Covenant and community in the post-exilic period
1. AN INTERPRETATION OF THE EXILE: A BROKEN COVENANT We shall need to understand, as Israel had needed to understand, that the
covenant made with her had been broken. Already Hosea and Isaiah, eighth-century prophets, had alerted Israel to her fragile relationship with
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God. Unless there was an early turn-about on the part of Israel, they said, the covenant relationship would terminate. Hosea employed his personal mar- riage and his subsequent difficulties to picture the covenantal situation between Israel and God.
The waywardness of a covenant partner could indeed result in God’s verdict, ‘Not my people’, in which case the covenant was no longer in effect.
In a covenant lawsuit Isaiah identified the strained relationship, charging that Israel had ‘forsaken the LORD’ (1:4), but still invited the waywardcove- nant partner to ‘come now, let us reason together’ (1: 18). Hosea, also in a covenant lawsuit, had been more threatening.
Because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me.
And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children (4:6).
In courtroom language, the indictments were systematically laid before the people. The verdict was all but certain. Finally Jeremiah, who ministered, as we know in retrospect, just prior to the fall of the nation of Judah, says, ‘The house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant which I made with their fathers’ (Je. 11: 10).
There it was in unambiguous language. The covenant was in ruins. As treaties go this breach was not unusual. One historian who investigated treaties between 1500 BC and 1850 AD has noted that some 7,500 ‘eternal’
treaties lasted an average of two years each.’ But whether commonplace or not, covenant-breaking is serious.
What results from a broken covenant? One thing is clear, the covenant partners must bear the consequences. For Israel the consequence was to experience, even if for a little, the justified anger of the covenant partner.
Judgment on her evil came in the form of enemy invasions and deportations.
Israel found it difficult to appreciate such a turn of events. Nor is the reason far to seek. For her, God’s guarantee of faithfulness was written so large that an unwarranted feeling of security had developed. True, God’s promise in Isaiah’s day was that Zion would stand. To that promise Israel clung despite her later disloyalty to Yahweh. But God’s promises have qualifications. The immediate situation, not to mention the attitude of a people, was determining. That which was a guarantee for Israel when Hezekiah feared the Assyrians was no longer a guarantee a hundred years later when in judgment God was bringing the Babylonians against Israel.
Israel had capitalized on the promise half of the formula ‘I will be your God’, without paying sufficient heed to the demand half, ‘You shall be my people.’
It is critical, as has been argued earlier, to understand that a covenant
‘Ronald Youngblood, The Heart ofthe Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1971), p. 42.
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Covenant and community in the post-exilic period differs from a contract. In a contract violation of certain demands is at once cause for invalidating the agreement. Failure to comply cancels the contract. In a covenant, this solution is not so clear-cut-for it is not conformity to code but loyalty to person that is basic. But dissolution of covenant is definitely possible, because loyalty is demonstrated through obedience. Israel had not been obedient. God had been forbearing with Israel’s flirtations with other gods and her injustices to one another, but a breaking point had now been reached. If an explanation for God’s judgment is needed, it is given in the book of Isaiah, who points to the rupture of the relationship: ‘0 that you had hearkened to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river’ (48 : 18).
The obvious consequence for Israel of a broken covenant was to experience God’s judgment. But there was another possibility: God would still fulfill his desire. A new covenant structure at his initiative was possible.
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AFFIRMATION OF COVENANT FORMULA: I WILL BE YOUR GOD The covenant formula has two parts. In the literature of the exilic and post- exilic period both parts are emphasized, sometimes together but more often separately.The people of the exile heard the reassuring word: ‘I will be your God.’
Judging from the material in the second half of Isaiah there were two points on the agenda, both fully understandable.2 First was the question, ‘Is God really who he claims to be-namely sovereign Lord of all gods?’ The col- lapse of national life raised the issue whether other gods were perhaps more powerful than Yahweh. Assuming that Yahweh was all that he claimed, and recognizing that the covenant was broken, the second question was, ‘Would God take up with Israel again? Would he still own her as his people?’
a. ‘Is Yahweh truly God?’
