The Bible Gets Sexy!

To me, this was just an erotic dream.

Yeah, maybe there’s a reason that things were dripping all over the place, but yeah, literally.

Yeah. When he thrust his hand into the opening, it’s just like, okay, okay, I get it. Bible, calm down. Bible.

Hey everybody, I’m Dan McClellan and I’m Dan Beecher. And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Things are good. I’m glad to have you back. You were just off and away in faraway lands, magical worlds.

Yes, a magical kingdom, if you will. Yes, the happiest place on Earth. With my family, a little retreat from the cold of a Utah winter. Although this winter has been mild at best.

While you were gone, you missed a day that was over 60 degrees. So I don’t know that it was a retreat from the cold so much as it was—.

A retreat from a mild winter. Well, I was in the sunshine where it was 72 degrees and yeah, I had a wonderful time. We got back late last night, and here we are.

Here we are.

And yeah, we’re set to increase some public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, from what I’m told.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re going to do a couple things. We’re going to do— well, first we’re going to do a chapter and verse, and we’re finally doing it, folks. It’s the Song of Something. I’ve heard two different titles, so we’ll figure out what it is when we get to the segment. And then also, uh, later on we’re gonna talk, uh, we’re gonna do an It’s the Law, and we’re gonna talk about a law that seems to break another law in the Bible, uh, or at very least might kill you. So yeah, so which is— yeah, we, we got to figure that out.

Yeah.

So let’s dive in to chapter and verse. And as I said, Dan, it’s the song— look, I grew up with hearing about the Song of Solomon.

Yes.

And I have heard you many times call it the Song of Songs.

Yes.

And I don’t know what’s going on. So talk to me.

Well, the very first verse of this song is Shir Hashirim, which just means Song of the Songs. And this is a construction that is used hyperbolically, superlatively. So King of Kings, God of Gods, Song of Songs. It’s not just the, it’s the song among songs.

It’s the best of all of the songs.

Yes, yes. And then the next two words are asher lishlomo, which means which belongs to or is for or is about Solomon. Oh, so okay, it is sometimes called the Song of Songs, sometimes called, uh, the Song of Solomon. It is— traditionally, people have attributed it to Solomon, like they have the Proverbs, like they have, uh, other stuff, the Wisdom of Solomon, uh, and, and there’s a tradition that says that Solomon, you know, wrote 1,000 songs and all this kind of stuff. So, so it might have been preserved precisely because, hey, this “Hey, this is one that has Solomon’s name on it. Maybe this is it. " But this is definitely not written by Solomon. This is coming many centuries after the life of any historical Solomon who may have existed. So the—.

Do we have a sense if a historical Solomon existed?

I think there are scholars, there are critical scholars who would say there probably was somebody there who may have been named Solomon, who was an early king of Israel. Saul, Solomon, David, those are all folks where there are scholars who are like, “Yeah, there’s something there, but it’s definitely not the way they’re represented in the text. " And there are other scholars who will say, “No, there was never any historical Saul, Solomon, or David. " So we’re a little split in that regard.

Well, so what we do know is that we don’t know for sure.

Yeah, yeah. If there’s anything that we can say for certain, it is that we don’t know, yeah.

Okay, awesome.

But another thing that we can say for certain is that the Song of Songs was not written by anybody in that time period. This comes from much later, probably the Persian period, like 5th, early 4th century BCE, or the Hellenistic period, uh, late 4th into the 3rd century BCE. So this is a post-exilic, uh, collection of poems, and it is probably precisely that, a collection where they were gathering, um, this poetry over time. And it is erotic poetry.

Yeah, yeah, it very much is. It’s, uh, and very much not anything else, really. No, just erotic poetry. It is— is it 8 chapters of it?

8 Chapters of erotic poetry, yeah.

And it’s in— I read the whole thing. It’s fascinating. Um, it doesn’t feel like Bible, I’ll say that.

Yeah, and, and that was a, a, um, contentious point in the opening centuries of the Common Era among, uh, Jewish folks. There were debates, uh, end of the 1st century, beginning of the 2nd century CE. There were debates about whether or not the Song of Solomon was a text that defiled the hands, and that was basically a metaphor for is considered inspired. And so you have—

So wait, defiling the hands was what made it good?

Yes, yes.

Yeah, because that’s counterintuitive. I’m just going to say that’s counterintuitive.

It is counterintuitive. The idea is that if you touch it, it defiles your hands and you have to You have to perform the requisite stuff in order to repurify. But, and there’s debate about exactly why that is the metaphor that came to be used to refer to inspired literature. There’s a scholar named, I’m pretty sure it’s Timothy Lim, who’s written on this that I think comes the closest to my own position, which is the idea that the text, because they have the divine name in them, they’re not meant for, um, profane, uh, contact. Profane in the sense of outside the temple. So you’ve got the sacred and the profane, and because it has the divine name on it, it’s like a divine image. It, it brings God’s presence. And so in a profane context, if you handle it, you cause problems for yourself.

