Codes of the Hebrew Bible
In this essay I pick up the thread I left hanging in the first part of this series on reading the codes of the Hebrew Bible (Fall/Winter 2023-24). My study is based on Edward Feld’s writing: “The Book of Revolutions—the Battles of Priests, Prophets, and Kings that Birthed the Torah.”
The purpose of this series is to use Feld’s scholarship to help us improve our reading skills with these codes as essential texts in the Hebrew Bible, that have vital presence in the gospels and literature of the early church.
In that first part I introduced several of his significant observations and presented two of the three codes: the Covenant Code and the Deuteronomic Code; in this portion I will add the Holiness Code into the mix. These codes often sit side by side and are interwoven throughout the biblical text. Each arises from their unique historical contexts and are promulgated by various powers within the Israelite ruling structure: Kings, Priests, and Prophets. Neither code is given preeminent authority over the other. This is important. They co-exist. They are related to each and yet represent a unique adaptation. The biologist David Haskell observes that: “All living creatures, our own lives included,” find in themselves a similar “tension between diversity and unity, individuality and tradition.”
Let us also remind ourselves that this living tension, preserved in the biblical text is interwoven over 740 years of history—roughly from the exodus from Egypt to the end of the Babylonian exile. Sometimes it is necessary to pause and take that in. The world up-heaves, settles and up-heaves again. Along the way, Law, codes, narratives, instructions, prophetic speech, and poetry are all revised, written and rewritten over centuries of lived experience.
Keeping this in mind is critical as we continue to read. Edward Feld’s observations help illuminate the importance of this. For example, as noted in Part One, many biblical codes in the Hebrew Bible parallel the codes of other cultures. We may refer to them as secular or not specifically religious but having to do with sharing common life including other peoples. There are underlying questions, consciously or unconsciously presenti: Who am I? And what am I to do? The communal version: Who are we? And what are we to do? Codes urge us to become more conscious. The answer to this question may be one of acknowledging our common humanity—I am a human being, or the code may be bound to a more particular identity—I am an Israelite!
Let me illustrate this through several examples.
The Covenant Code begins its list of regulations in Exodus 21:1. YHWH tells Moses to relate the following: “Now these are the regulations that you are to set before them; when you acquire a Hebrew serf, he is to serve six years, but in the seventh he is to go out at liberty, for nothing” (this and the following translations are by Everett Fox).
How curious that the first words of the Covenant Code concern serfdom (“slaves” in other translations). As we read further along, we notice a general lack of class distinctions and more often adjudications in favor of the powerless. This is how Edward Feld describes the Covenant Code: “The laws enumerated in Exodus 21-23 emulate the common legal traditions of the Near East, though seen through a more egalitarian Israelite lens and adding a distinct ethical and religious stamp to the common Near Eastern Inheritance” (32).
Notably this “ethical stamp” is connected to identity as, for example, the treatment of the serf in the passage above and that of the stranger in the following verse:
“A sojourner, you are not to oppress: you yourselves know (well) the feelings of the sojourner, for sojourners were you in the land of Egypt” (Ex 23:9).
Here behavior is coupled with empathy, undergirding the practice and awareness supported by memory. Who am I? I am a member of a people, once slaves. No matter how many years have passed since slavery. Rather than slipping into amnesia, memory is built into the code.
Identity becomes more vivid in the regulations concerning the Sabbath. The observance of the Sabbath is found in all three Codes, and each has its own way of bonding this observance to their identity as the people of God: Israel. When we set them side by side, we see both similarities and noticeable differences. Here is the Sabbath in the Covenantal Code:
“For six days you are to make your labor,
for on the seventh day, you are to cease,
in order that your ox and your donkey may rest
and the son of your handmaid and the sojourner may
pause-for-breath” (Ex 23:12).
This version is not grounded in theology or historical experience. It carries a social and economic interest, allowing workers-human and more than human workers to literally “stop” (the Hebrew meaning of shabbat) and take a breath. The text does not even mark the day as special by calling it the Sabbath. It is inclusive and practical. And it restrains an impulse that might encourage employers to take the day off while their workers continue to labor. The day is not given special significance beyond this.
However, the Deuteronomic Code has much to say about the Sabbath. The context of this revision of the Covenant Code, Feld and others observe, follows the dismemberment of the Northern Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrian Empire in 722 BCE.
“Keep the day of Sabbath, by hallowing it,
as YHWH your God has commanded you.
For six days you are to serve and to do all your work;
but the seventh day (is) Sabbath for YHWH your God—you are not to do any work:
(not) you, nor your son, nor your daughter, or your servant,
nor your maid, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your animals,
nor your sojourner that is in your gates—in order that your servant and your maid may rest as one-like yourself.You are to bear-in-mind that serf were you in the land of Egypt, but YHWH your God took you out from there with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm; therefore YHWH your God commands you to observe the day of Sabbath” (Deut 5:12-15).
We notice the observance of the Sabbath is given as command. I will elaborate on the use of commandments below. The command includes the entire household, as the Covenant Code describes, though this version is more detailed. If there were any thoughts of making exceptions, “any of your animals,” covers all bases. Whether the sojourner is to observe the Sabbath as an Israelite or simply take the day of rest as given is not quite clear, though this will (and continues to be) debated within Israel’s circle of influence. Further, we note that observing the Sabbath confirms the action of YHWH as liberator of Israel. This elemental experience continues to confirm while differentiating Israel’s identity from other peoples. It is a particular identity, one not shared by others. If this wasn’t clear in the Covenant Code version, it is in this one.
