BibleProject - The Way to True Life – Deuteronomy E2

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

In the first movement of Deuteronomy, two words appear more frequently than any others—listen and love. Why did Moses emphasize these two words in his farewell speech to Israel? In this episode, Tim and Jon explore what it looks like to be loyal to Yahweh, the God unlike any other, who listens to humanity.View full show notes from this episode →Timestamps Part one (00:00-11:41)Part two (11:41-32:15)Part three (32:15-51:10)Part four (51:10-01:05:43)Referenced ResourcesA Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, Walter Bauer, William T. Arndt, Wilbur Gingrich, F. W. DankerInterested in more? Check out Tim’s library here.You can experience the literary themes and movements we’re tracing on the podcast in the BibleProject app, available for Android and iOS.Show Music “Defender (Instrumental)” by TENTS“March 10th and a Third (Instrumental)" by JGivens"Eyes Aligning Stars Shining" by Xihcsr"Issa Vibe" by Sam StewartShow produced by Cooper Peltz with Associate Producer Lindsey Ponder. Edited by Dan Gummel, Tyler Bailey, and Frank Garza. Podcast annotations for the BibleProject app by MacKenzie Buxman.Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question when you email it in. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

In the first movements of Deuteronomy, two words appear more frequently than any others. The words listen and Hebrew, shamaman, and the word love. Listen and love, over and over. Moses tells Israel, the love Yahweh, and to listen to him, because these are the ways that they'll preserve their covenant with him. In every close relationship I can think of, one of the most simple but also difficult ways

to show love is attentive listening and responding and doing something because of what you hear. And this isn't just a one-sided listening endeavor. Moses assures Israel that Yahweh is listening to them. Far more than they will ever listen to Him. Moses warns that they shouldn't give their allegiance to other gods, because they are gods that do not shema. So you are to shema, and if you shema, you'll enter this relationship where Yahweh will listen to you. And if this whole concept of listening and loving has you thinking about your close friendships or your marriage, that's because it's supposed to.

So Israel's covenant loyalty and love to Yahweh is also described with this word to describe the marriage union of husband and wife in the Eden story. I think what the analogy is saying essentially is that just as God provided a covenant partner for man and woman that need him so that they can be fruitful and multiply and have a long life in the land. And then together, they are to become God's partners. Here, Israel is depicted as the covenant partner of Yahweh that is too love and cling to their staff that's made a sin for covenant loyalty and love. I'm John Collins and today Tim McE and I discuss the most repeated words in the first movement of the Deuteronomy scroll.

And you're listening to the Power Project podcast. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hey Tim. Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Yeah, you're telling either hi there. We are in Deuteronomy. Mm-hmm. We're sessioning the Torah our journey our year long journey through the Torah. Yeah, and we are in the fifth and final scroll. Fifth and final scroll. Yeah. Called Deuteronomy in English from the Greek. Yes. Yep. Meaning the second law. The second law, the second giving of the Torah, yes. Yeah. And so we set this up last session about how Moses is introduced by the narrator as preparing to give a speech.

And in the speech, he begins talking to the next generation of Israelites, the kiddos of those who left Egypt and said, Hey, your parents got the law. And I'm going to explain it to you. I'm going to what was it, bar? Oh, good memory. Bear. Bear. Bear. Yes. Make it legible to you. Yeah. Yep. If you transliterate it into English, it's be a apostrophe, er. Okay. So it looks like the word beer. Yeah, with a little apostrophe in the middle. Yeah. But add. But add.

You're kind of doing something nice with the R. Like a roll, not a roll. You got a roll of the R's. Especially, yeah. In the real soft roll though. But add. Oh, no, that was a good solid roll. But add.

You know, I could never do the full, like, what do you call the, I don't know, I can't do it. So I would make the sound, but the full rolling of the R's, you know? Beer. Beer. Yeah, there it is. That's it. Really? It's that strong?

No, no, but I'm saying that's what it makes me think of. Oh. But as you did a real soft, nice soft. Yeah, but it can sound like the letter L in the mouth of English speakers. But anyway, that's just language different. Yeah. So, but A out of means, yeah, to explain. This is like near and dear to your heart, John.

Yeah. Yeah. I love the metaphor of making something legible, which is what that means, right? Yeah. That's exactly right. Yeah. And then we talked about how Moses is doing that to the next generation, but the way that it is worded throughout Deuteronomy and presented is there's this ambiguity as to who the audience really is.

Yeah, the time. Is he talking to that generation going into Promised Land, or is he actually also talking to future generations, who will be in a similar situation, where they need to come back to the land and they need to follow the law. That's right. They need to explain to them. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. So that was the focus of our previous conversation was there's an intentional blurring of the audience of Moses' speech, because he's constantly talking to the children of the Exodus generation, but he's recounting events that happened to their parents, but saying, you all experienced this.

Yeah. Yeah. And then he is going to be talking about how you, the second generation that are standing for him in the narrative, were the ones who were at Mount Sinai or experienced the Exodus, and you all are going to go into the Promised Land. And then he starts addressing the you as if they're in the land and giving them direction for many generations into the future being in the land. And so there's a blurring of past, present, and future, and it's a narrative technique for the author, who's the narrator, who introduces the scroll and concludes the scroll, chapter 34. And the narrator is presenting Moses in the narrative

as addressing every generation of Israel, past, present, and future, which from the narrator's point of view, the narrator is the same voice that narrates all the way through the next scrolls, Joshua, Judge, Samuel, Kings, which lands the people in Babylonian exile. So all of Genesis, the Torah, and the prophets then come from the voice that is at least on the other side of Israel's exile and presenting Moses as addressing every generation, including the

exiles. What about us? Exactly. And every generation in the future, because we are also exiles. The point is that every generation that reads the scroll is waiting to go in and experience the promise of the Eden land. Because the promises have not yet come. And that's how the Torah ends. A prophet like Moses, who's going to re-store the people and bring us into the promised land that Prophet hasn't come yet.

