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May 30, 2025
Dear friends,
My apologies for missing last week. Two weeks ago we talked about First and Second Samuel which, as you recall, told the story of the beginning of the Jewish monarchy culminating in the reign of King David. This week we will take a look at First and Second Kings which is a continuation really of First and Second Samuel dealing with Solomon’s reign as King of Israel, the divided Kingdom upon Solomon’s death and the prophets Elijah and Elisha. Just to jog your memory, King Solomon was King David’s son.
To reiterate, I want to keep the full order of the Historical section of the Old Testament before you,
Joshua
Judges
Ruth
1 and 2 Samuel
1 and 2 Kings
1 and 2 Chronicles
Ezra
Nehemiah
Esther
Originally First and Second Kings was just a single book. They were split into two when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek. It is really important to understand that after the reign of King Solomon, who died in 925 BC, Israel was split into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah. You have heard me talk about this split kingdom in my homilies as it has come into play in interpreting some of the Old Testament texts. Remember, Judah became the Southern Kingdom centered around Jerusalem which left Israel, the Northern Kingdom, to be centered around Samaria. This split lasted until the Northen Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BC, some 200 years later, leaving only Judah to the south. Judah lasted until the Babylonian exile which occurred in 586 BC. I raise this up because it is difficult to understand the two books of Kings as the histories of both Israel and Judah are narrated side by side without any clear delineations between them. I invite you to keep this in mind as we look at the synopsis of these two books.
First Kings opens with a very old King David and the passing of the monarchy to his son, Solomon. David's death is recorded in chapter 2. Chapter 3 has that great story about Solomon asking for wisdom to rule God’s people with integrity. God was pleased that Solomon asked for this instead of riches or long life, or victory over his enemies, and so God gave to Solomon a wise and discerning heart. Early in First Kings, we find Solomon having great success. He builds the first Temple in just seven years along with his palace and other royal buildings. In chapter 8, Solomon dedicates the temple with sacrifices, a speech, a prayer, and a blessing. By chapter 11, things begin to go downhill. Solomon worships other gods and God brings adversaries against him. Solomon dies of old age. Solomon’s son Rehoboam became king, but ten of the northern tribes refused to submit to Rehoboam’s authority and they revolted. This is what precipitated the split. Jeroboam, son of Nebat, became the king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. He established Bethel and Dan as rival sacrificial places to Jerusalem with a golden calf in each city. Jeroboam was condemned by God for his idolatry and it cost him his child Abijah who died of sickness. Jeroboam reigned over Israel for 20 years and Rehoboam reigned over Judah for 17 years. The prophet Elijah makes his first appearance in First Kings chapter 17. It is in this chapter that we hear the story where Elijah visits the widow of Zarephath that Jesus referred to in Luke 4:26 that almost got him killed by the congregants of his home synagogue. There are wonderful stories of Elijah and his power in these latter chapters of First Kings.
The entire book of Second Kings deals with the divided monarchy, the Israelite and Judahite kingdoms with their stories intertwined into a complicated narrative. Second Kings begins with a focus on the prophet Elijah and then his successor Elisha. There are so many great stories in Second Kings as well. The story of Elijah being taken up into heaven while his disciple Elisha looks on is a foreshadowing of the story of the Ascension of Jesus found in Acts chapter 1. It is a wonderful story of love and commitment. At the moment Elijah is lifted up, Elisha inherits a double share of his power. In Second Kings chapter 7 we read the story of Elisha’s healing of Naaman from his leprosy. Naaman was a powerful and respected leader in the Syrian army. Along with the story of the widow of Zarephath, Jesus also referred to the story of Naaman in Luke 4:27 in that exchange with the congregants in his home synagogue that almost ended with him being thrown off a cliff. Chapters 1-17 describe the period from the reigns of Ahaziah of Israel and Jehoshaphat of Judah until the fall of Samaria and the Northern Kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians in 722 BC. Chapters 18-25 relate the story of the Kingdom of Judah, the Southern Kingdom, from the fall of the Kingdom of Israel to the fall of Judah with the capture and destruction of Jerusalem and the temple to the Babylonians led by King Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC. In this book, the fall of both Israel and Judah is interpreted in terms of the judgement of God.
