Justice: the earthly form of God's holiness
Walter Brueggemann
For all of our study of archaeology and history, we understand almost nothing of the way ancient Israel bursts into our midst as a socio-economic-theological novum. Certainly that community has socio-historical antecedents.1 But it has no antecedent that adequately justifies its revolutionary appearance in public affairs. That revolutionary emergence of Israel is in part socio-political. Israel undertakes social practices and entertains social visions from its very inception that are radical in character, embracing an economics of sharing and a politics of equity. That socio-political dimension of reality is matched by the revolutionary character of Israel's God who, in important ways, shatters conventional notions of 'goodness' and begins with a 'preferential option' for those who are to become Yahweh's special people in the world.
I
This revolutionary novum (newness of God, newness of public practices of power) is given us in the Exodus narrative which has become Israel's identifying narrative, mediated over time in 'Passover imagination.'2 This narrative of Passover imagination (Ex.1-15) provides for Israel the defining plot of Israel's historical drama with Yahweh, a drama that is repeatedly reenacted in many different times, places, and circumstances.
The key characters in the plot are three. Israel is first of all mindful of itself, its needs, its woundedness, its powerlessness, and its yearning for an alternative. Israel is ever again an exploited, oppressed community in need of an advocate and deliverer. Israel's antagonist is Pharaoh, the cipher in the Bible for every ruthless agent of exploitative power, the one eager to mobilize cheap labour for imperial aggrandizement. In the ongoing work of Passover imagination, Pharaoh becomes a type, who recurs in many guises in Israel's historical experience.
The third character in the drama, Yahweh, enters the plot abruptly and inexplicably. Yahweh appears in response to the voiced hurt and need of Israel (Ex.2.23-25) and immediately takes on the rôle of deliverer. Yahweh's characteristic rôle is to stand over against Pharaoh, in order to champion Israel's cause with enough power and authority to legitimate Israel's life, and to overturn oppressive structures, procedures, and assumptions. As the tale goes, Pharaoh eventually cannot withstand the resolve of Yahweh and, as a result, Israel escapes its oppressor, exercises freedom for its own life, and becomes 'the subject of its own history'.3
Through the process of tradition building and liturgic reenactment, this narrative becomes the dominant plot for Israel's life, memory, hope, and ethics.4 Israel's vision and practice of justice emerge in and from this narrative context. It is clear that justice as hoped for by Israel, resisted by Pharaoh, and finally given by Yahweh, is not simply a retributive arrangement whereby each receives what is 'deserved', but is a radical notion of distributive practice that gives to each one what is needed-by way of legitimacy, dignity, power, and wherewithal-in order to live a life of well-being.5 The subjects of this new justice of Yahweh make each a valued 'end' of God, and not a 'means' toward some other purpose. It is no wonder that this radical plot which conjoins theology and politics is thought by Walzer to be the tap root and source of revolution everywhere in the Western world.6 This Passover vision presents Yahweh, the creator of heaven and earth, as the active agent in the reshaping of human social power for the sake of human community and well-being. This tale tells of Yahweh's singular resolve, Pharaoh's inability to resist that resolve, and Israel's stunned, glad reception of a new possibility in the world.
II
While the Passover narrative energizes Israel's imagination toward justice, Israel's hard work of implementation of that imaginative scenario was done at 'Mt. Sinai'. I understand 'Mt. Sinai' to refer to both 1) the initial covenant-making at Mt Sinai (now lost to us as an historically recoverable event) and 2) the ongoing process of interpretation of torah which persists in Jewish tradition as a way to keep the ancient commands of Sinai endlessly pertinent and compelling.
Moses' difficult work at Sinai is to transform the narrative vision of the Exodus into a sustainable social practice which has institutional staying power, credibility, and authority. The most extreme understanding of Sinai is that Moses sought to fashion procedures, structures, and values to order a genuinely egalitarian community in which the political processes and economic resources of the community are made available for the sake of all members of the community, without reference to privilege or priority.7 Against the elitism of Egypt which predictably ended in oppression, this egalitarianism intends to curb every such claim of privilege. We may identify three phases of activity which sought to solidfy the social requirements of covenantal justice, i.e., the practice of genuine neighbourliness.
