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.