(Book of Numbers 2:1 - 2:34)
Jehovah gave the following instructions to Moses and Aaron: "When camp is set up, each family will pitch their tents beneath their family’s ancestral banners. The encampment will be made on all sides of the Tabernacle, but at some distance from it.
"On the east side, facing the rising sun, will camp the following tribes under their ancestral banners:
Judah, led Nahshon, son of Amminadab, numbering 74,600 fighting men
Issachar, led by Nethanel, son of Zuar, numbering 54,400 fighting men
Zebulun, led by Eliab, son of Helon, numbering 57,400 fighting men
The total number of forces from Judah's side of the camp totals 186,400 fighting men. These tribes will set out first when the Israelites break camp.
"On the south side will camp the following tribes under their ancestral banners:
Reuben, led by Elizur, son of Shedeur, numbering 46,500 fighting men
Simeon, led by Shelumiel, son of Zurishaddai, numbering 59,300 fighting men
Gad, led by Eliasaph, son Deuel [or Reuel], numbering 45,650 fighting men
The total number of forces from Reuben's side of the camp totals 151,450 fighting men. They will set out second.
"The Tabernacle and the camp of the Levites will have their places in the middle of the encampment. They will set out in the same order in which they make camp, each in their assigned places under their banners.
"On the west side will camp the following tribes under their ancestral banners:
Ephraim, led by Elishama, son of Ammihud, numbering 40,500 fighting men
Manasseh, led by Gamaliel, son of Pedahzur, numbering 32,200 fighting men
Benjamin, led by Abidan, son of Gideoni, numbering 35,400 fighting men
The total number of forces from Ephraim's side of the camp totals 108,100 fighting men. They will set out third.
"On the north side will camp the following tribes under their ancestral banners:
Dan, led by Ahiezer, son of Ammishaddai, numbering 62,700 fighting men
Asher, led by Pagiel, son of Okran, numbering 41,500 fighting men
Naphtali, led by Ahira, son of Enan, numbering 53,400 fighting men
The total number of forces from Dan's side of the camp totals 157,100 fighting men. They will set out last whenever the Israelites break camp."
These, therefore, are the forces of the Israelites, counted according to their tribes. The total number of fighting men equals 603,550 (excluding, as Jehovah ordered, the Levites, who were not enrolled for military service). The Israelites complied with the instructions Jehovah gave to Moses: each family and tribe set up camp under their ancestral banners and, when marching, did so with their own family and tribe.
Notes
1. It is amazing the degree to which Jehovah (Creator-God of the universe?) takes an interest in the nuts-and-bolts details of Israelite affairs. His insistence on micromanaging everything suggests little confidence in Moses' administrative abilities.
2. A common characteristic of ancient and medieval chronicles is the presentation of superfluous details, those that really do not further the narrative or provide any significant insight. Most such chronicles, the Bible included, are based on oral traditions, and so it seems unlikely that such details, especially numbers and names, would have been accurately recorded and passed down, yet they are always pointedly presented with assumed exactitude. Perhaps the reason for this is that details always suggest accuracy, a confirmation of authenticity, authority and, in the case of the Bible, divine provenance. Significant details, on the other hands, seem always omitted and ignored. For instance, the readers were never informed in Exodus of the name of the Egyptian Pharaoh, which is the very first thing one would like to know, but we are given the exact details of the construction of the Tabernacle. We have the exact number of people in each tribe of Israel, but we are not informed, for instance, of the unglamorous details of how the sanitation needs of such a vast population could possibly have been met.
Friday, November 21, 2014
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
The Census
(Book of Numbers 1:1 - 1:54)
One year after the Israelites had made their exodus from Egypt, on the first day of the second month, Jehovah spoke to Moses in the Tabernacle in the desert of Sinai. He instructed him, "Take a census of the entire population of Israel, recording each person's name, his family, and his tribe. You and Aaron must make a registry of every male who is twenty years of age or more and is able to bear arms. You are to be assisted in this by each of the tribal chiefs.
"The names of the chiefs and their tribes are as follows:
Reuben: Elizur, the son of Shedeur
Simeon: Shelumiel, the son of Zurishaddai
Judah: Hahshon, the son of Amminadab
Issachar: Nethanel, the son of Zuar
Zebulun: Eliab, the son of Helon
Joseph (Ephraim): Elishama, the son of Ammihud
Joseph (Manasseh): Gamaliel, the son of Pedahzur
Benjamin: Abidan, the son of Gideoni
Dan: Ahiezer, the son of Ammishaddai
Asher: Pagiel, the son of Ochran
Gad: Eliasaph, the son of Deuel
Naphtali: Ahira, the son of Enan
"These are the chosen leaders, the elders of the ancestral clans, the chiefs of the tribes of Israel."
Moses and Aaron summoned these leaders and, on that same day, assembled the entire population of Israel. All the people were listed according to their family and tribe and the men twenty years old and above were individually registered, just as Jehovah had instructed Moses. And so a census was taken there in the desert of Sinai.
Men twenty years old and above and able to bear arms were listed by name. The following is the tally from each of Israel's tribes:
Reuben, Israel's first born: 46,500
Simeon: 59,300
Gad: 45,650
Judah: 74,600
Issachar: 54,400
Zebulun: 57,400
Joseph (Ephraim): 40,500
Joseph (Manasseh): 32,200
Benjamin: 35,400
Dan: 62,700
Asher: 41,500
Naphtali: 53,400
These were the men registered by Moses, Aaron, and the chiefs representing the tribes of Israel. All men twenty years old and above and able to bear arms were listed by family. Their total number was 603,550.
Those of the ancestral tribe of Levi, however, were not counted with the others, for Jehovah had told Moses, "You should not count those of the tribe of Levi or include them in the census with the rest of the Israelites. The Levites are to be stewards of the Holy Tabernacle, its equipment and furnishings, everything it contains. They must tend and maintain it and transport it, and they must make their camp around it. When the Tabernacle is to be moved, they will take it down, and when it is to be set up again, it is they who will do it. If any unauthorized person approaches the Tabernacle, he is to be put to death. Each tribe of Israel will be assigned their own area in the encampment, marked with their tribal banner. But the Levites will camp around the Tabernacle so that I may not vent my wrath upon the people of Israel. They will guard and protect the Tabernacle."
The people of Israel did all that Jehovah had commanded Moses.
Notes
1. Numbers picks up the story of the Israelites a year after the Exodus, eleven months after their encampment beneath the holy mountain in Sinai. Presumably the Tabernacle and its furnishings described in Exodus have been built.
2. Taking a census makes sense from an administrative and logistical point of view. A new nation, forged from the tribes of Israel, descended from the sons of Jacob, was being formed, even if it had not yet reached the land on which it would settle. Although censuses date to the early history of Egypt, historically citizens have had an ambivalent attitude toward them. Numbering the populace has not always seemed benign, but has often been disparaged as the intrusive instrument of tyrants. --- It is interesting that in the New Testament Jesus would supposedly come to be born in Bethlehem because of a census.
3. A former census described in Exodus was taken in order to raise "money" through taxes. The purpose of this census is to lay a foundation for the organization of a national army.
4. The numbers given for the various tribes must be regarded as fanciful. A total of over 600,00 men able to bear arms would suggest a total population of 3 or 4 million, even more, if the Israelites were as prolific as the biblical texts suggest. If the Israelites had remained in Egypt for 400 or 430 years as the biblical texts claim, technically there might be enough time for such a population to accrue. However, since life spans in ancient times were short due to wars, disease, famine, poor nutrition, bad sanitation, and minimal medical care, it is very unlikely. The frenetic population boom of a slave class asserted by the text conflicts with the reality that in ancient times population numbers were often stable and growth, if any, was slow. (It should be mentioned that Israelite bondage being four centuries in length is problematic considering there were only 5 generations between Jacob and Moses!) It is sheer nonsense to entertain the idea that such a horde could subsist in the desert wastes of Sinai, let alone journey en masse under any sort of effective leadership. As has been noted before, an exodus of any more than a few thousand souls would have been impractical, if not impossible. And there is, in fact, no historical or archaeological evidence to support any sort of exodus.