1. The ten commandments (Ex.20.1-17) constitute an attempt to lay down policy lines which will preclude barbarism and nihilism.8 The first three commands (vv.2-7) assert the holiness of Yahweh beyond every ideological attempt to harness Yahweh for utilitarian ends. The absoluteness of Yahweh beyond every ideological effort serve to deabsolutize every would-be absolute socio-economic-political intention that is in principle idolatrous.9 Thus to 'love God' means to refuse every other ultimate love or loyalty. The last six commands (vv.12-17) concern love of neighbour. 'Love of neighbour' here implies nothing romantic, but hard-nosed disciplines concerning protection of and respect for the life-sphere of every neighbour, including those who have no power to defend themselves or access to advocate their own interest. These elemental guarantees serve to protect the weak from the strong. The juxtaposition of the first three commands on the holiness of God and the last six on justice for the neighbour show that God's holiness and neighbour love are of a piece in this revolutionary experiment in ancient Israel. Indeed, Israel has known from the beginning that love of God cannot be remote from love of neighbour (1 John 4:20), and that holiness and justice always come together.
At the centre of this list of policy statements at Sinai stands the regulation of sabbath, perhaps Israel's most stunning counter-cultural notion of justice.10 In this command Israel broke decisively from the Pharaonic system of production and consumption. Israel asserts that 'rest' for self, for neighbour, and even for God is the goal and quintessence of life. Now this rest is not passivity, but the kind of 'at-homeness' which precludes hostility, competition, avarice, and insecurity. The sabbath provision of ancient Israel anticipates a community of peace, well-being and joy.11 There could hardly be a bolder refutation of Pharaoh's brick quotas than in this sabbath principle.
2. Israel's policy statements concerning an alternative mode of social relationships require specificity and implementation. The ten commandments, generalized as they are, wait to be interpreted and applied to local, specific circumstance.12 In order to do that, 'Moses' extrapolated from the commands, in part making use of already existing, non-Israelite materials. It is clear that in enacting this inescapable interpretative move, Israel's social vision was significantly compromised and toned down, in order to accommodate what we may call 'social realism'.
The earliest example of such interpretation toward specificity is in the 'Covenant Code' of Ex.21.1-23.19.13 In this instruction, there are important articulations of Israel's radical social vision. Thus there is protection for the resident alien (Ex.22.21-23, 23.9), for the poor of Israel (Ex.22.25-27), and a prohibition of bribes which would bias justice toward the wealthy (23.6-8). These are extremely venturesome, concrete examples of a beginning in egalitarian justice. And in 21.2, the 'sabbatic principle' is implemented, setting a limit of debt-slavery to which a neighbour can be held. This institution is a daring economic innovation. It is equally clear, however, that this Exodus version of justice was difficult to sustain in the face of vested interest which most often shows up as property rights. Thus in the same law which protects Israelites and limits bondage for debt (21.2), Israel is willing to break up a family of the indebted for the sake of economic gain, for the creditor shall retain control of wife and children when the man is freed. Thus v.4 adds a remarkably calloused provision to the caring affirmation of v.2. And in v.26, the slave is said to be the property (ksph=silver) of the owner, showing that even in a less developed society, the disadvantaged can be commoditized in the same way Hebrew slaves were treated as a commodity by Pharaoh.
This collection of laws makes clear that for Israel, its peculiar social vision was in endless struggle with its protection of vested interest and its enthralment to ideological advantage.14 This juxtaposition of vision and interest no doubt caused an ongoing interpretative dispute, as Israel sought at the same time to enact and to compromise its vision which was kept available in its Passover liturgy. There is no doubt that such a radical vision will always keep such an interpretative struggle before this community, a struggle consisting in both theological and socio-economic-political dimensions.
