The word tôrâh (translated “law,” v. 2) refers to the story of God’s actions to create a people and guide them into the future, as described in Genesis and the first chapters of Exodus. Likewise it refers to the obligations, precepts and guidelines that shape the people’s life, as in the rest of the first five books of the Bible, the Torah. These two dimensions, narration and obligation, or, in the Jewish tradition, haggadah and halakah, are complementary. The English
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