Moses Gives The Law

Technorati Tags: Old Testament,Moses,laws,commandments,Jewish

 

Moses gave his people hundreds of laws preserved in the first five books of the Bible. He said these laws came directly from God – and the Israelites had good reason to believe it.

Before Moses presented his people with the first and most famous of these laws – the ten commandments engraved in stone – God personally delivered those same laws in a spectacular speech before the entire nation. It was dawn, and as instructed by Moses, the people assembled at the base of Mount Sinai to meet God. Thunder and lightning filled the sky as a dense cloud lowered itself on the mountain. God appeared as a fire, cloaked in billowing smoke. The long blast of a ram’s horn announced his arrival, and the mountain shook with a violent earthquake. The people trembled in terror.

When God spoke, with a voice that filled the plain, he delivered the ten commandments for all to hear. The experience was so frightening that the people pleaded with Moses to serve as intermediary between them and God. “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die” (Exodus 20:19). Moses agreed and delivered the remaining laws on God’s behalf.

Those ten laws that Moses later carried down the mountain on stone tablets became the fundamental laws of Judaism, on which all other Jewish laws are based. Many of the more than 600 subsequent laws probably came to Moses during the months the Israelites camped at Mount Sinai. Some of these laws are distinctive enough that they actually define the nation. People could tell a person was an Israelite by the way the Israelite looked and behaved. As the law required, Israelite males were circumcised. Israelites did not eat certain common foods, such as pork and rabbit. Israelites did not work form sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday.

Other law codes in the ancient Middle East covered only secular matters, such as penalties for stealing and procedures for getting a divorce. But Jewish law covered both secular and religious matters, showing that God ruled both domains. Other law codes also operated on the basis of class distinction, with the upper classes drawing milder penalties than commoners. Under Jewish law, aristocrats and commoners were treated alike. Even slaves had some rights. Jewish law was also unique in ordering people to protect the helpless, especially widows and orphans.

There are two types of Jewish law. The first and most common are laws that apply to specific cases. “When someone steals an ox . . . the thief shall pay five oxen” (Exodus 22:1). The second are broad principles designed to help people live in harmony with one another and remain faithful to God. These laws are not related to any specific cases and they do not have any stated punishment. The best-known examples are the ten commandments, which serve as the core of moral teaching for both Jews and Christians, and are today reflected in the laws of many nations.

Behind the Jewish law was the people’s conviction that they served a holy God who lived among them, first in the tabernacle (a tent worship center), and later in the temple. “Sanctify yourselves therefore,” God said, “and be holy, for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:44). By carefully observing god’s rules and rituals, the Israelites maintained their holiness, and found forgiveness when they failed. The high standards and unique laws of Moses set Israel apart as “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). Like priests, their purpose was to serve God. In return, God promised to bless them.

Jewish tradition says that many of the laws and explanations that God gave Moses were not written, but were passed along by word of mouth. The oral law, as it became known, included supplemental laws and guidance that reinforced the written law. For instance, the written law said to honor the Sabbath by not working. The oral law defined what was and was not work. As times changed, religious leaders adapted and expanded these oral laws. For instance, when Rome destroyed the temple in AD 70, Jews could no longer obey laws about offering sacrifices of prayer – in keeping with a prophet’s direction, “we will offer the fruit of our lips” (Hosea 14:2).

By about AD 200, the collection of oral laws had grown so large that Jewish scholars realized they needed to write it down. The result was the Mishnah, the first authoritative collection of Jewish legal traditions, and the most revered Jewish document after the Bible.

The book of Exodus says little about what the ten commandments looked like, except that they were two stone tablets written on both sides (Exodus 32:15). They probably were not as large as those shown in paintings and movies, otherwise Moses would have had a hard time carrying them down Mount Sinai.

Some Bible scholars suggest the tablets may have been slabs of limestone, a relatively light rock common in the region. Somewhat like shale, limestone can be broken into thin, flat slabs. People throughout the ancient Middle East often used small pieces of limestone as we use paper, recording words or pictures with ink or inscriptions.

The stone tablets containing Israel’s most basic laws were to be kept in a gold-plated box called the ark of the covenant. This chest, which became Israel’s most sacred relic, measured about one and a third meters (four feet) long and two-thirds of a meter (two feet) wide and high.

The ark, with the ten commandments inside, was put in the Holy of Holies – the most sacred room in the tabernacle tent, and later in the temple. Babylonian invaders apparently stole the ark when they captured Jerusalem in 586 BC. But a Jewish book, written perhaps in the first century BC, said the prophet Jeremiah hid the ark in a cave on the mountain where Moses died, in what is now Jordan (2 Maccabees 2:4-8).

