A Pentateuchal Pause
Scripture: Deuteronomy 4:1–2, 6–9 & James 1:17–27
I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but Deuteronomy is kind of an interruption in our sequential Bible-reading. If you proceed through the Hebrew Bible from the beginning, you start with the stories in Genesis, from creation to Abraham and his descendants to Joseph and his family in Egypt. Exodus finds us back in Egypt, and we begin the story of Moses and the Israelites. They escape slavery, receive the Ten Commandments, and build the tabernacle. In Leviticus, instructions are given around religious practice and community conduct, and not all of them might seem relevant in our day and age, but they were important in that time and place, and the story continues. In Numbers, the Israelites take a census, experience miracles and defeats, and learn more about entering the Promised Land.
Then we reach Deuteronomy, and nothing new happens. Aside from his death in the last chapter, the entire book consists of Moses addressing Israel. You have to jump ahead to Joshua to hear the continuation of the Israelites’ story.
One can be forgiven for not noticing such details. After all, if you’ve made it through the 153 chapters in the first four books of the Bible, you might be tired. Reading a chapter per day, if you read the first creation account on January 1, you wouldn’t reach Deuteronomy until June 3. Then, due to the length of Deuteronomy (and the absence of action within), you wouldn’t reach the Promised Land until July!
Why the rehashing, Moses? We already had to bumble around the desert for 40 years following the missteps and false starts of our spiritual ancestors. Now we have to talk about it?
As with much of scripture, Deuteronomy is not without its challenging passages, but it plays a key role in the Hebrew Bible and, thus, in our Bible as well. It is the fifth of the first five books of the Bible, which are also referred to as the Pentateuch or the Torah. Biblical scholar Bernard Levinson refers to it as providing “the foundation of Judaism . . . more than any other book of the Bible.” And no less a fan than Jesus himself quoted it more than any other book of the Torah.
This is where it’s good to take a step back and ask some of the questions my professors drilled into me in seminary. In what part of the Bible is Deuteronomy? When was it written? What was going on at that time? Who wrote it? What is the author trying to share?
Our lives are drastically different from those of our spiritual ancestors who lived in the Ancient Near East. Nonetheless, I’d like to have you imagine yourself in the place of one of those ancestors. So close your eyes if you would, and give this a try (unless you’re listening to the podcast and driving a car; if that is a case, please don’t close your eyes!). Before you get too far, though, don’t put yourself in the place of someone who’s been wandering in the desert awaiting entry into the Promised Land. Instead, imagine your community has been taken over by a foreign power. They speak a different language and have very different customs. Over time their practices have blended with yours, so society looks different.
Their religious practices are especially different from yours. When you want to pray or worship, you usually do it in secret, based on the rituals and stories you remember. You are unable to read or write, and even if you could you have no hymnals or books of scripture at your disposal.
This goes on for decades, and like the memory of a face of someone you knew long ago, the details of how life used to be fade with time.
We might feel like we were in exile if we were suddenly transported back to 1989. The challenges would be especially difficult for those who weren’t alive then, but I suspect even those of us who experienced it the first time around would struggle to remember how to get things done in that context.
I could bring up scenarios involving the reliability of cars, limited food options, or communication constraints of that time. For today’s purposes, though, I’ll share a story about getting information.
One of my research papers in high school compared two fighter planes, the US Air Force’s F-15 and the Russian Mig-25. If one were to do a paper on such a topic today, you could perform a Google search and be off and running. In 1989, however, your first stop would be the local library.
So I walked to the library after school. I grew up near a town of about 1500 people, so though the library was beloved, it had only one book mentioning fighter planes. I needed four more references for my paper, so I needed to escalate.
There weren’t any sizable libraries near me, so it was time to drive to the city. I grabbed the large Toledo phone book and looked up the address of the main library branch, then got out the Toledo city map to write down directions.
I drove the hour to Toledo, listening to the radio (which might well have been playing a song by Milli Vanilli) on the way there, paid the coin-operated parking meter, and headed to the library’s card catalog. I looked up the topic of airplanes and found the section of the library where related books were located. I browsed the shelves and found two books with the needed information. Now it was time to check out their magazine selections.
I found the dozens of volumes that comprised The Reader’s Guide to Periodic Literature. I looked up relevant key words, which referred to different magazine titles, volumes, and issues. I wrote those down and then went to the shelves where those magazines resided. After reviewing several articles, I had my final sources. I carefully copied notes, quotations, and the bibliographic information from each source into my notebook before making the hour drive home.
At home, I wrote down key points on different note cards, arranged them into a reasonable sequence, and typed up my first draft using the family typewriter.
It would be one thing for one of us who experienced 1989 to figure out how to live in such a reality again. Now imagine what it would be like for someone who hadn’t, who suddenly had to figure out how to use a card catalog, phone book, paper map, and electric typewriter based only on what she heard in stories.
