Day 86 I Samuel 9-12

            There was a Benjaminite kid named Saul who was a full head taller than everyone else.  He goes out one day looking for ome sheep that have wandered off and eventually finds his way to Samuel, who old him his sheep had already been found and also, he will be made king of Israel soon.

           

            When the time comes to choose a king,  all of Israel meets and Samuel starts drawing lots, which was not a random thing, but a way of telling what God wanted.  I think it would be frowned upon in most Christian churches today, but that was the way they made a lot of decisions back then.  Sure enough, Samuel drew Saul’s lot and he was made king.

            Everybody went home pretty unimpressed that the crown should go to kind of a backwater little clan, but not long after a town was attacked by ammonites and Saul led an army and defeated them though and everyone loved him.  That seems to be about the quickest way to impress the Israelites, raising an army and winning a battle.

            Once Saul is accepted as king, a bunch of his followers want to find those guys from before who made snarky comments about Saul being king and kill them as an example and a tribute to Saul, but he denies them because this is a good day in which the Lord has saved Israel.

            Samuel chews everyone out one last time for having a king, but tells them to just do the best they can to follow the Law still anyway.  I think it’s really interesting that God chose Saul as king, or that he chose anyone as king really.  We’ve seen that God has no trouble killing His people and unleashing terrible plagues among them when they act against Him, but I guess wanting a human king isn’t really a sin per se because God never told them not to do it, it’s just kind of stupid because God is in charge of the entire universe so they’re just adding another level of middle management to their own nation.

Day 85 I Samuel 4-6

            God punishes Eli’s sons and the rest of Israel by letting the Philistines win an important battle against them.  After the first defeat, the ark of the covenant is brought out, but God isn’t with Israel so Eli’s two sons are killed and the ark taken by the Philistines.  When Eli heard about this, he fell over and died too.  Samuel had gained quite a reputation by now though as someone with a direct line to God, so he was in a prime position to move in politically.

            Meanwhile, the Philistines were jazzed about having captured the God of the Israelites and took the ark to live with a giant statue of their god, Dagon.  When they came back the next morning, the statue of Dagon was on its belly on the ground in front of the ark of the covenant.  This happened a couple more times, along with some nasty curses and stuff.  Everyone started getting bad tumors.

            They moved the ark to another city, but then that city started having problems too.  Finally they decided that the ark was more trouble than it was worth and they needed to give it back.

            Once the ark was back in Israel’s hands, Samuel got everyone to worship the Lord properly again without trying to mix in a bunch of foreign gods and idols, and then organized an army to meet the Philistines, who had still been steadily soaking up more and more of Israel’s land.

            When Samuel prayed for God to help them in the battle, there was so much thunder and noise that the Philistines were routed before the battle even started.  Samuel’s army just waded through and killed them all.

            After such a high-profile victory, of course Samuel was the people’s choice for a leader.  For years he did laps around Israel mediating and teaching.  They wanted him to give them a king too, but he balked at that.  God was supposed to be the king, that was what was to set them apart from other people, what made them set apart for God.  The Israelites specifically wanted a king to make them more like the other nations around them though, and finally Samuel gave into their demands for a king.

            God told him first to explain to the people that a king would roll in and take all their best stuff for himself and his court and require taxes and tribute and service and all this material stuff on top of what was to be set aside for God.  Samuel di his best to convince them that they didn’t want a king, but the people had made up their big, loud, communal mind and they would not be swayed.

            Samuel told God about their demands for a king and He said to give them one.

            I have a friend who’s an anarchist as well as a Christian.  Well, he might not identify himself as an anarchist, but he’s sympathetic to their cause.  I don’t agree with him all the time in his interpretations of scripture, but I feel like the last couple books have really promoted an anarchistic political system.  Obviously there are clans and priests and all these official sounding social artifacts, but in practice, the way things work is that a need arises and then God drops in a judge with the skills needed to resolve the situation.  If there’s a battle that needs to be fought, God calls up a good general and tells him to build an army.  If there’s a whole bunch of Philistines that are going to need to be put in their place, God releases a super-human psychopath to terrorize them.  If there had been some great need to build a relationship with the Latin tribes in Italy, God would have called a judge who was really into the shipping industry or something.

            Now contrast that system with America today.  If there’s a battle to be fought, we have a standing military already prepared to keep us safe.  If there’s a famine or a natural disaster, we have federal programs already set up to deal with them, the national guard, FEMA, and so on.  This reminds me of another facet of the arguments made in Steven Levitt’s Ishmael which I mentioned several times back in Genesis.  Levitt opines through the titular character that it’s ridiculous to insist upon such a high degree of personal control over the world as we exercise in our culture.

            On a personal level, Jesus talked about how we shouldn’t spend all of our energy worrying about where our clothes or shelter or even our next meal are going to come from because those things are under God’s control.  When we spend all our energy trying to bring them under our own control, it’s disrespectful and only serves to show our own ignorance, but I’m getting ahead of myself now.

            I’m interested to see how this king thing works out.

day 84 I Samuel 1-3

            It looks like things are getting back into more of a narrative format now.  The lists of rules from Leviticus and Numbers were kind of tedious and the disjointed stories from Joshua and Judges were just confusing.  I miss being able to stick with a character for a while and watch their relationship with God evolve.  I've got a good feeling about his next group of chapters.

            Samuel is a boy born to a lady who was barren.  She prayed to God and said that if she had a son, she would dedicate him to the Lord for his entire life.  Eli, the priest Samuel got himself volunteered to serve under, had a couple sons also working under him.  His sons were, basically, jerks who didn’t respect God.  They abused the sacrifice system to get the best parts of meat for themselves.  God hated this kind of thing.  He probably still does.

            At this time prophets and miracles were rare, but God told Samuel that He was going to punish Eli’s family for what his sons were doing.  Eli is at fault for their sins both because he is both their father and their priest-boss and there’s a precedent back in Leviticus for a higher-ranking Levite also being held accountable for any screw-ups happening lower in his chain of command.  He’s very supportive of Samuel’s vision and even seems accepting when Samuel explains that God is going to take vengeance upon Eli and his family.

Day 84 Ruth

  King David (who we will be meeting shortly) is descended from a moabite woman.  It's okay though, she's a good one.

Day 83 Judges 19-21

            A Levite in the land of Ephraim had an unfaithful concubine.  Ephraim seems to be over-represented in this book.  The concubine runs off to her father’s house and the Levite goes after her.  After staying for a few days, they head back home, but by the time they reach Jebus, the sun is starting to set.  The Jebusites are not Israelites so the Levite does not want to stay there.  They press on and make it to Gibeon, which is a Benjaminite city, so they are Israelites.

            No one would take the Levite and his party in for the night though so they were ready to stay in the town square for the night.  Luckily an old Ephraimite man came in from the fields and invited them into his house.

