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DEUTERONOMY
Lesson 48 – Chapter 33
We are quickly approaching the end of our in-depth study of the first 5 books of the Bible. I am sure that many of you have now fully grasped just how important to our faith in Christ that it is to set its foundation upon the Torah, and to set the New Testament that presents us with our Messiah on top of that.
Yet I also know from talking with some of you that this has been anything but an easy path of discovery; that it has at times been painful to realize that we have in the past often relied on agenda driven doctrines as the checkpoints of our faith rather than the Word of God as it stands. I also know that others of you may remain at least somewhat unconvinced of the continuing validity of the Law of Moses that forms a goodly part of the Torah; and others of you are terribly uncomfortable with the smirks and words directed your way from those who think you have turned against the long-cherished beliefs of the mainstream church or even that you may have watered down your trust in Jesus Christ and instead are adopting some outdated form of self-justification that has proved ruinous to many Jews for over 2500 years.
I ran across something recently that might ease the discomfort for some, and do something else for the remainder of you: validate what you’ve learned and give you enthusiasm, joy and the commitment to learn even more of the original testament of the Bible despite the efforts of many to derail you.
One of the scores of sources I use to create these Torah Class lessons is the World Biblical Commentary. I think I can say without much risk of disagreement that within the realm of Christian academics this commentary series ranks as the best and most complete work of Bible research and exegesis accomplished in the 20 th century and no single work has surpassed it. This commentary series consists of 52 separate volumes totaling well over 30,000 pages. It has been written and edited by the best minds of Christianity’s elite theologians and scholars. What makes it unique is not only the depth of each volume, but the mixture of specialized fields of each of the contributors. This is neither a liberal oriented nor a conservative oriented series. It simply attempts to reveal to the layman and clergy the most up to date understandings gleaned from the Bible in a straightforward manner without glossing over difficulties or applying allegory to solve them.
The writer of the 2-volume Deuteronomy study that approaches 2000 pages in length is Duane L. Christensen. Dr. Christensen has a well-rounded background; he received his first training from the American Baptist Seminary, then advanced training at M.I.T, then it was on to Harvard for his Dr. of Divinity, and next he added to those accomplishments a long stint at the Pontificate University in Rome and later Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
I tell you all this to demonstrate that what I am about to quote to you comes from a very studied gentile Christian scholar who was trained from a variety of theological viewpoints, and who is considered one of the greatest living authorities on the Old Testament. So bear with me as I quote to you a paragraph or two from his 2 nd volume on the World Bible Commentary study on Deuteronomy.
Duane Christensen says this: “Deut 33-34 are the traditional readings in the synagogue liturgy for Simchat Torah (the celebration that occurs among the Jews when the annual cycle of reading the Torah from beginning to end has come to a close). Christians would do well to recover some of this “joy of the Torah” in public worship. Many have misread the teaching of Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount. When Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times……but I say to you.” in the book of Matthew, He was NOT replacing the Torah. He was merely challenging the manner in which the Torah was being interpreted in rabbinic circles of His day. Jesus was interpreting the text as it was written, for when properly interpreted, there is nothing there that is contrary to His own gospel message.
Professor Christensen continues:
The Torah is a way of life and a source of meaning and joy to Jew and Christian alike. The Torah was not intended to be something external to us, which only the highly trained specialists could understand. The Torah was to be learned by every member of the community; and the message is exceedingly practical. Jesus summed up the matter well when He was asked, “Which commandment in the Torah is the greatest? He said to him, ‘you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind’. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it; ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
The Law (the Torah) and the Prophets, to which Jesus referred on this occasion, make up fully one-half of the Christian Bible, as we know it today. And all of it is built on these two primary teachings of Deuteronomy. We would do well to become more familiar with the words of the Torah, as a guide to proper living in the very manner in which Jesus lived and taught His disciples. What better way to do this than to include once again the systematic public reading of the Torah within the context of Christian worship?” In this slogan-ized world we live in, Christians enjoy wearing wrist bands that asks the question: WWJD…..What would Jesus do? Dr. Christensen answers that question in the most fundamental way by saying that Jesus would encourage us to live the Torah life and to teach the Torah principles. Rest assured, Torah Class, that we are doing exactly that (imperfectly as it may be) and you are part of nothing less than a latter day revival within the Church to bring back the Word of God, all of it, and make it the center of our lives and worship. But it is also meant for us to learn to discern, and then discard, all which is not of God but is only of men. What it will take is a willingness to be molded and shaped by the Lord. That divine shaping includes pruning; it means having things removed that are dead and dying from our lives (but oh so warm, familiar and comforting) so that they can be replaced with new and vibrant growth.
