Performance as liminality: Between reality and possibility

I

The process of the extraction and transfer of wealth from below to above is offered in the Bible with two paradigmatic articulations. First Pharaoh, in the imagination of ancient Israel, is a cipher and a metaphor for all such policy and practice. Whatever may be the “historical” basis of Pharaoh, it is clear that he functions, in Israel’s imagination, in every season, under every empire, as an icon of confiscatory greed. Thus the narrative of Genesis features Pharaoh, as the one who controls the most reliable food supply (Gen 12:10–20), as the one who had nightmares about scarcity (Gen 41:1–7), and as the one who implemented an economic policy committed to accumulation which eventuated in a monopoly that reduced peasants to slaves (Gen 47:13–26).

The astonishing narrative of Genesis 47 tells of the forcible transfer of wealth. The peasants, amid famine, first pay their money to the food monopoly; second, they trade their cattle (means of production) for food, and third, they give up their land and their bodies to slavery for the sake of food. The hegemony of Pharaoh is so compelling that those who are now reduced to slavery express gratitude for their new bondaged status:

You have saved our lives; may it please my lord, we will be slaves to Pharaoh. (Gen 47:25)

Second, the ideology of extraction and transfer is reiterated in Israel by King Solomon, Pharaoh’s son-in-law. While the Solomon narrative ostensibly celebrates Solomon, little alertness is required to notice the irony of the text that wryly observes Solomon’s monopolizing propensity. ² It is Solomon who had an elaborate tax collecting system governed in part by two of his sons-in-law (I Kings 4:7–19). It is Solomon who maintained an elaborate table of meat for his is extended entourage (4:22–23). It is Solomon who had in his bureaucracy a “secretary of forced labor” (4:6), who drafted into the labor corps both his own subjects (5:13–18) and foreigners who served at his behest (9:15–22). It is Solomon who monopolized the arts of songs and proverbs, and who cataloged learned knowledge (4:32–34). It is Solomon who was an arms dealer, trafficking in horses and chariots (10:26–29). It is Solomon who endlessly collected wives and concubines, surely reckoned as commodities (11:3). He had learned the art of confiscation and monopoly from his father-in-law! It does not surprise that it is this same Solomon who specialized in temple gold in order to exhibit his commitment to the beauty of holiness (6:17–22, 7:48–51). It is Solomon who introduced into Israel the temple architecture of stratification for gradations of holiness, the vestibule, the nave, and the most holy place, or more conventionally, the outer court, the holy place, and the holy of holies (I Kings 6:14–19). ³

This architecture served to stratify society in terms of access to holiness according to norms of “purity;” surely an ideological device for determining social control and social access and, we may imagine, social goods. That stratified access is an adumbration of what we now practice as stratification pertaining to health care delivery and, as I have suggested elsewhere, to gradations of airplane passengers in endless variation with access to the outer court, the holy place, but now hardly ever to the holy of holies. ⁴ The holy of holies is reserved, as it was then, for those with intricate expertise. Pharaoh and his son-in-law stratified and valued or devalued according to the rigorous expectations of the “gold standard.”

We may identify the core commitments that legitimated the monopolies of Pharaoh and Solomon, rules of the game to which I will return. First, it is all about commodities and those who have and control them. Second, production must be endless. And third, greed is good and indispensible because it propels both endless production and insatiable acquisition. Those who produced wealth for Pharaoh and his son-in-law were commoditized in their production of commodities, had to produce endlessly, and were discounted in the greed system and never benefitted from it. These commitments by the power elite with their downside for the workers on the one hand legitimated policies and practices of extraction and transfer. On the other hand, these commitments fated the “losers” to an endless, unrelieved life of production that could only result in hopelessness. The extractors preferred their cheap labor to be hopeless, without energy to imagine beyond present arrangements.

