ה׳ HaShem: part 3.1

Image credit: Jackson Pollock in his studio, 1949. Photo: Martha Holmes / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images. Artwork: © 2020 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

part 3.1 of a series

Where did it come from (attributes)?

Never blame the man: his hard-pressed
Ancestors formed him: the other anthropoid apes were safe
In the great southern rain-forest and hardly changed
In a million years: but the race of man was made
By shock and agony. Therefore they invented the song called language
To celebrate their survival and record their deeds. And therefore the deeds they celebrate—
Achilles raging in the flame of the south, Baltic Beowulf like a fog-blinded sea-bear
Prowling the blasted fenland in the bleak twilight to the black water—
Are cruel and bloody. Epic, drama and history,
Jesus and Judas, Jenghiz, Julius Caesar, no great poem
Without the blood-splash. They are a little lower than the angels, as someone said. —Blood-snuffling rats:
But never blame them: a wound was made in the brain
When life became too hard, and has never healed.
It is there that they learned trembling religion and blood-sacrifice,
It is there that they learned to butcher beasts and to slaughter men,
And hate the world: the great religions of love and kindness
May conceal that, not change it. They are not primary but reactions
Against the hate: as the eye after feeding on a red sunfall
Will see green suns. The human race is one of God’s sense-organs,
Immoderately alerted to feel good and evil.

— Robinson Jeffers, “The Beginning and the End”

---

When it comes to 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄’s origins as inferrable from how he is described and the actions he is said to have taken, pretty much everyone agrees that his personality comes from the north. Which, duhh. How could it be otherwise, given that the Israelites (specifically, the Omrides) were his first marketers? Their religio-political noses pointed northward, to Aram-Damascus, and northwest to the Phoenician coast, with its rising city-states. Oh the alliances to be struck, the battles to be fought! Egypt, in those days, was back on its heels and not much of a concern.

Except, it’s probably not “duhh” to the Faithful, who might be shocked to learn that 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄, as envisioned in their Holy Writ, looks a whole lot like the Syro-Palestinian version of Baal. Both of the mainaics are storm gods who use cloudy vehicles for transportation, both speak in thunderous voices that make the earth quake and enemies scatter, both send rain through heavenly windows. They even seem to share the same palace, Zaphon. Both battle the sea monster, both can raise the dead from Sheol, both are attended by instantiations of plague and pestilence.¹ Both are sometimes said to be sons of El.²

So like are the two deities that some scholars think developing a theology of Baal a worthy endeavor. Is he a storm god, a fertility god, a dying-and-rising god, a war god, a Ugaritic royal god? All of the above? You can even earn a PhD picking at that knot.³ Who in the world would do that?

In the first place, Baal was not one but many (just as there wasn’t a single 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 but at least two: one of Samaria and one of Teman). In the second place, maybe there never was a god named Baal at all—at least in Phoenicia in the first millennium BCE. No clear evidence exists for a deity named Baal alone. It’s almost always Baal of somewhere. So you find bʿl ṣdn (“Baal of Sidon”); bʿl ṣr (“Baal of Tyre”); bʿl ṣpn (“Baal of Ṣapōn”). And when it’s not somewhere, it’s some thing over which Baal has dominion, e.g., bʿl šmm (“Baal of the skies”).⁴ In its translated (rather than transliterated) form, bʿl means simply “master” or “lord,” thus not naming a deity at all:

The question of the multiple manifestations of one and the same deity seems to be important only to scholars interested in a supra-regional view and more used to theological – and biblical – speculations than to historical-religious considerations. Finally, if our analysis is correct, or if it at least has some methodological impact, we should feel embarrassed and doubtful each time that we spell the name Baal “alone”, without pondering whether a translation as “master” would better match the context or not.⁵

However that may be and more to the point (or more to the pointlessness), is anyone writing a dissertation on the theology of Zues? Oh, right. Baal (if he ever existed outside the Hebrew Bible) is 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 adjacent, Zeus not so much. That explains it.

The Judahite scribes never tired of excoriating the Baal they imagined, even as they appropriated his attributes for the 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 they imagined—sometimes with shocking precision. Baal’s epithet, rkb.‘rpt “rider of the clouds,” is repeated word-for-word in Psalms 68:4: “Sing to God; sing praises to his name; lift up a song to him who rides upon the clouds— his name is 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄— be exultant before him.”⁶ But of course, the Israelite storm god was the superior twin, just as the Israelites were the superior race to their Canaanite twins. The narcissism of small differences.

What’s lost in the litany of traits shared by the two storm gods is a nearly unprecedented dissimilarity, a surprise compounded by the source of the narratives detailing—at length and in graphic detail—a profound distinction.

