The tears and the law --some thoughts on Nehemiah 8

“...the people were all in tears

as they listened to the words

of the law...”  --Nehemiah 8:9c

Are the laws of God proscriptive or prescriptive?  Proscriptive means to prohibit, denounce or condemn; to forbid.  I think traditionally I was raised with the proscriptive reading of the laws.  I believed that certain acts and desires and even words were forbidden.  And due to human weakness, we were (all of us) in desperate need of the grace of the confessional.  But this view of God’s law leads to a view of God as a judgmental figure who watches our every move.  This God has an eternal tally sheet that he keeps on each and every one of us.  He makes a hashmark every time we cross the line (break His law).  I guess when we go to confession He gets out His eraser.  This God is –in some ways—our nemesis.  He is standing apart and ever ready to accuse.

The more I read the Old Testament, the more I am beginning to see “the law” not as proscriptive, but as prescriptive. More of a guide or road map (an ideal) to help us find our way, than a benchmark we must achieve to avoid punishment or banishment or another stay in the long line outside the confessional.

And yet, the other night a friend reminded me that often the law shows up in scripture hand in hand with what often seem like hard and fast punishments. In fact, the death penalty seems –at times—almost ubiquitous:  blasphemy = death (Lv 24:10-16), contempt of court = death (Dt 17:12), incest = death (Lv 20:19), adultery = death (Lv 20:10), cursing your parents = death (Ex 21:17), etc.  And so, there does seem a kind of punitive element to “the law” which implies at the very least a proscriptive element.  However, as I read, that isn’t the picture of God that I am hearing from the Bible: a God tallying our missteps and failings, imposing or withholding appropriate punishments at His whim –that isn’t the God I meet in the Old Testament.

And all of this is on my mind because I have been reading the book of Nehemiah. This book tells the story of the restored Israelites who have returned from exile.  They are back in their homeland rebuilding Jerusalem.  When they finish their main work, they hold a massive week long celebration (8-9), and the people ask the priest Ezra to “bring the Book of the Law of Moses (perhaps Deuteronomy) which the Lord had prescribed...” (8:1-2) and he reads to them from the book –from “dawn til noon” (8:3)—for seven days straight. Then on the eighth day there is a solemn assembly and as Ezra reads, he sees that the people have tears in their eyes.  He tells them: “Today is sacred to the Lord. Do not be mournful; do not weep...” (8:9b).  But, listening to the reading, the people are so moved they are in tears.  And my first thought was what? Who weeps over a book of laws?  And my second thought was: Uhm, you know...uhm... all this law stuff is really good; great stuff! I mean it. I mean...who doesn’t like a little stoning and... all... But –uhm—I—uh-- I think I left a fleshpot boiling back in Babylon. I was in such a hurry... I uh... I just... You know... I’ll just go back and check on that. Better safe than sorry.  Be right back. And, uhm... If I uhm ...for some reason if I don’t make it... well, you just go ahead and start all that purifying and smiting stuff without me. Okay? Really.  I’ll catch up... No worries...

Like my imaginary character –I am not a rule person. I don’t like doing things because I have to. So, when I read of laws and rules, I tend to react strongly against them. Either by looking for a loophole or by simply declaring that it doesn’t apply to me.  That’s my gut reaction.  I think it is kind of an American reaction –that instinctive: You can’t tell me what to do! You can’t tell me what to say! attitude.

And so, to read that “the people were all in tears as they listened to the law” struck me as an odd paradoxical line.  Attracting my readerly attention. What would cause such a reaction?  What kind of tears did they cry? Tears of joy? Tears of consolation? Tears of dread? Fright?  What is the author telling us with this strangely stirring detail? About the people? About their relationship with God?  About their relationship to the law?

And I began to wonder about my own relationship to the law. My troubled relationship... The hours in line at the confessional trying to make right what I willfully made wrong.  Perhaps if I had greeted the law not with dread, but with tears of gratitude, I could have saved myself some pain, some hours spent in line on a Saturday afternoon at the local church. 

If, I could just remember that we have a God who loves us. A God who wants for us only what is good.  A God of mercy and tenderness. A God who brings us back from exile and offers us again and again (endlessly it seems) His love... A God who gave Himself on the cross for me, for my sins... if only I could remember that, then –instead of fleeing the “prohibitions” of the law, I too might beg for the words of the law to be read aloud, and I too might find my face wet with tears of gratitude and love for a Father who loved me enough to offer me the guidance, the counsel, the prescription of His law.

Nehemiah is a short book with lots of census information but buried in the lists of names and the brief descriptions of action is a beautiful image of a merciful God and a people returning to His love.

NOTE: I think I have more to say on this, but that will have to wait.  I know that reading Dante has inspired my reading of scripture and influenced it greatly.  Perhaps that is where I need to go next time.