II

The Bible does not spend much time on an analysis of the protocols and techniques that sustained Pharaoh and his son-in-law. The Bible is much more interested in articulating a counter-possibility that that could imagine and perform life outside the ideology of extraction and transfer that contained all approved social possibilities for all parties. The question posed by such a contained system is, “How do the hopeless hope? How do the exhausted imagine?” I propose that we consider the hope of the hopeless as liminal activity that runs between social realism about the power of Pharaoh and his son-in-law and social possibility that lies beyond the aegis of the extractors. That liminal ground is filled, in ancient Israel, by dramatic performance in oracle, song, narrative, and dance in liturgical form. These performances are acts of resistance that entertain the prospect of life outside the domain of greed. That performance edges out beyond realism and entertains possibilities that are performed liturgically long before they are enacted in the economy. The purpose of such liturgical performance in a liminal mood is exactly to be ready, as the manly adverts say, “when the time is right.” As these adverts imply, moreover, liturgical foreplay generates the right time for actual possibility in the world.

The Exodus narrative is the performance of defiance and alternative that keeps attesting that there is life beyond Pharaoh and his son-in-law. The Exodus—the exit—is not, as we have assumed too long, a geographical move from Egypt to the land of promise located on the map. It is rather a liturgical departure from an ideology of bondage that manages to assert its own totalism. Pharaoh wants to make the ideological case that there is no possible life thinkable, imaginable, or livable outside his domain of production and accumulation. The liturgy of Exodus, however, dares exactly the opposite. In order to do so, it has as its primary character the holy God whose name is so enigmatic that it can never be boxed in to an ideology (Ex 3:14). The narrative attests a force and agency that will outlast Pharaoh with the insistence, “Let my people go.” Let them go outside the totalism, outside the production schedule, outside the dictums of greed, accumulation, and monopoly. That “other” agent emerges from the burning bush of Exodus 3:1–9 with a huge resolve for emancipation.

The emergence of the holy one in the narrative, however, is stated quite cunningly in liminal performance. It is preceded in Exodus 2:23–25 by the out loud cry of the slaves who come to consciousness enough to voice their suffering and pain. Such a voicing is itself an act of defiant hope that refuses the bodily pain inflicted by the greedy world of Pharaoh. Indeed, Antonio Gramsci can say of that cry that it is the “small door through which Messiah may come.” ⁵

And just after the emergence of the holy one in the bush, after this new God has uttered resolve for emancipation, this God says to Moses, “You go to Pharaoh.” Divine resolve eventuates in human agency. It is Moses, not God, who must run the risks and engage the hegemony of Pharaoh. It is Moses who must persuade his despairing comrades that a life outside the totalizing system is on offer. Thus the sequence is critical for the performance of generative liminality: first, the cry of pain brings acute suffering to public attention so that it evokes energy; second, the emergent holy one responds to the specificity of the cry uttered in the depth of reality; third, the human agent is summoned to run risks.

What follows is a contest between the greed system and the alternative social possibility outside the greed system (Ex 7–12). The force of liminal performance is the affirmation that there is life outside: it is, to be sure, life that is perpetually risky. The contest is joined. The narrative does not rush. The narrative knows that alternative requires long, slow, oft-repeated scenarios that will yield energy and courage for departure. But the narrative also knows that as energy and courage build through performance, Pharaoh is progressively rendered helpless and exposed as illegitimate and ultimately impotent. Pharaoh starts out being defiant and dismissive. As the performance moves on, however, his facade of absoluteness wears away and he begins to negotiate. The progress of the drama, each step along the way, leaves him diminished in authority and capacity. By 8:25, Pharaoh says, “Go and sacrifice to your God within the land;” Moses refuses. By 8:28, he says, “I will let you go into the wilderness, provided you do not go very far away. Pray for me.” By 9:27, he says, “This time I have sinned; the Lord is in the right, and I am my people are in the wrong. Pray to the Lord!” By 10:8, Pharaoh says, “Go worship the Lord your God. But which ones are to go?” Moses, anticipating Mandela, responds, “We will not go until we all go.” By 10:16, Pharaoh confesses, “I have sinned … Do forgive my sin just this once.” And by 10:24, Pharaoh says, “Go, worship the Lord. Only your flocks and herds shall remain behind. Even your children may go with you.” Moses responds that he will take every hoof when he goes. This liminal performance re-imagines Pharaoh. He is imagined weak, frightened, and eventually helpless. The narrative process is the patient undoing of Pharaoh and, conversely, the patient recovery of nerve, capacity, and daring for those who observe about themselves that they are more than cheap labor.

