"Holy, as the Lord Your God Commanded You": Sabbath in the New Testament

"Holy, as the Lord Your God Commanded You": Sabbath in the New Testament

Sharon H Ringe. Interpretation. Richmond: Jan 2005.Vol.59, Iss. 1; pg. 17, 8 pgs
Copyright Interpretation Jan 2005

For the New Testament writers, the commandment to observe the divine holiness required on the Sabbath is expanded to encompass all of life. How to do that is an issue that Jesus and the Jewish authorities discuss in the Gospels. Rather than a matter of appropriate ritual observance, Sabbath emerges as an economic category at the heart of the gospel message.
Prominent in the homogenized gospel that many Christians carry in our memories are accounts in which Jesus is in conflict with Jewish religious authorities when he heals people on the Sabbath. Having learned (and accepted by faith) that Jesus is the "reliable" character who represents God's will, many conclude that the concern for proper Sabbath observance is a matter of Jewish legalism transcended by Jesus' ministry. Nothing could be farther from the truth. On the one hand, honoring the Sabbath is assumed by the authors of the Gospels and Acts. On the other hand, how to honor the Sabbath is one of the matters of disagreement, both between Jesus and his contemporaries and more directly among members of the early communities of Jesus' followers and the other groups of Jews with whom they were in contact. The rationale developed through the various pericopes about Jesus' Sabbath activity links the honoring of the day to the larger agenda of Jubilee and Sabbath economics that is at the heart of the Gospels.
SABBATH OBSERVANCE ASSUMED
It is important to note at the outset that traditional Jewish concerns related to Sabbath observance are assumed at several points in the Gospels and Acts. Acts 1:12, for example, refers in a matter of fact way to the Mount of Olives being "a Sabbath day's journey away" from Jerusalem, recognizing that there are limits on the distance one can travel on the Sabbath. A similar reference to appropriate Sabbath travel seems to underlie the saying in Matthew's version of Jesus' prediction of the fall of Jerusalem, "Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath" (Matt 24:20)-both being times when travel away from the city would be impeded. Mark 15:42-47, Luke 23:50-56, and John 19:38-42 all link Jesus' burial to concern about the approach of the Sabbath (with John 19:31 specifying the concern that the bodies of Jesus and those crucified with him not be left on the cross during the Sabbath). All four Gospels specify that the women went to the tomb to tend to Jesus' body only after the Sabbath: the day of rest when such activity would have been inappropriate (Matt 28:1; Mark 16:1; Luke 23:56a; 24:1; John 20:1).
The Sabbath is also acknowledged as a proper day on which to gather for prayer (often, but not only, in the synagogue) and to hear Torah read and interpreted. The writer of Acts describes Paul as beginning his ministry in the various cities by going to the synagogues on the Sabbath to teach (Acts 13:13-43; 17:2; 18:4).1 In Philippi, he is said to have sought out a women's gathering for Sabbath prayers "outside the gate by the river" (Acts 16:13) as the site for his initial teaching in that city. The letters unquestionably attributed to Paul do not mention Sabbath observance. In fact, Col 2:16 is the only epistolary reference to the Sabbath, and it simply urges the addressees of the letter to let no one condemn them "in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or Sabbaths." Nothing is specified about their practices in those matters, but the suggestion is that those groups follow patterns different in some way from those of other groups of Jews in their communities.
Jesus himself is said to have gone on the Sabbath to the synagogue in his hometown, where he taught and-at least according to Luke-read from the prophet Isaiah (Mark 6:1-6; Luke 4:16-30; the Sabbath is not specifically mentioned in the parallel in Matt 13:54-56). Likewise, early in his ministry Jesus is said to have taught "with authority" on the Sabbath in the synagogue at Capernaum (Mark 1:21-28; Luke 4:31-37).2
The latter account introduces the issue of Sabbath healing, because it also relates Jesus' first exorcism. It does so with no suggestion that such activity is seen as problematic. When the unclean spirit (Mark) or demon (Luke) recognizes and calls out to Jesus, he rebukes it and orders it to come out of the man. His successful healing of the man is greeted by the people's amazement at the "authority" of his speech. No question is raised about any violation of Sabbath prohibitions of "work," even though the event is set in the synagogue in full view of the leaders of the community, as well as of the rest of the people. One might argue that in fact Jesus' only action is to speak, which is not prohibited on the Sabbath, and his rebuking of the spirit is called a "teaching" (didache), which is an activity appropriate to do in a synagogue on the Sabbath.
Another Sabbath healing story in which Jesus' action provokes no opposition relates the healing of Peter's mother-in-law later on the same day (Mark 1:29-31; Luke 4:38-39),3 an account linked to the previous one by the opening reference to their leaving the synagogue. In Luke 4:39, Jesus again heals with only a verbal rebuke of the fever itself. In Mark 1:30, the healing involves an action by Jesus-lifting or raising her up from the bed where she has been suffering from the fever. It is not clear that assisting someone in that way would be specifically prohibited on the Sabbath, however. Furthermore, that story is set in a private home belonging to one of Jesus' closest followers, without the narrative presence of religious authorities whom readers (and especially re-readers) of the Gospel might expect to raise objections. It thus functions narratively as an instance of the disciples' being let in on a demonstration of Jesus' power to mediate the life and healing that make their "service" or "ministry" possible (the verb in both Mark 1:31 and Luke 4:39 is diakoneo).
SABBATH HEALING CONTROVERSIES IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS4
The first of the Sabbath healing controversies is common to all three Synoptic Gospels (Matt 12:9-14; Mark 3:1-6; Luke 6:6-11). It serves in Mark and Luke to close out a block of stories that demonstrate the building tension between Jesus and the religious authorities on a variety of issues (Mark 2:1-3:6; Luke 5:17-6:11).5 In those versions of the story of the man with the "withered" hand, opposition to Jesus by the authorities is anticipated without being expressed directly. Instead, Jesus takes the initiative with his question that goes to the heart of Sabbath observance. That question clearly implies the affirmation of God's hallowing and blessing of the Sabbath (Gen 2:3) and of the Sabbath commandment in the Decalogue (Exod 20:8-11 and Deut 5:12-15), but without referring directly to any Sabbath regulations. At issue is not whether to keep specific Sabbath rules, but how to make a day holy, which is what those rules were meant to assure. The answer of the pericope is that one keeps the Sabbath by not failing to do good, an omission that is equated with doing evil, something clearly inappropriate on the Sabbath. The concluding verse in Mark (3:6) underlines the contrast between the positive action for good counseled by Jesus' actions and words, and the consequences of his opponents' focus on the specifics instead of the purpose of Sabbath observance. Their death plot is not an activity appropriate to the Sabbath, of all days!6
In Matthew's version of that pericope, the authorities challenge Jesus explicitly about the prohibition of work-in this case, healing-on the Sabbath. Jesus' answer implies that all Jewish authorities would recognize these as legitimate exceptions to that prohibition when it is necessary to save the life of even an animal. Following the rabbinic form of argument from the lesser to the greater, he concludes that the exception would apply even more clearly in the case of a human being (Matt 12:11-12). That text, however, and versions of that debate about exceptions to the prohibition of work on the Sabbath found in Luke 13:10-17 (a story set in a synagogue) and 14:1-6 (at a Sabbath meal in the home of a leader of the Pharisees), present several problems. First, in none of these instances is there a clear need to act in order to save someone from death. Instead Jesus' action could easily have waited until after sunset, when the Sabbath was over. The Gospel writers are thus really arguing that healing or wholeness of life carries the same urgency as the literal preservation of life. Second, the exception cited in Jesus' reply is not altogether clear. According to the Qumran community (CD 11:13-14), that exception would not be permitted. Later rabbinic traditions such as m. Sabb. 18:3 and b. Sabb. 128b, however, would be closer to the view attributed to Jesus.7 The debate presented in these pericopes thus may reflect a conflict between groups of Jesus' followers (both in the communities of Matthew and Luke and in the earlier community from which some of their shared traditions emerged) and groups of other Jews about specific details of Sabbath observance. The views of those others may well have been closer to what is reflected in the later rabbinic sources than to those of Jesus' contemporaries at Qumran.
THE SABBATH AND WORK: "GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR"
The Synoptic healing controversies turn on Jesus' apparent violation of the prohibition of work on the Sabbath, especially if healing of a condition that is not life-threatening (regardless of the means by which that healing is accomplished) is interpreted as doing work. It is important, however, also to understand those controversies against the background of the economic significance of Jesus' work as an itinerant healer and of the early church's preservation of accounts of that work.8 In that role, Jesus and other such healers (of which there were both Jews and Gentiles) would likely have been the only health care providers available to the urban and rural poor alike. Unable to hire professional physicians or to travel to known healing centers, the poor-as well as wealthy people in moments of crisis or when other means failed9-had to hope that such a healer would pass by in time to help them. Jesus' "work" among those people-like other aspects of his ministry of "good news to the poor," appears to have been central to his identity, and specifically to his interpretation of what it means to keep the Sabbath holy.
Another controversy about a supposed violation of the prohibition of work on the Sabbath that has special implications for the poor underlies the story told in Matt 12:1-8; Mark 2:23-28; and Luke 6:1-5. In that account a group of Pharisees hold Jesus responsible for his followers' violation of the prohibition of work on the Sabbath when they pick heads of grain as they traverse grainfields. The issue is not clear cut, for while agricultural labor (such as actually harvesting the grain by cutting it with a sickle) would clearly be prohibited, Deut 23:25 appears to permit precisely the sort of gleaning by hand that the disciples have been doing.10 Instead of citing that provision in response, however, Jesus is said to refer to the precedent of David's action described in 1 Sam 21:1-6, when he and his followers were allowed by the priest to eat the bread of the Presence when they were hungry. The rationale does not fit the challenge, both because the problem in 1 Samuel is not that of Sabbath observance, and because David claims that he and his followers have actually met the purity requirements for eating that holy bread (contrary to what is stated in Matt12:4; Mark 2:26; and Luke 6:4). The pericope concludes by returning to the issue of the Sabbath, with the affirmation of the sovereignty of the Human One (or, traditionally, "the Son of Man") over the Sabbath.
