Judges: Chapter 2

 

Cry for the forgotten

Those who forget history

Are destined to repeat

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We move back, both in time and in space: once again,we are back in the encampment of Gilgal. the touchstone of the period of Joshua; once again, Joshua is alive, "sending the people away" (2:6). In an echo of Joshua's two closing farewell speeches (Joshua 23 and 24), the Book of Judges presents us with two transitons from the Joshua era to the epoch of the judges. As in the case of Joshua's farewell speeches, the first is more personal, while the second takes a broad historical perspective.

The story of the Exodus reverberates in the background.As in Egypt, where the passing of a generation leads to a loss of history as Joseph is forgotten, here a generation passes, and another rises that does not "remember God" and His faithfulness.

With the loss of Joshua's God of history, Israel enters a cycle of infinite return. We are no longer on a vector from "the other side of the river" towards the promised land, but rather in a repetitive futile cycle: repentance is fleeting; redemption temporary; and every boundary made to be broken. The language becomes habitual, yet laden with allusions, whether to the plagues in Egypt [the hand of God was heavy against them], or the Golden Calf [they have strayed quickly] .

The weeping that opens the chapter becomes a weeping for generations, a reverberation of the initial weeping in the aftermath of the spies' report in the days of Moses, which resulted in the loss of the Land.

A leitwort is "oath" (shvua) and "covenant". Israel has replaced the exclusive covenant with God with oaths and covenants with the local peoples. As intimated in the previous chapter, the cost will be steep.

Goodbye to Deuteronomy

So here it goes. I've been wafting and wedging about writing this Siyyum.
Why?
Because doing so would imply that this part is really over. Because it would mean I need to decide what to do next. And also because Deuteronomy was hard for me, on so many levels. How do I sum it up--or some up my interaction with this difficult book?

Deuteronomy means literally "deuter" "nomos"--"second law"--a close translation of the Rabbinic appellation for the book: "Mishne Torah"--"second/ repeated law". Both names focus on the fact that this book is mostly retrospective, a spoken review of the books that came before. In terms of the time frame, this book was indeed, for me, a doubling--it took me as long as the other 4 books put together. It is harder to get a sense of continuity with all the time that passed since starting this book and finishing it. I was forced to do my own "review", going back and looking at the images, to try to feel how this book develops. 

In some ways, the Book of Number leads smoothly and directly into Deuteronomy. The final chapters of Numbers act as a segue, as they begin the review of the desert years that becomes explicit at the opening of Deuteronomy.  More profoundly, if the Book of Numbers focused on learning how to speak, this Book of Words (the literal meaning of the Hebrew name, Devarim) focuses on the next stage of speech: the creation of identity and memory. We move from learning to speak, to learning how to write, and to transmitting this writing to the future. And if Numbers ends with the fear of curses and imprecation, Deuteronomy closes with the giving over of blessing.

  

How does this “book of words” transform speech?

“These are the words the Moses spoke”: we begin with a focus on the role of the narrator. The first chapter of this book can be read as a primer in literary theories of narratology, with a defined speaker presenting reported speech and internal speech, vying with a narrative that has already been told. The literary structure forces an awareness of the presence of the speaker, and how the speaker’s experience and narrative stance affects the story that is told. The review is not identical to the original. The prism of identity stands in the way—an identity formed by the “words” being spoken, which define the timeline, define causality, define responsibility. Experience is translated into a particular frame, and into various narratives that compete with each other. Speech becomes the bearer of identity, the maker of memory. It is words that bind: you are defined by what you swear by, by the words you declaim. History is defined by what and how you choose to remember. Covenant is a story that must be personally and collectively articulated, again and again.  The book ends with a grand scene of establishing a seminal text that will serve as the nexus of identity: "And Moses wrote this teaching (torah) and delivered it to the priests and the sons of Levi...and the elders of Israel" (31:9). From internal speech, we are moving outwards, towards writing that is meant for reading, for sharing: "you will read this teaching before all of Israel, in their ears. Gather the people together: men women, and children and the stranger within your gates, that they may hear and may learn... so that their children, who do not know, may hear and learn" (10-13). 

