Deuteronomy 7: In Writing

Strong as death

harder than hell

engrave me in your heard

brand me on your breast.

Let me be

a searing flame

a whirling wind

uprooting trees

scattering dead words

 like leaves

till only my voice

 reverberates

in the silence

let me be

the rushing current

that sweeps the shore

rises in sap

and buds in the bright fruit

ripening

Deuteronomy: Chapter 7

Dedication and devastation

Devouring desire

[For full chapter, click here

The past chapters have revolved around the recreation of the covenant at Sinai, building towards a relationship in which "you shall love God your Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might." Now we move to how this covenant will play out "when God brings you to the Land to which you will come to inherit." There is a tautology in this definition: God brings you to a land defined by the fact that you come there.

This tautology is thematic to the chapter. Love is defined by the fact that one was chosen; one was chosen because of love. Relationships are not defined not by objective parameters--"God did not choose you because you were numerous, for you are the smallest of all people" Rather, they are created by choice and commitment: "but because God loved you, and because He kept to the oath that he swore to your fathers..." This commitment must be absolute and  reciprocal: "God your Lord...is a faithful God, who keeps the covenant...with those that love him and keep his commandments." The key words of the chapter highlight this: "keep" (sh'm'r); "covenant" (brit); "face" (p'n'm); love (a'h'v).

Here, the implications of a "jealous God" become apparent: The relationship must be all consuming. There can be no competition. All other gods of the land must be utterly destroyed: "smash their altars, break their high-stones, uproot their Asheras, and burn with fire their statues". "You shall make no covenant with them"--the only covenant is with God, and any unfaithfulness will lead to utter devastation. The implicit metaphor is of a jealous marriage. There can be no bigamy: "you shall not marry them... for they will remove your son from following Me, and they will serve other gods. Then God's anger will flame out against you, and will quickly destroy you."

Being "holy" is being dedicated, set aside. Any adulteration will not be tolerated. Destroy, or be destroyed: "the graven images of their gods you will burn with fire. You shall not covet the silver or gold that is in them...they are an abomination to God, your Lord... you shall utterly detest it. you shall utterly abhor it."]

Deuteronomy 6: In Writing

The light through the drapes

the thread of road winding away

the warm smell of sunned olives

the heavy vines that shiver and sway

against  hair and arms

Are binds that bite flesh

twining the heart,

flinging forward to net

the fluttering wind,

making all words one:

I am here.

Sinai of the body

of sloped belly,
of heavy haunches 

sinking and springing, 

to trace the bonds
we weave each day

Deuteronomy: Chapter 6

The bonds that tie

And consume, 
Hand,  body,  soul 
How do you bind the heart? 
Make my name your word

[For full chapter, click here

"Hear, therefor O Israel"--this chapter continues Moses' anaphoric exhortations to the nation, culminating in the most famous need to "hear": "Hear, O Israel: God is our Lord, God is One." From actions ("the commandment, the statutes, and the ordinances") we have moved to being and emotion: " and you shalt love God your Lord, with all your heart, with all thy soul, with all your might."If the previous chapter established the need for distance, this chapter establishes a new kind of closeness: not to an external voice and perception that overwhelms, but rather a bond that comes from within, from inside  the human heart (one of the key words of the chapter): "these words that I commanded you this day, shall be on your heart." This is the chapter of presence/ Rather than consuming, God's presence here permeates: "you shall speak of them when you sit in your home, when you walk on  the way, when you lie down, when you rise." It becomes a self-engendered bond, both literal--"you shalt bind them as a sign upon your arm"--and figurative-- "you shalt ...swear by His name." God's name becomes the way  to bind yourself, and make your word your bond. It creates a bond between generations, as the chapter repeatedly highlights what must be "said to your children."
Yet presence is still dangerous. God is a "jealous God," and betrayal of the bonds can lead to a taking away of what was "given"]

Deuteronomy 5: In Writing

Faced with your face

who retains a face?

What eyes are not

dissolved in your flame?

Immolated to

ash-laden air

burdening clouds,

clustered with flocks

livid flame,

blinding as black

Crushed by a weight

I can’t escape

Tremble in dark dense

fingering a way away

From the vocative

voice

that compacts the flesh

wakes decayed corporality

buried

in the still of my palms

sere as a smoking pyre

I feel the brand

Your face fills the hollows of my face

Deuteronomy: Chapter 5

The extended presence

here and not here

distance or death

In a world of consummation

who will stand between

and leave a space within?

