Deuteronomy 22: Miscellaneous Laws

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Grigory Mekheev, Exodus (2000) artist shared work under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Grigory Mekheev, Exodus (2000) artist shared work under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Deuteronomy 22: 1-4 Caring for the Neighbor’s Property

1 You shall not watch your neighbor’s ox or sheep straying away and ignore them; you shall take them back to their owner. 2 If the owner does not reside near you or you do not know who the owner is, you shall bring it to your own house, and it shall remain with you until the owner claims it; then you shall return it. 3 You shall do the same with a neighbor’s donkey; you shall do the same with a neighbor’s garment; and you shall do the same with anything else that your neighbor loses and you find. You may not withhold your help.
 4 You shall not see your neighbor’s donkey or ox fallen on the road and ignore it; you shall help to lift it up.

 

I have broken the laws outlined in Deuteronomy 22 into three parts: those for the protection of the neighbor’s property, those for the creation of a properly ordered community and those that arise out of the interpretation of the commandment on adultery. This first section of commandments, addressing the neighbor’s property, specifically livestock property, is the easiest to address. In an agricultural world livestock is wealth, but a lose animal can also cause a lot of damage, particularly to farmland. Yet all of these actions that the individual is to take towards the animal is to ensure the best interest of their neighbor.

We live in a highly individualized society where we can often ignore the impact of our actions upon others in our community, but the book of Deuteronomy envisions a community where the neighbor is a vital part of one’s life. One does not have the option to hide from one’s responsibility for one’s neighbor. As Walter Bruggemann can point out in this passage:
The NRSV translates “You may not withhold your help.” The verb is “conceal, hide” stated in reflexive form. You may not withdraw from neighborliness. Perhaps in a more contemporary context, you may not hide behind high walls in a gated community, as though you are not obligated to be a neighbor. (Brueggemann, 2001 , p. 219)
 

The neighbor’s livestock and animals are not merely my neighbor’s responsibility, but they are mine as well. In our own time our neighbor’s livelihood is our concern as well. This is a difficult challenge then and now. When the question of neighborliness is asked it is natural for a Christian to go back to the parable of the Good Samaritan told in Luke’s gospel (Luke 10: 25-37) where our calling is to be the one who showed mercy (even when it is inconvenient or perhaps crosses the lines of purity or contamination in Luke’s gospel). This simple example of returning a neighbor’s animal or helping to lift it up or caring for an animal that is not one’s own goes against our own disinclination to become involved in the struggles of the neighbor. For the people of Israel to be who they are called to be they are called to look out for their neighbor’s best interest even when it would be far easier to simply ignore their struggles.

In our interconnected world this is a difficult challenge and one that I don’t have the answer to. There are a plethora of issues that can daily call out to me from the television or computer screen of people who are in need. The soft hearted part of me wants to help them all, the rest of me simply want to ignore my neighbors struggle both locally and across the world. Yet, I don’t get to put a limit on who my neighbor is and I believe that I am called to be the one who shows mercy. The reality is that no one person can do it on their own, but that is why the people of Israel were insistent on creating a community where neighbors are responsible for one another.

 

Deuteronomy 22: 5-12 Ordering the World

 5 A woman shall not wear a man’s apparel, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for whoever does such things is abhorrent to the LORD your God.
 6 If you come on a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs, with the mother sitting on the fledglings or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young. 7 Let the mother go, taking only the young for yourself, in order that it may go well with you and you may live long.
 8 When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof; otherwise you might have bloodguilt on your house, if anyone should fall from it.
 9 You shall not sow your vineyard with a second kind of seed, or the whole yield will have to be forfeited, both the crop that you have sown and the yield of the vineyard itself.
 10 You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together.
 11 You shall not wear clothes made of wool and linen woven together.
 12 You shall make tassels on the four corners of the cloak with which you cover yourself.

These seven laws may seem strange to us, but for the author of Deuteronomy the maintenance of a proper order was essential for the life of the people. The barriers between men and women and proper roles in Deuteronomy may seem strange to us, but this is written at least 2,500 years ago and the standards were much different. The idea of a woman wearing men’s clothing being abhorrent to the LORD seems excessive in our time, but in the tightly ordered world of Deuteronomy women and men were to remain in separate roles. The author of Deuteronomy would probably look down not only on crossdressing but also things like women wearing clothes styled after men’s clothing (like suits or pants). Probably a close analogy (although the clothing would reflect a different era) would be the Amish where men and women have specific clothing that they wear almost like a uniform. Deuteronomy’s boundaries are rigid and crossing them may have been viewed as a slippery slope to chaos and disorder and to being like the nations around them. Clothing is a significant part of identity and three of the seven laws address clothing. Mixing fabrics together was also considered crossing a boundary and leading to disorder as was the distinctive tassels they were to wear as a mark of their identity.

The command about a bird and its nest and eggs or fledglings does reflect an environmental concern that the people were to have, they were not to prevent a species from being able to continue to reproduce and produce more food by consuming the mother and the young at the same time. Yet, there is no remorse for eating the eggs or young of the mother bird-merely a limit on killing both. It is worth noticing that this command ends with the same ending as the commandment to honor one’s father and mother and to ponder if perhaps in the minds of the people honoring the mother in creation is connected to honoring the mother in the family. This may also relate to the command not to boil a kid in its mother’s milk in Deuteronomy 14: 21.

Bloodguilt again enters the discussion (as before in Deuteronomy 19 and 21) and this time the command is to prevent innocent blood by creating a parapet on the roof of a house to prevent someone falling off and bringing guilt on the house and land. Sowing multiple seeds in a vineyard and not plowing with and ox and a donkey together close out the commands here which again point to definitive practices that the people were to practice that made them different than others. Deuteronomy envisions a rigidly ordered world and that rigidly ordered world keeps the chaos and danger of wilderness and the surrounding people away from their world. These boundaries helped them feel safer in an uncontrollable world and perhaps we may reflect upon the boundaries we erect that help us feel safer.

Since the next section will deal with sexual relations in a way that are very foreign to us perhaps we might begin with looking at the command against wearing the opposite sex clothing in verse 5. For some communities this would still be abhorrent, in others it is accepted. One of the challenges of any time is to define the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable behavior, yet in making these distinctions we also have the challenge of accepting neighborliness and learning to love the neighbor as they are. One of the struggles of the church in the 20th and 21st century in the United States was the role of the church in defining those boundaries. For example there are churches who want the society to reflect a set of conservative moral boundaries that they feel protect families and they often act like a shrill siren against the perceived moral decline of the society. Yet, there are great differences within the Christian church and I serve a much more gracious (and in many others eyes more liberal) community that attempts to meet the neighbor where they are. There is not an easy answer in this either, and while I can understand Deuteronomy’s wish for a simple and ordered universe, I also can’t say that this is a worldview that I share.

Deuteronomy 22: 13-30 Sex, Lies and Proper Proceedings

 13 Suppose a man marries a woman, but after going in to her, he dislikes her 14 and makes up charges against her, slandering her by saying, “I married this woman; but when I lay with her, I did not find evidence of her virginity.” 15 The father of the young woman and her mother shall then submit the evidence of the young woman’s virginity to the elders of the city at the gate. 16 The father of the young woman shall say to the elders: “I gave my daughter in marriage to this man but he dislikes her; 17 now he has made up charges against her, saying, ‘I did not find evidence of your daughter’s virginity.’ But here is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity.” Then they shall spread out the cloth before the elders of the town. 18 The elders of that town shall take the man and punish him; 19 they shall fine him one hundred shekels of silver (which they shall give to the young woman’s father) because he has slandered a virgin of Israel. She shall remain his wife; he shall not be permitted to divorce her as long as he lives.
 20 If, however, this charge is true, that evidence of the young woman’s virginity was not found, 21 then they shall bring the young woman out to the entrance of her father’s house and the men of her town shall stone her to death, because she committed a disgraceful act in Israel by prostituting herself in her father’s house. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.
 22 If a man is caught lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman as well as the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel.
23 If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, 24 you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry for help in the town and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.
 25 But if the man meets the engaged woman in the open country, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. 26 You shall do nothing to the young woman; the young woman has not committed an offense punishable by death, because this case is like that of someone who attacks and murders a neighbor. 27 Since he found her in the open country, the engaged woman may have cried for help, but there was no one to rescue her.
 28 If a man meets a virgin who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are caught in the act, 29 the man who lay with her shall give fifty shekels of silver to the young woman’s father, and she shall become his wife. Because he violated her he shall not be permitted to divorce her as long as he lives.
 30 A man shall not marry his father’s wife, thereby violating his father’s rights.
 

This is another of those passages in Deuteronomy where their worldview is drastically different from mine, but I come from a much different time and would ask much different questions in these circumstances than Deuteronomy would.  As I have done before I will begin with how Deuteronomy would understand these things in its would and then attempt to move to thinking through how we might faithfully walk with people who find themselves in these situations today.

In the ancient world, marriage and sexual relationships may involve love but they are primarily based on economic and honor concerns. In the ancient world women were viewed as property, their father’s property until (by an economic arrangement) she is married and then she becomes her husband’s property. As in Deuteronomy 21: 10-14, where the issue of a female captive is discussed, the woman has no choice in many of these matters. It is a patriarchal society, much like the other societies of the ancient world, and even though there are some restraints placed here as well, there are not many placed upon this worldview. In an arranged marriage one of the expectations was that the new bride would be a virgin, and while scholars can debate about exactly what ceremonies would have been involved after the wedding to acquire this ‘proof of virginity’ ultimately it was important to the father of the new bride that he be able to demonstrate that he is giving the new husband an undamaged product. Divorce will be covered in Deuteronomy 24, but here Deuteronomy imagines a situation where the new husband is immediately dissatisfied with his new bride and tries to break the marriage based on an accusation that the daughter is not a virgin.

The accusation of a woman having sex out of wedlock are serious accusations for the woman and the family involved. It is a life or death issue for the woman in Deuteronomy’s strictly ordered world but it also brings a great deal of dishonor upon the family and may endanger the ability to negotiate future marriages for other children. There are a number of parallels between the daughter who brings dishonor by having sexual relations prior to marriage and the rebellious son discussed in Deuteronomy 21: 18-21. What is at stake is the family’s (particularly the father’s) honor and their standing within the community. The stakes are high for the author of Deuteronomy and he attaches the ending, “so shall you purge the evil that is in your midst” to this command (see also Deuteronomy 13: 5, 17:7, 19:19 and 21: 21) The stakes are not nearly so high for the accuser. Notice that the hundred shekel fine is paid to the father to account for the damage the accusation may have done, and while this is not a trivial fine it is not a life or death matter. Again the elders of the community are the ones who are responsible for the judgment and its execution with the man who makes the accusation. In addition, the man may never divorce this wife he has slandered, which does provide her with economic security as long as he lives.

The next three situations (vs. 22-27) involve a woman who is already spoken for who is caught in a sexual act with another man. If a woman is married both she and the man are to be killed. If she is engaged she is still considered to belong to the one she is engaged with and so the penalties are the same. The only time where she is given the benefit of the doubt is in the open country where she may have cried for help and was not heard. In that case only the man is killed, but in any other case both the man and the woman are killed. While these penalties are harsh, they are consistent with Deuteronomy’s view of harsh justice.

The situation envisioned in verse 28 and 29 shows how different the stakes are for women and men. We need to be honest that this is a situation of rape, where the man seizes and lies with her. If it was a woman who had sex out of wedlock and was therefore damaged property the penalty is stoning, but for the man he pays the fine, marries her and cannot divorce her. Finally, the situation is discussed where a son wants to marry his father’s wife. This is not the son’s mother, for that would be incest, but in a polygynous marriage where a father may have multiple wives a son may not marry one that belonged to his father, even after his father’s death.

