Deuteronomy 34 and Book Conclusion

Deuteronomy 34

Was Moses the most illustrious Old Testament character who ever lived? The end of Deuteronomy avers, "Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face" (verse 10). Pretty high praise, even if it's tempered by the knowledge that the "since then" probably wasn't all that long after the book of Deuteronomy was written. But to know God face to face--that's quite an intimate relationship to have with the Creator of the universe, especially in the days before He sent His son to earth.

However, even though Moses was very tight with God, he still screwed up. As a consequence, he got to see a marvelous vista of the Promised Land, but he never actually got to set foot in the land of milk and honey. Imagine if you were a kid (or adult, I guess) who loved Disney with all your heart, drove or flew with your parents to Anaheim, parked in the gargantuan parking lot, and took a tram to the entrance of Disneyland only to have your parents say at the main gates, "Amazing, isn't it? Can you see the train and Mickey Mouse in there? Well, guess what? Because you threw a fit at Costco yesterday, you're not going to go in. But look how exciting it looks! OK, time to go back home."

OK, Moses's error was more egregious than this hypothetical kid's (and the parents infinitely more sadistic), but still…what a tease. At least Moses got one last good image in his head before he died.

Book Conclusion

If I had been an Israelite who had listened to Moses's 34-chapter-long speech, I admit that I would have forgotten a whole lot of it soon after. As I've written before, I'm not an auditory learner--I have the semblance of a good listener, but I appear that way because if I don't pay attention closely to what people are saying, I won't process it. Thank God, then, that I'm privileged to live at a time when the word of God is printed and available for perusal at my leisure.

Sure, much of Deuteronomy is repetitive, but Moses inserted enough of his little nuggets to enliven the proceedings. We also get a sense of what Moses thought was most important for the Israelites to remember--chiefly, obedience to God. He even listed a whole litany of curses that would befall them if they decided to screw around a bit. Despite a few grumblings, though, Moses understood that the legacy of God's people would continue beyond his lifetime. His exhortations to obey, and even his censures, revealed his considerate care for His people. Even with his flaws, Moses ultimately proved that, for the most part, he deserved the moniker of the one who knew God "face to face."

Deuteronomy 33

As an English major, I've written my fair share of analytical essays. (Just how analytical they were is up for debate as I wrote most of them at the last minute, but I somehow still managed to do well on most of them. But it was not a good working habit--that I confess freely.) So if I wanted to be analytical, I could write an essay explicating the similarities and differences between Moses's blessing to the twelve tribes of Israel and Jacob's blessings to his sons. But I don't feel like writing a didactic disquisition, and you probably don't want to read one either. Instead, I will, as is my wont, make facile comments on passages that happen to stick out to me.

Moses opens up his blessing by portraying God as a being that shines forth like the dawn, accompanied by "myriads of holy ones" (verse 2). Indeed, God has been leading the Israelites this whole time as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night; light seems to be part of His essence. How many psalms, poems, and praise songs speak about God's light? "This Little Light of Mine," "Shine, Jesus, Shine," "Pushing Back the Dark"…. The list goes on and on. God's light reveals, provides comfort, and sends the cockroaches of malice scurrying away.

Moses does have good blessings to give each and every one of the tribes. I'd imagine that some of Jacob's sons were more well behaved than others, so it makes sense that he would give his sons a wide range of blessings and, well, non-blessings. But each tribe now has thousands of individual people, each of whom are responsible for their own actions. Some of the blessings make sense--the tribe of Levi has the priestly duties of protecting God's covenant, teaching the law, and preparing the "whole burnt offerings" (verse 10). The tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, from Joseph's line, receive the "choicest gifts" (verse 15). (Joseph's blessing once again compares God's provision to precipitation in verse 13 as "the precious dew from heaven above.") Because I'm an English major, I could also contrive an explanation (which is a fancy euphemism for "B.S.") for Judah's blessing, from whose line Jesus will spring--but I'm sure such a supposition would be spurious.

The blessing that puzzles me the most, though, is Dan's. The entirety of his blessing is, "Dan is a lion's cub / springing out of Bashan" (verse 22). That's it. No explanation of what the lion cub represents, or why the cub is leaping out of Bashan. Is there a fire in Bashan, causing the lion to flee? Is Bashan one giant trampoline or filled with pogo sticks? Is the lion cub like Simba, fleeing from his Uncle Scar? I'm sure most of the tribes of Israel walked away satisfied after hearing their blessings, but Dan's blessing must have been making some cultural reference that I don't understand. Maybe Dan's blessing is the equivalent of saying, "Dan is like a Rebel X-Wing pilot / blowing up the Death Star."

