Deuteronomy 20 "Year of The Torah" [13 of 19] Tim Mackie (The Bible Project) 8/27/2014

um all right deuteronomy 20. we're in i was thinking this image is going to be burned in my brain because i don't i feel like more than any other book i've drawn it but not really i just draw it and then i haven't needed to do anything with it so deuteronomy you will have made it through the book of deuteronomy i'm kind of feeling that way this morning i'm just letting you know i shouldn't say such things as the teacher but i don't know maybe i should anyway all right deuteronomy 20. here's another whole set of laws most of them are going to revolve around this realism that we were in last week the laws are shooting to point israel towards this life of of justice justice and justice alone a passage that's come up in the last few weeks and one of the but at the same time the the book is very much has very much has a realist mentality so the covenant people the life of the covenant people takes the form of an ethnic national entity at this point in the story and so one of the realities for a national ethnic entity is going to be some kind of military conflicts or tensions with other national entities and so what does it look like to embody the loyalty to yahweh and to justice and justice alone if war is involved or if other complex issues of murder are involved and all of the messiness that comes along with war and so here's what's interesting is that deuteronomy doesn't come along and just say creates you know uh a utopian view well that we might like it to that somehow like abolishes war and that it's not but rather it accommodates to the realism of war but then in a number of different ways tries to mitigate or embody torah's justice in the midst of that and so let's just see how i think and most of us those are the things we tend not to notice because we're hung up when we're just like god tells them to go to war that i don't know what i think about that so we'll think about that in a few minutes but let's at least just read the passages and see and see how they work work with uh in introducing concepts of justice into war that's all i'll say let's go deuteronomy 20. so when when you go to war against your enemies and you see horses and chariots and an army greater than yours do not be afraid of them because yahweh your god who brought you up out of egypt will be with you now just pause so big big army horses and chariots yahweh who brought you up out of egypt will be with you what what's the last that israel saw of the egyptians so horses and chariots floating floating in the red sea right so that's in other words that the most basic underline of israel when it came to war is that they're basically helpless and they kind of always have been from the beginning and that's been the whole point is that yahweh is doing something with these people that they're basically helpless to make happen when it comes to their enemies so we're reminded of the exodus memory verse two so when you're about to go into battle the priest will come forward and address the army not not the general the priest and the priest will say shema israel listen o israel today you are going into battle against your enemies don't be faint-hearted or afraid don't be terrified or give way to panic before them for yahweh your god is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you victory so that's the first introduction right here is remember you guys really aren't that significant and you're not that powerful in the first place and any victories uh that do come on your behalf are going to be because yahweh is working for you you may be familiar with that biblical theme but that that's the baseline of all of israel's at least well it was supposed to be it hardly ever is if you actually go read in the story they failed to live up to this ideal in a million ways but this was what yahweh had intended for them and basically if this is kind of your baseline as a community of people it it should undermine or subvert any sense of like national entitlement or that kind of nationalism that's like oh here we are and we're whatever we're bad and we're gonna kick everybody's bats or something like that the whole point is to undermine undermine that entirely so here's here's an example verse 5 of how this could work out verses 5 through 9. this is fascinating so the officers will say to the army hey has anyone built a new house and not dedicated it go home i mean he might die in battle and someone else might dedicate it or has anyone planted a vineyard recently and you haven't gotten to enjoy it well go home for goodness sakes or else you might die in battle and someone else might enjoy it or has anyone become pledged to a woman you got engaged but you haven't married her yet go home for goodness sakes he might die in battle and someone else might marry her then the officer shall add you know is there anybody that's just downright afraid and faint-hearted you know you should go home too so that your brothers uh won't become disheartened too and when the officers have finished speaking to the army they shall appoint the commanders over it now what's that all about now that's very interesting isn't it did you see that coming so this is interesting so the first this is the first two things in the israelite rules for war one is it's actually not you right you're the helpless bunch of slaves that i rescued from egypt and then the second is i mean what do you call what do you call this policy it's