Texts like this are distasteful, but perhaps more distasteful is the way the church has often preferred texts like this one that favored a male based power structure and had to be drug kicking and screaming by the enlightenment to grant women a greater role in the human enterprise. The church has struggled to be critical of its own traditions in the light of the gospel. Men and women together are critical parts of both families and societies and laws are needed to protect both women and men. We cannot simply accept a worldview where sexual relations are a life and death issue for women and an economic one for men. Nor should women be viewed as property that can be dealt with in any way the head of the household pleases. There are still significant conversations to be had around sexual ethics within the church and the household, but we cannot do it from the patriarchal framework of Deuteronomy and be faithful to our calling today.

The questions of sex before marriage, affairs, rape, unhappy marriages and abuse and domination within marriages are all very real and have drastic consequences on our lives and our communities. It is challenging to navigate the middle ground between the moral absoluteness of the community in Deuteronomy and the individual autonomy of today where fidelity to family and community are no longer valued in the same way. These are difficult questions, but I think perhaps a place to begin is the value of the individual within the relationships. Both women and men have needs and value in families, in the workplace and in our religious and other communities.

Perhaps the story recorded in John 8: 1-11[1] gives us a starting point to look at the way passages like this might have been handled by Jesus. The story has the scribes and Pharisees bring Jesus a woman caught in adultery (note the man is not brought forward and never appears in the story). Instead of following Deuteronomy in its rigid justice where she is to be stoned he places the challenge back upon the accusing community and does not condemn her. Forgiveness is hard, grace is challenging and for both women and men who are victims in sexual violence, abuse and affairs the desire for punishment and justice is real. How do communities of faith today stand with the victims and is there a place where reconciliation in some circumstances might happen? Can we be a part of a community that brings healing to women and men who have often not received grace in their families, society, and religious communities.

"Christ and the sinner" by Andrey Mironov - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Christ_and_the_sinner.jpg#/media/File:Christ_and_the_sinner.jpg

“Christ and the sinner” by Andrey Mironov – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Christ_and_the_sinner.jpg#/media/File:Christ_and_the_sinner.jpg

[1] Even though this passage is not a part of the earliest historical copies of the Gospel of John, it is one of the more better known stories distinctive to John’s gospel.

All That Is Solid Dissolves Into Air

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Smoke 1When the air becomes heated hotter than the smith’s forge
And the pillars of the earth begin to falter under the heat and pressure
When cynicism strips away every foundation, every dream, every hope
And all that is solid dissolves into air. 

In that breathless, lifeless landscape of an atomistic existence
That tears apart the ties that bind under conditions of molecular fission
The stories told, the dreams cherished and the hopes nurtured burn
When all that is solid dissolves into air. 

Can fusion reemerge from the fission and the foundations be sunk anew?
Can the furnace of our destruction be quenched and the pressure released?
For the atom rich air has no place left for the complexity of life
Until that which was dissolved becomes solid again.

 Deuteronomy 21: Death, Rebellious Children, Captured Women and Inheritance

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The First Funeral, Louis Ernest Barrias (1883)

The First Funeral, Louis Ernest Barrias (1883)

Deuteronomy 21: 1-9: Dealing with an Unsolvable Death

1 If, in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess, a body is found lying in open country, and it is not known who struck the person down, 2 then your elders and your judges shall come out to measure the distances to the towns that are near the body. 3 The elders of the town nearest the body shall take a heifer that has never been worked, one that has not pulled in the yoke; 4 the elders of that town shall bring the heifer down to a wadi with running water, which is neither plowed nor sown, and shall break the heifer’s neck there in the wadi. 5 Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come forward, for the LORD your God has chosen them to minister to him and to pronounce blessings in the name of the LORD, and by their decision all cases of dispute and assault shall be settled. 6 All the elders of that town nearest the body shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the wadi, 7 and they shall declare: “Our hands did not shed this blood, nor were we witnesses to it. 8 Absolve, O LORD, your people Israel, whom you redeemed; do not let the guilt of innocent blood remain in the midst of your people Israel.” Then they will be absolved of bloodguilt. 9 So you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from your midst, because you must do what is right in the sight of the LORD.

The author of Deuteronomy is concerned that the people’s life in the land is not contaminated by bloodguilt and that they have a means for dealing with an unsolvable death in their land. Even though the death may not be solvable there still needs to be action on behalf of the community to atone for the wrong that has been done and to make things right. This issue also comes up in Deuteronomy 19: 1-13 when discussing the cities of refuge to ensure innocent blood is not spilled for an accidental killing. In Deuteronomy’s perspective there is a need to atone for the death that occurs and only blood can do that. The ritual involves the elders of the community and the Levites who come together to absolve the community of guilt.

The ritual itself involves assigning the responsibility to the nearest town, the giving up of something of high value to the community, declaration of innocence of the community, blessing and finally a ritual of surrendering responsibility. The role of the Levites in the judicial process laid out in Deuteronomy 17: 8-13 is now expanded here to involve any case of dispute and assault, but they also oversee the actions of the community to make things right with God. Once the responsibility is assigned to the elders of the town they bring a heifer, a cow that has not been used for agricultural purposes and has not born a calf, and identify a wadi, a ravine which must have running water, that is also not being used in agricultural purposes to conduct the ritual. Breaking the heifer’s neck kills the animal in a non-sacrificial way and unlike the sacrifices (talked about earlier in Deuteronomy 12, in relation to the festivals in Deuteronomy 16, and in relation to the priests in Deuteronomy 18) there is no mention of participating in eating the heifer that has been killed. This animal is lost to the community in the action of absolution. The washing of hands to absolve responsibility is a common practice, but here the elders of the community act on behalf of the community: declaring innocence both in action and in not covering up the crime and attempt to make things right between the community and God.

Deuteronomy is an ancient book and it is sometimes difficult to approach in our world, and one of the reasons I spend the time working through this publicly is there is not much that is available online that is not either using Deuteronomy as a classic case of how irrelevant the Bible and religion is or on the other side lifts up Deuteronomy (often individual verses or sections) as a methodology that we should embrace without reflection in all its harshness. Most Christian pastors, especially in the more liturgical traditions, spend very little time in Deuteronomy other than perhaps chapters 4-6. Yet, as I have moved through these sections of Deuteronomy that deal with interpreting the law for the people of Israel it has become for me a dialogue within and between scripture. Wanting to honor and find what wisdom Deuteronomy has and how its perspective on God’s relationship to God’s people might help our communal life as Christians even when we can’t always agree with either the rules or the perspectives contained within Deuteronomy.

Some passages, including some coming immediately after this one, we would not want to integrate into our life in our society, but in our litigious society there is no way to deal with an unsolved case. It simply remains unsolved unless, somewhere down the road, a new revelation makes the case solvable. In events where a public wrong has been done, like an unsolved murder, perhaps there would be wisdom in finding a way for community leaders and religious leaders to come together, to denounce the wrong that has been done, to ensure that they do not bear responsibility for the actions and to atone on behalf of the community. Perhaps these actions might begin the process of the community’s healing and bring together the community to protect and watch over the fellow members of the community so that this type of action does not occur in the future.

Deuteronomy 21: 10-14 The Female Captive

 10 When you go out to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God hands them over to you and you take them captive, 11 suppose you see among the captives a beautiful woman whom you desire and want to marry, 12 and so you bring her home to your house: she shall shave her head, pare her nails, 13 discard her captive’s garb, and shall remain in your house a full month, mourning for her father and mother; after that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. 14 But if you are not satisfied with her, you shall let her go free and not sell her for money. You must not treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her.

War in any time is hellish both for the soldiers involved in it but perhaps even more so for those who are the victims of the conflict. Women and children rarely had any choices when their cities or lands were captured. From a modern standard the idea of forcing a captive woman to marry a warrior of the army that has conquered their land seems abhorrent. Deanna Thompson argues that this passage is a “glimpse of restraint in the midst of the brutal realities of war.” (Thompson, 2014, p. 159) It does set limits on the injustices that (in theory) be committed on a captive of war by the warriors of Israel.

The author of Deuteronomy would not understand the questions that people from a postmodern secular word (or even earlier worldviews) would have with passages like this, it was simply the world they lived in. Even though there are parts of the bible that can be read as sympathetic with a feminist or egalitarian view of sexuality there are large portions, like this one, which simply come from a world that would be alien to us. In the world that Deuteronomy speaks to: polygamy is an accepted and encouraged practice (to quickly grow the nation of Israel), being a brought into the chosen people of God (through conquest) is a privilege that the vanquished should be thankful for (many Christians shared a similar perspective in the conquest of the Americas), and ultimately in a male centered society the feeling of the women doesn’t carry very much weight. In the United States we can joke that, “if mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy” but assuming that type of worldview on the world of Deuteronomy is simply not true.

One of the gifts and challenges of wrestling through Deuteronomy is that it requires us to wonder how do utilize the wisdom and sometimes the wrongness (from a current perspective) of ancient scripture in our time. There isn’t a major calling for a wholesale adoption of the Deuteronomic and Levitical practices as a guide for life in our time, but I think the pieces of Deuteronomy that make me uncomfortable force me to think about questions like, “how then should women be protected in situations involving combat?” “How do we honor the scriptures and those who wrote them even when we disagree?” “Is there wisdom to be learned even in our disagreements?” “Are there places where the ancient scriptures challenged the world of their day?”

In the world of Deuteronomy, where women are looked upon as spoils that were treated however the captors chose: used while desired and then perhaps sold when no longer desired, Deuteronomy does place a restraint upon the power of the male head of the household. While the woman who is captured has no choice, once she is taken up into the household she does have some, albeit small protection. She is given a time to mourn, she is to lose hair and nails and fancy clothes that may have contributed to her being an object of attraction. She is given protection from being sold into slavery, even though being released does subject her to a significant economic challenge without a means of support. The reality is that she may be forced into begging or prostitution by the release but at least the releaser does not become the one to profit financially by this. Ultimately this is probably told in the hope that the one who releases would provide for the captive woman initially like the people of Israel receiving material wealth from the Egyptians prior to their leaving in the Exodus narrative. In its own harsh way I believe that Deuteronomy is trying to communicate a level of personhood and protection for the captured women. This provides a limit to the power over the booty outlined in Deuteronomy 20, not a sufficient limit for our time, but a limit nonetheless.

The reality of the plight of captive women in the ancient world, even within Deuteronomy’s system, forces them into marriages where they have no voice in the matter. The reality that in this world the woman has no choice over how her body is to be used may not be as far away as we would like to admit. Many women, and some men, in relationships may not feel freedom in how their body is used. Throughout history rape has been used as a part of the conquest of an area. Even today in combat zones throughout the world women’s bodies are not safe. As people of faith we need to be willing to answer the difficult questions of how we honor women and men and their bodies in relationship, in society and even in conflict.

Deuteronomy 21: 15-17 The Rights of the Firstborn

 15 If a man has two wives, one of them loved and the other disliked, and if both the loved and the disliked have borne him sons, the firstborn being the son of the one who is disliked, 16 then on the day when he wills his possessions to his sons, he is not permitted to treat the son of the loved as the firstborn in preference to the son of the disliked, who is the firstborn. 17 He must acknowledge as firstborn the son of the one who is disliked, giving him a double portion of all that he has; since he is the first issue of his virility, the right of the firstborn is his.

This is one of those interesting passages where the Biblical narrative, particularly as it relates to God’s freedom, comes into conflict with the ordered worldview of Deuteronomy. This passage places a limit on the freedom of the male head of household with respect to passing on the inheritance. A husband is not allowed to pick a younger son from a (currently) favored wife to inherit in preference to the eldest son. Matters of inheritance were serious business in the ancient world as possessions and land passed from one generation of men to the next. Yet, it is interesting the way that the narrative of the people of Israel comes into conflict with this fairly simple and common understanding of inheritance.

