In Deuteronomy, as in Exodus, the writer gives us a lot of preliminary material before he gets to the actual “rules and regulations” of the law. Please read through the Deuteronomy study questions on my History 413 Web page. Then read as much of you can from Deuteronomy Chapters 1-15. What is there in this preliminary material you find particularly, interesting, important, or worth discussing in class? In what way does this material show Deuteronomy to be a particularly fine law code or something more than just a law code?
There is quite a bit of back story in the first few chapters of Deuteronomy, but early on I picked up on Chapt. 1 Verse 17. Where God's guidance is not to judge people differently on earth, there is no great or small. Bring it to me. As with most passages I focus on I end up with more questions than answers. Does this passage mean metaphorically bring it to God, pray on it, leave it in his hands, or bring it to him to literally resolve? Verse 18 then says he will command you at that time. With all this back story is he referring to the 10 commandments, and he has already answered these questions of human judgment/dispute? My mind now turns to war and capital punishment, if God commanded us not to kill how is there a just war, or an eye for and eye tooth for tooth retribution system in place today?
ReplyDeleteSome of the things I found to be the most interesting was the mention that everyone was ultimately equal under the law system. I also found it pretty interesting that the most important law, was teaching the laws to your children and making sure they knew what the system was all about. This would be a very good implementation for the U.S. If a parent were required under law to teach their children the law their would probably be fewer problems.
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