« If-Plots in Deuteronomy », VT 63 (2013) 453-470.

Vetus Testamentum Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013) 1-18 brill.com/vt If-Plots in Deuteronomy Jean-Pierre Sonnet Gregorian University, Rome [email protected] Abstract In its overall literary construction, Deuteronomy has turned a syntactic form—the “if/when . . .” form of casuistic laws and vassal treaties—into its main narrative dynamics. It has combined the mini-plots of the case-laws (“if a man . . .” / “when you . . .”) with the overarching plot of the people’s loyalty (“if you listen to the commandments . . .”) and with the macro-plot of the divine promise (“when Yhwh your God brings you into the land . . .”) in order to create a general suspenseful momentum that leads to the memorable dénouement of Deut 34:9: “The sons of Israel listened . . . and did just as Yhwh had commanded Moses”. Keywords Deuteronomy, law, narrative The distinction between law and narrative is one of the basic conceptual tools in biblical exegesis. It has shaped countless studies, in “diachronic” as well as “synchronic” presentations and analyses of the Pentateuch. If it commends itself as a genetic tool—the legal and narrative sections of the Pentateuch certainly have separate remote origins—is it appropriate when it comes to characterizing the actual texts created by the biblical redactors in their speciijic dynamics? “The process that constituted the Pentateuch, in each of its stages”, Edward Greenstein writes, “tended to blend and integrate its material into a new entity, a text to be read as a continuous whole”.1 More attention needs still to be paid to the way the biblical books combine narrative and statutory dimensions: in biblical writing, law is narrativized and narrative is legalized. To some extent, the biblical epistemological revolution lies in the way it fuses genres so that they may join their respective forces. Drawing on a recent study 1) E. Greenstein, “Sources of the Pentateuch”, in Harper’s Bible Dictionary (San Francisco, 1985), p. 986. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 VT 63.3_1117_1-18.indd 1 DOI: 10.1163/15685330-12341117 4/17/2013 7:48:02 PM 2 J.-P. Sonnet / Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013) 1-18 by Meir Sternberg, the present study will bring forth a speciijic aspect of the cross-relationship between law and narrative in Deuteronomy: the book’s continuum turns out to be built on if-plots, in individual case-laws as well as in Moses’ admonitory and prophetic address to the people. Not only do these levels mirror each other, they also condition each other, operating like wheels within wheels, as becomes clear in Deuteronomy’s narrative closure in Deut 34:9. 1. If-Plots and the Law Code The study of the relationship of law and narrative is a relatively young but thriving discipline,2 stemming from the more general law-as-language approach.3 In the biblical ijield, the investigation has been marked out by insightful essays by Harry P. Nasuti, Bernard S. Jackson, and Assnat Bartor.4 A recent contribution by Sternberg has however shed a new light on the law and narrative relationship, and will provide the starting point of my own inquiry. In an eighty-page essay, “If-Plots: Narrativity and the Law Code”, Sternberg has addressed the narrative dimension of legal utterances, with special attention to their biblical form.5 In both their casuistic and apodictic construc2) See in particular the works by P. Brooks, “Narrativity of the Law”, Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature 14 (2002), pp. 1-10; “Narrative Transactions—Does the Law Need a Narratology?”, Yale Journal of Law & Humanities 18 (2006), pp. 1-12; “Narrative in and of the Law”, in J. Phelan and P. J. Rabinowitz (eds.), A Companion to Narrative Theory (Oxford, 2005), pp. 415-426. 3) See the overviews and bibliographies in B. Danet, “Language and the Legal Process”, in Law and Society Review 14 (1980), pp. 445-564; “Language and Law: An Overview of Fifteen Years of Research”, in H. Giles and W. P. Robinson (eds.), Handbook of Language and Social Psychology (Chichester, 1990), pp. 537-559; or J. Gibbons, Forensic Linguistics: An Introduction to Language in the Justice System (Oxford, 2003). 4) See H. P. Nasuti, “Identity, Identiijication, and Imitation: The Narrative Hermeneutics of Biblical Law”, Journal of Law and Religion 4 (1986), pp. 9-23, whose study opens with: “One of the most interesting features of biblical law is the extent to which it is pervaded by narrative. Many biblical laws have a quasi-narrative form, while others include within themselves a narrative reference of some sort. In their present context, all biblical laws have a narrative setting. Wherever one ijinds law in the Bible, one is in the presence of narrative as well” (p. 9); Nasuti’s assumption is echoed in A. Bartor, Reading Law as Narrative. A Study in Casuistic Laws of the Pentateuch (AIL 5; Atlanta, 2010), p. 1: “the cases described in the law collections [are] actually miniature stories”. See also B. S. Jackson, Law, Fact and Narrative Coherence (Merseyside, 1988), pp. 97-98. 5) M. Sternberg, “If-Plots: Narrativity and the Law-Code”, in J. Pier and J. A. García Landa (eds.), Theorizing Narrativity (Berlin, 2008), pp. 29-107. The present summary focuses on one of the many aspects of Sternberg’s article. A previous exploration, more explicitly centred on the Bible, is read in Id., Hebrews between Cultures: Group Portraits and National Literature (Bloomington, 1998), pp. 520-537. My presentation combines both contributions. VT 63.3_1117_1-18.indd 2 4/17/2013 7:48:02 PM J.