The Text
Last Time on Tales of Faith
Last time we heard about Moses being sent to bring the people out of enslavement in the land of Egypt. The Pharaoh is naturally reluctant to lose his slave labor, so God sends ten strikes/plagues against Egypt. These strikes show YHWHโs power above the gods of Egypt, both to the Egyptians and to the Hebrews. Finally, after the institution of Passover and the tenth plague, Pharaoh lets the people leave. They do not get far before Pharaoh changes his mind, and sends the entire army after them. God opens a way through the red/reed sea, and Pharaohโs army is swallowed up. After some testing through the wilderness, Moses and the people come to Mount Sinai/Hebron, the mountain of God. After a period of consecration, YHWH came down onto the mountain in fire and thunder, and gives the people the beginning of the Law in Ten Commandments, and covenants with them to be a holy nation. God then invites the people onto the mountain to hear the rest of the Law, but the people are afraid, and send Moses onto the mountain to hear the Law for forty days and nights. When they get bored, they decide to break most of the commandments all at once by making a graven image of God in a golden calf idol. God again covenants to be with and for these people, despite their sinfulness. They build a dwelling place for God, a Tabernacle with the Ark of the Covenant; and ordain priests for Godโs worship, so that God can dwell among Godโs people.ย
The people travel to the Promised Landโข and are given the chance to come in, but they are so filled with fear that they do not go in. As a punishment, God has the people wander in the wilderness until that generation passes away. There are lots of interesting adventures in the wilderness, but English readers donโt know about them because the name of that book in English is โNumbersโ and no one wants to read it. They defeat armies, get attacked by snakes, and a donkey talks, terribly exciting. It is now forty years later back at the border of the Promised Landโข. Moses, who has been informed that he will not be able to enter, is starting to retell the Law a second time (deutero- two, nomos-law).ย
Overview of Deuteronomy
1:1-4:43 Recap of the wilderness years
4:44-26:19 The Second Telling of the Law
4:44-49 Prelude
5:1-21 Preamble and the Ten Commandments
5:22-33 Moses as the Mediator between YHWH and the People
6:4-9 Shema Israel
6:10-25 Donโt put YHWH to the Test, and Teach Your Kids
7:1-11 YHWHโs Chosen People
7:12-26 YHWHโs Blessings for Obedience
8:1-20 Donโt Forget About YHWH in Prosperity
9:1-29 Consequences for Rebelling against YHWH
10:1-11 Carving Out the Second Copy of the Law
10:12-22 Basically, You Just Have to Serve YHWH and Obey the Commandments
11:1-32 If You Do, There Will Be Rewards
12:1-12 Take Down All of the Other Temples and Altars
12:13-28 Only Worship YHWH in One Place [cou-Jerusalem-gh]
13:29-14:2 Warning Against Other Forms of Worship
14:4-21 Clean and Unclean Foods
14:22-29 Tithing- Celebrating YHWHโs Blessings in Abundance
15:1-18 The Sabbath Year: Debt Forgiveness Every Seventh Year (Imagine that)
15:19-23 Sacrifice of the Firstborn (Livestock, what were you thinking?)
16:1-8 Passover
16:9-12 The Festival of Weeks (Shavuot)
16:13-17 The Festival of Booths (Sukkot)
16:18-20 The Importance of Justiceย
16:21-17:7 Incorrect Worship
17:8-13 The Wisdom of Priests and Judges
17:14-20 Rules About Kings (If you happen to need that someday)
18:1-8 Care for the Levites and Priests
18:9-14 Do Not Follow the Practices of Canaanite Worship
18:15-22 A New Prophet Like Moses
19:1-13 Cities of Refuge
19:14 Property
19:15-21 Witnesses and Retributive Justice
20:1-20 Rules of Warfare
21:1-9 Unsolved Murders
21:10-14 Warbrides Need to be Treated Well(ish)
21:15-17 The Anti-Jacob Law
21:18-21 Teenagers Amiright?ย
21:22-12 Miscellaneous
22:13-30 Sexual Relations (Women have some rights, if not much agency)ย
23:1-8 The People You โGet Toโ Exclude
23:9-25 More Miscellaneous Laws
24:1-5 Marriage and Divorce
24:6-25:4 Even More Miscellaneous Laws
25:5-10 Levirate Marriage (this will be important next week)
25:11-19 Donโt Fight Dirty; Speaking of Fighting Dirty, Amalekites Amiright?
