Hitzonim | Outsiders

Sorry to be delayed again with this week’s Torah commentary. I have just a little too much packed into my weeks these days! I may need to decide between the weekly Torah post and the weekly gospel through a Jewish lens commentary. Your feedback on this is always valuable! Feel free to comment or email me with your thoughts.

Introduction: More Questions than Answers

This week we continue in Deuteronomy, and Moses is addressing the Israelites on the cusp of entering the land that was promised to their ancestors. I’ve included a narrative summary of the Parsha this week, then I pick up on central themes revealed through commentary. I’ll tell you what is most exciting to me is to recognize how core components of the cultic practices of Israel are totally re-worked in Deuteronomy. The questions that I can’t answer involve the scope and degree to which the authors and redactors understood their project as revising both daily observances and complete festival traditions to match the new political reality of cultic centralization.

• Were the scribes in King Josiah’s court appreciating the scope of revisions they were making by way of the literary device of Moses’s addresses?
• Were the scribes under threat from the royal court to author such a book of laws?
• Were the scribes willingly complicit in the political project?
• Were the scribes partners in bringing the political reform into reality? Was it their idea as much as it was Josiah’s?
• Were these legal codes actually enforced? Archeological evidence speaks in favor of the centralization process, and the festivals of the Second Temple show coherence with Josiah’s centralization.

I suppose I’d work some of this out in a PhD. Let me know if anyone wants to write a letter of rec for my application. 😉

Where I fall out on this is deepening appreciation for how malleable the developing text of Torah proved to be. The text we read this week includes material from the core “Scroll of Torah,” of chapters 12-26 that was likely the pre-exilic text patterned after Assyrian treaties, like the vassal treaty of Esarhaddon (672 BCE). The effort was politically motivated, and I think this week’s Parsha reveals the downstream impact of this centralization program.

If you don’t want to read, here’s ten minutes from me in video form and another ten minutes focusing especially on reworking the cult.

Parsha Summary

In Parsha Re’eh, Moses continues his final address to the Israelites, presenting them with a choice between blessings and curses based on their obedience to God’s commandments. He emphasizes the importance of centralizing worship in a single, God-chosen location, and instructs the Israelites to destroy all forms of idolatry in the land they are about to enter.

Moses warns against the influence of false prophets and idolatrous practices, stressing the need for vigilance and strict adherence to God’s laws. He reiterates dietary laws, emphasizing the distinction between clean and unclean animals, and outlines the principles of tithing and charity, ensuring the well-being of the Levites, strangers, orphans, and widows.

The Parsha also covers the laws of the Sabbatical year, which include the release of debts and the freeing of enslaved Hebrews, promoting social justice and compassion–to the degree which a program of enslavement can be justice oriented. Of this position, I am deeply skeptical. 

Finally, Moses reminds the Israelites to observe the major festivals—Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot—as times of communal celebration and remembrance of God’s providence; names that are still used to describe these festivals today.

Commentary: At Least Some Answers

When I refelcted on the commentary sources, a few themes emerged. Continued literary borrowing from the political oath/treaty genre significantly influences the text. We’ll consider a few examples. Then, we’ll attempt to appreciate the significance of cult centralization.

By revealing the seams and cracks in the text, and the aims behind its composition, what I find here is license to be yet even more interpretive in my life. This literature is influence all the way down. It is intellectually liberating for me to encounter an agenda driving the law because it permits an openness to that same flexibility today.

Let’s dig in.

An Oath of Loyalty

Chapter 12 begins with the affirmation of the oath by asserting blessing and curses for adhering to the covenant–or not. The language is certainly retributive in nature: Follow the instruction, be blessed; violate the instruction, be cursed. In my introductory post to Deuteronomy I claimed that Deuteronomy and the associated Deuteronomistic History make trouble for an otherwise straightforward story arc for the Pentateuch. What may have been a more clear-cut narrative from Abraham’s promise to possession of the land, which he doesn’t get to do by the way, and neither does Moses, Deuteronomy makes trouble because at its time of incorporation into Torah, the people no longer reside in the land, but they come to return to the land later. Deuteronomy must account for all of this if it remains within Torah. Our presupposition informed by scholars suggests that the Torah reached its final form in a late exilic or early postexilic context.

And so, the Torah cannot be a story of promise to Abraham to a possession of the land because the Israelites do not possess the land during formative periods in the development of of the final form of the book. What do you do with a treaty that promised land, if you no longer reside in the land?

Deuteronomy sets up a history to explain this, and we’ll see how it must carefully treat Jerusalem as the central location for cultic practice, before, in the eyes of the text, the people have actually established Jerusalem as the site for worship. The narrative begins to come apart from reality. Because Jerusalem had not yet been conquered by David in the Deuteronomistic History when Deuteronomy, the book, is supposed to be composed, rather than stipulate Jerusalem, the text says that sacrifice is only permitted, “In the place that God will show you.”

More on this in a little while.

