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The Promise to the Patriarchs

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The Promise to
the Patriarchs
z
JOEL S. BADEN

1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data


Baden, Joel S., 1977–
The promise to the patriarchs / Joel S. Baden.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and indexes.
ISBN 978–0–19–989824–4 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Bible. O.T. Pentateuch—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 2. Abraham (Biblical patriarch)
3. Covenants—Biblical teaching. 4. God—Promises—Biblical teaching. I. Title.
BS1225.52.B334 2013
222′.106—dc23
2012030144

ISBN 978–0–19–989824–4

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For Zara and Iris
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Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1
1. The Promise in Its Canonical Setting 7
2. The Promise as Secondary 26
3. Restoring the Promise 57
4. The Promise According to the Sources 101
5. Returning the Promise to Its Canonical Setting 127
Conclusion 158

Notes 163
Bibliography 203
Index of Scholars Cited 213
Index of Biblical Citations 217
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Acknowledgments

as with all projects of a certain length, this book would not have been
possible without the help of numerous friends and colleagues.
As always, my colleagues at Yale Divinity School have been the perfect
models of collegial support, creating and sustaining an environment for
teaching, research, and writing that could hardly be improved on. I am
particularly thankful to my new Yale colleague Hindy Najman, who has
been both generous with her time and support and a source of much valu-
able intellectual stimulation.
I continue to be grateful to my coauthor and friend, Professor Candida
Moss, whose work ethic is impressive, whose successes are thoroughly
deserved, and who nevertheless has the time to be a constant source of
support during the writing process.
Over the course of this book’s gestation from a conference paper to an
article (never written) and eventually to a monograph, many people have
provided input that has made its way into the book, including the anony-
mous readers at OUP. Two colleagues stand out as particularly worthy of
mention. First, Baruch Schwartz, whose teachings—not merely the conclu-
sions, but far more importantly the means of reaching them—are always
on my mind. Second, my student Liane Marquis, who let me try out with
her most of this book, both orally and in writing; whose keen eye spared me
many a foolish mistake; and whose equally keen mind contributed to, and
at times changed for the better, my own ideas. To both I am grateful.
At times this book required long days and long evenings of work, and
I am thankful to Gillian for never begrudging me the time I felt I needed.
This book is dedicated to my daughters, Zara and Iris. The unmiti-
gated happiness they bring me every single day is worth more than all the
promises any deity could ever make.
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The Promise to the Patriarchs
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Introduction
“I will make of you a great nation; I will bless you;
I will make your name great; you, be a blessing. I
will bless those who bless you, and curse him that
curses you, and all the families of the earth will bless
themselves by you”
(gen 12:2 –3). 1

the patriarchal promise resonates as few other biblical texts do. As the
divine word, pronounced to individuals but definitive for an entire nation,
as the fundamental expression of God’s care for his people, it speaks to
readers in all times and places and situations. Abraham may have passed
from the stage of history long ago, but anyone who considers himself a
descendant of Abraham, be it through genealogy or faith, may be party to
the promise and the blessings it entails.2
The flexibility and centrality of the promise for Judeo-Christian
thought are evident in the many texts and traditions that take up the
promise and reconfigure it for different ends. For the classical rabbis, the
promise was bound up with the notion that Abraham knew and studied
the Torah all his life, even before it was given to Moses3 —thus on a very
practical level aligning the rabbis themselves, who devoted their own lives
to the study of Torah, with the promise. Similarly we find in the rabbinic
literature a link expressed between the patriarchal promise and the sacri-
ficial system, that is, the practice of fulfilling the commandments of the
Torah4 —again bringing those who practice Judaism in all of its ritual and
legal details in line with the promise and its benefits. Thus for the rab-
bis, the patriarchs were worthy of receiving the promise because of their
behavior (which was modeled on that of the rabbis themselves, of course);
those who participate in the same behaviors are thus laying claim to the
promise as well.5 Of course, for Judaism the patriarchal promise is the
basic expression of the notion of the Jews as God’s chosen people: to be
2 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

Jewish is to stand in direct descent from Abraham, whom God chose from
all humanity to be the recipient of divine blessing and favor.6
In the New Testament, Jesus is positioned as the fulfillment of the
patriarchal promise, thereby dramatically expanding the temporal and
conceptual limits of the promise as it is presented in the Hebrew Bible.
The notion that “all the nations of the earth will be blessed by your descen-
dants” is taken quite literally: “When God raised up his servant, he sent
him first to you, to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked
ways” (Acts 3:26).7 Famously, Paul uses the promise to justify the value
of faith over obedience to the law: “It depends on faith, in order that the
promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not
only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of
Abraham” (Rom 4:16).8 Just as the rabbis positioned obedience to the law
as an emulation of Abraham’s promiseworthy behavior, so Paul explicitly
and understandably does the same with faith. And just as lineal descent
from Abraham makes one party to the promise in Judaism, so Paul
changes the terms to center on Jesus: “And if you belong to Christ, then
you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise” (Gal 3:29).9
In short, the patriarchal promise is a means of marking identity. It
is available to all who claim to walk in God’s ways, however that may be
defined. It speaks to both the practices of the individual and membership
in a community: one may be party to the promise either by emulating the
individual patriarch or by association with the community that claims
to be the inheritor of the promise. The promise is at once ongoing and
already fulfilled: one may continually aspire to be worthy of the promise
while simultaneously believing that God has already bestowed its bless-
ings. The promise is a blank theological slate, on which can be inscribed
whatever is of significance to the author. It is a means of projecting one’s
own values onto the most elemental statement of God’s relationship with
humanity, shaping the mythical past in the mold of the present.
Part of the process of making a biblical passage or concept relevant in
another time, however, is loosing its literary moorings, setting it free from
its original historical or narrative context. In this way the promise may be
redefined to suit the interpreter’s needs; one need not have had the same
experiences as Abraham to participate in the Abrahamic promise. The
patriarch himself is abstracted: conceived of as a man of devout practice or
as a man of perfect faith. So too the nation that inherits the promise is not
necessarily the people who were taken out of Egypt and led through the
wilderness, at least not literally; it is a community of right believers. Most
Introduction 3

interpretations of the promise tell us much about the beliefs and values of
the interpreters, but not very much about the promise itself.
The early interpreters who latched on to the promise chose well, of course.
By laying claim to the promise, they could be seen as laying claim to the
entirety of the Pentateuch, the fundamental text of the Hebrew Bible. For
the promise is the refrain that echoes throughout the Pentateuch. It is pres-
ent in every one of the five books; in Genesis alone it appears in chapters 12,
13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 24, 26, 28, 32, 35, 46, 48, and 50. The promise asserts
itself at the highest narrative moments: the call of Abraham, the sacrifice
of Isaac, the descent to Egypt, the death of Joseph, the call of Moses, the sin
of the golden calf, the condemnation of the Exodus generation to wander in
the wilderness, the death of Moses. No other concept in the Pentateuch is
treated as extensively or as regularly. The Pentateuch cannot be fully under-
stood without taking the promise into account—but the promise cannot be
fully understood apart from its setting in the Pentateuch.
This book, then, is an attempt to examine the patriarchal promise as
it functions in the Pentateuch. What precisely does the promise entail?
How does it shape our reading of the whole? What message is conveyed by
it? What theological concepts are encoded within it? Why is it formulated
as it is? These questions will be examined from multiple angles—both
canonical and literary-historical—in an attempt to extract as much mean-
ing from the promise as possible. Each approach has its benefits and its
limitations, and it is part of the contention of this book that they are in fact
complementary: what one approach lacks, the other provides.
Far too often—indeed, almost universally—canonical and
literary-historical interpretations of the Pentateuch have been kept at
arm’s length from one another, or have even been positioned as overtly
antagonistic. Canonical readings are said to ignore the history of the text;
literary-historical readings ignore its present form. Canonical readings
are dependent on the subjectivity of the reader; literary-historical readings
are held hostage by the subjective notion of the author. Canonical read-
ings invent meaning; literary-historical readings destroy meaning. While
there is no denying that the two approaches are interested in different
questions—for the canonical approach, how can the text be explained as
it is, and for the literary-historical approach, how can we explain how the
text came to be as it is—both are, in fact, invested in the meaning of the
text. And neither has, nor needs to claim, exclusive rights to that mean-
ing. Different questions illuminate different aspects of the text—and the
text cannot be viewed in its full light without both.
4 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

The analysis of the patriarchal promise begins with an overview of its


role in the final form of the Pentateuch—which is, after all, the text that
lies before us to be interpreted. There are many different ways to inter-
pret the canonical text. Some involve close literary or theological readings
of a particular passage or sets of passages; the approach of this book is
considerably broader. The Pentateuch, for all its various theological state-
ments, is fundamentally a narrative, a story with a beginning, middle,
and end. Stories are told for a reason, to communicate something that
requires expression in narrative form. The full scope of the story cannot
be comprehended by reference to only one part of it; if we could discern
the meaning of the text from only its beginning, what need would there
be for the rest? The purpose of the first chapter, then, is to articulate the
shape of the pentateuchal story, and to show how that shape defines and
is profoundly defined by the patriarchal promise.
At the same time that it allows us to grasp the pentateuchal narrative
in its totality, however, it is this canonical reading that highlights some of
the narrative inconsistencies in the Pentateuch: the very contradictions,
doublets, and other problems that led to the rise of the literary-historical
program. If the aim of the literary-historical approach is to explain how
the text came to be as it is, to identify those literary pieces that must be
kept apart and those that must be kept together, then the literary-historical
investigation of the promise is to identify which promise texts are to be
considered authorially distinct and which are to be viewed as autho-
rially linked. The means by which such judgments are arrived at have
changed and developed over the century and a half since the rise of the
source-critical theory. Thus various schools of thought have emerged
regarding the composition of the Pentateuch, and the patriarchal promise,
each with its own methodological presumptions and conclusions. Despite
this variety, some elements of the literary-historical analysis of the prom-
ise have remained relatively constant over the years. Scholarly consensus,
however, does not necessarily mean that the discussion is closed. Often a
conclusion reached by faulty means becomes entrenched, either from the
force of a scholar’s personality or because the conclusion itself is of use
for later, perhaps quite different, arguments. It is therefore important to
interrogate even the long-held conclusions of scholarship, in order to iden-
tify the methodological mistakes of previous generations. It is this task
that chapter two takes up with attention to the scholarly consensus regard-
ing the identification of many of the promise texts in the Pentateuch as
secondary additions.
Introduction 5

Recognition of the methodological flaws in previous analyses does


not, of course, suggest that the basic question is simply to be dismissed.
The identification of methodological problems is useful precisely because
it allows those problems to be corrected, and thus the question to be
reopened from a fresh perspective. Negative argumentation—why pre-
vious suggestions should be discarded—must be accompanied by its
positive counterpart: how the text may be read with a different method-
ological approach. It is not always the case that faulty methodology leads
to an incorrect conclusion; penicillin, after all, was discovered quite by
accident in an old petri dish. To reopen the question of the promise texts
thus requires going back to first principles: reading the promise passages
without the framework of any overarching pentateuchal theory, simply
taking the texts on their own terms. (This is one way, of course, that
canonical reading can and should inform literary-historical approaches:
as a reminder that the basic material on which any analysis is based is
the text as we have it.) Whether and how the promise texts are integrated
into their narrative settings, and whether and how the various promise
texts require either separation from or connection with each other, are
questions that require no a priori theory of pentateuchal composition.
It is with these questions that chapter three is concerned. Although the
questions asked may be isolated from broader pentateuchal theories, the
answers that emerge from those questions can and do have an impact on
the larger question of how the Pentateuch was composed. At the risk of
giving away the game too soon, the answers arrived at in chapter three
support the attribution of virtually every promise text to the pentateuchal
documents J, E, and P—though it will be stated here and again in the
chapter itself that this conclusion was in no way predetermined, but
emerged from the explicitly nondocumentary analysis. (A brief note to
the reader: chapters two and three are relatively technical, as the con-
tent of their arguments requires. For the reader who is uninterested in
the minutiae of pentateuchal theory and method—and who is willing to
trust my conclusions regarding the alignment of the promise texts with
the documentary sources—it is possible to skip chapters two and three
without losing the main thread of the discussion.)
The attribution of a passage to its source is not the end of the
literary-historical process. The result of dividing the Pentateuch is not to
merely produce a fractured text, but to better appreciate the various voices
preserved in the text. Each voice is an invaluable record of one particu-
lar perspective, one piece of the broader religious community that was
6 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

ancient Israel. These perspectives are defined only by the texts that can
be identified with them; as such, every passage plays an important role in
more closely defining the source to which it is ascribed. Given the promi-
nence of the promise throughout the Pentateuch, it is perhaps unsurpris-
ing that the promise passages are particularly invested with meaning for
their respective sources. As the most explicit theological statements of
God’s relationship with Israel, the promise texts regularly give expression
to ideas that are only implicit elsewhere. Often, the promise serves as
the nexus for a broad constellation of densely linked concepts. Just as the
promise is necessary for understanding the canonical Pentateuch, so too
it is central to its source contexts. Chapter four details the way in which
the promise serves to encode the unique narrative, thematic, and theo-
logical claims of each source.
With the description of the function of the patriarchal promise from
both the canonical and the literary-historical perspectives, and the prom-
ise thus seen from multiple angles, at different depths, one might con-
sider the work done. Yet it hardly seems enough to simply present the
results of the two approaches. The question remains—particularly for the
reader interested in making meaning out of the text as we have it—how
can one bring these two perspectives into line? How do the interpretive
conclusions reached by the literary-historical approach affect the way one
reads the canonical text? In chapter five, an attempt will be made to lay out
a new path for the productive combination of literary-historical and final-
form readings. Such a combination has been prevented in most scholar-
ship to this point by the antagonism, real or imagined, between the two
approaches. Or perhaps it has simply been the result of a lack of interest
on the part of each side to engage with the questions and conclusions of
the other. Studies of the theology of the canonical Pentateuch have long
existed, as have studies of the theologies of the individual pentateuchal
sources. What I am proposing in this book is a source-critically informed
canonical theology of the Pentateuch, centered in this case on the patri-
archal promise. It is hoped that, at the very least, the program laid out in
chapter five may demonstrate that the literary-historical approach need
not be the enemy of canonical interpretation. The two can be mutually
informative and constructive, and can result in a more deeply understood
Pentateuch.
1

The Promise in Its Canonical Setting

for the modern reader interested in the theological meaning of the


Pentateuch, the patriarchal promise is central to the shaping and interpre-
tation of the canonical text. From the moment that Abraham emerges on
the scene in the beginning of Genesis to the death of Moses at the end of
Deuteronomy, the patriarchal promise is the guiding force behind the entire
pentateuchal narrative. The promise constitutes the first words God says to
Abraham in Gen 12:1–3 and the last words that God says to Moses in Deut
34:4. At virtually every key moment in the story, the promise is explicitly
mentioned or implicitly alluded to: at the binding of Isaac in Genesis 22, at
the call of Moses in Exodus 3 and 6, at the episode of the golden calf in Exodus
32, at the departure from Sinai/Horeb in Numbers 10, at the condemnation
of the generation of the Exodus to wander the wilderness in Numbers 14, at
the beginning of Moses’s farewell speech in Deuteronomy 1, and numerous
other times in the narrative as well. It appears also as a seminal aspect of the
legal corpora in the Pentateuch: in Leviticus 26, at the conclusion of the laws
given at Sinai/Horeb, and in Deuteronomy 29, at the conclusion of the laws
given in the plains of Moab.
And yet, despite its undisputed importance, the precise definition
of the patriarchal promise has remained a point of some confusion.
Frequently it is understood as two separate promises, one of progeny
and one of land. And often, further divisions are made, with the result
that several distinct promises are postulated: of individual progeny, of
a large community of descendants, of land, of blessing, of divine guid-
ance and presence.1 How we understand the patriarchal promise has a
significant impact on how we understand the Pentateuch as a whole. In
this chapter, then, I will attempt to defi ne clearly the patriarchal prom-
ise, giving it a concise form that distinguishes it from other biblical
promises, and examine how the promise is worked out over the course
of the pentateuchal narrative.
8 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

The Twofold Promise


In the first attestation of the patriarchal promise, in Gen 12:1–3, Yahweh
makes three self-willing statements in regard to Abraham: “I will make
of you a great nation; I will bless you; I will make your name great” (Gen
12:2). These are not separate promises, but are rather a single promise
expressed in three distinct ways. The first and fundamental statement is
that God will make Abraham into a great nation. This statement appears
relatively abstract. A great nation, after all, can have numerous meanings,
especially to the modern eye: great in size, great in power, great in faith,
great in influence; nation may refer to a political unit, to an ethnic group,
even to a community of belief. Yet the Hebrew word for “nation” here, gôy,
connotes specifically the political aspect of nationhood, in contrast to the
kinship term ‘ām, “people.”2 This political term is used not only here in
Gen 12:2, but throughout the promise texts: in Gen 17:4–6, 16, 20; 18:17;
21:13, 18; 35:11; 46:3. We also find the manifestly political term “king” used
in the promises, in Gen 17:6, 16, and 35:11. Nowhere in the promise texts
are the patriarchs told that they will become a people, an ‘ām; rather, twice
we find the promise to be “an assembly of peoples,” a qəhal ‘ammîm (Gen
28:3; 48:4). In other words, they will become an entity that encompasses
more than one kin group—that is, a gôy, a nation. Indeed, the promise to
become an ‘ām, a kin group, would be somewhat banal: everyone belongs
to an ‘ām, by virtue of having been born into one.3 It is the creation of
a nation out of a people that is worthy of the divine promise, especially
in light of Yahweh’s command to Abraham to separate himself from the
nation of his ancestors—and note that it is not primarily Abraham’s kin
group that he is instructed to leave in Gen 12:1, but the physical location
of his birth, his land.4
To become a nation thus entails more than simply being part of a kin
group. Nationhood in the political sense has two requirements: a dedicated
territory and a populace to inhabit it. A land without people is a desolation;
a people without land is unthinkable. Even if there were no further elabora-
tion, Yahweh’s promise to make Abraham into a great nation would involve
the two aspects of land and progeny. And in fact the promise texts make
it very clear that these two aspects are, indeed, the core of the patriarchal
promise. In Gen 13:14–17; 15:5, 18–21; 17:6–8; 22:17; 26:3–4; 28:3–4, 13–14;
35:11–12; 48:3–4—in almost every one of the promise texts, and certainly
in all of the most significant ones—God explicitly promises both progeny
and land. This is what it means to become a great nation.5
The Promise in Its Canonical Setting 9

There are, of course, promise texts that mention only one aspect of the
promise, be it land alone, as in Gen 12:7; 24:7; 50:24, or progeny alone, as
in Gen 16:10; 26:24; 32:13. The presence of such passages has led many
to posit that we are dealing with two originally independent promises,
which were combined only at a later stage in the development of the prom-
ise tradition (on which see chapter 2 below). Yet from the canonical per-
spective, no such claim can be made. The first promise to each of the
patriarchs—to Abraham in Gen 12:1–3, to Isaac in Gen 26:2–5, to Jacob
in Gen 28:3–4 (or 28:13–15)—is always the full promise, either implicitly
(Gen 12:1–3) or quite explicitly (Gen 26:2–5; 28:3–4). Every repetition of
or reference to the promise thereafter can be only a reinforcement or a
reminder, not a redefinition. It is not possible that, having given the full
promise of land and progeny, God would then restrict the promise to only
one of its aspects; rather, in these cases only one aspect is being reempha-
sized, and in every case, as we will see in the following chapters, for good
contextual narrative reasons. There is no point at which the promise can
be construed as anything other than the full promise of nationhood.
It is this nationhood that constitutes the essence of Yahweh’s blessing,
the second statement of Gen 12:2. As with the notion of nationhood, mod-
ern readers are perhaps inclined to interpret the term “blessing” in an
abstract sense. Yet here too the biblical usage suggests that blessing has a
material referent. When individuals are blessed in the Pentateuch—either
by another human or by God—the blessing entails some material gain.6
In the first category, humans blessing other humans: we may consider
the blessing of Rebekah by her family in Gen 24:60, that she should have
many offspring and that those offspring should defeat their enemies; the
blessing of Jacob by Isaac in Genesis 27, that he should be granted abun-
dant produce and power over other peoples; and the blessing of Joseph’s
sons by Jacob in Gen 48:15–16, that they should be numerous. More to
the point are the numerous times that God blesses humans: beginning
in Genesis 1, with the blessing of fertility; in Gen 24:35, when Abraham’s
servant says that God has blessed his master such that he has become
rich; Laban’s statements in Gen 30:27 and 30 that both he and Jacob have
become wealthy because of Yahweh’s blessing; Yahweh’s blessing of all
the possessions of Joseph’s Egyptian master in Gen 39:5; God’s blessing
of the Israelites in Deut 2:7, such that they lacked no provisions in the
wilderness; the divine blessing of abundant crops and livestock in Deut
7:13; the blessing of wealth in Deut 15:6, and so on. Blessing entails mate-
rial gain in all of these cases, and so too in the promise to the patriarchs,
10 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

where the announcement of blessing is always followed by its definition


as land and progeny: in Gen 17:16, 20; 22:17; 26:3–4, 24; 28:3–4; 48:3–4.7
As with land and progeny, some have claimed that blessing too should
be considered an independent promise. Yet as we have just seen, there
is no abstract notion of blessing in the Pentateuch; thus an undefined
promise of “blessing” is difficult to imagine.8 The blessing is, in the prom-
ise formulation, identical to land and progeny, to nationhood. This is not
to say that there are not moments of divine blessing in the Pentateuch
that have referents outside of the promise—God does bless individuals,
including the patriarchs, with wealth, as in the examples of Gen 24:35;
30:27, 30; 39:5, cited above, and other passages as well. These, however,
are not fulfillments of the promise, or of the notion of blessing associated
with it. They are blessings, but they do not contribute to the long-term
goal of nationhood. Nor is wealth ever one of the elements mentioned in
the full promise texts. The blessing of material gain in the context of the
promise is the blessing of land and progeny.
The third divine statement in Gen 12:2 is “I will make your name
great.” Though in some contexts this may imply little more than fame—
such as in the case of the builders of the Tower of Babel, who want to
make a name for themselves (Gen 11:4)—here too there may be a more
tangible meaning at play (in addition to that of fame, which is also clearly
present). In the largely preliterate world from which the Hebrew Bible
emerged, one’s name lived on beyond one’s death in two basic ways. The
first was by a continuity of lineage tracing itself back from individual to
individual. Such can be seen, for instance, in genealogies such as those
of Genesis 10 or Numbers 26, in which nations or clans are explained as
having descended from an ancestor after whom they were named, with
the older generations representing larger ethnic units and the younger
generations representing subgroupings thereof. In the most elemental
sense, this is basic filial duty: it is the responsibility of one’s offspring to
keep one’s name alive after one’s death; consider, for example, the actions
of Absalom, who erects a pillar to himself precisely because he has no
offspring who will carry on his name after he has died: “I have no son
to keep my name alive” (2 Sam 18:18). In broader terms, this use of the
name is represented by the designation of the Israelites as bənê yiśrā’ēl,
“the children of Israel.” The second way one’s name lived on was in the
identification of a particular land with its putative original possessor. This
too is applicable to the land of Israel, of course, but also to the surround-
ing territories of Ammon, Moab, and Edom, which are associated with
The Promise in Its Canonical Setting 11

pseudo-historical individuals. Even within the land of Israel, of course,


the lands of the twelve tribes are linked to the twelve sons of Jacob, with
the numerous subdivisions of those tribes according to the descendants
of Jacob’s sons through the generations. This conception of the name, as
linked to land, is at the heart of the plea of Zelophehad’s daughters, that
in the absence of any sons they should inherit their father’s land: “Let
not our father’s name be lost to his clan just because he had no son! Give
us a holding among our father’s kinsmen!” (Num 27:4). Thus the divine
statement “I will make your name great” continues the notion embodied
in the basic promise, “I will make of you a great nation,” and continued
in “I will bless you”: all three connote nothing other than the promise of
progeny and land.
This, then, is the patriarchal promise: progeny and land. Which is not
to say, of course, that God does not make other promises in the Pentateuch,
even to the patriarchs. Formally, there is no distinction between a divine
promise and a divine statement of future action: whatever God says he
will do is indelible and is to be fulfilled in the immediate or distant future.
What we term the patriarchal promise, then, is but one among many
divine promises. It is, however, the only one that has transgenerational
import, that is repeated from generation to generation, that is referred to
repeatedly even after its original recipients are long dead. In this way it
is fundamentally distinct from two classes of divine statements that are
sometimes associated with it, namely, the promise of individual offspring
and the promise of divine guidance. These latter promises are inextricably
embedded in their precise narrative contexts.
The promise of individual offspring can be given only to an individual,
in a narrative that has established that individual’s lack of a child; once it
is fulfilled, it is completed—but it does not lead inexorably to the notion
of a nation’s worth of progeny as does the patriarchal promise proper.
Abraham and Sarah are promised a son in Gen 18:10, but the promise
proper is not mentioned (the reference to the promise in 18:17–19 belongs
to the Sodom story). Certainly Abraham and Sarah need to have a son for
the promise of progeny and land to be fulfilled, but the birth of Isaac does
not constitute the fulfillment of the patriarchal promise.
The promise of divine guidance is given only in specific moments of
danger to the patriarch, at the beginning of an arduous or risky journey.9
When the journey ends and the patriarch is safe, the promise is fulfilled
and is no longer in force. When Yahweh tells Jacob “Return to the land of
your fathers, and I will be with you” in Gen 31:3, it is a promise of protection
12 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

on Jacob’s specific journey home, looking ahead to his encounter with


Esau in Genesis 32–33 (as Jacob states unequivocally in Gen 32:10–12).
Obviously Jacob must survive his journey for the promise proper to be ful-
filled, but simply surviving this one time does not signify the fulfillment
of the patriarchal promise.
The lack of long-term import of these two types of promises can be
seen in the total lack of reference back to them after they have been given
and fulfilled. Whereas the promise of progeny and land is regularly men-
tioned generation after generation, no one ever recalls Yahweh’s promise
to give Abraham and Sarah a son; no reference is ever made to Yahweh’s
promise to accompany Jacob on his journey from Aram to Canaan. Perhaps
most notably, both the promise of individual offspring and the promise
of divine guidance are found in narrative contexts where they cannot be
associated with the patriarchal promise, that is, outside of the Pentateuch
altogether. Thus, for a famous example, the announcement of the birth of
Samson in Judges 13 is formally nearly identical to the announcements of
individual births to the patriarchs in Genesis, but nowhere in the Samson
story is the patriarchal promise, or anything like it, mentioned. Similarly,
Gideon is promised divine guidance in his battle against Midian in Judg
6:16, but there is no equivalent to the patriarchal promise anywhere in the
Gideon story. These examples show that the promises of individual off-
spring and divine guidance, while genuine divine promises, are not to be
equated with the patriarchal promise of progeny and land. Although these
two promises play a part in the canonical presentation of the patriarchal
promise, as we will see below, they are not coterminous with it or of the
same type. They are limited in application and duration; the patriarchal
promise, by contrast, shapes and undergirds the entire narrative, includ-
ing the contextually bound promises of individual offspring and divine
guidance.
In summary, the patriarchal promise is a single promise in two inter-
dependent parts: progeny and land. The twofold nature of the promise is
established implicitly in the first promise to Abraham in Gen 12:1–3, and
is made explicit and given greater depth in its frequent repetitions there-
after. The promise cannot comprise only one of these two parts: both are
necessary.10 This makes eminent sense given the state of the individual
to whom the promise is first addressed: Abraham, a man who has left
behind his land and his kin. For Abraham of all people to be promised
that he will become a great nation is a striking statement of God’s power:
God will take a man who is the very definition of alone, who has neither
The Promise in Its Canonical Setting 13

land nor progeny, and turn him into a nation by giving him both. The
canonical Pentateuch is, then, the story of how that remarkable transfor-
mation takes place.

The Promise Narrative


The patriarchal promise is the basic theological underpinning for the
entire pentateuchal narrative. In the stories of the patriarchs themselves
in Genesis, this is eminently clear. Although some individual episodes
may make theological claims—theodicy in Genesis 18, trusting/fearing
God in Genesis 22, divine providence in the Joseph story—only the prom-
ise spans the entire arc of the patriarchal cycle and is mentioned over and
over again in virtually every context. Similarly, after the patriarchs have
passed from the scene in Exodus–Numbers, almost the only aspect of the
patriarchal stories that is ever referred to is the promise, and it appears at
regular intervals throughout the Exodus and wilderness account. While
individual narratives and narrative complexes bear their own distinct
themes and concepts, there is no theological idea that stands behind the
entire Pentateuch other than the promise.
When the patriarchal promise is understood as the fundamental theo-
logical principle at work in the Pentateuch, then every story is read through
that lens, every episode is freighted with the theological import of the
promise. Even as we may read many pentateuchal stories independently
of their contexts and find meaning in them, on the level of the canonical
Pentateuch the individual episodes have been subsumed under the over-
arching narrative of the promise and its fulfillment. The vicissitudes in
the life of an individual, and later in the life of a nascent people Israel, are
not simply episodes in the natural course of human existence. They are,
rather, theologically intensified moments in the tug-of-war between steps
toward and challenges to the fulfillment of the patriarchal promise.
This transformation of narrative from mundane to meaningful is
nowhere more apparent than in the varied familial stories in Genesis.11
The patriarchal cycle is full of wonderfully entertaining stories—of mar-
riage, sex, childbirth, sibling rivalry, and more—and no doubt it is the
entertainment value of these highly personal narratives that accounted
for their transmission and preservation, and indeed for the affection with
which they are read today. Yet the force of the patriarchal promise, which
stands at the beginning and end of the cycle (Gen 12:1–3; 50:24), invests
these lively tales with a resonance that goes beyond their surface value.
14 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

The cycle of a family’s existence, from generation to generation, is


common to the human condition, which is why the stories of Genesis
have such power: they speak to everyone at all times. When contextual-
ized in the story of the patriarchal promise, however, these events in the
life of the family are elevated to a higher plane. They are no longer about
human existence alone, or even primarily; they are, rather, about God’s
ability to bring to pass what he has promised.12 In the case of the family
stories in Genesis, it is the aspect of progeny that is specifically at issue.
This is clear enough in some of the most famous elements of the patri-
archal cycle. The barrenness of the matriarchs, of course, seems to be the
recurring family tragedy (Gen 11:30; 25:21; 29:31), and it is one that speaks
directly to the question of God’s power: how can the progeny aspect of the
promise be fulfilled when nature itself seems to be standing in the way?13
The personal tragedy of the matriarchs has enormous consequences,
and the healing of the matriarchs has equally great significance, each
birth standing not only as a sign of God’s participation in the lives of the
individuals but as a reaffirmation of God’s obligation to the patriarchal
promise.
Equally obvious in this regard is the near-sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis
22. Canonically, Isaac has been marked as the one of Abraham’s two sons
through whom the promise will be continued (Gen 17:21). When Isaac is
brought to the brink of death, by Abraham’s own hand, it reads as noth-
ing other than a clear abrogation of the promise, a withdrawal of all that
God had pledged to Abraham over and over again. It is thus unsurprising
that when the threat has passed, and Isaac has been spared, the promise
needs to be stated again (22:15–18): it was practically nullified by God’s
own actions.
Along the same lines, but perhaps less clearly related to the prom-
ise, is the episode in which Abraham passes off Sarah as his sister (Gen
12:10–20). This story contains both a potential threat to Abraham’s own life
(12:12–13) and, more importantly, a threat to the future of Abraham’s lin-
eage: if Sarah had remained in Pharaoh’s court, she could bear Abraham
no offspring. In this regard, the wealth that Abraham accrues (12:16) reads
as a cruel diversion from the underlying issue. It may go well with him
because of Sarah (12:13), but the better it goes for him the less likely it
becomes that the promise will be fulfilled. It is thus a relief when Yahweh
intervenes—it may mark the end of Abraham’s accrual of wealth, but it
signals God’s commitment to fulfilling the promise, even in the face of
Abraham’s ostensible selfishness.14
The Promise in Its Canonical Setting 15

In this group of texts we have three distinct ways in which the prom-
ise, specifically the aspect of progeny, is challenged and that challenge
overcome. It is noteworthy that the origins of the challenges are distinct
in each case: the “natural” phenomenon of barrenness; the divine deci-
sion to have Abraham sacrifice Isaac; and the human inclination toward
self-preservation. This diversity makes clear that the patriarchal promise
is not easily fulfilled—it is assaulted from every direction, and preserved
only through God’s intervention.15
In addition to the episodes described above, we may also include those
narratives that deal with the issue of marriage—specifically, endogamous
marriage (within the patriarchal kin group). Thus the story of Abraham’s
servant being sent to fetch a wife for Isaac, in Genesis 24, despite its
self-contained nature contributes to the story of the promise, as Abraham
makes perfectly clear: “Yahweh, the God of heaven, who took me from my
house and from my native land, who promised me on oath, ‘I will assign
this land to your offspring’”—and here we can only assume that Abraham
must have emphasized the word “offspring”—“he will send his messen-
ger before you.” This is no simple wooing mission: Abraham’s servant is
responsible for finding the right wife for Isaac to insure the continuity
of the patriarchal promise. And, indeed, the servant prays to Yahweh for
help in his mission, and that help is granted.
The quick success of Abraham’s servant stands in contradistinction to
Jacob’s later encounter with the same Aramean family, in Genesis 29–31.
Jacob’s arrival in Laban’s household begins with what appears to be a posi-
tive indication, as Laban welcomes Jacob warmly (29:13–14). Yet the joy
of Jacob’s arrival is quickly turned to frustration as Laban makes him
work seven years before he may marry Rachel—and another seven years
before he can actually marry Rachel (29:15–28). This frustration is more
than just that of Jacob, the individual; each passing year is another year
in which the potential fulfillment of the patriarchal promise is delayed.
And even when Jacob does leave with his family in tow, Laban pursues
him, claiming Jacob’s offspring as his own (31:43). Again, it is only divine
intervention that preserves the promise (31:24, 29).
The threat of violence presented by Laban against Jacob is, of course,
not the only such threat that Jacob encounters. Esau represents a direct
threat to the entire promise, first after the deception of Isaac in Genesis
27, when Esau pledges to kill Jacob, and again when Jacob encounters
Esau on his return from Aram. In this second instance, the threat to the
promise emerges not because Jacob’s life is in danger—after all, Jacob’s
16 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

children have all been born by the time Esau catches up with him—but
because Jacob is afraid for the children themselves, as he says: “Deliver
me, I pray, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau; else,
I fear, he may come and strike me down, mothers and children alike”
(Gen 32:12). This fear, which any reasonable individual would experience,
is not just Jacob’s own, however; he fears explicitly for the promise that
supersedes his individuality, as he continues: “Yet you have said, ‘I will
deal bountifully with you and make your offspring as the sands of the sea,
which are too numerous to count’” (32:13).
Even the story of Dinah in Genesis 34, which seems so independent
when read on its own, takes on greater meaning in light of the promise. Not
only is the question of endogamous marriage at the center of the story, as it
is in the stories of Genesis 24 and 29–31, but most importantly the conclu-
sion of the narrative signals a potential threat to the promise. After Simeon
and Levi have slaughtered the inhabitants of Shechem, Jacob responds in
fear of retribution: “You have made me odious among the inhabitants of
the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites; my men are few in number, so
that if they should unite against me and attack me, I and my house will be
destroyed” (34:30). From the perspective of the promise, the destruction of
Jacob and his house is not an individual or even a family issue: the fate of
God’s word hangs in the balance. Not surprisingly, the solution is provided
by God: “As they set out, a terror from God fell on the cities round about,
so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob” (35:5).
So too the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38, which, though it
seems to stand very much apart in the pentateuchal context, is, as part of
the pentateuchal story, fundamentally about a challenge to the fulfillment
of the patriarchal promise. For it is not enough that Jacob should have
twelve sons—he may have a burgeoning family, but they are not remotely
close to being a nation yet. Thus it is of paramount importance that each
of Jacob’s sons has numerous children of his own, and that his children
have children. And this is the topic of Genesis 38: Judah’s three sons were
either unacceptable, unwilling, or unavailable to procreate (38:6–11). Had
the situation at the end of 38:11 continued, Judah’s line would have ended.
This is one of the rare stories in which the promise is maintained not by
God, but by a human, in this case Tamar. It is perhaps no wonder that, in
later tradition, she was rewarded by being considered the direct ancestor
of David (Ruth 4:18–22).
The stories of the patriarchal family can, of course, be read as deeply
insightful studies of kinship relations, as commentaries on the universal
The Promise in Its Canonical Setting 17

human condition. But these stories are, in the canonical text, invested
with their theological import by virtue of their part in the story of the
patriarchal promise. The continuation of the family line means more than
just one family’s success in the world; it is symbolic of God’s power, and it
justifies mankind’s faith in that power. The obstacles to the continuation
of the family line are more than just the bumps in the road every family
experiences over four generations; they are challenges to the fulfillment
of God’s word.16 The promise transforms the story of humanity into the
story of God’s relationship with humanity.
Despite all of the challenges to the aspect of progeny in the patriarchal
promise, it does of course come to pass. The matriarchs are all healed of
their barrenness, the patriarchs all survive the threats to their lives, and,
by the beginning of the book of Exodus, the Israelites have multiplied just
as they were promised. Before turning to Exodus–Numbers, however, it
is important to recognize that although the stories of Genesis seem to
be centered on the aspect of progeny, as befits their familial nature, the
aspect of land is not ignored. It is in the background throughout; indeed,
it pervades the entire patriarchal cycle. Despite God’s promise to give the
patriarchs the land in which they are dwelling, the family of Abraham
has a rather difficult time actually settling in even a single location, much
less the entirety of the land. Abraham’s arrival in Canaan, the land that
Yahweh promised him, is almost immediately aborted by the famine that
forces him to go to Egypt (Gen 12:10). Upon his return he settles for a time
in Hebron, but soon enough he moves out of the promised land again, to
Gerar (20:1). From there he returns to Beersheba, but after his death Isaac
is also forced from the land by famine, again finding his way to Gerar
(Gen 26:6). After Isaac too returns to Beersheba, Esau’s threat of violence
requires Jacob to leave for Aram, this time for twenty years. When he
comes back to Canaan, he settles in Shechem, even purchasing a plot of
land (33:19)—yet after the events of Genesis 34, he abandons his recently
acquired property and heads for Bethel (35:6). The last clear statement of
Jacob’s location is “beyond Migdal-Eder” (35:21), before the Joseph story
and the dislocation of the entire family to Egypt.
The point of rehearsing the travels of the patriarchs is to show that they
are never able to actually possess the promised land. Whether by famine,
external threat, or simply their own choice, the patriarchs lead an extraor-
dinarily peripatetic existence. They experience the full range of Canaan,
from top to bottom, but they are never able to claim it as their own. Indeed,
the patriarchal stories are full of encounters with the non-Israelites peoples
18 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

who do lay claim to the land: the Amorites among whom Abraham lives in
Gen 14:13; the Hittites in Genesis 23; the Shechemites in Genesis 34. These
peoples are not dispossessed; there is no conquest of the land in Genesis
that would permit the patriarchs to settle there permanently.
The only piece of the promised land to which Abraham’s family can lay
any authentic claim in Genesis is the burial plot at Machpelah (Genesis 23),
where the patriarchs and matriarchs (with the exception of Rachel) are all
buried. This cave is important, to be sure—a burial plot signals continu-
ity of possession across the generations, the essential prerequisite for land
ownership. Yet with the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt, the burial
plot, and the possession of even a little piece of the promised land that it
represents, disappears, never to be mentioned again. Even the most minor
acquisition of the smallest piece of property in the promised land is obliter-
ated. Indeed, with the enslavement in Egypt, the entire notion that there
could be any fulfillment of the promise of land, even a partial fulfillment,
during the lives of the patriarchs is shown to be impossible. The nomadic
existence led by the patriarchs may have been an indication that the prom-
ise of land was never really going to be fulfilled during their lifetimes—as,
in fact, Abraham was told directly (Gen 15:13–16). The patriarchal cycle is
about the aspect of progeny; the aspect of land lingers only in the back-
ground, reminding us every time the family moves to a new location that
they continue not to possess the land that had been promised them. All of
the wandering of the patriarchal family in Genesis, inside and outside the
promised land, comes to a head in the descent to Egypt. Just as the roaming
of the patriarchs signified a continuous challenge to the promise of land,
the enslavement in Egypt is the forthright proclamation of that challenge.
The beginning of Exodus is a well-recognized point of demarcation
for the pentateuchal story: it is the border between the patriarchal story
and the Exodus-wilderness story, between Israel the family and Israel the
people. In that transition lies perhaps the fundamental irony of the pen-
tateuchal story as a whole: the greatest challenge to the promise of land
occurs at the same time that the promise of progeny is fulfilled. After all
of the familial struggles throughout Genesis, the joy of God’s word com-
ing to pass in the multiplication of Abraham’s descendants is shattered by
the enslavement in Egypt. Now it seems possible that all was for naught,
that the newly expanded people might never have a land of their own. The
irony runs even deeper: it is precisely because the promise of progeny has
been fulfilled and the Israelite people are now numerous that Pharaoh
searches for ways to constrain and, eventually, destroy them.
The Promise in Its Canonical Setting 19

It is little wonder that the Exodus became the dominant story and
image of God’s relationship with Israel: the rescue of the Israelites from
Egypt represents more than simply a victory over an oppressive enemy.
The enslavement of Israel marked a wrenching turn from joy to despair;
the Exodus offers the hope that the turn might be reversed. More than
hope: a renewed promise to bring the Israelites into a land flowing with
milk and honey (Exod 3:8, 17), the land that was promised to the patri-
archs (6:8). From the moment that God takes note of the suffering of the
Israelites—and, in doing so, remembers the promise to the patriarchs
(Exod 2:24)—there is no question that Israel will leave Egypt. All of the
exchanges between Moses and Pharaoh, all of the plagues, are nothing but
suspense for the sake of effect, as Yahweh says explicitly (Exod 7:3–5). The
Exodus is more than a great story of redemption from evil; in the canonical
context, it is a demonstration of God’s power to fulfill his own word.
The Israelites do not simply walk into Canaan after they leave Egypt,
of course, any more than Abraham’s offspring multiplied within the first
generation. Just as the promise of progeny faced obstacles before it could
be fulfilled, so now the promise of land faces a remarkable sequence of
challenges. In the patriarchal stories, the survival of the individual was
often at stake; after the people have increased, the individual is no longer
the relevant unit, but rather the people as a whole. Thus most of the chal-
lenges faced by the Israelites in their attempt to reach the promised land
are threats to their survival as a corporate whole. Some of these threats
are external, as in the attacks of the Egyptians (Exodus 14), Amalek (Exod
17:8–16), the king of Arad (Num 21:1–3), Sihon, king of the Amorites (Num
21:21–25), and Og, king of Bashan (Num 21:33–35).17 In each of these cases,
Israel is saved by divine intervention of one sort or another, as we might
expect. Some threats to Israel’s survival are what we might term “natural”;
that is, they reflect the conditions of the wilderness: thirst (Exod 15:22–25;
17:1–7; Num 20:2–13) and hunger (Exodus 16). In these episodes too it is
God who provides for Israel’s needs. And, often, the threats to Israel’s
existence have their origins in Israel itself: in the haste of the people to
get to the promised land, in the lack of faith the people show when facing
a difficult situation. In these cases, it is God who delivers the punish-
ment that threatens the people, and it is frequently Moses and/or Aaron
who prevents God from fully destroying Israel. This can be seen in epi-
sodes as famous and important as the golden calf (Exodus 32) and the
spies (Numbers 13–14), but also in many smaller episodes in which the
Israelites are struck by divine plague (Num 11:33; 17:11; 21:6; 25:9). At least
20 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

one example of each of these categories is accompanied by a statement of


Israel’s desire, albeit usually a rhetorical device only, to abandon the jour-
ney toward the fulfillment of the promise and return to Egypt (or to sim-
ply die in the wilderness): in the case of external threat (Exod 14:11–12); in
the case of natural difficulties (Exod 17:3); and in the case of Israel’s own
lack of faith (Num 14:2–4).
Interestingly, it is only in these latter episodes, of Israel’s infidelity,
that the progeny aspect of the promise rears its head again. For the most
part, when the survival of the Israelites is in question, what is at stake is
the eventual possession of the land. Yet at the episode of the golden calf,
and again in the spies story, God himself threatens not only to prevent the
Israelites from reaching Canaan, but also to undo the fait accompli of the
promise of progeny: “Let me destroy them and make of you a great nation,”
Yahweh says to Moses (Exod 32:10); “I will strike them with pestilence and
disown them, and make of you a nation far more numerous than they”
(Num 14:12). Not only is the destruction of the people threatened in these
divine statements; God invokes the language of the initial promise to
Abraham, “I will make of you a great nation” (Gen 12:2). God is proposing
to go back to the beginning, to make Moses into a new Abraham. It is no
coincidence that this threat occurs exclusively at the two lowest points of
Israel’s relationship with Yahweh. And it is a sign of Moses’s continuing
role as Israel’s appointed intermediary with Yahweh that he is willing and
able to step into that breach and maintain the promise.
Just as in the patriarchal stories, then, the challenges to the fulfillment
of the promise in Exodus–Numbers come from multiple directions. Also
like the patriarchal stories, the various episodes in Exodus–Numbers can
be read and appreciated independently of the overarching pentateuchal
narrative. The so-called “murmuring stories,” in which the Israelites
complain about sustenance in the wilderness, have both a clear traditional
profile and a common theological intent. The battle episodes provide for
the reader a sense of pride and superiority in the defeat of the enemy
at the hands of the Israelites. The golden calf story is a condemnation
of idolatry. The spies story demands faith in God’s protection. Yet all of
these episodes, large and small, are framed by the need for God to bring
the Israelites into the land, to fulfill the promise made all the way back in
Genesis 12. The individual episodes are not meaningless by any stretch of
the imagination, but their significance is not fully appreciated unless they
are understood as part of the narrative whole. Will the Israelites, at last
a numerous people, finally make it to the promised land—that question
The Promise in Its Canonical Setting 21

lies in the subtext of every narrative moment from the beginning of


Exodus until the end of the Pentateuch. The wilderness through which
the Israelites wander is, in this sense, more than just a geographic real-
ity, the literal landscape that stretches between Egypt and Canaan. The
wilderness is the embodiment of what it means to be a landless people, of
the horror that is the half-fulfilled promise.
At the end of the Pentateuch, the promised land is not yet quite in the
Israelites’ possession. But it is close, even inevitable, and indeed some
land has already been conquered and settled and, effectively, annexed
(Numbers 32).18 But the conquest itself, inevitable though it may be,
belongs to another part of the story. And perhaps this is as it should be;
for with the fulfillment of the promise of land, the promise has reached
its conclusion, narratively and theologically. The stories of what happens
after the people of Israel settle in the land that was promised to them
do not belong to the story of the promise—and the Pentateuch is, from
beginning to end, the story of the promise. Keeping the conquest just out
of reach ensures that this is the case.
What the Pentateuch contains is a collection of episodes, cycles, and
narrative complexes that retain some of their individual integrity, but
that are elevated by having been subsumed under a far greater theolog-
ical idea.19 A struggle in childbirth, a confrontation over land rights, a
famine—these common, even natural, events become magnified as they
threaten the fulfillment of the promise. A complaint about thirst, the sud-
den appearance of an enemy, a momentary lack of faith—these become
full-blown crises. From the minute to the grand, every moment is momen-
tous because it participates in the story of the promise.
The pentateuchal narrative can justifiably be called the promise
narrative, for the promise is, in a fundamental way, the main charac-
ter of the Pentateuch.20 Genesis may feature Abraham and Jacob, and
Exodus–Deuteronomy may feature Moses, but only the promise is con-
stant throughout. Even though it is frequently only in the background, the
promise is present in virtually every scene; even when it does not have any
speaking lines, it is controlling the action, or at least our interpretation of
it. David Clines has made a strong case for understanding the patriarchal
promise as the “theme” of the Pentateuch, with a clear definition of what
he understands a “theme” to be—in brief, as an overarching expression of
the underlying rationale behind the construction of a literary work.21 I am
claiming here that the patriarchal promise is more than a “theme,” but is
in fact the plot. It does not stand behind the narrative; it is the narrative.
22 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

The Pentateuch is often described as the story of Israel’s early history,


which is to say its growth from a single family to a nation—and that his-
tory is nothing other than the story of the patriarchal promise.

The Challenge of the Canonical Promise


While the promise serves to unite the disparate episodes in the text and
to shape them into a theological unity, the way in which the promise is
expressed throughout the Pentateuch, and particularly in Genesis, cre-
ates some narrative confusion. In Gen 12:1–3 Abraham is given the initial
promise, in a somewhat abstracted form; the full and explicit promise of
progeny and land is given in Gen 13:14–17. How is it, then, that almost
immediately thereafter Abraham can ask God, “What will you give me?”
(Gen 15:2)? The emphasis on Abraham’s trust in 15:6—“Because he trusted
in Yahweh, he reckoned it to his merit”—seems entirely at odds with what
appears, in the canonical text, full-fledged doubt on Abraham’s part that
the promise he was given in Genesis 12–13 might actually come to pass.
Canonically, Genesis 15 testifies against itself. And why must God repeat
the terms of the promise, as if for the first time (15:5, 18–21)?
The same question may be asked of Genesis 17, which again repeats
the terms of the promise in full. Here there is the further complication
of the bərît that God makes with Abraham—since God has just made a
covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15, why must he make another here?
Has the covenant of Genesis 15 been somehow abrogated in the interven-
ing chapter? And if the promise of progeny is linked to the change in
Abraham’s name (17:4–5), why should this change happen only now, rather
than when the promise of progeny was first given? The sudden introduc-
tion of the concept of circumcision in Gen 17:9–14 is equally problematic
for similar reasons: if circumcision is a prerequisite for the promise, as it
seems clearly to be in this passage, then it renders the previous bestowals
of the promise, and any steps toward its fulfi llment, effectively moot.
The repetition of the promise in Genesis 22—now for the fourth time—
adds yet another layer of difficulty, as it seems to suggest that the promise,
previously unconditional, was in fact subject to testing. It is especially con-
fusing in light of Genesis 17, which stated that as long as Abraham and his
offspring were circumcised, the promise would be upheld; now, however,
the maintenance of the promise seems to be dependent on entirely differ-
ent grounds. Thus over the course of Abraham’s life, he receives the prom-
ise in full four times, and every time the circumstances of the promise,
The Promise in Its Canonical Setting 23

or the covenants and other statements attached to it, seem to undermine


the preceding promise texts almost completely. Reading canonically, we
would not be surprised if Abraham were utterly confused: the promise,
so clear in Genesis 12–13, is systematically unrooted, deprived of its seem-
ingly solid and unchanging nature.
Jacob also receives the promise on three separate occasions, and again
each time is presented as if it were the first. This is marked most explicitly by
God’s initial self-introduction in each case: “I am Yahweh, the God of your
father Abraham and the God of Isaac” (Gen 28:13); “I am El Shaddai” (35:11);
“I am God, the God of your father” (46:3). The first two times, the promise is
given at Bethel—and in each case, Jacob reacts to the seemingly remarkable
appearance of God by renaming the site (28:19; 35:15). The first time, this is
logical enough; the second time, however, it makes little sense.
Even as the promise brings the whole pentateuchal narrative into line
theologically, it simultaneously raises questions about the narrative homo-
geneity of the text. Every repetition of the promise to Abraham and Jacob
is a source of confusion—not because the promise cannot be referred to
multiple times, which it most certainly can and is, but because each time
appears to be the first, and because the circumstances and even the condi-
tions of the promise keep shifting. Repetition, in the abstract, can serve
to reinforce the promise, as it frequently does. The type of repetition we
find in Genesis, however, does precisely the opposite, complicating and
redefining at each turn.
It is not only the narrative elements of the promise texts—their timing,
location, and secondary elements such as covenant or name-changing—
that differ from passage to passage. The literary presentation of the prom-
ise varies greatly as well. Some promise texts emphasize the blessing of
other nations, as in Gen 12:3; some mention kings, as in Gen 17:6; some
instruct the patriarch to look to the cardinal directions, as in 13:14; some
use the language of being fruitful and multiplying, as in 35:11; some say
“fear not,” as 46:3; and so on.
The problem this presents is different in kind from that presented
by the narrative elements: it is not so much a logical problem as it is an
interpretive one. For when the promise collectively is understood as the
underlying theological basis for the entire canonical text, the differences
in its expression are deprived of any real import. If the promise in Gen
12:1–3 is the same as that in Genesis 15, and both are identical in theologi-
cal force to that of Genesis 17, then whatever differences may exist in the
literary presentation of the promise in each case cannot bear any major
24 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

interpretive significance. Canonically, there are not multiple promises, but


only one promise. The literary presentation of the promise does not affect
its basic substance—regardless of how it is expressed, every promise is
fundamentally of progeny and land. The variety of expression is therefore
flattened into a two-dimensional rendering of the promise, which is the
only kind that, insofar as it takes into account every promise text, can be
successfully applied across the canonical whole.
The eliding of distinctions in expression among the promise texts
is reinforced by the repeated references to the promise throughout the
Pentateuch. For example, in Gen 18:18–19 Yahweh makes reference to
the promise when considering whether to share with Abraham his plans
regarding Sodom. There Yahweh uses language and themes—“Abraham
is to become a great and prosperous nation and all the nations of the
earth are to bless themselves by him” (18:18)—that have clear resonances
with Gen 12:1–3.22 Yet canonically it cannot be a reference only to Genesis
12, but rather to all of the promises that Abraham has been given, in
Genesis 12–13, 15, and 17. Yahweh’s recollection of the promise cannot
ignore all of its instantiations to that point, though the literary presenta-
tion seems to focus uniquely on the first occurrence of the promise. That
is to say, the precise expression is rendered inconsequential. A reference
to the promise can be a reference only to the baseline abstracted form
of the promise, even though each promise text has a particular verbal
manifestation.23
Whatever meaning one wants to attach to any particular expression
of the promise, one is forced by the repetition and variation in the text to
admit that that meaning is not exclusive or comprehensive. The presenta-
tion of a single promise text can, of course, be of great interest within its
immediate context. Yet the literary form of, say, Genesis 17 cannot have any
significance beyond itself; it cannot be used in any exclusive way to shed
light on how the promise shapes other pentateuchal passages, for every
promise text has equal claim in that regard. Genesis 17 and Gen 12:1–3 are
equally relevant for the interpretation of Genesis 24, for example, in terms
of the latter’s place in the overarching promise narrative. Alternatively,
interpretive worlds could be (and have been) built on a close reading of
Gen 12:1–3 as a locus for understanding the entire Pentateuch—but only
if one is willing to ignore the equal claims of Genesis 15, 17, and all of the
other promise texts. At that point, however, the resulting interpretation is
not taking account of the entire canonical text, but only part of it, leaving
the exegesis open to charges of subjectivity and selectivity.
The Promise in Its Canonical Setting 25

The challenge this situation poses for interpretation should be clear:


the interpreter’s ability to derive meaning from the canonical biblical text
is, ironically, limited by the need to read canonically. The flattening of
the promise texts removes from interpretive consideration any import
that the words themselves may carry; as every word in the Bible ought to
be of exegetical interest, this is a real concern. For canonical interpreta-
tion every promise text must have equal weight; yet to try to realize that
equality in interpretation requires finding the commonalities among the
various promise texts, and therefore to return once again to the lowest
common denominator, to the fundamentals of progeny and land.
Readings that concentrate exclusively on the final form of the Pentateuch
are undeniably valuable: in this case, such an approach allows for the rec-
ognition that the whole pentateuchal narrative is given its theological
shape by means of the promise: virtually every episode in the lives of the
patriarchs and of the people Israel is given increased meaning by virtue of
its relationship to the promise, whether as an obstacle to be overcome or
as a step toward fulfillment. Even the law is brought under the umbrella
of the promise: obedience to the law will result in the maintenance of the
promise (Lev 26:9), while disobedience will mean utter destruction, until
the people have learned to obey and God restores the promise in future
generations (Lev 26:44–45). The story of Israel in the Pentateuch, from
beginning to end, is the story of the patriarchal promise.
At the same time, however, the need to consider the entirety of the
canonical text brings with it certain drawbacks. The promise texts seem
to undermine each other narratively at the same time that any interpretive
significance that might be attached to their individual forms of expression
becomes flattened by the need to apply the promise across the whole of the
text. In short, the canonical Pentateuch does not allow for a clear interpre-
tive path when it comes to the promise, even as the promise lays the founda-
tion for the interpretation of the canonical text. There is, however, a way of
reading the text that is very intentional about grappling with precisely the
difficulties raised in the canonical reading, that is, the narrative contradic-
tions and the varieties of literary expression: the literary-historical approach.
It is this approach that the following chapters will engage—not as a rebuttal
to the canonical reading, but as an alternative viewpoint, a treatment of the
same material from a different direction, that may be helpful in shedding
light on the nature of the literary presentation of the promise.24
2

The Promise as Secondary

in the preceding chapter the centrality of the patriarchal promise to the


canonical Pentateuch was briefly outlined. It was also noted that in the
final-form reading the narrative disjunctions among the promise texts
are a cause for concern, and further that the distinctive verbal formula-
tions of the promise from passage to passage are almost by necessity
ignored in a canonical reading. These very issues are fundamental to the
way that literary-historical scholarship has proceeded in its analysis of the
promise.
In the lengthy history of literary-historical scholarship on the patriarchal
promise, despite significant differences between the various approaches
to the text, two claims, ostensibly contradictory but inextricably linked,
have remained constant: that the promise to the patriarchs represents the
primary locus of theological meaning in the patriarchal narratives, and
that the nonpriestly promise texts—or at least the vast majority of them—
are secondary additions to the patriarchal narratives. These two claims
have been present in scholarship since the beginning of the documen-
tary theory of the composition of the Pentateuch, and have only grown in
importance in the more recent nondocumentary approach. The first, that
the promise is theologically central, is scarcely debatable, though the way
in which this centrality is understood, especially as it relates to the growth
of the traditions underlying the text, varies in light of scholarly attitudes
toward the Pentateuch as a whole. The second, that most if not all of the
promise texts are secondary additions, is entirely open to debate.

