Daily Bible Reading: Deuteronomy 25-26 and Galatians 4

Deuteronomy 25 – Flogging may be imposed on a person found guilty of an infraction, but not more than 40 strokes – “more than that would humiliate him publicly” (25:3). Do not muzzle ox treading out grain—even animals have a right to a reward for their labor. If brothers live on the same property, and one of them dies with no son, the surviving should take a deceased brother’s wife as his own so that children may be brought forth for that brother’s line. Now get this, if he refuses, then the woman can call upon the town leaders to put pressure on him. If he still refuses “his brother’s widow is to go up to him in the presence of the town leaders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face, and say, ‘This is what happens to a man who refuses to give his brother a descendant’ His family will be known in Israel as ‘the family of the man who had his sandal pulled off’”(25:9-10).

Really, some of these rules are amazing. Makes me thankful the Temple never was rebuilt; that apparently is the reason ALL these laws are no longer in effect for the orthodox. If “two men fight and the wife of one, grabs hold of the other man’s genitals, show her no mercy; cut off her hand” (25:11). Then come some that you can easily understand. You are not to cheat using weights and measure. “The Lord hates people who cheat” (25:16). And the chapter ends with an admonition to “kill all the Amalekites” because of what they did when the Israelites entered the land; they attacked them from the rear when they were exhausted and killed stragglers. No mercy.

Deuteronomy 26 – In remembrance of all the blessings the Lord showed to the Israelites in bringing them from Egypt, people are to take the first-fruits of their crops to the place of worship and recite the words that tell of their history. Then celebrate with the Levites and any foreigners as well. “Every third year give the tithe – a tenth of your crops – to the Levites, the foreigners, the orphans, and the widows, so that in every community they will have all they need to eat” (26:12). The faithfulness of God’s people to all these laws “will bring praise and honor to his name. You will be his own people, as he promised” (26:19).

I think the thing I most take from reading through all these laws, some that seem fundamental and justice-based, some that seem trivial and even silly, is a sense of how fully and completely those who clung to them wanted everything in their lives to be in conformity with God’s will. They did not see God as a being who only loved; He hated as well. He hated evil, disobedience, interference with His plan to plant this “people” in a way of life that would attract the attention and admiration of others over time. 

The argument about whether the God of the Old Testament and the God Jesus talked about could possibly have been "the same God" makes me think of the movie, The Quarrel, about two Jewish friends who have survived the Nazi slaughter and meet by happenstance in a park in Montreal around 1948. They get into an argument about God - had he abandoned His people or punished them for their lack of complete obedience?  Was this God still a God anyone could rationally believe in? At the end you realize that neither argument could really be reasonably debated. The existential questions - on God's existence or not; His nature - loving or capable of abandonment and hatred towards humankind; the value (or not) of faith and memory and obedience - all the things Deuteronomy holds dear - are really beyond our ability to argue, or if not argue - we can argue these things forever - but our ability to resolve through argument. Whatever our answers are to these questions, they are answers based on faith. Faith is that inward rock on which the "house of your life" is built.

Galatians 4 - The Christian is no longer under the discipline of the law.  He is now a man.  He is no longer “enslaved to the elemental powers of the world” (4:3) – the various “celestial beings” pagans thought controlled the world. Gentiles are now adopted children of God and heirs. The proof of this is “that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts: the Spirit that cries, ‘Abba, Father’” (4:6).

It is not so much that they have come to “know God” but that God now “knows them” (4:9). He’s annoyed that somehow they now want to observe “special days and months and seasons and years” (4:11).  This sounds just like George Fox and early Friends complaining about the special Christian “Holy Days” and seasons. He is so aggravated by the fact that others have come and ended their devotion and enthusiasm to him as their teacher. He feels now he “must go through the pain of giving birth to you all over again, until Christ is formed in you” (4:19).

Paul insists that if they want to be “subject to the Law” (4:20) it will mean they have chosen to be heirs of Hagar, not heirs of the “free woman” Sarah. “[T]he women stand for the two covenants. The first who comes from Mount Sinai, and whose children are slaves, is Hagar—since Sinai is in Arabia—and she corresponds to the present Jerusalem that is a slave like her children. The Jerusalem above, however, is free and is our mother” (4:25-26). They are meant to be like “children of the promise” like Isaac, not children born in the ordinary way.

