4:32-34 - Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created man on the earth; ask from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of? Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived? Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by miraculous signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?
Many people conceive of faith as a leap into the dark. Moses would have been very surprised to hear of such a thing, for biblical faith understands itself to be a carefully considered step into the light. Biblical faith looks coldly on cynicism (which is, unfortunately, often confused with reason) but good questions and sound robust considerations have always been the bread-n-butter of the kind of faith the Bible talks about. Moses has been calling for a while now on Israel to trust in Yahweh on the fact of the sound evidences of what they had witnessed. As he brings his first address to close, he challenges her now to decide for Yahweh by verifying the truthfulness of what she had experienced and what he has been reminding and teaching them. It opens with an initial challenge (which is itself a question) followed by two more specific questions:
A. Challenge, v32: "Ask . . . from the day God created humans on earth; ask from one end of heaven . . . has anything like it ever been heard of?"
B. Question 1, v33: "Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of the fire?"
C. Question 2, v34: "Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another . . . by great and awesome deeds like . . .Yahweh did for you in Egypt?"
The challenge opens with a grand offer: there was to be no limits—spatial or temporal—as to where Israel may look in the archive of history for an answer, even back in time to the beginning of creation, and to the ends of the heavens (v.32). His challenge is simple: "Has anything so great as this ever happened, or anything like it ever been heard of?" The rendition in NIV slightly distorts the simplicity of the Hebrew: "Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of?" As noted by Wright, "The point is not quite that nothing greater had happened but that nothing like it had happened."1 This challenge is then set upon two more specific questions, 1) whether any other people had heard the voice of God speaking out of the fires and survived, as Israel had, and 2) whether God had ever tried to take for Himself one nation out of another by great and wonderous works of power as He had with Israel? Essentially, Moses is asking Israel to look at the evidence and to decide on the veracity of her uniqueness as the elect people of Yahweh. The logic of Moses' challenge here is simply this:
Question 1: Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of?
Answer: No.
Question 2: Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived?
Answer: No.
Question 3: Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by . . . great and awesome deeds, like all the things the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?
Answer: No.
Conclusion: Therefore, Israel is unique in both her experience of Yahweh and of her election.
In so challenging Israel to engage in evidential apologetics to prove his point, Moses reminds Israel that her faith is not built upon the sands of wishful religious rumination but upon the rock of unique historical precedents. With the conclusion clearly drawn, Moses will continue in vv35ff to spell out what this conclusion implies.
We have so far assumed that the NIV is good on its translation. It is time to take a closer look to see if there may be other layers of nuances if the questions were translated differently. We will look in particular at how the noun 'elohim is understood. 'elohim here in v33 and v342 has no article which leaves it open to being translated as "God" (i.e. Yahweh; NIV, KJV, NASB), or "a god" (NRS, RSV) or "gods." Usually the context will clarify which is intended; in this case, however, the context permits either.
V33:
A: "Has any people heard the voice of God speaking out of the fire, as you have, and lived?"
vs
B: "Has any people heard the voice of a god speaking out of the fire, as you have, and lived?"
First, it should be pointed out that the 3rd person masculine singular form of the verb 'live' means that the point is not whether any people had heard the voice of God (i.e., Yahweh) or 'a god' speaking out of the fire, but whether any such people have done so and survived the experience. Here the point is clear that Israel alone has survived such a theophanic experience; this made her unique. But then this suggests that other people have also had such theophanic experiences but had not survived. Then, there is the matter of the indefinite 'elohim. Translating it as 'God' assumes that other people too have heard Yahweh speaking out of the fire but have not survived the experience which then begs the questions how anyone would then know about it and to what purpose would Yahweh do such a thing. Translating it as "a god" assumes that other gods do speak out of the fire, which is not a faculty the Old Testament credits to any god. Taken together, we suggest that the question here simply serves to underline the uniqueness of Israel as the only people to experience a theophanic encounter (irrespective of whether it involved Yahweh or any other god) and lived to witness to it.
V34:
A: "Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by . . . great and awesome deeds, like all the things the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?
vs
B: "Has God [i.e., Yahweh] ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by . . . great and awesome deeds, like all the things the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? "
Here three options seem open to understanding the question depending on how 'elohim is translated.
a) Translation A contrasts Yahweh with the other gods, and thus lay stress on the uniqueness of Yahweh in doing what has been done. Only Yahweh has ever done this. This seems to be the point of v.35.
b) Translation B highlights Israel's uniqueness among the nations in being taken by Yahweh, for He has not done such a thing with any other nation. In this case the questions serve to add weight to the call to covenant faithfulness in vv.35-40.
c) A third option is to understand the lack of an article on 'elohim as a deliberately ambiguous. This would leave the question open to either reading, which has the effect then of stressing the uniqueness of Yahweh's act as well as the uniqueness of Israel's experience in the exodus out of Egypt and the theophany at Sinai.
No matter how we understand the indefinite 'elohim, all three questions are, in the end, rhetorical, expecting no for an answer, but upon their answers is contoured the fundamental shape of Israel's faith. Even if Yahweh's covenant grace towards Israel traces back to his promise to Abraham, the deliverance out of Egypt provides the historical basis for which Yahweh may claim Israel's allegiance to his covenant (cf.5:6). And Sinai becomes the historical reference point from which Israel will extrapolate the trajectory of her walk as the elect people of God, and upon their confession of both Yahweh's uniqueness among the gods and her own uniqueness as the 'taken' people she will have to give an account.
Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, 2019