Judges: Chapter 10

 Who do you choose

and for how long?

Abandonment

[For full chapter, click here

After their disastrous flirtation with monarchy, the Israelites retreat from centralized authority. Leadership is provided by two minor judges, summed up in less than two lines each, each ruling for an uneven, non-symbolic number of years (23, 22), contrasting to Gideon and Deborah's sonorous 40 years of peace. The nation is reduced to begging someone--anyone--to lead: “Let whoever is the first to fight the Ammonites be chieftain.”

 The lack of leadership is spirtual as well military, as the nation descends to "serving the Baalim and the Ashtaroth, and the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites, and the gods of the Philistines." Only one god is left out from this comprehensive list: the verse ends with the drumroll chiastic closing: "and God they did not serve." In losing leadership, the nation also loses the link to Moses, to Joshua his successor, and to God. 

The chapter is indeed structured as the dark mirror of the final chapter of the Book of Joshua, with its closing covenant binding God, Israel, and the two sides of the Jordan. Like that covenant, the chapter opens with the root y's'f,--to gather, to add. If Joshua is "ye'asef" (gathers) the nation, here the nation yosifu (continues) "to do what is evil in God's eyes" and God promises not to "continue (osif) to save you." The two sections are tied together with shared keywords: "Choose" (b'h'r); "worship, serve" (a'v'd), and "abandon, forsake" (a'z'v), as well as with a shared focus on the "alien gods" that are "in your mists." Both emphasize clear-cut boundaries, as embodied by the river: "On the other side of the river lived your forefathers," Joshua opens his address. Here, the chapter focuses on attacks on the far side of the river, which gradually move from the periphery inwards.  

"If it is bad in your eyes to worship God,choose this day which gods you are going to serve..." Joshua demands, in his final address to the people. After an overview of God's shared history with Israel, he demands a choice as clear-cut as the two banks of a river: either God or the alien gods must be abandoned.   “Far be it from us to forsake (la'azov) the Lord and serve other gods!" the people respond.

Yet here, in an exact inversion of their earlier promise, Israel "forsakes (va'yaazvu) God, and did not serve Him." If before,  Israel reviewed their shared history with God, here it is God that must remind them of all the prior salvations. "You have forsaken Me," He concludes, once again highlighting the inversion of the promise, "and served other gods." A different choice has been made.

Back at that definitive covenant, Joshua warned, “If you forsake God and serve alien gods, He will turn and deal harshly with you and make an end of you, after having been gracious to you.” And indeed, the end seems nigh. After a tepid repentance, with a partial confession ("We have served the Be'alim", Israel admits, with no mention of the plethora of other gods), God seems ready to "make an end": "No, I will not rescue you again," says God. Referring back to that primal choice demanded by Joshua, he tells the people "Go call to the gods you have chosen." 

The sacred stone of covenant inscribed by Joshua has been overturned, the oak uprooted. What will bind the people to the land now? 

Yet at the very moment that all seems lost, there comes a wildcard, overturning Joshua's vision of a jealous, relentless God. In a stunnigly anthropomorphic verse, God's nefesh (soul, breath, lifeblood) "cannot stand Israel's miseries." Almost despite Himself, God relents. Yes, there is the covenant, and its promises and curses. And then there are the deeper currents, the lifeblood stirring, the breath connecting God and humanity, beyond any local circumstance. Like a parent faced with a child's pain, God is carried away by overwhelming empathy. 

Though the chapter ends on a cliffhanger, with Isreal scrounging for leadership, this moving, strange and haunting verse gives the closing a hopeful cast. There are currents to the relationship between God and Israel that even Joshua cannot understand, a shared breath that reaches beyond the official bonds of covenant.]   

  

Judges 5: In Writing

 I, to God, I will sing

Seek "I"

pasty-faced in the mirror

while hands drum the door

Imma, I need you, I really

need you. 

Nur, nur, the baby pinches my shin

demanding milk.

From the corner of my eye

the hawk-swoop of my son's hand

and my daughter is wailing.

Motherhood is resisting

the blandishment

of rest. Constant

vigilance.   

Pull your mouth into a smile

Focus. Split 

your ears three ways.

Why did you hit your sister?

my voice a harsh caw. 

The casual kicks

swats and biting. Stop

I say. I am counting

They are wildwaters

bursting all dams

I the melting mountain.

His legs kick 

like a donkey's, just missing

my stomach,  

 I wonder how i ever

contained him

within me. 

Peer through the window

as the last lights fades

enumerate and engrave the finds of the day:

a smile, a cloud, a bird, glints on water

try to awaken tomorrow

to eke out a voice

and tell it sing. 

