Today, I am reading and commenting on Deuteronomy 24-26.

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Divorce and remarriage should be a difficult issue for the Church today.  Before I get into the lesson I see in today’s passage, let me be clear, Jesus teaches us that we should never get divorced in Matthew 19.  (Jesus may have included an exception for those cases where one’s spouse cheats with someone else depending on how you read that passage)  But people do get divorced, along with many other sins, and later repent and turn back to God.  Sometimes that happens after they have remarried.  While I do not think that today’s passage is binding on us today (see Acts 15), I think that it provides us with some insight into how we should behave.  Here Moses commanded the Israelites that if a man divorced his wife and she married another who later divorced her as well, or if her second husband dies, he should not remarry her.  While this passage addresses only if the woman remarries, I believe it applies to either spouse, because I think it is telling us something about people.  So, if a couple gets divorced and one or the other of the people from that marriage marries someone else, all of those will be better off if the original couple never get back together again.

My interpretation is based on my experience with seeing people I know who got back together with people they had been with in the past.  In every case of people I knew where a couple had been sexually involved, whether legally married or not, and they broke up, got together with other people who they later broke up with, and then the original couple got back together, the second relationship ended in the same manner as the first.  The reason I bring this up is because I remember that when the Church I was involved with as a child and into my teen years dealt with divorce and remarriage, there was a faction which believed that couples which got divorced and married to someone else should divorce their second spouse and reunite with their first spouse, particularly in cases where they were professing Christians during their first marriage.

I want to conclude by saying that I think what I have written here today is more valuable to provoke thoughts than for the ideas I present.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Deuteronomy 21-23.

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I want to start by commenting on the implications about how Moses commands the Israelites to treat captive women.  If they want to have sex with one of them, they need to marry them, after giving them a month to mourn their family.  Once they had sex with the captive, they could no longer sell them.  At any point after having sex with them, if they no longer desired to treat them as a wife they had to let them go free to wherever they wanted to go.  They could not go back to treating them as a slave.  The only time a man was allowed to have sex with a woman was if she was his wife.

I also want to comment on the command regarding a stubborn and rebellious son.  A careless reading of the passage makes it seem heartless, but let us look closely.  When the parents take their rebellious son before the elders of the city, they are to affirm that he is stubborn and rebellious, and that he is a glutton and a drunkard.  The implication of other laws means that all of that must be true.  The true meaning of this passage is that the entire community is to aid parents in raising their children to be good citizens.  If a son goes through puberty and is too strong for his parents to discipline him, and he refuses to accept their discipline, the entire community is to aid them in applying discipline.

There is a saying I learned as a child (not from my parents), “Losers weepers, finders keepers.”  This passage tells us not to follow that saying.  If we find something which was lost, we should return it to the one who lost it.  It does not give us the option of just leaving it where we found it.  And, if we do not know who lost it, we should hold it in trust until they come looking for it.  The same section goes on to tell us that not only should we return lost goods to those who lost them, but if we see someone struggling with a task, we should aid them.  In this context, it refers to an animal which is struggling with its load, but there are other passages in the Pentateuch which clearly show that the obligation to aid others extends beyond just that.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Deuteronomy 18-20.

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Moses told the children of Israel that they were not to learn to follow the abominable practices of the nations they would find in the land.  As I started to gather my thoughts about this I was struck by the way Moses phrased that.  He did not say, “you shall not follow the abominable practices of those nations.”  He said, “you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations.”  It was not enough that they not follow the practices which Moses was about to summarize.  They were not even to learn how to follow the practices.  Every time I read this, and similar passages elsewhere in the Bible, I am struck by the practices which are lumped together here.  Most of these lists begin by forbidding anyone in the land to sacrifice their children as a burnt offering*.  The list also contains multiple different ways of seeking knowledge about the future and what actions to take going into that future.

However, scattered among those are a few other practices which are not always clearly defined.  It mentions that no one is to be a sorcerer, a charmer, or a necromancer.  Initially, I thought I had seen something in these less than clearly defined words.  Then when I looked at the meanings of the Hebrew words used here, I learned that the list contains references to multiple different ways used in the ancient world to gain knowledge through what we would now call divination magic.  Things like astrology, cutting open an animal and making predictions from what is seen in its entrails, reading omens (making predictions based on things which happened such as birds flying overhead), etc..  In the same way, the Hebrew listed several different ways in which people sought guidance from the dead (hence referencing mediums, necromances, and “one who inquires of the dead.”).  Finally, we have two other practices forbidden to the Israelites: sorcerer, and charmer.  A sorcerer was one who made potions intended to effect others.  Sometimes those would be subtle poisons, but they might also change their behaviors, or they might be intended to give the drinker special powers (such as greater strength or speed).  A “charmer” was one who attempted to use magic to change the emotions and behaviors of others.

