-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You are not to take up the name of YHWH your God for emptiness,
for YHWH will not clear him that takes up his name for emptiness."
- Exodus 20.6
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -
they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced.
- Aldous Huxley
___________________________________________________________________________________
Yet again, we encounter a story in this book that we call our Scriptures that offends our sense of justice. Somebody gets in a scuffle, spouts out a few choice words, and - dies? Really?!? Who is this God - is it not the One of whom the Psalmist writes,
Compassionate and gracious, the Lord, slow to anger and abounding in kindness ... not according to our offenses has He done to us, nor according to our crimes requited us. As a father has compassion for his children, the Lord has compassion for those who fear Him (Psalm 103.8, 10, 13)
or the One who speaks through the prophets,
Fear not, you shall not be shamed; do not cringe, you shall not be disgraced ... the Holy One of Israel will redeem you - he is called "God of all the Earth." For a little while I forsook you, but with vast love I will bring you back. In slight anger, for a moment, I hid my face from you; but with kindness everlasting I will take you back in love - said the Lord your Redeemer. I will not be angry with you or rebuke you. For the mountains may move and the hills be shaken, but my loyalty shall never move from you, nor my covenant of friendship be shaken - said the Lord, who takes you back in love (Isaiah 54).
I think that often we just "look away" when something seems so at odds with what we understand about God and who we know God to be. We avoid talking about it (when was the last time you heard this read or preached?!), or we vilify the subjects of the story in a way that makes them safely different from us, or we quietly, in the tiny dark places of our minds where we don't even have to be honest with ourselves, put up some sort of little fence to separate this God from the God we're more comfortable with - the angry God from the merciful God, the Old Testament God from the New Testament God, the Jewish God from the Christian God, the righteous God from the redeemer God, the legalistic God from the gracious God.
How many gods do we have?
Our text for today forces us back to the question we asked at the beginning of our study - what does it mean to read Leviticus as Scripture? What does it mean to read it - all of it - as the word of God? What does it tell us about who God is and how we are to live? I can't just look away. I would rather have a God I don't understand than a god I can ignore, or a god I can take apart and piece back together in the shape I want. And I don't think we have to try to hide these hard things that we don't understand, either from ourselves or from others.
So what has happened here, with this son of an Israelite woman, that is so serious as to end in death? What does it mean to "revile the name of YHWH"?
First, let's remember the tone Leviticus has already set for how to deal with sin. In chapters 1-7 we read about all the kinds of offerings that were to be brought, including the hattat offering which effects purification for sin. This is what it says: "When one sins in error regarding any of YHWH's commandments that should not be done, by doing any one of them ... he is to bring-near, for the sin that he has sinned ... a hattat offering ... to effect-purgation for him from his sin, and he shall be granted-pardon" (chapter 4). Granted pardon? Regarding any of YHWH's commandments. Okay. We can live with that.
But then in chapter 10 we read about Nadav and Avihu, who brought foreign fire to the altar. Do you remember how they died? Fire. Even though this, too, is startling to our feeling that justice is not equal to vengeance, we were able to maybe, just maybe, comprehend that their deaths were less the result of irrational anger than the natural consequence of entering a danger zone without appropriate precautions. In these two events we start to see something of a general principle of equivalence in Leviticus - if someone becomes impure through inadvertent sin, she brings an offering of purification. If someone brings the wrong kind of fire, the protective boundaries are breached and YHWH's dangerous fire is no longer safe - "fire for fire."
But death for cursing? Isn't the punishment of death a little out of proportion to insulting God's name? I'm going to argue that this, too, is a literary comment on the principle of equivalence, and to do so we need to take a closer look at the very careful way that this story is written and the words that are chosen to tell it.
