 28 [1957] 2\u20138) that the term means \u201cresident alien\u201d and is a \u201cderogatory appellation\u201d cannot be sustained.
\nWhatever such a slave\u2019s nationality, he was clearly a slave with a certain hope of freedom after a set term of servitude. It may be appropriate to think of such an \u05e2\u05d1\u05d3 \u05e2\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9 \u201cHebrew slave\u201d as less than a full citizen but as more than a full slave. At the end of six years, whatever the cause of his servitude, he was to go free without cost to himself, presumably with the status of full and unencumbered citizenship. That the fulfillment of this hope of the seventh year was dependent upon the religious integrity of the slavemaster is shown by Jer 34:14\u201318, as is the seriousness with which Yahweh was believed to take the slavemaster\u2019s covenantal responsibility.
\n3\u20135 Nor do the \u201cHebrew\u201d slave\u2019s rights end with his right of release; if his wife has accompanied him into servitude, she is to accompany him into freedom. If, however, his wife has married him during his servitude, obviously by the permission and through the provision of his owner, both the wife and any children born to such a union must remain with the owner when the \u201ctemporary\u201d slave claims his freedom of the seventh year. They are obviously the owner\u2019s property. This provision raises the need for recourse for the temporary slave who does not want to be separated from his wife and any children his union in servitude may have produced. Thus is a further provision made: he may swear an oath of loyalty to his owner and to his family, and so forgo, presumably forever (so \u05dc\u05e2\u05dc\u05dd \u201cwithout release, forever,\u201d in v 6), his right of seventh-year release.
\n6 The formal ceremony for such a disavowal of his return to a status of freedom requires that the owner bring the man into the Presence of God, that is, to the sanctuary (cf. Falk, VT 9 [1959] 86\u201388) and perhaps even to the altar there, no doubt to repeat in that place his formal renunciation of freedom. \u05d4\u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd has sometimes been taken as implying \u201cjudges\u201d or \u201crulers\u201d representing divine authority (so BDB, 43; Tg. Onk.: \u05d3\u05d9\u05e0\u05d9\u05d0 LXX has \u03c0\u03c1\u03cc\u03c2 \u03c4\u03cc \u03ba\u03c1\u03b9\u03c4\u03ae\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 \u201cbefore the court of God\u201d), but as Gordon (JBL 54 [1935] 139\u201344) has demonstrated, such a translation is both unnecessary and incorrect. The \u201cdoor or the doorpost\u201d where the slave\u2019s ear is pierced is probably the door of the sanctuary (cf. Fensham, JBL 78 [1959] 160\u201361; Loretz, Bib 41 [1960] 167\u201370); it may have been the door of the owner\u2019s house, but in either case, more than merely a suitable \u201cwooden support\u201d for the ear-piercing (Cassuto, 267) is in view. The piercing of the ear, perhaps for the insertion of a ring or tag of some kind (Mendelsohn, \u201cSlavery in the OT,\u201d IDB 4:385), was a public indication of a permanent slavery, and had therefore to be carried out in a public place. By this ceremony, the \u201ctemporary\u201d slave became a \u201cpermanent\u201d slave, through devotion to his family.
\n7\u201311 The expectation of seventh-year release was denied to women (note however the later provision of Deut 15:12, where the man and the woman are both accorded the right of freedom in the seventh year). Though an owner may be unhappy with a female slave he has bought for himself (on the uses to which such female slaves were put, see Mendelsohn, IDB 4:385\u201386), he is to permit her to be freed by the payment of a price, apparently by her family, or he is to make provision for her to remain within his own family, perhaps as a daughter-in-law. Despite his own dissatisfaction with her, he has no right to sell her to \u201ca strange family\u201d (\u05e2\u05dd \u05e0\u05db\u05e8\u05d9), a family unknown to her, perhaps even one outside the covenant community of Israel (cf. Hoftijzer, VT 7 [1957] 390\u201391). If he keeps her within his own family, yet takes another woman as his own wife or concubine, he is not to deny her the basic rights which his purchase of her for himself guaranteed in the first place. North (VT 5 [1955] 204\u20136) has proposed that \u05e9\u05b0\u05c1\u05d0\u05b5\u05e8 may here refer not to food, but to the full range of physical satisfaction, that \u05db\u05b0\u05bc\u05e1\u05d5\u05bc\u05ea implies \u201charem-protection,\u201d and not merely clothing, and that \u05e2\u05b9\u05e0\u05b8\u05d4 describes the right to bear children, and not just the right of sexual intercourse. As intriguing as his interpretation is, it yet implies more than the OT usage of these terms will sustain. If the owner refuses to provide the female slave with these fundamental rights, he waives his claim of possession, and she is free to go her own way. The provisions here stipulated for such a woman make it very likely that she was not sold into slavery for general purposes, but only as a bride, and therefore with provisions restricting her owner-husband concerning her welfare if he should become dissatisfied with the union. Mendelsohn (JAOS 55 [1935] 190\u201395; cf. Henrey, PEQ 86 [1954] 5\u20138) has cited Nuzian sale contracts which almost exactly parallel the Exodus provisions. Such an interpretation makes clear why the provisions for such a slavebride are given in sequence to the \u201cguiding principles\u201d for the protection of the male temporary slave: the slave-bride had special rights, too, and if they were violated, she too could go free.
\n12\u201336 Next in sequence are two collections of \u201cguiding principles\u201d dealing with harm, chiefly physical harm, inflicted willfully or through negligence. Cases carrying the death penalty are appropriately set first (vv 12\u201317), and these are followed by cases calling for a less severe penalty (vv 18\u201336). The loose arrangement of such sequences has been explained by Daube (Biblical Law, 74\u201377, 85\u201389) as the result of \u201claziness, undeveloped legal technique, writing on stone or the like, oral transmission of the law, and regard for tradition,\u201d and the tacking of supplementary laws onto the end of extant collections, rather than the insertion of them into their logical place in a given sequence.
\n12\u201317 The death penalty is specified for one who strikes a premeditated fatal blow against a man, for one who strikes either of his parents, for one who is guilty of kidnapping for the commerce of slave-trading, and for the one who curses (\u05e7\u05dc\u05dc) either of his parents. These capital-penalty \u201cguiding principles\u201d are stated in the direct apodictic form of the \u201cstated principles\u201d of the sequences of the Book of the Covenant of 22:17\u201323:19. This form is no doubt a reflection of the seriousness of the offense. 22:17\u201318 are provisions of identical type and form; their location at a separate place in the Book of the Covenant is a reflection of the cumulative arrangement of the collection.
\n13\u201314 In a case where a blow resulting in death was not preplanned, and God permitted the enemy to come into the hand of one who struck the blow as un crime de passion, a place of sanctuary from the death penalty is to be provided. Just where this place is, we are not told, but the following statement (v 14) that the person guilty of murder cunningly planned can be taken even from Yahweh\u2019s own altar implies, at least, that the place of temporary sanctuary was the altar of Yahweh, any altar of Yahweh, wherever located (cf. de Vaux, Ancient Israel 1:160\u201361; contra Greenberg, JBL 78 [1959] 125\u201327, 132). Sanctuary at the altar was a temporary measure (and in one exceptional instance, it was not respected: 1 Kgs 2:28\u201335), until the innocence or guilt of the fugitive could be demonstrated. When the fugitive\u2019s claims of innocence were vindicated, he was free to go (1 Kgs 1:50\u201353). When he was found guilty, as here, he was dragged from the altar and executed.
\n15, 17 The two capital offences against parents (vv 15 and 17, presented in direct sequence in LXX) both involve the violation of the fifth commandment. Striking (\u05e0\u05db\u05d4) either parent is a reversal of the respect they are due. Cursing them is taken equally seriously because, as Brichto (Problem of \u201cCurse,\u201d 132\u201335) has suggested, \u05e7\u05dc\u05dc here apparently means something like \u201crepudiation,\u201d and may not involve a spoken \u201ccurse\u201d at all. Deut 27:16, the second curse of the \u201cSchechemite Dodecalog,\u201d reads \u201cCursed (\u05d0\u05ea\u05d5\u05ea) is the one who dishonors (\u05de\u05b7\u05e7\u05b0\u05dc\u05b6\u05d4, a hiphil participle of \u05e7\u05dc\u05d4, read by some versions \u05de\u05b4\u05e7\u05b7\u05dc\u05b5\u05bc\u05dc, a piel participle of \u05e7\u05dc\u05dc) his father or his mother.\u201d Brichto (134, n. 41) even speculates that the Deuteronomic law dealing with the rebellious and contentious son (Deut 21:18\u201321) who must be stoned to death is \u201can expansion\u201d of the \u201cterse statement of Exod 21:17.\u201d
\n16 Kidnapping a free man for sale into slavery, whether he has actually been sold or is being confined for sale later, is also a capital crime. Some scholars (so Alt, Kleine Schriften 1:333\u201340; Phillips, Criminal Law, 130\u201332) have connected this crime with the eighth commandment, in part because \u05d2\u05e0\u05d1 \u201csteal\u201d is used in Exod 20:15 as well as in the verse at hand. While Exod 20:15 is certainly inclusive of \u201cman-stealing,\u201d however, its application must be made much broader (see Comment above). Daube (Biblical Law, 95) has plausibly explained the awkward phrase \u05d5\u05e0\u05de\u05e6\u05d0 \u05d1\u05d9\u05d3\u05d5, which is translated here \u201cor is found confining him\u201d (see n. 21:16.a), as an interpolation designed to remove a loophole that might enable a slave dealer who had not actually sold his victim to escape the penalty of death.
\n18\u201321 Actions involving less serious harm to the integrity of the covenant community than murder, homicide, abduction for purpose of slavery, and the repudiation of parents were more frequent, no doubt, and are so accorded a much longer list of \u201cguiding principles.\u201d A man who strikes another with a stone or a tool in a right, thus taking an unfair advantage in the struggle, must be held responsible for the work the injured man cannot do and for his victim\u2019s recovery as well, while the wounded man is to be free of any punishment beyond the suffering his injury causes. A slave owner who strikes his slave a fatal blow with a stick or a club (\u05e9\u05c1\u05d1\u05d8) is to be punished unless the slave survives the blow for a day or so. In that case, he is to suffer no punishment beyond his financial loss in the death of his slave.
\n22\u201325 If two men in a scuffle inadvertently strike a pregnant woman, causing by the trauma of the blow the premature birth of her children (so MT; SamPent and LXX read \u201cchild\u201d), if there is no harm, presumably either to the mother or the newborn child or children, the man who actually inflicted the blow is to pay compensation, fixed by the woman\u2019s husband on the basis of an assessment agreed upon by an objective third party (cf. Speiser, JBL 82 [1963] 301\u20136). If, however, there is a permanent injury, either to the woman or, presumably, to the child or the children she was carrying, equal injury is to be inflicted upon the one who caused it. Jackson (VT 23 [1973] 290\u201397) argues that v 22 sets the payment for the loss of the fetus, v 23 the bodily harm done to the mother: \u201cthe remedy for a lost foetus is substitution, but that for the mother is talionic\u201d (cf. contra, Loewenstamm, VT 27 [1977] 352\u201360). The Code of Hammurapi, ANET 175:209, provides a payment of ten shekels of silver for the loss of a fetus in a similar instance; the Middle Assyrian Laws, ANET 184:50 specify a life as payment for the loss of a fetus. Paul (Book of the Covenant, nn) assumes the loss of the fetus also in Exod 21:22, translating \u05d5\u05d9\u05e6\u05d0\u05d5 \u05d9\u05dc\u05d3\u05d9\u05d4 \u201cand a miscarriage results\u201d; the text, however, is not that specific, referring as it does to \u201cher children going out\u201d (cf. BDB, 423h).
\nThis law of the talion, for a long time thought to be a more primitive kind of penalty, the reflection of a barbaric law form, has been shown by more recent comparative studies to be a later development, designed to remedy the inevitable abuses made possible by monetary payment for physical injury. See, for example, the comments of Diamond (Iraq [1957] 151\u201355), Finkelstein (JCS 15 [1961] 98\u2013104), or Paul (Book of the Covenant, 70\u201379), who calls \u201cthe principle of lex talionis \u2026 an important advance in the history of jurisprudence.\u201d
\n26\u201327 In the case of bodily injury to slaves, whose status does not qualify them for equal compensation, the owner whose abuse results in the loss of an eye or a tooth is to free that slave, a remarkably humanitarian provision directed at cruelty and sadism in a slave-owner.
\n28\u201332 Harm done by animals carelessly managed is also regarded as the responsibility of the owner, and appropriate restitution is to be made. If a bull not known to be dangerous suddenly gores someone fatally, the bull is to be killed, but the owner is to suffer no punishment beyond this quite considerable financial loss. If, however, the bull is known to be dangerous and its owner warned of the consequences of his negligence, a fatal attack is to be compensated by the death of both the bull and its owner. An indemnity payment is permitted in such a case, but it is an indemnity not for the life of the bull\u2019s victim, but for the life of the owner, put into jeopardy not by malicious intent but by negligence. This payment was to be of an amount apparently set by the victim\u2019s family, thus that varied from case to case. The same \u201cguiding principle\u201d is applied to the death of a son or a daughter: no less penalty is to be exacted if the bull\u2019s victim is a child, but in the case of a slave, a monetary compensation of thirty silver shekels is set, along with the death of the bull.
\n33\u201336 The further collection of \u201cguiding principles\u201d on harm relates to the losses sustained by the owner whose livestock is injured through negligence or theft leading to butchery or resale. Thus the man who leaves an open pit is to pay compensation to the owner of any animal that falls into it, apparently in the amount of the animal\u2019s value uninjured, and to keep the carcass of the dead animal. If a bull unexpectedly attacks and kills a neighbor\u2019s bull, the aggressive animal is to be sold and the two parties are to halve the proceeds of this sale and the dead animal. If, on the other hand, the attacking animal was known to be belligerent and its owner has taken no precautions, he must replace the dead animal, which he is then permitted to keep.
\n37, 22:2b\u20133 [22:1, 3b\u20134] The thief who steals a bull or a flock animal either to butcher for his own use or to sell for money must pay the compensation of five herd-animals for the bull, four flock-animals for one flock-animal stolen; if he is unable to pay such compensation, he is himself to be sold to raise the money needed for the compensation payment. If an animal that has been stolen is found alive in his possession, the thief is required to pay double compensation. Whether this involves double the price of the stolen animal in addition to the return of the animal to its owner (Friedrich, Hethitischen Gesetze, 41, n. 3) or the return of the animal plus a single compensation payment (Goetze, ANET, 192:70) is unclear.
\n22:1\u20132a [22:2\u20133] The \u201cguiding principle\u201d concerning the death of a thief killed in the course of his crime is obviously not in logical sequence with the livestock laws that precede and follow it. Attempts to rearrange the text (Beer, 112\u201313; rsv) and attempts to suggest a purpose for the arrangement as it stands (Cassuto, 282; Childs, 474) are unconvincing, however. The order may best be accounted for by Daube\u2019s theory (see above, p. 322). The thief who is discovered at his work and struck fatally brings no guilt of bloodshed upon the one who has struck him unless the attack and the death resulting from it occur during the daylight hours when the person being burglarized can see the thief and so allow justice to follow its normal course.
\n4\u20135 [5\u20136] The sequence of \u201cguiding principles\u201d dealing with harm through negligence and theft is followed by a miscellany concerned with property loss ranging from the potential of a crop (vv 4\u20135) to a marriage price (vv 15\u201316). First in the sequence is the loss of the potential of a field or a vineyard through negligence involving livestock or fire. In the first instance, the potential crop is destroyed by the grazing and trampling of the stock; in the second, a fire allowed to burn out of control destroys the harvested grain or the standing grain or even the entire crop. In the case of the loose animals, the negligent owner must give up the best of his own crop as compensation. In the case of the uncontrolled fire, the terms of the compensation are not specified. The expanded version of v 4 in LXX has been explained by Rabinowitz (VT 9 [1959] 40\u201344), probably correctly, as \u201cdoctoring the text\u201d by the \u201cAlexandrian translators\u201d to reflect the laws affecting agricultural economy in Egypt under Ptolemy II.
\n6\u20138 [7\u20139] The \u201cguiding principles\u201d designed to protect property put into the care of, or loaned to, another member of the covenant community deal primarily with loss by theft, but include also liability of other kinds. A primary concern of these provisions is a kind of \u201cbonding\u201d of the person to whom the possessions are entrusted, not least by reminding him in advance of his own liability. Thus when something of value is put into a neighbor\u2019s care and is missing when the owner comes to claim it, a thief must first of all be sought. If one is found, he is required in penalty of his crime to compensate the owner of the property double the amount of the property\u2019s value. The \u201cneighbor,\u201d \u05e8\u05b9\u05e2\u05b7, is here as at other places in Exodus (cf. 2:13; 20:16\u201317; 21:14) a fellow Israelite, one bound by the same covenant to Yahweh; the thief, of course, might belong to any group. \u201cNeighbor\u201d must not therefore be understood here in its contemporary sense; possessions would not be entrusted for safekeeping to someone who lived nearby, or who was a friend only. The additional covenantal bond is precisely what makes the situation here described so serious. If no thief is found, the suspicion of theft falls upon the person to whom the property has been entrusted, and he must be brought into the Presence of God so that his own innocence or culpability may be established.
\n7 [8] LXX includes here the additional idea of the taking of an oath (\u03ba\u03b1\u03af \u1f40\u03bc\u03b5\u1fd6\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9) of innocence before God, and many commentators have followed this line (so Noth, 184; Cassuto, 286; Hyatt, 238; Childs, 475\u201376), assuming that the willingness or unwillingness of the property holder to swear in God\u2019s Presence would establish his guilt or his innocence. This is not, however, what MT says. \u05e7\u05e8\u05d1 \u05d0\u05dc\u05be\u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd refers here as at many other places in the OT to a drawing near to the Presence of God to receive a divine opinion, not merely the testimony, albeit under special circumstances, of the accused and accusing parties. \u05e7\u05e8\u05d1 \u201cdraw near\u201d in the hiphil stem is a special cultic term for bringing a sacrifice or an offering into God\u2019s Presence; it is so used eighty-nine times in Leviticus and forty-nine times in Numbers. \u05e7\u05e8\u05d1 is also used in a variety of passages (cf. Exod 16:9\u201310; 1 Sam 14:36\u201337; Deut 5:27), as here, to describe drawing near to a place of theophany. The property owner and the person to whom he has entrusted his possessions are thus to be understood as coming into the Presence of God, no doubt at the local sanctuary or holy place, to seek an oracle of God (cf. Beer, 114).
\n8 [9] Whatever the loss, whether of livestock, clothing, or any other object of value, if it is found among the property of the trusted neighbor and the owner claims it (\u201cThis is it,\u201d i.e., the animal or article entrusted and \u201clost\u201d), the two parties with their disputant claims are to come to God to seek in his Presence the oracle of divine pronouncement. The procedure for this step is left unspecified, no doubt because it was well known. Perhaps it involved the sacred lot, urim and thummim. Whatever the means of designation, the property owner or the trustee would be declared guilty of deception, and that declaration, which as a divine word was the final word, required the payment of a double compensation to the injured party.
\n9\u201310 [10\u201311] In a case in which only livestock is involved, and the animal left for safekeeping suffers death or injury or disappears and there is no witness to the loss, the owner and the trustee, either of whom might be making a false claim, are to swear \u05e9\u05c1\u05d1\u05e2\u05ea \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u201cYahweh\u2019s oath,\u201d or an oath in Yahweh\u2019s Presence that each is telling the truth. Lehmann (ZAW 81 [1969] 78\u201382) has proposed that such an oath carried with it a curse against the one who played it false; Horst (Gottes Recht, 306\u20138) notes that this oath was taken in Yahweh\u2019s name and that Yahweh as witness to the oath was also its guard and guarantor. Such an oath would of course be the final and highest protestation of innocence, and the procedure here differs from the approach to the divine Presence for an oracle (vv 6\u20138 [7\u20139]) because both parties are open to suspicion. The owner is to accept such an oath of the innocence of the trustee in harm to or the loss of his animal, and, presumably, the trustee would similarly accept the oath with regard to the owner. The trustee would not need to pay any compensation.
\n11\u201314 [12\u201315] If, however, the loss of the animal through theft shall have occurred because of the negligence of the trustee, the trustee must pay compensation. If predators have mauled the animal and he can produce the maimed animal or its carcass in evidence, he need pay no compensation. In the event that the animal is in the trustee\u2019s keeping at his own request, as a loan, he is to pay compensation if it is injured or dies unless (1) the owner was with it at the time of its injury or death, and so could have looked after his own interests, or (2) the owner had rented it for a fee and so had already calculated the risk he was taking and provided for compensation in the fees he charged.
\n15\u201316 [16\u201317] The man who seduced an unbetrothed virgin and so compromised her father\u2019s opportunity to arrange a marriage for her was required to pay her marriage price and marry her himself (cf. Finkelstein, JAOS 86 [1966] 362\u201368). The terms of this \u201cguiding principle\u201d indicate that its primary focus is financial, both with regard to the father of the unattached girl and also with regard to the young woman herself. The marriage money (\u05de\u05b9\u05d4\u05b7\u05e8) was in the way of compensation to a young woman\u2019s family for her loss into another family, and it may have reverted to the bride herself upon the occasion of the death of her father or her husband (de Vaux, Ancient Israel 1:26\u201329). In case the girl\u2019s father considered the match unsuitable for his daughter, as well he might under the circumstance, the man involved was still to pay as a penalty a sum equivalent to the marriage price for young women eligible to be married.
\n22:17\u201323:19 [22:18\u201323:19] The reappearance in v 17 [18] of the apodictic form in the statement of the \u201cguiding principles\u201d of the Book of the Covenant and the recurrence of that form through most of the remainder of the collection has led many commentators to the view that 22:17 [22:18]\u201323:19 and 21:2\u201322:16 [22:17], characterized more by the casuistic form, are separate collections. The dividing point is variously set (see above, Form\/Structure\/ Setting), and some scholars argue for the precedence of the \u201ccasuistic\u201d section (so Paul, Book of the Covenant, 43\u201345, who regards 21:2\u201322:16 [22:17] \u201cthe formal legal corpus\u201d), some for the precedence of the \u201capodictic\u201d section (so Beyerlin, Gottes Wort, 19\u201329, who argues for a parenetic collection of \u201ccommandment- and prohibition-sequences\u201d prior to the incorporation of the collection of the case laws; cf. also, and more fully, Halbe, Privilegrecht Jahwes, 413\u201323). As interesting as these suggestions are, they tend by their subjectivity to be mutually canceling. What remains certain, of course, is the present form of the Book of the Covenant, and that form presents a variety of legal formulary given unity by its theological purpose, the exposition and application of the principles of life in covenant with Yahweh. It should come as no surprise that the two major halves of the Book of the Covenant each contain laws in \u201cwhen \u2026 you\u201d form, commandment form, and prohibition form. Whatever prior organization the Book of the Covenant may have had, in any of its parts or as an expanding whole, it stands now as a \u201cnew\u201d collection, to a \u201cnew\u201d purpose, with its own unique form.
\n17\u201319 [18\u201320] Three offenses for which the death penalty is commanded are listed together, perhaps by reason of their seriousness. The sorceress (sorcerers, the masculine plural form of the same Hebrew participle, are mentioned in Mal 3:5) is not to be permitted to live because her craft was an attempt to escape or to alter the will and the work of Yahweh. The OT uniformly opposes sorcery (cf. Deut 18:9\u201314; 2 Kgs 9:21\u201326; Mic 5:10\u201314; Jer 27:8\u201311; Nah 3:1\u20134), without ever specifying exactly what it is (Cazelles, Code de l\u2019alliance, 75, refers to \u201cdark and noxious practices\u201d). Copulation with any animal also is to be punished by death, not only because it was a sexual deviation (cf. Lev 18:23; 20:16; Deut 27:21), but even more because of its associations with animal cults and fertility worship among Israel\u2019s neighbors (cf. Cazelles, 76). The third offense punishable by death involves the violation of the first commandment, and is therefore, like the two offenses that precede it, an attack upon Yahweh himself. V 19 [20] is awkwardly stated, and its final phrase appears to be an addition called for by the lack of any modifier for \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd \u201cgods, God.\u201d SamPent adds a modifier, \u05d0\u05d7\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u201cstrange, other,\u201d and is missing the additional phrase; LXX has both. Alt (Essays, 112, n. 73) thought \u05d0\u05d7\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd the original reading, followed by \u05de\u05d5\u05ea \u05d9\u05d5\u05de\u05ea \u201che is certainly to be put to death\u201d; by error, the \u05d9\u05d7\u05e8\u05dd \u201che is to be destroyed under ban\u201d of MT replaced \u05d0\u05d7\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd rendering \u05de\u05d5\u05ea \u05d9\u05d5\u05de\u05ea \u201che is certainly to be put to death\u201d redundant, but necessitating the tack-on phrase to avoid ambiguity. The verb \u05d7\u05e8\u05dd means to devote to sacred use, or if that is impossible, as here, to destroy under the ban of what is to be used for Yahweh\u2019s purpose alone.
\n20\u201326 [21\u201327] V 20 [21] begins a sequence of prohibitions and commands that are in one way or another protective of defenseless and disadvantaged persons, and the similar concerns of 23:1\u20139, which take up the situation of the innocent, among men and animals, the needy, and again the newcorner?, have prompted the suggestion that these verses may originally have been a part of an \u201cethical\u201d code interpolated into the Book of the Covenant. I. Lewy (VT 7 [1959] 322\u201326), for example, has suggested a \u201cTorah of humaneness, justice, and righteousness\u201d in addition to the ten commandments, known throughout Israel, predating the prophets of the ninth and eighth centuries and reflected in \u201cthe Deuteronomic Code.\u201d He even suggests that Exod 22:20\u201326 [21\u201327] and 23:1\u20139 are from the hand of \u201cthe Yahwist master narrator,\u201d \u201cthe first prophet of ethico-centered religion.\u201d While this latter suggestion amounts to a speculation founded on a row of speculations, the presence in the Book of the Covenant of these provisions for the defenseless and the innocent certainly need not be taken, as they often have been, as indications of the influence of prophetic teaching. Concern for the disprivileged and humanitarian sensitivity are reflected throughout the OT, in every major dimension of its teaching.
\nThe \u201cnewcorner?,\u201d \u05d2\u05e8, as a temporary dweller, a \u201ctourist\u201d for a short or an extended time, was without familial and professional and sometimes national connections and so was open to abuse. The people of Israel knew the plight, for they had suffered it in Egypt, and they were not to maltreat or oppress those in a similar situation in the land over which they themselves ruled (cf. 23:9). Nor were they to \u201chumiliate,\u201d to \u201cweaken\u201d still further any widow or orphan: though their means of redress among men were limited, Yahweh himself was to be their protector. A cry of distress from such a defenseless person would certainly be heard by Yahweh and just as certainly provoke his furious anger, in result of which the offending Israelite would himself be slain, leaving his own wife and children in the same defenseless position as those whom he had maltreated.
\n24\u201326 [25\u201327] The poor are similarly to be looked after as the special concern of Yahweh. If the exigencies of existence force them to borrow money, the Israelite must keep in mind that these people are Yahweh\u2019s people too, despite their poverty. Thus the arrangement with them must be a special one, the arrangement of the family: the one who advances the money is not to do so as a businessman but as a fellow member of Yahweh\u2019s family (cf. Neufeld, HUCA 26 [1955] 357\u201359, 365\u201366, 375\u201376, 394\u201399). No interest is to be charged, and if collateral is held, it must be returned before its absence causes hardship. It is collateral more for the benefit of the feelings of the borrower than for the security of the lender. If these covenantal family ties are not respected and there is a cry of distress to Yahweh, he will hear it, because they are \u201cfamily\u201d and because he is compassionate: \u05d7\u05e0\u05d5\u05df \u201ccompassionate\u201d is used only of Yahweh (thirteen times), and usually in tandem with \u05e8\u05d7\u05d5\u05dd \u201ccaring.\u201d The confession of Yahweh \u05d7\u05e0\u05d5\u05df \u05d0\u05e0\u05d9 \u201cI am compassionate,\u201d may be understood as the foundational explanation of all the commands and \u201cguiding principles\u201d having to do with the defenseless members of the covenant community.
\n27\u201330 [28\u201331] Members of the covenant community are to show no disrespect for (they are not to \u201cmake light of,\u201d \u05e7\u05dc\u05dc) God. As Brichto (Problem of \u201cCurse,\u201d 150\u201365) has shown, blasphemy or the cursing of God is not at issue here, despite the assertion of some commentators (so Cassuto, 293\u201394; Hyatt, 244) that it is. To show disrespect for God is to act in any manner inimical to the relationship in covenant with him, indeed to ignore or to refuse to obey any of his commands or \u201cguiding principles.\u201d One such act would be to curse (\u05d0\u05ea\u05ea) a leader (\u05e0\u05e9\u05c2\u05d9\u05d0) of the covenant community; a second would be to hold back that to which Yahweh is entitled, whether from the produce of field, vineyard, and orchard or the womb or the herd or the flock. It is necessary, indeed, that the members of the covenant community be \u05e7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1 \u201choly,\u201d set apart for Yahweh: to the extent and in any way in which they are not so set apart, they are showing disrespect for the one to whom they have claimed special relationship.
\nThe \u05e0\u05e9\u05c2\u05d9\u05d0 was not the king, but an administrative leader elected by the assembly of the people and believed therein to have been elected also by Yahweh (Speiser, CBQ 25 [1963] 111\u201317). With regard to him the stronger word \u05d0\u05e8\u05e8 \u201ccurse\u201d is used, a choice that is quite deliberate. As Scharbert (Bib 39 [1958] 5\u201314, esp. 9) has noted, the piel of \u05e7\u05dc\u05dc \u201cshow disrespect\u201d and qal of \u05d0\u05e8\u05e8 are by no means synonymous, though many commentators have made them so, and more is intended even than Brichto\u2019s (Problem of \u201cCurse\u201d 158\u201359) idea of bringing a leader into disfavor with God by the irresponsibility of the people for whom he has special responsibility. \u05d0\u05e8\u05e8 \u201ccurse\u201d here should be taken literally, to signify the reversal of the \u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d5\u05e1 \u201chealth, wholeness\u201d of the leader elected by the people because he was elected by God. As such, to curse a leader is to attempt the negation of a blessing of Yahweh, thus an act of disrespect for the divine authority by which the covenant came to be.
\n28\u201329 [29\u201330] An appropriate respect for Yahweh also requires priority for him in the matter of offerings. \u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05ea\u05da \u05d5\u05d3\u05de\u05e2\u05da, literally, \u201cyour fullness and your dripping,\u201d refer to the bounty of the harvest. \u201cFullness\u201d is translated above by \u201cbumper crop\u201d and \u201cdripping\u201d (\u201csqueezings\u201d) by \u201cvintage wine and richest oil\u201d (cf. Cazelles, Code de l\u2019alliance, 82). The prohibition is against a token offering from a bounteous crop, a legalistic expression of the obligation as opposed to a joyous offering in thanksgiving. Firstborn sons are Yahweh\u2019s, as also are the firstborn animals of herd and flock: to hold any of these back is to show disrespect for Yahweh similar to that revealed by a token offering from bountiful crops. Israel\u2019s gifts must demonstrate an appropriate acknowledgement of the gifts of Yahweh that make their gifts possible. Firstborn sons were dedicated in Israel to Yahweh both actually and vicariously, but in service, not by sacrifice (cf. de Vaux, Early History, 443\u201344, and see Comment on 13:11\u201312); the firstborn animals of herd and flock were to be given on the eighth day, that is, only when the animal could safely be taken from its mother.
\n30 [31] Respect for Yahweh means, therefore, that those in relationship with him must be set apart for him. An example of such set-apartness is abstinence from food improperly gained: the people of Israel are not to eat the meat of animals killed by wild beasts. In time, such a requirement had to do at least in part with restrictions related to blood (\u05db\u05d9 \u05d4\u05d3\u05dd \u05d4\u05d5\u05d0 \u05d4\u05e0\u05e4\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cfor the blood is the life,\u201d Deut 12:23); earlier, it may also have been linked both to the practices of Israel\u2019s neighbors and a fear of the contamination, either physical, or ritual, of an animal killed by unknown predators. The plural verbs of this verse, often taken as an indication that it was an insertion from another law code, may better be understood in relation to the plural \u05d0\u05e0\u05e9\u05c1\u05d9\u05be\u05e7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cmen set apart\u201d as a concluding and summary statement addressed to Israel as a whole following a series of commands and guiding principles addressed to each individual member of the covenant community.
\n23:1\u20133 With the first nine verses of chap. 23, we come once again to a list of provisions concerned with ethical and humane behavior, verses sometimes linked with 22:20\u201326 [21\u201327]; see above. The first three verses deal with reputations both good and bad and have a primary connection with legal procedures in the covenant community. Passing along a groundless report is forbidden, as is the support of a false testimony by shoring up a bad reputation with a good one. Going the wrong way because the majority is headed there is forbidden, as is the testimony sympathetic to that given by a majority but distorted report. And giving an unfair advantage in a legal proceeding to the poor, who had no advantage at all, is forbidden, an insight into human temptation so perceptive that some commentators (so Noth, 189, and BHS) albeit wrongly, have felt compelled to emend \u05d5\u05b0\u05d3\u05b7\u05bc\u05dc \u201cand poor, weak,\u201d to \u05d2\u05b7\u05bc\u05d3\u05b9\u05dc \u201cgreat, important.\u201d
\n4\u20135 The reappearance in these two verses of the \u201cwhen \u2026 you,\u201d \u201cguiding principle\u201d form and the difference in subject matter in these two verses with what precedes and follows them have led some interpreters to consider them dislocated. Driver (237), for example, would relocate them after 22:24 or 27. Other commentators (cf. Noth, 188\u201389; Childs, 480\u201381) have sought a connection of context that might justify the apparent non sequitur. As Daube (Biblical Law, 74\u2013101) has shown, however, ancient law codes are not always arranged and transmitted in logical and consistent sequence, and Carmichael (ZAW 84 [1972] 19\u201325), following Daube, has made the additional point that the \u201cguiding principles\u201d are not \u201cin the strict, practical sense\u201d legislation, but \u201claws \u2026 basically addressed to the conscience\u201d and sometimes parallel in arrangement \u201cto the moral precepts in the Book of Proverbs.\u201d
\nThe point at issue in these two verses is not so much a humane attitude toward a lost or improperly laden animal as it is a refusal to take advantage of another\u2019s misfortunes because he happens to be an enemy. The loose animal is usually enjoying himself, and the animal that lies down under a poorly arranged load is protecting himself. The one at risk here is the owner, who may lose a valuable animal altogether or have to unload and reload an animal in an insecure spot and without help. Under normal circumstances, there would be no question about catching a stray animal or helping even a stranger rearrange a load. But if the animal should belong to an enemy, to one who hates (and is perhaps therefore hated), there is a temptation to permit and to hope for the worst to happen, and to take satisfaction from its occurrence. A member of the covenant community is forbidden to do so; instead, he should catch and return the straying animal, or assist in the arrangement of a poorly placed load.
\n6\u20138 The instructions related to legal proceedings are taken up again in these verses. The view of Frey (Wort und Dienst 1 [1948] 22\u201329) that these verses are addressed to the judge in a case at law and that vv 1\u20133 are addressed to the witnesses, and the view of McKay (VT 21 [1971] 321\u201325) that vv 1\u20133 plus vv 6\u20138 formed a decalogue of instructions for judges and elders administering justice in the city gate are too restrictive. There is no reason why these commands cannot be applied to anyone involved in a determinative role in a legal proceeding. There is to be no \u201cbending,\u201d no \u201cwatering down\u201d of a case-decision affecting a needy, disadvantaged person, and no entertainment of any complaint that has no foundation in truth. The innocent righteous person is not to be ruined (literally, \u201ckilled,\u201d \u05d4\u05e8\u05d2) by unjust legal procedure. Yahweh \u201cwill not make the wicked righteous\u201d (\u05dc\u05d0\u05be\u05d0\u05e6\u05d3\u05d9\u05e7 \u05e8\u05e9\u05c1\u05e2), and so let them off at the expense of an innocent person wrongly convicted, no matter what the law court may do (cf. Fensham, VT 26 [1976] 299\u201370, who emphasizes the first-person address of Yahweh in v 7). No bribe is to be accepted, because a bribe changes what people see and upends justice.
\n9 The repetition of the command against maltreating a \u201cnewcorner?\u201d (see Comment on 22:20), set at this point perhaps because of the context of injustice in the instructions regarding legal proceedings, is followed here as earlier by a summary statement with second person plural verbs. Each member of the covenant community is to have compassion for such a disadvantaged person because all of them together have known the experience of his plight.
\n10\u201312 The concept of a seventh-year release, whether of land or of a \u201ctemporary\u201d slave (see Comment on 21:2\u201311) is probably patterned on the much older practice of a seventh-day release, the sabbath day of rest. Both practices are commended in these verses, which are no doubt linked because of their parallel six-plus-one pattern. After six years of cultivation and harvest, land is to be left alone for a year. Whatever the land produces on its own, the \u201cvolunteer crop\u201d which comes through no effort of cultivation, the poor of the land are to have, and anything they leave, the wild animals are not to be deterred from eating. Vineyards and olive orchards are to be left alone in the seventh year, unpruned, unguarded, and unharvested. As the owner will not have worked for their produce, so he is not to take it or to be concerned with it. As de Vaux (Early History, 173\u201375) has noted, there is here no indication of whether a general or a staggered sabbatical year is meant, insofar as all Israel is concerned. Lev 25:1\u20137, which refers to a sabbath rest for the land, clearly implies a general sabbath year every seventh year following entry into the promised land. The sabbath day is of course a rest day commanded generally, here with no justifying reasons as in 20:8\u201311 apart from the statement that rest for the Israelite means rest also for the animals and the people under his authority. North (Bib 36 [1955] 185\u2013201) has argued that \u05e9\u05b7\u05c1\u05d1\u05b8\u05ea \u201csabbath\u201d is derived from the root \u05e9\u05c1\u05d1\u05ea \u201ccease, stop,\u201d that the sabbath has connections with the lunar month and the Babylonian \u0161apattum as a day of penance, and that sabbath observance may be linked, in its earliest OT form, to \u201cthe Mosaic revelation\u201d (cf. Cazelles, Code de l\u2019alliance, 92\u201395, and note Robinson\u2019s proposal, ZAW 92 [1980] 37\u201342, that \u05e9\u05c1\u05d1\u05ea has no connection with \u201crest\u201d).
\n13 The summary nature of Yahweh\u2019s statement concerning all that he has said, the use in it of inclusive plural verb forms, and the recurrence of the theme of the first commandment of the Decalogue, which also begins the Book of the Covenant (see Comment on 20:23), gives v 13 the appearance of a conclusion to the collection of commands and guiding principles. It is after all a caution to guard or keep the instructions Yahweh has given, to avoid even thinking of the name (or \u201cpresence,\u201d \u05e9\u05c1\u05dd) of any god other than Yahweh, and a command against speaking the name of any such \u201cstrange\u201d deity. Further, the commands that now follow this summary statement with its recurring prohibition of worship directed toward any save Yahweh could be supplementary, post-collection addenda of the kind Daube (Biblical Law, 74\u2013101) calls \u201ccodas\u201d to the \u201ccodes.\u201d They deal with (1) the sacred festivals of the year (vv 14\u201317) and (2) a miscellany of instructions connected mostly with sacrifices and offerings (vv 18\u201319); a large part of these addenda reappear, partially in verbatim form, in 34:18\u201326 (see Comment below).
\nCarmichael (ZAW 84 [1972] 19\u201321) sees 23:9\u201319 as a sequence of laws patterned after the sequence of 22:20\u201330, made by a scribe influenced by the compilations of the Book of Proverbs (23\u201325), and demonstrating a loose correspondence of individual laws. 23:13, on this view, is held to correspond to 22:27 [28]. Hyatt (247) thinks 23:13 \u201ca summary addition,\u201d and wonders whether it may originally have come following 23:19, at what is now the end of the law collections of the Book of the Covenant. Intriguing though these and other speculations like them are, we must not fail to take seriously the text as it stands. For some compiler(s), the present order of Exod 23 was the one to be transmitted, and v 13 may best be seen in its present sequence not as dislocated or the parallel of some other sequence, but as the conclusion of at least a subsection within the larger compilation that is the Book of the Covenant.
\n14\u201317 The three sacred feasts commanded in the instructions of vv 14\u201317 comprise the three principal events of Israel\u2019s religious calendar, perhaps because of their significant connection with the three principal events of Israel\u2019s ongoing physical life\u2014the first harvest of grain, the early barley; the harvest of the other cereal crops seven weeks later; and the final harvest of all the crops in the autumn. Of the several OT listings of these three sacred feasts (see also Exod 34:18\u201323; Deut 16:1\u201317; and Lev 23:1\u201344), the one at hand appears to be the oldest (see de Vaux, Early History, 470\u201374, 484\u2013506; Kraus, Worship in Israel, 26\u201370). These agricultural festivals were probably taken into Israelite life from the Canaanites, early in the period of Israel\u2019s settlement in Canaan (cf. Talmon, JAOS 83 [1963] 177\u201387), but as the OT calendars show, they were made into festive celebrations of thanks to Yahweh, no doubt as an attempted safeguard against syncretistic influence.
\n15 The first of the three festivals commanded of Israel by Yahweh, the feast of unleavened bread cakes, was set \u201cin the month of the green grain\u201d (\u05d7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1 \u05d4\u05d0\u05d1\u05d9\u05d1), the time of the earliest harvest, the harvest of barley planted in winter (Zohary, \u201cFlora,\u201d IDB 2:286). \u201cGreen grain\u201d may refer either to the barley itself or to the growing wheat and spelt, to be harvested seven weeks later, or to both (cf. Talmon, JAOS 83 [1963] 182\u201386). Unleavened bread cakes were made from the new barley, and enjoyed as the first bounty of the crops of another year. The association of this festival with the remembrance of exodus deliverance, as also the association of a spring lambing festival with that same deliverance by means of the Passover, was a remarkable contribution of Israel\u2019s religious leaders (see Comment on 12:14\u201320). The absence of any mention in this verse of Passover is entirely logical, since the point of reference here is the agricultural festival from which the feast of unleavened bread cakes was taken. The offering Yahweh expects is the acknowledgment of his gift of the first grain harvest and thanksgiving for the beginning of another crop year.
\n16\u201317 The second of the appointed festivals was in a way a continuation of the first, as it too celebrated the harvest of grain, the wheat and spelt that ripened later. This \u201cearly crop-harvest\u201d was a further harbinger of the fuller harvest to follow at the end of the agricultural year. It is called the \u201csacred feast of sevens (weeks)\u201d (\u05d7\u05d2 \u05e9\u05c1\u05d1\u05e2\u05ea) in Exod 34:22, because it came by prescription seven weeks after the harvest of the early grain (Deut 16:9\u201312). This harvest was the \u201cfirst fruits\u201d of the autumnal harvest, which was in turn the occasion of the third and largest of the three festivals of thanksgiving, the sacred festival of the ingathering harvest. This festival came at the end of the year, from an agricultural standpoint, and celebrated all of Yahweh\u2019s bounty, of field and orchard and vineyard alike.
\nThe section on the three sacred feasts is ended with a repetition of the statement of requirement with which it began, this time specifying that every male is to appear three times annually in the Presence, that is, in a place set aside for the worship of Yahweh, here called \u201cthe Lord, Yahweh\u201d (\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u05d4\u05d0\u05d3\u05d5\u05df), Cassuto (303) says \u201cin antithesis\u201d to the Canaanite address of Baal as \u201cLord,\u201d a point that might make more sense if the contrast were with a double name such as \u201cAliyn Baal\u201d (\u201cThe One Who Prevails: Baal,\u201d Kapelrud, Baal 47\u201350).
\n18\u201319 The commands and \u201cguiding principles\u201d of the Book of Covenant are closed with four miscellaneous instructions. The first two of these instructions have sometimes been connected with Passover (cf. Tg. Onk., Sperber, 1:128; Gispen, 232), but there is no justification in the text for doing so, and the instructions are better taken more generally. The prohibition of any combination of leaven with the blood of a sacrifice offered to Yahweh and of the keeping of the fat from such a sacrifice beyond the time prescribed for its disposal are both linked to the association of blood and visceral fat with the very essence of the life that is Yahweh\u2019s gift to all his creatures. The OT exclusion of the blood and the visceral fat of any sacrificial animal to the use of Yahweh alone is without exception (see Exod 29:12\u201313: Lev 3:16\u201317; 7:22\u201327; 8:14\u201330; Num 18:17; cf. Rendtorff, Geschichte des Opfers, 145\u201348). Leaven would be considered an impurity in combination with the blood of the sacrifice to Yahweh; the fat was Yahweh\u2019s alone and was to be offered to him promptly. The very first of the harvest was to be given to Yahweh, both as an indication that the crops came as his bounty to Israel and also to prevent a waiting for Yahweh\u2019s part that might eliminate it altogether. The prohibition of cooking a kid in the milk of its own mother has been variously explained on magical grounds (Gaster, Myth, Legend, and Custom, 250\u201363, following Frazer) or as a reaction against Dionysian (Radin, AJSL 40 [1923\u201324] 213\u201318) or Canaanite (G. R. Driver, Canaanite Myths, 121:6\u201314; Kosmala, ASTI 1 [1962] 50\u201356) religious practices. The use of this verse to explain Jewish dietary restrictions is far less obscure than its origin, about which we remain unsure.
\n20\u201333 The conclusion or epilogue to the Book of the Covenant is a kind of parallel to the beginning of the collection of \u201cguiding principles\u201d and commands and instructions (20:22\u201323; see Comment above), and similarly has as a foundational motif absolute loyalty to Yahweh and complete rejection of all other deities. Commentators have often remarked on the different style of these verses and their similarity to Deuteronomistic language and theology (cf. Noth, 192\u201394: \u201ca generally deuteronomistic stamp in style and content\u201d; or Hyatt, 250: \u201cthe Deuteronomistic redactor \u2026 has built upon E tradition\u201d), as on the fact that law-collections generally are ended with adjurations and promises (Cassuto, 305; Paul, Book of the Covenant, 35\u201342). A general assumption has arisen, to the effect that Exod 23:20\u201333 has been lifted from another context and set somewhat awkwardly into its present location as a typical concluding section to a long and complicated sequence of laws of mixed form and type.
\nStrangely missing from Exod 23:20\u201333, however, is the insistence on obedience to the laws just listed, an insistence repetitively and pointedly called for at the end of the Holiness Code (Lev 26:3\u201346) or following the \u201cSchechemite Dodecalogue\u201d of Deut 27:15\u201326 (so Deut 28) or even the Code of LipitIshtar (ANET, 161) or the Code of Hammurapi (ANET, 177\u201380). In fact, insofar as the specific laws of the Book of the Covenant are concerned, this conclusion seems almost to be a conclusion to something else entirely; with its reference to the Presence of Yahweh and the promised land to be entered and settled and the temptations to be faced there, it might appear more at home in the narrative of the departure from Sinai in the Book of Numbers. The plain fact is, of course, that the editors of the tetrateuchal narrative did not set this passage there, though they might have done. Wherever they found it, and however they emended it, they put it here, and as Childs (486) has wisely insisted, it must be seen in its present role if it is to be properly understood.
\nThe primary reference of Exod 23:20\u201333 is not the collection of laws preceding it, but the broader frame into which those laws too are set, a frame suggested also by the verses (20:22\u201323) that have been placed immediately before the laws themselves. Here, as there, the emphasis is upon Yahweh, whose commands and guiding instruction the laws are: Yahweh, who is and will be present with the people who enter covenant with him; Yahweh, who will guide his people and provide for them and protect them; Yahweh, who will expect, because he has every right to do so, the undiluted loyalty of the people he has \u201cbrought out,\u201d the people who are, in response, about to commit themselves to his service. It is hardly a coincidence that virtually the first (20:23) and last (23:32\u201333) words of the present sequence of the Book of the Covenant are Yahweh\u2019s insistence upon the absolute loyalty of his own people, in content and effect summary restatements of the first two of the ten commandments.
\n20\u201324 Thus the reference to the messenger whom Yahweh is to send out, here as everywhere in the OT a reference to an extension of Yahweh\u2019s own person and Presence, is in fact a restatement of the promise and proof of Presence motif that dominates the narrative of Exod 1\u201320. The \u201cattendant\u201d or \u201cmessenger\u201d (\u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05da) will perform the guiding, protecting, instructing, interposing functions that Yahweh\u2019s pillars of cloud and fire and Yahweh\u2019s attendant and providing Presence have performed earlier in the exodus narrative. Von Rad (\u201c\u05de\u05b7\u05dc\u05b0\u05d0\u05b8\u05da\u05b0 in the OT,\u201d TDNT 1:77\u201378) referred to the \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05da as \u201cthe personification of Yahweh\u2019s assistance to Israel,\u201d and noted that Yahweh and his \u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05da are \u201cobviously one and the same,\u201d the \u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05da being \u201can important literary theologization\u201d introduced to soften \u201cprimitive tradition\u201d regarding Yahweh\u2019s theophanic Presence. This is of course one possibility (see Ficker, \u201c\u05de\u05b7\u05dc\u05b0\u05d0\u05b8\u05da\u05b0\u201d THAT 1:906\u20138, for a summary review of the five major theories), but however the combination Yahweh\/Yahweh\u2019s messenger came about, the \u201cmessenger\u201d here is the equivalent of Yahweh himself, thus another way of indicating Yahweh\u2019s Presence. Indeed, North (CBQ 29 [1967] 429\u201332) has proposed, following an extensive review of the OT, that \u201cthe basic sense\u201d of \u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05da is \u201cPresence,\u201d or, with regard to God\u2019s appearance to men, \u201cmanifestation,\u201d and that \u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05da \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 is at least \u201cin some cases an expression for God himself\u201d (cf. Baumgartner, Zum Alten Testament, 244\u201346).
\nThis is why the messenger\u2019s guidance can be trusted: his guidance is Yahweh\u2019s guidance into the land \u201cmade ready,\u201d the gift of which will fulfill the second half of the covenant promise of progeny and land. Exodus begins with an account of the first half of this promise, and ends, at least in its narrative sequence, with the anticipation of the fulfillment of its second half. Paying close attention to the Presence of Yahweh\u2019s messenger and listening to his voice is equal to paying close attention to Yahweh\u2019s Presence and listening to Yahweh\u2019s voice. They must not \u201cresent\u201d or \u201cbe bitter against\u201d (\u05de\u05e8\u05d4) the \u201cmessenger\u2019s\u201d guidance and counsel, because to do so will bring punishment authorized by Yahweh, whose \u201cname\u201d (\u05e9\u05c1\u05dd = \u201cPresence\u201d) is \u201cwithin him\u201d (\u05d1\u05e7\u05e8\u05d1\u05d5). This latter statement is virtually an assertion of equivalence: the \u201cmessenger\u201d = Yahweh.
\nPaying careful attention to the messenger, Israel will hear what Yahweh himself is saying. If they are obedient to do what Yahweh says, Israel\u2019s enemies will become his enemies (cf. Gen 12:3, 27:28\u201329; Deut 28:1\u20137; Josh 1:1\u20139), and he will destroy those who would contest Israel\u2019s occupation of the land. Fensham (VT 13 [1963] 138\u201342) has linked this verse to the \u201cclauses of protection\u201d in the vassal treaties of the Hittites and has noted that Yahweh\u2019s protection came only to \u201can obedient nation.\u201d As they settle in this new land, Israel is to take care to maintain the integrity of the covenantal relationship with Yahweh: they must not worship the gods of the peoples of the land of Canaan. They must rather oppose them passionately, overturning their images and destroying the sacred pillars of their gathering places, the \u05de\u05e6\u05d1\u05d5\u05ea which may themselves have been iconic symbols of deity (cf. Noth, OT World, 178).
\n25\u201333 Israel\u2019s service, rather, is to be given to Yahweh alone, who blesses the people who are committed to him in a variety of ways. The blessing-list of vv 25\u201328 is but a sample of such longer lists of Yahweh\u2019s benefits as the one given in Deut 28:1\u201314, and is rooted in the blessing-cursing rhetoric of OT covenantal theology. Staff of life, bread and water, basic health, the healthy birth of healthy children, and length of life will all receive Yahweh\u2019s own attention. He will send his \u201cdreading-fear\u201d (\u05d0\u05d9\u05de\u05d4) and his \u201cpanic-terror\u201d (\u05e6\u05e8\u05e2\u05d4), the confusing and dispiriting depression that comes upon those against whom war is divinely waged (K\u00f6hler, ZAW 54 [1936] 291 and Hebrew Man, 98\u201399); in result, Israel\u2019s enemies will be in total disarray when they arrive. Israel will not have to face armed and dangerous resistance; the enemies that remain will be presented to them in complete vulnerability (so \u201cback of all your enemies\u2019 necks\u201d), and most of them will already have been driven out headlong.
\n29\u201330 This reference to so complete and sweeping a conquest presents an idealized prospect that never came to pass and so is followed immediately by a qualification: the headlong displacement of Israel\u2019s enemies is to be a managed rout, to take place across a number of years so that Israel will not be faced with the keeping and defense of the land until they shall be numerous and experienced enough to cope. Whether this qualification was original to this narrative of promise or was a later addition made necessary by history is impossible to say. The fact that even the qualified ideal was never achieved, even in the most general sense, may favor the first of the two possibilities.
\n31 Yahweh\u2019s delimitation of the borders of Israel\u2019s possession of land from the border of Egypt (\u201cthe sea of rushes,\u201d \u05d9\u05dd\u05be\u05e1\u05d5\u05e3, has also been connected with the Gulf of Aqabah, Hyatt, 156\u201362, 252 and the Red Sea, Batto, JBL 102 [1983] 27\u201335) to the Mediterranean (\u05d9\u05dd \u05e4\u05dc\u05e9\u05c1\u05ea\u05d9\u05dd), and from the southern desert (\u05de\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8) to the river Euphrates (\u05d4\u05d1\u05d4\u05e8) in the north is a description of the territorial limits of Israel in the days of Davidic-Solomonic glory. This specification may provide a hint about the time of the reference in vv 29\u201330 to a \u201cmanaged\u201d displacement.
\n32\u201333 Once again, the singularity of the devotion expected by Yahweh is stressed. Israel is not to covenant with the people of the land or their gods. These peoples must be displaced, to prevent their influencing Israel against Yahweh, primarily by the advocacy of their gods: service of these gods, in any manner whatever, would constitute an entrapment of Israel. Israel is to have no other gods, not in any form, not for any reason.
\nExplanation
\nThe conclusion to the Book of the Covenant, like its beginning, summarizes its point and its emphasis and links it unmistakably to the Decalogue that is its root Like the Decalogue, the Book of the Covenant is presented as Yahweh\u2019s expectation of Israel (see Explanation on 20:1\u201317). The \u201cguiding principles,\u201d the commands, the prohibitions that make up the collection that is Exod 20:23\u201323:19 are all to the end that the integrity of Israel\u2019s relationship to Yahweh be guaranteed. The Decalogue begins with the command that Israel have no god other than Yahweh. The Book of the Covenant begins (20:23) and ends (23:32\u201333) with that same command, and all that lies between that beginning and that ending is designed to assure its obedience.
\nThe obvious fact that the Book of the Covenant is a compilation, and presents laws in a mixture of forms and reflecting a variety of backgrounds in no way detracts from such a purpose. If anything, so multiform a collection drawn into a single focus enhances it. Any such collection invites attention to the parts that make it up, and is usually treated in its component parts far more fully than in its sum. That is certainly the case with the Book of the Covenant, which has attracted more proposed organizational patterns and subpatterns and interlocking and independent internal divisions than any other sequence or narrative, cultic or legal, in Exodus.
\nWe cannot afford to overlook, however, even though we have often done so, that the Book of the Covenant is presented in Exodus as a unit, a whole, and that it has been located by a tradition and by editors (who might have put it elsewhere) immediately after the narrative of Yahweh\u2019s Advent before Israel at Sinai and immediately before the account of the solemnization of the covenantal relationship. What makes so obviously diverse a collection a unit? And why was it inserted into so dramatic a narrative at so climactic a point in what seems at a first look so distracting a manner?
\nAll these questions and others they suggest may be answered by the recognition of the Book of the Covenant as the primary guide, applying the ten commandments, to the conduct of life in relationship with Yahweh, the God who has delivered Israel and who is now present with Israel. The Book of the Covenant is a kind of theological rule for life in the Presence of Yahweh. It is an exposition, an application of his ten words. Whatever its sources, wherever and whenever their \u201coriginal\u201d provenance, the collection that is now the Book of the Covenant has a single focus: its concern is how to serve Yahweh who is present, and him alone.
\nThis is the reason why the collection is begun and ended as it is, with the essential emphasis of the first two of the ten commandments. This is the binding theme that makes so diverse a collection a single code. This is the key to an understanding of \u201claws\u201d that are basically religious in their motivation, and designed to cement, cultivate and display a divine-human relationship. This is the explanation for the location of the collection at so crucial a point in the narrative of Yahweh and Israel. And this is why the Book of the Covenant is in a way not an interruption of that narrative at all: it is a rule for life in Yahweh\u2019s Presence that links the narrative of Yahweh come to Israel with the narrative of Israel\u2019s approach to Yahweh by providing the rule by which such an approach can be made by such a people to such a God.
\nThe Making of the Covenant: The People and Their Leaders (24:1\u201318)
\nBibliography
\nAllegro, John M. Qumran Cave 4: I (4Q158\u20134Q186). DJD V. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1968. Gordon, C. H. Ugaritic Literature. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1949. Graesser, C. F. \u201cStanding Stones in Ancient Palestine.\u201d BA 35 (1972) 34\u201363. Humbert, P. \u201cEtendre la main.\u201d VT 12 (1962) 383\u201395. Jenni, E. \u201c \u2018Kommen\u2019 im theologischen Sprachgebrauch des Alten Testaments.\u201d Wort-Gebot-Glaube. Beitr\u00e4ge zur Theologie des Alten Testaments. ATANT 59. Zurich: Zwingli Verlag, 1970. 251\u201361. Mann, T. W. Divine Presence and Guidance in Israelite Traditions: The Typology of Exaltation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. McKenzie, J. L. \u201cThe Elders in the Old Testament.\u201d Bib 48 (1959) 522\u201340. M\u00f6hlenbrink, K. \u201cJosua im Pentateuch.\u201d ZAW 59 (1942\u20131943) 14\u201358. Nicholson, E. W. \u201cThe Antiquity of the Tradition in Exodus XXIV 9\u201311.\u201d VT 25 (1975) 69\u201379. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cThe Covenant Ritual in Exodus XXIV 3\u20138.\u201d VT 32 (1982) 74\u201386. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cThe Interpretation of Exodus XXIV 9\u201311.\u201d VT 24 (1974) 77\u201397. Patrick, D. \u201cThe Covenant Code Source.\u201d VT 27 (1977) 145\u201357. Perlitt, L. Bundestheologie im Alten Testament. WMANT 36. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1969. Rendtorff, R. Studien zur Geschichte des Opfers im Alten Israel. WMANT 24. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1967. Roberts, J. J. M. \u201cThe Hand of Yahweh.\u201d VT 21 (1971) 244\u201351. Schmid, H. Mose. \u00dcberlieferung und Geschichte. BZAW 110. Berlin: Verlag Alfred T\u00f6pelmann, 1968. Schmid, R. Das Bundesopfer in Israel. SANT 9. Munich: K\u00f6sel Verlag, 1964. Schnutenhaus, F. \u201cDas Kommen und Erscheinen Gottes im Alten Testament.\u201d ZAW 76 (1964) 1\u201322. Taylor, J. \u201cSapphire.\u201d A Dictionary of the Bible. Ed. J. Hastings. New York: Charles Scribner\u2019s Sons, 1902. 4:403. Westermann, C. \u201cDie Herrlichkeit Gottes in der Priesterschrift.\u201d Wort-Gebot-Glaube. Beitr\u00e4ge zur Theologie des Alten Testaments. ATANT 59. Zurich: Zwingli Verlag, 1970. 227\u201349. Zenger, E. Die Sinaitheophanie. Forschung zur Bibel 3. W\u00fcrzburg: Echter Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1971.
\nTranslation
\n1 Then to Moses he said, \u201cClimb up toward Yahweh: you, and Aaron, Nadab (\u201cWilling One\u201d) and Abihu (\u201cMy Father is He\u201d), and seventy of the elders of Israel, and bow down in worship at a respectful distance, 2 Moses by himself is to come close to Yahweh\u2014the others are not to come close, nor are the people to climb up with him.\u201d
\n3 Next, Moses came and recounted to the people all Yahweh\u2019s words, all the guiding principles. All the people responded as with a single voice, and said, \u201cAll the words that Yahweh has spoken, we will do.\u201d 4 So Moses wrote down all Yahweh\u2019s words. Then, rising early in the morning, he built at the base of the mountain an altar and twelve pillars, one for each of the twelve tribes of Israel.
\n5 Next, he sent out young men of the sons of Israel to offer up whole burnt offerings and sacrifice completion-sacrifices of young bulls to Yahweh. 6 Moses took half of the blood and put it into open basins; the other half of the blood he dashed upon the altar. 7 Then he took the book of the covenant and read it aloud in the hearing of the people. Thus they said, \u201cAll that the Yahweh has spoken, we will do, and we will pay attention.\u201d
\n8 So Moses took the remainingblood and dashed it upon the people, saying, \u201cSee now the blood of the covenant that Yahweh has contracted with you, a covenant made specific by all these words.\u201d
\n9 At long last Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and seventy of the elders of Israel climbed up. 10 And then they saw the God of Israel! Beneath his feet was something like a mosaic pavement of lapis lazuli, like the span of the heavens in depth, 11 Yet toward the leaders of the sons of Israel, he did not stretch out his hand: thus they had a vision of God, and there they are and drank.
\n12 Yahweh then said to Moses, \u201cClimb on up toward me at the summit of the mountain, and be there; I will give you the tablets of stone on which are the instruction and the commandment I have written to direct the people, 13 Thus did Moses rise, along with Joshua his assistant, and Moses climbed up higher on the mountain of God. 14 To the elders, he said, \u201cWait for us in this place until we return to you. Look, Aaron and Hur are with you\u2014whoever has a lot to say can approach them.\u201d 15 So Moses climbed up higher on the mountain, and the cloud concealed the mountain. 16 Thus the glory of Yahweh settled onto Mount Sinai, and the cloud concealed it six days; then on the seventh day Yahweh called out to Moses from the midst of the cloud. 17 The spectacle of the glory of Yahweh, to the eyes of the sons of Israel, was like a consuming fire at the mountain\u2019s peak. 18 Then Moses went into the midst of the cloud, climbing up higher on the mountain. In fact, Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.
\nNotes
\n1.a. \u05d4\u05d5\u05d0 \u201che\u201d in \u05d0\u05d1\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d0 \u201cAbihu\u201d probably refers to Yahweh, as in Isa 43:25, \u05d4\u05d5\u05d0 \u05d0\u05e0\u05db\u05d9 \u05d0\u05e0\u05db\u05d9 \u201cI, I am he.\u201d SamPent adds here two other sons of Aaron, Eleazar (\u201cGod has helped\u201d) and Ithamar (\u201cDate-palm region\u201d).
\n1.b. \u05de\u05e8\u05d7\u05e7 \u201cfrom far\u201d in this context indicates that the movement up toward Yahweh is to be kept under careful limitations. LXX has \u201cthey\u201d rather than \u201cyou\u201d (pl.) as subj of the verb \u05e9\u05c1\u05d7\u05d4 \u201cbow down in worship,\u201d and adds \u03c4\u1ff7 \u03ba\u03c5\u03c1\u03af\u1ff3 (= \u201cYahweh\u201d) as direct object.
\n2.a. LXX has \u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03bd \u201cto God.\u201d
\n2.b. \u05d5\u05d4\u05dd \u201cand they,\u201d i.e., those who have accompanied Moses.
\n2.c. MT \u05e2\u05de\u05d5 \u201cwith him\u201d is read \u03bc\u03b5\u03c4\u02bc \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u201cwith them\u201d by LXX, but the change is unnecessary. Moses has been told to \u201cclimb up\u201d and whom to bring with him. The final clause of v 2 is a further specification: the people are not to be included in the ascending group.
\n3.a. The special waw beginning this verse links it with some part of the narrative prior to the instructions given to Moses in vv 1\u20132, instructions carried out in vv 9\u201311. The thematic connection is with the Book of the Covenant, given the present form of the text.
\n3.b. LXX reads \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 \u201cGod\u2019s.\u201d
\n3.c. LXX has here the same statement made by the people in v 7.
\n4.a. SamPent and LXX read \u05d0\u05d1\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd \u201cstones,\u201d instead of the sg \u05de\u05e6\u05d1\u05d4 \u201cpillar\u201d of MT.
\n4.b. \u05dc\u05e9\u05c1\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd \u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05e8 \u201cto the twelve \u2026\u201d; 4Q158:4, DJD V, has \u05dc\u05de\u05e1\u05e4\u05e8 \u201cfor the counting\u201d before this phrase.
\n5.a. \u05d6\u05d1\u05d7\u05d9\u05dd \u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05de\u05d9\u05dd \u201cofferings of wholeness\u201d signify the \u201cconclusion\u201d or \u201cfulfillment\u201d of something, in this case the sealing of covenantal relationship. See Rendtorff, Geschichte des Opfers, 132\u201333; Schmid, Bundesopfer, 103\u201326.
\n5.b. SamPent adds \u05d1\u05e0\u05d9 \u05d1\u05e7\u05e8 \u201csons of a herd animal.\u201d
\n5.c. See n. 2.a above.
\n6.a. \u05d0\u05d2\u05df \u201cbasins,\u201d apparently some kind of rounded vessel. Cf. the \u05de\u05d6\u05ea\u05e7 \u201cdashing-basin\u201d of Exod 27:3 and 38:3, a container apparently designed with such \u201cdashing\u201d or \u201ctossing\u201d in mind (\u05d6\u05e8\u05e7).
\n7.a. \u05e7\u05e8\u05d0: the Arabic cognate means \u201cread aloud, recite (the K\/or\u02be\u0101n),\u201d according to BDB (894).
\n7.b. \u05d5\u05e0\u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05e2 \u201cand we will hear,\u201d indicating in this context hearing with attention, interest; cf. BDB, 1033 \u00a7 1.f.
\n8.a. \u201cRemaining\u201d is added for clarity.
\n8.b. \u05db\u05e8\u05ea \u201ccut.\u201d See BDB, 137 \u00a7 III.l. and 503 \u00a7 4.
\n8.c. \u05e2\u05dc \u201cconcerning, according to,\u201d read in this context \u201cmade specific by.\u201d The Cairo Geniza fragment has \u201cguiding decisions\u201d (see n. 21:1.a) instead of \u201cwords.\u201d
\n9.a. SamPent also adds Eleazar and Ithamar here.
\n10.a. \u05e8\u05d0\u05d4 \u201csee.\u201d
\n10.b. LXX has \u03c4\u03cc\u03bd \u03c4\u03cc\u03c0\u03bf\u03bd \u03bf\u1f57 \u03b5\u1f30\u03c3\u03c4\u03ae\u03ba\u03c1\u03b9 \u1f10\u03ba\u03b5\u1fd6 \u1f40 \u0398\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u0399\u03c3\u03c1\u03b1\u03b7\u03bb \u201cthe place where the God of Israel had stood.\u201d
\n10.c. \u05db\u05de\u05e2\u05e9\u05c1\u05d4 \u05dc\u05d1\u05e0\u05ea \u05d4\u05e1\u05e4\u05d9\u05e8 \u201clike the working of a pavement of lapis lazuli.\u201d
\n10.d. \u05d5\u05db\u05e2\u05e6\u05dd \u201cand like the bone, substance, self\u201d (BDB, 782\u201383), taken here as the frame or scope of the heavens: what is most apparent about the heavens is their vastness.
\n10.e. \u05dc\u05d8\u05d4\u05e8 \u201cwith reference to purity,\u201d read above as \u201cdepth,\u201d the depth of the sky suggested by the deep blue of lapis lazuli.
\n11.a. \u05d0\u05e6\u05d9\u05dc \u201ccorner, side, support.\u201d The \u05d0\u05e6\u05dc\u05d9\u05dd are lit. the \u201cpillars\u201d of the people of Israel.
\n11.b. \u05d7\u05d6\u05d4 \u201csee.\u201d LXX has the very different reading, \u03ba\u03b1\u03af \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u1f10\u03c0\u03b9\u03bb\u03ad\u03ba\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u0399\u03c3\u03c1\u03b1\u03b7\u03bb \u03bf\u1f50 \u03b4\u03b9\u03b5\u03c6\u03ce\u03bd\u03b7\u03c3\u03b5\u03bd \u03bf\u1f50\u03b4\u03ad \u03b5\u1f37\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b1\u03af \u1f64\u03c6\u03b8\u03c5\u03b7\u03c3\u03b1\u03bd \u1f10\u03bd \u03c4\u1ff7 \u03c4\u03bf\u03c0\u1ff3 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 \u201cAnd from the elect of Israel, not one failed to answer the roll-call; and they were seen in the Presence of God.\u2026\u201d
\n12.a. \u05d4\u05d4\u05e8\u05d4 \u201cmountainward,\u201d here in reference to the higher part of the mountain where Yahweh is.
\n12.b. MT has simply \u2026 \u05d0\u05ea\u05be\u05dc\u05d7\u05ea \u05d4\u05d0\u05d1\u05df \u05d5\u05d4\u05ea\u05d5\u05e8\u05d4 \u201cthe tablets of stone and the instruction.\u2026\u201d Cf. Childs, 499.
\n12.c. \u05d4\u05ea\u05d5\u05ea\u05d4 \u201cthe instruction.\u201d
\n12.d. MT has \u201cthem,\u201d of which the obvious antecedent, the people, is added above for clarity.
\n13.a. LXX lacks \u201cMoses\u201d here, and has a pl. instead of the sg \u201cclimbed\u201d of the MT.
\n14.a. \u05de\u05d9\u05be\u05d1\u05e2\u05dc \u05d3\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u201cwhoever is a lord of words,\u201d i.e., anybody who is impatient with the long wait, and talks about it a great deal.
\n15.a. LXX adds \u03ba\u03b1\u03af \u1f38\u03b7\u03c3\u03bf\u1fe6\u03c2 \u201cand Joshua.\u201d
\n16.a. LXX has \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 \u201cGod.\u201d
\n16.b. MT has simply \u201che called,\u201d but the obvious subject of \u05e7\u05e8\u05d0 is Yahweh; LXX indeed reads \u03ba\u03cd\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 \u201cYahweh\u201d is added above for clarity.
\n18.a. LXX adds \u1f10\u03ba\u03b5\u1fd6 \u201cthere.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThe jigsaw puzzle appearance of the narrative of Exod 24, even to an untrained eye, has been the subject of extensive and often conflicting commentary. Vv 1\u20132 contain instructions that make them seem less in sequence to what has preceded them than the verses that follow, 3\u20138. Vv 9\u201311 recount the fulfillment of the instructions given in vv 1\u20132, and vv 12\u201318 set forth a narrative that has links to both the preceding narratives, but leave dangling the question of the whereabouts and the activity of the group that accompanied Moses onto the mountain during his long stay by himself nearer to the Presence of Yahweh. For example, compare v 14 with the continuation of the narrative in chap. 32, where Aaron is once again with the people and where Moses descends the mountain in the company of Joshua, who is not mentioned as in the ascending group in chap. 24 before v 13.
\nMost source-critics have assigned the bulk of Exod 24 to E, though they sometimes speculate the presence also of J tradition and various redactorial hands. Beer (125\u201327) for example, assigns the entire chapter to E1 and redactorial material, with the exception of vv 15b\u201318a, which he gives to P. Hyatt (253\u201354) gives vv 3, 4b\u20136, 8, 12\u201314, and 18b to E; 1\u20132, 9\u201311 to 1 J; 15\u201318a to P; and 4a, 7 to a deuteronomistic redactor. Beyerlin (Sinaitic Traditions, 14\u201318, 30) proposes that 1a, 3\u20138, 9\u201311, 12, 13b, (15a), 18b belong to E, and regards 1b\u20132 \u201ca theological correction,\u201d 13a, 14 \u201cE probably\u201d (48), and 15b\u201318a to P. Noth (194\u2013201, 243) attributes vv 1\u20132 to E as reworked by a redactor, 9\u201311 to E, 3\u20138 to an \u201cindependent\u201d Book of the Covenant source (cf. Patrick, VT 27 [1977] 145\u201357, who proposes that vv 3\u20138, along with Exod 19:3b\u20138 and 20:22 are a \u201cnarrative framework for the Covenant Code,\u201d written after the compilation of the Code itself, in the northern kingdom and prior to 721 b.c.), 12\u201315a to J, and 15b\u201318 to P. And Childs (499\u2013502) assigns vv 3\u20138 to E and 15b\u201318a to P, but considers the remainder of the chapter too difficult to assign with objectivity.
\nAs such a sampling reveals, Exod 24 is too complicated a composite, with too few characteristic signature-phrases, to permit anything more than a general speculation about its sources. The chapter is presented to us as a whole however, and it has a function in the narrative of Exodus which too much atomization has tended to obscure. The compilers who gave the chapter its present sequence were apparently intent on what the various pieces of their finished jigsaw would suggest. They were not as bothered by internal consistency and logical sequence as we seem to be. Not only is their combination of the materials they had available important; so also is their finished product.
\nNicholson (VT 32 [1982] 74\u201386, and VT 24 [1974] 77\u201397) has treated Exod 24 in relation to the larger narrative sequence in Exod 19\u201324; Perlitt (Bundestheologie, 156\u2013238) has seen it in the even larger frame of a Sinaipericope setting forth a covenant-theology; and Beyerlin (Sinaitic Traditions, 1\u201326, 167\u201368) has linked all the Sinai traditions to a cultic re-presentation in Canaan of Yahweh\u2019s Presence revealed and Yahweh\u2019s covenant promulgated. While the literary analysis of each of these scholars again reflects the problematical nature of chap. 24, the attempt to see the composite as a whole, with a specific purpose and in relation to a larger narrative context, is certainly a move in the right direction. Exod 24, with all of its inconsistencies, provides an obvious conclusion to the events set in motion in Exod 19, though in somewhat more general terms than Nicholson (VT 32 [1982] 83\u201385) suggests. Indeed, the awkwardness of the Exod 24 composite may be accounted for by the need of the editors who created it to bring to conclusion a series of strands, each of them anticipated by the narrative of chaps. 19\u201323, most of them summarized in the \u201ceagle\u2019s wings\u201d speech of 19:4\u20136, and all of them together creating an ideal \u201cend\u201d to the exodus narrative\u2014an \u201cend\u201d dramatically highlighted in Exodus by the placement immediately following chap. 24 of the lengthy section of cultic instructions for the media of worship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence.
\nThe fact that such an ideal \u201cend\u201d is not the true end of the exodus narrative is made clear by the tension-filled narrative of Exod 32\u201334, which also concludes with the making (or remaking) of the covenant, and also is followed by a very similar lengthy section of cultic instructions. As noted already (Form\/ Structure\/Setting on 19:1\u201315), we have in Exodus at least the major parts of a Sinai narrative sequence, the form of which is determined by a theological purpose. That purpose is the presentation, using every available tradition, of the primary theme of Exodus, the gift of Yahweh\u2019s Presence to Israel at Sinai. There is little wonder that this narrative as it is preserved in Exodus is complex, forced apart at a number of points by related material of both a primary and a secondary nature. Given the importance of the subject and its centrality not only to Exodus but to the OT and even to the entire Bible, such expansion and accretion are inevitable and a pointed testament to the subject they extend and distort. Our chief difficulty in understanding these narratives with all their excess baggage has been our susceptibility to distraction, by the parts and the seams, from the whole, the sum of admittedly mismatched blocks of material. Having examined the parts, and needfully so, we have somehow become unable, or at least too reluctant, to see them together as those who put them together saw them, and with important intentions.
