1 And he said unto Moses, Come up unto the LORD, thou, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and worship ye afar off.We get a break from 613 commandments. Sort of.
2 And Moses alone shall come near the LORD: but they shall not come nigh; neither shall the people go up with him.
3 And Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD, and all the judgments: and all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the LORD hath said will we do.
4 And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel.
5 And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the LORD.
6 And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basons; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar.
7 And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient.
8 And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words.
9 Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel:
10 And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness.
11 And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink.
12 And the LORD said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written; that thou mayest teach them.
13 And Moses rose up, and his minister Joshua: and Moses went up into the mount of God.
14 And he said unto the elders, Tarry ye here for us, until we come again unto you: and, behold, Aaron and Hur are with you: if any man have any matters to do, let him come unto them.
15 And Moses went up into the mount, and a cloud covered the mount.
16 And the glory of the LORD abode upon mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days: and the seventh day he called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud.
17 And the sight of the glory of the LORD was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel.
18 And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount: and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights.
God beckons Moses, Aaron, Aaron's boys Nadab and Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel to worship him... from afar. Except Moses — he's in the playas' club.
Moses relays the words of YHWH, and the sheeple answer as one that they will obey.
Moe got up early and built a twelve-pillared altar at the foot of the hill. If Jesus was a carpenter, sounds like Moses was a mason, and a damned efficient one. In addition to the building, he wrote (using tablets or other early implements, like maybe a CPT 8000) all of God's words (everything to date, or just his latest memo?).
Then Moses had young Israelites sacrificially burn animals in honor of God. He put half the blood in basins, and the other half he sprayed on the altar. I'm not sure Keith Moon would have treated the place worse.
He recited God's directions to, presumably, the rest of the Israelites, and they also signed onto the way God planned it.
He sprayed the rest of the blood on the people to seal the deal. There are some closing tricks Zig Ziglar can't teach ya. Actually, maybe he can.
The gang that Moses had previously brought to the base of the mountain got a look at God, standing on what looked like a sapphire floor. Weren't many of them supposed to perish if they got a look at the lordly mug?
Seeing God wasn't enough. They took time out to go to the snack bar while, I guess, God shuffled his feet.
The Lord summoned Moses up the mountain and gave him three tablets of stone to teach the people with. Hmm, I always thought it was two tablets.
Moses and his minister or servant Joshua went up the hill to fetch a deck of commandments that we've already read.
This narrative is seriously starting to play like Memento or Merrily We Roll Along. Didn't Mr. Bible Editor Man notice that things are a wee bit out of order? No problem, since we apparently get the commandments all over again in Deuteronomy.
Like Bush getting polyps removed, Moses delegates being the decider while he's indisposed. The temporary power goes to Aaron and Hur.
And like Bobby in Urinetown, Moses has his head in the clouds. Talk about getting the vapors! It's for the popular duration of six days, afterwards God gives it a rest.
The sight of God was "like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel." Suggests a volcano, the perfect image of love. If you're an authoritarian.
The clouds aren't gone after all, as Moses goes into them and sits on the mountain for that other popular duration of forty days and nights.
5 comments:
This chapter is a mix of the Elohist and Jahwist accounts. In the Elohist account, the laws have now been given, so here we have the Elohist describing the ratification of the laws. In the Jahwist account, the laws haven't been given yet, so here we have the Israelites preparing themselves to receive the laws. These two situations are spliced together.
In verse 7 you'll see the phrase "book of the covenant".
