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Sunday, January 1st, 2023
04:44
Been a little while. I notice that my absence from writing these entries (as well as committing to studies in general) over the autumn period mirrors the same span of absence I underwent last year, and the year before that, it seems to be a trend, seasonal apathy maybe. Regardless, it's a new year, and a new start. I never got around to finishing Ninian Smart's book on World Religions, it's still in the 'reading' slot on my desk, unmoved since late October. I will finish it, but it will likely be slower, as I plan to read my academic Bible over the course of this year, at least one page per day, which possibly means one diary entry per reading session, it's more than likely that I'll falter on this point eventually, but it's worth the attempt at commitment regardless. I will finish it, I am just preempting the inevitable slump in energy. This means that I will likely not have much time to read other texts in this area during that period, however, though I'll definitely keep up on my lighter reading, as I've been gifted an e-reader. A snazzy device, for sure.
As for how I've been, I can't complain, I mean, I can, but I won't. I have actually been reading quite a lot since my last entry, just fiction, though—I've been burning through my backlog of Cherryh novels to finish a review document that I've been typing up (for well over a year at this point!) of her Alliance-Union universe, so I'll probably stick that on my website when it's done. I've also found some neat books in charity stores within this period, I'll probably get around to detailing them as and when I sort my physical books (I have to donate a bunch, far too many hanging about the place).
I don't have a crazy amount to add, I'll focus on my Bible reading going forward, I'll try to shunt Smart's text as I go, just so I can just cross it off the list and get to other works as I eat into the year (my to-read pile of comparative religious texts is startlingly large at time of writing).
Addendum: Kali just asked me what I was writing, and much to her dismay, it was not about 'her tittys'; I hope this note placates her ego.
20:40
So begins my reading of the New Oxford Annotated Bible. My notes on this text are going to be very erratic, likely varying from entry to entry, some short, some long, and there's a lot to get through. It's going to be messy, and I'm going to type them onto my computer rather than write them in my diary, so as to make it easier on myself as I go (I will also be able to highlight particularly relevant information in bold, for my own convenience as online reference). Each entry will come with a header that refers to the specific book and number being referred to. It's extremely likely I will use extensive quotations of footnotes, as well as the text itself as I make my personal entries. No time like the present, I suppose!
It should be noted that this Bible is using MLA formatting, so citations will read with colons throughout. I will also be defaulting to using hyphens in lieu of en-dashes.
20:42
Introduction to the Pentateuch
The Pentateuch is the designation for the first group of books in the bible; assessing and naming a unified theme for the Pentateuch proves problematic: the development of Israel, the figure of Moses, as well as the covenant do not act as cohesive motifs for the entirety of the five books, composed at various different times, and by various differet peoples as they were, as such, scholars posit various extensions to the Pentateuch in order to group together such historical themes (the six books being the Pentateuch, plus Joshua, as well as the Enneateuch, or the nine books, for instance).
Torah, meaining in Jewish, Law; Greek, nomos (as found in the pre-Common Era Greek translation). Many examples of Law can be found in these opening books, such as the law of circumcision, the laws oncerning inheritance, the creation of the sabbath, as well as the Decalouge (the Ten Commandments), and the laws of sacrifice detailed after the introduction of the tabernacle.
Torah can also mean instruction, or teaching; teaching is not confined to law, as narratives and stories are as effective a medium of instruction.
Thus, given the predominance of narrative in significant portions of the Pentateuch, especially in Genesis, the beginning of Exodus, and Numbers, it is best to understand the biblical term torat moshe as "the instruction of Moses," an instruction realized through narratives and laws, which together elucidatet the proper norms of living and the relationship between God and the world.
The view that the Torah should be understood as the divine word mediated by Moses was the standard view of synagogue and church through the Renaissance; this is explicitly contradicted by the Torah's narrative, as Genesis refers to events that clearly happened after Moses' time ("at that time the Canaanites were in the land", implying that at the time of the author, the Cananites were no longer in the land, which was not the during Moses' lifetime).
The Documentary Hypothesis from the nineteenth century considers the Pentateuch to be composed of four main sources of documents that were edited or redacted together; this is supported by the fact that language and theological positions seem to differ from text to text: It has long been noted that chs 1-3 of Genesis twice narrate creation [. . .] [as] the second creation account does not simply mirror or repeat the first, but differs from the first both in outline and in detail, The manner in which God creates is of specific note, as in one case he speaks the world and man and woman into existence at once, but in the next he forms man and woman in sequence, fashioning them somehow in a manner that is distinctly not speaking.
Two of the apparent source documents of the Pentateuch (J and P) seem to speak of two distinct flood narratives, but the flood story as read in the collected work culminates in a tradition that God will never again bring a flood on the land; for this reason, the J and P flood narratives cannot appear as separate and complete narratives, so they are intertwined. The same happens again with the plague of Blood in Exodus, in one (J), Moses is the protagonist, and the blood affects only the Nile, and the main plague is death of fish, while in the other (P), Aaron appears as well, and blood affects all Egyptian water sources. Differentiating which source documents contributed to which part of the text is easiest in the original Hebrew, as many translations obscure differences, using neutral language where originally distinctions between composite narratives could be found.
The issue of slavery: Exodus differentiates between the treatment of male and female slaves, whereas Deuteronomy claims that they should be treated similarly: Such legal differences are not surprising given that the Bible is composite and that the different legal collections reflect norms or ideals of different groups living in different times or locations.
Some quick ways in which one can differentiate the proposed four sources of the Documentary Hypothesis:
J (Jahwist) is well known for its highly anthropomorphic God, who has a close relationship with humans (walking through the garden, making garments for the man and woman so as to clothe them).
E (Elohist) considers God as being more distant, typically communicating through dreams and intermediaries (such as angels and prophets).
P (Priestly) is characterized by a strong interest in order and boundaries, as well as an overriding concern for the priestly family of Aaron that supervises the Temple-based religious system.
D (Deuteronomist) is characterized by a unique hortatory (preaching style) and insists strongly that God cannot be seen, and is concerned with the specifics of how and where God is to be worshipped (in one place, understood to be Jerusalem).
Each of these sources have 'collections' of Pentateuch law associated with them, as such groupings of laws are thought to independently originate with each specific source.
Modern scholarship has largely abandoned rigid acceptance of the Documentary Hypothesis, as though it is clear the Pentateuch is drawing from numerous distinct sources, it is not so easy to group and date them in any meaningful manner (some presumed historical events that accompanied the dating of these sources have since been found to be largely mythical), scattered and diverse as they are.
Most scholars who continue to work with a documentary model no longer see each source as the work of a single author writing at one particular time but recognize that each is the product of a single group of "school" over a long time. Thus, it is best to speak of streams or strands of tradition and to contrast their basic underpinnings, rather than to speak of a source coming from a single auhtor, period, and locale. Yet, despite the unraveling of a consensus on the exact date and nature of the sources, it is still important to acknowledge the many contradictory perspectives found in the Torah, and to contrast the ideologies and worldviews of different passages, contrasting, for example, the Deuteronomic view of Israel's fundamental, intrinsic holiness—as seen, in Deut 7.6, "For you are a people holy to the Lord your God"—with the Priestly view, articulated most clearly in the Holiness Collection, which suggests that Israel must aspire to holiness—as in Lev 19.2, "You shall be holy."
The compilation and redaction of the Pentateuch is thought to have happened over a long period of time by a series of redactors (R) sometime during the Babylonian exile or soon thereafter in the early Persian period. This contrasts with the traditional view that Ezra alone compiled the books at the request of the Persian authorities (the so-called royal authorization hypothesis), a largely fictitious assertion. The redaction of the Torah, like the editing of other ancient works, was not interested in creating a purely consistent, singular perspective but incorporated a variety of voices and perspectives and wished to preserve them despite their repetitions and contradictions. This presents a problem to scholars: Do we concentrate on interpreting the indiviudal sources, on hearing the voices of the constituent parts of the text before redaction took place? Or do we focus on the final product, an approach that has been called holistic reading?
21:30
Introduction to Genesis
Jewish tradition calls the first book of the Bible after its first word, Bereshit, which can be translated as "in the beginning" or "when first"; it was common in the ancient world to name a book after its first word(s) (see: mesopotamian epics).
Genesis comes from the ancient greek translation of the Torah, the Septuagint, Genesis in Greek meaning 'origin' or 'birth'; this name highlights an important dimension of the book of Genesis: its focus on genealogical origins: Though Genesis contains some of the most powerful narratives in the Bible, these stories occur within a genealogical structure, [. . .] within this framework, the book may be understood as an expanded genealogy of the "children of Israel" who will be the focus of attention in the book of Exodus and subsequent books.
In the ancient Near East, most literary compositions, including Genesis, were anonymous. Only during the Greco-Roman period do we start to see statements in early Jewish texts that Moses wrote Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch. This is thought to have been a response to Greek influence on Judaism, with Jewish authors retroactively painting the Pentateuch as having been penned by Moses, easily the most important figure to the work. Such claims included a supposed justification found in Deuteronomy 4.44, "This is the law [Heb torah] that Moses set before the Israelites," a passage taken to suggest Moses' authorship. Again, this can be taken as a later revision, as the Pentateuch includes events that happened after Moses' death (including Moses' death and burial, for that matter).
Most scholars agree that the texts now found in Genesis began to be written down sometime after the establishment of the monarchy in Israel in the tenth century BCE or later. Initially thought to have been composed of two distinct sources (J and E), modern scholarship sees the text as a more nuanced composition made up of various threads from various different times and locations. In any case, the earliest works now embedded in Genesis were products of scribes working in the contest of the monarchies of early Judah and Israel.
Many important parts of Genesis, however, were not written until after the monarchy had fallen in 586 BCE and Judean leaders were living in exile in Babylon. This is where many biblical themes of promises of land and progeny entered the biblical narrative, with scribes editing, adapting and tying earlier writings to the books of the present, reassuring the exiled peoples that God would bless them as he had blessed their ancestors. Revision, indeed.
In conjunction with this, Genesis sees the introduction of the Priestly source (P), with various sections and passages in Genesis seeming to have direct links to passages in later Exodus; the scribes of P having written their own parallel version of the events of earlier Genesis, having been consolidated with various other sources into the Pentateuch we know during the exilic period. This consolidation, however, also produced the numerous contradictions in Genesis that can be seen by the attentive reader, e.g., inconsistency in creation accounts, the differences between flood narratives (sacrifice versus no sacrifice).
Genesis can be said to be comprised of two main sections: the primeval history in chs 1:1-11:26 and the ancestral history in chs 11:27-50:26. The latter section can be broken down thusly:
Abraham and Sarah (chs 11.27-25.11)
Jacob and Esau (chs 25.19-35.29)
Joseph and his brothers (chs 37.2-50.26)
Notably, despite the male focus of headings like this and in the book iself, it is matriarchs of ancient Israel, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah, who often play a determinative role in the Genesis narratives of birth and the fulfillment of God's promise.
The former section of primeval history itself is composed of two major sections:
(1) the creation of the cosmos and stories of the first humans (1.1-6.4); and
(2) the flood and dispersal of post-flood humanity (6.5-11.9).
It's worth noting that these narratives feature universal traditions similar to myths in other cultures, particularly those in the ancient Near East that predated the Biblical narrative by hyndreds of years, likewise featuring the creation of the world, a flood, and the vow of the gods (here plural) not to destroy life with a flood again.
These two sections are then followed by a genealogy in 11.10-26 that traces the generations connecting Noah's son, Shem, to Abraham, which is where we pick up on the aforementioned ancestral history that details God's promise to Abraham and his ancestors.
Taken all together, we can outline Genesis as follows:
(I) The primeval history (1.1-11.26) composed of:
(A) Creation and violence before the flood (1.1-6.4)
(B) Re-creation through flood and multiplication of humanity (6.5-11.9)
(II) Transitional genealogy briding from Shem (the Primeval history) to Abraham (Ancestral History) (11.10-26)
(III) The ancestral history (11.27-50.26)
(A) Gift of divine promise to Abraham and his descendants (11.27-25.11)
(B) The divergent destinies of the descendants of Ishmael and Issac (Jacob/Esau) (25.12-35.29)
(C) The divergent destinies of the descendants of Esau and Jacob/Israel (36.1-50.26)
By the end of the book, the lens of the narrative camera has moved from a wide-angle overview of all the peoples of the world to a narrow focus on one small group, the sons of Jacob (also named "Israel").
The history of interpretation of Genesis begins with its gradual composition over centuries. Early monarchic scribes reinterpreted oral traditions in writing the first preexeilic compositions behind Genesis. Later exilic scribes expanded and joined together earlier compositions in the process of addressing an audience of Judeans exiled in Babylon. Priests (exilic or postexilic) wrote their own versions of the beginnings of Israel, "P". Later postexilic writers consolidated the non-Priestly and Priestly writings into a common Torah that became the foundation of later Judaism. Each of these stages involved interpretation of how earlier writings pertained to the present. Genesis as we have it now is a crystallization of these multiple interpretations.
Commentary here on how Paul used Abraham's actions in Genesis as an argument for why Gentile converts did not need to fulill Torah requirements in order to partake of God's promise, as long as they joined themselves to Jesus Christ; this was in contrast to Jewish scholars who use Genesis to argue the opposite, that Torah law is certainly a pre-requisite in every sense of the word for salvation when it comes to Gentiles. I'm sure we'll see more on this later, so I write this here mainly for posterity.
Commentary too on how Islam interprets Genesis, with Abraham's son Ishmael, not Issac, being the almost-sacrifice unto God according to Islamic tradition. Moreover, it is said that Abraham and Ishmael went on to find and rebuild the Kaaba shrine at Mecca. In this way, stories from Genesis are linked to two of the five central pillars of Islam: monotheism and pilgrimage.
Discussion of the relatively new phenomena of arguing for the historicity of the creation narrative as found in Genesis; the notion of Genesis being literal history was not a significant concern in premodern times, such stories were often read metaphorically or allegorically: Moreover, many would argue that an ancient document such as Genesis should not be treated as scientific treatise or a modern-style historical source. Instead, its rich stoer of narratives offer nonscientific, narrative, and poetic perspectives on values and the meaning of the cosmos that pertain to other dimensions of human life.
Many who resolved to read the whole Bible, hey there! have made it through Genesis, but what they find often surprises them. Those who know the stories of Genesis through the lens of later interpretation often assume that the characters in the book are saints. A closer reading reveals otherwise. The supposedly "faithful" Abraham often seems doubtful of God's intent to protect and provide for him, and Jacob and his family are distinguished by their ability to survive in the world through bargaining and trickery. Such stories pose a challenge to those who would use the biblical ancestors as role models for ethical behavior. Standing at the Bible's outset, they challenge readers to develop other models for understanding and appreciating this ancient text.
Monday, January 2nd, 2023
21:30
Genesis
Gen 1:1: The priestly account of creation presents God as a king, creating the universe by decree in six days and resting on the seventh. Scholars differ on whether this verse is to be translated as an independent sentence, even a title summarizing what follows (e.g., "In the beginning God created"), or as a temporal phrase describing what things were like when God started (e.g., "When God began to create . . .the earth was a formless void"; cg. 2.4-6). In either case, the text does not describe creation out of nothing (contrast 2 Macc 7.28).
Gen 1.2: As with other ancient cosmogonies, Gen 1.2 begins with detailing what things were like before creation; Earth being uninhabitable sets the stage for God's transformation of it. Christian interpreters have often seen the "Spirit" of the Trinity later in this verse.
Gen 1.3: The first of eight acts of creation through decree. Like a king God pronounces his will and it is accomplished.
Gen 1.4-5: Introduction of two crucial themes: the goodness of creation, and the idea that creation is acomplished through God's manipulation of elements of the universe.
Gen 1.6-8: The dome/Sky made on the second day separates an upper ocean (Ps 148.4; see Gen 7.11) from a lower one, creating a space in which subsequent creation can take place.
Gen 1.11-13: Earth is a feminine noun in Hebrew; echoes universal mythologies of the feminine earth bringing forth life—God is involved only indirectly here, commanding the earth to put forth.
Gen 1.14-19: In response to non-Israelite cultures who worshipped the heavenly bodies, the bodies are not named and are identified as mere timekeepers.
Gen 1.20-23: God's blessing of the swarming creatures anticipates a similar blessing that God will give humanity.
Gen 1.26: The plural us, our, probably refers to the divine beings who compose God's heavenly court.
Gen 1.26-27: Image, likeness is often interpreted to be a spiritual likeness between God and humanity. This idea of God's making of humans as a "God image" (1.27) may instead be related to ancient ideas of the making of physical cult images of deities and/or ancient beliefs that the king was an "image" of the deity, and thus authorized to rule. This latter idea is democratized here. God makes all of humanity as images of God in order for them to exercise godlike rule over earth's creatures.
Gen 1.27-28: Stressing the creation of humanity as simultaneously male and female; prepares for God's fertility blessing that enables them to multiply greatly.
Gen 1.31: Where individual elements of creation were "good", the whole is very good, perfectly corresponding to God's intention.
Gen 2.1-3: God's seventh-day rest (Hebrew: "shabat") here weaves a seven-day rhythm into creation, anticipating later commands for Israel to rest on the seventh day (e.g., Ex 16.22-30; 20:8-11//Deut 5.12-15).
Gen 2.4-25: Creation in a garden. Non-priestly Yahwistic tradition differing from 1.1-2.3, as evidenced by the different style and order of events—though different, it nevertheless reflects ancient temple imagery.
Gen 2.4-6: A description of how things were prioer to creation is common in ancient Near Eastern creation stories.
Gen 2.7: The wordplay on the Hebrew "adam" (human being; here translated "man") and "adamah" (arable land/soil; here ground) introduces a motif characteristic of this tradition: the relation of humankind to the soil from which it was formed. Human nature is not a duality of body and soul; rather God's breath animates the dust and it becomes a single living being (Ps 104.29; Job 34.14-15).
Gen 2.8-9: Eden, likely meaning 'well-watered place'; elsewhere called "garden of God/the Lord" (13.10; Ezek 28.13-16; 31.8-9; Isa 51.3; Joel 2.3); such sacred gardens are known in other ancient Near Eastern temples. In addition, ancient Near Eastern art and texts feautre a prominent focus on trees, often associated with feminine powers of fertility.
Gen 2.15: God's placement of the human in the garden to till it echoes other ancient creation narratives where humans are created to labor on the gods' behalf.
Gen 2.18: The hebrew word rendered as "helper" need not imply a subordinate status.
Gen 2.19-20: Here, animals are created after the first man, rather than before (cf. 1.24-25). The human's naming of the animals suggests dominion over them analagous to that seen in in 1.26-28. Yet the Lord God here contrasts with the all-powerful deity depicted in ch 1; The Lord God creates the animals in a comical, failed attempt to make a truly corresponding helper for the human.
Gen 2.21-23: The connection of men and women is affirmed through the crowning event of creation: the making of the woman from a part of the man, mirroring that of humanity's connection to the ground, so too is there wordplay here, as seen in the man's poem, with the Hebrew for woman, "ishshah" stemming from that of the Hebrew for man, "ish".
Gen 2.24-25: Unashamed nakedness and the purity of sex is here considered as reflecting the essence of the connection God created between man and woman; innocent and uncivilized.
Gen 3.1-24: Garden disobedience and punishment. Though this story is often taken by Christians as an account of "original sin," the word "sin" never occurs in it. Instead, it is a sophisticated narrative describing how God's acts and their aftermath lead to the formation of fully adult, mortal humans to till the earth outside the garden.
Gen 3.1: Both the nakedness of the man and woman as well as the craftiness of the snake are described with the same Hebrew word, "arum", drawing contrast. Snakes were a symbol in the ancient world of wisdom, fertility, and immortality. Only later was the snake in this story seen by interpreters as the devil (see Wis 2.24).
Gen 3.3: Worth noting that the woman's recitation of God's prohibition differs from the actual words, leaving ambiguity as to which tree she is referring to, and though it was initially directed at the man, and not at her, she assumes she is included in the prohibition.
Gen 3.4-5: The snake introduces doubt by contradicting God's word, attributing God's prohibition to God's fear that humans would have their eyes opened so they gain godlike wisdom, knowing good and evil.
Gen 3.6-7: The couple eat from the tree, and gain enlightenment. Such wisdom takes them from the earlier unashamed nakedness (2.25) to clothing, a mark of their first move from childlike/animal-like unashamed nakedness to civilized adulthood.
Gen 3.8-13: The disintegration of the earlier simple bond between God, the man, and the woman is shown by the hiding of the humans from the Lord God and the tendency of the man to blame the woman (and implicitly the Lord God) for his action. Later interpreters of the story have shown a similar tendency to follow the man in blaming the woman (e.g., Sir 25.24; 1 Tim 2.14).
Gen 3.16-19: The man's rule over the woman here is a tragic reflection of the disintegration of original connectedness between them.
Gen 3.20: Eve, resembles the Hebrew word for "living"; because she was the mother of all living.
Gen 3.21: The fashioning of clothing for the man and woman by the Lord God is a form of divine recognition of their complete transition, through gaining wisdom, from childlike innocence to adulthood.
Gen 3.22-23: As elsewhere in the ancient Near East, humans here are depicted as having a brief opportunity for immortality. The Lord God's fear of humans becoming godlike (cf. 1.26-27) recalls the snake's assertions in 3.4-5. The term "us" probably refers to the heavenly court once more. God's speech here clarifies that the humans gaining of knowledge of good and evil would send them from the garden, permanently preventing their immortality, validating the prediction that they will "certainly die" made in 2.17.
Gen 3.24: Cf. Ezek 28.13-16. The last echoes of temple imagery occur here. The cherubim are composite, winged creatures like the half-human, half-lion sphinx of Egypt. Representations of them guarded sanctuaries like the one in Jerusalem (1 Kings 6.23-28,32,35). The gate to the garden of Eden is in the east, like the processional gate to the Temple (Ezek 10.19).
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2023
04:18
Gen 4.1-16: Cain and Abel. Relational focus on brothers, paralleling the focus on relations between man and woman in the prior chapter.
Gen 4.1: Emphasis on the power of creation that is childbirth; the child is named Cain, derived from a Hebrew word for create, "qanah."
Gen 4.2: The name Abel is the same word translated as "vanity", or "emptiness" in the book of Ecclesiastes: His name anticipates his destiny. The distinction in rpofessions between Cain and Abel implies a further step toward culture.
Gen 4.3-5: Why God has a preference for Abel's sacrifice and Cain's is not well explained; it is likely that the ancient Israelite audience would assume a divine preference for animal sacrifice over that of Cain's vegetable offering, but such an instance of divine preference would be unexplainable for Cain; he could not have known.
Gen 4.7: The first mention of sin in the Bible; sin is somehow linked wih the risk to Cain if he does "not do well" in dealing with his anger.
Gen 4.10-11: Blood is sacred, for it is the seat of life (9.4; Deut 12.23), and blood of unpunished murders pollutes the ground (Num 35.30-34).
Gen 4.13-14: The importance of arable ground in these chapters can be seen in Cain's conclusion that expulsion from the soil means being hidden from the Lord's face.
Gen 4.16: Land of Nod, Nod in hebrew meaning "To wander", or "Wandering". Footnote says to refer to notes on Gen 11.1-9 which mentions the conclusion of the eastward journey of the family that starts with Cain's leave in this verse.
Gen 4.17-26: First overview of generations from creation to flood. Deriving from a different source than 5.1-32, most of the names here are variants of those found there, but not in the same order. Note: the book includes two graphs of the two genealogies, taken from the Yahwistic and Priestly sources respectively.
Gen 4.17: Cain's marriage and fear of others (4.14) presumes the presence of a broader population thus far unmentioned, indicating that the narratives about him were not originally connected with the creation myth—another indication of intertwined myths unless we want to accept incest as the natural conclusion.
Gen 4.18-22: Emphasis on detailing what sons produced what aspects of civilization through their occupations, attributing culture and technology's entrance into the world through Cain's lineage.
Gen 4.23-24: The song Lamech sings (The Song of the Sword, thought to have originated in the now-lost non-canonical text the Book of the Wars of the Lord) in totality functions as a lamentation of the consequence of civilization's expansion: an expansion of the violence with which the family tree began.
Gen 4.25: Adam begets another child, Seth, which the wife named as such because "God [had] appointed" for her another child instead of Abel, the Hebrew verb for "Appointed" resembling the word for "Seth". This verse acts as a parallel to 4.1, introducing the new line of Seth.
Gen 4.26: This Yahwistic tradition locates the beginning of use of the divine name "Yahweh" (Lord) in the primeval period, in contrast to the Priestly tradition, in which the divine name is not used until the time of Moses (Ex 6.2-6).
Gen 5.1-32: Second overview of generations from creation to flood. This priestly genealogy prallels 4.1-26, building from the P creation story (1.1-2.3) to the Priestly strand of the flood narrative. The list of descendants of Adam was evidently a separate source which the Priestly writer drew upon for this chapter and used as a model for later notices (6.9; 10.1 etc.).
Gen 5.1-2: The Priestly writer uses this reprise of 1.26-28 to bind his genealogical source (where "adam" designates a particular person) to 1.1-23 (where "adam" designates humanity as a whole), In other words, purposefully referencing the opening of Genesis in the opening of this chapter that describes Adam's genealogy, thus connecting this lineage to that of the Priestly representation of creation, where Adam (singular) and adam (humanity) can now be interpreted thematically as being one; you can see the legwork the Priestly writer is doing here to bolster their narrative interrelations.
Gen 5.3: The divine likeness detailed in 1.26 is again invoked here, with Adam's son, Seth being described as being born in Adam's likeness, thus being transmitted to succeeding generations.
Gen 5.4-32: Ancient Babylonian lists similarly survey a series of heroes before the flood, each of whom lived fantastically long times. As in those lists, here too ages decline over time, to the 100-200 years of Israel's ancestors. The names in this list resemble those of 4.17-26.
Gen 5.24: Babylonian traditions also report that some individuals—e.g., Emmeduranki (a pre-flood figure), Etana, and Adapa—were taken up into heaven by God. Later Jewish tradition speculated at length on Enoch's travels.
Gen 5.29: The name of Noah, meaning "rest" in Hebrew, anticipates his founding of viticulture (9.20), providing wine that relieves the curse of the ground detailed in 3.17-19. Worth pointing out that Noah's father, Lamech, is apparently prescient of this fact, noting that Noah will bring them relief; how he knows this is an unanswerable question.
Wednesday, January 4th, 2023
22:57
I've been sick all day, I intended to do some reading when I first awoke, but I found myself near-bedbound. Had to cancel the day's arrangements—it's the nastiest flu, sweeping the country even. Committing to the schedule, however.
Gen 6.1-4: Divine-human reproduction illustrates the breaching of the divine-human boundary that the Lord God feared in 3.22. There the Lord God drove humans away from the tree of life. Here, in an abbreviated narrative often attributed to the Yahwistic primeval history, the Lord limits their life span to one hundred twenty years, the life span of Moses (Deut 34.7) Nothing appears to happen to the sons of God who instigated it all, though this becomes a matter of great speculation in postbiblical literature.
Gen 6.4: The products of divine-human intercourse are the legendary warriors of renown. They are distinguished here from the Nephilim, a race of giants said to exist both prior to and after those times (cf. Num 13.33; Deut 2.10-11).
Gen 6.5-8.19: The great flood. This story describes God's un-creation and re-creation of the world. The biblical version is an interweaving of parallel accounts; the combination of the Yahwistic and Priestly accounts being necessary to avoid describing two consecutive, contradictory floods.
Gen 6.5-8: This introduction links with the non-Priestly material, particularly 2.7 (compare 6.7)
Gen 6.5: Though the biblical account is quite close in many respects to Mesopotamian flood stories found in Atrahasis and Gilgamesh tablet 11, one significant difference is that this text attributes the flood to God's judgement on the wickedness of humankind rather than divine frustration with human overpopulation and noise.
Gen 6.11-13: Here the Priestly writers attribute the flood to corruption of the earth and violence filling it (see 4.8,10,23-24).
Gen 6.14-16: Utnapishtim, hero of the epic of Gilgamesh is likewise told to build a similar houseboat, sealing it with pitch: The description of a three-leveled ark may be based on an ancient idea that the ark reflects the three-part structure of both universe and temple.
Gen 6.18: Covenant, footnote refers to the notes on 9.8-17: Speaks of this being the first explicit mention of a Covenant in the bible, and it encompasses all of humanity as well as that of the animal world.
Gen 6.19-20: Footnote refers to notes on 7.2-3.
Gen 7.1-5: This non-Priestly text parallels P in 6.11-22 and continues the tradition seen in 6.5-8.
Gen 7.2-3: The provision of extra clean animals allows for the sacrifice that will occur in 8.20; if only one pair of each animal were taken, every sacrifice would eliminate a species. The priestly tradition instead presumes that both sacrifice and the distinction between clean and unclean animals (see Lev 11) were not introduced until the revelation at Sinai, therefore only one pair of each species suffices (6.19-20; 7.14-15; cf. 7.9). Example of one of the contradictions arising from the conflation of two flood narratives.
Gen 7.6-16: Noah, his family, and the animals enter the ark twice (7.7-9 || 7.13-16), reflecting the interweaving of the two originally distinct flood accounts. Whereas the non-Priestly account has the flood caused by forty days of rain (7.4,12), the Priestly account attributes the flood to God's opening of the protective dome created in the second day (1.6-8), thus allowing the upper and lower oceans to meet (7.11), reversing P's creation story. (Considered a full un-creation of that Priestly account at Genesis' opening which the mere mention of forty days' worth of rain would not fulfil)
Gen 7.17-24: The P and non-P strands are thoroughly interwoven in this description of the flood itself, including multiple descriptions of the extinction of life outside the ark (7.21-23). Such flood imagery powerfully represents a return to chaos. Though many world traditions speak of floods, there is no geological evidence of a global flood like that described here. Goes without saying really, flashbacks to the Bill Nye–Ken Ham debate on creation being a viable model of origins, good heavens.
Gen 8.1-2: God's wind echoes the first creation (1.2) in the process of starting the re-creation process. The closing of the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens reestablishes the space for life that was first created on the second day (1.6-8).
Gen 8.4: Ararat, a region in Armenia. Worth noting also that in the epic of Gilgamesh the boat also rested on a mountain.
Gen 8.6-12: Again, the sending out of the birds lifted straight from the epic of Gilgamesh.
Gen 8.20-9.17: Divine commitments after the flood. This section features two accounts of God's commitments after the flood (8.20-22 [non-P]; 9.1-17 [P]), both of which include God's promise not to destroy life through such a flood ever again.
Gen 8.20-22: The non-Priestly tradition describes Noah's burnt offerings of clean animals. In the Gilgamesh epic the hero offered sacrifices and "the gods smelled the pleasant gragrance" and repented of their decision to destroy humanity. here the Lord smells the pleasing odor of Noah's offering and resolves never again to curse the ground or destroy all creatures. The Lord does this despite full recognition that human nature has not changed (cf. 6.5-7). The final result of Noah's sacrifice is the Lord's promise to preserve the cycle of agricultural seasons. A central aim of temple sacrifice in Israel and elsewhere was to preserve that cycle, assuring agricultural fertility. The echo of that idea here is yet another way in which the "non-Priestly" primeval history reflects temple concerns (see also the focus on responses to sacrifice in 4.1-8 and notes on 2.8-9,10-14; 3.24).
Thursday, January 5th, 2023
01:38
Gen 9.1-17: The Priestly tradition lacks an account of sacrifice. Instead it focuses on affirmations of some aspects of the creation in 1.1-31 and revisions of others.
Gen 9.1-7: This section begins and ends with a reaffirmation of the fertility blessing (vv. 1,7; cf. 1.28).
Gen 9.2-6: Here God revises the earlier command of vegetarianism (1.29-30). This is a partial concession to the "violence" observed prior to the flood (6.11,13) and an extension of the human dominion over creation described in 1.26-28. At the same time, God limits human rule and regulates pre-flood violence through stipulating that humans may not eat the blood in which life resides (see 4.10-11n.) and that humans, as bearers of God's image (1.26-27), may not be murdered. Since these laws are given to Noah and his sons, the ancestors of all post-flood humanity, they were used in later Jewish tradition as the basis for a set of seven Noachide laws that were seen as binding upon Gentiles as well as Jews (see Acts 15.20; 21.25; b. San. 58b).
Gen 9.8-17: As noted prior, this is the first explicit mention of a Covenant in the Bible; A "Covenant" is a formal agreement, often between a superior and inferior party, the former "making" or "establishing" (vv. 9,11) the bond with the latter, and the superior protecting the weaker party. This agreement is often sealed through ceremonies. In this case, God sets his weapon, the bow (Ps 7.12-13; Hab 3.9-11), in the sky facing away from humanity as a sign of God's commitment not to flood the earth again. Did some googling on this one, traditionally taken to mean a rainbow, the "Bow" referenced here actually has quite a history of interpretation, with early Rabbinic sources imagining it as a war-bow, with the bow turned upwards so that arrows would be shot away from the earth—the Hebrew word used here is unhelpful, literally just meaning "bow" with no indication as to what specific kind might be meant. Modern scholars have theroized on the idea of the bow representing the firmament, the boundary between the primal seas that play into the creation-to-flood narrative. It's worth noting also that the Iliad also has mention of rainbows being a sign from the Gods to man: ...like the rainbows which the son of Kronos has set in heaven as a sign to mortal men.
