Mixing and Matching

President Josiah Bartlet:

Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads?

In another post I point out that there is nothing to suggest that the death penalty was ever applied or expected to be applied in the case of someone planting different crops side by side or wearing garments made from two different threads. The insinuation here that it might is a form of bearing false witness to the biblical text.

But what is the significance of YHWH’s instructions for holy living in Leviticus 19, sandwiched as they are between two chapters which stress that the Israelites must distinguish themselves as holy by following YHWH’s commands and not the nations’ sexual and religious practices? We learn that holiness is not only about abstaining from certain practices but about being discerning in every sphere of life (cf. A Jewish definition of holiness). It means, e.g., engaging in economic practices that are pro-actively helpful to the poor (19:9-10), not just refraining from stealing and defrauding people (19:11). It means not to do harm even when there is little risk of being detected (19:14) and it means judicial impartiality (19:15). It means not only refraining from slander (19:16a) but also being pro-active about helping someone discern the wrong in which they are engaged (19:17). It means not only that one does not jeopardize a neighbour’s life (or allow a neighbour to be victimised, 19:16b, the precise meaning is uncertain) but also not to bear a grudge (19:18, “but love your neighbour as yourself”). And then it also means

“You are to keep my statutes. Do not crossbreed two different kinds of your livestock, sow your fields with two kinds of seed, or put on a garment made of two kinds of material.” (19:19)

According to some Jewish interpreters, “statutes” are “those laws for which no rational justification was obvious. They are to be treated as ‘decrees of the king,’ to be obeyed simply because they come from God. This,” as Ephraim Radner observes, “represents, at best, a pure fellow following of God’s will, at worst a kind of blind obedience. Holiness here is a cleaving to God, but not one imbued with a coherent understanding.” (Leviticus [London: SCM Press, 2008], 213) It may be the equivalent of a football jersey or a school uniform – a marker of identity which is largely arbitrary but not therefore irrelevant. Keeping these statutes may also be a training ground for authentic and faithful performance where it really matters, cf. Hayim Donin’s comments on food laws.

Others, however, do find a rationale. They suggest that the instructions against cross-breeding and mixing different kinds of seeds in one field are about keeping separate what the Creator God had made distinct, “respecting the categories he has established” (Jay Sklar, Leviticus, TOTC [Nottingham: IVP, and Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013], 247, cf. Nahmanides [c.1194-c.1270], going further than the Rabbinic tradition of interpreting the mixing of different kinds of seeds as a prohibition against grafting). Understood in this way, the law could have implications for the ethics of genetic engineering. “But,” as Ephraim Radner notes, “God’s own love, which creates these in their discreet character, also seeks to bring them into the fullness of proximity with him” which leads him to a discussion of Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds and Paul’s use of grafting imagery in Rom 11:17-24 (Leviticus, 214)

Sklar notes that the use of different kinds of fabric in making garments is not forbidden but wearing such clothing is. “The rationale may be that some priestly garments were made from mixed fabrics (woollen yarn and linen, Exod. 28:5). Since non-priestly Israelites were forbidden from doing priestly duties (Num. 3:10, 38), this prohibition would have prevented them from heading in that direction (cf. Josephus, Ant. 4.208 [4.8.11]), something the early Israelites were tempted to do (Num. 16:1-40).” (Sklar, Leviticus, 248). The more specific reference to wool and linen in Deut 22:11 supports this. The abrogation of this priesthood and its regulations would mean that this specific command is not directly applicable among the new covenant people although the principle of respecting the calling and ordination of some people to specific ministries remains. Radner suggests, again, that Christ’s passion brings together what had been kept distinct (Leviticus, 215-16). In a more beautiful world a Bishop in the Church of England with a PhD in Old Testament studies would help us explore this further rather than ape President Bartlet’s dismissive attitude to OT law.

Stoning and Burning

President Josiah Bartlet:

Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads?

These questions apparently relate to Leviticus 19:19 (cf. Deut 22:9-11), except that the punishments are gratuitously added from elsewhere. It is presumably a case of combining what appear to us the most ridiculous Old Testament statutes with the most abhorrent ancient punishments.

