Contours of Old Testament Theology

28. Rejoicing in the Torah

2 8 . REJOICING IN THE TORAH We have JOUnd that the exile, and everything associated with it, was a time when faith was put to the test. In the time of the eclipse of God, how do the peo­ ple of God live? How do they retain a sense of orderly community when powers of chaos threaten to pull them apart? How do they find a way into the future when the purpose of God is not clear in the present? What holds this people together, enabling them to survive and giving them a sense of identity and vocation? These were existential questions for the remnant refined in the crucible of suffering. God's Teaching One answer to such questions is given in Torah observance. In a time of change and uncertainty, when the foundations are shaking, the people are not left to grope in an uncharted wilderness. For in the Torah God has given guidance on the way that they should walk (balak, "walk, go"). Indeed, the Hebrew word torah, as noted previously, means "guidance, instruction," and is so rendered in the NJPSV (e.g., in the torah psalms \, 19:7-13; 119). Happy is the man who has notfollowed tfcf counsel of tfcf wicked, or taken the path of sinners, orjoined the company of the insolent, rather, the teaching of the Lord is his delight, and he studies that teaching day and night. —Ps. 1:1 (NJPSV) In the Mosaic covenant tradition, as we have seen, torah cannot be reduced to law. Torah bears witness to the root experiences-, "the saving experience" and "the commanding experience" (Fackenheim). In one sense, torah is story. It is narrative or haggadah. The people tell an old, old story, "the story of our life."1 But in another sense, torah is commandment or halakah. At Sinai the people say, "All that Yahweh has spoken we will do and we will be obedient" (Exod. 24:7). The relation of these two, haggadah and halakah, is inseparably close, like Siamese twins. In this comprehensive sense the Torah became the basis of the peoples life in the restored community of Judaism under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah (ca. 400 B.C.). Ezra's reading of "the book of the torah of Moses," according to Nehemiah 8, must have been based on the Pentateuch approximately in its final form, later known as "the five books of Moses" or, in rabbinical terms, "the fivefifths of the Torah." 1. This echoes the title of a chapter in a book by H. Richard Niebuhr, The Meaning ofRevelation (New York: Macmillan, 1941), chap. 2. 253 2 5 4 Contours of Old Testament Theology Torah Piety Several things happened in the course of the transmission of the Torah. First, torah was written down,- it became "Scripture." In the initial covenant ceremony described in Exod. 24.1-11, Moses "told the people the words of the Lord [Yahweh]" (v. 3), and then proceeded to write them down (v. 4) in "the book of the covenant." Writing down the torah gave it greater permanence, especially when the text was scrupulously guarded and meticulously copied. Above all, a written text calls for creative interpretation, as can be seen from the story in Nehemiah 8, where the reading of the Torah was accompanied by oral interpretation for the purpose of giving "the sense, so that the people understood the reading" (Neh. 8:8). In the New Testament, Jesus is portrayed as reading from Jewish Scripture (the book of Isaiah) and giving an interpretation (Luke 4:16-22). It was the torah of Moses in written form that prompted the great reformation of Josiah, based on the book of torah found in the temple (which we have con­ sidered earlier). The written torah was eventually extended to include the whole Mosaic torah, referred to as "the book of Moses" in the Chronicler's history (e.g., 2 Chron. 25:4). In the modern period, this gave rise to controversial discussions of "the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch." However, the issue is not authorship in the modern sense but authority of a tradition endorsed with the name and inspi­ ration of Moses. Second, there was a definite shift of emphasis to the halakic or statutory dimension of torah. We see this already in the book of Deuteronomy, where "covenant" is identified with commandments (Deut. 4:11-14) and where the ark of the covenant is regarded as a box containing the Decalogue.2 Also we have...