-P. Sonnet / Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013) 1-18 3 tions, Sternberg shows, legal utterances are best understood as “law-tales”, sketching out possible courses of action with the aim of regulating them: “the law-tale is on the whole future-oriented, representing a prospective action.”6 Understood as a “foretold story”, the miniature tale of the law is a “type story”, as Nasuti puts it,7 or a “master tale”, in Sternberg’s words, endowed with a “boundless story-generating power.”8 The narrative dimension of the legal discourse surfaces in the dynamics that it activates. The master-tale indeed triggers an interrelated dynamics of suspense, curiosity and surprise—the three dynamics that Sternberg posits as the core of narrativity9—and all the more so in reason of the numerous gaps that characterize the formulation of the law (especially in a biblical context). Suspense is the prime movement of these dynamics. In its chronological ordering (“if . . . , then . . .”), the law “privileges a future directed, hence suspenseful, teleo-logic of communication:”10 tensed up by the “if . . .”, the mind gains release from the “then . . .”, with all the intermediate uncertainties.11 Futurity, indeed, “involves doubtful representation: contingent, hypothetical, provisional, ever vulnerable to chance and challenge. Whether what is projected to happen will in fact happen remains uncertain.” 12 In biblical lore, suspense prevails even in the eyes of the all-knowing God. When it comes to human freedom, the biblical God, the one who ensures the workings of retributive justice, withholds his knowledge and desires to know, as Moses tells the sons of Israel in Deuteronomy: God has been testing Israel in the desert “to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments” (Deut 8:2). “Here even God’s extraordinary control and knowledge of the world”, Sternberg writes, “is realized only in enforcement after the fact, and so validates the rule of the scenario’s uncertain occurrence in the law-world.”13 6) Sternberg, “If-Plots”, p. 73. 7) “The ‘type stories’ of casuistic law may be seen as narrative to the extent that they relate consecutive events (‘when’ or ‘if . . . then’). They differ from the rest of biblical narrative in the prescriptive nature of their ijinal clause, as well as in the possibility of their repeated occurance [sic]” (Nasuti, “Identity”, p. 9, n. 1). 8) Sternberg, “If-Plots”, p. 42. 9) For a presentation of the incidence of the universals in question in biblical narrative, see M. Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative. Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading (Bloomington, 1985), pp. 264-320. 10) Sternberg, “If-Plots”, p. 51. 11) Sternberg, “If-Plots”, p. 51. 12) Sternberg, “If-Plots”, p. 75. 13) Sternberg, “If-Plots”, p. 78. VT 63.3_1117_1-18.indd 3 4/17/2013 7:48:02 PM 4 J.-P. Sonnet / Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013) 1-18 Yet suspense does not exclude the opposite dynamics, governed by curiosity, and born of an opaque past. The statutory discourse is a web of uncertainties in reference and in antecedents, that prompt a continuous questioning—who is who in the law-tale, what’s what, when, and where, and why? The “Who is my neighbour?” question, raised by the practical translation of Lv 19:18 (“you shall love your neighbor as yourself ”), with its rabbinic, evangelical and other variants, is an example of this recurrent questioning. Questions about exact reference and intended antecedents pull the reader’s mind backward even as he goes forward in the phrasing of the law. But even the third universal, surprise, can intrude, when “an unknown precedent comes to light, an unexpected yet a posteriori defensible referent springs to the law-interpreter’s mind.”14 That further evidence may overturn a conclusion taken for granted is attested in biblical wisdom, as stated in Prov 18:17: “The one who ijirst states a case seems right, until the other comes and cross-examines”. “The statute book”, Sternberg sums up, “is accordingly the culture’s largest anthology of mini-narratives, whose smallness and ijixity is in inverse ratio to their thematic diversity, their enduring impact on the world, and their power to generate further narrative by way of readerly gap-ijilling or lawyerly application.”15 In the biblical context, however, the narrativity of the law code compounds with another narrative impulse, the one given by the framing Pentateuchal story. This enclosing narrative and historiographical discourse provides a “dramatic Sitz im Leben”16 to the law, from which it cannot be detached at will.17 In the Covenant Code, for instance, reference to the dramatic liberation out of Egypt recurs in the legal corpus as a decisive motivation (“for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” [Exod 22:20; 23:9]), and is perceptible as well in the law about the Hebrew slave (Exod 21:2-11). The very voice of the divine lawgiver is 14) Sternberg, “If-Plots”, p. 51. 15) Sternberg, “If-Plots”, p. 49. 16) Sternberg, Hebrews, p. 527. The combination of prose and law is not unique to the Pentateuch; it also characterizes collections of ancient Near Eastern law such as the Laws of Ur-Nammu (ca. 2100-2050 BCE), Lipit-Ishtar (ca. 2100 BCE), and Hammurabi (ca. 1750 BCE)—unlike the anonymous context-free Laws of Eshnunna (ca. 1770 BCE) or Hittite Laws (ca. 1600-1200 BCE). As wisely noted by Adele Berlin, “The Torah’s literary genius was not the mixing of genres; it was the invention of long prose narrative, which surrounds and overwhelms all the other ancient literary forms (poems, legal collections, treaties, etc.) which are embedded in it” (A. Berlin, “Numinous Nomos: On the Relationship between Narrative and Law”, in S. M. Olyan and R. C. Culley (eds.), “A Wise and Discerning Mind”: Essays in Honor of Burke E. Long (BJS; Providence, 2000), p. 28; see also E. Greenstein, “On the Genesis of Biblical Prose Narrative”, Prooftexts 8 (1988) 349-350. 17) See Sternberg, Hebrews, p. 524. VT 63.3_1117_1-18.indd 4 4/17/2013 7:48:02 PM J.