So this is, you know, you get the zappy zappy in the Hebrew Bible if you try to steady the Ark. And so there’s a sense in which it is inappropriate to touch it directly, only it’s not quite as strong as the old touch the Ark of the Covenant and you get buried. It’s more touch the scroll of the Torah and you have to go purify. That’s my opinion on that. That is not what all scholars think about that, but there has been some stuff written on that. And even in my open access book, I talk a little bit about that. But you have this famous Rabbi Akiva, and there’s a cool counterfactual history book called As a Driven Leaf, which tells the story of Rabbi Akiva. It’s a pretty cool bit of history. Historical fiction.

But anyway, uh, toward the beginning of the 2nd century CE, there’s this debate, and he says, “Heaven forbid that anyone in Israel ever disputes that the Song of Songs is holy. The Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies.” So again, we have that thing where— and so there were some rabbinic authorities who seemed to push back against the questioning of the holiness of the Song of Songs by basically coming over the top and saying, “No, it’s the holiest.” Was this like an extolling of the—

I mean, what was the argument? Was it just like human sexuality is the holiest thing that can be done?

It was probably understanding the text metaphorically. As representing the relationship of God to Israel. Oh, that became the dominant way of interpreting the song. And you have some references to certain identity markers of Israel in there that hint at that kind of reading. So there were a handful of texts. Esther was another one, and some people were like, Esther’s in, song is out. Others were like, no, song is in, Esther’s out. And so It was a back and forth, but you do have some places where some rabbis decided to get pretty rhetorical about their love for the Song of Songs.

So in that idea, the idea that it’s not about two human lovers, but rather about God and Israel, I— okay, here’s the thing.

Raises questions about some of God’s anatomy.

We’re going to get to it. What we should probably do is just go back and sort of discuss what it is and how it sounds and stuff before we get too deep into the weeds on how people interpreted it. Because here’s the thing, as I was reading it, I knew that there had been these theories put out that it’s God and Israel, or that it’s Jesus and the church or whatever.

It’s the Christian renegotiation of God in Israel.

Right. And I got to say, look, I’m pretty good at metaphor. I get poetry. I was raised by an English professor. I know what’s going on.

You’ve done Shakespeare.

I’ve done a lot of Shakespeare. And, um, you’re stretching. You are stretching on that one. Uh, it, It is quite a thing. So let’s just talk about what it is. Yeah. Just sort of nuts and bolts.

Yeah.

It says, let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. Like, That is explicit. Like, that’s not the kiss— that is not saying, like, you know, the— a kiss of— of—.

Yeah, it’s not some bashful little, like, this is a metaphor for love, right?

Right. Yeah, yeah, it’s, it’s pretty explicit, right in. And it gets, it gets— I’m not going to say nasty because I don’t think sex is nasty, but it gets overtly sexual.

Yes. Oh, I want to— there’s definitely a part I want to read about the lover at the door.

Oh, yes, yes, yes, absolutely.

But before we get to that, there is something very interesting going on in chapter 1, and it starts in verse 5. This is something that’s been debated by a lot of folks. It says, “I am black and beautiful. O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon, do not gaze at me because I am dark, because the sun has gazed upon me. My mother’s sons were angry with me. They made me keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept. " And I think in the King James Version it actually says, I am black. Oh, I am black, but comely. Oh, and so because it’s just the conjunction there is just a simple vav, and that could be and, could be but. And so that’s a debate there. But the word there for black, I If I recall, it has the idea is more blackened. And in my opinion, there are folks who will suggest that, and the poetry is really going back and forth between a woman talking and a man talking.

Yeah.

And they’re yearning for the love of the other.

And can I just say, there are no easy ways to tell when we’re switching from one voice to the other. And so I had to go through and as I’m going, I’m marking, like I’m pink highlighting parts of it and blue just so I can keep track, because it doesn’t say— because suddenly she’s, she’s talking, and then suddenly she’s yearning for a woman, and then you’re like, oh, maybe that’s him.

Okay. Um, and in my opinion, what’s going on here is, is the— this is someone who is at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum and must work outdoors, is required to work out in the sun. As a result, they have darkened skin because of that. So that kind of gives away their socioeconomic vulnerability. And so that there might have been a negative stigma associated with that. I mean, that still goes on today. There are groups of people who cover themselves up so that they don’t get tan because that’s associated with classism. And then there are other folks who understand this to the beloved, the woman, to be a Black person who is not saying, “Look, I’m Black, but I think I’m beautiful,” but is asserting, “No, I am Black and beautiful. " So that’s a passage that has some interesting scholarship behind it.

I recommend looking up some of the stuff that has been done on that. If you’re interested in more than just the the blue parts of the text.

