Tantor Audio, a division of Recorded Books, presents The Epic of Eden, a Christian entry into the Old Testament, by Sandra L. Richter, narrated by Pam Ward. Introduction The Dysfunctional Closet Syndrome The Bible in All Its Parts is intended to communicate to humanity the realities of redemption. Over the centuries, the Church has stumbled when it has forgotten this truth, and has thereby, ironically, damaged the authority of the book from which it has drawn its life. Often the error has run in the direction of making this book less than it is, less than the inspired Word of God, less than the supernatural report of God's doings throughout the ages. less than the definitive rule for faith and practice among those who believe.
But just as often, the error has run in the other direction, attempting to make the Bible more than it is. Too often in our zeal for the worldwide influence of this book, we forget that it was not intended as an exhaustive ancient world history or a guide to the biology and paleontology of creation or even a handbook on social reform. We forget that this book was cast upon the waters of history with one very specific, completely essential, and desperately necessary objective, to tell the epic tale of God's ongoing quest to ransom his creation, and to, thereby, give each generation the opportunity to know his amazing grace. The Bible is the saga of Yahweh and Adam, the prodigal son and his ever-gracious heavenly father. humanity in their rebellion, and God in His grace.
This narrative begins with Eden and does not conclude until the New Jerusalem is firmly in place. It is all one story. And if you are a believer, it is all your story.
So why is it that most lay people struggle with the study of the Old Testament? Certainly they recognize that the Old Testament is Scripture, are intrigued by its stories, and realize that there must be some significance to the first two-thirds of that leather-bound book they are lugging around. Yet, if you talk to the typical layperson, you will find that they have not been involved in any sort of intentional study of the Old Testament since, well, since they can't remember when. Nor can they remember the last time they heard a sermon on the Old Testament.
Why is this? In my now many years of teaching the Bible, I've come to believe that the issues that keep the average New Testament believer from their Old Testament can be categorized under three headings. The first, and to me the most heartbreaking, is that most Christians have not been taught that the story of the Old Testament is their story.
Rather, they have been encouraged to think that knowledge of the Old Testament is unnecessary to New Testament faith. Worse, many have been taught that the God of the Old Testament is somehow different from the God of the New, that unlike Christ, Yahweh is a God of judgment and wrath. So these folks stick with a part of Redemption's story that seems to include them, the New Testament. The second set of issues that make the Old Testament less than accessible is what I have come to call the Great Barrier.
As the narrative of the Old Testament happened long, long ago and far, far away, it can be very challenging to get past the historical, linguistic, cultural, and even geographical barriers that separate us from our ancestors in the faith. As a result, to the typical 21st century Christian, the God of Israel seems foreign, his people strange. The third category, and perhaps the most challenging, is the one that has driven me to write this book.
This is what I have coined the Dysfunctional Closet Syndrome. The Old Testament as your story. Two-thirds of the story of redemption is known to Christians as the Old Testament.
Yet, in the decades that I have been teaching Bible, I have found that most Christians, if allowed to answer honestly, might be tempted to dub this section of the Bible the Unfortunate Preface. to the part of the Bible that really matters. But the reality is that the Old Testament is the bulk of redemptive history, and the church's lack of knowledge of their own heritage renders much of the wealth of the New Testament inaccessible to them. One of my dear friends and colleagues, Mary Fisher, refers to this widespread condition as a sort of Christian Alzheimer's disease.
I realize that this is a painful metaphor for many of us, but it is, unfortunately, appropriate. The great tragedy of Alzheimer's disease is that it robs a person of themselves by robbing them of their memory of their experiences and relationships. Hence, An elderly woman with Alzheimer's can watch her own children walk through the door and need to ask their names.
As a mother, I cannot imagine the agony of such a state. The church has a similar condition. Just as the Alzheimer's patient must ask the name of her own children, the church watches her ancestors walk through the door with a similar response. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are unknown and unnamed.
The end result? The church does not know who she is because she does not know who she was. The Great Barrier If our goal is to know our own story, then we first have to come to understand the characters who populate the Old Testament, who they were, where they lived, what was important to them. Hence, the first chapter of this book discusses culture, and the second chapter rehearses the story of redemption, through the lenses of real space and time.
