Deuteronomy 21: In Writing

what the eye does not see
what the hand does not do
trickles through the stony soil

to the untouched reaching roots
that trail their long fingers

onwards

seeps out through the stream  
that will not wash clean

Deuteronomy: Chapter 21

What do you bring in

When you go out

And what do you take out from within?

[For full chapter click here

The chapter is a mixed back of disparate laws. Its opening reiterates and intensifies the themes of the previous chapter, while its closing looks ahead, to a time after settling in the land, defining the relationship between parents and children in a society where inheritance is at stake.

The opening section reiterates the previous themes of “coming in” and “gone out,” yet complicates them. If in  the previous chapters, we established a sacred space “within” and then “went out” to war, here what is out is brought in, and what is in is taken out.

The opening returns us to the laws of murder, and the metaphysical responsibility for blood: “you must expunge clean blood from within you.” Yet the movement “out” has changed the responsibilities “within” (a key word in all these chapters). In chapter 19, we dealt with the laws concerning inadvertent manslaughter, and the need to provide refuge for the killer from vengeful relatives who seek to “redeem the blood”—a responsibility to those who fit “within” (k’r’v) the roads and center that define Israel. Here, the responsibility is instead to the anonymous corpse, to the outsider who has no relative to demand “redemption.” Literal closeness, physical proximity, creates a bond: “then your elders and judges shall come forth, and they shall measure the distance unto the cities which are round about him that is slain. And it shall be that the city which is next to he that is slain, the elders of that city shall take a heifer that has not drawn a yoke…”

The ritual of atonement enacted by the elders brings what is outside into the intimate sphere. The unbroken heifer is taken to a wild “river that is not worked,” and what is beyond human habitation comes to atone for human habitation. The ritual shares much in common with the enigmatic laws of the Red Heifer, which comes to purify after contact with death. Here, we restate the connection between inheritance and blood, but a level of primal rituals of contact with the earth.  The stranger is brought “within” the circle of responsibility, and the unmarked spaces beyond the roads are webbed in to the sacred.

After bringing the outside in, we once again move “out” to the laws of war (the two sections are connected by a word play on yi-matze—“find”-- and te-tze—“go out”). Yet if the previous section on war mandated complete destruction, so as to prevent “learning from their abomination,” here, there is a possibility of bringing a captured woman “into your home.” After following a ritual of mourning and symbolic severing “inside your home,” the outside can become intimate: “and afterwards she shall be your wife.”

Uniting these two sections is a focus on seeing and eyes: the elders must swear that “Our hands have not shed this blood, nor have our eyes seen it,” so that they will do “the right in the eyes of God.” The unseeing eyes then open  to see “among the captives a woman of beautiful form” (21:7). 

At the closing of the chapter, the focus on seeing shifts to a focus on hearing, as the breakdown of relationship between parents and children is defined by "he does not listen to us" (21: 20); and the son's death penalty is supposed to make "all of Israel listen." Here, what is closest is expunged, as the parents "take out" (ho-tzi-u) their son to the court.
  
There is constant pulsation between bringing in and going out, between closing the senses, and opening them.]

Deuteronomy 20: In Writing

Always, at the threshold

Woman, earth, and tree

Always the constellation,

with the gleaming

always fruit a moon

dripping overhead

Always her arms,

her fingers curled in tight buds

Always the blossoming of her belly

a room expanding to hold

like the earth always beneath

calling to your feet

Always the question:

Will you rest in her arms?

Will you take the fruit?

Waiting to be given

Waiting  to be taken

Deuteronomy: Chapter 20

To plant but not flower,

Promise but not have

Don't fall

consumed before consummation

Be like a tree

Heavy with fruit

[For full chapter, click here

From the protracted focus on "when you come in,"  we now turn around to "when you go out." After building the matrix of center, ways  and periphery, a unified "Israel," the nation can now move outwards to "cities very far from you" (20:15). But if the space within focuses on justice, and a concern for blood, the turn outwards shifts to the (brutal) laws of war.

Even as God promises to "be with you," there is a full awareness of danger. "The officers shall say to the army: 'Has anyone built a home and not yet dedicated it? Let him go home, lest he die in battle and someone else dedicate in it.  Has anyone planted a vineyard and not yet eaten of it? Let him go home, lest he die in battle and someone else eat it.  Has anyone betrothed a woman and not yet taken her? Let him go home, lest he die in battle and someone else take her” (20: 6-8). Here, the greatest tragedy--the one thing that must be avoided--is non-consummation. Whether in human interrelations, or in relations to the earth, what has been prepared must be possessed; what is planted  must see fruition. 

The linkage of the human to the tree--the betrothed to the untasted vineyard--is sounded again at the closing of the chapter, where the army is warned against destroying fruit trees: "for man is the tree of the field." Though war creates an absolute break between human and human, the basal connection to the earth is maintained.]

Deuteronomy 19: In Writing

Expand and contract

follow the pulsing arteries

the beating blood

run, run, from the heated heart.

Redeem your blood

redeem your cells

redeem the membranes 

between your fingers

between knuckles and nails,

redeem what fell,

what you could not hold,

gather it all back in

within the walls

to that primal bound

that first line

before you were you

where self and mother

were one