The Decalogue: The Ten Commandments

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This is the 8th of a series of essays that cover the origin of the Israelite nation and conclude with a discussion of the Ten Commandments. This and all remaining essays will deal with what we call The Decalogue or Ten Commandments. Links to the prior essays can be found in the left hand column of this post under My Links: "Essays on the Exodus and the Ten Commandments."

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To make it easier to understand this essay and to reference the relevant Biblical passages I am including here at the beginning those passages that most closely relate to this essay.

From Exodus 20

1 Then God spoke all these words:
2 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;
3 you shall have no other gods before me.
4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me,
6 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

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One of the first things you notice is that modern Bibles break the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, into 17 verses. The breakout is not entirely arbitrary, but it is not well thought out either. And it came about centuries ago, when it was decided that the Bible would be easier to read if it were broken into books, chapters and verses. Sometimes it is easier. But other times it is just more confusing. And here, at the Decalogue, it is confusing.

Since we often see the Ten Commandments on statements, brochures, signs and elsewhere there is an assumption that we know what each commandment is, what its number is, and which verse contains it in the Bible. But that is not quite so.

The vast majority of the signs we see of the Decalogue are shorthand phrases of longer phrases in the Bible. It can get pretty confusing trying to walk through that maze. So I am going to walk us through a bit of that fog today. So just hang on, and we will make it to the other side unscathed.

Here is the first important thing to know in order to help you understand how the Decalogue is arranged. The first FOUR commandments are about our relationship with God, with the 4th commandment acting as a bridge to the remainder of the commandments. The SIX remaining commandments deal with how we relate to one another. Thus, ALL of the commandments deal with relationships: God with us and we with one another.

Now for a bit of maze walking. What is the first commandment?

It clearly is not verse 1: "Then God spoke all these words:"

But is it verse 2? "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;"

Or is it verse 3? "You shall have no other gods before me."

Well, Jewish tradition says verse 2 is the first commandment. But Christians say verse 3 is the first commandment, with verse two being just a preamble.

However, verse two is far more than a preamble. It is the basis of the "Shema," the holiest of Jewish prayers. Many of you know it, if not by that name. The Shema says, "Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might."

Christians may remember that Jesus assumed that everyone knew the first sentence of the Shema and recited only the second, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might." And then he said that the "second" commandment was "like it," saying, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." He then said that on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. In other words everything else in the Bible rests on keeping these two "commandments."

Now, clearly, neither of these two great religious statements, which Jesus called "commandments" is one of what we think of as the Ten Commandments. But both the Shema and the first and greatest commandment which Jesus recites derive from the proclamation of Yahweh the he and he alone is "the Lord your God." So Jewish tradition should make sense to both Jews and Christians. I will come back to that in a bit.

But, first, I want to show a bit more of the complication here before we move on. If you are a Roman Catholic or a Lutheran chances are that you have been taught that the first commandment is ALL of verses 3 through 6, which have to do with "having no other gods." In other words, verse four which says not to make idols, and verse 5, which says not to worship such idols, are seen as elaborations, details explaining verse 3.

So, in order to come up with TEN commandments you have to split verse 17, which deals with not coveting, into commandments which deal with different aspects of "coveting."

Most Protestant Christians say that verse 3 is the First Commandment, that verses 4 through 6 is the 2nd Commandment, and verse 7 is the 3rd Commandment. That way you can come up with a total of ten commandments without splitting verse 17.

I have actually seen it proposed that one could logically keep verse 2 as the first commandment as Jewish tradition does, split verse 5 into 2 parts, split verse 17 into 7 parts and so forth and come up with from 11 to 19 Commandments, depending on how you separate phrases.

And, that would be just as logical as saying there are ten commandments. In fact, ten is not a particularly "holy" number and numerologists would no doubt rather have the Twelve Commandments, given the twelve tribes of Israel and the holiness thought by some to be attached to that number.

My guess is that about now God is shaking his head and laughing at the absurdity of worrying about this, let alone fighting to have the Ten Commandments put up in public places, where they have no business being, but that discussion comes later in the series so I will not belabor it here.

My own feeling is that God is a whole lot less concerned with how we count than God is with what we do about obeying or living by the spirit of those commandments. If we must have 10 rather than 19 that is fine with me. But we are clearly not going to agree on how to split up the text to arrive at ten.

Keep in mind that this is no more problematic than trying to figure out the exact names of the original disciples of Jesus or trying to figure out who exactly were the twelve disciples, and coming to the conclusion that there were no more than twelve tribes of Israel. We can not be certain about those figures either.

Because I am a liberal Protestant theologian and am comfortable with what I was taught early on, I will go by the majority of Protestant positions on the Decalogue. This is not because it is better or "more right" than the other ways the Decalogue can be split up, but it is the way I can talk about it comfortably.

Accordingly, and no drum roll please, the FIRST commandment is Verse 3: "You shall have no other gods before me."

The SECOND commandment is Verses 4 through 6 with Verses 5 and 6 elaborations on verse 4. "You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments." The shorthand version of commandment #2 is simply, "You shall not make for yourself an idol."

The THIRD commandment in this counting scheme is Verse 7. "You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name." Again, the shorthand version of the third commandment is the first phrase of the commandment, "You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God."

Now, having settled that to no ones satisfaction except a few uptight Protestants who really care about these things for reasons that elude me, I want to come back, as I said I would, to Verse 2 and explain why the Jews are in the most fundamental theological sense right.

Their tradition says that the 1st commandment should be the statement of who Yahweh is, "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." This bothers those who are literalistic in their understanding of English since it is a statement of "fact," and not strictly a command to do something when viewed literally in English.

But, if it is a "fact" it is a fact that almost no one else knew at the time the Decalogue was spoken, and one that you know, simply from reading this series, the Israelites themselves challenged more than once.

But here, in stark clarity, Yahweh tells the people the He and He alone is the only God that they need, and they must remember that he is bound to this people by holy covenant. Keep in mind that in those days most people believed in many gods. Many of the Israelites believed that there were more than one god and to be safe several should be prayed to and appeased. Here Yahweh does not try to disabuse them of that belief. Remember that Yahweh has just proven that he could defeat the "gods of the Egyptians." Rather, here Yahweh makes the simple point that this Yahweh is the God who saves THEM.

It will only be much later in the development of the theology of Israel when Israel will come to believe that there are no other gods, period. That is, they will come to believe that no other gods even EXIST.

For now it is only necessary that the Israelites believe that Yahweh is the one with the proven track record: This Yahweh is the God who saves, delivers and redeems them from the dreaded 400 year captivity within Egypt. It is this special and specific God who has chosen this special and specific people to be the ones he loves, holds close and protects. And it is this God that the people must learn to worship and obey in gratitude for that love and protection.

If what comes next sounds familiar it is because I have walked you by this point before. But it cannot be overstated if you are to understand the place of the Decalogue within the context of salvation history. The conditions of the covenant, the details of the Torah, and all the minor and detailed laws that spring from interpretations of it, are the result first of God's deliverance of the people, saving them from bondage in Egypt.

He can make the demands he makes of the people in following the commandments of the Decalogue precisely because of the GRACE that he has ALREADY given to them. This Torah, this instruction for living, is not to be seen as another form of bondage, but as the GIFT of a redeeming God, the GIFT of the instruction as to how to live a full and holy life under this one God, Yahweh.

If we cannot see the so-called "Law" of the Ten Commandments in this light then we miss the entire ebb and flow of our relationship with God. For God always provides the pure grace of deliverance, redemption and salvation before any guidelines for living are promulgated. And by so doing we can respond to the Instruction for Living, the Torah, in gratitude. If we miss this point we might conceive of Torah as another form of servitude, something not even remotely true theologically.

Think of it this way. The "Law" is not given to them so that, IF they obey it they will be God's people. The Israelites are already God's people. Thus the Law or Torah can never been seen as a means of salvation. God saves, delivers, heals and redeems because he loves us, not because we follow some set of instructions, as important as those instructions may be.

Thoughtful Jews never consider Torah as a unique vessel for salvation. They know that they were saved from bondage in Egypt before the Torah came alone. Rather they see the Torah, what Christians too often call narrowly as "Law," as teaching or instruction regarding how to live a redeemed life day to day under the guidance of the LORD.

Here in the beginning of the Decalogue God is affirming WHO HE IS and he does that on moral grounds. This God of Israel, our God, is defined not in vague philosophical or theological propositions, but is defined by the very nature of the moral imperatives He will place upon the people. He is a HOLY GOD and he will insist that HIS PEOPLE BE HOLY.