As Dr. Christensen says so eloquently, what better way could there possibly be than for a Believer to get into the Torah and see it for what it is; the way of goodness and life as defined by the Creator. Make no mistake: the Torah is NOT there to save us. Yeshua does that. But once we are saved and redeemed by His atoning blood, what else could be our proper response than to serve Him through obedience? And where else can we find what obedience amounts other than in His written Word? If we look to our own hearts as the source of His will for our lives, or search out men’s philosophies (no matter how outstanding they may sound) for the borders and boundaries we should live within so that we can dwell in harmony with Yehoveh, then we will be drinking from a thoroughly muddied water supply.
Open your Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 33.
READ DEUTERONOMY CHAPTER 33 all
The Song of Moses of Deuteronomy 32 and the Blessing of Moses that we just read in chapter 33 together form what amounts to Moses’ last words to the people of Israel. It cannot help but be noticed, though, that there is a rather sharp contrast between the messages of those two poems.
The Song of Moses is essentially the history of Israel’s redemption, and redemption revolves around God’s justice system. It is full of warnings and presents a dark future for Israel if they follow the nearly inevitable path of idolatry and rebellion against Yehoveh. The Blessing of Moses, however, presents the possibility and hope of a happy future with abundance and godly prosperity; and it does so within the framework of a series of prophetic pronouncements concerning each tribe of Israel separately. This encouraging and upbeat message presents a side of Moses that Israel likely never saw before this moment. He spent the last 40 years of his life trying to guide a people who resisted that leadership at every step. He presided over the giving of the Torah and the carrying out of the Law during that entire time, using the stick far more than the carrot because the disposition of those stubborn people he governed required it. The people saw Moses as the one who rebuked and instructed them. Just as with our modern criminal law system, those in charge of dispensing justice deal almost exclusively with the prosecution and punishment side of the equation; blessings that come from the system of American jurisprudence manifests itself mainly as only the absence of punishment and does not include reward for doing right.
Most times God handed out the blessings, and Moses handed out the consequences for misbehavior; God made the laws and Moses enforced them. Is it any wonder that after years in the desert leading this reticent nation of 3 million souls that Moses angrily struck a boulder to bring forth water instead of speaking to it when Israel was thirsty and far from any known water source. Moses longed for a little credit and gratitude for making these Hebrews’ lives easier; but instead he was usually the recipient of the daily griping and complaining for making Israel toe the mark that was set up by the Lord, not Moses.
It seems as if Moses was always the bearer of dire divine warnings and the agent of God’s curses. He was always sober and serious as his assignment and purpose was such a great burden upon his all-too-human shoulders. So for him to be able to give a farewell address that finally spoke ONLY of hope and joy and blessing and a wonderful future was undoubtedly a great relief to him, and the people likely wondered who that man was that was speaking to them in such a way, now, after all this time. Moses had been the parent of Israel for the past 40 years and thus he had to act the part. But as Joshua was about to pick up the baton of leadership and assume the role of Israel’s stern father figure, Moses could transform into Israel’s kindly grandfather and enjoy Israel for the last few hours of his life.
Those who are grandparents know exactly what I’m speaking of; and those who have not yet attained such a blessing from God might not. Parents are the heavies in a family; it is the parents’ responsibility to order structure and lay out boundaries for their children. Fathers and mothers must establish rules and then follow through by being sure they are obeyed; but they must also be the ones who execute the punishments for violations. And these rules are being laid down to little people who inherently just can’t wait to test them and typically they don’t much like the rules no matter what they might be. Unfortunately it is the norm that (because of this dynamic) parents must demand more respect than love from their offspring; and usually in order to attain that respect the child must acquire a healthy measure of the fear of consequences for crossing paths with the all powerful lawgiver: dad.
