The Torah and the Land

Stepping stone 1

Let’s go back for a moment to Abraham and the covenant God made with him. Just like a marriage, this has both substantive and spatial implications. The partners make a substantive promise about how they will treat one another. And they also seek a place where they can shape that new life together in peace.
The substantive meaning of the covenant becomes increasingly clear as the Torah unfolds. If God desires anything from this covenant partner, it is that life there become visible as He has always intended. The people of Israel are to become a light among the nations of the earth.
But that new life must also be practiced somewhere; there must be a concrete space for it. But where? Is there a place on earth where all the words of the Torah can be fully realized?

In principle, this seems simple for God, because the whole earth belongs to Him, doesn’t it? Even though people often think that you can own land and therefore buy and sell it. In principle, however, nations live on the inheritance that God grants them. And that inheritance is and remains His.
So God must, as it were, set out to find a place somewhere for Himself and Abraham to live.
And then we hear something very special. At the covenant-making in Genesis 15, God says that Abraham’s descendants will have to wait another 400 years or so before He can give them land to inherit; for “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
The Amorites lived in Canaan, and God evidently has that land in mind for His people Israel. But that won’t happen just like that. The Amorites are also His creatures. He has given them that land as an inheritance to live on. That life may involve trials and errors, yet mercy and justice remain of the utmost importance to God. And while the injustice in the Amorites’ inheritance is evidently great, it is not yet of such a nature that God will “disinherit” them. He will first be patient with them for centuries to come.

Step 2

“To inherit” and “to disinherit”—these are the best renderings of the Hebrew verb that we encounter time and again in the last book of the Torah, Deuteronomy; it cannot be translated as“to take possession of” and“to drive out,”because it is precisely “inheriting” and “disinheriting” that are constantly linked and intertwined in the text.
At long last, after centuries, the people of Israel are ready to “inherit the land promised to Abraham.” God grants them permission to do so; and in doing so, He also commands them—again, by God’s command—to “disinherit” the inhabitants of Canaan.
At the same time, God warns His covenant people: “I, too, will surely disinherit you in turn if you do not live on My land as I have intended.” And Israel’s later exiles are a very serious example of this.
Thus, the people of Israel find their own place among the nations of the world, in Canaan: the land promised to Abraham.

It’s also striking, when you read the Torah, that many of the guidelines given to the people are tailored to this specific land and can therefore only be fulfilled in that land. These range from guidelines for sowing and harvesting to a guideline specifying which trees may be cut down to build watchtowers in the event of war—and which trees must definitely not be cut down.
All of this also means that many of the so-called 613 mitzvot/guidelines recognized by Judaism do not apply when the people live outside the land of Canaan. During the exiles the people experience, there will therefore always be a longing to return to the land given by God so that they may fulfill all the guidelines of the Torah.

Step 3

So now there is a country, a plot of land.
And so we come to the most important thing of all: how one should live in that land—the essence of a life lived according to the Torah. For the entire covenant—God’s entire foothold on earth—is meaningless if, in terms of faith and therefore also in terms of ethics, it does not distinguish itself from the surrounding nations; they must be “holy” and “set apart.” This is what God set out to do: a people that sends a signal of the true way of life—of people living together and in harmony with all of creation.

Now, one of the greatest misunderstandings in Christianity is that the word “Torah” was translated as “Lex” in the Vulgate, the Latin Bible that was in use for centuries. And so it has been adopted in all European languages, as if it were a “Lex,” a “Law.” This completely disregards the intimate context in which the covenant partners live. Anyone who experiences marriage as a period in which he or she must comply with “laws” would be better off ending it right away.
The people of Israel celebrate Simchat Torah, “Joy of the Torah,” and by that they do not mean a code of laws. What is meant is the Word of God that frees us from all bondage, God’s fatherly lessons for life, the unimaginable life you find when you walk the paths He points out. Psalm 119 is famous—it is the longest psalm in existence. It is pure Simchat Torah. In every verse, the poet says something about the significance of the Torah for his life. He does this by beginning a sentence eight times with each of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, resulting in 176 proverbs.
The so-called summary of the Torah in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 has also become famous. In Judaism, these are called the “Ten Words”; in Christianity, they are incorrectly called the “Ten Commandments.”
As far as we know, no church follows the Jewish counting of the Ten Words. For Israel, the first Word is: “I am the One, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of slavery.” That liberation comes first! And that liberation shapes all the words that follow. They are all guidelines to keep the people free forever and never again allow them to become slaves to anything or anyone. So, once again: Simchat Torah. There are times when people dance with the Torah scrolls in the synagogue!
It just shows how important it is to hear the words of the Bible within the living Jewish tradition and in the Hebrew language.

Step 4

What is in the Torah?
In these first five episodes, we can do no more than briefly touch on the context and the covenant within which the biblical texts are set. We hope to delve deeper later into the many biblical narratives, all of which further illustrate what the Torah can mean for every person. But to give a few examples already, there are a number of concepts and words that are interpreted so differently in God’s Torah than we are accustomed to.

Among the nations, the concept of “truth” is understood as that which is in accordance with the facts. However, in the Torah, “truth” —emet in Hebrew—means above all: being trustworthy toward your fellow human beings, being a good neighbor to others. For that purpose, you may even “lie.”
The concept of “Mercy” —racheem in Hebrew—is linked in the Torah to the word “womb.” Mercy is therefore the act by which a life that cannot yet exist on its own is embraced by the lap of another human being. Someone is taken into one’s lap.
The concept of “Justice”— tsedaka in Hebrew—has nothing to do with Roman thought and the Roman language: Iustititia; that is where our word “justice” comes from. Justice seeks to declare someone “guilty” or “innocent.” In the Torah, justice means striving to ensure that people receive their due, that they find true life—whether they are perpetrators or victims.
Finally, the concept of “Love.” In the Torah, this is not so much about something that must be felt; it is not about liking the other person; it is about a way of acting. You can even help your enemy to his feet if he has fallen; you can give him a cup of water if he is thirsty.
The Torah, God’s guidelines. This is what Israel, living on God’s inheritance, is called to do: to show the nations what may truly be called truth, faithfulness, faith, life, death, love, hate, right and wrong, wisdom and folly—and so on.