Editor’s note: The following excerpt is used with permission from an essay by Tracy McKenzie entitled “The Hebrew Bible and the Nations.” The forthcoming volume, Mission of God, is edited by Bruce Ashford and David Nelson. We thank the editors and author for permission to post it here. -JC

The Law: Genesis–Deuteronomy

The purpose of the Law extends beyond mere legal or historical reportage. Most people who read the Old Testament do so with the expectation of finding God’s historical dealings with Israel. That is, they expect to find history when they open up the first few books of the Bible. To be certain, that is what they find for the authors of Scripture use historical narratives to communicate their message. Interestingly enough, however, historical narratives are not the only type of medium they use. They also use poetry, legal code, discourse, genealogies and other literary material. From the manner in which they put these and other genres to use in their books, we can discern that they are not merely telling us what happened. They are also communicating a message with their depictions of what happened. In other words, the purpose of the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) is not only to tell us what happened in the early period of Israel’s history. We must find out its primary purpose by discerning the structure which has been left for the reader in the book itself.

When one reads through the Pentateuch, they find that the author uses past events to tell us about a future day. As strange as it might sound to modernistic[1] readers of the Pentateuch, by noting the way texts interface with one another and are arranged in the Pentateuch, the reader can discern that the Pentateuch is about the last days! The Pentateuch is not merely recounting past events. It is a recounting of past events in order to communicate a message about the future. One scholar traces the phrase “the last days” and other messianic themes which consistently appear together throughout the Pentateuch and asserts that there is a “fully developed messianic eschatology” in the Pentateuch.[2] Otto Procksch writes, “Already in Genesis 1:1 the concept of the ‘the last days’ fills the mind of the reader.”[3] If this is true, it should not surprise us that the Pentateuch reveals God’s plan for Israel and the nations through his anointed king in the last days. This section will explore the Pentateuch and God’s mission to the nations in two ways. First, it will note God’s concern for the nations as seen along the storyline and in the characters of the Pentateuch. Second, it will note God’s concern for the nations within the structure of the Pentateuch itself.

A common reference to God’s concern for the nations in the Pentateuch is God’s covenant to Abraham. Throughout the book of Genesis, the author records God’s varied promises to Abraham, Sarah, their children, and grandchildren. The first of these references can be found shortly after the introduction of Abraham in Gen 12:3. God promised Abraham that he would make him into a great nation, that he would bless him, that he would make his name great, and that in Abraham all the families of the earth would be blessed.[4] From this simple poem, one begins to discern that God had much more in mind than blessing one race of people through this Patriarch. As the reader follows the storyline of Abraham and his promised ‘seed,’ this theme of blessing all nations occurs repeatedly. In Gen 13:15–16 and 15:1–18, God affirms his covenant with Abraham although the promise concerning the nations is absent. Then in 17:1–8, 16, and 22:17–18, God’s plan for the nations returns with its association with God’s covenant to Abraham. The covenant is then reaffirmed through Isaac and Rebekah (Gen 24:60 and 26:3–4) and Abraham’s grandson, Jacob (Gen 28:13–15). This covenant is central to the book of Genesis and becomes the foundation of God’s actions throughout the remainder of the Pentateuch and into the conquest and monarchy.[5]

The Pentateuch did not begin, however, with Abraham. As the focus of the Pentateuch narrows to Israel, the nation, it is important to consider what was chronicled in Scripture prior to the narratives concerning Abraham. Genesis 1–11 depicts God’s concern for humanity from a universal perspective. It is from this universal perspective that Scripture begins. Later biblical authors often return to the early chapters of Genesis as an edenic portrayal of God’s blessing in the last days.[6] It is here in Genesis 1 that God first blesses Adam and Eve. Before Israel became the center of the biblical narrative, God blesses mankind, creates them in his image, speaks to them (unlike the rest of creation) and gives them a stewardship in his creation. It is prior to any mention of the nation of Israel when God first provides the institution of marriage which will one day result in the promised seed of woman. It is here with Adam, Eve, Cain, Noah, Lamech, the men of Babel, and all remaining mankind, where God must graciously deal with man’s fallen state in a manner which compromises neither his justice nor his mercy. Gerhard von Rad puts it well,

