RBL 11/2007

Veijola, Timo

Das fünfte Buch Mose (Deuteronomium): Kapitel 1,1–

16,17

Das Alte Testament Deutsch 8.1

Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004. Pp. x + 366.

Paper. €56.00. ISBN 3525511388.

Christoph Levin
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen
Munich, Germany

Old Testament scholarship suffered a great loss with the death of Professor Timo Veijola
of Helsinki, who succumbed to a severe psychiatric illness on 1 August 2005. His death
has prematurely deprived us of one of the most important biblical scholars of recent
decades, one whose contributions to the study of Deuteronomism are of pioneer
importance and will always belong to the foundations of our scholarship. We must
therefore be all the more grateful that during the year before his death Professor Veijola
was able to complete the first volume of his commentary on Deuteronomy. This work has
become his scholarly legacy. Although the commentary treats only the first half of the
book, its lines are so clearly drawn that it is easy to deduce what he thought about
Deuteronomy as a whole.

The commentary will long set the standard for Deuteronomic research. According to the
judgment of Lothar Perlitt (whose commentary deviates from Veijola’s in many respects)
it is “the only modern Deuteronomy commentary with which a dialogue … is absolutely
required and profitable” (Deuteronomium [BKAT 5.4; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener,
2006], 297). The Finish exegete wrote his commentary in flawless German, and his work
impressively documents the importance of German as an international language for
biblical studies. The only blemish is due not to the author but to the publisher, who had

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the book printed in the new German spelling, which is sometimes ungrammatical and
nonsensical. An English translation would be rewarding.

The volume consists almost entirely of the commentary proper, with the sole addition of
a brief introduction of six pages and a bibliography. A summary is lacking, for this
Veijola would have written only after completion of the commentary as a whole. The
interpretation takes full account of the contemporary debate, although the commentary
must have been prepared by many decades of other studies. The relevant literature that
had appeared almost up to the publication of the commentary is taken into account. The
text is based on the Masoretic Text, which is only in rare cases emended—in 1:4, 25; 2:8,
37; 4:10, 33, 37; 5:14, 24; 10:13; 11:24, 30; 14:13; 15:7, 9; 16:6 on the basis of the
transmitted text; and in 4:36; 6:3; 11:2; and 14:8 in the author’s own emendation.

The division follows the given arrangement of the text. Moses’ first address runs from
1:1–4:43, the second begins in 4:44 (–28:68). Both discourses have an extensive heading
(1:1–5; 4:44–49). The first is divided into a retrospective survey of salvation history (1:6–
3:29), the great exhortation to obey the First Commandment (4:1–40), and a coda on the
cities of refuge (4:41–43). The second address deals first with the divine covenant (5:1–
11:30) and then with the conditions of the covenant (from 11:31 onwards). At 16:17 the
commentary breaks off. Within the various sections Veijola discovers many significant
correspondences. He offers instructive observations about the structure of the section
12:2–16:17, which deals in the narrower sense with the rights of divine privilege (328–29).

In the individual pericopes too Veijola follows the structure of the text. Consequently,
some sections of the commentary cover forty and more verses (4:1–40; 9:1–10:11; 10:12–
11:30) while others deal with no more than three verses (on 1:6–8; 4:41–43; 11:31–12:1).
Although the text is treated with equal intensity, there are sections where Veijola writes
more succinctly, and there are points of particular emphasis. Both relatively and
absolutely, the excellent interpretation of the Decalogue is the most detailed part (125–
73) and forms the center of the volume.

Veijola does not follow the fashion—particularly prevalent in Deuteronomy exegesis—of

interpreting the text as a unit planned as such from its inception. Instead, he
acknowledges the literary heterogeneity, which leaps to the eye of every attentive reader.
This can only be emphatically welcomed. The nonanalytical exegesis, which goes on
interpreting the text until it is possible to see it as a unity, is very much more forced than
the analytical method! That does not mean that Veijola fails to give proper appreciation
to the final form. As the final outcome of the text’s development, this is regularly the
point of departure for the interpretation.

