The Legal Blend in Biblical Narrative (Joshua 20:1–9, Judges 6:25–31, 1 Samuel 15:2, 28:3–25, 2 Kings 4:1–7, Jeremiah 34:12–17, Nehemiah 5:1–12)

Abstract

In the 1980s scholars identified the “legal blend”—the phenomenon in Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles whereby the practice of a law is expressed as a conflation of two earlier iterations of the law as found in the legal corpora of the Pentateuch. The phenomenon is thought to reflect upheaval in Israel’s history and the need to reach a great compromise between competing strands of legal tradition. Discussions have identified legal blends in the books of Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles in descriptions of normative practice. This study claims that we also find the legal blend employed toward “haggadic” or rhetorical ends, whereby the law is extracted from its original focus and emerges within a new configuration of meaning. This study identifies seven narratives that blend iterations of the same law from across what are normally construed as distinct legal corpora. These examples are found in a broad range of narrative texts, most from the so-called Deuteronomic History. Trends that emerge from these examples are identified. The findings complicate the claim that the legal blend was exclusively a postexilic phenomenon.