Throughout the book of Genesis there are stories of later sons inheriting the first born portion. Beginning with the story of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar, the first born son, Ishmael, is set aside for the child of promise, Isaac. In this story the argument could be made that Hagar was never the wife of Abraham so the promise wouldn’t flow to Ishmael but to Isaac. Yet in the very next generation there is the stories of Jacob and Esau where Jacob, by trickery, gets both the inheritance and the blessing. Joseph is favored by his father over his brothers because he is the first child of Rachel, the favored wife, and later Reuben, the firstborn, is passed over for Judah because of sleeping with his father’s concubine Bilhah. David is chosen by God to be king even though he is the youngest brother and in the political intrigue surrounding David’s impending death he appoints Solomon to reign instead of older brothers. There are many other examples that could be lifted up, but things are rarely as neat and orderly as Deuteronomy may want them to be.

Deuteronomy 21: 18-21 The Rebellious Son and the Community

 18 If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother, who does not heed them when they discipline him, 19 then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the gate of that place. 20 They shall say to the elders of his town, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” 21 Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. So you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel will hear, and be afraid.

This portion of Deuteronomy links back to the commandment:

Honor your father and mother, as the LORD your God commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. Deuteronomy 5: 16

And attempts to legislate how families are to deal with children, particularly male children, who bring dishonor upon the household. Deuteronomy has a harsh view of justice and of honor and being a dishonor to one’s parents is lifted up as a capital offence. However, when you read closely to this passage there is a significant limit placed upon the familial authority. Families are not allowed to take matters into their own hands. The family is expected to be firm in their disciplining of their child but the threat, “I brought you into this world, I can take you out of it!” was not to be left to the discretion of the parents. The disciplining of the stubborn and rebellious son is left to the community, but must be initiated by the parents. Again the elders are expected to take upon themselves the role of judging for their community.

We wouldn’t sanction execution of children, even adult children, in our society for being stubborn and rebellious, being a glutton or a drunkard or refusing to obey parents. We as a society do set limits on what is acceptable for parents with respect to disciplining. Navigating the boundaries between discipline and abuse can be tricky at times but that is one of the decisions we make as a society for the protection of children. How we care for our elderly also is a part of this discussion as we create rules for a society and how their children are allowed to treat them, since the commandment on honoring parents probably primarily refers to how adult children care for their elderly parent as I discuss when talking about Deuteronomy 5. We may not always agree with Deuteronomy’s harsh stance on justice, and working through this part of the book can seem very legalistic, but the author of Deuteronomy is trying to construct a society that is living out of God’s covenant. In our society we also have to figure out how to advocate for rules that protect children and families, providing limits and unfortunately penalties for people who do not live in accordance with those laws.

Deuteronomy 21: 22-23 A Limit on Execution for the Sake of the Land

 22 When someone is convicted of a crime punishable by death and is executed, and you hang him on a tree, 23 his corpse must not remain all night upon the tree; you shall bury him that same day, for anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse. You must not defile the land that the LORD your God is giving you for possession.

                 For Christians this is one of those rare portions of Deuteronomy that is well known because of its echo by Paul in his letter to the Galatians:

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”—in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Galatians 3: 13-14

As Paul wrestles with the scandal of the cross among both Jewish and Greek audiences he alludes back to this piece of Deuteronomy and recasts it as a part of the language to explain the death of Christ. The passage does not have a problem with the execution, even hanging or crucifixion, but it does place a limit upon the way that body can be used.

 

Gladiators Crucified after the Third Servile War (73-71 BCE)

Gladiators Crucified after the Third Servile War (73-71 BCE)

In the ancient world executions had both a physical and a psychological dimension. Physically it killed the person who was executed but it also worked psychologically by making the person a public display of the cost of disobedience. Victims of crucifixion in many cultures were left out to both rot and be dismembered by animals as the executor destroyed not only the person but their honor. In cultures ruled by fear the executed one became a grotesque billboard proclaiming what happened to those who challenged the regimes in power. For the Hebrew people they were to treat the dead differently. As mentioned above in verses 1-9, and in Deuteronomy 19 there is the concept of blood guilt but here it is expanded to a curse upon the land for leaving a cursed person out in the elements. In the world of Deuteronomy the land and people are defiled by failing to deal properly with the dead.

This passage also may help shed some light on the crucifixion narrative in the synoptic gospels where Joseph of Arimathea requests the body of Jesus and buries it on the night of the crucifixion as well as John’s narrative in John 19: 31-37 where the Jewish leaders don’t want the bodies left on the cross. But for the Jewish people they were not to be a culture who relished in death, they were not to display dead bodies or skulls so that others would fear them: instead this would be a source of defilement for them. The prophet Ezekiel can lift up in the vision of the destruction of the armies of Gog, how the burial of the bodies of the vanquished horde will be a part of the cleansing of the land (Ezekiel 39: 11-20)

 

Deuteronomy 20: The Conduct of War

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James Tissot, The Taking of Jericho (1896-1902)

James Tissot, The Taking of Jericho (1896-1902)

Deuteronomy 20

1 When you go out to war against your enemies, and see horses and chariots, an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them; for the LORD your God is with you, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. 2 Before you engage in battle, the priest shall come forward and speak to the troops, 3 and shall say to them: “Hear, O Israel! Today you are drawing near to do battle against your enemies. Do not lose heart, or be afraid, or panic, or be in dread of them; 4 for it is the LORD your God who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to give you victory.” 5 Then the officials shall address the troops, saying, “Has anyone built a new house but not dedicated it? He should go back to his house, or he might die in the battle and another dedicate it. 6 Has anyone planted a vineyard but not yet enjoyed its fruit? He should go back to his house, or he might die in the battle and another be first to enjoy its fruit. 7 Has anyone become engaged to a woman but not yet married her? He should go back to his house, or he might die in the battle and another marry her.” 8 The officials shall continue to address the troops, saying, “Is anyone afraid or disheartened? He should go back to his house, or he might cause the heart of his comrades to melt like his own.” 9 When the officials have finished addressing the troops, then the commanders shall take charge of them.

 10 When you draw near to a town to fight against it, offer it terms of peace. 11 If it accepts your terms of peace and surrenders to you, then all the people in it shall serve you at forced labor. 12 If it does not submit to you peacefully, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; 13 and when the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword. 14 You may, however, take as your booty the women, the children, livestock, and everything else in the town, all its spoil. You may enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the LORD your God has given you. 15 Thus you shall treat all the towns that are very far from you, which are not towns of the nations here. 16 But as for the towns of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. 17 You shall annihilate them– the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites– just as the LORD your God has commanded, 18 so that they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent things that they do for their gods, and you thus sin against the LORD your God.

 19 If you besiege a town for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you must not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them. Although you may take food from them, you must not cut them down. Are trees in the field human beings that they should come under siege from you? 20 You may destroy only the trees that you know do not produce food; you may cut them down for use in building siegeworks against the town that makes war with you, until it falls.

 

I would love to be able to say that the remarks made by Jerry Falwell, Jr., the President of Liberty University that his students should arm themselves so that they could ‘end Muslims before they come in’ has no scriptural place to justify it, but that would mean looking aside from passages like Deuteronomy 20. Ultimately, from the way I read scriptures his remarks were not only wrong but inflammatory and yet passages like this probably feel like home for some conservative evangelical Christians who seem to feel the right to bear arms is more important than anyone else’s right freedom of religion. Yet, passages like this are in need of discussion and the warrior image of the God of Israel is a potent image which can be used for both good and ill.  As I discuss when talking about the second half of Deuteronomy 2 the warrior image of God which is used throughout the scriptures can be used in both powerful ways for good and evil. We have uncomfortable, well at least uncomfortable for a Christian who tries to take the witness of Jesus seriously, passages like this as a part of our scriptures. What I will attempt to do below is first talk about this text within the context of war in the ancient world and what it meant then, discuss some of how this powerful language can be used appropriately in our day as well as the challenges of this text in our secular and polarized age.

The Passage in the Ancient World

War is an assumed reality for the people of Israel, especially being at the crossroads for trade and movement of troops in the ancient world. In a world where empires would rise and fall around them the land of ancient Palestine would (and still does) find itself pulled between competing kings and empires. Ancient Israel, with the exception of a brief period under David and Solomon, is never a major military power in comparison to the other ancient empires (and in Deuteronomy 17 we see how Solomon is the opposite of the model king Deuteronomy envisions). And if the people of Israel are not to be a society whose strength relies upon its military might and muscle they probably felt the need for a way to demonstrate their reliance upon God in this reality. If Deuteronomy is finalized within the context of the Babylonian exile it may also be reflecting back upon the ways the focus on their own military solutions failed them in their conflict with Babylon.

The practice of a priest coming forward and blessing the troops for combat would not have been unusual in the ancient world. The soldiers of Israel, especially if they were fighting a larger opponent with better equipment, would want to believe that the fighting they were engaged in was a part of a holy war. Perhaps Psalms like 144 would become individual prayers for the soldiers after the priest gave their blessing:

1Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle; 2 my rock and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues the peoples under me. Psalm 144: 1-2

These words and the sense that the endeavor that they are taking part in is the LORD of Israel’s battle and war may also serve to provide a sense of justification for the horrors of war they are to endure. The charge given by the mustering officer which gives an opportunity for those who have not yet been able to enjoy the fruits of a good life (house, fruit of the harvest and family) to return from battle so that they would not be deprived of these things. These three things the mustering officer allows people to return to also are lifted up as a part of the curse of disobedience:

You shall become engaged to a woman, but another man shall lie with her. You shall build a house, but not live in it. You shall plant a vineyard, but not enjoy its fruits. Deuteronomy 28:30

Also the charge for anyone who is disheartened to return home does point to the reality that fear in combat is contagious, and yet for Deuteronomy this fear is also the result of a lack of trust in the God of Israel. While there is no stigma attached to the previous reasons for release from service in an honor based society there would be for this last one. Military duty was expected of the males of ancient Israel, they were to fight for their God and for their king (or judge or leader).

This passage addresses two types of conflicts, the conflict of occupying the promised land (which is covered second although in the narrative of Deuteronomy its time is near at hand) and the invasion of future enemies.  For the enemies of the future where the people of Israel come to take a city they are to offer terms of peace, the word behind this is shalom, but it is a brutal peace. The only way a city would probably accept these terms was if they saw no possibility of resistance for it ensured forced labor of all the people. In many respects this envisions a society, like Egypt, that is based upon conquest and slavery. Unlike our current world where war is an endeavor which societies go into debt for, war was a profitable endeavor in the ancient world. If a city resists their invasion there is the spoil of the city which goes to the conquerors once the men defending the city are slain. The booty is not just wealth, but also the women and children and livestock which may all serve to enhance the wealth of the invader. War in the ancient world, and in modern society as well, is not kind to women. Even for the Israelites, who have a little more protection for the conquered than some societies, the women are viewed as spoil. Even though we may interpret the commandment on adultery prohibiting the rape of women from a conquered village ancient Israel probably did not, they still viewed women as a commodity and adultery was primarily an offence against the male.  The ancient world was a violent world and war in any time in hellish.  For the list of enemies of the towns they will be occupying there is to be no accommodation, they are to be completely wiped out. There is to be no spoil but they are to be dedicated for destruction, they are herem (those to be destroyed, annihilated). In modern times we would consider this genocide.

A final note is on the environment which is also a victim in times of war. Siege warfare, which is the type of warfare represented in this section of Deuteronomy, involves cutting a city or refuge off from the surrounding resources of food and water and waiting for the supplies within the city to become desperate. Part of siege warfare against a walled city (which is the first line of defense for a city in the ancient world) is constructing siege engines which are designed to either breach or to go over a city wall. Siege engines and the practice of war in the ancient world would often consume the trees for use in these engines or burn them so that they couldn’t be used by an enemy. While crops can grow back in the next growing season the loss of trees involves a long term loss of production. The limit of cutting down only the trees that do not produce fruit to limit the environmental destruction of the siege is unusual, as well as the way the Deuteronomist frames it, “Are the trees human being that they should come under siege from you?” For the author of Deuteronomy, the conflict is with the people and not with the environment.

