CHAPTER 31
This is essentially concluding remarks time. The big finale to the last speech was in
Chapter 30, but the big finale isn’t actually the final words.
Moses says he’s 120 years old and can’t make the journey to
the Promised Land. He tells the
children of Israel to be strong and steadfast, for God will never fail or
forsake them. He calls on Joshua to lead the Israelites, and calls for the law
(the book of Deuteronomy) to be read in front of all Israel every seven
years.
God gives his last words to Moses about the Israelites.
(Note: these aren’t his final words to Moses overall, just his final words
about the community). Basically, it’s a
downbeat finale. God says the people
will whore themselves out to foreign gods, forget him – and then he’ll become
angry with them and forsake them. (Wait
– time out – just 11 verses ago we’re told God will never forsake them. Well, I guess this means he’ll never
permanently forsake them).
That is an incredibly depressing final bit of wisdom for God
to give Moses. These people Moses has
led, these people that have given him such a hard time, these people he’s
dedicated himself to leading in the right direction – Moses is told shortly
before he’s going to die that they’ll continue to fuck up and earn God’s
wrath. Surely this can’t be what Moses
wants to hear. Surely he’d like to think that it was just a bad generation, and
he cleansed them of their evil ways in the desert. Nope. They’ll still suck.
I know why the D author did this. He wrote at a time when the Hebrew weren’t obeying God’s laws as
he saw them and were lapsing. So he put
this scene here to foreshadow what will happen, and make it seem like God knew
all along. But without modern Biblical
scholarship, this scene reads like God pulling the rug out from underneath
Moses.
The law is placed in the ark, and it’s time for a song.
CHAPTER 32
This entire chapter is the Song of Moses. Again, it’s a weird way to end the Torah, as
this song is basically a litany of complaints about how rotten the Children of
Israel are. Well, it’s more than that,
but that is a large part of it. They’re
called “degenerate children” of “a twisted and crooked generation.” I assume this refers to the dead generation,
not the one about to go into Canaan.
The Lord is awesome for taking care of them, but they are
morons for forsaking God. It doesn’t
even read like a song of warning: “Don’t be like this or else.” It’s more like a song of condemning: “You’re parents really sucked. And I mean sucked hard.” God pointedly said that since they
considered him no God, he hid his face from them and declared them no people.
This is the worst halftime speech ever! These guys are about to go out and invade
Canaan, and the song they’re given is this?
Man, play some Smiths – even that would be more uplifting.
Well, to be fair, it does have a happy ending. The Lord will raise his sword and whump ass
all over the place. But most of the
song is condemning the children of Israel, a mighty strange song to sing to the
children of Israel just before they do battle.
I wonder where the song came from? My hunch is that it was already a traditional song. I doubt the prophet Jeremiah (if he indeed
was the author of Deuteronomy, as Richard Elliot Friedman argues) or whoever
wrote it. This is probably a
pre-existing work, that fit the moment perfectly. Odds are, there was already a tradition that Moses sang this song,
so it went here in the story.
And now, for the last time in the Bible, God talks to
Moses. He tells Moses that he won’t see
the Promised Land, but he’ll let Moses go to Mount Nebo and see it from a
distance. He’ll give Moses that much.
CHAPTER 33
This chapter is Moses giving a finally blessing to each of
the 12 tribes of Israel. Well, sort
of. He does it to the 12 children of
Israel, so Levi is included and Manasseh and Ephraim get paired together as
Joseph (though they each get name checked a bit at the end).
Oh, and Moses skips Simeon.
Wait – really? Yeah,
really. I’ve looked for it several
times and I just ain’t seeing Simeon get mentioned here at all. The hell?
What’s going on there? I really
have no idea, but there you go.
Most get standard blessings with minor alterations, but a
few are of note. Reuben gets a very,
very brief one, and it just says, “May Reuben live and not die out, but let his
numbers be few.” As blessings go, that
one really sucks. That’s a sarcastic
blessing: “You’re so wonderful that I hope everyone in your entire clan doesn’t
die.” Gee, thanks Moses!
Levi gets a nice, long one.
So does Joseph. Even if you
account for Joseph being the father of two tribes, he stills go on for longer
than expected. Most blessings are a
verse, but Joseph’s goes on for five verses.
Gad gets a long one, too for some reasons – two verses, and they’re a
little longer than most verses here.
Issachal and Zebulun get blessed together for some
reason. No idea why.
Then there are some final words for that old gang of
Yahweh’s and its time to die.
CHAPTER 34
This is just the death of Moses. He goes up on the mountain and sees the Promised Land. He’s earned it. He dies, and the Bible tells us, “to this day no one knows the
place of his burial.” Interesting.
There’s never been another prophet like him, we’re
told. Damn straight.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Interesting book.
It’s better than I’d expect for being a bunch of speeches. And slowing up the reading made me
appreciate what was going on, instead of just blowing through it like my
previous attempts at tackling it.
Though it does drift aimlessly in the middle, it rises to
the occasion for the big moments.
I call it the “pious fraud” – a phrase not at all original
with me – because it was composed during the reign of King Josiah and claimed
to be the works of Moses, but I don’t mean that in any especially harsh
light. The D author was genuinely pious
and really believed this was the laws of God and that Moses must have spoken
this. These traditions were ones that
had been passed down, not that he’d personally invented. But, yeah, he did engage in fraud passing it
off as something ancient.
I’ve recently been re-reading “Who Wrote the Bible?” and
Richard Elliot Friedman notes that this is largely a reaction to the P
author. That was a case of a rival
group of priests writing down their version of the law, God, and Moses and
passing it off as something from Moses, but it angered this author. So he felt honor bound to write down the
“real” version of Moses. And if that
meant he had to put it in Moses’ mouth and claim it was from that time, so be
it. As far as the D author was concerned, the laws really were from that time.
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