Moses concludes the section about not learning to follow the practices of the people living in the land by telling them not to listen to fortune tellers or diviners.  Then he transitions into telling them that God will raise up a prophet like him, like Moses from among them (the wording makes it clear that Moses specifically means that the prophet God will raise up will be a descendant of Jacob).  Most people today read this as a prophecy concerning the coming of the Messiah.  We Christians say that it refers to Jesus.  The basis for saying this refers to Jesus comes from several New Testament passages which I am not going to go into at this time.  However, there is also a verse, Deuteronomy 34:10, which says, “And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face,…” Having shown how this prophecy by Moses was fulfilled in Jesus, I want to look at a little more of what it tells us.  Reading this today, I realize that it says more than I realized.  We can use what it says to identify those who falsely claim to be the prophet like Moses, to be the Messiah.  If they speak words which God has not commanded them to speak, or if they speak in the name of other gods, they are not the Messiah.  I think the latter is pretty clear, but not always.

There have been prophets who have claimed to speak in the name of God, but when we look at how they describe God we see that the god in whose name they are speaking is NOT the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  One example of this are Mohammed the prophet of Islam.  The Bible clearly tells us that God is our Father, that He has made us His children.  Yet Mohammed tells us that God is no one’s father, that no one can approach the god he preaches as anything other than as a slave.  Another example of this is Joseph Smith of the Church of Latter Day Saints.  The Bible clearly teaches that God has always been God as an eternal being who created all that is and Jesus is with Him, has always been with Him, and is Him (while being distinct from Him).  Joseph Smith taught that God was a human being before he became God and that we were all born to him through his relations with his wives, who have been with him since before the creation of the world.  There are many other prophets who have arisen through history who preach in the name of a god who is not the same as the God of the Bible.

Finally, we have those prophets who speak presumptuously, who say things which God did not say to them.  Some of these were men to whom God had spoken in the past, who become arrogant and begin to speak that which God has not told them.  We can tell that they are not speaking on behalf of God when something they say will happen does not happen.  This is an important lesson we must all keep in mind.  We must learn to distinguish between what God has told us and what our minds have told us.  I look at the world and see things which I expect to happen.  Even when my predictions come to pass, I must not confuse my own thoughts with God’s thoughts.

*The actual phrasing was “makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire.”  It feels like that phrasing was chosen for a reason.  Why doesn’t it just forbid child sacrifice?  I believe that it does so because those who “passed their children through the fire” did not consume the flesh of their children as the Israelites, and others of that day, did with the animals they sacrificed.  So, if the passage had just said not to sacrifice children, they would have said, “Well, this is something different.”  I am not sure about that interpretation, but that’s what I believe currently.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Deuteronomy 14-17.

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I have been struggling to find the way to start talking about what I see in today’s passage.  The core of the lesson I want us to take from this passage comes in the portion about the sabbatical year.  Moses tells us that if we strictly obey the voice of the Lord our God, there will be no poor among us.  Notice that Moses does not say here that we should just obey the commands which God has given through him.  He tells us to obey the voice of the Lord.  The instructions about the sabbatical year was that every seven years they were to forgive all debts which were owed to them by their fellow Israelite, by their brothers.  Then, Moses tells them that if one of their brothers does become poor, they should lend him sufficient for his need…and they were not to take into account how close, or far, they were to the sabbatical year.

I really want to look at that.  Moses did not tell them to give their brother who had fallen on hard times what they needed.  No, he told them to lend it to them, but to forgive the debt in the seventh year.  So, when we give aid to those in difficult times, we are doing so in a manner which encourages them to stand on their own two feet.  The aid we give them is a loan, with the understanding that they just need a hand to pull themselves together and then they will be able to pay us back.  However, we are not to be heartless in doing so.  If the seventh year arrives and they have not yet paid us back, forgive the debt and move on.  I noticed a thought related to that in the commands regarding the Feasts later in the chapter.  During the Feasts, they were instructed to make a freewill offering which was to be given “as the Lord your God blesses you.”  From that offering they were to rejoice before the Lord, along with their children, their servants, the Levites, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who were among them.   We should strive to aid those who are less fortunate than ourselves in ways which build them up and encourage them to make their lives better.