Matthew's amplification ofthat concluding affirmation in 12:5-7 uses a logical tour de force to achieve the christological clarity concerning this enigmatic title that would have been crucial to the debates between his community and their neighbors. Mark's amplified conclusion in 2:27(11)-"the Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath"-points instead to the purpose behind the institution of the Sabbath itself, namely, the well-being of all people. Whether or not the specific wording of that saying can be traced to Jesus (a debate beyond the scope of this discussion), its substance conforms to the economic implications of the Sabbath rule in the Decalogue that work should cease for everyone-slave and free, resident alien and Israelite-as part of their own remembering of their identity as slaves in Egypt whom God set free (Deut 5:14-15).12 Similarly, the provision to protect gleaning rights on the Sabbath in Deut 23:25 would also have affected principally the poor peasants. Jesus' defense of his disciples' action thus becomes another dimension of his proclamation of good news to the poor, which the Synoptic Gospels affirm as the heart of Jesus' ministry.
SABBATH "WORK" IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL
In many ways the accounts in the Fourth Gospel concerning Jesus' Sabbath activities raise the same issues as the Synoptics. The debate between the Johannine community and their Jewish neighbors about what is permitted on the Sabbath is explicit in John 7:22-23. Through the character of Jesus, in the long dialogue that elaborates on the interpretation of the healing account in John 5, the community asks about an underlying principle: why is it permitted to circumcise a male on the Sabbath in order to fulfill the law but forbidden to heal a person's whole body? The very form of the question makes clear the conclusion that such a policy makes no sense to the writer or to those to whom and on whose behalf he writes.
The issue of healing and Sabbath observance is raised also in the story of Jesus' healing of the person blind from birth in John 9. There the Pharisees' charge that Jesus has violated Sabbath law is based on his having kneaded the mud used to effect the healing. The focus is their debate about Jesus' identity and source of authority. Some conclude that Jesus "is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath." On the other hand, others immediately question that conclusion by asking, "How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?" (John 9:16) The issue of Sabbath practice is thus connected to that of Christology, or of Jesus' identity.
The story of the man by the Sheep Gate pool in John 5 develops an escalating series of questions about Sabbath observance. The issue is first raised about the healed man's carrying of his mat. Such an action would clearly violate Sabbath laws against work. On the other hand, such laws would not have been a concern for someone who is paralyzed.13 Appropriately, then, when he is said to claim that he is simply doing what he has been told by the person who healed him, the attention of his challengers shifts to that person, namely Jesus, (once the healed man identifies him), who presumably should know that to carry a burden on the Sabbath is wrong.
With that shift of attention comes also a change in the action that is in focus (John 5:16). The reference of the "such things" that have provoked the persecution of Jesus is implied in the reply attributed to Jesus. That reply refers not to his instructions to the man to pick up and carry his mat, but to Jesus' own "work," which he links to God's work (John p5:17). As the story goes, "the Jews" seek to kill Jesus because he calls God his Father, "thereby making himself equal to God" (John 5:18). While that very "un-Jewish" christological claim is precisely what the Johannine community was confessing about Jesus, the way it is presented draws on principles close to the heart of Jewish culture and tradition. First, "Father" is a designation for God common in Judaism in the centuries preceding the time of Jesus.14 That reference in itself would not account for their opposition to him. Second, on a very popular level, by doing the work his "father" does, Jesus could be seen as claiming not equality but obedience-carrying on the "family business"! Finally and more seriously, the reply attributed to Jesus does make a claim about Jesus' identity. It does so by introducing the connection of Jesus' action specifically to God's work of judgment and giving life that never ceases (despite the Sabbath "rest" proclaimed in Exod 20:11). That connection is spelled out in the long discourse found in John 5:19-47. Just as in the Decalogue, the Sabbath regulation relates both to practical concerns (and especially the impact on the poor) and to the very holiness that is part of the identity of God, so in the Fourth Gospel pericopes about Jesus' Sabbath activity relate to his identity as the Christ and to the ethical values embodied in the community of his followers.
SABBATH ECONOMICS: JESUS AS HERALD OF THE GOD'S REIGN
Particularly in the Synoptic Gospels, then, but also in the Fourth Gospel, Sabbath is linked to good news to the poor and to the wholeness and integrity of life. In that sense texts focused on the Sabbath day can attune us also to Sabbath issues present (perhaps more subtly) in the Sabbath year and especially the "super-Sabbath" or Jubilee traditions that underlie the Gospels' witness to the ministry and teachings of Jesus-an intricate set of issues whose detailed examination is beyond the scope of this essay.15 Suffice it to say that, like texts related to the Sabbath day, laws in the Hebrew Bible concerning the Sabbath year (Exod 21:2-6; 23:10-11; Deut 15:1-18) and the Jubilee year (Leviticus 25) posit God's liberating act on behalf of Israel while enslaved in Egypt as the principal rationale for our need to grant a periodic rest to the land in an agricultural fallow year, and once every seven years to cancel debts and set free any Israelites whom financial need has forced into indentured servitude.16 The Jubilee laws of Leviticus blend the cyclical Sabbath year traditions with royal practices of granting amnesty at the inauguration of a new king, practices learned from Israel's neighbors and exilic overlords. These Jubilee laws assume a once-in-a-lifetime event whose unique provision is built on the principle of sovereign ownership of the land as the reason why no part of it can be sold in perpetuity, but instead must be returned at the Jubilee to those families and tribes to whom God had allocated its use and stewardship at the time of the settlement.
Although legal provisions related to the Sabbath and Jubilee years are not mentioned in the New Testament, the Hebrew words for "release" and "liberty," limited otherwise to the Jubilee legislation,17 are found also in Isa 61:1, where they are part of the proclamation of the herald announcing the inauguration of God's eschatological reign. That text, in turn, is used in the Synoptic Gospels (Matt 11:2-6 par. Luke 7:18-23; Luke 4:16-30) as the programmatic text that characterizes the ministry of Jesus as herald of God's reign. From that basis of clear reference to a Jubilee text, one can then recognize how the themes of Isa 61-good news to the poor, "release" or "forgiveness" (as it is often translated) of monetary debts and "sins" alike, and the healing of blindness and other conditions and diseases-permeate the Gospels to identify Jesus and to speak of the human response that is to characterize the boundary moment that occurs whenever people hear the inaugural trumpet of the reign of God.
CONCLUSION
The Sabbath in the New Testament, both in specific references to observing the Sabbath day and more generally in responses to the Jubilee inauguration of God's reign, continues to affirm the divine nature of the Sabbath and of the covenant into which God invites humankind, just as in the traditions of the Hebrew Bible. Sabbath holiness expresses both who God is and what God requires of God's people. To put it another way, the New Testament debates about how to observe the Sabbath day tap into the broader but always subversive canonical memory that the holiness of God is always linked to God's passion and compassion for euangelion-good news to the poor.
[Footnote] 1 Whether Paul actually did so is another question. His own letters do not mention such a beginning to his ministry. They seem rather to suggest that he encountered people in the course of plying his trade as an artisan and trader. 2 Matthew's soft-pedaling of Jesus' attendance in synagogue gatherings on the Sabbath, like his frequent reference to "their" synagogues (e.g., 4:23; 9:35; 19:17; 12:9; 13:54), may reflect tensions between Matthew's group and other Jews in their city or region. see the discussion of the religious identity ofthat community in Anthony J. Saldarini, Matthew's Christian-Jewish Community (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994). 3 The parallel in Matthew 8:14-15 is found later in the narrative sequence, following the collection of teachings known as the Sermon on the Mount and reports of other healing activity. There is no connection to the Sabbath. In this account Jesus merely "touches" her hand to effect the healing. 4 The Sabbath healing stories in the Fourth Gospel focus the issue differently. They are discussed below. 5 Additional stories about Jesus' activities and teachings break up that block of stories in Matthew's account without eliminating any of them. The effect, however, is to set the opposition clearly in the context of Jesus' own agenda and successful vocation (Matt 8:1-12:14). It should be noted, however, that Matthew's silence about the first exorcism and his disconnection of the story of the healing of Peter's mother-in-law from the Sabbath (Matt 8:14-15) results in a univocal message in that Gospel: Jesus' acts of healing, when done on the Sabbath, always lead to opposition from the Jewish religious authorities. 6 The picture is worsened by the addition of the Herodians as partners in the plot, since they were a group with whom Pharisees concerned with observing the law would not have wanted dealings at any time. Neither Matthew 12:14, which parallels Mark 3:6 in the aim of "destruction", nor Luke 6:11 includes the Herodians as co-conspirators. Luke further leaves the opponents' response more ambiguous than Mark, as they are said merely to have "discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus." The "fury" attributed to them, however, tips the scales in a negative direction there also. 7 J. A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke (X-XXIV), AB 28A (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1985) 1040. 8 See Gerd Theissen, The Miracle Stories of the Early Christian Tradition (trans. by Francis McDonagh; ed. by John Riches; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983) for a foundational study of those traditions. 9 Both of these "exceptions" can be found in the characters of Jairus, whose daughter is at the point of death, and the woman suffering from hemorrhages, who has already spent all she has in the quest for healing, in Mark 5:21-43. 10 Indeed, for subsistence laborers or any people whose survival depended on constant diligence and ingenuity or on obedience to the orders of their employers or masters, to observe the Sabbath command to lay aside all work would not have been possible anyway. 11 This verse is found in most manuscripts, but not in Codex Bezae (D). 12 The explanation given in Exod 20:10-11 goes back to God's own nature and activity in the creation, which is a connection implied also in the stories of Jesus' Sabbath healing found in the Fourth Gospel. 13 The man's disclaimer in response to Jesus' question that he has no one to put him into the pool in time also suggests that he is among the poor who have no servants to see to their needs, and presumably do not have the luxury of ceasing work on the Sabbath. 14 Gottlob Schrenk, "peter, ktl." TDNT 5 (978-982). 15 For a detailed study of the presence and role of the Jubilee in the Gospels, see Ross Kinsler and Gloria Kinsler, The Biblical Jubilee and the Struggle for Life (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), and Sharon H. Ringe, Jesus, Liberation, and the Biblical Jubilee: Images for Ethics and Christology (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1985). 16 Although neighboring texts forbid the oppression of resident aliens in the land, it is important to note that the liberating effect of the Sabbath year laws, like the Jubilee laws of Leviticus 25, is limited to other Israelites. 17 The Greek words used in those texts in the LXX (the noun aphesis and the verb aphiemi), however, are sufficiently common that language alone is not sufficient to assert a Jubilee or even a Sabbath reference. It is the inclusion of quotations or paraphrases of the texts themselves that allows one to affirm that connection.
[Author Affiliation] SHARON H. RINGE Wesley Theological Seminary Washington, D. C.

