quotes and notes from
the Torah

This page:

Genesis
Exodus
Leviticus
Numbers
Deuteronomy

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the Bible

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This is part of a current Bible-study effort and will therefore remain incomplete for some time.

Selections are idiosyncratic, not representative; they relate to whims or particular study concerns. Some choices may be accounted for by accompanying cross-references.

The books of the Torah or Pentateuch are traditionally ascribed to Moses, although internal evidence indicates their final form was a later compilation from multiple sources, possibly including writings by Moses.

A relative dating from Solomon’s reign (I Kings 6:1) would put Moses in the 15th century BCE. Numerous earlier and later dates have also been proposed.

Genesis

For translation and copyright information, see version links in the left column.

JPS 11:5-9 The LORD came down to look at the city and tower that man had built, and the LORD said, “If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. Let us, then, go down and confound their speech there, so that they shall not understand one another’s speech.” Thus the LORD scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel, because there the LORD confounded the speech of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

See:

Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

text checked (see note) Apr 2009

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Exodus

For translation and copyright information, see version links in the left column.

JPS 4:10-12

But Moses said to the LORD, “Please, O Lord, I have never been a man of words, either in times past or now that You have spoken to Your servant; I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” And the LORD said to him, “Who gives man speech? Who makes him dumb or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now go, and I will be with you as you speak and will instruct you what to say.”

Topic:

Rhetoric

text checked (see note) Apr 2009

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Leviticus

For translation and copyright information, see version links in the left column.

JPS 19:9-10

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I the LORD am your God.

19:13c The wages of a laborer shall not remain with you until morning.
25:23-24

But the land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me. Throughout the land that you hold, you must provide for the redemption of the land.

text checked (see note) May 2009

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Numbers

For translation and copyright information, see version links in the left column.

KJV6:22-27

And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this wise ye shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them,

The LORD bless thee, and keep thee:

The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:

The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.

And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel; and I will bless them.

text checked (see note) May 2009

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Deuteronomy

Modern scholarship dates this considerably later than the other books “of Moses.”

For translation and copyright information, see version links in the left column.

RSV/OT8:2-3 And you shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments, or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know; that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD.

Cited by:

Pope Benedict XVI

Quoted in:

Matthew 4:4

JPS 9:4,6 And when the LORD your God has thrust them from your path, say not to yourselves, “The LORD has enabled us to possess this land because of our virtues”; it is rather because of the wickedness of those nations that the LORD is dispossessing them before you. [...]

Know, then, that it is not for any virtue of yours that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess; for you are a stiffnecked people.

15:7-8

If, however, there is a needy person among you, one of your kinsmen in any of your settlements in the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kinsman. Rather, you must open your hand and lend him sufficient for whatever he needs.

text checked (see note) Feb 2006; May 2009

Note (Hal’s):
Reading this book as a continuation of the rest of the Torah, one may be struck by two contrasts. The first is the degree to which the provisions of the law set down in the earlier books are adapted to the circumstances of a settled, rather than a nomadic, nation.

The second is the greater emphasis on conquest, and particularly on the role in that conquest of activities only describable as ethnic cleansing, cultural annihilation, or, frankly, genocide. Unfortunately, it seems these attitudes may have been revived in the political context of modern Israel.

— end note

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