PEOPLE OF THE COVENANT: Although the experience of YAHwehs deliverance from bondage in Egypt forms the common experience out of which the faith community was born, it requires the formative experience of covenant-making at Sinai to make the community of IsraEl an ongoing reality. YAHwehs grace is manifest in the history of all humanity (cf. Amos 9:7), but it requires IsraEls faithful response to the Holy Ones initiative in its own experience to build the faithful community. The special relationship of covenant is also YAHwehs initiative: In accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you [Moshe] and with IsraEl (Ex. 34:27). In this brief verse are suggested all the crucial realities which must be discussed in order to understand the moral significance of covenant-community for Biblical Faith. YAH is an El Who initiates covenant and the further dimensions of the divine character revealed in the covenantal themes. Thus one needs to look closely at the words laws or commandments and their significance, and the structures of community through which IsraEl tried to express the nature of its covenant calling. It must be stressed that in the present shape of the book of Exodus we are intended to understand covenant and law as a response to Elohims initiative in the Exodus deliverance. There are those who argue strenuously that the exodus and Sinai traditions arose independently of one another, were nurtured as separate places of worship, and were combined secondarily by later editors of the Torah literary traditions. This view has now been almost universally abandoned. The opening of the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) is clear about the importance of this connection: I am YAHweh your El, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage (Ex. 20:2). The theological connection of the El of Exodus with the El of Sinai existed at the earliest periods of IsraEls history and is not a late and artificial literary connection. IsraEl arrives at the Sinai encampment in Exodus 19:1 and departs in Numbers 10:12. This body of material contains some of the most ancient witnesses to the nature of covenant relationship and the oldest of the law codes, the Decalogue. It also, however, contains codes of law that clearly reflect the conditions of later periods of IsraElite life (e.g., the Deuteronomic Code and the Holiness Code). Nevertheless, all of these have now been placed in the framework of the Sinai covenant-making: The striking point ..... is that all of these materials now appear as elements in the events at Sinai. For the ancient Israelites, Moses is the proto-typical lawgiver, and the covenant defines the framework within which the commandments, laws, and ordinances are to be understood (Thomas W. Ogletree, The Use of the Bible in Christian Ethics, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983, p. 53). In order to fully understand the covenant relationship one cannot limit ones self to the Sinai material in the Torah books but also needs to draw upon witnesses throughout the canon to IsraEls understanding of the covenant relationship and the issue of IsraEls community life which reflect that understanding.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 17:59:07 +0000
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