The Year of Remission

“When one of your fellow-countrymen in any of your settlements in the land which the Lord your God is giving you becomes poor, do not be hard-hearted or close-fisted with your countryman in his need.  Be open-handed towards him and lend him on pledge as much as he needs.  See that you do not harbor iniquitous thoughts when you find that the seventh year, the year of remission, is near, and look askance at your needy countryman and give him nothing.  If you do, he will appeal to the Lord against you, and you will be found guilty of sin.  Give freely to him and do not begrudge him your bounty, because it is for this very bounty that the Lord your God will bless you in everything that you do or undertake.  The poor will always be with you in the land, and for that reason I command you to be open-handed with your countrymen, both poor and distressed, in your own land.”  —Deut. 15.7–11.

Old Testament

Book Five:  Deuteronomy

God’s Laws Delivered by Moses (cont’d)

Chapter 15:  The sabbatical year

Okay, this is amazing.  The Israelites are commanded to be generous to the poor.  This chapter is amazing, and so utterly at odds with everything that happens today, and indeed insightful as to why it should be the way it is described here.  It says that there will always be poor, so you must always be generous to the poor with your bounty.  What this means is, basically, there but for the grace of god goes you.  Unfortunately it doesn’t say this explicitly, but it’s what it means.  Don’t be stingy or judgmental with the poor, because it is simply a human condition; someone will always be poor, so the idea that they are less than you is ridiculous.

What this chapter is really about is the “year of remission.”  Every seventh year, you are commanded to forgive all your debtors!  You must give back to the debtor any pledge he has made to you, and even if he can’t pay you off, you must not judge him for his failure!  What an utterly amazing economic system this would be!  It simply forces a reset every seven years.  That would go a huge way toward ending inequality—it’s even better than the idea of ending inheritance.

—bibletoenail

Gashes and Forelocks

“You shall not gash yourselves nor shave your forelocks in mourning for the dead.”  —Deut. 14.1

Old Testament

Book Five:  Deuteronomy

God’s Laws Delivered by Moses (cont’d)

Chapter 14:  Restrictions on mourning custom and diet

Chapter 14 (cont’d):  Tithing and centralization

Now the boredom is setting in, and presumably is here to stay for a long time.  This chapter just repeats everything we’ve heard a hundred times before, about clean versus unclean animals, cloven hooves and chewing cud.  Unfortunately, I stopped reading for so long, I forgot what is going on with the Levites, but there’s a special dispensation for them.  Apparently they had all their property taken away, so the rules say they need to be taken care of with tithing.  That’s actually an uncommonly moral stance for this book.  There’s really nothing else worth mentioning.  The notes are always interesting, about why these rules are here; it’s all about keeping the Israelites separate and urging them to reject Canaan religions.  (What I love is how obvious it is that Judaism is just one religion among many.  There’s nothing interesting or special about it, it’s just that it’s ours not their dirty religion over there.)

—bibletoenail

Quotables:

“You shall not gash yourselves nor shave your forelocks in mourning for the dead.”  —Deut. 14.1

“You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.”  —Deut. 14.21

The Enticers to Apostasy (i.e. Christians)

 “That dreamer shall be put to death, for he has preached rebellion against the Lord your God.”  —Deut. 13.5

Old Testament

Book Five:  Deuteronomy

God’s Laws Delivered by Moses (cont’d)

Chapter 13:  The treatment of enticers to apostasy

This is a great chapter.  It is about what to do if someone new comes along who claims to be a “prophet” or a “dreamer” and tells you about a God that you do not recognize:  put that prophet to death.  Now, who does this describe?  JESUS!  This is exactly what Jesus did.  It’s really great.  The entire bible is such a pile of self-contradictory crap.  The New Testament, and Christianity, is obviously absurd.  The Old Testament from beginning to end says that IT is the true religion, and that anyone who comes along and tries to change it should be put to death.

—bibletoenail

Quotables:

“When a prophet or dreamer appears among you and offers you a sign or a portent and calls on you to follow other gods whom you have not known and worship them, even if the sign or portent should come true, do not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer. . . .  That prophet or that dreamer shall be put to death, for he has preached rebellion against the Lord your God.”  —Deut. 13.1–5

The Meat of Gazelle or Buck

“You shall pull down their altars and break their sacred pillars, burn their sacred poles and hack down the idols of their gods and thus blot out the name of them from that place.”  —Deut. 12.3

Doesn’t that sound exactly like the attitude they always accuse Muslims of having?

Old Testament

Book Five:  Deuteronomy

God’s Laws Delivered by Moses

Chapter 12:  The one legitimate sanctuary

Okay, now start the actual rules, once again, another iteration of the same crap over and over.  These rules are specifically what to do once they take over Canaan.  The interesting thing here is that God tells them they have to have a centralized place of sanctuary in order to highlight that this religion is special—the Canaanites worship wherever they want, not the Israelites!  We have a special sanctuary.  There’s stuff about slaughter for sacrifice versus for food.  You can eat the flesh but not the blood, for “the blood is the life.”

God also says that He will “exterminate, as you advance, the nations whose country you are entering to occupy.”  It will be interesting to see (if it ever actually happens), whether this is true—whether God does it, or if in the end it’s just a regular old human-made war.

Finally he says, “you must not add anything to [these rules,] nor take anything away from it.”  Which is just funny, of course, because we continually add to it, over and over and over.  But it is always supposedly God doing it, so it’s okay.

—bibletoenail

A Phylactery on the Forehead

Old Testament

Book Five:  Deuteronomy

Primary Charge of Moses to the People (cont’d)

Chapter 11:  A final exhortation to future obedience (cont’d)

Yeah, it’s definitely getting to be better written.  This chapter is repetitive, but readable and coherent.  God is continuing his final “exhortations” to the Israelites.  It’s getting pretty exciting, because he’s been promising them forever that he would deliver them to Canaan, and most of the book has been about the delay of the promise, now finally we’re here.  It’s interesting that we are not actually there yet; but there is actually, perhaps for the first time ever, real suspense right now.  Canaan is right there across the river, and God has to pause one more time to repeat everything.  Is it going to happen or not?!

And of course he’s as paranoid and insecure as ever.  I really didn’t think he was ever going to actually fulfill his promises, because then he would have nothing to hold over the Israelites’ heads.  So now that he’s committed to doing it, he is really paranoid because he has no more leverage.  So he makes up a new threat—follow me, or there will be no rain.  Okay, whatever.  We all only follow you because of your threats; does that make you happy?

Even reading two chapters a day has become too much (obviously) so I’m going to try reading just one, and I’m going to keep these notes short.  We’ll see how it goes.  Hopefully I can at least finish Numbers before I have to take another year-long break!

—bibletoenail