Grandparents on the other hand are more relaxed about the whole process of dealing with bringing up children. We finally have a better handle on what matters and what doesn’t; we’ve seen it all and our motto has become, “this too will pass”. Grandparents don’t have to deal with either establishing discipline or carrying it out beyond perhaps withholding that second chocolate bar. We tend to take a rebellious grandchild who still thinks he can flush an entire unfurled roll of toilet paper down the commode (despite the same results for the 9 th consecutive time) and tell them of the time that we washed a dozen our father’s best white dress shirts along with the two fountain pens we forgot to remove from the pockets.
Or we will stand just around the corner where they can’t hear us and adore the creativity as they are hatching a plan to make a clubhouse, complete with campfire, out of the interior of grandma’s minivan. Grandparents have a different perspective on life than a parent can afford to have.
Moses was now the grandfather of Israel and for a very brief time he could look at Israel through eyes filled with adoration and hope and mercy and leave the worry and discipline to someone else.
The first verse makes it clear that it was not Moses who wrote down the words of this 33 rd because it speaks of Moses in the 3 rd person, and it speaks of him in the past tense. This is written like a person recalling the Gettysburg address after Lincoln had succumbed to his wounds.
We find in this first verse an important (but not heretofore used) title for Moses; he is called “a man of God”. Some scholars say that this never-before-used title for Moses is proof that a Hebrew editor added the 33 rd chapter of Deuteronomy a long time after Moses lived, but another explanation is much simpler. A “man of God” is but another way of saying “prophet”, and we’ll see several prophets in the Bible specifically called “a man of God”. Moses held the unique office of Mediator of Israel, but now that his time was over it was appropriate to reveal another attribute of Moses and his pronouncements; it is that the words he spoke were often prophetic. Moses indeed was a prophet, a man of God.
The farewell address Moses was about to speak looks very much like the great Patriarch Jacob’s deathbed blessing upon his sons, the tribes of Israel, as recorded in Genesis. Like Jacob’s blessing Moses’ blessing takes on a number of forms. Some of the blessings resemble an ordination of the firstborn as the new national authority; other blessings are hope for a pleasant future. Most often these blessings are descriptions of the nature and character of the various tribes, as they would be in their assigned territories of Canaan, and some were petitions to Yehoveh for their tribal destinies to be supernaturally ensured and protected.
Appropriately, before Moses begins to pronounce his deathbed blessing upon his people, he gives credit where credit is due: to the glorious unmatchable God who formed Israel and who has agreed to be their God and their redeemer. To best understand the purpose and context of the first several verses we need to see that what is being described is the approach of Yehoveh from the wilderness regions that are primarily south of the Promised Land. The picture painted for us is of Yehoveh coming from the mountains of these southerly deserts in order to deliver Israel from the cruel hands of Egypt, and then to redeem them unto Himself as His people. Therefore these passages speak of Sinai (the Sinai Peninsula and Mt. Sinai), Seir (the region and the mountain) in the land of Edom, and despite the usual translation of “Mount. Paran” it is the mountains of Paran that are being referenced (no specific mountain peak called Mt. Paran has ever been identified).
Next there is a reference to a place called Ribeboth-kodesh that appears in both the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Septuagint (the first Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible), but is not presented as a place in the Masoretic Texts so we won’t find it characterized that way in the CJB. Ribeboth means “myriads” and so the title of the place is “myriads of Kodesh”. Thus the Masoretic Text takes the phrase ribeboth-kodesh and instead of making it a place, makes it into a literal phrase: “myriads of holy ones” (thus giving us a mental picture of angelic beings). But this idea of God approaching the Promised Land from myriads of angels when the entire passage is about the desert regions Israel traveled through to get to Canaan simply doesn’t fit. Almost for sure this is speaking of an area near Kadesh (not of angels), since Kadesh is located in the Wilderness of Paran, right at the border of Seir.
