Articles
The Purpose of Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic History
The book of Deuteronomy is well-known as the conclusion of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible that were collectively known by the Israelites as “the Torah” or “The Law.” The main character in this collection (besides God) is the prophet Moses, who serves as the leader of the Israelite heirs to the Genesis promises and the human protagonist of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. Deuteronomy is the last speeches of Moses to the generation of Israelites that is going to conquer the promised land of Canaan and fulfill the Genesis promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In addition to serving as the conclusion to the Torah, though, an argument can be made that Deuteronomy also serves as the introduction to another series of books: the “former prophets,” as they were known to the Israelites, of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. While we often draw a fairly sharp dividing line between the Pentateuch and the History Books, the reality is that there are some notable similarities between Deuteronomy and these later books that help us to understand the overarching themes and ideas that God is wanting us to understand from the history of Israel. For the purposes of this article, the books of Deuteronomy through Kings will be collectively referred to as the “Deuteronomic History.”
The largest theme of the Deuteronomic History is the concept of the blessings and curses of the covenant. This theme is most concisely and clearly laid out in Deut. 30:15-19: “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity; in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it. But if your heart turns away and you will not obey, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You will not prolong your days in the land where you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess it. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse.” This concept of blessings and curses is consistently returned to throughout the Deuteronomic History, and indeed the point of these books seems to be illustrating the failure of Israel to adhere to the covenant relationship and the just consequences of their failure: conquest by foreign powers and exile from the land of promise. Some scholars have proposed (with strong evidence) that the Deuteronomic History, while based off of primary sources by writers such as Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, was compiled and edited together by the Israelites of the Second Temple Era that had returned from exile. The purpose of this sort of document (beyond the obvious inspiration of God Himself) would have been to remind the Israelites of the Restoration of the importance of covenant faithfulness to God with the failures of their ancestors serving as a warning and reminder of the consequences of not heeding such a warning.
The rewards for covenant faithfulness are made obvious as well: blessings from God will abound, and the people of Israel will enjoy prosperity, agricultural bounty, protection from enemies, long lines of descendants, and the dwelling of God amidst His chosen people. These blessings are a continuation of the promises made in Genesis to Abraham; the line of Israel was to become a blessing to the entire world through its faithful covenant service to God, and serve as His chosen nation and priesthood. People such as Joshua, Samuel, David, and Josiah serve as types (or literary echoes) of Moses to the Israelites: faithful, courageous men who lead Israel to faithful covenant service and bring about blessings to their people. Men such as Saul and many of the Judges and Kings serve as reminders of the failed generation of the Wilderness: men who choose to follow after the nations of the Earth and their own pride and vanity, and ultimately bring about destruction and curses for the people they have been given responsibility to lead. It is little wonder that the Latter Prophets will spend so much of their time disparaging and reprimanding the Kings, elders, and priests of Israel for failing to adhere to the covenant promises and bringing the curses upon Israel and the Land.
One of the big changes from the Book of Numbers to the Book of Deuteronomy is found in this idea of the blessings and curses language. The second generation of Israel is portrayed quite positively in the Book of Numbers: they are faithful to Moses’ commands, they are successful in conquering both Sihon and Og, they settle disputes that look forward to the taking of the promised land (eg. The daughters of Zepholad and the Reuben/Gad claims on the territory across the Jordan), and they are overall contrasted with the faithlessness of their fathers. Yet in Deuteronomy, Moses often lumps this new generation in with the old: they are the same hard-hearted people as their fathers, they will assuredly rebel against God, and Moses even knows that they will eventually be exiled. This helps to lend credence to the idea that Deuteronomy is less about continuing the themes of Genesis through Numbers, and more about the establishing of themes that will be developed in Joshua through Kings. Whereas Numbers had ended on a message of hope about the new generation, Deuteronomy is beginning the story of Israel’s failure that will continue through their history.