Militaristic Language and Its Positive and Negative Usage

You do not have to look far for examples of how religion has been used to justify any number of horrors. This is not exclusive to any faith and occurs even in non-religious governments. As Miroslav Volf states memorably:

The majority of the world’s populations is religious, and when they are at war, their gods are invariably at war too. It would seem that if we reconciled the gods we would come closer to reconciling the peoples. The question is, however, who is fighting whose battles in those wars? Are the people fighting the battles of the power-hungry gods or are the gods fighting the battles of their bellicose peoples? The two are not mutually exclusive, of course. My suspicion is, however, that the gods mostly get the short end of it: they end up doing more of the dirty work for their presumed earthly servants than their servants do for them. And when the gods refuse to do the dirty work most people involved in conflicts either discard them in favor of more compliant gods or seek to reeducate them, which amounts to the same thing. The poor gods! What they have to endure at the hands of their humble devotees! (Volf, 1996, p. 284)

And it is not hard to see how passages like Psalm 149 “Praise the Lord!…Let the high praise of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands” (verses 1, 6) can quickly evolve into “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. There is great damage that has been done when people are absolutely convinced that the LORD or another god is on their side and that they are involved in a struggle against an unredeemable opponent. Whether it is groups like ISIS/ISIL, or Christian groups calling for the elimination of Muslims, or even the inter-ethnic atrocities like Rwanda and Bosnia that are justified under the belief that they are the righteous ones of a god purging the earth of the infidel. These actions seem to come first from the desire to do violence or oppress another group and then the religious militaristic language is brought in as justification of the work. The poor gods, what they must suffer from the hands of their devotees.

Yet, for all of its danger and the way that militaristic language has been utilized to sanctify violence, oppression, enslavement, rape, environmental destruction and even genocide, I still think there is a place for this language. Psalm 46, which was Luther’s inspiration for “A Mighty Fortress”, is full of militaristic images as the song itself is and yet it also speaks to the conflict that the faithful feel in the world. In the hands of the oppressed it has often been utilized to point to the God of liberation that cares for and lifts up the poor, the oppressed, the forgotten and the least. It has certainly been misused by the powerful as well as the disenfranchised to authorize their violence. Yet, it also has spoken to people in their lives. We may not be able to redeem texts like Deuteronomy 20, or at least not all of it, but it speaks to a people whose lives did involve conflict. We may not share the Deuteronomist’s certainty that God is on our side, and when we are too certain we probably have crafted a god in our own image, but we do need to wrestle with, in a world that is still full of conflict, war and oppression, where our God is in the midst of these struggles.

War, God and our Secular Age

The enlightenment arose out of the ashes of conflicts over religion in Europe and now we live in an age where, in the United States and much of Europe, spirituality has been consigned to the realm of private choice. When pastors and priests blessed the soldiers of the various armies going off to war in World War I, the war to end all wars as it was known then, they believed that their causes were linked directly to God’s cause and that nation and God were closely joined together. After two world wars and countless other wars of the twentieth and twenty first century for most people in the United States our current wars may have religious undertones but they are not authorized by God. There are exceptions to this, but the wars of state are no longer uniformly blessed by the churches, mosques, and temples of the land. In the United States the war on terror has at times moved towards being portrayed as a between Christianity and Islam, yet within many religious circles there has been a continual lament and protest against this conflict as well.

As people of faith how do we engage warfare and conflict? What are the central beliefs that shape our interpretation of the world around us? If faith in merely a private spirituality we never have to engage questions like this but if it is a public faith, then we have to engage our faith in the messiness and the conflicts of the real world. As a Christian and as a Lutheran I do go back to the life and witness of Jesus which continually calls us to love even my enemy and to pray for them, to turn the other cheek in response to being struck and to learn how to forgive. Christians have long struggled with theologically making a case for various wars or military service and I won’t even attempt to answer those questions here. I am a military veteran and that is a part of my own history and the things God used to shape me for my life and thankfully I never had to endure the hell that is war, training for war is hellish enough. And yet, I can hope, with Isaiah, for the time when nations no longer train for war, when swords are beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.

Let us Beat Swords Into Plowshares, a sculpture by Evgeniy Vuchetich, given by the Soviet Union to the United Nations in 1959

Let us Beat Swords Into Plowshares, a sculpture by Evgeniy Vuchetich, given by the Soviet Union to the United Nations in 1959

Deuteronomy 19: Justice, Refuge and Grace

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"Bouguereau-The First Mourning-1888" by William-Adolphe Bouguereau - Art Renewal Center – description. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bouguereau-The_First_Mourning-1888.jpg#/media/File:Bouguereau-The_First_Mourning-1888.jpg

“Bouguereau-The First Mourning-1888” by William-Adolphe Bouguereau – Art Renewal Center – description. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bouguereau-The_First_Mourning-1888.jpg#/media/File:Bouguereau-The_First_Mourning-1888.jpg

Deuteronomy 19: 1-13: Cities of Refuge

1 When the LORD your God has cut off the nations whose land the LORD your God is giving you, and you have dispossessed them and settled in their towns and in their houses, 2 you shall set apart three cities in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess. 3 You shall calculate the distances and divide into three regions the land that the LORD your God gives you as a possession, so that any homicide can flee to one of them.

 4 Now this is the case of a homicide who might flee there and live, that is, someone who has killed another person unintentionally when the two had not been at enmity before: 5 Suppose someone goes into the forest with another to cut wood, and when one of them swings the ax to cut down a tree, the head slips from the handle and strikes the other person who then dies; the killer may flee to one of these cities and live. 6 But if the distance is too great, the avenger of blood in hot anger might pursue and overtake and put the killer to death, although a death sentence was not deserved, since the two had not been at enmity before. 7 Therefore I command you: You shall set apart three cities.

                8 If the LORD your God enlarges your territory, as he swore to your ancestors– and he will give you all the land that he promised your ancestors to give you, 9 provided you diligently observe this entire commandment that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God and walking always in his ways– then you shall add three more cities to these three, 10 so that the blood of an innocent person may not be shed in the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, thereby bringing bloodguilt upon you. 11 But if someone at enmity with another lies in wait and attacks and takes the life of that person, and flees into one of these cities, 12 then the elders of the killer’s city shall send to have the culprit taken from there and handed over to the avenger of blood to be put to death. 13 Show no pity; you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, so that it may go well with you.

                 With the roles that people will play within the community to ensure justice established in chapters 17 and 18 (judges, priests, king and prophets) now this section of Deuteronomy turns to expounding upon laws that continue to flesh out the ten commandments, particularly how the people of Israel are to relate to one another. There is less of a narrative and more of a didactic tone as the exposition of the law is intended to illustrate what the covenant life of the people is to look like and the manner in which they are interconnected with their God, the land and with one another. The author of Deuteronomy may not move systematically through the various commandments in articulating this exposition of the law, but is continually concerned to relate the adherence to the commandments to the people’s continuing life under the covenant with their LORD.

The setting up of cities of refuge assumes a situation very different from our modern legal system. In ancient honor bound agrarian societies if a member of the family was killed it was the family’s responsibility to enact justice. Deuteronomy assumes this type of system but also limits it with the provision of cities of refuge where a person who has killed another may flee to. Mentioned in Exodus 21: 13 and later designated in Joshua 20 they provide a place where the cycle of violence may be stopped providing the killing is accidental. If the killing is murder, the elders fill a judicial function in having the murderer turned over from the city of refuge to the family. The family remains the executor of judgment in this system.

Within this law setting aside both the cities of refuge and the method of justice to prevent a murder from remaining in sanctuary within these cities is an understanding of innocent blood which would contaminate the land and bring bloodguilt upon the people. Perhaps the understanding of this bloodguilt is similar to God’s response to Cain in Genesis 4:

And the LORD said, “What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now cursed you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. Genesis 4: 10-11

Innocent blood calls out to God who is ultimately the one who will have vengeance. There is an understanding that only blood can atone for blood and that the injury is not only against the individual but also the community and their holiness before God.

Issues of revenge and vengeance are huge threats to order within any society. There needs to be some manner that wrongs can be addressed. Yet, there also is a role for the legal system of a society to place a limit on the practice of revenge or vigilante justice. As much as Americans may love characters like Batman who are symbols of vigilante justice in a society where justice is perceived to be lacking. The reality of people creating their own systems of justice in a system where justice is not being carried out effectively (or rigorously enough) has led to many terrible acts throughout history. As will be outlined later in the chapter what is being sought is not vengeance but instead proportional justice. The lex talionis, (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, etc.) which probably was not enforced literally, provided a formula for justice that did not exceed the damage caused.

 

Deuteronomy 19:14 Honoring Boundaries

14 You must not move your neighbor’s boundary marker, set up by former generations, on the property that will be allotted to you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess.

 

The gift of the land to the people of Israel was a part of their living out of the providence of their LORD. Within this society, where land is the primary means of producing food and ultimately wealth, the book of Deuteronomy has a very different understanding of land than our modern understanding derived from philosophers like John Locke or Adam Smith. For the people of Israel land was to remain with a family and was not viewed as private property that could be bartered or sold, it was to remain with the family for as long as the people remained faithful to God’s commandments. It was contingent on their relation to God, not to their ability to acquire more wealth.  Moving the boundary markers on a neighbor’s property is stealing from their neighbor in addition to failing to trust in the provision of God for their needs.

 

Deuteronomy 19: 15-21 Bearing False Witness

15 A single witness shall not suffice to convict a person of any crime or wrongdoing in connection with any offense that may be committed. Only on the evidence of two or three witnesses shall a charge be sustained. 16 If a malicious witness comes forward to accuse someone of wrongdoing, 17 then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the LORD, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days, 18 and the judges shall make a thorough inquiry. If the witness is a false witness, having testified falsely against another, 19 then you shall do to the false witness just as the false witness had meant to do to the other. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. 20 The rest shall hear and be afraid, and a crime such as this shall never again be committed among you. 21 Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

Central to the pursuit of justice is truthfulness. Truth is not only about not telling falsehoods, but also about the damage it does to the neighbor and by extension the community. Fear of punishment is a part of the understanding for obedience in Deuteronomy. People are to fear the consequences of their actions both from God and from the community. Deuteronomy’s justice is a harsh justice but it is a proportional one, and here the lex talionis is applied to the concept of bearing false witness or perjury against another. The punishment is in relation to the damage the false witness intended to do to the neighbor.

Within any community people will act out of self-interest and look for advantages over their neighbor. Yet, Israel was intended to embody something different. They were to look out for and to care for their neighbor. Within the laws of Deuteronomy safe guards are put in place, like the provision of needing multiple witnesses to convict a person of any crime or wrongdoing and the important role of the judges and the priests in ensuring an impartial hearing. For Deuteronomy’s author the consequences are too high for justice to be corrupted. The bloodguilt would cry out against the community before God and the people would find themselves needing to atone for the wrongs done to the innocent.

Some Christians embrace this harsh judgment within Deuteronomy and would love to see a legal system that is as unforgiving and which embraces capital punishment for a number of crimes. They may also want to ensure that they can have the right to bear arms and have the ability to be enforcers of this system like the families in the ancient world would do in relation to a murder. Yet, Christians also have to wrestle with the way Jesus engages this text Matthew’s gospel for example:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for and eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist and evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.  Matthew 5: 38-42

Jesus was certainly concerned about a community that could live in justice but his manner of speaking about the way this community was centered more upon forgiveness than on justice. Perhaps Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s famous quote that, “there is no future without forgiveness.” Which came out of his experiences in South Africa, represent the challenge of constructing a society where forgiveness can lead to justice. But whether we talk about Jesus (see immediately before the above quote in Matthew 5: 33-37), or Archbishop Tutu, or Deuteronomy one of the prerequisites for a society that has justice is truthfulness.

Deuteronomy 18: Priests, Prophets and Forbidden Magic

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Deuteronomy 18: 1-8: The Levitical Priests

Painted board of Aaron, oil on wood panel, British, ca 1708

Painted board of Aaron, oil on wood panel, British, ca 1708

1 The levitical priests, the whole tribe of Levi, shall have no allotment or inheritance within Israel. They may eat the sacrifices that are the LORD’s portion 2 but they shall have no inheritance among the other members of the community; the LORD is their inheritance, as he promised them.

