In December 2019, we started writing notes on Genesis 1 and posting them to Twitter in the hope of engaging with others and learning from the many biblical scholars who use that platform. As we progressed, we determined Twitter/X was no longer a place well suited to this work, so we made the move to Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/kalevcreative.bsky.social) and Substack (@kalevcreativewrites) We have continued, slowly, to work our way through the narrative portions of the books of the Bible that lead up to Caleb’s story. Here in Deuteronomy, we learned new detail that fills in key elements. We plan to continue on until the end of his narrative in Judges 1.
Social media’s limitations force changes, so there are differences between these, which we took as we read and studied, and what we tweeted out. Because they were written for social media, they contain artifacts that make less sense in a webpage format. We hope you will bear with some of the awkwardness to see the process we’re using to understand and re-tell a richly informed version of Caleb’s story.
To find the tweet thread as we posted it, you can go to Twitter or Bluesky and search for ‘@kalevcreative’ plus a hashtag in the title or keywords from the body of the section you’re interested in.
Please read, share, and comment or engage with us on Bluesky or via email. We will do our best to respond. In the end, we hope to understand where Caleb’s story fits in the larger narrative, what role he plays in God’s plan for Israel and the nations, and what we can learn from him.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 1 #wilderness
In the 1st chapter of Deuteronomy, Moses summarizes the Israelites’ first year+ of their wilderness experience.
It begins with orienting us in time – though it was an 11 day walk to Kadesh Barnea near the southern border of Canaan from Horeb/Mount Sinai, the Israelites are now at Canaan’s eastern border eleven months into the 40th year.
Moses recalls God sent them from Horeb to enter Canaan, “…Enter the Amorite hill country, and all its neighboring areas, including the rift valley, the hill country, the foothills, the Negev, and the coastal plain—all of Canaan and Lebanon as far as the Great River, that is, the Euphrates. Look! I have already given the land to you. Go, occupy the territory that I, the Lord, promised to give to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to their descendants.”
When they reached Kadesh, Moses again directs them toward the land, “You have come to the Amorite hill country, which the Lord our God is about to give us. Look, he has placed the land in front of you! Go up, take possession of it, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, said to do. Do not be afraid or discouraged!”
Here, the details of Moses’ recollection differ from the Numbers account. In Numbers 13, God directs Moses to send key leaders into the land. In Deuteronomy 1, Moses recalls, “So all of you approached me and said, ‘Let’s send some men ahead of us to scout out the land and bring us back word as to how we should attack it and what the cities are like there.’ I thought this was a good idea, so I sent twelve men from among you, one from each tribe. They left and went up to the hill country, coming to the Eshcol Valley, which they scouted out. Then they took some of the produce of the land and carried it back down to us. They also brought a report to us, saying, ‘The land that the Lord our God is about to give us is good.’”
The Israelites refused to go into the land as God was commanding them, so Moses tell us, “When the Lord heard you, he became angry and made this vow: ‘Not a single person of this evil generation will see the good land that I promised to give to your ancestors! The exception is Caleb son of Jephunneh; he will see it and I will give him and his descendants the territory on which he has walked, because he has wholeheartedly followed me.’ As for me, the Lord was also angry with me on your account. He said, ‘You also will not be able to go there. However, Joshua son of Nun, your assistant, will go. Encourage him, because he will enable Israel to inherit the land.’”
In Numbers 14, the Israelites in another rebellious change of heart, attempt to assault Canaan without God’s help and encounter the Amalekites and Canaanites. Here, Moses recalls they encountered the Amorites. It’s not clear whether this is a discrepancy, “Amorites” is an umbrella term, or whether they were also there and Moses is emphasizing them here for a reason specific to this time and place.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 2 #war
Moses recounts travel from Kadesh south to the Reed Sea (in this case, almost certainly referring to the modern Gulf of Aqaba) and northeast to Moab. This is the new generation near the end of the Israelites’ 40 year period of wilderness wandering, “time for all the military men of that generation to die, just as the Lord had vowed to them. Indeed, it was the very hand of the Lord that eliminated them from within the camp until they were all gone.”
In the middle of this account, the narrator drops notes giving us some of the most detailed information found in the Bible about the Rephaites/Rephaim, often identified as giants. Regarding Moab, “The Emites used to live there, a people as powerful, numerous, and tall as the Anakites. These people, as well as the Anakites, are also considered Rephaites; the Moabites call them Emites. Previously the Horites lived in Seir, but the descendants of Esau dispossessed and destroyed them and settled in their place, just as Israel did to the land it came to possess, the land the Lord gave them.” 2:10-12, NET
The end note here strongly suggests post-Mosaic, post-Conquest authorship.
Concerning Ammon, “That also is considered to be a land of the Rephaites. The Rephaites lived there originally; the Ammonites call them Zamzummites. They are a people as powerful, numerous, and tall as the Anakites. But the Lord destroyed the Rephaites in advance of the Ammonites, so they dispossessed them and settled down in their place. This is exactly what he did for the descendants of Esau who lived in Seir when he destroyed the Horites before them so that they could dispossess them and settle in their area to this very day. As for the Avvites who lived in settlements as far west as Gaza, Caphtorites who came from Crete destroyed them and settled down in their place.” 2:20-23, NET
Numbers 13 told us of the Anakites, who lived in Canaan. Here, we learn that similar Rephaite/giant clans at one time lived east of Canaan and were driven out by Abraham’s relatives Moab, Ammon, Edom, and one group in the west by seafaring immigrants. In the first passage, Esau’s descendants dispossessed and destroyed the Rephaim tribe, in the second, God destroys the Rephaim then the new peoples dispossess them. We’re learning this as we learn God himself “eliminated [the rebellious Israelite generation] from the camp.” There is an interplay between God’s and people’s actions in war/judgment, but the biblical text does not exempt God from responsibility. In many passages, he’s doing the heavy lifting.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 2-3 #Sihon #Og
After passing through territory where descendants of Abraham had already eliminated Rephaim clans, Israel encounters King Sihon of Heshbon who refuses passage through his territory. Many commentators recognize a connection between God’s interaction with Sihon and with the Exodus pharaoh – as God hardened pharaoh’s heart, he “made [Heshbon] obstinate and stubborn, so that he might deliver him over.” Even in negotiations, there is interplay between the actions of the people and of God. They make their effort, and he acts decisively to determine the outcome.
