Reasoning Through the Prophetic: A
Reading of Isaiah 61, Leviticus 25 and Luke 4:16
Randi
Rashkover,
York College of Pennsylvania
We live in an era of de-secularization. Religion is being courted by two
suitors in the our current democratic climate. On the one hand, religion is the
cherished possession of the political right — its rhetorical and ideological
armor and source of guidance. On the other hand, secular progressivists of the
past are now wondering how we might restore its voice in America's democratic
discourse. We are now faced with the daunting challenge of discerning how
religion should function and contribute to the democratic conversation. One
compelling possibility posed recently by Cornel West's Democracy
Matters searches into Judaism and Christianity's prophetic
traditions. West argues here that Judaism and Christianity must retrieve their
prophetic voices. Appropriation of the prophetic voice requires an
investigation into this voice as it is proclaimed and heard scripturally. Far too often, recourse to the prophetic
tradition has amounted to an implicit endorsement of liberalism and its
standards of rationality — an endorsement that frequently dilutes central
religious claims, their rationality and an authentic assessment of how those
claims relate to a democratic conversation. As a method whereby readers may attend carefully to biblical texts in
dialogical and tri-logical encounters with other readers, scriptural reasoning
may contribute to an assessment of the value of the prophetic voice as a
contributor to democratic discourse. What follows is an exercise in reading a
prophetic text through a co-reading with a Levitical text on the one hand and a
New Testament text on the other with respect to a particular issue of political
concern, i.e. the character of territory or land possession, that will provide
a case study of how scriptural reasoning permits religious traditions to engage
in a pluralistic conversation without sacrificing their respective traditional
commitments. Once one begins via scriptural reasoning to move beyond blanket
applications of scripture, one begins to question liberal (that is
enlightenment-glossed) readings or appropriations of these texts, thereby
unveiling the authentic religious doctrines at their root. These doctrines, once exposed, help Judaism
and Christianity both to identify and to mutually reason through their own
positions, preparing them to better present them at the democratic table. Scriptural reasoning, therefore,
permits the reasoned discourse around scriptural texts to transpire through the
cross-readings in the traditions rather than through the lens of the
philosophical standard of the day. It thereby offers an invaluable method for
religious participation in a democratic setting.
Here I would like to pay particular
attention to an analysis of Isaiah 61 through a
reading together with Leviticus 25:1-35 and Luke 4:16- 30. I will pose the following question: What
happens to the Jubilee when it is proclaimed prophetically? In turn what
happens to the voice of prophecy when the subject is the Jubilee? An
investigation of these two questions leads to an engagement between Judaism and
Christianity's readings of the prophetic tradition and its place within a
democratic political discourse. More specifically, an engagement with these
three texts will lead readers to re-consider Leviticus 25's focus on the
theo-economy of the land, in a time when neither Judaism nor Christianity
present developed theological discourse about the land. The failure to provide
such discourse helps to sustain a vacuum regarding how to handle disputes over
land ownership and territory, which is then filled by secular politics alone.
Leviticus 25: 1-35
My reading of the three texts sits against
the backdrop of the fact that rabbinic Judaism does not commemorate the jubilee
(yovel in Hebrew, meaning either "rams horn" or "to bring forth") any
longer, because of its identification with the holdings in the land. Both
Isaiah 61 and Luke 4 do re-invoke the jubilee. More significantly, their
re-invocation of the jubilee truncates its Levitical dimensions. The jubilee
concerns a return of property holdings and not simply the liberation of the
enslaved or the poor.
And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto
thee, seven times seven years and there shall be unto thee the days of seven
sabbaths of years, even forty and nine years. Then shalt thou make proclamation
with the blast of the horn on the tenth day of the seventh month; in the day of
atonement shall ye make proclamation with the horn throughout all your land.
And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty through the land
unto all the inhabitants thereof; it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall
return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his
family. (Leviticus 25: 8-10)
This return of property holdings
is an essential piece of the theo-economy of the text. The text informs us of
the liturgical-doxological significance of property holding (that is, its
'holiness' ). We are to 'hold property' in order to point to God as the final
owner. "And the land shall not be sold in perpetuity; for the land is Mine; for
ye are strangers and settlers with Me." (Leviticus, 25:23) . The condition of
the possibility of the doxological moment however is property holding (not
negation). We possess the land so that we may be servants of God. In this
respect choseness or covenantal life is a life of possession, whereby our
possessions are themselves a testimony to God's holdings. To be chosen is not
to forgo one's property but rather to render it holy — that is, to recognize
its holiness by virtue of its ultimate owner. The jubilee commemorates the
sanctification of land in this liturgical function.
