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.”
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