Classical Documentary Scholarship


On any reading of the text as a unified whole, the promise to the patriarchs
serves as the lens through which the patriarchal narratives, and perhaps
the Pentateuch as a whole, are given their meaning. As we have seen, the
The Promise as Secondary 27

constant repetition of the promise, given at least once to each patriarch, as


well as the regular reminders of the promise within the patriarchal narra-
tives and continuing regularly into Deuteronomy, render the theological
centrality of the divine promise unavoidable.
From the mid-nineteenth century until the 1970s, the dominant theory
in pentateuchal scholarship was the Documentary Hypothesis, which, in
light of the manifold contradictions, doublets, and other inconsistencies
in the Pentateuch, considered the canonical text to be the combination of
four originally independent documents—the Yahwist (J), the Elohist (E),
the Priestly source (P), and the Deuteronomist (D).1 In classical documen-
tary scholarship, the status of the promise texts as definitive theological
statements was relatively understated. For the classical critics, many prom-
ise texts—including all of those from P—were considered original parts of
the pentateuchal sources, and stood in meaningful positions within their
respective narratives. The beginnings of the J and E patriarchal narratives
were represented by the promise to Abraham (Gen 12:1–3, 7 in J; Gen 15:5
in E).2 The transition from the story of the patriarchs to that of the Exodus
was marked by Joseph’s reference to the promise in his deathbed speech
to his brothers (Gen 50:24),3 as was the transition from the Israelites’ stay
at the mountain to their trek through the wilderness toward the promised
land by Yahweh’s instructions to Moses to depart from Sinai for Canaan
(Exod 33:1).4 If only in a structural sense, these prominent promise texts
served in the classical documentary theory as signposts along the path of
the pentateuchal narrative, tying the whole together under the overarching
theme of God’s promise of progeny and land to the Israelite ancestors.
At the same time, however, early documentary scholarship, from at
least the seminal work of Julius Wellhausen onward, regarded a number
of the nonpriestly promise texts as secondary additions. The promise to
Abraham in Gen 13:14–17; the promise to Hagar in Gen 16:10; the allusion
to the promise to Abraham in Gen 18:18; the promise to Abraham in Gen
22:15–18; the promise to Isaac in Gen 26:3b–5, 24; the promise to Jacob in
Gen 28:13–15; the reference to the promise to Jacob in Gen 32:10–13; the
promise to Jacob in Gen 46:3–4; the reference to the promise to all three
patriarchs in Exod 32:13 and Num 14:16, 22–23—all of these were consid-
ered by some, if not all, early pentateuchal critics to be editorial supple-
ments. The basic question to be asked of this analysis is on what grounds
the distinction is made between those promises considered original and
those considered secondary. For the moment, we will set aside the priestly
promise texts, which, as noted above, were all considered original to the
28 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

P document (though we will return to them shortly), and concentrate on


the nonpriestly passages.
Problems abound. Both Gen 50:24 (E) and Exod 33:1 (J)—which were
generally considered original promise texts—refer to the promise as having
been addressed to all three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but only
the promise to Abraham (in Gen 12:1–3, 7 [J]; 15:5 [E]) was typically deemed
“original.” How could the later references refer to a promise to all three
patriarchs, if only Abraham received one? One might posit that both J and
E did originally contain promises to Isaac and Jacob, but that they were lost
in the process of transmitting and compiling the sources. If this were the
case, however, then the “original” J and E promises to Isaac and Jacob have,
almost miraculously, been replaced by later hands. It would seem far sim-
pler to say that the promises currently in the text, those deemed secondary,
are in fact the original J and E promises to Isaac and Jacob. Alternatively,
neither J nor E did originally narrate the promise to Isaac and Jacob; rather,
they implicitly assumed that the promise given to the first patriarch was
passed down to the others. Yet when faced with passages that do explicitly
describe the regiving of the promise to each patriarch in turn, this solution
seems to be unnecessary and unnecessarily complicated.
More important, there was among the classical critics no unifying crite-
rion for the determination of secondary versus original promise passages.
Each promise text was evaluated on its own merits, which, though logical
in theory, led in practice to a subjective and inconsistent treatment of the
passages. We may take as an example Abraham Kuenen’s argument for the
secondary status of the promise to Jacob in Gen 28:14. He recognizes that
the wording of this verse, especially the phrase “all the families of the earth
will bless themselves by you,” is virtually identical to that of the promise to
Abraham in Gen 12:3b, which he claims to be original. Nevertheless, Gen
28:14 can be judged secondary because “the same follower of J who nota-
bly modified this promise elsewhere (xviii. 17–19), xxii. 15–18; xxvi. 4, may
have reproduced it here without alteration.”5 Thus, according to Kuenen,
when a promise is worded slightly differently from Gen 12:3 (as in Gen
18:17–19; 22:15–18; 26:4), it is secondary; when it is worded the same (as in
Gen 28:14), it is also secondary. The methodological flaw here is apparent.
Similarly, Wellhausen argues that the promise to Abraham in Gen
13:14–17 is secondary because it is introduced simply by “Yahweh said to
Abram after Lot had parted from him.” Wellhausen claims that it was unlike
J to introduce Yahweh’s speeches to the patriarchs in such a general man-
ner; J, he claims, always specified a particular location, which would then
The Promise as Secondary 29

be a revered site from that moment on. As proof, he brings the promise to
Abraham in Gen 22:15–18, which he and many others consider secondary
and which he claims is similar to Gen 13:14–17 in that it emphasizes the
content of the speech rather than its location.6 Yet Wellhausen seemingly
finds no such difficulty with Gen 12:1–3, which begins even more generally
than 13:14–17—“Yahweh said to Abram”—and which certainly emphasizes
solely the content of the promise.7 Thus for Wellhausen the clear sign of a
secondary insertion in one text is passed over silently in another.
These examples demonstrate the subjectivity prevalent in some classi-
cal arguments for secondary promise texts. In both cases, it should further
be noted, there is the assumption that Gen 12:1–3 is original, even though it
shares features with other texts that are deemed secondary. Both arguments
raise the question as to why, if these features are indicative of secondary
texts, Gen 12:1–3 should not be considered secondary as well. One is tempted
to believe that Gen 12:1–3 was viewed as original, despite its similarity to
other passages considered secondary, primarily because of its traditional
importance in Judeo-Christian thought. Many other promise texts could be
excised practically without anyone noticing, but the call to Abraham, with
its ostensible demonstration of pure faith, must be authentic.
Beyond the inconsistent application among the classical critics of the
criteria for deeming a passage secondary, however, the criteria themselves
were fraught with difficulties. For the most part, these stemmed from
methodological problems common to the older documentary school, and
can be recognized as microcosms of the systemic flaws in the standard
application of the classical theory as a whole. The criteria for attributing
promise passages to a secondary layer were basically three: the reference
of one promise passage to an earlier one; the ostensible ease with which
a passage may be removed from its context; and the perceived deutero-
nomic style of some promise formulations.
We may first examine the question of references. Gen 18:18 contains a
clear allusion to the promise to Abraham in Gen 12:1–3: “Yahweh had said,
‘Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham is to
become a great and populous nation and all the nations of the earth are to
bless themselves by him? For I have singled him out . . . ’” (18:17–18). Though
the narrative of Genesis 18 was considered by the classical critics to be the
work of J, as of course was Gen 12:1–3, this promise reference in 18:18 was
labeled as an addition specifically because it refers back to the earlier J passage.
Hermann Gunkel in particular makes this explicit: “The secondary character
of the verses is also clear in the allusion in v 18 to the promises already made
30 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

to Abraham (12:2, 3), as v 19b also explicitly states, whereas the old legend
in 18:1–16 (as is true of the old narratives in general) is entirely free of such
allusions to other accounts.”8 Though it appears that here Gunkel identifies
the individual narrative episodes of Genesis 12 and 18 as compositionally dis-
tinct, in fact he attributes both Gen 12:1–3 and 18:1–16 to J; moreover, although
he divides J into multiple layers, he attributes both of these passages to the
same earliest layer, his Ja.9 Why, then, could the same author not have cre-
ated an explicit link back to an earlier part of his own narrative? Presumably,
at least for Gunkel, this was a result of the nature of the ancient Israelite:
intellectually undeveloped, subject to a “poverty of comprehension.”10 Given
these restrictions on the mental capacity of the ancient Israelite, it is no won-
der that authorial techniques such as cross-reference had to be seen as the
work of a later stage.
Gunkel comes to the same conclusion in regard to two other promise
texts that make reference back to earlier portions of the narrative, namely,
Gen 26:3b–5 and 26:24. The first of these passages contains the words
“fulfilling the oath that I swore to your father Abraham,” and “inasmuch
as Abraham obeyed me,” in addition to repeating such features from
Gen 12:1–3 as “all the nations of the earth shall bless themselves by your
heirs.” Gunkel concludes that this must be an addition “in that it refers
back to the Abraham narrative.”11 The second, similarly, says “I am the
God of your father Abraham; fear not, for I am with you, and I will bless
you and increase your offspring for the sake of my servant Abraham.” Of
this Gunkel claims that “the editor betrays his later time by recalling the
Abraham narrative.”12
Given the advances in the last century in our understanding of oral
literature and of narrative in general, the argument that cross-references
represent an “advanced” stage of authorial technique, foreign to the earli-
est narrators, is easily dismissed. This argument is especially at odds with
the views of the classical critics, who saw in the documentary sources con-
tinuous compositions, even if they contained earlier elements. J—or any
of the pentateuchal sources—must be, as any author is, considered free to
refer backward or forward within his own literary creation if we are to take
seriously the notion of the sources as documents. It may also be observed
that both Gen 50:24 and Exod 33:1, with their references to the promise
given to all three patriarchs, also clearly refer to previous promise texts; yet
they were considered original.
The ostensible removability of some promises from their narrative con-
texts served as a further indication of a secondary insertion into the text.
The Promise as Secondary 31

Wellhausen uses the ease with which text may be excised from its context
as a criterion in his judgment that Gen 18:17–19 was a secondary block,
noting of these verses that “one does not miss them before the new begin-
ning of 18:20.”13 Similarly, J. Estlin Carpenter and G. Harford-Battersby
see Jacob’s prayer in Gen 32:10–13 (which ends with a reference to the
divine promise) as interrupting the connection between 32:9 and 14.14 This
seems a precarious argument.15 First and foremost, it is a judgment that
can be applied to a nearly infinite number of verses in the Hebrew Bible;
in nearly every narrative (or legal collection) there are verses that could
be removed without damaging the basic flow of the narrative.16 (An easy
example is the very beginning of Genesis, where Gen 1:2 can be removed
without affecting the text at all: “When God began to create the heavens
and the earth . . . God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” [Gen
1:1, 3].) A more objective criterion for determining where a connection is
truly broken, rather than intentionally delayed, is required to prove that an
insertion has taken place.17 Moreover, if the preceding criterion for identi-
fying secondary passages denied the ancient author the right to a standard
technique such as cross-reference, this criterion effectively denies him the
equally important devices of digression, tangent, provision of background
information, or interior monologue, all regular features of prose narra-
tion. We are again thrown back onto Gunkel’s unflattering views of the
abilities and intellectual facilities of the ancient Israelite. It would be wise
to heed the (admittedly somewhat ambivalent) statement of J. A. Emerton:
“The fact that it is usually possible to remove the promises without harm
to their context does not favour their originality, though it is scarcely suf-
ficient to disprove it.”18
Furthermore, as may be expected, those promise texts considered orig-
inal by the classical critics are just as easily removed from their context as
those considered secondary in part for that very reason. Gen 50:24–25, it
can be argued, actually interrupts the narrative of Joseph’s death. Without
these verses, the text reads perfectly smoothly: “Joseph lived to see chil-
dren of the third generation of Ephraim; the children of Machir son of
Manasseh were likewise born upon Joseph’s knees. . . . Joseph died at the
age of one hundred and ten years, and he was embalmed and placed in
a coffin in Egypt” (50:23, 26). Gen 21:13 and 18 are readily removed with-
out affecting the surrounding narrative. Even Gen 12:1–3 (along with its
fulfillment in 12:4a), at least in the canonical text, stands between the P
travel itinerary of 11:31–32 and 12:4b, and as such could easily be removed
without damage to the immediate context; the resulting text would read
32 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

“The days of Terah came to 205 years, and Terah died in Haran. Abram
was seventy-five years old when he left Haran” (11:32, 12:4b).19 Again, this
procedure can surely be undertaken with a very large number of bibli-
cal verses, and as such is virtually unusable as a criterion for secondary
attribution. What is crucial to recognize is that none of these ostensibly
secondary passages contradict the narrative claims of their contexts; they
simply expand on them. The driving rationale for source division in the
documentary theory is narrative contradiction, not removability of text.
The third and most substantial criterion in the classical approach for
the identification of secondary promise passages is the perception of “deu-
teronomic” affinities, linguistic and thematic.20 The argument here was
that if a promise text looks as if it contains language or ideas similar to
those of D, it must have been added by a later hand somehow related to
the “deuteronomic” school.21 There was significant consensus among the
classical critics as to the identification of these “deuteronomic” passages,
especially Gen 18:17–19; 26:3b–5; and Exod 32:13.22 The claim that these
promise texts are to be understood as “deuteronomic” has persisted in
documentary scholarship to the present.23 Yet despite the broad consensus
among classical scholars (and classical-minded modern scholars), funda-
mental logical and methodological flaws require us to rethink the concept
of the “deuteronomic” promise passage.
The first two of the aforementioned passages, Gen 18:17–19 and 26:3b–5,
are labeled “deuteronomic” because they employ what seem to be legalis-
tic language and concepts in describing Abraham’s fidelity to Yahweh: “to
keep the way of Yahweh by doing what is just and right” (18:19) and “inas-
much as Abraham obeyed me and kept my charge: my commandments,
my laws, and my teachings” (26:5). Obedience to the divinely given laws is
indeed a recurring concept in D. Yet it can hardly be taken here as having
the same meaning. Even a deuteronomic redactor would have easily recog-
nized that in the narrative to this point no laws have been given to which
Abraham could be said to be faithful.24 The import here must be simply
adherence to Yahweh’s commands—beginning with Abraham leaving his
homeland in Gen 12:4.25 In these passages, the legalistic phrases must
have a general meaning—in contradistinction to their usage in D, where
they unambiguously refer to the laws of Deuteronomy 12–26. If these are
in fact deuteronomic insertions, then it is further remarkable that they
should have been placed only in J contexts, and nowhere in E. Moreover,
J uses similar language outside of the promise texts to mean the same
thing, that is, general obedience to Yahweh: in Exod 15:26 and 16:4, 28,
The Promise as Secondary 33

the latter of which is particularly clear in its meaning of “instructions”


rather than literal “laws.” In short, this phrasing, with this generic mean-
ing, seems to be a feature of J—which contains no law code26—rather than
an anachronistic insertion by a secondary hand.27
The third passage commonly ascribed to a “deuteronomic” editor, Exod
32:13, is so ascribed not because it contains any particularly deuteronomic
language—which it does not—but rather because the broader context of
which it is a part is paralleled closely in D. The parallels between Exod
32:7–14, in which Yahweh tells Moses about the people’s construction of
the golden calf and threatens to destroy them and Moses in turn pleads
that Yahweh should spare the people, and Deut 9:12–14, 26–29, in which
Moses recalls this moment in his grand historical recollection before
the law-giving in the plains of Moab, are indisputable, and some depen-
dence of one passage on the other requires no further justification. The
most notable difference between the two passages is the most obvious:
in Deuteronomy 9, the dialogue is split into its two parts, God’s threat of
destruction before Moses goes down to see the calf, and Moses’s plea on
behalf of the people after he has destroyed the idol, while in Exodus 32
both come before Moses descends the mountain. Of the two, the order
of events in Deuteronomy 9 is potentially more logical: Moses waits until
he has seen the calf for himself and destroyed it before returning to the
mountaintop to plead for Yahweh to relent. Yet it is precisely the greater
ease with which D reads here that proves its dependence on Exodus 32,
rather than vice versa. There are two possibilities for the relationship
between the two texts. Either the author of D saw that there was a more
logical way to order the events at Horeb than he found in E and made the
change accordingly, or a deuteronomic editor—who, like any editor, had
the freedom to place his insertions wherever in the preexisting text he
chose—decided to consciously present a different, less logical sequence
of events when he went to put his deuteronomic stamp on the earlier E
material. Of these, the former is by far the more likely. Thus the best way
to understand the relationship between Exodus 32 and Deuteronomy 9 is
to see that the author of D was dependent on the E dialogue, rather than
to see that dialogue as a deuteronomic insertion.28 For our purposes, it is
also crucial to note that while Moses refers to the patriarchal promise in
Exod 32:13, he does not do so in the parallel in Deuteronomy. We would
thus have to suppose that a deuteronomic editor not only inserted deuter-
onomic material into the preexisting account, but that he added the notion
of the promise when it was not in the purportedly original D text.
34 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

In fact, basic to almost every variation of the documentary theory is


the recognition that the J and E documents preceded that of D; moreover,
that D was in fact dependent on the J and E documents.29 Given this, it
seems entirely backward to assume that, when there is an affinity between
a passage in a J/E context and a passage in D, the dependence should run
chronologically in reverse. Moreover, if we recognize that the author of D
has reworked and at times considerably amplified the content of the older
sources, why should it be assumed that he could not just as easily have
reworked and, to be sure, amplified the linguistic and stylistic formula-
tions of his predecessors? In respect to the proposed chronology of the
sources, we should rather be labeling those parts of D that look like J/E
passages in Genesis–Numbers as “yahwistic” or “elohistic,” rather than
calling anything in a J/E context “deuteronomic.” The reason, it seems,
that scholarship has gone in the direction it has lies in the acknowledged
fact that the deuteronomic corpus is both more easily identifiable and
rhetorically stronger than J or E. We typically identify as “deuteronomic”
those concepts and formulations to which D has given the strongest and
clearest voice, regardless of the accepted opinion (among documentary
scholars, at least) that D depended on earlier sources, which may have
employed similar concepts and formulations, though admittedly without
the same rhetorical force.
It may be noted again that the classical critics were less than consistent
in assessing the “deuteronomic” nature of the various promise texts. The
expression gōy gādôl, “great nation,” in Gen 12:3 is also found in prominent
passages in Deuteronomy (4:6; 26:5); the collocation of b-r-k, “blessing,”
and q-l-l, “curse,” also in Gen 12:3, is most famous from Deut 11:26–28
(“See, this day I set before you blessing and curse,” etc.); why are these not
considered evidence of a deuteronomic hand?
An analogous methodological problem, and an important one, arises
in the classical approach when various promise passages are linked to
Gen 22:15–18. In the case of the deuteronomic insertions, the initial step
in scholarship was the recognition that D was written after J and E; the
second (and erroneous) step was to assume that everything in the earlier
material that looked like D was written under deuteronomic influence. In
the case of Gen 22:15–18, the first step was the widespread recognition, on
a variety of grounds (to be discussed in the next chapter), that this passage
was a secondary insertion in the narrative, and could not have been the
work of either J or E.30 The second (and identically erroneous) step was to
assume that those promise passages whose wording was similar to that
The Promise as Secondary 35

of Gen 22:15–18 must also have been additions by the same hand—even
though they did not share the conditions that uniquely marked 22:15–18 as
secondary. Almost every identification of a promise text as secondary was
based, at least in part, on its commonalities with the one firmly established
secondary passage, 22:15–18. Thus Wellhausen argued that Gen 13:14–17 are
“analogous” to 22:15–18;31 Kilian saw Gen 16:10 and 22:17 as from the same
hand;32 Carpenter and Harford-Battersby connected the language of Gen
18:18 to 22:18;33 Dillmann related 26:5 to 22:18;34 Kuenen called 28:13–16
“homogeneous” with 22:15–18;35 Skinner described 32:10–13 as “akin” to
22:15–18;36 Bacon deemed Exod 32:13 secondary because it “quotes” Gen
22:16.37 Again, verbal similarities to an identifiably later passage do not
require, or even imply, that a given passage is also secondary. Rather, the
default assumption should be that the author of the acknowledged sec-
ondary passage knew and based his text on the earlier, original material.38
This is especially so when, as in the case of Gen 22:15–18, the elements
that compel scholars to view it as late are entirely absent from every other
promise text (on which see the next chapter).
Having surveyed the various criteria among classical scholars for deem-
ing nonpriestly promise texts secondary, we may now return briefly to the
priestly promise texts. As noted above, classical scholarship universally
considered the priestly promise texts to be original parts of the P docu-
ment. Yet it is striking that the very criteria used to determine secondary
passages in the nonpriestly sources are equally present in P, and yet did
not seem to have the same force.
If explicit reference back to earlier promise texts was a sign of a second-
ary hand in the nonpriestly sources, then on the same grounds nearly every
P promise text should be eliminated. The first P promise is to Abraham,
in Genesis 17. The next, Gen 28:3–4, Isaac’s transmission of the blessing
to Jacob, says “may he grant the blessing of Abraham to you and your
offspring, that you may possess the land where you are sojourning, which
God assigned to Abraham” (28:4), explicitly recalling the promise of Gen
17:8: “I assign the land where you are sojourning to you.” The promise to
Jacob in Gen 35:11–12 says, “The land that I assigned to Abraham and Isaac
I assign to you” (35:12), again referring back to the previous priestly prom-
ise texts. We also find in that passage the phrase “be fertile and increase”
(35:11), which is, in turn, recalled explicitly in 48:3–4: “El Shaddai appeared
to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and he blessed me and said to me,
‘I will make you fertile and numerous.’” In Exod 6:3–4 God tells Moses,
“I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not
36 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

make myself known to them by my name Yahweh. I also established my


covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which
they lived as sojourners.” This is as explicit as references get: it is, in fact,
no less than a rehearsal of the previous narrative, both in content and in
language. Rather than take these as indications of secondary insertions,
however, scholars took these references as proof of the continuity of P.
The nonpriestly promise texts deemed secondary can, so it was claimed,
be removed from their narrative context without disrupting the flow of the
passage. So too for most of the P promise texts. Removing Gen 28:3–4
from its context results in a perfect continuity of command and fulfill-
ment: “‘Up, go to Paddan-Aram, to the house of Bethuel, your mother’s
father, and take a wife there from among the daughters of Laban, your
mother’s brother.’ . . . Isaac sent Jacob off, and he went to Paddan-Aram”
(28:2, 5). So too Gen 35:11–12 can be taken as disruptive; when removed, the
text reads smoothly: “God said to him, ‘You whose name is Jacob, you shall
be called Jacob no more, but Israel shall be your name.’ Thus he named
him Israel. . . . God parted from him at the spot where he had spoken to
him” (35:10, 13). Without Jacob’s recollection of the promise in 48:3–4, we
have a perfectly coherent passage: “Jacob said to Joseph, ‘Your two sons,
who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt,
shall be mine” (48:3aD, 5a).39 Even Exodus 6 reads beautifully without the
reference to the promises in 6:3–4: “God spoke to Moses and said to him,
“I am Yahweh. . . . I have now heard the moaning of the Israelites because
the Egyptians are holding them in bondage” (6:2, 5). As observed above,
the ability to remove a passage without disrupting its context is not pecu-
liar to secondary insertions; it is the case for perfectly original passages as
well, as these examples demonstrate, for no classical scholar would ever
have thought to attribute the priestly promise texts to a later hand.
Though there is relatively little overlap between priestly and deutero-
nomic language, there are some phrases in the priestly promise texts that
are also present in Deuteronomy. In Gen 17:7, God tells Abraham that
he is establishing his covenant with Abraham and his offspring “to be
God to you,” lihyôt ləkā lē’lōhîm; the same language is found in Deut 26:17:
“Today you have affirmed Yahweh to be God to you,” lihyôt ləkā lē’lōhîm.
In Gen 17:8, God says of Abraham’s descendants, “I will be their God,”
wəhāyîtî lāhem lē’lōhîm; in Deut 29:12, Moses reminds the people that they
are entering the covenant by which they will be established as Yahweh’s
people, and Yahweh “will be your God,” wəhû’ yihyeh-ləkā lē’lōhîm. In Gen
17:20, God promises that Ishmael will be “a great nation,” gôy gādôl; in
The Promise as Secondary 37

Deut 4:7–8, Israel is compared (favorably) to a “great nation,” gôy gādôl,


and in the famous “credo” of Deut 26:5–9, we read of Israel’s ancestor that
“he went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there, but
there he became a great nation [gôy gādôl] and very populous” (26:5). No
one would argue that these phrases, in the priestly promise texts, are indi-
cations of deuteronomic authorship; yet just such phrases, and in equally
small proportion to the remainder of the passages, are used as evidence
for a secondary hand in the equivalent nonpriestly texts.
The evidence of the priestly promise texts stands as a counterweight to
the classical analyses of the nonpriestly passages, and highlights again the
flawed nature of the arguments used to deem many of those texts second-
ary. Each of the three common classical rationales for designating promise
passages as secondary is thus not only unconvincing on its own merits, it
was also subjectively and inconsistently applied. When taken as a group,
they point to perhaps the most serious flaw in the classical approach to the
entire concept of the secondary promise text. The critics provided a variety
of reasons for why they considered the promise texts secondary, but utterly
failed to explain why an interpolator would have seen a need to add the
passages in the first place. It is not enough to say that a passage “seems”
secondary, or doesn’t fit perfectly into its context; in order to attribute a text
to a redactor, we should be able to pinpoint, or at least attempt to pinpoint,
the reason that an interpolator would have felt the need to make such a
change to the text. On this point the classical school was silent.

Tradition-historical Scholarship
By on the one hand arguing that the majority of the theologically central
patriarchal promise texts were secondary additions to their narrative con-
texts, and on the other hand failing to provide any motivation for these
insertions, classical documentary scholars left a gaping hole in their theory
of pentateuchal composition, one which was eventually readily filled by
the new nondocumentary approach in the late twentieth century. Before
discussing the nondocumentary approach, however, it is important to con-
sider briefly the development of the tradition-historical approach prevalent
in the mid-twentieth century, and particularly the views of the two giants
of that approach, Gerhard von Rad and Martin Noth. Tradition-historical
criticism investigates the preliterary development of the traditions that
have made their way into the biblical text: where and in what circum-
stances the individual episodes may have had their oral origins, and how
38 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

those episodes were brought together into broader themes, which were
subsequently adopted and composed in a literary form by the pentateuchal
authors. Thus the tradition-historical inquiry regarding the patriarchal
promise has to do less with the question of secondary additions and more
with the question of how firmly grounded in the preliterary traditions of
the patriarchs the concept of the divine promise may have been.
Gerhard von Rad maintains the basic source division of his classical
predecessors—including seeing some of the promise texts as late addi-
tions40—but in light of his tradition-historical approach to the text, with
its emphasis on the theological purpose of each element, he gives even
more weight to the theological purpose of the promise texts, the Yahwistic
ones in particular. For von Rad, the promise is “a genuine element of that
pre-Yahwistic patriarchal religion, which assured the semi-nomadic peo-
ple, driving forward into civilised territory, that they would achieve the
goal of their aspirations,” and as such “belongs to the most ancient of
the traditions of which the J writer takes cognisance.”41 If the concept of
the promise was inherent in and indeed already central to the individual
preliterary traditions, however, it was the J author who expanded it into
the dominant theme of his combined patriarchal narrative. The Yahwist
turned the promise into a theological link connecting not only the dispa-
rate patriarchal cultic traditions to each other, but also to the originally
unrelated traditions of the Israelite settlement, the Sinaitic covenant, and
the primeval history—for the last of which von Rad deems Gen 12:1–3 in
particular to be the crucial linking text.42
Martin Noth substantially follows von Rad in his views on the centrality
of the promise within the patriarchal traditions. Indeed, in his separation of
the Pentateuch into its constituent overarching themes, that related to the
patriarchs is entitled “Promise to the Patriarchs.”43 Noth accepts von Rad’s
view that the promise was already an integral part of the once-independent
oral patriarchal traditions. Though the figure of Jacob, and the promise tra-
dition connected with him, was the first, according to Noth, to be merged
with the other pentateuchal themes in the preliterary stage,44 the stories
of Isaac and Abraham, added subsequently to the Jacob traditions, each
came with its own promise of progeny and land—“the only difference was
that the worshipers of their deities lived not in central Palestine, as in the
case of the worshipers of Jacob’s God, but on the southern margin of the
land.”45 Beyond this, however, Noth theorizes that other tribal groups had
similar traditions of patriarchs and promises, traditions which were not
incorporated into the pentateuchal framework: “One should take seriously
The Promise as Secondary 39

the possibility that the theme ‘the promise to the patriarchs’ may have
been further developed also among the central Palestinian, the Galilean,
and the East Jordanian tribes in connection with various other ‘patriar-
chal’ figures indigenous among them.”46 For Noth, then, in contrast to von
Rad, the prominence of the patriarchal promise is a result less of the work
of the Yahwist than of the agglomeration of disparate promise-centered
local traditions, either in Noth’s proposed prepentateuchal grand narrative,
the somewhat vaguely formulated Grundlage (which, according to Noth,
already contained the Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and even Joseph themes47),
or perhaps even earlier. Regardless of the mechanism by which these inde-
pendent patriarchal traditions were collected in the preliterary stage, the
centrality of the promise in Genesis was traced back to the centrality of the
promise in the earliest localized oral patriarchal traditions.
Thus while classical documentary scholarship maintained that at least
some of the patriarchal promise texts were original parts of their narrative
sources, early tradition-critical scholarship went even a step further, argu-
ing that the very concept of the Israelite patriarchal age as a whole, from
its earliest oral days, was inseparable from the notion of the promise. If
classical scholarship, by concentrating on the removal of ostensibly sec-
ondary promise texts, seemed to downplay the centrality of the promise
in the pentateuchal story, tradition-critical scholarship firmly restored the
promise to a prominent place in the patriarchal narrative—albeit without
challenging the classical view that many of the promise texts in their cur-
rent literary forms might be secondary. Indeed, some scholars, adapting
the basic tradition-critical insights of von Rad and Noth, argued that in
fact the promise was the creation of J, and was added to the originally
promise-free traditions about the patriarchs by the authors of the penta-
teuchal documents—thereby giving the promise perhaps an even more
central place in the theologies of the sources.48
The clear link established by von Rad and Noth between the promise
and the early traditions about the patriarchs was substantially challenged
by the study of J. Hoftijzer.49 Hoftijzer combines aspects of literary and
tradition-critical investigations in his analysis of the promise. He begins
by collecting the promise texts in Genesis into two broad groups, on the
basis of linguistic and stylistic similarities: what he calls the “El-Shaddai
group,” equivalent to the priestly promise texts, and what he calls the
“Genesis 15 group,” comprising the nonpriestly promise texts.50 Having
argued that the promise texts in each group were interdependent—that
is, that all of the nonpriestly promise texts seem to have come from the
40 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

same hand, and all of the priestly promise texts from another—Hoftijzer
then inquires as to whether the promise is an integral part of the narrative
traditions in which it is now literarily embedded.51 To an extent, this proce-
dure is similar to the classical argument that certain promise texts may be
lifted out of their literary contexts, but Hoftijzer moves this discussion to
the level of tradition, rather than text. Thus he argues, for instance, that in
Gen 12:1–3 (from the Genesis 15 group) the main tradition expressed in the
text is that of the patriarch moving to Canaan from a foreign land—a tradi-
tion found elsewhere without any mention of a promise (Gen 11:31–32 and
Jos 24:2–3); from this he concludes that the promise tradition has been
secondarily appended in Gen 12:1–3.52 Similarly, in Gen 48:3–4 (from the
El Shaddai group), the main tradition is that of the adoption by Jacob of
Joseph’s sons Ephraim and Manasseh; as this tradition occurs elsewhere
(in fact in the same chapter of Genesis, though in a nonpriestly narra-
tive) without the concept of the promise, the promise in 48:3–4 must be
secondary.53
In fact, in only two cases does Hoftijzer argue that the promise is not
a secondary tradition: in Genesis 15 and 17. Each of these texts, he cor-
rectly observes, is constructed entirely around the notion of the prom-
ise; there is no other tradition in which the promise has been embedded.
Further, both of these texts describe the making of a covenant between
God and Abraham on the basis of the promise. Thus for Hoftijzer, the
central text of the priestly promises is Genesis 17, and the central text of
the nonpriestly promises is Genesis 15. From these observations Hoftijzer
concludes that the promise is, in both groups, tradition-historically a later
development. Thus he thoroughly rejects the traditional primacy of the
promise as argued by von Rad and Noth.
Yet Hoftijzer goes a step further, and claims that the Genesis 15 group
(the nonpriestly promises) is not only tradition-historically but also liter-
arily a secondary stratum in the biblical text: all of these promise texts,
with Genesis 15 as the main one, were inserted into a preexisting nar-
rative by a later hand. At the same time, however, Hoftijzer argues that
the El-Shaddai group (the priestly promise texts), although sharing the
very same tradition-historical features as the Genesis 15 group, was an
original part of its literary context; in other words, the tradition-historical
integration of the promise and the other patriarchal traditions took place
at the preliterary level for the priestly material, but at the literary level for
the nonpriestly material.54 In this analysis, then, Hoftijzer goes beyond the
classical documentary critics, who saw many, but not all, of the nonpriestly
The Promise as Secondary 41

promise texts as secondary; for Hoftijzer, all of the nonpriestly promise


texts are secondary additions to their narrative contexts, with no excep-
tions even for passages such as the call of Abraham in Gen 12:1–3.
Claus Westermann follows and expands upon Hoftijzer’s conclu-
sions.55 Not content with two broad groups of promise texts, Westermann
attempts to separate the promise texts on the basis of what, precisely, was
being promised. Thus he determines that the biblical text preserves dis-
tinct promise traditions of an individual son, many offspring, land, and
blessing.56 Each of these would have constituted a separate tradition, and
thus the accumulation of them in the biblical text would be evidence for
the tradition-historical growth of the promise tradition as a whole. He
claims that the tradition-historically earliest promises were of a single son
(the central feature of the narratives in Genesis 16 and 18) and of the land,
with the promises of progeny and blessing being later; only at an advanced
stage, therefore, were the promises of progeny (both for an individual
and for the whole people), land, and blessing combined.57 Westermann
still works on the ostensibly preliterary level; yet the manner in which
he brings actual biblical texts to serve as his evidence makes the division
between preliterary and literary somewhat fuzzy.
Between them, Hoftijzer and Westermann succeeded in unmooring
the promise both from the patriarchal traditions identified by von Rad
and Noth and from its various narrative contexts in the biblical text. The
previous models for the status of the patriarchal promise, as fundamen-
tal to the sources in which it was transmitted (the classical documentary
theory) and/or to the traditions from which those sources were composed
(the tradition-historical model), were subsumed by the form-critical dis-
tinction between the narratives and the promise drawn by Hoftijzer and
Westermann. Because Hoftijzer and especially Westermann were still
working ostensibly on the preliterary level, however, the promise was left
in something of a state of limbo, neither a part of the preliterary traditions
on which the documents were based, nor quite original to the documents
themselves.

Contemporary Nondocumentary Scholarship


It was Rolf Rendtorff who began the process of reclaiming the central-
ity of the promise for the understanding of the patriarchal narratives as
a whole.58 In order to take into account the conclusions of Hoftijzer and
Westermann, however, he had to distance himself entirely from both the
42 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

documentary and tradition-historical approaches. Rather than seeing the


nonpriestly promise as an elemental part of the traditions that had been
carried over into the combined patriarchal narratives, Rendtorff sees it
as the very means by which the narratives—in their written form—were
combined in the first place. Once considered to be among the earliest
aspects of the patriarchal tradition, the promise is now viewed as the lat-
est. In this way, the promise gains enormous theological significance, as
it was not merely a remnant of pre-Yahwistic religion, nor a Yahwistic
enhancement thereof, but was conceived and shaped specifically for the
purpose of theologically interpreting and connecting the disparate patri-
archal traditions. (In this Rendtorff and Noth are quite close. Noth has the
promise as one of his major themes for the same reason that Rendtorff
views it as redactional: because it ties together and gives meaning to the
otherwise relatively loosely connected and theologically vague patriarchal
traditions. Noth, however, views this as an essentially preliterary process,
not a textually redactional one.) Thus Rendtorff can argue, for example,
that the independent Isaac traditions found in Genesis 26 were intention-
ally framed and interpreted by means of the promise texts in 26:2–5 and
24, which are evidence of a “theological reworking of the collection.”59
On a larger scale, following Westermann, the promise of “blessing for
others” found in Gen 12:3 and 22:18 (to Abraham); 26:4 (to Isaac); 28:14
(to Jacob) is viewed as a means of linking together the originally indepen-
dent Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob traditions under an overarching theologi-
cal concept.60 Rendtorff therefore argues for a supplementary succession
of promise-oriented redactional reworkings: some promise texts added
to unite one set of traditions with another, other promise texts added to
bring a third group of traditions into the fold, and so on. The freeing of
the nonpriestly promise texts from any narrative framework and their
assignment to entirely distinct redactional processes allows Rendtorff to
see “deliberate intention in the placing of the promise elements,”61 with
the result that the patriarchal stories can be seen as a unit that “has been
reworked in different stages and provided with theological interpretations;
and the divine promise addresses dominate both the reworking and the
interpretation.”62
Rendtorff’s approach, not only to the promise but to the entire question
of the composition of the Pentateuch, has become the standard paradigm
for much contemporary nondocumentary scholarship. His discussion
of the promise has been adopted and only slightly modified by a num-
ber of successors, most notably Erhard Blum and Matthias Köckert. The
The Promise as Secondary 43

importance of the promise texts for the nondocumentary approach is clear


enough from the overwhelming attention given to them in Rendtorff’s
work, in which the linking of various promise texts to theological reinter-
pretations of the patriarchal materials takes up the majority of the discus-
sion.63 Given the centrality of the promise for this model, it is safe to say
that were Rendtorff’s analysis significantly challenged or undermined, it
would pose a distinct problem for the entire nondocumentary model. As
we are concerned here exclusively with the promise, however, we will con-
centrate on this specific issue, and let the ramifications for the broader
question of the composition of the Pentateuch remain for another day.
The main problem with the classical model—the lack of an underly-
ing rationale for the insertion of the secondary promise texts—is the one
that appears to be most clearly remedied in the nondocumentary approach.
When the patriarchal stories came to be viewed as a collection of originally
independent literary units, the promise was thought to serve as the theo-
logical framework by which those units had been brought together and
given meaning. Blum, in his study of the patriarchal narratives, states that
“the promises have therefore become above all—and this is indeed not by
chance—of central importance as a means of shaping the other traditions
of the patriarchal history.”64 Scholars of the nondocumentary approach thus
deserve credit for recognizing, as the classical critics tended not to, that sec-
ondary insertions in the text require a justification for their presence—in
this case, what they suggest is a theological motivation—and cannot simply
be deemed “secondary” without any clear reason for their insertion.
A difficulty with the nondocumentary approach, however, is the start-
ing point from which analysis of the promise passages proceeds. The
promise texts can be seen as giving theological shape to the patriarchal
traditions only when one presupposes that those traditions were, in fact,
originally independent literary entities. This is the presupposition with
which the nondocumentary school works, beginning with Rendtorff: “The
Pentateuch as a whole as it lies before us is no longer the point of departure,
but rather the concrete individual text, the ‘smallest literary unit.’”65 This
claim is justified by a broader one: “the Pentateuch is no longer regarded
primarily as a literary product.”66 (Given, however, that the sole form of the
biblical narrative we have is that of a text, that is, a purely literary product,
the attempt to understand it as “primarily” otherwise produces something
of a cognitive dissonance.)
The major evidence produced by the nondocumentary school for these
smaller literary units is derived from the manner in which the promise
44 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

texts, a priori secondary, seem to bring the patriarchal traditions together.


There is thus a case of circular reasoning at work: the promise texts are
secondary because they frame the smaller literary units, which are iden-
tifiable only when the promise texts have been removed from them. The
patriarchal promise, then, is more than a piece of evidence in the non-
documentary model; it is the primary justification thereof. If the promise
texts are not secondary (a possibility not even allowed for in an approach
that begins from the standpoint of the “smallest literary units”), then it
becomes virtually impossible to claim that the patriarchal narratives—in
the literary form in which we have them—were originally independent. Of
course, the nondocumentary analysis of the secondary status of the prom-
ise is largely dependent on those of the classical documentary school;
many of the same criteria are used, especially the ease with which a pas-
sage may be removed and the ostensibly deuteronomic language (and the
objections to these criteria remain relevant). It is no small irony that con-
temporary scholarship should use the arguments of the classical critics to
undermine the very foundations of the classical theory.
The nondocumentary model requires more of the promise texts than
that they simply be secondary, however. The supplementary-development
model of the Pentateuch also requires that each stage of supplementation
be marked by a particular theological intent, one that, as we have seen, is
indicated primarily by means of the addition of a group of promise texts
specifically to provide theological shaping. Thus the promise texts have
themselves to be divisible into distinct layers or groups, and therefore
some grounds need to be found by which to separate them into layers.
As with the classical approach, however, even when we leave aside the
overarching conceptual problems with the model we find that the detailed
rationales for the layering of the promise texts are highly problematic.
The first category of criteria for discerning layers in the promise pas-
sages employed by the nondocumentary school is that of small lexical dif-
ferences between the various promise formulations. A primary example
of this is the difference between the use of the niphal and hithpael of
the root b-r-k, “bless,” in the statement that “all the nations of the earth
will bless themselves by you” and its slight variations. The niphal form,
wənibrəkû, appears in the promise texts of Gen 12:3 and 28:14, while the
hithpael, wəhitbārakû, appears in 22:18 and 26:4. This variation is explicitly
used as the basis for discerning two distinct compositional layers.67 Yet the
variation between the niphal and hithpael of a given root, even in identical
narrative settings, is a well-established feature of biblical style.68 We find it,
The Promise as Secondary 45

for example, in Gen 3:8, 10: “The man and his wife hid (wayyitḥabbē’, hith-
pael) from Yahweh Elohim” . . . “I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid
(wā’ēḥābē’, niphal).” Similarly, in Dan 2:1, 3: “Nebuchadnezzar had a dream;
his spirit was agitated (wattitpā’em, hithpael)” . . . “I had a dream, and my
spirit was agitated (wattippā’em, niphal).” Unless we are to imagine that in
each of these cases the two verses are actually from two different hands, it
must be acknowledged that this kind of variation is untenable as a means
of differentiating compositional layers. That this argument perhaps puts
too much weight on scanty evidence is also clear when Gen 18:18 is added
to the picture: “since Abraham is to become a great and populous nation
and all the nations of the earth (hā’āreṣ) are to bless themselves (wənibrəkû,
niphal) by him.” In this verse, which contains an allusion to the speech
of Gen 12:1–3, the niphal form of the verb is used; David Carr assigns the
verse, however, to a compositional layer different from that of Gen 12:3 and
28:14, though both of these verses contain the same form.69 He does so
on the basis of the word hā’āreṣ, “the land,” found in Gen 22:18 and 26:4,
while the synonym hā’adāmāh, “the ground,” is used in Gen 12:3 and 28:14.
Thus Gen 18:18 is viewed as standing between the two groups of formula-
tions, employing one of the keywords from each. The root assumption
here is that a single author could evidently not employ even very slightly
different formulations of the promise language. It seems considerably
more natural, however, if one does not already assume that the promise
texts must be divided into layers, to take Gen 18:18 as an indication that
they all belong together, since it bridges any distinctions we might other-
wise consider indicative of a division. The observation of Jean-Louis Ska,
who though subscribing to the nondocumentary approach in general has
a considerably less complex view of the development of the promise pas-
sages, is worth noting: “The promise to make Jacob a ‘blessing’ (28:14b)
is similar to the promise made to Abraham in 12:3, 18:18, and 22:18 and
to Isaac in 26:4. The affinity between these different texts is undeniable
despite slight characteristic variations of the Hebrew style.”70
Similarly, emphasis is laid by the nondocumentary school on the dis-
tinctions among the promise texts in the simile used to express the great
numbers of the patriarchs’ progeny. Gen 13:16 and 28:14 use the expres-
sion “like the dust of the earth”; Gen 15:5; 22:17; 26:4; Exod 32:13 use “like
the stars of the sky”; and Gen 22:17; 32:13 use “like the sands of the sea.”
The manner in which these are grouped varies by scholar: Rendtorff com-
bines the comparisons to dust and sand, as opposed to those to the stars;
Blum sees the references to the dust of the earth as forming a group, while
46 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

those to the stars and the sand are considered together.71 The view of these
phrases as demarcations of textual layers relies on the notion that they are
somehow unique to a particular author—that a given author was restricted
to using only one simile for the number of the patriarch’s descendants—
rather than being common, even generic, essentially interchangeable
expressions of great multitude. An examination of the Hebrew Bible
reveals that the use of “dust” to express limitless numbers occurs not only
in Gen 13:16 and 28:14, but also in Zech 9:3; Ps 78:27; Job 27:16; 2 Chr 1:9.
The comparison to the “sands of the sea” occurs outside of the promise
passages in Gen 41:49; Jos 11:4; Judg 7:12; 1 Sam 13:5; 2 Sam 17:11; 1 Kgs 4:20;
5:9; Isa 10:22; 48:19; Jer 15:8; 33:22; Hos 2:10; Hab 1:9; Ps 78:26; 139:18.
That to the “stars of the sky” is found in Deut 1:10; 10:22; 28:62; Nah 3:16;
Dan 12:3; 1 Chr 27:23, and is also found in Akkadian literature.72 Blum,
in assigning the use of the phrase “stars in the sky” in the promise texts
to a deuteronomic redactional layer, notes of course the examples from
Deuteronomy, but tellingly does not discuss the nondeuteronomic uses
thereof.73 It is especially noteworthy that two of these phrases can appear
in a single nonpentateuchal source: thus “dust” and “sand” are both found
in Psalm 78, while “dust” and “stars” are both found in Chronicles. None
of these phrases, it is clear enough, are the creation, or the sole possession,
or are even necessarily typical, of a particular literary author, editor, or stra-
tum. They are part of the common stock of Israelite (and non-Israelite)
expressions for great numbers, and like all stock expressions, are available
for use by any author. They are not a useful indicator of a particular literary
stratum, and are certainly not a significant piece of evidence for differen-
tiating layers in the patriarchal promise.74
A third argument against the type of overly detailed lexical analysis
advanced by the nondocumentary school is the evidence of the priestly
promise texts. The priestly layer in the Pentateuch, at least in the narrative
of Genesis and Exodus, is judged by most nondocumentary scholars to be
of one piece, and this goes for the promises found therein as well.75 Yet
on close inspection, the priestly promise texts display precisely the kind of
small verbal differences that have been held up in the nonpriestly promise
texts as an indication of multiple layers. There is variation in the wording
of God’s promise to make the patriarch fruitful: all the priestly promise
texts (Gen 17; 28:3; 35:11; 48:4) contain this notion, and all use the verbs
p-r-h, “be fruitful,” and r-b-h, “multiply”; in Gen 17:6, 20, however, we find
the added expression mə’ôd mə’ôd, “very very.” Following the nondocu-
mentary analysis of the distinctions in formula among the nonpriestly
The Promise as Secondary 47

references to blessing, this variation ought to be a sign of distinct author-


ship. Similarly, the phrasing used for God making the patriarch into a
great nation differs from passage to passage: in Genesis 17, Abraham
is to become gōyîm, “nations” (17:6); in 28:3 and 48:4 he is to become
qəhal ‘ammîm, “an assembly of peoples”; in 35:11, gōy ûqəhal gōyîm.76 This
seems almost entirely analogous to the aforementioned example of the
nonpriestly blessing passages, in which there are two groups with similar
wording and one that apparently bridges the distinction between them.
Perhaps most striking is the idea in the priestly promise texts that kings
will come from Abraham’s descendants, a concept found in Gen 17:6, 16;
35:11, but not at all in the promises of 28:3–4 or 48:3–4. This is precisely the
type of data employed by the nondocumentary school in discerning layers
in the nonpriestly promise texts, yet here the variations are left to stand.77
The inconsistency in applying these detailed analyses to the promise
is evident not only from the substantially different treatment afforded the
priestly promise texts, but even within discussions of the nonpriestly pas-
sages. Blum revealingly writes of the promise texts outside of Genesis (all
of which he assigns to his deuteronomic layer KD): “The promise of land
(as an oath) is found, admittedly, to vary linguistically and in terms of
content: in particular, in Numbers 11 ’adāmāh is mentioned (where other-
wise it is hā’āreṣ), and in Deuteronomy 31 the promise refers to Israel (and
not the patriarchs). However, corresponding variations can be explained
by the process of the formation of the tradition.”78 The most sensible
approach to these slight variations in wording among the promise texts is
that espoused by Emerton: “There are also differences between some of
the promises, and it must be asked whether they tell against the attribu-
tion of all of them to the same hand . . . The differences may, however, be
explained on the hypothesis that the same writer allowed himself variety
in the expression of similar ideas.”79
In a related set of arguments, the nondocumentary school has based
its layering of the promise texts on what might be termed a hypercritical
approach to the Hebrew language. This essentially amounts to the demand
that the Hebrew used in the promise texts be more precise than is typical
in biblical usage. Two major examples come readily to hand. The first is
that of the oath or swearing language used in some of the promise texts
(Gen 22:16–18; 24:7; 26:3b; 50:24; Exod 32:13; 33:1; Num 11:12; 14:16, 23;
Deut 31:23; 34:4). The reference to an oath sworn to the patriarch (using
some form of the root š-b-‘) is considered to be an indication of a particular
secondary layer, deriving from a redactor who added the concept of the
48 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

oath to the promise.80 For Blum in particular, this is linked explicitly to the
deuteronomic layer, because the oath language is particularly common
in the deuteronomic references to the promise.81 In all the promise texts,
however, there is only one explicit oath sworn by God, introduced with the
standard formula, and it is found in Gen 22:16–18. Every other reference
to an oath simply reminds the addressee that God previously swore an
oath to the patriarch(s). According to Rendtorff: “The words ‘I will fulfill
the oath that I swore to your father Abraham’ can refer only to 22.16.”82 In
the nondocumentary model, then, Gen 22:16–18 and all the subsequent
references to the oath are from the same layer.83
The essential issue in this analysis is whether an oath needs to be spe-
cifically marked with an oath formula; to put it another way, could the
references to a previously given oath to the patriarch refer to anything
other than Gen 22:16–18? From a purely technical standpoint, it is clear
that a reference to a sworn oath need not refer to a statement formulated
in any specific manner. In Deut 29:12 it is implied that God had sworn
to the patriarchs (ka’ašer nišba‘ la’abōteykā, “as he swore to your fathers”)
that he would some day establish the Israelites as his chosen people, and
be their god—an oath not found anywhere in the text, but which may be
a reference to Deut 10:15, in which no explicit oath language is used: “It
was to your fathers that Yahweh was drawn in his love for them, so that he
chose you, their lineal descendants, from among all peoples.” In Jos 21:42
we read that God fulfilled his oath (kəkōl ’ašer-nišba‘ la’abōtām, “just as he
had promised to their fathers on oath”) to give the people rest on all sides,
potentially a reference to Deut 3:20 (“until Yahweh has granted your kins-
men a haven such as you have”); in Judg 2:15 God is against the Israelites
in all that they do (ka’ašer nišba‘ yhwh lāhem, “as Yahweh had sworn to
them”), perhaps referring to the curses of Deuteronomy 28; in 1 Sam
20:42 Jonathan reminds David of the oath they have sworn to each other
(’ašer nišba‘nû, “which we swore”), at best a reference to their (oath-free)
dialogue in 20:12–16. In none of these cases is there an explicit prior oath
to which the narrative is referring. Rather, what is termed an oath in ret-
rospect was, at the time, no more than a simple statement (when one can
even positively be identified).
Of special importance is the use of oath language in P, in Exod 6:8;
Num 14:30; 32:11. In these passages P refers to God’s oath to the patriarchs
to bring them into the land, a clear reference to the priestly promise in
Genesis; yet in the priestly promise texts themselves, no technical oath
language is ever used. It is thus evident that there is no need for specific
The Promise as Secondary 49

oath terminology to be employed in order for a statement, particularly


one by God, to be considered an oath.84 This conclusion is supported by
Isaiah, who recognized Gen 8:21 as a divine oath: “I swore that the waters
of Noah would never again pass over the earth” (Isa 54:9), although the
text of Genesis says only that God said this to himself.85 In short, the
technical language for swearing an oath is simply not a requirement for
judging a statement to function as such. The simple verb d-b-r, “speak,” is
used to describe the making of a covenant or the act of swearing in bibli-
cal usage.86 In Deuteronomy, the phrases ka’ašer nišba‘ and ka’ašer dibber
are used interchangeably to mean “as he promised/swore.”87 Akkadian
usage may also provide support: the words qabû and zakāru, both mean-
ing “to speak,” are also used to mean “promise,” “swear,” and “declare
under oath.”88
Given the preponderance of evidence indicating that the description of
an oath given does not necessarily have to refer to an explicitly formulated
oath earlier in the text, it is difficult to support the contention that those
promise texts that refer to an oath must (a) be referring only to the oath to
Abraham in Gen 22:16–18; and (b) necessarily be from a distinct composi-
tional layer. Rather, it is eminently plausible that a reference to God’s oath
to the patriarch could refer to any of the promise texts, with or without
an explicit oath formula. Marc Brettler’s statement on Gen 24:7 seems
eminently sensible: “Here the verb nšb‘ is used for the first time with the
[land promise]. This does not imply that a šbw‘h reinforcing the land grant
is alien to all other contexts where it is not stated explicitly or that a šbw‘h
is secondary to God’s saying that the land is Abraham’s. Perhaps šbw‘h in
this context is a solemn declaration by God and not an oath in the juridi-
cal sense.”89 Indeed, if we are to be demanding about the use of language
(which is, after all, the hallmark of the nondocumentary approach to the
promises), we ought to observe that, other than 24:7 and 26:3b, all of the
oath language in the promise passages refers to the oath given to all three
patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; this indicates that in the mind
of the author, at least, the promises given to Isaac and Jacob that do not
contain the explicit language of Gen 22:16–18 are equally worthy of being
called oaths. If so, then there is no reason at all to discern different lay-
ers of promise texts on the basis of oath language. A final point on this
topic: every reference to a divine oath to the patriarchs is clearly referring
to the promise of land; yet in the sole explicit oath, that in Gen 22:16–18,
little (and certainly nothing quotable) is said about assigning the land to
the patriarch’s offspring.90 In Gen 24:7, the first reference to a previously
50 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

given oath, the promise referred to is unquestionably that of Gen 12:7, in


which no oath language is used. This difficulty seems insuperable.
A second example of hypercritical analysis of the Hebrew in the promise
passages is the manner in which Rendtorff approaches the word ûləzar‘akā,
“and to your offspring.” This word appears in the promises in the phrase
“I give it to you and to your offspring”; sometimes this is rendered with
the literal word order “to you and to your offspring I give it” (Gen 26:3),
and sometimes with the literal order “to you I give it and to your offspring”
(Gen 13:15; 28:13). Of the latter cases Rendtorff writes, “That it is a ques-
tion of an addition here will be readily discernible from the fact that in
some cases ‘and to your descendants’ has been inserted only after the verb
(28.13; 13.15).”91 Though here Rendtorff is ostensibly describing the forma-
tion of the promise only in the abstract sense—that is, he is not proposing
that this “addition” can be used to discern actual layers of pentateuchal
text—this argument again highlights a problem with the nondocumen-
tary approach: as seen in the previous example of the oath formulation,
judgments are made regarding the Hebrew of the promise texts that are
not applied, nor are they even applicable, to other biblical texts. In this
case, the structure of the Hebrew sentence ləkā ’etnennāh ûləzar‘akā, liter-
ally “to you I give it and to your offspring,” which Rendtorff sees as a sign
of some type of traditional or compositional accretion of concepts, is in
fact an entirely unremarkable feature of biblical style. Rendtorff is taking
a typical feature of biblical Hebrew and using it to argue for a preliterary
development of the promise (problematically, with only the purely literary
evidence on which to base his argument), to the exclusion of data from
outside the passages he discusses. August Dillmann already provided a
partial list of passages in which this type of structure is employed, rang-
ing across the entire biblical corpus.92 One easy example may suffice to
demonstrate the case: in Gen 43:18, Joseph’s brothers surmise that their
money has been replaced in their bags as a pretext for bringing them back
to Egypt and seizing them and their donkeys. They say that Joseph will
(following the literal order of the Hebrew) “take us as slaves and our don-
keys.” If the placement of a second object after the verb is, as Rendtorff
claims, a sign of a later development, then must we consider the possibil-
ity that a later hand found it necessary to add the brothers’ donkeys to
the text? Should we search for a redactor who was particularly concerned
about donkeys? Surely not.
As is the case elsewhere, the priestly promise texts provide an important
piece of evidence against this type of analysis. The priestly promise texts
The Promise as Secondary 51

evince the same alternation of wording, but are considered to be from a


single hand.93 Note the examples of Gen 17:8 and 35:12: the first reads, “I give
to you and to your offspring after you the land in which you sojourn”; the
second reads, “To you I give it, and to your offspring after you I give the
land.” What is fundamentally at stake here is the question of authorial free-
dom. To claim that a variation in word order is a sign of diachronic develop-
ment is to claim that an ancient author was somehow constrained to use
the same words, in the same order, whenever he wrote a promise text. Such
constraints are not applied to any other biblical authors or texts, nor should
they be. Furthermore, by taking the promise texts entirely out of their con-
text, small verbal variations appear far more prominent than they deserve.
The question of who the promise addressee is in each of the promise texts
is not an abstract issue, to be discussed without any reference to the narra-
tive situation in which the promise text occurs.94 As we will see in the next
chapter, the narrative contexts of the promise shape its contents.
One of the basic claims of the nondocumentary school is that the non-
priestly patriarchal narratives are tradition-critically and, more importantly,
compositionally distinct from the Exodus-wilderness complex.95 In terms
of the patriarchal promise, it is obvious that no actual promise is given
after the end of Genesis, as the patriarchs, the sole promise recipients,
have passed from the story. There are, however, a number of nonpriestly
references back to the patriarchal promise, scattered throughout Exodus–
Numbers (Exod 32:13; 33:1; Num 11:12; 14:16, 23).96 These references would
ostensibly pose a difficulty for the nondocumentary model, as they seem
to presume an original connection—on a compositional level—between
Genesis and Exodus–Numbers, the very connection that the nondocumen-
tary scholars deny. It is hardly surprising, then, that in the nondocumen-
tary model every one of these post-Genesis references to the nonpriestly
patriarchal promise is deemed secondary, part of a late combination of the
patriarchal and Exodus-wilderness themes: “One can recognize again and
again from the different passages throughout the book of Exodus isolated
references back to the patriarchal story. There was clearly a layer of rework-
ing which joined the two complexes of tradition together.”97
The first problem with the nondocumentary school’s removal of all the
references in Exodus–Numbers to the patriarchal promise is the basis on
which they are deemed secondary. Not surprisingly perhaps, virtually the
same arguments made by the classical documentary school are repeated
by nondocumentary scholars. Thus Ska, for example, in his treatment of
the intercessory speeches of Moses in Exod 32:7–14 and Num 14:11b–23a,
52 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

cites both the ease with which these passages can be removed from their
contexts and the seemingly deuteronomic language and ideology in these
speeches as justification for their secondary status.98 The criticisms of
these arguments noted above in relation to the classical model apply
equally to the nondocumentary model. Ska also argues that although
there are other Mosaic intercessions in the Exodus–Numbers narrative,
these two stand out in particular as being “more developed.” This is,
however, to read the intercessions in isolation from their contexts. The
other nonpriestly episodes in the wilderness that require something like
intercession, it should be noted, are essentially complaints: the Israelites
feel that they do not have enough to eat (Exodus 16) or drink (Exodus 17),
or that Moses is a poor leader (Numbers 16). It is only in the narratives
of the golden calf in Exodus 32 and the spies in Numbers 13–14 that the
Israelites directly disobey God’s commands, and these happen also to be
the two most critical moments in the entirety of the wilderness traditions:
the sin following the revelation on the mountain and the failure of will
at the intended moment of the conquest of the land. At these moments,
if at no others, it is prima facie unsurprising that an author would view
the disobedience of the Israelites as requiring a more substantial divine
response, and that response, in turn, as demanding a fuller interces-
sion by Moses. To expect in these two instances the same type of divine
response and Mosaic intercession as in the narratives of Israelite mur-
muring would not reflect the basic distinction in importance inherent in
these episodes: only when the promise is actually in danger of being bro-
ken for good does Moses remind Yahweh of it, and of how bad Yahweh
will look and feel if he breaks it.
The second problem, as usual, is the evidence of the priestly promise
passages outside of Genesis. Just as with the nonpriestly references to the
promise, there are only a handful of priestly references to the patriarchal
promise in Exodus–Numbers (Exod 2:24; 6:8; Num 14:30)99—even fewer,
in fact, than in the nonpriestly narrative. According to the nondocumentary
model, the patriarchal and Exodus-wilderness traditions are combined in
part by the addition of the scattered references in Exodus–Numbers to the
nonpriestly patriarchal promise. Thus, on this theory, there is an explana-
tion for why they occur so infrequently—the narratives of the patriarchs
and Exodus-wilderness were originally distinct, and the references are
mere linkages. P, however, according to one version of the nondocumen-
tary model, did not inherit separate traditions that needed to be linked
by means of the promises, but inherited rather the already-combined
The Promise as Secondary 53

traditions in a single text.100 Thus, for the priestly author, the patriarchs
and the Exodus-wilderness were already a single story. Why, then, did P
not more consistently reinforce the patriarchal promise in his rendering
of the Exodus-wilderness narratives, if it was already an integral part of
the story—and especially if, as some nondocumentary scholars argue, the
nonpriestly patriarchal promise in Genesis was already before it as the
dominant theological motif of the pre-Exodus traditions? Another school
of thought among the nondocumentary scholars is that P was in fact the
first to combine the patriarchal and Exodus-wilderness traditions.101 If,
according to this approach, P was trying to bring the two blocks of tradi-
tion into a single overarching narrative, then the same question must be
put to it: why did P not employ the dominant patriarchal motif as a linking
text more often in the Exodus-wilderness material?
The natural answer is that the priestly author recognized that the prom-
ise of divine activity on behalf of the patriarch was a theme that belonged
essentially to the patriarchal stories, and that in the Exodus-wilderness
traditions it was not unknown, but rather out of place: beginning with
the life of Moses, God no longer needs to promise to take care of the
Israelites, for he actually does so, in action, not in words. The events of
Exodus–Numbers are the fulfillment of the promise made to the patri-
archs; the promise no longer needs to be made or even explicitly referred
to, because every divine action on behalf of the Israelites is an implicit
reminder of the promise. Tradition-historically, the priestly author had
before him patriarchal traditions that contained the notion of the divine
promise and Exodus-wilderness traditions that had their own themes
(e.g., “the land of milk and honey”). In writing his narratives reflecting
these traditions, the priestly author naturally kept the themes where they
belonged traditionally, and used the theme from the preceding patriar-
chal tradition in the narrative of the subsequent Exodus-wilderness tradi-
tion only briefly and when appropriate. He had no need to be constantly
reminding his audience of earlier themes—they had just heard or read
them, and their understanding of the subsequent stories was naturally
informed by them. If the priestly author who either knew of or created
the combination of the patriarchal and Exodus-wilderness traditions
could refer to the patriarchs so infrequently after Genesis, then so too
could a nonpriestly author. Surely the relative scarcity of postpatriarchal
references to the promise in the nonpriestly narrative can hardly be an
indication that the two blocks of tradition must have originally been
independent.
54 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

A final piece of evidence that speaks against the nondocumentary model


for understanding the promise is the variety of results its proponents put
forward. Granted, there are innumerable variations in result among the
classical documentary scholars as well. They, however, agree on the funda-
mental aspects of the theory—J, E, D, and P—and disagree, for the most
part, only on individual verses and half-verses. Given the centrality of the
patriarchal promise to the nondocumentary model, however, it is some-
what more telling that there is little or no agreement either as to which
promise texts should be grouped together or as to what redactional layers
those groupings represent. Thus, for example, Blum’s earliest redactional
layer (Vg1) is founded on the promises of Gen 13:14–17 and 28:13–15, while
Ludwig Schmidt thinks that the preexilic layer connecting the Abraham
and Jacob traditions was framed by Gen 12:1–3, 7, and 28:13–14;102 Carr,
using almost identical arguments, claims for his first layer not only all
of the texts cited by Blum and Schmidt but also Gen 16:10; 26:1–3a, 24;
46:3–4. Köckert attributes Gen 12:1–3, 7; 13:14–17; 28:13–14 to an Abraham–
Jacob redaction, and Gen 18:18–19; 22:16–18; 26:3–5, 24 to a postdeutero-
nomic redaction.103 Christoph Levin assigns Gen 12:1–3 to his J (not to be
confused with the classical Yahwist by any means), while everything else
falls into the rather broadly drawn category of “postredactional additions”
(nachendredaktionelle Ergänzungen).104

The Effect of Removing the Promises


In both the documentary and the nondocumentary approaches, most if not
all of the nonpriestly promise texts are systematically removed from their nar-
rative contexts and considered secondary additions. Because of the divergent
claims of each school, however, this removal of the promise has strikingly dif-
ferent effects. For documentary scholarship, the designation of many promise
texts as secondary does not affect the underlying division of the text into four
sources; it does, however, leave the nonpriestly sources with far fewer explicit
theological statements. The bulk of the theology of the sources is therefore
shifted from the promise—yet it is unclear where it is imagined to have been
relocated. Documentary scholarship’s removal of the promise comes at a
heavy theological cost to the underlying sources for which it advocates.
Ironically, one of the most serious shortcomings of the nondocumen-
tary model is a direct result of the lacuna in earlier scholarship that it
was developed to answer. We have seen above that it is in the nondocu-
mentary school that the notion of the promise as the central theological
The Promise as Secondary 55

statement of the patriarchal narratives reaches its pinnacle. If classical


scholarship recognized this only implicitly, by considering original those
passages that stood at the head of their respective sources, the nondocu-
mentary approach brought the promise to the forefront of the process of
shaping and interpreting the patriarchal narratives. Yet to give this weight
to the patriarchal promise serves largely to highlight the essential lack
of theological meaning in the purportedly originally independent patri-
archal traditions. Of what importance would the supposed independent
story of Abraham and Lot, for example, be for an ancient Israelite without
the understanding that their entrance into the new land of Canaan was
divinely instructed and that its division and possession stood as an impor-
tant step in the fulfillment of God’s promise?
This is not to deny the possibility that an Abraham–Lot traditional tale,
without the promise, may have existed in some form at some point in
Israelite history. We are not dealing here, however, with an orally transmit-
ted etiological or cultic tale; the nondocumentary model explicitly defines
the Abraham–Lot narrative as a written text, in fact, precisely the writ-
ten text we may extract from the canonical Pentateuch. The equation of
the pentateuchal text with the theoretical local oral tradition is impossible
to prove and difficult to accept. The text we have is a written one, and
we can understand it only through the lens of a culture, or better a seg-
ment of a culture, that might produce a written text. Given the nature of
literacy in ancient Israel, it seems likely that the written text of the pur-
ported Abraham–Lot tradition would have been produced only in a small
handful of possible settings, most likely among them the temple or the
royal court, that is, the ancient loci of written literature.105 In any scenario,
the cultural elements responsible for producing a written document—
particularly a literary document, as opposed to the administrative or other
types of ephemera that make up the vast majority of epigraphic evidence
from ancient Israel—are not the same as those typically understood to
be responsible for the oral transmission of local cultic or etiological tra-
ditions.106 The interest in preserving and passing on the independent
patriarchal traditions does not obviously overlap with the interests of the
court or the temple in producing literary works; to put it another way, why
would the literate segments of Israelite society simply put into writing,
unconnected to any other narrative and entirely without any political or
theological framing or direction, a local patriarchal tradition?107
Then again, it is not so easy to imagine that even an oral tradition of
Abraham and Lot, the purpose of which would be to establish the Israelite
56 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

possession of the land, would have existed without any concept of the land
as promised. It is the modern scholarly sensibility that seeks to under-
stand the past without recourse to any supernatural phenomena; in the
ancient world, the deity was at the root of every aspect of life, from the
mundane to the grand, from weather to war. The nondocumentary theory
posits a pretheological conception of history. Yet there are no parallels in
the ancient Near East for such a conception. The involvement of God or
the gods in human activity, from the beginning of the world to the pres-
ent, is a given for everyone from Egypt to Mesopotamia to Ugarit. The
assumption of a tradition among the Israelites about their possession of
the land that did not integrally involve their national (or even tribal) deity
is anachronistic.108
The nondocumentary theory presents a difficulty, then, precisely
because it succeeded in drawing attention to the importance of the prom-
ise within the patriarchal tradition, thus raising the question of what pur-
pose, in fact, prepromise independent patriarchal narratives—in their
written form, presumably as a product of the literate segments of Israelite
culture—would have served. In fact, it seems clear that the patriarchal nar-
ratives are, at least from the perspective of anyone who would be interested
in or capable of preserving them in written form, meaningful only when
the promise is an integral part of the story.
Both documentary and nondocumentary approaches maintain, to vary-
ing degrees, the theological centrality of the promise for the pentateuchal
text, even as they recognize that the narrative inconsistencies inher-
ent in the repetitions of the promise are the result of the history of the
Pentateuch’s composition. At the same time, they use the variety of liter-
ary expression among the promise texts to argue for the removal of some,
or even all, of the promise passages from the earliest layers of the text.
In this chapter I have tried to show that these and related arguments are
flawed. It is not enough, however, to argue against the various scholarly
mechanisms for removing the promise texts from their narrative contexts
and deeming them secondary. We need not give up on the potential for
the literary-historical approach as a means of interpreting the patriarchal
promise. What is required at this point is a return to the promise texts
themselves and a new effort at situating them in their narrative contexts.
It is this task that the next chapter will take up.
3

Restoring the Promise

though neither the classical documentary nor the contemporary non-


documentary approaches to the promise, surveyed in the preceding chap-
ter, is methodologically or analytically convincing as it stands, they may
provide us with avenues of investigation to help resolve the problem of the
patriarchal promise. The first issue is whether, in fact, the promise texts are
secondary within their immediate narrative contexts. This question must
be approached by asking “how does this promise text work within its con-
text,” rather than “how does this promise text disrupt its context.” If we
begin by looking for reasons to remove a passage, we will inevitably find
them, as we have seen. If we begin, however, by trying to understand the
final form of the text, we may be more likely to discern the connections
between a promise text and its context. “The most we can strive for is a
reasonable degree of probability, and the method that seems to hold out
the best prospects of success is to work backward from the text as we have
it rather than forward from its hypothetical origins in ancient traditions in
oral or written form.”1
The second question pertains to the relationships among the various
promise texts. We should ask on the one hand whether a given promise
text, even if it belongs in its immediate context, does not contradict or
awkwardly reduplicate a preceding promise text when we read canoni-
cally. On the other hand we must note any obvious narratological or verbal
connections between promise texts that might speak to their belonging
to a larger literary whole. For the nondocumentary approach, the precise
groupings of promise texts represent an analytical issue: different schol-
ars can claim different groupings of passages without affecting the over-
all model, as indeed is the case in nondocumentary scholarship. For the
documentary approach, however, only one grouping is permissible within
the theory: that which conforms to the J and E sources. If the promise
texts fall into groups that cross or confound the borders of the sources, the
documentary model cannot account for them.
58 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

Our task is therefore to start afresh the examination of the patriarchal


promise, without the methodological preconceptions or analytical idiosyn-
cracies of either the documentary or the nondocumentary approaches. We
will simply ask whether the promise texts are plausibly original to their
immediate contexts, and whether they fall into obvious noncontextual
groupings, taking only the standards of biblical narrative as our guide.