\nCertainly the narrative of the \u201creal\u201d end of Exodus makes better sense immediately following the narrative of the \u201cideal\u201d end. Such may have been the original sequence of the Sinai narrative. But it is not so in the Exodus presented us by the Bible. Similarly, the rearrangement of Exod 24 may help us in the important task of reconstructing the separate traditions and interests that are commingled in the received text. We must not neglect the most painstaking research along these lines. But there is also a great deal to be learned by reflection on the one chapter of that story about which we have greatest certainty, the text as it is.
\nConsidered as a whole rather than a patchwork of fragments, Exod 24 may be seen as an attempt, following the decalogue and the Book of the Covenant expanding it, to provide (1) an account of the solemnization of the covenant by the people of Israel; (2) an account of an additional preparation and authorization of Israel\u2019s leaders; (3) an anticipation of a continuing revelation of Presence and Guidance; and (4) the beginnings (along with 20:19, 21) of the elevation of Moses as Yahweh\u2019s special representative and as Israel\u2019s special advocate. Undergirding all this is the \u201cconstant\u201d of the Sinai narrative sequence, indeed of the entire Book of Exodus\u2014the Presence of Yahweh among his people. This \u201cconstant\u201d and these themes are what give Exod 24 its form, and as uneasy as that form may seem on logical or source-critical grounds, quite dramatically it presents the summary for which the \u201cideal\u201d end of Exodus calls.
\nComment
\n1\u20132 Despite the obvious connection of these two verses to vv 9\u201311, where the instructions given in them are carried out, they serve also as a transition from the warning at the end of the Book of the Covenant (23:32\u201333) to the account of the actual commitment of Israel to the special relationship with Yahweh. Yahweh addresses Moses, here assumed still to be in the position in which he has received the commands and \u201cguiding principles\u201d of the Book of the Covenant (cf. 20:21\u201322), and gives him further instructions applying only to himself and Israel\u2019s leaders. Aaron, two of his sons, and seventy elders of Israel are to accompany Moses up the mountain, after Moses has delivered Yahweh\u2019s instructions to Israel and received their response. These instructions are posed by the composite narrative as given to Moses while he is still on Sinai, near the thick cloud surrounding Yahweh\u2019s Presence, and to be followed after he has carried out the prior responsibility of passing Yahweh\u2019s application of his \u201cten words\u201d along to Israel. Indeed v 2 makes clear both the exclusion of the people from these instructions and also the subsidiary if special position of those who are to accompany Moses: Moses himself is to \u201ccome close\u201d (niphal of \u05d2\u05bb\u05e9\u05c1) to Yahweh, the elders are to worship \u201cat a respectful distance,\u201d and the people are not to climb up the mountain at all. The seventy elders mentioned here may be taken as a reference to \u201call the elders\u201d of Exod 18:12, or to the \u201cmen of ability\u201d described in 18:21\u201326, though other \u201cseventy elder\u201d traditions (cf. Num 11:16\u201317, 24\u201325; Deut 1:9\u201318) may also be reflected (cf. H. Schmid, Mose, 67\u201369; McKenzie, Bib 48 [1959] 522\u201328).
\n3\u20134 Following Yahweh\u2019s delivery to Moses of these additional instructions regarding himself and the leaders who assist him, Moses \u201ccame,\u201d \u05d1\u05d5\u05d0, a verb that in this sequence can be taken to mean Moses\u2019 return to the people to give them the instructions of Yahweh applying the principles laid down in the ten commandments, the instructions that became in time our Book of the Covenant. Moses reviewed for the people this further revelation of Yahweh, as he had been bidden (in the present composite, at 21:1), and they responded with the set phrase of commitment, \u201cEverything Yahweh has spoken, we will do\u201d (19:8; 24:3, 7). Then Moses set down in writing Yahweh\u2019s words of command and guiding principle, and early the next morning he made preparation for the ceremony of Israel\u2019s formal entry into covenant with Yahweh. This preparation involved the construction of an altar and twelve pillars at the foot of Mount Sinai, the altar representing the Presence of Yahweh (see Comment on 20:24\u201326) and the twelve pillars, each of the twelve tribes of Israel. Graesser (BA 35 [1972] 34\u201339) has maintained that the \u05de\u05e6\u05d1\u05d4 \u201cpillar\u201d was a \u201cthing set up\u201d \u05e0\u05e6\u05d1 which called attention to itself as something placed, and served among other functions a \u201clegal\u201d purpose, \u201cto mark a legal relationship between two or more individuals,\u201d here between each tribe and Yahweh and so between tribe and tribe.
\n5\u20138 These preparations made, Moses delegated young men to offer both wholly burned offerings and also \u201ccompletion-sacrifices,\u201d sacrifices closely linked with covenant-making and covenant relationships (cf. R. Schmid, Bundesopfer, 118\u201325). Moses\u2019 use of the blood of these sacrificial animals is a further confirmation of the relational nature of the \u201ccompletion-sacrifices\u201d and the ceremonial of Exod 24:3\u20138 (so R. Schmid, 30\u201333, 75\u201380): one half of it he dashed upon the altar, the symbol of Yahweh\u2019s Presence; the other half, he dashed upon the people. In between these two acts, Moses read the newly written Book of the Covenant to the people, and they responded with the set phrase of commitment, to which is added here the additional assurance that they will pay attention and take seriously the words of Yahweh, all of which they have previously promised to do. This assertion Moses then confirms, for as he dashes the remaining blood upon the people, he reminds them that the covenant, contracted with Yahweh, has been solemnized in blood, having been made clear to the people by the words that Yahweh has spoken. Zenger\u2019s (Sinaitheophanie, 74\u201376, 216) view, that the ceremony involving the dashing of the blood is a deuteronomistic addition to the narrative, is questionable; much more appropriate is Nicholson\u2019s (VT 32 [1982 80\u201383) idea, that the blood ceremonial is a means of consecrating Israel as Yahweh\u2019s holy people.
\n9\u201311 With his primary task completed, Moses can now turn to the additional instructions Yahweh has given him, instructions applying only to himself and a select group of leaders singled out earlier on Jethro\u2019s advice (18:13\u201326). The apparent purpose of the climb up onto Sinai of this special group is that they shall have the experience, as Moses has had already, of a still more intimate contact with the Presence of Yahweh. In such a manner are they uniquely equipped for their service of guidance and teaching, of leadership through interpretation. The narrative is forthright in its statement of what happened on the mountain: the special group actually saw the God of Israel. Despite attempts by ancient translators and modern commentators to qualify this blunt statement and make it more consistent with the bulk of OT tradition, it must be taken seriously as it stands. \u05e8\u05d0\u05d4 primarily means see with one\u2019s eyes, and the account goes on to describe, at least in part, what the group saw and to state that (somewhat surprisingly?) no harm came to them. The first qualification of the experience may be the use in v 11 of the verb \u05d7\u05d6\u05d4, which can mean to see with one\u2019s eyes or in a visionary experience, but even that usage may be no more than a simple parallel.
\n10 Despite the assertion that Moses and his special companions saw God, however, the description of what they saw concentrates not on the appearance of God but on the appearance of what lay at his feet. This can be taken to imply that a description of God original to this passage has been respectfully deleted, or, as is more likely, that the group was not given permission to lift their faces toward God and so could describe only what they actually did see, the \u201cpavement\u201d beneath him, before which they were prostrate in reverential awe. Later in the Exodus narrative (33:18), a confident Moses asks permission to be shown (hiphil imperative of \u05e8\u05d0\u05d4) Yahweh\u2019s glory (\u05db\u05d1\u05d5\u05d3) and is refused because, Yahweh tells him (33:20), a man cannot see (\u05e8\u05d0\u05d4) Yahweh\u2019s face (\u05e4\u05e0\u05d9) and live. Here, no such permission is asked and none of course is granted. Thus what Moses and his companions experience is a theophany of the Presence of God, not a vision of his person, and what they see, bowed before even that awesome reality, is what could be seen from a position of obeisant prostration, the surface on which his Presence offered itself. That surface is described as \u201clike a working (a pattern) of bricks of lapis lazuli, and like the very essence of the heavens as regards purity.\u201d Taylor (Dictionary 4:403) has noted that lapis lazuli was available in the biblical period in both a natural (from Cyprus and Scythia) and an artificial (from Egypt) form, and that it fits the eleven OT references to \u05e1\u05e4\u05d9\u05e8. According to some translators (Gordon, Ugaritic Literature, 33: text 51: V: 96\u201397; Clifford, Cosmic Mountain, 112; cf. Driver, Canaanite Myths, 97: Baal II: V 18\u201319), the description of Baal\u2019s palace sometimes includes lapis lazuli. The reference in v 10 may therefore be a double one, calling up the deep dark blue of an endless sky and the building materials of legendary divine dwelling-places.
\n11 The uniqueness of the experience of Moses and those who were with him is underlined by the statement that they were not harmed by God: God \u201cdid not stretch out his hand\u201d toward Israel\u2019s leaders. Here, as in Exod 20:18\u201320, those who experienced God\u2018s special nearness may have feared harm. No harm befell them, however, for they were where they were by divine permission. Humbert (VT 12 [1962] 387\u201389) has pointed out that \u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d7 \u05d9\u05d3 \u201che stretched out a hand\u201d is in the OT a human gesture for the most part, but is used of God himself in five texts (here; at Exod 3:20; 9:15; Ezek 8:3; Ps 138:7), and refers in its three uses in Exodus to a \u201chostile or punitive action.\u201d Roberts (VT 21 [1971] 246\u201349) has set forth a series of extrabiblical parallels indicating that the primary meaning of such \u201chand of God\u201d expressions was the depiction of a \u201cdisastrous manifestation of the supernatural power.\u201d This power was not used against Moses and his companions, because they were present by divine invitation. Thus they had a vision (\u05d7\u05d6\u05d4) of God and ate and drank in his Presence.
\nThis meal has often been taken as a covenant meal (so Hyatt, 257\u201358; Childs, 507), a position vigorously opposed by Nicholson (VT 24 [1974] 84\u201394), who proposes that 24:9\u201311 records only a tradition of theophany at the mountain of God, sans Moses and sans covenant, and that the meal of v 11 is a means \u201cof worshipping and rejoicing in God\u2019s Presence\u201d (see also Nicholson, VT 25 [1975] 69\u201379). While Nicholson is surely right in his emphasis upon the theophany as the essential point of these verses, his interpretation of the meal may go a bit too far, especially when vv 9\u201311 are considered in their present setting. The covenant has been solemnized already, in a ceremony that surely included the leaders who accompany Moses, a bit later, onto the mountain of Yahweh\u2019s Presence. These leaders are then given their own unique experience of Yahweh, certainly as a means of reinforcing their self-confidence and undergirding their authority in the tasks of leadership before them. The meal they eat in Yahweh\u2019s Presence may therefore have special connections both with what they have experienced and with what they are to do (cf. von Rad, OT Theology 1:254). The strongest impression left by this quite remarkable theophany account, an impression given above all by its unusual description of God\u2019s Presence and the group\u2019s response, is that it may be from a different, and perhaps also an ancient, strand of tradition, one reflected only rarely in the OT.
\n12 The further instruction of Yahweh to Moses, that he alone should climb still higher up the mountain to receive the tablets of stone containing Yahweh\u2019s instruction and commandment, are a part of the tradition glorifying Moses as Yahweh\u2019s chosen intermediary (see Comment on 17:1\u201315; cf. Mann, Divine Presence, 144\u201349, 154). The tablets of stone Yahweh promises to give to Moses are the tablets written on both sides (Exod 32:15), the tablets Moses is subsequently to break in his anger at the people\u2019s idolatry (32:19). Precisely what was written on them is nowhere said in the OT, not even here where Yahweh owns having done the writing. Tradition has assumed that the original stone tablets bore the ten commandments largely because of Exod 34:1, in which Yahweh proposes to write on the second pair of tablets \u201cthe words that were on the first tablets,\u201d and because of 34:27\u201328, in which Yahweh dictates to Moses, who writes on the tablets \u201cthe words of the covenant, the ten words\u201d (\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9 \u05d4\u05d3\u05e8\u05d9\u05ea \u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05e8\u05ea \u05d4\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9). The OT references, however, are not consistent, as even these passages in Exod 24 and 34 show, and the phrase in v 12, \u201cthe tablets of stone and the instruction and the commandment I have written to direct the people,\u201d does not clear up the difficulty. While the tradition that the tablets contained the ten commandments may be seen to have been started very early and must for that reason alone be taken seriously, this first and possibly earliest reference to the contents of the tablets is ambiguous.
\n13\u201314 Joshua is four times (here; 33:11; Num 11:28; Josh 1:1) mentioned in the OT as the \u201cassistant\u201d or \u201cminister\u201d (\u05e9\u05c1\u05e8\u05ea \u05de\u05b0\u05e9\u05b8\u05c1\u05e8\u05b5\u05ea) to Moses, and the narrative of 32:17\u201318 makes it plain that we are to assume that he alone accompanied Moses during at least some of the additional climb up Sinai (cf. M\u00f6lenbrink, ZAW 59 [1942\u201343] 24\u201328, who considers the reference to Joshua here and in 32:17 later additions to the narrative). The instruction Moses gives to the elders, taken in the context of Exod 24 as a whole and as a part of the entire Sinai narrative sequence, shows that we are to think of the elders, along with Aaron and Hur (cf. Exod 17:10, 12), as remaining on the mountain in the place of their special experience of God\u2019s Presence until Moses and Joshua return to them. That the account of that return is missing from Exodus may be inferred from the fact that Aaron, and presumably also Hur and the (other?) elders, are in the camp with the people at the foot of the mountain when the idolatry of the golden calf takes place, as also when Moses returns to the camp with the tablets of stone (Exod 32). The designation of Aaron and Hur as \u201cin charge\u201d in Moses\u2019 absence may also be assumed to have carried over when the special group returned to the camp below, where Aaron became the focus of the people\u2019s complaints in Moses\u2019 absence (32:1\u20136).
\n15\u201318 These matters attended to, Moses climbed higher onto Sinai, apparently accompanied at first by Joshua and then moving on by himself, there to receive the promised tablets containing Yahweh\u2019s \u201cinstruction and commandment.\u201d The cloud (\u05e2\u05e0\u05df) that concealed the mountain, from the midst of which Yahweh called out to Moses, and into the midst of which Moses went is, as Mann (Divine Presence, 256\u201357) has shown, a special symbol in Exodus of divine guidance, divine communication, and divine Presence. The settling glory (\u05db\u05d1\u05d5\u05d3) of Yahweh, similarly a symbol of the divine Presence, is an extension of the theophanic experience of chaps. 19 and 20 and 24:9\u201311. Both the cloud and the glory in these verses are paralleled in 40:34\u201338, the paragraph that concludes the Book of Exodus.
\nWestermann (Wort-Gebot-Glaube, 230\u201340) has shown how carefully P has combined the coming and staying and speaking of Yahweh on the mountain with the coming and staying and Word-receiving of Moses, and has called attention to the assertion that the sight of this glory was visible to the sons of Israel on the plain below the mountain, in a special authentication of all that Yahweh was saying and giving in that special place, at that special time, to, and so through, his special intermediary, Moses.
\nThus the \u201cspectacle of the glory of Yahweh, like a consuming fire at the mountain\u2019s peak,\u201d is not to be taken as a memory of a volcanic eruption: this language, once again, is the language of theophany, the description in graphic symbols of Yahweh\u2019s advent (cf. Schnutenhaus, ZAW 76 [1964] 1\u201321; Jenni, Wort-Gebot-Glaube, 251\u201361). Israel is shown here to have experienced a continuation of the awesome events narrated in chaps. 19 and 20, at the beginning of a long period in which Moses is to receive the further \u201cinstructions and commandment\u201d of Yahweh. Whatever this teaching may originally have been, the placement at the end of chap. 24 of what amounts to the Priestly prologue to the lengthy section on the media of worship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence gives the impression that the revelation following the ceremony of Israel\u2019s entry into covenant with Yahweh was a revelation guiding the first obligation of a people so committed, their worship of the God who had bound himself to them.
\nExplanation
\nAs obvious and as complex as the composite form of Exod 24 is, it is the finished form of the chapter, viewed in relation to the still larger whole of the Sinai narrative sequence, that presents the chapter\u2019s essential point. Exod 24 presents what may be called the \u201cideal end\u201d to a narrative sequence begun in chap. 19, the narrative of the Advent of Yahweh to his people at Sinai. In chap. 19, after a careful preparation of the people of Israel over a three-day period and amidst an awesome array of phenomena symbolizing his Presence, Yahweh comes. In chap. 20, to an Israel waiting thunderstruck he speaks the basic principles of life in relationship with him, and following their fearful response and at their request, he then reveals to Moses the particularities of applying these principles to everyday life, 20:22\u201323:33. Then, in chap. 24, all this revelation is brought to a happy response as the teaching is shared with Israel. Israel makes a positive response; a covenant of relationship is joined and solemnized with appropriate ceremony; the leaders of Israel are given a preparatory and authenticating experience of Yahweh\u2019s still more intimate Presence; and Moses is commanded still higher onto the mountain to receive the tablets containing instruction and commandment, and further guidance still for Israel\u2019s life of response.
\nA more appropriate conclusion to the Sinai narrative sequence could hardly be imagined. Indeed, the only flaw apart from some ambiguity in detail is that this \u201cconclusion\u201d is not the conclusion of the Sinai narrative sequence. This is why it can be called the \u201cideal end,\u201d the conclusion we all may have hoped for, Yahweh himself above all. There is another end to the Sinai narrative sequence, a \u201creal\u201d conclusion, and chap. 24 must be seen as continued by that \u201creal end,\u201d which is located in Exodus as chaps. 32\u201334. Just as chap. 24 is a culmination of chap. 19\u201323, so chaps. 32\u201334 are a culmination of the high prospects of chap. 24. Indeed, chap. 24 may be said to face four directions at once: its narrative directions are up the mountain toward Yahweh, and down the mountain, toward Israel; and its thematic directions are backward, toward Yahweh\u2019s great advent to Israel, and forward, toward Israel\u2019s great departure from Yahweh, a departure that results in the possibility of Yahweh\u2019s departing from Israel.
\nNow what can be said to bind all this together? What makes a unity of a sequence of chapters so strung out through Exodus, themselves the result of an often loose arrangement of varied tradition, presented in various forms and styles? Just as there is in this sequence no chapter that is any more obvious a composite than chap. 24, so also there is no chapter that provides a better paradigm of the whole. Exod 24 is bound together by the theme of divine Presence: the chapter begins with a special call to a special group to come closer to the Presence that has come close to them; proceeds to narratives of covenant-making with the Presence, an intimate experience of the Presence, and a summons of Moses yet more closely to the Presence; then ends with the anticipation of a special revelation about response to the Presence. The narrative sequence of Exod 19\u201324, 32\u201334 begins with the advent of the Presence to Israel and ends with a qualification of the relation of Israel to that Presence, including in between a loyal response negated by a disloyal betrayal, the threat of withdrawal of the Presence, and a first great outpouring of forgiving mercy. Everywhere the preoccupation is with Yahweh in Israel\u2019s midst and what that means for Israel and Yahweh alike, and nowhere is that preoccupation stated more intensely or more hopefully than in chap. 24, the \u201cideal end\u201d of Exodus that Israel did not conserve.
\nII. Yahweh\u2019s Instructions for the Media of Worship (25:1\u201331:18)
\nThe Call for Materials (25:1\u20139)
\nParallel Verses:
\n35:4\u20139
\nBibliography
\nBrenner, A. Colour Terms in the Old Testament. JSOT 21. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1982. Cross, F. M., Jr. \u201cThe Priestly Tabernacle.\u201d BAR 1. Garden City: Doubleday, 1961. 201\u201328. Also BA 10 (1947) 45\u201368. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cThe Priestly Work.\u201d Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973. 293\u2013325. Gradwohl, R. Die Farben im Alten Testament. BZAW 83. Berlin: Verlag Alfred T\u00f6pelmann, 1963. Haran, M. Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. Hurvitz, A. \u201cThe Usage of \u05e9\u05e9 and \u05d1\u05d5\u05e5 in the Bible and Its Implication for the Date of P.\u201d HTR 60 (1967) 117\u201321. Jensen, L. B. \u201cRoyal Purple of Tyre.\u201d JNES 22 (1963) 104\u201318. Jepsen, A. \u201cZur Chronologie des Priesterkodex.\u201d ZAW 47 (1929) 251\u201355. Johnson, A. R. The Vitality of the Individual in the Thought of Ancient Israel. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1964. Kaiser, O. Introduction to the Old Testament. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1975. Kaufmann, J. \u201cProbleme der israelitisch-j\u00fcdischen Religionsgeschichte,\u201d ZAW 48 (1930) 23\u201343. Keel, O. The Symbolism of the Biblical World. New York: Seabury Press, 1978. Koch, K. Die Priesterschrift von Exodus 25 bis Leviticus 16. FRLANT 53 (N.F.). G\u00f6ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1959. Rad, G. von. Die Priesterschrift im Hexateuch. BWANT 13. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1934. Vink, J. G. \u201cThe Date and Origin of the Priestly Code in the Old Testament.\u201d OTS 15 (1969) 1\u2013144.
\nTranslation
\n1 During that time, Yahweh spoke thus to Moses: 2 \u201cSpeak to the sons of Israel, so that they will take for me an offering: from every man whose mind urges him, they are to take my offering. 3 This is the offering they are to take from such men: gold, silver, copper, 4 violet yarn, purple yarn, scarlet yarn, fine linen, goats\u2019 hair, 5 red-dyed rams\u2019 hides, sea-cows\u2019 hides, acacia lumber, 6 oil for light, balsam spices for the Oil of Anointment and for the special-formula incense, 7 gemstones and stones to be set on the ephod and the breastpiece.
\n8 \u201cThey are to make me a holy place, and I will dwell in their midst. 9 In accord with everything I will show you, the plan for the Tabernacle and the plan for all its equipment, precisely so you are to make it.\u201d
\nNotes
\n1.a. Special waw, so translated in the context of the sequence of chap. 24 to chap. 25.
\n2.a. \u05dc\u05d1 \u201cheart\u201d = \u201cmind\u201d in such a context; see BDB, 523\u201325; Johnson, Vitality, 77\u201379.
\n3.a. \u05de\u05d0\u05ea\u05dd \u201cfrom them\u201d; the antecedent rather than the pronoun is used above for clarity.
\n4.a. \u05ea\u05d5\u05dc\u05e2\u05ea \u05e9\u05c1\u05e0\u05d9 is, lit., \u201cworm of scarlet,\u201d the coccus ilicis which produces when correctlyprocessed a scarlet dye; see BDB, 1040, 1069; Brenner, Colour Terms, 143\u201344.
\n5.a. \u05de\u05b5\u05d0\u05b8\u05d3\u05b8\u05bc\u05de\u05b4\u05d9\u05dd a masc. pl. pual ptcp from \u05d0\u05d3\u05dd, \u201cbe red.\u201d
\n5.b. \u05ea\u05d7\u05e9\u05c1\u05d9\u05dd\u05b4 \u201csea cows\u201d were apparently sea creatures whose skin produced a leather favored for sandals (Cassuto, 326; BDB, 1065); the dugong, the dolphin, and the porpoise have all been suggested. For an alternate view, see Cross, BAR 1:220, n. 21, who proposes \u201can imported (?) specially finished leather.\u201d
\n5.c. \u201cTrees of acacias.\u201d
\n6.a. \u05e1\u05de\u05d9\u05dd is used in the OT only in connection with \u05e7\u05d8\u05e8\u05ea \u201cincense.\u201d It appears to be a collective term for various aromatic ingredients, other than \u05dc\u05d3\u05e0\u05d4 \u201cfrankincense,\u201d used in incense. Cf. Durham, Touch, Taste and Smell, 339\u201340.
\n8.a. LXX reads \u201cyou.\u201d
\n8.b. LXX has \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f40\u03c6\u03b8\u03ae\u03c3\u03bf\u03bc\u03b1\u03b9 \u1f10\u03bd \u1f51\u03bc\u1fd6\u03bd \u201cand I will be seen among you.\u201d
\n9.a. LXX begins this verse \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u03ae\u03c3\u03b5\u03b9\u03c2 \u03bc\u03bf\u03b9 \u1f51\u03bc\u1fd6\u03bd \u201cand you are to make for me.\u201d
\n9.b. SamPent and LXX add \u201con the mountain\u201d (\u05e4\u05d4\u05e8, \u1f10\u03bd \u03c4\u0342\u0345 \u1f44\u03c1\u03b5\u03b9).
\n9.c. \u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05db\u05df, lit., \u201cdwelling-place,\u201d has so special a significance in the Priestly sections of the OT that it and its various equipment will be capitalized in the translation.
\n9.d. \u05d5\u05db\u05df \u201cand yes (indeed).\u201d
\n9.e. This \u201cyou\u201d is pl., in reference to Moses and Israel; the \u201cyou\u201d following \u201cshow\u201d in this verse is sg, referring to Moses alone. LXX and SamPent read both as singular.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThe lengthy section of material recording Yahweh\u2019s instructions for the media of worship in his Presence, Exod 25\u201331, has for a long time been recognized as a unity in orientation if not also a unity in its organization by a single source. Virtually from the beginning of a comprehensive source-analysis of the Pentateuch, that single source has been held of course to be P, and no recent commentator has made any alternate suggestion that has gained acceptance. While the dates for a Priestly source and its possible growth from an early to a late and increasingly Complicated form have been fairly often debated, no one can have serious reservations about the cultic and sacerdotal nature of this material or its somewhat shuffled and considerably altered repetition in chaps. 35\u201340.
\nThe form of this Priestly material is dictated above all by the subject matter it treats, and that subject matter is founded on an essential theological assumption, that with the making of the covenant, Yahweh has in fact come to take up residence among his people. Such a residence demands response and provision of very special kinds, and that is what these chapters are intended to guide. They are begun, in fact, with a reference to a \u201choly place\u201d (\u05de\u05e7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1) in which Yahweh can \u201csettle down\u201d (\u05e9\u05c1\u05db\u05df) in their midst, and they are moved through a detailed specification of the primary symbols of his settlement, each a graphic representation of some aspect of the theological narrative of the deliverance, provision, guidance, and coming of Yahweh\u2019s Presence in Exodus.
\nThere is indeed a progression in the sequence of the instructions of chaps. 25\u201331. Appropriately first are the specifications for the Ark (25:10\u201322), the supreme post-Sinai symbol of the Presence of Yahweh, and for the implements of the Presence related to and so kept near to the Ark: the Table for the Presence-bread (25:23\u201330), and the Seven-branched Lampstand of pure gold (25:31\u201340). These instructions are followed immediately by the plan for the Tabernacle (26:1\u201337), the sanctuary and most holy shelter of Yahweh\u2019s Presence, to which are linked the instructions for the Altar of Burnt Offerings (27:1\u20138) and the Forecourt to the Tabernacle (27:9\u201319), both adjunctive in function as in location to the Tabernacle itself. Next are given the descriptions of the priestly vestments (28:1\u201343) and the directions for the authority-giving preparation of the priestly ministers themselves (29:1\u201346). These chapters of the Priestly instructions thus have the appearance, at least, of organization in three interlocked circles of symbol and function: outward from the presence of Yahweh (the Ark and the symbols of his provision and light) to the sheltering sanctuary of that Presence (the Tabernacle) and thence to the areas of preparation (the Altar and the Forecourt to the Tabernacle in which it was placed) for entry into that most intimate arena of the Presence. The three circles were perpetually joined by the movement through them of the priests, clad in the vestments of memory and ministry, and so the directions concerning priestly equipment and ordination are set last.
\nFollowing these chapters of instruction are three series of appendices: one dealing with four additional symbolic accessories to worship in the Presence (the Golden Altar of the Special Formula Incense, 30:1\u201310; the Bronze Laver for Ceremonial Ablutions, 30:17\u201321; the Special Formula Anointing Oil, 30:22\u201333; and the Special Formula Incense, 30:34\u201338), into which has been worked the instructions for Atonement (a further preparation of the people, 30:11\u201316); one dealing with the designation of the Artisans (31:1\u201311) who are to carry out the preparation of the symbolic implements of worship in the Presence; and one dealing with the sabbath (31:12\u201318) in which the reality and the deeds of the Presence were specially to be remembered.
\nThe comparison of this carefully arranged order with the sequence of the account of the implementation of the instructions in chaps. 35\u201340 is instructive. There, the sabbath is mentioned first (35:1\u20133) instead of last; the artisans are logically mentioned at the beginning (35:30\u201336:1) of the narrative of manufacture and construction; the Tabernacle is listed before (36:8\u201338) the Ark (37:1\u20139); the Golden Altar of the Special Formula Incense is treated before (37:25\u201328) the Altar (38:1\u20137); the Bronze Laver for Ceremonial Ablutions is given a single verse (38:8); the preparation of the priests, the daily offering, the Atonement offering, and the Special Formula Incense and Anointing Oil are not mentioned at all, and there is a great deal of very repetitive summary (35:10\u201319; 36:2\u20137 following upon 35:20\u201329; 38:21\u201331; and 39:32\u201343). The two sequences, when compared even in a general way, give the impression that a sequence of instructions carefully framed in a pattern theologically oriented (chaps. 25\u201331) have been in hand for a somewhat later, far more loosely framed account of implementation (chaps. 35\u201340), one with a somewhat altered interest. There can be little doubt that the two sections are from the same circle, or that they reflect the same general theological assumptions. The differences of order and inclusion between them may be accounted for as differences in emphasis, particularly since chaps. 35\u201340 may be understood as taking the theological assertions of chaps. 25\u201331 as granted.
\nA frequent assertion of the source critics is that the material of these chapters is like other cultic and legal material in P inserted into a somewhat thin narrative, one freely pulled apart to admit the material that is P\u2019s major concern (cf. Eissfeldt, Introduction, 204\u20138). A further assumption is that P is the latest of the tetrateuchal\/pentateuchal sources, and that much of the material it sets forth is far later than its context suggests, belonging as it does to the exilic periods. This oversimplification was popularized first by Wellhausen and has been followed, often with only cosmetic modification, by far the majority of scholars since (cf. Wellhausen, Prolegomena, 17\u2013167; McNeile, i\u2013v, 155\u201356; Driver, xv\u2013xvii, 257\u201363; Fohrer, Introduction, 178\u201386; Vink, OTS 15 [1969] 8\u201363). This opinion, which itself had dramatically overturned the earlier and widespread view that P was the earliest and basic pentateuchal source (Eissfeldt, 164\u201365; Bentzen, Introduction 1:32\u201337, 63\u201370) eventually set P into last place in the chronological sequence of the sources, and left room for doubt only about the sources or subdivisions of P itself.
\nFor most of the twentieth century, that is the direction that discussion of the P material has taken; following form-critical and traditio-analytic procedures, P, regarded as a late source in its canonical appearance, has been subdivided into early and later layers of material, often expanded by supplementary additions. Von Rad (Priesterschrift, 1\u201389), for example, proposed a division into three subsources: a basic and older source, P, a later source, PB, and a \u201cBook of Descendencies\u201d (\u05ea\u05d5\u05dc\u05d3\u05d5\u05ea), a suggestion followed in part by Galling\u2019s (in Beer, 13, 128\u201329) P, PB and P. These divisions, however, did not gain extensive support. They gave way, in part because of the complexity into which they led, to a simpler source-division of P material into P (for Grundschrift) and P (for material supplementing the foundational source), with the addition by some source critics of still other supplemental layers (see Bentzen, Introduction, 32\u201339; Kaiser, Introduction, 102\u201315, Soggin, Introduction, 134\u201346) such as P (the Holiness Code of Lev 17\u201326) or PO (the sacrificial instructions of Lev 1\u20138, \u201cO\u201d for Opfer).
\nThis kind of source-critical analysis has led to very subjective and often conflicting results, and increasingly scholars have turned to a much broader analysis of the P material, one informed more by tradition-history techniques than by source-criticism. This change, in turn, has had the effect of broadening considerably the time-span of the P material and has tended to give P a somewhat wider sphere of influence in the creation of both OT theology and the OT itself. As early as 1929 and 1930, Jepsen (ZAW 47 [1929] 251\u201355) and then Kaufmann (ZAW 48 [1930] 27\u201337) contended that the point of departure of P was the Solomonic Temple in Jerusalem. More recently, Cross (Canaanite Myth, 323\u201325) has proposed a date in the sixth century B.C., \u201clate in the Exile,\u201d for the composition by \u201ca narrow school or single tradent\u201d of a work made up of written and oral documents and designed to reconstruct \u201cthe covenant of Sinai and its associated institutions\u201d with Israel\u2019s restoration in mind (cf. also Rendtorff, \u00dcberlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem, 130\u201346). Far more persuasive is the suggestion of Haran (Temples, 1\u201312) that \u201cP is the literary product of circles of the Jerusalemite priesthood of the First Temple,\u201d \u201cremarkably utopian\u201d in its content and so given circulation only in the Priestly inner circle until the time of Ezra, who included the \u201cP\u201d material in his program of guidance for the postexilic community.
\nWhat makes the theory of Haran so attractive is that, unlike the somewhat tenuous and highly theoretical approach to Exod 25\u201331 and 35\u201340 of Koch (Priesterschrift, 5\u201340, 96\u2013104), who has sought by form-literary techniques to isolate a series of ritual Vorlage underlying the P material from Exod 25 through Lev 16, it is founded on the institution of temples and temple service as they can be known in both Priestly and non-Priestly texts in the OT. Haran, arguing that P was concerned with real institutions, however idealized in projection, notes that those institutions were pre-exilic in origin. P\u2019s point of departure is thus real and not imaginary, and the Priestly work may be said to move forward from historical institutions and problems toward utopian projections rather than backward from flights of sacerdotal fancy to largely fictional supposition.
\nHaran has pointed us in a right direction. There simply must be at the base of the Priestly material of Exodus something more than an imaginary blueprint for institutions and implements that never existed. A shift to a different center, however, may be suggested not only by the P material but also by the context into which it has been set in the composite Book of Exodus. It is not the Tabernacle or the institution of Priestly service that is at the root of Exod 25\u201331 and 35\u201340, nor is it an array of ancient rituals or some attempt to reconstruct the past and encourage Israel in exile. What these chapters make plain, by their content as by their placement, is that the theme at their center is Yahweh\u2019s Presence in the midst of his people. Like the narrative into which they are set, these chapters are theological in their origin, theological in their statement, and theological even in their arrangement; that is indeed one important reason why they are placed where they are, in a manner so obviously disruptive of the narrative preceding and following them. As Exodus through chap. 24 is shaped by the promise of Presence, the proof of Presence, and the coming of Presence, so these chapters are shaped by the need to keep current and extend that same Presence through a carefully presented and interlocked sequence of symbols.
\nExod 25\u201331 must thus be seen primarily as a whole, just as the received text presents these chapters. As important as the seams of growth within these chapters may be, as for example between the primary material of chaps. 25\u201329 and the supplemental material of chaps. 30\u201331, the impact of these seven chapters taken together must not be lost. The same can be said of chaps. 35\u201340, though the point made in the first sequence by a very tight organization is made there by what is emphasized, both by inclusion and by repetition. That there are subsidiary points to be made, both about the origin of the material and its relevance to changing OT contexts, is not to be doubted; these subsidiary points, however, must not be permitted to become a distraction. First and foremost, these chapters, clearly the product over a lengthy period of time of the Priestly circle, are about the Presence of Yahweh in the midst of a people who have covenanted with him to serve him.
\nComment
\n1\u20132 The placement of these verses in sequence to the narrative of Moses\u2019 climb still further up Sinai toward Yahweh\u2019s Presence and their introduction with the narrative special waw shows that, in the Exodus composite, they are to be understood as the content of the still further revelation Moses received from Yahweh on Israel\u2019s behalf. The people themselves received the \u201cten words\u201d; Moses then received and communicated to them the \u201cguiding principles\u201d and further commands applying the \u201cten words\u201d to their daily living: with this information before them, the people entered into covenant with Yahweh. Then and only then was Moses called still further up into Yahweh\u2019s Presence to be given by Yahweh himself the directions for and, as regards the Tabernacle, a vision of (25:40) the media of worship that were to call to mind the fact of Yahweh\u2019s Presence.
\nThe call for materials is prefaced by the instruction that the materials be given first as an offering (\u05ea\u05e8\u05d5\u05de\u05d4), that is, as an act of worship, and second, as a joyous expression to be made only by those \u201ccompelled\u201d by their own desire to do so. Just how excessively successful this call was is shown by the sequel narrative, which dwells repetitively on the abundance of the fine materials given (35:20\u201329; 36:2\u20137; cf. 38:21\u201331; 39:32\u201343).
\n3\u20137 The materials themselves represent a catalog of opulence: the finest metals, the finest fabrics, the finest leathers, the finest wood, the finest oil and incense and semiprecious stones. The metals are obviously listed in a descending sequence of value, and Haran (Temples, 160) maintains that the colored yarns are as well, with violet (Brenner, Colour Terms 146, \u201cblue purple\u201d) the most costly dyed material, purple a bit less so and scarlet less so still, though all dyed materials were precious because of the expense of the dye. Gradwohl (Farben, 66\u201378), discussing the organic dyes among which are the ones listed in v 4, notes that twelve thousand murex snails were required to yield 1.4 grams of pure dye (cf. Jensen, JNES 22 [1963] 108\u20139) of the variety I have translated \u201cviolet\u201d above (\u05ea\u05db\u05dc\u05ea).
\nFine linen (\u05e9\u05c1\u05e9\u05c1) was probably Egyptian, an imported fabric (Hurvitz, HTR 60 [1967] 119\u201321); goats\u2019 hair (\u05e2\u05d6\u05d9\u05dd) referred to natural, undyed wool, the least expensive of the fabric materials mentioned. The ram-skin leather was tanned, or dyed red (or both). The sea-cow leather may have been cured only; in this case, there may be here a descending value in these materials as well (cf. Haran, Temples, 162\u201363). Acacia is a hard and long-lasting wood (Trever, \u201cAcacia,\u201d IDB 1:23), apparently well suited for both carving and overlay work. Balsam spices were a mixture of three ingredients (the formula is given in Exod 30:34\u201336) added to pure frankincense (\u05dc\u05d1\u05e0\u05d4 \u05d6\u05db\u05d4) along with salt to create a Special Formula Incense used only on the Golden Altar (cf. Haran, 241\u201343). \u05d0\u05d1\u05e0\u05d9\u05be\u05e9\u05c1\u05d4\u05dd \u201cgemstones\u201d is by itself an indeterminate phrase, but if these are the stones of the two shoulderpieces of the ephod, as seems probable, since the same phrase is used in the descriptions of the ephod (28:9\u201312; 39:6\u20137; cf. Haran, 168 n. 43), they were of an engravable substance, such as cornelian or onyx or even lapis lazuli. The \u05d0\u05d1\u05e0\u05d9 \u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05d9\u05dd \u201cstones to be set\u201d might then refer either to the semiprecious stones to be set onto the breastpiece (28:17\u201321; 39:10\u201314) or to all the stones to be set on both ephod and breast-piece.
\n8\u20139 The \u201choly place\u201d (\u05de\u05b4\u05e7\u05b0\u05d3\u05b8\u05bc\u05e9\u05c1) which Israel is to make has a wider reference than just the Tabernacle (\u05de\u05b4\u05e9\u05b0\u05c1\u05db\u05b8\u05bc\u05df), mentioned specifically in v 9. \u05de\u05e7\u05d3\u05bc\u05e9\u05c1 includes the Tabernacle, of course, but its broader reference is to any and every place of Yahweh\u2019s theophany (cf. Josh 24:26; Exod 15:17; Amos 7:9; Ezek 11:16). Any place where Yahweh comes to dwell is in that coming and residence a holy place, and any place so designated is to be respected as such by the people in covenant with Yahweh. As for the Tabernacle as a pattern of and for such holy places, Yahweh will make it the authoritative ideal by prescribing its plan and the plan for all its furnishings and equipment to Moses on Sinai. This prescription, which may have involved a vision (\u05d0\u05e0\u05d9 \u05de\u05e8\u05d0\u05d4 \u05d0\u05d5\u05ea\u05da \u201cI will show to you\u201d) as well as instructions, was to be followed to the letter. Goppelt (\u201c\u03c4\u1f7a\u03c0\u03bf\u03c2,,\u201d TDNT 8:256\u201357) has suggested that \u05ea\u05d1\u05d5\u05d9\u05ea, as Yahweh\u2019s \u201cplan\u201d or \u201cpattern,\u201d may reflect a concept of a heavenly temple as the macrocosm to which the Tabernacle is the microcosmic parallel, an idea of which Keel (Symbolism, 171\u201376) has found reflections in the Psalms.
\nExplanation
\nThe essential points made by this brief introduction to the lengthy collection of priestly materials on the media of worship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence are several in number. To begin with, all that is to follow in chaps. 25\u201331 is connected with Moses\u2019 solitary climb farther up the mountain to receive Yahweh\u2019s special instructions. Second, all that is to be brought in the way of materials is requested not as an obligation, but as a free and joyous offering\u2014an emphasis that has important implications also for what is to be made of these materials and the use to which those media of worship are to be put. Third, the materials that are specified are the finest and rarest available. However much some of them may reflect an Israelite affluence later than the Sinai-wilderness period of Exodus, we must not miss the theological point the listing makes: nothing short of the finest and best is to be associated with the response to Yahweh. Fourth, Israel\u2019s construction of a holy place is a means of their acceptance and realization of his Presence in residence among them. He will reveal to them the plan for their worshipful response, they will follow that plan precisely, and doing so will teach them many things about his Presence and about their lives in response to his residence in their midst. The call for materials for the media of worship is thus a call for a joyous response to the Presence of Yahweh, a response guided by Yahweh as it is occasioned by Yahweh. Above all, the call for materials, issued by Yahweh and guided by Yahweh, makes clear that what is at the center of the priestly preoccupation is not a sanctuary nor the institution of sacerdotal order, but Yahweh alone, present as a gift.
\nThe Instructions for the Ark (25:10\u201322)
\nParallel Verses:
\n37:1\u20139
\nBibliography
\nDanthine, H. \u201cL\u2019imagerie des trones vides et des trones porteurs de symboles dans le proche orient ancien.\u201d M\u00e9langes Syriens, vol. 2. Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1939. 857\u201366. Davies, G. H. \u201cThe Ark of the Covenant.\u201d ASTI 5 (1967) 30\u201347. Dibelius, M. Die Lade Jahves. FRLANT 7. G\u00f6ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1906. Hartmann, R. \u201cZelt und Lade.\u201d ZAW 37 (1917\u201318) 209\u201344. Maier, J. Das Altisraelitische Ladeheiligtum. BZAW 93. Berlin: Verlag Alfred T\u00f6pelmann, 1965. May, H. G. \u201cThe Ark\u2014A Miniature Temple.\u201d AJSL 52 (1935\u201336) 215\u201334. Morgenstern, J. \u201cThe Ark, the Ephod and the \u2018Tent of Meeting.\u2019 \u201d HUCA 17 (1942\u201343) 153\u2013266 and 18 (1944) 1\u201352. Rad, G. von. \u201cThe Tent and the Ark.\u201d The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1966. 103\u201324. Reimpell, W. \u201cDer Ursprung der Lade Jahwes.\u201d OLZ 19 (1916) 326\u201331. Rost, L. \u201cDie Wohnst\u00e4tte des Zeugnisses.\u201d Festschrift Friedrich Baumg\u00e4rtel. Erlangen: Verlag Universit\u00e4tsbund Erlangen, 1959. 158\u201365. Schmidt, H. \u201cKerubenthron und Lade.\u201d EYXAPI\u00e5THPION. FRLANT 19. G\u00f6ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1923. 120\u201344. Schmitt, R. Zelt und Lade als Thema alttestamentlicher Wissenschaft. G\u00fctersloh: G\u00fctersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1972. Schrade, H. Der Verborgene Gott. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1949. Vaux, R. de. \u201cArk of the Covenant and Tent of Reunion.\u201d The Bible and the Ancient Near East. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971. 136\u201351. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cLes ch\u00e9rubins et l\u2019arche d\u2019alliance, les sphinx gardiens et les tr\u00f4nes divins dans l\u2019ancien orient.\u201d Bible et Orient. Paris: Les \u00c9ditions du Cerf, 1967. 231\u201359.
\nTranslation
\n10 \u201cThey are to make an Ark of acacia lumber, two and a half cubits in length, one and a half cubits wide, and one and a half cubits tall. 11 You are to overlay it with pure gold: inside and outside you are to overlay it, and you are to make upon it an encircling golden beading. 12 You are also to cast for it four golden rings and place them upon its four corners, two rings upon one side and two rings upon the other side. 13 You are to make carrying-poles of acacia lumber, and overlay them with gold. 14 You are to thrust the carrying-poles into the rings upon the sides of the Ark, to lift the Ark by them. 15 In the rings of the Ark, the poles are to remain: they are not to be withdrawn from it.
\n16 \u201cYou are to place into the Ark the Testimony that I am giving to you. 17 You are to make an Ark-Cover of pure gold, two and a half cubits in length and one and a half cubits wide. 18 You are to make two golden cherubs (you are to make them in hammered metal) for the two ends of the Ark-Cover. 19 Make one cherub for one end and the other cherub for the opposite end; a part of the Ark-Cover you are to make the cherubs, upon the two ends of it. 20 They are to be cherubs with spreading wings uplifted, protecting with their wings the Ark-Cover, and each is to be turned towards the other, while the faces of the cherubs are to be towards the Ark-Cover. 21 You are to place the Ark-Cover upon the top of the Ark, and into the Ark you are to put the Testimony that I am giving to you. 22 I will meet you there by appointment, and I will speak with you, from above the Ark-Cover, from between the two cherubs upon the Ark of the Testimony, everything that I will give into your charge concerning the sons of Israel.\u201d
\nNotes
\n10.a. LXX and SamPent have \u201cyou,\u201d sg.
\n11.a. SamPent has \u05dc \u201cfor.\u201d
\n11.b. \u05d6\u05e8 is a \u201ccirclet, band, border,\u201d apparently a kind of decorative bead-molding around the side or upper edges of the Ark.
\n12.a. \u05e4\u05b7\u05bc\u05e2\u05b2\u05de\u05b4\u05ea are, lit., \u201cthrustings, strikings\u201d (\u05e4\u05e2\u05dd), and so can refer to foot-steps or anvilblows or that which thrusts out, as here, the sides or corners of the Ark. LXX has \u03ba\u03bb\u1f76\u03c4\u03b7 \u201csides\u201d; Vg has angulos \u201ccorners.\u201d
\n15.a. MT has \u05d9\u05d4\u05d9\u05d5 \u201cthey are to be.\u201d
\n15.b. The masc. sg suff refers to the Ark.
\n16.a. See n. 16:34.b.
\n17.a. \u05db\u05b7\u05e4\u05bc\u05e8\u05b6\u05ea is derived from \u05db\u05e4\u05e8 \u201ccover over\u201d but must be understood in the context of meaning of the piel \u05db\u05b4\u05e4\u05b6\u05bc\u05e8 \u201cmake atonement for.\u201d Cf. BDB, 498.
\n18.a. \u05de\u05b4\u05e7\u05b0\u05e9\u05b8\u05c1\u05ea from \u05e7\u05e9\u05c1\u05d4 \u201cbe hard, severe\u201d appears to refer to hammered rather than poured metalwork.
\n19.a. SamPent reads \u05d9\u05e2\u05e9\u05d5 and puts this verb at the end of v 18. LXX has \u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u03b7\u03b8\u03ae\u03c3\u03bf\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 \u201cthey are to be made.\u201d
\n19.b. \u05de\u05df\u05be\u05d4\u05db\u05e4\u05e8\u05ea \u05ea\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d5 \u201ca part of the Ark-Cover you are to make.\u201d \u05de\u05df \u201cfrom,\u201d read above \u201ca part of,\u201d is used here in what BDB (579\u201381) describe as a \u201cpartitive\u201d sense.
\n21.a. SamPent ends the verse here, omitting what follows in MT.
\n22.a. \u201cYou\u201d is singular in this verse in reference to Moses.
\n22.b. \u05d9\u05e2\u05d3, here in niphal and with \u05dc\u05b0 following, to give the reflexive sense described by BDB (416\u201317): Yahweh \u201cappoints himself\u201d to meet Moses at the prearranged place and perhaps at a prearranged time. LXX misses this sense by taking the verb as the niph rather of \u05d9\u05d3\u05e2 to give \u03b3\u03bd\u03c9\u03c3\u03b8\u03ae\u03c3\u03bf\u03bc\u03b1\u03b9 \u201cI will make myself known.\u201d SamPent reads as does MT: Vg has inde praecipiam \u201cI will anticipate from there.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139.
\nComment
\nScholarly discussion of the Ark is extensive, not only as regards the varied appearances and functions of the Ark in the OT, but also as regards the age and authenticity of the descriptions of the Ark and the meaning of its symbolism. Helpful surveys have been made by Dibelius, Maier, and Schmitt, the latter of whom has provided (Zelt und Lade, 316\u201336) an extensive bibliography on the Ark (see also Zobel, \u201c\u05d0\u05b2\u05e8\u05d5\u05b9\u05df\u201d TDOT 1:363\u201364) and the tent, to which the Ark is sometimes related. The passage at hand, wholly from P, has often been regarded a late and idealized description, entirely untrustworthy as a guide to the when, how and why of the Ark (cf. Noth, 203; Hyatt, 265\u201366).
\nWhile the theological-liturgical bias of the Priestly interest in the Ark is as obvious as it is logical, the description in these verses should not be regarded as just so much dreamy fiction. There is no reason that every reference to the Ark in the OT must mesh with every other one, any more than there is justification for disregarding the information suggested in a passage because that passage is assigned to a \u201clate\u201d source. The theological symbolism of the Priestly description of the Ark may well be the most important suggestion of its function available to us, and we must not lose sight of the fact that the Priestly concepts were drawn not as esoteric self-preoccupation but as a means of demonstrating confession and eliciting response connected with the fundamental claims of belief in the Present Yahweh. However much the Priestly descriptions may elaborate the earlier traditions, they are carefully assembled and deliberately located in the text, and the elaboration should be taken as an expansion, rather than as a cancellation, of the roots from which it has grown.
\nThus the first point to be made about the instructions of Yahweh concerning the Ark is made by the placement of those instructions. The Ark is the foremost symbol of Yahweh\u2019s Presence beyond Sinai, and so its design and specifications are given first after the call for materials for the media of worship. Beyond this information, the function of the Ark is suggested with graphic symbols that quite probably draw on traditions far older than the final opulent form of the Ark may suggest. There has been too much of a tendency to interpret the symbolism and use of the Ark in exclusive and either\/or terms, either as a box containing holy objects (so Hartmann, ZAW 37 [1917\u201318] 225\u201344; von Rad, Problem of the Hexateuch, 112\u2013114; Zobel, TDOT 1:370\u201371) or as an empty symbol of Yahweh\u2019s residence (so Morgenstern, a tent-symbol, HUCA 17 [1942\u201343] 229\u201365, 18 [1944] 47\u201352; or May, a \u201cminiature temple,\u201d AJSL 52 [1935\u201336] 221\u201334) or as a throne on which Yahweh was invisibly seated (so Dibelius, Lade Jahves, 59\u201371; Maier, Ladeheiligtum, 54\u201360, 64\u201374) or as a footstool upon which Yahweh was thought to stand (so Schrade, Verborgene Gott, 46\u201351; Keel, Symbolism, 166\u201367; cf. Reimpell\u2019s suggestion of a \u201cstage,\u201d OLZ 19 [1916] 326\u201331). As the OT references to the Ark (cf. de Vaux\u2019s summary, Ancient Israel, 297\u2013302) show, it had more than a single use, and so also it must have more than a single symbolic meaning.
\nHaran (Temples, 246\u201359) has argued quite plausibly that the Ark served as both container and throne; de Vaux (The Bible 136\u201340) has suggested that the second function amounted to an extension of the first and has listed parallels (Bible et Orient, 231\u201359, with plates I\u2013VII) from ANE literature and art suggesting a throne containing law codes that were binding upon those who worshiped the king or the deity present or believed to be present above the throne-footstool. What is perhaps most important about the symbolism of the Ark, in whatever period of its existence, is its intimate connection with the Presence of Yahweh (cf. von Rad, Problem of the Hexateuch, 108\u201310; Davies, ASTI 5 [1967] 42\u201345) and that connection is precisely the concern of the Priestly description set forth in the verses at hand, as well as in the parallel to them in Exod 37:1\u20139. Whatever other roles the Ark may have had, its chief role, for P, was the suggestion of Yahweh\u2019s Presence at hand.
\n10\u201315 Thus must the Ark be constructed of the same wood to be used throughout the Tabernacle, and thus must it be adorned with pure gold. Its size, by P\u2019s specifications, was unimposing: 2\u00bd x 1\u00bd x 1\u00bd cubits would be roughly equivalent (see Sellers, \u201cWeights and Measures,\u201d IDB 4:836\u201338) to 3\u2019 6\u00bd\u00b4 long by 2\u2019 2\u00bc\u00b4 wide and high. Its appearance, on the other hand, would have been striking according to P\u2019s pattern, given its lining and covering of pure gold, decorated by a further beading of gold all around it, as by the four golden rings by which the Ark could be lifted and carried, and by gold-covered carrying poles inserted through them at all times. The purpose of such an arrangement, of course, was that the Ark might be moved without contact by human hands, an emphasis upon both its portability and the holiness of Yahweh\u2019s Presence. The sight of such a box so prepared for movement and so lavishly decorated would have made the Priestly message unmistakable.
\n16 The Testimony (\u05ea\u05e2\u05e8\u05ea) Moses was to place into the Ark is probably to be understood as the tablets of stone on which were written the ten commandments setting forth the principles of life in relationship with Yahweh (cf. Deut 10:1\u20135). Rost (Festschrift P. Baumg\u00e4rtel, 163\u201365) expands still further the application of the term \u201cTestimony\u201d on the basis of the phrase \u05de\u05b4\u05e9\u05b0\u05c1\u05db\u05b7\u05bc\u05a3\u05df \u05d4\u05b8\u05e2\u05b5\u05d3\u05bb\u0594\u05ea \u201cTabernacle of the Testimony\u201d (Exod 38:21; Num 1:50, 10:11) to include the range of Yahweh\u2019s testimony to his Presence, in \u201ceine Wohnst\u00e4tte des Zeugnises.\u201d In this verse, as in v 21, however, the reference is to something Yahweh is giving to Moses for Israel, something that can be put into the container formed by the Ark. As de Vaux (Bible et Orient, 256, and n. 1) has suggested, \u201cthe Ark contained the \u2018testimony,\u2019 \u05e2\u05b5\u05d3\u05d5\u05bc\u05ea, which is synonymous with \u05d1\u05b0\u05bc\u05e8\u05b4\u05d9\u05ea \u2018covenant,\u2019 and which designates the solemn law given by God to Israel. The Ten Words are, in effect, the provisions of the pact of Sinai \u2026\u201d (see also the survey of Schmitt, Zelt und Lade, 98\u2013106, 110\u201328).
\n17\u201322 The Ark-Cover \u05db\u05d2\u05e8\u05ea, to be made of pure gold, was to be of the same length and width as the Ark, and was to be placed on top of it. Onto this Cover, indeed made as a part of it at each end, were to be placed two cherubs made of hammer-worked gold. These cherubs were to be made with their wings spread and stretched out over the Ark-Cover, their bodies turned toward each other, their faces bowed towards the Ark-Cover. The cherubs have usually been connected with Yahweh\u2019s throne, both as guardians and as bearers (see Danthine, M\u00e9langes syriens 2:857\u201366; Schmidt, \u0395\u03a5\u03a7\u0391\u03a1\u0399\u03a3\u03a4\u0397\u03a1\u0399\u039f\u039d, 120\u201344; de Vaux, Bible et Orient 231\u201359, with plates I\u2013VII; Keel, Symbolism, 166\u201371). The statement that Yahweh will speak with Moses \u201cfrom above the Ark-Cover and from between the two cherubs,\u201d along with the phrase \u05d9\u05e9\u05d1 \u05d9\u05db\u05e8\u05d1\u05dd \u201cthe One sitting upon the cherubs\u201d (1 Sam 4:4; 2 Sam 6:2; 2 Kgs 19:15; Pss 80:2; 99:1; Isa 37:16), give the impression that the cherubs of the Ark-Cover were associated in some way with Yahweh\u2019s Presence above the Ark. Whether they were a part of, or were bearers of, an invisible throne remains indeterminate (cf. Schmitt, Zelt und Lade, 128\u201331, 173\u2013174).
\nThe Ark-Cover has sometimes been called the \u201cpropitiatory\u201d (BDB, 498; Childs, 513, 524), in connection with the ritual of atonement that took place before it (Lev 16) and the obvious derivation of its name from \u05db\u05e4\u05e8, which in the piel form is a primary OT term for propitiation, atonement, and sacral cleansing. This definition of \u05db\u05e4\u05e8\u05ea is obviously derived from the later function of the Ark-Cover and may indeed describe one way in which the Ark-Cover was thought of in later priestly ritual. Given P\u2019s description of the Ark in Exodus, however, the fullest description anywhere in the OT, it is just as appropriate, and perhaps even more so, to assume that the \u05db\u05e4\u05e8\u05ea takes its name from its placement, \u201ccovering\u201d the Ark. \u201cCover\u201d after all appears to have been the original meaning of \u05db\u05e4\u05e8.
\nEven so, the Ark-Cover must be thought of as more than simply a part of the Ark; as Haran (Temples, 247\u201353) has shown, the two are frequently mentioned separately in the OT and are in fact placed in physical contact only by P. This juxtaposition may be a reflection of the fact that these two objects were exactly the two most intimately associated with Yahweh\u2019s immanent Presence. The Ark contained his ten words, the symbol of \u201ceverything I will give into your charge concerning the sons of Israel,\u201d and was placed as a footstool beneath the Ark-Cover, the symbol of his throne protected by guardian cherubs (so Schmidt, \u0395\u03a5\u03a7\u0391\u03a1\u0399\u03a3\u03a4\u0397\u03a1\u0399\u039f\u039d, 132\u201344). Above these two objects, in the priestly symbolism, Yahweh\u2019s Presence was most powerfully concentrated. Thus the Ark and the Ark-Cover were overlaid with a sheath of pure gold and their location was the location to which Moses and his priestly descendants would come to meet Yahweh and to ask and receive his instructions. There, Yahweh promised to meet Moses by appointment and to speak to him \u201cfrom above the Ark-Cover, from between the two cherubs upon the Ark of the Testimony.\u201d It is this statement, an obvious summary combination of the Ark and the Ark-Cover, that makes clear P\u2019s linking of the two most intimate symbols of Yahweh\u2019s Presence. Exod 25:10\u201322 must therefore be seen, as Schmidt (\u0395\u03a5\u03a7\u0391\u03a1\u0399\u03a3\u03a4\u0397\u03a1\u0399\u039f\u039d, 141) has said, as the principal passage in the OT for P\u2019s view of the Ark.
\nExplanation
\nThe location of the instructions for the Ark and the Ark-Cover first in the sequence of Yahweh\u2019s instructions for the media of worship in itself suggests the special significance of these two objects. They are in effect the foci of Yahweh\u2019s revelation to Israel, the place of his special instruction in person. The opulence of the two objects suggests their unique nature also, as does the special arrangement for their transportation, the inclusion of and attention given to the cherubs, and above all the summary connection of the two as the place par excellence of the Presence of Yahweh in the context of Israel\u2019s worship. Here at the first of the instructions for the media of worship there are given the instructions for the center of that worship, the two symbols of the innermost circle of Yahweh\u2019s Presence in the midst of his people.
\nThe Instructions for the Table (25:23\u201330)
\nParallel Verses:
\n37:10\u201316
\nBibliography
\nJosephus. Jewish Antiquities, Books I\u2013IV. LCL. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957. Kelso, J. L. The Ceramic Vocabulary of the Old Testament. BASOR Supplementary Studies Nos. 5\u20136. New Haven: 1948. Kennedy, A. R. S. \u201cShewbread.\u201d A Dictionary of the Bible. J. Hastings, ed. New York: Charles Scribner\u2019s Sons, 1902. 495\u201397.
\nTranslation
\n23 \u201cYou are to make a Table of acacia lumber, two cubits in length, one cubit wide, and one and a half cubits tall. 24 You are to overlay it with pure gold, and you are to make for it an encircling golden beading. 25 You are also to make for it an encircling border a handbreadth wide, and you are to make an encircling golden beading for this border. 26 You are to make for the Table four golden rings and fix the rings to the four corners where its feet are. 27 The rings are to hang against the border, as attachments for the carrying-poles for lifting the Table. 28 You are to make the carrying-poles of acacia lumber, and overlay them with gold; with them, the Table is to be lifted. 29 You are to make for the Table dishes and pans, and pitchers and bowls for the pouring of libations. You are to make them of pure gold. 30 And you are to place upon the Table before me the Bread of the Presence continuously.\u201d
\nNotes
\n23.a. LXX reads \u03c7\u03c1\u03c5\u03c3\u03af\u03c5 \u03ba\u03b1\u03b8\u03b1\u03c1\u03bf\u1fe6 \u201cof pure gold.\u201d
\n24.a. This clause is logically missing from LXX.
\n24.b. As on the Ark; see n. 25:11.b.
\n25.a. MT has \u05dc\u05de\u05e1\u05e4\u05e8\u05ea\u05d5 \u201cfor its border.\u201d
\n26.a. MT has \u05dc\u05d5 \u201cfor it\u201d; \u201cTable,\u201d the clear antecedent, is used above for clarity. LXX and Vg omit the prep phrase.
\n26.b. Lit., \u201cat four of its feet.\u201d
\n27.a. \u05ea\u05b4\u05bc\u05d4\u05b0\u05d9\u05b6\u05d9\u05df \u201cthey are to be,\u201d apocopated qal impf. of \u05d4\u05d9\u05d4.
\n27.b. \u05dc\u05d1\u05ea\u05d9\u05dd \u201cfor houses,\u201d i.e., the rings were for the carrying-poles, which remained, \u201clived\u201d in them at all times. See BDB, 108\u20139.
\n29.a. MT has \u05e7\u05e2\u05e8\u05ea\u05d9\u05d5 \u05d5\u05db\u05e4\u05ea\u05d9\u05d5 \u05d5\u05e7\u05e9\u05c1\u05d5\u05ea\u05d9\u05d5 \u05d5\u05de\u05e0\u05e7\u05d9\u05ea\u05d9\u05d5 \u201cits dishes and its pans, and its jars and its bowls.\u2026\u201d The clear antecedent is Table, so \u201cfor the Table\u201d is substituted above for the four pronouns.
\n29.b. \u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05e8 \u05d9\u05e1\u05da \u05d1\u05d4\u05df \u201cwhich it is poured out with them.\u201d \u05e0\u05e1\u05da \u201cpour\u201d most frequently refers in the OT to the pouring of drink offerings. BDB, 650\u201351; cf. Haran, Temples, 216.
\n30.a. \u05dc\u05d7\u05dd \u05e4\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd \u201cBread of the Presence.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139.
\nComment
\nThe Table described in these verses is variously designated in the OT as \u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d9\u05df \u05d4\u05e4\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd \u201cthe Table of the Presence\u201d (Num 4:7), \u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d4\u05df \u05d4\u05d8\u05d4\u05e8 \u201cthe Pure Table\u201d (Lev 24:6, 2 Chr 13:11), \u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d4\u05df \u05d4\u05de\u05e2\u05e8\u05db\u05ea \u201cthe Table of the Row-arrangement\u201d (2 Chr 29:18), and even \u05d4\u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d4\u05df \u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05e8 \u05e2\u05dc\u05d9\u05d5 \u05dc\u05d7\u05dd \u05d4\u05e4\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd \u05d6\u05d4\u05d1 \u201cthe golden Table, upon which is the Bread of the Presence\u201d (1 Kgs 7:48). In each instance, the same piece of furniture is intended. The Table described here as made of acacia, is roughly 3\u00b4 long by 1\u00b46\u00b4\u00b4 wide by 2\u00b43\u00b4\u00b4 high (see Sellers, \u201cWeights and Measures,\u201d IDB 4:836\u201338), and overlaid with gold. This Table, like the Ark, was decorated by a golden beading all around and had in addition a golden border approximately 3\u00b4\u00b4 wide (Sellers, 838) encircling it, similarly decorated. Like the Ark, this Table too was to be moved without the direct contact of human hands, by the use of gold-plated acacia poles inserted through golden rings attached to the Table for that purpose.
\n29 The Table was to be equipped with containers of four kinds, all of them of pure gold. The first of these, the \u05e7\u05e2\u05e8\u05d4, appears to have been a dish or plate onto which the Bread of the Presence was placed (Kelso, Ceramic Vocabulary, 31, no. 77); the second, the \u05db\u05bc\u05e3, was a small pan (Kelso, 22, no. 47), onto which \u05dc\u05d1\u05e0\u05d4 \u05d6\u05db\u05d4 \u201cpure frankincense\u201d was placed as an accompaniment offering to the Bread of the Presence (Lev 24:7); the third, the \u05e7\u05e9\u05c2\u05d5\u05d4, was a pitcher for the wine of the libation, or drink-offering (Kelso, 31, no. 78); the fourth, the \u05de\u05e0\u05e7\u05d9\u05d4, was a bowl (cf. Kelso, 24, no. 54) into which the libation was poured.
\n30 These four containers were kept upon the Table along with the \u05e4\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd \u05dc\u05d7\u05dd \u201cBread of the Presence,\u201d for which, apparently, the Table was primarily constructed. This special Bread was placed on the Table each Sabbath, along with a \u201creminder-offering\u201d (\u05d0\u05d6\u05db\u05e8\u05d4) of frankincense (Durham, Touch, Taste and Smell, 347\u201355); The Bread of the previous week was eaten by the priests (though cf. 1 Sam 21:1\u20136) and the frankincense was burned (Lev 24:7). The Bread was arranged in two rows of six loaves each (Lev 24:5\u20136), the frankincense alongside it (or, according to Josephus, Antiquities, III, 11. 143\u201344, on top of the loaves), the loaves on the \u05e7\u05e2\u05e8\u05ea \u201cdishes,\u201d the frankincense in the \u05db\u05e4\u05d5\u05ea \u201cpans.\u201d The origin and the exact significance of this Presence-Bread are not clear. The offering of frankincense as an \u05d0\u05d6\u05db\u05e8\u05d4 suggests that the Bread came to be considered a grain-offering of a very special kind (cf. Haran, Temples, 209\u201310), but the careful placement of the Bread on so lavish a Table and the inclusion of the Table in the list of the instructions for the media of worship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence show that it was in some way a special symbol of Yahweh present with his people. It is at least possible that the Bread and the wine of the libation suggested his nearness in the availability of food provided and blessed by him and so kept continuously before him in acknowledgment of his giving nearness. Any idea of food being provided for Yahweh (cf. Kennedy, Dictionary, 497; Hyatt, 268\u201369) is surely as removed from this provision as from the offering of sacrifices; whatever primitive peoples may think about food for their gods, the people of Israel cannot by any stretch of the socio-theological imagination be put into such a category.
\nExplanation
\nThe Table of the Bread of the Presence is another symbol by which Yahweh\u2019s nearness was suggested. By its opulence as by the containers and the food and drink placed continuously upon it and periodically renewed, this Table announced: \u201cHe is here,\u201d and here as one who gives sustenance.
\nThe Instructions for the Lampstand (25:31\u201340)
\nParallel Verses:
\n37:17\u201324
\nBibliography
\nCook, S. A. \u201cCandlestick.\u201d Encyclopedia Biblica. New York: Macmillan, 1899. 1:644\u201347. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cNotes and Queries: Hebrew Inscription at Fik.\u201d PEQ 35 (1903) 185\u201386. Goodenough, E. R. \u201cThe Menorah among Jews of the Roman World.\u201d HUCA 23 (1950\u201351) 449\u201392. Kennedy, A. R. S. \u201cSnuffers, Snuffdish.\u201d A Dictionary of the Bible. J. Hastings, ed. New York: Charles Scribner\u2019s Sons, 1902. 4:557. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cTabernacle.\u201d A Dictionary of the Bible. J. Hastings, 9th ed; New York: Charles Scribner\u2019s Sons, 1902. 4:653\u201368.
\nTranslation
\n31 \u201cYou are to make a Lampstand of pure gold. The pedestal and the branching of the Lampstand are to be made of hammered metal: its lampcups, its bud-husks and its flowers are to be an integral part of it. 32 Six branches are to extend from its sides, three branches for lamps on one side and three branches for lamps on the other side, 33 with three lampcups like almond blooms with bud-husks and flowers on one branch and three lampcups like almond blooms with bud-husks and flowers on the matching branch, and so on for all six of the branches extending from the Lampstand. 34 On the Lampstand itself there are to be four lampcups like almond blooms, each with their bud-husks and their flowers, 35 and a bud-husk underneath each pair of branches where the six branches extend from the Lampstand. 36 These bud-husks and branches are to be an integral part of the Lampstand; the whole of it is to be a single implement of hammer-worked pure gold.
\n37 \u201cYou are to make it seven lamps; these lamps are to be elevated in order to give light upon the area in front of the Lampstand. 38 The wick-removers and wicktrays for the Lampstand are to be pure gold. 39 One talent of pure gold is to be used for the Lampstand in all these accessories. 40 See that you make them in accord with the plan that you are being shown on the mountain.\u201d
\nNotes
\n31.a. The \u05e7\u05de\u05d4 \u201cstalk or stem or shaft or column\u201d of the Lampstand, the design of which imitates a plant or tree. Cf. BDB, 889; Kennedy, Dictionary, 663\u201364.
\n31.b. LXX, SamPent, Syr. have \u201cyou are to make.\u201d
\n31.c. See n. 25:18.a.
\n31.d. The \u05d2\u05d1\u05d9\u05e2 \u201clampcup\u201d was a lampholder in the shape of a flower. Surrounding it at its base was the \u05db\u05e4\u05ea\u05d5\u05e8 \u201cbud-husk\u201d (see n. 31.e.).
\n31.e. \u05db\u05e4\u05ea\u05d5\u05e8 \u201cbud-husk,\u201d the bud or flower base of leaves and stem, the calyx, out of which grew the \u05e4\u05e8\u05d7, the flower itself.
\n31.f. \u05de\u05de\u05e0\u05d4 \u05d9\u05d4\u05d9\u05d5 \u201cfrom, a part of it they are to be.\u201d The whole Lampstand assembly was to be of one piece, and in imitation of a branching almond tree in bloom. Cf. Cassuto, 342\u201344; Kennedy, Dictionary, 663\u201364.
\n32.a. See n. 31.a.
\n32.b. \u05d9\u05e6\u05d0\u05d9\u05dd \u201care going out,\u201d as if they were growing out of the trunk of a tree.
\n32.c. Lit., \u201cthree branches of a Lampstand.\u201d
\n33.a. MT has \u05d1\u05e7\u05e0\u05d4 \u05d4\u05d0\u05d7\u05d3 \u2026 \u05d1\u05e7\u05e0\u05d4 \u05d4\u05d0\u05d7\u05d3 \u201con the one branch \u2026 on the other branch.\u201d
\n33.b. SamPent adds \u05ea\u05e2\u05e9\u05d4 \u201cyou are to make.\u201d
\n34.a. \u05d5\u05d1\u05de\u05e0\u05e8\u05d4 \u201cLampstand\u201d is definite here, indicating an emphasis on the central stalk or trunk of the Lampstand as opposed to the branches that extend from it and that have already been described.
\n34.b. \u201cThere are to be\u201d is added for clarity.
\n35.a. MT repeats 3X the phrase \u05d5\u05db\u05e4\u05ea\u05e8 \u05ea\u05d7\u05ea \u05e9\u05e0\u05d9 \u05d4\u05e7\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd \u05de\u05de\u05e0\u05d4 \u201cand a bud-base underneath two of the branches from it.\u201d \u05dc\u05e9\u05c1\u05e9\u05c1\u05ea \u05d4\u05e7\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd \u201cat, toward, near the six branches\u201d locates the budbases along the main trunk of the Lampstand.
\n36.a. MT has \u05db\u05e4\u05ea\u05e8\u05d9\u05d4\u05dd \u05d5\u05e7\u05e0\u05ea\u05dd \u201ctheir bud-husks and their branches,\u201d in obvious reference to the stem and six branches of the Lampstand: thus the translation \u201cthese,\u201d in the context of vv 34\u201335.
\n36.b. MT has \u05d4 \u201cit\u201d; the antecedent is added above for clarity.
\n36.c. MT \u05db\u05dc\u05d4 \u201cthe whole\u201d; \u201cis to be\u201d is added for clarity. This final clause of v 36 is a summary description of the Lampstand as one implement, despite its various parts, before its detachable equipment is described.
\n37.a. MT has \u05e0\u05e8\u05ea\u05d9\u05d4 \u201cits lamps.\u201d
\n37.b. \u05d5\u05d4\u05e2\u05dc\u05d4 \u201cand are to be elevated\u201d; read \u201cand you are to elevate\u201d by LXX, SamPent, Vg.
\n37.c. \u05e2\u05dc\u05be\u05e2\u05d1\u05e8 \u05e4\u05e0\u05d9\u05d4 \u201cupon the side of its face.\u201d
\n38.a. \u05de\u05dc\u05e7\u05d7\u05dd, from \u05dc\u05e7\u05d7 \u201ctake, seize,\u201d describes a tool like pliers or tweezers, used for removing spent wicks from lamps; \u05de\u05d7\u05ea\u05d4, from \u05d7\u05ea\u05d4, \u201csnatch up, usu. fire, coals\u201d (BDB, 367), describes the pan or dish onto which such wicks were placed. Cf. Cassuto, 345, and Kennedy, Dictionary, 557.
\n38.b. MT \u05de\u05dc\u05e7\u05d7\u05d9\u05d4 \u05d5\u05de\u05d7\u05ea\u05ea\u05d9\u05d4 \u201cits wick-removers and its wick-trays\u201d; the antecedent of these poss pronouns is the Lampstand, supplied above for clarity.
\n38.c. LXX adds \u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u03ae\u03c3\u03b5\u03b9\u03c2 \u201cyou are to make\u201d at the end of v 38.
\n39.a. MT has \u201cit.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u201319.
\nComment
\nThe Lampstand, like the Table and the Ark, was a symbol of the immediate Presence of Yahweh and so was constructed with pure gold. The Ark and the Table, had they been made solely of gold, would have been extremely heavy; thus they were made of acacia and overlaid with pure gold. Of smaller bulk, the Lampstand could be made entirely of pure gold, and thus for the first time an exact amount of gold for the construction is mentioned (v 39): a \u05db\u05db\u05e8 \u201ctalent,\u201d approximately sixty-six to seventy pounds (Sellers, \u201cWeights and Measures,\u201d IDB 4:831) of gold.
\n31\u201336 This Lampstand was to be made of hammered rather than cast gold and was by its pattern to suggest a growing tree, apparently an almond tree, the life-promising \u201cawakening\u201d tree of Jeremiah\u2019s call (Jer 1:11\u201312). The pedestal and main upright of the lamp were the \u201ctree\u2019s\u201d trunk, and \u201cgrowing\u201d out from this trunk on either side were three \u201cbranches.\u201d Each of these branches ended in the leafy base of a bud, from which opened the petals of an almond flower, and into this receptacle was fixed a lampholder or cup. This bud-and-bloom motif was repeated along both the trunk or shaft of the Lampstand and also along the six branches extending from it, four times on the trunk (v 34) and three times on each branch (v 33). The bud-and-flower design was located at the top of the central trunk, apparently where each pair of branches left the trunk; its location on the branches is not specified (for a different interpretation see Kennedy, Dictionary, 664, and cf. Cassuto, 342\u201343).
\nAs Goodenough (HUCA 23 [1950\u201351] 450\u201352) has indicated, the original significance of this Lampstand is obscure, though connections with the tree of life, the burning bush, and even the planets have all been suggested (cf. also Cook, Encyclopedia, 646\u201347, and PEQ 35 [1903] 185\u201386). The OT gives no direct clue as to the symbolism of the Lampstand, though the description of it given by P and the location of that description with the descriptions of the Ark and the Table make plain the connection of the Lampstand with Yahweh\u2019s Presence. The light and the fire of the lamps themselves must have been linked also to Yahweh\u2019s theophany, of which brightness and fire were primary symbols.