The focus on speech and its role in creating identity, is accompanied by a focus on boundaries, both literal and metaphysical. The book sets out to differentiate "self" from "non-self."Like all stories, it is a story that also excludes and destroys. There is no room for dual loyalties in the covenant. All that is "not self" must be destroyed or incorporated.  Deuteronomy  continuously moves between a defined center and outer limits and back again--whether by tracing the contours of the country though the tri-annual journey from the peripheral cities to the central "place" that God will choose; or through a judiciary that is placed at "every gate" yet relies on a central authority; or through the network of roads providing refuge for the inadvertent killer. Beyond these etched contours is the space "outside"--a space to which the army "goes out," only to come "back in". The boundaries of the land are echoed in metaphysical laws that define and limit who can "come into" the congregation.  Even the consequence of sin is limited by a boundary, not to exceed the limits of the individual life.

It is Moses, the speaker, who experiences these absolute boundaries most acutely. Barred from crossing the physical boundary of the Jordan River, his life embodies the unbreakable and unmoving limit of God's will. The book opens as he looks out toward the Promised Land, and closes as his final request is once again refused, and he dies "there, in the desert, by the passages of Moab," unable to "cross" the river. It is Moses who embodies the lesson that his "song" comes to teach:  That God is the singularity that holds all opposition,: "I am He...there is none that can deliver from My hands."

In its focus on giving and taking and absolute boundaries, Deuteronomy returns us to the primordial introduction of the speech act: Eden and its aftermath.  Deuteronomy indeed acts as a "second law" in that it returns us to the issues that animated the primal presentation of humanity: : speech, knowledge, possession, and “good”--the adjective that Moses repeats again and again. The first, the only, command given to the humanity is to see and not not to take--to accept the imposed limits, to be a guardian who does not “send forth his hand.” In Moses’ bitter experience standing on Nebo, we return to the human in the garden, staring at the forbidden fruit. And this time, the painful boundary remains unbroken.

Does this perhaps, allow the blessing to answer the curse? 

Deuteronomy 34: In Writing

Always across

always abyss

Pour myself out

over water, into water

wafting on the waves

waiting for hands

that reach, will not reach

Watch me as I look outward

nothing between us

sky above us.

Do you watch for me?

You will never find me.

As I can never pass

onto dry land.

Let me curl into the clefts

between the waves

listening for your voice

the brush of your breath.

Deuteronomy: Chapter 34

Everything and nothing:

what you see and what you cannot have

eye to eye

face to face

At the moment of ending 

who will know me

who will I know?

[For full chapter, click here

We come to the final chapter of Deuteronomy, a chapter of ending, and transitions. There is a harsh finality to this closing: some things are irreplaceable, irreparable. Moses' tears and pleading cannot undo his one mistake at Meriba. "You shall see the Land, and there you shall not pass." And with the death of Moses "in the land of Moab" is the end of an era. An intimacy has passed that will not return: "there arose no more in Israel like Moses, who knew God face to face." We touch absolute limits and absolute loss.

Moses climbs Nebo for a bird's-eye view of the Promised Land. Yet of Michel de Certeau sees the synoptic high view as presenting the position of power, here is serves to demonstrate absolute limits: "and God showed him the land of Gilead as far of Dan, and all of Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim and Menasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto the last sea... And God said to him: 'this is the land that I swore unto Abraham, Isaac and Jacob... you have seen it with your eyes, and there you shall not pass." The Torah closes with a harsh lessons that not all you see is there for the taking. Is this perhaps a return to humanities first, failed, lesson in boundaries, with a Tree whose "fruit was a delight for the eyes," yet was not to be eaten?