What's going on is
Jahwist:Moses+Aaron+Nadab+Abihu+70 /72 elders (depending on which ancient manuscript) are to go up the hill and look on while Moses approaches. They go up the hill and see a "sapphire" stone pavement under Yahweh's feet; they aren't killed by Yahweh, and enjoy food+drink.....continued in Chapter 33
Elohist: Moses tells everyone what Yahweh had said (in the Book of the Covenant), and Moses builds an altar to symbolise the covenant. The people hold a feast (which in Israelite society required sacrifices). Moses reads out the words of the covenant, and the people ritually agree to it. Moses goes up the mountain to get a copy of the laws written in stone, and takes 40 days and nights to do so ....continued at the end of chapter 31
Priestly Source:A cloud comes down onto the mountain, and Moses goes into it on the 7th day. Gosh, said the Israelites, doesn't the mountain look like its on fire
12 pillared altar - doesn't that sound just a little strange. Its really talking about a stone circle, with an altar in the middle. A neolithic-type sanctuary. Its the kind of description that sounds as if it describes something that the author new existed; in otherwords there was an altar like this on Sinai. No such altar has been found on any of the candidates for Sinai. The mountain at Petra has an excuse - the top 20 feet or so were carved away by the Nabateans to form a new summit, with 2 pillars sticking out; oddly enough, the rubble from this destruction (some survives) includes smooth blue slabs.... (compare verse 10).
"Sapphire" doesn't mean Sapphire. The Septuagint reads "Sapphire" and the translations into English are based on that, especially the older translations, but this is misleading. The Greek term "Sapphire" referred to gems with a certain shade of blue in general; modern Sapphire gained its name later, and wasn't even mined in Septuagint times.
In the Elohist/Jahwist accounts, sacrifices are primarily for food - life was "owned" by the deity, so killing animals required permission, namely they had to be killed on an altar. You notice that the blood isn't consumed; its thrown on the altar, or otherwise disposed of. The sprinkling of the blood on people is "sympathetic magic"; its to bind the people (who get one portion of the blood) with God (represented by the altar, which gets the other portion of blood).
The delegation to Aaron and Hur actually reflects badly on them; its a slur by the Elohist (who really hates the Aaronids). The reason its a slur becomes clear in the next set of verses from the Elohist (in chapter 32:The Golden Calf)
The meal on Sinai in the Jahwist account is about Yahweh's hospitality, not the 70 elders etc. being unimpressed and finding time to eat. Hospitality is a hugely big thing in the Middle East.
3 tablets. It is definitely 2 tablets, later...
As for authoritarianism. The Priestly Source is very authoritarian. The following chapters (25-31) are almost entirely from the Priestly Source - that will make its characteristics a lot clearer.
A.,
What's up with the incredibly sloppy merging of narratives? Was this oversight, or an unholy compromise of too many cooks -- that is, the Redactor could only redact so much without ruffling feathers by leaving someone's cherished passages on the cutting room floor, even where their inclusion leads to absurd redundancies and inconsistencies? What's the prevailing wisdom on this?
Its three things really.
First you have the Jahwist and Elohist narrative being merged together to make JE. You have to imagine it with just the Yahwist and Elohist, no priestly source bits.
The Jahwist account is Elders+Moses goes up mountain...Yahweh throws a feast for them...Moses gets laws IN STONE...they come down mountain
The Elohist account is similar, Moses goes up mountain...is told laws which he WRITES DOWN on paper/papyrus...comes down mountain...the Israelites ratify laws.
Except that the Elohist also wants to add the golden calf episode (I'll explain why when we get to it), so the above Elohist account is followed with Moses goes up mountain again for a COPY in STONE...Moses delegates authority to Aaron in the meantime...while Moses is up the mountain the Israelites (under Aaron) create golden calf...Moses comes down...Moses smashes the stone copy in anger when he finds out whats been going on.
The Elohist account ends up with BROKEN stones, and the laws written on paper/papyrus. The Jahwist ends up with the laws on UNBROKEN stones.
So, when these were combined to make JE, the join was achieved by making the smashing of the Elohists's stones an excuse for Moses to have to go up again and get the Jahwist's stones. The words "like unto the first" (which you'll get in Exodus 32/33) were added to achieve this. But that means that the Jahwist account of Moses getting ready to go up the mountain has to be put somewhere before that - the best place being where the Elohist has the laws being ratified; here it just looks like the feast held by the elders is just part of the ratification.
That gives you Moses goes up mountain..gets laws...comes down...ratifies laws...goes up for a copy in stone...comes down and smashes the stone copy (Ex32)...goes up again for ANOTHER copy in stone (Ex33)...gets laws again (Ex34)...
Then, much later in history, the Aaronids decide to write their own version; the Priestly Source. The Priestly Source reads the JE account, and uses it as the basis of its version, but ignores things where there is direct access to God without Aaron or descendants being involved, so modifies it heavily.