This concept also helps to explain why the Laws of Deuteronomy seem both repetitious and an expansion of the earlier Laws found in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. Deuteronomy, if seen as a work preceding Joshua rather than concluding Numbers, is not just a summary of previous laws: it’s the opening brief of God’s legal case against Israel. It’s a summary of the laws that Israel was to follow in order to adhere to the blessings of the covenant (social justice, cleanliness, respect of the priesthood and tabernacle, feast days, moral purity, etc.), and a preview of the laws that Israel is going to flagrantly break in their time in the promised land. This is not to say that Deuteronomy is somehow a different law than the previous books have been promoting: the Law is a single entity, but Deuteronomy is emphasizing certain aspects of it that will serve as important themes and issues that spring up in the history of Israel. Laws about the conquest, for example, had not appeared in the previous Torah books, primarily because they were not a concern for the previous generation. Now, however, the laws of conquest introduced in Deuteronomy are going to serve a major purpose in the book of Joshua. In fact, the failure of Israel to fully adhere to the laws of conquest is going to be a major theme in the book of Judges and helps to explain why Israel struggles so much with idolatry and covenant faithlessness to God. Reading the book of Deuteronomy as part of this history helps us to understand the particular emphasis given on these laws.
Deuteronomy is marked by speeches made by Moses to the assembly of Israel, and speeches by leader exhorting covenant faithfulness appear consistently throughout the Deuteronomic History. A well known example of this is when the book of Joshua closes with a speech by Joshua where he exhorts Israel to covenant faithfulness in a very similar way to Moses’ final speech in Deuteronomy. There are several other examples, however, of these types of speeches that lend credence to the idea of a continuity in the Deuteronomic History: Samuel’s farewell speech in 1 Samuel 12, David’s speech in 1 Kings 2, and even Solomon’s dedication speech of the temple in 1 Kings 8. These speeches all contain similar terminology and phrases that are introduced in Deuteronomy, particularly the concept of the blessings and curses for faithful covenant obedience. The downfall of Israel, alluded to heavily in Judges and brought to fruition in Kings, is based off the failure to adhere to God’s covenant promises and is linked to the curses that were introduced in Deuteronomy. Indeed, a key passage is 2 Kings 21:10-15, where God pronounces a final judgment on the Kingdom of Judah due to King Manassah’s terrible crimes: Now the Lord spoke through His servants the prophets, saying, “Because Manasseh king of Judah has done these abominations, having done wickedly more than all the Amorites did who were before him, and has also made Judah sin with his idols; therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Behold, I am bringing such calamity on Jerusalem and Judah, that whoever hears of it, both his ears will tingle. I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria and the plummet of the house of Ahab, and I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. I will abandon the remnant of My inheritance and deliver them into the hand of their enemies, and they will become as plunder and spoil to all their enemies; because they have done evil in My sight, and have been provoking Me to anger since the day their fathers came from Egypt, even to this day.’” To the Deuteronomic Historian, the sins and failures of Manasseh are the culmination of the failures of Israel stretching all the way back to the Exodus narrative!
So, why does this distinction between Deuteronomy being part of the Pentateuch or Deuteronomy being part of the Deuteronomic History matter? In truth, the position on this doesn’t necessarily have a vital impact on someone’s understanding of the book of Deuteronomy: one can certainly understand the need for covenant faithfulness to God without understanding the precise structural intent of the Old Testament! The benefit of reading Deuteronomy in this light is that it helps to serve as an interpretive key to the Former Prophets. In many cases of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, the approval or disapproval of God is not expressly noted; the author(s) of these books seems to want the readers to be able to make the judgment for themselves on whether the actions depicted in these stories are righteous or not. The Book of Deuteronomy helps us to understand the moral lens through which we should weigh these stories. Given the emphasis on the blessings and curses, and the need for covenant faithfulness, the reader of the Deuteronomic History should walk away convinced that God was just in overthrowing the Kingdom of Israel and Judah (which, remember, if the original audience was post-exilic Jews, it would be beneficial to them to be reminded that God had dealt with them and their ancestors justly!). Another benefit of this concept is that it also helps us to not become too discouraged reading the Former Prophets. The stories of Judges and the Kings in particular might leave the reader wondering if there was ANY hope for real righteousness to emerge from Israel: how is this broken people supposed to bring blessings on the entire creation? Moses makes it clear in Deuteronomy, however, that the curses against Israel will be temporary: while they will indeed face exile from the land, there will be a remnant that will return to the blessings of God. The Latter Prophets will pick up these Deuteronomic promises of a remnant, and will expand upon the themes of the Deuteronomic History: they will point to a Davidic King who will be a lawbringer like Moses and an eternal priest, and that King will bring all of creation into the blessings of God’s covenant relationship! The Deuteronomic History, then, helps us understand the blessings that will come through God’s kingdom: not a physical Kingdom of Israel, but the spiritual Kingdom of God!
