Thursday, March 9, 2023

Pietro Bovati on Intercession

  

The Intercession. Among the means used to convince the innocent to grant pardon, intercession plays a special part. The peculiarity of this form of supplication lies in its being made on behalf of the guilty by someone who is not guilty. Intercession is more effective the more it takes the criminal’s part, shouldering the guilt and asserting total solidarity with the person and fate of the guilty. From this point of view, an intercession means that pardon has already been granted by one human being; in fact there could not be a prayer of solidarity without a willingness to overcome the barrier of guilt. The intercessor is well aware that a crime has been committed, and is in no way conniving at it; it is worth remembering in this context that the great intercessors of biblical tradition were indeed representatives for the prosecution: from Moses—both in his confrontations with Pharaoh (Exod. 8.4; 9.28-29; 10.17-18) and with the people of Israel (Exod. 32.11-14; 30-32; Num. 14.13-19; 21.7; Deut. 9.25-29)—to Samuel (1 Sam 12.23; Jer. 15.1) and the prophets (Jer. 7.16; 11.14; 14.11; Amos 7.2, 5), who were sent to denounce sin and threaten appropriate retribution. But if the guilty manages by his request, sometimes only implicit, to bring about a change of function by the accuser in the dynamic of the rîb so that the accuser no longer speaks against but on behalf of the guilty, putting across the defence, then it is a reasonable assumption that nobody will speak up to accuse the guilty who will thus be able to experience the joy of pardon.

 

The twofold function of the same character (the intercessor) should not be a cause of surprise, since the change is in accordance with that of the accused as well, and carries the logic exhibited in the course of the juridical procedure of the controversy. The fact that this twofold juridical form (accusation = speech against; and intercession = speech on behalf of) is embodied in the same person makes this person the mediator of the reconciliation and the covenant that succeeds it. More precisely still, it may be stated that this single person is already the sign of a communion between guilty and innocent, a sign of that impossible unity which we call reconciliation. The intercessor is in fact a concrete demonstration of the fact that the just can truly make out of justice a principle of salvation and justification for every human being, bringing about a life-giving relationship that has overcome the logic of death. (Pietro Bovati, Re-Establishing Justice: Legal Terms, Concepts and Procedures in the Hebrew Bible [Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 105; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994], 132-33)