B. IN CRITICISM
5. Pre-exilic Prophets Knew Nothing of Levitical System of Which the Tabernacle Was Said to Be the Center
That the pre-exilic prophets knew nothing about the Levitical system of which the tabernacle was the center is regarded as perhaps the strongest proof that the tabernacle had no existence in the wilderness and indeed never existed at all except on paper. The assertion about the ignorance of the pre-exilic prophets as to the sacrificial system of the Priestly Code has been so often made that it has come to be a “commonplace” and “stock- phrase” of modern criticism. In particular, Amos in the 8th century BC (5:25,26) and Jeremiah in the 7th century BC (7:21-23) are quoted as having publicly taught that no such sacrificial ritual as the tabernacle implied had been promulgated in the wilderness. But, if these prophets were aware that the Levitical Law had not been given by Moses, one would like to know,
(1) how this interpretation of their language had been so long in being discovered;
(2) how the critics themselves are not unanimous in accepting this interpretation — which they are not;
(3) how Amos could represent Yahweh as saying “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Yea, though ye offer me your burnt-offerings and meal-offerings, I will not accept them; neither will I regard the peace-offerings of your fat beasts” (5:21,22), if Yahweh had never accepted and never enjoined them;
(4) how Jeremiah could have been a party to putting forward
Deuteronomy as a work of Moses if he knew that Yahweh had never commanded sacrifices to be offered, which Deuteronomy does; and (5) how Jeremiah could have blamed Judah for committing spiritual adultery if Yahweh had never ordered the people to offer sacrifice.
In reply to
(1) it will scarcely do to answer that all previous interpreters of Amos and Jeremiah had failed to read the prophets’ words as they stand (Am 5:25,26; <240722>
Jeremiah 7:22), because the question would then arise why the middle books of the Pentateuch should not also be read as they stand, as e.g. when they say, “The Lord spake unto Moses,” and again
“These (the legislative contents of the middle books) are the
commandments, which Yahweh commanded Moses for the children of Israel in mount Sinai” (<032734>Leviticus 27:34). As for
(2) it is conveniently forgotten that Bohlen (Introduction to Genesis, I, 277) admitted that some of the Pentateuch “might possibly have originated in the time of Moses,” and when quoting <240722>Jeremiah 7:22 never dreamed of putting forward an explanation different from the orthodox rendering of the same, and certainly did not cite it as a proof that the Law had no existence prior to the exile; that De Wette in his Einleitung (261, 262, 8th edition) stated that “the holy laws and institutions of theocratic people had for their author Moses, who in giving them stood under divine guidance”; that Knobel (Die Bucher Exodus und Lev, xxii) explicitly declared that Moses must be regarded not only as the liberator and founder of his people, but also the
originator of the peculiar Israelite constitution and lawgiving, at least in its fundamental elements; that Ewald (Die Propheten, II, 123) regarded
<240722>Jeremiah 7:22 as making no announcement about the origin of the
sacrificial cult; and that Bleek (Introduction to the Old Testament) forgot to read the modern critical interpretation into the words of Amos and Jeremiah for the simple reason that to have done so would have stultified his well-known view that many of the laws of the middle books of the Pentateuch are of Mosaic origin. Nor is the difficulty (3) removed by holding that, if prior to the days of Amos Yahweh did accept the burnt offerings and meal offerings of Israel, these were not sacrifices that had been appointed in the wilderness, because Yahweh Himself appears to intimate (Am 5:25,26) that no such sacrifices or offerings had been made during the whole 40 years’ wandering. Had this been the case, it is not easy to see why the post-exilic authors of the Priestly Code should have asserted the contrary, should have represented sacrifices as having been offered in the wilderness, as they have done (see Numbers 16; 18). The obvious import of Yahweh’s language is either that the sacrificial worship which He had commanded had been largely neglected by the people, or that it had been so
heartless and formal that it was no true worship at all — their real worship being given to their idols — and that as certainly as the
idolaters in the wilderness were excluded from Canaan, so the idolaters in Amos’ day, unless they repented, would be carried away into exile.