The Promise Texts in Their Contexts


The Priestly Promise Texts
As we have alread noted, there is virtually no scholarly debate regarding
the question of the identification of the priestly promise texts or whether
they constituted an original part of the P narrative. Thus it may seem
gratuitous even to examine how the priestly promise texts work in their
narrative contexts. Yet this is a necessary task, if only to see what kinds
of literary connections have been typically deemed acceptable evidence
of a single hand. The ways in which the priestly promise texts fit in their
contexts may be taken as the standard for how all promise texts fit in their
contexts. The priestly promise texts, then, can serve as a baseline for the
analysis of the more widely debated nonpriestly promise texts.
The first priestly promise text is that of Genesis 17. As Hoftijzer cor-
rectly recognized, this chapter is built entirely around the promise; it is a
promise text in the truest sense. Yet this does not mean that it is unrelated
to the parts of the priestly narrative that stand on either side of it. There are
three distinct renderings of the promise in Genesis 17, each introduced by
a renewed speech formula, “God said,” and each containing the naming
or renaming of the promise recipient: the covenantal promise to Abraham
(17:4–8), the promise regarding Sarah (17:15–16), and the promise regarding
Ishmael and, more importantly, Isaac (17:19–21). The highlighting of these
three distinct parties is integrally related to the larger narrative context of
P in which Genesis 17 stands. The episode immediately preceding Genesis
17 in P is Sarah’s giving of Hagar to Abraham and the birth of Ishmael
(Gen 16:1, 3, 15–16). Here are present all the main characters, and the driv-
ing issues, that come to the fore in Genesis 17. “Sarai, Abram’s wife, had
borne him no children” (Gen 16:1)—this sentence puts in motion not only
the events of Genesis 16, but of Genesis 17 as well. For now, when Abraham
receives the extended promise in 17:4–8, according to which God will make
him “exceedingly fertile,” such that nations and “kings shall come forth”
Restoring the Promise 59

from him, and in which repeated reference is made to Abraham’s offspring,


it appears as if the promise will be fulfilled through Ishmael, Abraham’s
only son. This perception is corrected by the promise regarding Sarah:
“I will bless her, indeed I will give you a son by her” (17:16). This is the
undoing of 16:1, and is of course sensible only when the announcement of
Sarah’s childlessness has already occurred. The promise that it is through
Sarah that the promise will be enacted—“I will bless her so that she shall
give rise to nations” (17:16)—throws the status of Ishmael into doubt: once
the perceived inheritor of God’s promise, now Hagar’s son stands outside
the covenant, in an uncertain position. Thus Abraham’s response, after his
disbelieving laughter, is concern for Ishmael: “O that Ishmael might live
by your favor!” (17:18). It should be observed that until this point, Ishmael
has not been mentioned by name in Genesis 17. Yet he is clearly in the
background, until this point, when Abraham makes the interest in Ishmael
explicit. Abraham’s request, and the issue of Ishmael’s position raised by
the promise to Sarah, is meaningful only if we already know that Ishmael is
Abraham’s only son—which we learn from P in Genesis 16.
The priestly text that immediately follows Genesis 17 is the announce-
ment of Isaac’s birth and circumcision, in 21:2–5.2 Here we have reference
to the fulfillment of God’s promise that Sarah would bear a son (21:2), the
naming of the child Isaac (21:3), the circumcision of Isaac on the eighth day
(21:4), and Abraham being a hundred years old when Isaac is born (21:5).
Each one of these elements is directly related to Genesis 17: God’s prom-
ise (17:16), Isaac’s name (17:19), the circumcision (17:9–14), and Abraham’s
age (17:17). The connections between the two passages are made explicit by
the fulfillment formulae: “at the set time of which God had spoken” (21:2)
and “as God had commanded him” (21:4). Thus the promise regarding
Isaac in 17:19–21 is linked not only to what precedes, the issue of Ishmael’s
status, but also to what follows, Isaac’s birth. Indeed, it is only because of
the separation of these three passages in the canonical text that we even
consider Genesis 17 a separate unit; when the P narrative is read continu-
ously, it is clear that the priestly elements in Genesis 16, 17, and 21 consti-
tute a single story, moving from the birth of Ishmael to the birth of Isaac,
with the promise as the necessary central element.
The next priestly promise text is Gen 28:3–4, in which Isaac blesses
Jacob when sending him off to Paddan-Aram to get married. This
blessing—anticipated by the sentence “Isaac sent for Jacob and blessed
him” in 28:1—is both a wish that Jacob should receive the promise and a
reference to the promise previously given to Abraham. These verses are
60 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

syntactically linked to what precedes them by the waw at the beginning


of 28:3 and by the fronting of the subject, El Shaddai, setting the actions
desired of God in purposeful contrast with those commanded to Jacob in
28:2: “You go to Paddan-Aram . . . As for El Shaddai, may he bless you.”
In form, the verses are well suited to their narrative context: as Isaac is
sending off his son to a foreign land, the expression of the promise in
the form of a parental wish is perfectly appropriate.3 The content of the
passage is equally appropriate. Isaac is sending off Jacob to get married
(28:2); thus the wish that God make Jacob fruitful and numerous, so
that he becomes an assembly of peoples (28:3), is very much to the point.
The reference to the promise of the land in 28:4 may seem somewhat
less relevant, yet again the fact that Jacob is leaving Canaan, the land
promised to Abraham’s descendants, renders it meaningful: Isaac’s ref-
erence to the promise of land is little else than a wish that his son should
return to Canaan. It should also be noted that Isaac wishes for the prom-
ise of the land to be given not only to Jacob but also to his offspring—
again very much in keeping with the context. Indeed, the issue of the
promise as a whole is particularly resonant here, as Jacob is being sent
to marry into the right family (his relatives) rather than intermarry with
the local Hittite women. Marriage and offspring are not simply standard
life events anymore—they are now imbued with far more importance,
as the means by which the promise is to be continued in Abraham’s line
from generation to generation. Finally, just as the sentence “Isaac sent for
Jacob and blessed him” in 28:1 integrates the promise that follows, so the
clause “Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob” in 28:6 firmly anchors the
promise in its narrative context on the other side.
The promise that Isaac wishes for Jacob in Gen 28:3–4 is realized,
nearly word for word, in 35:11–12. It is important to recognize that the nar-
rative context of 35:11–12 is intimately related to that of 28:3–4. In the ear-
lier passage, Isaac sends Jacob out of Canaan to get married; in the latter,
Jacob has just returned from that very journey: “God appeared to Jacob
on his arrival from Paddan-Aram and he blessed him” (35:9).4 There is
little narrative in P between the two promise texts—little more than the
description of Jacob fulfilling his father’s instructions by having children,
becoming wealthy, and leaving again “to go to his father Isaac in the land
of Canaan” (31:18).5 The promise of Gen 35:11–12, then, serves along with
28:3–4 to bracket Jacob’s sojourn in Paddan-Aram.
The promise itself is preceded by the change of Jacob’s name to Israel
in 35:10; this is distinct from the promise proper, but is crucial to it
Restoring the Promise 61

nonetheless. Israel, of course, is not only Jacob’s name but is the name of
the nation that will descend from him in the generations to come. This
broader meaning comes into play in the first half of the promise, in 35:11:
“Be fertile and increase; a nation, an assembly of nations, shall descend
from you.” The phrase “be fertile and increase” refers not to Jacob’s imme-
diate descendants, his twelve sons, but rather to future generations—to
the expansion from the single family of Abraham to the people Israel.6 Of
special note is the phrase “a nation, an assembly of nations.” The plural
term here, “an assembly of nations,” is typical for the priestly promises
(with some variations): Gen 17:4, 5, 6, 16; 28:3. The singular “a nation,”
however, stands out—and should be read as responding to the new identi-
fication of Jacob as that very nation: Israel. The second half of the promise
in 35:12, which deals with the land, is equally appropriate to its context, as
Jacob has just returned to Canaan from abroad; he has just set foot once
more on the promised ground.
The final priestly promise text in Genesis is that of Gen 48:3–4, part of
Jacob’s deathbed speech to Joseph (and eventually to his brothers as well,
in the continuation of this passage in 49:1a, 29–32). Here Jacob recalls the
promise of 35:11–12, but the context in which he does so is important. The
main new information imparted to Joseph in Jacob’s speech is in 48:5–6,
in which Jacob adopts Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, as his own.
This adoption reflects the common Israelite tradition that Ephraim and
Manasseh were among the twelve tribes; in fact, that they were two of the
most prominent in terms of land and power. The adoption of Joseph’s sons,
then, looks forward, long past their own generation, to the Israelite nation
as it would be established in the promised land. The promise referred to
in 48:3–4 thus plays a vital part in establishing the import of the adop-
tion in 48:5–6: it is only because God had promised Jacob he would be
fertile and numerous and possess the land that the adoption of Ephraim
and Manasseh is meaningful. That there is a direct relationship between
the promise and the adoption is explicitly marked by the conjunction at
the beginning of 48:5: wə‘attāh, “now.” This particle serves in Hebrew to
mark the shift from a general statement to a specific intended action that
follows logically from the general statement. It serves that purpose here
beautifully: God promised me progeny and land; wə‘attāh, therefore, I am
adopting your sons. Without the reference to the promise in 48:3–4, the
adoption in 48:5–6 comes suddenly and without explanation or meaning.
In Exod 2:23aE–25 we find P’s description of the Israelites crying to
God because of their enslavement in Egypt and God’s recognition of
62 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

their perilous situation. In 2:24, God’s recognition is explicitly connected


with the promise to the patriarchs: “God remembered his covenant with
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.” In its narrative context, this reference is
perfectly appropriate: the concept of God “remembering” occurs repeatedly
in P in moments of potential danger—in the flood narrative (Gen 8:1) and
at the destruction of the cities of the plain (Gen 19:29), for example. The
verse is, furthermore, structurally integrated with those on either side of it.
All three verses in 2:23aE–25 have a two-part construction: “The Israelites
were groaning under the bondage and cried out / their cry for help from
the bondage rose up to God” (2:23aEb); “God heard their moaning / God
remembered his covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob” (2:24); “God
looked upon the Israelites / God took notice of them” (2:25). The first seg-
ment of the first verse describes the physical act of the Israelites, their
cry; this physicalization is picked up in the first halves of the other verses:
“God heard” and “God looked.” These segments are descriptive of acts; the
second segment in each verse describes the result of those acts. In 2:23b,
the cry of the Israelites reaches God; in 2:24, God’s hearing the cry leads to
him remembering the covenant; in 2:25, God looking upon the Israelites
leads to him taking notice of them. Thus the reference to the covenant with
the patriarchs in 2:24 is part of a well-designed structure.
The more significant reference to the promise occurs in Exod 6:3–5, 8,
as part of the priestly call of Moses. This call begins in 6:2 with an intro-
duction: “I am Yahweh.” The assumption of this passage is that Moses,
living four hundred years after the patriarchs, does not know the history
of his ancestors or the promise made to them. (Indeed, it is on the basis
of this assumption that, in 2:23aE, the Israelites do not cry out specifically
to God—they are merely groaning under their labor, as they do not know
Yahweh.) Since Moses knows little or nothing about Yahweh or Yahweh’s
relationship with the ancestors, it is eminently sensible that this informa-
tion should be transmitted to him at this point, and that is precisely what
happens: Yahweh explains that the patriarchs knew him as El Shaddai
(6:3), and that he had made a covenant with them to give them the land of
Canaan (6:4). This information is all necessary for Moses to understand
what is happening now: Yahweh has heard the moaning of the Israelites,
and has remembered the covenant from long ago (6:5). This last verse is,
of course, no more than a recapitulation of what we learned in 2:24, com-
plete with the repetition of the rare word na’aqāh, “moaning.”
In Exod 6:6–7, Yahweh instructs Moses to tell the people of their immi-
nent rescue from Egypt; this is followed, in 6:8, by Yahweh’s statement,
Restoring the Promise 63

“I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, and I will give it to you for a possession.” Again, the reference
to the promise serves a necessary literary function here: the people need
to know not only that they are being taken out of Egypt, but also where
they are going. Freedom from enslavement is only half of the picture;
there must be a place in which they can settle in peace. It will be noted
that in both 6:4 and 6:8 reference is made only to the land, not to prog-
eny; in comparison with the priestly promise texts from Genesis, this is
a new feature. Yet it is one that is sensitive to its context. There is no
need to mention the progeny aspect of the promise, as it has long since
been fulfilled: “The Israelites were fertile and prolific; they multiplied and
increased very greatly, so that the land was filled with them” (Exod 1:7; see
also Gen 47:27). What is at stake in the Exodus is not the growth of the
patriarchs into a nation, but rather that nation’s possession of the land.
The final priestly reference to the promise comes in Num 14:30, in the
midst of the episode of the spies. Yahweh announces that the generation
of the Exodus will die in the wilderness: “not one shall enter the land in
which I swore to settle you.” In the priestly account (as in the nonpriestly),
Yahweh’s original intention was for the Israelites to go directly from the
revelation on the mountain to Canaan; this plan, however, is disrupted by
the Israelites’ reticence to enter the land after the spies return with their
report. There is thus no more suitable moment for the promise of the land
to be recalled, especially in a negative context as in Num 14:30. The people
are thereby reminded that the land was promised to them, and simultane-
ously that they have forsaken it.
That the priestly promise texts are original to the P narrative has never
been in doubt. What we have examined here is the ways in which the
promise texts are integrated into that narrative context. With the excep-
tion of Genesis 17, as Hoftijzer correctly observed, the priestly promise
texts are all attached to a distinct tradition: the sending of Jacob to Paddan-
Aram; the renaming of Jacob; the adoption of Ephraim and Manasseh; the
cry of the Israelites; the call of Moses; the episode of the spies. Yet there is
no doubt that, literarily, these passages constitute an essential part of their
narrative contexts. They are integrated lexically, syntactically, structurally,
and thematically—though every text does not necessarily work in all these
ways equally. Thus we can assert a standard against which to measure the
nonpriestly promise texts: if the nonpriestly passages are integrated into
their contexts in the same way that the priestly promise texts are, then the
same conclusions regarding their originality should be reached.
64 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

The Nonpriestly Promise Texts


The fi rst nonpriestly promise text is Gen 12:1–3. As many have rec-
ognized, the promise that Yahweh will make Abraham into a “great
nation” (12:2) creates a dramatic tension with the immediately pre-
ceding nonpriestly text in Gen 11:30, in which we have learned that
Abraham’s wife, Sarah, is barren.7 This tension gives both depth to
Yahweh’s promise, demonstrating that Yahweh’s power is not restricted
by the whims of nature, and meaning to the notice of Sarah’s bar-
renness, as without the promise that her unfortunate state will be
overcome there is no need to mention it at all. Gen 12:1–3 are further
necessary for what follows, as is evident from the continuation of the
narrative in 12:4a, 6.8 In 12:4a, we are told that Abraham went, wayyēlek
’abrām. Without Yahweh’s instructions in 12:1–3—“go from your
land . . . to the land that I will show you,” lek-lək ā m ē’arṣə k ā . . . ’el-h ā’āreṣ
’a šer ’ar’ekk ā — we do not know where Abraham is going, nor where he
is going from, nor why. The words “as Yahweh had commanded him,”
ka’a šer dibber ’elāyw yhwh, are obviously sensible only in the context of
the foregoing speech.9 In 12:6, “the land,” h ā’āreṣ, is mentioned, and
we know which land is referred to only from the promise speech (the
land that Yahweh would show Abraham, 12:1).
The promise of the land, however, does not come until 12:7. This sepa-
ration of promise elements is not a form-critical issue, as Westermann
and others would have it10 —this is not a different “type” of promise, nor
has it been added at a distance from the others in order to keep it sepa-
rate from them in any theological or conceptual manner—but it is rather
a direct result of the logic of the narrative, according to which Yahweh
simply could not have promised Abraham the land when Abraham was
still living outside of it. First, Abraham would not have known which land
Yahweh was referring to. Indeed, Gen 12:7 may function as the aforemen-
tioned indication that Abraham had actually reached the land he was sup-
posed to travel to.11 Second, every promise of land to a patriarch is made in
the land itself, such that God can say, “I give this land”—with the demon-
strative adjective—“to you / your descendants.” Promise of the possession
of an unseen, unknown land is foreign to the patriarchal narratives (as
we saw, this was the case in P as well: Jacob receives the promise only
when he has returned from Paddan-Aram in Gen 35:11–12). The promise
is of the land in which they are dwelling, over which they are traveling,
or on which they are sleeping. Thus it is that Yahweh does not promise
Restoring the Promise 65

Abraham the land while Abraham is still in his father’s house; Abraham
must first get to the land, and only then can he be promised it.
That the promise of 12:7 is completely integrated into its context is also
not in doubt. In 12:6, Abraham comes to Shechem. Our verse begins with
the notice that “Yahweh appeared to Abraham,” wayyērā’ yhwh ’el-’abrām,
upon which Yahweh promises Abraham the land, and concludes with
Abraham building an altar “there”—which can refer only to Shechem
from the preceding verse—“to Yahweh who had appeared to him,” layhwh
hannir’eh ’ēlāyw. The following verse is dependent upon 12:7, beginning
as it does with the deictic pronoun, “he proceeded from there,” wayya‘tēq
miššām. In addition, the geographical order is correct, as Abraham would
have gone through Shechem before coming to Bethel, if we assume that
he traveled from the north. The same order of travel is found in the non-
priestly narrative of Jacob’s return from Abraham’s ancestral land: he first
comes to Shechem (Gen 33:18), and then proceeds to Bethel (Gen 35:1).12
The lengthy promise text of Gen 13:14–17 is focused on the divine grant
of the land of Canaan to Abraham. The scope of the promised land is
made very clear by Yahweh’s instructions, to look in all directions (13:14)
and to walk the land’s length and breadth (13:17), which frame the promise.
In its emphasis on the expanse of the land this promise text is completely
attuned to its context. Here, after the separation of Lot from Abraham
(explicitly noted in the body of the promise text in 13:14), is the first time
that Abraham is made aware of precisely which lands are to belong to him
and his descendants alone: the land of Canaan (13:12). It is fitting, then,
that here, at the first moment that Abraham stands alone on the land
that is to be his, the promise text should be exceptionally expansive in its
description of the land. We may further observe that without this passage
it would appear as if Abraham’s territory came to be his by chance, on the
whim of Lot’s decision to dwell in the Jordan plain (13:10–11a). Yahweh’s
statement in 13:14–17 makes clear that the divine hand was at work in
the otherwise ostensibly random selection of territory. There is thus no
compelling reason to remove this promise text on purely narratological
grounds; it is, in fact, a very fine moment of reflection on the new order
after Abraham has set out on his own.13
The next set of promise texts are found in Gen 15:5 and 18–21. This
chapter is one of the two “promise narratives” identified by Hoftijzer; that
is, the narrative of the chapter is designed specifically to deliver the prom-
ise contained therein, and could have had no existence apart from the
promise. Further, the chapter is, as recognized by most scholars today,
66 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

likely a unity, regardless of to whom its authorship is attributed.14 If these


two ideas are accepted, then we need not even ask whether the promises
of 15:5 and 18–21 are secondary to their context.
It is noteworthy that this covenant of 15:18–21 refers only to the land
being given to Abraham’s descendants, not to Abraham himself. Though
the question of who the recipient of the land is in the promise texts—
the patriarch, the patriarchs’ descendants, or both—has been taken as
a form-critical issue, particularly by Rendtorff,15 I think we are better
served by looking to the narrative context of the promise in order to
understand why an author may have chosen to formulate it in a particu-
lar way, given the three choices apparently available. Here in Gen 15:18,
the land is promised to Abraham’s descendants rather than to Abraham
not because of the stage of development of the promise formula in the
history of the tradition but for simple narratological reasons: God has
just informed Abraham that his descendants will dwell in a foreign land
for four generations (15:13, 16), and it would be almost contradictory to fol-
low that with the promise of the land to the patriarch alone—Abraham
would know that the grant was essentially temporary. The promise of the
land is meaningful only if the land is promised to Abraham’s descen-
dants, that is, those who are to return from their lengthy sojourn abroad.
This understanding of the choice of Abraham’s descendants in 15:18 is
thrown into relief by the recognition that before God revealed the future
to Abraham, the promise was indeed addressed to Abraham alone: “I am
Yahweh who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to assign this
land to you as a possession” (15:7). God first establishes the personal
relationship with Abraham, pledging him both offspring (15:5) and land
(15:7); these elements are combined and extended into the future (once
that future has been revealed) in 15:18–21.
In Gen 16:8–11 the angel of Yahweh appears to Hagar and delivers a
series of pronouncements, including, in 16:10, the promise to increase
her offspring, using terminology similar to that of the patriarchal prom-
ise proper: “I shall greatly increase your offspring, and they will be too
many to count.” Gen 16:10 has long been seen as a later addition to the
text, not so much because of its content, but because of its form. The idea
that Ishmael’s descendants will be numerous is not problematic from the
standpoint of the patriarchal narratives as a whole, since every relative of a
patriarch, whether the recipient of the promise or not, whether portrayed
in generally positive terms or not, becomes a nation: Lot becomes the
Ammonites and Moabites, Ishmael the Ishmaelites, Esau the Edomites.
Restoring the Promise 67

The tradition that those outside the promise lineage also flourished is
probably no more than the working out of the interface of, on the one
hand, the common tradition that Israel’s neighbors are related to it via the
patriarchs and, on the other, the realia that these peoples were all signifi-
cant nations in their own right. The natural consequence of this interface
is that the relatives of the patriarchs must have been blessed with fruitful-
ness also, though they were not part of the covenantal promise line.16
Scholars have been bothered, however, by the repetition of the formal
speech introductions in 16:9, 10, and 11, each of which begins with the
identical “the messenger of Yahweh said to her . . . ”17 Though this type
of repetition is admittedly uncommon in successive verses, the basic
phenomenon at work here is well known: when, in the midst of a single
speech, the speaker changes topic, the transition is frequently marked
by a repeated wayyō’mer, “he said.”18 In these three verses, the messenger
of Yahweh touches on three distinct topics: in 16:9, he instructs Hagar
to return to Sarah; in 16:10, he tells her that she will have many descen-
dants; in 16:11, he announces that she is pregnant and will bear Ishmael.
This same type of repetition is found in the very next chapter, Genesis
17, a unified P narrative: in 17:3–8, God changes Abraham’s name and
gives him the standard patriarchal promise; in 17:9–14, he institutes the
covenant of circumcision; in 17:15–16, he changes Sarah’s name and gives
her a variant of the promise. Each of these topics is introduced with a new
wayyō’mer, and none marks a redactional insertion or secondary element
of any kind.19 Furthermore, the perceived difficulty in the biblical style
here should not lead to the conclusion that it is the result of a secondary
addition: why, after all, should a redactor have created a stylistic difficulty
by adding the introductory clause, rather than simply appending his addi-
tion directly to the preceding speech?20
It is notable that those scholars who attribute this verse to a secondary
hand on the basis of formal criteria are generally unable to provide any
underlying rationale for why the verse should have been inserted in the
first place, which, as I have suggested above, should be a precondition for
deeming a verse secondary. Noth, in calling this verse secondary, admits as
much when he describes it as an “expansion of quite general character.”21
Since the content of the verse is comprehensible in its context, and the
form, though uncommon, stands firmly in line with typical biblical style,
there is no compelling reason to view Gen 16:10 as secondary.
The next major reference to the patriarchal promise is in Gen 18:18:
“since Abraham is to become a great and populous nation and all the
68 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

nations of the earth are to bless themselves by him.” This verse cannot be
removed from the context of the verses immediately before and after it: it
is a parenthetical and explanatory remark, syntactically linked with 18:17
by means of the disjunctive phrasing, with the subject fronted (wə’abrāhām
hāyô yihyeh), and 18:19 is a subordinate clause dependent on it. It has been
argued that 18:19 was a later expansion of 18:17–18.22 This argument, how-
ever, is based on the perception that there are two rationales given for
Yahweh’s decision to inform Abraham of his decision to destroy Sodom:
one in 18:18 (because Abraham is going to be a great nation) and one in
18:19 (because Abraham is going to instruct his descendants in the ways
of Yahweh). In fact, however, 18:18 by itself makes little sense as a rationale
for consulting with Abraham; the increase of Abraham’s descendants and
his stature among the nations are unrelated to Yahweh’s present action.
It is only when the increase of Abraham’s descendants is linked with the
notion that Abraham is to instruct them in the ways of Yahweh—and that
in so doing, presumably, Abraham acts as a model for the non-Israelite
nations—that the decision to consult with him about this fundamentally
ethically and morally problematic act of destruction is understandable.23
If Moshe Weinfeld is correct that the key phrase in 18:19, ṣədāqāh ûmišpāt,̣
“righteousness and justice,” connotes specifically social justice, then the
reference to Abraham’s status as a model takes on even greater signifi-
cance as a counterexample to the distinct lack of social justice exhibited
by the inhabitants of Sodom in 19:4–11.24
Gen 18:17–19, in turn, in which Yahweh indicates and explains his
resolve to inform Abraham of his intentions regarding Sodom, is a nec-
essary introduction to the dialogue between Yahweh and Abraham in
18:20–32. From his first words in 18:23, “Will you sweep away the innocent
along with the guilty?,” Abraham clearly perceives Yahweh’s intentions,
which indicates that he had, in fact, been informed of them. Without
18:17–19, there is no reason to think that this would have happened. It has
been suggested, however, that both 18:17–19 and the dialogue of 18:22b–
33a are secondary insertions.25 This would leave 18:20–22a as the continu-
ation of 18:16, and would require us to understand that when it says in
18:22a that “the men went toward Sodom” Yahweh is included in their
number. The change from Yahweh as the stated subject of 18:20–21 to
“the men” in 18:22a, however, if they are in fact to be understood as iden-
tical, is jarring, even in the context of a narrative in which the figures are
somewhat confused.26 The difficulty is alleviated, however, by the begin-
ning of the supposed insertion in 18:22b, especially when we take into
Restoring the Promise 69

account the “tiqqun sopherim” here and read it as “but Yahweh remained
standing before Abraham.”
In fact, the desire to remove 18:17–19, as well as 22b–32a, stems less
from any textual difficulties caused by these verses than from the percep-
tion among some scholars that the concepts broached here are of a concep-
tually higher level than one would expect from the original biblical author:
they are “didactic,”27 or “moralizing.”28 This type of argumentation is sub-
jective at best, and at worst condescending. When we read the text without
preconceptions about the manner in which the ancient author “should”
have written, there is no reason to consider 18:17–19 to be secondary.29
In Gen 21:13, 18, we again find the promise of offspring for Hagar. In
terms of content, then, we have the same situation as in 16:10: the basic
notion that Hagar’s offspring should become a nation is unsurprising
and consistent with the rest of the biblical narrative. Even more so than
16:10, however, 21:13, 18 are an integral part of the narrative in which they
are found. The basic theme of this narrative is that Sarah wants Hagar
expelled from the house, and Abraham is worried for the fate of his
first-born son. God’s statement to Abraham that he should obey Sarah
because Isaac is his covenantal heir (21:12) is therefore incomplete with-
out the subsequent promise that Ishmael too will be taken care of (21:13).
When God speaks directly to Hagar in the wilderness in 21:18, he repeats
this promise virtually word for word;30 if 21:13 is recognized as a necessary
part of the story, 21:18 is only fitting as its complement.
Without the formal difficulties of the parallel in 16:10, with its repeated
speech introduction, classical scholars had no difficulties recognizing that
21:13, 18 belonged squarely in their narrative context, and so none marked
these verses as secondary. For nondocumentary scholars, however, despite
the clear integration of these verses into the story, they have to be redac-
tional additions, because it is unthinkable that Hagar should have origi-
nally been seen as the recipient of a promise while the patriarchs were
not (since the patriarchal promises were all secondary).31 In addition, we
again find that the attempt to apply a form-critical argument regarding
the independence of the promises of land and offspring, such as that by
Rendtorff,32 neglects the obvious narratological necessities here: Hagar and
Ishmael are not, according to any biblical conception, the recipients of the
covenantal promise of land—after all, Ishmael is portrayed throughout the
Bible as a nomadic people33 —but they are granted the increase of offspring
because they belong to Abraham’s family, and this, not any form-critical
reason, is why that promise element alone is found in the text here.
70 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

We come now to perhaps one of the most widely recognized additions


in the entire Pentateuch: Gen 22:15–18.34 For the most part, scholars have
keyed in on the style and substance of these verses, especially insofar as
they relate to the other promise texts, as the main evidence for their sec-
ondary status. We will deal with these various arguments below. Common
to almost every analysis of this passage, however, is the argument that the
introduction of the angel’s speech in 22:15—“the messenger of Yahweh
called to Abraham a second time from heaven”—is, to put it mildly, awk-
ward. We have already seen that the repetition of the speech introduction
wayyō’mer and the subject of the verb in itself, as in Gen 16:10, does not
present a textual difficulty, but that is not what we find here. Rather, here
we find an expansion of the preceding formula (in 22:11), with the added
element šēnît, “a second time.” Unlike the phenomenon in 16:10, this has
no clear parallels in the biblical corpus. A further important consideration
is the etiology that precedes the passage, in 22:14. From a general per-
spective, etiologies tend to be found at the end of narratives;35 if 22:15–18
is removed, then the story would have Abraham providing the etiologi-
cal naming of the place (which can be done only while he is there), then
returning to Beersheba: in other words, a typical narrative conclusion. In
this specific case, the placement of the etiology in relation to the following
speech is odd; since Abraham names the place on the basis of the appear-
ance of the divine messenger, one would expect him to do so after the
messenger had finished speaking, just before Abraham leaves; as it stands,
however, the place is named for the divine revelation before the revelation
has been concluded. Thus in this case, as distinct from the ones consid-
ered above, the formal markers, which are unique to this text, provide a
strong indication that the verses are secondary; as we will see below, this
conclusion is born out by analysis of the content and style of the passage.
In Gen 24:7, Abraham informs his servant of the promise that Yahweh
had previously given him, as a way of guaranteeing that the servant’s mis-
sion will be successful: “Yahweh, the God of heaven, who took me from
my father’s house and from the land of my birth, who promised me on
oath, ‘I will assign this land to your offspring,’ he will send his angel
before you.” Abraham’s statement is narratively necessary as a response
to his servant’s question as to what should happen if the woman does not
want to go with him: he says that just as Yahweh helped him, so Yahweh
will help the servant (which is, of course, how the story turns out).36 The
verse is linked lexically and thematically with 24:4, which also mentions
“the land of my birth,” and with 24:27, which refers to Yahweh’s guidance
Restoring the Promise 71

of Abraham’s servant. Indeed, all of the servant’s references to Yahweh’s


help in his errand (24:12–13, 40, 42–44, 48) have 24:7 in mind. Beyond
these obvious narrative connections, however, the syntax and substance
of the next verse demand that 24:7 be original. Gen 24:8 begins with an
adversative clause, wə’im-lō’, “but if not,” which is directly subordinate to
and sensible only in the context of Abraham’s statement in 24:7. A quick
survey of Genesis shows that when a clause begins with the negative
wə’im-lō’ it is almost always preceded by the positive alternative, in this case
represented by 24:7.37 Furthermore, wə’im-lō’ is something of a Leitwort in
this chapter, appearing in 24:8, 21, 41, and 49. Given the close connection
between 24:7 and 8, and given the use of this phrase throughout the chap-
ter, it seems not only unnecessary but in fact problematic to remove 24:7
as an addition. The specific promise element related in Abraham’s speech
is also entirely appropriate to its context: Abraham recalls here only the
promise of offspring, because Abraham’s concern is, at this point, entirely
for the continuation of his family line through Isaac’s marriage. To see
this verse as a form-critical unit over against more complex promises is to
ignore entirely the narrative setting.
The divine promise of land and offspring to Isaac in Gen 26:3b–5 has
been attributed to a redactor both on the basis of the perceived deutero-
nomic style (discussed in the previous chapter)38 and on the verbal affini-
ties with other promise texts, particularly Gen 22:15–18 (to be discussed
below).39 Virtually all commentators who claim that these verses are sec-
ondary do so, therefore, on the basis of the style of the passage, rather
than on its feasibility within its narrative context. And indeed, from the
contextual point of view they could hardly make the claim that they are
secondary. Because 26:3b begins with a subordinate clause (kî), it seems
fairly well linked to the immediately preceding text. Beyond the formal
syntactic subordination, however, the explicit promise of 26:3b–5 is also
sensible given the immediately preceding word, wa’abārkekkā, “I will bless
you.” In the context of the narrative, it is unclear precisely what this bless-
ing comprises; this is the first time Yahweh has appeared to Isaac, and
the patriarch does not necessarily know the details of Yahweh’s plan for
him and his offspring. The details of 26:3b–5 provide this information
for Isaac. This is typical of blessings elsewhere in Genesis, in both P and
non-P: the pronouncement of blessing is given first, and the particulars of
what that blessing entails follow.40
Precisely because 26:3b–5 seems to be closely related to what precedes
it, some scholars have argued that the insertion begins in fact in 26:2.41
72 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

Again, most of the arguments for this expanded addition revolve around
the style of the passage rather than whether it is disruptive of its context.
There is, however, admittedly one interpretive difficulty that is ostensibly
resolved by viewing 26:2–5 as an insertion. In 26:1, Isaac, in the face of
the famine, goes “to Abimelech, king of the Philistines, in Gerar.” And
in 26:6, after the divine speech, Isaac indeed dwells in Gerar. Why, then,
does Yahweh in 26:2 tell Isaac not to go to Egypt? As far as 26:1 indicates,
Isaac never intended to go to Egypt; Gerar seems to have been his final
destination all along.42 This difficulty, however, is not really resolved by
attributing 26:2–6 to a secondary hand; the question remains: why would
anyone, redactor or author, have Yahweh tell Isaac not to go to Egypt, when
he apparently had no intention of doing so?43 A possible answer is that in
the mind of the Israelite audience, Egypt would have been the expected
destination for an Israelite during a time of famine (cf. Gen 12:10, 42:1).
Traditionally and perhaps historically, Egypt seems to have been a land
of refuge for Israelites who found themselves in potential difficulty in
Canaan: famine in the patriarchal stories, but also political problems in
the cases of Jeroboam (1 Kgs 11:40) and the remnant of Judah (Jer 43:4–7).
Thus Isaac’s move to Gerar would have been seen as anomalous, or per-
haps as a stage on the way to Egypt, despite the counterindications in
the text. It is also possible that Yahweh does not know Isaac’s intentions
to sojourn in Gerar; Yahweh speaks to Isaac not while the patriarch is
in Gerar—since he does not reach Gerar until 26:6, when he is said to
dwell there—but when he departs from his home.44 Regardless of how
one resolves the question, however, there is no reason to attribute the cre-
ation of this issue to a redactor rather than to an author.
In fact, 26:2–5 is well integrated into its present context, despite the
aforementioned interpretive issue. In 26:3b and again in 26:4, Yahweh
tells Jacob that he is assigning “all of these lands,” kol-hā’arāṣōt hā’ēl, to
Jacob and his offspring. Among all of the promise texts, this use of the
plural, “lands,” is unique to this passage.45 Yet it is understandable when
read in precisely this context, and only in this context. Three times in
26:1–3 the word “land,” ’ereṣ, is used: in 26:1 to refer to Isaac’s homeland
(“there was a famine in the land”), that is, Beer-lahai-roi (25:11b); in 26:2
to refer to the land in which Yahweh wants Isaac to dwell permanently
(“dwell in the land that I will point out to you”), that is, Beersheba (26:3);
and in 26:3 to refer to the land in which Isaac is to sojourn temporarily
(“sojourn in this land, and I will be with you”), that is, Gerar.46 What is
crucial here is that, unlike Abraham and Jacob, who spend time in the
Restoring the Promise 73

foreign lands of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Aram, Isaac sojourns in a land,


Gerar, that will eventually become part of the Israelite territory.47 Thus the
promise of “all these lands” in 26:3–4 is explained: Yahweh is informing
Isaac that the place he is coming from, the place where he will perma-
nently dwell, and even the place where he will temporarily sojourn are all
one day to belong to his descendants.48
Later in this chapter, in 26:24, we find a second divine promise to
Isaac, with many of the characteristics of 26:3b–5 (the statements that
Yahweh will be with Isaac, that he will bless him, that he will increase
his offspring, and that all of these things are related to the obedience of
Isaac’s father, Abraham). How one views the first promise, therefore, will
significantly impact how one views 26:24.49 Suffice it to say that, even
more than 26:(2)3b–5, there is no indication on formal grounds that this
verse is a secondary insertion in its context.
For most documentary scholars, Gen 28:10–22 was considered a com-
posite text, with both J and E elements, and the promise of 28:13–15 was
taken to be an original part of the J narrative.50 Kuenen, unable to discern
two distinct strands, attributed the bulk of the narrative to E, which left
the promise, which looked Yahwistic to him, without any context, and he
therefore saw it as an addition.51 As with many of the promise texts, it has
been the content of the passage, particularly its similarities to other prom-
ise passages, that has led to it being deemed secondary, rather than how it
fits into its context. The presence of the divine messengers in 28:12 makes
Yahweh’s appearance in 28:13 unsurprising, and Jacob’s announcement
in 28:16 that “surely Yahweh is in this place” certainly suggests strongly
that he has actually witnessed Yahweh, rather than just God’s messengers
(to whom he seems to be reacting in 28:17). If we read 28:10–22 without
reference to any other text, and without any presuppositions about how
the Pentateuch was composed, there is virtually no indication that the
promise of 28:13–15 should not be original.
When we examine the content of the promise, it is clear that it is well
integrated into the larger narrative context. This promise is given while
Jacob is on the road to Haran, fleeing from the wrath of Esau (27:41–45;
28:10). The reference in 28:13 to “the ground on which you are lying”
reflects the travel Jacob is undertaking; he is not at home anymore, which
would be “the place where you are dwelling.” Rather, he is wherever he
happens to have stopped to rest. Nevertheless, Yahweh tells him, this land
too will belong to Jacob and his offspring—which comes as a surprise to
Jacob, as he announces in 28:16: “Surely Yahweh is in this place, and I did
74 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

not know it!” The reason for Jacob’s journey, his fear of Esau, and more-
over his reasonable worry that he may never be able to return to Canaan,
are at the root of Yahweh’s words in 28:15: “I am with you; I will protect
you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land.” Also implicit
here is Jacob’s fear of being in a foreign land, potentially unprotected by
the god of his fathers. The promise text, then, is specifically tailored to
the situation.52
Jacob refers to the promise of offspring in Gen 32:13, part of his larger
speech of 32:10–13: “Yet you have said, ‘I will deal bountifully with you
and make your offspring as the sands of the sea, which are too numer-
ous to count.”53 The prayer as a whole has been attributed to a second-
ary hand, but only because it seems stylistically similar to other promise
texts that have been deemed secondary.54 Viewed purely within its narra-
tive context, however, Jacob’s speech is eminently sensible: he is afraid of
his coming encounter with Esau (32:8), and having taken the necessary
precautions as far as he is able, he prays for divine assistance. Within
the prayer are not only direct references to the events of the surrounding
narrative, but verbal connections as well, in the use of maḥanôt, “camps”
(32:11; see 32:8–9) and yārē’, “fearer” (32:12; see 32:8), which is a particu-
larly nice play on Jacob’s fear of meeting Esau over against his fear of
(that is, devotion to) Yahweh. Though these connections could in theory
be attributed to the work of a particularly careful redactor, this type of
literary craftsmanship, with the thematic connections it creates, is more
readily attributable to a single author. As for the reference to the promise
itself, in 32:13, this too fits entirely within the context of the narrative and
the prayer as a whole. Jacob is afraid for two things: his life and that of
his family, as he expresses in both his actions of 32:4–8 and his words of
32:9–11; these are precisely the two elements of the promise he refers to
in 32:13. No reference to the promise of land or any mention of blessing is
present here, for none would be appropriate given Jacob’s situation: he and
the promise text are focused on survival.55
In Gen 46:3, the last of the direct nonpriestly patriarchal promise texts,
God promises Jacob that he will make him into a great nation in Egypt:
“Fear not to go down into Egypt, for I will make you there into a great
nation.” Because this promise so directly relates to its context—Jacob’s
travel to meet Joseph in Egypt—most classical documentary scholars saw
no reason to dispute its originality.56 For the nondocumentary school, this
passage (frequently expanded to 46:1b–4), which clearly links the patriarchs
and the Exodus, is automatically secondary.57 The divine speech to Jacob
Restoring the Promise 75

here is, however, readily understandable as an original part of the story. Not
only is it perfectly reasonable for Jacob, a very old man by this time, to be
afraid of the travel to Egypt, he also has every right to wonder whether if, by
leaving Canaan, he is somehow forefeiting his divine favor; God’s words of
46:3 directly address these worries. On a more technical level, however, the
potential transition from 46:1a to 46:5 is a difficult one: “Israel set out with
all that he had and came to Beersheba . . . and Jacob left Beersheba.” In a
priestly itinerary this would perhaps not be unexpected, but in a nonpriestly
narrative context it is thoroughly odd: why even note that Jacob stopped at
Beersheba if nothing at all happened there? Further, the use of the verb
wayyāqom, “he arose,” in 46:5 may also indicate that something happened
to Jacob in Beersheba. When this verb is used elsewhere in Genesis in the
context of someone traveling from a place that is not their permanent resi-
dence, it always follows an event of some significance.58
The final promise passage in Genesis is Gen 50:24, in which Joseph
tells his brothers that they (or their descendants) will be brought up from
Egypt to the land that God promised to the three patriarchs. The classical
critics found nothing objectionable in this verse, and none considered it
secondary. As with 46:3, however, for the nondocumentary school this
explicit connection of the patriarchal and Exodus traditions is an a priori
sign of redaction, and a particularly late one at that.59 Yet there are intri-
cate connections between this verse and those surrounding it. It is clear
that 50:24 and 25 must belong together, as Joseph’s statement in 50:24
that God will take the Israelites out of Egypt becomes the basis for the
brothers’ oath in 50:25 that Joseph’s bones will be carried out of Egypt at
that time.60 Joseph’s announcement that he is about to die follows logi-
cally on the heels of the narrator’s notice that Joseph lived to see the third
generation of his offspring in 50:23; the length of Joseph’s life is naturally
mentioned only at the moment of his imminent death. Similarly, Joseph’s
death in 50:26 follows logically from his statement in 50:24, “I am about
to die,” while the embalming of Joseph’s body in 50:26 is a necessary step
in the fulfillment of his brothers’ oath to bring his body out of Egypt in
the future.61 In the broader context of the Joseph story, the reference to
the promise plays an important role: when Joseph dies, the protection
offered to his family by virtue of his position in Pharaoh’s court will be
removed (as indeed it is); the safety of the Israelites thereby rests once
again squarely on God’s attention to the patriarchal promise.
The remainder of the nonpriestly promise passages are allusions, fre-
quently very brief, to the promise that God made to the patriarchs: Exod
76 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

32:13; 33:1; Num 11:12; 14:16, 23; Deut 31:23; 34:4. Of these, only one, Exod
32:13, is of any significant length. I have already criticized the arguments
that this passage is somehow “deuteronomic.” Here it is worth noting again
only that if there were to be a single moment in the Exodus-wilderness
narratives at which the promise of offspring, and the promise of land to
that offspring, would be appropriately raised by Moses, it is this moment:
when, at the mountain of revelation, the Israelites have built a golden calf
and God is on the verge of destroying them entirely. The revelation on the
mountain is the moment of greatest significance in the entire Pentateuch,
and the disobedience is concomitantly the most appalling; God’s intended
punishment is the most destructive, and Moses’s intercession by neces-
sity the most convincing.
In the other nonpriestly promise references in Exodus and Numbers,
the reference is always to the promise of land alone. This has been seen
as an indication of a single redactional layer, one concerned only with the
land (usually seen as deuteronomic). In response it may simply be pointed
out again that, as of Exodus 1, the promise of progeny has been fulfilled,
and what remains to be addressed in the narrative is the promise of the
land. This accounts not only for those references to the promise in Exodus
and Numbers, but also throughout Deuteronomy. We do not have here
evidence of a redactional layer concerned only with the land, but rather
with a biblical author or authors who actually avoid stereotyped phrasing,
remaining entirely cognizant and in control of the historical claims of the
narrative at each point in its progress and relating only the appropriate
matters at the proper stages. Furthermore, each of the nonpriestly refer-
ences to the promise of land alone after Genesis comes at a moment when
the land is a foregrounded feature of the narrative: when Yahweh instructs
Moses to leave the mountain and begin the journey to Canaan (Exod 33:1);
when Moses, just after leaving the mountain, is worried that he is not
capable by himself of leading all the people to the promised land (Num
11:12); when the Israelites have expressed their doubts about Yahweh’s abil-
ity to lead them safely into Canaan (Num 14:16, 23); when Joshua is told
that he will lead the Israelites into the land (Deut 31:23); and when Yahweh
shows Moses the entirety of the land before Moses’s death (Deut 34:4). As
the promise belongs tradition-historically to the patriarchal narratives, it
is not at all surprising that when it is mentioned thereafter, it should be at
such central moments in the Exodus-wilderness story.
In summary, there is no compelling reason to view all, most, or even
many of the patriarchal promise texts as secondary. At least insofar as
Restoring the Promise 77

the primary question of whether they are somehow obviously secondary


within their immediate narrative contexts is concerned, the answer is
in the negative. On the contrary, it seems evident that across the board
these passages—just like the promise texts in P—are either structur-
ally, verbally, or thematically tied to their contexts, at times so much so
that removing them would indeed cause, rather than resolve, significant
problems in the text. Not only are the promise texts generally sensible as
part of their narratives, but even the exact element of the promise given
or referred to seems to be responsive to the narrative environment.62
The significance of this result is twofold. First, it fundamentally chal-
lenges both the documentary and the nondocumentary claims that on
an individual basis the nonpriestly promise texts are necessarily second-
ary insertions. Second, it heightens the importance of the issue to be
addressed below: how do the promise texts relate to each other? For both
documentary and nondocumentary scholarship, the similarities among
some of the promise texts have been taken as the basis for seeing them as
redactional insertions, primarily when similar promise texts are found
to bridge the classical source divisions of J and E. If a promise text in a J
context looks to be from a hand similar to one in an E context, then the
promise texts would indeed appear to be redactional links, either from
the purported “JE” redactor of classical scholarship, or from the redactor
who brought together the disparate independent nonpriestly traditions
according to nondocumentary scholarship.
In the previous chapter I criticized documentary and nondocumen-
tary scholars for their various analyses of the relationships among the
patriarchal promise texts. Those criticisms may be generalized under the
headings of “overly specific” and “inconsistent.” In what follows, I hope to
readdress the question of whether the nonpriestly promise texts fall natu-
rally into any obvious groups. This will be done first and foremost on the
basis of the narrative claims of the text: does one promise text contradict
or repeat a previously given promise in a way that would present a narra-
tive difficulty? Does a passage align, in its situating of the promise within
the broader patriarchal narrative and in its focus on specific concepts,
with some promise passages but not others? My assumption is that the
biblical author(s) had great freedom of expression, such that differences
(and similarities) purely in wording or style should not be automatically
determinative of different (or the same) authors. Only as groups emerge
from the narrative considerations of the text may we look to see if there
are, in fact, any verbal consistencies within the emergent groups.
78 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

Grouping the Promise Texts


The fundamental connection between Gen 12:1–3 and 12:7 has already
been illustrated and explained above. The land is promised to Abraham
not while he is in his ancestral homeland, but only once he has under-
taken the journey to Canaan; as soon as he gets there, he receives the
promise of “this land.” The promise of land in Gen 13:14–17, however,
seems to be a more detailed version of the promise in Gen 12:7, and one
might wonder why it would be necessary.63 It is clear, however, that accord-
ing to the narrative this is the first time that Abraham has been in sole
possession of what will eventually come to be the promised land. Prior to
this, he has been travelling with Lot, and they have been living together
on the land; but Lot is not, in the end, party to the promise of land, and it
is therefore only after Lot has made his own unfortunate choice of terri-
tory, and Abraham has taken the rest, that the full divine promise is truly
appropriate. Alexander Rofé argues convincingly that Gen 13:14–17 is a
necessary part of the narrative of Abraham settling in the land, begun
in Gen 12:1–3: “In [Gen 13:14–17] the promise is integral to the story: it is
pronounced after Abraham has conceded a portion of the land to Lot, and
comes despite that concession. It confirms the original promise in Gen
12:7, and like the latter, it fits the description of Abraham as traveling
through the land: he journeys ‘its length and width’ in order to establish
ownership (Gen 12:8–9; 13:3, 18). The promise in the story of Abraham, in
Gen 12–13, is thus not editorial, but an original part of the story.”64
When viewed this way, the three ostensibly separate promise passages
in Genesis 12–13 make up a complete, well-integrated framework for the
beginning of the Abraham cycle. The promise texts in these two chapters
are linked to the context in which they are given, in terms of location and
narrative logic, and as such are equally closely linked with each other.
After the promise texts of Genesis 12–13, which are closely tied to the
narrative of Abraham’s journey and settlement in the land, the repeti-
tion of many of the same promise elements in Gen 15:5, 18–21 can seem
somewhat incongruous. Within the logic of the narrative, however, the
promise of Gen 15:5 is at least potentially comprehensible: Abraham was
promised many offspring in Gen 13:16, yet he remains childless. Abraham
has, one might think, every right to wonder about the promise he was
given earlier, as he does in 15:2–3, and the reasonable response from God
to Abraham’s question is to repeat in essence the promise of offspring,
although in slightly different words, as he does in 15:5. This interpretation,
Restoring the Promise 79

however, brings its own set of problems, as we have already had occa-
sion to note in chapter 1. If Abraham’s childlessness is an obstacle to the
fulfillment of the promise now, why was it not so when the promise was
first given, in 13:16? Nowhere else do the patriarchs question the validity
of the promise; the only doubts arise with specific regard to the continu-
ity of Abraham’s line through Sarah, given her age (18:12; see the parallel
in P in 17:17). Indeed, the issue raised by Abraham in 15:2–3 is related not
to the long-term promise of many offspring, of which Abraham seems
to have no knowledge, but rather to the pressing question of his imme-
diate inheritance; Abraham is expressing the fears common to anyone,
ancient or modern, without children: who will continue my line after me?
God responds to this immediate fear first in 15:4: “None but your very
own issue shall be your heir.” Only once Abraham’s question has been
addressed does God deliver the more expansive promise of 15:5, which
is presented here as the first announcement of the promise to Abraham.
The statement of Abraham’s trust in God’s word in 15:6—“Because he put
his trust in Yahweh, he reckoned it to his merit”—confirms that this is
not a previously given promise being restated.
Equally difficult is the promise of land, alluded to in 15:7 and fully set
out in 15:18–21, where it is not just a promise, but a fully-fledged covenant.
Though the mention of the land in 15:7–8 might be seen as parallel to the
question of offspring in 15:5—Abraham wants to be sure that he will actually
be given what he has been promised—the covenant in 15:18–21 is, it would
seem, unnecessary from the point of view of the nonpriestly narrative as a
whole. Abraham has already been promised the land, in very similar lan-
guage, and, perhaps unlike the question of offspring, he has no reason to
doubt the eventual fulfillment of the promise. This covenant adds nothing
new, except a lengthy detailing of precisely which lands are meant.65
The revelation of the future enslavement in 15:13–16 and the subsequent
formulation of the patriarchal promise in 15:18–21 seem also to be at odds
with the prior promise texts in Genesis 12–13. We may therefore at least ten-
tatively discern two separate groups of promises, that of Genesis 12–13, here-
after the “A” group, and that of Gen 15:18–21, hereafter the “B” group. As for
Gen 15:5, it could potentially belong to either when taken alone. When read
in its context, however, it is more closely linked to what follows in Genesis
15 than to what preceded; if Genesis 15 is indeed a unity, then there is little
choice but to read the two promise texts therein as part of the same group.
The promise to Hagar in Gen 16:10 neither conflicts with nor neces-
sarily conforms to the promise texts in either the A group or the B group.
80 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

In both Gen 13:16 and 15:5 God has promised Abraham many descendants;
16:10 contains another promise of offspring, here delivered to Hagar on
behalf of Ishmael. On the evidence of this verse alone—at least to this
point—there are no grounds for assigning it to either group of promise
texts (though see below).
In Gen 18:18 we find the first allusion to a previously given promise:
“Abraham is to become a great and populous nation and all the nations
of the earth are to bless themselves by him.” Yahweh, in deciding to tell
Abraham of his decision to destroy Sodom, bases his decision on the fact
that Abraham will “surely be a great and mighty nation, and all the nations
of the earth will bless themselves by him.” The phrase gōy gādōl, “great
nation,” alone is not indicative of either group of promise texts. Though
it is used in Gen 12:2 and not in Genesis 15, it is a relatively common
phrase, and one whose use crosses compositional boundaries.66 It is also
clear that the concept expressed by the phrase, that Abraham’s offspring
will be many and powerful, is common to both groups of promise texts,
however it may be expressed. The second element of Gen 18:18, however,
that the nations of the earth will bless themselves by Abraham, is unique
to Gen 12:3; neither a similar wording nor even a similar concept is found
in Genesis 15. This alone suggests that Gen 18:18 contains a direct recol-
lection of the promise of Genesis 12. This conclusion is reinforced when
viewed in combination with the reference to the “great nation”; note that
the order of the two elements here is precisely that of Gen 12:2–3: “I will
make of you a great nation . . . and all the families of the earth will bless
themselves by you.”
Not only the language but the very concept of the nations blessing
themselves, that is, the idea that somehow Abraham, his actions, and
his offspring, will have an effect, as a model and source of envy, on the
behavior of the non-Israelite nations, is also found only in the A group,
in Genesis 12–13. In Genesis 15, it will be recalled, the non-Israelites
referred to are either the nation that will oppress the Israelites (the
Egyptians) or those that the Israelites will dispossess (the Canaanites). In
the larger narrative of Genesis 12–13, however, the story of the separation
of Abraham and Lot and their settlement in two different lands, to be two
different peoples, reinforces the blessing of 12:3: Abraham is responsible
for those nations around him. It is precisely this element of the promise
and blessing of Abraham in Genesis 12–13 that Yahweh focuses on in
18:18–19: not only that Abraham will become a great nation, but that he
is intimately connected with other peoples, and should thus be privy to
Restoring the Promise 81

the major decision being made about just such a group. Note also that it
is not just any other people that is under discussion in Genesis 18, but
precisely those people and that land that Abraham is most invested in
outside his own: the area where his nephew Lot settled, the first impor-
tant non-Israelite, non-Abrahamic territory in the narrative of Genesis
12–13. On the basis of both the verbal connections and the thematic/nar-
rative connections, we may conclude that Gen 18:18 is a reminiscence of
the promise texts and narrative of Genesis 12–13, to the exclusion of any
elements from Genesis 15.
Like that in Gen 16:10, the promise to Hagar in 21:13, 18 does not neces-
sarily connect to either the A or B group. Gen 21:18 does, however, seem
to conflict with 16:10. In both, God tells Hagar that she (or her son) will
have many offspring. In both texts, this is presented as the first time
this has been announced to Hagar; 21:18 and 16:10 are thus not plausibly
sequential events in a single narrative but rather functionally equivalent
accounts of a single occurrence, and it would be surprising to find both
in the same narrative. And yet, even though we apparently have here two
promise texts that do not belong together and we may be inclined there-
fore to assume that each belongs to one of the emerging groups of prom-
ise texts, because both are so brief and similar in theme there is very little
in the verses themselves that is determinative one way or the other.67
Though the next promise text in the canonical sequence is Gen 22:15–18,
we will examine this passage at the end of the discussion, because it was
the sole passage that, in the previous section, seemed to be demonstrably
secondary within its immediate context.
In Gen 24:7 we encounter a clear reference to a previously given prom-
ise. Like the allusion in 18:18, this one too seems specifically and unequivo-
cally connected with the promise texts of the A group, rather than of the B
group. We have not only Abraham’s explicit recollection in the first half of
24:7 of the divine command of 12:1, using the same descriptive phrases in
the reverse order (24:7: “from my father’s house and from my birthplace”;
12:1: “from your birthplace and from your father’s house”), we also have
a direct, exact, word-for-word quote of the promise of land in 12:7: “Who
swore to me, ‘To your offspring I will give this land’.” Two items in this
passage are worthy of consideration. First, the combined reference to 12:1
and 12:7 confirms the connection between those two passages claimed
above. Second is the use of the verb nišba‘ here. As noted above, Abraham
here explicitly describes Yahweh’s words of Gen 12:7 as an oath, though
there is no formal oath language used there.68
82 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

