Deuteronomy 29:4 says, “But to this day the Lord
has not given you a mind to understand, or eyes to see, or ears to hear.”
Have the Israelites really not understood their
experience up to this point? Friedman answers:
I understand this to mean just that. Moses has just
finished the long speech that takes up nearly all of Deuteronomy. Now he is
beginning a much shorter speech, and he is telling them that he is about to
reveal to them, in his last message to them, the key to understanding what
their experience means. What follows is a speech like no other he has ever made
in the Torah. Until now he has focused on facts: points of history, specific
laws. But, starting in a few verses, he will turn philosophical, moral, and
spiritual—and his message is formulated in some of the most beautiful words in
the Torah.[1]
Moses says, “And you shall observe the words of
this covenant and do them so that you’ll understand
all that you’ll do.”
In the coming chapters, there are many echoes of
the beginning of the Torah. In Genesis, Eve is attracted by the tree of
knowledge of good and evil because it will give her understanding. Humans
acquire that understanding after eating of the tree. But then that word,
“understanding,” is not used in the Torah again until this point. In the
beginning, humans achieved understanding by breaking a divine command. Now they
can achieve understanding by using God’s power appropriately. Humans are not
limited to following the commandments without comprehension, as they were in
the beginning. Now God gives them understanding of his commandments.
In Deuteronomy 30:6 Moses tells the Israelites
that God will circumcise their hearts. Earlier, the people were told to
circumcise their own hearts. Why this change? Friedman explains:
The difference is that now he is speaking of a future
condition: the people will have violated the covenant, suffered the curses, and
turned back to their God; and God, in response, will bring them back and then
will circumcise their hearts. This in turn will enable them to love the deity
with all their hearts and souls—which Moses had commanded them to do earlier as
well. The divine-human relationship is pictured as mutual. Humans require
experience of being away from their God, on their own. And then, more
experienced, more understanding, having suffered and grown, humans look to God
anew. And then the new encounter with the divine transforms them.[2]
In Deuteronomy 30:14 Moses says, “No, the word is
very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.”
Paul picks up on this in Romans 10 and says this word is the word of faith. “If
you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that
God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9) If you are
interested, I have a sermon on this passage you may listen to here: http://willvaus.com/romans.
One of my favorite verses, for many years, has
been Deuteronomy 30:19, “I have set before you life and death, blessings and
curses. Therefore choose life!” Friedman comments on this:
The theme of the path to life began early in Moses’
speech (Deut 4:1) and culminates here in the last words of the speech. This
focus at the conclusion of the Torah returns us to the Torah’s opening: the
loss of the tree of life. Humans lose access to the tree of life as the price
of having gained access to the tree of knowledge of good and bad. Now the
people are told, “I’ve put in front of you life and good, blessing and curse.”
Using the knowledge of good and bad, and choosing to do good, is the path back
to life…[3]
In Deuteronomy 31:9 we read, “Then Moses wrote
down this law, and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carried the
ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel.” Which law
did Moses write down? Is this the whole of the Torah, or
Deuteronomy only, or what? Obviously, Moses did not write down Deuteronomy
31:9; someone else, an editor, is writing down this bit, otherwise it would not be written in the third person. Friedman comments on
this:
This “instruction” (Hebrew torah) does not refer to the entire five books, which came to be
known as the Torah long after this chapter was written. Those who began
claiming that Moses was the author of the entire Torah created much confusion
and misinformation by claiming more for Moses than the Torah itself ascribed to
him. It became a firmly established doctrine by the rabbinic period, and many
great teachers, including Rashi and Ramban, followed it. Ibn Ezra raised subtle
doubts about it, Spinoza openly challenged it, and Jewish, as well as Christian
scholars came to reject it in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Orthodox
Jews still accept it.
The instruction that Moses writes here appears to be most
of the law code that begins in Deuteronomy 12 and ends at 26:15. It may also be
understood to include the list of blessings and curses in Deuteronomy 28. That
concluding list of curses especially would account for the strong reaction that
is ascribed to King Josiah when he hears the words of the scroll of the Torah
centuries later…[4]
Deuteronomy 31:10 ff. contains Moses’ command to
read the law every seven years on the holiday of Sukkot, the festival of
booths. Friedman explains that later the Jewish practice was to read the
entire Torah (the first five books of the Bible) once every year or every three
years in weekly portions rather than all at once. Many Christian congregations
have followed this practice by dividing the entire Bible into lectionary
readings for each Sunday.
Deuteronomy 32 contains a poem that shows
linguistic signs of being an early composition. This indicates, once again,
that monotheism was an early, rather than late, development in Israel.
In Deuteronomy 32:20 God says, “I will hide my
face from them, I will see what their end will be.” Friedman has this excellent
comment on this verse:
There are two sides to the hiding of the face. It is a
fearful period of estrangement from their creator. It has been called divine
eclipse, Deus Absconditus, and
“death” of God. But, after living through it, humans are forced to grow up, to
become more responsible for their world. The words of the Song of Moses declare
that God is not simply hiding His face to bring His relationship with humans to
an end. There are rather two halves to the statement: “I’ll hide my face from
them; I’ll see what their future will be.” God gives humans responsibility for
their world. And the only way that they can be forced to take that
responsibility is if God is hidden. At whatever price (even world wars, even
the holocaust?!) and with whatever successes (rebuilding Israel, conquering
diseases, discovering secrets of the creation of the universe), humans must
grow up. And God will see what their destiny will be.
The Torah does not end with the natural conclusions of
the story: the promised land has not been reached, but it is in sight.
Everything lies in the future: finding a home, fulfillment of the promises,
bringing blessing to all the families of the earth. The divine words resound:
“I’ll see what their future will be.” The Torah ends leaving us looking forward
to what we can do and what we can be.[5]
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