---

The Hebrew Bible, like all cultural texts from days of old, is filled with tales of miraculous acts performed by gods. So you’ll read of city walls collapsing at divine command (facilitating a genocide), people being swept heavenward in whirlwinds, prayer-poems composed from the acidic gut of a giant fish and so on. The Faithful, of course, believe all these tales to be literally true, giving the explanation that 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 can do anything he wants. Which, sure. But less noticed are miracles performed not by 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄, at his command or much to his liking.

Take, for example, the tale of Aaron and the Golden Calf. To set the scene, 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 had freed the Israelites from Egyptian clutches just a few weeks earlier, and the not-yet-but-about-to-be-chosen rabble wandered from their campsite at Rephidim (where, with divine assistance, they defeated the Amelaks—whose memory was to be blotted out, except that Moses included them in the Pentateuchean tale he wrote, inadvertently frustrating 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄’s designs), into the wild Sinai. 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 ordered Moses to have the people wash their clothes—which itself would count as something of a miracle. Where in that parched land would you get water enough to wash the filthy garments of a hoard numbering in their millions (about 600,000 adult males, as tallied in Numbers 1, so with wives and kids, maybe a couple million)? Oh, right, god can do anything. Or maybe they used urine, like the Romans, sparing the necessity of divine assistance.

However that may be, the “people” were required to wait like bird watchers on a marsh, now ritually prepared in clean clothes (“consecrated”), for a divine sighting, while Moses ascended Mt. Sinai to record, somehow, seven chapters worth of commandments and ordinances. It should be noted at this point that the “people” so consecrated in Exodus 19:15 seem to have comprised only males, as they were prohibited from going near women. Which makes sense, as everyone knows that women and children are property, not people.

Anyway, the long wait for Moses proved too much for the “people,” no doubt exacerbated by the prohibition against mingling. For all they knew, Moses had died up on the mountain and they would never mingle again. You can imagine their distress. So they asked Aaron to make gods (plural) to lead them. Aaron had no problem with that and told the people to collect all the gold earrings from their property (women and children) and hand it over, which they did, allowing Aaron to perform an unnoticed miracle.

What might it take, you might ask (if the curious sort), to cast a golden calf from a pile of gold jewelry with the technology available in the Iron Age? Gold has a melting point of around 2000 °F, so a campfire wouldn’t do. You would need a hammer and anvil (or something) to flatten the earrings so that the heap would melt uniformly. Then you would need some sort of crucible—a charcoal furnace or clay-lined hearth—with bellows or blowpipes to maintain sufficient heat. You would need some sort of skimming tool to remove impurities that bubble to the top of the molten mass (dirt, various unwanted oxides). That’s the easy part. Once melted, you would need to figure out how to cast the calf. The lost-wax process would be one option, though a fussy one requiring all sorts of tools and skills. Another option would be to build a calf-shaped frame and cover it with gold foil, requiring casting the molten mass into thin sheets and then hammering the sheets to a uniform thickness before shaping them to the frame.⁷ Long and short, an impossible task for campers shuffling around in a land lacking resources needed to sustain life, much less to fashion works of sacred art. But Aaron pulled off the impossible, which counts as a miracle.

But, it must be said, a very strange miracle it was. In the first place, Aaron was tasked with creating gods but ended up forming a god. Second, who exactly proclaimed “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”?⁸ Aaron? That would make the most sense of the tale, but the quote begins with “and they said.” Commentators find the choice of pronoun (they versus he) “crucial,” as on it turns Aaron’s culpability in the whole affair.⁹ Not that it matters, as 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 himself blamed the people as a group, not Aaron, and burned with such hot anger that he threatened to consume the children of Abraham and make a great nation of Moses. Which counts as the third strange thing: a miracle performed by Aaron, at the people’s command, and not even slightly to 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄’s liking—making a mess of the “𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 can do whatever he wants” argument when it comes to biblical wonders.

Hidden in that unacknowledged miracle are several attributes of the god your culture inherited. Homocidally jealous is the first, but nothing new in that: 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 lacks all impulse control, and his knee-jerk reactions tend toward the murderous. Forgetful is the second, as Moses had to remind 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 of his promise to the patriarchs to get him to back down from his malicious intentions. The third is changeable: “And the LORD repented of the evil which He thought to do unto His people.”¹⁰

Worthy of note is the fact that not all textual traditions have 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 changing his mind. In the Greek version of the superseded testament (the LXX), 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄’s repentence is not the repentence his son (Yehoshua, “𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 saves”) would later advocate. In the LXX’s telling, 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 does not “repent” in the sense of having a change of heart (Yehoshua’s μετάνοια, metanoia); he was propitiated or appeased (καὶ ἱλάσθη κύριος, kai hilasthē kyrios, “and the Lord was propitiated)—a cultic rather than spiritual atonement realized by the ritual action of a priest. 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 wasn’t active. He didn’t relent, repent or have a change of heart; Moses bought him off.