Deuteronomy 32

Long before wrestler Dwayne Johnson flexed his acting chops--most notably in Furious 7, in which his character devised an unconventional way to break off an arm cast--God took on the nickname of "The Rock." And, knowing God's sturdy, unchanging, dependable nature, it's not hard to see why. However, a rock is a solid object--a very solid one, as anyone who's been thumped on the head with a rock knows all too well. And yet, nowadays, very few people actually see God as a solid, tangible, physical manifestation.

I'm a visual learner. I learned to read at an early age (apparently), and I need to take notes at lectures because otherwise I'll forget what the professor said. In fact, if I'm doing something else when people are talking, I often have to ask them to repeat what they said again. I process information best if I can actually see or visualize it--and because I haven't literally seen God, sometimes I find it difficult to remember that He's there. Now, that doesn't mean that I don't think Timbuktu doesn't exist just because I've never seen it before, or that all history is bunkum because I wasn't there to witness it. And yet all too often, I don't see God as the one reliable, steadfast force in my life, instead relying on material objects I can see but that will fade in time.

Moses's song, as with most Biblical poetry, is rife with natural imagery. Especially evocative is verse 2, which compares the teaching of God to falling rain. If you're outside, you can't really avoid rain. It's unstoppable, falling in profuse amounts. God's word is likewise, inexorably falling and, like rain, nourishing the world below. And yet rain, for all its bounty, is not injurious (most of the time). Would you rather stand underneath falling rain or falling rocks? God's word cleanses, revives, and provides sustenance to us. All we have to do is choose to "go outside" to receive it.

Verse 10 features the first use of the phrase "apple of his eye." If you think about it, this makes no sense. How can an apple fit in one's eye? And even if you did have a tiny apple in your eye, why on earth would anyone consider that the thing you adore the most? The "apple" here is not a literal apple; instead it refers to the pupil of the eye. The pupil is nothing but a hole (the iris does all the work), but it allows light to pass through to the retina so that we can see. God cherishes us infinitely more than anyone cherishes their pupils. I'm sure teachers would also concur with this statement.

Deuteronomy 31

Stories about time travel or prescience often run the risk of introducing time paradoxes. If you know the future, can you change it? If you do change it, then the future you saw in the first place wasn't really the future, was it? The Back to the Future trilogy explores some of the convoluted challenges that time travel might present while also being outrageously entertaining--featuring in equal parts nail-biting thrills and uproarious comedy. Minority Report, based loosely on a short story by Philip K. Dick and directed by Steven Spielberg, posits a world in which crime is eliminated because prescient people--knows as "precogs"--can "see" intended murders, allowing the police to arrest people before they commit the crimes. Tom Cruise plays a "Precrime" police officer who, as you might suspect, is accused of murdering someone in the future--someone he doesn't even know. Cruise, in turn, tries to prove his innocence and change the future. Eventually, Cruise meets the person he's supposed to kill and--I suppose this is a bit of a spoiler--a shocking "revelation" causes Cruise to say, "I am going to kill this man." (Don't worry, though--this is far from the end of the movie, which still has several twists up its sleeve.)

The movie does make one think: Why would you perform certain actions if you already know what the outcome is going to be? God knows that the Israelites will end up rebelling; He even says, "I will become angry with them and forsake them; I will hide my face from them, and they will be destroyed" (verse 17). Yes, God's wrath and the destruction bit are scary, but it's the hiding of the face that proves truly heart-rending. The Israelites have reached the Promised Land and will soon embark on a remarkable campaign in which, surprisingly, they will follow God's will for a bit. They're at a high point, so to speak. And yet God knows that it won't be long before Israel turns away from Him, so much so that He has to hide his face and withdraw His support. Why, then, does He tolerate the Israelites when He knows they're going to screw up in the long run? Or, a more relevant question might be--Why does God show me His grace and succor when He knows I'm going to screw up?

