Nielsen’s Nook

Shema Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai ehad (Hear O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is alone God). This famous sentence from Deuteronomy 6:4 seems to give us a rubric for understanding the book of Deuteronomy, if not our entire lives as those created by the LORD.

J. G. McConville, in his commentary on Deuteronomy, sees Deuteronomy chapters five and six as a single literary unit.¹ I find this resonates with my own thinking more globally about the meta-narrative found in the scriptures and is not disharmonious with approaches like that found in the IVP Dictionary of Biblical Imagery in which Deuteronomy five is said to be “a miniature version of the book as a whole”.²

The thought that impresses me is how easily we drive a wedge between the content of the two chapters. In chapter five we find the reiteration and reapplication of the Ten Commandments to the Israelites at the end of their 40 years of wandering in the desert. In chapter six we find the concern to be the worldview of covenant keeping as a means of true life.

The Ten Commandments are unfortunately left in the realm of abstract moral principles for most of us. Certainly do not covet is a bit abstract. Do not covet Jim’s wife is more concrete, but we still do not have a handle on what exactly coveting looks like. Certainly we would recognize the results of coveting if Sam were to engage in an adulterous relationship with Jim’s wife; however, the adultery is an effect of a more intimate and sinful disposition.

The Ten Commandments find their concreteness in the person of the LORD, our God. They describe One who is perfectly content in Himself and thus never covets, for example. They implicate us because we are created in the image of this One LORD, to live in the likeness of Him described in the Ten Commandments, thus living in consequent fellowship with Him. Concretely, breaking the Law of God is a direct and personal affront to the most holy LORD, exercising a desire to distance ourselves from God.

In this way, we can find that some kinds of obedience serve actually to distance ourselves from the LORD. We go to church on Sundays, perhaps the exceptionally spiritual go Wednesday evenings. But do we go to get God off our backs or do we go because we can’t help but worship the one our soul loves? When I see a police officer on the highway, one of my immediate reactions is to press the brakes a bit to slow down. This is a sort of obedience, making sure I am under the speed limit. However, it is obedience for the sake of avoiding a relationship with the lawgiver, which is in this case the State.

God has not made a covenant with his people so that we can do enough to call ourselves his. He has made and fulfilled a covenant with us in the person of Jesus that we might live out the likeness of God in fellowship with him from the heart. We are not more justified when we obey the Lord as Christians, but we do grow in grace and the appropriation of the Spirit of the LORD at work in us to will and to act (Philippians 2:12-13). Consequently, if we find our dispositions to the LORD different on Monday than they are on Sunday, we should be alarmed and we must ask the LORD to dilate our hearts that we would love loving him all the more.

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¹ J. G. McConville, Deuteronomy, Apollos Old Testament Commentary; 5 (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 139.
² Leland Ryken, Jim Wilhoit, Tremper Longman et al., Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, electronic ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000, c1998), 205.

In preparation for the continuation of a series on Deuteronomy at Bethel PCA in Dallas, I continue to notice a rhetorical theme recurring throughout the opening chapters of Deuteronomy. As chapter 4 transitions into Deuteronomy 5, which some see as the key section of the entire book, and consequently the entire Deuteronomic History, we find that it begins and ends with this rhetoric on life:

¹“And now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you, and do them, that you may live, and go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you. (Deuteronomy 4:1, ESV)

³³Did any people ever hear the voice of a god speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and still live? (Deuteronomy 4:33, ESV)

The reapplication of the Law to this new generation at the conclusion of the 40 years of wilderness wanderings, has everything to do with life (c.f., Deuteronomy 5:3). Chapter 5 continues to ask this question:

²⁴And you said, ‘Behold, the Lord our God has shown us his glory and greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire. This day we have seen God speak with man and man still live. ²⁵Now therefore why should we die? For this great fire will consume us. If we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, we shall die. ²⁶For who is there of all flesh, that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fire as we have, and has still lived? (Deuteronomy 5:24-26, ESV)

³³You shall walk in all the way that the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you shall possess. (Deuteronomy 5:33, ESV)

The holiness of God is perhaps shown to be analogous to combustion.� If left in raw contact with unbridled sinfulness it consumes it.� However, the purpose of holiness here and especially as it is fulfilled and demonstrated in the person of Christ and the sending of the Spirit of Holiness is to empower and cleanse God’s people, imparting life to them.