It is no accident that Jewish tradition sees verse two as the First Commandment. Verse 2 defines "who they are" by telling them WHO THEIR GOD IS. Logically, it would be of little help to tell them that they should "have no other gods before me," if the people had little or no idea who the God that they were to honor in that way was and is. They could have no respect for such a God because that God would have shown no love, care and protection to them. Yahweh did and still does show that today.

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Speaking of now, how much respect do we have for God? Do we really know who God is? Does each of us, individually, have a concrete idea, a firm belief, that in some way relevant to our individual lives the God we worship is the one who redeems, delivers, heals and saves us?

Perhaps that sounds too easy. But it is not. It is precisely at times when we forget that the grace of God precedes anything we must do in thanksgiving for that grace that we chafe at God's rules, and often break them.

But, my friends, a strong argument can be made that if we really believed that God is God and that God has our well being first in his heart, we would not chafe at the rules for living and would instead obey and trust God in thanksgiving for his grace.

The Torah, both written and spoken, is at the heart of Jewish morality. And I know some Christians who would like to see it as not applying to us. But that is totally anathema to orthodox Christian teaching.

Besides that, if we Christians truly believe that God is God and we are grateful for our personal salvation as Christians the promulgation of rules for living is standard Christian instruction. You can pick up just about any book in the New Testament, say, the letters of Peter, Paul or John and you will be told over and over and over that believing Christians ARE saved, ARE holy, and ARE sanctified. In fact that we ARE God's own saints.

And yet, even while knowing that, every one of the great apostles shook his head not only at our inability to avoid sinning, but at their own. Even the greatest of the apostles could not meet the tests that they clearly say that we have ALREADY MET because of faith in Christ.

So, for Christians, the big question is how can we possibly be holy, sanctified, and saved if we sin all the time? And it is a good question.

The truth is that we cannot save ourselves. Writers like Peter, Paul, John and the writer of Hebrews stress heavily that we cannot save ourselves, that only Jesus can do that. Paul says it best. I will paraphrase. We are saved not by our merits, not by our good works, not even by our holiness, but because when we believe in Jesus, the Christ. Once we believe in God's Son, God considers us ("reckons us") to be righteous for the sake of his Son, through the sacrifice he made for us on the Cross.

So, just as the Israelites were already saved from bondage in Egypt by the grace of Yahweh BEFORE they received the Torah, and were already God's chosen people bound by covenant to Yahweh even before he spoke the Ten Commandments, so too, Christians like me believe that they are saved by the grace of God through faith in Christ.

I believe that it is important to try to live up to the Torah and the instructions for living that apply to Christians and Jews. But if we cannot we have a remedy at hand within both faiths which is to admit our sin and be cleansed once more to be vicars of God. That is good news for Jews and Christians alike. In fact it is Amazing Grace!

God bless,

Monte

Next: Snares and pitfalls in applying the Decalogue. And just who do these commandments apply to anyway?

Thank you! My First Open Salon Anniversary

Who knew an internet site could make all the difference?

I am hopeless when it comes to remembering things like birthdays, anniversaries, and grocery lists. So it comes as no surprise to me that my first anniversary of being a member of Open Salon passed last Wednesday, October 21st, without me remembering it.

Perhaps being here a year should invoke nothing in particular but in my case I have to remember where I was psychologically when I first got here and compare it to how I am today. I am much stronger and have far better coping skills than I did then.

I owe so much to OS. I thank God that this platform was available to me when I needed it, even though at the time I did not know that I did. And I owe much of my getting back on my emotional feet to my friends in this internet community. I am not going to name names because the list is long and I would feel enormous guilt if I left someone out. But I was in a dark and depressing place last October when I joined this group.

In March, 2008 I developed vasculitis over my entire body. I looked like someone had poked me with a million needles that made me bleed underneath the skin. That was followed in a couple of months by the vasculitis concentrating in my feet, which developed large, deep blue blood blisters. In turn the bilateral neuropathy I had for about three years got much worse and I had enormous pain on the surface of my feet while the rest of the feet were mostly numb.

Shortly thereafter I started experiencing massive redness and swelling in my feet with accompanying unbelievable burning, shooting, stinging, shocking pain that is hard to describe. The only relief for this is to elevate the feet and keep them cool. Soon there was no "normal." Either they were red hot, swollen and painful, or they were ice cold. Meanwhile I had to give up being a pastor because I could not stand or even keep my feet down for a short while without causing a excruciating flare up which lasts for hours.

My doctors did not know the cause and it just got worse. I finally did enough research on the internet to diagnose myself as having erythromelalgia, in addition to vasculitis and bilateral neuropathy. With that my internist sent me to the Cleveland Clinic in July, 2008.

The Cleveland Clinic Rheumatology Department was one of the few places in the USA that knew anything about this rare disease for which there is no cure and for which remissions are rare. So mostly they started trying various combinations of drugs for the pain, steroids for the vasculitis, and doing incessant blood work and other tests because erythromelalgia can be a precursor to life threatening myeloproliferative diseases. So far nothing like that is manifest.

By October I had thousands of dollars worth of often painful tests and been off and on many drug combinations. I was emotionally strung out, to say the least. I was pretty much confined to the house, by the air conditioner, in a Lazy Boy with another chair to keep my feet elevated and a fan blowing on my bare feet. Some, but not much, of that has changed. That still describes an average day.

I was desperately trying to keep my spirits up by reading Scripture and praying, and my brain occupied by reading four or five novels a week, reading newspapers on the internet, and getting acquainted with online magazines, including Salon. Plus I had become an election junkie and had been one of Obama's early supporters, remembering him from his speech at the 2004 convention. A laptop computer I bought made much of that possible.

I was very miffed with Salon.com when it started running an ad that you had to click through to get to the Salon home page. For about a week I would click through this ad for "Open Salon," irritated beyond rationality. Finally I decided to click on the damned thing and see what this aggravating interruption was all about.

I have not been able to stay away from Open Salon since.

My first post, "It Only Takes One: Inviting Violence" was on October 21, 2008. It garnered a whopping five ratings and four comments. After a month I had about 6 mutual "Friends." Today we officially do not have "Friends" anymore. We have "Favorites." Not me. I still have friends. Mutual friends. About 200 now. Sure, they are my favorites too. But for me having mutual friendships means much more than having favorites.

So it should come as no surprise to anyone that I believe that the most important thing about OS is that it is a community. There has always been a talk of a split in OS over which to emphasize: "community" or "writers,/artists colony." I have always thought that the split was, and is, artificial.

Some of my best friends are some of the best writers on OS. There are, of course, some very good writers who are not my friends. But that is not for lack of trying to ferret them out. OS is just too big now to read everybody let alone get to know them well enough, and vice versa, to become mutual friends. But I manage to add a few each month, which is a privilege.

What I remember most about my early days here is how closed I was about telling anybody who I really am. I was all pinched in on myself and my pain, and I was worn out emotionally. It didn't help that I was much older than most of the people here. On top of that I come from a generation in which men were not supposed to tell much about who they were, and absolutely nothing about how they feel. But I guess you can't hide the hurt very well from people here on OS. They quickly read between the lines and they opened me up, little by little.

I started by writing political, motorcycling and memoir posts. Writing the "WWII Romance" memoir series of how my Mom met and married my step Dad opened me even further and I felt emotions I had long buried and no longer remembered I had. The strong positive response to that series encouraged me to continue exploring who I am and what I was doing on OS.

After about six weeks I started writing some posts on faith. A month or two after that, mostly in response to my posts on faith and the fact that I have been a counselor for many years, a number of people began to send me PMs to explore with me this or that problem they had; and, little by little, I gained the honor and privilege of being there for them during some of the rough stretches in their lives. That honor has grown in the ensuing months. I do not think that would be possible outside of a community of caring people.

So, dear friends, OS gave me you. And, if you ask Sue, the one who had to live with my depression before I found OS, she will tell you that OS helped give me myself back as well.

It is a joy to be part of this wonderful place, a place where we can write and share our experiences, our joys, our pains, our art, our talent, our craft, our hopes, our dreams and our fears. We all come here for our own reasons. No two are exactly alike in either talent or dreams.

But if we are open to it we can find friendship, caring, love and support here. And more importantly, we can offer those same things to one another. My faith is the essence of who I am. But I am keenly aware that we too easily forget that God most often comes to us in unspectacular ways. And mostly God works through people. People just like you good folk here on Open Salon.