But God, as we learned in the previous chapter, is a forgiving God. He doesn't just threaten. He promises to Joshua, Moses's successor, that He "will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged" (verse 8). God may withdraw sovereignty from nations, but He will always be available to those who, like Joshua, turn to Him. I confess that I don't turn to God as often as I should--and I should be turning to Him all the time. Guilt, laziness, and selfishness keep sprouting up like Whack-a-Moles. I often try to use my little mallet to subdue the little pests, but only God has access to the master switch that can subdue the moles for good. (I suppose it would be clever of me to say that my similes get lamer the later the night gets, but that's not true. My similes and metaphors are always lame.)

Deuteronomy 30

I'm a fan of the films of director David Fincher, but his oeuvre is intriguing in that every other one of his films is brilliant, with the intervening films ranging from underwhelming to pretty good. (His films, in release order, are Alien 3, Seven, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Gone Girl.) One of his more minor works, The Game, (though it's still pretty good) stars Michael Douglas as Nick Van Orton, an insufferable stuffed shirt, who finds himself embroiled in a real-life--and quite sinister--game. The game starts out harmlessly enough, providing conundrums that Van Orton can handle, but then it starts to spiral out of control. Or does it? One of the many pleasures of the film is trying to figure out the true intentions of those running the "game," which is why I'm deliberately being vague.

Just as the game starts out providing challenges within Van Orton's capacity, God and Moses also say, "Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach" (verse 11). God does not require anything of us we cannot accomplish or allow us to face temptations we cannot overcome. Easy to write, of course, because I know I've definitely given in to temptation innumerable times. I suppose I can be kind, generous, and compassionate (imagine that)--especially to people who don't annoy me--but I can also be selfish and surly, stubbornly refusing to perform simple tasks that would require only a scintilla of effort on my part but would help others enormously. In school, I tended to procrastinate, deciding to read for pleasure instead of doing math homework. Sure, when I procrastinated with English papers, I got away with getting good grades, but I regretted it. I pulled a few all-nighters in college, and each time I thought to myself wretchedly, "I am never going to do this again." Well, I never did do it again--after I graduated from college.

But when I do happen to act admirably, often it's because I remember the tenet in verse 14: "The word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it." Here, Moses is referring to the Law of the Covenant, but God's word--and indeed God Himself--is always right beside us, guiding our paths and giving us strength when our own faculties fail. I feel I'm at my strongest spiritually not when I see God as some sort of spying policeman, but as the Creator of the universe giving me the fortitude to prevail over challenges and temptations.

The previous few chapters have boasted their own fair share of the doom and gloom that will befall the Israelites should they disobey. But the first ten verses of this chapter offer just one the myriad reasons why God is great: He forgives. If we admit our transgressions and come back to Him, He welcomes us with open arms. How awesome is that? How many people hold lifelong grudges, sometimes for atrocities that many would find difficult to forgive and impossible to forget? Sin is so unfathomably offensive to the perfect and holy God, and yet He still loves us, forgives us through the death of His son, and what's more, actually wants to have a personal relationship with each and every one of us! All too often, I take for granted just how truly singular God's love and grace are.

Deuteronomy 29

I just recently re-watched Hayao Miyazaki's first Studio Ghibli film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. I don't know what I was expecting when I first saw it, but my reaction was, "It's OK." Watching it again, I saw just how complex, emotionally resonant, and flat-out entertaining it is. What was my younger self thinking? Anyway, the film takes place in a post-apocalyptic (there's that word again) wasteland. Toxic fumes emanate from a massive jungle, forcing the surviving humans to wear masks at all times. In the lush Valley of the Wind, however, a prevailing zephyr staves off the poisonous fumes, allowing people to breathe freely. Anyway, if you know any of Miyazaki's films at all, then you can probably guess that all the strife and the virulence of the landscape stems from human folly.

Likewise, if the Israelites fail to take advantage of or spurn God's oath with them, "they will bring disaster on the watered land as well as the dry" (verse 19). Verse 23 goes on to say that "The whole land will be a burning waste of salt and sulfur--nothing planted, nothing sprouting, no vegetation growing on it" (verse 23). In other words, even worse than Nausicaä's home. She had a cozy, verdant valley to call her domicile, and though the surrounding jungle was toxic, at least it was a jungle. Who wants to live in a landscape that doesn't support natural plant growth? (Before some wag mentions Los Angeles, I want to mention that LA, like most deserts, does have some natural plants. It's just a little sparser and seldom grows high enough to offer shade.)

