CHAPTER 16
On the face of it, this is just pure recapping – and
recapping some of the more boring parts of Biblical passages gone by. It’s just a goings-over on the religious
feasts that the Hebrew are to observe – Passover, Weeks, Booths. Yeah, we did this already in Leviticus, and
it was boring then (even by Leviticus standards).
Aye, but there is a wrinkle this time around, an interesting
wrinkle if you know much about modern Biblical scholarship. Each time the D author (the author of
Deuteronomy) discusses a feast, he makes sure to include that the feast should
be “only at the place which the LORD, your God, will choose as the dwelling
place of his name.” We get this about
Passover, that phrase is repeated with the Feats of Weeks, and again with the
Feats of Booths. Then in summing up all
three feasts, the Hebrew are again told this – only celebrate at the place the
Lord chooses to dwell.
Why does this matter?
Well, let’s look at this. Where
does the Lord choose to dwell? In the
Temple – specifically, in the holiest of holies inside it where the 10
commandments lay inside the ark, inside the tabernacle. That’s where God chooses to reside. Sure, Solomon built it, but if I recall
correctly, the Lord appeared as a cloud (as he’s wont to do) to show his
approval of this dwelling place for the ark.
(Prior to temple, the Lord’s ark was in Shiloh). So all festivals are supposed to be there.
More than that, four times the D author notes that the
festivals are only to be there.
He is quite clear on that point.
Why does this matter? Simple –
festivals weren’t just there. Heck, in
the divided kingdom era, the northern kingdom of Israel (with Jerusalem staying
in Judea) had their own festival centers.
That was done to keep their people from having a religious
allegiance/attachment outside the grasp of their ruler.
Now, D is believed to have written this well after the divided
kingdom era. As I noted at the outset
of this book, he’s believed to have written Deuteronomy during the reign of
King Josiah, near the end of Judea’s independent existence. OK, but people weren’t always practicing as
they were supposed to. There was a tug
of war between the priestly class and the populace. So the D author is trying to stamp his approach on things by
putting his words in the mouth of Moses.
Earlier, Moses had noted the importance of the feasts, but its only now
that they be centralized so.
CHAPTER 17
More rules and stuff.
A lot of this deals with political leadership. They’re told to pick judges and if a case is too baffling, then
you “shall go up to the place which the LORD, your God, will choose” – maybe we
should start a Deuteronomy Drinking Game?
Every time the book says something about going to the place where the
Lord, your God, choose – take a shot.
Following drinking game, you’d have four shots in Chapter 16 and one
here. It isn’t quite the drunkenness
off the Leviticus Drinking Game, but we still have 17 more chapters left to go.
Oh, and the people are told that if they want to pick a
king, that’s cool. (Yeah, makes sense Moses would think to say that, given that
D author is writing this down for Moses centuries after the first king. If Moses had really given instructions about
wanting a king, than Samuel really shouldn’t have had such a shit fit when the
tribes told him they wanted one). But
oh wait – Moses did tell them and then this book was “lost.” Sure, that’s it.
Note – when would Deuteronomy have been lost anyway? At the time they moved the ark from Shiloh
to Jerusalem? No, that can't be. If that were the case, it would've been known before the move, and Samuel (prophet based in Shiloh) is clearly unaware of what Moses says here about kings). So this was a sacred book of Moses,
lost way back in the days of judges in Shiloh, but despite being lost it was
taken with all the other things to Jerusalem – but still lost? No, I’m not buying it. This book wasn't lost and then found during the reign of King Josiah. It was written during Josiah's time and then claimed to be a lost holy book of Moses.
Actually, there is one other really key point about this
chapter – it’s from Chapter 17 that Deuteronomy gets its name. At the end, in verse 18, Moses says the king
shall write down a copy of the law – and that duplicate is where Deuteronomy
gets its name from. St. Jerome’s Latin
Vulgate Bible (the Bible for over 1,000 years) wrote the word in Latin as
Deuteronium – literally “second law.”
That makes sense to me. We’ve
already been given a law code, and now we’re being given it again, with some
tweaks.