---

Occassionally troubled by some of the more bloodthirsty acts of their god, the Faithful take heart in the Genesis 12:2–3 promise that his chosen people will be a blessing to all the families of the earth. Which, you have to admit, really is grasping at theological straws. Setting aside the fact that German National Socialists had a similar idea—based on genetic chosenness rather than the divine variety—what sort of “blessing” might 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 have in mind? You might think it’s the kind promised in the renewed covenant found in Exodus 34. 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄’s part of the bargain was to perform heretofore unheard of “marvels.” OK fine, that’s what gods are supposed to do. But what sort of marvels? What was his side of the bargain? The text does not disappoint: “See, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.”¹¹ A divine blitzkreig! How handy—a blessing even (for the chosen). But one implied, not stated. More a hint than anything else.

You’ll get a much better idea of what 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 considers a blessing if you take a closer look at the whole Golden Calf episode, wherein the rebellious Israelites had pissed off 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 good and proper, prompting an unwanted miracle and earning the LORD’s hot anger. Everybody knows the tale. 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄, whose mantra would seem to be not “I am that I am” but “I am My Own retribution,” has the Wizard of Oz (Moses) call out to ask who is on Oz’s side. The Levites jump forward, whereupon the Wizard tells them that Oz tells them to grab their swords and “go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill your brother, your friend, and your neighbor.”¹² Which they do.

Notably, none of the Levites are reported to have paused to wonder, “Who is my neighbor?” They had work enough to do without conjuring up dumb questions of the sort that lead only to moral ambibuity. Situational ethics and all that.

And what did they get for their efforts? Besides 3,000 hacked corpses bloating in the desert heat, they receive a blessing: they get to be Oz’s priests, a sort of guild (though not at all resembling the Lollipop Guild). Which, as it turns out, was a considerable blessing, as they didn’t have to do all that much (no sweat-of-brow for them), living instead on all sorts of in-kind rents extracted from everybody else in a divine extortion racket known as “tithing.”

It’s actually a little complicated, because as it turns out not all Levites were to be priests, only the direct descendants of Aaron—also Levites but somehow atop the Levitical pecking order Oz imposed. Or so goes the tale in Numbers 18. In the Exodus version, all Levites received the blessing of priesthood—which can be easily harmonized with the Numbers version if need be: all Levites were priests, it’s just that the Aronides ate better. Except, it’s more than just a little complicated: “The Gold Calf was, so to speak, the first skirmish in an internecine, intergenerational battle over the priesthood that was fought within the tribe of Levi.”¹³

A couple of points are of pernickety interest. First, the word “blessing” (בְּרָכָה, berākhāh) in Exodus 32:29—the one the Levites earned the old fashioned way—is the same as the “blessing” (בְּרָכָה, berākhāh) the chosen people are said to bestow on all the families of the earth in Genesis 12:2. So if you’re not among the übermenchen, you might have an idea of what you’re in for. Not that you have to guess. In the days of Exodus, you might find yourself an Amorite, a Canaanite, a Hittite, a Perizzite, a Hivite, or a Jebusite. Nowadays you might find yourself a Palestinian, an Iranian, a Lebanese or a Syrian. None great options then or now.

Second, Genesis 12:2–3 doesn’t say what the Faithful want it to say—in the sense that it doesn’t make sense as given and might not say what it is said to say by theologians in philologist’s garb. 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 does say that the descendants of Abram will be a blessing, but to whom remains unsaid. Except, it doesn’t even say that. The “be” in “be a blessing” is not an indicative future tense (“will be a blessing”) but an imperative: “Be a blessing!” That’s the second imperative, the first being “Go.” Oz barked orders of the doing and being variety, the second dependent on the first.¹⁴ Oz then goes on to promise to bless those who bless Abram and curse those who dishonor/disdain (qll, “to be light, to treat lightly,” not ’rr, “curse”) him, but that’s followed by the nonsequiter “and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Even the one’s doing the not-quite-cursing? Nah, couldn’t be.

And maybe it isn’t. The all-the-families-of-the-earth business gives scholars fits. Is the blessing passive (so, the families will be blessed) or reflexive (so, the families will bless themselves)? The difference is “of great consequence theologically.”¹⁵ If the former, you can imagine a “divine plan for universal salvation,”¹⁶ which is the preferred reading for the Faithful who imagine a god rarely (on a percentage basis) to be found in the Hebrew texts—you know, the universally nice sort. That view is bolstered by St. Paul’s twisted argument about Gentiles and faith:

And the scripture, foreseeing that God would reckon as righteous the gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘All the gentiles shall be blessed in you.’ For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.¹⁷

You’ll find nothing about faith in Genesis 12; Abram was following orders, so more on the works side.

