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 43 Numbers 5-6

            Anyone with a skin disease or who has become unclean through contact with a dead body must be sent away from camp.

            There is a special magic spell given in Numbers chapter 5 for determining whether or not your wife has been faithful.  You have to take her to the priests with some special offerings and they mix a potion for her to drink.  If she’s been fooling around on you then the draught will make her swell and then miscarry, but if she’s been faithful then she will be able to have children still.

            Another way to show dedication to the Lord is to take a vow as a Nazarite.  For a certain amount of time that you determine at the outset you may not drink any fermented beverage or eat or drink anything that has ever had anything to do with grapes.  You may not cut your hair, because your hair during this time is symbolic of your vow and so it’s holy.  You absolutely may not have anything to do with a dead body.  For serious.  If your mother or father dies you may not have anything to do with the burial.  If you’re in a room with someone and they drop dead faster than you are able to run out of the building, then you have to go to the priests, shave your head, offer a bunch of sacrifices and then start your time over again because God has exactly zero tolerance for you being around a dead body.

            At the end of your time as a Nazarite you cut off your hair and offer a bunch of sacrifices.  Nothing really happens, but you get to show your devotion to God, so that’s nice.  There are no time requirements given so I guess you could vow to be a Nazarite for like a day, but it doesn’t really make much sense unless you do it for long enough to allow your hair to grow out noticeably, so that’s at least a month or two.

            I can’t find any information on what this word ‘Nazarite’ actually means.  I always though it had at least some tacit connection to the town of Nazareth, and I’m sure there are plenty of medieval bible ‘scholars’ who were happy to make that jump as well, but it doesn’t sound like there’s really anything out there to back it up.  All the etymology sources I can find keep directing me back to this same chapter, which only says what a Nazarite is, but not why they are so named.  Oh well, I’m open to hearing new information if anyone has any.

            The section ends with a new blessing for the priests to give to the people of Israel, and so that is also how I will end.

The LORD bless you
   and keep you;
²⁵ the LORD make his face shine on you
   and be gracious to you;
²⁶ the LORD turn his face toward you
   and give you peace.

Day 35 Leviticus 14-15

            There is a process for coming back and being a real human being again after you’ve had an infectious skin disease.  If your symptoms go away then you can meet with the priests again and they can check you over to see if you’re still rashy.  I’ve heard the kosher laws praised for how they anticipate germ theory and modern health and safety customs, like how you’re not supposed to have anything to do with dead things or people with communicable rashes, but I feel, based on what I’m seeing so far, that we might be reaching a little bit there.  Honestly, as a society, it doesn’t take long to figure out that, for whatever reason, people who mess around with dead animals are not usually very healthy, and that poking at someone’s oozing sore is a good way to get one of your own.  Where the rules get more specific regarding actual treatments and practices, they are not that great.  If you fish a dead skink out of your rain barrel, the water it was floating in is unclean and you can’t drink it…until that evening when it becomes okay again.  Similarly, chapter 14 outlines the process by which the priest make someone ritualistically clean who had had a skin disease and it doesn’t sound any different to me than any other ancient magic spells.  The priests had to cut up a bird over some water and then put in the live bird along with some cedar wood, hyssop and red yarn, then sprinkle the potion on the sick man seven times.  There are more steps after that, many, many more steps, but you get the idea.

            We have not by any means mastered the science of medicine in our current era, but none of that stuff seems very helpful for skin conditions.  I don’t know, maybe in another couple thousand years we’ll learn that cedar wood and scared doves are wonder cures for shingles, but I’m going to wait until then to start ascribing that level of practical foresight to the Levitical laws.

            Some similar laws are given about mildew in one’s household for later when everyone eventually makes it to Canaan and gets to live in permanent dwellings.  These are actually pretty practical sounding though.  Go tell the priest about it, then scrape it all out, cut it out of the wall if you have to.  Basically you have to keep tearing out larger and larger chunks of your home until the priests are sure all the mildew is gone.  If you get a really nasty patch you may have to destroy the whole building and move.

            Any kind of discharge makes you unclean as well as pretty much anything that comes in contact with you.  And anyone who comes in contact with anything that’s come in contact with you.  If you’re a woman then you’re super unclean  and no one can touch you while you’re menstruating and then you’re just regular unclean for another week after that.  Then you can go make a sacrifice at the temple to become clean again until your next cycle.  So no matter what, you’re unclean or worse for two weeks out of every month and then it takes a moderately expensive sacrifice (2 doves) to be clean again.  I wonder how common it was for families to just skip it and let the women just be unclean all the time.  I mean that adds up, and it’s not like women in the ancient world got to go out much anyway.

            You’re also unclean for the rest of the day any time you have sex and there is a discharge of semen.  Semen makes things unclean.  I wonder if all the cool kids, when they first got married, would strut around camp all like “sorry guys, I’d like to go to temple with you, but, you know, I’m unclean right now.” *wink*