\n37\u201340 Seven lamps were placed on the Lampstand, one for each of the seven lampcups at the end of the trunk and the six branches. They were located at the tops of these extensions so as to give their light to a wider area, and they were so arranged that their light shone in front of the Lampstand, that is, with their burning wicks all in one direction, toward the area in front of the Lampstand (cf.Num 8:1\u20133). Special tools (\u05de\u05dc\u05e7\u05d7\u05d9\u05dd) were to be made for the adjustment and removal of the wicks, along with special containers for receiving the spent wicks for disposal. The Lampstand and most of its accessories were to be made from a talent of pure gold; there is some ambiguity about the lamps, the material for which is not specified (in the Temple of Solomon, they were made of gold as well, according to 1 Kgs 7:49). Of the three Presence-symbols of chap. 26, it is only the Lampstand and its equipment about which the further caution of v 40 is given, though this verse can also be taken to apply to the Ark and the Table as well.
\nExplanation
\nBy its light as by its reminder of the \u201cawakening tree,\u201d the Lampstand attested Yahweh at hand, present and active among his people. The repeated bud-and-flower motif suggested the almond tree bursting with bloom. The fire and light of the seven lamps were reminders of Yahweh\u2019s coming in brightness. In company with the Table attesting Yahweh\u2019s Presence in bounty and the Ark attesting Yahweh\u2019s Presence in mercy and revelation, the Lampstand symbolized Yahweh\u2019s Presence in perpetual wakefulness, through the reminder of the almond tree and the continual brightness of the living fire (cf. Num 17:16\u201326 [17:1\u201311]). The watcher over Israel never nodded, much less slept (Ps 121:4).
\nThe Instructions for the Tabernacle (26:1\u201337)
\nParallel Verses:
\n36:8\u201338
\nBibliography
\nBenzinger, I. \u201cTabernacle.\u201d Encyclopedia Biblica. New York: Macmillan, 1903. 4:4861\u201375. Clements, R. E. God and Temple. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965. Cross, F. M., Jr. \u201cThe Priestly Tabernacle.\u201d BA 10 (1947) 45\u201368. Also in BAR 1 (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1961): 201\u201328. Fretheim, T. E. \u201cThe Priestly Document: Anti-Temple?\u201d VT 18 (1968) 313\u201329. Gooding, D. W. The Account of the Tabernacle. TextsS 6. Cambridge: At the University Press, 1959. Haran, M. \u201cThe Divine Presence in the Israelite Cult and the Cultic Institutions.\u201d Bib 50 (1969) 251\u201367. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cShiloh and Jerusalem: The Origin of the Priestly Tradition in the Pentateuch.\u201d JBL 81 (1962) 14\u201324. \u2014\u2014\u2014. Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. Kennedy, A. R. S. \u201cTabernacle.\u201d A Dictionary of the Bible. J. Hastings, ed. New York: Charles Scribner\u2019s Sons, 1902. 4:653\u201368. Rabe, V. W. \u201cThe Identity of the Priestly Tabernacle.\u201d JNES 25 (1966) 132\u201334.
\nTranslation
\n1 \u201cThe Tabernacle you are to make of ten curtains of woven fine linen and violet yarn, purple yarn, and scarlet yarn; with cherubs artistically embroidered you are to make them. 2 The length of each curtain is to be twenty-eight cubits, and the width of each curtain, four cubits; all the curtains are to have an identical measurement. 3 Five of the curtains are to be joined one to another, and the remaining five are to be joined one to another. 4 You are to make violet loops along the edge of the curtain at the end of the first set, and you are also to make them on the edge of the end-curtain of the second set. 5 You are to make fifty loops on the first end -curtain, and you are to make fifty loops on the end-curtain in the second set: the curtains with loops are to be opposite one another. 6 You are to make fifty fasteners of gold and you are to join the curtain-sets one to another with the fasteners; thus the Tabernacle will be in one piece.
\n7 \u201cYou are to make curtains of goats\u2019 hair, for a tent to go over the Tabernacle; you are to make eleven of these curtains. 8 The length of each curtain is to be thirty cubits, and the width of each curtain, four cubits; the eleven curtains are to have an identical measurement. 9 You are to join five of these curtains in a unit, then the remaining six in a unit. You are to fold the sixth curtain over toward the front of the tent. 10 You are to make fifty loops along the edge of the curtain at the end of the first set, and fifty loops along the edge of the curtain at the end of the second set. 11 You are to make fifty fasteners of copper, and attach the fasteners to the loops, and so you are to join the tent so that it will be in one piece. 12 The additional area, the remaining part of the curtains of the tent, the half-curtain remaining, is to hang down the rear of the Tabernacle. 13 The cubit on either side, in the remaining part of the length of the curtains of the tent, is to be allowed to hang free upon the sides of the Tabernacle, on both sides, to cover it. 14 You are also to make a cover for the tent of red-dyed rams\u2019 hides and a cover of sea-cows\u2019 hides to protect it.
\n15 \u201cYou are to make the standing supports for the Tabernacle of acacia lumber. 16 The length of each support is to be ten cubits, and the width of each support, a cubit and a half, 17 with two upright braces to each support, each joined to the one next to it: thus you are to make all the supports of the Tabernacle. 18 You are to make the supports for the Tabernacle so: twenty supports for the Negev side, facing south, 19 and you are to make forty pedestals of silver to hold up the twenty supports, two pedestals underneath one support, for its two braces, and two pedestals underneath the next support for its two braces; 20 and for the second side of the Tabernacle, facing north, twenty supports, 21 along with forty pedestals of silver for them, two pedestals underneath one support and two pedestals underneath the next support. 22 For the deep side of the Tabernacle, westward, you are to make six supports, 23 and you are to make two supports for the corners of the Tabernacle on the deep side: 24 they are to be doubled at the bottom, and they are to be joined, to form a unit, at the top where there is a single ring. That is the pattern for both of them: they are to be the corners. 25 In all there are to be eight supports, along with their sixteen pedestals of silver, two pedestals underneath one support, and two pedestals underneath the next support.
\n26 \u201cYou are to make cross-members of acacia lumber, five for the supports of one side of the Tabernacle, 27 and five cross-members for the supports of the other side of the Tabernacle, and five cross-members for the supports of the side of the Tabernacle on the deep side, westward. 28 The middle cross-member, at the midpoint of the supports, is to pass along from end to end. 29 You are to overlay the supports with gold, and you are to make rings of gold for them as attachments to secure the cross-members. You are to overlay the cross-members with gold. 30 Thus you are to raise the Tabernacle, in accord with its specifications, which you have been shown on the mountain.
\n31 \u201cYou are to make a Veil of violet yarn and purple yarn and scarlet yarn and woven fine linen: with cherubs artistically embroidered he is to make it. 32 You are to suspend it with hooks of gold from four columns of acacia overlaid with gold and set in four pedestals of silver. 33 You are to suspend the Veil beneath the fasteners, and you are to bring into the space made separate by the Veil the Ark of the Testimony. The Veil is to divide for you the Holy Space from the Holiest Space. 34 You are to place the Ark-Cover upon the Ark of the Testimony in the Holiest Space. 35 You are to place the Table outside the space made separate by the Veil, and the Lampstand on the side of the Tabernacle towards the south, opposite the Table: you are to put the Table on the north side.
\n36 \u201cYou are to make a Screen for the opening of the tent, of violet yarn and purple yarn and scarlet yarn and woven fine linen, embroidered in variegated patterns. 37 You are to make five columns of acacia for the Screen, and overlay them with gold; their hooks are also to be of gold, but you are to cast five pedestals of copper for them.\u201d
\nNotes
\n1.a. See above, Comment on 25:3\u20137.
\n1.b. \u05de\u05e2\u05e9\u05c1\u05d4 \u05d7\u05e9\u05c1\u05d1 is, lit., \u201cwork of reflection\u201d; the cherubs are to be worked into the fabric of the curtains with great care and skill.
\n5.a. MT has simply \u05d4\u05d9\u05e8\u05d9\u05e2\u05d4 \u05d4\u05d0\u05d7\u05ea \u201cthe one curtain\u201d here, but has \u201cend-curtain\u201d in reference to the second set. \u201cEnd\u201d is added here for clarity.
\n5.b. MT has only \u05dc\u05dc\u05d0\u05ea \u201cloops,\u201d but the sense of the verse indicates that the end-curtains with the loops added are to be opposite each other.
\n6.a. \u05d0\u05d7\u05d3 \u201cone, a whole,\u201d here indicating a self-contained space.
\n7.a. \u05e2\u05dc \u201cupon\u201d the Tabernacle.
\n10.a. \u201cAt the end\u201d added here for clarity; it is in the text in reference to the first set.
\n11.a. LXX has \u03c4\u1f70\u03c2 \u03b4\u03ad\u03c1\u03c1\u03b5\u03b9\u03c2 \u201cleather screens,\u201d in reference to the goats\u2019 hides with the hair still on them; cf. v 7 in LXX.
\n14.a. See n. 25:5.a.
\n14.b. See n. 25:5.b.
\n14.c. MT has \u201cabove,\u201d designating this covering as \u201cabove\u201d the first cover; see Kennedy, Dictionary, 659, and for an opposing view, Cassuto, 353\u201354.
\n15.a. \u05e2\u05de\u05d3\u05d9\u05dd \u2026 \u05d4\u05e7\u05e8\u05e9\u05c1\u05dd \u201cstanding supports.\u201d The exact nature of the \u05e7\u05e8\u05e9\u05c1\u05d9\u05dd \u201csupports\u201d has been much debated, as interpreters have proposed either solid boards (Haran, Temples, 150\u201351) or rectangular frames (Kennedy, Dictionary, 659\u201360). Quite clearly the framework supporting the Tabernacle is being described; it is the nature of that framework that remains obscure.
\n16.a. \u201cEach\u201d is added here for clarity. \u05d0\u05d7\u05d3 \u201ceach\u201d modifies \u05e7\u05e8\u05e9\u05c1 \u201csupport\u201d at the end of the verse and so can be understood here as well. SamPent, LXX have it in both places.
\n16.b. LXX adds \u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u03ae\u03c3\u03b5\u03b9\u03c2 \u201cyou are to make.\u201d
\n17.a. \u05d9\u05d3\u05d5\u05ea \u201cbraces,\u201d taken here in the sense of \u201chand\u201d connoting strength, power. Note also BDB, 390, \u201cside, stay, support, tenon.\u201d Tenon may be too technical a term since it refers only to what would be the end of one of the upright \u05d9\u05d3\u05d5\u05ea, the smaller part that would fit into a mortise. \u05d9\u05d3 \u201cbrace\u201d appears to refer to the entire upright, each of which is one side-piece of a standing support. Cf. Kennedy, Dictionary 660 and Hyatt, 274. LXX reads \u1f00\u03b3\u03ba\u03c9\u03bd\u03b9\u03c3\u03ba\u03bf\u03c5\u03bd\u03c2 \u201csmall angles.\u201d
\n17.b. The \u05d9\u05d3\u05d5\u05ea \u201cbraces\u201d are joined (\u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05d3\u05ea), each to its \u201csister,\u201d a technical impossibility if \u201ctenons\u201d are lit. intended.
\n18.a. \u05dc\u05e4\u05d0\u05ea \u05e0\u05d2\u05d3\u05d4 \u05ea\u05d9\u05e0\u05d4, lit., \u201cto the side Negevward, toward the south,\u201d or \u201cto the south side, southward.\u201d LXX curiously reverses the direction: \u03c0\u03c1\u1f78\u03c2 \u03b2\u03bf\u03c1\u03c1\u1fb6\u03bd \u201cfacing north.\u201d
\n19.a. \u05ea\u05d7\u05ea, lit., as translated farther on in the verse, \u201cunderneath.\u201d
\n20.a. LXX here has \u03c0\u03c1\u1f78\u03c2 \u03bd\u03cc\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u201cfacing south.\u201d
\n22.a. \u05d9\u05e8\u05db\u05ea\u05d9 \u05d4\u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05db\u05df is, lit., \u201cthe recesses of the Tabernacle.\u201d The reference here is to the closed end opposite the entrance, the short side terminating the two long sides.
\n23.a. The Cairo Geniza fragment has \u05d0\u05d3\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd \u201cpedestals.\u201d
\n24.a. \u05ea\u05de\u05d9\u05dd \u201cperfection, wholeness,\u201d signifying the joining or dovetailing of the two frames at each corner for added strength. SamPent here has \u05ea\u05d0\u05de\u05d9\u05dd \u201cdoubled\u201d again; cf. LXX, Tg. Onk. Cassuto, 356, thinks the two terms are an intentional word-play.
\n24.b. MT \u05d0\u05dc\u05be\u05d4\u05d8\u05d3\u05e2\u05ea \u05d4\u05d0\u05d7\u05ea \u201ctoward the one ring,\u201d apparently a means of binding the supports together (though cf. Kennedy, Dictionary, 661, with an illustration).
\n24.c. MT \u05db\u05df \u05d9\u05d4\u05d9\u05d4 \u05dc\u05e9\u05c1\u05e0\u05d9\u05d4\u05dd \u201cthus it is for the two of them.\u201d LXX \u03bf\u03bd\u0313\u0301\u03c4\u03c9\u03c2 \u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u03ae\u03c3\u03b5\u03b9\u03c4 \u201cthus you are to make.\u201d
\n25.a. \u05d5\u05d4\u05d9\u05d5 \u201cand they are,\u201d i.e., the sum total of the six supports of the end wall plus the two bracing corner supports.
\n25.b. This phrase \u201ctwo \u2026 support\u201d is absent from SamPent.
\n29.a. MT has \u05d5\u05d0\u05ea\u05be\u05d8\u05d3\u05e2\u05ea\u05d9\u05d4\u05dd \u05ea\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d4 \u05d6\u05d4\u05d3 \u201cand their rings you are to make gold.\u201d
\n29.b. See n. 25:27.b.
\n31.a. See n. 1.b.
\n31.b. \u05d9\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d4 \u201che is to make,\u201d apparently in reference to the artisan who will do the work, Bezalel or Oholiab or those working under their supervision (Exod 31:1\u201311; 35:30\u201336:1). LXX has the usual \u201cyou,\u201d as do Syr., Cairo Geniza fragment.
\n32.a. MT \u05d5\u05e0\u05ea\u05ea\u05d4 \u05d0\u05ea\u05d4 \u05e2\u05dc \u201cYou are to give it upon.\u2026\u201d
\n33.a. \u05d4\u05e7\u05e8\u05e1\u05d9\u05dd are the golden fasteners of v 6, by which the two sets of curtains are joined to make the long rectangle of the Tabernacle. LXX reads \u1f10\u03c0\u1f76 \u03c4\u03bf\u1f7a\u03c2 \u03c3\u03c4\u03cd\u03bb\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 \u201conto the pillars,\u201d the \u201csupports\u201d of the translation above.
\n33.b. \u05e9\u05c2\u05de\u05d4 \u05de\u05d3\u05d9\u05ea \u05dc\u05e4\u05e8\u05db\u05ea \u201ctherewards within as regards the Veil.\u201d
\n34.a. LXX has Veil instead of Ark-Cover here, and reads \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u03ba\u03b1\u03bb\u03cd\u03c8\u03b5\u03b9\u03c2 \u03c4\u1ff7 \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u03c0\u03b5\u03c4\u03ac\u03c3\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03b9 \u201cYou are to cover up (veil) with the Veil.\u2026\u201d
\n35.a. Following this verse, SamPent locates MT\u2019s section on the altar of the special-formula incense, Exod 30:1\u201310.
\n36.a. \u05de\u05b7\u05e2\u05b2\u05e9\u05b6\u05c2\u05d4 \u05e8\u05b9\u05e7\u05b5\u05dd refers to artistic variegation of colors, probably into specific patterns.
\n37.a. SamPent has \u05d6\u05d4\u05d3 \u05d8\u05d4\u05d5\u05e8 \u201cpure gold.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139. Gooding (Tabernacle 3\u20134, 19\u201328) has made a study of the LXX translation of Exodus and has given a detailed analysis of the P sections in particular. He has concluded that LXX has followed MT \u201cfairly closely\u201d in rendering chaps. 25\u201331, apart from some inconsistency and ambiguity in the translation of technical terms. In chaps. 35\u201340, by contrast, LXX presents a sequence widely divergent from that of MT, a fact that Gooding (78\u2013101) attributes not to a different translation or to a different Urtext, but to the translator\u2019s attempt \u201cto improve and complete the original translation.\u201d Gooding (52\u201359) holds chap. 38 to be an exception to his assessment and proposes that it is either a translation from a separate hand or has been extensively reworked by an editor.
\nComment
\nThe study of the P account of the Tabernacle in Exod 26 and 36 and in related references has frequently been preoccuppied with an insoluble question: whether the Tabernacle, which is described in quite specific but still sometimes obscure detail, is in any sense an historical or \u201creal\u201d object. The single most influential answer to this question to date has been that of Wellhausen (Prolegomena, 38\u201351), who for a whole array of reasons, chief among them the OT silence about the Tabernacle outside P and the implausibility of the construction and use of so ornate and elaborate a cultic sanctuary in the wilderness, argued that the Tabernacle never existed, and that what the Priestly writers have given us in Exodus is a retrogression, perhaps even with some idealization, of the Solomonic Temple. This view was taken up and echoed by so large and continuing an array of scholars that it took on, for many years, the aura of a regnant hypothesis (cf., e.g., Kennedy, Dictionary, 666; Benzinger, Encyclopedia, 1474; Driver, 430\u201332; Noth, 201, 211\u201314; Clements, God and Temple, 114\u201316).
\nIncreasingly, however, this view has been qualified, as earlier dates have been proposed for P (see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139) and as the other OT \u201ctents\u201d associated with Yahweh\u2019s Presence have been studied with greater care, both in the light of revised opinions about the provenance and the sources of P and also following traditio-historical rather than literary-critical techniques. In 1947, Cross (BAR 1:209\u201328) proposed an evolving tent tradition, extending from a desert tent through \u201cDavid\u2019s \u2018Tent of Yahweh\u2019 \u201d to a \u201cschematic and ideal\u201d culmination in the Priestly Tabernacle. In 1962, Haran (JBL 81 [1962] 17\u201324) suggested that P\u2019s presentation of the Tabernacle is \u201ca pre-Jerusalemite shrine legend now extant only in its Jerusalemite dress.\u201d This \u201cshrine legend,\u201d in Haran\u2019s (20\u201322) view, is to be linked to Shiloh, to which P thought the Sinai Tabernacle, constructed on Yahweh\u2019s instructions, had been brought at the time of the conquest of Canaan. Also in 1962, Davies (\u201cTabernacle,\u201d IDB 4:502\u20136) suggested that the E tradition of a wilderness tent of meeting became the basis for P\u2019s elaborate conception, with augmentation en route by Shiloh and Davidic traditions (cf. Rabe, JNES 25 [1966] 132\u201333). In 1968, Fretheim (VT 18 [1968] 313\u201329) argued that P was opposed to any such permanent and royally sponsored structure as the Temple built by Solomon and thus proposed the elaborate and portable Tabernacle, more befitting \u201ctrue Yahwism,\u201d and in reflection of a lengthy pro-tent tradition, as an argument against the rebuilding of a fixed structure in the postexilic period.
\nThe proposal of some historical base or bases for the Tabernacle continues, and no one has taken up the cause more often or more thoroughly than Haran, who brought together in 1978 in revised form many of his earlier articles, reasserting (Temples, 197\u201398) that the Priestly writers, while projecting \u201cutopian views,\u201d \u201cundoubtedly believed in the reality of the subject-matter transmitted through them\u201d and forwarded a \u201ctemple legend\u201d whose \u201cabsolute authenticity\u201d they took for granted. For Haran, this \u201clegend\u201d remains Shiloh (Temples, 198\u2013204), a connection for which hard evidence is very scarce. Such detailed linkages apart, however, the connection of P\u2019s Tabernacle with early and historical rootage has now been solidly established. While few scholars would suggest, as Knight (161) does, that the Tabernacle as P describes it actually existed in the wilderness, there is an increasing affirmation of the antiquity of a tent symbolizing the Presence of Yahweh among his covenant people.
\nIt is precisely at this point\u2014the meaning of the Tabernacle and the various OT tents of Yahweh\u2014that the work most valuable for understanding the OT is to be done. The historicity of the Tabernacle that P describes, or the design of the tent of Moses\u2019 day, if there was one, or the permanence of the structure at Shiloh, or the decoration of David\u2019s tent for the Ark, or even an exact reconstruction of the P Tabernacle and how it worked are not the central issue of the OT presentation of the Tabernacle. However much these considerations may be of help in illumining that presentation, they yet remain secondary to its essential point, an essential point made unmistakably clear by Exod 25\u201331 and 35\u201340 considered as a kind of parallel and complementary whole and by the location of these units in the larger Exodus narrative, the major purpose of which both focuses and is enhanced by the essential point of the two P sections. Haran\u2019s (Bib 50 [1969] 251\u201367) trenchant criticism of Clements\u2019s God and Temple has made the point that the Temple built by Solomon in Jerusalem was a continuation of longstanding tradition, not a departure from it, as also were the interpretations of both P and D regarding the reality of Yahweh\u2019s Presence in the midst of Israel. This tradition, in its fundamental assertion, had to do with just that reality which was continually being depicted and symbolized in narrative as in royal and priestly and prophetic and sapiential material. Haran is entirely correct in his insistence that the varying expressions of the theology of Yahweh\u2019s Presence, from period to period, as from circle to circle within the given periods, were inter-complementary and not inter-conflictory.
\nThis point may be pressed still further, to suggest that the P descriptions of the Tabernacle in Exodus, along with all the descriptions that accompany them, are a kind of gathering and culmination of symbolic expressions of Yahweh\u2019s Presence, drawing on a theological assertion identified especially with Sinai, but clearly present also in the stories of the fathers. The symbols so glorified and elaborated by P, from the Ark to the priestly vestments, and above all the Tabernacle, are not to be understood as P\u2019s own invention, whether real objects or fantastic ones are supposed, but as an actual part of a continuing and ever-evolving confession, at every level of Israel\u2019s theological life and in every period of Israel\u2019s existence, of the reality of Yahweh\u2019s Presence.
\nThis is made clear not only by the description of the objects themselves, and by their function as suggested by such description, but also by the insertion of this description into the Exodus narrative, and at the particular points at which the insertion has been made. That narrative is above all a narrative of Yahweh\u2019s Presence, a coming and calling Presence that proves himself repeatedly in mighty deed, in rescue, in guidance, in provision, and comes climactically at Sinai to invite a response from Israel to all that he is and all that he does. Such a narrative could hardly incorporate so extensive a sequence of materials as that presented by Exod 25\u201331 and 35\u201340 if they dealt with themes contrary to its fundamental emphasis. The inclusion of this P material is another demonstration of the thematic continuity manifested to a lesser degree by the application and expansion of the ten commandments by the Book of the Covenant.
\nEven the placement of the P material is a guide to its application: the instructions for the media of worship come immediately after Israel responds to the invitation to covenant relationship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence; and they are carried out immediately after an unthinkable threat of the withdrawal of the gift of Yahweh\u2019s Presence is averted by the renewal of the covenant relationship in his Presence. No other location, in Exodus or in the OT, would provide a more intimate connection with the very theme which is the preoccupation also of the P material.
\nThus once again it is Exodus as a whole, Exodus in the form in which we have received it, that provides the important key by which one part of the book, the Priestly material of chaps. 25\u201331, and in particular the description of the Tabernacle in chap. 26, is to be understood. Whatever its origins, how much of it ever existed and when, however it actually may have looked and worked if it did exist, the primary significance of the Tabernacle is what it suggests to us about the theology of Yahweh\u2019s Presence. For that theology, P\u2019s Tabernacle description is nothing less than a cumulative archive.
\n1\u20136 The Tabernacle was to be made of ten curtains woven of the expensive fabric and yams specified in 25:4 (see above) and joined together to form two sets of five curtains each. These two sets were then to be connected by means of fifty loops on each end-curtain and fifty golden fasteners to form a continuous length approximately sixty feet long (end to end) and forty-two feet high (top to bottom). Onto each of these curtains cherubs were to be embroidered, with great care and artistic skill.
\n7\u201314 To protect this first expensive and beautifully fashioned set of curtains, an additional set of curtains and two covers were to be made. The curtains were to be made of cured but untanned goatskins, with the hair still in place (so \u05e2\u05d6\u05d9\u05dd), and were to consist of two sets of curtains, one made of five curtains joined together and one made of six curtains joined together, the two sets connected by means of one hundred loops and fifty copper fasteners to form a continuous length approximately sixty-six feet long (end to end) and forty-five feet high (top to bottom). This length of curtains was large enough to shelter the Tabernacle proper from top to bottom with enough additional height to extend beyond the Tabernacle curtains and enough additional length to provide protective material at both the front and the back of the Tabernacle.
\nTwo further covers were to be fashioned to protect the two sets of curtains: a cover of tanned rams\u2019 hides and a cover of sea-cows\u2019 hides, apparently arranged in that sequence. The fabric of the finished Tabernacle was thus to consist of four layers: an inner set of tent-curtains of fine cloth; an outer set of tent-curtains of cured goatskins with the hair still in place, six feet longer and three feet higher than the first set, to afford a protective overlap; an inner cover of tanned rams\u2019 hides; and an outer cover of sea-cows\u2019 hides.
\n15\u201325 These curtains and covers, which enclosed the Holy Space and the Holiest Space and protected the special objects within that space, were to be held in place by a series of upright supports anchored in pedestals of silver and bound together by a series of cross-members and two special corner supports. The supports and the cross-members were to be made of acacia, and overlaid with gold; the pedestals were to be made of silver. The standing supports were to be 15\u00b4 high and 2\u00bc\u00b4 wide, and each was to be supported by two silver pedestals, one for each of its \u05d9\u05d3\u05d5\u05ea, the side-braces that formed the length of the upright support, which were inserted into the silver pedestals, and were arranged touching, each one, the side-brace of the next upright frame. These supports, forty-eight in number, were arranged twenty plus eight plus twenty, to give a frame-work of three sides, 45\u00b4 X 18\u00b4 X 45\u00b4, oriented with the \u201copen\u201d or supportless side towards the east. The two corner frames were doubled at the bottom but joined at the top, to form a kind of brace at the points where the strain would be greatest.
\n26\u201330 These upright supports were to be held in place by a series of fifteen cross-members, five for each of the three \u201cclosed\u201d sides of the Tabernacle. These cross-members were attached to the upright supports by rings of gold, though at just what points, apart from a \u201cmiddle cross-member, at the mid-point of the supports,\u201d the text does not specify. This arrangement of course was to facilitate portability: the upright supports were light but strong and created a framework over which the curtains embroidered with cherubim could be hung and through which they could be seen, as in a sequence of frames of gold. The supports, in turn, were held rigid by the series of silver pedestals double their number, by the fifteen cross-members attached to them by golden rings, and by the two specially constructed corner supports. The entire structure could thus be struck and packed for transportation or reassembled at a new location in a relatively short period of time.
\nThis summary of details, though based on the text, is still theoretical, not only because some details of the construction of the Tabernacle are left unmentioned, but also because our understanding of such technical terms as \u05e7\u05e8\u05e9\u05c1\u05d9\u05dd \u201csupports,\u201d \u05d9\u05d3\u05d5\u05ea \u201cbraces,\u201d \u05d5\u05d5\u05d9\u05dd \u201chooks,\u201d and \u05d3\u05e8\u05d9\u05d7\u05dd \u201ccross-members\u201d is limited at best (cf. the discussions of Kennedy, Dictionary, 658\u201362; Davies, \u201cTabernacle,\u201d IDB 4:498\u2013502; Haran, Temples, 149\u201374; and the confusion of LXX concerning the translation of such terms, Gooding, Tabernacle 20\u201328). No proposed reconstruction or artist\u2019s sketch or model of the Tabernacle to date can be accepted fully, simply because the information available is too incomplete and ambiguous, in spite of its extent. We cannot even be sure whether this inexactitude is owing to a lack of familiarity, to overfamiliarity, or to the fantastic projection of a final form that never really existed.
\n31\u201335 The space formed by the Tabernacle, approximately 810 square feet, 34,020 cubic feet, was to be further subdivided by a veil matching the inner curtains in material and pattern, and apparently at a point 30\u00b4, or twenty cubits, from the opening of the Tabernacle, a location determined by the specification that the veil be hung beneath the fasteners that joined together the two sets of five curtains that formed the inner \u201ctent\u201d of the Tabernacle (cf. v 6). This created a smaller space 10 X 10 X 10 cubits, approximately 15\u00b4 X 15\u00b4 X 15\u00b4, and a larger space 20 X 10 X 10 cubits, approximately 30\u00b4 X 15\u00b4 X 15\u00b4. The smaller space was to be designated the Holiest Space (\u05e7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1 \u05d4\u05e7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1\u05d9\u05dd \u201cthe Holy of Holies\u201d), and the Ark with its special Cover (see Comment on 25:10\u201322) was to be placed there. The larger space was to be designated the Holy Space, and there the Table and the Lampstand were to be placed, on the south and north sides of the Tabernacle respectively, and opposite each other.
\n36\u201337 The open east end of the Tabernacle was to be closed by a Screen, to be made of the same material as the inner curtains and the Veil, but embroidered in multicolored patterns rather than with cherubs. This Screen was to be hung by golden hooks onto five columns of acacia overlaid with gold, but since these columns were apparently open to the outer court, which is not shielded from view by the rams\u2019 hide and sea-cows\u2019 hide covers, their five pedestals were to be made of copper, like the various implements of the outer court (cf. 27:1\u20138, 10; 30:17\u201318). As Haran has shown (Temples, 158\u201365), there is a \u201cmaterial gradation\u201d from more to less precious materials the greater the distance from the Holiest Space and the Holy Space.
\nExplanation
\nThe Tabernacle is at the center of the instructions concerning the media of worship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence, precisely because it houses the Ark and the Ark-Cover, which are the symbol par excellence of Yahweh\u2019s Presence in Israel\u2019s midst and so, logically, the center and the beginning point of the instructions. This connection is made unmistakably clear not only by the provision of the Holiest Space for the Ark and the Ark-Cover alone, but also by the repetition on the veil and the inner curtains of the Tabernacle of the cherub motif (see Comment on 25:17\u201322) and the use only of gold and the richest of the decorative fabrics within the Tabernacle itself.
\nParalleling this lavish designation of the center of Yahweh\u2019s Presence, however, there is a complementary, almost contradictory emphasis upon the temporary nature of Yahweh\u2019s settlement. Just as the Ark and the Ark-Cover are made and kept portable by the presence of lifting\/carrying poles kept permanently in place, so the Tabernacle is made up of smaller parts designed for ready disassembly and reassembly. Its supporting framework is made up of twenty-eight upright frames, set up in fifty-six pedestals, and made rigid by fifteen cross-members inserted through rings. Its two layers of curtains are held together by fifty fasteners each, its protective covers are readily removable, and its Veil and its Screen are suspended by hooks from columns mounted in detachable pedestals. The emphasis in every case is on portability, and the point, in sum and repeatedly, is that Yahweh\u2019s Presence, so precisely symbolized by gradations of ever more opulent materials, is a Presence on the move, a Presence that cannot be suggested by a stationary location, a Presence that Israel\u2019s worship and so also Israel must be prepared to follow to a new place at a moment\u2019s notice.
\nThe Instructions for the Altar (27:1\u20138)
\nParallel Verses
\n38:1\u20137
\nBibliography
\nAharoni, Y. \u201cArad: Its Inscriptions and Temple.\u201d BA 31 (1968) 2\u201332. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cThe Horned Altar of Beer-sheba.\u201d BA (1974) 2\u20136. Amiran, R. and Y. Aharoni. Ancient Arad. Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, catalogue no. 32, 1967. Gressmann, H. Die Ausgrabungen in Pal\u00e4stina und das Alte Testament. T\u00fcbingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1908. Kennedy, A. R. S. \u201cTabernacle.\u201d A Dictionary of the Bible. J. Hastings, ed. New York: Charles Scribner\u2019s Sons, 1902. 4:653\u201368. Lucas, A. Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries. 3d ed. rev. London: Edward Arnold & Co., 1948.
\nTranslation
\n1 \u201cYou are to make the Altar of acacia lumber, five cubits in length and five cubits in width: the Altar is to be square, and three cubits in height. 2 You are to make horns for it, one on each of its corners: its horns are to be an integral part of it, and you are to overlay it with copper. 3 You are to make pots for its ashes, and cleaning shovels, and dashing-basins, and pronged-forks, and fire-holders for it. You are to make all of its equipment of copper. 4 You are to make for it a grate, a strainer made of copper, and you are to make the strainer with four rings of copper, one upon each of its four corners, 5 and to place it below the rim of the Altar downwards: the strainer is to extend half the height of the altar. 6 You are to make carrying-poles for the Altar, carrying-poles of acacia lumber, and you are to overlay them with copper. 7 These carrying-poles are to be thrust through the rings, to be the carrying-poles on the two sides of the Altar when it is lifted. 8 You are to make the Altar hollow, of planks; exactly as he has shown you on the mountain, so they are to make it.\u201d
\nNotes
\n1.a. SamPent and LXX have \u201can altar.\u201d
\n2.a. LXX reads \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03ac \u201cthem.\u201d
\n3.a. \u05dc\u05b0\u05d3\u05b7\u05e9\u05bc\u05c1\u05e0\u05d5\u05b9, a piel inf constr from \u05d3\u05e9\u05c1\u05df \u201cbe fat,\u201d is apparently a reference to the greasy ash deposited from burning fat on the altar. LXX has \u03c3\u03c4\u03b5\u03c6\u03ac\u03b7\u03bd \u03c4\u1ff7 \u03c6\u03c5\u03c3\u03b9\u03b1\u03c3\u03c4\u03b7\u03c1\u03af\u1ff3 \u201ca brim, edging for the altar\u201d instead of \u201cpots for its ashes.\u201d Cf. BDB, 206.
\n3.b. \u05d9\u05e2 is from \u05d9\u05e2\u05d4 \u201cto sweep up to take away,\u201d hence \u201ccleaning-shovel.\u201d Cf. BDB, 418.
\n3.c. A \u05de\u05d6\u05d3\u05e7 is a bowl or basin designed specifically for the dashing or throwing of liquids. BDB, 284.
\n3.d. \u05de\u05d6\u05dc\u05d2\u05ea were apparently long probe-forks used to move meat-sacrifices on the Altar. Cf. \u05de\u05d6\u05dc\u05d2, 1 Sam 2:13\u201314.
\n4.a. \u05e8\u05e9\u05c1\u05ea \u201cnet,\u201d here a kind of sieve or strainer, from \u05d9\u05e8\u05e9\u05c1 \u201ctake possession of, inherit.\u201d Its function was to catch and hold the coals of fire and any unconsumed pieces of the sacrificial offerings, but to allow ashes and grease to fall through and air to enter from the bottom.
\n4.b. LXX reads \u03c4\u1fc7 \u1f10\u03c3\u03c7\u03ac\u03c1\u1fb3 \u201cthe grate\u201d here.
\n4.c. \u201cCorner\u201d is used to translate \u05e7\u05e6\u05d4 here and \u05e4\u05e0\u05d4 in v 2. The difference between the two terms, in this context, is slight: \u05e4\u05e6\u05d4 lit. means \u201cextremity,\u201d as the border of a territory or the end of a staff (BDB, 892); \u05e4\u05e0\u05d4 means \u201ccorner\u201d of something squared or presenting angles (BDB, 819).
\n5.a. LXX has \u03b1\u1fe6\u03c4\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 \u201cthem\u201d in apparent reference to the rings\u2014cf. Vg MT refers to the feminine singular \u05e8\u05e9\u05c1\u05ea \u201cstrainer.\u201d
\n5.b. \u05d5\u05d4\u05d9\u05ea\u05d4 \u05d4\u05e8\u05e9\u05c1\u05ea \u05e2\u05d3 \u05ea\u05e6\u05d9 \u05d4\u05e0\u05d6\u05d3\u05ea lit., \u201cand the strainer is to be to a point half of the Altar.\u201d
\n7.a. \u05d5\u05b0\u05d4\u05d5\u05bc\u05d1\u05b8\u05d0 is 3d masc. sg hoph pf; SamPent, LXX, Vg, Syr., Tg. Onk. have the equivalent of 2d masc. sg hiph pf, \u201cand you are to thrust.\u201d
\n8.a. MT has \u201cit.\u201d Altar, the clear antecedent, is used above.
\n8.b. This verse has the appearance of an explanatory addition, one prompted perhaps by the ambiguity of the description of the Altar.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139
\nComment
\nThe instructions for the construction of the Altar are in some ways the most ambiguous of all the instructions of the P sections. While the size of the Altar is given precisely and its accessories are carefully listed (our limitation here is understanding technical terminology), the exact construction of the Altar itself is far from clear. As a result, a number of interpretations of these verses have been given, and the most that can be said of them, the one below included, is that they are reflective guesses.
\n1\u20133 The Altar was to be made of acacia wood overlaid with copper, an instruction that is clear enough, but still a bit of a puzzle both because of the conflicting directions given in Exod 20:24\u201326 and also because of the practical difficulty of burning sacrifices on a wooden Altar, even one sheathed in copper. The size of the Altar is unambiguous: it was to be approximately 7\u00bd\u00b4 square and 4\u00bd\u00b4 tall. The Altar was to have \u05e7\u05e8\u05e0\u05d5\u05ea \u201chorns,\u201d one at each of its four corners. Speculation about the exact significance of these horns continues, since the OT nowhere makes any statement about their meaning, but their appearance has been clarified by the discovery of a horned altar (disassembled) at Beersheba (Aharoni, BA 37 [1974] 2\u20136). The Beersheba altar, like the one described in these verses, violates the prohibition of Exod 20:24\u201326 not only in the use of dressed stone but also in the incision into one of its stones of \u201ca twisting snake.\u201d An altar made of undressed stones and earth, though covered with plaster, was discovered at Arad; its dimensions are exactly those of v 1, and Aharoni has speculated that original horns, made of clay and plaster, may have been broken off (BA 37 [1974] 2; see also BA 31 [1968] 19, 21, and Amiran and Aharoni, Ancient Arad, 25). The earlier view that these horns represented the horns of animals sacrificed (Driver, 292) has been supplemented by the suggestion (Gressmann, Ausgrabungen, 27\u201328) that they represented \u05de\u05e6\u05d1\u05d5\u05ea \u201cpillars\u201d (see Comment on 24:3\u20134). Whatever the case, they were the holiest part of the Altar (Exod 29:10\u201312; Lev 4:18\u201321; 1 Kgs 2:28\u201334). The accessories for the Altar, all to be made of copper, included a pot or pail for ash removal, along with a special shovel for that purpose, basins for dashing liquids, pronged forks for the manipulation of the meat and fat being burned, and special pans to hold and transfer coals of fire.
\n4\u20138 The most obscure detail of the Altar\u2019s structure and function is the grate, which has been understood as a kind of trellis-work base (so Kennedy, Dictionary, 657\u201358) that served in part as a step (McNeile, 174) or formed a kind of \u201cCollar\u201d (Good, \u201cGrating,\u201d IDB 2:470) with only an ornamental purpose (Cassuto, 363\u201364). Since the altar was only 4\u00bd\u00b4 high, however, and since the grate extended downward for half of this height, such a step would have been both unnecessary and a cumbrance, as it would have meant that the top of the Altar would have been below the waist of even a short priest standing on the step. The description of the grate as \u05e8\u05e9\u05c1\u05ea a \u201cstrainer\u201d or \u201cnetwork\u201d of copper may just as easily be taken as suggesting that the grate was inside the Altar, not outside of it, and that it functioned as both a holder for the Altar fire (the melting-point of copper is 1,083\u00b0 C; cf. Lucas, Egyptian Materials, 243\u201344) and a kind of strainer that would permit ashes and grease to fall to the bottom of the Altar, while holding both the fire and anything placed upon it in the top half of the Altar. This would create the draft necessary for a hot fire, yet protect the wooden Altar and its copper overlay from a direct exposure to the fire itself.
\nThe grate\/strainer is to be placed under the rim (presumably at the top of the Altar) downwards half the height of the Altar, and thus the four rings by which the Altar was to be lifted and carried are attached to the four corners of the grate\/strainer, which could more easily bear the Altar\u2019s weight than could its plank sides. Indeed, this structure may have necessitated the assurance of the summary statement of v 8 that the Altar was hollow, a 7\u00bd\u00b4 square of copper-sheathed planking. No bottom is mentioned, and the bottom of the Altar was probably left open to facilitate the cleaning, for which the tools of v 3 are specified. The pronouns of v 8b refer, in order, to Yahweh (\u201che\u201d), Moses (\u201cyou\u201d), and Israel or Israel\u2019s artisans (\u201cthey\u201d); this stylistic shift further suggests that this verse may be an addition.
\nExplanation
\nThe Altar is a testimony of the attention to detail given worship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence. That worship was to be carefully planned and deliberately managed, precisely arranged and properly carried out. Once again, the movement of Yahweh\u2019s Presence is stressed: the altar is to be made portable. To such extent is this so that some interpreters have questioned whether an altar would even be usable unless filled with dirt or stones. The materials to be used in the altar and its accessories, finally, reflect the distance at which it is to be placed from the central symbol and the holiest space of Yahweh\u2019s Presence.
\nThe Instructions for the Tabernacle Court (27:9\u201319)
\nParallel Verses:
\n38:9\u201320
\nBibliography
\nKennedy, A. R. S. \u201cTabernacle. A Dictionary of the Bible. J. Hastings, ed. New York: Charles Scribner\u2019s Sons. 4:653\u201368.
\nTranslation
\n9 \u201cYou are to make the Courtyard of the Tabernacle: for the Negev side, facing south, there are to be draperies of woven fine linen for the Courtyard, one hundred cubits in length for that one side. 10 They are to have twenty columns and twenty pedestals of copper; the hooks of the columns and their rings are to be silver. 11 So also for the length of the north side, draperies a hundred cubits long, and twenty columns and twenty pedestals of copper, with the hooks of the columns and their rings of silver. 12 The width of the Courtyard on the west side is to be fifty cubits\u2019 length of draperies, with ten columns and ten pedestals, 13 and the width of the Courtyard on the east side, toward the sunrise, is to be fifty cubits. 14 There are to be fifteen cubits\u2019 length of draperies on one side of the entrance, with three columns and three pedestals, 15 and fifteen cubits\u2019 length of draperies on the other side of the entrance, with three columns and three pedestals. 16 For the entrance of the Courtyard there is to be a screen twenty cubits across, of violet yarn and purple yarn and scarlet yarn and woven fine linen, embroidered in variegated patterns, with four columns and four pedestals for it.
\n17 \u201cAll the columns all around the Courtyard are to have silver rings and silver hooks; their pedestals are to be of copper. 18 The Courtyard is to be a hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide at each end, and five cubits high, bordered by woven fine linen and copper pedestals. 19 All the tools of the Tabernacle, whatever the job, and also its anchor-pegs and all the anchor-pegs of the Courtyard, are to be of copper.
\nNotes
\n10.a. According to Exod 38:19, these things are silver overlay, not solid silver.
\n11.a. LXX omits \u201cthe length of.\u201d
\n11.b. MT has simply \u05e7\u05dc\u05e2\u05d9\u05dd \u05de\u05d0\u05d4 \u05d0\u05e8\u05da \u201cdraperies a hundred long.\u201d SamPent has \u05d1\u05d0\u05de\u05d4 \u201cin the cubit\u201d instead of \u05d0\u05e8\u05da \u201clong.\u201d LXX has \u03c0\u03b7\u03c7\u1ff6\u03bd \u03bc\u1fc6\u03ba\u03bf\u03c2 \u201ca hundred cubits long.\u201d \u201cCubit\u201d is added above for clarity.
\n14.a. MT has simply \u05d5\u05d7\u05de\u05e9\u05c1 \u05e2\u05e9\u05bc\u05c2\u05e8\u05d4 \u05d0\u05de\u05d4 \u05e7\u05dc\u05e2\u05d9\u05dd \u201cfifteen cubits of draperies\u201d; LXX adds \u1f55\u03c8\u03bf\u03c2 \u201cheight.\u201d
\n14.b. \u05dc\u05db\u05ea\u05e3 \u201cfor the shoulder\u201d is a reference to the draperies extending from the corner to the opening on the east side of the Courtyard; v 15 refers to the other \u201cshoulder\u201d of this entrance. \u05dc\u05db\u05ea\u05e3 \u2026 \u05d5\u05dc\u05db\u05ea\u05e3 is thus translated \u201con the one side of the entrance \u2026 on the other side of the entrance.
\n16.a. \u05dc\u05e9\u05c1\u05e2\u05e8 \u201cgate, entryway,\u201d translated \u201centrance\u201d in sequence to vv 14\u201315.
\n16.b. MT has put the pl. pronom suff, \u05e2\u05de\u05d3\u05d9\u05d4\u05dd \u05d0\u05e8\u05d1\u05e2\u05d4 \u05d5\u05d0\u05e0\u05d9\u05d4\u05dd \u05d0\u05e8\u05d1\u05e2\u05d4 \u201ctheir four columns and their four pillars.\u201d Cassuto (366) thinks the first \u201ctheir\u201d refers to the twenty cubits (an unlikely explanation) or is a slip (a better explanation), and the second \u201ctheir\u201d to the four columns.
\n18.a. MT has \u05d7\u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05d9\u05dd \u05d1\u05d7\u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05d9\u05dd \u201cfifty with, alongside fifty.\u201d SamPent has \u201ccubits\u201d instead of the second \u201cfifty.\u201d
\n18.b. MT has simply \u05d5\u05d0\u05d3\u05e0\u05d9\u05d4\u05dd \u2026 \u05de\u05e9\u05d6\u05e8 woven \u2026 pedestals\u201d; \u201cbordered by\u201d is added above for clarity.
\n19.a. SamPent has \u05d5\u05e2\u05e9\u05d9\u05ea \u05d0\u05ea \u05db\u05dc \u201cAnd you are to make all\u201d at the beginning of this verse.
\n19.b. \u05db\u05dc\u05d9 is rendered \u201ctools\u201d here (as in 1 Kgs 6:7), since the \u201cvessels\u201d or \u201cequipment\u201d (cf. 25:9, 29) of the inner service of the Tabernacle were to be made of pure gold.
\n19.c. \u05e2\u05d1\u05d3\u05ea\u05d5 \u201cits labor\u201d (Cairo Geniza: \u201ctheir labor\u201d), taken here to mean need of whatever kind in the placement, assembly, disassembly and transportation of the Tabernacle and its Courtyard.
\n19.d. A \u05d9\u05ea\u05d3 was a pin or peg used to anchor or secure anything, here the tent or its cover. Exod 35:18 and 39:40 refer also to the \u201cropes, cords\u201d used with these pegs. This phrase is missing from LXX.
\n19.e. SamPent adds here \u05d5\u05e2\u05e9\u05d9\u05ea \u05d1\u05d2\u05d3\u05d9 \u05ea\u05db\u05dc\u05ea \u05d5\u05d0\u05e8\u05d6\u05de\u05df \u05d5\u05ea\u05d5\u05dc\u05e2\u05ea \u05e9\u05e0\u05d9 \u05dc\u05e9\u05e8\u05ea \u05d1\u05d4\u05dd \u05d1\u05e7\u05d3\u05e9 \u201cand you are to make vestments (or coverings) of violet yarn and purple yarn and scarlet yarn for ministry in worship with them in the Holy Space.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139.
\nComment
\n9\u201316 The Courtyard that was to surround the Tabernacle and to separate it and the activities before it from the world outside was to be designated by draperies of woven fine linen suspended by hooks and rings of silver from columns of unspecified material (presumably acacia) set in pedestals of copper. This Courtyard was to be approximately 150\u00b4 across the south and north sides and 75\u00b4 across the west and east sides, thus comprising a total area of some 11,250 square feet. The entrance to the Courtyard was of course on the east side, paralleling the opening of the Tabernacle itself, and on that side, the draperies were to extend 22\u00bd\u00b4 in from the southeast and northeast corners respectively, with the resulting 30\u00b4 opening to be covered by a 30\u00b4 Screen made of the same material and apparently in the same pattern as the Screen covering the opening to the Tabernacle (Exod 26:36; see n. 26:36.a, and Comment above).
\nAltogether, fifty-six columns were to suspend the draperies, and four columns were to suspend the Screen. The arrangement of these sixty columns is not specified, nor is the placement of the Tabernacle within the Courtyard made clear. Cassuto (366\u201368) proposes that each corner had a post, which must be counted only once to give the specified number. Haran (Temples, 154\u201355; fig. 1, 152) suggests that the columns were placed every 2\u00bd cubits, \u201cin the middle of each imaginary space of five cubits.\u201d Haran also suggests (155), following rabbinic commentators, that the Tabernacle was located approximately 30\u00b4 from the western perimeter of the Courtyard, and 30\u00b4 from each of the two side perimeters to their respective sides of the Tabernacle (cf. Kennedy, Dictionary, 656\u201357). In the absence of any specification in the OT, any certainty is of course impossible.
\n17\u201319 The linen draperies that enclosed the Courtyard constituted an effective but entirely portable barrier to interference or distraction from outside the space set aside for special worship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence. Since the height of the Courtyard draperies was 7\u00bd\u00b4 and the height of the Tabernacle\u2019s upright supports was 15\u00b4, the draperies\u2019 purpose was not to block any view of the Tabernacle, or the view of anything outside the Courtyard taller than the draperies and their supporting columns, but to shut off the view at ground level. Indeed, a view from outside the Courtyard of the Tabernacle standing within the Courtyard, given what and whom it symbolized, was entirely desirable.
\nThe use of copper for the pedestals supporting the draperies and the Screen covering the entrance of the Courtyard is indicative, again, of the decreasing gradation of the special materials with an increasing distance from the Holy Space and the Holiest Space of Yahweh\u2019s Presence. This is the reason, also, for the use of copper for the anchor-pegs and the tools employed in the tasks of preparation, assembly and disassembly, packing and unpacking. These were all used outside the Tabernacle itself, and so were seen outside it; thus they did not need to be made of the gold reserved for every nonfabric object within the Tabernacle. The silver hooks and rings for the columns holding up the draperies and the Screen also belong, apparently, to what Haran (Temples, 164\u201365) has called the \u201cconcentric circles\u201d of diminishing holiness.
\nExplanation
\nOnce again, the Courtyard symbolizes both the movement of Yahweh\u2019s Presence and the uniqueness of the place where (as also of the people among whom) he chooses to settle, however temporarily. A deliberate tension is presented by these accounts, a tension between a Yahweh who may move at a moment\u2019s notice and a Yahweh whose Presence demands a sequence of special spaces set off by carefully prescribed patterns designated by a specific order of materials. All these materials are precious, but they suggest by their decreasing value the fact that anything (or anyone) must be better with increasing nearness to Yahweh\u2019s Presence. This lesson is not merely a lesson for worship: as the narrative of Exodus makes clear, it is what every lesson in worship is supposed to be, a lesson for the living of life.
\nThe Command for the Keeping of the Light (27:20\u201321)
\nParallel Verses:
\nLev 24:1\u20133
\nBibliography
\nLevine, B. A. \u201cThe Descriptive Tabernacle Texts of the Pentateuch.\u201d JAOS 85 (1965) 307\u201318.
\nTranslation
\n20 \u201cYou are to command the sons of Israel to obtain for you pure olive oil, pounded, not pressed, for the light, so that a lamp may be lit regularly. 21 In the Tent of Appointed Meeting, outside the Veil before the Testimony, Aaron is to see to it, along with his sons, from evening until morning in Yahweh\u2019s Presence. This is a perpetual requirement for all the generations of the sons of Israel.\u201d
\nNotes
\n20.a. \u05db\u05ea\u05d9\u05ea \u201cbeaten,\u201d refers to olive oil extracted by pounding the olives by hand as opposed to the much quicker and less thorough method of crushing them in an olive press.
\n20.b. \u05dc\u05d4\u05e2\u05dc\u05ea, lit., \u201cto raise, lift up\u201d the lamp, and so to cause it to give light. BDB, 749.
\n20.c. \u05ea\u05de\u05d9\u05d3 \u201ccontinually\u201d here means on a regular basis, each night, as v 21 shows.
\n21.a. \u05d9\u05e2\u05e8\u05df refers to Aaron \u201csetting in order, arranging\u201d the fueling, the trimming, and the lighting of the lamp.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139. These two verses, which are paralleled in Lev 24:1\u20133 but nowhere in Exodus, appear to be a bit out of place here, and some commentators have considered them an addition (so Galling, in Beer, 139; Noth, 217). Haran (Temples, 209, n. 6) considers these verses \u201cin about the right place,\u201d though he objects to the inclusion of Aaron\u2019s sons as \u201can erroneous insertion,\u201d a conclusion disputed in turn by Levine (JAOS 85 [1965] 311\u201312). If the verses are secondary to the Exodus narrative, they may have been attracted to their present location by the instructions that follow, dealing with the sacral vestments of Aaron and his sons. Cassuto (369\u201372) treats the two verses as the first of three commands to Moses introductory to the instructions for the sacral vestments, but 27:20\u201321 do not fit readily with 28:1\u20135, which are concerned with the sacral vestments as symbols of priestly authority and hence of Yahweh\u2019s Presence. The most logical explanation of the verses is that they are indeed additional to the original sequence of the P composite but are attracted there by their reference to a perpetual duty of Aaron and his sons. What this explanation does not tell us is why the verses were set here instead of farther along, after the instructions for the priests\u2019 ordination.
\nComment
\n20 The command for pure olive oil extracted by hand-pounding with a pestle in a mortar is consonant with the specification of only the best for use in Yahweh\u2019s Presence. Such oil gives off a bright light and almost no smoke, by contrast with pressed oil (cf. Gispen, 261\u201362). The reference to \u201cthe light\u201d (\u05de\u05d0\u05d5\u05e8) is apparently here a general one, even though \u05de\u05e0\u05e8\u05ea \u05d4\u05de\u05d0\u05d5\u05e8 in Exod 35:14 is a clear reference to the Lampstand; \u05e0\u05e8 may mean a (cf. Haran\u2019s view, Temples, 208, n. 4, that \u05e0\u05e8 is used here \u201cin a collective sense\u201d) lamp on the Lampstand or even somewhere else in the Holy Space.
\n21 Aaron is to attend to this light, and in due course his sons are also, and he is to \u201carrange\u201d or place it in the Holy Space, outside the Veil, in the Tabernacle, referred to here as elsewhere in P (according to BDB, 14, some 131 times) as \u05d0\u05d4\u05dc \u05de\u05d5\u05e2\u05d3, the \u201cTent of Appointed Meeting\u201d or the \u201cTent of Promised Presence.\u201d In Exod 39:32; 40:2, 6, 29, indeed, P uses the phrase \u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05db\u05df \u05d0\u05d4\u05dc \u05de\u05d5\u05e2\u05d3 \u201cTabernacle of the Tent of Appointed Meeting,\u201d a composite phrase that may reflect an attempt at consolidation (see below, on 33:7\u201311. The light is to be kept burning in Yahweh\u2019s Presence through the night, from evening until morning (cf. 1 Sam 3:3) and the command that it be so provided is a command in perpetuity, throughout Israel\u2019s generations.
\nExplanation
\nThe light burning through the night in Yahweh\u2019s Presence was to be only the best light that could be provided, because of its location. As such, it attested the importance of that location, even as it symbolized the Presence that made the location significant. The mention of Aaron and his sons as responsible for this light is a statement in support of Priestly authority.
\nThe Instructions for the Priests\u2019 Vestments (28:1\u201343)
\nParallel Verses:
\n39:1\u201331
\nBibliography
\nArnold, W. R. Ephod and Ark. HTS 3. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1917. Buck, A. De. \u201cLa Fleur au Front du Grand-Pr\u00eatre.\u201d OTS 9 (1951) 18\u201329. Chagall, M. and J. Leymarie. The Jerusalem Windows. New York: George Braziller, 1967. Elliger, K. \u201cEphod und Chosen.\u201d Festschrift Friedrich Baumg\u00e4rtel. EF 10. Erlangen: Universit\u00e4tsbund, 1959. 9\u201323. Also in VT 8 (1958) 19\u201335. Farrer, A. A Rebirth of Images. Boston: Beacon Press, 1963. Goodenough, E. R. By Light, Light. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1935. Haran, M. \u201cThe Form of the Ephod in the Biblical Sources,\u201d Tarbiz 24 (1955) 380\u201391. Lipi\u0144ski, E. \u201c\u02be\u0304Ur\u0304im and Tumm\u0131\u0304m.\u201d VT 20 (1970) 495\u201396. May, H. G. \u201cEphod and Ariel.\u201d AJSL 56 (1939) 44\u201369. Noth, M. \u201cThe Background of Judges 17\u201318.\u201d Israel\u2019s Prophetic Heritage. B. W. Anderson and W. Harrelson, eds. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962. 68\u201385. Reiner, E. \u201cFortune-Telling in Mesopotamia.\u201d JNES 19 (1960) 22\u201335. Robertson, E. \u201cThe \u201c\u02be\u016ar\u0304im and Tumm\u012bm; What Were They?\u201d VT 14 (1964) 67\u201374. Rowley, H. H. Worship in Ancient Israel. London: S.P.C.K., 1967.
\nTranslation
\n1 \u201cYou are to bring near to yourself from the midst of the sons of Israel, Aaron your brother, and his sons with him, to give priestly ministry to me: Aaron, and Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar (\u201cGod has helped\u201d) and Ithamar (\u201cDate-palm region\u201d), Aaron\u2019s sons. 2 You are to make sacral vestments for Aaron your brother, for splendor and for beauty. 3 You are to instruct all who have wise minds, whom I have filled with creative artistry, that they are to make Aaron\u2019s vestments, to set him apart to give priestly ministry to me. 4 These are the vestments they are to make: a Breastpiece, an Ephod, a Robe, a Tunic with a checked pattern, a Turban, and a Sash. So they are to make sacral vestments for Aaron your brother and for his sons who are to give priestly ministry to me: 5 they are to use gold, and violet yarn and purple yarn and scarlet yarn and fine linen.
\n6 \u201cThey are to make the Ephod of gold, violet yarn, purple yarn, scarlet yarn, and woven fine linen artistically embroidered. 7 It is to have two shoulder-pieces joined to its two sides, thus making one garment. 8 The elaborate belt of the Ephod, made as a part of it, is to be of identical workmanship, in gold, violet yarn, purple yarn, scarlet yarn, and woven fine linen. 9 You are to take two onyx-stones and engrave upon them the names of the sons of Israel, 10 six of their names on one stone and the six names remaining on the other stone, following the order in which they were born. 11 After the art of an engraver of gemstones, an inscriber of seals, you are to engrave the stones with the names of the sons of Israel; you are to mount them in a setting of gold filigree. 12 You are to place the two stones onto the shoulder-pieces of the Ephod as stones to call to mind the sons of Israel. Aaron is to carry their names into Yahweh\u2019s Presence on his two shoulders as a reminder. 13 You are to make gold filigree, 14 and two ropes of pure gold (you are to make these like tightly-twisted cordage) and you are to place the ropes of twisted cordage onto the filigree.
\n15 \u201cYou are to make a Breastpiece of Judgment; you are to make it artistically embroidered as the Ephod is: you are to make it of gold, violet yarn, purple yarn, scarlet yarn, and woven fine linen. 16 It is to be a square folded double, a span in length and a span in width. 17 You are to set in it an arrangement of gemstones, four rows of gemstones: the first row is to be a row of sardius, peridot, and emerald; 18 the second row, turquoise, lapis lazuli, and jasper; 19 the third row, jacinth, agate, and amethyst; 20 and the fourth row, green feldspar, sardonyx, and green jasper; filigrees of gold are to be their setting. 21 The stones are to be as the names of the sons of Israel, twelve in number, each with one name engraved as on a seal: they are to represent the twelve tribes.
\n22 \u201cYou are to make for the Breastpiece tightly twisted ropes, made like cordage of pure gold. 23 You are to make for the Breastpiece two rings upon the two edges of the Breastpiece. 24 You are to put the two twisted cords of gold into the two rings at the edges of the Breastpiece, 25 and the two ends of the two twisted cords you are to put onto the two filigrees and thus fasten them onto the shoulderpieces of the Ephod on its front.
\n26 \u201cYou are to make two rings of gold and place them onto the two edges of the Breastpiece, upon its inner side next to the Ephod. 27 You are to make two rings of gold and put them onto the two shoulderpieces of the Ephod at a lower point on its front, at a point just above where the elaborate belt of the Ephod is fastened. 28 Then they are to bind the Breastpiece by its rings to the rings of the Ephod with a twisted cord of violet yarn, so that the Breastpiece may hang snugly above the elaborate belt of the Ephod, and not fall forward from the Ephod.
\n29 \u201cThus is Aaron to carry the names of the sons of Israel on the Breastpiece of Judgment upon his heart whenever he enters the Holy Space, as a perpetual reminder in the Presence of Yahweh. 30 You are to put into the Breastpiece of Judgment the Urim and the Thummin, and they are to be upon Aaron\u2019s heart whenever he enters Yahweh\u2019s Presence. Thus is Aaron to carry the Judgment of the Sons of Israel upon his heart perpetually in the Presence of Yahweh.
\n31 \u201cYou are to make the Robe of the Ephod wholly of violet yarn. 32 In its center there is to be an opening for his head, and all around the opening there is to be woven reinforcement: this is to give it sturdiness, so that it cannot be ripped. 33 You are to make on its skirts pomegranates of violet yarn and purple yarn and scarlet yarn; these are to be all around its skirts, with bells of gold among them all around: 34 a golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, interspersed upon the skirts of the Robe, all around. 35 This robe is to be worn by Aaron when he ministers in worship, so that its sound can be heard when he enters and leaves the Holy Space in the Presence of Yahweh, so that he will not die.
\n36 \u201cYou are to make a Flower of pure gold, and you are to engrave upon it, like a seal-engraving, \u2018Set Apart for Yahweh.\u2019 37 You are to place it upon the Turban with a twisted cord of violet yarn: locate it on the front side of the Turban. 38 It is to be on the forehead of Aaron, and so Aaron is to carry the guilt of iniquity for the acts and implements set apart, that the sons of Israel have set apart as the free gifts of their set-apartness. It is to be upon his forehead perpetually to gain acceptance for them in Yahweh\u2019s Presence.
\n39 \u201cYou are to pattern-weave the Tunic with fine linen, and you are to make a Turban with fine linen, and you are to make a Sash, embroidered in variegated patterns. 40 For the sons of Aaron, you are to make tunics and you are to make for them sashes and high hats; you are to make them for splendor and for beauty. 41 You are to vest them, Aaron your brother and his sons along with him, and you are to anoint them and you are to ordain them, and you are to set them apart, so that they may give priestly ministry to me. 42 You are to make for them undergarments of plain linen to clothe naked genital areas; these undergarments are to extend from the waist to the thighs, 43 and they are to be on Aaron and on his sons when they enter the Tent of Appointed Meeting or when they approach the Altar to minister in worship in the Holy Space, that they may not carry guilt of iniquity and in consequence die. This is a requirement forever, for him and for his descendants after him.\u201d
\nNotes
\n1.a. \u05dc\u05b0\u05db\u05b7\u05d4\u05b2\u05e0\u05d5\u05b9, used also in vv 3 and 4, is a piel inf constr with a 3d masc. sing pronom suff, lit., \u201cto minister him as priest.\u201d SamPent and LXX omit the suff. The usage is curious (cf. Cassuto, 371) but apparently deliberate, and the following \u201cto me\u201d makes its meaning quite clear.
\n3.a. \u05ea\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8 \u201cyou are to speak,\u201d in this context \u201cinstruct, explain.\u201d
\n3.b. \u05e8\u05d5\u05d7 \u05d7\u05db\u05de\u05d4 \u201ca spirit of wisdom.\u201d
\n5.a. \u05dc\u05e7\u05d7, lit., \u201ctake,\u201d here in reference perhaps to receiving the offering brought by the people; translated \u201cuse\u201d in view of the larger context.
\n7.a. \u05d5\u05d7\u05d1\u05e8 \u201cand so it is joined united\u201d (SamPent has \u05d9\u05d7\u05d1\u05e8). The \u201ctwo sides\u201d or \u201ctwo edges\u201d of the Ephod are apparently its front and its back, described here as united by the two shoulder-straps, shown by v 12 to have a double purpose. Cf. Josephus, Antiq. III. 11.165\u201366.
\n8.a. \u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05e8 \u05e2\u05dc\u05d9\u05d5 \u201cthat is upon it.\u201d This \u201cbelt\u201d or \u201cband\u201d is used in the OT only in reference to the Ephod, and always in one of two phrases: \u05d7\u05e9\u05c1\u05d1 \u05d4\u05d0\u05e4\u05d5\u05d3 or, as here, \u05d7\u05e9\u05c1\u05d1 \u05d0\u05e4\u05d3\u05ea\u05d5.
\n9.a. LXX here adds \u03bb\u03af\u03b8\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 \u201cstones,\u201d reading \u201ctwo stones, onyx-stones.\u201d
\n12.a. \u05d0\u05d1\u05e0\u05d9 \u05d6\u05db\u05e8\u05df, lit., \u201cstones of remembrance.\u201d SamPent has \u05d0\u05d1\u05e0\u05d9 \u05d6\u05db\u05e8\u05df \u05d4\u05e0\u05d4 \u201cthey are stones of remembrance for\u201d; cf. LXX.
\n12.b. LXX has \u03c4\u1f70 \u1f40\u03bd\u0301\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1 \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u03c5\u1f31\u1ff6\u03bd \u0399\u03c3\u03c1\u03b1\u03b7\u03bb \u201cthe names of the sons of Israel.\u201d
\n14.a. These \u05e9\u05c1\u05e8\u05e9\u05c1\u05e8\u05ea are not link-chains, as the clause of instruction immediately following shows.
\n14.b. LXX adds a note on the attachment of these ropes to the front of the shoulderpieces.
\n20.a. The gemstones listed for the four rows of the Ephod are impossible to identify with certainty. The translation above generally follows the proposals of Garber and Funk, \u201cJewels and Precious Stones,\u201d IDB 2:900\u2013902. Each stone must have been clearly differentiated in its setting; clearly, no two mountings employed the same stone.
\n22.a. LXX has what is substantially MT\u2019s v 30 at this point, and the correspondence in versification through the rest of the chapter is varied accordingly. Indeed LXX follows a somewhat different sequence through its v 29.
\n23.a. That these would have to be the front edges of the folded square, at the top, is made likely by the continuation of the description, esp. vv 26\u201328.
\n25.a. The filigrees mounting the onyx stones onto the shoulderpieces of the Ephod.
\n25.b. MT has simply \u201cand so you are to give upon the shoulderpieces of the Ephod toward the front of its face\u201d\u2014\u201cthem\u201d is added in the parallel to this verse in 39:18 (see below) and so is included above for clarity.
\n26.a. Lit., \u201cupon its edge which is towards the side of the Ephod, inside.\u201d
\n28.a. MT has \u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05d5\u05ea \u201cto be,\u201d here translated \u201chang snugly,\u201d given the context
\n30.a. SamPent begins this verse with \u05d5\u05e2\u05e9\u05d9\u05ea \u05d0\u05ea \u05d4\u05d0\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u05d5\u05d0\u05ea \u05d4\u05ea\u05de\u05d9\u05dd \u201cYou are to make the Urim and the Thummim,\u201d then continues with the verse as MT has it.
\n30.b. Both SamPent \u05e2\u05dc and LXX \u1f10\u03c0\u1f76 (v 22) read \u201cupon.\u201d
\n30.c. Both here and in v 29, \u05dc\u05d1 is translated \u201cheart,\u201d because of the obvious physical sense of the text. It is important that the function of \u05dc\u05d1 as \u201cmind\u201d in the OT context be remembered (cf. Johnson, Vitality, 75\u201387).
\n32.a. \u05de\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d4 \u05d0\u05e8\u05d2 \u201cwoven reinforcement.\u201d
\n32.b. \u201cLike the opening of a \u05ea\u05d7\u05e8\u05d0 it is to be for it.\u201d \u05ea\u05d7\u05e8\u05d0 is used only here and in 39:23, and its meaning is obscure. The proposals include \u201cprob. (linen) corselet\u201d (BDB, 1065), \u201ccoat of mail\u201d (Tg. Onk.), and \u201can oversewn edge: lit., like the opening of a womb\u201d (neb). These are all guesses, and since the point is clear despite the lack of a definition for the term, it may be better to make the point without inventing a simile.
\n33.a. SamPent, LXX add \u201cand woven fine linen.\u201d
\n35.a. MT has simply \u05d5\u05d4\u05d9\u05d4 \u05e2\u05dc\u05be \u201cand it is to be on.\u2026\u201d \u201cThe meaning is unmistakable, and \u201cThis Robe\u201d and \u201cworn by\u201d are added above for clarity.
\n35.b. \u05dc\u05e9\u05c1\u05e8\u05ea \u201cfor service in worship.\u201d
\n36.a. \u05e6\u05d9\u05e5 is a flower or a blossom of some kind, however stylized. DeBuck, OTS 9 [1951] 18\u201329, who proposes on the basis of Egyptian art that the flower, predominantly the lotus, is a symbol of \u201cthe vital impetus, a manifestation of the creative power of nature\u201d (19). The popular translation \u201cplate\u201d is an attempt to suggest an engravable surface, but it may go too far in that direction.
\n37.a. \u05d5\u05d4\u05d9\u05d4, lit., \u201cand it is to be.\u201d
\n38.a. \u05d0\u05ea\u05be\u05e2\u05d5\u05df \u05d4\u05e7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1\u05d9\u05dd, lit., \u201cthe guilt of the set-apart things,\u201d in the broadest reference inclusive of all that the Israelites bring and do in worship, and so translated above.
\n39.a. See n. 26:36.a.
\n40.a. \u05de\u05d2\u05d1\u05e2\u05d5\u05ea, from \u05d2\u05d1\u05e2, a root with which \u201chill, elevation\u201d are connected. Some kind of tall headdress, different from Aaron\u2019s Turban, perhaps is meant, though a different turban is also a possibility; cf. 29:9.
\n41.a. Hiph of \u05dc\u05d1\u05e9\u05c1, here indicating a clothing or dressing in holy array, a vesting with authority suggested by the symbols of the office, an investiture. See also Pss 29:2 and 96:9.
\n41.b. \u05de\u05dc\u05d0 \u05d9\u05d3 \u201cfill the hand,\u201d is an idiom for \u201cordain\u201d in the OT.
\n42.a. MT has simply \u201cthey.\u201d The antecedent is added above for clarity.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139.
\nComment
\nThese elaborate instructions for the sacral vestments of \u201cAaron and his sons,\u201d that is, for the head priest and those who served under his direction, are a strange mixture of clarity and obscurity. On the one hand, they are redundant in their specificity, as for example in the directions for the shoulderpieces of the ephod; on the other hand, they do not supply enough data to give a clear idea of what is intended, as for example on how and in precisely what order the vestments were put on, or on the exact description of the lesser priests\u2019 clothing. Part of this obscurity is certainly the result of our ignorance of some of the terms used in the instructions, as for example the names of the semiprecious stones of the Breastpiece of Judgment, or the design of the collar of the Robe, or the headdress of the lesser priests. Another barrier to our understanding is the context in and for which these instructions were prepared. Their curious mingling of repetition and terseness suggests that these instructions were set down for people who knew what was being described, who had seen the vestments, in various combinations, in use; thus the instructions omit what would have been, for such persons, too obvious to require statement, but would have made the descriptions clearer to us.
\nJust how much of the wardrobe described here was worn, for just how long, and by exactly whom, is similarly impossible for us to say. The composite set forth in this chapter no doubt reflects an evolution of vestments, and perhaps also an adaptation of royal sacral vestments to priestly sacral use following the demise of Israel\u2019s sacral monarchy with and beyond the Babylonian exile. There can be little doubt that in pre-exilic Israel, certainly in the united monarchy of David and Solomon, and probably in the monarchies of Judah and Israel, the ruling king was always in title and frequently in practice the head or chief priest, in the terminology of this chapter, \u201cAaron.\u201d Thus at least some of the ornate vestments described here probably began as vestments for the sacral king, performing his duties as Yahweh\u2019s own anointed one. As time passed, the kings turned over some of these duties to the priests; then with the successive Assyrian and Babylonian destructions of the two monarchies, the priests took over the royal vestments, and by the postexilic period, many of the royal functions as well.
\n1\u20135 The designation of Aaron and his sons to give priestly ministry to Yahweh may thus be understood as a legitimation of priestly service at a royal level, much as Aaron himself has been legitimized in the Priestly source in Exodus by making him Moses\u2019 \u201cbrother\u201d (see Comment on 4:14\u201317). The chief symbols of that legitimation, according to this chapter, are the sacral vestments, the very robes of office that may once have been the exclusive property of the kings. It is for this reason, indeed, that despite the inclusion of Aaron\u2019s sons in vv 1, 4, 40\u201343, the clear preoccupation of the instructions for the priests\u2019 vestments is what \u201cAaron,\u201d the head priest, is to wear. Thus are the vestments to be made \u201cfor splendor and for beauty,\u201d of the same expensive materials as the Tabernacle, by artisans specially endowed by Yahweh, and for the express purpose of setting \u201cAaron\u201d apart to give priestly ministry to Yahweh. The sacral vestments described in this chapter are eight in number, though v 4 lists only six, omitting the engraved flower worn at the front of the Turban (vv 36\u201338) and the undergarments of plain linen (vv 42\u201343). The six that are listed are not listed in the order in which they are discussed or in any order of vesting.
\n6\u201314 First to be described is the Ephod, which is in Exod 28 plainly a garment, though one made of precious material. In 1 Sam 2:18; 22:18 and 2 Sam 6:14, a linen ephod is mentioned, apparently as a simple, and brief, shiftlike garment, perhaps covering the body only from the waist to the midthighs. In Judg 17:5; 18:14\u201320, an ephod is mentioned in connection with what appears to be an idol (Noth, Prophetic Heritage, 72\u201373). In Judg 8:24\u201327, an ephod made of captured Midianite gold is mentioned as a cause of idolatry in Israel. In 1 Sam 23:10 [9], an ephod at Nob is apparently a freestanding object behind which Goliath\u2019s sword, \u201cwrapped in the mantle,\u201d is stored. In 1 Sam 23:9\u201311; 30:7\u20138 an ephod is connected with the consultation of Yahweh. And in the present chapter, as in Exod 39:2\u20137, an ephod of elaborate workmanship is one of the sacral vestments reserved for the head priest. So many contrasting references have led to a variety of interpretations (see Arnold, Ephod and Ark, passim; May, AJSL 56 [1939] 44\u201369; Elliger, Festschrift F. Baumg\u00e4rtel, 19\u201335; Haran, Tarbiz 24 [1955] 380\u201391; Davies, \u201cEphod (Object),\u201d IDB 2:118\u201319; de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 349\u201352), no one of which successfully explains the connection between the different ephods or the differing uses of one ephod. Haran\u2019s view (Temples, 167\u201368) that a single golden ephod is meant is stretched too far by the references; de Vaux\u2019s (351\u201352) suggestion that the ephod was somehow a receptacle for sacred lots is also an imposition upon some of the references. It is better to think of a garment that evolved from a simple shift or skirt to the elaborate vestment of P, and perhaps also of a devolution from a garment for deity (de Vaux, 350) to a garment for a human serving deity and, on occasion, speaking for deity.
