I once made the mistake of citing the Old Testament as an authority to a minister known for his dislike of that part of Scripture. Lips tense and jaw set, he glared at me. "You ought to know you can't quote the Old Testament as authority for Christians!" he blasted. "We're under the new order, the New Testament!"
His angry remark voices an uneasiness that has harassed the church for its entire existence: How do you fit the Old Testament, with its law, sacrificial ritual, and harsher ethics, into a Christian Bible? The New Testament itself witnesses to this uneasiness. "Gentiles must be circumcised," shouted the angry Pharisaic party in the early church, "and told to observe the law of Moses" (Acts 15:5, Moffatt). The stormy conflict over this issue, chronicled in the rest of Acts 15, ended in what must have been a fragile truce (verses 25-29). The larger problem of making peace with the Hebrew Scriptures remained.
One hundred years later, Marcion, the wealthy shipowner turned theologian, became so irritated with the Old Testament that he finally tossed it out of his Bible. His gnostic antipathy toward the Old Testament even defaced the New. He moved through its pages, shearing away whole books and pas sages—anything that reflected the Old Testament. When he finished, only 10 Pauline Epistles, carefully purged of any references to the Creator God of the Old Testament, and the Gospel of Luke, minus the birth narratives, remained.
At the outset I want to make clear that I stand with the historic creeds of the church in affirming both the Old and New Testaments. Anything less, despite my minister friend's view, simply isn't a Christian Bible. But occupying such a position doesn't resolve the inherent tensions between these two portions of the Bible. The strain is especially felt, at least by ministers and laymen, in the area of soteriology. Because of this, I wish to look for a harmony between the Testaments in the most unlikely place—the Old Testament law codes, in particular, the book of the covenant (Ex. 20:22- 23:33). If we find redemptive theology here, we can no doubt find it elsewhere in the Old Testament. Our study will show, I believe, that not only the covenant code but other Old Testament law codes as well are deeply rooted in the redemptive activity of God, and thus stand in unity with the New Testament. It will show that the church has been justified in retaining the Old Testament in its Bible.
Hebrew law and the covenant code
Scholars find a variety of legal codes in the Pentateuch. The basic ones consist of the Decalogue (Ex. 20:1-17, Deut. 5:6-21); the covenant code (Ex. 20:22- 23:33); the holiness code (Lev. 17-26), so called because of its refrain "I, Yahweh, am holy" (Lev. 20:26; 21:8; 19:2, Jerusalem); the Deuteronomic code (DeM. 12-26); and the priestly code (Ex. 25 to Num. 10:10). While the division of the Old Testament laws into these various codes reflects an approach to the development of the Pentateuch not generally accepted by conservative scholarship, the distinctions themselves are useful.1
The covenant code is perhaps the most difficult—from a Christian stand point—in which to grasp any hint of divine salvific activity. Seldom cited by Christians, except when the discussion turns to abortion (see Ex. 21:22) or capital punishment (see verses 22-25), this code almost never appears as a text for a sermon. Its constituent parts, an altar law serving as a transition from the dramatic revelation of the Decalogue to the covenant code (Ex. 20:22-26); the main stipulations, covering human rights, property, social, and cultic obligations (Ex. 21:1-23:19); and a covenantal epilogue (Ex. 23:20-33), seem stubbornly resistant to any attempts at finding within them the fabric of grace.
Law: a gift of God
Such an understanding is superficial and needs to be dispelled. At the outset, the Old Testament understands the covenant code to be a gift of God and hence an expression of grace. It is initially attributed to God: "The Lord said to Moses" (Ex. 20:22).* In the covenant ratification that follows the giving of the code, the people refer to the covenant code as well as the Decalogue as "all the words which the Lord has spoken" (Ex. 24:3,8). The heading at Exodus 21:1 likewise quotes Yahweh as the giver of the code: "Now these are the ordinances which you shall set before them."
The law also covertly contains the same attribution. Two legal procedures speak of bringing a case "to God" or "before God" (Ex. 21:6; 22:8,9). Comparison with the Nuzi documents that reveal a similar custom sheds light on what is meant by this obscure terminology. (The Nuzi documents are a collection of several thousand cuneiform tab lets from the middle of the second millennium B.C. that were discovered at Nuzi, a city not far from ancient Asshur in Mesopotamia.) In Nuzi, when the judicial process reached an impasse the matter was referred to higher powers called ilani. 2 So the Hebrew code likely refers to the practice of taking the legal problem to the highest Authority in Israel—in other words, to the sanctuary. Here, where the presence of God dwelt (Ex.29:42,43), the dispute could be definitively settled. Such language ("to God") is not merely convention. Rather, it exposes the inner divine character of the code. God is both its source and goal.
But this raises a difficult question: Don't most extant ancient Near Eastern law codes claim to be a gift of God? How, then, is the Israelite covenant code different?