The Prophet Jeremiah and Exclusive Loyalty to God

The Prophet Jeremiah and Exclusive Loyalty to God

Kathleen M O'Connor. Interpretation. Richmond: Apr 2005.Vol.59, Iss. 2; pg. 130, 11 pgs
Copyright Interpretation Apr 2005


In the book of Jeremiah, the prophet's calling involves profound engagement with the world, with God, and with the local community. Exclusive allegiance to and intimate experience of God propel the prophet into the world, become the fiery source of his passion, and make Jeremiah the model of survival for his devastated community.


During these times of national and international turmoil, reflection on the prophetic calling is more than an historical inquiry. It is an urgent matter of critical importance for the Christian church in its worship, its ministry, and its striving to be faithful to the mission of God in the world. The prophets of ancient Israel invite believers to overcome the myopia of the personal and the local. They call for an expansive vision of faith and practice located not only in the local community but also in the larger world of international relations and of ecological life. Because Israel's prophets obey the Creator of the nations and the cosmos, they consider the whole world to be the arena in which the word of God holds sway.

In the Old Testament, the prophetic calling resembles a tree with three interrelated roots. This calling has its origin and nourishment from the realities of the world, from a steadfast relationship with God, and from the particular circumstances of an historical community. Although various Old Testament accounts of the prophetic calling may empiidiize one of these roots over others, all three are always present.

Jeremiah seems to be the prophet who offers the most fertile ground for reflection on the roots of the prophetic calling because the book named after him contains a river of so called "biographical information." Among these are a call narrative (ch. 1), prayers called "confessions" in the prophet's first-person voice (11:18-12:6; 15:10-21; 17:14-18; 18:18-23; 20:7-13), sermons attributed to him (e.g., the temple sermon, 7:1-8:3; the covenant sermon, 11:1-17; the Sabbath sermon, 17:19-27) as well as numerous stories about his prophetic struggles (especially in chs. 36-45). These materials about the life of the prophet do not, however, provide a direct witness to his personal sense of calling. Instead, the prophet's life and words are filtered through the eyes of the book's composers who are intent upon meeting the needs of their own community rather than on offering historical precision about the prophet's vocation.

Although prophecy is, indeed, a complex phenomenon, and much is known about prophetic phenomena in the ancient Near East,1 biblical prophecy comes to us as a literary heritage. That means Jeremiah's editors collected various kinds of material from different times to create a portrait, that is, a literary representation of Jeremiah's prophetic calling. Whatever historical life underlies the text, in his present "persona," Jeremiah is a highly symbolic figure conveying many levels of meaning.2 To understand the book's depiction of his vocation, it is first necessary to understand the historical world in which his prophecy is rooted.

PROPHECY ROOTED IN THE WORLD

Jeremiah's world is a place of disaster. Disaster created the book and led to Jeremiah's prophetic calling. No matter when the book received its final form, the tragic events surrounding and following the Babylonian invasions of Judah (597, 587, 582 B.C.E.) mark its every passage. Every poem, narrative, sermon, or symbolic act of Jeremiah relates to the Babylonian invasions one way or another, either announcing them, explaining them, or offering hope for surviving them.3 Daniel Smith-Christopher shows convincingly that Israel's exile was far more devastating than some interpreters previously thought. The collapse of the nation constituted a set of events that exceeded the ability of the nation "to cope."4 A disaster is more than a set of sorrowful or discouraging events or a temporary setback in the nation's flourishing. A disaster refers to an all-encompassing collapse of the world, what Louis Stulman refers to as "a cosmic crumbling."5 Indeed, the very meaning of disaster is that it is all encompassing. Nothing in the people's frame of reference is strong enough to support them in the aftermath of the crisis because their institutions and hopes have been destroyed.

A WORLD OF SUFFERING

To grasp the overwhelming suffering and despair that must have followed the Babylonian invasions requires little historical imagination. After years of international intrigue and maneuvering, Babylonian troops twice invaded Jerusalem (597 and 587 B.C.E.), destroyed the king's palace, razed the temple, and deported some of the leading citizens to Babylon. The Babylonian army then occupied Judah and Jerusalem, and a rebellion by some Judahites provoked a third invasion (Jer 41).

The invasions vastly disrupted daily life among ordinary citizens of Jerusalem. Many survivors would have lost loved ones in the sieges and perhaps their means of livelihood as well. They lost their government and religious leadership, and in the case of the exiles, they also lost their homeland. Such violent disintegration of their world also meant a massive loss of confidence in their God. Into this physical and theological catastrophe the book of Jeremiah intervenes. It interprets this turbulent world and in direct and indirect ways offers the means of survival. In this urgent and immediate sense, the roots of Jeremiah's prophecy lie in the world of his broken nation.

Jeremiah's prophetic vocation finds roots in the wider world because God designates him, "prophet to the nations" (1:5,10).6 This unique title, granted in his call narrative, looms over the book in its strangeness. In what sense could Jeremiah be called a prophet to the nations? What does it mean for him to have such a calling when his audience appears to have been largely the people of Judah and the exiles in Babylon? Some interpreters have avoided the problem by emending the Hebrew of the title to read "prophet to my nation." Alternatively, Holladay proposes that Jeremiah's call to "the nations" refers to Jeremiah's mission to the divided nations of Israel and Judah.7 But in this book, the prophetic vocation concerns something much larger than the world of Jeremiah's own people. In the large sweep of the book, the prophet testifies to God's ineluctable governance of all the nations of the world. As prophet to the nations, his sphere of concern, if not of influence,8 is the international world.

Jeremiah's rootedness in the international world is evident, first, in his continued proclamation that enemy Babylon is God's agent in the world who will punish Judah for its idolatry and infidelity (Jer 1-20).9 Second, the international fabric of the prophet's mission appears when he urges the people of Judah to surrender to the invading Babylonian forces (38:2). For Jeremiah, imperial Babylon is God's instrument with whom God's own people must cooperate (21:1-10). He even counsels the Judahites deported to Babylon to seek the shalom of their captors because Babylon's shalom is their shalom (29:7). Third, Jeremiah's prophecy addresses the nations "caught up in the web of events which had their origin in the impress of Babylonian imperialism."10 As prophet to the nations, he announces divine punishment upon them, particularly Babylon. The nations will drink of the cup of wrath that poisons and destroys, each in turn until finally Babylon will drink (25:15-38). Jeremiah reiterates this vision and particularly Babylon's certain punishment in his Oracles to the Nations, placed at a conclusive point near the end of the Hebrew text (46-51).11 He again announces God's plans for justice against Israel's enemies and, in the process, offers hope of survival to his own destroyed nation.

To say that Jeremiah's prophecy is rooted in the world is to recognize how embedded is his prophetic vocation in concrete human life that focuses upon the international political realities of his time. Clearly, this prophet speaks a political word; he makes political claims and interjects himself into the intrigues and power plays of the nations, and, therefore, into the internal arguments among his own people.

Jeremiah's support of the enemy contributes to virulent political clashes among the leadership of his own people. With high drama, his altercation with the prophet Hananiah reveals his allegiance to the God who does not conform to the nationalist expectations of Jeremiah's compatriots (28:1-17). The prophet Hananiah, for example claimed with certainty and rhetorical persuasiveness that God would restore the temple vessels that had been removed to Babylon after the first invasion. In a most effective symbolic act, he breaks the wooden yoke Jeremiah wears around his neck to symbolize Judah's captivity to Babylon. Jeremiah has no reply and goes away for "sometime" (28:12), his word seemingly defeated. But later Jeremiah returns to restate and expand God's word about the world. He wears an iron yoke to show that the nations shall indeed serve King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon for God has "even given him the wild animals" (28:14).

Among his own people, Jeremiah's prophetic word is wildly divisive because it is political. It is divisive because his is the harder and more painful viewpoint for the community. And it is divisive because it represents the minority viewpoint, the viewpoint of the "peace party," the ones who urge cooperation with foreign nations. Of course, the ancient world did not separate politics from religion, yet the core of Jeremiah's prophecy is his theological allegiance. He believes God to be God of the whole world, not merely of his own people. He points at every turn to God's governance of the world and to God's sovereignty over the nations. As a corollary of these beliefs, he speaks of the intertwined fates of the nations themselves. Modern conceptions of religion divorced from the public domain would be inconceivable to this prophet on theological grounds.

Jeremiah's vocation is also rooted in the world because the horizon of his ministry is broader even than international politics; his vision is cosmic. He sees the fate of humans to be inexorably linked to the fate of the earth itself. Like many prophets, his metaphors bespeak a kind of human and ecological symbiosis.12 The sinfulness of the people and the invasion by the Babylonians find mirroring expression in non-human life. With harrowing power, for example, the prophet depicts the coming onslaught of the Babylonian army as a reversal of creation itself.13 Light, mountains, hills, birds, and the cities will return to primeval "waste and void" (4:23-27; cf. Gen 1:2). In this mythic description of the effects of war, Jeremiah promises that the invasion will leave a burnt-out land, a moonscape devoid of human and animal life. The destruction of the created world anticipates and echoes the destruction of the people's life together.

When Jeremiah chastises the people for their infidelity, he melds the people's mourning, the spiritual emptiness of their leadership, and the barrenness of their lives with the impact of a drought upon the land and its creatures. Then, in the book's four short chapters of explicit hope often called "the little book of consolation" (chs. 30-33), he promises restoration of the earth itself. The created world will participate in the transformation of the covenant community in the impinging future. The storm of YHWH will have passed, and the exiles will travel home past brooks of water (31:9). The earth will be bountiful, and "the people shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord, over the grain, the wine and the oil, over the young of the flock and the herd, and life shall become like a watered garden . . ." (31:12). Creation itself will be reborn.