If we miss sharing with others that love that we each have within us then we miss the most important thing that God asks of each of us, which is to love one another. It has been my privilege to be the recipient of that gentle love from you.

Here is a song that expresses how I feel about you.

Spend all your time waiting
For that second chance
For a break that would make it OK
There's always one reason
To feel not good enough
And it's hard at the end of the day

I need some distraction ooh beautiful release
Memory seeps from my veins
Let me be empty and weightless and maybe
I'll find some peace tonight

Chorus
In the arms of an angel
Fly away from here
From this dark cold hotel room
And the endlessness that you feel
You are pulled from the wreckage
Of your silent reverie
You're in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort here

So tired of the straight line
And everywhere you turn
There are vultures and thieves at your back
And the storm keeps on twisting
You keep on building the lie
That you make up for all that you lack
It wont make no difference
Escaping one last time
It's easier to believe in this sweet madness oh
This glorious sadness that brings me to my knees

Chorus
You're in the arms of an angel
May you find some comfort here
Some comfort here

God bless you all.

Monte

The Mosaic Covenant: Its Origin and Conditions

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This is the 6th of a series of essays that cover the origin of the Israelite nation and conclude with a discussion of the Ten Commandments. Links to the prior essays can be found in the left hand column of this post under Blog Archives.

We are ready to understand God's Covenant with Moses and the people that will lay the foundation of the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. Without this Covenant there would be no Chosen People. There would be no Israelite nation. There would be no Ten Commandments. It all comes down to this event that we are going to discuss now.

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Camped at the foot of Mt. Sinai, the Israelites wait as Moses goes up the mountain to God, who proposes to change the very nature of his relationship with the Israelites. God does this in two carefully distinct stages. First God tells Moses, "Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself."

Notice how God recites what He has done as the basis of everything that is to follow: how He saved them from the Egyptians, and "bore them on eagles' wings," protecting them, watching over them, as an eagle watches over its young.

This image, of God raising us up as on eagles' wings, has become one of the most beloved and treasured symbols of faith. Moses, in his farewell speech at the end of Deuteronomy, elaborates on God's theme, when, speaking of "Jacob", another name for the Israelites, Moses said to the Israelites, "He shielded him [meaning Jacob, the Israelites], cared for him, guarded him as the apple of His eye. As an eagle stirs up its nest, and hovers over its young; as it spreads its wings, takes them up, and bears them aloft on its pinions, the Lord alone guided him, no foreign god was with him."

And, most importantly, God tells Moses to tell the people that God alone, "brought you to myself." Here we get, for the first time, a glimpse of God's plan, of His overall intention: to bring this chosen people to Himself.

The flight from Egypt and all the hardship that they endured, all the times God intervened on their behalf, the miracles God performed to keep them alive, all this was not simply so that they might be free from bondage, or to bring them to the Holy Mountain, or even to have a better land to live in. Actually, the Promised Land will prove to be nothing like as fertile and productive as Egypt, which has the Nile river.

But the destination of the Israelites turns out not to be a place at all: the destination turns out to be God. "I brought them to me." All that God has done for them, He did that they might become his own beloved people.

We must understand that this grace, this deliverance, precedes any idea of establishing the Torah. God intends that the Israelites clearly understand what He has done for them before He makes any demands on them. And He will make demands upon them only if they understand and appreciate the enormity of God's love for, and commitment to, them. This point is critical in understanding the origin of and the intent of the Ten Commandments.

God has a plan; but it will be revealed to them only in stages, because that plan will succeed only with their cooperation. They must willingly understand all that God has done, and be grateful for it. And they must trust Him to provide in the future, as he has in the past.

This relationship is not to be founded on some theological abstraction. This relationship is to be based on God's deeds in the past and God's promises for the future. God has saved them for himself. They should now know that unequivocally. And Moses is to tell them. But the larger question remains, "Having saved them, what will God do with them?"

The answer is that God proposes to enter into a covenant with them. "Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation."

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There are several critical things that we need to understand about this invitation to covenant.

First, it comes only after God's grace, God's gift of deliverance.

Second, it is conditional. "If" you do this, "then" you shall be.... God's love for them is not conditional. But their particular, chosen, relationship to him is. He loves them, that is clear. After all, He wishes them to be his " treasured possession out of all the peoples". Yet God also makes it clear that this special, covenantal relationship is conditional: While all the earth is his, and all the people in it, the Israelites alone shall have this special relationship with God -- If.

Third, "obeying God's voice" comes before keeping the covenant; and before the Torah. Already, in the desert, God has tested the Israelites to see if they would obey him. Some did. Some did not. But the point is not whether the Israelites obeyed or failed, but that to obey the voice of God entails something more than simply obeying the Torah that will be given to them shortly. To obey the voice of God requires more than simply abiding by the rules.

To obey God's voice is an act of the heart. It starts with our intentions to listen for and be alert to what God is saying to us, and to act accordingly. To obey in love, and with love toward others, is an even greater obligation than keeping the Law. Remember, first, God says, "obey my voice." Only then, second, does God say, "and keep my covenant."

If they do this God tells Moses that the Israelites "shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation." Now we are not going to go into great detail about what that means in this essay. For now, just remember that to be a "priestly" nation is to be one who mediates between God and others. Because the earth, all of it, is God's, Israel's role will be that of mediator, intercessor, between the rest of the world and God. It is to function in the world as a priest would function in a religious community.

More importantly, it is to be "a holy nation," that is, one which embodies God's own purposes in the world. To be "holy" is to be set apart for God's purposes. Israel is to reflect God's light to the world; to set an example, to show the world what it is like to live the good life under God. All this goes back to the original covenant with Abraham some 400 years prior, where God told Abram, "...In you all the nations of the world shall be blessed."

We are ready for the big question: "How will Israel respond?" Knowing the story to date, and being aware of what will happen in the future, one should be surprised to know that, after Moses reported all this to the people, the Bible tells us, simply, "The people all answered as one: 'Everything that the LORD has spoken we will do.'"

What is amazing about this response is that it is totally uncharacteristic of what has preceded this encounter. Up to now they had whined and complained and tried to get around God's tests in the desert. They have hardly been ideal candidates for holiness!

And we already know that the rest of the Hebrew Bible is as much the story of their disobedience as it is of their obedience. And we will learn soon enough that their disobedience starts up again immediately! We also know that their disobedience results in them wandering in the desert for forty years rather than two.

But now, at this critical juncture in the history of the world, they say "Yes!" And, with that "yes" everything changes. Nothing will be the same from this time forward.

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Let us not be hard on the Israelites for their disobedience. After all, we all know something about "good intentions," don't we? I can not even begin to count the times I have told God that I intend to do what he wants. Nor can I begin to count the times that I have failed. But that is the nature of the human condition. We even have a name for it. It's called sin.

Thankfully, the nature of God is something else entirely. God's nature is love and that love is manifest in forgiveness. It should not surprise us that a God who loves us so much, who forgives our sins, will do everything in his power to keep the covenant going, in spite of every error the Israelites - or we - might commit.

Do not look down you nose at "good intentions." God looks upon the heart. What you "intend" to do is far more important to God than what you actually are able to accomplish.

The Israelites intended to obey God. And that was enough for him. Today, we believers intend to obey God. And God will forgive us when we do not. That much has not changed.

Likewise, when we intend NOT to obey Him, but only go through the motions trying to convince others that we are in obedience, we are only fooling ourselves. God is not fooled, because God knows our intentions.

My advice to those of faith who want to try to please God is to keep having "good intentions." They have been important to God since before the foundation of the earth.

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Next: we'll look at the rest of Chapter 19 and then it will be time to really take a hard look at the Ten Commandments.

God bless.

Exodus: the Gathering of the Traditions

Traditional Site 0f Mt. Sinai.

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This is the 5th of a series of essays that cover the origin of the Israelite nation and conclude with a discussion of the Ten Commandments.

Prior essays are

http://open.salon.com/blog/monte_canfield/2009/10/19/birth_of_the_israelite_nation

http://open.salon.com/blog/monte_canfield/2009/10/20/torah_instruction_for_living

http://open.salon.com/blog/monte_canfield/2009/10/21/manna_bread_for_life_but_is_it_enough

http://open.salon.com/blog/monte_canfield/2009/10/22/testing_god

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This will, in some ways, be the most difficult essay to understand of this series. But it will answer questions about the Bible that too many in the past have forgotten to ask; which has led to the misuse of Scripture to further not theological but ideological goals.