5. That the numbers of this census and the names of the tribal chiefs would be remembered and regarded as important enough to be remembered nearly a thousand years later by biblical authors is remarkable. One does suspect that the authors of Numbers cooked the books a bit to make the more important and respected tribes (Judah, for instance) look good with higher population numbers. (Of course the record of the census may, like much of the Old Testament, be facilely interpreted as nationalistic propaganda intended to aggrandize ancestors.)
6. One also wonders how the census would have been recorded since the only writing the Israelites could have known would have been Egyptian hieroglyphics.
7. The second month, Iyar, occurs in April-May.
8. The Levites are charged not only to protect the Tabernacle from the common people, but to protect the common people from Jehovah. It’s as if Jehovah was radioactive or a ferocious animal that needed to be caged. To approach Jehovah or to violate what he regarded as sacred meant death. His anger was not to be aroused or it meant destruction to the people. The Levites (Moses and Aaron were Levites -- what a coincidence!) were intermediaries between Jehovah and his Israelite worshipers --- and placaters. They, therefore, enjoyed special privileges, such as being exempt from military service. The Levites must have numbered in the tens of thousands. How would the Tabernacle find employment for all of them? Some, to be sure, could be priests, but how many priests could serve in a single place of worship. Many Levites would have to have been nothing more than glorified roustabouts who put up and took down the Tabernacle and its compound. What would the rest of them do? Would the Tabernacle have the need for thousands and thousands of “roustabouts”? -- even The Greatest Show on Earth doesn’t require so many.
One year after the Israelites had made their exodus from Egypt, on the first day of the second month, Jehovah spoke to Moses in the Tabernacle in the desert of Sinai. He instructed him, "Take a census of the entire population of Israel, recording each person's name, his family, and his tribe. You and Aaron must make a registry of every male who is twenty years of age or more and is able to bear arms. You are to be assisted in this by each of the tribal chiefs.
"The names of the chiefs and their tribes are as follows:
Reuben: Elizur, the son of Shedeur
Simeon: Shelumiel, the son of Zurishaddai
Judah: Hahshon, the son of Amminadab
Issachar: Nethanel, the son of Zuar
Zebulun: Eliab, the son of Helon
Joseph (Ephraim): Elishama, the son of Ammihud
Joseph (Manasseh): Gamaliel, the son of Pedahzur
Benjamin: Abidan, the son of Gideoni
Dan: Ahiezer, the son of Ammishaddai
Asher: Pagiel, the son of Ochran
Gad: Eliasaph, the son of Deuel
Naphtali: Ahira, the son of Enan
"These are the chosen leaders, the elders of the ancestral clans, the chiefs of the tribes of Israel."
Moses and Aaron summoned these leaders and, on that same day, assembled the entire population of Israel. All the people were listed according to their family and tribe and the men twenty years old and above were individually registered, just as Jehovah had instructed Moses. And so a census was taken there in the desert of Sinai.
Men twenty years old and above and able to bear arms were listed by name. The following is the tally from each of Israel's tribes:
Reuben, Israel's first born: 46,500
Simeon: 59,300
Gad: 45,650
Judah: 74,600
Issachar: 54,400
Zebulun: 57,400
Joseph (Ephraim): 40,500
Joseph (Manasseh): 32,200
Benjamin: 35,400
Dan: 62,700
Asher: 41,500
Naphtali: 53,400
These were the men registered by Moses, Aaron, and the chiefs representing the tribes of Israel. All men twenty years old and above and able to bear arms were listed by family. Their total number was 603,550.
Those of the ancestral tribe of Levi, however, were not counted with the others, for Jehovah had told Moses, "You should not count those of the tribe of Levi or include them in the census with the rest of the Israelites. The Levites are to be stewards of the Holy Tabernacle, its equipment and furnishings, everything it contains. They must tend and maintain it and transport it, and they must make their camp around it. When the Tabernacle is to be moved, they will take it down, and when it is to be set up again, it is they who will do it. If any unauthorized person approaches the Tabernacle, he is to be put to death. Each tribe of Israel will be assigned their own area in the encampment, marked with their tribal banner. But the Levites will camp around the Tabernacle so that I may not vent my wrath upon the people of Israel. They will guard and protect the Tabernacle."
The people of Israel did all that Jehovah had commanded Moses.
Notes
1. Numbers picks up the story of the Israelites a year after the Exodus, eleven months after their encampment beneath the holy mountain in Sinai. Presumably the Tabernacle and its furnishings described in Exodus have been built.
2. Taking a census makes sense from an administrative and logistical point of view. A new nation, forged from the tribes of Israel, descended from the sons of Jacob, was being formed, even if it had not yet reached the land on which it would settle. Although censuses date to the early history of Egypt, historically citizens have had an ambivalent attitude toward them. Numbering the populace has not always seemed benign, but has often been disparaged as the intrusive instrument of tyrants. --- It is interesting that in the New Testament Jesus would supposedly come to be born in Bethlehem because of a census.
3. A former census described in Exodus was taken in order to raise "money" through taxes. The purpose of this census is to lay a foundation for the organization of a national army.
4. The numbers given for the various tribes must be regarded as fanciful. A total of over 600,00 men able to bear arms would suggest a total population of 3 or 4 million, even more, if the Israelites were as prolific as the biblical texts suggest. If the Israelites had remained in Egypt for 400 or 430 years as the biblical texts claim, technically there might be enough time for such a population to accrue. However, since life spans in ancient times were short due to wars, disease, famine, poor nutrition, bad sanitation, and minimal medical care, it is very unlikely. The frenetic population boom of a slave class asserted by the text conflicts with the reality that in ancient times population numbers were often stable and growth, if any, was slow. (It should be mentioned that Israelite bondage being four centuries in length is problematic considering there were only 5 generations between Jacob and Moses!) It is sheer nonsense to entertain the idea that such a horde could subsist in the desert wastes of Sinai, let alone journey en masse under any sort of effective leadership. As has been noted before, an exodus of any more than a few thousand souls would have been impractical, if not impossible. And there is, in fact, no historical or archaeological evidence to support any sort of exodus.
5. That the numbers of this census and the names of the tribal chiefs would be remembered and regarded as important enough to be remembered nearly a thousand years later by biblical authors is remarkable. One does suspect that the authors of Numbers cooked the books a bit to make the more important and respected tribes (Judah, for instance) look good with higher population numbers. (Of course the record of the census may, like much of the Old Testament, be facilely interpreted as nationalistic propaganda intended to aggrandize ancestors.)
6. One also wonders how the census would have been recorded since the only writing the Israelites could have known would have been Egyptian hieroglyphics.
7. The second month, Iyar, occurs in April-May.
8. The Levites are charged not only to protect the Tabernacle from the common people, but to protect the common people from Jehovah. It’s as if Jehovah was radioactive or a ferocious animal that needed to be caged. To approach Jehovah or to violate what he regarded as sacred meant death. His anger was not to be aroused or it meant destruction to the people. The Levites (Moses and Aaron were Levites -- what a coincidence!) were intermediaries between Jehovah and his Israelite worshipers --- and placaters. They, therefore, enjoyed special privileges, such as being exempt from military service. The Levites must have numbered in the tens of thousands. How would the Tabernacle find employment for all of them? Some, to be sure, could be priests, but how many priests could serve in a single place of worship. Many Levites would have to have been nothing more than glorified roustabouts who put up and took down the Tabernacle and its compound. What would the rest of them do? Would the Tabernacle have the need for thousands and thousands of “roustabouts”? -- even The Greatest Show on Earth doesn’t require so many.