The Levitical theo-economy now
noted, we can more fully appreciate the theological crisis of exile. If
Israelite holdings are a condition of the proclamation of divine sovereignty,
the demise of these holdings results in a liturgical crisis wherein the
Israelites cannot proclaim divine sovereignty in this way. How, one may even
ask, is it possible to guard against idolatry or the belief that the land is
'ours' if we no longer possess the land that is God's? How do we avoid the
dominant attitude of ancient and contemporary political reality that all land
is ours without limit? Moreover, how do we guard against the disordering of our
economic environment in general, when the land's doxological value is a
reminder of the character of all our possessions — land and otherwise? The loss
of the jubilee, in other words, is highly disruptive to the overall
theo-economic order reflected directly in the very character of Israelite
election.
It is noteworthy then that both the Isaiah
text and the Luke text re-invoke the jubilee in efforts to disrupt the
disruption — with the jubilee as the 'interruption' like the blast of the
shofar. Both the Isaiah and Luke texts are post-exilic texts (Isaiah 61
arguably a post first exilic text and Luke arguably written after the second
exile in 70 CE) Both may be understood as responses to the theological crisis
of exile. Both texts may be read as 'restoration' texts, broadly speaking. It
is not surprising, then, that both re-invoke the jubilee as part and parcel of
their hope for restoration of a pre-exilic condition. Still, when they do so
both stress the liberation of the poor to the neglect of the restoration of
property holdings.
Isaiah 61:
The Spirit of the Lord God
is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me: he has sent me to bring good news
to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the
captives and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
The Levitical references here to
the jubilee are both the citation of the literal 'proclaim liberty to the
captives' and the invocation of the year of the Lord's favor.
In Luke we have the repetition of this
Isaiah text as read by Jesus, with the important addition,
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the
attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.
Then he began to say to them, 'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your
hearing.' All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words . . . He
said to them 'doubtless you will quote me this proverb, "Doctor, cure
yourself!" . . .When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with
rage. (Luke 4:18-29).
Both leave out "It shall be
a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and
every one of you to your family . . . " (Leviticus 25:10 — immediately
following the above cited material from the same Leviticus text.) This
'neglect', if you will, is a neglect not only of a circumstantial element
resulting from exile but also a neglect of the whole theo/covenantal economy
and of the jubilee.
According to Leviticus 25, the
jubilee acknowledges the divine sovereignty by identifying God as the possessor
of the land that we possess. The proclamation of divine sovereignty is
predicated on our holding the land — our possession of the land — and this
proclamation takes place according to the calendrical ordering of the year
determined by a litany of sabbaths: "seven weeks of years, seven times seven
years, so that [ultimately] the period of seven weeks of years gives forty-nine
years. Then you shall have the trumpet sounded loud; on the tenth day of the
seventh month — on the day of atonement . . .And you shall hallow the fiftieth
year . . ." We see here a calendrical
ordering that links the cycles of the land itself to the liturgical practices
of the covenantal life.
Isaiah 61 and Luke 4 take the
jubilee out of the Jewish liturgical calendar and, even more significantly,
trans-value the jubilee, rendering it a commemoration of the 'good news of the
poor' rather than a celebration of property holding. In contrast to the
Levitical emphasis on the calendrical and natural cycle, Isaiah 61 is
immediately preceded by Isaiah 60 which identifies the year of the Lord's favor
— or 'redemption' (literally) with a time when "the sun shall no longer be
your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give light to you by night
— but the Lord will be your everlasting light". This text suggests the elimination of
liturgical time, as set out in Genesis 1 ("Let there be lights in the dome
of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and
for seasons and for days and years . . ."(Genesis 1: 14))
Luke also dislocates
the jubilee from its Levitical origins. Luke 4:16 cites directly from Isaiah 61
and thereby appropriates Isaiah's landless invocation of the jubilee. Also like
Isaiah, Luke severs the connection between the jubilee and the calendrical
cycle that derives out of and re-shapes the natural cycles of the land. This is
evident in the 'amazement' and then anger of the Jews listening to Jesus'
reading of the text. Shocking to the listeners is Jesus' proclamation re:
Isaiah's jubilee announcement "today this scripture has been fulfilled in your
hearing" (Luke 4: 21). In one fell swoop, Jesus identifies himself as the
calendrical authority — the one who determines literally 'what time it is' and
the liturgical and religious significance of this time. No longer does God
decide that the jubilee transpires in the 5th year after the seven cycles of
sabbatical years. Jesus assumes this position — his authority overrides the
Levitical calendar. (Note Jesus' frequent re-definitions of the 'sabbath'
itself in other Lukan texts e.g. Luke 6:5: "The Son of Man is Lord of the
sabbath.")
