A Look at the Torah
A brief introduction to Torah as a whole and each of the books individually.
The Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, are the soil from which the rest of Scripture, including the New Testament, grows. Narratively, the Five Books of Moses (Khumash in Hebrew) flow one right after the other, but what is happening in the Torah, in the back and forth of it, in the stuff we learn and glean about life and God, covenant, loss, sin, and redemption are what teach us how to read the rest of Scripture. Again, this includes the New Testament as well. I think having a decent grasp of the stories told in all of the Old Testament enrich our reading of the New, but I feel comfortable saying that without a solid understanding of the logics of Torah, we’re going to miss a lot of what is happening in the New Testament.1 I’m hoping, then, with this post that I can whet your appetite for a deeper study of Torah and a deeper fascination of its contents and stories.
The Ingredients of Instruction
The Hebrew word torah (תּוֹרָה) means teaching or instruction. So when we speak of the Pentateuch (Greek form of Khumash, the Five Books), using the word “Law” is a bit misleading, not because “law” is a bad translation, necessarily, but because “law” means something different to modern Westerners than “teaching” or “instruction.” The reason we call Torah “the Law” is because that is what the New Testament calls it. When the OT was being translated into Greek (the Septuagint), the translators used nomos (νόμος) to translate torah. The etymology of torah likely comes from a different Hebrew word, yarah (ירה), which means something like “stretching out the finger, or the hand, to point out a route.”2 This word, yarah, has a homonym that means to throw or shoot an arrow, which has some interesting crossover with the idea of sin (Heb. khata) carries the well-known idea of “missing the mark.” We’re not really sure which of these Hebrew words, which are spelled exactly the same, underlies torah, and though it seems likely it’s the first option, it’s hard to not think about torah being instruction on how to shoot straight and hit the target.
It’s important to note that the Torah (the first five books) nowhere, at least that I’m aware of, calls itself the Torah. Rather, this is how the people of God came to understand what the first five books were doing to them as a community. Deuteronomy does reference itself, or at least some core piece of itself, as “the Book of the Law” (Deut. 28:61; 29:21; 30:10; 31:26), and that seems to be how all five books came to be called by that name. The Book of the Law, or perhaps better, the Book of Instruction (sepher ha-torah - סֵפֶר הַתֹּורָה) in Deuteronomy is important because the people of God are taught how to follow the God with whom they are in covenant, Yahweh. Important themes from Genesis through Numbers are repeated through the book, all oriented to show that Israel are Yahweh’s chosen people and that they are covenanted to him.
When the Most High apportioned the nations, at his dividing up of the sons of humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples, according to the number of the sons of God. For Yahweh’s portion was his people, Jacob the share of his inheritance.
Deuteronomy 32:8-9 (LEB)3
All the nations of the world were appointed to other “sons of God,” but the Creator, Yahweh, saved Israel for himself and vowed to care for, protect, and discipline as their God. The Book of Instruction was written to guide their life with Yahweh, and as time progressed, the people saw that it wasn’t just the one specific book (likely Deuteronomy 12 through 26) or just Deuteronomy, but all the books in the Pentateuch, Genesis through Deuteronomy. Each book had something to say about being the people of God in covenant relationship with Yahweh. Each book pointed out the way of life (cf. Deut. 30:19 - does that remind you of a certain tree?), and to live in these stories was to be formed into the kind of people who chose life and obedience to Yahweh.
Torah, the Five Books of Moses, are like a meal. Each book is a self contained book of its own, each is delicious in its own way, but you don’t have full meal unless you have them all together. Each “ingredient,” though they contribute to the whole, has special features about it that make them unique. When read together, when taken as a whole meal, the uniqueness of each book brings out the good flavor of the others. Below, I will give a very brief description of each ingredient that makes the meal of Torah.
Genesis (Hebrew name - Bereshit: “In the beginning”)
Genesis is exciting and troubling and fascinating. In this book we are given the mythological4 beginnings of humanity generally, Israel specifically, and the reasons why the world is the way it is. Why did God choose Israel? Why is the world, at once so beautiful and good, rife with pain and evil? What is humanity's place in the world and what is Israel's place in humanity? When I use the word, "mythological," I'm not pitting it against "factual." Rather, I'm view it as a term that is not on the scale between fact and fiction. The mythological in Genesis, especially chapters 1 through 11, are windows into the way God views the human condition and the world. There are deep meanings under each story, and it’s important to pay attention to those meanings and learn from them before (not necessarily at the expense of) we start talking about whether “it really happened.”
