Decalogue or Novilogue, How Many Were There Again?

Then God spoke all these words, saying,   “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery:

1. “You shall have no other gods before Me.  You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.  You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
2. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.
3. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you.  For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
4. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the LORD your God gives you.
5. You shall not murder.
6. You shall not commit adultery.
7. You shall not steal.
8. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
9. You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Exodus 20:1-17 NASB

I’m going to make this one short because the disorientation from how many commandments are on the “Tablets” is probably enough to throw most Christ-followers off center anyway.  You have probably noticed I refer to what most Gentiles refer to as the “Old Testament” as the “Hebrew Scriptures”.  While it’s not wrong to call it that, it is weird, and intentional on my part.  The main reason I do that is because I believe in a much stronger continuity between the two sets of Scripture than do most other Christ followers.  The term “Old” makes it easier to relegate to irrelevance.

But one spin off from this is a perspective of these Scriptures from the Hebrew standpoint.  In the Hebrew text used by most scholars of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Masoretic Text, there have been punctuation and notation elements added to aid in translation and recitation.  This text is not that old, and the elements have been added, and they are clearly a construct of human nature.  But they are interesting because they provide insight into how the culture from which these texts arose used and understood them.  Jesus lived and ministered in this culture as well; it would be good to be aware of it.

One difficulty is determining how if any of them are reactions against a rising Christian-based culture, and how many developed independently.  I don’t know, but I suspect that the way we have arrived at 10 instead of 9 commandments is part of why the Hebrew text is punctuated for 9.  Jewish scholars count them as 10 “Sayings” because they count the “prologue” as one “saying”.  The Catholic tradition numbers them differently than most Protestant traditions. 

What I have listed as 1, most Protestant traditions break into the first and second commandments, using the first sentence as the first commandment, and the rest as the second.  Reviewed together here, I think it makes more sense to keep them together than apart.  To maintain the count of 10 requires either splitting the last law about coveting (as do the Catholics and Lutherans), or considering them “sayings” and adding the prologue (as does modern Judaism).  Just because I kind of like the controversy, I like just leaving them commandments, and counting 9.  You will need to read them for yourself.

So why focus on the number and not the content?  Where’s the application?  Where’s the point?  At least I hope you’re asking these questions.  In the day of Moses, ink was precious and so was paper.  So where did my Master spend most of His precious ink and paper?  On Himself, and on His creatures, but not evenly split.  Jesus summarized the whole law and prophets with, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul, and your neighbor as yourself.”  If you split this list at law four, you will find something akin to this emphasis here.

But you will also find a Sabbath emphasis missing for most Christ followers.  It used to be a huge emphasis in this country, culturally as well as religiously.  But to understand the Sabbath, I think the wording is important.  It specifically refers to your “occupation”, not just anything done with your hands.  It’s as if God is telling His people to “get a hobby!”   If a break from the concept of a harsh and distant God of the “Old Testament” can be imagined, then this can be seen as an element of grace; which it is.

The intent in focusing on numbers is a renewed consideration of the structure to discover emphasis and importance.  It becomes clear that my Master has designed these commandments to focus my attention on Him primarily.  And in the midst of that focus He tells me to “chill out” one seventh of the time, because He did (in Exodus, in Deuteronomy it is because the people used to be slaves).  Making this day a day of worship is good, but I should worship every day.  It needs to be a day I “fast” from my occupation in order to re-center my life on my Master.  Fasting any more I would call a “vacation”. 

A Painful Reminder - Genesis 17

God said further to Abraham, “Now as for you, you shall keep My covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations.  This is My covenant, which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: every male among you shall be circumcised.  And you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be the sign of the covenant between Me and you.   And every male among you who is eight days old shall be circumcised throughout your generations, a servant who is born in the house or who is bought with money from any foreigner, who is not of your descendants.   A servant who is born in your house or who is bought with your money shall surely be circumcised; thus shall My covenant be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant.   But an uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant." (Genesis 17:9-14 NASB)

This is not a guy’s favorite topic.  It hurts just to consider it.  That God would use such a practice makes a painful point, but doesn’t necessarily make it clear.  This is something that is not unheard of in the time of Abraham, but it is not common by any means.  The medical reasons aside for such a practice (that would not be common knowledge in that day, if anyone knew of them) it is one that put the person practicing it in a small sub-group of people.  That may be part of God’s point.