A final word on these two books. Although the subject of First and Second Kings is political history, its theme is the moral and religious failure that eventually led to the loss of national identity and autonomy. The king is evaluated by how well he upheld the primacy of God and God’s temple in Jerusalem or by how he failed in his responsibility by departing from the ways of King David.
These books resulted from a long process of collection, writing, editing, and revising a whole lot of diverse materials that were based on other written documents or oral traditions. Most scholars now view the books of the Kings as part of the Deuteronomistic History that starts with the book of Deuteronomy. I talked about this a few weeks back.
Next week, we will wade into the books of First and Second Chronicles.
Peace,
Dave.
i Tyler D. Mayfield, A Guide to Bible Basics, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY: 2018; pp. 73-87 ii The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocryphal / Deuterocanonical Books, Bruce M. Metzger and Roland E. Murphy eds., Oxford University Press, New York, NY; 1991; pp. 423, 463 OT.
—May 16, 2025
Dear friends,
Last week, we talked about the Book of Ruth and the wonderful story of Ruth and her mother-in-law, Naomi. This week, we will venture into First and Second Samuel. Just to reiterate, however, I want to keep the full order of the Historical section of the Old Testament before you, so I will continue to include it each week as we go through it. Here is the order of the historical books, as they appear in our Bible.
Joshua
Judges
Ruth
1 and 2 Samuel
1 and 2 Kings
1 and 2 Chronicles
Ezra
Nehemiah
Esther
First and Second Samuel is concerned with the beginning of the Jewish monarchy. In fact, the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures divided the story of Israel’s monarchy into four sections now commonly known as 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings. The content of First Samuel falls into two main parts, the story of Samuel the prophet and the story of Saul, Israel’s first king. The reign of King David figures prominently in the book of Second Samuel. There are many theories about when these books were written and by whom, [i] so I won’t get into that today.
The opening chapters of First Samuel focus on the special birth and the childhood of the prophet Samuel whose mother was Hannah. She was believed to have been barren, but she became pregnant after vowing to give her child to the service of God. [ii] Hannah’s song which is found in 1 Samuel chapter 2 verses 1-10 is widely understood to be the precursor to the Virgin Mary’s Magnificat found in the Gospel of Luke chapter 1. Both Hannah’s Song and the Magnificat are canticles we use during Morning and Evening Prayer; these are Canticle C from Enriching our Worship and Canticle 3 and/or Canticle 15 in the Book of Common Prayer respectively.
As Samuel grew into adulthood, the people of Israel requested that they be given a king to govern them just like the other nations around them. Samuel was told by God to anoint Saul as the ruler over Israel. Samuel was really the power behind the scenes, so to speak, but despite this, Saul made some really poor choices without consulting Samuel including the choice to offer a sacrifice that inadvertently cursed his own son. God rejected Saul as king and instructed Samuel to anoint David as Saul’s replacement. You can read this wonderful story in 1 Samuel chapter 16. David continued to prove himself. In 1 Samuel chapter 17, we read the story of David and Goliath, a story that most of us know.
The story then shifts to a series of encounters between David and Saul. Since God had rejected Saul and ordained David, it was only a matter of time before the power changed hands. David married Saul’s daughter and had the opportunity to kill Saul on numerous occasions, but chose not to harm him. After Samuel died, Saul consulted a medium to make contact with Samuel and from the other side, so to speak, Samuel told Saul that the kingdom was in David’s control. During a battle, Saul tragically fell upon his own sword and died.[iii]
Second Samuel begins with the news of Saul’s death. The kingdom was divided for a short period, not to be confused with the great schism that occurred after the reign of King Solomon. In this short-lived schism, the people of Judah to the south named David as their king and Abner, the commander of Saul’s army, named Ishbaal, Saul’s son, as the king of Israel to the north. The division of the two did not last long as both Abner and Ishbaal were killed by David’s commander Joab. 2 Samuel chapters 11 through 20 are an accounting of King David’s personal troubles including the story of his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba. This story is found in Second Samuel chapters 11 and 12. Just as an aside, the superscription to Psalm 51, a Psalm we pray together liturgically on Ash Wednesday as a Psalm of repentance, identifies the psalm as a prayer made by David after the prophet Nathan confronted him about his affair with Bathsheba.