26:1-15 First Fruits and Tithes
26:16-19 You Are YHWHโs Treasured People, Act Like It!
27:1-30:20 Reminder Stones, Renewed Covenant, Death and Life
31:1-34:12 Joshua Named Mosesโ Successor, Moses Sings, Blesses, and Dies
Characters
Moses (to pull out/draw out of the water; maybe Son of- Egyptian)
YHWH (I Am)
Todayโs Story
The Reason Have Called You Together Today:
Moses is getting ready to pass off leadership of the people to Joshua son of Nun, before he dies. He has been leading these people for some forty years in the wilderness, and has heard them complain about everything, no seriously, every little thing. The generation of those who came out of Egypt (those twenty years old and up) is all gone except for Moses and Joshua. Moses himself is not allowed to enter into the Promised Landโข because he misused Godโs power the second time he tried to make water flow out of a rock. Moses has seen a lot of stuff, and he has seen these people, how they have been told the Law, and even agreed to it, and yet break it at every opportunity. He is a burnt out leader who deeply cares for his people, but is also quite jaded about their ability to respond appropriately.. So he gathers them together to hear the Law one more time. This is going to be part imparting wisdom on a new generation, part reinterpreting the Law for a people who will be settling in a land as opposed to wandering in the wilderness (and modeling such reinterpretation for a new context), and part knowing that they are going to fail at the task.ย
As another take, according to the documentary hypothesis, Deuteronomy (and the rest of the Deuteronomical source material) was likely written in the southern kingdom of Judah sometime after the fall of the Northern kingdom to Assyria. This would change the intention of warning passages from a headโs up for what might happen if the people are not faithful to YHWH, to an explanation of the bad things that have happened. This would also explain the seemingly jaded tone from Moses. At some point in the speech, Moses warns of the dangers of prosperity in the land, when things are going well and you forget about YHWH your God. In many ways, this is the audience that the Deuteronomistic author is writing to, the elites who have built up the political power of Jerusalem, but have neglected the Temple. Those who see the destruction of Israel, but think that such destruction could never come to them. Those who are so full of their self-righteousness, that they have forgotten the righteousness of YHWH.ย
A Covenant with Us:
Moses does an interesting thing here. He is reminding the people of a past event, the covenant at Horeb, but bringing its relevance to the present. According to the narrative context, these are not the people who were at Horeb. Some of them might have been alive, but were under 20 years old, with the implication that they did not really know the implications of what was going on. Many of them were not alive at all, and have lived their entire lives in the wilderness. Yet Moses insists that YHWH made the covenant โwith us.โ If the documentary hypothesis is correct, Deuteronomy is being written by and for those who are living hundreds of years later. This magnifies the statement. It is not with your ancestors that YHWH was making covenant (or at least, they are not the most relevant covenant makers for you), but with you yourselves. This is what leads to the Jewish understanding that every Jewish soul was present at Sinai/Horeb, an each Jewish person consider themselves to have made a covenant with YHWH there, no matter when they were born.ย
I think this may be one benefit of the challenges that we are facing in the Church, and religion in general in the 21st Century. Under Christendom, Western culture made Christianity the default position. The vast majority of people were culturally, at least, Christian. Not that everyone went to church, in fact studies suggest that the historical norm for church attendance is 20-30%, but even those who did not attend had a basic grasp of biblical literacy and lived faith (if not always enacted through worship attendance). Those who were not Christian, had to make a conscious choice not to be, rather than the semi-default position of being quazi-Christian (at least). In post-war America, church attendance grew to historically abnormal numbers. These are the โgood old daysโ when 60-70% of people in America were active church members. Our institutions grew to fit the needs of this church boom, as did our expectations for programs, staff, facilities, etc. The peak church of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, owed much of its existence to a memory of the church in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. To be sure, there were problems in this era of the institutional church (many of which lead to the distrust of those institutions): outright racism, homophobia, prosperity gospel, grift, and abuse (sexual, spiritual, physical, emotional, etc) are a few of the major sectors of that era that we continue to battle.ย
In a Post-Christendom world, the only default religion in America is Capitalism. Most of those who continue to attend church are those who did so in the hay-day, most of their children do not attend any more. The wider culture is not culturally Christian. There are some places, like the American South, where this might be questioned; but I would argue that the version of cultural Christianity being espoused here has been twisted for political ends. Our institutions are struggling because we have not adequately addressed the sicknesses that have led to their decline.