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Votive Offerings
(Leviticus 27:1 - 27:34)
Jehovah spoke again to Moses and told him to instruct the people of Israel, "If someone makes a votive offering to Jehovah consisting a human being, here are the values set for each kind of individual:
“A man between the age of 20 and 60 -- 50 shekels of silver (according to the weights used at the Tabernacle)
A woman between the age of 20 and 60 -- 30 shekels
A boy between the age of 5 and 20 -- 20 shekels
A girl between the age of 5 and 20 -- 10 shekels
A boy child between the ages of 1 month and 5 years -- 5 shekels
A girl child between the ages of 1 month and 5 years -- 3 shekels
A man older than 60 years of age -- 15 shekels
A woman older than 60 years of age -- 10 shekels
"If you wish to make a vow, but are too poor to pay the full amount, take the person to the priest, who will figure out a price based on what you can afford.
"If the votive offering is an animal, such an animal, provided that it is an offering acceptable to Jehovah, will be considered holy. Another cannot be exchanged or substituted for it, neither a better one for a worse one or vice versa, but if one is substituted then both the substitute and the original animal should be considered holy. If the votive offering is a ritually impure animal, one not acceptable to Jehovah, then it must be brought to the priest, who will determine its value, high or low. His assessment will be final, and if you want to buy back the animal you must pay the price set by the priest, plus 20 percent.
"If someone dedicates his house to Jehovah as a votive offering, then the priest must assess its value. Whether high or low, the price set by the priest will be final. And if the owner wishes to buy it back, he must pay the price set by the priest, plus 20 percent, for the house to belong to him again.
"If someone dedicates a piece of family property as a votive offering, its value will be determined by the amount of seed the land requires for planting, eg. 50 shekels for a homer of barley seed. If the land is dedicated during the Jubilee Year, that assessment remains. If field has been dedicated after the Jubilee Year, then the priest must calculate the number of years till the next jubilee and reduce the price accordingly. If someone who has dedicated the land wants to buy it back, for the field to become his own again he must pay the established price plus 20 percent. But if the piece of property has not been bought back by the time of the jubilee, or has been sold to someone else, the original owner will no longer be able to redeem it. When it is released on the Jubilee Year, it will forthwith become of the property of the priests, holy as land dedicated to Jehovah.
"If someone dedicates a piece of property that was purchased and not part of his family's ancestral lands, the priest will calculate its value up to the next Jubilee Year, and at the time of the dedication make the assessed value a sacred donation to Jehovah. At the time of the Jubilee Year the property must return to the one from whom it was purchased, the one who inherited it as an ancestral land.
"All payments must be assessed in shekels as measured by the weights used at the Tabernacle. (One shekel is equal to 20 gerahs.)
"You may not dedicate a first-born animal to Jehovah, since first-born cattle, sheep, and goats already belong to him. However, you may buy back the first-born of any ritually impure animal at the price determined by the priest, plus 20 percent. If it is not bought back, the priest will then sell it at its assessed value.
"Nothing owned by a person that has been designated as a permanent sacrifice to Jehovah can be bought back or sold, whether it is a person, an animal, or a piece of family land. Anything dedicated in this way becomes holy and the property of Jehovah. No person designated as such a sacrifice and marked for destruction can be redeemed; he must be killed.
"All the produce of the land, whether the grain of the fields or the fruits of the trees, is subjected to 10 percent tax that must be paid to Jehovah and becomes his holy property. Anyone who wishes to buy back what he has donated of his harvest must pay its value and an additional 20 percent. A similar tax of herds and flocks is imposed: every 10th animal should be counted and set aside as the holy property of Jehovah. You may not pick or choose between good and bad animals or make substitutions. If a substitution is made, then both animals become holy and may not be redeemed."
These are the commandments that Jehovah on the mountain in Sinai gave to Moses for the Israelites.
Notes
1. A shekel is equal to about .4 ounces. An adult man is worth as much as a good tea service, 20 ounces of silver being roughly $400 given the 2014 market price of silver. A homer is equal to about 300 pounds.
2. While it is somewhat disturbing to think that Jehovah would put a specific cash value on a human being, it is dismaying to realize how little value an older man or woman has compared to a younger one, worth a third as much or less. Apparently the wisdom and experience of age didn't count for much when the shekels were counted by the priests. Also of note is how little value a woman has compared to a man. That womanly virtues and talents were undervalued is not surprising -- they always have been, but in a society that placed great emphasis on the propagation of its population, one would have thought that a woman, at least one of child-bearing years, would have at least as much value as a man. One can conclude that the shekel values here itemized are base solely upon the ability to perform manual labor and menial tasks.
3. A votive offering, unlike the required peace offerings, guilt offerings, etc., is made to Jehovah in fulfillment of a vow. It is personal in nature, not a public duty. A man promises Jehovah a goat, if he has a good harvest. The goat would be the votive offering. Such is a common practice among believers of all religions, Christianity no less than others. In medieval times, for instance, a noble warrior would ask for God's help in a battle and, in the event of winning it, promises to donate to the church some precious object. Similarly, in modern times, a rich man might promise he will fund a new steeple for the church if his prayers are answered and his wife recovers from an illness. The votive offering is always a bribe to the deity in payment for his favorable intervention in human affairs. It assumes that the divine being needs to be instructed by mortals in how he should aid mankind and will not do good unless he is rewarded for it.
4. It is unclear here what happens to the human being who is given to Jehovah as a votive offering. Does he become a slave to the priests or a commodity to be sold by them? It is clear that persons who are given as permanent sacrifices, those that can't be bought back, are to be killed. Are these criminals? Are they unwanted slaves, troublesome foreigners, or despised family members? Or are they, as they most likely were, captives of war? Are they executed, stoned to death or whatever, or are they sacrificed on the altar, butchered and burned like a sheep or a steer?
5. Once any kind of votive offering is bought back, Jehovah's law makes sure that the priests make a tidy 20 percent profit on the deal. Most of Jehovah's statutes are all about the priesthood being needed and honored -- and being able to enrich itself. Things were hardly different in the medieval Christian church where there was more emphasis on wealth and power than on piety, (although, to be fair, both the Jehovan and the Christian religious establishment did practice charity and provided what we call social services).
Jehovah spoke again to Moses and told him to instruct the people of Israel, "If someone makes a votive offering to Jehovah consisting a human being, here are the values set for each kind of individual:
“A man between the age of 20 and 60 -- 50 shekels of silver (according to the weights used at the Tabernacle)
A woman between the age of 20 and 60 -- 30 shekels
A boy between the age of 5 and 20 -- 20 shekels
A girl between the age of 5 and 20 -- 10 shekels
A boy child between the ages of 1 month and 5 years -- 5 shekels
A girl child between the ages of 1 month and 5 years -- 3 shekels
A man older than 60 years of age -- 15 shekels
A woman older than 60 years of age -- 10 shekels
"If you wish to make a vow, but are too poor to pay the full amount, take the person to the priest, who will figure out a price based on what you can afford.
"If the votive offering is an animal, such an animal, provided that it is an offering acceptable to Jehovah, will be considered holy. Another cannot be exchanged or substituted for it, neither a better one for a worse one or vice versa, but if one is substituted then both the substitute and the original animal should be considered holy. If the votive offering is a ritually impure animal, one not acceptable to Jehovah, then it must be brought to the priest, who will determine its value, high or low. His assessment will be final, and if you want to buy back the animal you must pay the price set by the priest, plus 20 percent.
"If someone dedicates his house to Jehovah as a votive offering, then the priest must assess its value. Whether high or low, the price set by the priest will be final. And if the owner wishes to buy it back, he must pay the price set by the priest, plus 20 percent, for the house to belong to him again.
"If someone dedicates a piece of family property as a votive offering, its value will be determined by the amount of seed the land requires for planting, eg. 50 shekels for a homer of barley seed. If the land is dedicated during the Jubilee Year, that assessment remains. If field has been dedicated after the Jubilee Year, then the priest must calculate the number of years till the next jubilee and reduce the price accordingly. If someone who has dedicated the land wants to buy it back, for the field to become his own again he must pay the established price plus 20 percent. But if the piece of property has not been bought back by the time of the jubilee, or has been sold to someone else, the original owner will no longer be able to redeem it. When it is released on the Jubilee Year, it will forthwith become of the property of the priests, holy as land dedicated to Jehovah.