The book of Second Samuel ends with David making a deal with the Gibeonites and burying the bones of Saul and Jonathan, the son of David’s brother. He then sings a Psalm of praise which is preserved as Psalm 18.[iv]
This is such good stuff. Next week, I will get into 1 and 2 Kings.
Peace,
Dave.
[i] The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocryphal / Deuterocanonical Books, Bruce M. Metzger and Roland E. Murphy eds., Oxford University Press, New York, NY; 1991; pp. 340 OT.
[ii]Tyler D. Mayfield, A Guide to Bible Basics, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY: 2018; pp. 54-55.
[iii] Ibid. pp. 57-58.
[iv] Ibid. pp. 64-65
~ May 9, 2025
Dear friends,
Last week, we talked about the first two books of the historical section of the Old Testament, Joshua and Judges. I want to keep the full order of this section of the Old Testament before you, so I will include it each week as we go through it. Here is the order the historical books, as they appear in our Bible.
Joshua
Judges
Ruth
1 and 2 Samuel
1 and 2 Kings
1 and 2 Chronicles
Ezra
Nehemiah
Esther
Last week, in our discussion of Joshua and Judges, we captured, I think, the nature of the books in this section of the Old Testament. As I wrote a couple of weeks ago and pointed out last week, these books are not so much bound by the facts of the events they describe as much as they are embellished stories that convey truth in a different way. As we saw in Joshua and Judges, the narrator at times weaved into these texts elements of metaphor and imaginative description, often adding enhancing elements to give legendary and archetypal proportions to various characters and themes. This pattern continues throughout the rest of the historical books. The norms that we learned in school about written history are not the norms of those who wrote these books, but they are in keeping with the times in which they lived and worked and prayed. I want to continue this week by looking at the book of Ruth with you. The story of Ruth is such a wonderful story that gets its name from one of the story’s central characters. The book of Ruth is placed between Judges and 1 Samuel probably because of the opening line of the book, “In the days when the judges ruled….” In the Jewish canon, however, Ruth is found in the third and final section which is called “Writings.”
The story focuses on a single family and it goes like this: A famine in Judah drove Elimelech, Naomi, and their two sons to Moab. Elimelech died there. The two sons married Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. After a decade, the sons also died. Left with two daughters-in-law, Naomi decided to return to her hometown of Bethlehem in Judah. She tried to convince Orpah and Ruth to remain in Moab and remarry. Orpah initially resisted but ultimately remained in Moab. Ruth, however, was adamant to stay with Naomi and accompany her back to Bethlehem. Now Naomi had a wealthy relative on her late husband’s side whose name was Boaz. One day, Ruth went out to glean wheat from the fields and found herself in Boaz’s field. Gleaning was a compassionate act of charity in those days as those who reaped the fields would leave grain behind for the poor to get what they needed. Boaz was good to Ruth and invited her to take what she needed from his fields. Naomi hatched a plan for Ruth and Boaz that you can read about in chapters 3 and 4. I won’t spoil the ending of the story for you.i The story of Ruth and Naomi is a wonderful story full of caring people and the love, loyalty and fidelity that bind this family together.