For the next several verses in Deuteronomy 33 the various Bible translations can look substantially different from one another. This Blessing of Moses is filled with odd phrases that have baffled the language scholars and that are even a couple of Hebrew words that appear nowhere else in the Bible, leaving their meaning very much in doubt. Further some of the phrases seem out of place and at times out of context, so Bible translators and interpreters have had a most difficult time here. We won’t get into all the possibilities of their interpretation because even the ones that are the most accepted are just a consensus of speculation. This is one of those times when it seems that even the earliest Bible documents at our disposal have had the text of these particular verses corrupted (albeit in some kind of minor way) such as a misspelling that went unnoticed for copy after copy; or more likely it was a basic Hebrew translation problem and this is because the earliest Hebrew alphabet (what is sometimes called Proto-Hebrew) didn’t even include some letters such as the aleph, heh, vav, and yod .
To help you understand what that means for us, imagine if the King James Bible had been written using a 22-letter alphabet instead of the modern 26 letters (this is NOT the case its just an illustration to help us visualize the problem). And then someone attempted to convert the English words formed using only 22 letters and sounds into English words that employed 26 letters and sounds. While much of the time it would be reasonably doable and produce good results, at other times it would leave us with strange words and phrases that would make little sense to us. Thus while the conversion from the most ancient Hebrew alphabet to the more modern took place perhaps 3000 years ago, the transliterated (but odd sounding) phrases we find here in Deuteronomy 33 would have had an understandable meaning passed down by tradition to the Hebrews of that age; but when taking it more literally (because the tradition of its intended meaning has been lost) we have a hard time making sense of it. So we’ll not linger here.
I will make one brief comment however. In verse 5 we again run into this strange epithet of Yeshurun, as it is referring to Israel; it literally means “the upright one”. And the idea being expressed in these verses (despite the many variations of the precise wording) is that among Yeshurun (Israel) a king arose and it happened during a gathering of the leadership of Israel. This cryptic comment is remembering the day that God was made king of Israel by the tribal leaders of Israel at the covenant acceptance ceremony at Mt. Sinai. Recall that the people of the Exodus said that instead of Israel having a human king as all their neighbors had, they wanted God to be their king.
The reason for this collective decision was a noble one in the hearts of some Israelites and not so noble in the hearts of others. Many Israelites truly trusted Yehoveh, had at least some inkling of His power and sovereignty, and so sincerely wanted the Lord to govern them through their Mediator, thinking it best. Others just didn’t want ANY leader over them that the power of a king. They had just escaped from the king of Egypt and so the thought of setting another king over them (more or less at their own doing) was more than they could bear. Further while the Israelite may have accepted the concept of a need for a human king it is hard to imagine that the leaders could have ever settled on which of the 12 tribes would have the honor of providing that king. Tribalism then as now looks to the welfare of its own members above that of any other tribe. Therefore the tribe that the king comes from always gets special care, additional protection, extra favors, and a greater share of power. Thus there is never-ending tribal maneuvering that often leads to outright war among tribes to be the dominant one that produces the king or ruler of the region. The wars we hear of today in the Middle East and in Africa are essentially tribal and/or sectarian. That is they are Muslim versus Muslim, or Muslim versus Christian, or extended family versus extended family.
Beginning with King Saul, and right up until the Romans conquered Israel, we read in the Bible of the litany of conspiracies and murders among the tribal leaders of Israel as they vied for power once they decided that they would rather have a human king than a divine one. The world is in turmoil today because it rejects the God of Israel and instead wants to continue on our rather unsuccessful path of governing ourselves by means of flawed human leadership.
Let’s move to verse 6 that begins the list of individual blessings Moses pronounces upon the tribes of Israel; the first tribe mentioned is Reuben.
Interestingly the very place Moses was standing at the time of this blessing was in Reuben’s territory. Rueben and Gad and approximately ½ of the clans who together formed tribe of Manasseh settled on the east side of the Jordan River (the so-called Trans-Jordan). On the one hand it is logical that Reuben would be the first tribe mentioned because he was Jacob’s firstborn son. Yet nearly 3 centuries earlier Jacob removed the firstborn rights of inheritance traditionally due to Reuben because he had sexual relations with Jacob’s concubine Bilah. So instead that firstborn inheritance was split into two part, and one part of it went to Judah and the other part to Joseph (technically it went to Joseph’s son Ephraim). Judah was given the right to rule over Israel while Ephraim was given the double-portion part of the firstborn blessing, meaning wealth and abounding fruitfulness ABOVE all of his other brothers. The blessing is in the form of a plea to the Lord that the tribe of Reuben would “live and not die”, meaning that Reuben would not become extinct through absorption of it by another tribe of Israel OR by Reuben being conquered and assimilated by a foreign culture. As we follow the fortunes of the tribe of Reuben into the future we’ll find that indeed it would survive as a separate tribe well into the time of the Judges and it is also mentioned in the earliest era of the Kings. But Reuben becomes almost an afterthought thereafter. Reuben became insignificant as a tribal entity, meaning that its population diminished greatly and thus lost any meaningful political power.