This trans-valuation in Isaiah 61
is further bolstered by Isaiah's re-definition of Jewish election in terms of
the Suffering Servant motif. Isaiah inverts the Jewish doctrine of election,
from one wherein the Jews are elect by virtue of their holdings and the
doxological significance of this holding,
to one in which the Jews are elect by virtue not of their property but
rather of their suffering — that is to say, their being without holdings.
Thus Isaiah 52: 3-14:
For thus says the Lord: You were sold for
nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money . . . long ago my people went down into Egypt . . . to reside there as aliens, the
Assyrian too has oppressed them without cause . . . See my servant . . . shall be exalted . . . so marred was his appearance beyond human semblance . . .
In 53: 4-10 we read,
. . .
surely he has borne our infirmities and carried out diseases . . . like a sheep
that
before its shearers is silent . . . for he was cut off from the land of the living . . . they
made his
grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich . . . yet it was the will of
the Lord
to crush him with pain. When you make his life an offering for sin . . .
To read the jubilee as the
celebration of the poor, to repair the exile through a thematic of the
Suffering Servant, is to not only truncate the jubilee but to invert its
meaning altogether. On the one hand, we have election premised upon the right
for me to hold property as a tribute to God's ultimate holding; on the other,
election premised upon — my impoverishment as a testimony to God's
long-suffering mercy.[1] Such an inversion of the
doctrine of Jewish election results in significant theopolitical fall-out,
evident in ancient and contemporary Jewish and Christian thought. On the Jewish
front, The tendency in rabbinic Judaism to either dismiss the yovel or spiritualize
its meaning in connection with Yom Kippur's emphasis on 'return' or teshuvah
can result in a de-politicization of Judaism in the face of political abuses.
The jubilee offers a theology of the land that if sustained could grant
rabbinic Judaism a position from which to credibly critique
political-territorial abuses.
Potentially more problematic,
however, than the rabbinic spiritualization of the jubilee is the prophetic
description of the jubilee found in Isaiah 61 as it has been read and interpreted
by strands inmodern Jewish thought.
Modern Jews anxious to assimilate into European society quickly associated with
the Suffering Servant motif in the Isaianic presentation.
Hermann
Cohen's reading of Leviticus 25
indicates exactly the extent to which modern Jews read the Levitical text
backwards through Second and Third Isaiah, thereby arguing that Jewish life in
the non-Jewish environment must involve 'suffering' servanthood for the sake of
the universal human community. In Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of
Judaism, Cohen admits the link
between Jewish
property and the covenantal notion of election and says, "It is not
sufficiently considered that the idea of Israel's election as God's property is
stressed mainly in Deuteronomy."[2] Then, however, Cohen goes
on to describe the theological history of the Jews in the context of Cohen's
messianism. He argues that the Jews do and should function as those who suffer -
those who have of course 'lost their land' but whose loss of the land factors
into their relation to God as the poor whose unique position it is to stimulate
the affect of pity in the nations thereby providing the condition of the
possibility of universal human compassion (Cohen's ethics stresses that we are
moved to ethical action towards the stranger when stimulated first by the pity
we feel for her poverty).
Said more simply,
Cohen sacrifices the jubilee-linked doctrine of covenant or election for the
Isaianic model of the suffering servant. Subsequently he reads Leviticus 25
through the lens of the universal mission to the nations — a mission that
undermines the very character of Jewish holiness with the land and in the
liturgical calendar. While the Leviticus text establishes laws regarding
redemption for property once held by 'brothers' in the group who are now poor,
"If thy brother be waxen poor, and sell some of his possession, then shall his
kinsman that is net unto him come, and shall redeem that which his brother hat
sold" (Lev. 25: 25), Cohen's reading of Leviticus 25:25-35 focuses less on the
text's concern to restore Israelite property and more on the social
identification between the poor 'brother' and the 'resident alien' thereby
evidencing an implicit toraitic concern with the welfare of the non-Israelite.
"If your brother grows poor and his hand falters with you, you shall support
him, as though he is a resident alien, so that he shall live with you." (Lev.