It is difficult to date when the Book of Ruth was written. Some scholars have argued that it was written before the Babylonian Exile, that is before 597 BC. Those who would place it here believe the book was written to establish David’s ancestry, and affirm the practice of Levite marriage. You can read Deuteronomy 25:5-10 to get a clearer picture of this. Others have argued that the book should be dated after Exile or after 538 BC. Those who would place it here believe the author wished to show that a non-Israelite could marry and become a faithful worshiper of the Lord. This, however, would counter the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, both of which consider intermarriage to be wrong. To understand this, you can read Ezra chapters 9 and 10 and Nehemiah chapter 10 verse 30. Even if you don’t think Ruth is a justification of intermarriage, what is clear about the Book of Ruth is that it does affirm the concern of the Lord extends beyond the people of Israel to people of every nation.ii
Next week I will get into 1 and 2 Samuel.
Peace,
Dave.
iTyler D. Mayfield, A Guide to Bible Basics, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY: 2018; pp, 54-55. ii The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocryphal / Deuterocanonical Books, Bruce M. Metzger and Roland E. Murphy eds., Oxford University Press, New York, NY; 1991; pp. 332 OT.
~ May 2, 2025
Dear friends,
I want to begin where we left off last week. Last week, I gave an overview of the Historical Books of the Old Testament. Here they are in order again, as they appear in our Bible:
Joshua
Judges
Ruth
1 and 2 Samuel
1 and 2 Kings
1 and 2 Chronicles
Ezra
Nehemiah
Esther
As we did with the books in the Pentateuch, I want to look at each of these in a bit more depth beginning with Joshua. The Book of Joshua is named after its main character and begins where the Book of Deuteronomy ends. You may remember that at the end of Deuteronomy, Moses dies and gives charge of the Israelites over to Joshua and he leads them on their final journey into the land of Canaan. The Book of Joshua is full of some wonderfully intriguing stories. For example, in this book we read the story of the two spies that Joshua sent over into Jericho, a prominent Canaanite city, to gather information. During the course of their mission, they meet Rahab ,the prostitute, who hides them from the king. In return for saving their lives, they promise to save her and her family when the Israelites return to conquer the city. We read this story in chapter 2.
Another wonderful and iconic story from Joshua is found in chapter 6. The Israelites march up to the walls surrounding Jericho and then march around these walls seven times while blowing their trumpets. When they completed this ritual act, the walls guarding the city come tumbling down allowing the Israelites to conquer the city. In chapters 7 and 8, we read the story of Achan’s disobedience, an act that leads to the Israelites being defeated at the city of Ai. Achan was stoned to death for his disobedience and in the end, the Israelites were able to conquer Ai. The Israelites renewed their covenant with God shortly thereafter at Mount Ebal. In chapters 8-10, we read the story of the Israelites treaty with the Gibeonite people. Israel successfully defends the Gibeonites from attack but only because God made the sun stand still so the Israelites could get the upper hand and ultimately win the battle. Chapters 11-12 record the stories about the many people the Israelites conquered or tried to conquer in both the north and south of Canaan. The next 9 chapters of Joshua document the more mundane record of how the land was allocated to the various tribes of Israel and the last two chapters, 23 and 24 is an accounting of Joshua’s final speech given to the people of Israel before his death. Joshua is a fascinating book.
This brings us to the second book in the Historical section of the Old Testament, namely Judges. The book of Judges is named after the main characters of the book. Though they were called judges, their work was not actually legal in nature. The judges were leaders who helped the tribes of Israel, mostly by providing military assistance. The Book of Judges is another book with lots of drama and it deals specifically with the period between the conquest of the Land of the Canaanites by Joshua and the establishment of the monarchy. Now there is a rather consistent theme to all of the stories we find in the book of Judges It goes like this:
