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LAW AND WISDOM IN THE BIBLE
David Daube's Gifford Lectures, Volume 2
By David Daube, Calum Carmichael TEMPLETON PRESS
Copyright © 2010 Calum Carmichael
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59947-345-1
CHAPTER 1
THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT
I
To those who share Bumble's view that "the law is an ass," the title of this series will seem ill-chosen. Even they must admit, however, that, ideally, it would not be a bad thing if law and wisdom did fraternize. In any case, it may be worthwhile to explore the position in the Bible.
To do so, a preliminary remark on that oscillating term "wisdom" is needed. Not as if "law" were unambiguous, but most readers will be more puzzled by the different guises that the former notion will assume in these chapters. Basically, "wisdom" means a more than ordinary understanding of the nature of things; it is partly a gift, partly the result of experience; and it confers on its possessor superiority in the mastery of life. Its various manifestations, however, can be confusing. There is "wisdom" in the sense of "shrewdness," "cunning," or even—descending further, if we look at it from the point of view of a higher morality—"ability to twist." It is probably because of this lower variety that, in the Hebrew Old Testament, God is never styled "wise."
There is "wisdom" in the sense of "excellence in craftsmanship." Where this sense prevails, law—like medicine, cult, prophecy, history, architecture, strategy—is a branch of wisdom, and especially law as a system of detailed, meti culous rules and machinery. Jethro's advice to Moses in the book of Exodus furnishes an illustration of wisdom taking charge of, and reforming, law or legal procedure. There is "wisdom" in the sense of "moderation," "restraint," "give-and-take." This wisdom may be antithetical to justice, the latter tending toward radical, one-sided solutions; it favors arbitration and compromise rather than the strict, legal verdict. There is "wisdom" in the sense of "life-and-death-dealing insight," a power saving its possessor and those it approves and destroying its enemies. The sects around New Testament times are much concerned about this wisdom, but it occurs long before.
Further varieties exist. That most commonly in mind when Scripture is being discussed is no doubt "a grasp of the ways of God, men, and nature," "a comprehension of man's position in society and the scheme of things," and "the conduct to be adopted by a person of such understanding." It is in view of their concentration in wisdom in this sense that certain books of the Bible—Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiasticus, even the Psalms—have been clas sified as Wisdom, in contradistinction to Law, History, or Prophets. Naturally, much wisdom of this kind is contained in the other books; the figure of Joseph, for example, is largely that of a young sage—toward the end of this chapter we shall advert to a characteristic wise scheme of his—and recently it has been shown that the book of Esther ought really to be transferred from History to Wisdom. On the other hand, wisdom literature is full of legal, historical, and prophetic matter: the chapters in Ecclesiasticus opening "Let us now praise famous men" are history of a sort.
In the first two chapters, "wisdom" is used chiefly in the familiar sense just noted. Hence when we speak of law and wisdom, we are thinking of the Pentateuch on the one hand and Proverbs and the like on the other—of the Pentateuch, with its specific authoritative musts; of Proverbs and the like, with their more general guidance and distillation of good sense for the leading of a decent, successful life. Despite much overlapping, the two categories of rules do dominate different parts of Scripture and do in the main derive from different milieus. The relation between them has been investigated by a number of authorities. As a rule, however, it is the influence of law on wisdom to which attention is paid—and indeed, it forms the subject of chapter 5. Here we shall say something about the influence of wisdom on law, which is far greater than is commonly realized.
The Fifth Commandment (according to the numbering with which I grew up) commences with an imperative: "Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long on the earth which the Lord thy God giveth thee." In the Deuteronomic version there are two brief additions, which we consider in due course. For the moment, what is of relevance is that, with one dubious exception, this is the only legislative commandment in the Pentateuch to employ the imperative. Commentators slur over the difference from the Sabbath Commandment, which begins with an infinitive: "To remember the Sabbath day." Thus Beer remarks on the latter: "Inf. abs. = Imprtv." But they are not equal. We indeed argue that the infinitive has a setting closer to the imperative than to the regular form of legislation, the so-called imperfect, "thou shalt do," "he, ye, they shall do," or the perfect with the waw consecutive, "and thou shalt do." Nevertheless, let us be clear that (with one possible exception) no other law in the Pentateuch is expressed by means of the imperative.
No doubt some laws are accompanied by stereotypical imperatives: "Guard (shemor) that which I command thee, guard thyself (hishshamer) lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land," "guard thyself (hishshamer) and guard (shemor) thy soul lest thou forget," "guard (shemor) and obey these words," "guard thyself (hishshamer) in the plague of leprosy to guard and to do." But these phrases are not legislative; they are cautionary. They merely introduce or close a law in order to inculcate the importance of observing it; but they do not, like "Honor thy father," express its actual substance—not to mention the fact that, as we shall see, their ultimate provenance is essentially the same as that of the substantial imperative, "Honor."
