Deuteronomy 22 - 25: In Which Moses Reads the Fine Print

Moses' long farewell speech continues....

In the next four chapters, Moses continues laying down the law. As I talked about last time, it makes a lot of sense that he would be thinking about law at this point, as the Israelites are about to make a huge lifestyle transition without him around to guide them through it. But whereas in the proceeding chapters, he was concerned with the large-scale issues of maintaining an egalitarian society in a new context, at this point he is getting down to the nitty gritty. Deuteronomy 22 through 25 is basically a list of laws, some new, some from the earlier books. I will summarize them for your convenience.

Deut 22

• If you see somebody's animal or property lying around, don't be a jerk: take it back to them. If you see somebody's animal in trouble, help it out.

OK, that was pretty straightforward. But now, a little social Conservatism for you:

• 5A woman must not wear men's clothing, nor a man wear women's clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this.

And then, something wildly obscure. We are definitely working through a grab-bag, here:

• If you take chicks from a bird's nest, you can't take the mother bird at the same time.

The reason given for this is a kind of "because I said so" that is repeated several times in Deuteronomy: "so that it may go well with you."

• Houses should have parapets, so nobody falls off the roof.

Then, what I think of as the autistic laws:

• Don't plant two kinds of seed in the same field.
• Don't put and ox and a donkey in a yoke together.
• Don't weave wool and linen together.
• Put tassels on the four corners of your cloak.

Next, some laws about sex. One notices that the Israelites do not necessarily consider sexuality a life-affirming celebration of mutual affection:

• If a guy tries to get rid of his new wife by saying that she wasn't a virgin, but her father can prove she was, he has to pay a hundred shekels and can never divorce her.
• However, if she really did have premarital sexual intercourse, the town should tie her up and throw rocks at her until she dies.
• Adultery: Both parties die.
• If a man has sex with an engaged woman in town, stone both of them to death. He is considered to have raped her, and she didn't shout for help.
• If it happens in the country, though, only the man gets stoned to death; it's assumed that she shouted for help, but nobody could hear her.
• If a man rapes a single girl, he has to give her dad 50 shekels and marry her with no chance of divorce.
• Marrying your father's wife is right out.

Deut 23

Three kinds people may not enter "the assembly of the Lord."

• Anyone who "has been emasculated by crushing or cutting."

(Ouch!)

• Those rotten Ammonites and Moabites.
• First or Second-generation Edomites or Egyptians.
  
  
• Keep things tidy in a military camp. Dig a latrine.
• Shelter fugitive slaves
  
• No shrine prostitutes in this religion!
• No charging interest on loans within the community (although you can feel free to stick it to foreigners).
• If you swear to God, you better follow through.

And then, another great "don't be a jerk" law:

• If you are in your neighbor's farm, you can pick a few grapes or kernals of grain, but don't start filling a basket or using your sickle. What were you, born in a barn?
  

Deut 24

• If a couple is divorced and one of them remarries, they can't remarry each other again.
• After a man gets married, he is exempt from military service for a year.
• You can't accept a millstone as collateral, because the miller's livelihood depends on it.
• Kidnapping and slaving of fellow Israelites is a capital offense.
• Don't mess around with leprosy. See a doctor!
• If you make a loan, don't be a jerk about claiming the collateral.
• Pay your employees' wages promptly.
• Parents and children can not be punished for each other's crimes.
• Aliens, widows, and orphans must receive equal protection under the law.
• Don't be overly thorough when harvesting; leave some produce in your fields for the poor to gather.

Deut 25

• Guilt or innocence is to be determined by the court, and the court will mete out punishment. No more than forty lashes may ever be given.
• 4Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.
• If a man dies, his brother must marry the widow. If he doesn't want to, the town elders will sit down with him for a little counseling session. If he STILL won't marry her, this is what is in store for him:
  
  

  9his brother's widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, take off
  one of his sandals, spit in his face and say, "This is what is done to the man
  who will not build up his brother's family line." 10That man's line shall be
  known in Israel as The Family of the Unsandaled.