Having reached the conclusion of the Abraham cycle, then, we may


stop to assess the evidence gathered to this point. In the acknowledged
nonpriestly texts, there appear to be two competing versions of the ini-
tial promise to Abraham, in Genesis 12–13 and Genesis 15. Both represent,
within their narrative contexts, the first time that God gives his promise to
Abraham. Throughout the rest of the Abraham narrative, the only clearly
identifiable promise passages (18:18; 24:7) are references back to the initial
promises of Genesis 12–13; there are no explicit references to the promise
of Genesis 15. In each of these two groups, then, Abraham is given one
promise, at the beginning of his narrative career; remaining promise texts
in the Abraham cycle are referential rather than primary. This is paral-
leled in the priestly promises also: the only promise given to Abraham is
the initial one of Genesis 17. (Though Genesis 17 appears in the middle of
the canonical Abraham cycle, in the priestly source there are but a handful
of verses preceding this chapter.69 Read consecutively as they were origi-
nally meant to be, these verses serve simply to establish where Abraham
lived in Canaan and of whom his family unit consisted. These items being
established, Genesis 17 stands as the first significant block of text in the
priestly patriarchal narratives.) This is, of course, narratologically sensible:
the promise is the divine word—and is even understood as an oath despite
the lack of technical oath language—as such, there is no need to repeat it,
for having once been pronounced it should remain in force.
We may turn, then, to the promise to Isaac in Genesis 26. We can
first observe that the promise text of Gen 26:2–5 stands, like those to
Abraham in both the A and B groups, at the beginning of the patriarch’s
(in this case, brief) narrative career.70 The second noteworthy aspect of the
initial promise in 26:2–5 is the location in which it is given. As Abraham
is instructed to leave his ancestral homeland in Gen 12:1–3, Isaac too is
leaving his homeland; he is en route to Gerar (26:1).71 By contrast, the
covenant of Genesis 15, from all appearances, takes place in Abraham’s
own territory (note the demonstrative pronoun in God’s speech: “To your
offspring I assign this land,” 15:18). Within the promise text itself, we find
in 26:3a the divine statement that Yahweh will bless Isaac: “I will bless
you.” The idea that Yahweh will bless the patriarch has been encountered
to this point only in the A group, in Gen 12:2. In Genesis 15 we find only
the promise of offspring (15:5) and land (15:7, 18–21); there is no men-
tion of divine blessing. The promise of “all these lands” is followed in
26:3b by the statement that Yahweh will “fulfill the oath that I swore to
Abraham your father.” The idea of a divine oath has appeared to this point
Restoring the Promise 83

only in Gen 24:7, where it referred exclusively to the promise of land to


Abraham’s descendants in 12:7. Here, where the reference to a previously
given oath comes directly after the promise of land, it is reasonable to
infer that Gen 12:7 is being referred to again. Finally, we may observe the
order of the constituent elements of the promise: while in Genesis 15 (and
in the priestly promise texts as well) the order of the elements is progeny
then land—as makes sense, given that the aspect of progeny is the first to
be fulfilled—in Gen 26:2–5, as in Gen 13:14–17, it is the land that precedes
the progeny.
Gen 26:4a begins with the promise of progeny, and the comparison
to the stars for number. We have seen that a simile is used in both Gen
13:16 and 15:5, so the mere use of this rhetorical device is not helpful in
connecting Genesis 26 with either group of promise texts.72 Since these
similes are stock phrases in the biblical corpus, it is not only possible
for an author to vary them, variation is perhaps even to be expected. In
Gen 26:4b, however, we have the statement that the nations of the earth
will bless themselves by Isaac’s offspring. This same statement was made
to Abraham in Gen 12:3, and recalled by Yahweh in 18:18.73 It is entirely
absent from Genesis 15. As established above, the concept of blessing—
whether the deity blessing the patriarch, or the nations of the earth bless-
ing themselves by the patriarch—is entirely located within the A group of
promise texts, and is not at all represented in the B group.
The final verse of Gen 26:3b–5 has posed the most difficulties for
commentators, because it contains what has been considered the most
ostensibly deuteronomic language. I have already criticized the argument
regarding deuteronomic style in the previous chapter. Here we may focus
more on the content of this verse, and particularly the reason that Yahweh
might refer to Abraham’s obedience here. Isaac, at this point in the nar-
rative, finds himself in a difficult situation: there is a famine in his native
land and he finds himself having to flee to a foreign country. The deity
has appeared to him and given him both instructions and the promise.
Unlike in Gen 12:1–3, however, in which the patriarch had to trust that
Yahweh would do as he promised, now, a generation later, Yahweh can
point to an example: Abraham, who was in a similar situation (12:10,
referred to explicitly in the first words of Gen 26:1: “There was a famine
in the land, aside from the previous famine that had occurred in the days
of Abraham”), who received similar promises (12:1–3, 7; 13:14–17), and who
not only survived, but thrived with Yahweh’s protection and help (12:16:
“He acquired sheep, oxen, asses, male and female slaves, she-asses, and
84 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

camels”). Gen 26:5 provides Isaac with a model both for Isaac’s behavior
and for the good things that will result from that behavior. The verse also
clearly indicates that Yahweh is willing to do these things for Isaac for the
sake of his father Abraham, who was obedient. This does not indicate, how-
ever, that the promise has suddenly become conditional when it originally
was unconditional; it stretches credulity to claim that had Abraham not
been obedient, Yahweh would have still cared for him. Though perhaps
not explicitly stated, it is clear enough that for the patriarchs, at the begin-
ning of Israel’s life with Yahweh, obedience was a condition upon which
the maintenance of the promises was based.74 The patriarchs, throughout
Genesis, never disobey God’s commands. God is disobeyed only after the
Exodus, and usually by the entire Israelite people or a substantial portion
thereof. By that point, however, as Moses repeatedly points out, God has
invested too much in this people to go back on his promise. In the patriar-
chal narratives, however, relatively little has been invested, and the threat
of the promise being withdrawn is therefore always a real one.75
The promise of offspring in Gen 26:24 is merely a briefer version of
the promise given in 26:2–5. Both begin with Yahweh stating that he will
be with Isaac and bless him, both include the promise of increased off-
spring, using virtually identical language, and both end with a reference
to Abraham’s obedience. According to Rendtorff, 26:2–5 and 24 mark,
respectively, the beginning and end of the Isaac cycle.76 Yet the narrative
of Genesis 26 continues until 26:33, placing the promise in 26:24 only
two-thirds of the way through the story, not at the end.77 Further, it is hard
to read Genesis 26 as a larger “cycle” like the Abraham and Jacob stories.
As most commentators have observed, Genesis 26 forms a single continu-
ous story.78 This story begins with Isaac in a foreign land, continues with
his entrance into Canaan, and comes to its conclusion with the agreement
between the patriarch and his neighbors regarding fair land use. In short,
the narrative of Genesis 26 is a very close replica, one generation later,
of the narrative of Genesis 12–13. As such, the promise that stands in the
middle, in Gen 26:24, does not mark the end of the Isaac cycle, but repre-
sents the functional equivalent of both Gen 12:7 and 13:14–17: the patriarch
has entered Canaan for the first time since receiving the promise outside
the land, as in 12:7 (after which he builds an altar on the spot: 26:25; see
12:8), and the promise is renewed after the patriarch has claimed land for
himself alone, without the threat of dispute, as in 13:14–17.79 As with the
three promise texts of Genesis 12–13, the two promise texts of Genesis
26 serve respectively to begin the action of the narrative and to signify
Restoring the Promise 85

that the unsettled situation at the beginning has now been successfully
resolved.80 Just as Gen 13:14–17 did not mark the end of the Abraham cycle,
so Gen 26:24 does not mark the end of the Isaac cycle; as noted above,
the chapter continues for another nine verses (which, proportionally, is
a significant block of text in the very brief Isaac material preserved in
Genesis). If anything, given the example of the Abraham narratives, this
set of promise texts marking the arrival and safe settlement of the patri-
arch in Canaan signals the beginning of a longer cycle, one that, for Isaac
at least, we do not have.
When we move to the Jacob story, the promise in Gen 28:13–15 is remi-
niscent in numerous ways of both Genesis 12–13 and 26:2–5. As in 26:1,
the patriarch is in danger, this time from his brother, and again he must
leave his homeland. In 12:1–3, the promise came to Abraham before he
had ever seen the promised land; in 26:2–5, the promise came to Isaac
just after he had left his homeland; in 28:13–15, the promise comes to
Jacob just before he leaves the promised land. Again, these changes are
conditioned by the context of the narrative. Because the promised land in
26:3 seems to have included Gerar, Yahweh did not have to promise Isaac
“this” land while he was still in Canaan proper. Jacob, however, is going
far beyond the borders of the promised land, and Yahweh therefore must
give him the patriarchal promise before he has crossed those borders. The
promise is given, therefore, not in Beersheba, where Jacob’s family lived,
but rather in Bethel, on the way out of the land; on the way out, but still in
the land, so that Yahweh can truly say, “the ground on which you are lying
I will give to you and your offspring” (28:13).
The promise of offspring in 28:14a—“Your descendants shall be as
the dust of the earth; you shall spread out to the west and to the east, to
the north and to the south”—is strongly reminiscent of Gen 13:14, 16, with
the order reversed;81 the statement of blessing in 28:14b—“All the fami-
lies of the earth shall bless themselves by you and your descendants”—is
nearly identical to that of 12:3b. This combination of elements from both
Gen 13:14–17 and 12:1–3 again confirms the intrinsic connection between
those two passages in the Abraham story.82 It is also noteworthy that here
again, as only in Gen 13:14–17 and 26:2–5, the order of the promise ele-
ments is land followed by progeny.
The pattern established with Abraham in the A group is, it is now clear,
repeated with each of the two succeeding generations. The patriarch, at
the beginning of his narrative career, on the occasion of a major jour-
ney away from his homeland, is given the full promise by Yahweh. This
86 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

promise always includes the land and progeny and a statement regarding
the blessing of others by the patriarch—in that order. These promise texts
may be divided between the period immediately before the travel and the
arrival in the promised land, depending on the demands of the narrative,
and the wording may vary, as one would expect, though not by much. Yet
the basic narrative premise remains consistent throughout.
In Gen 32:13 Jacob recalls Yahweh’s promise to him. The first aspect
of the promise he mentions is that Yahweh will “deal kindly,” hêṭēb ’êṭîb,
with him; yet this exact sentiment is nowhere to be found in the sole pre-
ceding promise to Jacob in 28:13–15 (nor anywhere else in the canonical
Jacob cycle). This is neither surprising nor problematic; we may assume
that Jacob is simply paraphrasing Yahweh’s words here, a relatively typi-
cal feature of biblical narrative style: we may note in this regard that the
general verb “deal kindly,” ṭ-w-b (hiphil), is often used to describe the very
types of actions that Yahweh promises Jacob in 28:13–15: preservation of
life (cf. Gen 12:13; see also 50:20; Exod 18:9); increase of offspring (Exod
1:20; Deut 6:3; 28:63; 30:5); possession of the land (Deut 4:40; 5:16; 6:18).83
In the second half of the verse, Jacob remembers that Yahweh promised
to make his offspring “like the sands of the sea, which are too numer-
ous to count,” while in 28:14 Jacob’s offspring are compared to the dust
of the earth, and in 15:5 to the stars of heaven. As we have already seen,
the content of these similes is interchangeable; their meaning remains
consistent. The use of the simile, therefore, does not mark 32:13 as belong-
ing squarely to the A group of promise texts. The verse does, however,
belong to a larger context, the prayer of 32:10–13. This prayer begins with
Jacob remembering that Yahweh had promised to “deal kindly” with him;
the phrase serves, therefore, as something of a bracket for the prayer as
a whole. In 32:10 Jacob also recalls that Yahweh had commanded him to
“return to your land and to your birthplace.” This is a direct and clear
reference to Yahweh’s address to Jacob in 31:3: “Return to the land of your
father and to your birthplace,” which in turn distinctly echoes both Gen
12:1 and 24:7. Thus indirectly, but quite firmly, the promise reference in
32:13 belongs to the A group of promise texts so far identified throughout
the patriarchal narratives of Genesis.
This verse also helps us in an unexpected way to identify with some
certainty the previously ambiguous Gen 16:10 and 21:13, 18. When we first
encountered those promise texts to or about Hagar and Ishmael, we did
not have enough data about the A or B groups of promise texts. Gen 32:13,
however, uses a locution, lō’-yissāpēr mērōb, “too numerous to count,” that is
Restoring the Promise 87

found elsewhere in the Pentateuch only in Gen 16:10.84 Given the rarity of
this particular expression, we may at least strongly suggest that Gen 16:10,
like 32:13, belongs to the A group of promise texts, and that, as a result,
Gen 21:13, 18 belongs either to the B group or is entirely independent.
Near the end of the Joseph story, in Gen 46:3–4, as Jacob prepares to
go down to Egypt from Beersheba, God appears to him in a dream and
promises to make the patriarch into a great nation there; he promises also
to bring Jacob back from Egypt. This divine revelation does not fit into the
pattern of the A group of promise texts established in the Abraham narra-
tive. On the basis of that pattern, we expect that after the initial promise,
in the case of Jacob that given in 28:13–15, there should be only references
back to that promise in the rest of the stories about the patriarch (as we
have in 32:13), not repetitions of the promise itself. The sudden appear-
ance of a full promise late in the life of the patriarch, then, is somewhat
surprising. Even more surprising is that it appears that this is the first
time that God has spoken with Jacob, since he feels the need for a formal
introduction: “I am God, the God of your father.”85
Some have argued that the instruction to Jacob not to fear going to
Egypt in Gen 46:3–4 is intended to be read as a reversal of the command
to Isaac in 26:2 not to go down to Egypt.86 Though such a reading is
tempting, it does not seem to work as well as has been claimed. In 26:2
Yahweh does not really “prohibit” Isaac from going to Egypt; in fact, as
noted above, Isaac was never planning to go to Egypt. In 46:3, God does
not “command” Jacob to go to Egypt; Jacob has already begun the journey,
and he is going to go to Egypt whether God appears to him or not. All God
does in 46:3 is alleviate Jacob’s fears about the journey and the fate of his
family; he does not “allow” Jacob to go to Egypt.87 There are, in fact, very
few indicators, either formal or verbal, that suggest a connection between
46:3–4 and the A group of promise texts.
On the other hand, there may be a few elements of Gen 46:3–4 that con-
nect to the B group. The first is the mechanism of the theophany: in 15:1,
Abraham encounters God in a vision; in 46:2, Jacob encounters God in a
dream. In none of the promise texts of the A group is there any description
of the manner in which the divine–human communication takes place.
The second notable feature of 46:3 is the initial clause of God’s speech: “Do
not fear.” This is admittedly a relatively common phrase, and in its simple
use is not indicative of particular authorship.88 Yet it is certainly sugges-
tive that these are also the first words to Abraham in Gen 15:1. Even more
interesting is the appearance of these words at the beginning of the divine
88 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

speech to Hagar in 21:17. As noted above, of the two promises to Hagar, the
one in 16:10 seems to fit into the A group of promise texts, while we did not
have enough evidence to definitively assign the promises of 21:13, 18 to the
B group. Now, however, there is a link, provided by the “do not fear” clause
in Gen 15:1; 21:17; and 46:3. This connection is reinforced also by the use of
the verb ś-w-m in the phrase “I will make you into a great nation”; among
the promise texts, this verb is used in this phrase exclusively in Gen 46:3
and 21:13, 18. We may also note that in Genesis 46, the promise is given
after Jacob has made a sacrifice (46:1), while in the A group it is the reverse:
the patriarch sacrifices after the promise is given (Gen 12:7–8; 26:24–25).
In the B group, however, we have as a parallel to Genesis 46 the extensive
promise of Gen 15:18–21 given to Abraham after Abraham has offered the
sacrifice between the pieces (15:9–11).89
Perhaps the most striking connection between Gen 46:3–4 and the B
group is the theme of Egypt. In Gen 15:13–16, God tells Abraham that his
descendants will be enslaved, but that they will also be brought back. As
Jacob prepares to descend into Egypt with his entire family, 46:3–4 stands
at the decisive juncture for the fulfillment of God’s pronouncement to
Abraham. At precisely this fateful moment, then, God appears to Jacob
and tells him that though he is going to Egypt, God will indeed bring him
back. It is more than likely that here the narrator intends God’s speech to
work on both the individual and communal levels: God will accompany
Jacob and Israel to Egypt, and he will bring back both Jacob the individual
and Israel the community. The divine promise to Jacob in 46:3–4 is there-
fore a reiteration of the pronouncement to Abraham in 15:13–16.90
As disruptive as Gen 46:3–4 is of the pattern of the A group of prom-
ise texts, it is just as structurally satisfying when read as the companion
to Genesis 15. The two patriarchal promise texts in the B group come as
bookends to the patriarchal experiences in Canaan: Genesis 15 stands at
the beginning of the narrative career of the first patriarch, while 46:3–4
comes just at the last moment before the patriarchal family in its entirety
leaves Canaan for the lengthy sojourn and enslavement in Egypt. The
brief promise to Hagar in between these two bookends conforms entirely
to the narrative, thematic, and verbal lines established by the patriarchal
promise texts proper. The promise to Hagar comes as she and Ishmael are
in the wilderness between Canaan and Egypt. She is frightened for the
future of her line, and is reassured by the deity. After being encouraged,
she follows the same path that Jacob and his family will take: from the
wilderness of Paran into Egypt, where she gets a wife for Ishmael (21:21).
Restoring the Promise 89

In the B group of promise texts as a whole, then, the two lines of Abraham
are accounted for. The future of his lineage is, of course, the overriding
concern for Abraham in Genesis 15; in 21:13, 18 the line of his elder son is
promised preservation in the face of the wilderness between Canaan and
Egypt; in 46:3–4 the line of his younger son is promised preservation in
the face of the wilderness between Canaan and Egypt.
With Gen 46:3–4 the direct promise texts come to an end. This is an
opportunity, then, to assess the data drawn from the passages under consid-
eration before moving ahead to the postpatriarchal references to the prom-
ise. The focus of the preceding discussion has been the attempt to read the
promise texts in their narrative context; the overriding question has been
whether, when read in the sequence in which we find them in the canonical
text, the promise texts fall into natural groupings on the basis of either nar-
ratological sense or obvious verbal and thematic links. What emerged from
this analysis were two distinct groups of promise texts, designated as the A
group and B group. The primary criterion for distinguishing these sets of
promise texts was the issue of narratological redundancy: in both Genesis
12–13 and Genesis 15 Abraham appears to receive the divine promise of
progeny and land, and in both cases for what appears to be the first time; in
both 16:10 and 21:13, 18, Hagar is promised that her offspring will become a
significant people. The pattern that emerged within the A group is that over
the course of the first significant narrative event in the life of the patriarch,
he received the divine promise from Yahweh; in each case, the promise
was given as the patriarch was about to embark on or was in the course of
a major journey out of his homeland. The pattern of the B group is cen-
tered around Egypt: the initial notice that Abraham’s descendants would go
there; the promise to Hagar in the wilderness between Canaan and Egypt;
and the promise to Jacob on his way to Egypt to begin the process of descent
and reemergence proclaimed to Abraham in Genesis 15.
These two large-scale narratological patterns are reinforced by the par-
ticular verbal and thematic links within each set. The most striking of
these is the exclusive use in the A group of the theme of blessing, both that
of the deity for the patriarch and that of the other nations in the name of
the patriarch. This theme recurs consistently in the A group, but occurs
nowhere in the B group. This theme alone is perhaps enough to distin-
guish the two groups, but there are also smaller verbal links, noted in the
course of the preceding discussion, which alone would not be enough from
which to draw any conclusions, but which are substantiating evidence for
the aforementioned larger narratological and thematic observations.
90 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

The nonpriestly promise texts in Genesis, then, can be divided into


two groups as follows:

A Group B Group

Defining narratological feature: Defining narratological feature:


promises at the beginning of the promises at the beginning and
patriarch’s narrative career, in end of the patriarchal stories
conjunction with a major journey

Defining thematic feature: blessing Defining thematic feature: Egypt


Abraham: 12:1–3, 7; 13:14–17 (18:18; 24:7) Abraham: 15:5, 18–21
Hagar: 16:10 Hagar: 21:13, 18
Isaac: 26:3b–5, 24
Jacob: 28:13–15 (32:13) Jacob: 46:3–4

The best external support for both the method and results achieved in
the foregoing analysis comes from the priestly promise texts. According to
P, Abraham received the promise once, in Genesis 17. Jacob also received
the promise once, in Gen 35:11–12. The latter episode stands in approxi-
mately the same relative place in the priestly Jacob narrative that Genesis
17 does in the Abraham narrative. In both, there is some initial mate-
rial that indicates how the patriarch acquired his family and possessions
(Abraham: Gen 11:31–32; 12:4b–5; 13:6, 11b–12bD; Jacob: Gen 28:1–5; 30:43;
35:22b–26; 31:17–18); this is followed by the promise (Abraham: Genesis
17; Jacob: Gen 35:9–13); and the cycle ends, in both cases, with the death of
the matriarch and her burial (Sarah: Genesis 23; Rachel: Gen 35:16a, 19).
(The genealogy of the older brother, Isaac or Esau, follows the death of the
mother in both cycles as well: Isaac: Gen 25:12–17; Esau: Genesis 36.)
God’s promise to Jacob in 35:12 refers to “the land that I gave to Abraham
and to Isaac,” suggesting that the promise to Abraham in Genesis 17 was
repeated to Isaac; on the other hand Isaac blesses Jacob by saying “May he
give you the blessing of Abraham, to you and your offspring” (Gen 28:4).
This implies that, in the mind of the priestly author if not in his actual
narrative, Isaac had received the blessing from Abraham and was now
passing it on, just as Jacob, in turn, will pass on the blessing to Joseph in
Gen 48:3–4. Narratologically, then, P has a structure similar to that of the
A group of non-P promise texts: the patriarch receives the divine promise
precisely once, in the first major episode of his narrative. The priestly
Restoring the Promise 91

promise texts, however, contain in addition the narrative element of the


promise both being given to each patriarch by God and also being passed
from father to son.
The priestly promise texts also have a significant and distinct the-
matic element: the concept of kings emerging from the descendants of
the patriarch (Gen 17:6, 16; 35:11). This important and unique element is
functionally, though obviously not semantically, equivalent to the theme
of blessing in the A group or Egypt in the B group; that is, it is a major
distinguishing feature of the content of the promise. Like the two non-
priestly groups, however, the priestly promise texts also contain more
detailed verbal links, primary among them the root p-r-h, “to be fruitful”
(17:6, 20; 28:3; 35:11; 48:4).
The most valuable aspect of the comparison of the priestly and non-
priestly groups of promise texts is the resulting methodological recogni-
tion that the priestly promise texts are identifiable and identifiably distinct
from the nonpriestly promise texts in precisely the same way that the
two nonpriestly groups are identifiable and distinct from each other. The
very narratological, thematic, and verbal criteria that mark the priestly
promise texts as compositionally connected can be used to identify and
separate the remaining nonpriestly promise texts. Additionally, the minor
verbal variations that do not serve to indicate different layers of authorship
in the priestly promise texts (as discussed above) are equally unhelpful in
distinguishing layers within the nonpriestly promise texts.
After the death of Jacob in Gen 49:33, the remaining promise pas-
sages are all references back to the promise by characters living after the
patriarchs have passed on. Because of this simple chronological shift,
the nature of the references changes. They almost exclusively mention the
aspect of land; they become more formulaic and less personal; they refer
regularly to the promise as an oath; and they mention all three patriarchs
as the recipients of the promise. The first of these changes, as already
observed, is a matter of narrative logic: by the beginning of the Exodus
narrative, the promise of offspring has been fulfilled (Exod 1:7). The rest
of the narrative, from the Exodus through the wilderness to the border of
Canaan, is focused on the possession of the land. As in the patriarchal
stories, the promise passages are well attuned to their narrative contexts.
The other three changes that occur in the promise passages after
Genesis, however—their more formulaic nature, the regular description
of the promises as oaths, and the mention of all three patriarchs as prom-
ise recipients—are not so easily attributed to context. The distinctive shift
92 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

in tone in the postpatriarchal narratives has led the nondocumentary


school to pronounce every reference to the promise in Exodus–Numbers
secondary, in large part, of course, because it is a significant aspect of
the nondocumentary theory that the patriarchal and Exodus-wilderness
narrative blocks were originally independent.91 To make this argument,
Rendtorff begins by inquiring as to “the continuation of the patriarchal
story in the book of Exodus.”92 Already he has skewed the discussion, since
“the patriarchal story” should not be continued in the book of Exodus, nor
could it; the patriarchal story concludes with the death of the last par-
tiarch, or at the very most with the summation in Exod 1:1–7. Rendtorff
has set up a straw man: we are required to imagine a Bible in which the
patriarchal narratives somehow should have continued into Exodus; yet
such a thing is inherently impossible. But by the lack of any such con-
tinuation, Rendtorff argues that the two textual blocks must be connected
only secondarily. His approach is to put forward an exceedingly implau-
sible idea of what one would “expect” from the text if the patriarchal and
Exodus-wilderness narratives were a single composition, and when these
marks are not found, he declares this to be proof that we have disparate
compositions. Thus he notes first that “the promise addresses, as a deter-
mining and characteristic element, are not found in the traditions of
the book of Exodus.”93 Indeed—but why should they be? The promise is
addressed to the patriarchs, and there is no tradition anywhere in Israelite
literature that suggests otherwise. The promise ought to stop with the
end of the patriarchal stories, and indeed it does. Rendtorff also suggests
that because the notice of the increase of the Israelites in Exod 1:7 does
not mention the promise of increase in the patriarchal stories, the author
of Exod 1:7 is “obviously not aware” of that aspect of the promise.94 Then
again, Exod 1:7 is narrative, not direct speech, and, it is crucial to note,
the biblical narrator never makes reference to the promise directly; the
promise is always mentioned only in the direct speech of the characters
of the story. Similarly, Rendtorff expects that in Exod 3:8, when Yahweh
tells Moses that the Israelites will leave Egypt for Canaan, there should
be a reference to the promise of that land to the patriarchs: “there is not a
word which mentions that the patriarchs have already lived a long time in
this land and that God has promised it to them and their descendants as a
permanent possession.”95 But beside the fact that this, like the preceding
claims, is yet another argument from silence, in this passage Yahweh is
speaking to Moses, who is living hundreds of years after the patriarchs
have died, and who was raised in Pharaoh’s palace as an Egyptian; what
Restoring the Promise 93

would he know, in the author’s imagination, of the patriarchal promise?


Context matters. Rendtorff ’s expectations for what the biblical author
should do or not do are not, it seems fair to say, a reasonable basis on
which to judge the compositional history of the text.
Why, then, does the style of the references to the patriarchal prom-
ise become so noticeably terse in the period after the patriarchs? The
most straightforward explanation is that implicit in the work of Noth:
the promise as a theme is an integral part of the patriarchal traditions,
and should not be expected to be as fully realized in the other traditional
blocks. The important distinction to be drawn here between Noth and
Rendtorff is the distinction between text and tradition. For Noth, the
promise belongs to the preliterary patriarchal traditions, and the language
of the promise is tied to the stories of the patriarchs; when the patriarchal
and Exodus-wilderness traditions were combined, the promise language
remained a significant part of the patriarchal narratives, because that was
its traditional locus. For Rendtorff, the promise and the patriarchs are
separate literary creations, written texts; the obvious literary links between
the patriarchs and the Exodus-wilderness narratives are thus secondary,
and the diminishment of promise language after the patriarchs is a sign
of a literary distinction.
Support for Noth’s view against that of Rendtorff and the nondocu-
mentary school comes, again, from the priestly promise texts. According
to a view prevalent among nondocumentary scholars, it was the priestly
redaction that first tied together the patriarchal and Exodus-wilderness
narratives.96 We should expect, then, to see significantly more connection
between the patriarchal and Exodus-wilderness narratives in the priestly
source than we have in the nonpriestly material. Yet even a cursory glance
at the priestly promise texts reveals that this is not so. Quite the contrary:
in P, the promise texts after the patriarchal era change in precisely the
same ways that the nonpriestly promise texts do. Thus we find references
only to the land (again, as expected on the basis of the narrative context);
the promise is referred to as an oath (and again, as noted above, P does
not use any oath terminology in the patriarchal promises in Genesis);
the references are more formulaic; and the passages refer to the land
sworn to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This last item is most interesting:
in the priestly text in Genesis, only Abraham and Jacob receive the divine
promise. Note that in the priestly text Yahweh refers also to the covenant
that he made with all three patriarchs (Exod 2:24; 6:3–4). From any point
of view, there was but one covenant with a patriarch in P, and that was
94 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

with Abraham in Genesis 17. Yet the author of P feels free to refer to the
covenant made with all three patriarchs. This appears to be the result
of the use of a common language to refer to the patriarchs in the nar-
ratives of the postpatriarchal period. Regardless of the differentiations
drawn between the patriarchs in their individual narratives, when looked
back on as a group, their experiences are conflated, such that the covenant
with one patriarch is seen as the covenant with all three, and the promise
to one or two patriarchs is considered as having been given to all three.
This is not just a priestly phenomenon, but indeed is best seen in the
nonpriestly text of Exod 32:13: “Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, how you swore to them by your self and said to them, ‘I will
make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven, and I will give
to your offspring this whole land of which I spoke, to possess forever.’”
Here Yahweh’s words are quoted back to him, but note that according to
Moses these words were spoken to all three patriarchs, rather than just
one. Since no author attributes the same divine speech to all three patri-
archs, this is a clear case of patriarchal conflation.
Although the relatively brief style of the postpatriarchal nonpriestly
promise references can at times render a connection with the A or B groups
somewhat difficult, there are a few indicators that can help decide to which
group at least some of these texts belong. The first of the postpatriarchal
promise references comes in Gen 50:24, only a few chapters after the last
patriarchal promise. Here Joseph tells his brothers that, although he is
about to die, God will bring them out of Egypt back to the promised land.
The theme of going to and returning from Egypt is one we have encoun-
tered in the promise passages only in the B group, where it is prominent.
Indeed, the message Joseph passes on to his brothers here is both a reitera-
tion of God’s words to Abraham in 15:14 and an expansion of God’s promise
to Jacob in 46:4. The connections between 50:24 and 46:3–4 are more
apparent when we include also 50:25, which is frequently recognized as
being chiastically parallel to 50:24.97 Joseph’s request that his bones be
brought up from Egypt to be buried in Canaan is strongly reminiscent of
God’s promise to Jacob in 46:4 that God himself would bring Jacob up out
of Egypt (using the same root, ‘-l-h, “go up,” as does Joseph in 50:25), and
that Joseph would close Jacob’s eyes. The two elements of God’s speech in
46:4, the ascent from Egypt and the death of the patriarch, are represented
also in Joseph’s speech to his brothers in 50:25.
The promise ostensibly quoted in Exod 32:13 is not found anywhere
in the extant patriarchal promise texts, at least not literally. The content,
Restoring the Promise 95

however, is known to all the promise texts: the increase of the patriarch’s
offspring, illustrated with a simile (in this case the stars of the sky), and
the giving of the land to the patriarch’s offspring. No aspect of this prom-
ise text is helpful in determining to which group it might belong.
The same is true of Exod 33:1. Here also we find a quote of a promise,
“to your offspring I will give it,” and again this precise wording is not used
in any of the patriarchal promise texts in Genesis. Again, however, the
basic sense of the promise is universal to the patriarchal promise texts.
The remaining nonpriestly promise texts in Numbers (Num 11:12; 14:16,
23), as well as the two in the non-D sections of Deuteronomy (Deut 31:23;
34:4), suffer from the same problem, and are even briefer than those in
Exodus, containing no more than a reference to the land that God swore
to the patriarchs. As such, there is no way to determine to which group of
patriarchal promise texts each belongs. At most we may draw the connec-
tion between Exod 33:1 and Deut 34:4, which are verbally identical from
the word hā’āreṣ, “the land,” forward, suggesting strongly that they are
from the same hand.
The inability to determine the provenance of the promise texts in
Exodus–Numbers, especially when the promise texts in Genesis, even
including that of 50:24, fit squarely and clearly into the two promise
groups, may appear to support the nondocumentary claim that Genesis
and Exodus–Numbers were not originally connected compositionally.
Yet on consideration this conclusion is illusory. As noted above, the brief
style of the promise texts in Exodus–Numbers is found also in Gen 50:24,
the first of the postpatriarchal promise texts, and the last in the book of
Genesis. This promise text is identifiably part of the B group, not because
it is stylistically or formally distinct from the Exodus–Numbers promise
texts but because it is set in a context that makes very clear to which group
it belongs. The promise texts in Exodus–Numbers, though formulated
nearly identically with that of Gen 50:24, are simply not set in contexts
with such obvious links to earlier promise material. They are, however,
squarely part of their own immediate narrative contexts, as demonstrated
in the first part of this chapter.
It is worth at least mentioning here the promise references in D.98 As
has long been recognized, all of the references to the patriarchal prom-
ise in D refer only to the aspect of land, and all describe the promise as
an oath. These observations have been used to argue for deuteronomic
authorship of the promise texts in Exodus–Numbers, since, it is claimed,
they exhibit the same features. Yet the arguments brought in the previous
96 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

chapter are pertinent here as well. The majority of scholars acknowledge


that D was familiar with and dependent on the nonpriestly narratives and
laws, particularly those in Exodus–Numbers. I have already argued above
that the change in tone in the nonpriestly promise texts after the death
of Jacob is entirely understandable from a narratological perspective; for
D those reasons are equally valid, if not even more so. The land, for D, is
certainly the only aspect of the promise left to be fulfilled, and that fulfill-
ment is imminent; it is no wonder that the references to the promise come
only in the context of the mention of the land, for only the land is relevant.
(We may note, however, that the concept of progeny is hardly foreign to
D, even if it is not couched in explicit promise language; see Deut 1:10:
“Yahweh your God has multiplied you until you are today as numerous
as the stars in the sky,” and Deut 10:22: “Your ancestors went down to
Egypt seventy persons in all, and now Yahweh your God has made you as
numerous as the stars of heaven.”99) The promise is referred to as an oath
in D not because this is a particularly deuteronomic style, but because
the references to the promise on which D is dependent, that is, those in
Exodus–Numbers, use this language, for the reasons given above.
Having completed the detailed analysis of the promise texts, we can
now state what may have become clear over the course of the preced-
ing discussion: the two groups of promise texts we have identified, the
A group and the B group, correspond precisely to the classical J and E
sources.100 The crucial aspect of this identification is that it was arrived at
independently of the classical source division: the promise texts fall natu-
rally into two groups on entirely internal grounds, without consideration
for which source they appear in—that is, we did not use the assumption
of a J context to identify a promise text as being from the A group, or an
E context to identify a promise text as being from the B group. We are
not dealing here with secondary promise texts essentially unconnected to
their narrative contexts, as the classical critics would have it, nor can the
promise texts be considered redactional, as the nondocumentary school
claims. Rather, they are thematically, verbally, and narratologically consis-
tent, well-integrated parts of the sources in which they are found.101 When
this identification is made, the analysis of the postpatriarchal promise
texts becomes considerably easier. If, in Genesis, the promise texts line
up precisely with the classical J and E documents, and if, as a result, we
can be more confident in positing the existence of the J and E strands in
the Pentateuch, then we can assume that these documents continued, as
the classical critics demonstrated, past Genesis and through the end of
Restoring the Promise 97

the Pentateuch. We may feel secure in stating, therefore, that despite the
lack of decisive evidence for source assignment within the narrow scope
of the promise passages in Exodus–Numbers, the narrative contexts in
which they are set do belong to the sources to which they have been classi-
cally assigned, and the promise texts embedded in those contexts belong
there as well.
The final step in the analysis of the promise texts is the return to the
promise in Gen 22:15–18. It will be remembered that discussion of this
promise text was postponed because, unlike any of the other promise pas-
sages, the divine messenger’s second speech to Abraham in Genesis 22
appears to be a secondary addition to its narrative context. Our first task,
therefore, was to analyze those promise texts that were not secondary, as
we have done above. Now, however, we may look more closely at 22:15–18
and ask whether it is equally secondary in terms of form and content.
As with the other promise texts, however, the first question to be asked
of this passage is whether it conforms to the narratological pattern estab-
lished in either the J or E promise texts as groups. The setting of this
promise is squarely in the land of Canaan, and the timing is near, but not
at, the end of the patriarch’s narrative career.102 It is difficult to see, given
these elements, how this promise text could be part of the A group, that is,
the J narrative. There is also, however, neither the “do not fear” opening
typical of the B group, that is, of E, nor is there any connection, either in
terms of content or setting, with Egypt, as is the case in the other E prom-
ise texts. From a purely logical standpoint, it should be added that the
notion inherent in this promise speech, that the promise given previously
to Abraham was at risk of being taken away had Abraham not passed this
sudden test, is unique to this passage among all the patriarchal prom-
ise texts and stands somewhat in opposition to the sense of the preced-
ing promise speeches to Abraham, all of which indicate that, so long as
Abraham did nothing wrong, the promise was final.103
Turning then to the details of the passage, the first element of Gen
22:16 to note is the technical language for swearing an oath. We have
noted already that, beginning with Gen 24:7, the patriarchal promise is
referred to as an oath, though, it should be remembered, only in retro-
spect; none of the promise texts proper utilize the technical oath formula.
This use of the oath language in 22:16 has, not unexpectedly, formed the
basis of the claim that all the references to the promise as divine oath are
referring back to this passage (and are all of the same layer).104 Yet, as was
pointed out above, the promise references that use oath language deal
98 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

almost exclusively with the promise of the land, and it is that promise
element that is most noticeably absent from 22:15–18. Thus to connect
this passage with the subsequent references to a divine oath is to focus
entirely on the use of the verb nišba‘ and not at all on the content of the
oath itself. It is more likely that the author of 22:16, recognizing that
the promise is frequently considered an oath in other places, made his
inserted promise text all the more solemn by using the formal oath lan-
guage at the beginning, despite the fact that none of the other promise
texts do so. Indeed, as we will see, this sort of emphatic solemnity is typi-
cal of 22:15–18 as a whole.
The two phrases that follow in 22:16, nə’um yhwh, “word of Yahweh,”
and ya‘an ’ašer, “because,” are not found in any of the other nonpriestly
promise texts and are indeed quite rare in the Pentateuch as a whole.105
They are found in succession, as in 22:16, only in Ezek 5:11; 34:8; Hag 1:9.
Both phrases are normally used in heightened speech, whether divine or
prophetic; the unusual combination of them here may be a second indica-
tion that the author of 22:15–18 made a conscious attempt to imbue this
passage with extra authority.
Gen 22:17 begins with two consecutive infinitive absolute + imperfect
clauses, bārēk ’abārekəkā wəharbāh ’arbeh, “I will surely bless you and surely
increase [your offspring].” This infinitival construction occurs occasion-
ally in the J promise texts (Gen 16:10; 18:18; 32:13), though not with the
verb b-r-k, “bless,” and these two verbs are used in sequence in Gen 26:24.
Nowhere in the other promise texts, however, do we find this infinitive
absolute construction used twice, and certainly nowhere twice in succes-
sion; indeed, two such constructions employed consecutively, with no
intervening words, is found only once elsewhere in Genesis–Kings.106
This passage, then, uses the theme of blessing known from the J promise
texts and the infinitive absolute construction known also from J, but in a
manner never found in J itself. Again it seems as if the author is here pil-
ing up expressions in order to give the promise more rhetorical force.
The similes used in 22:17—“as numerous as the stars of heaven and
the sands on the seashore”—are both known from other promise texts.
The comparison to the stars is found, as we have seen, in Gen 15:5; 26:4;
Exod 32:13. The comparison to the sand is attested in Gen 32:13. As we
have seen throughout, the use of a specific simile is not a mark of a par-
ticular author, as these are stock phrases in Israelite literature. As with the
infinitive absolute construction discussed above, however, the combina-
tion of two such similes in a single promise text is otherwise unattested,
Restoring the Promise 99

and again suggests an author who is intentionally combining promise ele-


ments in a unique manner.
The final clause of Gen 22:17 states that Abraham’s descendants will
“possess the gate of their enemies.” The sole parallel to this in the Bible is
the blessing given to Rebecca before she leaves with Abraham’s servant in
Gen 24:60 (which is not a promise text at all, as it is given to a matriarch
by non-Israelites). It is unclear whether the author of 22:15–18 was depen-
dent on the text of 24:60, or whether this was a fixed phrase, common in
blessings, that was used by both the authors of 24:60 and 22:17.
The first half of Gen 22:18 is the standard J formula for nations bless-
ing themselves by the patriarch: “all the nations of the earth will bless
themselves by your descendants.” The second half, however, is clearly
taken directly from 26:5: “because you have obeyed my command.” The
use of the phrase ‘ēqeb ’ašer, “because,” in these two passages has led
some to claim that they must be from the same hand, and further that
they must both be relatively late. This phrase and its variants, however,
are found across a wide range of biblical texts, and do not indicate either
single authorship or a particular time of writing.107 Given the evidence
presented above that suggests that the author of 22:15–18 has gathered and
combined elements from the other promise passages, it is considerably
more likely that he simply took 22:18 from 26:4–5, rather than that one
person wrote both. This is especially the case because 26:3b–5 contains
none of the other defining features of 22:15–18 noted above.
The conclusion, then, is that Gen 22:15–18 is indeed a secondary inser-
tion. This is initially suggested by its rather ill fit with its immediate nar-
rative context, and borne out in both the narratological setting and stylistic
details of the passage. It is unique among the promise texts, even while
employing many of the standard elements known from the other prom-
ises passages. As was suggested above, it was this uniqueness that led
to 22:15–18 being recognized from a very early period as secondary. The
methodological problem that ensued from this recognition, however, was
that scholars read the other promise texts in light of 22:15–18, rather than
the other way around. When 22:15–18 is seen as a template, then every
resemblance to it found in another promise text could serve as an indica-
tion that that promise text was secondary. The question should not be
“what looks like 22:15–18,” but rather, “what does 22:15–18 look like?” When
the acknowleged secondary passage is read in this light, it becomes plain
that it is unlike any other promise passage, and is simultaneously quite
obviously based, virtually in its entirety, on other promise passages.
100 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

In these last two chapters, we have identified the flaws in both the
documentary and nondocumentary arguments that the nonpriestly patri-
archal promise texts are secondary elements in the narrative; we have dem-
onstrated that the nonpriestly promise texts are integral to their contexts
narratologically, structurally, thematically, and verbally; and we have seen
that the nonpriestly promise texts can be naturally grouped on the basis
of their narrative situations, central themes, and unique expressions—
and that these groups line up precisely with the J and E sources of the
classical Documentary Hypothesis. It is now our task to take each source
independently and inquire as to how the promise texts function to shape
the unique theological message of the document. In other words, we can
now begin to address the question raised at the end of chapter 1: can a
literary-critical analysis of the promise (and the Pentateuch as a whole)
maintain the centrality of the promise while accounting more fully for the
distinctions among its various literary expressions?
4

The Promise According to the Sources

in the previous chapters, I have argued that the promise texts belong
squarely to the sources in which they are found; that they are not, as
commonly thought, secondary additions, but are rather integral parts
of their respective documents. The value in identifying a text as belong-
ing to a particular source is not self-justifying, however; the aim of the
source-critical enterprise is not merely to identify what text belongs
where for the mere sake of completeness. Because texts are associated
with sources on the basis of their continuity and coherence with other
biblical passages, no text stands alone. Rather, every passage plays a
part in the construction of the whole, narratively but also thematically
and theologically. The benefit that derives from identifying a passage as
belonging to a certain source is the greater understanding of both the
passage itself and of the source to which it is attributed. It is the aim of
this chapter, therefore, to explore the ways in which reading the prom-
ise texts within their documentary contexts serves this dual purpose:
both expanding our understanding of the promise texts themselves and
providing more depth and clarity to our understanding of the sources
of the Pentateuch.

The Tradition of the Promise


As demonstrated in the preceding chapter, each of the pentateuchal
sources J, E, and P has a unique presentation of the promise to the patri-
archs, with its own key terminology, themes, and narrative settings. These
individual features are not surprising, given that these documents were
composed independently of each other. Yet despite their distinctive pre-
sentations of the promise, all three sources share the most basic elements:
that the promise was given to the patriarchs (banal though this obser-
vation may seem), and that it contained the paired and interdependent
1 02 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

notions of progeny and land. These elements constitute the underlying


tradition on which each of the sources drew.
It is in the individualization of common traditions that authors’ voices
are most distinctively heard. As Robert Alter cogently put it, recognition of
the traditional base behind a text allows us “to see what is innovative and
what is deliberately traditional at each nexus of the artistic creation.”1 This
is especially so when a tradition is found across all of the sources. When
a tradition appears in only one source, for example, the Tower of Babel in
J (Gen 11:1–9), it can be difficult to discern which elements belong to the
tradition and which to the invention of the author. But, as with the prom-
ise, the more sources employ a tradition the more able we are to distill it
down to its fundamental essence, to recognize what constituted the basic
form of the tradition with which the authors worked; and, in turn, we
are able to more clearly delineate and define the voices of the authors and
their unique perspectives.
The preliterary origins of the promise tradition are, as is the case with
so much of the Bible’s background, unreconstructible with any degree
of certainty. What is clear is that by the time the narratives of Israel’s
early history were set down in writing, the promise had become the cen-
tral motif of the patriarchal cycle. As already noted, it is the only tradi-
tion that is held in common across all three patriarchal narratives, and
in each source it is a recurring theme. In this way it is very much akin to
the so-called murmuring tradition associated with the wilderness period
in Exodus–Numbers, another tradition that is found in all three sources,
though with distinctive variations in each.
What is notable about the promise tradition—and the murmuring
tradition as well—is that it is, in its elemental form, unbound to any par-
ticular location or episode. The promise of land and progeny was given to
the patriarchs—that is all the tradition maintains. Where, when, under
what circumstances, and even to which particular patriarch(s), were all
potentially open to the discretion of the author. It was only natural that
the pentateuchal authors would have associated the promise with a par-
ticular episode in the lives of their characters; since each was telling a
story, it would be passing strange for a seminal moment like the receiving
of the promise to exist without any narrative backdrop. Thus for all three
authors, the bestowal of the promise was attached to particular episodes
in the lives of the patriarchs. In P, the promise appears in conjunction
with the covenant of circumcision in Genesis 17; with Jacob’s departure
for Paddan-Aram in Genesis 28; and with Jacob’s return to Canaan and
The Promise According to the Sources 1 03

the change of his name (themselves two discrete traditions that were
combined into one episode) in Genesis 35. In J, the promise is attached
to Abraham’s sojourn to and settlement in Canaan in Genesis 12–13;
Isaac’s move from Canaan to Gerar in Genesis 26; and Jacob’s move from
Canaan to Haran in Genesis 28. And in E, it is joined with the making of
the covenant in Genesis 15 and Jacob’s departure for Egypt in Genesis 46.
Similarly, the secondary references to the promise in each of the sources
are all found in the context of other narrative settings, from Hagar’s flight
to Joseph’s death to the episode of the spies.
It is for this reason that the promise has repeatedly appeared to numer-
ous scholars as if it were a “secondary” addition to a “primary” tradition:
this is why it is possible for some to claim that, for example, the basic story
of Abraham’s sojourn from his homeland to Canaan is the authentic early
tradition in Genesis 12, to which the promise in verses 1–3 is a later accre-
tion. And to a certain extent, this is not wrong: the plot of Abraham’s life,
from his move to Canaan through his death, could well be told without
any mention of the promise, and would, in theory, be told with the same
events in roughly the same order. Where in that narrative the promise
occurred is, in theory, a secondary decision. Yet this is not because the
tradition of the promise is itself secondary; it is because the promise tradi-
tion could be placed anywhere in the narrative, while obviously traditions
such as Abraham’s journey to Canaan could come only at the beginning
and his death only at the end.2 It is not the relative age of the promise tra-
dition that resulted in its being bound to another narrative; it is, rather, its
fundamentally flexible nature.
Just as the pentateuchal authors had the freedom to locate the promise
almost anywhere in their patriarchal narratives, so too they had the free-
dom to formulate the wording of the promise and the themes connected
with it. The only words that appear in the promise texts across the sources
are the variations on the phrase “I give this land to you (and to your descen-
dants).” Aside from this stock element, the authors were free to articulate
the promise however they wished, and to frame the promise with themes
that expressed their unique historical and theological notions. Thus, as
observed in chapter 3, we find in J a focus on the concept of blessing; in E
a link with Egypt; and in P references to kingship, to name only some of
the most prominent themes.
Recognition that the pentateuchal authors had flexibility in deciding
where in their narratives the promise texts should be placed, and freedom
in deciding how to formulate the wording of the promise and the themes
1 04 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

related to it, brings to the forefront the issue of the specific renderings
of the promise in each source. Because the authors had such freedom,
the decisions they made become even more important as a guide to their
respective theologies and historical assumptions. Because the promise, for
all its lack of specificity, was the central theological statement of the patri-
archal narrative, it stands to reason that where, when, and in what situa-
tions the promise was introduced serve as significant clues to the authors’
intentions. When these features are combined with the particular themes
and language each author used in his presentation of the promise, we can
glean more from the promise tradition than might otherwise be apparent.
With these issues in mind, therefore, we can turn to the individual expres-
sions of the promise in each of the pentateuchal sources.

The Promise in P
The major promise texts of P comprise the following: Genesis 17; 28:3–4;
35:11–12; 48:3–4; Exod 6:3–4, 8. Within these passages a number of ele-
ments are unique, or uniquely emphasized. These include the connection
with the specifically priestly use of the term bərît; the phrase “be fruit-
ful and multiply”; the patriarchs as gērîm; the link between the promise
and family matters; the patriarchs’ descendants becoming a multitude of
nations; their descendants being kings; and the change of the patriarch’s
name. Each of these concepts has its independent function within the
larger priestly work, yet at the same time they all work in concert to high-
light one of P’s most pressing concerns: the distinction of Israel from the
other peoples and the formation of an Israelite national identity.
The connection of the promise with the concept of bərît is not exclu-
sive to P, as it appears also in Genesis 15 (E). Yet in P the patriarchal bərît
is a framing element, introduced at length in Genesis 17 of course, but
referred to again in Exodus 6: “I established my bərît with them to give
them the land of Canaan” (6:4). Thus in the first and last major refer-
ences to the promise in P—which also constitute the lengthiest narrative
(that is, nonlegal/prescriptive) dialogues between God and an individual
character in the priestly document—the bərît and the promise are linked.3
Indeed, they are more than linked—as will soon become clear, and as
many others have noted, they are identical. The connection between the
promise and the bərît in Genesis 17 and Exodus 6 serves to frame the
patriarchal cycle, as Exodus 6 marks the epochal change from the family
history of Abraham’s descendants to the national history of the Israelite
The Promise According to the Sources 1 05

people, a change signified by the revelation of the name Yahweh: it is in


Genesis 17 that God first introduces himself to a character using the name
El Shaddai (17:1), and in Exodus 6 that that name is mentioned for the final
time and ceases to be used (6:3). At the same time, the promise serves to
link the eras of the patriarchs and the exodus, by taking Yahweh’s faith-
ful adherence to the patriarchal bərît as the motivating force behind the
rescue of the Israelites from Egypt (Exod 2:24; 6:8).
In order to understand the intrinsic connection between the bərît and
the patriarchal promise in P, it is necessary to recognize the distinctive
way in which the author of P uses the term bərît. The word is usually
translated “covenant,” implying an agreement between two parties, in
which each is reciprocally responsible for a certain set of actions. This is
certainly how the word is used in D, where it appears most frequently: the
bərît comprises both the obligations of the Israelites to obey the laws and
those of Yahweh to bless the Israelites when they enter Canaan. As has
long been recognized, D as a whole is structured as a treaty—indeed, it
refers to itself explicitly as a bərît (Deut 28:69; 29:8, 11, 13)—in line with
the standard ancient Near Eastern treaty forms, and as such it adopts the
mutual obligations inherent in treaties between suzerain and vassal.4 Yet
it would be a mistake to read D’s particular rendering of the bərît as a
reciprocal treaty into the other pentateuchal sources, and especially into P.
In P, the bərît is not reciprocal, but unilateral: it is a divine grant, without
any necessary accompanying human obligation. This is clear in the first
priestly bərît, with Noah (and all living things) in Gen 9:8–17. There the
content of the bərît is God’s promise never again to destroy the world by
means of a flood. Humans (and animals) need do nothing at all in order
for this bərît to be maintained.5 Accompanying this unilateral bərît is a
sign (’ôt): the rainbow, which will serve to remind God of his obligation
every time it rains.6
The bərît functions similarly in Genesis 17, though its presentation is
a bit more complicated. Here the content of the bərît is God’s promise to
multiply Abraham’s offspring and to give them the land (17:4–8). This bərît,
however, unlike the one after the flood, appears to come with a condition:
circumcision.7 Yet upon closer inspection, it is apparent that circumcision
is not in fact the reciprocal obligation of the Israelites as in the treaty for-
mulation of D. It is, rather, the sign of the bərît (17:11), equivalent to the
rainbow in Genesis 9. As such, it functions as a reminder to God of the
bərît.8 If it is framed in obligatory terms, this is only natural: the purpose of
circumcision is to identify those to whom God has made the bərît promise,
106 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

and thus anyone who is not circumcised will be excluded from the bərît
recipients.9 Yet it is clear that the bərît and circumcision are not reciprocally
linked: though Ishmael is circumcised, God makes certain to note that
he is not a recipient of the bərît: Ishmael is to be blessed, certainly, “but
my bərît I will maintain with Isaac” (17:21). Adherence to the command
of circumcision does not guarantee the receipt of God’s obligations; thus
circumcision is not in fact part of a divine–human treaty. It is necessary
but not sufficient.10 When it is understood that circumcision is not a treaty
obligation but rather the sign of the unilateral bərît, it is also understood
that the bərît with Abraham in Genesis 17 is in fact coterminous with the
patriarchal promise: an unconditional grant of progeny and land.11
The promise to the patriarchs in P is a bərît, that is, a unilateral obli-
gation decided upon by Yahweh and taken freely upon himself, but it is
only one bərît among others in P. As has long been noted, the author of P
uses the bərît as a structuring element in the early history of Israel. The
first is made with all humanity and animals after the flood (Gen 9:9–17);
the second is with Abraham and his descendants (Gen 17:4–8); the third
is with Aaron and his priestly lineage (Num 18:19); and the fourth is with
the particular priestly family of Phinehas (Num 25:12–13).12 Each bərît thus
entails a narrower focus, from all flesh to one priestly family. The second
b ərît, that of Genesis 17, with which we are especially concerned here, rep-
resents the most dramatic narrowing: from all flesh, including animals,
to a single man and his descendants. It is this bərît —that is, it is the patri-
archal promise—that serves to separate Abraham’s family, the Israelite
people, from the rest of humanity.13 The author of P uses the promise for
its own sake, as the defining feature of the patriarchal narrative, but, by
equating it with the covenant, simultaneously embeds it in the overarch-
ing history of Israel’s selection from among all other peoples.
It is no surprise that all three pentateuchal sources should use the root
r-b-h (hiphil) in their promises; it is, after all, the standard Hebrew word
for “multiply,” and the increase of the patriarchs’ progeny is a fundamental
element of the basic promise tradition. In P, however, the expected r-b-h is
always accompanied, or even replaced, by p-r-h, “to be fruitful” (Gen 17:6,
20; 28:3; 35:11; 48:4). The collocation of p-r-h and r-b-h, of course, is typical of
P and hearkens directly back to Genesis 1: “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen
1:28). This phrase is more than simply a stylistic quirk of P, however, for
Genesis 1 is more than simply the description of the creation of the world.
Although Genesis 1 is often read as the introduction to P’s particular
conception of God and the cosmos—which it certainly is—the account
The Promise According to the Sources 107

of creation also serves a larger goal in P’s overarching presentation of the


history of Israel. Many of the seemingly universal elements introduced
in Genesis 1 as inherent parts of creation come into play again with par-
ticular significance or new meaning for Israel alone. Thus the creation of
the astral bodies in Gen 1:14–18 is more than just the etiology of the sun,
moon, and stars. They exist, from the beginning, for calendrical reasons:
“they shall serve as signs for the set times, the days and the years” (1:14).14
This is their universal function; that is, the priestly author certainly knew
that every human culture relied on the sun, moon, and stars in deter-
mining the passage of time. When the Israelites receive the festival laws
from Yahweh (Numbers 28–29), however, the celestial bodies, in their
calendrical role, take on a new importance. Now the “set times” (mô‘ adîm)
that they mark are specifically defined by Yahweh for Israel alone. The
universal has become particularized, and theologized. So too with the
divisions inherent in the animal kingdom from creation on (Gen 1:20–21,
24–25): these “natural” divisions are no more than a mere categorization
until the dietary laws of Leviticus 11, when they are bestowed with a far
greater significance—again only for Israel. And so also, of course, with
the structure of the seven-day week, and the sanctification of the seventh
day (Gen 2:2–3): however this sanctification may have been imagined to
exist in other cultures, it is only Israel that is instructed to observe the
Sabbath by refraining from work (Exod 31:12–17).15
Genesis 1 functions to create the universal conditions on which Israel’s
unique obligations are based. In its description of creation is embedded the
future emergence of Israel from among the rest of humanity, and Israel’s
unique relationship with the creator deity. The reflection of Genesis 1 in
the words “be fruitful and multiply” in the patriarchal promise, it would
therefore appear, serves the same purpose. At creation, this is a univer-
sal blessing—one given to humans as well as to the animal kingdom.
After the flood, it is only Noah and his descendants who receive this bless-
ing (Gen 9:1, 7), not the animals, who are here consigned to be food for
humans. In the promises to the patriarchs, the blessing is particularized
for Abraham and his descendants among all humans, and takes on a new
import.16 Only Abraham’s descendants receive the repetition of this bless-
ing. While all of creation is to be fruitful and multiply of its own accord,
God says only of Abraham’s descendants that he himself will make them
fruitful and multiply them, using the transitive hiphil form of the verbs.
And after the patriarchs have indeed increased, in Gen 47:27 (repeated in
the pluperfect in Exod 1:7, where it is intensified), the phrase never again
108 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

appears in P.17 The blessing has served its designed purpose: Israel has
become a people. The use of creation language in the priestly promise
texts thus reflects the general principle in P that already at the moment
of creation God had a special plan in mind for Israel, different from the
other families of the world.18
The possession of the land is a central component of the promise tradi-
tion. Yet in P we find a unique designation of the land as “the land of your
sojourning [məgureykā]” (Gen 17:8; 28:4; see also Exod 6:4). The notion
that the patriarchs were gērîm in Canaan is found throughout P (in addi-
tion to the preceding references, see too Gen 23:4; 35:27; 36:7; 37:1). In the
abstract, this is not particularly surprising, as P (like J and E) clearly states
that Abraham and his family moved to Canaan from elsewhere, and were
therefore gērîm, resident aliens, in the land. Yet it is noteworthy that P is
the only pentateuchal source to describe the Israelites as gērîm in Canaan;
in fact, in the nonpriestly texts the patriarchs are described as gērîm only
when they are somewhere other than Canaan: in Egypt (Gen 12:10; 15:13;
47:4; Exod 2:22; see also Deut 26:5), in Gerar (Gen 20:1; 21:23, 34; 26:3),
and in Aram (Gen 32:5).
In one respect, this sharp divide between P and non-P might be taken
as an indication that P adheres more strictly to the narrative context in its
rendering of the promise tradition, in that it takes into account Abraham’s
non-Canaanite origins.19 That said, however, P’s emphasis on the patri-
archs as gērîm also serves a greater purpose. In making abundantly clear
that Abraham’s family is not native to Canaan, the priestly promise of the
land takes on an additional signification of God’s power. The gēr, after all,
is an outsider, a foreigner by descent, a second-class citizen. It is, from a
sociological perspective, unthinkable that such people might some day
come to possess the land in which they are sojourning—such posses-
sion is entirely at odds with the very meaning of the word gēr. Yet, in
the promises, God states that Israel, the descendants of Abraham, will
overcome their status, as, it may be imagined, no other people ever could.
This promised transformation is at once an indication of God’s control of
history and of Israel’s distinctiveness from all other peoples.
Despite the seemingly obvious connection between the promise of
progeny and the actual children of the patriarchs, more often than not
in the nonpriestly text the two are kept separate. Only in Genesis 15, with
Abraham’s query about his inheritance, and in Genesis 24, in the search
that culminates in the wooing of Rebekah, is there a direct link between
the promise and the immediate patriarchal family.20 In the announcement
The Promise According to the Sources 109

of Isaac’s birth in Gen 18:10–15, in the narrative of his birth in Gen 21:1,
6–7, in the birth of Jacob in Gen 25:21–26, in Jacob’s marriages to Leah
and Rachel in Gen 29:15–30, in the births of Jacob’s children in Gen
29:31–30:24—in none of these nonpriestly texts is the promise mentioned
or even alluded to. In P, on the other hand, the promise is always linked to
the patriarchal family, in what appears to be a very intentional manner.
The first priestly promise text, of course, is set in the context of the
announcement of Isaac’s birth (Gen 17:15–21). As noted earlier, this con-
text also includes the birth itself (Gen 21:2–5), since in the independent
P document this follows directly on the end of the material contained in
Genesis 17. The second reference to the promise comes in Isaac’s bless-
ing of Jacob before sending him to Paddan-Aram to get married (Gen
28:1–9).21 The third reference occurs directly upon Jacob’s return from
Paddan-Aram, with family in tow (Gen 35:11–12).22 And the final priestly
promise text in Genesis is connected with Jacob’s adoption of Joseph’s
sons Ephraim and Manasseh (Gen 48:3–7). In each case, there is a clear
family context for the promise. In Genesis 17, the promise serves to dis-
tinguish between Abraham’s children: it is Isaac, not Ishmael, who will
be party to God’s b ərît, who will receive the full blessing of the patriarchal
promise. The promise is thus more closely circumscribed by means of
being attached to the birth of Isaac. In Genesis 28 and 35, we have the
bookends to Jacob’s journey to Paddan-Aram to take a wife: Isaac’s prayer
that El Shaddai will bless Jacob with the promise, and God’s fulfillment
of that prayer. At stake in Isaac’s sending away of Jacob is the question
of endogamous marriage: the reason Jacob is to go to Paddan-Aram is
so that he may marry within the family. Here again the priestly author
shows concern for the dilution of the family line: the promise is linked
to genealogy.
In these two cases, the connection of the promise with narratives of
birth and marriage has a restrictive function, narrowing the promise
recipients from all of humanity to Abraham’s family, and from there to
a particular lineage within that family. In the case of Jacob’s adoption of
Joseph’s sons in Genesis 48, however, the promise operates differently, in
no small part because, by this point in the story, the promise of progeny
in the sense of making Abraham’s family into a people has been fulfilled
(Gen 47:27). Now that Israel has increased and become a self-standing
people, the focus of P in general, and the promise in particular, shifts
from ethnic concerns toward a broader, nationalistic perspective. As noted
earlier, the association of the promise with the adoption of Joseph’s sons
110 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

is an attempt to take into account the reality that Ephraim and Manasseh
were the largest and most important tribes in Israel. Even while maintain-
ing the immediacy of the narrative present, the promise looks ahead to
the future of Israel the nation. The adoption of Ephraim and Manasseh
signals for P the connection between Israel’s patriarchal past and its con-
temporary reality: the definition of Israel the nation as the recipient and
fulfillment of the promise.
This forward-looking national perspective is present in other aspects of
the priestly promises as well. Although every pentateuchal source employs
the concept of the patriarchs’ descendants becoming a “nation,” a gôy —
indeed, this is, as we have already seen, the very essence of the promise—
only in P does God say that they will become “nations,” plural, gôyīm (Gen
17:6, 16; 35:11).23 Similarly, and in the very same verses, only in P does
God say that the patriarchs’ descendants will be kings. In Genesis 17, it is
tempting to read these statements as referring to the related nations that
descend from Abraham: Ishmael, of whom God says explicitly that he will
be a great nation (17:20; see the fulfi llment in 25:12–16), and Esau, whose
descendants are described in the Edomite king list of Genesis 36.24 Yet this
reading is undermined by the repetition of God’s words in Genesis 35, to
Jacob. Jacob’s children are the twelve tribes—no foreign peoples descend
from him to whom the promise of “nations” and “kings” could be refer-
ring.25 It must refer, therefore, to the Israelites themselves. Yet the indi-
vidual tribes can hardly be called independent nations—they are nowhere
so termed anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. Nor, of course, does each tribe
have its own king. The word for nation, gôy, has a specifically political con-
notation (as opposed to ‘ām, which is primarily an ethnic designation).26
The easiest way that Jacob’s descendants could be understood as nations,
plural, is if the promise refers to the northern and southern kingdoms of
Israel and Judah.27 It is difficult to conceive of another scenario in which
Jacob’s descendants become multiple nations: P seems here to be refer-
ring to the two kingdoms.28 If this is in fact the referent for the promise of
plural nations, then the reference to kings is comprehensible in the same
light: P is referring to the future kings of Israel, in both the northern and
southern kingdoms.
This reading has potentially significant implications for the dating of
P, although that is not our concern here. What is interesting in the context
of this discussion is how these mentions of nations and kings further
P’s agenda. Ironically, by using the plural “nations” to describe Israel,
the author of P is more inclusive: when only one nation is mentioned, it
The Promise According to the Sources 111

might be possible to understand it to refer to either the northern or south-


ern kingdom alone. From the perspective of P, Israel and Judah together
stand as the fulfillment of God’s promise to the patriarchs. (That they are
to be considered a unit, though they are two distinct political bodies, is
intimated in the promise to Jacob in Gen 35:11: “A nation, an assembly of
nations, shall descend from you”—the single nation, Israel, and its two
political embodiments, Israel and Judah, are hereby equated. It may fur-
ther be noted that in the P spies story the territory investigated is very
explicitly the whole of Canaan: “from the wilderness of Zin [in the far
south] to Rehob, at Lebo-Hamath [in the far north]” [Num 13:21]; this defi-
nition of the promised land makes clear that neither part of the divided
kingdom could constitute the fulfillment of the promise.29) Although
Israel and Judah are political entities, gôyīm, just like the other nations
surrounding them, they are different. They alone, both corporately and
as embodied in their kings, are the living representation of God’s will,
vivid demonstrations of God’s power on earth. By using terms that have
real-world application, in the two kingdoms, P emphasizes, more than the
other sources, the relationship between Israel’s political reality and divine
power.30 Not only in an ethnic sense are the Israelite people unique; in
Israel’s existence as a national polity it has a special place.
In this light we may also note that P alone connects the promise with
the change of the patriarchs’ names, from Abram to Abraham (Gen
17:4–5) and from Jacob to Israel (Gen 35:10).31 In the case of Abraham, the
name change is directly linked to the concept of a multitude of nations, as
discussed above.32 Thus already with Abraham, the priestly author looks
forward to the political reality of the two kingdoms. And in the case of
Jacob, the name change is transparently focused on the shift from family
to nation; indeed, despite announcing the name change in Genesis 35,
P never refers to the patriarch as Israel in narrative contexts, using the
name only when referring to the Israelites as a people (Gen 46:8; Exod 1:1,
and thereafter).
It may thus be posited that in P’s formulation of the patriarchal
promise, from its wording to its themes to its narrative and traditional
associations, there is a consistent focus on the distinctiveness of Israel
as a people and as a nation. This focus comports well with the overall
agenda of P. At the center of the priestly narrative are the interdependent
Exodus and Sinai episodes. The former is fundamentally a demonstration
of God’s power and the proof of God’s special relationship with Israel:
“I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall
112 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

know that I, the Lord, am your God who freed you from the labors of the
Egyptians” (Exod 6:7). As for the latter, the central premise of the priestly
Sinai narrative and legislation speaks to the remarkable status of Israel in
the world: though God is the creator of all the world, he chooses to dwell,
out of all the nations, in the midst of Israel: “Let them make me a sanctu-
ary that I may dwell among them” (Exod 25:8). This notion is unique to
P: the author who presents the most universalistic depiction of the deity,
in Genesis 1, is the same author who has the most personal depiction of
God’s relationship with Israel. The distinction of Israel from the rest of
the created world is of utmost concern to P, and the patriarchal promise
supports and furthers that central concern, highlighting Israel’s special
status both as an ethnic group and as a fully-fledged nation.