1. The Israelites are unfaithful to God.
2. They are oppressed by foreign people.
3. They cry out to God.
4. God hears them and sends a judge to deliver them from their oppression and bring about peace
5. Peace only lasts for a certain period of time.
6. The Israelites again become unfaithful to God and the cycle starts all over again.
Some of the more interesting characters in the Book of Judges include Deborah, Gideon, Samson and his lover Delilah. Perhaps no story is as intriguing as the story of Samson who was one of the judges. You can read about him in Judges chapters 13-16. In this story, a disobedient Israel has been given over to the Philistines. God appoints a rather unrefined man by the name of Samson to be their deliverer. As the story goes, Samson marries a Philistine woman (who remains nameless for some reason) who ultimately betrays him to the Philistines. In response, Samson kills 30 Philistine men and returns home without his new wife. When Samson returns to Philistia to see his wife, sometime later, he discovers that she had been given away to another man by her father who thought that Samson had rejected her. In his anger, Samson ties three hundred fox tails together and sets their tails on fire. As these foxes run, they completely burn up the Philistine’s grain fields. The Philistines respond by burning Samson’s wife and father. The Philistines eventually attack Samson, but during the attack, he kills a thousand men with the jawbone of a donkey. He then finds Delilah and falls in love with her. At the request of the Philistines, she coaxes Samson into telling her what gives him his strength. It is amazing what love can do, because he eventually tells Delilah that he would go weak if his hair was ever cut. Again, in an act of betrayal, as Samson sleeps on Delilah’s lap one night she invites a Philistine man to come in and cut off his hair. Now weak and vulnerable, the Philistines seize him and gouge out his eyes and imprison him. One evening, a bound Samson is brought to a house with many prominent Philistine men and women. They make fun of him and ask him to entertain them. So as Samson stands there in shackles between two pillars that are apparently holding up the house, he prayed to God for strength. God gives him the strength to knock down the pillars and bring the house down killing all inside including Samson. The text says, “So those he killed at his death were more than those he had killed during his life.” (Judges 16:30b).
This is the kind of storytelling that we see throughout these historical books. I personally think this is what makes them so intriguing. Next week, we will take a look at the wonderful Book of Ruth.
Peace,
Dave
~ April 25th, 2025
Dear friends,
Last week, we finished our conversation about the Pentateuch or the first five books of the Old Testament. We explored the idea that the Pentateuch is an oral tradition that was written down by representatives of four different Jewish traditions somewhere between the 950 BC and 587 BC. These five books are an account of the period in Jewish history between 2000 BC and 1200 BC. I hope you enjoyed reading about the Pentateuch.
The next section of the Old Testament as we have it in our Bible is that of the Historical Books. These are Historical Books in the order they appear in our Bible:
Joshua
Judges
Ruth
1 and 2 Samuel
1 and 2 Kings
1 and 2 Chronicles
Ezra
Nehemiah
Esther
In its most basic form, this section of the Bible continues the story of the Pentateuch by telling the stories of the Israelites’ conquest of the land of Canaan, their intermittent alliances under the judges, the United Monarchy, the Divided Monarchy, the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians, the fall of the southern kingdom of Judah to the Babylonians, and life back in Israel after the exile period. These books narrate a major portion of the history of Israel and Judah that occurred over about a 700-year period. It is important to understand that our Jewish brothers and sisters don’t have these books in a nice, neat section called the “Historical Books” like we do. In the Jewish Bible, the books of Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings constitute a section they call the Former Prophets. The books of Ruth, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther are grouped in a section of the Jewish Bible called “Writings.”[i]
There is a bit more to be said here however. Historical writings claim to be bound by the facts, and intend to record people, places, and events as they literally were. Biblical authors and editors, whose work in some cases was in the process of being formed over several centuries, were less concerned with documentable facts than modern historians would require themselves to be. Certainly, there would be those out there that would disagree with me on this, but if we are going to understand the Old Testament, we need to understand that these writers would often develop these stories to accentuate their dramatic appeal. The narrator at times would weave textures of metaphor and imaginative description, often adding aggrandizing elements to lend legendary and archetypal proportions to characters and themes.[ii] The story of David and Goliath found in 1 Samuel chapter 17 is an example of this kind of drama and character development. Another example is the wonderful story of Samson and Delilah found in the book of Judges. So, given this perspective, you can see that, in many ways, these books defy our modern understanding of what it means to be historical. However, these books are not fictional accounts either. Bruce Metzger and Roland Murphy in their introduction to these books in the New Oxford Annotated Bible have called these books a theological and didactic historiography. I think this is a really good description of what these books are. They are clearly theological writings that teach morality through the stories of the Israelites’ encounter with the living God.