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Veijola dates the Ur-Deuteronomy to the period of King Josiah. He sees it as a reforming
law that pushes forward the centralization in Jerusalem of the sacrificial cult. The Book of
the Covenant, Exod 20:24–23:19, constitutes the most important Vorlage. It was reworked
to serve the cult’s centralization. This revision also aimed at a social reform. Consequently,
Deuteronomy’s characteristic ethic already goes back to the first version. Veijola
presumes that it was sponsored by “a broadly based national religious reform movement”
(3). In its original form the book had 4:45* as heading, and the Shema and its exhortation
to memorization in 6:4–9* as introduction. Otherwise the text of Ur-Deuteronomy—as
far as the interpretation goes—comprises only the commandment to present burnt
offerings solely at the central sanctuary (12:13–14), the commandment to eat there the
tithe as well as the firstling and votive offering (12:17–18; 14:22–29*; 15:19–22a), and the
concession with regard to the profane slaughtering (12:21*). In addition, the earliest law
contains social regulations, such as the forgiveness of debts (15:1–2, 7, 8-9*) and the
manumission of slaves (15:12–14a, 16–18a). The last section dealt with in this volume are
the regulations about the feast-day calendar (16:1–6a, 9–11, 13–17). The earliest stratum
consists of forty-five Masoretic verses or part-verses and hence does not extend beyond
the first chapter of today’s book (forty-six verses). Measured against 1:1–16:17, Ur-
Deuteronomy comprises no more than a tenth of the existing text. This conclusion is
probably realistic.

Like Martin Noth, Veijola ascribes the integration into the course of the narrative to the
Deuteronomistic Historian (DtrH), who, he believes, wrote round about 560 B.C.E.
Veijola adheres to the caesura between Genesis to Numbers, on the one hand, and
Deuteronomy to Kings, on the other. In his view, the earliest expansion of the command
for centralization in 12:8–12 already looks forward to the books of Kings, which means
that the heart of Deut 1–4 must already be ascribed to DtrH (60 verses or part-verses, out
of 112 verses). Here the redactor has picked up earlier traditions and has retold a selection
of events from Num 10 onwards. For the Vorlage in the book of Numbers, Veijola
adheres to the Documentary Hypothesis, basing this on Ludwig Schmidt, “Die
Kundschaftererzählung in Num 13–14 und Dtn 1,19–46,” ZAW 114 (2002): 40–58.

Veijola interprets the literary development within Deuteronomy on the basis of the
scheme of the so-called Göttingen school, according to which the first redactor, DtrH, is
followed by a Deuteronomist DtrP, who is orientated toward prophecy, and a “nomistic”
Deuteronomist DtrN, whose concern is obedience to the law. DtrP is the one who
included the Decalogue in 5:1–6:1. The supposition of DtrP as redactor is born out by the
fact that in Deut 5 Moses is presented as a prophetic mediator of revelation. Veijola is also
able to show that the commandments in the primary version of the Decalogue have their
origin in the prophetic proclamation, above all in Jer 7:9. The distinguishing feature of
DtrN is its stress on the role of Moses as the teacher and interpreter of the Torah. Veijola

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finds traces of this revision in chapters 1; 4–7; 9–11 (forty-three verses or part-verses in
all), although not in the body of the laws.

Over and above the Göttingen scheme, Veijola assumes the existence of a DtrB, whom he
assumes to have been a pupil of DtrP and DtrN, writing in the early postexilic period, that
is to say, toward the end of the sixth century (in all, 127 verses or part-verses in Deut 4–
16, which is rather more than a third of the text). According to his own words, Veijola
took over the hypothesis of this “covenant-theology Deuteronomist” from Christoph
Levin, who put it forward in 1985. I am pleased and honored that my discovery should
have proved its worth as a key to the literary history of Deuteronomy. At the same time,
Veijola has somewhat modified the hypothesis. In my dissertation Die Verheißung des
neuen Bundes (FRLANT 137; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985), 84–110, I
showed that the covenant theology that determines the structure and thrust of the present
book was still unknown to the preexilic Ur-Deuteronomy, and I tried to show in contrast
how the covenant-theology form developed step by step through the mediation of literary
additions. The conclusion that there was a coherent covenant-theology revision was first
drawn by Veijola. I do not use sigla such as DtrP and DtrN, let alone would I have
augmented them on my own account by a DtrB. Admittedly, Veijola assumes “that DtrB
was not an individual, any more than was DtrP and DtrN, but rather represents a small
group of like-minded redactors” (5).

This DtrB gave Deuteronomy its consistent thrust toward the First Commandment. The
cultic unity that was the aim was complemented by cultic purity, as we can see especially
clearly from 12:2–7 (DtrB) if it is compared with 12:13–14 (Ur-Deut.). The most
significant text in this revision is 12:28–13:19, an easily recognizable interpolation that
describes three cases of enticement to idolatry with threatened sanctions, on the
(political) pattern of vassal treaties. It is also easy to see from this chapter that DtrB links
prophecy with the Torah. The references to the Deuteronomistic edition of the book of
Jeremiah are particularly clear (288).

