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OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES

Edited by

David J. Reimer
 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES

The mid-twentieth century was a period of great confidence in the study

of the Hebrew Bible: many historical and literary questions appeared
to be settled, and a constructive theological programme was well
underway. Now, at the beginning of a new century, the picture is very
different. Conflicting positions are taken on historical issues; scholars
disagree not only on how to pose the questions, but also on what to
admit as evidence. Sharply divergent methods are used in ever more
popular literary studies of the Bible. Theological ferment persists, but is
the Bible's theological vision coherent, or otherwise?
The Old Testament Studies series provides an outlet for thoughtful
debate in the fundamental areas of biblical history, theology and literature.
Cyril Rodd's comprehensive study of Old Testament ethics probes
especially the problematic relationship in relating these three facets to
modern moral questions. Given that the Old Testament is often invoked
in contemporary ethical debate, Rodd attempts to identify more closely
the nature of the bible's contribution on a wide range of issues. Rodd's
many years of writing on and teaching Old Testament ethics inform this
substantial study.
GLIMPSES OF A STRANGE LAND
This page intentionally left blank
 GLIMPSES OF A
STRANGE LAND
Studies in Old Testament Ethics

Cyril S. Rodd

T&T CLARK
EDINBURGH
 T&T CLARK
A Continuum imprint
The Tower Building
11 York Road
London
SE1 7NX
www.tandtclark.co.uk
www.continuumbooks.com

Copyright © T&T Clark Ltd, 2001

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of T&T Clark Ltd.

First published 2001

ISBN 0 567 08753 0

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bookcraft Ltd, Avon

 CONTENTS

Preface ix
List of Abbreviations xii

1. Why Only Glimpses? 1

2. Ethics and Purity 5
3. Ethics and Honour 19
4. Adultery 28
5. 'Such a Thing Is Not Done in Israel' 44
6. Abraham's Question 52
7. The Imitation of God 65
8. The Ten Commandments 77
9. Coveting, Homicide and Intention 94
10. Motivations 109
11. Sanctions 126
12. Lending at Interest 142
13. Interlude 158
14. The Poor 161
15. War 185
16. Animals 207
17. Nature 234
18. Women 250
19. How Did the Old Testament View What We Call Ethics? 271
20. The Old Testament and Ethics Today 301

Addendum: Walking with God 330

Books and Articles Referred to in the Text 335
vii
viii GLIMPSES OF A STRANGE LAND

Index of Subjects 365

Index of Modern Authors 381
Index of Biblical References 387
 PREFACE

This book has taken a life-time to write. I first had an interest in Old
Testament ethics when I was appointed lecturer in Old Testament
Language and Literature at the Methodist Handsworth College in
Birmingham in 1956. At that time ethics was a non-subject, and
Norman Snaith warned me off it, saying that there was no future in it.
I wrote an article on motivation in the prophets, which two
journals rejected - and I became despondent. My interest remained,
nevertheless, and in 1971 Leslie C. Mitton accepted an article on
Genesis 18.25 for The Expository Times. It was only when I
was given a free hand to introduce the subject into the
curriculum at Roehampton Institute in the 1980s that I was able to
pick up the interest again. By then, of course, Old Testament scholars
had rediscovered ethics and my concern with the subject did not
seem so odd. Nevertheless, my early experiences made me hesitant
about working up my lectures into a book, and it was only the
repeated urging of my students that made me begin to think of doing
so. For this nudging, and the keen interest in what they
complained was the most difficult of all the modules they had to do in
their degree course, I remain grateful. My gratitude to two Old
Testament scholars can never be adequately expressed. First,
Richard Coggins tried to convince me that what I was doing was
worthwhile. To him I also owe the further immense debt for
working meticulously over my draft manuscript and making many
most valuable suggestions. Secondly, David Reimer not only
suggested that my book might be included in the series he was editing,
but also gave the encouragement of showing considerable enthusiasm
for it. Finally, I cannot possibly omit expressing my deep thanks to a
friend from my Cambridge days, G. W. S. Knowles, who worked
through the draft, pointing out infelicities of expression and asking for
greater clarity on many pages. He has also acted as a reader of the
proofs and checked the Index.
To my wife I owe more than I can ever tell. Despite her firm
conviction that too many books are written (which is probably
true), she has borne with my adding to their number without
complaint.

ix
X GLIMPSES OF A STRANGE LAND

A Note on the Biblical Quotations.

I spent a considerable time thinking about which translation to use in
the quotations. My preference would have been for the RV, since it is
closest to the Hebrew, and, although archaic, enables singular and
plural second person forms to be identified. In the end I decided that
this might seem hopelessly old-fashioned, especially as the version is
no longer in print, so I chose the RSV. Many will raise objections to
what is commonly now rejected as a patriarchal or androcentric
translation, preferring the more inclusive language of the NRSV,
REB, or NJB. My choice, therefore, needs to be defended.
What is overlooked in favouring an inclusive language translation is
the fact that if masculine forms of verbs and possessives in English
foster a patriarchal attitude (as they almost certainly do), precisely the
same thing operated in ancient Israel. It is therefore an error to remove
masculine forms where we suppose they should include women as
well as men.1 To recover something of the feel which the Hebrew
must have had, it is necessary to go back at least fifty years - to the
period before the rise of the modern feminist movement, when it was
accepted that 'the masculine embraces the feminine' and married
women were designated by the 'Christian' name of their husbands.2
The right conclusion to be drawn from this is that, if using masculine
forms promotes strong support for patriarchal attitudes in English, this
also prevailed in the Old Testament - even more so, since second
person verbs, pronouns and suffixes possess masculine and feminine
forms.
The difficulty with adopting a translation which does not use
inclusive language and reproduces the genders of the Hebrew is that
in our modern culture, where 'man' no longer possesses the meaning
of 'human being' as well as male man that it once had, the patriarchal
aspect comes across in an exaggerated way. Nevertheless, I believe
that to retain the masculine forms introduces less distortion than to
follow the inclusive language versions.
The biblical references follow the Hebrew verses, and where the
English numbering differs this is added in brackets.

1
I am fully aware that my 'should' is ambiguous. On the one hand it refers to the fact
that sometimes in the Hebrew Old Testament, masculine forms refer to both men and
women, while on the other it points to a modern understanding of the equality of
women and men. One of the most extreme examples of the second is the NJB
translation of the commandment: 'You shall not set your heart on your neighbour's
spouse', where the context shows that only men are being addressed. The same version
attempts to make the sages in Proverbs address both sons and daughters, where again
the context shows that the advice only makes sense when given to sons.
2
This was actually required in making nominations in my own church!
 PREFACED xi
Additional Note
Two important books and a new series reached me only after the
present study was in proof. I have been unable, therefore, to
incorporate their insights into the text, although I have added a few
footnote references. The books are: Double Standards in Isaiah: Re-
evaluating Prophetic Ethics and Divine Justice by Andrew Davies
(E. J. Brill, 2000), and The Material Culture of the Bible: An
Introduction by Ferdinand E. Deist, edited with a preface by Robert P.
Carroll (Sheffield Academic Press, 2000). I have reviewed both books
in ET112, 2000-01,73-77.
The first two volumes in the series The Earth Bible are: Norman C.
Habel, ed., Readings, and Norman C. Habel and Shirley Wurst, eds.,
Earth Story. It is noteworthy that the aim is to discuss 'how the Bible
has played, and may continue to play, a role in the current ecological
crisis' (Readings, 9), and to 'read the Bible from the perspective of
Earth' (Earth Story, 9). The editors note the 'tendency among
ecotheologians and ecoexegetes, willy-nilly, to find a way to retrieve a
positive message about Earth in the text', and they accept that the
Bible is 'likely to be anthropocentric'. The intention in the series is to
explore whether particular ecological principles are affirmed or
negated. Keith Carley's 'Psalm 8' may be singled out as an example
of negation. Note also Habel's comments on 'ruling' in Genesis
1.26-28 and Ps 72.8.
 ABBREVIATIONS

AB The Anchor Bible (Doubleday).

ABD The Anchor Bible Dictionary, eds. Freedman, David
Noel, Herion, Gary A., Graf, David F. and Pleins, John
David (Doubleday, 1992).
ANET Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old
Testament, ed. Pritchard, James B. (Princeton
University Press, 1950, 1969).
BA Biblical Archeologist.
BDB A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament
with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, eds.
Brown, Francis, Driver, S. R. and Briggs, Charles A.,
(Clarendon Press, corrected impression 1952).
BJRULM Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library
Manchester, formerly Bulletin of the John Rylands
Library [BJRL].
BRev Bible Review.
BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin.
BWANT Beitrage zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen
Testament.
BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche
Wissenschaft.
CB Coniectanea Biblica.
CBC The Cambridge Bible Commentary on the New English
Bible.
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly.
DBI A Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, eds. Coggins,
Richard J. and Houlden, J. L. (SCM Press, 1990).
DBI, A-J Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, ed. Hayes, John
H., Vol. 1 (Abingdon Press, 1999).
DBI K-Z Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, ed. Hayes, John
H., Vol. 2 (Abingdon Press, 1999).
DCE A Dictionary of Christian Ethics, ed. Macquarrie, John
(SCM Press, 1967).
DCH The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, ed. Clines,
David J. A., exec. ed. Elwolde, John (Sheffield Academic
Press, 1993-).
xii
 ABBREVIATIONS xiii

ET Expository Times.
EvQ Evangelical Quarterly: An International Review of
Bible and Theology.
EvT Evangelische Theologie
FOTL The Forms of the Old Testament Literature.
HALOT The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament,
eds. Koehler, Ludwig and Baumgartner, Walter, revised
by Baumgartner, Walter and Stamm, Johann Jakob,
trans, and ed. under the supervision of Richardson, M.
E. J. (4 vols., E. J. Brill, 1994-).
HAT Handbuch zum Alten Testament.
HBT Horizons in Biblical Theology.
HDB 1963 Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, ed. Hastings, James,
rev. edn. eds. Grant, Frederick C. and Rowley, H. H.
(T&T Clark, 1963).
HTR Harvard Theological Review.
HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual.
ICC The International Critical Commentary on the Holy
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.
IDBSup The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Supplementary
Volume, ed. Crim, Keith (Abingdon Press, 1976).
JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion.
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature.
JETS Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society.
JJS Journal of Jewish Studies.
JLA Jewish Law Annual.
JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies.
JRelEthics Journal of Religious Ethics.
JSNTSup Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement
Series.
JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament.
JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement
Series.
JTS Journal of Theological Studies.
JTSoA Journal of Theology for Southern Africa.
LTJ Lutheran Theological Journal.
NCBC The New Century Bible Commentary.
NDCE A New Dictionary of Christian Ethics, eds. Macquarrie,
John and Childress, James (SCM Press, 1986).
NDCEPT New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral
Theology, eds. Atkinson, David J. and Field, David H.
(IVP, 1995).
xiv GLIMPSES OF A STRANGE LAND

NDT New Dictionary of Theology, eds. Ferguson, Sinclair B.

and Wright, David F. (IVP, 1988).
NERT Near Eastern Religious Texts Relating to the Old
Testament, ed. Beyerlin, Walter (SCM Press, 1978).
NIB The New Interpreter's Bible, eds. Keck, Leander E. et
al. (12 vols., Abingdon Press, 1994-).
NIBC New International Biblical Commentary.
NICOT The New International Commentary on the Old
Testament.
NRT Nouvelle Revue Theologique.
OBC The Oxford Bible Commentary, eds. Barton, John and
Muddiman, John (OUP, 2001).
OBO Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis.
OBT Overtures to Biblical Theology.
OTE Old Testament Ethics
OTL Old Testament Library.
OTS Oudtestamentische Studien.
PEQ Palestine Exploration Quarterly.
PRS Perspectives in Religious Studies
PSB Princeton Seminary Bulletin.
RB Revue Biblique.
RevExp Review and Expositor.
SBLDiss Society of Biblical Literature Dissertations Series.
SBT Studies in Biblical Theology.
SJTh Scottish Journal of Theology
SOTS Society for Old Testament Study.
TBC The Torch Bible Commentaries.
TDOT Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, eds.
Botterweck, G. Johannes and Ringgren, Helmer, trans.
Willis, John T. (Eerdmans, 1974-).
TS Theological Studies.
TynB Tyndale Bulletin.
USQR Union Seminary Quarterly Review.
VT Vetus Testamentum.
VTSup Supplements to Vetus Testamentum.
WBC Word Biblical Commentary.
ZAW Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft.
ZEE Zeitschrift fur Evangelische Ethik
 1
WHY ONLY GLIMPSES?

A major problem in writing about Old Testament ethics1 is to know

where to begin. An obvious place might seem to be the Ten
Commandments. After all, they are the best known ethical statements
in the whole Bible and are generally regarded as central to the Old
Testament morality. They have also been accorded very great
importance in later Christian thought. In many churches they used to
be written in a prominent position, often alongside the Lord's Prayer.
They were prominent in catechisms taught to the young. Even in our
modern secular society it is common to hear politicians urging a
return to the morality of the Ten Commandments. As we shall see,
however, this pre-eminence is not fully justified.
An alternative to starting with what is thought by many today to be
the heart of the Old Testament's own morality might be to pick up
ethical issues which are seen as urgent in the modern world. Thus we
might consider the place of women in society, or attitudes to war, or
the way animals were treated, or ecological issues. This approach
would have the advantage of being topical and arousing immediate
interest. It might, also, throw up features of Old Testament ethics
which are often overlooked. Whether it is fair to impose modern
interests upon ancient Israel, however, is very doubtful. To select
moral dilemmas which trouble us might well distort the ethical
thought of the Old Testament itself.
In his study of Old Testament ethics2 John Barton begins by noting
features which present moral difficulties to us - laying down the death
penalty for adultery (Lev. 20.10; Deut. 22.22), accepting mutilation as
a punishment (Ex. 21.23-24; Lev. 24.19-20; Deut. 19.21), forbidding

