The Constitutional Government of God

And all the community of Israelites murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.  Exodus 16:2  Robert Alter

Wilderness – In God’s geography, the wilderness is an amazing place.  First, it is the place of God’s self-revelation. Second, it is the place of total human dependence.  And third, it is the place where God provides the foundation document, the constitution, of Isreal—the Decalogue at Sinai.  As Erica Brown notes:

Early on our journey, we received a set of commandments designed as a moral and spiritual constitution to determine and shape the character and commitments of a nation.  They offered us reason through a process of revelation.  The rules had to be lived to test their worth and our mettle. . . They were given to us to shape a future that would always be precarious and unknown.[1]

Constitutions require interpretation if they are to provide meaningful instruction to each successive generation.  They are not fossilized documents, but they are also not open to addition and subtraction.  Interpretation is not revision.  It is application, which is why there is an oral tradition similar in kind to the function of a Supreme Court.  What this means is that the constitutional document provides a framework.  It does not give an answer to every possible question.  It gives an overview.  Why doesn’t it give us an endless list of rules?  Because the wilderness is also home to other elements of our existence which are not under our control.

But the wilderness was also filled with painful silence, the silence of unanswered questions and riddling doubts. Ultimately, the words mattered little.  Broken promises littered the desert floor.  The translation of the word ‘midbar’ in the King James Bible apparently takes 110 different forms.  Scholars understand its usage to refer not only to words but also to that which comes after or that which comes as a consequence of something else.  A davar is both that which exists and that which has yet to exist.[2]

God’s constitution enlists us as citizens asked to fulfill His grand plan, not ours.  “Humans are conduits of a divine master plan that they cannot control.”[3]  These implications are resident in the verb lûn,  “The various contexts in which it occurs suggest it means something like ‘complain’ (its meaning in modern Hebrew) or ‘express resentment.’  Some modern translations opt for ‘grumble,’ which may be too low as diction, and there is no good reason to relinquish the time-honored ‘murmur.’”[4]  The Israelites needed to learn the same thing we need to learn.  We are along for the ride.  Important but not in charge.  Murmuring against God’s direction is the same as saying “I want to run the show.”  Those are left behind, buried in the wilderness.

Topical Index:  murmur, lûn, wilderness, constitution, interpretation, Exodus 16:2