So, yeah, Deuteronomy is actually for every generation of God's people in that way, where we see ourselves like that second generation after the Exodus. There's a phrase in the Mishnah, which is an early collection of Jewish scholars meditating on the Torah from the second to fifth centuries after Jesus. And it's repeated multiple times that every generation of Israel should see itself as the generation of the Exodus. Yeah. And that's kind of, that's what this is doing.

That's the function of the book of Deuteronomy. You were there at the mountain. Yeah. That's the function of the Book of Deuteronomy. You were there at the mountain. Yeah, that's right. And for us, we re-experience the journey by reading it and experiencing it through the Torah itself. That's how we go on the journey ourselves. Yeah.

So yeah, that's how the Book of Deuteronomy presents itself. So what we want to do in this conversation and the next one is focus on some key themes in Moses' opening speech, which is what we call Deuteronomy, chapters 1, 3, 11. Maybe real quick, let's sketch a picture of the macro design of Deuteronomy real quick. It's fairly simple, I guess depends on your definition of simple. But Moses' speech is broken up into three big chunks. Which we're calling the movements.

Which we're calling the three movements. So essentially, what we call chapters 1 through 11 are the opening speech of Moses, and they read like sermons. They're condensed persuasive rhetorical masterpieces meant to persuade God's people to listen and love. Yahweh. Chapter 12 through 26th verse 15 are Moses expounding, explaining individual laws of the Torah. So it's a collection of laws.

We're getting used to that. Yeah, totally. This will be the last collection of laws in the Torah. Yep, wave and goodbye to law collections. And then the third movement moves from 26, for 16 through the end of the scroll, and Moses begins his sermon mode again, but specifically inviting this generation into the covenant,

and he lays out the blessings or the curses of the covenant, which was classic, engineering's covenantal kind of form, is here's what I'll do for you. Here's what you'll do for me. If you do it, here's the good stuff, blessing. If you don't do it, death and destruction, the curse. And then Moses will sing some songs about why he's pretty certain that

they're not going to be faithful to the covenant. And it's all going to go terrible and they're going to end up in exile, but one day God will restore his people. And that's what the final wisdom is about. Okay. So we are going to spend this in the next conversation exploring key themes in the opening speeches in chapters 1 to 11. So the first movement are three sermons, I suppose you could call them. Yeah. You said these are the first sermons in the Bible? Oh, yeah, yeah, they are.

They're long speeches that are just rhetorically crafted to persuade and move your heart and mind towards a certain goal. Do you think this set in motion, what has become the Protestant kind of obsession with preaching? Totally. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool.

It is. Yeah. Moses is the first preacher. Yeah. In that sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So the first movement, three speeches, three sermons. Yeah. And we want to look at those three sermons, but you're going to say there's some themes for us to pay attention to in all three. Exactly. Yep. And for those of you going through the reading journey on the app, we've highlighted two key interrelated words connected to a video that we made about Deuteronomy, but they are some of the most repeated words in this first collection of sermons, chapters 1 to 11, and they are the words listen and the words love. Listen in love.

Now, this was not a theme video. This was our first video we ever made on Deuteronomy. We made two. Yeah, we made a video series on the Torah. And-hmm. And in the one on Deuteronomy, there's a whole aside about this idea of listen and love. That's right. And how key it is as a concept to understand Deuteronomy. Yeah. That's right.

So that's what we're gonna focus on right now. Thank you. Thank you. We're getting to far We're getting to far We're getting to far So just as a quick note, listen, it's always interesting. Part of how you know you're in the presence of an important pattern, or repeated theme, is that a certain word or idea or image gets all of a sudden starts getting repeated a lot in a certain section. So in the book of Deuteronomy as a whole, the Hebrew word, listen, or here, it's the word

shema. Yeah, shema, oh, is real. That's right. And we also made a whole video and a video series about this word and a- The word study video on shema. That's right. Connected to the prayer called the shema that is from Deuteronomy chapter 6. Yeah. So the word shema appears 91 times in the Deuteronomy scroll and you know just a quick I've called them up here. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twenty. Are you counting old 96 right now? Mm-hmm. Oh, just in movement

one. Twenty, twenty, one, twenty, two, three, four, twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven, twenty nine, thirty, thirty, one, thirty, two, thirty, three, thirty, 33, 34, 35, 35. 35 times in chapters 1 to 11. So one third of them in the first third of the book. Yeah, okay. Evenly distributed. Yeah, totally. And the vast majority, in fact, all of them are going to be either

recounting narratives of where Israel did or did not listen, or Moses calling this generation to listen. So let's listen up. Yeah, totally. The next one is the word love, which is the word Ahav in Hebrew. Ahav. And then Ahavah, that's how I remember it. Ahavah is the noun. That's how I remember it. Oh yeah. Ahavah is the noun. That's the noun. Yeah. The verb is Ahav. Ahav. Ahav. Ahav.

Ahav. And then Ahavah. Yeah. And then this word appears one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve times. Ooh, and dude, remind me, I'm through eleven. Interesting. Interesting that listen is a multiple of seven.

And love is twelve times. Anyway. What that listen is a multiple of seven and love is 12 times. Anyway, what was listen 30 35 five that's multiple seven. Well, look at you. Yeah, anyway, math man, five times seven. Okay, so listen and love and listen and love have an important reciprocal relationship with each other. So another feature is that the speech in chapter four, the speeches in chapter five and six and nine all begin with the words, Shamayus Ra'el. Listen, oh, Israel. And that's a key structuring pattern here. So listen and love are really key. So let's go to the first passage where these words occur together, and we'll kind of see them, how they work. So Moses' speech in chapter four, which is at the center of the center of this first collection, it's the central speech in chapters one to 11.

