An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 34: If a nation is sacrificing their children, then kill them, and their children. Or, if you want to sell your temple offering for drink, that's fine (Deuteronomy 11-15)

Deuteronomy 11-15

If a nation is sacrificing their children, then kill them, and their children. Or, if you want to sell your temple offering for drink, that's fine.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology. 

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Deuteronomy 11

“And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.”

For all that there is, once again, some nice writing in this chapter, it is still more harping on the same theme, reminding the Israelites of all the things that God has done for them, and all the good things that await in the promised land, if they stick to the covenant. The reminders of God’s actions in this chapter cover punishments such as drowning the Egyptians in the Red Sea, and the earthquake that swallowed Dathan and Abirim. And there is a slight difference to the exhortations to keep the covenant, in that it is pitched at teaching the children (who have not seen all the events of the past forty years) to keep the covenant. If I was being uncharitable I’d say “indoctrinate”, but to be fair it’s more about keeping cultural traditions alive.

Deuteronomy 12

“Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God: for every abomination to the LORD, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods.”

Unusually I’ve taken a quote from right near the end of the chapter rather than the beginning, as I normally tend to do. If you recall I’ve been harping on about what the various nations about to be overrun by the Israelites did to deserve God offering them up for destruction like this. For the first time, we get some sort of sense – their gods demand child sacrifice. Now, it still seems a bit unfair to me that in order to punish people for child sacrifice you kill all their children as well, but that’s the OT for you. Also recall back in Leviticus (I think) the specific rule against offering your children for sacrifice to Moloch, but also Abraham’s acceptance that God wanted Isaac for a sacrifice, and it does seem like a fairly common activity in this place and time.

Anyway, the rest of the chapter concerns sacrifices of animals, not children. God tells the Israelites that once they have defeated their enemies they are to make sacrifice and offering at a place that He will show them, and here they can feast as well. Interestingly they are given sanction to eat unclean meat, as long as it is bled first. This last point, that the “blood is the life” is mentioned twice, but otherwise there is a lot of feasting on flesh. “I will eat flesh, because thy soul longeth to eat flesh; thou mayest eat flesh, whatsoever thy soul lusteth after.”

Deuteronomy 13

“Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.”

A short chapter that expands upon the commandment to worship no other gods. Prophets who suggest the worship of other gods, even family members, are to be put to death by stoning. If some of the population of a city turns to other gods, there is an exhortation to utterly destroy the city, in some fiery language that I could see being shouted by some frothing fanatic (like Carrie’s mother, for example). “Belial” gets name-checked here, which has become synonymous with the name of a devil, or The Devil although a quick trip to Wikipedia tells me that it stems from a Hebrew word meaning “worthless”, so the “sons of Belial” mentioned here are perhaps not devil worshippers but simply a poetic way of saying “worthless people”.

Deuteronomy 14

“And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth: and thou shalt eat there before the LORD thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou, and thine household,”

I’ve quoted from near the end again, as this is an amusing verse. This chapter deals with dietary rules and tithing, which I will discuss in a moment, but the first line stands alone as a proscription against cutting oneself or “making baldness between the eyes” to mourn the dead. Is this shaving the eyebrows, or forehead, or what?

Anyway, the dietary laws are the same as have been mentioned in Leviticus – eat only animals that have a cloven hoof and chew the cud, only things from the sea that have fins and scales, and then a list of proscribed birds (to be honest, you wouldn’t want to eat any of them). Tithing seems to involve taking your offering to temple and eating it, but if you can’t make it to temple, sell it and, as the quoted verse states, you can buy some booze with it and have a party.

Finally the chapter ends by stating that tithe offerings should also be given to Levites, widows, orphans and strangers as a charitable offering. I’m still having cognitive dissonance with this charitable God and the one who glorifies the extermination of whole nations just because they are there.

Deuteronomy 15
“And if thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee.”

Another mix of rules, and again these are ones that we’ve already encountered in Leviticus. Of most prominence in this chapter is the concept of the seventh year being one of the discharge of debts – any debts outstanding in this year are wiped clean, and also any slave, if they are Hebrew (see quote) is to be set free. If they don’t want to leave, you pierce their ear and they stay with you. There are a few rules closing loopholes (it seems that the release year is part of a set calendar, so if someone asks you for money at the end of the sixth year, you can’t refuse him – sneaky). There’s something of an NT feel to this part of the chapter, going on about there always being poor and you must never refuse them charity.

Then there is a tacked-on bit at the end concerning the sacrifice of animals with a blemish, which really doesn’t fit with the rest of the chapter – the chapter boundaries really feel very arbitrary sometimes.