-P. Sonnet / Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013) 1-18 5 what assures the continuity between the theophany told in the narrative and the revealed statutes: “You have seen for yourselves that I spoke with you from heaven [in contrast to any mute idol, and therefore]. You shall not make gods of silver alongside me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold” (Exod 20:22-23). Furthermore, it is the nature of the newly enforced law, whether in apodictic or casuistic form, to impinge on the future history of Israel, recorded in the ensuing narrative: “the ordinance’s future-directedness, in the nature of all imperatives and hypotheticals, would go without saying, except that the contingencies are here always liable to materialize before our eyes in the tale’s ijirst-order (‘real’) world, sooner or later, for better or worse.”18 The Golden Calf affair in Exod 32-34, elaborating on Exod 20:4 (“You shall not make for yourself an idol”), is the dramatic reminder of such a potentiality. Whatever its legitimacy in genetic enquiries, a rigid law vs. narrative distinction no longer represents the appropriate conceptual tool when it comes to the biblical continuum. “How to draw any sharp line between the genres in the Bible, when every piece of law is twice narrativized even by itself?”19—in itself, as a mini-plot, and in its context, as a situated and influential element in the embedding narrative. An “intergeneric crossing” has recoded both the narrative and the statute, and calls for an appropriate characterization.20 The present pages will seek to describe the combining of legal and narrative dynamics in 18) Sternberg, Hebrews, p. 536. 19) Sternberg, Hebrews, p. 525. 20) See Sternberg, Hebrews, p. 527. In a critical answer to Sternberg’s Poetics of Biblical Narrative (1985), B. Levinson has advocated “a notion not of poetics but of hermeneutics: a method informed by both synchronic and diachronic analysis of the text and a theory of revelation derived equally from narrative and law” (“The Right Chorale: From the Poetics to the Hermeneutics of the Hebrew Bible” [1991], in Id., “The Right Chorale”: Studies in Biblical Law and Interpretation [FAT 54; Tübingen, 2008], 7-39, cit. p. 9), and this, in order “to have access to what is most compelling about ancient Israelite literary creativity” (p. 39). Levinson’s critique is largely based on the fact that Sternberg’s essay does not take into consideration the biblical legal texts: “The consequence of Sternberg’s effective exclusion of the biblical legal corpora from his poetics is the omission from his account of the Israelite revelation that which is truly distinctive: the formulation of ethics and law in covenantal terms, the attribution of law to Sinai” [p. 9]). The more recent contributions by Sternberg, referred to in the present article, in some sense defuse Levinson’s critique. Sternberg’s essays on biblical law actually buttress Levinson’s perceptive observation: “not only must the legal corpora of the Bible be made central to a theoretical conception of revelation, they must also be made central to the literary study of the Bible” (p. 9). More speciijically, “The legal corpora, everywhere attributed to an authoritative speaker known from the narrative frame, can be analyzed—no less than the narratives—in terms of voice or persona, point of view, gapping, repetition, structure, and so on. As such they contain many of the stylistics features of literary texts” (p. 32). VT 63.3_1117_1-18.indd 5 4/17/2013 7:48:02 PM 6 J.-P. Sonnet / Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013) 1-18 Deuteronomy, where if-plots pervade the story in its various levels and in its overall extension.21 2. If Plots in Deuteronomy Deuteronomy’s legal core (chapters 12-26) features about 50 instances of caselaws. Some of them are cast in the classical third person form, endowed with the basic legal function illustrated in the Ancient Near East legal tradition and in the other Pentateuchal law codes:22 If (‫ )כי‬a man is caught lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die (Deut 22:22). When (‫ )כי‬brothers reside together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger (Deut 25:5a). The book of Deuteronomy, however, tends to favour the if-you form, typical of a covenantal rhetoric that establishes a bond between the lawgiver and the addressee:23 21) The mixing of genres in Deuteronomy has held the scholarship’s attention since M. Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford, 1972), pp. 146-157 (who focused on the overlapping of treaty and law-code forms in Deuteronomy); the narrative overarching dimension of Deuteronomy’s generic combinations, however, still calls for further attention. The present perspective, properly narrative, is not to be confused with C. M. Carmichael’s genetic and allegorical theory about the relationship between Deuteronomy’s laws and the narrative corpus that stretches from Genesis through 2 Kings. For a critical assessment, see B. M. Levinson, “Calum M. Carmichael’s Approach to the Laws of Deuteronomy”, in Id., The Right Chorale, pp. 224-255. 22) About the meaning and function of casuistic law in the Pentateuch, on the background of cuneiform law, see particularly R. Westbrook, “What is the Covenant Code ?”, in B. M. Levinson (ed.), Theory and Method in Biblical and Cuneiform Law: Revision, Interpolation and Development (JSOTSup 181; Shefijield, 1994), pp. 15-36 ; and L. Schwienhorst-Schönberger, Das Bundesbuch (Ex 20,2-23,33). Studien zu seiner Entstehung und Theologie (BZAW 188; Berlin, 1990), pp. 415-416. 23) As noted by Bartor, Reading Law, p. 36: “the addressee does not participate in only ijive (!) laws (the inheritance of the ijirstborn [21:15-17]; a false accusation of a woman by her husband [22:1319]; sexual congress with a virgin who was not betrothed [vv. 28-29]; exemption from recruitment to the army [24:5]; and law of levirate marriage [25:5-10], but he is present, participating or otherwise involved in the events, in all the rest”. About the You form, which does not appear in other ancient Near Eastern law collections, see H. W. Gilmer, The If-You Form in Israelite Law (SBLDS 15; Missoula, 1975); see also J. W. Watts, Reading Laws: The Rhetorical Shaping of the Pentateuch (Biblical Seminar 59; Shefijield, 1999), pp. 62-65. VT 63.3_1117_1-18.indd 6 4/17/2013 7:48:02 PM J.