Because we Westerner’s have such a meager conception of how tribalism operates let me interject that what I have just described as having happened to Reuben was a normal and usual ebb and flow among tribal societies. Tribes didn’t just “disappear”; typically their numbers drained off into a rival tribe (more often than due to intermarriage). There was nothing supernatural about a large tribe becoming small or a small tribe becoming large through some kind of political or economic circumstance. Perhaps a trade route that ran through their territory would become popular and they would collect taxes and tolls. Or a tribe might control a seashore that (as shipping evolved) became an ideal port as a major trade highway, so that tribe would become wealthy merchants. On the other hand a tribe (like Dan) could find itself living on the border of an aggressive people such as the Philistines, and be no match for them. Therefore a tribe’s fortunes would rise and fall and with it rode power and prestige or extinction. Not extinction in the sense that the genes of that tribe were eradicated; but rather extinct as a separately identified tribal entity with its own government.
A tribe is, after all, merely people that form a large extended family. When a tribe began to lose its grip and the people of that tribe recognized that there was no foreseeable hope that their own tribe would remain viable, many of its members would consider ways to solve the problem as it pertained to them personally. And one way was for their daughters to marry into larger and more powerful tribes. Another was for a family to simply migrate into another tribal territory and live there. Living there didn’t automatically make them a member of another tribe but it did add to the economic and military strength of the tribe whose territory they now lived in simply by the addition of more people, just as it lessened the economic and military strength of the migrating family’s own tribe and tribal region. Therefore a tribe was usually quite amenable to accepting peaceful newcomers.
We find this exact thing happening to the tribes of Israel. But as opposed to other of the world’s tribes, Israel’s l tribes had their futures more or less predestined by the Lord at the bedside of Jacob, and those destinies were reaffirmed here in Deuteronomy by Moses.
The next tribe addressed is Judah. Before we discuss Judah a logical question to ask is what the rationale is (or if there is one) for the ORDER of the tribal listing in the Blessing of Moses. For this there is not a consensus but it is rather clear that neither military battle order (as illustrated by how the tribes were set in groups of 3 around the Wilderness Tabernacle) nor birth order was involved. Even though Reuben is mentioned first, Judah is certainly not the 2 nd child born to Jacob. And even though Leah’s first four children are mentioned first the order gets confused thereafter.
Jeffrey Tigay says that one needs a map opened before us to understand the order of the tribes as presented here and that the order has to do with geography and with the boundary lines assigned to each tribal region. Beginning with Reuben (the territory where Moses is currently standing) the next tribe mentioned is Judah, where the Israelites would first cross into the Promised Land. Then after Levi, the order of tribal blessings follow a path that heads northward through Benjamin, and then into the contiguous regions of Ephraim and Manasseh (the Joseph tribes), next Zebulun and its neighbor to the east, Issachar. Continuing east we watch the blessing order in Deuteronomy 33 cross back over the Jordan (into the Transjordan region) and into the territory of Gad, then north to Dan, south from Dan to Naphtali, and finally westward to Asher. Levi, which was given no territory, is dealt with in between the blessings given to Judah and Benjamin, undoubtedly because this was the area where Jerusalem would one day exist and where the priests of Levi would serve at the great Temple.