1
The term 'ethics' presents considerable problems, both grammatical and with regard
to the meaning. I have tried to restrict the meaning of 'ethics' to the philosophical
study of the principles of morality and to those principles themselves, using 'morals'
for the actual practice of morality, and avoiding 'ethic' (in the singular) as being
irretrievably ambiguous. Following Fowler-Gowers, I normally use a singular verb
with 'ethics' where it refers to the science, but allow a plural in some of the more
general uses, according to the context (Modern English Usage, 170-171, 260).
" John Barton, Ethics. The topics mentioned are found on pp. 1-3. Despite his
disclaimer, Barton still has a tendency to concentrate on those features of Old
Testament ethics of which we can approve today.
1
2 GLIMPSES OF A STRANGE LAND

interest on loans (Deut. 23.19), the approval of the massacre of the

inhabitants of whole cities during the conquest of Canaan (Josh. 6;
11). His aim is to stress the difficulty in establishing the relevance of
Old Testament ethics for life today and to avoid the charge of
explaining away the 'blemishes' in the Bible by limiting his
discussion to the more attractive features. It is right that these
difficulties should be recognized, but it is doubtful whether this is the
best place to start. The difficulties are of different kinds and are best
treated in their contexts. Moreover, those who accept the Old
Testament as scripture usually hold that the offending ethical stances
must be explained away, justified, or ignored, and this easily leads to
a distortion of the Old Testament morality itself.
Most scholars who write monographs on Old Testament ethics
attempt to discover a pattern lying behind the ethics and begin their
studies by tracing this out. Three recent works show this clearly.
C. J. H. Wright divides his study between the Framework and
Themes. In the first part he sets out the principles which lie behind the
individual laws and exhortations, and he finds these in what he terms
'the ethical triangle', which has God, Israel and the Land at its
vertices, or, as he expresses it in another way, the theological, social
and economic angles.3 This emphasizes Wright's conviction that
theology and ethics are inseparable. Creation, election and covenant
are the dominant features in this understanding of Old Testament
ethics. Having set out the framework, Wright proceeds to examine six
themes: economics and the land, politics and the world of nations,
righteousness and justice, law and the legal system, society and
culture, and the way of the individual. Using 'paradigm' in the way it
is used in grammars, as a model which exemplifies the way other
verbs or nouns of a similar type are formed, he suggests that ethics are
not so much to be imitated as to be applied to similar situations in our
own day.
Similarly Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. begins with a discussion of
'Definition and Method'.4 He contrasts Old Testament ethics with
philosophical ethics, describing its ethics as personal, theistic,
internal, future oriented and universal, and then proposes a
'comprehensive' approach which combines synchronic, diachronic,
and central theme approaches together with exegetical studies of
particular texts. In the main body of the book he expounds the ethics

3
Christopher J. H. Wright, People of God, see pp. 19-20. The ideas are developed in
chs. 1-3.
4
Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Ethics. Although Kaiser initially recognizes the diversity of
genres and times of writing of the various parts of the Old Testament he is so
constrained by his conservative theological position that the diversity largely drops
away in the later discussion The effect is to present an extremely 'flat' picture of the
Old Testament.
 WHY ONLY GLIMPSES? 3

first according to the various collections of laws (Decalogue, Book of

the Covenant, Law of Holiness, and Law of Deuteronomy) and then
by topics, concluding with a discussion of moral difficulties and New
Testament applications.
Waldemar Janzen's primary purpose is to help Christians to
appropriate the guidance provided by the Old Testament for their
ethics and this to some extent controls his approach.5 He argues that it
is better to begin with the genre of story than with that of law, since
this is the main way in which the biblical faith was transmitted. On the
basis of what might appear as the somewhat unpromising stories in
Genesis 13, Numbers 25, 1 Samuel 25, 1 Samuel 24 and 1 Kings 21,
he uncovers five paradigms of the good life, which he terms the
familial, priestly, wisdom, royal, and prophetic. The first of these is
dominant, with the other four paradigms providing supporting models,
while within the familial paradigm three 'dimensions' are found: life
in community, the possessing of land, and the giving of hospitality.
The great virtue of this work is that, in striking contrast to Kaiser, it
keeps the liveliness of the Old Testament itself always before the
reader. To start with the stories is an excellent way in. The ethical
paradigms arise naturally from the stories. Moreover the qualifications
to many of his assertions, which Janzen makes in the extensive notes
at the end of each chapter, show that he is aware of the many facets
that the ethics present. But he does not go far enough in giving place
to the diversity of the material within the Old Testament.
Apart from the dominance of the attempt to show the relevance of
Old Testament ethics for Christians in the modern world in most of
these works, the presentation of the ethics within a systematic frame
distorts the ethics themselves. All ethics, apart possibly from those
deliberately formulated by philosophers, contain inconsistencies,
illogical inferences, variations, and differences of emphasis and
application. If, therefore, Old Testament ethics is to be viewed as a
living reality these features must not be concealed under a general
principle or abstract pattern. Aspects which chime in with modern
sensitivities must not be allowed a prominence which they lacked in
Israelite society.
Often when we visit a mediaeval castle we climb a spiral staircase
to the top of the keep. For most of the time we are surrounded by
blank walls, but as we clamber up we pass slit windows through
which we obtain glimpses of the countryside that surrounds the castle.
The view is narrowly restricted and we often find it difficult to
imagine what the whole panorama looks like.
In the present study I have deliberately rejected an overall scheme,
model, paradigm, dominant theme, underlying principle, or any other
5
Waldemar Janzen, Ethics.
4 GLIMPSES OF A STRANGE LAND

attempt to discover a unifying motif by means of which the ethics can

be packaged. The chapters are distinct, and are best understood as the
windows through which glimpses of occasional features of Old
Testament ethics may be obtained.6
Even so, uncertainty remains. What is the country that we are
viewing? Is it the 'real world' of Israelite society, or no more than
pictures on the glass which fills the window? The doubt is profound,
for all we possess are the texts that make up the Hebrew Bible and
some remains discovered by archaeology, largely non-epigraphic. If,
as many scholars now think, the texts were written in the Persian
period (I hesitate to say after the Exile, since whether the Exile is
historical fact or ideology is now very much a hotly debated
question),7 the relation between the writings and the life and history of
ancient Israel is uncertain. As we peer out of the windows we shall
never know whether the glimpses we obtain are of 'ancient Israel' or
Israel as later priests and scribes wished us to think of it. Ideas, beliefs
and morals are far more elusive than material culture, more obscure
even than historical events, as we shall discover. While I refer to dates
from time to time, and attempt to distinguish between the several
different layers of ethics (actual practice in ancient Israel, the norms
and values of the Israelites, and the morality and ethics revealed in the
biblical texts, both in their final form and possible earlier stages of
development), I accept that any such distinctions are highly dubious,
and in general I have simply taken the 'final form' of the texts.8
I hope that what is lacking in systematic organization may be more
than counterbalanced by liveliness and the odd moment of insight.

6
It will be seen that I have made little attempt to deal systematically with the question
of methodology. This is largely because I believe that discussing method in theoretical
terms can impose blinkers on our view of the Old Testament itself. A central
conviction running through the whole of this study is that the only valid approach is to
look long and seriously at the Old Testament as it is. Semeia 66 contained four articles
on methodology: John Barton, 'Basis', Bruce C. Birch, 'Moral Agency', Eryl W.
Davies, 'Ethics', and Robert R. Wilson, 'Sources and Methods'.
7
See Richard J. Coggins, 'The Exile', and Lester L. Grabbe, ed., Captivity. In his most
recent work Grabbe insists that the Fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple, the
loss of statehood and the incorporation of Judah in the great empires marked a
watershed (Judaic Religion, 5-6).
8
This does not mean that I subscribe to Brevard S. Childs's 'canonical' approach,
which appears to me highly questionable. But I am also very doubtful about attempts
to present an account of the historical development of the laws and the ethics, such as
that of Frank Crusemann (see my review of The Torah, ETIQS, 1996-97, 321-322).
 2
ETHICS AND PURITY

I take Leviticus 19 as my point of entry. Although it is generally

regarded as part of the 'Holiness Code', which itself lies within the
priestly writings in the Pentateuch, it stands apart as a distinct
collection of laws.1 Two features strike the reader. There are
similarities with the Ten Commandments, especially in the earlier part
of the chapter,2 and it contains a very mixed collection of laws, ethical
and ritual, with no obvious logical arrangement.
Among the more plainly ethical laws are the prohibitions of
stealing, dealing falsely, lying, robbery and oppression (vv. 11, 13).
Other laws stress social justice: not being partial in judgment (v. 15),
avoiding slander (v. 16), using accurate measures of length and
weight (vv. 35-36), and probably the demand not to swear by
Yahweh's name falsely, if the context is the assembly of elders in the
gate, which acted as the local law court (v. 12). More broadly, but still
within the ethical sphere, are reverence to parents, with mother
unusually placed before father (v. 3), paying the wages of the hired
labourer each evening (v. 13), leaving gleanings for the poor and
resident alien at the time of harvest (vv. 9-10), not cursing the deaf or
putting a stumbling block before the blind (v. 14), showing respect to
the aged (v. 32) - all perhaps summed up (in our minds, though not

1
Most commentators accept this, although some divide it into two separate
collections, vv. 1-18, 19-37, e.g., Erhard S. Gerstenberger, Leviticus, and others
propose further subdivisions: e.g., Philip J. Budd, Leviticus, divides the chapter into
six sections, vv. 1-10, 11-18, 19-25, 26-31, 32-34, 35-37; G. J. Wenham, Leviticus,
and Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., 'Leviticus', take 'I am the Lord' as marking out paragraphs
or subsections, arranged in three main sections, vv. 3-8 (or 10), 9 (or 11)-18, 19-37.
It may well have had a pre-history. Commentators note the alternations of singular and
plural address, and possible evidence of redactional additions to an original text; some
discern a set often laws. This, however, is irrelevant to the present purpose. Whatever
components may be traced, the present completed text marks the intention of the final
redactor.
2
Wenham asserts that 'all ten commandments are quoted or alluded to, and sometimes
expounded or developed in a new way' (Leviticus, 264), and Kaiser regards them as
'the formative principle' underlying the chapter, which is 'a further reinforcement and
a practical illustration' of the Decalogue ('Leviticus', 1131). As will be shown later,
verbal similarities are not close and there is little reason to suppose there is any direct
connection between Lev. 19 and the Ten Commandments.

5
6 GLIMPSES OF A STRANGE LAND
very obviously in the ordering of the chapter) in the call to love both
one's neighbour and the foreigner who has settled in an Israelite
village and who is not to be wronged but rather treated as a native
Israelite (vv. 17-18, 33-34). All in all it presents a picture of a
civilized society.
At the other extreme, however, is the prohibition of mixed
breeding of animals,3 the sowing of fields with two kinds of
seed, and the wearing of clothes made of two different materials
(v. 19). Further prohibitions which seem to have little ethical
significance oppose certain types of cutting of the hair and the beard,
and tattooing (vv. 27-28), and the treatment of newly planted fruit
trees, where the term 'uncircumcision' ('foreskin') is used of the first
three years when the fruit is not to be eaten, and the fruit in the fourth
year is holy (vv. 23-25). Mediums and wizards are not to be
consulted, for to do so causes defilement (v. 31), and augury and
witchcraft are not to be practised (v. 26). Moreover, while to forbid
forcing one's daughter into prostitution might be regarded as within
the sphere of ethics, this is described as profaning her and the
motivation is in order to avoid letting the land fall into harlotry
(v. 29). Keeping the sabbath, referred to twice in the chapter (vv. 3,
30) and the rejection of idols (v. 4) are familiar to us because of the
Decalogue, but are nevertheless hardly within the sphere of ethical
requirements. Laws which are equally matters of cultic practice are
the requirements concerning the destruction of the meat left over on
the third day after communion sacrifices (vv. 5-8) and the prohibition
against eating flesh with the blood in it (v. 26). Finally it should be
observed that the call to Israel to be holy because Yahweh is holy,
which is the basis for describing Leviticus 17-26 as the Holiness
Code, stands at the beginning of the chapter and asserts the aim of all
the varied laws as maintaining this holiness, a term which attracts
ethical connotations but which is not primarily within the semantic
field of ethics.
How then is this failure of the compiler of the chapter to make any
distinction between the different kinds of law to be explained? For it
is clear that he treats them all as of equal validity and importance. The
highest ethical ideas sit alongside what we would regard as the
triviality of wearing a coat made of linen and wool.
The popular answer is that at the time ethics in Israel had not
developed sufficiently for the distinction to be made between ritual
and moral requirements. All the things in the chapter which are

3
The presence of mules in ancient Israel (e.g., 2 Sam. 13.29; 18.9; Ps. 32.9) is curious.
Was the law disregarded with horses and donkeys, or is it an indication that the law is
a Utopian priestly construction? Or were horses and donkeys regarded as the same
species, so that interbreeding was not treated as a 'mixture'?
 ETHICS AND PURITY 7

condemned were regarded as equally displeasing to God and therefore

to be avoided.
This is true, but it hardly provides a completely satisfying
explanation. For a clue to the thought underlying the compilation of
laws in this chapter it is necessary to fasten on the demand for
holiness set at the beginning. Essential to understanding the chapter is
the call to be holy because God is holy and to do nothing to impair the
holiness of his land and his people. It is less a matter of keeping God's
laws simply because he commanded them and will punish those who
break them, than that both actions which break ethical precepts and
those which infringe cultic and ritual purity equally affect Israel's
holiness.
There have been many important studies of holiness,4 and it is not
the intention here to add to these. No more than an outline of the
central features that relate to the ethics of the Old Testament will be
given before turning more directly to the question of purity.
Holiness in ancient Israel was not what it is to us, goodness with a
veneer of piety. As we have seen, holiness was primarily linked to
God. Indeed, it might almost be regarded as the 'godness' of
God. Dominant in the concept was the idea which Rudolf Otto
termed the numinous - that sense of terrifying mystery which at the
same time attracts with an uncanny fascination.5 In these days
we have learnt to be cautious about filling out gaps in our knowledge
of ancient Israel from anthropology,6 and hesitate to transfer ideas of
mana and taboo from Polynesian religion directly to ancient Israel.
Yet it is fairly clear that holiness was more than a subjective feeling to
the Israelite. The most helpful analogy today, perhaps, is atomic
radiation, a physical force which is unseen yet powerful and
potentially destructive. In the same way it was regarded as
dangerous for the Israelite to come too close to the holy God. The
high priest had to take special precautions when he entered the holy of
holies on the day of atonement (Lev. 16.2-5, 12-13, 23-24). The
destructive power of God's holiness is seen in the story of David's
first attempt to bring the ark into Jerusalem. The oxen stumbled and
Uzzah put out his hand to steady it. Because he touched holy
things, even with a good intention, contact with its holiness killed him
(2 Sam. 6.1-11).7
Underlying the laws in Leviticus 19 is the idea of God's holiness.
Israel has to maintain its own holiness in order to live safely with the

4
As well as the main Old Testament theologies, see John G. Gammie, Holiness.
5
Rudolf Otto, The Holy.
6
See John Rogerson, Anthropology.
7
While holiness is a major concern of the priestly writings, it is not limited to these,
and Gammie's study (n. 4) extends to the prophetic, wisdom, and apocalyptic writings.
8 GLIMPSES OF A STRANGE LAND
holy God. To go against God's laws will bring upon the transgressor
the destructive force of that holiness. Securing holiness in Israel
requires both obedience to the ethical norms and upholding ritual
purity. It might seem to us that impurity was treated as a 'sin', but the
reverse is probably the case: to break ethical norms is a form of
impurity and impairs the holiness of Israel before the holy God.
Closely linked with the idea of holiness is that of purity and
pollution.8 Two forms are found in the Old Testament: the natural
uncleanness of certain animals, and the temporary impurity of certain
physical conditions, such as following bodily emissions, skin diseases,
and moulds on materials or buildings. Wenham notes that temporary
uncleanness is regarded as more serious than that which is
permanent.9 Unclean animals do not pass on their uncleanness to
others: they simply cannot be eaten. Temporary uncleanness, on the
other hand, is contagious and requires cleansing rites.10 There are
various degrees of temporary uncleanness, persisting for differing
lengths of time and requiring their own type of cleansing rites.
The lists of clean and unclean animals in Leviticus 11 and
Deuteronomy 14 have puzzled readers from early times. Mary
Douglas and Walter Houston discuss most of the explanations that
have been offered.11 Mary Douglas argues that the critical distinction
is between what are 'proper' members of their class of animals and
those creatures that seem to slip between the classes, since holiness
contains the sense of wholeness. Houston classifies the theories under
four heads: moral-symbolic, cultic, aesthetic, and hygienic, and offers
some critical comment on most of them. In particular he rejects Mary
Douglas's idea of the anomaly that does not fit into the distinct classes
of animals. His own proposal is that the systematic classification of
animals as clean and unclean for food developed at the sanctuaries
and was based on those animals which were acceptable for sacrifice.
The deeper roots of the distinction lay in the customs of an economy
that was strongly pastoral. Only in our present texts was the
distinction made absolute by becoming a demand for total abstinence
from 'unclean' food as a mark of dedication to God.

