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- Herausgeber: IVP Academic
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
Have We Misunderstood the Ten Commandments? Have you ever wondered what the Old Testament—especially the Old Testament law—has to do with your Christian life? You are not alone. Some Christian leaders believe we should cast off the Old Testament now that we have the New. Carmen Joy Imes disagrees. In this warm, accessible volume, Imes takes readers back to Sinai, the ancient mountain where Israel met their God, and explains the meaning of events there. She argues that we've misunderstood the command about "taking the Lord's name in vain." Instead, Imes says that this command is about "bearing God's name," a theme that continues throughout the rest of Scripture. The story of Israel turns out to be our story too, and you'll discover why Sinai still matters as you follow Jesus today. Bearing God's Name offers: - An opportunity for readers to revisit the story of Israel as they trudge through the wilderness from a grueling past to a promising future, - An appendix with resources from The Bible Project, and - Discussion questions for individual reflection or group conversation.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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FOREWORD BY CHRISTOPHER J. H. WRIGHT
For my parents,
Dan and Verna Camfferman,
and for Danny,
my partner for life,
and for our children,
Eliana, Emma, and Easton,
who have known for a long time
what it means to bear God’s name.
Contents
FOREWORD
Christopher J. H. Wright
“And you call yourself a Christian!” That was about the worst thing we feared hearing as young Christians in my Northern Ireland childhood. If you were caught cheating on a test, or saying a bad word in your anger, or getting into a fight on the playground, or telling a dirty joke, or just showing off in front of the girls . . . whatever it was, the most stinging rebuke from other kids (or worst of all from a teacher) would be, “And you call yourself a Christian!” From another kid, that would mean, “See! You’re no better than the rest of us. Holier-than-thou. Hypocrite!” From a teacher it was more sobering: “That’s not the sort of behavior we expect from you of all people, Christopher.” Either way it was a pretty excruciating humiliation. There you were with your little Christian lapel badge for the Scripture Union or whatever, advertising that you were a Christian. But you’d let the team down again, let Jesus down again.
In our late teenage years the terminology changed a bit, but the inference was the same. There were many things that a “real Christian” simply didn’t do, places you didn’t go, music you shouldn’t listen to, clothes you shouldn’t wear, and so on, because if anybody saw or heard you, it would spoil your testimony. How could you bear witness to being a follower of Jesus, if you were just as “worldly” as all the other young folks?
Now of course I recognize that an unwholesome dose of legalism lurked in that kind of Christian culture, and sadly there were those who so reacted against it that they rejected the very faith it was trying to protect. But there was a genuine biblical truth underneath those assumptions and restrictions, namely this: how those who claim to be the people of God behave is an essential and inseparable component in the credibility (or otherwise) of what they say they believe about the God whose name they bear. If you call yourself a Christian, you’d better behave like one (or at least bear some resemblance to how people think Christians should behave). “Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity” (2 Timothy 2:19 KJV, emphasis mine), was a memory verse impressed on us and rightly so.
Learning the Ten Commandments by heart, word-perfect from the KJV, was also part of my upbringing. So we chorused, “Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” And of course, we knew what taking God’s name in vain meant. It was using the name of God, or Jesus, or Christ as a swear word or in any kind of exclamation. So we just didn’t! And we tutted and frowned very disapprovingly at anybody who did.
Well, again, I don’t regret or reject those childhood admonitions to watch our language. But having now read this book by Carmen Joy Imes, I do wonder what difference it would have made if those renowned KJV translators had been more literal and rendered the verb in its natural meaning: “You shall not bear the name of the LORD thy God in vain.” It might, of course, have simply increased the agony of those “And you call yourself a Christian” moments. But if Imes is right, it would have been much closer to the strong ethical thrust of the commandment than merely verbal abuse or misuse of God’s name (not that that is a trivial matter by any means).
And I have to say that I am convinced that Carmen Imes is right. Her case in this book (and argued in great exegetical detail in her published dissertation, Bearing YHWH’s Name at Sinai: A Reexamination of the Name Command of the Decalogue), is that “bearing the name of Yahweh” is comparable in meaning to the High Priest bearing the names of the tribes of Israel on his breastplate and bearing the name of Yahweh on his forehead. He represents—in both directions—those whose name he bears. Similarly, those who bore the name of Yahweh, like those who bear the name of Christ, represented that name before the watching world. Israel was called to live in the midst of the nations as the people who bore the name of Yahweh and made Yahweh “visible” in the world by walking in his ways and reflecting his character. To bear the name of the Lord was not merely an inestimable privilege and blessing but a challenging ethical and missional responsibility. This makes eminent sense to me. And its New Testament parallels are obvious.
