Why Is the Torah Divided into Five Books?

In this article, I am exploring only the planning of the Torah as a Pentateuch, without the book of Joshua. The case for an original Hexateuch, i.e., the Pentateuch plus Joshua was suggested by Wellhausen, and argued for more recently by Marc Z. Brettler and Thomas Römer, “Deuteronomy 34 and the Case for a Persian Hexateuch,” JBL 119 (2000), 401-419; and in simplified form, Marc Z. Brettler, “Is the Torah a Pentateuch or a Hexateuch?” TheTorah.com (2013). Other scholars have even argued that it was originally planned together with Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings as an Enneatuch (a nine-volumed work). All of these different positions are discussed in Thomas B. Dozeman, Thomas Römer, and Konrad Schmid, eds., Pentateuch, Hexateuch, or Enneateuch: Identifying Literary Works in Genesis through Kings (Ancient Israel and Its Literature 8; Atlanta: SBL, 2011). All of these proposed collections other than the Pentateuch are artificial constructs with no basis in historical or textual reality. They lack exactly what the Pentateuch offers, the highest level of prophetic authority, that of Moses, with whom YHWH “speaks mouth to mouth, plainly and not in riddles” (Numbers 12:8).

Scholars assume that the different books of the Pentateuch in the LXX have different translators based on their translation styles; this implies that they were already separate books before their translation into Greek in the third century B.C.E. See Albert Pietersma and Benjamin Wright, A New English Translation of the Septuagint (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 162-165, 204 and John W. Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Deuteronomy (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), x. That at least Deuteronomy was considered to be its own book is implied by the translator’s rendering of Deuteronomy 17:18, which states that the king should write for himself and study daily “a copy of this law” (אֶת מִשְׁנֵה הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת). Based on this verse, one of the ancient names for the book of Deuteronomy is Mishneh Torah, “the Repetition of the Torah,” and this is the meaning of Deuteronomy, its Greek name. The LXX translates this phrase as “this Deuteronomy” (τὸ δευτερονόμιον τοῦτο), implying that Deuteronomy was already the name of the work in the third century B.C.E. See discussion in Joseph Blenkinsopp, The Pentateuch: An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 45.

Letter of Aristeas, 176-179; This last Greek term is the root of the term “Pentateuch”; it typically refers to jars or cases, but here denotes the scrolls or books.

Philo mentions this again in On the Eternity of the World 19, “Moses, the lawgiver of the Jews, had said in his sacred volumes . . . and the number of the books is five” (ἐν ἱεραῖς βίβλοις· εἰσὶ δὲ πέντε). This makes the five-fold division of the Torah more ancient than its division into sedrot or parashiyot, which dates to the Rabbinic period (but are also reflected in Qumran texts), and much more ancient than the division into chapters, which dates to the medieval period. See Blenkinsopp, The Pentateuch, 42; Israel Yeivin, Introduction to the Tiberian Masorah (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1980), 40-42; Emanuel Tov, “Textual Criticism,” AB VI:397).

In fact, Philo writes often of the five senses, or the five great lessons that Moses teaches, but never connects these with the number of books in the Torah. See, for example, Creation170, Abraham 147-50, 236-244. Surprisingly, midrashic literature is similarly silent, as Rabbi Martin Cohen notes, “As far as I am aware, no traditional midrashim speak directly to the question of why the Torah is specifically divided into five parts” (“Who Knows Five?,” Conservative Judaism 55, 2003, p. 63). One illustrative example of this strange silence is the passage in b. Ber. 6b that discusses the rewards for making the groom happy at this wedding. The text mentions that the Torah was given with “five voices,” but makes no mention of the “five-ness” of the Torah.

Ag. Ap. I.8. Josephus arrives at the sum of twenty-two books as opposed to the traditional twenty-four because he includes Ruth with Judges and Lamentations with Jeremiah. See, Sid Z. Leiman, The Canonization of Hebrew Scripture: The Talmudic and Midrashic Evidence (New Haven: The Connecticut Academy of Art and Sciences, 1991), 31-32.

“Ptolemy’s Epistle to Flora,” in Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures: A New Translation with Annotations and Introductions (New York: Doubleday, 1987), 306-315. A less direct allusion to the number of books in the Torah is found in 4 Ezra, also called the Apocalypse of Ezra, an originally Hebrew work which modern scholars date to approximately 100 C.E. 4 Ezra refers to ninety-four books revealed to Ezra, 70 hidden and 24 to be made public. These 24 books are typically assumed to be identical to the 24 books of the rabbinic canon, beginning with the five books of the Torah.

