Dr. Keith Essex · The Master's Seminary · 50 minutes
Lecture by Dr. Keith Essex, from The Master's Seminary's public channel. Study notes below from Medina Community Church.
The study of the text itself begins here, at the Bible's foundation. Dr. Essex introduces the Torah: what the word means, the nine ways the rest of Scripture refers to it, the command that all Israel, down to the children and the sojourners, gather every seventh year to hear it read, and the claim he says outweighs everything else in the session: the Torah is one book, not five. Listen for what happens to a nation when the hearing stops, and for the stance Jesus himself took toward Moses.
Torah is the Jewish canon's own name for the Bible's first quarter, and while it includes commandments, statutes, and ordinances, the word at root means instruction: guidance and direction for how to live. The Torah itself is far more than legislation; from Genesis through the first eighteen chapters of Exodus runs a long narrative prologue before the Lord gives a single commandment at Sinai in Exodus 19.
When the Septuagint translators rendered the Old Testament into Greek around 250 BC, they coined the church's more familiar title: Pentateuch, from penta, five, and teuchos, volume, a five-volumed book. The Jewish canon says Torah; everything descending from the Septuagint through the Latin Vulgate into English says Pentateuch. Both names point at the same single work.
From Joshua to the Gospels, Scripture refers back to this foundation under nine designations: the law, the book of the law, the book of the law of Moses, the book of Moses, the law of Moses, the law of the LORD, the law of God, and the books of the law of God and of the LORD. The names holding Moses emphasize the human instrument; the names holding the LORD and God declare the true source. It is God's word, written down through Moses.
In Joshua 1 the Lord commands Joshua to do according to all the law Moses commanded, then calls it this book of the law, a written document that must not depart from Joshua's mouth, meditated on day and night. Deuteronomy 31 shows where the document came from: at the end of his life Moses wrote this law and delivered it to the priests who carried the ark and to the elders of Israel. Israel's first hearing of the whole came on the plains of Moab, the second generation poised to enter the land, God as it were calling a timeout before Moses died.
Moses commanded that at the end of every seven years, at the Feast of Booths in the year of remission, all Israel gather at the place the Lord would choose and hear this law read. And where the ordinary feasts summoned the men, this assembly was total: the men, the women, the children, and the sojourner in the towns. Ten times in an ordinary lifetime an Israelite would stand with the whole nation and hear the Torah, beyond the regular teaching of priests and Levites through the land. Nehemiah 8 and 9 shows the practice honored: Ezra reading from the first day of the seventh month, the Levites giving the sense, morning by morning through the feast.
Deuteronomy 31 gives the order of operations: the people hear, so that they learn, so that they fear the LORD, so that they are careful to do all the words of this law. Obedience does not happen without hearing, learning, and fearing first. And the children who had not known would hear and learn to fear, generation after generation, the plains of Moab repeated. Short-circuit that process and the children will not know and will not obey: keep that in mind for Judges 2, where a generation arises that knows neither the LORD nor his works, and for the seventy-year captivity Chronicles ties to sabbatical years Israel never kept.
The Old Testament treats the Torah as the foundation of all spiritual insight; the rest of Scripture makes sense only correlated with what the Torah has already given. Joshua 1 opens the Prophets with a man commanded to meditate on the book of the law day and night; Psalm 1 opens the Writings with the blessed man whose delight is in the law of the LORD, meditating day and night. Both doors of the canon swing back toward the Torah. Essex is blunt: you will not advance in understanding the Bible without understanding the Torah.
In Luke 24 Jesus rebukes the two disciples as slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken; they had loved the glory texts and skipped the suffering ones. Then, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained the things concerning himself in all the Scriptures, the finest Old Testament class ever taught, and their hearts burned as he spoke. One of Essex's professors used to say that for a real spiritual blessing you should meditate on the parts of the Bible you have not underlined: attention to all of God's word.