"If someone dedicates a piece of property that was purchased and not part of his family's ancestral lands, the priest will calculate its value up to the next Jubilee Year, and at the time of the dedication make the assessed value a sacred donation to Jehovah. At the time of the Jubilee Year the property must return to the one from whom it was purchased, the one who inherited it as an ancestral land.
"All payments must be assessed in shekels as measured by the weights used at the Tabernacle. (One shekel is equal to 20 gerahs.)
"You may not dedicate a first-born animal to Jehovah, since first-born cattle, sheep, and goats already belong to him. However, you may buy back the first-born of any ritually impure animal at the price determined by the priest, plus 20 percent. If it is not bought back, the priest will then sell it at its assessed value.
"Nothing owned by a person that has been designated as a permanent sacrifice to Jehovah can be bought back or sold, whether it is a person, an animal, or a piece of family land. Anything dedicated in this way becomes holy and the property of Jehovah. No person designated as such a sacrifice and marked for destruction can be redeemed; he must be killed.
"All the produce of the land, whether the grain of the fields or the fruits of the trees, is subjected to 10 percent tax that must be paid to Jehovah and becomes his holy property. Anyone who wishes to buy back what he has donated of his harvest must pay its value and an additional 20 percent. A similar tax of herds and flocks is imposed: every 10th animal should be counted and set aside as the holy property of Jehovah. You may not pick or choose between good and bad animals or make substitutions. If a substitution is made, then both animals become holy and may not be redeemed."
These are the commandments that Jehovah on the mountain in Sinai gave to Moses for the Israelites.
Notes
1. A shekel is equal to about .4 ounces. An adult man is worth as much as a good tea service, 20 ounces of silver being roughly $400 given the 2014 market price of silver. A homer is equal to about 300 pounds.
2. While it is somewhat disturbing to think that Jehovah would put a specific cash value on a human being, it is dismaying to realize how little value an older man or woman has compared to a younger one, worth a third as much or less. Apparently the wisdom and experience of age didn't count for much when the shekels were counted by the priests. Also of note is how little value a woman has compared to a man. That womanly virtues and talents were undervalued is not surprising -- they always have been, but in a society that placed great emphasis on the propagation of its population, one would have thought that a woman, at least one of child-bearing years, would have at least as much value as a man. One can conclude that the shekel values here itemized are base solely upon the ability to perform manual labor and menial tasks.
3. A votive offering, unlike the required peace offerings, guilt offerings, etc., is made to Jehovah in fulfillment of a vow. It is personal in nature, not a public duty. A man promises Jehovah a goat, if he has a good harvest. The goat would be the votive offering. Such is a common practice among believers of all religions, Christianity no less than others. In medieval times, for instance, a noble warrior would ask for God's help in a battle and, in the event of winning it, promises to donate to the church some precious object. Similarly, in modern times, a rich man might promise he will fund a new steeple for the church if his prayers are answered and his wife recovers from an illness. The votive offering is always a bribe to the deity in payment for his favorable intervention in human affairs. It assumes that the divine being needs to be instructed by mortals in how he should aid mankind and will not do good unless he is rewarded for it.
4. It is unclear here what happens to the human being who is given to Jehovah as a votive offering. Does he become a slave to the priests or a commodity to be sold by them? It is clear that persons who are given as permanent sacrifices, those that can't be bought back, are to be killed. Are these criminals? Are they unwanted slaves, troublesome foreigners, or despised family members? Or are they, as they most likely were, captives of war? Are they executed, stoned to death or whatever, or are they sacrificed on the altar, butchered and burned like a sheep or a steer?
5. Once any kind of votive offering is bought back, Jehovah's law makes sure that the priests make a tidy 20 percent profit on the deal. Most of Jehovah's statutes are all about the priesthood being needed and honored -- and being able to enrich itself. Things were hardly different in the medieval Christian church where there was more emphasis on wealth and power than on piety, (although, to be fair, both the Jehovan and the Christian religious establishment did practice charity and provided what we call social services).
Jehovah's Rewards and Punishments
(Leviticus 26:1 - 26:46)
"You must not make idols or carved images, or erect pillars or stone sculptures in your land for the purpose of worshiping them. Thus says Jehovah your god. You must keep my sabbaths and revere my Tabernacle. Thus says Jehovah your god.
"If you follow my statutes, respect my commandments and observe them faithfully, I will send you rain in good season. The land will yield its crops and the trees will bring forth their fruit. Your threshing will continue until it is time to harvest the grapes, and you will still be harvesting grapes when it is time to plant the grain. You will able to eat your fill and live securely on the land. I will bring peace to your land. You will be able to lie down to sleep without fear. I will banish the wild beasts from your land and no warfare will threaten your country. When you pursue your enemies, they will be routed. Five of you will put to flight a hundred of them, and a hundred, ten thousand! By your arms your enemies will be overcome.
"I will look with approval upon you. You will be fruitful and multiply. I will keep the pact I made with you. You will still be eating the grain of last year's harvest when it is time to store the new. I will place my Tabernacle among you and will not spurn you. My spirit will always be with you. I will be your god and you will be my people. I am Jehovah your god, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves. I broke the yoke of slavery that bound your neck, so that you could walk erect.
"However, if you do not heed me or obey these commandments, if you break my contract by rejecting my decrees, showing contempt for my laws, or ignoring my commands, then what follows will happen to you. Terrible calamity will fall precipitously upon you. Debilitating disease and fever will steal your sight and sap your strength. Your seeds will be planted in vain, for it will be your enemies who will eat the crop. I will turn against you so that you will be conquered by your enemies. Those who hate you will lord over you. You will flee even when no one pursues you.
"If, after all this, you still disobey me, I will punish you sevenfold for your sins. I will break your rebellious spirit. Your sky will become as dry as iron and your land as hard as copper. Your labor will all be to no purpose, because crops will not grow in your soil and the trees in your land will bear no fruit.
"If you still remain hostile toward me and refuse to obey me, then I will increase your afflictions sevenfold, in punishment for your sins. I will send wild beasts to attack you, to rob you of your children and prey upon your livestock. They will so decrease the population that your roads will be deserted and desolate.
"If, despite these afflictions, you haven't learned your lesson and are still hostile to me, then I will be hostile to you. I will afflict you sevenfold for your sins. In retribution for the breaking of my contract with you, I will bring warfare down upon you. You will seek refuge in your cities, but I will afflict you with disease and you will be delivered into the hands of your enemy. When I cut off your grain supply, it will only take ten women and a single oven to bake all the bread you have. The bread will be doled out by weight and when you eat your meager ration, it won't be enough to keep you from being hungry.
"If you then continue to disobey me and be hostile to me, my full wrath will vented upon you and I will punish you for your sins sevenfold. You will end up as cannibals, eating the flesh of your children. I will destroy your pagan shrines and topple your altars. Your corpses will be heaped upon the ruins of your smashed idols. I will revile you. I will devastate your cities and lay waste your places of worship. I will find no pleasure in the otherwise pleasurable aroma of your burnt offerings. I will make the land a place of such desolation that even the enemies occupying it will be shocked. I will scatter you among foreign lands where you will be harassed by warfare. Your country will be a wasteland and your cities will lie in ruins. The land in its desolation will have a Sabbath Year every year. While you are in exile in the land of your enemies and the land remains desolate, the land will enjoy the rest and the Sabbath Years it was deprived of when you were living there.
“You who survive will live in the land of your enemies with such fear that even so much as the rustle of a wind-blown leaf will drive you to into a panicked flight. You will flee as if from an army, but will fall and stumble over one another, even when no one pursues you. You will have no strength to oppose your foes. You will find death in foreign countries and the lands of your enemies will swallow you up. Those who do survive will waste away there, not only because of their own sins, but because of the sins of their ancestors.
"But, if finally my people will confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors, if they will regret their infidelity and hostility to me, (which made me so hostile to them they I banished them to the land of their enemies), if their hard hearts will be softened and they will make amends for their trespasses, then I will remember the contract I made with Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham and remember the land I promised them. That land, evacuated by them, will enjoy a sabbath while they are absent making amends for their iniquity, for continually ignoring my ordinances and rejecting my regulations. Yet, despite that, when they are in exile in the land of their enemies, I will not spurn them or detest them so much as to utterly destroy them or break my contract with them, for I am still their god Jehovah. For their sakes, I will remember the ancient contract I made with their ancestors when, before the eyes of all the world, I brought them out of Egypt to be their god. Thus says Jehovah."
