2009

Moses in the desert

When my generation of exegetes first left the university, Old Testament studies was understood as a historical-critical discipline, with but a limited and mostly traditional connection to theology. Today – a generation later – this dominance of historical-critical research is collapsing on all fronts. One no longer speaks, for example, of a historically implicit ‘Sitz im Leben des Volkes,’ but rather about the implicit symbol system of a text's contemporary intellectual world. It is time once again to question the relationship of exegesis to theology. To further such a discussion, I would like to take up today the issue of the narrative figure of Yahweh as God, which is so problematic a representation of truth within the Pentateuch's discourse.

In my inaugural lecture to the faculty in Copenhagen more than fifteen years ago, I addressed the question of the concept of God in the Pentateuch on the basis of Exodus 3:12's presentation of Yahweh's self-understanding in the phrase, 'ehjeh 'imak, ‘I will be with you’ – a presentation, which is reiterated in Isaiah's ‘Immanuel’ discourse and reused in the Gospel of Matthew (Isa. 7:14; 8:8, 10; Mt. 1:23). In the scene of his revelation to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3, Yahweh understands himself as the god, who is with Israel; namely, God as Israel comes to experience and understand during the course of the story: the god, which is known from tradition (cf. Deut. 32:7-9).