A little more of my own story may explain why I resonate so enthusiastically with the message of this book. My parents were missionaries in Brazil before I was born, so I grew up with a houseful of missionary artifacts and a headful of missionary stories. (“And you a missionary’s son!” was an even more stinging rebuke for the mildest bad behavior, since it felt like bringing disgrace on my own father, let alone the Lord Jesus.)
I studied theology in Cambridge University. But in my undergraduate years there seemed no connection between theology and my missionary interests. I then went on to do doctoral research in the field of Old Testament ethics. That was a rich field of exploration in which I became ever more convinced that much of the weakness of the modern church is owing to its neglect of the profound ethical message and principles that God has woven so pervasively into the life and scriptures of Israel—and that filter through into so much of the ethical teaching of Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament. But again, this did not particularly connect with mission in my thinking.
Then I went to teach the Old Testament in India for five years in the 1980s. I remember vividly the moment I encountered the remarkable divine soliloquy that is Genesis 18:18-19.
Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just, so that the LORD will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him. (emphasis mine)
There, in the three clauses of that single sentence of verse 19, with its two explicit indications of purpose (“so that”), we have God’s election (“I have chosen him”), and God’s mission (the fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham that all nations on earth will be blessed through him), and right in the middle connecting both of those, we have God’s ethical demand (that Abraham’s community should walk in the way of the Lord—not of Sodom and Gomorrah—by doing righteousness and justice).
That verse united in my mind (and heart) the two great loves of my life in my biblical thinking and teaching: mission and ethics. They became like two sides of the same coin. God’s mission for Israel was simply that they should live as the people of Yahweh in the midst of the nations, bearing his name in their worship, prayer, and daily lives. And for that purpose, they must walk in the way of the Lord. And that was why God had chosen them in the first place, in Abraham, so that through them he could ultimately bring redemptive blessing to all nations. This single verse breathed missional election and missional ethics—and I was doing missional hermeneutics, though none of those terms seem to have been invented back then.
And that is what Carmen Joy Imes is doing in this book (though fortunately she does not use that kind of language!). She is helping us to relish once again the wondrous depths of truth and challenge that are there for us Christians in that great epic narrative of Old Testament Israel—whether those stories are familiar to us already or not. She not only shows what a horrendous and misleading fallacy it is when church leaders either ignore the Old Testament, or even worse, assure us that we can easily do without it and still be good Christians. The very idea would have appalled Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, and John.
Carmen also indirectly exposes the folly of some of the dichotomies that still plague the Christian West, particularly in the evangelical community—dichotomies I strive to overcome in speaking and writing. There is for example that tediously long-lived debate about whether “real mission” is primarily a matter of the evangelistically proclaimed word or also includes social, economic, and cultural engagement in works of compassion, justice, creation care, and so on. Why push asunder what God has joined together? For bearing the name of the Lord (in proclamation) will surely be “in vain” if it does not proceed from those who bear the name of the Lord also in lives and works that demonstrate his character. And then one hears of Christian pastors who never preach from the Old Testament or about any moral issues or even the ethical demands of Jesus and the apostles, for fear of undermining “the gospel” of justification by grace and faith alone. What do they think Paul means by “the obedience of faith” or “obeying the gospel” or being saved as “God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10), or “so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good” (Titus 3:8)? The dichotomizing of so-called gospel and ethics is damagingly unbiblical and might be said to constitute in itself a form of bearing the name of the Lord in vain.
So you call yourself a Christian? I trust that reading this book will give you a deeper and more biblical understanding of what it ought to mean to bear that name, and not to bear it in vain.
INTRODUCTION
AN INVITATION
In the opening to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C. S. Lewis crafts an arresting scene: Edmund and Lucy Pevensie are upstairs in their cousin Eustace’s home, lamenting that they are stuck with him for their summer holidays rather than somewhere far more interesting, such as Narnia. Their grief is sharpened by a painting on the wall—a ship at sea that seems remarkably like a Narnian vessel. Eustace overhears the siblings talking and begins to mock them for their childish imagination. He thinks the painting is downright rotten.