3. The book of Deuteronomy, commonly regarded as 'Moses'' belated, mature, and covenantal interpretation of the demands of Sinai, evidences Israel's ongoing struggle for radical justice. We may mention only two points in that daring interpretative work. In 15.1-11, 'Moses' elaborates on the 'sabbatic provision' first surfaced in Ex.21.2. In this more extended statement, so well expounded by Hamilton, the instruction envisages a coming society 'without the poor', who have been emancipated from their poverty.15 Moreover, the intensity of infinitive absolutes in rhetoric of these verses provides for a complete economic rehabilitation of the bond-servant. That is, the one with debts cancelled is not only returned to the 'economy', but is entitled to and guaranteed the wherewithal to reenter the economy with dignity and viability. We may take this provision as the signature of Israel's notion of radical justice, advocating the responsibility of the creditor community for rehabilitation and restoration of those lost in the shuffle of economic transactions. Economics is understood as a tool of a covenantal social fabric, and is not permitted to be a separate sphere with its own anti-neighbour procedures and laws.16
Second, Lohfink has observed that the provisions for institutional leadership of covenantal Israel in Deut.16.18-18.22 concern a variety of 'offices and authorities'.17 These include judge, king, priest, and prophet. Lohfink suggests that this material (which he regards as a 'constitution') provides for the separation of powers as a check on any centralizing or oppressive absolutism.18 Thus the polity of Israel, as well as its social vision, provides for covenantal procedures whereby the weak, powerless, and vulnerable are guaranteed structural protection. It is clear that for all of its compromise, this tradition of interpretation of the commandments retains much of the clarity and radicality of the Exodus. Israel's oddity in the world is not only because of its odd, justice-resolved God, but because of the social order envisaged, commanded and legitimated by that God.
III
After the torah traditions of Moses (Exodus and Sinai), the justice question pushes us on to the prophets. Whatever may be the historical relationship between torah and prophets, Israels own canonical self-understanding is that the prophets are based in the torah.19 That is, the prophets continue to articulate, in the monarchical period and vis-a-vis the king, Israel's primal conviction that Yahweh's theological intention is the transformation of the socio-economic-political process. They intend that social structures and social relationships in Israel should be covenantal.
The corpus of the prophets, as it is now edited, is arranged with reference to the decisive débâcle of 587 and the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in order to make two statements.20 The twofold editing of the prophetic books concerns first, the critical assertion that a community of unjust social relations will suffer the catastrophic judgment of Yahweh. That is, public affairs, including the incursions of the great powers into Israel, are understood by the prophets as an exercise of the sovereignty of Yahweh against a non-covenantal society. The prophets hold to a 'metahistory' voiced in Israel's liturgy and memory, but not otherwise visible in the world.21 In that metahistory Yahweh continues to be a primary actor and Yahweh's decisive agenda concerns punishment for unjust social practices, i.e., practices in Israel that replicate Pharaonic policies.
The second element in the final form of the text is that Yahweh takes an initiative in permitting a new community to emerge after the débâcle caused by injustice. This new community is empowered by Yahweh to make a fresh start in torah obedience, whereby just social relations will be enacted and the community will be shaped according to the covenantal vision of Yahwism.
In the early (pre-exilic) prophets, we may mention two obvious examples of this process. Amos inveighs against a community that distorts justice and righteousness (5.7, 6.12) through bribery (5.12), self-indulgence (6.4-6), and sharp business dealings (8.4-6).22 At the very end of the pre-exilic period when Jerusalem's public life ends in disaster, Jeremiah sounds the same themes. The prophet launches an assault against the exploiters who are 'great and rich, fat and sleek', and who have such social advantage because they know no limits in deeds of wickedness; they do not judge with justice the cause of the orphan, to make it prosper, and they do not defend the rights of the needy. (5.28)
More specifically, Jeremiah indicts the royal leadership of Jerusalem for its exploitative social policies (22.12-14), policies which are deeply in violation of care for the poor which is the cornerstone of effective royal policy (cf. Psalm 72.24). Thus the 'unrighteousness' and 'injustice' of the king is contrasted with that of his father Josiah:
Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not this to know me? says the Lord. (Jer.22.15-16)23
The entire sequence of prophets in the pre-exilic period represents an astonishing literary corpus which in some form surely reflects a staggering social movement.24 This profound and demanding social criticism is an ongoing counterpart to the monarchy, for the monarchy entails social stratificiation, surplus value, and monopoly of privilege, all matters which create social inequity and exploitation. This conduct of kingship is not at all unusual or remarkable, for it is so in every developed society.
What is unusual and remarkable is this sustained social exposé and criticism of the prophets which has a concrete policy edge to it, but which claims to be (and to some extent is accepted as) a transcendent voice of holiness. That voice, which will not be driven from the midst of Israel's social practice, insists that there is no wealth, power, knowledge, or privilege which can make a society safe when the most elemental requirements of neighbourlinesss are disregarded. The lyrical, imaginative poetry of the prophets is thrown in the face of exploitative social power with all the legitimacy of holiness.25 Israel knows, moreover, that it must host this voice which cannot finally be silenced or banished from its arena of neighbour relations.
