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OLD TESTAMENT ETHICS: A MISSIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE 

The discipline of OT ethics has developed significantly in the past two decades. When I wrote An Eye for an Eye (published in the UK as Living as the People of God; InterVarsity, 1983), I could truthfully say in the Preface that “the subject of Old Testament ethics has scarcely any literature to add to.” Certainly there had been virtually nothing in English for half a century. By 1995, my later collection of essays, Walking in the Ways of the LORD (InterVarsity) could refer to the works of W. Kaiser, B. Birch, W. Brueggemann, W. Janzen, and many others. This is very encouraging. 

Since 1983, however, my own pilgrimage included a period of years teaching in India, followed by my present position on the faculty of All Nations Christian College (London)—an international institution which specializes in training men and women for cross-cultural mission. The experience of teaching the OT in an overseas mission context, and then of teaching it in a missionary training context, has led me to reflect on the ethical content of the OT from a missiological perspective. Increasingly I have come to the conviction that a major hermeneutical key to understanding and applying OT ethics is to recognize the missional role of Israel as the people called by Yahweh to be “a light to the nations.” This is part of a wider conviction that there is a vital missiological perspective on the reading of the whole OT that is waiting to be explored more fully. 

To expound this conviction fully I would normally wish to begin with creation itself and explore the mission of humanity in the earth, with all its ecological, economic, and social dimensions. That could lead to a wide, missiological discussion of the significance of Israel’s theology of land, or the implications of its Yahwistic monotheism, and many other aspects of the people’s faith and practice. However, in the confines of this brief article we may begin where Paul began in his scriptural defense of his mission practice—namely, with Abraham.

The God who created our world and then watched us spoil it chose neither to destroy it nor us, but instead to commit himself under covenant to a project of ultimate redemption and recreation that would involve the whole of the rest of time and space. This is the scope of what God initiated through his dealings with Abraham, beginning in Genesis 12. It is the covenant of grace which stands behind all subsequent acts of God in history, for it represents God’s commitment to the ultimate good of humanity.  “In you shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” The universal scope of this promise echoes throughout the patriarchal narra-tives (Gen 18:18; 22:18; 26:4-5; 28:14), and then on through the rest of the Hebrew Bible. And indeed, it constitutes the mainspring of a fully biblical theology of mission. Certainly, for Paul, it was the scriptural justification for his mission to the Gentiles. In the light of Genesis 3-11, God’s commitment to bless the nations of humanity was very good news indeed. Not surprisingly Paul called it “the Gospel in advance” (Gal 3:6-8).

The Abrahamic covenant, however, did not merely make a long-distance promise for the future of humanity. God’s answer to a world of nations scattered in arrogance and strife (Genesis 11) was to create a new community that would ultimately be the vehicle for blessing to the whole world of nations.  And it would be a people, part of whose contribution to that purpose would be by their ethical distinctiveness. Although, obviously, Israel was not “sent” anywhere in the modern sense of “missions,” simply being Israel was an ethical agenda and mission in the midst of the world. To be an Israelite was to be called to respond to God’s covenant purpose for the nations by living as the people of God in their midst. 

The clearest expression of this is Genesis 18:19: “I have chosen him so that he will direct his household and his children after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing right-eousness and justice so that the LORD may bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.”

The context of this verse is God’s imminent judgement upon Sodom and Gomorrah. It is, in fact, part of a conversation between God and Abraham while God, with his two angelic deputies, was on his way down, so to speak, to find out the truth about the cities and act accordingly. This makes the ethical heart of the verse even more notable. In the midst of a world characterized by Sodom—whose evil is causing an outcry (vv. 20-21; twice: secaqa, the technical term for the crying out of those suffering from oppression and cruelty) that can be heard in heaven itself, God wants a community characterized by his own values and priorities—righteousness (sedaqa: one wonders if the word play is intentional here, as it certainly is in Isa 5:7) and justice. The presence here in the patriarchal narratives of these two phrases, “The way of Yahweh” and “doing righteousness and justice,” both of which would come among the top five of the most used summaries of OT ethical values, shows that Israel’s identity as a distinct ethical community comes well before the Sinai covenant and Mosaic law. It was something written into their genetic code, so to speak, while they were as yet in the loins of Abraham. In fact, such ethical distinct-iveness is put forward here by God himself as the very reason for the election of Abraham: “I have chosen him so that....” The sense of purpose is very strong in the verse. Election means election to an ethical agenda in the midst of a corrupt world of Sodoms.

