Deuteronomy

Law and Covenant

Jack R. Lundbom

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781532603723
• eBook ISBN: 9781532603716
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

This book on Deuteronomy seeks to place before a broad audience of students and lay readers one of the important books among the first five books (together called the Pentateuch) in the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. It lifts up major themes in the book, one of the most prominent being Moses as prophet par excellence. Deuteronomy is the Old Testament's major book on law and covenant, re-presenting the Ten Commandments given to Israel at Mount Horeb (also known as Sinai). But the book is more concerned to present the Deuteronomic Code (in chapters 12-26) taught to Israel in the plains of Moab, just before Moses dies and Israel is to cross the Jordan River into Canaan. The writer of Deuteronomy is not Moses, as stated in the Jewish Talmud, but most likely a Levitical priest in the late eighth or early seventh century BC who assumes the persona of Moses in Judahite worship. Two old poems, the Song of Moses (32: 1-43) and the Blessing of Moses (chapter 33), appear in a final supplement to the book, which then closes with an account of Moses's death and burial in Moab.

1

“I Will Raise Up a Prophet Like You”

Moses, Prophet par excellence

Moses in Deuteronomy

Moses is the speaking voice in Deuteronomy, giving Israel Yahweh’s law and admonishing people to keep it. The people are encamped in the plains of Moab, in a valley opposite Beth-peor (4:46). Beth-peor is just up from the Jordan Valley floor at the north end of the Dead Sea, and down from Mount Nebo in the Abarim range, where Moses will get his look at the Promised Land. It is not far from ancient Heshbon and modern-day Madeba. Across the Jordan River, just to the north, is Jericho.

Moses is soon to die, so this is his valedictory address. Israel is being readied to cross the Jordan under Joshua. In the past was the defining revelation of the Ten Commandments at the Holy Mountain, elsewhere called Sinai but in Deuteronomy called Horeb; 40 years of wandering in the wilderness; successful battles against Sihon and Og, Amorite kings in the Transjordan; the settlement of Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh in Amorite land. Here in Moab, Moses is teaching the Deuteronomic Code to Israel.

The Date of Deuteronomy

One of the great values of modern critical study of the Bible is a realization that Deuteronomy, at numerous points, reflects Israelite life during the monarchy and was written most likely in the late eighth or early seventh centuries. Critical study of the Bible had its modest beginnings in Europe—in the Renaissance and Protestant Reformation of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, coming to full flower in the eighteenth century Enlightenment, and the New Renaissance of the nineteenth century, when the preclassical world of the ancient Near East (ANE) was discovered anew. It now became apparent that Deuteronomy was not a thirteenth-century work written by Moses, as stated in the Jewish Talmud (Baba Bathra 14b-15a), but a document emanating from a later age.

Modern research in Deuteronomy—indeed in the entire Pentateuch— builds on the thesis of W. M. L. de Wette, published in 1805, that Deuteronomy was the lawbook found in the temple during the reign of Josiah (2 Kgs 22:8). De Wette thought the book had been written shortly before it was found. Comparing Deuteronomy with Joshua to 2 Kings, he found a peculiar language and content, which we now call “Deuteronomic.” By the time of Julius Wellhausen (1878), the language and style of Deuteronomy, labeled “Source D,” had become one of the four pillars of pentateuchal theory. Wellhausen’s views were presented convincingly to an Anglo-American audience by S. R. Driver, who in the “Introduction” to his Deuteronomy commentary (1895) compiled extensive lists of Source D vocabulary and phraseology.1 The (rhetorical) prose of Deuteronomy was also seen to have great affinity with the prose of Jeremiah, which could be dated to the late seventh and early sixth centuries.

So far as content was concerned, there were indications aplenty that this document purporting to look ahead to the conquest of Canaan was in fact written at a later age. Some of the early and later arguments:

1. Deuteronomy’s teaching of a single sanctuary (12) reflects the reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah, when local sanctuaries were closed down and worship was centralized in Jerusalem. Jerusalem, however, is not named in the book;

2. Passages on true and false prophecy (13:1–5; 18:20–22) presuppose conflicts among prophets and prophecy during the reign of Ahab in the ninth century, when Elijah and Micaiah ben Imlah emerged as true prophets in Northern Israel;

3. The three yearly festivals (16:1–17) reflect the monarchy when the festivals had been established and were already being celebrated;

4. The teaching pertaining to the king (17:14–20) presupposes a monarchy already in existence, and warns against royal excesses known to have occurred with Solomon;

5. Special benevolence accorded the Levitical priests (16:11, 14; 17:9) reflects the closing of the local sanctuaries when the Levites were out of a job;

6. The fragmentary account of the covenant renewal festival at Shechem (27) reflects worship in the north subsequent to the conquest of Canaan;

7. The blessings and curses of 28, particularly the curses, contain a specificity reflecting the Assyrian age after Tiglath-pileser III destroyed Transjordan and Galilee in 734, and Sargon II completed the ruin of the Northern Kingdom in 722;

8. The First Supplement (29–30) appears to reflect the time after the curses had fallen on Transjordan and the Northern Kingdom, and many people had been carried off to an Assyrian exile;

9. The words “as at this day” (4:38; 8:18; 29:28) and “to this day” (34:6) in the text point to a writing later than the time of Moses;

10. Simeon is omitted in the Blessing of Moses. Early in the Canaanite settlement his tribe was absorbed into Judah;

11. When Moses views Canaan from the top of Mount Nebo, the names given to the territories, Naphtali, Ephraim, Manasseh, Judah, and the city of Dan (34:1–2), are all post-Conquest.

12. The designation of Moses as prophet par excellence (34:10–12) appears to be an attempt to elevate Moses above the eighth-century prophets—Amos and Hosea in particular, and perhaps also Micah and Isaiah. In the reference to Moses being a prophet who performed many signs and wonders, there is an indirect reference to Elijah and Elisha, who had the gift of performing mighty works.

Moses is thus speaking in Deuteronomy to a later Israel and Judah, with the Levitical priests assuming his persona and being his speaking voice in Israelite worship (Muilenburg).

Subsequent Old Testament (OT) scholarship, while generally affirming a seventh-century date for Deuteronomy, challenged or rejected outright the view that Deuteronomy was written just before it turned up in the Jerusalem temple. While it was agreed that Josiah’s reform reported in 2 Kings 22–23 owed much to Deuteronomy, especially the king’s purge of idolatrous worship in Jerusalem and sites to the north (2 Kgs 23:4–20), a composition of the work just prior to the reform went ill with the report of a lawbook having been “found,” where the assumption was that this lawbook for some time had been “lost.” Some therefore pushed the date of composition b...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: “I Will Raise Up a Prophet Like You”
• Chapter 2: “Yahweh Cut a Covenant with Us at Horeb”
• Chapter 3: “I Brought You Out of the Land of Egypt”
• Chapter 4: “Hear, O Israel, Yahweh Our God Is One”
• Chapter 5: “For You Are a Holy People to Yahweh Your God”
• Chapter 6: “See, I Have Set the Land Before You”
• Chapter 7: “Yahweh Your God Has Blessed You”
• Chapter 8: “When You Reap the Harvest”
• Chapter 9: “I Am Not Able to Bear You Alone”
• Chapter 10: “Righteousness, Righteousness, You Shall Pursue”
• Chapter 11: “Remember, You Were a Slave in Egypt”
• Chapter 12: “Yahweh Walks in the Midst of Your Camp”
• Chapter 13: “When a Man Takes a Wife”
• Chapter 14: “So Jacob Ate and Became Sated”
• Chapter 15: “Moses’ Parting Word to Israel”
• Bibliography