Judges: Chapter 2

 

Cry for the forgotten

Those who forget history

Are destined to repeat

[For full chapter, click here

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.

A Belated Goodbye to Joshua

 It feels strange to say “Goodbye to Joshua” when I have just said a new “hello.”

After several years (!), I can't even begin to understand or explain what made me stop the Joshua section one chapter before completion.

I do remember after the end of Deuteronomy, I felt like I had reached closure, a natural stop point. Joshua always felt like a tag-along, an added experiment. I experienced the Book of Joshua as a comedown after the high poetry and complex narratology of Deuteronomy—the language mundane, the violence off-putting. And as a first-time new mother, I also had other concerns that felt more urgent. Yet why I stopped right before the end, I can’t say. No doubt there were some deep, unacknowledged currents there. I do know that the longer I waited, the more distant I felt from the project, and the harder it became to go back. Finally I blocked it out. A niggling untied end that I refused to consider.

Then came this year’s terrible Simchat Torah and its aftermath. As October turned to November, November to December, month after month, the war raging on with no exit point, I found myself completely blocked. Words disappeared.  When I tried to draw, I had to push against the intractable weight of futility. It was as bad—worse—as the block that started me on the Bibliodraw project so many years ago. This time I didn’t have whiplash or amnesia. My arm was working. It was my heart that wasn’t. I found myself desperate for a daily project. And the only project that seemed real enough and urgent enough to matter was Bibliodraw—a project in which I had already invested so much, a project embodying so many layers and history.  It is also a project that gives me a framework of feeling my way through this desperate time. Feeling my way, as I always have, with the “tikvat hut ha-shani”,  Rahab’s guiding bright thread of central archetypal narratives. Returning to Bibliodraw is returning to the questions: what are we doing here? How do we earn this home? How do we lose it? A project that could engage my heart and intellect and hand as one.

Finding a quiet moment does not happen often with four little kids in war time. But I suddenly had a day when I woke up, and all my children were in childcare, and I had no urgent projects that I needed to complete. For the first time in what seemed like months, I drew a deep breath. And I said: I'm going to finish this. I will at least complete Joshua, and close this one circle. Tie up this one dangling thread.

Because, despite all my denials, it was still bothering me. The notebook there, sitting in my closet, incomplete. And so I spent my quiet day reading through Joshua again. This is a much more condensed process that my other “goodbyes”, which were the slow accumulation of weeks' worth of ruminations and thoughts. This rather is the result of months of studying, years of silence, then a quick one-day review

So, the those thoughts after this review.

The Book of Joshua opens with a promise and a charge: I will be with you like I was with Moses, but you must take courage and be strong. The book indeed continues directly from the story of Moses, providing a bridge from Deuteronomy, . Yet it also actively redoes Moses’ legacy in a complex balancing act.   Jooshua’sleadership begins with crossing the Jordan, in a conscious recreation  of the parting of the Red Sea. This places him in the position of Moses, even as it rebirths Israel yet again as a nation. This is a new generation, with a new destiny.

Israel then camps in Gilgal, where they recreate the Exodus, celebrating Passover. It is a place of renewed literal brit, reactivating circumcision after the years of wandering: “Make thee knives of flint, and circumcise again the children of Israel the second time. … them [the children born in the desert] did Joshua circumcise; for they were uncircumcised, because they had not been circumcised by the way.” The desert era is seen as a hiatus, a kind of suspended animation between the beginning of the journey and its end. It is only now, when the children of Israel camp in Gilgal that they start national life anew

The ideas originally presented by Moses in the desert, which existed until this point only in words and concept, are now put into action, finding embodiment in the concrete space of the Land: cities of refuge, covenants in specific places, words literally etched in stone. Yet embodiment is a dynamic  and gradual process. Ideas become real, but not at once. Repetition and variation are key elements as this book. We keep going back to revisit history, even as we move forward. There is aonstant tension between potential and actual, becoming and being. The virtual desert journey does not truly end.

Again and again the verses declare that the conquest is complete, that the land is “subdued”, that Israel is settled and secure. Again and again, we find that it is not so. The same cities are conquered and unconquered, again and again: Hebron, Debir. This tension is perfectly encapsulated at the end of the era, when Joshua sends out representatives of eeach of the tribes to scout out and demarcatethe boundaries of their estate (18: 4). The land is then “distributed…each to his inheritance” (19:49), and they make “and end of dividing the land’ (19: 51), even though, as we find out, the land is as yet mostly unconquered, and not yet theirs to divide. The inheritance “ends” in abstracted visualization, even as in concrete terms it remains undone.   

