Forsake Not Jehovah

(Deuteronomy 8:1 - 8:20)
"Take care to follow every commandment I am giving you here today in order that you may prosper and multiply when you enter and occupy the land Jehovah swore to give your forefathers.  Remember how Jehovah your god guided you through the desert for 40 years, humbling you and testing your mettle, finding out whether or not you would obey his commands.  He humbled you and caused you to go hungry.  But he fed you with manna, something the neither you nor your ancestors had ever heard of before.  He did this to show you that man does not exist on food alone, but also on every word spoken by Jehovah.  Your clothes did not wear out nor did your feet swell during those 40 years.  And so bear in mind that Jehovah was disciplining you as a man might discipline his son.

"So you must observe the commandments of Jehovah your god, live according to his principles, and revere him.  For Jehovah your god is bringing you into a bountiful land, a land with brooks and streams and springs that gush water onto the hills and valleys, a land of wheat and barley, of grape vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey.  There will be plentiful food; it will be a land without want, and a land where there are iron ore deposits in the rocks and where copper can be mined in the mountains.  And when you have eaten your fill, thank Jehovah your god for the bountiful land he has given you.

"Take care that you do not forget Jehovah your god or fail to observe the commandments, laws, and decrees I am giving you today.  Otherwise, when you have eaten your fill, when you have built fine homes and settled in them, when your flocks and herds have grown large and you have accumulated much gold and silver, when all you have has increased, you may become arrogant and shun Jehovah your god who brought you out of Egypt, where you were held in slavery.  Do not forget that he guided you through the vast and dread desert, a land arid and waterless, with its poisonous snakes and scorpions.  He produced water from solid rock!  He fed you in the desert with manna, a food unknown to your ancestors.  He did this to humble you and test you -- eventually for your own good.  You may say to yourself, 'My ability and the strength of my hands produced this wealth for me.'  But remember it was Jehovah your god who gave you the ability to acquire that wealth, so as to fulfill the pact that he made with your ancestors and which he swore to honor -- as he is doing today.  And if you forsake Jehovah your god to pursue other gods, to worship and adore them, I gravely caution you here and now: you will surely be destroyed.  Like the nations that Jehovah will destroy ahead of your entering the land he has given you, he will destroy you, should you not obey Jehovah your god."

Notes
1. Moses continues to speak as if his entire audience has endured the 40 years of the Exodus and he is reminiscing with them.  It must be remembered that no male (save Joshua, Caleb, and Moses himself) remained alive who was an adult when the Israelites left Egypt.  That would leave a relatively small number who had known the complete experience of the Exodus.  (Unless the authors of Deuteronomy do not subscribe to the narrative set down in Numbers.)

2. All the trials and deprivations of the Exodus were merely Jehovah testing the Israelites, according to Moses.  Hadn't they had it tough enough as slaves in Egypt?  Wasn't the purpose of leaving there a quest for a better life?  Did Jehovah punish the Israelites because, like a reproving parent, he was disciplining them for their own good?  Or did Jehovah punish and inflict hardship upon the Israelites because of personal pique, wounded pride, vanity, and petty vindictiveness?

3. Moses boasts how Jehovah produced water from a rock, fed the hungry Israelites with manna that fell from the sky, and kept their clothes from wearing out.  Jehovah could have had knowledge of the springs in the area and therefore was able to engineer the water-from-the-rock miracle.  The manna that fell from the sky might have been synthetic food manufactured by Jehovah's people and dropped from their airship.  But how did Jehovah prevent the clothes of the Israelites from wearing out?  He did not give them any special clothes; they were wearing the same garments of wool (and possibly linen) that they had worn when they were slaves.  Surely the rocky desert terrain would not have been easy on them.  This is a miracle indeed!

4. In extolling the virtues of the Promised Land, Moses mentions deposits of iron and copper.  Copper, an important resource, would have been mined to produce bronze.  This was the Bronze Age, but it was not the Iron Age.  Iron would have meant nothing to the people of Moses' time, for the means of smelting it and forging iron weapons, tools, and implements had not yet been discovered.  Such anachronisms in the text betray the later, Iron Age, origins of the Books of Moses.  The authors were writing of times hundreds, even many hundreds of years in the past; they seem to possess little awareness of the technological, cultural, and social changes that had taken place during those hundreds of years.

4. Moses reiterates the threat of destruction to those who do not obey Jehovah.  Apparently the worship of Jehovah is so patently distasteful, the temptation to worship other gods so irresistible, that the rewards of fidelity, even the bounty of the Promised Land is not enough to keep Jehovah's followers faithful.  Moses is correct in his reading of human psychology; gratitude is an emotion of short duration, easily set aside in good times.  And it is oft that the just recipients of gratitude are facilely forgotten.  History bears this out.  It was not during the time of Moses, or the time of David and Solomon, or even the time of the Babylonian Captivity, but perhaps not until the 2nd Century BC that the bulk of the Israelite/Hebrew population became truly monotheistic, worshiping Jehovah exclusively.  In the Jehovist propaganda that is known as the Bible, this is not evident, for the worship of other gods is there portrayed as an anomalous perversion.

5. Moses and Jehovah are continually putting down, emasculating the Israelites by telling them they are nothing without their god, can achieve naught, can win no battles, can acquire no wealth without his necessary help.  Everything is owed to Jehovah and they must be continually reminded of this.  Any success they might have is not due to their hard work, talent, brains, ambition, or enterprise; all must be attributed to Jehovah who makes everything possible.  It is true that personal pride can often degenerate into a selfish arrogance, but how stifling, how dismal, how inhuman is a philosophy that does not permit a man to take pride in -- and credit for the things he has accomplished.