Pelting with stones is the means of execution in Lev 20:2 for devoting one’s children to Molech, in Lev 20:27 for mediums and spiritists, in Lev 24:10-23 for someone who used the divine name in a curse, and in Num 15:35-36 for violation of the Sabbath by manual labour. It is a punishment for sin that goes right to the heart of Israel’s relationship with YHWH, cf. its use in Deut 13:10 (“You must stone him to death because he tried to entice you away from the LORD your God, who delivered you from the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.”) and 17:2-7 as a punishment for false prophecy and idolatry. In Deuteronomy it is also specified as a punishment in cases that were likely seen as jeopardizing the covenant community, namely a son’s persistent rebelliousness in 21:18-21 (threatening the continuation of the household on its land), a daughter’s sexual affair while in the paternal household in 22:21 (explicitly designated “a disgraceful thing in Israel”), and adultery involving a married woman in 22:22-24 (raising paternity issues; the penalty was executed on both if consent could be presumed, on the man only if the woman’s consent could not be assumed, see verse 25).  

Fire features as a means of executing the death penalty in the case of a man marrying both a woman and her mother (Lev 20:14) and in the case of the daughter of a priest engaging in prostitution or promiscuity (Lev 21:9). In Deuteronomy burning is associated with items connected to idolatry (7:25; 12:3; 13:17) but not referenced as a form of execution.

The prevalence of the death penalty in biblical law codes warrants a separate discussion. It would need to take into account not only the different forms of sanctions available to ancient and modern societies but also the difference between ancient law codes and modern legislation. Note, e.g., that even the stark and urgent warnings against adultery in Proverbs 6 do not use the threat of the death penalty, assuming rather than the cuckold might ruin you in other ways instead.

More importantly for the question(s) at hand, there is nothing to suggest that the death penalty was ever applied or expected to be applied in the case of someone planting different crops side by side or wearing garments made from two different threads. The question “Does the whole town really…” is therefore bearing false witness. As, for “Can I burn my mother…?,” this is nowhere permitted in the OT. To insinuate that it might be is again a form of bearing false witness.

So what is the significance of YHWH’s instructions for holy living in Leviticus 19? That’s for another post.

Selling my daughter

President Josiah Bartlet:

I’m interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She’s a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be?

To become president of the United States you have to be one thing first of all: very wealthy. This presumably goes for West Wing’s fictional president as well who feigns an interest in making more money by selling his youngest daughter into slavery. Her virtues, he suggests, will fetch a good price.

This is very far removed from the situation envisaged in Exodus 21:7. Selling your daughter into slavery was not a choice within a free-market economy designed to maximise profit. Many in ancient Israel lived much closer to subsistence levels than modern despisers of the Old Testament. There was no such thing as a single-person household. Everyone was attached to a family – for a woman this meant being a daughter (and/or sister), a wife (and hopefully mother), or a widow (hopefully with children).

Exodus 21:7 concerns the transition from daughter to wife. This would usually involve a reciprocal financial transaction which binds two households together. The father of the bride pays a dowry which is meant to offer financial security for his daughter (if she were to be divorced she would receive back this dowry rather than be left destitute) and the groom’s family pays a bride price (which compensates the woman’s first family for lost labour).

Exodus 21:7 has a situation in view in which a father is unable to pay a dowry for his daughter. His household may struggle to feed everyone, e.g., if the poverty is the result of a series of bad harvests. But even if the extra labour of his daughter would make it possible for her to survive within her father’s household in the short run, her long-term security is under threat. The following verses indicate that she is bought as a wife or concubine either for the master of the household (verse 8) or his son (verse 9). In other words, someone will pay the bride price but no dowry is received.

Given that the dowry is a back-up for the daughter, getting married without one presents a risk. The regulation in Exodus 21 seeks to minimise this risk by forbidding the master to sell her on, as if she were his possession over which he could freely dispose. (The text specifies “sell her to a foreign people” because within the covenant community slavery was essentially only permitted for defaulting debtors.) If he wants to be rid of her, he is not allowed to receive any payment. In this case, the woman would be free to leave without owing the master anything. 

