Deuteronomy 1

What do you think when you hear the word "Deuteronomy"? If you're of a certain inclination, you'll immediately conjure in your mind the character from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats, portrayed in the original Broadway run by none other than The Nightmare Before Christmas's Oogie Boogie, Ken Page. It amuses me, an English major, that this alternately fawned-over and derided musical derives from poems by a fellow, one T. S. Eliot, who also wrote one of the most impenetrable poems of all time, "The Waste Land." In fact, Eliot's own footnotes for the poem are almost as long as the poem itself! (Eliot also wrote "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" if you're wondering where you've seen his name before.)

Anyway, despite seeing the VHS recording of Cats numerous times during my childhood (at my younger brother's behest), I don't remember too much of the plot (though apparently there wasn't too much of a plot anyway). All I remember of the Deuteronomy character was that he was a portly chap who served as some sort of wise man. And the Biblical book of Deuteronomy does indeed relate the wisdom of Moses, God's chosen representative.

Much of chapter 1 (and Deuteronomy) consists of events we've already read about before, but what adds spice is a more personal element: Moses's own feelings--some of them surprisingly candid--about what he and his fellow Israelites have gone through.

Two Moses nuggets stand out to me here. The first is in verse 23, in which Moses recalls his response to the idea of sending out spies to explore the Promised Land: "The idea seemed good to me." (Or, to quote the more literal NASB translation, "The thing pleased me.") What a thoroughly human phrase, rife with implied meaning. You can almost hear an unspoken tag: "The idea seemed good to me--at the time." Moses embraced the idea, but little did he know that it would lead to 40 years of loafing about in a, well, waste land.

This leads directly to the second intriguing nugget: After God condemns the Israelites to 40 years of wandering, Moses says in verse 37, "Because of you the LORD became angry with me also and said, 'You shall not enter [the Promised Land] either.'" Moses's transference of blame from himself to the Israelites shows that he's still bitter about not being able to enter the Promised Land he's been leading his people to for most of his adult life. Which makes sense--after all, he was handpicked by God Himself to deliver His people from the yoke of Egypt. And yet, after all these trials and constant attempts to keep the childish, recalcitrant Israelites in line, he doesn't even get to set foot in the Promised Land? But Moses is only human, so I suppose it's refreshing to see that he has flaws and frustrations. It's just a shame that he had to go and abuse that rock.