For those who are still recovering from your junior high geography classes, it is only fair to warn you that there will be maps. But I promise you that the payoff will be well worth the pain. Ultimately, my goal, as regards the Great Barrier, is to bring the heroes of the Old Testament into focus, such that you can see them as real people who lived in real places, and struggled with real faith, just as you do. We are Abraham's offspring, Galatians 3, verse 29, and his story is our story. I will know that we have successfully navigated the great barrier when you can see your own rebellion in Adam's choice.
Recognize your own frailty in Abraham's doubting, and hear the hope of your own salvation in Moses'cry, Let my people go. The Dysfunctional Closet Syndrome. Over the years, I have served in an array of educational and ministry positions, from youth to adults, the mission field to the local church, university students to seminarians, and lots of steps in between. From newbies to doctoral students, I have found that the same ailment affects all of those who aspire to study the Old Testament.
The ailment? The Dysfunctional Closet. Syndrome.
Everyone has a dysfunctional closet somewhere in their lives. A closet where Jabba the Hutt could be living and no one would know it. The closet is crammed full of clothes slipping from their hangers, accessories dangling from the shelves, shoes piled in disarray on the floor.
It is impossible to tell where one item stops and the next begins. You can't find anything. You can't use anything. Perhaps you are one of those very together people who has reduced this syndrome in your life to a single cupboard or junk drawer.
Perhaps a kid's toy chest. But even here, where the twine from last year's Christmas project has permanently entangled itself around the leftover hardware from the kitchen makeover, a person of average courage abandons the quest, closes the door or drawer or cupboard, and says, Maybe next summer I'll sort that out. It has been my experience that the average Christian's knowledge of the Old Testament is much the same. Dozens of stories, characters, dates, and place names.
Years of diligent acquisition. Yet these acquisitions all lie in a jumble on the metaphorical floor. A great deal of information is in there.
But as none of it goes together... The reader doesn't know how to use any of it. Rather, just like the dysfunctional closet, the dates, names, and narratives lie in an inaccessible heap.
Thus, the information is too difficult or too confusing to use. So the typical student of the Old Testament closes the door and says, maybe next summer I'll sort that out. Let me offer a personal example.
My closet in college. And let me begin by confessing that I have not always been the completely together person I am today. Rather, the clothes that belonged in my closet.
abandoned their hangers and hooks early on in my college career, such that my room was essentially a heap. So bad was my college dorm room that in desperation my resident assistant finally took pictures and posted them on the lounge bulletin board, hoping to humiliate me and to reform. A valiant effort, but not an effective one.
The result of my dysfunctional closet? Not only did I often look less than fresh when I ventured forth onto campus, but even when I made every attempt to plan ahead, I honestly could not find the pieces that went together to form a respectable outfit. And as my college had a dress code and a 745 AM chapel, this situation often resulted in crisis. The crisis? Either I would be forced to give up on the outfit I was attempting to wear, or I had to invest an outrageous amount of time finding the pieces that went together.
As I was not exactly a mourning person, the typical outcome was that I would re-wear whatever clothes I found on the top of the pile. Did I mention that I often looked less than fresh? Why do I tell you this less than flattering story? In my experience, This is how most laypeople and many preachers handle the Old Testament. Their closet is a mess.
And even with a significant time commitment, they cannot put the pieces together. Thus, they wind up either spending an outrageous amount of time putting together an Old Testament study or sermon, or they wind up with one or two texts or stories with which they feel comfortable and ignore the rest. i.e.
The end result is that most decide that the Old Testament is just too hard and give their attention to the New Testament, for there is some hope of memorizing the characters, places, and dates. And all this is in spite of the fact that most Christians are hungry to understand their Old Testament heritage. My goal in writing this book, therefore, is to deal a mortal blow to the dysfunctional closet syndrome.
I am convinced that the key to the problem described is order. Until a believer is able to organize what they know about the Old Testament meaningfully, they cannot use it. An appropriate quotation whose source I have lost over the years says this, facts are stupid things. Until brought into connection with some general law, So my goal in this book is to provide structure. Metaphorically speaking, to pick the clothes up off the floor, get some hangers, a pole, and some hooks, and help you build a closet of your very own.
You already have many, possibly most, of the facts you need. I am going to give you a place to hang them. How will we accomplish this?
By identifying a general law that gives order to the whole. and then by rearranging the contents of your closet accordingly. And rather than doing what folks have been doing for centuries, attempting to impose their own paradigm upon the text, we will attempt instead to discover the paradigm within the text.
