1 Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness.Verses #1-2... No false reports? Don't follow a multitude to do evil? Don't "give the support of your words to a wrong decision"? Who knew Colin Powell was an atheist?
2 Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment:
3 Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his cause.
4 If thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again.
5 If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his burden, and wouldest forbear to help him, thou shalt surely help with him.
6 Thou shalt not wrest the judgment of thy poor in his cause.
7 Keep thee far from a false matter; and the innocent and righteous slay thou not: for I will not justify the wicked.
8 And thou shalt take no gift: for the gift blindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous.
9 Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.
10 And six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather in the fruits thereof:
11 But the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still; that the poor of thy people may eat: and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard, and with thy oliveyard.
12 Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest: that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed.
13 And in all things that I have said unto you be circumspect: and make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth.
14 Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year.
15 Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread: (thou shalt eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded thee, in the time appointed of the month Abib; for in it thou camest out from Egypt: and none shall appear before me empty:)
16 And the feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.
17 Three items in the year all thy males shall appear before the LORD God.
18 Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread; neither shall the fat of my sacrifice remain until the morning.
19 The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.
20 Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared.
21 Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him.
22 But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries.
23 For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off.
24 Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images.
25 And ye shall serve the LORD your God, and he shall bless thy bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee.
26 There shall nothing cast their young, nor be barren, in thy land: the number of thy days I will fulfil.
27 I will send my fear before thee, and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee.
28 And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee.
29 I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee.
30 By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land.
31 And I will set thy bounds from the Red sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river: for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt drive them out before thee.
32 Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods.
33 They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin against me: for if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee.
In verse #3, we see that Republicans really are God's party: don't favor a poor man.
In #4-5, you should help your enemy with his ass. That's a generous love-thy-neighbor / love-thy-enemy sentiment. Good show!
#6: Things get fair and balanced: don't be unjust to a poor man.
#7: Colin's in trouble again. Didn't keep far from false matters and helped slay the innocent, which God won't justify.
#8: It's Duke Cunningham's turn in the hot seat — sinning by taking gifts.
#9: We again are told to be kind to strangers. I wonder when they tell us not to take their candy.
#10-11: Another food-preservation mystery and another Sabbatical scheme — work the farm for six years, and in the seventh, leave it to the poor and the beasts.
#12: On the same theme, shut down your business every seventh day.
#13: Be mindful of what God said, and don't speak the name of the other gods. Hmm, we haven't yet been told not to say "Jehovah," but we're told not to say the names of these other gods we keep hearing about in passing.
#14: Have three feasts in YHWH's honor each year.
#15: Yet another ad for Passover matzos.
#16: Sounds like the other two feasts are at the beginning and end of the harvest. Are there current holidays based on these?
#17: Three times a year, all boyz and men must appear before God. Is every guy in the world supposed to show up at the foot of Mt. Sinai?
#18: Don't offer God a bloody sacrifice with leavened bread. A fussy eater, I guess. And don't leave fatty meat out over night. I think that was also in Gremlins.
#19: Again, sacrifice your first stuff to God (which in some contexts, as we've seen, seems to include your firstborn son). And don't marinate kid meat in its mamma's milk. Recalls the gruesome inspiration of Paul Simon's lovely "Mother and Child Reunion," named after a Chinese chicken-and-egg dish.
#20: God's sending an angel to keep us in line or keep us safe or something and to take us to a place he's prepared. Sounds kind of creepy and/or like a reference to heaven.
#21: Watch out for my angel, and don't fuck with him. He is not going to forgive what you do, because he's God's agent. Hmm, when does the forgiveness come in?
#22: The enemy of my friends has YHWH to answer to. Makes you wonder how the enemies of Judeo-Christian countries ever last more than a couple of minutes. We'll get a great explanation for that ahead.
#23: God's going to fuck up a lot the Hebrews' enemies.
#24: Reject and "utterly overthrow" your enemies' gods and demolish their sacred icons. So much for pluralism.
#25: Serve God, and he'll bless your food and drink and keep you healthy. Excellent benefits package.
#26: The godfearing will never have a miscarriage or be infertile. If you have problems of this sort, you're obviously a sinner and deserve it.
#27: God will terrorize anyone who approaches you.
#28: Amongst God's weaponry are such diverse elements as hornets.
#29: God will take more than two Friedman Units to wipe out your enemies. This is because, um, if he did it too fast, you'd be overrun by animals. Yeah, that's the ticket!
#30: Jehovah will gradually get the job done. Really, really gradually, apparently.
#31: YHWH is giving Israel to the Hebrews, and he'll deliver the current occupants into their hands so they can be driven out. Talk about foreshadowing!
#32: In case you weren't listening to #24, don't be makin' no deals your enemy's Gods.
#33: The Hebrews' enemies are sinners. Even if they act all holy-like, they're just fakers.