I. "Let the punishment fit the crime"?
1 - The crime? "Reviling the name." The Hebrew word that is translated "revile" is naqav, which normally means "to pierce, bore through, perforate." What if this passage were instead translated, "he pierced the Name, perforated the Name with his words"? Then we ought to ask what harm is done. Do you remember back in chapters 12-15 when we read about coverings that are compromised by things breaking through the surface of skin, of garments, of tents? To pierce or perforate God's name is to compromise the integrity of God's reputation. What if the name of God - like skin, like clothes, like houses, like the tabernacle - is also a protective covering over the community of faith, a covering that is maintained and established through reverence and respect by those who are God's image-bearers? What if that covering is damaged by the very ones who both need protection and are the closest thing to YHWH's representatives in all creation?
2 - The punishment? "Whoever reviles the name of YHWH is to be put-to-death, yes, death, the entire community is to pelt, yes, pelt him." The Hebrew word that is translated "pelt" is ragam, meaning "throw, hurl, pelt with stones." Straightforward enough. But because this word is always used for the act of stoning, it also came to be used for - cursing. It seems as though there's a play on words here, inviting our imagination - "The blasphemer has insulted the Name, so let him die by insults." "He has pierced the Name, so let him be pierced with stones." "He has hurled insults, so let insults be hurled at him." Sound like this might be about some kind of equivalence after all?
II. A Story about the Name: the Names of the Characters
There's another interesting feature that I hope you may have noticed if you've been reading the text throughout our study. Did you notice all of the names that suddenly sprang up? How many names have we read in Leviticus before now? Let's see, there was Moses and Aaron... Nadav and Avihu... some others of Aaron's sons... and that's it. But here in chapter 24, all of a sudden we need to know everyone's name - the mother, the grandfather, the "father's house" (family, tribe), the blasphemer - wait, what was his name?
Oh.
Well, how about the others - what do their names mean?
- Shelomit - from the root shilem, meaning "repayment, retribution"
- Divri - from the root davar, meaning "to speak" or "quarrel, conduct a lawsuit"
- Dan - the tribe whose people "will mete-out-judgment" (Gen. 49.16)
Are you seeing a theme here? What if we were to rewrite the story with all these encoded suggestions spelled out:
Once there was a man with no name, son of Retribution, grandson of Lawsuit, from the house of Judgment, and he pelted insults at the Name ... and the Lord said, "He shall die, he pelted my Name, he shall be pelted to death."
(Somebody really ought to write a "Leviticus for Dummies")
III. An Interlude: Equivalence
Just in case we still haven't gotten the point, our narrative is interrupted with a reiteration of Exodus 21 (especially vv23-25), the familiar passage about making retribution for loss of any kind -
Now a man - when he strikes-down any human life, he is to be put-to-death, yes, death! One who strikes the life of an animal is to pay for it, life in place of life. And a man - when he renders a defect in his fellow: as he has done, thus is to be done to him - break in place of break, eye in place of eye, tooth in place of tooth; as he has rendered a defect in (another) human, thus is to be rendered to him...
Expounding what Scripture means by a "retributive principle" is beyond the scope of our subject for today, but this reminder being included within our narrative soundly affirms that what happens to No-Name is directly related to his actions.
IV. Conclusion
While I was in the process of writing this post I received an e-mail with a daily reflection from the Union for Reform Judaism. It is about God's oneness, and the invitation God extends to the community of faith to participate with God in world-shaping covenant relationship. Although there are a few things the Christian community might understand differently than this Rabbi's interpretation, suggesting that you read the entire post is the best conclusion I can offer you for how we might try to understand the grave seriousness of diminishing the name of God. Here is a highlight:
"Isaiah 49.3 teaches 'You are my servant, Israel. I will be glorified through you.' In this way, the Master is dependent on the servant. God's glory, if we dare say it, depends on how we, human beings of flesh and blood live out our days and our years ... the Rabbis imagine God saying, "When you are My witnesses, I am God. When you are not My witnesses, it is as if I am not God."
What we do matters. What we say matters. And if what we say diminishes God's glory then we ourselves become diminished.
No comments:
Post a Comment