An alternative reading—every bit as grammatically licit as the one typically found in English translations—reads “and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves.” But what might that mean? At the risk of theological disappointment, something a bit shy of heart warming: “The meaning of 12.3 would then imply that all nations will mention Abraham’s name when pronouncing a blessing, wishing themselves just as overflowing a blessing as he received from God.”¹⁸ In colloquial terms, the sentiment would be, “I’ll have what he’s having.”

A similarly vexatious “blessing” verse is to be found in the sick vignette of the Levites’s ordination ceremony: Exodus 32:29. The pertinent question is, Who’s doing the blessing? You’ll find various renderings in your English translations. Is it Oz (“that He may bestow a blessing upon you”¹⁹) or the newly minted priests themselves (“thus bringing a blessing on yourselves”²⁰)? In a way, it doesn’t matter. Either Oz gave the blessing or endorsed the blessing the Levites earned for themselves—the blessing of sloth won by their fratricidal devotion to the god that spoke only to his Wizard. You can read all about it yourself, if you have nothing better to do. And as you do (if you do), ask yourself what attribute might you ascribe to the Oz so described.

Truth be told, all the families of the earth would likely do better without all the blessings attending to a covenant with a malicious storm god and enforced by murderous priests in service to sociopathic chief priest, Moses—who was so personally offended by the Golden Calf incident that he burned the idol to a lump (source of sufficiently hot fire unspecified), beat the lump to powder (tools required unspecified), spread the powder on the water (resevoir unspecified) and forced the Israelites to drink it. An attempted poisoning, and a stupid attempt at that: gold is pretty much biologically inert.

If that weren’t vinegar-in-the-mouth enough, the tale of the Golden Calf ends on an even sourer note. Three thousand Israelites put to the sword was an insufficient blessing to sate Oz’s need for retribution, so he whipped up a plague (casualties unspecified).

---

Something about  the tale of 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 and his people finding each other in Exodus 24 makes the Faithful feel safe and warm and dry. Maybe it’s because the preceding four chapters of ponderous edicts no longer apply, what with Christ having fulfilled the law and all. Maybe it’s because they never actually read the texts themselves and know only the stories their Sunday School teachers told. Whatever the reason, they seem to imagine the god of the covenant as a loving sort of fellow, someone to watch over them even when they stray, like the kindly Mr. Brownlow caring for the orphaned Oliver in Dicken’s famous tale. Which, if they had read the text, would be weird. Who could read that macabre scene—oxen being stabbed to death by youngsters, blood sloshed on a crude stone altar and splatted Jackson Pollock style on the people by a crazed, god-whispering priest—as a scene of comfort and joy? Do the faithful find root canals erotic?

Truth be told, pretty much all of them do (find 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄’s covenant a source of comfort and joy, that is), much aided by the white-glove service of the Translators. Or rather, theologians in philologist’s guise.

As it happens, English Translators of Holy Writ know how to sew. Take for example the word “cut” (כָּרַת kārat). They translate it as given for hacking all sorts of things: branches,²¹ the corner of a cloak,²² idols.²³ They even use it for crueler cuts: foreskins,²⁴ testicles,²⁵ whole penises,²⁶ heads and hands.²⁷ They are brave enough to let the word stand for extermination.²⁸ But when it comes to a passage nearly vibrating with theological significance, the cleaving of 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 to his chosen people, they hide “cut” like Adam and Eve stitching loincloths out of fig leaves to hide the shame of their genetalia (presumably still intact, as genital mutilation wasn’t yet required). So you’ll read in Exodus 24:8, “Behold the blood of the covenant which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words,”²⁹ when the text clearly reads, “See: the Covenant blood that Yahweh has cut with you by all these words.”³⁰

Made? Are the Translators ashamed, or are they shamming you? Likely a bit of both.

Thing is, if you were to read “cut” and not “made,” you might ask, What does that mean? Probably not—but maybe. And theologically astute Translators are risk averse. Better safe orthodoxy than sorry apostasy, which is what, inevitably, inquisitiveness leads to.

But try to imagine that the Translators actually did their job—translate rather than obfuscate—such that you were to read of a covenant being cut and (most improbably) were tempted unto inquisitiveness: What does that mean? You might then, with a little effort, find that, in the context of the covenant law, kārat often means the premature death of the offender. So you’ll read “You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you; everyone who profanes it shall be put to death; whoever does any work on it shall be cut off from among the people.”³¹ But not always; sometimes the offender can escape with their life, like when diverting the sacral incense compounded for 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄’s enjoyment to a profane application: “Whoever makes any like it to use as perfume shall be cut off from the people.”³² Excommunication, then, rather than execution, which in the ancient world was actually a fate worse than death. Either way, nothing good comes of being on the business end of that verb.