4 comments:
Verses 1-19 are the last part of the Elohist's Book of the Covenant.
Verse 1 is the instruction not to commit false witness. We've had that before - in the Ethical Decalogue, but that was Priestly Code, so here its the first time that the Elohist has mentioned it.
Verses 1-3 are about being fair, and just. Its not "don't ever help the poor", but "don't bend the rules just because you take pity on someone"; the alternative valid translation, mirroring Arabic, is "don't ignore inconvenient facts just because they are presented by the poor".
Verse 6. This is translated from the Masoretic Text. The Septuagint instead says "You shall not aquit the poor from their judgements".
Verse 8. Note the metaphor of "blindness" for refusal to admit seeing obvious truths. We'll come back to that during the "miracles" in the Gospels.
Verse 9. "Stranger" means "resident foreigner".
Verses 10-11. Note that the reason is an ethical one. In the Holiness Code (latter third of Leviticus), the reason given is a theological one; the Holiness Code was written later. Also note that here it can be the 7th year after you started farming that particular bit of ground, rather than every piece of land having to lie fallow just because its 2007.
Verse 12. Oh look, its an explanation of the Sabbath. Except that a quite different explanation was given (by the Jahwist) in the middle of chapter 16, which states that it was to be dedicated to Yahweh, and that rest was compulsory in Yahweh's honour; Jahwist = rest needed due to the sabbath; Elohist = sabbath due to need for rest.
On the subject of not pronouncing YHWH. That's not really a biblical command, but one arising from ancient Kabbalistic belief; it was held that by pronouncing a name you could control the name's owner, which in YHWH's case would mean (in Jewish belief) that you would be in charge of everything, but since you presumably aren't omniscient or omnipotent, this would extremely rapidly lead to the destruction of the universe, so its best to avoid it.
Verse 15. Notice that the word "passover" isn't mentioned, despite it being obviously the same time of year; in the older passages, such as this, passover and the "feast of unleavened bread" are unrelated festivals, one occurring after the other.
Verse 16, yes its all to do with harvests. In Hebrew, the first of these two holidays is now called "shavuot" (aka "Feast of Weeks"), and the second is called "sukkot" (meaning "booths"; you'll find out why its called that in Leviticus). In Christian calendars, these (deliberately) correspond with Pentecost (aka Whitsun) and Harvest Festival respectively. FoUnleavenedB is for the first appearance of grain (Passover is for the lambing season, which co-incides with the appearance of grain), Shavuot is for the completed grain harvest (and "first fruits"), Sukkot is for the completed fruit harvest.
Verse 17. "Before Yahweh" just means "at a sanctuary"; it was later interpreted as meaning "at Jerusalem at the only-temple-that-is-genuine". The Samaritans interpret it to mean at Mount Gerizim (near Shechem, which is now Nablus),
Verse 18. Its about fat being burnt up entirely in the sacrificial fire, and blood not being eaten (because the sacrificed bread was then eaten by the priests).
Verse 19. I mentioned this verse before, this won't be the last time you see something like it. Its a good one to remember. It refers to (and bans) a Canaanite religious ritual, designed to create fertile fields; this ritual is documented in texts found at Ugarit.
Verses 20-22 (as far as "speak"). The Book of the Covenant has basically finished now, and the subsequent verses are not in their original places (possibly due to a common transcription error - "copying the wrong line"). These verses actually introduce the "Angel" that was earlier described as leading the Israelites out of the red sea (the verses belong just before that description); the Israelites are already at "the place which [YHWH has] prepared".
Verses 22-24 (from "then I will.."). The Jahwist narrative begins again after stopping back in chapter 19 - the Jahwist hasn't really started listing any laws yet. Its not "icons"; it specifically states "pillars" in the Hebrew, referring to neolithic-style standing stones, used as phallic representations of deity.
Verse 27 doesn't look too realistic in the light of international events in the Book of Kings.
Verse 32. The reason this seems to ignore verse 24 is because they are different sources. Verse 31 (from "I will deliver")-33 are the Elohist again. These last verses are the concluding words of the Book of the Covenant.
Verse 33 doesn't state that the non-Hebrews are "sinners". It states that Hebrews that follow non-Hebrew beliefs or practices would be "sinners".
I should add that "Jehovah" is a mistaken translation. In Biblical Hebrew there are no vowels, but in the masoretic text, pointings are added (little dots and lines) under and over the letters to indicate which vowels to add in. Because of the rule about not pronouncing "YHWH", people read out "Adonai" (which means [a] "lord") instead; so the scribes eventually added the pointings for "Adonai" under the word "YHWH" to indicate this. The vowels of "Adonai" are aoai - making "YHWH" look like it is "YaHoWaHi"; the Hebrew "W" can be pronounced as "V", and so you get "YaHoVaHi", which Anglicises to "JeHoVaH".
A.,
Thanks as always.
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