Covenant Conditions
Then the Lord said, “Because this people draw near with their words and honor Me with their lip service, but they remove their hearts far from Me, and their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote, Isaiah 29:13 NASB
Tradition – When you read this verse, what do you think it means? Yes, we see God’s complaint that the people only serve Him outwardly. They say the right things. They follow the right rituals. But He complains that that don’t serve or reverence Him with their hearts. I’m sure you got that bit. Now I want you to concentrate on the final phrase. The word in the translation is “tradition.” It looks as if God is saying that the pattern of past religious activity, the things we do because of our religious history and culture, are insulting to God. What He wants is our hearts, not our practices. This translation fits the Christian idea that the Jews were superseded by the Church because they continued to hold on to conventions no longer part of God’s plan. They didn’t convert because of their fixation on rules and routines. But the translation is wrong (deliberately?).
The Hebrew word here is miṣwâ. The NASB dictionary informs us that this word is derived from tsavah. The word tsavah is translated in the NASB with the following English words:
tsavah (845b); a prim. root; to lay charge (upon), give charge (to), command, order:—appoint(1), appointed(4), appoints(1), charge(5), charged(17), charging(1), command(56), commanded(332), commander(1), commanding(18), commands(6), commission(3), commissioned(4), commit(1), gave a command(1), gave them a charge(1), gave command(2), gave commandment(2), gave orders(2), give his charge(1), give you in commandment(1), give you charge(1), give orders(3), given(1), given a command(1), given it an order(1), given command(1), given commandment(1), giving(1), instructed(1), issued a command(2), laid(1), laid down(1), ordained(4), order(4), ordered(5), put(1), sent(1), set his in order(1), set your in order(2).[1]
You will notice that “tradition” is never the translation of this root word. Furthermore, the NASB lists the following English translations for miṣwâ:
command(15), commanded(7), commandment(34), commandments(118), commands(2), obligation(1), prescribed(2), terms(1), things(4), tradition*(1), what(1).[2]
As you can see, the choice of “tradition” occurs only once, in this verse. In every other occurrence, both the root and the derivative are translated by words associated with “command.” In fact, if we investigate occurrences of miṣwâ, we discover that it is used for the Ten Commandments, hardly what we think of as “tradition.” Can we conclude that this translation of Isaiah 29:13 is, in essence, anti-Jewish? I think so. The choice of “tradition” without any other linguistic support gives the impression that God doesn’t like Jewish religious routines, customs or practices. The implication is that if we are going to please God we must not do what these people did, namely, act in Jewish religious ways. We need new forms of worship, not old Jewish ones. But the real meaning of the verse isn’t about traditions at all. It’s about not following the Ten Commandments with heart and hands. What God wants is true obedience, motivated by love, not form. There is nothing here that suggests the form is wrong in itself. It just isn’t sufficient. “The rules of observance are law in form and love in substance. The Torah contains both law and love. Law is what holds the world together; love is what brings the world forward.”[3]
Heschel translates the verse like this: “This people draw near with their mouth and honor Me with their lips, while their hearts are far from Me, and their fear of Me is a commandment of men learned by rote.” The implications are startlingly different. If we read this verse with the correct understanding of miṣwâ, we could draw another conclusion. Insofar as the Church has left behind the Ten Commandments (including the commandment about Shabbat), it is the Church that causes God to say, “This people draw near with their words and honor Me with their lip service, but they remove their hearts far from Me.”
Topical Index: tradition, miṣwâ, commandment, Isaiah 29:13
[1] Thomas, R. L. (1998). New American Standard Hebrew-Aramaic and Greek dictionaries : updated edition. Anaheim: Foundation Publications, Inc.
* An asterisk (*) indicates that the key word represents two or more Hebrew or Aramaic words. Refer to the English concordance listing of the key word for the additional Hebrew or Aramaic word numbers.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Abraham Heschel, Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 170.
