Blessings and Curses
Wow! What a chapter! While I do mean that in a tongue-and-cheek
kind of way, I also say that in a very honest and respectful tone. Deuteronomy 28 is a tough chapter to read
just because it focuses so heavily on the curses.
This is no surprise
to me, and I’ll pass along some information so that it will not be of any
surprise to you in the future. In
ancient writing when a treaty is made, a list of blessings and curses was
always a part of the treaty. It is
typical for the list of curses to double (in space and words) the list of blessings. In this case, notice that we have 14 verses
of blessings but 54 verses of curses!
That’s almost 4 times as many! But
this is completely normal for ancient writings.
You might wonder
why. Well, it is simple. If I tell someone that they need to believe
in God because God really loves them and they need to get in touch with the
depth of that love, it should make sense to them. If it does make sense to them, they are
already in the mind of God and will see everything as a blessing. There is little need to convince the person
who is already predisposed to obedience.
On the other hand, there
are many people who are not naturally predisposed to God and willing to abide
and be obedient to Him. Thus, if I tell
them about the dangers of sin, the presence of evil in the world, the presence
of evil within ourselves, and things like this they are much more likely to
stop and listen and see whether what I am saying is true for them or not. The truth is that human beings are deterred
by the bad far more greatly than they are encouraged by the good. We are much more caught up by the bad things
of life than we are caught by the good.
Every wonder why our news casts are all bad stories and very little good
stories? Ever wonder why we have prisons
instead of ‘reward centers?’ This is why
the list of curses in this chapter is so much longer than the list of blessings.
Communal, not Individual
So rather than
talking about the individual blessings, let me say something in general. Notice that the Hebrew people have access to
the land because they are the children of Abraham. But they will only enjoy the promise of the
land if they choose for themselves to obey God’s ways. I love the parallel that can be made here
with Christianity. We have access to
salvation because God offered it to us through Jesus Christ first, just like
these Hebrew people were brought out of Egypt because of God’s relationship to
Abraham. But we only enjoy the benefits
of salvation when we obey God’s ways, just as these Hebrew people will only
enjoy the blessings of God when they themselves are obedient!
However, notice that
there is a communal element to this passage.
God is saying these things through Moses to the community. When their community is obedient, all of
their fields will prosper, all of their vineyards will fruit, all of their
animals will enjoy productivity and reproducibility. Much of this passage has a communal sense
more than an individual sense.
Going Deeper into the Curses Section
I apologize ahead of
time but this next section isn’t going to be all that enjoyable. But I think it is something that we as human
beings should confront, realize, and accept.
As I was reading
through the curses, I was struck by Deuteronomy 28:63. Just as God delights in blessing the
faithful, God will delight in bringing ruin to the faithless. This is a hard teaching, and there may be
some who simply cannot accept that this verse accurately describes a part of a
righteous God. However, I believe that
scripture is an accurate testimony to who God is and therefore I must accept
this verse as true.
Just to make sure I
wasn’t dealing with a particular translational issue in the ESV, I decided to
check the NRSV, the NIV, the Holman, and the NASB. In those bibles I found the following
translations where the ESV says delight: delight (NRSV), pleased (NIV), made
glad (Holman), and delight (NASB).
Looking up the actual Hebrew word tells me that these translations are
spot on. The Hebrew word means to exult
or rejoice. So there isn’t a
translational issue here. The Bible does
say that God delights in bringing ruing to the faithless.
And really, why
shouldn’t He? The definition of
something “righteous and just” is something that does the right thing for the
right reasons at the right time. I as a
human must absolutely be careful in judging because I cannot truly know anyone’s
heart but my own. But God does
know. God knows who has turned against
Him – or at least away from Him. God absolutely
knows who is truly faithful and faithless.
If God did not allow the faithless to fall into a punishment of their
own choosing in their own free will, would we even be able to call God
righteous? No, God is only righteous
when He allows people to choose life or death and then allow the consequences
of their actions to take them where they have chosen to go. That is the behavior of a righteous God.
Don’t forget, by the
way, that God also offers salvation to all.
Anyone can come to Him and try to abide by His ways in relationship with
Him. So it truly is God as a righteous
God desiring to love us all but allowing us to choose or deny relationship with
Him.
The parent does not
look for opportunities to discipline their child except where it is called for
and where it is expected. Then the
parent should delight knowing that while the consequences might be tough, the
discipline will ultimately result in the child being a healthier person in the
long run. The teacher does not delight
in giving a student a failing grade on a test.
However, the teacher knows that giving a student a failing grade when
they truly deserve it will demonstrate the student’s lack of understanding and
hopefully spur them on to a greater performance later. We would not think the parent who never
disciplines to be righteous. We would
not think the teacher who never fails a student to be righteous. We should therefore accept that God is only
righteous when discipline and judgment are a part of the process.
Along with these
difficult words, we should be careful to understand that words like “plucked
off the land” and “destroyed” do not necessarily imply absolute annihilation. God does not violate His covenant with
Abraham. Even if God punishes the
disobedient – and He does via the Babylonians, the Greeks, and ultimately the
Romans – He does not utterly annihilate them, either. God does preserve a remnant: those who are
faithful to Him. Faith in God – and thus
repentance of our wrong ways – always trumps judgment and condemnation. Even if God does take pleasure in seeing the
self-destruction of those who refuse to obey, God enjoys taking the repentant
and setting them along the ways of righteousness even more. If He didn’t, He wouldn’t have sent Jesus
Christ. The main reason God sent Jesus
Christ to save us is because God’s love is greater than God’s wrath.
<><
No comments:
Post a Comment