UnClobber by Colby Martin

Author:Colby Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781611647594
Publisher: Presbyterian Publishing Corporation

Transgressing the Boundary

Let’s move from the clunky and confusing parts of these Clobber passages to the more easily interpreted — yet still misunderstood — parts: the word abomination.

It comes from the Hebrew word toevah. This is a plural noun which, in short, was used to stipulate certain actions that, if committed, would render an Israelite indistinguishable from the surrounding nations, a betrayal of the Lord’s unique calling to live holy (aka, set apart). Toevah were cultural taboos, if you will. They transgressed the boundary that was supposed to delineate the Israelite people from both the Egyptians (from whence they came) and the Canaanites (to where they were going). Here is how toevah is unpacked in Deuteronomy 18:9–12:

When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices [toevah] of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination [toevah] to the LORD. (ESV)

The importance of grasping what it meant for an object, action, or person to be called a toevah cannot be overstated. Therefore, I want to survey some of the other usages in the Old Testament that illustrate how toevah was used. I’ll make three observations: (1) toevah was relative in nature, (2) it was not synonymous with “sinful,” and (3) it was used to describe the improper mixing of substances and/or the transgressing of boundaries.

First, a word about the relative nature of toevah. Calling actions toevah implied violation of cultural divisions. They were actions that caused the boundaries between people groups to disappear. Other cultures had their own set of behaviors considered toevah. For example, in Genesis 43, Joseph’s brothers met up with him in Egypt and shared a meal together, but the Egyptians did not eat with them because it was “[toevah] to the Egyptians” to eat with Hebrews (Gen. 43:32 ESV). Not only that; shepherds in general were considered toevah to the Egyptians (see Gen. 46:34). But the best example comes from Exodus 8 when Moses requested that Pharaoh allow the Hebrew people to offer sacrifices to their God outside the Egyptian borders. His reasoning was, “It would not be right to do so, for the offerings we shall sacrifice to the LORD our God are [toevah] an abomination to the Egyptians” (Exod. 8:26 ESV).

In other words, innocuous actions such as being a shepherd or eating with Hebrew people, and (at least from the perspective of the Old Testament) virtuous actions such as the sacrifices of the Hebrew people, were called offensive — an abomination, toevah — by the Egyptian people. This should be enough for us to question the loaded translation of “abomination” for toevah, which suggests (as mentioned above) actions that are vile, gross,

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