Gen 9.18-29: Noah and his sons. Aside from P in vv. 18-19 and 28-29, this text is part of the Yahwistic primeval history. It links to the explanation of Noah's name in 5.29 and repeats major themes from the pre-flood period: farming, (nakedness, alienation in the family, curse, and domination). Though this text was once widely misread as describing a "curse of Ham" justifying slavery of African peoples, Noah's curse here is actually directed at Canaan, a figure not seen as an ancestor of African peoples.
Gen 9.22-23: Some speculation over Ham's actions here. Some accuse Ham of incest (described alike in Lev 20.17, though differences in wording make this comparison tenuous), but Shem and Japheth are specifically contrasted as turning away, indicating that Ham's problematic behavior was the fact in and of itself that he did not look away from Noah's nakedness. Such behavior is an example of the breakdown of family relationships seen in ch 3 (see 3.8-13,16-19) and ch 4 (see 4.1-16).
Gen 9.24-27: Many have puzzled over why Canaan is cursed for his father, Ham's, misdeed (9.25-26). An editor may have redirected an earlier curse on Ham toward Canaan, so that the curse could help justify the conquest of the land of Canaan (see 10.16-18a; 14.1-12,13-16n.).
Friday, January 6th, 2023
04:19
Gen 10.1-32: The table of nations. A largely Priestly survey of the world of the Israelites; national groups depicted in relation to one another through means of kinship—Japhethites, Hamites, and Shemites overlapping precisely in Canaan. I have nothing much to note at this juncture, footnotes detailing whigh descendants correlate to which group. Clear enough that the descendants are a fictional anthropomorphization of their respective ethnicities and nations, existing as they do in order to explain the repopulation of a post-flood world, and there may be some indication that the genealogical groupings could have been political in nature at time of writing.
Gen 11.1-9: The tower of Babel. This narrative (from the non-Priestly Yahwistic primeval history) revisits the theme of preservation of the divine-human boundary. The threat to that boundary, self-reflective speech by the Lord, and act of divine prevention all parallel 3.22-24 and 6.1-4. With 11.2 the human family completes the eastward movement begun in 3.22-24. This story then focuses on a scattering of the human family into different ethnic, linguistic, and territorial groups, and gives background for the table of nations in ch 10, although it was not originally written with that in view.
Gen 11.4: Humans fear being scattered across the earth, so they build a tower. Their intention to stay together contradicts the divine imperative to "fill the earth" now found in Priestly traditions (1.28; 9.1,7).
Gen 11.6: The Lord is described here as fearing the human power that might result from ethnic and linguistic unity (see 3.22).
Gen 11.7: "Us" meaning the divine court.
Gen 11.8-9: The scattering of humanity and the confusing of language is the final step in creation of civilized humanity, the story of the tower of Babel acting as an etiology for cultural maturity in these areas. Each step toward this end has been fraught with conflict and loss. The name "Babel," interpreted here as "confusion" but originally meaning "gate of god" (cf. 28.16-17n), serves as af inal testimony to the result of this process.
Gen 11.20-26: The descendants of Shem. This genealogy from the Priestly tradition closely parallels 5.1-32, though it lacks death notices. It builds a genealogical bridge from Shem to Terah, the father of Abraham. Parts of the genealogy of Shem (10.21-31) are repeated, but now the text focuses on those firstborn male descendants who lead to Abraham, thus setting up Abraham as the firstborn heir of Shem, the eldest of Noah's sons.
Gen 11.27-25.11: The story of Abraham and his family. The bulk of this section is a non-Priestly narrative about Abraham. It builds on a blend of oral traditions around him, including the stories standing behind the present narratives about his descent into Egypt (12.10-20), the Abraham and Lot cycle (13.2-13; 18.1-16; 19.1-28,30-37), a pair of Hagar and Ishmael narratives (16.1-14 and 21.8-10), and the tradition about Abraham's stay in Philistine Gerar (20.1-18; 21.22-34; cf. 26.6-33). Some scholars think that the Abraham stories incorporate two separate written J and E sources, with remnants of J (the Yahwistic source) found primarily in chs 12-19 (along with ch 24) and E (Elohistic source) fragments in chs 20-22. Others suggest that they were composed as a single whole, though building on a range of separate traditions. Scholars generally agree, however, that the story of conquest and covenant in 14.1-15.21 and Priestly materials found in 17.1-27 and elsewhere (see 11.27-32n.; 12.4b-5n. 12.3n. 17.1-27n. 21.3-5n. 25.7-11n) were added later.
Gen 11.27-32: Introduction to the Abraham story.
Gen 11.27: Abram, footnote refers to a note on 17.5 regareding the etymology of Abraham's name. The designation "Abraham" is used here in the annotations as the better-known name of Abra(ha)m. Aside from his birth, nothing is told about the early life of Abraham; this lack is filled in by postbiblical tradition.
Gen 11.29-30: The first appearance of the theme of barrenness of the three most central matriarchs: Sarai/Sarah, Rebekah (25.21), and Rachel (29.31). Their initial barrenness highlights God's power to provide heirs of the promise.
Gen 11.31: Haran, in northwest Mesopotamia was Abraham's ancestral home, according to 24.10.
Saturday, January 7th, 2022
11:07
Gen 12.1-3: The Lord's call and promise to Abraham initiates a new movement in the story of Genesis. The first of three divine speeches in which a patriarch is given directions and promises of a blessing (12.1-3; 26.2-5; 41.1-4; see also 31.3,13). The combination of command and promise implies that the Lord's fulfillment of the promise will follow upon Abraham's fulfillment of the command.
Gen 12.1: This command is likely based on those that appear later, being added later so as to mirror them (31.3,13).
Gen 12.2: The promise of a great nation stemming from Abraham stands in tension with Sarah's barrenness, motivating much of the following narrative.
Gen 12.3: Paul interpreted this passage as meaning the Gentiles of all the world became blessed through Abraham (Gal 3.8), but it is more likely that the original translation means something more akin to by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves, i.e., they will say "may we be like Abraham".
Gen 12.4-9: Abraham's first journey to the land.
Gen 12.6-8: This report of Abraham's journey anticipates Jacob's travels through similar places with similar elements; sacred trees like the oak of Moreh occur elsewhere in Genesis and seem to have played an important role in the religion of the ancient Israelites due to their prevalence.
Gen 12.10-13.1: First story of endangerment of the matriarch (cf. ch 20; 26.6-11). Abraham appears not to trust the promise of protection just offered him. Overall, this story of descent into Egypt because of famine and rescue through plagues anticipates many aspects of the later narrative about Israel's descent into Egypt and exodus from it (Gen 45-Ex 14).
Gen 13.2-18: Split of Abraham and Lot.
Gen 13.2-7: The riches and flocks owned by Abraham at this point testifies to the preliminary fulfillment of the promise of blessing in 12.2-3.
Gen 13.8-13: Story anticipates the narrative of Sodom and Gomorrah as well as the wickedness of their inhabitants.
Gen 13.14-17: Only after Abraham has split from Lot and settled in Canaan does God show him the land. This certifies that Abraham has fulfilled God's command to go to the land that God "will show" him.
Gen 14.1-24: Abraham's rescue of Lot from the eastern kings. This and ch 15 relate to each other (see 15.1n., 15.12-16n.) and link in multiple ways with late layers of the primeval history (see 9.18-27n.; 10.6-18a n.).
Gen 14.1-12: Shemite king Chedorlaomer leads an alliance of eastern kings to crush an uprising within the ranks of their Canaanite subjects; this is a fulfillment of the curse of Noah on Canaan, confirming that his people would be enslaved to Shem—neither this battle (the Battle of Siddim) nor any of the kings are considered historical.
Gen 14.13-16: Divine blessing protects Abraham and his household, likewise his ability to overcome the Shemite conquerors testifies to his status as heir of Shem and his blessing.
Gen 14.17-20: First and only reference to Jerusalem by name in the Torah, "Salem". King Melchizedek blesses Abraham in the name of God Most High (El Elyon), highest God of the pre-Israelite Canaanite pantheon—Melchizedek is identified later as founder of a royal priesthood in psalm 110.4.
Gen 15.1-21: The first covenant with Abraham.
Gen 15.1: The promise to be a shield ("magen" in Hebrew) for Abraham echoes Melchizedek's praise of the god who "delivered" ("miggen" in Hebrew) Abraham, and the reward replaces the goods Abraham refused from the king of Sodom.
Gen 15.2-5: Repitition here indicates the intertwining of sources much like the flood.
Gen 15.7-21: Repeat of the pattern in 15.1-6, has covenant ceremony sealing God's promise to Abraham.
Gen 15.9-17: Ancient israelite practice of making a covenant by proclaiming that they will suffer the fate of the "cut" sacrifice if they disobey the terms of the agreement (see Jer 34.18); the Hebrew for "making" a Covenant is to "cut" a covenant. God passes between the pieces in the form of fire, establishing the covenant.
Gen 15.12-16: Though God promises a return in four generations in verse 16, verse 13 specifies 400 years: it is likely that verse 13 was later edited to 400 years so as to better reflect on Priestly material in Exodus 12.40.
Gen 15.16: The iniquity of the Amorites, see Lev 20.23; Deut 9.4.
Gen 15.18-21: Conclusion of ceremony has God promise to give the land of the Canaanite peoples to Abraham.
Gen 15.18: The boundaries given here are the broadest definition of the promised land in the Bible. They correspond to similarly broad, ideal descriptions of the land in the Deuteronomistic History (e.g., 2 Sam 8.3; 1 Kings 4.21; cf. Deut 1.7; 11.24; Josh 1.4). The phrase river of Egypt occurs only here and may refer to the Nile. But elsewhere in the Bible (e.g., Num 34.5; 2 Kings 24.7; Isa 27.12) and in other sources, the "Wadi of Egypt" is apparently either the Wadi Besor or the Wadi el-Arish, both south of Gaza.
Gen 16.1-16: Hagar's encounter with God and the birth of Ishmael stand at the heart of the Abraham story, enveloped by parallel traditions dealing with covenant (chs 15 and 17), Lot and Abraham (chs 13-14 and 18-19), the endangerment of Sarah (12.10-20 and ch 20), and the promise (12.1-6 and 22.1-19).' Interesting that this story mirrors the later exodus, with an Egyptian fleeing eastward into the wilderness to meet God. There will later in Genesis itself be a doublet of this story, with Gen 21.8-21. Both stories have their origins in ancient traditions surrounding the origin of the Ishmaelites, seen in Genesis as ancestors of the Arab peoples (see Gen 25.12-18).
Gen 16.2: According to ancient surrogate motherhood customs, a wife could give her maid to her husband and claim the child as her own (30.3,9).
Gen 16.7: Here the angel of the Lord is not a heavenly being subordinate to God, but the Lord (Yahweh) in earthly manifestation (cf. 21.17,19; Ex 14.19).
Gen 16.11: Explanation of the name Ishamel: "God hears, for the Lord has given heed to your affliction."
Gen 16.13: El-Roi, "God of seeing," or "God who sees."
Gen 17.1-27: The everlasting covenant and sign of circumcision. This account from the Priestly tradition is parallel to that in 15.1-21 and links to the Priestly covenant with Noah in 9.8-17.
Gen 17.1: The phrase translated as God Almighty (Hebrew: "El Shadday") is variously understood as "God [or "El"], the one of the mountains," "God of the Shadday [deities]," or even "fertile God" (literally, "God with Breasts," see 49.25). Whatever its original meaning, the Priestly tradition understands this epithet to be what the early ancestors of Israel called God before they learned the name Yahweh (Ex 6.2-8).
Gen 17.2-6: In a parallel to 15.1-6 this text includes the promise of offspring in the covenant.
Gen 17.5: A new name signifies a new relationship or status (see 32.28). Abram means "the [divine] ancestor is exalted," as does its dialectical variant here, Abraham. This verse, however, explains the extra syllable ham in Abraham as from the hebrew word, "hamon" (multitude), thus meaning that Abraham will now be ancestor of a multitude. This anticipates nations whose ancestry will be traced to Abraham, such as Edomites and Ishmaelites.' The promise to make Abraham exceedingly numerous and fruitful echoes the broader fertility blessings given to animals and humanity prior, suggesting that Abraham's line is now the recipient of the blessing originally intended for all humanity.
Gen 17.9-14: Notable that circumcision within the covenant pertains only to the household and heirs of Abraham. Circumcision was likely originally a fertility rite (see 34.14-17), elsewhere connected with warding off demons (see Ex 4.24-26).
Gen 18.1-15: The Lord's visit to Abraham and Sarah.
Gen 18.2-8: Secretly divine visitor motif. The narrative shifts between talking of the men as a collective and the Lord as a singular fluidly, confusing matters.
Gen 18.9-15: Sarah's laughter at the promise of a son stresses the incredibility of God's act.
Gen 18.11: Menopause.
Gen 18.12: Issac's name means "he [God] laughs"; other traditions develop the link with laughter as well (17.17-19; 21.6,8; 26.8).
Gen 18.16-33: Abraham's intercession for Sodom and Gomorrah.
Gen 18.20-21: Speech echoes that of Babel; going down and seeing what was going on there.
Gen 18.22-23: Like Moses (e.g., Ex 32.9-14), Abraham negotiates with an angry God, appealing to God's righteousness. Thus, this text appears to be a theoretical reflection on God's righteousness and how many righteous people are required to save a broader group; cf. Ezek 14.12-23.
Gen 19.1-38: The rescue of Lot and his family from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Prominent example of God's total judgement (Deut 29.23; Isa 1.9; Jer 49.18; Am 4.11).
Gen 19.1-11: Secretly divine visitors once more, however the sanctity of hospitality is threatened by the men of the city who wish to rape (know) the guests. Lot's attempt to avert this fate, in offering his own daughters in place of the guests, only angers the men of the city more: Where Abraham was the model of hospitality (Gen 18.1-16), Lot's actions show him to be a bungling, almost heartless imitator who does not deserve to be the heir of the promise to Abraham.
Gen 19.15-23: Lot hesitates at the angel's urging to leave Sodom, contrasting him once more disfavorably to Abraham, who hurried to serve his guests.
Gen 19.24-25: The rain of destruction continues the echoes of the Noah story.
Gen 19.26: The fate of Lot's wife acts as an etiological explanation for pillars of salt (common in the dead sea).
Gen 19.29: Priestly summary of the story. Echoes 8.1 (God remembered). Attributes Lot's rescue to his relation with Abraham.
Gen 19.37-38: Explanation for the origin of the Moabites and Ammonites through incest; Lot's daughters mistaking the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as being the destruction of the totality of humanity. Reminiscent of the story of Noah and his sons (9.20-27).
Gen 20.1-18: The second story of endangerment of the matriarch. Footnote details the discussion surrounding Chs 20-22 as possibly being the first major block of an Elohistic (E) source; not so clear-cut as the Priestly accounts however, as chs 20-22 are understandable only when read following chs 12-19 (Abraham's claim in 20.2 that Sarah is his sister, for instance), indicating that the Elohistic traditions here were written as part of a larger whole that included the preceding narratives, and can thus not be considered a wholly separate, independent source.
Gen 20.3-7: Abimelech's case is far more sympathetic than that of the foreign king in parallel accounts (12.15-19; 26.9-10), though it is worth nothing that God says it was he that kept Abimelech from sinning against him, calling into question free will.
Gen 20.7: First use of the term prophet, and the only designation of Abraham as a prophet in the Torah (but see Ps 105.15).
Gen 20.12: Abraham provides many excuses for his action despite Abimelech's god-proven sincerity in his questioning.
Gen 21.1-21: Issac and Ishmael.
Gen 21.14-17: In these verses Ishmael is a young boy; this is incongruent with the parallel accounts of the Priestly traditions (16.16; 17.25; 21.5) implying the contradiction was borne of later Priestly oversight.
Gen 21.22-34: Abraham's dispute with Abimelech. This text continues the story about Abraham and Abimelech that was begin in ch 20. They are later mirrored by Isaac's sojourn in Gerar in 26.6-33; it is likely they have a common oral background.
Gen 21.33: "El-Olam," everlasting God may be an ancient divine name once associated with the sanctuary at Beer-sheba.
Gen 22.1-19: The testing of Abraham. In general, the Bible suggests that God may control future events, but not that God knows all future events; Abraham's fear of God is not proven until he has reached out his hand to slaughter his son.
Gen 22.1-2: After giving up Ishmael earlier, Abraham must now prepare to give up Issac, his promised heir, as well. Echoing the start of Abraham's story, he is asked to go (Hebrew "lek laka") and sacrifice his future family on a mountain that God will show him, much like he was asked to go (Hebrew "lek laka") from his family of origin and go to a land God would show him. The highlighting of "your only son . . . who you love" presupposes that what is being asked of Abraham is extraordinary and extremely difficult. Though child sacrifice was not commonplace, it was known to happen (see 2 Kings 3.27).
Gen 22.3: Abraham leaves immediately to do as asked without question, much like in 12.4-6.
Gen 22.5: Abraham's promise that he and Isaac will return may suggest a faith that God will work out an alternative sacrifice.
Gen 22.9-13: Christian understanding of Isaac as a prefiguration of Jesus.
Sunday, Jaunary 8th, 2023
04:51
Gen 23.1-20: Abraham's purchase of a family burial place. A late priestly tradition.
Gen 23.17-20: As in many ancient cultures, the Israelites believed that burial of ancesors in a plot of land gave their heirs a sacred claim to it.
Gen 24.1-67: Finding a wife for Isaac among kinfolk in Haran.
Gen 24.3: Abraham is concerned about intermarriage with Canaanites that is otherwise seen primarily in late materials from Deuteronomy (Deut 7.3-4).
Gen 24.10-27: Commonplace of well scenes as meeting places for people in the Ancient near east.
Gen 25.1-11: The death of Abraham.
Gen 25.1-6: Keturah, one of Abraham's wives is considered the maternal ancestor of the Arabian tribes.
Gen 25.7-11: Conclusion to the Abraham story taken from the Priestly source.
Gen 25.12-18: Overview of the descendants of Ishmael. As the firstborn son of Abraham, we see Ishmael's descendants before that of Isaac's.
Gen 25.16: Like Israel, the Ishmaelites are said to have twelve tribes.
Gen 25.19-35.29: The story of Jacob and his family. Evokes early traditions of Jacob/Israel, father of the Israelite tribes; though many originated as oral tradition, this written version shows many connections to places that were important in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and thus likely originated there, enriched too as it is by emphasis on Judah, King David's purported ancestor. Added too is the Abrahamic promise to Jacob at Bethel, and fragments of other Priestly materials.
Gen 25.19-28: Introduction of the descendants of Isaac.
Gen 25.22-23: The narrative presupposes an ancient practice of seeking a divine oracle at a local sanctuary.
Gen 25.27-28: Much like Cain and Abel, this narrative plays on the tension between siblings and their respective lifestyles.
Gen 25.29-34: Jacob buys Esau's birthright.
Gen 25.31-34: The birthright refers to the extra rights that normally go to the eldest son: leadership of the family and a double share of the inerhitance (Deut 21.15-17). This caricature of Esau as a dull person, outwitted on an empty stomach, is intended to explain Israel's dominance of Edom (2 Sam 8.9-14; 1 Kings 3.9-12; 8.20-22).
Gen 26.1-33: Interlude on Isaac. Isaac's journey in this chapter clearly parallels that of Abraham's, the two likely influencing eachother; Isaac inherits Abraham's blessing and is thus prepared to pass it on to one of his sons.
Gen 26.32-28.4: The transfer of blessing to Jacob and not Esau.
Gen 27.1-45: Story of Rebekah and Jacob's cunning resembles "trickster" traditions in other cultures.
Gen 27.4: Deathbed blessings (and curses) were important in the life and literature of anceint peoples (e.g., 48.8-20' 49.1-28). It was believed that such blessings irrevocably released a tangible power that determined the character and destiny of the recipient. Ch 27 itself focuses exclusively on Isaac's blessing, but the preceding chapter makes clear that this is Isaac's transfer of a divine blessing first given to Abraham.
Gen 28.1-4: A Priestly parallel to the preceding story where Isaac was not tricked into blessing Jacob, bt intended from the outset to bless him in the process of sending him away to find a proper wife. Much parallels that of Isaac's goal in marrying Rebekah.
Gen 28.5-22: The split between Jacob and Esau occurs twice here, the Priestly version in 28.5-9 and the non-Priestly account in 28.10-22.
Gen 28.12: Jacob's ladder.
Gen 28.13-15: God's appearance here is awkwardly linked to the preceding stairway vision. Many scholars suppose this repetition of the Promise to Jacob was a later addition to an early Bethel narrative that lacked it.
Gen 28.13-14: The promise to Jacob after his split from Esau mirrors that of the promise to Abraham after his split with Lot.
Gen 29.1-30: Jacob's marriages to Laban's daughters.
Gen 29.10: Jacob, the folk hero, has superhuman strength.
Gen 29.23-25: Jacob, the trickster, is himself tricked.
Gen 29.31-30.24: The birth of eleven of Jacob's sons and Dinah.
Gen 30.21: The note about the birth of Dinah is inserted (without a story or explanation of the name) to anticipate the story about her in ch 34.
Gen 30.25-43: The birth of Jacob's flocks; Jackob outwits Laban by putting striped sticks before the female animals' eyes while they were breeding.
Gen 31.1-55: Jacob's departure from Laban's family.
Gen 31.13: Where Jerusalem Zion traditions claimed that the Lord dwells in Zion (Pss 9.12; 135.21), God claims in this text to be "the god of Bethel". This probably reflects the perspective of this originally northern Jacob story in comparison with Jerusalem-oriented traditions that predominate in the Bible.
Gen 31.19-35: Household gods may have been figures representing ancestral deities. Possession of them ensured leadership and legitimated property claims.
Gen 31.43-54: Based on an older tradition regarding a boundary covenant between Arameans and Israelites.
Gen 31.53: Footnotes don't note this, but I noticed that the God of Nahor is mentioned, the only place in the Bible that mentions such a God; theories point to Laban being a polytheist, though this is complicated by his recognition of the dream he recieved a day prior.
Gen 32.1-32: Journey toward Esau.
Gen 32.3-21: Jacob once more devises multiple strategies in order to attain his goals (though this time, his aim is appeasal).
Gen 32.22-31: Jacob wrestles with God. The divine being had to vanish before sunrise, an ancient folkloristic theme marking the antiquity of the tradition on which the story is based. Worth noting that Jacob's immense strength is allowing him the upper hand until the being puts his hip out of joint. Jacob is renamed Israel, "The one who strives with God", and the being notes too that he strives with humans—Esau and Laban. In this way, the community of Israel, as descendants of this god-wrestler, is depicted as a group that successfully strives with God and humans. The story is located at Penuel/Peniel ("face of El"), one of the first capitals of the Northern Kingdom (1 Kinks 12.25); it serves as an etiology for the site's choice.
Gen 33.1-17: Partial reunion with Esau.
Gen 33.10: Like seeing the face of God, who at Penuel also proved to be gracious.
Gen 33.18-35.5: The stay in Shechem and the rape of Dinah.
Gen 33.19: Here and in ch 34 Shechem is a personal name. As elsewhere in Genesis, the story portrays, in the guise of individuals, relations between Israel and non-Israelite groups.
Gen 34.1-31: In its broader context, this story explains why Simeon and Levi, two of Jacob's elder sons, did not receive his highest blessing.
Gen 34.2: May not be rape; some scholars interpret this to mean illicit sexual activity.
Gen 34.8-12: Israelite law stipulates that a man who has sex with an unbetrothed woman msut retroactively marry her by paying her father a marriage price (Ex 22.16-17; Deut 22.28-29). This narrative either does not recgonize this law or assumes that it does not apply outside the people of Israel.
Gen 34.25-26: Simeon and Levi lead the killing; Jacob is concerned less with family honor, and more with his relations with the Canaanites.
Gen 35.6-15: Jacob's return to Bethel.
Gen 35.6-7: Deities often had local manifestations (e.g., on ancient inscriptions we find "Yahweh of Samaria" and "Yahweh of Teman"). Jacob honors the local manifestation of El at Bethel by building an altar there and calling the santuary "El of Bethel".
Gen 35.9-15: Priestly parallel to the non-Priestly naming tradition in 32.28. Reiteration of the blessing of Abraham on Jacob. Another connection of "God Almighty" to passages regarding fertility.
Gen 35.16-21: The birth of Benjamin and death of Rachel. Rachel names the child ominously: "son of my sorrow"; Jacob overrules her decision and renames the child Benjamin.
Gen 35.22-29: Concluding materials on Jacob's sons and Isaac's death and burial.
Gen 36.1-43: Overview of the descendants of Esau and prior inhabitants of Edom/Seir. Once more, the narrative gives an overview of the firstborn son's descendants, Esau, before that of Jacob's.
Gen 36.6-8: Echoes the (non-Priestly) story of Abraham's split from Lot.
Gen 36.9: Repetition of introduction indicates an earlier Priestly source.
Gen 37.1-50.26: The story of Joseph and his family. As indicated in the introduction, this portion of Genesis features an intricate depiction of Joseph's relations with his brothers and father. Starting with a pair of dreams (37.5-11), the narrative follows a trajectory from his brothers' murderous hatred of Joseph to Joseph's eventual testing of and reunion with them (chs 42-45; 50). Joseph was a prominent northern tribe, and like the Jacob storym this narrative has Northern connections, especially with the addition of the story in 48.8-14 of Joseph's special blessing on his son, Ephraim. The first king of the Northern Kingdom, Jeroboam, was a member of the tribe of Ephraim (1 Kings 11.26), and stories like tehse about early Israelite ancestors would have reinforced his claim to rule. Yet over time the story evolved in significance, through additions assuming Judah's destiny to rule (see 49.8-12n.), inserted echoes of the promise theme first introduced in the Abraham story (such as 46.1-4; 48.15-16 and 12.1-3n.), connections leading to the book of Joshua (50.24-25), and a few fragments that may come from the Priestly source (e.g., 37.1-2; 46.8-27; 47.27-28; 48.3-6; 49.29-33).
Gen 37.2-4: Priestly and non-Priestly narratives offer different reasons as to specifically why Joseph's brothers take issue with him.
Gen 37.5-8: Joseph's first dream may be taken to predict the future rule of Jeroboam, a member of the Joseph tribe of Ephraim, over the other tribes of northern Israel.
Gen 37.9-11: Rachel being alive in this story indicates that this episode was likely part of an independent Joseph story that did not originally follow Rachel's death.
Gen 37.12-36: Joseph is sold into slavery.
Gen 37.25-36 Most scholars agree that some combination or modification of traditions has occurred here. Though the brothers decide here to sell Joseph (v.27) and Joseph later says that they did so (45.4-5), this narrative describes the Midianites as drawing him out and selling him to the Ishmaelites (v. 28). Later, both the Midianites (37.36) and the Ishmaleites (39.1; cf. 37.25) are identified as the ones who sold Jospeh to Potiphar.
Gen 37.31-34: Now Jacob is tricked by an article of clothing, contrasting how he himself tricked his father in 27.15.
Gen 37.35: Sheol, the underworld to which everyone went at death—the Hebrew Bible does not recognize a differentiated heaven and hell. Since this afterlife was at best a shadowy existence (see Ps 6.5; Eccl 9.10), Jacob's going to his son further reflects his misery.
Gen 38.1-30: Judah and Tamar. Two elements, the focus on Judah and anticipation of David, link 38.1-30 with a sequence of episodes, starting in 30.21; 34.1-31; 35.22, that prepare for Jacob's blessing of Judah and prediction of the Davidic dynasty in 49.8-12.
Gen 38.8-11: God really doesn't like when you spill your seed for means other than procreation (actually it was Onan's refusal to accord with a brother's obligation in furthering the family line, thus also offending God's desire for man to be fruitful and multiply that lead to God's killing of Onan).
Gen 38.27-30: The final link of this chapter to the David narrative occurs with Perez, firstborn and ancestor of David.
Gen 39.1-23: Joseph's success, temptation, and imprisonment. Includes Joseph's garment as misleading evidence once more, and has echoes of Abraham's blessing. Whole tale parallels that of an Egyptian "Tale of Two Brothers".
Gen 40.1-23: Joseph establishes his expertise as dream interpreter.
Gen 41.1-57: Joseph's elevation as the result of successful dream interpretation.
Gen 41.8: The narrator intends to demonstrate the superiority of Israel's God over Egyptian magic and wisdom, anitcipating the plague narrative in Exodus.
Gen 41.16: Joseph attributes his skill solely to God.
Gen 41.45: Joseph is accepted fully into Egyptian society, and no judgement is attached to his intermarrying with an Egyptian foreigner (see Deut 23.8-9).
Gen 42.1-38: Joseph's brothers' first journey to Egypt.
Gen 43.1-34: Joseph's brother's second journey to Egypt.
Gen 43.1-2: Simeon, left as a hostage in Egypt, is apparently forgotten, for his brothers only return when more grain is needed.
Gen 43.8-10: Judah depicted as hero once more.
Gen 43.34: Joseph favors Benjamin, mirroring the favor Jacob had for himself; this sets the stage for a reprise of his brothers' murderous envy possibly being directed at Benjamin.
Gen 44.1-34: Joseph's final test for his brothers.
Gen 45.1-28: Joseph makes himself known to his brothers and father.
Gen 45.4-13: Joseph reassures his brothers that it was not them that sold him into slavery, but God, so that he might grow prosperous and feed his family.
Gen 45.16-20: Asiatics are frequently attested to living in Egypt, though no Egyptian records refer specifically to the Israelites living there.
Gen 46.1-27: Jacob's migration to Egypt.
Gen 46.1-4: God states that he will fulfill the promise made to Abraham in making a great nation for Israel in Egypt.
Gen 46.28-47.28: Jacob's family settles in Egypt.
Gen 46.34: No nonbiblical evidence supports the assertion that shepherds were considered abhorrent in Egypt.
Gen 47.11: The land of Rameses cannot be identified with certainty. The first Egyptian pharaoh with that name ruled at the beginning of the thirteenth century BCE.
Gen 47.29-49.33: Jacob's preparations for death, including the adoption and blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh. This section is viewed by many scholars as a series of later insertions into the Joseph story, linking it back to the Jacob story and forward to the story of the Israelites in Exodus.
Gen 48.3-6: The division of the house of Joseph into two tribes, Manasseh and Ephraim, with Jacob adopting Joseph's two children to do so.
Gen 48.8-14: Jacob favors the younger son, Aphraim, over the older, Manasseh, echoing Jacob's ascendancy over Esau, as well as possibly predicting the Ephraimite Jeroboam's ascendancy over the Northern Kingdom.
Gen 48.15-16: Jacob passes onto the tribes of Joseph the special blessing of Abraham and Isaac.
Gen 49.1-28: Jacob's blessing on his twelve sons. Though the poem is depicted as a deathbed blessing by the text following it (49.28; cf. 27.4 and n.), this poem seems to have been originally designed as a prediction of the destines, good and bad, of the tribes of Israel. Many scholars have argued that the poem is ancient on the basis of its language and resemblance to other supposdly ancient tribal poems in Deut 33 and Judg 5. Nevertheless, the present form of the poem appears to have been modified to fit the narrative context in which it has been put. Its first part follows the birth order of 29.31-35 and legitimates rule for Judah and—by extension—the Davidic dynasty. The author of these changes may be responsible for inserting the whole poem into its present context, as well as for the addition to the Jacob-Joseph story of the narratives referred to in 49.3-7 (30.21; 34.1-31; 35.21-22a; cf. 37.36-38.30).
Gen 50.1-26: Burial of Jacob and final days of Joseph.
Gen 50.1-11: This non-Priestly narrative presupposes that the burial and mourning occurred in Transjordan, noat at the ave at Machpelah.
Gen 50.2-3: Jacob is embalmed as an Egyptian with full honors.
09:44
And with that rather long reading session, I am finished with Genesis, and in just about seven days, apparently. One thing has become clear to me, and that is that I am eventually going to have to stop taking such extensive notes; a lot of what I've noted down in this record have been direct quotations of footnotes and lots of compressing of others to best condense the information I find interesting—this can't go on through the entire Bible, lest it take me forever to do so; I find myself finishing a page in good time, only to spend minutes upon minutes transcribing information and copying quotes, not to mention the time that goes into the formatting of this record for upload to my website. This breaks my reading flow and already has set me to some apathy.
As such, I've decided that my note-taking will only be as extensive as this throughout the first 5 books of the Bible, the Torah. My reading of the rest of the OT will be much more sparse in terms of notes, likely noting each chapter as I have done thus far, but being strict with myself in not including so much detail so as not to harm my pace. This is absolutely subject to change, assuming later books interest me to the point I can't but help myself, but as it stands, this is the plan. When I reach the NT, we will reassess once more (I have to imagine the footnotes there will be deeply interesting).
As for Genesis itself, I have no wider notes to make, it's about what I expected, as I have read portions of it before in isolation, not to mention the sheer cultural osmosis that exists with the prevalence of these stories, but I am surprised to find that a lot of what I knew of said stories was extrabiblical in nature, with the scripture itself being a lot more scarce on details, details that I imagine church tradition filled in over time. Onto Exodus then.