That will be a fun passage to remember next time you hear someone advocating a return to Biblical standards of morality. As will this one:

• 11If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, 12you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.
• Don't cheat people by using inaccurate weights and measures.
• And finally, don't forget that the Amalekites are a bunch of rotten bastards, and that God wants you not only to destroy them, but destroy their legacy so that they disappear from human memory!
  

NEXT UP: Blessings, Curses, Reggae....

Deuteronomy 14 - 21: Moses Lays Down the Law, Again

We rejoin Moses in the epic-length farewell speech that is the Book of Deuteronomy....

Deut 14

This week's reading starts like this:

1 You are the children of the LORD your God. Do not cut yourselves or shave the front of your heads for the dead, 2 for you are a people holy to the LORD your God.

...and right away we know we are back in the quirky world of Old Testament law. Over the next several chapters, Moses will do less general sermonizing, and focus more on the specifics of allowable personal and social behavior. And while much of this is review of law that were laid out in Exodus, Numbers, and Leviticus, there is some new material too.

In Chapter 14, for instance, there is a concise little review of dietary laws (yes: ox, mountain sheep, ibex; no: rabbit, screech owl, bat), followed by a call for tithing that as far as I can remember is new in its details. You are expected to put aside a tenth of your crops, and the firstborn of your animals, and take them to the central place of worship for sacrifice. But now that everyone is not going to be in the same camp, there's a bow to practicality: if you live a long way from the central place -- let's just jump the gun and start calling it "The Temple" -- you can sell your tithe close to home, travel to the Temple, buy equivalent produce and animals, and sacrifice those. There is also a vague provision that, in every third year, the tithe ought to benefit the Levite priests, as well as the widows widows, orphans, aliens of the towns.

Now, that bit about supporting the poor people in the towns is interesting. Think about the situation as Moses is giving this pep talk; the Israelites are planning to make the transition from a nomadic to a settled agrarian lifestyle. For the last generation, they've all lived together in a sprawling mobile camp, but as soon as this Promised Land is conquered they are going to spread out and take up farming. The communal life of the camp has doubtless enforced some measure of social equality, and that's all going to go by the wayside as people prosper or fail according to their luck and skill as a farmer, and their luck and skill in getting their hands on the best chunks of land. Moreover, once you have farms, you will also have market towns and trade specialization, with the diversification of social class and function that will come along with them. Among many, many other things, this means that you will start to have a class of the poor and dispossessed, and that they will tend to wash up in the towns and cities. This tweak in the tithing rules sounds like a proactive attempt to deal with this new reality.

Deut 15

Chapter 15 introduces another law which is, as far as I can recall, new: at the end of every seven years, the Israelites must cancel all of their debts to each other. Moreover, if somebody asks you to lend them some money during Year Six, you can't be a jerk about it. "There should be no poor among you," says Moses (4) (although admitting almost immediately that "there will always be poor people in the land" (11)). Here again, we see a recognition that the new way of life is going to create winners and losers, and an attempt to set up a system where the losers will still be able to share in the wealth of the general community. We also see yet another of the countless ways that our modern way of life has nothing whatsoever to do with its alleged Judeo-Christian foundation. I may have to write to my mortgage holder about how it's God's will that all debts are cancelled after seven years, just to see what happens.

You have to release a servant after seven years of service, too, unless the servant really likes you and wants to make the arrangement permanent. In that event, you have him or her stand in your doorway with their head against the doorframe, and you drive an awl through their earlobe into the wood. The Israelites have a refreshingly hearty approach to labor law.

Deut 16 - 17

Mostly, Chapter 16 is Moses reminding the people to celebrate Passover and the other feasts. In Verses 18 to 20, there is the beginning of what you might call a mini-Constitution. In the new towns that are going to pop up, says Moses, you are going to need judges and local officials. Make sure they are fair, and don't let them take bribes. In Chapter 17, after an admonition on the familiar topic of how it is not OK to worship other gods, and you need to kill anybody who does, there is a provision for a sort of appellate court among the Levites, a body to handle cases that are too much for the local courts.

