When the Torah’s Narratives Subvert Its Laws

In his very first comment on the very first passage of the Torah, Rashi asks: why start here? 

Why begin with the creation of heaven and earth? Why not begin instead with Exodus 12:2, which reads: “This month shall be for you the first of months.”

After all, “This month shall be for you” is regarded as the Torah’s first commandment. “In the beginning,” on the other hand, is just a story. 

Rashi answers the question: If ever a dispute arises regarding the ownership of the land of Israel, the creation story will serve as a reminder that God is the sole landlord. 

In other words, Genesis 1:1 is not actually a story. Like Exodus 12:2, it serves a legal function. It is a property deed for the land of Israel, and indeed the entire universe, made out in God’s name. 

Rashi is attempting to solve one of the key mysteries at the center of the Torah: what is the relationship between its narratives and its laws? His answer is that there are no narratives. Not truly. Every word in the Torah, if understood correctly, has legal content. 

In other cases, the exact opposite approach has been taken, and legal material has been read as narrative. 

In Deuteronomy we find the shocking law of the rebellious son — who is to be put to death by the townspeople for disobeying his parents. According to the Zohar, however, the law’s purpose is not actually legal, but rather narrative. The rebellious son’s sorry fate is an allegory for the people of Israel’s history of exile — but the law is not to be enforced.

As the legal theorist Robert Cover wrote in his famous essay “Nomos and Narrative”: “No set of legal institutions or prescriptions exists apart from the narratives that locate it and give it meaning. For every constitution there is an epic, for each decalogue a scripture.”

Take, for example, the commandment found in Exodus 23:9: “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Here, the law (nomos) is explicitly an outgrowth of the narrative of the exodus, which provides the commandment with context and moral force. But what about the instances in which the narrative subverts the law? 

For instance, Deuteronomy prohibits a man from favoring the firstborn son of a favored wife over the older firstborn son of a “hated” wife. This law would seem to prohibit the very actions taken by Abraham, who favored Isaac over Ishmael. It would also seem to prohibit the actions of Jacob, who favored Joseph over Reuben. 

Deuteronomy also states that “no Moabite shall be admitted into the congregation of the LORD,” (23:4). In the book of Ruth, however, Ruth the Moabite is not only welcomed into the Jewish people, but is recorded as the great-grandmother of King David, and therefore the progenitor of the future messiah. 

What the Torah forbids in one passage, is represented elsewhere as the very foundation of the Jewish people’s existence and eventual redemption.

If the narrative subverts the law, does this indicate a lack of integrity in the text as a whole?

There’s a difficulty here. If the narrative subverts the law, does this indicate a lack of integrity in the text as a whole?

A pious approach to this difficulty would be to seek a new way of understanding the story or the law in order to preserve the integrity of both. Thus the Talmud modifies the simple meaning of the prohibition on marrying Moabites, limiting it to male Moabites. This way, the difficulty disappears. 

An impious approach would be to take these cases as sanction for antinomianism — a rebellion against the law itself. 

The tension between nomos and narrative, however, cannot be so easily dispensed — not through clever reinterpretations nor revolutionary revisionism.

The relationship between law and narrative is complex — but it is not a relationship of dominance — one does not bend to the other. The creation of the universe cannot be reduced to a deed of ownership. The entrance of redemption into the world in the form of Ruth’s descendant will not be forced to follow petty laws of pedigree. Jacob’s overwhelming love of Joseph, forged in the fire of his grief over Rachel, will not bend to the conventions of succession. 

The narratives of the Torah have altogether too much vitality to be reduced to legal parables or anodyne morality plays. Likewise, the commanding voice of the Torah — that which addresses the reader with a moral imperative that cannot be reasoned away — will not be reduced to allegory.

Rather than a challenge to the integrity of either, these moments signal the power of both.

Cover writes, “the nomos is but the process of human action stretched between vision and reality.” Nowhere do we see this so vividly as in these remarkable instances where narrative subverts law. Rather than a challenge to the integrity of either, these moments signal the power of both: the divine call of the law rings out, clear and unbending; while the human story, wild and alive, remains undomesticated to the finish.

Matthew Schultz is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (2020).