LAW AND NARRATIVE IN EXODUS 19-24

At the altars of stone selamim offerings for the purpose of obtaining meat to eat were available even for the ceremonially unclean (1 Sam 14:31-35), whereas the unclean were not to eat meat from the tabernacle's altar (Lev 7:20) or other more formally consecrated food (1 Sam 21:4). In the wilderness, the pre-eminence of the tabernacle's altar is further underscored by a temporary measure limiting all slaughter to the tabernacle (Lev 17:4-7), a measure meant to counteract the temptation to idolatrous goat-demon worship at that particular occasion in the desert. What Lockshin calls "[t]he standard understanding of most halakhic exegetes"37 was that the opening verses of Leviticus 17 are limited to the context of the Israelites traveling through the Sinai wilderness. But when Israel came to the land, altars of stone again were permitted and built (Deut 27:4-8; Josh 8:30-35). Deuteronomy 12:5, however, anticipates a day when all sacrifice would be limited to the one "place that Yahweh your God will choose." Although in Moses' day, and for a number of generations after Moses, altars after the description of Exod 20:24-26 continued to be allowed, 1 Kgs 3:2 sees this as temporary: "The people, however, were still sacrificing at the high places, because a temple had not yet been built for the name of Yahweh." According to the narrator of this text, there is no condemnation of sacrificing on the high places as such. Nevertheless, it does foresee a day after the temple is built when sacrifice at the high places would cease. This prediction came true through Josiah's reforms around 621 BC (2 Kgs 23:15, 19-20).

The above line of interpretation does not resolve all difficulties, and other solutions are defendable and may even be preferable. But it does seem possible to explain the differences among the altar laws on the basis of their placement in the framework of the Bible's narrative chronology. It thus shows the fruitfulness, hermeneutically, of taking narrative into consideration when interpreting law.

e. Firstfruits, firstborn, and holiness. Another place where the narrative affects the interpretation of law is at Exod 22:29-31. Here God commands Israelites to give to him the overflow (of wine/oil), the firstborn of their sons, and the firstborn of their livestock, adding that they are to be holy by not eating carrion.

The call for Israel to be "holy men" (Exod 22:31) picks up on Exod 19:6, which stipulates that Israel was to be a "holy nation." Exodus 22:29-31 is also surrounded by social-humanitarian regulations where further allusion to the exodus is explicit (cf. Exod 22:21; 23:9). The command about the firstborn repeats commands given earlier in conjunction with the Passover narratives that the firstborn of both man and beast belong to God, though, as a concession, human sons and more expensive animals were to be redeemed by sacrifice of a lamb (Exod 13:2, 11-19). Firstborn sons in particular play a prominent role in the Passover narrative (Exod 11:3-7; 12:12-13). Thus, in the light of the Passover law/narratives of Exodus 11-13 it would be wrong to read Exod 22:29 as a call for literal human sacrifice. The narrative context precludes that interpretation, even though the words without the earlier narrative might have been taken that way.