The prophet's vocation, therefore, embraces more than the merely human. It assumes the interrelationship of peoples with the larger creation in which they dwell. Jeremiah offers his audience a wide-angle view of their relationship to the earth and to other peoples, because he has an expansive vision of the domain of the Creator. His is an ethical vision that locates individuals and community in their proper place in the world; they are not at the center.

PROPHECY ROOTED IN GOD

With more deliberateness than any prophetic literature, the book of Jeremiah presents the prophet as centered utterly on his relationship with God. This is first evident in the account of his call, presented in the typical literary pattern of the call narrative. The call includes the following features: a divine encounter, a divine commission to the prophet, resistance by the prophet, reassurance, and a sign.14 Taken together, these elements of the call narrative point directly and essentially to the relationship of the prophet with God and establish that relationship as the unequivocal source of his vocation.

God summons him even before he is born, an indication that the prophecy to follow has it origins in God, not in Jeremiah's own designs. In the manner of the great prophet Moses (Exod 3:10-12), Jeremiah forcefully resists his call. He cannot speak, he claims, because he is too young. God reassures him by promising to be with him to "deliver" him to prophesy and commands him to speak "whatever I command you" (1:7). Two visions are signs that confirm his call (1:11-19). By means of a play on words in Hebrew, the early blooming branch of an almond tree (saqed) signifies God's steady watching (soqed) over the prophetic word. The overturned boiling pot signifies the content of that word to portend the disaster coming upon Jeremiah's people from the mythical "north."

Jeremiah's call account clearly indicates his vocation is God's idea, but it does something more. It characterizes the relationship between YHWH and the prophet as intimate, dialogical, and compelling. Jeremiah's commission comes in a conversation, a dialogue, in which the prophet and God speak back and forth; each speaks and hears, each gives and takes, and each is fully occupied with the other in the fashion of an intimate relationship. This relationship gives authority to Jeremiah and to all the words of the book; this relationship is why Jeremiah's audience can trust his interpretation of the calamitous world in which they live; and this relationship is the reason he can face the resistance of his own people to his preaching. The text portrays him to be so deeply rooted in his life with God that he is compelled to speak God's truth. Allegiance to God alone enables him to "gird his loins" against the people's resistance and to "stand up and tell them everything" God commands him (1:17).

The conversation between Jeremiah and God does not end with the call narrative. The book continues to portray him as one enabled to endure enormous suffering because of his on-going conversation with God, even though that relationship itself is part of his suffering. His five laments known as the "confessions" (11:8-12:6; 15:10-21; 17:14-18; 18:18-21; 20:7-13)15 portray Jeremiah as God's interlocutor and conversation partner despite his sense of divine abandonment. These laments are beautiful, poignant expressions of the prophet's sorrows in fulfilling his mission to be God's spokesman, and they are testimonies to his continued intimacy with God.

In the first two confessions (11:18-12:6; 15:10-21), Jeremiah complains of his enemies' attacks against him despite his innocence and his non-violence in the face of their evil deeds. He lays his case before God. "Why does the way of the guilty prosper?" he asks. God replies that things will get worse (12:5-6). Jeremiah again laments his situation in the second confession, this time from the perspective of his mission. His calling requires that he sit alone and not join in merrymaking because "your words were found and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and a delight" (15:16). Jeremiah has identified with his calling so completely that he understands God's word as if he had eaten it. But despite his costly loyalty and devotion, God has become like a "deceitful brook," like a wadi that floods in winter and dries up in the hot summer. God again urges Jeremiah to remain steadfast against the people's opposition, for God will make him "a wall of bronze" (15:19-21). Jeremiah can persevere in his calling because his strength comes from God.

In the third confession (17:14-18), Jeremiah's spirit continues to plummet downward, but he speaks unwaveringly to God. He asks God to heal him, to be his refuge, and to vindicate him against his enemies (17:14, 17, 18), to hear him and to protect him (18:19, 23). He accuses God of injustice (12:1-4) and of seducing and overpowering him (20:7). His calling itself is the cause of his immense pain. When he preaches, no one believes him; when he speaks out, enemies try to slay him for his treasonous words. He decides to quit his calling because the conflict is so wrenching, but he cannot. In a brilliant description of the power of his relationship with God to hold him steady in the face of massive doubt, he describes his vocational conflict and God's restraining power over him. "With me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones. I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot" (20:9).

After Jeremiah passes through his angry and bitter vocational despair, he ends his prayer with the renewed confidence in God typical of the lament form. He proclaims that God is with him and he himself will prevail over his enemies. He has moved through his darkness to a deeper faith. "YHWH has delivered the life of the needy from the hand of evildoers" (20:13).

Jeremiah's confessions declare that the steadying, energizing core of the prophetic vocation is life with God. They mark the true prophet as a contemplative, a mystic, a person of deep prayer, smitten by his encounter with the divine. This aspect of the prophetic vocation is easy to overlook, to historicize or intellectualize away because for some it smacks of overwrought emotion or flamboyant piety. Yet the prophet appears as one who lives in profound intimacy with God and knows that intimacy in his whole being. This intimacy distinguishes the true prophet from the false, for the latter has not stood in the council of God to see and hear the divine word (23:18).

Jeremiah's confessions also suggest something more about the prophetic calling. They, along with narrative accounts of Jeremiah's travails, show the prophet to be one with his people. In subtle ways, Jeremiah serves as a symbol of his community's predicament in the aftermath of disaster, even though he also suffers at their hands.

PROPHECY ROOTED IN COMMUNITY

In its richly evocative portrait of the prophet, the book depicts Jeremiah first as one with a unique calling as God's spokesperson, set over against his people. At the same time, it presents the account of Jeremiah's life as emblematic of the fate of the nation. His calling is rooted in the community in the obvious sense that the community is his primary audience, but it is also rooted in the community because the survival and future reclamation of the community are the book's most thoroughgoing concern. To help the community to endure its present suffering, to understand and absorb what has happened to it, and, finally, to reconstitute itself as God's covenant people is the book's large rhetorical purpose. The book's portrait of Jeremiah's life contributes to that purpose. His prophetic vocation reaches in two symbolic directions.16 On the one hand, the prophet suffers because his vocation is to speak words of judgment to a community utterly unwilling to listen. Their failure to heed him is one of the principal reasons they are in their present predicament. On the other hand, he suffers in ways that echo the fate of that same community, so that his life embodies their pain, mirrors it back to them, and offers them an example of how to survive it.

Jeremiah does not escape the suffering of his people, for in complicated ways, he also is a victim of the disaster. His repeated captivities (20:1-6; 26:1-24; 37:11-21; 38:1-6) and escapes from death (26:24; 36:19; 37:21; 38:7-13; 39:11-14), attacks upon him (11:18-19, 21-23; 20:1-6; 26:1-24), and his own exile (chs. 42-44) parallel the people's historical sufferings from military invasions, captivity, and exile. His celibacy points to the end of domestic life in the land (16:1-4), when there will be no more giving and taking in marriage, no voice of gladness, no voice of bride or bridegroom (16:9). His solitary state serves as an icon of the devastation of daily domestic life in the land.

Like his community, Jeremiah is a survivor of captivity, though in his case he is forced into exile in Egypt by some of his own people, rather than in Babylon by the foreign enemy. The book's silence regarding Jeremiah's life after exile in Egypt and its silence about his death are puzzling, especially if we think his portrait is biographical in the modern sense. The narratives leave him miserable in Egypt (chs. 43-44). But Jeremiah must survive and endure in the book, for so must the people, even up to seventy years in Babylon (29:10). At the end, all Jeremiah and his scribe Baruch have gained are their lives "as the prize for war" (45:5). And that is the book's chief promise to Jeremiah's people-they will survive. Jeremiah's survival is a sign of their survival, a basis for hope, a promise of a future in the utterly bleak present.

More subtly, Jeremiah symbolizes what his community ought to be. His behavior shows them how they must behave if they are to endure the present suffering and reconstitute themselves as God's covenant community in the future.17 Like them, he is wounded, but he is also the ideal survivor who, even as he opposes his people and is opposed by them, exhibits virtues they must practice to regain their life together. They should relate to God in the same manner he does. Like him, they must be utterly devoted to God; they must resist political allegiances contrary to God's will, and they must cooperate with others to survive.

Jeremiah's absolute loyalty to God creates a counterpoint to the behavior of the community whom he accuses of abandoning YHWH to follow after other gods, a theme that sweeps through chs. 1-20.18 Jeremiah's relationship with God is unbroken and enduring despite his suffering and his anger at God. God and he continue to be "made known" to one another (11:18); he converses with God and clings to God in his suffering (1:4-10; 11:18-12:6; 15:10-21). So must the community.

Jeremiah pursues his calling in fidelity to divine rule of the world. God's claims upon him transcend his personal fears or concerns for acceptance by family and friends (cf. 11:18-23; 15:15-18; 16:1-9). In this biblical book, the prophetic calling arises from allegiance to the God of Judah who is also the God of the nations. For Jeremiah, such fidelity yields a harsh fate, a stand against the national consensus, a lonely road of abandonment, but his fidelity allows for no other. Expressed at every turn, Jeremiah's fidelity appears most evidently in the "confessions." Despite attacks on his life (11:18, 21-23; 12:6; 20:10), his isolation from others (15:17), his sense of abandonment by his community, and, above all, by God (12:1; 15:18; 20:7), he stays engaged with God.

The confessions reveal the prophet's struggles with his vocation, but they also show the community how to pray to and rage at God as an act of fidelity in the midst of devastation. He is fully obedient to God's word even as he resists it, wrestles with it, and is "burned" by it (20:9), as they must be. Hence, Jeremiah's intimacy with and allegiance to God are not merely credentials of his calling. They are emblematic virtues to be practiced by the community in the midst of disaster. His prayers teach his people how to pray when all is lost. His complete devotion to God at the heart of his vocation is also the complete devotion to God at the heart of the covenant relationship between God and people. The prophet's life, therefore, invites the community to be as faithful as he is.