It is interesting. Like, I definitely— like, especially people who are tuned into sort of a modern context, that black and beautiful thing really pings. It really stands out because it’s just— I mean, then it was probably, you know, now we have racial constructions, we have the idea of race, then they didn’t have the idea of race. But like you say, it was probably a socioeconomic marker. And that’s just as interesting, but it is, yeah, it rings interestingly to a modern ear.

And there’s something in chapter 6 I want to talk about when we get there that actually has to do with the Shema. Oh, okay. Hear, O Israel. But I want to get to this part of chapter 5. See if you can pick up on some of the imagery that is being used here.

It might, yeah, you might be able to figure out what the metaphor is.

Yes.

So, I’m guessing you’re going to verse 4.

Well, I’m going to start in verse 2.

Okay.

“I was sleeping, but my heart was awake. The sound of my beloved knocking. Open to me, my sister. " And by the way, sister and brother are used to refer to the other. Throughout. And I’m actually going to share some— an Egyptian erotic poem that does the same thing, because this is actually in keeping with a prominent convention in this time period.

actually in keeping with a prominent convention in this time period. Well, actually, there are like the incest things start to happen, like sister, brother, my mother’s thing. Like, it becomes this weird—it was like I was getting uncomfortable, I’ll be honest.

So, open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is wet with dew, my locks with the drops of the night. I—and now we’re back to the woman talking—I had put off my garment, how could I put it on again? I had bathed my feet, how could I soil them? My beloved thrust his hand into the opening, and my inmost being yearned for him. I arose to open to my beloved. And my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh upon the handles of the bolt. I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had turned away and was gone. My soul failed me when he spoke. I sought him but did not find him. I called him, but he gave no answer. So there’s a lot of, uh, you know, the, the person is just out of reach. There’s a lot of yearning from a distance. There’s a lot of I missed you, a lot of, uh, ships passing in the night going on.

I take this to be a dream sequence. Uh, I was sleeping, but my heart was awake is—yeah, to me, to me, this was just an erotic, uh, dream.

Yeah, which, um, maybe there’s a reason that, uh, that for things were dripping all over the place.

But yeah, literally, yeah, when he thrust his hand into the opening, it’s just like, okay, all right, okay, I get it. Um, so Bible, calm down, Bible.

Here’s an ancient Egyptian poem. I’m just going to read a portion of it. Okay. There are like 8, 9 stanzas to this.

And this is from the same era?

No, this is actually from almost 1,000 years before.

Oh, okay.

So this is from the late 2nd millennium BCE. Oh, wow. And the Egyptian erotic poetry is probably what set the standard that centuries later the authors of these poems are following. And there are parts of the Song of Songs that are no doubt earlier than the final form of the text, but probably, but definitely not, at least in Hebrew, all the way back to this time period. Hebrew didn’t even exist when this Egyptian poem was written. So here we have stanza number 1 of this Egyptian love song. One alone, a sister without her peer, comelier than all mankind. Behold, she is like the star goddess arising at the beginning of a happy year, of sheen surpassing, of radiant skin, lovely of eyes wherewith to gaze. Sweet are her lips wherewith to speak. She hath not a word too much. Long of neck, radiant of nipple, of true sapphire is her hair. Her arm surpasseth gold, her fingers are like lotus lilies.

Drooping of buttocks, firm girt in her midst. Her legs show forth her beauty. Fair of gait she treadeth upon the earth. She hath captured my heart in her embrace. She maketh the necks of all men to be turned away, dazzled at the sight of her. Joyous is whoso embraceth her. He is like the chiefest of lusty youths. One regardeth her going forth abroad, even as the star yonder, the only one. And then the next stanza is: The brother troubleth my heart with his voice. He maketh sickness lay hold on me. So we’re doing the same back and forth, man, woman, talking about the other as a sibling, going into lots of metaphors about this that in some places gets really, really close to what’s going on here. And then, but it begins and ends that stanza with one alone, and then the only one. And this brings up what I wanted to talk about in chapter 6, where we have this statement.

This is Song of Solomon 6:9 . And don’t read anything into that. And don’t say 6:7 either. But anyway.

Oh, man. Now you got me thinking about like, there have got to have been moments where some poor pastor or church person got up and said, this is something—yeah, chapter 6, verse 7, and some kid doing, ah, all the children, all the youth lost their minds.

Yeah. So, um, it says here, uh, in verse 9, my dove, my perfect one, is the only one, the darling of her mother. And, uh, the, the Hebrew here is actually very, very similar to what we have in the Shema. Where it says Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad. Here what we have is achat hi, so “she is one.” And then we also have achat hi leimma, which means “she is one to her mother.” And this is widely understood by interpreters not to mean that she’s the only woman that exists, because we just got done talking actually about 60 queens and 80 concubines and maidens without number. And then it says, “My dove, my perfect one, is the only one.” And so, this echad or achat idea is not saying the only one in existence, but the only one for me.