[For full chapter, click here,

Beginning again, Moses once again recounts the story of the covenant at Sinai/Horeb. This chapter continues, develops, and departs from the previous one. The keywords remain the same: an emphasis on sight and sound (re'eh, eynayim, sh'm'a). "Voice" "kol", "come close" (k'r'v); and "guard, keep" (sh'm'r). Now, however,  another root gains prominence:  "life / alive" (hayim). 

If the previous chapter revolved around the dangerous power of direct perception--and so focused on the Second Commandment's prohibition on graven images--this chapter focuses on the aftermath of that perception. It lists the full Ten Pronouncements, but as told over by Moses, highlighting his part. If the previous chapter dealt with the danger of translating an overwhelming experience into a limited pictorial form, this chapter deals with the danger of overwhelming experience itself: 

“when you heard the voice from the midst of the darkness, while the mountain blazed in fire, you came near me…and said: ‘…We have seen this day that God speaks with a human, and he may live.  Now why should we die? For this great fire will consume us; if we keep hearing the voice of God our Lord more, we will die.”  

The consummation of a relationship with the Divine is literal consummation. Nothing is left from the conflagration of sound and sight. Give me distance, or give me death, Israel demands: "You go close and hear all that God our Lord will say, and tell us…” The text enacts this transformation of Moses transition into a living translator between the people and God: “Then God heard the voice of your words when you spoke to me, and God said to me: ‘I have heard the voice of the words of this people which they have spoken to you. They have spoken rightly..'” The people speak to Moses and God responds, Moses a transparent membrane between.

This chapter is about the value of distance. Moses' position as intermediary translates the divine word into human terms that can be "taught" (l’m’d, another key word of this chapter). The generation of direct perception indeed “die.” This generation of the “living” is still branded by the fires of Horeb, but at a remove. They are virtually both there and not there, both face-to -face and separated:

“God our Lord made a covenant with us in Horeb. …not with our fathers, but with us, those who are here today, all of us who are living.  God talked with you face to face on the mountain from the midst of the fire. I stood between God and you…”

 God’s command to return to the private spaces of “your tents” creates a protective space for human continuity.  Moses, who remained “standing with Me” alone on the mountain,  still remains alone on the mount of Nebo, never to truly come down. He is not one of the “living” but remains in the liminal space between the living and the dead, between the land and the wilderness, between the human and the divine.]

Deuteronomy 4: In Writing

Watch yourself

with gimlet gaze

as you look

at fleeing deer

at ox that lumber

at fowl that flock the sky

at the scuttling earth

and the swarming fish

that bear the mountains on their flitting fins

At the heart of heaven

that cobalt dream

at blinding sun,

cool moon

withdrawing stars

and the hordes that haunt the clouds

When fire roars

in lashing flames

the gold cackle of the consumed

that licks your guts

and rises within

ashes in your mouth

gusted on the wind

to sink to the sea

Watch and see

the shadow

the air within the wings

the ice-blue heart of flame

the dark between

And the silence stretching beneath sound

infinitely

Deuteronomy: Chapter 4

What you see
And what you don't see.

Can you still the fire
Within bonds of form?