From Him
Fallen winds
Assume barren lands
The promise of Dust
Embracing countless stars
That warn to take heed
Hither and thither
The lowest cry out
Unto most high
Calling out
To Him
Every vice of my existence
Begs and pleads and asks assistance
From your passions, I truly need this
To contrast is to know
For if there be your divine witness
Let me feel this pervert sickness
Mark my flesh and make me bleed, bliss
To contrast is to know
So when you're through I'll have my distance
From my former goodness, listless
Broken bodied, hear me plead, Miss
To contrast is to know
Monday, January 9th, 2023
16:25
Introduction to Exodus
"Exodus," from the Latinized abbreviation of the Greek title exodos aigyptou ("exit from Egypt").
The second book of the Bible in all canonical traditions, Exodus is not an independent work but rather an integral part of the Torah. Traditionally taken as being written by Moses, as mentioned in the introduction to Genesis, this can not be so. Like the rest of the Pentateuch, Exodus contains contradictions and redundancies. For example, Moses' father-in-law is sometimes called Reuel and sometimes Jethro; and the mountains of revelation is Sinai in some passages and Horeb in others. The narratives of Moses on the mountain in chs 19 and 24 have many overlapping and conflicting details, as does the account of the calamities—called "ten plagues" in postbiblical tradition but not in the Bible—against the Egyptians in 7.8-10.29.
Exodus depicts a story line describing the departure of a group of oppressed people from Egypt to a sacred mountain in Sinai where they enter into a covenant with the God they believed rescued them; then, at that God's direction, they construct a portable shrine for their deity before continuing their journey.
Historicity is once more questioned here; the literary strands comprising this text date from many centuries after the date described, and no historical or archaeological records support the claims made of an Egyptian exodus nor the travel of such a people across the continent. This extends too to the conquest of the land of Israel by Joshua.
Despite these problems, the basic story line about the departure from Egypt fits broad evidence from Egyptian and other sources. Foreigners from western Asia, called "Asiatics" in Egyptian documents, periodically did migrate to Egypt, especially during times of famine (see Gen 12.10; 41.57; 43.1-2); others were taken to Egypt as military captives or were forcibly sent there as human tribute by Canaanite rulers. Moreover, many such groups, including those who voluntarily entered Egypt, were conscripted for state projects (see Ex 1.11-14). This pattern was especially strong toward the end of the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1400-1200 BCE). And, although virtually all of the foreigners in Egypt were assimilated into local culture, there is at least one documented instance of several workers escaping into the Sinai wilderness. Thus the overall pattern of descent into Egypt followed by servitude and escape accords with general information in ancient documents. In addition, the end of the Late Bronze Age, by which time the Israelites would have left Egypt, coincides with the date of inscriptional evidence—a stele erected by Pharaoh Merneptah in ca. 1209 BCE—for a people called "Israel" in the land of Canaan, the first mention of Israel outside the Bible.
The writer of this introduction, Carol Meyers, theorizes here of how it is possible that a relatively small group of people could have escaped servitude and told of their story in Canaan, thus setting in motion an oral tale that developed into the mythology attributed to Yahweh as told in Exodus. It's an interesting theory, and I dont doubt that the oral tradition that lead to the formulation of the Torah was indeed comprised of some such tales. Good fun!
The book can be subdivided into thematic and literary units in various ways; this one positions the revelation at Sinai and the covenant in the center:
Part I: Israel in and out of Egypt (1.1-15.21): God sees Israelite suffering in Egypt (chs 1-2), Moses becomes God's spokesperson (3.1-7.7), and a series of calamities (7.7-13.16), known in tradition as the "ten plagues," culminate in the escape of the people (13.17-15.21).
Part II: Sinai and covenant (15.22-24.18): After traveling through the wilderness (15.22-18.27), the Israelites reach Mount Sinai, where they experience a theophany (a divine appearance, chs 19, 24), and receive the covenant (chs 20-23).
Part III: Sanctuary and new covenant (25:1-40:34): An episode of apostasy followed by covenant renewal (chs 32-34) separates instructions for building the sanctuary (chs 25-31) from the account of its construction (chs 35-40).
Exodus would have been an important literary tool and item of faith for Judeans suffering defeat and exile in the sixth century BCE, as the fundamental ideas about God expressed in this text, such as his care for the oppressed as well as his liberation of the people in Egypt would have helped alleviate their concerns and reinforce their status and understanding of themselves as a distinct people under YHWH.
Tuesday, January 10th, 2023
15:27
Exodus
Ex 1.1-15.21: Israel in and out of Egypt. The Israelites are oppressed in Egypt; but they escape through the intervention of their God, whose identity is revealed to their heroic leader Moses, who then carries out God's directives to secure their release.
Ex 1.1-22: The oppression of the Israelites. Prologue to bridge Genesis with Exodus.
Ex 1.1-7: "Israel" referring to Jacob. In Scripture, seven often symbolizes completion or perfection; the notion of seventy descendants of Jacob signifies that all Israel is present in Egypt. Emphasis on Israelite proliferation serves to indicate that God's divine promises are now fulfilled through Israel.
Ex 1.8: The king described is commonly identified as Rameses II (1279-1213 BCE), but he is not named here or anywhere in the Bible, possibly as a means of demeaning him.
Ex 1.10: Possibility of Israelite escape mentioned as an act of foreshadowing.
Ex 1.15-22: Forced labor fails to deplete the Israelite population; selective infanticide is thus implemented.
Ex 1.15: "Hebrew" seems to denote Israelites as a people, often in the speech of non-Israelites, where it may be a derogatory term.
Ex 1.17: "Feared God" indicates an awareness that killing would cause divine retribution.
Ex 2.1-25: The emergence of Moses.
Ex 2.1-10: As in the birth legends of other heroic figures in ancient literature, the miraculous rescue of the doomed infant Moses signifies that he is destined for greatness.
Ex 2.2: "Saw that he was a fine baby", lit., "saw that he was good," echoes the language of creation in Gen 1.
Ex 2.3: The hebrew word for basket appears elsewhere in the Bible only to refer to Noah's ark; here it is the means for rescuing the person who will save the Israelites.
Ex 2.10: As an Egyptian name, Moses means "is born", and it is often used in conjunction with a god's name, e.g., Thutmoses, Ahmoses, Rameses, but here it is given a Hebrew etymology ("he who draws out") in anticipation of Moses's role in drawing his people through the sea.
Ex 2.11-15: In the first two episodes of his adult life, Moses saves one Hebrew and tries to adjudicate between two others; both roles will recur and involve all his people.
Ex 2.17: Saved by the daughter of a king, Moses saves the daughters of a priest: the motif of saving recurs, anticipating the ultimate salvation or deliverance at the sea (13.17-15.21).
Ex 2.18: Reuel, elsewhere called Jethro or Hobab, likely reflecting different ancient sources.
Ex 2.23-25: It is only now that it is indicated that God becomse aware of the Israelite plight in Egypt, "remembering" his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Ex 3.1-4.17: Moses's call and mission. The god of the ancestors appears to Moses in Midian, revealing the divine name and commisions Moses to free his people; the term "prophet" is not used for Moses within Exodus, but the narrative presents him as one.
Ex 3.1-10: Theophany: a divine revelation at the bush, where serveral sources have been combined.
Ex 3.2: An "angel" (lit., "messenger") is a manifestation of God, who sometimes takes human form. God's physical presence also appears shielded in clouds and fire (e.g., Ex 19.9; 24.15-18; 33.9; 40.34-38), both sometimes depicted as pillars (Ex 13.21; 14.19,24); seeing God directly can be dangerous (see 3.6n).
Ex 3.6: Divine presence represents such intense, mysterious, and powerful holiness that it was considered dangerous to humans, hence Moses's reluctance to look at God's (physical) manifestation.
Ex 3.8: "Come down," implying that God resides in a heavenly abode.
Ex 3.11-17: Prophets are often reluctant, and Moses confronts God with four problematic issues.
Ex 3.11-12: Moses's first problem is a sense of unworthiness.
Ex 3.13-15: The next problem is not knowing God's name. Deities were identified by their proper names (not by generic "God"), and the Israelites will want to know which god has sent Moses to them. I am who I am (Hebrew "'ehyeh 'asher 'ehyeh") renders the first name that God provides; a shortened form, I am ("'ehyeh"), renders the second. These translations are uncertain, however, for the Hebrew is ambiguous. The third name is "Lord", which has four Hebrew letters, "yhwh" (probably pronounced Yahweh) in Hebrew and is thus known as the Tetragrammaton. Like the first two versions of God's name, its root means "to be" but its specific meaning is unclear. Because of the great sanctity of God's name, early Jewish tradition avoided pronouncing it and used the Hebrew word "adonay" ("my lord") as a substitte. Most translations respect that tradition and use Lord for the deity's proper name. According to Gen 4.26 (see also Gen 13.4), people knew God's name early in human history; but this passage along with 6.3 preserves a different tradition, that Moses is the first to hear it. In ancient nonbiblical sources this divine name is known from a Late Bronze Age inscription that mentions the "Shasu of ya-h-wa [or yhw]"; the Shasu were desert-dwellers and included Midianites.
Ex 3.16-22: A directive to Moses about speaking to his people and Pharaoh precedes other two problems.
Ex 3.16: "Elders" of Israel, referring to representatives of the people in community governance (see also 4.29; 12.21; 17.5,6; 18.12; 19.7; 24.1,9,14).
Ex 3.18: God of the Hebrews, connecting the Lord to a specific people when addressed to non-Israelites.
Wednesday, January 11th, 2023
07:36
Ex 4.1-9: Moses's third problem, that people will not heed him, is solved by God providing three supernatural signs: changing a staff to a snake, making Moses's hand diseased and then restoring it, and turning water bloody.
Ex 4.10-17: Moses's fourth problem, that he cannot speak, is solved by God by assigning his brother to speak for him.
Ex 4.18-31: Moses returns to Egypt.
Ex 4.21: The motif of Pharaoh's headened heart (stubbornness), appearing frequently in the narrative of Moses's negotiations with the Egyptian ruler, serves to increase dramatic tension. The number ten, though never mentioned explicitly, plays a role: Pharaoh hardens his own heart (e.g., 8.15) ten times, although even then it is part of God's plan (7.3; 11.9); and ten times God hardens it directly (e.g., 9.12). These differing reports of who caused the hardening of Pharaoh's heart likely reflect different sources.
Ex 4.22: Based on the formulaic words of heralds bearing messages in the ancient Near East, the biblical expression "thus says the Lord" introduces words conveyed by a prophetic messenger of God.
Ex 4.24-26: God attacks Moses for reasons that are unclear. Did some googling. The Jewish Study Bible says: Here circumcision seems to have apotropaic (magically protective) power, and by touching her son's foreskin to Moses' "legs" (genitals?), Zipporah saved him. The saving power of the bloody foreskin may foreshadow the protective role of the blood on the Israelites' doorposts on the eve of the exodus (12.7, 13, 22-23). Bridegroom of blood, cognates of Heb “Hatan," bridegroom, mean "protect" in Akkadian and Arabic, and "circumcise" in Arabic. My personal note on this matter is that, much like Jacob, Moses is depicted as doubtful of his actions and path forward under the guidance of the Lord; possible read that this "attack" could be analagous to Jacob's wrestling with the Angel, though this is of course with the understanding that the circumcision narrative holds legitimate water as a fragmented story regardless. So this is hermeneutics, huh?
Ex 5.1-6.1: Moses and Aaron have their first encounter with Pharaoh.
Ex 5.1: The imperative "Let my people go" appears for the first time and adumbrates its sevenfold use in the account of nine divine marvels.
Ex 5.2: To "know the lord" is to recognize God's authority; knowing God is a response to witnessing his powerful deeds.
Ex 5.3: To fail to carry out religious obligations to God would have dire consequences.
Ex 5.10: Introducing Pharaoh's words with "Thus says Pharaoh" sets him in opposition to the Lord, whose words are similarly announced.
Ex 5.20-6.1: Moses complains to God who promises to take action. Interesting that Moses consciously laments his position and directly complains about God's inaction in a way not characteristic of the prior patriarchs.
Ex 6.2-7.7: God reaffirms the mission of Moses and Aaron in the light of the worsened circumstances of the people.
Ex 6.6-8: Nine verbs denoting nine divine actions connoting the totality of God's commitment; anticipates the nine signs and wonders of the next section.
Ex 6.16-25: Authority is conferred on Moses, Aaron, and Aaron's sons and grandons by situation their lineage in the priestly tribe of Levi. The unusual naming of several women (bb. 20,23,25) emphasizes the importance of the Levites.
Ex 7.1-7: Another account of the affirmation of Moses's mission.
Ex 7.7: Moses is younger than Aaron here, contradicting the firstborn tradition of 2.2, but does repeat the motif of overriding secondborns seen in prior patriarchs.
Ex 7.8-10.29: The nine marvels. The designation "ten plagues" does not appear in the Bible, and fewer than ten catastrophes appear in the two psalms that mention them (Pss 7.8.44-51 and 105.28-36) . . . The marvels narrative likely draws from several sources to form a three-triad pattern, totaling nine marvels.
Ex 7.9: Aaron has the leading role in the first episode of the marvels, which incorporate material from the Priestly source, which emphasizes Aaron as a figure in general (as the first High Priest of the Israelites). Interesting too that 7.1 mentions Aaron as being a prophet of Moses. Paints priests as the prophets of Prophets?
Ex 7.11: Magicians, derived from an Egyptian word denoting a priestly official; their "secret arts" refer to spells or incantations, whereas Aaron simply casts his staff down.
Ex 7.14-8.19: First three marvels.
Ex 7.14-25: First marvel, bloody waters. As mentioned in a prior note, this story combines two traditions, in one Moses's actions pollute the Nile only; in the other, Aaron turns all Egyptian waters into blood.
Ex 7.15: Water and river bank ,evoking the image of the infant Moses in the river, also anticipating the role of water in the final water event of the parting.
Ex 7.22: Magicians can duplicate the calamity, but again they use spells, and humorously they make the calamity even worse!
Thursday, January 12th, 2023
07:39
Ex 8.1-15: Second marvel, frogs.
Ex 8.8: Pharaoh momentarily relents and seems to recognize Israel's god, requests that Moses and Aaron pray on behalf of the Egyptians. Hardens his heart regardless after the fact; this will repeat time and time again.
Ex 8.16-19: Third marvel, gnats.
Ex 8.16: Dust represents what is countless (Gen 13.16).
Ex 8.19: Magicians recognize the Lord; Pharaoh refuses.
Ex 8.20-9.12: Second group of three marvels. Instrumentality shifts: God is the direct ageint, then Moses and Aaron together are agents.
Ex 8.20-32: Fourth marvel, flies.
Ex 9.1-7: Fifth marvel, pestilence. Pestilence in Deuteronomic and prophetic texts kills both humans and animals, but here only animals.
Ex 9.8-12: Seixth marvel, boils.
Ex 9.12: Now God hardens Pharaoh's heart.
Ex 9.13-10.29: Third group of three marvels.
Ex 9.13-35: Seventh marvel, hail.
Ex 9.14: Only here is "plagues" used for one of the nine marvels, perhaps because of the extensive loss of human and animal life, as for the climactic slaying of the firstborn.
Ex 9.18: The severity prompts God, uniquely, to suggest a protective measure.
Ex 9.22: Hail, frequently Yahweh's weapon (e.g., Josh 10.11, Isa 30.20; Ezek 13.13).
Ex 10.1-20: Eighth marvel, locusts.
Ex 10.2: Heralds the importance of remembering; as with 9.16, God's marvels are characterized here as being a message to humanity.
Ex 10.21-29: Ninth marvel, darkness. Darkness anticipates the midnight setting of the death of the firstborns and the nighttime sea crossing.
Ex 10.22: Three days mirrors the requested three-day journey for sacrifice and anticipates the three-day duration of the first post-Sinai journey.
Ex. 11.1-13.6: Plague, commemorative rituals, and departure.
Ex. 11.1-10: Announcement of the plague.
Ex 12.1-28: Preparations for departure: passover and unleavened bread festivals. The ritual of unleavened bread predates Exodus, the text assuming the reader would be aware, though it is joined here with the pascal lamb, connecting the two traditions under the symbolism of passover.
Ex 12.23: Representing a variant tradition, a divine agent, the "destroyer", rather than God, carries out the mission.
Ex 12.29-52: Plague, departure, and passover.
Ex 12.37-42: Departing Egypt and beginning the wilderness journey (which continues in the book of Numbers).
Ex 12.38: "Mixed crowd" suggests that non-Israelites also escape.
Ex 12.40-41: Four hundred and thirty years is close to the span of time foreordained in Gen 15.13.
Ex 12.43-51: Further passover instructions, explicitly for future observances.
Ex 13.1-16: More commemorative rituals: consecration of the firstborn, and unleavened bread festival. The firstborn is consecrated ("given", perhaps "dedicated") to Yahweh, as a form of remembrance that they are too God's firstborn, remembering that of the slaying.
Ex 13.9: "Sign . . . forehead" (also v. 16; Deut 6.6-8) denotes metaphoric modes of commemoration (as Prov 6.20-21; 7.1-3), but is interpreted literally in postexilic times, giving rise to the Jewish custom of phylacteries. First mention of "teaching (Hebrew: Torah) of the Lord" in the Bible.
Ex 13.17-15.21: Journey to and through the sea, described in prose and poetry.
Ex 13.17-14.31: The narrative account, with its repetitions, contradictions, non sequiturs, and inconsistencies, is a composite.
Ex 13.17: Way of the land of the Philistines, the shortest land route from Egypt to Canaan, runs parallel to the Mediterranean coast toward southwest Canaan where the Philistines, an Aegean people, settled in the late thirteenth and early twelfth centuries BCE.
Ex 13.18: Red sea, properly Reed Sea, likely designates the reedy marshes of northeastern Egypt. The following miraculous sea-splitting account does not fit the marshland referent and reflects a different, perhaps imaginary or mythological, sea tradition.
Ex 13.21: Pillars of cloud and fire, likely the manifestation of the divine presence, shielded in cloud by day and fire by night.
Ex 14.1: Moses acts alone, without Aaron, in the sea-crossing episode.
Ex 14.14: God as the Divine Warrior, based on the Canaanite deity Baal.
Ex 14.19-20: Angel and pillar, both manifestations of God's presence, likely from different sources.
Ex 14.21: Wind, dry land, and divided waters, which evoke creation (Gen 1.2,6,9; cf. Gen 8.2), are from a Priestly hand.
Ex 15.1-21: The Song of the Sea is a lyric victory hymn generally considered an originally independent composition, one of the oldest literary units in the Bible, perhaps from the tewlfth century BCE. Influenced by mythic accounts of the Divinie Warrior's battle with watery chaos (see 14.14n.), it is rich in metaphors and terms that preclude single explanations and at times even defy comprehension; in many details it diverges from the prose accont in ch 14.
Ex 15.1: Although attributed here to Moses, this poem was originally attributed to Miriam, given the association of women with the victory song genre; "I" need not be moses.
Ex 15.6: The right hand of God, not Moses's hand, directly vanquishes the enemy.
Ex 15.11: "Among the gods" may be language of Israelite monolatry, in which the existence of other gods is acknowledged (18.11; 20.3; 23.32-33).
Ex 15.12: Earth, referring to the underworld, Sheol, swallowing the living (Num 16.32; Isa 29.4; Prov 1.12).
Ex 15.18: Reign introduces for the first time the prominent biblical metaphor of God as king.
Ex 15.22-24.18: Sinai and covenant.
Ex 15.22-18.27: Crises and reorganization in the wilderness.
Ex 15.22-27: First crisis, lack of water.
Ex 16.1-36: Second crises, lack of food.
Ex 16.23-30: Instructions for the sabbath as a day of rest on the seventh day precede the Decalogue's sabbath commandment; sabbath observance is part of Israel's learning to obey God.
Ex 16.33-34: Covenant, elliptical for the not-yet-announced "ark of the covenant", is parallel to Lord, indicating that the ark signifies God's presence.
Ex 16.35: Forty years of wandering.
Ex 17.1-7: Third crisis, lack of water.
Ex 17.7: Among us [in real life (sus, sus)]; an expression denoting God's potent presence, which provides food or water and protection for the Israelites.
Ex 17.8-16: Fourth crisis, military threat.
Ex 17.8: Amalek refers to a seminomadic group and habitual enemy of the Israelites; they are not atested to in nonbiblical sources.
Ex 17.9-13: First mention of Joshua; one of seven in Exodus. Moses, holding his staff, is assisted by Aaron and Hur, holding up his arms during the battle against Amalek in which the Israelites (headed by Joshua) prevail so long as Moses's arms stay raised.
Ex 18.1-27: Meeting with Jethro, who solves an organizational crisis. Jethro prompts Moses to lessen the load on his shoulders in mediating disputes; instead a hierarchy of administrative officials ("judges") are organized so as to share the burden (first indication of a priestly class after Aaron?). In the retelling of this episode in Deut 1.9-18, the initative is Moses's alone. Worth mentioning too that Jethro was likely some form of polytheist, as it is mentioned he is a priest of the Midianites, though recognizing Yahweh as being worthy of worship for his actions within the Exodus.
Ex 19.1-25: Revelation at the mountain.
Ex 19.1: The location of Sinai is uncertain. Some passages locate it in southern Jordan; the traditional site in the southern Sinai Peninsula is unlikely.
Ex 19.4: Reminder of God's actions as preface to the convenant is typical of Near Eastern treaties between a stronger and weaker party.
Ex 19.6: "Priestly kingdom . . . holy nation" poetically presents all Israelites as priests: they will have privileges of intimacy with God and responsibilities of physical and moral purity.
Ex 20.1-24.18: Covenant. The stipulations of the covenant—Decalogue (20.1-17) and covenant rules (20.22-23.19)—are interspersed with additional Sinai narratives (20.18-21; 23.20-24.18).
Ex 20.1-17: Decalogue (also Deut 5.6-21). These "Ten commandments," also found with some variations in Deuteronomy 5, are not numbered or titled here but are later called "ten words," that is, "ten sayings" or "ten matters" in 34.28; Deut 4.13; 10.4 (see 18.26n.; 35.1n.). Set forth in apodictic (absolute) form, they are not universal laws nor a concise summary of biblical law. Rather, they are unconditional community precepts, both injunctions and prohibitions, rather than laws, which typically have punishments. Unlike any other ancient Near Eastern materials, the Decalogue creates moral standards for a society; obedience is to be a function of divine authority, not fear of punishment. Containing more than ten statements, and not numbered in the Bible, they are counted in diverse ways.
Numbering of the Decalogue in Exodus 20.1-17 [according to most Jewish traditions]:
1 Ex 20.2 (divine self-identification)
2 Ex 20.3 (other gods)
2 Ex 20.4-6 (idols)
3 Ex 20.7 (divine name)
4 Ex 20.8-11 (sabbath)
5 Ex 20.12 (parents)
6 Ex 20.13 (murder)
7 Ex 20.14 (adultery)
8 Ex 20.15 (theft)
9 Ex 20.16 (perjury)
10 Ex 20.17a (coveting)
10 Ex 20.17b (coveting)
The first several deal with human obligations to God and are accompanied by motive clauses (explanations); the others concern social issues and usually do not mention God. Because its pronouns are all second-person masculine singular, the Decalogue seems to address individually adult men responsible for land-holding Israelite households with servants (as v. 17), with its stipulations otherwise applying to all people as appropriate.
Ex 20.3: Does not deny the existence of other gods, only that they shall not be worshipped before Yahweh.
Ex 20.4-6: Worship of God without anthropomorphic images; perhaps to distinguish from other religions. Possible influence from Zoroastrianism (lack of images, emphasis on fire?).
Ex 20.5: A jealous (sometimes "zealous") God; implies transgenerational guilt (see 34.7; cf. Ge 15.16), but is sometimes rejected (Jer 31.20-30; Ezek 18).
Ex 20.14: Adultery, sexual intercourse between a man and a married or betrothed woman, is a grave offense (Lev 20.10; Deut 22.22) because lineages could be compromised by this infidelity.
Ex 20.18-21: The Sinai account resumes, with the people insisting that Moses transmit God's word.
Ex 20.22-23.33: Community regulations. This collection of legal materials, called "book of the covenant" [Hebrew: "sefer ha-berit"] (24.7) or "Covenant Code" or "Covenant Collection," has affinities of form and content with other ancient law legal traditions. A discrete scribal collection, with laws—especially agricultural ones and those mentioning houses—inapplicable to a wilderness setting, it was likely incorporated into the Sinai narrative to afford it divine authority. The oldest of the legal materials in the Pentateuch, many of its stipulations probably arose in premonarchic village settings. Introductory instructions (20.22-26) and a concluding narrative (23.20-33) frame a two-part enumeration of legal materials. The first part (21.1-22.17) consists mainly of casuistic materials (case laws with attached punishments). The second part (22.18-23.19) comprises ethical or religious norms and exhortations typically expressed in apodictic or absolute form. These two parts may reflect the merging of ancient customary regulations with covenant-oriented materials.
Ex 20.22-26: Introductory instructions. Sacrifice can take place wherever people invoke God's name (presence); contrast 27.1-8 and the single "place" for sacrifice in Deuteronomy (Deut 12.5-14, etc.).
Friday, January 13th, 2023
07:48
Ex 21.1-22.20: Ordinances (rulings) and statutes (rules). In form and content, this section resembles other ancient Near Eastern legal collections.
Ex 21.2-11: Manumission regulations for indentured Israelite servants. Laws dealing with servitude usually come at the end of ancient Near Eastern law collections; here they are first, indicating the humanitarian interests of the "book of the covenant" and/or its placement immediately after Israel's liberation from slavery.
Ex 21.33-22.15: Property and restitution, more case rulings.
Ex 22.16-20: Social and religious stipulations.
Ex 22.21-23.19: Ethical and religious exhortations and norms.
Ex 23.1-12: Judicial integrity and the protection of animals and marginal groups.
Ex 23.20-33: The Sinai narrative resumes with further divine promises and admonitions.
Ex 23.22: "Enemy . . . foes" employs Near Eastern treaty language.
Ex 23.25-26: Sustenance, health, and progeny are the blessings produced by covenant fealty (Lev 26.3-10; Deut 28.1-6).
Ex 23.27-30: First real taste of OT genocide: The land's indigenous inhabitants will be gradually expelled; in Deuteronomy and related literature, they are to be exterminated (e.g., Deut 7.2; Josh 10-11).
Ex 24.1-18: Theophanies and covenant ceremonies. Repetitive or conflicting details again indicate a composite narrative about God's appearance—to Moses and the leaders, and to Moses alone.
Ex 25-40: Sanctuary and new covenant. The focus of the rest of Exodus is the construction of the wilderness tabernacle as an earthly home for God. Detailed directions for building the portable shrine (25.1-27.1; 30.1-31.18) and for clothing and inaugurating its priests (28.1-29.46) are followed by an account of its construction so God's presence can enter (35.1-40.38). Much of the information in the second section is the same as in the first, although the internal order differs. Between the two sections comes the golden calf episode (chs 32-34), in which the covenant is broken and restored. Did some preemptive googling on the tabernacle. Professor of Theology Michael Homan posits that the tabernacle could have been based on Rameses II’s military tent, as they share various traits in dimensions, method of construction, internal specifics and general use, the tent in question being depicted in various instances of Egyptian iconography that would have been apparent to ancient scholars: The depiction of YHWH’s sacred tent as modeled on a military tent fits with biblical context of YHWH as a "Divine Warrior."
Ex 25.1-31.18: Instructions for building the tabernacle and inaugurating the priesthood.
Ex 26.1-37: The tabernacle structure.
Ex 27.1-19: The courtyard and its altar.
Ex 28.1-43: Vestments for the priests.
Ex 28.1: Aaron has appeared frequently but is first called priest here. No title is given for him in the Pentateuch; the titles "high priest" and "chief priest" are in non-Torah texts.
Ex 28.3: Women are not specifically excluded from contributing materials to the priesthood.
Ex 28.6-30: The engraved stones of the high priest represent the tribes of Israel, as such the wearer embodies all Israel, and any oracles received apply to all Israelites. The Urim and Thummim are usually interperted to mean marked pebbles or rocks that are cast or thrown to secure divine decisions, a form of divination.
Ex 28.36-38: Engraved rosette with the words "Holy to the Lord" as a protective measure is reminiscent of the much later solomonic tradition of seals.
Ex 29.1-46: Consecration of the priests.
Ex 29.20: Sprinkling the ram's blood on the priests' extremities (lobes . . . thumbs . . . toes), which represent their entire bodies, substitutes animal blood and death for that of the priests; their symbolic death means they belong to God.
Ex 30.1-31.18: Additional instructions.
Ex 31.1-11: Artisans.
Ex 31.11: "Do . . . commanded" implies that human creativity is subordinated to divine inspiration.
Ex 31.12: The phrase "The Lord said to Moses" is used here for a seventh time in conjunction with discussion on the sabbath; another use of the number 7.
Ex 32.1-34.35: Covenant violation and restoration. The golden-calf apostacy (also Deut 9.7-21; Ps 106.19-23; Neh 9.16-21) interrupts the tabernacle sequence, yet it parallels it in some ways: a command to construct, contributions of gold, construction, an altar and sacrifices. It thus contrasts the proper response to God in the chapters following this section, with the sinful one it describes.
Ex 32.1-35: Sin, divine anger, and several intercessions by Moses. This episode shares many details with the account of Jeroboam (first king of the northern kingdom, 928-907 BCE) erecting golden calves in Dan and Bethel (1 Kings 12.28-33; see also Deut 9.7-10.11).
Ex 32.13: Moses reminds God that the ancestral covenant is unconditional and irrevocable (Gen 13.15-16; etc.).
Ex 32.26-29: The shocking violence of the Levites, perhaps reflecting an ancient power struggle, earns them eternal priesthood. Worth noting that Aaron is allowed to live despite his involvement in this perverse act; perhaps [written as such] because the priesthood in later times was traced to him.
Ex 33.1-23: The divine presence is secured through a third plea by Moses.
Ex 33.7: Mention of a tent shrine in this passage distinct from the previously introduced tabernacle indicates that Exodus combines several traditions about a community shrine.
Ex 34.1-35: Covenant restoration and Moses's fourth plea to God. Here we find the so-named "Ritual Decalogue", indicated by the text to be the "Ten Commandments" commonly attributed to the formerly seen "Ethical" Decalogue of Exodus 20. It differs from the prior Decalogue in that this one focuses on largely ritual matters, leading some to believe it was a redactional supplement in order to bolster later Priestly concerns; others still believe it may be the earliest form of the Decalogue before the Ethical Decalogue was introduced due to shifting social concerns, leaving the Ritual Decalogue an aberrant remnant despite its status as being apparently representative of God's second fling regarding a Mosaic covenant.
Ex 34.29,35: "Shone" and "shining", better "radiant." The verb used here (from the Hebrew root "qrn") means "to radiate." The related noun "qeren," usually meaning "horn," has produced the erroneous notion that Moses had horns.
Ex 35-40: The tabernacle is constructed, and God's presence enters it. These chapters contain nearly verbatim repetitions of many passages of chs 25-31, except that they describe actions taken (rather than commanded) and are arranged according to pragmatic construction concerns rather than degree of sanctity.
Ex 38.8: Women worked as low-rank temple servitors, and they were allowed to enter the entrance to the tent of meeting, the highly significant site of Moses's oracular interactions with God.
Ex 39.1-31: Vestments (see 28.1-43). Moses's name here appears seven times, indicating his total involvement.
Ex 39.32: "Work . . . finished" echoes the Priestly language of Gen 2.2, as does 40.33; the construction of the tabernacle,, a microcosm of the cosmos, thus echoes creation. "Tabernacle of the tent of meeting", used only here and in 40.2,6,29, combines the two designations of the wilderness shrine and thus its two functions: a place for God's earthly presence, and a locale for oracular interactions.
Ex 40.1-38: Erection of the tabernacle, and God's presence filling it.
That's Exodus done. Surprised to find that half the book is spent on repeatedly redundant descriptions of the tabernacle as well as Moses's numerous ascents and descents of the mountain, but beyond that, we are all very familiar with the story of Exodus. As with Genesis, not much to add in totality; I don't know if I'll have parting words for each independent book, most of my personal observations are included within the notes I make themselves. Leviticus, then.
Then, out of the stars
So, out of the stars
Bloodied and broken, accord to the word
So, when the time comes
Oh, when the time comes
To broker anew, you make your voice heard
For what has been said
Intends to be kept;
In anguish repaid, to anguish incurred
As then, the word, so now, the word, so now, the word, as then
Saturday, January 14th, 2023
10:04
Not feeling great today. I've had a few discussions over the past 48 hours with various people that have lead to me feeling incredibly unseen: It's as though my personal perspective is always secondary in any given talk, and I find myself increasingly unable to relay and relate my experiences to the people that bring such things to me as points of conversation, and even when a topic may ostensibly be an avenue of connection, I find my position quickly disregarded, not in a consciously malicious or ill-mannered way, just by the course of the conversation. But it keeps happening. It feels very isolating, and I'm unsure what to do with the feeling.