In John 5 Jesus tells Israel's leaders that their accuser is Moses, in whom they had set their hope: if you believed Moses you would believe me, for he wrote of me. Rejection of Christ's words exposes a prior rejection of Moses rightly read. For the believer the logic also runs the other way: we believe Christ, and Christ affirmed that everything Moses wrote was God-given and pointed to him, so we believe Moses.
Does all this make Christians keepers of the Sinai covenant? No, and the course will return to how Israel's ordinances relate to believers in Christ. But nothing given to believers now is out of harmony with the Torah, and the basic shape is the same in both Testaments: a people chosen, called, saved, redeemed, set apart, and then instructed how to live. The Torah was not written to us, but it is certainly written for us, profitable for teaching, rebuke, correction, and training.
We are not the first readers of the Torah. Interpretation divides into the pre-critical era, Jewish and Christian, patristic, medieval, Reformation, and the critical era that follows the Enlightenment, with its source, form, tradition, and literary criticisms. Anthology series now gather the ancient, medieval, and Reformation Christian commentary on each book, and the Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch surveys ten interpretive stances. The course's stance is simple and Messianic: the Torah is part of God's inerrant word, written through Moses, historically accurate, and read the way Jesus Christ and his apostles read it.
If everything else fades, keep this: the Torah is one literary unit, one book traditionally divided into five parts, probably between 400 and 250 BC so synagogue communities could copy and carry it on manageable scrolls. God told Joshua to meditate on the book, singular, and the New Testament never says the books of Moses. Do not take apart what God has put together: preaching Exodus without reference to Genesis is like preaching Romans 3 through 6 with no glance at Romans 1 and 2. Essex urges every student, once, to read or scan the whole Torah in a single sitting, to stand as it were on the plains of Moab and hear it whole.
Asked about Moses recording his own death, Essex sides with the view that Deuteronomy 34 is a narrative, not a prophecy, added after Moses died, quite possibly by Joshua, which would keep it very early. Moses knew and foretold that he would die outside the land, but the account of the death itself reads as later narration. The question remains a live discussion, even among believing scholars, and it leaves the larger conviction untouched: the Torah as we have it is one literary whole from God through Moses.
Each opens the chapter in your ESV app or on esv.org.
Tap an answer. A wrong guess points you back to the outline; when all thirteen are right, the lecture is marked complete on this device.
1. What does the word Torah mean at root?
2. Where does the Greek title Pentateuch come from?
3. What do the Torah's two families of biblical names emphasize?
4. According to Deuteronomy 31, what did Moses do with the law at the end of his life?
5. Who was required to attend the sabbatical-year reading of the Torah?
6. What is the order of operations in Deuteronomy 31 that leads to obedience?
7. How do Joshua 1 and Psalm 1 relate to the Torah?
8. What had the Emmaus disciples ignored in the Scriptures?
9. What does Jesus say about Moses in John 5?
10. In what sense is the Torah for Christians?
11. What is the single point Essex says to keep if everything else is forgotten?
12. Why was the Torah probably divided into five parts between 400 and 250 BC?
13. How does Essex handle the account of Moses' death in Deuteronomy 34?
All thirteen correct. Lecture 3 is complete.
Every seventh year all Israel, down to the children and the sojourners, stood together and heard the Torah read. What would a modern equivalent of that whole-congregation hearing look like, and what did Israel lose when it stopped?
One professor's counsel: meditate on the parts of the Bible you have not underlined. Which parts of Scripture do you skip past, and what might it mean that Jesus began with Moses when explaining himself?
Essex says preaching Exodus without Genesis is like preaching Romans 3 through 6 without Romans 1 and 2. How does treating the Torah as one book change the way you would read or teach any part of it?
The Lord's charge to Joshua as the Torah passed into his hands: this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but meditate on it day and night, to do all that is written in it, for then your way will prosper and you will have success.
The lecture's own trail: the introductions to the history of interpretation in the Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch, including its survey of ten interpretive stances; the anthology series gathering ancient, medieval, and Reformation Christian commentary on each book; and Essex's standing assignment to every student, to sit down once and read the Torah from beginning to end, hearing it whole as Israel did on the plains of Moab.