One final thing about this chapter – there’s a clear implied
critique of Solomon in it. A king is
gold to essentially live frugally. Not
have too many horses or too many wives or too much gold and silver. I don’t know how many horses Solomon had,
but he’s legendary for his wife collection, and his reign was known for being
wrapped in prosperity and gold
CHAPTER 18
This is about priests and prophets. Much of this, especially about priests, has
been said before. Prophets,
though? That’s new. I don’t recall Moses talking about that at
all before. But D author lives in a
time of prophets so what’s it to be addressed. (In fact, Richard Elliot Friedman makes a pretty good argument that the D author may in fact be the prophet Jeremiah – he had a similar message and lived at the right time. Added
bonus, the D author, Friedman has argued, is also likely the author of the
heart of the history section – Joshua, Judges, the two Samuels, and the two
Kings. We’ll talk more about that when
I get there.
Getting back on track, Moses here tells people they must
listen to the prophets. Well, how will
they know how is a prophet and how isn’t?
Simple, if a prophet says something and it happens, then he’s a true
prophet. If what he says doesn’t
happen, he’s not a prophet. OK, that
makes sense, but it also begs the question how can you know until it’s too
late? (Also, getting way ahead of
things, wouldn’t this demote Jonah to un-prophet status? Yeah, that’s getting ahead of things).
CHAPTER 19
This is a pretty bland bunch of rehashings. Now we rehash punishments. If you kill someone accidentally, you’re
punishment is internal exile. You go to
one of the cities of refuge. But if
it’s intentional, then going to a city of refuge won’t save you.
Also, don’t bear false witness. If you do, you’ll be done in like you intended to do to the
person you spoke against. Then the Code
of Hammurabi is quoted for at least the second time in the Bible – an eye for
eye, and a tooth for a tooth and all that.
CHAPTER 20
This chapter discusses the ethics of war. Some of it is predictable, other parts not
at all. First, we learn that a priest
should sanctify the Israeli soldiers before they go out into battle. OK, that makes sense.
Then we’re given reasons for why a soldier may be dismissed
from service. Most are sensible items
that you’d expect. If he made a house
that hasn’t been dedicated, planted a vineyard that hasn’t been plucked, been
betrothed but not yet married – all those guys may be excused. There’s a clear theme here – you shouldn’t
be asked to lay down your life when you’re on the cusp of a major
milestone. Added bonus – these rules
really shouldn’t cost the army too many soldiers. (Well, unless it’s on the eve of vineyard picking season).
But there is another rule, and this one is a bit more
unexpected. If someone is afraid, let
them go. Huh. That’s it – if you don’t want to be here, go home. That could conceivably cost them many. What’s going on here? My theory: peer pressure. You don’t want to look like a wuss in front
of all the other guys. The exact phrase the Bible uses is “afraid and weak
hearted” and what guy wants to be considered afraid? So you give people the option of leaving out of fear, and when
they don’t, that forces them to commit that much more to the fight.
When offering terms of peace, it depends who you’re offering
peace too. For people of the Promised
Land, show no mercy. They all die. For others, always offer terms of peace to a
city, and if they accept, just make them laborers for you. If they say know, lay it under siege, and
when you take it, kill all the men and let all the rest for plunder.
The difference is because one is the Promised Land and the
other isn’t. On the face of it, that
explains it. Another way of looking at
if from the point of view of Biblical scholarship: the conquest of the Promised
Land happened centuries before Deuteronomy was written down, while the other
fighting is what the nation of Judea actually does.
Saying that all Canaanites should be killed sounds terrible
to modern ears, but it has an advantage – it wipes the slate clean. This was for us and it’s only for us. In reality, things never work that simply.
Whether you’re looking at Germanic tribes, or the Aryans in India or Turkic
bands or whoever – when a group comes into a place, they never fully displace
the old group. It’s easy to say they
came and therefore everyone else died or fled, but in reality you end up
intermingling. (But that doesn’t
perfectly jibe with a notion of a Promised Land. The more bloodthirsty approach actually sounds better. Also, it allows for a clearer creation of a
separate people. We’re not a bunch of
people from Egypt who intermingled with the locals, we came and took
over).
Finally, the chapter ends on an odd note. There’s a bit of proto-environmentalism as
Moses tells people not to cut down trees in cities you besiege: “Are the trees
of the field human beings, that they should be included in your siege?” Then he relents a bit, saying trees that
don’t grow fruit are fine to cut down for siege works, but otherwise – don’t
cut them down. Moses phrases it like
trees are more important than people. I
guess it’s better to say that trees are less to blame or less at fault than
people. I don’t know fully what to make
of it, but there you go.
EDITED to add: if you want to move ahead, here's a link to Deuteronomy: Chapters 21 to 25.
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