The constitution of the Old Testament

Last updated on: April 19, 2016 at 7:02 am by Gerald McDermott

The constitution of the Old Testament 2016-04-19T07:02:44-04:00 Gerald McDermott

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Some of the rabbis used to say that the Schema is the constitution of the Tanach, which is what Christians call the Old Testament.

The Schema is the passage in Deut. 6.4-9, which pious Jews recite three times every day. (No wonder it is called the OT constitution!)

It is a rich passage that demands study by Christians. In it are worlds upon worlds of revelation from God.

Let’s look today at the first verse, the most famous. The whole passage gets its title (Schema) from the first word, which means “Hear.”

Sh’ma Yisra’eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.

Hear, Israel, YHWH is our God, the Lord alone.

The first word is better translated, “Listen.” It suggests the difference between hearing sound and taking it in for the purpose of understanding. I think of when my wife says, “You are hearing my words, but you aren’t really listening!” It’s what Luther meant when he said the Christian organ is the ear, and that the definition of Christian faith is listening to the Word of God.

Actually, Luther could have said this is Christian and Jewish faith. After all, Paul and Jesus were Jews, and got their emphasis on faith from Tanach, and perhaps even this passage in particular.

God told this to Moses, who in turn repeated it to Israel. God was addressing his chosen people, the ones whom (Jewish) Orthodox theologian Michael Wyschogrod said God was truly in love with–the people despised for millennia and just as much today as back in the fateful decade of the 1930s–the Jews. We Christians believe that we have been adopted into this Jewish family of God’s people by our faith in the Jewish messiah Yeshua. Paul says we Gentiles have become what we might call associate members of the “commonwealth of Israel” (Eph 2.12).

Most translations of the next word (YhVh) render it “LORD” out of respect for the second commandment (Do not take the name of the Lord in vain, which means casually or cavalierly) and because of the Jewish practice, followed by the most of the Christian tradition, to substitute here Adonai or LORD in its place. This is why this word, usually invisible here, is called the “sacred tetragrammaton,” or “the holy four letters” (the Hebrew has only four letters).

The four letters come from the verb root “to be” or “cause to exist.” The meaning has been thought to be something like “he who causes to exist” or “he who gives life” (the root idea of the word being “to breathe,” and hence, “to live”).

Some of the Fathers wrote that since Jesus said he was “the Life,” this is his name–He who gives life.

This word that God gives for himself was most famously revealed to Moses after God had called him to lead his people out of slavery in Egypt. Moses asked who he should tell the Israelites had called him (Ex 3.14). In other words, What is your name? In the Ancient Near East names were precious and often hidden, for they revealed the deepest identity of a person. God said, I am YhWh–he who gives life to all.

I take it to mean, “I am the cause of all that exists, the inner meaning and source of all of reality, and especially of that most mysterious part called life, and the superlatively mysterious part called human life.”

Moses tells Israel that YhWh is “our” God, which means the God of the Jews in particular–as opposed to the other peoples of the ancient near East.

This is a rock of offense to moderns. As the wag has written, “How odd of God to choose the Jews.” Or as many cry, How unfair! Why should God choose some over others?

Before we accuse God of arbitrary partiality, we should recall that Jesus affirmed this election when he said he had come not primarily for Gentiles but for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And that Paul affirmed the same in Romans 9-11.

One of the keys to unlocking this mystery is to remember Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman, “Salvation is from the Jews.” In other words, God called Israel as a vessel through which to bring his love and goodness and truth to the nations. And this was not just a NT teaching, but something that went all the way back to his first calling of the first Jew Abraham in Genesis 12: “You will be a blessing to all the families of the earth.”

Now the last part of this verse is usually translated, “The LORD is one.” It is taken to be the Bible’s premier claim to monotheism.

But I am convinced this is not a good translation. It should be, “YhWh alone.” That is, “Our God is YhWh and none of the other gods which our neighbors worship. Do not worship them; worship only Him.”

The premier Hebrew Bible commentary set, that of the Jewish Publication Society, agrees with me on this. It acknowledges that the Hebrews back then believed there were other supernatural beings (fallen angels in their view) competing for their allegiance. They were not creators or redeemers, as YhWh alone was, but they were spiritual powers nonetheless that sought their allegiance. This is an urgent call by the only Creator and Redeemer, the God who loved Israel (and those like us who would attach themselves to Israel and its messiah), to ignore the siren calls of all the other gods of this world and to cleave only to Him. For He alone is the source of the only Life worth living.

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