Circumcision is mentioned in Scripture 87 times.  Of those 32 are in the Hebrew Scriptures, and this is the first reference.  So, in a sense, the law that became such a distraction for the Jews really started with the covenant between God and Abraham.  Using the criteria for what constitutes a law in Scripture, this command to keep this “sign of the covenant” fits in nicely.  It has both a reason and a consequence tied to it.

First, the reason is to be a sign of the covenant between God and Abraham.  Every male in the household, slave or free, is to have this sign.  Abraham made the covenant, but every male in the house carries the mark of it.  There are several things that make this not only interesting, but also important as a law to be used by Christ-followers in a modern setting (but don’t panic!).

Second, the consequence is really severe.  If a male refuses the sign, then that person is cut off from the household (or his people).  One of the interesting items in this passage is the flipping back and forth between second person singular (Abraham) and second person plural (everyone affected by this: his household and descendants).  So the consequence becomes an ethnic consequence as time goes on.

My observations that make this both interesting and important to modern Christ-followers stem from elements of the setting then; obvious elements.  This isn’t a sign to everyone else around the household/people.  It’s a “private” sign.  Only the household and members of Abraham’s descendants are aware of it.  The covenant of which this is a sign was that God would give Abraham descendants and the land of Canaan.  His part was this circumcision element.

This isn’t the first covenant that God enters into with Abraham, but it the first one where God requires anything but faith on Abraham’s part.  He and the males of his household will carry about the sign that this land will be given to the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, who had no children.  Every male would know and have a reminder of what God was doing through this man and his descendants.

Where I see the importance for Christ followers is in the importance of the covenant we are under.  Ours, like Abraham’s, has been ratified by a huge act on the part of our Savior.  But what is our mark?  What is it that we use to pass this covenant on down to our children?  Unlike Abraham’s covenant with the Creator, our Savior did not make this covenant with us and our descendants, but with persons.  I don’t receive my salvation because my parents were in this covenant.

If I want my child to enter into this same covenant, what am I doing to pass it along?  What reminder do I have or use a sign of this covenant?  Does my Master prescribe a “sign” of this covenant?  There are only two things that my Master prescribes, and they are not prescribed together.  One is baptism, which I believe is to be performed on a person once they become a Christ follower.  The other is Communion or The Lord’s Supper.  This is also for Christ followers.

The differences between circumcision and these two acts are huge.  Neither one of these are for males alone, everyone is included regardless of social or gender differences.  They are not painful (unless one is kept under water too long, but that almost never happens).  There are two, not one sign of this covenant.  The two signs are performed among individuals rather than within social structures (with one exception).

Communion is called that for at least two reasons.  First it celebrates the communion between the Creator and His human creatures with whom He relates.  Second it celebrates the communion of fellow Christ followers, regardless of other differences; at least it’s supposed to.  This one is performed within a social structure of “called-out ones” or church.  Churches come in various sizes, but share a lot in common, both within and out between different groups.

Another observation about this law is that this was done by parents to sons on the eighth day.  Initially, the adults and young men were circumcised, but this was to be continued by parents to sons.  These sons aren’t going to remember what happened, and won’t know the significance until they are taught it.  This continues the transmission of the covenant from one generation to the next within the household and among Abraham’s descendants. 

Scripture notes that sometimes groups of believers are baptized on a “household” scale as well.  Usually a prominent or sizable household, and it is not specified if the slaves or just the family members participated.  I’m not sure how to take this because I’m not told whether all the participants did it because “dad did” or because they too wanted to accept the covenant he accepted.  Scripture seems to accept it, so it may not be “normative” but it is acceptable to my Master.

The last observation is related to the first element; that this is done to those in the household who are not necessarily relations but are closely associated with the family.  In other words, once a person becomes a part of the social structure of Abraham’s house or of his descendants, they fall under this sign of the covenant between Abraham and God. 

This is where I believe this law became such a distraction for the Jews of Jesus’ day.  It was the private “club card” exclusive among the cultures around them.  It set them apart.  They saw it as a means of survival; to keep their society from being consumed by the ones in which they lived, which ruled over them.  This was not a new problem, because Canaan or Palestine had always been overrun by different cultures.  That they have maintained their identity as a people is miraculous; it is a confirmation of God of His continued love for these people.