The clearest explanation of what cutting might mean in the context of a covenant with 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 is to be found in Jeremiah 34:18³³—except that, here again, the Translators attempt to hide the light of the text under a bushel:

And those who transgressed my covenant and did not keep the terms of the covenant that they made (kārat, “cut”) before me, I will make like the calf when they cut (kārat) it in two and passed between its parts (bəṯārāw, “its severed parts”).

Clear enough now? There was nothing metaphorical about cutting a covenant in those days: the fate of the animal hacked to pieces was to be shared by transgressors. Which was a pretty common theme in the ancient Near East when it came to making agreements of various sorts—particularly those concluded in a less-than-amicable context, with the superior party threatening the inferior in a bloody ritual display. These sorts of covenants are known as “vassal treaties.”³⁴ So you read in an eighth century BCE covenant imposed by one Bir-Ga’yah, an Aramaean king, upon one Matî‘el, king of Arpad:  “[Just as] this calf is cut in two, so may Matî‘el be cut in two, and may his nobles be cut in two!”³⁵

But why the need for an animal stand-in? Couldn’t Bir-Ga’ya have just said to Matî‘el, “Swear to Marduk, Matî‘el, I’ll rip your fucking head off and spit down your neck if you break this agreement!” and leave it at that? No need for cutting. As luck would have it, another vassal covenant hints at the answer. After invoking any number of gods as witnesses, the text reads:

This spring lamb has not been brought out of its fold for sacrifice, nor for a banquet, nor for a purchase, nor for (divination concerning) a sick man, nor to be slaughtered for […]: it has been brought to conclude the treaty of Assur-nerari, king of Assyria with Mati’-ilu. If Mati’-ilu [sins] against th[is] sworn treaty, then, just as this spring lamb has been brought from its fold and will not return to its fold and [not behold] its fold again, (in like manner) may, alas, Mati’-ilu, together with his sons, daughters, [magnates] and the people of his land [be ousted] from his country, not return to his country, and not [behold] his country again.

This head is not the head of a spring lamb, it is the head of Mati’-ilu, it is the head of his sons, his magnates and the people of [his la]nd. If Mati’-ilu [should sin] against this treaty, so may, just as the head of this spring lamb is c[ut] off, and its knuckle placed in its mouth, […] the head of Mati’-ilu be cut off, and his sons [and magnates] be th[rown] into […].

This shoulder is not the shoulder of a spring lamb, it is the shoulder of Mati’-ilu, it is the shoulder of his so[ns, his magnates, and the people of his land. If Mati’-ilu] should sin against this [treaty], so may, just as the shou[lder of this spring lamb] is torn out and [placed in …], the shoulder of Mati’-ilu, of his sons, [his magnates] and the people of his land be torn out and [placed] in […].³⁶

Most people in antiquity, kings included, were illiterate. The only people who knew how to perform such dark arts as reading and writing were scribes. Literacy literally reorganizes the brain, leading to such deformaties as abstract thinking. You (presumably literate) might find yourself asking impossibly useless questions: What is consciousness? Do I have free will? Can something come from nothing? Illiterate types are free of that burden and just get on with things.

So it’s all well and good for literate scribes to use abstract metaphors to describe their gods (as an example, “Since they have sinned against the Lord who is the habitation of righteousness,” literally nĕwēh-ṣedeq, “pasture/dwelling of righteousness”),³⁷ but the average man on the street would be thinking, “What do I have to do to keep this god from killing me?” In the case of the Israelites, that started with paying off the trigger-happy Levites.

The practical upshot is that when illiterate ancients wanted to imprecate an inferior party in a formal covenant, simile was the better choice to metaphor, (“like the calf,” “just as this spring lamb”). And in fact, threats of this sort are known as “simile curses.”³⁸ Better still is to enact the ritual in front of the party so imprecated. Besides being illiable to abstract thought, ancients were visual learners. Slashing a spring lamb to pieces and saying That’s going to be you if… cuts an indelible mental incision.

---

It is commonly thought of Martin Luther that he advocated public education so that everyone could read Scripture in their own language and draw their own theological conclusions. Nothing could be further from the truth. Luther knew that would be a disaster, as in fact it became—a calamity known as Protestantism. Luther was by no means an epistemological libertarian.

To be fair, it is the case that he wanted people to read Holy Writ in their mongrel tongues (prompting his translation of the bible into German): “Since it becomes Christians then to make good use of the Holy Scriptures as their one and only book and it is a sin and a shame not to know our own book or to understand the speech and words of our God. . . .”³⁹ He thought boys could afford an hour or two of schooling, girls at least one, leaving plenty of time for racing, tussling, dancing, sleeping, as well as doing what needed to be done for matters of a more practical variety (learning a trade, performing chores).⁴⁰ Luther took a belt-and-suspenders approach to his argument for public education. Setting aside the “spiritual realm” (notions of a soul, heaven, hell, the Scriptures, God), a case could be made based on the bodily needs of the temporal government.⁴¹ After all, the Turks were ever at the gates.