The book portrays Jeremiah as a mystic, a contemplative, one utterly entangled with God. He knows God, communes with God, and argues with God. He is "seduced" and "tricked," yet steadfast (20:7). Although Jeremiah consistently prays for judgment upon his opponents and in this sense may seem less than exemplary, his prayers are laments that speak brutal truth to God. His laments encourage the community of survivors to do the same. Such prayer offers them a means to express their bitterness, their sense of betrayal, and their rage. Like Jeremiah, they too should pray for justice and for hope in the face of despair. Perhaps they will also survive with renewed life in God.

Jeremiah's relationship with God is the source of his courage and of his prophetic message. It empowers him to resist the king, religious leaders and the national consensus that they are safe because they are God's chosen. His loyalty to God requires him to be a teller of truth, and it both undermines and overrides any loyalty to human leaders, monarchical (37-38) and prophetic (27-28). It makes him the embodiment of political resistance to the excessively nationalist outlook of his own nation. He challenges those who make the temple a robber's den (7:11). He declares that everyone "from the least to the greatest of them is greedy for unjust gain" (6:13). He accuses the priests and prophets of whitewashing the situation by saying, "Peace, peace when there is no peace" (6:13-14). He threatens the king who "builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbors work for nothing and does not give them their wages" (22:13).

Jeremiah's preaching and the book itself bring a large global vision before the people, but the audience is not finally the nations; it is his own community. That Jeremiah had a community of followers and supporters is evident from the existence of the book itself, but also from the many stories of the book, where he is rescued by supporters and by the presence of Baruch as his scribe and the chief conveyer of his prophecy. Although the first twenty five chapters of the book present Jeremiah apart from his community and as the sole faithful member of his community (5:1-6), the book's second half shows him surviving because of the help and cooperation of other faithful ones. He escapes some of his tribulations because of aid from others inside and outside the community. Ahikam, son of Shaphan, mysteriously rescues him after his trial (26:24). Officials of King Jehoiakim counsel Baruch and Jeremiah to hide before Jeremiah's scroll is read to the king and thereby these officials save them from the king's wrath (36:11-19). Ebed-melech, the Ethiopian slave of the king, rescues Jeremiah from the cistern (36:7-13). Baruch records his words on two scrolls when Jeremiah is prohibited from entering the temple (ch. 36).

Implicit in these accounts is a call to the community to acquire a spirit of openness, of willingness to seek survival in cooperation with others. The exiles must seek the shalom even of the enemy for Babylon's shalom is their shalom (29:7). And this too is an expression of loyalty to God who promises "When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me . . . and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you . . . I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile" (29:13-14).

Jeremiah's prophetic vocation was deeply pastoral, but perhaps not in the modern sense of the term. His words and deeds are not aimed at keeping the peace among his own, nor at trying to avoid offense, nor at supporting the people's rampant, narrow-minded nationalism, as if they lived in a world designed for their well-being alone. The claims of the God of the nations upon him override his personal fears or concerns for acceptance by family and friends (cf. 11:18-23; 15:15-18; 16:1-9). He pursues his calling in fidelity to God's rule of the created world. He ministers to his community by speaking truthful words directed at its disobedience and idolatry, and his own life offers a counter example of how to live in fidelity to God in the midst of disaster.

In this biblical book, the prophetic calling arises from allegiance to the God of Judah who is also the God of the nations. For Jeremiah, such fidelity yields a harsh fate, a stand against the national consensus, a lonely road of abandonment and exile, but his calling allows for no other. It may be that his sorrows and his pain provide the space wherein he can imagine a new community in which everyone will know God from the least to the greatest, and their new life together will be like a watered garden.

[Footnote]
1 See P. D. Miller, Jr. "The World and Message of the Prophets: Biblical Prophecy in Its Context," Old Testament Interpretation: Past, Present, and Future; Essays in Honor of Gene M. Tucker, eds. J. L. Mays, D. L. Petersen, and K. H. Richards (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995) 97-112.
2 For studies with strong confidence in the book as historical biography, see William L. Holladay, Jeremiah, 2 vols. Hermeneia (Philadelphia and Minneapolis: Fortress, 1986 and 1989). For more literary approaches see W. Brueggemann, A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and Homecoming (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); M. Biddle, Polyphony and Symphony in Prophetic Literature: Re-reading Jeremiah 7-20, Studies in Old Testament Interpretation 2 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996) and essays in A. R. P. Diamond, L. Stulman, and K. M. O'Connor, Troubling Jeremiah, JSOTSup 260 (Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1999).
3 J. Bright, A History of Israel, 4th ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2000) 345-46.
4 D. Smith-Christopher, A Biblical Theology of Exile, OBT (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002) 79, cf., 75-104.
5 L. Stulman, Order Amid Chaos: Jeremiah as Symbolic Tapestry, The Biblical Seminar 7 (Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1998).
6 N. Habel's important form-critical study of prophetic "call narratives" ["The Form and Significance of Call Narratives," ZAW 77 (1965) 297-323] is now almost cliché among interpreters, but it deserves continued reflection. See also D. N. Freedman, "Between God and Man: Prophets in Ancient Israel," Prophecy and Prophets, ed. Y. Gitay, SemeiaSt (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997) 57-87.
7 Holladay, Jeremiah, vol 1, 33.
8 So R. P. Carroll, Jeremiah (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986) 95.
9 Until ch. 20, the prophet refers to the invaders under the mythic and terrifying title, "foe from the north." See especially poems scattered across chs. 4-6.
10 R. Clements, Jeremiah, IBC (Louisville: John Knox, 1988) 18.
11 In the Septuagint, the Oracles Against the Nations appear in chs. 26-32.
12 See, for example, Joel 2:1-11; Hosea 2:21-23; and Isa 11:6-9.
13 K. M. O'Connor, "The Tears of God and Divine Character in Jeremiah 2-9," God in the Fray: A Tribute to Walter Brueggemann, ed. T. Linafelt and T. K. Beal (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998) 172-85.
14 See Habel, "The Significance."
15 Some interpreters divide 11:18-12:6 into two poems, and some include 20:14-18 in the final confession. I interpret the first confession as containing two parallel panels of poetry, and 20:14-18 as a cursing poem. K. M. O'Connor, The Confessions of Jeremiah and Their Role in Chapters 1-25, SBLD 94 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988).
16 T. E. Fretheim, "Caught in the Middle: Jeremiah's Vocational Crisis," WW (Fall 2002) 351-60.
17 See J. B. White, When Words Lose Their Meaning: Constitutions and Reconstitutions of Language, Character, and Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
18 See for example, Jer 2:1-4:2.

[Author Affiliation]
KATHLEEN M. O'CONNOR
Professor of Old Testament
Columbia Theological Seminary

Friends with God? Moses and the Possibility of Covenantal Friendship

Friends with God? Moses and the Possibility of Covenantal Friendship

Jacqueline E Lapsley. Interpretation. Richmond: Apr 2004.Vol.58, Iss. 2; pg. 117, 13 pgs Copyright Interpretation Apr 2004