Oddly enough, in the present form, even these pre-exilic prophets so focused on Israel's destruction do not finish before they speak their alternative vision of a new society that will arise out of the débâcle by the authority of Yahweh. Thus in 9.11-15, Amos envisages a new community of prosperity, security, order, and well-being. Even more extensively, Jeremiah envisages a reordered community of well-being in which there is fertility and prosperity, and the resumption of dance, joy, comfort, and bounty (31.12-14). As the cessation of communal rituals of joy marked a terrible ending of social process (cf. Jer.7.34, 16.9, 25.10), so now the resumption of such rituals signal the rehabilitation of a community of well-being:
There shall once more be heard the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voices of those who sing, as they bring thank offerings to the house of the Lord:
'Give thanks to the Lord of hosts, for the Lord is good, for his steadfast love lasts endures forever!' (Jer.33.10-11)
This same accent on justice is unabated in some of the voices of prophecy in the exile and after the exile, that is, after the nullification of the monarchy. In the later materials of the book of Isaiah, addressed to Israel in a forlorn condition, the enigmatic figure of the prophet is identified as one sent for the sake of justice:
Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations... he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching. (Is.42.1-4)
If we take 'the servant' to be Israel, then Israel's vocation, even in its marginalized situation of exile, is nonetheless to 'establish justice', the very same justice around which Moses organized his anti-hegemonic revolution, and to which Amos harshly summoned Israel. That mandate for justice is reiterated in late Isaiah as a thematic summons to justice (56.1), as a call to inclusiveness (56.2-8), as a vocation of communal responsibility for the needy (58.6-9), and as an 'impossible possibility' for the new creation given by God (65.17-25).
The lyrical imagination of later Isaiah is matched by the resolve of Yahweh, according to -Ezek.34.1116 and in the utterance of Zechariah. This accent in a later priestly prophet is all the more astonishing, because Zechariah, along with Haggai, is commonly understood in terms of temple building and long-term hope. Zechariah, however, clearly stands in this same relentless justice tradition of Israel, and so can never move far away from a Mosaic cadence which comes to be characteristic in Israel:
Thus says the Lord of hosts: Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another; do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another. (Zech.7.9-10)
In season and out of season, Israel holds to this vocation. The prophetic urgings of later Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah finally come to quite concrete effect in the reforming activity of Nehemiah. While the Ezra-Nehemiah effort is commonly seen to be concerned with the rebuilding of the city and the recovery of the torah, it is clear that neighbourliness as an economic-political necessity is on their horizon. In Nehemiah 5, the great 'urban planner' of ancient Israel requires an economic reform whereby the 'haves' and 'have nots' must act together in Yahwistic good faith. This is again the 'sabbatic principle' at work, redefining social relationships:
Restore to them, this very day, their fields, their vineyards, their olive orchards, and their houses, and the interest on money, grain, wine, and oil that you have been exacting from them. (Neh.5.11)
This appeal, which is reported to be effectively implemented, is a concrete outcome of this long tradition of holiness evident in social relations as justice.
IV
The public utterance of justice in the prophetic oracles, and the (occasional) practice of public justice are fully reflected in the texts we have mentioned. That public possibility in Israel expressed in torah and prophets, however, is matched and sustained by the liturgical-pastoral tradition of the Psalter. That is, justice is not only a public issue, but it permeates Israel's life of devotion, piety, spirituality, and prayer.26 Justice is what Israel pondered as it entered into God's own presence.
In the great doxological liturgies of Israel, Yahweh is affirmed as a doer of justice, the very kind of justice toward the oppressed and marginalized that Pharaoh could never host or imagine:
Mighty king, lover of justice, you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. (Psalm 99.4)27 The very character of Yahweh is understood under the rubric of justice in quite specific ways. This is a God who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the strangers, he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin. (Psalm 146.7-9)
Justice is no extra for Yahwism, but is at the core of Yahweh's own identity, so that this community cannot have Yahweh as God without this public agenda.
As Israel's hymns celebrate who Yahweh is and what Yahweh does, the complaint Psalms regularly address Yahweh in an imperative, urging that God will act and intervene in order to transform situations of exploitation and injustice:28
Rise up, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand; do not forget the oppressed. (Psalm 10.12)
For we sink down to the dust; our bodies cling to the ground. Rise up, come to our help. Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.(Psalm 44.25-26)
Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked... Rise up, O God, judge the earth; for all the nations belong to you! (Psalm 82.3-4, 8)29
Rise up, O judge of the earth; give to the proud what they deserve!(Psalm 94.2)
As the hymns proclaim Yahweh's commitment to justice, so the laments hold Yahweh to the commitment, anticipating that Yahweh's deep resolve is to transform the world into a genuine community of neighbours.