Then the Israelites are exiled (6th century). Eventually they are released from exile (due to Cyrus - documentary evidence of this, the Cyrus Cylinder, survives in the British Museum). Ezra is sent to join them, and empowered to enforce a new copy of scripture (according to the Book of Ezra/Nehemiah); this scripture was the first 5 books of the bible - someone (probably Ezra) had made it from splicing together the JE account, the Priestly Source, and Deuteronomy, and adding a couple of other minor documents to paper-over the gaps.
This splicing isn't so neat as the splicing of the Jahwist and Elohist into JE, and many of the edges are much more obvious.
As for leaving stuff on the cutting room floor. You have to remember that the redactions/splicings were done when two different groups merged. JE when Israel [the northern kingdom] was conquered, and the people of Israel fled to Judah [the southern kingdom]; the 5 books when Israelite/Judean identity was so battered by the exile, that the differences between the Aaronids and non-Aaronids were neglected, and the survivors of the different tribes simply became one group - "Jews". At these times, each group considered its version to be the sacred one, so missing a bit would be bound to irritate one of the groups. It was also normal practice at the time to splice together versions of documents on a word-for-word basis, rather than to try to produce a new version that agreed with both.
Its a cultural thing really; most scribes could only copy, very few were any good at creating new text. Literacy now means that you can read and write, back then there were many people who could only do one of these - many copyists could mainly only copy words, without really understanding them much -, and many many people who were completely illiterate.
The third thing going on is the fact that sometimes copyists make typographic mistakes, or scanning mistakes, or sometimes manuscripts just end up in the wrong order, and they get copied like that. That creates problems too. All the copies of the bible that exist now are copied from a chain of manuscipts going back in time; at some point will be the earliest common parent (not necessarily the original copy of the bible - its like genetics, find a group of people and they have an earliest common ancestor, who is probably a human and not primeval bacteria). That earliest common parent will be a copy, and contain copying mistakes.
An interesting copyist issue is in the book of Judges - all ancient copies have a particular word written MNSHH, with the N written in superscript, like its been added later; MSHH is Moses, MNSHH is Manasseh, and the word in question names the father of a particular idol-worshipper.
Some things did end up on the cutting-room floor, anyway. The passage about Lamech is peculiarly brief (including the one surviving line of poem), as is the description of the Nephilim (aka "Giants"). What was that about the curse of Cain? Where or what is the book of Jasher/Book of the Wars of the Lord? What was going on at the inn with Zipporah?
Then you have the Sacrifice of Isaac - the original ending was him being killed; it was cut out of the redacted version. The original ending of JE's version of the heresy of peor (in Numbers), and the start of the Priestly source's version, are both missing.
The heresy of Peor (in numbers) is the most grating of the joins; the identity of the protagonists, and the nation that's the enemy, both abruptly change half way through, without a hint of explanation.
I wonder what % of True Believers know about the Documentary Hypothesis or notice the numerous massive narrative flaws in this book they're betting their life on.
That's a big part of journey for me -- making the Bible not an abstract symbol of morality, but actually reading the danged thing to see what it really says. As of this point, I am still rather unimpressed that it's got much value as a set of life lessons, though a few of those commandments are pretty easy to agree with. And there are miles to go....
I THOUGHT THAT VERY HUMOURIS COULD HAVE BEEN FAR MORE SO IF YOU HAD BUT LET GO ALLAH AS THE ALMIGHTY BE NOT LACKING IN SENSE OF HUMOUR. BUT FOR FACT RESPECT FOR MOSES STILL STRONG DESPITE ALL PASSING YEARS AS LIFES. UNIVERSE IN FIRST STAGE OF CREATION BE PURE ENERGY IN A FORM YOU COULD DESCRIBE AS LIGHT HARMLESS WITHIN THE HUMAN FORM,EFFECT ON PERSON AS CLEANSING OF SOUL..GOLDEN LIGHT FROM SAME SOURCE YET THIS IS NOT AS HEALING OF BODY AS SOUL RATHER IT BEING THE ULTIMATE IN SPIRITUAL BONDING.
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