8
L. William Countryman, makes a sharp distinction between the two collections of
purity law in Lev. 11-16 and 17-26, seeing the first as concerned primarily with those
aspects of uncleanness that call for some rite of purification, and the second as calling
on the people as a whole to cleanse itself by removing offenders (Dirt, 22-23).
9
G. J. Wenham, Leviticus, 21. His whole discussion of 'Holiness' and 'Sacrifice'
(pp. 18-29) is valuable.
10
For its seriousness cf. Num. 19.11-13, where the failure to carry out the cleansing
rite after touching a dead body defiles the tabernacle. Such a person is to be 'cut off
from Israel' (a phrase denoting 'excommunication' or even execution).
11
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger, esp. 29-57 (she has modified this somewhat in
Leviticus); Walter Houston, Purity and Monotheism, 68-123.
 ETHICS AND PURITY 9

Whatever the origins and rationale of the laws concerning clean and
unclean animals, the idea of lack of wholeness has been widely
adopted to explain many of the temporary forms of uncleanness, such
as the uncleanness of women when menstruating and after childbirth,
and 'leprosy'.12 In a similar way, although they are not 'unclean', the
animals offered in most of the sacrifices must be 'whole', 'without
blemish', as must men who become priests. The idea of lack of
wholeness may be the reason why men who have tasks uncompleted
are excused or disqualified from war.13
Mary Douglas has argued that in many societies a purity system
exists alongside the system of ethics.14 Pollution rules do not
correspond closely with moral ones: some behaviour is clearly
wrong and yet is not polluting, whereas some actions which are
not very reprehensible cause pollution. She suggests four ways in
which pollution can uphold a moral code: (1) when a situation is
morally ill-defined, a pollution belief can provide a rule for
determining whether an infraction has taken place; (2) in cases of
conflicts between moral principles, pollution can provide a simple
focus of concern; (3) when an action that is held to be morally wrong
fails to provoke indignation, belief in the harmful consequences of
pollution can increase its seriousness and so marshal public opinion
on the side of right; and (4) when moral indignation is not reinforced
by sanctions, belief in pollution can provide a deterrent to
wrongdoers. She also points out that because pollution can be fairly
easily cleansed through special rites, pollution beliefs can make
reconciliation and forgiveness easier, especially when the cleansing
rite includes confession. Besides stressing that the moral and purity
systems are often poorly integrated, Mary Douglas provides evidence
of the way pollution rules can take on a cultural life of their own, and
once established may even provide grounds for breaking the moral
code.
In the Old Testament there are few examples of the direct and
explicit linking of ethics and purity. With regard to the moral laws of

12
I use this term for sara'at simply because no other adequate alternative has been
suggested; cf. the vain attempts of modern translations: 'a contagious skin-disease'
(NJB), 'an infectious skin disease' (NIV), 'a malignant skin-disease' (NEB), 'a virulent
skin disease' (REB), 'a dreaded skin disease' (GNB). GNB is perhaps the best
paraphrase, but it fails to convey the sense of uncleanness and ostracism from both
God and human beings connoted by the biblical term and which the word 'leper'
conveys to modern ears. The Hebrew noun does not refer to Hansen's disease. It is
important to notice that it is not the fact of having the disease but the piebald
appearance of the skin which marks the uncleanness. Someone whose skin is
completely covered with the disease is not unclean (Lev. 13.13).
13
Deut. 20.5-7; cf. 24.5, and see the discussion in Chapter 15 below.
14
Purity and Danger, ch. 8. Her main examples are taken from the Nuer and Bemba
people.
10 GLIMPSES OF A STRANGE LAND
Leviticus 19.18, 35, Countryman states: 'These are not purity rules
themselves, but are set in this context so that they will be reinforced
by association with purity rules, taking advantage of the apparently
automatic distaste or even disgust that dirt evokes.'15 This is hardly a
correct application of the insights that Mary Douglas has provided, for
no direct link between morals and purity is made in the chapter. He is,
however, on firmer ground when he points out that in Deuteronomy
25.13-16 those who act dishonestly by using unequal weights and
measures are an 'abomination' (to'ebah) to Yahweh. Further, he notes
that purity language is applied by Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and in Proverbs
to ethical offences.16
Helmer Ringgren makes some useful distinctions.17 He states: 'both
sin and uncleanness can be viewed as expressions of the hostile reality
that permeates life, attempting again and again to penetrate the sphere
of what is divine and good. There is, so to speak, a sphere of evil and
death that continually threatens man's life: it is called uncleanness,
sin, chaos.' Thus there are two different concepts of sin, which he
terms 'mechanistic', in which both deliberate and accidental
violations of God's commandments create a 'sphere of evil' that
results in punishment and suffering, and 'personal', when the
individual knows that he or she has broken the law and accepts
responsibility for it. This is helpful, providing that it is recognized that
'sin' is not limited to ethical wrongdoing. Nevertheless it is confusing
to use the concept of responsibility as the means of distinguishing
between mechanistic and personal 'sin'.
K. van der Toorn, on the other hand, describes the distinction
between moral and cultic laws as between ethics and etiquette, 'the
seemingly arbitrary rules of conduct to be observed in the intercourse
with the gods'.18 Although they appear to be irrational, the cultic laws
set out what is pleasing to God, and since there is no higher standard
than the pleasure of the gods, moral precepts are ultimately validated
by the same idea. Some things that please God correspond to the
human sense of justice, while others are to be respected simply out of
consideration for the personal likes and dislikes of the gods.19 This,
15
Countryman, Dirt, 28.
16
Ibid.; no references are given.
17
Helmer Ringgren, Israelite Religion, 142-143. Ringgren repeats this in his article
on tame' ('unclean', TDOT V, 332). In the same article G. Andre discusses idolatry
and sin under 'Metaphorical Usage', listing a number of passages where uncleanness
'is equated explicitly with sin, transgression, and iniquity' (e.g., Lev. 16.16, 19; 22.9;
Isa. 6.5; 64.5[6]; Lam. 1.8f.; 4.15; Ezek. 14.11; 18.6, 11, 15; 37.23; Zech. 13.1-2). The
land is polluted by murder (Num. 35.33-34), while Gen. 34.27 speaks of 'defilement
through unchastity' (ibid., 338-340).
18
K. van der Toorn, Sin and Sanction, 12.
19
Ibid., 27. Van der Toorn finds little difference in ethics between Israel and the
countries of Mesopotamia, though huge differences in religion (p. 39).
 ETHICS AND PURITY 11

however, does not greatly assist the attempt to determine the relation
between the two systems.
To return to the term 'Abomination' (to'ebah). The word is applied
in Leviticus to homosexuality (18.22; 20.13), but elsewhere is used
generally of the offences (mainly sexual) which the writer ascribes to
the previous inhabitants of the land (18.26, 27, 29, 30), and which are
also said to pollute the land so that it vomited out its inhabitants.
Deuteronomy equally speaks of the abominations of the nations
(Deut. 18.9, 12; 20.18), but also uses the term of image worship and
serving other gods (7.25, 26; 13.15 [14], 17.4; 27.15), Canaanite
religious practices, especially burning their children to their gods
(12.31), unclean animals (14.3), offering blemished animals in
sacrifice (17.1), using the hire of a harlot to pay a vow (23.19[18]),
transvestites (22.5), remarrying a wife who has been divorced (24.4),
and dishonesty in weights and measures (25.16). Only the last is
clearly ethical.
The usage in Jeremiah and Ezekiel is similar, as might be expected
from their close links with deuteronomistic and priestly thought. The
only specific moral references in Jeremiah are to stealing, murder,
adultery, false swearing (as well as burning incense to Baal and going
after other gods, Jer. 7.9-10), though some of the general references
may possibly include ethical offences.20 In Ezekiel the only example
of what may be regarded as a moral fault is adultery (Ezek. 33.26),
the other uses of the term being mainly general 'or related to
uncleanness.21
Proverbs is quite distinct in using the term for a wide range of
ethical wrongs, including false balances (Prov. 11.1; 20.10, 23), lying
lips (12.22), 'perversity' (3.32; 11.20), acquitting the wicked and
convicting the innocent (17.18); general wickedness (8.7; 13.19; 15.8,
9, 26; 16.12; 21.27; 29.27), the arrogant and scoffers (16.5; 24.9), and
turning away from the law (28.9). In 6.16-19 a list of seven things
which Yahweh hates and which are an abomination to him are
haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart
that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false
witness and a man who sows discord among brothers, while the man
who has seven abominations in his heart is described as possessing
hatred, dissembling with his lips and harbouring deceit in his heart,
and the warning is against his false words (26.24-26). Although
several of these proverbs speak of God's rejection of prayer and

20
The other references are Jer. 2.7; 6.15; 8.12; 16.18; 32.34, 35; 44.4, 22.
21
Ezek. 5.9, 11; 6.9, 11; 7.4, 8, 9, 20; 8.17; 9.4; 11.21; 14.6; 16.22, 36, 43, 47, 51;
18.24 (although the wider context includes such sins as robbery, murder, adultery,
oppression, and righteous actions such as giving bread to the hungry); 33.26, 29;
36.31; 43.8; 44.6, 7, 13.
12 GLIMPSES OF A STRANGE LAND
sacrifice by those who commit these abominations the underlying
disposition is ethical rather than within the sphere of purity, and it
seems probable that the sense of 'abomination' has changed. Perhaps
overtones of uncleanness remain, but in the setting of Proverbs these
hardly represent a living belief.22
All this makes it doubtful whether there was any conscious attempt
to relate a distinct purity system to an independent ethical system.
Purity language is occasionally applied to matters which we would
regard as ethical, and some offences which we would treat as moral
lapses are seen as breaches of purity. Moreover, despite Countryman's
claims, sexual offences are generally viewed as matters of purity.23 It
is difficult not to conclude that by speaking of purity and ethical
systems we are separating concepts which had not yet crystallized out
in Israelite thought.24
The discussion, however, needs to be broadened to take into
account other phrases and terms.
Leviticus and Ezekiel speak of profaning the name of Yahweh. In
the first it is usually the result of uncleanness - unclean priests
(Lev. 21.6; 22.2), and the result of giving children to Moloch (20.3).
Perhaps naturally, swearing by Yahweh's name falsely profanes his
name (19.12), and although it immediately refers to keeping
Yahweh's commandments in 22.32, this comes at the end of a section
of ritual laws. Every example in Ezekiel refers to idols (Ezek. 20.39;
36.20-23), but on two occasions there is mention of Yahweh being
profaned (without 'the name', 13.19; 22.26), where a wider range of
offences are included. Amos speaks of profaning Yahweh's name in
2.7. If this is limited to the nearer wrongs it is caused by 'father and
son [going] in to the same girl',25 which may refer to sacred

22
None of the other references to 'abomination' in the other Old Testament books is
related to ethics.
23
Countryman distinguishes between sexual purity and sexual property.
24
For completeness it may be added that the other Hebrew word translated
'abomination' in many English versions (V $qs) is never used in an ethical setting.
The noun Siqqus is predominantly used of idols and the gods of other peoples (e.g.,
1 Kgs. 11.5, 7; 2 Kgs. 23.13). Hosea says that Israel became 'detestable' (Siqqusim)
by consecrating themselves to Baal. Leviticus uses Seqes'm 7.21; 11.10-12, 13, 20,
23, 41-42, referring to water creatures lacking fins and scales, birds which may not be
eaten, winged insects apart from locusts and grasshoppers, and 'swarming things'. The
word seqes is rare outside Leviticus (only Ezek. 8.10; Isa. 66.17). Mary Douglas
suggests that it is used idiosyncratically in Leviticus to avoid the pejorative
associations of Siqqus. She argues that it should be rendered 'You shall absolutely
shun everything that swarms', etc., and proposes that this means that God is 'telling his
people to avoid certain things, keep out of their way, not harm, still less eat, them'
(Leviticus, 167), adding that 'though contact with these creatures is not against purity,
harming them is against holiness' (ibid., 168). See a further discussion below, Ch. 16.
25
There is no equivalent to 'same' in the Hebrew, and the meaning of the oracle is
disputed and obscure. The 'girl' may be a temple prostitute or a household slave (cf.
 ETHICS AND PURITY 13
prostitution. If the wider context is taken into account, social wrongs
are included - trampling the head of the poor into the dust of the earth
and turning aside the way of the afflicted. Jeremiah declares that
taking back their slaves whom they had freed, apparently in obedience
to the laws of Exodus 21.2 and Deuteronomy 15.12, profaned
Yahweh's name. Occasionally, therefore, moral wrongs are said to
pollute God's holiness, but usually this is ascribed to matters of ritual
uncleanness.
A phrase found in Deuteronomy but never in the priestly law,
and elsewhere only in Judges 20.13, is that translated 'you shall purge
the evil from your midst' (ubi'arta ham* miqqirbeka). It almost
certainly belongs to the purity system, although the precise
meaning is disputed.26 Since in all cases apart from Deuteronomy
19.19 it is added to the imposition of the death penalty, it seems most
probable that it refers to the removal of the uncleanness that
attaches to the notorious sinner and so maintains the purity of the
nation (or by some of those accepting the theory of the amphictyony,
of the tribal confederation).27 It occurs in the cases of prophets and
dreamers who urge the following of other gods (13.6[5]), those
worshipping other gods (17.7), those who refuse to accept the
judgment of the 'higher court' of priests or judge (17.12), the
malicious witness (19.19),28 the rebellious son (21.21), the bride who
was not a virgin when she was married (22.21), both the man found
lying with the wife of another man and the woman (22.22), and the
kidnapper (24.7). It is significant that in four of these (enticing to
worship and the worshipping of other gods, the rebellious son, and the
bride who is not a virgin) execution is by stoning, the punishment
which keeps the unclean criminal at a distance from his
executioners.29 After noting that what he regards as the oldest section

