4:25-28 - After you have had children and grandchildren and have lived in the land a long time—if you then become corrupt and make any kind of idol, doing evil in the eyes of the Lord your God and provoking him to anger, I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you this day that you will quickly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You will not live there long but will certainly be destroyed. The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and only a few of you will survive among the nations to which the Lord will drive you. There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell.
At a first glance Moses seems now to extend his warning to future generations of Israelite. But he is not. Moses knows only too well what Israelites were made of; they will turn away from Yahweh. Would that mean the end of Israel at the hands of the jealous God? Instead Moses casts an imaginative eye to a future scenario of what could (or very likely) happen; his purpose for doing this will be made clear in vv29-31.
The scenario looks to a time when Israel has settled in the land, and warmed to its security and comfort. The term "settled," from a root meaning "sleep," is suggestive of lethargy and ennui. Good times like these will tempt Israel to loosen her spiritual vigilence to become corrupt and turn to idolatry.1 So great is this temptation that Moses had already warned them against it in v16, using the identical phrase.♦ Two verbs here (as in v16) call for some attention. The verb 'become corrupt' (hiphil of the root shcht) has no English equivalent. The basic meaning of the root is to destroy and is used frequently in the accounts of the flood and of Sodom and Gomorrah to describe both the state of the world and the cities and Yahweh's acts of their destruction (Gen 6:11,112,13,17; 9:11, 15 & 18:28, 31,32; 19:13, 14, 29).2 'Become corrupt' thus speaks of behaviour that ensures and invites self-destruction. The verb, 'aśa, "make" an idol and "do" what is evil in the sight of Yahweh (v25) is identical to, and, therefore, contrasts sharply with the earlier calls to follow ('aśa) Yahweh's commandments (v.1, 5, 6, 13, & 14). Again the idea here is clear: to make idols and to do evil is the opposite of 'making' Yahweh's commandments. Such evil doings will surely "provoke Him to anger." These four English words (consistently so translanted in all English Bibles) is just one word in the Hebrew: the hiphil of ka'as. One of several Hebrew words for anger, its basic meaning is "to stir up the heart to a heated condition."3 Parents or teachers who have had to deal with children who do the opposite of what is instructed them will understand what ka'as means.
Having painted such a future scenario of rebellion, Moses turns back abruptly in v26 to the present and calls upon heaven and earth as witnesses against GenB that they would perish from the land they were about to conquer. But what why call on heaven and earth as witnesses and what does perishing from the land entail?
Calling upon the gods to be witnesses was a common practice found in ancient Near Eastern suzerainty treaties, and many commentators see this as the background for Moses' convocation of heaven and earth as witnesses.4 Since it is meaningless that Moses should call upon the other gods as witnesses, it is argued, heaven and earth are commissioned into service instead. Such a suggestion helps us appreciate the sociopolitical context of Deuteronomy. At the same time, however, we should not overlook the fact that Moses' speech provides its own logic for their convocation as witnesses: if Israel has been commanded not to craft any form of anything on earth to bow down to them or to venerate any of the bodies in heaven, that makes the heaven and earth the most reliable and appropriate candidates to testify against Israel should she so transgress. In time Isaiah would call upon these very agents as witnesses against Israel's recalcitrance and apostasy from Yahweh (Isa.1:2ff.).
Vv26-28 now fills out what perishing from the land entails. However these verses do not represent a reasoned discourse. Instead, a series of inchoate statements are piled on one another in a manner that defies logic in order to evoke emotions of utter calamity. First, Israel will "surely and quickly perish from the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess." This is now underlined by two somewhat redundant assertions ("you will not live long," and "you will certainly be destroyed") that serve like an extended hendiadys, for, if she was destroyed, what then would there be left to scatter, and where were to be found the few who would survive for Yahweh would drive them among the nations? This swishswash of inordinate vignettes is capped by the concluding irony—that would have been comical if only the consequences were not so tragic—that, for their sin of idolatry, they shall worship idols so useless they were not capable even of the most fundamental faculties of life—see, hear, eat or smell (v.28).5 Such a calamity would be a reversal of Yahweh's promise to and intention for Israel: delivered from serving ('abad) Pharaoh, in order that they might be given the land, and serve ('abad) Yahweh in it, she would end up scattered from the land and serving ('abad) idols. If Yahweh's promise to Abraham is for Israel to be "as numerous as the stars in the sky," (Gen.26:4), then in rebellion they will be "left few in number" (v.27).
It is tempting to think of this scattering in terms of the Assyrian and Babylonian exile, as most commentators do. Caution, however, is warranted. Firstly, since the promise of land fulfilment, and the attendant need for faithfulness, is the theme here, exile is the natural antithesis for infidelity. Exile, as the price for political-social defection, has had a long history.6 The idea would have been familiar to Israel from her earliest history; here its significance is simply restated in terms of her relationship with Yahweh. Secondly, as pointed out by McConville, Deuteronomy does not use the same term for "exile" as is commonly found in Kings and Jeremiah.7 Nonetheless, this warning would have served a powerful reminder—one that the prophets would repeat—to those who lived in the approaching shadows of Assyrian and Babylonian ambitions of where their security was to be found.
Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, 2019