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.