Daily Bible Reading: Deuteronomy 21-22 and Galatians 2

Deuteronomy 21 – The laws we are reading about in this section of Deuteronomy are among the 613 that make up the full “Law of Moses” – the “mitzvoth.” Some very odd laws are put into place in this code, none stranger than the few here described: the concerns are understandable but the methods of dealing with them are hard to understand. If a dead body is found – a murdered person – you need to go to the leaders of the town nearest to where it’s found, get a young cow (under a year) and take it to a “spot near a stream that never runs dry and where the ground has never been plowed or planted and there they are to break its neck” (21:4). All the leaders of that town “are to wash their hands over the cow and say, ‘We did not murder this one, and we do not know who did it’ Lord, forgive your people. . .and do not hold us responsible for the murder of an innocent person” (21:8). The Schocken editor points out that the cow’s death “symbolically atones for the death of the murder victim” (940). Hard as it is to make sense of, the process reflects a concern for the dignity of the human corpse, even the corpse of a possible criminal. And the innocent sacrifice is figurative as well from a Christian point of view.

           

Another issue involved women taken in war; they were to be treated with a degree of respect.  First of all, she has to be able to mourn her family for a month. If she is beautiful, and you want to marry her, she must have this month to mourn, and then taken in marriage. But if you ever want to rid yourself of her, she must be set free and not sold as a slave.

Concerning inheritance rights of sons from polygamous marriages, the man may not favor the son of the more “beloved wife.” The first-born son should get twice what other sons get, no matter who the mother is.  Rebellious sons should be stoned after a trial before town leaders. And if a man is put to death and hung upon a wooden stake, he is to be cut down the same day “because a dead body hanging on a post brings God’s curse on the land” (21:23).  

Deuteronomy 22  – Continuing the list of very detailed laws that seem in many ways similar to those listed in Hammurabi’s Code.  Lost animals and possessions are to be returned to their owners if possible. Women are forbidden to wear male garments  and vice versa. Rules are laid down for the treatment of birds whose nest falls on the ground. You must put a railing around the edge of your newly built roof, so no one will fall off. Keep your vineyards pure – only plant grapes in them. Do not weave wool and linen together and many other detailed rules. Sexual laws involve the treatment of wives one has come to dislike, stoning of wives who were not virgins at marriage, stoning of adulterers (male and female), and so on. They all sound so much like the many rules strict Muslims claim they must follow in their Shariah Law. I am not an expert on Orthodox Judaism, but in Wikipedia, it says that most of these laws have not been observed since the destruction of the 2^nd Temple in 70 AD. I wonder what would happen if they rebuilt it?

Galatians 2 – Continuing his story, Paul recounts to the Galatians that 14 years after something – his conversion? - Paul again went to Jerusalem, moved to do so by a revelation of some kind from God. He goes with Barnabas and Titus (an uncircumcised Greek friend and co-worker). There, he reports on what he has been teaching – that the Gentiles are welcome to become Christians without undergoing circumcision or accepting the Jewish Law. The tone of the letter is angry. He thinks “false brothers [have been] secretly brought in . . . to spy on our freedom . . . in Christ Jesus” (2:4) and  are trying to keep converts “enslave[d]” to the law of circumcision.  It is through his stubbornness that “the truth of the gospel” is being preserved or kept “intact.”

Paul reports that the leaders of the Church in Jerusalem - Peter, James and John -  “recognized that God had given me this special task; so they shook hands with Barnabas and me, as a sign that we were all partners. We agreed that Barnabas and I would work among the Gentiles and they among the Jews” (2:9). Paul is only asked to keep the poor in Jerusalem in mind, something Paul was eager to do (2:10). 

When Peter comes to Antioch, however, Paul feels he must opposes Peter “to his face” over the question of table fellowship with uncircumcised brothers.  He thinks Peter has been influenced by James’s people, and become unreliable. Even Barnabas apparently has been induced to join their pro-law anti-freedom faction (2:13).  Paul is sure that “a person is put right with God only through faith in Jesus Christ, never by doing what the Law requires” (2:16), “For through the law, I died to the law, that I might live for God.  I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me.  I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing” (2:19-21).