And even when it’s referring to her mother, it’s probably not saying that she is her mother’s only child or even necessarily her mother’s only daughter, but this is the most important one.

It’s not an ontological exclusivity. It’s not that God is the only God. But for you, God is the only one that matters. Just like the dove, the perfect one, is the only one that matters to the beloved.

Right. And that dove thing, man, I tell you, the metaphors— dove is one of those ones that sort of has continued.

Shakespeare still feels relevant.

Shakespeare used the term my dove or whatever for, for a lover. Uh, but man, they— there’s a lot, there’s a lot of, uh, fruit and veg, uh, metaphors.

There’s a lot of agricultural stuff going on, a lot of agricultural stuff.

There’s— yeah, at one point, uh, your hair is like goats coming down a hill. That one’s— that one felt a little sketchy. And then your— and then your teeth are like ewes. So, okay, sheep. You got sheep teeth. Congratulations on your sheep teeth. Yeah, uh, I guess they’re white. I guess that’s a good thing. Um, but yeah, it does. But, but one of the things that’s really weird is, can you explain why boobs are gazelles? I, I— I could not— I couldn’t figure out what the ‘your— her breasts are like gazelles’ thing. I, I—.

Well, I— there’s, there’s, uh, and then there’s the part where the beloved’s brothers are like, she’s flat as a board. Yeah, yeah.

What are we gonna do with her? She’s got no boobs.

I don’t know.

There’s a lot of breast talk in this.

Yeah, yeah. I think maybe, I mean, gazelles, what do gazelles do? They jump. So maybe you gotta think boing, boing, boing, boing. What is the thing that the, when male authors write romances, like, “She breasted boobily down the stairs,” or something like that. Right, yeah, exactly. So, maybe you got gazelles going boing, boing, boing. Maybe that. I don’t know. But there’s also something famous in verse 3, chapter 6, verse 3, “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” Oh, yeah. Which is, in Hebrew, it’s “Ani ledodi vedodi li.” And I’ve seen this— people get this tattooed on them. But that is a— that’s a famous passage from here.

But— and it points out actually a really interesting thing. When you say it in English, the translated version, you miss out on a poetic element of it.

Yeah, absolutely.

That’s there in the Hebrew. Will you say the Hebrew again for me? Yeah. So I can hear it.

Ani ledodi vedodi li.

I think that’s one of the things that’s so, you know, I think it was Robert Frost who said that poetry is what’s lost in translation. I think that, I think, I’m guessing that there are lots of poetic elements that I can’t appreciate. Oh, 100%. Because I can’t read the Hebrew.

Yeah, yeah, there’s absolutely a lot. And it’s different kind of poetry. It’s not the iambic pentameter kind of stuff. It’s—.

Sure, sure, sure.

It’s not the kind of rhyme schemes that we have in English poetry, but there are absolutely ways that they use, uh, that they use a lot of different, uh, features of, of ancient Hebrew poetry. And I’m, I’m blanking on some of the words. Alliteration is big.

Okay.

And, and, you know, you use— they’ll use, um, a lot of your Bs and your Ps to give you kind of a sense of roundedness, right? Or you can use your Ks and your Ts for more sharp-pointed kind of stuff. Just kind of give you a flavor of these general kind of senses.

Yeah, just splashing around in the sounds of language is one of the things that poetry is— that’s important in poetry that you can’t get in a translated version.

Yeah. And here’s something to— as we get to the end of chapter 8, which kind of draws things to a conclusion. We talked about her brothers. Her brothers have a concern. We have a little sister and she has no breasts.

Then I thought, okay, what I thought was happening, I didn’t catch that this was the brothers. Because it never says, and then the brothers say blah, blah, blah. So I thought it was the woman in the thing concerned for her little sister and being like, oh, you know, I’ve got these gazelles on my chest and poor girl, she doesn’t have any boobs at all. So I don’t know. I’ll tell you what, it’s hard to interpret a lot of this stuff.

Yeah, there are— I think there’s discussion of brothers elsewhere. They give her a hard time elsewhere. But she says, “My breasts were like towers. Then I was in his eyes as one who brings peace. Solomon had a vineyard at Baal-Hamon. He entrusted the vineyard to keepers. Each one was to bring for its fruit 1,000 pieces of silver. My vineyard, my very own, is for myself. You, O Solomon, may have the 1,000, and the keepers of the fruit 200.” And elsewhere, I don’t remember off the top of my head where the brothers come into play, but there’s a sense in which the brothers still assert some kind of ownership or authority over her. And this is where people have said, this seems to be talking about premarital sex. Because if she’s in a position where the brothers have authority over her, she still lives in her family’s household. She is not a part of another man’s household.

