This week, we take our first look into the interesting material of Deuteronomy. Traditionally held to have been written by Moses, I have serious doubts that this text was ever set to paper before the years of captivity. I say this based only on what I've read in this book; I expect serious Biblical scolars could shed more light on the question.
Anyway, we start with some excerpts from Chapter 7.
Deu 7:1-5 -When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy, and he clears away many nations before you - the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations mightier and more numerous than you - and when the LORD your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for that would turn away your children from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the LORD would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. But this is how you must deal with them: break down their altars, smash their pillars, hew down their sacred poles, and burn their idols with fire.
Deu 7:22 - The LORD your God will clear away these nations before you little by little; you will not be able to make a quick end of them, otherwise the wild animals would become too numerous for you.
Deu 7:25,26 - The images of their gods you shall burn with fire. Do not covet the silver and gold that is on them and take it for yourself, because you could be ensnared by it; for it is abhorrent to the LORD your God. Do not bring an abhorrent thing into your house, or you will be set aside for destruction like it. You must utterly detest and abhor it, for it is set aside for destruction.
Here we see the orders given to Israel concerning the planned invasion and ethnic cleansing of the land of Canaan. I find it interesting that these instructions include orders to avoid marrying among the people they are supposed to be completely exterminating, warning that doing so would cause people to change their religion. The most interesting thing (to me) is that later in this book, marriages to slaves captured from other nations than the ones being "cleansed" are allowed. Xenophobia had yet some ways to go, it seems.
I'm not very clear on the rationalization for the clearing out of the land slowly. You'd think an omnipotent God could protect his people from wild animals as well as from foreign armies -- right?
In the last section, God appears to be saying that if you take metal used in the worship of other gods, the religion will rub off on you. Could this "holy" faith really be that fragile? Or could it be a case of the priests taking these gold and silver things with "anti-Yahweh cooties" off into some tent and just saying they had destroyed the evil, evil metal?
Comments?