Yet it is the harshness of absolute limits that itself that reveals the deepest intimacy. In Moses' lonely journey up the mountain, it is God who is with him. He dies "by the mouth of God," and it is God who buries him "in a valley in the land of Moab, and no man knows his burial site, to this very day." No man knows Moses' final resting place, but Moses "knows God face to face." It is this mutual knowledge that defines Moses and provides his space, as the people move onwards. 

For this is also a chapter of transition. There will be no replacement for Moses, but there will be a next step. Joshua is filled with the "spirit of God, for Moses laid his hands on him." The days of mourning "end," and we await the next step.]

Deuteronomy 33: In Writing

These are the words...

After all has been said

factored and seen

loosen the strands

and watch them rectangle

speak watching and wondering

watering a seed

and whispering Grow

language of letting go

ceasing to mold

the world with word

speaking the words

between now and later

Listen to my speech

turn to blessing

turn to prayer.

May we live and not die

May we be

May we come

into our people

May we draw on the deeps

May we reach for the dew 

sunk in the sand

plyng the sea.

May we reach what lurks below

what drips above.

May we find the everlasting hills

the eternal mountains

that embrace.

Hold us in your arms

gathered at your feet

carrying your voice

in the nucleus of our cells.

I know

no one

but the weave that holds us together,

the everlasting arms of earth

a lone glinting spring.

Deuteronomy: Chapter 33

from word

to blessing

draw it together

Waters above

waters below

pain of not-love

lack 

of knowledge

let us live and not die

let us be one in You

[For full chapter, click here

We come to Moses' final address to the Children of Israel. After a whole book of "the words that Moses spoke"--a book of exhortation, rebuke, warning, promise--Moses "made an end of speaking all the words" (32: 45), and begins is another kind of address: blessing. "And this is the blessing that Moses the man of God blessed the Children of Israel before his death."

In closing with a blessing, the final book of the Torah takes us back to the closing of the first book. Genesis also closes with a blessing before death--Jacob's final blessings to his sons.

These two closings are indeed linked by multiple intertextual allusions. At the opening of the blessing, Moses declares that we are dealing with the "inheritance of Jacob," and closes by declaring Israel "the spring of Jacob." As in Genesis, these blessing combine a focus on the future with a look back on the past. As in Genesis, the blessings are performative, and interweave a whole from the disparate parts. As in Genesis, the leitword is asaf, to gather, to bring together: "And there was in Yeshurun a king, when the heads of the nation were gathered, all together, the tribes of Israel,"

Like Jacob, Moses brings "together, all the tribes of Israel"  by interweaving the children of the various mothers, erasing the painful divisiveness of Jacob's family by creating new connections. Jacob created his new whole by cross-hatching the liminal surrogate children of the maidservants,  not quite Rachel's, not quite Leah's, making them the binder for the two sides of the family, interlinking Rachel and Leah's children through their proxies. Moses follows in Jacob's path, interlinking Bilhal's Dan with Zilpa's Gad through the imagery of the lion; and Zilpah's Asher with Bilha's Naphtali, through the key-word "ratzon" (desire, will). Yet Moses is more ambitious, and actually creates a matrix that unites Rachel and Leah's children directly: Levi, who has renounced all particular loyalties serves as the glue, allowing Benjamin and Joseph to be couched between Judah and Zebulun. 

Once again, Joseph seems to act as a primal binding force, as he merges the waters above and the  "deeps lurking below," reconnecting the split "waters above, and the waters below" that have not merged since the Deluge. Gad also returns to the primal "beginning" (Reishit) that opened the Bible. Throughout, the blessings bind through returning to "the eternal hills," "the ancient earth." Bringing "together, all the tribes of Israel" is tied to going all the way back to the primal divisions of creation, bringing together air, water, seas, sand and hills--all the natural phenomena that define these blessings. 

The centrality of Joseph in the blessing serves as a reminder that the question of redemption in Genesis is linked to bringing Joseph back, to undoing his sale and exile. 