As they stare at it, the children fall silent. Something peculiar happens. They can almost see the undulating waves, almost feel the wind blowing, almost hear the sound of the ship slicing through the waters, and almost smell the air of the sea. Suddenly, they are splashed with sea spray and water pours through the frame into the bedroom. In a matter of moments, there is no bedroom at all, and the children are gasping for air in a tumultuous Narnian sea.
Perhaps without meaning to, Lewis demonstrates the nature of Scripture. At first glance, the Bible is only a book, telling us of lands and peoples long ago and far away. But like the Narnian painting, as we look more closely, it comes to life and sweeps us into its story.
You’re holding in your hands a book about Sinai, the mountain where the ancient Israelites met their God, Yahweh. It revisits their story as they trudge through the wilderness from a grueling past to a promising future. Chances are slim that you’ve ever been to Sinai in person, and slimmer that you are there as you read this. The people in this story lived over 3,000 years ago, spoke a different language, and lived by a radically different rhythm, with different values, customs, and concerns. However, these differences cannot erase the fundamental connection between their ancient story and your own. My prayer is that as you read you will experience what the Pevensie children experienced on that hot summer day in England—that you’ll be drawn into the biblical story and find that it is very much alive and that you’re a part of it—that it’s your story.
A WORD TO THE SKEPTIC
You may already be skeptical about the value of time travel to Sinai. You may be reading this book only because someone shoved it in your hand and said, “You need to read this.” If so, I understand your hesitation.
The Old Testament has been given a bad rap for lots of reasons. Too violent. Too confusing. Too remote. Too legalistic. Too outdated. Oh, there are a few inspiring stories tucked in between the head-scratchers. These we like to pull out and hold up to the light briefly before high-tailing it back to the New Testament. But the rest? We might not be willing to say it out loud, but large portions of the Old Testament are not just boring, they’re downright embarrassing. It would be easier to defend our faith if most of the Old Testament would just disappear.
An example of this ambivalence comes from Atlanta megachurch pastor Andy Stanley. He enjoys wide popularity, and for good reason. He has a special gift for communicating spiritual truths in a way that attracts the unchurched. He gets people in the door, and he holds their attention. He recognizes that the Old Testament is a significant barrier for many who might otherwise want to follow Jesus. His solution to this problem is to set it aside. The word he used was “unhitch.” In a sermon on Acts 15, Stanley said, “[Early] church leaders unhitched the church from the worldview, value systems, and regulations of the Jewish Scriptures . . . and my friends, we must as well.” He claimed, “The Old Testament was not the go-to source regarding any behavior for the church.” In the same sermon he went so far as to say, “When you read the Old Testament, when you read the old covenant, when you read the story of Israel . . . you don’t see much [grace].”1
The book of Exodus overflows with grace.
But as I read it, the book of Exodus overflows with grace. It turns out that Stanley realizes this too. In an interview with Dr. Michael Brown a few months after Stanley’s controversial sermon, he explained that what he wants his listeners to “unhitch” from is not the Old Testament properly understood, but the Old Testament as people have come to imagine it.2 In other words, he’d like people to leave aside the Old Testament temporarily, just long enough to be captivated by the resurrected Lord. Once they’ve encountered Jesus, they’ll rediscover the value of the Scriptures Jesus loved.
With this book, I’m taking a different approach. I believe that we need the Old Testament as Christians, not later, but now. Rather than unhitching, I want to make the case that we should re-hitch to Israel’s Scriptures so that we can truly understand who Jesus is and what he came to do. Without some guidance, we might easily conclude that the Old Testament is a terrible burden to pull and wish to walk away from it. We need an experienced guide who can help us see the enduring value of the Old Testament for the life of faith. I’ve had many such guides who have helped bring the Old Testament to life, and this book is my means of passing along to you their most important insights along with my own. I hope it will change your mind about the relevance of the Old Testament for Christians.