That sustained reflection upon the character of Yahweh in hymn and lament issues, in the Psalter, into ethical reflection. That is, what Yahweh wills and does in the world is echoed and replicated by the adherents of Yahweh. Thus those (Psalm 112.1) who 'fear Yahweh' and 'delight greatly in Yahweh's commandment' act in certain ways:
They rise in the darkness as a light for the upright; they are gracious, merciful, and righteous. It is well with those who deal generously and lend, who conduct their affairs with justice... They have distributed freely, they have given to the poor; their righteousness endures forever; their horn is exalted in honour.(Psalm 112.4-5, 9)
Human conduct which enacts justice is a counterpart to Yahweh's own work of justice.30 For that reason, Israel's worship life has an ethic of justice at its core, and never imagines being in 's presence except as those who have justice as their identifying agenda (cf. Pss. 15, 24).
Indeed, in the 'final form of the text', the Psalms are reckoned as a corpus of 'torah-piety'.31 That is, Psalm 1 sets the tone for the entire Psalter. Those who worship and trust Yahweh, and who appeal to Yahweh, 'meditate night and day upon the torah' which, according to the tradition of Moses, is a mandate for revolutionary, transformative justice in the world. In its positive aspects, torah activity transforms the neighbourhood. In its negative function, the torah refuses the anti-neighbourly ways of the world which can only end in brutality and nihilism. Thus the characteristic Israelite of 'torah piety' seeks God's goodness and trusts in God's commands for justice:
I know, O Lord, that your judgments are right, and that in faithfulness you have humbled me... You are righteous, O Lord, and your judgments are right.(Psalm 199.75, 137)
V
It is our insistence that this revolutionary eruption of justice in the world in the life of Israel is a primal motif in many varieties and genres of texts, including the Exodus narrative of liberation, the commands of Sinai and its interpretative afterlife, in the prophetic oracles, and in the meditative piety of the Psalter. Before we finish, however, we must add a qualifying note of candid realism. The transformative agenda of justice is not everywhere uncontested in the texts of ancient Israel. This visionary intentionality, with such radical practical implications, always lives in the presence of uncompromising 'realism' which bespeaks ideology, vested interest, and pragmatism. Not only is there a transformative notion of justice, but there is alongside it a justice that intends to maintain the status quo, and to protect present power arrangements with all its several advantages and disadvantages.32
This countertheme of pragmatism that resists excessive visionary intentionality is found in many places in the text, but in none is it more visible and sustained than in the wisdom instruction of the book of Proverbs. Issues of 'wealth and poverty' in the book of Proverbs are characteristically handled so that the prosperous understand themselves as the righteous who serve generous blessings and have no call to share with the 'undeserving poor'.33 Thus for example,
A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.(Prov. 10.4) A generous person will be enriched, and the one who gives water will get water.(Prov. 11.25) Poverty and disgrace are for the one who ignores instruction, but one who heeds reproof is honoured.(Prov. 13.18)
The outcome of such an understanding of the shape of reality is self-congratulation. The root of such a view, however, is the theological claim that this is a tightly reliable world in which there is no slippage between goodness and blessing, and therefore between 'badness' and disadvantage. It is this close, uncritical view of things which the friends of Job state in the most blatant, exaggerated form.34
It is not possible here to engage in an extended critique of this ethic of self-congratulation which is at odds with Israel's more radical justice commitment. It is enough to notice that it is also 'biblical' and, like the more radical view of justice, it is both rooted in actual social experience and thought by its adherents to be a legitimated form of Yahwism.
The result of this tension between a tradition of revolutionary transformation and a tradition of maintenance of the status quo is that Israel endlessly faced a disputatious conversation about justice. This conversation is always an adjudication of vision and experience (sometimes the experience of deprivation and sometimes the experience of privilege). That disputatious conversation in which the community of faith must be engaged includes disputes about the character of God, about the ethical mandate for the faithful, and about the public policy possibilities that flow from decisions about both of these. That conversation cannot ever, in the historical process, be fully resolved. There can be, at the most, provisional settlements made in particular conversations. Those provisional settlements, however, are endlessly reopened in new circumstances and fresh contexts. What is certain is that the heirs of this textual tradition are heirs to this difficult conversation, and must continue such difficult and conflictual reflection.