But that ethical agenda is itself only part of a still wider purpose. The goal of the verse moves on into a third purpose clause: “...so that the Lord may bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.” That is a clear reference, in the light of the preceding verse, to God’s ultimate intention to bring blessing to all nations through the descendants of Abraham. That is God’s mission, God’s universal agenda. That too was the reason for the election of Abraham. Syntactically and theologically, the verse binds together election, ethics, and mission, with ethics as the middle term. It will be the moral nature of the people of Abraham, who keep the way of Yahweh in righteousness and justice, that will enable God to fulfil the point of having chosen Abraham—blessing the nations. The text has a programmatic nature, all the more powerful by being in the form of direct divine speech. The very election of Israel, in all its particularity, not only has a universal missional goal, but also leads to a clear and distinctive ethical agenda for God’s people in the world as part of the condition of that goal being accomplished. The distinctive quality of life of the people of God, committed to his way of righteousness and justice, stands as the purpose of election on the one hand and the means to mission on the other. It is the fulcrum of the verse. There is no election without mission. And there is no mission without ethics. 

The next major event in the canonical story is, of course, the exodus. And we could devote a whole article to the missiological significance of that event alone. However, moving past it to the establishing of Israel as the covenant people of Yahweh at Mt. Sinai, we come to another crucial text for appreciating the link between ethics and mission: Exodus 19:4-6: “You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

This text is a hinge between the redemptive history of the exodus and the chapters of law and covenant that follow. In these verses God gives to Israel an identity and a mission, which is the basis for the ethical demands of the law. We may notice three relevant points.

First, behind both the identity of Israel and the demand of the law stands the redemptive action of God himself. “You have seen what I have done...” (Exod 19:4). God points to his own initiative of grace and redemption, which was a matter of historical fact and recent memory. We need to recognize the priority of grace in OT theology of mission and ethics. Obedience to the law was based on, and was a response to, God’s salvation. Exodus has 18 chapters of redemption before a single chapter of law. 

Second, we are also exposed to God’s universal interest (v 5b): “Out of all nations.…” “The whole earth is mine....” God’s very special place for Israel (“treasured possession”), their identity and task, is here set in the context of his universality as God in relation to the nations of the earth (cf. the similar balance of particularity and universality in the Abraham covenant). Interestingly, Peter’s use of this text in relation to the identity and role of Christians likewise emphasizes our living “among the nations” (unfortunately translated “pagans,” 1 Pet 2:12). Therefore, the ethical and missional agenda for Israel has to be motivated by the same universal concern that characterizes Yahweh as God. 

Third, we are informed of Israel’s identity and duty (v 6): to be priestly and holy. Each of these has rich significance for a biblical understanding of mission.

(1) A Priestly Kingdom: To understand what this meant for Israel as a whole in relation to the nations, we have to understand what the priests were in Israel in relation to the rest of the people. They had a major twofold task: (a) Teaching the law (Lev 10:11; Deut 33:10; Jer 18:18;  Mal 2:6-7; Hos 4:1-9). Through the priests, God would be known to the people. (b) Handling the sacrifices (Leviticus 1-7, etc.). By their work of atonement, through the priests, the people could come to God. The priesthood was thus a two-directional representational task between God and the rest of the Israelites. The priests also, of course, had the task of blessing the people (Num 6:22-27), which echoes the role of Israel as a whole to be a blessing to the nations. 

It is thus richly significant that God confers on Israel as a whole people the role of being his priesthood in the midst of the nations. As the people of Yahweh they would have the historical task of bringing the knowledge of God to the nations, and bringing the nations to the means of atonement with God. This dual movement is reflected in prophetic visions of the law/light/justice, etc. of Yahweh going out to the nations from Israel/Zion, and of the nations coming to Yahweh/Israel/Zion. The metaphor easily connects with the centrifugal and centripetal dimensions of OT eschatology. The priesthood of the people of God is thus a missionary function. 

In the NT, Peter sees the priestly nature of the church as “declaring the praises” of our exodus God, and living in such a way among the nations that they come to glorify God. Significantly also, in the only NT text to speak of any individual Christian’s ministry in priestly terms, Paul describes his evangelistic mission to the gentiles as his “priestly duty” (Rom 15:16). Sadly the church forgot that priesthood is what happens outside the walls of the church in mission to the world and imported it back into the internal ministry of the church, where the NT never refers to it. 

