Friday, December 25, 2020

Excerpts from Yael Shemesh, “Lies by Prophets and Other Lies in the Hebrew Bible”

The following are some interesting excerpts from:

 

Yael Shemesh, “Lies by Prophets and Other Lies in the Hebrew Bible,” Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 29 (2002):81-95

 

. . . one finds biblical narratives in which the narrator's attitude to the falsehoold described is undoubtedly favorable . . . Included in this category are various instances of lies intended to save the liar's life (The text of the Torah, “You shall keep My laws and My rules, by the pursuit of which man shall live: I am the Lord” (Lev. 18:5; cf. Ezek. 20:11, 13, 21), inspired the following comment by the Sages of the Talmud: “by . . . which man shall live—and not die,” on which they based the principle that danger to life overrides almost all the religious precepts (BT Yoma 85b).) or altruistic lies (mainly on the part of women).

 

Thus, for example, David lies to Ahimelech (1 Sam. 21:3) and misleads King Achish of Gath (1 Sam. 21:14) in order to save his own life. Saul’s daughter Michal lies to her father’s messengers in order to save her husband David’s life (1 Sam. 19:11–16), and then lies to her father in order to escape his rage (1 Sam. 19:17). Jonathan, too, lies to his father to save his friend David’s life (1 Sam. 20:28–29), and the woman from Bahurim lies to Absalom’s servants to save David’s spies Ahimaaz and Jonathan, hidden in the well in her courtyard (2 Sam. 17:18–20). Proof that God may actually approve of such lies may be derived from His rewarding of the midwives in Egypt, who lied to Pharaoh out of compassion for the lives of the male children born to the Hebrew women (Exod. 1:15–21). A further indication to that effect is the narrator’s comment concerning Hushai’s deception of Absalom by pretending to support him: “The Lord had decreed that Ahithophel’s sound advice be nullified, in order that the Lord might bring ruin upon Absalom” (2 Sam. 17:14). A forgiving view of deception may also be discerned in cases where persons lie to secure what belongs to them by right but has been unjustly withheld.

 

A forgiving view of deception may also be discerned in cases where persons lie to secure what belongs to them by right but has been unjustly withheld. Thus, the initiative

taken by Judah’s daughter-in-law Tamar, who disguises herself as a prostitute in order to become pregnant by him after his failure to marry her to his son Shelah, is described in a favorable light, and indeed justified by Judah himself in the narrative (Gen. 38:26). Tamar is rewarded for her subterfuge by the birth of the twins Perez and Zerah, through whom the tribe of Judah is established (Gen. 38:27–30). (p. 84)

 

. . . God sometimes adopts deceptive measures (Gen. 2:17; 18:13; Exod. 3:22; 1 Kgs. 22:19-23), and also instructs a genuine prophet to lie (Exod. 3:18; 1 Sam 16:2). (p. 85)

 

[On the character of God and texts that speak of his fidelity] Perhaps a partial solution to the problem would be the following observation: if God gave advance warning that, under certain circumstances, God would mislead humanity, God’s falsehood would raise fewer difficulties. One might add that divine deception, by analogy with human deception, is justified by the theological maxim, “With the pure You act in purity, and with the perverse You are wily” (2 Sam. 22:27; Ps. 18:27). That is to say, God treats human beings in accord with their own actions. (p. 86)

 

“I was presenting my petition to the king” (Jer. 38:26)

 

The protagonist of my last example is Jeremiah—a representative of classical prophecy. Unlike Abraham and  Elisha, who resort to misleading at their own initiative, and unlike Moses and Samuel, who mislead a king (Pharaoh, Saul) upon God’s instructions, Jeremiah is forced to deceive the officials on orders from King Zedekiah. After Jeremiah’s secret encounter with Zedekiah, on which occasion he tells the king in God’s name of the calamity that will befall him and Judah in general if he does not surrender to the Babylonians, Zedekiah advises the prophet that, for both their sakes, (To my mind, Zedekiah, in his last words to Jeremiah, “that you may not die,” is not threatening to put the prophet to death if he disobeys, but warning him that if the officials discover the real content of the conversation they will kill him.) should he be interrogated by the officials about the content of their conversation, he should tell them, “I was presenting my petition to the king not to send me back to the house of Jonathan to die there” (Jer. 38:24–26). And Jeremiah does indeed do “just as the king had instructed him” (v. 27). Eva Osswald, in her study of false prophets, cites this episode to support her thesis that the distinction between true and false prophets cannot be based on an ethical criterion. Even the canonical prophets, she writes, resorted at times to unethical deeds, such as Hosea’s marriage to a whore (Hos. 1:2–3) and Jeremiah’s lie to the officials. Other scholars have defended Jeremiah, justifying the deceit in one way or another. On the other hand, in the view of scholars who believe Jer. 38:14–28 to be a parallel tradition to the text of Jer. 37:17–21, Jeremiah was telling the truth, for he did indeed entreat the king not to send him back to the house of the scribe Jonathan (37:20). As Jones writes, Jeremiah’s response to the officials “has the advantage of being both convincing and true.” As to those scholars who suggest some kind of textual error and believe 38:14b–27 to be the immediate chronological sequel to 37:17–20, continuing the king’s conversation with the prophet, Jeremiah did not tell a lie, only concealing the political portion of the encounter. However, even if we accept the biblical text as it is, considering ch. 38 to be the chronological sequel to ch. 37, recounting an event other than (and later than) that described in ch. 37, Jeremiah is not, formally speaking, telling an outright lie: he is simply telling the officials what he said to the king— albeit at a previous meeting.

 

Common to all these cases is that the prophet has not uttered an outright lie, but employed a technique of telling a half-truth (Abraham, Moses, Samuel, and Jeremiah) or using ambiguity (Elisha). Formally speaking, therefore, one might say that he has not told a lie, although his intention was undoubtedly to mislead another person. (pp. 92-93)