Contrary to popular opinion, the Old Testament is not a hodgepodge of unrelated materials thrown together by some late, uninformed redactor. Nor has it come to us as the result of an empty-headed secretary copying down verbatim some mysterious message. No, the Old Testament writers were themselves theologians. And under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have written for us a carefully formatted and focused piece of literature in which there exists an intentional theological structure.
Our goal, therefore, is to discover that structure. our closet, and to hang our facts within it. Essentially, our goal is to discover and employ a biblical theological hermeneutic. How are we going to accomplish this? We have some hard work to do.
First, we need to get past the great barrier that divides us from them, the chasm resulting from millennia of linguistic, cultural, and historical changes. Then we must begin to put the book in order so that you, the New Testament believer, will be able to get a handle on your Old Testament heritage. When we are done, it is my heart's cry that the story of the Old Testament will come alive to you, such that you will recognize your own story in the sweeping epic of redemption.
More important, my hope is that you will come to know the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who delivered the children of Abraham from the slavery of Egypt, and has delivered you as well. Chapter 1. The Bible as the Story of Redemption Our objective as Christians is to understand the story of redemption, the Bible, more than anything else. We want to know the story of redemption.
to hear the words of the biblical writers as they were intended and claim their epic saga as our own. To accomplish this, we need to get past the great barrier, that chasm of history, language, and culture that separates us from our heroes in the faith. In this first chapter, we take our first step across the great barrier by addressing what I believe is the most profound distinction between us and them. Culture. Regarding the average human's awareness of their own culture, career anthropologist Daryl Whiteman has said that it is scarcely a fish who would discover water.
This is a reliable statement. Humans, rather than recognizing the trappings of their own culture, and that their culture may, in fact, be very different from someone else's, tend to assume that other societies are just like their own. This is known as ethnocentrism and is a human perspective that is as old as the hills. As regards the Christian approach to the Old Testament, consider, for example, the standard depiction of Jesus in sacred Western art. Jesus is repeatedly portrayed as a pale, thin, white man with dirty blonde hair and blue, sometimes green, eyes.
His fingers are long and delicate. His body frail and unmuscled. Mary is usually presented as a blonde.
In medieval art, the disciples may be found in an array of attire that would have rendered them completely anomalous and ridiculous in their hometowns. I am reminded of the famous Sacred Heart of Jesus image, in which Jesus is, again, frail, pale, light-haired, and green-eyed, and Marsani's Gethsemane. in which the red highlights of jesus hair glow in the light from above while his piano-player hands are clasped in desperate prayer these portrayals are standard in spite of the fact that we are all fully aware that jesus was a semite and his occupation was manual labor so shouldn't we expect a dark-haired man with equally dark eyes Certainly his skin would have been Mediterranean in tone and tanned by three years of constant exposure to the Galilean sun. His hands would have been rough, probably scarred, definitely calloused.
His frame, short, stocky, and well-muscled. So why is he presented in Christian art as a pale, skinny, white guy? Because the people painting him were pale, skinny, white guys.
We naturally see Jesus as one of us and portray him accordingly. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Rather, our close association with the characters of redemptive history allows us to see ourselves in their story.
And this is as God would have it. But to truly understand their story, we need to step back and allow their voices to be heard in the timber in which they first spoke. We need to do our best to see their world through their eyes.
The flip side of ethnocentrism is a second tendency I have come to speak of as canonizing culture. This is the unspoken and usually unconscious presupposition that the norms of my culture are somehow superior to the norms of someone else's. Like ethnocentrism, this tendency is also as old as the human race.
And in case you are tempted to think that the members of your culture have evolved past these sorts of presuppositions, let me counter for a moment. As an American, I spent most of my life simply assuming that democracy was somehow morally superior to monarchy, that bureaucratic cultures were more sophisticated than tribal cultures, and that egalitarian relationships were more advanced than patriarchal. Why? Because these are the norms of my culture, and I naturally saw them as better than the norms of others.
In fact, until challenged, I would have been hard-pressed to even separate the norms of my culture from my values or beliefs. Consider, for example, the early European and American missionaries, who wound up exporting not only the gospel, but Western culture, as they spread across the globe. The New England missionaries to Hawaii are an example made famous by James Michener's novel, Hawaii.