But she does seem to be going out at night to try to meet up with this paramour, and they are engaging in a lot of thrusting hands and openings before, it seems, they have tied the knot.

I’m remembering a moment where she says that she— it says something like, “If I saw him, I would kiss him outside and no one would complain.” Yeah, the idea being that he’s so handsome that like nobody can be mad that we’re not— that we’re kissing out in the open. Because who could blame me? Yeah, I feel like one of the things that I wanted to get to about this, and one of the things that I find remarkable about this, and you can sort of tell me if this is just obvious or whatever, but the woman’s voice is not only possibly more present than the man’s voice. Like, it goes back and forth, but I think my feeling of it was that I was reading from the woman’s voice more than from the man’s. And the woman seemed fully sexualized, but not— no, I mean, like, empowered.

Empowered. Yeah.

Of her—.

Of herself. Fully owned her own sexuality. And she objectified the man every bit as much as he objectified her. It feels shockingly equal.

Yeah. And that is something that— there’s a wonderful book by Jennifer Knust called Unprotected Texts, which is one of the cleverest titles for a book.

It’s great.

The subtitle is The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire. And I highly recommend this book. It is a phenomenal book. But the discussion of the Song of Solomon is wonderful, because there are hints that this kind of more liberated approach to sexual desire, it’s definitely not the holiness code. It’s definitely not later Christians. And she even shares a quote from Origen of Alexandria, this guy who, he might have castrated himself, but he says, “For this reason, I give warning and advice to everyone who is not yet free of the vexations of the flesh and blood and who has not withdrawn from desire for corporeal nature, that he completely abstain from reading this book.” So, the Christians are warning to stay away from that smut. But it— and who knows if the fact that the woman seems to be in possession of her own sexuality and to be okay with it, and who knows if that may be part of why it gave the ick to a lot of men throughout history.

Well, one of the things that it did for me was make me suspicious that maybe it was written by a woman, because it is so positive when it’s coming from the— it’s so non-stereotypical when it’s coming from the woman’s perspective, that I just thought, you know, this does not feel like so many of the other biblical authors that I’ve read.

Yeah.

And feels very different.

Yes, yes. This is a different type of author penning this, this prose than, than what we normally get.

And is anyone out there like proposing that this could have been written by a woman?

I’m sure there have been. I don’t know that we can know for sure, but I mean, it’s certainly a plausibility. Again, these are collections of poems that probably circulated independently before being brought together in a single volume or on a single scroll. And so who knows who composed some of these poems.

Yeah.

But, but, and, you know, we have the ancient Egyptian stuff, which also goes back and forth between a man talking and a woman talking. So we get both perspectives, uh, in. And so that’s just part of the genre as well.

Sure.

So I don’t— I, I— we can’t know for sure, but I’m— I have no doubt that there are folks who have suggested that.

Well, yeah, I did. Yeah, I just suggested it.

Well, I I’m not going to be dismissive, but—

Well, because I don’t have a PhD and haven’t studied it, and I only just read it this week?

Sure. And you don’t publish on it. But yes, what I meant was published in peer-reviewed venues. But yeah, I think it’s certainly plausible. I mean, the first known named author is a woman who wrote, uh, the princess and priestess Enheduanna, who, uh, who wrote in Sumerian. So, um, so yeah, it’s— it would not be, uh, outside the realm of, uh, of possibility, plausibility. But, uh, but yeah, we can’t really know.

We, we need to wrap this up, but I do have one more question, and that is Was this a song? Was it set to music?

I don’t know about being set to music, but I’m sure that parts of it at different times would have been sung. And in their original circulation, yeah, they would have been sung a cappella or accompanied by music.

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute, perhaps?

There definitely were musical instruments going back long before this this book, so it’s certainly plausible.

I just don’t know why it’s called a song, if it’s—

Well, it’s not a song in the contemporary sense of song, but shir in ancient Hebrew didn’t necessarily mean something that you sang accompanied by music. I mean, the idea of a poem has probably got an awful lot of semantic overlap with the idea of a shir.

I’m going to call it Poem of Poems, then.

Poem of Poems. I’m not going to get in your way.

All right. Well, I think that’s all fascinating. I love it. I wish we could talk more about erotic poetry, but I think we’ve got to move on because it’s the law. All right. So this week’s It’s the Law, you had sent me a whole bunch of different places where a certain Hebrew construction occurs.

Yes.

In a bunch of different books, in Deuteronomy and Exodus, and Isaiah and Samuel. And talk to me about what— about this phrase and how it’s translated, because what you sent to me is not what I see when I’m looking.

Yeah. Yeah. So This is a commandment. I think it’s most clearly given as a command in Deuteronomy 16:16 , but it’s always mistranslated. It’s always knowingly mistranslated, and I think it’s so fascinating. But Deuteronomy 16:16 , I’ll read it and then I’ll talk a little bit about what’s going on with some of the Hebrew. I’m not going to get too technical, but I think you—

I don’t believe you. I just— I think you are, and I like it.

