Wednesday, July 10, 2024

Jeffrey Stackert on The Sabbath as ברית/covenant

  

The Sabbath as ברית

 

With the Sabbath as sign so clarified, it is possible to address the relationship between this rite and the idea of covenant, an issue raised by Exod 31:16:

 

‎ ושׁמרו בני־ישׂראל את־השׁבת לעשׂות  את־השׁבת לדרתם ברית עולם

 

The Israelites shall ever keep the cessation, performing the cessation as a perpetual requirement.

 

This verse has prompted significant deliberation of the Sabbath’s possible connection to a prior covenant in P or even outside of P. Yet Exod 31:16 refers to no foregoing covenant in P or any other text. As in several other instances in Pentateuchal Priestly literature, the term ברית in Exod 31:16 has the limited sense of “obligation/requirement” and, as such, refers simply to the Israelites’ future obligation to observe Sabbath cessation (cf. Gen 17:10, 13; Lev 2:13; 26:15, 25). This means that neither this obligation nor its corresponding sign is perpetual (אות הוא לעלם ברית עלום) by virtue of its hearkening back to the Sabbath’s origin in creation, as has sometimes been claimed. Israelite Sabbath observance in P is not an imitation of the deity’s Sabbath observance following creation. In fact, P’s historical myth precludes this possibility. In the P narrative, cultic observance is specifically tied to the deity’s presence among the Israelites, and even the idea of the cult (to say nothing of its institution) is only hatched once Yahweh realizes that his initial arrangement—with people on earth and himself in heaven—is untenable.

 

In P, then, Yahweh does not observe the Sabbath and never did. The Sabbath is established not at creation but precisely when it is commanded—when the Israelites are at Sinai. Its observance resembles Yahwe’s cessation on the seventh day of creation, and it is this observance that is commanded in perpetuity to remind the deity to bless Israel. In this sense, ברית עולם in v. 16 and אות הוא לעלם in v 17 correspond precisely: the mnemonic will be effective for as long as the Israelites properly enact the cessation, which they are to do in perpetuity from this point on. (Jeffrey Stackert, “How the Priestly Sabbath Works: Innovation in the Pentateuchal Priestly Ritual,” in Ritual Innovation in the Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism, ed. Nathan MacDonald [Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 468; Tübingen: De Gruyter, 2018], 95-97, emphasis in bold added)

 

The initial indication in P of Yahweh’s intent to maintain a sustained involvement on earth is in Gen 9:5, where the deity promises to intervene himself when any animal or human sheds human blood. The delay between the Flood and Yahweh’s selection of Abram seems to accommodate the need to repopulate the earth. If Yahweh chose Noah immediately after the Flood, all humanity would belong to Israel. However, such a scenario does not accord with P’s contemporary situation, where Israel is distinguishable from many other people groups who do not worship Yahweh. (Ibid., 96 n. 44)

 

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