As to
(4) Jeremiah’s action in putting forward or helping to put forward Deuteronomy as a work of Moses when he knew that it represented Yahweh as having commanded sacrifices to be offered both in the wilderness and in Canaan (<051206>Deuteronomy 12:6,11,13), and must have been aware as well that J-E had represented Yahweh as
commanding sacrifice at Sinai (<022024>Exodus 20:24,25), no explanation can be offered that will clear the prophet from the charge of duplicity and insincerity, or prevent his classification with the very men who were a grief of mind to him and against whom a large part of his life was spent in contending, namely, the prophets that prophesied lies in the name of God. Nor does it mend matters to suggest (Cheyne) that when Jeremiah perceived that Deuteronomy, though floated into publicity under high patronage, did not take hold, he changed his mind, because in the first place if Jeremiah did so, he should, like an honest
man, have washed his hands clear of Deuteronomy, which he did not;
and in the second place, because had he done so he could not have been “the iron pillar and brazen wall” which Yahweh had intended him to be and indeed had promised to make him against the princes, priests and people of the land (1:18). And, still further,
(5) it passes comprehension how, if Yahweh never commanded His people to offer sacrifice to Him, Jeremiah could have represented Yahweh as enjoining him to pronounce a curse upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem because they transgressed the words of Yahweh’s covenant, which He had made with their fathers in the day when He brought them out of the land of Egypt, by running after other gods to serve them, setting up altars and burning incense unto Baal and even working lewdness in Yahweh’s house (<241101>Jeremiah 11:1-15). It is urged in answer to this, that the offense complained of was not that the men of Judah did not offer sacrifices to Yahweh, but that they offered them to Baal and polluted His temple with heathen rites — that what Yahweh demanded from His worshippers was not the offering of sacrifice, but obedience to the moral law conjoined with abstinence from idolatry.
But in that case, what was the use of a temple at all? And why should Yahweh speak of it as “mine house,” if sacrifices were not required to be offered in it (compare on this Kittel, The Scientific Study of the Old Testament, 218)? Why idolatrous sacrifices were denounced was not merely because they were wrong in themselves, but also because they had supplanted the true sacrificial worship of Yahweh. As already stated, it is not easy to perceive how Jeremiah could have said that Yahweh had never commanded sacrifices to be offered to Him, when he (Jeremiah) must have known that the Book of the Covenant in J-E (<022024>
Exodus 20:24,25) represented Yahweh as expressly enjoining them. Had Jeremiah not read the Book of the Covenant with sufficient care? This is hardly likely in so earnest a prophet. Or will it be lawful to suggest that Jeremiah knew the Book of the Covenant to be a fiction and the assumption of divine authority for its enactments to be merely a rhetorical device? In this case his words might be true; only one cannot help regretting that he did not distinctly state that in his judgment the Book of the Covenant was a fraud.
It may now be added in confirmation of the preceding, that the various references to a tabernacle in the New Testament appear at least to imply that in the 1st Christian century the historicity of the Mosaic tabernacle
was generally accepted. These references are Peter’s exclamation on the Mount of Transfiguration (<401704>Matthew 17:4; <410905>Mark 9:5; <420933>Luke 9:33);
Stephen’s statement in the council (<440744>Acts 7:44); the affirmations in Hebrews (chapters 8; 9); and the voice which John heard out of heaven (Revelation 21:3). It may be admitted that taken separately or unitedly these utterances do not amount to a conclusive demonstration that the tabernacle actually existed in the wilderness; but read in the light of Old Testament aeclarations that such a tabernacle did exist, they have the force of a confirmation. If the language of Peter and that of John may fairly enough be regarded as figurative, even then their symbolism suggests, as its basis, what Stephen and the writer to the He affirm to have been a fact, namely, that their “fathers had the tabernacle .... in the wilderness,” and that, under the first covenant, “there was a tabernacle prepared.”
LITERATURE.
I, critical: De Wette, Beitrage; von Bohlen, Genesis; Georg, Judische Feste; Reuss, Geschichte der heiligen Schriften des AT; Graf, de Templo Silonensi; Kuenen, The Religion of Israel; Wellhausen, Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels; HDB and EB, articles “Tabernacle,” II, conservative:
Bredenkamp, Gesetz und Propheten; Kurtz, Geschichte des alten Bundes;
Havernick, Einleitung; Hengstenberg, Egypt and the Books of Moses;
Riehm, Handworterbuch, and Herzog, RE (ed 1; edition 3 is “critical”), articles “Stiftshutte”; Baxter, Sanctuary and Sacrifice; Bissell, The Pentateuch: Its Origin and Structure; Orr, The Problem of the Old Testament; Whitelaw, Old Testament Critics.
T. Whitelaw TABERNACLE OF TESTIMONY (WITNESS)
(<040915>Numbers 9:15; <142406>2 Chronicles 24:6, the Revised Version (British and
American) “the tent of the testimony”).
See TABERNACLE.
TABERNACLES, FEAST OF See FEASTS AND FASTS, I, A, 3.
TABITHA
<tab’-i-tha> ([Tabeiqa>, Tabeitha]).
See DORCAS.
