Opus 2024-439: A Heavy Load

(Deu 9:15 KJV)  So I turned and came down from the mount, and the mount burned with fire: and the two tables of the covenant were in my two hands.

I am sporadically doing research and study on the Biblical law.  When I see something of interest it jumps out at me.  This passage did that.  I am seeing a lot of indications that the 613 Commandments that the Rabbis and various preachers like to talk about is a fabrication of a theological position more than an article of faith.

What does the Bible mean when it talks about the Law?  There are numerous words used to express variants of the concept such as statutes and testimonies.  I think they are significant but I don’t have a definitive explanation.

What this verse does it points out that at least here the content of the law was a bit shorter than the 613.  I don’t know if it was just the ten commandments but that is more likely than all the laws of kosher and sacrifice.

Why it that?  Notice that Moses was carrying the law engraved on stone with just his two hands.  I don’t know how many pictures you have seen of writing chiseled on stone but there is a serious limit to how small you can carve words.  I would submit that if Moses was carrying the “two tablets of the covenant” it was seriously shorter than what the Rabbis would have considered the law.  It might be the Readers’ Digest version of the law.

Is this the final word?  Obviously not.  If God did the carving the font could be very small but it had to be big enough to read.  My printout of the 613 runs to 15 pages of 12 point font.  I have not idea how that would work out on stone.

Just an observation.  Keep thinking.  

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-423: The Depths of Evil

Americans do not understand evil.  At least that is true for the general public who believes in the traditional values of the Jewish and Christian heritage.  Part of the reason we have been able to live with those benevolent attitudes is because in the past much evil was rooted out.  We see that rooting out process going on in the Middle East today as Israel responds to the mayhem of October 7.  Let me try to give you a historical perspective from the Bible.

When Israel was ready to cross over the Jordan River into the Promised Land, God tried to clarify a couple of things.  The first Israel liked and wanted to hear.

(Deu 9:3 KJV)  Understand therefore this day, that the LORD thy God is he which goeth over before thee; as a consuming fire he shall destroy them, and he shall bring them down before thy face: so shalt thou drive them out, and destroy them quickly, as the LORD hath said unto thee.

God was promising to be with them and bring victory.  Everyone likes that idea.

What we have a hard time with is that they would be driven out and destroyed.  That seems a bit of overkill to us.

God tries to clarify what is going on.  You often find such clarification if you look and are willing to listen.  First He addresses a misconception that Israel might have.  We have the same problem.

(Deu 9:4 KJV)  Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the LORD thy God hath cast them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness the LORD hath brought me in to possess this land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD doth drive them out from before thee.

We have this natural tendency to think that God is lucky to have us on His team.  We are like the little boy who “stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum and said, ‘What a good boy am I.’”  God was having none of that.  It was not that they were so “righteous” but that the people living in the land we so “wicked.”

He reinforces this point,

(Deu 9:5 KJV)  Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and that he may perform the word which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Try to wrap your hand around the culture that lived there and seems to live there again today.  The wickedness of Canaan was not that they partied too loud or rioted in the streets.  That may have happened but that is just a mild form of anti-social behavior.  No, we are talking about people who participated in child sacrifice, and it wasn’t a matter of death by lethal injection.  No.  Try to grasp this.  They would take their trusting, smiling, cooing baby and cast them into the red hot metal arms of the statue of Molech.  Who could do this and think it was right?  A perverted, evil people living in a perverted, evil culture.

God is not a silly fool who believes we will be absolutely perfect.  He knows us better than that.  He also knows the evil cultures of the world better than you will ever want to grasp.  Strangely enough that may be our hope.  I have talked a lot about our nation compared to Sodom.  I have written about it.  In the election my concern was that there might not be a figurative ten righteous people to be found in our modern Sodom.  That might be the wrong question.  God may spare us like He spared ancient Israel.  It may not be that we are righteous enough but that the comparison is such a swamp of evil.

Live in such a way that God will go before you and drive the wicked to their destruction.  We may deserve God’s wrath but there are people who deserve it more.  

At least I hope so.

homo unius libri