Henry McKeating, Amos, 23; James L. Mays, Amos, 46; Francis I. Andersen and
David Noel Freedman, Amos, 318-319). But halak is not the usual verb for sexual
intercourse, cf. Carolyn S. Leeb, who concludes that the young woman was 'working
outside the home', away from the protection of the father, and was vulnerable (Away
from the Father's House, 146-150).
26
A. D. H. Mayes denies that it is a legal formula, since its direct address indicates
instruction or teaching of the law (Deuteronomy, 233-234). He also rejects any cultic
background, since there is no reference to Yahweh. This appears to limit the
interpretation too narrowly to the form of the phrase.
27
Helmer Ringgren, article bcr in TDOTll, 203-204, compares the formula with 'that
man shall be cut off from among his people' in the priestly writings (e.g., Lev. 17.4, 9,
14), and argues that while the latter refers to excommunication as a punishment,
purging out the evil coming after the declaration of the penalty expresses the idea of
purifying the community.
28
This is the only instance where the penalty is not that of death but is the penalty
which belongs to the crime of which the witness accuses his fellow Israelite.
29
Cf. the stoning of the ox which gored a human being to death, even if that person
was a slave (Ex. 21.28, 29, 32), and the command that human beings and animals who
14 GLIMPSES OF A STRANGE LAND
of a group of casuistic laws in Deuteronomy (19.11-13; 21.18-21;
22.22; 24.7) have a counterpart in the phrase mot yumat ('shall be
put to death') in Exodus 21.12-17, Ringgren points out that the verb
is used in the rite to cleanse the land when a murderer cannot be
found, though with the object 'innocent blood' instead of 'the evil'
(Deut. 21.1-9). This strongly supports the contention that the phrase
belongs to the purity system, for the land would be polluted unless the
rite were duly performed by the elders. The same idea is found in the
incident of the Levite's concubine in Judges 19-20, where the other
Israelite tribes demand the punishment of the evildoers in Gibeah in
order to purge the evil.
In addition to the unique cleansing rite in Deuteronomy 21.1-9, the
expiatory sacrifices in the priestly writings show that ethical wrongs
were also regarded as pollutions.
We begin with the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16).30 This ceremony
comprises two main rites. In the first Aaron (signifying the later high
priest) takes of the blood of the hattat bull and of the hattat goat31
which had previously been chosen by lot, and sprinkles it on and in
front of the 'mercy seat' (kappdret, the golden cover on the ark in the
holy of holies), the 'tent of meeting', the main part of the temple, and
the four horns of the altar. In the second rite Aaron places both
hands32 on the head of the other goat and confesses over it the sins of
the people. This goat is then sent away into the desert. Underlying the
various rites is the belief that the uncleannesses and sins of Israel
during the previous year have polluted the temple, which has to be
cleansed. The purpose of the manipulation of the blood of the hattat
bull and goat on and before the 'mercy seat' and on the horns of the

strayed on the holy mountain were to be stoned (Ex. 19.13). Achan, who kept back
part of the goods subject to the 'ban' (Josh. 7:25), and Naboth, who was accused of
cursing God and the king (1 Kgs. 21.10, 13), are also stoned; in both cases the issue is
one of holiness. The priestly writer uses a different Hebrew word for stoning (rdgam,
found once in Deuteronomy, in 21.21), but the connection with impurity is "even
stronger (cf. Lev. 20.2, 27; 24.14, 16, 23; Num. 15.35, 36).
30
The previous history of the chapter is not of primary importance for the present
purpose, although it impinges upon the precise way in which the rites are to be
envisaged (see the commentaries by Budd, Wenham and Gerstenberger).
31
The usual translation is 'sin offering' (RSV, NRSV, NIV, NEB, GNB). JB and NJB
have 'sacrifice for sin'. Only REB's 'purification offering' avoids the false overtones
which the word 'sin' introduces. The Hebrew name of the sacrifice, of course, is the
same as one of the words for sin, but this must not be allowed to distort the meaning of
the sacrifice.
32
This is the only instance where both hands are placed on the animal, as opposed to
the worshipper's placing of one hand on the head of the animal to be offered in
sacrifice (e.g., Lev. 1.4), where it probably indicates the ownership of the victim or
that it is dedicated or set apart for the sacrifice (see, Budd, Leviticus, 47-48; contrast
Wenham, Leviticus, 61-62, who favours substitution ('the animal is taking the place of
the worshipper') or the transference of sin).
 ETHICS AND PURITY 15

altar is stated as 'to make atonement' for the holy place, the tent of
meeting and the altar. In the second rite the sins of the people are then
transferred to the live goat which removes them from the land and
takes them into the desert.33
David P. Wright argues that the two parts of the atonement rituals
remove different evils, the hattat blood rites remove the impurity
attached to the temple (Lev. 16.16, 19), while the scapegoat removes
the 'transgressions' (his word) of the people (vv. 21-22).34 He
recognizes, however, that these cannot be sharply distinguished, since
verse 16 also refers to the removal of 'their transgressions, all their
sins', a phrase almost exactly repeated in the account of the scapegoat
('all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions,
all their sins', v. 21). He resolves the apparent contradiction by
treating the phrase '(all) their transgressions, all their sins' as an
addition to the original text. He accepts, however, that the two evils
are intimately related, since sin in the priestly writings is the cause of
the impurity of the sanctuary.35 Thus he concludes: 'The two evils
belong naturally together, and, consequently, the two parts of the rite
belong together.'
It seems to me, however, that both rites concern the removal of
pollution. Indeed, commentators frequently use ambiguous language
in their accounts of the meaning. Even Wright can say: 'Sending the
goat to the wilderness is only to remove the impurity from the
sanctuary and habitation so that they might become and remain
clean.'36 It is true, of course, that if it were the sins that the goat was
carrying these would also be polluting, and therefore uncleanness
would also be removed. The crucial issue, however, is whether ethical
wrongdoing can be transferred. This seems to be as impossible among
the Israelites as it is among us. What is transferred through the
confession of sins is the pollution that they carry, and it is that
pollution which is removed. Both rites deal with pollution, the blood
rites cleansing the temple, which has been polluted by the people's
sins, and the scapegoat removing the pollution from the land and the
people.37
33
Azazel is probably the name of a demon.
34
David P. Wright, Disposal, 15-21. He discusses the meaning of Azazel on
pp. 21-25. In his study he compares biblical rites with those of the Hittites and in
Mesopotamia, and argues that there is no evidence that in the priestly writings the
impurities and sins were taken to the underworld, as in these other cultures. In addition
he stresses that ideas of substitution and appeasement found in Hittite and
Mesopotamian rites are absent from the biblical ones. The scapegoat 'merely receives
the community's sins and bears them to a harmless locale' (pp. 73-74).
35
He refers to Lev. 4.1-5.13; 15.31; 20.3; Num. 19.13, 20. He also notes the pollution
of the man who took the scapegoat into the desert (Lev. 16.26).
36
Wright, Disposal, 73.
37
So Philip J. Budd, Leviticus, 232: 'Some kind of transference seems to be implied
16 GLIMPSES OF A STRANGE LAND
With this ceremony may be compared the rite using live birds to
carry away the impurity of 'leprosy' in both healed persons and restored
buildings (Lev. 14.2-9, 48-53). Somewhat similarly to the Day of
Atonement rites,38 two birds are taken, one is killed 'in an earthenware
vessel over running water'.39 The other bird is then dipped into the
blood and water, together with cedar wood, scarlet stuff and hyssop,
and the liquid is sprinkled seven times on the person or the house.
Finally the live bird is released into the open country. The blood
removes the impurity from the person and the house. It has also been
transferred to the live bird, which removes the impurity from the
community generally (in v. 53 the priest sends the bird 'out of the city').
Washings on the seventh day complete the cleansing of the person.40
Wright sees a major difference between the release of the bird and
the scapegoat. In the latter the blood rites remove impurity, the
scapegoat removes the sin, whereas with 'leprosy' both blood and live
bird remove impurity. He points out, however, that since impurity and
sin are 'different sides of the same coin', the difference is less.41 It
seems more probable, as I have argued earlier, that it is impurity
which is removed in all the rites: on the Day of Atonement the
impurity caused by moral wrongs, in the 'leprosy' ceremony the

here, though this too is probably a purificatory rite. Just as the blood of the sin
offerings carries away any defilements incurred by (or threatening) the sanctuary so
the scapegoat carries away the iniquities of Israel (v. 22) - i.e., those she has incurred
and which threaten her status as the holy people.' By contrast Wenham (Leviticus,
233—234) sees the rite as transferring sins to the goat; the ceremony removes the sins
from the people and leaves them in an unclean place. In a recent article, 'Animal
Sacrifice', J. W. Rogerson, apparently accepting the theory of Douglas Davies,
'Sacrifice in Leviticus', distinguishes between the cleansing of the holy place from
'the defilement of Israel's wrongdoings', and the symbolical removal of 'these
wrongdoings' from among the people as the scapegoat 'proceeds from the holy place
through the camp and out into the wilderness'. Rogerson suggests that if we wish to
understand the scope of Old Testament sacrifice, 'it is probably best to operate with
the distinction clean/unclean' ('Sacrifice', 53).
38
Wright, Disposal, 79, finds three differences between the two. The third of these
will be considered later.
39
The Hebrew is difficult to understand. Literally it reads: 'and he shall slaughter the
one bird to ('el) a vessel of earthenware over ('#/) living water'. RSV, JB and NJB
follow this closely, but what actually happened is not easy to visualize. Several
translations offer intelligible actions, but the relation to the Hebrew is not clear. Most
suppose that spring or river water is collected in a pot and the bird killed over this so
that its blood falls into the water and is mixed with it (so NEB, REB, NIV, NRSV
(apparently), and GNB). Gerstenberger offers: 'The priest shall command further that
one bird be slaughtered over an earthen vessel alongside running water' (Leviticus,
173).
40
Martin Noth describes the rite, with its 'very crude ideas of the effectiveness of
magic', as aimed at the removal of all cultic uncleanness caused by the disease
(Leviticus, 107).
41
Wright, ibid., 80, tentatively suggests that originally both goats removed impurity,
and it was a later development which ascribed the removal of sins to the scapegoat.
 ETHICS AND PURITY 17
residual impurity that remains after the 'disease' has been 'cured'.
Sins are mentioned in the ceremonies of the Day of Atonement
because it was the annual build-up of the impurity that these produced
which had to be removed through the rites.
Since our purpose is not to give a full account of all the purification
rites in ancient Israel, the hattat and 'asdm42 sacrifices will not be
discussed. The distinction between them is difficult to determine, but
both are concerned with the removal of uncleanness, resulting either
from an impure condition or an ethical wrong, and so restoring relations
with God and avoiding the destructiveness of divine holiness.43
Finally, a few other texts which relate sin to pollution may be
mentioned. In one of the accounts of the cities of refuge (Num.
35.9-34), the justification for executing deliberate murderers and the
refusal of a ransom for their life is that the land should not be
polluted, 'for blood pollutes the land, and no expiation can be made
for the land, for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of him
who shed it' (v. 33). The law declares: 'You shall not defile [make
unclean] the land in which you live . . . for I the LORD dwell in the
midst of the people of Israel' (v. 34). Bloodshed, of course, is a
special type of crime, since the blood was regarded as the life, and as
such belongs to God. Nevertheless, the passage as a whole is
concerned with protecting those whose action was accidental.44
Jeremiah sees sin as polluting the land (Jer. 2.7; 3.1, 9), while the late
passage in Isaiah 24.5-6 declares that the land is polluted because the
people have disobeyed God's laws and broken the covenant.
Ethics within the Old Testament cannot be divorced from the
question of purity. It has been shown that sin always creates
uncleanness, which has to be removed by means of sacrifice and
cleansing rites, although uncleanness is also caused by non-ethical
actions and states, such as touching dead bodies and menstruation.
Essentially there is no difference between the two with regard to the
dangers to which they give rise when faced with the holiness of God.
This does not mean that ethics are subsumed under impurity or that
morality was treated less seriously. It does call into question, however,
some of the rather imprecise language which is often used about sin
and forgiveness by many writers. It also entails that care must be
taken to differentiate between the two when actions which appear to

42
Usually translated 'guilt offering' (RSV, NRSV, NIV, NEB). Some translations
introduce the idea of reparation: 'sacrifice of reparation' (JB, NJB), 'reparation
offering' (REB), 'repayment offering' (GNB).
43
See, in addition to the Old Testament theologies and the commentaries, articles in
TDOT by D. Kellermann (I, 429-437), and K. Koch (IV, 309-319). See also the
discussion of 'confess' (ydddh, hithp.) in V, 439-442 by G. Mayer. In NIDOTTE,
Richard E. Averbeck contributes two useful discussions (1, 557-566; 2, 93-103).
44
Intention and responsibility will be discussed in Chapter 9 below.
18 GLIMPSES OF A STRANGE LAND
us as being within the sphere of morals are considered. As has been
seen, the reaction to murder by an unknown person is to remove the
pollution that the crime has produced rather than devising ways of
tracking down the murderer.
It will have been noticed that most of the examples that have been
given are from the priestly writings, Deuteronomy,45 and Ezekiel.
Whether these writings also represent the views of the Israelite
peasant, the court, or earlier periods in Israel's history is impossible to
determine. Almost certainly there has been some modification of
traditional practices by the priests in their own interests. Yet it is hard
to believe that the attitudes to sin and impurity were invented by them.
Impurity, after all, is a well-defined state, as Mary Douglas has
shown, and is likely to have been accepted by all groups within Israel
during most of its history. The priests may have refined the rites but it
is more probable that they reflect common ideas than that the priests
practised a secret set of ceremonies within a closed community. Hence
it is probable that, allowing for some increased rigidity, formality and
precision in the definition of uncleanness and purity rites, the priestly
understanding of ethics and purity was that of ancient Israel in
general.46
This discussion of ethics and purity has shown how far removed the
Old Testament ways of thinking are from modern ethics.47 In the next
chapter we shall consider another feature of life in ancient Israel
which should also make us hesitate about speaking too confidently
about Old Testament ethics.