As one of the heirs of the ancient textual tradition of Judaism, it is clear that the same issues were inescapable for the New Testament community which sought to understand the 'news' of Jesus in the light of this textual inheritance.
(Professor Walter Brueggemann is Professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, USA.)
Notes
1. On the antecedents, see David Notel Freedman and David Frank Graf, eds., Palestine in Transition: The Emergence of Ancient Israel, The Social World of Biblical Antiquity Series 2, Sheffield: The Almond Press, 1983, and, recently and popularly, Herschel Shanks et al., The Rise of Ancient Israel Washington: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1992.
2. Sandra M. Schneiders, The Revelatory Text: Interpreting the New Testament as Sacred Scripture, San Francisco: Harper, 1991, pp.102-108, uses the happy parallel term, 'Paschal Imagination'.
3. The phrase of course refers to the programme of Karl Marx. On his insistence upon the emancipation of human persons from fate, see Karl Marx, Early Writings, New York: Penguin Books, 1975, pp.379-400, and José Miranda, Marx against the Marxists, Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1980, pp.29-68 and passim.
4. On my understanding of the plot, see Walter Brueggemann, Hope within History, Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1987, pp.7-26.
5. My friend Tom Green has helped me see that even the word 'justice' as used in the Old Testament is likely to be misunderstood in contemporary usage, because of the radically different notions of justice in ancient Israel and ancient Greece. Our Greek understandings render the Israelite usage most difficult.
6. Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, New York: Basic Books, 1985.
7. The case has been most rigorously made by Norman K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250-1050 B.C., Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1979. See his more recent articulation of the hypothesis with changed terminology, Responses, The Rise of Ancient Israel, pp.70-75.
8. The best recent summary of scholarship on the ten commandments is Walter Harrelson, The Ten Commandments and Human Rights, Overtures to Biblical Theology, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980. On the commandments and nihilism, Cynthia Ozick, Round Table Discussion, in Berel Lang, ed., Writing and the Holocaust, New York: Holmes and Meier, 1988, p.280: Another way of reflection on the why is to note that the Jews vis-a-vis nihilism stand for No: not the No of nihilism, but the No against nihilism, the No that presses for restraint if you listen to the commandments in Hebrew, you will hear a no nonsense abruptness, a rapidity and a terseness. They begin with Lo, the Hebrew word for No. Lo tigonov, do not steal. Punkt. The torah the Jews carry stands for No, for all the things we ordinary mortals want to do and take glee in doing. The Jews stand for the hard demands of monotheism nobody wants monotheism the burden of being the people that carries monotheism into the world, monotheism with its uncompromising obligations to mercy, monotheism with its invention of conscience.
9. On the relationship of idolatry and ideology, see Walter Brueggemann, Israel's Praise: Doxology against Idolatry and Ideology, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988.
10. See especially Patrick D. Miller, The Human Sabbath: A Study in Deuteronomic Theology, The Princeton Seminary Bulletin VI.2 (1985), pp.81-97, and Deuteronomy, Interpretation, Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990, pp.79-84. Miller, Deuteronomy, p.83, refers to the sabbath commandment as a primary impetus to social justice. Marva J. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989, has poignantly voiced the contemporary urgency of the sabbath.
11. Visions of this community are evident in the sufficiency of manna in Ex. 16:17-18, and in the vision of reconciled creation in Is.11:6-9.
12. See Walter Brueggemann, Finally Comes the Poet, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989, pp.79-10, and Interpretation and Obedience, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991, pp.145-58.
13. For a conventional, reliable introduction to this corpus, see Dale Patrick, Old Testament Law, Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985.
14. Paul D.Hanson,The Theological Signifance of Contradiction Within the Book of the Covenant, in G.W.Coats and Burke O.Long, eds., Canon and Authority: Essays in Old Testament Religion and Theology, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977, pp.110-131, has shown the contradictions within the corpus. It is not necessary, however, to conclude with Hanson that the two attitudes need to be or even can be divided into separate and distinct sources. The fact that they come together discloses more poignantly the character of Israel's problematic thinking about its social vision.
15. Jeffries M.Hamilton, Social Justice and Deuteronomy: The Case of Deuteronomy 15, SBL Dissertation Series 136, Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992.