The Rabbis see in the proclamation of God after creating man, "Be fruitful and multiply," a command to marry and beget children. In its original con ception, however, this is a blessing: "And God blessed them, Be fruitful and multiply." Actually, the same blessing is pronounced over the fishes. Nor are the Rabbis fully in earnest in making a commandment of it: Ben Azzai, one of the most distinguished, refused to comply.
There are, of course, numerous imperatives in orders for the individual, present occasion, as when God calls on Abraham, "Go from thy land," or on Moses, "Speak to the children of Israel," or when Judah decides to have Tamar put to death, "Bring her forth and she shall be burnt." These orders can be of a very comprehensive nature: Abraham is exhorted by God, "Walk before me and be perfect." But this is still not a legislative commandment, addressed to the people at large and valid for future times as well as the present. It has reference exclusively to Abraham's personal conduct. Here and there, at first sight, an imperative may look like a law proper, but on closer inspection this turns out not to be the case. An invocation like "Hear"—"Hear, o Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord"—is always in the Pentateuch thought of as confined to the audience of the moment. Or take the passage: "And now, write ye this song for you and teach it to the children of Israel, put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me among the children of Israel." The opening particle "and now" shows that what is being enjoined is not continuous transmission throughout the coming generations (as, for example, in the law "and these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and thou shalt write them upon the post of thy house.") What is being enjoined is one definite action only. God inspires Moses to a last song which he is to set down and pass on. This interpretation is confirmed by a subsequent verse which tells us that the order was executed: "And Moses wrote this song on that day and taught it the children of Israel."
The only exception occurs earlier on in the same chapter: "At the end of every seven years," says Moses to the priests and elders, "thou shalt read this law; gather thy people together that they may hear and learn." This imperative "gather" does form part of a true legal provision. It is interesting that the portion from "gather" onward has been held to be interpolated on quite different grounds: it ought logically to come before the commandment to read the law. Be this as it may, the imperative may well have been put under the influence of the "gather" by which Moses asks the priests to assemble the elders for his last song—obviously not legislation but a special order. Another passage seems to have contributed: at Horeb, God had said to Moses, "Gather me the people together that I may let them hear these words that they may learn." Moses' legislative injunction to gather the people every seven years is very close. At any rate, it can hardly be maintained that this one precarious parallel renders the Fifth Commandment unremarkable.
We are left, then, with this uniquely (or near uniquely) imperatival law. No doubt the reaction of many scholars will be to try and explain it away. It will be claimed, for instance, that kabbedh could and should be construed as an infinitive, "To honor thy father"—analogous to "To remember the Sabbath day." But, apart from the fact, already hinted at, that the infinitive itself has a setting very different from "thou shalt do" and much nearer the imperative, this way out will not do. First, it is unfair, simply because I have noticed the strange character of this commandment, to repudiate the way everybody has taken it without the least hesitation up to now. Second, the legislative infinitive is extremely rare; so rare that, as we saw, Beer accounts for "To remember" by equating the infinitive with the even rarer imperative, "Honor." If we discount fixed, introductory phrases like "to remember" (zakhor), "to guard" (shamor), we meet the infinitive about half a dozen times. Its presence should not be lightly assumed. Third, the law speaks not of "father and mother," but of "thy father and thy mother." While this is not incompatible with an infinitive, "To honor thy father," it goes better with an imperative, the direct address: "Honor thy father and thy mother." (The Sabbath Commandment starts off impersonally: "To remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.") Above all, kabbedh recurs in Proverbs, "Honor the Lord with thy substance," where it is paired off with betah, "Trust in the Lord," and yera', "Fear the Lord"—unmistakable imperatives.
What are we to make of the situation? Two questions really need to be answered. One: the Pentateuch is full of laws in the direct address, "thou shalt," "ye shall." Why is the imperative virtually unknown? As far as laws in the third person are concerned, "he shall," "they shall," they could not, without a major switch, use the imperative. But those in the direct address could. This question becomes only the more baffling if it is denied that the Fifth Commandment commences with an imperative. Two: the imperative being virtually unknown, why does it nevertheless occur in the Fifth Commandment? This question remains even if it is considered that there are a few more imperatival laws. On any reckoning, they form the tiniest fraction.