In battle “…the Lord our God delivered him over to us and we struck him down…”
The narrator tells us God intended to give the land to the Israelites but also emphasizes giving over the king and his troops, then even the people in the land. “At that time we seized all his cities and put every one of them under divine judgment, including even the women and children; we left no survivors. We kept only the livestock and plunder from the cities for ourselves. From Aroer, which is at the edge of Wadi Arnon (it is the city in the wadi), all the way to Gilead there was not a town able to resist us—the Lord our God gave them all to us.”
Here, as in some passages in Joshua, there is no rationale given for “putting the people under divine judgment,” for leaving no survivors. The invocation of judgment does appear to indicate, in the narrator’s view, God assessed the people as deserving, but we do not have an explanation specific to this group.
Later, in Deuteronomy 18:9-12, we do get an evaluation of the peoples in the land, "...you shall not learn to imitate the detestable things of those nations. There must never be found among you anyone who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, anyone who practices divination, an omen reader, a soothsayer, a sorcerer, one who casts spells, one who conjures up spirits, a practitioner of the occult, or a necromancer... [B]ecause of these detestable things the Lord your God is about to drive them out from before you. "
As previously noted, beginning in Genesis 3, there is a pattern to God’s assessment of judgment, which, because of its pervasiveness in surrounding narratives, we could assume is operative here.
In his Understanding the Bible Deuteronomy commentary, Christopher Wright identifies language used with Og and Sihon as recalling Numbers 13 and 14, where the previous generation was dissuaded by giants and high-walled, fortified cities. In the new generation, God demonstrates his power, faithfulness, and capacity to judge by defeating the very kinds of enemies their parents had refused to face.
Og’s massive iron bed/coffin emphasizes his giant size. Here again, Deuteronomy gives us more specific detail about giants than anywhere in Scripture except David’s encounter with Goliath.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 3 cont. #Moses
Moses recounts the story of the tribes who took land allotments on the east side of the Jordan. Reuben and Gad receive land to the north of their distant relatives the Ammonites, while Manasseh inherits further north including the former kingdom of Og.
In exchange, they must leave their families behind in their new territory as they cross over the Jordan to fight alongside the other tribes to take Canaan.
“The Lord your God has given you this land for your possession. You warriors are to cross over equipped for battle before your fellow Israelites.”
God has given them the land, yet warriors must physically cross over to take it.
Moses tells Joshua, the army’s commander, “You have seen everything the Lord your God did to these two kings; he will do the same to all the kingdoms where you are going. Do not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God will personally fight for you.”
Moses pleads with God for permission to enter the land, but God unsympathetically shuts him down. Moses can climb a mountain to view the land but is not allowed to cross the Jordan to enter it. God tells him to commission Joshua “and encourage and strengthen him…”
#Bible #Deuteronomy 4 #law
“Now, Israel, pay attention to the statutes and ordinances I am about to teach you, so that you might live and go on to enter and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you.”
Tigay calls chpt 4 “the theological heart of Deuteronomy, explaining its most fundamental precepts, monotheism and the prohibition of idolatry.”
God reminds the people they stood before him at Horeb/Mount Sinai and saw no form as he spoke to them from the fire, so he does not want them to make images of “any kind of figure.” Genesis 1 tells us he has made us in his image, and here he prohibits the making of other images.
“if you become corrupt and make an image of any kind and do other evil things before the Lord your God that enrage him, I invoke heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that you will surely and swiftly be removed from the very land you are about to cross the Jordan to possess”
Deuteronomy 4:25-31 summarizes the judgment cycle.
https://cateclesia.com/2023/04/10/the-canaanite-conquest-and-the-pattern-of-judgment/
Moses identifies cities of refuge east of the Jordan.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 5-6 #law
“Listen, Israel, to the statutes and ordinances that I am about to deliver to you today; learn them and be careful to keep them! The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. He did not make this covenant with our ancestors but with us, we who are here today, all of us living now.”
Moses restates the Ten Commandments for the new generation and recounts that in their parents’ generation, God appeared in fire on Horeb/Mount Sinai and gave him the law after the people did not want to approach.
6:4 is the Shema: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! 5 You must love the Lord your God with your whole mind, your whole being, and all your strength.” (NET)
Chapter 6 contains repeated instructions to teach the law to the next generation, to live it out, and to place reminders of it on one’s body and house. God desires that Israel remember his salvation out of Egypt and receive the ongoing benefit of observing his law even as they enter a land and receive houses, farms, and cities they did not build for themselves. He warns them against judgment if they fail to honor this commitment.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 7 #war #land
“When the Lord your God brings you to the land that you are going to occupy and forces out many nations before you…and he delivers them over to you and you attack them, you must utterly annihilate them. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy!.. this is what you must do to them: You must tear down their altars, shatter their sacred pillars, cut down their sacred Asherah poles, and burn up their idols.”
Moses gives a mission, first found in Exodus 23, to the new generation. There, the emphasis is on the angel God will send before them and includes terror and hornets, which will drive out the peoples in the land. Here, the people take more of the focus though God is an active participant.