Throughout this intense period of process, Gilgal is the home base, from which Israel sets out in short sorties, returning back to this space of covenant, as they try to work out the relationship between themselves and God.

The conquest begins with thedivine battle at with Jericho, which is essentially a version of the Jubilee (yovel): seven cycles on the seventh day, which ends with the blowing of the shofar (yovel), in a recreation of the Jubilee opening which undoes human ownership. With the blowing of the Jubilee horn, all the land returns to the owners originally allotted by God, all debts are cancelled, human possession and transactions are undone.  We return to origin. Just so, Israel’s inheritance of the land begins with God announcing a Jubilee, undoing the ownership of the Canaanites. The yovel is blown, the land returns to God. The victory is not the people’s ,but completely herem—forbidden, within the realm of the divine.

The second battle with Ai opens the door for human involvement in battle, as God steps back, acting mostly as tactician. And throughout the book, Joshua pushing for greater and greater human involvement. “You are a great people, who have great power…you shall drive out the Canaanites” (17:17), he tells the children of Joseph, urging them to take charge of their inheritance.

Yet at the very closing, the book returns to its opening point of yovel: the land is not truly theirs. It remains always God’s, a gift that precludes true possession, always given, never had. It is the process itself that is true belonging, the various points where God showed his faithfulness. What remains is to make a choice, and witness your own commitment.

Joshua: Chapter 24

God of history
God of faithfulness and choice
He is your belonging
in a land not your own
and the cycles close

[For full chapter, click here

After what seemed like a farewell speech in the previous chapter, Joshua "gathers" (y's'f ) the people together one last time, this time in the fateful location of Shechem--the city Abraham first encountered upon entering the land; the place where Jacob settled when he returned from exile; the place where the eponymous gatherer, Joseph / yosef is finally brought to rest, in the portion (shechem ) promised him by Jacob so many years before: "And behold, I am giving you one portion over your brethren, which I took out the Amorites with my sword and with my bow" (Genesis 48: 22). 

And indeed it is not only the people who are gathered here but history itself, as Joshua draws the full story of the children of Israel, stretching back to a primordial river that predates and prefigures the formative Jordan that opened this book: "on the other side the Rivers sat your forefathers, Terach, the father of Abraham and Nahor" (Josha 24: 3).  Joshua follows Abraham on his fateful journey to Cannan and  to God, touching on key events: the choice of Isaac,  the split between Jacob and Esau, the descent to Egypt, the splitting of the Red Sea (which plays so dominant a role in the opening of this book, prefiguring the splitting of the Jordan). Surprisingly, Balaam's forced blessing is also included in the key overview, seen as an opening volley in the conquest of the Promised Land. From there, the crossing of the Jordan, the conquest of Jericho, all leading to single, primal choice: Who will you worship?  

Joshua demands a clear-cut choice, as split as the two banks of a river, or the covenant upon entering the land before the two mountains of Grisim and Eival. Indeed, the covenant here is modeled on that earlier covenant, also including an etched stone. There can be no more walking on both sides.

 

Throughout, Joshua lets Israel know that God is their only true source of belonging.  The land that has become so central is not truly theirs, it is the land of the Amorites (24: 15): they dwell in "cities which you did not build... you eat of the vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant" (24:13). In contrast to Jacob, who conquered Shechem with "sword and bow", his descendants won with God's intervention, not with "sword and bow" (24: 12).  It is God who has been with them throughout their journey, a faithful God of relationship and history, who demands faithfulness back,

Echoing the altar erected as "witness" between the interlinkage of the Eastern and Western tribes, the tribes all accept and witness their interlinkage with God.

Joshua: Chapter 23

To walk a path and not deviate. 

Watch the sides 

watch where your feet fall

And be on guard

[For full chapter, click here

After  "many days", Joshua "old, coming into days," calls the people together in a farewell speech that echoes, in many ways, Moses' final address to the people. As in the desert, the "elders" the "judges"  and heads come together. Here, the Shema prayer command to "love God with all your heard and all your soul" is recreated for people that experienced not the Exodus, but the coming into the Land. Now the people will know "with all their hearts and all their souls" that God has fulfilled his promise.  Everything is embodied in space. "I am going the way of all flesh," Joshua says, and proceeds to speak of following a path, from which Israel must not deviate. Th relationship to God can be "seen" (r'e')--one of the leitwords of the chapter.

The other keyword is "to guard." Again and again, thhe duty is defined by the negative, what must not be done. "do not deviate" "do not enter" "do not worship and bow to them." The path outwards is the channel left between the warnings: "for to your own God you will stick". Hovering in the background is the threat of disembodiment, of becoming "lost from upon the earth" that has come to define everything]

  

Joshua: Chapter 8

Learn to lie.

