So far we’ve seen some very curious biblical views of—and responses to—differing divine laws, which may seem quite foreign to the modern mind. How could Tamar’s actions of dressing up as a prostitute and intentionally getting herself knocked up by her own father-in-law have been considered more righteous than Judah not giving her in marriage to his son? Why did the judge Jephthah, in Judges 11, think it was okay to sacrifice his daughter to YHVH because he had made an oath? How could an oath so negate God’s explicit commands, as with Jephthah, the preservation of the Gibeonites, or even the spies who swore not to kill Rahab, against the command of YHVH? Unless their idea of YHVH worship and the nature of his law was radically different from a modern reading of the Torah, for which we’ve actually seen much evidence. Some of these different understandings of law probably merely point to older practices, such as child sacrifice, or tribal blood vengeance, as we have noted. But others actually serve a purpose of the authors.
We’ve noted many contradictions in the law and its application, ranging all the way from the Torah to Kings to Ezekiel. One might be tempted to conclude that all of these are simply a result of humans saying different things, and not having divine guidance. I would like to suggest looking at the matter from another perspective, which again focuses on the intent of the authors, who actually develop patterns in the literature of flipping law on its head periodically. In other words, they were actually trying to say something with many of these differences in divine law, not just changing the law because they thought it should be different.
When God Commanded His Law to Be Broken
First Caveat
It has long been widely noted that from as far back as the 8th century, prophets like Hosea often emphasized the idea that God required mercy rather than sacrifice. Amos would emphasize righteousness over sacrifice. Jeremiah (6th century) would emphasize obedience over sacrifice.[1] And most of the prophets, though often preaching keeping the law, including sacrifice, continually reiterated the need for righteousness of the heart and social justice, loving one’s fellow. The human tendency to follow the letter of certain laws while leaving the weightier matters undone was not new in Jesus’ day: preaching against such legalism had a long-standing tradition in the Hebrew Bible, even and especially against corruption in the priesthood itself.
Some Christians have pointed to such passages to try to show that the law was inferior. I will not take sides on this matter, but I will categorically affirm that ancient believers do not appear to have ever taken these prophets to be saying that keeping the law, such as sacrifice, was not necessary; even when the Temple was not in operation and sacrifice could not be done, faithful Torah observers kept what laws they could, and even made up more to boot. Even when Jesus upbraids legalists for leaving these weightier matters of righteousness and love undone, he actually agrees that they should be tithing even the tiniest household herbs like mint, dill, and cumin.[2]
So let’s dispense with more recent notions sometimes stemming from more modern Protestantism that law was not important to the authors of the Hebrew Bible, or even the New Testament. And let’s examine what the authors were doing even when God often himself set aside the law.
When Mercy Trumps Law
The easiest to explain cases of God ignoring his own law stems from his mercy, or at least the presence of an intercessory advocate or sacrifice. During the time of Moses especially, the plague or angel of death is not stopped because he gets done killing, but because of the blood of a sacrifice, or because Moses pleads on their behalf. Even Aaron, the Levitical offspring who gave Israel their only line of priests, was guilty of breaking a law that required his execution, and yet this was not carried out.[3]
It’s been my experience that one of the best examples of God’s mercy trumping law is often overlooked by some of the most conservative fundamentalists. It takes place during the reign of the reformer king Hezekiah. The account is only found in 2 Chronicles 29 and 30, not 2 Kings 18 and 19, which also covers the life and some reforms of Hezekiah. They find a copy of the book of the law while cleansing the long-neglected Temple, a book which in this account has been entirely lost. They “discover” that they have not been keeping the Passover, and so make a proclamation throughout all Israel, even though the northern kingdom of Israel had already fallen to Assyria years before; in this account, there are enough people left in the North that some reject Hezekiah’s command of centralized worship, and some accept. They are even promised that their kinsmen will be returned from captivity if they obey.
But when you look at the details of how the Passover was kept, or not kept, many curious details arise. Firstly, they did not keep it in the first month as required, because they were not ready. For instance, not enough priests were clean in order to perform the sacrifices; nevertheless, when they did keep it in the second month, some still weren’t. In fact, they had to be assisted by the Levites, which also was contrary to the law. Perhaps the most curious detail is that the Levites assist those who were not clean to offer sacrifice. So they not only offered the Passover lambs contrary to the law, they also engaged in a new rule/practice as a result: the unqualified Levites (who were not descendants of Aaron, per the law) were to assist the unqualified (unclean) people.