And it begins with Moses saying, now Shema, oh Israel, listen to the statutes and the judgments which I am teaching you to do so that you may have life and go and possess the land that you're always giving you. Statutes is another word for the laws. Yes, yeah, that's right. So yeah, Moses develops the vocabulary for how to refer to the laws. You can call them laws, statutes, judgments, decisions, ordinances. It's about half a dozen actually. Yep, they overlap but each have a little distinct meaning. I see a word study in our future. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, Psalm 119 just goes bananas with all these. It just loves to interplay all of them together.

So notice that the basic call is Yahweh has provided teaching and instruction through the laws. For life so that you might live. Yeah. And God's instructions lead to life in the garden land. Yeah. That's the basic point of Deuteronomy. The way to life.

It could be listen and live. Yeah. Yeah. That is true. Yeah. Live is like the result of listening. Yeah. Yeah. It turns out that listen and love are two aspects of the same call.

To love is to listen. And if you listen, you are loving. And if you love, you will listen kind of thing. So the posture is to listen to always instruction and that will lead to life in the garden land. It sounds a lot like Genesis chapter 1 and that will lead to life in the garden land. Sounds a lot like Genesis chapter one and two. But we'll come to that later.

So he's gonna retell the story in chapter four about how Yahweh gave them his instructions and commands at Mount Sinai. So he's gonna retell the story in this right here about Mount Sinai, and the word Shema is just off the charts. He's going to retell it focusing on how the whole purpose was for Israel to hear Shema, hear the words of the Lord. So translated here instead of listen. Yeah, yep, you're gonna. It's the same word. It's the same word in Hebrew. Yeah, yeah. So in verse 10, Moses

says, remember the day where God said, assemble everybody so that they may hear Shema, my words, verse 12. The Lord spoke to you all from the fire and y'all heard the words down in verse. This is interesting. Moses warns that they shouldn't give their allegiance to other gods because they are gods that do not shema. So you are to shema and if you shema you'll enter this relationship where Yahweh will listen to you and you will listen to Yahweh. That's interesting because there is this sub-theme in the Bible about how these other gods are kind of worthless. Yeah. Yeah. But then there's other times where it's like, no, these other gods like our rivals, they can show up and they can...

Oh, yes. So what does it... It says they can't hear or eat or smell. It's like it's like they're dead. Yeah, it's interesting. This goes all the way back to years ago our Elohim spiritual being conversations. So when biblical prophets want to critique and persuade Israelites not to follow the other gods, they'll do it in multiple ways. They'll do it in one to say the thing that you actually see like the idol statues. Yeah, like the golden calf. Like the golden calf and statues of Marduk

or Bell or Dogon. And they'll critique by using satire Mm-hmm. They're just wood. Yeah, and rock and they don't they don't smell they don't see the images of God like humans are Yeah, they're inanimate images. Okay, that have no power. Yeah, so sometimes they'll say the word idle Sometimes they'll use the word Elohim to refer to the idol. So when they're saying, like, look, this thing can't smell or see or listen, they're talking about the material that everyone's worshiping. But that material is connected to this power of another Elohim. And there's sometimes where that power shows up, and God has to deal with it. Actually, in this very chapter, Moses is going to talk about how we're backing up to verse 15.

This is a rabbit hole, but it's a good one. In verse 15, he says, so watch carefully, because you all, you didn't see any physical form up on top of Mount Sinai, when you always spoke to you from the fire. You didn't see like an image. An image. So don't act corruptly and make an image in the form of any figure, a human likeness, male or female, the likeness of any creature on the land, the likeness of any bird, or land creeper, or fish. He just worked through the cosmos and the cosmos of courting and this happened exactly in Exodus in the Ten Commandments right? They're essentially the same. Oh yes this is a great example of Moses explaining and

unpacking further the implication of the first two commands of the Ten Commandments but he's now giving a little sermon on it. Yeah so basically you didn't see an image on top of Mount Sinai. Right. And so don't make any image to represent the power that has no image. Then check this out. Look at verse 19. Also, don't lift your eyes up to the skies and look at the sun, the moon, and the stars, the host of heaven. Remember that word host means army. The heavenly army. Yeah, these are the spiritual things. Spiritual beings. Yes. So that you don't lift up your eyes and see them and be drawn away to worship them and serve them. That is to give your allegiance to them. They are the ones that

Yahweh has allotted or assigned to all the people peoples under the heaven. But Yahweh took you all and brought you out of the iron-smelting furnace to be a people of his own possession. Oh, well, he made you into his image through fire. He's, yeah. Wow. The Exodus was referred to as a iron-smelting furnace where Yahweh fashioned an image. Whoa. That is Israel. Whoa. The Kingdom of Priests.

Yeah. So don't make an image. And you've said this before, don't make an image because you are God's image. You are the image. That's exactly the point, Moses. That's the point, wow. Like, it's actually fairly explicit.

Yeah. If you get the metaphor. Right. So don't make an idol that you've fashioned in a furnace. Nor worship the images in the sky. That's right. Which you didn't fashion. You always fashion them.

And they're his hosts that serve his purposes. Well, and also serve you. They're allotted to the people. Yeah. Yeah, he's assigned them over the peoples. So here, this is a little connection that's gonna get further explored in Deuteronry 32 about the spiritual powers

that Yahweh has delegated to rule over the land or oversee the land in a way that corresponds to the human rulers. This is all about Genesis 1 and the way the rulers above have some kind of mirror relationship to the rulers below. The star is above, and then the human rulers below. Right. So basically, his point is,

hey, there's spiritual beings that are here depicted as the lights in the sky. And they have a purpose. They have a delegated authority, and don't give your allegiance to them. They themselves are just images of God's light and power and authority. And another way you can say it is, don't give your allegiance to a statue,

because it's just metal or whatever. So that's how we got here. So in this very passage, Mosa says, Hey, there's some things that you make an image of and it's just you're making an image of a creature and it doesn't like, yeah, it's like you're the image. But then there are also other beings in God's world that are real. Yeah. And that, you know, they don't see, taste, or smell the way we do, but they are, they are real. But then rot inanimate. They're not inanimate. And they also don't give youraster smell the way we do, but they are real. But then rot inanimate.