The Promise in J
As we have often had occasion to observe, the essence of the patriarchal
promise is the intertwining of the aspects of progeny and land, and both
are present in all of the pentateuchal sources’ representations of the prom-
ise. In J, however, there is a subtle emphasis on the aspect of the land. As
noted in chapter 3, in both P and E when the two aspects of progeny and
land are mentioned together the progeny always comes first, while in J
when both are mentioned it is the land that is given priority (Gen 13:14–17;
26:3–4; 28:13–14). The promise of land plays a central role also in the struc-
ture of J’s narrative. While the promise proper is always given in the land
of Canaan itself with the regular expression “this land,” three times in J
Yahweh speaks to a character about the promised land from outside the
land itself. The first of these, of course, is Gen 12:1, the very first words of
Yahweh to Abraham: “Go . . . to the land that I will show you.” The second
occurrence is in Exod 33:1, spoken to Moses just before the Israelites are to
leave Sinai: “Set out from here, you and the people that you have brought
up from the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob: ‘To your offspring I will give it.’” And the final time comes in
God’s final words to Moses in J, in Deut 34:4, as Moses is about to die:
“This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: ‘To your
offspring I will give it.’” Three seminal moments in the history of Israel—
Abraham’s sojourn in Canaan, the Israelites’ departure for Canaan from
Sinai, and the conclusion of their long journey at the border of Canaan—
are marked by the introduction of the promise and explicit references to
it (the latter two using virtually identical language). The promise serves
The Promise According to the Sources 1 13

as a signpost for J, marking off the beginning, middle, and end of Israel’s


early history.
In a similar manner, the two arrivals in Canaan—that of Abraham and
that of Moses and the Israelites—serve as bookends to the narrative, and
have their own unique marking in J. In both Gen 13:14 and Deut 34:1–3,33
and only in these passages, we find the notion of a character visually sur-
veying the land. In Gen 13:14, after Abraham has finally split off from Lot,
Yahweh instructs Abraham to look at the land in all four cardinal direc-
tions.34 In Deut 34:1–3, Yahweh shows Moses the entirety of the land, here
described not by cardinal directions but by tribal affiliations and geograph-
ical features.35 In their emphasis on the visual, these passages play a part
in the larger J source, which is particularly invested in sight as a means of
perception. This theme recurs throughout the document, beginning in
Genesis 3 with the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil: “God
knows that as soon as you eat of it your eyes will be opened” (3:4); “The
woman saw that the tree was good for eating and a delight to the eyes, and
that the tree was desirable as a source of wisdom” (3:6); and “The eyes of
both of them were opened and they perceived that they were naked” (3:7).
It is found also in the deception of Isaac in Genesis 27, which is predicated
on the introductory statement that “Isaac was old and his eyes were too
dim to see” (27:1). Perhaps most notably, the theophanies in Exodus are
explicitly visual. First, there is Yahweh’s appearance to Moses in the burn-
ing bush: “Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God” (Exod 3:6);
then the theophany before all Israel at Sinai: “On the third day Yahweh will
come down in the sight of all the people” (19:11); also in the theophany to
the elders alone: “They saw the God of Israel” (24:10); and, famously, in the
individual theophany to Moses on Sinai: “I will take my hand away and you
will see my back” (33:23). This is to name only a few of the more prominent
passages in which sight plays a significant role in J. Throughout the docu-
ment, starting from the tree in Eden, sight is equated with knowledge and
understanding: to see something is to know it more intimately, to compre-
hend it more fully. When Abraham and Moses survey the land, they are
doing more than simply seeing it; it is the divine promise made concrete,
tangible—even if, or perhaps precisely because, neither one will truly pos-
sess it himself.
Perhaps the most prominent recurring concept unique to the J prom-
ise is the idea that other peoples are to bless themselves (or each other) by
Abraham and his descendants (Gen 12:3; 18:18; 26:4; 28:14). Scholarly dis-
cussion of this phrase—whether it should be taken as reflexive or passive,
114 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

and what it might mean in either case—tends to center on the phrase


in isolation. It is our interest here to consider how the concept fits into
the larger context of J, and how it contributes to J’s overall presentation.
Of all the pentateuchal sources, J goes to the greatest lengths to estab-
lish Israel’s genetic relationship with its neighboring nations. Certainly
P makes clear that the descendants of Ishmael and Esau—that is, the
Arabs and Edomites—are related by blood to the patriarchs (Gen 25:12–16
and Genesis 36, respectively), just as J does (Gen 16:4–14 and 25:21–26,
respectively), and that Israel and Aram are kin (Gen 28:2), also as in J
(Genesis 24). In addition to these, however, J provides genetic relationships
for the Ammonites and Moabites, through Lot (Gen 19:30–38), and for
Sheba and Midian (and other lesser-known peoples), through Abraham’s
second wife, Keturah (Gen 25:1–4). In short, with the exception of Egypt
(for obvious reasons), all of the nations that surround Israel are, according
to J, part of the larger Abrahamic family.
In addition, J has a recurrent concern with the perception of Israel
(in the persons of the patriarchal family) by non-Israelites. In Genesis
26, Abimelech, the king of Gerar, says to Isaac, “We now see plainly that
Yahweh has been with you” (26:28). That is, they recognize that Isaac has
been blessed by Yahweh (26:3, 12, 24, 29). When Jacob encounters Esau
in Genesis 33, he explains the procession of people and gifts that precede
him in similar terms: “God has favored me and I have plenty” (33:11). In
reverse, there is the concern of Jacob when Simeon and Levi act in a way
that might damage the family’s reputation: “You have brought trouble on
me, making me odious among the inhabitants of the land” (Gen 34:30).
Similarly, Joseph is careful to make sure that his brothers do not offend
their Egyptian hosts with their shepherding (46:31–34).36
On the whole, then, J is acutely aware of Israel’s place among its neigh-
bors. And—again with the understandable exception of Egypt—J goes to
some lengths to set the relations between Israel and its neighbors in positive
terms, be it through blood ties or through reciprocal respect. The phrase
“all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you” in the promise
texts fits into this overarching theme, in its concern for the status of Israel
in the eyes of other peoples. The familial ties between Israel and its neigh-
bors also link thematically with the implied blessing, “May you be blessed
like Abraham,” insofar as these sorts of blessings are, in J and in the other
sources as well, confined to familial situations, mostly fathers blessing sons
(see in J, for instance, Genesis 27).37 Kinship stands at the heart of J’s geopo-
litical view, and at the heart of the blessing formula in the promise as well.
The Promise According to the Sources 1 15

In addition, it may be noted, as others have, that implied in this phrase


about blessing is the idea that the successes of Abraham and his descen-
dants will be so widely known that it may serve as a model for others; this
idea is tied directly to the promise in Gen 12:2, “I will make your name
great”: Yahweh guarantees to Abraham and his descendants the fame that
was sought unsuccessfully by the builders of the Tower of Babel—“Come,
let us build a city and a tower with its top in the sky to make a name for
ourselves” (11:4). Ironically, of course, it is not possible that the builders
of Babel should have made a name for themselves even if they had suc-
ceeded, since everyone on earth was in the same place—there was no
one else to acknowledge their fame. Once they had been scattered, how-
ever, a select group of them—Abraham’s family—could indeed garner
fame among the remaining peoples, not by their own hubristic actions,
but through Yahweh’s blessing. Thus the author of J ties the blessing of
Abraham to the primeval history, at the same time emphasizing the sta-
tus of Israel in the eyes of other peoples.
In Gen 18:19 and 26:5 we fi nd references to Abraham’s obedience
and uprightness: “in order that he may instruct his children and his
posterity to keep the way of Yahweh by doing what is just and right”
(18:19); “inasmuch as Abraham obeyed me and kept my charge, my com-
mandments, my laws, and my instructions” (26:5).38 As noted earlier,
these various terms cannot refer to any actual laws, as none have yet
been given. Rather, they describe Abraham’s general behavior as being
in line with Yahweh’s will (as Abraham indeed is always fully obedient
to Yahweh’s commands). It was also noted above that similar phrases are
used elsewhere in J, in Exod 15:26 and 16:28, also to denote not formal
law but rather the behavior of the Israelites. Indeed, there is no formal
law in J, as there is in each of the other pentateuchal sources.39 What
J has, instead, is the story of the tree of knowledge of good and evil
in Genesis 3. This story represents a sort of theory of natural law; the
understanding of what is acceptable behavior and what is unacceptable is
a human trait from the first generation onward. As the serpent astutely
notes, to eat from the tree is to become “like divine beings, knowing
good and bad” (Gen 3:5). That is to say, “the way of Yahweh” in Gen 18:19
is essentially the knowledge gained by Adam and Eve in Genesis 3. What
is expressed in the promises, then, is not anticipation of, response to, or
adherence to a set of practices specific to the Israelites, as is the case in
the other sources, but rather adherence to the universal modes of behav-
ior revealed in Eden.
116 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

For J, Abraham and his descendants are not distinguished from


other peoples by their obligation to the imposed divine legislation after
the Exodus; they are distinguished by their voluntary commitment to
act in accord with the natural law that is equally shared between God
and humans. This may be seen to extend also to include the ostensibly
uniquely Israelite practice of worshipping Yahweh: after all, J tells us that
mankind begins to worship Yahweh in the generation of Enosh (Gen
4:26), and Noah builds an altar to Yahweh (8:20). In J the rationale for
the selection of one family among all the others to be Yahweh’s people is
fundamentally based on the premise that although all of humanity was
supposed to worship Yahweh, they were evidently unable, thereby forcing
Yahweh to choose a more restricted group to provide him with the wor-
ship he requires. Worship of Yahweh was supposed to be universal; only
Abraham and his descendants, however, actually do worship Yahweh.40
This special commitment to Yahweh’s will is to a certain extent the paral-
lel to Yahweh’s blessing of Abraham’s family: they are singled out from
the other families of the earth by Yahweh for blessing, but at the same
time they are more worthy of the blessing by virtue of their obedience to
the divine will. Implied in this is the notion that the other peoples of the
earth are not obedient to the same degree, a notion that is more or less
confirmed by the narratives about non-Abrahamic peoples in J, in virtu-
ally all of which the other peoples act in questionable ways: Pharaoh in
Genesis 12, the inhabitants of Sodom in Genesis 18–19, the inhabitants of
Gerar in Genesis 26, Laban in Genesis 30, Shechem in Genesis 34. The
promise texts that speak of Abraham’s particular obedience to the divine
will, therefore, make explicit the uniqueness of the Israelites, and relate
also to the aforementioned issue of blessing: Abraham’s family is indeed
a model for others to follow.
The conjoining of Yahweh’s blessing, in the form of the promise,
and Abraham’s obedience creates in J a distinctive sense of reciprocity
between God and Israel. Yahweh will act so as to ensure that Abraham’s
family is blessed; Abraham’s family will, for their part, act in such a way
as to be worthy of that blessing. This reciprocity is stated clearly in Gen
12:2: “I will bless you . . . and you, be a blessing.” There is a partnership
between Yahweh and Abraham, the end goal of which is that the rest
of the peoples of the world will come to recognize Abraham’s family as
particularly blessed, and Yahweh as the source of that blessing.41 Both
parties stand to benefit from this joint venture, Abraham materially and
Yahweh in reputation.
The Promise According to the Sources 117

Perhaps related to this sense of partnership is the idea that Yahweh


works on behalf of the patriarchal family behind the scenes, so to speak.
Because it is in Yahweh’s interest that Abraham’s family prosper, chance
seems to conspire on their behalf. A substantial number of episodes in J
make little or no mention of Yahweh, and certainly report no direct inter-
vention on Yahweh’s part: the wooing of Rebekah in Genesis 24, Jacob
and Esau’s barter of the birthright in Genesis 25, Isaac’s stay in Gerar
in Genesis 26, Jacob’s deception of Isaac in Genesis 27, Jacob’s stay with
Laban in Genesis 29–30, his encounter with Esau in Genesis 32–33, and,
most prominently, the entirety of J’s portion of the Joseph story in Genesis
37–50—in none of these does Yahweh play a direct part. The success of the
patriarchal family in these narratives frequently hinges on happy coinci-
dences, such as Abraham’s servant going to the very well where Rebekah
watered the flock (or Jacob going to the very well where Rachel did the
same), or the Ishmaelites happening to pass by just as Joseph’s brothers
were about to kill him. Yet the author makes certain to indicate that these
ostensible coincidences are nothing of the kind, but are rather the work-
ing out of the divine plan. Abraham’s servant recognizes this: “Blessed be
Yahweh, the God of my master Abraham, who has not withheld his stead-
fast faithfulness from my master, for I have been guided on my errand by
Yahweh” (Gen 24:27). So too, famously, does Joseph: “God has sent me
ahead of you to ensure your survival on earth, and to save your lives in an
extraordinary deliverance” (Gen 45:7); “Although you intended me harm,
God intended it for good, so as to bring about the present result—the sur-
vival of many people” (Gen 50:20).42 Inherent in the partnership between
Yahweh and the patriarchs is the frequently silent but ever-present sup-
port provided by the deity in mundane affairs.43
On occasion, however, there is explicit notice that Yahweh is work-
ing on behalf of the patriarchs, in the form of the phrase “I am with
you” (or variations thereon). The phrase appears first in Genesis 24, when
Abraham sends his servant off: “he will send his messenger before you”
(24:7); the servant repeats Abraham’s words when he arrives: “Yahweh,
whose ways I have followed, will send his messenger with you” (24:40).
Clearly implied in the statement of Yahweh’s presence is divine assis-
tance: “I have been guided on my errand by Yahweh” (24:27). So too in
the promise to Isaac in Genesis 26: “Reside in this land, and I will be with
you and bless you” (26:3), and “Fear not, for I am with you and I will bless
you” (26:24). Even Abimelech and Phicol recognize Yahweh’s presence
with Isaac: “We now see plainly that Yahweh has been with you” (26:28).
118 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

Here too the divine presence equates to divine aid—in this case, as with
that of Abraham’s servant, specifically in terms of safety in travel to or
through a foreign territory. This is explicitly the import of the phrase also
in the promise to Jacob in Genesis 28: “Remember, I am with you; I will
protect you where you go and will bring you back to this land” (28:15; see
also 28:20–21). And indeed, when it is time for Jacob to return, Yahweh
tells him again: “Return to the land of your fathers where you were born,
and I will be with you” (31:3). Although no direct intervention is attributed
to Yahweh in these narratives, his presence is repeatedly affirmed, and
stands as the implicit guarantee of divine assistance.
It is not simply assistance that is at stake in Yahweh’s presence, how-
ever, as becomes clear over the rest of the J narrative. In Exodus 4, when
Moses objects to being sent by Yahweh to Pharaoh, it is not divine aid that
he doubts, but rather the very success of his mission: he believes that he
will be unable to do what is asked of him. To this Yahweh responds, “Now
go, and I will be with you as you speak” (4:12), and further, “I will be with
you and with [Aaron] as you speak” (4:15). Yahweh’s presence is more than
an implicit notice of protection, it is a promise of success in the venture.
The theme of Yahweh’s presence is most clearly delineated in the wil-
derness period, in which the regular element of travel associated with the
promise of divine presence is combined with the constant threat to Israel’s
survival. The Israelites, when faced with dire thirst, specifically inquire,
“Is Yahweh present among us or not?” (Exod 17:7)—expressing, perhaps,
their fundamental lack of trust in the behind-the-scenes nature of God’s
actions: when faced with an uncertain situation, the people require proof
of God’s presence, hence their straightforward question. It is this question
that drives the Sinai theophany in J, which is nothing less than the visual
proof of Yahweh’s presence before the entire Israelite community (Exod
19:11). At the same time, it is the occasion for Yahweh to threaten divine
abandonment: “I will not go in your midst” (Exod 33:3). To Moses, this
threat puts the survival and, indeed, the very identity of the community
at risk: “How shall it be known that your people have gained your favor
unless you go with us, so that we may be distinguished, your people and
I, from every people on the face of the earth?” (Exod 33:16; see also 34:9).
Finally, the meaning of Yahweh’s presence among the Israelites is fully elu-
cidated at the end of the spies episode in Numbers 14, when the Israelites
decide to attempt an invasion of Canaan even after being instructed to
turn around and reenter the wilderness: Moses tells them, “You will fall
by the sword, inasmuch as you have turned from following Yahweh and
The Promise According to the Sources 1 19

Yahweh will not be with you” (Num 14:43). When the Israelites fail to heed
Moses’s words, they are duly routed in battle. In this passage, then, it is
made absolutely clear that Yahweh’s presence is not merely a good, but is
a necessity for the survival and success of the Israelite people. Moreover,
it is tied to obedience: it is because the Israelites did not follow Yahweh—
that is, because they did not “keep the way of Yahweh” (Gen 18:19)—that
Yahweh was not with them. Yahweh’s presence in J, in the words “with
you” and its variations, is linked to the promise, and in turn to obedience.
And, from the other side, when the phrase appears in the context of the
J promises in Genesis, it sets the standard for the whole of Israel’s early
history according to J.44
Overall, there is in J a striking immediacy to the patriarchal prom-
ise. That is, even as it looks ahead to the future of Israel, it is distinctly
grounded in the narratives in which it is found. The promise occurs at
particular moments when it is of most use, so to speak, to the characters:
notably, at the beginning of journeys, when risk is high and divine aid
most needed. The giving or repetition of the promise on these occasions
serves to reassure the patriarchs in those specific moments, even as they
speak of the longer term. The blessing promised by Yahweh is always
that of the patriarch alone, not of his offspring as well; the obedience in
question is always that of the addressee, not of generations to come. The
promise to be “with you” is entirely of the moment. Only in the broadest
sense, in the notion that the other families of the earth will bless them-
selves by the patriarchs, does the promise look beyond its context. This
goal is, however, nearly eschatological, in that it represents the fulfillment
of the overarching divine plan; it is not achievable within the narrative
or within the lives of the author’s contemporary audience. The promise
is not without import for that audience, inasmuch as they are to think of
themselves as standing in the line of the promise, but the promise never
speaks directly to or even much about Israel in the national sense. It is
tied to the immediate concerns of the narrative, and is presented in a
highly personal manner.

The Promise in E
A consistent feature of the promise in E is the introduction of the promise
with the phrase “Fear not” (Gen 15:1; 21:17; 46:3). Although this phrase is
used sporadically elsewhere in the Pentateuch and beyond, in E it takes
on special significance due to the source’s overarching concern with the
120 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

fear of God.45 When Abraham passes Sarah off as his sister in Genesis


20, he explains his actions by saying “I thought, surely there is no fear
of God in this place” (20:11). When God relieves Abraham of the obliga-
tion to sacrifice Isaac, he does so with the words “Now I know that you
are one who fears God” (Gen 22:12). When the Hebrew midwives disobey
Pharaoh’s orders to kill all the newborn Israelite boys, they do so because
they fear God (Exod 1:17), and are rewarded for precisely that reason (1:21).
Those Israelites who are deemed capable of assisting Moses with the bur-
den of judging the people’s disputes are chosen because they fear God
(Exod 18:21). The “fear of God” in these passages means nothing other
than correct moral behavior, that is, obedience to God. Most notably, the
purpose of the theophany at Horeb is explicitly so that the Israelites will
learn to fear God: “God has come only in order to give you this experience
in order that the fear of him may be ever with you, so that you do not go
astray” (20:17).46
This last example, from the central event of the E narrative, provides
a lens through which we may understand E’s concept of the fear of God
and the use of “fear not” in the patriarchal promise. For at the same time
that Moses tells the Israelites that they are to fear God, he introduces his
announcement with the words “Fear not” (20:17). Two types of fear are
thus juxtaposed in this one verse: natural human fear—in this case, fear
of the extraordinary sights and sounds of the theophany (“the thunder and
lightning, the blare of the horn and the mountain smoking” [20:15])—and
fear of God, which is understood as obedience and trust. The Israelites
are told to set aside their natural human emotion and give themselves
over to God. In this light we may understand the midwives of Exodus 1,
who overcome their fear of reprisal from Pharaoh and instead trust that
God will protect them, and Abraham in Genesis 22, who overcomes the
terror of sacrificing his only child and instead trusts that God knows best.
This holds for the promise texts as well: Jacob is told to set aside his fears
of bringing his family to a foreign land, but to trust that God will care for
him and them there, and Hagar is told not to fear the death of her son, but
to trust that God will save him and make him into a great nation.
And, of course, God tells Abraham in Genesis 15, “Do not fear”—indeed,
these are the very first words spoken by God in E. They are without context:
although it appears that we are missing the beginning of E, since Gen 15:1
begins with the words “after these things,” that very opening phrase makes
clear that God’s words have no immediate narrative referent. They are a gen-
eral statement: do not fear anything that one might normally fear. Implicit,
The Promise According to the Sources 121

as we have seen, is the desire that Abraham should fear God, should obey
God’s instructions and trust that faith in God’s providence leads to reward:
protection, wealth, and progeny (15:1–5).47 And, famously, this is just what
Abraham does: “Because he trusted in Yahweh, he reckoned it to his merit”
(15:6). This opening scene of Genesis 15, the first divine appearance in E,
introduces both the promise and one of the fundamental theological argu-
ments of the document as a whole, one that is repeated throughout in vari-
ous contexts: divine rewards come to those who put aside their mundane
fears and instead fear—trust—God.
Perhaps the most striking feature unique to the E promise is the
repeated reference to Egypt: in the initial covenant with Abraham (Gen
15:13–16 48) and in the promise to Jacob (Gen 46:3–4). These are the only
two true instances of the patriarchal promise in E; though God speaks to
the patriarchs elsewhere (Gen 35:1, for example), and though God delivers
something very promise-like to others (Gen 21:18, for example), only in
these two passages does God give the promise directly to the patriarchs.
And in both instances, Egypt plays a central role in the divine discourse.
The reference to Egypt in the context of the promise is not a mere
quirk of E, however, but rather belongs to a larger set of issues in the E
document, some of which are perhaps not readily apparent. Israel’s expe-
rience in Egypt is formative and definitive for E in a way that it is not for
J and P. All three sources tell of the Israelites complaining in the wilder-
ness that they were better off in Egypt, or that they wish to go back;49
this feature seems to be a staple of the underlying wilderness tradition,
which cannot of course be severed from the Exodus tradition proper. In
E, however, in the wilderness period the Exodus experience is used as
a means of defining Israel for outsiders as well. Upon Jethro’s arrival at
the Israelite camp in Exodus 18, Moses immediately tells him the story:
“Moses then recounted to his father-in-law everything that the Lord had
done to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians for Israel’s sake, all the hardships
that had befallen them on the way, and how the Lord had delivered them”
(Exod 18:9). When the Israelites arrive at the border of Edom in Numbers
20, Moses sends the same message: “You know all the hardships that
have befallen us; that our ancestors went down to Egypt, that we dwelt in
Egypt a long time, and that the Egyptians dealt harshly with us and our
ancestors. We cried to Yahweh and he heard our plea, and he sent a mes-
senger who led us out of Egypt” (Num 20:14–16). Moses, in both cases,
introduces the Israelite people by describing the Exodus experience; this,
Moses is saying, is who we are. Such is not the case in either J or P.
122 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

Only in E is the period of Israel’s stay in Egypt explicitly anticipated


during the patriarchal era. In J the closest we come is the potential
foreshadowing of the Exodus in Gen 12:10–20; in P there is nothing at
all. In E God announces in Genesis 15 the entire plot in advance: the
descent to Egypt, the length of the stay, and the eventual departure. So
too in Genesis 46: both the descent and the departure are stated out-
right.50 By placing the Exodus at or near the very beginning of the docu-
ment, before there is any narrative requirement to do so, and moreover
in the context of the initial covenant with Abraham and the promise
entailed in that covenant, the author of E sets the Exodus as a defi ning
part of Israel’s existence. Who are the Israelite people? They are those
who descend from Abraham, who are promised land and progeny, and,
equally, who will experience the descent to and emergence from Egypt.
The Exodus is a part of Israel’s identity from the very beginning. The
promise and the time in Egypt are deeply connected for E: God tells
Jacob, “Fear not to go down to Egypt, for I will make you there into a
great nation” (Gen 46:3). Only in E is the promise linked to Egypt in
this way, such that the fulfi llment of the aspect of progeny is almost
dependent on the descent to Egypt.
Israel’s identity is bound up with the time in Egypt not only in the
narratives of the patriarchal period, however, but also in the laws of the
Covenant Code (Exod 20:23–23:33). These laws form the basis of Israel’s
relationship with the deity and of Israel’s self-definition as a people: “If
you will obey me and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured pos-
session among all the peoples” (Exod 19:5). Embedded in the laws are
rationales—not for obedience, but for the existence of the laws in the first
place; that is, the rationales provide the basis for the behavior that consti-
tutes Israelite-ness according to E. The laws define the people; the ratio-
nales define the laws. And the rationales in the Covenant Code are based
on the experience of Egypt: “You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress
him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exod 22:20); “You shall
not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having
yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt” (23:9); “You shall observe
the Feast of Unleavened Bread . . . at the set time in the month of Abib,
for in it you went forth from Egypt” (23:15). Notably, the embedding of
the Exodus in the laws is a novelty of E. J, as already noted, has no laws;
P, for its part, never mentions the Exodus in its ritual legislation.51 The
non-E legal texts that do use the Exodus in a manner similar to E are both
derived from it: the laws of D, which have been conclusively demonstrated
The Promise According to the Sources 1 23

to be based on those of E, and the laws of H, which in turn reflect both D


and E (and, of course P).52
In E, the Exodus experience thus stands at the inception of Israel as
a genealogical entity, with the promise to Abraham in Genesis 15, and at
the inauguration of Israel as a community of practice, with the laws of the
Covenant Code.
As noted above, there are only two true places where the promise is
given to the patriarchs in E. They serve as important markers in the narra-
tive: at the beginning of the patriarchal generations, with the first address
to Abraham, and effectively at the end of the patriarchal generations, with
the reference to Jacob’s death and in light of the clear threat to the fulfill-
ment of the promise that the descent to Egypt presents. The description of
the Exodus in both passages highlights a further distinction in the prom-
ise between E, J, and P. For P, the promise looks ahead to the national
entity, Israel. For J, the promise texts have an immediacy that situates
them in their close narrative contexts. In E, on the other hand, the promise
emerges from immediate concerns (Abraham’s question about inheritance
and Jacob’s reticence about bringing his family to a foreign land), but it is
endowed with a broader historical view than the promise in J—yet one
not so forward-looking as that in P. The E promise consciously bridges
the traditions and narratives of Israel’s early history in a way that those of
J and of P do not. To the promise texts proper we may add in this light the
speech that Joseph makes to his brothers on his deathbed: “‘I am about
to die. God will surely take notice of you and bring you up from this land
to the land that he promised on oath to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.’
So Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, ‘When God has taken
notice of you, you shall carry up my bones from here’” (Gen 50:24–25).
Here again the promise and the Exodus are intertwined, and E uses the
promise as a mechanism for looking ahead in the narrative. In this case,
furthermore, the bridge between the traditions is even more explicit, inso-
far as the fulfillment of Joseph’s request is narrated almost word for word:
“And Moses took with him the bones of Joseph, who had exacted an oath
from the children of Israel, saying, ‘God will be sure to take notice of you:
then you shall carry up my bones from here with you’” (Exod 13:19).
It may be further observed that God speaks of the patriarchal promise
a third time in E: in Deut 31:23, God says to Joshua, “Be strong and reso-
lute: for you shall bring the Israelites into the land that I promised them
on oath.” This is admittedly not a patriarchal promise proper, but then
again nor can it be, as it occurs well after the patriarchs have died. It is,
124 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

however, reasonably equivalent, insofar as it positively states that Joshua


and the Israelites will occupy the promised land. We may note, then, that
here again a promise text stands at a structurally important moment in
the overarching narrative: the promise was given at the beginning of the
patriarchal period, potentially near the very beginning of the E document;
at the seam between the patriarchal and Exodus-wilderness periods; and
now at the border of the wilderness and conquest periods.53 The three
divine statements of the promise serve to structure the entire course of
Israel’s history according to E.
Finally, we may note that the descriptions of the Exodus in the E
promises represent truly rare instances of God vouchsafing a vision of
the future. Both Abraham and Jacob are granted knowledge of what is to
happen hundreds of years later. In J, the future represented by the nations
blessing themselves by the patriarchs is aspirational; in P, the future
looked to in the references to kings and a multitude of nations is, to the
patriarchs at least, abstract. In E the patriarchs know precisely the course
of history: what is going to happen, when, and, to a certain extent, how.
There are two close analogues to this sort of foresight. One is internal to
E: Joseph’s interpretations of the dreams of Pharaoh’s baker and butler
and of Pharaoh himself in Genesis 40–41. In this story we have both the
element of dreams as the mode by which the future is revealed (just as in
Genesis 15 and 46 the patriarchs experience God’s message by way of a
vision, and as elsewhere in E) and the exact knowledge of that future. The
second is common to all of the pentateuchal sources: Moses as recipient
of divine predictions. In J, E, and P, Moses knows in advance that God will
deliver the Israelites from Egypt; in J and P, he knows that the plagues
will not convince Pharaoh to let the people go; in E, he knows that the
Israelites will despoil the Egyptians; in P, he knows that the Egyptians
will be destroyed by the sea; and so on. All of the pentateuchal sources
ascribe the receipt of this sort of foreknowledge to Moses. Only in E,
however, is this same foreknowledge manifested in anyone other than
Moses—namely, in the patriarchs.
It is well known that prophecy is among E’s central themes, and that E
uniquely describes Abraham as a prophet. It is not usually noted, however,
that the knowledge of the Exodus granted to both Abraham and Jacob in
E may also stand in this thematic line (even as we must recognize that
prophecy in the biblical context comprises far more than the ability to
foresee the future, and that quite often foreknowledge is not at all a part
of the prophetic picture). Yet the promise is, in fact, on the rather extreme
The Promise According to the Sources 1 25

end of the prophetic spectrum, even for E: both Joseph and Moses are
given advance knowledge of events or processes that are to occur or begin
immediately, yet the patriarchs know the course of history much further
in advance. We may venture to propose that the confluence of this extreme
foresight and the patriarchal promise is not accidental, but rather that the
author of E tries by this conjunction to set the stage, as it were, for the
emergence of Moses in the period of the Exodus. That is, insofar as prom-
ise and Exodus are interwoven in E, prophecy may be another strand tied
up with them; the message may be that as the promise is to be fulfilled
in the period of the Exodus, so too prophecy will reach its zenith in the
person of Moses, who is central to bringing about that fulfillment.
Bound up in the E promise, then, are a multitude of issues and themes
that pervade and define the E document as a whole: fear of and trust in
God; Israel’s identity; the course of history; and prophecy. These overlap
and intersect throughout the E source, but first and foremost in the prom-
ise, perhaps the only E texts in which all are embedded together.
From a common traditional base—that God promised the patriarchs
land and progeny—the authors of J, E, and P constructed intricate and
comprehensive historical and theological statements. They each took
advantage of the freedom permitted them by the unbound promise tradi-
tion, locating the promise at different points in their narratives, linking
it with different other traditions, and employing different phrases and
themes in the expression of the promise. In this chapter I have tried to
articulate the ways in which the promise is integrated into its respective
sources, how the promise encodes the larger concerns of the documents
in which it is found. Reading the promise in the context of its original
sources allows us to understand more not only about the promise texts,
but about the sources as wholes.
The elaborate connections between each set of promise texts and the
documents in which they are found serve also to further justify their attri-
bution to the original sources themselves, rather than to secondary layers.
For it would be remarkable indeed if promise texts secondarily inserted
into J contexts happened by chance to engage with precisely the interests of
the J document as a whole, while those inserted into E contexts connected
intimately with the interests of E; that this is indeed the case may be con-
sidered another piece of evidence for the originality of the promise.
Engaging the promise on the level of the individual pentateuchal
sources resolves the two major difficulties with reading on the level of
the final form: the narrative contradictions evaporate, and the particular
126 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

literary expressions of the promise texts are not ignored but are rather
highlighted and given great significance, even while the centrality of the
promise as the leading theological element in the text is preserved. What
the literary-historical approach ostensibly lacks, however, is the capac-
ity to speak to the interpretation of the Pentateuch as a whole, which is
precisely what the canonical reading provides. In the final chapter, an
attempt will be made to bring these two equally important approaches to
the Pentateuch into a meaningful dialogue.
5

Returning the Promise to


Its Canonical Setting

in chapter 4, we examined the rationales for attributing the various


promise texts to their pentateuchal sources, and attempted to understand
the function of the promise in each source. The purpose of this chapter is
to try to apply the insights gained from the source-critical analysis to the
theological reading of the canonical Pentateuch.
The step taken in this chapter is one that is rarely found in source-critical
studies. Source criticism has long and rightly been seen as a primarily divi-
sive (not to say destructive) process: it takes a single text, the Pentateuch,
and renders it into four (or more) individual pieces, and considers the
job completed. From a purely historical perspective, this process makes
good sense: by isolating the original components of the text, we can
reconstruct some part of ancient Israel’s self-conception, even if it is not
always possible to link those components with any precision to specific
times or places. From a literary-historical perspective, it is also reason-
able: the source-critical endeavor originates with the recognition that the
Pentateuch is impossible to read as a unified story, given the innumer-
able contradictions in narrative logic, or as a unified theological statement,
given the diversity of theological views present in the text.
Indeed, the theology of the Pentateuch has long been a topic almost
entirely foreign to source-critical treatments of the text. The classical
expression of the Documentary Hypothesis, as exemplified by the work
of Julius Wellhausen, was not particularly favorable to the notion of any
theology of the final form of the Pentateuch.1 The object of source-critical
inquiry, from its earliest incarnations, was to explain the various contra-
dictions inherent in the canonical text, contradictions which, to be sure,
included the obvious theological inconsistencies from passage to pas-
sage: the nature of divine discourse with humans, the location of God’s
128 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

presence among the Israelites, the revelation of the divine name, among
many others. Indeed, it was, at least in part, precisely the lack of any uni-
fied theology in the canonical Pentateuch that led to the conclusion that
there were multiple sources in the text.
Although perhaps somewhat obvious, it is also the case that the classical
Documentary Hypothesis did not ascribe any particular theological inten-
tionality to the redactors of the Pentateuch. The combination of the sources
was often considered a political necessity, driven by historical events: the
fall of the northern kingdom in the case of the combination of J and E,
and the exile in the case of the combination of JED and P.2 The object of
the redactors was, at each step, merely to combine the given sources into
a single document, thereby preserving their already-authoritative status.
What limited passages could be ascribed to the redactors were primarily
in the service of this mechanical end; or, in a very few cases, were so attrib-
uted because the source division was too difficult, and the redactor was an
easy solution. In either case, the redactors’ work had no clear theological
profile, nor should it have; the theory aimed not at identifying and describ-
ing the theological meaning of the canonical Pentateuch, but at identify-
ing and describing its constituent parts.
What Wellhausen’s work illuminated, then, was not the theology of the
Pentateuch or its redactors, but rather the historical development of Israelite
theology as manifested in the succession of pentateuchal sources. From the
almost chthonic religion discerned in J up to the ostensibly decadent ritual-
ization of P, theology was certainly at the forefront of Wellhausen’s analysis.
In the pentateuchal documents the trajectory of Israelite faith and practice
was preserved, and the value of the source-critical project, as Wellhausen
clearly demonstrated and as the generations that followed him confirmed,
was grounded in the ability of the scholar to reconstruct the theology of
Israel over the course of several hundred seminal years of its history. But
the theology or theologies that could be extracted from the Pentateuch were
only those of its sources, not of the Pentateuch as a whole.
Precisely because the classical Documentary Hypothesis seemed to
concentrate only on the theologies present in the Pentateuch’s constituent
elements, many of the early anticritical writers zeroed in on the fact that
the theory seemed to eliminate any theological meaning for the final form
of the text. As one author wrote in 1894, “If the Bible be broken up as the
critics are doing, then its organic unity is destroyed, then its spiritual life
must leak out, its divine purposes be thwarted, and its divine setting of
truth be almost wholly destroyed.”3 One year later, the great anti-critical
Returning the Promise to Its Canonical Setting 129

author William Henry Green wrote, “The Scripture is no longer reliable in


its present form. The inspiration of its writers has been surrendered. We
have lost our infallible guide.”4
The fundamental question at the heart of these writings is how it can
be possible that the Pentateuch, the foundational unit of the Hebrew
Bible, can have no unified or unifying theology. This question was, and to
a certain extent remains, especially pressing because of the primacy of the
Pentateuch for later traditions and beliefs; as Green put it, “All the subse-
quent revelations of the Bible, and the gospel of Jesus Christ itself, rest
upon the foundation of what is contained in the Pentateuch.”5 Such argu-
ments were not limited to Christian authors, of course; in the same vein
is the now-famous renaming by Solomon Shechter of higher criticism as
“higher anti-Semitism”: “we allowed ourselves to be slain by hundreds
and thousands rather than become unfaithful to [the Bible.] . . . The Bible
is our sole raison d’être, and it is just this which the higher anti-Semitism
is seeking to destroy, denying all our claims for the past, and leaving us
without hope for the future.”6
In the works of somewhat later scholars we can see an effort to accept
some critical analysis of the Pentateuch—though not the Documentary
Hypothesis—while still preserving its essential unity. Relevant here is
the example of Umberto Cassuto, who devoted his efforts to proving “the
unity of the Torah—a unity, in truth, that does not exclude . . . a multiplic-
ity and variety of source materials, nor even their reflection in the text
before us; but a unity, none the less.”7 Similarly, M. H. Segal argues that
although there may be some oral or even written materials that pre-date
the final composition of the Pentateuch, “the book is clearly the work of a
single inspired author and literary artist who composed it with a definite
and preconceived plan and with fixed purpose.”8 Most recently, one may
point to the work of Norman Whybray, who attributes the Pentateuch to a
single, sixth-century historian who made ample use of preexisting written
sources and oral traditions.9
From the perspective of a present-day reader, however, seeking a
deeper understanding of the canonical text from whatever vantage point,
it has usually been assumed that the division of the text into its sources
is of little interpretive value; final-form readings tend to set aside the
literary-historical treatment of the material.10 The leading example of this
type of scholarship is surely David Clines’s The Theme of the Pentateuch, a
book explicitly aimed at discussing the final form of the Pentateuch with-
out concern for its origins. Also of note is Thomas Mann’s The Book of
130 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

the Torah: The Narrative Integrity of the Pentateuch, which fully admits to
the basic tenets of the Documentary Hypothesis, but attempts to read the
whole of the Pentateuch as a single unit, with an overarching message:
“With this description of the new community of God [in Deut 27:9: “this
day you have become the people of Yahweh your God”], the Pentateuch has
reached its true end—its telos—its goal and purpose.”11
The divorce of final-form reading and source-critical analysis need
not be irrevocable, however. While it is safe to say that some aspects of
the historical analysis of the Pentateuch are irrelevant to a final-form
reading—the dating of the sources, the identity of their authors, and so
on—the existence of the sources may not be. The presence in the canoni-
cal text of distinct voices affects any reading of the whole. As demonstrated
in chapter 4, each source makes individual claims, narrative and, more
importantly for our purposes, theological, that stretch over the entirety
of the text. An individual passage—say, the promise to Abraham—does
not stand alone, but is deeply interconnected, even in the canonical text,
to a series of other passages that share the same broader conception of
Israel and its relationship to the deity. Even when reading the final form,
one cannot come across the phrase “all the nations of the earth will bless
themselves by you” in Gen 12:3 and not associate it with the occurrence of
the same phrase in Gen 18:18, and the context of the latter in the story of
Yahweh and Abraham’s dispute over the fate of Sodom and the salvation
of Lot. One cannot read the prediction in Gen 15:13 that Abraham’s descen-
dants will be gērîm in a foreign land without hearing the rationales for the
laws in Exod 22:20 and 23:9, “for you were gērîm in the land of Egypt.” It is
impossible to read “I will make you fruitful” in Gen 17:6 without recalling
the blessing of fruitfulness in Gen 1:28. The texts, in both their wording
and their ideologies, lead to each other. The connections drawn by source
critics as a means of dividing the text into its sources are present for any
reader, even one without any source-critical intentions.
One of the values of source-critical analyis for canonical reading, then,
lies in the closer identification and comprehension of both the divergences
and interconnections among the parts of the Pentateuch. In the vast array
of narratives, laws, and other material, it is easy to miss some of the finer
nuances. Source criticism provides a basis for recognizing more clearly
how a given passage may be read in light of the broader picture created by
the link with other passages. Even a careful canonical reader may miss the
connection between the prediction of the Exodus in Genesis 15 and Moses’s
description of the Israelites in Numbers 20, for instance; the source-critical
Returning the Promise to Its Canonical Setting 131

identification of both passages as being from a single document helps to


highlight the unique way that the author construes the identity of Israel
and imbues the passage in Numbers 20 with meaning beyond being a
mere rehearsal of the narrative.
Just as source criticism does not end with the identification of the texts
that make up the Pentateuch, but must also account for how those texts
were brought together, so too any attempt to read the final form of the
text from a source-critical vantage point must also be concerned with the
method of the Pentateuch’s redaction. The shape of an edited text is by defi-
nition intentional, and that intentionality, however it may be manifested, is
a crucial guide for how the reader is to approach the text. For example, the
Deuteronomistic History in the books of Joshua–Kings comprises a wide
range of diverse source materials that have been edited so as to frame them
with an interpretive model of sin and punishment. Even when that model is
foreign to the source materials used by the deuteronomistic editor, as it fre-
quently is, it would be mistaken to read the Deuteronomistic History, in its
final form, from any perspective other than that of its editorial framework.
Indeed, as we have seen already, this sort of theologically intentional
editorial shaping is precisely what is proposed by contemporary nondocu-
mentary scholarship. While even documentary scholars, in the identifica-
tion of some promise texts as secondary, seem to be allowing for some
theological shaping of the Pentateuch, the center of the theory still posits
the essentially nontheological combination of two or more sources. The
development of the new nondocumentary approach in the late 1970s, how-
ever, effectively shifted from the margins to the center the idea that there
was some theological shaping of the text. To briefly recapitulate: accord-
ing to this theory, presented in programmatic fashion by Rolf Rendtorff,
fleshed out comprehensively by Erhard Blum, and expanded in a myriad
of directions by subsequent scholars, the Pentateuch grew entirely by
accretion of redactional layers: early tradents collected and framed a series
of small, originally independent, basically etiological texts, bringing them
together for the first time under a single theological umbrella; those early
collections were subsequently expanded and combined with other such
collections, again with a distinct theological motivation; and these new
complexes were themselves overlaid again and again, each time adding a
new theological view, be it deuteronomic, priestly, or some other.12
In this light, the Pentateuch is not merely a mechanical collection of
sources, each with its own theology, but rather is a living and growing text,
each stage of which, from the earliest minor collection of traditions to
132 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

the final overarching redactional supplements, has a clear and definable


theological profile. As Rendtorff puts it, “What stands out above all in this
is that clearly defined theological intentions were at work in the arrange-
ment and interpretation of these larger units.”13 Both in the coordination
of previously self-standing textual units and in the insertion of newly com-
posed passages, each redactional layer took preexisting, authoritative texts
and refashioned them in its own image.14
As appealing as this theory may be to those who wish to find in the
Pentateuch a unifying theological view, there are some complications.
Leaving aside the more technical challenges that could be leveled,15 we
may ask what we are to make of those purportedly redactional changes
that serve no theological purpose at all. Though it is easy to see the theo-
logical value in P’s ostensible alteration in the flood story from J’s seven
pairs of animals to two animals—since P is very careful not to present any
sacrifice having taken place before Sinai—it is much less obvious what
meaning we are to attach to the change from the thrice-sent dove to the
once-sent raven, or from forty days of flooding to 150.16 What is the theo-
logical import of the change of Moses’s father-in-law’s name from one
layer to the next, or of the different names for the city where Rebekah’s
family lives? Moreover, why does the author of a supposed redactional
layer repeat so closely the content of his predecessors, especially in cases
where there is no theological advantage to be gained? For instance, in
the flood story, J’s sentence recounting the destruction of all life reads,
“All existence on earth was blotted out—man, cattle, creeping things, and
birds of the sky; they were blotted out from the earth” (Gen 7:23); why did
this not suffice for the purported later priestly redactor, who did little other
than say the same thing again: “all flesh that stirred on earth perished—
birds, cattle, beasts, and all the things that swarmed upon the earth, and
all mankind” (Gen 7:21)?
We may also consider the fact that even as we can, according to this
approach, discern within the Pentateuch the various layers of its composi-
tion, it is the final layer—whatever that may be thought to consist of, as
this varies from scholar to scholar—that supposedly has the last word,
that was designed to provide the lens through which we are to read the
whole. The previous layers, though still present, are mere historical relics,
evidence of previous theologies, but not guides for the theological under-
standing of the final form. An analogy may be drawn to the United States
Constitution, which likewise preserves older laws even while altering or
even completely reversing them: the Constitutional amendments do not
Returning the Promise to Its Canonical Setting 133

literarily replace the laws they amend, but stand beside them in the final
form of the text. In the Constitution, then, we have not only the final legal
viewpoint, but also evidence for earlier legal views; the Constitution is a
layered text. The difference, however, is that the Constitution is structured
in such a way that the later layers are readily discernible from the earlier;
the amendments stand at the end, and the last of them is the most current
(as in the case of the institution and repeal of Prohibition in the eigh-
teenth and twenty-first amendments, respectively). In the Pentateuch, on
the other hand, the later layers are structurally indistinguishable from the
earlier; there is no guide for the reader that allows him or her to identify
what is “current,” so to speak, and what is mere historical remnant of ear-
lier thought. It is thus equally possible to read P’s flood story as a revision
of J, or to read J’s flood story as a revision of P.17
More to the point, the canonical text of the Pentateuch does not speak in
one discernible voice, be it that of the latest redactional layer or any other.
Though it is frequently assumed that the final layers of the Pentateuch
are priestly, the priestly material does not dominate to the degree that is
often claimed, if at all. It is common to point to Genesis 1 as an indica-
tor of P’s conclusive stamp on the whole, yet even while the Pentateuch
begins with P—though given a text that opens with the word bərēšît, “in
the beginning,” where else could it possibly go?—the Pentateuch does not
end with P. Though P does contain structural elements, they do not always
structure the final form: the Abraham cycle is initiated not by P, but by
the nonpriestly text (Gen 12:1–3); Moses is introduced not by P, but by the
nonpriestly text (Exod 2:1–10); and so on. More importantly, although at
times P certainly does dominate the text, requiring that we read it through
a priestly lens—as, for instance, in Genesis 1—it is also very often the case
that the priestly theology is subjugated to or undermined by the nonpriestly
material: P’s announcement of the change of Jacob’s name to Israel (Gen
35:10), which occurred already three chapters earlier (Gen 32:29); or P’s
dramatic revelation of the divine name to Moses in Exodus 6, preceded
as it is by that of Exodus 3; or, of course, P’s grand presentation of the
patriarchal promise to Abraham, which is rendered somewhat redundant
by the presence of two earlier such promise texts, involving precisely the
same aspects of land and progeny. Some P narratives are virtually lost in
the sea of nonpriestly text: Jacob’s journey to Aram, for instance, or the
Joseph story, or the theophany at Sinai. And then there are the laws: for
all of P’s extensive legislation, it is conclusively overshadowed by the exis-
tence of Deuteronomy at the end of the Pentateuch—not only as the final
134 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

word for anyone reading the canonical text, but also explicitly as “the laws
and the rules that you are to observe in the land that the Lord is giving you
to possess” (Deut 12:1), a claim that the priestly laws, for their part, never
make. It is hardly imaginable that a priestly editor would allow his laws,
the central part of all the priestly writings, to be so utterly undermined.
Nor is it conceivable that a priestly editor, holding the long-recognized
position that there was no sacrifice before the establishment of the cult in
Lev 8:22–24, could allow that fundamental tenet to be otherwise unrec-
ognizable in light of the sacrifices offered before Sinai by, among others,
Noah (Gen 8:20–21), Abraham (12:7–8; 13:18; 15:9–17; 22:13), Jacob (28:18;
31:54; 35:7, 14; 46:1), Moses (Exod 18:12; 24:4–8), and Aaron (Exod 32:5–6).
As William Gilders has pointedly observed, “the combination of P and
non-P ends up subverting and negating P’s very ideological point.”18
What is true of P is true of every source, strand, and layer proposed in
pentateuchal criticism: no one viewpoint dominates the others. All are, in
one way or another, equally undermined by the others. This alone makes
it difficult to accept the notion that the final product is the work of any
one of the theologically minded authors whose words are contained in it.19
Indeed, if the Pentateuch is the result of a series of theologically motivated
redactional layers, each of which is intended to recast the whole in its own
image, it must be said that these redactors did a particularly poor job of
getting their messages across. Note that even in the earliest interpreta-
tions of the Pentateuch, even those within the Bible itself, no one source
or layer is privileged over the others. The famous example of the law
regarding the passover sacrifice in 2 Chr 35:13 demonstrates that the con-
tradictory priestly and deuteronomic positions embedded in the canonical
Pentateuch were given equally authoritative weight. Jubilees does not dis-
tinguish between the various pentateuchal viewpoints, but takes bits and
pieces from each, according to its own interpretive needs (and so too other
ancient readers such as Philo and Josephus). This is not to say that ancient
readers were unaware of the contradictions in the text, of course; both
the example of 2 Chronicles and the extensive rabbinic literature make
it abundantly clear that the narrative difficulties in the Pentateuch were
indeed registered. Yet no ancient reader, indeed no one at all until the rise
of critical scholarship, was able to identify any one perspective in the text
as interpretively dominant.
What is interesting about the new nondocumentary theory is that,
despite its fundamental opposition to the classical documentary analysis,
it shares with Wellhausen one important basic feature: the notion that
Returning the Promise to Its Canonical Setting 135

the text of the Pentateuch preserves evidence of an evolutionary develop-


ment of Israelite religious thought. Both theories are founded on the core
idea that the Pentateuch presents a chronological progression of theologi-
cal arguments; that we can, by peeling back the layers, both get back to
the earliest manifestations of Israelite religion and also see how religious
beliefs changed over the centuries.
Of course, there are differences in how this sort of evolutionary model
manifests itself in the two approaches. For Wellhausen, the pentateuchal
laws were representative of actual Israelite practice; for contemporary
nondocumentary scholars, there is no such assumption—these texts are
more literary and theological than practical. For Wellhausen, the penta-
teuchal documents were authoritative on the national level, such that all
Israelites would have known and respected them; for nondocumentary
scholars, it is, certainly more rightly, assumed that the Pentateuch, in any
of its written manifestations, would have been known by only a small lit-
erate elite subsection of Israelite society. Despite these differences, how-
ever, the basic theological arc of the Pentateuch’s growth has remained
constant: from original texts that were theologically naïve (in the case of
Wellhausen’s J) or practically nontheological (in the case of the smallest
etiological units in the nondocumentary approach) to nearly exclusively,
almost overbearingly theological, writings (Wellhausen’s P, and contem-
porary theory’s latest redactional layers, usually also priestly).20
It is precisely this evolutionary scheme, however, that poses a chal-
lenge for both the classical documentary model and the contemporary
nondocumentary model. For it is unlikely to the point of near impossibil-
ity that the culture from which the Pentateuch emerged, ancient Israel,
would have had any unified religious conception at any single time. Even
in the nondocumentary approach, in which the Pentateuch is the product
of only a very small segment of that society, the problem remains. For
it assumes that the Pentateuch, from its earliest collections on, passed
through a linear sequence of hands, each with a distinctive theological
viewpoint, each unwilling to remove any part of the preceding incarna-
tion, each identifiable not only by theology but also by chronology, each
representing the state of theological thinking among Israel’s elite at that
very moment—and all of this despite the undeniable differences in social
location among the various hands at work, from royal or nationalistic to
popular or prophetic to exclusivist or priestly. Chronology and theology
are, for both Wellhausen and today’s pentateuchal critics, so closely linked
as to be virtually identical.
136 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

Yet, while not denying that theological ideas do indeed change over
time, and often in easily discernible ways, it must be remembered that if
ancient Israel, or even the elite portion thereof, held a single consistent
set of theological views at any particular point in time, it would be the sole
exemplar of such religious unity in recorded history. From its very incep-
tion, Christianity was marked by discord: the contention between Peter
and Paul, for example, or more broadly the divergent views held by fol-
lowers of the Jesus movement that are evident in Paul’s attempts to unite
them. Islamic unity lasted no longer, fracturing almost instantly upon the
death of Muhammed. And it should not be forgotten that Israelite religion,
even as far back as we can speak of it, did not emerge from a single indi-
vidual (Abraham notwithstanding), but was always a hodgepodge of ele-
ments from Canaanite, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian religions, along with
an admixture of a wide range of localized stories, practices, and beliefs.
The idea of a monolithic Israelite religion, progressing in lockstep down
the centuries, is a myth.
It is far more likely that the diversity of theological views present in
the canonical Pentateuch is evidence not of sequential evolutionary devel-
opment of religious thought but rather merely of precisely what it looks
like: theological diversity in ancient Israel. The idea that there were mul-
tiple, contradictory religious conceptions in Israel at the same time is not
at all difficult to accept: we may consider the wide divergences between
Deutero-Isaiah and Ezekiel, for example, or between Proverbs and
Ecclesiastes. This is not to mention that the theologies present throughout
the Hebrew Bible are essentially elitist; enough archaeological discover-
ies of local cultic sites, figurines, and other religious paraphernalia have
demonstrated that there was a widespread “popular” religion that existed
alongside the religion presented as normative in the biblical materials.
Indeed, as has long been recognized, the biblical screeds against various
nonnormative practices serve only to demonstrate the existence of such,
from Baal to the Queen of Heaven. The religion of ancient Israel was
always diverse.
The various theologies present in the Pentateuch should be seen as evi-
dence of the same phenomenon, especially as they seem to emerge from
distinct social settings, all of which existed for the vast majority of Israel’s
history: the royal court, prophetic circles, the cult. It is fallacious to assign
any of these strands of thought to what might be considered a particularly
appropriate moment in Israel’s history—for example, P to the post-exilic
period because at that time Israel was a hierocracy; after all, the Jerusalem
Returning the Promise to Its Canonical Setting 137

Temple existed in the preexilic period also, and there is no reason to think
that its priests would have been any less internally focused when it came
to describing the regulations of the cult in the seventh century than in
the fifth.21 Especially when we take into account the considerable evidence
that the strands of the Pentateuch underwent extensive internal develop-
ment—multiple layers within D or P, for example—it becomes clear that
each of these schools of thought had its own lengthy history, written and
rewritten over multiple generations. It is thus increasingly difficult to put
these theological views into any chronological order; all seem to have been
part of the religious fabric of ancient Israel across the centuries.
In this light, it is worth noting that the absolute dating of the penta-
teuchal sources is technically not the concern of the documentary theory.
The literary evidence points to four sources, and regardless of when any
of them was written, that evidence would not change. The relative dating,
however—which is another way of saying the literary relationships among
the sources—is important. Without an externally derived notion of evolu-
tionary development, there are no grounds for seeing any literary relation-
ship between the three major sources in Genesis–Numbers, J, E, and P.
None refers to another, none cites another, none interacts in any discern-
ible way with another. Each is referentially self-enclosed, internally coher-
ent, and almost entirely continuous. At the same time, however, it is clear
that D is familiar with and dependent on the J and E sources, in both narra-
tive and law, while H, the latest stratum of the P source, seems to be famil-
iar with and dependent on D and E.22 What is important to recognize about
this sort of dependence, however, is that both D and H were written not to
supplement their sources, but as alternatives to them. This distinction is
not trivial. For supplementation obliterates the independent existence of
the underlying text: a supplemented text remains a single text. Consider,
for example, the difficulties of recovering the ipsissima verba of a prophet
amid the various accretions. Critical scholarship may be able to delineate
original text from secondary layers, but in the precritical era, for all practi-
cal purposes, there could be no such division. The writing of an alternative
text, on the other hand, does not destroy the original. It creates not a single
text, but two texts, each of which can continue to have a life of its own
among the circles that value it. The composition of D did not negate J and
E; all three continued to exist, as is evident from the dependence of the
Deuteronomistic History on all three (indeed, on all four, including P).23
Thus even though there is evidence of some literary relationship between
certain pentateuchal sources, each remained an independent text.
138 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

To say that the documents of the Pentateuch were independent before


they were brought together, however, is not to say that the act of compila-
tion had no theological motivation. Thus before attempting to read the
canonical promise from a source-critical perspective, it is necessary to be
clear about just what sort of intentionality can be ascribed to the penta-
teuchal editor. For if the pentateuchal sources were combined in a man-
ner intended to direct the reader toward some particular interpretation, it
would be of the utmost importance for any canonical reading. To ignore
the message intended by the editor would be to read against the text. We
must, therefore, describe how the pentateuchal editor brought the sources
together, and what meaning, if any, emerges from that process.

The Combination of the Sources


The existence in the Pentateuch of four independent sources requires, at
the very minimum, one person to have combined them. No more than
that is necessitated in the abstract; in order to claim that there was more
than one compiler, therefore, it must be demonstrated that more than
one redactional hand is evident in the text. Just as the different penta-
teuchal authors are identifiable by their authorial distinctions—that is, in
how they go about telling their stories—so too different redactors should
be identifiable by redactional distinctions, that is, how they undertake the
process of combining the sources. If it could be shown that J and E were
combined in a manner different from the combination of J and P, for
example, then we would have a literary justification for assuming multiple
stages of redaction.
A close examination of the Pentateuch reveals, however, that this is
not the case: there is no difference between the combination of J and E
and the combination of J and P, or P and D, or any other set of sources.
From the broad picture to the smallest details, from Genesis 1 through
Deuteronomy 34, the sources have been put together in precisely the same
way throughout the entire text. Without any literary evidence of more than
one redactional hand, there is no compelling reason to claim that there
was more than one compiler.24
The import of this assessment should be clear: if the sources of the
Pentateuch were compiled in a single process, then they all must have
existed simultaneously and independently up to the point of their combi-
nation into the canonical text. None was culturally subsumed by another;
all four, it would seem, were preserved in some form and valued by some
Returning the Promise to Its Canonical Setting 139

segment of Israelite society. This points again to the notion that ancient
Israel maintained, over multiple centuries, a rather wide diversity of reli-
gious conceptions, and it is probably safe to say that the texts preserved in
the Pentateuch illuminate only a small part of the theological diversity that
must have existed in ancient Israel.
Because the figure of the compiler emerges only from the recognition
of the pentateuchal sources, the minimal description of what the compiler
did is nothing more than that he combined his sources into a single nar-
rative. It is not impossible that the compiler had some ideological agenda
in mind when undertaking the process of combination, but, as with the
notion of multiple redactors, anything beyond the minimum required by
the theory must be justified by the literary evidence. Thus in order to claim
that the combination of the pentateuchal sources was done from a particu-
lar theological perspective it is necessary to show where in the process of
redaction that perspective manifests itself.
There are effectively three ways that the compiler could have brought
his multiple sources together while imposing his own particular viewpoint
on the resulting whole. The redactor could have removed those passages
that contradicted his perspective, thereby creating a theologically harmoni-
ous text. It is manifestly clear that this did not happen in the compilation
of the Pentateuch: one the one hand, the canonical text is riddled with con-
tradictions, both narrative and theological; on the other hand, when the
sources are read independently, they flow so smoothly that it is difficult to
see where the compiler might have made such cuts.25 The compiler could
also have added passages that reflected his views, thereby shaping the
resulting whole by means of a series of guiding insertions. For this too the
evidence is nonexistent: those passages that can decidedly be attributed to
the redactor are very minimal, and contain no theologically important mes-
sages; they are brief words or phrases that serve only to better connect the
disparate sources into a unified plot.26 We may note again the model of the
Deuteronomistic Historian in Joshua–Kings, who, as has long been recog-
nized, frames his source texts with patently deuteronomistic speeches and
statements, elements that appear regularly throughout the corpus. There
are no similar insertions to be found in the Pentateuch—nothing nearly as
consistent in theme or frequency.27 Those most commonly cited as such
are, of course, the promise texts; yet as I have argued in the previous chap-
ters, these are firmly at home in their respective sources.
The third mechanism by which the compiler could have created a new
theological meaning in the combination of his sources would have been
140 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

to reorder them, either by the setting of one text before or after another
such that priority would be given to the presentation in one source over
another, or by placing two texts beside each other such that an entirely new
meaning might emerge. A commonly raised example of the former is the
placing of Genesis 1 at the beginning of the Pentateuch: it is argued that
by doing so the compiler betrayed his propriestly stance. The latter posi-
tion is exemplified by the claim that the situating of the nonpriestly epi-
sode of the golden calf in Exodus 32–34 between the two priestly passages
about the construction of the Tabernacle (Exodus 25–31; 35–40) creates a
meaningful sequence of divine command, disobedience, repentance, and
covenantal reestablishment.28
Neither of these propositions is supported by the text. We have already
seen above that P is not privileged above the other sources. More gener-
ally, as noted above, none of the sources is given regular priority over the
others: P may begin the Pentateuch, but it does not end it; J is granted
the lead position in introducing the story of Abraham; E is prominently
featured in its revelation of the divine name in Exodus 3; and D has the
last word in all legal matters. And while it is possible to find meaning in
the proximity of certain passages, this does not lead to the conclusion that
such meaning was intended by the redactor. For the example of Exodus
32–34 given above, for instance, once the redactor had equated Moses’s
ascent of the mountain to receive the tablets of the Decalogue in E with
Moses’s ascent of the mountain to receive the blueprint for the Tabernacle
in P (Exod 31:18), then the entire golden calf narrative, which takes place
while Moses is on the mountain, can come nowhere else but after Exodus
25–31; and since Moses’s final descent from the mountain in J and in E
must be the same as Moses’s final descent from the mountain in P (Exod
34:29), the construction of the Tabernacle in Exodus 35–40 could not come
anywhere but after Exodus 32–34. In every case where it appears that two
disparate passages create a larger meaningful whole by their sequential
placement in the canonical text, it is evident that, according to the nar-
rative assumptions of each source, there could be no other place for the
passages to be but beside each other in precisely that order.
This last observation leads to the recognition that in order to claim
a theological intentionality in the ordering of the pentateuchal sources
it is necessary to demonstrate that no other logic could be at work. Yet
the Pentateuch, from beginning to end, proceeds in perfect chronologi-
cal order: what is placed first in the text must come first chronologically,
and what is placed next is what must have happened next. At no point
Returning the Promise to Its Canonical Setting 141

is the chronology disturbed—indeed, it is quite the reverse: the very few


places where the compiler seems to have in fact moved a passage from
its original position in its source document, it is demonstrably for the
purpose of resolving what would have otherwise been a disturbance in
the canonical chronology.29 For example, it has long been recognized that
P’s notice of the destruction of the cities in the Dead Sea region originally
followed directly on the priestly description of the separation of Abraham
and Lot in Gen 13:12; yet in the canonical text, that notice has been moved
far later, to Gen 19:29, because that is where J narrates the destruction
of Sodom. Since the same place cannot be destroyed twice, the compiler
had to delay P’s announcement until it fit into the canonical chronology.30
Given the strict adherence to chronology in the ordering of the sources,
it is difficult to claim that there was any theological motivation at work:
between believing that in the process of ordering the sources chronologi-
cally some chance pockets of new interpretive meaning were created and
believing that in the process of ordering the sources theologically they
miraculously happened to also end up in perfect chronological order, the
former is surely the more likely option.
The lack of any theological intention in the process of compilation is,
ultimately, evident in the lack of any overarching theology in the Pentateuch
as a whole; every individual theological claim by one of the pentateuchal
sources is undercut by those of the others, such that no single source speaks
more loudly, no one perspective is given precedence in the final form.
The method of the compiler, then, as it emerges from the literary
analysis of the Pentateuch, was to preserve his sources as completely as
possible, both in their content and in their original internal order, while
striving simultaneously to create a chronologically consistent narrative
from beginning to end. With this process in mind, we can turn to con-
sidering the impact of the compiler’s method on our interpretation of the
final form.