And finally, Hezekiah, the Davidic anointed, prays on behalf of all who eat of the Passover who are not ritually clean. Not only are they allowed to do so, but we’re actually told that God cleansed them, despite their violation of the rules. In other words, the law was suspended so that they could keep…the law. In this light, perhaps Jesus’ arguments centuries later for man not being made for the Sabbath do not seem so strange. (See below.) However, such arguments would seem completely foreign to the Pharisees, who probably would never countenance the violation of the letter of the law under any circumstance. And in my own experiences, fundamentalists of today similarly do not typically have a view of law that would allow its violation without a sin taking place. Such thinking is evident in questions like “what if you are on your way to [insert your favorite essential requirement for salvation here], but you are killed in a car accident?” I have heard many fundamentalists pose such quandaries, as their view of law leads to them inevitably.
But the way that the biblical authors so often abrogate the law is far more complex than merely God wanting to extend mercy to a remnant of sinful man on the Earth through whom to finally bring blessings and peace to the nations. We now turn to a few of the most dominant law-breaking motifs, and their purposes.
The Flipping of the Birthright
One of the most obvious motifs throughout the most foundational book of Genesis is the abrogation of the birthright which is passed to a younger son, rather than to the eldest. This would become illegal under the Mosaic law, and yet we see that God keeps doing it even into the Mosaic age. Why would he do that? This is not merely human error creeping into the Bible, but an intentional message.
All three of those most important generations that give us the very nation of Israel see a flipping of the birthright. It was not Abraham’s “first-born” son Ishmael who was to be counted as the firstborn, but his son Isaac, who was born about 14 years later. Isaac’s son Esau who came out first should have been counted as the firstborn, but Jacob, the other twin, would receive the blessing. And Jacob’s eldest, Reuben, would not receive the birthright. Rather we see in the stories of the latter half of Genesis etiological tales that give us two great nations from younger sons of Jacob.
The northern kingdom of Israel would be called Ephraim, since that was its greatest tribe. The grand soteriological tale of Jacob’s son Joseph, and the account of his younger son Ephraim who received the blessing of the firstborn in Genesis 48, gives us this kingdom. The other kingdom from Jacob’s offspring would be Judah, which is foreshadowed in Jacob’s blessings in Genesis 49. Like Joseph, Judah’s brothers would also bow to him, as well as the nations. Joseph was the next to youngest son, from the favored wife Rachel; it should also be noted that the very youngest son, Benjamin, would also become part of Judah, the only remnant of the children of Israel who would remain. Judah was also the last of the first group of four sons of Leah, the unfavored wife. None of these details were incidental to the Hebrews.
After the first three generations that give us the nation(s) of Israel, the motif of the law of the firstborn being broken continues. Judah’s “younger” twin by an incestuous union would get the right of the firstborn, and would give us the Davidic dynasty.[4] Further down that line, an illicit union with a Moabitess, Ruth, would give us David’s grandfather. David himself was the least of his brothers, even left out in the field when his father knew full well that the prophet Samuel had requested that he gather his sons. Then David’s son, the prince of peace, would not be the technically firstborn either, yet he received the blessing and the kingdom.
But let’s go backward in Genesis to the stories before Abraham. This motif was probably foreshadowed there. Cain was the firstborn, yet because he murdered his brother, we find the bloodline that would bring us the Abrahamic covenant would come through a younger son, Seth. After the Flood, the line that gave us Abraham would come from Shem, who was mostly likely the second son of Noah, despite being listed first in the genealogies.[5]
Patterns of God Breaking His Own Law
Unlike other ancient law codes, which sometimes allowed individuals to pay a fine, the Bible has one law regarding murder: the murderer’s blood must be spilt, or the land cannot be cleansed of the blood guilt, which eventually leads to God wiping the people out. And this law apparently is so important to Israel that it is actually portrayed as given before Moses, at Ararat after the Flood. In fact, this law is one of the few laws in the Bible which appears to be given for all people.[6] And yet, what does God do with the very first murderer, Cain? Not only does he not execute him, he protects him. We’ve already seen one possible literary significance of this story as it may relate to what I call the Azazel motif. Perhaps there are more explanations, such as a theological dichotomy between mercy and justice. But we need only to focus on the relation to the figure of Azazel to point out something: the author is portraying God’s law being suspended to portray a literary message. We will see yet more very significant examples below of the suspension of the capital penalty for murder to serve God’s purposes, even when the Mosaic law was supposed to have been in effect.
New Law?
