Making Sense of the Unthinkable

There is a disconnect between myself, a twenty-first century woman, and our Hebrew ancestors who wrote the Hebrew Bible over two thousand years ago. That was so long ago, and our lives seem so different, it’s hard to relate and honestly, I don’t always want to. Women were not autonomous humans back then, rather we were merely an economic commodity.[1]

The historical context provided in this week’s readings helped deepen my understanding of the Hebrew Bible and find a connection with our ancestors who wrote it. While I, gratefully, cannot relate to the conditions of the world they lived in or the God they described, I can relate to some of what they were feeling, the fear, frustration and pain of living through trauma and the need to make sense of it. The yearning for safety, security and seeking assurance that if they do everything right bad things will never happen again.

The Deuteronomistic History and the scriptures we read this week reveal and explore a people trying to make sense of what was happening around them. The Deuteronomistic History is a historic overlay that connects the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings.[2] The history unpacks and explores when different parts of the scriptures were written. This provides helpful context in understanding how our ancestors perceived the relationship between faithfulness to God and God’s covenant with the people of Israel.

The social and political history of the time is also instructive. The Northern Kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians in 722 BCE.[3] The people of the Southern Kingdom of Judea blamed the fall on the failure of the Northern Kingdom to centralize the sacrificial worship of God and the sin of Jeroboam, which was the worship of other gods. [4] The people of Judea reasoned that they were spared because they centralized their worship of God at the Temple in Jerusalem and worshiped God alone. A couple hundred years later Babylon conquered the Southern Kingdom of Judea, destroyed the sacred Temple in Jerusalem, and exiled the Judeans to Babylon.[5]

The people of Israel were shaken to the core and tried to make sense of what happened, why God let it happen, and how to restore the covenant with God so it didn’t happen again. Deuteronomy 28:1-68, Joshua 23:1-16, 1 Samuel 12:1-25, 2 Kings 17:5-18, and 2 Chronicles 36:11-21 trace the ups and downs of the covenant between God and the people of Israel during this tumultuous time.

In Deuteronomy, the people of God are with Moses on the precipice of the Promised Land. In the first fifth of the book, Moses speaks of the blessings that will come to the children of God if they are obedient to His laws. The blessings are explicit from “the fruit of your womb will be blessed” to “the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated.”[6]

The remaining forty-eight verses detail, with specificity, the curses that will befall anyone who disobeys God. The verses mimic the blessings in the first part of the chapter and turns them into curses. The curses don’t stop there. Many additional punishments are added. Moses goes so far as to say that not only will the Lord punish those who do not follow His laws, the Lord will take pleasure in ruining and destroying them. Fear undergirds this chapter. Be faithful to God, or else.

In Joshua 23:1-16, people enter and inhabit the Promise Land. Prior to Joshua’s death he warns the people of Israel not to “associate with the nations that remain among you.”[7] He warns that they are only worship God and must not serve other gods. If they disobey, God will punish the people of Israel. Like Deuteronomy, this book is laced with fear and the use of fear tactics to keep people in line and faithful to God.

In 1 Samuel 12:1-25, Samuel chastises the people for their sinful desire for a king. 2 Kings describes the fall of the Northern Kingdom to Assyria, and 2 Chronicles details the fall of the Southern Kingdom to Babylon and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.

Scholars deduced, based on the language and terminology used, that parts of Deuteronomy were written prior to the fall of the Northern Kingdom to Assyria in 722 BCE. [8] After the fall to Assyria, there was a redaction, or addition, to the scripture and there was another redaction hundreds of years later after the fall of the Southern Kingdom to Babylon and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.[9] This is significant because it sheds light on the context with which our ancestors wrote. They were traumatized and when humans experience trauma they often only have capacity for black and white thinking. Good or bad. Right or wrong. Punishment or blessing.

It’s not that the God of the Hebrew Bible was punishing, cruel or enjoyed destroying those who weren’t obedient. Rather that is who the people who were writing at the time thought He was because they didn’t understand why they were being conquered and their sacred spaces destroyed. They reasoned that it must have been because they were not faithful to God’s covenant. Reading the laws through today’s lens, the restrictive laws set forth in Deuteronomy seem drastic, harsh and cruel.

The harsh laws and the people of Israel’s perception of a punishing God made sense for the time they were written. Now, over two thousand years later, they don’t line up with the Good News of the Gospels.

[1] “Rape in the Hebrew Bible by Frank M. Yamada,” www.bibleodessey.org.

[2] Dr. Brooke Lester, “Deuteronomy & the DTRH: Part A.” (class lecture, Introduction to the Tanak, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, IL, 2009).

[3] Michael D. Coogan and Cynthia R. Chapman, The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 176.

[4] Dr. Brooke Lester, “Deuteronomy & the DTRH: Part A.” (class lecture, Introduction to the Tanak, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, IL, 2009).

[5] Ibid.

[6] Deuteronomy 28

[7] Joshua 23: 7

[8] Michael D. Coogan and Cynthia R. Chapman, The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 176.

[9] Dr. Brooke Lester, “Deuteronomy & the DTRH: Part A.” (class lecture, Introduction to the Tanakh, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, IL, 2009).