Return to central. In the end, it is the Land itself that will  will act as a binder. In living within the "everlasting hills" Israel will actually, metaphysically, be living living within God: "The eternal God is a dwelling place, and beneath are the everlasting arms... and Israel dwelleth in safety, the spring of Jacob alone, in a land of grain and wine, and his heavens drop down dew."]

Deuteronomy 32: In Writing

Between listening sky

and attentive earth

between my call

and silence

between seeing and hearing

between what is

and what is not

 between drops of rain

between blades of grass

between the eagle and its nest

between inhale and exhale

between my God

and the cliff walls

stone without crevice

leaking honey

of the ending

unconsummated

between emptiness and hollows

between being lost and gathered

on this mountain of passage

that blocks the path

does something cross between?

Deuteronomy: Chapter 32

       Two           sides

and the hollow          between

  What is           not

                     seen,          not touched

can longing        hold

it all together

solidify to inescapable?

[For full chapter, click here

This chapter consists of the "song" of witness that Moses introduced in the previous chapter. Dense, enigmatic and imagistic, it brings together in condensed form many of the themes of the previous chapters of exhortation: the motifs of seeing and of listening; of hiding and being "found"; and most importantly, of remembering and forgetting: "Remember the days of the world / understand the years of every generation / ask your father and he will tell you."

The binary structure that underlay the previous chapters here becomes explicit, embodied in the very topographical structure of the Torah scroll: the text is set up in two facing columns, with a space in between. The poem becomes a visual manifestation of the tension that animates the covenant--the mixture of fury and love; of opposition and commitment. The visual hollows becomes thematic, as the poem revolves around negatives, the shadow of non-being. If Israel angers God with a "not-god," he will punish them with a "not nation." They will be swallowed by the space between the columns. 

Despite the duality of the poem, there is also a drive to unity, an undermining of the binary split. The vegetable becomes animal, dripping blood, full of fat; stones seep honey and water, as the world is poetically tied into a single entity. God, in the poem, represents the "straight" unchanging line that runs through history, while Israel is   "a twisted generation," changing and turning as the years pass. Yet this torturous "vine" circles around the solidity of God's rock.

The poem ends by declaring that God holds within Himself both opposing forces "I kill and I make alive, I wounded and I heal." There are no two sides, only a single reality: "I am He...there is none that can deliver from My hands."

The chapter closes by emphasizing the impossibility of "deliverance" from "God's hands," as God commands Moses to climb Mount Nebo, "and die on the mount... you shall see the land before you, but you shall not come unto it." There is no arguing with the implacable will of God, that has all the finality of death.] 

Deuteronomy 31: In Writing

Stand and see 

the fire flame between

us, a pillar we can-

not cross.

What remains witness

when I am hollowed 

flattened to a shadow

on the sands?

Barred at the river

of no traverse

I cannot leave

cannot come

can only dissipate

as I walk towards you

again and again.

The sea, the sky, the ground beneath

bear the marks of my passing.

The disturbed air

my weight born on the waves

leave a hollow no

one will find.

Don’t loosen me

don't leave me.

Make my word stone

let it sprout water

and drink it deep

feel its cold slide down

your empty belly

its residue on you tongue and lips. 

Deuteronomy: Chapter 31

What continues  when you can no longer come or go?
Who crosses to the other side ?

Write the words 
and make them live 
on the ears 
on the tongue...

[For full chapter, click here

"Behold, the day approaches that you must die." With this chapter, we arrive at the final section of the book: the death of Moses. Again and again, the word tum'am, "closing, ending, completion" is repeated. We have come to the final day of  Moses' life: "I am one hundred and twenty years old today. I am no longer able to come and go."