Yet, this attitude of isolation or entrenched life means that while they separated themselves from distracting cultures, they also separated those cultures from God.  That was not really the plan.  It is my interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures that God intended all along to include the nations in His family; to redeem all of humanity, not just one people.  But I also see a struggle in and with His people to accept this element. 

This is a danger for Christ followers as well.  Both on an individual and on a church scale this attitude of isolation from the cultural enemies of our Savior also separates those in that culture from our Savior.  There are enough barriers inherent to this covenant without additional ones being created by fearful believers.  It is not the will and design of my Master that I restrict or dictate who and who will not be admitted to His family.  Yet, in a way, I do this whenever I refuse to engage with others outside my comfortable ring of safe fellow Christ followers.  That is not my Master’s way, and should not be mine.

So, this law, only a few verses, might be a bit more complex and meaningful than at first imagined.  Is it possible that it should be examined and mined by Christ followers for a better understanding of what Christ wants for them?  I believe so.  I believe it would be very profitable for believers to dive deep into this topic in order to better understand the will and design of our Master.  I believe we will find a missing part of the heart of Jesus when we do.

Something About Blood - Genesis 9

And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.  "The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given.  "Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant.  "Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.  "Surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man's brother I will require the life of man.

  "Whoever sheds man's blood // By man his blood shall be shed,

   For in the image of God // He made man.”

"As for you, be fruitful and multiply; Populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it." (Genesis 9:1-7 NASB)

There are a few imperatives in this passage, but I don’t see any of them as “laws” per se (again, a matter of opinion).  If the criteria I established for myself in the last post are used, then none of these verses work as a law because none of the imperatives have consequences specified.  Verses 4 and 5 along with the poetic element in verse 6 though do have consequences, it’s just that the prohibitions are not constructed using an imperative.  I think I need to widen my criteria to include prohibitions with consequences.

So now my criteria could be revised as follows:  If the text has an imperative or prohibition coupled with a consequence, whether good or bad, I will consider that as one sort of legal text.  Second, if an imperative or prohibition is coupled with a declaration of endorsement or rational support, a reason is given for it; I will consider that as a second sort of legal text.  If I modify these criteria in this way, then verse six fits nicely.  I believe the context also supports seeing this as a “law” since there is the establishment of a covenant taking place as part of Noah and his family leaving the ark.  Laws are often components of covenants helping establish responsibilities of either party.

These laws are both about blood.  One is about consuming meat with the blood still in it, and the other is about shedding the blood of another person.  The consequences are stiff.  When meat is consumed with the blood in it, the blood of the offender will be required.  But another way to look at verse 5 is as the consequences if any person or beast (or brother) sheds the blood of a person rather than eating the meat with the blood.  The problem I face is that if verse 5 is taken as the consequence of taking the life blood of a person, then this “law” no longer fits my criteria.  There is no “imperative” or prohibition with the consequence.

But there is a third way to see verse 5 as well.  It could be that it is not a consequence but an explanation of the prohibition in verse 4.  The reason blood is not to be consumed is that God reserves to Himself the blood of any living thing.  It belongs to God, so it is not to be consumed.  This is interesting for a variety of reasons; the cultural ones are the murkiest, but probably the most important.  I think that my interpretation lays more this direction, viewing verse 5 as a consequence of verse 4.  Execution for eating blood in meat seems a bit extreme, even for God.

The text of verse six actually meets both criteria of consequence and rational support.  In this verse it is the shedding of human blood, the violence that brought on the flood in the first place, to which God refers.  Here is laid down the rule that killing a person forfeits the killer’s life.  The rationale is that people are made in the image of God.  Therefore destroying this image is a personal affront to the Maker of the image, God.  It seems rational.  In fact, it is odd that it has to be said, I would think it would be obvious; that this law would have already been in place.  The earliest legal texts found so far all include prohibitions against murder with stiff penalties.  Perhaps they all stem from this one.

So what does all this tell me about my Master?  What do I learn of His character?  What is important to Him?  What would He have me do in consequence?

The first thing that strikes me is that blood is very important to God.  There may be cultural issues here, but I also see a place where sacrifice is foreshadowed, eventually leading to Jesus on the cross.  Blood is important, and here it is used to refer to the life of a person.  The term translated “lifeblood” is taken from the literal Hebrew terms, “your (2nd plural) bloods to/for your (2nd plural) souls.”  The blood of your soul isn’t as cut and dried as it sounds since soul isn’t always used the same way in Hebrew.  Here the context supports understanding soul as the whole person, or the living essence of the person. 