Finally, in 17:14-20, Moses gives instructions for the appointment of a king. The provisions are interesting: He has to be an Israelite, can't accumulate wealth, wives, or horses, and can't send people back to Egypt for any reason. He has to read a copy of these provisions daily, so he won't "consider himself better than his brothers" (20). He is clearly intended to govern a still quasi-egalitarian society, able to lead the people by their consent but limited in his economic means (wealth), family connections (wives), and military power (horses) from having excessive power to inflict his personal will. It really is an amazingly progressive vision of government that Moses is trying to set up for the Promised Land.

Deut 18

Chapter 18 covers some specifics of how the Levites will be supported, and issues a stern warning against anyone taking up the "detestable practices" of other peoples: child sacrifice, witchcraft, communication with the dead, or divination. However, says Moses, God will eventually elevate another prophet who, like Moses, will be able to communicate God's will to the people. If somebody claims to be that prophet, says Moses, it will be pretty easy to test them. Does what they say will happen actually happen? If not, that's not the prophet I'm talking about.

Deut 19

The "Cities of Refuge" concept is revisited: three cities are to be set aside as safe havens for anybody who has accidentally killed someone and is afraid that their victim's relatives will kill them. In an interesting appendage, Moses adds

8 If the LORD your God enlarges your territory, as he promised on oath to your forefathers, and gives you the whole land he promised them, 9 because you carefully follow all these laws I command you today—to love the LORD your God and to walk always in his ways—then you are to set aside three more cities.

This is the first we've heard explicitly that all those Covenants from Genesis might be contingent on good behavior.

Deut 20

Deuteronomy 20 is all about war and how to conduct it. It implies that, for the Israelites, military service is kind of like jury duty -- if you have a good excuse, or just kind of whine a little, you can get out of it easy enough. Next, Moses instructs the Israelites to always start with an offer of peace. This is new, and quite different than the rock-em-sock-em rhetoric of chapters past. Mind you, the offer of peace is really an invitation of surrender into slavery, but still. If this offer is declined, the standing orders are still to split up the women and children, but to put to the sword all the men. (13)

Wait! I read it wrong the first time through! On closer examination, Moses is actually only telling the Israelites to offer peace to enemies outside of the Promised Land. The competing locals are indeed, as we have read before, are to be slaughtered: in the cities of the nations the Lord you God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. (16)

Finally, Moses tells the people not to cut down fruit trees around a city they are besieging because, duh, you'll want that fruit!

Deut 21

Finally, Deuteronomy 21 provides some miscellaneous laws, all of them new. If there's an unsolved murder, kill a cow in a complicated manner and have the elders of the nearest towns wash their hands over the cow to atone for the sin. If you fall in love with an enemy woman, you can marry her after a one-month cooling down period; but if you change you mind, you can't treat her like a captive. If you have a wife you love and a wife you don't, you can't favor the children of the wife you love. If a child is totally out of control and the father and mother tell the town they can't deal with him any more, everybody joins in stoning the child to death. And, when you hang someone, don't leave them out overnight. All of these are new, I think, and I don't see any particular logical connection between them. File under Laws, Miscellaneous.


Next Week: More Laws, Miscellaneous.

Deuteronomy 9 - 13: The Speech Continues

When we left the action last week, Moses was well into a long speech that serves both as his farewell address and a pep talk to the Israelites, who are will shortly be crossing the Jordan and commencing their conquest of the Promised Land. I predicted last week that he would be returning frequently to the subject of obedience to God. I was right. Obedience has not exactly been a strong suit for the Israelites, and Moses is running out of time for convincing them to mend their ways, so he passes no opportunity to press the point.

In Deuteronomy 9 - 13 the sermon continues as it did in the first eight chapters, with a loosely organized blend of exhortations to obedience, reminders about specifics of the legal code, and recountings of events from recent history.

Deut 9: 1 - 6 -- Just because y'all's the chosen people, you ain't so great

Just because you are God's chosen people, Moses tells the people, don't get to feeling all high and mighty about yourself. He makes an interesting distinction: God is not going to enable the Israelites to conquer nations that are more powerful than them because they are righteous, he says, but because those other nations are evil.

It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going
in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these
nations, the Lord your God will drive them out before you.... (5)

Now, this is interesting. We usually think of concepts like evil/wickedness and goodness/righteousness as existing on something of a continuum, with most people being somewhere in between those two poles. For myself, I seldom think of an acquaintance as being unambiguously righteous or completely evil. I see flaws in the best people, and mitigating factors in the worst, and I think most people are like me in this.

