God According to Deuteronomy

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Background
Deuteronomy. It is the final book of the Pentateuch/Torah/Law, and the final chance for Moses to teach the new generation of Israelites the ways of God before they enter the Promised Land. It is time now to reflect on what we have learned about God's ways in this book.

God According to Deuteronomy

Piecing together some information from earlier books, we figure out early in Deuteronomy that God believes that when you reach the age of 20 years old, you are fully accountable for your actions. As far as any arbitrary number goes, that seems like a reasonable age.

God believes that the Israelites have not lacked anything in their 40 years since the Exodus began. But God is obviously out of touch with reality, because the Israelites complained about not having good food and, even more importantly, about not having water, on multiple occasions. God even sometimes punished them for making these requests for basic and essential needs.

God is really, really proud of the the laws and commandments (collectively know at the Law) which He gave to the Israelites. He does not want you to add to or subtract from them. They are good for eternity. God thinks that they are so good that any other nation which studies these laws will be extremely impressed at how smart they are. Are you wearing blended fabrics? Dummy!

Did I mention that God was impressed with the Law? Well, God wants you to teach your children the Law everyday, and speak and write the Law all over the place. Be sure to teach your kids how to treat their slave girls! It is through following the Law that you can be righteous, and you do not even have to be perfect at it to be righteous. (Sorry Christianity.)

God says that He will drive out the Promised Land's present inhabitants, but then confusingly reminds the Israelites to completely wipe out those same inhabitants, killing everything that breaths.

Who is God? Think of God as a Father: you know, the kind of father who constantly tests you to see if you will obey him, humbles you with starvation and thirst, and threatens to kill you if you show an admiration of any other father.

God reminds the Israelites that it is just sheer luck that they are chosen by God; luck that their forefathers had impressed God. Otherwise, God would have already killed them.

Getting to God's impressive, holy Law, God commands having absolutely zero tolerance for other religions within the Promised Land. Censor pagan knowledge. Destroy all pagan symbols and altars. Kill individual pagan worshipers. And if an entire town is pagan? Kill everything that breaths in the town, and burn the entire town as an offering to God. Are you impressed?

God's Law continues, instructing to cancel debts every seven years, but only for fellow Israelites. You should maintain debt records for foreigners. You should also generously loan (not give) to the poor, so that you will be financially blessed by God.

God's Law also has commands for kings to follow with no negative connotations associated with kingship, even though it becomes clear later on that God did not want the Israelites to have a king.

God tells us that He will provide multiple prophets, not just one, and that the Israelites need to test each prophet to make sure that they come from God based on the fulfillment of prophesies during the prophet's lifetime. If what they prophesy does not come true, kill them.

What about the morals and family values of God's Law? God says that women as part of the plunder of war, allowing you to have sex with them and marry them if you want. God approves of polygamy, but your firstborn son must get the inheritance typically allotted to the firstborn regardless of how much you love (or hate) the woman who gave birth to this son. Oh, and you should stone rebellious children to death.

God's Law also says that if there is no blood from a broken hymen during a newlywed's first intercourse, then the woman should be stoned to death because she obviously was not a virgin. Of course, this proves God has a poor understanding of female anatomy, because natural variations in body structure can make it so that no blood is produced during the first intercourse. God also says that a raped woman must be married to the rapist in certain cases. Yes, indeed, God has wonderfully high moral standards. So wise.

God has restrictions of who is allowed to enter His congregation, and who is not. God does not want anyone with damaged testicles, anyone from a lineage from someone born out of wedlock, or anyone of Ammonite or Moabite ancestry.

God believes divorce is OK, but you had better not remarry your divorced wife after she has married someone else. That would be disgusting to God, even though a man having multiple wives is not disgusting to God in the least.

God's Law says that no man should be put to death for the sins of his children, and no son should be put to death for the sins of his father. Yet God has an established pattern of ignoring this rule of morality.

God obligates a brother to marry his brother's widow (regardless of this brother's marital status) if there was no male heir, or else face a shame which would forever endure with his progeny. God also wants you to chop off the hand of any woman who fights dirty to try to save her husband. Plus, God wants the Israelites to hold a permanent grudge against the Amalekites, never forgiving them for what their previous generation had done.

Now if the Israelites obeyed God's righteous Law, God would bless them with peaceful, financial prosperity. If not, God would curse them in so many horrendous ways that they would be tortured into submission.

When the Israelites were again willing to follow only God's will, God promised that He would circumcise their hearts and the hearts of their descendants so that they would love God and obey His Law once again. Of course, this is in dramatic contrast to how Christianity spins the prophesy.

Closing out Deuteronomy with a song, God says that He has perfect works and perfect justice, and that He never does anything wrong. This brands God a liar, because He made man (imperfect), His justice is wanting (as seen above), and He routinely goes against His own moral code (again as seen above). The song ends with God making atonement (without Jesus) for both His people (the Israelites) AND His land (Zion), which is a bit different than the Christian perspective of salvation and redemption.

What We Have Learned
God thinks 20 years old is the age of full accountability.

God thinks that you can be dying of thirst, and still not lack anything.

God thinks that the Law He provided is perfect as is for all eternity, and it should never be amended or redacted. It is a showcase of God's wisdom, providing proof of His divinity to any pagan willing to study it. Children should be taught it, and the culture should be immersed in it, purging all other ideas. God is the kind of father who will have either your complete obedience to His Law or your death. When people drift away, their return to God will always be coupled to their return to His Law. HUGE red flag that Christianity is false...

God wants the present Promised Land inhabitants absolutely and completely wiped out, as well as death for all Amalekites. Short on forgiveness, God never wants anyone from a bastard's lineage or of Ammonite or Moabite ancestry in His congregation.

Just because you are chosen by God, does not mean you are any better than anyone else, which essentially means that decision is arbitrary.

God's wise laws include ideological intolerance, racism, nationalism, and sexism, as well as a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of human anatomy. In God's Law, death sentences are a usual form of punishment.

Even in cases where God provides good moral guidance, God Himself does not feel obligated to do what is right and obey His own given morals.

God will reward obedience in this life, not some life beyond death. And for disobedience, if you are not killed, you may wish for death when God gets done with applying curses.

Finally, God has a highly inflated ego and delusions of righteous grandeur.

In short: God is a hypocritical, intolerant, racist, nationalist, sexist, capricious, and delusional megalomaniac with little regard for human life, a poor understanding of anatomy, and an even poorer understanding of what it means to be a role good model for fatherhood.

Swan Song

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Background
Previously we discussed how God knew that the Israelites would stray from Him, and how God would curse them and send them into exile for punishment, but would eventually bring them back to Israel when they again turned to God.

In the next chapter, Deuteronomy 31, Joshua is named as the heir to the position of leadership which is now held by Moses. Moses reminds the Israelites to completely kill all of the Promised Land's present inhabitants and to obey God's Law. God then tells Moses again that the Israelites will soon stray from God and His Law, and so God gives Moses a song to have all of the people memorize as a witness against themselves...