For Veijola a further observation has moved into the center in recent years: that the
Deuteronomists were the precursors of “the scribes.” There is a line of tradition that runs
from the interpretation that can already be found in the Bible itself, down to later rabbinic
exegesis. The growth of Deuteronomy was a continuous, century-long literary process. It
was stimulated by a multitude of associations, theological insights, and religious concerns.
Consequently, many of the additions cannot be traced back to overriding revisions but
must be understood as “commentaries on the passage.” Veijola mentions as motifs the
anathematizing of the country’s indigenous population (7:25–26; 13:16–18*), the
unconditioned love of God and Israel’s lack of righteousness (4:36–40*; 7:7–11; 9:1, 3–6),
the central position given to the Sabbath in the Decalogue and the social ethic associated

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with it (5:12–15; 15:15; 16:3*, 12), as well as the Levites’ claim to the priesthood (10:8–9;
12:12*, 19; 14:27, 29*). The priestly concern with regulations about sacrifice and dietary
injunctions might also be mentioned (e.g., 12:22–27; 14:12–20; 16:3*, 4*, 8–9a, 16*). The
latest of these revisions already presuppose the existence of the Priestly Source, and
11:29–30 even implies the Samaritan schism. The sequence of expansions reaches “almost
as far as the canonization of the Pentateuch round about 300 B.C.E.” (5). Thus the
development of the text extends over about three centuries, from the first redactional
shaping until the final form.

Anyone who really engages with the wording of the Hebrew text will soon be forced to
conclude, without any alternative, that the existing version developed through a process
of textual self-interpretation. Veijola shows the reader how it grew by way of indentations
and not infrequently also through the use of brackets. These greatly help the reader to
trace the literary historical development of the text. There is, in fact, not a single pericope
that is not marked in this way. The earliest stratum always begins at the left-hand margin.
Which stratum it is can vary. DtrN and DtrB can also provide the foundation on which
the respective pericope developed. Readers must therefore take their bearings afresh in
every pericope. At the beginning of each pericope, readers are given the necessary
information about the growth of the text. The interpretation follows the literary stages,
not the course of the text. In this way it traces the process of theological reflection that
stimulated the literary growth.

The commentary offers an excellent reading text that is able to fascinate not only the
expert but also the theological laity as well as those engaged in practical work. Veijola
draws on the whole gamut of the exegetical apparatus, but the exegesis never becomes an
end in itself, and scholarship never departs from its ancillary role. In an often surprising
and illuminating way the reader learns to listen for the changing kerygmata and to
develop a sense for the way Deuteronomy’s Sitz im Leben shifts, step by step, in the course
of the postexilic centuries. Insight into the text’s changing relation to its situation is also
the most direct path that leads from the biblical text to preaching today.

It is this preaching that the commentary wishes to serve. It is written with great theological
commitment. Notwithstanding his respect for the historical conditions of the text’s
development, Veijola is convinced of its binding religious character. This conviction is
not always easy to maintain, for many injunctions must already have been unrealistic
even when they were promulgated. The social and historical relation of Deuteronomy is a
problem that can as little be solved through the ecclesiological interpretation of
contemporary Catholics as it can through the Word-of-God theology of Lutherans
(among whom Veijola is to be numbered). In so far as a relation to reality is conceivable,
many regulations are so tied to their own time and situation that they do not fit the

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conditions of life today. Others again, and not a few, maintain a policy of rigorous
religious separation that is in contradiction to ethical principles. The sanctions in the case
of idolatry are cruel, and there is also a religiously justified double moral standard that
distinguishes between the obligations toward the brother belonging to God’s people and
the stranger. One can only come to terms with precepts of this kind if they are viewed as
the reverse side of the commandment to worship Yahweh alone and if this exclusiveness
is the response to Yahweh’s loving commitment to his people. “The First Commandment
makes of Israel a contrast society which is not permitted to avoid conflict with others if it
is to preserve its existence as God’s people” (195, following Georg Braulik). Veijola
continually compares Martin Luther’s interpretation, for whom Deuteronomy “teaches
faith best” and who there finds again his theology of the Word. Luther, for example,
interprets Deut 13 as “the conflict between trust in the Word of God and trust in worldly
ties and authorities” (293 n. 1004). Luther interprets the regulation in 15:17 about
piercing the slave’s ear as follows: “The ear means the obedience with which he bows to
the commandment” (320 n. 1147). In his notes Veijola points to many interpretations of
this kind. He also always has an eye for the rabbinic interpretation. The rabbis had a fine
feeling for the practability of the commandments, for example in the case of the year of
release (15:1–11; see p. 312).