The friendship shared by Moses and God offers a more appropriate model of faithfulness than Israel's prescribed obedience. The intimacy of their relationship offers an alternative model for the church's relationship to God, a countercultural "covenantal friendship."
After accepting the invitation to write on "friendship and covenant," a Bible scholar friend asked me: "What are you going to say? Those ideas seem completely antithetical to me." At first glance, the evidence seems to support this assessment. Consensus affirms that the covenantal relationship between Israel and God in the Old Testament demands Israel's obedience to the covenantal stipulations or the law. For the last half-century, scholarship has viewed this relationship through the lens of ancient Near Eastern treaties, in which a sovereign enters into a highly structured relationship with a vassal. This would appear to be barren ground for exploring notions of divine-human friendship. It is difficult to imagine a definition of "friendship" elastic enough to describe the relationship between a vassal and his overlord without rendering the concept itself useless.
So is there anything positive to say about friendship in the context of Israel's covenantal relationship with God? Indeed, there is. I propose that the friendship between God and Moses offers a model of covenant faithfulness for the whole people of God.1 While outlining four important qualities of their friendship, I will give most attention to the last one, the honest expression of emotion, because it is a key element not only in the friendship between God and Moses, but also, as I will argue, in the covenantal friendship between the people and God.
SPEAKING TO A FRIEND
Dictionary definitions are usually of limited use in this kind of exploration, but the following one highlights something quite helpful: "One joined to another in mutual benevolence and intimacy," excluding relatives or lovers.2 Intimacy-a core characteristic of friendship-was foundational to Moses' relationship with God. The same intimacy present in YHWH'S initiating encounter with Moses at the burning bush characterizes their relationship throughout Exodus and Numbers. To delve more deeply into the nature of Moses' relationship with God, I will focus on one significant passage, the conversation between Moses and God in Exod 33:7-11. This passage is useful for reflection on friendship and covenant for several reasons. First, it offers a unique window into a significant moment in Moses' covenantal mediation between God and the people. The passage falls within the golden calf episode and its aftermath and, as such, narrates a critical moment in Israel's history. More particularly, as Childs observes, w. 7-11 are a "pale shadow of Ex. 19" and therefore provide "another link to the renewal of the broken covenant which is consummated in ch. 34."3 second, these verses reveal much about the relationship between Moses and God by describing, for example, not one particular event but a recurring pattern of behavior over the long term ("Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it..."). Furthermore, as part of the encounter at the Tent of Meeting, the passage is characterized by Ellen Davis as "the most intimate exchange between [Moses and God] that we are privileged to witness."4 Finally, Exod 33:11 tells us explicitly that "the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend." Commentators frequently observe that the "face-to-face" quality of this instance of divine-human interaction suggests an intense intimacy, an unmediated immediacy with the deity unavailable to most other individuals and to Israel as a people.5 But few note the second part of the phrase, "as one speaks to a friend."
There is reason for this reticence. The Hebrew expression translated here "as one speaks to a friend" occurs fifteen times in the Old Testament, but this is the only occurrence that the NRSV, along with many other translations, chooses to render as "friend." For the most part, the expression 'if 'el-reehu-woodenly, "a man to his neighbor"-is appropriately translated in the NRSV "one to another" as in "they said to one another,"6 or in certain legal contexts (e.g., "when someone delivers to another.. .").7 The expression seems to denote reciprocity among equals,8 but without necessarily invoking amicable relations. It is thus not immediately evident that "friend" is a warranted translation. In fact, it might seem like special pleading to adopt "friend" here and nowhere else. Nonetheless, I want to argue that most English translations are justified in maintaining the tradition of the KJV, which offers: "as a man speaketh unto his friend."9 The argument that friendship is a meaningful category in this context relies less on the translations of this phrase elsewhere than on the fuller portrait of the relationship between Moses and God in Exodus and in the Pentateuch more broadly. Even a brief review of this portrait will suggest that Moses and God were indeed friends, and that their friendship has four significant features worthy of our attention.
But a further difficulty emerges: Moses is typically portrayed as exceptional, not a genuine model of what is possible for the people of Israel or for contemporary Christians. (Yet I will argue that friendship is a meaningful way of conceiving our own relationship to God.) Moses' relationship is summed up in Deut 34:10 by way of contrast to the rest of Israel: "Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face." The intimacy between Moses and God was not available to others, not even to other prophets. Walter Brueggemann observes: "No general immediacy or directness is offered to Israelites. When these [personal] encounters occur, they are indeed freighted, dangerous, and special. Israel's sense of Yahweh's relatedness is that Yahweh is only guardedly and rarely available to individual persons."10 To be sure, Israel's relationship with God is distinctly corporate; further, the individualism of contemporary forms of Christian piety would have been inconceivable in ancient Israel. Yet in addition to narratives of individual encounter (especially in the Pentateuch), the Psalms testify to the potential for a poignant and sometimes anguished intimacy in the divine-human relationship. The claim I want to make, then, is a bold one: the friendship between Moses and God is a more appropriate model for faithful readers of scripture than ancient Israel's model of distant obedience.
But first let us return to the question of "friend" as translation in Exod 33:11 in order to clarify some central issues. The context in which this phrase, 'îs 'el-rë'ëhû, occurs in Exodus 33 is not a simply a description of two interlocutors having a casual conversation or commenting on events unfolding before them, as is frequently the case in the other examples of the phrase. Rather, the passage involves a twofold description of how "the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend...." The latter clause must be understood in light of the former, which carries considerable theological significance. In Genesis 32, God memorably speaks face to face with Jacob, which results in Jacob not only naming the site Peniel ("Face of God") but alerting us to the intensity and danger of the encounter by means of a contrast: "I have seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved" (v. 31 [Eng. v. 30] ). The implication here, of course, is that a face-to-face encounter with the deity by rights ought to kill you. This is supported by Gideon's encounter with the angel of YHWH, in which YHWH assures Gideon that he will not die, despite having come face to face with a divine figure (Judg 6:22-23). The phrase (or a variation) is also used to describe encounters between God and the people as a whole, once in the context of judgment and another in the context of law-giving.11
Two observations emerge. First, the expression "face to face" exclusively describes divine-human, not human-human, encounters. secondly, these encounters are intense, dramatic, and fraught with danger, and so can hardly be described as "friendly" in the usual sense. Yet a curious feature arises. If the first part of the phrase describes unusual, extraordinary divine-human encounters, the second half of the phrase evokes the ordinariness of everyday conversations between people. Yet these opposing types of encounter-linked by kaäser ("just as")-appear to describe the same kind of experience. "Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face" (extraordinary divine-human occurrence), just as one person speaks to a friend" (everyday occurrence between people).12 A highly unusual, dangerous experience has become a customary, everyday occurrence. What for Jacob and Gideon was a once-in-a-lifetime, never-to-be-forgotten experience of intimacy, becomes a regular experience for Moses, akin to the types of interactions that people ordinarily have with one another. This begins to look more akin to something like friendship, but not just any friendship, divine friendship, the unique friendship that God offers to humanity. Unlike most of the other occurrences of 'îs 'el-rë'ëhû, the verb here is not plural but singular ("one speaks").13 God is the subject of the speaking and enters as subject into what is elsewhere a uniquely human experience. In juxtaposing, indeed equating ("just as"), two starkly different kinds of encounters, and in taking up the human position in the reciprocal relation evoked in the latter phrase, God befriends Moses. The peculiar combination of mysterium tremendum and everyday chat in this verse not only confirms an understanding of Moses as friend to God, but attests to a core theological paradox at the heart of divine friendship. For Christians, the trajectory of this friendship leads ultimately to the incarnation and to the cross.
DIVINE FRIENDSHIP
At least four salient features of this divine friendship emerge from the interactions between Moses and God in Exodus (already assuming intimacy as constitutive of all of them): habit, reciprocity, self-assertion, and a special category, emotion. We will examine each of these in turn. Interpreters have long puzzled over the way w. 7-11 fit into the over all structure of ch. 33. As Brevard Childs notes, "This section which is basically unified has no obvious connection with either what precedes or follows."14 This section seems to interrupt God's refusal to accompany Israel on the journey (as a result of the golden calf debacle) related in w. 1-6, with that topic picked up again in v. 12. Yet the description of Moses' actions in w. 7-11 anticipates the dialogue between God and Moses in v. 12 by providing a foundation for understanding the nature of their relationship over the long term. The NRSV appropriately translates the frequentive verbs in the passage with "used to": "Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp...." (33:7). This sketch in w. 7-11 describes not a one-time event, but the repeated, habitual actions of Moses and God. So v. 11 serves as a kind of summary: "Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend." In sharp distinction to the other individuals who encountered God "face to face" only once, Moses had these face-to-face meetings routinely. Like human friendship, divine friendship is not about a once-in-a-lifetime encounter, or even about casual, occasional meetings. Rather, it entails a commitment to regular encounters that form habitual practice.
In other instances of 'is 'el-reehu, we observe that reciprocity is a feature of nearly all these encounters. As mentioned above, most employ a plural verb or subject, thus ensuring reciprocity as a grammatical feature of the phrase. In our passage, however, the verb is singular: "just as one speaks [yedabber] to a friend . . .," so the reciprocal nature of the interaction is less apparent. Again, the singular verb with the phrase 'is 'el-reehu; is rare and thereby sets aside this instance as something different and significant beyond the mere casual interchange that the phrase often evokes elsewhere. Nonetheless, the reciprocity attending the phrase elsewhere is not absent here: "as one speaks to a friend" implies that the friend will respond in turn-a mutuality assumed in the expression itself. Further evidence beyond grammar is at hand, however. A brief review of the way Moses and God have interacted throughout Exodus to this point vividly and poignantly attests to the reciprocal nature of their relationship.
In contrast to these regular "face-to-face" meetings in ch. 33, when Moses first encountered God at the burning bush, he hid his face, "for he was afraid to look at God" (Exod 3:6). Yet even this initial conversation is marked by an unusual degree of give-and-take for a divine-human tête-à-tête. Moses listens to God's long introduction explaining the situation of the Israelites in Egypt and how Moses will go to Pharaoh and lead the people out of Egypt (w. 6-10), but then he protests that he is the wrong person for the job. Even though God assures Moses of the divine presence in this endeavor, Moses demurs again, this time over the question of the divine name (v. 13). Twice more Moses throws up objections only to have them addressed by the deity (4:1, 10). Finally he gets to the real point and begs: "O my Lord, please send someone else" (4:13). By measure of their resistance and persistence, Moses' five protestations (see 6:12, 30 for two more) represent an extreme example of the prophetic call. Furthermore, Moses' "pushing the envelope" here resembles Abraham's insistent bargaining over the fate of Sodom (Gen 18:22-33). Abraham is no doubt called a friend of God on account of his reputation for faithful obedience (e.g., Gen 22), but surely also because of the intimacy and mutuality demonstrated in this animated exchange with God.15 Both Abraham and Moses raise questions with God, mount objections to the proffered divine plan, and pointedly continue the conversation even after an initial objection has been addressed. In both cases, friendship with God is about listening to the divine word, and responding to it, usually not with acquiescence, then listening again to the divine response, and so on in an honest exchange of views and concerns.
