Divine Promises

B. Divine Promises

In addition to the series of covenants that structure history, the Torah views Israel's experience as the fulfillment of divine promises. It presents Israel's history as goal oriented and divinely guided. The promises specifically concerned posterity eventually leading to nationhood, a homeland, and continued divine presence. Clines (1978) argues that promise is the heart of the Torah:

The theme of the Pentateuch is the partial fulfilment--which implies also the partial non-fulfilment--of the promise to or blessing of the patriarchs. The promise or blessing is both the divine initiative in a world where human initiatives always lead to disaster, and a re-affirmation of the primal divine intentions for man. The promise has three elements: posterity, divine-human relationship, and land. The posterity-element of the promise is dominant in Genesis 12-50, the relationship-element in Exodus and Leviticus, and the land-element in Numbers and Deuteronomy. (p. 29)

    But if promise and fulfillment are the defining issues of the Torah, then the question must be asked why the Torah ends without fulfillment. Deuteronomy concludes with the death of Moses and the Israelites on the edge of the Promised Land without possession of it. This tension raised a rather large issue that bears on the overall meaning of the Torah and concerns how Deuteronomy relates to the preceding four books.
   By the end of the fifth century B.C.E. there were two major collections of books. The first was Genesis through Numbers, a Tetrateuch, or set of four books. The second was Deuteronomy through Kings, the Deuteronomistic History. The first covered the early history of the nation, from creation to conquest. The second told the story of the rise and fall of Israel, from conquest to exile. Each collection has its own consistent voice and perspective.
   But the compilers of the Hebrew Bible did not divide the material along those lines; the major break in the canon comes after Deuteronomy, not before it. Theologically speaking, a Tetrateuch would be more natural, since those books share the three sources J, E, and P. Why then did the early Jewish community of faith structure the early books of the Hebrew Bible as a Pentateuch and not a Tetrateuch? The answer has a great deal to do with when and where the Torah took final shape.
   The Torah was formed in an exilic setting to provide a theological framework for a postexilic Jewish community. Above all, the exilic community needed a narrative and legal tradition that could direct national life. The priests naturally turned to Moses as the great lawgiver. Since, in addition to Exodus through Numbers, Deuteronomy provided legal material attributed to Moses, it was included in this core community document, thus creating a Pentateuch.
   But more importantly, the Torah took shape as a document for a people "on the road," a people exiled and not yet home. In positing a Pentateuch, with a major break between Deuteronomy and Joshua, the community of faith was affirming this basic historical and theological fact; the people of God are continually moving from promise to fulfillment. The people of God have not "arrived." Like Moses, the exilic community viewed the promised land from a distance. By not including the conquest recorded in Joshua, the hope of the exilic people resonated with that of their forefathers. Like them, they too would gain possession of the land...someday. The structure of the Pentateuch affirms that the exilic community was essentially a community of hope.