Standing Strong |
|
Vayechi— And He Lived Continued... |
|
These scholars evidently base their interpretation of the Patriarch’s oath-taking ritual on the familiar curse formulae of royal inscriptions which provide that the G-ds should take away the living children of anyone who defaces or changes the monument, and that the G-ds should prevent the offender’s having future offspring.10 This interpretation is vulnerable at best.
In the curse-formula literature that we possess, the formulae are used only by kings; among private parties they are unknown11 until Neo-Babylonian times (6th century B.C.E.). Moreover, a curse formula is particularly unlikely to be used in the case of an agreement between master and servant (Abraham and Eliezer in Genesis 24); and it is unthinkable in the case of a father and son (Jacob and Joseph in Genesis 47). Was it not Jacob himself who (in Genesis 42:35–38) refused to accept Reuben’s offer of Reuben’s two sons as a pledge for Benjamin’s safety when Joseph demands Benjamin’s presence in Egypt? The offer that Jacob does accept is from Judah (43:8–13), who tells his father, “If I do not bring him (Benjamin) back to you (from Egypt) and set him before you, I shall stand guilty before you forever.” No mention here—where we would surely expect it—of sterility or extirpation. Would this same Jacob then impose such dire sanctions as those suggested by the curse formulae on his beloved son Joseph?
The parallel to the Old Babylonian custom of using parts of divine images in oath-taking rituals is a much less vulnerable explanation of the act of grasping the circumcised membrum in Biblical oath-taking ceremonies; and this interpretation is supported by the completely independent methodology of traditional Jewish interpretation. Moreover, the very same custom is still evident in modern secular courtrooms, where Bibles are used for the same reason that divine images were used in Babylonian law and the circumcised membrum was used by Abraham and Jacob—to invoke the divine presence as witness to the gravity of the oath.
Selah. |
|
Isaiah 11:6 2 Thessalonians 2:15 |