What do holy people do?

What do holy people do?

This is my first of (hopefully) many Deuteronomy posts.  My goal is to read through the entire book of Deuteronomy in Hebrew by the end of the summer.  I’ve been reading a little less than half a chapter a day, give or take.

Deuteronomy 7.5 is where I left off yesterday.  It gives a response God’s people are expected to do, then gives a good reason why God demands such a strong action.  The context is Moses standing on the edge of the promised land, repeating all the torah God had given to him and the Israelites during their wanderings.  He emphasizes over and over, and over and over, the Israelites are to obey the commands God has put before them when they go into the promised land.  However, he also realizes they won’t entirely do this, even though they nod their heads in agreement.

Here, in 7.5 there is a command to drive out all the nations in the promised land they are about to cross over into.  They are to not make any treaties, and they are to show no mercy (2).  They are not to intermarry, because that will turn their sons away from the Lord, and God will quickly destroy them.

What they are to do, though, is pretty clear in verse 5.  They are commanded to smash down altars to false gods, smash sacred stones, cut down their poles carrying images of the goddess asherah, and they are to burn their idols with fire.

Why?  Because they are a holy people to the Lord, who God chose because he wanted to. 

God expects holy people to not do unholy things. 

God’s people are called to follow him and his commands faithfully.  Israelites had a tendency of justifying their actions, of serving both the true God and false gods at the same time, of keeping around idols up in the mountains to be able to go to every so often.  They knew God commanded destruction of those things, yet they were so appealing.  It was a visible sign of something to cling to, and the holiness of the invisible God was not enough for them.

God expects holy people to follow his commands

If they did intermarried beautiful, attractive women in the land despite being clearly told not to, God was also clear that the Lord’s anger would burn against them.

Having the Almighty God, Creator of the Universe angry at you sounds quite unappealing.  But the phrasing here, of “burn with anger” intensifies it even more so.  Being an unmarried single man, I have not yet fully experienced a wife burning with anger, but can only imagine that God himself burning with anger against me would be a wretched anger unlike any other.  Here, Moses is saying God will be intensely angry with the Israelites he chose, called, redeemed, delivered from Egypt, and uses to declare his glory –if they are so foolish as to spit in his face and adamantly turn against him.

The next passage, 7.7-11, has quite a bit of theological underlyings, of God’s faithfulness regardless of our faithfulness, and of his redemption, and the covenantal love of God.  I’ll try to get a post up on that fairly soon.