The sad thing is that until the return of Christ where the defeat of sin is completed, humanity lives in a sort of functional psychosis.� We want holiness and rightness and yet we hate it.� We want order and lawfulness and yet we covet and steal.� As I reflect on this contradiction in my own life, I am compelled to cry out, “Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner!”� And I must believe that the one who said, “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest”; that one who is unequivocally holy, will make good on his promise.

I wanted to share with you a drawning that a boy at Bethel PCA gave me today after a sermon on Deuteronomy 4:32-40. The baptismal is on the left, the Lord’s Table on the right and the pulpit in the middle. What I find fascinating is how others perceive you. I have about 27 hairs left on the top of my head and not one of them is represented here! At any rate, it was such a pleasure to recieve this from a young man who apparently had been touched by the Gospel in Deuteronomy. Thanks Nate!

There is an issue in the text here that seems to be glossed over in many translations. Deuteronomy 4:32-40 specifically (and larger parts of the OT generally) are making polemic against social and theological norms that are aberrant. This seems evident in the Hebrew. In Deuteronomy 4:32 most translations capitalize the word God, which seems right given that the god in view is the one who created (barah). Conceptually, this is God, the Lord, YHWH.

As most translations catch, the word for god (elohim) is rendered lowercase (i.e., god not God). But when the Hebrew text uses the definite article or the reflexive pronoun (hu’), the NIV and KJV do not bring out the polemic that appears to be going on here. The ESV and NRSV do the best job of catching this, but do not stay as consistent as the Hebrew would seem to warrant.

For example, in Deuteronomy 4:33-34 we read this abridged in the ESV:

Did any people ever hear the voice of a god speaking … and still live? … Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself … which the Lord your God did for you in Egypt…

The KJV alone here in missing the argument in the Hebrew reads in abridged form:

Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking … and live? … Or hath God assayed [i.e., attempted] to go and take him a nation … according to all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt …

The difficulty here is that you have an impossible question to answer if you follow the KJV’s translation. “Did God do ‘x’ according to what God did when he did ‘x’ ” is the logic of the translation. The problem here is that when the KJV has the only subject as the covenant God, and not gods and God, then we get a sort of tautological idea that really seems out of place.

When we come to Deuteronomy 4:39, it is the KJV over against the ESV, NIV, and NRSV that does a better job translating the Hebrew. These translations lack in that they don’t bring the weight of the argument to confront their English speaking readers. The Hebrew here is:

The maroon text above may be translated as:

… for YHWH himself is the God in heaven above and upon the earth below - there is no other.

The Hebrews were living among a polytheistic peoples and had demonstrated polytheistic tendencies in their history (e.g., the golden calf, Exodus 32). YHWH had broken into time and space and crushed Egypt before this tiny people in order to deliver them. However, it was in Israel’s deliverance that we find God revealing much about himself to his new people. In the means God employs to deliver his people we find he declares himself to be the only God anywhere, anytime.

In omitting the pronoun hu’, taken reflexively in my translation (i.e., himself), the ESV, NIV and NRSV all obfuscate the singularity of the claim that is being made. Even the KJV in catching the pronoun, leaves out the article that has been missing up to this point in the passage. It is possible to discern this in the English texts because they all include the “there is no other” clause at the end of the verse; however, the emphatic nature of the Hebrew seems diminished unnecessarily.

This has implications for how we understand the nature of salvation as applied today. Polytheism is alive and well in quite sophisticated ways in the twenty-first century. We worship money, power, possessions, and even Buddha, Allah, rivers and animals (e.g., in India). It is not merely a third-world country issue. It is rampant in all the world. It is not just “out there” in the world, but as Calvin noted, “our hearts are idol factories”. Thus, we take away from Deuteronomy 4:32-40 that if God will crush the Egyptian pantheon to deliver his people then and bring them near to himself at that time, then we may expect that he will invade the pantheons of our own hearts without hindrance and deliver us to union with himself in the same bonds of love.

Deuteronomy is the transliterated Greek title (Δευτερονόμιον) of the fifth and last book of the Pentateuch (as compared with אלה הדברים - these are the words or sayings). The Greek transliteration comes from δεύτερος meaning second or subsequent and νόμος meaning law, specifically referring to the Mosaic Law. So how did we get from “These are the Words” to this is the book about the second giving of the Law? There is quite an interpretation in rendering the title of the book as Deuteronomy, as I think you can see.