I think this is fascinating. 3 Times a year, all your males shall appear before the Lord your God at the place that he will choose: at the Festival of Unleavened Bread, at the Festival of Weeks, and at the Festival of Booths. They shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed. So this is— this is a commandment to, to come up and appear before the Lord 3 times a a year at specific festivals. However, what’s going on in the Hebrew is, is a little peculiar, because it says, literally, the Hebrew is, 3 times in a year will see all of your males the face of Adonai your God. And the, the consonants of the Hebrew say, have it in the active. You will see the face of God. The vowels have altered it to make it passive.

Now, in the consonants, they can be understood in the passive, but the way the rest of the construction works with the particular particles and prepositions and everything, the consonants want you to understand this in the active. So the verbal root raah means to see. And so in the active, it means you see the face of God.

Now, when you say God, you’re substituting the— it’s the Tetragrammaton.

It’s the Tetragrammaton.

It is the named God of Israel.

Yes. And then appositionally, it adds your God, Eloheicha. You see this in Exodus 34:24 as well. But in Isaiah, I think it is the most revealing because in Isaiah it doesn’t use a regular finite verb. It uses an infinitive and a specific kind of infinitive, the infinitive construct. And in the finite form, the active and the passive can have the same consonants. In the infinitive construct, they do not have the same consonants. And the consonants that we have in Isaiah 1:12 — I’ll read Isaiah 1:12 from the NRSV-UE. “When you come to appear before me who ask this from your hand, trample my courts no more.” So the idea is coming to appear before God— me, this is God talking— means coming into my temple. But the “appear before me” actually cannot mean that. The consonants can’t mean that. The consonants are lirot, which would be, uh, when you come to see my face.

That means to see my face. But they, the Masoretes, have, um, added the vowels of the passive form, so it’s leraot, but it should be lirot. So here, here’s where I’m getting technical. But, but in, in short, the consonants very definitely are intended to be active. When, uh, when you come to see my face, who asked this from your hand? Uh, and so I think, and there are a lot of scholars who, who acknowledge this, that this original commandment was not to appear before God. The original commandment was to see God’s face 3 times in a year. And as we see in Isaiah, this is about coming into the temple. And so most likely this was a kind of ritualistic mystic, a beatific vision where you go into the temple and you see the face of God, probably by looking at a divine image.

I am really trying to get Wizard of Oz out of my head right now, because all I’m thinking about right now is like, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” But that’s not what we’re talking about.

Not that kind of image. No, it wasn’t holographic. It would have been a standing stone. And we’ve actually found a standing stone in an Israelite Judahite temple in Arad. So we know that they had standing stones in their temples. But to see the standing stone was to see God. And so I think that the idea here is you come to the temple, you see the standing stone, you see the face of God. And you have in the Psalms, you know, “When shall I see the face of God?” This yearning for the beatific vision. So it’s something that is referenced in a variety of different ways, but it always gets translated in the passive because people are uncomfortable with this idea that you could see God’s face because you’re not supposed to be able to see God’s face.

Right.

Because of another tradition from Exodus where Moses says, “Show me your glory,” and God goes, “Ooh, I’ll tell you what, I’m going to put you on this rock right here and then I’m going to walk by, but I’m going to cover your face with my hand so that you can’t see my face. And then I’m going to pull my hand away after I’ve passed by and you can see my back, but you won’t see my face.” And the text says, “No one can see me and live.” And the ancient Greek translation says no one can see my face and live. So you weren’t supposed—.

And then of course there are all of these scriptures later where people do see God.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And live.

Including Moses.

Including Moses, right, right. Yeah. And like some of his elders too, right?

I mean, yeah, yeah. They, they saw— that’s Exodus 24:10 . They saw the God of Israel and his feet are like standing on this sapphire patio kind of thing. But yeah, it also has, you have in Numbers that Moses spoke to God face to face like a man speaks with his friend. And so they’re very clearly, they’ve got, they’re a little conflicted on what’s going to happen.

Heck, Jacob done wrestled with the guy.

Yeah, Jacob, and Jacob held his own for a bit. Yeah.

So it was a tie. So one of the things that I wanted to get to with you, because you mentioned the Psalms, going and talking about when, you know, I— when can I see his face? I want to see the face of God. One of my questions is, because it sounds to me like the standing stone idea is like, you call the thing at the center of the temple, the face of God.

Yeah, so we, uh, Psalms 42:2 , “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?” Yeah, I, I think it’s, it’s something that there, there was the ritual aspect to it, and then there was kind of the yearning for being in the presence of God, of the actual, like, well, well, the incorporeal being. Well, the— they, they certainly understood God to be corporeal in this time period, but to be located elsewhere. And the standing stone was really the material, uh, medium that transmitted, uh, the divine presence. And so—

You’re still making me think of Wizard of Oz, I’m sorry.