Also of particular note is verse 4: "But to this day the LORD has not given you a mind that understands or eyes that see or ears that hear." I must say that I haven't been given a mind to understand completely what this verse means. Does it refer to the unfathomable nature of God? Or is it saying that, despite the Israelites' awe of the miracles they've witnessed, they have no way of understanding just how glorious they are and what they mean for human history? They certainly wouldn't have been able to anticipate that their triumphs, failures, and experiences would be pondered and puzzled over by billions of people.

Moses closes with an equally abstruse little nugget: "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and our children forever, that we may follow all the words of the law" (verse 29). We have no way of knowing what the "secret things" are because, unlike a large portion of humanity, God doesn't blab His secrets. However, we should view what He has revealed to us as an invaluable gift, to be obeyed, cherished, and savored. I have to remember how marvelous it is that God has chosen to reveal just the merest modicum of knowledge to His creation.

Deuteronomy 28

Writer Dante Alighieri's best known work is The Divine Comedy, which consists of three parts (called "cantinas"): Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Each follows a fictionalized version of the author as he receives a pleasant little tour of hell, purgatory, and heaven, respectively. Pop culture contains innumerable references to Inferno and its seven circles of hell, as well as a healthy number of allusions to Purgatorio's seven terraces of purgatory, but you don't hear people talk too much about Paradiso. As humans, we seem fascinated by the variegated forms of torment, torture, and tribulation. Hollywood has no dearth of horror movies, action blockbusters, or dramas in which people inflict emotional trauma on each other. When was the last time you read a good book or saw a good movie that had no conflict whatsoever, where everyone was as happy as clams?

This truly gargantuan chapter of Deuteronomy contains 14 verses on blessing for obedience but devotes a whopping 54 to curses for obedience. It's like those high school handbooks that no one read except me: Nearly the entire handbook contains rules and regulations as well as the punishments for violating those regulations. The blessings in this chapter paint a lovely, somewhat pastoral picture of the kind of life we should be living. I certainly know that I enjoy many of these blessings and all to often take them for granted. However, the curses portray a truly dismal landscape with horrors that even the most hardened author of post-apocalyptic fiction would be hard-pressed to top.

Most of the curses are truly harrowing, and I don't think I'd add anything by writing something like, "People will resort to cannibalism. Isn't that awful?" I'm hoping you know that already. Instead, I'll point out some of the more bizarre curses. First, we have the image of an army coming in one direction but fleeing in seven (verses 7, 25). Good fodder for a farce, if only because it reveals how utterly panicked the fleeing army becomes in its retreat as it creates a kind of impromptu heptagon. Though I guess that makes it harder for the pursuing army to completely vanquish them because they too have to split into seven groups.

Verses 30-33 relate how one will labor but not be able to enjoy its fruits. Amidst the depressing examples--33 and the first part of 30 are especially heart-wrenching--is the rather odd, "Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you and not returned." Well, shoot, my kids are slaves to some far-off nation and my ox is dead, but my donkey not being returned? That's the last straw!

Verse 40 also contains a little gem: "You will have olive trees throughout your country but you will not use the oil, because the olives will drop off." Bummer. (Reminds me a little of the apple "tree" at our house.)

Deuteronomy 27

I kind of alluded to this in my post on Genesis 1, but I suck at most visual arts. Not just drawing and painting, but sculpting as well. If you ever took art in elementary school, you might remember with fondness the glorious times when you got to screw around with clay. Even more than Play-Doh, clay is a wonderfully tactile material that glides and smushes over your hands in an ineffably satisfying manner. Even I had fun squishing the buttery, pliable material between my digits. But when it came time to mold it into something that wasn't a sphere, my utter incompetence manifested itself, forcing my fingers to fumble all over their sorry maladroit selves. Once, I tried to create an elephant, but when it was clear that I was being far too ambitious, I modified it into a hippo. It came out looking like a table with a woefully misshapen knob on one end. But it didn't matter; I was proud of myself because I managed to get the number of legs right.

Another time, I had the brilliant idea of trying to write something on the clay. Do you know how freaking hard that is? Okay, maybe it's easy for you, but to inscribe anything legible, I had to carve letters an inch high. And as the piece of clay was only a few inches square, I clearly couldn't write much. I don't remember what I was trying to write, but it probably ended up saying something like "THIS SUC" with room for only half of the "C."