But God and Moses seem to disagree with this way of looking at things. In my own perceived realm of relative righteousness, there's not much difference between saying "the Israelites will prevail because they are righteous" and "everybody else will be put to the sword because they are wicked," because either way it is the relative virtue of the two that saves one and damns the other. The only important factor is that the Israelites are enough higher on the righteousness continuum to be above what we might call the Smiting Point.

God and Moses, on the other hand, appear to be laying out a binary, or possibly a three-level, definition of morality. There is righteousness and there is wickedness. The Israelites are not righteous, and should not get to thinking they are. Everybody else in the neighborhood is wicked, and is about to pay the consequences. The Israelites are either wicked, but excused from extinction by special dispensation (binary model), or they are in a intermediate, not-wicked, not-righteous category (three-level model).

I go into all this because many religious people get so very exercised in opposition to the idea of "relative morality." Well, here in Deuteronomy 9, God and Moses seem to concur.

Deut 9:7 - 10:10 -- The Ten Commandments (reprise)

As an example of how the Israelites (or at least, as I pointed out last time, their parents) have been disobedient to God, Moses tells the story of how, while he was receiving God's laws on Mt. Sinai, the unpleasant business with the Golden Calf went down. It is interesting that the retelling here, although it does not absolutely contradict the telling in Exodus 32, is quite different in its details. Here are the key events, in sequence:

• God tells Moses that the people have built the calf, and that he will destroy them. (Exodus & Deut)
• Moses then begs God to spare them, and God agrees. (Exodus version)
• Moses goes down the mountain, sees the calf, and breaks the tablets. (Exodus & Deut)
• Moses lies prostrate & fasting for forty days, begging God to spare the Israelites. God agrees. (Deut version)
• Moses destroys the calf, reduces it to a powder, mixes it in water, and makes the people drink it. (Exodus version)
• Moses destroys the calf, reduces it to a powder, and dumps the powder in a creek. (Deut version)
• Moses has the Levites, who reject the calf, kill about 3000 calf-worshipers. (Mentioned only in Exodus)
• God strikes the people with a plague. (Mentioned only in Exodus)
• Some time later, Moses goes up the mountain again, witnesses God, and comes back with a second set of tablets. (Exodus & Deut)

So, not radically divergent, but divergent enough to make you wonder why the two accounts are different.

Deut 10:12 - 11 -- Obey!

Much talk about how the Israelites must obey God, along with, for a change of pace, warnings about how they should not disobey God. Very much in the style of a sermon.

Deut 12: Places of Worship

Deut 12 begins with a warning against adopting any of the religious practices of the people that the Israelites will find in the Promised Land. Any places where other gods have been worshiped, for instance, are to be destroyed utterly. The Israelites are obviously forbidden to adopt new gods, but they are also warned here against adopting any foreign religious practices as a way of worshipping their own god (which is to say: God).

It's an interesting prohibition. Through human history, whenever people of one religion conquer another, it is a commonplace that the sacred sites of the conquered religion become sacred sites for the conquerors, and that the rituals of the old religions have a way of sneaking into the new. Many of the churches of Europe and Latin America rest on the foundations, sometimes quite literally, of older "pagan" places of worship, and many of those churches have seen centuries of Christmas trees, Easter eggs, and many other Christian or quasi-Christian rituals of non-Christian origin.

Moses seems fully aware of this phenomenon, and wants nothing of it. Destroy the holy sites of the others, he tells the Israelites; God will tell you where to locate a central place for His worship. There will be just one place that God "will choose as a dwelling for his Name," and that will be the only proper place to go for sacrifice.

At this point, there is a long digression into exactly what kinds of sacrifice will be limited to this one central place, but the general point has been made, and the idea of the one holy place seems to prefigure the Jerusalem temple in which the Ark of the Covenant will be kept.

The chapter ends with a reiteration of the warning not to adopt the religious ritual of other peoples. 31 You must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods. This seems like a ridiculous piece of bronze-age slander, an unsubtle attempt to demonize the enemy people that the Israelites are about to take up arms against. Except that, from what I've read, there is archeological evidence that ritual sacrifice of children by fire actually was practiced by some Middle Eastern tribal peoples. Icky.