TABLE
“Table” is derived from the Latin tabula, meaning primarily “a board,” but with a great variety of other significances, of which “writing-tablet” is the most important for the Biblical use of “table.” So in English “table” meant at first “any surface” and, in particular, “a surface for writing,” and further specialization was needed before “table” became the name of the familiar article of furniture (“object with a horizontal surface”), a meaning not possessed by tabula in Latin. After this specialization “table” in the sense of
“a surface for writing” was replaced in later English by the diminutive form
“tablet.” But “surface for writing” was still a common meaning of “table,”
and in this sense it represents j”Wl [luach] (<022412>Exodus 24:12, etc.), a word of uncertain origin, [pla>x, plax], “something flat” (2 Corinthians 3:3; <580904>Hebrews 9:4), [de>ltov, deltos], “a writing tablet” (1 Macc 8:22;
14:18,27,48), or [pinaki>dion, pinakidion] “writing tablet” (<420163>Luke 1:63
— a rather unusual word). the American Standard Revised Version has kept the word in the familiar combination “tables of stone” (<022412>
Exodus 24:12, etc.), but elsewhere (<200303>Proverbs 3:3; 7:3; <233008>Isaiah 30:8;
<241701>Jeremiah 17:1; Habbakuk 2:2; <420163>Luke 1:63) has replaced “table” by
“tablet,” a change made by the English Revised Version only in <233008>Isaiah 30:8; <420163>
Luke 1:63.
See TABLET.
The table as an article of furniture is ˆj;l]vu [shulchan], in the Hebrew and [tra>peza, trapeza], in the Greek. The only exceptions are <220112>Song of Solomon 1:12, bs”me [mecabh], “something round,” perhaps a “round table,” perhaps a “cushion,” perhaps a “festal procession,” and <410704>Mark 7:4, the King James Version [kli>nh, kline], “couch” (so the Revised Version (British and American)), while John 13:28 and John 12:2, the King James Version “at the table,” and Tobit 7:8, the King James Version
“on the table,” represent only the general sense of the original. Of the two regular words, [shulchan] is properly “a piece of hide,” and so “a leather
mat,” placed on the ground at meal time, but the word came to mean any
“table,” however elaborate (e.g. <022523>Exodus 25:23-30). Trapeza means
“having four feet.”
<120410>2 Kings 4:10 seems to indicate that a table was a necessary article in
even the simpler rooms. Curiously enough, however, apart from the table of shewbread there is no reference in the Bible to the form or construction of tables, but the simpler tables in Palestine of the present day are very much lower than ours. The modern “tables of the money changers”
(<411115>
Mark 11:15 and parallel’s) are small square trays on stands, and they doubtless had the same form in New Testament times.
See SHEWBREAD, TABLE OF; MONEY-CHANGERS.
To eat at a king’s table (<100907>2 Samuel 9:7, etc.) is naturally to enjoy a position of great honor, and the privilege is made by Christ typical of the highest reward (<422230>Luke 22:30). Usually “to eat at one’s table” is meant quite literally, but in <111819>1 Kings 18:19; <160517>Nehemiah 5:17 (compare <111005>1 Kings 10:5) it probably means “be fed at one’s expense.” On the other hand, the misery of eating the leavings of a table (<070107>
Judges 1:7; <410728>
Mark 7:28; <421621>Luke 16:21) needs no comment. The phrase “table of the Lord (Yahweh)” in <390107>Malachi 1:7,12 the King James Version (compare
<264122>Ezekiel 41:22; 44:16 — <263920>Ezekiel 39:20 is quite different) means “the
table (altar) set before the Lord,” but the same phrase in 1 Corinthians 10:21 is used in a different sense and the origin of its use by Paul is obscure. Doubtless the language, if not the meaning, of Malachi had its influence and may very well have been suggested to Paul as he wrote 1 Corinthians 10:18. On the other hand, light may be thrown on the passage by such a papyrus fragment as “Chareimon invites you to dine at the table (kline) of the lord Serapis,” a formal invitation to an idol-banquet (1 Corinthians 8:10; Pap. Oxyr. i.110; compare iii.523). This would explain Paul’s “table of demons” — a phrase familiar to the Corinthians — and he wrote “table of the Lord” to correspond (compare, however, Pirqe
‘Abhoth, iii.4). “Table at which the Lord is Host,” at any rate, is the meaning of the phrase. On the whole passage see the comms., especially that of Lietzmann (fullest references). Probably <422230>Luke 22:30 has no bearing on 1 Corinthians 10:21. The meaning of <196922>Psalm 69:22 (quoted
in <451109>Romans 11:9), “Let their table before them become a snare,” is very
obscure (“let them be attacked while deadened in revelings”?), and perhaps was left intentionally vague.
Burton Scott Easton TABLE OF NATIONS