3 This shall be the priests’ due from the people, from those offering a sacrifice, whether an ox or a sheep: they shall give to the priest the shoulder, the two jowls, and the stomach. 4 The first fruits of your grain, your wine, and your oil, as well as the first of the fleece of your sheep, you shall give him. 5 For the LORD your God has chosen Levi out of all your tribes, to stand and minister in the name of the LORD, him and his sons for all time.

6 If a Levite leaves any of your towns, from wherever he has been residing in Israel, and comes to the place that the LORD will choose (and he may come whenever he wishes), 7 then he may minister in the name of the LORD his God, like all his fellow-Levites who stand to minister there before the LORD. 8 They shall have equal portions to eat, even though they have income from the sale of family possessions.

In addition to judges and the king outlined in Deuteronomy 16 and 17 respectively now a third ordering portion of society is added, already alluded to in Deuteronomy 17: 8-13 with their role being the final judicial appeal for cases too difficult for the regional judges. This third pillar of the society is the priesthood, a group set aside to minister before the LORD and who serve cultic, teaching and judicial roles for the people of Israel.

The Levites do not have an inheritance of agricultural land, they will have places to live but not the fields for growing crops or animals like the other tribes. On the one hand they are independent of the necessity to work in the fields and are able to dedicate their time to their work of ministering on behalf of the community. On the other hand, they are incredibly vulnerable and dependent on the other tribes providing for them and continuing to offer before the LORD their sacrifices and bringing in their first fruits. If Israel remains faithful to their calling to bring in from the fields their first fruits of grain, wine and oil as well as offering the firstlings of the flock and the other offerings that are outlined the Levites will be taken care of. If Israel becomes a more secular society then the economic security of the Levites is undercut because they do require the other tribes to provide the portion that they are living off of. They have no inheritance other than the LORD which gives them, perhaps, a closer sense of communion with their God but also depends upon receiving the blessing of the LORD through the labor and work of the other tribes.

Israel was intended to be a society structured around this covenantal relationship with their God, not a secular society. In this society structured around a particular understanding of justice the people will care for the tabernacle and later the temple and those who minister to it. The remembered reality is often far different: the priests would often fail in being faithful by abusing their position, the temple and tabernacle would fall into disrepair, the people and kings would be attracted by the ways of the other nations and the economy would become indistinguishable from the nations that surrounded them or the practices of Egypt where they were enslaved.

It is possible that the reference to Levites leaving the towns and coming to minister at the temple/tabernacle may reference the reforms of King Josiah in 2 Kings 23: 8-9, where he tries to centralize the worship of Judah in the temple and eliminates the high places. In the theology of Deuteronomy and the books that come after it, the high places are places where the worship of the LORD is not done correctly, perhaps blending in the elements of the surrounding nations. Perhaps this is also referencing the practices mentioned in 16: 20. The centralization of the cultic functions in Jerusalem does cause a concentration of a large number of levites, but the ongoing narrative also is aware of priests that are scattered throughout the nation. There would be tensions that would arise between the rural priests and the urban priests who became a part of the power structure in Jerusalem, but these verses imagine a situation where rural priests would be welcomed into Jerusalem as equals.

We live in a very different world than the one imagined in Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy the Levites become one of the central parts of the society ordered around the worship of the LORD. In the United States where there is a strange hybrid relationship between the religious and the secular those in religious callings that are dependent upon the support of their congregations share the blessing and insecurity imagined for the Levites. There is the gift of being able to dedicate one’s time to the ministry that they fell called to be a part of. Yet, particularly in our increasingly spiritual but not religious age where many congregations are aging and shrinking and fewer people identify themselves religiously as a part of a congregation much less support one financially, many leaders of religious communities are finding their calling very tenuous. Unlike the Levites there is the opportunity in a diverse economy for dual callings where the religious role becomes one of two or more roles that sustain a person and their family, but in the ancient world where wealth was tied to land the Levites were placed in a vulnerable state if the other tribes did not support the religious system.

Deuteronomy 18: 9-14: Forbidden Magic

9 When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you must not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. 10 No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire, or who practices divination, or is a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, 11 or one who casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits, or who seeks oracles from the dead. 12 For whoever does these things is abhorrent to the LORD; it is because of such abhorrent practices that the LORD your God is driving them out before you. 13 You must remain completely loyal to the LORD your God. 14 Although these nations that you are about to dispossess do give heed to soothsayers and diviners, as for you, the LORD your God does not permit you to do so.

We live in a world where magic is predominantly a part of fiction and the magicians we may see are illusionists that are able to trick our senses through various forms of deception. There are still people who look to horoscopes, palm readers, mediums and other spiritual forms of divining the future but for most people in our society theses are looked upon in terms of entertainment rather than items to place one’s trust in. In the world of Deuteronomy, the practices listed were apparently real and persuasive options available in the world they lived within. All of these forms of magic and divining the future were not to be things that the people of Israel were to heed.

Many of the prohibited practices relate to trying to predict the future or discern how a person is to act to bring about a desired future, whether through practices like augury or by inquiring of the dead. In many respects this vacancy is to be filled by the role of the prophet talked about in the coming verses, even though the biblical prophets are primarily concerned with the present and its impact on the immediate future. Perhaps one of the key differences comes from a different view of the universe. For many people in the ancient world the future was fixed and many ancient religions have some idea of fate. For the people of Israel the future rested in God’s freedom and their relationship with their God. Ultimately God would decide the course of their lives based upon their obedience to the covenant. Deuteronomy will echo repeatedly: if you follow the ways of the covenant you will be blessed and your lives will be long, if you do not follow the commandments and ordinances you will be cursed.

In verse 13, the command is that “you must remain completely loyal to the LORD your God.” Walter Brueggemann points out when speaking about the word translated completely loyal, “The Hebrew term tāmîm means “integrated, whole, undivided, as one unit.” This idea and term likely lies behind Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5:48 which gets translated, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The translation in the gospel as perfect could mislead the reader to think this is about some type of moral perfection which is different from the direction of the Sermon on the Mount within which this verse is contained. Jesus and Deuteronomy are both calling for unreserved loyalty and living a whole integrated life within the followers ongoing relationship with their God. (Brueggemann, 2001 , p. 194)

Deuteronomy 18: 15-22 The Prophetic Voice

Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem by Rembrandt van Rijn 1630

Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem by Rembrandt van Rijn 1630

15 The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet. 16 This is what you requested of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said: “If I hear the voice of the LORD my God any more, or ever again see this great fire, I will die.” 17 Then the LORD replied to me: “They are right in what they have said. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command. 19 Anyone who does not heed the words that the prophet shall speak in my name, I myself will hold accountable. 20 But any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, or who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak– that prophet shall die.” 21 You may say to yourself, “How can we recognize a word that the LORD has not spoken?” 22 If a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it.

 The fourth and final pillar of the Israelite society is the voice of the prophet. The judges, priests and king will all be voices charged with defending the faithfulness of Israel and protecting the justice for all the people, especially the vulnerable. Yet, the judges, priests and king will all compose the ruling class of the people and come from privileged positions which may skew their perspective on justice at times. With Moses all of these roles are held within one person but in the coming future without Moses these gifts will need to be spread among the community, yet the prophetic voice, the one charged with speaking on behalf of God, is a unique gift of the Hebrew people. The prophets may or may not come from the priestly Levites, but they are charged with standing between God and the people as a mouthpiece. Often their words will be uncomfortable: they will challenge kings and sometimes be thought of as traitors. In Deuteronomy 13 it is the faithfulness of the prophet to the LORD that is the critical discernment as to whether the prophet is a true or false prophet, but sometimes a situation may arise, as in Jeremiah 28 where Hananiah and Jeremiah are proclaiming two very different prophecies and both apparently in the name of the LORD. Now the actual occurrence of the prophecy becomes a key part of discerning who the true and false prophet is. Being a true prophet of God is often a dangerous and lonely vocation because it often challenges the monarchy, priestly and judicial powers calling them back to justice and their vocation on behalf of the LORD. Only certain people seem to be able to hear the voice of the LORD, and this story places this back with the reception of the law at Mount Horeb/Sinai (see Exodus 20: 18-21). The word of God being enfleshed in messengers rather than appearing in its terrifying unveiled power is a concession to the people’s plea. Yet, in this enfleshment in the prophets there is also the potential for abuses even in this office. The story of Israel will be full of false prophets who tell people what they want or expect to hear or those who ensnare others. The prophets will also be those who at least in some cases, like Elijah and Elisha, are able to act as an extension of God’s power towards (or against) the people of Israel.

Within the person of Moses he bears together the roles of leader, priest, judge and prophet. From a Christian perspective these roles come together in a very different way with Jesus. Because of this it is not surprising that the gospel of Matthew spends a lot of time placing Jesus and Moses alongside each other and understands who Jesus is in light of Moses story and role. It is very early in the Christian church that you can find references to the three roles of Christ: as prophet, priest and king. And perhaps it is underappreciated how Jesus was seen by the people of his time as a prophet because his words and his actions would have called to mind some of the biblical prophets that had been a part of the story of Israel.

Deuteronomy 17: A Society Structured Around One Lord

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The Blasphemer, as in Leviticus 24: 13-23, by William Blake circa 1800

The Blasphemer, as in Leviticus 24: 13-23, by William Blake circa 1800

Deuteronomy 16:20-17:7 Only the LORD your God

1You must not sacrifice to the LORD your God an ox or a sheep that has a defect, anything seriously wrong; for that is abhorrent to the LORD your God.

                2 If there is found among you, in one of your towns that the LORD your God is giving you, a man or woman who does what is evil in the sight of the LORD your God, and transgresses his covenant 3 by going to serve other gods and worshiping them– whether the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven, which I have forbidden– 4 and if it is reported to you or you hear of it, and you make a thorough inquiry, and the charge is proved true that such an abhorrent thing has occurred in Israel, 5 then you shall bring out to your gates that man or that woman who has committed this crime and you shall stone the man or woman to death. 6 On the evidence of two or three witnesses the death sentence shall be executed; a person must not be put to death on the evidence of only one witness. 7 The hands of the witnesses shall be the first raised against the person to execute the death penalty, and afterward the hands of all the people. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

For the author of Deuteronomy the first and central commandment that the people are only to have the LORD as their God. It comes at the head of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy 5:6:

I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me

and in Deuteronomy 6: 4-5:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

Even before this Deuteronomy 4 emphasizes this same theme, as do Deuteronomy 7, 8, and 9. Deuteronomy 12 again addresses this issue in relation to destroying places of worship for other gods, and all of Deuteronomy 13 addresses this issue in stark terms of what the punishment is to be for violating this covenant relationship by individuals or by entire towns. It comes up here again at the end of 16 and beginning of 17 because it is such a central issue for the Deuteronomist that the author wants no chance for the hearer/reader to miss it. Being an aural culture the things that are central will be repeated over and over to ensure that they are heard by the listening audience. The death penalty for following other gods may seem harsh to us, and I address this question in greater detail when I talk about Deuteronomy 13, but this unique relationship with the LORD is to be at the center of the life of the people of Israel.

