Old Testament Ethics for the People of God

Christopher J.H. Wright

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780830864942
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Nothing confuses Christian ethics quite like the Old Testament. Some faithful readers struggle through its pages and conclude that they must obey its moral laws but may disregard its ceremonial and civil laws. Others abandon its teaching altogether in favor of a strictly New Testament ethic. Neither option, argues Chris Wright, gives the Old Testament its due.In this innovative approach to Old Testament ethics--fully revised, updated and expanded since its first appearance in 1983 as Living as the People of God (An Eye for an Eye in North America) and including material from Walking in the Ways of the Lord--Wright examines a theological, social and economic framework for Old Testament ethics. Then he explores a variety of themes in relation to contemporary issues: economics, the land and the poor; politics and a world of nations; law and justice; society and culture; and the way of the individual.This fresh, illuminating study provides a clear basis for a biblical ethic that is faithful to the God of both Testaments.

PART ONE

A STRUCTURE FOR OLD TESTAMENT ETHICS

1. THE THEOLOGICAL ANGLE

A historian of comparative legal systems in Europe was once asked to summarize the essential differences he had observed in different national cultures in their approach to law and ethics. ‘It’s simple,’ he said. ‘In Germany, everything is prohibited, except that which is permitted. In France, everything is permitted, except that which is prohibited. In Russia, everything is prohibited, including that which is permitted. And in Italy everything is permitted, including that which is prohibited.’

Ethical systems display a similar variety throughout history and culture. That variety can be seen in relation to the fundamental axiom or assumption taken as the starting point of any given ethical system. Aristotle, for example, spoke of ‘the Golden Mean’ – popularly summarized as ‘all things in moderation’. Utilitarianism advocates the principle of ‘the greatest good of the greatest number’. Situation ethics regards love as the governing principle that will be sufficient to guide our choices and behaviour in any given situation. In more postmodern dress this boils down to the ‘no harm’ criterion – ‘It doesn’t matter what you do so long as nobody else gets hurt.’

In the Old Testament, however (as in the whole Bible), ethics is fundamentally theological. That is, ethical issues are at every point related to God – to his character, his will, his actions and his purpose. So the first angle we must explore as we seek a method for handling the ethics of the Old Testament is the theological angle. How does the Old Testament presentation of God impact its ethical teaching?

God’s identity

To say that biblical ethics starts from God is obvious, but doesn’t get us very far. Many systems of ethics that have a religious foundation would say the same. So first of all we have to be more specific about the word ‘God’. Which god? And how is this god known? As Christians we are so used to using the Anglo-Saxon monosyllable ‘god’ and investing it with the content of a biblically informed faith that we fail to recognize how much we are packing into it when we decide to promote the first letter to upper case – ‘God’. Or, conversely, we may be unaware how much is not packed into it by those who have no grounding in the story and worldview of the Bible. For the word ‘god’ is nothing more than a generic term, which in its linguistic origins was usually plural (gods) rather than singular. It originally referred to the multiple deities of the tribes of northern Europe. So the question, for example, ‘Do you believe in God?’ means very little (as does any answer given to such a question), unless one specifies what the last word refers to in objective reality. Many who might answer in the affirmative would be in for a surprise if they truly encountered the God of the Bible. And many who would say ‘No, I don’t believe in God’ might be surprised to discover that biblical Christians too do not believe in the ‘God’ such atheists deny.

In his self-revelation to Israel the living God took no such risks. Monotheism is sometimes said to be the essential distinctive of the faith Israel bequeathed to the world. But that term is also far too non-specific. What were the Israelites to learn from the great acts of God in their history? Did Moses say to them after the exodus and Sinai, ‘You were shown these things so that you might know that there is only one God’? If that was all the conclusion they had to draw, the singularity of deity, they would have got no further than what the demons already know, as James said (Jas. 2:19). No, the inference the Israelites were to draw from their history was much more specific: ‘You were shown these things so that you might know that the LORD (YHWH) is God; beside him there is no other.1 . . . Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other’ (Deut. 4:35, 39; my italics).

The acts of this God, YHWH, proved who was truly God. It was not the gods of the Egyptians or the Canaanites. It was YHWH who alone had done these things, uniquely as God and uniquely for Israel. The issue being stressed here, then, was not the numerical value of deity (one god or many) – though that was important and YHWH’s unity is affirmed strongly elsewhere (e.g. Deut. 6:4–5). What mattered was the identity and character of the God who had done these amazing things in their history. This matters greatly when we come to the ethical teaching of the Old Testament, for it is founded precisely on the identity of this God. When Israel went after other gods (to use the phrase most commonly used in Deuteronomy and the history books), the effects were not just religious but also ethical. Or rather ‘unethical’ – for idolatry always has disastrous social and ethical effects, as the prophets saw clearly. How we behave depends on what or whom we worship – then as now. So for Israel, ethical behaviour was defined by the identity of this God, their God, Yahweh, ‘the LORD our God’, the Holy One of Israel.

God’s action

God acts first and calls people to respond. This is the starting point for the moral teaching of the Old Testament. God takes the initiative in grace and redeeming action and then makes his ethical demand in the light of it. Ethics then becomes a matter of response and gratitude within a personal relationship, not of blind obedience to rules or adherence to timeless principals. This might not always appear so when we read the laws of the Old Testament by themselves. Dip into a typical chapter of Leviticus or Deuteronomy and it might seem that obedience to the law is all that counts. But ‘dipping in’, as we saw in the introduction, is always a dubious way to handle the biblical text. It is vitally important that we pay attention to the narrative framework in which the Old Testament laws are set.

