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!"