Swan Song

Time is drawing to an end for Moses. Now, on the border of a country which God has sworn that he will never enter, it is time for Moses to give one of his last performances as leader of the Israelites, his swan song. Fortunately for Moses, God is a song writer, so He has provided Moses with just the song for the occasion. God wants all of the Israelites to memorize and sing this song; a song about (among other things) the horrible fate awaiting later generations of Israelites in their upcoming, inevitable rejection of God (Deuteronomy 31:19-21).

Like any epic tune, God's song begins with an introduction in Deuteronomy 32:1-4. In case you have difficulty figuring out what to think of God's character, God Himself affirms that His works are perfect works, that His ways are just, and that He does no wrong (Deuteronomy 32:4). Ergo, we know that man is perfect (created by God) and that this covenant with the Israelites was perfect (sorry Hebrews 8:7), that killing someone for picking up sticks on the wrong day is true justice, and that there is nothing wrong with the practice of entrapment.

Then the soul of the song opens with God being disgusted at how the Israelites have repaid Him (Deuteronomy 32:5-6). God recounts how He changed the man Jacob (Israel) from a state of insignificant destitution into a great and richly prosperous nation in the Promised Land, only to have that nation turn its back on God while turning to idol worship instead (Deuteronomy 32:7-18).

With that section is the interesting verse of Deuteronomy 32:9:

For the Lord's portion is His people, Jacob His allotted inheritance. NIV

Contrary to Christian mantra, what God gets, what God keeps, is not anyone who walks in His ways. His people, Jacob, a.k.a. the Israelites, a.k.a. the Jews are God's allotted inheritance. Nobody else.

Moving on in the song, because the Israelites have rejected God, God rejects them (Deuteronomy 32:19). Parents should keep this in mind when they get to raising those troubled teens, because God's ways are just.

This is not some passive rejection where God simply stops giving His children an allowance of blessings. God illuminates that hand-in-hand with His rejection comes His wrath. The Israelites will be invaded by a pagan nation, have their harvests stolen and their cities destroyed, be ravaged by pestilence and plague, be attacked by wild animals and snakes, and be slaughtered by the sword (Deuteronomy 32:20-25). Again, parents, I hope you are taking notes of God the Father's exemplary behavior.

Next we find that God really wants to kill all of the Israelites, but the trouble is that the pagan nation which God will make conquer the Israelites will not understand. If all of the Israelites are wiped out, that nation might think that God was not the reason for the Israelites' prior prosperity (Deuteronomy 32:26-33).

This is a subtle yet devastating blow to a branch of Christian theology known as Typology. They see Moses as a type of Jesus; playing out different roles and actions which would be echoed and completely fulfilled by Jesus. One of those roles is for intercession to stay God's wrath, as Moses managed to keep God from killing all of the Israelites twice before; once for their making of a gold cow and once for their being afraid of the Promised Land's inhabitants. So too, Jesus intercedes on believers' behalf to prevent them from tasting God's wrath. Yet these verses show that intercession is not necessary. God is willing not to completely annihilate the Israelites simply to protect His reputation. If only He could protect His reputation from Himself.

No good deed goes unpunished. As the song concludes, we find that God will punish this pagan nation to prove that only He is God and to take vengeance on them for enacting God's vengeance on the Israelites (Deuteronomy 32:34-43). Sure, that makes sense.

Deuteronomy 32:43, the last line of the song, is particularly interesting:

Rejoice, O nations, with [God's] people, for [God} will avenge the blood of His servants; He will take vengeance on His enemies and make atonement for His land and people. NIV

An affront to foreshadowing Christianity, God will make atonement for His people and His land. That land? The Promised Land. Israel. Zion. The Jewish God is concerned with preserving the little patch of actual Earth which He so dearly loves as well as saving people, while the Christian God is only concerned with people; going to whisk the lucky ones off to Heaven, or to a new Earth (depending on the flavor of Christianity).

In an overly redundant theme, the chapter then continues first with a plea for the Israelites to obey God's Law, because the words of the Law are “not just idle words, they are your life”(Deuteronomy 32:44-47). Of course, this is a blow to foreshadowing Christianity too, unless you obey Jesus instead of the Apostles on the matter.

The chapter closes out with God telling Moses to go up on Mount Nebo to die (Deuteronomy 32:48-52). There is a curious expression we find in Deuteronomy 32:50-51 where God says:

“There on [Mount Nebo] that you have climbed you will die and be gathered to your people, just as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people. This is because both of you broke faith with me in the presence of the Israelites at the waters of Meribah Kadesh in the Desert of Zin and because you did not uphold My holiness among the Israelites.” NIV

The phrase “gathered to your people” is vague enough to open interpretation. As far as I can tell, unanimously Christianity believes this to be some indicator of the knowledge of the afterlife even in the Bible's (debatably) earliest scriptures (used first in Genesis 25:7-8). The exact details of what it means are not so unanimous.

I could be wrong, but I think that a connection to the afterlife as Christianity knows it is an incorrect interpretation altogether. Why? I base it on a couple factors.

First, in the Christian sense of the afterlife, once the Saved die (such as Moses) they are essentially in paradise with Jesus at that moment. (There are some that say the dead sleep until a final resurrection, in which case, to the dead, it would seem like an instantaneous event.) In that sense, death is practically a reward. Death, where is thy sting? Yet from the text we see that God intends for this death to be a punishment for Moses for breaking the faith.

Second, notice how Moses will be gathered to “your people” while his brother was gathered to “his people.” Why are Moses and Aaron being gathered to different sets of people when they are in the same family and (presumably) both Saved?

Instead, I offer this alternative: Perhaps “gathered to your people” is a euphemism for a funeral proceeding. “Your people” are specific to the ones who would mourn for you, which would explain why Moses and Aaron had different people. This may also be connected with a status of cultural veneration of patriarchs which have died, which ties into the Genesis 15:15 verse where God tells Abraham that he will go to his fathers (plural, not possessive) in peace.

This interpretation appears to be more in line with the text early in the Bible, because there is absolutely no specific mention of eternal afterlife in the early books. Instead you find consequences within the physical, temporal world left as an inheritance for later generations. Surely an eternal reward or punishment would have would have been more important to record than whether or not you went to your people after you die. By that omission, it appears that no such afterlife belief was held.

Blessings and Curses

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Background
In Deuteronomy 26, God provides regulations for the firstfruit offerings. In Deuteronomy 27, curses are pronounced on Mount Ebal against those who break a seemingly random subset collection of laws, as well as a general pronouncement of a curse for anyone who does not obey and enact the entirety of God's Law (Deuteronomy 27:26). With the conclusion of the relaying of God's Law to the Israelites, they are now ready to enter yet another covenant with God.

Blessings and Curses
They say that you can often tell what a person likes by gauging how much they talk about a particular thing; a hometown sports team, a new gadget, a favorite travel spot, or perhaps even merciless and prolonged torturing as a form of punishment.

Enter Deuteronomy 28-29. In these chapters, God is entering another covenant with the Israelites, and is explaining the terms of the covenant. The terms are simple. Do everything in God's Law, and be blessed. Skip out on some of God's Law, and be cursed.