They're not inanimate, and they also don't give your allegiance to them. Yeah. Because once again, you are the image that God has called to rule in the garden land. Anyway, do run before. Powerful stuff. Okay. So, but the idols, they don't shema. But you are, that was, we started in verse 28, so I'm going to scan down to verse 30,

when Moses says, listen, let's say that you don't listen to Yahweh, things are going to go really bad for you. But when you're in distress, just return to Yahweh and Shema to his voice. And Yahweh's compassionate. And he won't forget the covenant that you made with your forefathers in the past. So any moment, you can turn this game around. Yeah. There's never a point, I think I'm thinking of this larger frame of Moses speaking to his generation. And then the narrator using Moses the speeches

to speak to every generation in the future, a group of Babylonian exiles reading this would also find Moses speaking right to them. And so on. So Shema. The word Shema is going to just play a huge role. Let's go down to verse 36. He's going to go back to Mount Sinai and he'll say, out of the skies, Yahweh let you Shema his voice.

To give you instruction, like formative parental instruction. It's translated discipline in the New American Standard. He let you see his fire and you shamad his words from the midst of the fire. Why did you do that? Because he loved your ancestors and he chose their descendants after them. That is you. He brought you out of Egypt. He's going to drive out nations greater and mightier than you to give you the garden land. So here, there's this reciprocity here between listen to Yahweh. Why? Because he loved you and your ancestors. The words

love can refer to God, loving as people, or to God's people, loving God and return. And then listening is mostly about Israel listening to Yahweh because he loved them. And then there will be occasional references to Yahweh listening to his people that is responding to their cries for help when he cries out. So listen and love are in this tight, I think in the video we had the two words on top of each other with little arrows. Listen, leading to love and love, leading to listen, because there's this reciprocity. So that's chapter four. Listen and love. As I'm reflecting on it, this is fairly intuitive for human relationships. The brief, we, tell me more.

Well, I'm just, you know, we experience someone who's a really attentive listener. Is a, oh, is a feeling of loving. Yes, it's a form of love. Yeah. Yeah. In every close relationship I can think of, one of the most simple but also difficult ways to show love is attentive listening. And responding and doing something, right, because of what you hear.

Well yeah, and so let's unpack that because what we haven't explicitly said yet, which is in the video of listen and love and in our Shema video, is that listen doesn't just mean hearing. Yes, right. Right. Because it is very loving just to hear someone. If someone's sitting with you and they're just hearing you and you can tell that they're hearing you, that is very loving. But in Hebrew, it means more than just hearing, right?

Yeah, absolutely. It's synonymous with hearing and the response to what you hear is all bound up, which is why in our English translations, it depends on which one, but the word can also be translated Obey. So right when Israelites arrive at Mount Sinai and Yahweh invites the people to enter into a covenant in Exodus 19 new American standard translates it, obey my voice. Let me just look here is here the ESV translates Exodus 19, verse 5, obey my voice, It's getting interesting. And RSV Obey, King James, Obey. It's pretty standard. And it could have easily been listened to my voice there. Yeah.

What he says next is, if you will shema my voice and keep my covenant and keep us to guard or care for. So it's clear that you're not a passive just taking in. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And so actually back to here Let's actually let's step forward into another speech here in Deuteronomy Deuteronomy 6 because it's where the famous Shema is So this is how it begins Deuteronomy 6 verse 1 Now this is the commandment these are the statutes and the judgments that Yahweh or God commanded me to teach you, so that you will do them in the land you're going. If that sounds very similar to how chapter four began,

that's because it is. And the repetition is, it's a signal that we're beginning a new speech. We're starting again. We're starting a new unit within the movement. Yep, that's right. Yep. So, verse three, Israel, you should shema and be careful to do so that there will be Tove for you, good for you, and that you may multiply. Yeah. All language from Genesis one. Right. Be fruitful, multiply.

For multiply. In the land, Yahweh, your God promised you the land like flowing with milk and honey. Yeah, that is goats and bees. That is the stuff that you produce through agriculture and then the stuff that God provides in the wild. That's right. Yep. Verse 4, Shema, oh Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one. You shall love Yahweh your God with all of your... Live? Live? Oh, wow, all of your heart, all of your... Nefesh? Nefesh, all of your being, and with all of your...

Mewd. Whoa, John! Man, I guess we have been talking about all this for like eight plus eight plus years ago. No, I was recently just cataloging all these words recently. So they're fresh about everything. Yeah, all of your muchness, your muchness, all of your potential. Yeah. So this is the classic passage where listen, Shema is paired with love. Listening is love. Lo loving is listening. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, Israel. And so love speaks to both emotion, but also to loyalty and allegiance. Because love is connected here with covenant loyalty.

So love is a verb as some, what is it 1990, Christian American artist, hip-hop artist, once said. So that's the flow. And these words, listen and love, just keep repeating like this throughout the chapter. So that's one whole thing. It's that these two words repeat throughout and throughout. Loving is listening, listening is loving, and that's a cool point just to meditate on itself. Yeah.