Here, as the Hawaiians converted to Christianity, they were subsequently also converted to the high-collared, long-sleeved, long-skirted uniforms of the missionaries. Petticoats and suit jackets for a seagoing people living in an island paradise. Why? Because these valiant missionaries were unaware of the distinction between the message of the gospel and their own cultural norms. They had...
canonized their own culture such that they saw their Western dress code as part and parcel of a Christian lifestyle. For the same reason, my senior pastor back in the 1980s would not allow my youth group to listen to Amy Grant or Petra. As their youth leader, I was instructed that if the kids wanted to listen to contemporary Christian music, they could listen to Sandy Patty. Why?
It had nothing to do with the message or lifestyle of the respective musicians. My senior pastor did not actually know much about Amy Grant or Petra, or Sandy Patty for that matter. It was because Sandy Patty sang slowly, she sang soprano, and she had no drums in her accompaniment. In the mind of my senior pastor, her music was holier than her more percussion-driven contemporaries. because it was similar to the music of his youth and the music that inspired him to faith.
My senior pastor, like most of us, was having trouble separating culture from content. But history proves to us that it is impossible to diagnose any human culture as fully holy or unholy. Human culture is always a mixed bag, some more mixed than others. every culture must ultimately respond to the critique of the gospel. As we open the Bible, however, we find that the God of history has chosen to reveal himself through a specific human culture.
To be more accurate, he chose to reveal himself in several incarnations of the same culture. And, as the evolving cultural norms of Israel were not without flaw, Rather, there was a mixture of the good, the bad, and the ugly. God did not canonize Israel's culture.
Rather, he simply used that culture as a vehicle through which to communicate the eternal truth of his character and his will for humanity. We should not be about the business of canonizing the culture of ancient Israel either. But if we are going to understand the content of redemptive history, the merchandise that is the truth of redemption, we will need to understand the vehicle, i.e., the culture through which it was communicated.
Thus, the study of the Old Testament becomes a cross-cultural endeavor. If we are going to understand the intent of the biblical authors, we will need to see their world the way they did. The word redemption.
But even as we attempt this first step of our journey into the Old Testament, we crash into the great barrier because the very term redemption is culturally conditioned. It had culturally specific content that we in modern times have mostly missed. In fact, redemption is one of the several words I have come to refer to as Biblish. A word that comes from the Bible is in English, but has been so overused by the Christian community that it has become gibberish.
So let's begin our cross-cultural journey with this word. What does the word redemption mean? And where did the church get it? The first answer to that question is obvious. The term comes from the New Testament.
Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited us and accomplished redemption for his people. Luke. chapter 1 verse 68 knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers but with precious blood as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.
1 Peter 1, verses 18-19. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. Galatians 3, verse 13. Okay, so the word comes from our New Testament, but what does it mean?
And where did the New Testament writers get it? A short survey of the Bible demonstrates that the New Testament writers got the word from the Old Testament writers. The prophet Isaiah declares, But now, says the Lord, your Creator, O Jacob, and he who formed you, O Israel, do not fear, for I have redeemed you.
I have called you by name. You are mine. Isaiah chapter 43 verse 1. And where did the Old Testament writers get the word?
Contrary to what we might assume, they did not lift it from a theological context. Rather, this word and the concepts associated with it emerged from the everyday secular vocabulary of ancient Israel. To redeem, Hebrew ga'al, in its first associations, had nothing to do with theology, but everything to do with the laws and social customs of the ancient tribal society of which the Hebrews were a part. Thus, if we are to understand the term and what the Old Testament writers intended when they applied it to Israel's relationship with Yahweh, we will need to understand the society from which the word came.
Israel's tribal culture. Israelite society was enormously different from contemporary life in the urban West. Whereas modern Western culture may be classified as urban and bureaucratic, Israel's society was traditional. More specifically, it was tribal.
In a tribal society, the family is literally the axis of the community. An individual's link to the legal and economic structures of their society is through the family. As Israel's was a patriarchal tribal culture, the link was the patriarch of the clan. The patriarch was responsible for the economic well-being of his family, he enforced law, and he had responsibility to care for his own who became marginalized through poverty, death, or war.
Hence, the operative information about any individual in ancient Israel was the identity of their father, their gender, and their birth order. This is very different from a bureaucratic society in which the state creates economic opportunity, enforces law, and cares for the marginalized. In fact, in a bureaucratic culture, the family is peripheral.
