16
rest" invested in the number seven by the creation narrative. This also explains why the land is
to lie fallow specifically on the 7
th
year (Exod 23:11). Later the Year of Jubilee will be after the
7 x 7 years (Leviticus 25), and there would be a remission of debts every seven years (Deut
15:1-3; 31:10) for exactly the same reason.
d. The Altar Laws. It is well known that the altar of earth law of Exod 20:24-26 is hard to
reconcile with the references to the other altars in the Bible (Exod 27:1-8 [bronze altar]; Lev
17:3-9; Deuteronomy 12). Although there are a variety of ways to approach this problem, one
way explains the differences between these laws on the basis of their occurrences at differing
points in the narratives.
The following reconstruction seems possible:
36
Before the exodus, no regulations about
altars are recorded, though had God commanded that one not eat the flesh of an animal "with the
blood" (Gen 9:4). This command may or may not assume the use of altars. The altar law of
Exod 20:22-26 limits altars to simple, "natural" and unmanufactured, stone materials, in contrast
with the bronze altar of the tabernacle (Exodus 27). This difference of material is probably in
order to show the tabernacles altar preeminent. At the altars of stone shelmim offerings for the
purpose of obtaining meat to eat were possible even for the ceremonially unclean (1 Sam
14:31-35). In the wilderness, the preeminence of the tabernacles altar is further underscored by
a temporary measure limiting all slaughter to the tabernacle (Lev 17:4-7), a measure meant to
counteract the temptation to idolatrous goat-demon worship at that particular occasion in the
desert. Lockshin calls "The standard understanding of most halakhic exegetes"
37
was that the
opening verses of Leviticus 17 are limited to the context of the Israelites traveling through the
Sinai wilderness. But when Israel came to the land, altars of stone again were permitted and
36
I hope to expand this discussion into a separate paper.
37
Martin I. Lockshin, trans. and ed., Rashbams Commentary on Leviticus and Numbers: An
Annotated Translation (BJS 330; Providence, RI: Brown University, 2001), 93 n. 20.