However, the thing that really stood out to me in my last past through the section of Deuteronomy was something we've already seen is how this whole setup of Israel standing on the border about to go into the garden land where they will listen and love Yahweh. will listen and love Yahweh. All of it through hyperlinks and narrative patterning is set on close analogy to Adam and Eve's opportunity that they had in their garden land by the river that flowed out from the tree of life. As this generation sits by the river Jordan

about to go into the garden land. And all of a sudden, a whole bunch of themes about loving Yahweh and their covenant with Yahweh, who is one and there to join Yahweh and covenant. Yahweh is one, but you get to join them and covenant. All of a sudden like I realize we're working the themes of Adam and Eve's relationship in the carton. Their relationship to each other and their relationship to Yauwei. Do you want to session that for a minute? Oh yeah. Super interesting. So let's first begin with a little kind of big picture observation. So Israel is outside the garden land.

Yeah. They're in a desert. They're at the gates. Yeah, they're at the entrance. They're the entrance. Across the river. But across the river. But here the image is, the river is this boundary and the river

Going through the waters becomes a symbol of going through death Going through a trial And having to trust and then coming out the other side you got it. That's right So to go into the garden land they're gonna have to go through the waters Yeah, and then it turns out, pass by a cherubim holding a sword. Really? Yeah, that happens in Joshua. Oh wow, okay.

They go through the water and by the fiery sword. But that's Joshua. You don't end the early Jessus Naredes, you don't get a sense of being passed a river as a boundary point. No, it's more just kind of inferred that there's a river that went out from Eden and then split into four. Yeah. So to go back into Eden will involve, you know, going back to the headwaters of the rivers of the world, kind of thing. So the whole thing is that

Israel's outside the land, they're gonna have to go through the waters by a heavenly bouncer at the door of the Cherubim. Yes, want one more thing though, because most iconically is Israel going through the waters of the Reed Sea, out of slavery. Yes, in the Exodus. Is there earlier images of the flood, the flood going through the waters of the flood? Yeah, yeah. And then the beginning, the first, the second sentence of the Bible, oh yeah, is the chaos waters, out of which God delivers the land to place seed and animals and then humans on it. So creation is depicted in Genesis 1 and 2 in 2 narratives. God brings dry land out of the Chaos Waters to plant a garden and then viewed from another perspective, Genesis 2.4 and onward,

the chaos state is a desolate wilderness, and God provides water in the wilderness to plant a garden that is sourced by a river. And there he puts the humans. Okay. In both of those stories, Adam and Eve are images of God, and they are given an opportunity for long life in the land.

In Adam and Eve's case, eternal life in the land, but it's all contingent on whether or not they will listen to the voice of Yahweh's command. And there's one command. And there's only one command. But it's the word command, Genesis 2 15, Sava, which is the word Moses is using constantly, the whole thing is their enjoyment of the garden land is that and they're in it. Yeah. But they begin outside it. Humans created outside the garden. But they're basically like picked up by God. The gardens planted and cultivated, then

Yahweh picks them up and rests them in the garden. Gives them rest. Yeah. Yeah. Genesis 2.15. Gives them rest in the garden and then gives them a command. It says, this whole place is for you. Just one thing, just follow my command. So that whole setup right here is being replayed explicitly through all this same word repetition. Israel is on the borders about to go be invited through the waters, passed by a chair beam to go into the garden land where there's tov, goodness. The phrase in Deuteronomy 11, there's this phrase most of it says, so that you may make

your days long in the land. It's constant repetition. When you go into the land, if you obey the voice of the Lord, you will make your days long in the land. It's about long life in the garden land. So it's the same thing. Is that you always commands lead to life in the garden land. You know, aside, sorry, Genesis 2, it's not about long life, it's about eternal life.

Yes, yeah. I suppose why isn't Israel now interested in eternal life? Oh, I see. It's just now more about like, we want a land where we can have long life, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there isn't a sense of this desire anymore for life eternal.

It depends on whose perspective you're thinking within. If you're thinking within the characters in the story, it's a narrative about a people group going into the land to live long there. But I'm a reader of the Tnok. And Tnok begins with the Torah, and the Torah begins with humanity given an offer of eternal life. And then continues on, they failed and forfeit that and then Yahweh is on a mission to restore eternal life of Eden too. That is creation and that leads to this moment in the story. So Israel being given long life, not eternal life but long life in the garden land, is a part of a bigger set of patterns in the Hebrew Bible. And by the time you finish the whole tenac,

you are into the Psalms and you're into Daniel, where it is all about returning to the ultimate Eden, where there is eternal life. That's why the phrase eternal life appears only in Genesis, the Psalms, and Daniel. So for the author or the narrator, this picture of Israel entering into the land for long days is an image for the reader of the tonk that ultimately is about the return to the ultimate Eden. It is about eternal life. Does that make sense?

It does. They could have been more explicit. I mean, they could have said they were you're going to land and you will find eternal life. Oh, sure. Okay, totally That's right, but they didn't that's not what happened. That's not what happened But that would be fusing the Perspective of the final framers of the whole tenac with the perspective of the characters within this moment of the story That makes sense totally do the characters in this moment of the story expect they could have eternal life? It doesn't seem that way. Yeah. No. I mean, if they had read the story of Genesis 1 through 3, they might have that perspective. Sure. Like us. Yeah. Yeah. Like us. Yeah,

that's right. And this is actually a challenge, I think, often when we're reading, is that we limit what the text means to what the characters in the story might have thought. Right. And we forget that the characters are being presented to us by an author and a narrator that's connected to the perspective of the whole of the Hebrew Bible, not just limited to the perspective of the characters. So this whole moment of the story is a part of a bigger set of patterns

that also is connected to the ascent of the Son of Man, to heavenly rule and eternal life in the book of Daniel. And these stories are designed with an eye towards that trajectory. And Daniel is written as a summary of what these stories are all about in terms of the author's perspective. It's like an interplay. Maybe it's sort of like if you're sitting, if you're watching a movie, and there's a really tense scene, and the characters don't know what's going to happen,

and you don't know what's going to happen. That's what makes movies exciting to watch. But it would be a mistake to say, oh man, I wonder if the director knows where the story's going to watch. But it would be a mistake to say, oh man, I wonder if the director knows where the story is going to go. And it's like, well, but the movie's finished. Like the director made the movie. Well, I think I get really distracted by trying to understand

how God is working in human history in a way that is logical and makes sense. Because if God's mission is to bring humanity back into an eternal relationship with Him, then why hide that from this generation? Yeah. And just have it be about long life in the land. Your step in this story is just to become the kind of people

in which then the Messiah will come. And you don't need to know about the offer of eternal life and be distracted by that. Just have a long life. Yeah, yeah. You know, here, let me just get inside the Apalsa Paul's way. I'm talking about this. I'm trying to think which passage to choose.

