Holy Light, Bread, and Divine Name (24:1–23)
Bake twelve loaves of bread (24:5). Laying offerings of bread before deities in their temples was common among ancient Near Eastern peoples from early times. The practice appears, for example, in a Sumerian inscription of Uru-inimgina of Lagaš (a little before 2350 B.C.)243 and is well attested among Egyptians, Hittites, and Babylonians as part of the daily care and feeding of gods, represented by their idols (see also comment on 3:11). In the Israelite sanctuary, twelve loaves served as a reminder that the twelve tribes of Israel constituted the human party to the covenant.244 However, this offering was not to feed Yahweh. The purpose was exactly the opposite: to acknowledge that he supplied the ongoing needs of the Israelites as their resident Creator-Provider.245
Stele of Luny showing offering of loaves of bread in bottom register
Marie-Lan Nguyen/Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of the Louvre
Sabbath after Sabbath . . . as a lasting covenant (24:8). Compare Exodus 31:16–17, where Sabbath signifies a “lasting covenant” between the Lord and the Israelites, whom he makes holy (31:13), because God created the heavens and earth and rested on the seventh day, a day he made holy (Gen. 1–2).246 A Syrian amulet bears a Phoenician inscription that expresses some parallel motifs: “Ashur has made an eternal covenant with us. He has made (a covenant) with us, along with all the sons of ʾEl and the leaders of the council of all the Holy Ones, with a covenant of the Heavens and Eternal Earth, with an oath of Baʿl.”247 However, lacking are the concepts that one deity created the heavens and earth, sanctified the Sabbath, and makes his chosen people holy.
Blasphemed the Name with a curse (24:11). In the ancient Near East, deities and their names were regarded as holy. For example, the Egyptian Great Hymn to Osiris praises the god: “Holy and splendid is his name.”248 Speaking evil of a deity or blaspheming his/her name (cf. Ex. 22:28) was a serious offense, as shown by harsh Assyrian punishments on blasphemers, including cutting their tongues.249 In a Syrian treaty between Ebla and Abarsal, one who committed treason by blaspheming his own king, gods, and country could be put to death.250
All those who heard him are to lay their hands on his head (24:14). Compare the Mesopotamian treaty (from Alalakh) between Ir-Addu and Niqmepa, which stipulates that witnesses to theft (committed by a person from the other party’s territory) “shall set his guilt on his head” and “he will be a slave.”251
Stone him (24:14). In the Bible, stoning is a common way for the community to execute someone guilty of a crime against it, without holding any one individual responsible for the death of the offender. Outside the Bible, various modes of execution are attested (such as drowning, impaling, burning), but stoning is rare. The Syrian Hadad Inscription condemns any member of the royal household who plots destruction to being pounded with stones by his/her relatives of the same sex.252
Hadad Inscription: Syrian “Hadad Inscription” condemns any member of the royal household who plots destruction to being pounded with stones by his/her relatives of the same sex.
K. Lawson Younger, courtesy of the Vorderasiatische Museum, Berlin
If anyone takes the life of a human being, he must be put to death (24:17). Outside Israel, a person who committed homicide could receive capital punishment, as in the Laws of Ur-Namm.253 Alternatively, he could be forced to give up one or more persons who belonged to him (Hittite Laws).254 If a death occurred during a brawl, the penalty was a monetary fine (Laws of Eshnunna, Laws of Hammurabi).255 According to the Hittite king Telipinu, it was up to the heir of a murdered person to decide whether the murderer would die or pay.256
By contrast with this subjective approach, murder, like adultery, is an absolute crime in the Bible. Because of the supreme value of the life of a human being, made in God’s image, a person who takes the life of another forfeits his own right to live and there is no alternative to capital punishment (Gen. 9:6; Num. 35:31).257
Anyone who takes the life of someone’s animal must make restitution (24:18). Law collections outside the Bible present similar remedies. For death of an animal or such serious injury to an ox that it is unusable, the Laws of Hammurabi stipulate replacement with an animal of comparable value. For other permanent injuries, money payments suffice.258 The Hittite Laws mandate money payments for death or permanent injuries to animals.259
Whatever he has done must be done to him (24:19). Outside Israel, retaliatory punishments are first attested in the eighteenth-century B.C. Laws of Hammurabi from Babylonia (LH 116, 196–197, 200, 210, 229–30),260 which are earlier than the biblical laws. Such penalties also appear later in the Middle Assyrian Laws (MAL A 20, 50, 52, 55). In their time, retaliatory punishments administered by civil courts were a major advance for the cause of justice by curbing unlimited retribution (cf. Gen. 4:23) and ensuring that rich and poor were treated in a way that affected them equally.261 Biblical law authorized by Yahweh accepted the principle of talion, which was pioneered by Hammurabi, but Yahweh tailored its applications to suit the Israelite judicial system.