Many of the verbs in this passage are violent yet the extent of the violence is not clear. God is to “bring [the Israelites] to the land,” “force out many nations,” and “deliver them over.” The Israelites are to “attack,” “utterly annihilate,” “Make no treaty…and show them no mercy,” which could reasonably be interpreted as mass slaughter, yet a clarifying clause focuses solely on the destruction of religious artifacts.
This passage, by itself, appears inadequate to draw firm conclusions about what God wants of the people. As in similar passages we’ve previously considered, God’s and his people’s actions are co-mingled – force out, deliver over, attack, annihilate – ideally conceived, God and his representative people acting in concert to expel rebellion against God from the land. As the narrative unfolds, the Israelites persist in bringing rebellion with them.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 7 cont. #war #land
Moses considers God’s motives for choosing Israel from among the nations and reminds them of his faithfulness and justice. If they remain faithful, he promises to bless them; make them, their animals, and land fruitful; and protect them from disease.
The end of chapter 7 has a second section directing the Israelites to drive Canaanites from the land. This portion shares more with Exodus 23 including the hornets and expands on instructions given earlier in this chapter.
“You must destroy all the people whom the Lord your God is about to deliver over to you; you must not pity them or worship their gods, for that will be a snare to you…the Lord your God will release hornets among them until the very last ones who hide from you perish…the God who leads you, will expel the nations little by little. You will not be allowed to destroy them all at once lest the wild animals overrun you.
The Lord your God will give them over to you; he will throw them into a great panic until they are destroyed. He will hand over their kings to you, and you will erase their very names from memory. Nobody will be able to resist you until you destroy them. You must burn the images of their gods, but do not covet the silver and gold that covers them so much that you take it for yourself and thus become ensnared by it; for it is abhorrent to the Lord your God.”
The actions God requires of the Israelites are again violent yet not precisely defined – destroy, erase their names from memory, burn images. God will “deliver over,” “release hornets…until the…last ones…perish,” “throw them into a…panic until they are destroyed.” The most specific guidance concerns the destruction of images. One could argue that here, there is no direct command to the people to kill, that “destroy” and “deliver over” could refer to the expulsion of those who do not believe in YHWH and elimination of other gods’ religious items. In this model, God’s actions still apparently result in the deaths of people in the land.
As a practical matter, military action that displaces entire people groups would inevitably involve armed conflict resulting in casualties. It is reasonable to recognize any contemporary reader would understand this without extensive, specific elaboration. Biblical narratives eschew this kind of detail, neglecting description of tactics, the battlefield, and the heroics of individuals. Genesis 14:8-24 sparsely recounts Abram’s attack with his 318 trained men on regional powers to rescue Lot and culminates in Melchizedek crediting God for the victory. Biblical authors consistently blur the distinctions between God’s actions and his people’s in war. They act as one.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 8-9 #land #war
Deuteronomy 8 reads as a recollection and expansion of Genesis 1-2 ideas for the new generation of Israelites – God reminds them he has brought them through the wilderness, promises to bring them into fruitful land and bless them there as long as they obey him and credit him for the things he has done. The connection between obedience and dwelling in/restoration to fruitful land persists through biblical narrative, poetry, and prophecy.
“Just like the nations the Lord is about to destroy from your sight, so he will do to you because you would not obey him.”
God warns the Israelites against rebellion and in 9, cites it as the reason he is removing the peoples currently in the land.
“you are about to cross the Jordan so you can dispossess the nations there, people greater and stronger than you who live in large cities with extremely high fortifications. They include the Anakites, a numerous and tall people…of whom it is said, ‘Who is able to resist the Anakites?’…the Lord your God who goes before you is a devouring fire; he will defeat and subdue them before you. You will dispossess and destroy them quickly”
3x God tells the Israelites he is not giving them the land because they are righteous. He says 2x he is driving out the peoples in the land because of their wickedness.
In his book Flood and Fury, @MattLynch_OT tells us, “Joshua doesn’t mention Canaanite immorality as a justification for killing the Canaanites, as do other Old Testament passages (e.g., Gen 15:16). They were simply in the land and needed to go.” Yet, if we read through Deuteronomy into Joshua, we’ll have encountered several passages explicitly stating to the generation preparing to enter the land that God is driving the Canaanites out because of their wickedness.
Lynch reasons, “Killing children and animals puts to rest any argument that this was only about the moral degeneracy of the Canaanites. How could children and animals be held morally responsible?” Previous judgment narratives including the flood, Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the plagues/signs against Egypt did not exclude children and animals. There is substantial consistency in many areas across stories of judgment including the Canaanite conquest.
https://cateclesia.com/2023/04/10/the-canaanite-conquest-and-the-pattern-of-judgment/
In her book Blessed are the Peacemakers, @HelenEPaynter approvingly quotes @LDanielHawk ‘s Violence of the Biblical God, “God says a lot about the flood, but, at least the way the narrator tells it, God doesn’t do much. . . . Aside from a note that Yahweh closed the hatch for Noah (7:16), God remains out of the picture when the action takes place. God only reenters the narrative after the flood has done its work.” Both Hawk and Paynter express sympathy to the idea that God is a step removed from judgment, yet even in the flood story God says “I will cause it to rain on the earth…and I will wipe from the face of the ground every living thing that I have made.”
In each judgment narrative from Genesis 3 through the conquest narratives, God himself appears present in judgment. Even when he sends an angelic or human proxy, his and the proxy’s actions are difficult to distinguish from each other. In Deut 9, both God and the Israelites are to play a role in the destruction of the Anakites.