            Now this story plays out exactly like the story of Sodom and Gomorrah for a little while.  The wicked men come and want to have sex with the Levite, but the head of the household in stead offers them his daughter.  This time though, the wicked men accept the offer and the host’s daughter and the Levite’s concubine are both dropped outside in the crowd and the concubine is raped to death by the mob.

            The Levite slung her body over the back of his donkey the next morning, took her home and cut her into twelve pieces which he sent to the heads of the twelve tribes.

            All of Israel came together and met so the Levite could tell them the story of what had happened.  They told the tribe of Benjamin to hand over the men of that wicked town, but they refused and mustered an army.  They were beaten though and most of the town was killed.  All the men of the other eleven tribes swore that they would never give a daughter in marriage to a Benjaminite.

            What happened next is a little unclear, but it sounds like there was an assembly sometime later and everyone felt bad for the tribe of Benjamin because they had no women and would die out.  Now no one from Jabesh Galead bothered to show up to this meeting, so the rest of the assembly went in and killed all the men and all the women who weren’t virgins there.  I’m not sure what tribe Jabesh Galead was a part of, but I think they must have been Israelites because they were expected at the meeting.  The Israelites gave the women who weren’t killed to the Benjaminites, but there weren’t enough to go around.  The solution they came up with was to wait until the next big festival and have all the available girls run around through the fields and the Benjaminites hide in the grass waiting for them.  Then the Benjaminites could steal some women and they would have Israelite wives without anyone having to break their vow.  If any of the girls fathers started asking questions about what happened to their daughters at the festival, the tribal elders would let them know that they had been given to the Benjaminites but don’t worry because the vow hadn’t been broken.

            This is the last story in Judges and I’ve got to say, I don’t think I’ve taken away a single message or lesson from this entire book.  It’s interesting to read, but no one seems to be following the law, even when the book seems to imply that they’re doing the right thing.  The first story didn’t make much sense, and then each one after that made progressively less.  There’s a recurring assertion that this was the time before Israel had a king and people did as they pleased.  Is this whole book just a statement about what a mess things are when we try to govern ourselves without anyone who has a direct line to God?  I would certainly accept that teaching but isn’t that kind of what we’re trying to do now?

Day 82 Judges 16-18

            Some time later, Samson went to Gaza and saw a prostitute he wanted to spend the night with.  The Philistines still hated him though so when they found out about it they shut the gates of the city to trap him so they could kill him.  Samson just tore the gates off the wall and carried them off when he felt like leaving.  This kind of scenario was not uncommon with Samson.

            Eventually he fell in love with a Philistine woman, a different Philistine woman than the one from before though.  Her name was Delilah and shortly after they started sleeping together, some Philistine leaders promised to pay Delilah if she could learn Samson’s weakness.

            Three times she asked him the secret of his strength and each time he lied to her, and when she tried to weaken him and called the Philistines, he broke free and killed them all.  I mean all of them except her.  Finally the forth time, when Samson had had a lot to drink one night (again, breaking his vow to never drink) he showed incredibly poor pattern recognition skills and told her the truth, that he was a Nazarite and that he could never cut his hair.

            So, of course, Delilah cut his hair.  The Philistines came to capture him, he fought back, but his strength was gone and he was taken.

            The Philistines put out Samson’s eyes and threw him in jail.  Later, they brought him out at a party to dance for their entertainment.  Samson prayed to God and was given back his strength just long enough to push over a pillar and topple the building they were in, killing himself and all of the Philistines.

            It seems to me in this reading though that Samson still didn’t learn anything about humility to God or glorifying God.  His final prayer isn’t apologetic for any of his own sins or even about showing God’s power to the Philistines or helping the oppressed Israelites.  Samson asks for the strength to take revenge on the Philistines for putting out his eyes.  But it still works.

            Man, God must have really hated Philistines.

            Okay, next judge:

            Micah and his mother made an ephod and a bunch of household gods.  Just to round out their collection of blessings, Micah also hired an errant Levite to be their household priest.  I guess an ephod is an okay thing to have now.  I know idols are forbidden, and you can only worship God properly with the help of some priests at a stone altar at the temple, but maybe an ephod doesn’t count as an idol.  I understand the desire for a physical object to focus your worship, but these ephods seem like bad policy, especially when it’s surrounded by other little idols.

            I guess I’m not in any position to judge the practice of displaying ephods though when I go to a church with an 18 foot tall cross hanging over the stage.

            So Micah’s got all his god ornaments in order and everything’s going great when some scouts from the tribe of Dan come through looking at land.  The Danites still haven’t received their inheritance so they’re looking around for land to conquer.  These scouts stay with Micah and they get a blessing from his priest before heading out again.  With this blessing, they find some nice land just past the lands of the tribe of Ephraim.

            The scouts return home and report what they saw and the Danites move out to conquer this good land.  On the way, they stop by Micah’s house, take his ephod and his household gods and convince his personal priest to come with them.  Micah and his neighbors go out and yell at the Danites about taking all of his stuff, but they tell him to go back home before they get angry and kill him.

            The Danites conquered the land and made a city  there named Dan (named after their ancestor, Dan).  They used Micah’s idols the whole time they were there.

            So, is this story about Micah being punished for having such a materialistic faith?  Is it about the dangers of investing too much in physical idols when they might be lost?  Is it just a sad story about a nice guy who got all his silver stolen by the Danites or a happy story about God providing blessings and silver for the righteous tribe of Dan?  I have no idea.  This one’s a little too foreign for me to make sense of I guess.

            That’s okay though, it doesn’t all have to resonate perfectly.  There’s so much different stuff in here that I’m pretty comfortable chalking one up to our cultural differences every once in a while.

            That seems to be happening a lot in this book though.

Day 81 Judges 13-15

            Ah, Samson.  Samson was super-strong, you probably already knew that, but there’s far more to his story.

            Before Samson was born, an angel came to his parents and told them that he was to be a Nazarite.  I think that vow was outlined in Leviticus.  Nazarites have three major rules: don’t drink any fermented beverages or anything that comes from grapes, don’t ever touch anything dead, and don’t cut your hair.  What’s different about Samson though is that he wasn’t just a Nazarite for a couple months like most people who took the vow, he was to be a Nazarite for life.  This is notable because, for his entire life, Samson was a terrible Nazarite.

            First, he decided he was in love with a Philistine woman, which was frowned upon by his family to say the least.  He demanded that his father procure this woman for him though and so he did.

            On his way to visit his future wife once he killed a lion with his bare hands.  That’s pretty amazing, but then when he went back through there again later to actually marry his betrothed, he saw that some bees had moved into the lion carcass.  He grabbed a handful of honey on his way by to snack on, breaking his vow to never touch dead things.