However, this is also a time when Christianity has to be chosen rather than being the default (which I think is an ultimately good thing). It is not with our ancestors that God has made a covenant, but with us. Each Christian has to be a Christian โon purposeโ rather than an accident of history. Our role as institutions is to address the needs of people now rather than continually try to recreate what used to be. We need to face the demons of our prosperity, and build for a more sustainable future. We need to adapt our institutions to the context that we are actually in, and the future and a hope that God has called us to.ย
Reinterpreting the Law:
In Deuteronomy, the second telling, Moses repeats many of the laws that have been given previously in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. However, there are many of them that are modified and reinterpreted. Within the narrative context, this is a new telling of the Law from being for a nomadic people, to being for a people who are settled in the land. In this, Moses is modeling a view of the Law which is indeed Torah, instruction for the people. This is wisdom lived out, not through frozen and dead recitation, but living and active. This is law with and for the people and their needs. Later, in what we call chapter 31, Moses will suggest that such a telling/reading of the law should be done every seven years (and perhaps implies that such reinterpretation should be a part of it).
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the Jewish people have a rich history of interpretation and reinterpretation of the Torah. The Mishna, Talmud, and continued works are a record of this conversation within Judiasm. The works of the Christian New Testament bear witness to the early church, mostly from the Jewish context, making sense of the Jewish scriptures in light of Jesus. Again, assuming the documentary hypothesis, Deuteronomy is already a reinterpretation of the earlier Levitical law, in light of the rise and fall of the monarchy, and fall of the nation of Israel.ย
We are always in the process of reinterpreting the law, or as Dan McLellen puts it, we are all negotiating with the text. The life of faith is one that is like a tree planted by living waters (Psalm 1) always drawing from the well of Godโs wisdom. We are to be people who bring out treasures, both new and old (Matthew 13), and see how they might apply to our current contexts. The preaching task is to discern how todaysโ scripture intersects with the lived experiences of our community. The Deconstruction โmovementโ is the process of examining the beliefs that we have received and dismantling harmful ones.ย
The Ten Words
So, it takes a full sermon series to do the commandments justice, but here are a few thoughts on some of them.ย
Christians tend to take the first commandment as starting with โyou shall have no other gods before me,โ but our Jewish siblings include the opening โI am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slaveryโ as a part of this commandment.ย
โbefore meโ is literally โbefore my face.โ This is in-part about the practice in ancient temples to place other subsidiary idols in front of the temple of the main deity. This commandment precludes such actions. YHWH is not interested in being the chief of a pantheon.ย
Today, the idea of putting something before God, in between us and God is a powerful (and challenging) recasting of this commandment.ย
The commandment not to make idols is taken very literally, but some suggest that the reason for the commandment is that according to Genesis 1, we are created in the image (a common word for idol) of God, and so we are therefore supposed to be Godโs idols (physical manifestations which communicate, point to, and mediate the presence of a deity). We are not to make idols, because we ourselves are to be Godโs idols.ย
The command not to misuse the name of YHWH is often taken to mean that we are not to use Godโs name as a swear word. However, the phrase used literally translates to โbear the name in vainโ suggesting a military banner carried into battle. In other words, the instruction is to not bring Godโs name into a situation where Godโs name should not be. It calls to mind warriors (could be of the crusader,ย โhappy,โ or โsocial justiceโ variety) marching with the name of God into battle where they will defend the oppressors, dehumanize those made in the image of God, and otherwise disregard the call to do justice love mercy and walk humbly.ย
