The problem is particularly complicated when it arises within the family (13:6-11), because there is a clash of loyalties. Jesus dealt with a comparable issue in his call for full discipleship (Matthew 10:34-39). The physical severity of Deuteronomy is not there, of course, but the issue is the same. It is a hard word, and we shouldn’t be too quick in brushing it aside or in taming it to fit our thinking.
The laws regarding clean and unclean foods were meant to protect the health of the people, which was surely important. They were also to underline the fact that the Israelites were separate from the nations around them. Consider how hard it was for Simon Peter to leave these dietary regulations when a vision used them as a sign that Gentiles were to be welcomed into the church (Acts 10:9-16).
PRAYER: Help me, I pray, to have a breadth of mind toward those who are now different from me, and a singleness of commitment to you. Amen.
How do we maintain integrity of faith in a pluralistic culture?
| DEUTERONOMY 15–17 | Week 10, Day 4 |
God was calling the Israelites into a way of life in which worship and ethics would dominate. Instead of accumulating endlessly, getting ever more to pass on to one’s heirs, there were to be regular opportunities for starting again with a clean slate. This would assure that there would be “no one in need among you” (15:4). But it was not a naively optimistic approach; it was built on the hard realization that “there will never cease to be some in need on the earth” (15:11).
Such a program could succeed, of course, only in a nation or a community bound together by a common religious commitment. It is at this point that economics, ethics, and worship come together. Properly, then, there is again a review of several major religious festivals; these occasions were the spiritual power undergirding the political and economic structure. Our values need to be lifted up on occasions of sacred celebration.
The day would come when Israel would want a king. But he must remain close to the people in his lifestyle, not accumulating silver, gold, horses, and wives. Above all, he is to be a student of God’s Law, having it near at hand so he can “read in it all the days of his life”—not simply to accumulate knowledge or as an act of piety, but “so that he may learn to fear the LORD his God” and follow God’s path (17:19). Ideal? Yes. Attainable? Yes. Did Israel have it often? No.
PRAYER: Help me, O Lord, to be a source of light in a pluralistic and secular society, to your glory and to human gain; in Christ. Amen.
What significance, if any, do you find in the way a discussion of the holy days is interspersed with various social and ceremonial laws?
| DEUTERONOMY 18–20 | Week 10, Day 5 |
The poet Robert Frost said that good fences make good neighbors. Laws are such fences. They make it easier for people to live together in harmony: So that the tribe of Levi shall know what portions of the sacrifices are theirs (18:1-8), there are specific regulations regarding the cities of refuge (19:1-13) and careful limitations on the use of witnesses (19:15-21). And especially, the ancient boundaries shall be respected, not only because to move a marker is a theft from your neighbor, but because the land is, ultimately, the Lord’s (19:14).
We usually think of Moses as a great lawgiver and political leader, but he is identified here as a prophet (18:15-22)—that is, he was one who spoke for God. This is what made his leadership unique. Thereafter there would be national leaders and there would be prophets, but with the possible exception of Saul, the two were not again combined, at least not on a continuing basis.
Are you troubled that the Old Testament gives rules for warfare and encouragement for Israel in times when their enemies outnumbered or outpowered them (20:1-20)? The Bible is a wonderfully realistic book. It not only holds up ideals for perfection, as in the Sermon on the Mount and 1 Corinthians 13, but also gives pragmatic insights for living in a less than perfect world. War was as commonplace in that ancient world as the baseball season in ours, and the people had to know how to live with it.
PRAYER: Give me, I pray, a faith that is pragmatically tough so I will know how to cope with life when it is short of your will. Amen.
What restraints that respect life do you see in the instructions for war in Deuteronomy 20?
| DEUTERONOMY 21–23; PSALM 51 | Week 10, Day 6 |
Religious people are sometimes accused of being so heavenly-minded they’re of no earthly use. No such accusation can be made against the rules laid out in Deuteronomy. They are wonderfully down-to-earth—so much so that they may at times seem quaint to people far removed from a relatively simple, primitive society. It doesn’t take too much imagination to adapt many of the rules to life in the twenty-first century.
There is a severity to the laws—as in, for instance, the issue of a rebellious son (21:18-21)—because this is a nomadic society where order is a crucial issue. But there is also great care for those who may be at a disadvantage, such as the woman taken captive in war (21:10-14) or the firstborn who is the son of an unloved wife (21:15-17). And there is practical neighborliness, if an ox or sheep has strayed or a donkey or ox has fallen on the road (22:1-4); and there is a kind of pre-liability law (22:8), not simply to protect one from a lawsuit but because if there were an accident you would “have bloodguilt on your house” (22:8). Neighbors can feel free to eat one another’s produce in passing; in their ancient culture this was not theft. But to take a container or use a sickle was (23:24-25).
All of these commandments, both small and great, rest on the same foundation: the responsibility to “the LORD your God.” If God is truly paramount in our lives, right conduct must follow.
PRAYER: Dear Lord, may I always remember that you are an issue in every detail of my life, great and small; in Jesus’ name. Amen.
How might the rather down-to-earth, common-sense laws of Deuteronomy 22 be applied in our time?
| DEUTERONOMY 24–26 | Week 10, Day 7 |
Someone has said that a society can be judged by the way it treats those who are least able to defend or care for themselves. So many of the commands in Deuteronomy are for the protection of the poor or the alien. When you collect for a loan, you wait outside for the pledge (24:10-11), thus respecting the dignity of the borrower; and if the pledge is a poor man’s garment, you return it to him in the evening because it is his only nighttime covering (24:12-13). So, too, you pay wages at sunset so the day laborer has food for his family (24:14-15). You extend justice to the alien because “Remember that you were a slave in Egypt” (24:17-18). You purposely leave some food behind when you harvest, so the poor can glean on your property (24:19-22). If you will so live, “it will be to your credit before the LORD” (24:13).
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