The blessings for obeying God's Law occupy Deuteronomy 28:1-14. Fourteen verses. The curses for disobeying occupy Deuteronomy 28:15-68, plus Deuteronomy 29:16-28. Sixty-seven verses. Sixty-seven verses!!! Over four-and-a-half times the number of blessing verses!!! Oh yes, God loves vengeance. However, pure numbers are a bit removed from true meaning, so let us take a closer look.

First, the blessings. Obey, and you will get the following: a nation superior to all others, prosperity regardless of rural or urban location, bountiful children, crops, and livestock, safe and prosperous travels, protection from enemies, prosperity from all labor, God's holy stamp of approval, respectful fear from all other nations, just the right amount of rain, and they will lend to other nations but borrow from none.

Did you notice anything strange about the blessings? Except for God labeling the Israelites as His holy people, the blessings are all physical, and primarily financial, with absolutely no spiritual content or context. Plus there is no mention of eternal life. It is about as far away from the concept of Christian Salvation as you can be. It fails at foreshadowing.

OK, now for the curses. If you do not obey all of God's Law, there will be:

• a lack of success regardless of rural or urban location
• reduced and afflicted children, crops, and livestock
• dangerous and unsuccessful travels
• failure, confusion, and destruction of all of your labors
• degenerative diseases
• intensely hot temperatures
• drought
• blight
• mildew
• rains of dust
• defeat at the hands of enemies
• contempt from all other nations
• bodies of fallen citizens eaten by birds and beasts
• incurable boils, tumors, festering sores, and itchiness
• madness, mental blindness, and confusion
• groping about like you are blinded by darkness in the middle of the day
• a lack of success in anything
• daily oppression with no rescue
• daily robbery with no rescue
• rape of women promised to be married
• theft of houses prior to being lived in
• theft of vineyards prior to their first harvests
• slaughtering and theft of your livestock with no recompense or rescue
• theft of your children by foreign nations
• capturing of all of your produce by foreign nations
• enduring cruel oppression
• more incurable boils from head to toe
• forced exodus from the Promised Land by a foreign nation which God motivates
• idolatry
• scorn and ridicule from all other nations
• swarms of locusts eating all vegetation and crops
• grape-eating worms
• rotting olives
• the aliens living among you will become superior to you
• borrowing from aliens, but aliens will not borrow from you
• hunger
• thirst
• nakedness
• dire poverty
• attacks from ruthless foreign nation motivated by God
• this attacking nation will
  • plunder your nation of grain, livestock, wine, and oil
  • siege and conquer all of your cities
  • drive you to selfish and wicked cannibalism out of desperation during the sieges
• fearful plagues on you and your descendants
• horrible and enduring disasters
• severe and lasting illnesses
• horrible diseases from Egypt
• every type of sickness not recorded in the Torah
• every type of disaster not recorded in the Torah
• extreme reduction of your nation's population
• scattering of your remnant throughout all other nations all over the world
• no repose, peace, or rest
• perpetual anxiety
• chronic terror
• return to Egypt in ships
• refusal of anyone to buy you as an indentured servant
• and any particular individual who does not heed God's Law will:
  • never being forgiven by God
  • receive God's zealous wrath
  • receive all of the curses listed in the Torah
  • get your name blotted out (cessation of you, your progeny, and your progeny's lineage)
  • be singled out for destruction by God through all of the curses mentioned above
• conversion of the Promised Land into a burning waste of salt and sulfur
• cessation of all vegetation on the Promised Land

Did you notice anything strange about the curses? They too are all physical, and primarily related to financial security and painful suffering, with absolutely no spiritual content or context. Again, there is no mention of eternal life. Nor is there mention of eternal punishment, aside from ending a family lineage. The curses are all temporal, dealing with life as the Israelites would have known it.

There are other weird and implausible things about the curses. How can mildew spread when the atmosphere will be hot and dry? How will locusts and worms eat the crops when they would not grow well enough to provide for such pests under severe drought and blight conditions? How can you be in dire poverty and yet own a vineyard and build a house? What could an invading nation really plunder under such conditions, and why would they want to invade such a cursed land? These would all be neat tricks, indeed.

According to Deuteronomy 29:19-21, only certain people will experience each and every one of these curses, people who completely disregard God's Law. Obviously from the list of curses, you would not want to live anywhere near such a person.

That is interesting too. If you take the implication of those verses, at least some people will experience some of the curses even though they respect God's Law for the most part just because they have not upheld the Law perfectly. Furthermore, the above-listed curses are so wide-reaching that even perfectly-pious, Law-abiding citizens would be affected. God would punish the innocent along with the guilty.

These curses are obviously not intended to be discipline, such as the way a father may discipline his son to keep him on the right path. Instead, they are the release of the pent-up, unmitigated wrath of God. It is a temporal wrath, divorced of eternal-life perspective, which is applied long after people have gone astray. Is it really any wonder that these curses were ineffective as a deterrent?

Sins of Their Fathers

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Background
We are continuing through Deuteronomy, where Moses is relaying God's Law to the Israelites just before they are to enter the Promised Land. Recently we learned that God allows divorces and subsequent marriages, as long as they are not remarriages of the same couple to one another.

Sins of Their Fathers
If you know much about the story of Jesus, you may know that He did not like hypocrites. The Bible mentions hypocrites 18 times. Once is in the Old Testament (Psalm 26:4). The rest come straight from the mouth of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. (It is strange that Jesus never says “hypocrite” in the Gospel of John.) So if Jesus really does not like hypocrites, He needs to have a stern talk to God the Father, as we will see in Deuteronomy 24.

From last time, you remember that Deuteronomy 24:1-4 dealt with remarriage your ex-wife, which is never a good idea. ;-) The rest of the chapter, Deuteronomy 24:5-22, is largely a collection of really good laws, such as: A newly married man is not obligated to fight in wars. Have zero tolerance for kidnappers. Do not take a man's livelihood as security for a loan, and do not abuse the poor in taking loan securities. Do not take advantage of the poor or aliens. Do not deny aliens, orphans, or widows their justice. Share the remnants of your produce with the poor and the aliens.

Let us take a closer look at one of those good laws which we find in Deuteronomy 24:16:

“Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.” NIV

Death penalty aside, this is a good law. You cannot kill a man for something that his kid did, nor can you kill the kid for something that his father did. This is God's holy moral guidance, His code, His very law. We should review the Old Testament so far to see if God practices what He preaches.

First, we begin with the Flood of Noah. Besides Noah and some of his immediate family, God wiped out everyone on earth in a global flood. Life was going on as normal up to the day of the Flood (Matthew 24:38), so undoubtedly there were innocent children who were killed in the Flood for the sins of their parents.

Next, we find that God destroyed the entire cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for the sins of the people, with the exceptions of Lot and his daughters. Again, it is likely that innocent children were in those cities at the time of their destruction.

Moving on to Exodus, we find that God almost kills Moses' son (or possibly Moses himself depending on interpretation) because Moses did not yet circumcise his son.