Not peripheral to the values and affections of the members of that society, but certainly peripheral to the government and economy. In Israel's tribal society, the family was central. and it is best understood by means of three descriptive categories, patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal.
Patriarchal. The first of these terms, patriarchal, has to do with the centrality of the oldest living male member of the family to the structure of the larger society. In his classic work on the topic, Marshall Sullins states that the societal structure of patriarchal tribalism involves a progressively inclusive series of groups emanating from the patriarchal leader.
In other words, the layers of society form in ever broader circles, radiating from the closely knit household to the nation as a whole. In Israel's particular tribal system, an individual would identify their place within society through the lens of their patriarch's household first. then their clan or lineage, then their tribe, and finally the nation.
Even the terminology for family in ancient Israel reflects the centrality of the patriarch. The basic household unit of Israelite society was known as the father's household. In Hebrew, the bait of. This household was what Westerners would call an extended family, including the patriarch, his wife or wives, his unwed children, and his married sons with their wives and children. In this patriarchal society, when a man married, he remained in the household.
But when a woman married, she joined the Beit Av of her new husband. An example of this is Rebekah's marriage to Isaac in Genesis chapter 24. She left her father's household in Haran and journeyed to Canaan to marry. Modern ethnographic studies indicate that the Israelite Beit Av could include as many as three generations, up to 30 persons.
Within this family unit, the father's household lived together in a family compound, collectively farming the land they jointly owned and sharing in its produce. This extended family shared their resources and their fate, and those who found themselves without a bait of, typically the orphan and the widow, also found themselves outside the society's normal circle of provision and protection. This is why the Old Testament is replete with reminders to care for the orphan and the widow.
So profound is Yahweh's concern for those who stand outside the protection of the Beit Av that he actually describes himself as the God of God and the Lord of Lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who does not show partiality nor take a bribe. He executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and shows his love for the alien by giving him food and clothing. Deuteronomy chapter 10, verses 17 through 18. As we will see later in this chapter, there were numerous laws in Israelite society targeted at the protection of the least of these, the marginalized of Israel's patriarchal society. Correspondingly, it was the patriarch of the household who bore both legal and economic responsibility for the household. In extreme situations, he decided who lived and who died, who was sold into slavery.
and who was retained within the family unit. An example of this from the Bible is the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38, verses 6-26. Here, Tamar has become a member of Judah's Beit Av by marriage, but is currently a widow. Although she is apparently no longer living under Judah's roof, which is evidence that Judah is not fulfilling his responsibilities to her, she is still under his authority. When Tamar is found to be pregnant, the townspeople report her crime to Judah.
It is obvious in this interaction that they expect him, as the patriarch of her bait Av, to administer justice. And so he does. Judah instructs the townspeople, bring her out and let her be burned. Genesis chapter 38 verse 24. As the head of her household, Judah's words carry the power of life and death.
for this young woman. We will return to this story a bit later in the chapter. When the patriarch died, or when the Beit Av became too large to sustain itself, the household would split into new households, each headed by the now oldest living male family member. Consider the description of Abraham's family in Genesis chapter 11, verses 26 through 32. Here, Terah's household consists of his adult sons, their wives and their children.
His oldest son, Haran, died in the presence of his father, Tira, perhaps while still a member of his household. But Lot, Haran's son, remains under Tira's care. So when Tira migrates to the city of Haran, he takes Lot with him. When Tira dies, Abram, the eldest, becomes the head of the Beit Av. and therefore takes responsibility for his brother's son.
Thus, Lot comes to Canaan with Abram. Now Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, and the land could not sustain them while dwelling together, for their possessions were so great that they were not able to remain together. Genesis chapter 13, verses 5 through 6. As a result, Abraham invites Lot to be separated from upon me.
Genesis chapter 13 verse 11. Lot chooses the fertile Jordan Valley and the original bait of becomes two. Petrilineal. The term petrilineal has to do with tracing ancestral descent and therefore tribal affiliation and inheritance through the male line. In Israel, the possessions of a particular lineage were carefully passed down through the generations, family by family, according to gender and birth order. in order to provide for the family members to come and to preserve the name of those gone before.
The genealogies of the Old Testament make this legal structure obvious. Women are typically not named. When women are named, something unusual is afoot, and we should be asking why.