\n6\u20138 Whatever the origin and the other roles of an ephod, in Exod 28 the Ephod is clearly a garment, and an elaborate one, though for all the details given concerning its materials and its decoration, we are left in the dark about just how and where it fitted the head priest\u2019s body. The Ephod described here had at least four parts: the main part of the garment, two shoulderpieces, and an elaborate belt. The fabric for these parts was to be identical to that to be used in making the Tabernacle, though in addition, the shoulderpieces were each to be decorated with an onyx-stone in a setting of gold filigree. Just how the shoulderpieces fitted the body of the Ephod, and exactly how the elaborate belt was fitted, and what was its function, is not clear, any more than are the length and construction of the body of the Ephod. We are not told whether the shoulderpieces functioned as suspenders to hold the Ephod in place, only that they were joined to the \u201ctwo sides\u201d of the Ephod, apparently its front and back, to make \u201cone garment.\u201d
\n9\u201314 The chief function of the shoulderpieces was apparently to provide a mounting place for the two onyx stones into which were incised, in their genealogical order (see Gen 46:8\u201327; Exod 1:1\u20135), the names of the twelve sons of Israel. The stones, mounted in settings of gold filigree, were thus borne on \u201cAaron\u2019s\u201d shoulders into Yahweh\u2019s Presence. Their function was to serve as reminders, calling to mind the twelve sons of Jacob, the theoretical progenitors of all Israel. For whom this reminder was intended is not said; it is very likely that both \u201cAaron\u201d and Yahweh are in view. Also to be attached to the filigree settings of the shoulderpieces were two ropes made of pure gold thread twisted tightly together; these were for the attachment of the Breastpiece, which is described next.
\n15\u201321 The Breastpiece of Judgment, so named because it too incorporated gemstones bearing the names of the twelve sons of Israel and because it contained the Urim and the Thummim, the media of Yahweh\u2019s oracle, was also made of the special Tabernacle fabric. As in the manufacture of the Ephod, this material was here too to be artistically embroidered, though the design is not specified in either case as it is for the Tabernacle (\u201cwith cherubs,\u201d Exod 26:1). The Breastpiece was to consist of a single piece of this fabric, folded over to form a square approximately nine inches by nine inches (Sellers, \u201cWeights and Measures,\u201d IDB 4:837\u201338). Onto this square, by settings of gold filigree, twelve different gemstones were to be mounted, each of them engraved with the name of one of the twelve sons of Jacob.
\nThe specific varieties of gemstones employed can only be surmised, as we cannot translate the terms employed for them with any certainty. Garber and Funk (IDB 2:900\u2013904) have a thorough treatment of gemstones known to be available in the OT period (cf. also Frerichs, \u201cEdelsteine,\u201d BHH 1, cols. 362\u201364), and Lucas (Egyptian Materials, 442\u201361) presents a detailed account of the precious and semiprecious stones used in ancient Egypt from the First Dynasty forward. The difficulty is that we cannot with any accuracy translate the Hebrew terms for the stones used in the Breastpiece; thus we cannot establish the color patterns, and indeed we can only guess that each stone was a different color since each one has a different name. The rabbinic commentators worked out elaborate symbolic color schemes, sometimes linked to the signs of the Zodiac (Goodenough, By Light, 99\u2013100; Garber and Funk, 904\u20135), and it is upon this tradition that the colors of Chagall\u2019s magnificent Jerusalem Windows for the Hadassah Hospital synagogue are based (Chagall and Leymarie, xiv\u2013xvi).
\nThe stones would have been finished \u201cen cabachon, i.e., in rounded, convex forms with smooth or polished sides\u201d (Garber and Funk, IDB 2:899), and then engraved with the names of the twelve sons of Jacob. They were set onto the Breastpiece in three horizontal rows of four stones each. The connection of gemstones with theophany is both widespread and ancient (cf. Garber and Funk, 904\u20135; Farrer, Rebirth, 216\u201344), and may be reflected in the placement of the Urim and the Thummim (v 30) behind the gemstones of the Breastpiece and the engraving of the names of the twelve sons of Israel onto the gemstones, facing the implements with which the Presence was intimately associated within the Holy Space and the Holiest Space.
\n22\u201329 For the Breastpiece, as for the Ephod, ropes of pure gold thread twisted tightly together were to be made, then passed through gold rings attached to the top corners of the Breastpiece, and attached to the filigree mountings on the two shoulderpieces. (Cassuto, 377, thinks the gold ropes of v 22 are the same ropes mentioned in v 14; the text is not clear about the use of that first pair of ropes.) Another pair of gold rings at the bottom corners of the Breastpiece was to be attached by means of a rope made of violet yarn to two gold rings attached to the Ephod. In this manner, the Breastpiece was held firmly against the top of the Ephod, from the elaborate belt up towards the two shoulderpieces. Just how these various ropes were to be tied, and by whom, is not said. With the Breastpiece and the Ephod thus in place, \u201cAaron\u201d would enter the Holy Space of the Tabernacle with a double reminder of Israel, one on his two shoulders and one on his chest, over his heart.
\n30 Into the Breastpiece, by what means we are not told, the Urim and the Thummim were to be placed. That the Urim and the Thummim were an oracular device of some sort is established by the few OT references to their function (cf. Num 27:21; Deut 33:8; 1 Sam 28:6; Ezra 2:63; Neh 7:65; and LXX 1 Sam 14:41). What sort of device they were, and how the message of Yahweh contained in them was understood, we have no hint in the OT. A variety of suggestions has been made, all of them largely guesswork: two stones, each of a different color (Lipi\u0144ski, VT 20 [1970] 495\u201396); small objects made of metal or gemstones, engraved with symbols (Mendelsohn, \u201cUrim and Thummim,\u201d IDB 4:740); small pebbles or dice or \u201clittle sticks\u201d (de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 352); flat stones, each with an \u201causpicious\u201d and an \u201cinauspicious\u201d side (Rowley, Worship, 67). Robertson (VT 14 [1964] 71\u201372) has even suggested the twenty-two letters of the alphabet \u201cinscribed or engraved\u201d on \u201cdiscs or tablets of wood or metal,\u201d serving both as symbols of writing, a gift of God, and as arithmetical, odd-even symbols, \u05d0 equalling \u201cone\u201d and suggesting \u05d0\u05d5\u05e8 \u201clight,\u201d and \u05ea equalling \u201ctwenty-two\u201d and suggesting \u05ea\u05dd \u201cend\u201d; \u05d0\u05d5\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u201cUrim\u201d would thus represent the odd-number letters, \u05ea\u05de\u05d9\u05dd \u201cThummim\u201d the even-number letters, and any three letters might suggest a verb root. The practice of oracle-seeking by a variety of means, including the use of positive and negative stones, is widely attested in the ANE (cf. Reiner, JNES 19 [1960] 24\u201331), and the Urim and Thummim are without doubt an Israelite version of such practices. Just what they were and how they worked, however, we cannot say without more data.
\n31\u201335 The next vestment to be described is the Robe of the head priest, called the Robe of the Ephod because it was to be worn under the Ephod, and therefore under the Breastpiece as well. This Robe was to be made of a less opulent material, though still of one of the special yarns employed in the Tabernacle, the Ephod, and the Breastpiece, the violet yarn always mentioned first in the listing of the three colored yarns. The Robe was apparently to be without fastenings of any kind, and was to have an opening only for the head and arms, since it was to be pulled on over the head like a sweater or a nightshirt. There is no mention of sleeves; the attention given to reinforcing the opening for the head and neck suggests that that area of the garment was expected to have continual wear and stress. The skirts of this \u201cwholly violet\u201d Robe were to be decorated with pomegranates (embroidered, apparently, with the usual three colored yarns, including the violet yarn of which the Robe itself was made; though cf. Haran, Temples, 168\u201369, 171, who thinks of the pomegranates as \u201csuspended\u201d) interspersed with bells made of gold, a pattern to be continued all around the skirt.
\nThe pomegranates appear to have suggested the fruitfulness of Yahweh\u2019s provision (cf. Deut 8:8; Num 13:23; Feliks, \u201cGranatapfel, Granatbaum,\u201d BHH 1:607). The bells are explained as a necessary accompaniment to \u201cAaron\u2019s\u201d movements into and out of the Holy Space, required by Yahweh. As Haran (Temples, 214\u201318, 223\u201324) has suggested, these bells must be understood as an integral part of a total ritual involving all of man\u2019s senses; but this ritual had a double application: Yahweh\u2019s \u201cneeds\u201d also were symbolized by the sounds, the sights, the provisions, and the smells of the Tabernacle and its Court.
\n36\u201338 The Flower of pure gold to be worn like a medallion or a brooch on the front of the head priest\u2019s Turban may in its floral design have suggested Yahweh\u2019s provision in nature; the primary function of this decoration, however, is made clear by the inscription it bore. \u201cSet apart for Yahweh\u201d refers not alone, indeed not even primarily to \u201cAaron\u201d and his successors, as v 38 makes plain. It is Israel that is \u201cset apart for Yahweh,\u201d \u201cAaron\u201d of course among Israel and representing Israel (as the king had done from David forward), and the Flower with its inscription serving as a perpetual reminder that \u201cAaron\u201d in Yahweh\u2019s Presence was as Israel in Yahweh\u2019s Presence. Any \u201cguilt of iniquity\u201d associated with Israel\u2019s worship would be made more obvious by this constant reminder, which would also symbolize Yahweh\u2019s acceptance of a people forgiven by his grace.
\n39 The Tunic and the Turban of the head priest were both to be woven of fine linen (\u05e9\u05c1\u05e9\u05c1), the Tunic in a checked pattern. This Tunic was apparently a long, shirtlike garment worn under the Robe (Meyers, \u201cDress and Ornaments,\u201d IDB 1:869), though the text names it only. The Sash was to be embroidered apparently in the variegated pattern of the Screen for the tent (cf. 26:36). Its material is not specified; presumably it was the mixture of colored yarns and fine linen used for the Screen.
\n40\u201341 Following this almost cursory description of no less than three of \u201cAaron\u2019s\u201d sacral vestments, there is an even briefer listing of the clothing of \u201cAaron\u2019s sons,\u201d the assisting priests, and a description of the undergarment all priests were to wear whenever they ministered in the places of Yahweh\u2019s Presence. The ordinary priests were to have tunics, but apparently not with the checked pattern of \u201cAaron\u2019s\u201d Tunic. They were also to have sashes, again apparently of less opulent material, and high hats or turbans, again different from that of the head priest. The vesting of the priests is specified as the first part of a three-part procedure establishing priestly authority: the other two steps are anointing and ordination, and such texts as Ps 133:2 and Lev 8:12 imply that the ritual of authorization may have been carried out in just such a sequence.
\n42\u201343 The instructions for the priests\u2019 vestments close with what has the appearance of an addendum dealing with the single garment that was to be a common requirement for both the head priest and those who ministered under his supervision. It is an undergarment of plain linen, required in perpetuity of all priests, that they may not violate the prohibition reflected also in Exod 20:26, a prohibition of the exposure of genitalia in the areas of Yahweh\u2019s Presence.
\nExplanation
\nThe essential point of the priestly vestments is the central point of all the instructions concerning the media of worship: Yahweh is present, and Israel must respond to that Presence, be guided in that response, and be reminded constantly in worship as in life of the reality of the Presence and of the need for response. The vestments are double symbols: they signify priestly authority, and they signify the priestly confession of the source of that authority. Exod 28 begins with a reference to the singling out and bringing near (to Moses, Yahweh\u2019s representative and messenger) of \u201cAaron\u201d and his assisting \u201csons\u201d (v 1). It closes, apart from the addendum about the priests\u2019 undergarment, with a reference to the ceremony of setting apart, in which each priest was vested, anointed, and ordained to the service of ministry in Yahweh\u2019s Presence (v 41).
\nIn between such an opening and closing, the sacral vestments are listed and described, and each of them reflects, in one way or another, the double symbolism they carry. The Ephod of gold, the material used most often for the objects closest to Yahweh\u2019s Presence, includes also the engraved onyx-stones through which Israel was to be brought to mind in Yahweh\u2019s Presence. The Breastpiece of Judgment, attached to the Ephod, was through its twelve engraved gemstones to keep Israel before Yahweh and to signify the glow of the Presence through Israel. The Urim and the Thummim placed inside this Breastpiece were to suggest Yahweh\u2019s judgment and specific direction of his people. The Robe of the Ephod was a reminder of Yahweh\u2019s plenty and nearness, and the engraved Flower on the Turban was a reminder that Israel and all that Israel undertook were set apart to Yahweh\u2014made what they were by him and in need of becoming what they were called to be in his Presence. In sum, every article of the sacral vestments made the same point, each with its own specific accent: Yahweh is here, we are his, and we must both know this and show this.
\nThe Instructions for the Priests\u2019 Ordination (29:1\u201346)
\nParallel Verses:
\nLev 8:1\u201333
\nBibliography
\nGray, G. B. Sacrifice in the Old Testament. New York: KTAV, 1971. Kutsch, E. Salbung als Rechtsakt. BZAW 87. Berlin: Verlag Alfred T\u00f6pelmann, 1963. Levine, B. A. \u201cThe Descriptive Tabernacle Texts of the Pentateuch.\u201d JAOS 85 (1965) 307\u201318. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cUgaritic Descriptive Rituals.\u201d JCS 17 (1963) 105\u201312. Noth, M. \u201cOffice and Vocation in the Old Testament.\u201d The Laws in the Pentateuch and Other Studies. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1966. 228\u201349. Schmid, R. Das Bundesopfer in Israel. SANT 9. Munich: K\u00f6sel-Verlag, 1964. Vriezen, T. C. \u201cThe Term Hizza: Lustration and Consecration.\u201d OTS 7 (1950) 201\u201335. Walkenhorst, K.-H. Der Sinai: im liturgischen Verst\u00e4ndnis der deuteronomistischen und priesterlichen Tradition. BBB 33. Bonn: Peter Hanstein Verlag, 1969.
\nTranslation
\n1 \u201cNow this is what you are to do for them to set them apart to give priestly ministry to me: take one bull-calf and two perfect rams, 2 unleavened bread, unleavened cakes soaked in oil, and thin unleavened wafers smeared with oil. (You are to make these of the finest wheat-flour.) 3 Put the cakes into one basket and bring them near, in the basket, along with the bull and the two rams. 4 You are to bring Aaron and his sons near to the opening of the Tent of Appointed Meeting, and you are to wash them with water.
\n5 \u201cYou are to take the vestments, and you are to clothe Aaron in the Tunic and in the Robe of the Ephod, and in the Ephod and in the Breastpiece, and you are to wrap around him the elaborate belt of the Ephod. 6 You are to place the Turban upon his head, and place the Emblem of Set-Apartness upon the Turban. 7 You are to take the Oil of Anointment and you are to pour it upon his head and so anoint him. 8 You are to bring his sons near 9 and clothe them in Tunics and bind around them sashes, Aaron and his sons, and bind on them high hats, and priestly service will be theirs as a requirement in perpetuity.
\n10 \u201cSo you are to ordain Aaron and his sons: you are to bring the bull near to the opening of the Tent of Appointed Meeting, and Aaron and his sons are to lay their hands upon the head of the bull. 11 Then you are to slaughter the bull in the Presence of Yahweh at the opening of the Tent of Appointed Meeting, 12 and you are to take some of the blood of the bull and put it upon the horns of the Altar with your finger; all the remaining blood, you are to pour out at the bottom of the Altar. 13 You are to take all the fat that surrounds the entrails and the appendage on the liver and the two kidneys along with the fat that is on them, and you are to offer it as smoke on the Altar. 14 The meat of the bull, and his hide and his offal, you are to burn in the fire outside the camp\u2014it is an offering for sin.
\n15 \u201cYou are to take one of the rams, and Aaron and his sons are to lay their hands upon the head of the ram; 16 then slaughter the ram, and take his blood and dash it upon the Altar, all around. 17 You are to cut the ram into pieces, wash his entrails and his legs, and put them on his pieces and upon his head. 18 Then you are to offer as smoke on the Altar the entire ram. It is a wholly burned offering to Yahweh, an appeasing smell, a gift by fire to Yahweh.
\n19 \u201cYou are to take the second ram, and Aaron and his sons are to lay their hands upon the head of the ram. 20 You are to slaughter the ram, and take some of his blood and put it on the lobe of Aaron\u2019s right ear and on the lobe of his sons\u2019 right ears, on the thumb of their right hands, and on the big toe of their right feet. Then you are to dash the remaining blood upon the Altar, all around. 21 You are to take some of the blood that is on the Altar and some of the Oil of Anointment and sprinkle it upon Aaron and upon his vestments and upon his sons along with him, and upon their vestments; thus he is to be set apart, and his vestments, and his sons and their vestments, his sons along with him.
\n22 \u201cYou are to take from the ram the fat and the fat tail, the fat that surrounds the entrails and the appendage on the liver and the two kidneys along with the fat that is on them, and the right leg (since this is a ram of ordination), 23 and one round loaf of bread and one cake of bread with oil, and one thin wafer from the basket of unleavened bread that is in Yahweh\u2019s Presence. 24 You are to place all this upon the palm of Aaron and upon the palms of his sons, and you are to present them as a symbolic offering in Yahweh\u2019s Presence. 25 You are then to take these gifts from their hands, and you are to offer them as smoke upon the Altar, in addition to the wholly burned offering as an appeasing smell in Yahweh\u2019s Presence, a gift by fire to Yahweh.
\n26 \u201cYou are to take the breast of the ram of Aaron\u2019s ordination and present it as a symbolic offering in Yahweh\u2019s Presence; it will then be your part. 27 You are to set aside the breast of the symbolic offering and the leg of the gift held aloft, that which is presented and that which is raised in presentation, a part of the ram of ordination that belongs to Aaron and that belongs to his sons: 28 it is for Aaron and for his sons, a share in perpetuity from the sons of Israel, because it is a gift held aloft, and a gift held aloft by the sons of Israel from their completion offerings, their gift held aloft to Yahweh.
\n29 \u201cThe sacral vestments that are for Aaron are to be for his sons after him, to be worn for anointing and ordination ceremonies. 30 The priest from among his sons who succeeds him is to wear them for seven days when he enters the Tent of Appointed Meeting to minister in the Holy Space.
\n31 \u201cYou are to take the ram of ordination, and you are to boil his meat in a place set apart; 32 and Aaron and his sons are to eat the flesh of the ram, and the bread that is in the basket, at the opening of the Tent of Appointed Meeting. 33 They are to eat these gifts by which atonement was made for their ordination and their setting-apart. No outsider is to eat them because they are holy. 34 If any of the meat of ordination or any of the bread is left over until the morning, you are to burn the remainder with fire\u2014it is not to be eaten, because it is holy.
\n35 \u201cSo you are to do, for Aaron and for his sons, in strict accord with everything I have commanded you: you are to ordain them seven days. 36 You are to make a sin offering of a bull every day, for the atonement, and you are to make a sin offering for the Altar as your atonement for it, and you are to anoint it for its setting apart. 37 You are to make atonement for the Altar for seven days, and so you are to set it apart, and so the Altar is to be most holy: anything touching the Altar will become sacred.
\n38 \u201cThis is what you are to offer upon the Altar\u2014two year-old lambs per day, regularly: 39 you are to offer one lamb in the morning and you are to offer the second lamb between sundown and nightfall. 40 Along with the first lamb, offer a tenth of an ephah of fine flour mingled with a fourth of a hin of oil (pounded, not pressed) and a fourth of a hin of wine as a drink offering; 41 the second lamb you are to offer between sundown and nightfall, accompanied by a cereal offering and by a drink offering, as in the morning. You are to offer it by fire for an appeasing smell to Yahweh. 42 It is to be a continual wholly burned offering, down through your generations, at the opening of the Tent of Appointed Meeting in the Presence of Yahweh: I will meet you there by appointment, to speak to you there. 43 I will meet the sons of Israel there by appointment; it will be made sacred by my glory: 44 I will set apart as sacred the Tent of Appointed Meeting and the Altar, and I will set apart Aaron and his sons, to give priestly ministry to me.
\n45 \u201cSo I will dwell in the midst of the sons of Israel, and I will be their God, 46 and they will know that I am Yahweh their God who brought them forth from the land of Egypt on account of my dwelling in their midst. I am Yahweh their God.\u201d
\nNotes
\n2.a. \u05d1\u05dc\u05dc \u201cmingle, mix.\u201d The reference could be either to mixing the flour with the oil or to soaking, moistening the bread cake already prepared with oil.
\n2.b. SamPent omits \u201csmeared with oil.\u201d
\n2.c. MT has \u201cthem\u201d; \u201cthese\u201d is used above in reference to the three forms of bread, treating this instruction as secondary and so parenthetic to the list of things to be included in the offering.
\n3.a. MT has \u201cthem\u201d; the antecedent is supplied above for clarity.
\n3.b. Hiph of \u05e7\u05e8\u05d1 is a technical term in P for bringing something near to Yahweh\u2019s Presence. It is so used 89X in Leviticus, 49X in Numbers.
\n5.a. SamPent reads the remainder of this verse so: \u201cand you are to bind around him a sash and clothe him in the Robe and put upon him the Ephod and the Breastpiece and wrap around him the elaborate belt of the Ephod.\u201d
\n6.a. \u05e0\u05d6\u05e8 \u05d4\u05e7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cthe Emblem of Set-Apartness\u201d; the reference is to the \u05e6\u05d9\u05e5 \u05d6\u05d4\u05d1 \u201cgolden flower\u201d of 28:36\u201338, here described as the \u201ccrown\u201d or \u201cdesignation\u201d of the \u201capartness\u201d or \u201csacredness.\u201d Cf. BDB, 634.
\n9.a. MT has \u05d0\u05d1\u05e0\u05d8 \u201ca sash\u201d; SamPent has \u05d0\u05d1\u05e0\u05d8\u05d9\u05dd \u201csashes.\u201d
\n9.b. This phrase is absent from LXX, and the inclusion of Aaron does make it seem a bit out of place.
\n9.c. See n. 28:40.a.
\n10.a. SamPent reads \u05dc\u05e4\u05e0\u05d9 \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u05e4\u05ea\u05d7 \u201cinto the Presence of Yahweh at the opening.\u201d
\n12.a. MT has simply \u05db\u05dc\u05be\u05d4\u05d3\u05dd \u201call the blood.\u201d LXX has \u03c4\u1f78 \u03b4\u1f72 \u03bb\u03bf\u03b9\u03c0\u1f78\u03bd \u03c0\u1fb6\u03bd \u03b1\u1f37\u03bc\u03b1 \u201call the remaining blood.\u201d
\n13.a. Hiph of \u05e7\u05d8\u05e8 lit. means \u201cto cause a smoke\u201d; \u201cburning\u201d is not the point of the verb, even though fire or hot coals were necessary to create the smoke. Both the hiph and piel forms of \u05e7\u05d8\u05e8 depict a making of smoke as an act of worship. Cf. Durham, Touch, Taste and Smell, 309\u201311, 316\u201326.
\n18.a. \u05e8\u05d9\u05ea \u05e0\u05d9\u05ea\u05d5\u05ea \u201can appeasing smell\u201d occurs 43X in the OT, in every case in reference to deity, and in 40 instances that deity is Yahweh. Of its occurrences, 38 are in P passages, 4 in Ezekiel, and one in J (Gen 8:21), and the phrase describes an odor of gratification or appeasement of God. Cf. Durham, Touch, Taste and Smell, 286\u201398.
\n23.a. The reference here is to the three kinds of bread, listed and described more fully in v 2.
\n24.a. \u05d5\u05d4\u05e0\u05e4\u05ea \u05d0\u05ea\u05dd \u05ea\u05e0\u05d5\u05e4\u05d4 lit. is \u201cand you are to wave them, a wave offering.\u201d The \u05ea\u05e0\u05d5\u05e4\u05d4 was itself a symbolic offering of something presented by a ritual manipulation, or waving, in Yahweh\u2019s Presence. \u201cAaron\u201d and his \u201csons,\u201d their hands \u201cfilled\u201d with the symbols of their ordination, are here described as such a symbolic offering, given to Yahweh, yet kept for his service. LXX reads here \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f00\u03c6\u03bf\u03c1\u03b9\u03b5\u1fd6\u03c2 \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u1f7a\u03c2 \u1f00\u03c6\u03cc\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03bc\u03b1 \u201cand you are to set them apart, a special designation.\u201d
\n25.a. MT has \u05d0\u05ea\u05dd \u201cthem\u201d; the antecedent is added for clarity.
\n27.a. \u05d4\u05ea\u05e8\u05d5\u05de\u05d4 \u201cthe gift held aloft.\u201d
\n27.b. \u05d4\u05d5\u05e0\u05e3 \u201cpresented.\u201d
\n27.c. \u05d4\u05d5\u05e8\u05dd \u201craised in presentation.\u201d
\n28.a. SamPent has what is substantially v 21 of MT at this point.
\n29.a. MT has \u05dc\u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05ea\u05d4 \u05d1\u05d4\u05dd \u05d5\u05dc\u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05be\u05d1\u05dd \u05d0\u05ea\u05be\u05d9\u05d3\u05dd \u201cto anoint in them and to fill in them their hand.\u201d
\n33.a. MT has \u201cthem.\u201d
\n33.b. LXX has \u1f00\u03c0\u02bc \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u201cfrom them\u201d; MT leaves the object to be understood.
\n35.a. \u05db\u05db\u05d4 \u201cthus.\u201d Cf. BDB, 462.
\n38.a. See n. 27:20.c. \u05dc\u05d9\u05d5\u05dd \u05ea\u05de\u05d9\u05d3 here means \u201cdaily, on a regular basis.\u201d SamPent adds \u05e2\u05dc\u05ea \u05ea\u05de\u05d9\u05d3 \u201ca continual offering.\u201d Cf. LXX.
\n39.a. \u05d1\u05d9\u05df \u05d4\u05e2\u05e8\u05d1\u05d9\u05dd, lit., \u201cbetween the pair of evenings.\u201d
\n40.a. \u201cOffer\u201d is supplied from the context, for clarity.
\n40.b. See n. 27:20a.
\n42.a. This \u201cyou\u201d is pl. in MT (sg in LXX and at MT 30:6, 36); the second \u201cyou\u201d is singular.
\n43.a. SamPent reads \u201cI will present myself to be sought \u2026\u201d; LXX has \u201cI will command.\u2026\u201d
\n43.b. So MT, \u05d5\u05e0\u05e7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1. LXX, Syr., Tg. Ps.-J. read a 1st pers sg verb here.
\n46.a. \u05dc\u05e9\u05c1\u05db\u05e0\u05d9. Cf. GKC \u00b6 114f, o.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139.
\nComment
\nThe instructions for the priests\u2019 ordination specify a ritual of vesting, a ritual of anointing, and the climactic ritual of ordination, along with their accompanying symbolic and wholly consumed offerings. These instructions, reported as carried out by Moses in Lev 8, have the appearance of having evolved over a long period of time, and they may reflect both royal and priestly ceremonies of investiture. Walkenhorst (Der Sinai, 33\u2013115) has analyzed Exod 29 with Lev 8\u20139 at some length, comparing the treatments of the rituals of washing, vesting, anointing, sin offering, and the wholly-burned and the partly-consumed offerings, and has concluded that the question of the relationship of sequence between the two chapters and a possible older core of liturgical material remains in question (see esp. 37\u201344). Levine (JAOS 85 [1965] 310\u201314), after a much briefer analysis, has come to the conclusion that Exod 29 is not the source of Lev 8, and that the reverse may be true, with Exod 29:1\u201337 being \u201cprobably based\u201d on Lev 8:13\u201336.
\nWithout additional information, the question remains insoluble, and what is most significant about both sequences is what they suggest about the priestly concept of liturgical authority. Whatever the origin of the ideas and symbols set forth in these chapters, and whatever the sequence of their development, the presentation of them in the composites that are Exodus and Leviticus has an implication all its own.
\n1\u20134 The sacrificial animals and the cereal offerings that are to accompany the ordination rituals are listed first. As befits the solemnity of the occasion and the location of the ceremony, only the best is to be \u201cbrought near\u201d (hiphil of \u05e7\u05e8\u05d1) for use in the ordination. Then Aaron and his sons are to be \u201cbrought near\u201d to the opening of the Tabernacle (\u201cTent of Appointed Meeting\u201d; see Comment on 27:21) and washed in preparation for the rituals to come. As de Vaux (Ancient Israel, 460\u201361) correctly points out, such washing was necessary both before contact with holy things, and sometimes after such contact (cf. Levine, JCS 17 [1963] 105, on parallels in the Ugaritic texts).
\n5\u20139 Thus prepared, \u201cAaron\u201d (representative of each head priest) was to be vested with the sacral garments symbolizing his office; of the vestments described in chap. 28, only the undergarment of plain linen is unmentioned in this vesting, though the Sash is apparently deemphasized. Thus vested, Aaron was to be anointed; the special Oil of Anointment to be used for this purpose is described in Exod 30:22\u201333. Aaron\u2019s \u201csons\u201d (representative of the assisting priests) are to be vested in the garments appropriate to them, though there is no mention here, as there is in Exod 28:41, 30:30, and 40:15, of an anointing of these assistants. It is generally argued that the exclusive designation of the anointing as Aaron\u2019s alone is indicative of an earlier form of the tradition (so Hyatt, 295), though Levine (JAOS 85 [1965] 312) argues a somewhat opposite view. The purpose of this vesting and anointing, the text makes quite clear, is the establishment in perpetuity of the right and obligation of priestly service (v 9). For a full survey of anointing and its OT significance, see Kutsch (Salbung, 1\u201327).
\n9 The next step in the ceremony of ordination was to be a complex ritual of sacrificial and symbolic offering by which (1) atonement was to be made for Aaron, thus \u201cpurifying\u201d him for the service of ministry to Yahweh, and (2) the commitment of Aaron to this service was symbolized. This sequence was to be the climax of the ceremony, and above all constituted the ordination itself; thus it is introduced by the statement at the end of v 9: \u201cSo you are to ordain Aaron and his sons.\u201d The idiom for ordain, \u05de\u05dc\u05d0 \u05d9\u05d3 \u201cto fill the hand,\u201d has been much discussed (see Noth, Laws 231\u201333), in particular as to whether a literal or a figurative sense is implied. No definitive answer can be supplied, but in the context of Exod 29, both senses are probably intended: vv 23\u201324 describe the gifts that are to be placed on the palm of Aaron and the palms of his sons before they are burned on the Altar; vv 27\u201328 describe the symbolic offering that is to be the share in perpetuity of Aaron and his sons; and v 34 refers to \u201cthe meat of ordination\u201d (\u05d4\u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05d9\u05dd \u05d1\u05e9\u05c2\u05e8 \u201cthe flesh of the fillings\u201d).
\n10\u201314 The ritual in which the priests to be ordained laid their hands upon the head of the bull-calf to be sacrificed was preparatory to the atonement for their sins. The place in which this ritual and the entire ceremony of atonement was carried out, the opening of the Tabernacle, is significant. Here, where Yahweh\u2019s Presence met them by appointment, Yahweh would come to grant them authority. Without that authority, they could go no further and do nothing more. The bull-calf was to be wholly disposed of: its blood was to be used to anoint the Altar-horns, which symbolized especially the Presence of Yahweh at the Altar (see Comment on 27:2), then poured out at the bottom of the Altar (Gray, Sacrifice, 365\u201366, has noted that only the blood of sin-offerings was so disposed of); its entrail fat, liver-appendage, and kidneys were to be \u201coffered as smoke\u201d on the Altar; and its meat, its hide, and its offal were to be burned outside the camp: the bull-calf had become polluted, an offering for sins (on \u05d7\u05d8\u05d0\u05ea see Rendtorff, Geschichte des Opfers, 199\u2013234).
\n15\u201325 The first of the two perfect rams was to be slaughtered after the laying-on of hands; its blood was to be dashed upon the Altar all around, then the ram, properly dismembered and washed, was to be offered as a gift to Yahweh wholly burned, and on the Altar. The meat of this sin offering was to be burned outside the camp, and it is not referred to as a gift to Yahweh. The second ram, however, also after Aaron and his sons had laid their hands upon its head, was to be slaughtered, then treated in the following manner: its blood was to be smeared on the right ear lobe, the right thumb, and the right big toe of the priests being ordained, actions whose significance remains a puzzle (cf. Lev 14:14), then dashed upon the Altar. Some of this scattered blood was then to be collected, along with some Oil of Anointment, and then sprinkled (\u05e0\u05d6\u05d4) upon Aaron, his sons, and their sacral vestments. And it is this act, v 21 notes precisely, that sets Aaron and his sons and their vestments apart for ministry to Yahweh.
\nVriezen (OTS 7 [1950] 205, 207\u201319, 233\u201335) has suggested that the rituals involving this special sprinkling are rites of lustration and consecration of the most elevated kind, rites that can be performed only on the authority of God. Following this lustration, specified parts of the second ram, along with samples of each of the three kinds of unleavened bread (v 2) were to be placed in the hands of the priests being ordained, and they were then to be presented as a symbolic offering (literally, \u201cwaved as a wave-offering,\u201d \u05e0\u05d5\u05e3 \u05ea\u05e0\u05d5\u05e4\u05d4) in Yahweh\u2019s Presence. The gifts in the priests\u2019 hands were then, following this symbolic offering of the priests themselves, to be burned on the Altar as a gift by fire to Yahweh.
\n26\u201334 The remaining parts of this second ram, called \u201cthe ram of ordination,\u201d the breast and the leg, were to be presented, as Aaron and his sons had been, as a symbolic offering in Yahweh\u2019s Presence; then they were to become the share of the priests from the \u201ccompletion offerings\u201d (\u05d6\u05d1\u05ea\u05d9 \u05e9\u05c1\u05dc\u05de\u05d9\u05dd; cf. Schmid, Bundesopfer, 27\u201339) of Israel. This meat was to be boiled in a special place; then Aaron and his sons were to eat it, along with the bread remaining from the ordination ritual, at the opening of the Tabernacle. These gifts, the remaining tokens of their purification for Yahweh\u2019s service and their setting apart for it, were to be eaten only by the priests. As foodstuff that had become holy, any leftovers were to be burned with fire.
\n35\u201337 The instructions for the ordination of Aaron and his sons are brought to a close by a brief summary statement, but this statement and the instructions preceding it have attracted (1) a brief notice about Aaron\u2019s sacral vestments: they are to be worn by Aaron and his successors for anointing and ordination ceremonies and for the seven-day period of ministry in the Holy Space; (2) an instruction for the atonement and setting-apart of the Altar, which is so important an implement in the ceremonies of ordination; (3) the designation of the offering to be made routinely on this Altar twice a day; and (4) a summary of the theology of Yahweh\u2019s Presence in relation to the Tabernacle, one that serves both to underscore the authority of the ordination of the priests and also as a conclusion to the main chapters of priestly instructions, the ones dealing with the symbols of Yahweh\u2019s intimate Presence (chap. 25), the Tabernacle that houses them (chap. 26), the Altar and the Tabernacle Court (chap. 27), the Priests\u2019 Vestments (chap. 28) and the Priests\u2019 ordination (chap. 29). The two chapters that follow these five, 30 and 31, are also closely connected by their subject matter to the Tabernacle and the service of Yahweh\u2019s Presence there, as noted above (see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139), but they have the appearance of supplementary appendices, related thematically and not organically.
\n38\u201344 The offering to be made twice daily on the Altar on a regular basis, that is, apart from sin offerings or such special ceremony offerings as those involved in ordination, was to consist of a lamb accompanied by approximately 1.6 quarts of fine flour, and a quart each of fine oil and wine (cf. Sellers, \u201cWeights and Measures,\u201d IDB 4:834\u201335). It was offered in the morning, probably at the beginning of the day\u2019s activity, and in the evening just before nightfall; thus the day was opened and closed with gifts to Yahweh, from whom all gifts were believed to come. These offerings were to be made, again, at the opening of the Tabernacle, the place where Yahweh had promised to meet his people. How literally this location is meant to be taken, in view of the position, in the Courtyard of the Tabernacle, of the Altar on which the offerings were \u201cturned into smoke,\u201d is not clear; perhaps the offerings were actually presented at the opening of the Tabernacle, at some stage in Israel\u2019s liturgical history, before they were taken to the Altar to be burned.
\nFar more important than the movement of the giver and the gift in this summary statement is the movement of Yahweh\u2019s Presence, as the expansion of the statement in the conclusion to the five main chapters of priestly instructions shows. Yahweh\u2019s promise to be present is referred to four times in vv 42\u201344; the place of Israel\u2019s meeting with the Presence, the opening to the Tabernacle, is referred to three times in vv 42\u201343, and is said to be made sacred, specially set apart, by Yahweh\u2019s glory (\u05db\u05d1\u05d5\u05d3 = Presence). Yahweh will also set apart by his Presence the Tabernacle itself, the Altar, and Aaron and his sons, to give priestly ministry. With this summation in v 44, the whole of chaps. 25\u201329 are brought to conclusion, with the subject matter of chap. 29, the priestly ordination, appropriately set last.
\n45\u201346 The closing verses of chap. 29 are a broader and more revealing summary still. They reiterate the promise of Presence that is the constant of the first nineteen chapters of Exodus, repeat twice the autokerygmatic statement of 6:2 and 20:2 (see above), and declare Yahweh\u2019s coming to dwell in Israel\u2019s midst as the demonstration of his assertion that he is Israel\u2019s God. This latter statement is as remarkable and sensitive a summary as is to be found in Exodus, for it handily reverses the \u201cproof of the Presence\u201d sequence (alluded to in v 46 by the reference to the \u201cbringing forth\u201d from Egypt) of the first nineteen chapters of Exodus into a \u201cPresence giving proof\u201d interpretation of the chapters following the Book of the Covenant. Thus as the chapters leading up to Yahweh\u2019s Advent on Mount Sinai demonstrate Yahweh\u2019s Presence by what Yahweh does, the chapters that follow that Advent are here interpreted as chapters that demonstrate that Yahweh is present by what Israel does, first of all in the way they are to live, and second, in the places, the symbols, and the acts of their worship.
\nExplanation
\nThe authority for the ordination of Aaron and his sons, declared in one way or another in nearly every verse of chap. 29, is Yahweh at hand. In the place appointed for the ceremony, in the rituals of vesting, anointing, atonement, and offering in ordination of Aaron and his sons, in the Altar and its horns that receive the wholly-burned offerings and the blood, in the gifts of the herd, the flock and the grain and grape and olive harvests, in all the movements of these rituals and certainly in any words spoken with those movements, Yahweh\u2019s Presence was celebrated and confessed. With the sprinkling upon Aaron and his vestments and his sons of the Oil of Anointment and the blood of the ram of ordination, a rite that could only be authorized by Yahweh and the consummating rite of the ordination, Yahweh\u2019s Presence was asserted. With the presentation of Aaron and his sons as an offering symbolically given, Yahweh, the recipient of the gift and the object of the priestly ministry, was known to be near. In the holiness of the remaining foodstuffs, of the vestments, and of the Altar, Yahweh\u2019s Presence was declared. And so that this point might be unmistakable, the summary of chap. 29 and of all the chapters of instruction preceding it states clearly that through the knowledge of Israel that he is present, Israel is to know that Yahweh is their God.
\nThe Instructions for the Altar of Incense (30:1\u201310)
\nParallel Verses:
\n37:25\u201328
\nBibliography
\nAlbright, W. F. The Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible. New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1933. Beek, G. W. van. \u201cFrankincense and Myrrh in Ancient South Arabia.\u201d JAOS 78 (1958) 141\u201352. Glueck, N. \u201cIncense Altars.\u201d Translating and Understanding the Old Testament. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1970. 335\u201341. Hoonacker, M. van. \u201cLa date de l\u2019introduction de l\u2019encens dans le culte de Jahve.\u201d RB 11 (1914) 161\u201387. Langhe, R. de. \u201cL\u2019autel d\u2019or du temple de Jerusalem.\u201d Bib 40 (1959) 476\u201394. L\u00f6hr, M. Das Raucheropfer im Alten Testament. Halle (Saale): Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1927. Weiner, H. M. The Altars of the Old Testament. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs\u2019sche Buchhandlung, 1927. Wright, G. E. Biblical Archaeology. Rev ed Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962.
\nTranslation
\n1 \u201cYou are to make an Altar to make incense smoke. You are to make it of acacia lumber, 2 a cubit in length and a cubit wide. It is to be square, and two cubits tall. Its horns are to be an integral part of it. 3 You are to overlay it with pure gold: its top, its sides all around, and its horns. You are to make for it an encircling golden beading. 4 You are to make for it two rings of gold, and you are to attach them beneath its beading on two sides, two opposing sides, as attachments for carrying-poles with which to lift it. 5 You are to make the carrying-poles of acacia lumber, and you are to overlay them with gold.
\n6 \u201cYou are to put it in front of the Veil that is before the Ark of the Testimony, before the Ark-Cover which is over the Testimony; there I will meet you by appointmerit. 7 Aaron is to make Special-Formula Incense smoke upon it; morning by morning when he trims the lamps, he is to make it smoke, 8 and when Aaron sets the lamps alight between sundown and nightfall, he is to make it smoke, a continuing incense in Yahweh\u2019s Presence, down through your generations. 9 You are not to offer up upon it profane incense, or a wholly-burned offering or a cereal-offering, nor are you to pour out upon it a drink-offering. 10 Aaron is to make atonement upon its horns one time a year: with the blood of the sin offering for atonement he is to make atonement for it one time a year, down through your generations. It is to be most holy.\u201d
\nNotes
\n1.a. See n. 26:35.a.
\n1.b. \u05de\u05b4\u05e7\u05b0\u05d8\u05b7\u05e8 \u05e7\u05b0\u05d8\u05b9\u05e8\u05b7\u05ea. \u05e7\u05d8\u05e8 in the hiph and piel stems can refer to making fat or meat or incense smoke, but the emphasis is on the smoke, not the burning; see n. 29:13.a. \u05e7\u05d8\u05e8\u05ea may signify \u201csacrifice-smoke\u201d as well as \u201cincense-smoke,\u201d though in this context, it clearly refers to the latter. Cf. L\u00f6hr, Raucheropfer, 168\u201370; Durham, Touch, Taste and Smell, 308\u201326.
\n3.a. See n. 25:11.b.
\n4.a. \u05ea\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d4 \u201cmake.\u201d
\n6.a. \u201cBefore \u2026 Testimony\u201d is missing in SamPent and LXX.
\n6.b. See above, n. 29:42.a.
\n7.a. \u05e7\u05d8\u05e8\u05ea \u05e1\u05de\u05d9\u05dd means \u201caromatic incense-smoke.\u201d As \u05e1\u05de\u05d9\u05dd is always used in the OT (16X) in connection with \u05e7\u05d8\u05e8\u05ea, and always to refer to the special ingredients added to frankincense to make the \u201cmost holy\u201d incense (Exod 30:34\u201338), \u05e7\u05d8\u05e8\u05ea \u05e1\u05de\u05d9\u05dd is here translated \u201cSpecial Formula Incense.\u201d Cf. Haran, Temples, 241\u201343.
\n7.b. \u05d1\u05d4\u05d9\u05d8\u05d9\u05d1\u05d5 \u201cin his making good.\u201d
\n8.a. \u05d1\u05d4\u05e2\u05dc\u05ea \u201cin causing to go up,\u201d i.e., in placing the lighted lamps up on the lampstand, whence they can give light.
\n9.a. \u05e7\u05d8\u05e8\u05ea \u05d6\u05e8\u05d4 \u201cstrange incense,\u201d i.e., incense made and used for ordinary purposes.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139.
\nComment
\n1\u20135 The Altar of Incense was to be a small altar, approximately a foot and a half square and three feet tall (Sellers, \u201cWeights and Measures,\u201d IDB 4:836\u201338). It was to be made of acacia, and entirely overlaid with gold, for which reason it is sometimes called \u05de\u05d6\u05d1\u05d7 \u05d4\u05d6\u05d4\u05d1 \u201cthe Altar of Gold\u201d (cf. Exod 39:38; 40:5, 26; Num 4:11; 2 Chr 4:19). De Langhe (Bib 40 [1959] 489\u201394) has argued, incidentally, that \u201cgold\u201d may be a mistranslation of \u05d6\u05d4\u05d1 in reference to the Altar of Incense; basing his theory on such texts as Isa 60:6; Ps 141:2; and Jer 4:30, he suggests that this Altar was originally called \u05de\u05b4\u05e7\u05b0\u05d8\u05b7\u05e8 \u05d4\u05b7\u05d6\u05b8\u05d4\u05b8\u05d1, lit., \u201cthe place-of-burning of the yellow aromatic material,\u201d and that when \u05de\u05e7\u05d8\u05e8 was replaced by \u05de\u05d6\u05d1\u05d7, the use of \u05d6\u05d4\u05d1 to refer to a yellow aromatic substance was forgotten. Given the extensive use of gold for the other furnishings of the Holy Space and the Holiest Space, however, de Langhe\u2019s theory becomes less plausible. This Altar of Incense was to be decorated with an encircling beading of gold similar to that of the Ark (25:11) and the Table (25:24) and equipped with rings and carrying-poles for moving it, as were the Ark, the Table, and the Altar for burned offerings.
\n6\u201310 The location of the Altar of Incense was inside the Holy Space of the Tabernacle, before the Veil that closed off the Holiest Space, and behind which was the Ark, the Testimony in the Ark, and the Ark-Cover above them both. Just how the Altar of Incense was positioned in relation to the Table and the Lampstand (cf. 26:35), we are not told, though v 6 implies that it was set in a central position before the Veil, at the point at which Yahweh proposed to meet Moses by appointment. On this Altar, \u201cAaron\u201d was to offer only the Special Formula Incense described in 30:34\u201338; all other incense and all other offerings that were burned were to be excluded from it. On a routine basis, at the times of the trimming of the lamps in the morning and the lighting and placing of the lamps in the evening, Aaron was to make incense smoke on this Altar daily. This schedule is very close to the schedule set for daily offerings on the Altar of burned offerings in the Tabernacle Courtyard, and both sets of daily rituals must have had special significance for the acknowledgement and worship of Yahweh present. On the annual Day of Atonement (see Lev 16), atonement was to be made for the Altar of Incense by the application to its horns of blood from the sin-offering for atonement.
\nFor some years following Wellhausen\u2019s (Prolegomena, 64\u201365) assertion that the use of incense came late in Israel, as a postexilic \u201cinnovation from a more luxuriously-developed foreign cultus,\u201d most commentators suggested that the references to incense and incense-altars were later additions to the text of the OT. As early as 1914, however, van Hoonacker (RB 11 [1914] 161\u201387) challenged the Wellhausenist position at length and point by point and concluded that incense was used in Israel\u2019s worship long before the seventh century b.c. and that there was an altar of incense in the Temple of Solomon, just as P maintains. In 1927, Max L\u00f6hr (Raucheropfer, 164\u201389) and H. M. Weiner (Altars 16\u201317, 23\u201331) criticized the view of the Wellhausenists as one with no basis. Albright (Archaeology, 108\u20139), Wright (Biblical Archaeology, 114\u201315), Galling (\u201cIncense Altar,\u201d IDB 2:699), van Beek (JAOS 78 [1958] 141\u201352) and Glueck (Translating, 325\u201341), among others (cf. Durham, Touch, Taste and Smell, 373\u201377), have reviewed the archeological evidence for incense altars and incense use in the OT period and have found more than enough data to make the early use of incense plausible, though as Haran (Temples, 235\u201338) has noted, the discovery of an incense altar in situ in an Israelite sanctuary has yet to be made. More important still is Haran\u2019s (230\u201345) correct distinction between the incense of the Tabernacle Court, the frankincense used variously with burned offerings, and the Special-Formula Incense used inside the Tabernacle itself, on the Golden Altar of Incense, though Haran\u2019s insistence on a distinction between the piel and hiphil usages of \u05e7\u05d8\u05e8 is not sustained by the 112 OT occurrences (42 piel and 70 hiphil; see, for a detailed discussion, Durham, 316\u201325).
\nIn sum, there is little reason why the use of incense and incense altars cannot be as early in Israel\u2019s worship as the OT suggests. And though the Altar of Gold may be a later elaboration of a somewhat plainer altar\u2014and a reflection of the stone incense altars that were a commonplace in Canaan\u2014there is little reason to suggest that it is any later than other elaborate furnishings of the Tabernacle.
\nExplanation
\nThe Golden Altar of Incense, by its expensive construction as by its placement and the special incense offered upon it, is established as yet another symbol of Yahweh at hand. Whatever the period in which such an Altar came into use, and indeed whether it ever even existed, the theological declaration of the Priestly description remains the same. Of all the purposes that have been proposed for the burning of incense, none is given in the OT and none provides a satisfactory explanation for the OT practice. The most that can be said with assurance is that making incense smoke was a further attestation of the belief in Yahweh\u2019s Presence.
\nThe Instructions for the Atonement Money (30:11\u201316)
\nBibliography
\nScott, R. B. Y. \u201cWeights, Measures, Money and Time.\u201d Peake\u2019s Commentary on the Bible. New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1962. 37\u201341. Speiser, E. A. \u201cCensus and Ritual Expiation in Mari and Israel.\u201d Oriental and Biblical Studies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1967. 171\u201386.
\nTranslation
\n11 Then Yahweh spoke to Moses to say: 12 \u201cWhen you count the heads of the sons of Israel for the purpose of assembling them, each man is to give atonement money for himself to Yahweh, as they are counted, that there may be no smiting against them because of their being counted, 13 Everyone who moves over into the counted group is to give a half-shekel (by the measure of the set-apart shekel; there are twenty gerahs to a shekel), a half-shekel as a contribution to Yahweh. 14 Everyone who moves over to the counted group who is twenty years old or more is to give this contribution for Yahweh. 15 The rich are to give no more and the poor are to give no less than the half-shekel in making this contribution for Yahweh in atonement for themselves. 16 You are to take the money of atonement from the sons of Israel, and you are to give it for the expense of the Tent of Appointed Meeting, that it may be a reminder in the Presence of Yahweh for the atonement of yourselves.\u201d
\nNotes
\n12.a. \u05db\u05e4\u05e8, lit., \u201clife-price, ransom, atoning payment.\u201d Note \u05db\u05e1\u05e3 \u05d4\u05db\u05e4\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u201cmoney of atoning payments\u201d in v 16.
\n12.b. \u05d1\u05e4\u05e7\u05d3 \u05d0\u05ea\u05dd \u201cin numbering them.\u201d The first occurrence of this phrase is lacking in LXX; it is translated above in two different ways, given the context of the verse.
\n12.c. \u05e0\u05d2\u05e3 refers always in the OT to Yahweh\u2019s disastrous blow; see n. 12:13.b.
\n13.a. Cf. Speiser, Oriental, 182: \u05e2\u05d1\u05d3 \u05e2\u05dc\u05be\u05d4\u05e4\u05e7\u05d3\u05d9\u05dd \u201cemerges as \u2018one who is entered among the enrolled.\u2019 \u201d
\n16.a. LXX has \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u03b5\u1f30\u03c3\u03c6\u03bf\u03c1\u1fb6\u03c2 \u201cof the contribution.\u201d
\n16.b. \u05e2\u05d1\u05d3\u05d4, lit., \u201clabor, service,\u201d here referring to upkeep and day-to-day expenses.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139.
\nThe interruption of the lengthy sequence of Yahweh\u2019s instructions by the introductory sentence of v 11 has frequently been taken as an indication that this section is an addition to the instructions (so Noth, 236, and even Cassuto, 393) that have preceded it, as also, and for the same reason, are the five sections that follow: 30:17\u201321; 30:22\u201333; 30:34\u201338; 31:1\u201311; and 31:12\u201318. Galling (in Beer, 147\u201353) refers to this section and the three that follow it as \u201csupplements from various hands,\u201d and to 31:12\u201318 as a \u201cconclusion to the announcement of the requirements.\u201d
\nThe miscellaneous nature of these sections can hardly be doubted, any more than can their semiarbitrary sequence. They have, however, been put into Exodus because they were considered significant by those responsible for the traditions connected in one way or another with Israel\u2019s worship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence, and there may well be more of a design in their arrangement than seems apparent to us. The section at hand, for example, amounts to the endowment of the upkeep of the place and equipment for worship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence. It is located where it is, no doubt, because of the references to atonement in the instructions for the Altar of Incense, though its real purpose was to ensure the financing of the Tabernacle and the worship carried on there.
\nComment
\n11\u201312 The provision for the payment of a set sum of money contains two assumptions that cannot be satisfactorily explained, given only the information available in the OT. The first of these assumptions is that a head count of males aged twenty or more was to be made. Though Num 1 reports Yahweh commanding such a census, the connection of that command to the counting referred to in Exod 30:11\u201316, generally made by commentators (so Noth, 236; Hyatt, 293), is by no means assured. Another counting, and quite possibly a periodic counting given the continuing needs of the Tabernacle, may be in view. The second assumption is that such a head count might result in harm, and harm brought by Yahweh unless the atonement sum was paid. Given such a possibility, why would the count be made in the first place? And how would the payment of a half-shekel a head, a payment that sounds very much like a bribe, avert Yahweh\u2019s anger?
\nA variety of speculations has been made, most of them linked in one way or another to the idea of a military census because of the narrative of 2 Sam 24. So Gispen (283), for example, refers to the soldier who was regarded as \u201ca potential taker of human life\u201d and to the pride in the count that might provoke divine jealousy, and Knight (180) speaks of the danger of gathering information that might be useful to an enemy, thus constituting an act of disloyalty toward one\u2019s own deity. A more reasonable, if still partial explanation has been given by Speiser (Oriental, 171\u201386), on the basis of a comparison of biblical passages with texts from Mari. Speiser connects the counting with \u201cnew land grants\u201d and political structures, notes that it is far more than \u201ca routine mustering process,\u201d and though he still relates the procedure to an \u201cunderlying\u201d military purpose, he maintains that a kind of purification was in view vis-\u00e0-vis \u201cthe cosmic \u2018books\u2019 of life and death.\u201d By the time of the requirement set forth in the passage at hand, the older and more ominous implications of such a life-and-death \u201ccalling to account\u201d had been weakened. The atonement-money, a remnant of the earlier concept, thus became the reason for preserving the practice, and its proceeds were turned in a new direction\u2014the support of the Tabernacle and its services of worship.
\n13\u201314 Whatever the reasons for the counting, and whatever there was about such a numbering that was originally believed to displease Yahweh, the count and the atonement payment it required became somehow a source of support for the Tabernacle. Just how early such a procedure was practiced is impossible to say. The frequent assumption that this passage is a late justification of a postexilic poll tax (so McNeile, 196\u201397; Noth, 236) cannot be fully sustained. What seems clear is that the support of the Tabernacle is the primary reason for the inclusion of this instruction in its present form and location. There may be a memory of the procedure employed in counting and collecting in the language of vv 13\u201314. The males twenty years old and older were allowed as they were counted to move from the uncounted to the counted group, and as each man \u201cpassed over\u201d (\u05e2\u05d1\u05e8), he paid the half-shekel atonement money for himself. This half-shekel is certainly to be regarded as money, but probably as a weight of precious metal rather than as coinage (cf. Hamburger, \u201cMoney, Coins,\u201d IDB 3:423\u201324). The metal was quite possibly silver, and a half-shekel, ten gerahs, would weigh approximately 5.7 grams, 0.2 of an ounce (Sellers, \u201cWeights and Measures,\u201d IDB 4:832\u201333). The phrase \u05e9\u05c1\u05e7\u05dc \u05d4\u05e7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cthe set-apart shekel\u201d has not been clearly understood; it may mean only the measure of the sanctuary, or it may refer to a different weight (cf. Sellers, 833; Scott, Peake\u2019s Commentary, 38).
\n15\u201316 The sum thus fixed was not by any standard a large amount, but the instruction that rich and poor alike were to give precisely this payment is an important indication of the equality with which all men were received in Yahweh\u2019s Presence. They were all to give equally because they were all to be received and remembered equally; the money was to be used for the expense of the Tent where Yahweh by appointment came to meet them. Thus it would be a \u05d6\u05b4\u05db\u05b8\u05bc\u05e8\u05d5\u05b9\u05df \u201creminder\u201d of each of them on an equal basis in the place before which they were to gather in his Presence. \u05d6\u05db\u05e8\u05d5\u05df is the term used of the ambiguous \u201creminder\u201d for Israel in Exod 13:9, as also of the gemstones on the shoulderpieces of the Ephod and on the Breastpiece of Judgment that were to be a \u201creminder\u201d for Yahweh.
\nExplanation
\nThus even so pragmatic and routine a necessity as the financial support of the Tabernacle and its ministry of worship is turned into an expression of the central confession of Israel\u2019s faith. An existing procedure of counting and taxation was apparently turned from a census with an element of fear (of military service and of divine punishment) to a passing into the ranks of those who would be remembered, each one equally, in the place where Yahweh came by promise. Here, then, as elsewhere, atonement comes to mean blessing, the blessing of being in Yahweh\u2019s Presence, rather than escape, a flight from that same Presence. By the payment of the atonement money, Israel is to be remembered, not forgotten.
\nThe Instructions for the Laver for Washing (30:17\u201321)
\nParallel Verse:
\n38:8
\nTranslation
\n17 Then Yahweh spoke to Moses to say: 18 \u201cYou are to make a Laver of copper with its pedestal of copper, for washing, and you are to put it between the Tent of Appointed Meeting and the Altar and you are to put water into it. 19 Aaron and his sons are to wash their hands and their feet in this water. 20 Whenever they enter the Tent of Appointed Meeting, they are to wash in this water, so that they will not die. Also whenever they approach the Altar to minister in worship to make an offering by fire into smoke for Yahweh, 21 they are to wash their hands and their feet, so that they will not die. This is to be for them a requirement forever, for Aaron and for his sons down through their generations.\u201d
\nNotes
\n19.a. \u05de\u05de\u05e0\u05d5 \u201cfrom it.\u201d
\n20.a. \u05d0\u05b4\u05e9\u05b6\u05bc\u05c1\u05d4; cf. Gray, Sacrifice, 9\u201313.
\n21.a. LXX adds \u1f55\u03b4\u03b1\u03c4\u03b9 \u1f45\u03c4\u03b1\u03bd \u03b5\u1f30\u03c3\u03c0\u03bf\u03c1\u03b5\u03cd\u03c9\u03bf\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 \u03b5\u1f30\u03c2 \u03c4\u1f74\u03bd \u03c3\u03ba\u03b7\u03bd\u1f74\u03bd \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03bc\u03b1\u03c1\u03c4\u03c5\u03c1\u03af\u03bf\u03c5 \u03bd\u03af\u03c8\u03bf\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 \u1f55\u03b4\u03b1\u03c4\u03b9 \u201cwith water whenever they enter the Tent of Appointed Meeting; they are to wash with water.\u201d
\n21.b. MT \u05dc\u05d5 \u201cfor him,\u201d but Aaron is the obvious antecedent.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139 and 30:11\u201316.
\nComment
\n17\u201319 The Laver of copper was for the ceremonial cleansing of the priests\u2019 hands and feet when they entered the Tabernacle or approached the Altar for ministry there. The washing of hands and feet is clearly related to the priests\u2019 approach to the places of Yahweh\u2019s Presence and their handling of the implements of his Presence; but a broader symbolism of purity may also be intended. No dimensions are given for this Laver, either here or in the parallel reference in Exod 38:8, but it is not to be regarded as of anything like the size of the ten massive Lavers of Solomon\u2019s Temple (1 Kgs 7:27\u201339), which with their stands were more than eight feet tall and held two hundred and forty-three gallons each (Garber, \u201cLaver,\u201d IDB 3:76\u201377).
\n20\u201321 The requirement that the priests should wash before carrying out their duties in Yahweh\u2019s Presence is specified as a permanent one, to be kept on pain of death. There was to be no carelessness in the matter of respect for Yahweh\u2019s nearness. The duties before which the priests were so to cleanse themselves are listed as (1) entry into Tabernacle, apparently for any purpose whatever, and (2) coming to the Altar to minister there. The general designation for this latter ministry is causing an offering to smoke by fire, \u05dc\u05d4\u05e7\u05d8\u05d9\u05e8 \u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05d4, a phrase that is intended to describe all the offerings made on the Altar, herd offerings, flock offerings or field offerings, \u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05d4 is a general term for any offering made by fire, either in part or wholly (cf. Gray, Sacrifice 9\u201310; de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 417).
\nExplanation
\nNot alone the Laver and the permanent requirement that the priests should wash in its water before attending duty near Yahweh\u2019s Presence, but even more the specification that neglect of the requirement may lead to death, all attest with unmistakable clarity the belief in Yahweh\u2019s Presence. Performing the obligations of ministry in the Presence was not enough; preparation and fitness for the performance of those obligations were equally important.
\nThe Instructions for the Anointing Oil and the Special-Formula Incense (30:22\u201338)
\nBibliography
\nBeek, G. van. \u201cFrankincense and Myrrh in Ancient South Arabia.\u201d JAOS 78 (1958) 141\u201352. Noth, M. \u201cOffice and Vocation in the Old Testament.\u201d The Laws in the Pentateuch and Other Studies. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1966. 228\u201349.
\nTranslation
\n22 Then Yahweh spoke to Moses to say 23 \u201cYou yourself take the best aromatic spices: five hundred shekels of powdered myrrh, half that much cinnamon spice (two hundred and fifty shekels), two hundred and fifty shekels of cane spice, 24 five hundred shekels of cassia, by the measure of the set-apart shekel, and a hin of olive oil. 25 You are to blend these into a sacred Oil of Anointment, compounded in a spice-mixer\u2019s mortar, as a spice-mixer\u2019s blend. This is to be the sacred Oil of Anointment.
\n26 \u201cYou are to anoint with it the Tent of Appointed Meeting and the Ark of the Testimony, 27 the Table and all its containers, the Lampstand and its accessories, the Altar of Incense, 28 the Altar of wholly-burned offerings and all its accessories, and the Laver and its pedestal. 29 You are thus to set them apart, and they are to be most holy: anything touching them must similarly be set apart.
\n30 \u201cYou are to anoint Aaron and his sons, and so you are to set them apart to give priestly ministry to me. 31 To the sons of Israel you are to say, \u2018This is to be my sacred Oil of Anointment down through your generations. 32 It is not to be poured upon the flesh of laymen, nor are you to blend any like it, by its formula. It is set apart, and it must be set apart as regards you. 33 A man who mixes any like it, or who puts any of it upon someone inappropriate, is to be ostracized from his people.\u2019 \u201d
\n34 Then Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cTake for yourself aromatic spices: resin droplets, mollusk scent, and galbanum gum, aromatic spices along with pure frankincense, one part frankincense to an equal part of the aromatic spice mixture; 35 you are to blend these into an incense of mixed aromatics, a spice-mixer\u2019s blend, salted, pure, set apart. 36 You are to pound some of this into a fine powder, and you are to put it in front of the Testimony in the Tent of Appointed Meeting, there where I will meet you by appointment. It is to be most holy to you. 37 The incense that you are to blend by this formula, you are not to blend for yourselves; as far as you are concerned, it is set apart for Yahweh. 38 A man who blends any like it, to smell it himself, is to be ostracized from his people.\u201d
\nNotes
\n23.a. \u05d1\u05e9\u05c2\u05de\u05d9\u05dd \u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cthe chief, superior, head aromatic spices.\u201d
\n23.b. \u201cShekels\u201d is added here and 3X more in vv 23 and 24 on the basis of the statement in v 24 of the standard of measurement for the shekel intended.
\n23.c. \u05de\u05e8\u05be\u05d3\u05e8\u05d5\u05e8, lit., \u201cfree-running\u201d or \u201cflowing myrrh.\u201d \u201cLiquid myrrh\u201d (rsv) is a possibility, but as myrrh was collected as a gum resin by cutting the bark of Balsamodendron Myrrh (van Beek, JAOS 78 [1958] 141\u201343), the hardened globules of the gum appear also to have been ground into a powder that would have been easy to store and would have been poured from a container.
\n24.a. See Comment on v 14.
\n25.a. \u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d9\u05ea \u05d0\u05ea\u05d5 \u201cyou are to make it.\u201d
\n25.b. \u05e8\u05e7\u05d7 \u05de\u05e8\u05e7\u05d7\u05ea \u201ca spice-mixture of an ointment-pot\u201d; cf. BDB, 955.
\n27.a. SamPent, LXX read \u201call its.\u201d
\n29.a. \u05d9\u05e7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cit will be set apart, holy.\u201d Holiness, like uncleanness, is considered infectious by touch-contact in the OT. Thus anyone or anything touching these most holy implements of the worship of Yahweh\u2019s Presence became holy upon contacting them, a situation that necessitated precaution. See more fully Durham, Touch, Taste and Smell, 108\u201345; cf. neb\u2019s reading, \u201cshall be forfeit as sacred.\u201d
\n32.a. \u05d0\u05d3\u05dd \u201cmankind,\u201d used here as a general term in reference to all humankind except those being ordained as priests to Yahweh.
\n33.a. \u05d6\u05e8 \u201cinappropriate\u201d here designates anyone outside the circle of those set apart by ordination, as \u201cforeign, strange,\u201d so far as this special Oil of Anointing is concerned.
\n34.a. \u05e0\u05d8\u05e3 \u201cresin droplets\u201d refers to an aromatic substance we can no longer identify. Its name suggests that it was harvested in droplets, but so were nearly all aromatic gum resins. Cf. Durham, Touch, Taste and Smell, 334\u201335.
\n34.b. \u05e9\u05c1\u05d7\u05dc\u05ea \u201cmollusk scent\u201d refers to the \u201ccover\u201d or \u201cshell\u201d of a mollusk common along the coast of the Red Sea, which produced a pungent, musky odor when it was burned. Cf. Durham, Touch, Taste and Smell, 335\u201336.
\n34.c. \u05d7\u05dc\u05d1\u05e0\u05d4 refers to another gum resin, frequently connected with the Ferula Galbanifera, and so often called \u201cgalbanum.\u201d Cf. Durham, Touch, Taste and Smell, 336\u201337.
\n36.a. See n. 29:42.a.
\n37.a. Lit., \u201cby its formula.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139 and 30:11\u201316.
\nThere are two appendix sections in this sequence, one dealing with the recipe for the special Oil of Anointment, and one with the recipe for the Special Formula Incense for use on the \u201cGolden Altar\u201d described in 30:1\u201310. Each of the two sections begins with an introductory phrase ascribing authority for the formulas to Yahweh, and they probably come together because of the similarity of their content.
\nComment
\n22\u201325 The formula for the sacred Oil of Anointment is reasonably clear, both as regards the ingredients of the special mixture and the relative proportions in which they were to be added. Only the form in which the aromatic ingredients were to be used remains ambiguous, whether liquid or dry. On the whole, a dry, powdered form is the preferable guess, in part because a weight measure as opposed to a liquid measure is used to describe their proportions. Thus approximately 16 lbs 10 oz (5.7 kilos) each of cinnamon and cane spice were added to approximately one gallon of olive oil (Sellers, 832, 835). Cassuto (397\u201398), depending largely upon rabbinic commentary, explains the relatively small amount of oil to be mixed with approximately 33 1\/2 lbs of aromatic spices by suggesting that the spices were \u201ccooked\u201d with water in a lengthy process of distillation. If such a process was employed, the OT gives no hint of it. Lucas (Egyptian Materials, 104\u201310) describes the Egyptian process of pressing gum resins with oil, then removing the oil by squeezing the resultant paste in a cloth to extract the oil. The oil thus became the base, one that absorbed and then retained the fragrance of a variety of flowers or aromatic substances. This seems a far likelier possibility for the production of the Oil of Anointment, which was after all not needed in large quantities but was required to be specially fragrant, and no doubt expensive. The fact that it is described as blended in a \u201cspice-mixer\u2019s mortar,\u201d manufactured by what amounted to a professional process, lends support to such a suggestion.
\n26\u201333 This special-formula oil was to be used to anoint the symbols of Yahweh\u2019s nearness already identified as sacred by their close association with his Presence, the Tabernacle itself, and the furnishings of the Tabernacle and its Courtyard. This anointing amounted to a formal declaration that these implements were all in the category of \u201cmost holy,\u201d and thus that anyone or anything coming into physical contact with them would become infectiously holy and so must be either (1) appointed to such contact, through ordination (cf. Num 4:15\u201320), or (2) appropriately isolated and dealt with (so Uzzah is stricken dead for touching the Ark [2 Sam 6:6\u20138], albeit with an apparently good intention; those who misuse the special oil or incense were to be ostracized [Exod 30:33, 38]).
\nThis is the oil to be used, of course, in the anointing ceremony that was a part of Aaron\u2019s ordination (29:7), as in the sprinkling of the sacral vestments (29:21) of the priests. As Noth (Laws, 238\u201340) has pointed out, anointment in the ANE not only symbolized the special authority conferred on the king or the priest being anointed, it also bestowed, through the \u201c \u2018life-giving oil,\u2019 \u201d what Noth calls \u201cpermanent additional vital energy.\u201d Under no circumstances, therefore, was the Oil of Anointment to be used on any person other than a priest being ordained, and employing its special formula to blend any of the oil for any personal use is strictly forbidden, upon pain of being \u201ccut off\u201d from one\u2019s own people, a penalty whose awful consequences are dramatized by the story of Cain (Gen 4:11\u201316).
\n34\u201335 The Special Formula Incense is similarly unique, and similarly restricted to use only in worship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence. The formula for this incense is given just as specifically as the formula for the Oil of Anointment, though without the mention of exact quantities. Three aromatic spices mixed together were to be matched by an equal amount of frankincense. The aromatic spices can no longer be identified with certainty, though two of them, the first and the third in the sequence of v 34, appear to have been produced by shrubs or trees; the middle one was produced by a shellfish. Frankincense (\u05dc\u05d1\u05e0\u05d4) was also a gum-resin incense, though more common and less expensive than the other fragrant substances of the Special Formula Incense, thus more widely used (cf. Lucas, Egyptian Materials, 111\u201313). \u05dc\u05d1\u05e0\u05d4 is used twenty-one times in the OT, seventeen times in connection with worship (always as an accompaniment to cereal offerings); \u05e0\u05d8\u05e3 \u201cresin droplets,\u201d \u05e9\u05c1\u05d7\u05dc\u05ea \u201cmollusk scent,\u201d and \u05d7\u05dc\u05d1\u05e0\u05d4 \u201cgalbanum gum\u201d are used only here, in the special incense formula. Like the Oil of Anointment, this incense mixture was to be blended by professional methods, apparently with a small amount of salt, for a reason now unknown (Cassuto, 400, takes \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05d4 to mean \u201cpure,\u201d not as a reference to salt at all).
\n36\u201338 The proper blend having been achieved, a portion of this Special Formula Incense was to be pulverized into a very fine powder to prepare it for use. Apparently the blend was stored in its coarse, resin-grain form. The reference to the placement of the powdered form of the incense \u201cin front of the Testimony in the Tent of Appointed Meeting\u201d seems strangely ambiguous and has led some commentators (for example, Noth, 239) to suggest that censers rather than the Altar of Incense may be in view. The text is no more amenable to that view, however, than it is to the view that the \u201cGolden Altar\u201d is implied here. The location specified in v 36 is near enough to the location of that Altar in 30:6 to give weight to the opinion that the Altar of Incense, not a censer or censers, is the place where the Special-Formula Incense in powdered form was to be placed. Like the Oil of Anointment, this incense too was to be reserved for the exclusive use of worship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence, with the same penalty assessed against anyone who should make any for any other use.
\nExplanation
\nThe Oil of Anointment and the Special Formula Incense are additional symbols of the Priestly belief in and confession of the Presence of Yahweh in the midst of Israel. Like the materials of the Tabernacle and its furnishings, or the sacral vestments, the ingredients of this oil and this incense are rare and expensive: the best is to be employed in the worship of Yahweh. Like everything else connected with the Tabernacle, the Oil of Anointment and the Special Formula Incense are to be painstakingly prepared by the most professional methods. And like the Holy Space and the Holiest Space, and all the implements of worship within those areas and before them in the Courtyard, the Oil and the Incense are reserved for use only in the worship of Yahweh. In every possible way, Yahweh\u2019s Presence in Israel was to be conveyed as both real and unique. And Israel\u2019s response, designed to be a part of that message, had also to be both real and unique, costly and reserved for Yahweh alone.
\nThe Designation of the Artisans (31:1\u201311)
\nParallel Verses:
\n35:10\u201319; 35:30\u201336:1
\nTranslation
\n1 Then Yahweh spoke to Moses to say: 2 \u201cTake note\u2014I have called out by name Bezalel (\u201cIn El\u2019s protecting shadow\u201d), son of Uri (\u201cMy flame\u201d), son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah; 3 I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom and in discernment and in skill and in workmanship of every kind, 4 to design intricate patterns for work in gold, in silver, and in copper, 5 in engraving gemstones for setting, and in carving wood, to make workmanship of every kind.
\n6 \u201cNote also that I have myself put alongside him Oholiab (\u201cTent of father\u201d), son of Ahisamach (\u201cMy brother has sustained\u201d), of the tribe of Dan, and that I have put wisdom into the mind of all those already skilled, so that they may make everything I have commanded you\u20147 the Tent of Appointed Meeting, the Ark of the Testimony, the Ark-Cover over it, and all the equipment of the Tent, 8 the Table and its equipment, the pure Lampstand and all its equipment, the Altar of Incense, 9 the Altar of wholly-burned offerings and all its equipment, the Laver and its pedestal, 10 the elaborately sewn vestments, the sacred vestments of Aaron the priest and the vestments of his sons, for their priestly ministry, 11 and the Oil of Anointment and the Special Formula Incense for the Holy Space. In accord with everything I have commanded you they are to work.\u201d
\nNotes
\n2.a. \u201cChild\u201d or \u201cWhite One\u201d or even \u201cof Hurrian descent\u201d; see n. 17:10.a.
\n3.a. \u05d5\u05d1\u05d3\u05e2\u05ea \u201cand in skill\u201d; \u05d3\u05e2\u05ea refers to knowledge gained by experience, so is taken to refer to \u201cskill\u201d in the sequence above, which attempts to describe the artisan divinely endowed.
\n5.a. LXX omits \u201cfor setting.\u201d
\n6.a. LXX reads \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u201chim\u201d as a dir obj, followed by \u03ba\u03b1\u03af \u201cand.\u201d
\n6.b. LXX has \u0395\u03bb\u03b9\u03b1\u03b2 = \u05dc\u05b1\u05b4\u05d9\u05d0\u05b8\u05d1 \u201cGod of father.\u201d
\n6.c. \u05d5\u05d1\u05dc\u05d1 \u05db\u05dc\u05be\u05d7\u05db\u05dd\u05be\u05dc\u05d1 \u201cand into the heart (= mind) of everyone wise of heart (= mind).\u201d
\n8.a. SamPent, LXX, Syr, Cairo Geniza have \u201call.\u201d
\n10.a. \u05e9\u05c2\u05e8\u05d3 \u201celaborately sewn\u201d describes braid-work, stitched and over-stitched; cf. BDB, 975, and Haran, Temples, 172\u201373.
\n10.b. \u05dc\u05db\u05d4\u05df; lit., \u201cto give priestly ministry,\u201d to which LXX adds the usual \u03bc\u03bf\u03b9 \u201cto me.\u201d
\n11.a. \u05dc\u05e7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cfor the Holy Space,\u201d here a reference to the Tabernacle generally and the space before the Veil in particular. Cf. Haran, Temples, 172, n. 50.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139 and 30:11\u201316.
\nThis appendix section and the one following it serve, in the composite Exodus, as a logical conclusion to Yahweh\u2019s instructions concerning the media of worship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence. These verses note the designation of the artisans in charge of the work of making the Tabernacle and the furnishings, equipment, vestments, and supplies, so they afford an opportunity for a summary listing of them all. Vv 12\u201317 review the command of the sabbath as the day above all days for reflection on the reality and the meaning of Yahweh present in Israel\u2019s midst, the day when the significance of the symbols of Yahweh\u2019s Presence could be pondered and treasured. The summary nature of these two sections is further suggested by v 18, which recounts the conclusion of Yahweh\u2019s speaking to Moses and mentions the gift to him of the two tablets of the Testimony containing the ten words that began the entire sequence of Yahweh\u2019s revelation on the mountain.
