ETHICAL LISTS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

 The Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, contains a number of lists including genealogical material, place names, and enemies which have been conquered. But also among them are those catalogs of acceptable and non-acceptable behavior for a person of God. These could also be called virtues and vices. Concentrating just those catalogs in the OT, we come across the following:

Ten Commandments

These are by far the most well-known of such lists, and they include both virtues to emulate as well as vices to avoid. The two places where they are presented are in Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. I will not attempt to canvass all that the scholarly commentaries have to say on each one of the commands except to note that the ten deal both with behavior and attitude. Also, although some of them are negative in form and others are positively stated, each could be easily restated to fall into the opposite category. As just one example, “Do not commit adultery” is the same as “Be true to your spouse.”

Crimes Cursed by God

Twelve such violations of God's law are found in Deuteronomy 27:15-26, which is Moses' recitation before all the assembled of the curses they agree to if they disobey the covenant stipulations. On the flip side, the following chapter is devoted to all the blessings which will accrue to the people if they are true to God's covenant.

Sexual Crimes

Again, there are twelve of these, presented in Leviticus 18:6-18. It should be noted that “12” appears often in the Bible, both OT and NT, because of its symbolic value as the product of 3 (standing for the triune God) and 4 (often representing creation or, more specifically, mankind). Thus, it is an ideal way to symbolically speak of the close relationship between God and His people.

Capital Offenses

Verhey additionally includes crimes requiring the death penalty. However, these differ from those above in that they do not appear in any one OT passage but are scattered throughout the Book of Exodus at 21:12, 15, 16, 17; 22:18, 19; 31:15. Verhey's unproven theory is that they may all have been part of a ceremony such as described in Deuteronomy 27 where the people took on the responsibilities of the covenant with God. Such heinous offenses include, respectively – murder, striking one's parents,

kidnapping, cursing your parents, female sorcery, having sex with an animal, and doing work on the sabbath. Note that most of these infractions involve disobedience to one of the Ten Commandments. And having interspecies sex violates the basic distinction between man and animal clearly pointed out in Genesis 1-2.

I Samuel 12:2-5

Returning to the discrete lists in the OT, we next come to this passage, which is Samuel's farewell speech to the people now that they have decided to let a king lead them instead. He defends his own actions during the time when he was their leader by declaring himself innocent of fraud, robbery, oppression of others, and bribe-taking. When he is done with this declaration, the people all confirm that he has been innocent of all those sins (presumably in contrast with other so-called leaders of the time).

Nehemiah 10:28-39

Those Jews gathered together in the Holy Land after the great Exile renew their covenant with God at this time. As Ezkenazi notes: “The obligations reflect practices important for Jewish identity in the fifth century BCE. They combine legislation from various Torah sources as well as obligations not reflected in the Torah as it now exists.” Some of those regulations especially expressed during this particular time period include (negatively) vows not to let their children intermarry with Gentiles and (positively) to give a certain amount of money every year towards the upkeep of and regular services at the temple.
Job 31:1-40

Much as Samuel declared to the people all the sins of which he was not guilty, Job, in his desperation, does the same in the presence of his critical friends. As Seow says, “Job provides a kind of detailed affidavit listing every possible offense that he might be accused of committing and vigorously insisting on his innocence. He is prepared to be judged by the highest legal and ethical standards.”

It should be pointed out that in both the case of Samuel and Job, neither one is entirely perfect in God's eyes. But from man's viewpoint, on the other hand, neither is blameworthy.

Psalm 15:2-5

The Psalmist presents us with a list of the characteristics of those who may be admitted into the Temple. Kselman says, “The moral qualities enjoined are right action and truthful speech, specifically refraining from slander (Lev. 19.16), nonassociation with the wicked (Ps 1.1), keeping one's oath, and honesty in business and legal matters. As in some of the prophets (e.g. Am 5.21-24; Isa 10-17), religion is defined in terms of moral behavior rather than ritual activities.”

Psalm 24:3-6

This passage is quite similar to Psalm 15:2-5. In both cases the context involves the requirements for entering into holy space and they are also four-fold (the number four being symbolic of creation): being clean of hand and pure of heart (given positively) as well as, negatively, “not taking up my life falsely” and not swearing falsely. The phrase in quotes is a fairly literal rendering of the Hebrew text, but one must admit that its meaning is not transparently clear at first glance. The following alternative translations have been suggested, all of which make it clear that it is a warning against the sin of idolatry:

    NRSV: “who do not lift up their souls to what is false”

    JB: “whose soul does not pay homage to worthless things”

    NEB: “who has not set his mind on falsehood”

    NIV: “who does not trust in an idol”

Thus, it is a warning against the sin of idolatry.