Learn to trap.

Learn to circle round from the back,

weapon clenched in upraised hand.

[For full chapter, click here

With the exorcism of Ahan, the worse seems to have passed. The Children of Israel are no longer infected with the contigion of herem; God once more speaks as comforter rather than in "fierce anger," telling Joshua "do not fear, and do not be lowered." Yet even though God speaks as he did "at the first" (one of the key phrases of this chapter), something fundamental has changed.

From a world of miracles and open revelation, we move to a world of tactics. There is a huge chasm between the capture of Jericho, and the destruction of the Ai. The fall of Jericho does not require warfate in the usual sense of the word. The warriors circle silently, doing nothing. On the seventh day, after seven circles, the walls of the city fall away--just as on the Jubilee year of seven-seven, all human ownership falls away. God's presence is palpable, and His central command is to restrict human action: "do not open your mouth." And after the victory, the command not to try to approparite this victory: all spoils are to be herem to God. 

In Ai, by contrast, God acts as a tachtician. He does not provide victory--only the information that can allow Israel to win by their own means. Yehoshua, under the direction of God, plans a sophisticated ambush that takes advantage of the Ai's own over-confidence (an echo of Israel's over-confidence in the previous chapter). The mistakes and failures "of the first" are used to Israel's own advantage here, as the backup (two?) ambush parties attack the undefended city, leaving the main force to turn around and wipe out the war party. The leitwort  of this chapter is "hand", emphasizing the role of human action: if in Jericho, the inhabitants "hearts" melted, here, the warriors of Ai don't have a "hand." Emphasing the change is Joshua's hands, which remain upraised trhoughout the battle--an echo of Moses' upraised hands in the battle against Amalek.  Yet in contrast to Moses' empty hands, upraised to heaven, Joshua's hands hold up a spear, emphasizing the importance of tachtics and weapons. 

The violation of the Herem moves us out of the world of divine Precense and into the human realm . The spoils now belong to the people rather than God.

 The chapter ends with an enactment of the covenanat at mount Gerizim and Eival that Moses commanded before his death--a covenant that emphasizes the human role in recording the Torah. It is unclea if the stones here are the same stones taken from the Jordan. The ambigity of whether this is a new covenant or a reitification emphasies the transformation: having changed the framework of the relationship between God and Israel, the covenant must be changed as well. ]

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 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: 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: 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? )

Deuteronomy 27: In Writing

As you cross

carve;

As you cross
cover.

Map the earth with your foot
tread hard
tread heavy
grip like a chisels
your arrival a hammer.

Find contour in the crossing
your veins a river
your bones the stones
your breath the wind
your voice runs within
like streams
like seeds
like the veins in the stones
waiting to be freed

Every rock can speak
if you listen hard enough.
Every mountain can bear witness

to your passing.

Let the weight of being
press into soil

leave a mark

a mouth

a hollow
that cradles and demands answer.

Answer Amen

Answer I am

here. Answer

Yes; answer  in-

graved; answer, yes, a fissure

crossing the landscape

Say Yes to your blood
Say Yes to your shadow
Say Yes to sinews and muscles and bone
Say Yes to curse
say Yes to darkness
Say Yes to fractures
to caverns your cannot cross
Yes to before
Yes to after
Yes to the sea and the mountain and divide

And yes, I walk the bounds
And yes, the bounds are deep
And yes, I will gather
And yes I will bring
And yes and yes and yes.

Deuteronomy: Chapter 27

Trace the line

in earth, in stone

the chasm between

write, 

be silent, listen

declare and answer: 

Amen

We affirm

[For full chapter, click here

This chapter continues the focus on narrative and articulation. If the previous chapter emphasized the need to testify, we now move from the oral to the written. Upon crossing the Jordan, the children of Israel must erect standing stones, engraved with "all the words of this law, very clearly."

Again and again, the word "crossing" (a'v'r, also "past") is emphasized. Crossing the Jordan is not just a change in physical space--it is a change in existential space. The very physicality of the Land becomes a player in the relationship between God and Israel. The stones become new Tablets of Law, and then the basis of a new altar. The two mountains become physical manifestations of the split between "blessing" and "curse."

The embodying of the relationship between  the human and divine in the earth gives the human a more active voice. The new Tablets will be written by human hands: "you shall write upon the stones" (27: 8). Now, Israel does not only need to speak to a witness (as they did in the previous chapter), but to activly affirm the price of covenant, answering each curse with an affirmative "Amen."]