But I can't complain about my epic struggles with clay writing because the Israelites had to write "all the words of the law" on a set of stones covered with plaster (verses 2-3). A couple things to note here. First, the Israelites had to write far more than a petulant whine like "THIS SUCKS." They had to write the entire law. Which I assume means the whole honking book of Leviticus, with possibly some of Numbers and Deuteronomy as well. Second, the Israelites didn't have the luxury of writing in soft clay like I did. They had to coat a rock with plaster, and I'm guessing that plaster was a lot more resistant than clay is. So the next time I try to inscribe something in clay, which will be never, I will remember how good I've got it compared to the ancient Israelites.

The bulk of this chapter consists of Moses rattling of a litany of curses. This reminds me of a scene from The Mummy Returns:

Half the tribes are to shout out blessings and the other half are to shout curses. The tribes of the sons of Rachel get to shout the blessings and the tribes of the sons of the servants Zilpah and Bilhah shout the curses. But the tribes of the sons of Leah are split. Reuben and Zebulun shout curses and the others utter blessings. Why? Was there something special about Reuben and Zebulun, or was this split arbitrary?

The curses bring condemnation down upon the sorry heads of folks who flout a law already discussed previously. Somewhat new (or maybe I just don't remember it) is verse 18: "Cursed is anyone who leads the blind astray on the road." What a slimeball thing to do. Also noteworthy is the diction in verse 25: "Cursed is anyone who accepts a bribe to kill an innocent person." Does that mean accepting a bribe to kill a guilty person is OK? If so, this might have led to some of history's first bounty hunters. Boba Fett would be pleased.

Deuteronomy 26

If you watch Disney animated movies, chances are you've seen the masterful Beauty and the Beast. Amidst the film's rapturous songs, lush visuals and richly realized characters lies an emotionally resonant love story between two complex, appealing souls trying to live in a society that frowns upon them. Anyway, the prologue, gorgeously told through stained glass windows and David Ogden Stiers's beguiling narration, relates how the Beast became a beast in the first place. Basically, when he was a human prince, he pissed off an old beggar woman, who really turned out to be an enchantress. Said enchantress then turned the prince into the Beast we all know and love.

Chances are, if I see a panhandler at a busy intersection, she's not going to really be some enchantress. And one has to be careful about handing out cash to beggars willy nilly lest they just putter off and spend it on booze, smokes, or drugs. And yet the act of tithing, as verse 13 states, is meant to provide sustenance and support for "the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow." (And the Levite, but that's not quite as applicable today.)

And although the poor and disadvantaged may not be enchantresses, supporting them can have wonderful repercussions that we may never see. OK, maybe my tithing won't have the direct result of saving the world from a massive asteroid. But isn't giving someone hope, a bit more just to keep on living, reward enough?

(Yes, this is a commercial for an insurance company, but I think you get the point.)

I know that I'm more parsimonious with my funds than I could be. I do tithe, but it's the mindless "write a check every month and put it in the offering basket" kind of thing. When the Israelites tithe, they're supposed to recite a whole speech (verses 5-10) thanking God for His provision in bringing them out of the Egypt and into the Promised Land. Such a recitation forces them to recall the trials they've been through and the wonders they've seen. I should be similarly thankful for what God has given me, offering the first fruits of my labor to sustain those whom He loves. And that just might mean devoting more of my time, resources, and skills to supporting causes that help the poor, the orphaned, or the disadvantaged.

Deuteronomy 25

Many fans of the original Star Wars trilogy--Star Wars: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi--hold the prequel trilogy (The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith) in contempt--or worse. Other than the admittedly thrilling pod race sequence, The Phantom Menace doesn't have a whole lot going for it, what with its dry, character-less exposition scenes, awkward dialogue, and bitty, momentum-free climax. At one point in the film, a character named Watto rolls a "chance cube," which looks like a die with red and blue face. "Blue--it's the boy. Red--his mother!" Watto states. (That actually sounds amusingly sordid out of context, so I'm not going to explain it.) Anyway, the point is that the cube actually has only one blue face and five red faces with a weight on the blue side. But of course, Liam Neeson uses the Force to make the cube stop blue-side up.

God, then, would have detested Watto for using a dishonest device, as verses 13-16 state. Granted, if you've seen The Phantom Menace, you probably detest Watto too, but it seldom feels good to learn that someone has swindled you.