These are the laws and statutes and decrees that Jehovah gave to Moses on the mountain in Sinai as part of the contract between himself and the Israelites.
Notes
1. The prohibition against images, statues, idols, etc. is specific, but only if they are used for idolatrous worship. It is not, therefore, forbidden to make a statue, a painting, and carving of anything; worshiping them is what is sinful. This prohibition has been too strictly interpreted by many religious who regard the Old Testament as scripture.
2. Success, good fortune, peace and prosperity are all predicated on ones' obedience to Jehovah and proper observance of his laws and statutes. Good things will happen to those who are good, evil things to those who are evil -- this is the kind of earthly justice we all yearn for and hope for. But experience repeatedly tells us it does not exist. Jehovah makes these glowing promises to his followers. When they are not fulfilled there is always the excuse that his people have not been holy enough, that their sins, and there are always sins, have deprive them of Jehovah's blessings. This mindset is not peculiar to the Israelites or even to the ancient world. That God in this earthly life will reward the righteous and punish the sinful is a belief that persists among the faithful of all religions, however much empirical evidence militates against its reality.
3. The worship of Jehovah was apparently so distasteful to the Israelites that they had to be bribed and threatened to be observant. The inducements to devotion are so great, the punishments that befall the apostate so horrendous, it is hard to understand why would the Israelites not remain dutifully faithful. But there is always skepticism and obstinacy, indulgence and passion and venality. Jehovah doesn't seem to be able to compel obedience or to change the nature of his errant worshipers.
4. Jehovah (or the authors of the Old Testament) always exhibits a taste for the melodramatic and seems to derive almost sadistic pleasure from florid descriptions of cataclysm, catastrophe, and calamity on an epic, indeed biblical scale. Jehovah, definitely not a turn-the-other-cheek kind of chap, takes delight in threatening evil and violence upon his people. He is rather like a stern father who must never be crossed or challenged, who demands unquestioning obedience, and who will find any excuse to get out the strap and give his unworthy offspring a good lickin'.
5. The Israelites are to be punished not only for their own sins, but for that of their ancestors. The concept of collective and ancestral guilt is well established in the Old Testament and promoted by Jehovah, although it is generally rejected by moderns who feel that a man is responsible only for his own actions.
6. The prophecies of disaster, conquest and exile, are obvious references to the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzer and the subsequent conquest and captivity of the Israelites from the Kingdom of Judah. Even the cannibalism refers to a recorded incident during that siege. To the writers of the Old Testament, very conscious of their audience, these events were recent history. Readers needed to be comforted by the knowledge that Jehovah must have been aware of this many hundreds of years before.
"You must not make idols or carved images, or erect pillars or stone sculptures in your land for the purpose of worshiping them. Thus says Jehovah your god. You must keep my sabbaths and revere my Tabernacle. Thus says Jehovah your god.
"If you follow my statutes, respect my commandments and observe them faithfully, I will send you rain in good season. The land will yield its crops and the trees will bring forth their fruit. Your threshing will continue until it is time to harvest the grapes, and you will still be harvesting grapes when it is time to plant the grain. You will able to eat your fill and live securely on the land. I will bring peace to your land. You will be able to lie down to sleep without fear. I will banish the wild beasts from your land and no warfare will threaten your country. When you pursue your enemies, they will be routed. Five of you will put to flight a hundred of them, and a hundred, ten thousand! By your arms your enemies will be overcome.
"I will look with approval upon you. You will be fruitful and multiply. I will keep the pact I made with you. You will still be eating the grain of last year's harvest when it is time to store the new. I will place my Tabernacle among you and will not spurn you. My spirit will always be with you. I will be your god and you will be my people. I am Jehovah your god, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves. I broke the yoke of slavery that bound your neck, so that you could walk erect.
"However, if you do not heed me or obey these commandments, if you break my contract by rejecting my decrees, showing contempt for my laws, or ignoring my commands, then what follows will happen to you. Terrible calamity will fall precipitously upon you. Debilitating disease and fever will steal your sight and sap your strength. Your seeds will be planted in vain, for it will be your enemies who will eat the crop. I will turn against you so that you will be conquered by your enemies. Those who hate you will lord over you. You will flee even when no one pursues you.
"If, after all this, you still disobey me, I will punish you sevenfold for your sins. I will break your rebellious spirit. Your sky will become as dry as iron and your land as hard as copper. Your labor will all be to no purpose, because crops will not grow in your soil and the trees in your land will bear no fruit.
"If you still remain hostile toward me and refuse to obey me, then I will increase your afflictions sevenfold, in punishment for your sins. I will send wild beasts to attack you, to rob you of your children and prey upon your livestock. They will so decrease the population that your roads will be deserted and desolate.
"If, despite these afflictions, you haven't learned your lesson and are still hostile to me, then I will be hostile to you. I will afflict you sevenfold for your sins. In retribution for the breaking of my contract with you, I will bring warfare down upon you. You will seek refuge in your cities, but I will afflict you with disease and you will be delivered into the hands of your enemy. When I cut off your grain supply, it will only take ten women and a single oven to bake all the bread you have. The bread will be doled out by weight and when you eat your meager ration, it won't be enough to keep you from being hungry.
"If you then continue to disobey me and be hostile to me, my full wrath will vented upon you and I will punish you for your sins sevenfold. You will end up as cannibals, eating the flesh of your children. I will destroy your pagan shrines and topple your altars. Your corpses will be heaped upon the ruins of your smashed idols. I will revile you. I will devastate your cities and lay waste your places of worship. I will find no pleasure in the otherwise pleasurable aroma of your burnt offerings. I will make the land a place of such desolation that even the enemies occupying it will be shocked. I will scatter you among foreign lands where you will be harassed by warfare. Your country will be a wasteland and your cities will lie in ruins. The land in its desolation will have a Sabbath Year every year. While you are in exile in the land of your enemies and the land remains desolate, the land will enjoy the rest and the Sabbath Years it was deprived of when you were living there.
“You who survive will live in the land of your enemies with such fear that even so much as the rustle of a wind-blown leaf will drive you to into a panicked flight. You will flee as if from an army, but will fall and stumble over one another, even when no one pursues you. You will have no strength to oppose your foes. You will find death in foreign countries and the lands of your enemies will swallow you up. Those who do survive will waste away there, not only because of their own sins, but because of the sins of their ancestors.
"But, if finally my people will confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors, if they will regret their infidelity and hostility to me, (which made me so hostile to them they I banished them to the land of their enemies), if their hard hearts will be softened and they will make amends for their trespasses, then I will remember the contract I made with Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham and remember the land I promised them. That land, evacuated by them, will enjoy a sabbath while they are absent making amends for their iniquity, for continually ignoring my ordinances and rejecting my regulations. Yet, despite that, when they are in exile in the land of their enemies, I will not spurn them or detest them so much as to utterly destroy them or break my contract with them, for I am still their god Jehovah. For their sakes, I will remember the ancient contract I made with their ancestors when, before the eyes of all the world, I brought them out of Egypt to be their god. Thus says Jehovah."
These are the laws and statutes and decrees that Jehovah gave to Moses on the mountain in Sinai as part of the contract between himself and the Israelites.
Notes
1. The prohibition against images, statues, idols, etc. is specific, but only if they are used for idolatrous worship. It is not, therefore, forbidden to make a statue, a painting, and carving of anything; worshiping them is what is sinful. This prohibition has been too strictly interpreted by many religious who regard the Old Testament as scripture.