Remember the plagues prior to the Exodus? In the tenth plague, God killed Pharaoh's firstborn son (and lots of other people's firstborn sons) for refusing to let the Israelites go.

Jumping on to Numbers, there is the tale of a rebellion led by Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. God slaughters these men along with their entire families as punishment.

Finally, and maybe most significantly from an eternal perspective, in the previous chapter of Deuteronomy we learned that the Ammonites and the Moabites were essentially forbidden to ever learn about and worship God, thereby damning them for all eternity, just because of how their ancestors had treated the Israelites while they were wondering the desert.

Keep in mind that this immoral behavior does not stop with the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. In perhaps one of the more famous episodes of the Old Testament, God kills David's son as punishment because David had slept with Bathsheba and had her husband killed (2 Samuel 11-12).

God is a hypocrite. God kills children for the sins of their fathers. Supposedly, God even had His own son killed (in a manner of speaking) for the sins of entirely different people. In Jesus' own words in Matthew 24:51, God the Father should be assigned to a place “where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” for all eternity for His hypocrisy.

Family Values

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Background
We are working through the law-giving section of Deuteronomy, where Moses is repeats most of God's Law, and appends it, for a new generation of Israelites. (God had killed the previous Israelite generation for being afraid.) Recently we saw how God was planning on providing prophets for the Israelites; prophets who needed to be tested before being believed. In Deuteronomy 19 we see the establishment of refuge cities, requirements for witnesses, and eye-for-eye/tooth-for-tooth justice. In Deuteronomy 20, there are rules for wars of aggression, where the Israelites are to slay all of the men of a captured city, but keep the women and children as plunder. That brings us up to this study.

Family Values
One of the most-often purported benefits of Christianity is moral guidance. When you look at the concepts of this guidance, and when you consider how these ideas are communicated today, it seems like this is true. When you look at the text of the Bible itself, however, you get a different picture. The morals we have today are often dissonant with the morals actually written in the Word of God. Let us consider Deuteronomy 21.

First, on a slight diversion of atonement and redemption, let us take a look at God's law for unsolved murders in Deuteronomy 21:1-9. Find someone murdered in a field, but you have no witnesses? Forget the crime scene investigation, and do not consult omniscient God to determine the guilty party. Instead, determine the closest town. Then have the elders of that town kill a non-worked cow in a stream within some virgin valley, and have the elders wash their hands over the cow while declaring their innocence of the murder. Deuteronomy 21:8-9 are particularly revealing:

"Accept this atonement for your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, O LORD, and do not hold your people guilty of the blood of an innocent man." And the bloodshed will be atoned for. So you will purge from yourselves the guilt of shedding innocent blood, since you have done what is right in the eyes of the LORD. NIV

Again in the Old Testament we see true atonement without Jesus. This act does not even foreshadow Jesus, as Jesus is presumed to have worked as a carpenter and certainly did His Father's work, while the sacrificed cow was not allowed to have worked, to say nothing of differences in the manners of death between the cow and Jesus. Note how God has redeemed the Israelites without a sacrifice, referring to their Exodus from Egypt, which again conflicts with foreshadowing Christianity. Finally note how the murdered person is considered an innocent man, as in being quite the opposite of a sinner who deserved to die for his sins.

Moving on to values and morals, Deuteronomy 21:10-14 states that after you go to war (and slay all of the surviving men – Deuteronomy 20:13), you can take a captive woman as your wife after she mourns her family for a month. The woman gets no choice in the matter. If you decide that do not like her, you can let her go, but you can not sell her. Why? Because you have dishonored her... meaning you have had sex with her already. So much for love and the sanctity of marriage.

Do you think that those morals are good? Well, how about Deuteronomy 21:15-17? That passage explains that the inheritance rights of the firstborn always go to the firstborn son, regardless of how many wives you have or whether or not you actually love the wife who bears you the firstborn son. Not only does this passage implicitly approve of polygamy, but it also sees no problem with a man marrying and having sex with someone who he does not love! I guess in reality that goes on all the time, but you would think that God, the purported epitome of love, would push for love to be the basis of marriage. That is not the case. So will you teach your kids that you can not only have multiple wives, but that you can marry people you do not love?

Lest you think I simply cherry-pick the couple of embarrassing laws out of a wealth of good ones, let us continue on to Deuteronomy 21:18-21. Here you find that if you have a stubborn and rebellious child, you are to have him stoned to death. Remarkably, this is the kind of law which Jesus would get behind, as we see in Matthew 15:3-6 and Mark 7:9-13 where Jesus is angry that the Pharisees teach against killing your own children because they teach contrary to what is in God's Law.

Now, will you teach and practice these laws from God, or will you seek a higher moral ground? Will you teach your children that polygamy is wrong? Will you teach your children that both people who get married should consensually agree to do so? Will you teach your children that slavery is wrong? Will you promote the liberty to kill your own children for disobedience? Or will you instead align yourself with the “moral” God of Christianity? What are your family values?

Give and Take

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Background
We are a section of Deuteronomy where Moses is reviewing to the new generation of Israelites (almost) all of the laws and commands given by God. It started out by instructing them to have zero tolerance for other faiths within their borders. Next in Deuteronomy 14, as in Leviticus, Moses reviews clean and unclean foods. Now it is time to cover lending.

Give and Take
There are some passages in the Bible which almost seem like they actually may be of divine inspiration. Yet, these even in these passages, there is often some odd twist or catch which still paints God in some hue other than blissfully pure love. Deuteronomy 15 is one of those passages.

God commands that every seven years, outstanding debts are to be canceled, no longer to be collected (Deuteronomy.15:1-2). Could you imagine a world like that? No one would even drown in debt forever, and people would get multiple chances to succeed without risk of utter economic ruin. It seems like a divine ideal, but it is unfair to the lender to some extent. Those who lend are most often lending out of their own surplus, so this almost seems to be a Godly policy of redistribution of wealth. A gallon of virtual ink could be spilled on this topic, but we need to set that aside for now to keep our eyes on the big picture.

We will come back to Deuteronomy 15:3 in a moment. Moving on to Deuteronomy 15:4-6, God contrasts the message of debts by essentially saying that there should be no need for the Israelites to borrow from one another, because God will richly bless them if only they obey His Law. This implies two things: One, financial security is a measure of how well you are obeying God. Two, God knew that not everyone would obey His Law to the letter, but He provided a system where people could make a new start, which is graceful.

In Deuteronomy 15:7-8, God commands the Israelites to be generous to the poor people in the Promised Land. Deuteronomy 15:9 goes on to explain how God considers it a sin if you withhold or adjust the amount you give to the poor people relative to the seventh year, the year when debts are canceled.

Did you catch that? When God is commanding to be generous to the poor, He is not talking about a pure gift giving. It appears rather that when you give to the poor, God wants you to consider it a loan, not a gift. You should expect to get something back, at least up until the seventh year. This contradicts what Jesus instructed in Luke 6:30. Yet even if you are to consider it a loan, not a gift, the command to be generous and the seventh-year debt forgiveness displays a sort of divine mercy.