We especially need help with Old Testament law. Most of us do not perk up when we hear the word “law.” Boring, irrelevant, primitive, harsh, patriarchal, ethnocentric, cruel—all these charges are leveled against it. Laws are dry and tedious, and they take away freedoms we’d rather have. Laws keep us from parking in the most convenient places and require us to take off our shoes at airport security checkpoints. Laws cramp our style—do not climb this or sit here or talk loud there. Silence your cell phone and no flash photography and don’t chew gum and don’t bring in outside food or drink and keep your hands and arms inside the car.
This is why Moses’ response to the law catches us off guard. Here he is, with tens of thousands of former slaves, exhausted after trekking through the wilderness with everything they own. They’ve been hungry, thirsty, and attacked along the way. They set up camp at the base of Mount Sinai, where the Lord first spoke to Moses in the flaming bush and promised to deliver his people from Egypt. Moses climbs up the mountain to talk with God again, now that he’s carried out God’s instructions to lead the people out of Egypt. The people have arrived. And God gives them rules?
I would expect Moses to push back a bit. Um . . . Lord? Isn’t this the part where you bless us? Or at least give us a break? These folks have had a long journey and, frankly, a hard life. What they need is a rest. Couldn’t you cut them some slack? Do you really think it’s fair to saddle them with a bunch of rules when they’ve only just tasted freedom? Couldn’t this wait until later?
But the way Moses sees it, other nations will actually be jealous of the law Israel gets at Sinai:
See, I have taught you decrees and laws as the LORD my God commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today? (Deuteronomy 4:5-8, emphasis added)
Wisdom? Jealous? If Moses’ words strike us as odd, then we need to take a second look at Sinai because we have failed to catch what’s actually happening there. That’s where we’ll begin in Part One. First, we’ll ask, “What’s the big deal about Sinai? Why should we care what happens there?” These questions are answered by the narrative frame within which the Sinai experience is set: the wilderness stories leading up to it mirror those that follow Sinai. This literary context makes Sinai the high point of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible, also called the Pentateuch) and the event that sets the agenda for everything that follows.
Once the frame is in place, in the rest of Part One we’ll study the “painting” itself. The Sinai narratives span fifty-seven chapters from Exodus 19 to Numbers 10. Much happens here, and it’s crucial for the formation of Israel’s identity and vocation. Israel cannot be God’s people without Sinai. (Neither can we, but that’s getting ahead of ourselves.) Most people have a general familiarity with the most famous declaration that takes place there: the Ten Commandments. Nevertheless, misunderstandings abound about their purpose and meaning. We’ll tackle some of these misunderstandings along the way, zeroing in on a single command that has been largely misinterpreted—the command not to “take the name of the LORD thy God in vain” (Exodus 20:7 KJV). Then we’ll look at the other laws that lay out God’s covenantal expectations, including instructions for building the tent in which he is to dwell.
That brings us to Part Two. We’ll look at the story after Sinai—how Israel largely fails at living as the people of God, how the prophets hold out hope for future covenant renewal, how Jesus adopts the vocation of the people of God as bearers of Yahweh’s name, and how the story opens up to include those of us who are non-Jews, enabling us to become who we were meant to be. Rather than abandoning the Old Testament, the New Testament church turns to it again and again as their primary source for ethical reflection. They see themselves in continuity with the Old Testament people of God, carrying forward their mission to represent God to the nations. Their story becomes ours when we join the family of faith.
WHO IS “THE LORD”?
We’ll want to get one thing straight at the outset so there’s no misunderstanding. “God” (elohim in Hebrew) and “Lord” (adonai in Hebrew) are not names. Elohim is a category of beings who inhabit the spiritual realm; angels are elohim and so are the gods of other nations. Adonai is a title that means “master,” whether human or divine. Both words can describe Israel’s deity. However, the God of Israel also revealed his name, inviting the Israelites to address him personally as “Yahweh.”
Scholars today aren’t precisely sure how to pronounce God’s name because in Hebrew we’re given just four consonants, YHWH. Later in history Jews adopted the practice of replacing the divine name YHWH with other words out of reverence. When reading the biblical text, they might refer to YHWH as “Adonai,” which means “Lord,” or “Ha-Shem,” which means “the Name.” In order to remind people not to say God’s name, Jewish scribes attached the vowels of “Adonai” to the consonants of YHWH, resulting in a nonsense word, YaHoWaH, that was meant to remind people to say Adonai. Later still, Christian scholars trying to read ancient Hebrew sounded out this nonsense word, coming up with “Jehovah.” Our English Bible translations follow Jewish tradition of avoiding pronunciation of the name by representing the Hebrew YHWH with LORD in all capital letters.