We can reliably assert that God’s desire from Gen 1-2 is relationship with people in a fruitful land and that increasing human corruption moves him to act in judgment through de-creation to preserve a remnant and eventually restore them for relationship in a fruitful land.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 9 cont.-10 #relationship
Moses reminds the Israelites of the previous generation’s rebellion at Sinai. Instead of being God’s image as in Genesis 1, they made a metal image, celebrated, and worshipped it. God was ready to kill them, but Moses, acting as an image of God, interceded on their behalf. God spared them, yet they repeatedly rebelled. Moses says to them, “when he sent you from Kadesh Barnea and told you, ‘Go up and possess the land I have given you,’ you rebelled against the Lord your God and would neither believe nor obey him. You have been rebelling against him from the very first day I knew you!”
Moses recounts his extensive intercession for them, recalling how, even in their rebellion, they were witness to the nations. Moses recalls the re-making of the stone tablets, Aaron’s death, the responsibilities of the Levites, and the Israelites’ desert travel.
Deuteronomy 7-10 may be read as an out-of-order exposition of an instance of the relationship cycle.
If we start in Deut 7, the command to bring judgment to the peoples in the land comes first, followed by recollection of the Israelites’ time in the wilderness, description of the fruitfulness of the land, and, for much of the rest of Deuteronomy, a renewal of the covenant/instructions for living in the land.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 10 cont.- #Israel #foreigners
Now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you except to revere him, to obey all his commandments, to love him, to serve him with all your mind and being, and to keep the Lord’s commandments and statutes that I am giving you today for your own good?
The heavens—indeed the highest heavens—belong to the Lord your God, as does the earth and everything in it. However, only to your ancestors did he show his loving favor, and he chose you, their descendants, from all peoples—as is apparent today.
Therefore, cleanse your hearts and stop being so stubborn! For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God who is unbiased and takes no bribe, who justly treats the orphan and widow, and who loves resident foreigners, giving them food and clothing.
So you must love the resident foreigner because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. Revere the Lord your God, serve him, be loyal to him, and take oaths only in his name. He is the one you should praise; he is your God, the one who has done these great and awesome things for you that you have seen. When your ancestors went down to Egypt, they numbered only seventy, but now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of the sky.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 11 #God #law
11 begins by recounting God’s “marvelous deeds,” “His majesty, His mighty hand, His outstretched arm; the signs and deeds that He performed…” (Jewish Study Bible) – the destruction of the Egyptian army, “what he did for you in the wilderness” (presumably the defeat of the Amalekites and provision of food and water), and using natural forces to bring judgment on rebellious Israelites.
The reason the author identifies for the Israelites to obey God’s laws is, largely, his use of force against evil forces in the world. God is just and uses his power to bring justice, though it is sometimes delayed. He protects creation from forces that act opposite his plan for life and fruitfulness.
The author then turns to the positive, “the soil that the Lord swore to your fathers to assign to them and to their heirs, a land flowing with milk and honey.”
God’s ongoing provision is necessary because this land is not like Egypt, irrigated perpetually by a river, rather it’s watered by intermittent rain, which God will withhold if his people refuse relationship with him.
If the Israelites obey, God will dislodge greater and more numerous nations before them, giving them a territory we first saw hints of in Genesis 2 and again in his promises to Abraham – from the wilderness to Lebanon, from the Euphrates to the Western Sea/Mediterranean. God will not allow any enemy to prevail against them.
The themes here expand on God’s Gen 1 blessing/command to be fruitful and subdue the land and Genesis 2 instruction to tend and keep/cultivate and guard the garden, contingent on the ongoing obedience of the Israelites.
“I set before you blessing and curse: blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God…; and curse, if you do not obey the commandments…but turn away from the path…and follow other gods…”
God tells them they must, after they enter the land, hold a ceremony of blessing and curse at Mount Ebal and Gerizim, one we see performed in Joshua 8.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 12 #law
In his JPS commentary, Jeffrey Tigay summarizes, “The first section of laws focuses primarily on the sanctuary, the rites and festivals celebrated within it, and other religious matters, such as shunning Canaanite religious practices, punishing instigation to worship other gods, and holiness in mourning and diet.”
For him, Moses commands a “campaign against idolatry…to eliminate it from the land of Israel where it might influence Israelites.”
This requirement to destroy the remnants of Canaanite religion tends to support the idea that driving out, even “utterly destroy[ing]” does not mean the slaughter of every individual dwelling in the land. There would be no one left to share religious practices. Rather, as Tigay proposes, it appears to indicate God’s intolerance for the continuance of Canaanite religion as a temptation to the Israelites and, likely, in God’s eyes, its destructive impact on the land.
Moses also orders a change from earlier religious practice as they enter the land – worship will occur at the central sanctuary and food for sacrifices will be brought there, though other meat can be killed elsewhere as long as the Israelites comply with the Noahic command to avoid eating blood.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 13-14 #law
13-14 prohibit other religious practices, punishable by death. The juxtaposition of 10’s laws about treating the foreigner with the same justice and mercy as the Israelite with 12-14’s intolerance of deviation from the Israelite religion emphasize that God’s interest is not in race/tribe/family, rather that his people be faithful representatives to his creation. He is bringing them to a fruitful land and desires that through right relationship with him, both the land and the people be enduringly blessed.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 15-17 #law
15 – Remission of debts every seventh year, care for the needy, freeing of Hebrew slaves, consecration of firstborn animals, some for sacrifice and a sacrificial meal before the Lord every year
16 – Observe Passover at the central sanctuary. Celebrate the Feast of Weeks with family and the vulnerable among you. Celebrate the Feast of Booths with family and the vulnerable. For each, the males will bring gifts to the Lord at the central sanctuary. Appoint judges and other officials to ensure justice is done.