Judah, the ruling tribe out of which the Messiah would come, is given a blessing that seems to foresee a time of war and the need for the Lord God to hear the prayers of Judah, aid it in its battles, and then bring the soldiers back home to their families. The word used to describe the way in which Judah beseeches the Lord and in which the Lord hears Judah, is a familiar one to us: shema . Shema means to listen and obey, or listen and take action. It does not indicate the passive act of listening and only intellectually understanding the plea but going no further. Up to this point in the Torah the plea has been for Israel to “ shema ”, to hear and obey, God. Now the plea is that God would “ shema ”, to hear and act, on Judah’s behalf when they call on Him for help
Next the Levites are addressed. Since the Levites are God’s own set-apart Priests the blessing is focused around their role in society as teachers of God’s Law and officiators of the all-important rituals. For only the 4 th time in the Bible the Urim and Thummim are mentioned. These were two stones stored in a special pouch that was attached to the Breastplate of Israel’s High Priest, and they were used to determine God’s will in certain matters. How, exactly, they were used and how it is that they indicated the divine decision has been lost over the centuries. Even the precise meaning of the words Urim and Thummim are in doubt. Some think that that the names are indicative of the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. What is self-evident is that the type of answer that the Urim and Thummim gave was limited to either a “yes” or a “no”.
Nevertheless, the plea from Moses is that the honor of using the Urim and the Thummim would remain in the hands of the Levites (that’s the “faithful ones” of verse 8), and that God would continue to reflect his will through the use of those two stones as appropriate.
After the subject of the Urim and Thummim, Moses refers to the Levites as those who were tested at Massah and Meribah. In other words it makes the Levites as those who were the real objects of the Lord’s testing at the Wilderness stops at Meribah and Massah. If we look at Exodus 15:24, 25 we see this:
CJB Exodus 15:24 The people grumbled against Moshe and asked, “What are we to drink?” 25 Moshe cried to ADONAI; and ADONAI showed him a certain piece of wood, which, when he threw it into the water, made the water taste good. There ADONAI made laws and rules of life for them, and there he tested them .
So the idea is that while all Israel went through this ordeal, it was actually the Levites who were being measured by the Lord to see if they were the right choice to be His personal Priests.
As is more common than you might suspect in the Bible, there are two word plays in verse 8. Massah means “testing place” and Meribah means “challenge place”. So the words of this part of the passage are: whom you tested at the testing-place, and challenged at the challenge- place”. I only point this out so that you can begin to see that the names of places and locations in the Bible are almost always established by something of significance that happened there or is due to an outstanding feature of the place (Be’er Sheva, 7 wells). Therefore over the centuries a place name might be changed as one culture who has named the place for a significant happening within their history, gives way to another and newer culture that has something of a different significance happen at that same place, so they rename it appropriately.
Verse 10 is essentially the result of what happened with Levi as recounted in verse 9. And it harkens back to the Golden Calf incident of Exodus 32. Even though it was Aaron who actually led the rebels in molding the graven image of the Calf, it was also Aaron and his family who (when confronted by Moses for this horrible sin) saw their error and stood with Moses against those who went right on worshipping the Calf. Moses and Aaron being Levites, it was natural that members of their tribe (Levi) would also come and stand with them; but not all Levites did that. The result was that the Lord ordered Moses, Aaron, and the Levites who joined them to go about killing all Israelites who continued to bow down to the Golden Calf. And this included putting to the sword many family members including their own mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters. It was this act of repentance and their willingness to forsake that which meant most to them on the face of this earth (their immediate families), that merited them the honor of being chosen from among all the tribes of Israel as the Lord’s set-apart servant tribe.
Never one to miss showing you a good example of patterns being established in the Torah and reoccurring in the rest of the Bible, I ask you to listen to Jesus in Luke 14.
CJB Luke 14:25 Large crowds were traveling along with Yeshua. Turning, he said to them, 26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father, his mother, his wife, his children, his brothers and his sisters, yes, and his own life besides, he cannot be my talmid.
Exodus 32 and Deuteronomy 33:8 form the context for this verse. This is NOT about the commandment to “honor your mother and father”; it is not about establishing an exception to that foundational principle. So “hating you father and mother” is not that we are to go out and kill our families if they commit idolatry, or to leave them if they don’t agree with our newfound faith; rather it is that we have to be willing to let go of anyone and anything (at the Lord’s direction) if we are going to follow Messiah. It is that we might have to make some tough and heartbreaking choices. And Yeshua says to essentially make the same choice (in principle) that Aaron, Moses, and those who allied themselves to them made back in the days of the Exodus.