16 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the earth, so that it may become gnats throughout the whole land of Egypt.’” 17 And they did so; Aaron stretched out his hand with his staff and struck the dust of the earth, and gnats came on humans and animals alike; all the dust of the earth turned into gnats throughout the whole land of Egypt.
Exodus 9:24 there was hail with fire flashing continually in the midst of it, such heavy hail as had never fallen in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation. 25 The hail struck down everything that was in the open field throughout all the land of Egypt, both human and animal; the hail also struck down all the plants of the field, and shattered every tree in the field.
Exodus lists nine nature plagues in all, and then concludes with a tenth plague that copies the violence done to the Hebrews at the start of this story—the death of the firstborn, only now among the Egyptians. In between the ninth and tenth plagues is the celebration of Passover, a ritual meal in Chapter 12, so that the Israelites may always remember their slavery and the God who led them to freedom. Then the drama concludes with one more attempt by Pharaoh to destroy the Hebrews as they leave. Again nature, the water of the Red Sea, swallows Pharaoh’s army.
This same theme of nature keeping the ever expanding power of humans in check was already used in Genesis 7—the story of the great flood and Noah. Here again, it was the wicked warrior heroes whom God did away with through a great flood—Chapter 6. Paul Ricœur has made the observation that while other neighbors of the Israelites had flood stories, the flood stories of the Israelites differed in one very significant way. Ricœur observes that in primitive myths such as the Babylonian’s Enuma elish human violence is due to humans copying the violent powers they find in nature.34 This confirms Girard’s observation that behind the gods in the warrior myths are real human victims of violence.35 However, Ricœur notes that in the biblical flood accounts, it is human violence that initiates the response of nature. Human violence is exposed in the story as being responsible for nature’s response.36
Think of the climate change debate today. As it turns out, the biblical salvation story holds humans accountable for nature’s response. As argued earlier by Walter Wink, the biblical worldview is integral, where humans are tied in with nature and evolution. Humanity cannot claim to be outside of the loop of what is happening in nature. To argue as such is to take the position of primitive pagan religions and abandon the worldview of the bible! The biblical worldview is much more akin to evolution than it is to pagan mythology. On this point the work of Richard Dawkins on the dynamics of evolution is well worth our observation. In his book The Selfish Gene, Dawkins observes that ultimately evolution does not reward those who constantly cheat and abuse power. Rather, in evolution cooperation and mutual assistance is the larger strategy for the continuation of life.37
Returning to the salvation story, the Israelites once set free will regress to their idols after leaving Egypt. And today we regress in our religious life as we fashion gods in our own images of power, and in our own images of conformity to unjust powers that have once again blinded us through rivalry—our in-groups and out-groups, those we copy, and those we resent for not conforming to our copying. Law alone and law telling us not to make idols is only part of the salvation story’s response to the problem of human mimesis. The prophets, as we have already seen in Isaiah, take up the problem of idolatry again, and as we shall see, point us to the other part of the equation—receiving a new identity from the God who is becoming.
34. Ricœur, The Symbolism of Evil, 175–217.
35. Girard, The Scapegoat, 48–49.
36. Ricœur, The Symbolism of Evil, 175–217.
37. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 202–33.
Deuteronomy 5
1 Moses convened all Israel, and said to them: Hear, O Israel, the statutes and ordinances that I am addressing to you today; you shall learn them and observe them diligently. 2 The LORD our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. 3 Not with our ancestors did the LORD make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today. 4 The LORD spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the fire. 5 (At that time I was standing between the LORD and you to declare to you the words of the LORD; for you were afraid because of the fire and did not go up the mountain.) And he said: 6 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 7 you shall have no other gods before me. 8 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me, 10 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
If books of the bible were movies, Exodus could be titled Moses One. Deuteronomy could be titled Moses Two. The reason the commandments are given once again is because refugees from the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians in 721 BCE are now coming south to settle into the remaining Southern Kingdom of Judah. Moses is long gone. But the story needs to be retold once again to a new generation of people. The first three verses of Chapter 6 are a recasting of the Israelites’ first entrance into the Promised Land for this new generation of refugees:
6:1 Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the ordinances—that the LORD your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy, 2 so that you and your children and your children’s children may fear the LORD your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long. 3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, has promised you.
I am lifting up these texts to show how the work of the reformers who write Deuteronomy are essentially dealing with the same problem of idolatry as earlier writers and that their editing of books at this time reveals that the Israelites were not a monotheistic religion in the united kingdom of Israel and Judah, nor even in Judah. It is not until after the fall of the Southern Kingdom in 587 BCE to the Babylonians that we begin to see the rise of monotheism and the belief in just one God. In his book The Hebrew Goddess, Raphael Patai tells how the Hebrew people could not abandon the Canaanite goddess Asherah, who was originally the consort of the Canaanite god El. Instead, the Israelites made Asherah the consort of Yahweh.38
The goddess Asherah was connected to the belief that human sex and fertility were related to the fertility of the land. Thus the people engaged in sexual ritual practices and believed the practices had a bearing on the success of their produce from the land and trees. The reformers of Deuteronomy try to denounce the ritual practices centered around the goddess Asherah, but to no avail. Here is some of their editing in the books of 1 Kings and Isaiah, where they have inserted their condemning of Asherah. Here the translation is “pole,” but it is Asherah, a pole-like figurine of the fertility goddess.
1 Kings 14:23 For they also built for themselves