are you afraid [Laughter] you know what i mean it's just like what on earth now there's um there's one other story of an israelite battle where this principle this policy got at least kind of halfway employed you know the story um it's in the book of judges um the story of uh of gideon and uh now i'm this actually sorry this just occurred to me here we go yeah so this is this is gideon one of the most famous judges and rulers in the book of judges and his enemy at this point are the midianites who are you know overrunning the land and so uh he got a whole bunch of people together as an army and the lord says to gideon yeah you've got way too many soldiers just way too many i can't deliver midian into their hands or else they're gonna boast against me and say yeah we did this so announce your army hey anybody afraid why don't you just leave just leave right now and and 22 000 men left i mean it was two-thirds of his army left right there and he always says again there's still too many soldiers and you if you know the story that it gets whittled down to i want to say yeah 300 300. i know i didn't see the movie but uh anyhow so three and ends up being 300 are left and the whole point of this story again this is the this is the whole point so even within what do you call a policy like this within israel's military strategy were very i don't anti-militaristic policies within their own military strategies and so here's one case this is the only case we know of that something like this ever actually happened and most of israel's kings ended up amassing huge armies and trying to become players in the in the politics of the ancient near east but that was not that was not the vision and that's not torah and again the whole point is to divert all attention away from israel onto yahweh so go enjoy your vineyard for goodness sakes okay let's address another subject when it comes to going to war and that is how you deal with negotiations and making peace or not making peace and so on verse 10. so when you march up to attack a city so so it assumes we don't know that you know what's the imagined scenario here is that they attacked you they came and kidnapped a bunch of people from your villages we don't know uh is this an offensive maneuver is this defensive doesn't doesn't say the whole point is once you get to that stage what's the first thing you do when you go to attack a city you make its people an offer of peace and if they accept and open their gates then all the people in it will be subject to forced labor and they shall work for you so let's say there's some you got the moabites and they've attacked you and you've attacked them and they attacked you back and you go back the whole point is make an offer of peace that's always your first your first initiative and then if they accept it then you don't kill them you don't destroy them you don't burn their city to the ground you enter into oh have we talked about this at all we probably haven't but you should know about you should know about these things um have i ever used the word vassal on wednesday mornings do you guys know about basil vessels it's not a decoration for your house um so uh in let's see i'm trying to think if we have any examples of this in the modern world basically you have um if you have the the big some sort of uh empire you have a powerful nation and so they come and they say hey you um you're gonna be annexed and become a part of our territory now the subjugated nation is called a vassal and in ancient near east it was always entered into by a treaty some kind of treaty format and this is actually the vassal treaties there's all kinds of ancient texts of these treaties and so on and they read a lot like the book of deuteronomy the language of the book of deuteronomy it's very interesting that deuteronomy pulls on a lot of the the language from these these ancient treaties and then um deuteronomy who's the powerful one yahweh and in uh deuteronomy israel is then the vassal anyway i'd like to introduce boring scholarly technical terms when i can um so that's what's being talked about here is that essentially this nation will become a vassal nation and they'll give you tribute they'll give you taxes or something like that so that's supposed to be the deal that's what's supposed to be the normal uh order of negotiations but verse 12. let's say they refuse to make peace and then they engage you in battle then you lay siege to that city when yahweh your god delivers it into your hand put to the sword all of the men in it as for the women the children the livestock everything else in the city you may take these as plunder for yourselves you may use the plunder the lord yahweh your god gives you from your enemies this is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby however in the cities of the nations yahweh your god is giving you as an inheritance in other words that's their approach to all of the nations outside of the promised land and then here we are back to this theme that bothers at least me and i think most of you uh of the treatment of the canaanites don't leave alive uh in in the land of what yahweh or god is giving you don't leave alive anything that breathes completely destroy and that's that word we've explored before or completely dedicate or hand over to yahweh the hittites the amorites the canaanites the perizzites the hivites the jebusites as yahweh your god has commanded you why why otherwise they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods and you will come to sin against yahweh your god so there you go uh you have the nations that are a distance you first thing you do is do peace negotiations you have the nations living in uh the land promised abraham and there we come across this theme yet again man and we have joshua coming after this so there you go um and there to completely um wipe them out they didn't do that in fact they didn't even come close to doing anything like that and ended up with israel for most of its history actually being mostly canaanite in terms of religion and culture and so on and so they didn't do this and what happened is precisely what yahweh didn't want to have happen which is he saved these people and wanted to do something utterly unique with them by setting them apart and they ended up compromising the whole thing so i don't you know you can kind of like say that makes you feel a little better because they didn't actually do it but the point is that they were commanded to by yahweh and that's of course what is challenging for us so i don't want to go into that whole rabbit hole again because i think i have about two or three times and we'll come across it again but i don't want to get lost in it otherwise except just to say the the reason given is that this is an exceptionally morally corrupt group of peoples and yahweh is giving them the boot off of this land to do a new thing with the promised people that will lead to the coming of the messiah and this is how yahweh chose to do it he he got his hands involved with the mess of human history um there you go i'm just not going to say anything more about that but i'm happy to talk about it but so isn't this interesting so we're like yes the thing about the beginning don't be afraid that's awesome and whittle down your armies for anybody who's afraid that's awesome oh i don't like this part but then this verses 19 through 20 are really unique there's nothing else quite like this in in the hebrew bible verse 19. now let's say you're laying siege to a city for a long time and you're fighting against it to capture it don't destroy its trees by putting an axe to them because they're fruit trees for goodness eggs eat the fruit but don't cut them down are the trees of the field human that you should besiege them now you can cut down the trees that you know are not fruit trees and you can use them to build siege works until the city at war with you falls and that's the law that's the law that's the last law for going to war um so boil it down what are you not supposed to do don't cut down fruit trees don't cut down fruit trees and what's the rationale given this is really look down what's the reason given or multiple reasons there's one functional reason wait you can eat the fruit why you know it's like food for the soldiers why would you do that but then there's actually a more underlying principle under that and it's that last sentence of verse 19. now are there any this is i'm reading the niv here i'll get it up here um here we go are the trees people that you should besiege them or are the trees of the field humans that you should be seated any other translations you don't have that at all the last sentence of verse 19. you have something different oh yeah yeah okay so they're going a completely different direction in the translation um yes so that's the niv uh the esv goes the same route are the trees of the field human that they should be besieged by you the new american standard is the tree of the field a man that it should be besieged by you are the trees of the field human beings that they should come under stage so all of our modern what translation are you reading king james oh yes for the tree of the field is man's life to employ them during the siege [Music] well yes suffice it to say the king james was like the model the ford was the model a a ford the old model a yeah it was the model a of its day um but we have audis we drive audis nowadays and uh this is this is not uncommon when the king james was working with the best of its knowledge of hebrew grammar and clearly the smartest people in the world all agreed that it should be translated this way and i'm not going to waste time because i want to get through 21. so um i looked into this once a long time ago but i don't remember the details so the it's a question this is our this is where our modern translations land and i'm i'm certain this is correct so the rationale given is hey you know they're useful they don't eat their fruit and my goodness these trees aren't humans for goodness sakes so your issue is with these humans don't involve the trees in your war for goodness sakes i mean this is really outstanding so it's just a little sideline but just stop and think about that what there's a there's a view of the trees underneath here and specifically i think it's interesting because uh in genesis one and twos you know other focus on fruit trees as well in the in the creation narrative i mean the only kinds of trees mentioned in genesis 1 are fruit trees like what about the other deciduous trees or evergreens or something like that and it's like it doesn't care about them because the story is going to focus on a fruit tree and the whole point of genesis 1 is about god preparing this sacred space that's beneficial for humans and fruit trees are the kinds of trees that are beneficial for humans so there's something going on here and for years i've just felt there's something going on here but the text doesn't say it so i don't want to like