OT149

Themes and Perspectives in Torah: Creation, Kinship, and Covenant (Sarah Shectman)

Exodus 24:12 And Yahweh said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain, and be there, and I will give you the tablets of stone and the law and the commandments that I have written to instruct them.”

Deuteronomy 4:44 Now this is the law that Moses set before the Israelites;

Proverbs 1:8 My child, may you keep your father’s instruction,

and do not reject your mother’s teachings,

Nehemiah 8:1 All of the people gathered as one to the public square before the Water Gate. They asked Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses that Yahweh had commanded Israel.

Part 1: Perspectives on Reading the Torah

Nehemiah 8:1 All of the people gathered as one to the public square before the Water Gate. They asked Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses that Yahweh had commanded Israel.

Deuteronomy 31:10–13 Then Moses commanded them, saying, “At the end of seven years, in the time of the year for canceling debts during the Feast of Booths, 11 when all Israel comes to appear before Yahweh their God at the place that he will choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. 12 Assemble the people, the men and the women and the little children and your aliens that are in your towns, so that they may hear and so that they may learn and they may revere Yahweh your God, and they shall diligently observe all the words of this law. 13 And then their children, who have not known, they too may hear, and they may learn to revere Yahweh their God all the days that you live on the land that you are crossing the Jordan to get there to take possession of it.”

Deuteronomy 6:7 And you shall recite them to your children, and you shall talk about them at the time of your living in your house and at the time of your going on the road and at the time of your lying down and at the time of your rising up.

Exodus 24:4 And Moses wrote all the words of Yahweh, and he rose early in the morning, and he built an altar at the base of the mountain and set up twelve memorial stones for the twelve tribes of Israel.

Exodus 34:28 And he was there with Yahweh forty days and forty nights. He ate no food and drank no water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten words.

Deuteronomy 31:9 So Moses wrote this law, and he gave it to the priests, the descendants of Levi, the ones carrying the ark of the covenant of Yahweh, and to all the elders of Israel.

Deuteronomy 31:24 And then when Moses finished writing the words of this law on the scroll until they were complete,

Exodus 31:18 And when he finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, he gave to Moses the two tablets of the testimony, stone tablets, written with the finger of God.

Deuteronomy 4:13 And he declared to you his covenant, the Ten Commandments, which he charged you to observe, and he wrote them on the two tablets of stone.

Deuteronomy 5:22 “These words Yahweh spoke to your whole assembly at the mountain from the midst of the fire and the very thick cloud with a loud voice, and he did not add anything, and then he wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me.

Deuteronomy 9:10 And Yahweh gave me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them was writing according to all the words that Yahweh spoke with you at the mountain, from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly.

Deuteronomy 34:10–11 And not again has a prophet arisen in Israel like Moses, whom Yahweh knew face to face, 11 as far as all the signs and the wonders Yahweh sent him to do in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all of his servants and against all of his land,

Part 2: Themes in the Torah

Leviticus 18:28 so that the land will not vomit you out when you make it unclean just as it vomited out the nation that was before you.

Numbers 9:15–23 And on a day setting up the tabernacle, the cloud covered the tent of the tabernacle, the tent of the testimony; in the evening it was on the tabernacle as an appearance of fire until morning. 16 So it was continually; the cloud would cover it and the appearance of fire by night. 17 Whenever the cloud lifted up from on the tent, after that the Israelites would set out, and in the place where the cloud dwelled, there the Israelites camped. 18 On the command of Yahweh the Israelites would set out, and on the command of Yahweh they encamped; all the days that the cloud dwelled on the tabernacle they encamped. 19 And when the cloud prolonged on the tabernacle many days the Israelites kept the kept requirement of Yahweh and did not set out. 20 When the cloud remained a number of days on the tabernacle, on the command of Yahweh they encamped; and on the command of Yahweh they set out. 21 When the cloud remained from evening until morning, and the cloud lifted up in the morning, they would set out, or if it remained in the daytime and at night, when the cloud lifted up they set out. 22 When it was two days, a month, or a year that the cloud prolonged to dwell on the tabernacle, the Israelites encamped, and they did not set out; when it lifted up they set out. 23 On the command of Yahweh they encamped, and on the command of Yahweh they set out. They kept the requirement of Yahweh, on the command of Yahweh in the hand of Moses.