2. Success, good fortune, peace and prosperity are all predicated on ones' obedience to Jehovah and proper observance of his laws and statutes. Good things will happen to those who are good, evil things to those who are evil -- this is the kind of earthly justice we all yearn for and hope for. But experience repeatedly tells us it does not exist. Jehovah makes these glowing promises to his followers. When they are not fulfilled there is always the excuse that his people have not been holy enough, that their sins, and there are always sins, have deprive them of Jehovah's blessings. This mindset is not peculiar to the Israelites or even to the ancient world. That God in this earthly life will reward the righteous and punish the sinful is a belief that persists among the faithful of all religions, however much empirical evidence militates against its reality.
3. The worship of Jehovah was apparently so distasteful to the Israelites that they had to be bribed and threatened to be observant. The inducements to devotion are so great, the punishments that befall the apostate so horrendous, it is hard to understand why would the Israelites not remain dutifully faithful. But there is always skepticism and obstinacy, indulgence and passion and venality. Jehovah doesn't seem to be able to compel obedience or to change the nature of his errant worshipers.
4. Jehovah (or the authors of the Old Testament) always exhibits a taste for the melodramatic and seems to derive almost sadistic pleasure from florid descriptions of cataclysm, catastrophe, and calamity on an epic, indeed biblical scale. Jehovah, definitely not a turn-the-other-cheek kind of chap, takes delight in threatening evil and violence upon his people. He is rather like a stern father who must never be crossed or challenged, who demands unquestioning obedience, and who will find any excuse to get out the strap and give his unworthy offspring a good lickin'.
5. The Israelites are to be punished not only for their own sins, but for that of their ancestors. The concept of collective and ancestral guilt is well established in the Old Testament and promoted by Jehovah, although it is generally rejected by moderns who feel that a man is responsible only for his own actions.
6. The prophecies of disaster, conquest and exile, are obvious references to the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzer and the subsequent conquest and captivity of the Israelites from the Kingdom of Judah. Even the cannibalism refers to a recorded incident during that siege. To the writers of the Old Testament, very conscious of their audience, these events were recent history. Readers needed to be comforted by the knowledge that Jehovah must have been aware of this many hundreds of years before.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Sale of Slaves
(Leviticus 25:35- 25:55)
"If a fellow Israelite becomes destitute and cannot support himself, you should assist him as you would a foreigner or resident alien. If you respect your god, then do not charge him interest or make a profit at his expense, so that he may afford to live in the community. Do not charge interest on the money you may lend him or sell him food at a profit. Thus says Jehovah your god, who brought you out Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your god.
"If a fellow Israelite becomes destitute and must sell himself to you, treat him not as a slave, but as any other hired hand or migrant worker. He will only be in your service till the next Jubilee Year, at which time he and his family will have no obligation to you, but will be able to return to their own clan and ancestral lands. Since I freed the people of Israel from Egypt, they are my servants and they must not be sold into slavery. Show your respect for your god by not treating them as slaves.
"However, you may purchase slaves, both male and female, from neighboring countries and from among the foreigners that reside temporarily with you or even foreigners that have been born among your people. You may treat them as your personal property, chattels that may be bequeathed to your children as a permanent inheritance. But while you may regard foreigners as your slaves, you must never regard a fellow Israelite as such.
"If a resident alien becomes wealthy and he, or a member of his family purchases a fellow Israelite who has become impoverished, the Israelite retains the right to have his freedom bought back. A member of his family, an uncle or cousin or any blood relation, may do so -- or even the Israelite himself, if he is able to acquire sufficient wealth. The buyer and Israelite who has sold himself must calculate the price based upon the time to the next Jubilee Year from the date when the purchase was made and at a rate that a hired worker would normally be paid. (If many years remain till the next Jubilee Year, then a larger price will have to be paid for the Israelite to gain his freedom; if only a few years remain till the Jubilee Year, then a proportionately smaller amount is paid.) The foreigner must regard the purchased Israelite only as a worker who has been hired on a yearly basis and must not be allowed to treat your fellow Israelite as a slave. Any Israelite whose freedom has not been purchased before the Jubilee Year arrives will automatically be freed at that time, along with his children.
"The people of Israel belong to me. They are my servants that I brought of Egypt. Thus says Jehovah your god."
Notes
1. We see here more indications of the tribalistic attitude being reinforced by Jehovah's commands. These within the tribe are treated differently than those outside the tribe. Those within must not be charged interest on loans, profit must not be taken on food sold to the needy among them, and slaves must not be taken from within the tribe. Treatment of those outside the tribe is different. It's OK to take them as slaves, buy and sell them as mere property, for to Jehovah human beings have a different value depending on what tribe they belong to. Tribalism was the prevailing mindset in ancient times (and after), weakened only by the political and legal structures of the great empires, those of the Persians, the Hellenes, and the Romans. The moral equality of men would be a concept promulgated later by philosophies such as Stoicism and religions such as Christianity.
2. Any moral imperatives presented here are relative, not absolute: they are based solely on what is pleasing to Jehovah and what supports his personal pride. Israelites must be treated well for the sole reason that they are Jehovah's people, his servants, his property, not because of any overarching moral responsibility or concepts of righteousness or humanity.
"If a fellow Israelite becomes destitute and cannot support himself, you should assist him as you would a foreigner or resident alien. If you respect your god, then do not charge him interest or make a profit at his expense, so that he may afford to live in the community. Do not charge interest on the money you may lend him or sell him food at a profit. Thus says Jehovah your god, who brought you out Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your god.
"If a fellow Israelite becomes destitute and must sell himself to you, treat him not as a slave, but as any other hired hand or migrant worker. He will only be in your service till the next Jubilee Year, at which time he and his family will have no obligation to you, but will be able to return to their own clan and ancestral lands. Since I freed the people of Israel from Egypt, they are my servants and they must not be sold into slavery. Show your respect for your god by not treating them as slaves.
"However, you may purchase slaves, both male and female, from neighboring countries and from among the foreigners that reside temporarily with you or even foreigners that have been born among your people. You may treat them as your personal property, chattels that may be bequeathed to your children as a permanent inheritance. But while you may regard foreigners as your slaves, you must never regard a fellow Israelite as such.
"If a resident alien becomes wealthy and he, or a member of his family purchases a fellow Israelite who has become impoverished, the Israelite retains the right to have his freedom bought back. A member of his family, an uncle or cousin or any blood relation, may do so -- or even the Israelite himself, if he is able to acquire sufficient wealth. The buyer and Israelite who has sold himself must calculate the price based upon the time to the next Jubilee Year from the date when the purchase was made and at a rate that a hired worker would normally be paid. (If many years remain till the next Jubilee Year, then a larger price will have to be paid for the Israelite to gain his freedom; if only a few years remain till the Jubilee Year, then a proportionately smaller amount is paid.) The foreigner must regard the purchased Israelite only as a worker who has been hired on a yearly basis and must not be allowed to treat your fellow Israelite as a slave. Any Israelite whose freedom has not been purchased before the Jubilee Year arrives will automatically be freed at that time, along with his children.
"The people of Israel belong to me. They are my servants that I brought of Egypt. Thus says Jehovah your god."
Notes
1. We see here more indications of the tribalistic attitude being reinforced by Jehovah's commands. These within the tribe are treated differently than those outside the tribe. Those within must not be charged interest on loans, profit must not be taken on food sold to the needy among them, and slaves must not be taken from within the tribe. Treatment of those outside the tribe is different. It's OK to take them as slaves, buy and sell them as mere property, for to Jehovah human beings have a different value depending on what tribe they belong to. Tribalism was the prevailing mindset in ancient times (and after), weakened only by the political and legal structures of the great empires, those of the Persians, the Hellenes, and the Romans. The moral equality of men would be a concept promulgated later by philosophies such as Stoicism and religions such as Christianity.
2. Any moral imperatives presented here are relative, not absolute: they are based solely on what is pleasing to Jehovah and what supports his personal pride. Israelites must be treated well for the sole reason that they are Jehovah's people, his servants, his property, not because of any overarching moral responsibility or concepts of righteousness or humanity.
Sale of Land
(Leviticus 25:14 - 25:34)
"When you sell land to any of your own people, or buy land from them, do not cheat one another. When you buy land from a neighbor, the price should be based upon the number of years since the last Jubilee Year. The seller must take into account the number of years until the next jubilee. The more years there are until the next jubilee, the higher the price, the fewer the years, the lower the price. The reason for this is that the person selling you the land is actually selling a certain number of harvests. Show respect to your god by not cheating each other. Thus says your god Jehovah.