Verse 5-10 reveal the importance the Israelites placed on family legacy. Boys were more valued than girls, maybe because they tended to be physically stronger, but boys also carried on the family name. Therefore, if a man died without bearing his wife a son, then his brother was supposed to perform the oh-so-onerous task of carrying on his brother's lineage. However, if the brother didn't want to marry his brother's widow, the widow got to "take off one of his sandals [and] spit in his face" (verse 9). The man and his line would then be the joyful beneficiaries of the glorious moniker "The Family of the Unsandaled" (verse 10).

Moses and God tell the Israelites to hold yet another grudge--this time against the Amalekites. In all fairness, the Amalekites probably deserved the Israelites' scorn, as they had basically acted like jerks and picked off all the Israelite stragglers who were perhaps too weak to keep up with the main group. One can clearly see Moses's attitude toward the Amalekites come through in the nugget that closes this chapter: "Do not forget!" (verse 19) Or, reading between the lines, "What rat finks!"

Deuteronomy 24

One of my favorite Japanese dramas is Saikou no Rikon, roughly translated as "The Great Divorce." From the title, you might expect it to involve overwrought, doom-and-gloom, soap opera machinations. And while the drama does make some heartfelt observations about marital relationships, strife, pain, and loneliness, the show emphasizes the humorous, impulsive, and often farcical interactions that constitute daily life.

Early in the first episode, the main character, Mitsuo (on the left in the picture below), comes home to find his wife, Yuka (second from the left), consuming some snacks he had been saving for a special occasion. This triggers a hilariously passive-aggressive argument that escalates to an impulsive decision to file for divorce. Mitsuo dutifully prints the divorce papers, but Yuka keeps screwing up her portion of the form, forcing Mitsuo to print the form again and again. Finally, the printer jams and runs out of paper, but, of course, neither Mitsuo nor Yuka wants to be bothered with going out and buying more paper.

Anyway, the drama eventually introduces another couple, though it turns out to be more complicated than the love quadrilateral (or rhombus or trapezoid) you might expect. Anyway, I'm not going to divulge whether anybody ends up divorcing anybody, but such complicated situations would've been much more clear-cut in ancient Israelite society. Verses 1-4 basically say that if a man divorces a woman who then marries someone else, then he can't get married to her again if she divorces the second man. Tons of drama and soap opera story lines out the window--just like that!

Moving on from passive-aggressiveness to just plain aggressiveness, verse 10 says, "When you make a loan of any kind to your neighbor, do not go into their house to get what is offered to you as a pledge." I'm sure we've all run into pushy or presumptuous people who walk all over everything. I know this is selfish of me, but I used to get annoyed in school whenever another kid would take my book and bend it around as if it were Gumby--even if the book belonged to the school. I also got a little miffed when the student who sat next to me in band wrote in pen all over my sheet music, but as the notes he wrote were rather hysterical, I couldn't stay irritated for too long.

The rules in this chapter cover a wide range of topics, but many of them stress the importance of responsibility--for one's own actions (verse 16), for the well being of the disadvantaged (verses 17-22), for those under your purview (verses 14-15), and for the livelihood of one's neighbors (verse 6). While I believe in the perhaps naive notion that kids should grow up in loving households with a full range of opportunities, as adults we're not really entitled to anything. Not even God's grace--but God gives it to us anyway. Sometimes, I fall into the entitlement trap, thinking that I deserve something just because I exist, but I have to remember that I do have responsibilities. (If you're puzzled by the logical flow--or rather, lack of it--in this paragraph, don't worry, so am I. I hereby claim responsibility for the muddled reasoning in this paragraph.)

Finally, I'd like to make a note of verse 5, a considerate stipulation for newlyweds: "If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married." "Bring happiness" indeed--and receive happiness from his wife as well, I'm sure.

Deuteronomy 23

"Two households, both alike in dignity" starts William Shakespeare's most famous love story, Romeo and Juliet. Don't worry--I'm not going to turn this into a didactic monograph on iambic pentameter, poetic motifs, or even Shakespeare's innumerable dirty jokes. I just want to make the point that Romeo and Juliet come from two families, the Montagues and the Capulets, that feud with each other just because that's what they've always done. No doubt there was some sort of reason that kicked off the enmity several generations ago--it even could've been as inane and implausible a reason as, say, the assassination of some archduke--but said reason has been all but forgotten by the time the play begins.