            At his wedding, he drank a little too much (violating his vow to never drink) and made a bet with the philistine guests to solve a riddle, but they pressured his new wife to give them the answer.  Samson responded by beating up a bunch of random philistines in town, gave away his wife and went back to his father’s house implementing what we might refer to today as a tantrum.

            Later, after he’d had some time to cool down, he went back again to claim his wife.  She was now someone else’s wife though because they thought that he didn’t want her.  Samson was so angry about not being able to see his wife that he set all the Philistine’s fields on fire.

            This was the last straw for the Philistines, who rounded up an army to take Samson prisoner.  Samson hid in a cave.

            This was a real turning point in Samson’s story though.  Up until this point he’s mostly just been using his great strength to beat up people he doesn’t like or to further his own goals, but after this encounter it seems like Samson begins to acknowledge that there are some bigger issues at stake.

            Some Israelites come and confront him with the fact that the Philistines are going to take out their anger on them if Samson isn’t captured, so he agrees to let them turn him over to the Philistine army, which he then kills with the jawbone of an ass.  I’m not sure if that counts as touching a dead thing or not.

            Then he delivers one of the most disrespectful prayers I think I’ve come across so far, yelling “You have given your servant this great victory. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?”

            But maybe the tone is changed by the translation, because God responds by opening up a spring nearby for Samson to drink from.  Or maybe the moral of this story is simply that God really hates Philistines.

Day 80 Judges 10-12

            A couple more judges came and went apparently without doing very much.  Jael’s three-verse story sounds like a nursery rhyme.  It seems like the average reign these days is only around 20-30 years as opposed to some of the older heroes of the faith who were the heads of their clans for a hundred years or more.  I wonder is people are still dying younger or if there’s a lot of political turmoil.

            Israel angered God again by worshipping other gods and the Lord again delivered them into the hands of their neighbors.  They cried and apologized and threw out their idols though, and eventually God said He would fix things for them.  Again.

            Jephthah takes the job leading Israel against the Ammonites, who are trying to reclaim the land the Israelites took from them back when the Israelites were conquering everybody.  Jephthah is told that he will be king after he rids the land of Ammonites.

            He delivers a pretty eloquent rebuttal to the Ammonite king’s claim to the land, explaining that they were given that land by their God, which is different than just taking it form the Ammonites.  Also, that happened like 300 years ago so the statute of limitations is up on this land.  The Ammonite king is not surprisingly resistant to this line of logic so Jephthah goes and kills him.

            He gets a little too excited about it though and promises to sacrifice the first thing he sees of his to the Lord as soon as he gets back home.  That thing turns out to be his young daughter.  She’s surprisingly accepting of her own sacrifice, although she does ask to go into the hills for a couple months to weep with her friends first.

            The Ephraimites were upset that they weren’t included in the fight with the Ammonites, but Jephthah kind of blows them off.  Actually Jephthah conquers the place where Ephraimites cross the Jordan river and starts killing every Ephraimite that tries to cross it.  In the 6 years he rules, 42000 Ephraimites are killed trying to cross.  That’s about 20 a day.

            The rulers stay in power for even less time now.  There’s a series of judges who all stay less than ten years.  The book is not forthcoming on how they really served the Lord, if at all, but they had lots of sons, and owned lots of donkeys.  So that’s something I guess.

Day 79 Judges 8-9

            Gideon passed through a couple towns while pursuing the last leaders of the army of eastern peoples.  In them, he asked for bread for his tired men, but the leaders of the towns mocked him and refused to help.  Once Gideon captured everyone God told him to capture then, he returned to these towns and whipped their elders with thorn bushes and tore down a tower as an example to the people there.

            After the battle, everyone wanted Gideon to rule, but he told them that God was to rule.  That was a good thing he did, but it’s pretty much the last good thing that anyone does in this story.

            With a collection of gold earrings Gideon made an ephod, which I think, is kind of like a tabard or a sort of holy sandwich board.  He displayed it in his hometown and people worshipped it.  It was a snare to Gideon and his family.

            If there were only one human habit chosen to embody all of our sinful nature and our broken relationship with God it would be our sense of entitlement.  Even when we do something good, we love to allow it to lead to something awful.  Gideon did a good thing by refusing to take leadership over the land, and he knew it.  Because he did this great thing, right after being a part of the great battle that God had won just before no less, he felt he could indulge a little and make a small monument.  It was a monument to God sure, but it was also just a little bit a monument to how awesome Gideon is.

            When people would show up in town and see this neat altar made of Gideon’s ephod, they would say “Hey, what’s this altar for?” and someone would reply, “Well, listen to this great thing that the Lord did with Gideon.”  “Listen to the amazing things that Gideon and the Lord did.”

            It’s kind of like if someone had carved his own initials into the standing stones on the bank of the Jordan back at the beginning of the book of Joshua.

            So Gideon’s family has this alter to themselves and eventually Gideon dies, but he leaves 70 sons with his many wives.  Abimalek goes off to a neighboring town where his mother is from and tells them that they should support his claim to the throne (this is the throne that Gideon had previously refused and left open for God).  The people of the town give him enough money to go buy some thugs to kill the rest of his brothers and then I guess he informs the people in the area that he is now king.

            The youngest brother escapes after delivering a parable about trees electing a king, but he runs off into exile and we don’t hear from him again.  It is important though that he takes off because I guess now we know that Gideon’s line isn’t broken by the horrible thing that you know is going to happen to Abimelek soon.

            I mean he claimed a throne for himself that was held by God.

            Abimelek eventually loses the people’s favor so when a city gets unruly he rolls in with his army and not only defeats them, but then sets fir to the tower where all the non-combatants were hiding.  He does this once in a town that’s about to rebel, and then when he hears of another town rebelling, he goes to do it again, but a lady on the roof of the tower throws a millstone at him and cracks his skull.  He tells one of his men to stab him so no one will say he was killed by a girl.

            And that’s the story of the line of Gideon.  Nobody wins, everyone’s wrong.

            The end.

Day 78 Judges 6-7

            The story of Gideon and the Midionites is one of great meaning to me, and not only because the title has such an aesthetically pleasing cadence.  God calls Gideon to raise an army to fight the Midianites who are currently oppressing Israel.  He resists at first, requiring several signs from the Lord before he accepts the task, but he eventually comes around.

            Gideon started with 32,000 men to face the Midianite army of over 100,000.  God told him to keep sending men home though until he had only 300 men left when he finally reached the Midianites.  The reason God told him to do this is because he had too many men for God to deliver the Midianites to.  God said that if a real Israelite army defeated the Midianites then they would be boastful and believe that they did it themselves, without God’s help.  In order to make His point, God had to make the army so weak that they couldn’t possibly claim credit for the victory themselves.