\nComment
\n1\u20135 The designation and special endowment by Yahweh of Bezalel as the supervising artisan for the manufacture of the various media of worship is a logical conclusion to the sequence of instructions Yahweh has given to guide this process. Just as logically, Bezalel is mentioned at the beginning of the narrative of the implementation of these instructions, in 35:30\u201336:1, immediately after the account of the offering of the requisite materials (35:4\u201329). Bezalel, appropriately enough from the tribe of Judah, is described as specially endowed for his assignment by an infilling of the divine spirit, which adds to his native ability three qualities that suit him ideally for the task at hand: wisdom (\u05d7\u05db\u05de\u05d4), the gift to understand what is needed to fulfill Yahweh\u2019s instructions; discernment (\u05ea\u05d1\u05d5\u05e0\u05d4), the talent for solving the inevitable problems involved in the creation of so complex a series of objects and materials; and skill (\u05d3\u05e2\u05ea), the experienced hand needed to guide and accomplish the labor itself. Bezalel, so gifted, is the ideal combination of theoretical knowledge, problem-solving practicality, and planning capability who can bring artistic ideals to life with his own hands. That such a comprehensive equipping is intended here is suggested also by the summary listing of what Bezalel is to accomplish: he is to design intricate patterns in three metals, gold, silver and copper; to engrave gemstones; and to carve wood; all these talents are required for \u201cworkmanship of every kind.\u201d In sum, Bezalel is made expert by Yahweh himself for every kind of work necessary for fulfilling the instructions given to Moses on Sinai.
\n6\u201311 Bezalel is also to have an assistant, Oholiab, and the additional advantage of workmen who will, like himself, be divinely augmented to the work at hand. The summary list of all that is to be made by Bezalel and Oholiab and their helpers is a review of everything described in chaps. 25\u201330. The introduction in v 10 of \u05d1\u05d2\u05d3\u05d9 \u05d4\u05e9\u05c2\u05e8\u05d3 \u201celaborately sewn vestments\u201d is not a reference to some new vestment not mentioned before (Cassuto, 403, suggests that optional winter garments might be meant), but simply the use of a general term to describe all the elaborately made and decorated sacral vestments (cf. Haran, Temples, 172\u201373). All the work to be undertaken by these divinely equipped artisans and craftsmen has been described to Moses by Yahweh himself. Yahweh had chosen to have the media of his worship made by men (and women, according to 35:25\u201329), albeit persons specially equipped for their tasks by him, but the works they were to produce had been described in detail already to Moses. No room is left for creative variations on the plans Yahweh had given.
\nExplanation
\nAs the materials for the symbols of Yahweh\u2019s Presence had to be only the best, so also the workmanship by which they were created had to be the finest. To this end, artisans already both skilled and gifted had their abilities enhanced and were to be guided by an ideal artist, one made wise and practical and facile by Yahweh himself. The resulting Tabernacle and equipment were thus to be the undoubted result of a divine-human partnership, but one which left by divine intention no possibility of a human error or willful aberration. Bezalel, filled with Yahweh\u2019s spirit, was to be as one divinely possessed, and Israel, looking at anything made under his direction, was to think not of Bezalel and his helpers, but only of Yahweh present.
\nThe Instructions for Keeping the Sabbath (31:12\u201318)
\nParallel Verses:
\n35:1\u20133
\nBibliography
\nThomas, D. W. Some Further Remarks on Unusual Ways of Expressing the Superlative in Hebrew. VT 18 (1968) 120\u201324. Weingreen, J. \u201cThe Case of the Woodgatherer (Numbers XV 32\u201336).\u201d VT 16 (1966) 361\u201364. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cThe Deuteronomic Legislator\u2014a Proto-Rabbinic Type.\u201d Proclamation and Presence. New corr. ed. Ed. John I Durham and J. R. Porter. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1983. 76\u201389.
\nTranslation
\n12 Then Yahweh said this to Moses: 13 \u201cYou speak to the sons of Israel, and say, \u2018Be sure that you keep my sabbath, because that is a sign between me and you down through your generations, that you may know by experience that I am Yahweh, the one who sets you apart. 14 You are to keep the sabbath because it is set apart for you: anyone who desecrates it is strictly to be put to death; when anyone does customary labor on it, that person is to be ostracized from among his people. 15 Six days is customary labor to be done. On the seventh day, there is to be a sabbath of sabbath-rest, set apart for Yahweh: anyone doing customary labor on the day of the sabbath is strictly to be put to death, 16 The sons of Israel are to keep the sabbath, to respect the sabbath down through their generations as a perpetual covenant. 17 Between me and the sons of Israel it is to be a sign in perpetuity\u2014because in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, then on the seventh day he rested and so caught his breath.\u2019 \u201d
\n18 Finally Yahweh gave to Moses, when he had completed speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tables of the Testimony, tables of stone written by God\u2019s own hand.
\nNotes
\n12.a. \u05dc\u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u2026 \u05d9\u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u201che said to say.\u201d
\n13.a. \u05d0\u05da \u201csurely.\u201d
\n14.a. \u05de\u05d5\u05ea \u05d9\u05d5\u05de\u05d9 \u201cis strictly to be put to death.\u201d
\n14.b. \u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05db\u05d4 \u201ccustomary labor\u201d; see Comment on 20:9\u201310.
\n16.a. LXX has \u03c3\u03ac\u03b2\u03b2\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1 \u201csabbaths\u201d here, and \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u1f70 \u201cthem\u201d instead of the second \u201csabbath\u201d of this verse.
\n16.b. \u05dc\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d5\u05ea \u201cto do.\u201d
\n18.a. MT has simply \u201che\u201d; the antecedent is added above for clarity.
\n18.b. \u05d1\u05d0\u05e6\u05d1\u05e2 \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd \u201cby the finger of God,\u201d which Thomas (120\u201321) suggests may be here, as in 32:16, an attempt to indicate a superior kind of writing.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139, 30:11\u201316, and 31:1\u201311.
\nComment
\n12\u201317 Yahweh\u2019s strict instructions regarding the keeping of the sabbath provide an appropriate conclusion to the extended instructions to Moses begun specifically at 25:2, and in broader terms, with the revelation to the people of Israel in 20:2\u201317. Indeed, the fourth of the commandments is recorded in language (20:8\u201311) closely parallel to the instructions set forth here, at several points. These instructions are somewhat wider in their application than the ban of working on the Tabernacle and its various equipment on the sabbath day (so Noth, 240\u201341, and Cassuto, 403\u20135), however. They are intended as a conclusion to the whole series of instructions concerning the media of worship, a conclusion designed to call attention to the importance of stopping to reflect on the reality of the Presence of Yahweh, of providing a regular time for honoring that Presence in worship. It is precisely this conclusion to the instructions for the media of worship that provides the introduction to the narrative of the implementation of those instructions, in 35:2\u20133. In fact, if the account of Israel\u2019s first disobedience and its aftermath were to be removed from the sequence of the Book of Exodus and these two collections of Priestly material were brought together, the two sets of instructions regarding the sabbath day would become a repetitive bridge connecting command to obedience, blueprint to construction. Further, the sole specific concern of the instruction of 35:2\u20133 has nothing to do with the building of the Tabernacle or its equipment but sets forth a ban against kindling a fire on the sabbath day.
\n13 Keeping the sabbath is set forth here with the broad significance of a general sign (\u05d0\u05d5\u05b9\u05ea), throughout Israel\u2019s generations, that Yahweh is the one who has made them special. Keeping his sabbath is one way of realizing that specialness, of keeping keen the sense of it, just as the Tabernacle and the various symbols contained within it were a continuing way of representing the Presence at hand that made that specialness a reality. The intention of this sign and the reason it must be kept so regularly and so conscientiously is that Israel might know Yahweh\u2019s Presence by experience, in every generation, and be reminded constantly that only by that Presence are they a people set apart. It is for this reason that the sabbath command is to be kept so strictly. Disregard for the sabbath, either by neglect or by a violation of the strictures concerning it, is disregard for Yahweh: and disregard for Yahweh is disregard for the reason and the possibility of Israel\u2019s existence as a people.
\n14\u201315 Israel was thus to keep every seventh day as a sabbath-rest, set apart for Yahweh. Any desecration of the sabbath (no specific example is given) was to result in death. The performance of customary labor on the sabbath is accorded the penalty of exclusion from the community in v 14 and the penalty of death in v 15, a discrepancy Noth (241) attributes both to emphasis and \u201csecondary addition,\u201d but one that has more to do with the kind of labor, its intention and its result. Num 15:32\u201336, the case of the man found gathering wood on the sabbath may be, as Weingreen (VT 16 [1966] 361\u201364) has suggested, a violation of the specific ban against kindling a fire on the sabbath (Exod 35:3; cf. also Weingreen\u2019s later reversal, Proclamation, 87\u201389). Exod 34:21 warns against sabbath labor during the busy agricultural seasons, and Jer 17:21 forbids lifting a burden on the sabbath to those who would \u201cguard their lives.\u201d No further specific examples are cited in the OT, but these are enough to suggest that every case of supposed sabbath violation was reviewed as individual unless there was a very close precedent.
\n16\u201317 The fact that the sabbath commandment is called a perpetual covenant between Yahweh and Israel, and \u201ca sign in perpetuity,\u201d is an additional reason to extend the application of these verses to a frame far broader than the prohibition of work on the Tabernacle on the sabbath. The reason the sabbath is to be kept is that Yahweh has commanded it as a sign of the covenant in perpetuity between himself and Israel, the covenant by which Israel had made a response to the gift of Yahweh\u2019s Presence. The precedent for the sabbath is stated as Yahweh\u2019s own rest after the six days of creation. The result of the keeping of the sabbath is that Israel will know, generation after generation, the experience of Yahweh\u2019s nearness.
\n18 The words of Yahweh\u2019s concluding instruction are followed by a reference to the ten commandments, with which the teaching on Mount Sinai was begun. Yahweh completed his revelation of himself and his way by giving to Moses the two stone tables of the Testimony, that is, the ten words, described as written by his own hand. It is this tradition, along with the unique contents of the tables, that gave them the name Testimony and a special place in the Ark, which came thereby to be called the Ark of the Testimony (cf. 25:16\u201322).
\nExplanation
\nThe repetition of the sabbath-commandment as the conclusion to the long sequence of Yahweh\u2019s instructions for the media of Israel\u2019s worship provides a bracket from the beginning of Yahweh\u2019s teaching on the mountain to its end. A restrictive sabbath observance also provides a continuing means of Israel\u2019s reflection upon the Presence of Yahweh, and so a continuing means of sensitizing Israel to the reality of that Presence, as communicated by the symbolism of the Tabernacle and its equipment. Because of this, the sabbath-commandment is referred to as a sign in perpetuity of the covenant with Yahweh, and a means of helping Israel to know by experience that it is Yahweh at hand who makes them a unique people. If even Yahweh stopped to catch his breath after six days of customary labor, so also should Israel. And in that stopping, as Israel came to know Yahweh, Israel would come also to know themselves.
\nIII. Israel\u2019s First Disobedience and Its Aftermath (32:1\u201334:35)
\nIsrael\u2019s Sin with the Golden Calf (32:1\u20136)
\nBibliography
\nAberbach, M., and L. Smolar. \u201cAaron, Jeroboam, and the Golden Calves.\u201d JBL 86 (1967) 129\u201340. Bailey, L. R. \u201cThe Golden Calf.\u201d HUCA 42 (1971) 97\u2013115. Brichto, H. C. \u201cThe Worship of the Golden Calf: a Literary Analysis of a Fable on Idolatry.\u201d HUCA 54 (1983) 1\u201344. Coats, G. W. Rebellion in the Wilderness. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1968. Davis, D. R. \u201cRebellion, Presence, and Covenant: A Study in Exodus 32\u201334.\u201d WTJ 44 (1982) 71\u201387. Eissfeldt, O. \u201cLade und Stierbild.\u201d ZAW 58 (1940\u201341) 190\u2013215. Faur, J. \u201cThe Biblical Idea of Idolatry.\u201d JQR 69 (1978) 1\u201315. Gevirtz, S. \u201c\u05d7\u05b6\u05e8\u05b6\u05d8 in the Manufacture of the Golden Calf.\u201d Bib 65 (1984) 377\u201381. Key, A. F. \u201cTraces of the Worship of the Moon God Sin among the Early Israelites.\u201d JBL 84 (1965) 20\u201326. Lehming, S. \u201cVersuch zu Ex. XXXII.\u201d VT 10 (1960) 16\u201350. Lewy, I. \u201cThe Story of the Golden Calf Reanalysed.\u201d VT 9 (1959) 318\u201322. Lewy, J. \u201cThe Assyro-Babylonian Cult of the Moon and Its Culmination in the Time of Nabonidus.\u201d HUCA 19 (1945\u201346) 405\u201389. Loewenstamm, S. E. \u201cThe Making and Destruction of the Golden Calf.\u201d Bib 48 (1967) 481\u201390. Loza, J. \u201cExode XXXII et la redaction JE.\u201d VT 23 (1973) 31\u201355. Moberly, R. W. L. At the Mountain of God: Story and Theology in Exodus 32\u201334. JSOTSup 22. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1983. Noth, M. \u201cThe Background off Judges 17\u201318.\u201d Israel\u2019s Prophetic Heritage. Ed. B. W. Anderson and W. Harrelson. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962. 68\u201385. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cZur Anfertigung des Goldenen Kalbes.\u201d VT 9 (1959) 419\u201322. Ostwalt, J. N. \u201cThe Golden Calves and the Egyptian Concept of Deity.\u201d EvQ 45 (1973) 13\u201320. Petuchowski, J. J. \u201cNochmals \u2018Zur Anfertigung des \u201cGoldenen Kalbes.\u201d \u2019 \u201d VT 10 (1960) 74. Sasson, J. M. \u201cBovine Symbolism in the Exodus Narrative.\u201d VT 18 (1968) 380\u201387. Vermeylen, J. \u201cL\u2019affaire du veau d\u2019or (Ex 32\u201334). Une cl\u00e9 pour la \u2018question deut\u00e9ronomiste\u2019?\u201d ZAW 97 (1985) 1\u201323. Wainwright, G. A. \u201cThe Bull Standards of Egypt.\u201d JEA 19 (1933) 42\u201352. Zenger, E. Die Sinaitheophanie. Forschung zur Bibel 3. W\u00fcrzburg: Echter Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1971.
\nTranslation
\n1 Then the people realized that Moses was long overdue coming down from the mountain, and so they came together against Aaron, and they said to him, \u201cGet busy! Make gods for us who can lead us, because this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we have no idea what has become of him.\u201d 2 So Aaron said to them, \u201cSnatch the rings of gold from the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters and bring them to me.\u201d 3 All the people snatched from themselves the rings of gold that were in their ears, and they brought them to Aaron, 4 who took them from their hands and immediately began to press the gold with a metalworking tool. Thus he made a calf with a shaped sheathing. Then they said, \u201cThese are your gods, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.\u201d 5 When Aaron saw their reaction, he built an altar in front of it, and then Aaron made an announcement: he said, \u201cTomorrow is to be a sacred day for Yahweh!\u201d
\n6 So they got up early the next day, and they offered wholly-burned offerings, and they brought completion-offerings. And then the people sat down to eat and to drink, after which they rose to frivolity.
\nNotes
\n1.a. \u05d1\u05b9\u05e9\u05b5\u05c1\u05e9\u05c1 is a polel from \u05d1\u05d5\u05e9\u05c1, \u201cbe ashamed, dismayed.\u201d The sense here reflects the people\u2019s fright and indignation; given their feeling of need in the isolation of Sinai, Moses\u2019 long delay is in their opinion either irresponsible or tragic: \u201ca shame,\u201d we might say.
\n1.b. \u05e2\u05dc + \u05e7\u05d4\u05dc \u201ccome together upon, to, against.\u201d
\n1.c. \u05e7\u05d5\u05dd \u201crise up\u201d for action. See BDB, 878, 6.
\n1.d. Lit., \u201cwho can go in front of us.\u201d
\n4.a. \u05d0\u05ea\u05d5 \u201cit\u201d clearly refers to the metal made available in the rings; thus the antecedent is used above. \u05d9\u05b8\u05e6\u05b7\u05e8 can be either a 3d masc. sg hiph impf. of \u05e6\u05e8\u05e8 \u201ctie up, press,\u201d as above, or a 3d masc. sg qal impf. of \u05e6\u05d5\u05e8 \u201cconfine, bind.\u201d The meaning in either case is that the gold is being stressed, pressed into sheets. Such a working of small and relatively thin pieces of gold would have been easier than melting the gold down, since the melting point of gold is 1,063\u00b0 C. (cf. Lucas, Egyptian Materials, 263\u201365).
\n4.b. \u05d7\u05e8\u05d8 \u201cmetalworking tool,\u201d a kind of shaping or engraving tool with which Aaron apparently was thought to have shaped a covering of gold around a solid core, probably of wood; see Judg 17:4, and cf. von Rad, OT Theology 1:216, n. 61 with Noth, Prophetic Heritage, 72, n. 12. Cf. also Smolar and Aberbach, \u201cCalf, Golden,\u201d IDBSup 123; and note the alternative of Gevirtz, Bib 65 (1984) 378\u201379, who proposes that \u05d7\u05e8\u05d8 was a \u201cbag\u201d or \u201cpurse,\u201d by analogy with \u05d7\u05e8\u05d8\u05d9\u05dd in 2 Kgs 5:23.
\n4.c. \u05de\u05e1\u05db\u05d4 from \u05e0\u05e1\u05da \u201cweave,\u201d BDB, 651, II. The alternate possibility, \u05de\u05e1\u05db\u05d4 from \u05e0\u05e1\u05da \u201cpour out,\u201d BDB, 650, I, may be either \u201cmolten metal\u201d or perhaps \u201cmolded metal,\u201d a rubbed gold overlay. Note also the theory of Faur (JQR 69 [1978] 10\u201312), who connects \u05de\u05e1\u05db\u05d4 with anointment and perhaps libation by which the calf-image was consecrated and so became \u201ca living idol.\u201d
\n4.d. So MT, apparently in reference to the people\u2019s reception of the calf Aaron had produced. LXX has \u201che said,\u201d making the statement an announcement of Aaron.
\n5.a. MT has simply \u05d5\u05d9\u05e8\u05d0 \u201cand he saw, perceived\u201d; \u05e8\u05d0\u05d4 is used here as in v 1 above, where it is translated \u201crealized.\u201d Cf. BDB, 970, 5. \u201cTheir reaction,\u201d the obvious sense of the statement, is added above for clarity. Syr. reads \u201che feared\u201d instead of \u201che saw.\u201d
\n6.a. LXX reads this verb and the two that follow it as sgs, thus connecting the early rising and the sacrifices and offerings with Aaron\u2019s activity, rather than the people\u2019s.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nAny consideration of the literary form of the narrative of the making of the golden calf in Exod 32:1\u20136 must take into consideration the relation of this brief but crucial narrative to the larger literary complex of which it is a part, Exod 32\u201334. And that linkage necessarily raises the question of the still larger Sinai narrative sequence of Exod 19:1\u201320:21; 24; and even chaps. 25\u201331, 35\u201340, which leads in turn eventually to some review of the entire composite that is Exodus, both as we know it and in its various component parts. Reference has been made already (see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 24:1\u201318) to chaps. 32\u201334 as the \u201creal end\u201d of Exodus, a narrative conclusion to the \u201cideal end\u201d presented by chap. 24, and perhaps even the original conclusion to the Sinai narrative sequence. But note has been taken also of how irretrievable such underlying sequences are and how necessary to an understanding of Exodus (or any other biblical text) is a careful reading of the composite form of the text in the whole with which the canonical book presents us (see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 19:1\u201315).
\nEven a cursory reading of Exod 32\u201334 reveals to the reader a labyrinth of seams and separate paths, a labyrinth explored and reviewed at length and in sometimes mutually contradictory detail by a variety of commentators (see, e.g., Beer, 153\u201365; Noth, 243\u201346; Beyerlin, Sinaitic Traditions, 18\u201326; Zenger, Sinaitheophanie, 77\u2013108). Attempts to consider Exod 32\u201334 as a whole, however, have sometimes led to assertions of a fundamental unity, transcending a patchwork that is ultimately irrecoverable and in some cases purely imaginary (see, e.g., Childs, 557\u201364, 610; Davis, WTJ 44 [1982] 71\u201387; Brichto, HUCA 54 [1983] 4\u201340; and above all Moberly, Mountain of God, 11\u201314, 38\u2013189).
\nThe source critics have assigned most of Exod 32\u201334 to J and E, though they have disagreed somewhat broadly on which source is responsible for what passage\u2014Beyerlin (Sinaitic Traditions, 18\u201322) and Hyatt (300\u2013304) give most of chap. 32 to E, while Noth (243\u201346) and Clements (204\u20136) assign the same material to J. Loza (VT 23 [1973] 50\u201355), after a careful analysis of what he calls \u201cthe JE redaction\u201d of Exod 32, comes to the conclusion that the chapter contains passages in which the redactor of JE is \u201cun vrai auteur,\u201d as Wellhausen (Prolegomena, 83\u201398) suggested might sometimes be the case. And Moberly (Mountain of God, 43), after a detailed and intensive analysis, has referred to the \u201cimpenetrability\u201d of Exod 32\u201334. Vermeylen (ZAW 97 [1985] 3\u201323) has argued that the text of chaps. 32\u201334 is the result of a series of no less than five redactions, the first four of them deuteronomistic, the last of them showing the provenance of P.
\nIn the sections that follow, the conclusions of source and form criticism and tradition-historical study will be reviewed, as they have been throughout this commentary. Beyond the valuable data provided by such studies, however, there remains the need to consider the text of each pericope of the biblical text as a whole and in the light of the theological purpose binding the pericopae into larger sequences, entire books, and even whole sections of the Bible. Of all the shorter composites that make up the composite Exodus, none is more uniformly and dramatically presented than Exod 32\u201334, and none provides a more singular and sustained emphasis upon the undergirding theological motif of the entire Book of Exodus. Brichto has referred to \u201can exemplary rhetorical achievement\u201d in which even \u201cevery discrepancy is deliberate,\u201d \u201ca tapestry-like presentation of a theological principle\u201d (HUCA 54 [1983] 1, 4). Here, the theological yearning of the narrative of Exod 1\u201317 (on chap. 18 as dislocated, see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 18:1\u201312), which has finally been satisfied in Exod 19\u201320, provided a guidance for response in Exod 20:22\u201323:33, guaranteed by covenant and the authorization of leadership in Exod 24, and repeatedly suggested in the symbolism of the media of worship in chaps. 25\u201331 (and even chaps. 35\u201340), is thrown into terrifying jeopardy by a shattering act of disobedience that threatens to plunge Israel into a situation far deadlier and more ignominious than Egyptian bondage at its worst. The special treasure-people whose identity has been established by the arrival in their midst of the Presence of Yahweh himself are suddenly in danger of becoming a people with no identity at all, a non-people and a non-group fragmented by the centrifugal forces of their own selfish rebellion and left without hope in a land the more empty because it has been so full of Yahweh\u2019s own Presence.
\nA powerful tension is thus set up, one far more powerful, even, than the tension of expectation in Egypt, at the sea, and in the wilderness. All that has been received is about to be lost, and the loss is the greater because it is Israel\u2019s own fault. An Israel from whom Yahweh\u2019s Presence has departed is far worse than an Israel that had not known that Presence. The drama of the situation is multiplied by a layering of traditions about Yahweh\u2019s punishment and Moses\u2019 intercession\u2014but at last it is resolved by Yahweh\u2019s mercy. Yahweh will not withdraw his Presence. Though things cannot be the same, because Israel\u2019s innocence as the people of Yahweh\u2019s Presence has been lost, Yahweh will remain with them still. The shattered covenant is renewed, and the shattered tablets of the ten words are replaced, and Moses\u2019 authority, compromised by the surly rebellion of the golden calf, is reestablished by the shining of his face, the result of his time on Sinai and in the Holiest Space in the Presence of Yahweh.
\nIt is a tight narrative, despite the separate layers so obvious in it, and it is so permeated by the central theological concern of Exodus that a coincidental assembly of such parts in such a sequence and across a wide span of time is just not a possibility. If a narrative paradigmatic of what Exodus is really about were to be sought, Exod 32\u201334 would be the obvious first choice.
\nThat these chapters are paradigmatic of Israel\u2019s relationship with Yahweh throughout the OT is also obvious, and the farthest thing from coincidence. However many layers of tradition make up Exod 32\u201334, whatever their time and context of origin, and whatever the inconsistencies in their juxtaposition, these three chapters constitute a marvelous literary unity, bound together as is the entire book of Exodus by theological emphasis. This is why the consideration of any of the individual parts of this narrative of disobedience and mercy, even one so apparently intrusive to it as the narrative of the Tent of Appointed Meeting (33:7\u201311) or the narrative of Moses\u2019 shining face (34:29\u201335) must be considered in the context of the entire sequence. The seams and discrepancies of Exod 32\u201334 are far more obvious and bothersome to us than they were to those who compiled the sequence. Whenever these seams and discrepancies are permitted to obscure the continuity and singleness of this powerful sequence, they have become too obvious, as the tail that wags the dog.
\nExod 32:1\u20136 has generally been considered a unity, belonging to the \u201cbasic source\u201d that provided the nucleus for the narrative of chap. 32 (so Driver, 347\u201350; Beer, 13, 153; Beyerlin, Sinaitic Traditions, 18\u201322; Hyatt, 301\u20134; Childs, 558\u201362). Attempts to subdivide it into variant (Gressmann, Mose und seine Zeit, 199; Lehming, VT 10 [1960] 21\u201324, 50) or even differing accounts (so Noth, 244\u201345) have properly gained no following. Not only are vv 1\u20136 a unit, they are the unit that sets up the tension of the entire narrative sequence of Exod 32\u201334. In one way or another, virtually everything in the sequence of punishment, mercy, covenant renewal, and reconciliation is set in motion by this terse narrative of disobedience. This is only one of the telling reasons why the golden calf episode cannot be the propagandistic plant from the Rehoboam-Jeroboam era it has sometimes been made out to be (cf. Noth, Pentateuchal Traditions, 142\u201345; Aberbach and Smolar, JBL 86 [1967] 135\u201340).
\nComment
\n1 The impression given by the report of Israel\u2019s reaction to Moses\u2019 lengthy absence on Mount Sinai (set by the verse immediately preceding in the Sinai narrative sequence, 24:18, as \u201cforty days and forty nights,\u201d the standard phrase for a long period of time) is one of frightened impatience. Any absence of their leader, the one person who has been their representative to Yahweh from the moment of his return to them in Egypt, would have been unsettling. His absence in such a place, with so much yet to be done by way of provision and guidance, would have been problematic if even only a few days were involved. With the passage of a long period of time, the people are represented as nearly in a frenzy, some perhaps assuming Moses had deserted them, others more charitably fearing some tragedy had befallen their leader.
\nThis is the context within which the impulsive surge of the people against Aaron is to be understood, rather than as a continuation of the rebellion\/murmuring tradition; as Coats (Rebellion, 188\u201389) points out, Israel\u2019s problem is not here with Moses\u2019 leadership, but with Moses\u2019 absence. The people assemble themselves, gather as a group (niphal \u05e7\u05d4\u05dc) against (\u05e2\u05dc) Aaron and command him, with two terse imperatives, to make them gods to lead them (literally, \u201cgo in front of\u201d them), that is, to take the place of Moses, who is given credit for leading them up from Egypt, and whose protracted absence is stated as the justification of their demand. The request of the people for \u201cgods\u201d (\u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd) is taken by some commentators as a cry for a god as opposed to an array of gods (so Hyatt, 304; Moberly, Mountain of God, 46\u201348; Bailey, HUCA 42 [1971] 99\u2013100), not because Moses was viewed as a god, but because with Moses gone, access to Yahweh is cut off, and another deity is needed. There is, however, no reason to read \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd here as anything but a plural, the more so since it is followed by a plural verb. The people may well be asking for \u201cgods\u201d because their neighbors had gods, and because their one God seemed gone with the absence of Moses.
\n2\u20134 Aaron\u2019s response to the threatening approach of the assembled people may be intended to indicate his own agitation under their pressure. He tells them, also by the use of two imperatives, the first a piel imperative, to \u201csnatch off, tear away\u201d their earrings of gold, and to bring them (hiphil) to him. When they do so, Aaron begins immediately (special waw in context) to make a calf (\u05e2\u05d2\u05dc). The exact nature of this calf and Aaron\u2019s work in making it have been the subject of considerable discussion and conjecture, in part because of the ambiguity of the text and in part because of our uncertainty about the proper translation of the terms \u05d7\u05e8\u05d8 and \u05de\u05e1\u05db\u05d4. To begin with, Aaron is said to start \u201cpressing or causing to be narrow\u201d (hiphil \u05e6\u05e8\u05e8) \u201cit\u201d (\u05d0\u05ea\u05d5); this is taken here, given the sequence of vv 2\u20134, to mean the gold, and this antecedent is used instead of the pronoun of MT in the Translation above. Some commentators, however, believe \u201ccalf\u201d to be the antecedent of \u201cit,\u201d because of the reference farther along in v 4 and the statement of Aaron in v 24 (so Loewenstamm, Bib 48 [1967] 481, 487\u201390). This is unlikely.
\nSuch a translation of \u05d9\u05e6\u05e8 better fits the little we know about the noun \u05d7\u05b6\u05e8\u05b6\u05d8, which refers to a tool used as a stylus and apparently for stripping or peeling (cf. BDB, 354\u201355; note LXX, \u1f11\u03bd \u03c4\u1fc7 \u03b3\u03c1\u03b1\u03c6\u03af\u03b4\u03b9 \u201cwith a stylus\u201d). Attempts to make \u05d7\u05b6\u05e8\u05b6\u05d8 a device for molding or casting metal, one of the earliest of them the paraphrase of Targum Onkelos (cf. Loewenstamm, Bib 48 [1967] 486), have taken the word to refer to a die or mold of some kind (Hyatt, 304). Noth (VT 9 [1959] 419\u201322), by the emendation of \u05d7\u05b6\u05e8\u05b6\u05d8 to \u05d7\u05b8\u05e8\u05b4\u05d8, has proposed that Aaron collected the gold in a bag or purse preparatory to melting it down, an interpretation given also and much earlier by rabbinic exegetes (Petuchowski, VT 10 [1960] 74; cf. Loewenstamm, 487 and Gevirtz, Bib 65 [1984] 377\u201381). Such emendation is unnecessary, however, if \u05d9\u05e6\u05e8 is taken to mean \u201cpress, bend,\u201d and \u05de\u05b7\u05e1\u05b5\u05bc\u05db\u05b8\u05d4 gives additional support for such an interpretation if it is taken from II \u05e0\u05e1\u05da \u201cweave\u201d (BDB, 651), as it means \u201cwoven stuff, covering,\u201d or as proposed above, \u201cshaped sheathing.\u201d Faur (JQR 69 [1978] 11\u201312), following a suggestion of the nineteenth century scholar Elie Benamozegh, has suggested that \u05de\u05b7\u05e1\u05b5\u05bc\u05db\u05b8\u05d4 may be derived from \u05e1\u05db\u05da \u201ccover, screen,\u201d and mean the \u201canointment\u201d of an idol as an \u201cact of consecration.\u201d
\n4 The words with which Israel greeted the product of Aaron\u2019s labor have often been connected with the very similar announcement of Jeroboam in 1 Kgs 12:28, and the obvious thematic connections between the two narratives have given rise to an elaborate array of speculation about which of the two passages is earlier and about the way in which each of the two accounts has influenced the other. Scholars have suggested that the entire golden calf episode was (1) created by the deuteronomists to discredit the northern cultus of Jeroboam, which placed one calf of gold at Bethel in the south and another at Dan in the north (Noth, Pentateuchal Traditions, 142\u201345, among many); (2) an ancient story of idolatry in the wilderness in Moses\u2019 time recalled and used to condemn Jeroboam (Cassuto, 407\u201310, among others); and (3) an ancient story of an entirely acceptable cultic practice begun by Aaron and utilizing a bull image in the worship of Yahweh, taken by Jeroboam as an entirely legitimate precedent for the cultus which he claimed, after all, to be Yahweh\u2019s, then later reworked by the Zadokite priesthood to attack both Jeroboam and Aaron (Aberbach and Smolar, JBL, 86 [1967] 129\u201340, among others).
\nAs Childs (559\u201361) has noted, the thematic links between Exod 32:1\u20136 and 1 Kings 12:25\u201333 are altogether too apparent to be doubted, but the existence of an idolatrous calf tradition prior to the time of Jeroboam can be denied on no convincing argument. Among other things, the denial to the narrative of Exod 32\u201334 of the calf episode, or at least something very like it, removes the reason for the remainder of that narrative. Far too much that is an integral part of Exodus is lost thereby, and for no telling reasons. The integrity of the composite narrative of Exod 32\u201334 simply demands the reliability of the calf story in some form.
\nThe widespread presence of bull images in ANE worship has been thoroughly confirmed by Eissfeldt (ZAW 58 [1940\u201341] 199\u2013215; cf. also Wainwright, JEA 19 [1933] 42\u201352), and attempts have been made to connect the golden calf with the lunar cult of the god S\u00een, brought by the patriarchal fathers from Haran and possibly even reflected in the name \u201cSinai\u201d (Bailey, HUCA 42 [1971] 103\u201315; cf. also J. Lewy, HUCA 19 [1945\u201346] 405\u201389, and Key, JBL 84 [1965] 20\u201326), and also with the Egyptian representation of Amon-Re as a bull, \u201cthe \u2018Bull, chief of all the gods\u2019 \u201d (Ostwalt, EvQ 45 [1973] 17\u201319). One scholar (Sasson, VT 18 [1968] 383\u201387) has even made an imaginative though implausible suggestion that the golden calf is to be understood as a symbol of the \u201ccontinued, reassuring presence\u201d of the absent Moses (cf. also the proposal of Brichto, HUCA 54 [1983] 41\u201344). These theories go beyond what the text will allow, not least because the entire composite of Exod 32\u201334 turns on the fact that the making and worship of the golden calf are an unacceptable idolatry that threatens the destruction of the relationship between Yahweh and Israel. The probability that the calf was a symbol of divinity widely used among Israel\u2019s neighbors of course makes Israel\u2019s idolatry even worse.
\nThe apparent acceptance of the golden calf by Israel as their gods \u201cwho brought them up from the land of Egypt,\u201d is taken by Faur (JQR 69 [1978] 11\u201312) as a part of a ritual of consecration by which the people hoped to have God \u201cidentify with\u201d the calf and \u201cmake his glory dwell among them.\u201d The evidence for such a ritual in the OT is very skimpy (Faur builds his case, for the most part, on Egyptian and Babylonian texts\u20149\u201310, nn. 51\u201354).
\n5 It is within some such framework, however, that the response of Aaron to the people\u2019s acceptance of the calf is best to be understood. He built an altar, a standard OT reaction to the manifestation of deity, and then announced a \u05d7\u05d2 \u201csacred feast\u201d (the same term is used in reference to the Passover in 12:14 and to the three principal events of Israel\u2019s religious calendar, in 23:14\u201317), for the next day. What is more striking about this sacred feast is that Aaron designates it a \u05d7\u05d2 \u05dc\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u201csacred feast for Yahweh\u201d (the very phrase used in 10:9; 12:14; 13:6; Lev 23:6, 34, 31, 39 and Hos 9:5). This pronouncement has been taken both as an indication of an original acceptability of the calf cult (cf. Newman, People of the Covenant, 179\u201387) and also as an attempt to \u201crehabilitate\u201d Aaron after his lapse under pressure (cf. Hyatt, 302; Aberbach and Smolar, JBL 86 [1967] 135\u201340; I. Lewy, HUCA 19 [1945\u201346] 319), but whatever overtones may have emanated from it or attached themselves to it, Aaron\u2019s deliberate announcement, made in response to the people\u2019s declaration about the calf, f, must be taken in the composite of Exod 32\u201334 at face value.
\nIt is precisely the attempt to worship Yahweh by means he has already declared totally unacceptable that makes the sin of the golden calcalf so destructive, far more so than a simple shift of allegiance to \u201cother\u201d or \u201cforeign\u201d gods. The people receive the calf with the confession \u201cThese are your gods, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt,\u201d an act they had attributed to Moses, albeit certainly as Yahweh\u2019s representative, in v 1. And Aaron, in obvious and specific response, declares a sacred day to Yahweh, not to the calf, or to any other god or gods. The composite of Exod 32:1\u20136 is not an account of the abandonment of Yahweh for other gods; it is an account of the transfer of the center of authority of faith in Yahweh from Moses and the laws and symbols he has announced to a golden calf without laws and without any symbols beyond itself. Moses is the representative of a God invisible in mystery. The calf is to be the representative of that same God, whose invisibility and mystery is compromised by an image he has forbidden. The terrible irony of the foolish, impulsive action of Israel is incisively summed up in the trenchant summary of Ps 106:19\u201320:
\nThey made a calf at Horeb,
\nThey bowed themselves down to an overlaid image (\u05de\u05b7\u05e1\u05b5\u05db\u05b8\u05d4)
\nThey swapped their Presence (\u05db\u05b0\u05bc\u05d1\u05d5\u05b9\u05d3\u05b8\u05d4)
\nfor a likeness of a grass-eating bull.
\n\u05db\u05d1\u05d5\u05d3 here as in P describes the invisible immanent Presence of Yahweh, given to Israel at Sinai, symbolized by the cloud and by the Tabernacle and all its furnishings.
\n6 In demanding such an image, the people have violated, first of all, the second commandment. This is made clear in the composite by the identification of the calf with the rescue from Egypt, by Aaron\u2019s construction of an altar for sacrifices, by his declaration of a \u05d7\u05d2 \u201csacred feast\u201d for Yahweh, and by the people\u2019s worship the next morning by the very offerings Yahweh has specified for himself. Whatever additional commandments came to be thought of as compromised in the development of the traditions that grew up around the calf episode, and no doubt they were several, the first, third, and seven commandments among them, the emphasis in 32:1\u20136 is primarily on the second commandment. Israel has violated Yahweh\u2019s own unambiguous requirement about how he is to be worshiped. There can be little surprise, therefore, that they rise from their communion meal to frivolity. \u05dc\u05e6\u05d7\u05e2 \u201cto laugh, make fun\u201d has a connotation also of sexual play (Gen 26:6\u201311; 39:6c\u201320). The contrast with the ritual and the communion meal of chap. 24, which may originally have immediately preceded the narrative of 32:1\u20136, is devastating and must not be lost with the insertion of the instruction narratives of chaps. 25\u201331. The celebration of an obligating relationship in Exod 24 becomes in Exod 32 an orgy of the desertion of responsibility.
\nExplanation
\nExod 32:1\u20136 thus sets the stage for an additional revelation at Sinai. In the absence of Moses, the people ask for a new point of focus for their worship of Yahweh, and when Aaron provides it, they both acclaim it and begin the abandonment of the commitments they had made when Moses provided the point of focus. The calf represented Yahweh on their terms. Yahweh had made clear repeatedly that he would be received and worshiped only on his terms.
\nThus the sin of the golden calf sets in motion several motifs: the judgment of the covenant, the blessings of which Israel had only just begun to enjoy; the tension between the Absence and the Presence of Yahweh; the further definition of the nature of the present Yahweh; the exercise of Yahweh\u2019s mercy; and the reassertion of Moses\u2019 authority as Yahweh\u2019s representative. Because of Israel\u2019s embrace of an idol in the worship of Yahweh, Israel comes to a new understanding of themselves, of Moses, and above all, of Yahweh himself.
\nMoses\u2019 Anger and Yahweh\u2019s Judgment (32:7\u201335)
\nBibliography
\nAberbach, M., and L. Smolar. \u201cAaron, Jeroboam, and the Golden Calves.\u201d JBL 86 (1967) 129\u201340. Andersen, F. I. \u201cA Lexicographical Note on Exodus XXXII 18.\u201d VT 16 (1966) 108\u201312. Brichto, H. C. \u201cThe Worship of the Golden Calf: A Literary Analysis of a Fable on Idolatry.\u201d HUCA 54 (1983) 1\u201344. Burrows, M. The Dead Sea Scrolls of St. Mark\u2019s Monastery. Vol. 2. New Haven: ASOR, 1951. Cassuto, U. \u201cBaal and Mot in the Ugaritic Texts.\u201d IEJ 12 (1962) 77\u201386. Coats, G. W. \u201cThe King\u2019s Loyal Opposition: Obedience and Authority in Exodus 32\u201334.\u201d Canon and Authority. Ed. G. W. Coats and B. O. Long. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977. 91\u2013109. Driver, G. R. Semitic Writing. Rev. ed. London: Published for the British Academy, 1954. Edelmann, R. \u201cTo \u05e2\u05b7\u05e0\u05bc\u05d5\u05b9\u05ea Exodus XXXII 18.\u201d VT 16 (1966) 355\u201358. Fensham, F. C. \u201cThe Burning of the Golden Calf and Ugarit.\u201d IEJ 16 (1966) 191\u201393. Gradwohl, R. \u201cDie Verbrennung des Jungstiers, Ex 32, 20.\u201d TZ 19 (1963) 50\u201353. Gunneweg, A. H. J. Leviten und Priester. FRLANT 89. G\u00f6ttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1965. Kuschke, A. \u201cDie Menschenwege und der Weg Gottes im AT.\u201d ST 5 (1952) 106\u201318. Lehming, S. \u201cVersuch zu Ex XXXII.\u201d VT 10 (1960) 16\u201350. Loewenstamm, S. E. \u201cThe Making and Destruction of the Golden Calf.\u201d Bib 48 (1967) 481\u201390. \u2014\u2014\u2014. \u201cThe Making and Destruction of the Golden Calf\u2014a Rejoinder.\u201d Bib 56 (1975) 330\u201343. Loza, J. \u201cExode XXXII et la redaction JE.\u201d VT 23 (1973) 31\u201355. Perdue, L. G. \u201cThe Making and Destruction of the Golden Calf\u2014A Reply.\u201d Bib 54 (1973) 237\u201346. Thomas, D. W. \u201cSome Further Remarks on Unusual Ways of Expressing the Superlative in Hebrew.\u201d VT 18 (1968) 120\u201324. Valentin, H. Aaron: Eine Studie zur vor-priesterschriftlichen Aaron-\u00dcberlieferung. OBO 18. G\u00f6ttingen. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978. Whybray, R. N. \u201c\u05e2\u05b7\u05e0\u05bc\u05d5\u05b9\u05ea in Exodus XXXII 18.\u201d VT 17 (1967) 122.
\nTranslation
\n7 Then Yahweh spoke to Moses: \u201cGo! Descend! Your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt, have gone to ruin! 8 They have already turned away from the life to which I have commanded them! They have made for themselves a calf with shaped sheathing, and they have bowed themselves down to it, they have made sacrifices to it, and they have said, \u2018These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.\u2019 \u201d 9 Yahweh said further to Moses, \u201cI have seen this people, and I know them to be obstinate: 10 now do not interfere with me, and my anger will burn hot against them. I will destroy them, and I will make you alone into a great nation.\u201d
\n11 But Moses attempted to calm Yahweh his God: he said, \u201cWhy, Yahweh, does your anger burn hot against your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt with great strength and with a forceful hand? 12 Why give the Egyptians an excuse to say, \u2018For an evil purpose he brought them out, to slaughter them in the mountains, and to obliterate them from the face of the land?\u2019 Turn from the heat of your anger, and be moved to pity concerning such injury to your people. 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel your servants, to whom you bound yourself by oath, to whom you spoke so: \u2018I will make your descendants as many as the stars of the heavens, and this whole land of which I spoke I will give to your descendants, and they will take possession of it in perpetuity.\u2019 \u201d
\n14 Thus was Yahweh moved to pity concerning the injury that he had spoken of doing to his people.
\n15 So Moses turned and began to descend from the mountain, with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hand, tablets with writing on both sides: on the front side and on the back side, they had writing. 16 The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets.
\n17 Then Joshua heard the racket of the people celebrating, and he said to Moses, \u201cA noise of battle in the camp!\u201d 18 But Moses answered,
\n\u201cNot the sound of heroes exulting,
\nNot the sound of losers lamenting,
\nthe sound of random singing
\nis what I hear!\u201d
\n19 And sure enough, when he came near to the camp, he saw the calf and the frenzied dancing. Then Moses\u2019 anger burned hot, and he threw down out of his hand the tablets and he broke them to bits at the bottom of the mountain. 20 He took the calf that they had made, he burned it in the fire, then he ground it until it was a fine powder, he sifted it onto the surface of the water, and he made the sons of Israel drink.
\n21 Next, Moses said to Aaron, \u201cWhat did this people do to you that you should have brought down on them so great a sin?\u201d 22 Aaron replied, \u201cMay the anger of my lord not burn hot\u2014you know from experience the people, that they are evil by nature. 23 Thus it was they said to me, \u2018Make gods for us who can lead us, because this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we have no idea what has become of him.\u2019 24 So I said to them, \u2018Whoever has gold, let them snatch it from themselves!\u2019 They then gave it to me, I threw it into the fire, and this calf came right out!\u201d
\n25 Thus Moses saw the people, that they were out of control, because Aaron had let them get out of control, fair game for the whispered slander of those who are set against them. 26 So Moses took a position in the entrance to the camp, and he said, \u201cWho is Yahweh\u2019s? To me!\u201d Thus he gathered to himself all the sons of Levi. 27 Then he said to them, \u201cThus says Yahweh, God of Israel, \u2018Each of you put his sword at his side, pass through the camp and come back, from the entrance and back again, and kill, each of you his brother, and each of you his neighbor, and each of you his friend.\u2019 \u201d 28 The sons of Levi did what Moses ordered, and on that day nearly three thousand men from the people fell. 29 Then Moses said, \u201cOrdain yourselves today for Yahweh, for each of you against his own son and against his own brother has put upon himself this day a blessing.\u201d
\n30 On the next day Moses said to the people, \u201cYou have yourselves sinned a great sin. I will now go up toward Yahweh. I may possibly be able to make atonement for your sin.\u201d 31 Thus Moses went back towards Yahweh and said, \u201cI beg you: This people have sinned a great sin, they have made for themselves gods of gold. 32 Now, if you will, forgive their sin \u2014if not, pray erase me from your book that you have written.\u201d 33 Yahweh replied to Moses, \u201cWhoever sins against me, I will blot him from my book. 34 Now go. Guide the people toward the destination of which I have spoken to you. Look\u2014my messenger will go in front of you. Yet on the day of my taking account, I will take account upon them for their sin.\u201d
\n35 Thus did Yahweh level a blow upon the people because they demanded the calf that Aaron made.
\nNotes
\n7.a. The two impvs are set in rapid sequence by maqqeph; the effect is almost \u201cGo-descend!\u201d Cf. LXX, \u03b2\u03ac\u03b4\u03b9\u03b6\u03b5 \u03c4\u1f78 \u03c4\u03ac\u03c7\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f72\u03c5\u03c4\u03b5\u1fe6\u03b8\u03b5\u03bd \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03ac\u03b2\u03b7\u03b8\u03b9 \u201cWalk hastily, descend from here!\u201d
\n8.a. \u05e1\u05e8\u05d5 \u05de\u05d4\u05e8 \u201cthey have turned away in a hurry.\u201d
\n8.b. \u05d4\u05d3\u05e8\u05da \u201cthe way, path,\u201d indicating here as at so many points in the OT the manner or style of living directed by the covenant relationship. Cf. Kuschke, ST 5 (1952) 106\u201318.
\n9.a. This entire verse is absent from LXX. Cf. Deut 9:13 in MT, LXX.
\n9.b. \u05d5\u05d4\u05e0\u05d4 \u201cand just look.\u201d
\n9.c. \u05e7\u05e9\u05bc\u05c1\u05d4\u05be\u05e2\u05e8\u05e3 \u201cstiff-necked,\u201d i.e., difficult to yoke, unruly. An equivalent contemporary idiom is \u201chard-headed.\u201d
\n10.a. \u05d4\u05b8\u05b9\u05e0\u05b4\u05bc\u05d9\u05d7\u05b8\u05d4 \u05dc\u05bc\u05d9 this hiphil impv. of \u05e0\u05d5\u05d7 commands Moses to leave Yahweh alone, to refrain from bothering him.
\n10.b. \u05d5\u05b7\u05d0\u05b2\u05db\u05b7\u05dc\u05b5\u05bc\u05dd piel of \u05db\u05dc\u05d4, \u201cbring to an end, finish.\u201d
\n10.c. \u05d0\u05d5\u05ea\u05da \u201cyou\u201d; \u201calone\u201d is added above to make clear that the pron is sg, referring only to Moses.
\n10.d. SamPent adds here what is substantially Deut 9:20.
\n11.a. \u05e4\u05e0\u05d9 + \u05d7\u05dc\u05d4 lit. means \u201cmake sweet or pleasant the face of.\u201d
\n11.b. SamPent reads \u05d5\u05d1\u05d6\u05e8\u05d5\u05e2 \u05e0\u05d8\u05d5\u05d9\u05d4 \u201cand with an arm stretched out\u201d; cf. LXX, and see 6:1 above.
\n12.a. \u201cWhy will the Egyptians say to say \u2026?\u201d
\n13.a. SamPent and LXX have \u201cJacob\u201d here.
\n13.b. \u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05e8 \u05e0\u05e9\u05c1\u05d1\u05e2\u05ea \u05dc\u05d4\u05dd \u05d1\u05da, lit., \u201cwhom you swore yourself to them by yourself.\u201d
\n13.c. LXX has \u03b5\u1f35\u03c0\u03b1\u03c2 \u03b4\u03bf\u03c5\u03be\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9 \u03c4\u1ff7 \u03c3\u03c0\u03ad\u03c1\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03b9 \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03c9\u03be\u03bd \u201cwhich you spoke to give to them.\u201d
\n13.d. This pronoun is absent from MT, present in SamPent, LXX, Syr.
\n15.a. \u05de\u05d6\u05d4 \u05d5\u05de\u05d6\u05d4 \u201cfrom this and from that.\u201d
\n16.a. \u05d7\u05e8\u05d5\u05ea \u201cengrave\u201d occurs only here; BDB (362) think it is a misspelling of \u05d7\u05e8\u05d5\u05e9\u05c1 \u201ccut\u201d on the basis of Jer 17:1; \u05d7\u05e8\u05d5\u05ea occurs three times in the Qumran Cave I Manual of Discipline (10:6, 8, 11; cf. Burrows II, loc. cit.)
\n18.a. \u05d0\u05de\u05e8 with special waw; MT has \u201che\u201d: \u201cMoses,\u201d the obvious antecedent, is added for clarity.
\n18.b. \u05e2\u05e0\u05d5\u05ea is 3X repeated in Moses\u2019 poetic response to Joshua, the first 2X as a qal inf constr of \u05e2\u05e0\u05d4 \u201csing,\u201d this 3d time as a piel inf constr. In each instance, singing is referred to: in the 1st case the singing of the strong (\u05d2\u05d1\u05e0\u05e8\u05d4), in the 2d, the singing of the weak (\u05d7\u05dc\u05e0\u05e9\u05c1\u05d4); in the 3d case, there is no word to qualify the singing, but the inf constr has been pointed an intensive by the Masoretes, an indication perhaps of yet a 3d kind of singing. Thus \u05e2\u05e0\u05d5\u05ea is translated above \u201crandom singing,\u201d the disorganized, haphazard singing of a wild debauch. In the consonantal text, of course, all three words are the same. Thus BHS suggests the loss of a word in the 3d line of Moses\u2019 answer (Andersen, VT 16 [1966] 111, suggests \u05e6\u05d7\u05d5\u05e7\u05d4 \u201cscornful laughter\u201d and sets \u05d0\u05e0\u05db\u05d9 \u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05e2 \u201cwhat I hear\u201d outside the poem proper). As it stands, however, the poem consists of three balanced 2 + 2 lines. LXX is a muddle, suggesting apparently that the revelers\u2019 wine was beginning to work.
\n22.a. The subj is made emphatic by the use of the independent pers pronoun \u05d0\u05ea\u05d4 \u201cyou\u201d along with the 2d pers masc. sg form of the verb. LXX adds \u03c4\u0300 \u1f45\u03c1\u03bc\u03b7\u03bc\u03b1 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03bb\u03b1\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03c4\u03bf\u03cd\u03c4\u03bf\u03c5 \u201cthe impulsiveness of this people\u201d following \u201cknow.\u201d
\n22.b. \u05db\u05d9 \u05d1\u05e8\u05e2 \u05d4\u05d5\u05d0 \u201cbecause on evil they (are set).\u201d SamPent has \u05db\u05d9 \u05e4\u05e8\u05d5\u05e2 \u05d4\u05d5\u05d0 \u201cbecause they are out of control.\u201d
\n23.a. Aaron\u2019s report here of what the people said to him is a verbatim duplication of 32:1, excepting only the beginning impv., \u05e7\u05d5\u05dd \u201crise up.\u201d
\n25.a. MT has simply \u05dc\u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05e6\u05d4 \u201cto a whispering,\u201d but in this context it refers to the exposure of the people to the criticism of their enemies.
\n25.b. \u05d1\u05e7\u05de\u05d9\u05d4\u05dd \u201cby the ones who rise up against them.\u201d
\n27.a. \u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05e2\u05e8 \u05dc\u05e9\u05c1\u05e2\u05e8 \u201cfrom an entrance to the entrance.\u201d A single, main entrance is implied by \u05d5\u05e9\u05c1\u05d5\u05d1\u05d5 \u201cand come back.\u201d
\n28.a. \u05db\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8 \u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05d4 \u201caccording to the word of Moses.\u201d
\n29.a. \u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05d5 \u05d9\u05d3\u05db\u05dd \u201cordain yourselves\u201d; LXX has \u201cyou have ordained yourselves,\u201d and rsv, neb follow such a reading. Barth\u00e9lemy et al. (Preliminary and Interim Report, 145) take the verb to be a 3d com pl. qal pf and read \u201cthey have filled your hand,\u201d understanding Yahweh to be \u201cthe author of the ordination.\u201d These readings are all attempts to avoid the difficult sense of the passage, which apparently suggests that the Levites have, by their uncompromising loyalty, earned a unique ordination to the service of Yahweh.
\n29.b. \u05e2\u05dc\u05d9\u05db\u05dd \u201cupon yourselves.\u201d
\n30.a. LXX has \u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u0398\u03b5\u03cc\u03bd \u201cGod.\u201d
\n31.a. SamPent reads \u05d4\u05e0\u05d4 \u201clook here\u201d instead of \u05d0\u05b8\u05e0\u05b8\u05bc\u05d4; BDB 58: \u201ca strong particle of entreaty.\u201d LXX follows MT but adds \u201cYahweh\u201d after \u201cI beg you.\u201d
\n32.a. SamPent has \u05e9\u05c1\u05d0 \u2026 \u05ea\u05e9\u05c1\u05d0 \u201cif you will forgive \u2026 forgive,\u201d followed by LXX and Tg. Ps.-J..
\n32.b. \u05e0\u05d0 \u201cpray\u201d is omitted by SamPent. Cf. LXX, Syr., Vg.
\n34.a. MT has simply \u05d0\u05dc \u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05e8\u05be\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8\u05ea\u05d9 \u05dc\u05da \u201ctoward which I have spoken to you,\u201d but the intention of the statement is clear. LXX adds \u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03c4\u03cc\u03c0\u03bf\u03bd \u201cthe place\u201d; cf. Tg. Onk., Tg. Ps.-J..
\n35.a. \u05e0\u05d2\u05e3; see n. 7:27.b.
\n35.b. MT has \u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d5, lit., \u201cthey did, made\u201d. The sense appears to be that the people are held primarily responsible, though Aaron actually made the calf from their earrings. Vg reads pro reatu vituli \u201cfor the guilt of the calf.\u201d Tg. Ps.-J. \u201cbecause they prostrated themselves before the calf\u201d (Le D\u00e9aut, 259).
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nThe section at hand continues the narrative of Israel\u2019s first disobedience following the solemnization of the covenant by depicting, with a dramatic layering of separate traditions, the immediate aftermath of the sin with the golden calf, from the deliberately contrasted perspectives of both Moses and Yahweh. As noted already (see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 32:1\u20136), any part of Exod 32\u201334 must be understood within and in specific connection with the entire composite, which presents a dramatic and tight-knit narrative, filled with tension and striking contrasts, and moved skillfully forward in the service of the basic theological goal of the entire Book of Exodus.
\nWhat holds Exod 32:7\u201335 together, despite its obvious component parts with their equally obvious logical non sequiturs, is its focus on the response of both Yahweh and Moses to Israel\u2019s sin with the golden calf. This focus is actually continued into chap. 33, where it is brought to conclusion in a verse (17) that provides also the modulation of the narrative into what amounts to a new revelation of Yahweh on Mount Sinai (33:18\u201334:9), a renewal of the relationship between Yahweh and his people and a consequent remaking of the covenant (34:10\u201328), and a reestablishment of the authority of Moses as Yahweh\u2019s proper representative (34:29\u201335).
\nThere appear to be at least three narratives of the response of Yahweh to Israel\u2019s sin of the calf, into which has been worked also the related account of Moses\u2019 response. These three narratives probably represent three separate contexts of interest, each of them nearer to us from the events at Sinai, though of course no one of them may give as accurate an impression of the meaning of what happened there as all of them do together, in the narrative of Exod 32\u201334. The most important of the three narratives, at least from the perspective of the theological emphasis of Exodus, may (only may) also be the oldest of them. It is the narrative of Yahweh\u2019s response by the removal from Israel altogether of his Presence, given to them after so much careful preparation at Sinai. This narrative appears primarily in 33:1\u20136, 12\u201317, though it is reflected at other points in the composite of 32\u201334 (e.g., at 32:9\u201310, 33\u201334, 34:10, 29\u201335), and it has attracted to it the important section about the Tent of Appointed Meeting that is not the Tabernacle (33:7\u201311). The second of the narratives, in importance and perhaps in sequence of origin, is the narrative of Yahweh\u2019s response by the affliction upon Israel of a powerful blow, very much like his blow against the Egyptians in the death of their firstborn (12:23, 27). This narrative appears only briefly in Exodus, chiefly in 32:35, though there may be reflections of it in 32:9\u201310, 20, 34; Num 11:1\u201312:16; chap. 14; 21:4\u20139; and Deut 9:6\u201324. The third of the narratives, in importance and almost certainly in sequence of origin, is the narrative of Yahweh\u2019s response through his command of the Levites in 32:25\u201334. There is nothing quite like this account anywhere else in the OT, and it appears to be a justification of the Levites as deserving ordination by virtue of their uncompromising loyalty. It may well come from a context in which the Levites were for some reason under attack, a context we are now unable to reconstruct with any certainty.
\nIn the composite that is Exod 32\u201334, all three of these narratives (at least) have been molded into one, and have drawn to themselves in that process (and perhaps also on the way to it) such additional traditions as those concerned with Yahweh\u2019s advocacy of Moses, Moses\u2019 advocacy of Israel, the description of the tablets containing the commandments of Yahweh, the Tent of Promised Meeting outside the camp, and the additional revelation of Yahweh concerning himself and his ways. The employment of so many separate layers in the composite of a single continuous narrative has inevitably meant some logical inconsistency, and unfortunately these inconsistencies have attracted far more attention than has the narrative as a whole, as regards both the source criticism and the traditio-historical analysis of these chapters.
\nBeer (13, 152\u2013155), for example, assigns 32:7\u201314 to his E supplement, vv 15\u201316 to E and E1, vv 17\u201318 to J1, vv 19\u201324 to E and E1, vv 25\u201329 to J1, vv 30\u201334 to E supplement, and v 35 to E and E1 Lehming\u2019s (VT 10 [1960] 25\u201350) \u201cVersuch\u201d presents an even more fragmented Exod 32, involving twelve sources and twenty-seven bits and pieces for 32:7\u201335. Noth (243\u201346, 248\u201352) gives most of this sequence to J, except for vv 9\u201314, which he calls \u201ca deuteronomistic addition.\u201d Loza (VT 23 [1973] 38\u201345, 50\u201355) attributes most of Exod 32:7\u201334 to R. Hyatt (300) gives 32:7\u201314 to \u201ca Deuteronomic Redactor,\u201d vv 15\u201320 and v 35 to E, vv 21\u201334 to \u201ca Supplementer of E.\u201d
\nThe layers of tradition of Exod 32:7\u201335 quite similarly are distributed into smaller sections and even fragments dealing with such subjects as Moses as a royal intercessor (cf. Coats, Canon and Authority 94\u2013100, 105\u20139), Jeroboam\u2019s calf symbols at Bethel and Dan (cf. Aberbach and Smolar, JBL 86 [1967] 129\u201340), the intrusion of Deuteronomistic special interests (cf. Loza\u2019s comparative analysis, VT 23 [1973] 32\u201338, of Exod 32:7\u201314 and Deut 9), Aaron pro and con (cf. Valentin, Aaron, 206\u2013303), Levitical origins and cultic roles (Gunneweg, Leviten, 29\u201337, 88\u201395), and even an Aaron-cultus at Bethel, based on a positive etiology connected with Sinai (Beyerlin, Sinaitic Traditional, 126\u201333).
\nAs fascinating and helpful as these considerations of source and traditiohistory are, however, they must be taken as contributory (or not contributory) to Exod 32\u201334 as a whole, and they must not be allowed to leave the impression of a jumble of pieces haphazardly assembled. The narrative of Exod 32\u201334, like the narrative of the other pericopae and larger sequences in Exodus, and for that matter the canonical book of Exodus as a whole, has an important purpose and impression of its own, and simply must be taken seriously in its canonical form (cf. Brichto, HUCA 54 [1983] 1\u20134, 41\u201344).
\nComment
\n7\u20138 The announcement to Moses by Yahweh that Israel has turned away from the path to which their covenant relationship with Yahweh had committed them is sometimes linked with the move of Moses described in v 15 (so Noth, 244\u201345, 248\u201349), in which case vv 9\u201314 become an interpolation, usually from a Deuteronomistic context. This has been the approach in part because of a supposed logical inconsistency between Yahweh\u2019s announcement of what Israel has done and Moses\u2019 own later discovery (vv 18\u201319) and in part because there are two accounts of Moses\u2019 intercession and Yahweh\u2019s change of approach, one in 32:11\u201314 and a second in 32:30\u201334. In fact, there is a third account of Moses\u2019 intercession and Yahweh\u2019s mercy, in 33:12\u201317, and a fourth account in 34:9\u201310 which becomes the basis for the renewal that comes by virtue of Yahweh\u2019s forgiveness. And each of these accounts is a valuable contribution to the impact of the narrative as a whole. As Childs (567\u201368) has pointed out, the narrative of vv 7\u201314 must not be taken out of the larger sequence of Exod 32, which he sees as presented in a dramatic contrasting of what is going on at the top of Sinai with what is going on below, in the plain.
\nMore important still is the even larger narrative: (1) Yahweh tells Moses to descend the mountain, and why; he announces his intention to destroy the people and continue his plan with Moses alone; Moses pleads against this, stating four reasons; Yahweh pulls back from obliterating Israel (vv 7\u201314); (2) Moses descends with the tablets, discovers the sin of the calf at first hand, and grows angry himself, breaking the tablets, destroying the calf, and making Israel drink the detritus of their own image (vv 15\u201320); (3) Moses confronts Aaron, receives a report that what has happened is as bad as he feared, and calls upon those truly loyal to Yahweh to aid in the punishment of those who apparently are the leading and worst offenders (vv 21\u201329); (4) Moses again intercedes for the people, identifying himself with them if Yahweh will not forgive them, but Yahweh promises punishment for the guilty in due course and then proceeds to level a blow of unspecified nature upon the people in punishment for their affair with the calf (vv 30\u201335). The larger narrative is not complete at this point, of course; indeed all this is in a way a preparation for what is still to come.
\nExod 32 thus presents a deliberately repetitive mosaic of reaction to the sin of the calf; a didactic dramatization of the seriousness of Israel\u2019s sin, alternating the anger of Yahweh with the anger of Moses; and the pleading of Moses with the tempering of Yahweh\u2019s intended punishment. Even so, chap. 32 leaves an impression of incompleteness, of exploration, of movement toward some punishment to be decided upon that will be more fitting for a sin as monstrous as Israel\u2019s. This impression is quite intentional: the sequence of Exod 32 is a brilliant coaxing of disparate parts into a narrative of movement toward something, a something revealed with all the more impact because of such a preparation.
\n7\u201310 The terse imperatives of Yahweh\u2019s command to Moses provide a dramatic continuation of the narrative of the calf that ends with the words, \u201cthey rose to frivolity.\u201d A momentum of haste is built by a chain reaction of verbs: \u201cGo! Descend!\u2026 you brought \u2026 have gone to ruin \u2026 have turned away quickly \u2026 have made a calf \u2026 have bowed themselves down \u2026 have made sacrifices \u2026 have said \u2026,\u201d and that sequence is matched by an intermeshed sequence describing Yahweh\u2019s prior action and present response: \u201cI have commanded \u2026 I have seen \u2026 I know \u2026 my anger will burn hot \u2026 I will destroy \u2026 I will make you alone.\u2026\u201d Following such an outburst, it is not surprising that Moses \u201cattempted to calm Yahweh his God.\u201d
\n11\u201314 Moses\u2019 whole concern is with the people: he seems not to have realized the gravity of their actions, that they have themselves negated their privileged relationship with Yahweh. Thus he gives a series of reasons why Yahweh should not carry through his intended destruction of Israel: (1) Yahweh has gone to great trouble to free them from the Egyptians and bring them this far; (2) the Egyptians will interpret such an action wrongly, as a slander of Yahweh\u2019s intention and ability; (3) Yahweh should have pity on his own people, faced with such harm; and (4) there is the important matter of the promise to the fathers, to whom Yahweh had bound himself by oath, to give them both a numberless progeny and a wide land. At the end of these logical arguments of Moses (paralleled in part by Num 14:13\u201319 and Deut 9:25\u201329), Yahweh is not reported to have said anything (though cf. Num 14:20\u201323), but is said to have been moved with pity for Israel under such a threat as he had made. The implication of this statement is of course that he tempered but did not altogether waive his judgment, and this implication is confirmed in the continuation of the narrative, at both 32:34 and 35 and also at 33:17 and 34:6\u20137.
\n15\u201316 The report of Moses\u2019 descent of the mountain is begun with two verbs with special waw that match Yahweh\u2019s two imperative commands in v 7: Moses \u201cturned\u201d from his work of receiving Yahweh\u2019s instructions for living and worshiping and \u201cbegan to descend\u201d Sinai with the tablets containing the Testimony (see Comment on 31:18) in his hand. This report has attracted a unique description of the tablets as having writing on both sides and as being themselves the work of God. The writing on them is once again said to have been God\u2019s (as in 31:18). G. R. Driver\u2019s (Semitic Writing, 78\u201380) comment about early writing in stone, and Thomas\u2019s (VT 18 [1968] 120\u201321) note that this is a way of expressing the superlative nature of the writing on the tablets miss the point of this statement, the intention of which is to confirm God as the source of the commandments and therefore the authority behind them.
\n17 The trip down the mountain is presented with skillful brevity, the level of suspense being raised by what is not said, and by what we must therefore supply. In 24:13 (in the narrative that may originally have immediately preceded this one), we were told that Joshua accompanied Moses for a part of his further climb up the mountain. In the narrative of chap. 32, Moses has rejoined Joshua, and when they are within earshot of the camp below, Joshua catches the sound of Israel\u2019s wild celebration and blurts out the breathless phrase, \u201cA noise of battle in the camp!\u201d
\n18 Moses\u2019 reply, a short but graphic poem that has the texture of an ancient and well-worn report of a momentous event, belongs to the same genre as the song of Miriam\/Moses (Exod 15:1 and 21). The poem turns on the threefold use, once in each of its three four-beat lines, of the word \u05e2\u05e0\u05d5\u05ea, pointed by the Masoretes \u05e2\u05b2\u05e0\u05d5\u05b9\u05ea in the first two lines and \u05e2\u05b7\u05e0\u05bc\u05d5\u05b9\u05ea in the third line. The root of this form, \u05e2\u05e0\u05d4, can have to do with \u201canswering, responding, being busy with, being bowed down by, singing\u201d (cf. BDB, 772\u201377). Here it is apparently intended to describe a kind of responsorial or answering recitation or traditional expression. In response to Joshua\u2019s fear that he has caught the sounds of a battle, Moses rules out the two options that would mean the exultant victory-cry of triumph or the keening lamentation of defeat, then goes on to state what he hears\u2014the disorganized, conflicting answering of random singing. Andersen (VT 16 [1966] 110\u201312) has made two proposals: (1) the loss of a word in the third line, for which he suggests a form of \u05e6\u05d7\u05e7 \u201claugh;\u201d (2) an original \u05e2\u05b2\u05e0\u05d5\u05b9\u05ea \u05e2\u05b7\u05e0\u05bc\u05d5\u05b9\u05ea, to give \u201ca sound of antiphonal singing\u201d = a sound of worship; Edelmann (VT 16 [1966] 355, supported by Whybray, VT 17 [1967] 122) has made the unlikely proposal that \u05e2\u05b7\u05e0\u05bc\u05d5\u05b9\u05ea in the third line of the poem should be read \u05e2\u05b7\u05e0\u05b7\u05ea in reference to the Canaanite goddess Anat, without suggesting why.
\n19\u201320 When Moses arrived in the camp, he saw that he was right, and his anger then \u201cburned hot.\u201d When this account has been taken as a separate narrative tradition, considered in isolation from its context, this reaction is usually explained as Moses\u2019 initial reaction when he first discovered the people\u2019s sin (see Hyatt, 301\u20134). In the composite narrative of Exod 32, however, Moses\u2019 reaction upon seeing the people\u2019s frenzied idolatry is contrasted with his earlier reaction upon being told about Israel and the calf by Yahweh, and his anger is thus paralleled with the anger of Yahweh\u2019s response. The seriousness of Israel\u2019s lapse is thus doubly and very effectively emphasized.
\nMoses\u2019 shattering of the tablets may be taken more as a symbol of the shattered relationship between Yahweh and Israel than as an expression of Moses\u2019 fury, and the total destruction of the calf is a further indication of the dreadful nature of Israel\u2019s sin. There is no basis for drawing a connection between Moses\u2019 requiring Israel to drink the remains of the burned and ground-up calf and the oracle-ritual of jealousy in Num 5:11\u201315, though such a connection has sometimes been made (so S. R. Driver, 353; Noth, 249\u201350; Gradwohl, TZ 19 [1963] 50\u201353; cf. contra, Moberly, Mountain of God, 199, n. 46). The more probable link may be with the \u201cblow\u201d of Yahweh referred to in v 35 (cf. Num 21:4\u20139, where the people are punished for speaking against Yahweh by the often fatal bites of serpents).
\nThe destruction of the golden calf by burning and by grinding has been variously explained, sometimes as an evidence of a two-layered calf, wooden core and gold overlay (cf. Loewenstamm, Bib 48 [1967] 481\u201382; Fensham, IEJ 16 [1966] 191). While this may indeed be the case, the sequence \u201cburning \u2026 grinding \u2026 scattering\u201d occurs also in a Ugaritic text describing the destruction of the Canaanite god Mot by the goddess Anat (cf. Cassuto, IEJ 12 [1962] 77\u201386; ANET, 140:ii), and this has led to the view that the account of Moses\u2019 destruction of the calf is related to a set idiom describing the destruction of a god or an idol (Loewenstamm, Bib 56 [1975] 338\u201341, and, contra, Perdue, Bib 54 [1973] 237\u201346), perhaps even an idiom describing \u201critual acts in a fixed form\u201d (Fensham, 192\u201393).
\n21\u201324 The account of Moses\u2019 inquiry of Aaron concerning the calf can hardly be the attempt to exonerate Aaron it has sometimes been made out to be (cf. Cassuto, Exodus, 419\u201321; Hyatt, 309), at least not in the form in which it occurs here. The answer of Aaron to Moses\u2019 attempt to find some excuse for his capitulation only makes Aaron\u2019s guilt worse by showing that he has no excuse, beyond expediency under pressure and his own weakness. Aaron\u2019s response is begun in a manner quite similar to the beginning of Moses\u2019 response to Yahweh in v 11, but there the parallel ends. Moses uses a list of logical reasons that shift attention away from the people to the work, the reputation, the character, and the promises of Yahweh (vv 11\u201313); Aaron attempts to call attention away from his own involvement by putting the blame for what has happened on the people. He succeeds thereby only in appearing absurd: his accurate quotation of nearly the whole of what the people said to him (v 23 vis-\u00e0-vis v 32) loses its impact because he is not strong enough to let it speak for itself, and the line about the calf emerging by itself from the fire is not a myth of divine autogeneration (so Loewenstamm, Bib 48 [1967] 487\u201390), but the dazzling insight of a master narrator designed to show the hopelessness of Aaron\u2019s leadership and perhaps the contrasting magnificence of the leadership of Moses (cf. Childs\u2019s list of comparisons, 570).
\n25\u201329 The motif of Aaron\u2019s lack of control of Israel provides the transition to the next section of the composite narrative. After his interview with Aaron, Moses saw that the people were \u201cout of control\u201d because Aaron had allowed them to go out of control, and indeed that Aaron had thereby left them vulnerable to the slander of their enemies, a theme taken up with repeated dismay in the laments of the Psalter (see, for example, Pss 4, 5, 7, 22, 25, 26, 31, 35, 39, 41, 52, 55, 59, 64, 69, 70). Thus the narrative of the loyal Levites is introduced: whatever else it may have been as a separate narrative, this account does not function in the composite as a means of discrediting Aaron (who has already discredited himself) or primarily as an etiology of Levitical ordination (a matter dealt with in other texts) but as the report of how the out-of-control Israelites were brought under control once again.
\nThe invitation Moses gives is to those who are \u201cYahweh\u2019s,\u201d that is, Yahweh\u2019s on Yahweh\u2019s terms, not via a calf or any other substitute devised by humans. Whether those who rallied to Moses\u2019 side had remained aloof from the calf-business or were, in the earliest form of the tradition, all Levites is of course impossible to say. The text says nothing on the former point, and its reference to the gathering and obedience of an all-Levite group of unbending loyalists is of course very suspicious, as Gunneweg (Leviten, 29\u201337; cf. Lehming, VT 10 [1960] 40\u201345), among many others, has pointed out. What is at the base of this account is in all likelihood an ancient story of those who remained loyal to Yahweh against all pressure to do otherwise, whether from the majority or family or neighbor or friend. The loyalty of such men (cf. also the loyalty of Aaron\u2019s grandson Phinehas, Num 25:6\u201312) provided in itself a kind of ordination to Yahweh\u2019s service that resulted in a blessing, but it is not likely that this \u201cordination,\u201d despite the use of the \u05d9\u05d3 + \u05de\u05dc\u05d0 \u201cfill + hand\u201d idiom to describe it, was regarded as ordination to the ministry of worship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence described, for example, in Exod 29. Gunneweg, indeed, has described (14\u201381) the Levites to begin with as a kind of non-Priestly teaching order.
\n30\u201335 The further intercession of Moses for the people, presented in the composite as occurring on the day following the slaughter by the loyalists, though it presents Moses in a splendid light, is still quite inconclusive so far as Israel\u2019s situation is concerned. This is so for two reasons: (1) this narrative is designed to depict a Moses willing to suffer the plight of his people, over against an Aaron looking out only for himself, and (2) the movement of the composite is still forward, both in terms of the punishment of Israel, here predicted as certain but left undefined, and also in terms of Israel\u2019s continuation as Yahweh\u2019s people, if there is to be any, beyond the sin of the golden calf. Once more, whatever place this narrative had as a separate tradition, it has here been woven with consummate skill into a sequence rising toward the summit and conclusion of the book of Exodus.
\nThus Moses, reminding the people once more of the gravity of their sin, announces to them that he will reascend the mountain toward Yahweh to seek atonement for them. He pleads with Yahweh, this time stating with candor the sin and its critical seriousness. In a phrase that seems awkwardly incomplete in Hebrew (either a word has dropped out or the narrator is attempting to represent Moses having difficulty saying what he wants to say), Moses asks Yahweh to forgive Israel or to erase his own name from the book Yahweh has written, a reference apparently to a register of those loyal to Yahweh and thereby deserving his special blessing (cf. Ps 69:28; Isa 4:3; Ezek 13:9; Durham, \u201cPsalms,\u201d BBC [Nashville: Broadman, 1970] 4:310\u201312). It is a magnificent petition, but one that dramatizes both the seriousness of Israel\u2019s sin and the impossibility of the healing of relationship by anyone save the persons who have compromised it. Yahweh cannot overlook what Israel has done, for their sin has destroyed the basis of his interchange with them. Moses cannot atone by the sacrifice of himself for a disobedience of which he is not guilty. Yahweh\u2019s response to Moses makes this abundantly clear. No one save Yahweh himself can undertake to do what Moses here wants to do, and even he cannot accomplish it for those unwilling to open themselves.
