Injustice Made Legal: Deuteronomic Law and the Plight of Widows, Strangers, and Orphans in Ancient Israel.

Schmitt, John J.

By Harold V. Bennett. The Bible in Its World. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002. Pp. xiii + 209. $28.

This is a surprising book. The dusk jacket proclaims it "daring" and "necessary reading for anyone interested in the Hebrew Bible, ancient history, or social justice issues." Bennett argues that certain laws in Deuteronomy for these disadvantaged groups were written from motivation other than sheer compassion and humanitarianism. Using critical theory and relentless analysis on certain Deuteronomic laws, he concludes that cultic functionaries, participants of the Yahweh-alone movement at the time of the Omride dynasty of the Northern Kingdom, created certain of these laws for their own material advancement. Specific laws in Deuteronomy differ from laws in the covenant code from an earlier period. The innovations of centralized location and temporal specifics (every three years, in one law) of the collection of tithes raise questions and invite comparison with the previous regulations for these oppressed people.

B. moves from data to selected data in Deuteronomy and narrative books, and employs much sociological and biblical scholarship. Sometimes the argumentation produces a "well ..." in the reader, and often one reads "possible" or "this implies" without total conviction. An example would be the interpretation of the text's recollection of the Exodus and of Israel's former slavery as a threat that violators of these laws would return to such a condition. Sometimes the narrative material is taken as reflecting historical data exactly, and other times just the ideological source of the passage is sought. But the research and the insights are truly stimulating. B. is right to claim that critical theory has not been used in the examination of Israel's laws.

Is the argument complete? The nondiscussion of the prophets' emphasis on vulnerable persons is puzzling. The wisdom literature too takes up this concern. At one point B. says that he will discuss some Mesopotamian and Syro-Palestinian texts, but this turns out to be only a reference to the Moabite stone and some inscriptions of Shalmaneser III. Readers might want the larger context for this focus on the oppressed.

B.'s approach is appreciated. His book should be in any library.

JOHN J. SCHMITT

Marquette University, Milwaukee