The doxology of Psalm 150 is different in style. James Limburg suggests that this is because it serves as a concluding doxology both for Book V (Psalm 107-150) as well as for the Psalter as a whole (“Book of Psalms,” ABD V:526).

Avi Hurvitz notes that the language of three of the four passages that break up Psalms clearly exhibit characteristics of postexilic Hebrew (Ps 41:14, 72:18-20, 106:47-48; The Transition Period in Biblical Hebrew: A Study in Post-Exilic Hebrew and its Implications for the Dating of Psalms (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1972), 170-171 [Hebrew]) On the basis of its similarity to 1 Chronicles 16:36, Nahum Sarna suggests that Psalm 106’s final verse “may well be an integral part of the Psalm,” and not a later addition, so that Psalms 90-150 originally constituted a single collection, and was later “artificially split into two” to make five divisions, in imitation of the Torah. Nahum Sarna, Songs of the Heart: An Introduction to the Book of Psalms (New York: Schocken, 1993), 17-18.

See Sarna, Songs of the Heart, 16. He dates the translation of the Psalter into Greek to the second half of the second century B.C.E., while Limburg dates the Greek translation of Psalms to “the first half of the third century B.C.” (“Book of Psalms,” ABD V: 523), along with A. Pietersma, A New English Translation of the Septuagint (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 936.

Midrash Tehillim, 1.2, ed. Buber p.3; William Braude writes that the present form of Midrash Tehillim is the result of one thousand years of accretions, from the third century C.E. to the thirteenth century C.E. William G. Braude, The Midrash on Psalms (New Haven: Yale, 1959), vol.1, xxvi-xxxi, 5.

Rabbi Martin Cohen, “Who Knows Five?,” 69, n.10. He sees a five-part structure for Proverbs based on obvious headings, in Proverbs 1-9 (“The proverbs of Solomon), son of David, king of Israel”, 10-24 (“The proverbs of Solomon”, 25-29 (“These too are the proverbs of Solomon, which the men of King Hezekiah of Judah copied”), 30 (“The words of Agur, son of Jakeh”) , and 31 (“The words of Lemuel, king of Massa”) . Others see more divisions in its structure, however, these are less distinct, for example, Proverbs 22:17-24:22 – “Incline your ear and listen to the words of the sages,” which is not obviously a heading. See R. N. Whybray, The Book of Proverbs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 12; J.L. Crenshaw, “Book of Proverbs,” ABD V:513.

Aaron M. Gale, “The Gospel According to Matthew,” in The Jewish Annotated New Testament (ed. Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Brettler; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 1. The Gospel of Matthew is divided into five major discourses, separated by the formula, “when Jesus had finished” (7:28, 11:1, 13:53, 19:1, 26:1), “suggesting a recapitulation of the Torah,” because of the author’s desire to depict Jesus as a second Moses. This link between the Gospel of Matthew and the Pentateuch was first suggested by Benjamin W. Bacon “The ‘Five Books’ of Matthew against the Jews,” The Expositor 15 (1918), 56-66. While the presence of exactly five major discourses is “firmly established,” scholars disagree over the importance of the discourses in relation to the gospel’s structure and whether there is any link to the Pentateuch. See, T.J. VanderWeele, “Some Observations Concerning the Chiastic Structure of the Gospel of Matthew,” JTS 59 (2008), 670; J. P. Meier “Gospel of Matthew,”ABD IV: 629.

Judah Goldin, “Avot,” EJ 3:983-4.

These are Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and Elihu; see Job 2:11 where they are first enumerated. Elihu son of Barachel does not appear until Job 32, which leads Cohen to suggest that he was added in later to “to provide a necessary fifth part” (Cohen, “Who Knows Five?,” 69, n.11). In addition to these, Cohen suggests some that are perhaps more speculative (“Who Knows Five?,” 65):

• The Latter Prophets constitute fifteen books (5×3)
• The MT of Psalms has 150 psalms (5×30; the LXX has 151 and the Psalm Scroll from Qumran has four non-canonical psalms).