This intense form of reciprocity appears most vividly when the welfare of the people is at stake. The intimacy of Moses' relationship with God empowers him to represent God to the people, but it equally empowers him to represent the people to God. This is most apparent in the fallout from the golden calf episode. The divine impulse is to destroy the people, but there is an obstacle-Moses. Both the significance of Moses as an intercessor and the mutuality of the relationship between God and Moses are exhibited most startlingly in the divine directive to Moses: "Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them ..." (Exod 32:1O).16 But Moses will not acquiesce to this divine imperative. Instead, he begins to reason with God, asking a number of pointed questions about the effects of such actions on God's reputation among the Egyptians (w. 11-12) and recalling God promises that should not now be abridged (v. 13). The result is that "the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people" (v. 14). Asking pertinent questions that risk impertinence is a sign of genuine friendship. And even after Moses has seen the people's sin for himself and expressed a rage akin to God's (32:19), he still intercedes on their behalf and traipses back up the mountain to plead: "Alas, this people has sinned a great sin; they have made for themselves gods of gold. But now, if you will only forgive their sin-but if not, blot me out of the book that you have written" (32:31-32).17 As Terence Fretheim notes, "Moses offers up his place among God's elect for the sake of the people's future."18 Friendship with God is born out of a deep care for God's people, for if Moses had cared less, he would not have intervened in this way. It is not a personal, individual relationship to be enjoyed alone, for its own sake. Rather, it is this care for the whole people of God that forms the context for divine friendship, and it is this care that feeds the mutuality and reciprocity of that friendship.
Closely related to reciprocity, self-assertion is another feature of divine friendship. In his first encounter with God at the burning bush, Moses hid his face, the first and the last time he evidenced any self-effacing tendencies. Moses' forthright self-assertion is evident in most of his interactions with God, but it is especially characteristic of his conversation with God after the golden calf incident. Again, the passage (w. 7-11) that describes the habitual "friendly" conversations between God and Moses is strategically placed. The order of events in ch. 33 underscores the significance of God's friendship with Moses. God's harsh decision not to be present among the people on their journey to the promised land (33:1-6) is followed by a thumbnail sketch of the long-term nature of the friendship between Moses and God (w. 7-11). This passage explains how Moses can make the kinds of claims on God that he asserts in the verses that follow (w. 12-16): it is only on the basis of a longstanding intimate friendship with God that Moses can initiate an effort to change God's mind about not being present among the people.19 His argument is tightly woven and strategically articulated: "Moses said to the LORD, 'See, you have said to me, "Bring up this people"; but you have not let me know whom you will send with me'" (v. 12). Moses introduces the topic by pointing out that God had given him a task but failed to supply him with adequate resources to complete the task.20 Furthermore, Moses presumes on his friendship with God by asking to be "shown God's ways" (v. 13). Their prior experience of friendship is a firm foundation on which Moses can assert himself; he is not cowed by the inherent inequities of being friends with God. This is an effective, if circumlocutionary, way of asking God to reconsider the decision not to accompany the people on their journey. Moses does not hesitate to offer his own opinions ("Consider too that this nation is your people," v. 13b) or assert himself with God whenever the welfare of the people is at stake. As Ellen Davis remarks, "It must be for his frankness that Moses is so beloved of God."21 Moses' self-assertion is closely related to the reciprocity discussed above: this divine-human friendship is characterized by an honest exchange of views when everything depends on such self-assertion and mutuality.22 THE FEELING(S) OF FRIENDSHIP
The fourth and last feature of divine friendship-emotion-is rarely considered as constitutive of a faithful relationship with God. I suggest that appropriate feelings are part of both Moses' relationship with God and the covenantal stipulations, elaborated most fully in Deuteronomy, by which all the people must abide. It is, in fact, the active role of emotion in the relationship between Moses and God, as well as between the people and God, that decidedly moves the relationship beyond fealty, as usually defined by the suzerainty treaty model from the ancient Near East, toward the intimacy of friendship. Divine friendship does not mean that obedience is any less important, for this is not a friendship between equal parties. This is why the phrase 'is 'el-reehu in Exod 33:11 seems so shocking-the phrase contains the inherent idea of a basic equality among those referenced. The collocation of mysterium tremendum and everyday chat is the paradox at the heart of divine-human friendship. Another aspect of this same paradox can be named as well: although this is clearly a relationship between unequal partners, God enters into a friendship of such intense intimacy and care that only the language of equality can approximate the depth of its mutuality.
We can see this first of all in the way Moses expresses a full palette of emotions to God. In his plea for a revelation of the divine glory in 33:12-23, Moses discloses his passionate desire to know God in an "emotional tone of the highest intensity."23 But even back in his first conversation with God, Moses repeatedly expresses his self-deprecation, fear, and general anxiety ("Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?" "But suppose they do not believe me . . . ?"; 3:11; 4:1, etc.). Uncowed, Moses continues to tell YHWH what he feels, without mincing words. When the Israelites find themselves even more oppressed on account of Moses' acts to "liberate" them, Moses complains to YHWH: "O LORD, why have you mistreated this people? Why did you ever send me? Since I first came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has mistreated this people, and you have done nothing at all to deliver your people" (5:22-23).24 The anger, or perhaps even rage, in this complaint recalls the language of lament psalms, even though Moses' anger is expressed utterly without apology or qualification insofar as there is no movement from or toward praise.
On the other end of the spectrum, Moses' deep love of God is reflected not only in his carrying out of the divine imperatives but in his desire to know YHWH. In the passage immediately following the one discussed above, Moses makes a rather imperious demand of YHWH: "Show me your glory" (33:18). Davis argues persuasively that this stunning request comes not from "Moses the religious-political leader of Israel... but [from] Moses the mystic, the ardent lover of God."25 Moses is not fundamentally motivated by duty, but by love, and this is a crucial difference between him and the people he leads (more on this below). In sum, the divine friendship between Moses and YHWH embraces a wide array of emotions-everything from rage to love-and none is seen as inappropriate to, or testing the limits of, that friendship. Moses faithfully represents YHWH to the people; his actions are performed less out of duty than as an expression of love, of the peculiar variety of friendship that is offered by God. The variety and depth of Moses' "negative" emotions in no way diminish his allegiance, or indeed love, for YHWH. On the contrary, the full range of emotions is part of Moses' divine friendship with God, and in a way that should not be underestimated, they make that friendship possible.
God's position is equally complex. While God famously demonstrates steadfast love in delivering the Israelites (hesed; Exod 15:13; 20:6; 34:6-7; cf. Deut 7:7-9), YHWH also becomes enraged with the people at fairly regular intervals, and this rage can even extend to Moses. Consider the bizarre episode in Exod 4:24-26, in which YHWH tries to kill Moses. This episode is strange enough to have prompted an unusual number of critical efforts to understand it. Most recent interpretations discern an ancient ritual of blood manipulation in the background of this story, although the meaning of the story itself remains enigmatic (Why is YHWH trying to kill Moses?).26 In the context of what has just transpired in chs. 3 and 4, it is not entirely absurd to suggest that God wants to kill Moses because he is failing as a potential leader of the people. In short, YHWH may be expressing a suppressed rage provoked by Moses' endless self-deprecation at the burning bush immediately preceding the attempted killing.27 After Moses' fifth attempt to get out of the job ("O my LORD, please send someone else," 4:13), "the anger of the LORD was kindled against Moses ..." (4:14). Only ten verses later, "the LORD met [Moses] and tried to kill him" (4:24). Attempted murder is not part of the typical prophetic call narrative, of course, but this is the first time in the biblical narrative that YHWH has encountered such extreme resistance in one called to serve-Abraham, for example, was considerably more compliant. After Moses, YHWH seems to have developed a divine resignation toward resistance as a normal prophetic reaction. But in this early episode, it may be that Moses has provoked YHWH to kill him.28
This is less surprising when we consider the situation from the divine perspective: God has chosen Moses to lead God's people out of bondage, and he is not meeting expectations. His peculiar upbringing has uniquely prepared him for the task ahead-he is Hebrew but also Egyptian. he is a slave, but he travels in circles of supreme power. One senses that this was all part of the divine plan-to form Moses in this unique way to fit him for a unique task. But then he turns out to lack self-confidence and ask a lot of whimpering questions. With this in mind, God's attempt to kill him is more intelligible, though the episode's terror remains undiminished. It is as though God wants to abort this plan and develop a new one, perhaps with someone more confident and less demanding. Such violence in the context of friendship is, of course, chilling. But it is worth recalling that, at this point, Moses and YHWH are only at the beginning of their friendship; indeed they are not even friends yet. The friendship is forged in what follows in the book of Exodus, in the confrontation with Pharaoh, in the exodus itself, in the wilderness, and at Sinai-these form the anvil of the divine friendship forged between YHWH and Moses.
To highlight further the importance of emotion to divine friendship, it is worth leaving the particularity of Moses and God for a moment and enlarging our scope to consider how Deuteronomy envisions the emotional bond between the people and God. In Deut 7:7-8, Moses explicitly states that God's love for Israel (and thus acts of deliverance) is not based on rational considerations ("not because you were more numerous than any other people"), but has a completely irrational foundation: "It was because the LORD loved you [me'ahabat] and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors... ."29 The love is primary, while the oath to the ancestors is important but secondary. Repeated exhortations for Israel to love YHWH (and the stranger) shape the structure of Deut 10:12-11:1. While obedience to the commandments is a central manifestation of that love, Israel is also to mirror the kind of love that propels God toward Israel, and that is at root an inexplicable emotion. Everything on earth and in heaven belongs to God, "yet the LORD set his heart in love on your ancestors alone..." (Deut 10:15). Obedience is obligatory to the covenantal life and entails its own beauty, but only when the Israelites deepen and nurture their emotional bond of love do they reflect back to God the kind of love they have received. Indeed, I suspect that Deuteronomy does not distinguish between feeling and action as we do "naturally." In short, feelings of love are not something appropriate only to the relationship between Moses and God; they also play a crucial role in the covenantal relationship between the people and YHWH.
We should nonetheless be clear that, with both Moses and the people, God is the superior partner in this divine friendship. Yet some of the most significant and enduring friendships among people exist not among people who are similar in age, social location, status, or access to power, but among "unequal" partners. Many friendships form between disparate persons: between a younger, less experienced person and one who is older and wiser, between someone who is cognitively challenged and one who is not, between the powerful and the powerless, and so on. Certainly the character of these friendships is affected by these inequalities, and so in Israel's case. Israel owes its allegiance and its obedience to God, without question. But without intimacy and the feelings born of intimacy, the relationship between God and the people flounders. Obedience and feeling are interdependent; obedience follows feeling and feeling follows obedience in an endless circuit of faithfulness. It takes a friendship to make that faithfulness a reality over the long term.