In the 7th Century before the birth of Jesus, Judah has seen the Northern Kingdom of Israel conquered by the Assyrians. They lived at a crossroad between Africa and Asia, and thus frequently found their land changing hands among larger, stronger powers. Judah was not far away, but in the 600s they were still their own kingdom. Nonetheless, the Assyrians had a great deal of influence over Jewish culture. Thus, their practices — including religious practices — changed over time, and that’s reflected in the book of 2 Kings, where you’ll find several kings doing “what is evil in the sight of the Lord.”
When King Josiah shows up in 2 Kings 22, his people have lost their way. That’s why, when the high priest Hilkiah finds an old scroll containing “the law” in the temple, he urgently sent it to the king. Upon receiving it, understanding its significance, Josiah tore his clothes.
What was that scroll? Many think it was Deuteronomy.
Who was most in need of a retelling of the story of the Israelites and the ways of living shared with them by the Lord? Those who had just lived through it, or those who hadn’t had the opportunity to learn it in the first place?
Today’s passage would have spoken to Jews living in the shadow of Assyria. In a time when wisdom was always attributed to kings, God’s law gave them the opportunity to show “wisdom and discernment” to those living in their midst. Other nations did not have “a god so near to it as the Lord our God” whenever they called. The people were encouraged to prevent what they had learned from slipping from their minds all the days of their lives, and they were to make it “known to [their] children and children’s children.”
Biblical scholar Deanna Thompson puts it this way: “Deuteronomy binds together obedience to God’s commands with the concepts of wisdom and justice. While parts of Deuteronomy resemble the structures of ancient treaties, the emphasis on wisdom and justice within the text suggests that Israel’s laws possess a quality of justice not often seen among other nations.” Thus the scripture provided clarity and reassurance to the Judean people, reminding them that their God was near and had a plan for them.
In a time when information is so readily available, it’s hard to understand why getting a short history and collection of laws was a reason for excitement. But if all we knew about our faith came from memories passed to us from our grandparents, a Bible discovered unexpectedly would be a treasure. Our biggest challenge maybe isn’t having access to scripture and other faith foundations — we can freely view multiple translations of the Bible, as well as books of order and confessions, online. We’re perhaps more challenged to find the time and energy to devote to such study in a society designed to have us watch commercials.
On that note, maybe our situation does bear some similarities to that of our spiritual ancestors in the Ancient Near East. We may not live under the influence of a foreign empire, but the powers and principalities and practices of the prevailing culture do not lend themselves to worship of the creator of the universe.
That brings me to today’s message from James, which like the message from Deuteronomy reminds us of a different way of living. In this reading, every perfect gift comes from the Father of lights (not Amazon), and that wisdom is freely available to us all regardless of income, nationality, or background. It does not require a monthly subscription, your personal information, or completion of a survey.
We’re also encouraged to “be quick to listen, slow to speak, [and] slow to anger.” This is another challenge in a society that encourages self-promotion, and where we’re surrounded by posts and programming seemingly designed to make us mad. To take the time to listen — especially to the still, small voice of God amidst louder noises — requires deliberate effort.
Being “doers of the word and not merely hearers” reminds us that listening leads to action. When it doesn’t, we’re like those who forget an image viewed in a mirror after being away too long. (That’s a reminder of the audience to whom Deuteronomy was written, who had lost access to the Word of God as it was given to them.)
And if you’re not sure what “doing” looks like, James reminds us that it involves caring “for orphans and widows in their distress” and keeping “oneself unstained by the world.”
It’s tempting to wrap up the sermon here without acknowledging some of the more challenging passages in scripture, but if you take the time to read Deuteronomy you’re bound to run into several of them. You might cite the slaughter of the people who resided in Canaan at the hands of the Israelites, or point out the harshness of stoning a child to death for drinking too much, or notice that the Ten Commandments mentions proper treatment of slaves. (Hadn’t the Israelites just escaped slavery?)
That’s where the questions I mentioned earlier come in. When was this scripture written? What was going on at that time? Who wrote it? What is the author trying to share? The Bible was not written to us, but it was written for us, and it’s important to understand the difference.
Deuteronomy can be a tough book, but it’s also the source of the greatest commandment as quoted by Christ, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Leviticus also has its challenges, but is the source of the command to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Not all books of the Bible can be easily or readily applied to our context, but they all served a role — sometimes a crucial one — in the lives of our spiritual ancestors. When we put ourselves in the place of one of those ancestors — whether a desert-wanderer, an exile, or a disciple of Jesus — we might be able to hear God’s word more clearly.
So when you reach a passage like Deuteronomy 4 and find yourself tempted to skim through or skip over it, instead listen for what God was saying in order to determine what God is saying: that we are God’s people, that God’s word offers wisdom and discernment, and that God is near when we call.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
References
Clements, Ronald E. “The Book of Deuteronomy,” in New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume I. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2015.
Collins, John J. Introduction to the Hebrew Bible: Third Edition. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2018.
Heil, John Paul. The Letter of James: Worship to Live By. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2012.
Levinson, Bernard M. “Deuteronomy,” in The Jewish Study Bible, ed. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
McCartney, Dan G. James: Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2009.
Thompson, Deanna A. Deuteronomy (Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible). Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.