The LORD is not to be worshiped in the same way that the gods of the nations around the people are worshiped, there is to be no blending of the gods of the nations and the LORD. The people are also to bring their best to the worship of their LORD, not the animals that are defective. For the Deuteronomist these are life and death decisions, and yet they are still bound by the due process of the law. Justice is expected and a thorough investigation of any claims of idolatry are to be made. Deuteronomy 17 probably lays behind the command in Matthew 18.16 of wanting claims to be confirmed with the testimony of two or three witnesses and also behind the command for the one who is without sin to ‘cast the first stone’ in John 8 (even though this deals with adultery). In a contemporary fictional setting it is similar to the insistence of Ned Stark in the Game of Thrones that the one who passes the sentence should swing the sword, but instead here it is the witness who has testified against a person who must cast the initial stone of the community’s judgment. As Walter Brueggemann can state, “The book of Deuteronomy is committed to a rule of law even if it is a severe rule of law.” (Brueggemann, 2001 , p. 181) The nation of Israel is to be a theocracy where ultimately the LORD their God is at the center of their judicial, religious and political life and the central place of their LORD their God should, in the view of Deuteronomy, impact the way they structure the leadership and judicial life of their community

Deuteronomy 17:8-13 The Levitical Judicial Function

8 If a judicial decision is too difficult for you to make between one kind of bloodshed and another, one kind of legal right and another, or one kind of assault and another– any such matters of dispute in your towns– then you shall immediately go up to the place that the LORD your God will choose, 9 where you shall consult with the levitical priests and the judge who is in office in those days; they shall announce to you the decision in the case. 10 Carry out exactly the decision that they announce to you from the place that the LORD will choose, diligently observing everything they instruct you. 11 You must carry out fully the law that they interpret for you or the ruling that they announce to you; do not turn aside from the decision that they announce to you, either to the right or to the left. 12 As for anyone who presumes to disobey the priest appointed to minister there to the LORD your God, or the judge, that person shall die. So you shall purge the evil from Israel. 13 All the people will hear and be afraid, and will not act presumptuously again.

The vision of Deuteronomy is for a theocracy, a nation that is an extension of the covenantal relationship with the LORD their God, and so all of the functions of life are structured around trying to create that type of a nation. In many respects ancient Judaism and Islam share this desire to create nations that are structured in this manner and so in ancient Judaism, like some Muslim states, the highest court of appeals is a religious court and not a secular one. For people who live in Europe or the United States this may seem a strange concept because we live in a post-enlightenments modern society where religion is viewed as a private portion of a person’s life, but this is a relatively recent development. The law for the Jewish people was a reflection of their covenantal relationship with their God and it was viewed as a gift that God had given them. Even the judges that were a part of the tribes were expected to judge in accordance with the ideals outlined in the law. It doesn’t take long reading through books like Judges or 1 Samuel to find ways in which the judges often failed in this respect, but the ideal was that those entrusted with ministering to the LORD in the tabernacle or temple would be those most focused on the ideals of justice that the LORD called for. People are to obey the judgments of this religious and tribal courts, for a judge whose sentence holds no power is not going to be effective in enforcing this justice. So again, it is a harsh justice, where the penalty for disobeying a priest or a judge in their sentences is execution.

Deuteronomy 17: 14-20 The Model King

                14 When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,” 15 you may indeed set over you a king whom the LORD your God will choose. One of your own community you may set as king over you; you are not permitted to put a foreigner over you, who is not of your own community. 16 Even so, he must not acquire many horses for himself, or return the people to Egypt in order to acquire more horses, since the LORD has said to you, “You must never return that way again.” 17 And he must not acquire many wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away; also silver and gold he must not acquire in great quantity for himself. 18 When he has taken the throne of his kingdom, he shall have a copy of this law written for him in the presence of the levitical priests. 19 It shall remain with him and he shall read in it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, diligently observing all the words of this law and these statutes, 20 neither exalting himself above other members of the community nor turning aside from the commandment, either to the right or to the left, so that he and his descendants may reign long over his kingdom in Israel.

Willem de Poorter, 'De afgoderij van konig Solomo'-Solomon's decent into idolatry (between 1630 and 1648)

Willem de Poorter, ‘De afgoderij van konig Solomo’-Solomon’s decent into idolatry (between 1630 and 1648)

Most people assume that the monarchy, and particularly the Davidic monarchy, was universally embraced by scriptures and particularly King David and Solomon are the great kings where everything went well during their reign. The bible is not unanimous in endorsing having a king at all and for example in 1 Samuel 8, when the people are demanding of Samuel a king the LORD’s response is telling:

“Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. Now then, listen to their voice; only—you shall solemnly want them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.” 1 Samuel 8: 7-9

The Deuteronomic history (the books beginning with Judges and stretching through 2 Kings) is pretty unromantic when it describes the failings of the kings that would rule over Judah and Israel, and it is telling the way that Deuteronomy describes the aspects of who the king is to be, they are the opposite of King Solomon. Most Christians know little of the story of Solomon, other than his request for wisdom and his building of the temple, but the way 1 Kings tells of his reign he quickly is drawn into a quest for wealth, military power and in making alliance is led astray from being faithful to the LORD, the God of Israel. Solomon imports horses from Egypt and has 12,000 horses and 1,400 chariots. Horses in the ancient world are a sign of military might. With power centralized and the military muscle to back up that power the king of Israel may begin to act like the Pharaohs of Egypt and the people become plunged into dependence under the burden of supplying for the hunger of a large military budget. 1 Kings goes at length into describing the wealth that Solomon accumulates as well as the incredible investment in projects beyond the temple, like his own palace. Solomon’s reign is reported to have brought in more than five tons of gold a year in addition to countless other resources. Finally Solomon is lifted up as having seven hundred princesses and three hundred concubines. All of these are direct counters to Deuteronomy’s vision of what a king is to be, and are ultimately blamed for the rising opposition to Solomon in his life and the splitting of the kingdom in two after his death. I tell about this briefly in the Place of Authority posts.

The title of the book of Deuteronomy comes from verse 18 where it refers to a copy of the law (in greek deutero nomos-second law) that the king is to read from each night and to be the way in which the king stays grounded in the covenantal life the people are called to.  Ultimately in the view of Deuteronomy the king is subservient to the will of the LORD. In reality, this rarely seemed to be the case in the story of the people of Judah and Israel. In a time where the majority of the population would be illiterate and not have access to written copies of the law they did rely upon the leaders including the king and the religious authorities guiding them in their actions. The bible evaluates the kings theologically: were they faithful to the LORD their God or did they lead the people to follow other gods?

I am writing from a Christian perspective, and in the church year we are approaching Christ the King Sunday and perhaps as Christians it might be worth examining how Jesus who we call Messiah or Christ (which means anointed king) lives into this identity. In Paul’s short statement of who Christ was in Philippians 2:

Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Philippians 2: 6-8.

Many of the servant songs from Isaiah, which Christians read as talking about Jesus probably originally were trying to consider a monarch that might embody the vision of passages like Deuteronomy 17. Perhaps when the New Testament talks about explaining who Jesus was from the law and the prophets this is one of the places in the law where the early Christians went back to.

Mark’s Portrait of the Jesus and the World He Lived in Part 5

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Icon, St. Mark the Evangelist by Emmanuel Tzanes (1657)

Icon, St. Mark the Evangelist by Emmanuel Tzanes (1657)

Mark’s Portrait of the Jesus and the World He Lived in Part 5: Structure and Reading in Light of the Cross

This final entry on these windows into how Mark presents Jesus and his world to us deals with two large topics which could consume a lot of space on their own right, but since these are designed more as an introduction to the way Mark presents Jesus and his world they will be shown briefly as a way to suggest some further work. When we look at the Bible in general and the sixty six books that make up the canon of many people’s Bibles if we pay attention we realize that the people who composed the scriptures do not tell stories the way that we tell stories. In the modern world, stories are written for the eyes and paper is cheap (and digital print is nearly free). We live in a literate, or as some would argue post-literate culture. We live in a culture where literacy in at least one language is assumed, where education is available for men and women to be able to read and write at some level of proficiency and where information is available on diverse platforms and especially with the advent of the internet and digital connectivity we are able to access a wide variety of media from a variety of perspectives with very little effort compared to previous times and places. With the easy accessibility of the written word, some would argue we have even gone as far as living in a post-literate culture where everyone has the ability to read but due to the increasingly visual nature of communication many people no longer utilize their literacy to be a primary source of information but instead rely upon the continual availability of visual media to be their source of information to interpret their world. Regardless of whether we live in a literate or post-literate world we live in a far different world than the world of the writers of scripture, like the Gospel of Mark.

The Gospel of Mark is written to an aural culture (aural having to do with the ear). Most people in the time of Mark’s gospel would not be highly literate or have access to written texts.  One of the reasons the scribes receive the highlighting they do in the gospels is that they are among those religious and political elites that were both literate and had access to the written texts. Visual images were present in the time of the gospels but they were permanent, and they would be placed onto stones or coins where they would combine physical images with textual information so that information could be communicated that way, but to lock in images this way was costly and time consuming. These images did not change and became a static part of people’s environment. Most information was communicated by speaking and in ancient cultures they had ears to hear far better than we did. They would be familiar, for example with large pieces of Torah or the prophets or the Psalms being read and or sung. They were able to listen for longer periods of time than we are used to listening for and they also knew how to structure speech so that it could be remembered. That does not mean that written texts were not consulted, merely that people’s memories also became saturated with the images of scriptures and the stories they heard primarily through the spoken word. When you are telling a spoken story, you tell it differently if you want people to remember the details and Mark’s Gospel is an excellent example of an aural piece of literature, a piece of work that is written more for the ear and less for the eye.

When you tell an aural story you don’t spend all of your time on details, you allow the person hearing the story to fill in the details of the world. When we read a novel, for example, we expect the author to narrate for us a description of the world and to paint us a picture with words about how something looked, tasted, smelled, sounded like, felt like, what feelings it evoked in the person and more. If you read the Biblical stories they are incredibly short when they give descriptions and when they do it is something to pay attention to. Mark is incredibly terse in how he tells his story, but it is also designed to be able to be memorized by a storyteller and told over and over again. The telling of Mark’s gospel takes about two hours from beginning to end and was memorable  enough to still be referred to over 2,000 years later.

Structure in Mark’s Story

Mark uses structure in a lot of ways to propel the story along. Sometimes Mark wants people to hear a linkage between various events and so uses shared vocabulary to link one event to another.  And example of this is the linkage between the baptism story in Mark and the crucifixion story where the temple veil is torn. Mark uses a very unusual word for this- schizomenous  a word that only appears twice in the New Testament  and both occurrences are in Mark. Schizomenous refers to an irreparably tearing, the beginning of the work is where we get schizophrenia from, and it occurs on the front end of the story in the baptism with the heavens being ripped apart and at the end of the story where the temple veil is torn apart forming a linkage between the two event. Hearing this unusual word could create in the hearers a sense of wonder at the connection between the crucifixion and the baptism, between the temple veil and the veil of heaven and what it means that they are both now ripped apart. Through something as simple as shared vocabulary Mark is able to make a profound linkage between two events that a casual reader may miss.

Mark has a distinctive vocabulary as well that pushes the narrative along and like most storytellers has words that speed up the narrative or slow it down. Characteristic of Mark is the tendency to drive the narrative quickly, particularly with the word euthus, which is frequently translated immediately or at that time (which doesn’t carry the same level of urgency that the word is trying to convey.) Mark wants us to understand that things are happening quickly in this narrative and the terse manner of storytelling compels this even faster.

Mark also uses geographical features to give structure to the story. This not only helps in remembering the story by forming inclusions, it also links the stories together in very interesting linguistic ways. For example in Mark 4. 35-51 Jesus stills the storm as they journey across the water to Gerasene and in Mark 6. 45-52 Jesus now walks on water while the disciples are on the journey to Geneserret. The linkage in the two stories of wondering who then is this Jesus also brackets a section where this question comes up again, but the section ends with the disciples not understanding  and their hearts being hardened. In a similar way mountain scenes tend to reveal, although in sometimes hidden ways who Jesus is: for example Jesus goes up a mountain to set aside the 12 apostles, later going up to the mountain to be transfigured before Peter, James and John. At times the mountains point back to times in the story of Israel, like the temple mount with Solomon or the Mount of Olives with David entering from that direction, other times the connection is less concrete as the hill of Golgotha is contrasted with the Temple mount and yet in many respects for Mark’s Gospel Golgatha comes to occupy the space of the temple mount and becomes the place where the disciples flee from but the Transfiguration in reinterpreted.