Finally, Pharaoh says in 12:32:

Go, worship the Lord as you have said. Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone. But bless me!

III

Of course, the story does not end there. By an act of defiant courage allied with holy resolve, the slaves departed Pharaoh’s system in Exodus 15. By chapter 16, when they had experienced “the wilderness,” they wanted to go back. The wilderness is not just desert. It is an arena without viable life supports, even short of the modest guarantees offered by Pharaoh. This liturgical performance, however, attests that they found the wilderness to be occupied by abundance. They were given, in ways they could not explain, bread, meat, and water. The bread, they said, came from heaven. The meat, they said, came from compliant quail. And the water came from a rock. It was all miracle! It was a miracle to discover there was a viable life beyond the gift of Pharaoh.

They hurried along in their inexplicable abundance. They arrived at Sinai, and before any commandments were given, they agreed to obedience. The signed a blank check to the emancipating God:

Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do. (Ex 19:8)

They agreed eagerly, surely recognizing that whatever the emancipatory God would command would be better than the commands of Pharaoh. Pharaoh’s oft-repeated command is, “More bricks; more bricks without straw; don’t be lazy; more bricks” (Ex 5:7–19). Behind Pharaoh’s command are Pharaoh’s convictions: it is all about commodities and who has them; production must be endless. Greed is good and indispensible. The emancipated slaves agreed to an alternative obedience (Ex 19:8). And then, in the next chapter, the holy voice of emancipation spoke ten times (20:1–17). These ten commands are counter commands. ⁶ They are ways of resisting Pharaoh’s ideology and forming life outside the domain of monopoly. Here I will consider only three of the ten.

The first and second commandments of Sinai are readily antithetical to the commands of Pharaoh (Ex 20:1–3). The first command, to obey only YHWH, asserts that Pharaoh and Pharaoh’s command economy merit no ultimate obedience. Thus the commandment is a contradiction to the Egyptian gods who legitimated the exploitation system (see Ex 12:12). The commandments are clearly contra Pharaoh’s system. The God who speaks here is the one who delivered from bondage. The Exodus narrative has been the imaginative liturgical enterprise of deconstructing Pharaoh’s grip on the imagination of Israel. The second commandment that prohibits images is, given Pharaoh’s culture of commodity fetishism, an insistence that Israel’s life cannot be one of commoditization, either the pursuit of commodities or the willingness to be commoditized by Pharaoh’s system.

The commandment concerning Sabbath provides regular, disciplined, visible work stoppage, a decisive intentional break with production schedules, in order that life not be defined by productivity (Ex 20:8–11). It is evident that in Pharaoh’s system there could no such work stoppage, not for the slaves, or the taskmasters, or the supervisors and we may suspect, not even for Pharaoh, for even Pharaoh is defined by insatiable commodity pursuits. ⁷

The tenth commandment, “Thou shalt not covet,” is a prohibition against inordinate acquisitiveness (Ex 20:17). ⁸ The commandment is not concerned with matters of petty envy, but with systemic avarice. It is clear that Pharaoh’s system is completely devoted to acquisition, as it drives to accumulation that will not be sated until there is monopoly. This tenth commandment, moreover, uses the word “neighbor” three times, neighbor’s wife (in a patriarchal culture!), neighbor’s house, and anything that belongs to the neighbor. The very notion of “neighbor” is definitional for the covenant community that is enacted at Sinai: the others are not, as in Pharonic imagination, only threats or competitors. In covenant they are companions in the practice of a common good.