25:35). Reading Leviticus 1-25 through the lens of 25:35 Cohen says, "Almost
more important than the prohibition of taking interest from the stranger is
this recognition of him as brother."[3]
Taken as a whole, the tragedy of
Cohen's perspective is nothing less than the claim that Jews must sacrifice —
that is to say, negate themselves for the sake of the human family. Jews, in
other words, must deny their Sinaitic election in order to fit into the larger
universal European community — a community that by and large did not welcome
these efforts.
While it may be argued, of course,
that the existence of the state of Israel is an out and out rejection of Modern
Judaism's appropriation of the suffering servant model, it too lacks an
appropriate theology of the land wherein the land — our holding if you will, is
of doxological significance. Jews have much to gain from re-reading Isaiah and
Luke's re-invocations of the jubilee. Appreciating the urgency for such a
restoration may help Jews recognize the need for a fully-fledged teshuvah
around this Levitical category. Without
so doing Jews will either sacrifice their own doctrine of Sinaitic election —
that is the very theo-economy of holiness and sanctification biblically
described, for the sake of political survival in non-Jewish nations, or Jews will dwell in their own
political environments idolatrously — also divorced from their covenantal
status. I am not advocating that Jews actively campaign to restore the land,
the temple and the monarchy. I am advocating that Jewish text readers pay
attention to Leviticus 25 in the hopes of considering a viable theology of the
land in the time of exile.
The encounter between Leviticus 25, Isaiah 61 and Luke 4 also impacts
greatly on Christianity. While it is the case that the Lukan text (following
Isaiah) invokes the jubilee — the dislocation of the jubilee from the
liturgical calendar and from the restoration of property holdings drastically
reduces the possibilities of Christian theopolitics.
Certainly the celebration of the
good news for the poor has doxological significance.The classically prophetic
advance of the rights of the poor and the critique of the abuse of power has
granted Christian theopolitics, at times, vibrant theopolitical position (note
of course the history of Christian political critique all the way from the
early martyrs to the dialectical theology of Barth and up until the pacifism of
Yoder and Merton). However, radical 'prophetic' critique cannot offer a way
through the storm — it can only call out and warn folks of the danger.
Christianity needs a theology of the
land — a theology that does more than negate the powers that be in the name of
divine sovereignty — but a theology that restores the earth as the place of the
glory of God. It needs a re-reading of Leviticus 25. Arguably, without this
re-reading, Christianity runs the risk of assuming realpolitik's own politics
of land. Even given the dialectical theology mentioned above, a vacuum remains
concerning the character of right possession, right holding, right materiality,
the restoration of the created order as God's order. All too frequently, this
vacuum is filled with the rules of realpolitik,
given the lack of attention to the earth that we find in post-prophetic
dialectical theology.
How may Christians re-till the land?
In a recent essay, "Holy Seeds: The Trisagion and the Liturgical Untilling of
Time", written as a contribution to a volume co-edited by myself and Chad
Pecknold, Liturgy, Time
and the Politics of Redemption, Ben Quash offers an exquisite reading of the role of the trisagion in
the eucharistic commemoration. Here Quash suggests that the three fold
repetition of the sanctus affords a liturgical re-tilling — or re-planting of
the earth — what in the context of this discussion might be read as a
eucharistic return to the land. In his essay, Quash appreciates the need for
such a re-tilling in the face of political and economic idolatry and hubris.
Quash's inquiry into the sanctus, 'Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven
and earth are full of thy glory: Glory be to thee, O Lord most High',
links the text back to
its textual roots in Revelation and Isaiah. His liturgical reading of
Revelation and Isaiah re-interprets these two texts through the liturgical
function of the eucharist. Said daily and repeated thrice, the trisagion
implicates the 'holy, holy, holy' — the holiness of Leviticus — back into the
Christian dwelling in our time and in our place. Reading early Isaiah 6 through
the trisagion 'holy, holy, holy' opens up Quash's powerful suggestion that,
"In Isaiah 6, alongside the uncleanness of the people, we are confronted with
burning holiness; and alongside the images of extraordinary emptiness ('vast .
. . in the midst of the land') we are confronted with images of extraordinary
fullness ('the whole earth is full of his glory'; 'his train filled the temple')."[4]
To
read early Isaiah through the sanctus helps illuminate how early Isaiah
suggests that amidst the very emptying abandon of the land there remains a
glory in the land, a residue of holiness that requires attention — tilling, we
might say.Of note here is how Quash's
eucharistic illumination of early Isaiah helps to challenge the dislocation of
later Isaiah 61 away from the land (thereby helping as well to recover a
Christian appreciation for the Levitical notion of Israelite covenant over against
the suffering servant motif characteristic of Second and Third Isaiah).