The commentary shows its extraordinary quality in its firm ties with the text. But it could
be written only because Veijola had a concept about the literary development. Anyone
who lacks an overall picture of this kind will offer no more than detailed explanations,
which may well be learned and interesting but do not open up an understanding of the
whole. A concept of this kind is not to be had without some simplifications. Veijola has
tried to consolidate the ongoing growth of the text that he so clearly perceived into a few
main revisions. This has the advantage that the caesuras in the history of the theology can
be clearly perceived, and it is these caesuras that are important—that is to say, an
understanding of the changing theological motivations that stimulated the growth of the
text. But the consolidation into more extensive strata also calls for many decisions of
judgment that lay it open to dispute.

To give some examples: Veijola distinguishes the prohibition of images in 5:8 from its
later interpretation in Deut 4, an interpretation that is in itself divided into several layers.
Yet he attributes both to DtrB. Even though he admits that DtrB “was rather a small
group” (5), he still talks about it as if a single, individual editor or author were at work. In
order to make this possible, he even relativizes the change of number in the forms of
address, which is one of the most important criteria in literary analysis. DtrB, he claims,
writes both “you” plural and “you” singular (98). To say this can only be correct insofar as
even the crassest disturbance of the coherence is not permitted to become the analytical
principle.

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If the entities DtrB and DtrN are not literary units in the strict sense, their mutual
demarcation is also relativized. The distinction appears artificial in some respects, for
Torah and covenant belong together. But if one nevertheless wishes to make the
distinction, the sequence that Veijola assumes is stood on its head, for the nomism
follows from the idea of the divine covenant, not the divine covenant from the nomism.
DtrB should be the teacher of DtrN, not the pupil.

With this premise, the placing of the Decalogue particularly becomes a difficulty. Like
most exegetes, Veijola adheres firmly to the view that the Decalogue originally belonged
to Exod 20 and was then taken over to Deut 5, and for this he gives numerous reasons
(130–31, 149–50). However, in his view the prohibition of images and the Sabbath
commandment were not yet in existence when Exod 20 was taken over to Deut 5. The
prohibition of images was added for the first time in Deut 5:8 and was taken into Exod
20:4 from there. Veijola ascribes it to DtrB (156–58), from which the comment on it in
Deut 4 also derives. Even later, in the fifth century, the Sabbath commandment was
expanded in Exod 20:8–10. It derives from a revision “characterized by the later linguistic
usage of the Priestly Source” (161). When it was subsequently inserted into Deut 5:12–14,
it was expanded by the explanation given in verse 15. The deviating explanation given in
Exod 20:11 is a later reaction to Deut 5:15. For this view Veijola refers to his well-founded
theory that the Sabbath in the form of the weekly Sabbath “came into being because of the
Sabbath commandment in the Decalogue,” when “after the exile the Sabbath as well as
circumcision advanced to become the nota ecclesiae in Israel” (161).

The reason for the complicated relationship between the two versions of the Decalogue is
that, while Veijola perceives that the development of the weekly Sabbath must be dated to
the fifth century B.C.E., he wishes to assign the Decalogue itself to the late period of the
monarchy. The date he gives for the First Commandment is about 600 B.C.E. (150). It
would be simpler, and therefore more probable, if the Decalogue—except of course for
the reason for the Sabbath commandment given in Exod 20:11 (and Deut 5:15)—was fully
developed before the doublet in Deut 5 came into existence. Once this is presupposed, the
Decalogue cannot have been taken over into Deuteronomy before the fifth century. The
sequence of the literary strata in Deut 4–11 must differ from the one Veijola proposes.

This is also suggested by other considerations. Veijola judges “that [in the Decalogue] the
Prologue and the First Commandment, which hold the whole series together, show
features characteristic of Dtn/Dtr throughout” (150). In addition, the prologue to the
Decalogue corresponds to “the ‘previous history’ that emerges in vassal treaties with the
following ‘fundamental declaration,’ where the overlord puts forward the good things he
has done in the past as foundation for the special relationship between him and the
vassal” (152). The religious relationship is thought of in political categories. These

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observations contravene the conclusion that the First Commandment already came into
being about 600 B.C.E., for under preexilic conditions, the relationship to God conceived
in political categories would naturally have drawn in the king, who acted as mediator
between the Deity and the people. This still shows itself inasmuch as the Decalogue
addresses a singular “you”: “I am Yahweh, your [sing.] God.” But the Decalogue is
directed from the outset to everyone in Israel, without any intermediary authority. A
transformation of the relationship to God of this kind—one that ignores the king—is
conceivable only after the end of the Judean monarchy.