Deuteronomy 23:13–15 and a digging tool shall be included in addition to your other utensils for yourself; and then when you relieve yourself outside the camp you shall dig with it, and then you shall turn, and you shall cover your excrement. 14 For Yahweh your God is walking about in the midst of your camp to deliver you and to hand your enemies over to you before you, and so let your camp be holy, so that he shall not see in it anything indecent, and he shall turn away from going with you.

15 “And you shall not hand over a slave to his master who has escaped and fled to you from his master.

Genesis 12:1–3 And Yahweh said to Abram, “Go out from your land and from your relatives, and from the house of your father, to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great. And you will be a blessing. 3 And I will bless those who bless you, and those who curse you I will curse. And all families of the earth will be blessed in you.”

Genesis 1:28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of heaven, and over every animal that moves upon the earth.”

Genesis 26:34 And when Esau was forty years old he took as wife Judith, daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath, daughter of Elon the Hittite.

Genesis 12:3 And I will bless those who bless you, and those who curse you I will curse. And all families of the earth will be blessed in you.”

Exodus 6:14–25 These are the heads of their families.

The sons of Reuben, the firstborn of Israel, are Enoch and Pallu, Hezron and Carmi. These are the clans of Reuben.

15 And the sons of Simeon are Jemuel and Jamin and Ohad and Jakin and Zohar and Shaul the son of the Canaanitess. These are the clans of Simeon.

16 And these are the names of the sons of Levi according to their genealogies: Gershon and Kohath and Merari, and the years of the life of Levi were one hundred and thirty-seven years.

17 The sons of Gershon are Libni and Shimei according to their clans.

18 And the sons of Kohath are Amram and Izhar and Hebron and Uzziel, and the years of the life of Kohath were one hundred and thirty-three years.

19 And the sons of Merari are Mahli and Mushi. These are clans of the Levites according to their genealogies.

20 And Amram took Jochebed his aunt for himself as a wife, and she bore for him Aaron and Moses, and the years of the life of Amram were one hundred and thirty-seven years.

21 And the sons of Izhar are Korah and Nepheg and Zikri.

22 And the sons of Uzziel are Mishael and Elzaphan and Sithri.

23 And Aaron took Elisheba the daughter of Amminadab, the sister of Nahshon, for himself as a wife, and she bore for him Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar.

24 And the sons of Korah are Assir and Elkanah and Abiasaph. These are the clans of the Korahites.

25 And Eleazar the son of Aaron took for himself one from the daughters of Putiel as a wife, and she bore for him Phinehas. These are the heads of the families of the Levites according to their clans.

Genesis 28:6–9 Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Paddan-Aram, to take for himself a wife from there, and he blessed him and instructed him, saying, “You must not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan,” 7 and that Jacob listened to his father and to his mother and went to Paddan-Aram. 8 Then Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan were evil in the eyes of Isaac his father, 9 then Esau went to Ishmael and took Mahalath, the daughter of Ishmael, son of Abraham, sister of Nebaioth, as a wife, in addition to the wives he had.

Deuteronomy 7:1–4 “When Yahweh your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter into it to take possession of it, and he drives out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations mightier and more numerous than you, 2 and Yahweh your God will give them over to you and you defeat them, you must utterly destroy them; you shall not make a covenant with them, and you shall not show mercy to them. 3 And you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughter to their son; and you shall not take his daughter for your son. 4 For their sons and daughters will cause your son to turn away from following me, and so they will serve other gods, and the anger of Yahweh would be kindled against you, and he would quickly destroy you.

Genesis 41:45 And Pharaoh called the name of Joseph Zaphenath-paneah and gave him Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, as a wife. And Joseph went out over the land of Egypt.