Archeologists have discovered a number of Near Eastern law codes, including those of Hammurabi, Lipit Ishtar, Eshnunna, and the Hittites. All of these come from the first half of the second millennium B.C. or earlier. Two of them, those of Lipit Ishtar and Hammurabi, begin with prologues asserting the divine commission of the king who promulgated the laws. Hammurabi, for instance, acknowledges, "Marduk commissioned me [Hammurabi] to guide the people aright." 3 Although the other codes mentioned here have been imperfectly preserved, it seems reasonable to think that they once had similar prologues attached to them.
While such statements imply the divine character of the laws, the kings themselves, at least Lipit Ishtar and Hammurabi, take actual credit for the laws. Lipit Ishtar claims he "established justice in Sumer and Akkad in accordance with the word of Enlil," 4 while Hammurabi maintains, "I established law and justice in the language of the land." 5 We must allow for conventional legal language, but these claims differ from those made in the covenant code, at least in respect to the explicitness with which it attributes the laws to God and the sustained continuity of this claim throughout. The divine gift character of law stands out more clearly in the code than in these other laws.
Not only in attribution, however, does the covenant code resemble these other codes. The similarities extend to both content and form. A simple reading of one of these law codes in conjunction with the laws in Exodus reveals this remarkable correspondence. Compare the Laws of Eshnunna (c. 2000-1700 B.C.), No. 53, with Exodus 21:356 :
"If an ox gores another ox and causes its death, both ox owners shall divide among themselves the price of the live ox and also the meat of the dead ox" (Law of Eshnunna).
"When one man's ox hurts another's, so that it dies, then they shall sell the live ox and divide the price of it; and the dead beast also they shall divide"(Exodus).
The covenant code's regulation obligating a husband who takes a second wife to continue supporting the first (Ex. 21:10) parallels that found in Lipit Ishtar (Nos. 27, 28). Compare also the covenant code's statute dealing with homicide (verse 12) with Hammurabi's code No. 207 and Hittite laws 3 and 4.
At places too the arrangement of the laws are the same. The Hittite collection (Nos. 105-107), like Exodus 22: 5, 6, puts the law of illegal grazing and the law of destructive fire adjacent to each other. 7
These similarities have naturally prompted scholars to find the basis of the covenant code in Israel's environment. Although its analogy to other Near Eastern laws suggests a Mosaic or even a pre-Mosaic date, 8 some scholars, pointing to a relationship between certain patriarchal customs and the code, indicate several of the laws may actually date back to the patriarchal era. The advances in law represented by various second-millennium law codes would have been a general inheritance known by the migrating Abraham and thus would have found their way into the biblical tradition. 9 Because most of the covenant code laws presuppose settled social conditions, others date the code wholly or in part to a period immediately Canaan. 10 In this case, the Israelites would likely have obtained the code's legal precedents from the Canaanites, who in turn got them from ancient Near Eastern legal practice. Few question the essential antiquity of the code. But those attempting to trace its origin generally suggest a long process of development in which the code was supplemented and modified over the centuries, only reaching the form now found in Exodus in ninth-century northern Israel. 11
Evangelical scholars, of course, do not concur with these developmental theories. They accept more seriously the Mosaic claims of the text, although some find evidence that the laws underwent a limited revision in the period immediately following Moses' death (e.g., Ex. 23:14-17). 12
Be this as it may, we would expect Israel's law to resemble those of her milieu. The laws' appropriation of form, and even content, does not necessarily preclude its revelatory nature as a whole. Revelation comes to humankind in human language, and consequently in common human forms, legal or otherwise. "God's Word," as Berkouwer puts it, "has not come to us as a stupendous supernatural miracle that shies away from every link with the human in order thus to be truly divine. Rather, when God speaks, human voices ring in our ears." 13 Do we somehow find it difficult to believe that God spoke to Israel's conscience through ancient Near Eastern legal forms?
When God did so, however, He lifted Israelite law to a level higher than that of its contemporaries. Several enlightened factors set the covenant code apart. Because the law represents the divine will, all offenses become sins—the code places the entirety of the Israelites' lives directly under the will of God. The code takes law out of the exclusive province of the court and gives it directly to the community, before whom it is to be publicly read. It exalts the sacredness of human life to the foreground; it all but eliminates excessive, brutal, or vicarious punishment; and where it retains corporal punishment, its laws of talion ("eye for eye, tooth for tooth," etc.) seek to limit excess so that proper justice may be achieved.
Whereas other Near Eastern codes more or less relegate God to isolated spheres of the collections, the reader of the covenant code meets God at almost every turn. It uniformly posits God as the fountainhead, the author, of the law permeating humankind's total life. 14 While the code has one foot in the ancient Near East, it has the other in the timeless will of God.