Moses explains that the Israelites are to hold a similar grudge against the Ammonites and Moabites. Not only did they fail to provide the Israelites with "bread and water" (verse 4), but they also sent Balaam, that old scoundrel, to curse God's chosen people. As a result, no Ammonite or Moabite may enter God's assembly--to the tenth generation (verse 3). The NIV study notes say that "tenth generation" basically means forever--a long time to forbid a race of people from God's presence. Fortunately, Jesus' sacrifice would nullify this restriction. (Either that, or the line of Ammonites and Moabites died out somewhere along the way.)

Verses 12-13 provide delight for anyone who likes poop jokes (i.e., kids and many males of any age). I'm guessing Sunday school teachers are wary of letting kids pick their own memory verses because inevitably some wag will pick something like Deuteronomy 23:13 or a gem from Song of Songs. Imagine the unstoppable giggle fits that would break out when it came time to recite the verse.

I find verse 24 odd--Israelites can basically eat all the grapes they can stomach from a neighbor's vineyard. I know this verse isn't supposed to be promoting gluttony, but you'd think Moses would foresee corruptible humans taking advantage of this law.

On a more serious note, verses 21-23 emphasize the importance of keeping vows to God. Which makes sense, but then verse 22 goes on to say, "But if you refrain from making a vow, you will not be guilty." I've written this before, but I admit that I seldom make vows to God because I know I might not be able to keep them. However, I have to keep in mind that I did make a vow to God once I let Him in my heart--a vow to follow Him and trust in His power.

Finally, the Moses nugget for this chapter comes from verse 18, in which he refers to male prostitutes as "dogs." What an insult to dogs.

Deuteronomy 22

The BFG by Roald Dahl--now a movie directed by Steven Spielberg with a screenplay by ET scenarist Melissa Mathison--was one of my favorite books when I was a wee one. One if its major premises (and no, I'm not talking about logic and enthymemes) was that giants roamed the world, picking children out of their cozy bedrooms at night to guzzle like potato chips. (In fact, one scene of the book has a character describing the varying tastes of children from different nations. You can just imagine Dahl's eyes glinting gleefully as he wrote this scene.) This notion would be rather horrid in real life, but imagine if a ruling body actually sanctioned this behavior. What if whoever was in charge said that giants were free to take and gobble up as many children as they wanted--right in front of the parents--as long as they just left the parents alone?

That's basically what verses 6-7 say, only involving birds instead of humans. If an Israelite sees a nest with a bird sitting on its eggs or with its young, he or she can take the young but must leave the mother. Now, I'm not a vegetarian, and if I had to make a choice between saving a pet bird and saving a human about whom I knew nothing, I would save the human every time. Still, how much does it stink to be a mother bird watching your kids be taken away from you and consumed? Makes me wonder if the bird would rather be taken along with its young--kind of like that "Mother and Child Reunion" chicken and egg soup you sometimes see in Chinese restaurants. (I do find that name morbidly humorous.)

Most of the other rules in this chapter have to do with rather sensitive matters. I do like that a man falsely accusing his fiancee of being a non-virgin is punished. The punishment is still one-sided though: if the man is wrong, he's merely fined (verse 19), but if the woman is, in fact, a non-virgin, she's stoned--on the steps of her father's house! (verse 21) I wonder, though, how exactly the Israelites proved or disproved if a woman was a virgin. As we know today, no reliable test for virginity exists. Unless, of course, the woman's stomach starts growing and something starts kicking around in there.

I do find the punishment for a man raping a virgin disheartening--the man is fined and then forced to marry the woman with no possibility of divorce (verses 28-29). How terrible would your life be if you were forced to marry the person who took away your virginity? Both the woman and the rapist would have to live with each other for the rest of their lives. Not a happy note to end on, but despite the airy, flippant tone of these posts, I do find myself caring about real issues from time to time.

Deuteronomy 21

I don't have kids yet, but I've worked with my fair share of them. And kids, just like adults, run the gamut from awesome and charming to exasperating and bratty. About a week or so ago, I watched the movie Finding Dory at a theater. And I can't really say that I have an unbiased opinion of the movie because the whole experience was tarnished by this kid who was constantly kicking the back of not only my seat, but also the seat next to me. In addition, he would start whining loudly every 5-10 minutes (because he wanted candy, I think) and, for the last 15 minutes of the movie, started playing some kind of game with himself that involved stomping disruptively on the floor.