Numbers 27:1–11 Then the daughters of Zelophehad, the son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Makir, the son of Manasseh, of the clan of Manasseh the son of Joseph, came near; and these were the names of his daughters: Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, and Tirzah. 2 They stood before Moses and before Eleazar the priest and before the leaders of the entire community at the doorway of the tent of assembly, saying, 3 “Our father died in the desert; he was not in the midst of the company of those who banded together against Yahweh in the company of Korah, but he died in his own sin, and he had no sons. 4 Why should the name of our father disappear from the midst of his clan because he does not have a son? Give us property in the midst of the brothers of our father.” 5 So Moses brought their case before Yahweh. 6 And Yahweh said to Moses, saying, 7 “The statements of the daughters of Zelophehad are right. You must surely give them the property of an inheritance in the midst of their father’s brothers, and you must transfer the inheritance of their father to them. 8 And you must speak to the Israelites, saying, ‘If a man dies and has no son, you must transfer his inheritance to his daughter. 9 And if he has no daughter, you must give his inheritance to his brothers. 10 If he has no brothers, then you must give his inheritance to his father’s brothers. 11 If his father has no brothers, then you must give his inheritance to his nearest relative from his own clan, and he will take possession of it. It will be as a decree of stipulation for the Israelites, just as Yahweh commanded Moses.’ ”

Numbers 36:1–12 The leaders of the families of the clans of descendants of Gilead the son of Makir, the son of Manasseh, of the clans of the descendants of Joseph came near and spoke before Moses and before the leaders of the families of the Israelites. 2 And they said, “Yahweh commanded my lord to give the land by lot as an inheritance to the Israelites, and my lord was commanded by Yahweh to give the inheritance of Zelophehad our brother to his daughters. 3 But if they become wives to one of the sons from another tribe of the Israelites, their inheritance will disappear from the inheritance of our ancestors, and it will be added to the inheritance of the tribe to which they belong; the lot of our inheritance would disappear. 4 When the Jubilee of the Israelites comes, it will be added to the inheritance of the tribe to which they belong; and their inheritance will disappear from the tribe of our father.”

5 Then Moses commanded the Israelites by the command of Yahweh, saying, “The tribe of the descendants of Joseph is right regarding what they are speaking. 6 This is the word that Yahweh commanded the daughters of Zelophehad, saying, ‘Let them marry whomever they like; only they must marry from within the clan of the tribe of their father. 7 Thus an inheritance of the Israelites will not go around from tribe to tribe. Rather, the inheritance of each tribe of his father will remain with the Israelites. 8 Every daughter who possesses an inheritance from the tribes of the Israelites will marry one of the clan of the tribe of her father, so that the Israelites will possess the inheritance of his ancestors. 9 Therefore an inheritance will not go around from one tribe to another tribe because the tribes of the Israelites will each hold to their own inheritance.’ ”

10 Just as Yahweh commanded to Moses, so the daughters of Zelophehad did: 11 Mahlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Noah, the daughters of Zelophehad, married the sons of their uncles. 12 They married those from the sons of Manasseh son of Joseph, and their inheritance remained among the tribe of the clan of their ancestors.

Exodus 6:15 And the sons of Simeon are Jemuel and Jamin and Ohad and Jakin and Zohar and Shaul the son of the Canaanitess. These are the clans of Simeon.

Numbers 20:14–21 From Kadesh Moses sent messengers to the king of Edom: “Thus your brother Israel has said, ‘You know all the hardship that has found us; 15 our ancestors went down to Egypt, and we lived in Egypt a long time, and the Egyptians mistreated us and our ancestors. 16 Then we cried to Yahweh, and he heard our voice; he sent an angel and brought us out from Egypt. And look, we are in Kadesh, a city on the edge of your territory. 17 Please let us go through your land. We will not go through a field or vineyard, and we will not drink water from a well. We will go along the road of the king; we will not turn aside right or left until we have gone through your territory.’ ”

18 Then Edom said to him, “You will not pass through us lest we will go out to meet you with the sword.” 19 The Israelites said to him, “We will go up on the main road, and if we and our livestock drink your water, we will pay for it. It is only a small matter; let us pass through on our feet.” 20 But he said, “You will not go through.” And Edom went out to meet them with a large army and a strong hand. 21 So Edom refused to give Israel passage through his territory, and Israel turned aside from him.