The Ten Commandments are also known as The Decalogue, a word worth knowing. We are now at Chapter 19 of Exodus. The Decalogue comes in Chapter 20.

But, unless we understand why and how we came to have the Decalogue we will miss much of what God is telling us; and, we can fall into the common Christian trap of taking the Commandments out of context and missing their true meaning. We want to avoid doing that. You can't truly understand any Biblical text without understanding the context in which it is written.

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We come now to a point in our story that is absolutely critical to our understanding of who Jews and Christians are as people of faith: the formation of the nation of Israel.

Up to now the people had been led by and protected by Yahweh, but they claimed no special allegiance to him; and he made no universal demands on them.

In fact, when they complained it was usually to and about Moses, not God. Moses knew that when they complained against him they were really complaining about God. But the people did not quickly realize that to be the case, as the incident of the Water from the Rock showed us.

Yet, increasingly, they had begun to realize that Moses had no power except that which God gave him, and they were more and more turning to Moses not to provide his counsel, but to seek God's counsel through Moses.

God had tested the people in several specific ways, such as how they were to treat the manna he provided. Now a bigger decision will be made by God: he will decide to keep them as his own chosen people through whom he will seek to bless the nations of the world. That will be a monumental task, one at which they would sometimes succeed, but one at which they, like all humans, would often fail.

So Chapter 19, at the very heart of the Book of Exodus, is where God does make universal demands upon the people; and where they commit themselves wholly to God. By agreeing to become God's "priestly kingdom and a holy nation," they become partners in the covenant between God and Abraham.

This "new covenant" will be known as the "Mosaic Covenant," the "Covenant with Moses." It is more than its name for it is a covenant not only between God and Moses but between God and this chosen people. And it is really an extension of the larger covenant that God made with Abraham.

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At its core what this covenant between God and the Israelites does is expand upon the covenant with Abraham to include an entire people, many of who bear no known direct relationship to Abraham, but who now form an elected, redeemed, believing, worshiping community.

In a similar way, Christians, who also have no known direct blood relationship to Abraham, will much later be called by another Jew whom Christians know as St. Peter, "...A chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession...." (1 Peter 2;9) Christians see themselves as descendants of this covenant because of the "New Covenant" which we entered through the blood of our Jewish Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth.

While this Mosaic covenant is really not new in its intent, this is truly a "new" covenant for those involved in it, those whom we call Israelites; a covenant made with a people who were held in slavery for over 400 years, a bunch of refugees, for whom the promises made by God to Abraham were but the dim recollections of a clouded history. For them it would be the beginning of a whole new way of life under God.

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All of the covenant making, the giving of the Ten Commandments, and the expansion of the law in the "Covenant Code" which follows the Decalogue and details instructions on how those people were to live, as well as the establishment of all of the fundamental rituals of worship, the construction of the tabernacle, the ark of the covenant and all the related fixtures of worship: all of this takes place at the foot of Mr. Sinai.

Everything that happens in the rest of Exodus, in all of Leviticus, and in the first ten chapters of Numbers, all of it, happens at the Holy Mountain, where the people camp for just under one year. And all of it is further summarized in the Book of Deuteronomy.

In the Book of Exodus, what happens in Chapter 19 lays the foundation for everything that will follow in the rest of the Bible, both in the Old and the New Testaments. The section of text, the pericope, starting at chapter 19 through Chapter 24, informs forever the Israelite experience.

It is here where God offers His covenant with the people and demands obedience. It is here where the people respond positively. It is here where the Torah, the instructions for life under God, is promulgated. It is here where God shows himself to the people, and speaks directly to them, issuing the Ten Commandments, which are the foundation of the "Law", or Torah.

It is here where the people, fearful of further direct contact with Yahweh, seek Moses as an intermediary between them and this Almighty God. It is here where the "Covenant Code," that long list of detailed rules for day-to-day living, is given to the people; and, finally, it is here where God once more appears to the leaders of the people, and where the Covenant is completed. In other words, it is here that Israel is born. And, in a very real sense, it is here where the faith of modern Jews and Christians begins.

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When we look at the critical first verses of Chapter 19, the first thing that we notice is that the first two verses repeat the obvious: That the Israelites came to the wilderness of Sinai about two months after they left Egypt, coming from Rephidim, and camped in the wilderness. Now they camp at the foot of the Holy Mountain, which we call today, Mt. Sinai, but was then more often called Mt. Horeb.

I am going to use this obvious repetition here at the beginning of Chapter 19 as a reason for us to take a side trip for the rest of this essay.
This side trip could have been taken earlier, but I wanted to wait until we were at a crucial point in the text. We need to understand how this part of the Bible was put together, so you'll begin to understand why the Bible often repeats itself, and sometimes even contradicts itself.

This repetition is obvious in the first five books of the Old Testament, which are called the "Pentateuch," (literally, "Five Books"), although it is readily apparent in other parts of the Old Testament and also in parts of the New Testament as well. In the Old Testament, for example, the 10 Commandments appear twice, not once, in Exodus and again in Deuteronomy. And the Commandments are not exactly the same in both places. (Deuteronomy translates roughly: "the second telling." That book is written as a series of speeches by Moses to the people prior to entering the Promised Land.)

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In the case of Exodus and all of the Pentateuch and in many subsequent chapters of the Old Testament, you will find a lot of this overlapping repetition and the taking of different slants on the same event. This is because these books are an edited accumulation of at least four separate text streams. They were "redacted," that is cut and pasted together, and bound into a text with transitional words by the "redactor."

The sources of these words come from the different traditions of different groups of Israelites, and were gathered over a period of hundreds of years. They were first passed along by word of mouth, and only much later were they written down.

The four most obvious text sources in the Old Testament are called J, E, P and D.

"J" stands for "Yahwist," meaning that in that source God is called Yahweh. The "J" comes from the German spelling of Yahweh, which is "Jahweh." The J source is believed to come from*the traditions of the Southern tribes of Israel.

[ * When I say "believed to come from" I do not mean it is just a guess. Conclusions as to these source streams come after decades of careful analysis of the words, the forms of the language and careful and laborious study of the text.]

The "E" strand of tradition stands for "Eloist," because, in these sections of text, God is called "El" or "El-ohim," or some other variation of "El," which is translated as "God." The E source is believed to stem from the traditions of the Northern tribes of Israel.

The "P" source stands for the "Priestly" writer or editor. We do not know if it was a single editor, although that is how it is usually discussed. Likely there were multiple writers who worked together on these complicated texts.

This source is primarily responsible for all the information and details about building the tabernacle, the forms of ritual and ceremony, and other details of sacrifice and worship. In other words, this source is interested in the way the people are to worship of God. A huge part of the first five books of the Bible is devoted to this.

"D" stands for "Deuteronomist" and, in many ways this is the most important textual source of all. In addition to adding textual material to the Bible, it was the Deuteronomist who pulled all of the threads together. This source came hundreds of years after "J" and "E" and comes from the same writer, or writers, who compiled the Book of Deuteronomy.

Although the source is likely composed of a school of writers, this source is called often called simply the "Deuteronomistic Historian" because the writers' strong interest in getting a clear understanding of what actually happened to the Israelites from the time they left Egypt.

This interest continues through not only the Pentateuch but also through the books that follow. The Deuteronomistic History of the Bible runs all the way to the end of Second Kings. Thus, much of the heart of what we know as the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, was gathered together by this writer or group of writers.

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The final form of the Bible that we see today is called the "canon," or "canonical" text. It is the text accepted by Jews and Christians who are members of the worshiping community as the authentic, sanctified record of God's relationship to us. It is this text that is "normative" for us: that is, it is the text from which we base our actions on how to live under God's leadership.

The "canonical text" of the Old Testament is the final result of many redactions over literally hundreds of years. And the New Testament underwent similar, but not as complete, redactions as well.

The final editors had to accommodate many different ideas, stories, and theological positions. That it is as coherent as it is seems to me truly amazing. So, as we read the Bible we need to keep in mind that the Bible is not a book written by one person at one time for one reason. Rather it is a beautiful tapestry, a quilt, woven over centuries.

As such we must try not to get hung up on the little inconsistencies, or the repetitions, or the lack of historical sequence in some of the chapters. It is important to remember that the Bible is primarily theology, not history; It is God's revelation of God's self to us.