Deuteronomy is useful, as far as it goes, if we’re considering cultic practice to be useful, because it establishes an oath of loyalty and conditional covenant that possession of the land is only binding if the oath is obeyed.

Deuteronomy is a post hoc fix for being exiled from the land, but its 7th century BCE construction must be redacted in light of later knowledge. Deuteronomy becomes the raw material by which a story is constructed about a people’s claim to the land, and in that construction, covenant becomes important as a condition placed on the original promise to Abraham.

What emerges from this new covenant is literally what Deuteronomy means: a second giving of the law. Older practices are revised, and new ones are established. Now we are beginning to understand how this text was deployed over time, first to centralize worship, then to reinforce a covenant that stipulates conditions for an oath of loyalty with the God of Israel.

The oath begins with a demand to tear down multiple sites for sacrifice. Indeed, this was the Josiah project. Multiple sacrificial or cultic sites are associated with the cultic practice of Canaan, which the authors and redactors try hard to distance Israel from, but Israel itself was also engaged in just such a practic; sacrifice at multiple sites, and so, centralization creates trouble. This is what we’ll discuss next.

Centralization of Cultic Practice

In Deuteronomy 12.5–and yes, if you realized that this is within the earliest, pre-exilic core of the text, you get a gold star. Go on, put it in your chart.–The text says that sacrifice may only take place in the place that God will show you. You and I, and the later redactors, know that this is Jerusalem, but because in the Deuteronomistic History, David must first conquer Jerusalem and bring in the ark of the covenant, which does not fit a 7th century BCE context, the redactors cannot yet say Jerusalem. Deuteronomy can only say, “the place where God will show you.”

Pause here.

This is actually a big deal, and I want you to feel the tension. We have redactors a couple hundred years after the fact figuring out how to square the circle here. The Deuteronomist, a legit source in Torah, knows it can’t say Jerusalem and also follow its own history, so the editors have to solve for that. Even though we know we end up in Jerusalem, we can’t know that in this text.

Pardon me, but this is really fucking cool. We’re witnessing after the fact rhetorical moves, and our ancestors 2,600 years ago, felt the same tension. It’s gobsmackingly amazing to me. Some people think the power of scripture is God’s influence, maybe it’s just my love of writing, but the moves our ancient authors and editors made to maintain a text is all the holy that I need. My God is in each other.

Malleable Tradition

When centralizing sacrifice, the need to permit the slaughter of animals becomes evident. If multiple sites for sacrifice are eliminated, the requirement for ritual slaughter must be adjusted. People want to eat their meat, and they don’t want to have to schlep to a central location to do so! This requires changes to sacrifice and slaughter, including the introduction of new practices for ritual slaughter, as outlined in Deuteronomy 12.4-16.

This is a novel innovation: separating ritual slaughter from actual sacrifice. And to give a nod to our work on the eating of flesh and blood in the Gospel, According to John, the rules around pouring blood on the ground during ritual slaughter are introduced.

The sacrifice of the firstborn, traditionally offered at local sites, must also be revised to fit the centralized system. Deuteronomy 15.19-23 addresses this shift, ensuring that these sacrifices align with the new centralized practices.

One of the most significant redactions involves Pesach. With sacrifices no longer allowed on the doorposts of individual homes, centralization demands a reworking of this festival. Deuteronomy in fact combines Pesach with another festival having to do with unleavened bread and presents a combined festival, reflecting the need to adapt to centralized worship. Signs of Pesach and a separate festival of unleavened bread also appear in the books of Numbers and Leviticus. Deuteronomy combines them into one festival.

Prophecy becomes suspect in this Parsha, diverging greatly from tradition up to this point. For example, prophecy and dream divining, as mentioned in Deuteronomy 13.2, are scrutinized for fear of the false prophet (13.10). Execution on the spot is the punishment for those who would lead others to worship other gods, but this edict contradicts itself! Elsewhere, Deuteronomy calls for due process as a requirement before punishment.

Dietary laws are introduced along with the innovation of ritual slaughter (Deuteronomy 14.3-21). Interestingly, the author of Deuteronomy seems unaware of the Priestly material about kashrut, as the guidelines differ.

The centralization of cultic practices requires significant revisions and adaptations to past practices, reflecting tradition’s dynamic and malleable nature. The text’s editors navigate these changes skillfully, ensuring the covenant remains central to Israelite identity and practice.

Wrapping Things Up: Malleability and Resilience

The malleability of tradition as seen in Deuteronomy is both a testament to the adaptability of the Israelite faith and a reflection of the political and social realities of its time. The centralization of worship, the reworking of sacrificial practices, and the introduction of new laws all point to a dynamic process of religious evolution. This week’s Parsha, with its emphasis on loyalty, covenant, and centralized worship, invites us to consider how our own practices and beliefs might be shaped by the contexts in which we live.

As we navigate our own journeys, may we find inspiration in the flexibility and resilience of our ancestors and continue to seek understanding and connection in our ever-evolving relationship with the Holy One.

Shabbat shalom, fam. xx. ❤ -a.