With Moses unable to "cross" ('a'v'r--another key word of the chapter), he now "goes" to attempt to provide for continuity. First, he passes the mantle on to Joshua, who can "cross before you."  Joshua will be the emissary who will "come with you" into the land, a physical continuation of Moses leadership. The next tack of preservation is writing. If the Book of Numbers focused on learning how to speak, this Book of Words (the literal meaning of the Hebrew name, Devarim) ends with a focus on how to write: "And Moses wrote this teaching (torah) and delivered it to the priests and the sons of Levi...and the elders of Israel" (31:9). This is a writing that is meant for reading, a code being lain down for public transmission: "you will read this teaching before all of Israel, in their ears. Gather the people together: men women, and children and the stranger within your gates, that they may hear and may learn... so that their children, who do not know, may hear and learn" (10-13). Through this writing, Moses' teaching will live on, to be heard by later generations who do not "know" Sinai.

God responds to Moses' "going" by calling him to come "stand" by the Tent of Meeting with Joshua.  God too sets out to provide for a transition from Moses, and His vision both reflects and departs from Moses'. The message at the Meeting is harsh: "Behold you will sleep with your fathers, and this people will rise up and go astray." For naught, Moses, desperate entreaties and plans to teach "the fear of God." Regardless of all teaching, the people will inevitably stray, like a fact of nature, like the sea will rush and the sky will rain. Nature itself, the earth and the heavens, will stand witness to this.

Continuity does not imply avoiding disaster. It is finding a way back after disaster. God, like Moses, appoints Joshua to lead the people. Yet Moses sees Joshua as a mirror of the people,  who like them must be told to "be strength and take courage,"   who like them, is dominated by "fears": he will "come" with the people, not lead them. By contrast, God empowers Joshua, seeing him as the new leader, "standing" in place of Moses, the two of them side by side: "you will bring the people." 

In a similar fashion, God also echoes Moses' need for writing, yet this is writing of a different kind. Moses focuses on recording "teaching / law" (torah), which would be entrusted to the national leadership of priests, Levites and elders. The teaching would be sounded out to the people, laid on their "ears" as they imbibe and listen. The act of reading and of listening is collective, God, by contrast, commands to "write for yourself this song, and teach it to the children of Israel, put it in their mouth." Not a "teaching/law" but a "poem"; not for the leadership, but for the people; not for passive listening, but for speaking; not for the collective, but for each individual. Just as He empowers Joshua, God empowers the people. Yet the purpose of this writing is different. It will not control the future, and make distant generations "fear God." Rather it will be a "witness," placing this history-that-will-inevitably-unfold within the specific context context of God's words. "Not [to] be forgotten from the mouth of your seed," it will shape the meaning of their experiences.

The chapter closes with the intertwining of both the human and divine vision of continuity. Joshua is appointed as leader to "bring" not to "come"--yet Moses strengthens him. Moses "writes the whole teaching / law to its completion" and gives it over to the leadership. Yet he also "writes the words of this song and teaches it to the children of Israel." Finally, Moses, as per his original vision, speaks into the "ears" of the assembled people. Yet this time, he calls heaven and earth as "witnesses." It is not simply a teaching, but an act of testimony.]

Deuteronomy 30: In Writing

When it all comes down

like rain, a storm,

when you drink it in

drowning droughts

you will hear the voice

within the fall of the drops

Don’t wait at the edge

of the breathing sea

that rises and falls

to the shape of your fears.

Don’t reach for the night sky

distant stars that pulse

to your longing.

The edge of the sky

gathered inwards

you will plunge, suddenly,

down the middle

to the base of your heart

and be pumped,

like the diluted blood in your veins

filled rich and salty again

charged with breath

to circle your hands

your legs

embracing your neck

lighting your skin

lick your lips

for the trace of sugar

for the remnant of salt

on your tongue.

Deuteronomy: Chapter 30

Sometimes, you can go back again 

and home is waiting

where it was left.

Just breath deep,

look in

And say... 

It's on your lips

[For full chapter, click here

This chapter brings together and closes the sequence of chapters dealing with the future covenant, with their attendant blessings and curses. As such, it repeats and intensifies many of the key words that have run throughout these chapters: "Look, I have set before you to do the life and the good, and the death and the evil. Choose life that you might live!" Once again, the focus on "seeing" (r'e'e), and on binary oppositions with a clear path running between; again, the focus on the wayward "heart" (lev); on what is given (n't'n); and on learning to hear. 

