Thanks to God we are reading the 5th book of the Bible. We started in Genesis where God introduced himself to Abraham as the first patriarch and he gave him a threefold promise (Seed, Gospel and Land).
God gave Abraham the seed through the son Isaac, and God gave him the land through his grandchild Jacob, who left it because of literal food and took the whole generation into captivity in Egypt.
We see God going to rescue his people from 400 years of slavery to take them back to the same land they left because they could not cultivate it.
And because some other people saw, in the Land, what the owners never saw, they cultivated it and it qualified it to be one that flows with Milk and Honey. God decided to take back these descendants of Abraham back to their rightful land and that is what the book of Exodus is about.
This God argues that the reason as to why they ended up in slavery is because they did not know who he was so he decides to initiate a vertical a relationship with them and put up structures for this relationship. Essentially, that is what the book of Leviticus is about.
In the Book of Leviticus, therefore, the promise of the Gospel is fulfilled and the Gospel of Righteousness is demonstrated in signs and symbols.
In fact, to me, Leviticus is the Romans and Galatians of the New Testament.
After the vertical relationship between man and God is established, the journey continues through the book of Numbers which is basically about what it means to live in the wilderness.
There is too much we’ve learned about what it really means to live in the wilderness while keeping in mind and in perspective the essential vertical relationship between you and your God.
It is unfortunate to know that the entire generation that left Egypt, except for two individuals, is not going to make it to the Promised Land and that includes their leader, Moses.
So as we approach the book of Deuteronomy, the generation we have is 98% new, and that is why the book is called in Hebrew: elleh haddevarim (these are the words) or devarim which means: words.
The name Deuteronomy, however, is not a Hebrew Translation but a Greek transliteration (not translation) of the Septuagint (Greek version of the O.T) Deuteronomion which literally means: Second Law or a copy of the Law as Deuteronomy 17:18 puts it.
We can only appreciate what this book is about only and only if we understood the title that the Jews gave to the Book. They called it the WORDS.
It is the words because the Book has three narrative-speeches (1. chapters 1-4, 2. Chapters 5-26, 3. Chapters 27-30) by Moses and a concluding appendix perhaps written by other Jewish scholars (Chapters 31-34), for logically, Moses could not have given a speech at his funeral.
The Book of Deuteronomy is a book of Words but what does this mean?
In Biblical hermeneutics (science of language), it is important that if an exegete (one who analyses the meaning of Biblical words, sentences and passages) is to avoid eisegesis (reading his mind into the text) and the word-study fallacy to ensure that he digs a little bit deeper about the historical patterns within which the word was used by the owners of the language.
When the Greek used the term ‘Logos’ which means word (John 1:1-3) they conceptually communicated a different thing from what the Jews meant when they used the term ‘Davar/Dabar’ which also literally means word.
Notice that the book we are reading has the title: elleh haddevarim = these are the words.
But one could ask: which words? Is it every word in their? What words?
To understand this, I would like to draw your attention to this truth:
We all have heard of the Ten Commandments, but did you know that the phrase Ten Commandments appears nowhere in the Bible? (I could be wrong).
What we have in Hebrew, however, is aseret hadevarim which literally means ‘Ten Orders’.
Stay with me here, did you see that the same word translated as ‘words’ as the Book title is hadeverim?
So does Dabar (from which the plural form hadeverim is derived) mean word or Order? The answer is both. However, the conceptual form meaning of the term is order.
But again, what is the semantic range of this ORDER in the Jewish philosophy?
To answer this, we do some other Hebrew nouns derived from the root dabar (which can be word/order).
One of them is devorah from which the name Deborah comes. The term Devorah means Bee or bee society. Conceptually, the term communicates the orderliness of the bee community.
So the book of Deuteronomy is a book about words communicated by Moses, not about anything else but SOCIAL ORDER and ORDERLINESS. The Ten Commandments and all other regulations and admonitions that are about to be communicated in this book are orders to you and me (believers in God) from God through Moses to ensure that we maintain social order.
Moses said all he said to the Jews to make sure that these people live in Canaan peacefully and in harmony. He was not talking to people who might fail to reach Canaan but to those who already were destined to occupy Canaan.
We Christians do not obey the Law to go to heaven, but rather we obey the law to maintain social order in this chaotic world.
The book of Deuteronomy, therefore, is about Horizontal Relationships, not influenced by any other philosophy but by one’s vertical relationship. When we get God wrong, we are destined to get all other relationships wrong.
The orderliness in Deuteronomy makes sense only when we find out whether the Jews really understood who God was or misunderstood him altogether.
I wish you blessings as you read and am sure this introduction will make sense only to those who read the book and see what the philosophy of order in there is and why.
I invoke TRUTH, REASON and FAITH
Pr. ITM White
The Gospel Hawker
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24) 