17 – Sacrificial animal instructions, death for idolatry, instructions for difficult judicial matters, instructions for appointing a king once they have entered the land:
“If, after you have entered the land…you decide, ‘I will set a king over me, as do all the nations about me,’ you shall be free to set a king over yourself, one chosen by the Lord your God. Be sure to set as king over yourself of your own people…he shall not keep many horses or send people back to Egypt to add to his horses, since the Lord has warned you, ‘You must not go back that way again.’ And he shall not have many wives, lest his heart go astray; nor shall he amass silver and gold to excess.
When he is seated on his royal throne, he shall have a copy of this Teaching written for him on a scroll by the levitical priests. Let it remain with him and let him read in it all his life, so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God, to observe faithfully every word of this Teaching as well as these laws. This he will not act haughtily toward his fellow or deviate from the Instruction to the right or to the left, to the end that he and his descendants may reign long in the midst of Israel” (Jewish Study Bible)
#Bible #Deuteronomy 18-19 #law
18 – Levitical priests have no land allotment but receive a portion of sacrificed food from the people. A Levite from anywhere in the land may serve in the central sanctuary. Prohibition against adopting spiritual practices of the land’s former inhabitants, wholeheartedly serve God.
God will raise up a prophet like Moses; instructions for listening to the prophets.
19 – Designate sanctuary cities for one who has killed a person to flee from vengeance pending justice.
Two witnesses are necessary in an accusation of a crime. False witness merits the penalty for the alleged offense. Just laws drive evil from the land.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 20 #law #war
Deuteronomy 20 is one of the more difficult passages in the HB/OT for modern readers. Is it possible, separated from its described events by millennia, to interpret it well? How do we square its apparent merciless ethics with other passages telling us of a loving, forgiving God?
Our interpretation ought to be limited by its context – within Deuteronomy, where it follows other military guidance and laws governing treatment of laborers, foreigners, and other categories of vulnerable people, and within the Torah/Pentateuch where it appears part of a cycle of judgment.
The earlier judgment narratives of the Flood, where judgment came as the Gen 1 waters above and below collapsed back together; Babel, where people attempted to reach the heavens but were scattered in the land; Sodom and Gomorrah, where elements of the sky fell to the land; and of Egypt, where elements of the heavens, waters, and land transgressed boundaries all provide context for this one, in which God’s covenant people receive instruction for conquering cities and protecting trees in the land. Genesis 1-11’s paradigms of fruitfulness and rebellious city building hang in the air like heavy scent.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 20 cont. #law #war
Deuteronomy 20’s commands for treating distant conquered peoples as forced labor appear consistent with the practice of surrounding nations at the time, yet when viewed in the context of the preceding chapters governing dealings with the foreigners who live among them, the release of slaves every seven years, etc, there is movement toward mercy rather than increasing oppression and death the Israelites experienced as slaves of the Egyptians.
In contrast, the peoples of the land where Israel will live are subject to a judgment of pervasive destruction reminiscent of Noah’s flood and Sodom and Gomorrah. Previously, the Gen 1 day 2 and 3 separated waters collapsed to destroy the peoples in the land, then elements of the sky fell to destroy Sodom. Here, God’s (Gen 1) appointed rulers of the land are to utterly annihilate (20:17 NET) as God goes before them.
This is deeply disturbing for many readers to contemplate. How can the same God who values life, justice, and mercy command that “you must not allow a single living thing to survive.” (20:16) It appears that there is a pattern in relationship between God and people in which, when the corruption of people and/or land becomes pervasive, God chooses to destroy the corrupt in order to preserve the land for a remnant, another people who he wishes to give a chance at relationship with him in the land. The Israelites attacking rebellious Canaanites will be the recent descendants of rebellious Israelites condemned to die in the desert (Numbers 14) after they purposed to murder their leaders and return to Egypt.
Because we can observe this pattern in numerous earlier, relatively compact stories, it is reasonable to look for it and use it as a standard for interpretation of this complex and distributed one.
See https://www.kalevcreative.com/blog/2024/10/10/deuteronomy-20s-command-to-destroy-the-canaanites
#Bible #Deuteronomy 20 cont. #law #war
Laws of war for Israel:
-The otherwise-committed or reluctant soldier may go home. We find echoes of this logic in later narratives (i.e. Gideon’s in Judges ?)
-When attacking a distant town, first offer terms of peace. If accepted, its people will be subject to forced labor. If rejected, “you shall lay siege to it; and when the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword. You may, however, take as your booty the women, the children, the livestock, and everything in the town – all its spoil – and enjoy the use of the spoil of your enemy, which the Lord your God gives you.” (Jewish Study Bible)
We shouldn’t overlook the disturbing nature of this command. Deuteronomy 21 will provide more specific instructions for treatment of female captives, apparently designed to provide some protection from battlefield rape, yet certainly not prioritizing her wishes, possibly allowing forced marriage. This passage does not address the religious practices of the captured people and appears to, at least in spirit, contradict the prohibition of marrying many wives who might lead the king astray (ref?). An Israelite male marrying a foreign woman captured in battle would likely also be exposed to her religious practices. The passage does not clarify what it means by taking children as spoil, whether they would be treated as slaves or as adopted children. This is the instruction for towns far from where the Israelites will live.
For the nearby Canaanite peoples, however, “…you shall not let a soul remain alive. No, you must proscribe them…as the Lord your God has commanded you lest they lead you into doing all the abhorrent things that they have done for their gods and you stand guilty before the Lord your God.”
Finally, God mandates the protection of fruit trees in war.
Why would God value trees more than the people in the land? I would argue from context that he does not, that passages as early as God’s conversation with Abraham in Genesis 15 inform us God is paying attention to the Canaanites, aware of their actions and evaluating them. He is not merely disposing of them as inconvenient, rather, as he has with many peoples including the Israelites, is bringing judgment to a people who have become corrupt enough that relationship in the fruitful land is no longer a viable possibillity.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 21 #law
21 begins with instructions for seeking communal atonement for, ensuring the land is not polluted by an unsolved murder.