It's frustrating to me, and it makes me sick. Even writing this now I feel the spite welling up. It's fruitless, I'll distract myself. Fucking useless. Forcing myself to write something, probably get to Leviticus later.
15:52
Introduction to Leviticus
Leviticus derives its name from the Septuagint, where the book is titled as such because its main concern is worship practices officiated by the high priest Aaron and his descendants, belonging to the tribe of Levi. The early rabbinic title, "The Priests' Instruction" is perhaps more fitting, as Levites not belonging to Aaron's line are mentioned only briefly.
The two main compositional strata in Leviticus are known as P ("Priestly"), which comprises most of chs 1-16; and H ("Holiness"), which includes the "Holiness Collection" (chs 17-26; so named because of its repeated exhortation to the Israelites to be holy), the addendum on vows, dedications, and tithes in ch 27, and brief interpolations in chs 1-16. These two strata are distinguishable on the basis of ideological and stylistic differences as well as narrative characteristics.
The H source was likely composed to supplement, revise and complete the Priestly source's earlier P stratum, which is responsible for the source's overall narrative structure and plot; Many of H's innovations over P are mediating positions between P and non-Priestly pentateuchal legislation. For example: in P the only Israelites who are holy are priests. In the Deuteronomical source, all of Israel is holy.
Strong evidence suggests that at least the core of Deuteronomy originated in the late seventh century BCE. Because H appears to revise this Deuteronomic core, it must postdate Deuteronomy. The P portions of Leviticus, which predate H, exhibit little or no correspondence with Deuteronomy and thus may be contemporary with or older than Deuteronomy.
Leviticus can be divided into five major sections:
1. Sacrifice (chs 1-7).
2. The dedication of the tabernacle and priests and the transgression of Aaron's sons (chs 8-10).
3. Ritual purity (chs 11-16).
4. The Holiness Collection (chs 17-26).
5. Addendum concerning vows, dedications, and tithes (ch 27).a
Leviticus is difficult to understand and appreciate because it is highly technical and regularly assumes knowledge of its ritual system. Its sparse narrative structure is also easily obscured due to the large blocks of laws that comprise the book. In addition, its authors' approaches to the issues they treat and their assumptions about them are often far removed from modern Western views.
Leviticus
Lev 1.1-7.38: Sacrificial prescriptions: In Priestly thought, sacrifice, a ritualized meal for the deity at times shared with its offerers, is the basic mode of interaction with God. To be accepted, sacrifices must be performed according to the divine instructions.
Lev 1.9: The imagery of smoke rising from the altar suggests that the deity is in the heavens.
Lev 2.1-16: This verse on grain offering interrups the animal food gift offerings; it was likely inserted later to provide a still more affordable alternative to the burnt offering. It is uniquely placed here in that it utilises second-person address rather than the usual third-person of surrounding chapters.
Lev 2.1: Frankincense, an aromatic resin from shrubs found in Arabia and East Africa.
Sunday, January 15th, 2023
13:08
Lev 3.1-17: The well-being offering.
Lev 4.1-6.7: Instructions for purification and reparation offerings. In H's view, the accumulation of sin and impurity in the tabernacle threatens the abiding presence of the deity. If God should depart, Israel will lose all divine protection and benefaction (Lev 26.30-33; cf. Ezek 8-11). P, however, appears not to countenance divine abandonment. It instead expects Israel to perform the requisite purgation, which elminates any cause that might be posited for the deity's departure. In P, God's presence among the Israelites is wholly for his own benefit. The threat of divine abandonment, which is meant to motivate humans to serve the deity and in so doing preserve the benefits they enjoy from God's presence in their midst, is thus inconsistent with P's claims.
Lev 4.1-35: The purification offering.
Lev 4.6: Sprinkling of blood seven times.
Lev 5.1-13: Purification offerings for specific offenses.
Lev 6.8-7.38: Elaborations on the sacrificial instructions. These speeches are likely derived from a subsource, incorporated here for extra detail.
Lev 6.14-23: The grain offerings.
Lev 6.18: "Become holy"; holiness is conceptualized as an invisible divine essence that is communicable through physical contact (cf. v. 27; Ex 29.37; 30.29; Ezek 44.19).
Lev 6.24-30: The purification offering.
Lev 7.1-10: The reparation offering.
Lev 7.11-38: The well-being offerings.
Lev 8.1-10.20: The dedication of the tabernacle priests and the transgression of Aaron's sons.
Lev 8.10-12,30: Annointing with oil was a common transition rite for persons and objects in the ancient Near East (cf. 14.15-18,26-29) and was therefore also used in Israel to change the status of a commoner to king (e.g., 1 Sam 10.1; 16.13).
Lev 9.1-10.20: The inauguration of priestly service and the transgression of Nadab and Abihu. Divine glory appears to the people with fire, confirming the deity's presence and approval of the priests' ritual activities. Immediately following this joyous occasion, however, Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu, commit sacrilege by making an unauthorized incense offering, which prompts the divine fire to emerge once more to consume them. The deaths of Nadan and Abihu occasion further instructions for the priests.
Lev 10.1-20: The transgression of Nadab and Abihu.
Lev 10.1-2: Unholy fire; unauthorized incense offering that God had not instructed, as such, the fire that would have consumed the offering instead consumes the sons. The Korah rebellion ends similarly with divine fire consuming the offerers of illicit incense (Num 16.35).
Lev 10.3: "When he said," likely referencing a text now lost.
Lev 10.8: Something I noticed: it mentions specifically that one should not drink wine or alcohol in the tent of meeting, this contrasts quite nicely with the later christian sacrament.
Lev 10.10: Holy, common, unclean, and clean, can be used in multiple permutations: holy and clean, common and clean, common and unclean, and rarely, holy and unclean. It all depends on how an individual or item is used and how they interact with impurities.
Lev 11.1-16.34: Ritual impurity and purification. Impurity is seen as a real, though invisible, film that adheres to persons and objects and is attracted to the tabernacle. Impurity is fundamentally different from sin: impurity is contracted in the course of normal, daily activities and carries no moral stigma, however, impurity is contagious and vexes the deity, so to fail to purify is considered sinful, and thus has consequences.
Lev 12.1-8: Childbirth. Considered impure due to postpartum blood; period of impurity varies depending on sex of child but is a multiple of forty regardless, a common biblical number representing completion.
Lev 13.1-14.57: Surface afflictions. Though the specific conditions are unknown to us (one theory posits vitiligo), conditions that alter the surface of the skin would be assessed by a priest to determine whether or not the person was clean or unclean; if unclean, the indiviudal would be dressed in mourner's clothes and be set outside of the camp so as to ensure their uncleanliness did not contaminate others. Once again, this is not a form of sin, and speaks nothing to the moral character or fate of the individuals in question.
Monday, January 16th, 2023
13:24
Lev 14.1-32: Purification after surface affliction.
Lev 14.33-53: Surface affliction in houses. "When you come into the land:" In the narrative, the Israelites are living in the wilderness camp; they therefore do nto currently live in houses. "I put," in non-Priestly texts, surface affliction is viewed as divine punishment; however, in the Priestly view, all natural occurrences ultimately stem from the deity's command. P thus attributes outbreaks of surface affliction to God even when they are not divine punishments.
Lev 15.1-33: Sexual discharges. Once more, sex is not sinful, rather it merely engenders impurity that should be cleansed, as is the case with discharges, normal or abnormal.
Lev 15.19-24: The requirement to bathe in a ritual bath (Hebrew: "mikveh") is a later institution commonplace in the late second temple period at the earliest.
Lev 16.1-34: The day of purgations. The holy of holies is purged once a year to clean it of intentional sins; it is considered a deeply important act, but also one that is secondary to the routine, daily cleaning of unintentional sin and impurities that are considered much more common due to the priests' optimism that those who know God would not be prone to commit sin intentionally.
Lev 16.8: Azazel. Lots to read into about this one, but ultimately it's simply worth saying that it was unlikely that Azazel was intended to be a literal demonic figure in opposition to Yahweh at the time of writing, the Priestly source being monotheistic and focused on Yahweh's preeminence as it is; though scholars used to think that Azazel literally meant 'scapegoat', the language does seem to imply Azazel is a literal name for something, just what that something is is up for debate. I did some googling, it's been argued that Azazel may have been a generic term for the 'boogeyman' representative of the evil of the wilds to which the scapegoat was sent. All too vague still, however.
Lev 17.1-26.46: The holiness collection. Has redundancies and contradictions, not organized, incomplete; can't be said to be a unified, structured code.
Lev 17.7: Goat demons, likely a reference to Satyr and goat worship of the Ugaritic peoples; it is likely that the Israelites saw such entities, "demons", as being terrestrial beings of the wilds (see note on Azazel).
Lev 18.1-30: Foreign abominations. Sins of foreigners, mainly Canaanites, used as narrative justification for God's expelling of them from their lands so that Israel may live there.
Lev 18.21: Molech, a Canaanite deity associated with child sacrifice.
Lev 18.22: Out of all biblical legal corpora, only H contains a prohibition against same-sex intercourse, likely due to its nonreproductive nature.
Lev 19.1-37: Holiness of Israelite laypersons.
Lev 19.9-10: Incitement to charity?
Lev 19.19: Mixtures of fabrics are prohibited so as to keep the Israelite laity distinct both from other nations, as well as the Priests, for whom mixed fabrics are acceptable.
Lev 19.25: Lifted straight from the Laws of Hammurabi.
Lev 20.1-27: Various prohibitions. Likely a separate source of compiled laws; absolute prohibitions rendered here have been instead forumlated as legal cases with stated penalties.
Lev 20.2-3: Worth pointing out that Molech as a deity of literal child sacrifice is also up for debate, could well be the case that this is mirroring Exodus language in 'sacrificing' children to the deity in a symbolic sense. Haven't looked deeply into this, however.
Lev 20.27: Tactless later insertion.
Lev 21.1-22.33: Priestly restrictions and sacrificial rules.
Lev 22.1-16: Rules for avoiding defilement of offerings.
Lev 23.1-44: Calendar of sacred occasions.
Lev 23.42: Booths? What booths? There is no prior mention of booths, may relate somehow to the tent sanctuary.
Lev 24.1-9: Ritual lamps and bread.
Lev 24.10-23: The case of the blasphemer and laws arising from it. Likely an originally separate composition, these verses exist to settle a case of blasphemy in the case of a half-Israelite; the answer being that any indiviudal regardless of status shall be put to death for such a sin.
Lev 25.1-26.2: The sabbaical and jubilee years and their social implications. Slaves may only come from the nations around the Israelites. We all know this one.
Lev 26.3-46: Inducements for obedience.
Lev 26.11-12: The ultimate reward for obedience is the divine presence in Israel.
Lev 26.18: "Sevenfold," likely not a literal accounting but a reference to full/extensive punishment.
Lev 26.33-45: These verses address exile, indicating that this chapter may have been written or edited after Babylonian conquest of Judah in 586BCE. Those who remain and repent will be restored, for God's commitment to Israel is unmoved. This was likely a particularly meaningful promise to the exiles.
Lev 27.1-34: Vows, dedications, and tithes. A later addition.
Leviticus down. Very dry, much repetition. Fascinating in a narrative sense though, how all these laws were worked naturally into the story of Exodus and eventual conquest; God placing himself among the people so as to afford his divine commandments immediate legitimacy—this is of course recognizing much of this was compiled later to justify temple arrangements, but that only makes it all the more interesting. Onto Numbers.
Slaughter, bleed, dash all that seeps
Upon my cold, earthen stone,
consuming all, rife with breath
Upon my rule, my promise
and my nightmare, living fear
Upon all hearts, and all minds
this bloodsoaked word knows no creed
Upon the knowledge of life
and of death, there is no doubt
Let there be no transgression
Tuesday, January 17th, 2023
12:29
Introduction to Numbers
The title "Numbers," derives from the Vulgate and the Septuagint, named as such due to the two censuses of the Israelites that bookmark the narrative of the book. Another title, "In the wilderness," comes from the Masoretic Text.
The Oxford commentary provides a graph to illustrate three ways in which one can analyse the structure of the book, I copy it here in text form:
Chs 1-25: First Generation.
Chs 26-36: Second Generation.
The first segmentation highlights the two-part structure that emerges from the census of the first and second generations.
Chs 1.1-10.10: Wilderness of Sinai.
Chs 10.10-21.35: Wilderness Journey.
Chs 22.1-36.13: Plains of Moab.
The second segmentation clarifies the three-part geographical structure of the wilderness journey.
Chs 1.1-6.27: Holiness and Camp.
Chs 7.1-10.10: Holiness and Tabernacle.
Chs 10.11-36: Departure from Sinai.
Chs 11.1-21.35: Rebellion and Death.
Chs 22.1-25.18: Threats on the Plains of Moab.
Chs 26.1-36.13: Preparation for the Promised Land.
The third segmentation breaks down the book into smaller thematic units.
Numbers acts as a narrative bridge between Leviticus (from which it directly follows) and Deuteronomy, linking the Priestly legislation that came before with the laws expounded by Moses in Deuteronomy, helping to bring together the two law collections into a single Torah, even though contradictions between the two books are common.
The book of Numbers follows two generations of Israelites, those that experienced the Exodus from egypt and head the law at Sinai firsthand, and those born after that must be prepared for entry into the Promised Land.
As in other parts of the Torah, the composition of Numbers took place over an extended period of time, and thus contains three distinct bodies of literature: independent poems and records; non-Priestly literature about the wilderness journey; and Priestly literature and law from several different authors.
17:57
Numbers
Num 1.1-10.10: The wilderness camp.
Num 1.1-6.27: The community and the camp. Camp layout has degrees of holiness indicated by proximity to the tabernacle.
Num 1.1-47: Census of the first generation.
Num 1.3: "Enroll" indicates a miltiary census for war; thus only males twenty and older are counted.
Num 1.17-47: The Levites are excluded because of their special priestly functions, and the number of twelve tribes is maintained by separating the tribe of Joseph into Ephraim and Manasseh.
Num 2.1-34: Arrangement of the camp.
Num 3.1-10: Genealogy and duties of the Levites. Genealogy is narrowed in focus here to highlight Aaron.
Num 3.5-10: Levites, subservient to Aaronide priests, act as guards of the tabernacle.
Num 3.11-13: Levites as substitutes for firstborn. The claim God made on the firstborn in Exodus is replaced here with the Levites acting as substitutes.
Num 3.14-51: First census of the Levites.
Num 3.38: Aaronide priests camp on the east and most significant side of the tabernacle; their labor is within the sanctuary separate from the Levites who work outside.
Wednesday, Jaunary 18th, 2023
18:28
Num 4.1-49: Second census of the Levites for work. Now that all are assigned, the camp is ready for the journey.
Num 5.1-6.27: Laws to protect the camp.
Num 5.1-10: Purity laws for the camp.
Num 5.1-4: Three types of impurity threaten the camp: skin disease, genital discharges, and contact with a corpse.
Num 5.6: Breaking faith with the Lord through wronging another incurs guilt that must be purified via confession.
Num 5.11-31: Law regulating a woman accused of adultery. These are the so-called "abortion" verses of Numbers: if a man believes his wife to have been unfaithful, he presents a grain offering and a Priest shall make the wife drink the bitter potion; if the woman has been faithful, nothing will happen, but if she has been unfaithful or has lied, her womb will drop and discharge—a miscarriage, essentially. Interestingly, this is the only ritual regarding holy water in the Hebrew Bible; holy water in this instance likely means running water from a spring.
Num 6.1-21: Law of the nazirite. Nazirites ("nazar" probably meaning "to abstain") are a voluntary class of Israelites that act as a form of ascetic, temporary Priests; one undertakes the vow of the nazirite and thus takes on a number of prohibitions in order to afford them holiness and social status. In order to revoke the vow one must offer various sacrifices to the tabernacle/temple; due to this, the vow of the nazirite today is considered permanent, as there is no way to offer sacrifice as described without a temple.
Num 6.22-27: Priestly blessing. Safeguard of divine blessing afforded to the congregation. The discovery of a form of this blessing on a sixth-century BCE silver amulet from a burial cave (the Ketef Hinnom scrolls) underscores its central role in Ancient Israel.
Thursday, January 19th, 2023
21:39
Num 7.1-10.10: Tabernacle.
Num 7.1-88: Offerings of dedication. Names and tribe order mirror that of their initial introduction. That sure is a lot of gifts.
Num 8.1-4: Lampstand. The lampstand is depicted as a stylized tree, perhaps symbolizing a tree of life.
Num 8.5-26: Dedication of the Levites. The Levites are purified, so as to become separated from the Israelites, but they are not consecrated as the Aaronite priests were.
Num 9.1-14: Passover. This is the second passover, the first taking place in Egypt. This marks the conclusion of the revelation at Mount Sinai.
Num 9.15-23: Cloud and wilderness march. The rest periods of this march may reflect the Priestly ritual calendar, where distinct sacrifices and feasts require different periods of time.
Friday, January 20th, 2023
16:33
Num 10.1-10: Trumpets. Trumpets used to summon the congregation, prepare camp for travel, and to summon the people to war and feasts.
Num 10.11-22.1: The wilderness journey. The murmuring of the Israelites arises from threatening situations in the wilderness over lack of food and water, disease, or fear of the inhabitants of Canaan, all of which cause the Israelites to protest their present condition. The complaint is accompanied by a longing to return to slavery in Egypt, which shows a lack of faith in the leadership of the Lord and Moses and eventually leads to the death of the generation that had escaped from Egypt.
Num 10.11-36: Leaving Sinai. Two accounts here, Priestly and not.
Num 10.11-28: Organization of the wilderness march.
Num 10.29-36: The ark leading the people. Jethro doesn't want to go a-marching!
Saturday, January 21st, 2023
15:17
Num 11.1-12.15: The prophetic spirit of Moses.
Num 11.1-3: Complaint at Taberah. This complaint lacks specific details. Moses intercedes.
Num 11.4-35: Moses and the seventy elders.
Num 11.12: God is described as the mother who conceived and gave birth to the people, and Moses is their wet nurse.
Num 11.15: Moses requests death if the mistreatment is continued.
Num 11.16-17: God instructs Moses to select seventy elders to share his spirit so as to aid him in leadership. Calls back to the elders mentioned in Ex 24.1,9, as well as to Jethro's advice in Ex 18.
Num 11.25-30: Prophetic inspiration of others is distinguished here as being temporary, and it can also be transferred without intent.
Sunday, January 22nd, 2023
23:40
Num 12.1-15: Conflict between Miriam and Aaron, and Moses. Moses is challenged because he married a Cushite woman.
Num 12.3: The humble (Hebrew: "Anaw") seek God (Ps 22.27), rejoice in God (Ps 63.33), and do justice (Isa 11.14), so that God hears (Ps 10.17), instructs (Ps 25.9), and saves them (Ps 76.10).
Monday, January 23rd, 2023
01:29
Num 13.1-14.45: Story of the scouts and its consequences. Combining two different sources.
Num 13.1-20: Selection of the scouts and their instructions.
Num 13.16: Joshua gets his name changed from Hoshea.
Num 13.21-33: Mission and report of the scouts.
Num 13.22: Anakites, a race of fearful giants.
Num 13.25: Forty days.
Num 14.1-45: Responses to the report of the scouts.
Num 14.9: The people of the land of Canaan have had the protection (Hebrew: "shadow", "shade") of their Gods removed from them; protection in this manner is used as such to describe the Lord's actions also (Pss 91.1; 121.5).
Num 14.13-19: Moses intercedes for the nation with two arguments: killing the Israelites would lead the nations to judge the Lord to be unreliable (see Ex 32.11-14); and the central characteristic of the Lord is mercy (see Ex 34.6-7).
Num 14.20-24: God forgives; the nation will not be destroyed, but the inheritors of the land will be the second generation.
Num 14.34-35: For every day of scouting, there is one year of marching in the wilderness.
Num 14.39-45: Unsuccessful war against the Canaanites; Yahweh, represented by the ark, is not with the people.
Num 15.1-3: Legislation for Israel's future life in the land.
Num 15.22-31: Rules regarding forgiveness from three distinct transgressions: unintentional communal sin (vv. 22-26); unintentional individual sin (vv. 27-29); intentional sin, which cannot be forgiven (vv. 30-31).
Num 15.32-41: Further legal material. Collecting sticks on the sabbath results in consultation with the Lord, the answer is the death penalty (such consultations are made in cases that lack legal precedent, e.g. Lev 24.10-23).
Wednesday, January 25th, 2023
22:05
Missed two days, low mood. Had to happen eventually. Back to it, however.
Num 16.1-17.13: Conflicts over priestly leadership.
Num 16.1-40: Conflict with Korah and Dathan and Abiram. Two narratives interwoven. God sends the families to Sheol and likewise consumes the incense holders with fire due to their transgression. Interestingly, the censers of these incest were made holy 'at the cost of their lives.' The metal is hammered into a covering for the altar so as to remind the faithful.
Num 16.41-17.13: Special status of Aaron. Aaron atones for the people, stoping the plague with his own incense, and he also has a magical staff.
Num 17.2: Election of Aaron once more via this staff lot, another sign of his holiness.
Num 18.1-19.22: Responsibilities and rights of priests and Levites.
Num 18.1-32: Rules for priests and Levites.
Num 18.1-7: A divine speech to Aaron, rather than to Moses, outlines the safeguards to protect the people from perisihing in the presnce of God; Aaronide priests and Levites protect the Israelites from divine holiness.
Num 18.1: Direct address to Aaron is rare, though all instances are associated with danger to the sanctuary, thus accentuating the authority of the priesthood.
Num 18.19-21: Priests own no territory due to their 'covenant of salt' with the Lord, instead they receive tithes and offerings for their devoted service.
Num 19.1-22: Cleansing from corpse contamination. Postulated in footnote that corpse contamination may stem from a rejection of ancestor worship; the dead are a danger to divine holiness.
Num 20.1-21.35: Leaving the wilderness. As before, two narratives here.
Num 20.1-13: Sin of Moses and Aaron. Individual responsibility of Moses and Aaron for not being allowed to enter the land due to disobedience regarding divine command. Different explanations are given in Deut 1.37; Ps 106.32-33.
Num 20.7-8: Moses is instructed to use his staff; this staff may be Aaron's from the prior story, but it could also be the staff from Exodus.
Num 20.9-11: Moses judges the complaint of the people as an instance of disobedience, accusing the people of being "rebels"; as a consequence he does not follow the divine instructions exactly, and strikes the rock twice rather than speaking to it.
Num 20.14-21: Conflict with Edom.
Num 20.14: "Brother," reflecting the genealogy of Genesis; Esau, brother of Jacob is the ancestor of the Edomites.
Num 20.18-21: Here, Israel is forced to go around Edom under threat of the sword, later in Deut 2.3-13 the Isrealites are said to have travelled through Edom.
Num 20.22-29: Death of Aaron. Robing Eleazar with Aaron's vestments signals the transfer of the priestly office. Thirty days of morning rather than the normal seven-day period indicated prior.
Num 21.1-3: War against the king of Arad. The lands and property is given to God through destruction rather than spoil for the Israelite warriors. Hormah mentioned here is the same as in the unsuccessful war fought prior in 14.39-45, reversing the negative account.
Num 21.4-9: The bronze serpent. Serpents, "seprahim," could refer either to dangerous desert reptiles, or to members of the divine council. The serpent of bronze Moses fashions was said to exist in the Jerusalem temple (2 Kings 18.4)
Num 21.10-35: Journey north through Transjordan. In these narratives the Amorites control territory later controlled by the Ammonites.
Num 21.14-15: Book of the Wars of the Lord once more, funny how a book, presumably written later, is cited here as if Moses has precognition given the tradition of his writing of Numbers is taken to be fact.
Num 21.17-18: Ancient work song celebrating the digging of a well. Cute!
Num 21.21-26: Israelites ask to pass through the territory of Sihon, king of the Amorites; Siohn wages war on the Israelites and is defeated. The subsequent poem may originally have been used by Sihon in his defeat of the Moabites (as quoted in Jer 48.45), repurposed and placed here as a taunt from Israel in their defeat of Sihon. Chemosh is mentioned, the principal Moabite god.
Friday, January 27th, 2023
02:43
Num 22.1-36.13: Preparing for entry into Canaan. Set in the plains of Moab, conflicts with other nations continue, and we get laws for Israel's future life in the land.
Num 22.1-24.25: Balak and Balaam. Balak, king of Moab fears Israel's strength; he requests the seer Balaam to curse them. Israel plays no active role in the mounting threat of Balak, but the Lord is an active participant in the drama.
Num 22.1-14: First mission. In this account, Balaam is depicted positively.
Num 22.5: "Balaam son of Beor" is also featured in an eighth-century BCE text from Tell Deir Alla in the Jordan Valley. That text indicates that Balaam was a well-known prophetic figure, and recounts his vision of a natural disaster brought on by Shagar, a fertility goddess, and the Shaddai-gods. We can take this to mean that the character of Balaam predates this story, or at least existed alongside the development of it as a general figure.
Num 22.7: Balaam has the power of divination, condemned elsewhere in the bible, it proves to be efficacious.
Num 22.9-11: Balaam's dialogue with the Lord shows that although he is a non-Israelite, Balaam has a relationship with the Lord.
Num 22.15-21: Second mission. This narrative was likely immediately followed by vv. 36-38, instead, a separate story interrupts the sequence of events (see next note).
Num 22.22-35: Balaam and the angel of the Lord. This interruption of the narrative is an accont of Balaam's journey to Balak; the Lord is angry at this journey despite being the one that had just instructed him to go with the men. The central theme of the story is the blindness of the seer to the threat of the divine being in his path, but which his donkey sees clearly. The story presents Balaam negatively, which becomes the dominant interpretation elsewhere in the Bible (see 31.8,16; Deut 23.5; Josh 13.22; 24.10; Neh 13.2).
Num 22.22: "Adversary" (Hebrew: "Satan"), the angel of the Lord acts as the adversary to Balaam.
Num 22.23: "Drawn sword," see Josh 5.13; 1 Chr 21.16.
Num 22.36-23.12: First oracle.
Num 23.7-10: The oracle consists of three stanzas: vv. 7-8: the inability of Balaam to curse if it not God's will; v. 9: the distinctive character of Israel; v. 10: reference to the Israelites' fertility. Funny for God through Balaam to note "a people living alone, and not reckoning itself among the nations!" right after the wars against Arad and Sihon.
Num 23.13-26: Second oracle. The oracle has three stanzas: vv. 18-19: the contrast between Balak and God underscores that the human attempt to manipulate the future is useless since God fulfills all divine promises; vv. 20-22: Israel's history of deliverance as an outgrowth of divine blessings; vv. 23-24: shift from the past to the present by comparing Israel to a lion that eats its prey.
Num 23.27-24.13: Third oracle.
Num 24.2: "Spirit of God," suggests that Balaam achieves a new level of revelation in the third oracle.
Num 24.5-9: Balaam describes the Israelite nation with fertility imagery of palm trees, gardens, aloe tree, and cedars, before concluding with the ominous statement that those who curse Israel will be cursed and those who bless Israel will be blessed. Echoing Gen 12.3.
Num 24.14-25: Balaam's fourth oracle has a future prophetic orientation not present in the first three, making predictions on events to come regarding the nations surrounding Israel.
Num 24.15-17: The vision about Moab is eschatological; destruction is not now, and it is not near. The royal imagery may point to the victory of an Israelite king over Moab; it also influences expectations for a future leader, such as Bar Kokhba in the revolt against Rome (132-135 CE), and Jesus, "the bright morning star" in Rev 22.16. In the view of some schools of textual criticism, the oracles narrative, excepting the episode involving the donkey, is simply a framework invented in order to be able to insert much older poems.
Sunday, January 29th, 2023
07:27
Missed another day, my ability to commit falters as usual; still aiming to complete the project, of course, but small gaps may continue.
Num 25.1-19: Sin of Israel at Baal-peor. Narrative has two versions, one about sexual relations and idolatry with the Moabites, the other about intermarriage with the Midianites.
Num 25.4: Divine anger requiring impalement to abate.
Num 25.6: Marriage between Israelites and Midianites condemned here, but worth noting that Moses married Zipporah, a Midianite.
Num 25.16-18: This divine command to Moses points ahead to the war against Midian in ch 31.
Num 26.1-36.13: Generation of the conquest and instructions for inheritance. The central theme is the inheritance of the Promised Land by the second generation after the death of the first, signaled by a new census (ch 26) and a change of leadership; Eleazar replaces Aaron as high priest (26.1), and Joshua succeeds Moses as Israel's leader into the Promised Land (27.12-13).
Num 26.1-65: Census of the second generation.
Num 26.52-55: Inheritance of land for each tribe is determined by lot, emphasizing that the result is determined by God.
Num 27.1-11: Daughters of Zelophehad
Num 27.3: Zelophehad died "for his own sin," suggesting the principle of individual responsibility in which successive generations should not be punished for the sins of a single member of the family. Again, contradicting the notion of generational guilt.
Num 27.6-11: God instructs Moses to transfer the inheritance of Zelophehad to his daughters. "Equal" opportunity inheritance, baby.
Num 27.12-23: Leadership of Joshua.
Num 27.12-14: Divine announcement of Moses's impending death.
Num 27.15-21: Transfer of Moses's authority to Joshua, accomplished through the laying on of hands under the supervision of Eleazar.
Num 28.1-29.40: Prescribed sacrifices. Sacrifices to be offered by priests for "appointed times," sacred moments in the day, week, and month.
Num 29.1-21: More festivals. I'm sure I will be forgiven for not going into extensive detail here.
Num 30.1-16: Vows. The central topic in the chapter is vows by women, in which a wife or daughter promises to do something for God in exchange for divine help. Autonomy of women is called into question here; the father or husband of a woman can disapprove of any vow, thus nullifying it, and the Lord will forgive such a nullification.
Num 31.1-54: War against Midian. A fictional account of the destruction of the entire Midiante nation by the Israelites without a single casualty. This Priestly story is a sequel to the account of the intermarriage between the Israelite man Zimri and the Midianite woman Cozbi (25.6-18). The story provides the Priestly interpretation on a range of topics associated with war, including the role of priests, the evaluation of male and female captives, spoils, and the purity of soliders. Moses and the priests oversee the event, Eleazar the high priest determines acceptable spoils from holy war, and Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, leads the troops.
Num 31.6: Phinehas takes the vessels of the sanctuary into battle, thus making it a holy war.
Num 31.8: Rest in peace Balaam.
Num 31.16: "On Balaam's advice," not found in chapter 25 or elsewhere. The women are slaughtered due to their actions at Baal-Peor; Balaam's supposed influence here acts as the post hoc scapegoat.
Num 32.1-42: Inheritance east of the Jordan. Extended exchange between the tribes of Gad and Reuben and Moses regarding land distribution.
Num 33.1-56: A summary of the wilderness journey, includes minutia on each and every stop, then a proclamation of continued holy war in crossing the Jordan.
Num 34.1-29: Boundaries of the land west of the Jordan.
Num 35.1-15: Levitical cities of refuge. The Levites are separated from the other tribes in the Promised Land, as in the wilderness camp. They receive no contiguous block of land, because they are a divine possession, instead they receive cities; Deut 18.6 suggests that Levites are scattered throughout all of the cities of the Promised Land; see also Judg 17.7-8.
Num 35.16-34: Laws of homicide.
Num 35.33-34: The rationale for the laws regarding homicide is that shed blood pollutes the land (Ezek 36.17-18) causing it to vomit out its inhabitants (Lev 18.28).
Num 36.1-12: Daughters of Zelophehad. The question of intermarriage and the inheritance of lands is raised; if the daughters of Zelophehad marry into other tribes, does the land they had inherited change tribes? Moses answers in the negative, revising the previous law with an addendum that says in the land must be retained by the tribe in collective, therefore such women may only marry one of their father's tribe, so as to negate the issue entirely. Placed at the end of Numbers as this is, this was likely a later addition tacked on to address such cases.
And that is Numbers done. Can't lie, this one was a bit of a slog, felt my desire to continue reading during my sessions wane, as is evident in the length of my reading sessions. Interesting structure, the narrative sections interspersed with sudden bouts of law and ritual and the like. Feeling the cast of characters begin to diversify a bit, with Moses as figurehead being joined by Aaron's descendants in Eleazar, Phinehas and Joshua, making the wider arc of the Israelites seem less of a point-to-point prophet-to-porphet affair. Good fun! Deuteronomy, then.
Wander, O' Carnelians, deprived of birthright;
Wander, O' Peridots, divided and scattered;
Wander, O' Carbuncles, praised whelps of martyr's wine;
Wander, O' Sapphires, seekers of Enoch's pavement;
Wander, O' Diamonds, farers of the firmament;
Wander, O' Onyxes, of those that are fruitful;
Wander, O' Onyxes, of those that help forget;
Wander, O' Jaspers, ravenous wolves, left of hand;
Wander, O' Jacinths, black sheep, serpent of my kin;
Wander, O' Lapides, innocent of ill intent;
Wander, O' Amethysts, triumphant with fortune;
Wander, O' Agates, goodly hinds let loose to fear.