The example is taken from case law and regulates a situation in which an attempt by a poor man to provide a better life for his daughter might put her at risk by specifying an arrangement which preserves her honour as an Israelite woman. Insinuating here a parental permission to maximise profits by selling one of their daughters is bearing false witness to the text.

Dead Pig Football

President Josiah Bartlet:

Here’s one that’s really important because we’ve got a lot of sports fans in this town: touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point?

The question assumes that it is important that people avoid becoming unclean. Why should that be? Uncleanness is not a punishable crime. If a member of the Israelite covenant community touched the skin of a dead pig, they were unclean until the evening (verse 39) which means they could not come to the sanctuary on the same day. If they handled the skin, they should also wash their clothes (verse 40) which, one might assume, football players would do anyway after a match. Given that the use of pig skin is hardly essential to playing American football, ancient Israelites would presumably have used a different leather if they had played American football but they would not have had to call off a match against the Moabites just because the ball was made of dead pig skin.

What’s more the function of these laws was to set apart the Israelites as a holy people of YHWH (cf. verses 44-45; see also Lev 20:24-26). Laws touching all of life were a constant reminder that Israel was to be distinct from other nations. But this does not mean that all the laws were of equal weight and significance. Idolatry and immorality whose seriousness is underlined by the punishment specified for them are the real deal, as it were. Dietary laws were YHWH’s forget-me-not and forget-not-that-you-are-to-be-holy.

The different cultures suggested by the reference to three football clubs [*] highlights how strange it would be to make dietary laws a universal norm, thereby erasing cultural distinctives. It would be like requiring all teams to wear the same jerseys. The church has always made a distinction between, on the one hand, laws which reflect God’s character which God’s people are to imitate at all times and in all places, and on the other hand, laws which were given to Israel specifically to mark them out as distinct and remind them of the call to be holy to YHWH.

See also Hayim Donin's comments on the dietary laws.

[*] The Washington Redskins, founded in 1932 as the Boston Braves and renamed “Redskins” after they moved to Fenway Park, were under pressure from major sponsors to change their name and since July 2020 are the Washington Football Team.

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team is the intercollegiate football team representing the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana.

West Point is The United States Military Academy in New York.

Responding to President Bartlet

I want to reflect on some questions raised by President Josiah Bartlet in the TV drama The West Wing, Season Two, “The Midterms” (written by Aaron Sorkin).

The Jenna Jacobs character in the following exchange is apparently based on talk show host Laura Schlessinger. The Bartlet challenge is cribbed from an open letter written by Kent Ashcroft that circulated anonymously on the internet at the time.

Hyperlinks within the exchange point to my blog posts. The questions are obviously rhetorical. In addressing them I want to challenge the dismissive attitude towards the Old Testament they reveal.

 

Bartlet:
I like your show. I like how you call homosexuality an abomination.

Dr. Jenna Jacobs:
I don’t say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr. President. The Bible does.

President Josiah Bartlet:
Yes it does. Leviticus. [*]

Dr. Jenna Jacobs:
18:22.

President Josiah Bartlet:
Chapter and verse. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I have you here. I’m interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She’s a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be? While thinking about that, can I ask another? My Chief of Staff Leo McGarry insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself or is it okay to call the police? Here’s one that’s really important because we’ve got a lot of sports fans in this town: touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made fromtwo different threads? Think about those questions, would you? One last thing: while you may be mistaking this for your monthly meeting of the Ignorant Tight-Ass Club, in this building, when the President stands, nobody sits.

