Now,
Deuteronomy starts out with a long, multi-chapter speech supposedly delivered
by Moses himself to Israel as they were on the banks of the Jordan prior to
crossing into their promised land. Much of it is recap of their journey so far,
though there are some points of disagreement between the speech and the stories
recorded in the previous books. And the ways in which they disagree can tell
you something about Moses’ character.
For
example, when he talks about the time when they were on Mount Horeb and he
appointed chiefs to settle all the lesser disputes in the camp because there
were too many people for him to handle alone, he completely leaves out the part
where it was his father-in-law’s idea. Although, since at this point in the
story the Israelites had just finished slaughtering his father-in-law’s entire
people (the Midianites) down to the women and children, perhaps it didn’t seem like the time to
be giving him credit.
Then a
few verses later in the speech, he talks about the time when they sent spies
into Canaan, and the bad report the spies brought back caused them to balk at
entering the promised land. Here are Moses’ words on the subject:
“Deut 1:22 Then all of you came
near me and said ‘Let us send men before us, that they may explore the land for
us and bring us word again of the way by which we must go up and the cities
into which we shall come.’ 23 The thing seemed good to me, and I took twelve
men from you, one from each tribe. 24 And they turned and went up into the hill
country and came to the Valley of Eschol and spied it out.”
Compare
that to the account of the same event in Numbers.
“Num 13:1 Yahweh spoke to Moses,
saying 2 ‘Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the
people of Israel. From each tribe of their fathers you shall send a man, every
one a chief among them.’”
So in
Moses’ account, the people begged him to send spies, and he agreed and picked
twelve men on his own initiative. In the Numbers account, God initiates the
order to Moses to send the spies, and specifies twelve chiefs. Who’s right?
There’s no way to say. But there’s definitely some blame shifting going on
here. And it actually kinda matters which is true in evaluating the character
of God and of Moses. And no matter which is true, the contradiction means that at
least one of the books is now rendered an unreliable narrative.
Moving
on, Moses recounts some of the journeys up until the forty years was up and the
cursed generation had all died out. Then he skips right past the genocidal mass
human sacrifice of the people of Arad to recount the defeat of King Sihon and
his people the Amorites. If you recall, Moses had sent messages to Sihon asking
to cross his land. Sihon had refused, and sent his army out to attack the
Israelites. Israel won, and genocided the Amorites. Moses adds some interesting
details in his recounting of events.
“Deu 2:31 But Sihon the king
off Heshbon would not let us pass by him, for Yahweh your god hardened his
spirit and made his heart obstinate, that he might give him into you hand as he
is this day 31 And Yahweh said to me
,’Behold, I have begun to give Sihon and his land over to you. Begin to take
possession, that you may occupy his land.’”
So now
Moses claims that the reason Sihon attacked Israel is because God took away
that free will thingy that Christians like to go on about. Also, you may recall
that, at the end of Numbers, the Israelites were all set to leave this land
behind and cross the Jordan into the promised land. But the Reubenites and
Gadites decided they would rather stay since they’d already conquered the
people here, and Moses had to negotiate with them to secure the use of their
soldiers across the Jordan. So here in this Deuteronomy passage, we basically
have Moses taking that negotiated result of intertribal politics and claiming
“Oh, that’s totally what God ordered us to do in the first place!”
Either
Moses in this speech is full of shit, or the author of Numbers is.
Moses
continues on to describe the defeat of King Og, in which he uses the phrase
“devoted to destruction” (which you may remember from our discussion of
Leviticus 27: 28-29 is the Biblical code phrase for human sacrifice) to
describe the genocide of Og’s people, again down to the women and children.
From there he claims to have commanded the distribution of the conquered lands
to the Reubenites, Gadites, and half tribe of Manasseh, which as we’ve already
discussed was a concession they forced from him in negotiation rather than
something he could be said to have commanded.
For a
further example of weasel speech, Moses continues on to talk of his being
forbidden to cross the Jordan into the promised land and his exchange with God
on the matter:
“Deu 3:25 ‘Please let me go over and see the good land beyond the
Jordan, that good hill country and Lebanon.’ 26 But Yahweh was angry with me because of you and would not listen
to me. And Yahweh said to me ‘Enough from you; do not speak to me of this
matter again.’”
Moses is
claiming that it is the fault of the Israelite people that God is angry with
him and won’t let him cross the Jordan, as opposed to God’s supposed own words
on the matter:
“Num 20:12 And Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you did not
believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel,
therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given
them.’”
Well,
shit! Looks like God was pissed at Moses because of something Moses did (or
rather, failed to do). In that case, it was failing to give God credit for the
water he provided to the people in the wilderness, and claiming the credit for
himself. But in his little farewell speech here Moses is sloughing the blame off
on the Israelites (and making God look like even more of a dick) by saying God
was only mad at him because the people misbehaved. Isn’t that “bearing false
witness?” Moses seems to have been kind of a weasely little fuck.
The
speech moves on to commanding Israel to obey the laws Moses gave them, and that
they can neither add to nor subtract from those laws in the future. There’s a
reminder that the only reason that God only speaks to him and not to them is
because way back on Sinai the people (remember: the parents and grandparents of
the people he’s actually talking to, none of whom are still alive to corroborate)
asked to not have to hear God’s voice because it would kill them. He fits in a
repetition of the lie that God won’t let him cross the Jordan because of the
people’s actions and not his own. And he throws in admonitions not the worship
idols, or else God will destroy their nation and scatter them among the other
people of the earth.
Finally,
Moses wraps up the speech with a long exposition about how wonderful God is and
how nothing as awesome as what he’s doing for Israel has ever been done in the history
of the world. Which brings us not only to the end of his speech, but also to the
end of today’s post. Until the next time, y’all be well!
No comments:
Post a Comment