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Deuteronomy 6-7
“Sh’ma, Yisra’el! Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad. And you are to love Adonai your God with all your heart, all your being and all your resources.” D’varim (Deu) 6:4-5 Complete Jewish Bible If you asked a Rabbi to tell you the most important text in the Torah, he would, without a moment’s hesitation, quote the above.…
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Deuteronomy 5
This chapter is why Deuteronomy is called Deuteronomy. It’s the 2nd giving of the Law. Deuteros (second) ✌🏼 Nomos (law) ⚖️ There are a few details here that we don’t get in Exodus 20 describing the original event. We’ll get to that in a second. First… Does anyone else find it weird/distracting/fascinating that Moses speaks…
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Deuteronomy 4
We’re still in a kind of grand preamble for the book of Deuteronomy. Moses continues recounting the recent history of Israel with particular emphasis on the experience at Sinai. 🌋 Moses: Listen up, you guys. You are called to be different than other nations. Just because Jimmy the Canaanite worships idols, doesn’t mean you should…
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Deuteronomy 2-3
Pronouns: you/we/us. Moses speaks to the assembly of Israel as if they were the previous generation. “Then all of you approached me, and you said, ‘Let us send men before us, and let them explore the land for us, and let them bring back a report to us concerning the way that we should take…
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Deuteronomy 1
Welcome to Deuteronomy. Think this is gonna be a yawn-fest, like rewatching an old movie? 📽️ Nope. Did you know that Jesus quoted Deuteronomy more than any other OT book? He did. In fact, when Jesus was tempted by the Devil in the wilderness, ALL of His refutations came from Deuteronomy. 🤓 In fact, let’s…
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Numbers 36
You made it! 🥳 We’ve reached the end of the book of Numbers. And it ends on a technical note. This chapter brings together Numbers 27 and Leviticus 25. Remember back in chapter 27 with the daughters of Zelophehad inheriting their father’s share of the land? 👧🏽👩🏽🦱👱🏾♀️👩🏽👧🏽 I kinda wonder if there wasn’t some matchmaking…
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Numbers 34-35
A picture map is worth a thousand words: Here we can see the boundaries and the designated “cities of refuge.” The question marks on some of the spots are because, archeologists aren’t exactly sure on some of them. It’s not like there are 3500 year old signs just laying around. 🪧 What’s up with the…
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Numbers 33
This chapter is a recap of all the material from the Exodus up to now. Basically. It would be so many levels of ridiculous to recap a recap. So I’m only going to touch on a couple of things that particularly stood out to me. (And be forewarned – I’m feeling particularly linguistic today. 🤓😏…
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Numbers 32
“the land that Yahweh struck before the community of Israel, is a land of livestock, and your servants have livestock.”Numbers 32:4 LEB When I read that, this soundtrack starts playing on my mental jukebox: This is cattle country… 🐂🐂🐂🐂🐂🐂🐂 (I tried Googling “cattle country” and apparently there’s a video game?) If you don’t know the…
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Numbers 30-31
Vows & Vengeance… What are these vows? And why is it handled differently for males and females? 🤔 Most of us don’t take many vows these days. Marriage vows and being “sworn in” as part of judicial proceedings or as part of a government position are the kinds of vows and oaths we’re familiar with.…
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Numbers 28-29
Offering Review… Q: When does the teacher give a review? A: Before a test. 📝 There are several things happening in these chapters. Moses does a new census. The technicalities of land inheritance are settled. Joshua is commissioned to take Moses’ place. The Lord is getting the new generation ready to settle in the land.…
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Numbers 27
The Daughters of Zelophehad… Zelophehad (tzel-of-khad) is one of my favorite OT names. I prefer how it is usually pronounced: zel-off-uh-had. We know nothing about him except that he was of the generation that died in the wilderness. He had no sons. Only 5 daughters – who are about to go into the promised land…
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