The fourth commandment concerning Sabbath is the first one where there are significant differences between this version and the one found in Exodus.ย
First, instead of the command to โrememberโ (ืึธืืึนืจ, zakhor: To remember, recall, call to mind), Deuteronomy uses โqadashโ( ืืงืืฉื) meaning to consecrate, sanctify, prepare, dedicate, be hallowed, be holy, be sanctified, be separate. This might not be a significant shift in meaning, but does suggest a shift from the blessing of rest itself, to an emphasis on religious worship.
There is a slight expansion on Exodusโ โyour cattleโ to Deuteronomyโs โyour ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock.โ
Another marked difference is in the stressing of Sabbath being extended to enslaved peoples. Both versions specifically list enslaved women and men, but Deuteronomyโs version then adds, โso that your male and female slave may rest as well as youโ emphasizing the (relative) justice and equity of their inclusion. This added clause makes the explicit humanizing of enslaved people more explicit.ย
We must note here the troubling fact that the enslavement of peoples is being supported within the biblical witness, which was used to support the chattel slavery of our black siblings in the United States, and the continued abuse of and violence against black bodies and communities. We must bear the shameful history of interpretation of these scriptures in witness to the oppressed as well as their oppressors.ย
The most significant shift in this command is the reason given for it. In Exodus, the command to keep Sabbath is rotted in the first Genesis creation narrative, and Godโs own sabbatical rest. Deuteronomy, however, roots the holy-keeping of Sabbath in the redemptive act of YHWH. Here the emphasis shifts from you needing to keep Sabbath because God did, to the holiness of extending YHWHโs liberation to your children, enslaved people, animals, and immigrants. You were given freedom, so give that freedom to others. The holiness of your own Sabbath is tied up in its application to your neighbor.ย
The fifth commandment to honor parents is shifted slightly to emphasize the overall Deuteronomistic emphasis on covenant keeping and divine blessing.ย
The other commandments are the same between Exodus and deuteronomy, except for the tenth commandment (coveting) which has slightly different words.ย
If you really want my other thoughts on the commandments, I recently went through the Exodus set in my Daily Prayer videosย
First Commandment: Out of the House of Slavery; Before My Face
Second Commandment: Image of God
Third Commandment: Watch Your Damn Mouth
Fourth Commandment: Rest as Resistance; Rest from Labor
Fifth Commandment: Honoring Parents
Sixth Commandment: Murder Most Fowl
Seventh Commandment: To Know and Be Known
Eighth Commandment: Economy of Theft
Ninth Commandment: Honesty
Tenth Commandment: God or Mammonย
Hear O Israel:
This section also includes the famous shema, Hear O Israel, YHWH is our God, YHWH alone. This phrase was to be recited by observant Jews every morning as a reminder of their primary identity. It comes with the summation of the first four commandments, to love YHWH with everything that you have. This is notably referenced by Jesus when he was asked what the greatest commandment was in Matthew 22, paired with the second one, to love your neighbor as yourself.ย
Pass on What You Have Learned:
finally, this section ends with an entreatment to pass on these commandments, to tell them to your children. These are the things that you are to talk about around the dinner table, or on a trip. Perhaps here is also an opportunity to reconsider and reevaluate, to discuss how these commandments might be applied to different situations. In an agrarian society, when there is really very little cultural change from generation, this passing on might be a simple copy of the things that have been passed on to you. However, when there are great changes, there is an opportunity to apply afresh the wisdom of the law. The given context of the liminal space between a nomadic peoples and a conquering/agrarian people certainly is a shift in culture, and therefore needs reinterpretation. The