Don’t Listen to This

“They have acted corruptly toward Him, they are not His children, because of their defect; but are a perverse and crooked generation.” Deuteronomy 32:5 NASB

Not His children – Jeffrey Tigay points out that the syntax of this verse is particularly difficult. He suggests that it is the result of scribal error and he offers a few possible corrections.[1] But the message is perfectly clear. “God assigned Israel its land as a father assigns land to his children, and expected that Israel would acknowledge His fatherhood and remain loyal, and not ‘play false.’”[2] That expectation was never fulfilled. As the Song of Moses declares, Israel fails on every level to be the obedient son that God anticipated.

With this message in mind, we confront a very difficult problem unrelated to the syntactical confusion. The problem is simple. How are we to interpret Moses’ statements? This speech is the end of Moses’ leadership with the people. Immediately following this song, God instructs Moses to ascend the mountain and die. Deuteronomy 32 is Moses’ final words to Israel just before they cross into the Promised Land. But if you read the entire song, you will be shocked by its portrayal of Israel in the land. Instead of an enthusiastic pep talk to encourage the people who have survived a full generation in the wilderness, Moses essentially castigates these wanderers. He tells them that they will be severely punished, that they will backslide, that God will spurn them and heap judgment on them. In fact, his description is so demoralizing that it is a wonder that anyone would want to cross into the Land. For example, “‘I will heap misfortunes on them; I will use My arrows on them. They will be wasted by famine, and consumed by plague and bitter destruction; and the teeth of beasts I will send upon them, with the venom of crawling things of the dust. Outside the sword will bereave, and inside terror—”[3] Not exactly a bon voyage message.

If this is a prophetic vision, if what Moses describes is the inevitable consequences of crossing over, then why would the people go forward? I know I wouldn’t. “No, Lord, thank you very much, but I’ll just stay on this side of the Jordan and avoid all this woe.” As a vision, this passage makes no sense when compared to the actual behavior of the people.

But there is an alternative. An uncomfortable one, I admit, but nevertheless, one that makes much more sense of the actual crossing of the Jordan. What if the Song of Moses was written long after the people crossed into the Land? What if the Song is really a statement of Israel’s actual apostasy represented in the mouth of Moses but seen from the perspective following the Assyrian invasion? Then all of these “predictions” would have already happened, and could be known as such.   Then Moses’ Song would be anachronistic. It would be written so that it appears that Moses laid out the inevitable but in fact recounts the actual choices of Israel over nearly 1000 years of history.

Before you throw up your hands in disbelief, ask yourself what the purpose of this text really is. If it is truly Moses’ declaration before the people enter the Land, then explain why they do so. But if it is historical recollection projected back to Moses, then the purpose makes sense. The audience is not the people waiting to cross over. The audience is Israel between Assyria and Babylon, a people who need to know how serious their ancestors’ past sins have been—and will continue to be—unless they reform. Babylon is on the horizon. Judgment is coming. God will use the nations to bring calamity unless . . .

Peter Enns writes, “Israel’s stories of the deep past were not written to ‘talk about what happened back then.’ They were written to explain what is. The past is shaped to speak to the present.”[4]

See if that view of the text doesn’t make a lot more sense.

And then try to sort out the implications for your view of inspiration.

Topical Index: Song of Moses, Deuteronomy 32:5, history, inspiration

[1] See the discussion in Jeffrey Tigay, The JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy, p 301.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Deuteronomy 32:23-25a

[4] Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending the Bible Has Made Us Unable to Read It, p. 112.