Finally, I want to look at the instructions regarding future kings of Israel (future from the perspective of those to whom Moses was speaking).  It starts out with a set of instructions which directly goes against much of what Solomon did.  The king was not to acquire many horses for himself.  We are told that Solomon acquired many horses.  The king was not to send people to Egypt to acquire horses.  Solomon acquired horses from Egypt.  He was not to acquire many wives.  Solomon acquired many wives.  The king was not to acquire excessive silver and gold.  Solomon acquired huge amounts of silver and gold.  All of these instructions were listed as things which might cause the king to turn away from God.  Solomon did indeed turn away from God.  However, these instructions are not just about Solomon.  All of these instructions indicate ways in which those who govern over others betray their duty to look out for the interests of those over whom they govern.

Aside from the negative instructions, the things the king was not to do, there was a positive instruction, something the king was to do.  The king was to write for himself a copy of the law.  One which was checked for accuracy by the Levitical priests.  He was to keep that copy, which he himself had written, with him and read from it daily.  The purpose of this was to remind him to keep God’s laws and to keep him from thinking himself better than those over whom he governed.  Again, we should all do this so that we too do not think ourselves better than others and so that we do not turn aside from doing God’s will.  OK, maybe not write a copy of God’s law, but certainly we should read from His word daily.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Deuteronomy 11-13 (ESV).

I have a Youtube video of me reading the Scripture passage and my comments. Please check it out and let me know your thoughts.

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Today’s passage is directed at those who have seen God’s great works, those who have seen the power of God.  Moses tells us to do whatever it takes to keep God’s instructions to us in front of our minds.  If that means writing them on our hands or on our forehead, we should do it.  We should think about and talk about what He commands all of the time, whether we are at home sitting down, or walking somewhere, when we go to bed at night and when we get up in the morning.  We should put reminders of God’s words everywhere.  We should make it obvious to all that we are striving to be faithful to God, not so that they think us righteous, but so that we are embarrassed when we disobey Him.  Those who have seen God’s power and heard His words, have a choice between a blessing and a curse.  If they follow God’s commands, they will be blessed.  If they turn away from what God commands and serve another god, they will be cursed.  By the way, anything which you allow to become the center of your life aside from God, is another god.

At the end of today’s passage we come to something which reminds me of what Paul wrote in his letter to the Galatians.  Paul said that anyone who preaches a message contrary to what we have already received should be accursed, even of that someone were himself, or an angel from heaven.    Here Moses tells us that if anyone, whether it be a prophet or some other visionary, even if it is our brother, son, daughter, or wife, calls us to worship another god, we are to consider them dead to us.  Those of us who have seen God demonstrate His power, must not allow anyone to lead us to another god, no matter what signs and wonders they perform.  This is why we must not listen to Muslims, or Latter Day Saints, or Jehovah Witnesses, or anyone else who follow someone who claims that they have a message which supersedes the Scripture which we have already received.  This even applies to those who want to separate the New Testament from the Old Testament.  Anyone who teaches us to follow a god other than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Deuteronomy 8-10.

I have a Youtube video of me reading the Scripture passage and my comments. Please check it out and let me know your thoughts.

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Moses starts out by telling the people of Israel to remember the forty years that God had led them in the wilderness.  They were to remember that God did this in order to make them humble.  God fed them manna so that He might teach them that man does not live by bread alone.  Rather man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.  Moses expands on this by explaining that when we become wealthy and powerful, we will be tempted to take credit for our wealth and power, to think we came by them because of our own abilities.  We may stop giving credit to God for what He has given us and begin to worship other gods.  One of the other gods we may worship in that instance is ourselves.  Another mistake we may make which Moses points out here is that we may think that God has given us power and/or wealth while others are weak and poor because we deserve it, because we are righteous.   Moses reminded the people of Israel that time and again they had rebelled against God as they travelled the wilderness.  So, God was giving them the land He had promised to Abraham’s descendants, not because of their righteousness, but rather because He chose to do so.  Let us remember that we have repeatedly sinned against God.  God has shown us mercy and invited us into His kingdom because He is a loving God, not because we are special people.

All of the previous means that we must strive to walk in God’s ways.  God asks us to fear Him, to love Him, and serve Him with all of our heart and with all of our soul.  Doing so will work together for our good.  Moses in this passage tells the children of Israel that God gave them the ritual of circumcision as a reminder to cut stubbornness and rebellion out of their hearts.  Let us do likewise and cut stubbornness and rebellion out of our hearts.  Remember that God executes justice for the fatherless and the widow and loves the sojourner.  Therefore we too should seek justice for the powerless and love to those who have no family near them.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.