000 Allen FMT (i-xxii) - The Presbyterian Leader

52 Proper 6 [11]/Year A
Law and story interact throughout the Torah and law changes in response
to incidents that show the inadequacy of prior law. As important as law,
torah, is to Israel, equally important is the recognition that the purpose of
torah is that the people may have lives of blessing and well-being. As a
result, when the orphaned daughters of Zelophehad complain to Moses
and Aaron that they cannot inherit their father’s property because only
sons could inherit (and Zelophehad had no sons), the Lord said to Moses:
“The daughters of Zelophehad are right in what they are saying; you shall
indeed let them possess an inheritance . . .” (Num. 27:1–7). Torah in Israel
and postbiblical Judaism has not ceased developing even today.
Torah is the gracious gift to Israel from the God who loves Israel. In
today’s reading this point is stressed with YHWH’s remark: “You have
seen . . . how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now
therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my
treasured possession out of all the peoples” (19:4–5).
The image of God as a mother bird is strikingly gracious. Deuteronomy
32:11–12 puts it this way:
As an eagle stirs up its nest,
and hovers over its young;
as it spreads its wings, takes them up,
and bears them aloft on its pinions,
the LORD alone guided him [Israel].
This is a frequent image in the Scriptures: “Hide me in the shadow of
your wings,” prays the psalmist (Ps. 17:8). “All people may take refuge in
the shadow of your wings” (Ps. 36:7). “In the shadow of your wings I will
take refuge” (Ps. 57:1). “Like birds hovering overhead, so the LORD of
hosts will protect Jerusalem” (Isa. 31:5). Matthew 23:37 and Luke 13:34
attribute to Jesus the statement: “How often have I desired to gather your
children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings . . .” The
Gospels owe this image to Israel’s Scriptures.
In a supersessionist way of thinking, Christian commentators have too
often emphasized the “if” in the statement “if you obey my voice and keep
my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession.” They stressed that
Israel’s covenant with God was conditional and that Israel lost the
covenant through disobedience. We reject this reading as tendentious and
ideologically motivated by a desire to assert that Christians displace Jews
in the covenant. Such a reading is works-righteous, turning the graciously
given covenant into a condition apart from which God cannot be gracious.