When it came to a proper understanding of Holy Writ, Luther insisted on knowledge of “the languages,” Hebrew and Greek, which he considered to be sacred, “the sheath in which this sword of the Spirit is contained . . . the baskets in which are kept these loaves and fishes and fragments.”⁴² Setting aside the unarguable point that, as languages go, those lacking vowels are at best fragments, Luther had a point. Simple preachers and teachers ignorant of the languages may be capable of teaching the clearest of theological verities (Christ), but beyond that, “they grope their way like a blind man along the wall, frequently missing the sense of the text and twisting it to suit their fancy. . . .”⁴³ Which a cynic might suggest is a pretty good description of the theological enterprise in general.

Luther, linguistically skilled as he was, knew that equally skilled judges were needed, citing St. Paul in support of his rhetorical attack on the philologically challenged (and apparently forgetting, as St. Paul seems to have, the bit about “judge not”—you know, eyes/motes/beams and all that):

Here belongs also what St. Paul calls for in I Corinthians 14 [:27, 29], namely, that in the Christian church all teachings must be judged. For this a knowledge of the language is needful above all else. The preacher or teacher can expound the Bible from beginning to end as he pleases, accurately or inaccurately, if there is no one there to judge whether he is doing it right or wrong. But in order to judge, one must have a knowledge of the languages; it cannot be done in any other way.⁴⁴

Luther, like a broken clock, was right about those who engage in theological speculation lacking knowledge of (or interest in) the languages. They’re as hopeless as they are numerous. But only marginally more so than Luther’s judges. Knowledge of the languages does not produce a common verdict, Holy Spirit or not. Much to the contrary, and much to the benefit of those who earn their living by knowing the languages and engaging in endless disputations with others equally knowledgeable and disputatious. As a cohort, these are known as “biblical scholars.”

So it is with the troublesome phrase found in Exodus 24:8, “blood of the covenant.” Covenant? When was the last time you heard someone say “covenant”? At the wedding you recently attended, did the bride and groom utter a nuptual covenant? Of course not, they exchanged ‘vows.” But it could have been: the English “covenant” inherited its distinctly happy connotations from its etymological forbearer, the Latin convenire, “to come together, agree, be in accord.” Cognates include convene, convention, convenient. Which proved to be a convenient word for English Translators to employ when spackling over the hole that is the Hebrew word בְּרִית berît found in in the phrase dam-hab-berît, “blood of the berît”. Their theology, intolerant of plain readings, required the text to describe a joyous scene, an agreement of mutual fidelity between the doting 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 and the blushing Israel that will ultimately lead to universal human flourishing. Which is pretty much how Luther’s simple preachers and teachers, ignorant of the languages, sell it to the even more ignorant.

To be fair, English Translators inherited a long tradition of philological slight-of-hand. In their second century CE Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible, Aquila of Sinope and Symmachus both replaced the Septuagints correct use of diatheke (διαθήκη) to translate berît—implying a unilateral ordinance or imposed disposition—with the gentler syntheke (συνθήκη)—implying a mutual agreement. Hieronymus (aka St. Jerome), in his fourth century CE Latin translation, followed suit, using foedus (“treaty”) and pactum (“agreement”).⁴⁵ The Geneva Bible of 1560 was the first English translation from the original texts. Hailing from Geneva and distinctly Protestant, it established covenant as the authoritative translation of berît. So it came to be used in most cases in the King James Version of 1611, which usurped the Geneva Bible as the Authorized Version. Lauded as “the noblest monument in English prose,”⁴⁶ the mandate given to the Committee of Translators by the Policies Committee of the Revised Standard Version (a standing committee of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A) for producing a revised version of the Revised Standard Version was “to continue in the tradition of the King James Bible, but to introduce such changes as are warranted on the basis of accuracy, clarity, euphony, and current English usage.”⁴⁷

And that is how you end up with the theologically cozy (if philologically suspect) translation of Exodus 24:8 in your NRSVue Bible, “Here is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words.”

But, you might ask, doesn’t the “blood” part suggest something a bit less sanguine? A fair question, but one that fails to recognize just how hemophilic the Faithful are. After all, they would be at risk of eternal hot anger but for a blood sacrifice: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”⁴⁸ Why?  Because “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.”⁴⁹ Ah, right, of course.

In fact, so excited do the Faithful become at the thought of butchery that they fill their cavernous sanctuaries with rising song:

Would you be free from the burden of sin?
There’s pow’r in the blood, pow’r in the blood;
Would you o’er evil a victory win?
There’s wonderful pow’r in the blood.

There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder-working pow’r
In the blood of the Lamb;
There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder-working pow’r
In the precious blood of the Lamb.⁵⁰

You might wonder just how seriously the Faithful—piping such a sachrine hymn on such an ominous topic—take their grisly faith. But, whatever.