Yet there is a profoundly different ambiance to this chapter of reconciliation than those previous chapters of threat and imprecation. A kind of peace that comes after the storm: "and it shall be when all these things have come upon you, the blessing at the curse." No more dire warnings. It will all happen, regardless. What is important is that there is a way back. Again and again, the chapter repeats the root sh'a'v--"return," "reconciliation," which is also the root for the Hebrew word for repentance, teshuva: "you shall return (ve-shavta) to God, your Lord... and God your Lord will return (shav) you from captivity (shvut'kha)" . If in previous chapters, the land becomes a physical embodiment of the relationship with God, here the return to the Land is the direct correlation of spiritual reconciliation.

The focus on return is echoed in the literary form, which forms a chiastic frame structure, that returns us to the the initial threats and promises: if in chapter 28, the curse revolves around the "the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your animal," here, God will increase "the fruit of the womb at the fruit of your animal" more than it was in the beginning.

 What is discovered in this long way home is that the way back was no so far as what it seemed. It is not in the heavens, or over the see, but "it is very close to you, in your mouth and your heart to do." What is furthest in the end turns out to be closest, like the frame structure of the chapter,  which brings us back to the beginning.]

.

Deuteronomy 29: In Writing

I saw, eyes wide open

yet had no eyes to see

no ear to hear

no heart to know

what I saw.

Curled in earth

unknowing, unchanging

sealed in my pod

that never wears down.

Does entropy freeze

as I battle 

through childhood

roots curling down

like fine white hair

enwrapping your fingers

till we grow enwrapped 

in each other 
I was yours before I was me 
If you move, 

I am uprooted 
from root to tip
ash and sulphur 
who will know me?

Deuteronomy: Chapter 29

The hidden and the revealed--

what came before

and what comes after

intertwined in covenant and oath

Walk between, and give your word

Will you grow and prosper?

[For full chapter, click here

This chapter follows seamlessly from the previous one, sharing many of its leitwords: the focus on seeing and eyes (r''e'a); on hearing (sh'm'a) and knowing (y'd'a); on giving (n't'n);  the idea of rising (k'a'm); and the shadowy presence of Egypt. Yet if in the previous chapter, Egypt is a source of threat , with the possibility that Israel might be force to "return on  the path" they had thought never to see again, in this chapter, Egypt is the source and bedrock of the relationship between God and Israel.  "You have seen what God did before your eyes in the land of Egypt unto Pharaoh and onto all his servants and unto all his land." Rather than looming as a cursed future, Egypt is the proof of God's past faithfulness and care.

We continue the previous chapter's structure of binary oppositions. Here, covenant itself becomes dual. You shall "cross" between parts to create the covenant, which is always both a "covenant" and an "oath" (ala).  The covenant includes both "those who are here today" and "those who are not here today." Those who are "not here" include both the past--the promise to "your forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob"-- and also the future children who have yet to be born.

Thus, the binary structure is no longer one of opposition, but rather of inclusion. The parts are continuously related to a whole. Covenant is founded on a continuity between past and future, so that the past is always present, even within "the last generations, your children who will come after you."  The nation now becomes symbolized --for good and for bad--by "a root that bareth" (29:18): a single organic entity, whose roots reach downwards, and whose future can blossom in different directions.

Deuteronomy 28: In Writing

Your land will be bronze,

a sky of iron,

as the earth rains down

a shower of bone.

You will not be calm

You will not find rest

for the sole of you foot.

For your shivering heart.

In the morning you say:

Cover my eyes

with darkness

In terror of night

when darkness

rises in your heart

you say: Would it be day.

You grope the afternoon

for air.

