Covenant Connection

November 2024 Vol. 18.1.   
Cheshvan, 5785

A Universe in Twelve Words:
The Seven Laws of the Rainbow Covenant

Jews, the Children of Israel, are called to live by the Bible’s Ten Commandments’ laws, involving a total of 613 Scriptural black-letter laws, including the laws that make the end-of-the-week Sabbath compulsory, and that make Israel a nation apart. This is Israel’s obligation arising from the Covenant of Sinai, including the entire Law of Moses – the Torah, the  Divine “Teaching,” “Guidance,” “Way” or “Law.” Non-Jews or Gentiles –  in Torah parlance, the Children of Noah, the vast majority of the human race – are subject to an older Covenant and a simpler, much more straightforward body of instruction, which doesn’t compel Sabbath-observance: the Seven Noahide Commandments, the Code of the Rainbow Covenant.

The Rainbow is the symbol of this, the Bible’s first covenant – a solemn, binding, eternal contract – between the Sovereign of the Universe and all the Earth, including the whole human race.

Genesis  9, the One and Only Living God speaking to Noah and his family: “This is the token of the covenant which I make between Me and you and every living creature with you, for perpetual generations: I do set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for a  token of the covenant between Me and the Earth (Gen. 9:13)

Obviously, this is meant for everybody, forever. It’s a continuance and a slight expansion upon the one prior revelation – 10 generations earlier – to the legendary first true human beings, Adam and his wife Eve, that God created man “in His image” (Genesis 1:26-27). Basically, the Seven Universal Laws of the Rainbow Covenant make the prior universal revelation, to Adam, operational. All the Seven Laws logically follow the first revelation, that every human being exists in “the image” of God.

Many nations have traditions that roughly correspond to these precepts – the so-called Golden Rule, however it’s phrased, “Do unto others as you would be done by,” etc. – but only Israel kept the whole tradition alive, thanks to the miracle of Torah and the writing and the covenant-instruction of Moses. Genesis 9 is a memory-retrieval device, a mnemonic, declaring the word “covenant,” or “b’rit,” seven times, reflecting and recalling the Rainbow Covenant’s seven commandments.

So, in just twelve words, in the ancient Talmud Bavli, the so-called Babylonian Talmud, the Torah sets them all out – simultaneously a comprehensive body of law, a philosophy, a moral code, and a compelling, logically harmonious, elevating forever-modern worldview. These are the Seven Commandments, the Universal Law, Heaven’s basic rules and instructions for living a moral, fully human life. They are designed to guide every son and daughter of women and, collectively, every nation. These are the laws of the Rainbow Covenant – the First Covenant, also called the Noahide Covenant,  after the Biblical figure of Noah: the Seven Commandments of the Children of Noah.

The Torah is a unitary program for all humanity.

Following the initial universal revelation to Adam and Eve, that every individual human being is a more or less sacred being, a precious, infinite personage, the Seven Commandments teach, against all the contrary ideas and philosophies of savage paganism, vying cosmologies, and tyrannies of all time, that:

1) Life and the Earth are real. The pain of animals matters to the Lord Himself. He will not suffer people, created in “His image” in order to serve Him as His stewards over Earth (Genesis 1), to treat His creatures with gratuitous cruelty, to devour them or any part torn from them while they’re living, the way that wild animals might. People, being people, need to stand up to the exalted status of existing in God’s “image” and the responsibilities of stewardship and treat the natural world responsibly – and not just treat the gift from God  of life, and of dominion over the Earth, as a license for savage piggishness.

This commandment – to kill your food before you eat it – is traditionally called “Torn Limb.” Don’t tear a limb from a living creature to devour it. It applies to the higher animals with developed nervous systems – to all mammals, and many birds – who would suffer from such cruelty.

This commandment appears to cast some light on the Torah’s famous dietary prohibitions, governing the people of Israel, against eating meat and milk together (the very symbol of mother’s love together with the dead flesh of a calf), against inflicting needless pain in the slaughtering process, and against human consumption of blood.

2) Larceny, usurping what’s not yours, defiles the Earth. This commandment corresponds to the Torah’s “you shall not steal”  (Exodus 20:15). Volumes could and have been written about the extent of this prohibition: it covers commercial crimes, and defamation, kidnapping, and even rape. It prohibits, like all the  Universal Commandments, savage oppression.

3) Sex laws. Human beings are sexual beings. Using sex to diminish and oppress others, to infringe their right to not be forced, coerced or pressured into sexual relations, or to force sex on animals, is sordid, forbidden, blasphemous, and less-than-animal misconduct.

4) Murder. This corresponds to the Torah’s “you shall not commit  murder” (Exodus 20:13, Deuteronomy 6:17), and the early black-letter revelation in Genesis: “Whosoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the ‘image’ of God made He man” (Genesis 9:5-6). This precept has bearing on matters including suicide, “assisted suicide,” and fetal abortion – since the Torah recognizes that there is some sanctity even in womb-bound humans – as well as  capital punishment and warfare.