[Dr. Jenna Jacobs stands]

 

[*] This rather depends on how one defines “homosexuality” and how one translates the relevant verse(s). Mark P. Stone recently published an overview of suggestions with regard to the latter in which he also observed that “while ‘homosexual acts’ are available for historical investigation in every human era, ‘homosexuality’ is not.” See ‘Don’t Do What to Whom? A Survey of Historical-Critical Scholarship on Leviticus 18.22 and 20.13,’ Currents in Biblical Research 20/3 (2022): 203-233. Casting his net wide and making every nuance count, Stone identifies twenty-one hypotheses on Lev 18:22 and 20:13.  He suggests that the sheer variety should lead one to hold any conclusions about the meaning of the text tentatively. Others may conclude that the variety demonstrates that the growing resistance to the most common reading (“you must not lie with a man as you would lie with a woman”) has not produced a plausible alternative and that the “traditional” understanding as a reference to male same-sex intercourse emerges the stronger for having been stress-tested in this way. But which way one leans here is, in a sense, irrelevant for contemporary questions in Christian ethics, if Biblical law is dismissed as irrelevant..

Here is Stone’s list:

1. Same-Sex Eroticism (‘homosexuality’)
2. Male Same-Sex Intercourse (both partners culpable)
3. Sexual Intercourse between Israelite Males in The Promised Land
4. Unrestrained Bisexuality
5. Sexual Intercourse with Intersex Persons
6. The Active/Insertive Partner in Male Anal Intercourse
7. The Passive/Receptive Partner in Male Anal Intercourse
8. Gender Confusion (male acting as female)
9. Social Humiliation (male treated as female)
10. Pederasty
11. Male-Male Rape
12. Idolatry
13. Fear of Demons
14. Male Cult Prostitution
15. Improper Mixture of Defiling Substances (semen & excrement)
16. Failure to Ensure Procreation (waste of semen)
17. Improper Placement of Semen (i.e., not wastage)
18. Redactional Layer Clarifying Implicit Acceptance in 18.7*, 14*
19. Male Same-Sex Incest
20. Ambiguous Paternity from Male-Male-Female Threesome
21. Male Same-Sex Intercourse with an ‘Unavailable’ Man 

Defining Holiness

 

Ephraim Radner, Leviticus (London: SCM Press, 2008), 204.

Working on the Sabbath

President Josiah Bartlet:

Can I ask another? My Chief of Staff Leo McGarry insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself or is it okay to call the police? 

By phrasing the question in a way that assumes the existence of a police force and a strong culture of individualism, the distance to ancient Israel is immediately highlighted. There the context would less be one of individuals monitoring other individuals but of a community committed to a communal rest day which explicitly includes every resident, whatever their status in society (Exod 20:10), all across the country (Lev 23:3). It is a responsibility laid on the community as a whole and infringements would be dealt with by the community.

That Leo McGarry would insist on working on the Sabbath is plausible. Powerful people often like to think of themselves as too important to stop working (although it is perhaps also true that those with power over others like to imagine that their underlings want to work all the extra hours expected of them). It is arguably especially important for people who are “in charge” to be reminded regularly that they are not ultimately in charge of the world. Readiness to stop working is an acknowledgement that the flourishing of our world does not ultimately depend on my input. Designating the rest day as a holy day further underlines that it is the Holy One who is in charge of the world. Specifying the death penalty for breaking the Sabbath rest underlines the deadly seriousness of living as if oneself rather than YHWH is in charge. (Strictly speaking, exclusion from the community might perhaps have been another way of dealing with infringements once Israel was settled, given that the death penalty is only specified in the wilderness context.)

This holy day is given to a holy people. The incidents reported in Exod 32–34 have just highlighted the potential for sin to sabotage God’s presence. The warning in Exod 35:2 comes in the wake of all this, just as the book moves from the instructions for building God’s tabernacle to their implementation. Given that neither President Bartlet nor his Chief of Staff show any interest in God’s holy presence among his holy people, it seems altogether hypocritical for him to feign interest in keeping a holy day, let alone in punishing  others who do not keep the Sabbath. Of course Bartlet only means to imply that those who consider male same-sex intercourse a taboo (“abomination”) must also put to death those who break the Sabbath (with he himself being interested in neither) but it is not clear why this should be so. It seems perfectly possible for someone who reads the Bible as God’s Word written to deduce from the specification of the death penalty the seriousness of a matter, as one might deduce from taboo/abomination language the non-negotiability of a matter, without believing for a minute that our contemporary communal life should be organised in strict accordance with laws and penalties specified to ancient Israel on route from Egypt to the promised land. The church has centuries of experience with this, never accepting that the only options are either (a) to pretend that we are ancient Israel bound to strict observance of all the old covenant law and stipulations, or (b) entirely free to ignore whatever we do not like about these old covenant law and stipulations. Given that Leo McGarry is not a member of the community addressed in this text, it is bearing false witness to claim that “Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death.”