So in Trist Corinthians 10, Paul's writing, to I'm loving this rabbit trail, this is a total rabbit trail, by the way. And I'm loving it. 1 Corinthians chapter 10, for I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, passed through the sea,

baptized in de Moses in the cloud and through the sea, baptized Indomosis in the cloud and in the sea. Yeah, okay. This is God as the cloud and fire, but here referring to the cloud, leading them through the waters into the wilderness. Yeah. So notice what he says. The audience is important. A bunch of non-disraelites and Israelites that follow Jesus in the city of Corinth. He retells the story of the Exodus and says, our ancestors, like the 12 tribes of Israel that went through all that are our ancestors. So this is somebody Paul gets how the audience of the book of Deuteronomy works Paul gets how the audience of the book of Deuteronomy works. Because he sees himself in the messianic community that is right carrying forward the story of the Hebrew Bible

as their story. So now we are a part of the Israel that went through the Exodus, yeah, that came out of Egypt. So what he goes on to say, he retells the stories of the wilderness. And then number six, what he says is, now, all of these things happened as Tupoi. That's what he says in Greek. Tupoi types.

Types. So this is what's fascinating. The word Tupas, here, I'm just going to open it in the Bauer, aren't Gengrich and Danker, Greek, English, out-lexicon of the New Testament, or the Christian literature. This is the like, the standard. So here's what the word two-poss means. It literally means a mark or an impression made on something because you pressed on it. So literally go like a mark. And then secondly, a model, a copy or an image. Because how would you make a type of something except for like have a stand up? Yeah, that's a great way to do it. Yeah. Which is also related to a set of meetings,

which is pattern. Yeah. And then it becomes metaphor. Yeah. So the story of the Exodus and the wilderness wanderings and Israel going into the land is a two-poss or two-poise, just the plural, in patterns. A pattern. So a thing happened, but from the perspective, way down the line, where you see many things that happen and link them together in a series of patterns. And you start seeing a pattern cycling over and over and over again. And Paul says all of those narratives are patterns for us. And then he starts talking to the Corinthians about how to deal with meat-sacrifice to idols. But he's using the narratives to give Torah guidance. And that makes sense from the perspective of later narrators

Compiling the stories as Torah for future generation. Yes, and it's like yeah, that makes perfect sense to doing this Are creating these patterns and then it becomes instruction for me to know how to just live in my city. Yeah, that's right from The sense of this is also Israel's history. Yeah, and these were actual people. Yeah. city? Yeah, that's right. From the sense of this is also Israel's history. Yeah. And these were actual people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. Then it stops making as much sense.

And it's like why, why are they just used as ponds almost? It's interesting. It almost seems like their life, this brutish ancient life, was just so then I can have an example of how to live. It's interesting. Well, they're more important than that. Yeah, they're way more important than that. Yeah, that's so fascinating. Yeah, I might just invite a reframe on that.

So the biblical authors, and he'll just stick with the Hebrew Bible for the moment. So in the final centuries, BC, the second temple period is real rebuilding its life in the land, and the Holy Spirit is a part of this long process of guiding a minority group within Israel that believes that God is revealed to them the true meaning of Israel's history, that Israel's history reveals a pattern and a purpose of the will, the creator God, for all of creation. And so the oral traditions and the written traditions they've received, they're constantly studying, pouring over and meditating on, and crafting them into literary holes that eventually take the

form of the final shape of these scrolls that we have. And the production of the scrolls as we have them is itself the product of generations of prayerful spirit guided meditation on the meaning of Israel's history. And so those authors or editors or composers, whatever inadequate terms we want to use, they want us to see Israel's history in a certain way. That's why the generation here in Deuteronomy is being compared to Adam and Eve. So that we sitting way down the line can see the meaning of it all. And so I don't think they experienced it as, well, whatever the people who actually stood there by the Jordan River, what they thought was happening, we're just gonna use whatever they thought

was happening to them. I think it's more that each generation of Israel began to see that its experience was unfolded in a part of a larger plan and a picture. I think, and that's what Paul's getting at. And I think that's what it means for us to see our lives within the same set of patterns. Is like when Jessica and I got married and made a covenant, I was invited through the Apostle

Paul's teaching in his letters to see that Jessica and I were we were making a covenant that will last for our lives to each other. But that also this covenant relationship can be a space where we can either experience the desolation of exile, because of broken covenant, or experience little glimpses of Eden, and of eternal life, when we listen and love, right, each other. And that ultimately those longings, those little tastes of Eden will be fulfilled in the new creation. But that doesn't mean my little experiences of that and the present are meaningless. It's the bigger story viewed from the end is what gives the meaning now. But when I like having a good day and I'm being loving and attentive, it's serving my family, usually those are moments when I've got new creation on the brain.