Deut 13 -- Troubleshooting

For yourself, the important thing is to obey God's laws. If anybody else starts worshipping other gods, though, it is your duty to set them straight. In most cases, the best way to do this is to kill them. Any prophet who appears and suggests that you follow other gods is to be ignored, even if he has really good miracles. If your best pal, your spouse, your child, or your parent suggests a change of religion, you are to kill him or her immediately; it's best to do this by leading your neighbors in stoning him or her to death, as this is good for building community and consensus. (6-11) If a town changes its religion, it should be destroyed and left a ruin in perpetuity, with all its residents slain and all of their belongings burnt. Tolerance is decidedly not considered a virtue in the Mosaic world view.


Next Week: Obedience in General, Obedience in Specific

Deuteronomy 1 - 8: The Farewell Speech Begins

We're back. MRTB is rested, refreshed, and ready to venture further into the mysteries of the Old Testament. But first:

Procedural Notes

I blog for lots of reasons. I enjoy writing, and I like the thinking that you have to do when you're writing regularly. The communities that develop around blogs has been a huge and unanticipated bonus; it gets harder and harder to distinguish between "blog friends" and "real life friends," with the important exception that I always know what members of the latter group look like.

The original reason I started keeping blogs, though, was to light a fire under my long-term projects. Whether it's my reading list, my "Great Films" project, my quilting goals, or -- of course -- reading the Bible, blogging about it backs me into a corner. I've got to stick with my projects, or I'll look like an idiot. More of an idiot, anyway.

The problem is this: you reach a point where, between all of the projects and the write-ups, you start to have trouble getting enough sleep. I've reached that point, and need to do some cutting back. Am I going to abandon the Bible project? Absolutely not. It's a great project! But, it's not a very popular blog. It just doesn't get read very much, and it hardly gets comments at all. At the end of the day, there's just not enough happening to justify the amount of time I've put into it.

So with that in mind, for now I am going to continue but strip things down a little. Here's the plan:

• No More Art. Finding the images has been fun and rewarding, but time-consuming; basically, it's been a whole side-project of its own. For now, we'll be text-only.
• Bigger Bites. I've been averaging about four chapters per entry recently. I'm going to try to bump that up to six or seven chapters per entry.
• Less Detail. It's hard, because there is just SO MUCH that's interesting. But I bet nobody will complain if I back off on some of the detail.
• Schedule? I'm not sure if I want to stick to the Sunday night schedule or not. We'll see.

So that's the plan. Let's roll.

"Today, I consider myself the luckiest prophet on the face of this Earth."

The first 33 of Deuteronomy's 34 chapters -- I snuck a peek ahead -- turns out to be Moses' long goodbye speech. Chapter 34 describes his death. Since most of what he wants to talk about seems to be the events described in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, as well as the laws that were revealed in those chapters, there is clearly going to be some review going on.

Deut 1 - 3: How Did We Get Here?

You know those guys who show up at athletic events with signs referencing a single Biblical verse, hoping that they'll be caught on camera so that the entire viewing audience will be struck with curiosity and crack open the family Bible? They pick out verses that they think summarize their personal religious philosophy especially well, of course. Well, I often stumble across verses that are so incidental, so trivial, so devoid of spiritual insight, such obvious candidates for removal if the Bible had ever been edited, that the absurdist in me wants to slap them on a sign and head for the stadium. Such is the case with Deuteronomy 1:2, which reads as follows:

(It takes eleven days to go from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea by the Mount Seir road.)

But I digress. In the first three chapters of Deuteronomy, Moses recounts the events of Numbers 10 - 36, from the point when the Israelites broke camp at Mt. Sinai. Despite that a full generation has passed since that time, he lays it on pretty thick with the guilt trips, continually reminding the assembly of times they let him, and God, down. Presumably, he is thinking of their parents, but what the heck. He's a very old guy by now, and likely a bit confused.