I take this all to mean that while it is true that they (and we all) come through the Law (through our identification with the “chosen people” in the salvation “narrative”), our faith in Christ now brings us into the New Covenant, which frees us from obedience to the Law, and make it possible for us to live in obedience to Christ in us. It isn’t what Luther described as salvation through faith alone; it is salvation offered to all nations now through Christ’s work, which is kept present to us through the teachings and sacraments of the Church, and through the working of the Spirit of God in us as well. 

Daily Bible Reading: Deuteronomy 19-20 and Galatians 1

Deuteronomy 19 - The land is to be divided into three regions and each region is to have a city of refuge so “that every [non-malicious or accidental] homicide will be able to find a refuge” (19:4). In the event the territory given is expanded, three additional cities shall be added. In that time, it was the duty of a family member of anyone killed to exact vengeance on the perpetrator; this is an attempt to put in place some means whereby those innocent of intending to kill can be protected from unjust revenge. The guilty are not to be protected, however, under the system. If a person seeking refuge is really guilty of a “murder” he is to be killed: “life for life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, and a foot for a foot’”(19:21). Judicial findings require two or three witnesses.  If one commits false witness “you are to receive the punishment the accused would have received” (19:19) had the testimony been true. 

           

Deuteronomy 20 - In battle, do not be afraid.  The Lord fights for you.  But this part of the code permits a number of categories of people to avoid involvement. If you are someone who “has just built a house” that has not been “dedicated”; or has a vineyard that has not been harvested; or has just become engaged to be married (20:5-7), you are exempt from having to fight. More surprisingly, another exemption is provided for those who lose their nerve and are full of fear. They are to go home as well (20:8). They don’t want people with them who will damage the morale of all the others.

When you prepare to attack a city, they are instructed to always offer terms of peace first.  If the terms are accepted, and they surrender, the people of the city under assault “are all to become your slaves and do forced labor for you. But if the people of that city will not surrender, but choose to fight, surround it with your army [and] kill every man in it [and] take for yourselves the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city” (20:13-14). As bad as this sounds, it is even more dire if the people attacked are Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites or Jebusites. These are people who worship their gods in ways that the Jews must not be tempted by – child sacrifice or other vilified practices. These people, if defeated, are all to go under the ban and be completely wiped out lest they “teach. . . . all the disgusting things that they do in the worship of their gods” (20:18). Then there is a passage concerned with protecting the fruit trees in cities placed under siege. Other trees may be used for building defenses, but fruit trees should be preserved. 

Introduction to Galatians: The Jerusalem Bible introduction has this letter dated after the Council of Jerusalem (57-58 AD), the first such “council” called in the history of this newly emerging Christian “Church.” The letter implies that Paul has visited there twice on his first missionary journey – visiting them on the way out and then on the way back. Galatia is located in the middle of the Anatolian Peninsula, present-day Turkey.

Galatians 1 - A Jerusalem Bible note says that the opening of this epistle is “shorter and less friendly” than any other letter Paul wrote. He starts by saying that his apostle-ship “did not come from human beings or by human means, but from Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from death” (1:1). Jesus came, Paul says, to “set us free from this present evil age” (1:4). “Christ gave himself for our sins, in obedience to the will of our God and Father” (1:4). 

He is disappointed with the Galatians. They are already drifting from the true gospel and following “a different version of the Good News” (1:6). But there is only one gospel. He says, “even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel other than the one that we preached. . .let him be accursed” (1:8-9).

Paul insists that the Good News he taught them “is not a human message . . . it is something I learnt only through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (1:12). He recounts his conversion story and insists he did not go up to Jerusalem to see the early apostles but went to the Nabataean Arabs, who lived in what today is the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. Only three years after his conversion did he go to Jerusalem to confer with Peter for 15 days.  The only other apostle he saw then was James, the brother of the Lord (1:20). Then he went to Syria and Cilicia where his hometown of Tarsus was. He is vociferous in writing that he is not lying about any of this!