Reading: Deuteronomy 13-14, Psalm 57
God: Hey, people of Israel, here is the deal: don’t be like the nations around you. Don’t worship their gods. Don’t adopt their cultural practices. Don’t follow their laws. Got it?
Israel: Hey, what about if someone tells us to worship their gods?
God: Wha-? Um, don’t listen to them. They are dangerous, get rid of them.
Israel: But what if it’s my good friend Joe whose always right?
God: Joe wouldn’t do that. He’s not always right, though. I am.
Israel: Oh sure, but what about my cousin Tony. I have to trust family, right?
God: Oh good grief. If it’s family, still don’t listen to them. Same rules apply. Just don’t worship the gods of the nations around you and get rid of people who say you should.
Israel: Okay. But, you know, we heard that the people from Tizrah have started worshiping some other gods, but haven’t tried to get us to do it. And, you know, live and let live, right?
God: Okay, this is the deal: Nobody in Israel is to worship foreign gods. Really. Like, I really mean this. If everyone in Tizrah is worshiping foreign god, go burn Tizrah down. Same for anyone. You all get this? Get rid of the foreign gods. No exceptions.
Israel: Can we take their stuff?
God: Oh, for the love of- No, you can’t take their stuff! Burn it all down and make the city a heap of rubble and leave it there as a warning!
Israel: Okay, yeah. Think we got it.
God: I guess we’ll see.
The time and language barrier we have with the people of ancient Israel can present some difficulties in understanding why God gives what appear to be the same laws over and over with lots of details. The preceding dialogue is my take on answering that question. The speech Moses is giving in Deuteronomy is to people who have had the Levitical law for a generation. They have had plenty of time to work out corner cases, exceptions- to bend the rules. Now they are about to enter the promised land, and Moses is dealing with the natural degradation that happens over time when people get a hold of any rule.
Anyone who has ever set a rule and tried to enforce it for any length of time knows this struggle. With younger kids the challenges to the rules are often rudimentary. As they get older they come up with more complex arguments. Once you are their boss at a workplace, the arguments for making your rules say the opposite of what you meant them to say can reach such sophistication you may wonder why your employees aren’t off working for NASA as rocket scientists.
As we read the regulations in Deuteronomy, we can almost hear the objections and exceptions. Moses loops back to the laws from Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers over and over. Yes, you really should pay attention to what God said to eat and not eat. You really do need to take care of the Levites and observe the worship requirements God attached to the tabernacle. That these laws were given a generation ago does not exempt you from them.
Now, we do need to be careful in how we might apply this. Deuteronomy does not fix the Levitical laws in place in a way that means they apply to us today. In fact, once we get a little further in Deuteronomy, we will see that there is a prediction made, right inside the law, for it’s own replacement in the future. On the other hand, it does teach us a lesson about the human need for repetition and our tendency to use our cleverness to bend, break, or reinterpret rules to mean what we want them to mean. Remember the greatest commandment? The people of Israel were to repeat the laws of God all the time, look through the laws in how they saw others, and obey the laws in all they did. They were to sink the laws right into their hearts, not look for ways to make the laws work for the natural tendencies of their hearts. While we are not under the laws as given by Moses, we are the same kind of humans, with the same tendencies. Looking for loopholes. God’s greatest commandment is still in force. He is looking for us to repeat, look, and do life through the lens of the covenant we live under, just as the people of Israel were to do in their day.