It is through Isaiah especially that an answer to this twofold agenda is not only given but propounded and argued. Yahweh is indeed God. This assert- ion is boldly proclaimed: ‘Your God reigns’ (52:7; cfi 62:8). But mere table- thumping will not suffice as a reply to the doubters. The argument for God’s sovereignty over all competing deities is established through several sup- porting arguments. Yahweh is creator. In majestic rhetoric, the prophet asks, ‘Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?’ (40: 12). It is he, Yahweh, who sits above the circle of the earth, who reduces rulers to
IIsaiah, as has been stated earlier, addresses the situation of the exile, whether or not the material in chapters 40-66 dates from the prophet in the eighth century or from his successor in the time of the exile.
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nothing (40:22-23). Look beyond the earth to the heavens and see that the one who created the stars ‘brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power not one is missing’ (40:26). The doctrine of creation, important in the hymnic literature of the Psalms, functions nowhere else as dominantly as here where it underscores Yahweh’s uniqueness, his incomparability and his supre- macy.
Yahweh, the creator, is also Lord of history. Testimony is given in the hearing of the coastlands that the God Yahweh has aroused someone from the east, presumably Cyrus, who will deliver up nations and subdue kings.
That development in the world of nations, so runs the argument, is in keeping with earlier action in which God has called forth the generations from the beginning. God appeals to history, to ‘the former things’ (41:22;
42:9; 43:9,18; 46:9; 48:3). The identity of the mover of history is declared once more: ‘I, the LORD, the first and with the last; I am He’ (41:4). A God who moves the course of nations is unlike the idols of the heathen.
The prophet now takes the offensive. The heathen idols are impotent. In unabashed sarcasm the prophet mocks the production of an idol. He describes how the craftsmen, the goldsmith, the silversmith, or the wood- carver make the figurines, ensuring that the fragile images ‘will not move’
(40:20). The man who uses his tools to fashion the idols is nothing but a man, for he becomes hungry and his strength fails (44:12). What he makes will be inferior to himself rather than stronger. Moreover the idol he fashions is in his own image. As if to compound the stupidity man will take a tree, use some of it to fashion an idol and with the remainder make a fire for baking bread-part of that lumber serves to keep him warm, the other part is his god before which he falls down and worships. ‘He prays to it and says,
“Deliver me, for thou art my god”’ (44: 17). But the images fashioned by the hands of men are powerless, futile, claims the prophet. They are t&z2 (44:9), a word used in the creation account to describe the waste and unin- habited earth (Gn. 1:2). How different from the product of a man’s hand is Yahweh. ‘Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god.
Who is like me? Let him proclaim it, let him declare and set it forth before me’ (44:6).
The argument for Yahweh’s sovereignty over other gods includes his ability to predict the future-a benefit the heathen gods cannot supply. The setting is the court. ‘Set forth your case, says the LORD; bring your proofs, says the King of Jacob. Let them bring them, and tell us what is to happen. . . or declare to us the things to come’ (41:21-22). The gauntlet is thrown down to all who would claim to be gods: ‘Tell us what is to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods’ (41:23). When challenged in a court 214
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controversy the gods, who cannot declare either the former things or the things to come, are silent and so lose the court case by default. Hence the verdict, ‘Behold, you are nothing’ (4 1:24).
The argument is subtle in this sense: it is before nations that God offers proofs of his supremacy, but in providing these proofs he is at the same time answering the misgivings of Israel. The argument for fulfilled prediction has a further interesting facet. God says to Israel, ‘You are my witnesses’
(43:lO). The nations along with their deities are unable to attest to ‘the former things’, namely events in the past, now fulfilled. But Israel is a witness to Yahweh predictions. As Israel gives witness to Yahweh’s ability to foretell the future, she will ‘know and believe me and understand that I am He. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me’ (43: 10).