Sunday, January 1st, 2023
04:44
Been a little while. I notice that my absence from writing these entries (as well as committing to studies in general) over the autumn period mirrors the same span of absence I underwent last year, and the year before that, it seems to be a trend, seasonal apathy maybe. Regardless, it's a new year, and a new start. I never got around to finishing Ninian Smart's book on World Religions, it's still in the 'reading' slot on my desk, unmoved since late October. I will finish it, but it will likely be slower, as I plan to read my academic Bible over the course of this year, at least one page per day, which possibly means one diary entry per reading session, it's more than likely that I'll falter on this point eventually, but it's worth the attempt at commitment regardless. I will finish it, I am just preempting the inevitable slump in energy. This means that I will likely not have much time to read other texts in this area during that period, however, though I'll definitely keep up on my lighter reading, as I've been gifted an e-reader. A snazzy device, for sure.
As for how I've been, I can't complain, I mean, I can, but I won't. I have actually been reading quite a lot since my last entry, just fiction, though—I've been burning through my backlog of Cherryh novels to finish a review document that I've been typing up (for well over a year at this point!) of her Alliance-Union universe, so I'll probably stick that on my website when it's done. I've also found some neat books in charity stores within this period, I'll probably get around to detailing them as and when I sort my physical books (I have to donate a bunch, far too many hanging about the place).
I don't have a crazy amount to add, I'll focus on my Bible reading going forward, I'll try to shunt Smart's text as I go, just so I can just cross it off the list and get to other works as I eat into the year (my to-read pile of comparative religious texts is startlingly large at time of writing).
Addendum: Kali just asked me what I was writing, and much to her dismay, it was not about 'her tittys'; I hope this note placates her ego.
20:40
So begins my reading of the New Oxford Annotated Bible. My notes on this text are going to be very erratic, likely varying from entry to entry, some short, some long, and there's a lot to get through. It's going to be messy, and I'm going to type them onto my computer rather than write them in my diary, so as to make it easier on myself as I go (I will also be able to highlight particularly relevant information in bold, for my own convenience as online reference). Each entry will come with a header that refers to the specific book and number being referred to. It's extremely likely I will use extensive quotations of footnotes, as well as the text itself as I make my personal entries. No time like the present, I suppose!
It should be noted that this Bible is using MLA formatting, so citations will read with colons throughout. I will also be defaulting to using hyphens in lieu of en-dashes.
20:42
Introduction to the Pentateuch
The Pentateuch is the designation for the first group of books in the bible; assessing and naming a unified theme for the Pentateuch proves problematic: the development of Israel, the figure of Moses, as well as the covenant do not act as cohesive motifs for the entirety of the five books, composed at various different times, and by various differet peoples as they were, as such, scholars posit various extensions to the Pentateuch in order to group together such historical themes (the six books being the Pentateuch, plus Joshua, as well as the Enneateuch, or the nine books, for instance).
Torah, meaining in Jewish, Law; Greek, nomos (as found in the pre-Common Era Greek translation). Many examples of Law can be found in these opening books, such as the law of circumcision, the laws oncerning inheritance, the creation of the sabbath, as well as the Decalouge (the Ten Commandments), and the laws of sacrifice detailed after the introduction of the tabernacle.
Torah can also mean instruction, or teaching; teaching is not confined to law, as narratives and stories are as effective a medium of instruction.
Thus, given the predominance of narrative in significant portions of the Pentateuch, especially in Genesis, the beginning of Exodus, and Numbers, it is best to understand the biblical term torat moshe as "the instruction of Moses," an instruction realized through narratives and laws, which together elucidatet the proper norms of living and the relationship between God and the world.
The view that the Torah should be understood as the divine word mediated by Moses was the standard view of synagogue and church through the Renaissance; this is explicitly contradicted by the Torah's narrative, as Genesis refers to events that clearly happened after Moses' time ("at that time the Canaanites were in the land", implying that at the time of the author, the Cananites were no longer in the land, which was not the during Moses' lifetime).
The Documentary Hypothesis from the nineteenth century considers the Pentateuch to be composed of four main sources of documents that were edited or redacted together; this is supported by the fact that language and theological positions seem to differ from text to text: It has long been noted that chs 1-3 of Genesis twice narrate creation [. . .] [as] the second creation account does not simply mirror or repeat the first, but differs from the first both in outline and in detail, The manner in which God creates is of specific note, as in one case he speaks the world and man and woman into existence at once, but in the next he forms man and woman in sequence, fashioning them somehow in a manner that is distinctly not speaking.
Two of the apparent source documents of the Pentateuch (J and P) seem to speak of two distinct flood narratives, but the flood story as read in the collected work culminates in a tradition that God will never again bring a flood on the land; for this reason, the J and P flood narratives cannot appear as separate and complete narratives, so they are intertwined. The same happens again with the plague of Blood in Exodus, in one (J), Moses is the protagonist, and the blood affects only the Nile, and the main plague is death of fish, while in the other (P), Aaron appears as well, and blood affects all Egyptian water sources. Differentiating which source documents contributed to which part of the text is easiest in the original Hebrew, as many translations obscure differences, using neutral language where originally distinctions between composite narratives could be found.
The issue of slavery: Exodus differentiates between the treatment of male and female slaves, whereas Deuteronomy claims that they should be treated similarly: Such legal differences are not surprising given that the Bible is composite and that the different legal collections reflect norms or ideals of different groups living in different times or locations.
Some quick ways in which one can differentiate the proposed four sources of the Documentary Hypothesis:
J (Jahwist) is well known for its highly anthropomorphic God, who has a close relationship with humans (walking through the garden, making garments for the man and woman so as to clothe them).
E (Elohist) considers God as being more distant, typically communicating through dreams and intermediaries (such as angels and prophets).
P (Priestly) is characterized by a strong interest in order and boundaries, as well as an overriding concern for the priestly family of Aaron that supervises the Temple-based religious system.
D (Deuteronomist) is characterized by a unique hortatory (preaching style) and insists strongly that God cannot be seen, and is concerned with the specifics of how and where God is to be worshipped (in one place, understood to be Jerusalem).
Each of these sources have 'collections' of Pentateuch law associated with them, as such groupings of laws are thought to independently originate with each specific source.
Modern scholarship has largely abandoned rigid acceptance of the Documentary Hypothesis, as though it is clear the Pentateuch is drawing from numerous distinct sources, it is not so easy to group and date them in any meaningful manner (some presumed historical events that accompanied the dating of these sources have since been found to be largely mythical), scattered and diverse as they are.
Most scholars who continue to work with a documentary model no longer see each source as the work of a single author writing at one particular time but recognize that each is the product of a single group of "school" over a long time. Thus, it is best to speak of streams or strands of tradition and to contrast their basic underpinnings, rather than to speak of a source coming from a single auhtor, period, and locale. Yet, despite the unraveling of a consensus on the exact date and nature of the sources, it is still important to acknowledge the many contradictory perspectives found in the Torah, and to contrast the ideologies and worldviews of different passages, contrasting, for example, the Deuteronomic view of Israel's fundamental, intrinsic holiness—as seen, in Deut 7.6, "For you are a people holy to the Lord your God"—with the Priestly view, articulated most clearly in the Holiness Collection, which suggests that Israel must aspire to holiness—as in Lev 19.2, "You shall be holy."
The compilation and redaction of the Pentateuch is thought to have happened over a long period of time by a series of redactors (R) sometime during the Babylonian exile or soon thereafter in the early Persian period. This contrasts with the traditional view that Ezra alone compiled the books at the request of the Persian authorities (the so-called royal authorization hypothesis), a largely fictitious assertion. The redaction of the Torah, like the editing of other ancient works, was not interested in creating a purely consistent, singular perspective but incorporated a variety of voices and perspectives and wished to preserve them despite their repetitions and contradictions. This presents a problem to scholars: Do we concentrate on interpreting the indiviudal sources, on hearing the voices of the constituent parts of the text before redaction took place? Or do we focus on the final product, an approach that has been called holistic reading?
21:30
Introduction to Genesis
Jewish tradition calls the first book of the Bible after its first word, Bereshit, which can be translated as "in the beginning" or "when first"; it was common in the ancient world to name a book after its first word(s) (see: mesopotamian epics).
Genesis comes from the ancient greek translation of the Torah, the Septuagint, Genesis in Greek meaning 'origin' or 'birth'; this name highlights an important dimension of the book of Genesis: its focus on genealogical origins: Though Genesis contains some of the most powerful narratives in the Bible, these stories occur within a genealogical structure, [. . .] within this framework, the book may be understood as an expanded genealogy of the "children of Israel" who will be the focus of attention in the book of Exodus and subsequent books.
In the ancient Near East, most literary compositions, including Genesis, were anonymous. Only during the Greco-Roman period do we start to see statements in early Jewish texts that Moses wrote Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch. This is thought to have been a response to Greek influence on Judaism, with Jewish authors retroactively painting the Pentateuch as having been penned by Moses, easily the most important figure to the work. Such claims included a supposed justification found in Deuteronomy 4.44, "This is the law [Heb torah] that Moses set before the Israelites," a passage taken to suggest Moses' authorship. Again, this can be taken as a later revision, as the Pentateuch includes events that happened after Moses' death (including Moses' death and burial, for that matter).
Most scholars agree that the texts now found in Genesis began to be written down sometime after the establishment of the monarchy in Israel in the tenth century BCE or later. Initially thought to have been composed of two distinct sources (J and E), modern scholarship sees the text as a more nuanced composition made up of various threads from various different times and locations. In any case, the earliest works now embedded in Genesis were products of scribes working in the contest of the monarchies of early Judah and Israel.
Many important parts of Genesis, however, were not written until after the monarchy had fallen in 586 BCE and Judean leaders were living in exile in Babylon. This is where many biblical themes of promises of land and progeny entered the biblical narrative, with scribes editing, adapting and tying earlier writings to the books of the present, reassuring the exiled peoples that God would bless them as he had blessed their ancestors. Revision, indeed.
In conjunction with this, Genesis sees the introduction of the Priestly source (P), with various sections and passages in Genesis seeming to have direct links to passages in later Exodus; the scribes of P having written their own parallel version of the events of earlier Genesis, having been consolidated with various other sources into the Pentateuch we know during the exilic period. This consolidation, however, also produced the numerous contradictions in Genesis that can be seen by the attentive reader, e.g., inconsistency in creation accounts, the differences between flood narratives (sacrifice versus no sacrifice).
Genesis can be said to be comprised of two main sections: the primeval history in chs 1:1-11:26 and the ancestral history in chs 11:27-50:26. The latter section can be broken down thusly:
Abraham and Sarah (chs 11.27-25.11)
Jacob and Esau (chs 25.19-35.29)
Joseph and his brothers (chs 37.2-50.26)
Notably, despite the male focus of headings like this and in the book iself, it is matriarchs of ancient Israel, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah, who often play a determinative role in the Genesis narratives of birth and the fulfillment of God's promise.
The former section of primeval history itself is composed of two major sections:
(1) the creation of the cosmos and stories of the first humans (1.1-6.4); and
(2) the flood and dispersal of post-flood humanity (6.5-11.9).
It's worth noting that these narratives feature universal traditions similar to myths in other cultures, particularly those in the ancient Near East that predated the Biblical narrative by hyndreds of years, likewise featuring the creation of the world, a flood, and the vow of the gods (here plural) not to destroy life with a flood again.
These two sections are then followed by a genealogy in 11.10-26 that traces the generations connecting Noah's son, Shem, to Abraham, which is where we pick up on the aforementioned ancestral history that details God's promise to Abraham and his ancestors.
Taken all together, we can outline Genesis as follows:
(I) The primeval history (1.1-11.26) composed of:
(A) Creation and violence before the flood (1.1-6.4)
(B) Re-creation through flood and multiplication of humanity (6.5-11.9)
(II) Transitional genealogy briding from Shem (the Primeval history) to Abraham (Ancestral History) (11.10-26)
(III) The ancestral history (11.27-50.26)
(A) Gift of divine promise to Abraham and his descendants (11.27-25.11)
(B) The divergent destinies of the descendants of Ishmael and Issac (Jacob/Esau) (25.12-35.29)
(C) The divergent destinies of the descendants of Esau and Jacob/Israel (36.1-50.26)
By the end of the book, the lens of the narrative camera has moved from a wide-angle overview of all the peoples of the world to a narrow focus on one small group, the sons of Jacob (also named "Israel").
The history of interpretation of Genesis begins with its gradual composition over centuries. Early monarchic scribes reinterpreted oral traditions in writing the first preexeilic compositions behind Genesis. Later exilic scribes expanded and joined together earlier compositions in the process of addressing an audience of Judeans exiled in Babylon. Priests (exilic or postexilic) wrote their own versions of the beginnings of Israel, "P". Later postexilic writers consolidated the non-Priestly and Priestly writings into a common Torah that became the foundation of later Judaism. Each of these stages involved interpretation of how earlier writings pertained to the present. Genesis as we have it now is a crystallization of these multiple interpretations.
Commentary here on how Paul used Abraham's actions in Genesis as an argument for why Gentile converts did not need to fulill Torah requirements in order to partake of God's promise, as long as they joined themselves to Jesus Christ; this was in contrast to Jewish scholars who use Genesis to argue the opposite, that Torah law is certainly a pre-requisite in every sense of the word for salvation when it comes to Gentiles. I'm sure we'll see more on this later, so I write this here mainly for posterity.
Commentary too on how Islam interprets Genesis, with Abraham's son Ishmael, not Issac, being the almost-sacrifice unto God according to Islamic tradition. Moreover, it is said that Abraham and Ishmael went on to find and rebuild the Kaaba shrine at Mecca. In this way, stories from Genesis are linked to two of the five central pillars of Islam: monotheism and pilgrimage.
Discussion of the relatively new phenomena of arguing for the historicity of the creation narrative as found in Genesis; the notion of Genesis being literal history was not a significant concern in premodern times, such stories were often read metaphorically or allegorically: Moreover, many would argue that an ancient document such as Genesis should not be treated as scientific treatise or a modern-style historical source. Instead, its rich stoer of narratives offer nonscientific, narrative, and poetic perspectives on values and the meaning of the cosmos that pertain to other dimensions of human life.
Many who resolved to read the whole Bible, hey there! have made it through Genesis, but what they find often surprises them. Those who know the stories of Genesis through the lens of later interpretation often assume that the characters in the book are saints. A closer reading reveals otherwise. The supposedly "faithful" Abraham often seems doubtful of God's intent to protect and provide for him, and Jacob and his family are distinguished by their ability to survive in the world through bargaining and trickery. Such stories pose a challenge to those who would use the biblical ancestors as role models for ethical behavior. Standing at the Bible's outset, they challenge readers to develop other models for understanding and appreciating this ancient text.
Monday, January 2nd, 2023
21:30
Genesis
Gen 1:1: The priestly account of creation presents God as a king, creating the universe by decree in six days and resting on the seventh. Scholars differ on whether this verse is to be translated as an independent sentence, even a title summarizing what follows (e.g., "In the beginning God created"), or as a temporal phrase describing what things were like when God started (e.g., "When God began to create . . .the earth was a formless void"; cg. 2.4-6). In either case, the text does not describe creation out of nothing (contrast 2 Macc 7.28).
Gen 1.2: As with other ancient cosmogonies, Gen 1.2 begins with detailing what things were like before creation; Earth being uninhabitable sets the stage for God's transformation of it. Christian interpreters have often seen the "Spirit" of the Trinity later in this verse.
Gen 1.3: The first of eight acts of creation through decree. Like a king God pronounces his will and it is accomplished.
Gen 1.4-5: Introduction of two crucial themes: the goodness of creation, and the idea that creation is acomplished through God's manipulation of elements of the universe.
Gen 1.6-8: The dome/Sky made on the second day separates an upper ocean (Ps 148.4; see Gen 7.11) from a lower one, creating a space in which subsequent creation can take place.
Gen 1.11-13: Earth is a feminine noun in Hebrew; echoes universal mythologies of the feminine earth bringing forth life—God is involved only indirectly here, commanding the earth to put forth.
Gen 1.14-19: In response to non-Israelite cultures who worshipped the heavenly bodies, the bodies are not named and are identified as mere timekeepers.
Gen 1.20-23: God's blessing of the swarming creatures anticipates a similar blessing that God will give humanity.
Gen 1.26: The plural us, our, probably refers to the divine beings who compose God's heavenly court.
Gen 1.26-27: Image, likeness is often interpreted to be a spiritual likeness between God and humanity. This idea of God's making of humans as a "God image" (1.27) may instead be related to ancient ideas of the making of physical cult images of deities and/or ancient beliefs that the king was an "image" of the deity, and thus authorized to rule. This latter idea is democratized here. God makes all of humanity as images of God in order for them to exercise godlike rule over earth's creatures.
Gen 1.27-28: Stressing the creation of humanity as simultaneously male and female; prepares for God's fertility blessing that enables them to multiply greatly.
Gen 1.31: Where individual elements of creation were "good", the whole is very good, perfectly corresponding to God's intention.
Gen 2.1-3: God's seventh-day rest (Hebrew: "shabat") here weaves a seven-day rhythm into creation, anticipating later commands for Israel to rest on the seventh day (e.g., Ex 16.22-30; 20:8-11//Deut 5.12-15).
Gen 2.4-25: Creation in a garden. Non-priestly Yahwistic tradition differing from 1.1-2.3, as evidenced by the different style and order of events—though different, it nevertheless reflects ancient temple imagery.
Gen 2.4-6: A description of how things were prioer to creation is common in ancient Near Eastern creation stories.
Gen 2.7: The wordplay on the Hebrew "adam" (human being; here translated "man") and "adamah" (arable land/soil; here ground) introduces a motif characteristic of this tradition: the relation of humankind to the soil from which it was formed. Human nature is not a duality of body and soul; rather God's breath animates the dust and it becomes a single living being (Ps 104.29; Job 34.14-15).
Gen 2.8-9: Eden, likely meaning 'well-watered place'; elsewhere called "garden of God/the Lord" (13.10; Ezek 28.13-16; 31.8-9; Isa 51.3; Joel 2.3); such sacred gardens are known in other ancient Near Eastern temples. In addition, ancient Near Eastern art and texts feautre a prominent focus on trees, often associated with feminine powers of fertility.
Gen 2.15: God's placement of the human in the garden to till it echoes other ancient creation narratives where humans are created to labor on the gods' behalf.
Gen 2.18: The hebrew word rendered as "helper" need not imply a subordinate status.
Gen 2.19-20: Here, animals are created after the first man, rather than before (cf. 1.24-25). The human's naming of the animals suggests dominion over them analagous to that seen in in 1.26-28. Yet the Lord God here contrasts with the all-powerful deity depicted in ch 1; The Lord God creates the animals in a comical, failed attempt to make a truly corresponding helper for the human.
Gen 2.21-23: The connection of men and women is affirmed through the crowning event of creation: the making of the woman from a part of the man, mirroring that of humanity's connection to the ground, so too is there wordplay here, as seen in the man's poem, with the Hebrew for woman, "ishshah" stemming from that of the Hebrew for man, "ish".
Gen 2.24-25: Unashamed nakedness and the purity of sex is here considered as reflecting the essence of the connection God created between man and woman; innocent and uncivilized.
Gen 3.1-24: Garden disobedience and punishment. Though this story is often taken by Christians as an account of "original sin," the word "sin" never occurs in it. Instead, it is a sophisticated narrative describing how God's acts and their aftermath lead to the formation of fully adult, mortal humans to till the earth outside the garden.
Gen 3.1: Both the nakedness of the man and woman as well as the craftiness of the snake are described with the same Hebrew word, "arum", drawing contrast. Snakes were a symbol in the ancient world of wisdom, fertility, and immortality. Only later was the snake in this story seen by interpreters as the devil (see Wis 2.24).
Gen 3.3: Worth noting that the woman's recitation of God's prohibition differs from the actual words, leaving ambiguity as to which tree she is referring to, and though it was initially directed at the man, and not at her, she assumes she is included in the prohibition.
Gen 3.4-5: The snake introduces doubt by contradicting God's word, attributing God's prohibition to God's fear that humans would have their eyes opened so they gain godlike wisdom, knowing good and evil.
Gen 3.6-7: The couple eat from the tree, and gain enlightenment. Such wisdom takes them from the earlier unashamed nakedness (2.25) to clothing, a mark of their first move from childlike/animal-like unashamed nakedness to civilized adulthood.
Gen 3.8-13: The disintegration of the earlier simple bond between God, the man, and the woman is shown by the hiding of the humans from the Lord God and the tendency of the man to blame the woman (and implicitly the Lord God) for his action. Later interpreters of the story have shown a similar tendency to follow the man in blaming the woman (e.g., Sir 25.24; 1 Tim 2.14).
Gen 3.16-19: The man's rule over the woman here is a tragic reflection of the disintegration of original connectedness between them.
Gen 3.20: Eve, resembles the Hebrew word for "living"; because she was the mother of all living.
Gen 3.21: The fashioning of clothing for the man and woman by the Lord God is a form of divine recognition of their complete transition, through gaining wisdom, from childlike innocence to adulthood.
Gen 3.22-23: As elsewhere in the ancient Near East, humans here are depicted as having a brief opportunity for immortality. The Lord God's fear of humans becoming godlike (cf. 1.26-27) recalls the snake's assertions in 3.4-5. The term "us" probably refers to the heavenly court once more. God's speech here clarifies that the humans gaining of knowledge of good and evil would send them from the garden, permanently preventing their immortality, validating the prediction that they will "certainly die" made in 2.17.
Gen 3.24: Cf. Ezek 28.13-16. The last echoes of temple imagery occur here. The cherubim are composite, winged creatures like the half-human, half-lion sphinx of Egypt. Representations of them guarded sanctuaries like the one in Jerusalem (1 Kings 6.23-28,32,35). The gate to the garden of Eden is in the east, like the processional gate to the Temple (Ezek 10.19).
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2023
04:18
Gen 4.1-16: Cain and Abel. Relational focus on brothers, paralleling the focus on relations between man and woman in the prior chapter.
Gen 4.1: Emphasis on the power of creation that is childbirth; the child is named Cain, derived from a Hebrew word for create, "qanah."
Gen 4.2: The name Abel is the same word translated as "vanity", or "emptiness" in the book of Ecclesiastes: His name anticipates his destiny. The distinction in rpofessions between Cain and Abel implies a further step toward culture.
Gen 4.3-5: Why God has a preference for Abel's sacrifice and Cain's is not well explained; it is likely that the ancient Israelite audience would assume a divine preference for animal sacrifice over that of Cain's vegetable offering, but such an instance of divine preference would be unexplainable for Cain; he could not have known.
Gen 4.7: The first mention of sin in the Bible; sin is somehow linked wih the risk to Cain if he does "not do well" in dealing with his anger.
Gen 4.10-11: Blood is sacred, for it is the seat of life (9.4; Deut 12.23), and blood of unpunished murders pollutes the ground (Num 35.30-34).
Gen 4.13-14: The importance of arable ground in these chapters can be seen in Cain's conclusion that expulsion from the soil means being hidden from the Lord's face.
Gen 4.16: Land of Nod, Nod in hebrew meaning "To wander", or "Wandering". Footnote says to refer to notes on Gen 11.1-9 which mentions the conclusion of the eastward journey of the family that starts with Cain's leave in this verse.
Gen 4.17-26: First overview of generations from creation to flood. Deriving from a different source than 5.1-32, most of the names here are variants of those found there, but not in the same order. Note: the book includes two graphs of the two genealogies, taken from the Yahwistic and Priestly sources respectively.
Gen 4.17: Cain's marriage and fear of others (4.14) presumes the presence of a broader population thus far unmentioned, indicating that the narratives about him were not originally connected with the creation myth—another indication of intertwined myths unless we want to accept incest as the natural conclusion.
Gen 4.18-22: Emphasis on detailing what sons produced what aspects of civilization through their occupations, attributing culture and technology's entrance into the world through Cain's lineage.
Gen 4.23-24: The song Lamech sings (The Song of the Sword, thought to have originated in the now-lost non-canonical text the Book of the Wars of the Lord) in totality functions as a lamentation of the consequence of civilization's expansion: an expansion of the violence with which the family tree began.
Gen 4.25: Adam begets another child, Seth, which the wife named as such because "God [had] appointed" for her another child instead of Abel, the Hebrew verb for "Appointed" resembling the word for "Seth". This verse acts as a parallel to 4.1, introducing the new line of Seth.
Gen 4.26: This Yahwistic tradition locates the beginning of use of the divine name "Yahweh" (Lord) in the primeval period, in contrast to the Priestly tradition, in which the divine name is not used until the time of Moses (Ex 6.2-6).
Gen 5.1-32: Second overview of generations from creation to flood. This priestly genealogy prallels 4.1-26, building from the P creation story (1.1-2.3) to the Priestly strand of the flood narrative. The list of descendants of Adam was evidently a separate source which the Priestly writer drew upon for this chapter and used as a model for later notices (6.9; 10.1 etc.).
Gen 5.1-2: The Priestly writer uses this reprise of 1.26-28 to bind his genealogical source (where "adam" designates a particular person) to 1.1-23 (where "adam" designates humanity as a whole), In other words, purposefully referencing the opening of Genesis in the opening of this chapter that describes Adam's genealogy, thus connecting this lineage to that of the Priestly representation of creation, where Adam (singular) and adam (humanity) can now be interpreted thematically as being one; you can see the legwork the Priestly writer is doing here to bolster their narrative interrelations.
Gen 5.3: The divine likeness detailed in 1.26 is again invoked here, with Adam's son, Seth being described as being born in Adam's likeness, thus being transmitted to succeeding generations.
Gen 5.4-32: Ancient Babylonian lists similarly survey a series of heroes before the flood, each of whom lived fantastically long times. As in those lists, here too ages decline over time, to the 100-200 years of Israel's ancestors. The names in this list resemble those of 4.17-26.
Gen 5.24: Babylonian traditions also report that some individuals—e.g., Emmeduranki (a pre-flood figure), Etana, and Adapa—were taken up into heaven by God. Later Jewish tradition speculated at length on Enoch's travels.
Gen 5.29: The name of Noah, meaning "rest" in Hebrew, anticipates his founding of viticulture (9.20), providing wine that relieves the curse of the ground detailed in 3.17-19. Worth pointing out that Noah's father, Lamech, is apparently prescient of this fact, noting that Noah will bring them relief; how he knows this is an unanswerable question.
Wednesday, January 4th, 2023
22:57
I've been sick all day, I intended to do some reading when I first awoke, but I found myself near-bedbound. Had to cancel the day's arrangements—it's the nastiest flu, sweeping the country even. Committing to the schedule, however.
Gen 6.1-4: Divine-human reproduction illustrates the breaching of the divine-human boundary that the Lord God feared in 3.22. There the Lord God drove humans away from the tree of life. Here, in an abbreviated narrative often attributed to the Yahwistic primeval history, the Lord limits their life span to one hundred twenty years, the life span of Moses (Deut 34.7) Nothing appears to happen to the sons of God who instigated it all, though this becomes a matter of great speculation in postbiblical literature.
Gen 6.4: The products of divine-human intercourse are the legendary warriors of renown. They are distinguished here from the Nephilim, a race of giants said to exist both prior to and after those times (cf. Num 13.33; Deut 2.10-11).
Gen 6.5-8.19: The great flood. This story describes God's un-creation and re-creation of the world. The biblical version is an interweaving of parallel accounts; the combination of the Yahwistic and Priestly accounts being necessary to avoid describing two consecutive, contradictory floods.
Gen 6.5-8: This introduction links with the non-Priestly material, particularly 2.7 (compare 6.7)
Gen 6.5: Though the biblical account is quite close in many respects to Mesopotamian flood stories found in Atrahasis and Gilgamesh tablet 11, one significant difference is that this text attributes the flood to God's judgement on the wickedness of humankind rather than divine frustration with human overpopulation and noise.
Gen 6.11-13: Here the Priestly writers attribute the flood to corruption of the earth and violence filling it (see 4.8,10,23-24).
Gen 6.14-16: Utnapishtim, hero of the epic of Gilgamesh is likewise told to build a similar houseboat, sealing it with pitch: The description of a three-leveled ark may be based on an ancient idea that the ark reflects the three-part structure of both universe and temple.
Gen 6.18: Covenant, footnote refers to the notes on 9.8-17: Speaks of this being the first explicit mention of a Covenant in the bible, and it encompasses all of humanity as well as that of the animal world.
Gen 6.19-20: Footnote refers to notes on 7.2-3.
Gen 7.1-5: This non-Priestly text parallels P in 6.11-22 and continues the tradition seen in 6.5-8.
Gen 7.2-3: The provision of extra clean animals allows for the sacrifice that will occur in 8.20; if only one pair of each animal were taken, every sacrifice would eliminate a species. The priestly tradition instead presumes that both sacrifice and the distinction between clean and unclean animals (see Lev 11) were not introduced until the revelation at Sinai, therefore only one pair of each species suffices (6.19-20; 7.14-15; cf. 7.9). Example of one of the contradictions arising from the conflation of two flood narratives.
Gen 7.6-16: Noah, his family, and the animals enter the ark twice (7.7-9 || 7.13-16), reflecting the interweaving of the two originally distinct flood accounts. Whereas the non-Priestly account has the flood caused by forty days of rain (7.4,12), the Priestly account attributes the flood to God's opening of the protective dome created in the second day (1.6-8), thus allowing the upper and lower oceans to meet (7.11), reversing P's creation story. (Considered a full un-creation of that Priestly account at Genesis' opening which the mere mention of forty days' worth of rain would not fulfil)
Gen 7.17-24: The P and non-P strands are thoroughly interwoven in this description of the flood itself, including multiple descriptions of the extinction of life outside the ark (7.21-23). Such flood imagery powerfully represents a return to chaos. Though many world traditions speak of floods, there is no geological evidence of a global flood like that described here. Goes without saying really, flashbacks to the Bill Nye–Ken Ham debate on creation being a viable model of origins, good heavens.
Gen 8.1-2: God's wind echoes the first creation (1.2) in the process of starting the re-creation process. The closing of the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens reestablishes the space for life that was first created on the second day (1.6-8).
Gen 8.4: Ararat, a region in Armenia. Worth noting also that in the epic of Gilgamesh the boat also rested on a mountain.
Gen 8.6-12: Again, the sending out of the birds lifted straight from the epic of Gilgamesh.
Gen 8.20-9.17: Divine commitments after the flood. This section features two accounts of God's commitments after the flood (8.20-22 [non-P]; 9.1-17 [P]), both of which include God's promise not to destroy life through such a flood ever again.
Gen 8.20-22: The non-Priestly tradition describes Noah's burnt offerings of clean animals. In the Gilgamesh epic the hero offered sacrifices and "the gods smelled the pleasant gragrance" and repented of their decision to destroy humanity. here the Lord smells the pleasing odor of Noah's offering and resolves never again to curse the ground or destroy all creatures. The Lord does this despite full recognition that human nature has not changed (cf. 6.5-7). The final result of Noah's sacrifice is the Lord's promise to preserve the cycle of agricultural seasons. A central aim of temple sacrifice in Israel and elsewhere was to preserve that cycle, assuring agricultural fertility. The echo of that idea here is yet another way in which the "non-Priestly" primeval history reflects temple concerns (see also the focus on responses to sacrifice in 4.1-8 and notes on 2.8-9,10-14; 3.24).
Thursday, January 5th, 2023
01:38
Gen 9.1-17: The Priestly tradition lacks an account of sacrifice. Instead it focuses on affirmations of some aspects of the creation in 1.1-31 and revisions of others.
Gen 9.1-7: This section begins and ends with a reaffirmation of the fertility blessing (vv. 1,7; cf. 1.28).
Gen 9.2-6: Here God revises the earlier command of vegetarianism (1.29-30). This is a partial concession to the "violence" observed prior to the flood (6.11,13) and an extension of the human dominion over creation described in 1.26-28. At the same time, God limits human rule and regulates pre-flood violence through stipulating that humans may not eat the blood in which life resides (see 4.10-11n.) and that humans, as bearers of God's image (1.26-27), may not be murdered. Since these laws are given to Noah and his sons, the ancestors of all post-flood humanity, they were used in later Jewish tradition as the basis for a set of seven Noachide laws that were seen as binding upon Gentiles as well as Jews (see Acts 15.20; 21.25; b. San. 58b).
Gen 9.8-17: As noted prior, this is the first explicit mention of a Covenant in the Bible; A "Covenant" is a formal agreement, often between a superior and inferior party, the former "making" or "establishing" (vv. 9,11) the bond with the latter, and the superior protecting the weaker party. This agreement is often sealed through ceremonies. In this case, God sets his weapon, the bow (Ps 7.12-13; Hab 3.9-11), in the sky facing away from humanity as a sign of God's commitment not to flood the earth again. Did some googling on this one, traditionally taken to mean a rainbow, the "Bow" referenced here actually has quite a history of interpretation, with early Rabbinic sources imagining it as a war-bow, with the bow turned upwards so that arrows would be shot away from the earth—the Hebrew word used here is unhelpful, literally just meaning "bow" with no indication as to what specific kind might be meant. Modern scholars have theroized on the idea of the bow representing the firmament, the boundary between the primal seas that play into the creation-to-flood narrative. It's worth noting also that the Iliad also has mention of rainbows being a sign from the Gods to man: ...like the rainbows which the son of Kronos has set in heaven as a sign to mortal men.