A woman might be named in a genealogy if a man had several wives who each had sons. as is the case with Jacob and Esau's genealogies in Genesis 35 and Genesis 36. A woman might be named in the rare and extreme cases in which she might inherit land or goods. Numbers 26.33, 27.1-11, Numbers 36.1-12, Joshua 17.3-6.
But most often, women are named when the biblical writer has something to say. Note the genealogy of Matthew chapter 1. Here, in what comes to be the opening chapter of the New Testament, the information most significant to a first-century Jewish audience regarding the one claiming to be the Messiah is announced, his credentials as the son of the promise. Any Jew knew that the Messiah must be the offspring of Abraham.
He must be a son of David. This is the bloodline of the Christ. But notice that there are four women named in this crucial register. Rahab, Ruth, the wife of Uriah Bathsheba, and Mary. Mary's inclusion is an obvious necessity.
But what about the others? Why are they here in what ought to be an exclusively male list? Do you remember Rahab's occupation?
Ruth's nationality, Bathsheba's claim to fame. Why might the biblical writer have included these women in the opening chapter of the New Testament? I believe it is because this writer has something to say about the nature of the deliverance that this Messiah is bringing.
This deliverance is for all people, not just the Jews, not just the righteous, rather the unclean, the foreigner, the sinner, if they will believe, as Rahab did, are welcome. Not merely welcome into the new community, but welcome even into the lineage of the Christ. The genealogies also give us a window into the privileged position of the firstborn in Israelite society. The firstborn male child would replace his father in the role of patriarch upon his father's death. Hence, The firstborn took precedence over his brothers during his father's lifetime.
Genesis chapter 43 verse 33. And upon his father's death, he received a double portion of the family estate. Deuteronomy chapter 21 verse 17. Compare 1 Samuel chapter 1 verse 5. I often joke with my classes about the potential impact of incorporating Deuteronomy's law of the double portion. into the typical American home. Picture Christmas morning, the first rays of dawn peak over the horizon.
Your offspring leap from their beds and bound down the stairs to find the pile of loot that has come to characterize the celebration of an American Christmas. But rather than finding the carefully apportioned, equal stack of stuff awaiting them under the Christmas tree, Your children discover that your firstborn has twice as much as his siblings. Anarchy, chaos, bloodshed. In my egalitarian society, it is obvious why this apportionment would inspire dispute.
Not so in Israel's tribal society. There was a reason that the firstborn received a double portion. He would become the next patriarch.
Thus, during the lifetime of the patriarch, The firstborn was expected to shadow his father, to serve as an apprentice in all his duties. Much more was expected of him than his siblings. As the firstborn came to maturity, he slowly evolved into his father's peer, until upon the patriarch's death, he was prepared to assume the weighty responsibility of directing and maintaining the bait of.
Obviously, the firstborn would need adequate resources to ensure the survival of the family, hence the double portion. All firstborns are special to their parents, but because of his pivotal role in Israelite society, the firstborn in Israel was precious. Consider the stories of Esau and Jacob, Reuben and Judah, David and his seven brothers. In each of these stories, the culture demanded that the firstborn male be the one who received the privilege of leading the family into the next generation.
But in each of these cases, God chooses a younger son to lead. Thus, each of these stories is an example of how God's way of doing things. often stands in opposition to the cultural norms of his people and how Redemption's story critiques every human culture.
The choice of David is particularly telling. As the eighth-born son of Jesse, David's inheritance would have fit into a backpack. But after surveying all of Jesse's sons, eldest to youngest, of course, God's spokesman says no. to those David's society would have chosen, and yes, to the one least likely in the eyes of his own community. For I have selected a king for myself among his sons. 1 Samuel 16, verse 1. Indeed, people look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.
1 Samuel 16, verse 7. In Israel's patrilineal society, Children always belonged to their father's tribe. But when a female child came of age, she was married into another Beit Av. She became a permanent member of that new household, and her tribal alliance shifted with that marriage. As a result, a woman's identity in Israel and her link to its economy and civil structures was always tracked through the men in her life.
She was first her father's daughter, then her husband's wife, and then her son's mother. The resources and protection of the clan came to her through the male members of her family. This is why it was critical for a woman to marry and to bear children.
A woman who was widowed prior to bearing a son was a woman in crisis. And a woman without father, husband, or son was destitute. Without the charity of strangers, she would starve.