This living soul is important to my Master.  Death is a big deal to Him, and requires the punishment of death for those who kill.  I catch a glimpse of the pain my Master felt as He felt remorse over having created people in the first place.  The choice of fruit in the Garden of Eden had far reaching consequences, well beyond the death of Abel.  Cain’s descendants were a rampant scourge on the earth.  Cain and his descendants are not mentioned in lineages past Genesis 6.  He and all his children were eventually wiped from the face of the earth.  I see something here of the magnitude of the importance of the image of God to my Master.

And what of eating meat with blood in it?  I see in verse 5 that my Master reserves the blood to Himself.  Even before a “sacrificial” system, my Master claims the blood of any living thing as holy and His, without calling it holy; by claiming it, it become holy by definition (another action defining a term not used before).  Later on I will find that blood outside of the sanctuary profanes the person in contact with it.  Again, it belongs to God, and is reserved to Him.  Individuals in contact with it have to be cleansed. 

I cannot take blood so lightly.  I cannot take life so lightly.  Those living around me are living people in the image of God, and they are precious to my Master.  I stay away from them in fear, and keep the light and hope within me hidden.  Why?  These are precious people to my Master.  Their lives, their blood belong to Him.  How can I not do something to bring that vital news to them?  They may not receive it, but they might.  They may not want to have anything to do with church, but they might.  It’s not about church anyway; it’s about my Master’s love for them.  Once they experience that, they will desire church and Bible study, and all the rest.

In this account, God makes explicit what was implicit before.  He wants me and all His human creatures to know how precious they are to Him; how painful to Him it is when we destroy each other.  Do I get that?  I’m no pacifist, but it’s not hard to see the effects of the destruction of families, of lives, and hate that.  Countries are now “digging” their way out of the pain and destruction of war.  Do I see that pain of my Master that has viewed all this as sadness and waste?

But to bring it home to me personally, I play games that are violent.  Should I?  Are these games eroding my ability to see people as precious ones to God?  That is something I really need to take a good look at.  All the ones I play are military in nature, and that takes a lot of the stigma away.  God has and I believe does lead nations to war as punishment on other nations.  I believe He sets up and tears down rulers today in much the same way as He did in the record of His work among the Israelites in Scripture.  God commanded death, and complete and utter destruction for some in Canaan.  Again, this is not a cut and dried answer.  Violence clearly belongs to rulers and authorities.

Something that reflects the touch of sadness felt by my Maker is contained in verse 6.  The prohibition is given a consequence, so following it relies on a person’s self-interest.  Yet the reason given is the Image of God in each person.  I detect the wish of my Master that His image was enough to warrant holding life precious; this rule is a concession that pains His heart to have to give.  But I also see that my Master doesn’t give up on me just because my nature is flawed.  He works with me where I am to bring me closer to His design.  His Spirit within me works transformation of me more into the image of my Master.  The Image of God lives and I represent the hopes and desires of my Master!

God's First Law - Genesis 2:16-17

The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die." (Genesis 2:16-17 NASB)

Rather than define legal texts in terms of commands, I decided to look for a pattern.  Two things will indicate for me that the text is legal in nature.  First if the text has an imperative coupled with a consequence, whether good or bad, that is one sort (or two sorts with one sort of indicator) of legal texts.  Second, if an imperative is coupled with a declaration of endorsement or rational support, a reason is given for it.  Right now, those are the two criteria that immediately spring to mind.  I may find others in clearly legal texts, but right now I’ll use these two.

With those two criteria, I have eliminated the first imperative given in Scripture found in Genesis 1:28, the series of imperatives to manage the earth.  But in Genesis 2, I find the first example of one of these two types of legal texts.  In verses 16 and 17 God sets the boundary of what Adam may eat in the Garden.  He may eat freely (an intensified verb) from any tree but one.  The one in the center of the knowledge of good and evil produces fruit that will kill Adam on the day he eats of it.  The verb for death here is an intensified verb as well.  Just as surely as Adam will eat at all, he will die the day he eats of that tree.