-P. Sonnet / Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013) 1-18 7 When (‫ )כי‬you draw near to a town to ijight against it, offer it terms of peace (Deut 20:10). Or, in a speciijic provision: If (‫ )ואם‬the man is poor, you shall not sleep in the garment given you as the pledge (Deut 24:12). In all these cases, whether in third or in second person, the subordinating conjunction ‫ כי‬means “whenever” or “if ”, and joins the conjunction ‫ אם‬in the hypothetical sense of “suppose”, “in the case where”. In their generality, the “whenever”, “in the case where” ‫ כי‬and ‫ אם‬are revealing of the omnitemporality of the law. The law is omnitemporal for it is, as John Lyons writes, “time-bound, but temporally unrestricted.”24 Sternberg comments: “the law is time bound, since it represents some event(s) happening in the world, and therefore subject to contingency, mobilizing agents and counteragents, and exhibiting the peculiarly temporal features of sequentiality, directionality and duration. But the law is also time unrestricted, in that (unless stipulated otherwise) its lifespan extends indeijinitely.”25 Yet, to read Deuteronomy is to encounter before (and also alongside and after) these case-laws analogous syntactical forms in ‫ כי‬or ‫אם‬,26 that have a different value, irreducible to the casuistic law import: When (‫ )כי‬Yhwh your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy . . . , and when Yhwh your God gives them [the nations] over to you and you defeat them . . . , then you will utterly destroy them . . . (Deut 7:1-2). If (‫ )אם‬you will only listen to my commandments that I am commanding you today . . . , then I will give the rain for your land in its season (Deut 11:13-14). As will be shown in more detail in the next sections, these when- and ifsentences pertain either to Deuteronomy’s historical plot, linked to God’s promise (especially in the case of the ‫כי‬-forms), or to Israel’s overall decision about the law and the Lawgiver (especially in the case of the ‫אם‬-forms). Deu24) J. Lyons, Semantics (Cambridge, 1977), p. 680. 25) Sternberg, “If-Plots”, p. 42. 26) See the survey by R. D. Kunjummen, “The Syntax of Conditionals in Deuteronomy and Translation of wqatal (Consecutive Perfects)”, on http://www.biblicallaw.net (Biblical Law Section of the Society of Biblical Literature, 2008). VT 63.3_1117_1-18.indd 7 4/17/2013 7:48:02 PM 8 J.-P. Sonnet / Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013) 1-18 teronomy thus brings into play various kinds of if-plots—in casuistic law, prophetic admonitions, and hortatory speech;27 yet, as I also intend to show, the biblical book combines them within a single narrative purpose.28 3. ‫כי‬-Plots in Deuteronomy: Temporality of the Law and Temporality of the Promise Within the hortatory ‫כי‬-sentences in Deuteronomy, a group stands out, in which Moses brings into play the imminent entry of the people into the land (in its different phases). The protases preijixed by ‫כי‬, with either God or the people as subject, have in this case a concrete temporal import, associated to a non-repeatable history: When Yhwh your God has brought you into the land . . . (Deut 6:10; 7:1; 11:29). When you cross the Jordan to go in to occupy the land . . . (Deut 11:31). When Yhwh your God enlarges your territory, as he has promised you . . . (Deut 12:20). When Yhwh your God has cut off before you the nations . . . (Deut 12:29; 19:1). When you have come into the land that Yhwh your God is giving you, and have taken possession of it and settled in it . . . (Deut 17:14). 27) The same phenomenon is observable in Exod 19-24 (see in particular the if-sentences in Exod 19:5; 23:22.23-24), but not at the scale of Deuteronomy’s general coordination of if-sentences. 28) As pointed out by Sternberg (see “If-Plots”, pp. 52-65), in casuistic law the logic visibly asserts itself in the syntax: the ‘if . . . then” advances from protasis (e.g., “If you buy a Hebrew slave . . .”) to apodosis (“six years he shall serve” ’), that is, logically, from antecedent to consequent “with the chain mapped seriatim onto narrative time, dynamism, reasoning, chronologic, in short” (p. 53). The apodictic “You shall . . .” / “You shall not . . .” equally represents and regulates a future course of action, yet in the most reducible and unqualiijied form. Whereas the casuistic if-premise qualiijies the antecedent, albeit with elements of indeterminacy, the entire “if” is premised in silence in apodictic law. “From . . . a narrative viewpoint, the bare apodictic directive then jumps in medias res; nor does it provide the gapped exposition thereafter at that, behind time, leaving closure to the reader instead” (p. 56). Compare Bartor, Reading Law, p. 6: “Although [the apodictic laws] contain the potential for narrative . . . in their current textual form this potential remains merely latent”. The present inquiry will focus on the case-laws because of Deuteronomy’s way to foreground the formal analogy between if/when-sentences of all kinds. The apodictic laws (ijirst of all the Decalogue) however participate in the overall narrative economy of the book, sufijice it to point to the way the Decalogue’s ijirst stipulation “You shall have no other gods before me” (Deut 5:7) is rephrased in if-form in Deut 8:19 (“If you . . . go after other gods”) as well as in 13:3.7.14; 17:3 and 30:17. VT 63.3_1117_1-18.indd 8 4/17/2013 7:48:02 PM J.-P. Sonnet / Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013) 1-18 9 When you come into the land that Yhwh your God is giving you . . . (Deut 18:9). When you have come into the land . . . (Deut 26:1). The temporality in question is no longer the hypothetical omni-temporality of the law (“whenever”, “suppose”), but the historical, one-off (and so, actually, impending) temporality of the promise, stemming from God’s initiative, and formulated with prophetic authority. Moreover, these two different temporalities form a prospective sequence here. As is made clear in Moses’ ultimate warning before the Law code, the historical scenario embodied in the whensentences leads (in its apodosis) to the coming into force of the case-laws and to the people’s duty to observe them: When you cross the Jordan to go in to occupy the land that Yhwh your God is giving you, and when you occupy it and live in it, (then) you shall observe to do all the statutes and ordinances that I am setting before you today (Deut 11:31-32). In other words, the historical, divinely driven, scenario “when you . . .” will bring