Gen 9.18-29: Noah and his sons. Aside from P in vv. 18-19 and 28-29, this text is part of the Yahwistic primeval history. It links to the explanation of Noah's name in 5.29 and repeats major themes from the pre-flood period: farming, (nakedness, alienation in the family, curse, and domination). Though this text was once widely misread as describing a "curse of Ham" justifying slavery of African peoples, Noah's curse here is actually directed at Canaan, a figure not seen as an ancestor of African peoples.
Gen 9.22-23: Some speculation over Ham's actions here. Some accuse Ham of incest (described alike in Lev 20.17, though differences in wording make this comparison tenuous), but Shem and Japheth are specifically contrasted as turning away, indicating that Ham's problematic behavior was the fact in and of itself that he did not look away from Noah's nakedness. Such behavior is an example of the breakdown of family relationships seen in ch 3 (see 3.8-13,16-19) and ch 4 (see 4.1-16).
Gen 9.24-27: Many have puzzled over why Canaan is cursed for his father, Ham's, misdeed (9.25-26). An editor may have redirected an earlier curse on Ham toward Canaan, so that the curse could help justify the conquest of the land of Canaan (see 10.16-18a; 14.1-12,13-16n.).
Friday, January 6th, 2023
04:19
Gen 10.1-32: The table of nations. A largely Priestly survey of the world of the Israelites; national groups depicted in relation to one another through means of kinship—Japhethites, Hamites, and Shemites overlapping precisely in Canaan. I have nothing much to note at this juncture, footnotes detailing whigh descendants correlate to which group. Clear enough that the descendants are a fictional anthropomorphization of their respective ethnicities and nations, existing as they do in order to explain the repopulation of a post-flood world, and there may be some indication that the genealogical groupings could have been political in nature at time of writing.
Gen 11.1-9: The tower of Babel. This narrative (from the non-Priestly Yahwistic primeval history) revisits the theme of preservation of the divine-human boundary. The threat to that boundary, self-reflective speech by the Lord, and act of divine prevention all parallel 3.22-24 and 6.1-4. With 11.2 the human family completes the eastward movement begun in 3.22-24. This story then focuses on a scattering of the human family into different ethnic, linguistic, and territorial groups, and gives background for the table of nations in ch 10, although it was not originally written with that in view.
Gen 11.4: Humans fear being scattered across the earth, so they build a tower. Their intention to stay together contradicts the divine imperative to "fill the earth" now found in Priestly traditions (1.28; 9.1,7).
Gen 11.6: The Lord is described here as fearing the human power that might result from ethnic and linguistic unity (see 3.22).
Gen 11.7: "Us" meaning the divine court.
Gen 11.8-9: The scattering of humanity and the confusing of language is the final step in creation of civilized humanity, the story of the tower of Babel acting as an etiology for cultural maturity in these areas. Each step toward this end has been fraught with conflict and loss. The name "Babel," interpreted here as "confusion" but originally meaning "gate of god" (cf. 28.16-17n), serves as af inal testimony to the result of this process.
Gen 11.20-26: The descendants of Shem. This genealogy from the Priestly tradition closely parallels 5.1-32, though it lacks death notices. It builds a genealogical bridge from Shem to Terah, the father of Abraham. Parts of the genealogy of Shem (10.21-31) are repeated, but now the text focuses on those firstborn male descendants who lead to Abraham, thus setting up Abraham as the firstborn heir of Shem, the eldest of Noah's sons.
Gen 11.27-25.11: The story of Abraham and his family. The bulk of this section is a non-Priestly narrative about Abraham. It builds on a blend of oral traditions around him, including the stories standing behind the present narratives about his descent into Egypt (12.10-20), the Abraham and Lot cycle (13.2-13; 18.1-16; 19.1-28,30-37), a pair of Hagar and Ishmael narratives (16.1-14 and 21.8-10), and the tradition about Abraham's stay in Philistine Gerar (20.1-18; 21.22-34; cf. 26.6-33). Some scholars think that the Abraham stories incorporate two separate written J and E sources, with remnants of J (the Yahwistic source) found primarily in chs 12-19 (along with ch 24) and E (Elohistic source) fragments in chs 20-22. Others suggest that they were composed as a single whole, though building on a range of separate traditions. Scholars generally agree, however, that the story of conquest and covenant in 14.1-15.21 and Priestly materials found in 17.1-27 and elsewhere (see 11.27-32n.; 12.4b-5n. 12.3n. 17.1-27n. 21.3-5n. 25.7-11n) were added later.
Gen 11.27-32: Introduction to the Abraham story.
Gen 11.27: Abram, footnote refers to a note on 17.5 regareding the etymology of Abraham's name. The designation "Abraham" is used here in the annotations as the better-known name of Abra(ha)m. Aside from his birth, nothing is told about the early life of Abraham; this lack is filled in by postbiblical tradition.
Gen 11.29-30: The first appearance of the theme of barrenness of the three most central matriarchs: Sarai/Sarah, Rebekah (25.21), and Rachel (29.31). Their initial barrenness highlights God's power to provide heirs of the promise.
Gen 11.31: Haran, in northwest Mesopotamia was Abraham's ancestral home, according to 24.10.
Saturday, January 7th, 2022
11:07
Gen 12.1-3: The Lord's call and promise to Abraham initiates a new movement in the story of Genesis. The first of three divine speeches in which a patriarch is given directions and promises of a blessing (12.1-3; 26.2-5; 41.1-4; see also 31.3,13). The combination of command and promise implies that the Lord's fulfillment of the promise will follow upon Abraham's fulfillment of the command.
Gen 12.1: This command is likely based on those that appear later, being added later so as to mirror them (31.3,13).
Gen 12.2: The promise of a great nation stemming from Abraham stands in tension with Sarah's barrenness, motivating much of the following narrative.
Gen 12.3: Paul interpreted this passage as meaning the Gentiles of all the world became blessed through Abraham (Gal 3.8), but it is more likely that the original translation means something more akin to by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves, i.e., they will say "may we be like Abraham".
Gen 12.4-9: Abraham's first journey to the land.
Gen 12.6-8: This report of Abraham's journey anticipates Jacob's travels through similar places with similar elements; sacred trees like the oak of Moreh occur elsewhere in Genesis and seem to have played an important role in the religion of the ancient Israelites due to their prevalence.
Gen 12.10-13.1: First story of endangerment of the matriarch (cf. ch 20; 26.6-11). Abraham appears not to trust the promise of protection just offered him. Overall, this story of descent into Egypt because of famine and rescue through plagues anticipates many aspects of the later narrative about Israel's descent into Egypt and exodus from it (Gen 45-Ex 14).
Gen 13.2-18: Split of Abraham and Lot.
Gen 13.2-7: The riches and flocks owned by Abraham at this point testifies to the preliminary fulfillment of the promise of blessing in 12.2-3.
Gen 13.8-13: Story anticipates the narrative of Sodom and Gomorrah as well as the wickedness of their inhabitants.
Gen 13.14-17: Only after Abraham has split from Lot and settled in Canaan does God show him the land. This certifies that Abraham has fulfilled God's command to go to the land that God "will show" him.
Gen 14.1-24: Abraham's rescue of Lot from the eastern kings. This and ch 15 relate to each other (see 15.1n., 15.12-16n.) and link in multiple ways with late layers of the primeval history (see 9.18-27n.; 10.6-18a n.).
Gen 14.1-12: Shemite king Chedorlaomer leads an alliance of eastern kings to crush an uprising within the ranks of their Canaanite subjects; this is a fulfillment of the curse of Noah on Canaan, confirming that his people would be enslaved to Shem—neither this battle (the Battle of Siddim) nor any of the kings are considered historical.
Gen 14.13-16: Divine blessing protects Abraham and his household, likewise his ability to overcome the Shemite conquerors testifies to his status as heir of Shem and his blessing.
Gen 14.17-20: First and only reference to Jerusalem by name in the Torah, "Salem". King Melchizedek blesses Abraham in the name of God Most High (El Elyon), highest God of the pre-Israelite Canaanite pantheon—Melchizedek is identified later as founder of a royal priesthood in psalm 110.4.
Gen 15.1-21: The first covenant with Abraham.
Gen 15.1: The promise to be a shield ("magen" in Hebrew) for Abraham echoes Melchizedek's praise of the god who "delivered" ("miggen" in Hebrew) Abraham, and the reward replaces the goods Abraham refused from the king of Sodom.
Gen 15.2-5: Repitition here indicates the intertwining of sources much like the flood.
Gen 15.7-21: Repeat of the pattern in 15.1-6, has covenant ceremony sealing God's promise to Abraham.
Gen 15.9-17: Ancient israelite practice of making a covenant by proclaiming that they will suffer the fate of the "cut" sacrifice if they disobey the terms of the agreement (see Jer 34.18); the Hebrew for "making" a Covenant is to "cut" a covenant. God passes between the pieces in the form of fire, establishing the covenant.
Gen 15.12-16: Though God promises a return in four generations in verse 16, verse 13 specifies 400 years: it is likely that verse 13 was later edited to 400 years so as to better reflect on Priestly material in Exodus 12.40.
Gen 15.16: The iniquity of the Amorites, see Lev 20.23; Deut 9.4.
Gen 15.18-21: Conclusion of ceremony has God promise to give the land of the Canaanite peoples to Abraham.
Gen 15.18: The boundaries given here are the broadest definition of the promised land in the Bible. They correspond to similarly broad, ideal descriptions of the land in the Deuteronomistic History (e.g., 2 Sam 8.3; 1 Kings 4.21; cf. Deut 1.7; 11.24; Josh 1.4). The phrase river of Egypt occurs only here and may refer to the Nile. But elsewhere in the Bible (e.g., Num 34.5; 2 Kings 24.7; Isa 27.12) and in other sources, the "Wadi of Egypt" is apparently either the Wadi Besor or the Wadi el-Arish, both south of Gaza.
Gen 16.1-16: Hagar's encounter with God and the birth of Ishmael stand at the heart of the Abraham story, enveloped by parallel traditions dealing with covenant (chs 15 and 17), Lot and Abraham (chs 13-14 and 18-19), the endangerment of Sarah (12.10-20 and ch 20), and the promise (12.1-6 and 22.1-19).' Interesting that this story mirrors the later exodus, with an Egyptian fleeing eastward into the wilderness to meet God. There will later in Genesis itself be a doublet of this story, with Gen 21.8-21. Both stories have their origins in ancient traditions surrounding the origin of the Ishmaelites, seen in Genesis as ancestors of the Arab peoples (see Gen 25.12-18).
Gen 16.2: According to ancient surrogate motherhood customs, a wife could give her maid to her husband and claim the child as her own (30.3,9).
Gen 16.7: Here the angel of the Lord is not a heavenly being subordinate to God, but the Lord (Yahweh) in earthly manifestation (cf. 21.17,19; Ex 14.19).
Gen 16.11: Explanation of the name Ishamel: "God hears, for the Lord has given heed to your affliction."
Gen 16.13: El-Roi, "God of seeing," or "God who sees."
Gen 17.1-27: The everlasting covenant and sign of circumcision. This account from the Priestly tradition is parallel to that in 15.1-21 and links to the Priestly covenant with Noah in 9.8-17.
Gen 17.1: The phrase translated as God Almighty (Hebrew: "El Shadday") is variously understood as "God [or "El"], the one of the mountains," "God of the Shadday [deities]," or even "fertile God" (literally, "God with Breasts," see 49.25). Whatever its original meaning, the Priestly tradition understands this epithet to be what the early ancestors of Israel called God before they learned the name Yahweh (Ex 6.2-8).
Gen 17.2-6: In a parallel to 15.1-6 this text includes the promise of offspring in the covenant.
Gen 17.5: A new name signifies a new relationship or status (see 32.28). Abram means "the [divine] ancestor is exalted," as does its dialectical variant here, Abraham. This verse, however, explains the extra syllable ham in Abraham as from the hebrew word, "hamon" (multitude), thus meaning that Abraham will now be ancestor of a multitude. This anticipates nations whose ancestry will be traced to Abraham, such as Edomites and Ishmaelites.' The promise to make Abraham exceedingly numerous and fruitful echoes the broader fertility blessings given to animals and humanity prior, suggesting that Abraham's line is now the recipient of the blessing originally intended for all humanity.
Gen 17.9-14: Notable that circumcision within the covenant pertains only to the household and heirs of Abraham. Circumcision was likely originally a fertility rite (see 34.14-17), elsewhere connected with warding off demons (see Ex 4.24-26).
Gen 18.1-15: The Lord's visit to Abraham and Sarah.
Gen 18.2-8: Secretly divine visitor motif. The narrative shifts between talking of the men as a collective and the Lord as a singular fluidly, confusing matters.
Gen 18.9-15: Sarah's laughter at the promise of a son stresses the incredibility of God's act.
Gen 18.11: Menopause.
Gen 18.12: Issac's name means "he [God] laughs"; other traditions develop the link with laughter as well (17.17-19; 21.6,8; 26.8).
Gen 18.16-33: Abraham's intercession for Sodom and Gomorrah.
Gen 18.20-21: Speech echoes that of Babel; going down and seeing what was going on there.
Gen 18.22-23: Like Moses (e.g., Ex 32.9-14), Abraham negotiates with an angry God, appealing to God's righteousness. Thus, this text appears to be a theoretical reflection on God's righteousness and how many righteous people are required to save a broader group; cf. Ezek 14.12-23.
Gen 19.1-38: The rescue of Lot and his family from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Prominent example of God's total judgement (Deut 29.23; Isa 1.9; Jer 49.18; Am 4.11).
Gen 19.1-11: Secretly divine visitors once more, however the sanctity of hospitality is threatened by the men of the city who wish to rape (know) the guests. Lot's attempt to avert this fate, in offering his own daughters in place of the guests, only angers the men of the city more: Where Abraham was the model of hospitality (Gen 18.1-16), Lot's actions show him to be a bungling, almost heartless imitator who does not deserve to be the heir of the promise to Abraham.
Gen 19.15-23: Lot hesitates at the angel's urging to leave Sodom, contrasting him once more disfavorably to Abraham, who hurried to serve his guests.
Gen 19.24-25: The rain of destruction continues the echoes of the Noah story.
Gen 19.26: The fate of Lot's wife acts as an etiological explanation for pillars of salt (common in the dead sea).
Gen 19.29: Priestly summary of the story. Echoes 8.1 (God remembered). Attributes Lot's rescue to his relation with Abraham.
Gen 19.37-38: Explanation for the origin of the Moabites and Ammonites through incest; Lot's daughters mistaking the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as being the destruction of the totality of humanity. Reminiscent of the story of Noah and his sons (9.20-27).
Gen 20.1-18: The second story of endangerment of the matriarch. Footnote details the discussion surrounding Chs 20-22 as possibly being the first major block of an Elohistic (E) source; not so clear-cut as the Priestly accounts however, as chs 20-22 are understandable only when read following chs 12-19 (Abraham's claim in 20.2 that Sarah is his sister, for instance), indicating that the Elohistic traditions here were written as part of a larger whole that included the preceding narratives, and can thus not be considered a wholly separate, independent source.
Gen 20.3-7: Abimelech's case is far more sympathetic than that of the foreign king in parallel accounts (12.15-19; 26.9-10), though it is worth nothing that God says it was he that kept Abimelech from sinning against him, calling into question free will.
Gen 20.7: First use of the term prophet, and the only designation of Abraham as a prophet in the Torah (but see Ps 105.15).
Gen 20.12: Abraham provides many excuses for his action despite Abimelech's god-proven sincerity in his questioning.
Gen 21.1-21: Issac and Ishmael.
Gen 21.14-17: In these verses Ishmael is a young boy; this is incongruent with the parallel accounts of the Priestly traditions (16.16; 17.25; 21.5) implying the contradiction was borne of later Priestly oversight.
Gen 21.22-34: Abraham's dispute with Abimelech. This text continues the story about Abraham and Abimelech that was begin in ch 20. They are later mirrored by Isaac's sojourn in Gerar in 26.6-33; it is likely they have a common oral background.
Gen 21.33: "El-Olam," everlasting God may be an ancient divine name once associated with the sanctuary at Beer-sheba.
Gen 22.1-19: The testing of Abraham. In general, the Bible suggests that God may control future events, but not that God knows all future events; Abraham's fear of God is not proven until he has reached out his hand to slaughter his son.
Gen 22.1-2: After giving up Ishmael earlier, Abraham must now prepare to give up Issac, his promised heir, as well. Echoing the start of Abraham's story, he is asked to go (Hebrew "lek laka") and sacrifice his future family on a mountain that God will show him, much like he was asked to go (Hebrew "lek laka") from his family of origin and go to a land God would show him. The highlighting of "your only son . . . who you love" presupposes that what is being asked of Abraham is extraordinary and extremely difficult. Though child sacrifice was not commonplace, it was known to happen (see 2 Kings 3.27).
Gen 22.3: Abraham leaves immediately to do as asked without question, much like in 12.4-6.
Gen 22.5: Abraham's promise that he and Isaac will return may suggest a faith that God will work out an alternative sacrifice.
Gen 22.9-13: Christian understanding of Isaac as a prefiguration of Jesus.
Sunday, Jaunary 8th, 2023
04:51
Gen 23.1-20: Abraham's purchase of a family burial place. A late priestly tradition.
Gen 23.17-20: As in many ancient cultures, the Israelites believed that burial of ancesors in a plot of land gave their heirs a sacred claim to it.
Gen 24.1-67: Finding a wife for Isaac among kinfolk in Haran.
Gen 24.3: Abraham is concerned about intermarriage with Canaanites that is otherwise seen primarily in late materials from Deuteronomy (Deut 7.3-4).
Gen 24.10-27: Commonplace of well scenes as meeting places for people in the Ancient near east.
Gen 25.1-11: The death of Abraham.
Gen 25.1-6: Keturah, one of Abraham's wives is considered the maternal ancestor of the Arabian tribes.
Gen 25.7-11: Conclusion to the Abraham story taken from the Priestly source.
Gen 25.12-18: Overview of the descendants of Ishmael. As the firstborn son of Abraham, we see Ishmael's descendants before that of Isaac's.
Gen 25.16: Like Israel, the Ishmaelites are said to have twelve tribes.
Gen 25.19-35.29: The story of Jacob and his family. Evokes early traditions of Jacob/Israel, father of the Israelite tribes; though many originated as oral tradition, this written version shows many connections to places that were important in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and thus likely originated there, enriched too as it is by emphasis on Judah, King David's purported ancestor. Added too is the Abrahamic promise to Jacob at Bethel, and fragments of other Priestly materials.
Gen 25.19-28: Introduction of the descendants of Isaac.
Gen 25.22-23: The narrative presupposes an ancient practice of seeking a divine oracle at a local sanctuary.
Gen 25.27-28: Much like Cain and Abel, this narrative plays on the tension between siblings and their respective lifestyles.
Gen 25.29-34: Jacob buys Esau's birthright.
Gen 25.31-34: The birthright refers to the extra rights that normally go to the eldest son: leadership of the family and a double share of the inerhitance (Deut 21.15-17). This caricature of Esau as a dull person, outwitted on an empty stomach, is intended to explain Israel's dominance of Edom (2 Sam 8.9-14; 1 Kings 3.9-12; 8.20-22).
Gen 26.1-33: Interlude on Isaac. Isaac's journey in this chapter clearly parallels that of Abraham's, the two likely influencing eachother; Isaac inherits Abraham's blessing and is thus prepared to pass it on to one of his sons.
Gen 26.32-28.4: The transfer of blessing to Jacob and not Esau.
Gen 27.1-45: Story of Rebekah and Jacob's cunning resembles "trickster" traditions in other cultures.
Gen 27.4: Deathbed blessings (and curses) were important in the life and literature of anceint peoples (e.g., 48.8-20' 49.1-28). It was believed that such blessings irrevocably released a tangible power that determined the character and destiny of the recipient. Ch 27 itself focuses exclusively on Isaac's blessing, but the preceding chapter makes clear that this is Isaac's transfer of a divine blessing first given to Abraham.
Gen 28.1-4: A Priestly parallel to the preceding story where Isaac was not tricked into blessing Jacob, bt intended from the outset to bless him in the process of sending him away to find a proper wife. Much parallels that of Isaac's goal in marrying Rebekah.
Gen 28.5-22: The split between Jacob and Esau occurs twice here, the Priestly version in 28.5-9 and the non-Priestly account in 28.10-22.
Gen 28.12: Jacob's ladder.
Gen 28.13-15: God's appearance here is awkwardly linked to the preceding stairway vision. Many scholars suppose this repetition of the Promise to Jacob was a later addition to an early Bethel narrative that lacked it.
Gen 28.13-14: The promise to Jacob after his split from Esau mirrors that of the promise to Abraham after his split with Lot.
Gen 29.1-30: Jacob's marriages to Laban's daughters.
Gen 29.10: Jacob, the folk hero, has superhuman strength.
Gen 29.23-25: Jacob, the trickster, is himself tricked.
Gen 29.31-30.24: The birth of eleven of Jacob's sons and Dinah.
Gen 30.21: The note about the birth of Dinah is inserted (without a story or explanation of the name) to anticipate the story about her in ch 34.
Gen 30.25-43: The birth of Jacob's flocks; Jackob outwits Laban by putting striped sticks before the female animals' eyes while they were breeding.
Gen 31.1-55: Jacob's departure from Laban's family.
Gen 31.13: Where Jerusalem Zion traditions claimed that the Lord dwells in Zion (Pss 9.12; 135.21), God claims in this text to be "the god of Bethel". This probably reflects the perspective of this originally northern Jacob story in comparison with Jerusalem-oriented traditions that predominate in the Bible.
Gen 31.19-35: Household gods may have been figures representing ancestral deities. Possession of them ensured leadership and legitimated property claims.
Gen 31.43-54: Based on an older tradition regarding a boundary covenant between Arameans and Israelites.
Gen 31.53: Footnotes don't note this, but I noticed that the God of Nahor is mentioned, the only place in the Bible that mentions such a God; theories point to Laban being a polytheist, though this is complicated by his recognition of the dream he recieved a day prior.
Gen 32.1-32: Journey toward Esau.
Gen 32.3-21: Jacob once more devises multiple strategies in order to attain his goals (though this time, his aim is appeasal).
Gen 32.22-31: Jacob wrestles with God. The divine being had to vanish before sunrise, an ancient folkloristic theme marking the antiquity of the tradition on which the story is based. Worth noting that Jacob's immense strength is allowing him the upper hand until the being puts his hip out of joint. Jacob is renamed Israel, "The one who strives with God", and the being notes too that he strives with humans—Esau and Laban. In this way, the community of Israel, as descendants of this god-wrestler, is depicted as a group that successfully strives with God and humans. The story is located at Penuel/Peniel ("face of El"), one of the first capitals of the Northern Kingdom (1 Kinks 12.25); it serves as an etiology for the site's choice.
Gen 33.1-17: Partial reunion with Esau.
Gen 33.10: Like seeing the face of God, who at Penuel also proved to be gracious.
Gen 33.18-35.5: The stay in Shechem and the rape of Dinah.
Gen 33.19: Here and in ch 34 Shechem is a personal name. As elsewhere in Genesis, the story portrays, in the guise of individuals, relations between Israel and non-Israelite groups.
Gen 34.1-31: In its broader context, this story explains why Simeon and Levi, two of Jacob's elder sons, did not receive his highest blessing.
Gen 34.2: May not be rape; some scholars interpret this to mean illicit sexual activity.
Gen 34.8-12: Israelite law stipulates that a man who has sex with an unbetrothed woman msut retroactively marry her by paying her father a marriage price (Ex 22.16-17; Deut 22.28-29). This narrative either does not recgonize this law or assumes that it does not apply outside the people of Israel.
Gen 34.25-26: Simeon and Levi lead the killing; Jacob is concerned less with family honor, and more with his relations with the Canaanites.
Gen 35.6-15: Jacob's return to Bethel.
Gen 35.6-7: Deities often had local manifestations (e.g., on ancient inscriptions we find "Yahweh of Samaria" and "Yahweh of Teman"). Jacob honors the local manifestation of El at Bethel by building an altar there and calling the santuary "El of Bethel".
Gen 35.9-15: Priestly parallel to the non-Priestly naming tradition in 32.28. Reiteration of the blessing of Abraham on Jacob. Another connection of "God Almighty" to passages regarding fertility.
Gen 35.16-21: The birth of Benjamin and death of Rachel. Rachel names the child ominously: "son of my sorrow"; Jacob overrules her decision and renames the child Benjamin.
Gen 35.22-29: Concluding materials on Jacob's sons and Isaac's death and burial.
Gen 36.1-43: Overview of the descendants of Esau and prior inhabitants of Edom/Seir. Once more, the narrative gives an overview of the firstborn son's descendants, Esau, before that of Jacob's.
Gen 36.6-8: Echoes the (non-Priestly) story of Abraham's split from Lot.
Gen 36.9: Repetition of introduction indicates an earlier Priestly source.
Gen 37.1-50.26: The story of Joseph and his family. As indicated in the introduction, this portion of Genesis features an intricate depiction of Joseph's relations with his brothers and father. Starting with a pair of dreams (37.5-11), the narrative follows a trajectory from his brothers' murderous hatred of Joseph to Joseph's eventual testing of and reunion with them (chs 42-45; 50). Joseph was a prominent northern tribe, and like the Jacob storym this narrative has Northern connections, especially with the addition of the story in 48.8-14 of Joseph's special blessing on his son, Ephraim. The first king of the Northern Kingdom, Jeroboam, was a member of the tribe of Ephraim (1 Kings 11.26), and stories like tehse about early Israelite ancestors would have reinforced his claim to rule. Yet over time the story evolved in significance, through additions assuming Judah's destiny to rule (see 49.8-12n.), inserted echoes of the promise theme first introduced in the Abraham story (such as 46.1-4; 48.15-16 and 12.1-3n.), connections leading to the book of Joshua (50.24-25), and a few fragments that may come from the Priestly source (e.g., 37.1-2; 46.8-27; 47.27-28; 48.3-6; 49.29-33).
Gen 37.2-4: Priestly and non-Priestly narratives offer different reasons as to specifically why Joseph's brothers take issue with him.
Gen 37.5-8: Joseph's first dream may be taken to predict the future rule of Jeroboam, a member of the Joseph tribe of Ephraim, over the other tribes of northern Israel.
Gen 37.9-11: Rachel being alive in this story indicates that this episode was likely part of an independent Joseph story that did not originally follow Rachel's death.
Gen 37.12-36: Joseph is sold into slavery.
Gen 37.25-36 Most scholars agree that some combination or modification of traditions has occurred here. Though the brothers decide here to sell Joseph (v.27) and Joseph later says that they did so (45.4-5), this narrative describes the Midianites as drawing him out and selling him to the Ishmaelites (v. 28). Later, both the Midianites (37.36) and the Ishmaleites (39.1; cf. 37.25) are identified as the ones who sold Jospeh to Potiphar.
Gen 37.31-34: Now Jacob is tricked by an article of clothing, contrasting how he himself tricked his father in 27.15.
Gen 37.35: Sheol, the underworld to which everyone went at death—the Hebrew Bible does not recognize a differentiated heaven and hell. Since this afterlife was at best a shadowy existence (see Ps 6.5; Eccl 9.10), Jacob's going to his son further reflects his misery.
Gen 38.1-30: Judah and Tamar. Two elements, the focus on Judah and anticipation of David, link 38.1-30 with a sequence of episodes, starting in 30.21; 34.1-31; 35.22, that prepare for Jacob's blessing of Judah and prediction of the Davidic dynasty in 49.8-12.
Gen 38.8-11: God really doesn't like when you spill your seed for means other than procreation (actually it was Onan's refusal to accord with a brother's obligation in furthering the family line, thus also offending God's desire for man to be fruitful and multiply that lead to God's killing of Onan).
Gen 38.27-30: The final link of this chapter to the David narrative occurs with Perez, firstborn and ancestor of David.
Gen 39.1-23: Joseph's success, temptation, and imprisonment. Includes Joseph's garment as misleading evidence once more, and has echoes of Abraham's blessing. Whole tale parallels that of an Egyptian "Tale of Two Brothers".
Gen 40.1-23: Joseph establishes his expertise as dream interpreter.
Gen 41.1-57: Joseph's elevation as the result of successful dream interpretation.
Gen 41.8: The narrator intends to demonstrate the superiority of Israel's God over Egyptian magic and wisdom, anitcipating the plague narrative in Exodus.
Gen 41.16: Joseph attributes his skill solely to God.
Gen 41.45: Joseph is accepted fully into Egyptian society, and no judgement is attached to his intermarrying with an Egyptian foreigner (see Deut 23.8-9).
Gen 42.1-38: Joseph's brothers' first journey to Egypt.
Gen 43.1-34: Joseph's brother's second journey to Egypt.
Gen 43.1-2: Simeon, left as a hostage in Egypt, is apparently forgotten, for his brothers only return when more grain is needed.
Gen 43.8-10: Judah depicted as hero once more.
Gen 43.34: Joseph favors Benjamin, mirroring the favor Jacob had for himself; this sets the stage for a reprise of his brothers' murderous envy possibly being directed at Benjamin.
Gen 44.1-34: Joseph's final test for his brothers.
Gen 45.1-28: Joseph makes himself known to his brothers and father.
Gen 45.4-13: Joseph reassures his brothers that it was not them that sold him into slavery, but God, so that he might grow prosperous and feed his family.
Gen 45.16-20: Asiatics are frequently attested to living in Egypt, though no Egyptian records refer specifically to the Israelites living there.
Gen 46.1-27: Jacob's migration to Egypt.
Gen 46.1-4: God states that he will fulfill the promise made to Abraham in making a great nation for Israel in Egypt.
Gen 46.28-47.28: Jacob's family settles in Egypt.
Gen 46.34: No nonbiblical evidence supports the assertion that shepherds were considered abhorrent in Egypt.
Gen 47.11: The land of Rameses cannot be identified with certainty. The first Egyptian pharaoh with that name ruled at the beginning of the thirteenth century BCE.
Gen 47.29-49.33: Jacob's preparations for death, including the adoption and blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh. This section is viewed by many scholars as a series of later insertions into the Joseph story, linking it back to the Jacob story and forward to the story of the Israelites in Exodus.
Gen 48.3-6: The division of the house of Joseph into two tribes, Manasseh and Ephraim, with Jacob adopting Joseph's two children to do so.
Gen 48.8-14: Jacob favors the younger son, Aphraim, over the older, Manasseh, echoing Jacob's ascendancy over Esau, as well as possibly predicting the Ephraimite Jeroboam's ascendancy over the Northern Kingdom.
Gen 48.15-16: Jacob passes onto the tribes of Joseph the special blessing of Abraham and Isaac.
Gen 49.1-28: Jacob's blessing on his twelve sons. Though the poem is depicted as a deathbed blessing by the text following it (49.28; cf. 27.4 and n.), this poem seems to have been originally designed as a prediction of the destines, good and bad, of the tribes of Israel. Many scholars have argued that the poem is ancient on the basis of its language and resemblance to other supposdly ancient tribal poems in Deut 33 and Judg 5. Nevertheless, the present form of the poem appears to have been modified to fit the narrative context in which it has been put. Its first part follows the birth order of 29.31-35 and legitimates rule for Judah and—by extension—the Davidic dynasty. The author of these changes may be responsible for inserting the whole poem into its present context, as well as for the addition to the Jacob-Joseph story of the narratives referred to in 49.3-7 (30.21; 34.1-31; 35.21-22a; cf. 37.36-38.30).
Gen 50.1-26: Burial of Jacob and final days of Joseph.
Gen 50.1-11: This non-Priestly narrative presupposes that the burial and mourning occurred in Transjordan, noat at the ave at Machpelah.
Gen 50.2-3: Jacob is embalmed as an Egyptian with full honors.
09:44
And with that rather long reading session, I am finished with Genesis, and in just about seven days, apparently. One thing has become clear to me, and that is that I am eventually going to have to stop taking such extensive notes; a lot of what I've noted down in this record have been direct quotations of footnotes and lots of compressing of others to best condense the information I find interesting—this can't go on through the entire Bible, lest it take me forever to do so; I find myself finishing a page in good time, only to spend minutes upon minutes transcribing information and copying quotes, not to mention the time that goes into the formatting of this record for upload to my website. This breaks my reading flow and already has set me to some apathy.
As such, I've decided that my note-taking will only be as extensive as this throughout the first 5 books of the Bible, the Torah. My reading of the rest of the OT will be much more sparse in terms of notes, likely noting each chapter as I have done thus far, but being strict with myself in not including so much detail so as not to harm my pace. This is absolutely subject to change, assuming later books interest me to the point I can't but help myself, but as it stands, this is the plan. When I reach the NT, we will reassess once more (I have to imagine the footnotes there will be deeply interesting).
As for Genesis itself, I have no wider notes to make, it's about what I expected, as I have read portions of it before in isolation, not to mention the sheer cultural osmosis that exists with the prevalence of these stories, but I am surprised to find that a lot of what I knew of said stories was extrabiblical in nature, with the scripture itself being a lot more scarce on details, details that I imagine church tradition filled in over time. Onto Exodus then.