Through her own witness as God’s advocate in this controversy between God and nations, Israel will know that Yahweh is God.’
These four arguments-God’s role in creation, in history, in prediction, together with the impotence of the heathen gods-represent the chief evidence the prophet marshals for the superiority of Yahweh. The prophets were faced with the crucial question from their people and from the Gentiles: is the God of Israel the God of gods? The experience of the exile had put the answer in doubt. The prophets replied, yes. There were reasons for that answer, and by following the format of a legal court controversy they sustained an appeal to their hearers to consider the evidence.
6. ‘Will God own us as his people?’
Before Israel was prepared to appropriate God’s promise ‘I will be your God’, she needed the assurance in the exile context that God would indeed own Israel as his people. To this question, verbally posed or not, the material in Isaiah 40-66 speaks repeatedly.
The lawsuit form was used as a vehicle to supply an answer to the earlier question; here various forms of salvation speeches are used to communicate the assurance of God’s relationship with Israel.4 The ‘assurance of sal- vation’ is one type of salvation speech. It is characterized by its formal ‘Fear not’. Then follow reasons why Israel should not be anxious. One of these reasons is, ‘I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine’
(43: 1). In another assurance-of-salvation oracle the affirmation of God’s ownership of his people comes in the so-called ‘consequences’ section: ‘This one will say, “I am the LORD'S". . . and another will write on his hand, “The
lAn interesting treatment of the word ‘witness’ as advocacy is given from the book of Isaiah by Allison A.
Trites, The New Testament Concept of Witness (New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
4Salvation speech genres are designated by C. Westermann as ‘assurance’ and ‘proclamation’, Isaiah 40- 66, pp. 13, 67, 126, etc. A helpful discussion is found m J. Hayes, introduction to Old Testament Study (Nashville: Abingdon, 1979).
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L O R D ’ S ” ’ (445). In yet another salvation oracle the assurance of God’s ownership of Israel is elaborated extensively and impressively in conjunc- tion with the ‘addressee’ section, ‘But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham, my friend; you whom I took from the ends of the earth . . . saying to you, “You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off”’ (41:8-9). God’s willingness to continue with Israel is most impressive. A second type of salvation speech is the ‘announce- ment of salvation’. It is characterized among other features by a lament nuance. God, addressing the afflicted, announces his help and defines the re- lationship: ‘I the LORD will answer them, I the God oflsraelwill not forsake them’ (41:17).
Assertions of God’s readiness to continue his purpose with Israel occur also in conjunction with family-oriented language in which God is pictured as either a parent or a marriage partner. The parental attachment is high- lighted by Yahweh’s rhetorical question given in reply to Israel’s complaint:
‘But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.”
Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you’
(49: 14-15). ~
The same thought of God having forsaken his people is taken up in 50: 1, but now under the figure of a marriage relationship. ‘Where is your mother’s bill of divorce, with which I put her away?’ The expected answer is that it cannot be produced. Israel’s separation from God occurred because of her sin a;d not because of a divorce decree issued by her partner. The metaphor of matrimony surfaces again. As a youthful woman who is forsa- ken and grieving is recalled by her husband to be his wife, so the LO R D
recalls Israel into the relationship that once existed (54:6; cfi Zc. 10:6). And then as if to leave no doubt about God’s willingness to take Israel as his partner, the prophet declares,
For as a young man marries a virgin,. . . and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you (62:s).
The parent will not disown the child. The bridegroom is not expected to disown the bride. So the LORD will not disown Israel.
In the second half of the book of Isaiah a double movement centres around the first covenant formula: ‘I will be your God.’ On the one hand it is necessary to articulate clearly ‘I am God.’ On the other hand it is not im- mediately self-evident that God will still identify himself with Israel follow- ing the exile and the brokenness of the covenant. Hence the many attempts to clarify the simple statement, ‘I will be your God.’
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