There may be an echo of the first two requirements in Psalms found in Jesus' beatitudes. Thus, Blomberg states, “Psalm 24:3-5 may underlie [Matthew] 5:8 with its call for clean hands and a pure heart as a requirement for those who would come into God's presence and receive his blessings.”

Proverbs 6:16-19

Waltke says of these seven descriptions of wrongdoers, “Although the troublemaker is not named in vv. 16-17, the catalogue's list of unhealthy body members and abhorrent antisocial schemes and actions fits him to a 'tee.' Each abomination, a misused body part, does not represent a different individual but functions as synecdoche [i.e. a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole] manifesting the psyche and behavior of a type of person labeled 'insurrectionist' in v. 12; above all, it holds his attitude and actions up as an abomination to the LORD. These are not descriptions of any one person but descriptions of people who deserve the title troublemakers and whose behavior the LORD detests.”

Proverbs 30:11-14

Although scholars such as Scott, Hubbard, and Whybray treat the three negative descriptions in v. 14 as all saying the same thing, other scholars recognize three separate items in that verse, bringing the total to seven, exactly as in Proverbs 6:16-19.

Hubbard comments: “A significant sector of Israel's society seems to have run amok. Life is out of hand in ways that the prophets denounced. 'Generation' at the head of each verse calls attention to a substantial group within the land that bears wretched characteristics...Whereas most of the proverbs focus on the foolish or wicked as individuals, here the suggestion must be that a substantial minority or even a majority of the citizenry are bound together in the four kinds of rebellious conduct described.”

Isaiah 33:14-16

The context behind this ethical list of six characteristics is that it describes those who will be able to stand in the day of God's judgment. “Verses 13-16 relate the impact of God's appearance upon the world but especially upon Judah. When they see God's might displayed upon Assyria, there will be terror among those Jews who have been little more believing than the Assyrians...Although those who know the Bible will perhaps see it as familiar and predictable (Pss. 15 and 24 are very similar), it [i.e. v. 15] is in fact a rather strange answer. What kind of change must a human being undergo to live with God? It is not a change of essence but a change of character...This is the truth which the Hebrews discovered at Sinai (Lev. 19:2, etc.) and which Isaiah also recognized in his personal Sinai...If we are to dwell with God as his guests, we must share his character.” (Oswalt)

Derek Kidner adds, “If this verse is negative, it is in order to clarify the meaning of 'pure in heart' in readiness for v. 17.”

Ezekiel 18:5-18

In the 37 entries in these verses, Ezekiel here “presents...the relationship between one's conduct and one's fate. His rhetorical strategy involves the presentation of three hypothetical case studies, each of which illustrates the manner in which justice is administered: A: vv. 5-9, B: vv. 10-13; C: vv. 14-17. (Block)

Block goes even further with a chart in which he shows that, to a large degree, the comments in parts A and C are but negative forms of the more positive formulations in part C.

Finally, Weinfeld compares the form of this particular list with those in Psalms 15 and 24 as well as in Isaiah 33, all of which he feels arose in priestly / temple circles.

Micah 6:6-8

R.L. Smith labels these verses as the conclusion of “God's Lawsuit” beginning in v. 1 of the chapter. In this powerful passage, the supplicant asks God rhetorically what sort of ritual acts he should do to satisfy God. But he ends up saying instead: “What does God demand of you? Nothing but to do justice, to love devotion, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Thus, this ethical list is the most concise of all, and Smith states, “This is one of the great passages of the OT. It, like Amos 5:24 and Hos 6:6, epitomizes the message of the eighth-century prophets...This question represents one of the two basic ideas about religion. How can a man approach God? One answer is: with sacrifice, things, good works. The other answer is reflected in v. 8. God requires not some external gifts from his worshiper, but a humble communicant who loves to serve God and practice justice toward his fellow-man.”

So we see that all of these lists go together to give us a very good idea of the sort of both behavior and attitude believers should practice if we wish to be pleasing to our heavenly Father.