Codes of the Hebrew Bible, part III
The third part of this series on biblical codes focuses on the Holiness Code. This code originated among the exiled community deported deep into the Babylonian empire. In the previous articles we looked at the Covenant Code and the Deuteronomic Code (Fall/Winter 2023 and Spring/Summer 2024). The series is based upon the scholarship of Edward Feld and his remarkable book, “The Book of Revolutions; the Battles of Priests, Prophets and Kings, that Birthed the Torah.”
Living as I do, in the middle of a vast and powerful empire, it is beyond imagination to touch the experience of those who lived for two generations as refugees and exiles—torn from their homeland by powerful armies and imperial ambition. As readers, in some manner we must acknowledge the depth of this crisis following the destruction of Jerusalem, the demolition of the temple and the deportation of much of the population, lasting between 50 and 60 years!
Some of their suffering is given voice in Psalm 137: 1-5 (translation by Robert Alter).
By Babylon’s streams,
there we sat, oh we wept
when we recalled Zion.
On the poplars there
we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors had asked of us
words of song,
and our plunderers—rejoicing:
“Sing us from Zion’s songs.”
How can we sing a song of the Lord
on foreign soil?
Should I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand wither.
Who are we and what are we to do? These questions are amplified by the prior fate of the Northern Kingdom which had been excised by the Assyrian Army 135 years earlier. They did not survive as people of the covenant. Indeed, so traumatic was this whole experience that the second code, the Deuteronomic Code was written and promulgated in response. As I noted in my previous article, Feld describes this code and the reforms they instituted as measures to prevent just such another tragedy. The language of command, the distinctions between citizens and non-citizens in the rewriting was meant to shore up the national religious identity with strict adherence to temple and religious practice for the remaining southern kingdom.
Yet they now live in refugee camps by the waters of the great Tigris and Euphrates. There is no temple. No king. No country. Is it over? Is YHWH done with us?
The responses are multiple as we would assume. Some assimilate into the bright lights of Babylonian culture. Others try to remember and address the significant challenges that lie ahead. Prophets and priests weigh in. Feld urges us to hear a vigorous dialogue. The exile is not time emptied of meaning. A significant number of “Jewish exiles in Babylonia maintained their loyalty to the God of their ancestors and preserved a distinct and separate identity from the majority population among whom they now lived. They took up permanent residence in distinctly Israelite enclaves” (169).
One major enterprise was preserving memory into living practice and distinctiveness. The scribes and priests who stood in the Deuteronomic lineage edited the history of the people into the books we know as: Joshua, Judges, First and Second Samuel, and First and Second Kings. When we read these narratives with the awareness of when they were edited, we can sense the Deuteronomic point of view. Here is Feld’s observation:
Especially Kings reflects the consistent theme of sin and punishment: Each king of Israel and Judea is judged by the Deuteronomic standard of purity of worship. Deuteronomy thus formed a spine for a historical body of literature that was now edited in exile. Altogether, these books constituted not only an analysis of past misdeeds, as explanation of how we got here, but a program for the future: a map for the return to Jerusalem that, this time around, would be upheld by the proper observance of the covenant (171-172).
Within the circle of exiles there were other leaders, “historically anonymous but eminently significant.” Their voices were also present before the exile, but they gain strength because of the lack of “clear authority.” There was no king and no temple to hold sway. In these moments, ideas, once drowned out, rise, and may be considered.
This is Feld’s description of what he calls “reformist priests” and their platform:
They believed that the prophets had conveyed an important message: if society was unjust, there could be no true worship of the Divine. They taught that ethical lapses convey impurity as much as dead bodies, and so they emphasized the need for societal reform and individual transformation as central concerns of holiness. God’s presence is to be achieved both by proper ritual observance and through righteous activity in the workaday world (178).
These thoughts are woven into the second half of the book of Leviticus and sections of the book of Numbers. We know their writing as the Holiness Code. The code takes this name from Leviticus 19:1-2 (translated by Everett Fox): “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!”
