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This week’s Torah portion begins the book of Deuteronomy, or in Hebrew D’varim. In the weekly cycle of readings, the key word in the first sentence of the passage becomes the title of the reading. D’varim means “words”. The book opens this way: These are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel across the Jordan in the wilderness…
As a literary document, Deuteronomy follows the structural pattern of Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) treaties made between kings. Typically, in the aftermath of a war between two nations, the two kings (both the victor and the vanquished) would come together in a solemn ceremony, and in the presence of many witnesses, ratify the terms of the treaty or covenant between their respective countries.
And Deuteronomy follows the literary sequence of those covenants. That shouldn’t surprise us, since D’varim is a covenant between God and Israel. Like those ANE treaty documents, it opens with a preamble (naming the parties), and then recounts the historical events leading up to this gathering to affirm the covenant. The opening five verses of Deuteronomy chapter one are that preamble: the parties to the Covenant are identified as God and Israel. Most of the rest of the book contains a recapping of the events from the time we first approached Canaan, to our disobedience there and having to turn around and head back into the wilderness for forty years. It also recounts our wars with Sihon and Og, the kings of Heshbon and Bashan, and the beginning of the conquest of the land.
Deuteronomy opens, oddly enough, with a reminder of our dismal failure. Verse two says, It is eleven days’ journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir to Kadesh Barnea… Geographically, Kadesh Barnea represented the threshold of the Promised Land. Yet verse three goes on to say, And it came about in the fortieth year… Someone hearing these words for the first time would be shocked and ask, “Why on earth did it take 40 years to travel what ought to have taken 11 days?”
What happened was that we disobeyed God’s directive. God commanded us, saying, “See, I have placed the land before you; go in and possess it.” We decided instead to send an advance party to check out the situation first. The result: 10 of the 12 spies brought back a discouraging report. Oh, to be sure, the land was lovely! But the 10 spies didn’t believe that the battle belongs to the Lord, and their words frightened our people into giving up before we’d even started. We complained and began accusing Moses and God of having had evil intent; this in spite of our having witnessed first-hand God’s great deliverance through the Red Sea, and the great pillar of fire and cloud guiding us.
Adonai was justifiably angry at our rebellion. He commanded us, saying, “… turn around and set out for the wilderness by the way to the Red Sea.” “No wait,” we said (no doubt at the prospect of having to schlep forty years in the Sinai wilderness) “We can do this!” We would go up to fight the Canaanites after all. But God warned us not to do it; we’d had our chance and had refused, and now He would not go with us. But we decided to fight anyway. The result: we were driven back and chased out of the land, and many of our people were needlessly killed that day. And so when we finally decided to obey God, we turned to go back to the wilderness, defeated and despairing, and our numbers tragically diminished.
If that was the end of the story, it would be discouraging indeed. But it wasn’t. In fact, the book of Deuteronomy exists precisely because God is a God of second chances. He preserved us in the wilderness and brought the next generation back to Canaan to successfully conquer it. There would have been no covenant, no treaty, had God simply written Israel off (as some people today think He has). But the mere fact that we have this document demonstrates that God is a God of second chances. He is committed to Israel, and He is committed to you, if you are in covenant relationship with Him through Messiah Yeshua, the One He sent to redeem mankind. Being joined to Messiah Yeshua means that God is committed to the process of training you and molding you for an eternity you will spend in His glorious presence. Are you committed to the process as well? If so, even the discipline we endure when we fail is a discipline we can embrace, being convinced of His love for us.
But there is a warning here as well – a warning that we not refuse Him and turn away. You and I are expected to learn from Israel’s failure. The Scriptures have been wondrously preserved, in large part so that this generation might not repeat the disobedience and failure of that generation in Israel, and suffer similarly. The author of the letter to the Messianic Jews, quoting from Psalm 95 wrote, Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, where your fathers tried Me by testing Me, and saw My works for forty years. Therefore I was angry with this generation… He went on to write, Take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart, in falling away from the living God (Hebrews 3:8, 12).
If you have not yet trusted in Yeshua the Messiah, then you have unresolved business with God. By all means settle it today. And if you are a believer, do not turn away from the process. It is the one who endures that proves to be His disciple. It is important that we finish well.