Reading the Law

(Deuteronomy 31:9 - 31:29)
Moses wrote down the law and delivered it to the Levite priests who were in charge of Jehovah’s Chest of Sacred Records and to the Israelite elders.  Moses charged them, “Every 7 years, in the year that debts are canceled, during the Festival of Tabernacles when all the people of Israel appear before the altar of Jehovah your god at the designated place of worship, you should publicly read the law in their hearing.  Assemble the entire population, men, women and children, as well as foreign residents of your towns, so they can listen and learn to revere Jehovah your god and carefully follow the details of the law.  Do this so that your children who are not familiar with the law, may hear it and learn to revere Jehovah your god.  Do this as long as you dwell in the land you are crossing the River Jordan to occupy.”

Jehovah then told Moses, “The time has come for you to die.  Call Joshua and come to the entrance to the Tabernacle so that I may instruct him.”  And so Moses and Joshua presented themselves at the Tabernacle.  Jehovah manifested himself within the Tabernacle as an elongated cloud standing before the entrance to the tent.

Jehovah spoke to Moses.  “You are about to pass over and join your ancestors.  After you are gone, these people will begin to worship alien gods, the gods of the land to which they are going.  They will betray me and violate the contract I have made with them.  My ire will then be aroused against them.  I will abandon them.  I will conceal myself from them.  And they will be devoured.  Many misfortunes and disasters will fall upon them and when that happens they will say, ‘These disasters have befallen us because Jehovah is no longer among us.’  At that time I will surely hide myself from them, because of the great evil they have done by worshiping other gods.

“Now write down the words of this song.  Teach it to the Israelites and have them sing it, so that it may serve as my testimony against the people of Israel.  For after I have brought them to the land flowing with milk and honey, the land I swore I would give to your forefathers, and when they have have eaten their fill and have grown fat, they will turn to other gods and worship them, disrespecting me and breaking my contract.  But when disasters and calamities will overtake them, this song will remain as a testimony against them, for it will not be forgotten by their descendants.  Even before I am to bring them into the land I swore to give them, I have been made aware of the inclinations of these people.”

So, on that very day, Moses wrote down the song and taught it to the Israelites.

Jehovah charged Joshua the son of Nun, “Be brave and strong, for you will lead the people of Israel into the land I swore I would give them.  I will be at your side.”

When Moses had finished writing down in a book the entire body of law, he gave this order to the Levites who were in charge of carrying the Chest of Sacred records: “Take this book of law and place it inside Jehovah’s Chest of Sacred Records so that it may remain there as a testimony against the people of Israel.  I know how stubborn and rebellious you are.  If you are rebellious to Jehovah while I am alive and still among you, how more rebellious will you be after I am dead.  Now convene all the tribal elders and officials so that I may speak with them directly and call upon the heaven and the earth as a witness.  For I am aware that after my death you will corrupt yourself and act contrary to the ways I have commanded you.  In the future, evil will befall you, because you will have done what is evil in the sight of Jehovah, arousing his ire by your actions.”

Notes
1. Again it must noted that Moses could not have written down the law, since there was no alphabet and no writing except for cuneiform and hieroglyphics.  It is always assumed and it is certainly inferred that Jehovah’s law was written down in Hebrew, but it would be many centuries after Moses before that could become possible.  It is also unclear whether a written record of every utterance, every law and statute, is to be housed in the Chest of Sacred Records, which is thought of as a receptacle for the Ten Commandments, traditionally both the Moses tablets and the broken pieces of the tablets Jehovah gave him.  It also should be noted that if a record, a book, refers to a stone tablet and not, say, a papyrus scroll, there is a storage problem.  (How many stone tablets could the chest contain?  Its outside dimensions were 45 x 27 x 27 inches.)

2. The record of the law exist only as a rebuke to the Israelites it seems and not a positive inspiration or a guide for behavior.  Jehovah seems to maintain a threatening, adversarial relationship with his Chosen People and expresses no confidence in their loyalty.  (He of course knows what is in their hearts and also presumably knows the future.)  One repeatedly asks, if the Israelites are so unworthy and so faithless, why did Jehovah pick them as his Chosen People?  Was it because other peoples already had gods to represent them and national god of the Israelites was an open post, so to speak?

3. And again we are reminded that the ultimate sin, the greatest evil, is not any sort of moral depravity, but merely deserting Jehovah and worshiping other gods.

4. Moses doesn’t really pass muster as a successful leader.  He was barely able to control his people in his lifetime and he despairs that his will and wishes will be followed after his death.  He apparently has little faith in Joshua, who is his successor.  (One gains the impression here that Joshua will be much more of a military than a spiritual leader.)  No Mosaic dynasty has been established.  In fact, there is no mention of Moses’ sons, Gershom and Eliezer; they disappear from the chronicle.  Did they die?  Perhaps they were unworthy in character, although that hardly seems disqualifying, judging from past history of the Hebrews in which all manner of scoundrels, mass murderers, cheats, and adulterers were exalted.  Perhaps they were unworthy owing to the fact that their mother, Sephora, was a Midianite, a Hebrew, but not an Israelite.

5. Jehovah appears in the Tabernacle as he is wont, manifesting himself as an elongated cloud.  This is a better translation, I think, than “pillar of cloud,” since a cloud does not have a defined and delineated shape and, therefore, can only approximate the shape of a pillar or column.  An elongated cloud would veil Jehovah’s form, if he was a humanoid.  Why he hides himself is a manner of conjecture -- to create a mystique? to conceal an appearance that humans would find repellent?  (In Exodus it is asserted that Jehovah does have a physical and humanoid form.  Moses is allowed to view him from the rear.)