just build into this a full like ecological theology of creation and stuff like that and but it doesn't seem to me like it's too far here the whole point is that the trees have some kind of independent integrity aside from humanity and like don't involve them in your war they're fruit trees they're just supposed to do what fruit trees do don't tangle them up in your war isn't this fascinating i've always thought this is such an interesting law and then then and then it goes it just goes on now if it's not a fruit tree then go ahead and use it it's good lumber but don't cut down the fruit trays they're not people which which doesn't mean they don't have value the whole point is that they do have value independent of humanity's use for them just let them be they're the fruit trees any thoughts it's a good memory verse it makes a great memory verse deuteronomy 21 let's just keep going all right there you go that's israel's rules for war house okay sorry that's right we'll do 21 a second so this deuteronomy 20 is a great example of how the 613 laws in the torah are nowhere near anything like a complete or a sufficient constitution or or actual law book for a nation to operate what if that these are your rules for war like i mean it's like what on earth there's a million circumstances that aren't envisioned or even thought of here and so a chapter like that is a great example of how the 613 laws are just a sampling from the laws of the sinai covenant how many other laws were given i mean i would we don't know i would presume thousands even if something sufficient to run an actual nation and so for me it's a good it's a good example of how the laws or samplings meant to highlight the the world view underneath torah that yahweh was trying to get out okay here we go deuteronomy 21 unsolved murder remember last week we had stuff about the cities of refuge if you if you murder someone unintentionally you can go to these cities um what about uh an unsolved murder a cold case deuteronomy 21 so let's say that a man is found a man is found slain and he's lying in a field in the land yahweh your god is giving you to possess and nobody knows who killed him your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance from the body to the neighboring towns then the elders of the town nearest the body so that's that's the measure right there you just take some mileage or whatever it is and elders of the nearest town and then they do this ritual that will weird you out and that is not actually explained in much in detail as far as what the symbols mean but here it is here's what the elders do they go take a heifer that has never been worked it's never plowed the field or anything like that it's never worn a yoke and they lead it down to a valley like a river valley a ravine that has not been plowed or planted and where there's a flowing stream so a deep ravine with a stream flowing at it that's near this nearby town there in the valley they are to break the heifer's neck the priests the sons of levi will step forward for yahweh your god has chosen them to minister and pronounce blessings in the name of yahweh and to decide all cases of dispute and assault then the elders of the town nearest the body they shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley so uh so i think here's the idea you go down to this ravine where the stream is it's near the town you break the animal's neck actually how would you break a cow's neck i don't i'm sure you have to be strong i don't know i guess i don't know i don't know how you would actually do that but then so then it's there and it doesn't is it lying in the stream now what's happening but then they get water from the stream and then they're washing their hands like this over the dead animal and they're to say out loud our hands did not shed this blood nor did our eyes see it done so they're referring back to the unsolved murder right we didn't do this we're the elders we've looked into it we don't know we don't know so we didn't shed this blood our eyes did not see it done accept this atonement for your people israel whom you have redeemed of yahweh and don't hold your people guilty for the blood of an innocent man end quote and the law goes on that bloodshed will then be atoned for and so you will purge from yourselves the guilt of shedding innocent blood since you have done what is right in the eyes of yahweh and that's the law the bible i'm telling you so what so what's going on here so there's there's two in terms of how people like what's going on with the symbolism of this some people think that this this young cow the heifer is like a substitute and not just that that it's like they're sacrificing it as a substitute and that it dies in the place of the unknown murderer because if the murderer was known then he would have his own life to give for the life that he took but we can't find that person and so we we kill the cow instead so that's one that's one view um the problem is it doesn't make sense of all these weird symbols like why do you have to why don't you go do it in the temple why do you have to take it to an isolated ravine and break its neck and wash your hands and this and this kind of thing so there seems to be all these symbols in this ritual that just they're not explained and we don't we don't actually know for sure what they mean there is something uh similar here uh with the day of atonement because actually so so look closely um is breaking an animal's neck we work through leviticus