Day 77 Judges 3-5

            Israel sins against God and so God uses foreign kings to punish the tribes until they cry out and God sends a judge to save them.  One stabs a fat Moabite king and sinks a sword into his stomach up past the hilt.  One kills 600 philistines with an ox goad.

            I still don’t completely understand why all these foreign people were allowed to stay when Joshua conquered the land, but it’s interesting that one of the major groups working against the Israelites is the people from Sidon.  Sidon colonized Tyre, which colonized Carthage, which was the Soviet Union to the Roman Empire’s NATO back just before Jesus was born.  The Roman Empire plays such a large role in the life of Jesus and Carthage played such a large role in Roman foreign policy, it’s interesting to think of how things would be different if the Israelite armies had conquered the Sidonians.

            The first judge that warrants their own chapter is Deborah.  She’s a prophetess and a mediator of some renown.  It seems like a big deal that she’s a woman, but the text doesn’t seem to stress it much.  It’s pretty amazing that even though women were considered somewhere between pets and furniture on the scale of personal rights, God still used Deborah for such an important role.

            Deborah told the Israelite general Barak to fight a bunch of Canaanites and Barak said he would only do so if Deborah came with.  She agreed, but told him that because of his hedging, he wouldn’t get the honor for the battle, but it would go to a woman.

            It seems like she’s referring to herself here, but the way the battle plays out, the Canaanite general is actually killed by a different woman after running away from the battle.  What’s odd about this death is that the Canaanite general is killed by his host as he’s sleeping in her tent (she drives a tent spike clear through his head).  This doesn’t seem to mesh with the very strict laws about how you are to treat guests in your home.  The woman who killed him, Jael, is a Kenite, but I’m not sure if that’s an Israelite clan or not, so I guess I don’t know what here cultural rules were regarding hospitality and not braining your guests.  I thought it was pretty universal, but it wouldn’t be the first thing I’ve been wrong about so far.

Day 76 Judges 1-2

            Everyone continues to sweep across Israel driving out Canaanites.  God hands out victory after victory, including Jerusalem, which will be super-important later on.  There is a big list of places though where Canaanites are still allowed to live because they refuse to leave.  I’m not sure what that means exactly since Israel has an invincible God-powered military machine, but the Canaanites refuse to leave a few places and so they stay.  Later on they are all made to do forced labor so I guess that doesn’t count, as making a treaty with them and so is allowable under the covenant with God.

            They don’t do a very good job of breaking down all the altars to foreign gods though so an angel of the Lord, or possibly the Lord Himself depending on your interpretation, chewed them out pretty good for not completing their end of the deal.  Again though, it couldn’t have been too bad because it is also true that the nation was on good terms with God all through Joshua’s time and beyond through the reign of the elders and leaders who had first-hand knowledge of God’s work.

            The next generation didn’t do so great though.  In fact they entered a time of wavering between breaking the law and following it.  Basically, when things were good, the Israelites would slack off and do what they pleased, worshiping other gods and ignoring their history and covenant with God.  Once they angered God enough, He would send raiders and curses and make the Israelites lose battles all over the place until they came back to Him and to their covenant out of desperation.  Then, because He promised to take them back when they asked, He would raise up judges to lead the people back into a proper relationship with God, defeating foreigners and teaching the Law.  Every time one of these judges would finish their work and die though, the people would fall back into sin.

            That last paragraph summarizes about half a chapter in the book of Judges, which seems to sort of broadly cover several decades, maybe hundreds of years.  It’s interesting to me that this complex pattern is laid out so simply.  I mean we take that kind of analysis for granted today because I can scan Wikipedia for a few minutes and find a handful of infographics outlining relevant events surrounding pretty much any theme I like, but it’s hard to tease out that kind of pattern with only the tools available to a pre-roman era anthropologist/goat-herder.

Day 75 Joshua 22-24

            The tribes living east of the Jordan river are finally dismissed to go back home.  They build a giant altar just on their side of the border which stirs up a lot of concern back in Israel proper.  Knowing that God will punish the whole nation of Israelites for the idolatry of a few tribes, the rest of the Israelites are ready to go to war with the tribes of Benjamin, Gad and the quarter-tribe of Manasseh.

            When they show up with a giant army, the two and a quarter tribes living there explain that they didn’t erect this altar to any foreign God, but as a testament pointing at the tabernacle back west of the river.  They actually built their altar specifically so the other tribes wouldn’t be able to roll in after a couple generations and claim that they weren’t worshiping the Lord out here.

            Once everything is straightened out and nobody feels the need to annihilate anyone else anymore, they all have a big party in stead.  Happy ending.

            Joshua reaffirms the covenant between God and the people and, in front of all the elders. leaders, judges and officials of all the tribes of Israel, he bound them to all follow the Lord and not worship foreign gods or compromise their culture or religion with their neighbors.  God will not tolerate any nonsense when it comes to foreign gods and foreign worship.

            A while after this speech, Joshua dies.  A while after Joshua dies, Eleazer, the head priest dies.  Since the high priest died, I presume that means there was a free for all in the cities of refuge.  You have to stay inside the boundaries of a city of refuge if you accidently kill someone and want to avoid their people from killing you back, but you are allowed to leave when the head priest dies.  If you can’t ever leave the city, it’s got to be hard to make a living, which must be why a big part of your tithe is supposed to go toward supporting the cities of refuge.  Still though, I’ll bet living in a city of refuge was probably not a very pleasant existence.

            Eleazer is buried in the land of Ephraim, which is strange since he’s a Levite and not an Ephraimite.  That’s fine though, maybe Levites are all buried in other lands since Levite land was divvied up differently than everyone else’s.  Joshua is buried in Shechem, in some land that he bought there.  Now this is a pretty minor point, but my text says that that land became a part of the inheritance of Joshua’s line, but land that is bought is supposed to return to the original owner in a year of jubilee every 50 years.  At least the land is staying in the tribe of Ephraim, but it’s weird that this land is bought permanently.

            I guess no rules are broken though because the book of Joshua ends by claiming that the law was upheld all through the time of Joshua and the time of the elders that outlived him who had seen the miracles God performed in these times.

            I feel like this wouldn’t have been pointed out to us how well everyone followed the rules in this era unless it was in contrast to the era we’re going to read about in the next book.

Day 74 Joshua 19-21

            All the land is divided up among the tribes with cities set aside for the Levites and for cities of refuge.  One city of refuge is Kadesh in Galilee in the land belonging to the tribe of Naphtali.  Jesus is from Galilee so it’s possible we’re going to hear more about this city later.

Day 73 Joshua 16-18

            The half tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh are not allotted very much land for all of their people and there are Canaanites living in their part of Israel to boot.  The Canaanites are only allowed to do forced labor there, which I guess must be good enough to fulfill the law against having treaties with the native people.