Remember also that the so-called "history" in Bible comes to us through many different sets of eyes. Believers must evaluate the Bible through the eyes of faith. It is not science. Nor is it written as it would be written by a modern day historian. If you subject it to the tests of modern science or history writing, then you have simply missed God's purpose in giving us this documentation of God's relationship to us. It is to be judged by God's standards, not ours.

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Just as we learn when looking at the gospel accounts of the death and resurrection of Jesus, different communities of faith often saw the same events slightly differently, saw some events that the other groups did not see at all, and reported all the events a little differently, one from the other.

But Jews and Christians believe that God guided the hearts and hands of those who wrote and edited these words. In other words, we believe that they were inspired by God.

Most conservative Christians also believe that the Bible as we have it today is also infallible and inerrant, even though wholly translated from texts written long after the events depicted, and even though no original manuscripts exist to our knowledge. Nevertheless, these Christians believe that these words are to be taken literally.

I do not think that position is tenable. It is based on assumptions long ago proven to be unsubstantiated. But each reader of the texts that make up the Bible must make that decision for him or her self.

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One final thought on this. The canonical text of the Bible is often called "The Word of God." While I understand why that is said, I believe that to be wrong and I do not think it is just semantics when I say that. It is far too easy to say that and become so enamored with the Book that we forget that it is the Witness to God. It is not God.

The Bible stands as witness and contains many words of God to us. But we must never fall into Bibliolatry. We do not worship a book. We worship God. And there is a big difference. The Bible was written within, and is addressed to, the worshiping community. But God is still speaking to us and we must evaluate the words of the Bible in the context of the worshiping community today.

The Bible is both spoken to us and interpreted by the worshiping community. What may have been seen as acceptable interpretation of certain texts in the Bible in one generation or century may well not be acceptable to the worshiping community in a later generation or century in the light of a different understanding of how the Bible speaks to that later generation.

The Bible does not and cannot stand alone, isolated, out of the context of its intended audience. The traditions of the worshiping community and the experiences of that community today must be taken into account when deciding how God would have us live, and how we are to interpret what the Bible means for us today.

And so, while the Bible is ancient and honored, it is not to be confused with the whole truth that God has to reveal to us. Each generation of the faith community must read and understand the Bible within the context in which we find ourselves. In other words the Bible is, and has always been, a Living Bible.

We need to work to keep it as such and not become obsessed with anachronistic teaching which makes no sense for a current generation of believers.

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Next: God calls Moses to take a message to the people! That message, and their response, will change everything!

God bless.

Testing God

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Moses Striking the Rock in Horeb

by Gustave Doré, 1865

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The first essay in this series is Birth of the Israelite Nation. The second is Torah: Instruction for Living. The third essay is Manna: Bread for Life. This is the fourth essay in a series of essays that cover the origin of the Israelite nation and conclude with a discussion of the Ten Commandments.

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This essay concentrates on just on the first half of Chapter 17 of the Book of Exodus, just seven verses.

Remember the pattern I told you about that was developing during this time between God and the Israelites? Remembering that will help us understand the importance of this brief episode within the exodus from Egypt. So let's look at it quickly.

The pattern is that first the people experience a crisis; followed by distress. This leads to complaint, which God hears. God then speaks and solves the problem, resolving the crisis and relieving the distress. This, usually, but not consistently, is followed by joy, praise, and thanksgiving: in other words, God's grace results in the worship of him by his people.

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In this episode most of the pattern is present, but it does not end in worship, which is not a good sign, and certainly will not endear the people to Moses, nor to God. Here is what happens.

The first thing we notice is positive. The people are finally beginning to learn the need to follow God's instructions. God has just provided for their nourishment with manna and quails while they were in the Wilderness of Sin, so they had ample evidence, once again, of his ability to take care of them.

And, apparently, they took some comfort in that fact, for the text tells us, 17:1 From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the LORD commanded. They are on the move again at God's command. They are following God's orders without complaint, leaving a place where they know that they will find food each day for an unknown future. That took no small amount of courage given what they had already endured.

They do not know what they will find where they are going; actually, except for the increasingly vague goal of finding the "Promised Land," they don't even know where they are going! But they go. They are learning to trust God. We should give them no small amount of credit for that. I am not so sure that we would be so bold or brave.

After a while they stopped at Rephidim, where we are told there was "no water for them to drink." Crisis. Distress. And a familiar grounds for complaint. Once again, God does not simply lead them to an oasis, but rather to a place where there appears to be no water. They, like us, do not always understand why God does what he does. It is likely that God is testing them, but the text doesn't say. Will they trust him to provide yet again having come this far in faith? Well, they don't!

So, what happens? Complaint, of course. They quarrel with Moses, telling him "Give us water to drink!" In what is becoming a typical fashion, Moses replies, "Why are you quarreling with me!?" But then he adds, "Why do you test the Lord!?"

Moses is clearly saying that confronting him, Moses, is the same thing as confronting God. Moses is on shaky ground here because Moses knows that he can do nothing without God. In a sense this is, as it was in Chapter 16, equating his authority with God's.

The text doesn't say what God thinks about that. But, needless to say, the people aren't persuaded that Moses is God and they accuse Moses of bringing them out of Egypt to kill them all, including their children and livestock.

This time Moses cries out to God, not that they need water, even though that is the whole point of their complaint! - but that he is afraid for his own life! So Moses cried out to the LORD, "What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me."

Now, while we know God cares very much about Moses' life, that is not what God thinks Moses should be worrying about right now. After all, Moses is God's chosen instrument, and God intends to use Moses for God's purposes. Moses has some things to learn too.

So God ignores Moses' fears and concentrates instead on the real problem, which, if solved, should alleviate Moses' fear as well. God is a lot like that now, isn't he? We take him one problem; he solves another that we don't bring up, and, surprise!, the original problem goes away!

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So God says, "... Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink."

You'll notice a couple of things right away. First, God makes it clear that, regardless whether or not Moses thinks he may be killed by the people, Moses is still the leader. He is to "go ahead" of the people, and to take with him some elders, who, I presume, will be witnesses. He is also to take the staff God gave him, the same staff that God has used to work many prior miracles, both in Egypt and when escaping from it. The staff clearly is associated with God's power, and the people know that.

Here, at a rock at Horab [Also called Sinai. They are now camped near the foot of Mt. Sinai] we will see, once again, God's grace in action. God tells Moses that he, God, will be standing there on the rock. God will, again, be present with his people in their time of need.

The text tells us simply that "Moses did so." It says he struck the rock "in the sight of the elders of Israel." They, as well as Moses, witnessed the power of the Lord. We know what happened next. Water flowed from the rock and the problem was solved. The thirst of the people was quenched. And the people got off of Moses' back. Once more God's gift of grace prevailed over the chaos of the desert. That's what we know. But the text says nothing at all about that! That positive conclusion is assumed by the writer!

If you want to "prove" what happened from the Bible text you have to jump ahead all the way to Numbers, Chapter 20, which gives more detail of this episode. There it says, at verse 11, "Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his staff; water came out abundantly, and the congregation and their livestock drank." But here, in Exodus, our writer assumes that we know that when the Lord says he will provide, He provides!

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All our narrator tells us is that Moses gave this place two names, and they are not ones you might expect. He did not name it "God provides" or "God gave us to drink" or some such positive thing. Rather he named the place "Massah and Meribah," which means "Test and Quarrel." The episode ends telling us that Moses gave the place these names "because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, 'Is the Lord among us or not?'"

The problem is that we don't precisely know that. We know that they quarreled with Moses. And we know that Moses told them they were testing the Lord. But the text nowhere actually tells us that they "quarreled" with the Lord, or even that they thought that they were. They were angry with Moses. And nowhere does it say that they "tested" the Lord.

But Moses isn't wrong since they knew that Moses could do nothing, and had no power, without God. So while the text is distressingly vague and imprecise, once again, they did not trust that God would provide food and drink. Moses is right when he says at verse 7, that they were asking, without actually saying so, "Is the Lord with us or not?"

And, when we ask that question, we are, in fact, testing God because if we have faith we know that the question is rhetorical. The assumed answer from one who believes in God is, "Of course God is with us."

But what does "testing God" really imply? Using this example let's examine its implications more closely. Implied in the question "Is the Lord with us?" is that he may not be. The testing of God comes in seeking "proof" that he is with us. That is, we decide that we need for God to act or to show his hand in a particular way at a particular time to solve a particular "need" we feel we have.