"Observe my statutes and obey my decrees and you will live securely in the land. The land will produce bountiful harvests, you will be able to eat your fill and live in security. But you might ask, 'What will we eat on the seventh year, since we are not allowed to plant or harvest crops during that year?' Rest assured that I will so bless your fields on the sixth year that the land will yield a crop that will last for three years. When you plant your fields in the eighth year you will still be eating the large crop from the sixth year. (In fact you will still be eating it when the new crop is being harvested on the ninth year!)
"You cannot sell the land permanently, for it belongs to me; you live upon it only as a resident alien would. When land is purchased, the right of the seller to buy it back must be honored. If one of your fellow Israelites falls into poverty and is forced to sell a piece of family property, a close relative should have the opportunity to reclaim it for him. If there is no family member to do so, but the original owner acquires enough wealth to buy it back, he may do so from the person he sold it to, after figuring a discount for the number of years to the next Jubilee. In this way, the original owner may return to his land. If, however, he cannot afford to pay for his land, it must remain with the new owner until the next Jubilee Year. At that time the property will revert to the original owner, who can live again on his own land.
"Anyone who sells a dwelling in a walled city has the right to reclaim it up to a full year after the purchase. During that year he has the right to buy it back, but if it is not bought back within the year, then the sale of the dwelling will become final. It will become the permanent property of the buyer and not to be returned in the Jubilee Year. However, a dwelling in a village, that is, an unwalled settlement, is to be treated like any other property in the countryside. It may be bought back anytime by the original owner and must be returned to him in the Jubilee Year.
"Members of the tribe of Levi retain the right to buy back any house in the towns belonging to them. Real estate sold by the Levites or property in the towns belonging to them must be returned to them during the Jubilee Year, since the property in their towns are their sole inheritance in Israel. The pastureland around the Levite towns may not be sold at all and is their permanent possession."
Notes
1. Laws concerning the disposition of land seem absurd to promulgate at a time when the migrant Israelites own no land and will not do so for several decades. But the chickens are being well counted before they hatch and the far-sighted Jehovah is supposedly establishing the ground rules long before the game is to be played. (Pardon the mixed metaphor!) It must be reiterated that Levitical law was obviously not established with a divine wave of the hand on Sinai, but evolved over many generations, many hundreds of years. To give custom and human-devised law authority, it is made out to be the command of the national deity -- standard practice among ancient and primitive societies.
2. Jehovah guarantees that there will be good harvests on the sixth year so that on the seventh year the land may lay idle. Really! Jehovah will apparently continually manipulate and manage the weather to benefit the Israelites and that bountiful harvests are assured if the Israelites follow his will. The idea that God (or, more commonly, the gods) actively controls climatic conditions and that every "act of God" is divinely ordained is an old one. For it has always been difficult for man to acknowledge that the venting of Nature's wrath, a drought, a flood, a hurricane, or a tornado, is simply a purposeless, random event. A companion to this view is that the righteous, those favored by the gods, will be rewarded with good fortune: crops yields are in direct proportion to the piety of the farmer.
3. Property and land ownership was regarded differently in Hebrew society than it is today. Firstly, all the land belongs to Jehovah. No one else can really own the land. (This is not conceptually dissimilar to monarchial nations where the crown technically owns all the land.) In most cases, an Israelite merely holds purchased property for a period of time, but families do seem to have permanent ancestral rights over certain tracts of land. It is to be assumed that upon settlement in Canaan there will be allotments of land to tribes, clans, and families, rather the way William the Conqueror divided up England after the Conquest. Any sale of these allotments will be more like a leasing agreement with the land reverting to the original owner after a period of time, here, by the advent of the Jubilee Year that occurs every 50 years. The original owner has the right to terminate at his discretion what is tantamount to a lease. The difference, though, between this arrangement and a lease is that here the "leasee" must make the entire payment up front. In modern terms, it would work like this: Pete wants to expand his farm and would like to plant wheat on a tract of land owned by Joe. He is willing to pay $1000 a year for the land. That's OK with Joe. Since it’s 12 years until the next Jubilee Year, Pete must fork over to Joe $12,000. He can then farm the land for 12 years. At the end of that time he must give it back to Joe. If Joe decides he wants the land back after 6 years time, he has the right to rescind their agreement, but he must give Pete $6000 to get his land back. If he can't afford to do so, he has to wait until the Jubilee Year when it will be returned to him without charge. This was an agrarian plan not without merit. It prevented the disenfranchisement of the poor and the creation of a permanently landless and, therefore, restive and disgruntled class of people, yet it did not impede those who were ambiguous, hard-working, and savvy from acquiring wealth. Ownership of land has been a sticking point in many, if not most societies, ancient and modern. Special problems are created when the indigenous population owns all the land, but is idle, while hard-working, ambitious immigrants are barred from owning property, or, when the ambitious immigrants buy up all the land and leave the indigenous people landless and destitute. The Hebrews found an admirable way of avoiding these extreme situations.
4. We see this early on in the history of civilization a difference between the city and the country/small town. Final after a period of a year are sales of dwellings in cities (in ancient and medieval times, any settlement that had a wall around it), unlike the sale of dwellings in towns, or of farmland and pastures. Cities have always attracted immigrants, foreigners, merchants, and travelers, a turnover of a diverse population. Different rules had to be in force. This is also due to the fact that city-dwellers probably didn’t own farmlands or pastures upon which they could subsist. The prosperity of even these ancient cities would depend upon the ability of its inhabitants to buy and sell freely, to transfer property and real estate.
5. The Levites, the tribe from which the priests of Jehovah come, would not receive the same sort of land allotment the other tribes did. They could, therefore, claim special, compensatory privileges. They made sure that they could, since it is they who are writing the rules, as is evidenced by the name of this book.
"When you sell land to any of your own people, or buy land from them, do not cheat one another. When you buy land from a neighbor, the price should be based upon the number of years since the last Jubilee Year. The seller must take into account the number of years until the next jubilee. The more years there are until the next jubilee, the higher the price, the fewer the years, the lower the price. The reason for this is that the person selling you the land is actually selling a certain number of harvests. Show respect to your god by not cheating each other. Thus says your god Jehovah.
"Observe my statutes and obey my decrees and you will live securely in the land. The land will produce bountiful harvests, you will be able to eat your fill and live in security. But you might ask, 'What will we eat on the seventh year, since we are not allowed to plant or harvest crops during that year?' Rest assured that I will so bless your fields on the sixth year that the land will yield a crop that will last for three years. When you plant your fields in the eighth year you will still be eating the large crop from the sixth year. (In fact you will still be eating it when the new crop is being harvested on the ninth year!)
"You cannot sell the land permanently, for it belongs to me; you live upon it only as a resident alien would. When land is purchased, the right of the seller to buy it back must be honored. If one of your fellow Israelites falls into poverty and is forced to sell a piece of family property, a close relative should have the opportunity to reclaim it for him. If there is no family member to do so, but the original owner acquires enough wealth to buy it back, he may do so from the person he sold it to, after figuring a discount for the number of years to the next Jubilee. In this way, the original owner may return to his land. If, however, he cannot afford to pay for his land, it must remain with the new owner until the next Jubilee Year. At that time the property will revert to the original owner, who can live again on his own land.
"Anyone who sells a dwelling in a walled city has the right to reclaim it up to a full year after the purchase. During that year he has the right to buy it back, but if it is not bought back within the year, then the sale of the dwelling will become final. It will become the permanent property of the buyer and not to be returned in the Jubilee Year. However, a dwelling in a village, that is, an unwalled settlement, is to be treated like any other property in the countryside. It may be bought back anytime by the original owner and must be returned to him in the Jubilee Year.
"Members of the tribe of Levi retain the right to buy back any house in the towns belonging to them. Real estate sold by the Levites or property in the towns belonging to them must be returned to them during the Jubilee Year, since the property in their towns are their sole inheritance in Israel. The pastureland around the Levite towns may not be sold at all and is their permanent possession."