Whenever you see LORD throughout this book (or in your Bibles!), remember that you’re looking at God’s personal name, Yahweh.
DIGGING DEEPER
If you’re relatively new to the Bible or if you’re rusty on the overall storyline, it would be a good idea to pause your reading and check out the appendix. There I’ve provided links for videos from The Bible Project that will help orient you to the message of Scripture. The first two video links will be especially helpful before you dive into the next chapter. If you already quite familiar with the Bible, then I’d recommend the third video for you. All three will help you get the big picture in mind before we dive into the particulars. If you can read QR codes with your smartphone or tablet, these will take you straight to the videos. Alternatively, you can type in the url or google the title of the video, joining the hundreds of thousands of people who have seen the Bible come to life with the help of The Bible Project. You’ll find other codes that correlate with each chapter in the book in the appendix. The videos nicely complement each chapter of the book, but should not be considered an endorsement from The Bible Project.
1
LEAVING EGYPT
Deliverance as Grace
CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING
The first and most commonly made mistake with the Old Testament law is to ignore where it appears. Many Christians assume that in the Old Testament era the Israelites had to earn salvation by following the Sinai law, while Jesus did away with that notion, making salvation available for free. This is a terribly unfortunate caricature of the Old Testament, but it is easily resolved by taking a closer look at the story. Israel arrives at Sinai in chapter 19 of Exodus. That’s where Yahweh will give them the law. However, God’s elaborate deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt takes place in chapters 3–14. If the law were a prerequisite for salvation, then we would expect to see Moses in Egypt making a public service announcement: Hey, everyone—Good news! Yahweh plans to set you free from slavery to Pharaoh. There’s just one catch. You’re gonna have to agree to live by this set of rules. If you just sign on the dotted line saying that you agree to these conditions, Yahweh will spring into action. Who’s in?
Of course, this is not what happens. Instead, God appears to Moses in the wilderness, reveals his personal name, Yahweh, and gives Moses this message for those living under oppression in Egypt:
The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey. (Exodus 3:16-17)
Yahweh delivers them “with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment” (Exodus 6:6) without first checking their homes for idols or performing an audit of their morality. His deliverance has to do with his character and his promise to their ancestor, Abraham, rather than with their righteousness. True, God had given instructions to Abraham and his sons, which they were to obey, but he had not given them any permanent code of conduct.
God made a covenant with Abraham back in Genesis. He promised as many descendants as the stars in the sky (Genesis 15:5), along with a vast tract of land that would become theirs (Genesis 15:18-21). He also had spoken of Israel’s future enslavement in Egypt:
Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. (Genesis 15:13-14)
Now they’ve done their time. Yahweh is ready to put his plan in motion. Abraham’s descendants have become a great multitude (see Exodus 1:7), and they’re about to be rescued. The only requirement is for each family to eat a lamb together and spread its blood on their door frame as a sign for God to protect them from the destroying angel.1
Whatever Sinai represents, it cannot be a prerequisite for salvation. Israel has already been delivered when they arrive. In order to understand what the law at Sinai is for, we’ll need to take seriously where and when it is given and how it is framed. And timing is everything.
PASSOVER
We know this event as the “Passover,” but the English word “Passover” is not a great translation of the Hebrew pasakh in Exodus 12:13. It gives the unfortunate impression that Yahweh is “passing over” them and his attention is elsewhere. While the word can mean pass over, in this context the meaning “protect” makes more sense. Yahweh protects, or covers, the Hebrew households from the destroying angel who has been commissioned to carry out God’s judgment.2 Yahweh’s gracious protection of his people shows faithfulness to his promise to save them. Exodus 12:23, 27 and Isaiah 31:5 are other examples where pasakh means “cover” or “protect” rather than “pass over.”3
FRAMING SINAI: THE WILDERNESS JOURNEYS
You’ve likely seen Leonardo da Vinci’s painting titled “The Last Supper.”