As for the virtual absence of the imperative from the codes, one might perhaps think of the following reason. A large proportion of the laws are prohibitions (alas!). As the Hebrew imperative cannot be negated, it is unsuitable for these: "do not murder" or "murder not" must become "thou shalt not murder," in the imperfect. Accordingly, it might perhaps be thought, there is no scope for the imperative; we must not expect it in—prohibitive—legislation. But this cannot be the explanation. Side by side with the—admittedly enormous—prohibitive legislation, there are in the Pentateuch very many positive laws; yet none (but the Fifth Commandment) employs the imperative. "Thou shalt surely tithe thy produce year by year," "Thou shalt surely furnish thy slave when thou releasest him"—no quirk of grammar would have prevented "Tithe thy produce," "Furnish thy slave." (In fact, it looks as if the imperative were distinctly avoided. The formulation exemplified by the two laws just quoted is rather artificial. Apparently a law cannot be opened by a simple imperfect preceded by a supporting infinitive, literally "To tithe thou shalt tithe." The traditional rendering is by means of "surely": "Thou shalt surely tithe.") To give an instance of the verb at the end—"My Sabbath ye shall guard and my sanctuaries ye shall fear." Here, too, an imperative would have been perfectly feasible. At the close of Ecclesiastes we find precisely these two verbs following the object and in the imperative: "God fear and his commandments guard." The same applies to the perfect with waw consecutive: "and ye shall offer a lamb," "and ye shall count from the morrow of the Sabbath," "and thou shalt love the Lord." No grammatical obstacle to an imperative. "Eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mingled," we are admonished in Proverbs, "forsake the foolish and live and go in the way of understanding."
The solution lies in a different direction. Where it is a question of a general rule (as opposed to an order on a specific occasion), in Hebrew, the imperative, "do so-and-so," "fear God," is far weaker than the imperfect or the perfect with waw consecutive, "thou (and thou) shalt do so-and-so," "thou (and thou) shalt fear the Lord." It expresses counsel, recommendation, rather than a compelling law imposed from above. Hence, whereas, except for the Fifth Commandment, the imperative plays no part in Pentateuchal legislation, it is a normal form in Wisdom literature. "Refrain thy foot from the path of the sinners," "Put far from thee perverse lips," "If thou hast become surety for thy neighbor, deliver thyself as a roe from the hunter," "Go to the ant, thou sluggard" (I had myself called at 6 o'clock this morning), "Go [plural] in the way of understanding," "Chasten thy son while there is hope," "Fear the Lord and depart from evil," "Depart from evil and do good"—all these rules are in the imperative. "My son, hear the instruction of thy father" stands practically at the head of the directions given in Proverbs. It is plainly directions, educational advice—not legislation, inescapable, divinely ordained. This friendly, advisory nature of the imperative excludes it from the laws of the Pentateuch.
Yet it does figure in the Fifth Commandment. This commandment, we conclude, as transmitted in Exodus and Deuteronomy, descends from, has its original setting in, wisdom. To avoid misunderstandings, let us add at once, what will become clearer as we go on, that by this we mean neither that it is necessarily later than the legislative portions of the Pentateuch nor that it is less imbued with religious spirit. Ancient Oriental wisdom is very old indeed, and there is no reason to suppose that the Hebrews did not from early on share in it and develop their own brand; the relatively late date of some or all of the Wisdom collections of the Old Testament in their present shape is no evidence to the contrary. Again, it has long been seen that it is a mistake to look on wisdom as entirely this-worldly, making light of the will and intentions of God. Certainly Hebrew wisdom is not of this type; any doubter might profitably consult Zimmerli's commentary on Ecclesiastes.
Our result, gained by looking at the form, is confirmed when we contemplate the substance. Two points may be singled out. First, respect of the child for the parent, the disciple for the master—I hardly daresay the student for the professor—is one of the most prominent themes—perhaps the most prominent one—in ancient Oriental and Old Testament wisdom. In the Egyptian teaching of Pta h-hotep we are told, "How beautiful when a son hearkens to his father." The sayings of Ahikar open, "Hear, o my son Nadan, and come to the understanding of my self, and be mindful of my words and the words of God." At the beginning of Proverbs we find the exhortation already cited for the imperative: "My son, hear the instruction of thy father and forsake not the teaching of thy mother." The list could be prolonged ad libitum. Note also the address "my son," constantly recurring in wisdom injunctions. The basic relationship of wisdom, between master and disciple, is identified with and expressed as that between father and son. Manifestly, the Fifth Commandment fits well into this background.
Second, a feature to which attention is drawn in the Epistle to the Ephesians: the Fifth Commandment promises a reward. This is typical of wisdom. Indeed, wisdom is keen on precisely this kind of reward: long life and—the addition in Deuteronomy—well-being. "He that is wise attaineth to old age," we are assured in a Babylonian book of bilingual proverbs. Above we quoted from Proverbs, "Honor the Lord with thy substance," with the same imperative, kabbedh, as the Fifth Commandment; it continues, "so shall thy barns be filled." In Psalms we read: "What man is he that desireth life, loveth days to see good? Keep thy tongue from evil, depart from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it." That this section of the psalm at least comes from wisdom is clear not only from the form of the admonitions—all in the imperative—but also from the introduction in the preceding verse: "Come, ye children, hearken unto me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from LAW AND WISDOM IN THE BIBLE by David Daube, Calum Carmichael. Copyright © 2010 Calum Carmichael. Excerpted by permission of TEMPLETON PRESS.
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