In Deuteronomy 30:15-20, we find blessing and imprecation associated with treaties. It stresses the necessity of choice. The choice is between life in the covenant and life not in the covenant. Life outside the covenant is death. The theme is the two ways. It raises the question of the way to possess any “land” to which God may call the people of God. Some people will refer to this as the gospel of the Old Testament in the sense that it is simple and direct proclamation. The people hold their lives in their hands. The choice of life involves loving God, walking the ways of God, and observing the commandments. The simplicity of the proclamation ought never to blind us from the difficulties we as hearers have of making the choice Moses urges here. 15See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. This is a moving moment in Israel's history. The people whom the Lord has already brought from Pharaoh's slave yards still face the possibility of failure. Unlike when Pharaoh held their life and death in his hands and chose according to his whims, the Israelites now hold their own lives in their own hands. The choice is theirs. Moses makes clear what the Lord requires for their choice to be life. 16 If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, reminding us that obedience was as popular then as it is today. Human instinct is to keep options open in ways that we think of as free. Yet, obedience and freedom do have a connection. Citizens of the United States are free, but they can lose that freedom if they move outside the Constitution and the laws of the land. Freedom without boundaries would lead to another form of slavery. We also have the reminder that Deuteronomy is full of commands. A command is a word that calls us to live beyond what we presently understand or feel or want. Everyone has choices to make. The choices are not trial-and-error guesses, for the commands of God inform them. These commands do not restrict a natural freedom; they create the conditions of freedom. The first word addressed to Adam by his Creator is a command, which is found in Genesis 1:28: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.” Commands assume freedom and encourage response. When commands address us, we receive training in responsibility.[1] Thus, they have heard the commandments of the Lord, but also that I am commanding you today. Making the choice for life is simple, but make no mistake, it has never been easy.First, by loving, meaning to act loyally and to honor the commitments of the treaty contained in the Code, the Lord your God. Loving the Lord is not simply a matter of warm, fuzzy feelings that will soon evaporate. Love of the Lord has content in that one shows it by how one chooses to live. Loving the Lord is a call to action. In marriage, the feeling of love is to have the companion of how one treats the spouse with kindness and faithfulness. Love shows itself in what we do. Deuteronomy presents God as being in a loyal, committed relationship of love with the people God has chosen. God is actively and energetically dealing with people in love. Such love is the key to both the character of God and the command of God. Living in covenant with this kind of God means we do not have a life worthy of the name that does not participate in that love.[2] This message of loving God alone came on the heels of a time of rebellion and misconduct during the reigns of Manasseh and Amon (687-640). Judah had grown increasingly lax about her monotheism. The traditions of Assyrians and Ba’al-type worshipers slowly sucked the people of God by the cultic lures they offered. There is evidence of syncretism, idolatry, child sacrifice, witchcraft, persecution of the prophets.[3] In 621, some ancient scholars rediscovered Deuteronomy during King Josiah's rule. King and people immediately recognized its words as divinely inspired. Under Josiah's leadership, Judah humbly renewed her covenantal relationship with God as established by the dictums of the Deuteronomic code. Second, by walking in his ways. After decades of drifting morality, Judah joyously embraced the heart of the Deuteronomic message -- God had offered a way to fulfilled living. All the Judaeans had to do was walk according to that prescribed path. In these verses, the choice is before the people. They hold their lives in their own hands. And, third, by observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances. Then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. Verses 17-18 show the consequences of disobedience. 17 But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, 18 I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. The result of idolatry is extinction. Looking toward the promised land he will never inherit, he implores the people to choose life. 19 I call heaven and earth, that which the Lord created in Genesis 1:1, to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings (barakah, denoting the power of life to expand and flourish in all ways linked to the Lord) and curses (qelalah, a complete deprivation of blessing, enfeeblement, existence without the expansion and flourishing that blessing suggests). Choose life, an invitation that Joshua will repeat in Joshua 24:15, so that you and your descendants may live. Here again, the choice is simple and direct, even if making the choice is never easy. This didactic use of the image and life and death shows influence from the wisdom tradition, where the one steadfast in righteousness will live while the one pursuing evil will die (Proverbs 11:19), the fear of the Lord is a fountain of life that helps one avoid the snares of death (Proverbs 14:27), and death and life are in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21). In a comparable use of the image, Jeremiah says a remnant shall prefer death to life (8:3), and the Lord is setting before the people this day life and death (21:8). Is a particular choice in a specific situation one that leads to life or death? If one imagines human life were as simple as following a rule it might be easier to answer that question. However, once one views life as messier or more complicated than that, choices enter a gray area very quickly, given the situation. 20 First, loving the Lord your God. Second, obeying him. And third, holding fast to him. For that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. The distinctive outlook of Deuteronomy is that Israel must choose in correspondence with the choice or election of the Lord. It must choose between life and death, blessing and cursing.[4] We must also face another reality. Life is not always blessing, and death is not always a curse. Death is intrinsically the end and limit of human life. It challenges it remorselessly. It confronts humanity as an incomprehensible reality beyond human control. Death in the Bible appears to human beings as strange.[5] There is anxiety that Israel may forfeit her salvation. This is something new -- that disobedience with all its sinister possibilities is part of the theological vision of Deuteronomy. Just before catastrophe, the author once again offers Israel life. The author does this by wiping out seven centuries of disobedience and once again placing Israel on the thresh-hold of the Promised Land.
The Way
To every man there openeth
A Way, and Ways and a Way,
And the High Soul climbs the High Way,
And the Low Soul gropes the Low,
And in between, on the misty flats,
To rest drift to and fro.
But to every man there openeth
A High Way, and a Low.
And every man decideth
The way his soul shall go.[6]
When arriving at a fork in the road, which way does one go? Every day we make thousands of choices. We make many such decisions in a nano-second, such as the movements we make with our bodies, the brain connecting to our feet and hands. We decide to read, to listen, to watch, to buy or not buy, to agree or not agree. Some choices are inconsequential. Most fall into this category. In life, however, we are going to face one, two or three moments that will decide our future and affect not only ourselves but others. Some choices are so significant that they will determine the course of our lives. Jesus said the same thing in other words: "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters” (Matthew 12:30). Peter announced to the ruling authorities in Jerusalem following his arrest shortly after Pentecost: "We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29).
[1] Peterson, Eugene H. Run with the Horses: The Quest for Life at Its Best. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2009, Kindle Edition. Kindle locations 1537-1546.
[2] Peterson, Eugene H. Run with the Horses: The Quest for Life at Its Best. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2009, Kindle Edition. Kindle locations 1537-1546.
[3] Elizabeth Achtemeier, "Plumbing the Riches, Deuteronomy for the Preacher," Interpretation 41 [1987], 273.
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[6] --19th-century English poet, William Dunkerley, writing under the pseudonym John Oxenham.
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