Deuteronomy 8: The history of the future

Deuteronomy 8: A Warning Not to Forget God in Prosperity

Writers right for an audience, right? Literature of any kind - prose, poetry, journalism, instruction manuals - serves a purpose, whether this is to entertain, inform, instruct, etc.  Without an audience to read and interpret, literature is simply words on a page (or screen, as is increasingly the case). It would be safe to say that the biblical author in Deuteronomy is trying to tell his audience something about its relationship with God. In fact, that has been the theme of the first seven chapters, and the message continues into and beyond today's reading.

Deuteronomy so far:
History 1 and 2
Obedience
The Ten Commandments
More Obedience
A Chosen People

These readings are all concerned with Israel's relationship with God. There are many warnings that link disobeying God with God abandoning or actively working against Israel. The messages are prophetic, but not in the sense that we usually think of prophecy. One misconception about biblical prophecy is that it is making predictions about events that will happen long into the future. This is not the case. Biblical prophecy is not like Nostradamus predicting the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Rather, the biblical prophet takes a look at the world around him and warns that something bad will happen, usually because it will: you will be invaded, you will be destroyed, etc. Educated guesses are made based on the political circumstances of the time. What distinguishes the prophet's writing is that this political upheaval is linked to God's will. This is why dialectical tensions are so important in the bible. Dialectical tensions create a framework to which prophecy may be applied. The prophet attaches religious meaning to political events. Instead of simply saying, "the enemy will soon be at your gates because your enemy has been conquering everyone in sight," prophecy says, "the enemy will soon be at your gates because you disobeyed the Lord.

If a prophet warns that disobedience results in tragedy, whenever tragedy occurs it is reckoned that the cause is disobedience. These things are easy to prove in hindsight. And that is what we are working through right now. This section, and the prophetic sections ahead, reveal the history of the future. That is, it is a story of the past created by contemporary writers to explain the current situation in terms of fulfillment of the covenant.

Here are the words of the Lord, as delivered by Moses to the people of Israel as they wait to enter the promised land.

A Warning Not to Forget God in Prosperity: Deuteronomy 8
Remember learning about similes and metaphors in elementary school? The biblical author uses a number of these in an attempt to describe the relationship between God and his chosen people.

The Lord claims that the reason the people wandered forty years in the wilderness was so that he could humble them to test whether they trusted in the Lord: "Know then in your heart that as a parent disciplines a child so the Lord your god disciplines you" (Deut. 8.5). He made them hungry before giving them manna - a food never before eaten by the Israelites and their ancestors. The manna has a metaphorical quality for the Lord, given to the Israelites "in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of the Lord" (Deut. 8.3). In other words, obedience to the Lord's commandments is as important as (if not more than) physical food. It was with God's protection that they survived the journey through the wilderness.

The Lord promises a land of bountiful food sources, with precious metals and abundant water sources. The people will bless the Lord for what they have ben given.

But the people must not grow complacent. They must always recognize the God that has chosen them as his people. They must remember that the power and wealth they have has only been attained with the blessing of God. If the Israelites abandon YHWH for other gods, they will perish like the people they are about to drive out of the promised land.

So What?
The promised land was set aside by God for the Israelites as far back as the time of Abraham. The biblical author asserts that it is rightfully theirs, but only if they worship YHWH exclusively. Therefore, if the people are ever expelled from the promised land, which will happen by the time this text was written, it is because they did not keep God's commandments. This is the history of the future at work.]