There is one last thing I want to develop before I move on in case you want to read these books from a different perspective. During our discussion of the Pentateuch, we talked about the Deuteronomists and their influence, in particular, on the book of Deuteronomy. The influence of the Deuteronomists extends through this historical section as well. Most scholars agree that the books from Joshua through 2 Kings, with the Book of Deuteronomy serving as an introduction, make up what is called the Deuteronomistic History. There is a consistent theological theme at work here that many scholars have attributed to the Deuteronomists. You may want to read the Book of Deuteronomy through 2 Kings and notice the theological perspective of God that is being portrayed there and the other themes that have been developed. The other “collective history” that was written at the time after Israel’s restoration from exile is called the Chronicler’s History. This history includes 1 and 2 Chronicles and may include the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. “Presupposing the earlier Deuteronomistic History, this author for the most part repeated, rewrote, and supplemented large portions of 1 Samuel 31- 2 Kings 25 while also drawing upon other portions of the Bible. The result is a version of Israel’s history that parallels Genesis – 2 Kings, running from Adam through the Davidic monarchy and down to the Persian period when Cyrus decreed that the exiled Israelites might return to their homeland.[iii] Just a thought that you might want to keep this in mind as you read through the Chronicles and Ezra and Nehemiah.
Next week, we will take a closer look at Joshua and perhaps Judges.
Peace,
Dave.
[i] Tyler D. Mayfield, A Guide to Bible Basics, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY: 2018; pp. 43.
[ii] The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocryphal / Deuterocanonical Books, Bruce M. Metzger and Roland E. Murphy eds., Oxford University Press, New York, NY; 1991; pp. 267 OT.
[iii] Ibid. pp. 268OT-269OT.
~ April 11th, 2025
Dear friends,
I want to begin where I left off last week. As we finish looking at the Pentateuch today, I want to keep this outline in front of you because it is the outline of the whole Pentateuch.
· The beginning of humanity (Genesis 1-11)
· Abraham’s story (Genesis 12-25)
· Jacob’s story (Genesis 26-36)
· Joseph’s story (Genesis 37-50)
· Israelites in Egypt (Exodus 1-12)
· Israelites delivered from Egypt (Exodus 12-15)
· Israelites in the wilderness (Exodus 15-18)
· Israelites at Mount Saini (Exodus 19-40; all of Leviticus, Numbers 1-10)
· Wilderness wanderings (Numbers 11-21)
· Encampment on the Plains of Moab across the Jordan River from Jericho (Numbers 22-36; and the whole book of Deuteronomy)[i]
Last week, I talked about and outlined Genesis and Exodus for you. The rest of the Pentateuch is less known to most of us; Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
Leviticus is where the law gets very specific. This book contains rules and regulations for the Hebrew people regarding both their daily lives and their ritual lives. “Leviticus instructs the people and the priests how to offer sacrifices, to establish the ritual worship life of the community, and to negotiate the boundaries of clean and unclean things.”[ii] One way to look at the Book of Leviticus is to think of it as something like our Book of Common Prayer. Our BCP offers instructions about worship and various liturgical forms not just for corporate worship, but for personal worship as well.
Some of the cast of characters in Leviticus are familiar to us. We find Moses and his brother, Aaron and his sister, Miriam. We find Aaron’s four sons, Eleazar, Ithamar, Nadab, and Abihu. Aaron and his four sons were the first priests appointed by God. In Leviticus chapter 10, the older two, Nadab and Abihu were consumed by fire after offering an unholy fire before the Lord (Leviticus 10:1-2). Apparently, you did not want to approach the Tent of Meeting as a priest without the right intentions in your heart.
Leviticus is where you can read about burnt offerings, what it means to be clean and unclean and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, perhaps the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. You can read a description of Yom Kippur in Leviticus chapter 16.