Its indelible vision of Israel's saving God has unquestionably left its mark. These ancient laws, which have much in common with the international legal tradition of the ancient Near East, have been caught up in the reforming vision of a climactic act of redemption. "I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery" (Ex. 20:2, Jerusalem). That vision, and not the laws themselves, singled out Israel from the other nations of antiquity and made her the bearer of the divine promise.
An advanced concept of human dignity
Having seen that Israel understood the covenant code as a divine gift rooted in the divine promise, let us notice how this concept of grace infiltrates the individual laws themselves. Observe, for example, the code's estimation of human dignity. While it is not as advanced as the concept of human dignity Christians know, it still represents a significant improvement over other laws of its time.
Why, for instance, does the Code place a slave law near its beginning (Ex. 21:2-11)? Hammurabi, by contrast, puts the slave law at the very end (Nos. 278-282). Such prioritizing no doubt recalls Israel's own experience with slavery and the consequent need to treat slaves as human beings rather than as mere chattel. (Pre-Civil War America often lost sight of this fact, pressing this passage into service to support the institution of slavery.) The position of the slave law at the beginning of the code further suggests a redemptive link: Israel is to treat her slaves in a fashion befitting her own redemption from bondage.
Structurally, this law parallels the Decalogue's introduction, which also calls attention to Israel's bondage in Egypt and subsequent deliverance (Ex. 20:1, 2).15
In the law relating to the beating of a slave (Ex. 21:20, 21), the Hebrew code takes the unprecedented course of exacting punishment from the master in a case in which the slave's death results from "cruel and unusual" punishment! Unfortunately, the key phrase here, literally, "he shall surely be avenged" (verse 20), is obscure and seems to imply the death penalty. 16 Most likely, however, it intends some form of remuneration other than death. This assignment of blame to the master indicates the slave is considered a human being—accorded some sense of dignity—in his/her own right. 17
In its treatment of homicidal offenses, the code also shows a heightened awareness of human dignity. Its absolute ban on monetary payment for homicide (see verses 12-14, 20, 22-25) is unprecedented in ancient Near Eastern law. 18 "If anyone kills a Hittite merchant for his goods," reads a Hittite law, "he shall give x minas of silver and shall make threefold compensation for his goods." 19
How do we explain the higher evaluation of human life in the covenant code? Again, it no doubt represents the legal embodiment of the divine sanctity of human life revealed early in Genesis: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image" (Gen. 9:6). In Hebrew law, obliterating this divine image could only lead to the forfeiture of life: the murderer "shall be put to death" (Ex. 21:12). 20
The covert evidences of divine favor found in the code's attribution to God and its sense of human dignity reveal a subtle shade of grace that isn't often given proper due. Law not only proceeds from grace but paradoxically prepares for grace as well. While Scripture calls grace a gift in that it comes undeservedly, discipline prepares us to accept grace. We "both choose grace and are chosen by grace." 21 The use of law by which we discipline ourselves to respect the rights of others, to hold to their essential dignity, to regard the sanctity of the community, in a strange, paradoxical sense prepares us for the coming of grace. Just as the law exposes our sins and so renders us helpless before God (Rom. 3:19, 20), the values it accents provide the mood in which grace can be received. No less than the other biblical law codes, the covenant code shares in this task.
God's redemption motivates
The code's larger framework reveals its final touchstone of grace. In considering this, we must remember that every civilization develops laws designed to preserve the mutually agreed-upon values of that society. Laws inevitably reflect the world view, the Weltanschauung, as the Germans call it, underlying a civilization. 22
The pentateuchal law codes, especially as they are presently embedded in the Pentateuch, point to Israel's world view. The legal codes are carefully placed within an overarching framework of grace. Exodus 19-24, the narrative of the Sinaitic covenant, in which the covenant code is found, commences with a reference to the Exodus: "You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself (Ex. 19:4). This sounds the note that the entire Exodus experience (Exodus 1-15), an event called elsewhere the "saving deeds of the Lord" (1 Sam. 12:7), 23 provides the context for the giving of the law.
In fact, because of this arrangement, the Book of Exodus "provides a classic model by which to understand the proper relation between 'gospel and law.' " 24 Israel's election, originating in the grace of God, was on no account predicated on obedience to the law. Certainly, as Gerhard von Rad argues, God expected obedience. "But in no case were these commandments prefixed to the covenant in a conditional sense, as if the covenant would only come into effect once obedience had been rendered. The situation is rather the reverse." 25 The salvific pattern—God saves, then summons to obedience—lies at the very heart of the Pentateuch, as it does also that of the New Testament.