Cohen admits that some of these observations are “far-fetched,” but suggests that “they make it possible to consider every single book in the Bible either to be in five parts or to be part of a larger five-part work!”

This category includes the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther. They all serve a liturgical function as they are read in synagogue over the course of the Jewish calendar year. The term “five scrolls” does not appear in the Talmud, nor are they grouped together in any enumeration of biblical books from the Rabbinic period. As a group of five, they appear in medieval manuscripts (Nahum Sarna, “Bible,” EJ 3:582).

Herbert Wolf also suggests that the division into five “may owe its origin to a practical consideration,” as “No scroll could hold all the words” (An Introduction to the Old Testament Pentateuch [Chicago: Moody Press, 2007], 18. Jeffrey Tigay writes that, “The Torah in its final form is divided into five separate books because ancient scrolls could not contain a work of that length” (“Exodus,” in The Jewish Study Bible, 2^nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 95).

Menachem Haran, “Book- Size and the Device of Catch-Lines in the Biblical Canon,” JJS36 (1985), 1-11. Only after its translation into Greek was Chronicles divided into two books.

Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 74-76. The Dimensions of Qumran Scrolls,” Dead Sea Discoveries 5:1 (1998), 71. also Blenkinsop, The Pentateuch, 46, citing DJD II (Oxford, 1961), 75-78. While the Talmud refers to scrolls containing the entire Torah, the evidence from Qumran cannot be used to support the existence of such large scrolls, perhaps 25 meters in length.

Moshe Weinfeld (“Pentateuch,” EJ 13:232) notes that “the division into five books could have been motivated by technical reasons, as, for example, the length of the scroll needed for convenient reading,” but adds that the breaks are also inherent in Scripture. Israel Leivin (“Torah,” EncyMiqrait 8:484) writes that the three middle books were initially divided up “for ease of reading only.” See the discussion by Olson, The Death of the Old and the Birth of the New (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985), 52, quoting Arnold Goldberg (Das Buch Numeri, (Desseldorf: Patmos-Verlag, 1970), 11) and Sarna (Bible, EJ 4:820), who writes that “following the activities of Ezra and Nehemiah, it became customary, for strictly non-liturgical purposes and for convenience of handling, to transcribe the work on five separate scrolls.”

The source for these numbers is Avraham Even-Shoshan, The New Concordance for the Torah, Prophets, and Writings (Jerusalem: Kiryat Sefer, 1981), Introduction, 38.

Obviously, Genesis is the longest book, almost twice the size of Leviticus. Exodus and Numbers are similar in length, but each is about 30% longer than Leviticus. Deuteronomy is longer than Leviticus but shorter than the other three. The greatest disparity is the relative brevity of Leviticus as compared with Exodus and Numbers: yet all three form a continuous narrative and share similar “priestly” content. Obviously, other factors must determine the division of these books.

Haran, “Book- Size,” 6, 11.

Editor’s note: In fact, this distinction has led many contemporary scholars to argue that Genesis was originally a separate unit that was loosely connected to the Exodus-Joshua account at a later stage. See, Tzemah Yoreh, “The Northern Tradition of Settling the Land,”TheTorah.com (2016); Zev Farber, “Jacob the Conqueror of Shechem,” TheTorah.com(2015). For a full-length treatment of the problem, see, Konrad Schmid, Genesis and the Moses Story: Israel’s Dual Origins in the Hebrew Bible (trans. J. Nogalski; Sifrut: Literature and Theology of the Hebrew Bible, 3; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2010).

Genesis 12:2, 13:16, 15:5, 17:6, 18:18, 22:17, 26:4, 26:24, 28:14, 46:3.

Deuteronomy or some part of it was perchance the scroll found in the Temple which motivated King Josiah to initiate his extensive religious reform (2 Kings 22-23). The book refers to itself as a torah (literally, “teaching,” “instruction”) in Deuteronomy 1:5, 4:8, 44, and sefer ha-torah (“scroll of instruction”) in Deuteronomy 29:20, 30:10, and other books refer to it as Sefer Torat Moshe (Joshua 8:31, 23:6, 2 Kings 14:6). Modern scholarship, based on Deuteronomy’s unique style and content, considers it the “touchstone for dating the sources in the Pentateuch and the historical books of the Old Testament” (Moshe Weinfeld, “Deuteronomy” EJ 5:1576).

Schwartz, “Leviticus,” JSB, 193.

Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 1.

William Propp, Exodus 1-18 (New York: Doubleday, 199), 125. He suggests it likely comes from the Redactor, rather than the P source.

Milgrom writes that Exodus 40:36-38, the description of how this luminous cloud will determine their journey, was inserted here to form a giant parenthesis with Numbers 9:15-23, where this subject will be covered in greater detail. In between is “the very center of the Pentateuch,” the laws given to Israel at Sinai following the Book of the Covenant (Exodus 21-24). Milgrom, Leviticus 1-17, 139.

Propp, Exodus 19-40 (New York: Doubleday, 2006), 674.

Olson, The Death of the Old and the Birth of the New, 49.

Usually these are called “blessing and curses,” however neither word occurs in Leviticus 26. Baruch Schwartz, “Leviticus” JSB, 260. The Holiness Collection (named for the demand of Leviticus 19:2 that Israel be holy) spans Leviticus 17-27; for the characteristic language and idea of this source, see Milgrom, Leviticus 17-22 (NY: Doubleday, 2000), 1319-1333.

The third term, “instructions,” is the Hebrew torot. In the context of Leviticus, it refers to the ritual prescriptions of Leviticus 6:17, 7:1, 7:11, 14:1, so that v.46 serves as a conclusion not just for the Holiness Code (chapters 17-27), but also chapters 1-16.

Baruch Levine, Leviticus (NY: JPS, 1989), 192.

For a more extensive list, see Milgrom, Leviticus 17-22, 1333, and Leviticus 23-27, 2407-2409.

Milgrom writes that the repetition of “Mount Sinai” shows that the editor is deliberately completing 26:46, and both conclusions complement each other, “so that both effect a proper closure for the entire book” (Leviticus 23-27, 2402).

See Jonathan Grossman, “The Message of the Non-Chronological Opening of Numbers,” TheTorah.com (2017).

Numbers 33:16-49 describes their journey from the Wilderness of Sinai till the Plains of Moab, and lists many place-names not mentioned in Numbers 10-36.

Deuteronomy 1:1 opens in the same region, the steppes of Moab, in the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, six months after the last chronological notice given in Numbers, Aaron’s death in the fortieth year, on the first day of the fifth month (Numbers 33:38). As noted above, Deuteronomy, styled as Moses’ valedictory address, constitutes a unique body of literature, with origins and intent that contrast with the three preceding works.

Blenkinsopp, The Pentateuch, 47. The literary element to which Blenkinsopp alludes is chiasm, a literary device in which words or concepts are repeated in reverse order, expressed as A B C D E D’ C’ B’ A’. Often the author will place the main idea or turning point of a narrative at the center. Modern scholarship has detected chiastic order in many biblical books and passages to varying degrees of persuasiveness. Yehuda T. Radday, “A Chiasmus in Hebrew Biblical Narrative,” in Chiasmus in Antiquity: Structures, Analyses, Exegesis (ed. J. H. Welch; Provo: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 1998), 50-117. Regarding the role of Leviticus 19, see 84, 88. For other books of the Bible, see Jan Fokkelman’s Narrative Art and Poetry in the Books of Samuel: A Full Interpretation Based on Stylistic and Structural Analyses (Leiden: Brill, 1986). See also the bibliography in David A. Dorsey’s The Literary Structure of the Old Testament: A Commentary on Genesis – Malachi (Ada, Michigan: Baker, 2004).

The Pentateuch, 47, 59. He also finds five-part structure in the two series of toledot passages in Genesis. These are the passages which begin ‘eleh toledot, “these are the generations,” found in Genesis 2:4a, 5:1, 6:9, 10:1 and 11:10, and then in Genesis 11:27, 25:12, 25:19, 36:1, and 37:2; Genesis 5:2 has a variant, zeh sefer toledot adam, “This is the scroll/record of the generations of Adam.”

Milgrom, Leviticus 17-22 (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 1767-1768. See also 1320, 1366, 1656. Radday, “A Chiasmus in Hebrew Biblical Narrative,” 84, 88.

Milgrom, Leviticus 17-22, 1767-1768.

The division of the Torah into sedarim is found in the scrolls from the Judean Desert. The division into verses is early but is not indicated in the Torah scrolls because it is based on oral tradition; verse notations are indicated in early Greek Bible scrolls.