45
Mary Douglas, however, draws a sharp distinction between Leviticus and
Deuteronomy. She thinks Deuteronomy has a 'more political agenda', and follows
Moshe Weinfeld in describing Leviticus as 'ritualist, sacrificial, formal' and
Deuteronomy as 'rationalist, humanist, anti-ritualist' (Leviticus, 66, 89, see the whole
chapter, 'The Totally Reformed Religion', 87-108, also 14, 29, 41).
46
The writers of the wisdom books (especially Proverbs) may stand somewhat apart
from this, though Job offers colot (Job 1.5; the term strictly refers to the sacrifice
which was wholly burnt on the altar) on behalf of his sons, lest they had sinned and
cursed God in their hearts.
47
It may be noted, however, that, far from regarding the purity system in the Old
Testament as remote from the ethics of the present day, John Barton finds a concern
for the natural order in the laws of clean and unclean animals (Ethics, 68-71). Mary
Douglas goes further, declaring it 'frivolous' to suppose that the 'analogical thought
system' of Leviticus excludes something we call 'ethics'. 'Any person raised in a
closed and strongly positional society would know what is moral and what is immoral.
Injunctions to be compassionate would not be necessary because kindness would be
predicated in the rules of behaviour as well as exemplified in the narratives' (Leviticus,
44). Even if this is accepted (and the existence of'ethical' laws within Leviticus raises
questions), it shows that our conception of'ethics' is very different from the culture of
the biblical text.
 3

ETHICS AND HONOUR

With much of the Old Testament we feel quite at home. We interpret

the Ten Commandments as laws, and see the punishments set out in
many of the other laws in the Pentateuch as similar to our own
criminal law. For we are accustomed to the death penalty, even
though it has been abolished in many countries. Even when we come
upon the punishment of cutting off a hand (Deut. 25.11-12), our
recent increased knowledge of traditional Islamic law makes it seem
less outlandish, even if no less barbaric. But then suddenly we find
this scenario:
If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife
of the dead shall not be married outside the family to a stranger; her
husband's brother shall go in to her, and take her as his wife, and
perform the duty of a husband's brother to her. And the first son whom
she bears shall succeed to the name of his brother who is dead, that his
name may not be blotted out of Israel. And if the man does not wish to
take his brother's wife, then his brother's wife shall go up to the gate to
the elders, and say, 'My husband's brother refuses to perpetuate his
brother's name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband's
brother to me.' Then the elders of his city shall call him, and speak to
him: and if he persists, saying, 'I do not wish to take her,' then his
brother's wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, and pull
his sandal off his foot, and spit in his face; and she shall answer and say,
'So shall it be done to the man who does not build up his brother's
house.' And the name of his house shall be called in Israel, The house of
him that had his sandal pulled off (Deut. 25.5-10).

The custom of taking the deceased brother's wife, though odd, is

familiar to us because of the question the Sadducees put to Jesus in
the Gospels,1 but the action of the woman when her brother-in-law
refuses to take her appears extremely curious. The passage begins
exactly like any of the other casuistic laws, outlining the situation and
setting out what is to be done when brothers are living together and
one dies without having fathered a son.2 Then, again in normal

1
Mk. 12.18-23; Mt. 22.23-28; Lk. 20.27-33.
2
The form-critical analysis of the Old Testament laws is usually traced back to
Albrecht Alt, 'Origins'. For later discussions see Dale Patrick, Old Testament Law, Harry W.

19
20 GLIMPSES OF A STRANGE LAND
casuistic fashion, the further situation in which the brother refuses to
carry out the levirate is presented. The widow first takes her brother-
in-law before the elders who try to persuade him to do his duty. If he
persists in his refusal, the widow is to pull his sandal off his foot, spit
in his face, and utter a formal statement that is almost a curse. Instead
of punishment as a sanction, therefore, there is public shaming,
reinforced by the mocking of the man's family as 'The house of him
that had his sandal pulled off, its 'name' now being a matter of
shame rather than of honour.
A large part of our sense of the strangeness of this legal passage
springs from the fact that Christianity is obsessed with sin and guilt,
forgiveness and punishment. Even though Christian influences are
diminishing in modern secular society, crime, guilt and punishment
dominate the culture. It makes it harder to move imaginatively into a
society in which honour and shame were important, and shaming was
not an alternative 'punishment' but belonged to a different way of
thinking within the culture.3
In an important study Lyn M. Bechtel has argued that shaming was
an important means of social control in ancient Israel.4 Building
on the work of David Daube on shame in the book of
Deuteronomy,5 she presents an analysis of 'shame' and offers
evidence of three main types of shaming: formal judicial shaming,
formal and informal political shaming in war and diplomacy, and
informal shaming in everyday social life. The second of these is
illustrated from the stripping of captives by victorious armies (cf.
Isaiah's symbolic actions in Isa. 20.1-6 and Assyrian and other bas-
reliefs) and the treatment of David's ambassadors by Hanun, the
new Ammonite king (2 Sam. 10.1-5), while the individual

Gilmer, If-You Form. A distinction should be made between clauses in which a

punishment is prescribed and those which declare what action is to be taken (as here).
3
Social anthropologists formerly distinguished between a 'shame' culture and a 'guilt'
culture, but it is now recognized that all cultures contain elements of both, even our
own highly individualistic one where guilt is dominant (and 'anxiety' has increasing
importance). Johs. Pedersen made an early study of honour and shame, somewhat
distorted by his idiosyncratic view of 'soul' in Israel /-//, 213-244. Recently New
Testament scholars have shown an interest in the culture of honour and shame in the
Mediterranean world (see Jerome H. Neyrey, Honor and Shame, and the extensive
bibliography which he has collected). For a further definition and analysis of 'honour'
and 'shame' see also Bruce J. Malina and Jerome H. Neyrey, Honour and Shame,
25-65, and Saul M. Olyan, 'Honor, Shame'. Michael Herzfeld, 'Honour and Shame'
points out that honour and shame always need to be understood in relation to the
culture in which they are found.
4
Lyn M. Bechtel, 'Shame as a Sanction'.
5
David Daube, 'The Culture of Deuteronomy' and 'To Be Found Doing Wrong'.
Daube stresses that he deliberately speaks of 'shame-cultural elements' in
Deuteronomy, not 'shame culture', because Deuteronomy is 'a curious blend' of
shame and guilt cultures, and he suggests that the guilt-culture predominates.
 ETHICS AND HONOUR 21

laments in the Psalter and the book of Job offer examples of

informal social shaming. For 'judicial shaming', which is most
pertinent to the present enquiry, Bechtel fastens on the levirate law
(Deut. 25.5-10) and the attempt to avoid excessive shaming by
limiting judicial beating to forty stripes (Deut. 25.1-3). She fails to
notice, however, that the part played by the shaming is different in the
two examples.
The threat of shaming by the widow was intended to put pressure on
the reluctant brother-in-law to carry out his duty to the deceased. The
significance of the 'name' underlies the actions, for not only was the
purpose of the levirate to continue the dead brother's 'name'6 - the
main way in which life was held to continue after death - but the
whole family of the brother who refused to take the widow is shamed
by the 'name' by which it is to be known. The label now attached to
the brother's family affected their status in the community; Bechtel
thinks it may have 'threatened their very survival'.7 Nevertheless, the
isolation of this ordinance may be significant. Daube holds that it is
the only law in the Pentateuch where 'the punishment consists in
public degradation'.8 The propriety of speaking of 'punishment' here
is doubtful. In the sense that it brings dishonour upon the brother and
his family and so affects their position within the community it may
be so regarded, but the term 'punishment' is better restricted to
situations where a crime has been committed and retribution is
exacted. Here the intention is to secure compliance with custom. It is
also questionable whether it is properly called 'judicial', since,
although the elders are involved, they do not impose the sanction, and
despite the quasi-legal formulation of the final verse of the passage, it
is more the recognition of what happened within Israelite society than
a formal legal sentence.9
There is a hint of a similar use of shaming in Numbers 12, to which
Bechtel draws attention in her attempt to explain the symbolism of
taking off the sandal and spitting. Embedded in the account of
Miriam's leprosy, which God imposed as a punishment for her
opposition to Moses, is the divine decree that Miriam is to be shut up
outside the camp for seven days. This is justified by the comment: 'If
her father had but spit in her face, should she not be shamed seven

6
A. D. H. Mayes holds that the main purpose was to avoid the loss of property to the
family (Deuteronomy, 328).
7
'Shame as a Sanction', 61.
8
'The Culture of Deuteronomy', 35, cf. 27.
9
A. D. H. Mayes discerns 'a certain weakening in the institution' in that failure to
fulfil the duty of the levirate 'is seen as a disgrace but not as a crime deserving of
punishment' (Deuteronomy, 329). The practice may have been dying out (the
limitation to brothers who are living together probably indicates this), but the
implication that disgrace was of less weight than punishment is not to be accepted.
22 GLIMPSES OF A STRANGE LAND
days?' (v. 14). This must refer to the shaming of a daughter for some
misdemeanour, although the original context is now lost. It is possible
that the daughter had spoken disrespectfully to her parents or had
failed to preserve sexual modesty.10
Rightly Bechtel states that such shaming is an objective act, and is
to be distinguished both from subjective feelings - 'being ashamed' -
and from a sense of 'guilt'. The reluctant brother and the disobedient
daughter suffer loss of status within the village hierarchy, the brother
and his 'house' permanently, the daughter for a fixed period of time.
Here are clear examples of shaming as a sanction of social control.
The forty stripes, on the other hand, is a punishment which follows
the finding of the 'judge' - 'acquit', 'innocent', 'condemn' and
'guilty' are forensic terms - and the beating is carried out in his
presence. It is only in the final motive clause that a word within the
vocabulary of honour and shame is found: 'lest . . . your brother be
degraded [niqlah] in your sight'.11 It is not clear whether the beating
itself contains an element of shame. Bechtel points out that the text
does not deal with the degree of shame the guilty person suffered by
having his guilt revealed in public and suffering the humiliation of a
public beating, though she believes that it did involve shame and this
functioned as 'an important deterrent and means of control'. To this
extent it was acceptable shame. Excessive beating, however, was
degrading, and the law protects the dignity of the individual. What is
central in public beating, however, is punishment, and is primarily
retributive, though it also acts as a deterrent to others. The two
systems of control are distinct, even though the one involves elements
of the other.
Informal shaming may possibly have played a part in social control,
though from the evidence of the book of Job it would appear that the
shaming followed the punishment which the friends believed God had
inflicted on Job. The belief against which the writer protests is that
God punishes wrongdoing with misfortune and illness. Loss of his
property and children, and the disease with which he is afflicted,
destroy Job's honourable place within society, a fact that Job bitterly
describes in his final speeches and elsewhere. Men younger than he is,
men of much lower social status, mock him (Job 30.1). They spit at
the sight of him (Job 30.10). His relatives, even his slaves, no longer
show him respect or wish to be with him (Job 19.13-19). Job sets his
humiliation in vivid contrast to the honour with which he had once
been held (Job 29.7-12). But this destruction of Job's honour is the
result of his misfortunes and is hardly a form of social control

10
See Eryl W. Davies, Numbers, 125.
11
Bechtel offers the translation 'it will dishonour your brother' and wrongly takes the
verb as hiph'il. It does not affect her argument.
 ETHICS AND HONOUR 23

in itself. The shaming would not have happened had not disaster
struck Job.
Shaming within the Psalter is to be understood in a similar way. The
vocabulary of shaming clusters in a small number of psalms, notably
in national and individual laments. Among the national laments
Psalms 44 and 74 stand out. In the first of these the psalmist contrasts
past victories, when God 'put to confusion those who hate us'
(44.8[7]) with their present humiliation (44.14-17[13-16]), while in
the second the attacks of the enemy are highlighted and their scoffing
and mocking is stressed (74.4-11, 18, 21, 22). In Ps. 69 the psalmist,
who is apparently seriously ill, repeatedly refers to the shaming to
which he is subjected (vv. 8[7], 10-13[9-12], 20-21 [19-20]). Other
psalmists pray that God will not allow them to be shamed, and seek
revenge on those who mock them (e.g., 25.1-3; 31.2[1], 18[17]; 71.1,
13, 24; 35.4, 26). How closely shaming is related to the judicial
process is doubtful. If some of the psalms are prayers by the accused,
the link may be close, although whether this is a correct interpretation
has been questioned and it has to be noted that the psalms which can
most convincingly be viewed in this way contain no references to
shaming (Pss. 7, 26, 27).12 It seems more probable that the shaming in
the psalms is to be understood against the background of sin and its
consequences,13 as in the book of Job. Some psalmists assert with
complete confidence that those who trust in Yahweh will never be
shamed (Ps. 37.18-19). Those who are ill find their suffering
increased because they are seen as bearing the consequences of
wrongdoing and are mocked by their 'enemies'.
From the evidence on which she bases her claims, therefore, it
would seem that Bechtel goes too far in claiming that shaming was 'a
prevalent and important sanction of behavior'. While she seems to be
correct in seeing its use as a means to 'manipulate status' and to
'dominate others', there is little evidence that it was used as a formal
sanction by the elders to control deviant activity. Rather, if the
psalmists correctly reflect what happened within the Israelite towns
and villages, it was illness and misfortune which were interpreted as divine
punishment. The mockery and shaming were a consequence of this.
Nevertheless, there is more to be said.
Although David Daube, as we have seen, regards the levirate law in
Deuteronomy 25 as the only example of shaming as a sanction, he
12
H. Schmidt made the claim for over thirty psalms in Gebet. Although criticisms of
the theory have been made, many accept that it is a plausible interpretation at least for
these three psalms. See also his commentary, Die Psalmen.
13
Whether this should be correctly described as sin and punishment has been
effectively questioned by Klaus Koch, 'Retribution', who argues that what is usually
described as retribution should be seen as an automatic working out of the
consequences of wrong-doing. For his discussion of Psalms see pp. 69—75.
24 GLIMPSES OF A STRANGE LAND
finds elements of shame-culture in the book.14 He believes that
disgrace awaits those who slip away from the army out of fear (Deut.
20.8, in the light of vv. 3-4). In the law concerning the straying ox or
sheep (Deut. 22.1^) the Hebrew 'you shall not hide yourself points
to shame - you must not try to escape without being noticed, for not
to help would be shameful.15 The man who claims that his wife was
not a virgin when he married her 'brings an evil name upon her'
(Deut. 22.13, cf. vv. 17, 19) - and the law seeks to save her from
being unjustly shamed. In the law prohibiting remarriage of a
divorced wife to her first husband if she had been remarried and
divorced in the meantime, the cause of the initial divorce is stated as
the finding by her husband of 'some indecency' in her (Deut. 24.1).
Daube points out that the phrase occurs elsewhere only in
Deuteronomy 23.14, and reflects the shame aspect.16 He sees the
prohibition of entering a neighbour's house to fetch his pledge (Deut.
24.10-11) as showing sensitivity to shame.17 More generally Daube
finds evidence of elements of a shame culture in the deterrent 'that all
Israel hear and fear' (Deut. 13.12[13]; 17.13; 19.20; 21.21) and the
communal display of happiness (Deut. 12.7, 12, 18; 14.26; 16.11, 14,
15; 26.11). He holds that the demand to 'purge out the evil from the
midst of you' (Deut. 13.6[5] and twelve other times) reflects a
concern with the look of things and hence is related to shame, but it is
more probable that it is related to purity, as we have already seen.18
Equally uncertain are his claims that the use of the imperfect 'thou
canst not' (Deut. 12.17; 16.5; 17.15; 21.16; 22.3, 19; 24.4) is distinct
from 'thou shalt not'. Behind this unique form by which
Deuteronomy urges that the prohibited actions should be regarded as
impossible to a people conforming to this code (an important
observation in itself) Daube sees an appeal to shame. Finally, he
draws attention to the curious phrase 'if there be found' (Deut. 17.2;
21.1; 22.22; 24.7). He denies that it is the equivalent of'if a man shall
.. . ', restricts the punishment to those caught in the act, or means 'if
found out' or 'discovered by chance'. Rather, he argues, the laws
stress the fearfulness of the appearance of the misdemeanour and the
expression is a further mark of the shame-cultural element in the

