This week begins our examination of the former prophets of Israel. For this first make I will be examining five passages from this section of the Tanak and discovering what they have to say about God’s promises, history, and the point of their inclusion in the scripture.
Deuteronomy 28
The focus of Deuteronomy 28 is around persuading the people to remain obedient to their covenant with God. The first 14 verses speak to all the positive things that come from being obedient to God. The remaining 54 verses speak to all the horrible things that will happen if the covenant with God is broken. As one might suspect, for every positive thing that would happen by following God, there is an opposite, negative thing for going against God. It should also be clear, since there is significantly more space given to the negative consequences, that there are negative consequences that have no positive opposite. The negative isn’t just the opposite of the positive. It is the opposite of the positive and so much worse then even that.
In this text God and humanity share in power and responsibility. God remains faithful to the covenant but the people have to remain faithful as well. It is only when the people break the covenant that God’s end of the covenant is broken. Not because God is unfaithful, but because the covenant is ended by Israel. This passage does not provide any context for return to the covenantal relationship with God once it has been broken. Instead, the chapter ends with the note that the people will be so desperate, they will try to sell themselves into slavery but nobody will even take them as slaves. In this the text is fairly incoherent with the rest of the scripture. Some of the latter prophets will not see any hope for the people to avoid punishment, but there would be no point if there was only punishment with no hope of return to right relationship.
Joshua 23
Just as with the chapter from Deuteronomy this text speaks to what will happen if the people break their covenant with God. Joshua spends a lot less time (only a few verses) and goes into a lot less detail onto the punishment for disobeying God. Instead much of this chapter is given over to the good things God has already done for the people as a sign for why they should continue following their covenant. Again, God has remained faithful and will continue to do so if the people also uphold their end of the bargain.
This text might also come from the exilic period. However, unlike the last text this one’s softer approach to the issue of punishment might mean it is a call for repentance. The Wesley Study Bible notes that this passage is most likely written in response to the Babylonian campaign against Judah, and not about Assyria. This is because verse 12 mentions intermarriage between the people and other nations which is the sin listed in Ezra 9 as the reason for the exile.
1 Samuel 12
This text from Samuel begins like the above texts, particularly Joshua, by looking at what God has already done for Israel. Unlike the others, this includes not just the positive things, but the negative things as well which were caused by past disobedience. However, after each of these negative outcomes the people came back to God who once again delivered them. Samuel’s focus is on the sin of the people for asking for a king to rule over them. The people accept this as a sin and repent of it. Though they will still have a king, if they begin to sin again Samuel tells them they and their king will be swept away. Here we really get to see God’s faithfulness come through. God never forsakes Israel forever, but forgives them once they repent after they are punished. As long as Israel is willing to come back to the covenant, the covenant is not truly gone.
2 Kings 17:5-18
In this text we finally get to the actual story of Samaria being conquered by Assyria. The details about the conquest are very limited. Most of the text is used to explain why it is that Samaria was defeated and taken into captivity in the first place. According to the text, Samaria sinned against God by worshiping other gods. The author is also very careful to explain that Samaria had plenty of warnings to stop from prophets and seers. However the people did not listen and after a long while God’s anger was so great that God sent Assyria to take the people away. The people in Samaria, as told through the author’s point of view, clearly were unwilling to do what was right with God and remained unfaithful to both God and the covenant. A theological justification stating such was necessary for the author of the text since, if Israel had been faithful, it should have been impossible for Assyria to prevail against them. However, since Samaria was conquered a justification needed to be given and so we get the condemnation of forms of YHWH worship that were considered completely acceptable before worship was centralized in Jerusalem (see verses 9-13 for examples of these formerly acceptable practices).
2 Chronicles 36:11-21
The last text we will look at describes the conquest of Jerusalem by Babylon. Unlike the Assyrian conquest of Samaria, a lot more detail is given to the actual activity of conquest in this section. This is likely due to both texts being written by authors who were likely from Judah and therefore not present for the fall of Samaria, but had at least some connection to the fall of Jerusalem. 2 Chronicles also specifically mentions Jeremiah’s prophecy as being fulfilled. The reasoning given in this text for the fall of Jerusalem primarily centers on King Zedekiah failing to heed Jeremiah and rebelling against Babylon. However, the text also mentions that the people and priests were also unfaithful, going so far as to pollute the temple of God. Here we might see the fulfillment of the text from 1 Samuel. The people and their King have sinned against God and they are either killed or taken away to exile.
Wrapping Up
Most, if not all, of these texts are likely written by an exilic redactor or editor. Whether the redactor is writing about the Assyrian takeover of Samaria or the Babylonian takeover of Jerusalem is not necessarily clear in every passage. In the Deuteronomy text, verses 64-65, for example, speak to the people being taken away to a foreign land as punishment. No matter which of the situations it is speaking to, the redactor is trying provide an explanation for why Assyria or Babylon were able to conquer the people and take them away. Ultimately, the judgment is that the people were not faithful to God. This theme runs throughout each of these texts. Certainly this worldview still exists today (look at people claim God’s judgment in natural disasters), but it is also a minority view among people today. Also, while it is used to speak to natural disasters, it is not used to talk about invading armies, at least not when the invading armies don’t believe in the same God we believe in.
Finally, some of the texts seem to be lacking in what we would consider moral today. The Deuteronomy text talks about famine and drought hitting the people so hard that they have to resort to eating their children (see verses 53-57). Certainly, this text seems to go a bit too extreme on the proscribed punishments. The Joshua text isn’t as gruesome, but it still revolves around the sin of intermarriage being the reason for death and exile. The 2 Kings text seems to be a redactor ascribing formerly acceptable worship as sin because the people didn’t embrace religious reformation. Finally, 2 Chronicles text deals with the slaughter and enslavement of the people as punishment which lasted for 70 years. These all seem to be excessive to us in modern society, but each is trying to explain why punishment had to happen. This is how I think we can deal with these excessive punishments. We don’t have to agree with the redactors that they are God ordained. Instead we can see them as the result of a people trying to understand how these things could happen if God was on their side. They ultimately decide that God wasn’t on their side for these horrible periods in their history. Not because God was unfaithful to them, but because they were unfaithful to God.
Great post!
ReplyDeleteYou make an interesting comment about modern vs ancient theodicy - "Ultimately, the judgment is that the people were not faithful to God... this worldview still exists today... but it is also a minority view among people today."
Do you think that's true? I can't tell you how many people I've met in crisis who say, "God is punishing me" or "I thought I was a good person, why is God letting this happen to me"? In our more individualistic culture, people are not applying this theology across nations as often, but I think people have a deep internal need to explain bad things relative to their own choices and behavior, much like the deuteronomist.
Thanks for the comment Jonah. I was quite unclear with my intent so thank you for asking such a good question. You are quite right that the popular worldview still contains a lot of similarities to the Deteronomist worldview. However, I was unclear in that I was not speaking to this popular worldview, but to a structural worldview. Structurally the church has taken on a more pastoral worldview and moved away from a retributive worldview. I spoke to the structural worldview because the Deuteronomist's worldview becomes the accepted structural viewpoint through writing it into the scriptures. Most of the dissenting voices are not heard (with a few exceptions). So, because the Deteronomist becomes structurally accepted, I spoke to the modern structural worldview as a contrasting point. You are still quite right that among the people this worldview is quite prevalent.
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