Exodus (Sh’mot - Names)
Genesis ends with Joseph as a ruler in Egypt, and Exodus begins with a new ruler in Egypt who didn’t know Joseph. Genesis ended with Israel being blessed and provided for in Egypt. Exodus begins with Israel in slavery and in need. Exodus tells us how God responds when he sees his people being oppressed and enslaved by another nation as well as how God works within his people, choosing messy, non-heroes to accomplish his work in the world. Pharaoh is an image of power and wealth, the embodiment of Egypt’s supreme deity. Moses, who is made “like God” to Pharaoh (Ex. 7:1), is prone to emotional outbursts, he’s afraid, a stutterer, and a man who runs from his problems. He’s not quick to obey God. But it is this man who’s more like you and I than Pharaoh is (thought) to be, through whom God will deliver Israel from slavery and initiate his covenant.
After the drama of Israel’s deliverance, the whole narrative suddenly changes pace. There are some stories of Israel’s wandering in the wilderness toward Sinai, but once we get there and are introduced to the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20), the whole story starts to crawl. From there we’re given some community laws and a lot of instructions for the building of the Tabernacle and the worship that will happen there. From Genesis 1 to Exodus 20, we’ve covered thousands of years of human/Israelite history, then we suddenly halt to focus on a very small window of time focused on the Tabernacle and worship. What does this say about the significance and importance of these things?
The incident with the golden calf (Ex. 32) happens in the middle of this section, and immediately after, Exodus picks up with more instructions for the Tabernacle, much of it a repetition of what was said already.
Leviticus (Va’yikrah - And He called…)
If the narrative starts to crawl in Exodus 20, we basically stop moving in Leviticus, stopping to focus on the ritual and sacrificial system of the priesthood and Tabernacle. Don’t let that fool you, though. Leviticus is a fascinating book. It gets a bad rap among clergy and laypeople alike. I admit that it can be a difficult book to understand, not because the vocabulary is difficult, but because the kind of world where a book like Leviticus makes sense is long gone, at least for those of us in the West. We live in a world of fast paced, screen-based technology, whereas Leviticus is for a world that lives by the cycle of seasons and agriculture, and where a single building, the Tabernacle (or Temple) and a single family, Aaron’s, sit at the heart of religious and spiritual practice. But, if you try just a little, it’s possible to catch a glimpse of that mysterious world and why Leviticus is so important.
Leviticus, like the Tabernacle among the people, sits at the heart of the Torah, and this is on purpose. It teaches Ancient Israel’s religion, their covenant and relationship with God orbited around the Holy Place where the Ark of the Covenant was held. Most of the blood sacrifices that are found in Leviticus are not actually about forgiving or cleansing “moral” sins, though there is a little bit of that. Rather, the blood sacrifices were focused on the ritual purification of sacred spaces and people who would go into sacred spaces. In a time like ours, when we have such a scant conception of sacred space, it’s hard to imagine what this would have meant to the Israelites. The rest of the instructions (or laws, if you prefer) in Leviticus are concerned about peoples’ relationship with one another and the health of the community. It’s very rare to find a commandment that addresses a moral abstraction like hate, deceit, or jealousy, and when they do, they’re always explained in concrete terms. Leviticus is concerned with the health of the community and the communities relationship with a holy God.
Numbers (Ba-Midbar - In the wilderness)
With Numbers, we begin our narrative movement again. The English name comes from the censuses and camp arrangements at the front of the book. The Hebrew name, In the Wilderness, is so named because the majority of the book deals with the Israelites 40-year wandering in the wilderness. Of all the books in the Torah, I’m the least familiar with Numbers, and I’m only realizing it now!
Much of what was said in Leviticus becomes preeminent in Numbers. This is indicated by the inclusion of more ritual purity instructions toward the beginning of the book, after the census. Now the Israel is on the move, and the priesthood has taken their place at the center of the community, Israel is responsible for maintaining holiness and a righteous and healthy community. Keeping their covenant with Yahweh was imperative to their inheriting the promised land, and as we learn quite painfully in Numbers, Yahweh is serious about this matter.
Numbers contains a lot of “murmuring” stories, times when the people would complain about God’s leadership or against Moses, and we see how quickly God responds to this complaining. This culminates on the return of the spies who had gone ahead into Canaan, the Promised Land, and the people’s response to their report. The story, told in chapters 13 and 14, is quite dramatic and the imagery potent. The people declare they will not be able to take the Promised Land, and say that a leader should be chosen who will take them back to Egypt, i.e. back to slavery. God, who was about to destroy the people, relents on account of Moses’ intercession, but promises that the generation who rejected the land (14:31), who chose the wilderness, will die in the wilderness while their children go on to inherit the Promise. The very next chapter (15) is a kind of reassurance that the children will go into the Promised Land as they are commandments on what the Israelites are to do when they finally enter Canaan. The rest of the book is a cycle of rebellions and punishments, even on Moses as well as a series of battles. The book ends after the 40-year period has ended with Moses and the people at the edge of the Promised Land.