Pharaoh’s hardened heart: Another look

“[the Egyptians]…whose hearts He turned to hate His own people,

To treat His servants deceitfully…”

--Psalm 105:25

Psalm 105 is a brief history of ancient Israel, with several verses on the exile and Exodus story.  And in it we come again upon this idea of God making someone obstinate or hateful –for some purpose known only to God. In this image from the Psalm we see God paradoxically turning the hearts of Pharaoh and the Egyptians against His own beloved people. In some unspoken way this turning of the enemy's heart to obstinacy and hate and deceit is presented as necessary for the fulfillment of God's plan; it seems somehow essential for the building up of Israel.  God makes Pharaoh’s heart hard and obstinate, against Pharaoh’s own good and the good of the Egyptians. And God does this (it seems) so that Israel’s ultimate victory can somehow be recognized as even more astonishing; more miraculous.  Israel overcomes her foes who are powerful, obstinately bad, persisting in evil, and who  far outnumber her –but who, in the end, are defeated through God’s miraculous intercession.

But I am left pondering: How is the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart necessary to God’s plan?  Even if this is just a myth (or hyperbole), why did the ancient story teller feel it necessary to put it in these terms? What lesson was God imparting by having His scribes write His story in this way?  If (for instance) God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is a metaphor –then what is it a metaphor of? And what lesson (or insight) was it supposed to teach? What psychological (or spiritual) insight was it intended to reveal?

1.       That God is willful and can do whatever He likes?  Even make our hearts hard and turn our ways to deceit? Sin?  -OR

2.       That God’s plan, the work of a loving God, may even be found in the hardened heart and deceitful ways of our foe…

And, in the end, the key question is: What does a loving God accomplish by changing the hearts of Pharaoh, the Egyptians, all of Israel’s foes “so that they hate His own people?” What is it that He accomplishes through this hardened heart that He couldn’t accomplish otherwise? Why didn’t He change their hearts so that they loved His people?  What part does this hardening of the heart play in God’s plan?  How does it reveal His loving presence?  Those are the questions, the paradox, I am pondering these days. 

Next I want to spend a little time considering this passage, this image, through the lens of the four-fold method; seeking in it the four levels of reading: literal, allegorical, moral & anagogical.

  

Consider the stubborness of Pharaoh

“Pharaoh sent urgently for Moses and Aaron and said:

I have sinned against the Lord your God and against you.

Now forgive my sin, I implore you, just this once, and entreat

The Lord your God to turn this deadly thing away from me.

When Moses left Pharaoh’s presence he prayed to the Lord,

 and the Lord changed the wind into a west wind, very strong,

which carried the locusts away and swept them into the Sea

of Reeds. There was not one locust left in the whole of Egypt.

But the Lord made Pharaoh stubborn, and he did not

let the Israelites go…”  --Exodus 10: 16-20

Boy this Bible reading is kind of tough stuff. I am working my way through Exodus now and coming to the very familiar story of Moses and Pharaoh, I was quite surprised to bump into this verse –a phrase repeated a few times in this story.  What does it mean?  Why would God make Pharaoh “stubborn?”  If, as we are told, God is love –how does making Pharaoh stubborn reveal God’s love?  It is easy to see how it plays out for the Hebrews who receive their freedom and 40 years of wandering.  But consider the stubborn Pharaoh (and all of Egypt); what does he receive? Boils, frogs, locust and the death of his first-born son.  Why does God make the Pharaoh stubborn?

If we assume that God doesn’t literally make Pharaoh stubborn, then we are still left with the question: Why is it in the story? Repeatedly? Starting with God’s assurance to Moses:

“I myself shall make Pharaoh stubborn…” (cf. 7:3)

Even if we assume this is just a story that is trying to explain how the Hebrew people came out of Egypt, we still have to wonder why the ancient author would have chosen to tell it in this way? What is the author telling us about God? And, what is the spiritual or moral lesson that is being imparted?  If Pharaoh is simply an allegorical figure (a symbol of enslavement to sin –for example), we still are left with the fact that God seems to willfully stop Pharaoh from changing his ways.  What does that mean?

To my 21^st century mind, it seems unfair of God to make Pharaoh stubborn. It seems unloving. And so, we might ask, what did it say to the ancient reader? Was there a lesson in Pharaoh’s stubbornness that transcended narrative logic? Or was it a lesson about God’s authority? Was it an assertion that God can make someone do something against their own best interest? Or was it a lesson about how God’s ways are not man’s ways?

I don’t know. But it is perplexing and seems to hold a paradox of some kind at its core. 

If we assume that Holy Scripture is Holy and truly the Word of God then the issue becomes even more complex.  Why would God say such things about Himself?  What is He trying to teach us about Himself and His ways…? And –of course—we may have to ask ourselves whether questions of fairness are meaningful when it comes to God.   And His ways.