Deuteronomy 25 continues the strange mix of laws somewhat humane and others definitely peculiar to our
modern sensibility. In the first few verses we have the allowance for torture
as punishment for crime: forty lashes with a whip. However, there is a limit to
the torture: it is to be no more than forty lashes otherwise “your neighbor
will be degraded in your sight.”
Then in the middle portion of the chapter we have
what seems to us the strange practice of Levirate marriage where a dead man’s
brother is required to marry his dead brother’s wife and propagate children
through her to carry on the dead brother’s name.
In verses eleven and twelve, we have the situation of a wife attempting to help her husband in a fight with another
man. If she tries to help by grasping the other man’s genitals, her hand is to
be cut off in punishment. This penalty seems rather severe. One would think a
wife should be praised for trying to protect her husband’s life in a fight.
In verses thirteen through sixteen, the
Israelites are admonished to have honest weights for use in commerce. This is
one of the laws that seems most just.
However, then it is followed by the admonishment
to wipe out the Amalekites once the Israelites are settled in the Promised
Land. The reason for this is because the Amalekites attacked the Israelites
when they were wandering in the desert. Revenge is not only allowed but urged.
Friedman has an interesting comment on another strange practice in Israel suggested in Deuteronomy 26:14….
The person declares that he has not misused his tithed
produce in any way that associates it with death or impurity. This disallows
offering the dead tithed food; but,
as many scholars have observed, this prohibition is not against making other offerings of food to the dead.
Giving food (and drink) for dead ancestors was practiced in Israel and Judah at
least until the reign of King Hezekiah (c. 700 B.C.E.). Tombs have been
excavated (at Megiddo, Hazor, Gezer, Beth-Shemesh, Dothan) that had apertures
cut into their ceilings through which it would be possible to give offerings to
the dead, or that had storage jars placed directly over the heads of the
corpses. Beginning in the tenth century B.C.E., open ceramic bowls and flasks
and jars for liquids, store-jars with dipper juglets, plates, cooking pots, and
wine decanters were placed in tombs in Judah. The destruction of much of the
countryside by the Assyrians, followed by the centralization of worship under
Hezekiah, dramatically cut back on this practice.[1]
After all the strangeness of the preceding verses, we have, in Deuteronomy 26:16-19, the conclusion of Moses' speech begun in chapter 5. In these verses, Moses formally pronounces that the
Israelites and YHWH have both pledged themselves to one another.
Deuteronomy 27 introduces the curses that will be
upon the Israelites if they fail to uphold their covenant with YHWH. Friedman
comments:
The curses seem like a list of sundry examples of the
laws that Moses has given until now. Most of the things that are forbidden are
uncommon and easy to avoid doing. So the people as a whole will readily say the
“Amen” to them. But then the final curse is on anyone who will not support and
perform “the words of this Torah”—in other words: the Torah as a whole. The
people are led to a point at which they must say “Amen” to the full Torah.[2]
Deuteronomy 28 presents the blessings that will
be upon the Israelites if they keep their covenant with YHWH. Friedman notes:
The curses are four times the length of the blessings.
Like the blessings and curses list in Leviticus 26 (where the curses are three
times longer than the blessings), this list may convey that threats of
punishment were thought to be more effective than promises of reward. Or it may
convey the opposite: that threats are less
effective, and therefore more are required. The remarkable thing is that,
following all these blessings and curses, Moses speaks beautifully for two
chapters about why the people should keep the covenant for itself. The blessings and curses are there out of a realistic
recognition of human psychology: rewards and punishments are effective tools of
instruction from childhood and up. But the aim is higher: that humans should
come to see that what is being put in their hands is “life” and “good” and
“love” (Deut 30:15-16).[3]
Many of the curses mentioned in Deuteronomy 28
relate back to the plagues that were visited upon Israel’s enemy, Egypt in the
book of Exodus. Sadly, many of these curses came true. The curse mentioned in
28:53, eating the flesh of one’s sons, came true four centuries later during
the Aramean siege of Samaria (2 Kings 6:25-29). Furthermore, Friedman notes:
For the last curse of this list of horrors, what would be
the worst threat specifically for the people of Israel: back to Egypt! This
nightmare comes true seven hundred years later, after the Babylonian
destruction of Jerusalem, described at the end of the book of Kings: “All the
people, from the smallest to the biggest…got up and came to Egypt” (2 Kings
25:26; Jer 43:5-7). The last curse is that they will go back to Egypt, and the
last page of the book of Kings reports that the entire people go back to Egypt.
Yet, incredibly, this fact is almost never mentioned in commentaries on
Deuteronomy or Kings or in biblical scholarship in general. The focus has been
on the small portion of the nation who go into exile in Babylon, not on the
mass of the people who go as refugees to Egypt. It is time that we recognized
first, the full horror of the final curse of the covenant. Second, we must be
sensitive to what it means to Moses
to pronounce this curse: the heartbreak of what it would mean for his people to
be back in Egypt, even worse off than before, the failure, the humiliation.
Third, we must give due attention to the fate of the Jews who ended up back in
Egypt. And, fourth, we should appreciate the significance of the fact that it
was the small portion of the community who were taken to Babylon who produced
the kernel who returned to Israel a generation later and rebuilt the Temple,
Jerusalem, and the country—a second life for Israel in its land that lasted six
hundred years.[4]
Ultimately, in the midst of all the strange stuff in these chapters from Deuteronomy, the Israelites are presented with a fork in the road. Which way are they going to follow: the way of YHWH or their own path, blessing or curse? The same question is presented to us: Which way will we follow?
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