into the world of action the multifold hypothetical “when you . . .” / “if a man . . .” statutes and ordinances. The two levels, both of them expressed in an analogous syntactic form, are thus operating like a chain reaction: when God carries out his promise, bringing the people into the land, then the “when/ if . . .” case-laws will have to be diligently observed.29 Deuteronomy is therefore built on the meeting and the coupling of two future oriented narrativities: the omnitemporality of the law and the particular, divinely bound, temporality of the promise.30 Deuteronomy’s peculiarity, Paul Beauchamp writes, is to operate at the “juncture between the law and the promise:”31 in it the law is given in the presence of the Promised Land. The law has been originally given prior to the land, in the desert’s no-man’s land, yet in the last book of the Pentateuch, 29) The Jordan about to be crossed is the limen of the coming into force of the law; for the theme of liminality, see N. Stahl, Law and Liminality in the Bible (JSOTSup 202; Shefijield, 1995); about liminality in Deuteronomy, see J.-P. Sonnet, The Book within the Book: Writing in Deuteronomy (BibInt14; Leiden, 1997), pp. 88-92. If enforcement was meant to go through steps (after crossing, after victory on the nations, after settlement), it is nevertheless anticipated per modum unius in Moses’ valedictory speech. 30) The temporality of the promise is “categorial”, to put it in Karl Rahner’s parlance, i.e., it belongs to the particular, historical, circumscribed in space and time, non necessary and a posteriori; see R. Murphy, “When is Theology ‘Biblical’?: Some Reflections”, in BTB 33 (2003) 21-27. 31) P. Beauchamp, L’un et l’autre testament. 1.Essai de lecture (Paris, 1976), p. 60 (my trans.). VT 63.3_1117_1-18.indd 9 4/17/2013 7:48:02 PM 10 J.-P. Sonnet / Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013) 1-18 “the founding narrative is ijinally ‘landing,’”32 and “the decision about the Law is made in presence of the promised object.”33 Interestingly enough, the historical when-sentences are found not only in the hortatory speech that precedes (and follows) the Law code, but also within the code in question: When Yhwh your God enlarges your territory, as he has promised you, . . . (Deut 12:20, in the altar law). When Yhwh your God has cut off before you the nations whom you are about to enter to dispossess them, . . . (Deut 12,29, in a warning against idolatry). When Yhwh your God has blessed you, as he promised you, . . . (Deut 15:6, in the law on the sabbatical year). When Yhwh your God has cut off the nations whose land Yhwh your God is giving you, and you have dispossessed them and settled in their towns and in their houses, . . . (Deut 19:1-2, in the law on the cities of refuge). When you have come into the land that Yhwh your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, . . .” (Deut 26:1, in the law on the ijirst fruits). In such cases, the protasis no longer represents a hypothetical human-bound situation; it represents a contingency in history, associating the people with the realization of God’s promise, and in that measure divinely bound. The unrestricted temporality of the Law code is thus permeated by the unique temporality of the promise and indeed of its realization.34 The two provisions that conclude the legal corpus in Deut 26 are a ijine illustration of the phenomenon in question, since they juxtapose a temporally unrestricted regulation (“When you have ijinished paying all the tithe of your produce in the third year . . . [= every third year]” [Deut 26:12]), with a restricted one, the giving of the ijirst fruits, “When you have come into the land that Yhwh your God is giving you, and you possess it, and settle in it, you shall take some of the ijirst of all the fruit of the ground . . .” (Deut 26:1-2). The stipulation about 32) P. Beauchamp, L’un et l’autre testament. 2.Accomplir les Écritures (Paris, 1990), p. 314 (my trans.). 33) Beauchamp, L’un et l’autre testament. 1, p. 60 (my trans.); see also B. S. Jackson, Studies in the Semiotics of Biblical Law (JSOTSS 314; Shefijield, 2000), p. 258. 34) The two temporalities actually combine any time Yhwh’s gift of the land (or of cities) is remembered in a casuistic law; see, for instance, Deut 12:8-11; 15:4.7; 16:20; 17:2; 19:2.10.14; 20:16; 21:23; 23:21; 24:4; 25:19. VT 63.3_1117_1-18.indd 10 4/17/2013 7:48:02 PM J.-P. Sonnet / Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013) 1-18 11 the ijirst fruits indeed refers to a single-occurrence ritual; it is, as Robert D. Nelson writes, “a ‘foundation’ ceremony, undertaken at the time of the ijirst harvest after entry.”35 In it, the statutory imperative (“you shall take”) is related, indeed subject, to the gift of the land and to its fruits, in an eloquent recoding (in the form of restriction) of law by contingent history.36 The presence of historical protases within the Law code is thus a clear signal of the fusion of genres: the Law code, in its speciijic narrativity and temporality, intersects with the narrativity and the temporality of God’s promise. Both of them are futureoriented and thus suspenseful, even in the case of the divine promise, depending on particular hows and whens, and both therefore drive the reader forward in Deuteronomy’s narrated history. 4. ‫אם‬-Plots in Deuteronomy Along with the ‫כי‬-sentences, Deuteronomy features a group of 22 occurrences of protases introduced by ‫אם‬, in either legal or exhortatory use. In deuteronomic casuistic law, the ‫אם‬-cases always formulate (sub-) provisions, further determining a general case introduced by ‫( כי‬see Deut 20:11-12; 21:14; 22:2.20.25; 24:1.12; 25:2.7) :37 When (‫ )כי‬you draw near to a town to ijight against it, offer it terms of peace. If (‫ )אם‬it accepts your terms of peace and surrenders to you, then all the people in it shall serve you at forced labor. If (‫ )ואם־לא‬it does not submit to you peacefully, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; and when Yhwh your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword (Deut 20:10-12). The casuistic formulation is akin to a process axiology, made of successive provisions (. . . if . . . , and if . . .) and successive branching choices. The purest form is the alternative, illustrated in some rare cases, as in Deut 20:11-12 just cited (“if it accepts your terms of peace . . . , if it does not”), and in Deut 22:13-21: “Suppose 35) R. D. Nelson, Deuteronomy (OTL; London, 2002), p. 307. 