(2) A Holy Nation: For Israel to fulfil their mission of being Yahweh’s priesthood in the midst of the nations, they must be “holy.” The word was not exclusively, nor even primarily “religious” (in our sense, at least), but fundamentally meant “different, distinctive.” Israel was to be a nation among the nations, but to be recognizably, visibly, and substantively different, as the people belonging uniquely to Yahweh and therefore representing his character and ways to the nations who did not yet know him as God. Holiness is both a fact (it is something God does, cf. Lev 20:8, 26; 21:8, 15, 23; 22:32), and a command (it is something we work out in life, cf. Lev 18:3; 19:1; 20:7, 23, 26). For Israel, the command, “You must be holy because the Lord your God is holy,” basically meant: “You must be a different kind of nation, because Yahweh is a different kind of God.” Leviticus 19, prefaced by that command (v 2), is a key text, giving practical, down-to-earth content to holiness. The list of ethical distinctives for God’s people includes family and community respect (vv 3, 32), religious loyalty (vv 3b, 4-8, 12, 26-31), economic relationships (vv 9-10), workers’ rights (v 13), social compassion (v 14), judicial integrity (v 15), neighborly attitudes and conduct (vv 11, 16-18), distinctiveness (v 19), sexual integrity (vv 20-22, 29), exclusion of the idolatrous and occult (vv 4, 26-31), racial equality (vv 33-34), and commercial honesty (vv 35-36).

In short, to love your neighbor (and even the stranger) as yourself (Lev 19:18, 34), is not a revolutionary love ethic initiated by Jesus but the fundamental ethical demand of OT holiness. If Israel were to be God’s priesthood in the midst of the nations, then they had to be different. This reinforces again the integral relationship between mission and ethics in biblical thinking. The chief agent of God’s mission to the nations is the people of God. The chief requirement on the people of God is that they should be what they are; live out their identity. 

There is little space to go much further into the OT, but this perspective can illuminate even those parts which are sometimes thought to be untouched by the universalistic strand in Israel’s faith. Deuteronomy, for example, is sometimes accused of being narrowly focused on Israel alone with no regard for this wider vision of Israel’s role in God’s purpose for the nations. Certainly its primary focus is on Israel as a society, but it would be unfair to take this as either an unawareness or an exclusion of the tradition of the blessing of the nations through Israel. The emphasis on the Abrahamic covenant alone would make such an oversight unlikely. Furthermore, the broader issue of Yahweh and the nations is to be found quite explicitly in the theology of the Deuteronomic History (cf. Josh 4:23-24; 1 Sam 17:46; 2 Sam 7:22-26; 1 Kgs 8:41-43, 60-61; 2 Kgs 5:15; 19:15-19). 
 

The most significant of these texts for the case being made here is Deuteronomy 4:6—8: “Observe [these laws] carefully for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what other nations is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nations is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?”

In a chapter of major theological importance in Deuteronomy’s affirmation of the uniqueness of Israel and of Yahweh their God, these verses somewhat unexpectedly raise the readers’ gaze to the surrounding nations. They will see something in Israel. Israel’s ethical life was to be deliberately on the open international stage. The point is that if Israel would be shaped and characterized by obedience to the laws and institutions of the Sinai covenant, then they would be a highly visible exemplar to the nations both as to the nature of the God they worshipped and as to the quality of social justice embodied in their community. This seems to be a deliberate linking of Israel’s role among the nations to the socio-ethical structure of their corporate life: mission and ethics combined. The mission of Israel was to be a model to the nations. Mission was not a matter of going but of being; to be what they were, to live as the people of the God Yahweh in the sight of the nations. 

Hermeneutically, this perspective also offers a potentially more fruitful way of handling the law as regards contemporary ethical relevance. The issue of the status and applicability of OT law in the Christian context has been a major point of debate and division in the church since the NT itself. Part of the problem seems to be that the law is discussed as an entity in itself, whereas it needs to be set explicitly in the context of the mission of Israel.  The purpose of the law must be set in the light of the universal significance of Israel for the nations as a presupposition of any extended application. In order to answer the question, Why the law?, we need to ask, Why Israel?

“Given Israel’s role in relation to God’s purposes for the nations, and given the law’s function in relation to that mission, we can see that the law was designed to mold and shape Israel in certain clearly defined directions, within their own historico-cultural context. That overall shape, with its legal and institutional structures, ethical norms and values and theological undergirding, thus becomes the model or paradigm intended to have a relevance and application beyond the geographical, historical and cultural borders of Israel itself....The point is that this paradigmatic nature of Israel is not just a hermeneutical tool devised by us retrospectively, but theologically speaking, was part of God's design in creating and shaping Israel as he did in the first place” (C.J.H. Wright, “The Ethical Authority of the Old Testament: A Survey of Approaches,” Tyndale Bulletin 43 [1992] 101-20, 203-31 [227-28]). 

By Christopher J.H. Wright, Principal, All Nations Christian College, Ware, England; author of Walking in the Ways of the LORD: The Ethical Authority of the Old Testament (InterVarsity, 1995)—a book that expands on some of the perspectives summarized above. Wright has also sought to include a missiological slant in his commentary on Deuteronomy (New International Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament; Hendrikson, 1997).