if you made it if you made it with us we work through leviticus is breaking an animal's neck the way you sacrifice an animal no it's not no because the whole point is about the symbolism of blood and so that's about slitting the animal's throat and then you drain the blood out the whole point is to get the blood out and there's there's no bloodshed of the animal um we're not talking about this blood of the animal at all actually anywhere the point is just its neck is broken and then we symbolically wash our hands over it and so some people think that there's something similar going on here as to the day of atonement and you remember there's two animals involved in the day of atonement one of them is sacrificed but you remember what the other one is yeah the scapegoat and do you kill the scapegoat no no the scapegoat is used symbolically the priest confesses all the sins of israel and places them on it in this act of confession by hands and then you kick it out of town into the desert for it to go you know go away forever and ever and so it's a symbol right it's the symbol of of your sin and your guilt being banished from the community and it seems like there's something similar going on here so is it that they're washing the guilt into the water and it takes flows out into the sea or something like that it doesn't actually say but for one way or another this animal dies and you wash their hands it's sort of like the elders become responsible symbolically responsible for this innocent uh life being taken and so this at least acknowledges it and deals with it so that it's atoned for and washed away in some way so okay so that may so that may be um what's going on here but i wanted to read um the comments by christopher christopher wright i told you guys about christopher wright his deuteronomy commentary that i've been using as i go along so helpful and he just had some really wise um insights right here that i thought were useful uh so he says it's often when the old testament seems most culturally remote which this is quite a good example isn't it right it's when when the old testament seems culturally remote to us that we need to pay closest attention to its challenge so what ought to strike us from this law is not the oddity of a cow having its neck broken in a desolate ravine although that is quite odd let's just be honest about that here's he thinks what should strike us the that the expected this is the excuse me what ought to strike us is that this is the expected response of a whole community through its civic and judicial and religious leaders to a single human death this is one person who died and it's this huge huge ceremony in our culture violent death has to be particularly gruesome or shocking to even make the news let alone a matter for public penitence we have lost not only any concept of corporate responsibility for innocent death but we have increasingly lost any sense of the sanctity of life itself we or at least our emergency services can cope with hundreds of thousands of car crash deaths we tolerate millions of abortions what need do we have for rituals of cleansing that would acknowledge responsibility of the whole community even when personal guilt cannot be assigned for us shedding of innocent blood has become a simple fact of life silently sanitized by statistics symbolic reenactment is left to our commercialized catharsis of the movie screens and television that'll keep you up at night um and so i think it's a really it's a really good point it's a it's a good example of how these laws there's a world view underneath them about in this case the value of even one human life that was killed and that that such a tragic act that the whole community comes around it with this ritual to acknowledge that it needs to be accounted for and dealt and dealt with in some way and that's worth sitting down and having a cup of tea over and thinking about i think what's that yeah it's a good point i i think probably the assumption is that it's someone living in israel in a part of the people so it could be you know there are immigrants there were people who married in um but it doesn't say does it this is all we got a human if a human is found lying in the field um there you go all right let's keep going chapter 21 is a grab bag of laws that when you first read them you're deeply disturbed and then you see there's something interesting going on next one this goes back to an issue raised by warfare i mean i remember reading this for the first time when i was a new christian reading my bible this has just bothered me in a big way when you go to war against your enemies right remember chapter 20 and yahweh your god delivers them into your hands and you take captives if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman you're attracted to her you may take her as your wife bring her into your home have her shave her head trim her nails put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured after she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month then you may go to her and become her husband and she shall be your wife if you're not pleased with her let her go wherever she wishes you must not sell her or treat her as a slave since you have dishonored her and that's the law well then well then what do you do with something like this um so two things we we i read this and we're just like this is so screwed up like you shouldn't you shouldn't even do this don't mess with her in the first place let her be she's a human