            Joshua tells the tribes that they can have all the land they want up in the forested areas.  They just have to drive out the people living there first.  They gripe about it, but end up doing just that, even though the people living there have chariots and iron weapons.  Why a people living in forested lands would invest a lot in chariots is an interesting question, but the half tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh seemed to regard them as powerful combatants so it must have worked out well for them.

            The other tribes have still yet to clear out their lands completely either.  Joshua orders the remaining land surveyed and he casts lots in the presence of the Lord to determine the lands allotted to the clans in the tribes left over.

Day 72 Joshua 12-15

            Joshua led the army to defeat 31 kings in all, but when he was old, God told him there was still lots to conquer.  For the time being though, they went ahead and started dividing up the land by tribe for the inheritances.  Gad and Reuben and half of the half tribe of Manasseh set up east of the Jordan river and the other nine tribes and the other quarter tribe of Manasseh took the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean sea, although the tribe of Levi didn’t get the same kind of plot of land, but cities spread throughout Canaan.

            Caleb shows up again at 85 years old and just as strong and spry as the day Moses first sent him to scout out the promised land according to him.  He was promised a bunch of land for his faith so Joshua gives him Hebron.

            I’m glad to see Caleb get something good.  I thought it was weird that we kept hearing in Numbers about how great Joshua and Caleb were and how much faith they had, but then only Joshua got to lead the camp afterword and we never heard about Caleb again.  I guess he is a Kenizite though, which it looks like makes him not actually an Israelite.  He mentions something about his fellow Israelites though so he’s clearly part of the nation.  He doesn’t seem to have a tribe attached to his name now even though back in Numbers, he scouted out Canaan as a representative of the tribe of Judah, so I have no idea what the politics are here.

Day 71 Joshua 9-11

            The Gibeonites trick Joshua and the leaders of the camp into making a treaty with them by claiming to be from far away.  They heard about all the amazing things God has done for the Israelites and knew they couldn’t defeat them, or even survive them, so they resorted to subterfuge.  The Israelites are commanded not to make a treaty with anyone in Canaan, but they believed the Gibeonite envoy and didn’t check in with God before signing a treaty.  A little while later they came up to the Gibeonite cities and found out that they had just sworn an oath not to harm them.

            The people were kind of pissed at their leaders, but no one would violate the oath they made to God not to harm the Gibeonites.  Joshua made them wood cutters and water carriers, which I guess made an unpleasant lower class for them to occupy, but it’s better then the alternative.  A little later some other allied nations come and attack the Gibeonites, but Joshua actually brings the army to their aid and wipes out the other army.  In the process he stops the sun and moon in the sky for a day.

            They conquer all of southern Canaan down into the Negev.

            No other treaty problems came up as God hardened all the other tribes to fight the Israelites.  The only places in Canaan left with non-Israelites still alive in them were Gaza, Gath, which we think is kind of by Jerusalem and Ashdod, which is just a little north of modern-day Gaza along the coast.

Day 70 Joshua 5-8

            When Joshua first comes to approach Jericho he sees a man with a drawn sword standing in front of him.  Joshua asks him if he’s on the side of Israel or their enemies and the man says  “Neither, I’m the commander of the armies of the Lord.”  I think it’s interesting the distinction made by this guy, I assume he’s an angel or something.  He’s basically telling Joshua “Look, I’m not a part of your army, I’m not here to serve your side, but as long as you play your cards right, you can be part of my side.”

            The army marches around Jericho six times in six days blowing trumpets just like they’re told to do.  On the seventh day they march around the city seven times and when they blow their trumpets the walls collapse and the Israelite army is able to slaughter everyone inside.  God says that all the plunder of this city belongs to Him so they have to round all of it up and put it in the Lord’s treasury.

            Later, Joshua sends a small force of a couple thousand men to conquer a little city called Ai, but they’re routed and come running back defeated.  Joshua comes to God to ask why this happened and finds out that some guy kept a bunch of God’s treasure.

            Once they find this guy, Achan, and stone him and his entire family to death, God takes them back to Ai and hands the city over to the Israelites.

            Before all this though, Joshua makes camp just inside Canaan and has everybody circumcised.  They have to stay there and heal for  couple days before moving on, but fortunately the rumors about that trick with the Jordan river are spreading quickly and everyone is afraid to attack the camp during this time because of the Israelite God.  Apparently they haven’t been keeping everybody circumcised while they wandered the desert, which is surprising considering what a big deal it is to God for everyone to be circumcised.  He almost killed Moses over it that one time.

            God decrees that Jericho is never to be rebuilt, which it actually has been.  Jericho is there today, but it’s in Palestine so I guess you could say that it’s cursed because I’m sure it sucks to live there.

Day 69 Joshua 1-4

            Joshua sends some men to go spy on Jericho before they begin the invasion there.  He mentions their land stretching from the great rive to the Mediteranian.  I feel like there’s some confusion between whether Israel is supposed to go from the Euphratese to the sea or just from the Jordan to the sea.  These guys kind of alternate between which area God promised them.  Streathcing from the Jordan to the Mediteranian makes a lot more sense because they run sort of parallel, and it makes a piece of land that seems about the right size for a nation of only 600,000 people.  The Euphratese is all the way up in Persia, and hits the Arabian Sea farther north than what is supposed to be the northern border of Israel.  Also, it runs at a 45 degree angle to the bank of the Mediteranian.

            Whatever the eventual borders may be, the spies don’t do a very good job and the king of Jericho finds out about them and sets out to kill them.  Fortunately, the men have started their reconessance of Jericho at the house of a prostitue named Rahab and she fears the Lord and wants to ally herself with the men.  I’ll say that again, the men decide to start their reconessance of the defenses of Jericho at the house of the prostitute Rahab.

            The text doesn’t rally explore that so I guess we’re just pretending that that’s perfectly reasonable.

            Rahab says she will help them and sends the king on a wild goose chase into the wilderness looking for them, but, in exchange, she wants protection for her and her family.  The spies tell her to tie a scarlet rope to her window and they will make sure she and her family are kept safe.

            A piece of scarlet yarn is also a key ingredient of the purification potions brewed in Exodus to cure skin diseases and kill mold.

            Meanwhile, Joshua is working on getting an entire nation across a big river in flood stage.  The Jordan is the major river in the area and a large part of Jericho’s defenses, especially at this time of year when it is just about impossible to get a large group of people across it in any orderly or safe fashion.  Fortunately, this sort of thing is God’s specialty.  Some Levites with the ark go and stand in the middle of the Jordan and as soon as their sandals touch the water, the flow of the river stops.  The Israelites walk across on dry land.

            Once everybody’s across, Joshua tells some men to go grab twelve stones out of the river and set them up on shore.  They will be a monument to what the Lord has done so when their sons come by here years down the road they’ll see them and ask why those river stones are stood up on the bank and their fathers can say “Well, let me tell you about how awesome God is and what He did for us here.”