\nThus Yahweh\u2019s answer is no surprise: the one who sins must be blotted from the book; Moses is to go and to guide the people toward a prearranged destination. Then suddenly, there is a flashing reflection of what is to come, of what Yahweh has in mind: his messenger will go before Moses. It is a hint only, and the suspense is maintained by an immediate shift back to the reality of Israel\u2019s most terrible moment: there is to be a day of taking account, and Yahweh will take account (\u05e4\u05e7\u05d3) upon Israel for their sin. This sobering announcement, the only possible answer to Moses\u2019 prayer, has attracted the brief notice of a blow leveled by Yahweh at Israel because of their sin with the calf. As noted above (on v 20), this verse is probably a remnant of a tradition describing an epidemic of some kind as Yahweh\u2019s punishment of Israel because of the calf. It serves now as an emphatic underscoring of Yahweh\u2019s response to Moses and adds to the suspense to be resolved only in chap. 33.
\nExplanation
\nThe tight composite narrative of Exod 32\u201334 is brought tumbling toward its climax by the accounts of Moses\u2019 anger and Yahweh\u2019s judgment in 32:7\u201335. The monstrous and unthinkable sin of Israel with the golden calf, described in 32:1\u20136, calls for an immediate and drastic response, and these remaining verses of chap. 32 provide a mosaic of response traditions, all of which might have been Yahweh\u2019s response but none of which really and finally was. Thus these traditions have been molded into a suspenseful narrative pulling us toward what amounts to the only possible response of Yahweh, given the framework of theological emphasis that supports the Book of Exodus as a whole. The series of Moses\u2019 reactions has been interwoven with traditions about Yahweh\u2019s response in so skillful a manner that we are caught up in an ascending sequence of possibilities, each of which seems the response until the next one comes along. Moses\u2019 reactions, each one of which seems so natural and so entirely appropriate, are crystal-clear to us, in part because they are either of us or of us as we would like to be, and so we are drawn into the serious drama that is really our own story anyway. Yahweh\u2019s response seems clear at first and then ambiguous as he draws back from his first intention, then refuses to forgive, then announces darkly an account-taking to come. At the end of chap. 32, we have no answers, only questions: what will Yahweh do? what is to become of Israel? Moses? the Covenant-Promises? the Revelation, the Guiding Principles, the Instructions?
\nAll this is quite deliberate. Moses\u2019 first response, upon hearing what Israel has done, is to plead with Yahweh to spare the lives of Israel; his second response, upon seeing what Israel is doing, is outraged anger; his third response is to assess the situation at hand, probing for the reasons for it; his fourth response is to bring Israel under control by the slaughter of a large number of them, apparently their leaders in the matter of the calf; his fifth response is to plead with Yahweh for mercy for Israel, even at the cost of the loss of his own special relationship with Yahweh. The range of this response includes survival, anger, reason, an end to the sinning, and merciful forgiveness. Yahweh\u2019s first response is anger, his second response pity. Though he does not follow through with his threat to destroy Israel, he also does not forgive them their sin. In fact, his anger does not pass. Moses changes from section to section of the narrative of Exod 32:7\u201335, but Yahweh does not, really. And we are brought up to Exod 33 with all questions, one small hint in the command to Moses and the promise of the messenger (v 34), but no answers. It is a brilliant, symphonic preparation for the climax of the Book of Exodus.
\nThe Command to Leave Sinai (33:1\u20136)
\nBibliography
\nBaumgartner, W. \u201cZum Problem des \u2018Jahwe-Engels.\u2019 \u201d Zum Alten Testament und Seiner Unwelt. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1959. 240\u201346. Coats, G. W. \u201cThe King\u2019s Loyal Opposition: Obedience and Authority in Exodus 32\u201334.\u201d Canon and Authority. Ed. G. W. Coats and B. O. Long. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977. 91\u2013109. Rudolph, W. \u201cDer Aufbau von Exodus 19\u201334.\u201d Werden und Wesen des Alten Testaments. BZAW 66. Berlin: Verlag von Alfred T\u00f6pelmann, 1936. 41\u201348. Vermeylen, J. \u201cL\u2019affaire du veau d\u2019or (Ex 32\u201334). Une cl\u00e9 pour la \u2018question deuteronomiste\u2019?\u201d ZAW 97 (1985) 1\u201323.
\nTranslation
\n1 Then Yahweh spoke to Moses: \u201cGo! Ascend from this place, you and the people whom you have brought up from the land of Egypt to the land I swore to cede to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, \u2018to your descendants I will give it.\u2019 2 I will send out in front of you a messenger, and I will drive out headlong the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 3 To a land gushing with milk and honey you are to go; however, I am not going up in your midst lest I destroy you en route, because you are an obstinate people.\u201d
\n4 When the people heard this dreadful news, they plunged themselves into deep mourning. Not one of them wore his festive dress. 5 Indeed, Yahweh had said to Moses, \u201cSay to the sons of Israel, \u2018you are an obstinate people: I go up in your midst for one moment, and I will finish you off! Now put off from yourselves your festive dress. I will decide what I am to do with you.\u2019 \u201d 6 Thus the sons of Israel divested themselves of their festive dress from Mount Horeb on.
\nNotes
\n1.a. The statement of Yahweh to Moses to this point is very close to his statement in 32:7. There the message was for Moses; here it is for Israel as well.
\n2.a. LXX has \u03c4\u0300\u03bd \u1f04\u03b3\u03b3\u03b5\u03bb\u03cc\u03bd \u03bc\u03bf\u03c5 \u201cmy messenger,\u201d and this messenger, rather than Yahweh, expels the peoples of the land.
\n2.b. SamPent includes at this point the Girgashites to give the list of seven peoples recorded in Deut 7:1. LXX also includes the Girgashites but omits the Canaanites, who are nevertheless added in some LXX texts (see Rahlfs\u2019s note on Exod 33:2).
\n3.a. MT has no verb in the opening clause of this verse, which may be understood as governed by the impvs that begin Yahweh\u2019s statement in v 1. LXX adds \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03b5\u1f30\u03c3\u03ac\u03be\u03c9 \u03c3\u03b5 \u201cand I will lead you in\u201d; Vg has et intres \u201cand you will enter.\u201d The attempt above is to keep the sense of the governing impv..
\n4.a. \u05d4\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8 \u05d4\u05e8\u05e2 \u05d4\u05d6\u05d4 \u201cthis evil word.\u201d
\n4.b. Hithp \u05d0\u05d1\u05dc \u201cmourn, lament,\u201d generally for the dead (cf. BDB, 5); the most abject remorse and grief are intended here.
\n4.c. \u05e9\u05c1\u05d9\u05ea \u201cput on, donned.\u201d
\n4.d. \u05e2\u05d3\u05d9 refers to ornamental or fancy dress, any attire that might suggest not just joyful life, but even life as normal; cf. BDB, 725\u201326.
\n5.a. \u05d0\u05ea\u05dd \u201cyou\u201d pl. here; \u05d0\u05ea\u05d4 \u201cyou\u201d sg in the similar statement of v 3.
\n5.b. LXX reads \u03b4\u03b5\u03af\u03be\u03c9 \u03c3\u03bf\u03b9 \u201cI will show you\u201d instead of \u201cI will decide.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee above, Form\/Structure\/Setting on 32:1\u20136 and 32:7\u201335. The shifting pronouns (v 3 vis-\u00e0-vis v 5) and awkward syntax (v 3, following upon v 1, with the parenthetic v 2) and unusual sequencing (v 5, with its command regarding festive dress, preceded [v 4] by the report that the people did not put it on, then followed [v 6] by the report that they took it off) have led to a frequent assessment of this section as a composite of material from several sources. Rudolph (Werden und Wesen, 45\u201346, 48), for example, considered it a mixture of J (v 1a), non-J polemical material (vv 3b\u20136) and secondary, interpolative material (vv 1b\u20133a); Beer (13, 156\u201357) divided it among his J2 (vv 1, 3, 4), the JE redaction (v 2), and E, to which he attributed vv 5\u201311 as a unit (vv 5\u20136, E2; vv 7\u201311, E); Noth (253\u201354) regarded it \u201cof Deuteronomic origin\u201d but nevertheless a patchwork held together with the rest of the \u201cvery varied pieces of Ex. 33\u201d \u201cby the theme of the presence of God in the midst of his people;\u201d Hyatt (312\u201315) thought it a Deuteronomic redaction using material from J (vv 1, 3a) and E (vv 3b\u20136); Beyerlin (Sinaitic Traditions, 22\u201324) has allocated vv 1\u20133a to J and vv 3b\u20134 and 5\u20136 to two variants of E connected with 32:34; Vermeylen (ZAW 97 [1985] 8\u201315 has assigned vv 2\u20134 to the second of his \u201credactions by the Deuteronomistic school\u201d and vv 1, 5\u20136 to the third of them.
\nIn fact, the variety of these opinions and others like them suggest (1) that any precise divisions of Exod 33:1\u20136 into component sources is, without more information than we have, impossible; (2) that the differences within these verses that have been taken as indications of separate sources and variants may in some instances have been deliberately kept or even introduced by the compiler of this sequence; and (3) that these verses are best understood as a whole and within the larger whole, Exod 32\u201334, of which they are a part. The use of a variety of materials here, as throughout the Exod 32\u201334 composite, is clear; but these verses cannot be subdivided with any certainty, and the attempts to do so have tended to obscure the very deliberate momentum the narrative is intended to present.
\nExod 33:1\u20136 continues the preparatory composite of 32:7\u201334, at the end of which 32:35 has been placed, a fragment of a tradition of Yahweh\u2019s punishment by epidemic (see above), attracted by Yahweh\u2019s assertion (v 34) of a day of accounting to come. Yahweh has already commanded Moses to \u201cgo, guide,\u201d and has promised that his divine messenger will go in front of Moses. The command is now taken up again, and the hint of the messenger and his work is given explication, but the real result of the sin of Israel with the calf is mentioned for the first time: because of what Israel has turned out to be, Yahweh\u2019s Presence will go with them no longer. The most they can expect is a divine messenger to guide them. Yahweh\u2019s presence in their midst, in the aftermath of what has happened, is too dangerous.
\nThus all the questions piled up at the end of chap. 32 are answered, and the answer is so incredible and so unexpected by Israel that it is given twice (vv 3 and 5). It plunges Israel into the grief that death alone can bring and poses in a new and more terrible way the awful question of their own fate. That question is still left deliberately unresolved; Yahweh has yet to decide on its solution (v 5). And so Israel falls into an attitude of abject gloom. This terrible statement of Yahweh and the resultant devastating grief, the first twice stated, the second three times emphasized in the sequence of only four verses (3\u20136), are the center of Exod 33:1\u20136 and the expression of the purpose that gives this section its form. The compiler has deliberately piled up repetitions of his theme to create a powerful and dramatic preparation for what is to come, the single answer to the one question uppermost in both Yahweh\u2019s mind (\u201cI will decide what I am to do with you,\u201d v 5) and Israel\u2019s mind (\u201cthey plunged themselves into deep mourning,\u201d v 4).
\nComment
\n1 There is a rhetorical connection between this verse and 32:7. There, Yahweh says to Moses alone: \u201cGo! Descend!\u201d Here, he gives Moses a command that includes Israel also: \u201cGo! Ascend.\u2026\u201d Here and there, Israelis called the people whom Moses brought up from the land of Egypt. It is almost as if Yahweh cannot bear to take any responsibility for a people who have behaved as Israel has. In view of their disregard for their covenant relationship, he has no obligation to take any further responsibility. Yet he does. It is a motif that comes to an apex in 34:6\u201310, and is focused with searing sharpness by Num 11:10\u201323. The reference to the covenant promise to the fathers is connected of course with 32:13, and the expansion of the hint of the divine messenger given in 32:34 also underscores the continuity between 33:1\u20136 and the sequence that precedes it.
\n2\u20133 The sending of this divine \u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05da \u201cmessenger\u201d has generally been taken as a positive move on Yahweh\u2019s part, against which the statement immediately following, that Yahweh himself will not go up among them, becomes a non sequitur and for some scholars an indication therefore of another source or of a layer within a source (cf. Rudolph, Werden und Wesen, 45\u201346; Beyerlin, Sinaitic Traditions, 22\u201324; Hyatt, 313; Childs, 585\u201386). Another view is possible, however. Yahweh\u2019s command of Moses and Israel to leave Sinai, the mountain of his Presence, must be read as more than a mere transition to the next part of the narrative. Israel has by the sin with the calf destroyed both their right to remain near a place of Yahweh\u2019s Presence and also Yahweh\u2019s desire to be present in their midst. His command that they leave Sinai must be seen in this light. It is like Yahweh\u2019s expulsion of the man and the woman from the Garden of Delight (Gen 3:14\u201324) or even Yahweh\u2019s separation of Cain from his family and from the soil (Gen 4:10\u201316). It is the first hint, indeed, of the punishment Yahweh had decided to bring upon Israel.
\nThe interpolation of the tradition of the promise of land to the fathers, made necessary by the need to state a destination for Moses and Israel, if they are to leave Sinai, suggests the inclusion also of the tradition concerning the displacement of hostile peoples from the land, and that in turn calls for a repetition of the tradition of the richness and desirability of the land. These traditions, in turn, require the inclusion of a means of guidance, hinted at in 32:34 and promised still farther back in the Exodus composite, at 23:20\u201324 (see above), but the nature of the guidance this messenger is to give is immediately qualified by the stark announcement of the punishment Yahweh will mete out to Israel for their sin with the calf. It is not to be a plague, and it is not to be death by some other means. Indeed, it is to be the most appropriate response possible to Israel\u2019s compromise of their relationship with him, and a punishment worse than death.
\nThey are to go up, guided by his messenger, to the place he had chosen and in which he had intended to live in their midst, but without him. In the place of his Presence, there was to be only Absence. It is a punishment, announced at this point in the sequence of the Book of Exodus, that negates every announcement, every expectation, every instruction except those now being given. There will be no special treasure, no kingdom of priests, no holy nation, no Yahweh being their God, no covenant, no Ark, no Tabernacle, no Altar, no cloud of Glory. The messenger promised in 23:20\u201324 was, as is so often the case in the OT, a close equivalent, at the very least, of Yahweh\u2019s Presence (see esp. 23:21, \u201cmy Presence is with him\u201d\u2014cf. above; Baumgartner, Zum Alten Testament, 244), but the messenger mentioned here is quickly and very specifically qualified: (1) his function is guidance only, and (2) Yahweh plainly states that he himself will not go up with them. Israel must leave Sinai, the place where they have known Yahweh\u2019s Presence, and they must journey forth in a way to have been graced by his Presence to a place to have been filled with his Presence with no hope of his Presence ever again (cf. Coats, Canon and Authority, 100\u2013101).
\n4\u20136 In the light of such an interpretation, the account of the people\u2019s reaction makes sense both as a continuation of the narrative of vv 1\u20133 and also as an expression of bitter and hopeless grief. The people could hardly be expected to be plunged into such abysmal grief by an announcement of a tempered judgment. What they are told by Yahweh amounts to the worst of all possible outcomes from their point of view, but the only one we could logically expect, given the theological framework of Exodus. Yahweh\u2019s word is thus quite appropriately called \u201cdreadful news,\u201d and the people thus \u201cplunge themselves into deep mourning.\u201d
\nAs an expression of their grief, the people do not wear any \u201cornamentation\u201d or \u201cfestive dress\u201d (\u05e2\u05d3\u05d9), and by this inclusion of yet another tradition of Yahweh\u2019s terrible announcement and the people\u2019s abject grief, the compiler of this sequence provides an explanation of this symbol of the people\u2019s mourning and effectively doubles the impact of his narrative. Yahweh had told Moses to say to Israel, \u201cYou are an obstinate people\u201d (this time with a plural \u201cyou,\u201d by contrast to the collective singular \u201cyou\u201d of the similar statement of v 3), and to explain to them the awesome danger involved in his continued Presence with them, even \u201cfor a single moment.\u201d He had also instructed that they should divest themselves of any festive dress. In the context of the composite narrative, this latter instruction may be taken as an indication that an immediate expression of the people\u2019s grief was to become a permanent one, not least because their grief was to be a permanent one.
\nThere is no reason to assume that the festive dress the people here put off was what they had put on for festivities at Sinai (so Beer, 156), nor is there any basis for the assumption that the ornamentation the people set aside here was used to make the Tent of Appointed Meeting mentioned in the verses that follow (7\u201311; cf. Driver, 358), or the Ark (Dibelius, Lade Jahves, 45\u201347; Davies, 238; cf. Haran, 262\u201365), and it is, of course, useless to see any discrepancy between this setting aside of festive dress and the call for special materials for the construction of the Tabernacle and its equipment and the sacral vestments of chaps. 25 and 35. The present text is concerned only with depicting Israel\u2019s profound mourning of the threatened loss of Yahweh\u2019s Presence and to express that grief has utilized a tradition, no doubt quite ancient, of mourning dress.
\nThe punishment of Yahweh having been announced and the people having been plunged into deep grief, there remains still the question of Israel\u2019s fate. The people are to be guided to the land promised them and prepared for them by Yahweh, who is represented as determined to keep his word on that score. But without Yahweh\u2019s Presence, what is to become of Israel? At the end of this section, that matter remains unresolved: Yahweh says, \u201cI will decide what I am to do with you.\u201d Thus the dramatic narrative of Exod 32\u201334 is opened to its next and climactic stage by a tiny glimmer of light across the black darkness cast by the announcement of Yahweh\u2019s Absence. Yahweh must yet decide what he is to do with his ex-people.
\nExplanation
\nThe terrible announcement of Yahweh\u2019s punishment, anticipated with rising suspense throughout Exod 32:7\u201334, is made in 33:1\u20136 in two stages: Israel is to leave Sinai, where Yahweh gave his Presence to them, and even worse, they are to make their way without his Presence. Their sin with the golden calf, a rejection of their relationship with Yahweh, is to end in the removal of any possibility of further relationship. Yahweh will leave them, and even with Moses and the divine messenger to guide them, they will be alone, all alone. The great narrative of promised Presence and the great narrative of the Advent of Presence are thus to be brought to an abrupt and empty conclusion by a narrative of Absence.
\nLittle wonder that the people plunge themselves into deepest mourning and remove all suggestions of joy from themselves. They have lost their very identity, as Moses is later to say (33:16). All that Yahweh had planned has come to a bitter end by their irresponsible behavior. All that they already were stands canceled.
\nAnd in such a manner the narrative of Exod 32\u201334, and also of Exodus as a whole, is brought to the threshold of its own Holiest Space.
\nThe Tent of Appointed Meeting (33:7\u201311)
\nBibliography
\nDumermuth, F. \u201cJosua in Ex. 33, 7\u201311.\u201d TZ 19 (1963) 161\u201368. Rad, G. von. \u201cThe Tent and the Ark.\u201d The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1966. 103\u201324. Rost, L. \u201cDie Wohnst\u00e4tte des Zeugnisses.\u201d Festschrift Friedrich Baumg\u00e4rtel. Erlangen: Verlag, Universit\u00e4tsbund Erlangen, 1959. 158\u201365. Sellin, E. \u201cDas Zelt Jahwes.\u201d Alttestamentliche Studien R. Kittel. BWANT 13. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1913. 168\u201392. Vaux, R. de. \u201cArk of the Covenant and Tent of Reunion.\u201d The Bible and the Ancient Near East. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1971. 136\u201351.
\nTranslation
\n7 And Moses was accustomed to take the Tent and he would set it up outside the camp, at some distance from the camp, and he would call it a \u201cTent of Appointed Meeting.\u201d Everyone seeking the will of Yahweh was accustomed to go out to this Tent of Appointed Meeting, which was outside the camp. 8 When Moses would go out to the Tent, all the people, were accustomed to stand up, and each man would take a position at the opening of his own tent. They would gaze at Moses until he entered the Tent. 9 When Moses went into the Tent, the column of cloud was accustomed to come down and would station itself at the opening of the Tent, and Yahweh would speak with Moses. 10 When all the people would see the column of cloud standing at the opening of the Tent, all the people would stand up: then each man would prostrate himself in worship at the opening of his own tent. 11 So Yahweh would speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his neighbor. Moses would return to the camp, but his helper Joshua, son of Nun (\u201cOne Who Increases\u201d), a young man, was not accustomed to leave the interior of the Tent.
\nNotes
\n7\u201311.a. This entire section appears to be a unit inserted into an otherwise dramatic and forward-moving composite narrative and so is marked by a vertical line in the left margin. See below, Form\/Structure\/Setting.
\n7.b. The verbs in this sequence of five verses appear to present a sequence of customary actions, which are indicated above by the use of \u201cwas accustomed to\u201d with the governing impf. verbs, followed by the use of \u201cwould\u201d with the series of pf verbs with special waw. Cf. GKC, \u00b6 112e. It is possible, since this section seems to be a part of a larger sequence dealing with a wilderness tent, that the beginning and perhaps also the end of the sequence lie outside the verses we have.
\n7.c. \u05d1\u05e7\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cseek\u201d (cf. also \u05d3\u05e8\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cseek\u201d) with Yahweh as dir obj has the near-technical meaning of seeking an oracle from Yahweh. See Gerleman, \u201c\u05d1\u05e7\u05e9\u05c1 suchen,\u201d THAT 1:335.
\n7.d. MT leaves \u05d0\u05dc\u05be\u05d0\u05d4\u05dc \u05de\u05d5\u05e2\u05d3 \u201cto a tent of appointed meeting\u201d indefinite, but the context makes clear that the same tent is intended.
\n8.a. LXX has \u03c3\u03ba\u03bf\u03c0\u03b5\u03cd\u03bf\u03bd\u03c4\u03b5\u03c2 \u201cstand looking\u201d instead of \u201ctake a position.\u201d
\n9.a. MT has simply \u05d5\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8 \u201cand he spoke.\u201d Yahweh, clearly the subj of the verb, is added above to avoid an ambiguous translation.
\n11.a. MT has simply \u05d5\u05e9\u05c1\u05d1 \u201cand he returned\u201d; \u201cMoses\u201d is added above for clarity.
\n11.b. \u05e0\u05d5\u05df \u201cpropagate, increase,\u201d BDB, 630. Noth (Personennamen, 229\u201330) includes \u05e0\u05d5\u05bc\u05df in his list of names taken from \u201canimal names\u201d and makes it equivalent, though with no explanation, to \u201cfish.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 32:1\u20136 and 32:7\u201335.
\nThese verses are so strikingly different in both content and style from the dramatically arranged narrative composite that precedes and follows them that they have given rise to a wide variety of explanations concerning their origin, and above all their purpose in relation to their present setting. They have been attributed to both J (Newman, People of the Covenant, 63\u201371; possibly, says Noth, 254\u201355, though he favors a \u201cspecial tradition\u201d taken up by J) and also (more generally) to E (Beer, 156\u201359; Hyatt, 314\u201315), though not universally as a unity (cf. Beyerlin, Sinaitic Traditions 112\u201326, who thinks E took over an old tradition and then reworked it). In fact, there is not enough clear evidence in Exod 33:7\u201311 to make a firm source assignment.
\nThe location of these verses here has likewise stimulated considerable discussion. A conjecture of some years\u2019 standing (going back at least to Wellhausen, Composition des Hexateuchs, 93) that Exod 33:7\u201311 continues an account (generally assigned to E) of the making (from the Israelites\u2019 cast-off \u201cornaments\u201d of 33:4\u20136) of the Ark, for which in turn the Tent described here was to provide the shelter, is an argument without evidence. Despite frequent attempts to connect the Ark and this Tent of Appointed Meeting (see esp. Beyerlin, Sinaitic Traditions, 112\u201326; de Vaux, The Bible 136\u201351; and also, by a somewhat different theory, von Rad, Problem of the Hexateuch, 102\u201324) no strong and convincing argument for doing so has yet been presented, a fact which has led Haran (Temples, 267\u201369; for an earlier version of the discussion of the \u201c\u02d2ohel mo \u02d3edh,\u201d see JSS 5 [1960] 50\u201365), among others, to propose two tents in pre-Priestly tradition, one within the camp of Israel, to house the Ark between journeys (cf. also de Vaux, 141\u201342), and one outside the camp, entirely empty, that provided a place of meeting with Yahweh. The former of these two tents is of course a speculation, though a reasonable one. The OT refers to two tents that function in such a manner, one of them the Tent outside the camp, described in the verses at hand; but the other one is the Tabernacle of P, described in Exod 26:1\u201337 and 36:8\u201338.
\nThe tradition of a Tent outside the camp, set up specifically as a meeting place appointed by Yahweh, a place where he made his Presence available on a periodic basis, to Moses primarily, but through Moses to any honest suppliant, is best regarded as an ancient tradition. This ancient tradition is reflected in Num 11:16\u201330; 12:4\u201316; Deut 31:14\u201315; and 1 Sam 2:22, and recalled, perhaps, in 1 Chr 16:39\u201340; 21:29\u201330; and 2 Chr 1:3, 13, albeit in a somewhat garbled fashion (cf. Haran, Temples, 199\u2013200), but the primary description of its purpose is in the section at hand, Exod 33:7\u201311. This Tent for trysting, pointedly remembered as the \u05d0\u05d4\u05dc \u05de\u05d5\u05e2\u05d3 \u201cTent of Appointed Meeting,\u201d literally, a \u201ctent of assembly by appointment,\u201d had no connections with the Ark, or with any other palpable symbol of Yahweh\u2019s Presence, nor with any rituals of sacrifice or offering. It was exclusively and solely a place where Yahweh\u2019s Presence could be met, as Haran (265\u201369) has described it, a kind of post-Sinai point of theophany (though Haran\u2019s insistence, 265\u201367, that Moses met Yahweh only outside the Tent, at its entrance, seems a bit forced).
\nWhen this Tent originated, of course, we have no way of knowing, but there is no good reason to deny it to the wilderness period. How long it was in use in its original and \u201cpure\u201d form is equally impossible to say. By the time of the P concept of the Tabernacle, the tradition of a Tent of Appointed Meeting had become amalgamated with the concept of Yahweh\u2019s Presence in his people\u2019s midst (cf. Rost, Festschrift F. Baumg\u00e4rtel, 158\u201365; Childs, 530\u201337; Haran, Temples, 271\u201375), and thus capital letters are used in the translation of P\u2019s usages of \u05d0\u05d4\u05dc \u05de\u05d5\u05e2\u05d3, to give \u201cTent of Appointed Meeting.\u201d About the significance of the Tent of Appointed Meeting however there can be little question: its name, the OT references to it, and even its integration into the P tradition of the Tabernacle all make clear that this Tent was a primary symbol of Yahweh\u2019s Presence, and especially of the accessibility of that Presence to those in need of guidance, represented primarily by Moses.
\nThis significance of the Tent of Appointed Meeting, even more than the style of 33:7\u201311 or its discontinuity with the narrative surrounding it, makes clear the complete dislocation of these verses in their present setting. The whole point of the composite narrative of 32:1\u201333:6 is that Yahweh, because of the sin of Israel with the calf, is not accessible to his people, and indeed intends fully that they should henceforth know only Absence. 33:12\u201317 continues that narrative and resolves its terrible tension at last with Yahweh\u2019s decision not to withdraw his Presence. An account of an appointed place in which Yahweh is accustomed to make himself available to his people simply does not fit into such a narrative. Attempts to make it fit, whether by the supposition of original information now missing (Dibelius, Lade Jahves, 45\u201347; Sellin, Alttestamentliche Studien 168\u201372; de Vaux, The Bible, 140\u201342; Clements, God and Temple, 36\u201338) or by the theory that the Tent of Appointed Meeting provided access to Yahweh in spite of his judgment (Cassuto, 429\u201332; Moberly, Mountain of God, 63\u201364) serve only to call further attention to the obvious inconsistencies presented by these verses. Childs (591\u201393) suggests that vv 7\u201311 either have found their way into chap. 33 \u201cby sheer accident\u201d or that these verses, though originally independent of the narrative of Exod 33, have been deliberately located where they now are because of the topical connection (Moses as intercessor) and as a means of showing \u201ca transformed people\u201d and \u201can indirect\u201d accompaniment of Israel by Yahweh. Childs\u2019s theory is imaginative, but perhaps too much so; though it is an admirable attempt to take seriously the text in its canonical form, it might work better if vv 7\u201311 had been located at the end of the dramatic Presence-Absence narrative, following 33:17 or 34:9 or even 34:35. As it stands, this brief notice about the Tent of Appointed Meeting simply cannot be made to fit its present location in the received text.
\nHow, then, did these verses come to their canonical place? Childs\u2019s (591) suggestion of a \u201csheer accident\u201d is nearer the truth than his other theory, but it too may be a bit excessive. The old tradition of a trysting Tent may have been considered by the compilers of Exodus too important to omit, and thus they may well have tried several locations for it. They could not locate it before the narrative of the revelation by Yahweh of his Presence at Sinai, nor in too close a proximity to the P accounts of the Tabernacle, with which it could (and has) so easily become confused. Thus finally, they placed it in the account of the aftermath of Israel\u2019s sin with the calf (1) because it dealt with the subject of access to Yahweh\u2019s Presence, about to be denied because of that sin, and (2) because of the practical problem created by Yahweh\u2019s order to Moses and Israel to leave Sinai. There is no hint, anywhere in the OT, that access to Yahweh\u2019s presence at the Tent of Appointed Meeting was in any way a weakened or more aloof kind of access; the problem is that until the decision of Yahweh is revealed in 33:17, Israel has no access, of any kind. Indeed, Moses\u2019 own authority as Yahweh\u2019s representative to Israel, compromised by Israel\u2019s request for the calf in 32:1, is not fully reestablished in the narrative before 34:27\u201335.
\nThe location of Exod 33:7\u201311 may thus be seen to have a logical basis, in some ways more of one than Exod 18, which also appears to be dislocated (see above). But it is nevertheless an unfortunate placement, because it is one that interrupts the single most powerful compiled narrative in the entire Book of Exodus. For that reason alone the movement of Exod 32:7\u201311 into its present location can be fixed in a period later than the compilation of the narrative sequence preserved in 32:1\u201334, 33:1\u20136, 12\u201334:9.
\nComment
\n7\u20139 The action of Moses in setting up the Tent (\u05d4\u05d0\u05d4\u05dc) has been variously taken as an action for himself (Cassuto, 430; Haran, Temples, 264, n. 6; cf. LXX, which even calls the Tent \u201chis Tent\u201d) or for the ark (Beyerlin, Sinaitic Traditions, 114; de Vaux, The Bible, 141). \u05d5\u05e0\u05d8\u05d4\u05be\u05dc\u05d5 is better read either \u201che would set it up for him (= Yahweh)\u201d (so Beer, 156, n. 7d) or, as translated above, \u201che would set up \u05dc\u05d5\u05b9,\u201d i.e., \u201che would perform the setting-up operation with reference to it (= the Tent),\u201d taking \u201cit\u201d here as a dative of specification, or reference (as in 2 Sam 6:17, where the same phrase occurs, interestingly enough in reference to the Ark). This verse appears to be a part of a sequence, the loss of whose first part makes the statement about Moses\u2019 action more ambiguous than it would otherwise be. The essential point of v 7, in any case, is the placement well outside the camp (a point triply emphasized) of a tent aptly named by Moses \u201cthe Tent of Appointed Meeting.\u201d
\nThis Tent was deliberately located outside the normal patterns of traffic and provided a place of access to the Presence of Yahweh for those seeking to know his will, whether by oracle or in some other manner. When Moses left the camp on his way to the Tent, Israel knew that an appointed meeting with Yahweh was at least possible. Therefore they gazed after Moses, not out of any respect or deference to him (so Childs, 592\u201393), but because of the unique experience of communion with Yahweh about to take place. The people\u2019s gaze was on Moses until he entered the Tent; then they had something else as the focus of the experience, for when Moses had entered the Tent, the column of cloud both symbolizing and concealing Yahweh\u2019s Presence would descend and take up a position at the opening of the Tent. From this cloud, Yahweh would speak to Moses, and presumably (v 7) through Moses to anyone else who might come out to the Tent with a petition.
\n10 At their first sight of the column of cloud at the entrance of the Tent, the people knew that the appointed meeting had passed from possibility to reality, and they would respectfully and appropriately stand and then prostrate themselves in worship before the opening of their own tents. Though so much is not said, we may assume that the people remained in a position of adoration and obeisance as long as the cloud was in place, indicating the continuation of Yahweh\u2019s conversation with Moses. Whatever historical memory may or may not be reflected here, the theological point, awe in the Presence of Yahweh, is presented with telling impact.
\n11 The reference to the intimacy of Yahweh\u2019s communion with Moses is almost certainly to be considered a reflection of the traditions represented by the narratives of 33:12\u201317 and 33:18\u201334:9. As the second of these narratives makes clear, \u201cface to face\u201d is here to be understood as an idiom of intimacy, not as a reference to theophany. Following the conversation with Yahweh, presumably indicated by the ascension or disappearance of the cloud, Moses returned to the camp, a move that apparently would mean a return to normal activity in the camp. The continued presence in the Tent of Joshua is not to be taken as an indication of some continuing cultic activity there, whether of priestly service (cf. Beyerlin, Sinaitic Traditions, 114\u201316) or by a continuation in Moses\u2019 absence of an intermediary function before Yahweh (cf. Dumermuth, TZ 19 [1963] 161\u201368).Joshua here or elsewhere in Exodus is Moses\u2019 assistant, and his role in the Tent is probably that of a guard.
\nExplanation
\nThe five verses of Exod 33:7\u201311, therefore, as important as they are, are nonetheless completely out of place in the taut narrative of Exod 32:1\u201334:9. They have been attracted to their present location by logical associations of both topic and overall sequence in the Book of Exodus. Even so, they now disrupt an otherwise carefully directed narrative mosaic.
\nThe verses themselves are concerned with the continuation of access to Yahweh\u2019s decision-giving Presence after the departure from Sinai, with the symbolism of his Presence in that role, with the role of Moses in continuing communion with Yahweh, and with the response of Israel, as typified by the men of Israel, during the times of that communion.
\nMoses\u2019 Plea for Mercy and Yahweh\u2019s Answer (33:12\u201317)
\nBibliography
\nBaumann, E. \u201c\u05d9\u05d3\u05e2 und seine Derivate im Hebr\u00e4ischen.\u201d ZAW 28 (1908) 22\u201341, 110\u201343. Eissfeldt, O. Die Komposition der Sinai-Erz\u00e4hlung Exodus 19\u201334. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1966. Labuschagne, C. J. \u201cThe Emphasizing Particle Gam and Its Connotations.\u201d Studia Biblica et Semitica. Wageningen: H. Veenman & Sons, 1966. 193\u2013203. Muilenburg, J. \u201cThe Intercession of the Covenant Mediator (Exodus 33:1a, 12\u201317).\u201d Words and Meanings. Ed. P. R. Ackroyd and B. Lindars. Cambridge: University Press, 1968. 159\u201381. Rudolph, W. \u201cDer Aufbau von Exodus 19\u201334.\u201d Werden und Wesen des Alten Testaments. BZAW 66. Berlin: Verlag von Alfred T\u00f6pelmann, 1936. 41\u201348.
\nTranslation
\n12 So Moses replied to Yahweh, \u201cConsider! You have said to me, \u2018Ascend with this people!\u2019 Yet you have not let me know whom you will send forth with me. You have said, \u2018I know you by name, and you have indeed found favor in my estimation.\u2019 13 Now, please, if I really have found favor in your estimation, please let me know your intention, in order that I may keep on finding favor in your estimation. And consider: that this people is your very own people.\u201d
\n14 Then Yahweh said, \u201cMy Presence will go. Thus will I dispel your anxiety.\u201d 15 Moses replied to him, \u201cIf your Presence does not go, do not bring us up from this place. 16 How indeed is it to become known as a fact that I have found favor in your estimation, I myself and your people, except in your going with us? In that are we separated, I myself and your people, from all the people who are upon the surface of the earth.\u201d
\n17 Thus Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cIndeed the very thing you have spoken, I will do: because you really have found favor in my estimation, and I know you by name.\u201d
\nNotes
\n12.a. \u05d5\u05d9\u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u201cand he said,\u201d continuing the narrative of 33:1\u20135, to which 33:6 is an explanatory note, following which 33:7\u201311 is a disrupting insertion; see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 33:7\u201311.
\n12.b. \u05e8\u05d0\u05d4; \u201cconsider\u201d cf. BDB, 907 \u00a7 7.
\n12.c. \u05d4\u05e2\u05dc \u05d0\u05ea\u05be\u05d4\u05e2\u05dd \u05d4\u05d6\u05d4 is, lit., \u201cCause to go up this people.\u201d The hiphil impv. \u05d4\u05b7\u05e2\u05b7\u05dc is, however, a rhetorical link to the qal impv. \u05e2\u05b2\u05dc\u05b5\u05d4 of v 1. Both these occurrences of impv. \u05e2\u05dc\u05d4 thus are translated above by \u201cascend.\u201d
\n12.d. The emphasis is shown by the use of \u05d0\u05ea\u05d4 \u201cyou\u201d in addition to the 2d masc. sg hiph of \u05d9\u05d3\u05e2 \u201cknow.\u201d
\n12.e. \u05dc\u05d0 \u05d4\u05d5\u05d3\u05e2\u05ea\u05e0\u05d9 \u201cyou have not caused me to know, revealed to me.\u201d
\n12.f. LXX has \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u1f70 \u03c0\u03ac\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03c2 \u201cbeyond, above all.\u201d
\n12.g. \u05d2\u05dd \u201cindeed,\u201d a particle of emphasis, as Labuschagne (Studia, 193\u2013203) has shown.
\n13.a. \u05d3\u05e8\u05db\u05da \u201cyour way,\u201d taken here in the sense of \u201cpurpose, direction, intention,\u201d and as a specific reference to Yahweh\u2019s statement in v 6, \u201cI will decide what I am to do with you (\u05dc\u05da = Israel).\u201d LXX has a different reading altogether: \u1f10\u03bc\u03c6\u03ac\u03bd\u03b9\u03c3\u03cc\u03bd \u03bc\u03bf\u03b9 \u03c3\u03b5\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u03cc\u03bd. \u03b3\u03bd\u03c9\u03c3\u03c4\u1ff6\u03c2 \u1f34\u03b4\u03c9 \u03c3\u03b5 \u201cshow me yourself, so that I may see you clearly.\u201d
\n13.b. \u05d0\u05b6\u05de\u05b0\u05e6\u05b8\u05d0, impf., continuing action, following the pf \u05de\u05b8\u05e6\u05b8\u05d0\u05ea\u05b4\u05d9 earlier in the verse.
\n13.c. The emphasis, indicated above by \u201cvery own,\u201d is suggested by the order of the words \u05e2\u05de\u05da \u05d4\u05d2\u05d5\u05d9 \u05d4\u05d6\u05d4, lit., \u201cyour people (is) this people.\u201d There is here also a clever play on the words \u05d2\u05d5\u05d9 \u201cpeople, nation\u201d and \u05e2\u05dd \u201cpeople,\u201d with \u05d2\u05d5\u05d9 as a more general term and \u05e2\u05dd a more intimate term in this context.
\n14.a. MT has only \u05d5\u05d9\u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u201cand he said,\u201d but Yahweh is the clear subject so is added above to avoid ambiguity.
\n14.b. \u05d9\u05b5\u05dc\u05b5\u05db\u05d5\u05bc \u201cthey will go.\u201d This 3d masc. pl. qal impf. \u05d4\u05dc\u05da is a rhetorical link with the 2d masc. sg qal impv. of \u05d4\u05dc\u05da in v 1, so both occurrences are translated \u201cgo.\u201d Cf. LXX \u0391\u1f50\u03c4\u1f78\u03c2 \u03c0\u03c1\u03bf\u03c0\u03bf\u03c1\u03b5\u03cd\u03c3\u03bf\u03bc\u03b1\u03af \u03c3\u03bf\u03c5 \u201cI myself will go before you.\u201d
\n14.c. \u05d5\u05d4\u05e0\u05d7\u05ea\u05d9 \u05dc\u05da \u201cthus I will give rest, quiet to you.\u201d See BDB, 628 \u00a7 1.
\n15.a. MT has only \u05d5\u05d9\u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u201cand he said,\u201d but the subj of the verb is clearly Moses.
\n15.b. LXX reads \u201cme.\u201d
\n16.a. \u05d9\u05b4\u05d5\u05b8\u05bc\u05d3\u05b7\u05e2 \u201cknown as a fact,\u201d 3d masc. sg niph impf. of \u05d9\u05d3\u05e2; read here as sure knowing, the knowing of experience as opposed to hearsay or mere rumor. Cf. Muilenburg, Words and Meanings, 179.
\n16.b. Niph \u05e4\u05dc\u05d4 \u201cbe separated, distinguished from.\u201d LXX has \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f72\u03bd\u03b4\u03bf\u03be\u03b1\u03c3\u03b8\u03ae\u03c3\u03bf\u03bc\u03b1\u03b9 \u03b5\u03b3\u03ce \u03c4\u03b5 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f41 \u03bb\u03b1\u03cc\u03c2 \u03c3\u03bf\u03c5 \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u1f70 \u03c0\u03ac\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1 \u03c4\u1f70 \u1f14\u03b8\u03bd\u03b7 \u201cand I and your people shall be glorified, held in high honor \u2026 beyond all the nations.\u201d
\n17.a. \u05d2\u05dd \u05d0\u05ea\u05be\u05d4\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8 \u05d4\u05d6\u05d4 \u201cindeed the very thing\u201d; cf. Labuschagne, Studia 200.
\n17.b. See n. 12.f.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 19:1\u201315 and 19:16\u201325.
\nWith these verses, we are returned to the sequence of the composite narrative begun at Exod 32:1 and interrupted at 33:6 by the insertion of the account of the Tent of Appointed Meeting. Like most of the component sequences of the larger narrative sequence of which they are a part, these verses too must be understood primarily not in terms of any original source or sources from which they may have come, but as carefully integrated into a meaningful narrative sequence. The usual source assignment of Exod 33:12\u201317 is to J (so Driver, 360\u201362; Beyerlin, Sinaitic Traditions, 98\u2013107; Hyatt, 316), with a frequent linking of this sequence to 24:3\u201311 (so Rudolph, Werden und Wesen, 46\u201348) as an \u201coriginal locus\u201d (Muilenburg, Words and Meanings, 162, n. 1). This assignment cannot, however, be maintained as anything more than general conjecture, as the divergent opinions indicate (Beer, 13, 158\u201359, e.g., considers 33:12\u201317 from the hand of Js; Eissfeldt, Composition, 11, 31, largely a secondary addition to E; Zenger, Sinaitheophanie, 194\u201397, an amalgam of his \u201cjehovistisches Geschichtswerk\u201d [different from his \u201cjahwistisches Geschichtswerk\u201d], vv 12\u201314 and his \u201cdeuteronomistic revision,\u201d vv 15\u201317).
\nMuilenburg (Words and Meanings, 162\u201381), applying his rhetorical-critical technique, has proposed that Exod 33:12\u201317, along with its \u201cintroduction\u201d in 33:1a, has preserved an ancient cultic liturgy presenting the plea of \u201cthe mediator of the covenant\u201d to \u201cIsrael\u2019s Lord and Suzerain,\u201d Yahweh, reflecting ANE covenant-treaty formulary, and emphasizing, by the fivefold use of \u05d9\u05d3\u05e2, a special \u201ccovenantal knowing\u201d \u201cbetween Suzerain and vassal.\u201d Terrien (Elusive Presence, 138\u201352) considers these verses a part of his third collection of Sinai theophany traditions (108\u20139): 33:1a, 12\u201323, in his view, present in response to Yahweh\u2019s command to depart Sinai (33:1a) three pleas of Moses and three responses from Yahweh. These suggestions, interesting attempts to take seriously both the form and the language of Exod 33:12\u201317 in the context of the larger narrative with which it is contiguous, are to be commended. Both of them catch and communicate the excitement and tension of this powerful narrative as no source-analytical treatment has ever done, and Muilenburg\u2019s essay presents a stimulating array of rhetorical suggestions.
\nEven so, both Muilenburg and Terrien impose upon the text of Exod 33:12\u201317 patterns that are too much in the eye of the interpreter, patterns that do not connect these verses sufficiently with the larger narrative sequence of which they are the theological, and therefore by design, the literary high point. Everything in this tautly drawn narrative has moved toward and anticipated this climactic pleading of Moses, with its account of Yahweh\u2019s withdrawing his threat of Absence and beginning the restoration of the gift of his Presence. This narrative is indeed the centerpiece of a carefully arranged sequence of pieces of tradition from a wide variety of sources, and it can be appropriately understood only in its setting, just as the narratives that provide that setting can best be understood only in view of the dramatic center these verses provide.
\nThe narrative of the calf (32:1\u20136) sets up the crisis, Israel\u2019s disobedience of Yahweh and its rejection of Moses. The narrative of Moses\u2019 anger and Yahweh\u2019s judgment (32:7\u201334) defines the crisis as a serious one with serious consequences. The narrative of the command to leave Sinai (33:1\u20136), with its devastating announcement of those consequences and its foreboding anticipation of a decision yet to come concerning Israel\u2019s fate, raises the tension to an unbearable intensity. The narrative at hand, of Moses\u2019 plea for mercy and Yahweh\u2019s anger (33:12\u201317), resolves that tension, though in a manner that in no way lessens the seriousness of Israel\u2019s responsibility. And the three narratives that follow renew (1) the understanding of Yahweh\u2019s Presence and nature (33:18\u201334:9), (2) the covenant of relationship (34:10\u201328), and (3) the authority of Moses (34:29\u201335), all of which were both misunderstood and rejected by the sin with the calf. Exod 33:12\u201317 is at the very center of the composite narrative of Presence-Absence-Presence which provides the theological center of Israel\u2019s struggle to belong to Yahweh.
\nComment
\n12 Moses\u2019 reply to Yahweh is a response not to 32:34 (so Noth, 256; Hyatt, 316), but to Yahweh\u2019s speech of command in 33:1\u20133. Yahweh had ordered Moses to \u201cascend from this place,\u201d along with the people (\u05e2\u05dd; 33:1). Moses now repeats that order, quoting Yahweh\u2019s verb \u201cascend.\u201d He then proceeds to raise with Yahweh the question \u201cHow?\u201d Yahweh has not revealed to Moses what only he (note you, emphasized) can reveal: who is to go with Moses to make possible the departure of such a people as Israel under the promise of Yahweh\u2019s Absence from such a place as Sinai, the one place where Yahweh\u2019s Presence has been most real? This is not, as it is sometimes understood to be, a request for guidance: guidance has been promised already in 33:2, a verse with which this verse, were it such a request, would be in conflict. What Moses is asking here is an echo of what he has asked before: \u201c \u2018Who am I, that I am to go, that I am to bring?\u2019 \u201d (3:11). \u201c \u2018Suppose I come and say and they ask \u05de\u05d4 \u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05d5?\u2019 \u201d \u201cwhat is his name?\u201d (3:13, see above).
\nAs Terrien (Elusive Presence, 139\u201340) has correctly pointed out, Moses really wants (and needs) to know something about Yahweh himself, and Moses presses his question on the strength of the favor he has won with Yahweh. There is no narrative earlier in Exodus in which Yahweh has made the statement Moses attributes to him here, though 32:10 reflects a similar theme. Muilenburg (Words and Meanings, 177\u201381) has commented on the importance of Moses\u2019 statement that Yahweh knows him by name (the statement is actually made by Yahweh in v 17), following Baumann\u2019s (ZAW 28 [1908] 22\u201341) understanding of \u05d9\u05d3\u05e2 as indicating in such usages \u201ca personal association,\u201d noting that Yahweh\u2019s knowing Moses by name is a singling out that demonstrates Yahweh\u2019s favor upon him.
\n13 Thus Moses presses his request, which is somewhat more specific than Terrien proposes. Moses wants and needs to know Yahweh\u2019s \u201cintention,\u201d his \u201cway,\u201d specifically, his decision where Israel\u2019s fate is concerned. The reference is to 33:6, where Yahweh, having announced (v 3) the withdrawal of his Presence, had said, \u201cI will decide what I am to do with you.\u201d In the dialogue between Yahweh and Moses in Exod 3, Yahweh had tied his Presence to Moses\u2019 request for authority in Egypt: \u201c \u2018The point is, I Am with you.\u2019 \u201d (3:12). \u201c \u2018I Am has sent me forth\u2019 \u201d (3:14). Now Moses, with his insistence on knowing who is to go with him as he leaves Sinai and with his urgent plea (\u05e0\u05d0 \u201cplease\u201d occurs twice in v 13) that Yahweh reveal to him his intention concerning Israel, is just as clearly tying Presence to his willingness to obey Yahweh\u2019s command. Only if Yahweh\u2019s Presence accompanies him and Israel as they depart Sinai can Moses keep on finding favor in Yahweh\u2019s estimation. The implication is clear: without Yahweh\u2019s Presence, Moses will soon incur Yahweh\u2019s disfavor. As a closing plea, Moses ends his speech with the imperative with which he began it: \u201cconsider\u201d (\u05e8\u05d0\u05d4); he began by asking Yahweh to consider what he was commanding, and he ends by asking him to consider that Israel, deftly referred to as \u05d4\u05d2\u05d5\u05d9 \u05d4\u05d6\u05d4 \u201cthis people,\u201d a designation with overtones of generality, is \u05e2\u05de\u05da \u201cyour people,\u201d which is placed first in the clause, for emphasis, and gives the intimate phrase \u201cyour very own people.\u201d
\n14\u201315 It is a masterpiece of a speech, the intention and effect of which are confirmed by Yahweh\u2019s immediate response, powerfully expressed by two simple sentences that contain, in Hebrew, only two words each. \u201cMy Presence will go\u201d is linked by its verb (\u05d9\u05dc\u05db\u05d5) to the first of Yahweh\u2019s imperative commands to Moses in 33:1: \u201cGo!\u201d (\u05dc\u05da). \u201cThus will I dispel your anxiety\u201d is the confirmation of Moses\u2019 intent in his plea. Nothing else, indeed, will give Moses rest from the fear gripping him, as his relief-laden reply further indicates: if Yahweh\u2019s Presence is not to go, Moses does not want either Israel or himself (MT \u201cus\u201d; LXX\u2019s \u201cme\u201d is an alteration of the text probably based on a misunderstanding of it) brought up from Sinai. The reason for this is quite clear: without Yahweh\u2019s Presence, Israel and Moses are not just certain to fail the destiny set before them; they cannot even begin it, because they will have lost their identity as \u201ca special treasure,\u201d Yahweh\u2019s \u201cown kingdom of priests and holy people\u201d (19:5\u20136; see above).
\n16 All this is made doubly clear by Moses\u2019 summary confession of what Yahweh\u2019s Presence means to Israel, the final part of his plea, and the statement of the reason for Israel\u2019s abject grief and for his own urgent anxiety. Only Yahweh\u2019s Presence with Israel and with Moses will give credence to the assertion that Moses, and Israel along with him (and because of him), have found favor with Yahweh. Only Yahweh\u2019s Presence with Moses and Israel separates them from all other people throughout the world. It is the lesson Moses learned on Sinai at the time of his call: he alone was not equal to the task of challenging Pharaoh, but he was not to be alone. It is the lesson Israel learned, by the mighty acts in Egypt, by the deliverance at the sea, by the guidance and provision in the wilderness, and above all by the theophany and the revelation at Sinai: what they had seen, what they had been given, what they had the chance of becoming, all were the direct result of the Presence in their midst of Yahweh.
\nIncredibly enough, the people had somehow not realized this until they were under the prospect of Yahweh\u2019s Absence; then it became all too terribly clear, and they were overwhelmed by bitter grief. Moses had known it all along, and so his reaction was the quickest and most passionate, and his need to reverse the terrible prospect of Absence was the most urgent The matter had come down finally to whether Israel as a special people would continue to exist or not, and Moses\u2019 own fate is bound up with his people\u2019s fate. His plea for them is not merely the reflex of a sense of responsibility. Moses\u2019 own real existence is caught up in Israel\u2019s real existence.
\nWhatever historical memory may or may not be preserved in this marvelous narrative is really beside the point. Its theological insight is universal, equally applicable to divine-human relationship and ministry in any age. No people, no matter how religious they are and for whatever reasons, can be a people of God without the Presence of God. Moses has posed the ultimate either\/or: Yahweh\u2019s decision to withdraw his presence from Israel is the decision of Israel\u2019s fate. Without Yahweh\u2019s presence, in the dark and chaotic umbra of his Absence, Israel will cease to exist.
\n17 Thus comes Yahweh\u2019s answer a second time, so anxiously anticipated, so carefully prepared for. The answer remains direct and simple, an eloquent affirmation of the clear either\/or Moses has posed: \u201cIndeed (\u05d2\u05dd) the very thing you have spoken, I will do.\u201d Moses\u2019 has focused the issue in terms of Israel\u2019s existence or nonexistence as a special people. This brilliant narrative presents Yahweh \u201cseeing the point,\u201d and affirming without argument and without repetition (in itself a remarkable rhetorical surprise) that Moses is right, that he must not withdraw his Presence from Israel. And so Yahweh says simply, \u201cIndeed the very thing you have spoken I will do.\u201d It is a brilliantly arresting conclusion to a magnificent narrative sequence, dazzlingly effective in its brevity, masterfully bold in its presentation of a Yahweh who is so secure that he does not mind being upstaged by his own servant Moses. This answer is the most convincing possible testimony of the favor in which Yahweh holds Moses, as Yahweh proceeds immediately to say. And this answer, in turn, sets the stage for the next component of the narrative sequence, in which, in a passage unique in the OT, Yahweh describes himself and Moses falls prostrate in worship.
\nExplanation
\nIn a brief passage, displaying profound insight and presented with the consummate skill of a literary genius, the composite narrative of Exod 32\u201334 is brought to its zenith. Moses focuses the real issue of the aftermath of Israel\u2019s sin with the calf. Though Israel has cancelled any possible claim to a continuation of the gift of Yahweh\u2019s Presence, deserving only the Absence Yahweh has promised, Israel cannot continue to exist without that Presence. The entire great undertaking, made possible from beginning to end by Yahweh\u2019s Presence, is about to come to a humiliating and complete finish because of Yahweh\u2019s Absence.
\nMoses is represented raising the question by asking who is to go with him and with Israel, by asking what is Yahweh\u2019s intention, by insisting, in a reflection of the \u201ceagle\u2019s wings\u201d speech (19:4\u20136), that Israel remains Yahweh\u2019s own people. The real question, of course, is the continuation of Yahweh\u2019s Presence with Israel, and when Yahweh, reversing his earlier threat, promises after all that he will go, Moses blurts out in a flood of relief, this real concern. Thus Yahweh affirms again both his intention to do what Moses has asked, and his favor, based on a firsthand knowledge, toward Moses. These six verses are a masterpiece in the presentation of theological insight and the apex of the composite narrative of Exod 32\u201334.
\nMoses\u2019 Request and Yahweh\u2019s Response (33:18\u201334:9)
\nBibliography
\nBrichto, H. C. \u201cThe Worship of the Golden Calf: A Literary Analysis of a Fable on Idolatry.\u201d HUCA 54 (1983) 1\u201344. Dentan, R. C. \u201cThe Literary Affinities of Exodus XXXIV 6f.\u201d VT 13 (1963) 34\u201351. Eichrodt, W. Theology of the Old Testament. OTL. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967. Freedman, D. N. \u201cThe Name of the God of Moses.\u201d JBL 79 (1960) 151\u201356. Mannati, M. \u201cT\u0325\u00fbb-Y. en Ps XXVII 13:La Bont\u00e9 de Y., ou Les Biens de Y.?\u201d VT 19 (1969) 488\u201393. Rudolph, W. \u201cDer Aufbau von Exodus 19\u201334.\u201d Werden und Wesen des Allen Testaments. BZAW 66. Berlin: Verlag von Alfred T\u00f6pelmann, 1936. 41\u201348. Scharbert, J. \u201cFormgeschichte und Exegese von Ex 34, 6f und Seiner Parallelen.\u201d Bib 38 (1957) 130\u201350. Stoebe, H. J. \u201cDie Bedeutung der Wortes h\u0325\u00e4s\u00e4d im Alten Testament.\u201d VT 2 (1952) 244\u201354. Walker, N. \u201cConcerning Exod 34:6.\u201d JBL 79 (1960) 277. Westermann, C. \u201cDie Herrlichkeit Gottes in der Priesterschrift.\u201d Wort-Gebot-Glaube. Ed. J. J. Stamm, E. Jenni and H. J. Stoebe. ATANT 59. Z\u00fcrich: Zwingli Verlag, 1970. 227\u201349.
\nTranslation
\n18 Then Moses said, \u201cShow me, please, your glory.\u201d 19 Yahweh replied, \u201cI will make all my goodness pass in front of you, and I will call out the name Yahweh in your presence. I show favor to whom I want to show favor, and I show compassion to whom I want to show compassion. 20 However,\u201d he continued, \u201cYou cannot stand to see my Presence, because a man is not to see me and then continue living.\u201d 21 Yahweh went on to say, \u201cLook: there is a place where you can stand near me; you are to position yourself on the rocky cliff; 22 when my glory passes by, I will place you in a fissure of the rocky cliff, and I will screen you with the palm of my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will remove my palm, so that you may see where I have passed. My Presence is not to be seen.\u201d
\n34:1 Next Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cChisel out for yourself two tablets of stone like the first ones, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first two tablets, which you shattered. 2 Be prepared in the morning. You are to ascend Mount Sinai in the morning, and you are to position yourself in readiness for me there upon the summit of the mountain. 3 No one is to ascend with you; indeed, no one is to be seen anywhere on the mountain; not even the flock or the herd are to be allowed to graze anywhere near that mountain.\u201d
\n4 So Moses chiseled out two tablets of stone like the first ones. Next Moses set off early in the morning. He ascended Mount Sinai. All this he did exactly as Yahweh commanded him, and he took in his hand two tablets of stone. 5 Then Yahweh came down in the cloud. He took his place beside him there, and he called out the name, Yahweh. 6 Next Yahweh passed in front of him and called out:
\n\u201cYahweh! Yahweh!
\n\u2014a God compassionate and favorably disposed:
\n\u2014reluctant to grow angry,
\nand full of unchanging love and reliableness;
\n7 \u2014keeping unchanging love for the thousands;
\n\u2014taking away guilt and transgression and sin;
\n\u2014certainly not neglecting just punishment,
\nholding responsible for the guilt of the fathers
\nboth sons and grandsons,
\nto the third and the fourth generations.\u201d
\n8 Immediately, Moses hurriedly bowed down toward the earth and prostrated himself in worship. 9 Then he said, \u201cPlease, if I have found favor in your estimation, Lord, please go, Lord, in our midst. Though this is a stubborn people, you forgive our guilt and our sin, and you take us for your own possessions.\u201d
\nNotes
\n18.a. MT has \u05d5\u05d9\u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u201cand he said.\u201d \u201cMoses\u201d is added above for clarity.
\n18.b. LXX has here as in v 13 \u1f10\u03bc\u03c6\u03ac\u03bd\u03b9\u03c3\u03cc\u03bd \u03bc\u03bf\u03b9 \u03c3\u03b5\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u03cc\u03bd \u201cshow me yourself.\u201d
\n19.a. \u201cYahweh,\u201d the obvious subj, is added to MT\u2019s \u05d5\u05d9\u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u201cand he said\u201d for clarity.
\n19.b. LXX appears to be following a different text: \u201cI will pass in front of you my glory (\u03b4\u03cc\u03be\u03b1) and I will call in (\u1f10\u03c0\u1f76) my name, \u039a\u03cd\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 (= Yahweh), across from you.\u201d
\n20.a. \u05d4\u05d0\u05d3\u05da \u201cman\u201d used here in its generic sense, to refer to any human being.
\n21.a. MT has \u05de\u05e7\u05d5\u05dd \u05d0\u05ea\u05d9 \u201ca place with me.\u201d
\n21.b. \u05e2\u05dc\u05be\u05d4\u05e6\u05d5\u05e8 \u201con the rocky cliff.\u201d Cf. BDB, 849.
\n22.a. \u05db\u05e4\u05d9 \u201cmy cupped hand, my palm\u201d; cf. BDB, 496\u201397.
\n34.1.a. LXX adds \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f00\u03bd\u03ac\u03b2\u03b7\u03b8\u03b9 \u03c0\u03c1\u03cc\u03c2 \u03bc\u03b5 \u03b5\u03b9\u03c2 \u03c4\u1f78 \u1f44\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2 \u201cand climb up to me up on the mountain.\u201d
\n2.a. Niph of \u05e0\u05e6\u05d1 \u201cstation, position oneself for a specific purpose or duty.\u201d Cf. BDB, 662.
\n4.a. MT has only \u05d5\u05d9\u05e4\u05e1\u05dc \u201cand he chiseled out\u201d; Moses is clearly the subj, so is added for clarity; SamPent has Moses, as does the Ethiopic version.
\n4.b. \u201cMoses\u201d is lacking in SamPent, Vg.
\n4.c. \u05db\u05d0\u05e9\u05e8 \u05e6\u05d5\u05d4 \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u05d0\u05ea\u05d5 \u201cexactly as Yahweh commanded him\u201d is the phrase used repeatedly in the narrative of the fulfillment of Yahweh\u2019s instructions in Exod 39\u201340 (see for example 39:1, 5, 21, 26). \u201cAll this he did\u201d is supplied above on the basis of the sequence of verbs (\u201cchiseled \u2026 set off early \u2026 ascended\u201d) with special waw.
\n4.d. LXX adds \u039c\u03c9\u03c5\u03c3\u1fc6\u03c2 \u201cMoses\u201d here, and LXX adds \u03bc\u03b5\u03b8\u02bc \u03ad\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u201cwith him\u201d to \u201ctook.\u201d
\n6.a. Yahweh\u2019s self-description is arranged as a sequence of defining phrases following the double pronunciation of the tetragrammaton, not to indicate any poetic form, but to give this recital something of the sonorous impact it has in Hebrew.
\n6.b. LXX has \u039a\u03cd\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f41 \u03b8\u03b5\u1f78\u03c2 \u201cLord God.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 32:1\u20136; 32:7\u201335; and 33:12\u201317.
\nThis continuation of the composite narrative of Exod 32\u201334 has been broadly assigned by source critics to J (Davies, 237, 242\u201345; Hyatt, 312, 318\u201319); to J, J compilation, and supplements (Rudolph, Werden und Wesen, 46\u201348; Beer, 13, 158\u201361; McNeile, 215\u201318); to a combination of J and E material (Driver, 362\u201367; Beyerlin, Sinaitic Traditions, 24\u201326); or even to a combination of J, E, Deuteronomistic, and P traditions (Zenger, Sinaitheophanie, 93\u201396, 196\u2013200). This very variety affirms the difficulty if not the impossibility of any detailed allocation of 33:18\u201334:9 to the sources that have contributed its layers, and with this sequence as with the remainder of the narrative of chaps. 32\u201334, we are on far surer ground if we consider the sequence a layered composite, carefully integrated into the larger whole of which it is now a part and understandable only in the context of that whole. The clues to the theological themes being emphasized are far clearer than the clues to the sources from which these verses may have been drawn.
\nThe central theme of this sequence is, once again, Yahweh\u2019s Presence (cf. Brichto, HUCA 54 [1983] 27\u201329). Yahweh has withdrawn the threat of his Absence and promised Moses that he will, after all, go with him and with Israel as they leave Sinai. Thus Moses asks that he might see Yahweh\u2019s glory (= Presence), following which request there comes a theophany, the declaration by Yahweh of his name, and a further revelation of Yahweh\u2019s nature. This experience is remarkably parallel to Moses\u2019 first experience on Sinai as he asked, in effect (and in result) for the proof of Yahweh\u2019s Presence when Yahweh commissioned him to go to Pharaoh\u2019s Egypt and bring Israel forth (cf. Exod 3:7\u20134:23). In 33:14 and 17, when Yahweh promises that he will go, Moses wants to see that Yahweh is present. As before, Moses, like the people he is to lead, wants proof. Thus the request of Moses in 33:18 leads naturally from Yahweh\u2019s promise to go, affirmed by his agreement to \u201cdo the very thing\u201d Moses has spoken, to Yahweh\u2019s proof, in yet another unique theophany, that he is present. And that in turn leads to a preparation for the renewal of the shattered covenant relationship by (1) a preparation of new tablets of stone to replace the broken pair and (2) a reassertion of Yahweh\u2019s nature, this time in relation not to what Yahweh does, but to what Yahweh is. All this provokes Moses once more to obeisant and awed worship and to a repetition, by way of reaffirmation, of his plea for Yahweh\u2019s Presence.
\nSeveral points are suggested by such a consideration of Exod 33:18\u201334:9 as a composite unit within the setting of Exod 32\u201334 and against the still larger Exodus narrative as a whole. The first is that the blending of earlier traditions dealing with separate themes has here been accomplished deliberately and with a masterful style. The second is that the thematic connections of this sequence with Exod 3\u20134 are by no means merely coincidental: one of the two narratives, probably this one, has been shaped under the influence of the other one. The third is that this composite is a carefully planned anticipation of the remainder of the taut narrative of Exod 32\u201334. And fourth is that even the repetitious lines (such as the supplementary account of Yahweh\u2019s instructions to Moses, in 34:2\u20133 vis-\u00e0-vis 33:21\u201323 and 34:4\u20135, or 34:9 vis-\u00e0-vis 33:12, 13, and 17) or the paralleling of the conditions laid down in 19:12\u201313, 23 by 34:3 are entirely deliberate. While it is possible to take these parallels as indications of separate traditions reporting the same events (so Wellhausen, Composition, 329\u201335, who considered Exod 34 \u201cthe Decalog narrative of J\u201d) it is far more important to recognize the effect of the whole into which narrative components now no longer traceable have been assembled. The theory of parallel sources, once they are taken beyond broad generality, becomes very tenuous. They have tended, furthermore, to draw needed attention away from the composite whole, which has both a purpose and a canonical life of its own.
\nComment
\n18 The request of Moses to see the glory of Yahweh is effectively a request that Yahweh demonstrate the reality of his promise to be present, indeed that he prove his Presence once again, as he did before the solemnization of the covenant that has since been shattered. \u05db\u05d1\u05d5\u05d3 \u201cglory\u201d in this context is very close to a synonym for \u05e4\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd \u201cface, Presence,\u201d as the ensuing narrative shows. Neither term is intended to suggest \u201chuman features,\u201d as Eichrodt (Theology of the OT 2:29\u201340; cf. also Davies, \u201cGlory,\u201d IDB 2:401\u20132; Westermann, Wort-Gebot-Glaube, 227\u201349 and \u201c\u05db\u05d1\u05d3,\u201d THAT 1:801\u201312) has shown.
\n19\u201323 What Moses asks, however, is more than Yahweh is willing to grant, for Moses\u2019 own good. Yahweh\u2019s response to Moses\u2019 request stresses first what Yahweh will do: he will cause all his \u05d8\u05d5\u05bc\u05d1 \u201cgoodness\u201d to pass in front of Moses, and he will call out in his hearing (literally, \u201cin his presence\u201d) the name \u201cYahweh.\u201d \u05d8\u05d5\u05bc\u05d1 here is sometimes taken (cf. Mannati, VT 19 [1969] 488\u201390) to imply the \u201cbeauty\u201d of Yahweh and so to suggest a theophany, as it appears to do in Psalm 27:13 (note, however, the argument of Mannati, 490\u201393). But though Yahweh does indeed come to Moses in theophany, what he gives to Moses is quite specifically not the sight of his beauty, his glory, his Presence\u2014that, indeed, he pointedly denies. What he gives rather is a description, and at that, a description not of how he looks but of how he is.
\nThe calling out of the name \u201cYahweh\u201d as an accompaniment or perhaps even a conclusion to the passing of Yahweh\u2019s \u05d8\u05d5\u05bc\u05d1 is an important clue to what Yahweh promised Moses. \u05d8\u05d5\u05bc\u05d1 refers not to an appearance of beauty but to a recital of character. Exod 33:19a is yet another parallel to Exod 3:14. To the question \u05de\u05b7\u05d4\u05be\u05e9\u05bc\u05c1\u05de\u05d5\u05b9, \u201cWhat is his name?\u201d or, better, \u201cWhat is he really like?\u201d Yahweh replied, \u201cI really AM\u201d (cf. Comment on 3:13\u201314). To Moses\u2019 request for a look at his Presence, Yahweh replied, \u201cI will reveal to you what I am, not how I look.\u201d And in both instances, Yahweh followed his revelation with the calling out of his special name, \u201cYahweh.\u201d
\nYahweh follows this promise with a statement of his sovereignty. His favor and his compassion are given only on his terms (Childs, 596, helpfully links this tautology to \u05d0\u05d4\u05d9\u05d4 \u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05e8 \u05d0\u05d4\u05d9\u05d4 \u201cI Am the One Who Always Is\u201d in 3:14; cf. also Cross, Canaanite Myth, 153\u201354, and Walker, JBL 79 [1960] 277). Then he explains why Moses cannot see his Presence. The human family cannot look upon Yahweh and survive: the gap between the finite and the infinite is too great; it is an experience of which man is incapable. Yahweh thus makes provision for the experience Moses is to have by designating a place on Sinai in the fissure of a rocky cliff. There Moses can stand as Yahweh\u2019s glory (= Presence) comes near and passes by.
\nAn ancient tradition that Yahweh\u2019s Presence came near Moses in spatial terms is clearly reflected here, not least in the additional report that Yahweh would protect Moses from any accidental (and fatal) sight of that which he could not endure to see by the placement over him of his palm until his Presence shall have passed by. These provisions transmit an air of frightening expectation.
\n34:1\u20133 The further instructions to Moses involve more practical matters\u2014the preparations Moses can himself make. He is to prepare two tablets to replace the two he shattered, on which Yahweh will write the words that he wrote (cf. 31:18; 32:16) on the first ones. Moses is to be ready by morning, to ascend Sinai alone, to station himself at the designated spot at the summit of the mountain, after having insured, as he had once before (19:12\u201313, 23), that neither human nor animal is to come anywhere near the mountain. This repetition by Yahweh of his instructions, with expansions, is not a doublet, but a dramatic heightening of the tension already set up so skillfully by 33:20\u201323.
\n4\u20135 The tension is then wound tighter still by the narrative of Moses\u2019 obedience of Yahweh\u2019s instructions, moved forward by a sequence of imperfect verbs connected by special waw, verbs translated above as a tightly connected staccato sequence. When all Moses\u2019 preparations were made, Yahweh descended in the cloud that both hid and symbolized his Presence, came to a position near the spot to which he had directed Moses, and called out his name, \u201cYahweh.\u201d (For a review of the position that these last two verbs have Moses, rather than Yahweh, as subject, see Childs, 603; as he concludes, Yahweh is far the better choice in the composite narrative, despite the ambiguity of v 5b.)
\n6 In accord with his promise, Yahweh passed by Moses, apparently with the various precautionary measures in place, and twice more (according to the composite narrative) called out his name: \u201cYahweh! Yahweh!\u201d This double pronounciation of the tetragrammaton must not be taken as an appositional expansion (so Cassuto, 439) or as a redundant statement to be reduced by the deletion of the second \u201cYahweh\u201d (so LXX; though note that LXX has a second \u039a\u03cd\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 \u201cLord\u201d). It is a deliberate repetition of the confessional use of the tetragrammaton (see Comment on 3:11\u201312, 14\u201322 and Explanation on 3:11\u201312, 14\u201322), emphasizing the reality of Yahweh present in his very being, linking this proof to Moses to the earlier proof-of-Presence narratives that are begun in Exod 3, and providing an anchor line for the list of five descriptive phrases to follow, phrases that define how Yahweh, \u201cThe One Who Always Is,\u201d really is.
\nIn Exod 3, Yahweh declares, \u201cI really Am,\u201d and then proceeds to prove that confession by the mighty acts in Egypt, by the deliverance at the sea, by the guidance and provision in the wilderness, and above all by his Advent at Sinai. Here, in response to Moses\u2019 request that he demonstrate that he really is present to go with Israel despite his earlier threat that he would not do so, Yahweh once again says, in effect, the same thing: \u201cYahweh! Yahweh!\u201d As he said in 3:16, \u201cThis is my name from now on: and this is to bring me to mind generation after generation.\u201d Now, in response to Moses asking yet the same question over again, Yahweh calls out his name over again, twice this time, and then he proceeds to describe himself, to say, \u201cI Am, and this is how I Am.\u201d
\n6\u20137 The confession that follows the double calling of Yahweh\u2019s name is clearly reflected in eight OT passages, three of them in the Psalms (86:15; 103:8; 145:8) and one each in Num 14:18; Joel 2:13; Nah 1:3; Neh 9:17; and Jonah 4:2. Possible allusions to it can be discovered at additional places in the OT, Exod 20:5 among them (cf. also Scharbert, Bib 38 [1957] 132\u201337, and Dentan, VT 13 [1963] 34, n. 4). Dentan (34\u201351; cf. also Scharbert, 130\u201350) has made a careful analysis of these passages and Exod 34:6\u20137, and has reached the conclusion that this \u201centire formula\u201d was produced by the circle of Israel\u2019s Wise Men and set into the Exodus narrative by them in their \u201cultimate redaction of the Pentateuch.\u201d
\nA variety of commentators (cf. the summary of Dentan, VT 13 [1963] 36\u201337, and note also Beyerlin, Sinaitic Traditions, 137\u201338, and Hyatt, 322\u201323) have assumed such a cultic origin and a liturgical use for this summary of Yahweh\u2019s characteristics. Moberly (Mountain of God, 128\u201331), however, has argued for the reverse of such a proposal, suggesting that the \u201cformula\u201d of Exod 34:6\u20137 is so apt a development of its context that one must assume a narrative origin for these verses and a borrowing of them for cultic usage, rather than the other way around. In fact, we-have no basis for certainty regarding the origin of these verses; they are certainly a part of a confession of faith about Yahweh (as Dentan, 37, suggests), but probably of a very ancient one, far older than the Wisdom movement in any formal sense and connected with Israel\u2019s oldest perceptions of Yahweh and his relationship to those he claimed as \u201chis own people.\u201d This confession may have been refined, and even expanded, by the addition of supplementary phrases in the use of it in both narrative summary and liturgy; but its beginning may be assumed to be quite old, at least as old as the early development of the use of the name \u201cYahweh\u201d for confessional purposes.
\nThe description of Yahweh set forth here is an apt one for the narrative of Israel\u2019s first disobedience and Yahweh\u2019s judgment. Yahweh\u2019s compassion had just been demonstrated (32:14), and his tendency to be favorable was in the process of exercise (33:12\u201317). His slowness to grow angry had been attested from the moment of Israel\u2019s complaint at the sea (14:11\u201312), and his unchanging love and reliableness were the reason Moses had still been able to plead after the terrible cancellation made by the people\u2019s disobedience with the calf. His keeping of unchanging love to the thousands and the removal of their guilt, their transgression and their sin (the multiplication of terms is a deliberate attempt at comprehensive statement) were in process. And his serious view of obligation and commitment was the very basis of the crisis provoked by the worship of the calf and the reason that Israel\u2019s fate had hung so precariously in the balance.
\nYahweh\u2019s confession of his nature is a powerful exegesis of the meaning of \u201cYahweh! Yahweh!,\u201d one brilliantly matched to (or by) the narrative of which it is a part and one that summarizes dramatically that Yahweh will not accommodate his nature to the vagaries of his people\u2019s commitment. He is willing to give himself to them, but they must take him as he is, exactly as he is. He will not compromise, and therefore they must not. Such a confession not only makes all the more clear what a rebellion the disobedience with the calf was, it also anticipates what the next step simply must be: the people must renew their commitment, both by reviewing what it is and also by making it all over again. Thus the next sequence in the narrative of Exod 32\u201334 is introduced: once more the people must hear what they are to obey; once more Yahweh, favorably disposed and full of unchanging love, is opening himself to them.