In essence, while we never think of it that way, when we ask "Is the Lord with us?" we are trying to control God, to get him to be with us in this or that thing, when maybe God does not think that is the right thing for us to be doing at all, or that his intervention is the wrong thing for us.

The way the Israelites tried to do this was to demand that he prove his presence by providing them with water in the desert yet again. And if God does act to provide the water this yields two possible conclusions which are diametrically opposed to each other. The fact that he did provide water no doubt led some of the Israelites to believe that they could force God to act. They had yet to learn the other possible conclusion: that God did it out of his love for them; not because of their coercion.

We have a lot to learn in this area as well. We often test God, but, of course, we either don't realize we are doing it, or we deny that we are. here are some simple examples: if we don't take ordinary precautions in our lives; if we don't buy insurance; or have a doctor check out a potential problem, or act recklessly with the lives or well being of others, then we test God.

We say, "If God is with me, God will take care of me" even when we act rashly or foolishly. We say, "If its my time to go; well, its my time to go. God makes that decision, not me," even as we continue to do harmful things to our bodies, against all common sense, knowing that we are by our own destructive actions influencing when it is "our time to go." Yet we still want and expect God to be there for us when the results of our foolishness come home to roost.

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Remember the story about the guy in the flood? He sat on the roof of his house as the flood waters continued to rise. A boat came by to get him; then a helicopter, then another boat. Each time he refused help saying, "God will take care of me!" He was swept away and drowned. At the pearly gates he asked St. Peter why God let him drown. And a voice came from a cloud saying, "I sent a boat and a helicopter and another boat to save you. What more did you expect me to do?"

When we test God we try to hold Him hostage. We try to determine how he should act if he is God. This places God in the role of a servant; expected to respond to our every beck and call. If he doesn't answer our prayers the way we want him to, then we say he doesn't care; or that He isn't there.

Such attitudes can even lead to cruel feelings about others. Some people will say, "If God does not heal you, or protect you from that problem, it is because you do not have enough faith!" Implicit in that stupid statement is the idea that, if a person has enough faith, they can command God to do whatever they want. It assumes that God's will always coincides with ours. And it assumes that we can make his will coincide with our wishes through our prayers.

Sorry, but God doesn't work that way. God is God. And we aren't. And unless we figure that out we are going to be pretty confused about what faith is and isn't; what prayer can and can't do, and probably be pretty disappointed in a God who intends to remain independent of his creatures' demands.

Faith is trust in God to provide even when he decides not to provide in the way we want! Faith is hard. If anyone told you it was easy, he or she lied. In this episode we confront an Israelite people who are stubborn, demanding, and arrogant. They demand that God perform in a particular way at a particular time. They want God to be their puppet, their slave, their provider - on their terms.

This time God provides. But not for the reasons that they think. The naming of the place Massah and Meribah tells us that Moses knew, and the later writer of this story knew, the shame of treating God this way. This place would forever be known not for the gift of water; but for the arrogance of the demand of the people.

And when we, as they did, decide that if we do not have what we want - money, health, power, well being - then God is not with us, then we, too, have reduced faith to some sort of prosperity sham. We are saying that unless everything happens for good to me, when and how I want it, then God is not with me.

There are more than enough preachers out there getting rich telling us that "if we just believe" then the prosperity, the health and the well being that we "deserve because of our faith" will roll right in. That sounds foolish when it is baldly exposed as I just did. And it is foolish. But the truth is that millions of well meaning believers are being fed that hogwash every day, and they are believing it. Feel good, narcissistic religion is all the rage. And what do you suppose God thinks of that?

The truth is that God is with us. The truth is that God cares for us. The truth is that God provides for us. But the truth is, as well, that God will be God and that we cannot control him. The Israelites will have to learn this the hard way. So did Job. And so must we.

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Next: We will skip the rest of Chapter 17 and Chapter 18 which would be a detour in this series, and go directly to the heart of the Exodus experience at the base of Mr. Sinai, where the 10 Commandments will be given. We will also take an important look at how this part of the Bible was put together from many traditions, which greatly influence how the story is told.

God bless.

Manna: Bread for Life. But is it enough?

"Gathering of Manna" by Nicolas Poussin (The Louvre, Paris)

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The first essay in this series is Birth of the Israelite Nation. The second is Torah: Instruction for Living. This is the third in a series of essays that cover the origin of the Israelite nation and conclude with a discussion of the Ten Commandments.

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Today we will look at a small part of Chapter 16 of Exodus in some detail because it forms the foundation of the relationship which God will have with his people throughout the entire time of wandering in the Wilderness.

The issue is TRUST. Will the people trust God? Will God trust the people to believe that he can provide; and, therefore, will they keep his commandments? The object of the issue is FOOD; the necessary nourishment to sustain life.

After God made the bitter water sweet at Marah and led the Hebrews to the oasis at Elim where they rested a short while, they set out from Elim and came to the Wilderness known as Sin. (It does not mean "sin" as we know the word.)

This was about a month and a half after they left Egypt. There they complained again; this time because there was no food. They accused Moses and Aaron of leading them out to die; and they longed for the "flesh pots" and bread of Egypt. There, at least, they had meat and bread.

This time Moses did not "cry out to the Lord," but God heard the people's complaint. God said to Moses, "I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my instructions or not."

Moses passed this word on to the people, telling them that, in this way, they shall know that it was God who brought them out of Egypt, and that they shall see God's glory.

He also cautioned them against complaining about him and Aaron, since, when they did that, they were actually complaining against God: "Your complaint is not against us, but against the Lord." Then Moses had them look toward the wilderness, not Egypt, where they saw God's glory in the cloud.

That evening a great cloud of quail covered the camp, so they had meat to eat. And the next morning all the surfaces of the wilderness were covered with a fine flaky substance which they could use like flour and eat. They did not know what it was, but Moses told them it was "the bread the Lord has given to you to eat." They called it "manna." man huh in Hebrew means "What is it?"

Then Moses gave them God's specific instructions to gather no more than each family needed. They did not follow the instructions, some gathering more, some less. But, miraculously, when they measured it all had enough, but no more.

They were told to use all of it and not try to store it. But they disobeyed, only to find it had bred worms by morning and was foul. It could not be hoarded. Moses was angry at them for continuing to disobey God's instructions.

Part of the gathering instructions included gathering twice as much the day before the Sabbath and none on that day of rest. They actually did what they were told, and the extra did not spoil. Even so, the people went to gather more of the manna on the Sabbath, but found none.

This time the Lord was angry, telling Moses, "How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and instructions? See! The Lord has given you the Sabbath, therefore on the sixth day he gives you food for two days; each of you stay where you are; do not leave your place on the seventh day." Apparently God's anger had some effect, for we are told "So the people rested on the seventh day."

The remainder of the chapter describes God's command to keep some of the manna in a jar to remind future generations that God took care of them in the wilderness. We are told that the Hebrews ate manna in the wilderness for 40 years. ("40 years" can mean in Hebrew either a literal 40 year period or simply "a long time.") Later, in Joshua, we learn that on the day the Hebrews ate the produce of the Promised Land the manna ceased.

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I am not sure how important this sub-story within the Exodus story is when Jewish children are taught. But this indelible subplot about Manna is one that for centuries has been told to every Christian child and is one of the great stories from which Christianity has taken many lessons. For Christians like myself it forms the basis of some of the most fundamental understandings of how people relate to God, and how we relate to Christ.

Jesus said that "It is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven" (John 6:32) and, tellingly, a short while later, he added: "I am the bread that came down from heaven." (John 6:41) The stories of feeding the 4000 and the 5000 also make it clear to Christians that Christ is the one who provides for the daily necessities of life.

And the Lord's prayer incorporates the idea that we are to be satisfied with looking to God for our daily bread, or, translated literally, "our bread for each day." So too in the Christian celebration of the Eucharist, (Holy Communion) we break and distribute the bread to all, equally, sharing so that each has enough. The language and symbolism of bread from God is strong in many basic Christian rituals.

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There are important lessons to be learned here. Foremost is the lesson that we often must travel from bondage through wilderness in order to get to the promised land. We wish it were not so, but the realities of life seldom allow us to go from slavery to delightful freedom. Most of our lives are full of wilderness experiences.