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Other Laws in Stone

The ten Commandments were not the first laws etched in stone. Hundreds of years before Moses, a Babylonian king named Hammurabi had 282 laws inscribed onto a black stone pillar more than two meters (seven feet) high. Some laws are similar to those in the Bible. “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth” (Exodus 21:24) echoes law 196 in Hammurabi’s Code: “If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out.”

 

 

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A Great King’s Lust

Technorati Tags: Old Testament,David,Bathsheba,lust

 

The Biblical narrative of David’s rise to power is filled with vivid detail. From the start, when Samuel prophetically anointed David, the narrative follows him through the dangerous rivalries of Saul’s court, and through his years as an outlaw. After Saul’s death, we witness David’s struggle to consolidate his position. Finally, David was anointed as king by all the tribes of Israel. He brought unity to the nation, defeated its enemies in battle, and captured Jerusalem – making it his capital and moving the Ark of the Lord there. Success attended him as he built his empire.

But it is just at this point that the biblical narrative takes a strange turn. David’s public success is followed by the dark narrative of his private sins and their dire consequences for himself and his family. The negative side of even so great a hero as David must also be told so that the reader will be reminded that it is God, and not a human being, who is the focus of the story.

The tragedy begins with David’s adultery with Bathsheba. There are hints, planted in the story’s introduction, that David had forsaken his heroic role. It was spring, “the time when kings go forth to battle,” but David sent a subordinate to do his kingly duty while he “remained in Jerusalem.”

While his troops besieged the Ammonites, David took a walk on the roof of his palace. Gazing down, he spied a beautiful woman bathing nearby. He found out that she was Bathsheba, the wife of a Hittite named Uriah, a man who was not an Israelite but was fighting in David’s army. In a raw exercise of power, “David sent messengers and took her.” He committed adultery with her, and she became pregnant.

The king sought a way to hide his crime. He had Uriah summoned back from the front, and, over the course of three days, tried to get the man to visit his wife so as to make plausible Uriah’s paternity of the child. To David’s chagrin, Uriah the foreigner remained true to the Israelite tradition of continence during a time of battle – a tradition that David himself had formerly observed. Uriah refused to go to his wife so long as his comrades were in combat.

David resorted to a more desperate stratagem. HE sent Uriah back to the war with a sealed message to his commander instructing that Uriah be placed in the front line of battle. The order was followed, and, as David had hoped, Uriah was killed. David quickly married Bathsheba, and when their son was born, they assumed they were beyond the reach of any who could call them to account.

“But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.” The prophet Nathan came to the king and asked him to judge the case of a wealthy man and many flocks of sheep who stole the one little lamb that belonged to his poor neighbor. Not realizing that Nathan was offering a parable of his own crime, the king angrily declared that the rich man deserved death. The prophet replied, “You are the man.”

David confessed and was repentant, but his remorse could not release him from the consequences of his sin. “And Nathan said to David, ‘The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child that is born to you shall die.’” One of the most beautiful prayers of the Hebrew Scriptures, Psalm 51, was later attributed to this moment in David’s life.

Nathan also predicted further strife and turmoil for David as punishment for adultery and murder: “the sword shall never depart from your house.” Indeed, the remainder of David’s reign was a sorry spectacle of jealousy, rape, murder, and rebellion within his own family.

The manner in which this story unfolds allows the readers to see the moral purposes of the narrators. The initial sin of David and Bathsheba is told with almost austere brevity, but the consequences of their sin are narrated with pathos and great detail.

The inclusion of such a story about this otherwise heroic king reveals much about the understanding of human beings in Israelite tradition. There are heroes and villains throughout the Scriptures, but none of them is a paragon of virtue – not the Patriarchs, not Moses, and certainly not King David. David was chosen by God to rule over Israel; he was blessed with victories; he was the progenitor of a monarchical dynasty; he was the prototype of the Messiah destined to come and redeem the world. Nevertheless, he committed a heinous sin.

When David neglected his responsibilities and began to exceed his prerogatives as an anointed monarch, his actions led to disaster. Even though divinely anointed, David was bound by the same rules of morality and justice that governed the lives of his subjects. The prophet Nathan did not hesitate to enter the palace and confront the king with his crime. David, for his part, felt obliged to acknowledge the truth and repent. Until he laid eyes on Bathsheba, David is portrayed as one immune to sinful temptations – in fact, he seems to be almost too good to be true. But some later Jewish commentators felt that David was overly confident and wished to be tested by God so that he could prove that he compared favorably with the Patriarchs. He complained to God; he wished to be put through a trial so as to attain the spiritual greatness of Abraham and the other Patriarchs. Sure enough, when temptation was placed before his eyes, the great king succumbed. David overestimated his own strength of character and was punished for his pride.