And I really want to bring on the brain and I really want to bring the whole story and where creation's going to bear in this present moment. And what these is reliance whether they have that in their minds or not, I don't know, you know, I have to ask them one day. But I think that's the dynamic. And so am I scratching at the thing that was itching you? It's a good question. I really appreciate that you're asking it. I think the reframe is important in that these stories aren't to explain to me exactly what the relationship God had with these people inviting them into from their perspective

into relationship with him. That's right. But we aren't being told narratives around what would seem like we would call God inviting them into a relationship with him. Yeah. But they're framed in a way to become a pattern for us. That's right. So they're composed and framed in a way to serve us. It was too past. Too past. Yeah, patterns, images. That's right. Not serve them. So I get distracted by like, what did it mean to them? And how does that serve them? For God to love them and bring them into eternal life.

Yeah. And that's not the question the composers, the narrators, the editors, whatever you want to call them, were thinking about. They were thinking about how does this become Torah for us? Yeah, or how is the will and purpose of God revealed to us through the story of the ancestors

that they can see the pattern of God's purpose at work. So these is relights from their perspective. It was about, hey, we are an immigrant nomadic community that's wandered through the desert, were escaped slaves from Egypt. We've been told that an Elohim named Yahweh, who says he's the creator of land and sky, made some promises

way back to our ancestors that we're supposed to go live in this land, and that if we trust this Yahweh, he's going to deliver us from the giants that live in that land and rule it, and he's going to give us this land and its abundance as a gift, and we will live long and have many generations of fruitfulness and security in this land. Like that's from the character's perspective. That's it. Long life in the land. But from the author's perspective, this is a pattern, a type, and it's about long life, eternal life in the ultimate eat in land. Yeah. Which is how the story began. How generous, how the Torah began. And we know that God's using this people

to then make that possible for everyone. It's the promise to Abraham, their ancestor. I will bless you so you can bless the nations. So we know that. I'm just thinking like if I was a missionary to ancient Israel, I wouldn't be like, guys, be excited. You're gonna live in the land. I'd be like, hey, the land, that's just a temporary thing.

What we should care about is eternal life. Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So whatever reason that becomes a little hang up in my brain, but I think the reframe is to allow those who have crafted these narratives to do their thing, to serve me and be okay with that. Yeah, yeah could session that.

Rabbos some more. I just want to peek our head up. Yes. How we got here was I was showing how the narrator is using this as a type and is using this speech of Moses and all the language around it is language drawn from the first chapters of Genesis, the victim Adam and Eve in the garden land, but their enjoyment of it is conditional on them obeying the divine command. So that led me to just notice one little thing that is interesting.

So in the Eden story, it begins with God making a singular Adam, human outside the garden, bringing them in. And then we know that this is a creature that's supposed to be fruitful and multiply, but how can it do that alone? So God says, yeah, it's not good that a Adam is alone. So God splits the Adam male and female, and then that one human that has become two male and female is then to become one again. And this is Genesis 2.24, get the narrator breaks in to the Eden story and talks to you, the reader, who's sitting away in the future. This is why a man leaves his father and mother and devox to his wife. So de devak, it's literally the word grab onto and not let hold of.

Sometimes translate a cling. But to cling to his wife and they, that is the two, become a had one flesh. And the word covenant is not used, but the function of what a marriage covenant does is that the two become one. Yeah. And Davak is the word that's used here. It's very interesting to notice that the word Davak, the Klingon two, Klingon two is introduced right here in Genesis chapter two. And often translated United.

Hmm. The NIV translates it Unite right here. ESV says hold fast. Okay, with more literal. New American standard be joined. That's not really what it means. And the classic. Which one was that?

Was that ESV? That's new American standard. Oh, new American standards. Yeah, because you think of join meaning two things coming together, which is what's happening in context, right? But the word means to clean your hands to grab something and not let go of it. Yeah. And then King James is cleave, which is a cleave

Undo his wise. Is that old English that means to hold on to yes, because in modern English it means to split. Yes How does that happen enough money? That is a weird. So Devak means to grab on to and not let go of. Okay. Okay. So what's interesting is that words not used very often throughout the Torah, it's introduced in Genesis and then off the charts in Deuteronomy. And these are from the opening speeches to Moses. Check this out. These are from the opening speeches. To the Moses, check this out. So Deuteronomy chapter 10 verse 20, you shall fear Yahweh your God, you shall serve Him and Davak to Him.

Hmm. You shall cling to Him. Cleave unto Yahweh. Cleave. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, hold on to Him. Hold on to Him.

Doodarami 11, verse 22. If you are careful to keep all of this commandment, which I am commanding you to do, to love Yahweh your God, to walk in all your ways and to cling to Him. So Israel's covenant loyalty and love to Yahweh is also described with this word used to describe the marriage union of husband and wife in the Eden story. So I think what the analogy is saying essentially is that just as God provided a covenant partner for man and woman that needn so that they can be fruitful and multiply and have a long life in the land, and then together they are to become God's partners, which is implied in the Eden story.

Here Israel is depicted as the covenant partner of Yahweh that is to love and cling to their spouse. Notice Yahweh in Israel depicted a spouse as entering into a covenant here. And it's precisely that word to hold onto that's made a synonym for covenant loyalty and love. To the one God. Hmm. Bring it all the way back to the Rami 6 verse 4.

Listen to Israel. Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one. And we've talked about this. Yahweh is one. Yeah, I think this is a part of, again, the rhetoric of Moses' speeches of is that there are many Elohim out there that you're gonna meet in the world

or in the land or up in the sky, and they are not your Elohim. There are spiritual beings out there that are not your Elohim. Yahweh is our one Elohim. He is our Elohim. Yahweh is our Elohim. Yahweh, Achaat, Yahweh, the one. And it's hard for me not to see this as a part of the analogy being set with Adam and Eve. Because you're saying the two become one. Adam was one, Adam, humanity, one. But as one wasn't able to multiply and fill the earth, humanity needed to be split into

two male and female, two others that are separate and other from each other. But then the narrative says those two others need to become one by clinging onto each other. And we know, biologically, that's how you multiply. Yeah. And it's framed as a covenant of this uniting together. And so you're saying that there's something here where God is depicted as one and other. Yeah, that's right.