The issue is not whether we will have them, because we will. The issue is who we will turn to and trust during those times. The times of wilderness and crisis are the very times when we need to lean most heavily on God. And, ironically, they are usually the times when we turn from him, choosing to try to "tough it out" on our own. The crisis of faith often occurs in just this time between bondage and well being. The challenge we face is not really so different from the one faced by the Israelites.

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Another of the things that happened to them also happens to us. When faced with crisis in the wilderness they looked back through rose-tinted glasses at the time of bondage. At least in Egypt the flesh pots were full of meat, and there was bread. Forgotten were all the evils they were subjected to in the old days. So too we, when challenged by the desert of the transition from bondage to new freedom, sometimes look back and see only the good of the past time of bondage; forgetting that it was mostly not so good.

After all, we tell ourselves, it can't be worse than the present uncertainty. Again, the issue is trust. Can we trust that the Lord will provide and get us through to the good future he promises? We have to trust the Lord to provide on a daily basis. Such trust is often in short supply.

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The Lord's instructions not to hoard but to share are also difficult for the Israelites. Any who have been members of churches or synagogues know something about that problem. It is clear that we are to be generous, self-sacrificing, and open in our giving to others.

Yet it is very hard to give generously when we don't have a lot ourselves; even when we know full well that we have much, much more than the vast majority of the people on the entire planet.

It is hard not to hoard, to try to gather just a little more for ourselves, even when we know that it is taking from others. Sometimes we joke about the "starving children in Africa" when we throw away more food in a week than many of them eat in a month.

But there is truth in the saying: there ARE starving children in Africa, and right here in America, if we bother to look. Yet we tell ourselves we have to be sure that we have enough. We reason that we have gone without this or that long enough; that we are only being prudent, saving for a rainy day. Still, the children starve.

The temptation is to try to serve two masters: God and Pharaoh, or in this case: God and our selves. We want to put our trust in two bread supplies at once: in the bread of heaven and in the bread earned by the sweat of our brows.

But this story and many of the stories told in the Bible teach us that trying to have it both ways leads only to anxiety.

We may not want to hear it, and we may never do anything about it, but the gospel message is that only one master, only one bread supplier is needed. This story says, and the gospel message of Jesus says, that God knows what we need and faithfully supplies everything required for life for those who totally trust Him. Few, if any of us, are willing to put that truth to the test!

Thus it should not surprise us that, after the miracle of the multiplying of the loaves to feed the 5000 that Mark tells us the disciples did not understand its meaning. They did not understand, we are told, because "their hearts were hardened." Like the Israelites, and like the disciples, our "hard hearts" make us rely on our own capacities and to make our own bread, and to hoard it at the expense of others.

Nor should it surprise us that the Israelites tried to hoard the manna and to harvest it on a day for which God had already supplied enough. We too always try to have it both ways. Sometimes it works. But it is not the way God would have us live.

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One final thing I think we need to get out of this story about the manna is the fact that, when God is in control, food abounds even in the wilderness. The wilderness, feared from the beginning of time by God's creatures as an area of death and desolation, is, after all, also part of God's creation.

Just so, if we are traveling with God, the wildernesses of our lives are also part of his creation and he is in control of them. Through trust in him we shall find in the worst wildernesses of our lives food and water to sustain us -- and a guide to take us by the hand and lead us out of the wilderness into the promised land.

If this story tells us nothing else it tells us that God is present in our daily lives, not just some abstract being remote from what is important to us. We always find that hard to believe. We even seem ashamed to ask for our daily bread.

The illusion of self reliance and total independence from others is a very strong thread woven into the fabric of this country, and we are a "pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps" kind of people. Which is well and good to a point. But the truth is that the gospel message is something quite different than American rugged individualism and pride.

It is a message of TRUST: trust in God to provide and sustain and lead. Not abstractly. But concretely. Every day. Day in. Day out. If we pray "Give us this day our daily bread" do we understand that? That daily bread is there for those who trust God to provide. That is Good News, if we are bold enough to believe it!

Next: Water from a Rock and Testing and Quarreling in the Desert

God bless.

Torah: Instruction for Living

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The first essay in this series is Birth of the Israelite Nation. This is the second in a series of essays that cover the origin of the Israelite nation and conclude with a discussion of the Ten Commandments.

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When I was a pastor I keep a little clipping taped to my computer monitor in my office. It said, "Put it up to a vote, and the people will always vote to go back to Egypt." That was no idle speculation for the Israelites. As problems mounted in the desert at one point the vast majority were ready to return to familiar bondage in Egypt.

We should ask ourselves if we too would vote to go back to the familiar bondage of the past. I think that when things get tough many of us would. The bondage of the past might be awful, but it is something we know and think we understand. The future God offers to us is unknown; and the unknown is frightening.

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God saved the Israelites from the slavery and bondage of Egypt. God did it alone, using Moses as his instrument. Moses had absolutely no power to do anything for the people without God. And the people did nothing to save themselves from the Egyptians. Nothing at all.

Why did God do it? Why bother to save this unruly brood of complainers? There were many reasons, but two stand out. The obvious one in the text is that God wanted to show Pharaoh who was boss. He wanted to demonstrate that no evil could stand against his righteous power. Moses reminds God of this fact later in the story when he convinces God to change his mind about consuming his own people lest he look bad in the eyes of Egypt.

But, underlying that reason is a far more basic reason that is not so obvious. The world was out of whack. God's own creation was being corrupted yet again, particularly due to the evil power exerted by the Pharaohs of the world. God intended to restore His creation to its original intent.

Thus, if we simply look at the struggles in Exodus to free the chosen people from bondage in Egypt as of little consequence; and if the crossing of the Red Sea is nothing more than a curiosity - something to argue over whether or not it is even true - then we miss the whole point that the text is trying to tell us.

These struggles and this event are meant by the writers of Exodus to be seen as being cosmic in their scope. The God of Salvation who wins the freedom for the Israelites is also the God of Creation intent on restoring the good order of things which he created originally. And his chosen instrument for that restoration was to be the people who descended from Abraham, with whom he had established his covenant.

God chose these people as his own. They were to become a new nation, a new people, destined to set the example for the rest of the world; and destined to "be a blessing to all nations" according to the original covenant some 400 years before with Abraham. Nothing in God's intentions implied in any way that the chosen people were to "do their own thing." They were to do God's will. That is why he saved them.

Thus, their freedom was never viewed by God as the freedom to do as they pleased. The issue was never bondage versus "no boundaries;" but rather bondage to Pharaoh versus freedom to serve God. The whole purpose of the Exodus was to create a people with one goal: to be obedient to God.

The story of the wanderings in the wilderness is the story of a people growing up; learning to trust and to serve their God, making mistakes, stumbling, and yet learning all the while. The question for them is the question for us: "Whom will you serve?" That is always the question.

If the purpose of salvation for the Israelite nation was to be obedient to God, it is clear from the text that they struggle, right from the beginning, with doing that.

Yes, immediately after the crossing of the Red Sea they do get it right, until the next crisis. At the next crisis, which was no small thing, they were in the desert without drinkable water, they complained. Chances are that we would have too. We have to be very cautious about feeling smug about how we are when compared to how they were.

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From the very beginning of the book of Exodus there was a pattern starting to form, a pattern that will continue throughout not only Exodus, but throughout the entire Pentateuch - the first five books of the Bible - and into Joshua and Judges.

Here is the pattern. First there is a crisis; followed by distress. This leads to complaint, which God hears. God then solves the problem, resolving the crisis and relieving the distress. This, usually, but certainly not always, is followed by joy, praise, and thanksgiving: in other words, God's grace results in worship by his people. At least that is how it is supposed to work.

At the end of Chapter 15 we saw the first crisis in the wilderness: bitter water that is unfit to drink. So the crisis leads to distress and the people go to Moses. But Moses has no power to do anything alone, so he complains to God.

And, what happens? God hears and solves the problem, showing Moses a particular piece of wood which, when thrown into the brackish water, sweetens it and makes it drinkable. Crisis solved. Interestingly, the people do not break out in thanksgiving or anything like it. I guess they felt that they were entitled to the water.

God does not get angry at their lack of thanksgiving this time. In fact, He leads them onward to a marvelous oasis at Elim, complete with twelve springs of water and 70 palm trees for shade. Nothing is said in the text about how they felt about that. But I imagine that they felt about like we do: the crisis is solved so we forget about who solved it and get on with our lives.

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Another thing happened at Marah that is vitally important to understanding our story. God laid down some ground rules. Call them "Instructions for the Journey." Whatever you call them these rules begin to set the boundaries for what will be later known as the "Torah," the instructions for living that God sets before the Israelites.