It may be the case that the restoration of
the jubilee and its economy must transpire through liturgical re-shaping of our
land — of our place — of our earth. Liturgy may in both traditions have the
unique ability to restore our earth to its doxological significance. In
Christian terms, if Christ is understood as the agency of divine post-exilic
redemption, a close reading of Christian liturgy may hold the key to appreciating
how Christ's redemption affects — that
is, restores — the land/our land in a manner that exceeds (or in Sam Wells'
words, 'overaccepts') both the exile and the Christian bodily sacrifice.
Liturgy — in Quash's essay, the sanctus — offers a re-tilling of the earth as
God's via a new liturgical counting here specifically the thrice stated 'Holy,
holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory: Glory be
to thee, O Lord most High' — a new calendrical connection that
re-plants God's glory into our earth.[5]
Are there, we may ask,ways to fill out
the redemptive meaning of Christ's sacrifice as something other than an
absolute emptying in the name of divine fullness but as a creaturely
restoration that points to the value of our land — that is a Levitical
re-reading of the passion and the resurrection through the lens of temple
sacrifice?
If Christians may re-till the land by
reading Luke 4 forward through the lens of liturgical language, one possibility
that Jews can explore may involve reading Isaiah 61 back through a reading of
Leviticus 25. Quash's reading of the trisagion is instructive here for Jews so
far as it points to how Jewish readers may consult other passages in Isaiah
that speak about restoration in terms that match the celebration of the poor
with hopes for the re-possession of the land.We may seek to read late Isaiah
through early Isaiah, and thereby re-establish the link to the Levitical
emphasis on the theo-economy of the land. Isaiah 4:2-6 invokes the covenantal
theology of Leviticus 25 replete with reference to the holiness of the land —
its ability to bear fruit (its property value, we might say — understood here
as its ability to house those who stand obediently to God within it):
On that day the branch of the Lord shall
be beautiful and glorious and the fruit of the land shall be the pride and
glory of the survivors of Israel. Whoever is left in Zion and remains in
Jerusalem will be called holy . . .
coupled with the other pole of
covenantal life — divine care of unconditional love:
the Lord will create over the whole site
of Mount Zion and over its places of assembly a cloud by day and smoke and the
shining of a flaming fire by night. Indeed over all the glory there will be a
canopy. It will serve as a pavilion, a shade by day from the heat, and a refuge
and a shelter from the storm and rain.
To conclude therefore, if, as Scott
Bader-Saye and others have argued, Christianity must come to terms with the
carnal body of Israel in order to affect its own post-Constantianian political
life, it is also the case that Christianity must come to terms with the land of
Israel (and its doctrine of Jewish election) in order to develop a
post-Constantianian political life. At the same time, Jews can and ought to use
recent trends in de-secularization to develop theological perspectives on a
host of political issues, such as 'land' or 'territory', which they may bring
to the democratic table.
As here demonstrated, scriptural reasoning
can play a significant role in unveiling and discerning these theological
positions.The unique contribution of
scriptural reasoning rests not only in the careful attention to text here
provided, but more in the reasoning process that transpires when text readings
from the variant traditions are imported as agents of rational challenge or
inquiry. The encounter between the texts and readings of the variant traditions
brings about a rational encounter that offers a philosophical alternative to
the apologetic tradition that sought commensurability with the governing
philosophical views of the day. Scriptural reasoning offers an invaluable tool
for those interested in discerning how religious traditions may participate
boldly in the democratic conversation in an era of increasing de-secularization.
ENDNOTES
[1] Note the use of the suffering
servant motif inpost-Holocaust thought,
see Eliezar Berkovitz, Faith After the
Holocaust (New York: Ktav, 1973).
[2] Herman Cohen, Religion of
Reasong Within the Sources of Judaism, trans. Sion Kaplan (NY: Frederick Ungar
Publishing Co.), 1972, p. 148.
[3]Cohen, Religion, p. 126.
[4]Ben Quash, "Holy
Seeds: The Trisagion and the Liturgical Untilling of Time", Liturgy Time and the Politics of Redemption
ed. Chad Pecknold and Randi Rashkover (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), 2006,
forthcoming.
[5]It is worth noting that Quash
does emphasize the temporality of delay that is a necessary feature in any
liturgical re-tilling.Quash hereby
offsets any possibility of human over-determination of territorial restoration.
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