Reading: Deuteronomy 24-27, Psalm 61
Oh good, more pithy laws that seem to apply only in very specific circumstances. We already know that the purpose of these laws is the distinction between the people of Israel and the people around them, so why is it so extensive? For one thing, these are applied laws- case law. We know that Moses is giving this long speech to the second generation of Israelites. It stands to reason that over forty years of wandering in the desert the people came up with some situations that they weren’t sure how to deal with. These are the result, and as dull as they may seem to us, they are worth looking at in order to understand how God was intending his laws to be applied.
We continue the rules about marriage and divorce from the last chapter with a regulation we don’t really see a ton of application for: the remarriage to a previous spouse of an already remarried woman. What is going on here? One possibility is that this is a property issue. While we might balk at thinking of a woman as a device of transferring property, it is simply a fact that at the time that was a part of marriage. If a man married a woman, divorced her, and then wished to remarry her after she had married a second time, it is unfortunately quite likely a matter of getting a hold on that second man’s property. While the economic element of marriage is not forbidden by God, he is forbidding the people of Israel to distort marriage beyond a certain extent. Marriage was designed to reflect the image of God, and he will not allow it to totally degenerate into a property transaction.
There are extensive laws about what an Israelite could and could not take in pledge for debts. This was a simple practice of securing loans. If a poor person promised to pay for goods or services later, the lender would ask for a pledge as proof of their intent to pay. By forbidding them to take garments and millstones, or invading a man’s house to take something in pledge, God is preserving the basic dignity of every human in Israel, even if they are utterly destitute. The laws about leaving grain and fruit in the field for the poor to glean serves the same function, as does the limitation on punishment (the 40 lashes). Subjecting anyone who enslaves a fellow Israelite to death is similar: the people of Israel have a irreducible dignity. Even the animals are given a measure of dignity by God’s commands, as God tells the people not to muzzle an ox while it is at work treading grain. Even the ox was deserving of the benefit of it’s own labor.
How the laws are applied give us a picture of how the people of Israel were to be distinct. They were to have a respect for the basic dignity of all life, human and animal. They were to have respect for the basic dignity of marriage as instituted by God, for partnership and in reflection of his image, not as a means of economic gain. They were to maintain fair measurements and fair courts, treating everyone with the basic dignity owed them as a human person. They were to tithe of the produce of their land to support the poor, the fatherless, and the widow, for they too were deserving. While these laws are alien to us in specifics, and do not apply to us in terms of covenant, they should point us to the second great commandment in Leviticus 19: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Israel was not to be like the nations around them, where the dignity of human life was reduced to the point of offering children as burnt offerings and both men and women made into prostitutes for their fertility gods. The people of Israel are to be a living example that humans, for all our problems, are better than that.
The last oddball law we see here is about the practice of levirate marriage. We’ve seen this before in the story of Judah and Tamar. It was the practice that if a man died childless, it fell to his brother to have children for him through his widow, who his brother was also responsible for as wife. This ensured that she had financial support after he husband died, and into her old age as she would have children to support her. Strange to us, but totally sensible at the time. This section doesn’t really comment on the practice itself, but on what happens when a man refuses to do what is required of him. Rejecting a brother’s wife was economically advantageous. Not only does he not have to support her, but his brother’s property may pass to his own children. God puts in place an interesting solution to this. He does not force the issue, but puts a scene of public shaming together. The man has to stand at the city gate and be symbolically castrated (the foot was a euphemism for sexual organs) by the woman in question, while she spits in his face in the public square, and his family name will be equated with this event. The consequences of this were clearly intended to be public disgrace, as well as publicly announcing the freedom of the woman to marry elsewhere. We will see how far this degenerates in the book of Ruth.
Okay. Now for the curses. These are basically a restating of the laws and the people agreeing to them. It is like signing a contract. The next few chapters of Deuteronomy will be a long form contract signing between God and the people of Israel. Moses has now recounted the story of what God has done for the people of Israel which demonstrates his worthiness to be their ruler. He has given them the code of laws by which their relationship to their ruler will be carried out. And not he is asking for their signature. And they say, “Amen.” Israel signs the contract. They, for the second time, willingly enter into this covenant with God, accepting the consequences for both obedience and disobedience.