See Milgrom, Leviticus 17-22, pp. 1602-3. He notes also that “this is the only place in Leviticus where the term ‘edah is used in a commission speech.”

Rabbi Levi sees allusion to all sections of the Decalogue, and modern scholarship confirms many of these: Clearly Leviticus 19 repeats the Sabbath commandment (v.3, 30), the command to honor parents (v.3), the prohibition to worship other gods and make images for worship (v.4), the prohibition of misusing God’s name (v.12) and theft (v.11). The prohibition of adultery is reflected in vv. 20-22. Editor’s note: See further discussion in, Ed Greenstein,“An Inner-Biblical Elaboration of the Decalogue,” TheTorah.com (2016); Uzi Weingarten,“Not Signing Off on Sacrifices,” TheTorah.com (2015).

Leviticus 19:19 obviously starts a new section of miscellaneous laws of a more ritual character. For various ideas about the structure of Leviticus 19, see Milgrom, Leviticus 17-22, 1596-1602.

The literature on this verse is vast, but for basic ideas, see Milgrom, Leviticus 17-22, 1653-1656; Richard Elliott Friedman, “The Exodus, the Alien, and the Neighbor,”TheTorah.com (2017). Rabbi Akiva calls this commandment, “a great principle of the Torah” (Sifra Kedoshim 4). It plays an important role in the Gospels as one of Jesus’ two “greatest commandments” (Matthew 22:34-40, Luke 10: 27), and for Paul, it represents the summary of the Law (Galatians 5:14).

If the symbolic value of 5 did play a role in determining the division of the Torah into books, it would not be a unique case. A widely read modern work, the parts of which represent a significant number for the author and her religious tradition, is Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. She wrote the book with 108 chapters, with three sections of 36 in each. The number 108 represents the number of beads on a japa mala and is considered in Eastern religion to be “most auspicious, a perfect three-digit multiple of three, its components adding up to 9, which is three threes” (Eat, Pray, Love [New York: Riverhead, 2007], 1).

Gematria uses the numeric values of the letters with which words are spelled in order to gain information about the meaning of words. Stephen J. Lieberman, “A Mesopotamian Background for the So-Called Aggadic ‘Measures’ of Biblical Hermeneutics?,” HUCA 58 (1987), 167.

In Genesis 17, Sarai becomes Sarah; both refer the royalty, related to Hebrew sar, “prince” or “ruler.” The former reflects an archaic form (Nahum Sarna, Genesis (Philadelphia: JPS, 1989), 126). In the same chapter, Abram becomes Abraham, with the infixed heh representing the Hebrew hamon, “multitude,” as his name is given the meaning “father of a multitude of nations,” av hamon goiim. As for Joshua, in Numbers 13:8, he is called Hoshea, and then v.16 indicates that Moses called him Yehoshua; this perhaps indicates that Moses understood the prefix heh to represent the Tetragram or that he renamed him (b. Sota 34b).

Martin Cohen cites two examples in the Torah, Leviticus 24:11 (v.16) and Deuteronomy 28:58 (“Who Knows Five?,” 70, n.20). Jacob Milgrom disputes the first example, arguing that it refers to God’s name YHWH (as opposed to Elohim) and only the Deuteronomic text represents an example of HaShem as a substitute for God (Leviticus 23-27 (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 2108. Nevertheless, Jeffrey Tigay agrees with Cohen (Deuteronomy [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991], 271) and notes that in several psalms, God’s name is synonymous with Himself (Psalm 5:12, 54:8, 61:6, 145:1-2).

Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1962), 68-79.

See Stephen J. Lieberman, “A Mesopotamian Background,” 167-176. Since Mesopotamian texts used cuneiform writing, the “Gematria” in this case is based on the association of particular names with particular numbers, or the association of syllable signs with numbers. This differs from the Hebrew system which is based on alphabetic order (Lieberman, p.176).

“Gematria,” EJ 7:369.

“On Gematria in the Bible,” Beit Miqra 58 (2013), 130-134 (Hebrew); “Sacred Architecture: The Numerical Dimensions of Biblical Poems,” VT 62 (2012), 189-197; HaShem: Ha-misparim ha-sodiyim shel ha-Tanakh ve-ta’alumat yetsi’at Mitsrayim (Or-Yehuda: Dvir, 2012).