Numbers 21:21–32 Israel sent messengers to Sihon, the king of the Amorites, saying, 22 “Let us go through your land; we will not turn aside into a field or vineyard; we will not drink well water along the way of the king until we have gone through your territory.” 23 But Sihon did not allow Israel to go through his territory. Sihon gathered all his people and went out to meet Israel; he came to the desert, to Jahaz, and he fought against Israel. 24 But Israel struck him with the edge of the sword, and they took possession of his land from Arnon to Jabbok, until the Ammonites, because the boundary of the Ammonites was strong. 25 Israel took all these cities, and Israel inhabited all the cities of the Amorites, in Heshbon, and in all its environs. 26 Because Heshbon was the city of Sihon king of the Amorites, who had fought against the former king of Moab and taken all his land from his hand until Arnon. 27 Thus the ones who quote proverbs say,

“Come to Heshbon! Let it be built!

And let the city of Sihon be established.

28 Because fire went out from Heshbon,

a flame from the city of Sihon;

it consumed Ar of Moab,

the lords of the high places of Arnon.

29 Woe to you, Moab!

You have perished, people of Chemosh.

He has given his sons as fugitives,

and his daughters into captivity,

to the king of the Amorites, Sihon.

30 We destroyed them;

Heshbon has perished up to Dibon;

we laid waste up to Nophah,

which reaches Medeba.”

31 Thus Israel lived in the land of the Amorites. 32 Moses sent to explore Jaazer; they captured its environs and dispossessed the Amorites who were there.

Deuteronomy 25:5–10 “When brothers dwell together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not become the wife of a man of another family; her brother-in-law shall have sex with her, and he shall take her to himself as a wife, and he shall perform his duty as a brother-in-law with respect to her. 6 And then the firstborn that she bears shall represent his dead brother, so that his name is not blotted out from Israel. 7 But if the man does not want to take his sister-in-law, then his sister-in-law shall go up to the gate, to the elders, and she shall say, ‘My brother-in-law refused to perpetuate his brother’s name in Israel, for he is not willing to marry me.’ 8 Then the elders of his town shall summon him and speak to him, and if he persists and says, ‘I do not desire to marry her’ 9 then his sister-in-law shall go near him before the eyes of the elders, and she shall pull off his sandal from his foot, and she shall spit in his face, and she shall declare and she shall say, ‘This is how it is done to the man who does not build the house of his brother.’ 10 And his family shall be called in Israel, ‘The house where the sandal was pulled off.’

Genesis 2:24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cling to his wife, and they shall be as one flesh.

Genesis 9:4–6 Only you shall not eat raw flesh with blood in it. 5 And your lifeblood I will require; from every animal I will require it. And from the hand of humankind, from the hand of each man to his brother I will require the life of humankind.

6 “As for the one shedding the blood of humankind,

by humankind his blood shall be shed,

for God made humankind in his own image.

Genesis 17:19 And God said, “No, but Sarah your wife shall bear a son for you, and you shall call his name Isaac. And I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant to his offspring after him.

Deuteronomy 4:37 And because he loved your ancestors he chose their descendants after them. And he brought you forth from Egypt with his own presence, by his great strength,

Genesis 15:6 And he believed in Yahweh, and he reckoned it to him as righteousness.

Exodus 2:24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob,

Deuteronomy 28:64–68 And Yahweh shall scatter you among all the nations from one end of the earth up to the other end of the earth, and there you shall serve other gods that you have not known nor your ancestors, gods of wood and stone. 65 And among these nations you shall not find rest, and there shall not be a resting place for the sole of your foot, and Yahweh shall give you there an anxious heart and a weakening of eyes and a languishing of your inner self. 66 And your life shall hang in doubt before you, and you shall be startled night and day, and you shall not be confident of your life. 67 In the morning you shall say, ‘If only it was evening!’ and in the evening you shall say ‘If only it was morning!’ because of the dread of your heart that you shall feel, and because of the sight of your eyes that you shall see. 68 And Yahweh shall bring you back to Egypt in ships by the route that I promised to you that ‘You shall not see it again!’ And you shall sell yourself there to your enemies as slaves and as female slaves, but there will not be a buyer.”