36) See Beauchamp, L’un et l’autre testament. 1, pp. 62-64. 37) The exceptional case of Deut 19:8 (“If [‫ ]אם‬Yhwh your God enlarges your territory . . .”), in the law on the cities of refuge, may be added to the group in question; although the protasis represents a divine action, it also constitutes a further juncture contemplated by the law, thus falling within the syntactic form attached to (sub-)provisions. It should be noted that the ‫ כי‬form is used in the main protasis (“When Yhwh your God has cut off the nations”). VT 63.3_1117_1-18.indd 11 4/17/2013 7:48:02 PM 12 J.-P. Sonnet / Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013) 1-18 a man marries a woman, but after going in to her, he dislikes her and makes up charges against her, slandering her by saying . . . If, however, this charge is true, that evidence of the young woman’s virginity was not found, . . .”.38 But, in any case, the ‫אם‬-provision is then subordinated to a more general, subsuming, ‫כי‬-law. In Moses’ exhortative use, on the other hand, the ‫אם‬-sentences are promoted to the role of master protasis (see Deut 8:19; 11:13.22.28; 15:5; 28:1.15.58; 30:17).39 The ‫אם‬-sentences of this kind mostly pertain to commitments of allegiance and faithfulness to the deity in a covenantal relationship. In this, the ‫אם‬-group in question clearly betrays the influence of the Ancient Near East vassal treaty literature: political covenants between suzerain and vassal, in remote Hittite, Neo-Assyrian or Aramean fashion, are marked by if-stipulations bearing on the vassal’s loyalty.40 In Deuteronomy, the ijirst of these sentences stipulates: If (‫ )אם‬you do forget Yhwh your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that Yhwh is destroying before you, so shall you perish, because you would not listen to the voice of Yhwh your God (Deut 8:19-20). The warning is a rehearsal of the ijirst commandment of the Decalogue (Deut 5:7.9: “you shall have no other gods before me . . . You shall not bow down to them or worship them”), now rephrased in conditional form. The primary stipulation of the covenantal treaty is turned into a hypothetical scenario, mapping out Israel’s trajectory toward life or death. Whereas the circumstantial protases 38) See also the alternatives in Deut 14:7-8 (animals with or without rumination and cleft hoof); 14:9-10 (aquatic animals with or without ijins and scales); in 22:25 (the engaged virgin met in the town / in the open country); and in 23:20-21 (interests on loans to an Israelite brother / to foreigners). About binary contrasting patterns in biblical law, see Bartor, Reading Law, pp. 72-75. 39) In Deut 11:28 and 30:17, the ‫ אם‬construction is embedded within a disjunctive proposition (11:26-28 and 30:15-18) prefaced by the phrase “See, I set before you” (11:26; 30:15). In both cases, the ijirst element, expressing the positive choice (in favour of blessing or life), opens with ‫אשר‬. Yet, in the case of 30:17, the initial conditional ‫ אשר‬seems to have been conflated with a subsequent (relative) ‫ אשר‬attested in the LXX, which reads: “if you obey the commandments of Yhwh your God, which I command you today”). 40) See most recently (with overviews and bibliographies) H. U. Steymans, “DtrB und die adê zur Thronfolgeregelung Asarhaddons. Bundestheologie und Bundesformular im Blick auf Deuteronomium 11”, in G. Fischer, D. Markl and S. Paganini (eds.), Deuteronomium—Tora für eine neue Generation (BZABR 17; Wiesbaden, 2011), pp. 161-192. VT 63.3_1117_1-18.indd 12 4/17/2013 7:48:02 PM J.-P. Sonnet / Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013) 1-18 13 in casuistic laws lead to a full array of proportional legal conclusions, the people’s overall obedience (or disobedience) here stipulated has a radical outcome (“you shall surely perish”). Just as in the past, when God tested Israel in the desert “to know what was in your heart, whether or not (‫ )אם־לא‬you would keep his commandments” (Deut 8:2), the present situation of the people is a place of life and death bifurcations. The crucial force of the alternative is particularly perceptible when the ‫אם‬-protases are construed with the verb ‫שמע‬, “to listen, to obey”, in warnings occurring before the law code (and just before it: Deut 11,13-15; 11:27-28), within the law code (Deut 15:5), and after it (Deut 28:1.15; 30:15-16.17-18).41 In all the cases listed, the all-embracing character of the hortatory ‫אם‬-statements (by way of anticipation or resumption) is noticeable.42 The protasis explicitly or implicitly (30:17) covers the entire legal revelation: “the commandments”, “all these (his) commandments”, “my commandment”, “this entire commandment”, “his voice [by diligently observing all his commandments]”. To the all-inclusiveness of the protasis corresponds the radicalization in the apodosis, which, in most cases, polarizes life with death, blessing with curse.43 Once more, a suspenseful plot is opened, one that drives the reader forward to the branching future. 5. If-Plot in Deuteronomy’s Overall Plot The “if you listen / don’t listen” thread is joined by other key verbs that punctuate Deuteronomy’s major plot,44 in particular the verb ‫שמר‬, “to keep, to 41) In Deut 8:2; 11:22; 28:58, similar warnings are construed with the verb ‫שמר‬, “to keep, to observe”. 42) A similar covering of the legal revelation is observable in sentences introduced by ‫ כי‬in Deut 6:25; 13:13; 19:9; 28:2.9.13; 30:10. 43) See in particular the alternatives in Deut 11:27-28, 28:1.15 and 30:15-18. 