It is being increasingly recognized, in fact, that preoccupation with the law of the Old Testament has distorted Christian understanding of the ethical value and values of the Old Testament as a whole. It is somewhat unfortunate that the English expression ‘The Law’ has been used to translate tôrâ, the Hebrew term for the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible). The Torah is certainly foundational to the whole canon of the Old Testament (and indeed of the Bible), but equally certainly, the Torah is much more than law, and even the laws within it are more than ‘legislation’ in a modern judicial sense. Open the Torah at the start and you enter a narrative that goes on for a book and a half before you encounter a single ‘code of law’. And that narrative framework is sustained throughout the Pentateuch. The law is given within the context of a story. In that story we meet the God who is creator and redeemer. We read of the wonder of creation, the tragedy of human rebellion, the calling of Abraham and his people. We learn of God’s intentions for that people and through them for the rest of humanity. We hold our breath through many moments of suspense and danger and we marvel with Israel at the compassion, patience, anger, judgment and purposes of this God who tangles with them in their historical journey.

Not only is it important to look at this narrative within which the law is set (as we shall do in a moment), we also need to bring into our account of Old Testament ethics the fact that so much of the rest of the Old Testament is also narrative – about half, actually. For there we find the stories through which Israel understood themselves and their God. And it was through these stories that they learned and handed on that accumulated store of revelation and experience, of tradition and challenge, of glowing examples and spectacular failures, that make up the ethical tapestry of the Old Testament. Israel was a community of memory and hope. It was in the remembering and retelling of their past, and in the hope that this generated for the future, that Israel most learned the shape of its own identity and mission and the ethical quality of life appropriate to both. Israel’s community was shaped by Israel’s story. ‘The community is formed . . . by the belief that the narrative witnesses to the reality of the community-shaping encounter with God in historical time and space . . . Israel’s character is significantly formed by its remembering and reinterpreting of God’s previous actions on its behalf.’2

So let us look at the foundational story of the origin of Old Testament law; namely, the exodus and Sinai events described in Exodus 1 – 24. We find the Israelites oppressed and in slavery in Egypt, crying out under intolerable conditions. Their cry is heard by God (2:23–25), and he acts. In a series of mighty acts he delivers (redeems) them from Egypt (chs. 3 – 15), brings them to Sinai (chs. 16 – 19), gives them his law (chs. 20 – 23) and concludes a covenant with them (24). And all of this God does out of faithfulness to his own character and the promises he made to the forefathers of the nation (2:24; 3:6–8):

Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.

Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the LORD.

(Exod. 6:5–8).3

The sequence of events in the biblical story is very important. God did not reveal his law to Moses on Mount Sinai when he first met him there at the burning bush. He did not then send him down to Egypt with the message ‘This is God’s law, and if you keep it fully from now on, God will rescue you out of this slavery.’ Israel was not told they could deserve or hasten their own deliverance by keeping the law. No, God acted first. God first redeemed them out of their bondage, and then made his covenant with them, a covenant in which their side was to keep God’s law, as their response of grateful obedience to their saving God.

This point is made as soon as Israel arrived at Sinai at the start of Exodus 19. Already there have been eighteen chapters of God’s salvation in action. We have not yet reached the giving of the law in chapter 20. First of all God addresses the people in a text that functions like a fulcrum in the whole book, or like a hinge between the story of redemption and the giving of the law. ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession . . .’ (Exod. 19:4–5).

God calls attention to his own prior action. Three months previously they had been slaves in Egypt. Now they were not. And the reason lay only in God’s combination of compassion, faithfulness to his promise, and judgment on Pharaoh. The Israelites were not told to keep the law so that God might save them and they could be his people. He already had and they already were. He delivered them and made them his people and then called them to keep his law. Ethical obedience is a response to God’s grace, not a means of achieving it.

Even the Decalogue itself does not begin with the first commandment. There is the vital preface ‘I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery’ (Exod. 20:2). With those words God identifies himself (‘I am YHWH’) and his redeeming activity (‘I brought you out’), and then goes on, ‘You shall have no other gods before me’ (v. 3). The command follows the statement, with an implied ‘therefore’ linking the two.

The relationship between God’s command and God’s previous actions on behalf of Israel is even more clearly shown in Deuteronomy, where the whole historical prologue, chapters 1 – 4, precedes the Decalogue in chapter 5. It has even been argued that the mainly legal section of the book, chapters 12 – 26, is deliberately reflective of the mainly theological section, chapters 1 – 11. Israel’s response to the LORD is meant to be, in broad social terms, a mirroring of the LORD’s own actions towards Israel.4 Certainly, in Deuteronomy 6:20–25, when an Israelite son asked his father about the meaning of, or reason for, all the law his family were observing,5 the answer was not a curt ‘Because God commands it.’ Rather, the father was to tell the story, the old, old story of the LORD and his love in action, the story of the exodus. The meaning of the law was to be found in the ‘gospel’ – the historical events of redemption.

Right from the start, then, Israel’s keeping of God’s law was meant to be a response to what God had already done. This is the foundation not only of Old Testament ethics, but is indeed the principle running through the moral teaching of the whole Bible. The same order is seen in the New Testament: ‘Love each other as I have loved you’ (John 15:12; my italics); ‘We...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface to Living as the People of God
• Preface
• Introduction
• PART ONE: A STRUCTURE FOR OLD TESTAMENT ETHICS
• PART TWO: THEMES IN OLD TESTAMENT ETHICS
• PART THREE: STUDYING OLD TESTAMENT ETHICS
• Appendix: What about the Canaanites?
• Bibliography
• Index of Scripture References
• Index of names
• Index of subjects
• Notes
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright Page