Exodus 21:2–11 ‘If you buy a Hebrew slave, he will serve six years, and in the seventh he will go out as free for nothing. 3 If he comes in single, he will go out single. If he is the husband of a wife, his wife will go out with him. 4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears for him sons or daughters, the wife and her children will belong to her master, and the slave will go out single. 5 But if the slave explicitly says, “I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,” 6 his master will present him to God and bring him to the door or to the doorpost, and his master will pierce his ear with an awl, and he will serve him forever.

7 “ ‘And if a man sells his daughter as a slave woman, she will not go out as male slaves go out. 8 If she does not please her master who selected her, he will allow her to be redeemed; he has no authority to sell her to foreign people, since he has dealt treacherously with her. 9 And if he selects her for his son, he shall do for her according to the regulations for daughters. 10 If he takes for himself another, he will not reduce her food, her clothing, or her right of cohabitation. 11 And if he does not do for her these three, she shall go out for nothing; there will not be silver paid for her.

Exodus 20:2–3 “I am Yahweh, your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from the house of slaves.

3 “There shall be for you no other gods before me.

Genesis 12:8 And he moved on from there to the hill country, east of Bethel. And he pitched his tent at Bethel on the west, and at Ai on the east. And he built an altar there to Yahweh. And he called on the name of Yahweh.

Genesis 26:25 And he built an altar there and called on the name of Yahweh. And he pitched his tent there, and the servants of Isaac dug a well there.

Genesis 8:21 And Yahweh smelled the soothing fragrance, and Yahweh said to himself, “Never again will I curse the ground for the sake of humankind, because the inclination of the heart of humankind is evil from his youth. Nor will I ever again destroy all life as I have done.

Leviticus 3:11 The priest shall turn it into smoke on the altar as a food offering made by fire for Yahweh.

Genesis 32:28 And he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed.”

Genesis (Rodney S. Sadler Jr.)

Genesis 50:20 As for you, you planned evil against me, but God planned it for good, in order to do this—to keep many people alive—as it is today.

Genesis 2:4b These are the generations of heaven and earth when they were created, in the day that Yahweh God made earth and heaven—

Genesis 1:6 And God said, “Let there be a vaulted dome in the midst of the waters, and let it cause a separation between the waters.”

Genesis 1:16–17 And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the smaller light to rule the night, and the stars. 17 And God placed them in the vaulted dome of heaven to give light on the earth

Genesis 2:6 but a stream would rise from the earth and water the whole face of the ground—

Genesis 1:28–30 And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of heaven, and over every animal that moves upon the earth.”

29 And God said, “Look—I am giving to you every plant that bears seed which is on the face of the whole earth, and every kind of tree that bears fruit. They shall be yours as food.” 30 And to every kind of animal of the earth and to every bird of heaven, and to everything that moves upon the earth in which there is life I am giving every green plant as food.” And it was so.

Genesis 2:4b–17 These are the generations of heaven and earth when they were created, in the day that Yahweh God made earth and heaven—5 before any plant of the field was on earth, and before any plant of the field had sprung up, because Yahweh God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no human being to cultivate the ground, 6 but a stream would rise from the earth and water the whole face of the ground—7 when Yahweh God formed the man of dust from the ground, and he blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

8 And Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And Yahweh God caused to grow from the ground every tree that was pleasing to the sight and good for food. And the tree of life was in the midst of the garden, along with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

10 Now a river flowed out from Eden that watered the garden, and from there it diverged and became four branches. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon. It went around all the land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 (The gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stones are there.) 13 And the name of the second is Gihon. It went around all the land of Cush. 14 And the name of the third is Tigris. It flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

15 And Yahweh God took the man and set him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and to keep it. 16 And Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “From every tree of the garden you may freely eat, 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.”