There are no signposts, no bold headings to indicate we are in new textual territory. But if we slow down we can notice the difference. In tone, the elegance of the language, the simplicity and inclusion of its invitation the shift becomes more apparent. Like the other codes, the words of instruction are placed in the voice of Moses equipping them with the authority and continuity of the legal tradition. However, in the opening of this code Moses speaks “to the entire community,” not just priests or elders whose concerns are primarily laws of sacrifice and ritual purity. Feld notes: “In the middle of Leviticus, the subject matter changes; the average citizen of Israel is center stage” (187).
As we read along, we are aware of the echoes of both the Covenant Code and the Deuteronomic Code (including their version of the Decalogue) woven into what are many significant differences. This requires careful attention. Notice the way holiness is presented: “be Holy as YHWH is Holy.” Holy is a supercharged word, full of assumptions, definitions. We must hold these prior assumptions lightly as we open our minds and hearts to learn what the writers of this code intend. The following verses will begin to fill out the authors’ sense of holiness and their particular emphasis on its practice (translations below by Everett Fox):
Verse 3: 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!
Verse 4: Do not turn-your-faces to no-gods,
and molten gods you are not to make yourselves,
I am YHWH your God!
Here we notice the artful reframing of three of the commandments also found in Exodus and Deuteronomy. Similar but not quite the same. Take note of the differences. Spend time with the language, how it moves inside you, especially since the people are addressed in this very personal way—not from on high, standing on the top of a mountain and proclaiming and certainly not written in stone. To my ears, I experience Moshe sitting beside them as he spoke.
The three central elements of the Holiness Code are present: family and relationships; the sabbath; and the propensity to turn from God to “no-god”—from what is real to delusion. I notice the careful order of the text that places the relationship between children and their parents preceding the concerns we might label as idolatry. Might this placement indicate how vital these relationships are to a community that has been ripped from homeland and dumped onto foreign soil? Family dynamics are the essential bond in all matters of life, not to mention moments when survival is at stake. And not just lineage—relationship!
Matters of proper care in the performance of ritual and sacrifice are then included:
Verse 5: Now when you slaughter a slaughter-offering of shalom to YHWH, for your being-accepted you are to slaughter it.
Verse 6: At the time of your slaughtering it, it is to be eaten, and on the morrow (as well), but what remains by the third day is to be burned in fire.
Verse 7: Should it be eaten, yes, eaten on the third day, it is tainted-meat, it will not be accepted;
Verse 8: those who eat it-his iniquity must he bear, for the holy-offering of YHWH he has profaned, cut off shall that person be from his kinspeople!
The radical difference between this code and the others is that these rubrics are directed to the householder and not just to priest and temple. The absence of the temple in Babylon was keenly felt but the connection between ritual and YHWH’s presence remains vital. (To my eyes and mind, this feels similar to my pietist heritage in their assertion of the priesthood of all believers.)
Further elements of holiness will be spelled out as we read further. Real and honest relation to others requires that we don’t lie or steal or cheat or slander or adopt a lifestyle of selfishness. Holiness means sharing the edges of crop land and vineyard with those passing by. And in a particularly touching and thoughtful directive the code pays special attention to the disabled (translation by Everett Fox):
Verse 14: You are not to insult the deaf, before the blind you are not to place a stumbling-block: rather, you are to hold your God in awe; I am YHWH!
Awareness of the other, their need and condition, our intricate entanglement in each other’s life and behaving accordingly—this is holiness. To “hold God in awe” is not to sing “Holy Holy Holy—Lord God Almighty” at the top of our lungs. It is to care for each other, treat each other with kindness, regardless of condition: whether stranger or fellow citizen. In my reading, this reverberates with the words of Jesus in Matthew 25:40: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me”!
Feld describes this passage as including “several of the most ethically sublime assertions of the Bible, culminating in verse 19, which many have seen as the highpoint of biblical law:
but be-loving to your neighbor (as one) like yourself,
I am YHWH!
