Why the Torah’s Law Is from God

This text is an abridged and edited version of my open access article “How God Became a Lawgiver,” Stellenbosch Theological Journal 10 (2024): 1–27. Editor’s note: On the judicial role of the king in ancient Near Eastern royal ideology, see Bernard M. Levinson, “The Origins of Constitutional Thought—Found in Deuteronomy,” TheTorah (2025); on principles of justice, see Jonathan Ben-Dov, “The Message of the Covenant Collection: Do Not Abuse Power,” TheTorah (2025).

Hammurabi asserts in the epilogue of the collection:

^{LH xlviii 95–xlix 17} I am Hammurabi, king of justice, to whom the god Shamash has granted (insight into) the truth.

Translations from Hammurabi’s Laws follow Martha T. Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2^nd ed., SBLWAW 6 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 71–142.

Editor’s note: See Jan Assmann, “Pharaoh’s Divine Role in Maintaining Ma’at (Order),” TheTorah (2016).

See Douglas Frayne, Old Babylonian Period (2003–1595 B.C.), RIM 4 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990), 605 (E4.6.8.2, ll. 1–6); my translation. On the terms kinatum and kittum see CAD 8, 1971, 383f, 468–472 as well as in detail Kai Lämmerhirt, Wahrheit und Trug: Untersuchungen zur altorientalischen Begriffsgeschichte, AOAT 348 (Münster: Ugarit, 2010), especially 293–336.

Editor’s note: See, e.g, David P. Wright, “How Exodus Revises the Laws of Hammurabi,” TheTorah (2019); Sandra Jacobs, “Deathblows to a Pregnant Woman – What Restitution Was Required?,” TheTorah (2020); Wayne Horowitz, “An Eye for an Eye or for Shekels: Canaan’s Cuneiform Laws,” TheTorah (2024).

The Covenant Collection (Exod 20–23) contains case laws about injury, property, and festival observance. The Holiness legislation (Lev 17–26) interweaves ritual and ethics with a refrain that links legal conduct to God’s holiness. Deuteronomy (especially chapters 12–26) reshapes and expands earlier materials within Moses’s farewell address.

The Torah balances divine authorship with human mediation through the figure of Moses. Moses ascends the mountain, receives instruction, argues and pleads on behalf of the people, and then transmits what he has heard. He is neither an original lawgiver in the mode of Hammurabi nor a passive conduit. Rather, he is the mediator whose presence allows divine speech to take human form. The narrative device accomplishes two things at once: it preserves the claim that the law originates with God, and it acknowledges that law reaches the people through human teaching and interpretation.

See Erich Bosshard-Nepustil, “Der schreibende Gott am Sinai,” BZ 54 (2010): 1–19; Anselm C. Hagedorn, “Sacred Law, Lawgivers and Codification: Perspectives from the Hebrew Bible, Gortyn and Selinus,” in Writing Laws in Antiquity: L’écriture du droit dans l’Antiquité, ed. Dominique Jaillard and Christophe Nihan, BZAR 19 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2017), 117–140, here 119.

Cf. Exodus 32:16, Deuteronomy 9:10. Moses shatters this first set (Exod 32:19; 34:26–27)—an inner-biblical acknowledgment that no indestructible divine artifact exists on earth, even if the law’s authority is traced to heaven. Biblical translations follow NJPS, with modifications.

See on the history of research, Christoph Koch, Vertrag, Treueid und Bund: Studien zur Rezeption des altorientalischen Vertragsrechts im Deuteronomium und zur Ausbildung der Bundestheologie im Alten Testament, BZAW 383 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 2–14. Editor’s note: See also Shalom E. Holtz, “YHWH’s Covenant: Why Moses Calls Heaven and Earth as Witnesses,” TheTorah (2024); Melissa Ramos, “The Making of a Covenant: The Book of Deuteronomy,” TheTorah (2022); Deena Grant, “Loving God Beyond the Way You Love Ashurbanipal,” TheTorah (2016).

Simo Parpola and Kazuko Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths, State Archives of Assyria 2 (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1988), 36.

See, e.g., Bernard M. Levinson and Jeffrey Stackert, “Between the Covenant Code and Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty: Deuteronomy 13 and the Composition of Deuteronomy,” JAJ 3 (2012): 123–140; Eckart Otto, Das Deuteronomium: Politische Theologie und Rechtsreform in Juda und Assyrien, BZAW 284 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999).

See, e.g., Othmar Keel, Die Geschichte Jerusalems und die Entstehung des Monotheismus, OLB VI,1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 199–212; Reinhard Müller, Jahwe als Wettergott: Studien zur althebräischen Kultlyrik anhand ausgewählter Psalmen, BZAW 387 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008); idem, “Die frühe Jahweverhrung im Spiegel der ältesten Psalmen,” BTZ 30 (2013): 89–119.

See also Psalm 68:9.

See, e.g., Bernd Janowski, “JHWH und der Sonnengott: Aspekte der Solarisierung JHWHs in vorexilischer Zeit,” in Pluralismus und Identität, ed. Joachim Mehlhausen (Güstersloh: Gütersloher, 1995), 214–241; Othmar Keel, “Der salomonische Tempelweihspruch: Observations on the Religious Historical Context of the First Jerusalem Temple,” in Gottesstadt und Gottesgarten: Zur Geschichte und Theologie des Jerusalemer Tempels, ed. Othmar Keel and Erich Zenger, QD 191 (Freiburg: Herder, 2002), 9–23; Martin Arneth, “Sonne der Gerechtigkeit”: Studien zur Solarisierung der Jahwe-Religion im Lichte von Psalm 72, BZAR 1 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2000), 54–108.

Numerous texts in the Hebrew Bible also connote YHWH in solar terms, but without directly referring to him as “sun.” See Hosea 6:5; Genesis 32:23–33; Numbers 25:4; Judges 19:14–26; Exodus 17:8–16; Joshua 10:12f; Judges 9:33; 1 Samuel 11:9–11. See on this Juliane Kutter, “nūr ilī: Die Sonnengottheiten in den nordwestsemitischen Religionen von der Spätbronzezeit bis zur vorrömischen Zeit,” AOAT 346 (2008): 355–417 (esp. 373–376). The onomasticon in Judah also reflects this solarization (Kutter, “nūr ilī,” 355f, 383, 413).

Editor’s note: See Reinhard Achenbach, “How YHWH Became King of the Universe,” TheTorah (2023).

On motive clauses, see, e.g., Rifat Sonsino, Motive Clauses in Hebrew Law: Biblical Forms and Near Eastern Parallels, SBL Dissertation Series 45 (Chico: Scholars Press, 1980); and Dale Patrick, “Legal Rhetoric,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Law, ed. Brent A. Strawn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

See Carol A. Newsom, “Models of the Moral Self: Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism,” JBL 131(2012): 5–25; eadem, The Spirit within Me: Self and Agency in Ancient Israel and Second Temple Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021). Ancient Near Eastern legal thinking does not know this type of exhortation; its law collections are mostly targeted towards scribal and legal exercise, and not towards direct personal application.

See Rémy Brague, The Law of God: The Philosophical History of an Idea, trans. L. G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

For example, the manumission laws provide a series of subsequent legal updates within the Torah (Exod 21:2–11; Deut 15:12–18 and Lev 25:39–46). See Bernard M. Levinson, “The Manumission of Hermeneutics: The Slave Laws of the Pentateuch as a Challenge to Contemporary Pentateuch Theory,” in Congress Volume Leiden 2004, ed. André Lemaire, VTSupp 109 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 281–324.

See Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter, The Making of the Bible: From the First Fragments to Sacred Scripture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2021), 99–104.