So to, um, to be in the Holy of Holies was to be in God’s presence, but you’re, you’re more sensing it than you are gazing upon it. But the standing stone represented the material manifestation of that. And interestingly, I said that we have a standing stone found in a Holy of Holies in a Judahite temple. We also have two incense altars that were found right just a few feet away from that standing stone. And they tested the substances that had been burned on those incense altars 2,700 years ago. And there were residues of cannabis that were being burned, uh, in the incense there. So, so I’m sure that played a role in the, uh, you know, the psalmist is like, I gotta get back there, man, because I’m sure he had a lovely experience being in God’s presence.

And I mean, depending on what they were, uh, burning at the altar, you might have seen the face of God. I don’t know.

Yeah, I, I think it was, it was a mystic— it was probably considered kind of a mystical experience. You go into the Holy of Holies, you have this mystical communion with God and you see the material representation of God’s presence, and that is, you know, like gazing upon the face of God. And there’s been a lot of research on how the divine images kind of represent that gaze, because there’s this idea also that when you are looking at God, God is looking back at you. And so there’s an intimidation that is also probably felt by folks there. What’s the saying? Don’t look into the abyss or something like that?

Because you’ll see what’s looking back or something.

Well, yeah, because the abyss stares back or something like that. I forget what it is. My closest exposure to it is from the animated show Amphibia where one of the characters quotes that. I wish I could remember what it was. But, um, so this is a spiritual mystical experience to be able to, to do that. But, but yeah, it was— I think it’s incorporated into this commandment in Deuteronomy 16:16 as a way to require that the males actually present themselves at the temple. This was part of costly signaling, but also there were almost certainly offerings that were, um— and in fact, it even says that at the end, you shall not see God’s face empty-handed. So it’s being worked into this demand for offerings that are supposed to be three times a year. So it’s time for your quarterly offering.

Right. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that it feels like is that— because when I think about something that feels as important as the idea of seeing God’s face, that feels like you take your time with it. But if they’re doing it on the festivals, meaning everyone has to do it at the same time.

There’s a line forming.

It’s— yeah, you’re not taking your time with this. You’re like, you’re, you’re seeing the face, you’re dropping off your offering, and you’re getting out of there.

So yes, yeah. And, and there’s a— there are other parts of the Hebrew Bible where the— you’re burning all this incense and all this stuff going on. There’s even a degree to which it seems like your ability to see the divine image is probably obscured by the smoke as well. So, there’s also, you know, later on when the high priest is the only one who can go into the Holy of Holies on one day a year, it’s basically like fill the place with smoke and then the high priest is going in like, okay, I’m trying not to run into anything. And so, there’s also some obscuring of God’s presence and God’s face as well, which could probably lend to the mystical experience. If you just see a hazy outline of something in the mist while you’re getting stoned off your gourd, then maybe you do come out of there going, “I saw God.”

Yeah, just take a deep breath and then hold it for as long as you you can.

And every time I see the face of God, I get real paranoid. I just feel like—.

Why is it like doing a Whippet?

I just— I, I guess part of my— okay, so I have one question. It might sound stupid. Is there a chance that these standing stones, that some— that there was a physical, like, a face carved into them? Have they ever found like representative imagery? Or is that— that’s actually not even okay, right? Like, that’s what the—.

Well, according to the Hebrew Bible, even the standing stones are not allowed, or at least parts of the Hebrew Bible. You’re not supposed to have that kind of divine image. In Genesis you have it. It’s really— in parts of Genesis you have it. It’s really later on, and particularly Deuteronomy, where they’re like, ‘You heard a voice, but you didn’t see any image, so don’t go making divine images.’ So it’s not like the standing stone was the approved version and then anthropomorphic statuary was the non-approved version. They were all unapproved. But I think that just— a lot of scholars would suggest that just shows that the anti-idol polemic is a later developed thing, because we clearly have divine images from earlier periods in Israel and Judah. Now, when it comes to anthropomorphic stuff, if there was, there could have been painted onto the standing stone. Oh, something. We, we haven’t recovered any anthropomorphic statuary.

I’m just picturing a stone with a smiley emoji on it. I don’t think that’s right either.

Well, you know, what about all of the things? The, when, uh, if you ever have the, the privilege to travel to Malta, the, and you go to Marsaxlokk, which is this little fishing village in the southeastern corner of the island. Uh, they— the boats are very colorful and they paint eyes on the boats. Oh, fun. And, uh, yeah, it’s, it’s very cool. But I, I, you know, that could have been part of it— eyes. We don’t have any anthropomorphic statuary from ancient Israel and Judah. There is anthropomorphic statuary from Egypt and from Mesopotamia. It— there’s a scholar, Tryggve Mettinger, who argues that in ancient Israel and Judah, there was a de facto aniconism in the sense that the divine imagery seemed to be non-representational, not because there was actual opposition to, institutional opposition to anthropomorphic statuary, but just because the market wasn’t there. They didn’t have the resources.