For Luther’s judges, berît presents a conundrum. In the first place, it’s not entirely clear where it came from. Some argue it comes from brh, “to eat, dine,” pointing to the meal Moses, two of Aaron’s sons (who would later be immolated by 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 for offering an unapproved incense offering, prompting Aaron to zip it⁵¹) and 70 elders ate after seeing 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 and his feet. Others note that it’s identical to the Akkadian birit, “between, among,” and corresponds to the Hebrew ben. The problem with that is you would have to imagine that birīt transitioned like a gender-dysphoric youth from preposition (“between”) to an adverb (“betweenly”) and then into a noun (“betweenness”). As you might expect, other proposals have been made, but the most plausible etymology for the obstreperous noun is its association with the Akkadian birītu, meaning “clasp” or “fetter.” That would make sense, as both Akkadian and Hittite terms for treaty mean “bond.”⁵² Further endorsing that view is the use of brt as a Canaanite loanword in a text of Ramesses III dated to ca. 1170 BCE from Medinet Habu describing the defeated Lybians:

“. . . your terror seizes them, cowed, miserable and straying. They all make a brt, bringing their tribute [on their backs . . , and coming with prai]se to adore [him = the king]”.⁵³

In the second place (and related to the first) is that berît can signify different convenings in different circumstances. A berît can be cut between individuals,⁵⁴ between kings and subjects,⁵⁵ even with death.⁵⁶ It can be entered into between husbands and wives,⁵⁷ or just be with fieldstones and animals.⁵⁸ In only two instances is berît qualified by dam, “blood,” and of those only one occurs in a cultic context, Exodus 24.8: dam-hab-berît, “berît of blood.”⁵⁹

To be continued. . . .

