Deuteronomy 1-4

Deut 1-4

The boundary of the land God promises to his people seems to be expanding, while the criteria of who is considered a true Israelite seems to be shrinking. That's the way it seems to me when I'm reading it, anyway.

God and Moses create the concept of a "judge", a person who will function as the legal and martial head of the nation.

My notes say "who is talking here, oh..Moses". LOL. This is written in first person, by Moses. I've gone and looked this up, and it seems that Talmudic scholars suspected that this book wasn’t really written by Moses, because it describes his death and says " there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses". They think Joshua wrote it. From Wikipedia- These writers had no problem identifying a period for the text to have been written within. At the end of the 2 Kings, there is an enigmatic story of the religious reform conducted during the reign of King Josiah, also recounted more briefly in the 2 Chronicles 34:3. After eradicating the rival cultic centres to Jerusalem, Josiah purged the Temple in Jerusalem of pagan influences (621 BC). During the process of cleansing, Hilkiah, the High Priest, found a lost scroll of the Torah, whose laws were happily in complete accord with the reforms then being instituted."

But for now, frankly I don't care that much who really wrote it, whoever they are, I suspect I wouldn't like them.

He recounts what happened in Numbers. Right away, I'm noticing that this version of events is not the same as the one I just finished reading. This time, the Lord says he won't give them the land of Esau, although in the last book he promised it to them. He will not give them the Moabite land, it's reserved for the descendants of Lot (although in the last book they were told go to war with the Moabites and slaughter them all). He will not give them the land of the Ammonites either.

God will not allow Moses to enter the promised land, but the text doesn't explain why other than that Moses hadn't done well enough at keeping the people from whining. I have been told two different reason, neither of which appears in this book- a) that Moses cheated on his wife and so made God angry, and b) that he had allowed the spies to lie about what they found. Um… huh? I don't see any evidence of a) in the text, and I honestly can't remember when or how I was given the impression that it was anything close to the reason.