Because of this, there were a number of laws in Israelite society targeted at the protection of the widow. Consider, for example, Deuteronomy's gleaning laws, which required that landowners reserve a portion of the produce of their land for those among them who found themselves on the margins. When you reap your harvest in your field and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it.
It shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow, in order that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat your olive tree, you shall not go over the boughs again. It shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow.
When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not go over it again. It shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow. Deuteronomy chapter 24 verses 19 through 21. Another law concerned with the well-being of widows and directed at preserving proper lines of inheritance within Israel's tribal culture is the Leveret Law found in Deuteronomy chapter 25, verses 5 through 10. The Latin term lever means brother, and the law dictates the behavior expected when a brother has left a young widow behind. In sum, the Leveret Law prescribes that in a bait of, that has more than one son.
When a married man dies before he has produced a male heir, his young wife is not to be married off to someone outside the household. Rather, it was the responsibility of a living brother to take that woman as his wife, often his second wife, and to father a child with her. The first child of that union would belong to the deceased brother.
The child would be legally recognized as the deceased brother's offspring and would receive his inheritance. If there were additional children, those would belong to the living brother. The intent of this law was both to protect the young widow from destitution and to protect her deceased husband's inheritance.
The people of Israel considered it a serious offense for a man to fail to fulfill this responsibility to his dead brother. When brothers live together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a strange man. Her husband's brother shall go in to her, and take her to himself as wife, and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her. And it shall be that the firstborn whom she bears shall assume the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out from Israel. But if the man does not desire to take his brother's wife, then his brother's wife shall go up to the gate to the elders, and say, My husband's brother refuses to establish a name for his brother in Israel.
He is not willing to perform the duty of a husband's brother to me. Then the elders of his city shall summon him and speak to him. And if he persists and says, I do not desire to take her, then his brother's wife shall come to him in the sight of the elders and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face. And she shall declare, Thus it is done, to the man who does not build up his brother's house. In Israel his name shall be called, The house of him whose sandal is removed.
Deuteronomy chapter 25 verses 5 through 10. Although this system seems very odd to most westerners, it worked. The inheritance of the deceased brother was properly conferred upon his legal offspring, and the young widow was secured within the household. Thus, her current need for food and shelter was met. and her future need for a child to care for her in her old age was addressed as well.
With this insight into the nuts and bolts of a patrilineal society, let us return to the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis chapter 38. We have already learned that the widowed Tamar had become a member of Judah's Beit Av through marriage, and as such, Judah is responsible for bringing her to justice. after the townspeople announce her out of wedlock pregnancy. In agreement with societal norms, Judah orders her execution.
But there are details of this story that must be reconsidered. According to Genesis chapter 38, verses 6 through 11, Tamar had been the wife of Judah's firstborn, Ur. When this man died, Judah had instructed his second son, Onan, to fulfill the duty of a husband's brother, by marrying Tamar and fathering a child in his deceased brother's name. But because Onan knew that the child would not be his, when he went in to his brother's wife, he wasted his seed on the ground in order not to give offspring to his brother.
Genesis chapter 38 verse 9. The text tells us that for this crime, Yahweh requires his life. Although the law called for Judah now to give this woman to his third son, Judah did not. He was afraid that there was something wrong with this woman, as opposed to something wrong with his sons, and that if his third son, Shelah, married her, he would die too. So Judah deceived Tamar, saying, Remain a widow in your father's house until my son Shelah grows up.
The biblical narrator makes it very clear that Judah has no intention of carrying out his responsibilities toward this young woman, either by marrying her to his third son or by making a place for her within his household. Thus, after a considerable time, when Tamar saw that Judah was not going to fulfill his obligation to her, Genesis chapter 38 verse 14, Tamar decided to take matters into her own hands. She removed her widow's garments. and disguised herself such that when Judah encountered her along the road, he believed her to be a prostitute. Judah propositioned her, and she consented, providing that he leave a pledge of payment with her.
The pledge, she requested, your seal and your cord and your staff. Genesis chapter 38, verse 18. Tamar's plan worked, she conceived, and when her condition became apparent to her village, They reported it to Judah. Even though this woman was living in her own father's home, Judah ordered her burned. Now, consider Tamar's response.
It was while she was being brought out to be burned that she sent to her father-in-law, saying, I am with child by the man to whom these things belong. And she said, Please examine and see whose signet ring and cords and staff are these. Judah recognized them and said, She is more righteous than I.