1. James S. Anderson, Monotheism and Yahweh’s Appropriation of Baal, Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 617 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 86–93. ↩︎
2. For YHWH, Deut 32:8–9 (sonship masked by many English translations); the Ugaritic texts name both El and Dagan as Baal’s father, Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Harvard University Press, 1973), 15. ↩︎
3. For example, Susan J. Sanders, “Towards a theology of Baal : Revisiting the Interpretation of the Ugaritic Texts,” (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 2003). ↩︎
4. Guiseppe Garbati and Fabio Porzia, “In Search of God Baal in Phoenician and Cypriot Epigraphy (First Millennium BCE),” in Alaya Palamidis and Corrine Bonnet eds, What’s in a Divine Name: Religious Systems and Human Agency in the Ancient Mediterranean (de Gruyter, 2024), 365–90. ↩︎
5. Garbati and Porzia, “In Search of God Baal,” 382. ↩︎
6. Anderson, Monotheism and Yahweh’s Appropriation of Baal, 86. ↩︎
7. See T.G.H. James, “Gold Technology in Ancient Egypt: Mastery of Metal Working Methods,” Gold Bulletin 5, no. 2 (1972): 38–42. ↩︎
8. Exod 32:4. ↩︎
9. William H.C. Propp, Exodus 19–40: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Doubleday, 2006), 541. ↩︎
10. Exod 32:14. ↩︎
11. Exod 34:11. ↩︎
12. Exod 32:27. ↩︎
13. Propp, Exodus 19–40, 567–74. ↩︎
14. Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1–17, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 1990), §II.A.1, “The Call of Abram (12:1–9).” ↩︎
15. E.A. Speiser, Genesis Volume 1: An Introduction, Translation, and Notes, The Anchor Bible (Doubleday, 1965), 86. ↩︎
16. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, §II.A.1, “The Call of Abram (12:1–9).” ↩︎
17. Gal 3:8. ↩︎
18. Bertil Albrektson, History and the Gods: An Essay on the Idea of Historical Events as Divine Manifestations in the Ancient Near East and Israel (Berlingska Boktrycheriet, 1967), 80. See further: “In fact to render Gen. 12.3b by “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed’ is to read too much into it—behind such an interpretation lies untimately the New Testament use of this passage in Acts 3.25 and Gal. 3.8, where Luke and Paul, following the LXX have נברכו rendered by ἐνευλογηθήσονται. We must take Gen 12.3 as a statement about the abundance of blessing which had been alloted to Abraham, not as an intimation of the final goal of a divine plan for the salvation of the world. Thus interpreted the passage admittedly becomes less charged with theological profundity, but this seems in fact more justified in view of the context: so advanced a universalism as the rendering by a passive form implies would be rather surprising in this connexion” (80–81). ↩︎
19. NASB. ↩︎
20. NRSV. ↩︎
21. Gen 13:23, “And they came to the Wadi Eshcol and cut down from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes, and they carried it on a pole between two of them. They also brought some pomegranates and figs.” ↩︎
22. 1 Sam 24:5, “Afterward David was stricken to the heart because he had cut off a corner of Saul’s cloak.” ↩︎
23. 1 Kgs 15:13, “He also removed his mother Maacah from being queen mother, because she had made an abominable image for Asherah; Asa cut down her image and burned it at the Wadi Kidron.” ↩︎
24. Exod 4:25, “But Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin, touched his feet with it, and said, ‘Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!’” ↩︎
25. Lev 22:24, “Any animal that has its testicles bruised or crushed or torn or cut, you shall not offer to the LORD.” ↩︎
26. Deut 23:1, “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall come into the assembly of the LORD.” ↩︎
27. 1 Sam 5:4, “But when they rose early on the next morning, Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord, and the head of Dagon and both his hands were lying cut off upon the threshold; only the trunk of Dagon was left to him.” ↩︎
28. Jer 11:19b, “Let us destroy the tree with its fruit; let us cut him off from the land of the living, so that his name will no longer be remembered!” ↩︎
29. 21st Century KJV (emphasis added), followed by nearly all English translations. See BibleGateway, “Exodus 24:8, Bible Book List,” accessed June 16, 2026. ↩︎
30. William H.C. Propp, Exodus 19–40, 107. ↩︎
31. Exod 31:14. ↩︎
32. Exod 30:38. ↩︎
33. So Theodore J. Lewis, “Covenant and Blood Rituals: Understanding Exodus 24:3–8 in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context,” in Seymour Gitin, J. Edward Wright and J.P. Dessel eds., Confronting the Past: Archaeological and Historical Essays on Ancient Israel in Honor of William G. Dever (Eisenbrauns, 2006), 344. ↩︎
34. William S. Morrow, “Ancient Near Eastern Treaties/Loyalty Oaths and Biblical Law,” in Pamela Barmash ed., The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Law (Oxford University Press, 2019), §20.2, “The Concept of the ‘Vassal’ Treaty.’” ↩︎
35. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Aramaic Inscriptions of Sefîre, Biblica et Orientalia 19 (Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1967), 15. ↩︎
36. Simo Parpola and Kazuko Watanabe eds., State Archives of Assyria Volume II (Helsinki University Press, 1988), 8–9. ↩︎
37. Jer 50:7. ↩︎
38. Delbert R. Hillers, “Treaty-Curses and the Old Testament Prophets,” in F.W. Dobbs-Allsopp ed., Poets before Homer: Collected Essays on Ancient Literature (Eisenbrauns, 2015), 97–189. See esp.125–32. ↩︎
39. Martin Luther, “To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany That They Establish and Maintain Christian Schools,” in Walther I. Brant ed., Luther’s Works, Vol. 45, Christian in Society II (Concordia Publishing House, n.d.), 364. ↩︎
40. Luther, “To the Councilmen,” 370–71. ↩︎
41. Luther, “To the Councilmen,” 366–68. ↩︎
42. Luther, “To the Councilmen,” 360. ↩︎
43. Luther, “To the Councilmen,” 362. ↩︎
44. Luther, “To the Councilmen,” 365. ↩︎
45. Moshe Weinfeld, “B^erît—Covenant vs. Obligation.” Biblica 56, no. 1 (1975): 122. ↩︎
46. John Livingston Lowes, “The Noblest Monument of English Prose,” in Of Reading Books (Constable, 1930), 47–77. ↩︎
47. New Revised Standard Version Bible, “To the Reader,” (National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, 1989), 4. ↩︎
48. Matt 26:28. ↩︎
49. Heb 9:22. ↩︎
50. Composed by Lewis E. Jones in 1899, now included in 451 hymnals. See Hymnary.org, “Power in the Blood,” accessed August 1, 2026. ↩︎
51. Lev 10:1–3. ↩︎
52. M. Weinfeld, “בְּרִית bᵉrith,” in G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Riggren eds., Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament: Volume II (Eerdmans, 1975), 255; Moshe Weinfeld, “Covenant,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica Volume 5: C-Dh (Keter Publishing House, 1972), 1013. ↩︎
53. Kenneth A. Kitchen, “Egypt, Ugarit, Qatna and Covenant,” Ugarit-Forschungen. Internationales Jahrbuch für die Altertumskunde Syrien-Palästinas Neukirchen-Vluyn 11 (1979): 453. ↩︎
54. Gen 31:44. ↩︎
55. 2 Sam 5:3. ↩︎
56. Isa 28:15. ↩︎
57. Ezek 16:8. ↩︎
58. Job 5:23. ↩︎
59. The second occurrence is in Zech 9:11 – “As for you also, because of the blood of your covenant (bə-dam-bərîtēk), I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.” Notably, the NRSVue has “blood of my covenant,” which is an interpretive gloss rather than a translation of the text as found in the MT. ↩︎