What's DEUTERONOMY about?

Summary

The title of this book, “Deuteronomy,” is a Greek word meaning “Second Law,” because in Deuteronomy Moses presents the Ten Commandments to the people a second time, because he had destroyed the first in response to the people abandoning God.

About 500 years before Jesus, the Israelites were allowed to return home after having been enslaved by the super-power of Babylon. As a result of this unexpected release, the Israelites came to realize that the God of the universe has a special concern for insignificant countries like theirs, and therefore for insignificant people like them. For details about how that return happened, click here.

This discovery that God cared especially for small and insignificant countries would have an profound effect on how they understood God and their past. Back in Jersualem, as they re-built their ruined temple in which to worship this extraordinary God, they began to weave the ancient oral stories of their ancestors into a coherent account of how their God had always rescued them. The result was a carefully crafted narrative that traced God's care for them all the way back to the start of the universe. That long story was then divided up into five sections, the first being called the book or scroll of "Genesis" and the fifth and last, "Deuteronomy." The entire section is called the “Pentateuch” because it consists of five books ('Pentateuch' in Greek). In Judaism it is called the "Torah" ('Law' in Hebrew).

Deuteronomy is the last of those five books, and presents in great detail their understanding of how the God who has special care for little countries relates to the Israelites and how they are to respond to God’s care by caring for the poorest in the country.

The Jews were aware that they had worshipped God, sometimes under a variety of names, and perhaps almost as a variety of gods, for as long back as anyone could remember. But this discovery of God's intense concern for the weak, 500 years before Jesus, changed everything.

How God's character changes everything

Deuteronomy presents this radically new understanding of God in the form of a long speech by Moses to the people just before they enter the land God promised to them. This speech has three sections, each describing some aspect of that relationship.

The first section focuses on what God has done for the people in rescuing them from slavery from Egypt. Their recent experience of enslavement and miraculous return from Babylon became the underlying template for the story of their escape from Egypt in the ancient past, and for even more ancient stories about God’s rescue of them and of all humanity. God, it seems has been doing the same kind of caring for all of history. The focus of the first section of Deuteronomy is on God's unreasonable care for their small nation.

But the people's character doesn't change in response

The second part of Moses' speech deals with the question about why such a caring and powerful God would have allowed the people to be captured by Babylon in the first place. The explanation that made most sense was that the people had been so evil that God allowed the consequences of their evil to take place, and that’s why they were enslaved in Babylon. Because Deuteronomy is written as if it were a speech by Moses in the ancient past, the answer to why God allowed the people to be captured by Babylon is presented as the reason why the people suffered in the wilderness for forty years after they escaped from Egypt. So the second part of Moses' speech, the middle section of Deuteronomy, describes how the people abandoned God in the wilderness. The consequence, just like their enslavement in Babylon, was that the people suffered terribly in the wilderness. Moses makes clear that it's always been extremely important to respond with generosity to one another and not to assume we can bask in God's generosity without implementing justice and dignity among ourselves. That's a lesson that was widely taught after the people returned from Babylon. How impressive it must have been to be able to say that Moses had said exactly the same things to their ancestors in the ancient past.

God's character of generosity doesn't change either

The third and final section of Deuteronomy imagines Moses speaking about the fact that God remained committed to the people in spite of their not practicing God's generosity among themselves. This on-going generosity on God's part became called “covenant.” A covenant is a commitment by one party to be faithful to the other party even if the second party isn't faithful in return. In other words, God will continue to care about their tiny country, and about powerless individuals, regardless of whether they respond to God’s call to generosity. It remains essential that the people respond to God’s generosity by not descending into selfishness because there are dreadful consequences for doing so. But even if they do abandon generosity, God will not abandon them. This warning was appropriate as the people returned from Babylon, perhaps with some of the leaders expecting to oppress the less powerful.

How Deuteronomy is important to us

We live in a similar situation. Despite our being more aware than any other culture has ever been of the wonders of how we came to exist, the priority of our nations is not how to ensure all people everywhere are upheld so they can delight and be fulfilled. Rather the priority of nations, and much of our personal lives, is how much we can accumulate in goods, military power, and control over other people and nations for our own benefit. Deuteronomy presents the antidote to that downward spiral—if we centre ourselves in the God who entered a covenant with us to give us life and joy, then we need not be afraid and succumb to greed for power and wealth. Moses speaks to us in our day, promising that we will indeed inherit the life of joy that God promised, and enter that land, and will remain there forever, if we trust God's generosity and enact it rather than being seduced by the surrounding gods of exploitation and greed. It's still up to us. But God will never abandon us.