The Hellenistic Jews who translated the Tanak or Old Testament into Greek from Hebrew were the ones who made this interpretation that has stuck with us from before the time of Jesus of Nazareth. This translation is called the Septuagint, abbreviated LXX. The English speaking world does not know the last book of the Pentateuch as “These are the Words” but as “Deuteronomy”.

In entitling the book “Deuteronomy”, the translators of the LXX it seems were trying to account for the reiteration of the Law in Deuteronomy 5 and perhaps the nuances to the commandments as found in Exodus 20. While these are important considerations, it seems to project tertiary concerns of the translators rather than the primary concern of the book itself.

Covenant Remembrance and the Second Giving of the Law

I suggest in this opening of a short series of reflections on Deuteronomy that this interpretative rendering of the title of the book as Deuteronomy seems to be a bit ambiguous and therefore confusing.

On the one hand, the “Second Giving of the Law” as a title might reflect the immediate context of the covenant renewal through which Moses was leading the People of God. In this way, even today, the church of God always looks to the written Law, and each Sunday comes to renew the covenant that God has made with them and they have broken in many ways during the week. In this way, Deuteronomy would seem to reflect the idea of “Zecherayberith” ( בְּרִית + זֶכֶר) or the Book of Covenant Remembrance.

On the other hand Deuteronomy self-consciously looks beyond itself. The words in Moses’ mouth teach us this:

¹⁵“The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— ¹⁶just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ ¹⁷And the Lord said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken. ¹⁸I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. ¹⁹And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. (Deuteronomy 18:15-19, ESV)

So there is to be a prophet raised up who will speak everything that the LORD commands. That is, unlike Moses who was the greatest of the Prophets, this prophet will communicate everything that the LORD commands. While Moses was barred from entering the Land of Promise because he communicated something contrary to what the LORD had commanded Him, the future prophet of whom Moses speaks will not do such a thing.

This prophet does come and does present perfectly all that the LORD commanded him to communicate. John 1:18 teaches us that Jesus, the Word of God, was the explanation of God. Colossians 1:15-20 shows us that Jesus who was the image of God, came in the likeness of God, and restored fellowship with God through the blood of his Cross. So perhaps as we telescope Deuteronomy’s trajectory out to its ultimate fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus, we see again that the book looks forward to a time when covenant will be renewed once and for all on account of the blood of Jesus’ cross.

Jesus as Deuteronomy

If the book of Deuteronomy then is all about covenant renewal and covenant renewal is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus who is the explanation of God; then we must also consider the aspect of covenant renewal that includes the reiteration of the terms or parameters of the covenant. This is why the Ten Commandments are recited and reapplied to the historical context that the Israelites found themselves in forty years after the Ten Commandments were given to them as represented in Exodus.

The Ten Commandments are most definitely imperatives for us; however, they have a greater weightiness for us than just being imperative. They are primarily descriptive to us of who God is and correlatively they describe humanity, those created in God’s image. The imperative force is seen when we who are created in the image of God, whom the Law describes, rebel against God and correlatively deny ourselves and walk in unlikeness to God. We walk as self-contradictions when we rebel against God’s Law, having lost our referent that gave us any objective dignity.

In this way, we find that Christ Jesus has come and perfectly kept the Law of God. In other words, Jesus demonstrated the likeness of God perfectly. He reiterated the Law in his words and life as he labored to renew the covenant we sinners broke with God. In so far as Jesus is the final expression and iteration of the Law of God, he is the second giving of the Law, truly he is Deuteronomy.

In John 21:1-14 there are three symbols that stand out to me: fish, water and fire. These each have to do with Peter personally. He is a fisherman, who is learning that he is utterly dependent upon God in his vocation, even and perhaps especially in the most mundane aspects of that vocation. It is in the midst of Peter’s vocation that Jesus’ had first called him. He had gotten into Simon Peter’s boat to address the crowds and then told him, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” (Luke 5:3-4) Simon had responded after receiving the catch, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” (Luke 5:8)

Jesus had come to them in the fourth watch of the night (Matt 14:25), having walked on water for three or four miles (John 6:19). They did not recognize him this time either, being terrified and thinking he was a ghost (Matt 14:26); however, Jesus calmed them saying, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” (Matt 14:27) Peter responds in faith and uncertainty to Jesus’ identity, “If it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” (Matt 14:28) However, when Peter turned his attention from Christ who called him to the wet wind howling about him, his faith faltered. He sank down into the depths of the sea. Yet even in faltering faith, he cried out, “Lord, save me.” (Matt 14:30). The one, who made the wind, lifted Peter out of the water, delivering him safely to the boat and the wind stopped.

