In the world of the ANE, weights
and measures were crucial, not least because ancient economies were mostly
barter economies, not money economies. The way the value of some goods was
estimated in antiquity was by putting them on a scale, and putting weights in
the other pan of a two pan scale until a balance was achieved. It is not
surprising then that just as you would add more and more to one pan of the
scale (say more grain) until a balance happened with a certain number of
weights in the other pan, that such commercial processes affected the way sin
was viewed in antiquity. This was so
for two reasons: 1) the God of the Bible
was indeed depicted as a merciful God, who put up with a lot and for a long time,
but not forever. His patience was not
infinite.; 2) sins add up. This is why for instance we hear in Gen.
15.16 the explanation that the reason the descendents of Abraham will not enter
the promise land for a long period of time is because about the current
inhabitants there, the Amorites, it is said “the iniquity of the Amorites is
not yet complete”. We may compare this
for instance to what Paul says in 1 Thess. 2.14-16 about Jews in Judea who had persecuted Jewish Christians there, about
which Paul comments “thus they have been constantly filling up the measure of
their sins; but God’s wrath has overtaken them at last.”
Sin mounts up like grain in a
scale, and when it reaches the tipping point, judgment happens, not by some
sort of moral calculus inherent in the world, but through a direct judgment of
God. Dan. 8.23 speaks of transgression
being completed and then judgment following.
But it is not just sin that is weighed or measured, so also judgment is meted out proportionally,
using again the commercial metaphor.
Thus for instance Jeremiah says that Judea
will go into exile for some 70 years for their sins, a specified definite
period of time. And indeed counting from
about 587 B.C. or so, this was the period of the exile. In his discussion of this matter in Chapter 6
Anderson emphasizes the notion of a building up of a debt, which eventually God
must demand payment for. But in fact,
this commercial metaphor, with the scales as a image equally well can be called
the building up of a weight, which when it reaches a certain proportion, there
has to be a reckoning. Just as one adds
more and more grain to the scale until the weights are counter balanced, so
also with sin seen as an accumulating weight.
Indeed, one can say that an accumulating weight of sin is an
accumulating debt of sin. The two images
supplement one another in the metaphorical description, one need not supplant
or make superfluous the other.
This whole bookkeeper way of
looking at God’s handling of sin troubled some Jews who reflected deeply on the
matter, especially when there were all the promises that God would not abandon
his people or destroy them. The matter
became even more problematic when it seemed that God was regularly judging his
people, and indeed seemingly judging them more harshly than the pagan nations (‘judgment
begins with the household of God’).
This moral problem led to some ingenuous solutions. For example consider the words Anderson points to in 2
Macc. 6.12-17 which says in part “With the other nations God waits patiently,
staying their punishment until they reach the full measure of their sins. Quite
otherwise is his decree for us, in order that he should not have to punish us after we complete the full
measure of our sins” Accordingly God
keeps short accounts with his people, judging them a little at a time and never
though regularly chastised by calamities of one sort or another. “God never allows her sins to reach a level
wherein he would be forced to disown her.” (p. 91). It is precisely this sort of rationalization
that led some Jews, both ancient and modern to say— let God pick another
chosen people. Suffering repeatedly is
a hard way to pay down one’s debt of sin, even if, as the rabbis rationalized
in Sifre that God mercifully
collected far less for Israel’s sins than they deserved. Of what comfort in the
end is it if God still exacted his ‘pound of flesh’ when one can only say thank
goodness he didn’t exact all that was owed?
And what then of such rationalizations when Amos 3.2 says “you alone
have I singled out of all the families of the earth—that is why I call you to
account for all your iniquities.”
From the Christian purview, all of this makes one long for a new covenant
with a new way of God relating to his people, in which sin is still dealt with
and judged, but a substitute is
provided. We will say more of this in
subsequent discussion of Anderson’s
provocative book on sin.
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