Moving on, the Book of Numbers is a strange book, at least in my view. In this book, we see the life of the Israelites being played out in the midst of the adversity of the wilderness. There is back and forth between God and God’s people. In this book we see the Israelites marrying foreign women and worshipping foreign deities. The title for the fourth book of the Pentateuch comes from the Greek Septuagint or the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. The title comes from the many numbers and census lists in the book. The Hebrew tradition simply names the book Bemidbar, which in English is “in the wilderness.” The Book of Numbers in its entirety is about the Israelites journey in the wilderness focusing on that part of the journey from Mount Sinai toward the land of Canaan. “Interspersed with these narratives are census lists and legal regulations concerning festivals and sacrifices.”[iii]
In chapter 1, God instructs Moses to take a census of the twelve tribes and that number comes to 603,550 males in the whole assembly of Israelites. I think people wonder how many Israelites were wandering in the wilderness and when you add women, children, you can see that it was a very large group. Chapter 6 verses 24-26 is where we get the wonderful benediction that is often used in our churches; “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.” Chapter 20 is where Moses strikes the rock at Meribah and water gushes out of the rock to satisfy the thirst of the people and their livestock. It is also the chapter where Miriam and Aaron both die. The book ends with the Israelites in the plains of Moab by the Jordan River at Jericho where they make plans to enter the promised land of Canaan.
The Book of Deuteronomy is the fifth and last book in the Pentateuch. The title for the book comes again from the Greek Septuagint and means “second law.” The Book of Deuteronomy contains another set of laws spoken by Moses to the Israelites as they await their entrance into the promised land. The Hebrew title for the book is Devarim, which means “words” and is taken from the book’s opening phrase; “These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan in the wilderness….”
The basic theme of Deuteronomy is the reaffirmation of the covenant between God and the Hebrew people. In this book, the legal tradition of the book of Exodus is repeated and reinterpreted in contemporary terms. I will explain this in a moment. The book is set up as a series (three to be exact) of farewell addresses given by Moses as the Israelites make plans to enter the promised land. A distinctive teaching of Deuteronomy is that the worship of the Lord is to be centralized in one place, that the syncretism characteristic in local shrines may be eliminated. We read this in chapter 12.[iv] In Deuteronomy, we see the Ten Commandments repeated again in chapter 5 and perhaps the most sacred of Jewish prayers, the Schema Yisrael in chapter 6 verses 4-9. Of course, the Schema Yisrael is the foundation of the first great commandment that Jesus taught, “You shall love the Lord with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37). By the way, the second of the commandments that Jesus taught, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” (Matthew 22:39) comes from Leviticus chapter 19 verse 18. The last chapter of the book records Moses’ death and burial in Moab.
What did I mean above about Deuteronomy being a reinterpretation of the Mosaic law in contemporary terms? As you may recall from my blog back on March 14th, I briefly introduced the Documentary Hypothesis and the Yahwists, the Eloists, the Priestly Class, and the Deuteronomists, and mentioned that the Book of Deuteronomy is the product of the tradition of the Deuteronomists. For the lack of a better way to put this, when Deuteronomy was published, the temple in Jerusalem was regarded as the central sanctuary. The Book of Deuteronomy was most likely the “book of the law” that prompted Josiah’s sweeping reform in 621 BC which we can read about in 2 Kings chapters 22-23 “and led to the revision of the history found in Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, often called the Deuteronomic History. Although Deuteronomy rests on ancient tradition, fundamentally it is a rediscovery and reinterpretation of Mosaic teaching in the light of later historical experience.”[v]
I hope this walk through the Pentateuch has been worthwhile. I won’t have a blog next week, but in two weeks we will begin our look at the historical books beginning with Joshua.
Take care and God bless!!
Peace,
Dave.
[i] Tyler D. Mayfield, A Guide to Bible Basics, Westminster, John Knox Press, Louisville, KY; 2018; pp. 11
[ii] Ibid. pp. 31.
[iii] Ibid. pp. 34.
[iv] The New Oxford Annotated Bible,, Bruce M. Metzger and Roland E. Murphy, eds., Oxford University Press, Mew York, NY: 1991; pp. 217 OT.
[v][v] Ibid.