Notes
1. Laws concerning the disposition of land seem absurd to promulgate at a time when the migrant Israelites own no land and will not do so for several decades. But the chickens are being well counted before they hatch and the far-sighted Jehovah is supposedly establishing the ground rules long before the game is to be played. (Pardon the mixed metaphor!) It must be reiterated that Levitical law was obviously not established with a divine wave of the hand on Sinai, but evolved over many generations, many hundreds of years. To give custom and human-devised law authority, it is made out to be the command of the national deity -- standard practice among ancient and primitive societies.
2. Jehovah guarantees that there will be good harvests on the sixth year so that on the seventh year the land may lay idle. Really! Jehovah will apparently continually manipulate and manage the weather to benefit the Israelites and that bountiful harvests are assured if the Israelites follow his will. The idea that God (or, more commonly, the gods) actively controls climatic conditions and that every "act of God" is divinely ordained is an old one. For it has always been difficult for man to acknowledge that the venting of Nature's wrath, a drought, a flood, a hurricane, or a tornado, is simply a purposeless, random event. A companion to this view is that the righteous, those favored by the gods, will be rewarded with good fortune: crops yields are in direct proportion to the piety of the farmer.
3. Property and land ownership was regarded differently in Hebrew society than it is today. Firstly, all the land belongs to Jehovah. No one else can really own the land. (This is not conceptually dissimilar to monarchial nations where the crown technically owns all the land.) In most cases, an Israelite merely holds purchased property for a period of time, but families do seem to have permanent ancestral rights over certain tracts of land. It is to be assumed that upon settlement in Canaan there will be allotments of land to tribes, clans, and families, rather the way William the Conqueror divided up England after the Conquest. Any sale of these allotments will be more like a leasing agreement with the land reverting to the original owner after a period of time, here, by the advent of the Jubilee Year that occurs every 50 years. The original owner has the right to terminate at his discretion what is tantamount to a lease. The difference, though, between this arrangement and a lease is that here the "leasee" must make the entire payment up front. In modern terms, it would work like this: Pete wants to expand his farm and would like to plant wheat on a tract of land owned by Joe. He is willing to pay $1000 a year for the land. That's OK with Joe. Since it’s 12 years until the next Jubilee Year, Pete must fork over to Joe $12,000. He can then farm the land for 12 years. At the end of that time he must give it back to Joe. If Joe decides he wants the land back after 6 years time, he has the right to rescind their agreement, but he must give Pete $6000 to get his land back. If he can't afford to do so, he has to wait until the Jubilee Year when it will be returned to him without charge. This was an agrarian plan not without merit. It prevented the disenfranchisement of the poor and the creation of a permanently landless and, therefore, restive and disgruntled class of people, yet it did not impede those who were ambiguous, hard-working, and savvy from acquiring wealth. Ownership of land has been a sticking point in many, if not most societies, ancient and modern. Special problems are created when the indigenous population owns all the land, but is idle, while hard-working, ambitious immigrants are barred from owning property, or, when the ambitious immigrants buy up all the land and leave the indigenous people landless and destitute. The Hebrews found an admirable way of avoiding these extreme situations.
4. We see this early on in the history of civilization a difference between the city and the country/small town. Final after a period of a year are sales of dwellings in cities (in ancient and medieval times, any settlement that had a wall around it), unlike the sale of dwellings in towns, or of farmland and pastures. Cities have always attracted immigrants, foreigners, merchants, and travelers, a turnover of a diverse population. Different rules had to be in force. This is also due to the fact that city-dwellers probably didn’t own farmlands or pastures upon which they could subsist. The prosperity of even these ancient cities would depend upon the ability of its inhabitants to buy and sell freely, to transfer property and real estate.
5. The Levites, the tribe from which the priests of Jehovah come, would not receive the same sort of land allotment the other tribes did. They could, therefore, claim special, compensatory privileges. They made sure that they could, since it is they who are writing the rules, as is evidenced by the name of this book.
Sabbath and Jubilee Years
(Leviticus 25:1 - 25:13)
When Moses was on the mountain in Sinai, Jehovah told him to give the following instructions to the people of Israel, "When you have settled upon the land I am giving you, the land itself must observe a Sabbath, a time of rest, every 7 years. For 6 years you should plant your fields, prune your vineyards and harvest your crops, but the 7th year must be a Sabbath year of total rest. During that year, devoted to Jehovah, you must not doing any planting or pruning. You must not harvest what has grown untended in your fields, or pick the fruit of your unpruned vines. It must be a year of complete rest for the land. However, whatever the land yields during the Sabbath Year will be subsistence for yourself, your male and female slaves, the hired hands and migrant workers who live with you, as well as your livestock and the wild animals on your property. Whatever grows wild on the land may be eaten.
"Counting off 7 weeks of sabbath years, that is, 7 times seven years, the result adds up to 49 years. On the Day of Atonement (on the 10th day of seven month, Tishri) of the 5oth year a ram's horn should sound loudly throughout the land. The 50th year will be regarded as holy, and liberty will be proclaimed throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It will be for you a jubilee. Everyone should return to his ancestral lands and to his own family. The 50th year will be a jubilee for you. You must not plant or harvest what has grown untended in your fields, or pick the fruit of your untended vines. For this is the Jubilee Year, holy to you. You must eat only what grows wild on your land. In this Jubilee Year each person must return to his own property."
Notes
1. The concept of letting fields lie fallow every few years is a sound and long-observed agricultural practice. However, letting all of one's fields go untilled for a year would seem unwise, since it is impossible to predict whether there will be a good harvest or not. A bad harvest before the Sabbath Year would result in a hungry community.
2. The demand that on the Sabbath Year one must leave to rot on the vine and in the field any fruits and crops that might grow on their own seems an incredible waste. But the commands of Jehovah, arbitrary as they are, must be obeyed.
3. On the Jubilee Year everyone is to return to his family and ancestral property. One wonders to what extent Israelites, even in later times, would have traveled and settled away from where they were born.
When Moses was on the mountain in Sinai, Jehovah told him to give the following instructions to the people of Israel, "When you have settled upon the land I am giving you, the land itself must observe a Sabbath, a time of rest, every 7 years. For 6 years you should plant your fields, prune your vineyards and harvest your crops, but the 7th year must be a Sabbath year of total rest. During that year, devoted to Jehovah, you must not doing any planting or pruning. You must not harvest what has grown untended in your fields, or pick the fruit of your unpruned vines. It must be a year of complete rest for the land. However, whatever the land yields during the Sabbath Year will be subsistence for yourself, your male and female slaves, the hired hands and migrant workers who live with you, as well as your livestock and the wild animals on your property. Whatever grows wild on the land may be eaten.
"Counting off 7 weeks of sabbath years, that is, 7 times seven years, the result adds up to 49 years. On the Day of Atonement (on the 10th day of seven month, Tishri) of the 5oth year a ram's horn should sound loudly throughout the land. The 50th year will be regarded as holy, and liberty will be proclaimed throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It will be for you a jubilee. Everyone should return to his ancestral lands and to his own family. The 50th year will be a jubilee for you. You must not plant or harvest what has grown untended in your fields, or pick the fruit of your untended vines. For this is the Jubilee Year, holy to you. You must eat only what grows wild on your land. In this Jubilee Year each person must return to his own property."
Notes
1. The concept of letting fields lie fallow every few years is a sound and long-observed agricultural practice. However, letting all of one's fields go untilled for a year would seem unwise, since it is impossible to predict whether there will be a good harvest or not. A bad harvest before the Sabbath Year would result in a hungry community.
2. The demand that on the Sabbath Year one must leave to rot on the vine and in the field any fruits and crops that might grow on their own seems an incredible waste. But the commands of Jehovah, arbitrary as they are, must be obeyed.
3. On the Jubilee Year everyone is to return to his family and ancestral property. One wonders to what extent Israelites, even in later times, would have traveled and settled away from where they were born.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)