            I heard a great talk once about how this passage should be our model for evangelism, that our lives are standing stones.  Evangelism and missions are a huge part of the church I go to, as well they should be.  This is the most important thing in the world after all.  But I think as American Christian we can easily lose sight of the content of our message.  When we just scream holy holy holy and throw a bible tract at someone, we’re not really showing them what we’re talking about.  I mean we’re just talking.  Npw that kind of ministry has a place I’m sure, but, especially in America, most people’s problem with the church isn’t that the haven’t heard of Jesus.  Now if we simply follow Jesus to the best of our ability and help the poor, treat each other fairly and glorify God with our actions and words, then people will seek us out and ask “wow, why are you so great?” and then you say “Well, let me tell you about how awesome God is and what He did for us.”

Day 68 Deuteronomy 32- 34

            I’m just going to get this out of the way now because it’s going to come up a lot later on.  I can’t make heads nor tails of pretty much any kind of poetry.  I know that’s a sweeping generalizations, but it’s especially true for poetry that was written in a very different time or culture than mine, or that’s been translated from another language.  I tell you this now because I’m sifting through the song of Moses which he recites to the whole assembly of the twelve tribes of Israel right before he dies.  This is his concluding argument, so you know it’s important, but it’s kind of obtuse in the way it’s worded.  So, I’m doing the best I can, but you may be better off reading it for yourself.

            This is going to come up again in the book of Psalms.

            Moses says that God is perfect and amazing and created everything, but all of you (Israelites) are going to screw up this good thing you’ve got going and God is going to absolutely ream you for it.  Like no punishment or plague we’ve seen so far, God is going to destroy everything you love and spread you to the wind.

            This is going to happen.  God already knows it even.  You’re going to fail at this one thing that the Lord has told you to do.  But eventually, once all this hardship knocks some sense into you and you come back to the Lord, then He’ll take you back and things will be good again.

            After his speech, Moses gives each tribe a blessing, just like Jacob gave each son a blessing.  Ephraim and Manasseh have to share one.  They’re all mostly about prosperity and the accumulation of more land, which is odd because I thought that land ownership was permanent, but it’s still a nice sentiment.

            Finally, Moses climbs to the top of a mountain as God instructs him, sees all the lands promised to them from the time of Abraham, and dies.  The people grieve for 30 days, then Joshua is filled with wisdom and takes control of the camp to prepare for the invasion of the promised land.

Day 67 Deuteronomy 30-31

            For the second time, God tells the people that even after they are cursed for their disobedience and all the horrible things outlined in the last section come to pass, God will still take them back when they decide to straighten up and follow the law again.

            And speaking of the law, God preemptively rebuts a bunch of the arguments that I’m sure we’re going to be hearing before too long.  No, the law is not too difficult for any man to follow; it is possible, so no excuses.  Yes, this is the whole law, there are not missing sections hidden away in heaven or in a far away land.  This is it, just do it and reap the rewards.

            Moses wrote down all of the law, from beginning to end and had the Levites place his book with the Ark of the Covenant.  He said it would serve as a witness against them since they had rebelled against the Lord so much with Moses around, he said it would be even worse after he’s gone.  God came out and directly told Moses in the tent of meeting that Israel was going to screw this up and that He was going to turn his back on them all.  Joshua was there for that meeting too, so that’s what he’s inheriting.

            Moses is a hundred and twenty now and he has officially handed the reigns over to Joshua.  Well, I guess really God has handed them over.  So Moses’s last act before the heads of the tribes of Israel will be to recite this song…

Day 66 Deuteronomy 28-29

            After a quick round of descriptions of the amazing blessings God will bestow upon everyone who follows the law, He continues with a much longer section outlining the terrible wrath you incur for not following the law.  Good little Israelites will get bounteous harvests and leisure time, land and children to continue their line.  Bad Israelites will be conquered and enslaved, way worse than they had it in Egypt.  They’ll crawl back to Egypt to try to sell themselves as slaves just to survive but the Egyptians won’t buy them.  You buy a house and watch it be destroyed.  You become engaged to a nice girl and she’s raped.  Your animals are stolen and slaughtered by your enemies; you don’t get any of the meat.  Even the gentlest and noblest will be so desperate they will eat their own children.

            In 28:49 God describes a nation swooping down like an eagle and taking over everything with no sympathy for anyone.  The description it gives sounds to me like the kind of officious, impersonal conquest the Roman Empire was known for.  The symbol of the emperor himself was an eagle.  That’s not necessarily connected, but it’s kind of interesting to speculate on isn’t it?

            Moses rounds up all the Israelites and gives them a little pep talk reminding them of some of the things God has done over the past fifty years as well as His covenant with Abraham and all of their responsibilities to God under their covenants.  Don’t screw this up guys.

Day 65 Deuteronomy 24-27

            More lists of rules.  Don’t muzzle an ox while it’s treading the grain.  Listen to the priests about how to treat skin diseases.  Newly married men get a year off before they can be drafted.  Don’t kidnap other Israelites and sell them into slavery.  Kill Amalekites on sight.

            More rules about dealing with the poor.  Make sure to pay your field hands every night.  Don’t deny justice to the foreigner or the fatherless.  Don’t be too thorough harvesting your field; leave a little behind for the poor.

            Then, at the end of all that, Moses tells the elders of the tribes that once they cross the Jordan River, half the tribes go up Mount Ebal to pronounce curses and half go up Gerezim to pronounce blessings.  We only hear the curses here though.  Over a dozen or so stanzas, the Levites and the other Israelites on Mt Ebal curse anyone who abuses the weak, acts with injustice, or sleeps with family members.

Day 64 Deuteronomy 21-23

            The following things are not allowed under the Law:

Denying your first-born son his rightful inheritance because you don’t like his mother

Leaving the body of a criminal on display on a pole overnight

Seeing your neighbor’s animal wandering off and not stopping it

Taking a mother bird from the side of the road with her young

Not building a railing around your roof

Planting two kinds of seed in your field

Plowing with an ox and a donkey together

Wearing cloths of more than one kind of cloth woven together

wearing a cloak without tassels           

Littering in the camp

Handing over a runaway slave to their master

Being a shrine prostitute

Having anything to do with the money made by a shrine prositute

Charging another Israelite interest

Harvesting in your neighbors fields, although you may snack in them as long as you take none home with you.

Marrying your father’s wife

            The following things prevent one from entering the tabernacle to worship:

Having something wrong with your testicles

Being descended from a forbidden marriage

Being an Ammonite or Moabite

            The following things will get you killed with rocks

Disrespecting your parents

Raping a woman in the city or in the country

Being raped in a city

Sleeping with another man’s wife

Sleeping with a virgin pledged to another man

Cheating on your husband

Cheating on your fiancé

            I would feel a lot better about sifting through these piles of strange rules if I understood better what my relationship was as a Christian to the law of Moses.  Jesus says later on that he’s not there to change the law, but He very clearly does, or at least changes the way it affects us.  I’ve never seen a Christian who takes the Law seriously.

