"... The proliferation of form with respect to the Torah in the Second Temple period reflects the increasing role of Torah in mediating the divine presence to the people. In the Torah, God’s people not only find divine instruction, but also divine presence. This increasing importance affects a shift towards veneration of the Torah that can already be seen in the biblical texts themselves. In Nehemiah 8 we find a most interesting scene. Nehemiah describes a gathering of all the people before Ezra the scribe so that he may read the Torah in their presence (verses 1-2). When Ezra opens the scroll, significantly, all the people stand (verse 5). Ezra then blesses God and the people respond by saying “amen” while lifting their hands before bowing and worshipping God with the faces pressed to the ground (verse 6). Yehezkel Kaufmann describes the scene as follows; The Law is read daily during the festival (Tabernacles); it is as though the light of the Shekinah breaks forth with the reading. Herewith, a significant cultic development: the Torah as the embodiment of the word of God, of His spirit, the symbol of sanctity and the sublime, the source of all that is holy on earth, the book of the Torah as a cultic object. What is important here is not a straightforward identification of Torah with God, no such identification exists, but there is a functional overlap in the orientation/stance of the people towards Torah and towards God. The most dramatic example of this overlap can be found in Psalm 119 where the psalmist repeatedly uses expressions that are ordinarily reserved for God to express a devotion to Torah. Consider the following ... (Psalm 119:19 with Psalm 27:9; Psalm 119:30 with Psalm 16:8; Psalm 119:31 with Psalm 63:8-9 and Deuteronomy 10:20; Psalm 119:48 with Psalm 63:5 and Lamentations 2:l19) ..."

Fisher, Roy Allan Locating Matthew in Israel (pp. 162-163) University of California, Berkeley, 2018