When what you see you cannot have

and what you have in not

yours because it’s taken

and your heart leaves your chest

and you pounce on it starving

and the earth unravels

unwinding threads into the sky

like your life, that billows before you

a frayed shirt

that will not keep faith.

You cannot trust

that look in the mirror

you cannot trust

your face, distended,

like a sentence said backward

like a palindrome unraveled

like a poem recited in reverse

eyes out of focus

mouth slack

teeth glistening in hyena mouth

who will eat whom first

when you trust

no one

when your right arm slices your left?

I trust you, you whisper

to the torturer’s whisper.

The pain, at least, is

real.

Deuteronomy: Chapter 28

What do you see,

what can't you see?

In a world of doubles
split down the middle
a path running between
What will come on you?

Will you be swallowed by a mirror
Where the center cannot hold?

For full chapter, click here

This chapter follows seamlessly from the previous chapter’s command to set up the “blessing” and the “curse” on facing mountains. If in the previous chapter, the children of Israel were to be split between Mt. Grizim and Mt. Eival, half articulating the “blessings” while the other half articulated the “curse,” this chapter continues and emphasizes this binary structure. The chapter is set up along a clear split between the blessings that will come “if you listen” and the curses that “will come” “if you do not listen.” This overall frame is repeated on a microcosmic levels, as the individual blessing / curses are also structured along binary oppositions: “blessed are you in the field blessed are you in the city” “be cursed in your leaving be cursed in your coming.”

Between these mountains of blessing and curse, a path runs. Again, and again, the chapter emphasizes the leitword d’r’k, path, road: “You must not shift to the left or to the right” “you will walk in His paths.” These binary structure does not simply delineate isolated instances of consequence, but rather a path leading inevitably to a destination. The blessing and the curse will “come upon you and overtake you,” like the sun comes up, or a flood follows rain.

Yet as the chapter continues, the binary structure is also complicated and undermined. A single word unites both the blessing and the curse: n’t’n, “given”—the same word used to introduce this whole section of covenant: you will either be "given" blessing, or "given" into the hands of your enemies, or given a "fearful heart" you will wish to escape. A single concept unites the opposite sides: the question is how it is utilized. 

What is more, the description of the curses is far more detailed and extensive than the presentation of the blessings. Though they echo each other, there is also a break in the pattern. In the end, the curses become a kind of canon, raising and repeating the same issues again and again, in infinite regress, with continuously growing complexity. 

For example, the simple “Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, and the fruit of your land, ,” is first directly echoed in “cursed shall be the fruit of your body, and the fruit of your land." 

But then the curse is expanded: it is not simply that the “fruit of your body” are cursed—they will be actively taken away: “your sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people, and your eyes shall look, and fail with longing for them all the day…” 

Then it it is not only that they will be taken away—they were never truly yours: “You shalt beget sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours; for they shall go into captivity.” 

And in the final horror, it is you yourself who destroy these “fruit of the body”: “You shall eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters whom God your Lord gave you.”

The terror of the curses seems to lie specifically in this break of the binary structure. A cursed world is a hazy world, where one cannot--or does not want to--see: "you shall grope in the afternoon like a blind man." The curses undermines the clear demarcation of heaven and earth, as "dust shall rain from the sky." They make the distinction between "city" and "field" meaningless, as the walls of the city are "pulled down" and the outside comes in. Even past and future becomes fluid, as the past is not really past. "God shall bring you back to Egypt in ships, by the path that I said to you "you shall never see it more." With the erasure of these primary distinctions, the relationship between self and other breaks down. Brotherhood, "the wife of your bosom," beloved child--all turn into the enemy. One cannot even relate to one's self: disease attacks from within, and one "watches your life hanging in doubt before you."

If up to this point, Deuteronomy has been concerned with establishing the lines between inside and outside, ingroup and outgroup (see for example 21, 20, 19), this chapter gives a sickening glimpse into what it would mean to break down all these distinctions. What if opening the bounds does not make all men brothers, but rather assures that no men are kin? )