The Theology of the Compiled Text


In the abstract, it is undoubtedly tempting to read some meaning into
the sequence of the promises—the ordering of the promises to Abraham
in Genesis 12, 15, and 17, for example.31 An argument could be made for a
marked progression from the more abstract promise of Genesis 12 through
the covenant ceremony of Genesis 15 and finally to the explicit bərît of cir-
cumcision in Genesis 17. Yet when the promise texts are recognized as
142 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

part of their respective sources, and when the method of the compiler is
taken into account, it becomes all too clear that there is no other order in
which these promise texts could have been set. The promise in Genesis 12,
from J, is given before Abraham has entered Canaan; indeed, it contains
the instruction to settle there, and it must have come first. The promise
in Genesis 15, from E, assumes that Abraham has no offspring at all, not
even Ishmael: “what can you give me, seeing that I shall die childless”
(Gen 15:2); it therefore must come before Genesis 16, in which Ishmael is
born. In Genesis 17, on the other hand, Ishmael is already thirteen years
old (Gen 17:25), and so must of course come after Genesis 16. As every-
where, the order of the promise texts is entirely contingent on the presup-
positions of the narratives in which they are embedded. None of the three
could possibly be put in any other canonical location; by their own words
they would present insurmountable narrative difficulties.
What this means from a practical interpretive perspective is that—at
least for someone considering the composition of the text to be an impor-
tant factor in its interpretation—it may be unwise to read too much into
the canonical sequence of the promise texts, as there was no theological
intentionality on the part of the compiler when they were put into their
present order. That said, there is some meaning to be derived from the
canonical Pentateuch—just not in the ordering of the sources. Rather,
the meaning emerges from the even-handed treatment of the sources by
the compiler, from the fact that each is allowed to speak its part fully, in its
own words and in its own way. The compiler of the Pentateuch took four
documents, with all their theological differences and disagreements, and
set the entirety of each of them into what became, either by intention or by
tradition, the central literary work of the Hebrew Bible.
That is to say, the compilation of the Pentateuch is nothing less than
a bold statement of theological impartiality. Ancient Israelite society
comprised a diversity of theological positions, and that diversity is repre-
sented in the text. The Pentateuch is a snapshot—or, better, an extended
exposure—of the multiplicity of Israelite perspectives on God and God’s
relationship with Israel. From a historical perspective, the existence of the
Pentateuch speaks to the abiding importance of these various theologies
over much of the span of Israel’s history. The fact that the Pentateuch was
taken up into tradition and given the prominence it has testifies to the
acceptability of this diversity for its ancient audience. This may not be par-
ticularly surprising, as they would have recognized, more readily than we
do, the manner in which the diversity in the text mirrored the diversity in
Returning the Promise to Its Canonical Setting 143

their own society. It is we who, with our own biases and predispositions,
desire to imprint the Pentateuch with a single identifiable theology; this
was evidently not of concern for either the compiler of the Pentateuch or
for its earliest tradents. Nor, for that matter, is it of concern for contem-
porary readers of the Bible as a whole: the presence in the canonical Bible
of both Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, for example, with their fundamentally
opposing views on the wisdom tradition, does not require and is not sus-
ceptible to any leveling into a unified statement. Both books are taken as
exemplars of biblical thought, and they are given equal authority as scrip-
ture. So too the sources of the Pentateuch.
From the perspective of one searching for theological meaning in the
Pentateuch today, recognition of its sources and of the process of its com-
pilation provides a clear lens through which the text may be appreciated—
one that does not try to explain away the diversity, but rather revels in
it. The theological value of the compilation of the Pentateuch lies in its
implicit permission to understand God’s relationship with humanity from
multiple perspectives. It speaks against any attempt to define that relation-
ship in one way to the exclusion of others. For all the conflict between its
constituent parts, the Pentateuch is fundamentally an irenic document.
Its reader is encouraged—or perhaps even required—to take multiple
conceptions of the divine into account; not to adjudicate between them
and hold up one against the other, but to hold them simultaneously, for all
of them have, by virtue of their compilation into a single text, been granted
equal authority.
In short, if one wants to read the canonical text in light of source-critical
analysis, the method of interpretation that the form of the text calls for
is not one in which individual passages are interpreted in light of those
adjacent to it from a different source, for the placement of the texts is
based on thoroughly nontheological rationales. Rather, we should appre-
ciate the broader claims made in each source, across the span of its con-
stituent passages, and read these broad claims alongside one another.
Perhaps ironically, recognition of the literary history of the text frees the
canonical reader from the need to account for the narrative contradictions
and allows instead for concentration on the larger issues presented by
the sources. For it was the whole of each source that was deemed wor-
thy of inclusion in the canonical Pentateuch, not just individual passages;
surely it was the distinctive overarching perspective in each document that
marked it as worthy, rather than the distinctive details of plot. P’s unique
presentation of Abraham as receiving the promise after Ishmael is born
144 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

hardly seems motivation enough for its inclusion in the Pentateuch; but
the uniquely priestly conceptualization of the promise as the fulfillment of
God’s design established at creation, as looking ahead to the future politi-
cal entity of Israel the nation, as separating Israel from others, and so
on—that is a compelling reason to include it. Details of plot are useful,
indeed necessary, for separating the sources of the Pentateuch; the broad
conceptual distinctions among those sources are useful for the interpreta-
tion of the final form of the text.
We may draw an analogy: if we can imagine four brightly colored
threads that have been randomly twisted together, it is certainly possible,
even probable, that in a few spots along the length of the whole the com-
bination of colors will be especially aesthetically pleasing; yet it would be
a mistake, knowing that they were intertwined randomly, to assume that
the creation of these small areas was the result of any intent to create
them. Rather, we should concentrate on how the decision to use those
four colored threads resulted in a whole greater than the sum of its parts,
on how the entire rope is made beautiful and meaningful by the selection
of those particular colors, and on how they interact with each other from
beginning to end. This, I posit, is the best way to think about the relation-
ships between the strands of the Pentateuch as well: not in small bits sub-
jectively selected, but in the presence of all four in the final work, and how
they play off of and illuminate each other throughout.
The fundamental point here is that we are dealing with sources, with
lengthy documents that contain developed arguments across their entire
lengths. In the early nineteenth century, scholars proposed what came to be
known as the Fragmentary Hypothesis: that the Pentateuch was composed
of small individual units that had been chronologically ordered by one or
more redactors.32 Within such a model, it would be far more reasonable,
even necessary, to think solely about the relationships between adjoining
textual blocks. Yet the Fragmentary Hypothesis quickly fell into disfavor
because it ignored the extensive interconnections between passages of the
Pentateuch. To read source-critically is to engage with the length of each
source, with the range of passages that it comprises, and with the kinds of
claims that can be made and expanded upon and nuanced over the course
of an extended, sophisticated text.
It is, of course, practically impossible to deal with the full scope of
each source in this or any other study of any reasonable length; yet, as
was demonstrated in chapter 4, even by looking at only a subset of each
source—in this case, the promise to the patriarchs, which as we have seen
Returning the Promise to Its Canonical Setting 145

is of fundamental importance for all of the pentateuchal authors—it is


possible to gain significant insight into the broader conceptions inherent
in the pentateuchal sources. And armed with those insights, it becomes
our task then to attempt to read those broader conceptions in a comple-
mentary fashion: not prioritizing one over another, but finding those areas
in which the views of one source can expand on or give specificity to those
of another; can illuminate unexplored aspects of another; can, when read
together with its pentateuchal counterparts, provide a more complete pic-
ture of Israel’s description of itself and its relationship with its god.
The presence in the Pentateuch of multiple divergent stances, on issues
of central importance, therefore calls for the reader’s active participation.
The reader seeking to make sense of the whole is invited to read the diver-
gences as complementary. This is not to say that all of the various positions
taken in the text are to be brought into a single overarching notion with
which all would agree, as such would seem to be largely impossible (and
any position with which all would agree is likely to be rather obvious, if not
in fact banal). Rather, it is to be recognized that no one strand is necessar-
ily comprehensive in its treatment, that when read together the different
voices make up a greater whole than any one of them taken individually.

Complementary Reading of the Promise


In what follows, I make some suggestions regarding ways in which the
promise texts in the Pentateuch, and the range of concepts inherent in
them as identified in chapter 4, may be read in a complementary fashion,
so that the interplay of the promise among the pentateuchal documents
adds to our appreciation and understanding of the final form of the text.
It should be stated from the outset that this is in no way a comprehensive
project, but is rather more programmatic. Because interpretation, espe-
cially of the canonical text, is so much a subjective process, it would be
impossible to capture every possible nuance or connection. Rather, in this
section I will simply draw out a few possible readings, a sample of what
might be done, as a potential model for others seeking to make construc-
tive use of source-critical analysis for canonical interpretation.

Defining Israel
For the priestly author, the separation of Israel from all the other peoples
of the earth is of paramount importance. It is anticipated in the act of
146 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

creation in Genesis 1, and formalized in P’s promise texts: through the


selection of Abraham and his lineage, through the blessing of fruitful-
ness and abundance, and through the emphasis on the family. The dis-
tinctiveness of Israel is given its clearest expression in the dwelling of
Yahweh in its midst, in the Tabernacle. Other nations, especially those not
of Abrahamic descent, are of little or no interest to P; even the standard
list of the Canaanite nations never appears in P. Israel is defined against
all others as God’s chosen people. The E source is also concerned with the
definition of Israel, yet goes about describing it differently: for E, Israel
is a people defined by its experience as “other,” as gērîm in Egypt. This
is made clear from the promise of Genesis 15 and those texts connected
with it, the rationales of the Covenant Code and the self-description of
Israel by Moses to outsiders in Exodus 18 and Numbers 20. Israel is not
defined against anyone in E; rather, it is defined by its own historical expe-
rience, one that is communicated to others. It is not so much that Israel is
uniquely chosen in E, it is that Israel has undergone a unique and forma-
tive experience. For J, while the special status of Israel is clear from the
selection of Abraham and his descendants, that selection is paired with
Israel’s own self-willed obedience to Yahweh’s universal laws. Moreover,
Israel’s relationships with other peoples, and its perceived status by those
peoples, is a recurring concern for J: the final stage of the divine-Israel
partnership expressed in J’s promise texts, beginning with Genesis 12, is
that all the other peoples of the earth should take Israel as a model for
blessing, and perhaps even for behavior.
The Pentateuch thus contains three distinctive concepts of how Israel
is to be defined to itself, to others, and for others. From P to E to J we
can see a broadening of perspective, a move from interiority to exteriority,
from a closed system to an open system. This is not to say that J’s position
is preferable to that of P; we are not faced with an either/or choice, but
rather with a range of views that are applicable in distinct situations and
that can be brought together into a more complete picture.
The priestly position implicitly poses the question, “what do we do that
makes us Israelites?” Its answer comes in the form of the promise, with
its requirements for both circumcision and membership in the Israelite
family (Genesis 17), and the legal and ritual obligations that identify a per-
son as Israelite and that, most importantly, guarantee the continued pres-
ence of Yahweh in the midst of the community. For E, the question is not
“what do we do?” but “who are we?” And for E, the answer is the experi-
ence of the Exodus, as anticipated in Genesis 15 and as set in the heart of
Returning the Promise to Its Canonical Setting 147

the civil laws. It is an answer not only for the Israelites themselves, but
also for any outsider who wants to know what defines the Israelite people.
J, for its part, can be seen as the answer to the question, “why are we?”:
not only because God chose Israel, but so that Israel could stand as a guide
for others, that they too might see what blessings derive from obedience
to the divine will.
Practical, historical, and ethical considerations are therefore raised
by each of the sources in turn. Together, they present a robust depic-
tion of Israel’s self-identification; without any one of them, we would
be left with a gap, an unanswered, because unasked, question. As they
are read together, they not only complement each other, but they can
be seen to implicitly expand each other at the same time. While only
E suggests how Israel is to define itself to others, and does so from a
historical perspective, it is possible to read P’s practical stance into E’s
outward message: Israel is a people who experienced the Exodus and
also a people with a prescribed set of rituals. One could even go so far
as to see P as counterintuitively expanding on E, opening the possibility
of membership in the community to nonnative Israelites: one can be an
Israelite not only by having experienced the Exodus, but also by adhering
to the rituals, by participating actively in the process of maintaining the
divine presence in Israel’s midst. Or the reverse: P’s concern with cor-
rect lineage, intended to keep Israel apart, can be made more inclusive
by E’s notion of having experienced salvation from unjust oppression
and the ethical demands that such salvation requires. J’s broad view of
Israel’s interactions with other peoples cannot be narrowed to fit into P’s
exclusivist perspective, as that would be akin to prioritizing P over J. Yet
both P and E can be read in light of J: just as J suggests that Israel will
be a model of behavior according to the divine will, so we might, reading
in a complementary fashion, consider adherence to the priestly ritual
legislation part of that modeling; so too we might consider that, as E sug-
gests, part of the means by which the divine message is spread involves
the recounting of Israel’s past, as a demonstration of the salvific benefits
that derive from the obedience central to J.
The identity of Israel is a central component of the promise tradition in
all three sources, J, E, and P, and in each the concepts established in the
promise extend throughout the document. When read not in isolation but
in tandem, not as opposing but as complementary, it is possible to find in
the Pentateuch a nearly comprehensive treatment of the issue, ranging
from internal to external, from practical to historical to ethical, presenting
148 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

the reader both with a variety of answers to discrete questions and with a
variety of avenues for reading them all together.

Israel’s Obligation
Just as there are three distinct views on Israel’s identity in the promise
texts of the Pentateuch, so too there are three identifiably different takes
on Israel’s selection as the recipient of the promise and the responsibili-
ties that that selection entails. In P, the promise is styled as a bərît, which,
as we have seen in chapter 4, should be understood not as a covenant
in the usual sense of the term, but rather as an unconditional promise.
Abraham and his descendants are selected from all the other peoples of
the earth, seemingly at random, to be the beneficiaries of God’s bless-
ing. All that is required of them, at least for the time being, is that they
belong to the specific lineage designated by God—from Abraham to Isaac
to Jacob, to the exclusion of Ishmael and Esau—and that they be circum-
cised as a reminder to God of his unilateral commitment to them. This sit-
uation changes only after the Exodus, when God’s rescue of the Israelites
from Egypt puts them under further obligation to obey the detailed ritual
laws that God prescribes at Sinai. Yet—explicitly according to H, and per-
haps implicitly according to P—even lack of obedience to these laws will
not result in the abrogation of the promise to the patriarchs, at least not
permanently.
For J, in contrast, Abraham and his descendants are worthy of the
promise and its blessings because unlike the other nations of the world
they alone maintain the universal laws established by Yahweh: the knowl-
edge of good and evil, Yahweh’s path. This is both the warrant for their
selection and the responsibility that ensues from it. Not only did Abraham
obey Yahweh and keep his charge, commandments, laws, and instructions
(Gen 26:5), but it was incumbent on him to do so: “I will bless you . . . and
you, be a blessing” (Gen 12:2). This responsibility devolves onto future
generations as well: “in order that he may instruct his children and his
posterity to keep the way of Yahweh” (Gen 18:19). And in E, the blessings
of the promise to the patriarchs are a reward not only for Israel’s obedi-
ence, their “fear of God,” but also for their trust that God will grant them
protection, wealth, and progeny—trust expressed by the regular repetition
of the phrase “fear not.” In neither E nor J is it at all clear that the prom-
ise is unconditional. Certainly for J it seems not to be, as the blessings
of the promise are wrapped up in the partnership between Yahweh and
Returning the Promise to Its Canonical Setting 149

Abraham, such that neither side can succeed without the other. Even for
E, despite its opening words—“Fear not, Abram, I am a shield to you; your
reward will be very great” (Gen 15:1)—the fulfillment of the promise seems
dependent on Israel’s continued trust in and fear of God. Even Abraham,
after all, is subject to a horrifying test of his fear, in Genesis 22, while the
generation of the Exodus must be given a direct experience of Yahweh in
order to confirm their fear. Both sides of E’s fear—obedience and trust—
appear to be in need of regular renewal.
Read independently, these various conceptions of Israel’s selection and
obligation seem at odds, or at least raise questions for the (Israelite) audi-
ence: is the promise unconditional and everlasting or not? what must be
done to maintain it? are the obligations general or specific? When they
are read as complementary, however, the distinctions are elided and the
points of contact highlighted and expanded.
The unconditionality of the priestly bərît is tempered by the need for
occasional renewal in E and further by J’s obligation on every generation
of Abraham’s descendants both to continue to uphold the partnership
with Yahweh and to instruct their offspring to do the same. The canoni-
cal promise does not permit Israel to let its guard down for an instant. At
the same time, the priestly bərît functions canonically as a safety valve of
sorts for Israel: while they must be vigilant—as P itself makes clear in its
ritual legislation—they can rest assured that Yahweh will never fully reject
them. The blessings of the promise may be withdrawn for a time, but as a
nation their status as promise recipient is firm. The two-sided coin of the
promise thus demands uninterrupted present obedience and also main-
tains the security of the future. Additionally, by incorporating the notion of
renewal from E, the canonical text allows for the possibility that Israel will
have the opportunity to reaffirm its commitment to God, perhaps even in
the very sorts of crises that would naturally lead to doubt as to whether God
has indeed abrogated the promise. Thus the opportunity for reaffirmation
blends with the fear of temporary divine withdrawal and the concomitant
reassurance that it is indeed only temporary, a reassurance that is put in
the clearest terms, at least canonically, by the refrain “fear not.”
The ritual laws are presented as an imposition in the wake of the
Exodus, both in P and in the canonical narrative; so too are the laws of
the Covenant Code, from E. Both of these codes serve to reify the previ-
ously abstracted notions of obedience in the nonpriestly sources. When E
mentions the fear of God before the laws (Exod 20:17), it clearly implies
obedience, yet the precise contours of that obedience are ill defined. Aside
150 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

from the two clear examples of Abraham in Genesis 22, who fulfills God’s
commands despite their abhorrent content, and the midwives in Exodus
1, who act on behalf of Israel as a whole, the exact nature of what it means
to “fear God” is left somewhat open: Abraham passes Sarah off as his wife
because he worries that “there is no fear of God in this place” (Gen 20:11),
but we are given no indication as to what particular practices Abraham is
worried about. Yet when Israel is given a theophany in order that the fear
of God “may ever be with you, so that you do not go astray” (Exod 20:17)
and those words are followed by Israel formally accepting the obligations
of the laws (Exod 24:3, 7), their meaning is made clear. Similarly, the
laws give shape to J’s rather open-ended notion of walking “in the way of
Yahweh.” The universal laws to which J refers by this phrase, and the other
expressions that connote the same thing, are nowhere explicitly laid out.
When the laws of E and P come into force after the Exodus, however, it is
made clear what is to be taught when Abraham, and by extension Israel,
is to “instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of Yahweh by
doing what is just and right” (Gen 18:19).
At the same time, the sense of imposition in the legal codes is mitigated
by the notion of natural law in J. Israel’s obedience is not only required by
Yahweh’s salvation from Egypt, but is taken on voluntarily from Israel’s
earliest days down to the present. The legal codes do not negate the natu-
ral law, but give it concrete expression. Every generation from Abraham
onward accepts the burden of obedience voluntarily, and passes it on to
the next. While for both P and E there is a distinct sense of periodization
in Israel’s history—the imposition of the laws in the wilderness marks a
new beginning, indeed perhaps the true beginning of Israel’s existence as
a people—the contribution of J insists on the elision of any divisions of
Israel’s past. The Israel that existed when Abraham uniquely worshipped
Yahweh is fundamentally unchanged down to the present, despite the laws.
Though the practices elaborated in the law codes are a new requirement,
the underlying motivation is not. J’s notion of divine–human partnership
is not eliminated at Sinai/Horeb; rather, it serves as a lens through which
to understand the purpose of the laws. It is by these means that both God
and Israel will be exalted.

Historical Scope
Because in the canonical text the promise to the patriarchs occurs over
and over again, often multiple times even with a single patriarch, it can
Returning the Promise to Its Canonical Setting 151

be difficult to discern clearly the differences in historical scope among the


promise texts. They all seem to be linked closely to the lives of the patri-
archs, and to the various moments in the patriarchs’ lives at which they are
delivered. Yet when the promise is read in the context of its independent
sources, as in the previous chapter, it becomes apparent that even while
the promise is given at a specific time and place in the patriarch’s life it
has, through its specific wording and its links to other texts from the same
source, a broader context. As we have seen, the precise scope of that con-
text differs significantly from source to source.
In J, the promise seems to be particularly of the narrative present: it
responds to significant situations in the patriarchs’ lives, and is accompa-
nied by or linked to the J refrain that God will “be with” the patriarch in
his time of immediate need. The future nation of Israel is implicit almost
exclusively in the readership of the text, but is not directly or indirectly
reflected in the promise itself. E, for its part, broadens the historical scope
of the promise beyond the patriarchs to the Exodus, and, it may be argued,
to Joshua and the conquest as well. Israel’s entire history, according to
E, consists of the giving and fulfillment of the promise, and insofar as
the readership of E sees itself as standing in that historical current, the
promise has resonance beyond its precise literary contexts. As for P, the
regular references to the patriarchs’ descendants as “nations” and “kings”
seem to have their most natural referent in the divided monarchy. With
the introduction of these common but weighty words into the received
promise tradition, the author of P makes a powerful connection between
the ancient promise to Israel’s ancestors and the contemporary state of
Israel as a nation. The political body of Israel is the living fulfillment of
God’s promise to the patriarchs.
When these distinct notions regarding the historical scope of the prom-
ise are recognized from a source-critical vantage point, an entirely new
window opens up into the reading of the canonical text. There is no ques-
tion of contradictions among the sources in this case, as none of the pro-
posed historical scopes is exclusive of any other. Their distinct emphases,
however, can be brought into fruitful conversation, such that the canonical
text presents the promise with greater depth and force than do any of the
sources individually.
On the most basic level, the coordination of all three presentations of
the promise covers the entire range of Israel’s history: from the present of
the patriarchs to whom the promise is given, through the broader narra-
tive of the Exodus and conquest, up to the reader’s present. The promise,
152 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

then, is effective from its initial statement to the present; it speaks equally
to every point in Israel’s history. Yet there is more that can be said.
E’s depiction of the promise as the structuring feature for Israel’s most
important historical events—the patriarchs, the Exodus, and the conquest—is
extended by P’s insistence on the fulfillment of the promise in the political
state of Israel. We, the intended readership, need not look to the narratives of
Israel’s early history to see the promise put into effect, for we too are its living
fulfillment. The present thus becomes yet another of Israel’s great moments;
the patriarchs, the Exodus, the conquest, and the present are all put on equal
footing. The past is made present, the historical thread unbroken. Even
though the giving of the promise proper ceases with the death of Jacob, its
force continues unabated through every stage of Israel’s history.
As E and P can be read together to create a dramatic sweeping view of
the promise working throughout Israel’s past and present, the J promise
adds a distinctly personal and immediate aspect. It may be that the nation
as a whole stands as the fulfillment of the patriarchal promise, but what of
the individual? To this J comes with the answer: the promise is not merely
a national statement, but applies to each Israelite, and particularly in his
time of need. It is a reassurance that God will care for each person, will
be with him. Just as the promise was given to the individuals Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, so too the promise functions for every Israelite individ-
ual thereafter. In combination with the broader connotations of E and P,
the individualistic aspect of J’s promise leads to an equation between the
Israelite and Israel: the nation is identified as the sum of its members, and
the individual as a necessary and irreducible part of the greater whole.
Furthermore, J’s connection of the promise to times of need adds
a distinctive element to the E and P promises. The links in E and P to
Israel’s triumphant historical moments indicate that those were (and are)
the patriarchal promise put into effect. To this J adds, in effect, all of the
moments in between: the times of crisis, the struggles, the hardships, both
personal and national. The promise is not just about triumph; it is about
the difficult road that leads to triumph. It is not merely a post hoc explana-
tion for success; it begins to take effect at the moment of yearning, with
the need for help. Indeed, as J makes clear, there is no success without
God’s assistance: as both the Tower of Babel story and the episode at the
end of Numbers 14 demonstrate, without God’s accompaniment human
endeavors are bound to fail, even to lead to distresses greater than those
initially felt. The J promise thus gives a personal and clarifying nuance to
the history of Israel as expressed in E and P.
Returning the Promise to Its Canonical Setting 153

The historical scope of the promise in the three sources is not, there-
fore, simply a temporal matter, or a parenetic issue. Rather, contained
within it are far more substantive theological claims. When these claims
are identified by reading each promise within its original source context,
and when they are then read as complementary aspects of the canonical
promise, the import of the historical scope is significantly broadened.

The Divine Plan


It is clear enough in all of the sources, and in the canonical text as well,
that both the giving and the fulfillment of the patriarchal promise are a
central part, if not in fact the central part, of God’s plan for Israel. Yet
precisely how that plan manifests itself differs from source to source. By
linking the promise to creation by means of the phrase “be fruitful and
multiply,” the priestly author suggests that the patriarchal promise, the
selection of Israel from among all other peoples, was embedded in the
divine plan from the very beginning. As with so much in P, the course of
history, in particular Israel’s history, is plotted out in advance, and what
happens is no more than the gradual unfolding of the divine plan. By con-
trast, in J it seems that the promise is given to Abraham only because the
rest of humanity was incapable of obediently following God’s will. In addi-
tion, J introduces the notion that even while events progress, seemingly
without extraordinary divine intervention, Yahweh is continuously work-
ing behind the scenes, as it were, to ensure the successes of his chosen
people. And in E we find the unique element of human foreknowledge of
events: the patriarchs know the course of the history to come. The divine
plan is revealed to them, at least in its broad outlines.
A central question for all three sources, then, is: what did the Israelites
know and how did they know it? According to E, they knew the divine plan
in some detail from the beginning; according to J, they knew only that
God would be working on their behalf, even without knowing how that
would manifest itself; and according to P, they knew nothing at all—it is
we, the readers, who are privy to the connection between Israel’s selec-
tion and creation, but Abraham cannot be expected to have heard in the
divine promise the resonances with God’s blessing of the first humans.
The central question in this regard for the canonical reader, however, is
not what the Israelites knew, but what we know, and how we can com-
bine these divergent concepts of the revelation of the divine plan into a
productive whole.
154 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

There are three levels of knowledge present in the canonical promise:


the past-oriented knowledge that the divine plan was set in motion from
creation; the present knowledge that God is working behind the scenes;
and the future-oriented knowledge associated with prophecy. To read them
all together is to see the workings of the divine plan from multiple angles,
even as the plan itself, that is, the fulfillment of the patriarchal promise,
remains the same. The temporal aspect of these modes of perception can
also lead to the understanding that the divine plan encompasses all time,
from creation into the indefinite future; or, taken another way, that the
divine plan is essentially timeless. The experienced now is a combination
of the present, the past, and the future; time blends together, setting the
promise even more clearly at the heart of God’s plan—God, who is the
very essence of timelessness.
What we understand about the working out of the divine plan in our
own present is also impacted by the complementary reading of these three
strains of thought. We can trust that whatever happens, it is part of God’s
design. We can trust that, though unseen, God continues to affect the
present. And we can live with the hope that the future will be revealed,
that the divine plan will be made known in some way. The very existence
of a divine plan is cause for hope; the different ways of accessing it give
that hope particular shape and substance.
The canonical combination of the promises also addresses the ques-
tion of how each individual can gain insight into the divine plan. That is,
the variety of options presented in the canonical text speaks to the variety
of individual experiences of the deity. For some, God’s intentions are made
manifest, through sudden insight or, in some cultures, through authentic
prophecy. Yet for the vast majority of people, such direct insight is unat-
tainable; they, however, can rest easy knowing that, despite God’s apparent
abstention from intervening in daily life, God is “with them” in the most
important sense. Even this innate sensing of God’s presence, however,
is certainly not held in common by all. Thus even for those who seem
to live without any knowledge or innate sense of God’s will, there is the
indirect understanding that God set the basic course of history from the
very beginning, and that our lives are part of the continuous working-out
of God’s intentions.
This aspect of the promise leads inexorably to the ever-present ques-
tion of free will. If God’s plan was set in motion from creation, if it is
made known in advance, if God is continuously working to bring it to
pass, then what part do we play? Even as the ultimate fulfillment of the
Returning the Promise to Its Canonical Setting 155

promise is essentially never in doubt, however, all three traditions, in


their own ways, clearly maintain humanity’s central role. In E, though
the patriarchs are granted the knowledge of what is to happen, of God’s
eventual salvation of Israel, the path to that end is left open. Israel will
return from Egypt, that much is clear; yet how it gets there, and how it
gets back, is unknown. It is perhaps not coincidental that it is in E that
the human element of the Exodus is emphasized: while in J God says to
Moses, “I have come down to rescue [Israel] from the Egyptians” (Exod
3:8), and P says, “I will redeem you with an outstretched arm” (Exod 6:6),
in E God tells Moses, “I will send you to Pharaoh, and you will free my
people, the Israelites, from Egypt” (Exod 3:10). And it is in E that the
people are given a choice: they are presented with God’s laws, and they
must determine to follow them, as they do: “All the things that Yahweh
has commanded we will do!” (Exod 24:3).
For J, God’s behind-the-scenes support is guaranteed, but is contin-
gent upon correct behavior. This is evident from the episode at the end
of Numbers 14 mentioned above, and may in fact be traced back to the
very selection of Abraham in Genesis 12: for it is implied in J that if all of
humanity had followed God’s universal laws, then there would have been
no need for Abraham and his descendants to be specially chosen; God’s
blessings would have devolved on all of humanity equally. It is because of
Abraham’s obedience that God is with him and his descendants. This is
the basic point of the divine–human partnership in J, after all: that God’s
support and protection and blessing are contingent on Abraham’s being
“a blessing” (Gen 12:2).
P is perhaps most susceptible to the fear that there is no free will, since
it is in P that the course of history seems to have been established already
at creation. Yet P makes abundantly clear that while the bərît will not be
abrogated, and while God will never permanently abandon his people,
Israel must constantly work to maintain the bərît in the present. P’s God is
not averse to punishing Israel when they are disobedient, or to threaten-
ing to remove his presence from their midst until they have learned their
lesson. More than any of the other sources, in fact, P is absolutely clear
that the maintenance of the bərît and the divine presence is a constant
effort; this is practically the sole meaning of the entire corpus of ritual
legislation.
Thus all three strands, and the canonical whole that their combination
creates, are united in the conviction that even while the ultimate fulfill-
ment of the promise is assured, the means of achieving it are firmly in
156 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

Israel’s hands. This is both a comfort and a threat, both an assurance and
a responsibility. We can be secure in the knowledge that the divine plan
is set, and its future fulfillment certain; yet we must constantly strive to
bring it to pass in the present.
In the preceding section I have taken four topics of central theological
importance to the understanding of the patriarchal promise—the iden-
tity of Israel, Israel’s obligation, historical scope, and the divine plan—
and explored some of the ways that the diverse treatments of these topics
across the pentateuchal sources can be brought together in a complemen-
tary reading of the canonical text so as to create a wide range of potential
theological readings. The divergent perspectives of the sources can, as I
hope to have demonstrated, serve to instill in the reader not necessarily a
sense of internal contradiction in the text but rather a sense of wholeness;
the fullness of humanity’s experience of the divine cannot be captured
by a single author with a single worldview, but rather is brought to light
by the combined and even-handed reading of multiple worldviews. The
interpreter looking to treat the canonical text need not consider source
criticism the enemy, need not treat the documentary theory as innately
anti-theological. Commitment to finding meaning in the final form of the
text does not require commitment to the authorial unity of the final form.
Meaning for the whole can emerge from the acknowledgment and appre-
ciation of the voices that make up that whole.33
As already noted, the suggestions raised above are in no way compre-
hensive or exclusive; not only are there undoubtedly many other, even
entirely opposing, ways to understand each of these issues, but there are
surely many other topics that could be discussed in equally fruitful ways.
The point here was not to present a complete picture, as such may in fact
be impossible, but rather to provide a template for reading the canonical
promise in light of its sources. The method of interpretation promoted
here is one that takes seriously the form of the canonical text: its com-
bination, without prejudice, of divergent theological positions into a
single authoritative whole. The Pentateuch, by its very composite nature,
encodes a basic respect for all the different voices that make up a culture,
be it the ancient culture from which the text emerged—that is, those who
effected this combination and the audience for whom it was intended—or
the subsequent cultures of those readers who claim the Pentateuch as a
central text of the scriptural canon. To read the Pentateuch with its com-
posite nature in mind is both to closely identify and understand its indi-
vidual components and to value the fact that all of those voices are equally
Returning the Promise to Its Canonical Setting 157

fundamental to the final form. Without each of the pentateuchal sources,


there is no Pentateuch; without treating each of the pentateuchal sources
as having equal say in the interpretation of the final form, it is impossible
to do justice to the intention of the text itself.
These complementary readings of the patriarchal promise were surely
not intended by any of the original authors, nor, as stated above, is it likely
that they were intended by the compiler of the Pentateuch. Yet they legiti-
mately emerge from the interplay of the sources in the canonical text. The
compilation of the sources to form the Pentateuch is the textual record
of the compilation of ancient Israel’s diverse societal groups, with their
unique perspectives, into a unified Israelite people, with a single text at
their theological center. As the descendants of that unifying tradition, it is
reasonable to propose that our task as interpreters is to constantly recre-
ate the process of combination, bringing to it, of course, our own values
(while still being restrained by the claims of the texts themselves). The
theology of the Pentateuch is a constructive one.
I do not wish to be misunderstood as arguing that the method
suggested here is the only authentic or productive way to read the
Pentateuch. I want only to make the point that the source-critical analy-
sis of the text need not be destructive of canonical meaning. It can, to
the contrary, add significant depth and nuance to our understanding
of both the undeniable differences and continuities of thought pres-
ent in the Pentateuch; and these closer understandings can, in turn,
lead the way to a new and fruitful final-form exegesis. Reading source-
critically—and then applying the insights of source-critical reading to
the final form—brings together all of the benefits of both canonical and
literary-historical readings while effectively overcoming the interpretive
difficulties of each when undertaken on its own.
Conclusion

as laid out in the introduction, this book has had three main aims: to
examine the patriarchal promise in the Pentateuch from a variety of
angles, both canonical and literary-historical; to highlight and attempt to
overcome some of the methodological difficulties inherent in the standard
documentary and nondocumentary approaches to the promise, and by
extension to the entire Pentateuch; and to use the promise as a template
for proposing a new method of canonical theological interpretation, one
that engages with the literary-historical evidence.
From the perspective of the canonical Pentateuch, the patriarchal
promise is the guiding force behind the entire narrative. At the moment
that Abraham emerges on the scene, Yahweh promises to make him into
a great nation, a promise that by necessity involves the inseparably linked
aspects of progeny and land. The rest of the Pentateuch is nothing other
than the story of how that promise comes to be fulfilled—through the
lives of the patriarchs, with all the very human obstacles that must be over-
come, until their eventual growth into a numerous people, and through
the life of that people Israel as they make their way, haltingly and in the
face of nearly constant threats to survival, to the promised land.
The story of the promise is not one among many in the Pentateuch. It
is the sole story of the Pentateuch. The narrative is filled with individual
episodes, to be sure. But each of those episodes is self-contained, raising a
problem to be overcome—famine, family conflict, external threat, marriage,
thirst—and resolving it reasonably quickly. These episodes are perfectly
good stories, but they are not the story. And there are of course larger com-
plexes, most significantly that of the Exodus and the wilderness wandering.
But that narrative complex comprises only parts of the books of Exodus and
Numbers, and obviously has nothing at all to do with the patriarchal cycles
in Genesis. What’s more, even the extended narrative of the Exodus and wil-
derness wandering is initiated and driven by the promise: “I will bring you
into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Exod 6:8).
Conclusion 159

The promise is the only aspect of the Pentateuch that is introduced at


the beginning of the narrative and continues through its entire length.
It introduces a problem to be overcome—how will God transform one
man, Abraham, into a fully-fledged nation—and that problem is not
resolved in one episode, or one complex, but only over the course of the
Pentateuch as a whole. Once the promise narrative is set in motion, the
Pentateuch cannot end until it has been fulfilled, with the expansion of
Abraham’s descendants at the transition from Genesis to Exodus, and
with the beginning of the conquest of the land at the end of Numbers
and Deuteronomy. As the only question that remains open until the end
of the Pentateuch, the promise subsumes every individual episode and
every larger complex within it. For it means that each episode and com-
plex is not isolated but is rather colored by the additional and overriding
concern of the promise. A given episode is not, for instance, just about
marriage; it is about marriage and the promise. Not just about external
threat, but about external threat and the promise. Moments come and
go—the promise remains constant.
From a narratological perspective, the Pentateuch as a whole addresses
the question of whether the promise will come to be fulfilled. Yet from the
perspective of the reader, whether ancient or modern, the answer is already
known. Whenever the text was written, and certainly whenever it has been
read since, the knowledge of Israel’s existence and its settlement in the
land is taken for granted. The audience’s question is therefore not whether
the promise will be fulfilled, but how—overcoming what obstacles, and by
what means. In other words, the promise is not merely a plot element, but
contains the fundamental message of the narrative. That message is God’s
power to bring about what he has promised. It is a message that is not
bound to any specific historical time or place; it is, in fact, not even bound
to the tradition of the promise. Yet the promise expresses it fully, extend-
ing it over a diverse range of episodes, from intimate to national, thereby
ensuring that it is applicable for everyone in every place and time.
What is true of the promise in its canonical setting is equally true for
the promise as it is manifested in the individual sources. Indeed, the
promise carries even more weight in the context of the pentateuchal docu-
ments, as its particular narrative setting and literary expression in each
become of great interpretive significance. Ironically perhaps, the history
of scholarship, be it documentary or nondocumentary, has obscured in
one way or another the intimate and intricate links between the promise
160 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

and the sources to which it is central. Classical documentary scholarship


deems a large number of the nonpriestly promise texts to be secondary
insertions, on three basic flawed methodological grounds. First, that the
references in one promise text to another are a sign of a later hand—an
argument that, at least in the context of ostensibly continuous documents,
makes little sense. Second, that many promise texts are easily removed
without damaging the flow of their literary contexts—a judgment which
can be made for virtually every verse in the Pentateuch, and thus holds
no real explanatory power. And third, that some promise texts seem to be
“deuteronomic” in style—a claim that neither holds up under close scru-
tiny nor takes into account the possibility that the deuteronomic passages
in question may in fact be based on the promise texts, rather than the
other way around. Not only are these analyses faulty on their own terms,
they have also been applied inconsistently within the nonpriestly corpus,
and have not been applied at all to the priestly promise texts for which they
should theoretically have worked just as well. Most importantly, perhaps,
the classical documentary approach provides no explanation for why these
promise texts should have been inserted in the first place.
The nondocumentary approach, on the other hand, provides a clear
theological rationale for the secondary promise texts, as a means of bring-
ing together originally disparate textual blocks into a theologically unified
complex. Yet this approach is founded on the a priori decision that there
were in fact originally disparate textual blocks that required secondary
redactional linking, a decision that is based on the tradition-historical work
particularly of Noth, but that differs radically from Noth in equating pre-
literary traditions with purely literary units. Further, the nondocumentary
approach requires the biblical authors to have been dramatically restricted
in their ability to vary their expression of the promise, such that slight dif-
ferences in word order, binyan, or lexical choice are taken as evidence of
distinct hands, rather than as evidence of authorial stylistic freedom. As
with the classical approach, so too in nondocumentary scholarship the
criteria used to determine layers within the nonpriestly promise texts are
not equally applied to the equivalent priestly passages.
While it is clear enough that the promise tradition can be separated
from the various other traditions with which it has been combined, this is
not in itself evidence that the promise is a secondary addition on the liter-
ary level. To make such an argument requires demonstrating not simply
that a promise text can be removed from its narrative context, but that it
needs to be removed. Yet when we take each promise text individually, it
Conclusion 16 1

becomes clear that in fact virtually every promise text is well integrated
into its literary context on the lexical, syntactic, structural, and thematic
levels, and moreover that removing the promise frequently produces a
resulting text that is either syntactically or narratologically problematic.
While the close integration of a promise into its context could in theory be
taken as the work of a particularly sensitive redactor, such a conclusion is
by no means required. If a well-integrated passage is the sign of a second-
ary hand, then what would a single-authored text look like? The literary
indications of a secondary insertion—contradiction, syntactic confusion,
distinctiveness of narrative claim or theme or theology—are markedly
absent from the promise texts. If the promise texts are deemed secondary,
it is not for any literary reason.
In order to justify any conclusions regarding the groupings of the non-
priestly promise texts—whether according to the documentary sources or
according to redactional layers—the promise texts must be examined on
their own, independently of any arguments to be made about their contexts.
That is, one cannot attribute a promise text to J because it is situated in a J
context, or to a particular redactional layer because certain texts are deemed
to have been in need of secondary linking. Groupings of the promise, when
taken independently, should proceed on two grounds. First, does one prom-
ise text contradict or repeat a previously given promise in a way that would
present a narrative difficulty? For example, Genesis 12–13 and Genesis 15
each present the promise as if it were given for the first time. Second, does a
passage align, in its situating of the promise within the broader patriarchal
narrative and in its focus on specific concepts, with some promise passages
but not others? Thus rather than concentrate on the minor details of style,
which can be part of a single author’s artistic repertoire, it is more impor-
tant to focus on those ideas that are unique to certain sets of promise texts,
such as blessing, kingship, or references to Egypt. When the nonpriestly
promise texts are analyzed from these two perspectives, they fall into two
groups, each internally consistent in terms of their narrative claims and
their thematic presentations. The two groups align exactly with the classical
documents J and E. When the promise texts are then read in light of their
documentary contexts, it becomes clear that they contain numerous impor-
tant links to other parts of their respective sources. Not only do they fit their
sources literarily; they can be seen to encode a wide range of thematic and
theological concepts unique to the sources in which they are found.
Recognition of the deeper interpretive significance of the promise
when read in light of the pentateuchal sources opens the way for what may
162 t he promise t o t he pa t r i a rc hs

be the most controversial argument made above: that the source-critical


readings of the promise can be combined with a canonical approach to
construct novel theological interpretations of the Pentateuch as a whole.
There is no doubt that, in the theoretical sense, the literary-historical and
final-form methods are fundamentally separate: one attempts to under-
stand how the text came to be as it is, and the other to make sense of
the text as it is. Yet this difference in basic methodological aim does not
mean that the two approaches cannot inform each other in productive
ways. The source-critical theory reveals more clearly the individual theo-
logical conceptions that are preserved, quite intentionally, in the canonical
text. Attention to these distinct voices does not entail any disregard for the
final form; rather, it takes seriously the shape of the canonical text and the
choices made by the figure or figures who brought the canonical text into
being. Instead of flattening the canonical Pentateuch so as to fit all of its
disparate elements into a uniform and thereby necessarily almost banal
interpretation, using source-critical results creates a far rougher and more
interesting text, one that in its variety of concepts and nuances better rep-
licates both the world that created the text and the worlds of its readers.
When read in this way, the centrality of the patriarchal promise for
the canonical Pentateuch is not diminished, but further articulated. The
theology of the promise continues to undergird the entire Pentateuch, but
more fully—now the promise means far more than just progeny and land,
but entails all of the various unique theological concepts encoded in the
individual sources and brings them into fruitful conversation. The result
is a true pentateuchal theology: not any external notion imposed on the
text, but an even-handed appreciation and combination of the full range
of notions preserved in the text. If this is a challenging process, well it
should be. If it is necessarily subjective to a lesser or greater degree, there
can hardly be any objection to that: the Pentateuch, and particularly the
patriarchal promise so central to it, has spoken to disparate people across
the centuries and around the world. It is not dogmatic; it is ever open to
persistent inquiry.
Notes

i n t r oduc t ion

1. Quotes from the Bible throughout the book are based on the NJPS translation.
2 . For the sake of ease, I have everywhere rendered the name as “Abraham,” rather
than using the shorter form, “Abram,” found before Gen 17:5; similarly, I always
refer to “Sarah,” not “Sarai” (see Gen 17:15).
3. See, e.g., Ber. Rab. 95.3.
4 . Ber. Rab. 44.14.
5. On the rabbinic perspective on the patriarchal promise, see A. Goshen-Gottstein,
“The Promises to the Patriarchs in Rabbinic Literature,” in Divine Promises to
the Fathers in the Three Monotheistic Religions, ed. Alviero Niccacci (Jerusalem:
Franciscan, 1995), 60–97. See particularly the following: “The patriarchs are
now the ideal representatives of a lifestyle in which we all participate” (89).
6. See, e.g., Benno Jacob, The First Book of the Bible: Genesis, trans. Ernest I. Jacob
and Walter Jacob (New York: Ktav, 1974), 84: “God chose Israel as his people for
the sake of the fathers.”
7. See also Luke 1:73; Gal 3:16.
8. See also Gal 3:6–29.
9. See also Rom 9:8; Gal 4:28; Eph 2:12–13.

chap ter 1

1. See, even in canonical treatments of the promise (rather than those attempt-
ing explicitly to isolate the constituent earlier elements on which the canoni-
cal promise is based, on which see chapter 2 below), David J. A. Clines, The
Theme of the Pentateuch, 2nd ed., Journal for the Study of the Old Testament,
Supplements 10 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 29; Terence E.
Fretheim, The Pentateuch, Interpreting Biblical Texts (Nashville: Abingdom,
1996), 95–99; R. Norman Whybray, Introduction to the Pentateuch (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 10.
1 64 Notes on pages 8–11

2 . E. A. Speiser, “‘People’ and ‘Nation’ of Israel,” Journal for Biblical Literature 79


(1960): 157–63; Ronald E. Clements, “‫ גוי‬gôy,” in Theological Dictionary of the
Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 2:426–33.
3. See Clements, “‫ גוי‬gôy,” 2:429: “While the extended family of Abraham’s
descendants naturally constitutes an ‘am, it requires a territorial acquisition
and a political structure before they can truly form a goy among the other goyim
of the world.”
4 . Clines acutely notes, however, the implicit linking of land and family in Gen
12:1: “What kind of land can it be that will replace ‘your land’ . . . the land of
Abram’s family and father’s house, except a land that will become his land and
the land of his family-to-be, the land where he himself will become the head of
a father’s house?” (Theme, 31).
5. See Paul R. Williamson, Abraham, Israel, and the Nations: The Patriarchal
Promise and Its Covenantal Development in Genesis, Journal for the Study of the
Old Testament Supplements 315 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000),
133–35; Keith N. Gr üneberg, Abraham, Blessing, and the Nations: A Philological
and Exegetical Study of Genesis 12:3 in Its Narrative Context, Beihefte zur
Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 332 (Berlin: de Gruyter,
2003), 162–65.
6. This material gain is often assumed by scholars to be specifically that of fertil-
ity, as in Genesis 1 (see, e.g., Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11, trans. John J.
Scullion; CC [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994], 139–40); yet this assumption is, to
my mind, overly restrictive.
7. Note that the book of Isaiah picks up on this clearly: “Look to Abraham your
father, and to Sarah who bore you / For he was one when I called him, but I
blessed him and made him numerous” (Isa 51:2). See also Isa 44:3.
8. Thus Clines subsumes “the promise of God’s blessing” under an even
broader concept, the promise “of a relationship with God” (Theme, 29). This
seems to me a relatively modern concept, and not one that would have been
comprehended in such abstract terms by an ancient Israelite. Clines fur-
ther includes under this broader heading “the promise of the covenant,”
which, to my mind, simply does not exist; the covenant is not promised as
something for the future, it is given in the immediate present, with future
implications—implications that are, as we will see below, identical with the
patriarchal promise.
9 . Clines attempts to distinguish between a promise of “being with” and a
subset of that promise that he terms “guidance” proper (Theme, 36). This
seems to me to be overanalyzing—all of his examples come in the context
of movement from one place to another, and all are contextually bound,
with no continuing force beyond the journey in question. As noted above,
not every divine promise is necessarily to be equated with the patriarchal
promise.
Notes on pages 12–17 1 65

10. See Clines, Theme, 31, who makes a similar statement (though he sees three
elements inherent in the promise, rather than two): “For the . . . elements are
unintelligible one without the other.”
11. In the following discussion, there is some significant overlap with the treatment
of Clines, Theme, 48–65. Clines, however, is interested there mostly in dividing
the Pentateuch into three parts, aligned with his division of the promise into three
elements: progeny (Genesis), divine–human relationship (Exodus–Leviticus), and
land (Numbers–Deuteronomy). This division of text and theme allows Clines to
find meaning in, for example, the laws in Numbers that are specific to the post-
conquest period, and are thus about “the land.” For our purposes, however, it is
the plot that is in question, not the thematic arrangement of the Pentateuch—an
arrangement that is, to my mind, at least partially artificial.
12 . See Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1979), 151: “All the individual stories of the Fathers have now been
framed within a bracket of eschatology.”
13. Closely aligned with the barrenness of the matriarchs as an obstacle to the
fulfi llment of the promise is the problem of the age of the patriarchs and matri-
archs. Frequently barrenness is not explicitly mentioned, but rather the impos-
sibility of conception and childbirth at a greatly advanced age, as in Gen 17:17;
18:11–12. This too is a “natural” challenge to be overcome by God’s power. It is
important to note that the division between “natural” and “divine” is emphati-
cally a modern one, and not a biblical one: in biblical terms, God is clearly
responsible, both in the active and reactive sense, for what we term “nature,” be
it weather or illness. Yet there is also a distinction made in the Bible between
those aspects of nature that are circumstantial and those that are the direct
result of divine intervention, and the barrenness of the matriarchs fits into the
former category (while the barrenness of Abimelech’s kingdom in Gen 20:17–
18, by contrast, is an example of the latter).
14 . Note that it is only the fi rst of these episodes that can be easily read in light of
the promise; in the parallel stories of Genesis 20 and 26, Isaac and Jacob have,
respectively, already been born (contra Clines, Theme, 48).
15. See Whybray, Introduction, 55: “It is the uncertainty both about survival and
about the birth of an heir, apparently despite the promises which God has
made, that constitutes the main drama of the patriarchal history. Time and
again these are placed in danger in one way or another, creating a dramatic
suspense. Each of these situations is then resolved by God’s intervention, often
by what we should call a miracle, only to be succeeded by another.”
16. See Walter Brueggemann, An Introduction to the Old Testament: The Canon and
Christian Imagination (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 45: “The
story is told so that the account of the family cannot be narrated apart from the
sometimes overt and sometimes hidden work of God who has promised, willed, and
guaranteed the well-being of the family” (italics original).
1 66 Notes on pages 19–24

17. We may also include Balak in this list, who wants to wage war against Israel but
requires that Balaam curse them fi rst (Num 22:6).
18. The numerous interpretations of the Pentateuch, from a variety of view-
points, that make a significant point of the fact that it does not include the
conquest proper are, in my opinion, not taking full account of the inevitability
with which the conquest and settlement in the land are presented. (Clines,
Theme, 107–26, exerts much energy in fi nding a theological point to the lack
of fi nality in the conclusion of the Pentateuch before the conquest of the land,
essentially landing on the very open-endedness of the Pentateuch and the
promise as a meaningful message about living in a state of existential hope.)
The fi nal word on this in the Pentateuch belongs obviously to Deuteronomy,
which is emphatic in its claim that the Israelites will certainly possess the
land: “Hear O Israel: you are about to cross the Jordan to go in and dispos-
sess nations greater and more populous than you” (Deut 9:1; and see also the
many times that Deuteronomy introduces material with the positive statement
“when Yahweh your God brings you into the land”—Deut 6:10; 7:1; 11:29, and
variations thereon throughout). Readings that present the fulfi llment of the
promise as being somehow in doubt at the end of the Pentateuch ignore these
defi nitive statements.
19 . See Childs, Introduction, 151: “In spite of the enormous variety within the
individual traditions which the canonical process has retained, the por-
trayal of the patriarchs has been refocused about their one role as bearers of
Israel’s hope.”
20. It may be noted that the primeval history of Genesis 1–11 has gone undiscussed
here. The connections between the primeval history and the promise will be
drawn out in chapter 4.
21. Clines, Theme, 19–23.
22 . Here and throughout I translate both the niphal and the hithpael forms of
“bless” in this context as “bless themselves,” following the basic hithpael
meaning, rather than the passive niphal meaning of “be blessed.” I follow
many before me in fi nding the reflexive meaning more probable. The paral-
lel passages in Genesis (18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 28:14) and Jeremiah (4:2) provide
the key to understanding the semantics here. Including Gen 12:3, three of
these six passages use the niphal of b-r-k (Gen 12:3; 18:18; 28:14), and three the
hithpael (Gen 22:18; 26:4; Jer 4:2). Since the context is the same in all cases,
it stands to reason that the meaning of the phrase should be the same as well.
Though there are numerous examples in the Bible of niphal verbs that take
a reflexive meaning, there are virtually no hithpaels that are to be under-
stood as passive; see Joel S. Baden, “Hithpael and Niphal in Biblical Hebrew:
Semantic and Morphological Overlap,” Vetus Testamentum 60 (2010): 33–44.
Thus it seems almost certain that the niphal here should be understood as
reflexive.
Notes on pages 24–27 167

23. The impact this sort of flattening of language has on interpretation can be seen
clearly in Clines’s presentation of the pentateuchal texts that speak to each of
his three parts of the promise (progeny, land, and relationship with God): he
combines every reference to progeny, for example, under one heading, and pro-
ceeds to discuss the promise in these broad terms without any effort to make
meaning from the specific verbal instantiations attested under the heading
(Clines, Theme, 31–65).
24 . On the lack of methodological antagonism between the two approaches, see
Joel S. Baden, “The Tower of Babel: A Case Study in the Competing Methods
of Historical and Modern Literary Criticism,” Journal of Biblical Literature 128
(2009): 209–24.

chap ter 2

1. This remains the dominant theory, it should be noted, everywhere except


continental Europe (on which see below, Contemporary Nondocumentary
Scholarship).
2 . Although Genesis 15 has always been recognized as a source-critically diffi-
cult chapter, the majority of classical scholars, though admitting the inherent
uncertainty of their analysis, largely agree that Genesis 15 was a combination of
J and E, and that the promise in 15:5 belongs definitively to E. On this (and the
assignment of Gen 12:1–3 to J), cf. Benjamin W. Bacon, The Genesis of Genesis,
rev. ed. (Hartford: Student Publishing Company, 1893), 120, 124–25; August
Dillmann, Genesis Critically and Exegetically Expounded (Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark, 1897), 2:8–15, 53–56; J. Estlin Carpenter and C. Harford-Battersby, The
Hexateuch According to the Revised Version (New York: Longmans, Green, 1900),
2:18–19, 22; S. R. Driver, The Book of Genesis, 12th ed. (London: Methuen, 1926),
144–45, 174–75; John Skinner, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis,
2nd ed., International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1930),
242–43, 276–77.
3. This passage was generally viewed as belonging to E. Cf. Julius Wellhausen,
Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments
(Berlin: G. Reimer, 1885. Repr., Berlin: de Gruyter, 1963), 60; Abraham Kuenen,
An Historico-Critical Inquiry into the Origin and Composition of the Hexateuch,
trans. Philip H. Wicksteed (London: MacMillan, 1886), 146; W. E. Addis, The
Documents of the Hexateuch, 2 vols. (London: David Nutt, 1892), 1:104–105;
Bacon, Genesis, 223; Driver, Genesis, 400; Skinner, Genesis, 536. Carpenter and
Harford-Battersby stand virtually alone in attributing the verse to J (Hexateuch,
2:79).
4 . Generally acknowledged as J; cf. Benjamin W. Bacon, The Triple Tradition of
the Exodus (Hartford: Student Publishing Company, 1894), 151; Carpenter and
Harford-Battersby, Hexateuch, 2:132; A. H. McNeile, The Book of Exodus, 2nd
1 68 Notes on pages 28–31

ed. Westminster Commentaries (London: Methuen, 1917), xxxvii; S. R. Driver,


The Book of Exodus, Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1918), 357.
5. Kuenen, Hexateuch, 147.
6. Wellhausen, Composition, 23–24.
7. This problem with Wellhausen’s theory was recognized already by Dillmann,
Genesis, 2:27.
8. Hermann Gunkel, Genesis, trans. Mark E. Biddle, Mercer Library of Biblical
Studies (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997), 201–2.
9. Gunkel, Genesis, 163, 192.
10. Gunkel, Genesis, xxxiii. Cf. also Gunkel’s assessment in “Israelite Literary
History,” Water for a Thirsty Land, ed. K. C. Hanson (Minneapolis: Fortress,
2001), 34: “[The ancient listener’s] receptive power was very limited . . . The most
ancient Israelite ballad is contained in one or perhaps two long lines—that was
all the average listener of the day could grasp at one time.”
11. Gunkel, Genesis, 294.
12 . Gunkel, Genesis, 296. Though only Gunkel made explicit that cross-reference
is a criterion for a later dating in regard to the patriarchal promises, and it
would thus be tempting to read this as a view uniquely his own, a number of
classical critics made similar judgments about other parts of the Pentateuch,
and, though they did not say so explicitly, it is natural to suppose that they had
the same idea in mind when assigning the promises to a secondary stratum.
Thus even within the J source, a simple reference such as that found in Gen
26:1b (“beside the first famine which was in the days of Abraham”) was consid-
ered secondary precisely because it referred back to an earlier narrative—again,
despite the fact that both Gen 12:10–20 and Genesis 26 were attributed to J
(cf. Addis, Documents, 1:145; Driver, Genesis, 249; Skinner, Genesis, 363). Erhard
Blum correctly dismisses this argument (Die Komposition der Vätergeschichte,
Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament 57
[Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1984], 299). Similar rhetorical devices such
as foreshadowing and summation were also apparently denied to the ancient
Israelite author by a number of older scholars. This is explicitly stated by
McNeile on Exod 4:21–23: “The vv. are premature . . . nothing has yet been said
of any wonders to be performed before Pharaoh. 21 anticipates the whole story
of the first nine plagues, and 22, 23 the story of the last plague” (Exodus, xiv;
italics original). See also McNeile on Exod 3:19–20; 11:9–10; 32:30–34 (Exodus,
xiv, xvii, 209); Carpenter and Harford-Battersby on Gen 15:12–15; Exod 3:19–20;
14:31 (Hexateuch, 2:23, 84, 103); Addis on Exod 9:14–16 (Documents, 1:121); and
Driver on Gen 26:15 (Genesis, 252).
13. “Vor dem neuen Ansatz 18,20 entbehrt man sie nicht” (Wellhausen, Composition,
26). A similar argument is brought by Addis (Documents, 1:25) and Skinner
(Genesis, 303).
Notes on pages 31–32 1 69

14. Carpenter and Harford-Battersby, Hexateuch, 2:50. So also Skinner (Genesis,


406).
15. See the comment of John Van Seters (Prologue to History: The Yahwist as
Historian in Genesis [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992], 296) on the
question of Gen 32:10–13: “The fact that one can move from v. 9 to v. 14 and omit
the prayer is little justification by itself for regarding it as secondary.”
16. Cf., e.g., Dillmann’s assessment of Gen 2:10–14: “These verses, which are eas-
ily taken away without making one feel that anything essential is lost . . . were
perhaps first inserted by R or by another hand, or following another source”
(Genesis, 1:123).
17. For precisely such an objective criterion, see Joel S. Baden, “A Narrative Pattern
and Its Role in Source Criticism,” Hebrew Studies 49 (2008): 41–54.
18. J. A. Emerton, “The Origins of the Promises to the Patriarchs in the Older
Sources of the Book of Genesis,” Vetus Testamentum 32 (1982): 14–32 (at 20).
Emerton, unfortunately, then proceeds to argue that most of the promises are
secondary precisely because they can be removed from their contexts.
19. Thus Jean-Louis Ska has recently argued at length that Gen 12:1–4a is a post-
priestly insertion (“The Call of Abraham and Israel’s Birth-Certificate [Gen
12:1–4a],” The Exegesis of the Pentateuch [Forschungen zum Alten Testament
66; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009], 46–66).
20. I use “deuteronomic” throughout, though scholars are inconsistent in the use
of the terms “deuteronomic” and “deuteronomistic,” for both convenience and
greater precision: “deuteronomic” refers to the work of D, the source contained
entirely in the book of Deuteronomy, and it to D that classical scholars drew
their comparisons with the promise texts.
21. For the most part, the promises deemed to be “deuteronomic” were attrib-
uted not to a strictly deuteronomic redactor, but rather to RJE (the redactor
who purportedly combined the J and E documents before they were compiled
with D and P), who, it was argued, had “affinities” with D. Cf. Carpenter and
Harford-Battersby (Hexateuch, 1:174): “In the secondary passages . . . which may
with great probability be ascribed to RJE, the language and ideas approximate
more and more to those of D.” On RJE, see Joel S. Baden, J, E, and the Redaction
of the Pentateuch, Forschungen zum Alten Testament 68 (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2009).
22 . On Gen 18:17–19: Bacon, Genesis, 131 (where he uses the term “didactic,”
equated elsewhere with deuteronomic); Carpenter and Harford-Battersby,
Hexateuch, 2:26 (where it is termed a “moralizing amplification,” again a
code for deuteronomic); Skinner, Genesis, 298: “reflecting theological ideas
proper to a more advanced stage of thought”; Rudolf Kilian, Die vorpriester-
lichen Abrahamsüberlieferungen literarkritisch und traditionsgeschichtlich unter-
sucht, Bonner biblische Beiträge 24 (Bonn: Peter Hanstein, 1966), 105–106;
Norbert Lohfink, Die Landverheissung als Eid: Eine Studie zu Gn 15 , Stuttgarter
1 70 Notes on pages 32–33