Deuteronomy 15:10-11 closes the matter out with another plea to be generous towards the poor, because then God will bless you financially.

Summing it up, be generous because it is commanded by God, because you will be held guilty of sin by God if you do not, and because God will make you rich if you do.

OK, now back to Deuteronomy 15:3, where we find:

“You may require payment from a foreigner, but you must cancel any debt your [fellow Israelite] owes you.” NIV

God's merciful debt relief does not extend outside the borders of the Promised Land. As we discussed in a previous study, while the Israelites were chosen, they were not special. So there is no reason why God would not extend the same courtesy, the same act of loving mercy, to foreign debtors, other than to further differentiate between the Israelites and other nations. That, and possibly to foreshadow the Truth to come. As Christianity tells us, there is a time coming when God's mercy will only extend to the Elect, those who are in the eternal Kingdom of God.

Yet you cannot look at that verse divorced from the rest of the context. God tells the Israelites (through Moses) in Deuteronomy 15:6:

“For the LORD your God will bless you as He has promised, and you will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. You will rule over many nations but none will rule over you.” NIV

That is a sharp divide from any foreshadowing of Christian eschatology. Pictured here is the Israelite nation's financial and political dominance over its neighbors. In terms of foreshadowing the Christian version of the eternal Kingdom of God, that is dead wrong, because in that version all of the neighbors have been destroyed and are (debatably) undergoing eternal torment in a completely different realm.

Ultimately, this presents a very different God than what Christianity would like to present. This is a God who treats people differently based simply on where they are born. This is a God whose favor is made obvious in financial riches. This is a God whose Kingdom is on earth, a Kingdom which coexists with and dominates other nations. This is an eternal God with temporal interests.

Chosen, But Not Special

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Background
We are working our way through Deuteronomy, which has been an epoch speech by Moses as he attempts to prepare the Israelites to enter the Promised Land. Recently, Moses reminded the Israelites that God wanted them to kill all of the men, women, children, goats, cows, etc. which now reside in the Promised Land. Then Moses reminded them of how God is like a father to them; a father who will kill them if they drift away from Him. Now Moses will remind the Israelites of who they are.

Chosen, but Not Special
Some passages of the Old Testament have such profound implications when considered as being a foreshadowing of Christianity that they are best left unsaid, at least if you are a believer. Take Deuteronomy 9, for example.

Moses begins by telling the Israelites that God is going to subdue the present occupants of the Promised Land, thereby granting the Israelites quick possession of the land (Deuteronomy 9:1-3).

In terms of foreshadowing Christianity, you might imagine that the Israelites (at this stage anyway) represent God's chosen Elect, and that the Promised Land represents the coming Kingdom of God. So far so good. God is going to make it easy for His Elect to enter the Kingdom of God. The “make it easy” part could even be projected to represent Jesus' touted victory over death.

That is where the benevolent foreshadowing ends, and things take on a darker motif.

In Deuteronomy 9:4, Moses tells the Israelites that they will get the Promised Land, not because of their own righteousness, but because of the wickedness of the other nations presently in the Promised Land. Next, in Deuteronomy 9:5, Moses says that same message again:

“It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations, the LORD your God will drive them out before you, to accomplish what He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” NIV

Just for good measure, Moses repeats the message one more time in Deuteronomy 9:6, where he adds that the Israelites are a “stiff-necked people.”

So God was going to destroy those nations because they were so wicked, but the Israelites were also wicked and were almost destroyed by God twice! Moses continues by reminding them of these moments of near annihilation. The first was the Golden Calf idol incident, which Moses recalls in Deuteronomy 9:7-21, where we find God saying to Moses in Deuteronomy 9:14:

“Let Me alone, so that I may destroy [the Israelites] and blot out their name from under Heaven. And I will make you into a nation stronger and more numerous than they.” NIV

The second near-fatal incident was a moment of doubt and fear experienced by the Israelites before they were to enter the Promised Land, which Moses recalls in Deuteronomy 9:22-29, where we find Moses pleading to God in Deuteronomy 9:27:

“Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Overlook the stubbornness of [the Israelites], their wickedness and their sin.” NIV

Summing all of this up, we find that the Israelites had Godly-destruction-worthy wickedness, but that they were only still alive because God promised something to a few men centuries ago, and because Moses was there to remind God of His promise. Because of this promise, they were chosen, but not special.

Now, fast-forward to Christianity and consider the meaning of what was supposedly foreshadowed in this Old Testament story.

The Elect are chosen by God, but are not special. They do all sorts of sins worthy of destruction, but because of a promise, and perhaps because of Jesus reminding God of that promise, God begrudgingly allows His Elect to live. That is not exactly the attitude of a loving God.

Yet what is perhaps more disconcerting is that this effectively means that God is choosing people to save arbitrarily. It is not based on the merits of righteousness, works, or integrity. An arbitrary decision by God determines your fate for eternity. That is not love; that is lottery.

Free-will advocates will attempt to push this back on personal responsibility of the individual to choose God, and thereby get God off the hook of being arbitrary. However, as this foreshadowing suggests, there is no way around such a harsh, and realistic perspective. In fact, Paul's words in Romans 9:16-21 make this position explicitly clear:

“It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” Therefore God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and He hardens whom He wants to harden. One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?” NIV

Show and Tell

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Background
Deuteronomy so far has largely been a review of previous events, during which we discovered the age of culpability and what God considered to be the condition of not lacking anything. As Moses was about to begin to reviewing the laws from God, he spoke of how important it was to obey them without adding or subtracting from them.

In Deuteronomy 5, Moses tells the story of receiving the popular version of the Ten Commandments, though (accurately) not calling them the Ten Commandments. This preamble to the review of the Law is only about halfway complete, so it is time to stress the importance of knowing God's laws...

Show and Tell
God had a Plan. Given the fallibility of man, it was perhaps one of the best plans possible, at least in theory. The Israelites would have to obey God in the Promised Land in order to be blessed by Him without making a mockery of God. To obey God, they needed to know His Law, and know it well.

In Deuteronomy 6, Moses tries emphatically to impress upon the Israelites the importance of knowing God's commands, decrees, and laws. He tells them that they will live long lives and will prosper in the Promised Land if they obey (Deuteronomy 6:1-3). He pleads that they should love only God, and love Him with all their heart, soul, and strength (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). In Deuteronomy 6:6, God says through Moses:

“These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.” NIV

You may remember in a previous study where God said not to follow your heart, so this should not be taken to mean “put God's commandments in your heart along with what you believe to be good versus bad.” Instead, you could think of it in one of two ways: that God's laws effectively become your heart, giving you the guidance as to what is good versus bad, or that you should set your heart, your inner and deepest desire, to obeying God's laws (Psalm 40:8).