See also the works of C.J. Labuschagne, “Significant Compositional Techniques in the Psalms: Evidence for the Use of Number as an Organizing Principle,” (VT 59 (2009), 583-605; Numerical Secrets of the Bible (Texas: BIBAL, 2000); “General Introduction to Logotechnical Analysis,” www.labuschagne.nl.; James Limburg, “Sevenfold Structure in the Book of Amos,” JBL 106 (1987), 219-220; Duane Christensen, Nahum (NY: Doubleday, 2009), 8-17.

See b. Nedarim 32a and Genesis 14:14 and 15:2. Stanley Gevirtz doubts that Gematria plays a role here, but rather he sees 318 as the sum of all primary numbers between 7 and 49 (“Abram’s 318,” IEJ 19 (1969), 110-113). Early Christian interpretation saw a different significance in this number as it appeared in Greek, ιητ, claiming that it represented Jesus (the 310 are the first to letters of his name) and the cross (the tau looks like a cross).

Francine Klagsbrun, The Fourth Commandment: Remember the Sabbath Day (NY: Harmony, 2002), 46.

Isaiah 65:11 refers to a god by the name of Gad, associated with luck or fortune. W.A. Maier III, “Gad,” ABD II: 863-864. Perhaps we have here an ancient link between the number seven and good fortune (lucky sevens?) This may this explain the assortment of names in the Bible derived from the number 7 (sheva): Batsheva in 2 Samuel 11, Elisheva in Exodus 6:23, Sheva son of Bichri in 2 Samuel 20, a son of Gad named Sheva in 1 Chronicles 5:13, and the town Be’er-Sheva.

Rashi comments that the five clauses with God’s Name as the fifth word reflect the five volumes of the Pentateuch.

Rashbam, a grandson of Rashi, finds the subject of the verse in Exodus 40:35, “the Glory of YHWH,” and rearranges the words to make sense of the verse: “And He summoned Moses from the Tent of Meeting and spoke to him saying.” Milgrom follows Rashbam in connecting Exodus 40:35 and Leviticus 1, and comments, “Possibly, when Leviticus became a separate book, the Tetragrammaton was added (but in the wrong place) in order to provide a subject for this verse (Leviticus 1-17, p.139). Baruch Levine calls the syntax of the verse “unusual,” and also links Leviticus 1:1 with the end of Exodus.

This was pointed out to me by David Stern, M.D., of Houston, Texas.

Ethel J. Alpenfels, “The Anthropology and Social Significance of the Human Hand,” Digital Resource Foundation for the Orthopedics and Prosthetics Community 2 (1955), 4.

http://medstud.ceu.hu/gesturesfinal/index.htm?hand.htm&1

W. Gunther Plaut, “Calculated, Not Accidental,” The Jerusalem Report 1/14/1993, 37.

It is worth adding that there may be a gematria connection here as well. The very unusual verb hoya (the qal participle of ה.י.ה), is reminiscent of the Tetragrammaton with its doubled heh, along with a yod and vav. Also, the letter heh appears five times in the phrase.

Deuteronomy 2:15, 1 Samuel 5:6, 9, 7:13, perhaps Ruth 1:13 and 2 Samuel 24:16, 17; see Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1-11 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 163-164. He notes that the hand of the god refers to pestilence in Ugaritic and Akkadian texts.

See also, 1 Kings 18:46; 2 Kings 3:15; Ezekiel 3:14, 22, 8:1, 33:22, 37:1, 40:1.

See also, Ezra 8:31, Nehemiah 2:18, and perhaps 2 Chronicles 30:12.

See Exodus 31:18, Deuteronomy 9:10, and for the ten “utterances,” see Exodus 34:28, Deuteronomy 4:13. See Cohen, “Who Knows Five?,” 67.

John D. MacIsaac, “The Hand of God: A Numismatic Study,” Tradition 31 (1975), 323-4.

Another example of the democratization of holiness is the commandment for all Israel to wear fringes on their garments, which harkens back to the sha’atnez (linen and wool) worn by Israel’s priesthood (see Milgrom, Numbers (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990), 413). Israel is a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6), thus all are commanded to know the law, even ritual law! (Exodus 21:1, Leviticus 1:2, 19:1-2, etc.). Editor’s note: For a similar idea, see Jeffrey H. Tigay, “Why Are Laws for Priests Included in the Torah?” TheTorah.com (2018).