Rand McMoses

Deuteronomy 3:12-20

Moses recaps the occurrences of Numbers 32, but in a much more abbreviated version.  If you don't remember our riveting conversation from last year, you can find it here: http://chiphall.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-sins-of-fathers-numbers-32-so-as.html

Moses tells us in a quite boring fashion how this land was split up and that the folks who were staying to claim it still had to cross over the Jordan and help their brothers claim the rest of the land.  However, they could leave their women, children, and livestock safely behind.

Moe eliminates any detail of the discussion to claim these lands as inheritance and that this was an idea the Israelites pitched to God.  Could this be a separate thread of the oral retelling?  Family stories are told differently by different people who remember different details- or who want to frame stories to make themselves appear more heroically.  Both versions of this tale are ascribed to Moses, but certainly pieces of them (especially this book written after his death) could have been written by others who remembered things with less specificity. 

It's a bit disheartening for us lovers of plot that the part left out was the closest thing to a story that existed here. 

Perhaps the message is to remember that God's story doesn't end with the generation that experienced it.  Retellings keep the story alive from generation to generation.  However, those stories that more blatantly seem to tell us about God and his people are a bit more helpful to relive.

Bashin' Bashan

Deuteronomy 3:1-11

This section greatly mirrors those that came before- more recollection of the good ole days of bloody war.  Here Moses reminds them of the incident where they defeated King Og of Bashan.  God says, don't be afraid- do what you did to the Amorites...no worries.

So they do.  Men, women, and children. Dead.

In return they got 60 cities.

Rob Bell suggests that the people in this time were describing the world they knew, that fighting in the name of their god was natural, expected, and commonplace.  He suggests that these ultra-violent passages may illustrate a people not yet evolved culturally enough to recognize that their God is different, that His expectations and desires don't match up to the whims of the gods surrounding them.

And he stresses that this same God put in us the ability to recognize how foreign this violence is to what His will truly is...but this recognition only comes after a gradual cultural evolution.  God guides the people slowly from that barbaric culture and helps it gradually shift to our slightly less but still somewhat barbaric culture.

But it takes many, many, many small steps.  And an amazing Savior.

Nostalgia To Die For

Deuteronomy 2:24-37

Moses's greatest hits collection reaches the track about the battle of Jabaz.  Remember how God told you to offer King Sihon money for food, drink, and safe passage through his land.  And remember when he said no how I helped you slaughter his people, including the women and children?  However, even though we took his land for ourselves, we were careful not to take any Ammorite land.

This feels like celebration talk: serious reminiscing reminding the troops of great victory.  However, it's hard to stomach the celebration of mass killing; especially when that killing involves women and children.

Rob Bell discusses the violence in the old testament as being natural- as they are stories told through oral tradition in a culture where violence is the norm and as these stories are retold, I wonder how much of the tales are justification for violence in the name of God.  I wrestle with how much perspective comes into play in biblical texts- and I wonder what the detail is included for.  Was it there to remind the people of the potential of the bloodthirstiness of their God?  Or was it there to frame their history in a way that made them look more humane.  This same kind of thinking influences how Americans talk about the first Thanksgiving- or westward expansion.

The same question arises when thinking about the detail of steering clear of Ammorite land.  Moses emphasizes...remember, we didn't go anywhere near it.  Perhaps, this was in case any Ammorites had their own version of the story.  This would document that the Israelites weren't involved in whatever could possibly be pinned on them.

Context seems so central to these stories- but that context is often hard to crack thousands of years later and thousands of miles away.