Sprinkled throughout the covenant code like grains of seasoning are allusions to this larger salvific context. The command to exclusive devotion to Yahweh (Ex. 23:13), "Make no mention of the names of other gods, nor let such be heard out of your mouth" (see also verses 20-33), recalls the opening of the Decalogue, where the claim of exclusive devotion is predicated upon the redemption of Israel from Egypt (Ex. 20:2, 3). Yahweh's salvation places Israel under covenantal obligation to render exclusive devotion to Him. "This day you have become the people of the Lord your God," Deuteronomy 27:9 puts it. "You shall therefore obey the voice of the Lord your God" (verse 10).
Three times the code refers to Egyptian bondage as a reason for certain stipulations. In Exodus 22:21, Israel is forbidden to oppress the stranger, or ger, the displaced person, because Israel herself had once been "a displaced person in the land of Egypt" (literal translation). Israel's experience was to make her sympathetic with the homeless, widows, and orphans in her midst. If Israel oppresses these people, the law continues to argue, Yahweh will exercise His redemption in behalf of the oppressed: He will "kill" Israel "with the sword" (verses 21-24). Implicit in this passage, despite what seems to us a strange severity, is the theme of redemption. Recalling her Egyptian experience was ever to bring to mind Yahweh's promise and redemption. The motivation behind this law, in other words, can be traced to that redemptive experience. It stands in fundamental unity with grace.
In Exodus 23:9 Israel is again forbid den to oppress displaced persons because she "has known how a displaced person feels" (literal translation). Her previous experience as the oppressed—from which she has been rescued—constitutes a summons to the humanitarian treatment of those presently oppressed or in danger of oppression.
When the code turns to cultic matters, it strikes this touchstone in a slightly different manner. Here we find the earliest Old Testament cultic calendar, featuring, in addition to the Sabbath and sabbatic year, the three principal feast days: Passover/Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, and Booths (Ex. 23:10-17). While Pentecost and Booths are connected with an agricultural rationale, Unleavened Bread contains something more: "You shall keep the feast of unleavened bread . . ., for in it you came out of Egypt" (verse 15). The salvific act of God underlies all these laws, and fuels their motivation.
Thus the covenant code, despite its forbidding external shell, is literally shot through with all kinds of implicit and explicit references to the gracious salvation of God. Nestled in a context of grace, at every turn it witnesses to an Old Testament version of what Paul later calls the "message of reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5:19). Although we cannot attribute to the Old Testament a complete awareness of the redemption in Christ, still its redemptive accents come in the same key, the same dialect, the same voice. In Paul's words again: "The law and the prophets bear witness to ... the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ" (Rom. 3:21, 22).
As I see it, both Marcion and my minister friend were dead wrong. They simply hadn't looked closely enough.
1 Cf. W. S. LaSor, D. A. Hubbard, and F. W.
Bush, Old Testament Survey (Grand Rapids:
William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1982), pp. 146,
157, for a similar evangelical opinion.
2 Shalom M. Paul, Studies in the Book of the
Covenant in the Light of Cuneiform and Biblical Law,
supplement to Vetus Testamentum, vol. 18 (Lei
den: E. ]. Brill, 1970), pp. 102, 103.
3 J.B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern
Texts, 3d ed. (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1969), pp. 164, 165.
4 Ibid., p. 159.
5 Ibid., p. 165.
6 Ancient Near Eastern Texts, p. 163.
7 Paul, pp. 102, 104.
8 Cf. Walther Eichrodt, Theology of the Old
Testament, trans. J. A. Baker, 2 vols. (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1961, 1967), vol. 1, pp.
83, 84.
9 Cf. E. A. Speiser, The Anchor Bible: Genesis
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1964),
vol. 1, pp. xliv, xlvii, xlviii.
10 Cf. Paul, pp. 44, 45, 104.
11 See, for example, Norman Gottwald, The
Hebrew Bible: A Socio-Literary Introduction
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), p. 207.
12 R. K. Harrison, Introduction to the Old
Testament (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans
Pub. Co., 1969), pp. 582,583.
13 G. C. Berkouwer, Studies in Dogmatics: Holy
Scripture (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans
Pub. Co., 1975), p. 145.
14 Paul, pp. 100, 101,36, 37, 43.
15 Ibid., pp.52, 106, 107
16 Cf. the Samaritan Pentateuch reading: "He
shall surely be put to death."
17 Paul, p. 69. For a contrary view, cf. Brevard S.
Childs, The Book of Exodus (Philadelphia: West
minster Press, 1974), p. 471.
18 Paul, p. 61.
19 Ancient Near Eastern Texts, p. 189.
20 This statement must not necessarily be
construed as an argument for capital punishment
today. Many complex factors militate against the
too facile appropriation of these ancient Israelite
laws into today's society.
21 M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), p. 308.
22 Paul, p. 1.
23 Literally "the acts of the justice of Yahweh"
(tsidqoth Yahweh).
24 Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old
Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1979), p. 177.
25 D.M.G. Stalker, trans. Old Testament Theology,
2 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1962,
1965), vol. 1, p. 194.