A primary concern in the promulgation of any code is accountability and enforcement. There are courts to adjudicate some of the violations of codes and are often included in the text. For example, in the Covenant Code:
“When a man strikes the eye of his serf or the eye of his handmade, and ruins it,
he is to send him free at liberty (for the sake of) his eye;
if the tooth of his serf or the tooth of his handmaid he breaks off,
he is to send him free at liberty (for the sake of) his tooth” (Ex 21:26-27).
If this happens…this is the consequence. The code makes the ruling public and the consequence should match the offense and not be capricious. In this case not quite “eye for an eye” and “tooth for a tooth,” but freedom for the slave.
When the scroll of Deuteronomy is “discovered” during the period of Josiah’s reforms the codes are revised—under the pseudonym of Moses the original law-giver. These revisions follow the common equation: if this happens, then this will happen. However, this new code is written during the post traumatic years following the destruction of the Northern Kingdom. Conditionality takes on historic and dramatic theological weight. The prophetic answer to how or why the North could have been so viciously destroyed was that the North failed to observe the Covenant with YHWH. The new code was written to make it clear that the future of Israel now lay in the willingness of the people to reaffirm their exclusive allegiance to YHWH. The Deuteronomic Moses emphasized this in his last speech to the people:
“See I set before you today life and good,
and death and ill:
in that I command you today to love YHWH your God,
to walk in his ways and to keep his commandments,
his laws and his regulations,
that you may stay-alive and become-many
and YHWH your God may bless you in the land that you are entering to possess.
Now if you heart should face-about, and you do not hearken,
and thrust-yourself-away and prostrate yourselves to other gods,
and serve them, I announce to you today that you will perish,
you will not prolong days on the soil that you are crossing the Jordan to enter, to possess” (Deut 30:15-18).
Written after the destruction of the North, these words carry the weight of historical experience while carrying a future warning. This will happen again if you do not “hearken.” Deuteronomy is not so glib, as some who use this same equation in the present to explain, for example, why Hurricane Katrina took aim at New Orleans. The devastating loss of life and property was claimed to be God’s judgment on the people’s “flagrant” sexuality.
The tragedy, at the time of decreeing the Deuteronomic Code, is that about 136 years after the destruction of the northern tribes, and a mere 50 years or so following the reforms of Josiah, Babylonian armies sweep down into Judea (586 BCE), destroying the temple, the city and with the forced deportation of much of the population into exile. No people had ever survived this kind of trauma. The ancient question of identity is now urgently asked anew: “Who are we?” “What are we to do?” “How do we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land?” (Ps 137). The Holiness Code is one response.
As Edward Feld reminds his readers these three codes live together in the same textual landscape. This is dramatically apparent in the appearance of the Holiness Code in Leviticus 19. Right there, without forewarning the code appears:
“YHWH spoke to Moshe, saying;
Speak to the entire community of the Children of Israel, and say to them:
Holy are you to be, for holy am I, YHWH your God!” (Lev 19:1-2).
Following this introduction, theSabbathis spliced into the code:
“Each-man—his mother and his father you are to hold-in-awe, and my sabbaths you are to keep:
I am YHWH your God” (vv 3-4).
Once more in Leviticus 23:1-3:
“YHWH spoke to Moshe, saying:
Speak to the Children of Israel and say to them:
The appointed—times of YHWH, which you are to proclaim to them (as) proclamations of holiness—
These they are, my appointed times:
For six days may work be done,
But on the seventh day (is) a Sabbath, a Sabbath—Ceasing, a proclamation of holiness,
Any—kind of work you are not to do,
It is a Sabbath to YHWH, throughout all your settlements.”
All three codes summon the Sabbath to help strengthen their particular projects—whether creating balance of equality in work and rest; or for encouraging and demonstrating their identity as those who adhere to the commands; or as a day to set aside time to practice and learn the ways of holiness.
As I listen to each, I hear a difference in tone. The themes are there but in this last iteration, to my ears, the music is transformed: “Holy you are to be, for holy am I.”
This is epitomized in what is perhapsthecodesmost beloved and quoted lines:
“You are not to take vengeance, you are not to retain-anger
against the sons of your kinspeople—
But be-loving to your neighbor (as one) like yourself, I am YHWH” (19:18).
We know these words, perhaps hearing them for the first time from the mouth of Jesus in all three synoptic gospels.
Feld, in his book, describes this change emanating from a group of reformist priests and prophets. The lack of political and religious power (no king and temple) provided the soil for their ideas to grow. “Influenced by the prophetic message of personal responsibility and ethical behavior as critical in religious life, they combined these ideas of the need to reform the entire society with their understanding of the place of sacrificial offerings and sacred worship in constituting holiness” (178).
Their voices will vie with those continuing to hold to the Deuteronomic Code. Some of these will double down and begin to envision what a return to the land might look like—if there was to be a return. The temple would be rebuilt, the monarchy restored, and the Code reinstated.
The priests and scribes behind the Holiness Code have a different vision. In the next and final portion of this series, I will follow Feld’s work more deeply into the Holiness Code and the continuing influence it has in the teaching of Jesus and the early church.