suggested time when this was written, during great political turmoil and threat of imperial capture. The form that we have, not only of Deuteronomy, but all of the Hebrew Scriptures, likely happened during the second temple period when the people had come back to the land after exile in Babylon, and were reevaluating their covenantal life. Jesus came to complete the law, and reinterpret for his disciples under the Roman occupation, just on the cusp of the destruction of the temple (again). This massage and law would be re evaluated and reinterpreted over and over in the centuries ahead, after Constantine made Christianity the official Roman religion, the fall of the Empire, the Protestant Reformation, etc. Today, technological changes have accelerated the cultural changes that we are seeing from generation to generation, which further necessitates this call to pass on, but also to discuss what we have learned. As we have these conversations between the generations, we have the opportunity to learn afresh the wisdom of these commandments. As with any cross-cultural translation, it causes us to refine and reevaluate what must remain the same, and what needs to be changed. We face the exodus of younger generations in the church precisely because many times their perspectives and wisdom are not valued. Older generations tend to think that this transmission and learning should only be one way, and undervalue the discussion and reevaluation that should come with it. Younger people have understood the wisdom of God and applied to their context, but too often find an institution that is not willing to do the same, one which is overly committed to extra-gospel commitments of the exclusion of others.ย
Hear Godโs people, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and mind, andย soul, and strength. Also, love your neighbor as yourself. Talk about these things, tell them and reinterpret them over and over, when you are at home and when you are away. Bind them on your head and on your hand, put them on your doors. Learn from your elders and from your children. Learn from those who look and think and act and love like you, and from those who don't look or think or act or love like you. See this torah, instruction, from other peopleโs eyes, and always be searching for the truth.ย
Pop Culture References
A major theme in Star Wars is the role of Master and Apprentice. Disney+ has a great and short documentary about the recently completed first season of Ahsoka on this importance to the saga, this series, and in the Master/Apprentice relationship between George Lucas and Dave Feloni. These stories center around the learning of wisdom from generation to generation, and reevaluating it based on the current context.ย
Duku took the wisdom that he learned from Yoda, and passed it onto Qui-Gon. Duku would later deconstruct his faith in the Jedi Order, based on their lack of justice and growing corruption (he then chose the sith, which is an interesting move, but that is beside the point). Qui-Gon passed on this sense of justice, but also distrust of the council to Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan tried to pass on a sense of duty to Anakin, but also had to navigate the Jediโs sudden shift from keepers of peace to generals in a galactic war. Anakin passed his passion as well as is wartime understanding of the order to his padawan, Ahsoka. Ahsoka also deconstructed, and walked away from the Order before Anakin converted to the Sith, but she remained committed to a strong sense of justice. The whole process is beautifully summed up in a conversation between Luke Skywalker (an apprentice of Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Ahsoka) with Yodaโs force ghost. Yoda tells Luke that the true path of the Master is to pass on the wisdom as well as the failure, โwe are what they (our apprentices) grow beyond.โ
More Links
The Bible Worm Podcast 505; Episode 105 (2019)
Bible Project: Deuteronomy (Read the Bible Series)
Bible Project: Deuteronomy (Torah Series)
Bible Project Podcast: (Deuteronomy Scroll Series)
Bible Project Podcast: โWhat Are The Ten Commandments All About?โ (Exodus Scroll Series)
Faith Adjacent Podcast: โThe Ten Commandmentsโ
Faith Adjacent Podcast: โMoses Goes to the Promised Land (Not)โ
Hymn Suggestions
Spirit of God Descend Upon My Heart (688)