Next, a law of war concerning the steps necessary for taking a captured woman as a wife. To modern eyes, this is rightly disturbing because our law and common practice has progressed far past 3000 years ago when battlefield sexual assault followed by enslavement was the norm. Still, it is hard to square “Do to others as you would have them do to you” with this ethic of “if you should see among them an attractive woman whom you wish to take as a wife,” which contains the key elements of the Genesis 3 temptation scene – “When the woman saw that the tree produced fruit that was good for food, was attractive to the eye, and was desirable for making one wise, she took some of its fruit and ate it (NET)” – that recur in failed temptations including in Genesis 6 (sons of God-daughters of men), Genesis 16 (Sarai and Abram-Hagar), Genesis 34 (Shechem-Dinah), 2 Samuel 11 (David-Bathsheba). A straightforward reading of the text appears to grant permission for taking a (certainly unwilling) wife in war, while the subtext portrays it as a failed temptation. I am not aware that the tension is ever resolved. The restrictions in the law protect the rights of the woman not her captor, but her right to refuse to be taken in the first place is not in view. As with many passages in the Conquest narratives, it remains unsettling and unsatisfying.
The next law limits how a man can show favor to his children in distributing inheritance, with the key element of tension generated by the presence of a less-loved wife among multiple wives. The text of Genesis 2 and subtext of numerous Genesis stories discourages marrying more than one wife, demonstrates it leads to disaster, yet here the straightforward reading assumes it’s happened and gives instructions for dealing with the resulting conflict.
The stubborn and rebellious son who refuses to obey his parents can be assessed as worthy of death by the elders and stoned “to purge wickedness from among you, and all Israel will hear about it and be afraid.” Numerous commentators question whether this ever happened. There is no way to know without an account acknowledging it. Presumably the severity of the punishment communicates the son’s ongoing drunken, selfish actions were a threat to the subsistence farming family’s ability to survive.
An executed criminal must be buried the same day, so the land is not defiled.
The elements of the chapter connect through concerns of preserving fruitfulness when Israelites have failed temptation and embraced violence, echoes of Genesis 3-6.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 22-23 #law
22 – Laws concerning returning of neighbor’s animals or property when lost.
It’s offensive to God for women to dress as men and vice versa.
If you find a bird’s nest, you can take the young but not the mother, “so that it may go well with you and you may have a long life.”
Put a guardrail on the roof of your house so you won’t be culpable if someone falls.
Don’t mix seed when planting a vineyard, plow with an ox and a donkey together, or wear wool and linen woven together. Wear tassels on the corners of your clothing.
Laws about marrying a woman who isn’t a virgin, adultery, sex outside of engagement/marriage, marrying a former wife of one’s father. The death penalty figures prominently in sex laws.
23 – Laws concerning who may “enter the assembly of the Lord” and purity laws in wartime. “…the Lord your God walks about in the middle of your camp to deliver you and defeat your enemies for you. Therefore your camp should be holy…” Interestingly, the Israelites are to dispose of human waste in the equivalent of a modern cat hole or slit trench as required in the current US Army and Marine Corps Field Sanitation field manual to prevent flies from spreading disease.
Do not return a runaway slave. Cult prostitution is forbidden. Don’t charge interest to Israelites, though you can to foreigners. Fulfill your vows or don’t make them. When in a neighbor’s field, you may eat what you pick there by hand, but you cannot harvest more to carry away.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 24 #law
Laws governing divorce, release from obligation of military service in the first year of marriage.
You must not take a millstone as collateral.
A kidnapper/slaver gets the death penalty.
Cooperate with the priests during during a leprosy outbreak.
Laws ensuring mercy and fairness when loaning to or hiring the poor.
Fathers must not be put to death for their children’s actions or vice versa.
“You must not pervert justice due a resident foreigner or an orphan, or take a widow’s garment as security for a loan. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I am commanding you to do all this.
Whenever you reap your harvest in your field and leave some unraked grain there, you must not return to get it; it should go to the resident foreigner, orphan, and widow so that the Lord your God may bless all the work you do. When you beat your olive tree you must not repeat the procedure; the remaining olives belong to the resident foreigner, orphan, and widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard you must not do so a second time; they should go to the resident foreigner, orphan, and widow. Remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt; therefore, I am commanding you to do all this.” (NET)
#Bible #Deuteronomy 25-26 #law
25 - Laws governing fairness in court. Don’t muzzle your ox when it’s working.
If a man dies without a son, his brother should marry his widow to preserve his line. Law if he refuses.
If a woman grabs a man’s genitals during a fight between men, her hand must be cut off.
Dishonest weights and measures are abhorrent to God.
Reminder of the Amalekites’ attack on Israel and renewal of the mandate to wipe them out.
26 – Instructions for religious ceremonies – presentation of the first fruits grown in the land of Canaan, recognizing Israel’s history as descendants of Abraham, slaves in Egypt, God’s rescue and gift of a fruitful land. Ritual of the third year tithe to provide for the Levites and vulnerable people in the land.
Moses admonishes the people to keep all these statutes, so they will be a holy people to the Lord.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 27-28 #Shechem #blessing #curse
This passage provides instructions for a unique event in Israel’s history, fulfilled in Joshua 8. They are to plaster stones on Mount Ebal above Shechem, write the law on them, build an altar, and perform a ceremony of loudly announced blessings and curses from there and Mount Gerizim as an inauguration ceremony of God’s relationship with his people in the land.