From Him
Fallen winds
Assume barren lands
The promise of Dust
Embracing countless stars
That warn to take heed
Hither and thither
The lowest cry out
Unto most high
Calling out
To Him
Every vice of my existence
Begs and pleads and asks assistance
From your passions, I truly need this
To contrast is to know
For if there be your divine witness
Let me feel this pervert sickness
Mark my flesh and make me bleed, bliss
To contrast is to know
So when you're through I'll have my distance
From my former goodness, listless
Broken bodied, hear me plead, Miss
To contrast is to know
Monday, January 9th, 2023
16:25
Introduction to Exodus
"Exodus," from the Latinized abbreviation of the Greek title exodos aigyptou ("exit from Egypt").
The second book of the Bible in all canonical traditions, Exodus is not an independent work but rather an integral part of the Torah. Traditionally taken as being written by Moses, as mentioned in the introduction to Genesis, this can not be so. Like the rest of the Pentateuch, Exodus contains contradictions and redundancies. For example, Moses' father-in-law is sometimes called Reuel and sometimes Jethro; and the mountains of revelation is Sinai in some passages and Horeb in others. The narratives of Moses on the mountain in chs 19 and 24 have many overlapping and conflicting details, as does the account of the calamities—called "ten plagues" in postbiblical tradition but not in the Bible—against the Egyptians in 7.8-10.29.
Exodus depicts a story line describing the departure of a group of oppressed people from Egypt to a sacred mountain in Sinai where they enter into a covenant with the God they believed rescued them; then, at that God's direction, they construct a portable shrine for their deity before continuing their journey.
Historicity is once more questioned here; the literary strands comprising this text date from many centuries after the date described, and no historical or archaeological records support the claims made of an Egyptian exodus nor the travel of such a people across the continent. This extends too to the conquest of the land of Israel by Joshua.
Despite these problems, the basic story line about the departure from Egypt fits broad evidence from Egyptian and other sources. Foreigners from western Asia, called "Asiatics" in Egyptian documents, periodically did migrate to Egypt, especially during times of famine (see Gen 12.10; 41.57; 43.1-2); others were taken to Egypt as military captives or were forcibly sent there as human tribute by Canaanite rulers. Moreover, many such groups, including those who voluntarily entered Egypt, were conscripted for state projects (see Ex 1.11-14). This pattern was especially strong toward the end of the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1400-1200 BCE). And, although virtually all of the foreigners in Egypt were assimilated into local culture, there is at least one documented instance of several workers escaping into the Sinai wilderness. Thus the overall pattern of descent into Egypt followed by servitude and escape accords with general information in ancient documents. In addition, the end of the Late Bronze Age, by which time the Israelites would have left Egypt, coincides with the date of inscriptional evidence—a stele erected by Pharaoh Merneptah in ca. 1209 BCE—for a people called "Israel" in the land of Canaan, the first mention of Israel outside the Bible.
The writer of this introduction, Carol Meyers, theorizes here of how it is possible that a relatively small group of people could have escaped servitude and told of their story in Canaan, thus setting in motion an oral tale that developed into the mythology attributed to Yahweh as told in Exodus. It's an interesting theory, and I dont doubt that the oral tradition that lead to the formulation of the Torah was indeed comprised of some such tales. Good fun!
The book can be subdivided into thematic and literary units in various ways; this one positions the revelation at Sinai and the covenant in the center:
Part I: Israel in and out of Egypt (1.1-15.21): God sees Israelite suffering in Egypt (chs 1-2), Moses becomes God's spokesperson (3.1-7.7), and a series of calamities (7.7-13.16), known in tradition as the "ten plagues," culminate in the escape of the people (13.17-15.21).
Part II: Sinai and covenant (15.22-24.18): After traveling through the wilderness (15.22-18.27), the Israelites reach Mount Sinai, where they experience a theophany (a divine appearance, chs 19, 24), and receive the covenant (chs 20-23).
Part III: Sanctuary and new covenant (25:1-40:34): An episode of apostasy followed by covenant renewal (chs 32-34) separates instructions for building the sanctuary (chs 25-31) from the account of its construction (chs 35-40).
Exodus would have been an important literary tool and item of faith for Judeans suffering defeat and exile in the sixth century BCE, as the fundamental ideas about God expressed in this text, such as his care for the oppressed as well as his liberation of the people in Egypt would have helped alleviate their concerns and reinforce their status and understanding of themselves as a distinct people under YHWH.
Tuesday, January 10th, 2023
15:27
Exodus
Ex 1.1-15.21: Israel in and out of Egypt. The Israelites are oppressed in Egypt; but they escape through the intervention of their God, whose identity is revealed to their heroic leader Moses, who then carries out God's directives to secure their release.
Ex 1.1-22: The oppression of the Israelites. Prologue to bridge Genesis with Exodus.
Ex 1.1-7: "Israel" referring to Jacob. In Scripture, seven often symbolizes completion or perfection; the notion of seventy descendants of Jacob signifies that all Israel is present in Egypt. Emphasis on Israelite proliferation serves to indicate that God's divine promises are now fulfilled through Israel.
Ex 1.8: The king described is commonly identified as Rameses II (1279-1213 BCE), but he is not named here or anywhere in the Bible, possibly as a means of demeaning him.
Ex 1.10: Possibility of Israelite escape mentioned as an act of foreshadowing.
Ex 1.15-22: Forced labor fails to deplete the Israelite population; selective infanticide is thus implemented.
Ex 1.15: "Hebrew" seems to denote Israelites as a people, often in the speech of non-Israelites, where it may be a derogatory term.
Ex 1.17: "Feared God" indicates an awareness that killing would cause divine retribution.
Ex 2.1-25: The emergence of Moses.
Ex 2.1-10: As in the birth legends of other heroic figures in ancient literature, the miraculous rescue of the doomed infant Moses signifies that he is destined for greatness.
Ex 2.2: "Saw that he was a fine baby", lit., "saw that he was good," echoes the language of creation in Gen 1.
Ex 2.3: The hebrew word for basket appears elsewhere in the Bible only to refer to Noah's ark; here it is the means for rescuing the person who will save the Israelites.
Ex 2.10: As an Egyptian name, Moses means "is born", and it is often used in conjunction with a god's name, e.g., Thutmoses, Ahmoses, Rameses, but here it is given a Hebrew etymology ("he who draws out") in anticipation of Moses's role in drawing his people through the sea.
Ex 2.11-15: In the first two episodes of his adult life, Moses saves one Hebrew and tries to adjudicate between two others; both roles will recur and involve all his people.
Ex 2.17: Saved by the daughter of a king, Moses saves the daughters of a priest: the motif of saving recurs, anticipating the ultimate salvation or deliverance at the sea (13.17-15.21).
Ex 2.18: Reuel, elsewhere called Jethro or Hobab, likely reflecting different ancient sources.
Ex 2.23-25: It is only now that it is indicated that God becomse aware of the Israelite plight in Egypt, "remembering" his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Ex 3.1-4.17: Moses's call and mission. The god of the ancestors appears to Moses in Midian, revealing the divine name and commisions Moses to free his people; the term "prophet" is not used for Moses within Exodus, but the narrative presents him as one.
Ex 3.1-10: Theophany: a divine revelation at the bush, where serveral sources have been combined.
Ex 3.2: An "angel" (lit., "messenger") is a manifestation of God, who sometimes takes human form. God's physical presence also appears shielded in clouds and fire (e.g., Ex 19.9; 24.15-18; 33.9; 40.34-38), both sometimes depicted as pillars (Ex 13.21; 14.19,24); seeing God directly can be dangerous (see 3.6n).
Ex 3.6: Divine presence represents such intense, mysterious, and powerful holiness that it was considered dangerous to humans, hence Moses's reluctance to look at God's (physical) manifestation.
Ex 3.8: "Come down," implying that God resides in a heavenly abode.
Ex 3.11-17: Prophets are often reluctant, and Moses confronts God with four problematic issues.
Ex 3.11-12: Moses's first problem is a sense of unworthiness.
Ex 3.13-15: The next problem is not knowing God's name. Deities were identified by their proper names (not by generic "God"), and the Israelites will want to know which god has sent Moses to them. I am who I am (Hebrew "'ehyeh 'asher 'ehyeh") renders the first name that God provides; a shortened form, I am ("'ehyeh"), renders the second. These translations are uncertain, however, for the Hebrew is ambiguous. The third name is "Lord", which has four Hebrew letters, "yhwh" (probably pronounced Yahweh) in Hebrew and is thus known as the Tetragrammaton. Like the first two versions of God's name, its root means "to be" but its specific meaning is unclear. Because of the great sanctity of God's name, early Jewish tradition avoided pronouncing it and used the Hebrew word "adonay" ("my lord") as a substitte. Most translations respect that tradition and use Lord for the deity's proper name. According to Gen 4.26 (see also Gen 13.4), people knew God's name early in human history; but this passage along with 6.3 preserves a different tradition, that Moses is the first to hear it. In ancient nonbiblical sources this divine name is known from a Late Bronze Age inscription that mentions the "Shasu of ya-h-wa [or yhw]"; the Shasu were desert-dwellers and included Midianites.
Ex 3.16-22: A directive to Moses about speaking to his people and Pharaoh precedes other two problems.
Ex 3.16: "Elders" of Israel, referring to representatives of the people in community governance (see also 4.29; 12.21; 17.5,6; 18.12; 19.7; 24.1,9,14).
Ex 3.18: God of the Hebrews, connecting the Lord to a specific people when addressed to non-Israelites.
Wednesday, January 11th, 2023
07:36
Ex 4.1-9: Moses's third problem, that people will not heed him, is solved by God providing three supernatural signs: changing a staff to a snake, making Moses's hand diseased and then restoring it, and turning water bloody.
Ex 4.10-17: Moses's fourth problem, that he cannot speak, is solved by God by assigning his brother to speak for him.
Ex 4.18-31: Moses returns to Egypt.
Ex 4.21: The motif of Pharaoh's headened heart (stubbornness), appearing frequently in the narrative of Moses's negotiations with the Egyptian ruler, serves to increase dramatic tension. The number ten, though never mentioned explicitly, plays a role: Pharaoh hardens his own heart (e.g., 8.15) ten times, although even then it is part of God's plan (7.3; 11.9); and ten times God hardens it directly (e.g., 9.12). These differing reports of who caused the hardening of Pharaoh's heart likely reflect different sources.
Ex 4.22: Based on the formulaic words of heralds bearing messages in the ancient Near East, the biblical expression "thus says the Lord" introduces words conveyed by a prophetic messenger of God.
Ex 4.24-26: God attacks Moses for reasons that are unclear. Did some googling. The Jewish Study Bible says: Here circumcision seems to have apotropaic (magically protective) power, and by touching her son's foreskin to Moses' "legs" (genitals?), Zipporah saved him. The saving power of the bloody foreskin may foreshadow the protective role of the blood on the Israelites' doorposts on the eve of the exodus (12.7, 13, 22-23). Bridegroom of blood, cognates of Heb “Hatan," bridegroom, mean "protect" in Akkadian and Arabic, and "circumcise" in Arabic. My personal note on this matter is that, much like Jacob, Moses is depicted as doubtful of his actions and path forward under the guidance of the Lord; possible read that this "attack" could be analagous to Jacob's wrestling with the Angel, though this is of course with the understanding that the circumcision narrative holds legitimate water as a fragmented story regardless. So this is hermeneutics, huh?
Ex 5.1-6.1: Moses and Aaron have their first encounter with Pharaoh.
Ex 5.1: The imperative "Let my people go" appears for the first time and adumbrates its sevenfold use in the account of nine divine marvels.
Ex 5.2: To "know the lord" is to recognize God's authority; knowing God is a response to witnessing his powerful deeds.
Ex 5.3: To fail to carry out religious obligations to God would have dire consequences.
Ex 5.10: Introducing Pharaoh's words with "Thus says Pharaoh" sets him in opposition to the Lord, whose words are similarly announced.
Ex 5.20-6.1: Moses complains to God who promises to take action. Interesting that Moses consciously laments his position and directly complains about God's inaction in a way not characteristic of the prior patriarchs.
Ex 6.2-7.7: God reaffirms the mission of Moses and Aaron in the light of the worsened circumstances of the people.
Ex 6.6-8: Nine verbs denoting nine divine actions connoting the totality of God's commitment; anticipates the nine signs and wonders of the next section.
Ex 6.16-25: Authority is conferred on Moses, Aaron, and Aaron's sons and grandons by situation their lineage in the priestly tribe of Levi. The unusual naming of several women (bb. 20,23,25) emphasizes the importance of the Levites.
Ex 7.1-7: Another account of the affirmation of Moses's mission.
Ex 7.7: Moses is younger than Aaron here, contradicting the firstborn tradition of 2.2, but does repeat the motif of overriding secondborns seen in prior patriarchs.
Ex 7.8-10.29: The nine marvels. The designation "ten plagues" does not appear in the Bible, and fewer than ten catastrophes appear in the two psalms that mention them (Pss 7.8.44-51 and 105.28-36) . . . The marvels narrative likely draws from several sources to form a three-triad pattern, totaling nine marvels.
Ex 7.9: Aaron has the leading role in the first episode of the marvels, which incorporate material from the Priestly source, which emphasizes Aaron as a figure in general (as the first High Priest of the Israelites). Interesting too that 7.1 mentions Aaron as being a prophet of Moses. Paints priests as the prophets of Prophets?
Ex 7.11: Magicians, derived from an Egyptian word denoting a priestly official; their "secret arts" refer to spells or incantations, whereas Aaron simply casts his staff down.
Ex 7.14-8.19: First three marvels.
Ex 7.14-25: First marvel, bloody waters. As mentioned in a prior note, this story combines two traditions, in one Moses's actions pollute the Nile only; in the other, Aaron turns all Egyptian waters into blood.
Ex 7.15: Water and river bank ,evoking the image of the infant Moses in the river, also anticipating the role of water in the final water event of the parting.
Ex 7.22: Magicians can duplicate the calamity, but again they use spells, and humorously they make the calamity even worse!
Thursday, January 12th, 2023
07:39
Ex 8.1-15: Second marvel, frogs.
Ex 8.8: Pharaoh momentarily relents and seems to recognize Israel's god, requests that Moses and Aaron pray on behalf of the Egyptians. Hardens his heart regardless after the fact; this will repeat time and time again.
Ex 8.16-19: Third marvel, gnats.
Ex 8.16: Dust represents what is countless (Gen 13.16).
Ex 8.19: Magicians recognize the Lord; Pharaoh refuses.
Ex 8.20-9.12: Second group of three marvels. Instrumentality shifts: God is the direct ageint, then Moses and Aaron together are agents.
Ex 8.20-32: Fourth marvel, flies.
Ex 9.1-7: Fifth marvel, pestilence. Pestilence in Deuteronomic and prophetic texts kills both humans and animals, but here only animals.
Ex 9.8-12: Seixth marvel, boils.
Ex 9.12: Now God hardens Pharaoh's heart.
Ex 9.13-10.29: Third group of three marvels.
Ex 9.13-35: Seventh marvel, hail.
Ex 9.14: Only here is "plagues" used for one of the nine marvels, perhaps because of the extensive loss of human and animal life, as for the climactic slaying of the firstborn.
Ex 9.18: The severity prompts God, uniquely, to suggest a protective measure.
Ex 9.22: Hail, frequently Yahweh's weapon (e.g., Josh 10.11, Isa 30.20; Ezek 13.13).
Ex 10.1-20: Eighth marvel, locusts.
Ex 10.2: Heralds the importance of remembering; as with 9.16, God's marvels are characterized here as being a message to humanity.
Ex 10.21-29: Ninth marvel, darkness. Darkness anticipates the midnight setting of the death of the firstborns and the nighttime sea crossing.
Ex 10.22: Three days mirrors the requested three-day journey for sacrifice and anticipates the three-day duration of the first post-Sinai journey.
Ex. 11.1-13.6: Plague, commemorative rituals, and departure.
Ex. 11.1-10: Announcement of the plague.
Ex 12.1-28: Preparations for departure: passover and unleavened bread festivals. The ritual of unleavened bread predates Exodus, the text assuming the reader would be aware, though it is joined here with the pascal lamb, connecting the two traditions under the symbolism of passover.
Ex 12.23: Representing a variant tradition, a divine agent, the "destroyer", rather than God, carries out the mission.
Ex 12.29-52: Plague, departure, and passover.
Ex 12.37-42: Departing Egypt and beginning the wilderness journey (which continues in the book of Numbers).
Ex 12.38: "Mixed crowd" suggests that non-Israelites also escape.
Ex 12.40-41: Four hundred and thirty years is close to the span of time foreordained in Gen 15.13.
Ex 12.43-51: Further passover instructions, explicitly for future observances.
Ex 13.1-16: More commemorative rituals: consecration of the firstborn, and unleavened bread festival. The firstborn is consecrated ("given", perhaps "dedicated") to Yahweh, as a form of remembrance that they are too God's firstborn, remembering that of the slaying.
Ex 13.9: "Sign . . . forehead" (also v. 16; Deut 6.6-8) denotes metaphoric modes of commemoration (as Prov 6.20-21; 7.1-3), but is interpreted literally in postexilic times, giving rise to the Jewish custom of phylacteries. First mention of "teaching (Hebrew: Torah) of the Lord" in the Bible.
Ex 13.17-15.21: Journey to and through the sea, described in prose and poetry.
Ex 13.17-14.31: The narrative account, with its repetitions, contradictions, non sequiturs, and inconsistencies, is a composite.
Ex 13.17: Way of the land of the Philistines, the shortest land route from Egypt to Canaan, runs parallel to the Mediterranean coast toward southwest Canaan where the Philistines, an Aegean people, settled in the late thirteenth and early twelfth centuries BCE.
Ex 13.18: Red sea, properly Reed Sea, likely designates the reedy marshes of northeastern Egypt. The following miraculous sea-splitting account does not fit the marshland referent and reflects a different, perhaps imaginary or mythological, sea tradition.
Ex 13.21: Pillars of cloud and fire, likely the manifestation of the divine presence, shielded in cloud by day and fire by night.
Ex 14.1: Moses acts alone, without Aaron, in the sea-crossing episode.
Ex 14.14: God as the Divine Warrior, based on the Canaanite deity Baal.
Ex 14.19-20: Angel and pillar, both manifestations of God's presence, likely from different sources.
Ex 14.21: Wind, dry land, and divided waters, which evoke creation (Gen 1.2,6,9; cf. Gen 8.2), are from a Priestly hand.
Ex 15.1-21: The Song of the Sea is a lyric victory hymn generally considered an originally independent composition, one of the oldest literary units in the Bible, perhaps from the tewlfth century BCE. Influenced by mythic accounts of the Divinie Warrior's battle with watery chaos (see 14.14n.), it is rich in metaphors and terms that preclude single explanations and at times even defy comprehension; in many details it diverges from the prose accont in ch 14.
Ex 15.1: Although attributed here to Moses, this poem was originally attributed to Miriam, given the association of women with the victory song genre; "I" need not be moses.
Ex 15.6: The right hand of God, not Moses's hand, directly vanquishes the enemy.
Ex 15.11: "Among the gods" may be language of Israelite monolatry, in which the existence of other gods is acknowledged (18.11; 20.3; 23.32-33).
Ex 15.12: Earth, referring to the underworld, Sheol, swallowing the living (Num 16.32; Isa 29.4; Prov 1.12).
Ex 15.18: Reign introduces for the first time the prominent biblical metaphor of God as king.
Ex 15.22-24.18: Sinai and covenant.
Ex 15.22-18.27: Crises and reorganization in the wilderness.
Ex 15.22-27: First crisis, lack of water.
Ex 16.1-36: Second crises, lack of food.
Ex 16.23-30: Instructions for the sabbath as a day of rest on the seventh day precede the Decalogue's sabbath commandment; sabbath observance is part of Israel's learning to obey God.
Ex 16.33-34: Covenant, elliptical for the not-yet-announced "ark of the covenant", is parallel to Lord, indicating that the ark signifies God's presence.
Ex 16.35: Forty years of wandering.
Ex 17.1-7: Third crisis, lack of water.
Ex 17.7: Among us [in real life (sus, sus)]; an expression denoting God's potent presence, which provides food or water and protection for the Israelites.
Ex 17.8-16: Fourth crisis, military threat.
Ex 17.8: Amalek refers to a seminomadic group and habitual enemy of the Israelites; they are not atested to in nonbiblical sources.
Ex 17.9-13: First mention of Joshua; one of seven in Exodus. Moses, holding his staff, is assisted by Aaron and Hur, holding up his arms during the battle against Amalek in which the Israelites (headed by Joshua) prevail so long as Moses's arms stay raised.
Ex 18.1-27: Meeting with Jethro, who solves an organizational crisis. Jethro prompts Moses to lessen the load on his shoulders in mediating disputes; instead a hierarchy of administrative officials ("judges") are organized so as to share the burden (first indication of a priestly class after Aaron?). In the retelling of this episode in Deut 1.9-18, the initative is Moses's alone. Worth mentioning too that Jethro was likely some form of polytheist, as it is mentioned he is a priest of the Midianites, though recognizing Yahweh as being worthy of worship for his actions within the Exodus.
Ex 19.1-25: Revelation at the mountain.
Ex 19.1: The location of Sinai is uncertain. Some passages locate it in southern Jordan; the traditional site in the southern Sinai Peninsula is unlikely.
Ex 19.4: Reminder of God's actions as preface to the convenant is typical of Near Eastern treaties between a stronger and weaker party.
Ex 19.6: "Priestly kingdom . . . holy nation" poetically presents all Israelites as priests: they will have privileges of intimacy with God and responsibilities of physical and moral purity.
Ex 20.1-24.18: Covenant. The stipulations of the covenant—Decalogue (20.1-17) and covenant rules (20.22-23.19)—are interspersed with additional Sinai narratives (20.18-21; 23.20-24.18).
Ex 20.1-17: Decalogue (also Deut 5.6-21). These "Ten commandments," also found with some variations in Deuteronomy 5, are not numbered or titled here but are later called "ten words," that is, "ten sayings" or "ten matters" in 34.28; Deut 4.13; 10.4 (see 18.26n.; 35.1n.). Set forth in apodictic (absolute) form, they are not universal laws nor a concise summary of biblical law. Rather, they are unconditional community precepts, both injunctions and prohibitions, rather than laws, which typically have punishments. Unlike any other ancient Near Eastern materials, the Decalogue creates moral standards for a society; obedience is to be a function of divine authority, not fear of punishment. Containing more than ten statements, and not numbered in the Bible, they are counted in diverse ways.
Numbering of the Decalogue in Exodus 20.1-17 [according to most Jewish traditions]:
1 Ex 20.2 (divine self-identification)
2 Ex 20.3 (other gods)
2 Ex 20.4-6 (idols)
3 Ex 20.7 (divine name)
4 Ex 20.8-11 (sabbath)
5 Ex 20.12 (parents)
6 Ex 20.13 (murder)
7 Ex 20.14 (adultery)
8 Ex 20.15 (theft)
9 Ex 20.16 (perjury)
10 Ex 20.17a (coveting)
10 Ex 20.17b (coveting)
The first several deal with human obligations to God and are accompanied by motive clauses (explanations); the others concern social issues and usually do not mention God. Because its pronouns are all second-person masculine singular, the Decalogue seems to address individually adult men responsible for land-holding Israelite households with servants (as v. 17), with its stipulations otherwise applying to all people as appropriate.
Ex 20.3: Does not deny the existence of other gods, only that they shall not be worshipped before Yahweh.
Ex 20.4-6: Worship of God without anthropomorphic images; perhaps to distinguish from other religions. Possible influence from Zoroastrianism (lack of images, emphasis on fire?).
Ex 20.5: A jealous (sometimes "zealous") God; implies transgenerational guilt (see 34.7; cf. Ge 15.16), but is sometimes rejected (Jer 31.20-30; Ezek 18).
Ex 20.14: Adultery, sexual intercourse between a man and a married or betrothed woman, is a grave offense (Lev 20.10; Deut 22.22) because lineages could be compromised by this infidelity.
Ex 20.18-21: The Sinai account resumes, with the people insisting that Moses transmit God's word.
Ex 20.22-23.33: Community regulations. This collection of legal materials, called "book of the covenant" [Hebrew: "sefer ha-berit"] (24.7) or "Covenant Code" or "Covenant Collection," has affinities of form and content with other ancient law legal traditions. A discrete scribal collection, with laws—especially agricultural ones and those mentioning houses—inapplicable to a wilderness setting, it was likely incorporated into the Sinai narrative to afford it divine authority. The oldest of the legal materials in the Pentateuch, many of its stipulations probably arose in premonarchic village settings. Introductory instructions (20.22-26) and a concluding narrative (23.20-33) frame a two-part enumeration of legal materials. The first part (21.1-22.17) consists mainly of casuistic materials (case laws with attached punishments). The second part (22.18-23.19) comprises ethical or religious norms and exhortations typically expressed in apodictic or absolute form. These two parts may reflect the merging of ancient customary regulations with covenant-oriented materials.
Ex 20.22-26: Introductory instructions. Sacrifice can take place wherever people invoke God's name (presence); contrast 27.1-8 and the single "place" for sacrifice in Deuteronomy (Deut 12.5-14, etc.).
Friday, January 13th, 2023
07:48
Ex 21.1-22.20: Ordinances (rulings) and statutes (rules). In form and content, this section resembles other ancient Near Eastern legal collections.
Ex 21.2-11: Manumission regulations for indentured Israelite servants. Laws dealing with servitude usually come at the end of ancient Near Eastern law collections; here they are first, indicating the humanitarian interests of the "book of the covenant" and/or its placement immediately after Israel's liberation from slavery.
Ex 21.33-22.15: Property and restitution, more case rulings.
Ex 22.16-20: Social and religious stipulations.
Ex 22.21-23.19: Ethical and religious exhortations and norms.
Ex 23.1-12: Judicial integrity and the protection of animals and marginal groups.
Ex 23.20-33: The Sinai narrative resumes with further divine promises and admonitions.
Ex 23.22: "Enemy . . . foes" employs Near Eastern treaty language.
Ex 23.25-26: Sustenance, health, and progeny are the blessings produced by covenant fealty (Lev 26.3-10; Deut 28.1-6).
Ex 23.27-30: First real taste of OT genocide: The land's indigenous inhabitants will be gradually expelled; in Deuteronomy and related literature, they are to be exterminated (e.g., Deut 7.2; Josh 10-11).
Ex 24.1-18: Theophanies and covenant ceremonies. Repetitive or conflicting details again indicate a composite narrative about God's appearance—to Moses and the leaders, and to Moses alone.
Ex 25-40: Sanctuary and new covenant. The focus of the rest of Exodus is the construction of the wilderness tabernacle as an earthly home for God. Detailed directions for building the portable shrine (25.1-27.1; 30.1-31.18) and for clothing and inaugurating its priests (28.1-29.46) are followed by an account of its construction so God's presence can enter (35.1-40.38). Much of the information in the second section is the same as in the first, although the internal order differs. Between the two sections comes the golden calf episode (chs 32-34), in which the covenant is broken and restored. Did some preemptive googling on the tabernacle. Professor of Theology Michael Homan posits that the tabernacle could have been based on Rameses II’s military tent, as they share various traits in dimensions, method of construction, internal specifics and general use, the tent in question being depicted in various instances of Egyptian iconography that would have been apparent to ancient scholars: The depiction of YHWH’s sacred tent as modeled on a military tent fits with biblical context of YHWH as a "Divine Warrior."
Ex 25.1-31.18: Instructions for building the tabernacle and inaugurating the priesthood.
Ex 26.1-37: The tabernacle structure.
Ex 27.1-19: The courtyard and its altar.
Ex 28.1-43: Vestments for the priests.
Ex 28.1: Aaron has appeared frequently but is first called priest here. No title is given for him in the Pentateuch; the titles "high priest" and "chief priest" are in non-Torah texts.
Ex 28.3: Women are not specifically excluded from contributing materials to the priesthood.
Ex 28.6-30: The engraved stones of the high priest represent the tribes of Israel, as such the wearer embodies all Israel, and any oracles received apply to all Israelites. The Urim and Thummim are usually interperted to mean marked pebbles or rocks that are cast or thrown to secure divine decisions, a form of divination.
Ex 28.36-38: Engraved rosette with the words "Holy to the Lord" as a protective measure is reminiscent of the much later solomonic tradition of seals.
Ex 29.1-46: Consecration of the priests.
Ex 29.20: Sprinkling the ram's blood on the priests' extremities (lobes . . . thumbs . . . toes), which represent their entire bodies, substitutes animal blood and death for that of the priests; their symbolic death means they belong to God.
Ex 30.1-31.18: Additional instructions.
Ex 31.1-11: Artisans.
Ex 31.11: "Do . . . commanded" implies that human creativity is subordinated to divine inspiration.
Ex 31.12: The phrase "The Lord said to Moses" is used here for a seventh time in conjunction with discussion on the sabbath; another use of the number 7.
Ex 32.1-34.35: Covenant violation and restoration. The golden-calf apostacy (also Deut 9.7-21; Ps 106.19-23; Neh 9.16-21) interrupts the tabernacle sequence, yet it parallels it in some ways: a command to construct, contributions of gold, construction, an altar and sacrifices. It thus contrasts the proper response to God in the chapters following this section, with the sinful one it describes.
Ex 32.1-35: Sin, divine anger, and several intercessions by Moses. This episode shares many details with the account of Jeroboam (first king of the northern kingdom, 928-907 BCE) erecting golden calves in Dan and Bethel (1 Kings 12.28-33; see also Deut 9.7-10.11).
Ex 32.13: Moses reminds God that the ancestral covenant is unconditional and irrevocable (Gen 13.15-16; etc.).
Ex 32.26-29: The shocking violence of the Levites, perhaps reflecting an ancient power struggle, earns them eternal priesthood. Worth noting that Aaron is allowed to live despite his involvement in this perverse act; perhaps [written as such] because the priesthood in later times was traced to him.
Ex 33.1-23: The divine presence is secured through a third plea by Moses.
Ex 33.7: Mention of a tent shrine in this passage distinct from the previously introduced tabernacle indicates that Exodus combines several traditions about a community shrine.
Ex 34.1-35: Covenant restoration and Moses's fourth plea to God. Here we find the so-named "Ritual Decalogue", indicated by the text to be the "Ten Commandments" commonly attributed to the formerly seen "Ethical" Decalogue of Exodus 20. It differs from the prior Decalogue in that this one focuses on largely ritual matters, leading some to believe it was a redactional supplement in order to bolster later Priestly concerns; others still believe it may be the earliest form of the Decalogue before the Ethical Decalogue was introduced due to shifting social concerns, leaving the Ritual Decalogue an aberrant remnant despite its status as being apparently representative of God's second fling regarding a Mosaic covenant.
Ex 34.29,35: "Shone" and "shining", better "radiant." The verb used here (from the Hebrew root "qrn") means "to radiate." The related noun "qeren," usually meaning "horn," has produced the erroneous notion that Moses had horns.
Ex 35-40: The tabernacle is constructed, and God's presence enters it. These chapters contain nearly verbatim repetitions of many passages of chs 25-31, except that they describe actions taken (rather than commanded) and are arranged according to pragmatic construction concerns rather than degree of sanctity.
Ex 38.8: Women worked as low-rank temple servitors, and they were allowed to enter the entrance to the tent of meeting, the highly significant site of Moses's oracular interactions with God.
Ex 39.1-31: Vestments (see 28.1-43). Moses's name here appears seven times, indicating his total involvement.
Ex 39.32: "Work . . . finished" echoes the Priestly language of Gen 2.2, as does 40.33; the construction of the tabernacle,, a microcosm of the cosmos, thus echoes creation. "Tabernacle of the tent of meeting", used only here and in 40.2,6,29, combines the two designations of the wilderness shrine and thus its two functions: a place for God's earthly presence, and a locale for oracular interactions.
Ex 40.1-38: Erection of the tabernacle, and God's presence filling it.
That's Exodus done. Surprised to find that half the book is spent on repeatedly redundant descriptions of the tabernacle as well as Moses's numerous ascents and descents of the mountain, but beyond that, we are all very familiar with the story of Exodus. As with Genesis, not much to add in totality; I don't know if I'll have parting words for each independent book, most of my personal observations are included within the notes I make themselves. Leviticus, then.
Then, out of the stars
So, out of the stars
Bloodied and broken, accord to the word
So, when the time comes
Oh, when the time comes
To broker anew, you make your voice heard
For what has been said
Intends to be kept;
In anguish repaid, to anguish incurred
As then, the word, so now, the word, so now, the word, as then
Saturday, January 14th, 2023
10:04
Not feeling great today. I've had a few discussions over the past 48 hours with various people that have lead to me feeling incredibly unseen: It's as though my personal perspective is always secondary in any given talk, and I find myself increasingly unable to relay and relate my experiences to the people that bring such things to me as points of conversation, and even when a topic may ostensibly be an avenue of connection, I find my position quickly disregarded, not in a consciously malicious or ill-mannered way, just by the course of the conversation. But it keeps happening. It feels very isolating, and I'm unsure what to do with the feeling.