44) I have contended in recent essays that Deuteronomy’s overall plot is linked to the reader’s growing uncertainty about the people’s actual reception of and appropriate response to Moses’ Torah, given the prophet’s non-crossing of the Jordan (and his death). Paradoxically, this uncertainty is proportional to the multiple provisions taken by Moses in order to secure the answer in question; see my essays “Redeijining the Plot of Deuteronomy—From End to Beginning: The Import of Deut 34:9”, in Tora für eine neue Generation, 37-49; and “The Fifth Book of The Pentateuch: Deuteronomy in its Narrative Dynamic”, JAJ 3.2 (2012) (forthcoming). VT 63.3_1117_1-18.indd 13 4/17/2013 7:48:02 PM J.-P. Sonnet / Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013) 1-18 14 11,13-15 Protasis Apodosis (anticipated*) If you will only listen to my commandments that I am commanding you today . . . → then I will give the rain for your land in its season . . . and he will give grass . . . 11:27-28 . . . if (ʾăšer) you listen to the * The blessing → commandments of Yhwh your God that I am commanding you today . . .” . . . if you do not listen to the commandments of Yhwh your God . . .” * The curse → 15:4-5 . . . if only you will listen to Yhwh your * Yhwh is sure to bless you in God by diligently observing this the land → entire commandment that I command you today . . .” 28:1 If you will only listen to the voice of → Yhwh your God will set you Yhwh, by diligently observing all his high above all the nations of commandments that I am the earth. commanding you today, 28:15 If you will not listen to the voice of Yhwh your God by diligently observing all his commandments and decrees, which I am commanding you today,” → then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. 30:15-16 [If you obey the commandments of Yhwh your God]45 that I am commanding you today, → then you shall live and become numerous, and Yhwh your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. 30:17-18 If your heart turns away and you do → . . . you shall perish; you not listen, but are led astray to bow shall not live long in the land down to other gods and serve them, that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. 45) The introductory conditional clause is missing in MT (see n. 39); it is added here according to the Greek ἐὰν δὲ εἰσακούσῃς τὰς ἐντολὰς κυρίου τοῦ θεοῦ σου; the missing phrase is almost identical to Deut 11:27, which opens with ‫( אשר‬in conditional sense), and not ‫אם‬. VT 63.3_1117_1-18.indd 14 4/17/2013 7:48:03 PM J.-P. Sonnet / Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013) 1-18 15 observe”, and ‫עשה‬, “to do.”46 From 4:5 on, the last of these verbs is linked to the ijinality of God’s Torah: “See, I now teach you statutes and ordinances, just as Yhwh my God has commanded me, for you to do in the land that you are about to enter and occupy” (Deut 4:5; see also 4:14; 5:31; 6:1). Most interestingly, these two threads (“listen”, “keep” and “do”) lead to the ijinal action told in Deuteronomy, in Deut 34:9b (before the flashback of vv. 10-12): “And the sons of Israel listened to [Joshua] and did as Yhwh had commanded Moses”. The half-verse echoes the opening of the book: “Moses spoke to the sons of Israel according to everything Yhwh had commanded him to speak to them”, and informs the reader that Moses’ communication has reached its goal.47 In other words, the suspense built into Deuteronomy’s if-plots ijinds its resolution in Deut 34:9 (a conclusion that does not preclude further developments beyond the limits of the book). The people, that is, Joshua’s generation, “listened” and “did” “just as Yhwh had commanded Moses”: they chose to listen to the commandments, as a whole (“if you listen . . .”) and in their individual requirements (“if a man . . .”, “when you . . .”)—at least concerning all the requirements applicable in their case. Moreover, they necessarily did so within the land, where the commandments came into force. What is ijirst implied by the people’s compliance is indeed the fulijillment of God’s promise, or, in other words, the carrying out of the “when you enter into the land” scenario.48 The “if you listen . . .” thread has in particular revealed its narrative quality. The report by the narrator in Deut 34:9 “the sons of Israel listened . . . and did” indeed represents the resolution of the suspense created in Deut 31:16-29 by 46) See B. A. Strawn, “Keep/Observe/Do—Carefully—Today! The Rhetoric of Repetition in Deuteronomy”, in B. A. Strawn and N. R. Bowen (eds.), A God so Near. Essays on Old Testament Theology in Honor of Patrick D. Miller (Winona Lake, 2003), pp. 215-240. 47) The narrator’s statement in Deut 34:9, moreover, mirrors the people’s commitment in Deut 5:27, “All that Yhwh our God will say you will tell us, and we will listen and do it”; what might have sounded overreaching turns out to come true (see “Redeijining”, pp. 44-45). 48) The period of faithful obedience to the law by Joshua’s generation, here anticipated, is determined in Judg 2:7: “The people worshiped Yhwh all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work that Yhwh had done for Israel”. A clear signal of the end of the respite in question is read in Judg 2:17, in a narrator’s statement that not only assigns a negation to the verbs of the summary in Deut 34:9b, but also echoes the announcement of the people’s unfaithfulness in Deut 31 (vv. 16.18.20.29): “Yet they did not listen even to their judges; for they prostituted themselves with other gods and bowed down to them. They soon turned aside from the way in which their ancestors had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of Yhwh; they did not do so” (see W. Groß, Richter [HTKAT; Freiburg im Breisgau, 2009], p. 208). The Deuteronomistic History thus emerges as the larger dramatic scene of Deuteronomy’s if-plots, in the wake of the plot’s ijirst resolution recorded in Deut 34:9. VT 63.3_1117_1-18.indd 15 4/17/2013 7:48:03 PM 16 J.