This is particularly interesting, because there are prophesies, such as Jeremiah 31:33, where God said that He would write His Law in the Israelites' hearts. Christianity likes to distort these prophesies, suggesting instead that these prophesies mean that believers will know to do good once they love Jesus in their hearts, or such similar semantics. However, consulting how this phrase was first used in the original text here in Deuteronomy 6:6, as well as reading the prophesies in the full context (such as including Ezekiel 37:24 which effectively claims that God's laws will persist), it becomes clear that the prophesies are for a literal return to God's Law.

Moving on, God through Moses then said this of God's laws in Deuteronomy 6:7-9:

“Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.” NIV

The idea was complete immersion in the Law. Talk about the Law constantly. Put the Law where you will see it. Wear the Law on you.

Also, you had the responsibility to teach your children how to treat slave women, how God spreads disease and mildew as punishment, why you should avoid wearing blended fabrics, how blasphemers should be killed, and all of the other perfect commandments of God (Psalm 19:7). This responsibility was to be carried out every day.

Such a system was the best way to ensure that everyone knows the Law of God. However, laws without timely enforcement, particularly on the part of God, are bound to be cast aside and ignored. This fact is even recorded in the Bible in verses such as Proverbs 13:24 and Ecclesiastes 8:11-12, and clearly from Ecclesiastes 8:11-12 God was slack in His discipline. By God's delay of justice, He chose to let the system of the Law fail, to let sin thrive through His inaction.

In the remainder of this chapter, Deuteronomy 6:10-25, Moses continues to plea with the Israelites to remember, respect, and fear God, and to obey His laws. They should be careful not to rebel, specifically like when they “rebelled” for being thirsty and wanting water at Massah (Deuteronomy 6:16), or else God would kick them out of the Promised Land.

At the end of this chapter, we find a particularly revealing verse. Deuteronomy 6:25 states:

“And if we are careful to obey all this Law before the LORD our God, as He has commanded us, that will be our righteousness.” NIV

Yes, spitting in the face of Christianity, Moses claims that you could indeed be righteous by following God's Law. From what the Bible teaches, earning this righteousness did not necessarily mean following the Law perfectly. While it seems that possibly there were perfect followers (Psalm 119:1, Psalm 119:34, Psalm 119:51), a shining example of being imperfect yet righteous was King David, who God considered to be as someone who had followed all of His laws well enough (2 Chronicles 7:17-18). This is despite the fact that David had committed adultery Bathsheba and then had her husband killed (2 Samuel 11-12). If David could find such favor with God through a desire to follow His Law yet despite his heinous sins, then clearly the Old Testament taught that you could be imperfect and yet righteous in God's eyes.

God According to Numbers

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Background
The book of Numbers has been an interesting adventure; a tale involving counting, commandments, and catastrophes, culminating with the condemnation of Moses and a new generation of Israelites being poised to enter the Promised Land. God's fingerprints are all over Numbers, so let us review what we have learned about Him.

God According to Numbers
God began the book of Numbers by wanting a census of the Israelites. However, it seems that this census was really just a means of taxing the Israelites, because the census conspicuously added up the same count as the one taken in Exodus 38, and of course God would have already known how many there were. Yet in the Numbers' census, the Levites were excluded from the count. This is because Levites acted to protect the Israelites from God. Why? Because if a common Israelite tried to get too close to God, God would kill the trespasser.

We later found out that God essentially gave the Levites to the priests as possessions. The Levites were a substitute for the Israelites giving their firstborn children to God, thus contradicting the law made by God only a short time ago. But the number of firstborns outnumbered the Levites, so God decided that cash will work to make up for the shortcomings of this substitution.

God then went on to divide up the labor of the Levites based on their family lineages. He disproportionately assigned 8580 of them to move the Tabernacle and its accompaniments. (The Tabernacle was just a tent situated in the midst of a large portable-walled courtyard which was a little larger than a soccer field [football pitch].)

With the Levites squared away, it was time for more laws, and why not begin with suspected adultery? God described what a jealous husband should do if he suspects his wife of adultery, but has no witnesses. The suspect wife must drink a magic, cursed potion made by the priest. If she is guilty of adultery, God will cause her to miscarry (also known as aborting) pregnancies or become barren altogether. These holy abortions make you wonder about the fate of the soul of such a child, and in turn if life on Earth is really necessary.

Later, God described how someone can make a temporary pledge of devotion to God, thereby becoming a Nazirite. The pledge centered around growing your hair, abstaining from any products of grape vines, and staying away from dead people. If a Nazirite came near a dead person, they had to shave off their hair and start their pledge all over; after they made atonement for this sin. At the end of the vow, a Nazirite got to make several offerings, including burning his or her hair in front of God.

One common sub-theme in Exodus and Leviticus is that God loves a party! In Numbers, we found that God particularly liked the Passover festival. He even extended the invitation to the festival to aliens living in the Promised Land. However, if an Israelite did not participate without having good excuse, God expected that person to be “cut off,” which is usually a Biblical euphemism for being killed. Celebrate or die.

Another recurring sub-theme is that God sometimes needs to be reminded about His promises, and in Numbers that theme continues. God instructed the Israelites to blow a trumpet when they are attacked in order to remind Him of His promise to protect them from their enemies.

God demonstrated His loving providence to the Israelites by providing manna for them to eat. After eating manna every day for every meal for over a year, the Israelites complained for want of a little variety in their diets. God was quite offended by this, and so He buried them in quail and spitefully bestowed a horrible plague on them at the same time.

When Aaron and his sister, Miriam, started complaining about Moses out of their own jealousy, God reminded them that Moses is the only one with whom He speaks face-to-face, while He speaks to everyone else in dreams and with riddles. God then punished only Miriam, afflicting her with a skin disease. Meanwhile, Aaron got off free despite having enacted same sin and having led the earlier major transgression of the Golden Calf (Exodus 32).

As the Israelites approached the Promised Land, they sent out spies to survey the land. The Israelites were frightened by the news which the spies bring back; the occupants were numerous and powerful. They spoke about returning to Egypt and of stoning Joshua and Caleb for trying to rally them to instead continue on with God's help. God was so outraged by the Israelites that He wanted to kill them all and start a new nation from Moses, thereby repenting that He had brought the Israelites out of Egypt in the first place. Moses managed to calm God's hasty rage. God forgave them, which meant that He prevented them from entering the Promised Land for forty years, meanwhile slowly killing off everyone who was at least 20 years old at the time of this rebellion.

With the rebellion squashed, more laws were issued by God, which included the command that anyone who intentionally disobeyed God's laws should be “cut off.” This was followed by an illustrative incident where a man was caught picking up sticks on the Sabbath. God ordered his execution by stoning. Then God instructed the Israelites to sew blue tassels onto their clothes to remind them to follow God's Law as opposed to their own hearts.

Next, yet another rebellion sprang up. Korah, Dathan, Abiram, and 250 other nameless men challenged the leadership of Moses and Aaron. God was so furious that He wants to kill the rebels along with the assembly of onlookers. Moses and Aaron persuaded God not to kill the onlookers, but God did kill the 250, and destroyed Korah, Dathan, and Abiram along with their entire families. The Israelites grumbled against these deaths, so God inflicted a plague on the Israelites with the intent to kill them all. Moses and Aaron managed to make an atonement offering to stop the plague after 14700 people had died.