The tradition of Sinai, regularly performed in some form in Israel amid its many seasons of exploitation, is a practical proposal for the management of social power. It is at the same time a contestation for the imagination of Israel, so that Israel may know itself destined for neighborly emancipation in every venue. The contest is urgent, because this “departure” from Pharaoh—geographical, economic, liturgical—depends on embrace of a covenantal destiny that refuses being enthralled by Pharaoh’s appetites; appetites sustained by an ideology of greed. One can see the endless attraction and seduction of being drawn back into the exploitative system of Pharaoh, both in Exodus 16 wherein emancipated Israel immediately wanted to return to the brick quotas of Pharaoh, and in the narrative of the Golden Calf wherein the sacral quality of gold becomes a compelling alternative to YHWH’s neighborliness (32:1–6). The drama of Pharaoh–Israel–YHWH becomes paradigmatic for the continuing life of contestation in Israel. Of course we dare imagine it is a paradigm that has significance beyond that particular community of performance and interpretation.

IV

The ten absolutes of Sinai were by themselves not adequate. They were not adequate because actual life in the world requires conduct, attitudes, and policies that are daily, specific, local, and face-to-face. The broad sketch of Sinai must have interpretation, and that interpretation is of course the primary and endless work of the tradition. The accent on the local and the daily is evident in the Covenant Code of Exodus 21–23 that, except for placement, has no discernible connection to the Big Ten. This collection of commandments focuses on how neighbors relate to each other. Indeed, we might imagine that the text has been formulated by Wendell Berry with his accent on slow, local, daily neighborliness. They assure restitution for stealing an ox or a sheep (22:1), restitution for livestock that get loose in a neighbor’s field (22:5), restitution for a fire that burns a neighbor’s crop (22:6), and restitution for injury for a barrowed animal (22:14–15). There is more; part of this early collection of regulations is harsh and not neighborly, a fact that suggests that matters were deeply contested, for neighborly alternative to a command economy is not easy or simple.

The big effort to unpack the alternative of Sinai is the tradition of Deuteronomy. The book received its name from the provision of 17:18 where it is specified that the king must have—we translate—a “copy,” a deuteros of the Torah. But of course Deuteronomy is not a “copy” of Sinai. Rather it is a second version, a “revised version,” a “revised standard version,” a “new revised standard version,” as Israel endlessly worked at articulating its alternative to Pharaoh. One can of course see the anti-Pharaoh casting of Deuteronomy in a variety of ways. First, the fourth commandment on Sabbath is here given an Exodus motivation, “remember that you were a slave in Egypt” (Deut 5:15). That formulation is repeated in the teaching of Deuteronomy (15:18, 16:12, 24:18, 22). All of these reminders urge refusal of the acquisitive model of Pharaoh that will surely lead to slavery.

Second, one can see the anti-Pharaoh imagination at work in the singular provision for kingship in 17:14–20. It is provided that the king in Israel must not accumulate for himself horses and chariots, silver and gold, and wives. This “second version” of the Torah is for the king an alternative to accumulation. It is obvious that the provision has in purview the tradition of Solomon, the accumulator, the son-in-law of Pharaoh. Governing authority in neighborly Israel is from the ground up, an alternative to and an enemy of accumulation. These two textual evidences—frequent allusion to the Exodus and a curb on accumulation—prepare us for the specificity of Deuteronomy that seeks to evoke a neighborly economy that flourishes outside the totalism of a commodity-propelled arrangement. The specific provisions of Deuteronomy seek to prevent the ownership class, epitomized by the king, from denying other access to the resources of the community, thereby denying the legitimacy and worth of others members of the community.

Third, I judge that the year of release in Deuteronomy 15:1–18 is the signature of the tradition of Deuteronomy. ⁹ It states the positive counterpoint to the prohibition of coveting (acquisition) in the tenth commandment of Sinai. Now, beyond “no acquisition,” the creditor class is to make active redress to the debtor class, specifically by the cancellation of debts after six years. ¹⁰ The intent is that the economy should be subordinated to neighborly well-being and therefore steps must be taken that preclude a permanent under-class. ¹¹ The urgency of the provision is indicated by the awareness that there will “never cease to be need” (v. 11). The prospect is that the faithful performance of this regulation will eventuate in a socio-economic situation in which “there will be no need among you” (v. 4).