14
In the two articles listed in n. 5 above.
15
The EVV paraphrase and give a different sense: 'withhold your help' (RSV) 'do not
ignore it' (NIV, GNB, NRSV). RV retains 'hide thyself from them'.
16
By contrast Mayes (who regards the clause as a later addition) suggests it implies
some state of impurity (Deuteronomy, 322).
17
S. R. Driver interprets the motive as preserving the right of the borrower to select
the article offered as a pledge (Deuteronomy, 275). P. C. Craigie mentions both
interpretations but adds: 'It means that a man can borrow with honor' (Deuteronomy,
308).
18
See above, pp. 13-14.
 ETHICS AND HONOUR 25
book. The construction is not identical in each of the four laws,
however, and it is doubtful whether a single interpretation should be
given to all of them.
Daube over-presses the evidence, but he has shown that shame must
not be overlooked in any discussion of Old Testament ethics.
To take the matter further, it is to be noted that the Hebrew
vocabulary for shame is extensive.19 What is significant from the
perspective of ethics, however, is that the main word for shame (bd$)
is found more frequently in the prophets than elsewhere in the Old
Testament. Horst Seebass even claims that the root and its derivatives
'play practically no role at all before the great literary prophets of the
8th century B.C.'20 Too much should not be made of this. While the
prophets refer primarily to the shame which will come upon Israel and
Judah through defeat by their enemies, several of the metaphors which
they apply to Israel point to the practice of shaming in everyday life.
The most striking of these images is the public stripping of women
(Hos. 2.5[3], 12[10]; Ezek. 16.37-39; 23.10, 29; Isa. 47.2-3).
Jeremiah's account of the treatment of Jerusalem in 13.22, 26,
however, may refer to rape rather than shaming, while Isaiah 47.2-3
refers primarily to the treatment of captives in war, though here the
dominant feature is the shame of nakedness (and loss of honour by
being forced to do the work of slaves). In these examples, however,
the metaphor is contaminated by features from conquest of the nation
by an enemy, and it is not always certain which 'punishments' were
actually inflicted on adulteresses. It is true that the law decreed that
those committing adultery should be put to death (Lev. 20.10; Deut.
22.22), but as McKeating has pointed out, there is no recorded
evidence of anyone actually being put to death for adultery in the Old
Testament, the stories describing only the threat but not its being
implemented (Gen. 38.24; Susanna 41, 45,21 Jn. 7.53-8.11).22
What, then, can be concluded from this discussion? Bechtel has
argued that shame was an important social sanction in the culture of
ancient Israel. Daube offers examples of several different kinds and

19
Bechtel points this out and lists eight main verbs and associated nouns, as well as
actions that express shame, such as spitting and wagging the head ('Shame as a
Sanction', 54). The place that shaming held within Israelite culture, however, cannot
be proved from the width of the vocabulary and the contrast with the fewer number of
words for sin and guilt. For useful discussions of the words connected with honour and
shame see TDOT.
20
Horst Seebass, 'bosh' (TDOTII, 50-60), 52.
21
Note that Susanna's veil is stripped off (v. 32). The narrator says this is in order for
the 'wicked men' to feast upon her beauty, but it is also shaming - and shaming before
she is found guilty.
22
H. McKeating, 'Sanctions against Adultery'. See the next chapter for a fuller
discussion.
26 GLIMPSES OF A STRANGE LAND
applications of shame, but in the end admits that all he has proved is
the presence of shame-cultural elements in the book of Deuteronomy.
Pedersen, one of the earliest scholars to analyse shame in the Old
Testament, displays the significance of shame as clearly as any of the
later scholars. He points out that the man who is rich in blessing,
successful in all he undertakes, and wealthy, is held in honour, as the
book of Job so clearly shows. Honour for a woman is primarily to
bear a man's name and to provide him with children (cf. Isa. 4.1; Gen.
30.23).23 Not to possess the strength to maintain one's honour leads to
shame, as when an army is defeated and steals back into the city
ashamed (2 Sam. 19.4[3], cf. national laments in the Psalter). To
appear abandoned by God or under his judgment and displeasure,
because of illness or misfortune, leads to shame and to being mocked,
thence the anguished petitions of the psalmists. Shame causes acute
distress in the one who is shamed. But whether there was a 'system'
of shame, parallel to that of right and wrong, goodness and evil, in the
same way that there was a purity system is doubtful. Shaming as a
sanction appears to be limited to a very narrow range of wrongdoing.
The main types of 'immorality' with which the sanction is linked are
sexual, and shame may be experienced even when the person bearing
the shame is the innocent victim, as in the case of Tamar (2 Sam.
13.13, 19). For the rest, however, the shame accompanies or follows
various kinds of failure. Only very occasionally does the law attempt
to ensure that no one is shamed for circumstances over which they
have no control.
Despite this limited conclusion, the importance of shame must not
be underestimated. The Israelites were extremely sensitive to honour
and shame, and the shame that followed disasters that were regarded
as divine punishment increased the bitterness of that punishment.
Hence on the one hand the prophets could elaborate on the shame to
which Israel would be brought as a powerful support for their demand
for justice and obedience to God's will, while on the other hand the
suffering of Job and the psalmists was increased by the shame which
their plight entailed. Shaming Israel is part of God's reaction to
Israel's sin, but equally the pleas of Job and the psalmists show that
by mocking those who suffer, the 'friends' of Job and the 'enemies'
of the psalmists have failed to understand the relation between

23
Malina and Neyrey express it differently: 'for males, shame is the loss of honor;
shame, then is a negative experience, as in being shamed: for females, shame is the
sensitivity to and defense of honor: female shame (having shame), then is a positive
value in a woman; a woman branded as "shameless" means for a female what being
shamed means for a male' (Honor and Shame, 4If). This accepts the difference in
what constitutes 'honour' for the two sexes, but is an odd way of expressing it. The
'shameless' woman is one who has no sense of the difference between honour and
shame.
 ETHICS AND HONOUR 27
suffering and wrong-doing. Shame can be a powerful sanction and a
fearful consequence of a few types of sin. As powerfully and fearfully
it can be misapplied and harm the innocent. It can season the
eloquence of the prophet. Equally it enters into the plea of those who
are ill. No study of Old Testament ethics can ignore it, but too great
emphasis upon it risks exaggerating the importance of sexual sins, for
it is to these that shame is mainly attached, and distorting the
motivation for keeping the law.24
The glimpses of the biblical social landscape which we have
obtained through these two windows have suggested that our
understanding of ethics may be too narrow. Ethics, purity and honour
are all visible. Moreover, while we make clear distinctions between
them, it may well be that the Israelites failed to do so, indeed, were
completely unaware that such differences existed. If this is right, our
attempts to analyse the biblical scene and fasten on ethics may lead to
false interpretations. We need to climb higher.

24
See Ferdinand E. Deist, Material Culture, 293-294, 297. He sees shame and guilt as
universal social control mechanisms. Importantly, he stresses that 'shame' is not a
feeling but a social status, as guilt is a legal status: 'One can only be shamed after one
has been "caught out".' Jacqueline E. Lapsley has a useful discussion of shame in
Moral Self, 129-156 (this reached me too late to include a discussion).
 4

ADULTERY

In the last chapter we noticed briefly that Henry McKeating pointed

out that the Old Testament never records anyone actually being put to
death for adultery, despite the laws which decree this as the penalty. It
will advance our understanding of Old Testament ethics if we pursue
this a little further.
The laws on adultery are few in number, short, and far from clear.
In the Decalogue just two Hebrew words issue the command: 'Thou
shalt not commit adultery' (Ex. 20.14; Deut. 5.18). No definition of
adultery is given, no punishment for offenders is laid down, no
situations which might allow for extenuating circumstances are
suggested. Anthony Phillips, however, argues that the Decalogue was
Israel's criminal law and that the punishment for breaking the
commandments was death.1 It will be necessary to return to this later.
In Deuteronomy adultery carries the death penalty:
If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall
die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman; so you shall
purge out the evil from Israel (Deut. 22.22).
Here the offence is more plainly defined. Adultery is committed when
a man has sexual intercourse with a married woman. No more and no
less, although a woman who is betrothed counts as married (Deut.
22.24).2 There is no hint that the man has committed a wrong against
his own wife, were he married. The offence is entirely against the
woman's husband, and even if the man was not married he is still
regarded as an adulterer. Nothing is said about having sexual
intercourse with a woman who is not married. Laws regarding the
seducing of unmarried women who are not betrothed are quite
different. In that case the man has to pay the mohar ('bride-price'),
whether he is willing to marry the woman or not, since her value to
her father is less because she is no longer a virgin
(Ex. 22.15-16[16-17]; Deut. 22.28-29; note that the amount of the

1
Anthony Phillips, Israel's Criminal Law.
2
Although the reference in this law is to rape, the situation of the betrothed virgin
seems to be the same, especially as it was assumed that the woman had given her
consent if the rape occurred within a town.
28
 ADULTERY 29
payment is specified and the man is required to marry the woman, the
marriage being indissoluble; whether the law refers to seduction or
rape is not certain).
Several features in this adultery law, however, are ambiguous.
Three suggestions have been offered as the grounds of the offence: (1)
the woman is the husband's property, (2) the offence comes within the
purity system, and (3) adultery disturbed the patriarchal system by
introducing uncertainty about the father of any children who might
result from the act.3 The first may well have been part of the popular
attitude towards adultery, but the much greater severity with which it
was treated shows that this is not the main reason. Pollution was
always involved, whatever the chief purpose may have been.
Questions of the paternity of the children are never raised explicitly,
though it may well have been one motive (see the law of the jealous
husband, pp. 30f.).
Two further points of procedure should be noted. First, the law
contains the phrase, 'if a man is found', which, as we have seen,
Daube takes to imply the shame that adultery causes by emphasizing
the fearfulness of the appearance of the misdemeanour.4 Here,
however, it is more natural to take the phrase to mean that the couple
are caught in the act.5 There is no law in Deuteronomy to meet the
situation of a husband who entertains suspicions that his wife has had
sexual relations with another man but has no firm evidence.6 Second,
the method of execution is not defined. If the case of the betrothed
virgin can be taken as in some sense parallel, it was by stoning, which,
as we have already seen, is the only form of execution where those
carrying it out have no physical contact with the wrong-doer, and
were this the punishment decreed for adultery here, it would support
the view that the chief evil that the law found in adultery was
impurity. This is supported by the further clause attached to the law:
'so you shall purge the evil from Israel', which we have had reason to
link with the purity system.7
The final reference to adultery found in the law codes is included in
the list of sexual offences in Leviticus 18, part of the Holiness Code:
You shall not lie carnally with your neighbour's wife, and defile yourself
with her (Lev. 18.20).

The wording is curious. A baldly literal rendering would be something

3
See A. D. H. Mayes, Deuteronomy, 170, 311.
4
See p. 24 above.
5
Of the offences in the four laws in which the phrase occurs, adultery is the only one
which can only be proved if the couple are caught in the act - hence the common
resort to an ordeal (see n. 11 below).
6
Num. 5.11-31 will be considered later (pp. 30f.).
7
See above pp. 13-14.
30 GLIMPSES OF A STRANGE LAND
like: 'And to the wife of your neighbour (companion8) you shall not
give your lying for seed for (to) pollution in (with, by) her.' The main
problem is in the phrase 'lying for seed', instead of the usual 'a lying
o/seed' (construct relation, Lev. 15.16, 18, 32; 22.4; Num. 5.13),
which refers to the emission of semen. Westbrook suggests that the
offence is not adultery in the strict legal sense. Rather the offender has
agreed to sleep with his companion's wife with his consent in order to
provide a child for the couple who were childless. If this is so, the
offence is not conceived as being against the woman's husband, and
there is no prospect of legal proceedings being undertaken. Indeed,
Westbrook points out that the matter is not likely to come to light.9
The Holiness Code says nothing about a legal punishment but
states that it causes defilement.10 In other words, it is interpreted
unambiguously in terms of purity. Further, such defilement will cause
the land to be defiled and it will 'vomit out' its inhabitants. To avoid
this, whoever commits any of these 'abominations', 'shall be cut off
from among their people' (Lev. 18.28-29). What is intended by this
last phrase is not entirely certain. It might imply the death penalty, and
this is decreed later in the code, in a law which is parallel to that in
Deuteronomy 22.22:
If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbour, both the
adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death (Lev. 20.10).
Or it might mean some form of 'excommunication' (the term is
strictly anachronistic, since it applies only to the Christian church; it is
used loosely to signify exclusion from the covenant community). The
words may bear some relation to the Deuteronomic call to 'purge out'
the evil. On the other hand, since verses 24-30 are expressed in non-
legal terms, it is more probable that the Holiness Code is thinking in
terms of divine retribution, maybe through a quasi-automatic evil
consequence, though under the control of God.
To complete this survey of the legal evidence, the case of the
jealous husband needs to be considered (Num. 5.11-31). This is the
only example of trial by ordeal in the Old Testament, although ordeals
were common in the ancient world, and, indeed, were practised in

8
Apart from Zech. 13.7 the Hebrew word (cdmit) is found only in Leviticus, where it
appears to refer to a male fellow Israelite. Sometimes it expresses reciprocal relations
(Lev. 19.11). In 5.21 [6.2] it seems to mean 'business associate'.
9
Raymond Westbrook, 'Adultery', 568.
10
N. H. Snaith, Leviticus and Numbers, 125, suggests that the defilement is due to
contact with the husband's semen which it is assumed is present in the woman's
vagina (cf. contact with menstrual blood in v. 19). This is possible, but it seems more
probable that it is simply sexual contact with a woman who belongs to another that
causes the uncleanness.
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Church from those tender years wherein the only vocation manifest
is that which summons boyhood to peg-top and jam tart. When the
time drew near in which he should have taken orders, Willoughby
went up to London, brimful of eager philanthropy, of religious doubts,
and of literary ambition, to become one of the High-priests of Letters.
His first work was a novel to illustrate the mission of the literary
Priesthood, a topsy-turvy affair, but dashingly clever—by the way,
you can scarcely offend him more than to mention it now;—with this
book he succeeded in producing a sensation, and the barrier thus
passed, his pen has found full employment ever since. He has now
abandoned the extravagances of hero-worship, and I have even
heard him intimate a doubt as to whether ‘able editors’ were, after
all, the great, divinely-accredited hierophants of the species.
At present Willoughby is occupied, as time allows, with a
philosophical romance, in which are to be embodied his views of
society as it is and as it should be. This desperate enterprise is quite
a secret; even Atherton and Gower know nothing of it; so you will not
mention it, if you please, to more than half-a-dozen of your most
intimate friends.
Willoughby was first introduced to Atherton as the author of some
articles in favour of certain social reforms in which the latter had
deeply interested himself. So remarkable were these papers for
breadth, discrimination, and vivacity of style, that the admiring
Atherton could not rest till he had made the acquaintance of the
writer. The new combatant awakened general attention, and Frank
Willoughby was on the point of becoming a lion. But his
conversational powers were inconsiderable. His best thoughts ran
with his ink from the point of the pen. So Atherton, with little difficulty,
carried him off from the lion-hunters.
The three friends were agreed that the crowning locality of all for any
mortal was a residence a few miles from town, with congenial
neighbours close at hand,—a house or two where one might drop in
for an evening at any time. As was their theory so was their practice,
and the two younger men are often to be found in the evening at
Atherton’s, sometimes in the library with him, sometimes in the
drawing-room, with the additional enjoyment afforded by the society
of his fair young wife and her sister.
But while I have been Boswellizing to you about the past history of
these friends of mine, you cannot have heard a word they have been
saying. Now I will be quiet,—let us listen.
 CHAPTER II.

