Devotional
Commentary on Deuteronomy 7
In 7:1 Moses is anticipating and outlining
what the Lord is going to do for Israel regarding the squatters from other
countries on this territory called Canaan or Palestine. Hittites did not live
originally in Palestine. Their territory was higher up above Syria in Turkey.
Amorites were in the desert. But in Judges 1:34 they lived in the plains and
Mount Heres, Aijalon and Shaalbim (1:35). This was in 1406-1368 BCE. Moses
wrote his report in 1411-1410 BCE. The word Perizzites may be the Egyptian word
pr for palace or house. The Akkadian word zizanu for reptile gives the
idea of moving, also from the Akkadian root zazu for move. House of
reptiles or house of moving and even the option of house of abundance. If it was
a storehouse(s) for the king of Egypt it might be called the house of
abundance. People from Egypt working for the Pharaoh in this territory will be
called related to those building functions Perizzites, people related to the
house of abundance-storehouses. Again they were squatters in a country not of
their own. They were tapping the resources for other countries to enjoy. The
word 3bw in Middle Egyptian means “ivory” so whether Jebus is related to the
Egyptian center for ivory markets in Canaan, called Jebusites, around
Jerusalem, is not certain but then again is also a possibility. Judges 3:3
indicates that the Hivvites lived Mount Lebanon from Mount Baalhermon unto the
entering of Hamath. One of my theories is that the Perizzites were Egyptian
loyalists to the son of the architect of Thutmosis III who died in 1450 BCE as
pharaoh of the Exodus, with the name of Pe-ra-aš-še-na. The cuneiform letter
from Tell Balaṭa in line one says: ana Pe-ra-aš-še-na (Albright read Bi-ra-
aš-še-na). This individual was under the king of Beth-shean. Probably he served
in that area between 1410-1405 BCE. God was going to drive out these squatters
in the territory where Abraham used to live and his immediate children. It is
legitimate for us to speculate over who they were because no one knows for
sure. It is God who will
deliver them (7:2). In Isaiah 31:1 that the problem with faithful people is
that they trust in military powers but do not “look unto the Holy One of
Israel, neither seek the Lord.” This is very important in our own age where
trust is place upon the might of the military as well. People feel safe when
the military is strong. God fights with symmetry but also asymmetry. If they
received the order to destroy them they were not to make a covenant with them
or be gracious to them. Intermarriage with
these nations were forbidden (7:3). M. Fishbane, the modernist theologian argues
with hermeneutics of suspicion, that Deuteronomy 7:1-2 is different than
Deuteronomy 7:3 because, he said, if extermination of these nations takes place
in verses 1-2, how can they intermarry in verse 3 (Fishbane 1985, ed. 1989:
201-202). The answer is simple. These nations were squatting in Canaan and by
exterminating them, they are only exterminated on Israel soil not outside of
it, not in their own countries. They can return later for intermarriage.
Fishbane is under serious review methodologically. His epistemology crippled
his interpretation and in could just be that his ontology crippled his
epistemology to start off with. He may be agnostic? Heaven forbid. The total removal of the nations was
expected by God as a source of problems in future, if not. Israel, as one will
learn from the invasion history in Judges also, did not succeed in driving them
out completely. They failed to heed to God’s warnings. The squatters were put
to labor-forces and that was their problem because laborers have to stay in
their free-time or off-time with their families nearby and children of the
laborer will play with the children of the owner. They thought they could
handle the social situation. They couldn’t and God was right. Faithful people
needed to segregate as families to a safe zone and only integrate at times and
places when called for but a total integration all the time proved harmful. The problem with integrating with these
foreigners is their culture, their religion that is contra God. “For he will
turn away your son from following Me and they will worship the gods of others”
(7:4). The altars are to be demolished and the
monuments should be smashed, the asherim trees should be cut down and the
graven images should be burnt with fire (7:5). Of course, Deuteronomy 7 was
preached and written many years after Exodus 23. There will be differences in
the sense that it is a different audience and different zone where it is
preached and Moses is older, from 82 in Exodus 23 and 120 in Deuteronomy. Nothing that Moses said in Deuteronomy
7:6-11 was not said in Exodus or Numbers or Leviticus, for example about
holiness, election of God, also the individual retribution by God. It is
embedded all over these three earlier books. But what Fishbane et al modernists
want to do is to refuse the existence of Moses, create a school of plagiarists
who constructed the books and intercepted them with later phrases. Jewish
scholarship would not allow this manipulations of the canonical text, not in
earlier times and not today. The theory stands under serious review. God said
that He did not choose them for their quantity (7:7). Similar to language that one finds in Isaiah
and in John 3:16, the beloved disciple of the Lord, it is said that “the Lord’s
love for you” is the main reason why God choose people. So this concept is all
through the canon of Scriptures unchanged: Moses, Isaiah and John and Paul.