Sometimes Mark will use similar stories to form an inclusion, a set of brackets to what is within and the transition to what is to come. For example there are two feeding stories in Mark, the feeding of the 5,000 in Mark 6. 30-42 and the feeding of 4,000 in Mark 8.1-10 and could be looked at like this:

Feeding 5, 000

Jesus walks on water

Jesus heals sick in Gennesaret

What makes clean and unclean

Healing of Syrophonecian’s daughter

Healing of the deaf man

Feeding 4,000

 

Now a lot more could be gone into with the breaking down and highlighting of how this structure is highlighting different parts of the story and how they go together but at the center of the story is a question about what is unclean and clean and it is surrounded by stories where Jesus heals and while the disciples do not understand the deaf man is enabled to hear.  Another example is the use of healing of blind men in 8.22-26 and 10.46-52 to mark the beginning and end of a section on the disciples seeing and not seeing before transitioning into the crucifixion narrative.

 

Mark is a master storyteller and uses all sorts of structural elements to add flavor to his terse story and to evoke from that structure and highlights a broader story of God and God’s people that the story is a part of. Mark may focus primarily on what Jesus does, but in what is said and what is alluded to he also wants us to enter into the mystery of who Jesus is. It is a tightly woven story with many linkages and often there is benefit from both the wide reading of the entire narrative as well as paying close attention to the individual pieces that compose the narrative quilt.

Reading Backwards from the Crucifixion

Reproduction of Carl Heinrich Bloch's, Christ on the Cross (1870)

Reproduction of Carl Heinrich Bloch’s, Christ on the Cross (1870)

Mark has been called a crucifixion narrative with an extended prologue, and six of the sixteen chapters of Mark deal with the final week of Jesus’ life. There are a variety of ways that the New Testament talks about the crucifixion, many times they want to explain what is happening in the crucifixion but Mark at best alludes to this and is much more interested in narrating the journey to the cross and beyond. Mark does not engage in any discussion about atonement theology or Jesus dying for our sins, in fact the closest he comes to that is in Mark 10.45 where he states “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus goes to a Roman cross, rejected by the leaders of the temple and executed as a low class political prisoner and Mark’s narrative understands the scandal of the crucifixion for the early followers of Christ in the Roman world but Mark also doesn’t back away from this part of the story, instead the rest of the story only makes sense in light of the crucifixion.

Beginning at the midpoint of the story in chapter 8, Jesus begins to tell his disciples that he is going to be rejected by the elders, the chief priest and the scribes and be killed (see Mark 8.31, 9.31 and 10.33). Even before we arrive in the story in Jerusalem we are told over and over again where the story is going. Once in Jerusalem we encounter a story that is full of scriptural, political and religious overtones. Jesus enters Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, the way that David had entered the city in celebration in a way that intentionally echoes Zechariah 9.9, as the peaceful king who arrives on the donkey rather than the warhorse. It also has political implications as it implicitly mocks not only the pretensions of Kings like Herod Antipas in Jesus time, who ruled in Galilee, or Pontus Pilate and by extension Caesar.  Jesus immediately challenges the temple hierarchy and much of the story over the preceeding chapters (Mark 11 and 12) involves the various groups trying to shame Jesus and separate him from his authority with the crowds. Mark links a group of passages around money with the story of the widows mite leading into a long statement about times to come (and particularly the destruction of the temple) with another anonymous woman who anoints Jesus with very costly ointment of nard (and how that money could have been used) and then Judas being offered money to betray Jesus. These stories link together suggestively and it is an interesting contrast between the anonymous women and the infamous disciple but they stop short of being declarative. We, for example, are never given by Mark a reason why Judas betrays Jesus, although the other gospels will supply us with different reasons. The Passover meal that Jesus shares with his disciples becomes a new covenant and a new meal to be done to tell again a different and new story of God’s deliverance of God’s people. Playing with the resonant images of the festival Mark paints a powerful picture of what is getting ready to occur as we approach the crucifixion, although again in a suggestive and mysterious way.

Jesus again takes Peter, and James and John, like in the transfiguration, to Gethsemane and the three disciples again are unable to respond faithfully. The location links it back to the times when Jesus is declared the beloved Son and it is contrasted with the Father who does not respond to the prayer for the cup to be removed. Again, suggestively the language of cup also links back to the language of the meal where the cup is the blood of the covenant. Jesus is betrayed and taken into custody by the ominous crowd bearing clubs and swords and put on the stand for blasphemy. This is only a trial in the loosest of terms, but in the midst of the trial what has been hidden is made known when Jesus claims in front of the elders, the chief priests and the scribes his identity in terms of the words of Daniel 7 as the son of man. Jesus is handed over to Pilate and the charge against him becomes a political one, he is crucified as king of the Jews and a freedom fighter names Barabbas is released in his place. It is an interesting note that Barabbas means son of the father, and so one obedient Son of the Father is rejected for a rebellious one.

The crucifixion narrative itself is often misunderstood in popular portrayals because of the excessive focus on the flogging. The flogging and the mocking by the soldiers is more to dishonor the person than to weaken them, the Romans wanted their victims not to be too weakened otherwise they would die too quickly on the cross.  Crucifixion was a slow and agonizing way to die as the body fights against the limits of pain and suffocation. The people who were crucified where stripped and placed up as examples of what the cost of defying Rome was and not only were their bodies tortured by the long and painful process of crucifixion their honor was to die as well. Yet, in classic Markan irony it is from the mocking mouths of many of those around the cross that truth is said. Even the final statement from the centurion that , “Truly this man was God’s Son!” could be read as a final ironic (but true)mockery or an unexpected statement of faith from an enemy (much like the demons or the Syro-Phonecian  woman).  Mark brings us into the mystery of this God forsaken moment and invites us to wonder once again about the mystery of who this Jesus is, and is Jesus separated from God, is Jesus taking on the role of Israel, what is the linkage between these words of Psalm 22 spoken from the cross to the promised presence of God.  Mark does not present nice easy answers, but invites us to go back to the story again and wonder who this Jesus is and what the kingdom of God means. By linking the crucifixion and the baptism we wonder again about this ‘Beloved son’ also being the forsaken one. We are invited into a mystery where words fail us and the truth can overwhelm us.

Mark leaves the story on an unsettled note, an unsettled resurrection where the women  flee in terror and amazement and say nothing to anyone for they were afraid. Perhaps this ending reflects the ongoing nature of the story in the Markan communities, or the inability to put into words the mystery that they were a part of.  Perhaps we are called to go back to the Transfiguration where the Peter, and James and John are terrified, or in the boat where Jesus passes by and tells them not to be afraid, or when the storm has subsided and they are in great awe. To me Mark asks us to go back to story after story and to wonder again, ‘Who then is this Jesus and what is this kingdom of God that has come near.’ What words can we use to describe this mystery and do we dare state what seems to be a reality that somehow in this Jesus that God has come down to be among us in the most unusual and unexpected of ways? Mark’s story point to the crucifixion and the crucifixion and resurrection points us back to re-enter the story and see things with eyes that can see and to hear it with ears that can hear.

 

 

Mark’s Portrait of Jesus and The World He Lived in Part 4

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Mark’s Portrait of Jesus and The World He Lived in Part 4: A Scripture Shaped World

Scroll of the Book of Isaiah

Scroll of the Book of Isaiah

When I originally did my presentation on the Gospel of Mark and the way that it interacts with the world in which Jesus lived and breathed I left out a very important part, the way the Gospel of Mark interacts with the Scriptures (at this time the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament most likely in its Greek translation the Septuagint) and uses the language and world of the scriptures to find a way to talk about who Jesus is and what the Kingdom of God means in a world of the Roman empire, Second Temple Judaism and a world where the conflict between good and evil was viewed in terms of conflict between various spiritual forces. Inhabiting a Jewish world where the language of the scriptures would have been a critical part of that world it is not surprising that Mark uses scriptures to help illuminate who Jesus is and to allude to a deeper engagement with the story of the God of Israel and the people of that God.

The question of Mark as a reader of scripture is normally handled by looking at the explicit places where the gospel quotes the scriptures and often without taking some time to examine the broader question of how Mark is using these scriptures to show who Jesus is. Richard B. Hay’s recent work on the way that the gospel authors utilized scriptures is a helpful and generative study of this question in a much more holistic light. In examining the interaction between the way that the Hebrew Scriptures were read by Mark and the way they form a linguistic world that the gospel is able to access Hays argues:

And upon rereading, we discover numerous passages scattered through this Gospel that offer intimations of a disturbing truth: Jesus’ identity with the one God of Israel. Unlike the Gospel of John—which explicitly declares that Jesus is the Logos, the Son who is one with the Father—Mark shies away from overt ontological declarations. Nonetheless, Mark’s Gospel suggests that Jesus is, in some way that defies comprehension, the embodiment of God’s presence. Mark never quite dares to articulate this claim explicitly; it is too scandalous for direct speech. For Mark, the character of God’s presence in Jesus is a mystery that can be approached only by indirection, through riddle-like allusion to the OT. (Hays, 2014, p. 19f.)Emphasis authors.

From the first direct citation in Mark 1: 2-3 which weaves together Malachi 3.1, and Isaiah 40.3, both passages which link back to the LORD, the God of Israel being the one who is coming, Malachi pointing to the LORD coming in judgment and Isaiah who proclaims the LORD God coming with might to rule and to gather together the people of Israel. Right at the very beginning there are the audacious and bold claims about the one who is coming, and yet throughout the narrative of Mark the characters in the story will wonder and will have the secret kept from them who this Jesus is. The demons may know who Jesus is but they are silenced, others may have flashes of who Jesus is but they are also told not to speak to anyone about it, Jesus’ identity is a mystery that is ultimately revealed by his actions and the way these actions resonate with the story of who God is in relation to God’s people.

Many of the conflicts that emerge between Jesus and the Pharisees early in the gospel revolve around Jesus doing things that are reserved for the God of Israel. In Mark 2.1-12, when Jesus heals the paralytic man who is lowered through his roof the accusation is, “Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” And the scriptures do highlight in several places that the God of Israel does forgive sins, for example Hays lifts up Exodus 34.6-7:

The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation.

A similar dynamic is at play with Jesus declaring he is Lord of the Sabbath at the end of chapter 2, where now Jesus is able to interpret what the commands of God mean and becomes an authoritative interpreter of the scriptures. Perhaps this is some of the wonder that Mark records in 1.22 where the crowds are amazed at him teaching as one with authority.  Mark continues, through Jesus’ actions, to invite us to wonder who Jesus is and how he is connected with the God of Israel, from his healings and exorcisms to the walking on water in Mark 4. 35-41 where the disciples wonder, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” and whether Mark directly evokes Psalm 107 or not, it provides an evocative answer to the question, “Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he brought them out of their distress; he made the storms be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.” Psalm 107. 28f. Continuing in the story of the feeding of the five thousand with the evoking of the image of the people as sheep without a shepherd there are numerous allusions to the LORD, the God of Israel being the shepherd of the people, most memorably Psalm 23, but more pointedly Ezekiel 34 which rails against the leaders of Ezekiel’s time who have not proved to be faithful shepherd and in response the LORD declares, “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the LORD God.” Ezekiel 34.15.  We are left to wonder after each event who is this Jesus, and how is he able to speak in ways that reflect God’s speech, how is he able to act in ways that reflect God’s actions and how does he embody the presence of the God of Israel who has drawn near with God’s kingdom. Mark points us continually to the suggestive but never overt answer that Jesus is fulfilling the role that God has promised to fulfill in the scriptures. That Jesus can forgive, can be Lord of Sabbath, can master the elements and the demonic forces that threaten God’s people and can be the faithful shepherd that the people has longed for.