I consider this a law partly because it is a command with a consequence, and that is one of my criteria.  But this is also labeled as a “command”.  This is part literary since there seems to be a narrator in this text missing from chapter 1, but this text feels different somehow as well.  There is a difference in the command missing from the previous imperatives.  I believe the difference lies in the consequence, which is one reason I have adopted that as a criteria.  I believe this difference was understood by the writer as well.  When this text was recorded it was sensed to be different from the previous one.  I suppose part of that was also foreshadowing.

So, examining these two verses as a legal text, what is the law made up of?  First of all it provides permission.  Adam may eat freely from any tree in the Garden where God placed him.  Adam is only limited by the Garden itself.  It could be asked why he would want to be otherwise, but the same question could be asked about the forbidden tree as well.  He seems content to remain within the boundaries of the Garden for his food.  So, even here his freedom is given within a boundary, the Garden.  While the rivers stemming from the Garden indicate that this Garden was enormous and provided life to the rest of the earth, still, it formed a boundary.

Secondly, this command provides a limitation.  From the tree of the knowledge of good and evil Adam shall not eat.  And a reason is given:  in the day he eats of it he will surely die.  At this point, I wonder how much Adam understood of the concept of death.  So far what has died?  Both animals and people eat plants, not each other (Genesis 1:29-30).  There wouldn’t be an occasion for death.  I am also struck by the names for the two trees: The Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Why not the tree of life and the tree of death?  Death results from eating the second tree just as life results from eating from the other one, so why that name?  Is it possible that God is helping Adam make his choice by providing a definition for something of which he has no experiential knowledge?

The purpose of this blog is to examine legal texts in the Hebrew Scriptures to discover their practical use to those who base their relationship to their Creator solely on Jesus as their Savior.  So where’s the practical use in this one?  In this law I find insight into my Master’s will for me and all people, perspective into my Master’s character, and finally from these first two I gain a glimpse into what could be the essential irreducible form of my Master’s interaction with His human creatures.  That’s a lot to derive from a few verses, so I do so with the understanding that it’s highly interpretive and subjective.

When God created the Garden in Eden He placed two trees.  One He called the Tree of Life and the other the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  The trees obviously represent a choice, and it was clearly the will of God that the Tree of Life be chosen over the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  He wants to be the source of my understanding of good and evil.  Trying to work this out for myself leads me to compromise where mixtures can favor one over the other and gain acceptance.  Evil can wear the guise of good and I can be easily deceived.  When I define good and evil I favor myself and miss the definition of God, hence I sin; I miss the mark.

The law regarding these two trees shows me that my Master will not leave me in the dark about what I need to maintain my relationship with Him.  He considers my relationship with Him so important that He communicates the boundaries.  He loves me so much that He takes the initiative and doesn’t expect me to “guess right” in order to be in right relationship with Him.  Sure He provides a choice, there were two trees, but He also provides direction as to what choice to make.  Anyone claiming it was cruel to provide two trees would still like 31 flavors of ice cream.  At least He provides direction, that’s more than I get from Baskin Robins.

I think that this law combined with the title of the two trees sets a precedent my Master follows throughout the remainder of Scripture.  If I had to give the opposite of life, it would be death.  Yet in a world where death is unheard of, what good would it do to provide a choice between life and death?  Instead, my Master provides insight into the term rather than just uses the label.  Death is defined here as what happens when I take on the role of knowing good and evil; a role reserved for God alone.  To say it another way, death occurs when I seek knowledge apart from the Creator of the universe; “…in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” 

In Genesis 3, from the result of Adam and Eve’s choice I find that what happens is separation from the good relationship with my Master.  Death is not defined by my Master biologically but rather He defines death relationally. But I also believe that He continues to help understand that definition throughout the rest of Scripture.  He wants me to know what they mean so I can choose.  In Deuteronomy 19, He wants me to choose life and blessings over death and curses.  In John 17, I find that, in the upper room, Jesus defines eternal life as knowing the One True God and the One He has sent.  The only knowledge I need is of Jesus.

So while this is a lot to unpack from a few verses, I think their place among Scripture provides support for unpacking meaning from them in this way.  This is one law that I think provides valid important insight into my relationship with my Master.  It is a law, the intent of which I do well to follow, and provides insight into my Master’s will for me.  That is a lot of value, even though I may not be judged on the basis of this law, to a degree, because I have chosen to relate to my Master (the Tree of Life, knowing the One True God and the One He has sent), it does define my salvation.  I’d say that’s one important law.