Deuteronomy (D’varim - Words)
Finally, we reach the last book of Torah, Deuteronomy. In this book, Moses recounts the Israelites’ deliverance from Egypt and their wandering through the wilderness and it looks forward to their entrance into the Promised Land and beyond. The end of the book hints to the much later Exile, with Moses knowing that the people are destined to repeat their wilderness mistakes. Deuteronomy is like a threshold where Torah ends and the story of the people of Israel and Judah begin. It is the end of Torah and the beginning of the “Deuteronomic History,” extending from Deuteronomy through 2 Kings,5 and much of what is written in the Prophets refers back to ideas found in Deuteronomy. The book is uniquely ethical among the books of Torah, but again, the ethics are not ambiguous or abstract, they are grounded in concrete situations from which we extrapolate. OT scholar, John Goldingay, lists six categories of ethics taught in Deuteronomy:
1) Justice (e.g. Deut. 4:8; 19).
2) Concern for the needy (14:22-29; 15:1-18)
3) Brotherhood (15; 17:14-20)
4) Womanhood, i.e. the idea that women have the same, or at least similar rights to men (15:12, 17; 21:10-21; 21:1-4)
5) Family order (4:9; 5:9, 16; 22:13-30)
6) Happiness and celebration (12; 26:11-12; 24:5)
The book winds down with Yahweh placing a choice before the Israelites as they enter their Promised Land. Will they choose obedience and life, or rebellion and death?
See, I am setting before you today life and good, death and evil. That which I command you today is to love Yahweh your God, to walk in his ways by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his judgments…
I invoke against you today the heavens and the earth—life and death I set before you, the blessing and the curse—so choose life! that you and your offspring may live. Love Yahweh your God, hear his voice, and cling to him for he is your life and the length of your days…Deuteronomy 30:15, 19-20
You’ll notice the use of phrases and ideas from the creation stories in Genesis, like “the heavens and the earth,” and the idea of choosing between life and death. The idea is that the Promised Land is the beginning of the restoration of the Eden-reality, where the Creator and his people live together in the sacred garden, and similar to Adam and Eve, two trees stand in the garden. From which will they eat?
Whoever Hears and Does Them…
I said that each of the books was like an ingredient of a meal, and I hope the snippets I’ve provided show you how each book works individually and how they come together to provide a whole meal. I also said that torah is better translated as teaching or instruction rather than law, and that the all five books are considered this sacred teaching. It’s easy to see how the commandments are instructions, but what about all those stories, poems, and songs?
Stories, poems, and songs are the lifeblood of a culture, and when we hear them, especially when we hear them over and over again, they begin to become part of our psyche. There are a lot of commandments, we can’t get around that, nor should we try, but there are also a lot of stories, poems, and songs. What does it mean, then, that the stories, poems, and songs are torah, are instruction and teaching? How do they point, along with the commandments, toward the way of life? I haven’t really said, and I’ve already written a long post. Next time, I will talk more about how the Five Books of Moses in their entirety are instruction, and how we can learn to sit and hear what God is saying to us through them. For now, I hope that my brief snippets on each of the five books are helpful to you and have you interested to learn more.
This is tricky, because I don’t think it’s impossible to understand the New Testament without the Old, or without Torah, but so much of what is written there is framed by the Old Testament that it is impossible to grasp everything. That being said, this is certainly not an “salvation issue,” or anything like that.
Koehler, Ludwig, Walter Baumgartner, M. E. J. Richardson, and Johann Jakob Stamm. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994–2000.
Lexham English Bible.
Mythological doesn’t necessarily mean non-historical, but parsing between the historical, i.e. “what actually happened” and the symbolic is difficult with the mythological elements of Genesis. Personally, I think to get hung up on what is “factual” takes away from the beauty and power of what Genesis is and it is to miss the point.
This is in reference specifically to the Hebrew order of books: Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, (1 & 2) Samuel, and (1 & 2) Kings.
Super helpful. I tend to find the NT and the OT narrative sections much easier to pay attention to (for various mostly obvious reasons) than much of the Torah. This helped me see how it all fits together.