Philosophy itself
Smacks of the age it lives in, nor is true
Save by the apposition of the present.
And truths of olden time, though truths they be,
And living through all time eternal truths,
Yet want the seas’ning and applying hand
Which Nature sends successive. Else the need
Of wisdom should wear out and wisdom cease,
Since needless wisdom were not to be wise.

Edwin the Fair.

Atherton. A pleasant little knot to set us, Gower,—to determine the

conditions of your art.
Willoughby. And after dinner, too, of all times.
Gower. Why not? If the picture-critics would only write their verdicts
after dinner, many a poor victim would find his dinner prospects
brighter. This is the genial hour; the very time to discuss æsthetics,
where geniality is everything.
Willoughby. Do you remember that passage in one of our old plays
(I think it was in Lamb I saw it), where the crazed father asks all sorts
of impossible things from the painter. He wants him to make the tree
shriek on which his murdered son hangs ghastly in the moonlight.
Gower. Salvator has plenty of them, splintered with shrieking.
Willoughby. But this man’s frenzy demands more yet:—make me
cry, make me mad, make me well again, and in the end leave me in
a trance,—and so forth.
Atherton. Fortunate painter—a picture gallery ordered in a breath!
Willoughby. By no means. Now does this request, when you come
to think of it, so enormously violate the conditions of the art?
Seriously, I should state the matter thus:—The artist is limited to a
moment only, and yet is the greater artist in proportion as he can not
only adequately occupy, but even transcend that moment.
Gower. I agree with you. Painting reaches its highest aim when it
carries us beyond painting; when it is not merely itself a creation, but
makes the spectator creative, and prompts him with the antecedents
and the consequents of the represented action.
Atherton. But all are not equal to the reception of such
suggestions.
Gower. And so, with unsusceptible minds, we must be satisfied if
they praise us for our imitation merely.
Willoughby. Yet even they will derive more pleasure, though unable
to account for it, from works of this higher order. Those, assuredly,
are the masterpieces of art, in any branch, which are, as it were,
triumphal arches that lead us out into the domain of some sister art.
When poetry pourtrays with the painter,—
Gower. My favourite, Spenser, to wit.—
Willoughby. When painting sings its story with the minstrel, and
when music paints and sings with both, they are at their height. Take
music, for instance. What scenes does some fine overture suggest,
even when you know nothing of its design, as you close your eyes
and yield to its influence. The events, or the reading of the previous
day, the incidents of history or romance, are wrought up with glorious
transfigurations, and you are in the land of dreams at once. Some of
them rise before me at this moment, vivid as ever:—now I see the
fair damosels of the olden time on their palfreys, prancing on the
sward beside a castle gate, while silver trumpets blow; then, as the
music changes, I hear cries far off on forlorn and haunted moors;
now it is the sea, and there sets the sun, red, through the ribs of a
wrecked hull, that cross it like skeleton giant bars. There is one
passage in the overture to Fra Diavolo, during which I always
emerge, through ocean caves, in some silken palace of the east,
where the music rises and rains in the fountains, and ethereally
palpitates in their wavering rainbows. But dream-scenery of this sort
is familiar to most persons at such times.
Gower. I have often revelled in it.
Willoughby. And what is true for so many with regard to music, may
sometimes be realized on seeing pictures.
Atherton. Only, I think, in a way still more accidental and arbitrary.
An instance, however, of the thing you mention did happen to me
last week. I had been reading a German writer on mysticism,
searching, after many disappointments, for a satisfactory definition of
it. Page after page of metaphysical verbiage did I wade through in
vain. At last, what swarms of labouring words had left as obscure as
ever, a picture seemed to disclose to me in a moment. I saw that
evening, at a friend’s house, a painting which revealed to me, as I
imagined, the very spirit of mysticism in a figure; it was a visible
emblem or hieroglyph of that mysterious religious affection.
Willoughby. Your own subjectivity forged both lock and key
together, I suspect.
Gower. What in the world did the piece represent?
Atherton. I will describe it as well as I can. It was the interior of a
Spanish cathedral. The most prominent object in the foreground
below was the mighty foot of a staircase, with a balustrade of
exceeding richness, which, in its ascent, crosses and recrosses the
picture till its highest flight is lost in darkness,—for on that side the
cathedral is built against a hill. A half-light slanted down—a sunbeam
through the vast misty space—from a window without the range of
the picture. At various stages of the mounting stairway figures on
pillars, bearing escutcheons, saints and kings in fretted niches, and
painted shapes of gules and azure from the lofty window in the east,
looked down on those who were ascending, some in brightness,
some in shadow. At the foot of the stairs were two couchant griffins
of stone, with expanded spiny wings, arched necks fluted with horny
armour, and open threatening jaws.
Gower. Now for the interpretation of your parable in stone.
Atherton. It represented to me the mystic’s progress—my mind
was full of that—his initiation, his ascent, his consummation in self-
loss. First of all the aspirant, whether he seeks superhuman
knowledge or superhuman love, is confronted at the outset by
terrible shapes—the Dwellers of the Threshold, whether the cruelty
of asceticism, the temptations of the adversary, or the phantoms of
his own feverish brain. This fiery baptism manfully endured, he
begins to mount through alternate glooms and illuminations; now
catching a light from some source beyond the grosser organs of
ordinary men, again in darkness and barren drought of soul. The
saintly memories of adepts and of heroes in these mystic labours are
the faithful witnesses that cheer him at each stage, whose far glories
beacon him from their place of high degree as he rises step by step.
Are not those first trials fairly symbolized by my griffins, those
vicissitudes of the soul by such light and shadow, and those exalted
spectators by the statues of my stairway and the shining ones of my
oriel window? Then for the climax. The aim of the mystic, if of the
most abstract contemplative type, is to lose himself in the Divine
Dark[3]—to escape from everything definite, everything palpable,
everything human, into the Infinite Fulness; which is, at the same
time, the ‘intense inane.’ The profoundest obscurity is his highest
glory; he culminates in darkness; for is not the deathlike midnight
slumber of the sense, he will ask us, the wakeful noonday of the
spirit? So, as I looked on the picture, I seemed to lose sight of him
where the summit of the stair was lost among the shadows crouched
under the roof of that strange structure.
Gower. I perceive the analogy. I owe you thanks for enabling me to
attach at least some definite idea to the word mysticism. I confess I
have generally used the term mystical to designate anything
fantastically unintelligible, without giving to it any distinct
significance.
Willoughby. I have always been partial to the mystics, I must say.
They appear to me to have been the conservators of the poetry and
heart of religion, especially in opposition to the dry prose and
formalism of the schoolmen.
Atherton. So they really were in great measure. They did good
service, many of them, in their day—their very errors often such as
were possible only to great souls. Still their notions concerning
special revelation and immediate intuition of God were grievous
mistakes.
Willoughby. Yet without the ardour imparted by such doctrines,
they might have lacked the strength requisite to withstand
misconceptions far more mischievous.
Atherton. Very likely. We should have more mercy on the one-
sidedness of men, if we reflected oftener that the evil we condemn
may be in fact keeping out some much greater evil on the other side.
Willoughby. I think one may learn a great deal from such erratic or
morbid kinds of religion. Almost all we are in a position to say,
concerning spiritual influence, consists of negatives—and what that
influence is not we can best gather from these abnormal phases of
the mind. Certainly an impartial estimate of the good and of the evil
wrought by eminent mystics, would prove a very instructive
occupation; it would be a trying of the spirits by their fruits.
Gower. And all the more useful as the mistakes of mysticism,
whatever they may be, are mistakes concerning questions which we
all feel it so important to have rightly answered; committed, too, by
men of like passions with ourselves, so that what was danger to
them may be danger also to some of us, in an altered form.
Atherton. Unquestionably. Rationalism overrates reason, formalism
action, and mysticism feeling—hence the common attributes of the
last, heat and obscurity. But a tendency to excess in each of these
three directions must exist in every age among the cognate varieties
of mind. You remember how Pindar frequently introduces into an ode
two opposite mythical personages, such as a Pelops or a Tantalus,
an Ixion or a Perseus, one of whom shall resemble the great man
addressed by the poet in his worse, the other in his better
characteristics; that thus he may be at once encouraged and
deterred. Deeper lessons than were drawn for Hiero from the
characters of the heroic age may be learnt by us from the religious
struggles of the past. It would be impossible to study the position of
the old mystics without being warned and stimulated by a weakness
and a strength to which our nature corresponds;—unless, indeed,
the enquiry were conducted unsympathizingly; with cold hearts, as
far from the faith of the mystics as from their follies.
Gower. If we are likely to learn in this way from such an
investigation, suppose we agree to set about it, and at once.
Atherton. With all my heart. I have gone a little way in this direction
alone; I should be very glad to have company upon the road.
Willoughby. An arduous task, when you come to look it in the face,
—to determine that narrow line between the genuine ardour of the
Christian and the overwrought fervours of the mystical devotee,—to
enter into the philosophy of such a question; and that with a
terminology so misleading and so defective as the best at our
service. It will be like shaping the second hand of a watch with a pair
of shears, I promise you. We shall find continually tracts of ground
belonging to one of the rival territories of True and False inlaid upon
the regions of the other, like those patches from a distant shire that
lie in the middle of some of our counties. Many of the words we must
employ to designate a certain cast of mind or opinion are taken from
some accidental feature or transitory circumstance,—express no real
characteristic of the idea in question. They indicate our ignorance,
like the castles with large flags, blazoned with the arms of
sovereigns, which the old monkish geographers set down in their
maps of Europe to stand instead of the rivers, towns, and mountains
of an unknown interior.
Atherton. True enough; but we must do the best we can. We
should never enter on any investigation a little beneath the surface of
things if we consider all the difficulties so gravely. Besides, we are
not going to be so ponderously philosophical about the matter. The
facts themselves will be our best teachers, as they arise, and as we
arrange them when they accumulate.
History fairly questioned is no Sphinx. She tells us what kind of
teaching has been fruitful in blessing to humanity, and why; and what
has been a mere boastful promise or powerless formula. She is the
true test of every system, and the safeguard of her disciples from
theoretical or practical extravagance. Were her large lessons
learned, from how many foolish hopes and fears would they save
men! We should not then see a fanatical confidence placed in pet
theories for the summary expulsion of all superstition, wrongfulness,
and ill-will,—theories whose prototypes failed ages back: neither
would good Christian folk be so frightened as some of them are at
the seemingly novel exhibitions of unbelief in our time.
Willoughby. A great gain—to be above both panic and
presumption. I have never heartily given myself to a historic study
without realizing some such twofold advantage. It animated and it
humbled me. How minute my power; but how momentous to me its
conscientious exercise! I will hunt this mystical game with you, or
any other, right willingly; all the more so, if we can keep true to a
historic rather than theoretical treatment of the subject.
Gower. As to practical details, then:—I propose that we have no
rules.
Willoughby. Certainly not; away with formalities; let us be
Thelemites, and do as we like. We can take up this topic as a bye-
work, to furnish us with some consecutive pursuit in those intervals
of time we are so apt to waste. We can meet—never mind at what
intervals, from a week to three months—and throw into the common
stock of conversation our several reading on the questions in hand.
Atherton. Or one of us may take up some individual or period; write
down his thoughts: and we will assemble then to hear and talk the
matter over.
Gower. Very good. And if Mrs. Atherton and Miss Merivale will
sometimes deign to honour our evenings with their society, our
happiness will be complete.
This mention of the ladies reminds our friends of the time, and they
are breaking up to join them.
The essays and dialogues which follow have their origin in the
conversation to which we have just listened.
 CHAPTER III.

If we entertain the inward man in the purgative and illuminative

way, that is, in actions of repentance, virtue, and precise duty,
that is the surest way of uniting us to God, whilst it is done by
faith and obedience; and that also is love; and in these peace
and safety dwell. And after we have done our work, it is not
discretion in a servant to hasten to his meal, and snatch at the
refreshment of visions, unions, and abstractions; but first we
must gird ourselves, and wait upon the master, and not sit down
ourselves, till we all be called at the great supper of the Lamb.—
Jeremy Taylor.

‘So, we are to be etymological to-night,’ exclaimed Gower, as he

stepped forward to join Willoughby in his inspection of a great folio
which Atherton had laid open on a reading desk, ready to entertain
his friends.
‘What says Suidas about our word mysticism?’
Willoughby. I see the old lexicographer derives the original word
from the root mu, to close: the secret rites and lessons of the Greek
mysteries were things about which the mouth was to be closed.[4]
Gower. We have the very same syllable in our language for the
same thing—only improved in expressiveness by the addition of
another letter,—we say, ‘to be mum.’
Atherton. Well, this settles one whole class of significations at
once. The term mystical may be applied in this sense to any secret
language or ritual which is understood only by the initiated. In this
way the philosophers borrowed the word figuratively from the priests,
and applied it to their inner esoteric doctrines. The disciple admitted
to these was a philosophical ‘myst,’ or mystic.
Willoughby. The next step is very obvious. The family of words
relating to mystery, initiation, &c., are adopted into the ecclesiastical
phraseology of the early Christian world,—not in the modified use of
them occasionally observable in St. Paul, but with their old Pagan
significance.
Gower. So that the exclusive and aristocratic spirit of Greek culture
re-appears in Christianity?
Atherton. Just so. Thus you see the church doors shutting out the
catechumens from beholding ‘the mystery’ (as they came to call the
Eucharist, par excellence) quite as rigidly as the brazen gates of
Eleusis excluded the profane many. You hear Theodoret and
Ambrose speaking freely before the uninitiated on moral subjects,
but concerning the rites they deemed of mysterious, almost magical
efficacy, they will deliver only obscure utterances to such auditors;
their language is purposely dark and figurative,—suggestive to the
initiated, unintelligible to the neophyte. How often on approaching
the subject of the sacrament, does Chrysostom stop short in his
sermon, and break off abruptly with the formula,—‘the initiated will
understand what I mean.’ So Christianity, corrupted by Gentile
philosophy, has in like manner its privileged and its inferior order of
votaries,—becomes a respecter of persons, with arbitrary distinction
makes two kinds of religion out of one, and begins to nourish with
fatal treachery its doctrine of reserve.[5]
Willoughby. But Suidas has here, I perceive, a second meaning in
store for us. This latter, I suspect, is most to our purpose,—it is
simply an extension of the former. He refers the word to the practice
of closing as completely as possible every avenue of perception by
the senses, for the purpose of withdrawing the mind from everything
external into itself, so as to fit it (raised above every sensuous
representation) for receiving divine illumination immediately from
above.
Gower. Platonic abstraction, in fact.
Atherton. So it seems. The Neo-Platonist was accustomed to call
every other branch of science the ‘lesser mysteries:’ this inward
contemplation, the climax of Platonism, is the great mystery, the
inmost, highest initiation. Withdraw into thyself, he will say, and the
adytum of thine own soul will reveal to thee profounder secrets than
the cave of Mithras. So that his mysticus is emphatically the
enclosed, self-withdrawn, introverted man.[6] This is an initiation
which does not merely, like that of Isis or of Ceres, close the lips in
silence, but the eye, the ear, every faculty of perception, in inward
contemplation or in the ecstatic abstraction of the trance.
Willoughby. So then it is an effort man is to make—in harmony with
the matter-hating principles of this school—to strip off the material
and sensuous integuments of his being, and to reduce himself to a
purely spiritual element. And in thus ignoring the follies and the
phantasms of Appearance—as they call the actual world—the
worshipper of pure Being believed himself to enjoy at least a
transitory oneness with the object of his adoration?
Atherton. So Plotinus would say, if not Plato. And now we come to
the transmission of the idea and the expression to the Church. A
writer, going by the name of Dionysius the Areopagite, ferries this
shade over into the darkness visible of the ecclesiastical world in the
fifth century. The system of mystical theology introduced by him was
eminently adapted to the monastic and hierarchical tendencies of the
time. His ‘Mystic’ is not merely a sacred personage, acquainted with
the doctrines and participator in the rites called mysteries, but one
also who (exactly after the Neo-Platonist pattern) by mortifying the
body, closing the senses to everything external, and ignoring every
‘intellectual apprehension,’[7] attains in passivity a divine union, and
in ignorance a wisdom transcending all knowledge.
Gower. Prepared to say, I suppose, with one of old George
Chapman’s characters—

I’ll build all inward—not a light shall ope

The common out-way.—
I’ll therefore live in dark; and all my light,
Like ancient temples, let in at my top.