Shechem as a location is surely significant. It was Abram’s first named stop in the land of Canaan where God first promises that his descendants will inherit that land. When Jacob’s family returned to the land, his sons committed an appalling massacre there after their sister was kidnapped and assaulted by its prince. Joseph was kidnapped by his brothers and sold into slavery in its vicinity.
God purposes to renew his covenant, this time with Abraham’s descendants. Its focus is on relationship with God and relationships with people, admonishing them to listen to God; prohibiting carved images, sexual sin, and violence; promising fruitfulness in the land for continued obedience, destruction and expulsion from the land when they rebel.
Christopher Wright, in his 1996 commentary, posits that many of the curses are aimed at discouraging sins done in secret, though the ceremony itself is very public. He notes the disturbing nature of the curses to modern sensibilities yet suggests these lists of blessings and curses were to be expected in similar ancient documents outlining treaties between kings and their vassals.
Tigay divides the events into three ceremonies – erecting stele on Mount Ebal with a new altar and sacrifices on it, the proclamation of blessing and curses from Mount Ebal and Gerizim, and the Levites’ invocation and people’s affirmation of God’s punishment for sin that is difficult for people to detect and punish. He views the ceremonies as affirmation inside the land of law Moses had given them outside.
Stepping back from the details, the passage appears to be an expanded recapitulation of God’s original covenant with Abram as he first entered the land including updates prohibiting behaviors that threaten Israel’s fruitfulness in the land and ongoing relationship with God, especially those that intervening stories have given us reason to fear.
***Transitioned to Substack/Bluesky***
Deuteronomy 29
This begins a speech Moses gives to the new generation of Israelites as they approach the land of Canaan, encamped across the Jordan River in Moab.
He summarizes their experience in the wilderness, emphasizing God’s provision for them. They lived in a land that is difficult to inhabit, likely for a people that large, impossible to survive in, but they did survive and their possessions were preserved by God’s continual intervention for their needs. The duality evident first in Genesis 1 – be fruitful and subdue – and Genesis 2 – cultivate and guard – appears again here as Moses recalls both God’s provision for them in the wilderness and the defeat of Og and Sihon, kings of near supernatural power.
Moses tells them to keep the terms of the covenant, so it will go well with them in the land and emphasizes the universality of its applicability among the people who live with them and their history of covenant dating to Abraham.
Keep faith with God, or judgment will result and its evident severity will endure as a sign to any who pass by.
“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those that are revealed belong to us and our descendants forever, so that we might obey all the words of this law.” (NET)
Deuteronomy 30
Moses prophetically informs the Israelites they (or their descendants) will in fact experience all the blessings and curses and be scattered among the nations. God will gather them back into the land, cleanse their hearts, and judge the enemies that harmed them. They will return. He will cleanse their hearts, and they will obey him. He will judge their enemies. His people will obey him, and he will make them fruitful in the land.
He emphasizes that God’s commands are not too difficult to understand or to fulfill.
In the NIV Application Commentary, Daniel Block identifies two Israels. One that claims status before God as descendants of Abraham, the other characterized by obedience, though some are of other nations.
“Like Josiah centuries later, they turn to Yahweh with all their inner beings, their persons, and their resources (2 Kings 23:25); like Caleb and Rahab and Ruth (who were Gentiles by blood), they have a different Spirit and follow Yahweh fully (cf. Num. 14:24; Deut. 1:36; Josh. 14:8); and like David, they trust Yahweh fully (2 Sam. 22:2–51).”
Block recalls Caleb again as he considers Deuteronomy 30’s final section. “Sadly, the history of Israel is a history of wrong choices. To be sure, there were individuals who chose life. The history of the nation is framed by two such persons. For his loyalty, at the beginning Caleb gained the honorific title ‘my servant,’ and enjoyed the delights of dwelling in the land, because he possessed a different spirit and followed Yahweh fully (Num. 14:24).18 At the end, Josiah received the supreme commendation: ‘Before him there was no king like him, who turned to Yahweh with his whole inner being, his whole person, and all his resources, according to the entire Torah of Moses’ (2 Kings 23:25, pers. trans.). But in the swirl of Judah’s final decades, even his life was cut short by a ‘random’ Egyptian arrow.”
Moses wraps his argument by admonishing Israel to choose God’s purpose for them. “Today I invoke heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set life and death, blessing and curse, before you. Therefore choose life so that you and your descendants may live! I also call on you to love the Lord your God, to obey him and be loyal to him, for he gives you life and enables you to live continually in the land the Lord promised to give to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
Deuteronomy 31:1-13
Moses’ speeches are complete. We learn of his final acts as leader of Israel. He expresses care for them, that they learn the law God has given them, so they may have life in the land.
“As for the Lord your God, he is about to cross over before you; he will destroy these nations before you, and you will dispossess them…The Lord will deliver them over to you, and you will do to them according to the whole commandment I have given you. Be strong and courageous! Do not fear or tremble before them, for the Lord your God is the one who is going with you. He will not fail you or abandon you!”
God’s actions and Israel’s intertwine in Moses’ understanding of the conflict over Canaan. God commands the Israelites to participate and acts with them on their behalf. If this is a reliable narrator, we do not have room to claim God is removed from the conflict. If we recognize the Canaanite conflict as part of a larger pattern of judgment, God is not removed from executing judgment, he is active in it.
Moses codified the law and scheduled a recurring event where the priests would read it to the people, so they would be repeatedly reminded of it and children will learn it and fear God.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 31:14-30
The Lord tells Moses he will commission Joshua as Moses’ successor. He appears at the tent of meeting in a pillar of cloud and gives a short speech, a strange one to our ears. Rather than congratulating Moses on his hard work over the many years with the people, God tells him the people are going to reject God and be judged, so God wants them to compose and learn a song, which will be a witness against the people when they enter the land and sin.
