“The Lord will fasten the plague on you,
until it has exterminated you from the country
which you are about to enter and make your own.”
--Deuteronomy 28: 21
There is a tendency to think of the Old Testament God as a God of judgment, harsh and demanding. But, if the Bible is the Word of God and if Jesus came "not to abolish the law, but fulfill it" (cf. Mt 5: 17), then (for me) that puts the Old Testament God (Yahweh) in a different light. If Jesus is the fulfillment of the law, then there is much more to the "law" than blind obedience and harsh judgment. So... what are we to do with a reading like this? Even a whole book like Deuteronomy? A book that seems obsessed with laws and obedience and punishment. For me, my first step is to consider (when reading scripture) what part of it troubles me. And in this particular passage, it is that phrase "fasten the plague on you..."That word “fasten” troubles me. And that means it also interests me. I want
to think about it; mull it over; see where it takes me.
Reading
through Deuteronomy there is a lot of talk about laws and commandments that God
requires His people to fulfill and uphold.
But here in chapters 27 and 28 we start getting some clear and almost nightmarish statements
about what happens if they don’t. In
this chapter we have one of the most horrifying visions in the Bible; a vision
of parents eating the flesh of their own children (cf. 28:53ff):
“…you will eat the offspring of
your own body… the gentlest and tenderest of your men will scowl at his brother
and at his wife… not willing to give any of them any of his own children’s
flesh, which he is eating…”
The vision of this terrible hunger comes in a warning. It is part of a curse that is threatened to
befall God’s people if they don’t keep and observe His commandments and
laws. The brutality of it, the immensity
of it, overwhelms me. This image of a father, even a gentle or tender one, eating his
own children and eating them so selfishly that he will eye his brother and
beloved wife suspiciously --like an animal guarding his kill. What could
have prompted the author to have written this? What could have prompted God to
have threatened it? How can such a fate be just? How can it be deserved? How can it be the judgment of a loving and
merciful God? Why would God threaten to "fasten" it upon His people if they do not follow and
obey Him.
Scholars
may speculate that this prophecy of a curse was possibly written after the fact
and reflects some actual catastrophe that befell the Jews (or that they witnessed) –a siege and horrible time of starvation. But, taken on its own terms, how does this
prophecy reflect the God (and the laws) fulfilled in Christ? Are we to believe that a loving God fastens
such punishments on His beloved people?
Is that how Love acted when it came to earth and took flesh and dwelt
among us?
So then, I
ask myself (and the text) regardless of what the original scribe intended, what do you reveal about the God who became man and died on a cross for my sins? How is this “curse” a sign of God's love. And to me, it seems that it can only be a sign of love if we look at it not as something God
imposes or threatens, but as dire consequences God is warning us against. What if, instead
of reading this as a threat of something God will do to us, we read it is a warning about the "natural" consequences of sin? When we
turn from God we risk becoming beasts capable of eating our own children. What if God is telling us, fasten yourself to Me, follow My laws, obey My commands and you will become more fully the creatures you were made to be? But turn away and you will become fastened instead to exploitation,
plunder, selfishness, war, famine, blindness and cruelty --even cruelty toward those you
should love (even your own children). If we turn away from God, we risk becoming blind beasts who devour our progeny and beg to be enslaved by our
captors, our tormentors (our sin). Turn away from God and we will find ourselves begging to become the slaves of prosperity, technology,
pleasure and comfort, selfishness and sin. Sound familiar?
