One thing to think about when considering such a posit is the nature of what it means to be a covenant person of God. If one takes a look at the idea of Ancient Israel and their orientation to their own cultural paradigms, one thing begins to become evident in the way they viewed the manifestation of holiness in the world. This is the idea of different spheres of holiness that are concentrated in the most holy and are then espoused to less holy concentric areas as one moves further away from the center or most holy sphere. In this, one sees that “[t]aken together the results seem to suggest that spiritual life occurred [for Ancient Israel] in three concentric spheres.”[1] This, of course, is found in the idea of the tabernacle and its interplay with both Israel as a people and the world. The Tabernacle is, of course, that most holy place, but beyond this it gives way to the next but less prominently holy place in the camp of Israel. After the camp of Israel, by this model, the concentric spheres lead away from the tabernacle to the ultimately destitute nations and land outside the camp in the wilderness, into chaos.
It is easy to see that Divine presence becomes less and less the further one journeys through these concentric spheres.[2] This type of structure gives heir to Israelite identity as a covenant community. Here, one might argue that any spiritual factors aside, this type of existent worldview has a pronounced psychological stance on the orientation of the self, in the Subject of an Israelite, to Yahweh and that realm of holiness. When God proclaims Israel a nationhood of priests, He ultimately shapes them as that people bound within the confines of not only national boundaries but much more psychical boundaries as related to their actual orientation to Him.[3] While sin was definitely present and accounted for in the Atonement sacrifices in Ancient Israel and while the full extent to which God’s manifested presence is found in the holiness of the tabernacle, the nation of Israel, through the theocracy of God, found itself as that identifiable intermediary between chaos and the divine.
The idea of God reaching out to the world through a human intermediary was not simply started with the rise of Ancient Israel, in the biblical tradition, but one might argue that this is an idea that was set out and expounded through the very moment of first creation in Adam. Scholar Richard Hess takes this idea up when he speaks of Adam’s likeness to God by saying:
"What then is the meaning of the terms image (tselem) and likeness (demuth), used here to describe the image of God? It is best illustrated in the practice of ancient Near East kings of erecting or carving out images in order to represent their power and rulership over far-reaching areas of their empires. These represented the dominion of the ruler when the sovereign was not present in the region[.]"[4]
One here sees that Adam himself may have been a symbol of that divine work in creation and thus that herald to Divine authority in creation. With this idea in mind, it can be noted that the very core, in the Israelite orientation to theocracy, was always meant to see humanity as that which announces Divine presence and authority. So, when interacting with these concentric realities of earthly living, perhaps the emphasis is much more meant to express a covenant identity of such an intermediary role in contrast to a ritualistic or legalistic promulgation so that Israel is much more measured in the way that it lives out covenant reality. Not only is God a jealous God, desiring their affection, passion, and commitment, but Israel itself is set up as that to which the Divine is present, and they are meant to embody that identity.
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