            At least not the whole law.  Sometimes people like to latch on to a specific verse or two when there’s politics involved.

            I guess it may be more complicated than this once I get to what Jesus specifically said, but it seems like we either have to follow these rules or we don’t.  I don’t understand this kind of half-obedience, half-unaffected attitude that I see in American Christian culture.

Day 63 Deuteronomy 17-20

            Once in the promised land, either God or Moses wants the Israelites to pick themselves a king like the other nations.  Their king is not supposed to accrue wealth or many wives or lands though.  In other nations, the wealth of the king was supposed to reflect the power and success of the nation, but the Israelite king is not supposed to consider himself better than any other Israelite.  This seems to me to sort of beg the question, what is the king of Israel for?  They’ve got priests and Levites to interpret the Law for them and even judges to help figure out the really tricky cases in the law, so the king isn’t really necessary for that.  If the king is not supposed to be a symbolic figure head either, I don’t know what is left for him to do.

            Moses says he’s supposed to write down the entire law and read it very day and his line will reign a long time.  It kind of seems like he’s not really reigning at all anyway though, but I guess maybe they just felt the need to have a king on principle.

            Israelites are not permitted to consult spirits or practice any kind of witchcraft.  God says that it’s this kind of stuff that’s getting the other nations in Canaan destroyed, so He really detests these things.  Instead of using divination and sorcery though, the Israelites are going to have prophets.  God says He will raise up men to speak for Him and they will tell the future a little bit.  Be careful though because there will also be false prophets speaking out of turn and prophets to other gods and those you’re supposed to kill with rocks.  The test for prophets is simple enough, although it’s a little hard to check sometimes.  If what they say doesn’t come true, they’re false, kill them.

            There have to always be several cities of refuge around so that there’s one that’s convenient to get to.  The cities or refuge are only for unintentional crimes though.  If you murder someone on purpose, the elders of the city will cast you out.  It always takes more than one witness to convict someone of a crime though.

            One last thing has to do with war.  God talks about two kinds of cities the Israelite army will be attacking.  Some cities are just in the way, and they will be offered a chance to surrender.  If the people surrender, all their stuff and people are plunder for Israel.  You can take them off as slaves and keep all their stuff, you just can’t make a treaty with them because that will lead to their culture bleeding into Israelite culture which is unacceptable.

            Some cities though, are part of the Israelite inheritance and those cities don’t get to surrender.  All the men are to be killed and then all the women and children may be taken as slaves and the goods and livestock plundered, but they are not allowed to accept their surrender.  It’s pretty brutal.

Day 62 Deuteronomy 14-16

            Only eat animals that have cloven hooves and chew their cud, or have undivided hooves and do not chew cud, but not animals with only one or the other.  There are some birds you can eat and some you can’t.  Also, bats are a kind of bird.

            Tithing according to Moses is taking ten percent of your crop to the temple and eating it there with God.  At least that’s what the passage sounds like to me, my commentary casually mentions that it goes to the priests but doesn’t really back that up with anything.  A quick scan of a couple websites yields that the tithe was supposed to come in the form of a big feast, but you had to go to the temple for your tithe feast and include the priests.  Ten percent of your crop for the entire year makes for a huge feast, so I guess the excess probably went to maintain the temple too, or something.  Every third year your tithe went to the Levites and the needy staying in Levite towns.

            Every seventh year you have to cancel all the debts you hold against other Israelites.  There are a lot of rules here for taking generous care of the poor and helping out others when they fall on hard times, but it’s all only for other Israelites.  It sounds like you can do pretty much whatever you want to foreigners, like they’re completely outside the social contract.  Likewise for slaves.  If an Israelite sells himself to you in servitude, you can only keep him for six years before letting him go, but foreigners are yours forever. Classy.

Day 61 Deuteronomy 11-13

            This is a heavy section with two very dangerous pieces of scripture.  Chapter 11 relays both a blessing and a curse from God.  If we follow God’s commandments, He says we will have food and comfort, health and safety.  But if we disobey, then we will have trouble, sickness and war.  This seems at a glance to say that your situation in life is determined by how obedient you are to God, by your own righteousness.  I can think of half a dozen places across both testiments that clearly state the exact opposite of that though, so I think it’s important to dig a little deeper on this one.

            A certain interpretation of this passage is one of the cornerstones of what we like to call health and wealth, or name it and claim it theology.  This theology is bullshit.

            Once we start going down this road, it starts to seem like all of the good things in our life are coming from our own awesomeness in the eyes of God, which entitles us to have nice things.  Likewise, people dying of AIDS and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa are naughty in the eyes of God and deserve what is happening to them.  That’s why missionaries who’ve devoted their lives to serving God all live such glamorous lives and why we’re always hearing about the righteous, God-centered lifestyles of the wealthy.

            We’ve seen already that the Israelites were unable to follow the Law even with God standing right in front of them the whole time they were in the desert.  That entire trip was one long line of plagues and rebukes from the Lord, so it’s possible that this is exactly as it seems, but only vacuously true since no one can ever live up to God’s law.  Even Moses managed to piss God off and they were, like, best friends.

            It’s also possible, although equally open to abuse, that the ‘you’ in this passage is referring to people at the national scale.  This is still dangerous though because then we get to hear obnoxious things like this from our church pedagogues all the time.  Which I guess could be true, but I think it’s unlikely.  I could rant about this all day, but I’ll wait until I get to some of the other counterpoints for this one, like some of the things in Ecclesiastes, or most the stuff Jesus said about justice and grace.

            Or the entire book or Job.

            Okay, moving on.  Moses also explores the dangers of being led astray to false gods.  He says not to allow anyone to even mention worshiping other Gods to you, and he says it three times in slightly different ways, which is how you can tell when Moses is super-serious about something.  If someone shows you miracles and then tries to lead you astray, kill them with rocks.  If a friend or family member tries to lead you astray, kill them with rocks.  If you hear about trouble-makers in another town leading people astray, kill them all with rocks, destroy the city and never rebuild it.

            That first one I think is the most interesting because it touches on something more personal to me I think.  I mean all of my family and most of my friend either believe the same basic things that I do or are not religious at all, and I’m not really one to get caught up in popular local movements, so I don’t feel very vulnerable to either of those traps.  I am pretty impressed by neat things I can’t explain though.

