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8 Signs for God Signs, as demonstrations of God’s presence and power, dominate the beginning of Israel’s national story as related by the priestly tradition. God instructs Moses to perform signs before the Israelites as proof of God’s readiness to save them (Exod. 4:4-8) and before Pharaoh to demonstrate God’s superior power (Exod. 4:17, 28, 30). As God prepares to carry out the onslaught of demonstrations, God declares, “I will harden the heart of Pharaoh and I will multiply my signs and wonders (ʾet-ʾōtōtay wǝʾet-mȏptay) in Egypt” (Exod. 7:3). With that declaration, God also provides the terminology that will define the plagues and other demonstrations of divine power in Israel’s historiography.1 A second category of sign is the apotropaic blood intended to ward off God’s destructive force as God moves through Egypt killing all of the firstborn (Exod. 12:13). This sign is a one-time event that nevertheless proves that God can be affected or swayed by such cues and triggers. The most important category of sign includes the permanent ones, all of which refer to the covenant. Signs of the Covenant As we saw, the priestly tradition establishes the crucial function of “signs” as the instrument securing God’s memory in the priestly account of [re-]creation with the “sign” that God fashions: the bow of Genesis 9. Once God has entered into a covenant with Israel, however, the people and the cult provide the requisite signs. They are circumcision (Genesis 17), the Sabbath (Exodus 31), and the combination of the plating and Aaron’s rod, preserved after the high priest’s singular status was reconfirmed in Numbers 17. Both of the latter two “signs” represent the reinterpretation of practices or instruments. As well, each covenantal “sign” has a worldly significance and a cosmic meaning. Each, therefore, represents the real meaning of God’s relationship with Israel, a relationship for the sake of the world. 1. For example, in Deuteronomy where such “signs” existed in the past and are to be recalled, not present and observable. 161 1. CIRCUMCISION In the priestly tradition God establishes an eternal covenant with Abraham, promising that Abraham will be a “father of a multitude of nations” (ʾab-hămȏn gōyȋm) and that his descendants will possess the land of Canaan as an “eternal land-hold” (ʾăḥūzzat ʿȏlām) (Gen. 17:4-8). The covenant is eternal—it is a bǝrȋt ʿȏlām—and as a sign of this covenant, Abraham and his descendants must be circumcised on the eighth day following birth. But God does not explain to Abraham how or why circumcision is a sign, and the reason for the practice has perplexed many readers.2 As a sign of the first half of the covenantal promise, progeny, the circumcised penis may be a reasonable mnemonic, but we cannot determine for whom or how. There appears to be no connection to the second part of the promise, namely the land. Attempts to understand the signatory value of circumcision have led in many directions. Some historians argue that the practice of circumcision entered Israelite life in exile, as a way to distinguish the Judeans from their Babylonian neighbors, while others propose it was to differentiate Israelites from the Philistines in the first half of the first millennium bce.3 An explanation popular in the mid-twentieth century suggests that circumcision was introduced as a substitute for sacrifice of the firstborn.4 In the previous chapter, I mentioned the possibility that circumcision gained importance in the context of the Holiness program of inclusive sacredness. That may be true, but it does not explain the stated connection between circumcision and the covenant with 2. Michael V. Fox, “The Sign of the Covenant: Circumcision in the Light of the Priestly ʾôt Etiologies,” RB81 (1974): 590–91, 595. 3. Cf. Judges 13–16, in particular 14:1-4; 1 Samuel 13. On the importance of circumcision as a meaningful “ethnic marker,” see Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, “Israelite Ethnicity in Iron I: Archaeology Preserves What Is Remembered and What Is Forgotten in Israel’s History,” JBL122, no. 3 (2003): 415; Rainer Albertz, History of Israelite Religion(Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 407–8; Meir Sternberg, Hebrews Between Cultures: Group Portraits, National Literature(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 93–94, 109, 196–205. Fox however dismisses this possibility (“The Sign of the Covenant,” 595). Kenton L. Sparks points...

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