5) Dinim, or literally “laws,” or – really – the Law against lawlessness. We are all Divinely obligated to stand up for justice, fairness and equity on Earth and fight against oppression and injustice. This is really an anti-anarchy, pro-government Commandment. Humans must necessarily organize ourselves into societies and do what we can to ensure that our societies operate justly.

6) Laws against sacrilege, or [against] “blessing the Name,” (really, “cursing” the Divine Name). The Rainbow Covenant, like the Torah, teaches that people have the power both to sanctify the Creator – the Infinite Sovereign of the Universe – and, God-forbid, to disparage or profane Him. His “Name” – His reputation, what people think of Him – is in our hands. This Commandment is so closely related to the following Commandment, against Idolatry, that it’s like the two legs of a man walking.

7) Idolatry – or, really, literally, “Weird Worship,” or “Weird Service.” The great sage Maimonides – Rambam – put this prohibition first among the Universal laws. But it resembles the prior Law. Worshiping or “serving” a cause or deity by performing acts that no deity worth worshiping would ever countenance – like murdering children to glorify Allah, for instance – that is both blasphemous (a violation of the Law against Sacrilege) and Idolatrous.

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Notice that all these “Noachide” or Seven Commandments Laws are negative, “You shall not,” prohibitions. Unlike the Torah’s Ten Commandments, they’re designed to be legislated into criminally enforceable law, administered by police and courts. Which in fact they partly have been, in the nations’ law codes: in no nation is it lawful to murder children to glorify any deity, even though some nations – we’re thinking particularly of Iran and the nations of the Arab League, in their endless struggle to annihilate Israel – practically encourage it.

No nation and no person is virtuous unless it, he, or she, do the opposite of what the Seven Commandments prohibit. To refrain from murder is not particularly praiseworthy, for instance, but it is indeed virtuous to try to save the life of one in danger. To refrain from larcency isn’t all that wonderful, similarly, but charitable giving really is good. Further, unquestionably, one way to determine what is good and virtuous is to reference the world’s only other Divinely given set of laws, the Torah, which should be regarded as the Universal Laws’ other face. All Divine legislation is related to all other Divine legislation. And “Happy is he who heeds Your Commandments, your Torah and Your word.” (Siddur).

In the Torah, the whole Book of Genesis, the Book of Exodus, up to the Revelation at Mt. Sinai, and Numbers 22-24, constitute terrific learning material for Noahides, along with all the rest of Bible: Psalms, Proverbs, the Histories and Writings and all the prophets, etc. The Bible exists, partly, to help Noahides, or Gentiles, orient themselves towards the people and the phenomenon of Israel.

We need to emphasize that, every person existing in the “image” of Divinity, that democracy, one man, one vote; government of the people, by the people, for the people, strikes us, at least, as the highest and most righteous type of government. One aspect of every nation’s sovereignty is the right and obligation to determine the details of its own laws for itself. The Seven Commandments are all general prohibitions which point the way to that which is good, “and what HaShem (the Living God of Israel, the Lord of all Creation) demands of you – to do only that which is just, to love generosity and kindness, and to walk humbly with” Him (Micah 5:28). Within the framework of the Seven Rainbow Covenant Commandments, each nation is obliged to forge its own path to what  is good.

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Why Anti-Semitism?

Israel’s obligation to help raise up the nations, scholars say, is one of the reasons for the Jews’ dispersion among the nations.
From “Rainbow Covenant: Torah and the Seven Universal Laws”

Recently, discussing the phenomenon of Jew-hatred, we asked, sarcastically:

“Why would anyone hate acolytes of a religion that claims to be radically different and better than all others, making us better than all others, and gives us a basis for declaring all others to be lacking, while offering them no real way to join us cool kids?”

It seems only natural that people should feel inclined to presume such people to be guilty, before considering the genuinely extraordinary facts.

As the Jewish people confront Iran and the myths of the 22-countries of the Arab League – that the Jews’ ancient Holy Land, the size of tiny El Salvador, or the state of New Jersey, is really a sacred Muslim trust, a wakf, belonging to the followers of Islam and to no one else, while the Jews are strangers, “colonialists” and interlopers in the Middle East, who really need to pack up and move “back” to Poland – it seems appropriate to mention two things:

1) With some notable – and very praiseworthy! – exceptions, the Arab peoples have been extremely ungracious to the Jewish people, from before Islam began, and then even more so subsequently. The Persians – the Iranians – haven’t been excessively hospitable either.

2) All of Iran’s and the Arab League’s chatter about Jews being European colonialists who should go back to Poland is ridiculous. This map helps tell the story:

By Michael Dallen
Detroit
November 2024

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