Figure 1.1. da Vinci’s The Last Supper
In it, Jesus sits at the center of a long table with six of his disciples on either side, grouped in clusters of three. The twelve are not insignificant, but Jesus matters more. He is the center of focus. All the perspective lines point toward his face, which is framed by the window behind him. That window is flanked by windows and four columns on either side of the room, drawing the viewer’s eye to the center. This framing technique is not only effective in visual art. It also works in stories.
Each culture has its own set of expectations for how stories ought to be told. In the Western tradition, the climax belongs at the end. Other cultures arrange their stories differently, some with the climax right in the center. This technique is sometimes called a “ring structure,” “mirror imaging,” or “chiasm,” and it was commonly used in ancient writing. I like to think of it as a literary sandwich. While the climax of a chiasm is not always found in the middle, the turning point of the narrative often is.4
The flood narrative in Genesis 6–9 is an example of mirror imaging on a smaller scale. The way the story is told mirrors the actual event; the symmetrical ebb and flow of the story matches the rise and fall of the water. The structural center of the chiasm, or literary sandwich, is also the theological turning point: “God remembered Noah” (Genesis 8:1).5
A closer look at the wilderness stories immediately before and after Israel’s camp at Sinai reveals a surprise: they deliberately mirror each other, creating a narrative frame that draws our focus to Sinai in the center (see Figure 1.2). If we were tempted to think of the Sinai instructions as a boring appendix to the story of deliverance from Egypt, this framing technique wakes us from our delusion. We’d miss it if we only read parts and pieces of the Torah. But when we read large chunks of text in one sitting, we can begin to see what’s there. As a result, the Sinai narratives take their place as the crown jewel—the center of focus—of the Torah. Let me show you what I mean.
Figure 1.2. The framing of the Sinai narratives
Numbers 33 lays out the full itinerary of Israel’s hike from Egypt to Canaan. There are forty-two camping spots on that itinerary. But if you carefully read the narratives that actually describe those travels before and after Sinai (Exodus 12–18 and Numbers 11–32) you’ll discover that only six campsites are mentioned on either side, each introduced by the same Hebrew phrase: “and they set out.”6 This is not to suggest that one account is more reliable than the other. The itinerary and the narrative serve different purposes. If you made a scrapbook of your summer road trip, you might include a page with your full itinerary. But you might not have taken great pictures at every stop along the way. Some places were more significant than others, so they’ll get more attention on the pages of your scrapbook. So, too, with Israel. The narrator has selected six representative campsites before Sinai and six after, putting Sinai right in the middle, like Jesus in da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” With Sinai deliberately in the center, our eyes are drawn to it. But this is only the beginning of the literary symmetry.
The itineraries mention “desert” seven times before Sinai and seven times afterward. On the way to Sinai we read about God’s provision of manna and quail (Exodus 16), as well as two requests for water satisfied by a gushing rock (Exodus 17:1-7). After Sinai? The same pattern: one story about manna and quail (Numbers 11) and two requests for water satisfied by a gushing rock (Numbers 20:1-16). We’re told that God provided manna daily in the wilderness as they traveled from Egypt to Canaan (Exodus 16:35) and obviously the people would have needed regular access to water, but the narrator’s selective telling contributes to the literary framing effect that points to Sinai.
But there’s more. God’s angelic messenger protects the Hebrews from a foreign king once before Sinai and once afterward (Exodus 14:19-20; Numbers 22:21-35). Before Sinai, Israel fights the Amalekites (Exodus 17:8-16). After Sinai? Again, Israel fights the Amalekites (Numbers 14:39-45). Before and after Sinai, Moses meets with a Midianite family member and receives guidance (Exodus 18; Numbers 10:29-32). Before and after Sinai, Moses is weighed down with leadership responsibilities (Exodus 18:17-18; Numbers 11:10-15) and begins delegating those responsibilities to others (Exodus 18:24-26; Numbers 11:16-17). This example involves a deliberate quotation. In Numbers 11, Moses explicitly reuses Jethro’s language from Exodus 18. Speaking of Moses’ leadership responsibility, Jethro had said, “For this thing is too heavy for you. You are unable to do it alone” (Exodus 18:18, author’s translation). Moses takes up these words after Sinai, saying “I myself am unable alone to carry this whole people for it is too heavy for me” (Numbers 11:14, author’s translation).