Bibelstudien 28 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1967), 18. On Gen 26:3b–5:


Addis, Documents, 1:45; Bacon, Genesis, 153–54; Carpenter and Harford-Battersby,
Hexateuch, 2:38; Dillmann, Genesis, 2:201–202 (who actually considers attrib-
uting the passage to Rd); Lohfink, Landverheissung, 18. On Exod 32:13: Bacon,
Triple Tradition, 135; McNeile, Exodus, xxv, 205; Edgar S. Brightman, The Sources
of the Hexateuch (New York: Abingdon, 1918), 53; Lohfink, Landverheissung, 18;
Martin Noth, A History of Pentateuchal Traditions, trans. Bernhard W. Anderson
(Chico, CA: Scholars, 1981), 31 n. 113.
23. See, e.g., Joseph Blenkinsopp, The Pentateuch: An Introduction to the First
Five Books of the Bible, Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York: Doubleday,
1992), 117, 122; and especially Suzanne Boorer, The Promise of the Land as Oath
(Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 205; Berlin: de
Gruyter, 1992).
24 . Cf. Van Seters, Prologue, 241: “In Dtr these terms always refer to Deuteronomic
Code, but that is hardly possible in the case of Abraham.”
25. Moshe Weinfeld (Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East,
2nd ed. [Jerusalem: Magnes, 2000], 25–44), argues on the basis of ANE paral-
lels that the phrase “just and right,” sədāqāh ûmišpāt, in Gen 18:19 has the gen-
eral connotation of “social justice.”
26. The laws of Exod 34:17–26, classically understood as J’s equivalent to the
elohistic Decalogue of Exod 20:1–14, have been conclusively demonstrated
to be a postredactional insertion into the pentateuchal text. See Shimon
Bar-On, “The Festival Calendars in Exodus xxiii 14–19 and xxxiv 18–26,”
Vetus Testamentum 48 (1998): 161–95; Erhard Blum, “Das sog. ‘Priviligrecht’
in Exodus 34,11–26: Ein Fixpunkt der Komposition des Exodusbuches?” in
Studies in the Book of Exodus, ed. Marc Vervenne, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum
Theologicarum Lovaniensium 126 (Leuven: Peeters, 1996), 347–66;
Hans-Christoph Schmitt, “Das sogenannte jahwistische Priviligrecht in Ex
34,10–28 als Komposition der spätdeuteronomistischen Endredaktion des
Pentateuch,” Abschied vom Jahwisten, ed. Jan Christian Gertz, et al., Beihefte
zur Zeitschrift f ü r die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 315 (Berlin: de Gruyter,
2002), 157–71.
27. Moshe Weinfeld, “The Covenant of Grant in the Old Testament and in the
Ancient Near East,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 90 (1970): 184–203
(at 186 n. 14), has argued that Gen 26:5 does not in fact display any common-
alities with the language of D. Weinfeld correctly observes that although the
phrase šāmā bəqôl, “obey,” is frequent in deuteronomic literature, it was not
necessarily coined by D, a claim clearly proven by the use of the phrase in
a wide variety of pentateuchal contexts and sources: Gen 21:12 (E); 27:8, 13,
43 (J); 30:6 (J); Exod 4:1 (J); 5:1 (J); 18:19 (E); 19:5 (E); 23:21,22 (E); Num 14:22
(J); 21:3 (J). Weinfeld also notes that the combination ḥûqîm wətôrôt, “laws and
teachings,” is never found in D or Dtr, but that D always uses tôrāh in the
Notes on pages 33–38 171

singular and usually with the definite article, while the plural formulation is
found in E (Exod 18:16, 20); it is, it should be observed, also found in J (Exod
16:28). Whether he is correct or not, the question should have no bearing on
the determination that these verses are “deuteronomic.” Given the relative dat-
ing of the corpora in question, it is far more prudent to assume that the author
of D has borrowed from and expanded upon the formulations he found in his
source, in this case J. The objections to Weinfeld from Samuel Loewenstamm
(“The Divine Grants of Land to the Patriarchs,” Journal of the American
Oriental Society 91 [1971]: 509–10) are dependent upon the view, criticized in
this chapter below, that formulations similar to those of Deuteronomy should
be axiomatically attributed to a deuteronomic author, and are for that reason
unconvincing.
28. It should be noted that this argument holds equally well for contemporary schol-
ars who see Exod 32:7–14 as a deuteronomic text (e.g., Erhard Blum, Studien zur
Komposition des Pentateuch, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche
Wissenschaft 189 [Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990], 73).
29. See Baden, Redaction, 99–195.
30. That this was indeed the initial step is clear from Wellhausen, who analyzes the
composition of Genesis 22, and identifies the insertion of 22:15–18, before deal-
ing with the rest of the patriarchal material, including the rest of the promise
passages (Composition, 18–19).
31. Wellhausen, Composition, 24.
32 . Kilian, Abrahamsüberlieferungen, 94.
33. Carpenter and Harford-Battersby, Hexateuch, 26.
34 . Dillmann, Genesis, 2:203.
35. Kuenen, Hexateuch, 247.
36. Skinner, Genesis, 406; see also Carpenter and Harford-Battersby (Hexateuch,
50), who claim that 32:12 depends on 22:17.
37. Bacon, Triple Tradition, 135.
38. We may take, as an example, the laws of Exod 34:17–26: scholars have recog-
nized it as late because it incorporates elements from E, P, and D, but were we
to follow the logic employed with the patriarchal promises and Gen 22:15–18, we
would have to conclude that all of the passages parallel to Exod 34:17–26 are in
fact secondary insertions composed on the basis of these late laws.
39. Assuming that the first word of Gen 48:5, wə‘attāh, “now,” would have also been
part of the insertion, as a means of connecting the two seemingly unrelated
topics.
40. Von Rad agreed that Gen 26:3–4 (and of course 22:15–18) was a late inser-
tion (Genesis, trans. John H. Marks, Old Testament Library [Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1972], 270–71).
41 . Gerhard von Rad, “The Form-Critical Problem of the Hexateuch,” The
Problem of the Hexateuch and other Essays, trans. E. W. Trueman Dicken (New
1 72 Notes on pages 38–41

York: MacGraw-Hill, 1966), 61. In this he followed Albrecht Alt closely; cf.
Albrecht Alt, “Der Gott der Väter,” Beiträ ge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und
Neuen Testament, 3. Folge Heft 12 (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1929).
42 . Von Rad, “Form-Critical Problem,” 50–74. See also Hans Walter Wolff, “The
Kerygma of the Yahwist,” in Walter Brueggemann and Hans W. Wolff, The
Vitality of Old Testament Traditions, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: John Knox, 1982), 41–66
(esp. 46–55).
43. Noth, Pentateuchal Traditions, 54.
44 . Noth, Pentateuchal Traditions , 56. This goes back to von Rad’s observation
that what he deemed the early Israelite creed in Deut 26:5 “in its most
primitive form began simply with Jacob” (“Form-Critical Problem,” 58; cf.
also p. 56).
45. Noth, Pentateuchal Traditions, 102 n. 300. Cf. also p. 58: “Among the southern
tribes the stories of Isaac and Abraham were added to the theme of the patri-
archs. These stories introduce nothing fundamentally new but provide a very
lively variation to the theme ‘promise to the patriarchs.’”
46. Noth, Pentateuchal Traditions, 102 n. 300.
47. Noth, Pentateuchal Traditions, 39–40.
48. Cf., e.g., Kilian, Abrahamsüberlieferungen; Albert de Pury, Promesse divine et
lé gende cultuelle dans le cycle de Jacob: Genèse 28 et les traditions patriarcales,
Études Bibliques (Paris: Gabalda, 1975); and, somewhat differently, John Van
Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1975).
49. J. Hoftijzer, Die Verheissungen an die drei Erzväter (Leiden: Brill, 1956).
50. Hoftijzer, Verheissungen, 6–9.
51. Hoftijzer, Verheissungen, 14–27.
52 . Hoftijzer, Verheissungen, 14.
53. Hoftijzer, Verheissungen, 24–25.
54 . For criticism of Hoftijzer’s method on this point, see William McKane, Studies
in the Patriarchal Narratives (Edinburgh: Handsel, 1979), 157–58; for a more
general rebuttal, see Horst Seebass, “Gehörten Verheissungen zum ältesten
Bestand der Väter-Erzählungen?,” Biblica 64 (1983): 189–210.
55. Claus Westermann, The Promises to the Fathers, trans. David E. Green
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980).
56. See the criticism of this division of the promises in chapter 1.
57. Westermann, Promises, 28. The opposite conclusion is argued by Z. Weisman,
“National Consciousness in the Patriarchal Promises,” Journal for the Study of
the Old Testament 31 (1985): 55–73 (at 59): the “national” promises are primary,
and have undergone “expansion into the promise of an heir who inherits all the
national promises made to his father, Abraham.” See also de Pury (Promesse,
201–202), who argues that the promise of land always has the patriarch’s
descendants in mind.
Notes on pages 41–46 173

58. Rolf Rendtorff, The Problem of the Process of Transmission in the Pentateuch,
trans. J. J. Scullion, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplements 89
(Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990).
59. Rendtorff, Problem, 75. See also Matthias Köckert, Vätergott und
Väterverheissungen: Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Albrecht Alt und seinen Erben,
Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 142
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 172 n. 45.
60. Rendtorff, Problem, 83.
61. Rendtorff, Problem, 82.
62 . Rendtorff, Problem, 83.
63. See also David M. Carr, Reading the Fractures of Genesis: Historical and Literary
Approaches (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996), in which the title of the
section outlining his “Proto-Genesis Composition” (i.e., the non-P material) is
titled “Constructing the Promise” (177).
64 . “Die Verheissungen als Gestaltungsmittel sind dann aber vor allem—und dies
gewiss nicht von ungef ähr—für die weitere Überlieferung der Vätergeschichte
von zentraler Bedeutung geworden” (Blum, Vätergeschichte, 462). See also the
quotes from Rendtorff above.
65. Rendtorff, Problem, 23.
66. Rendtorff, Problem, 173.
67. Rendtorff, Problem, 77–78; Blum, Vätergeschichte, 364; Carr, Fractures, 155–56,
322–23.
68. See Baden, “Hithpael.”
69. Carr, Fractures, 155; 171–72. See Köckert, Vätergott, 171–73, however, who attri-
butes Gen 18:18–19; 22:16–18; 26:3–5, 24 all to one layer, despite the fact that
there is not a single terminological element that is common to all four; rather,
for Köckert the connecting feature of these passages is their references to
Abraham’s obedience to Yahweh’s word (on which see above).
70. Jean-Louis Ska, Introduction to Reading the Pentateuch, trans. Pascale Dominique
(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 91. See also Van Seters, Prologue,
254–55.
71. Rendtorff, Problem, 62–63; Blum, Vätergeschichte, 290, 364, 367.
72 . Chicago Assyrian Dictionary 8:47 (b), 48 (g).
73. Blum, Vätergeschichte, 364. So also Carr, Fractures, 159.
74 . Cf. Van Seters, Prologue, 302: “This lack of precision in quotation does not sig-
nify a difference in authorship. Ancients did not feel the same compulsion as
do moderns toward exact quotation, even of public documents. And when it is
a case of the same author, the variety is simply a matter of literary style.”
75. Where P “originally” ended is a matter of much dispute in the nondocu-
mentary school; for a survey of the issues, see Thomas Römer, “The Exodus
Narrative According to the Priestly Document,” in The Strata of the Priestly
Writings: Contemporary Debates and Future Directions, ed. Sarah Shectman and
1 74 Notes on pages 47–49

Joel S. Baden, Abhandlung zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments 95
(Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 2009), which also confirms the view
that the original P document comprised all of the priestly promise texts in
Genesis–Exodus.
76. One might also note the variation in the verb used to describe the process of
Abraham becoming a nation: n-t-n in Gen 17:6, 20; 48:4; h-y-h in Gen 17:16;
28:3; 35:11.
77. See also Van Seters’s statements regarding inconsistent language in D: “If in a
corpus as homogeneous in language and outlook as Deuteronomy one finds a
variety of formulaic expression, there is no need to deny the same possibility to
an author of Genesis” (Prologue, 220).
78. “Die Landverheissung (als Eid) findet sich freilich sprachlich und inhaltlich
variiert: Insbesondere ist in Nu 11 von ’adāmāh (sonst hā’āres) die Rede, und in
Dtn 31 wird die Verheissung auf Israel (und nicht die Väter) bezogen. Doch
lassen sich entsprechende Variationen auch sonst in der Traditionsbildung”
(Blum, Studien, 81).
79. Emerton, “Origins,” 23–24. One might also look profitably to the extensive corpus
of biblical poetry, which is practically defined by its use of linguistical variation—
in word order, in synonymous constructions, in similes, even in binyanim. There
is no reason to suppose that a writer composing a prose work should be any more
limited in his ability to vary his language than would a poet.
80. Rendtorff, Problem, 87–88; Blum, Vätergeschichte, 363–64, 370–71.
81. Lohfink (Landverheissung, 21–22) correctly notes that even though most of the
references to the promise of land as an oath are from Deuteronomy, it is imper-
missible to draw general conclusions on that basis about every other such refer-
ence. We may similarly critique the assessment of Hans Henrich Schmid (Der
sogenannte Jahwist: Beobachtungen und Fragen zur Pentateuchforschung [Zürich:
Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1976], 130–31, 141–3), that the themes of progeny
and land so prominent in the promises necessarily have their origins in deu-
teronomic ideology; so too his claim (ibid., 137) that the concept of “blessing”
found in some promise texts should be assigned a late date because it is found
in some relatively late contexts.
82 . Rendtorff, Problem, 96.
83. Josef Scharbert (“Die Landverheissung an die Väter als einfache Zusage, als Eid,
und als ‘Bund,’” in Konsequente Traditionsgeschichte, ed. Rüdiger Bartelmus, et
al; Orbis biblicus et orientalis 126 [Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1993], 343–6)
tries to split the difference by arguing that the oath language originated in
E, and was subsequently adopted by D and Dtr (including therein all of the
post-Genesis references to the promise as oath listed above). It is not clear, how-
ever, why the oath language in Exodus and Numbers should necessarily be deu-
teronomic, if it is admitted that D learned the phrasing from E.
84 . Indeed, virtually every divine statement can be considered an oath in the sense
of a binding statement: “For he is not a man that he should recant” (1 Sam
Notes on pages 49–51 1 75

15:29). See the comments of Marc Brettler: “Sometimes late Hebrew works com-
prehend what God earlier only spoke as a šəbû‘āh (compare 2 Sam 7:8 to Psalm
89:4 and 132:2)” (“The Promises of the Land of Israel to the Patriarchs in the
Pentateuch,” Shenaton 5–6 [1983]: vii–xxiv [at xx n. 53]).
85. The rabbis also recognized that oaths could be made without the technical lan-
guage, as is clear from their comment on these verses. Cf. b. Shevuot 36a and
Rashi on Gen 8:21.
86. Weinfeld, “‫ברית‬, berîth,” Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, ed. G.
Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, 15 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1975), 2:253–79 (at 257, 260).
87. Jacob Milgrom, “Profane Slaughter and a Formulaic Key to the Composition of
Deuteronomy,” Hebrew Union College Annual 47 (1976): 1–17 (at 3–4). It is also
worth noting that the typically deuteronomic phrase ka’ašer nišba‘ is found only
once in Genesis–Numbers (in the late text Exod 13:11), surprising if, as the non-
documentary scholars would have it, there is substantial deuteronomic mate-
rial in the patriarchal promises.
88. CAD 13:38–39, 41; 21:16–17.
89. Brettler, “Promises,” xx.
90. Cf. Lohfink, Landverheissung, 22. Contra Rendtorff: “The whole of the divine
address to Abraham in 22.16 is introduced by a solemn oath formula; this
oath is taken up explicitly in 26.3 and the promise described as the fulfi lment
(‘maintenance’) of the oath. In both cases the promise address comprises the
promise of increase—using largely the same terminology—and the promise of
blessing for others” (Problem, 78). Yet the syntax of Gen 26:3b–5 makes clear
that it is only the land that was “sworn” to Abraham; Rendtorff also neglects the
many other passages in which the oath is mentioned alongside the promise of
land alone. Blum, Vätergeschichte, 363–82, argues that while the oath language
is all part of the K D layer, which includes Gen 22:15–18, all of the oaths of land
refer in fact to Genesis 15—which, as he admits, contains no explicit oath lan-
guage. See the reaction of Konrad Schmid, Genesis and the Moses Story: Israel’s
Dual Origins in the Hebrew Bible, trans. James D. Nogalski; Siphrut 3 (Winona
Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 275–6.
91. Rendtorff, Problem, 58. See also Scharbert, “Landverheissung an die Väter,”
340–41.
92 . Gen 1:16; 12:17; 28:14; 34:29; 43:15, 18; Exod 34:27; Num 13:23, 26; Deut 7:14;
Judg 21:10; 1 Sam 6:11; Jer 27:7; 40:9, et al. (Dillmann, Genesis, 1:123). Though
at least some of these passages are debatably secondary (though none convinc-
ingly so, in my opinion), as a class these examples demonstrate that this struc-
ture was both acceptable and reasonably common in biblical Hebrew. See also
Ernest Nicholson, The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century: The Legacy of Julius
Wellhausen (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 114.
93. As observed by Nicholson, Pentateuch, 115.
94 . As also in Köckert, Vätergott, 171–3.
176 Notes on pages 51–52

95. Cf. Rendtorff, Problem, 84–100. See most importantly on this topic Schmid,
Genesis, and the two major recent collections of essays from the nondocumentary
school: Jan Christian Gertz, Konrad Schmid, and Markus Witte, eds., Abschied
vom Jahwisten: Die Komposition des Hexateuch in der jüngsten Diskussion, Beihefte
zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 315 (Berlin: de Gruyter,
2002), and Thomas B. Dozeman and Konrad Schmid, eds., A Farewell to the
Yahwist? The Composition of the Pentateuch in Recent European Research, SBL
Symposium Series 34 (Atlanta: SBL, 2006). In response, see Hans-Christoph
Schmitt, “Erzvätergeschichte und Exodusgeschichte als konkurrierende
Ursprungslegenden Israels—ein Irrweg der Pentateuchforschung,” in Die
Erzväter in der biblischen Tradition, ed. Anselm C. Hagedorn and Henrik
Pfeiffer, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 400
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009), 241–66.
96. This is not even to mention the question of the references to the patriarchal
promise in Deuteronomy, which constitute a separate case (to be discussed
briefly in chapter 3); it is worth noting, however, that there is a significant move-
ment in nondocumentary scholarship to see the references to the “fathers” in
Deuteronomy as referring not to the patriarchs of Genesis, but rather to the gen-
eration of the wilderness (see most prominently Thomas Römer, Israels Väter:
Untersuchungen zur Väterthematik im Deuteronomium und in der deuteronomis-
tischen Tradition, Orbis biblicus et orientalis 99 [Freiburg: Universitätsverlag,
1990], following an initial suggestion by John Van Seters, “Confessional
Reformulation in the Exilic Period,” Vetus Testamentum 22 [1972]: 448–59).
According to this argument, the explicit mentions of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
by name in Deuteronomy are all secondary insertions; furthermore, the idea
of the promise of the land originated in Deuteronomy, and was subsequently
extended through redactional reworkings back into the preceding books of the
Pentateuch.
97. Rendtorff, Problem, 87–88. See also Schmid, Genesis, 66–67, 278–79; Römer,
Israels Väter, 561–66.
98. Ska, Introduction, 93–94. On the deuteronomistic nature of these passages, see
also Scharbert, “Landverheissung an die Väter,” 344–45.
99 . Three other passages that are in ostensibly priestly contexts will be left out
of this study. In Num 32:11, we fi nd a reference to the promise—or, more
accurately, a reference to a reference to the promise, as this verse is sim-
ply a recollection of Yahweh’s words in Num 14:30. The source division of
Numbers 32 is complicated, and no certain division has yet been offered; since
Wellhausen (Composition, 114), however, many scholars have treated this sec-
tion of Numbers 32 as a late addition. Whether or not this is correct—though
a recent paper by my student Liane Marquis has me thinking that it probably
is—the nature of this twice-removed reference to the promise may allow us
to set it aside. In Exod 13:5 and 11 we also have references to the promise; both
Notes on pages 53–56 177

of these texts, however, are set in passages that seem to be postredactional


compositions (cf. Shimon Gesundheit, “Three Times a Year”, Forschungen
zum Alten Testament 82 [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012], 167–222; I thank
Prof. Gesundheit for providing me an advance look at the manuscript). Finally,
the clear references to the promise in Lev 26:9, 42–45 belong, as has long
been recognized, to the later H stratum of the priestly writings. Even were
we to include these in our tabulations, however, there would still be fewer
post-Genesis P references to the promise than there are in non-P.
100. As in the work of, for example, Erhard Blum.
101. As argued most forcefully by Schmid, Genesis.
102 . Ludwig Schmidt, “Väterverheissungen und Pentateuchfrage,” Zeitschrift für
die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 104 (1992): 1–27.
103. Köckert, Vätergott, 250–55, 264; 171–76.
104. Christoph Levin, Der Jahwist (Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des
Alten und Neuen Testaments 157; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993).
It is worth observing also that scholars’ own positions have changed: Blum
now assigns Genesis 15; 22:15–18; 26:3b–5, 24; 50:24; Exod 32:13, to a stratum
that is postpriestly but predates the final redaction of the Hexateuch (“Die lit-
erarische Verbindung von Erzvatern und Exodus: Ein Gesprach mit neueren
Endredaktionshypothesen,” in Abschied vom Jahwisten, ed. Jan Christian Gertz,
Konrad Schmid, and Markus Witte, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttesta-
mentliche Wissenschaft 315 [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2002], 119–56).
105. On literacy in ancient Israel, cf. Menahem Haran, “On the Diff usion of Literacy
and Schools in Ancient Israel,” in Congress Volume: Jerusalem 1986, ed. J. A.
Emerton; Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 40 (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 81–95;
Ian Young, “Israelite Literacy: Interpreting the Evidence,” Vetus Testamentum
48 (1998): 239–53, 408–22; Christopher A. Rollston, Writing and Literacy in
the World of Ancient Israel: Epigraphic Evidence from the Iron Age, Society of
Biblical Literature Archaeology and Biblical Studies 11 (Atlanta: SBL, 2010),
127–35. On the social location of Israel’s scribal elite, see Karel van der Toorn,
Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2007), 82–89.
106. See further Joel S. Baden, The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the
Documentary Hypothesis, Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2012), 60.
107. On the ways that scribe-authors necessarily transform their oral source mate-
rial to fit it into broader contexts—rather than simply recording it verbatim—
with particular reference to traditional folk material, see van der Toorn, Scribal
Culture, 114–15.
108. It is worth noting that the same is true of the progeny aspect of the patriar-
chal promise, and in this case we have good parallels from Ugarit, in the epic
tales of Aqhat and Kirta: both stories relate a divine promise of progeny to an
1 78 Notes on pages 57–64

individual and the working out of that promise. These epics, composed by any
reckoning hundreds of years before the first biblical text, already contain the
ostensibly “late” theological motif of the promise. My thanks to David Wright
for this observation.

chap ter 3

1. Blenkinsopp, Pentateuch, 111.


2 . The one verse from P that stands in the canonical text between Genesis 17 and
21:2–5 is 19:29, the destruction of the cities of the plain. This verse has long
been recognized as being out of place, moved by the compiler of the Pentateuch
from its original position after 13:12ab D because the cities of the plain are not
destroyed in the nonpriestly narrative (J) until Genesis 19. So already Bacon,
Genesis, 135.
3. The prefi x-conjugation verbs in 28:3–4, though unmarked, are all to be under-
stood as jussives, as they constitute the continuation of the volitive sequence ini-
tiated with the imperatives in 28:2 (cf. Harry Orlinsky, “On the Cohortative and
Jussive after an Imperative or Interjection in Biblical Hebrew,” Jewish Quarterly
Review 31 [1940–41]: 371–82; 32 [1941–42]: 191–205, 273–77).
4 . The word “again” in this verse in the canonical text is a long-recognized redac-
tional insertion: in the P narrative, God has not appeared to Jacob before
Genesis 35, but in the nonpriestly text it has happened repeatedly (28:12–15; 31:3,
10–13; 32:25–30; 35:1). This was observed as long ago as Hermann Hupfeld, Die
Quellen der Genesis und die Art ihrer Zusammensetzung (Berlin: Wiegandt und
Grieben, 1853), 56, 203.
5. The description of Jacob’s children is found in the canonical text in 35:22b–26,
but it originally stood before 31:17–18; it was moved here because, in the non-
priestly account, Jacob’s last child, Benjamin, was born in Canaan after Jacob’s
return from abroad (while in the priestly account, as these verses make clear,
all twelve of Jacob’s sons were born in Paddan-Aram). See already H. Holzinger,
Genesis, Kurzer Hand-Commentar zum Alten Testament 1 (Freiburg: J. C. B.
Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1898), 185.
6. That it has this broader meaning is clear not only from the fact that the promise
is made to Jacob after he has already had his children, but also from its attes-
tations elsewhere in P; notably in Gen 1:28: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill
the earth.” Adam’s children are obviously not going to fill the earth, but his
descendants, that is, humanity, will. Similarly, Noah receives the same blessing
in Gen 9:1, although his three sons have already been born; Abraham receives
the blessing in 17:6, though according to P he has only two sons, Isaac and
Ishmael.
7. That Gen 11:30 is nonpriestly is widely recognized (though cf. Ska, “Call,” 49
n. 14 and the scholarship cited therein); in particular we may note that the
Notes on pages 64–66 1 79

statement of Sarah’s barrenness, using the term ‘aqārāh, is foreign to the priestly
author, who never describes any of the matriarchs as barren, but is a recurring
theme of the nonpriestly narrative, in which both (and only) Rebekah (Gen
25:21) and Rachel (29:31) are described using the same term.
8. Gen 12:4b–5 is from P.
9. For this reason, those critics who see this promise as secondary include 12:4a as
part of the insertion. Cf., e.g., Ska, “ Call.”
10. Westermann, Promises, 123–24.
11. See Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Part Two: From
Noah to Abraham, trans. Israel Abrahams (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1992), 328.
12 . Carr recognizes that Gen 12:1–4a, 6–8 is a continuous, coherent account
(Fractures, 183–84). He also notes correctly that “this text is distinguished by an
unusual density of specific linkages to texts both before and after it” (Fractures,
179). Yet Carr somehow takes these two observations to indicate that this text
is redactional rather than an authentic part of the composition with which, as
he observes, it is so closely linked. If a passage that is in itself coherent, and
that is closely linked with the narratives before and after it, is to be consid-
ered redactional, it becomes unclear on what basis any passage in the Bible
might be accepted as original. Again, one comes to the conclusion that a text
such as Gen 12:1–4a, 6–8 is redactional only if one has determined a priori
that the patriarchal narratives were originally independent and thus required
redaction to bring them together. An intermediate position is taken by Kilian
(Abrahamsüberlieferungen, 10–12), who sees Gen 12:1–4a, 6–8 as a coherent
promise-centered J reworking of a preexisting Abraham narrative (a “vorjah-
wistiche Grundschrift”); see also de Pury, Promesse, 60–64.
13 . Cf. Van Seters, Prologue, 260–61.
14 . The compositional status of Genesis 15 has long been a matter of serious dis-
pute in scholarship, and a firm consensus has yet to be achieved. Classically,
this chapter was divided between J and E, although it was admitted that the
precise assignment of verses, and more importantly the question of how the
two strands had been combined, was a nearly intractable problem (see chapter
2, note 2). More recently, scholars, predominantly European, have tended to see
the chapter as not only a unity, but a very late one, usually postpriestly (see the
bibliography and discussion in Konrad Schmid, “The So-Called Yahwist and
the Literary Gap between Genesis and Exodus,” in A Farewell to the Yahwist: The
Composition of the Pentateuch in Recent European Interpretation, ed. Thomas B.
Dozeman and Konrad Schmid; SBL Symposium Series 34 [Atlanta: SBL, 2006],
29–50 [at 38]). For the argument that this chapter derives from a deuteronomic
hand, see Blenkinsopp, Pentateuch, 123–24, and Blum, Vätergeschichte, 362–72
(though Blum has since changed his mind and now argues that Genesis 15 is
postpriestly [“Verbindung,” 153–54]). Lohfi nk (Landverheissung) argued that the
majority of the chapter was quite early, and from J. More recent documentary
180 Notes on pages 66–68

scholarship has seen the entire chapter as belonging to E: cf. Menahem Haran,
“The Bĕrît ‘Covenant’: Its Nature and Ceremonial Background,” in Tehillah
le-Moshe, ed. Mordechai Cogan, et al. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997),
203–19 (at 206 n. 6). See further below.
15. Rendtorff, Problem, 57–59. For a clear tradition-historical argument that the
promise of land is an early theme in the Pentateuchal narrative, see Brettler,
“Promises.”
16. It is telling in this regard that the classical documentary scholars universally
considered the parallel in 21:13, 18 to be original, though it contains precisely the
same promise of offspring to Hagar. See below.
17. Cf. Addis, Documents, 1:24; Carpenter and Harford-Battersby, Hexateuch, 2:24;
Gunkel, Genesis, 183; Skinner, Genesis, 285.
18. See the discussion of this phenomenon in biblical narrative by Bernard
Septimus, “Iterated Quotation Formulae in Talmudic Narrative and Exegesis,”
in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel, ed. Hindy
Najman and Judith H. Newman, Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplements
83 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 371–98 (esp. 372–75).
19. Other examples of this phenomenon are equally compelling: in Genesis alone
cf. Gen 1:28–29; 9:1, 8, 12, 17; 9:25–26; 15:2–3; 15:5; 18:17, 20; 19:9; 20:9–10; 21:6–
7; 24:24–25; 27:36; 30:27–28; 41:39, 41; 42:1–2; 47:3–4.
20. Indeed, there are places where two speeches from two different sources have
been subsumed under a single wayyō’mer introduction; see, e.g., Num 11:16,
wayyō’mer yhwh ’el-mōšeh, “Yahweh said to Moses,” which introduces the dis-
tinct speeches of 11:16–17 and 11:18–20 (a distinction which is agreed on by both
documentary and nondocumentary critics alike).
21. Noth, Pentateuchal Traditions, 28 n. 86.
22 . See especially Carr, Fractures, 159–61; Levin, Jahwist, 170.
23. See Van Seters, Prologue, 259–60.
24 . Weinfeld, Social Justice, 25–44; idem, The Promise of the Land: The Inheritance
of the Land of Canaan by the Israelites, Taubman Lectures in Jewish Studies 3
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 196–97.
25. See especially Carpenter and Harford-Battersby, Hexateuch, 2:26–27; and more
recently see Karin Schöpflin, “Abrahams Unterredung mit Gott und die schrift-
gelehrte Stilisierung der Abrahamgestalt in Gen 18, 16b–33,” in Die Erzväter in
der biblischen Tradition, ed. Anselm C. Hagedorn and Henrik Pfeiffer, Beihefte
zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 400 (Berlin: de Gruyter,
2009), 93–113, who argues that the entirety of Gen 18:16b–33 is a very late
insertion.
26. The two major transitions between Yahweh and “the men” come in 18:1–2 and
9–10; in the first, Yahweh is introduced but “the men” take over the action, and
in the second “the men” give way to Yahweh again. On the distinction, or lack
thereof, between Yahweh and his appearance to the human characters of the
Notes on pages 69–71 181

Bible, see James L. Kugel, The God of Old: Inside the Lost World of the Bible (New
York: Free Press, 2003), 5–36.
27. Bacon, Genesis, 131.
28. Carpenter and Harford-Battersby, Hexateuch, 2:126. Carpenter and
Harford-Battersby also recognize, however, that there are no verbal indications
that the dialogue between Yahweh and Abraham is secondary.
29. See the discussion of the contextualization of Gen 18:18 in Gr üneberg, Abraham,
72–80.
30. The sole discrepancy is the word gādôl, “great,” in 21:18, missing in 21:13 in the
MT; note however, that it is supplied in the versions, though this is probably a
case of levelling rather than an authentic reading.
31. Cf. Claus Westermann, Genesis 12–36, trans. John J. Scullion, Continental
Commentaries (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 341–43; Levin, Jahwist, 178. Blum
attributes the entirety of Gen 21:8–21 to his Vg2 layer (Vätergeschichte, 311–15).
32 . Rendtorff, Problem, 68.
33. Cf. Weisman, “National Consciousness,” 66.
34 . The only major scholars to claim that Gen 22:15–18 is original to the narra-
tive of the binding of Isaac are Richard Elliot Friedman, who tentatively and
unconvincingly proposes that in the original Elohistic story Isaac was actually
sacrificed (The Bible with Sources Revealed [San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco,
2003], 65), and Van Seters (Prologue, 261–63). Scharbert (“Landverheissung an
die Väter,” 343–44) suggests that they are from E, but that they are the E supple-
ment to the originally self-standing narrative of 22:1–15. Konrad Schmid (“Die
Rückgabe der Verheissungsgabe: Der ‘heilsgeschichtliche’ Sinn von Gen 22 im
Horizont innerbiblische Exegese,” in Gott und Mensch im Dialog, ed. Markus
Witte, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 345
[Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004], 271–300) accepts that 22:15–18 is a secondary addi-
tion, but sees the entirety of Genesis 22 as dating to the Persian period.
35. In Genesis, cf., e.g., 2:24; 11:9; 16:13–14; 19:37–38; 21:31; 26:33; 32:3, 31; 33:17.
36. Noth, even in claiming the verse as secondary, saw this narrative connection,
describing 24:7 as a “presumably ‘pious’ addition in view of the question of
doubt in v. 5” (Pentateuchal Traditions, 29 n. 90).
37. Cf., e.g., Gen 4:7; 18:21; 27:21; 34:17; 37:32.
38. Cf. Addis, Documents, 1:45; Bacon, Genesis, 153–54; Carpenter and
Harford-Battersby, Hexateuch, 2:38; Dillmann, Genesis, 2:201–203; Driver,
Genesis, 250; Blum, Vätergeschichte, 362–65; Köckert, Vätergott, 174.
39. Cf. Dillmann, Genesis, 2:201–203; Driver, Genesis, 250; Blum, Vätergeschichte,
362–65; Levin, Jahwist, 205–206; Westermann, Genesis 12–36, 424–25; de Pury,
Promesse, 186 n. 313; Köckert, Vätergott, 171–73.
40. Cf. Gen 1:22, 28; 9:1; 12:2; 14:19; 17:16, 20; 22:17; 24:35, 60; 27:27; 28:3; 35:9.
41. F. Delitzsch, A New Commentary on Genesis (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1888–
94), 138–89; Carpenter and Harford-Battersby, Hexateuch, 2:38; Wellhausen,
1 82 Notes on pages 72–73

Composition, 29; Frank M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 273 n. 231; Westermann, Promises, 129;
Gunkel, Genesis, 294; Kilian, Abrahamsüberlieferungen, 202–209. Blum
(Vätergeschichte, 298–99) and Carr (Fractures, 177–80) argue for two stages of
redaction: first the addition of 26:2–3bD, and later the expansion of that addi-
tion with 26:3bE– 5.
42 . Though the locative gərārāh might be understood as “in the direction of Gerar,”
the use of the preposition ’el, “to,” in the phrase “to Abimelech” requires that
this be understood as his fi nal destination. When used in combination with
the verb h-l-k, “go,” this preposition always indicates the goal of the journey.
In the Pentateuch, cf. Gen 12:1; 13:4; 22:2, 3, 19; 24:4, 5, 10, 38; 27:9; 28:5, 9;
30:25; 36:6; 41:55; Exod 7:15; 18:27; 19:10; Num 10:30; 13:26; 16:25; 22:13; 23:13. The
most relevant example among these is Gen 22:19: wayyēlkû yaḥdāw ’el-bə’ēr šāba‘
wayyēšeb ’abrāhām bib’ēr šāba‘ (“they went together to Beersheba, and Abraham
dwelt in Beersheba”), which would represent an almost perfect parallel to the
construction of Gen 26:1, 6.
43. Thus Haran (“Bĕrît,” 209 n. 12) suggests that 26:2–5 has been displaced from
its original location after 26:23, since he sees it as “authentically connected
with Beer-sheba,” rather than with Gerar. This problem is also at the root of
those translations that render the first words of 26:2, wayyērā’ ’ēlāyw yhwh, as if
pluperfect: Yahweh had appeared to him (so, for example, in the NJB and NJPS
translations).
44 . If Gen 26:1 intended to describe Isaac’s arrival in Gerar, it would say wayyābō’
gərārāh, “he came to Gerar,” as in Gen 35:6; 37:14; 46:1, et al.
45. Thus Köckert, for example, states that the use of the plural here is a sign of late
authorship; he compares it to examples from Chronicles (Vätergott, 175 n. 56).
Yet this comparison does not take into account at all the context of the passage.
Words cannot be separated from their contexts. Quite differently, Scharbert
(“Landverheissung an die Väter,” 340) takes the uniqueness of this formulation
as evidence for it being part of the earlier tradition of the land promise.
46. The key distinction here is between the verb š-k-n, “dwell,” in 26:2 and g-w-r,
“sojourn,” in 26:3; the former connotes permanent residence, the latter a tem-
porary stay.
47. See 1 Chr 4:4, where we should read grr rather than gdr ; cf. Eliezer D. Oren,
“Gerar,” Anchor Bible Dictionary, 2:989–91; S. Cohen, “Gerar,” Interpreter’s
Dictionary of the Bible, 2:381–82.
48. If this reading is correct, it stands as a counterargument to Haran’s claim that
this promise text originally belonged after 26:23 and took place in Beersheba.
Haran’s argument requires that the two lands mentioned in 26:2 and 3 must
be the same, i.e., the territory of Beersheba; yet this raises the question of why
the author would use the plural “lands” when only one land, the same as in the
other promise texts, is described.
Notes on pages 73–74 1 83

49. Despite the noted similarities between the two promises in this chapter, docu-
mentary scholars for the most part viewed 26:24 as original and 26:3b–5 as
secondary. Blum (Vätergeschichte, 301–302, 391), as expected, connects the two
promises as part of a single layer. Westermann (Genesis 12–36, 428) sees 26:24
as relatively late, though earlier than 26:2–5. See the criticisms of these schol-
ars in Van Seters, Prologue, 269–70.
50. Cf. Carpenter and Harford-Battersby, Hexateuch, 2:42–43; Dillmann, Genesis,
2:226; Driver, Genesis, 265.
51. Hexateuch, 147.
52 . Cf. de Pury, Promesse, 175–85 (though he considers Gen 28:14 to be unconnected
with its context).
53. Although Gen 31:3 has features in common with other promise texts—Yahweh
tells Jacob “I will be with you,” as in 28:15—it is not a promise text proper. It is,
more accurately, an instruction: “Return to the land of your fathers where you
were born,” and should be compared with texts such as Gen 35:1: “God said to
Jacob, ‘Arise, go up to Bethel and remain there.’” Important here is the recogni-
tion, against Westermann and others, that the promise of divine accompani-
ment is not to be equated with the patriarchal promise; the former is related
only to the narrative present, the latter always to the narrative future.
54 . Cf. Bacon, Genesis, 173; Carpenter and Harford-Battersby, Hexateuch, 2:50;
Skinner, Genesis, 406; Blum, Vätergeschichte, 365; Carr, Fractures, 168–69;
Levin, Jahwist, 248–49; Westermann, Genesis 12–36, 509. Skinner also argues
on the basis of the ease with which the passage may be removed without dis-
turbing its context; see chapter 2.
55. de Pury (Promesse, 95) rejects this interpretation on the grounds that, in his
view, the promise of the land was not in fact an important part of the J promises
(to which he assigns this text); he is unable, however, to account for the down-
playing of the promise of land in J.
56. Addis attributes it to RJE, though without any explanation (Documents, 1:95);
Gunkel objects that “if the statement were authentic, it would stand after v 4”
(Genesis, 404). His argument is, as his frequently were, based on his own aes-
thetic judgment of what the text ought to look like, and is for that reason not
compelling.
57. Precisely when this text might have been added is a matter of debate within the non-
documentary school. Levin ( Jahwist, 305; idem, “The Yahwist and the Redactional
Link between Genesis and Exodus,” in A Farewell to the Yahwist? The Composition
of the Pentateuch in Recent European Interpretation, ed. Thomas B. Dozeman and
Konrad Schmid, SBL Symposium Series 34 [Atlanta: SBL, 2006], 131–41 [at 134])
and Jan C. Gertz (Tradition und Redaktion in der Exoduserzählung: Untersuchungen
zur Endredaktion des Pentateuch, Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten
und Neuen Testaments 186 [Göttingen: Vandehoeck & Ruprecht, 2000], 278–80)
argue for a postpriestly date. Blum (Vätergeschichte, 298), Carr (Fractures, 177–79;
1 84 Notes on pages 75–77

idem, “What is Required to Identify Pre-Priestly Narrative Connections between


Genesis and Exodus? Some General Reflections and Specific Cases,” in A Farewell
to the Yahwist? ed. Dozeman and Schmid, 159–80 [at 178–79]), Konrad Schmid
(“Die Josephsgeschichte im Pentateuch,” in Abschied vom Jahwisten, ed. Jan C.
Gertz, Konrad Schmid, and Markus Witte, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alt-
testamentliche Wissenschaft 315 [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2002], 83–118 [at 116]),
and Peter Weimar (“Gen 46,2–4* und die Jakobgeschichte: Eine Spurensuche,”
Revue Biblique 112 [2005]: 481–510), consider the text to be prepriestly. All, however,
agree that it is a secondary insertion.
58. Cf. Gen 21:32; 25:34; 31:17; 32:23.
59. Cf. Erhard Blum, “The Literary Connection between the Books of Genesis and
Exodus and the End of the Book of Joshua,” in A Farewell to the Yahwist? ed.
Dozeman and Schmid; Schmid, “Josephsgeschichte,” 117; Levin, Jahwist, 315.
For a rebuttal to these claims, see Carr, “What is Required?,” 169–72.
60. Many scholars have noted a chiastic construction in Gen 50:24–25 (some-
times expanded to include the fi rst words of 50:26, “Joseph died”); cf. Jan
Christian Gertz, “The Transition between the Books of Genesis and Exodus,”
in A Farewell to the Yahwist? ed. Dozeman and Schmid, 73–87 (at 79; and
see the scholarship cited in 79–80 n. 23). Schmid (Genesis, 214–15) attempts
to argue against the chiastic relationship and close connection of 50:24–25
on the grounds that 50:24 raises an issue (the patriarchal promise) that is
entirely enclosed within the Pentateuch, while 50:25 looks forward to the
burial of Joseph’s bones in Jos 24:32. His argument rests on the assump-
tion that Gen 50:25 and Jos 24:32 belong to the same compositional layer,
though there is no a priori reason that the author of Jos 24:32 could not have
known of the earlier text of Gen 50:25 and composed his verse on that basis.
His argument is, further, dependent on the impossibility of there being any
continuation of the pentateuchal sources in Joshua, an impossibility which is
by no means proven. The assessment of some scholars that 50:26a is from P
(thereby ostensibly proving that the construction of 50:24–26a is postpriestly)
is based on the faulty, though prevalent, assumption that whenever a biblical
character’s age is mentioned, the text is automatically priestly. There is no
reason that this should be the case.
61. On the close structural connection of Gen 50:24–26, see Blum, “Literary
Connection,” 97.
62. This point was made, ironically, by Rendtorff: “Indeed, it has become quite clear
now that the combination of promise elements often has something to do with
the function of the promise addresses in a particular narrative context” (Problem,
73). For Rendtorff, this was evidence of a series of textually sensitive redactors;
this type of sensitivity, however, is surely more readily attributed to an author. In
fact, Rendtorff ’s claim sounds in this case more like a forced attempt to explain
away the evidence that militates strongly against his theory.
Notes on pages 78–81 1 85

63. Westermann, for example, states that the passage is a secondary addition to the
narrative of Abraham’s separation from Lot (Genesis 12–36, 172–73, 178–80).
Westermann sees 13:16 as a secondary development within the promise tradi-
tion itself, because it deals with the promise of offspring rather than of land.
Precisely because 13:16 stands out, and because the particular wording of the
promise of offspring found in this verse is unique, Josef Scharbert has argued
that it is the original kernel of the promise, a special local tradition that has been
preserved (“Die Landverheissung als ‘Urgestein’ der Patriarchen-Tradition,”
in Mélanges bibliques et orientaux en l’honneur de M. Mathias Delcor, ed. André
Caquot, et al.; Alter Orient und Altes Testament 215 [Neukirchen-Vluyn:
Neukirchener Verlag, 1985], 359–68 [at 363]). Neither form-critical argument is
particularly convincing: though Abraham has been told that Yahweh will make
of him a great nation (12:2) and that he will have offspring (12:7), the formulaic
promise of many offspring is, like the promise of the land, introduced in full for
the first time here.
64 . Alexander Rofé, Introduction to the Composition of the Pentateuch, Biblical
Seminar 58 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 104. See also Köckert’s
argument for the connection among the promises of Genesis 12–13 (Vätergott,
252–53).
65. Bacon already noted that there was a narratological problem in the sequence of
promises in Gen 13:14–17 and Genesis 15; his solution was to view Gen 13:14–17
as a later addition, on the grounds that Genesis 15 seems not to know of the prior
promise of land (Genesis, 122–23). The list of territories, beginning in 15:18bE,
has long been seen (though without justification) as a late addition to the text.
Cf., e.g., Kuenen, Hexateuch, 143; Carpenter and Harford-Battersby, Hexateuch,
1:23; Skinner, Genesis, 283.
66. Cf. Gen 17:20; 21:18; 46:3; Exod 32:10; Num 14:12; Deut 4:6, 7, 8; 26:5. It occurs
also twice in Jeremiah: 6:22; 50:41. Though this is precisely the type of data
one would expect the nondocumentary school to use to demonstrate that every
occurrence of this phrase is from one layer (and, given the distribution, one
would expect it to be a deuteronomic layer), note that while Blum assigns some
of these verses to his K D, others belong to his Vg2, and obviously Gen 17:20
belongs to P.
67. The main distinguishing feature of 21:13, 18 is the uncommon use of the verb
ś-w-m in the phrase “make of him a nation,” l əgôy ’a śîmennû. This occurs only
here and in Gen 46:3; elsewhere in the priestly and nonpriestly promises we
fi nd the verbs ‘- ś-h (Gen 12:2; Exod 32:10; Num 14:12; Deut 9:14;), n-t-n (Gen
17:20 [P]), and h-y-h (Gen 18:18; 35:11 [P]; Deut 26:5) used for this concept.
This use of ś-w-m does not help us to decide to which set of promise texts
21:13, 18 belongs. It is again notable, however, that this difference in word-
ing, precisely the type of difference we would expect to be important for
the nondocumentary school in determining layers, is essentially ignored in
186 Notes on pages 81–83

nondocumentary scholarship; while some details of wording are considered


probative for grouping and ordering the promise texts, others that conform
less well to the desired templates, like this one, go unmentioned. See in par-
ticular Rendtorff, Problem, 63–64, who concentrates on the various terms
for “nation,” “people,” “assembly,” etc., without even considering the various
verbs used to describe how the patriarchs and their offspring are to become
a nation.
68. Thus Scharbert (“Landverheissung an die Väter,” 342) suggests that the phrase
“who swore to me on oath” is a later insertion; as we have seen, this supposition
is unnecessary.
69. Gen 12:4b–5; 13:6, 11b–12a; 16:3, 15–16.
70. Westermann claims that this passage is a “clear example” of a secondary text
because “the promise does not appear in the two parallels, chapters 12 and 20”
(Promises, 124 n. 8). This rationale is possible only on the assumption that the
“ancestress in danger” narratives were transmitted independently of the patri-
archal narratives, and should thus contain all the same features. If, however,
these narratives are read as we are trying to read the promise texts here, that is,
in order and as part of the patriarchal story as a whole, it is clear that it would
be narratologically both unnecessary and very awkward to have promise given
(again) to Abraham in both Genesis 12 and 20.
71. This explains the distinction between the land in which Isaac is to dwell (26:2b)
and the land in which he is to sojourn (26:3a). As noted above, “this” land,
in which he is to dwell temporarily as a resident alien, is Gerar; the land in
which he is to dwell permanently, the land that Yahweh will show him, is
Canaan. Attempts to read these two commands as doublets or contradictory do
not take into account the context of the narrative here, as Blum correctly notes
(Vätergeschichte, 299). It is no difficulty that Isaac is promised the land in a for-
eign country while Abraham has to wait until he has actually entered Canaan
to be promised it. For one thing, it appears, as Blum notes, that Gerar is actu-
ally included in the promise of land to Isaac. Beyond this, however, the reason
Abraham couldn’t be promised the land is that he could not know which land
was meant. Isaac, on the other hand, was raised in Canaan, and so would have
known which land was being promised.
72 . The structure of the two similes in Gen 15:5 and 26:4 is noticeably different.
In Gen 15:5, Abraham is told to count the stars, if he is able; thus his off spring
will be. In 26:4, Yahweh simply states that he will increase Isaac’s offspring
like the stars of the sky. This is much closer in form to the promise of off-
spring in 13:16, in which Yahweh simply states that he will make Abraham’s
offspring like the dust of the earth. I do not consider this determinative, but
it does serve as a counterbalance to the similar content of the similes in 15:5
and 26:4; further, it serves as a reminder that in comparing biblical passages
there are always two criteria to be recognized: content and form.
Notes on pages 83–87 187

73. Given this list of connections between 26:3b–4 and the promises of Genesis
12–13, it is difficult to see how Carr can claim that the parallels between the two
passages are confined only to 26:2–3a, and stop with 26:3b–5 (Fractures, 155).
74 . Cf. Weinfeld, Promise of the Land, 184–85.
75. It is also possible to simply follow Emerton: “it may be doubted whether an
ancient writer would have been conscious of any conflict of ideas here” (“Origin,”
24).
76. Rendtorff, Problem, 83; see also Köckert, Vätergott, 172 n. 45.
77. Cf. Emerton, “Origin,” 28.
78. Excluding 26:13–15, 18, 34, which belong to P.
79. Note particularly the use of the root rîb, “dispute,” in both Gen 13:7, 8 and 26:20,
21, 22.
80. See the similar observations of Weisman, “National Consciousness,” 62–63.
81. Emerton correctly states that the different order of cardinal directions in 28:14
and 13:14 is not to be taken as an indication of different authorship (“Origin,”
24).
82 . Cf. Van Seters, Prologue, 299–300. Note also the narrator’s description of
Yahweh’s appearance to Jacob: “Yahweh was standing beside [‘al] him,” a rela-
tively uncommon locution, but one that is found prominently in Gen 18:2, at
the beginning of another narrative that contains a promise connected to the
Genesis 12–13 set. Strangely, Rofé argues precisely the opposite: “The fact that
the words of promise in [Gen 28.]13–14 resemble remarkably the promise that
had been made to Abraham in Gen 13.14–16 only confirms that those verses are
a foreign element” (Introduction, 104).
83. Cf. Van Seters, Prologue, 302.
84 . In the entire Bible it is found only in these two passages and in 1 Kgs 3:8. A
similar expression using the verb m-n-h rather than s-p-r is found in 1 Kgs 8:5//2
Chr 5:6. Carr, focusing on the ease with which the prayer of 32:10–13 is removed
from its context, and on the ostensible deuteronomic elements of the prayer,
ignores this verbal link—again, precisely the type of connection we commonly
find at the root of nondocumentary analyses, at least when convenient—and
assigns the two passages to different redactional layers (Fractures, 168–69,
194).
85. A similar introduction is found in Gen 26:24: “I am the God of your father
Abraham.” There are two differences, however, between that passage and this.
First, I have argued above that 26:24 is part of the same initial promise struc-
ture as 26:2–5, just as 13:14–17 is part of the same promise structure as 12:1–3,
7. It is thus not impossible for the deity to make his formal introductions in
the second of the two promise passages. Second, a major theme of the promise
to Isaac is that he is receiving it for the sake of his father; it is thus narratively
sensible for Yahweh to identify himself as the god of Abraham.
86. Blum, Vätergeschichte, 298; Carr, Fractures, 178.
188 Notes on pages 87–96

87. It is therefore misleading to describe Gen 46:3–4 as a “travel command,” as


does Carr (Fractures, 177–79; “What Is Required,” 165–66). Moreover, Carr is
surely in error when he says that “the promise of Gen 46:1–4 concludes the
Genesis series of travel commands and promises, sharing with all of them a
focus on ‘going into’ and ‘coming out of’ Egypt” (“What Is Required,” 177)—
the first and third of his travel commands, Gen 12:1–2 and 31:3, have nothing
at all to do with Egypt.
88. Cf. de Pury, Promesse, 222–33, who presents numerous extrabiblical citations
of similar formulae, and Edgar W. Conrad, Fear Not Warrior: A Study of ’al tîrā’
Pericopes in the Hebrew Scriptures, Brown Judaic Studies 75 (Chico: Scholars,
1985). Whether or not one agrees with the claim of both de Pury and Conrad
that every occurrence of this phrase connotes a martial aspect, these discus-
sions serve to collect the examples of this phrase and demonstrate the range
of sources in which it appears.
89. Cf. Weisman, “National Consciousness,” 64–65 (who does not recognize the
parallel of Genesis 15).
90. Cf. Van Seters, Prologue, 319.
91. Although he works from a primarily documentary standpoint, even Horst
Seebass declares that all of the promise texts from Gen 50:24 on are deutero-
nomic, largely because they are formulaic and refer to the promise as an oath
(“Landverheissung an die Väter,” Evangelische Theologie 37 [1997]: 220–23).
92 . Rendtorff, Problem, 84.
93. Rendtorff, Problem, 84.
94 . Rendtorff, Problem, 84–85.
95. Rendtorff, Problem, 85. See, however, Nicholson: “In addressing Moses in this
passage, God declares that he is ‘the God of thy father, the God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’, and also refers to Israel as ‘my peo-
ple’. Such statements seem to presuppose a patriarchal story in which the
three patriarchs have already been associated as father, son, and grandson
and in which they and their descendants are the people of the God who thus
addresses Moses” (Pentateuch, 128).
96. Cf. Schmid, Genesis, and the essays in Gertz, et al., Abschied, and Dozeman
and Schmid, Farewell.
97. See the discussion of these verses and the scholarship cited there in Carr,
“What is Required?” 169–72.
98. Deut 1:8, 35; 6:10, 18, 23; 7:12; 8:1, 18; 9:5, 27–28; 10:11; 11:9, 21; 19:8; 26:3; 28:11;
29:12; 30:20.
99. It is not the case, as von Rad would have it, that “Deuteronomy, which appeals
with great frequency to the promise to the patriarchs, understood it only as a
promise of land” (apud Westermann, Promises, 22).
100. Given the fraught nature of scholarship on Genesis 15, the question of its
assignment to E is worth briefly engaging here. As noted earlier, the classical
Notes on page 96 189

source division of the chapter into two, J and E, has largely been abandoned
in both documentary and nondocumentary scholarship, with many claiming
that the chapter is a postpriestly unity. A major rationale for this late dat-
ing of the chapter seems to be that the reference to the Exodus in 15:13–15
cannot be prepriestly, because according to the nondocumentary school
the priestly layer was the first to connect Genesis and Exodus; it cannot be
priestly, because Genesis 17 is from P and is a clear doublet; ipso facto, it must
be postpriestly. This argumentation has no support in the text itself, which
shows virtually no signs, linguistic or otherwise, of a late date. The frequently
cited form wəhe’emin in 15:6, a hiphil weqatal with a clear past tense meaning,
is admittedly difficult, but a single errant form is by no means sufficient to
demonstrate the late date of the chapter. To date a passage on the basis of one
form is to say that the oddity is more important than the established norm,
for if the chapter were late, then all of the other forms, the usual wayyiqtols,
would be “wrong.” It is more likely that this one errant form is the result of
a scribal mistake. It should be noted that two similar forms are found else-
where in Genesis—wəhôkiaḥ (Gen 21:25) and wəheḥəlip (Gen 31:7)—both hiphil,
both weqatals, both with clear past tense meaning, and both in E. This raises
at least the possibility, though no more, that the erroneous change from the
wayyiqtol to a weqatal in the occasional hiphil form could have taken place
within the process of transmission of the independent E document.
It is often claimed that the word rəku š in 15:14 is an indication that the text
cannot be from E, as this word is, according to many, exclusive to P. It should
first be recognized that the argument of exclusive language is a problematic
one: just because one author uses a word regularly does not mean that others
are forbidden from doing so as well, even only once. More to the point, how-
ever, this is not the only occurrence of the word rəku š in a nonpriestly context:
it appears in Gen 14:11, 12, 16, 21 (a chapter with its own difficulties, but one
that is clearly not priestly) and, most notably, in another clear E context, in
Num 16:32. All told, the word appears in six distinct priestly passages (Gen
12:5; 13:6; 31:18; 36:6–7; 46:6; Num 35:3), and in three nonpriestly passages
(Genesis 14; 15:14; Num 16:32). This distribution is hardly one-sided enough to
prove that the word is exclusively priestly or, taking that claim a step further,
that every nonpriestly usage must by necessity be postpriestly, the word evi-
dently being known only from its use in P.
All of that being said, it is possible—though not defi nitive—that 15:14b
is in fact part of a secondary addition to the chapter (though one that does
not affect the promise). It seems that 15:13aE – 14a is an insertion into the
chapter: whereas 15:13aD , the statement that Abraham’s descendants will
be strangers in a foreign land, conforms entirely to E’s presentation of
the Israelite experience in Egypt, the notion that the Israelites would be
enslaved for four hundred years does not, for there is no enslavement of
19 0 Notes on page 96

the Israelites in E. On the other hand, the idea that the Israelites would be
in Egypt for four generations, found in 15:16, is fulfi lled in a remarkable
manner by the E narrative, and exclusively by E, which alone takes great
care to inform us that “Joseph lived to see children of the third generation
of Ephraim” (Gen 50:23). For the details on both of these points, see Baden,
“Joseph.”
Finally, one must reckon with the phenomenon of the divine names in
Genesis 15, which has of course long been an ostensible stumbling block to
the recognition of the entire chapter as belonging to E. One is tempted to sim-
ply dismiss this issue altogether, since the use of the divine name is emphati-
cally not one of the primary criteria used to identify source documents (see
Baden, Redaction, 225–27). Yet it must be admitted that the frequent use of
yhwh in Genesis 15 is striking, and perhaps demands some closer attention. Of
the attestations of yhwh in this chapter, four can be set aside from the begin-
ning: 15:1, 4, 6, and 18. In these cases the name occurs not in direct speech
but in the narrator’s voice, and is thus unproblematic: the author of E knew
that God’s name was Yahweh; what he claims is that the human characters
in his story did not know that name until Exodus 3. The divine name appears
elsewhere in the E narrator’s voice (Gen 20:18), and indeed even in P (Gen
17:1). (One might suggest, in fact, that the use of the divine name in 15:1 and
17:1, at least, may be a redactional alteration made by some later scribe who
thought it necessary to use God’s proper name in the context of his promise to
Abraham, thus linking Genesis 12, 15, and 17—and maybe also 22:15–18.) With
those four examples removed from consideration, we are left with three occur-
rences of yhwh in Genesis 15. Two of these are in Abraham’s voice, and are
therefore theoretically difficult: 15:2 and 8. In both of these, however, the word
appears as part of a collocation, ’adōnāy yhwh, that is otherwise unattested in
Genesis–Numbers. I venture the possibility that yhwh here is a gloss, perhaps
a later scribe’s attempt to make sense of Abraham’s use of the common noun
“lord” even though the narrator has already said yhwh; since both words had
the same traditional pronunciation, this scribe may have assumed (correctly
enough) that they were to be equated (only at a later stage would the proper
name have been repointed as ’elōhîm, as we have it in the MT). Though this is
admittedly speculative, the strange phrase ’adōnāy yhwh should at least give us
pause when considering the state of the divine names in the chapter. And the
final use, in 15:7, comes in God’s own words to Abraham: “I am Yahweh who
brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans.” Here the name occurs in what
we may consider a stock phrase, or at least a deeply significant one, as the
language here distinctly echoes that of the seminal E text of the Decalogue: “I
am Yahweh who brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Exod 20:2). (As for the
reference to Ur of the Chaldeans in this verse, which some see as based on the
priestly text of Gen 11:28, 31, it is possible that this is a redactional insertion
Notes on pages 96–103 19 1

intended to match the mention of Abraham’s ancestral home in P; it is also


possible that the references in P are redactional insertions, for the same pur-
pose. In neither case is it necessary to posit that this reference is an indication
that the entirety of Genesis 15 is postpriestly.)
To these arguments one may add a variety of positive indications that link
Genesis 15 with E on thematic and stylistic grounds: the prophetic address to
Abraham in 15:1 (cf. Gen 20:7, 17); the appearance of God in a vision (cf. Gen
20:3; 31:24; 46:2); the description of God as appearing in smoke and fire in
15:17 (cf. Exod 20:18, the only other pentateuchal text in which the word lap-
pîd appears); and the presence of a formal ceremony to mark the making of a
covenant (cf. Exod 24:3–8).
101 . It should be noted that this analysis does not require that the sources them-
selves be singly authored compositions. The Documentary Hypothesis
does not preclude the possibility that each of the sources has undergone
various stages of development before reaching its fi nal form (see Baden,
Composition, 248). It is possible that some verses, entire episodes, or even
promise texts may have been added to any given source during the lengthy
process of its composition. What is important is that however the source
came into being, it was composed with a common set of literary and narra-
tive sensibilities, such that its unity is evident from its internal consistency
and coherence.
102 . Contra Rendtorff, Problem, 83.
103. See particularly Gen 18:18.
104 . Cf. Rendtorff, Problem, 96.
105. The first of these phrases occurs elsewhere only in Num 14:28; 24:3, 4, 15, 16.
The second is found only in Deut 1:36, though variants of the phrase are found
in both P (Lev 26:43; Num 20:12) and non-P (Num 11:20).
106. 1 Sam 30:8.
107. Cf. Num 14:24; Deut 7:12, 8:20; 2 Sam 12:6, 10; Isa 5:23; Am 4:12.