God established more laws for the Sanctuary. Instead of being welcoming to all because of His love for everyone, God instead put up a series of barriers, ultimately allowing only the High Priest to gain private audience with God, and even then only on one day of the year.

Surprise! Another rebellion occurred; the Israelites complained about lacking food variety and water. Echoing the earlier Exodus account, Moses whacked a rock to make water come out. Yet God does not something about like the way in which Moses did this, and so God condemned Moses and Aaron to die without entering the Promised Land.

As the Israelites made their way around to the Promised Land, with God's help they pillaged and committed genocide to all nations in their path. King Balak solicited a prophet named Balaam to help protect his people from the Israelites. Balaam asked God if he should go to Balak. God said no. Later, Balaam asked again. God then told Balaam to go to Balak, but to say only what God tells him to say. So Balaam set out on his donkey. The donkey seemed to act crazy. Balaam beat the donkey for this odd behavior. God made the donkey be able to speak, and then God told Balaam that had it not been for his donkey's actions, God would have killed Balaam.

When Balaam finally reached Balak, Balaam performed a series of three sets of sacrifices, inquiring of God after each set of sacrifices. Balaam had to go through this series because, instead of being straightforward from the beginning, God chose to only give piecemeal information.

While the Israelites were camped outside the Promised Land, some of them started up interracial relationships and worshiping the god of the natives, Baal. God was so angry that He sent a plague to kill the Israelites and demanded that their leaders be publicly executed. While Moses was gathering the leaders to develop a plan, an Israelite man walked by with a Midianite woman. Phinehas followed them back to their tent and skewers them both together with his spear. God was so impressed with Phinehas' extremist zeal that God rewarded him with the promise of a lasting priesthood and stopped the plague. Unfortunately and indiscriminately, 24000 had fallen already by God's plague.

Later on, we learned how God views vows. A man's vow is binding, while a woman's vow is subject to her male-authority-figure's approval. This approval process even extends to a promise a woman might make to honor God.

God directed a war of vengeance against the Midianites to repay them for corrupting the Israelites. This war was a genocide of the Midianites, with the extermination of all males of any age and any non-virgin females. The Israelites got to keep the virgins for themselves, which included some virgin sacrifices for God.

To wrap up the book, God dictated some more laws regarding murder and manslaughter. It was an interesting approach to these issues, for sure, and overall rang of justice. However, the term served for manslaughter was rather arbitrary; dependent upon the High Priest's death. Also, one clause stated that atonement for the land could not be made except by the blood of the guilty party. While the High Priest's death seems to foreshadow Jesus well, the non-substitution atonement conflicts with Jesus.

What We Have Learned
God likes to collect money. (Or rather, God likes to give money to the Priests. Convenient, no?) Plus, God will accept money as a substitute for some other offerings.

God has a problem allocating manpower proportionately.

God will conduct abortions (through miscarriages) to dishonor an adulterous wife.

God seems to hold high regard for hair, and thinks that it gets contaminated by dead people.

God does like to party, but He wants you dead if you do not go to the party without a good excuse.

God needs to be reminded to carry out His own promises.

God will punish you if you ask for more than what He gives you, no matter how meager His giving is.

God is sometimes arbitrarily selective in His wrath, and almost always speaks to people in riddles (even though revelation riddles have not yet been demonstrated in the Bible).

God will be exceedingly angry for a lack of faith. More significantly: God will still punish you even if you are forgiven.

God does not want you to follow your heart, but rather to follow His Law exactly.

God needs persuasion not to kill the innocent along with the guilty.

God only wants a direct relationship with a very, very select few.

God will condemn you due to one instance of using poor choice of words.

God will tell you that it is OK to do something, and then nearly kill you when you do that very same thing.

God will string you along instead of being up front with all pertinent information from the beginning.

God rewards extremists.

God puts a woman's vows under a man's control.

God will command genocide and virgin sacrifice.

God seems confused in His foreshadowing of Christianity.

In short: God is hungry for money, hair, and blood, but not for relationships. His arbitrary wrath takes out the innocent with the guilty. He is desperately in need of anger control management and memory aids. Yet he rewards those who exhibit His same fiery temper and expects you to follow the Law as opposed to your heart. Worst of all, He will punish you even if He forgives you, which does not bode well for His bumbled, foreshadowed Christianity.

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Blood Justice

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Background
The Israelites are on the borders of the Promised Land. Since the God-directed genocide of the Midianites in Numbers 31, the Israelites clans of Reuben, Gad, and Makir (from the Manasseh clan) decided that they would take land on the east of the Jordan River instead of entering the Promised Land (Numbers 32). Remarkably, God did not have an opinion on the alternative settlement.

Numbers 33 had God tell Moses to be sure to drive out all of the inhabitants of the Promised Land, despite God claiming earlier in Exodus 23:28-29 that God Himself would drive them out.

In Numbers 34, God established the borders of the Promised Land. That must have reminded God that there were still some important rules to convey, which we find in the chapter of this study.

Blood Justice
Murder and manslaughter. Outside of conditions of a war, what is the appropriate justice for the intentional and the unintentional killing of another person? The Bible presents an interesting approach to this question, and in the process provides even more interesting revelations; revelations which both support and refute of the efficacy of the blood of Jesus.

Numbers 35:1-15 opens the chapter describing how the Levites (the official helpers of the priests) will be granted 48 towns throughout the Israelite settlements, and how six of those towns will become Cities of Refuge. A person who accidentally kills someone or who is accused of murder can flee to any of these Cities of Refuge. (Cross-reference Exodus 21:12-14)

Numbers 35:16-21 elaborates on what counts as murder, such as any attack with a weapon in hand regardless of intent, or any attack made with malice or hostility, when a person dies as a result. The “avenger of blood” (typically the closest surviving family member of the dead person) gets to kill the murderer.

Numbers 35:22-28 covers the case of manslaughter in greater detail, when death comes without malicious intent. The person guilty of manslaughter should flee to a City of Refuge. His or her case will be judged by an assembly. Provided that the judgement is that there was no malicious intent, the person guilty manslaughter can live in a City of Refuge without any fear retribution. Once the High Priest dies, the guilty person can then return to his or her home without any fear retribution. However, if the avenger of blood sees the guilty person outside the City of Refuge anytime before the High Priest dies, the avenger can kill the guilty person without becoming guilty of murder himself.

So a man guilty of manslaughter could only be held accountable for a certain term; a term which could be anywhere from a few days up to the remainder of his life, if the High Priest lived longer than he did. Having a flexible and somewhat arbitrary term does not really seem like true justice. However, it does do a great job of foreshadowing redemption through Jesus, a different kind of High Priest (Hebrews 5:7-10). As the story goes, when Jesus died, all of our sins were forgiven. Well, at least the sins of believers were forgiven.

After that, we see that a murderer should be killed only if there is more than one witness (Numbers 35:30).

