1
Paper Read at the Evangelical Theological Society 54
th
Annual Meeting
Regal Constellation Hotel, Toronto, Ontario
November 21, 2002
LAW AND NARRATIVE IN EXODUS 19-24
© November 2002 Joe M. Sprinkle
Professor of Old Testament
Toccoa Falls College
I. HOW BIBLICAL LAWS HAVE BEEN READ APART FROM NARRATIVES
James Watts writes, "Lawyers and judges do not usually read law books from beginning
to end like novels. Instead, laws are collected, compared, harmonized, codified, and in general
arranged systematically so as to preclude the necessity of ever having to read the whole code
through from start to finish."
1
As Watts goes on to note, this is exactly how the regulations of the
Pentateuch often have been read by traditional Jewish and Christian readers as well as modern
critical scholars. The laws of the Pentateuch have regularly been analyzed by themselves
without much consideration to the narrative context in which they are embedded.
2
Without
denying the usefulness of attempts to systemize biblical regulations, this paper stresses the need
to read the laws contextually within their narrative and legal-literary frameworks and visa versa.
II. WAYS THAT LAWS INTERRELATE WITH NARRATIVES
The laws of Exodus 19-24 interrelate with the narratives of the Pentateuch in a variety of
ways.
1. The Laws are part of the Narrative of Gods Graciously Establishing a Personal Relationship
with Israel as Distinct from other Nations.
1
James W. Watts, Reading Law: The Rhetorical Shaping of the Pentateuch (The Biblical
Seminar 59; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 11.
2
E.g., Zeev W. Falk, Hebrew Law in Biblical Times (2
nd
ed; Provo, Utah: Brigham Young
University Press, 2001).