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built (Deut 27:4-8; Josh 8:30-35). Deuteronomy 12:5, however, anticipates a day when all
sacrifice would be limited to the one "place that Yahweh your God will choose." Although in
Moses' day, and for a number of generations after Moses, altars after the description of Exod
20:24-26 continued to be allowed, 1 Kgs 3:2 sees this as temporary: "The people, however, were
still sacrificing at the high places, because a temple had not yet been built for the name of
Yahweh." According to the narrator of this text, there is no condemnation of sacrificing on the
high places as such; nevertheless, it does foresee a day after the temple is built when sacrifice at
the high places would cease. This prediction came true through Josiahs reforms around 621 BC
(2 Kgs 23:15, 19-20).
The above line of interpretation does not resolve all difficulties, and other solutions are
defendable and may even be preferable, but it seems possible to explain the differences among
the altar laws on the basis of their placement in the framework of the Bibles narrative
chronology. It thus shows the fruitfulness, hermeneutically, of taking narrative into
consideration when interpreting law.
e. Firstfruits, Firstborn and Holiness. Another place where the narrative affects the
interpretation of law is in Exod 22:29-31. Here God commands Israelites to give to him the
overflow (of wine/oil), the firstborn of their sons, and the firstborn of their livestock; adding that
they are to be holy by not eating carrion.
The call for Israel to be "holy men" (Exod 22:31) picks up on Exod 19:6, that Israel was
to be a "holy nation." Exod 22:29-31 is also surrounded by social-humanitarian regulations
where further allusion to the exodus is explicit (cf. Exod 22:21; 23:9). The command about the
firstborn repeats commands given earlier in conjunction with the Passover narratives, that the
firstborn of both man and beast belong to God, though as a concession human sons and more
expensive animals were to be redeemed by sacrifice of a lamb (Exod 13:2, 11-19). Firstborn
sons, in particular, play a prominent role in the Passover narrative (Exod 11:3-7; 12:12-13).
Thus, in the light of the Passover law/narratives of Exodus 11-13 it would be wrong to read Exod