being um so first let's situate this let's situate this um and just to give you a um a picture of what's the context into which a law like this speaks and what's the point that this law uh is trying to make have i guess have ever shown you guys pictures of the la the lucky uh carvings before do you guys know about the lakeish carvings do you like it when i show you archaeology stuff it's cool isn't it yeah so lakeish was an israelite city that was besieged and conquered by the assyrian armies in the late 700s bc so a couple hundred years after this and what the king of assyria did because this was such an epic battle and the destruction was so awesome of the city awesome in terms of they decimated it he had in his palace a whole wing of the palace that was rock carvings uh telling the story of the battle and they're in the british museum now and they're big i mean they're real these are like they're taller than you are when you look at them and so these were big halls you know big carvings etched with the story of the king's massacre of the siege of of lakeish so go google them they're really they're really interesting um but uh so one there you know you can look at detailed drawings of it here and there they're actually some of the most um detailed a detailed depictions of ancient war that we have tolkien actually jrrl tolkien depicted a lot of got a lot of his images of warfare in his novels from uh ancient assyrian warfare stuff anyway there's all this stuff in the movies that you're like oh that's the assyrians they would behead their enemies and catapult the heads into the city and this kind of thing anyway so here's uh here's the assyrian armies here you can see the israelites appear on the wall and all these little battle posts what are these parapets here is that what you call those parapets and it's archers up here and then they're throwing down spears and rocks and then these are depictions of the assyrian siege ramps going up coming up to the city so fascinating and then so that's the besieging of the city but what's interesting then is all of these scenes about what's happening with all of the captured israelites outside the city like with soldiers that have been taken and so on and that's where this image comes in so this is out outside the city and these are um trains of captive israelites uh being taken and different things are happening here's the king of assyria sitting on his battle throne at a distance and here's some an israelite leader being brought before the king to give some kind of staff to him as a symbol of surrender or something like that but what's most horrifying is a couple scenes here so here's um a scene of israelites being executed having their heads cut off with a knife that's horrible um and then what's puzzled scholars is what's going on in this scene right here and the best that scholars can reconstruct here is that they're they're pulling the skin off of these people right outside of the city walls um and this is i mean this is just this was a part of the sieging and uh destruction of cities and so the assyrians particularly they kind of set the trend they were the first and largest empire in human history they were the first mega empire of human history and their their war tactics were extremely brutal and so you get a law like this and this is the context that we're talking about here so we already have this ethos of israelite war that is has this anti-militaristic edge within it and then you get a law about what you do with so if you're supposed to execute all of the enemy soldiers what about the women and children that are left now look at this law just look at the law again so you have captive there's a woman you want to well you like her what do you have to do you have to marry her you have to give her time and space um to adjust to give her a month to mourn then only then can you marry her and then if you change your mind and don't want to marry her you can't sell her or treat her as a slave you just have to let her go period break off the engagement or whatever now just stop and ask yourself this question resist every western world view thing you have about individual liberty and just ask ask yourself who's who is this law whose interest is this law trying to serve in whatever weird way it might feel to you whose interest is it trying to serve i hear one one vote for the woman one vote for the woman okay so what are what are the available options let's say the assyrians captured the city um you're either having your skin peeled off um or let's just say it out loud like what we what happens when a huge army of men who've been on the road for months is plundering a city full of women and children you know what happens you know what happens and and uh rape as a cause of war and plunder it's it's it's happening right now in our world today and so this whole law is actually meant to put huge curbs on what israelite soldiers can do to the women in a captive city and all of a sudden this this law becomes pretty remarkable because if you there is a woman that you are attracted to you first of all can't do anything you can't do anything all you can do is say that you want to marry her and you have to make a commitment to marry her you can't touch her until you marry her and not only that you actually have to make that commitment to marry her but then give her a full month to mourn for the loss of everything that just happened which is interesting it's just that itself is interesting and then you have