Numbers 35:31-32 expands on the guilty sentence, saying that no ransom should be accepted for the life of a murderer, or to allow a man guilty of manslaughter to return to his land before his full term in the City of Refuge.

Here is where things begin to look bad for foreshadowing Jesus. Scripture tells us that Jesus gave his life as a ransom to save everyone from death (Mark 10:45, 1 Timothy 2:5-6, Hebrews 9:15). You could argue that the death of Jesus was an act of substitution, not ransom, for guilty parties. Well then, examine the next verse of Numbers 35:33:

"Do not pollute the land where you are. Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it." NIV

God has a strict no-substitution policy here. So this is a definite failing of foreshadowing Jesus. Unless...

Well, there are some people who believe everything happens for a reason, and that God is in control of everything. From that perspective, we are just meat puppets without even realizing it. Now, if that is the case, then you could say that God is ultimately the one who shed the blood. So maybe this does foreshadow Jesus after all! ;-)

Disposable Leaders

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Background
In Numbers 18, God confirmed a hierarchy of personal relationship, where only the Priests had access to God, and where anyone else who tried to access God would be killed. This is not exactly a great foreshadowing of Christianity.

In Numbers 19, God instructs on the purification of sin through water of cleansing; water mixed with the ashes of red cow, cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet wool. Again, this seems off for foreshadowing Christianity, but there is something even more strange about it. Aaron was the High Priest at the time, while Eleazar was his son. God specifically instructed Eleazar to make these special ashes, excluding Aaron and his other remaining son/Priest Ithamar. (Aaron's other two sons, Nadab and Abihu, had been burned to death by God.)

Why was Eleazar selected? That answer may be revealed in the next within this study of the next chapter.

(On a side note, it is rather amusing that the water of cleansing is used anachronistically in Numbers 8:7 before it was defined in Numbers 19:1-10.)

Disposable Leaders
In the business world, sometimes a manager will look for any excuse to fire a particularly bad employee. Poor attendance. Surfing the Internet instead of working. Stealing office supplies. Any little recordable reason will suffice to be rid of the bigger problem at hand. As it turns out, God may be the same way, even with His favorite worshipers, as we will see in this study.

In Numbers 20:1-5, we find the Israelites at Kadesh in the Desert of Zin. There was no water, so the Israelites complained to Moses about the lack of water and variety of their diet.

Does that plot sound familiar? It might if you remember the previous study involving thirsty Israelites, or if you remember complaints about water in Exodus 15:22-25 and Exodus 17:1-7, or complaints about food variety in Exodus 16 and Numbers 11:1-35 (also in a previous study).

Because of its many similarities with our present study, the Exodus 17:1-7 account stands out. There they are walking through the Desert of Sin. There was no water, so the Israelites complained to Moses that they were dying of thirst. God tells Moses to whack a rock with his staff, and God would make a spring come forth from it. Moses does this, and then names the place Meribah, which means quarreling.

Continuing now with the story in Numbers 20:6-13, God tells Moses to whack a rock with his staff to make a spring come forth from it. This place is called Meribah too. Quite a coincidence, huh? Even the names Sin and Zin are so close that it makes you wonder if this is really two tales are of the same origin.

Yet there are differences. Big differences. While the Exodus 17:1-7 episode went rather smoothly, the Numbers 20:1-13 version results in condemnation. In Numbers 20:10-11:

[Moses] and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, "Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?" Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank. NIV

You may be wondering why Moses, the most humble man in the world (Numbers 12:3), is so confrontational. Well, the rebels did start it (Numbers 20:3-5), and perhaps Moses was remembering how God acted the last time the Israelites complained about provisions, sending a plague which killed many Israelites. It seems like Moses is projecting his and God's frustrations (Numbers 17:10) at this rebellious people. (Rebellious, that is, for being thirsty in the desert and complaining about it.)

Well, God was not impressed by this performance. We find in Numbers 20:12:

But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "Because you did not trust in Me enough to honor Me as Holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them." NIV

Wait, what? What is that supposed to mean?

Christian commentaries are a bit confused and uncertain as to what this means. They have come up with a myriad of explanations for why God was angry:

• Moses took credit for God's work, as seen by “must we bring you water...”
  
• God told Moses to speak to the rock (Numbers 20:8), but instead he struck it twice.
  
• Moses spoke to the people instead of to the rock.
  
• It was implied that Moses should strike the rock once, but instead he struck it twice.
  
• Moses struck the rock twice because he did not believe that once would be enough, similar to his second-guessing God in Numbers 11:21-23.
  
• By striking the rock twice, Moses messed up God's planned symbolism for Jesus being struck down once to produce “living water” (1 Corinthians 10:4) (despite this being actually the second episode of a rock being struck to produce water).
  
• Moses acted in a fit of rage and spoke in anger calling them rebels (Matthew 5:22) (despite that he was saying essentially what God had previously said in Numbers 17:10).
  
• Moses and Aaron had unbelief that God would actually provide water for such a rebellious people.

Thank God that the words of the Bible, and even the very words of God Himself, are so clear as to prevent misunderstanding, huh?

There are two references to this episode beyond this chapter which may help clarify. Numbers 27:13-14 claims that both Aaron and Moses “disobeyed [God's] command to honor [Him] as Holy.” Psalm 106:32-33 claims that “trouble came to Moses because of [the Israelites]” and “rash words came from Moses' lips.”

The commandment to honor God as holy comes from Leviticus 22:32:

"Do not profane My Holy name. I must be acknowledged as Holy by the Israelites. I am the LORD, who makes you holy." NIV

So putting all of the pieces together, it may be that God was offended by Moses using the term “we” in the act of bringing forth water; not in the sense that he was taking credit, but rather in the he was bringing God down to the level of himself and Aaron, or elevating himself and Aaron up to God's level. Moses did not emphasize that God was separate and different from himself, and the almighty, Holy source of miracles. Or simply put; Moses did not acknowledge God as superior in Holiness.

Of course, this still makes you wonder why Aaron was condemned in this episode. Was it just guilt by association, or is this what God meant by holding the Priests accountable for transgressions against the Priesthood?

Whatever the reason for God's pronouncement of a death sentence on Moses and Aaron, it seems relatively minor compared to their past transgressions. Moses was very reluctant in obeying God, he had challenged God's decisions not once, but twice, and he had previously doubted that God could provide what He had promised. Aaron lead the Gold Cow rebellion and complained about the superiority of Moses.

So it appears as though God is just drawing an arbitrary line, using this fairly minor mistake as an excuse for a change of command. Aaron dies at the end of the chapter, bestowing his son Eleazar with the title of High Priest (Numbers 20:22-29). Moses survives a bit longer, but dies before entering the Promised Land, and Joshua assumes the role of leadership in his place (Deuteronomy 34).

(For those of you who may still believe that this episode foreshadows Jesus, take a moment to consider that both this place and the previous place where water came from a rock were both named Meribah, which means quarreling, and that Moses and Aaron became condemned to die early as a form of punishment for their actions. Then ask yourself: How could those facts possibly relate to Jesus?)