No Christian is under obligation to execute punishments stipulated under the old covenant. But neither should any Christian ignore what the laws reveal about the character, values and purposes of God. This reminder about the importance of Sabbath rest just before the narrative of the building of the tabernacle (cf. 31:12-17 right at the end of the instructions for the tabernacle, characterising the Sabbath as “a sign between me and the people of Israel”) perhaps puts the large amount of detailed work that is now required into perspective. Acknowledging that God is in charge by taking a break from work every seven days is more important than building the tabernacle as quickly as possible.

Just as the Sabbath marks the climax of the specification section (see 31:12–17), so now it stands in the forefront of the execution section…The Sabbath as weekly day of rest takes precedence over even the urgent work of constructing the tabernacle as the dwelling place of YHWH among the Israelites. To observe the Sabbath is to participate in the perfection and completion of God’s own creative work. This is the essential context within which all human labor takes place.

William Johnstone, Exodus 1–40, SHBC (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2014), 435–436

Holy eating

Hayim Halevy Donin observes that the food laws are regularly associated in the Torah with a call to holiness (e.g., Exod 22:31; Lev 11:44; Deut 14:21) and concludes

"To distinguish between "the beast which is to be eaten and the beast which is not to be eaten" (Lev. 11:47), is an aspect of the broader requirements that Israel learn to "distinguish between the unclean and the clean" not only in food, but in all areas of life -- the sexual, the moral, the ethical, the spiritual. The laws of kashrut do not stand isolated from the purposes and goals, from the disciplines and demands that are part of the total picture of Judaism. To treat kashrut in isolation is to distort and misunderstand it."

"Holiness meant and means becoming master over one's passions so that one is in command and control of them, and not they of him. The one who has been trained to resist cravings for forbidden foods that tempt him may also have strengthened his capacity to resists his cravings for forbidden sexual involvements that may tempt him too; it may also strengthen his capacity to resist forbidden unethical questions that may hold forth the promise of tempting financial or status rewards. The transference of this religious discipline to other areas is not guaranteed, but there is no denying the inherent value in religious discipline intended to train one to resist bodily drives and urges just to satisfy a craving or experience a pleasure."

"Kashrut is a good example of how Judaism raises even the most mundane acts, the most routine activities, into a religious experience. What narrower minds look upon as a picayune concern with trifling kitchen matters is really an example of how Judaism elevates the mere physical satisfaction of one's appetite into a spiritual act by its emphasis on the everpresent God and our duty to serve Him at all times."

To Be a Jew: A Guide to Jewish Observance in Contemporary Life (New York: Basic Books, 1994 [1972]), 100-101

A Jewish definition of holiness

"A Jewish definition of holiness may be put in these terms: Holiness does not lie in the ascetic, saintly withdrawal from life, or in excessive denial to oneself of all human pleasures, or in the repression of all human drives. It consists, rather, of full participation in the stream of human community life, sharing the joyous as well as the sorrowful experiences which life has to offer, denying to oneself no legitimate pleasures; but at the same time so developing one's sense of discernment as to be able to distinguish and choose the right from the wrong, the true from the false, the good from the bad, the sacred from the profane, the pure from the impure, and the clean from the unclean. The greater the sense of ethical-moral-religious discrimination, the greater the holiness of the individual."

Rabbi Hayim Donin, To Be a Jew: A Guide to Jewish Observance in Contemporary Life (New York: Basic Books, 1994 [1972]), 36.