Others too. From 1410 BCE to 97 A.D. the concept of God’s love for humanity
before salvation was unchanged. Love preceded redemption. Old and New
Testaments. There never was a covenant of works that is followed by a covenant
of grace. It is faith that works that saved in the Old Testament and faith that
works that saved in the New. No contradiction. God also is faithful (7:9). He keeps His
covenant with dignity of loving kindness. Those who also love Him, He keeps the
agreement. In similar vein He punishes those who hate
Him. Their destiny is eventually to perish. Not just die as all people are but
eventually to be completely extinct. Memory, deeds, existence, ID everything.
Forgotten and nobodies. Despite the volumes of agnostic and atheistic books
they have written. What God is constantly expecting His
faithful to do is to observe the commandments, statutes and ordinances (7:11).
It includes Leviticus 11 with the arrangement as to what one should eat and
not. Ham is forbidden even unto our times and well beyond. Unfit pig then is
unfit in our day. Not difference. The cross of Christ did not mean to make the
pig cleaner. In 7:12 Moses repeat again that keeping the
commandments will have the added blessing that God will keep His covenants. Love was not only before redemption. It is
ongoing. “He will love you and bless you and multiply you” (7:13). Tangible
things would be blessed: fruit of your womb, soil, grain, wine, oil and offspring
of cattle. Anyone who is faithful is blessed above all
peoples. No nation is excluded. It is about a relationship not about genes or
bloodtype or race category (7:14). It sounds like one nation better than others
here but in the context of the whole canon that is not the case. God does not catch a fish and do not scale
it too. He will remove “all illness…evil diseases” (7:15). The extinction rule that the Lord gives in
7:16 are those whom the Lord gave into their hands. It does not mean destroying
the Hittite country but those Hittite squatters in their territory. Should they have the grasshopper complex? We
are too small or too little to defeat them? (7:17). The answer is that they
should not fear them (7:18). They must remember what the Lord did to Pharaoh
Thutmosis III in 1450 BCE that midnight and morning at the Red Sea. He was ten
years younger than Moses when he died and the Thutmosis III mummy in the
Oriental Institute in Chicago is not his mummy but that of his oldest son who
died at midnight. The X-ray evidence indicates that the mummy was about 35
years old. Thutmosis III was never found. This was a big dilemma in Egypt and
one can see that in the linen placed on his oldest brother that Amenhotep II
cited from the Book of the Dead very much concerned about the worms that now
will devour his father. The mummy was safe from that but not his father! The
text was translated by a number of scholars. The funeral room was completed in
haste. A different team was brought in because something happened to the team
who worked before that night and the additional team was send in to substitute
them? Substitute? Of course, they were after the Red Sea on the other side. The
workmanship was sloppy and drawings just stock men. The painting was quick and
droppings were not cleaned. They were superstitious and scared and wanted to
get out as soon as possible. They saw the hand of God with signs and
wonders. God brought them out with outstretched arm (7:19). That is what the
Lord God will do to all the peoples that the faithful people fear. In 7:20
there is a word that scholars did not know what it means so they suggested that
it is perhaps from the Arabic meaning throwing down, so our prestigious Hebrew
dictionary by BDB page 863. The answer is no. Moses did not speak 680 A.D.
Mohammedan Arabic. He spoke Egyptian and that was Middle Egyptian. There is a
better option here. Moses was Hebraizing an Egyptian word sr meaning “foretell”.
So the word הַצִּרְעָ֔ה or haṣire’ah is
better served using this word “foretell” or the Hebrew root ṣire’a. Translate 7:20 as follows: “And also the foretelling, the
Lord your God will incite against them, until the survivors and those who hide
from you perish”. Moses spent between 1518 to 1490 BCE in the palace of
Hatshepsut and was well versed with Middle Egyptian. One cannot use late
Byzantine Arabic to discover Moses’ meanings two thousand years before. It is
too long a shot. Through the Holy Spirit, who is also God,
the essence of the Trinity is dwelling in the midst of people (7:21). The Holy
Spirit is interpreted here because of the rest of the canon that makes that
clear.
The gradual theory for the invasion
expressed in Deuteronomy 7:22 and also in Exodus 23:29-30, is a gradual process
not of centuries like modern scholars argued with the so-called peaceful
infiltration theory. It is rather that the process is slow within the
confinement of five years between 1410-1405 BCE. There is no contradiction when the
gradualness is in five years but not in one year. God said, that He will not
drive the Canaanites out in one year (Exodus 23:29-30) but as Fishbane had
problems with this pointing to contradiction, it is not. It is going to take
five years and that will be gradually at times and fast at other. God deliver enemies with inner confusion
until they are destroyed. In our day, did the western world become the enemy of
God if we see the inner confusion of England, of the USA, of South Africa, of
South Korea, and the list just goes on from country to country. The west is
imploding itself as of September 2019. The
faithful of the remnant was to burn the images of the gods of the nations and
shall not wear their jewelry. “You shall not covet the silver or gold that is
upon them and take it for yourself” (7:25). Do not wear them and do not take
them. An abomination should not be brought into
the house because it is a curse to the person. They are to “utterly detest it
and you shall utterly abhor it for it is to be destroyed”.
Dear God Your love shines out of this chapter within
our hearts and draws us closer to You. We did not miss it. We cling to Your
blessings and do not wish to desire jewelry or bring it into our house. Amen.