\n8\u20139 Following such a powerful recital, the revelation not of what Moses asked for but of what he needed, Moses hastily prostrated himself in worship. No other response was appropriate. Then, when Moses did speak, he could only plead repetitiously for what Yahweh had already granted, acknowledging the people\u2019s guilt and sin, including himself with them, and ask for what Israel had not deserved and could never earn\u2014that they should be Yahweh\u2019s own, his inheritance, his possession (\u05e0\u05d7\u05dc). The rhetorical link of this response of Moses with Yahweh\u2019s invitation to Israel in 19:5 is staggering.
\nExplanation
\nMoses\u2019 second request of Yahweh for a proof of his Presence ends as did the first such request, with a declaration, by Yahweh, of his confessional name. The first request was made in the context of Moses\u2019 concern both that Israel would believe him and also that Yahweh could indeed free them from the Pharaoh\u2019s bondage. This second request is made in the context of Moses\u2019 concern that Yahweh really will be present and really will go up from Sinai with Israel, in spite of what has happened. Yahweh has promised, but Moses wants assurance.
\nAs the first request became the question that led to the revelation of Yahweh\u2019s name, so the second request becomes the plea that leads to the revelation of Yahweh\u2019s character. The parallel can hardly be fortuitous.
\nYahweh\u2019s response to this second request becomes in turn not only the exegesis of the revelation of his name, given in response to the first request, but also the preparation for the renewal of the shattered relationship by the instructions given Moses concerning (1) the provision of two new stone tablets and (2) the separation and reascension of Mount Sinai, and by (1) the new descent of Yahweh onto the mountain, and (2) the new revelation of his name and his nature there. With the conclusion of this sequence, all is in readiness for the renewal of the covenant between Yahweh and Israel.
\nThe Renewal of the Covenant Relationship (34:10\u201328)
\nBibliography
\nBrongers, H. A. \u201cDer Eifer des Herrn Zebaoth.\u201d VT 13 (1963) 269\u201384. Davis, D. R. \u201cRebellion, Presence, and Covenant: A Study in Exodus 32\u201334.\u201d WTJ 44 (1982) 71\u201387. Horn, H. \u201cTraditionsschichten in Ex 23, 10\u201333 und Ex 34, 10\u201326.\u201d BZ 15 (1971) 205\u201322. Kosmala, H. \u201cThe So-Called Ritual Decalogue.\u201d ASTI 1 (1962) 31\u201361. Langlamet, F. \u201cIsra\u00ebl et \u2018l\u2019habitant du pays\u2019: Vocabulaire et formules d\u2019Ex XXXIV, 11\u201316.\u201d RB 76 (1969) 321\u201350. Morgenstern, J. \u201cThe Oldest Document of the Hexateuch.\u201d HUCA 4 (1927) 1\u2013138. Pfeiffer, R. H. \u201cThe Oldest Decalogue.\u201d JBL 43 (1924) 294\u2013310. Rowley, H. H. \u201cMoses and the Decalogue.\u201d Men of God. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1963. 1\u201336. Also BJRL 34 (1951\u201352) 81\u2013118. Scharbert, J. \u201cFormgeschichte und Exegese von Ex 34, 6f und Seiner Parallelen.\u201d Bib 38 (1957) 130\u201350. Wilms, F. E. \u201cDas jahwistische Bundesbuch in Ex 34.\u201d BZ 16 (1972) 24\u201353. \u2014\u2014\u2014. Das jahwistische Bundesbuch in Exodus 34. SANT 32. Munich: K\u00f6sel Verlag, 1973. Winnett, F. V. The Mosaic Tradition. Toronto: TUP, 1949.
\nTranslation
\n10 Thus Yahweh said, \u201cLook: I am making a covenant. In the sight of all your people I will do extraordinary deeds as yet unimagined in all the earth and among all the nations, and all the people among whom you now are will see the doing of Yahweh, that what I am doing with you is awesome. 11 You yourself keep that which I am commanding you today. Watch me driving out headlong before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 12 Guard yourself against making a covenant with those who live in the land into which you are going, that they not become a trap in your very midst. 13 Rather are you to pull down their altars completely, and shatter their sacred pillars utterly, and cut down their holy poles to the ground.
\n14 \u201cIndeed you are not to bow down in worship to another god, because Yahweh\u2019s very name is \u2018Jealous\u2019: he is a jealous God, 15 and does not want you making a covenant with those who live in the land. When they prostitute themselves after their gods, and offer sacrifices to their gods, and call out to you, you might eat of their sacrifice, 16 and even take their daughters for your sons, with the result that when their daughters prostitute themselves after their gods, your sons will prostitute themselves after their gods.
\n17 \u201cYou are not to make for yourselves gods of shaped metal.
\n18 \u201cYou are to keep the sacred feast of unleavened bread cakes: for seven days you are to eat unleavened bread cakes, as I instructed you, at the set time in the month of the green grain, because in the month of the green grain, you went out from Egypt.
\n19 \u201cEvery creature that opens the womb is mine\u2014all your male livestock, the firstborn of cattle and of sheep. 20 You are to replace the firstborn ass with a sheep: if you do not replace it, then you are to break its neck. Every child firstborn of your sons you are to replace. You are not to appear in my Presence without an offering.
\n21 \u201cSix days you are to work, and on the seventh day you are to rest. Even in ploughing time and in crop harvest, you are to rest.
\n22 \u201cYou are to celebrate the sacred feast of weeks, the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the sacred feast of the ingathering harvest at the completion of the year. 23 Three times in the year all your males are to appear in the Presence of the Lord, Yahweh the God of Israel. 24 Indeed I will disinherit nations there ahead of you, and I will make your borders far apart. No man shall desire for himself your land when you go up to present yourself in the Presence of Yahweh your God three times in the year.
\n25 \u201cYou are not to combine with anything leavened the blood of my sacrifice, and the sacrifice of the sacred feast of the Passover is not to be kept through the night until morning.
\n26 \u201cYou are to bring the very first of the firstfruits of your ground to the house of Yahweh your God.
\n\u201cYou are not to cook a kid in the milk of its mother.\u201d
\n27 Then Yahweh said to Moses, \u201cYou yourself write these words, for on the basis of these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.\u201d 28 So he was there with Yahweh forty days and forty nights: bread he did not eat and water he did not drink.
\nHe wrote upon the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Words.
\nNotes
\n10.a. MT has only \u05d5\u05d9\u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u201cand he said,\u201d but Yahweh is clearly the speaker. LXX adds Yahweh as subj and Moses as indir obj; Vg adds Dominus \u201cLord\u201d (= Yahweh) as subj.
\n10.b. LXX adds \u03c3\u03bf\u03b9 \u201c(with) you,\u201d though LXX does not.
\n10.c. \u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05e8 \u05dc\u05d0\u05be\u05e0\u05d1\u05e8\u05d0\u05d5 \u201cthat are not yet created.\u201d Note BDB, 135: \u201cof something new, astonishing.\u201d
\n11.a. \u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05e8\u05be\u05dc\u05da, lit., \u201ckeep (impv.) with regard to yourself.\u201d Langlamet (RB 76 [1969] 329) suggests that the addition here of \u05dc\u05da \u201cto you\u201d modifies the sense of \u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05e8 to \u201cprends garde,\u201d \u201cfais attention,\u201d giving an emphatic tone to the review of commandments about to follow. The sg \u201cyou\u201d here and throughout this passage before v 27 is to be taken as referring to Israel and esp. to each individual Israelite.
\n11.b. SamPent adds \u05d5\u05d4\u05d2\u05e8\u05d2\u05e9\u05d9 \u201cand the Girgashites\u201d to this list, and follows a different order. LXX also includes the Girgashites, also giving a total of seven peoples. See n. 33:2.b.
\n13.a. The three impf. verbs of this verse have the added emphasis of \u201cparagogic nun\u201d; cf. GKC, \u00b6 47m.
\n13.b. Following this verb (the third one with the emphatic nun) LXX adds \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03c4\u1f70 \u03b3\u03bb\u03c5\u03c0\u03c4\u1f70 \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u03b8\u03b5\u1ff6\u03bd \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u03ba\u03b1\u03cd\u03c3\u03b5\u03c4\u03b5 \u1f10\u03bd \u03c0\u03c5\u03c1\u03af \u201cand the carved images of their gods you are to burn in fire.\u201d Cf. Deut 7:5, 25.
\n14.a. LXX reads \u03b8\u03b5\u1ff7 \u1f11\u03c4\u03ad\u03c1\u1ff3 \u201cother gods.\u201d
\n15.a. \u05e4\u05df\u05be\u05ea\u05db\u05e8\u05ea lit., \u201clest you cut (= make).\u201d On \u05e4\u05df as an \u201caverting, or deprecating\u201d conj, cf. BDB, 814.
\n15.b. LXX adds \u1f10\u03b3\u03ba\u03b1\u03b8\u03b7\u03bc\u03ad\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9\u03c2 \u03c0\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f00\u03bb\u03bb\u03bf\u03c6\u03cd\u03bb\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 \u201cto embrace ways foreign\u201d to their covenant promises.
\n16.a. LXX adds here \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u03b8\u03c5\u03b3\u03b1\u03c4\u03ad\u03c1\u03c9\u03bd \u03c3\u03bf\u03c5 \u03b4\u1ff7\u03c2 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fd6\u03c2 \u03c5\u03b9\u03bf\u1fd6\u03c2 \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u201cand give your daughters to their sons.\u201d
\n17.a. \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9 \u05de\u05e1\u05db\u05d4 \u201cgods of shaped metal\u201d\u2014see n. 32:4.c.
\n18.a. This verse is nearly a verbatim parallel of Exod 23:15. The primary differences are the repetition here of the phrase \u05d1\u05d7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1 \u05d4\u05d0\u05d1\u05d9\u05d1 \u201cin the month of the green grain\u201d (SamPent reads \u05d1\u05df \u201cin it\u201d) and the concluding sentence of 23:15, which reappears in this sequence as the final sentence of v 20.
\n19.a. MT has \u05ea\u05b4\u05bc\u05d6\u05b8\u05bc\u05db\u05b8\u05e8 \u201cshe is remembered,\u201d though cf. Barth\u00e9lemy, 150: \u201cThe verb form \u05ea\u05b4\u05bc\u05d6\u05b8\u05bc\u05db\u05b8\u05e8 has an active meaning \u2018to put asunder the male beasts,\u2019 \u201d and Cassuto\u2019s proposal, 445, that \u05ea\u05d6\u05db\u05e8 refers to cattle dropping, i.e., giving birth to, a male. Another possibility, more frequently followed (LXX; Vg; BDB, 270 \u00a7 II 4; Childs, 604), is the emendation \u05d4\u05b7\u05d6\u05b8\u05bc\u05db\u05b7\u05e8, \u201cthe male.\u201d The meaning is substantially the same, by any of these alternatives. LXX omits \u201call your livestock.\u201d
\n20.a. See n. 13:13.b.
\n20.b. LXX has \u03c4\u03b9\u03bc\u1f74\u03bd \u03b4\u03ce\u03c3\u03b5\u03b9\u03c2 \u201cyou are to give compensation-money\u201d instead of MT\u2019s \u05d5\u05e2\u05e8\u05e4\u05ea\u05d5 \u201cbreak its neck,\u201d
\n20.c. \u05db\u05dc \u05d1\u05db\u05d5\u05e8 \u201cevery firstborn one.\u201d The parallel verse, Exod 13:13, has \u05d5\u05db\u05dc \u05d1\u05db\u05d5\u05e8 \u05d0\u05d3\u05dd \u201cevery firstborn human,\u201d a reading which SamPent has here as well.
\n20.d. This verse, to this point, is closely parallel to Exod 13:13.
\n20.e. This sentence is paralleled verbatim by the last sentence of Exod 23:15.
\n21.a. This sentence is very similar to the first part of Exod 23:12; the verb here is \u05e2\u05d1\u05d3 \u201cwork\u201d; there it is \u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d4 \u201cdo, make,\u201d and followed by \u05de\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d9\u05df \u201cfrom your doing.\u201d
\n21.b. LXX has \u03c4\u1ff7 \u03c3\u03c0\u03cc\u03c1\u1ff3 \u201cseed-sowing time\u201d instead of MT\u2019s \u201cplowing time.\u201d
\n22.a. \u05ea\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d4, lit., \u201cyou are to do.\u201d LXX adds \u03bc\u03bf\u03b9 \u201cto me.\u201d Cf. BDB, 794\u201395, II.6.
\n23.a. This verse is a close parallel of 23:17. The difference is the addition at the end of this verse of \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9 \u05d9\u05e9\u05c2\u05e8\u05d0\u05dc \u201cGod of Israel.\u201d
\n24.a. SamPent adds \u05e8\u05d1\u05d9\u05dd \u201cmany.\u201d
\n24.b. \u05de\u05e4\u05e0\u05d9\u05df \u201cfrom in front of you.\u201d
\n25.a. \u05dc\u05d0\u05be\u05ea\u05e9\u05c1\u05d7\u05d8 \u05e2\u05dc\u05be\u05d7\u05de\u05e5; cf. n. 23:18.a.
\n25.b. This verse parallels in part Exod 23:18.
\n26.a. This verse is a verbatim parallel of Exod 23:19.
\n27.a. \u05e2\u05dc\u05be\u05e4\u05d9 \u05d4\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u05d4\u05d0\u05dc\u05d4 \u201cupon the mouth of (= speaking of) these words.\u201d Cf. BDB, 805 \u00a7 6.d.
\n28.a. LXX adds \u039c\u03c9\u03c5\u03c3\u1fc6\u03c2 \u201cMoses.\u201d
\n28.b. SamPent adds \u05dc\u05e4\u05e0\u05d9 \u201cin the Presence of,\u201d a reading followed also by LXX.
\n28.c. \u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05e8\u05ea \u05d4\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u201cthe Ten Words,\u201d in reference to the ten commandments, occurs also in the OT in Deut 4:13 and 10:4.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 32:1\u20136, 32:7\u201335, 33:12\u201317, and 33:18\u201334:9.
\nThe analysis of the form of this section has been dictated, in the main, by two considerations: (1) that these verses represent a parallel account of the initial making of the covenant on Sinai, relocated at this point in the Exodus narrative and minimally redacted to give a narrative of covenant renewal, and (2) that we are here presented with an alternative list of commandments, a so-called \u201critual decalogue\u201d in contrast to the \u201cethical decalogue\u201d of Exod 20:2\u201317. Linked to these two proposals, of course, are various theories about which tetrateuchal sources are contributory to the compilation of Exod 34:10\u201328 as this section stands in the sequence of the received text.
\nThe most frequent source assignment of this sequence is to J (Wellhausen, Composition, 83\u201398, 334\u201335; Noth, 260\u201367; Childs, 607\u20139), though virtually all commentators posit also at least some redactional supplementation. Beer (13, 159\u201362), for example, proposes this complex analysis: vv 10a, 14a, 17, 19a, 20d, 21ab, 23, 25\u201326, 27\u201328 to J2; 10b\u2013d, R; 11\u201313, 15\u201316, 24, R; 14b, 18, 22, R; 19b\u201320, 21b, R. Driver (368\u201374) somewhat more simply assigns vv 10a, 14, 17\u201318ab, 19\u201323, 25\u201328abc to J; 10b\u201313, 15\u201316, 18cd, 24 to R; and 28d (\u201cthe ten commandments\u201d) he calls \u201ca gloss.\u201d Hyatt (318\u201319, 323\u201326), more simply still, gives vv 10, 17\u201323, 25\u201328 to J; 11\u201316, 24 to R; noting that \u201cthe ten commandments\u201d of 28d is not a gloss, but \u201cpart of the J tradition.\u201d As this representative sampling shows (cf. also the comparative chart of Zenger, Sinaitheophanie, 228\u201330), however, the source criticism of Exod 34:10\u201328, beyond quite broad designations, is very subjective and therefore productive of somewhat arbitrary conclusions.
\nAttempts to discover here a separate and cultically oriented decalogue have resulted in equally complex and diverse results, as the studies of Halbe (Das Privilegrecht, 13\u2013255) and Wilms (BZ 16 [1957] 24\u201353; Das jahwistische, 15\u2013135) in particular have shown. Though many scholars have followed Wellhausen\u2019s (Composition, 333\u201334) suggestion along these lines and have argued that the \u201cdecalogue\u201d of Exod 34 is far earlier than the decalogue of Exod 20 (so for example Morgenstern, HUCA 4 [1927] 54\u201398; Mowinckel, Le D\u00e9calogue, 19\u201330, 43\u201355; Rowley, Men of God, 7\u201336), or far later than the decalogue of Exod 20 (Pfeiffer, JBL 43 [1924] 294\u2013310; Winnett, Mosaic Tradition, 30\u201356, 155\u201371), the difficulties involved in these proposals raise more problems than they solve.
\nThese complications have led to the suggestions of Rudolph (\u201cElohist,\u201d 59\u201360), considerably extended by Beyerlin (Sinaitic Traditions, 81\u201388), that the decalogue now in Exod 20:2\u201317, though in an earlier form, was the decalogue referred to in Exod 34:27\u201328, and that \u201cthe kernel\u201d of 34:10\u201326, a variant of the ancient covenantal requirements reflected also in Exod 23:12\u201319, replaced \u201cthe original Decalogue\u201d in the J \u201caccount of the making of the covenant\u201d because of the pressures of syncretism following the settlement in Canaan. Related traditio-historical approaches have been taken by Horn (BZ 15 [1971] 206\u201322), who compares Exod 34:10\u201326 with 23:10\u201333 and proposes parallel older and later traditions dealing with the calendar of the sacred festivals and with the occupation of the promised land; by Wilms (BZ 16 [1972] 25\u201326, 51\u201353; cf. also Das jahwistische, passim), who argues that Exod 34 contains neither a decalogue nor an account of covenant renewal (which he terms \u201ceine literarische Fiktion\u201d), but a \u201cLandgabebundestext\u201d (vv 11\u201317), a \u201cFestkalendar\u201d (vv 18\u201324) and \u201cErg\u00e4inzungstoroth\u201d (vv 25\u201326) all of which together constitute a \u201csmall lawbook\u201d made up of five prohibitions and twelve commandments and belonging to the J source-stratum; by Kosmala (ASTI 1 [1962] 38\u201357), who denies that Exod 34:14\u201326 has anything to do with a \u201cdecalogue\u201d and argues instead, by a comparison of Exod 34:14\u201326 with 23:14\u201319 and Deut 16:1\u201317, that Exod 34:18\u201324 preserves \u201can ancient feast-calendar,\u201d to which 34:25\u201326 adds four stipulations related to the Passover; or even, concerning only 34:11\u201316, by Langlamet, who, after a detailed rhetorical analysis of these six verses (RB 76 [1969] 327\u201350, 481\u2013503), concludes (503\u20137) that they are pre-deuteronomic, intermediary between J and Deuteronomy, and that they preserve a passionate attack on cooperation with Canaan that appears to predate Solomon.
\nThese theories too, despite their presentation of some thought-provoking analysis and fecund suggestion of detail, remain altogether too subjective, however, and altogether too fragmentary in their approach to Exod 34:10\u201328 as a part of the narrative of chaps. 32\u201334. Whatever may be the past history of these verses, whatever other literary complexes they may once have belonged to, and by whatever routes they may have come to their present location, it is precisely that location in which their purpose and meaning is first of all to be found. Too much attention has been given to the seams and inconcinnities of Exod 34:10\u201328, both real and imaginary. Far too little attention has been given to the function of these verses as a part of the larger Presence-Absence-Presence narrative in which they stand (though cf. Davis, WTJ 44 [1982] 81\u201384; and Moberly, Mountain of God 95\u2013106, 131\u201340, 157\u201361).
\nExod 34:10\u201328 has been woven with some care into the larger narrative whole that is now Exod 32\u201334, with the express purpose of suggesting the renewal of the covenant relationship between Yahweh and Israel. This section has been pieced together from material taken from several areas of interest (e.g., covenant renewal, the avoidance of syncretistic influence, Yahweh the \u201cjealous God,\u201d gifts and sacred festivals due to Yahweh) to present an overall impression of covenant renewal (1) emphasizing complete loyalty to Yahweh (a deliberate contrast to the terrible sin with the calf) whose justified jealousy (see Comment on 20:5) is stressed as a warning against the temptation of a divided loyalty, and (2) summarizing, in a deliberate mingling of themes from the ten commandments and what is now called the Book of the Covenant, an array of requirements directed against exactly the kind of disobedience the sin with the golden calf presented. That there are inconsistencies and some ambiguity in such a compilation goes without saying: they are at least as inevitable here as they are in literary compilations throughout the OT. The people who originally compiled this sequence, however, and those for whom their compilation was made would not only have been less concerned about such matters than we have been; they would have been far less likely to have been sidetracked by them from the movement and the message of the sequence as a whole.
\nComment
\n10 The tone of the renewal sequence of 34:10\u201328 is set in its beginning verse by Yahweh\u2019s double announcement that he is in the process of making a covenant (\u05d0\u05b8\u05e0\u05b9\u05db\u05b4\u05d9 \u05db\u05b9\u05e8\u05b9\u05ea \u05d1\u05b0\u05bc\u05e8\u05b4\u05d9\u05ea) and that Israel with whom he makes it is to be both the subject and the medium of \u05e0\u05e4\u05dc\u05d0\u05ea \u201cextraordinary deeds\u201d that will command the attention of the peoples all about them. \u05e0\u05e4\u05dc\u05d0\u05ea provides a rhetorical link with Exod 3:20, where Yahweh promises his \u05e0\u05e4\u05dc\u05d0\u05ea in the Egypt of Pharaoh, there too as a proof of his Presence (see above). The deeds yet to be done are, however, to be more remarkable still: they have not before been created (\u05d1\u05e8\u05d0), and thus nobody will have conceived in advance of them that such things could be.
\n11\u201313 One of the first of those deeds (but certainly not the compass of them) is the displacement from the promised land into which Israel is to go of the hostile peoples (note also v 24, below), a motive stressed earlier in the composite narrative of Exod 32\u201334 (33:1\u20132; see above), and mentioned also with exactly the purpose and implication it has here in the conclusion to the Book of the Covenant, at Exod 23:23\u201333 (see above). Israel must guard against (cf. the detailed study of \u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05e8 by Langlamet, RB 76 [1968] 327\u201329) any covenantal alliance with these peoples as a dangerous means of entrapment. They must extirpate from the land the altars, sacred pillars, and sacred poles of these peoples, thus removing even the possibility of any compromise in their worship of and loyalty to Yahweh. This theme is a frequent one throughout the OT, especially as the pressures of syncretism became more and more intense. Its employment here is in direct and specific reaction to Israel\u2019s sin with the golden calf.
\n14\u201316 The sequence is thus continued with a reference to the first and second commandments (Exod 20:3\u20136), in particular by a reference to Yahweh as a jealous God, expanded here by the unique assertion, \u201cYahweh\u2019s very name is \u2018Jealous\u2019 \u201d (though cf. Deut 4:24; 5:9; 6:15; Sauer, \u201c\u05e7\u05b4\u05e0\u05b0\u05d0\u05b8\u05d4 Eifer,\u201d THAT 2:647\u201350; and Brongers, VT 13 [1963] 269\u201384). Loyalty to Yahweh must be absolutely undiluted. There is to be no worship of any other god of any kind, and Israel simply must avoid any covenant with the inhabitants of the land into which they are going; such alliances may lead to a fraternization that could begin with the eating of sacrifices made to other gods and end with intermarriage and the embrace of other gods by Israel\u2019s children. Of course vv 11\u201316 are repetitive, perhaps intentionally so, in their passionate introduction to the renewal of the covenant that (1) is cautionary at exactly the point of Israel\u2019s covenant-shattering sin with the calf, (2) begins at precisely the same point as does the decalogue of 20:2\u201317, and (3) starts out just as does the collection of requirements and guiding decisions in the Book of the Covenant (cf. 20:22\u201323).
\n17 This introductory sequence is appropriately brought to a climax by the first of a series of Yahweh\u2019s requirements designed to present a broad summary of covenant obligation with a particular bearing on the necessity of maintaining undiluted loyalty to Yahweh in the setting of the new land to which Israel is going. This requirement is linked specifically to the sin with the golden calf by the use of the word \u05de\u05e1\u05db\u05d4 \u201cshaped metal,\u201d the term used to describe the calf in 32:4 and 8 (see also Deut 9:16; 2 Kgs 17:16; cf. Lev 19:4; and Davis, WTJ 44 [1982] 82, and Moberly, Mountain of God, 99\u2013100). As noted above (n. 32:4.b,c and Comment on 32:2\u20134), \u05de\u05e1\u05db\u05d4 appears to refer to a metal sheathing molded around a solid core of wood. In the context of this renewal narrative, the use of so specific a term must be a deliberate rhetorical connection. The application of vv 11\u201316 is thus made crystal clear and given the authority of a requirement for the future heavily emphasized because of the disobedience of the past.
\n18\u201326 The summary series is continued by a list that parallels (cf. the detailed list of parallels drawn by Scharbert, Bib 38 [1957] 132\u201337, Horn, BZ 15 [1971] 206\u201312, and Kosmala, ASTI 1 [1962] 38\u201344) laws in the Book of the Covenant (esp. 23:12\u201319) and in Exod 13:11\u201316 that set Israel apart from all other peoples as Yahweh\u2019s own unique and loyal people, following the note struck by the first of them, in v 17. Thus are mentioned (1) Passover (v 18), in a nearly verbatim parallel of 23:15 (see above); (2) the offering, in actuality or by replacement, of the firstborn (vv 19\u201320), in a parallel in part of substance, in part verbatim, of 13:12\u201313 (see above; Moberly, Mountain of God, 100, considers this an attempt to mark Israel as different from Canaan at the point of redemption rather than sacrifice of the firstborn son: \u201can example of the distinction \u2026 even when there are similarities\u201d); (3) the rhythm of worship and rest following six days of work (v 21), in a close parallel to 23:12 (see above), with the addition of a statement not found elsewhere in the OT, that the rhythm of seventh-day rest is not to be interrupted even by the busiest work-seasons, plowing time and harvest time\u2014this requirement, which would certainly have set Israel apart, has the sound of a negative experience about it; (4) the calendar of the three principal sacred feasts (vv 22\u201323), a parallel in general content to 23:14\u201316, with a very close parallel to 23:17 (see above)\u2014this feast, called \u201cthe sacred feast of the early crop-harvest\u201d in 23:16, is called \u201cthe sacred feast of weeks\u201d here (cf. Deut 16:9\u201310), and there is added here both a reference to the motif of widely spaced borders (= a large and secure land) and also an intriguing assurance that Yahweh will prevent the covetous desire (\u05d7\u05de\u05d3 is the verb of the tenth commandment, 20:17) of anyone for the land of the Israelite who is away observing one of the three great feasts (thus removing another excuse against obedience); (5) respect for the unique sanctity of Passover, by keeping all leaven separate from it (see Comment on 12:15, 19\u201320) and by consuming or burning any remaining parts of the sacrificial animal before morning (see 12:8\u201310), a general parallel of 23:18 (see above); (6) the command that the firstfruits of the ground be offered to Yahweh (v 26a), a verbatim parallel of 23:19a (see above); and (7) the command against cooking a kid in its mother\u2019s milk (v 26b), a verbatim parallel of 23:19b (see above), connected by Kosmala (50\u201356) with Canaanite fertility worship mainly on the basis of a reconstructed text from Ugarit. While Kosmala\u2019s suggestion cannot be proven, the inclusion of this command in the summary list of 34:17\u201326 almost certainly implies that it has something to do with a practice that had the potential of drawing Israel into a compromise of loyalty to Yahweh.
\n27\u201328 The final verses of the renewal narrative, clearly placed to provide a conclusion, nevertheless leave an impression of ambiguity because of Yahweh\u2019s command to Moses to write \u201cthese words,\u201d because of the question of the subject of \u201cwrote\u201d in v 28, and because of the inclusion at the end of that verse of the phrase \u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05e8\u05ea \u05d4\u05d3\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u201cthe Ten Words,\u201d a phrase that occurs elsewhere only in Deuteronomy. \u201cThese words\u201d in v 27 are usually assumed to be the ten commandments elsewhere said to have been written by Yahweh himself. The ten commandments are simply not present in the summary series immediately preceding, however, despite numerous and very imaginative efforts to find them there. The first \u201che\u201d of v 28 clearly refers to Moses, as does the second, but the third \u201che\u201d has been taken to refer both to Moses (so Driver, 374; Hyatt, 326) and also to Yahweh (so Beer, 162; Childs, 604). And \u201cthe Ten Words\u201d at the end of v 28 has fueled the speculation that Exod 34 was originally J\u2019s account of the making of the covenant, or that this chapter originally contained an early version of the decalogue of 20:7\u201317 (see Form\/Structure\/Setting above), or that a later editor added this last phrase and imposed on the chapter an impression it was never intended to present (cf. esp. Childs, 607\u20139, 615\u201317).
\nNone of these theories does justice to Exod 34:27\u201328 viewed strictly in its present location and as a conclusion to a deliberately arranged covenant renewal narrative. While there is always the possibility that such a deliberate arrangement has been compromised by yet another well-meaning redactor\u2019s addition or rearrangement, it is nevertheless possible to interpret these verses as they stand as an apt final paragraph to the renewal narrative. What Moses is commanded to write in v 27 is exactly what he has been held responsible for in the revelation of Yahweh\u2019s requirements and guiding principles and, for that matter, given the full composite narrative of Exodus, in the instructions for the media of worship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence as well. \u201cThese words\u201d may be taken as a reference to the whole of Yahweh\u2019s explanatory revelation regarding the application of the principles set forth in his own \u201cTen Words.\u201d It is on the basis of this entire range of revelation that Yahweh \u201chas made\u201d a covenant with Moses and with Israel (cf. this pairing in 32:30\u201332; 33:12\u201317; 34:9; note Davis, WTJ 44 [1982] 83). We are indeed told, immediately following this command of Yahweh, that Moses was a very long time carrying it out; the usual designation of a considerable period of time, \u201cforty days and forty nights,\u201d is given, with the added note that Moses neither ate nor drank during this time with Yahweh.
\nThe final sentence of the renewal narrative should then be read as a new paragraph, in sequence both to 34:10 and 34:1, setting forth in specific clarification of the statement of Yahweh\u2019s command to Moses to write (v 27) that what Yahweh wrote, by way of contrast, was what he had written before and what he had promised to write again, namely, \u201cthe words of the covenant, the Ten Words.\u201d The awkwardness of the final sentence of v 28 may well suggest that it was appended to the end of the renewal narrative to resolve the very confusion it has increased. In any case the sentence can be taken as a reference to the writing Yahweh did, just as he had promised, immediately following the different (though unfortunately ambiguous) designation of the writing Moses was to do.
\nCertainty is of course impossible in the interpretation of these verses. The suggestion above, like the other approaches to these verses, amounts finally to a guess. Its merit, if it has any merit, lies in its attempt to see the composite narrative as making sense in its canonical form. Moberly (Mountain of God, 101\u20136, 209\u201310, nn. 197\u201399) makes a similar proposal, though his suggestion of the \u201cindependence\u201d of v 28b and his assumptions that \u201cthe writer\u201d of Exod 34 \u201cassumes the tradition made explicit in Deut 10:1\u20134\u201d and \u201ctakes for granted that the reader \u2026 will naturally read v 28b \u2026 with Yahweh as subject\u201d seem to me to go a bit far, even as guesswork. Very few people have after all read these verses in such a manner.
\nExplanation
\nThe genius of this composite reporting the renewal of the covenant relationship between Yahweh and Israel is that it does not make any attempt to replicate the dramatic narrative of the first solemnization of the covenant in Exod 24. Instead, it appropriately stresses the Achilles\u2019 heel of the first covenant relationship\u2014Israel\u2019s willingness to compromise the promise of undiluted loyalty to Yahweh\u2014by reviewing the requirements whose obedience would make defection far less likely.
\nThe narrative of renewal is thus introduced, following Yahweh\u2019s statement that he is again \u201cmaking a covenant,\u201d by a repetitive emphasis upon his active Presence among them, upon his demand for absolute singleness in his people\u2019s loyalty to him, and upon the relationships they simply must avoid if they are not to compromise their loyalty to Yahweh yet again. Following this introduction, a summary series of Yahweh\u2019s requirements, each of them addressing some aspect of the compromise of a single loyalty, is listed. The people are not to make gods of shaped metal for themselves, no matter whom they may represent\u2014a direct allusion to their sin with the calf. They are to keep Passover, and to keep it as directed, and also the Sabbath and the three great yearly sacred feasts. They are to consider every firstborn creature Yahweh\u2019s, some to be given, some, including their own sons, to be redeemed; they are to give firstfruits to Yahweh. They are not to boil a kid in the milk of its mother.
\nIn such a manner, with a deliberate and repeated emphasis upon Yahweh\u2019s absolute requirement of an undivided loyalty, with a multiplication of the caveats against compromise, and with a summary review of commandments designed to emphasize the people\u2019s uniqueness, to themselves as well as to others, the composite narrative of covenant renewal is presented. It is a brilliantly apt sequence, carefully linked to both the decalogue and the Book of the Covenant, and consciously drawn with the composite narrative of 32:1\u201333:18 in view. The very disloyalty that led to the shattering of the first covenant thus becomes the focus of the summary stipulations that introduce the second covenant. And the continuity between the two covenants is shown by the continuing active Presence of Yahweh, who writes once more the principles of life in covenant with Yahweh, and by the continued application of those principles in the requirements and guiding principles Moses is required to receive and to transmit to Israel.
\nMoses\u2019 Shining Face (34:29\u201335)
\nBibliography
\nCoats, G. W. \u201cThe King\u2019s Loyal Opposition: Obedience and Authority in Exodus 32\u201334.\u201d Canon and Authority. Ed. G. W. Coats and B. O. Long. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977. 91\u2013109. Cross, F. M., Jr. \u201cThe Priestly Work.\u201d Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973. 293\u2013325. Davis, D. R. \u201cRebellion, Presence, and Covenant: A Study in Exodus 32\u201334.\u201d WTJ 44 (1982) 71\u201387. Dhorme, E. L\u2019emploi m\u00e9taphorique des noms de parties du corps en h\u00e9breu et en akkadien. Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1963. Dumermuth, F. \u201cMoses strahlendes Gesicht.\u201d TZ 17 (1961) 241\u201348. Jaro\u0161, K. \u201cDer Mose \u2018strahlende Haut.\u2019 \u201d ZAW 88 (1976) 275\u201380. Jirku, A. \u201cDie Gesichtsmaske des Mose.\u201d ZDPV 67 (1944\u20131945) 43\u201345. Morgenstern, J. \u201cMoses with the Shining Face.\u201d HUCA 2 (1925) 1\u201327. Reindl, J. Das Angesicht Gottes im Sprachgebrauch des Alten Testaments. 1st ser. TS 25. Leipzig: St. Benno-Verlag, 1970. Sasson, J. M. \u201cBovine Symbolism in the Exodus Narrative.\u201d VT 18 (1968) 380\u201387. Seebass, H. Mose und Aaron Sinai und Gottesberg. EvT 2. Bonn: H. Bouvier Verlag, 1962.
\nTranslation
\n29 When at long last Moses descended Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in hand, Moses was not aware as he descended the mountain that the skin of his face shone because of Yahweh\u2019s speaking with him. 30 Then Aaron and all the sons of Israel saw Moses, and indeed the skin of his face shone! Thus were they afraid to come close to him. 31 So Moses called out to them, and Aaron and all the chief men of the congregation came back to him. 32 Next Moses spoke to them, and after that, all the sons of Israel came close. Then he made them responsible for everything Yahweh had spoken to him on Mount Sinai.
\n33 When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. 34 Then whenever Moses came into the Presence of Yahweh to speak with him, he took off the veil until he went out; and whenever he went out and spoke to the sons of Israel what he had been commanded, 35 the sons of Israel saw Moses\u2019 face, that the skin of Moses\u2019 face shone. Then Moses would put the veil back on his face until he went in to speak again with Yahweh.
\nNotes
\n29.a. \u05d5\u05b7\u05d9\u05b0\u05d4\u05b4\u05d9 \u05d1\u05b0\u05e8\u05b6\u05d3\u05b6\u05ea \u05de\u05b9\u05e9\u05b6\u05c1\u05d4 \u201cwhen at long last Moses descended\u201d; special waw with \u05d4\u05d9\u05d4 plus inf constr of \u05d9\u05e8\u05d3 in the context of chaps. 33\u201334.
\n29.b. MT has \u05d1\u05d9\u05d3 \u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05d4 \u201cin the hand of Moses,\u201d the 2d of 3 occurrences of the name \u05de\u05e9\u05c1\u05d4 in this verse. SamPent has \u05d1\u05d9\u05d3\u05d5 \u201cin his hand.\u201d
\n29.c. \u05e7\u05e8\u05d5, lit., \u201csent out horns of light, glowed.\u201d
\n30.a. LXX reads \u03c0\u03ac\u03bd\u03c4\u03b5\u03c2 \u03bf\u1f31 \u03c0\u03c1\u03b5\u03c3\u03b2\u03cd\u03c4\u03b5\u03c1\u03bf\u03b9 \u201call the elders\u201d instead of \u201call the sons of Israel.\u201d
\n30.b. \u05d5\u05d4\u05e0\u05d4 \u201cand behold.\u201d Cairo Geniza fragment has \u05db\u05d9 \u201cfor.\u201d
\n32.a. \u05d5\u05d0\u05d7\u05e8\u05d9\u05be\u05db\u05df \u201cand after that\u201d\u2014of BDB, 486.3.
\n32.b. SamPent, LXX, Syr., Vg add \u201cto him.\u201d
\n32.c. \u05e0\u05d9\u05e6\u05d5\u05dd \u201cThen he ordered them, put into their charge.\u201d
\n34.a. SamPent has \u05d9\u05e6\u05d5\u05d4\u05d5 \u201che commanded him\u201d; LXX reads \u1f45\u03c3\u03b1 \u1f10\u03bd\u03b5\u03c4\u03b5\u03af\u03bb\u03b1\u03c4\u03bf \u03b1\u03bd\u0313\u03c4\u1ff7 \u03ba\u03cd\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 \u201cwhat Yahweh commanded him.\u201d
\n35.a. SamPent omits the 3d occurrence of \u201cMoses.\u201d
\n35.b. MT has simply \u05d0\u05ea\u05d5 \u201chim.\u201d The clear antecedent, Yahweh, is added above for clarity.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 32:1\u20136, 7\u201335; 33:12\u201317; 33:18\u201334:9, 10\u201328.
\nThis brief conclusion to the Presence-Absence-Presence narrative of Israel\u2019s first disobedience and its aftermath handily deals with the single theme left hanging after the sin with the calf\u2014the question of Moses\u2019 authority as Yahweh\u2019s representative. Israel had not intended to reject Yahweh, though their action, a terrible disobedience of their covenantal promises, was in effect a rejection. Moses, however, they dismissed during his absence with the sarcastic words of anxiety, \u201cbecause this Moses \u2026 we have no idea what has become of him\u201d (32:1). Following that rejection, Moses is represented in the composite narrative of Exod 32\u201334 as both angry toward and solicitous of Israel, as pleading with Yahweh on their behalf, as persuading Yahweh to show forgiving mercy, as receiving the favor of an additional special theophany on Sinai, and as the intermediary once again of Yahweh\u2019s covenant instructions in the summary of those instructions relating particularly to the disobedience into which Israel had fallen\u2014an appropriate review to accompany the renewal of the covenant. One matter still remains unresolved: Israel has not reaffirmed Moses as Yahweh\u2019s authoritative representative, the transmitter of Yahweh\u2019s own revelation and instructions, so quickly disregarded during his absence on Sinai and in spite of that rejection so active, even at terrible risk to himself (cf. 32:31\u201333 and 33:12\u201316), on Israel\u2019s behalf. The purpose of these seven verses that conclude the Presence-Absence-Presence narrative is to provide a resolution to this one remaining question posed by Israel\u2019s disobedience.
\nSource criticism has frequently assigned these verses to P, and linked them to the narrative of the giving (at 24:15\u201318) or the narrative of the completion (at 31:18) of Yahweh\u2019s instructions to Moses on Mount Sinai (cf. Beer, 162\u201365; Beyerlin, Sinaitic Traditions, 3\u20134; Hyatt, 318, 326; Cross, Canaanite Myth, 314: \u201ca Priestly postscript to the JE section,\u201d 32:1\u201334:28b). Some scholars have suggested, however, that the P characteristics of Exod 34:29\u201335 are additions to a narrative belonging originally to some other source: Morgenstern (HUCA 2 [1925] 1\u201312), for example, suggested J, specifically his J2, the combination of J and Kenite narrative material (cf. Seebass, Mose und Aaron 32, 50\u201360); Noth (260 & 267) proposed that these verses were from \u201ca special tradition comparable with 33:7\u201311,\u201d into which have been inserted \u201ca few observations by J\u201d (vv \u201c29aa, 32b\u201d) and \u201csome elements of P language\u201d (\u201c \u2018Aaron,\u2019 \u2018all the leaders of the congregation,\u2019 \u2018the tables of the testimony\u2019 \u201d).
\nOnce again, evidence for any precise assignment to underlying sources is indeterminate, and reference to such traditio-historical motifs as cultic horned masks designed to signify the divinely affirmed authority of priestly figures (Gressmann, Mose und seine Zeit, 246\u201351; Jirku, ZDPV 67 [1944\u201345] 43\u201345; Jaro\u0161, ZAW 88 [1976] 275\u201380; cf. Bailey, \u201cHorns of Moses,\u201d IDBSup, 419\u201320) and a glowing face as a sign of Moses\u2019 elevation to a semidivine state (Morgenstern, HUCA 2 [1925] 8\u201327; cf. Coats, Canon and Authority, 104\u20135, and Dumermuth, TZ 17 [1961] 243\u201348) are similarly far too speculative to be sustained by the scanty OT evidence. Whatever ANE ideas and practices may lie behind these verses in their present form remains a puzzle of which we have far too few pieces for even a tentative reconstruction (cf. Moberly, Mountain of God, 179\u201380). Until further information is available, the most we can reasonably attempt is some understanding of why this narrative of a shining face, which had consequently to be veiled to avoid frightening people, became the conclusion to a brilliantly arranged composite narrative of Israel\u2019s shattering of the covenant relationship with Yahweh and of the renewal of that relationship after the entirely justified threat of the withdrawal of Israel\u2019s raison d\u2019\u00eatre, the Presence of Yahweh.
\nThe answer to that inquiry can be seen with any clarity only when Exod 34:29\u201335 is viewed as an integral part of the larger narrative sequence of Exod 32\u201334, and specifically as the concluding section of that sequence, which began, in its very first verse, with a rejection by Israel of the human intermediary through whom Yahweh had chosen to give the application of his ten commandments, his guiding principles, and his instruction for the media, the times, and the ways of worship in his Presence. If Moses should remain discredited, both the repetition of Yahweh\u2019s revelation and instruction given already and also the continuing revelation and instruction to be given through him would be compromised. Moses\u2019 authority must therefore be reestablished in the eyes of the very people who have rejected him, and by none other than Yahweh himself. That is undertaken in these verses and in a manner that keeps Yahweh and Yahweh\u2019s Presence central, just as it is throughout all the rest of the Exodus narrative.
\nComment
\n29 Moses\u2019 descent from Sinai a second time with the two tablets, pointedly called here as in 32:15 \u05e9\u05c1\u05e0\u05d9 \u05dc\u05d7\u05ea \u05d4\u05e2\u05d3\u05ea \u201cthe two tablets of the Testimony\u201d (see Comment on 16:32\u201334), is a deliberate contrast to his first descent in 32:7\u201335. There, he came down to rejection and chaos; here, he comes down to awe and acceptance. What makes the difference is obviously the reestablishment of Moses as Yahweh\u2019s own messenger. And what symbolizes that difference is Moses\u2019 shining face. While there can be no doubt concerning what was shining or glowing, since the text quite unambiguously specifies that it was \u05e2\u05d5\u05e8 \u05e4\u05e0\u05d9\u05d5 \u201cthe skin of his face,\u201d just what the skin of Moses\u2019 face was doing remains the subject of continuing discussion. The verb \u05e7\u05b8\u05e8\u05b7\u05df occurs only in this passage, three times (vv 29, 30, 35). Its connection with horns, \u05e7\u05b7\u05e8\u05b0\u05e0\u05b7\u05d9\u05b4\u05dd is far more defensible than its connection with light (cf. Jaro\u0161, ZAW 88 [1976] 276\u201379), and the hiphil of \u05d0\u05d5\u05e8 would far more clearly have suggested \u201cshining\u201d than does \u05e7\u05b8\u05e8\u05b7\u05df\u2014unless the author of this narrative had some specific and different kind of shining in mind.
\nMoberly (Mountain of God, 108\u20139) suggests that the use of \u05e7\u05e8\u05df was a deliberate attempt to link Moses, as Yahweh\u2019s choice of a representative, with the calf, the people\u2019s choice of a representative of Yahweh, \u201ca daring parallelism\u201d (cf. a similar connection, for very different reasons, by Sasson, VT 18 [1968] 384\u201387). The fatal flaw in this theory, however, lies in the fact that the word for \u201chorn,\u201d \u05e7\u05b6\u05e8\u05b6\u05df is nowhere used in the composite narrative of Exod 32\u201334. Dumermuth (TZ 17 [1961] 243\u201348), on the basis of a comparison of similar phenomena from other religious traditions (Gautama Buddha, Ramakrishna, and Swiss mysticism) proposes a mystical inner transformation somewhat inadequately described as a glowing face.
\nIn fact, we simply do not have enough information to enable us to form any clear understanding of what is meant by the use of \u05e7\u05e8\u05df to describe what happened to the skin of Moses\u2019 face as a result of his close communion with Yahweh, but the key must certainly lie in Yahweh and not in Moses, as the use of this narrative to reassert Moses\u2019 rejected authority shows. It is at least possible that \u05e7\u05e8\u05df was deliberately used rather than \u05d4\u05b9\u05d0\u05b4\u05d9\u05e8 \u201cshine, give light,\u201d for example, because the narrator intended to suggest a light or a shining that was separate from Moses\u2019 own person, an appendage-light, an exterior light, a light that was a gift to Moses from Yahweh, a sign precisely of an authority that was his by virtue of his special fellowship with Yahweh, an authority of which Moses himself was unaware, as the text plainly says.
\n30\u201332 The reaction of Aaron and Israel to Moses\u2019 shining face was fear. The transformation of his appearance was striking, and apparently it suggested to them the fearful circumstances of the Sinai theophany of Exod 19\u201320 and 24 (cf. the comparison of Childs, 617\u201318), which was, of course, exactly what it was supposed to do. Only when Moses called out to Aaron and the leaders who represented the people, and only when they drew near and conversed with Moses without harm, did the people themselves feel that it was safe to come close to Moses. And then it was that Moses began the process of reviewing for them the revelation he had received on Sinai. The specific reference of v 32b, in the context of Exod 34, is the review of the commandments and instructions connected especially with disloyalty and the conditions that lead to disloyalty (34:10\u201327). The larger reference, however, in the context of the composite narrative of Exod 32\u201334 and the still broader composite frame of Exod 19\u201331, is the full extent of Yahweh\u2019s covenantal due. The verb that describes this review of Moses is revealing: \u05d5\u05b7\u05d9\u05b0\u05e6\u05b7\u05d5\u05b5\u05bc\u05dd piel imperfect of \u05e6\u05d5\u05d4 \u201cThen he made them responsible for, gave into their charge,\u201d in effect turned over to them the commandments and instructions given to him by Yahweh for their guidance in living the life in relationship to Yahweh\u2019s Presence. This amounts, given the context, to Israel\u2019s recommitment to the requirements of covenant relationship.
\n33 When Moses had completed this review and recommitment of Israel, he put a veil, \u05de\u05e1\u05d5\u05d4 over his face. Just why Moses did this we are not told, though the assumptions generally are that he did so (1) to avoid frightening the people and (2) to indicate the end of his \u201cofficial\u201d communication of Yahweh\u2019s revelation. With the veil in place, Moses would be speaking once again for himself. The word \u05de\u05e1\u05d5\u05d4 is used in the OT only in this passage (in vv 33, 34, 35), and its exact meaning is impossible to discover without further information. The term appears to have been derived from a root (\u05e1\u05d5\u05d4) that has to do with covering (cf. BDB, 691, and \u05e1\u05d5\u05ea\u05d4 \u201chis mantle, cloak\u201d in Gen 49:11). This ambiguity has given rise to the widespread theory that the \u05de\u05e1\u05d5\u05d4 was a cultic mask of some sort (so Gressmann, Mose und seine Zeit, 249\u201351; Jirku, ZDPV 67 [1944\u201345] 43\u201345; Hyatt, 327; Jaro\u0161, ZAW 88 [1976] 278\u201380), but such a notion cannot be supported by the text in its present form, not least, as has often been pointed out, because the function of the \u05de\u05e1\u05d5\u05d4 is exactly the reverse of the function of a cultic mask (cf. Morgenstern, HUCA 2 [1925] 4, n. 9; Dumermuth, TZ 17 [1961] 241\u201343; Childs, 609\u201310, though note also 618\u201319; Davis, WTJ 44 [1982] 84\u201385, esp. n. 29). The \u05de\u05e1\u05d5\u05d4 must rather be regarded as a covering of some sort, a veil or cloth through which Moses could see but which would obscure from the view of those around Moses the glowing skin of his face.
\nWhat is far more significant than the appearance of Moses\u2019 face, or the means by which he obscured that appearance, is what this unusual sight, which may after all be largely a theological metaphor, implies in the context of Exod 32\u201334. Davis (WTJ 44 [1982] 84\u201385) has suggested a dual meaning: the unveiled face symbolizing \u201crenewed acceptance,\u201d the shining face of Yahweh \u201creflected from Moses\u2019 face,\u201d the veiled face symbolizing \u201cthe catastrophe of rebellion.\u201d Only the first of these two suggestions has any biblical basis, and that in the light of the OT theology of Yahweh\u2019s \u201cshining face\u201d (cf. Num 6:25; Ps 80; Dhorme, L\u2019emploi metaphorique, 51\u201356; Reindl, Angesicht Gottes, 137\u201345). Moberly (Mountain of God, 108) proposes that the shining face of Moses without any covering was a deliberate putdown of the use of cultic masks to represent deity: \u201cIt is a man and not an object who has the role of mediating Yahweh.\u201d This view seems to impose on the text more than is there and more than we know, as Moberly (179) himself later admits, of what may or may not have been a practice in the Sitz im Leben from which this tradition comes.
\n34\u201335 Nothing more than a guess can be attempted, but it is possible that both the shining skin of Moses\u2019 face and also the veil which hides that shining from view are to be understood as symbols of Moses\u2019 reaffirmed authority, and nothing more. The text itself seems to suggest as much by its shift, following the narrative reference to the veil, to the statement of the continuing and habitual practice of Moses with the veil. Whenever Moses came into Yahweh\u2019s Presence (wherever this was, the Tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting of Exod 33:7\u201311, or even Sinai or some other place of theophany, is deliberately left unspecified thus making the statement inclusive), he removed the veil and so spoke with Yahweh \u201cface to Presence\u201d (cf. Exod 33:11), in intimate communion. Having absorbed the brightness of Yahweh\u2019s Presence, Moses\u2019 glowing face as he departed from Yahweh\u2019s Presence to communicate Yahweh\u2019s Word to Israel, left no doubt about the authority of the words he spoke. Then, when the divine message had been delivered, Moses would always put the veil once again over his face. This hiding of the glow was the symbol that Moses\u2019 further words were his own, not to be confused with what Yahweh had said. One might well imagine, in such a case, that the veil was at least as much for Moses\u2019 benefit as for Israel\u2019s.
\nExplanation
\nThe concluding section of the narrative sequence of Exod 32\u201334 reverses the last of the dire effects of Israel\u2019s sin with the golden calf. The rejection of Moses, made so impulsively and in selfish and thoughtless panic while he was away with Yahweh on Sinai, is negated by Yahweh himself, who once more does for Moses what Moses cannot do for himself. As a result of his work of receiving Yahweh\u2019s instructions in the brightness of Yahweh\u2019s Presence, Moses\u2019 face glows with a supernatural light. This light leaves no doubt about Yahweh\u2019s favor toward Moses and no doubt about the source of the requirements and guiding principles Moses announces to Israel. As if to underline the uniqueness of that symbolism, Moses exposes his face when he is in Yahweh\u2019s Presence and also as he passes along to Israel what Yahweh has revealed to him for them. Then Moses covers his face\u2014until the next time.
\nThus at the end of the Presence-Absence-Presence narrative Moses\u2019 credibility is restored. Israel can no longer doubt what he says when he reports Yahweh\u2019s Word to them, and Israel can no longer wonder where he is and what he is doing and whether he will return when he is beyond their sight. The way is thus cleared for the continuation of Yahweh\u2019s revelation, particularly in the fulfillment of the instructions he has already given.
\nIV. Israel\u2019s Obedience of Yahweh\u2019s Instructions (35:1\u201340:38)
\nThe Offering of the Materials and the Recognition of the Artisans (35:1\u201336:7)
\nParallels, in sequence:
\n31:12\u201318=35:1\u20133; 25:1\u20137=35:4\u20139; 31:6\u201310=35:10\u201319; 31:1\u20136=35:30\u201336:1
\nBibliography
\nAlter, R. The Art of Biblical Narrative. New York: Basic Books, 1981. Cross, F. M. \u201cThe Priestly Work.\u201d Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973. 293\u2013325. Elliger, K. \u201cSinn und Ursprung der priesterlichen Geschictserz\u00e4hlung.\u201d Kleine Schriften zum Alten Testament. TB\u00fc 32. Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1966. 174\u201398. Gray, J. The KRT Text in the Literature of Ras Shamra. 2d ed. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1964. Kearney, P. J. \u201cCreation and Liturgy: The P Redaction of Ex 25\u201340.\u201d ZAW 89 (1977) 375\u201386. Koch, K. Die Pristerschrift von Exodus 25 bis Leviticus 16. G\u00f6ttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1959. McEvenue, S. E. The Narrative Style of the Priestly Writer. AnBib 50. Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1971. Muilenburg, J. \u201cA Study in Hebrew Rhetoric: Repetition and Style,\u201d Congress Volume: Copenhagen, 1953. VTSup 1. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1953. 97\u2013111. Vink, J. G. \u201cThe Date and Origin of the Priestly Code in the Old Testament.\u201d OTS 15 (1969) 1\u2013144.
\nTranslation
\n1 Then Moses called to assembly the whole congregation of the sons of Israel, and he said to them, \u201cThese are the words that Yahweh has commanded to be obeyed: 2 \u2018Six days is customary labor to be done. The seventh day, you are to keep sacred, a sabbath of sabbath-rest belonging to Yahweh: anyone who does customary labor during it is to die. 3 You are not to build a fire in any of your dwelling places on the sabbath day.\u2019 \u201d
\n4 Next Moses said this to the whole congregation of the sons of Israel: \u201cThis is the word that Yahweh has commanded; he said, 5 \u2018Take from your own possessions an offering for Yahweh: everyone whose mind urges him is to bring it, Yahweh\u2019s offering of gold, silver, copper, 6 violet yarn, purple yarn, scarlet yarn, fine linen, goats\u2019 hair, 7 red-dyed rams\u2019 hides, sea-cows\u2019 hides, acacia lumber, 8 oil for light, aromatic spices for the Oil of Anointment and for the Special Formula Incense, 9 and gemstones and stones to be set on the Ephod and the Breastpiece.
\n10 \u201c \u2018All who are wise in mind among you are to come and to make all that Yahweh has commanded: 11 the Tabernacle, its tent, its cover, its fasteners, its supports, its crossmembers, its columns, and its pedestals; 12 the Ark, its carrying-poles, the Ark-Cover, and the Veil separating the Holiest Space; 13 the Table, its carrying-poles, all its equipment, and the Bread of the Presence; 14 the Lampstand for the light, its equipment, its lamps, and oil for the light; 15 the Altar of Incense and its poles, the Oil of Anointment, the Special Formula Incense, and the Veil for the opening at the opening of the Tabernacle; 16 the Altar of wholly-burned offerings, the copper grate belonging to it, its carrying-poles, all its equipment, and the Laver and its pedestal; 17 the draperies of the Courtyard, its columns and its pedestals, and the Screen for the entrance of the Courtyard; 18 the anchor-pegs of the Tabernacle, the anchor-pegs of the Courtyard, and their ropes; 19 the elaborately sewn vestments for ministry in worship in the Holy Space, the sacral vestments for Aaron the priest and the vestments of his sons for priestly ministry.\u2019 \u201d
\n20 Thus the whole congregation of the sons of Israel went out of Moses\u2019 presence; 21 then they came, every man whose mind prompted him, everyone whose spirit urged him, bringing an offering for Yahweh for the manufacture of the Tent of Appointed Meeting and for all its work, and for the sacral vestments. 22 They came, the men and the women as well, everyone whose mind urged it: they brought nose-rings and earrings and finger-rings and bangles, all of them articles of gold, every person presenting by gesture an offering of gold to Yahweh. 23 Every person who owned violet yarn, purple yarn, scarlet yarn, fine linen, goats\u2019 hair, red-dyed rams\u2019 hides, and sea-cows\u2019 hides brought them. 24 Everyone who could contribute a present of silver or copper brought it as Yahweh\u2019s present, and everyone who owned acacia lumber useful to the workmanship of construction brought it. 25 Every woman who knew how set her hands to making yarn; then they brought yarn: violet yarn, purple yarn, scarlet yarn, and fine linen. 26 All the women whose minds prompted them with skill spun the goat\u2019s hair. 27 The leaders brought gemstones and stones to be set on the Ephod and the Breastpiece, 28 aromatic spices, and oil for light, for the Oil of Anointment, and for the Special Formula Incense. 29 All the men and the women whose minds urged them to bring anything for the workmanship that Yahweh had commanded through Moses to be done did so as Israelites, making a voluntary offering to Yahweh.
\n30 Next Moses said to the sons of Israel, \u201cTake note\u2014Yahweh has called out by name Bezalel, son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, 31 then filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, in discernment, and in skill and in workmanship of every kind, 32 to design intricate patterns for work in gold, in silver and in copper, 33 in engraving gemstones for setting, and in carving wood to make elaborate workmanship of every kind. 34 And he has put it into his mind to teach, both him and Oholiab, son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, 35 filling them with wisdom of mind to do every kind of workmanship, whether of a metal-worker, a designer, an embroiderer in violet yarn, purple yarn, scarlet yarn and fine linen, or a weaver: they are able to do any kind of workmanship and work out complex plans. 36:1 Bezalel and Oholiab and every person wise of mind to whom Yahweh has given wisdom and discernment to be skilled and to accomplish all the workmanship of the construction of the Holy Space are to make all that Yahweh has commanded.\u201d
\n2 So Moses called out Bezalel and Oholiab and every person wise of mind to whom Yahweh had given wisdom of mind, all those whose mind prompted them to take on the work and do it. 3 Then they had from Moses the whole of the contribution that the sons of Israel had brought to make possible the workmanship of the construction of the Holy Space. Yet they brought the voluntary offering to Moses still, morning after morning, 4 so that all expert craftsmen busy with all the workmanship of the Holy Space came, man after man leaving his specialized task, the work they all were doing, 5 and they said to Moses this: \u201cThe people are bringing far more than is required for the construction of the workmanship Yahweh has commanded to be done.\u201d 6 Thus Moses gave an order, and an announcement was passed along through the camp to the effect that neither any man nor any woman was to produce anything more for the contribution for the Holy Space: then the people restrained their giving. 7 What they had given was sufficient for the accomplishment of the workmanship, with some left over.
\nNotes
\n1.a. \u05dc\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05ea \u05d0\u05ea\u05dd \u201cto do them.\u201d
\n2.a. LXX and Syr. read \u201cyou are to do.\u201d SamPent has \u05d9\u05e2\u05e9\u05d4 \u201cit (masc) is to be done.\u201d
\n2.b. \u05d9\u05d4\u05d9\u05d4 \u05dc\u05db\u05dd \u05e7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cit is to be for you set apart.\u201d
\n4.a. \u05dc\u05d0\u05de\u05e8
\n5.a. \u05de\u05d0\u05ea\u05db\u05dd \u201cfrom with yourselves\u201d; the offering is to be specifically Israel\u2019s, taken from what is theirs, as opposed to any other possible sources.
\n5.b. This obj suff is absent from SamPent, Syr., Tg. Onk., Tg. Ps.-J..
\n7.a. L unaccountably has \u05e9\u05b4\u05c2\u05d8\u05b4\u05d9\u05dd instead of \u05e9\u05b4\u05c1\u05d8\u05b4\u05bc\u05d9\u05dd \u201cacacia,\u201d but the parallel in 25:5 makes plain that \u05e9\u05b4\u05c1\u05d8\u05b4\u05d9\u05dd is correct.
\n12.a. MT has \u05e4\u05e8\u05db\u05ea \u05d4\u05de\u05e1\u05d3 \u201cthe Veil of the covering.\u201d \u05de\u05b8\u05e1\u05b8\u05da\u05b0 is the term for the Screen covering the opening of the Tabernacle (26:36\u201337), but the word is used also to designate the Screen covering the opening of the Courtyard of the Tabernacle (27:16). In sum, all three coveringsconnected with the Tabernacle and its Courtyard are referred to by the noun \u05de\u05b8\u05e1\u05b8\u05da\u05b0.
\n13.a. This last phrase, \u201cand \u2026 Presence,\u201d is not in LXX.
\n14.a. SamPent and LXX add \u201call\u201d before \u201cits equipment\u201d and do not have \u201cits lamps.\u201d
\n2l.a. Lit., \u201cwhom it lifted him, his heart.\u201d
\n22.a. SamPent reads \u05e2\u05d2\u05d9\u05dc \u201choop, ring\u201d of some sort.
\n22.b. \u05db\u05d5\u05de\u05d6 \u201cbangles\u201d: an article of jewelry no longer known to us, though it appears to be derived from a root that means \u201cbunch, heap\u201d (BDB, 484; cf. KB, 443, 458). None of the articles of jewelry in this list can be translated with complete assurance, though the first three appear to be rings of some kind.
\n22.c. \u05d0\u05d9\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cman\u201d in its distributive, inclusive sense; see BDB, 36. SamPent omits this \u05d0\u05d9\u05e9\u05c1; cf. LXX.
\n22.d. \u05d4\u05e0\u05d9\u05e3 \u05ea\u05e0\u05d5\u05e4\u05ea \u05d6\u05d4\u05d1 \u201che waved a wave-offering of gold\u201d: the waving of an offering was a gesture of dedication to Yahweh in Yahweh\u2019s Presence.
\n22.e. Cairo Geniza fragment has \u05ea\u05e8\u05d5\u05de\u05ea a \u201craising, contribution\u201d of gold.
\n23.a. \u201cWhom it was found with him.\u201d
\n24.a. SamPent reads simply \u05dc\u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05db\u05ea \u05d4\u05e2\u05d1\u05d3\u05d4 \u201cfor the workmanship of construction.\u201d
\n25.a. \u05d7\u05db\u05de\u05ea\u05be\u05dc\u05d1 \u201cwise of heart (= mind)\u201d: the woman skilled at spinning and weaving is intended.
\n26.a. Lit., \u201call the women whose hearts lifted them with wisdom.\u201d
\n34.a. See n. 31:6.b.
\n35.a. \u05d7\u05b8\u05e8\u05b8\u05e9\u05c1 \u201cengraver, skilled craftsman\u201d in 1 Sam 13:19; Jer 10:9; and Deut 27:15 clearly refers to a worker in metal, and in the latter two examples (cf. also Isa 44:9\u201311), to the specialized metal-worker who does the refined work of idol-making and decoration.
\n35.b. \u05d7\u05b9\u05e9\u05b5\u05c1\u05d1 a \u201cthinking, inventing, devising one.\u201d Cf. BDB, 362\u201363.
\n35.c. \u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d9 \u201cdoers of.\u201d
\n36:1.a. LXX has \u1fa7 \u1f10\u03b4\u03cc\u03b8\u03b7 \u201cto whom was given.\u201d
\n2.a. \u05dc\u05e7\u05e8\u05d1\u05d4 \u201cto draw near, approach\u201d the work.
\n3.a. \u05dc\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05ea \u05d0\u05ea\u05d4 \u201cto do it.\u201d
\n3.b. MT \u201cto him\u201d; antecedent added for clarity.
\n4.a. \u05d4\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05dd \u201cthe ones doing.\u201d
\n5.a. See n. 3.a.
\n7.a. \u05d5\u05d4\u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05db\u05d4 \u201cand the work, workmanship.\u201d
\nFrom\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139 and 26:1\u201337.
\nThe repetition in Exod 35\u201339 of information already given in chaps. 25\u201331 has frequently been pointed out and quite often attributed to a later and secondary layer of the P material. So Galling (Beer, 13, 165), e.g., attributed most of chaps. 25\u201329 to his P and PB, all of chap. 30 and the first eleven verses of chap. 31 to his P (the latest layer of P), and most of chaps. 35\u201340 to P. So also for Elliger (Kleine Schriften, 174\u201375), very little of 35\u201340 belongs to the earlier layer of P (Elliger\u2019s Pg). Koch\u2019s (Priesterschrift, 7\u201348) theory of ritual Vorlage underlying Pg and providing for it both authority and agenda leads to a three-layered concept: the first layer consisted of an array of compact ritual S\u00e4tze orally transmitted and connected with a pre-Jerusalemite cultus. To this layer Koch (42\u201345) assigned only 40:1\u201315 of chaps. 35\u201340; the second layer, Pg, a written tradition connected with Jerusalem, included only 35:20\u201329 (Koch, 39\u201340) from chaps. 35\u201340; the third layer, made up of additional material connected with the fulfillment of divine commands, Koch (38\u201348) held to include the bulk of chaps. 35\u201340.
\nVink, who connects the \u201cPriestly Code\u201d to Ezra\u2019s mission (OTS 15 [1969] 18\u201363), takes the somewhat different view that chaps. 35\u201340 are linked closely to chaps. 30\u201331 and that these chapters together are to be termed \u201cP-Grundschrift,\u201d while 25:1\u201329:42 are \u201ccloser to the Vorlage\u201d (102\u20138). According to Vink\u2019s theory, chaps. 35\u201340 are much nearer to the mainstream of P than chaps. 25\u201329, but that mainstream is post-exilic and so somewhat later than many literary critics would maintain. Cross (Canaanite Myth, 323\u201325) has recently argued for a sixth-century date for P and has suggested that the tetrateuchal P strata \u201cnever existed as an independent narrative document.\u201d Kearney (ZAW 89 [1977] 375\u201386), following Cross, has proposed that \u201ca P editor,\u201d following the ANE linking of Temple building with divine creation, presented in Exod 25\u201340 a unity based on Gen 1:1\u20132:3: \u201ccreation (ch. 25\u201331), fall (ch. 32\u201333) and restoration (ch. 34\u201340).\u201d According to Kearney\u2019s theory, chaps. 25\u201331 present seven speeches of Yahweh to Moses, based on the seven days of creation; chaps. 35\u201340 echo this structure faintly in speeches made by Moses, and chaps. 32\u201334 are JE material edited by P \u201cto effect a balance\u201d between what amounts to Yahweh\u2019s revelation to Moses (25\u201331) and Moses\u2019 revelation to Israel (35\u201340).
\nNone of these varied theories gives any satisfactory answer to the question of the similarities and differences of Exod 25\u201331 and 35\u201340, however, despite their helpful illumination of a number of detailed points. They tend toward too late a dating for the underlying concerns of P, primarily because they identify these concerns too much in terms of the context in which they believe P to have come to its final form. It is all over again far too much a case of dating the whole of P, this time in terms of its conceptual rather than its literary Sitz, in or too near the period of its end form. As noted above (Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139), the nucleus of the P material in Exodus may best be seen not by isolating the P material but by viewing it as an integral part of the composite Exodus. What links Exod 25\u201331 and 35\u201340 is not primarily a series of literary connections, but a series of theological ones; and at the heart of the theological connections is the ever-present irreduciole minimum of the Book of Exodus, the immanent Presence of Yahweh.
\nThe similarities of Exod 25\u201331 and 35\u201340 may all be accounted for on the basis of their rootage in this all-encompassing theme: both sections, each in its own way, are preoccupied with Israel\u2019s need to experience the reality of Yahweh\u2019s Presence. The differences between Exod 25\u201331 and 35\u201340 may all be accounted for if four probabilities are kept in mind: (1) Exod 35\u201340 is based on the same theme as Exod 25\u201331 but follows a different order; (2) Exod 35\u201340 omits or adds material in comparison with Exod 25\u201331 in relation to its own separate purpose and was not intended simply to duplicate chaps. 25\u201331; (3) the obvious repetition of parts of Exod 25\u201331 in Exod 35\u201340, sometimes even a verbatim repetition, is for didactic and liturgical reasons, and perhaps also by reason of genre; and (4) the two sections are seen as having developed along with both the Exodus composite and, to a degree, alongside each other, and are viewed in the context of Exodus as a whole rather than as parts in isolation.
\nThe theme \u201cYahweh\u2019s Presence in Israel\u2019s Midst\u201d is presented in Exod 25\u201331 by extending a call for the offering of materials worthy of symbolizing and remaining near Yahweh\u2019s Presence, then following that call with a series of instructions for the preparation of such media, listed in a sequence moving from the most intimate of those symbols (the Ark) to the symbol farthest from it (the Tabernacle Court). This order provides for the linking of the three circles of nearness to Yahweh\u2019s Presence (see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139), is expanded by various appendices, and is closed by the establishment of the command to keep the sabbath as a sign of the uniqueness of a people among whom Yahweh is resident.
\nThe theme \u201cYahweh\u2019s Presence in Israel\u2019s Midst\u201d is presented in Exod 35\u201340 in an order that begins with this sabbath-emphasis, then moves logically to the gathering of materials and the recognition of the artisans, to the actual construction of the Tabernacle and its equipment and its Court, to the preparation of the sacral vestments of those who will minister in and join the three circles of nearness, to the erection of the Tabernacle and the climactic arrival onto it and in it of Yahweh\u2019s Presence. Into this sequence have been inserted two summary sections, one dealing with the precious metals used in the fulfillment of Yahweh\u2019s instructions and one dealing with the fulfillment of all those instructions.
\nSome matters dealt with in chaps. 25\u201331, as for example the ordination of the priests or the collection of the atonement money, are not included in this sequence because they would be both inappropriate and irrelevant, perhaps even impossible, before the arrival of Yahweh\u2019s Presence. So also the account of the coming of that Presence could hardly be given before the Tabernacle had actually been constructed and set up.
\nThe repetitious style of the Priestly source is well known (cf. McEvenue, Narrative Style, 10\u201321, 49\u201350, 167\u201371), though far too little attention has been given to the reasons for such repetition, either in the Priestly material- or in the OT as a whole (cf. Muilenburg, Congress Volume, 97\u2013111; Alter, The Art, 88\u2013113). The repetition in Exod 35\u201340 of material in chaps. 25\u201331 is probably quite deliberate and should not therefore be regarded as merely the insignificant duplication of a later and supplementary source. The redactor who brought Exodus into the form in which we know it must certainly have been aware of the similarities between the two sections, including the numerous points where the parallels are verbatim. The fact that the repetition remains suggests some purpose for it, and given the essential nature of the theme underlying the two sections, that purpose may be understood as both didactic\u2014the instruction of Israel and Israel\u2019s priests concerning fundamental symbols and practices that were all too frequently either corrupted or abandoned\u2014and liturgical\u2014the ordering of movement and perhaps also word in the round of worship by which Israel both asserted and reinforced faith. Cassuto (453) has suggested also the influence of the ANE genre of the giving of divine instructions which are then reported as carried out by a detailed repetition of the instructions. Cassuto\u2019s example is the Ugaritic account of King Keret\u2019s dream (Gray, KRT Text, 12\u201314) in which El gives instructions subsequently followed by Keret and repeated nearly verbatim in the account (15\u201318) of his accomplishments.
\nFinally, chaps. 25\u201331 and 35\u201340 need to be seen as complementary of one another. The questions of which section is nearer a supposed Vorlage and of how one section can be seen to presuppose or to supplement the other tend to draw attention away from the manner in which the two sections complete each other as instruction and obedience, as promise and fulfillment. Yahweh instructs Moses and gives him the visionary pattern of his intentions in chaps. 25\u201331; Moses passes along the instructions and his understanding of them as they are carried out in chaps. 35\u201340. The first sequence begins with the call for materials; the second section begins with the offering of these materials. The first section ends with instructions for the priests\u2019 ordination, then is followed by a sequence of supplemental material which ends with an emphasis on keeping the sabbath as a sign of the special relationship founded on Yahweh\u2019s Presence. The second sequence ends with the advent of Yahweh\u2019s Presence onto and into the newly built and erected Tabernacle, an authentication of the symbols and an authorization of the beginning of worship with them. In sum, there is an intercomplementary relationship between Exod 25\u201331 and Exod 35\u201340 throughout, one that links these sections far more closely and far more consequentially than has generally been assumed.
\nComment
\n1\u20133 The second sequence dealing with the symbols of worship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence begins where the first sequence left off, with the reminder of Israel\u2019s special identity as the people among whom Yahweh dwells\u2014the sabbath day. As noted above (Comment on 31:12), this strict command of a day set apart serves as a bridge, binding Exod 25\u201331 and Exod 35\u201340 together. This reference does not call the sabbath a sign (\u05d0\u05d5\u05b9\u05ea) as 31:12\u201318 does, and there is added here a prohibition against building a fire on the sabbath, one definition of what is meant by customary work on the sabbath, quite possibly one having to do with the preparation of food (cf. Exod 16:22\u201330, and see above).
\n4\u20139 Moses\u2019 call for the offering of materials for the construction of the Tabernacle and its equipment is a review of the materials listed earlier in 25:3\u20137, but particular and repeated emphasis is laid on the fact that it is to be (1) an offering of the people\u2019s own possessions and (2) entirely a voluntary offering. This point, hinted in 25:2, is stressed here at the beginning of this sequence (v 4), at its end in the report of the over-lavish gift (36:5\u20137), and also within the sequence, at vv 21\u201322, 29.
\n10\u201319 The listing of what Yahweh has commanded to be made is similarly a review of objects listed earlier, but again with a special emphasis, one also hinted at earlier (31:6): the artisans and their assistants are persons already gifted whose minds and hands Yahweh will now endow even more lavishly. There is to be a partnership of human genius and dexterity with divine direction, the whole enhanced by a further divine outpouring: 35:10, 25\u201326, 30\u201335; 36:1\u20133.
\n20\u201329 The account of the bringing of the offering for the media of worship is both an additional review of materials listed previously (with some supplemental additions) and a description of skilled labor that preceded the work of Bezalel and Oholiab and the expert craftsmen who assisted them. For the first time, women are specifically mentioned as participants in both the giving and the preparation of materials for giving. A series of articles of gold jewelry, some if not all of it to be understood as belonging exclusively to women, is listed, and women skilled at spinning are said to have made yarn of the colored fibers, the fine linen and the goat\u2019s hair. That this and other labor of preparation of the materials to be brought are to be considered a part of the voluntary gifts is suggested by 36:5\u20136.
\n30\u201336:2 The recognition of Bezalel and Oholiab is a repetition of the account of Yahweh\u2019s call of them in 31:2\u201311, with the additional report that they are able themselves to do any kind of specialized workmanship, have been given the ability to unravel the most complex plans, and have also been inspired by Yahweh to teach those who are to assist them in what they must know to fulfill the tasks necessary to the completion of Yahweh\u2019s instructions concerning the media of worship. Two of the colored yarns mentioned here and throughout the instruction connected with the Tabernacle and the sacral vestments, violet yarn (\u05ea\u05db\u05dc\u05ea) and purple yarn (\u05d0\u05e8\u05d2\u05de\u05df) are mentioned also in Jer 10:9 as clothing for idols, \u05de\u05b7\u05e2\u05b2\u05e9\u05b5\u05c2\u05d4 \u05d7\u05b2\u05db\u05b8\u05de\u05b4\u05d9\u05dd \u201cwork of skilled craftsmen.\u201d The parallel to the instructions in Exodus is striking.