But what irritated me far more than this misbehaving kid was his parents' complete and willful obliviousness at how unruly their son was acting. They gave him some halfhearted "sushes," but they really should have taken him out of the theater after the whining became constant. And I don't think I'm being too much of a curmudgeon--the whining was actually loud enough so that I couldn't hear the film's dialogue. (On a side note, I've seen a fair number of Disney and Pixar films that have had a fair number of kids in the audience, and this was my first negative experience. The screening of Big Hero 6 I attended had plenty of laughter, gasps, applause at the end, and even some sad sniffling at one point--which I did not mind at all and, in fact, actually enhanced the communal experience).

Now, I know this is the Bible, but I don't think a rebellious son needs to be stoned to death as verse 21 of this chapter states. And as much as that kid in the movie theater irked me, he certainly didn't deserve a stoning--just some tough love from his overly lenient parents. Sometimes, one can blame misbehaving kids on poor parenting, but sometimes, it just seems like the kid is a bad seed. The Bible itself is rife with such examples, from King David to Eli the priest. Again, I don't have any kids of my own yet, so I'm going to cop out from postulating any more harebrained theories on this matter.

Just as stoning a rebellious son to death is no longer relevant or acceptable today, the laws about marrying captive women also wouldn't sit well in today's society. Israelite men were permitted to marry captive women if they thought they were foxy, but the women had to shave their heads (like Sinead O'Connor, as Deadpool might say) and cut their nails (and how did people cut their nails before nail clippers? With scissors? Teeth?) Seems like a sucky situation for the wife--though admittedly better than getting killed by your captors--but the good news was that if the man was "not pleased with" the woman, he had to let her go wherever she wanted. He could not make her a slave (verse 14). I'm aware that many marriages before modern times weren't made primarily because of love (though a loving relationship sometimes did develop), so I'm pleasantly surprised to learn that women--and foreign women at that--were afforded at least some rights in this situation.

Deuteronomy 20

Every movie with a big battle scene worth its salt also has some kind of inspiring speech intended to rally the troops to glorious victory: Henry V, Patton, Braveheart, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Glory--heck, even the speech in Independence Day can stir the loins, though much of its rousing quality stems from David Arnold's magniloquent music.

But one of my favorite "rallying the troops" speeches is from Brad Bird's Ratatouille. A character, one Alfredo Linguini, is trying to inspire the kitchen staff of a restaurant as they prepare to cook a dish for the most formidable, influential food critic in France: Anton Ego. Linguini's speech goes like this: "Tonight is a big night. Appetite is coming and he's going to have a big ego. I mean Ego. He's coming. The critic? And he's going to order. Something. Something from our menu. And we'll have to cook it. Unless he orders something cold. Like a salad." Of course, he completely deflates the kitchen staff, leading another chef, Colette, to deliver the succinct but effective line, "Anton Ego is just another customer. Let's cook!"

The speech that Moses and God offer as the rallying cry for the Israelite troops is also concise--a mere two verses long--but no less powerful (verses 3-4). Notably, it's not the general who's supposed to give this speech, but the priest. Which does make sense--as the spiritual leader of the nation, the priest is responsible for the most important aspect of people's lives. Furthermore, having the priest deliver the speech reminds the Israelites that their strength and vitality in battle comes from God.

Moses and God also allow provisions for those who would be inconvenienced in some way by fighting. (Yes, I know fighting in general is far from convenient, but I think verses 5-9 make the point pretty clear.) The Israelites even allow those who are "afraid and disheartened" to go home as well so that they won't lower the morale of the rest of the troops (verse 8). I suppose Israel can afford to do this because they're not fighting for survival and thus do not require every able-bodied man to fight. Israel is a conquering force, propelled by the power of God to overtake the Promised Land. With God's power directly behind them, Israel can vanquish their enemies using just those willing to fight.

Moses's nugget pops up at the end of the chapter in verses 19-20: When the Israelites attack the city, they can only chop down trees that bear fruit. Although this command is very utilitarian, it also means that it would suck to be a tree that just happens to not bear fruit that humans like to eat. Instead of living and bearing fruit, you'd be demoted to having your trunk and branches chopped up and used for siege engines. But I suppose it's better than having your trunk and branches processed into pulp and then made into paper for a Twilight book.