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."]

Deuteronomy 26: In Writing

Gather the given.

Let it swell

full globed and weighty,

let it fall in your palm

like a heart

like a fist.

Can you carry it

without spaces

cracking between your fingers?

Can you carry it,

unbroken?

Can you leave it

untaken?

Unwitnessed,

have I spoken?

Listen to the sound of my voice,

the fall of my call,

I say you today

and you are here

and you say me

and I am here,

full to bursting

like a pod 

heavy with seed

Swallow the seeds

like the earth

like the water

feel roots shoot

and take hold

round your heart

that spurts and bursts

 Like that first day

when I first felt flesh break

the juice spurt

It was good on the tongue

and burned going down

and I felt my skin  turn translucent

till I wrapped it with words

with leaves

stripped the trees

to cover me, cover me, cover me quick.

And now I ask,

If both our voices wander

on the heat of the day

can we bloom in the space between?

Deuteronomy: Chapter 26

I say you
You say me.

 
Reciprocity

 
To take what is given 
and give it on

[For full chapter. click here
This chapter continues with the focus on memory. If the previous chapter demands "do not forget" this chapter calls on each and every Israelite to declare before God "I have not forgotten" (26:13). If previous chapters spoke of leftover produce forgotten in the field, this chapter focuses on the first fruit, consecrated from the moment they bud, and gathered together.

The focus is on narrative as the vehicle of collective memory, the creator of history. As soon as Israel "comes to the land which God has given to you, and you possess," one must go up to the "place that God will choose" and bear witness to this fact: "I profess this day unto God the Lord that I have come to the land that God swore to our fathers to give to us."

After attesting to the human priest regarding the faithfulness of God's ways, one must attest to God regarding the history of human ways: "And thou shall speak before God your Lord: "An Aramean lost was my forefather, and he went down to Egypt." Narrative becomes reciprocal: one must speak to the divine regrading the human, and to the human regarding the divine. The two become completely intertwined: "You have avouched God today (he-emarta, lit. "spoken")... and God has avouched for you (he-emircha)" (26: 17:18).

In additional to attesting to national history, one must also attest to faithfulness in one's personal history. And in making a place for the personal, one also makes place for those who were previously forgotten. "You shall say before God: I have taken out the hallowed from my house, and have given it to the Levite, the stranger, the orphan, the widow...I did not forget." Rather than being fed from the forgotten leftovers, the more vulnerable elements of society are now fed from the "hallowed" tithes that were "not forgotten."

The key word of this chapter is "give" (n't'n--yet another key word of the Genesis story... we are returning to primal roots here).  Again and again it is emphasized that the land and the fruit are "given" by God. The human must "take" these gifts to the priest, who will "take" them and lay them back before God. Yet the mutuality of the human and the divine is not one of taking and giving back, but rather of overwhelming giving, which is then passed onwards. What was "given" by God is then "given" to the "Levite, the stranger, the orphan, the widow," so that ultimately Israel itself becomes "given high on the nations."]  

Deuteronomy 25: In Writing

Entwine

enfold

interweave.

Falling,  flaying

How do I carry you

How do I call your name?

To hold,

to cradle,

to clasp,

to grasp

the things you cannot

                             forget

or give.

Call a name to darkness

look for the distant flaming 

sword flipping around itself

a tree that hangs with words

will you reach out to take

or pull back

the clasp

to a gasp of breathe?

Deuteronomy: Chapter 25

Brothers

together

fall

enfold

fight

Who do you hold
Intertwined
What do you carry
And what cannot be grasped?

[For full chapter, click here

If the previous chapter closed with a focus of forgetting, on learning to leave things behind, this chapter focuses on remembering. “Remember what did to you on the way, when you came forth from the Land of Egypt” (25:7).  It is not only the memory of the path of national history that must be preserved, but also the individual names of those die “that his name be not blotted out from Israel.”

The forgotten are given to the forgotten: the left produce of the previous chapter are  left for those on the margins, for “the window, the fatherless, the stranger.” Memory is connected to belonging, to brotherhood—the leitwort of this chapter. Again, and again, the chapter speaks of ahim (brothers)—brothers, even if one is “wicked” (25:3); brothers, even if they fight. Brotherhood creates a space of “togetherness” (yahdav, another key word of the chapter).

  

Until now, Deuteronomy has focused on the socially vulnerable, insisting that the weaker parts of society—the widow, orphan the stranger—must be protected.  The lesson of slavery is providing a safe space for the weak. Yet now the focus on togetherness and brotherhood create a sensitivity to another type of vulnerability: the vulnerability of those who are “together” and alike to you. One must recognize the vulnerability of the guilty man punished in court, “so that your brother will not destroyed before you”; Amalek is condemned for attacking “all those who faltered behind” when the nation was  “enfeebled and weary.” A woman who “reaches forth her hand” (that terrible key phrase of Genesis) to grab a man's "vulnerable parts  (mevushav)" is to be punished by the loss of her own hand.

Which leads us to the fact that the place of women in this "together" space is questionable. The wife of a man who dies without children remains within the family space “she shall not go outside,” unless her husband’s brother does not wish to perform a levirate marriage that will “preserve the name of his brother.” Here, the wife becomes the glue in the continued “togetherness” of the brothers. Yet in the case of the a fight (“if men strive together, a man against his brother”), the woman cannot get involved: if she jumps in to protect her husband, she is punished. She is not to put her hand in the intimate space of their grappling together. Her own vulnerability is not taken into account.]

Deuteronomy 24: In Writing

Do not return for the forgotten

learn to leave the lost behind

do not pick over the beaten tree

rifle the flagging vine.

Leave a remnant in the shadows

to catch the gleam of the setting sun

a glowing globe in a temple of leaves.

Let the forgotten gather together

let the past take the other path

let the world unfold

as you dive within

feeling your breath flow

through the limits of your lips

feeling the weight of your day

coat you like the clothes on your back

giving your body shape.