Reading: Deuteronomy 32-34, Psalm 64

We did it! Today is the last reading from the books of Moses, which are collectively referred to through the rest of the Bible as “The Law.” While the story will pretty directly continue with the life of Joshua and then into the time of the judges, these first five books hold a somewhat privileged place in the story. Everything that follows them will in some sense refer back to the story they set up. There really aren’t any ideas presented in the rest of the Hebrew Bible that aren’t present here, though many of the themes that we have seen start up will get much more developed as the story goes on. Themes like the human problem have already taken on a great deal of depth as they played out in the story of Israel, and at this point I think we kind of get it. Others, like the identity crisis brought on when we see that we are not who we think we are, or how God looks on the heart, will take on new dimensions through the later stories of Israel.

Okay, on to today’s reading. Most of the passage is taken up with two songs. The first one, mentioned at the end of yesterday’s reading, is given to Moses by God for the purpose of reminding the people of Israel who they are, where they come from, and who their God is. This is one of those fairly obvious tactics that we use right down to the present day. Teaching our kids songs to help them remember important information like the alphabet is a long standing tradition. Ancient peoples knew, perhaps better than we do, that it is easier to remember the sung word than the spoken one. There is a reason that Jewish worship would develop into semi-sung recitations of these books. We are deeply privileged (and should be grateful) to be able to pull a device out of our pockets and read our sacred Scripture in well organized apps which will give us daily reading plans, commentaries from all eras of history, and might even read it to us out loud. In the ancient world, they had to do it themselves. Anyway. The song Moses teaches to Israel is a very shorthanded summary of the story of Israel so far. God chooses, forms, and rescues Israel. Then they reject him. He disciplines them for it. The pattern repeats, apparently ad infinitim. But this is just the chapter 28 and 29 writ poetic. So not much new for us here.

The second song that our reading contains is a kind of remix of Jacob’s blessing for his sons in Genesis 49. Moses goes right through the list of tribes and makes some predictions as to how they will fare in the coming years. Some do better than others, but as we proceed into the next era of Israel’s history, which will last until a shepherd boy gets anointed king, we will see that these predictions generally play out, both in terms of role and temperament. One interesting item of note is the total absence of the tribe of Simeon. So what is the deal there? Simeon doesn’t totally disappear from the scene at this point, though it does become almost totally subsumed into the tribe of Judah, to the point that Simeon’s territory will be listed as part of Judah is the fairly near future. This is one of those tidbits of the story that can lead to all kind of speculation, but which yields almost nothing by it. The admittedly frustrating reality is that we simply are not given the answer, and so we are left with an open question.

This is not the last time this will happen in the Scriptural narrative. Similar to some other annoyingly non-specific narratives we have already run into (Zipporah at the inn, anyone?), there are things we can only make a guess at, never have total confidence that we understand what is going on. One of the great problems that the people of Israel will run into in the next era of their story is that while they lose almost all of their knowledge of how God would have them to live, they maintain a great deal of confidence that they know exactly what to do. It is far too easy for us to do the same. Confidence in what is clear is warranted. Everything else should be approached with great humility, leaving room for the possibility that we are very far wrong.