If this premise is correct, then the importance of the covenant-theology revision for the
development of Deuteronomy is still greater than Veijola assumes. In my view, it is not
merely the framework as we have it today that goes back to this revision; with this step
law became a component part of the relationship to God—which was hitherto the case
neither in the Book of the Covenant nor in Josiah’s Ur-Deuteronomy. Through covenant
theology the theological law came into being. But the quintessence of this theological law
is the Decalogue, with the First Commandment at its heart.

It is hardly conceivable that the Decalogue, as the Magna Carta of the Old Testament’s
divine covenant, is earlier than the genesis of covenant theology. Consequently, the
Decalogue cannot have been carried over into Deuteronomy before Deuteronomy
underwent the covenant-theology revision. Otherwise the covenant-theology revision of
Deuteronomy must have originated in the Decalogue. But Veijola does not draw this
conclusion, and rightly so, for the position of the Decalogue in the structure of
Deuteronomy speaks against this assumption. In my own hypothesis I have therefore
interpreted the origin of the Ur-Decalogue in Exod 20 as a parallel phenomenon to the
covenant-theology framework of Deuteronomy (Die Verheißung des neuen Bundes, 89–
110). If this assumption is correct, the Decalogue was not inserted into Deuteronomy
before DtrB but only afterwards. Since the interpretation of the Decalogue in Deut 4 is
later still, the old assumption that the paraenetic prologue has its starting point in Deut 6
retains its probability.

For Veijola, this prologue belongs from the outset to the Ur-Deuteronomy, which
therefore does not begin in Deut 12 but (after the heading 4:45*) in 6:4. He interprets the
Shema to mean “Yahweh is one alone,” that is to say, “Yahweh is the only God for us.…
In this way the First Commandment and the Shema‘ Israel interpret each other mutually”
(178). This fits in with the early date for the Decalogue that Veijola maintains. However,
for this he has first to exclude the commandment of love in 6:5, which belongs to the
covenant-theology context, as being an interpolation by DtrB. Formally speaking this is
entirely possible. Veijola thinks that another interpretation of the Shema is certainly
possible but less probable: the reading “Yahweh is one,” which contrasts the oneness of

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Yahweh with the multiplicity of his forms of appearance in the local sanctuaries.
“Although this view cannot fundamentally be rejected, it is none the less improbable in
view of the fact that in Deuteronomy the reason given for the centralization of the cult is
never the nature of ‘the one Yahweh’ ” (178). However, in the earliest Deuteronomy as
Veijola reconstructs it, the Shema directly precedes the commandment about the
uniqueness of the cultic site.

One serious question has to do with the redaction history of Deut 1–3. Veijola assigns the
center of the historical prologue to the Deuteronomistic Historian, DtrH, who wrote
round about 560 B.C.E., but this judgment is incompatible with the recent development of
Pentateuch criticism. Even if we presuppose that the Documentary Hypothesis still
provides the best foundation, there are exegetical reasons for the questions that have
recently been raised about the compass and date of the Yahwist and the Priestly sources
that Ludwig Schmidt cannot eliminate. Judging by the Yahwist’s selection of narrative
sources and measured against his kerygma, which is related to the Jewish Diaspora, this
source must be immediately preexilic or exilic. With this premise, the Yahwist material
would have had to be taken almost at its inception from the book of Numbers into Deut
1–3. This is unrealistic. It has become very improbable for many reasons to see Deut 1–3
as going back to DtrH and as having with these chapters begun the Deuteronomistic
History. Consequently, how to fit Deuteronomy into the sequence of historical events is a
problem still unsolved. It is not by chance that Veijola does not attribute to DtrH but to
later editors the sentences scattered throughout the Deuteronomic corpus Deut 12–26
that relate the obedience demanded to the impending occupation of the land.

A good commentary does not put an end to the exegetical debate but rather stimulates it.
Veijola’s commentary will long prove fruitful for Deuteronomic research. For both
external and internal reasons, it is improbable that anyone will be in a position to
complete the interpretation of Deut 16:18–34:12 along Veijola’s lines. Thus the torso will
be an abiding reminder of the untimely death of this great exegete, whom we shall
remember with respect and gratitude.

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