Willoughby. Not much light either. The mystic, as such, was not to
know anything about the Infinite, he was ‘to gaze with closed eyes,’
passively to receive impressions, lost in the silent, boundless ‘Dark’
of the Divine Subsistence.
Atherton. This, then, is our result. The philosophical perfection of
Alexandria and the monastic perfection of Byzantium belong to the
same species. Philosophers and monks alike employ the word
mysticism and its cognate terms as involving the idea, not merely of
initiation into something hidden, but, beyond this, of an internal
manifestation of the Divine to the intuition or in the feeling of the
secluded soul. It is in this last and narrower sense, therefore, that the
word is to be understood when we speak of mystical death, mystical
illumination, mystical union with God, and, in fact, throughout the
phraseology of what is specially termed Theologia Mystica.[8]
Gower. I have often been struck by the surprising variety in the
forms of thought and the modes of action in which mysticism has
manifested itself among different nations and at different periods.
This arises, I should think, from its residing in so central a province
of the mind—the feeling. It has been incorporated in theism, atheism,
and pantheism. It has given men gods at every step, and it has
denied all deity except self. It has appeared in the loftiest speculation
and in the grossest idolatry. It has been associated with the wildest
licence and with the most pitiless asceticism. It has driven men out
into action, it has dissolved them in ecstasy, it has frozen them to
torpor.
Atherton. Hence the difficulty of definition. I have seen none which
quite satisfies me. Some include only a particular phase of it, while
others so define its province as to stigmatise as mystical every kind
of religiousness which rises above the zero of rationalism.
Willoughby. The Germans have two words for mysticism—mystik
and mysticismus. The former they use in a favourable, the latter in
an unfavourable, sense.—
Gower. Just as we say piety and pietism, or rationality and
rationalism; keeping the first of each pair for the use, the second for
the abuse. A convenience, don’t you think?
Atherton. If the adjective were distinguishable like the nouns—but
it is not; and to have a distinction in the primitive and not in the
derivative word is always confusing. But we shall keep to the usage
of our own language. I suppose we shall all be agreed in employing
the word mysticism in the unfavourable signification, as equivalent
generally to spirituality diseased, grown unnatural, fantastic, and the
like.
Gower. At the same time admitting the true worth of many mystics,
and the real good and truth of which such errors are the
exaggeration or caricature.
Atherton. I think we may say thus much generally—that mysticism,
whether in religion or philosophy, is that form of error which mistakes
for a divine manifestation the operations of a merely human faculty.
Willoughby. There you define, at any rate, the characteristic
misconception of the mystics.
Gower. And include, if I mistake not, enthusiasts, with their visions;
pretended prophets, with their claim of inspiration; wonder-workers,
trusting to the divine power resident in their theurgic formulas; and
the philosophers who believe themselves organs of the world-soul,
and their systems an evolution of Deity.
Atherton. Yes, so far; but I do not profess to give any definition
altogether adequate. Speaking of Christian mysticism, I should
describe it generally as the exaggeration of that aspect of
Christianity which is presented to us by St. John.
Gower. That answer provokes another question. How should you
characterize John’s peculiar presentation of the Gospel?
Atherton. I refer chiefly to that admixture of the contemplative
temperament and the ardent, by which he is personally
distinguished,—the opposition so manifest in his epistles to all
religion of mere speculative opinion or outward usage,—the
concentration of Christianity, as it were, upon the inward life derived
from union with Christ. This would seem to be the province of
Christian truth especially occupied by the beloved disciple, and this
is the province which mysticism has in so many ways usurped.
Gower. Truly that unction from the Holy One, of which John speaks,
has found some strange claimants!
Willoughby. Thus much I think is evident from our enquiry—that
mysticism, true to its derivation as denoting a hidden knowledge,
faculty, or life (the exclusive privilege of sage, adept, or recluse),
presents itself, in all its phases, as more or less the religion of
internal as opposed to external revelation,—of heated feeling, sickly
sentiment, or lawless imagination, as opposed to that reasonable
belief in which the intellect and the heart, the inward witness and the
outward, are alike engaged.

Note to page 21.

Numerous definitions of ‘Mystical Theology’ are supplied by Roman

Catholic divines who have written on the subject. With all of them the
terms denote the religion of the heart as distinguished from
speculation, scholasticism, or ritualism; and, moreover, those higher
experiences of the divine life associated, in their belief, with
extraordinary gifts and miraculous powers. Such definitions will
accordingly comprehend the theopathetic and theurgic forms of
mysticism, but must necessarily exclude the theosophic. Many of
them might serve as definitions of genuine religion. These mystical
experiences have been always coveted and admired in the Romish
Church; and those, therefore, who write concerning them employ the
word mysticism in a highly favourable sense. That excess of
subjectivity—those visionary raptures and supernatural exaltations,
which we regard as the symptoms of spiritual disease, are, in the
eyes of these writers, the choice rewards of sufferings and of
aspirations the most intense,—they are the vision of God and things
celestial enjoyed by the pure in heart,—the dazzling glories
wherewith God has crowned the heads of a chosen few, whose
example shall give light to all the world.
Two or three specimens will suffice. Gerson gives the two following
definitions of the Theologia Mystica:—‘Est animi extensio in Deum
per amoris desiderium.’ And again: ‘Est motio anagogica in Deum
per purum et fervidum amorem.’ Elsewhere he is more metaphorical,
describing it as the theology which teaches men to escape from the
stormy sea of sensuous desires to the safe harbour of Eternity, and
shows them how to attain that love which snatches them away to the
Beloved, unites them with Him, and secures them rest in Him.
Dionysius the Carthusian (associating evidently mystica and
mysteriosa) says,—‘Est autem mystica Theologia secretissima
mentis cum Deo locutio.’ John à Jesu Maria calls it, ‘cœlestis
quædam Dei notitia per unionem voluntatis Deo adhærentis elicita,
vel lumine cœlitus immisso producta.’ This mystical theology,
observes the Carthusian Dionysius, farther, (commentating on the
Areopagite), is no science, properly so called; even regarded as an
act, it is simply the concentration (defixio) of the mind on God—
admiration of his majesty—a suspension of the mind in the
boundless and eternal light—a most fervid, most peaceful,
transforming gaze on Deity, &c.
All alike contrast the mystical with the scholastic and the symbolical
theology. The points of dissimilarity are thus summed up by Cardinal
Bona:—‘Per scholasticam discit homo recte uti intelligibilibus, per
symbolicam sensibilibus, per hanc (mysticam) rapitur ad
supermentales excessus. Scientiæ humanæ in valle phantasiæ
discuntur, hæc in apice mentis. Illæ multis egent discursibus, et
erroribus subjectæ sunt: hæc unico et simplici verbo docetur et
discitur, et est mere supernaturalis tam in substantiâ quam in modo
procedendi.’—Via Compendii ad Deum, cap. iii. 1-3.
The definition given by Corderius in his introduction to the mystical
theology of Dionysius is modelled on the mysticism of John de la
Cruz:—‘Theologia Mystica est sapientia experimentalis, Dei
affectiva, divinitus infusa, quæ mentem ab omni inordinatione puram,
per actus supernaturales fidei, spei, et charitatis, cum Deo intime
conjungit.’—Isagoge, cap. ii.
The most negative definition of all is that given by Pachymeres, the
Greek paraphrast of Dionysius, who has evidently caught his
master’s mantle, or cloak of darkness. ‘Mystical theology is not
perception or discourse, not a movement of the mind, not an
operation, not a habit, nothing that any other power we may possess
will bring to us; but if, in absolute immobility of mind we are illumined
concerning it, we shall know that it is beyond everything cognizable
by the mind of man.’—Dion. Opp. vol. i. p. 722.
In one place the explanations of Corderius give us to understand that
the mysticism he extols does at least open a door to theosophy itself,
i.e. to inspired science. He declares that the mystical theologian not
only has revealed to him the hidden sense of Scripture, but that he
can understand and pierce the mysteries of any natural science
whatsoever, in a way quite different from that possible to other men
—in short, by a kind of special revelation.—Isagoge, cap. iv.
The reader will gather the most adequate notion of what is meant, or
thought to be meant, by mystical theology from the description given
by Ludovic Blosius, a high authority on matters mystical, in his
Institutio Spiritualis. Corderius cites him at length, as ‘sublimissimus
rerum mysticarum interpres.’
Happy, he exclaims, is that soul which steadfastly follows after purity
of heart and holy introversion, renouncing utterly all private affection,
all self-will, all self-interest. Such a soul deserves to approach nearer
and ever nearer to God. Then at length, when its higher powers have
been elevated, purified, and furnished forth by divine grace, it attains
to unity and nudity of spirit—to a pure love above representation—to
that simplicity of thought which is devoid of all thinkings. Now,
therefore, since it hath become receptive of the surpassing and
ineffable grace of God, it is led to that living fountain which flows
from everlasting, and doth refresh the minds of the saints unto the
full and in over-measure. Now do the powers of the soul shine as the
stars, and she herself is fit to contemplate the abyss of Divinity with a
serene, a simple, and a jubilant intuition, free from imagination and
from the smallest admixture of the intellect. Accordingly, when she
lovingly turns herself absolutely unto God, the incomprehensible light
shines into her depths, and that radiance blinds the eye of reason
and understanding. But the simple eye of the soul itself remains
open—that is thought, pure, naked, uniform, and raised above the
understanding.
Moreover, when the natural light of reason is blinded by so bright a
glory, the soul takes cognizance of nothing in time, but is raised
above time and space, and assumes as it were a certain attribute of
eternity. For the soul which has abandoned symbols and earthly
distinctions and processes of thought, now learns experimentally that
God far transcends all images—corporeal, spiritual, or divine, and
that whatsoever the reason can apprehend, whatsoever can be said
or written concerning God, whatsoever can be predicated of Him by
words, must manifestly be infinitely remote from the reality of the
divine subsistence which is unnameable. The soul knows not,
therefore, what that God is she feels. Hence, by a foreknowledge
which is exercised without knowledge, she rests in the nude, the
simple, the unknown God, who alone is to be loved. For the light is
called dark, from its excessive brightness. In this darkness the soul
receives the hidden word which God utters in the inward silence and
secret recess of the mind. This word she receives, and doth happily
experience the bond of mystical union. For when, by means of love,
she hath transcended reason and all symbols, and is carried away
above herself (a favour God alone can procure her), straightway she
flows away from herself and flows forth into God (a se defluens
profluit in Deum), and then is God her peace and her enjoyment.
Rightly doth she sing, in such a transport, ‘I will both lay me down in
peace and sleep.’ The loving soul flows down, I say, falls away from
herself, and, reduced as it were to nothing, melts and glides away
altogether into the abyss of eternal love. There, dead to herself, she
lives in God, knowing nothing, perceiving nothing, except the love
she tastes. For she loses herself in that vastest solitude and
darkness of Divinity: but thus to lose is in fact to find herself. There,
putting off whatsoever is human, and putting on whatever is divine,
she is transformed and transmuted into God, as iron in a furnace
takes the form of fire and is transmuted into fire. Nevertheless, the
essence of the soul thus deified remains, as the glowing iron does
not cease to be iron....
The soul, thus bathed in the essence of God, liquefied by the
consuming fire of love, and united to Him without medium, doth, by
wise ignorance and by the inmost touch of love, more clearly know
God than do our fleshly eyes discern the visible sun....
Though God doth sometimes manifest himself unto the perfect soul
in most sublime and wondrous wise, yet he doth not reveal himself
as he is in his own ineffable glory, but as it is possible for him to be
seen in this life.—Isagoge Cord. cap. vii.
 CHAPTER IV.

The desire of the moth for the star,

Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.

Shelley.

Willoughby. Here’s another definition for you:—Mysticism is the

romance of religion. What do you say?
Gower. True to the spirit—not scientific, I fear.
Willoughby. Science be banished! Is not the history of mysticism
bright with stories of dazzling spiritual enterprise, sombre with
tragedies of the soul, stored with records of the achievements and
the woes of martyrdom and saintship? Has it not reconciled, as by
enchantment, the most opposite extremes of theory and practice?
See it, in theory, verging repeatedly on pantheism, ego-theism,
nihilism. See it, in practice, producing some of the most glorious
examples of humility, benevolence, and untiring self-devotion. Has it
not commanded, with its indescribable fascination, the most powerful
natures and the most feeble—minds lofty with a noble disdain of life,
or low with a weak disgust of it? If the self-torture it enacts seems
hideous to our sobriety, what an attraction in its reward! It lays waste
the soul with purgatorial pains—but it is to leave nothing there on
which any fire may kindle after death. What a promise!—a perfect
sanctification, a divine calm, fruition of heaven while yet upon the
earth!
Atherton. Go on, Willoughby, I like your enthusiasm. Think of its
adventures, too.
Willoughby. Aye, its adventures—both persecuted and canonized
by kings and pontiffs; one age enrolling the mystic among the saints,
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