16. On the relation of the economy to the larger social fabric, see Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, Boston: Beacon Press, 1957, and the theological use made of his argument by M.Douglas Meeks, God the Economist: The Doctrine of God and Political Economy, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989.
17. Norbert Lohfink, Distribution of the Functions of Power, Great Themes From the Old Testament, Edinburgh: T.&T.Clark, 1982, pp.55-75.
18. In addition to Lohfink, see S.Dean McBride, Polity of the Covenant People: The Book of Deuteronomy, Interpretation 41 (1987), pp.229-44.
19. For a theological understanding of this problem, see Walther Zimmerrli, The Law and the Prophets: A Study of the Meaning of the Old Testament, New York: Harper and Row, 1963. Most recently see Brian Peckham, History and Prophecy: The Development of Late Judean Literary Traditions New York: Doubleday, 1993.
20. See Ronald Clements, Patterns in the Prophetic Canon, Canon and Authority, pp.42-55.
21. For the term 'metahistory', see Klaus Koch, The Prophets I: The Assyrian Period, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982, p.144 and passim. Koch also uses the term 'suprahistory'.
22.On Amos, see James Luther Mays, Justice: Perspectives from the Prophetic Tradition, Interpretation XXXVII (1983), pp.517, and more generally Bernhard Lang, The Social Organization of Peasant Poverty in Biblical Israel, JSOT 24 (1982), pp.4763. Mays and Lang speak variously of 'early capitalism' and 'rent capitalism'.
23. On this text, see José Miranda, Marx and the Bible: A Critique of the Philosophy of Oppression, Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1974, pp.47-62.
24. On the sociological aspects of prophecy, see Robert R.Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980.
25. The messenger formula 'Thus Saith the Lord' is a claim of 'metahistorical' authority for prophetic utterance which intends to counter other presumed authorities in the conversation.
26. On the cruciality of justice in the faith of the Psalter, see J.David Pleins, The Psalms: Songs of Tragedy, Hope, and Justice, Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1993, and Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary, Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1984, pp.168-176.
27. On this verse and its focus on justice, see the comment of Hans Joachim Kraus, Psalms 60-150, Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1989, p.270.
28. Gerald T.Sheppard,'"Enemies" and the Politics of Prayer in the Book of Psalms', in Norman K.Gottwald and Richard A.Horsley eds., The Bible and Liberation: Political and Social Hermeneutics, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993, pp.376-91, and 'Theology and the Book of Psalms', Interpretation 46 (1992), pp.143-55, suggests that the imperatives of the Psalms are voiced so that the oppressors may 'overhear' and are in fact addressed to them. It is not necessary to make it an either/or: they may be both 'real address' and 'overhearing'.
29. Verses 3-4 are not addressed as imperatives to Yahweh, but appear to be imperatives addressed by Yahweh to the other would-be gods. In any case, the subject matter is telling and points to v.9.
30. The juxtaposition of the two, human conduct and Yahweh's own work, is nicely visible in the juxtaposition of Pss. 111 and 112, which in turn affirm the justice of Yahweh and the justice of God'>s righteous people.
31. See James L. Mays,'The Place of the Torah-Psalms', JBL 106 (1987), pp.3-13, and J. Clinton McCann, Jr., A Theological Introduction to the Book of Psalms: The Psalms as Torah, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993, pp.25-s40 and passim.
32. On this tension, see Leo G. Perdue,'Cosmology and the Social Order in the Wisdom Tradition', in John G. Gammie and Leo G. Perdue eds., The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990, pp.457-78.
33. On the social location of wisdom, see the early and compelling proposal of Robert Gordis, 'The Social Background of Wisdom Literature', in his Poets, Prophets, and Sages: Essays in Biblical Interpretation, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971, pp.160-197, and the more recent, more complex scholarly judgments in the collection, The Sage in Israel. On 'wealth and poverty' see, for example, J. David Pleins, 'Poverty in the Social World of the Wise', JSOT 37 (1987), pp.61-78, and R.N. Whybray, Wealth and Poverty in the Book of Proverbs, JSOT Supp. 99, Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990.
34. On the voice of the friends as a theological stance, see Claus Westermann, The Structure of the Books of Job: A Form-Critical Analysis, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981, pp.81-95, Gustavo Gutierrez, On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987, pp21-38, and more broadly David J.A. Clines, 'Deconstructing the Book of Job', What Does Even (...) Do to Help? JSOT Supp. 94, Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990, pp.106-23.