The whole primeval history, [Gen 1–11] therefore, seems to break off in shrill dissonance, and the question we formulated above now arises even more urgently: Is God’s relationship to the nations now finally broken; is God’s gracious forbearance now exhausted; has God rejected the nations in wrath forever? That is the burdensome question which no thoughtful reader of ch. 11 can avoid; indeed, one can say that our narrator intended by means of the whole plan of his primeval history to raise precisely this question and to pose it in all its severity. Only then is the reader properly prepared to take up the strangely new thing that now follows the comfortless story about the building of the tower: the election and blessing of Abraham.[7]

Von Rad is saying that the universal man has miserably failed and apparently been left under God’s wrath. Von Rad continues describing the intersection between the failure of the Tower of Babel and the gracious election of Abraham. Most readers assume the author is merely reporting what happened and thus, their focus immediately turns to Israel.  These readers miss the question posed by the author before the subject of Israel actually commences. The question is, “Will God forever be wrathful against the nations?” In missing the question, they must also miss the answer that the election of Abraham truly is!

In other words, the narrative of Abraham, his seed, the blessing to the nations and the entire story of Israel is an answer to the dilemma of the universal sin of all mankind and God’s wrath found in the first eleven chapters of Genesis! Von Rad answers his own question, “The question about God’s salvation for all nations remains open and unanswerable in primeval history. But our narrator does give an answer, namely, at the point where sacred history begins. Here in the promise that is given concerning Abraham something is again said about God’s saving will and indeed about a salvation extending far beyond the limits of the covenant people to “all the families of the earth.”[8] Abraham and his seed, the eventual messiah, are the answer to the sin and rebellion found in “all the families of the earth.” While there is no question that subsequent to Genesis 12, Israel is a focal point of the Hebrew Bible, it is noteworthy that the author does not turn to the patriarchal narratives without purpose. His purpose for turning the reader’s attention to the patriarchal narratives is revealed in the way Abraham’s seed will bring blessing to “all the families of the earth.” Seen from this perspective, the author’s attention is primarily on the future, not on the past. Moreover, God’s gracious and loving care for all humanity is declared from the outset of the Bible.[9]

The structure of the Pentateuch itself demonstrates additional evidence for God’s mission to the nations…

---

[1] By “modernistic readers of the Pentateuch,” I mean readers who for generations have been trained to get inside the head of author, audience, and characters inside the narrative in order to divine the meaning of the text. None of these options are possible. Instead we must discern meaning by observing how the text has been written and shaped by an author in order to communicate a message.

[2] John Sailhamer, “Hosea 11:1 and Matthew 2:15,” WTJ 63 (2001): 87–96.

[3] Otto Procksch, Die Genesis uebersetzt und erklaert (Leipzig: Deichertsche Veragsbuchhandlung, 1913), 425,  quoted in Sailhamer, Genesis Unbound (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah, 1996), 43.

[4] The phrase at the end of 12:3 “All the families of the earth” is to be understood from the perspective of all humanity because of its association with the same familial term associated with the disbursement of Noah’s children (and therefore, everyone who was alive) after the flood in Genesis 10:32.

[5] Exod 2:24, 32:13; Lev 26:42; Num 32:11; Deut 1:8, 34:4; Josh 24:2; 1 Kings 18:36; 2Kings 13:23.

[6] For example, Hos 2:16–23 and Ezek 36:8–15.

[7] Gerhard von Rad, Genesis (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972), 153.

[8] Ibid., 154

[9] Other narratives along the storyline of the Pentateuch describe important roles for non-Israelites: Melchizedek, Esau, and the foreigners who apparently enter into covenant with God (Deut 29:11–13).