COVENANTAL FRIENDSHIP
I have argued that Moses and God exhibit-enjoy would be a better word-a divine friendship characterized by habit, reciprocity, self-assertion, and the widest possible array of honest emotional expression, all of which are rooted in an abiding mutual love. But how does this apply to us? I am making the claim that the friendship between Moses and God is a model for covenantal faithfulness, and so a model for us as we strive to read scripture faithfully. Yet I also mentioned the potential objection that Moses is unique-his experience, and so his friendship with God, are not meant to be emulated by us. And that is true, if by emulating Moses we mean that we should expect God to offer us individual personal encounters on a par with Moses. Brueggemann is right that such encounters are offered only to a few persons in the Old Testament. They are not the customary means of YHWH'S self-revelation. Nonetheless, the friendship between Moses and God is one the church must take seriously as a model for itself. This kind of divine friendship is not between any single individual and God; it is a "covenantal friendship" that God offers to the whole people.
The church has long identified with Israel in the Old Testament. But in this case, I think it would be more profitable to identify with Moses, again not as individuals but in our corporate life lived before God. No one disputes that the people in Exodus hardly represent the ideal model of faithfulness. Interpreters account for the failings of the people in various ways. Michael Walzer makes the cogent argument that their prior servitude inhibits the people from immediately being capable of faithfulness; they must grow into the responsibilities inherent in freedom.30 It is significant that Moses did not participate in his people's servitude-his habit of mind was formed in freedom-and as such he is capable of entering into and sustaining a friendship with God over the long term. In the episode of the golden calf, the people's theology of fear leads them to make an inert god they can get close to without fear when Moses does not immediately descend from the mountain. But Moses' friendship with God sustains him and his faith, even in the midst of severe testing, when he is caught between God's demands and the people's anger and faithlessness. The people, by contrast, view God as frightening and distant, with the result that their faithlessness begins immediately. Their lack of self-assertion renders their relationship with God a one-dimensional "faith" constituted by obedience alone. This "faith" cannot sustain them over the long term. In sum, while we are informed that "never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face" (Deut 34:10), this singularity may not be because God willed it so but because no one else demonstrated the same kind of habitual interaction, reciprocity, and self-assertion necessary to maintain a divine friendship over the long term (although Elijah comes close). For the church to read Exodus as scripture today, then, there is more reason to identify with Moses than with the people, and more reason to see in his friendship with God a path of faithfulness than in the slavish (dis)obedience of the people.
While individual friendships with God are not illegitimate or unsupported in the biblical witness (e.g., the Psalms), the book of Exodus offers a distinctly corporate understanding of friendship with God.31 No pietistic individualism undergirds the friendship offered here (this is no "Jesus and me" or even "YHWH and me" theology). Rather, Exodus holds up for Israel and for the church a vision of a sustaining and sustainable friendship-one strong enough to hold Moses and God together during the tumultuous years of bondage, deliverance, the wilderness, and arrival in the land. This contrasts sharply with a tendency of the contemporary church to mirror Israel's posture toward God in Exodus: we do not trust our covenantal friendship with God. The church sometimes cowers before God, afraid to admit our fear, disappointment, and anger, afraid to speak the truth or reveal how we experience (or do not experience) God in the world. I suspect that this problem is related to the way friendship is shaped by a business ethos in American society. Good business, for example, means "winning friends," according to Dale Carnegie whose number one principle for "winning friends" is "don't criticize, condemn or complain."32 The friendship between Moses and God offers the church a model for covenantal faithfulness that is thus distinctly countercultural; it pushes the boundaries of what we are comfortable calling "friendship."33
A lack of genuine friendship led Israel to abandon God in favor of other, more tangible gods, and so it is for us in the church, though we usually abandon God in more genteel ways, semi-embarrassed that things have just not worked out.34 The friendship between Moses and God rejects this posture and creates the possibility of a covenantal friendship in which questioning, cajoling, and demanding, sometimes in anger, are part of a normal, corporate friendship with God that makes covenant faithfulness possible. To reiterate, the expression of Moses' "negative" emotions toward God make their friendship possible. An honest emotional life is one of the core features missing from the relationship between YHWH and the people, and that emptiness leads them inevitably to disobedience. We would do well to adopt a more Moses-like attitude toward God, rather than the sometimes timid, resentful, or apathetic "respect" for God that characterizes Israel in Exodus and too often characterizes the church today.
Obedience without the sustenance of habitual communication, reciprocity, self-assertion, and a deep and broad emotional life leave Israel, and ultimately the church, perpetually disobedient to a covenant that does not reach their innermost being. Only a covenantal friendship with God could sustain them, and us.
[Sidebar] God enters into a friendship of such intense intimacy and care that only the language of equality can approximate the depth of its mutuality.
[Sidebar] The collocation of myster/um tremendum and everyday chat is the paradox at the heart of divine-human friendship.
[Sidebar] An honest emotional life is one of the core features missing from the relationship between YHWH and the people, and that emptiness leads them inevitably to disobedience.
[Footnote] 1 On the idea of covenant in Exodus, see D. E. Gowan, Theology in Exodus: Biblical Theology in the Form of a Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994) 173-78. 2 Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971) 545. 3 B. S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary, OTL (Louisville: Westminster, 1974) 593. He notes the structural parallels between 33:7-11 and the initial ascent at Sinai. 4 E. E Davis, Getting Involved With God: Rediscovering the Old Testament (Boston: Cowley, 2001) 155. 5 T. E. Fretheim, Exodus, IBC (Louisville: John Knox, 1991) 296. Moberly sees 33:lla as "the turning point" of chs. 32-34, marking the transition from judgment to mercy (R.W.L. Moberly, At the Mountain of God: Story and Theology in Exodus 32-34, JSOTSup 22 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1983) 63-67). see Deut 5:4; 34:10; Jacob in Gen 32:30; Gideon in judg 6:22; and Ezek 20:35 in the context of divine judgment. 6 Gen 11:3; judg 6:29, 10:18; 1 Sam 10:11; 2 Kgs 7:3, 7:9; Jer 22:8, 46:16; Jonah 1:7; cf. Gen 43:33; Isa 13:8; 36:16. 7 Exod 22:10; cf. 22:7. The root of the translation difficulty lies in the word red itself having a wide range of meaning, denoting everything from "another person" to "neighbor" to "friend." 8 All of the examples above involve equal parties, and it appears to be an assumed element of the expression. More on the implications of this below. 9 Among the major translations, the most recent one from the Jewish Publication Society and the New American Bible stand out as exceptions; they opt for "as one man speaks to another." Curiously, the NAB translates part of the next verse "You are my intimate friend" (Exod 33:12). 10 W. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997) 571. 11 Ezek 20:35: "I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I will enter into judgment with you face to face." A slightly different form of the phrase (with preposition b instead of 'el) appears in Deut 5:4, where Moses begins his recitation of events: "The LORD spoke with you face to face [panîm bepanîm] at the mountain, out of the fire." In this latter case, Moses immediately clarifies that while YHWH spoke to the people "face to face," he was nonetheless mediating the encounter (Deut 5:5). 12 NRSV, slightly modified. 13 The two exceptions are in the legal material of Exod 22: 7, 10: "When someone delivers to a neighbor...." 14 Childs, Exodus, 589-90. Recent interpreters who attend to the narrative structure are less inclined to see the verses as disjunctive. see M. R. Hauge, The Descent from the Mountain: Narrative Patterns in Exodus 19-40, JSOTSup 323 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001) 73-74; 159; G. Barbiero, "Ex. XXXIII 7-11: Eine synchrone Lekture," VT 50 (2000) 152-66. 15 Abraham is also described as a "friend [from 'ahab] of God" (Isa 41:8; 2 Chr 20:7; James 2:23). For this essay, I chose Moses because he displays an unusual tenacity and emotional depth in his friendship with God that endures through four biblical books, as well as for his pivotal role in the Sinai covenant. On Abraham, see B. W. Anderson, "Abraham, the Friend of God," foi 42 (1988) 353-66. 16 Emphasis added. 17 Emphasis added. Jeremy Schipper observes, in personal communication, that the people want to make a new god, and God, in angry response, wants to make a new people (from Moses' progeny [32:10]). Only Moses prevents this from happening. 18 Fretheim, Exodus, 290. Donald Gowan sees this as a form of solidarity-Moses will be blotted out with the people, not instead of them (Theology in Exodus, 227). 19 On challenging God as a form of faithfulness, see G. W. Coats, "The King's Loyal Opposition: Obedience and Authority in Exodus 32-34," in Canon and Authority, ed. G. W. Coats and B. O. Long (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977) 107. 20 This recalls a similar scene in Exodus 4, where God proposes Aaron as a companion in order to assuage Moses' anxiety about the entire undertaking (4:14-16). 21 Davis, Getting Involved With God, 154. 22 William Irwin sees Moses and God speaking at cross purposes in this dialogue, which gives it "an ironic playfulness" fitting to this "friendly exchange" (W. H. Irwin, "The Course of the Dialogue between Moses and Yhwh in Exodus 33:12-17," CBQ 59 (1997) 633. 23 Childs, Exodus, 594. 24 Emphasis added. 25 Davis, Getting Involved With God, 157, contra Gowan, Theology in Exodus, 232-33. 26 For the history of scholarship on these verses, see W. Propp, Exodus 1-18: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 2 (New York: Doubleday, 1999) 233-38. Propp understands this attempt on Moses' life as an act of divine justice for the manslaughter that Moses commits in Exodus 2. 27 For a discussion of this vein of interpretation, see I. Pardes, Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992) 80-81. 28 The episode is more complex than this, of course, as Fretheim rightly observes: "This multivalent vignette is thus a sign of what is at stake in all of that which is to follow" (Exodus, 81). 29 I have discussed at length the meaning of love in Deuteronomy 7 and 10 in J. Lapsley "Feeling Our Way: Love for God in Deuteronomy," CBQ 65 (2003) 350-69. 30 M. Walzer, Exodus and Revolution (New York: Basic, 1985). 31 While I have thus far emphasized the initiative Moses has shown in building and sustaining his habit of friendship with God through his self-assertion and his part in the reciprocal nature of the relationship, it is nonetheless crucial to note here that it is God who offers friendship to Moses, and ultimately to the people, though they are unable to respond to it on account of their servitude. From the very beginning, God describes his relationship to Israel as an enduring, habitual one based on a personal, intimate relationship with individuals ("I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob....") that is now extended to the whole people. As Gowan puts it: "God graciously willed to establish an intimate relationship with them at the beginning of their existence as a people; indeed, they insist, it was that relationship that made them a people" (Gowan, Theology in Exodus, 168). This is not a distant, abstract god, but one who engages the hearts of individuals and finally Israel itself. 32 D. Carnegie, Pathways to Success: The Groundbreaking Best Sellers: "How to Win Friends & Influence People" and "How to Stop Worrying & Start Living": Complete in One Volume (Hauppauge, N.Y.: Dale Carnegie & Associates, 1981, 1984) 3-16. 33 D. Louw argues for a metaphoric model of "God as friend" because it links intimacy and co-suffering with strength and steadfastness (D. J. Louw, '"God as Friend": Metaphoric Theology in Pastoral Care," Pastoral Psychology 46 [1998] 233-42). 34 See E. Davis on how attentive reading of the Psalms might address the lack of honesty in Christian prayer (Getting Involved With God, 7-41).
[Author Affiliation] JACQUELINE E. LAPSLEY Assistant Professor of Old Testament Princeton Theological Seminary