Deut 4 - 6: The Law

It looks like there is going to be a lot of recap of the law here in Deuteronomy. For now, Moses speaks generally about the greatness of God, the importance of obedience of God and of the Law, and the prohibition of idols. Also, the Ten Commandments are repeated, in exactly the same wording as they were originally presented back in Exodus 20. Particularly dogged readers might recall that I challenged the importance of these particular 10 injunctions back then, pointing out that there is nothing in particular in Exodus to indicate that they are any more crucial than the many other laws before and after them. That they are set aside and highlighted here in Deuteronomy pretty much shoots down that criticism.

Deut 7: Imperial Israel

Moses assures the Israelites again that God will deliver the Promised Land, as long as they honor him and his laws. They are, as we have seen before, not expected to be gracious to their defeated enemies. Make no treaty with them, exhorts Moses, and show them no mercy. (2) Their leaders are not only to be killed, but to have their names wipe[d] out from under heaven. (24) Their religious buildings and monuments are to be destroyed utterly, of course, but the people themselves are pretty much marked for slaughter as well: The Lord your God will send the hornet among them until even the survivors who hide from you have perished. (20)

Deut 8: Encore!

Chapter 8 discusses, again, how important it is to follow the law, to remember that God freed the nation from slavery and therefore deserves and expects submission to his will. This is the main point that Moses is making in his speech, of course -- the Israelites do not have the strongest of track records, obedience-wise, and he knows that this is his last shot at whipping them into shape. So, with the speech only one-quarter done, I'm guessing this is not the last time he will reiterate the point.

Next Time: Before television, a crowd could sit still while they were being read the legal code.

The Blog Sabbath

Another landmark! With tonight's post, I completed the Book of Numbers, the fourth book of the Bible.

After I started on this project in July 2006, I managed only six entries before taking an unplanned 5 1/2 month hiatus. Okay, that was lame. But since I fired things back up again in February, I've been on task every Sunday night, pretty much just like clockwork. I've been happy about that.

Now, though, I think it's time for an official Michael Reads the Bible Blog Sabbath. I'm going to take November and December off from the project. I'll be back in the first week of January, we'll do some brief review, and then we'll start the new year in the fresh terrain of Deuteronomy.

Thanks to those few of you who are reading along as I go. I know that you are out there, and that makes the whole thing more fun and interesting for me.

Best, and see you in the new year,
M5K

Numbers 31 - 36: On the Brink of the Promised Land

Numbers 31: The Horror

Numbers 31 is the most disturbing chapter of the Bible that I have read so far.

You may remember that last week, in Chapter 25, God killed 24,000 Israelites by plague because some of the men had been having sex with Midianite, or Moabite, women, and more significantly worshipping the Midianite god. Now, I don't know about you, but this seemed a touch draconian to me. But, the sex and especially the worshipping was clearly in violation of The Laws, which had been repeated and repeated and repeated to the Israelites, who furthermore have had every opportunity to see that God means business. So, the plague business seemed excessive but technically justifiable.

What offense had the Midianites committed? Basically, they had been friendly. They were willing to date people from backgrounds other then their own. And they invited newcomers to the area to a non-denominational religious observance. They might as well have been in Welcome Wagon.

The first sentence of tonight's reading, then, is a bit of a shocker: 1 The Lord said to Moses, 2 "Take vengeance on the Midianites for the Israelites." Say what? Vengeance? For what? It was the Israelites who broke their own laws.

Well, it's certainly the Israelites who attack the Midianites. Winning the battle, they proceed to kill every adult male of the kingdom, including the leadership. They capture the women and children, burn the towns and villages, and bring the livestock and everything of value back to the camp.

Moses, not surprisingly, is furious. But wait. He's not furious about the slaughter. He's furious about the mercy. 15 "Have you allowed all the women to live?" he asks. After all, they were the ones who lured the poor Israelite men into sin in the first place, right? So, after ordering his soldiers kill all of the Midianite boys, Moses utters this supremely creepy line: "And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who who has never slept with a man." (18)

But wait, again! Eleazar, the new high priest, is standing by! Will he bring a voice of sanity and prevent this senseless slaughter? Well, no. He speaks up, but it's to warn everyone to wash their loot properly, so that all of the booty is in a state of ritual cleanliness. The second half of the chapter, then, is an accounting of how many animals (including sheep, cattle, donkeys, and "people") and how much treasure was brought in by this military adventure, and how it was divvied up among the Israelites.