This is the heart of the Holiness Code—the north star guiding us especially in times of darkness. It reads as an elegant summary of what we are learning about holiness. As Feld continues to describe this code, he introduces two 20-century Jewish philosophers to help us understand how this code continues to inspire and inform religious and ethical dialogue: Martin Buber and Abraham Heschel. Let us hear from Buber who comments on this text in his essay, “The Love of God and the Idea of Deity”:
The Bible knows that it impossible to command the love of man. I am incapable of feeling love toward every man, though God himself command me. The Bible does not directly enjoin the love of man, by using the dative puts it rather in the form of an act of love (Leviticus 19: 18, 34). I must act lovingly toward my rea, my “companion” (usually translated as “my neighbor”) that is toward every man with whom I deal in the course of my life, including the ger, the “stranger” or “sojourner”; I must bestow the favours of love on him, I must treat him with love as one who is “like unto me.” (I must love “to him”; a construction only found in these two verses in the Bible.) Of course I must love him not merely with superficial gestures but with an essential relationship. It lies within my power to will it, and so I can accept the commandment. It is not my will which gives me the emotion of love toward my “neighbor” aroused within me by my behavior (Buber, “The Eclipse of God,” 57).
In later rabbinic literature these kinds of summary verses will be called a kelal. Jesus uses these summary statements throughout his teaching. Consider Matthew 7:12, “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” A statement often called the Golden Rule. Once again in Matthew 22:37-38, responding to the question, “which commandment in the law is the greatest,” Jesus replies: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
In both, Jesus quotes from Leviticus 19. In the later, he binds the one with the citation from Deuteronomy 6: 4-5; the text portion we know as the Shema (Hear, O Israel!). Two codes spoken in a single breath. This is an essential aspect of Edward Feld’s important observation. All three codes abide in the same biblical geography and continue to live in dialogue through the age of the gospels and epistles, throughout the development of rabbinic and church tradition, and into our present time.
These reformist prophets and priests reached more deeply into the trauma of exile to offer an alternative to those who dreamed of the (possible) return to the land whereupon the temple would be rebuilt and a king enthroned. This is the Deuteronomic vision of life returned back to normal reestablishing their code but with more rigorous enforcement. The writers of the Holiness Code encouraged a more personal embracing of holiness expressed through right relation with each other, and therefore with YHWH. This included a right relation with the land they hoped to return to. In the chapter 25 of Leviticus we read:
Verse 1: YHWH spoke to Moshe at Mount Sinai, saying:
Verse 2: speak to the Children of Israel, and say to them:
When you enter the land that I am giving you,
the land is to cease, a Sabbath-ceasing to YHWH.
Verse 3: For six years you are to sow your field,
for six years you are to prune your vineyard,
then you are to gather in its produce,
Verse 4: but in the seventh year
there shall be a Sabbath of Sabbath-ceasing for the land,
a Sabbath to YHWH:
your field you are not to sow,
your vineyard you are not to prune,
There is not enough space in this article to fill out the implications of this part of the code, other than to say that the sabbath is of great concern to the writers of this code just as it is for the others. But the change is noticeable; the land is given the same sabbath rest as all those who work that land, human and more than human. Consideration for the earth is holiness. The entirety of ecological policy and action can flow from this simple text. Reciprocity is holiness.
I hear in this code a profound word to the exiles; “We may return to the land. But we cannot return as the people who were carried away. Something vital within us must be addressed. We must use this experience and our suffering to transform who we are, our relationship with each other, those we live among us, and the One who first called our ancestors, liberated us from slavery and set us on our course.” Suffering may be redemptive if we allow our hearts to be changed by our own experience to attend to the suffering of others. It is this elemental: we live for others because this is what it means to be human.
All three codes highlight this same attention for the care of the “other” more often referred to as “sojourner.” Though often overlooked (and under-practiced) this concern is the most quoted law in the Hebrew scriptures. (See also the Covenant Code version in Exodus 22:21 and the Deuteronomic Code version in Deuteronomy 10:19.) The Holiness Code lifts up the centrality of this act into the very definition of “holiness”: loving neighbor as oneself is the same act as loving the sojourner. Consider Leviticus 19:34 (translation by Everett Fox):
Now when there sojourns with you a sojourner in your land,
You are not to maltreat him;
like the native born-among you shall he be to you, the sojourner
that sojourns with you:
be loving to him (as one like yourself),
for sojourners were you in the land of Egypt.
I am YHWH your God!
From this ethical pinnacle another vision for the return from exile takes shape. Jeremiah the prophet /poet who lives among the exiles will proclaim that this will be a new covenant, written into the hearts and minds of the people (see Jeremiah 31:31-14). Feld is teaching many to look again at the complexity of the living text of the Torah. The implications for reading the gospels, in particular, are very helpful and will provide a rich resource for further study.