Reading: Deuteronomy 30-31, Psalm 63

So Moses has told the people of Israel they are going to screw up. He has told them what will happen to them when they do. It’s bad. Really bad. Utter and complete destruction of their country winding up in exile in a land full of people who think of them as cursed by their god for their bad behavior. That’s cheery. It would be a bit of a bummer if that was the end of the books of Moses. The unfortunate fact of the matter is, pretty much the rest of the narrative history of the Hebrew Bible is the playing out of Moses’ predictions from yesterday’s reading. It is kind of a bummer. But then, there is chapter 30.

Having told the people of Israel that they will become a witness to his character and plan for the world, God tells them that even though that process will be distinctly unpleasant for them due to their rebelliousness, a day will come when they will turn back to him and become obedient. He makes the usual promises about prosperity and abundance in the land when this happens. When the people of Israel eventually go into exile, they will begin to obsess over this promise, causing them to become meticulously obedient to every commandment in the books of Moses. They become, outwardly anyway, the holiest people who have ever lived. But as we will see, they missed the point. Because God makes a promise here way beyond prosperity and abundance. He takes his sign of his promise to Abraham, circumcision, and make it a metaphor for a radical change in the human heart. The promise to Abraham was to bless all the families of the Earth through his descendants, who are circumcised. This promise is to circumcise the heart of his people and the hearts of their descendants, which will result in them loving Yahweh their God with all their hearts and souls. Note the order of events here. God is not saying that the people will succeed in obedience and this will result in a charge of their hearts. God is promising to change the heart of the people which will make them able to fulfill his commands. He has already told them that they will fail utterly to be obedient to his greatest commandments, but is now promising that one day he will fix the root of the problem.

Important things to note is that God is still not reneging on his promised curses. The curses of Genesis 3 and Deuteronomy 28 are very much in force. What God is saying is that after the curses of Deuteronomy 28 are exhausted, after every consequence for disobedience has been suffered, God will make a change in them which will make them able to be obedient. The hope offered here is not in disagreement with anything that came before, but it is superior to it. This little hopeful promise in Deuteronomy will weave it’s way through the rest of the story we are telling until is lands, over a thousand years later, squarely on the shoulders of a carpenter from Nazareth. But here I am getting way ahead of myself.

Okay, moving on. Moses does another dramatic farewell bit where he puts the present generation of Israelites in the position of choosing life or death. He tells them that the commands they have heard are not like the commands of the gods of the nations around them, hidden and always changing. They ought to be able to do this, since they have concrete knowledge of what it required. But Moses doesn’t really have any hope that they will. His final speech to the people of Israel closes with him saying he has no doubt they will depart from everything he has told them from God. Here at the end of the books of Moses is seems clear that Moses is feeling very done. He goes through the steps of handing off leadership to Joshua, and looks to God for last instructions.

And God teaches him a song.

Yeah, a song. For a witness. God has given the people of Israel a book. He has given them national camp out weeks. He has given them a tabernacle, priests, and a whole tribe of teachers. But just to be sure he has all the bases of memory covered, he is going to have Moses teach the people of Israel a song. A song about God and a song about the people. Moses is about to die, but the people of Israel will have every tool available to remember what he taught them.