Now, I don't want to belabor the obvious, here, but this chapter does not depict God (or for that matter, our distant intellectual forbearers) acting in a way that is very palletable to modern people. Longtime readers might remember that one of the original questions I set out to explore in this project was "Is God good?" Well, whether or not you believe, as many do, that all goodness ultimately derives from God, it is hard to describe his actions in Numbers 31 -- or those of his representative, Moses -- as resembling goodness in any way.

Whatever else this portion of the Bible is, it is a fragmentary historical record of the real actions of real people. They were people who lived in an often violent time and place, where a person of my own sentimental morality probably wouldn't have lasted long. But by their own account, what they did here was to ambush and slaughter their neighbors, people who had been receptive and friendly to them and who represented no physical threat. It doesn't endear me to them.


The Technicalities

The remainder of the Book of Numbers -- chapters 32 through 36 -- deals with technical and administrative issues that need to be resolved before the crossing over into the promised land. Here's an overview:


Chapter 32: A couple of the tribes actually like the Non-Promised Staging Area east of the Jordan pretty well, and ask Moses if they can stay there instead of crossing over to the Promised Land Proper. After some back-and-forth, it is settled that they can do this as long as they take part in the military conquest. (The Promised Land, remember, isn't empty. God wants the Israelites to take it from its current occupants by force: if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land, those you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides. (34:55))


Chapter 33: There is an extensive recap of the Israelite wanderings, from Egypt to the present. It's almost like a narrative map. Here's an excerpt:

25 They left Haradah and camped at Makheloth.
26 They left Makheloth and camped at Tahath.
27 They left Tahath and camped at Terah.
28 They left Terah and camped at Mithcah.

You get the idea.


Chapter 34: God tells Moses where the boundaries of the Promised Land are, and appoints a committee to divide the territory up among the various tribes.


Chapter 35: Special dispensation is made for towns for the Levites, who as you remember are the tribe of priests, and therefore won't need extensive farming or grazing lands like everyone else. "Cities of Refuge" are also set up; these are places you can run to if you have accidentally killed somebody. Once you are in a refuge city, no one is allowed to take vengeance on you before you come to trial.


Chapter 36: A question of inheritance is cleared up. You may recall from last time that, under some circumstances, women may inherit wealth. Well, what happens if a woman who owned property married outside of her tribe? No good! The wealth would change tribes! That would throw off the delicate parity among the tribes that Moses has always been at pains to reinforce. So, the decision is that women who own property can only marry within their own tribe. A nice cousin or something.


Numbers

And so we finish up with Numbers, which is the book of.... what? It is difficult to define, because there is no particular starting point to it. It just continues on from the end of Leviticus with nine more chapters of laws and regulations, as well as the first of the two censuses from which it takes its name.

Major narrative events in Numbers include the breaking of camp at Mt. Sinai and the march to the Promised Land, the failure of nerves once the Promised Land is reached, and God's subsequent punishment, that another generation must pass before the conquest may proceed. During the famous forty years in the desert, we have seen the Israelites' strength and influence grow. No longer can kings make them go around their land the long way. Now, the Israelites go where they want to, and have clearly become a force to be reckoned with, if not downright feared, in the region.

In the last five chapters, there is a sense of preparing. As the Israelites work out some of the details of how their society will operate on the west side of the Jordan, you can all but sense the activity in the camp: plans being drawn up, livestock being brought in close to the camp, clothes and boots being repaired... and swords being sharpened. The Israelites are crossing the river, and will claim what they have been told will be their own.

Numbers 25-30: Interlude

Tonight's reading starts off like a real rip-snorter: While Israel was staying in Shittim, the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women. After that issue is dealt with, however, the bulk of the next few chapters is taken up by the least narrative kinds of Old Testament writing we've seen so far; with restatements of laws, and other administrative business. Even the sexual immorality is just another itteration of a very familiar pattern: Israelites disobey, God punishes, Moses intercedes, God relents. The most interesting bits of tonight's text deal with gender relations, as we get some new thoughts on the rights of women.