Some of the most remarkable examples of the suspension of God’s law occur in one of the most powerful examples of restoration of YHVH worship, in the time of Hezekiah, as explained above. And I do not think that this irony is unintentional, especially since the author explicitly indicates that he knows they are acting contrary to the law. This passage fits well into the motif of the anointed of God praying for the cleansing of the people, as Hezekiah, son of David, does, and as Moses did, for that is the method by which God comes to cleanse them.
Here I believe is one of the keys to what is perhaps the conflict resolution of the story that connects across most of the major books of the Bible, a story which we will explore further later in this series. In other words, it is the pinnacle of most of the Bible’s message, so it is therefore important to most of the authors, and that is the soteriological motifs that stress the importance of an anointed (i.e., Messiah) son of David who will finally usher in all of God’s promises for the nation of Israel, despite their continual failure to keep the covenant. Not only that, but passages such as the one related to Hezekiah’s restoration also point to how David will do that, which includes a restoration of cleanness and forgiveness of the people, not just of imposing law and its penalties on them, which they cannot fully bear.[7] Many times, Moses stood in the breech between YHVH and the people to save them, and so we see Hezekiah doing as the Nasi who saves God’s people from destruction for not following God’s law. And God picks up the slack for their weakness and failure to follow that law.
But this messianic Nasi was not just to heal the people and bring them blessings from YHVH like Moses, the judges, and some of the kings of David’s line did. He was also to rule, which implies the giving of law. As we’ve seen in previous chapters, David not only ruled with the Mosaic law, he also added to it. So in a way, like Moses, he also was a law giver. Though Hezekiah did not add to the law of Moses, he did find the law, and gave it to the people as if it were new to them, for it was as if they had never seen it. Perhaps most important of all for this savior motif that keeps getting repeated throughout the Hebrew Bible, Hezekiah got the people cleansed despite their failure to keep it.
And this is why I believe that Ezekiel’s alterations to the law fit into this motif, as we saw in a previous chapter. For it is the Nasi that he too emphasizes, along with changes to the law, even if his changes never came to be.
And so now we come to New Testament version of the anointed son of David who was to restore all things, for all times, in a way that Hezekiah or Josiah, or even Moses, could have only done temporarily. He would become not only law giver, but a “superseder” in a long tradition, which he would in fact reference to prove himself.[8] When Jesus is caught in the act of plucking grain on the Sabbath, he says that the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath. He looks back over a long line of broken laws which appear to be approved of God, including David’s men eating the bread of the presence, which the law banned all but the priests from eating.[9] I’ve heard Christian exegetes curiously interpret Jesus’ words to indicate that David bore guilt for this; however, from the context it should be obvious that Jesus was drawing the analogy because his hearers would have perceived David as actually guiltless. The version found in Matthew 12 is perhaps most explicit, which mentions the priests who “violate” the Sabbath, and are guiltless! Again, it seems we have a theological principle here where God’s care for his people supersedes law. To see how the pattern of law breaking is woven right into the narrative of King David himself, check out my book here.
[1] Hosea 6:6; cf. Jeremiah 6:20; 7:21-22; Amos 5:7, 10, 11, 12, 15, 21-25
[2] Matthew 23:23
[3] Exodus 32. Cf. Deuteronomy 17:1-7.
[4] Genesis 38:27-30.
[5] Some translations of Genesis 10:21 say that Shem was the elder brother of Japheth, while others say the opposite, as the Hebrew is not certain. Genesis 5:32 seems to suggest that Noah began having sons at the age of 500, 100 years before the Flood, and we’re told that Shem was 100 years old two years after the Flood. Since Ham was the youngest (9:24), that leaves only Japheth to be born when Noah was 500. However, all this assumes the ancients were very precise with such numbers, which they often weren’t.
[6] Genesis 9:6; for the Mosaic law, see Deuteronomy 21:1-9; Numbers 35:31, 35.
[7] It may sound like I’m following Paul’s reasoning for the purpose of the law here (e.g., Galatians 3), but as these examples indicate, Paul didn’t make this up.
[8] I give hearing to the arguments against New Testament Supersessionism in chapter 8 below; I also argue that seeing the New Covenant as superseding the old is not the full picture of what the New Testament authors were doing. I thus use “superseder” here in a more general sense, to be understood in the present context. In fact, the present context gives more meaning to the idea that Supersessionism is an incomplete understanding of what the first century writers did, since this is an analysis of the tradition as found in the Hebrew Bible.
[9] Mark 2:23-28