“Lord, where are you going?” Peter once asked. (John 13:36) Essentially Peter responded to Jesus’ answer in John 13:36 saying he would even lay down his life for Jesus. “Would you?” Jesus responds. And we know that as Jesus predicted so it came to pass. Peter denied the Lord three times that very night. He did not deny Jesus before legions of soldiers or great giants of might. No Peter, the Great Rock, denied Jesus Christ before servants and slave girls around a charcoal fire (John 18:17-18).

Here in John 21:1-14 we find the Apostle John returning to these three symbols of Peter’s life: fish, water and fire. Jesus comes back to these moments of Peter’s life in a very different way. These are all places which mark out for us the death in Peter. They chart for us the destination of judgment that Peter has apart from Christ. Peter acknowledges this when he says, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” (Luke 5:8) But Jesus did not depart. He invaded Peter’s boat, vocation and life - not for the sake of merely invading - but to change him forever. Do you feel the edge of the Surgeon’s scalpel in the words Jesus casts upon the early morning waters of the Sea of Galilee? “Children, do you have any fish?” (John 21:5) “Do we have any fish!?” we can imagine they mimicked under their breath. Their fog horn like reply bemoaned back to the shore, “No.”

“Cast your net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some,” the voice echoed back from the shore.

“Oh we’ve heard that before,” Peter may have thought in a cynical moment. John’s heart shot right through any cynicism. “It’s the Lord!” This time, the catch would be counted. This time the fish were all large - 153 of them. This time the nets would not break. This time. But what was different.

Something clicked for Peter, still carrying the complex of burdens in the shadow of the Cross. He was not waiting for anything. He bolted for Jesus. If his burdens should drown him, surely Jesus could save him.

This time Peter did not start off walking on the water. This time he threw himself in it, and traversed about a 100 yards. When he arrived on the beach, Jesus was waiting for him and the rest of the disciples who were coming in the boat. Jesus had made a charcoal fire. Where Peter had denied Jesus around a charcoal fire, Jesus comes to reveal his resurrection glory to Peter around a charcoal fire. The word for charcoal fire is used only in John and only when Peter denies Christ and here when Jesus has built the same kind of fire to nourish and restore Peter.

Jesus is Lord over all. He demonstrated his rule over Peter’s vocation and called Peter to Himself though the most mundane - Peter just doing what he as a fisherman would do. The Lord manifests his kingship over our barriers and fears. This time Peter was not afraid of the water or the wind. He did not walk on the water, but that did not matter because whether or not he walked on the water or swam through it, he had Jesus as his singular focus. This man, Jesus, had not only treaded across the water to meet Peter, he had now trampled down death by his death.

Christ our God has most certainly proven his Lordship over the fire, charcoal and otherwise. The symbol of Peter’s denial was now reclaimed as that of acceptance, redemption and restoration. In the Old and New Testaments the Holiness of God was described to us as a consuming fire.

“For the Lord your God, is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” (Deuteronomy 4:24)

“Know therefore today that he who goes over before you as a consuming fire is the LORD your God.” (Deuteronomy 9:3)

“The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling has seized the godless: “Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?” (Isaiah 33:14)

“Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12:28-29)

Jesus would charge the disciples to go to Jerusalem and wait for Him to send his Holy Spirit upon them in power. We find that when the Spirit of Holiness does come upon Peter and the disciples in Jerusalem, he manifests himself as “tongues of fire”. This most personal manifestation of God’s holiness does not consume these disciples but empowers them.

Jesus is raised from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. He will judge the quick and the dead. Those who have died to themselves, who have flung themselves to the waters that they might have of Christ even a glimpse more closely, these will be raised to life just as Jesus himself was. His death upon the Cross for our sins was vindicated. His being raised shows us who are His that our sins, our charcoal fires, have been remade and redeemed. The Father has forgiven us in the Son and now empowers us with the Spirit of Holiness. God, once our enemy, has now become our friend and the bodily historical resurrection is the billboard of all time that God will stop at nothing to glorify himself in loving a people for himself.