God commissions Joshua using language we will see again in Joshua 1, “Be strong and courageous…” God tells Joshua that Joshua will lead the people into the land and that God will be with him. Here again, God links the people’s work with his own in the land.
“It came about, when Moses finished writing the words of this law in a book until they were complete, that Moses commanded the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying, ‘Take this book of the law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may remain there as a witness against you.’”
Moses speaks to the people for the last time to give them the song, but, like God, he speaks in a manner we wouldn’t expect, first calling heaven and earth as witness, telling them they will act corruptly and that evil will befall them.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 32:1-43
The song Moses composes to remind the Israelites of the nature of their relationship with God, God’s greatness, and the reasons they will be punished when they rebel after Moses’ death
After introducing Moses’ teaching and God’s greatness, the song admonishes the people for acting corruptly and identifies Israel as God’s portion and inheritance among the nations.
There is a translation issue in Deuteronomy 32:8. The Masoretic text uses “sons of Israel,” while the Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls prefer “sons of God.”
Tigay assesses that “sons of God” avoids difficulties raised by the “sons of Israel” reading and evaluates the passage to mean “that when God was allotting nations to the divine beings, he made the same number of nations and territories as there were such beings…and kept Israel for himself.”
“This seems to be part of a concept hinted at elsewhere…When God organized the government of the world, He established two tiers: …himself, ‘God of gods’… who reserved Israel…to govern personally; below Him, seventy…’divine beings’… to whom He allotted the other peoples. The conception is like…a king…governing the capital…of his realm personally and assigning the provinces to subordinates.”
Most of the remainder of the song poetically reenacts a relationship/judgment cycle involving Israel’s movement from wilderness to fruitful land, rebellion, judgment at the hands of other nations, and, an unusual element to this point though common later, the harsh judgment of the nation that brings judgment on Israel.
https://cateclesia.com/2023/04/10/the-canaanite-conquest-and-the-pattern-of-judgment/
https://cateclesia.com/2024/07/16/genesis-1-11-as-introduction-and-paradigm/
God assures them vengeance is his and that he will swiftly bring justice. Speaking in first person, God tells Israel of his power, that he alone is God, and, in bloody language, takes personal responsibility for judgment and vengeance on those who hate him. Moses further emphasizes that God “avenges the blood of his children…repays those who hate him and cleanses his people’s land.”
The song is written to Israelites prior to entering the land but also to their descendants who are to be brutally oppressed and in need of assurance their oppressors will not prevail in the end.
In Moses’ telling, it appears the land is currently oppressed by God’s enemies, while in the future, as a result of their continued rebellion, the people will be.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 32:44-33 #Moses #blessing
Moses and Joshua present the song to the Israelites, and Moses tells them remembering the song is essential for continuing life in the land.
God gives Moses instructions to go up to Mount Nebo, look out over the land of Canaan, which he will not enter, and that Moses will die there on the mountain. Moses will not enter because he rebelled against God at Kadesh.
After this song predicting terrible consequences and emphasizing God’s power in judgment, in a passage reminiscent of the end of Jacob’s life, Moses blesses the tribes of Israel.
He begins by glorifying God:
“The Lord came from Sinai
and revealed himself to Israel from Seir.
He appeared in splendor from Mount Paran,
and came forth with ten thousand holy ones.
With his right hand he gave a fiery law to them.
Surely he loves the people;
all your holy ones are in your power.
And they sit at your feet,
each receiving your words.
Moses’ own tribe Levi and the tribe of Joseph receive special emphasis, while Caleb’s tribe Judah’s is relatively short:
“Listen, O Lord, to Judah’s voice,
and bring him to his people.
May his power be great,
and may you help him against his foes.”
In contrast to Jacob’s assessment of Benjamin as “a ravenous wolf,” Moses calls him the “beloved of the Lord” who “will dwell in safety.”
Moses ends by again praising God:
“There is no one like God, O Jeshurun,
who rides through the sky to help you,
on the clouds in majesty.
The everlasting God is a refuge,
and underneath you are his eternal arms;
he has driven out enemies before you…”
reminding Israel of God’s protection and expressing hope that they will prevail.
#Bible #Deuteronomy 34
Moses walks from the Moab rift valley up mountains named Nebo and Pisgah across the Jordan River from Jericho, where God (presumably miraculously) shows him the territories of the tribes. God tells Moses he is fulfilling his promise to Abraham to give Abraham’s descendants the land, but Moses will not enter.
Moses dies in the land of Moab. God buries him “in the valley in the land of Moab near Beth Peor,” the site to remain secret. God preserved his life and liveliness to the full age of 120. Israel mourns him for 30 days.
In an episode of the OnScript podcast, Amy Balogh, author of Moses Among the Idols, speaks movingly of the intimacy between God and Moses at Moses’ death
https://onscript.study/podcast/amy-balogh-moses-among-the-idols/
Though Deuteronomy did not substantially advance the narrative, for our purposes, it did fill in important detail regarding giant clans, spiritual beings, God’s reasoning/justification for the conquest of Canaan, and God’s view of judgment. God desires relationship with his people in the fruitful land. Canaan is that land. Israel is that people. God goes before them to prepare a place he can dwell with them.
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With this post, we finish a 5+ year journey from Genesis 1 through the end of the Torah that began on Twitter @kalevcreative. We will continue with Joshua through Judges 1, the last verses of Caleb’s continuous narrative, and likely Caleb’s sparse mentions in Chronicles during 2025 and beyond if necessary.
After that, we’ll be consolidating lessons, writing, and revising in the hope of achieving a new, unique, and insightful approach to Caleb’s story.
Thanks for traveling with us.