chap ter 4

1. Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 47.
2 . Although it is the case that the promise to Abraham comes at the beginning
of his narrative career in all three sources, this is not because there was any
common tradition that maintained that this must be the case. It seems more
likely that all three authors simply recognized that this was the most sensible
place in the Abraham cycle for the promise tradition to make its fi rst appear-
ance, as it would thereby give an overarching shape to the whole (and to the
rest of the patriarchal narrative and beyond as well). It should be noted, how-
ever, that the sources do not agree on when in Abraham’s life—as opposed to
his existence in the story—the promise was fi rst given. According to J, it was
192 Notes on pages 104–105

before he left his home for Canaan; according to E, it was after; and according
to P, it was well after, twenty-four years to be precise (Abraham leaves Haran
at age 75 according to Gen 12:4b, and is given the promise when he is 99
according to Gen 17:1).
3. Although Exodus 6 constitutes the last significant reference to the bərît in P, the
promise does appear again in H, in the curses and blessings of Leviticus 26,
where it seems to be used as an intentional bookend to Exodus 6: just as Israel’s
national history begins in Exodus 6 with God remembering the bərît, so too will
it collapse and be renewed with God remembering the bərît (Lev 26:42; Baruch
J. Schwartz, personal communication).
4. See Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Winona Lake,
IN: Eisenbrauns, 1992), 59–157. This seems also to be how H views bərît, as is
evident in Leviticus 26, the blessings and curses equivalent to those of D in
Deuteronomy 28, where H says “If you follow my laws and observe my com-
mandments . . . I will maintain my covenant with you” (Lev 26:3, 9)—but “if you
reject my laws and spurn my rules, so that you do not observe all my command-
ments, and if you break my covenant, I will do this to you: I will wreak misery
upon you,” etc. (26:15).
5. It has sometimes been understood that the covenant with Noah in Gen 9:8–17
is dependent on obedience to the preceding Noahide laws in 9:3–6. Yet this is
a misreading on multiple levels, not least of which is that the entire concept of
the Noahide laws is postbiblical, deriving from postbiblical midrash (see James
L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible as It Was at the Start of
the Common Era [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998], 224–26).
The instructions in Gen 9:3–6, which entail the removal of the restriction on
humans to eat only vegetation, are not really laws, but are rather a revision of the
natural order of humanity’s relationship with the animal kingdom. They are a
statement of fact, just as the initial instructions to humankind in Gen 1:29–30
are not laws but a statement of fact: this is what humans and animals eat. Even
if one were to take Gen 9:3–6 as something approximating law, however, this
passage is formally separated from the covenant that follows in 9:8–17 by the
repetition of the speech introduction in 9:8: “God said to Noah and his sons
with him.” As has long been recognized, the repetition of the formal speech
introduction in the middle of a single speech serves to delineate between dis-
tinct topics in the discourse.
6. See Na ḥmanides on Gen 9:12.
7. It may be argued that there is another potential obligation in Genesis 17, in God’s
first words to Abraham: “Walk in my ways and be blameless” (Gen 17:2). These
words are followed directly by the introduction of the bərît, which might be taken
therefore as an implicit result of Abraham’s fulfillment of the commands in 17:2.
Yet at no point in the entire chapter thereafter is it suggested that Abraham must
behave in any particular way in order to receive the bərît. It is therefore possible,
Notes on pages 105–106 193

and more likely, that the words of 17:2 are to be taken as a complete thought in and
of themselves: “Walk in my ways and (thus) be blameless.”
8. See the seminal article of Michael V. Fox, “The Sign of the Covenant:
Circumcision in the Light of the Priestly ’ôt Etiologies,” Revue Biblique 81 (1974):
557–96.
9. This seems to be what is meant, at the basic level, by the oft-repeated priestly
expression “that person will be cut off from his people,” which appears first in
Gen 17:14: not being circumcised will result in not being party to the divine
promise, which is essentially how the Israelite people are defined in P.
10. As Fox puts it, “The covenant in Gen., XVII is not conditional—it will not be
cancelled because of Israel’s behavior—but it does have a condition, namely
that the individual Israelite do his part to aid God in fulfi lling his part” (“Sign,”
596). There are two prerequisites for receiving the benefits of the promise in
P: one must be Israelite, and one must be circumcised. Those who are circum-
cised but not Israelite, like Ishmael, do not receive the promise; those who are
Israelite but uncircumcised are “cut off.”
11. The unconditionality of the patriarchal promise in P may be highlighted by the
regular use of the word “establish,” hēqîm, in P’s bərît language (Gen 6:18; 9:9,
11; 17:7, 19, 21; Exod 6:4; see similarly the use of “give,” nātan: Gen 17:2; 25:12).
The covenant is not “made,” or “cut” (kārat; Gen 15:18; 21:27, 32; 26:28; 31:44;
Exod 23:32; 24:8; 34:10, 12, 15, 27), as it is in the nonpriestly texts, where the
covenant (whether between God and humans or between two human parties)
is reciprocal.
12 . The idea that there are four bərîts in P is commonly associated with Julius
Wellhausen, who, however, identified them as being with Adam, Noah,
Abraham, and Moses; at the very least the fi rst of these seems and has usually
been correctly deemed a fi gment of Wellhausen’s imagination, as there is no
mention of a bərît before Noah. Other scholars have adjusted Wellhausen’s
claim, fi nding, e.g., only three bərîts (Noah, Abraham, and Moses; Gunkel,
Genesis, 151), or a different four (Noah, Abraham, Moses, Phinehas; Menahem
Haran, The Biblical Collection, Hebrew; 3 vols. [Jerusalem: Magnes, 1996–
2008], 2:115–18). Like those of Genesis 9 and 17, discussed above, the bərîts
of Numbers 18 and 25 are also unilateral: in Numbers 18, there is no obliga-
tion laid on the priests in exchange for their receipt of the perquisites from
the sacred donations of the Israelites; in Numbers 25, though the grant of
eternal priesthood is bestowed as a result of Phinehas’s actions, there is noth-
ing further that Phinehas’s descendants need do to insure the continuing
receipt of the promise. The possibility that Numbers 18 is, in whole or in part,
from H (see Israel Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the
Holiness School [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995], 53–54) would, of course, simply
mean that P proper contained only three bərîts, which, unless one is wedded to
Wellhausen’s notion of four covenants, is essentially unproblematic. It should
19 4 Notes on pages 106–108

be noted that the Sabbath in Exod 31:13–17 is not a distinct bərît, but is rather,
like circumcision, the sign of the bərît; the group addressed in Exodus 31 is the
Israelite population, i.e., precisely the same group covered by the promise of
Genesis 17. (Although many scholars have argued that Exod 31:13–17 is from H,
or is otherwise later than P, see the recent argument for an original P stratum,
including the bərît, by Jeff rey Stackert, “Compositional Strata in the Priestly
Sabbath: Exodus 31:12–17 and 35:1–3,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, 2011, http://
www.jhsonline.org/Articles/article_162.pdf.) We may conjecture that the new
sign of the bərît in Exodus 31 functions as a supplement to circumcision in
Genesis 17, an element added as a result of the changed circumstances of
Israel’s relationship with the deity in the aftermath of the Exodus and Sinai.
13. The selection of Abraham in P is, like virtually everything else in the priestly
narrative, without any stated rationale. That is, we are never told why God
chooses Abraham rather than someone else, just as there is no rationale given
for why Moses is chosen to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, or why the Levites
are chosen among all the tribes to serve as Tabernacle functionaries; it is simply
God’s prerogative to choose whom he will.
14 . Here, with others, I take the waw in lə’ōtōt ûləmô‘adîm to be a waw explicativum
(GKC §154a1).
15. See Edwin Firmage, “Genesis 1 and the Priestly Agenda,” Journal for the Study
of the Old Testament 82 (1999): 97–114.
16. One may note that the blessing of fertility, when given to humans rather than
animals, has a third element in Gen 1:28 and 9:1 and 7: dominion or spreading
over the earth. It is thus possible, if not indeed probable, that this universal
human blessing regarding the earth is a precursor to the land aspect of the
patriarchal promise in P—that is, whereas all of humanity fi lls the earth, Israel
is given a particularized version of that blessing, relating to the land of Canaan
alone. My thanks to Liane Marquis for this observation.
17. It does appear in H, in Lev 26:9, where it is said that the promise to make
them fruitful and multiply them will be one of the blessings that will devolve
from Israel’s obedience. Here again, however, the difference between the P
and H uses of the bərît emerges: for P, the bərît is unconditional and unwaver-
ing, while in Leviticus 26, if Israel obeys, then the bərît will be maintained,
but if Israel disobeys the laws then Yahweh will—temporarily—allow the b ərît
to lapse, and bring terrible punishments down on the people; only once the
people repent will Yahweh remember the bərît and restore it (26:42). Even in
this threat, however, the essential unconditionality of the promise from P
seems to retain its force in H: despite the momentary abrogation of the prom-
ise as a punishment for disobedience, Yahweh will always restore the b ərît
with his people.
18. See the statement of the rabbis: “The intention to create Israel preceded every-
thing else” (Ber. Rab. 1.4).
Notes on pages 108–111 195

19. Konrad Schmid has noted that in the patriarchal accounts it is only P that refers
to the patriarchs as gērîm in Canaan, but he takes this as an indication that P
is already foreshadowing the Exodus by making the patriarchal family’s stay in
Canaan a temporary one (Genesis, 84). Yet the term gēr is used to indicate a resi-
dent alien; it speaks to a person’s origin, rather than his destination. Although
some gērîm certainly would leave their adopted territory and return to their
homeland, the majority of the biblical usages of the term seem to have no end-
point in mind for the gēr ’s stay.
20. As they speak to a distinct genealogical line, and involve only some aspects of the
promise, we may leave aside the references to Ishmael in Genesis 16 and 21.
21. In J, Jacob goes not to Paddan-Aram but to Haran, where Rebekah’s family lives
according to J, and he goes not for the purpose of getting married as in P, but
merely to escape Esau’s wrath (Gen 27:42–45); that he happens to find his wives
there is an unplanned but fortunate consequence of his journey.
22 . According to P, all of Jacob’s sons—including Benjamin—were born in
Paddan-Aram (Gen 35:22b–26).
23. In Gen 48:19 (E), the language is similar, but not identical: Manasseh is blessed
before Ephraim because his offspring will be plentiful enough for multiple
nations (məlo’-haggôyīm)—but not actually multiple nations.
24 . So Rashi on Gen 17:6, though he claims that as Ishmael has already been born
the statement must refer only to Esau.
25. Williamson (Abraham, 154–70) attempts to read “nations” and “kings” here
somewhat metaphorically, and very much in light of Gen 12:3: that these nations
will be Abraham’s descendants insofar as Abraham mediates God’s blessing to
them. This seems to me a stretch.
26. Speiser, “‘People.’”
27. Although they equate the nations in this passage with the Israelite tribes, the
rabbis were close to this reading when they said that the prediction of kings
coming from Jacob referred to Jeroboam and Jehu—that is, descendants of
Ephraim and Manasseh (Gen Rab. 82.4, followed by Rashi on Gen 35:11).
28. Admittedly, there are no explicit references in P to the divided kingdom, but
this is hardly an obstacle: the narratives of the Pentateuch, in all of its source
documents, take place long before there is any kingdom at all, and in none of
the sources is there any explicit mention of the future division of the Israelite
people into two parts. Furthermore, as is well known, the author P is particu-
larly careful to keep his text anchored in its narrative historical context. The
foremost example of this, of course, is P’s unbending focus on the Tabernacle
as the central cultic site (as it was in the wilderness in which the narrative is
set), rather than the Temple.
29. Thanks again to Liane Marquis for this observation.
30. Though it is often stated that P has no interest in, or even shows no awareness
of, the concept of kingship in Israel (and is thus to be dated to the postexilic
19 6 Notes on pages 111–117

period when there were no Israelite kings), such a view is, to my mind, unsus-
tainable, if only because of the references to kings in the promise texts.
31. In the nonpriestly narrative of the changing of Jacob’s name to Israel (Gen
32:25–32), there is no mention of or allusion to the tradition of the promise.
32 . See on this connection especially Noam Mizrahi, “Abraham’s Name Derivation
(Gen 17:5): A Linguistic Phenomenon as a Literary Device,” Tarbiz 71 (2002):
337–52 [in Hebrew].
33. In Deut 34:1 both P and J are present: the text according to P read “Moses went
up from the steppes of Moab to Mount Nebo, opposite Jericho” (cf. Deut 32:48);
according to J, “Moses went up to the summit of Pisgah, and Yahweh showed
him the whole land” (cf. Num 21:20).
34 . The cardinal directions are mentioned by J also in Gen 28:14, when Yahweh
tells Jacob that his descendants will spread out in all directions.
35. In Deut 3:27 we find the instructions to Moses for which Deut 34:1–3 is the ful-
fillment, in the former passage using the cardinal directions rather than geo-
graphical features as in the latter. The D text of Deut 3:27 seems to be derived
from the earlier J source in Num 21:20 and Deut 34:1–3.
36. It is possible, even probable, that this is a ruse: Joseph’s brothers are, accord-
ing to J, farmers (Gen 37:7; note also that in J the patriarchs are referred to
as being “in the fields”: Gen 30:15; 34:5, 7); it is in E that the brothers are
shepherds (Gen 37:2, 12–17). If it is possible that Genesis 14 is, for the most
part, from J, as I think is the case, we may add to the foregoing list Abraham’s
insistence that he receive nothing in exchange for his part in defeating the
foreign kings, in order that it be clear that everything he has derives from
Yahweh (Gen 14:22–24).
37. In P, see Gen 28:1–4, 6; 48:20; 49:28b; in E, see Gen 48:9, 13–16.
38. I have translated the word tôrōtāy here as “my instructions,” rather than “my
teachings,” as the NJPS translation has it. The meaning of “teachings” is effec-
tively a postbiblical one, grounded in the notion that the entire Torah, both law
and narrative, constitutes a single basis for behavior. Nowhere does the word
have this meaning in the Bible.
39. Bar-On, “Festival Calendars.”
40. There is an intriguing overlap between this concept of Abraham’s unique obe-
dience to the divine will as manifested in the natural law and the classical state-
ment of the rabbis, that “Abraham obeyed the entire Torah before it was given”
(m. Qid. 4:14).
41. On this reading of Gen 12:1–3, see Joel S. Baden, “The Morpho-Syntax of
Genesis 12:1–3: Translation and Interpretation,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 72
(2010): 223–37.
42 . Although these verses are frequently attributed to E, they are in fact from J, as
is clear from Joseph’s initial words in the speech comprising Gen 45:4–13: “I am
your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt”—a claim that is true only in
Notes on pages 117–122 19 7

J, in which Joseph is indeed sold to the Ishmaelites (Gen 37:28b), while in E


Joseph is stolen by the Midianites (37:28a; see also 40:15).
43. This was recognized famously by Gerhard von Rad: “God’s way of dealing with
the ancestors of the race is by unobtrusive guidance” (Old Testament Theology,
Vol. 1: The Theology of Israel’s Historical Traditions, trans. D. M. G. Stalker
[Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1962], 175).
44 . As may be observed from the passages cited in the preceding discussion,
the phrase “I am with you” and its variations are found extensively in J from
Genesis 24 onward, but never before that; that is, it begins to be used in the
first narrative of Isaac (the wooing of Rebekah), but is not used once with regard
to Abraham. This remarkable break between Abraham and the other patriar-
chal and postpatriarchal narratives deserves fuller attention than can be given
here.
45. On the fear of God as a primary theme in E, see Hans Walter Wolff, “The
Elohistic Fragments in the Pentateuch,” in Walter Brueggemann and Hans
Walter Wolff, The Vitality of Old Testament Traditions, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: John
Knox, 1982), 67–82, and Jacques Vermeylen, “Les premières étapes littéraires
de la formation du Pentateuque,” in Le Pentateuque en question, ed. Albert de
Pury and Thomas Römer, 3rd ed. Le Monde de la Bible 19 (Geneva: Labor et
Fides, 2002), 149–97 (at 151–60).
46. On the translation of Exod 20:17, see Moshe Greenberg, “‫ נסה‬in Exodus 20:20
and the Purpose of the Sinaitic Theophany,” Journal of Biblical Literature 79
(1960): 272–79.
47. The centrality of divine providence in the promise of Genesis 15 may be under-
scored by the covenant ceremony that accompanies the promise: as Ronald
Clements has pointed out (Abraham and David: Genesis 15 and Its Meaning for
Israelite Tradition, Studies in Biblical Theology, Second Series 5 [London: SCM,
1967], 34 n. 45), this is modeled on a treaty ceremony in which both parties
would pass between the pieces of the sacrifice, thereby demonstrating their
joint allegiance to the treaty and particularly their common acceptance of the
curses that would come about as the result of breaking the treaty. It is there-
fore unusual, and perhaps pointed, that it is only God who passes between the
pieces of the sacrifice in Genesis 15—as if to emphasize that this is a unilateral
promise, and that God is taking on all of the responsibility inherent in it.
48. It is likely that portions of these verses are not original to E, but are in fact
redactional, intended to take into account the later P and J presentations of
Israel’s experience in Egypt. The original E text would have comprised Gen
15:13aD, 14b–16. See Joel S. Baden, “From Joseph to Moses: The Narratives of
Exodus 1–2,” Vetus Testamentum 62 (2012): 133–58 (at 150 n. 51).
49. In J: Exod 14:11–12; 17:3; Num 11:4–6; in P: Exod 16:3; Num 14:3–4; 20:4.
50. In Gen 46:4, God’s statement that “I will surely bring you up again” can have
only the Exodus in mind, for in E, unlike J and P, there is no narrative of Jacob’s
19 8 Notes on pages 122–129

burial in Canaan. If we read this verse in conjunction with the one that precedes
it, we may posit that Jacob is being spoken of in two distinct ways: in 46:3, he is
directly addressed by God as an individual (“Fear not”), and it is claimed that he
will become a great nation; in 46:4, then, God’s statement that he will go down
to Egypt with Jacob has an individual focus, but the statement that he will bring
him back up should be taken to refer to Jacob’s existence as a people.
51. The closest P comes to a reference to the Exodus in its legal sections is in Num
3:13 and 8:17, where the the selection of the Levites to stand in for the first-born
of all Israel is linked with the smiting of the first-born in Egypt.
52 . On the relationship of D’s laws to the Covenant Code, see Bernard M. Levinson,
Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998); on that of H to the other law collections, see Jeffrey
Stackert, Rewriting the Torah: Literary Revision in Deuteronomy and the Holiness
Legislation, Forschungen zum Alten Testament 52 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2007). The most obvious text in which the Exodus is used as grounds for legis-
lation is of course Exodus 12; yet in the original P narrative only the instructions
for the first Passover in Egypt were given, without any laws regarding future
observance of the festival—those laws, in Exod 12:14–20, derive from H. See
Joel S. Baden, “Identifying the Original Stratum of P: Theoretical and Practical
Considerations,” in The Strata of the Priestly Writings: Contemporary Debate and
Future Directions, ed. Sarah Shectman and Joel S. Baden, Abhandlungen zur
Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments 95 (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag
Zürich, 2009), 13–29.
53. It should be noted that in the latter two cases, the promises occur not only at
narrative borders, but at geographical borders as well.

chap ter 5

1. Wellhausen, Composition, and idem, Prolegomena to the History of Israel, trans.


J. Sutherland Black and Allan Enzies. Repr. (Atlanta: Scholars, 1994).
2 . On this historical/literary presumption, see Baden, Redaction, 289–99.
3. Alexander Stewart, “The History of the Southern Kingdom in Relation to the
Law of Moses,” in Lex Mosaica or The Law of Moses and the Higher Criticism,
ed. Richard Valpy French (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1894), 353–406 (at
358).
4 . William Henry Green, The Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1895), 172.
5. Green, Higher Criticism, 31.
6. Solomon Shechter, “Higher Criticism—Higher Anti-Semitism,” in Seminary
Addresses and Other Papers (Cincinnati: Ark, 1915), 35–39 (at 37).
7. Umberto Cassuto, The Documentary Hypothesis and the Composition of the
Pentateuch, trans. Israel Abrahams (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1961), 103.
Notes on pages 129–132 199

8. M. H. Segal, The Pentateuch: Its Composition and Authorship and Other Studies
(Jerusalem: Magnes, 1967), 30.
9. R. Norman Whybray, The Making of the Pentateuch: A Methodological Study,
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplements 53 (Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic, 1987).
10. Of course for the purposes of this discussion I am leaving aside the gen-
erations of explicitly theological interpretations of the text, from Jubilees to
Walter Brueggemann, the writings of those who read the text in order to make
sense of it for narrower or wider communities of believers, who knew noth-
ing about or intentionally set aside the critical evaluation of the Pentateuch’s
composition. It is worth noting, however, the struggles that Gerhard von Rad
encountered in attempting to write his Old Testament Theology when he dealt
with the Pentateuch: even in trying to participate in the long tradition of theo-
logical introductions, von Rad was able to talk almost exclusively about the
theologies of the individual sources, so difficult was it for him, as a penta-
teuchal scholar, to conceive of any overarching meaning to be found in the
fi nal form.
11. Thomas W. Mann, The Book of the Torah: The Narrative Integrity of the Pentateuch
(Atlanta: John Knox, 1988), 161.
12 . Rendtorff, Problem; Erhard Blum, Vätergeschichte; idem, Studien. See the two
major collections of essays by scholars adhering to this theory: Jan Christian
Gertz et al., eds., Abschied vom Jahwisten, and Dozeman and Schmid,
Farewell.
13. Rendtorff, Problem, 189. The similarities of this view to that of Brevard Childs
should be apparent; it is noteworthy, however, that Childs still worked with a
fundamentally source-critical model for the development of the text, and that
his canonical criticism dealt in practice less with the intentionality of the com-
bination of the sources and more with the resulting meaning as understood by
particular communities of faith. Childs was more sociophenomenological than
literary-historical.
14 . It is not necessarily the case, of course, that each redactional layer should be
thought to have worked over the entire Pentateuch; some are seen to have
treated only the patriarchal narratives, for example (cf. Blum, Vätergeschichte),
and some very late layers dealt exclusively with one or other of the canoni-
cal books (see, e.g., the analysis of Numbers by Reinhard Achenbach, Die
Vollendung der Tora: Studien zur Redaktionsgeschichte des Numeribuches im
Kontext von Hexateuch und Pentateuch, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für altoriental-
ische und biblische Rechtsgeschichte 3 [Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003], or of
Leviticus by Christoph Nihan, From Priestly Torah to Pentateuch: A Study in the
Composition of the Book of Leviticus, Forschungen zum Alten Testament II/25
[Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007]).
15. On which see Baden, Composition, 53–67.
200 Notes on pages 132–138

16. Or, for those who see the nonpriestly flood story as the redactional revision
of P’s, vice versa; for this view see, e.g., Blenkinsopp, Pentateuch, 78–87;
Jean-Louis Ska, “The Story of the Flood: A Priestly Writer and Some Later
Editorial Fragments,” in The Exegesis of the Pentateuch: Exegetical Studies and
Basic Questions, Forschungen zum Alten Testament 66 (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2009), 165–83; Albert de Pury, “Pg as the Absolute Beginning,” in
Les dernières rédactions du Pentateuque, de l’Hexateuque et de l’Ennéateuque, ed.
Thomas Römer and Konrad Schmid, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum
Lovaniensium 203 (Leuven: University Press, 2007), 99–128 (at 114).
17. See above.
18. William K. Gilders, “Sacrifice before Sinai and the Priestly Narratives,” in The
Srata of the Priestly Writings: Contemporary Debate and Future Directions, ed.
Sarah Shectman and Joel S. Baden, Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten
und Neuen Testaments 95 (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 2009), 57–70
(at 69).
19. This was recognized already in the seminal work of Hupfeld, Quellen, 165–66.
20. See, for instance, the analysis of the book of Numbers offered by Achenbach,
Vollendung, which identifies the final three layers of the book as “theokratische
Bearbeitungen.”
21. On this logical problem, long prevalent in biblical scholarship, see the recent
essay of Benjamin D. Sommer, “Dating Pentateuchal texts and the Perils of
Pseudo-Historicism,” in The Pentateuch: International Perspectives on Current
Research, ed. Thomas B. Dozeman, Konrad Schmid, and Baruch J. Schwartz;
Forschungen zum Alten Testament 78 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011),
85–108.
22 . On the narrative dependence of D on J and E, see Baden, Redaction; on the legal
dependence of D on E, see Levinson, Deuteronomy; on H’s dependence on D
and E, see Stackert, Rewriting.
23. Though the claim that Dtr is dependent on J and E (and even P) is no doubt
controversial, I believe it to be warranted on the basis of such texts as Jos 5:12, in
which it is recorded that the manna ceased once the Israelites entered Canaan
(the explicit fulfi llment of P’s statement in Exod 16:35 that the Israelites ate the
manna until they entered Canaan); Jos 15:14, in which Caleb’s dispossession
of the Anakites Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai is narrated (these Anakites are
known by name only from J, in Num 13:22); Jos 24:32, in which we learn that
Joshua buried the bones of Joseph, that were brought up from Egypt, in the site
that Jacob had purchased from the inhabitants of Shechem for one hundred
kesitahs (thus conforming exclusively and explicitly to a series of E texts: Gen
33:18; 48:22; Exod 13:19). This is, of course, far too broad a discussion to enter
into here.
24 . See Baden, Composition, 217–21.
Notes on pages 139–156 201

25. This is not merely an aesthetic judgment, that the independent sources read
“well” literarily. It has, rather, everything to do with the narrative claims of
the source: for the vast majority of the pentateuchal sources that emerge from
the Documentary Hypothesis, each narrative claim is dependent on, and in
turn forms the basis for, other narrative claims that precede and follow it. What
makes the sources seem “complete,” then, is that there are so few narrative
claims lacking—places where we read the independent document and miss an
earlier mention of a person, place, or event that is necessary for understanding
the text.
26. See Baden, Redaction, 263–85.
27. On the attempts of classical source-critical scholarship to discern deuteronomic
insertions in the Pentateuch, see Baden, Composition, 139–46.
28. See, e.g., Peter J. Kearney, “Creation and Liturgy: The P Redaction of Ex 25–40,”
Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 89 (1977): 375–87 (at 381–84);
Childs, Introduction, 175–76.
29. See Joel S. Baden, “The Original Place of the Priestly Manna Story in Exodus
16,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 122 (2010): 491–504.
30. As already recognized by Bacon, Genesis, 135.
31. See, e.g., Williamson, Abraham; Dixon Sutherland, “The Organization of the
Abraham Promise Narratives,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
95 (1983): 337–43.
32 . On the Fragmentary Hypothesis, see Baden, Composition, 256–58 n. 12.
33. Similar arguments for the even-handed reading of the pentateuchal sources,
and for the theological implications of their compilation into a single text,
are made by Benjamin Sommer in “Dialogical Biblical Theology: A Jewish
Approach to Reading Scripture Theologically,” in Biblical Theology: Introducing
the Conversation, ed. Leo Perdue (Nashville: Abingdon, 2009), 1–53, 265–85.
Sommer applies this argument in his book The Bodies of God and the World
of Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 124–26,
where he shows that the same approach suggested here can indeed be fruitfully
applied to a central theological issue other than the patriarchal promise.
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Dominique. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2006.
———. “The Call of Abraham and Israel’s Birth-Certificate (Gen 12:1–4a).”
In The Exegesis of the Pentateuch: Exegetical Studies and Basic Questions,
210 Bibliography

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2009 .
———. “The Story of the Flood: A Priestly Writer and Some Later Editorial
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Questions, 165–83. Forschungen zum Alten Testament 66. Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2009.
Skinner, John. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis. 2nd ed. International
Critical Commentary. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1930.
Sommer, Benjamin D. “Dialogical Biblical Theology: A Jewish Approach to Reading
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edited by Leo Perdue, 1–53, 265–85. Nashville: Abingdon, 2009.
———. The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel, 124–26. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009.
———. “Dating Pentateuchal Texts and the Perils of Pseudo-Historicism.” In The
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Alten Testament 78. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011.
Speiser, Ephraim A . “‘People’ and ‘Nation’ of Israel.” Journal for Biblical Literature
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Stewart, Alexander. “The History of the Southern Kingdom in Relation to the Law
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Sutherland, Dixon. “The Organization of the Abraham Promise Narratives.”
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———. Abraham in History and Tradition. New Haven: Yale University Press,
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Index of Scholars Cited

Achenbach, Reinhard 199 n. 14, 200 Brightman, Edgar S. 169 n. 22


n. 20 Brueggemann, Walter 165 n. 16
Addis, W. E. 167 n. 3, 168 nn. 12–13,
169 n. 22, 180 n. 17, 181 n. 38, 183 Carpenter, J. Estlin 31, 35, 167 nn. 2–4,
n. 56 168 n. 12, 169 nn. 14, 21–22, 171 nn.
Alt, Albrecht 171 n. 41 33, 36, 180 n. 17, 180 n. 25, 171 n. 28,
Alter, Robert 102, 191 n. 1 181 nn. 38, 41, 183 nn. 50, 54
Carr, David 45, 54, 173 nn. 63, 67, 69,
Bacon, Benjamin W. 35, 167 nn. 2–4, 73, 179 n. 12, 180 n. 22, 181 n. 41,
169 n. 22, 171 n. 37, 178 n. 2, 181 183 nn. 54, 57, 184 n. 59, 187 nn.
nn. 27, 38, 183 n. 54, 185 n. 65, 201 84, 86, 188 nn. 87, 97
n. 30 Cassuto, Umberto 129, 179 n. 11, 198
Baden, Joel S. 166 n. 22, 167 n. 23, 169 n. 7
nn. 17, 21, 171 n. 29, 173 n. 68, 177 Childs, Brevard S. 165 n. 12, 166 n. 19,
n. 105, 188 n. 100, 191 n. 101, 196 199 n. 13, 201 n. 28
n. 41, 197 n. 48, 198 nn. 52, 2, 199 Clements, Ronald E. 164 nn. 2–3, 197
n. 15, 200 nn. 22, 24, 201 n. 47
nn. 26–27, 29, 32 Clines, David 21, 129, 163 n. 1, 164
Bar-On, Shimon 170 n. 26, 196 n. 39 nn. 4, 8–9, 165 nn. 10–11, 14, 166
Blenkinsopp, Joseph 170 n. 23, 178 n. 1, nn. 18, 21, 167 n. 23
179 n. 14, 200 n. 16 Cohen, S. 182 n. 47
Blum, Erhard 42–43, 45–48, 54, 131, Conrad, Edgar W. 188 n. 88
168 n. 12, 170 n. 26, 171 n. 28, 173 Cross, Frank M. 181 n. 41
nn. 64, 67, 71, 73, 174 nn. 78, 80,
175 n. 90, 177 nn. 100, 104, 179 n. Delitzsch, F. 181 n. 41
14, 181 nn. 31, 38–39, 41, 183 nn. 49, de Pury, Albert 172 nn. 48, 57, 179
54, 57, 184 nn. 59, 61, 186 n. 71, 187 n. 12, 181 n. 39, 183 nn. 52, 55, 188
n. 86, 199 nn. 12, 14 n. 88, 200 n. 16
Boorer, Suzanne 170 n. 23 Dillmann, August 35, 50, 167 n. 2, 168
Brettler, Marc 49, 174 n. 84, 175 n. 89, n. 7, 169 nn. 16, 22, 171 n. 34, 175
180 n. 15 n. 92, 181 nn. 38–39, 183 n. 50
214 Index of Scholars Cited

Driver, S. R. 167 nn. 2–4, 168 n. 12, 181 Levin, Christoph 54, 177 n. 104, 180
nn. 38–39, 183 n. 50 n. 22, 181 nn. 31, 39, 183 nn. 54, 57,
184 n. 59
Emerton, J. A. 31, 47, 169 n. 18, 174 Levinson, Bernard M. 198 n. 52, 200
n. 79, 187 nn. 75, 77, 81 n. 22
Loewenstamm, Samuel 170 n. 27
Firmage, Edwin 194 n. 15 Lohfink, Norbert 169 n. 22, 174 n. 81,
Fox, Michael V. 193 nn. 8, 10 175 n. 90, 179 n. 14
Fretheim, Terence E. 163 n. 1
Friedman, Richard Elliot 181 n. 34 Mann, Thomas 129, 199 n. 11
McKane, William 172 n. 54
Gertz, Jan C. 183 n. 57, 184 n. 60 McNeile, A. H. 167 n. 4, 168 n. 12
Gesundheit, Shimon 176 n. 99 Milgrom, Jacob 175 n. 87
Gilders, William K. 200 n. 18 Mizrahi, Noam 196 n. 32
Goshen-Gottstein, A. 163 n. 5
Green, William Henry 129, 198 nn. 4–5 Nicholson, Ernest 175 nn. 92–93, 188
Greenberg, Moshe 197 n. 46 n. 95
Grüneberg, Keith N. 164 n. 5, 181 n. 29 Nihan, Christophe 199 n. 14
Gunkel, Hermann 29–31, 168 nn. Noth, Martin 37–42, 67, 93, 169 n. 22,
8–12, 180 n. 17, 181 n. 41, 183 n. 56, 172 nn. 43–47, 180 n. 21, 181 n. 36
193 n. 12
Oren, Eliezer 182 n. 47
Haran, Menahem 177 n. 105, 179 n. 14, Orlinsky, Harry 178 n. 3
182 n. 43, 193 n. 12
Hoftijzer, J. 39–41, 58, 63, 65, 172 Rendtorff, Rolf 41–43, 45, 48, 50, 66,
nn. 49–54 69, 84, 92–93, 131–32, 173 nn.
Holzinger, H. 178 n. 5 58–62, 64–67, 71, 174 nn. 80, 82,
Hupfeld, Hermann 178 n. 4, 200 n. 19 175 nn. 90–91, 176 nn. 95, 97, 180
n. 15, 181 n. 32, 184 n. 62, 185 n. 67,
Jacob, Benno 163 n. 6 187 n. 76, 188 nn. 92–95, 191 nn.
102, 104, 199 nn. 12–13
Kearney, Peter J. 201 n. 28 Rofé, Alexander 185 n. 64, 187 n. 82
Kilian, Rudolf 35, 169 n. 22, 171 n. 32, Rollston, Christopher 177 n. 105
172 n. 48, 179 n. 12, 181 n. 41 Römer, Thomas 173 n. 75, 176
Knohl, Israel 193 n. 12 nn. 96–97
Köckert, Matthias 42, 54, 172 n. 59,
173 n. 69, 175 n. 94, 177 n. 103, 181 Scharbert, Josef 174 n. 83, 175 n. 91,
nn. 38–39, 182 n. 45, 185 n. 64, 187 176 n. 98, 181 n. 34, 182 n. 45, 185
n. 76 n. 63, 186 n. 68
Kuenen, Abraham 28, 35, 73, 167 n. 3, Schmid, Hans Heinrich 174 n. 81
168 n. 5, 171 n. 35, 185 n. 65 Schmid, Konrad 175 n. 90, 176 n. 95,
Kugel, James L. 180 n. 26, 192 n. 5 177 n. 101, 179 n. 14, 181 n. 34, 183
Index of Scholars Cited 2 15

n. 57, 184 nn. 59–60, 188 n. 96, n. 34, 183 n. 49, 187 nn. 82–83, 188
195 n. 19 n. 90
Schmidt, Ludwig 54, 177 n. 102 Vermeylen, Jacques 197 n. 45
Schmitt, Hans-Christoph 170 n. 26, von Rad, Gerhard 37–41, 171 nn. 40–41,
176 nn. 95, 97 172 nn. 42, 44, 188 n. 99, 197 n.
Schöpflin, Karin 180 n. 25 43, 199 n. 10
Schwartz, Baruch J. 192 n. 3
Seebass, Horst 172 n. 54, 188 n. 91 Weimar, Peter 183 n. 57
Segal, M. H. 129, 199 n. 8 Weinfeld, Moshe 68, 170 nn. 25, 27, 175
Septimus, Bernard 180 n. 18 n. 86, 180 n. 24, 187 n. 74, 192 n. 4
Shechter, Solomon 129, 198 n. 6 Weisman, Z. 172 n. 57, 181 n. 33, 187 n.
Ska, Jean-Louis 45, 51–52, 169 n. 19, 80, 188 n. 89
173 n. 70, 176 n. 98, 178 n. 7, 179 Wellhausen, Julius 27–28, 31, 35,
n. 9, 200 n. 16 127–28, 135, 167 n. 3, 168 nn. 6–7,
Skinner, John 35, 167 nn. 2–3, 168 13, 171 nn. 30–31, 176 n. 99, 181 n.
nn. 12–13, 169 nn. 14, 22, 171 n. 36, 41, 193 n. 12, 198 n. 1
180 n. 17, 183 n. 54, 185 n. 65 Westermann, Claus 41, 64, 164 n. 6,
Sommer, Benjamin D. 200 n. 21 172 nn. 55, 57, 179 n. 10, 181 nn. 31,
Speiser, E. A. 164 n. 2,195 n. 26 39, 41, 183 nn. 49, 54, 185 n. 63,
Stackert, Jeffrey 193 n. 12, 198 n. 52, 186 n. 70, 188 n. 99
200 n. 22 Whybray, Norman 129, 165 n. 15, 199
Stewart, Alexander 198 n. 3 n. 9
Sutherland, Dixon 201 n. 31 Williamson, Paul R. 164 n. 5, 195 n. 25,
201 n. 31
van der Toorn, Karel 177 nn. 105, 107 Wolff, Hans Walter 172 n. 42, 197 n. 45
Van Seters, John 169 n. 15, 170 n. 23, Wright, David 177 n. 108
172 n. 48, 173 nn. 70, 74, 174 n. 77,
176 n. 96, 179 n. 13, 180 n. 23, 181 Young, Ian 177 n. 105
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Index of Biblical Citations

Genesis 8:1 62
1 9, 106–7, 133, 138, 140, 146, 8:20 116
188 n. 89 8:20–21 134
1:1 31 8:21 49, 174 n. 84
1:2 31 9 105, 193 n. 12
1:3 31 9:1 107, 178 n. 6, 180 n. 19, 181 n.
1:14 107 40, 194 n. 16
1:14–18 107 9:3–6 192 n. 5
1:16 175 n. 92 9:7 107, 194 n. 16
1:20–21 107 9:8 180 n. 19, 192 n. 5
1:22 181 n. 40 9:8–17 105, 192 n. 5
1:24–25 107 9:9 193 n. 11
1:28 106, 130, 178 n. 6, 181 n. 40, 9:9–17 106
194 n. 16 9:11 193 n. 11
1:28–29 180 n. 19 9:12 180 n. 19, 192 n. 6
1:29–30 192 n. 5 9:17 180 n. 19
2:2–3 107 9:25–26 180 n. 19
2:10–14 169 n. 16 10 10
2:24 181 n. 35 11:1–9 102
3 115 11:4 10, 115
3:4 113 11:9 181 n. 35
3:5 115 11:28 188 n. 100
3:6 113 11:30 14, 64, 178 n. 7
3:7 113 11:31 188 n. 100
3:8 45 11:31–32 31, 40, 90
3:10 45 11:32 32
4:7 181 n. 37 12 3, 20, 30, 80, 103, 116, 141–42,
4:26 116 146, 155, 186 n. 70, 188 n. 100
6:18 193 n. 11 12–13 22–24, 78–82, 84, 89, 103,
7:21 132 161, 185 n. 64, 187 nn. 73, 82
7:23 132 12:1 8, 64, 81, 86, 112, 182 n. 42
218 Index of Biblical Citations

12:1–2 188 n. 87 13:15 50


12:1–3 7–9, 12, 22–24, 27–31, 38, 13:16 45–46, 78–80, 83, 85, 185
40–42, 44–45, 54, 64, 78, n. 63, 186 n. 72
82–83, 85, 90, 103, 133, 167 13:17 65
n. 2, 187 n. 85, 196 n. 41 13:18 78, 134
12:1–4 169 n. 19, 179 n. 12 14 188 n. 100
12:2 8–10, 20, 30, 64, 80, 82, 14:11 188 n. 100
115–16, 148, 155, 181 n. 40, 185 14:12 188 n. 100
n. 63, 185 n. 67 14:13 18
12:2–3 1, 80 14:16 188 n. 100
12:3 23, 28, 30, 34, 45, 80, 83, 85, 14:19 181 n. 40
113, 130, 166 n. 22, 195 n. 25 14:21 188 n. 100
12:4 31–32, 64, 179 n. 9, 191 n. 2 14:22–26 196 n. 36
12:4–5 90, 179 n. 8, 186 n. 69 15 3, 22–24, 40, 79–83, 88–89,
12:5 188 n. 100 103–4, 108, 120, 122–24, 130,
12:6 64–65 141–42, 146, 161, 167 n. 2, 175
12:6–8 179 n. 12 n. 90, 177 n. 104, 179 n. 14,
12:7 9, 27–28, 50, 54, 64–65, 78, 81, 185 n. 65, 188 n. 100, 197 n. 47
83–84, 90, 185 n. 63, 187 n. 85 15:1 87–88, 119–20, 149, 188 n.
12:7–8 88, 134 100
12:8 84 15:1–5 121
12:8–9 78 15:2 22, 142, 188 n. 100
12:10 17, 72, 108 15:2–3 78–79, 180 n. 19
12:10–20 14, 122, 168 n. 12 15:4 79, 188 n. 100
12:12–13 14 15:5 8, 22, 27–28, 45, 65–66,
12:13 14, 86 78–80, 82–83, 86, 90, 98,
12:16 14 167 n. 2, 180 n. 19, 186 n. 72
12:17 175 n. 92 15:6 22, 79, 121, 188 n. 100
13 3 15:7 66, 79, 82, 188 n. 100
13:3 78 15:7–8 79
13:4 182 n. 42 15:8 188 n. 100
13:6 90, 186 n. 69, 188 n. 100 15:9–11 88
13:7 187 n. 79 15:9–17 134
13:8 187 n. 79 15:12–15 168 n. 12
13:10–11 65 15:13 66, 108, 130, 188 n. 100, 197
13:11–12 90, 186 n. 69 n. 48
13:12 65, 141 15:13–14 188 n. 100
13:14 23, 65, 85, 113, 187 n. 81 15:13–15 188 n. 100
13:14–16 187 n. 82 15:13–16 18, 79, 88, 121
13:14–17 8, 22, 27–29, 35, 54, 65, 78, 15:14 94, 188 n. 100
83–85, 90, 112, 185 n. 65, 187 15:14–16 197 n. 48
n. 85 15:16 66, 188 n. 100
Index of Biblical Citations 2 19

15:17 66, 188 n. 100 17:17 59, 79, 165 n. 13


15:18 66, 82, 185 n. 65, 188 n. 100, 17:18 59
193 n. 11 17:19 59, 193 n. 11
15:18–21 8, 22, 65–66, 78–79, 82, 88, 90 17:19–21 58–59
16 3, 41, 59, 142, 195 n. 20 17:20 8, 10, 36, 46, 91, 106, 110,
16:1 58–59 174 n. 76, 181 n. 40, 185
16:3 58, 186 n. 69 nn. 66–67
16:4–14 114 17:21 14, 106, 193 n. 11
16:8–11 66 17:25 142
16:9 67 18 3, 12, 29–30, 41, 121
16:10 9, 27, 35, 54, 66–67, 69–70, 18–19 116
79, 81, 86–90, 98 18:1–2 180 n. 26
16:11 67 18:1–16 30
16:13–14 181 n. 35 18:2 187 n. 82
16:15–16 58, 186 n. 69 18:9 121
17 3, 22–24, 35, 40, 46–47, 18:9–10 180 n. 26
58–59, 63, 67, 82, 90, 94, 18:10 11
102, 104–6, 109, 110, 141–42, 18:10–15 109
146, 178 n. 2, 188 n. 100, 192 18:11–12 165 n. 13
n. 7, 193 n. 12 18:12 79
17:1 105, 188 n. 100, 191 n. 2 18:16 68
17:2 192 n. 7, 193 n. 11 18:16–33 180 n. 25
17:3–8 67 18:17 8, 68, 180 n. 19
17:4 61 18:17–18 29, 68
17:4–5 22, 111 18:17–19 11, 28, 31–32, 68–69, 169
17:4–6 8 n. 22
17:4–8 58, 105–6 18:18 24, 27, 29, 35, 45, 67–68,
17:5 61, 163 n. 2 80–83, 90, 98, 113, 130, 166
17:6 8, 23, 46–47, 61, 91, 106, n. 22, 181 n. 29, 185 n. 67, 191
110, 130, 174 n. 76, 178 n. 6, n. 103
195 n. 24 18:18–19 24, 54, 173 n. 69
17:7 36, 193 n. 11 18:19 30, 32, 68, 115, 119, 148, 150,
17:6–8 8 170 n. 25
17:8 35–36, 51, 108 18:20 31, 180 n. 19
17:9–14 22, 59, 67 18:20–21 68
17:11 105 18:20–22 68
17:14 193 n. 9 18:20–32 68
17:15 163 n. 2 18:21 181 n. 37
17:15–16 58, 67 18:22 68
17:15–21 109 18:22–32 69
17:16 8, 10, 47, 59, 61, 91, 110, 174 n. 18:23 68
76, 181 n. 40 19:4–11 68
220 Index of Biblical Citations

19:9 180 n. 19 22:12 120


19:29 62, 141, 178 n. 2 22:13 134
19:30–38 114 22:14 70
19:37–38 181 n. 35 22:15 70
20 120, 165 n. 14, 186 n. 70 22:15–18 14, 27–29, 34–35, 70–71, 81,
20:1 17, 108 97–99, 171 nn. 30, 38, 40, 175
20:3 188 n. 100 n. 90, 177 n. 104, 181 n. 34,
20:7 188 n. 100 188 n. 100
20:9–10 180 n. 19 22:16 35, 48, 97–98, 175 n. 90
20:11 120, 150 22:16–18 47–49, 54, 173 n. 69
20:17 188 n. 100 22:17 8, 10, 35, 45, 98–99, 171
20:17–18 165 n. 13 n. 36, 181 n. 40
20:18 188 n. 100 22:18 35, 42, 44–45, 166 n. 22
21 3, 59, 195 n. 20 22:19 182 n. 42
21:1 109 23 18, 90
21:2 59 23:4 108
21:2–5 59, 109, 178 n. 2 24 3, 15–16, 24, 108, 114, 117, 197
21:3 59 n. 44
21:4 59 24:4 70, 182 n. 42
21:5 59 24:5 181 n. 36, 182 n. 42
21:6–7 109, 180 n. 19 24:7 9, 47, 49, 70–71, 81–83, 86,
21:8 121 90, 97, 117, 181 n. 36
21:8–21 181 n. 31 24:8 71
21:12 69, 170 n. 27 24:10 182 n. 42
21:13 8, 31, 69, 81, 86–90, 180 24:12–13 71
n. 16, 181 n. 30, 185 n. 67 24:21 71
21:17 88, 119 24:24–25 180 n. 19
21:18 8, 31, 69, 81, 86–90, 180 n. 16, 24:27 70, 117
181 n. 30, 185 nn. 66–67 24:35 9–10, 181 n. 40
21:21 88 24:38 182 n. 42
21:23 108 24:40 71, 117
21:25 188 n. 100 24:41 71
21:27 193 n. 11 24:42–44 71
21:31 181 n. 35 24:48 71
21:32 184 n. 58, 193 n. 11 24:49 71
21:34 108 24:60 9, 99, 181 n. 40
22 3, 7, 12, 14, 22, 97, 120, 25 117
149–50, 171 n. 30 25:1–4 114
22:1–15 181 n. 34 25:11 72
22:2 182 n. 42 25:12 193 n. 11
22:3 182 n. 42 25:12–16 110, 114
22:11 70 25:12–17 90
Index of Biblical Citations 221

25:21 14, 178 n. 7 26:28 114, 117, 193 n. 11


25:21–26 109, 114 26:29 114
25:34 184 n. 58 26:33 84, 181 n. 35
26 3, 42, 82–84, 103, 114, 116–17, 26:34 187 n. 78
165 n. 14, 168 n. 12 27 9, 16, 113–14
26:1 72, 82–83, 85, 168 n. 12, 182 27:1 113
nn. 42, 44 27:8 170 n. 27
26:1–3 54, 72 27:9 182 n. 42
26:2 71–72, 87, 182 nn. 43, 46, 48, 27:13 170 n. 27
186 n. 71 27:21 181 n. 37
26:2–3 181 n. 41, 187 n. 73 27:27 181 n. 40
26:2–5 9, 42, 72, 82–85, 182 n. 43, 27:36 180 n. 19
183 n. 49, 187 n. 85 27:41–45 73
26:2–6 72 27:42–45 195 n. 21
26:3 47, 49–50, 71–72, 82, 85, 108, 27:43 170 n. 27
114, 117, 175 n. 90, 182 nn. 46, 28 3, 102–3, 109, 117
48, 186 n. 71 28:1 59–60
26:3–4 8, 10, 73, 112, 171 n. 40, 187 28:1–4 196 n. 37
n. 73 28:1–5 90
26:3–5 27, 30, 32, 54, 71, 73, 83, 90, 28:1–9 109
99, 169 n. 22, 173 n. 69, 175 28:2 36, 60, 114, 178 n. 3
n. 90, 177 n. 104, 181 n. 41, 183 28:3 8, 46–47, 60–61, 91, 106, 174
n. 49, 187 n. 73 n. 76, 181 n. 40
26:4 28, 42, 44–45, 72, 83, 98, 113, 28:3–4 8–10, 35–36, 47, 59–60, 104,
166 n. 22, 186 n. 72 178 n. 3
26:4–5 99 28:4 35, 60, 90, 108
26:5 32, 84, 99, 115, 148, 170 n. 27 28:5 36, 182 n. 42
26:6 17, 72, 182 n. 42 28:6 60, 196 n. 37
26:12 114 28:9 182 n. 42
26:13–15 187 n. 78 28:10 73
26:15 168 n. 12 28:10–22 73
26:18 187 n. 78 28:12 73
26:20 187 n. 79 28:12–15 178 n. 4
26:21 187 n. 79 28:13 23, 50, 73, 85
26:22 187 n. 79 28:13–14 8, 54, 112, 187 n. 82
26:23 182 nn. 43, 48 28:13–15 9, 27, 54, 73, 85–87, 90
26:24 9–10, 27, 30, 42, 54, 73, 28:13–16 35
84–85, 90, 98, 114, 117, 173 28:14 28, 42, 44–46, 85–86, 113,
n. 69, 177 n. 104, 183 n. 49, 166 n. 22, 175 n. 92, 183 n. 52,
187 n. 85 187 n. 81, 196 n. 34
26:24–25 88 28:15 74, 118
26:25 84 28:16 73
222 Index of Biblical Citations

28:17 73 32:10–13 27, 31, 35, 74, 86, 169 n. 15


28:18 134 32:11 74
28:19 23 32:12 16, 74, 171 n. 36
28:20–21 118 32:13 9, 16, 45, 74, 86–87, 90,
29–30 117 98
29–31 15–16 32:14 31, 169 n. 16
29:13–14 15 32:23 184 n. 58
29:15–28 15 32:25–30 178 n. 4
29:15–30 109 32:25–32 196 n. 31
29:31 14, 178 n. 7 32:29 133
29:31–30:24 109 32:31 181 n. 35
30 116 33 114
30:6 170 n. 27 33:11 114
30:15 196 n. 36 33:17 181 n. 35
30:25 182 n. 42 33:18 65, 200 n. 23
30:27 9–10 33:19 17
30:27–28 180 n. 19 34 16, 18, 116
30:30 9–10 34:5 196 n. 36
30:43 90 34:7 196 n. 36
31:3 11, 86, 118, 178 n. 4, 183 34:17 181 n. 37
n. 53, 188 n. 87 34:29 175 n. 92
31:7 188 n. 100 34:30 16, 114
31:10–13 178 n. 4 35 3, 103, 109–11, 178 n. 4
31:17 184 n. 58 35:1 65, 121, 178 n. 4, 183 n. 53
31:17–18 90, 178 n. 5 35:5 16
31:18 60, 188 n. 100 35:6 17, 182 n. 44
31:24 15, 188 n. 100 35:7 134
31:29 15 35:9 60, 181 n. 40
31:43 15 35:9–13 90
31:44 193 n. 11 35:10 36, 60, 111, 133
31:54 134 35:11 8, 23, 35, 46–47, 91, 106,
32 3 110–11, 174 n. 76, 185 n. 67
32–33 12, 117 35:11–12 8, 35–36, 60–61, 64, 90,
32:3 181 n. 35 104, 109
32:4–8 74 35:12 35, 51
32:5 108 35:13 36
32:8 74 35:14 134
32:8–9 74 35:15 23
32:9 31, 169 n. 15 35:16 90
32:9–11 74 35:19 90
32:10 86 35:21 17
32:10–12 12 35:22–26 90, 178 n. 5, 195 n. 22
Index of Biblical Citations 2 23

35:27 108 46:4 94, 197 n. 50


36 90, 110, 114 46:5 75
36:6 182 n. 42 46:6 188 n. 100
36:6–7 188 n. 100 46:8 111
36:7 108 46:31–34 114
37–50 117 47:3–4 180 n. 19
37:1 108 47:4 108
37:2 196 n. 36 47:27 63, 107, 109
37:7 196 n. 36 48 3, 109
37:12–17 196 n. 36 48:3 36
37:14 182 n. 44 48:3–4 8, 10, 35–36, 40, 47, 61,
37:28 196 n. 42 90, 104
37:32 181 n. 37 48:3–7 109
38 16 48:4 8, 46–47, 91, 106, 174
38:6–11 16 n. 76
39:5 9–10 48:5 36, 61, 171 n. 39
40–41 124 48:5–6 61
40:15 196 n. 42 48:9 196 n. 37
41:39 180 n. 19 48:13–16 196 n. 37
41:41 180 n. 19 48:15–16 9
41:49 46 48:19 195 n. 23
41:55 182 n. 42 48:20 196 n. 37
42:1–2 180 n. 19 48:22 200 n. 23
42:10 72 49:1 61
43:15 175 n. 92 49:28 196 n. 37
43:18 50, 175 n. 92 49:29–32 61
45:4–13 196 n. 42 49:33 91
45:7 117 50 3
46 3, 88, 103, 122, 124 50:20 86, 117
46:1 75, 88, 134, 182 n. 44 50:23 31, 75, 188 n. 100
46:1–4 74, 188 n. 87 50:24 9, 12, 27–28, 30, 47, 75,
46:2 87, 188 n. 100 94–95, 177 n. 104, 184 n.
46:3 8, 23, 74–75, 87–88, 119, 60, 188 n. 91
122, 185 nn. 66–67, 197 50:24–25 31, 123, 184 n. 60
n. 50 50:24–26 184 nn. 60–61
46:3–4 27, 54, 87–90, 94, 121, 50:25 75, 94, 184 n. 60
188 n. 87 50:26 31, 75, 184 n. 60

Exodus 1:7 63, 91–92, 107


1 76, 120 1:17 120
1:1 111 1:20 86
1:1–7 92 2:1–10 133
224 Index of Biblical Citations

2:22 108 15:26 32, 115


2:23 62 16 19, 52
2:23–25 61–62 16:3 197 n. 49
2:24 19, 52, 62, 93, 105 16:4 32
2:25 62 16:28 32, 115, 170 n. 27
3 7, 133, 140, 188 n. 100 16:35 200 n. 23
3:6 113 17 52
3:8 19, 92, 155 17:1–7 19
3:10 155 17:3 20, 197 n. 49
3:17 19 17:7 118
3:19–20 168 n. 12 17:8–16 19
4 118 18 146
4:1 170 n. 27 18:9 86
4:12 118 18:12 134
4:15 118 18:16 170 n. 27
4:21–23 168 n. 12 18:19 170 n. 27
5:1 170 n. 27 18:20 170 n. 27
6 7, 104–5, 133, 192 n. 3 18:21 120
6:2 36, 62 18:27 182 n. 42
6:3 62, 105 19:5 122, 170 n. 27
6:3–4 35–36, 93, 104 19:10 182 n. 42
6:3–5 62 19:11 113, 118
6:4 62–63, 104, 108 20:1–14 170 n. 26
6:5 36 20:2 188 n. 100
6:6 155 20:15 120
6:6–7 62 20:17 120, 149–50, 197 n. 46
6:7 112 20:18 188 n. 100
6:8 19, 48, 52, 62–63, 104–5, 20:23–23:33 122
158 22:20 122, 130
7:3–5 19 23:9 122, 130
7:15 182 n. 42 23:15 122
9:14–16 168 n. 12 23:21 170 n. 27
11:9–10 168 n. 12 23:22 170 n. 27
12 198 n. 52 23:32 193 n. 11
12:14–20 198 n. 52 24:3 150, 155
13:5 176 n. 99 24:3–8 188 n. 100
13:11 175 n. 87, 176 n. 99 24:4–8 134
13:19 123, 200 n. 23 24:7 150
14 19 24:8 193 n. 11
14:11–12 20, 197 n. 49 24:10 113
14:31 168 n. 12 25–31 140
15:22–25 19 25:8 112
Index of Biblical Citations 2 25

31 193 n. 12 33:1 27–28, 30, 47, 51, 76, 95,


31:12–17 107 112
31:13–17 193 n. 12s 33:3 118
31:18 140 33:16 118
32 7, 19, 33, 52 33:23 113
32:30–34 168 n. 12 34:9 118
32–34 140 34:10 193 n. 11
32:5–6 134 34:12 193 n. 11
32:7–14 33, 51, 171 n. 28 34:15 193 n. 11
32:10 20, 185 nn. 66–67 34:17–26 170 n. 26, 171 n. 38
32:13 27, 32–33, 35, 45, 47, 51, 34:27 175 n. 92, 193 n. 11
76, 94, 98, 169 n. 22, 34:29 140
177 n. 104 35–40 140

Leviticus 26:9 25, 176 n. 99, 192 n. 4,


8:22–24 134 194 n. 17
11 107 26:15 192 n. 4
26 7, 192 nn. 3–4, 194 26:42 192 n. 3, 194 n. 17
n. 17 26:43 191 n. 105
26:3 192 n. 4 26:44–45 25, 176 n. 99

Numbers 14:12 20, 185 nn. 66–67


3:13 198 n. 51 14:16 27, 47, 51, 76, 95
8:17 198 n. 51 14:22 170 n. 27
10:30 182 n. 42 14:22–23 27
11 47 14:23 47, 51, 76, 95
11:4–6 197 n. 49 14:24 191 n. 107
11:12 47, 51, 76, 95 14:28 191 n. 105
11:16 180 n. 20 14:30 48, 52, 63, 176 n. 99
11:16–17 180 n. 20 14:43 119
11:18–20 180 n. 20 16 52
11:20 191 n. 105 16:25 182 n. 42
11:33 19 16:32 188 n. 100
13–14 19, 52 17:11 19
13:21 111 18 193 n. 12
13:22 200 n. 23 18:19 106
13:23 175 n. 92 20 121, 130–31, 146
13:26 175 n. 92, 182 n. 42 20:2–13 19
14 7, 118, 152, 155 20:4 197 n. 49
14:2–4 20 20:12 191 n. 105
14:3–4 197 n. 49 20:14–16 121
14:11–23 51 21:1–3 19
226 Index of Biblical Citations

21:3 170 n. 27 24:16 191 n. 105


21:6 19 25 193 n. 12
21:20 196 nn. 33, 35 25:9 19
21:21–25 19 25:12–13 106
21:33–35 19 26 10
22:6 166 n. 17 27:4 11
22:13 182 n. 42 28–29 107
23:13 182 n. 42 32 21, 176 n. 99
24:3 191 n. 105 32:11 48, 176 n. 99
24:4 191 n. 105 35:3 188 n. 100
24:15 191 n. 105

Deuteronomy 9:14 185 n. 67


1 7 9:26–29 33
1:8 188 n. 98 9:27–28 188 n. 98
1:10 46, 96 10:11 188 n. 98
1:35 188 n. 98 10:15 48, 96
1:36 191 n. 105 10:22 46
2:7 9 11:9 188 n. 98
3:20 48 11:21 188 n. 98
3:27 196 n. 35 11:26–28 34
4:6 34, 185 n. 66 11:29 166 n. 18
4:7 185 n. 66 12–26 32
4:7–8 37 12:1 134
4:8 185 n. 66 15:6 9
4:40 86 19:8 188 n. 98
5:16 86 26:3 188 n. 98
6:3 86 26:5 34, 37, 108, 172 n. 44, 185
6:10 166 n. 18, 188 n. 98 nn. 66–67
6:18 86, 188 n. 98 26:5–9 37
6:23 188 n. 98 26:16 36
7:1 166 n. 18 27:9 130
7:3 9 28 48, 192 n. 4
7:12 188 n. 98, 191 n. 107 28:11 188 n. 98
7:14 175 n. 92 28:62 46
8:1 188 n. 98 28:63 86
8:18 188 n. 98 28:69 105
8:20 191 n. 107 29 7
9 33 29:8 105
9:1 166 n. 18 29:11 105
9:5 188 n. 98 29:12 36, 48, 188 n. 98
9:12–14 33 29:13 105
Index of Biblical Citations 2 27

30:5 86 34 138
30:20 188 n. 98 34:1 196 n. 33
31 47 34:1–3 113, 196 n. 35
31:23 47, 76, 95, 123 34:4 7, 47, 76, 95, 112
32:48 196 n. 33

Joshua 21:42 48
5:12 200 n. 23 24:2–3 40
11:4 46 24:32 184 n. 60, 200
15:14 200 n. 23 n. 23

Judges 1 Samuel
2:15 48 6:11 175 n. 92
6:16 12 13:5 46
7:12 46 15:29 174 n. 84
13 12 20:12–16 48
21:10 175 n. 92 20:42 48
30:8 191 n. 106

2 Samuel 12:10 191 n. 107


7:8 174 n. 84 17:11 46
12:6 191 n. 107 18:18 10

1 Kings Isaiah
3:8 187 n. 84 5:23 191 n. 107
4:20 46 10:22 46
5:9 46 48:19 46
8:5 187 n. 84 44:3 164 n. 7
11:40 72 51:2 164 n. 7
54:9 49

Jeremiah 33:22 46
4:2 166 n. 22 40:9 175 n. 92
6:22 185 n. 66 43:4–7 72
15:8 46 50:41 185 n. 66
27:7 175 n. 92

Ezekiel Hosea
5:11 98 2:10 46
34:8 98

Amos Nahum
4:12 191 n. 107 3:16 46
228 Index of Biblical Citations

Habakkuk Haggai
1:9 46 1:9 98

Zechariah
9:3 46

Psalms 89:4 174 n. 84


78:26 46 132:2 174 n. 84
78:27 46 139:18 46

Job Ruth
27:16 46 4:18–22 16

Daniel 1 Chronicles
2:1 45 4:4 182 n. 47
2:3 45 27:23 46
12:3 46

2 Chronicles
1:9 46
5:6 187 n. 84
35:13 134

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