Marc Chagall: "Moses [iii]" (1956)
Scripture recounts that God chose the descendants of Jacob to serve him as a sacred nation of priests to the world. Whereas the covenant made with Abraham entailed exclusive devotion to El ("God"), the covenant made with the descendants of Jacob further established that no other god exists apart from El (ref. Deuteronomy 32:39a) who now revealed himself as YWHW, a name that not even Abraham had known.
God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am [YWHW]. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God [El Shaddai], but by my name [YWHW] I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners.” (Exodus 6:2-4)
When the [El] gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.* But [YWHW]’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage. (Deuteronomy 32:8-9)
Moreover, the descendants of Jacob (i.e. Israel) were chosen to serve YWHW as a "kingdom of priests" to bring the wider nations to a knowledge of the one true God. The sign of this covenant would be male circumcision (females being subsumed under a male head of household) and the terms if the covenant would be such as God would dictate on Mount Sinai. Good standing as a priesthood was, however, conditional on Israel's fidelity to a vast priestly code promulgated at Mount Sinai. (ref. Romans 2:25-29)
Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.* (Exodus 19:5-6a)
Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. (Isaiah 42:1; ref. Isaiah 41:8)
Beware lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from [YWHW] our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.’ This will lead to the sweeping away of moist and dry alike. (Deuteronomy 29:18-19)
The Book of the Covenant (i.e. Mosaic Law) comprising these stipulations, particularly those regarding the Sabbath and the three major festivals enumerated in Exodus 23:14-19, were understood to be specific to Israel as a nation of priests of the one true God. The priests and high priests of Israel were further marked off within this nation of priests by special clothing, restrictions, and obligations exclusive to their tribe and office with the exception of the restrictions peculiar to the High Priest, which any ritually clean Israelite could take on for a specified period of time as part of a special offering called the Nazarite vow (Numbers 6:1-21). There were also, in addition to other votive offerings of various sorts, many prescribed animal sacrifices whose object was to ritually cover over personal, priestly, or collective impurity by spilling blood as a vicarious death penalty for entering into the presence of YHWH in an impure state. The point of all this was to engrain in Israel (a) some sense of the impossible purity of YHWH, (b) an awareness of the cost of human impurity, and (c) the hint of ransom from this conundrum by means of some unforeseen substitute as in the case of Abraham's near sacrifice of Isaac.
The Lord said to Moses,“Speak to the people of Israel, and tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a cord of blue on the tassel of each corner.” (Numbers 15:7-8)And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying to them, “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, These are the living things that you may eat among all the animals that are on the earth...” (Leviticus 11:1-46)
If any one of the house of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn among them eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people. For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life. (Leviticus 17:10-11)
Non-Israelites were not bound to the Mosaic Law, though they were understood to be subject to the so-called Noahide Laws common to all of humanity. Non-Israelites living in the land (i.e. under the jurisdiction of Mosaic Law) were nevertheless bound to certain laws that pertained to Israelites and non-Israelites alike. This is what lies behind the four laws stipulated by James as binding on Gentile believers as well as the curious justification regarding the Mosaic Law having been proclaimed in every city.
Our Rabbis taught: “Seven precepts were the sons of Noah taught: social laws, [and] to refrain from blasphemy, idolatry, adultery, bloodshed, robbery and eating flesh cut from a living animal.” (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin VII.56a)
I will set my face against any Israelite or any foreigner residing among them who eats blood, and I will cut them off from the people. (Leviticus 17:10)
It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath. (Acts 15.19–21)
As it turned out, Israel had trouble adhering to even the pared-down requirements expected of non-Israelites. They moreover abandoned YHWH when times were good, only reaffirming their commitment when things were absolutely dire, a lack of constancy foreseen from the beginning when Moses warned the people against presuming that they would be protected by a covenant with YHWH from whom they would turn away (see above: Deuteronomy 29:18-19). Israel is nevertheless promised that those tribes that turn back to YHWH while in exile will return to the land and have their hearts consecrated by YHWH himself.
And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where [YWHW] your God has driven you, and return to [YWHW] your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, then [YWHW] your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where [YWHW] your God has scattered you (Deuteronomy 30:1-3)
If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there he will take you. And the Lord your God will bring youinto the land that your fathers possessed, that you may possess it. And he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live. (Deuteronomy 30:4-6)
One might well wonder what the point of the Mosaic Law could have been given the history of Israel from the time of the judges, to the time of the kings to the time of the exiles to the time of their return. On the one hand, those who returned from exile in the birthplace of Abram were a people literally reborn, with a firm resolve never to turn aside from the covenant again. On the other hand, many failed to grasp that the outward signs of the covenant, its outward observation, could never truly justify anyone before YHWH because that had never even been its intent, which was to maintain the consecration of the people as a sacred nation of priests to the world. Those who returned to the land nevertheless succeeded in fulfilling the original purpose of bringing a knowledge of the one true God to the world, of which this very post is proof enough.
[*A poetic allusion is made to the seventy sons of El, who in Canaanite religion were the gods of seventy nations (ref. Genesis 10).]