            At this time in history also the natural sciences were just starting to get moving.  In ancient Greece, some men with a surplus of spare time started analyzing patterns in nature, watching the progression of the stars, weather, rivers and whatever else they saw around them.  Many of them very selflessly took all they learned and tried to share it with those around them, but a couple were real jerks about it.  One guy in particular comes to mind, the philosopher Heraclitus picked up a couple tricks and some catchy rhetoric and built himself a good-sized cult.  All he had to do was predict an eclipse and he convinced everyone around that he had an understanding of the heavens, the realm of the gods, and therefore he must be a god.  Maybe he even believed it himself.  Now, in 2011, my phone can predict eclipses.  Want to be a god?  Done.

            There are countless examples of this same thing happening all through history, showing off some fancy technology of knowledge about the world and convincing everyone that you’re a god.  The Romans did it to the Germans, the Japanese did it to the Koreans, the Spanish did it to the Aztecs.  When Lewis and Clark explored the Luisiana Purchase for President Jefferson, they took this goofy looking steampunk air-gun thing that had just been invented with them for the sole purpose of impressing natives along the way.

            I guess Deut 13:1-5 is kind of restated by Arthur C. Clark’s third law of prediction: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Day 60 Deuteronomy 8-10

            Moses likens the last forty years of wandering through the desert to a father punishing his son.  God didn’t do it because He hated the Israelites, just the opposite.  In fact, it really could have been worse in hindsight.  They were punished when they were disobedient, but God didn’t wipe them out, they were fed and cared for.  And now, in the same way that God punished them because He cares, He is going to hand over this great land to them.  It’s important to remember that neither of those things happen by the power of men.  Moses tells the younger generation that when they’re sitting in their nice homes overlooking their good lands after a big meal with pomegranates and honey and stuff, they’re going to be tempted to think of all this as their own success, brought about by the strength and goodness of their own families and tribes.  That kind of thinking is poison though, everyone has to always remember that it’s not because of their righteousness that they’re getting all these blessings, but because of the evilness of the nations that are there now.

            The rest of this section is basically just Moses reading Exodus for us.  He talks about the stone tablets and the golden calf and building the ark of the covenant, but this time the perspective is different.  In exodus, it feels like the narrator is down with the people, talking about Moses disappearing up into the mountain and then things happen in camp and them Moses comes back and is super-pissed.  This time the perspective is personal to Moses.  He talks about going up the mountain, talking to God, then coming down and seeing the idol and what he does to it.  He never mentions anything that happened that he didn’t actually see though.  I think I remember reading that Exodus and Deuteronomy were both written by Moses, but it sounds a lot like they’re coming from different perspectives.  I suppose Deuteronomy wasn’t written entirely by Moses because (spoiler alert) Moses dies at the end, but since the entire book seems to be one long speech by Moses, I guess it doesn’t really matter whether he wrote it himself or merely dictated it does it.

Day 59 Deuteronomy 5-7

            Moses reiterates the ten commandments for the new generation about to enter Canaan.  He stresses the importance of passing on the law to each new generation and continuing to follow the law even after everyone’s set up in the promised land.

            When they cross the Jordan and start encountering other people groups, they have to completely destroy them.  No treaties are allowed.  Only Israelites are allowed to stay in the promised land because any other people living in the same place with their false religions will distract the Israelites from God and turn them away from the law.  After what happened the last time they saw the foreign armies in Canaan, Moses is quick to add that they must not be afraid of any of the kingdoms already there, after all, look what God did to the Egyptian army and they were the toughest kid on the block when the Israelites left.

            When talking about the law, Moses adds that the Israelites must love God with all their hearts, with all their souls and with all their strength.  Later, Jesus will say that this is the greatest commandment given.

Day 58 Deuteronomy 3-4

            The Israelites have been fighting different little kingdoms for over forty years now, but it’s always been merely for passage or in self-defense.  Now that they’re getting ready to move into Canaan and settle down, they’re fighting to take over land.

            Still east of the Jordan river, they defeat a series of semi-pronounceable kings and kingdoms and split the land up for the Gadites, Ruebenites and half tribe of Manasseh, because they all said they wanted the good pastureland here.  They’re told they may leave their women and livestock behind in their new cities, but their fighting men have to lead the attack once they get across the river into Canaan.

            Now, with that brief bit of action out of the way, the entire rest of this book is God telling the Israelites some last minute things in preparation for crossing the Jordan river.  First though Moses pleads with God to see the promised land.  Since God forbade Moses from entering himself after he got kind of uppity in the desert, kind of claiming responsibility for bringing forth water from a stone, Moses was hoping he might just climb up to a high place and at least see where the people were going.  That seemed to kind of irritate God, who did let him go, but only after commanding him not to speak of that matter any further.  Afterwards, God reiterated that Moses was not to cross the Jordan with the rest of the camp, but to commission Joshua as his successor.

            And speaking of God reiterating things, God, via Moses, sit the camp down to tell them they need to keep following the laws given to them after they settle down in Canaan.  The covenant is not over, it’s just getting started.  Follow the laws and teach them to your children.  It seems like the Israelites have been just barely able to keep the laws while they’ve have this big cookie hanging over their heads in the form of the promised land.  Once they actually get it, I have a suspicion they’re going to do even worse.

            I mean, I know they do eventually because I know that Canaan under Israelite rule gets conquered a bunch, by Alexander the great, the Romans, and even a few little local punks.  Even not knowing much about the history of early Israel though, I have a feeling their problems are going to start pretty much right away.

            The section headings in my Bible for the rest of this chapter run like so: Idolatry Forbidden, The Lord Is God, Cities of Refuge, Introduction to the Law.  I know Idolatry is a really big deal, but it’s interesting that that comes before the part about God being awesome.  I mean, I probably would have led with that, but I guess pedagogy was different back then than it is now.  Or maybe Moses just wasn’t working from an outline.

            The passage at 4:28-29 really speaks to me personally though.  Moses is still talking about the consequences of idolatry and he says “There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell.  But if from there you seek the Lord, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul.”  I have a habit, when I see some Buddhist kid, to think that, well, at least they’re thinking about spiritual things.  I feel like that’s better than a complacent agnostic and sometimes better even than a docile self-identifying Christian.  God says that even if we’re way off base, as long as we’re truly searching for the truth, we’ll find Him.  Speaking as someone who grew up as a Buddhist and eventually found my way to Christ, this promise carries a lot of weight for me since, without it, I probably wouldn’t be here writing this.  Now that’s not to say that we should be indulging every little existential foray that crosses anyone’s mind.  There’s a big fat difference between following Buddhism or Hinduism or Taoism or Islam because you’re searching for meaning in the universe, and following them because you want to piss of your parents.  And I think it’s okay to give someone some counterpoints to chew on when they’re saying something stupid.

            As a general rule though, I think some conflict is healthy and keeps us from getting too comfortable.  A famous Spanish priest Miguel de Unamuno said that “Faith without any doubt is a dead faith.”