Genesis chapter 38 verses 25 through 26 She is more righteous than I? Hadn't this young woman just tricked her father-in-law into illicit sex? How could one of the twelve patriarchs of Israel make such a statement?
To answer this question, we have to understand the culture of the people of the Old Testament and resist the temptation to impose our cultural norms on them. Although, in my world, Tamer's actions would be reprehensible. In her own culture, it was Judah who was worthy of rebuke, for it was Judah who had failed to honor the Leveret Law and had allowed another household to take responsibility for the support of his widowed daughter-in-law. In Israelite culture, Judah was the villain. Tamar was the courageous, albeit a bit audacious, heroine.
Another important biblical law regarding inheritance addressed land. Throughout its national period, the bulk of the Israelite populace lived on small family farms, in which the main economy was a mixture of pastoralism and diversified agriculture. The primary goal of that economy was ensuring the survival of the family.
As a result, for the typical household in ancient Israel, the inherited land holdings of the Beit Av were the family's lifeline. Thus, there were laws in ancient Israel, designed to ensure that the family plot, Hebrew nachalah, remained within the lineage. Based on the concept formulated early on that the promised land actually belonged to Yahweh and had been distributed among the tribes as he intended, the only legally permissible permanent transfer of land in Israel was through inheritance.
and the parcels of land originally distributed by Yahweh were to pass from father to son in perpetuity. But if poverty or dire life circumstances forced the sale of some portion of the patrimonial estate, the land was not to be sold permanently. Rather, according to the inalienable land law of Leviticus, chapter 25, verses 13 through 28, It was the responsibility of the seller's nearest kinsman to step in and buy back what his relative had sold.
If there was no kinsman, but the seller managed to recoup his loss such that he was able to repurchase his land, the buyer was required to give him that opportunity. And if there was no kinsman, and the seller was incapable of raising the funds necessary to reclaim his patrimony, then what he has sold shall remain in the hands of its purchaser until the year of jubilee but at the jubilee it shall revert that he the seller may return to his property leviticus chapter twenty five verse twenty eight although we have no evidence to prove or disprove the actual practice of the widespread restoration of patrimonial lands at the year of jubilee we do have firm evidence that the kinship based land tenure described in Leviticus, and the responsibility of the nearest kinsman to restore patrimony when possible, was indeed the expectation of Israelite society. Compare Jeremiah chapter 32 verses 6 through 44, 2 Kings chapter 8 verses 1 through 6. Again, this system of land tenure is very different from the capitalist economy in which I have been raised.
But, generally, it worked. The end result was that no lineage in Israel was condemned to permanent or inescapable poverty. Petrolocal. The term petrolocal has to do with the living space of the family unit, which, as we have come to expect, was built around the oldest living male.
Corresponding to the makeup of the Beit Av as an extended family, The architectural structure in which the Israelite family lived was not so much a house as it was a compound. Nuclear families were housed in individual units, which were clustered together within a larger, walled enclosure. And this living space was also known as the Beit Av. The integration of data gathered via archaeology, modern ethnographic study, and the biblical text. leaves us with a surprisingly clear picture of this Israelite family compound.
Here, the individual dwelling places circled a shared courtyard, in which the necessary domestic chores were carried out by family members. At any given daytime hour, one might find the women of the household in this courtyard grinding grain into flour, preparing food or baking bread in the standard domed oven, known as a tenour. All of this was done with the small children close at hand. A pergola of grapevines for the family's use, and animals who had been brought in from the fields to be watered and housed, would also be typical courtyard residents.
At day's end, the family would regather within the security of the walled compound for the evening meal and sleep. The individual dwelling units of the Israelite Beit Av are especially characteristic of Israelite culture and are so consistent in their design that they have come to be known as the four-room pillared house. In the States, you might call them the two-bedroom cape of the average Israelite neighborhood. In a rural setting, the houses might be freestanding, but frequently, especially in more crowded urban settings, these houses were more like townhomes, sharing their exterior walls, with their rear walls sometimes doing double duty as the wall around the compound and or village. A typical Israelite home has two stories, each of which has three long rooms delineated by rows of pillars, and a long room which spanned the back of the house.
The house was constructed of a mixture of field stone and mud brick, sealed and plastered. The roof was composed of small branches, plastered together with 8 to 10 inches of tempered clay and mud and or sod. We hope you enjoyed this preview.
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