It's frustrating to me, and it makes me sick. Even writing this now I feel the spite welling up. It's fruitless, I'll distract myself. Fucking useless. Forcing myself to write something, probably get to Leviticus later.
15:52
Introduction to Leviticus
Leviticus derives its name from the Septuagint, where the book is titled as such because its main concern is worship practices officiated by the high priest Aaron and his descendants, belonging to the tribe of Levi. The early rabbinic title, "The Priests' Instruction" is perhaps more fitting, as Levites not belonging to Aaron's line are mentioned only briefly.
The two main compositional strata in Leviticus are known as P ("Priestly"), which comprises most of chs 1-16; and H ("Holiness"), which includes the "Holiness Collection" (chs 17-26; so named because of its repeated exhortation to the Israelites to be holy), the addendum on vows, dedications, and tithes in ch 27, and brief interpolations in chs 1-16. These two strata are distinguishable on the basis of ideological and stylistic differences as well as narrative characteristics.
The H source was likely composed to supplement, revise and complete the Priestly source's earlier P stratum, which is responsible for the source's overall narrative structure and plot; Many of H's innovations over P are mediating positions between P and non-Priestly pentateuchal legislation. For example: in P the only Israelites who are holy are priests. In the Deuteronomical source, all of Israel is holy.
Strong evidence suggests that at least the core of Deuteronomy originated in the late seventh century BCE. Because H appears to revise this Deuteronomic core, it must postdate Deuteronomy. The P portions of Leviticus, which predate H, exhibit little or no correspondence with Deuteronomy and thus may be contemporary with or older than Deuteronomy.
Leviticus can be divided into five major sections:
1. Sacrifice (chs 1-7).
2. The dedication of the tabernacle and priests and the transgression of Aaron's sons (chs 8-10).
3. Ritual purity (chs 11-16).
4. The Holiness Collection (chs 17-26).
5. Addendum concerning vows, dedications, and tithes (ch 27).a
Leviticus is difficult to understand and appreciate because it is highly technical and regularly assumes knowledge of its ritual system. Its sparse narrative structure is also easily obscured due to the large blocks of laws that comprise the book. In addition, its authors' approaches to the issues they treat and their assumptions about them are often far removed from modern Western views.
Leviticus
Lev 1.1-7.38: Sacrificial prescriptions: In Priestly thought, sacrifice, a ritualized meal for the deity at times shared with its offerers, is the basic mode of interaction with God. To be accepted, sacrifices must be performed according to the divine instructions.
Lev 1.9: The imagery of smoke rising from the altar suggests that the deity is in the heavens.
Lev 2.1-16: This verse on grain offering interrups the animal food gift offerings; it was likely inserted later to provide a still more affordable alternative to the burnt offering. It is uniquely placed here in that it utilises second-person address rather than the usual third-person of surrounding chapters.
Lev 2.1: Frankincense, an aromatic resin from shrubs found in Arabia and East Africa.
Sunday, January 15th, 2023
13:08
Lev 3.1-17: The well-being offering.
Lev 4.1-6.7: Instructions for purification and reparation offerings. In H's view, the accumulation of sin and impurity in the tabernacle threatens the abiding presence of the deity. If God should depart, Israel will lose all divine protection and benefaction (Lev 26.30-33; cf. Ezek 8-11). P, however, appears not to countenance divine abandonment. It instead expects Israel to perform the requisite purgation, which elminates any cause that might be posited for the deity's departure. In P, God's presence among the Israelites is wholly for his own benefit. The threat of divine abandonment, which is meant to motivate humans to serve the deity and in so doing preserve the benefits they enjoy from God's presence in their midst, is thus inconsistent with P's claims.
Lev 4.1-35: The purification offering.
Lev 4.6: Sprinkling of blood seven times.
Lev 5.1-13: Purification offerings for specific offenses.
Lev 6.8-7.38: Elaborations on the sacrificial instructions. These speeches are likely derived from a subsource, incorporated here for extra detail.
Lev 6.14-23: The grain offerings.
Lev 6.18: "Become holy"; holiness is conceptualized as an invisible divine essence that is communicable through physical contact (cf. v. 27; Ex 29.37; 30.29; Ezek 44.19).
Lev 6.24-30: The purification offering.
Lev 7.1-10: The reparation offering.
Lev 7.11-38: The well-being offerings.
Lev 8.1-10.20: The dedication of the tabernacle priests and the transgression of Aaron's sons.
Lev 8.10-12,30: Annointing with oil was a common transition rite for persons and objects in the ancient Near East (cf. 14.15-18,26-29) and was therefore also used in Israel to change the status of a commoner to king (e.g., 1 Sam 10.1; 16.13).
Lev 9.1-10.20: The inauguration of priestly service and the transgression of Nadab and Abihu. Divine glory appears to the people with fire, confirming the deity's presence and approval of the priests' ritual activities. Immediately following this joyous occasion, however, Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu, commit sacrilege by making an unauthorized incense offering, which prompts the divine fire to emerge once more to consume them. The deaths of Nadan and Abihu occasion further instructions for the priests.
Lev 10.1-20: The transgression of Nadab and Abihu.
Lev 10.1-2: Unholy fire; unauthorized incense offering that God had not instructed, as such, the fire that would have consumed the offering instead consumes the sons. The Korah rebellion ends similarly with divine fire consuming the offerers of illicit incense (Num 16.35).
Lev 10.3: "When he said," likely referencing a text now lost.
Lev 10.8: Something I noticed: it mentions specifically that one should not drink wine or alcohol in the tent of meeting, this contrasts quite nicely with the later christian sacrament.
Lev 10.10: Holy, common, unclean, and clean, can be used in multiple permutations: holy and clean, common and clean, common and unclean, and rarely, holy and unclean. It all depends on how an individual or item is used and how they interact with impurities.
Lev 11.1-16.34: Ritual impurity and purification. Impurity is seen as a real, though invisible, film that adheres to persons and objects and is attracted to the tabernacle. Impurity is fundamentally different from sin: impurity is contracted in the course of normal, daily activities and carries no moral stigma, however, impurity is contagious and vexes the deity, so to fail to purify is considered sinful, and thus has consequences.
Lev 12.1-8: Childbirth. Considered impure due to postpartum blood; period of impurity varies depending on sex of child but is a multiple of forty regardless, a common biblical number representing completion.
Lev 13.1-14.57: Surface afflictions. Though the specific conditions are unknown to us (one theory posits vitiligo), conditions that alter the surface of the skin would be assessed by a priest to determine whether or not the person was clean or unclean; if unclean, the indiviudal would be dressed in mourner's clothes and be set outside of the camp so as to ensure their uncleanliness did not contaminate others. Once again, this is not a form of sin, and speaks nothing to the moral character or fate of the individuals in question.
Monday, January 16th, 2023
13:24
Lev 14.1-32: Purification after surface affliction.
Lev 14.33-53: Surface affliction in houses. "When you come into the land:" In the narrative, the Israelites are living in the wilderness camp; they therefore do nto currently live in houses. "I put," in non-Priestly texts, surface affliction is viewed as divine punishment; however, in the Priestly view, all natural occurrences ultimately stem from the deity's command. P thus attributes outbreaks of surface affliction to God even when they are not divine punishments.
Lev 15.1-33: Sexual discharges. Once more, sex is not sinful, rather it merely engenders impurity that should be cleansed, as is the case with discharges, normal or abnormal.
Lev 15.19-24: The requirement to bathe in a ritual bath (Hebrew: "mikveh") is a later institution commonplace in the late second temple period at the earliest.
Lev 16.1-34: The day of purgations. The holy of holies is purged once a year to clean it of intentional sins; it is considered a deeply important act, but also one that is secondary to the routine, daily cleaning of unintentional sin and impurities that are considered much more common due to the priests' optimism that those who know God would not be prone to commit sin intentionally.
Lev 16.8: Azazel. Lots to read into about this one, but ultimately it's simply worth saying that it was unlikely that Azazel was intended to be a literal demonic figure in opposition to Yahweh at the time of writing, the Priestly source being monotheistic and focused on Yahweh's preeminence as it is; though scholars used to think that Azazel literally meant 'scapegoat', the language does seem to imply Azazel is a literal name for something, just what that something is is up for debate. I did some googling, it's been argued that Azazel may have been a generic term for the 'boogeyman' representative of the evil of the wilds to which the scapegoat was sent. All too vague still, however.
Lev 17.1-26.46: The holiness collection. Has redundancies and contradictions, not organized, incomplete; can't be said to be a unified, structured code.
Lev 17.7: Goat demons, likely a reference to Satyr and goat worship of the Ugaritic peoples; it is likely that the Israelites saw such entities, "demons", as being terrestrial beings of the wilds (see note on Azazel).
Lev 18.1-30: Foreign abominations. Sins of foreigners, mainly Canaanites, used as narrative justification for God's expelling of them from their lands so that Israel may live there.
Lev 18.21: Molech, a Canaanite deity associated with child sacrifice.
Lev 18.22: Out of all biblical legal corpora, only H contains a prohibition against same-sex intercourse, likely due to its nonreproductive nature.
Lev 19.1-37: Holiness of Israelite laypersons.
Lev 19.9-10: Incitement to charity?
Lev 19.19: Mixtures of fabrics are prohibited so as to keep the Israelite laity distinct both from other nations, as well as the Priests, for whom mixed fabrics are acceptable.
Lev 19.25: Lifted straight from the Laws of Hammurabi.
Lev 20.1-27: Various prohibitions. Likely a separate source of compiled laws; absolute prohibitions rendered here have been instead forumlated as legal cases with stated penalties.
Lev 20.2-3: Worth pointing out that Molech as a deity of literal child sacrifice is also up for debate, could well be the case that this is mirroring Exodus language in 'sacrificing' children to the deity in a symbolic sense. Haven't looked deeply into this, however.
Lev 20.27: Tactless later insertion.
Lev 21.1-22.33: Priestly restrictions and sacrificial rules.
Lev 22.1-16: Rules for avoiding defilement of offerings.
Lev 23.1-44: Calendar of sacred occasions.
Lev 23.42: Booths? What booths? There is no prior mention of booths, may relate somehow to the tent sanctuary.
Lev 24.1-9: Ritual lamps and bread.
Lev 24.10-23: The case of the blasphemer and laws arising from it. Likely an originally separate composition, these verses exist to settle a case of blasphemy in the case of a half-Israelite; the answer being that any indiviudal regardless of status shall be put to death for such a sin.
Lev 25.1-26.2: The sabbaical and jubilee years and their social implications. Slaves may only come from the nations around the Israelites. We all know this one.
Lev 26.3-46: Inducements for obedience.
Lev 26.11-12: The ultimate reward for obedience is the divine presence in Israel.
Lev 26.18: "Sevenfold," likely not a literal accounting but a reference to full/extensive punishment.
Lev 26.33-45: These verses address exile, indicating that this chapter may have been written or edited after Babylonian conquest of Judah in 586BCE. Those who remain and repent will be restored, for God's commitment to Israel is unmoved. This was likely a particularly meaningful promise to the exiles.
Lev 27.1-34: Vows, dedications, and tithes. A later addition.
Leviticus down. Very dry, much repetition. Fascinating in a narrative sense though, how all these laws were worked naturally into the story of Exodus and eventual conquest; God placing himself among the people so as to afford his divine commandments immediate legitimacy—this is of course recognizing much of this was compiled later to justify temple arrangements, but that only makes it all the more interesting. Onto Numbers.
Slaughter, bleed, dash all that seeps
Upon my cold, earthen stone,
consuming all, rife with breath
Upon my rule, my promise
and my nightmare, living fear
Upon all hearts, and all minds
this bloodsoaked word knows no creed
Upon the knowledge of life
and of death, there is no doubt
Let there be no transgression
Tuesday, January 17th, 2023
12:29
Introduction to Numbers
The title "Numbers," derives from the Vulgate and the Septuagint, named as such due to the two censuses of the Israelites that bookmark the narrative of the book. Another title, "In the wilderness," comes from the Masoretic Text.
The Oxford commentary provides a graph to illustrate three ways in which one can analyse the structure of the book, I copy it here in text form:
Chs 1-25: First Generation.
Chs 26-36: Second Generation.
The first segmentation highlights the two-part structure that emerges from the census of the first and second generations.
Chs 1.1-10.10: Wilderness of Sinai.
Chs 10.10-21.35: Wilderness Journey.
Chs 22.1-36.13: Plains of Moab.
The second segmentation clarifies the three-part geographical structure of the wilderness journey.
Chs 1.1-6.27: Holiness and Camp.
Chs 7.1-10.10: Holiness and Tabernacle.
Chs 10.11-36: Departure from Sinai.
Chs 11.1-21.35: Rebellion and Death.
Chs 22.1-25.18: Threats on the Plains of Moab.
Chs 26.1-36.13: Preparation for the Promised Land.
The third segmentation breaks down the book into smaller thematic units.
Numbers acts as a narrative bridge between Leviticus (from which it directly follows) and Deuteronomy, linking the Priestly legislation that came before with the laws expounded by Moses in Deuteronomy, helping to bring together the two law collections into a single Torah, even though contradictions between the two books are common.
The book of Numbers follows two generations of Israelites, those that experienced the Exodus from egypt and head the law at Sinai firsthand, and those born after that must be prepared for entry into the Promised Land.
As in other parts of the Torah, the composition of Numbers took place over an extended period of time, and thus contains three distinct bodies of literature: independent poems and records; non-Priestly literature about the wilderness journey; and Priestly literature and law from several different authors.
17:57
Numbers
Num 1.1-10.10: The wilderness camp.
Num 1.1-6.27: The community and the camp. Camp layout has degrees of holiness indicated by proximity to the tabernacle.
Num 1.1-47: Census of the first generation.
Num 1.3: "Enroll" indicates a miltiary census for war; thus only males twenty and older are counted.
Num 1.17-47: The Levites are excluded because of their special priestly functions, and the number of twelve tribes is maintained by separating the tribe of Joseph into Ephraim and Manasseh.
Num 2.1-34: Arrangement of the camp.
Num 3.1-10: Genealogy and duties of the Levites. Genealogy is narrowed in focus here to highlight Aaron.
Num 3.5-10: Levites, subservient to Aaronide priests, act as guards of the tabernacle.
Num 3.11-13: Levites as substitutes for firstborn. The claim God made on the firstborn in Exodus is replaced here with the Levites acting as substitutes.
Num 3.14-51: First census of the Levites.
Num 3.38: Aaronide priests camp on the east and most significant side of the tabernacle; their labor is within the sanctuary separate from the Levites who work outside.
Wednesday, Jaunary 18th, 2023
18:28
Num 4.1-49: Second census of the Levites for work. Now that all are assigned, the camp is ready for the journey.
Num 5.1-6.27: Laws to protect the camp.
Num 5.1-10: Purity laws for the camp.
Num 5.1-4: Three types of impurity threaten the camp: skin disease, genital discharges, and contact with a corpse.
Num 5.6: Breaking faith with the Lord through wronging another incurs guilt that must be purified via confession.
Num 5.11-31: Law regulating a woman accused of adultery. These are the so-called "abortion" verses of Numbers: if a man believes his wife to have been unfaithful, he presents a grain offering and a Priest shall make the wife drink the bitter potion; if the woman has been faithful, nothing will happen, but if she has been unfaithful or has lied, her womb will drop and discharge—a miscarriage, essentially. Interestingly, this is the only ritual regarding holy water in the Hebrew Bible; holy water in this instance likely means running water from a spring.
Num 6.1-21: Law of the nazirite. Nazirites ("nazar" probably meaning "to abstain") are a voluntary class of Israelites that act as a form of ascetic, temporary Priests; one undertakes the vow of the nazirite and thus takes on a number of prohibitions in order to afford them holiness and social status. In order to revoke the vow one must offer various sacrifices to the tabernacle/temple; due to this, the vow of the nazirite today is considered permanent, as there is no way to offer sacrifice as described without a temple.
Num 6.22-27: Priestly blessing. Safeguard of divine blessing afforded to the congregation. The discovery of a form of this blessing on a sixth-century BCE silver amulet from a burial cave (the Ketef Hinnom scrolls) underscores its central role in Ancient Israel.
Thursday, January 19th, 2023
21:39
Num 7.1-10.10: Tabernacle.
Num 7.1-88: Offerings of dedication. Names and tribe order mirror that of their initial introduction. That sure is a lot of gifts.
Num 8.1-4: Lampstand. The lampstand is depicted as a stylized tree, perhaps symbolizing a tree of life.
Num 8.5-26: Dedication of the Levites. The Levites are purified, so as to become separated from the Israelites, but they are not consecrated as the Aaronite priests were.
Num 9.1-14: Passover. This is the second passover, the first taking place in Egypt. This marks the conclusion of the revelation at Mount Sinai.
Num 9.15-23: Cloud and wilderness march. The rest periods of this march may reflect the Priestly ritual calendar, where distinct sacrifices and feasts require different periods of time.
Friday, January 20th, 2023
16:33
Num 10.1-10: Trumpets. Trumpets used to summon the congregation, prepare camp for travel, and to summon the people to war and feasts.
Num 10.11-22.1: The wilderness journey. The murmuring of the Israelites arises from threatening situations in the wilderness over lack of food and water, disease, or fear of the inhabitants of Canaan, all of which cause the Israelites to protest their present condition. The complaint is accompanied by a longing to return to slavery in Egypt, which shows a lack of faith in the leadership of the Lord and Moses and eventually leads to the death of the generation that had escaped from Egypt.
Num 10.11-36: Leaving Sinai. Two accounts here, Priestly and not.
Num 10.11-28: Organization of the wilderness march.
Num 10.29-36: The ark leading the people. Jethro doesn't want to go a-marching!
Saturday, January 21st, 2023
15:17
Num 11.1-12.15: The prophetic spirit of Moses.
Num 11.1-3: Complaint at Taberah. This complaint lacks specific details. Moses intercedes.
Num 11.4-35: Moses and the seventy elders.
Num 11.12: God is described as the mother who conceived and gave birth to the people, and Moses is their wet nurse.
Num 11.15: Moses requests death if the mistreatment is continued.
Num 11.16-17: God instructs Moses to select seventy elders to share his spirit so as to aid him in leadership. Calls back to the elders mentioned in Ex 24.1,9, as well as to Jethro's advice in Ex 18.
Num 11.25-30: Prophetic inspiration of others is distinguished here as being temporary, and it can also be transferred without intent.
Sunday, January 22nd, 2023
23:40
Num 12.1-15: Conflict between Miriam and Aaron, and Moses. Moses is challenged because he married a Cushite woman.
Num 12.3: The humble (Hebrew: "Anaw") seek God (Ps 22.27), rejoice in God (Ps 63.33), and do justice (Isa 11.14), so that God hears (Ps 10.17), instructs (Ps 25.9), and saves them (Ps 76.10).
Monday, January 23rd, 2023
01:29
Num 13.1-14.45: Story of the scouts and its consequences. Combining two different sources.
Num 13.1-20: Selection of the scouts and their instructions.
Num 13.16: Joshua gets his name changed from Hoshea.
Num 13.21-33: Mission and report of the scouts.
Num 13.22: Anakites, a race of fearful giants.
Num 13.25: Forty days.
Num 14.1-45: Responses to the report of the scouts.
Num 14.9: The people of the land of Canaan have had the protection (Hebrew: "shadow", "shade") of their Gods removed from them; protection in this manner is used as such to describe the Lord's actions also (Pss 91.1; 121.5).
Num 14.13-19: Moses intercedes for the nation with two arguments: killing the Israelites would lead the nations to judge the Lord to be unreliable (see Ex 32.11-14); and the central characteristic of the Lord is mercy (see Ex 34.6-7).
Num 14.20-24: God forgives; the nation will not be destroyed, but the inheritors of the land will be the second generation.
Num 14.34-35: For every day of scouting, there is one year of marching in the wilderness.
Num 14.39-45: Unsuccessful war against the Canaanites; Yahweh, represented by the ark, is not with the people.
Num 15.1-3: Legislation for Israel's future life in the land.
Num 15.22-31: Rules regarding forgiveness from three distinct transgressions: unintentional communal sin (vv. 22-26); unintentional individual sin (vv. 27-29); intentional sin, which cannot be forgiven (vv. 30-31).
Num 15.32-41: Further legal material. Collecting sticks on the sabbath results in consultation with the Lord, the answer is the death penalty (such consultations are made in cases that lack legal precedent, e.g. Lev 24.10-23).
Wednesday, January 25th, 2023
22:05
Missed two days, low mood. Had to happen eventually. Back to it, however.
Num 16.1-17.13: Conflicts over priestly leadership.
Num 16.1-40: Conflict with Korah and Dathan and Abiram. Two narratives interwoven. God sends the families to Sheol and likewise consumes the incense holders with fire due to their transgression. Interestingly, the censers of these incest were made holy 'at the cost of their lives.' The metal is hammered into a covering for the altar so as to remind the faithful.
Num 16.41-17.13: Special status of Aaron. Aaron atones for the people, stoping the plague with his own incense, and he also has a magical staff.
Num 17.2: Election of Aaron once more via this staff lot, another sign of his holiness.
Num 18.1-19.22: Responsibilities and rights of priests and Levites.
Num 18.1-32: Rules for priests and Levites.
Num 18.1-7: A divine speech to Aaron, rather than to Moses, outlines the safeguards to protect the people from perisihing in the presnce of God; Aaronide priests and Levites protect the Israelites from divine holiness.
Num 18.1: Direct address to Aaron is rare, though all instances are associated with danger to the sanctuary, thus accentuating the authority of the priesthood.
Num 18.19-21: Priests own no territory due to their 'covenant of salt' with the Lord, instead they receive tithes and offerings for their devoted service.
Num 19.1-22: Cleansing from corpse contamination. Postulated in footnote that corpse contamination may stem from a rejection of ancestor worship; the dead are a danger to divine holiness.
Num 20.1-21.35: Leaving the wilderness. As before, two narratives here.
Num 20.1-13: Sin of Moses and Aaron. Individual responsibility of Moses and Aaron for not being allowed to enter the land due to disobedience regarding divine command. Different explanations are given in Deut 1.37; Ps 106.32-33.
Num 20.7-8: Moses is instructed to use his staff; this staff may be Aaron's from the prior story, but it could also be the staff from Exodus.
Num 20.9-11: Moses judges the complaint of the people as an instance of disobedience, accusing the people of being "rebels"; as a consequence he does not follow the divine instructions exactly, and strikes the rock twice rather than speaking to it.
Num 20.14-21: Conflict with Edom.
Num 20.14: "Brother," reflecting the genealogy of Genesis; Esau, brother of Jacob is the ancestor of the Edomites.
Num 20.18-21: Here, Israel is forced to go around Edom under threat of the sword, later in Deut 2.3-13 the Isrealites are said to have travelled through Edom.
Num 20.22-29: Death of Aaron. Robing Eleazar with Aaron's vestments signals the transfer of the priestly office. Thirty days of morning rather than the normal seven-day period indicated prior.
Num 21.1-3: War against the king of Arad. The lands and property is given to God through destruction rather than spoil for the Israelite warriors. Hormah mentioned here is the same as in the unsuccessful war fought prior in 14.39-45, reversing the negative account.
Num 21.4-9: The bronze serpent. Serpents, "seprahim," could refer either to dangerous desert reptiles, or to members of the divine council. The serpent of bronze Moses fashions was said to exist in the Jerusalem temple (2 Kings 18.4)
Num 21.10-35: Journey north through Transjordan. In these narratives the Amorites control territory later controlled by the Ammonites.
Num 21.14-15: Book of the Wars of the Lord once more, funny how a book, presumably written later, is cited here as if Moses has precognition given the tradition of his writing of Numbers is taken to be fact.
Num 21.17-18: Ancient work song celebrating the digging of a well. Cute!
Num 21.21-26: Israelites ask to pass through the territory of Sihon, king of the Amorites; Siohn wages war on the Israelites and is defeated. The subsequent poem may originally have been used by Sihon in his defeat of the Moabites (as quoted in Jer 48.45), repurposed and placed here as a taunt from Israel in their defeat of Sihon. Chemosh is mentioned, the principal Moabite god.
Friday, January 27th, 2023
02:43
Num 22.1-36.13: Preparing for entry into Canaan. Set in the plains of Moab, conflicts with other nations continue, and we get laws for Israel's future life in the land.
Num 22.1-24.25: Balak and Balaam. Balak, king of Moab fears Israel's strength; he requests the seer Balaam to curse them. Israel plays no active role in the mounting threat of Balak, but the Lord is an active participant in the drama.
Num 22.1-14: First mission. In this account, Balaam is depicted positively.
Num 22.5: "Balaam son of Beor" is also featured in an eighth-century BCE text from Tell Deir Alla in the Jordan Valley. That text indicates that Balaam was a well-known prophetic figure, and recounts his vision of a natural disaster brought on by Shagar, a fertility goddess, and the Shaddai-gods. We can take this to mean that the character of Balaam predates this story, or at least existed alongside the development of it as a general figure.
Num 22.7: Balaam has the power of divination, condemned elsewhere in the bible, it proves to be efficacious.
Num 22.9-11: Balaam's dialogue with the Lord shows that although he is a non-Israelite, Balaam has a relationship with the Lord.
Num 22.15-21: Second mission. This narrative was likely immediately followed by vv. 36-38, instead, a separate story interrupts the sequence of events (see next note).
Num 22.22-35: Balaam and the angel of the Lord. This interruption of the narrative is an accont of Balaam's journey to Balak; the Lord is angry at this journey despite being the one that had just instructed him to go with the men. The central theme of the story is the blindness of the seer to the threat of the divine being in his path, but which his donkey sees clearly. The story presents Balaam negatively, which becomes the dominant interpretation elsewhere in the Bible (see 31.8,16; Deut 23.5; Josh 13.22; 24.10; Neh 13.2).
Num 22.22: "Adversary" (Hebrew: "Satan"), the angel of the Lord acts as the adversary to Balaam.
Num 22.23: "Drawn sword," see Josh 5.13; 1 Chr 21.16.
Num 22.36-23.12: First oracle.
Num 23.7-10: The oracle consists of three stanzas: vv. 7-8: the inability of Balaam to curse if it not God's will; v. 9: the distinctive character of Israel; v. 10: reference to the Israelites' fertility. Funny for God through Balaam to note "a people living alone, and not reckoning itself among the nations!" right after the wars against Arad and Sihon.
Num 23.13-26: Second oracle. The oracle has three stanzas: vv. 18-19: the contrast between Balak and God underscores that the human attempt to manipulate the future is useless since God fulfills all divine promises; vv. 20-22: Israel's history of deliverance as an outgrowth of divine blessings; vv. 23-24: shift from the past to the present by comparing Israel to a lion that eats its prey.
Num 23.27-24.13: Third oracle.
Num 24.2: "Spirit of God," suggests that Balaam achieves a new level of revelation in the third oracle.
Num 24.5-9: Balaam describes the Israelite nation with fertility imagery of palm trees, gardens, aloe tree, and cedars, before concluding with the ominous statement that those who curse Israel will be cursed and those who bless Israel will be blessed. Echoing Gen 12.3.
Num 24.14-25: Balaam's fourth oracle has a future prophetic orientation not present in the first three, making predictions on events to come regarding the nations surrounding Israel.
Num 24.15-17: The vision about Moab is eschatological; destruction is not now, and it is not near. The royal imagery may point to the victory of an Israelite king over Moab; it also influences expectations for a future leader, such as Bar Kokhba in the revolt against Rome (132-135 CE), and Jesus, "the bright morning star" in Rev 22.16. In the view of some schools of textual criticism, the oracles narrative, excepting the episode involving the donkey, is simply a framework invented in order to be able to insert much older poems.
Sunday, January 29th, 2023
07:27
Missed another day, my ability to commit falters as usual; still aiming to complete the project, of course, but small gaps may continue.
Num 25.1-19: Sin of Israel at Baal-peor. Narrative has two versions, one about sexual relations and idolatry with the Moabites, the other about intermarriage with the Midianites.
Num 25.4: Divine anger requiring impalement to abate.
Num 25.6: Marriage between Israelites and Midianites condemned here, but worth noting that Moses married Zipporah, a Midianite.
Num 25.16-18: This divine command to Moses points ahead to the war against Midian in ch 31.
Num 26.1-36.13: Generation of the conquest and instructions for inheritance. The central theme is the inheritance of the Promised Land by the second generation after the death of the first, signaled by a new census (ch 26) and a change of leadership; Eleazar replaces Aaron as high priest (26.1), and Joshua succeeds Moses as Israel's leader into the Promised Land (27.12-13).
Num 26.1-65: Census of the second generation.
Num 26.52-55: Inheritance of land for each tribe is determined by lot, emphasizing that the result is determined by God.
Num 27.1-11: Daughters of Zelophehad
Num 27.3: Zelophehad died "for his own sin," suggesting the principle of individual responsibility in which successive generations should not be punished for the sins of a single member of the family. Again, contradicting the notion of generational guilt.
Num 27.6-11: God instructs Moses to transfer the inheritance of Zelophehad to his daughters. "Equal" opportunity inheritance, baby.
Num 27.12-23: Leadership of Joshua.
Num 27.12-14: Divine announcement of Moses's impending death.
Num 27.15-21: Transfer of Moses's authority to Joshua, accomplished through the laying on of hands under the supervision of Eleazar.
Num 28.1-29.40: Prescribed sacrifices. Sacrifices to be offered by priests for "appointed times," sacred moments in the day, week, and month.
Num 29.1-21: More festivals. I'm sure I will be forgiven for not going into extensive detail here.
Num 30.1-16: Vows. The central topic in the chapter is vows by women, in which a wife or daughter promises to do something for God in exchange for divine help. Autonomy of women is called into question here; the father or husband of a woman can disapprove of any vow, thus nullifying it, and the Lord will forgive such a nullification.
Num 31.1-54: War against Midian. A fictional account of the destruction of the entire Midiante nation by the Israelites without a single casualty. This Priestly story is a sequel to the account of the intermarriage between the Israelite man Zimri and the Midianite woman Cozbi (25.6-18). The story provides the Priestly interpretation on a range of topics associated with war, including the role of priests, the evaluation of male and female captives, spoils, and the purity of soliders. Moses and the priests oversee the event, Eleazar the high priest determines acceptable spoils from holy war, and Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, leads the troops.
Num 31.6: Phinehas takes the vessels of the sanctuary into battle, thus making it a holy war.
Num 31.8: Rest in peace Balaam.
Num 31.16: "On Balaam's advice," not found in chapter 25 or elsewhere. The women are slaughtered due to their actions at Baal-Peor; Balaam's supposed influence here acts as the post hoc scapegoat.
Num 32.1-42: Inheritance east of the Jordan. Extended exchange between the tribes of Gad and Reuben and Moses regarding land distribution.
Num 33.1-56: A summary of the wilderness journey, includes minutia on each and every stop, then a proclamation of continued holy war in crossing the Jordan.
Num 34.1-29: Boundaries of the land west of the Jordan.
Num 35.1-15: Levitical cities of refuge. The Levites are separated from the other tribes in the Promised Land, as in the wilderness camp. They receive no contiguous block of land, because they are a divine possession, instead they receive cities; Deut 18.6 suggests that Levites are scattered throughout all of the cities of the Promised Land; see also Judg 17.7-8.
Num 35.16-34: Laws of homicide.
Num 35.33-34: The rationale for the laws regarding homicide is that shed blood pollutes the land (Ezek 36.17-18) causing it to vomit out its inhabitants (Lev 18.28).
Num 36.1-12: Daughters of Zelophehad. The question of intermarriage and the inheritance of lands is raised; if the daughters of Zelophehad marry into other tribes, does the land they had inherited change tribes? Moses answers in the negative, revising the previous law with an addendum that says in the land must be retained by the tribe in collective, therefore such women may only marry one of their father's tribe, so as to negate the issue entirely. Placed at the end of Numbers as this is, this was likely a later addition tacked on to address such cases.
And that is Numbers done. Can't lie, this one was a bit of a slog, felt my desire to continue reading during my sessions wane, as is evident in the length of my reading sessions. Interesting structure, the narrative sections interspersed with sudden bouts of law and ritual and the like. Feeling the cast of characters begin to diversify a bit, with Moses as figurehead being joined by Aaron's descendants in Eleazar, Phinehas and Joshua, making the wider arc of the Israelites seem less of a point-to-point prophet-to-porphet affair. Good fun! Deuteronomy, then.
Wander, O' Carnelians, deprived of birthright;
Wander, O' Peridots, divided and scattered;
Wander, O' Carbuncles, praised whelps of martyr's wine;
Wander, O' Sapphires, seekers of Enoch's pavement;
Wander, O' Diamonds, farers of the firmament;
Wander, O' Onyxes, of those that are fruitful;
Wander, O' Onyxes, of those that help forget;
Wander, O' Jaspers, ravenous wolves, left of hand;
Wander, O' Jacinths, black sheep, serpent of my kin;
Wander, O' Lapides, innocent of ill intent;
Wander, O' Amethysts, triumphant with fortune;
Wander, O' Agates, goodly hinds let loose to fear.