What’s more, the Israelites’ response to the report of the scouts in Numbers 14 mirrors the response to Pharaoh’s army before they crossed the sea (Exodus 14:10-12)—they lament ever having left Egypt. With such a close match between stories that took place before and after Sinai, you might begin to wonder if anything has changed during Israel’s year at the mountain. Indeed, it has.
MIDDLE OF NOWHERE: A PLACE OF BECOMING
In spite of the similarities before and after Sinai, a great transformation has taken place. The Hebrews fled Egypt as a mixed multitude, refugees and former slaves seeking a better life. They leave Sinai as a well-organized army, registered and marching tribe by tribe. But change wasn’t easy. Big questions plagued the first part of their journey. Are we safe? Where are we going? What’s on the menu? Who’s in charge? What sort of god is Yahweh? And what does Yahweh expect of us?
We can relate. It’s like being lost on a hike. You know where you want to end up, but you can’t figure out how to get there because you don’t know which direction you’re facing. Or maybe you’ve felt lost in life, stuck in between where you’ve been and where you’re going. You know what you’re cut out to do, but you can’t get the traction you need to get there. There’s a word to describe this state: liminality. It’s from the Latin word limen, which means “threshold.”7 Imagine yourself standing in the doorway, neither in nor out of a room. That’s liminal space. An airport, for example, is a liminal space. Nobody lives there. We’re all passing through on our way to somewhere else.
The first people to start talking about liminality were anthropologists. They used it to describe a stage in rituals that change someone’s status or identity. Sociologically speaking, a liminal place is a transitional space where a person lacks social status and is reduced to dependence on others. Every human ritual the world over includes an element of liminality, from coming-of-age rituals to funerals. Liminality has since been applied more broadly to psychology, politics, popular culture, and religion. In a moment, we’ll explore Israel’s experience of liminality. But first, I want us to think about the ways we experience liminality, because all of us do! For example, a wedding ceremony sets the bride and groom apart and lingers in liminal space. During the ceremony the couple is neither married nor unmarried. They wear new, symbolic clothes and explore other symbols of their new life together (rings, candles, vows, kiss). The congregation witnesses their change of status as the minister pronounces them “husband and wife” and welcomes them to rejoin the community with a new identity.
When a woman becomes pregnant, she enters liminality. She is officially on the threshold of motherhood, and yet she has not yet experienced most of its aspects—nighttime feedings, diapering, discipline, pushing a stroller, singing the ABCs. Liminality is usually temporary, but it can be prolonged. My first pregnancy ended in miscarriage. Part of my grief was because I found myself in the strange position of having been pregnant, but lacking a child to hold. Mother’s Day that year was especially awkward and painful. Was I a mother? Or wasn’t I? I didn’t really belong in either category.
Few people actually enjoy liminality. We have an inborn desire to seek order and belonging and predictability. Just a few months after that awkward Mother’s Day I became pregnant again and happily left that liminal state behind. My grief largely dissolved when the ambiguity of my status was resolved. Others are not so fortunate. Immigrants or refugees sometimes spend long stretches of time in a liminal state—lacking papers to legally work or even stay in their host country, always feeling like an outsider, and never knowing if they should put down roots or start packing.
College intentionally creates liminality. Students leave home and enter an entirely new environment with a new set of expectations and roles. With the help of faculty and staff, they scrutinize themselves in order to reshape their identity and discover their vocation. But they are not welcome to stay. Just when they feel like they know the ropes, they are thrust into the “real world” to begin the process all over again as full-fledged adults. Graduation is a ritual designed to mark that transition between academia and the outside world. To some extent, it redefines students by qualifying them for new roles in society. Crossing the stage, they cross the threshold to a new season of life.
For Israel, the wilderness journey from Egypt to Canaan is liminal space. Far more than just a place to pass through, it is the workshop of Israel’s becoming. The wilderness is the temporary destination that makes them who they are. Liminal places always do this. They change us.
God is not in a hurry to lead them out of liminal space and into the land he promised to give them. They’re not ready yet.