Holy. And that humanity is depicted as another. Or Israel in particular. And Israel in particular here. Yeah, as an image of Elohim. Yes. Created in the furnace. Smelted in the fiery furnace. To represent here. Yeah, yeah, as an image of Elohim. Yes, created in the furnace Mm-hmm melted in the fiery furnace. Yeah to represent humanity

Yeah, and they are being invited to cling onto God. It's the same word Of two humans coming together and clinging on to each other It's right. Ah, and this is the family that all the way back in Abraham left the house of father and mother Abraham left the house of father and mother. Abraham left the house of his family, a journey to become one with his new covenant partner. Yeah. And this generation of Israel is now invited to enter into a listening, loving covenant bond with one partner that is

Yahweh. I'm sure what's going on here. In other words, what I'm saying is that Deuteronomy threw intentional hyperlinking to Adam and Eve, and notice we're at the book ends of the Torah here. Right, yeah. That when you get to the prophet Hosea, for example, later in the tonk, and he's just gonna assume

this whole metaphor, this whole way of talking about Israel's covenant bond with Yahweh as between a man and a woman, and as a broken relationship, or the song of songs, which is going to be all this poetry about a man and a woman trying to get to a garden together. And then it ends by telling you that love is a gift from Yahweh stronger than death. So what I'm saying is that the imagery of Adam and Eve's human love for each other and Yahweh's love for his covenant partners, they're actually two ways of exploring the same ultimate reality. Yeah, you're sending like Paul in the feast. Yeah, totally an all of a sudden I'm like, oh, Paul, he's not just like making this up.

Using creative sermon application. It's like he's actually meditating on the tour. On the meaning of Torah. Yeah. Because what does he say? He says, what for him it's about Messiah and his people. Right.

He believes that's heading. That's right. In Ephesians 5 is that he believes in Messiah is the incarnate form of Yahweh, the Elohim of Israel. The true image of God. That's right. And so for Yahweh in Human form to become one with his people That is what a marriage between a man and a woman is an image of And so that's why he can go in between talking to husbands and wives and saying, what I'm really talking about is Messiah and his covenant partners, the church.

And he can just like flex in between those two as if they're one thing. Now, if man and woman coming together in union is about multiplication, I mean, it's more than that, but that seems kind of central to the idea. Yeah. Uniting with God or uniting with the Messiah. What's the analog there? The fruit of that. I think it's abundant life, garden life. Yeah, in that case, on ending days.

On ending days and on ending life. The fruit of the union of man and woman is children. The fruit of the union of God and man. Humans, yeah, is that we get to participate in the abundance and infinite multiplication of life, enjoy, experience, and goodness, and happiness, and yeah, existence in an ideal, uncrupted form. Yeah, love is life.

Yeah, listen and love. Yeah, love is life. Yeah, listen in love. Listen in love is life is the way to true life. That's what this is about. So once again, the narrator of Deuteronomy presents Moses giving these speeches to his generation of Israel, but for the reader of the Tanakh, this fits in to the bigger story of Yahweh's invitation to all of humanity, to listen and love so that we can experience life. And it's a pattern, it's a set of glasses, as it were, through which I enter my day-to-day life in relationships and see like my life today is another cycle of the pattern. And I have choices today about whether or not I'm going to listen and love and experience and contribute a little bit of Eden to the world or add to and prolong my own exile and the world's exile from the presence of God. And that's the choice that lay before Moses and his generation. And that's, I think,

what choice that the reader wants us to see before us too. Another major theme, we're not going to have you trace through if you're doing the app reading journey But that I want to talk about in our last conversation on these opening chapters is why there's so much mention of Giants running around in the land that Israel's going into what's up with the Giants? What's up with the Giants? Well, top of the Giants and what's up with God's commands to go in and Like kill the Giants and kick out the Canaanites? The giants and kill and giants. And these speeches and Deuteronomy introduce these themes that are very disturbing for most

modern readers now, including myself, which is about God's commands to attack, destroy or dispossess the giants and Canaanites in the land. So we've never talked about this before. Let's do it. And that's what I want to talk about in our next conversation. Thanks for listening to this episode of Bible Project Podcast next week. We're going to grapple with a difficult topic. Yahweh's instruction to Israel to completely conquer the people who already live in the land of Canaan,

a land where the Nephilim live. This is the land that Yahweh has marked out to be a hub of even life for the rest of the nations, but it's inhabited by snakes and by Nephilim and Ghiborem. When a human culture gives itself over to death and practices that lead to death, which they think are good. That's Genesis 3 through 11. That's the portrait there. So here, these people groups in the land are portrayed as a people group that are too far gone like the generation of the flood.

Today's episode was produced by Cooper Peltz with the associate producer Lindsey Ponder, who was edited by Dan Gummel, Tyler Bailey, and Frank Garza. Mackenzie Buxman provided the annotations for our annotated podcast in our app. Bible project is a crowdfunded nonprofit and we exist to experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus. Everything that we make, including this podcast, all of our videos, seminary level classes, Bible studies, and more, it's all free because of the gender support of

thousands of people just like you. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us. Hi, this is Jessica Diaz and I'm from Austin, Texas. Hi, this is Johan Bambino and I'm originally from India. I first started about the Bible project when I was at a very difficult time in my life and it really helped me to rediscover my faith by understanding what the Bible is about. I use the Bible project just for learning for understanding. The Bible can be quite a difficult book to read. My favorite thing about the Bible project, I love animation. The fact that they have embraced modern technology and they have made ancient texts relevant for us in our modern context.

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