-P. Sonnet / Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013) 1-18 God’s disclosure to Moses of the people’s unfaithfulness:49 “Soon you will lie down with your ancestors. Then this people will begin to prostitute themselves to the foreign gods in their midst, the gods of the land into which they are going . . . they will turn to other gods and serve them, despising me and breaking my covenant” (Deut 31:16.20). In other words, Moses’ death would be the signal of the people’s disobedience—as Moses came to understand, wrongly, in Deut 31:27.29, and the reader along with him. In their unfaithfulness, the people would immediately (and unhappily) match in historical terms the prophet’s ijirst ‫אם‬-warning: “if you do forget Yhwh your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them” (Deut 8:19). Yet, to the reader’s surprise, the last action by the people told in Deuteronomy—their listening to Joshua and their compliance with the law taught and enjoined by Moses—springs not from the people’s unfaithfulness, but from their faithfulness. Contrary to all expectations, the people have initially chosen “life” (as also advocated by Moses in Deut 30:1920 and 32:47).50 The initial if-sentence in Deut 8:19 has indeed activated a narrative plot, with all the strings of uncertainty attached to it. The resolution of the suspense is accompanied by a narrative surprise, since Joshua has never been described as a teaching prophet (but rather as a military leader; see Deut 31:7-9). In his ofijice as mediator of the law, however, Joshua embodies a role that was left hanging in Moses’ announcements, the role of the prophet like Moses. “To him you will listen (‫”)אליו תשמעון‬, Moses announced apropos the prophet (Deut 18:15); and indeed: “And the sons of Israel listened to him [=Joshua] (‫ )וישמעו אליו‬and did as Yhwh had commanded Moses” (Deut 34:9). Joshua’s identity as mediator of the law has been hidden from the reader and, in typical surprise fashion, the disclosure after the fact prompts the reader to reassess the entire plot of Deuteronomy: in it the teaching and the empowerment of the updated Torah went together with the appointment of its second mediator.51 49) God’s disclosure precipitates earlier warnings and announcements by Moses in Deut 4:25, 8:19 and 29:21. 50) Still, the dire predictions of unfaithfulness and apostasy uttered by Moses in Deuteronomy, and powerfully reformulated in the song “Listen Heavens” (Deut 32), are not nulliijied. If the announced apostasy did not come true in (or as) the immediate aftermath of Moses’ demise (as imagined by Moses himself in Deut 31:27-29), it will actualize itself in post-mosaic history, after the fortunate in-between phase of Joshua’s generation (see n. 48). Post-mosaic history, however, before anything else, opens with a scene of actual obedience (see my essay “Redeijining”, p. 43). 51) The Greek text of Sir 46:1 is an early witness of the reading in question: “Joshua son of Nun was mighty in war, and was the successor of Moses in the prophetic ofijice”; Ibn Ezra has noticed the echoing effect between Deut 18:15 and 34:9, and has accordingly identiijied Joshua with the promised VT 63.3_1117_1-18.indd 16 4/17/2013 7:48:03 PM J.-P. Sonnet / Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013) 1-18 17 The resolution in Deut 34:9 not only pertains to the comprehensive “if you listen . . .” plot; it also concerns the (relevant) minute plots of the casuistic laws. The people “did just as (‫ )כאשר‬God had ordered to Moses” (Deut 34:9): the narrator’s report echoes his opening statement: “Moses spoke to the sons of Israel according to everything (‫ )ככל אשר‬Yhwh had commanded him about them” (Deut 1:3). The active obedience per modum unius to the prophet like Moses in Deut 34:9 amounts to the compliance with God’s will spelled out in his many commandments. We must therefore infer that in the exemplary obedience of Joshua’s generation, every casuistic “if . . . then” has been carried out. The suspense inherent to the if-form has been met at all levels. Thus Deuteronomy’s logic is indeed narrative. * * * In brief, by means of its poetics, Deuteronomy has turned a generic form—the syntactic “if/when . . .” form of casuistic laws and vassal treaties—into its principal narrative dynamics: it has mingled the mini-plots of the case-laws with the overarching plot of the people’s loyalty and the macro-plot of the divine promise. Integrating in that way levels of suspense, the book does not close, however, without resolving a multilayered tension: the people in fact did loyally listen and comply, and did so within the Promised Land. Before anything else—that is, before the predicted unfaithfulness—faithfulness does occur, spurred by God’s own ijidelity. Beyond their syntactic, juridical, rhetorical and narrative functions, Deuteronomy’s if-plots thus convey a theological message. In the book’s overall plot, the contrasting if/when-sentences subtly combine human freedom and divine commitment. “Suspense”, Sternberg writes, “pays a moral as well as an epistemological dividend that the Bible can hardly afford to forgo. What gives a sharper sense of the agent’s freedom of choice than the uncertainty of their ultimate fate?”52 However unpredictable, human freedom, nevertheless, is capax Dei, as Deut 34:9 records, capable of enjoying God’s gift—promised and realized. Surrounded by dire predictions about the ensuing prophet (see his comment on Deut 18:15); see also E. Otto, Die Tora. Studien zum Pentateuch: Gesammelte Aufsätze (BZAR 9; Wiesbaden, 2009), p. 209. Joshua turns out to be the ijirst (and the exemplary) ijigure of a series of prophets sent by Yhwh—“my servants, the prophets” (2 Kings 17:13.23; 21:10; 24:2)—in order to warn the people and avoid the catastrophe of exile; the last representative of the series is apparently Jeremiah (see Jer 7:25; 25:4; 26:5; 29:19 MT; 35:15; 44:4). However, the narrator’s summary in 2 Kings 17 reveals that the later prophets met a fate that contrasted with Joshua’s: the people “did not listen” to them (v. 14). The contrast highlights the deliberate refusal of the people, embodied in their non-listening. 52) Sternberg, Poetics, p. 266. VT 63.3_1117_1-18.indd 17 4/17/2013 7:48:03 PM 18 J.-P. Sonnet / Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013) 1-18 history on the land, the Torah closes—and closes its embedding and embedded if-plots—on a different note: “Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away . . . No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to do it” (Deut 30:11.14). VT 63.3_1117_1-18.indd 18 4/17/2013 7:48:03 PM