The Israelites have been liberated from slavery in Egypt, but they have not yet arrived at their final destination. Everything they know about who they are, how to survive, and what is expected of them is stripped away on that fateful night when they make their escape, leaving them vulnerable and uncertain. They don’t know how to live under these new arrangements. But God is not in a hurry to lead them out of liminal space and into the land he promised to give them. They’re not ready yet. Into this vacuum, Yahweh speaks. He answers the basic questions of human existence in surprising new ways, offering himself as the solution to their needs for leadership, guidance, protection, and provision, and revealing his name as the key to their identity and vocation as his people. Yahweh invites them to begin walking in a new direction by trusting him. Sinai is part of their liminal experience. In the wilderness of Sinai they are free from the mind-numbing distractions of Egypt and Canaan. In their isolation, they can hear the voice of God. Having lost their old identity, they are ready to become what they are meant to be.
ARE WE SAFE? FINDING SECURITY
We may be long centuries removed from Israel’s wilderness wanderings, but we share many of the same basic human instincts. Like the Israelites, we want to know if we can close our eyes at night and fall asleep in safety. Uncertainty breeds anxiety.
As I read the wilderness narratives with students, the question I’m asked more than any other is this: “How can the Israelites so quickly forget God’s power to deliver them?” The people who’ve seen ten dramatic plagues on Egypt, whose own households were spared devastation, whose neighbors have willingly given them silver and gold and clothes for their journey, who’ve heard Pharaoh’s command to “Get out!”—these are the same people who quickly change their tune as Pharaoh chases them in hot pursuit. The Hebrews are terrified. They cry out:
Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians?’ It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert! (Exodus 14:11-12)
If this response surprises us, it’s because we underestimate the disorienting effect of liminal spaces and because we overestimate our own stability. Perhaps a thought experiment would help. Imagine you are a college student. One day your professor ends class with a special announcement: “Attention Students! I have fantastic news. A generous donor has arranged to cover the rest of your tuition payments this year as well as all the school loans you have accumulated so far.”
Incredulity melts into celebration as you all realize she is dead serious. The classroom erupts with cheers of joy and (for some) tears of relief. When the commotion dies down, your professor gives some instructions. “All who would like to take advantage of the donor’s offer need to gather up their belongings and follow me.” Of course, you pack your bag and follow. How could you pass up the opportunity? But you’re not sure where she’s taking you. The class files out into the hallway, down a back staircase, and down the sidewalk behind the cafeteria to the parking lot.
“Wait here,” she says. “I’ll be back.”
She disappears into the administration building and she’s gone . . . for a long time. For the first few minutes everyone is jovial and curious, wondering where she’s gone and how long the wait will be. But as the minutes stretch on and the sun gets higher, your stomach reminds you that it’s lunchtime. The longer you wait, the more you begin to wonder if this is some sort of practical joke. You crane your neck to see if there’s a video camera set up somewhere, capturing your gullibility on film.
What if this happened to you? How long would you wait in the parking lot for your professor to reappear? How quickly would you begin to doubt the sincerity of her announcement? A wonderful promise becomes much harder to believe when we are tired and hungry, or when we can’t imagine how things will play out. Abraham Maslow claimed as much in his 1943 essay, which popularized a hierarchy of needs.8 He posited that certain needs are fundamental, such as physiological needs (food, water, air, sleep) and the need for safety. Without these in place, people are less motivated to focus on higher-level needs, such as love, esteem, and self-actualization. Some criticize Maslow’s hierarchy as reflecting an individualist, rather than collective, society, making it potentially less pertinent for understanding Israel’s wilderness wanderings. We could also disagree with Maslow’s humanist perspective. He insists on the essential goodness of any human desire, failing to recognize how our inclination toward those desires may be corrupted by sin. Contrary to Maslow’s assumption, we do not become who we are meant to be by seeking to fulfill every felt need. Still, his overall idea is helpful—without fulfillment of basic needs such as food, water, and a safe place to live, people will very quickly lose interest in promises relating to higher-order thinking about values or beliefs or opportunities. Remember when Moses delivered God’s great promise of deliverance to the Hebrews in Egypt? “Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labor” (Exodus 6:9). The promise was glorious, but they weren’t buying it.
Hunger, thirst, and fear are powerful masters. (These days, so is the lack of internet access.) Yahweh knows this. Remarkably, he does not chide the Israelites when they complain or panic as they travel toward Sinai. He simply provides for their needs. He utilizes this trek to demonstrate to them his trustworthiness. Here are a few examples of Yahweh’s care from these chapters:
When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea. (Exodus 13:17-18)
Yahweh first ensures Israel’s safety.
By day the LORD