Mark continues to invite those with eyes to see and ears to hear to sit and wonder about who Jesus is and to listen to the frequently allusive way in which the language of scriptures helps to paint this picture in a suggestive way. Yet it is a mystery that Mark invites his readers into, the mystery of the kingdom of God that arrives in parables rather than outright proclamation. Most of Jesus’ overt quotations of scriptures come at the end of the book of Mark where the question of who Jesus is comes to its ironic and sharply contested conclusion. Jesus’ authority is continually questioned by the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the scribes and the chief priests and Jesus continues not only to allude to scripture but to embody it. Whether it is the allusion to Jeremiah’s temple sermon when Jesus enters the temple in Mark 11.17 and contrasting it with the vision of Isaiah in 56.7 and Jesus continuing to embody the role of Jeremiah in conflict with the temple of his day (see the previous post particularly on Jesus and Jeremiah), and the way this plays into the image of the cursed fig tree and the oracle of Jeremiah 8.13. The allusion to Isaiah 5 with both the parable of the wicked tenants in Mark 12. 1-12 and the denunciation of the scribes in Mark 12. 38-40. The language of Daniel 7 forms the answer to the High Priest in the trial where Jesus is accused of blasphemy, but also forms the background for the Son of Man imagery used throughout the gospel.  Mark uses these images poetically and sometime Jesus seems to take on the role of the God of Israel, other times Jesus walks in the place of Israel and is able to cry out to their God, sometimes he is the fulfillment of the hope of Israel and the scriptures, and yet in every place Mark leaves us with the mystery of the kingdom of God. Yet the use of scriptures continually points that somehow, evocatively, in Jesus we in some way encounter the divine presence of the God of Israel. Mark is not interested in explaining how this comes to be but rather inviting us into the journey and experience of the new people of God trying to find the language to explain who this Jesus was and what he did and finding in the language of the Hebrew Scriptures a vast set of hopes and expectations and words that describe the relationship of God to God’s people. And into that web of images the experience of Jesus mysteriously seems to fall and we wonder with the first hearers of the message what that means for our experience of this Jesus Christ the Son of God whose gospel we receive from Mark.

Mark’s Portrait of Jesus and the World He Lived In: Part 3

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Mark’s Portrait of Jesus and the World He Lived In: Part 3 Second Temple Judaism: Pharisees, Sadducees and Zealots, oh my

James Tissot, Reconstruction of Jerusalem and the Temple of Herod, painted between 1886 and 1894

James Tissot, Reconstruction of Jerusalem and the Temple of Herod, painted between 1886 and 1894

The time of Jesus’ ministry takes place within a time scholars call Second Temple Judaism. Second Temple Judaism is named this simply because it is the time after the destruction of the first temple when the city of Jerusalem is captured and destroyed by the Babylonian empire in 588 BCE and the time after the temple is rebuilt as a part of the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the return from exile of some of the Jewish people beginning in 520-515 BCE. The world would change dramatically for the Jewish people over the 500 years preceding the time of Jesus’ life but with one exception (the time after the Maccabean Revolt (140 BCE). By the time of Jesus, the Jewish people have been under Roman rule (although indirectly ruled by client kings)since Pompey’s invasion in 63 CE.  For the time around Jesus’ life you will see some of the religious and political power struggles continuing to play out on the pages of the gospels between Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Herodians and other groups that are trying to figure out how to live out their political and religious philosophies in the context of Roman and Herodian rule.

The Pharisees

James Tissot, Woe Unto You Scribes and Pharisees

James Tissot, Woe Unto You Scribes and Pharisees

The Pharisees and the Sadducees are both political and religious movements that go back to the time of the Maccabean revolt. Both at various times would occupy greater or lesser authority based upon the ruler at the appropriate time, but by the time of Jesus the Pharisees and Sadducees have been in conflict for well over 100 years. The Pharisees according to the Jewish historian Josephus, a Pharisee himself, had more of their support in the common people and probably more in the rural areas, like Galilee, than within the city of Jerusalem itself (although there were certainly Pharisees within Jerusalem). Politics and religion are not separate in the ancient world, so the Pharisees exercise both political and religious authority. The Pharisees were more centered on the reading of the scriptures and the practicing of those scriptures as boundary markers for the people in contrast to the world around them.

The Pharisees are often only looked at from a Christian perspective for their disagreements with Jesus, and they are present from very early in the narrative of Jesus because they are present in Galilee where Jesus begins his ministry. You often see the conflicts with Jesus center around the tabernacle, reading of scripture, and particularly Sabbath and other distinctive practices that served as boundary markers in the Pharisees eyes for the Jewish people from the Gentiles. Both they and the Sadducees emerge from a time of forced Hellenization of the Jewish people under the Selucid Empire and to they hold onto these boundary markers as distinctive practices of every faithful Jew. For the Pharisees they attempt to heighten the religious practice of the people in order to bring about a closer coherence with God’s torah, God’s law. Instead of being focused primarily on the priestly practices of the temple they were focused on the actions of the everyday person to live a holy and righteous life.

The Pharisees did believe in the resurrection of the dead, which is a belief that emerges in the time of Second Temple Judaism. They were not in the positions of power and yet they believed that ultimately God would intervene and set the world right and the righteous would share in this world that God had liberated. With their focus more on individual practices, the reading of scriptures centered around the synagogues and their practice of trying to discern God’s will through the law they would survive the collapse of the temple in the wake of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome in 70 CE and eventually evolve into Rabbinic Judaism.

 The Sadducees

James Tissot, The Chief Priests Take Counsel Together (1886-1894)

James Tissot, The Chief Priests Take Counsel Together (1886-1894)

There is the old saying that the Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection so they were sad, you see-and while memorable the saying misses the point. The Sadducees, while they didn’t believe in the resurrection, were far from sad. They were predominantly the priestly class that were in a politically and economically more affluent position than their Pharisee counterparts. For the Sadducees, they understood that God was blessing them in their current life and that were the ones charged with maintaining the temple worship and sacrifice to God. For them the center of their life flows out of the first five books of the Bible and they become the cultic leaders of the temple, offering sacrifices and living a holy life in a priestly manner. The Sadducees to maintain their political power do have to maintain relationship with the Roman powers of the day, whether Herod the Great at the time of Jesus’ birth or Pontus Pilate at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion. They are accused by the Pharisees of being collaborators at times, but with their focus on maintaining the temple function and sacrifice they see that as their primary task.

The Sadducees do come into Jesus when he enters into Jerusalem because Jesus does challenge the temple as the source of Jewish authority. For the Sadducees maintaining the temple and by extension Jerusalem are at the center of their life. When the temple is destroyed in the First Jewish Revolt against Rome in 70 CE the Sadducees begin to fade away. Without the temple and its worship they lose their reason for existing and do not have the distributed power base or the focal points of the Torah and the synagogue to be able to recast their identity as easily as the Pharisees do.

Essenes

A much smaller group that do not play directly into the story of Jesus but who have come to prominence with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls are the Essenes. The Essenes pulled away in a monastic way from society and formed smaller groups of dedicated disciples who were practicing a more rigorous form of Judaism. There appears to be both and ascetic and mystical side to the Essenes and they consider the temple compromised to the point where the only option is to separate themselves and form a new community of the righteous.

Zealots

Describe by Josephus as the ‘fourth philosophy’ the zealots were those who felt that the Roman Empire was to be resisted by force. The time of Jesus’ life was not a peaceful one and the zealots make their way into the story in a number of ways. In both Mark and Matthew the apostle Simon is known  as Simon the Cananaean but Luke he is know as Simon the Zealot and it is certainly possible that among the followers Jesus there were former freedom fighters. It is also possible that Judas Iscariot’s title may refer to the Sicarii, the knife men and assassins who targeted Roman targets. Perhaps it is Luke’s gospel with the parable of the Good Samaritan, where the man is beaten up by the side of the road by bandits (who may well have been freedom fighters-the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was very instable much like the airport road in Bagdad) but many of Jesus’ teachings at the end of his ministry seem to be directed specifically against the revolutionary messages that the zealots were spreading even in his day. Perhaps this could be one reason, although this will never be more than suggestive, why Judas makes the decision to betray Jesus.

Focal Points of Jewish Identity

The Temple by Radojavor@deviantart.com

The Temple by Radojavor@deviantart.com

Throughout the history of the Jewish people they had different focal points of identity and authority (I deal with this more in depth in my posts of The Place of Authority, particularly parts 1-5). Family and tribe, land, the temple, Jerusalem, the Davidic king and the Torah and more broadly the scriptures at various points become the focal point of Jewish identity. Among the groups in conflict in Jesus day there are different variations on these points of identity. For the Sadducees for example the temple is a central point, for the Pharisees it focuses more on the Torah and the scriptures, and for the zealots there is a focus both on the land and the hope for a Davidic messiah that will lead them out of their captivity under Rome. Within the focal points are various practices and beliefs that help center each group and reinforce these beliefs.  Judaism had adapted to various situations throughout its life that would enable them to place their focus in different places to maintain their identity. The situation after the destruction of the temple would again be a time where the focus would again become focused on the Torah and on the Hebrew scriptures and the debating on what they would mean for their identity.  This was not the first time the Hebrew people encountered this challenge, previously in the Babylonian exile they had to reengage their stories to figure out who they were as the people of God.

Jesus and Jeremiah

Those who have read much in this blog know I spent an extended period of time with the book of Jeremiah, and because of that time there are a number of ways in which Jesus embodies parts of the prophet’s life and struggle. Both Jesus and Jeremiah stand at the edge of a major crisis in their respective times where there are people calling for resistance to the empires of their day, Babylon in the time of Jeremiah and Rome in the time of Jesus. Both would struggle with the temple and its hierarchy that had a vested interest in things remaining the way they were. Both would be considered traitors by their own people. Jesus is seen by those around him as a prophet, that is not to limit his identity to that but he was seen as at least that by most of the people of his time.  In Mark when Jesus asks, who do people say that I am the response is , “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” (Mark 8.28) but I found in intriguing that the Gospel of Matthew this is expanded to include Jeremiah specifically mentioned as one of the prophets.  Jesus comes into conflict with both the Pharisees and the Sadducees in his day and will ultimately be crucified by Rome under the title the King of the Jews, but the primary reason for his crucifixion in Matthew, Mark and Luke is his opposition to the temple and his challenge to both the Sadducees and the Pharisees sources of authority.

Jesus’ Temple Problem in the Gospel of Mark

The Gospel of Mark dedicates most of chapters 11, 12 and 13 to Jesus’ struggle with the temple and it’s authorities in his time. After the entry into Jerusalem, the following day Jesus curses a fig tree a symbol of the Jewish people and then proceeds to turn over the tables in the temple, quoting Isaiah as the vision for what the temple should be (Isaiah 56.7) and Jeremiah for what the temple has become (Jeremiah 7.11).  On the way out of town Jesus and his disciples pass the now withered fig tree and in the text that follows Jesus says, “if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass it will be done for you.” (Mark 11. 23) Jesus is probably not talking about an abstract mountain, but rather the temple mount where they have just come from.  Later in chapter 12 after Jesus  had warned his disciples to beware of the scribes that devour widows houses we encounter the story of the poor widow who gives the two small copper coins. Perhaps this is simply a parable of the widow’s piety who gives all she haves to live on or perhaps this is a condemnation of the temple which devour all she had to live on.  Regardless of how this passage is interpreted in the following passage at the beginning of Mark 13 Jesus must deal with his own followers becoming impressed by the temple structure and Jesus remarks to them that the temple will be thrown down and they are not to place their trust in it, but they are not to become revolutionaries like many others who will be led astray.

Jesus will also struggle with both sets of religious authorities particularly in these chapters which lead up to the crucifixion narrative. Jesus has challenged their authority and they attempt to undermine his authority and shame him or have reason to accuse him of being a revolutionary. Jesus is eventually accused by the high priests and the elders who are assembled of blasphemy, of claiming authority for himself that rested either with the religious authorities or specifically with the God of Israel. Jesus will be a voice struggling within the Jewish people of his day for how people were to order their lives as the people of God and ultimately his vision would not be embraced by the leaders of his day. But for his followers Jesus would in various ways become the focal point of his follower’s devotion to God. As Richard B. Hays argues in his recent work Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness (Hays, 2014) each of the gospel writers envision Jesus as embodying the mystery of God (Mark), the fulfillment of the hope of the Hebrew Scriptures (Matthew), the one who redeems the chosen people of God (Luke) and the embodiment of the Jewish temple, sacrifice and festivals (John).  It is to Mark as an interpreter of the Jewish story that we will turn next.