See the voice in the heart of the sky
in the depth of the fire

The silence on the other side of Being

[For full chapter, click hereFollowing directly from the description of Moses' view over the Promised Land, this chapter focuses on the power--and danger--of the visual. "Your eyes have seen," Moses says, ""Look!"he commands. "Guard yourself! Carefully guard your soul, lest thou forget the things that your eyes saw, lest they depart from your heart all the days of thy life."Side by side with the need to carefully remember and preserve the "witness" is the equally urgent need to guard against what was not seen.  The presentness of the visual makes it dangerous, leads to drive to "create forms" to hold what cannot be held. 
"You came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven,...And God spoke to you from the fire: you heard the voice of the words, but saw no image; only a voice....Therefor guard yourself, for you saw no image on the day...lest you become corrupted and make a graven image, the picture of any figure, the likeness of male or female,  the likeness of any beast on the earth, the likeness of any winged birds that fly through the air, the likeness of any thing that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that swims the waters beneath the earth lest thou lift up your eyes to the heavens, and when you see the sun, and the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, you should be driven to worship them..."
What is seen is a voice, not a form, a fire that defies any direct gaze. This dangerous tension between seeing and not seeing, having and not having, runs throughout the key words of the chapter: "see" vs. "listen"; "guard/ take care" (sh'm'r) vs. "come close" (k'r'v).Even as Israel prepares to enter the Promised Land, to have and possess, Moses' dispossession echoes beneath, in a triple negative: "God was angry with me for your sakes, and swore that I should not cross the Jodan, that I should not go in that good land...that I  die in this land, and not be (eyneni, lit., nothingness) crossing the Jordan.You shall go over, and possess that good land"
 The delicate balance between seeing more than you see, or forgetting what was seen teeters: "Guard yourself, lest ye forget the covenant of God, your Lord, ...make you a graven image...For God your Lord is a consuming fire, a jealous power." Not having and dispossession looms at the horizon, a loss of both sight and sound: 
"I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that you shall perish from off the Land...God will scatter you among the nations, and you shall be left few in number...And there you shall serve gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear..."
What is left is only Moses' promise that there is a way out of the "furnace," that what cannot be truly seen can nonetheless be found: "You will seek God your Lord, and you will find Him, if you search for him with all your heart and all your soul."The chapter ends with a chaisatic closing that returns us to the opening of the book: this is the initial message that Moses gave the people. A message laced with pain and resentment--Moses blames the people three times for his death!--yet also with the hope that Moses himself is denied. Unlike Moses, who was told to be silent, Israel will be heard.)

Deuteronomy 3: In Writing

Look out 
on unfurled longing

rising from the east, 

outstretched to the south,

winding to the setting sun

a lodestar of desire.

I am surrounded

by caverns of craving

wellings of want.

To see, and not to have
not to have and not to hold
not to hold and not to touch
not to touch and not to taste

Gritty and parched,

my mouth is a desert

never to be quenched.

my flesh,

is wavering, evaporating

as even your face melts away.

My call is lost in the heights

an eagle circling in lonely flight.

Deuteronomy: Chapter 3

Stand and gaze

At the limits of longing

To see, and not to have

[For full chapter, click here

After the long list of all the land that has "not been given" (n't'n --the key word of these two chapters) to Israel, we come at last to the land that is "given": "And God said, fear him not, for I have given him into your hands." We come to  Og, the last of the "remnant of the Rephaim"--that mysterious race of giants whose country Israel wanders. He is the giant who has been been left in waiting until Israel arrives to inherit. 
Yet to truly have what is "given," one must also actively :take"--va-nikakh. Only after an active involvement can give over the gift, as Moses does when "gives" the land of Og to Reuben and Gad; or rename the gift, as the tribe of Manasseh does, making the land truly theirs. 

The refrain of multiple names developes the key theme of retelling, recounting--the "deuter (second, retelling) nomos (of the law)" that gives this book its name. Renaming is retelling in the deepest sense,highlighting different perspectives, the alternate realities.  

Yet the chapter that begins with "giving" and inheritance ends with denial, and with absolute limits:"It is enough for you(rav le-kha! Do not continue (al tosef) to speak to me on this matter." We return to the refrain of limits, the "rav le-kha" that began this journey. Moses will not be allowed into the Promised Land. 

His longing is palpable. It paints the land in idealized shades: "the good land" "the good mountain." Even when recounting the story of the spies, Moses can only say the favorable aspect of the report: "the Land is good." However, despite this love, Moses, like the generation that rejected the land, will die in the desert: "God was wroth with me because of you." 

But if the nation would not even "see" the land, Moses is allowed to look: "Climb you to the top of the mountain, and lift  your eyes westward, and northward, and southward, and eastward, and behold with thine eyes." This is a gaze with no consummation. It is Joshua  who will be granted the fulfilled eyesight: "And I commanded Joshua at that time, saying: 'Your eyes have seen all that God your Lord has done to these two kings; so shall God do unto all the kingdoms where you cross over."

The final verse, with its reference to being "across Peor,"  sets up an implicit link between Moses, in his longing  lonely lookout, and Balaam's earlier all seeing gaze, looking over the people of Israel. Broad scope that comes at the expense of having. Like Balaam, Moses' voice is ultimately silenced: "Do not speak of this matter again" This "book of words" is also the book of the  limit on human speech in the face of divine decree]