Thus the view of David that emerges from this moving story is of a man like other men. David’s public success could not mask his private vice. At the same time, David is not perceived to be a villain – his reputation is merely tarnished. Repentance restored him the eyes of the Lord, the Israelites, and posterity.

 

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Crossroads of Destiny

Technorati Tags: Old Testament,Gibeon,Joshua,Canaan

 

The town of Gibeon, about six miles northwest of Jerusalem, appears repeatedly in the history and legends of Israel. Its story reflects both the violence and the piety of ancient days, and in modern times it has become the site of remarkable archaeological discoveries. First occupied about 2800 BC, biblical Gibeon’s site is located in an Arab village in whose name – El Jib – Gibeon’s first syllable survives. (The name Gibeon means “hill.”)

When the Israelites, under Joshua, first entered Canaan (about 1200 BC) the site of Gibeon already had a millennium and a half of human history. Its inhabitants were prosperous vintners and wine merchants. It was a far more important settlement than the town to its south – the town that was to become the capital, Jerusalem.

The Gibeonites had a special relationship with Israel from the time of the conquest. Through an elaborate ruse they convinced Joshua that they were “from a very far country” and thus were able to make a treaty with Israel and escape the destruction that befell the other cities in the area.

When local Amorite armies attacked Gibeon for breaking the united defense against the invading Israelites, Joshua came to their aid. It was during the decisive battle that the Lord threw great stones down from heaven and Joshua commanded the sun to stand still (Joshua 10:11-14).

Gibeon next appeared on the stage of Israelite history in the stormy aftermath of the death of King Saul. David had been anointed as king of Judah, in the south. Saul’s son Ishbosheth, meanwhile, had been installed as king of Israel, in the north. Gibeon, now a city belonging to the tribe of Benjamin, was near the border between the northern and the southern regions.

In a mysterious incident that began as some sort of duel or tournament – but soon erupted into a full-scale battle – the opposing sides confronted each other around the great rock-cut pool of Gibeon (2 Samuel 2:12-17). David’s commander, Joab, sat on one side; the dead Saul’s former commander, Abner, was on the other. Abner proposed the duel by saying, “Let the young men arise and play before us.” Then Joab said, “Let them arise.”

Twelve soldiers on each side stepped forward and paired off for their bloody “play.” In the duel, “each caught his opponent by the head, and thrust his sword in his opponent’s side; so they fell down together” (2 Samuel 2:16). The death of the 24 initiated a fierce battle in which David’s side clearly had the advantage but the other camp was not totally defeated. Thus at Gibeon began “a long war between the house of Sal and the house of David” (2 Samuel 3:1), in which David ultimately triumphed.

After David’s victory, the Gibeonites again took part in another remarkably bloody incident. When a famine ravaged the land, David was told that it was caused by a “bloodguilt on Saul and on his house, because he put the Gibeonites to death” – an event that is not previously recorded in the Bible (2 Samuel 21:1). The Gibeonites demanded the death of seven sons of Saul to expiate this guilt. But by this time, many of Saul’s sons had already died. David satisfied the Gibeonites by giving them two of Saul’s sons and five of his grandsons, “and they hanged them on the mountain before the Lord, and the seven of them perished together” (2 Samuel 21:9).

Their bodies were left out to be devoured by birds and animals, but they were spared this indignity through the remarkable perseverance of Rizpah, the mother of two of Saul’s sons. Day and night, from April to late autumn, she guarded the hanging bodies. Finally David, hearing of Rizpah’s vigil, had the bones buried with Saul’s near Saul’s home in the land of Benjamin.

During the reign of Solomon, David’s successor, Gibeon was a great high place, where Solomon sacrificed a thousand burnt offerings to the Lord. Moreover, it was at Gibeon that Solomon had his famous dream, in which he asked the Lord for the wisdom to rule justly. Not only was he granted unsurpassed wisdom, but he was also given great riches and honor.

Biblical references to Gibeon are often in connection with a “pool,” or “great pool.” But it was not until 1956 that the “great pool” was located. In that year, an archaeological expedition led by J.B. Pritchard discovered the pool of Gibeon. It was a cylindrical water shaft – 37 feet wide and 82 feet deep – that had been cut into the rock. Seventy-nine rock-cut steps spiral down the inner wall of the shaft. This enormous excavation is estimated to have required the removal of approximately 3,000 tons of limestone, a work that in those days would probably have been done by hand. The giant well together with two extensive water tunnels, also hewn from the rock, formed a water system that – until relatively recently – continued to supply water to the modern town of El Jib.

 

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