It is clear that this neighborly provision was resisted, and perhaps so effectively resisted that it was never enacted. The resistance is reflected in the warning,

Do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. (v. 7)

The Old Testament does not dwell on the social mechanisms whereby the vulnerable in the community were forcibly managed by the ownership class. One can, however, consider the positive provisions advocated and thereby identify by inference the mechanisms that must have been resisted. Thus, moving boundary markers by the exercise of eminent domain or the power of zoning makes the small property owner helpless before the power of ownership class. Charging interest on loans in a way that will create a permanent poverty class fates some to a hopeless spiral of debt. Making subprime loans to the poor causes them to risk what property they have as collateral, so as to become a permanent debtor class. The practice of wage theft always works to the advantage of moneyed interests and against those cast as cheap labor. When excessive loan collateral is required, justice has no role in the reality of economics. When nothing of value is left for those without resources in a confiscatory economy, the neighborhood cannot flourish.

If we take the mantra, “Remember you were slaves…” as definitive and we seek its negation in policy and in practice, the erasure of Exodus memory, an erasure accomplished by Solomon, is essential. The Exodus memory functions in the tradition of Deuteronomy as an endless testimony about the proper limit of acquisitive practice and about neighborly alternative that is guaranteed by holiness and not administered by the ownership class. When amnesia can be achieved, as it presumably can be by a relentless resilient ideology of accumulation, there is no limit to acquisitiveness that enslaves. There is then is no alternative possibility that could energize either reform or resistance. Thus the erasure of transformative social possibility is crucial for an acquisitive economy, the erasure of the category of neighbor, making possible an absolutizing totalism that is beyond challenge.

V

The current tilt of Old Testament criticism, perhaps a fad, is to date everything as late as possible. As a result, it is currently credible to assume that the final form of the Exodus-Deuteronomy tradition is in the Persian period. There is a long-standing tendency among us to take the Persian hegemony, in contrast to the Babylonian Empire, as a relatively benign operation. We must be clear, however, that the Persian Empire, with its policies of taxation, was not overly benign, but acted like every empire will act. I will mention only two texts that illuminate a perspective in the Jewish tradition amid the Empire. Of these two cases, one concerns Jews in relation to Persia, the other Jews in relation to other Jews.

The long prayer of Ezra in Nehemiah 9:6–37 lets the scribe speak the truth, even though he was authorized and funded by Persia for the reformulation of the Jewish community in Jerusalem. The prayer walks YHWH through the entire memory of Israel, beginning with creation, the ancestral promises, and the Exodus deliverance. The prayer is an antiphon concerning Israel’s guilt that has brought suffering and YHWH’s mercy that repeatedly responded to that suffering. There is no erasure in Ezra’s articulation. Ezra, in summation, acknowledges both Israel’s sin and YHWH’s justice:

You have been just in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly; our kings, our officials, our priests, and our ancestors have not kept your law or heeded the commandments and the warnings that you gave them. (Neh 9:33–34)

VI

The second Persian period episode I cite concerns Jews vis-à-vis Jews. Every imperial regime can readily identify “locals” who can be co-opted to play the imperial game of exploitation, as with Joseph for Pharaoh. There were Jews who readily engaged in imperial modes of acquisitiveness, even against their own neighbor Jews. In Nehemiah 5:1–13, they are called to account by Nehemiah. ¹³ As with every alternative to imperial exploitation, this episode begins with the public voicing of pain:

Now there was a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish kin. (v. 1)

Nehemiah’s indignation toward the kin who oppress their kin pivots on a single point:

You are taking interest from your own people. (v. 7)

The long sweep from Pharaoh to Persia, from Sinai to Ezra and Nehemiah attests a deep restlessness in the Bible with predatory economic policy. That economic practice, so evident everywhere in the text, is criticized by liturgical performance that grows out of publicly voiced pain.

Our reading of the text may be an engagement with that contestation. The draw into commoditization depends upon the convergence of a caged God who legitimates the process of confiscation, shriveled neighbors who cede their life over in despair and complicity, and a flat book that attests no alternative. The breaking of that lethal totalism requires in this context, a God who commits to emancipation, neighbors who are able and willing to be agents in their own history, and a book that energizes toward and legitimates alternatives. The totalizing of Pharaoh’s ideology is subverted from the ground up, from cry to imagined possibility. The entire drama constitutes a dare that delegitimates the totalism.