We usually translate the word "Torah" as "law." And, at least in one sense, that is a true translation. But it is not enough to say "law" in English and capture the real meaning of "Torah" in Hebrew. "Torah" means more than "law" as we understand that term. "Torah" means "instruction," or "teaching." In other words, the "Torah" is God's own teaching, God's own instruction, to the Israelites on "How to Live the Good Life."

Regardless of how we define Torah, as law or instruction or teaching, let me just impress one thing on you: The law follows salvation. The law is the result of grace. We are mightily confused about that in Christianity. We are constantly talking about the law versus grace. But what Jesus in the New Testament was railing against was the corruption and narrow interpretation of Torah, not the reasonable application of Torah to everyday life.

In Chapter 15 God said, after he solved the problem with the bitter water, and after he delivered them through the Red Sea; in other words, after he saved them by his grace: "If you will listen carefully to the voice of your God, and do right in his sight, and give heed to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians." Now, listen carefully to the next line: "For I am the Lord who heals you!"

God is saying that he is the one who makes them whole, who restores them to abundant life. This is the God of Grace, the God who gives wholeness, completeness, integrity. This is the Creator God who restores, redeems and saves. The word in Hebrew for "heals" is the same word we also translate in English as "saves." God heals and saves.

And that is what the Israelites had to figure out. God offered them protection, salvation, healing and wholeness, but the price they had to pay for that was obedience. What will they do? Will they obey and follow the God who saved them, or will they pressure Moses to take them back to Egypt?

They will have to learn that there is no cheap grace. Just so, there is no cheap, easy healing. But there is real healing for those who trust God. God says that those who trust his decrees and make the break with Pharaoh will find themselves at the oasis with an abundance of sweet water. And from there they will just have to trust him to take care of them. That is the choice. Return to a known bondage or trust God to lead them to an unknown future. They must choose.

So it is with us. We can continue to allow ourselves to be seduced by the evil idols of indulgence, by our own society's "fleshpots of Egypt," or we can chose to follow "Torah," God's own instruction as to how to live. Which will it be for us?

Next: Manna from Heaven: But is it enough?

God bless.

Birth of the Israelite Nation

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Fresco of Crossing the Red Sea, by Rosselli, Sistine Chapel

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Introductions, while seldom thrilling, are necessary. This is the introduction to a series of essays that cover the origin of the Israelite nation and conclude with a discussion of the Ten Commandments.

The Ten Commandments are usually misunderstood and have often been abused by ignorant people. That problem largely stems from taking them out of context. We are not going to make that mistake. And we are not going to make anachronistic assumptions about their universal application in the present.

This series is not a review of history. There is a kind of "history" in it, of course. But much more than that, it is a story about God and faith. For Christians and Jews this is our story; the story of the formation of the nation of Israel, our ancestors in faith. More importantly, this is the story about God, seeking to redeem his creation and re-establish the covenant with the children of Abraham, his chosen people, not for their sake, but for the sake of the world.

The events we will discuss took place 3400 years ago. They are embellished in myth and shrouded in mystery, sifted and filtered through oral traditions and then written by many redactors. Some of the story is likely "true" in the literal sense, while much of it is clearly mythic saga. Regardless, for believers this story abounds in theological truth and is as relevant today as it was then.

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Let me give you a very brief introduction to the Book of Exodus so that, when I plop us down at the beginning of Chapter 15, you won't be totally lost.

The Hebrew people who would come to be known as Israelites were in Egypt about 400 years. After the death of Joseph, they remained in Egypt and grew large in numbers. But they were slaves to Pharaoh, and were severely oppressed. Our story begins when Pharaoh decreed that all newborn Israelite boys must be drowned in the Nile.

After his birth, Moses, born to Levitical parents, was hidden by his mother for three months, and then placed into the Nile in a papyrus basket, where the daughter of Pharaoh found him. Rather than killing the baby, Pharaoh's daughter decided to keep him. Ironically, Moses' own mother was called to nurse and raise the child, returning him to Pharaoh's daughter when he was grown.

As a young man, after killing an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew, Moses fled Egypt for Midian. There he married Zipporah, daughter of the priest Reuel. Meanwhile, the oppression continued in Egypt. God heard the cries of the people, and remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

At Mt. Horab, God appeared to Moses in a burning bush, telling Moses that he intended to deliver his people from bondage in Egypt; and that he was sending Moses to bring them out of Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey.

Moses, reluctant to go, finally agreed after God allowed his brother, Aaron, to go with him to be Moses' spokesman. Once in Egypt, through Moses God confronted Pharaoh with a series of devastating plagues, each based on God's demand that Pharaoh "let my people go." The tenth and final plague was that death would sweep through the land and kill every first-born child, mirroring what Pharaoh had decreed when Moses' mother had hidden Moses as a baby.

To protect the first-born of the Israelites, the Lord instructed them to slaughter a lamb and spread its blood on the doorposts and lintels of their houses, and that death would "pass over" the households where the blood was spread. This they did. This is the origin of Passover.

Pharaoh finally agreed to let them go, and to take their cattle with them. Pharaoh instructed the Egyptians to give them gold and jewelry and to be rid of them. They also took with them unleavened bread to eat, for they left in haste. This became ritualized into the Passover observance as the Feast of Unleavened bread.

God then led them out of Egypt, guided by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, so that they might travel swiftly. When they had gone as far as the Red Sea, Pharaoh changed his mind about letting them go, and led his army after them.

As the Egyptians closed in, the Israelites were scared witless, but Moses held firm in faith. At the last minute God gave Moses the power to use his staff to divide the sea. The entire Israelite nation then walked safely on dry ground through the sea; but, as they pursued them, the Egyptian chariots and soldiers bogged down in the mud of the sea bed.

Moses then commanded the sea to return to normal and the Egyptian army drowned. Chapter 14 ends: "Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses."

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Chapter 15 begins with a long prayer of thanksgiving spoken by Moses, a song to God for the deliverance of the Israelites from Pharaoh. It begins, "I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea. The LORD is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him."

The praise did not last. A few verses later the Bible reads "Then Moses ordered Israel to set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter. That is why it was called Marah. And the people complained against Moses, saying, "What shall we drink?"

So when the people complained to him, Moses complained to God. "He cried out to the LORD; and the LORD showed him a piece of wood; he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet."

And it was there and then that God began his training of this rag tag bunch which was to be God's own chosen people: "There the LORD made for them a statute and an ordinance and there he put them to the test. He said, 'If you will listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in his sight, and give heed to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians; for I am the LORD who heals you.'"

So here we see a developing relationship between the Israelites and God. God provides salvation which leads to thanksgiving and worship by the people. The Bible says the thanksgiving lasted only three days. But the number of days aren't what's important. What's important is that the thanksgiving lasted only until the next crisis.

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To us the Israelites seem terribly insensitive to the grace from God that they have just received. They have been safely led out of Egypt and the oppression they endured. They have been saved from Pharaoh's army; and they have been given water to drink in the desert. God's grace abounds; but their thanksgiving is short lived.

What we need to acknowledge is that we are the same way. People, including us, always complain about the next thing. That has not changed.

For example, we may worry about a deadly disease we might have. And we pray and pray and make bargains with God. We make all sorts of commitments we have every intention of keeping: maybe including going to Church or Synagogue regularly, studying the Bible, treating people better, appreciating the simple things of life. We may not blatantly bargain with God, but that is often not far back in our minds, which God, of course, knows. Seldom do we say, "Thy will be done" and mean it.

Then we find out we don't have that disease; or, that we do, but that we can be healed. And, in a month,or maybe a year, we look up and notice that we are back to the same old routine. We have done some of the things we promised for a while; but then there were other priorities. There are lots of other examples I could cite. But I don't think we need more examples. You and I live them.

We forget the truth of the saying that "God cures every disease except the last one." We are too busy thinking that this one is the last one; and too busy worrying about how to get God to keep it from being so. True thanksgiving has nothing to do with bargaining with God. We'll discuss that a bit more as we go along in this series because it is at the heart of our relationship with God.

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Next time we will look at key elements of what God expects from the people. Then, with that context, we will look at the next series of complaints. It is here, in the complaints and God's responses to them that we shall see a pattern which will develop in the relationship between God and his chosen people. It is out of the pattern of this relationship that the Ten Commandments will be born.

God bless.