They probably didn’t have the materials. There wasn’t as much demand for it. And so, it’s hard, man. Yeah. And the representations are more symbolic. But, you know, you do have the Adonai and his Asherah thing.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Drawing. So that’s the face of God and it’s represented with Bes imagery. So it’s kind of bovine in appearance. And there are things where people have argued, oh, this might be a depiction of of God’s face. We don’t have anything anthropomorphic because it doesn’t seem like that was the in thing, right, at the time for these smaller territorial states like ancient Israel and Judah. They didn’t have near the complexity and the resources and the market that you had in Babylon or in Egypt. So, but that’s an ongoing debate as well. Was there anthropomorphic representation of, of the God of Israel? We don’t know for sure. So yeah, that’s a question I would love to have answered as well. I think it would be absolutely fascinating to go see what was going on around 1000 BCE in these temples.

Yeah, I guess, I mean, I guess it’s just so clear that it’s like the face of God. It’s not, it’s not like the image of God or the, you know, it’s the idea of God or whatever it— I think that’s what I was flashing on is just that it keeps saying the face.

Well, you know what, what do we have in the, in the priestly blessing that we have on the Ketef Hinnom silver amulets that we’ve talked about? Uh, it says, may his face shine upon you, which is, uh, which is probably a reference to the sun. And so, you know, if the sun is on the divine image and the sun is the symbol of the face of God, like, there are a variety of ways that could be understood.

Interesting.

So yeah, I, I wish we had more details about all of this, but what we can say is that Deuteronomy 16:16 , Exodus 34:24 , Isaiah 1:12 , and I think also the story of Hannah and Samuel in 1 Samuel, is the Hebrew there is saying that they’re there to see the face of God, and it’s just been reinterpreted.

As appear before or just be in the general proximity of or presence of God.

It does speak to the— I don’t want to assign like an agenda to all of these translators or whatever, a tradition maybe. But it’s interesting that none of the translations that I checked are saying the face of God.

Oh no, they won’t. That’s just the widely agreed upon, we’re understanding this to mean appear before. And the Masoretic tradition vocalizes it that way. And so you’re kind of overturning what the Masoretes wrote when you translate it differently.

So yeah, when you do the McClellan translation, the DMV, yeah, are you going to put the face of God in there?

Hell yeah, I am.

Nice, nice. Yeah, I like to hear.

And then there will be explanatory notes. I mean, if you look in, uh, if you go in the NRSVUE to Deuteronomy 16:16 , um, or maybe— no, it’s not Deuteronomy, it’s Isaiah. If you go into Isaiah 1:12 , uh, there’s a footnote marker. When you come to “appear before me,” footnote b, and you go down and it says, “Or see my face.” So they’re acknowledging that this is going on in the Hebrew, even though they’re relegating it to the footnote of just one of the passages where that’s more clearly what the Hebrew is saying.

I’m fascinated that the NRSVUE doesn’t have a footnote. They’ve got a footnote for booths, Festival of Booths and/or Tabernacles.

Yeah.

But no note about face of God.

Well, I think, I think it’s because in Exodus 34:24 and in, um, Deuteronomy 16:16 , the consonants could go either way. Now, now, when you look at the particles, because it’s a, it’s a direct object marker, and then “my face”— you don’t appear to my face, you appear before me. It should be lifne, but it’s et panay. And so it works. The consonants of the verb could be active or passive, but in the context, I think we got to throw the weight of the evidence in the direction of understanding it as active. But I think that’s why there’s no note, because they’re like, “Yeah, the consonants could go either way in the verb, so we’re just going to take the passive reading.” But with Isaiah, you can’t. The, the consonants very clearly of the, of the infinitive construct have to be active. So, uh, they’re like, all right, just put it in the footnotes there.

Okay, well, I— that is— that’s a lot of fun. There you go.

Hopefully not too technical.

Go see the face of God if you want to, I guess. Uh, yeah, probably won’t kill you.

Smoke them if you got them, but, uh, enjoy the smoke.

While you’re in there. All right, friends, well, that’s it for, for this episode. Thank you all so much for tuning in. If you would like to become a part of making this show go, and, you know, get over and, and listen to the, uh, the, the after party over on Patreon where we, you know, we, we talk— we— one of the things we do is we answer our patrons’ questions. So if you have a personal personal question that you’d like us to address, you can make us do it by becoming a $10 a month or more patron over at patreon.com/dataoverdogma, and, uh, and we will, we’ll, we’ll answer your questions for you. Uh, thanks so much to Roger Gowdy for editing and to JJ for, uh, being our producer, and we will talk to you again next time.

Bye, everybody.

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