to take her as a wife not as a concubine or something not as a sex slave or whatever and if you change your mind then she doesn't belong to you so you just have to simply let her let her go do you see that so so this is another a good example i think of deuteronomy is facing this realism if if israel is a national ethnic entity then there's going to be war and there's you're going to have to deal with plunder and so how what is torah's way of mitigating the worst types of human depravity that happens in war and this law is one of them it doesn't do everything we might like it to do but what it does given its context is is pretty remarkable does that make any sense i'll just let you think on these things two more laws let's say a man has two wives he loves one but not the other and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife that he does not love when he wills his property to his sons he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual firstborn the son of the wife that he does not love he must acknowledge the son of the unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double share of all that he has that son is the first sign of his father's strength the right of the firstborn belongs to him now so let's stop just pause and think about that okay first of all this assumes that there will be situations of polygamy um or of at least bigamy having two having two wives um which is nowhere um would you say validated or underwritten in the bible genesis 1 2 actually undermines that whole idea but again it's the realism of deuteronomy that was a part of their culture so let's say that happens and can you think of a story in the bible where this actually happened yes in genesis the story of jacob who he worked seven years and then to earn the rights to marry rachel and then laban you know pulled his trick he tricked the deceiver that's a part of the whole story the deceiver gets deceived but jacob doesn't love leah at all but actually it's leah who who has the firstborn and it introduces all of this complexities in the family so here's what's interesting is that the rights of the firstborn belong to the first son jacob has 12 sons and who is the actual firstborn this is great bible trivia in genesis 49 he blesses his sons in birth order this is genesis 49 and uh reuben he's the first son of leah the unloved the un unloved wife and so uh technically he has the rights of of the firstborn but actually he forfeited the rights of his firstborn and so specifically he slept with one of his father's wives next in line two and three are simon and levi and they also forfeit the rights of the firstborn because there was that whole scene where they murdered a whole city of men who were recovering from getting circumcised remember that horrible story right so yep they forfeited the rights and so who's next in line forthborn judah judah and so it's such a fascinating connection then it's precisely because the right of the firstborn should have gone so in a way the story went the way that this law says it should have but then the firstborn themselves disqualified the rights of the firstborn and then it becomes judah and it's exactly this story it's it's through reuben sleeping with one of his dad's other wives simon and levi's like murderous anger that's how judah becomes the tribe that inherits the rights of the firstborn and then right here in this promise is the first messianic prophecy about a king coming from the line of judah who will rule over the nations so put that in your pope and pipe and smite it mike oh my gosh i just butchered that one put that in your pipe and smoke it anyway so the whole point is that um this uh this law actually become this law both refers back to jacob and jacob is a torah breaker because he didn't actually do necessarily what the law told him to do because he had favoritism within his marriage but that it's actually through the breakdown of this law not working out quite right that the messianic promise came out of the 12 12 tribes of judah isn't that interesting i've always thought that's so fascinating that it's the fourth born and then actually can you think of any of the firstborn in genesis that actually becomes think of how many brothers do you have in genesis cain and abel who's the firstborn kane and he's the bad guy you've got you've got isaac and ishmael who's the firstborn ishmael does he receive the rights of the firstborn no isaac does you have jacob and esau who's the firstborn you have the 12 tribes of jacob and so and actually in no case in the book of genesis does the firstborn ever receive the actual rights of the firstborn isn't that interesting and so even though for human this is a way of mitigating like human depravity but yet the way god actually worked out the messianic line through history it was constantly subverting uh cultural practice of the firstborn getting the double portion and anyway i've always thought this interesting sub theme uh underneath all of this okay so war unsolved murder captive uh women and the rights of the firstborn the book of deuteronomy how you guys doing um we'll we'll we'll pick up next week with the the rebellious sun story um let me uh close with the lord's prayer and that i trust will frame frame things for us

Channel: Bible Nerds & Tim Mackie Fans

Views: 461

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Tim Mackie, Bible Project

Id: VkSQOj4nu7w

Length: 53min 11sec (3191 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 21 2021