Numbers 25: God isn't crazy about the sexual immorality, but the big problem is that the new girlfriends are inviting Israelite guys out for dinner and a sacrifice to Baal, and the guys are saying yes. God is very angry about this. Moses gives the word to the clan chiefs that anyone who sacrificed to Baal must be put to death.

At this point, a minor Israelite leader with an unfortunate sense of timing brings his new girlfriend home to the tent, walking right past Moses and the assembly. Oops. Aaron's grandson, Phinehas, grabs his spear, charges into the tent, and dispatches the lovers with a single blow. God recognizes this as a righteous deed, and the plague is stopped (which is a surprise to the leader, as it had never been mentioned that a plague had started). It had killed 24,000.

Two pieces of fallout from this incident. First, God singles out Phinehas as an especially righteous man, due to his zeal to uphold community standards, and declares that succession to the priesthood will pass through him. Secondly, because the unfortunate girlfriend was a Midianite, God instructs Moses to "Treat the Midiantes as enemies and kill them." This will be important next week.

[note: with all of the sex and violence in this chapter, I thought it would be a favorite subject for painters. But I can't find a thing. See the Brick Testament, always, for visuals.]


Numbers 26: God tells Moses to take another census of men 20 or older, but clan and sub-clan. The total number is 601,730, plus 23,000 Levites who are counted seperately for legal reasons. Given that this does not include women, children, young adults, or slaves and servants, my estimation that the travelling strength of the Israelites was about 2 million is clearly pretty modest.

None of the people counted at this census, the text claims, was present for the previous census (Numbers 2). That earlier count was taken before Israelite misbehavior led to the punishment of 40 years in the desert. The adult Israelites at that time were told they would never see the Promised Land, and now apparently they have all died off, replaced by the younger generation. The only ones over 40 are Caleb and Joshua, who were exempted from the punishment, as well as Moses himself and Aaron's son Eleazar.


Numbers 27: Three daughters of Zelophehad, a man who died without sons, come to Moses and argue that they should be allowed to inherit his property. Moses, as always, takes the question straight to his boss. God says yes, absolutely, the girls are right. If a man has no sons, his daughters should be his heirs. (No daughters? Then his brothers. No brothers? Then his uncles.)

God also tells Moses his life is getting close to its end. He suggests a formal ceremony to establish that Joshua will be the official leader of the Israelites when the time comes. And so the ceremony is held.


Numbers 28 & 29: Immediately following is a reitteration of some of the laws that we saw earlier, in Exodus and Leviticus. Their reappearance here is somewhat mysterious, unless we are to take them as instructions through Moses to Joshua, the new "shepard" of the Israelites. And if that was true, we would expect the laws that got reitterated to be the very most important ones, right? The closest to God's heart? Perhaps the traditional Ten Commandments?

Nope. Here are the laws that are repeated in Numbers 28 & 29:

• The required daily animal sacrifices.
• The required Sabbath sacrifices.
• Required monthly sacrifices.
• Sacrifices required on the various special holidays.

I have never gone into the details of sacrifice requirements before and will not now. They are highly specific and legalistic, and pretty alien to most modern religious practice. I'll just give you a quick taste, from Numbers 29:

26 " 'On the fifth day prepare nine bulls, two rams and fourteen male lambs a year old, all without defect. 27 With the bulls, rams and lambs, prepare their grain offerings and drink offerings according to the number specified. 28 Include one male goat as a sin offering, in addition to the regular burnt offering with its grain offering and drink offering.

I should admit that I haven't checked to make sure the sacrifice requirements here are consistent with the ones given at the beginning of Numbers. God might be reitterating, or might be making adjustments. Whatever.


Numbers 30: Moses issues a new law, which might be his last, concerning the making of oaths. The core of the law is simple -- when a man makes an oath, he is required to keep it. But what of women?

Here's the deal with women and oaths. If the woman lives with her father, the father has the option when he first learns about the oath to nullify it. Same goes for a husband. Women who are divorced or widowed -- the only independent singles in Israelite society -- are held to their oaths, just as a man would be.


Next Week: War! Vengeance! Further clarification of female inheritance laws!