\n3\u20137 The account of the offering of the materials for the Tabernacle, its equipment, and its supplies as a willing offering of labor and possessions, placed into the skilled hands of expert craftsmen with thinking and dexterity divinely enhanced, is brought to a confirming conclusion by a report of the superabundance of preparing and giving. So many materials came to be brought day after day, beyond the point of obvious sufficiency, that the craftsmen under the supervision of Bezalel and Oholiab had to stop their labor and inform Moses. Moses then sends word through the camp not only that both men and women are to stop giving, but also that they are to stop producing things for contribution\u2014a deft hint that the joy of the response to Yahweh\u2019s call for voluntary gifts was so great as to obscure the fact that the gifts were impeding progress on the Tabernacle, rather than making it possible. And even after Moses by command persuaded the people to restrain themselves from giving, there was still well more than enough for the task at hand.
\nExplanation
\nThe complementary relationship of Exod 35\u201340 to Exod 25\u201331 is made plain by this beginning sequence, which starts where the earlier section left off\u2014with an emphasis on the importance of the sabbath\u2014and which reviews the instructions given earlier as it starts the narrative of their fulfillment. Everything to be made and everything to be used in that process, the artisans who are to direct and supervise the work and the manner of their enablement\u2014all are reviewed, with important supplementary information, as for example, the source of the gold to be used (it came from the women\u2019s financial security, their dowry-jewelry), the involvement of women in the preparation of materials, and the full endowment of Bezalel and Oholiab to understand, to do, and to teach how to do.
\nYet something more is stressed in this sequence also: the fulfillment of Yahweh\u2019s instructions was not merely dutiful, it was exuberant. The voluntary nature of the offering that is being called for is stressed throughout this beginning, as is the involvement of all the people, both men and women, in a giving, a preparation for giving, and more giving still\u2014all of which leads, as the actual work of the craftsmen gets under way, to an embarrassment of riches and an order by Moses that the giving and the preparation for giving cease. The point is thus established before Israel\u2019s formal worship can even be begun that Israel\u2019s response to Yahweh present in their midst is to be in no way routine, in no way a reluctant meeting of requirement. For Yahweh who has come to them, they can give only their best, and they can never give what they consider enough. That we generally consider this the unrealistic ideal of priestly euphoria may well be more a commentary on us than on this ecstatic narrative.
\nThe Construction of the Tabernacle (36:8\u201338)
\nParallel Verses:
\n26:1\u201337
\nBibliography
\nGooding, D. W. The Account of the Tabernacle. Texts S 6. Cambridge: University Press, 1959. Jellicoe, S. The Septuagint and Modern Study. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968. Katz, P. Review of D. W. Gooding, The Account of the Tabernacle. TLZ 85 (1960) 350\u201355. Roberts, B. J. SOTS Book List 16 (1961) 25. Robinson, H. W. Corporate Personality in Ancient Israel. Rev. ed. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980. Rogerson, J. W. \u201cThe Hebrew Conception of Corporate Personality.\u201d JTS 21 (1970) 1\u201316. Vaux, R. de. \u201cBulletin.\u201d RB 68 (1961) 291\u201392.
\nTranslation
\n8 So all those wise of mind for the accomplishment of the workmanship made the Tabernacle of ten curtains of woven fine linen and violet yarn, purple yarn, and scarlet yarn; with cherubs artistically embroidered Bezalel made them. 9 The length of each curtain was twenty-eight cubits, and the width of each curtain, four cubits; all the curtains had an identical measurement, 10 He joined five curtains one to another, then the remaining five curtains one to another, 11 Next he made violet loops along the edge of the curtain at the end of the first set, and he also made them along the edge of the end-curtain of the second set; 12 he made fifty loops on the first end-curtain, and he made fifty loops on the end-curtain in the second set: the curtains with loops were to be opposite, one to the other, 13 He made fifty fasteners of gold, then he joined the curtain-sets one to the other with the fasteners: thus the Tabernacle was in one piece.
\n14 He next made curtains of goats\u2019 hair, for a tent to go over the Tabernacle; he made eleven of these curtains. 15 The length of each curtain was thirty cubits, the width of each curtain, four cubits; the eleven curtains had an identical measurement. 16 Then he joined five of these curtains in a unit, and the remaining six in a unit. 17 He made fifty loops along the edge of the curtain at the end of one set, and he made fifty loops along the edge of the curtain at the end of the second set. 18 Then he made fifty fasteners of copper to join the tent, so that it would be in one piece, 19 Next he made a cover for the tent of red-dyed rams\u2019 hides and a cover of seacows\u2019 hides to protect it.
\n20 He proceeded to make the standing supports for the Tabernacle of acacia lumber. 21 The length of each support was ten cubits, and the width of each support, a cubit and a half, 22 with two upright braces to each support, one joined to the other: thus he made all the supports of the Tabernacle. 23 He made the supports for the Tabernacle so: twenty supports for the Negev side, facing south, 24 and he made forty pedestals of silver to hold up the twenty supports, two pedestals underneath one support, for its two braces, and two pedestals underneath the next support for its two braces; 25 and for the second side of the Tabernacle, facing north, he made twenty supports, 26 along with forty pedestals of silver for them, two pedestals underneath one support, and two pedestals underneath the next support; 27 for the deep side of the Tabernacle, westward, he made six supports, 28 and he made two supports for the corners of the Tabernacle on the deep side: 29 they were doubled at the bottom, and they were joined, they made a unit at the top where there was a single ring: thus he made two of them, for the two corners, 30 In all, there were eight supports, along with their sixteen pedestals of silver, two pedestals underneath each support.
\n31 Next he made cross-members of acacia lumber, five for the supports of one side of the Tabernacle, 32 and five cross-members for the supports of the other side of the Tabernacle, and five cross-members for the supports of the Tabernacle on the deep side, westward, 33 He made the middle cross-member to pass through the midpoint of the supports from end to end. 34 He overlaid the supports with gold, and he made rings of gold as attachments for the cross-members, then he overlaid the cross-members with gold.
\n35 Then he made a Veil of violet yarn and purple yarn and scarlet yarn and woven fine linen: he made it with cherubs artistically embroidered. 36 He made for it four columns of acacia, and he overlaid them with gold; their hooks were gold, and he cast for them four pedestals of silver, 37 Next he made a Screen for the opening of the Tent, of violet yarn and purple yarn and scarlet yarn and woven fine linen, embroidered in variegated patterns, 38 along with its five columns and their hooks. He overlaid the tops of the columns and their rings with gold. Their five pedestals were copper.
\nNotes
\n8.a. LXX has \u03c4\u1f70\u03c2 \u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03bb\u1f70\u03c2 \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u1f01\u03b3\u03af\u03c9\u03bd \u201cthe robes of the holy spaces\u201d here, and from this point forward follows a sequence very different from that of MT. BHS (148, n. 36:8b) gives a handy equivalence summary.
\n8.b. MT has \u201che\u201d here and throughout the remainder of chap. 36. That Bezalel is the subj of this sequence of verbs, and the antecedent of these pronouns, is made clear by the similar sequence of chap. 37, in whose first verse, however, Bezalel is named, but in the verses following, right through 38:9, referred to simply as \u201che.\u201d Bezalel is of course referred to clearly as the one in charge of the entire process and all the craftsmen.
\n10.a. The content of that part of the description of the making of the Tabernacle recorded in vv 10\u201334 of this chapter is missing altogether from LXX, a fact that Gooding (Tabernacle, 66\u201377) attributes to the translator\u2019s intentional abbreviation of the text he was putting into Greek.
\n12.a. See n. 26:5.a.
\n12.b. See n. 26:7.a.
\n16.a. An additional sentence about the position of the sixth curtain (26:9b) is omitted by MT here.
\n17.a. See n. 26:10.a.
\n18.a. MT omits here the phrase about attaching the fasteners to the loops; cf. 26:11.
\n18.b. MT omits from the sequence at this point the explanation of what is to be done with the extra length of the curtains making up the protective tent. Cf. 26:12\u201313.
\n19.a. See n. 26:14.c.
\n27.a. See n. 26:22.a.
\n32.a. SamPent, Tg. Ps.-J., Cairo Geniza add \u05e6\u05dc\u05e2 \u201cside\u201d here, as in 26:27.
\n34.a. The instruction about raising the Tabernacle, included by MT at 26:30, is appropriately omitted here.
\n36.a. Three verses about the arrangement of the furniture of the Tabernacle, included at this point in the instructions (see 26:33\u201335), are appropriately omitted here, where the construction of the Tabernacle is the subject.
\n38.a. MT has \u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05d9\u05d4\u05dd \u201ctheir tops\u201d; the antecedent is substituted for clarity.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139 and 35:1\u201336:7.
\nThe differences between this account of the making of the Tabernacle and the instructions for this work in 26:1\u201337 involve either the omission of material appropriate to the earlier sequence and not so here, or such quite minor matters as changes in spelling (from plene to defective, for example) and the use of parallel idioms, or the logical change from action commanded to action performed. For far the majority of this section, this second sequence is a verbatim parallel of the first.
\nWhile this is so for MT, however, and the Samaritan Pentateuch, and in general for the Targumic paraphrases, it is not so for LXX, which from this chapter right through to the end of Exodus follows an order and in many cases an inclusion of content very different from that of MT. D. W. Gooding has given a brief review of previous attention to this question (Tabernacle, 1\u20137, 29\u201339) with considerable appraisal of the consequential nineteenth-century work of Popper and a careful survey of the LXX Exodus, with special attention to both the order and the content of chaps. 25\u201331 (19\u201328 and 35\u201340 (40\u201359, 64\u201377) and an analysis of technical terminology relating especially to ritual and to the Tabernacle (8\u201318). Gooding (99\u2013101) reached the conclusion that the same translator translated both chaps. 25\u201331 and chaps. 35\u201340 (excluding chap. 38, the work \u201cin its present form\u201d of a later editor), that he followed a Hebrew text substantially the same as our MT, abbreviating and omitting material at will, and that the original order of chaps. 35\u201340 in the translation of LXX \u201cin all major respects\u201d preserved the order of MT (78\u201398). Indeed, Gooding presents (102\u20134) a fascinating reconstruction of the original order of chaps. 35\u201340, which in his view were rearranged somewhat later than they were translated, and by another hand.
\nOn the whole, Gooding\u2019s careful argument is convincing. It has been received with enthusiasm by some scholars (e.g., Katz, TLZ 85 [1960] 350\u201355; Jellicoe, Septuagint, 272\u201376) and with qualification by others (for example Roberts, Book List 25; de Vaux, RB 68 [1961] 291\u201392), and it remains the most thorough treatment in the twentieth century of the LXX version of Exodus.
\nThe account of the construction of the Tabernacle is set at the beginning of the narrative of Israel\u2019s obedience of Yahweh\u2019s instructions to Moses on Sinai, not out of a desire to present a chiastic parallel to those instructions (so Cassuto, 461\u201362), since a real chiastic order is not presented in the narrative of Exod 35\u201340, but, more probably, for two reasons: (1) the making of the Tabernacle presents the longest and most complex of the various construction narratives; and (2) more important still, the editor(s) who arranged 35\u201340 wanted to bracket the construction narratives with the accounts of the construction (36:8\u201338) and the erection (40:1\u201333) of the Tabernacle, before which and after which is the further bracket of (1) Israel\u2019s response to the call for materials (35:4\u201336:7) and (2) Yahweh\u2019s response to the completion of all his instructions (40:34\u201338).
\nComment
\n8\u201338 The account of the construction of the Tabernacle by Bezalel and his assistants contains no new information and no surprising changes or omissions. It is a more compact account than the account setting forth the instructions for the Tabernacle, thirty-one verses as opposed to the thirty-seven verses of chap. 26. The six verses in Chap. 26 that are omitted from the parallel account here are 26:12\u201313, the somewhat ambiguous explanation of the placement of the remaining half-curtain of the protective tent of goats\u2019 hair curtains; 26:30, the instruction that the Tabernacle, completed in full accord with what Moses was shown on Sinai, is to be raised (cf. 40:16\u201333); and 26:33\u201335, the directions for the arrangement of the symbolic furniture of the Tabernacle.
\nEach of these omissions is entirely logical, given the purpose of the narrative of Exod 36:8\u201338, and not one of them offers therefore any justification for attributing this account of the Tabernacle to a tradition separate from the one that produced Exod 26:1\u201337. The other differences between the two accounts are all quite minor, the most notable of them being the omission of an additional sentence about the folding of the \u201csixth curtain\u201d of the protective goats\u2019 hair tent (26:9b, see 36:16) and the phrase \u201cand attach the fasteners to the loops\u201d in the account of the copper fasteners connecting the two sets of curtains comprising this protective tent (26:11; see 36:18).
\n8 The construction of the entire Tabernacle is attributed to Bezalel (see n. 8.b), following the reference in 36:8 to \u201call those wise of mind for the accomplishment of the workmanship.\u201d This is not by way of suggesting that Bezalel worked alone, as v 8 and the narrative of 35:30\u201336:7 alone make clear. Nor is the plural verb of v 8, followed by the singular verbs in the remainder of the narrative to be considered a \u201cdiscrepancy\u201d that \u201cescaped the notice of the author\u201d (Noth, 276). Bezalel is Yahweh\u2019s called-out and inspired \u201cartistic director,\u201d responsible for supervising the work and assuring that it is carried out in strict accord with Yahweh\u2019s instructions delivered to Moses on the mountain. Bezalel represents the group working under his direction, and their work is in a real sense Bezalel\u2019s work, just as a king\u2019s messenger represents the king who sent him, and in a sense therefore is the king (cf. Robinson, Corporate Personality, 34\u201337 and Rogerson, JTS 21 [1970] 7\u201316).
\nExplanation
\nThe lengthy repetition of the often abstruse details of the Tabernacle in this account of its construction is further evidence of the preoccupation of the Priestly theologians with the representation of Yahweh as a Presence on the move. Not one of the omissions of material present in Exod 26 has to do with this image of portability, and the repetition in chap. 36 in such full measure of the details given in chap. 26 provides a didactic reinforcement of the impression made there. See Explanation on 26:1\u201337.
\nThe Construction of the Ark, the Table, the Lampstand, and the Altar of Incense (37:1\u201329)
\nParallels in Sequence:
\n25:10\u201322=37:1\u20139; 25:23\u201330=37:10\u201316; 25:31\u201340=37:17\u201324; 30:1\u201310=37:25\u201328; 30:22\u201325 and 34\u201336=37:29
\nBibliography
\nRad, G. von. Die Priesterschrift im Hexateuch. BWANT 13. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1934.
\nTranslation
\n1 Next, Bezalel made the Ark of acacia lumber, two and a half cubits in length, one and a half cubits wide, and one and a half cubits tall. 2 He overlaid it with pure gold, inside and outside; then he made for it an encircling golden beading. 3 He cast for it four golden rings to go on its four corners, two rings upon one side and two rings upon the other side. 4 He made carrying-poles of acacia lumber and he overlaid them with gold, 5 then thrust the carrying-poles into the rings upon the sides of the Ark, to lift the Ark.
\n6 He made an Ark-Cover of pure gold, two and a half cubits in length and one and a half cubits wide. 7 He made two golden cherubs (he made them of hammered metal) for the two ends of the Ark-Cover, 8 one cherub for one end and the other cherub for the opposite end; he made the cherubs a part of the Ark-Cover, a part of its two ends. 9 They were cherubs with spreading wings uplifted, protecting with their wings the Ark-Cover, and each was turned toward the other, while the faces of the cherubs were toward the Ark-Cover.
\n10 He made the Table of acacia lumber, two cubits in length, one cubit wide, and one and a half cubits tall. 11 He overlaid it with pure gold, and he made for it an encircling golden beading. 12 He also made for it an encircling border a handbreadth wide, and he made an encircling golden beading for this border. 13 Then he cast for the Table four golden rings, and he fixed the rings to the four corners where its feet are. 14 The rings hung against the border, attachments for the carrying-poles for lifting the Table. 15 He made the carrying-poles of acacia lumber to lift the Table, and he overlaid them with gold. 16 He also made the containers that go on the Table: its dishes and its pans and its bowls and pitchers for the pouring of libations, of pure gold.
\n17 He made the Lampstand of pure gold. He made the pedestal and the branching of the Lampstand of hammered metal: its lampcups, its bud-husks and its flowers were an integral part of it. 18 Six branches extended from its sides, three branches for lamps on one side and three branches for lamps on the other side, 19 with three lampcups like almond-blooms with bud-husks and flowers on one branch and three lampcups like almond-blooms with bud-husks and flowers on the matching branch, and so on for all six of the branches extending from the Lampstand. 20 On the Lampstand itself there were four lampcups like almond blooms, each with their bud-husks and their flowers, 21 and a bud-husk underneath each pair of branches where the six branches extend from it. 22 These bud-husks and branches were an integral part of the Lampstand; the whole of it was a single implement of hammer-worked pure gold. 23 He made seven lamps; and the Lampstand\u2019s wick-removers and wick-trays were pure gold. 24 He used one talent of pure gold in making the Lampstand and all its accessories,
\n25 He made the Altar of Incense of acacia lumber, a cubit in length and a cubit wide, square, and two cubits tall; its horns were an integral part of it. 26 He overlaid it with pure gold: its top, its sides all around, and its horns; and he made for it an encircling golden beading. 27 He made for it two rings of gold, beneath its beading on two sides, two opposing sides, as attachments for carrying-poles with which to lift it. 28 Then he made carrying-poles of acacia lumber and he overlaid them with gold.
\n29 He also made the sacred Oil of Anointment and Special Formula Incense, pure, a spice-mixer\u2019s blend.
\nNotes
\n3.a. MT here has simply \u05e2\u05dc \u201con, upon\u201d; in 25:12 \u05e0\u05ea\u05ea\u05d4 \u201cyou are to place\u201d is included.
\n5.a. The instruction that the carrying-poles are to remain in the rings, 25:15, and the instruction that the Testimony is to be placed into the Ark, 25:16, are omitted from this construction narrative. SamPent adds \u05d1\u05d4\u05dd \u201cwith them\u201d to the end of this verse; cf. LXX 38:4.
\n8.a. See n. 25:19.b.
\n9.a. SamPent reads \u05d0\u05d7\u05d3 \u05d0\u05dc \u05d0\u05d7\u05d3 \u201cone toward one.\u201d
\n9.b. The verse about the location of the Ark-Cover and the Testimony (25:21) and the verse about speaking \u201cfrom between the two cherubs\u201d (25:22) are omitted here, though 40:20 summarizes the first of the two.
\n13.a. \u201cTable\u201d is added here for clarity, as at 25:26, where the verb \u201cmake\u201d is used, rather than the verb \u201ccast,\u201d as here. MT has \u05dc\u05d5 \u201cfor it\u201d; SamPent omits the indir obj.
\n15.a. This phrase comes in MT at the end of the verse.
\n16.a. \u05e2\u05dc as in n. 3.a.
\n16.b. The parallel to this verse, 25:29, omits \u201cthe containers \u2026 the Table.\u201d
\n16.c. See n. 25:29.b.
\n16.d. 25:29 has \u201cyou are to make\u201d before \u201cpure gold\u201d; the expected \u201che made\u201d has been omitted here, as also is the instruction regarding the placement on the Table of the Bread of the Presence, 25:30. That parallel is in 40:23.
\n17.a. On the translation of this verse, see nn. 25:31.a-f.
\n19.a. MT has \u05d1\u05e7\u05e0\u05d4 \u05d0\u05d7\u05d3 \u2026 \u05d1\u05e7\u05e0\u05d4 \u05d4\u05d0\u05d7\u05d3 \u201con the one branch \u2026 on another branch,\u201d unlike 25:33 (and SamPent here), omitting the article with the second \u201cone branch.\u201d
\n21.a. See n. 25:35.a. This verse ends with \u201cfrom it;\u201d 25:35 ends with \u201cfrom the Lampstand,\u201d as do some Syr. texts here.
\n22.a. See n. 25:36.a.
\n22.b. See n. 25:36.b.
\n23.a. The specification of the placement of these lamps and the reason for that placement, included at this point in 25:37, is omitted here, and the conclusion to this verse is parallel to 25:38.
\n23.b. See n. 25:38.b.
\n24.a. MT \u201cit.\u201d
\n24.b. The summary instruction concerning strict adherence to the plan revealed on Sinai, included at 25:40, is omitted here.
\n25.a. This verse is a compression of 30:1\u20132.
\n28.a. Five verses dealing with the location, use, restrictions and atonement of the Altar of Incense, 30:6\u201310, have been omitted here.
\n29.a. This verse is a compact summary of 30:22\u201338.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139 and 35:1\u201336:7.
\nComment
\n1\u201328 There is no additional information in this narrative of the construction of the Ark, the Table, the Lampstand, and the Altar of Incense. Too much has been made of the fact that the Altar of Incense is not included in the list of instructions in chap. 25, but is described separately in 30:1\u20134, and yet is included with the other furnishings mentioned in chap. 25 in the construction narrative here (cf. Driver, 328\u201329; von Rad, Priesterschrift, 75\u201377; Noth, 277\u201378). There is not sufficient evidence in the separation of the instructions for the Altar of Incense from the instructions for the Ark, the Table, and the Lampstand in Exod 25\u201331 to sustain the view that the Altar of Incense was not a part of P\u2019s earlier list of the media of worship (note Haran, Temples, 227\u201329). Why these articles are separated in chaps. 25\u201331 is not clear. The reason for treating them together in the narrative of construction of chap. 37 is a logical one: they are all articles that belong to the Holy Space and the Holiest Space of the Tabernacle. The construction narratives, though they are quite detailed, are summary narratives, and the inclusion of the account of the construction of the Altar of Incense with the accounts of the construction of the Ark, the Table, and the Lampstand simply confirms the assertion of 30:34\u201338 that this Altar, like the Special Formula Incense blended for exclusive use on it, belongs to the very special worship of the Holy Spaces of the Tabernacle.
\nThe omissions from these construction narratives are entirely logical and have to do for the most part with those parts of the instruction narratives that have no bearing on construction: thus the instructions about (1) the position of the carrying-poles for the Ark (25:15); (2) the placement of the Testimony into the Ark (25:16); (3) the location of the Ark-Cover and the Testimony (25:21); (4) Yahweh\u2019s promise to speak from between the two cherubs (25:22); (5) the placement of the Bread of the Presence on the Table (25:30); (6) the placement of the lamps and the reason for it (25:37); (7) the strict adherence to the plan for the Lampstand revealed to Moses on Sinai (25:40); (8) the location, use, restrictions, and atonement for the Altar of Incense (30:6\u201310); and (9) the formulae for the sacred Oil of Anointment and the Special Formula Incense (30:22\u201338).
\nIn sum, the construction narratives of chap. 37 are approximately twenty-nine verses shorter than their parallel instruction narratives in chaps. 25 and 30 without the loss of a single detail affecting the actual construction of the Ark, the Table, the Lampstand, and the Altar of Incense. The editor of these narratives of construction has clearly had in hand, in a form very close to their present form, the narratives of instruction, and has excerpted from them only what was deemed necessary for the account of the actual building of the media of worship, rearranging the sequence of the narratives of instruction as he thought appropriate.
\n29 The inclusion of the brief notice about the Special Formula Incense was no doubt suggested by the account of the construction of the Altar of Incense on which that incense was used. The equally brief notice about the Oil of Anointment was also included, in part because of the similarity of the formulae for these two special substances, but perhaps more because they are treated together in the narrative of instruction, as is suggested by the order in which the two substances are mentioned in this one verse summary: it is the reverse of a logical order, and the order of 30:22\u201328.
\nExplanation
\nSee Explanation on 25:10\u201322, 23\u201330, 31\u201340; 30:1\u201310, and 22\u201338.
\nThe Construction of the Altar of Wholly-Burned Offerings, the Laver, and the Tabernacle Court (38:1\u201320)
\nParallels in sequence:
\n27:1\u20138=38:1\u20137; 30:17\u201321=38:8; 27:9\u201319=38:9\u201320
\nBibliography
\nCross, F. M. \u201cThe Priestly Houses of Early Israel.\u201d Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973. 195\u2013215.
\nTranslation
\n1 He made the Altar of wholly-burned offerings of acacia lumber, five cubits in length and five cubits in width, square, and three cubits tall. 2 He made horns for it, one on each of its four corners: its horns were an integral part of it, and he overlaid it with copper. 3 He made all the equipment of the Altar: the pots, the cleaning-shovels, the dashing-basins, the pronged forks and the fire-holders. He made all of its equipment of copper. 4 He made for the Altar a grate, a strainer made of copper underneath its rim downwards for half its height. 5 He cast four rings on the four corners to the copper grate as attachments for the carrying-poles. 6 He made the carrying-poles of acacia wood, and he overlaid them with copper; 7 then he thrust the carrying-poles through the rings upon the sides of the Altar, to lift it with them. He made the Altar hollow, of planks,
\n8 He made the Laver of copper and its pedestal of copper of the mirrors of the women arrayed for ministry who ministered in turn at the opening of the Tent of Appointed Meeting.
\n9 He made the Courtyard: for the Negev side, facing south, the draperies of the Courtyard were of woven fine linen, a hundred cubits of them, 10 with twenty columns and twenty pedestals of copper; the hooks and rings of the columns were silver. 11 Facing the north side were a hundred cubits with twenty columns and twenty pedestals of copper, with the hooks and the rings of the columns of silver, 12 and facing the west side were fifty cubits of draperies with ten columns and ten pedestals, with the hooks and the rings of the columns of silver, 13 and facing the east side, toward the sunrise, were fifty cubits. 14 Fifteen cubits of draperies were on one side of the entrance, with three columns and three pedestals, 15 and so also on the other side of the entrance. On either side of the entrance of the Courtyard were fifteen cubits of draperies, with three columns and three pedestals, 16 All the draperies, all around the Courtyard, were of woven fine linen, 17 and the pedestals for the columns were of copper, with the hooks and the rings of the columns of silver, and their tops overlaid with silver; the rings of all the columns of the Courtyard were of silver,
\n18 The Screen of the entrance to the Courtyard was embroidered in variegated patterns of violet yarn, purple yarn, scarlet yarn, and woven fine linen, twenty cubits long and five cubits high, corresponding in measurement to the draperies of the Courtyard, 19 with four columns and four pedestals of copper, with silver hooks; their tops were overlaid, and their rings were made of silver. 20 All the anchor-pegs, for the Tabernacle and for the Courtyard all around, were of copper,
\nNotes
\n1.a. This word is omitted by SamPent.
\n3.a. On this instrument and the two preceding it, see nn. 27:3.b,c,d.
\n4.a. See n. 27:4.a.
\n4.b. From this point forward through the end of v 5, there is a compression of the text of 27:4b\u20135, which is more detailed.
\n7.a. See n. 27:8.a.
\n7.b. Vv 6 and 7 are a compression of 27:6\u20138, with one significant omission: the final clause of 27:8, which urges that the Altar be made precisely in accord with the revelation to Moses on Sinai. See n. 27:8.b.
\n8.a. The continuation of this verse in 30:18 specifies the use of the laver and its location, and 30:19\u201321 expands on the requirement that Aaron and his sons wash their hands and their feet before they minister in worship. All this has been replaced here by an obscure note about the source of the copper used in making the laver and its pedestal.
\n8.b. \u05e6\u05d3\u05d0 \u05d4\u05e6\u05d1\u05d0\u05ea \u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05e8 \u05e6\u05d1\u05d0\u05d5 refers to the regimented service of soldiers and Levites, to Yahweh\u2019s \u201cangelic\u201d armies, to the array of the heavenly bodies (cf. BDB, 838\u201339). This final clause of v 8 occurs nowhere else in the OT, and is obscure, especially in the light of 1 Sam 2:22, where \u05e6\u05d1\u05d0 appears to refer to cultic prostitution (cf. Cross, Canaanite Myth, 201\u20133; McCarter, I Samuel, ab 8 [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980] 81, 91\u201393).
\n9.a. MT has simply \u05de\u05d0\u05d4 \u05d1\u05d0\u05de\u05d4. LXX (37:7) reads \u1f11\u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03cc\u03bd \u03b5\u03c6\u02bc \u1f11\u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03cc\u03bd \u201ca hundred by a hundred.\u201d
\n10.a. SamPent omits \u201cof copper.\u201d
\n11.a. See n. 9.a.
\n12.a. Though the narratives of construction are generally more compact than the narratives of instruction, the repetition of this closing phrase, \u201cwith the \u2026 of silver\u201d is additional; cf. 27:12.
\n14.a. See n. 27:14.b.
\n15.a. \u05de\u05d6\u05d4 \u05d5\u05de\u05d6\u05d4 \u05dc\u05e9\u05c1\u05e2\u05e8 \u201cfrom this (side) and from that (side) with regard to the entry-way.\u201d
\n15.b. This verse too is an expansion of the narrative of instruction, 27:15, though it simply adds words, not information.
\n16.a. This verse is not in the narrative of instruction, though its information is at least implied by 27:18b.
\n17.a. SamPent has \u201cwith their hooks of silver,\u201d omitting \u201cand the rings of the columns.\u201d
\n17.b. This verse is an expanded statement of the content of 27:17.
\n18\u201319.a. Vv 18 and 19 are an expanded statement of the content of 27:16, with additional information about the size of the Screen and the ornamentation and fittings of the columns.
\n20.a. LXX (37:18) has just \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u03b1\u1f50\u03bb\u1fc6\u03c2 \u201cfor the Courtyard.\u201d
\n20.b. This verse is a compression of 27:19, omitting the reference to the tools of the Tabernacle; see n. 27:19.b.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139 and 35:1\u201336:7.
\nComment
\n1\u20137 There is no information in this account of the construction of the Altar beyond that given already in the instruction narrative in 27:1\u20138. Indeed, that narrative has been shortened here by the reduction of the content of 27:4b\u20135 (cf. 38:4\u20135) and 27:6\u20138 (cf. 38:6\u20137).
\n8 While the five verses of instructions regarding the Laver (30:17\u201321) have been reduced appropriately to a brief notice that Bezalel made the Laver and its pedestal of copper, there has been added a brief and mystifying note concerning the source of that copper. The fact that the Laver and its pedestal are not listed among the items made from the more than three and a half tons of copper (38:29\u201331) given in response to Yahweh\u2019s call for the voluntary offering of materials has led to the view that the Laver and its pedestal were less important than the other furnishings of the Courtyard of the Tabernacle, intended for a purpose preliminary to the actual ministry of worship (Haran, Temples, 159), and had therefore to be made of material not included in the offering designated as Yahweh\u2019s (Cassuto, 466\u201367). This seems to be an explanation contrived to fit a scanty argument from silence, as there are too many other reasons why the Laver and its pedestal may have been omitted from Exod 38:29\u201331 (as also were \u201call the tools of the Tabernacle,\u201d 27:19, the copper for which appears to have come from the voluntary offering).
\nEven more of a puzzle is just who the \u201cwomen arrayed for ministry\u201d were, what their ministry was, and why they had mirrors of copper they had not already contributed, following Moses\u2019 delivery of Yahweh\u2019s invitation. These women have been called every fanciful thing from cleaning women (Driver, 391; Hertzberg, I Samuel, OTL [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1964] 36) to dancing girls and musicians (Hyatt, 330; Davies, 251), and their service has been connected with the Tabernacle (Hyatt, 330), the separate Tent of Appointed Meeting outside the camp (cf. 33:7\u201311; Gispen, 325), and even Moses\u2019 own tent, set up \u201cas a place of meeting between himself and the Lord\u201d (Cassuto, 429\u201332, 467). In the context of Exod 38, however, it is difficult to imagine that the reference to the Tent of Appointed Meeting can mean anything but what it means everywhere else in the P composite, the Tabernacle. And yet, as a variety of commentators have pointed out (so Driver, 391), the Tabernacle, not yet erected, can hardly have had a ministry of women arrayed at its opening.
\nThis puzzle is further complicated by the use of \u05e6\u05d1\u05d0 \u201cminister\u201d to refer to a special regimented service of Levites in connection with the Tent of Appointed Meeting (Num 4:23 \u05db\u05dc\u05be\u05d4\u05d1\u05d0 \u05dc\u05e6\u05d1\u05d0 \u05e6\u05d1\u05d0 \u05dc\u05e2\u05d1\u05d3 \u05e2\u05d1\u05d3\u05d4 \u05d1\u05d0\u05d4\u05dc \u05de\u05d5\u05e2\u05d3 \u201call who can enter for ministry to do the work in the Tent of Appointed Meeting\u201d; cf. Num 8:24) and even more by the reference in 1 Sam 2:22 to the sons of Eli sinning against Yahweh by copulating with \u201cthe women who ministered in turn at the opening of the Tent of Appointed Meeting\u201d (\u05d4\u05e0\u05e9\u05c1\u05d9\u05dd \u05d4\u05e6\u05d1\u05d0\u05d5\u05ea \u05e4\u05ea\u05d7 \u05d0\u05d4\u05dc \u05de\u05d5\u05e2\u05d3), a phrase almost identical to the one used in Exodus (\u05d4\u05e6\u05d1\u05d0\u05ea \u05d0\u05e9\u05c1\u05e8 \u05e2\u05d1\u05d0\u05d5 \u05e4\u05ea\u05d7 \u05d0\u05d7\u05dc \u05de\u05d5\u05e2\u05d3 \u201cthe women arrayed for ministry who ministered in turn at the opening of the Tent of Appointed Meeting\u201d). This reference in 1 Sam 2:22 seems certainly to refer to cultic prostitution of some kind (note Galling\u2019s reference in Beer, 172, to \u201c \u2018Aphrodite\u2019-Spiegeln\u201d and 2 Kgs 23:7, and Cross\u2019s connection, Canaanite Myth, 201\u20133, of the incident in 1 Sam 2:22 with the account in Num 25:1\u201315 of the sin of Israel with the Baal of Peor), but any such connection would be so totally out of place in Exod 38 as to make its inclusion there unthinkable.
\nThe obvious reason for the inclusion of the information of Exod 38:8 is that it specifies the source of the copper used in the manufacture of the Laver and its pedestal. Undoubtedly, this information was not only clear but considered necessary by the P redactor of Exod 38, and it is not likely that a reference associating the Laver with anything so antithetical to the P concept of cultic acceptability as cultic prostitution would have been included without some such explanation as that given in Num 17:1\u20135 [16:36\u201340], regarding the use upon the Altar of the copper of the censers of Korah\u2019s company of rebels. The best we can do with Exod 38:8 is to note its obvious purpose and then to confess ignorance, until some further information is available, as to who the women at the opening of the Tent of Appointed Meeting were, why they were there, what they were doing, and whether their mirrors were for personal or ritual use. We know for certain only that these mirrors were regarded by P as the source of the copper for the Laver and its Pedestal, and that that information was for some reason considered significant.
\n9\u201320 The account of the construction of the Courtyard includes no such entirely new additional information; it has been reworked more thoroughly than most of the parallel P material, including as it does only a little compression (cf. 38:20 vis-\u00e0-vis 27:19), and uncharacteristically, considerable expansion (38:12 vis-\u00e0-vis 27:12; 38:15 vis-\u00e0-vis 27:15; 38:16 vis-\u00e0-vis 27:18b; 38:17 vis-\u00e0-vis 27:17; 38:18\u201319 vis-\u00e0-vis 27:16) of the account of instruction. This expansion involves, for the most part, repetition and rearrangement, though vv 18 and 19 include a comparative statement about the size of the Screen and the report that the columns supporting it had tops overlaid with silver (cf. 36:38).
\nExplanation
\nSee Explanation on 27:1\u20138, 9\u201319.
\nOnce again, the attention given to the details in the construction narratives, details even expanded in the case of the Courtyard, attest the importance of the symbols of Yahweh\u2019s Presence in the priestly view of worship.
\nA Summary of the Metals Used in the Tabernacle and Its Courtyard (38:21\u201331)
\nBibliography
\nScott, R. B. Y. \u201cWeights, Measures, Money and Time.\u201d Peake\u2019s Commentary on the Bible. New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1962.37\u201341.
\nTranslation
\n21 These are the inventories of the Tabernacle, the Tabernacle of the Testimony, as recorded upon the command of Moses by the work of the Levites under the authority of Ithamar, son of Aaron the priest. 22 Bezalel, son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, made everything Yahweh had commanded Moses, 23 with the help of Oholiab, son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, a metalworker, a designer, an embroiderer in violet yarn, purple yarn, scarlet yarn, and fine linen.
\n24 All the gold used for the workmanship in all the workmanship of the Holy Space, was gold of the symbolic offering, twenty-nine talents, seven hundred and thirty shekels (by the measure of the set-apart shekel). 25 Silver from the inventories of the congregation was a hundred talents, a thousand seven hundred and seventy-five shekels (by the measure of the set-apart shekel). 26 This comes to a beka per person, half a shekel (by the measure of the set-apart shekel) for each one who moved over into the counted group who was twenty years old or more, six hundred and three thousand, five hundred and fifty of them. 27 A hundred talents of the silver were for casting the pedestals of the Holy Space, the pedestals of the Veil: a hundred pedestals for a hundred talents, a talent per pedestal, 28 and of the thousand seven hundred and seventy-five shekels he made the hooks for the columns and he overlaid their tops and made rings for them. 29 Copper from the symbolic offering was seventy talents, two thousand, four hundred shekels, 30 with which he made the pedestals for the opening of the Tent of Appointed Meeting, the copper Altar and its copper grate, and all the equipment of the Altar, 31 the pedestals of the Courtyard all around, the pedestals for the opening of the Courtyard, all the anchor-pegs for the Tabernacle, and all the anchor-pegs for the Courtyard all around.
\nNotes
\n21.a. Pual of \u05e4\u05e7\u05d3 \u201cbe attended to, mustered, reviewed, looked after carefully.\u201d Cf. BDB, 823\u201324; \u05e4\u05b0\u05bc\u05e7\u05bb\u05d3\u05b8\u05d4 a noun derived from \u05d2\u05e7\u05d3 is the word translated \u201cinventories\u201d earlier in the verse (where it occurs in a pl. constr form).
\n21.b. \u05d1\u05d9\u05d3 \u201cin, by the hand of.\u201d
\n23.a. MT has \u05d5\u05d0\u05ea\u05d5 \u201cand with him,\u201d though the sense throughout is that Oholiab serves as an assistant.
\n23.b. On these terms, which occur also in 35:35, see nn. 35:35.a,b.
\n24.a. \u05ea\u05e0\u05d5\u05d2\u05d4 \u201csymbolic offering\u201d; see nn. 29:24.a, 35:22.d.
\n24.b. See Comment on 30:14.
\n25.a. The parenthetic note is absent from SamPent and LXX (39:2).
\n26.a. See n. 30:13.a.
\n28.a. \u201cShekels\u201d supplied from the context; cf. v 25.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139 and 35:1\u201336:7.
\nComment
\n21\u201331 This summary of the metals used in the construction of the Tabernacle, its Courtyard, and their furnishings has no parallel in the narratives of instruction, for the obvious reason that it is an account of the results of the voluntary offering requested by Yahweh at the beginning of the narratives of instruction (25:1\u20133). Even so, there is no new information here, apart from the summary amounts of the three metals, the explanation of the amount of silver as largest by virtue of its connection with the head-count of Israelite males twenty and above, and the note that Ithamar, mentioned two other times in Exodus (6:23 and 28:1), was in charge of the inventory-taking (on the further supervisory work of Ithamar, see Num 4:21\u201333; 7:1\u20138).
\n24 The amounts of metal given in the voluntary offering and so recorded in the inventories are remarkable, and the inclusion of this information appears to serve two purposes: (1) a further testimony of the joyous generosity of Israel, and (2) an additional evidence of the magnificence of the spaces and the furnishings devoted to Yahweh\u2019s Presence. The total amount of the gold brought was approximately 2,210 pounds; of silver, approximately 7,601 pounds; of copper, approximately 5,350 pounds (cf. Sellers, \u201cWeights and Measures,\u201d IDB 4:832\u201333; by the different equivalences of Scott, Peake\u2019s Commentary 38\u201339, these amounts are somewhat lighter: approximately 1,828 pounds of gold; 6,286 pounds of silver; and 4,425 pounds of copper, by the \u201c \u2018sacred\u2019 shekel,\u201d which Scott reckons as lighter than the \u201ccommon shekel,\u201d. 3333 ounce as opposed to. 4 ounce; Sellers\u2019 equivalence is. 403 ounce for both shekels).
\nThe availability of gold, silver, and copper in the ANE, even in such large amounts, is by no means unrealistic, as the extensive research of Lucas (Egyptian Materials, 222\u201391) on the use of metals in Egypt has shown. Though the perspective of P tends, as Haran (Temples, 10\u201312, 122\u201331, 194\u2013204) has maintained, to be somewhat \u201cutopian,\u201d the reference to such considerable quantities of precious and semiprecious metals is not to be taken as discrediting the Priestly narrative, the primary purpose of which, after all, is theological, not statistical. It is probably not unrealistic to speak of such quantities of these metals in the service of Yahweh in the Solomonic temple, and in any case, P\u2019s intention, the dramatic presentation of a theology of Yahweh\u2019s Presence in Israel\u2019s midst, is the constant in the light of which all these texts must be read.
\n25\u201328 The size of the voluntary offering of silver, some eighty pounds more than the combined offerings of gold and copper, is linked to the fulfillment of Yahweh\u2019s instruction that a half-shekel of silver be taken from each male twenty years of age or older, a gift for atonement and for the expense of the Tabernacle (cf. 30:11\u201316, and above). The actual amount of silver is thus linked to the narrative of the census commanded by Yahweh in Num 1, where the total number of Israelite males, excluding the Levites, is given (Num 1:46) as 603,550, the total given in Exod 38:26, for each one of whom a beka, or half-shekel of silver, was paid, giving a total of 301,775 shekels, or 100 talents, 1,775 shekels. The tradition of an offering received for the support of the Tabernacle may well be older than the organization of the kind of census described in Numbers, however, and it is clear here as in 30:11\u201316 that the real point of this narrative is not the counting of Israel but the huge offering of costly materials for the media of worship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence.
\nThe use to which the silver and the copper were put is specified in summary terms in vv 27\u201328 and vv 30\u201331. The gold is said, in an even more terse summation, to have been used for all the workmanship of the Tabernacle. The gradation of these metals vis-\u00e0-vis closeness to Yahweh\u2019s Presence (cf. Haran, Temples, 158\u201365) as well as the three interlocked circles of symbol and function outward from Yahweh\u2019s Presence (see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139) are implicit in this summary.
\nExplanation
\nSee Explanation on 25:1\u20139.
\nThe impression left by this summary of the inventories of gold, silver, and copper received in the voluntary offering (even the silver atonement-money is referred to three times [30:13, 14, 15] in the brief narrative calling for it as a \u201ccontribution for Yahweh\u201d) is one of generosity and opulence. The Priestly writers, far from being daunted by the thought of such large quantities of precious metals, were concerned rather to dramatize it by way of exemplifying the appropriate response to Yahweh\u2019s Presence. The metals were singled out as the most costly of the materials employed in the construction of the Tabernacle and its furnishings, as the three materials that most clearly designated the three successive circles of nearness to Yahweh\u2019s immanent Presence, and as the materials that most readily suggested by both their cost and quantity the abundance of Israel\u2019s generosity. Then this summary of the inventories of the metals was set here in the Exodus composite as a kind of conclusion to the narrative of the construction of the Tabernacle and its equipment.
\nThe Making of the Sacral Vestments (39:1\u201331)
\nParallel Verses:
\n28:1\u201343
\nTranslation
\n1 From the violet yarn, the purple yarn, and the scarlet yarn they made elaborately sewn vestments for ministry in worship in the Holy Space, and they made the sacral vestments for Aaron, exactly as Yahweh had commanded Moses.
\n2 Thus Bezalel made the Ephod of gold, violet yarn, purple yarn, scarlet yarn, and woven fine linen, 3 They hammered the gold into thin sheets; then he cut it into twisted strands to interweave with the violet yarn, the purple yarn, the scarlet yarn, and the fine linen, an artistic embroidery. 4 They made shoulderpieces for it, joined to its two sides, thus making one garment; 5 its elaborate belt, made as a part of it, was of identical workmanship, in gold, violet yarn, purple yarn, scarlet yarn, and woven fine linen, exactly as Yahweh had commanded Moses.
\n6 Then they took the onyx-stones, mounted in a setting of gold filigree, engraved as a seal is engraved with the names of the sons of Israel, 7 and he placed them onto the shoulderpieces of the Ephod as stones to call to mind the sons of Israel, exactly as Yahweh commanded Moses. 8 He made the Breastpiece, artistically embroidered as the Ephod is, of gold and violet yarn, purple yarn, scarlet yarn, and woven fine linen; 9 it was a square folded double. They made the Breastpiece a span in length and a span in width, folded double, 10 They set in it four rows of gemstones: the first row was a row of sardius, peridot, and emerald; 11 the second row, turquoise, lapis lazuli, and jasper; 12 the third row, jacinth, agate, and amethyst; 13 and the fourth row, green feldspar, sardonyx, and green jasper; all were mounted in a setting of gold filigree, in their arrangements, 14 The stones were as the names of the sons of Israel; they were twelve in number, each with one name engraved as on a seal: they represented the twelve tribes.
\n15 They made upon the Breastpiece tightly twisted ropes, made like cordage of pure gold; 16 then they made two filigrees of gold and two rings of gold, and they put the two rings upon the two edges of the Breastpiece. 17 They put the two twisted cords of gold into the two rings at the edges of the Breastpiece, 18 and the two ends of the two twisted cords they put onto the two filigrees, and thus they fastened them upon the shoulderpieces of the Ephod on its front.
\n19 Next they made two rings of gold, and they placed them onto the two edges of the Breastpiece, upon its inner side next to the Ephod. 20 They made two rings of gold, and they put them onto the two shoulderpieces of the Ephod at a lower point on its front, at a point just above where the elaborate belt of the Ephod is fastened. 21 Then they bound the Breastpiece by its rings to the rings of the Ephod with a twisted cord of violet yarn, so that the Breastpiece hung snugly above the elaborate belt of the Ephod, and did not fall forward from the Ephod, exactly as Yahweh had commanded Moses.
\n22 They made the Robe of the Ephod, a work woven wholly of violet yarn. 23 The opening of the Robe, in its center, was like the opening of a sturdily reinforced garment yoke, so that it could not be ripped. 24 They made on the skirts of the Robe pomegranates of violet yarn, purple yarn, and scarlet yarn woven, 25 and they made bells of pure gold, and then they put the bells among the pomegranates on the skirt of the Robe, all around among the pomegranates, 26 a bell and a pomegranate, a bell and a pomegranate, interspersed upon the skirts of the Robe all around, for ministry, in worship, exactly as Yahweh had commanded Moses.
\n27 They made the Tunic of fine linen, a woven work for Aaron and his sons, 28 the Turban of fine linen, the high-hat headwear of fine linen, and the linen undergarments of woven fine linen, 29 the Sash of woven fine linen and violet yarn, purple yarn, and scarlet yarn, embroidered in variegated patterns, exactly as Yahweh had commanded Moses.
\n30 They made a Flower, the Emblem of Set-Apartness, of pure gold, and they engraved upon it an inscription, like a seal-engraving, \u201cSet Apart for Yahweh,\u201d 31 and they fixed upon it a twisted cord of violet yarn, to attach it to the Turban at the top, exactly as Yahweh had commanded Moses.
\nNotes
\n1.a. \u201cThey\u201d refers to the artisans working under the supervision of Bezalel and Oholiab; cf. 36:8.
\n1.b. This verse is a compression of the content of 28:1\u20135.
\n2.a. MT has \u201che,\u201d which is undoubtedly the intended reading, despite the \u201cthey\u201d of SamPent and Syr.; as noted above, n. 36:8.b, this \u201che\u201d refers to Bezalel. Throughout the remainder of chap. 39, \u201che\u201d in reference to Bezalel and \u201cthey\u201d in reference to the artisans working under his guidance are intermingled.
\n3.a. SamPent, Tg. Onk., Tg. Ps.-J., Syr. have \u201cthey.\u201d
\n3.b. \u05dc\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d5\u05ea \u05d1\u05ea\u05d5\u05d3 \u201cto work into the midst of,\u201d a graphic description of weaving and embroidery with such different and different-colored materials.
\n3.c. This verse, apart from its last two words, is an addition to the instructions of 28:6.
\n5.a. This final clause, \u201cexactly \u2026\u201d is additional to a slightly rearranged 28:8.
\n6.a. Vg has \u201che.\u201d
\n6.b. MT has \u05d5\u05d9\u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d5 \u201cthen they made,\u201d i.e., \u201cmade ready.\u201d
\n7.a. SamPent and Syr. have \u201cthey.\u201d
\n7.b. Vv 6\u20137 are a compression of the detailed instructions of 28:9\u201314.
\n8.a. See n. 7.a.
\n9.a. SamPent has \u201che.\u201d
\n9.b. This verse is an expansion, by repetition, of 28:16. SamPent omits \u201cfolded double.\u201d
\n13.a. See n. 28:20.a.
\n13.b. This final clause is a slight expansion of 28:20.
\n16.a. This phrase is additional to the instruction of 28:23.
\n18.a. This pl. pronoun is absent from the instruction of 28:25; its presence here may clarify the description there.
\n19.a. \u201cThem\u201d is not in MT here, but it is included at this point in 28:26, and is thus added above for clarity.
\n21.a. See n. 28:28.a.
\n21.b. This final clause is additional to 28:28, and SamPent adds still more: \u05d5\u05d0\u05ea\u05be\u05d4\u05ea\u05de\u05d9\u05dd \u05db\u05d0\u05e9\u05e8 \u05e6\u05d5\u05d4 \u05d9\u05d2\u05d5\u05d4 \u05d0\u05ea\u05be\u05de\u05e9\u05d4\u05d5 \u05d5\u05d9\u05e2\u05e9\u05d5 \u05d0\u05ea\u05be\u05d4\u05d0\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u201cand then they made the Urim and the Thummim, exactly as Yahweh had commanded Moses.\u201d 28:29\u201330, the explanation of the significance of the Breastpiece and the instruction that \u201cAaron\u201d is to wear it \u201cupon his heart\u201d whenever he enters Yahweh\u2019s Presence are appropriately omitted from the narrative of construction at this point.
\n22.a. See n. 7.a.
\n22.b. This phrase is an expansion of the instruction of 28:31.
\n23.a. MT is a compressed and rearranged version of 28:32, also employing the difficult term \u05ea\u05d7\u05e8\u05d0 in its only other OT occurrence (see n. 28:32.b). A literal translation is all but impossible (\u201clike the opening of a \u05ea\u05d7\u05e8\u05d0 an edge for its opening all around\u201d), but the intention of the description is clear.
\n24.a. SamPent, LXX (36:32), Syr., Vg all include the equivalent of the usual \u05e9\u05b5\u05c1\u05e9\u05c1 here, to give the reading \u201cand woven fine linen.\u201d
\n26.a. SamPent has \u05e4\u05e2\u05de\u05d5\u05df \u05d6\u05d4\u05d1 \u201ca golden bell.\u201d
\n26.b. Vv 24\u201326 are a rearrangement of 28:33\u201335, with some additions (the bells here are of pure gold; and the recurrent clause about Moses\u2019 command is included) and some deletions, the most significant of which is the instruction about the purpose of the Robe and when it was to be worn.
\n28.a. \u05e4\u05d0\u05e8\u05d9 \u05d4\u05de\u05d2\u05d1\u05e2\u05ea \u201chigh-hat headwear\u201d; \u05e4\u05d0\u05e8 a term for a headdress of some kind, occurs in Exodus only here (cf. Ezek 24:17, 44:18); on \u05de\u05d2\u05d1\u05e2\u05d5\u05ea see n. 28:40.a.
\n29.a. Vv 27\u201329 are a considerably abbreviated summary of 28:39\u201343, omitting especially the instructions of purpose and function of 28:40b, 41, 42b, c, and 43, and adding the concluding clause about Yahweh\u2019s command to Moses.
\n31.a. Vv 30\u201331 are a slight compression of 28:36\u201337. 28:38, the instruction about the meaning of the inscribed Flower on the Turban and when it is to be worn, has been omitted altogether. The concluding \u201cexactly \u2026\u201d is additional.
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139 and 35:1\u201336:7.
\nComment
\n1\u201331 The narrative of the making of the sacral vestments is, like the major part of the construction narratives, a compressed parallel of its comparable instruction narrative and one from which any reference to purpose and function and also some descriptive details have been omitted. Even with the addition of information about the manufacture of gold thread for the Ephod (v 3), the sevenfold repetition of the quality-control clause \u201cexactly as Yahweh had commanded Moses,\u201d the inclusion of supplementary details (vv 16, 18, 22, 25, 28) and some repetition (vv 9, 13), this account of the fulfillment of Yahweh\u2019s instructions is still eleven verses shorter than the instruction themselves.
\n3 The description of the manufacture of gold thread by hammering gold into gold leaf, then cutting the gold leaf into thin strands which could be used as decorative thread, conforms to Egyptian methods of gold-working (Lucas, Egyptian Materials, 263\u201365; cf. also 284). The description of the manufacture of the sacral vestments themselves appears to have in view the fuller details of the narratives of instruction in chap. 28, though enough detail\u2014sometimes more than enough detail\u2014is included here to give a reasonably clear impression of how the vestments looked and how they were worn. The intermixture of \u201che\u201d (referring to Bezalel) and \u201cthey\u201d (referring to the artisans working under Bezalel\u2019s supervision), sometimes taken as an indication of the mingling of primary and secondary sources (so Driver, 394\u201395; Noth, 279), may just as readily be seen as a deliberate interplay, in the composite Exodus, attributing the work on the sacral vestments both to the guidance of Bezalel and to the craftsmanship of those who assisted him.
\n1, 5, 7, 21, 26, 27, 31 The sevenfold repetition of the phrase that concludes the major sections of this narrative of the making of the sacral vestments is an attempt to connect the completion of Yahweh\u2019s instructions with their revelation, while underscoring again the origin and authority of the concept of the vestments, their initial connection with Moses (and not Aaron, significantly), and the literal precision with which any instruction of Yahweh should always be carried out.
\nFinally, the omission from this narrative of manufacture of any mention of the Urim and Thummim, a point often discussed (Noth, 279; Hyatt, 331\u201332; Clements, 239; Childs, 637), is entirely in accord with the deletion from all of the narratives of construction of most of the references to purpose, function, placement, and the like, and the omission of\u2019 the title \u201cBreastpiece of Judgment,\u201d used in chap. 28 only in the paragraph dealing with the Urim and Thummim, is only to be expected.
\nExplanation
\nSee Explanation on 28:1\u201343.
\nThe significant additional emphasis of this narrative of the making of the sacral vestments is that the conception of the vestments is from Yahweh, has been commanded through Moses, and has been realized without divergence from Yahweh\u2019s instructions.
\nA Summary of the Fulfillment of Yahweh\u2019s Instructions (39:32\u201343)
\nParallel Verses:
\n31:1\u201311; 35:11\u201319
\nBibliography
\nWestermann, C. Blessing. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978.
\nTranslation
\n32 And so all the labor of the Tabernacle of the Tent of Appointed Meeting was accomplished: the sons of Israel had made everything that Yahweh had commanded of Moses, just so had they done it. 33 Thus they brought the Tabernacle to Moses, the Tent and all its parts: its fasteners, its supports, its cross-members, its columns, its pedestals, 34 the cover of red-dyed rams\u2019 hides and the cover of sea-cows\u2019 hides, the Veil of the Screen, 35 the Ark of the Testimony, its carrying-poles and its Ark-Cover, 36 the Table and all its equipment, and the Bread of the Presence, 37 the pure Lampstand and its lamps all arranged, all its equipment, and the oil for the light, 38 the Altar of Gold, the Oil of Anointment, the Special Formula Incense, the Screen for the opening of the Tent, 39 the Altar of Copper, the grate of copper for it, its carrying-poles and all its equipment, the Laver and its pedestal, 40 the draperies of the Courtyard, its columns and its pedestals, the Screen for the entrance to the Courtyard, its anchor-ropes and its anchor-pegs, and all the tools for the labor of the Tabernacle, for the Tent of Appointed Meeting, 41 the elaborately sewn vestments for ministry in worship in the Holy Space, the sacral garments for Aaron the priest and the vestments of his sons for priestly ministry.
\n42 In accord with everything Yahweh had commanded Moses, just so had the sons of Israel done all the labor. 43 Then Moses looked at all the workmanship, and in fact they had done it exactly as Yahweh had commanded: just so had they done it. So it was that Moses blessed them.
\nNotes
\n32.a. \u05db\u05df \u05e2\u05e9\u05c2\u05d5 \u201cjust so had they done it.\u201d
\n33.a. LXX (39:13) has \u03c4\u1f70\u03c2 \u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03bb\u1f70\u03c2 \u201cthe vestments.\u201d
\n37.a. Lit., \u201cits lamps, the lamps of the row.\u201d The reference is to the arrangement of the lamps on the branches of the Lampstand, facing the area in front of the Lampstand. See Comment on 25:37\u201340.
\n40.a. See n. 27:19.b.
\n41.a. This verse is a verbatim repetition of 35:19.
\n43.a. \u05d5\u05d4\u05e0\u05d4 \u201cand behold, just look.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139 and 35:1\u201336:7.
\nComment
\n32, 43 In due course\u2014no reference is made to a specific period of time\u2014Yahweh\u2019s instructions for the preparation of the media of worship were all carried out. An essential point of this report of the completion of that work, made at both the beginning (v 32) and the end (v 43) of the sequence, is that everything had been done in precise conformity to Yahweh\u2019s directions. It is a point made repeatedly through the entire narrative of construction. Inspired and specially gifted by God, Bezalel, Oholiab, and their helpers nevertheless stay strictly with the plans laid down by Yahweh through Moses. The media of worship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence, though made by the hands of men and women, are Yahweh\u2019s conception, not theirs, and even their special talents are harnessed, augmented and guided by his Presence.
\n33\u201341 Israel thus is reported to have brought to Moses the completed components of the Tabernacle, its Courtyard, and all their furnishings and equipment. Only Moses received Yahweh\u2019s instructions on Sinai at first hand, and only Moses was shown by Yahweh the vision of how things were to be, so only Moses can determine whether what Bezalel and his helpers have made is in keeping with Yahweh\u2019s intention. The inventory of what has been made, and is therefore brought to Moses for his inspection, is a considerable expansion of the summary list of 31:7\u201311 and a parallel with some variation and minor expansion of the summary list of 35:11\u201319. No new information is given in the list, which is virtually an index list drawn from the separate narratives of construction.
\n42\u201343 When Israel had brought to Moses all that they had made, pointedly referred to once again as \u201ceverything Yahweh had commanded Moses,\u201d Moses looked at (\u05e8\u05d0\u05d4) the workmanship, \u05d4\u05de\u05dc\u05d0\u05db\u05d4 not just the objects made, but specifically at how they had been made by those entrusted with and guided in the task. The term is a derivative of \u05dc\u05d0\u05da a verb having to do with sending an appointed messenger (cf. BDB, 523), and it refers to the specialized workmanship of professionals in a variety of OT texts (cf. Jer 18:3; Ps 107:23; Prov 24:27; Lev 13:48), and frequently in P it refers to workmanship in the construction of the Tabernacle and the Temple. When his inspection had been completed, Moses was satisfied that Yahweh\u2019s intention had been followed exactly.
\nAnd so it was that Moses \u201cblessed them,\u201d that is, all who were a part of the preparation of the media of worship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence\u2014those who gave, those who directed, those who labored with their hands, those who brought the completed work for him to see, in effect, the collective whole, all Israel. Cassuto (477) connects this blessing with the blessing of God upon humankind and upon the sabbath in the Priestly narrative of creation, and Westermann (Blessing, 42\u201345) relates the structure of P from Exod 19:1 to Lev 9:23 to a theology of blessing and coming. This latter motif is reflected in this account of Moses\u2019 reaction to Israel\u2019s giving and workmanship, when paired with Yahweh\u2019s own reaction after the Tabernacle and its Courtyard have been set up and their furnishings put in place: Yahweh\u2019s glory (= his Presence) comes upon and into the Tabernacle (40:34\u201335). This sequence is stated in the single verse cited by Westermann, Lev 9:23.
\nExplanation
\nThe work thus having been done in accord with Yahweh\u2019s instructions and confirmed by Moses, who alone has seen the vision on Sinai, all is in readiness for the building of the Tabernacle and its Courtyard, for the arrangement of the equipment of both, and for the beginning of worship in the Presence of Yahweh. One gift yet remains to be given, the gift to which all that has been made is a perpetual testimony. That gift, Yahweh alone can give. And Moses prepares the people to receive it by blessing them.
\nThe Tabernacle Set Up, the Priests Cleansed, Yahweh\u2019s Glory Comes (40:1\u201338)
\nTranslation
\n1 Then Yahweh spoke to Moses to say: 2 \u201cOn the first day of the first month, you are to set up the Tabernacle of the Tent of Appointed Meeting. 3 You are to place therein the Ark of the Testimony, and you are to screen the Ark with the Veil. 4 You are to bring the Table in, and you are to see to arranging it; you are to bring the Lampstand in, and you are to set in place its lamps. 5 You are to put the Altar of Gold for incense in front of the Ark of the Testimony, and you are to place the Screen at the opening of the Tabernacle.
\n6 \u201cYou are to put the Altar of the wholly-burned offerings in front of the opening of the Tabernacle of the Tent of Appointed Meeting, 7 and you are to put the Laver between the Tent of Appointed Meeting and the Altar, and you are to put water therein, 8 You are to place the Courtyard on all four sides, and you are to put the Screen at the entrance of the Courtyard.
\n9 \u201cThen you are to take the Oil of Anointing, and you are to anoint the Tabernacle and everything in it, and you are to set it apart, and all its equipment, and it is to be holy. 10 You are to anoint the Altar of the wholly-burned offerings and all its equipment, and you are to set apart the Altar, and the Altar is to be utterly holy. 11 You are to anoint the Laver and its pedestal, and so you are to set it apart.
\n12 \u201cYou are to bring Aaron and his sons near to the opening of the Tent of Appointed Meeting, and you are to wash them with water. 13 You are to clothe Aaron in the sacral vestments, and you are to anoint him and set him apart, that he may give priestly ministry to me. 14 You are to bring his sons near and clothe them in Tunics, 15 and you are to anoint them as you shall have anointed their father, that they may give priestly ministry to me. Their anointing is to authorize them for priestly ministry down through their generations in perpetuity.\u201d
\n16 So Moses did everything that Yahweh commanded him: he did it precisely. 17 Thus it was that in the first month of the second year, on the first day of the month, the Tabernacle was set up.
\n18 Moses set up the Tabernacle; he put down its pedestals, then he placed its supports, and he put up its cross-members and he set up its columns. 19 He spread out the tent over the Tabernacle, and he placed the cover of the tent upon it at the top, exactly as Yahweh had commanded Moses.
\n20 Next, he took the Testimony, and he put it into the Ark, and he placed the carrying-poles onto the Ark, and he put the Ark-Cover onto the top of the Ark. 21 Then he brought the Ark into the Tabernacle, and he placed the Veil of the Screen, and so he screened off the Ark of the Testimony, exactly as Yahweh had commanded Moses.
\n22 He then put the Table into the Tent of Appointed Meeting, on the northern side of the Tabernacle outside the Veil, 23 and he arranged upon it in order the Bread in the Presence of Yahweh, exactly as Yahweh had commanded Moses.
\n24 Next, he put the Lampstand into the Tent of Appointed Meeting, in front of the Table on the southern side of the Tabernacle, 25 and he set in place the lamps in the Presence of Yahweh, exactly as Yahweh had commanded Moses.
\n26 Then he placed the Altar of Gold into the Tent of Appointed Meeting, before the Veil, 27 and he made Special Formula Incense smoke upon it, exactly as Yahweh commanded Moses.
\n28 He next placed the Screen at the opening of the Tabernacle, 29 and the Altar of the wholly-burned offerings there at the opening of the Tabernacle ofthe Tent of Appointed Meeting, and he offered upon it the wholly-burned offering and the cereal offering, exactly as Yahweh had commanded Moses.
\n30 He then placed the Laver between the Tent of Appointed Meeting and the Altar, and he put water into it, for washing, 31 Moses and Aaron and his sons washed their hands and their feet in it: 32 whenever they entered the Tent of Appointed Meeting and whenever they came near the Altar, they washed, exactly as Yahweh had commanded Moses.
\n33 Finally, he set up the Courtyard and all four sides of the Tabernacle and the Altar, and he put the Screen at the entrance of the Courtyard. Thus Moses completed the work.
\n34 Then the cloud covered the Tent of Appointed Meeting, and the Glory of Yahweh filled the Tabernacle, 35 and Moses was not able to enter the Tent of Appointed Meeting, because the cloud had settled down upon it and the Glory of Yahweh had filled the Tabernacle. 36 Whenever the cloud was raised up from upon the Tabernacle, the sons of Israel journeyed forth in their various travels; 37 but if the cloud was not raised up, they did not journey forth until the day when it was raised up. 38 Indeed the cloud of Yahweh was upon the Tabernacle in the daytime, and fire was in it in the nighttime for the whole family of Israel to see throughout all their journeyings.
\nNotes
\n2.a. LXX and Cairo Geniza fragment omit \u201cthe Tabernacle of.\u201d
\n3.a. SamPent has \u05d4\u05d0\u05e8\u05d5\u05df \u05d0\u05ea \u05d4\u05db\u05e4\u05e8\u05ea \u201cthe Ark Cover.\u201d
\n4.a. MT has \u05d5\u05e2\u05e8\u05db\u05ea \u05d0\u05ea \u05e2\u05e8\u05db\u05d5 \u201cand you are to set in order its arrangement\u201d; cf. n. 27:21.a.
\n4.b. \u05d5\u05d4\u05e2\u05dc\u05d9\u05ea \u201cand you are to set in place\u201d refers to the elevation of the lamps, setting them up high on the branches of the Lampstand to make the best use of their light; see 25:37.
\n6.a. SamPent has the definite article.
\n8.a. \u05e1\u05d1\u05d9\u05d1 \u201caround, surrounding.\u201d
\n10.a. \u05e7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1 \u05e7\u05d3\u05e9\u05c1\u05d9\u05dd \u201cutterly holy.\u201d
\n12.a. See n. 29:3.b.
\n15.a. Lit., \u201cit is to be for them, their anointing.\u201d
\n16.a. \u05db\u05df \u201cso.\u201d
\n17.a. The second year counting from the exodus, a point made specific by SamPent, which adds here \u05dc\u05e6\u05d0\u05ea\u05dd \u05de\u05de\u05e6\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u201cwith reference to their departure from Egypt.\u201d LXX has the same addition, also at 40:17.
\n19.a. LXX has \u03c4\u1f70\u03c2 \u03b1\u1f50\u03bb\u03b1\u03af\u03b1\u03c2 \u201cthe curtains,\u201d the term used in 26:1\u20136 and its parallels to translate \u05d9\u05e8\u05d9\u05e2\u05ea The appropriate word for LXX, on the basis of its reading of 26:7, would have been \u03b4\u03ad\u03c1\u03c1\u03b5\u03b9\u03c2 \u201ccurtains, screens of hide\u201d; cf. LSJ, 380.
\n22.a. SamPent has \u05d5\u05d9\u05e9\u05c2\u05dd \u201che then set.\u201d
\n25.a. \u05d5\u05d9\u05e2\u05dc \u201cand he set in place\u201d; cf. n. 4.b.
\n27.a. SamPent adds \u05dc\u05e4\u05e0\u05d9 \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 \u201cin the Presence of Yahweh\u201d here.
\n29.a. See n. 2.a.
\n33.a. SamPent, LXX, Vg have \u201call the work.\u201d
\n36.a. \u05d1\u05db\u05dc \u05de\u05e1\u05e2\u05d9\u05d4\u05dd \u201cin all their journeyings-forth.\u201d
\n38.a. \u05db\u05d9 \u201cfor, because.\u201d
\n38.b. LXX omits \u201cYahweh.\u201d
\nForm\/Structure\/Setting
\nSee Form\/Structure\/Setting on 25:1\u20139 and 35:1\u201336:7.
\nThis chapter, the conclusion to the composite Exodus by reason of its location, is more intentionally the conclusion to the Priestly sequence of narratives of instruction and narratives of construction connected with the media of worship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence. Indeed, it not only summarizes the broad outline of Exod 25\u201331 and 35\u201340, it does so by paralleling the narratives of instruction of 25\u201331 with a narrative of Yahweh\u2019s instruction to Moses regarding setting up the Tabernacle and its Courtyard and arranging their furnishings (vv 1\u201311) and by paralleling the narratives of construction of 35\u201340 with a narrative of Moses\u2019 work in strict obedience to all Yahweh\u2019s instructions (vv 16\u201333).
\nThe instructions of Yahweh concerning the anointing and the vesting of Aaron and his sons (the climactic ordination following these two acts is not mentioned here; cf. Exod 29 and discussion above) are not reported as carried out by Moses here, but in Lev 8, a passage that parallels the instruction narrative of Exod 29 and is regarded by many commentators as the continuation of the Priestly narrative of Exod 35\u201339, interrupted by the summary material of Exod 40 and the directions for sacrifices and offerings in Lev 1\u20137. (Cf., e.g., Noth, Leviticus, OTL [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1965] 68\u201369; K. Elliger, Leviticus, HAT [T\u00fcbingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1966] 106\u20137; J. R. Porter, Leviticus, CBC [Cambridge: University Press, 1976] 59\u201360; G.J. Wenham, Leviticus, NICOT [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979] 129\u201335.)
\nThe conclusion to Exod 40 (vv 34\u201338) and therefore to the entire book is a careful recapitulation of the primary theme of Exodus, appropriately restated both as a summary and also by way of a preparation for what is to follow, the narrative of the beginning of Israel\u2019s corporate worship in Yahweh\u2019s Presence and the narrative of Yahweh\u2019s guidance of Israel through the wilderness to and then into the land promised to the fathers. While it is necessary to keep in mind that the division of Exodus from Leviticus is, like the division of Leviticus from Numbers, somewhat arbitrary, and that the end of Exodus is not really the end of the larger tetrateuchal narrative, Exod 40:34\u201338 can nevertheless be seen as an effective summary and conclusion of one part of this larger narrative and an equally effective anticipation and beginning of its next part.
\nComment
\n1\u201311 The instructions of Yahweh to Moses concerning the setting up at last of the Tabernacle, its Courtyard, and their furnishings amount to a kind of review of the basic information of the narratives of instruction and construction, from which these verses appear to have been drawn. There is no new information here, apart from the specification of the date for setting up the Tabernacle: the first day of the first month (v 2) of the second year (v 17) following the exodus from Egypt. The sequence Moses is to follow involves (1) setting up the Tabernacle, (2) placing its furniture, (3) placing the furniture that stands outside the Tabernacle, (4) setting up the Courtyard around all this, and anointing everything set up and placed, beginning with the Tabernacle and its contents.
\n12\u201315 The instruction regarding Aaron and his sons, though it makes no use of the terms \u201cordain\u201d and \u201cordination,\u201d and though it is reported as carried out beyond the Exodus narrative, in Lev 8, is nevertheless an instruction to ordain, as the mention of the ritual of vesting and the ritual of anointing and the reference to the continuing ministry of Aaron and his sons and a comparison with Exod 29 and Lev 8 clearly show.
\n16\u201333 The account of Moses\u2019 action upon Yahweh\u2019s instructions is, like the account of the making of the sacral vestments (39:1\u201331) and the summary of the construction of the Tabernacle, its Courtyard, and their furnishings (39:32\u201343) punctuated with assurances that Yahweh\u2019s expectations have been carried out literally and without variation. Indeed, following the assertion of v 17, this assurance is given, almost like a refrain, at the end of the seven successive paragraphs describing the work of Moses in the sequence established in vv 1\u201311 (cf. vv 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 32). Once again there is no new information here, apart from the statement of the date on which the Tabernacle and its equipment were set up.
\n30\u201332 Following the report of the placement of the Laver, Moses and Aaron and his sons are said to have washed their hands and feet in its water, an action in keeping with the requirements given in 30:19\u201321, and a necessary preparation for any further ministry in the places of Yahweh\u2019s Presence. The order of this work, like the order of Yahweh\u2019s instructions, follows a sequence moving outward from the symbolic center of Yahweh\u2019s Presence, the Ark in the Holiest Space of the Tabernacle.
\n34 Immediately following the sonorous statement \u201cThus Moses completed the work,\u201d there is begun the concluding paragraph of Exodus, the language of which is semipoetic (cf. Cassuto, 483\u201385), almost hymnic. The impression is given of a Yahweh waiting with impatience for the completion of the symbolic place of his Presence and descending upon it the moment it is finally ready. The double reference to the cloud covering the Tent of Appointed Meeting and the Glory of Yahweh filling the Tabernacle is connected with the other cloud and Glory passages in Exodus (cf. 13:21\u201322; 14:19, 24; 16:10; 24:16\u201318; 33:9\u201310, 22; 34:5) and is a particular allusion to the narrative of Yahweh\u2019s descent onto Mount Sinai in the sight of Israel in 24:16\u201318 (see above), also a passage generally assigned to P.
\n35 There is no real discrepancy in the statement that Moses could not enter the Tent filled and surrounded with Yahweh\u2019s Presence, as Hyatt (332), among others, suggests. As in the approach to Sinai following the covering of the cloud and the settling of the Glory (24:15\u201318), Moses must await Yahweh\u2019s invitation before he can draw nearer to the Presence. In the narrative of Exod 24, that invitation is given in v 17; here, that invitation comes farther along in the narrative, perhaps, as Cassuto (484) suggests, in Lev 1:1. Another possibility is that it stands reflected at the end of the narrative of the ordination of Aaron and his sons, following Aaron\u2019s first sin-offering and atonement offering, after he had blessed Israel: \u201cand then Moses and Aaron entered the Tent of Appointed Meeting\u201d (Lev 9:23). The reference of 33:9 is of course not to the Tabernacle (see Form\/Structure\/Setting on 33:7\u201311).
\n36\u201338 Finally, and appropriately, Israel\u2019s further journeyings are linked to the guiding Presence of Yahweh, not only at hand but also visible to all the people as a cloud by day and as a fire by night. As long as the cloud remained upon the Tabernacle, Israel made no move to any new journey; when the cloud was raised, Israel too made preparations to travel, and in the direction indicated, no doubt (cf. 13:21\u201322) by the movement of the cloud. Thus Exodus ends as it began, in the multiplication of Israel in Egypt and in the singling-out of Moses, with Yahweh present and in charge of things.
\nExplanation
\nWith Yahweh\u2019s Presence promised, then demonstrated, then given to Israel in theophany at Sinai, the first half of Exodus ends. The second half of the book is preoccupied with response to that Presence, in life, in covenant, in worship, and even in disobedience. The largest part of that second half has to do with the communication to Israel of the reality of that Presence, through a series of set-apart places, set-apart objects and set-apart acts, all of them intimately connected, in one way or another, with Yahweh\u2019s Presence.
\nThis final chapter sums up the symbolisms of those places, objects, and acts, then recounts the fulfillment of the ideal of the Exodus theology of the Presence: Yahweh among his people, not in his mighty deeds, or in his rescue, or in his provision, or in his guidance, or in his judgment, or at a distance on a forbidden and foreboding mountain, but there in their midst; the symbol of his nearness visible to all, and all the time, Yahweh protecting and guiding, Yahweh teaching and blessing; Yahweh\u2019s Presence settled in Israel\u2019s center, Yahweh\u2019s Presence filling their Holiest Space, Yahweh\u2019s Presence in their living place, wherever it might be, and when; Yahweh\u2019s Presence in them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PART THREE ISRAEL AT SINAI (19:1\u201340:38) I. The Advent of Yahweh\u2019s Presence and the Making of the Covenant (19:1\u201324:18) II. Yahweh\u2019s Instructions for the Media of Worship (25:1\u201331:18) III. Israel\u2019s First Disobedience and Its Aftermath (32:1\u201334:35) IV. Israel\u2019s Obedience of Yahweh\u2019s Instructions (35:1\u201340:38) I. The Advent of Yahweh\u2019s Presence and the Making of the Covenant … <\/p>\n