We have, first, a recapitulation of the chief events of the wanderings in the wilderness from the day that the Covenant was made in Horeb, the mount of God.[[249]] They are intermingled with antiquarian notes, which may, or may not, be of the Mosaic age, as well as with exhortations to obedience to the Law. Then follows a series of enactments which constitute the Deuteronomic Law itself. The enactments necessarily go over some of the ground already traversed by the previous legislation; in some points they even seem to contradict it. But the contradictions are more apparent than real, like the reason assigned for observing the Sabbath. Sometimes they are supplementary to the Levitical laws, sometimes are supplemented by the latter; at other times the same regulation is repeated from a different point of view.[[250]]
A special characteristic of the Deuteronomic Law is its tenderness and care for animals as well as for the poor, ‘the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow.’[[251]] Even the Egyptian is not to be ‘abhorred’ (Deut. xxiii. 7), and all Hebrew slaves are to be released every seventh year. Along with this, however, we find the ferocity which distinguished the Semites in time of war. If the enemy lived afar off, all the males of a vanquished city were to be mercilessly slain, and the children and women spared, only to become the slaves and concubines of the conquerors. But even this amount of mercy was forbidden in the case of the Canaanitish cities; here the massacre was to be universal, lest the Israelites should take wives from the conquered population and fall away from the worship of Yahveh. A similar spirit of ferocity breathes through the Assyrian inscriptions, where the kings boast of the multitudes of the vanquished whom they had tortured and slain in honour of their god Assur. Alone of the ancient nations of the East the Egyptians seem to have understood what we mean by humanity in war.
Like the poor, the Levite is commended to the care and support of the people. He has no land or property of his own—much less a ‘Levitical city,’—the Lord alone ‘is his inheritance,’ and consequently those who remember the Levite remember at the same time the Lord whom he serves. The portion of the offering is defined which is to be the due of the Levites, and tithe is to be paid to them upon all the produce of the land. No distinction is drawn in the book of Deuteronomy between the Levites and the priests, ‘the sons of Aaron,’ and therefore the laws relating to the Levites apply to all the priests alike.
Another characteristic of the Deuteronomic Law is its insistence on a central sanctuary. It was to this central sanctuary that the God-fearing Israelite was commanded to ‘go up’ three times in the year at each of the great feasts, and there offer his firstlings and sacrifices to the Lord. This central sanctuary, however, did not exclude the existence of local altars or shrines. The Levite is described as living in the families of the other tribes throughout the land (xii. 19, xiv. 27), and as deciding cases at law, wherever they might occur, along with the judges (xvi. 18, xvii. 9, xix. 17, xxi. 6). Nor was it necessary when an animal was slaughtered, and its life-blood poured out before Yahveh, that this should be done in the one chief temple of the nation. It was only such offerings as had been specially vowed to the national God that were required to be brought there. They had been dedicated to Yahveh as God of the whole nation, and it was therefore to that sanctuary in which Yahveh was worshipped by the nation as a whole that they had to be taken. In his individual or local capacity the Israelite was free to offer his sacrifices where he would. For, it must be remembered, the very fact that the life-blood was shed made the death of the animal a sacrifice to the Lord, and the feast on its flesh which followed was a feast eaten in the presence of the Lord.
The insistence on the central sanctuary implied an equal insistence on the absolute supremacy of Yahveh in Israel. Idolaters and enticers to idolatry were to be cut off without pity; even the prophet who spoke in the name of another god, and whose words came to pass, was to be stoned to death. The fulfilment of a prediction guaranteed its truth only if the prophet was the messenger of Yahveh. Yahveh would suffer no other gods to be worshipped at His side, and the Deuteronomic Law accordingly forbids all such practices as were connected with the heathenism of the neighbouring peoples. The Israelites were forbidden to tattoo themselves like the Syrian worshippers of Hadad, to scarify their flesh like the Egyptians in mourning for the dead, far less like the Canaanites around them to sacrifice their firstborn by fire. Every effort was made to preserve them from contact with their neighbours; their king was forbidden to ‘multiply’ horses and wives; for the one would lead to intercourse with Egypt, the other would introduce into Israel the worship and the images of foreign deities. The sacred trees which from time immemorial had been planted near the altars of the gods, some of them by the patriarchs themselves, were to be destroyed like the conical pillar of the goddess Asherah and the upright column which symbolised the sun-god.
Few aspects of Hebrew life are left untouched by the enactments of Deuteronomy. Marriage and divorce, murder and other crimes, the institution of the cities of refuge, the observance of the great feasts, the election and duty of a king, sanitary laws including the distinction between clean and unclean meats, slavery, commerce, and usury, are all alike subjects of the Deuteronomic legislation. And the whole legislation is marked by a spirit of compassion for the poor and suffering, at all events if they belong to the house of Israel, or have been allowed to share some of its privileges. The creditor is enjoined to give back to the poor man before nightfall the raiment he had taken in pledge, and the master is bidden to pay at the close of the day the wages of ‘the hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates.’ Even the curious prohibition to mix like and unlike together, as in the case of a garment of wool and linen (xxii. 11), seems to be a reduction from the principle which forbade the yoking together of the ox and ass.
The legislation relating to the king is perhaps somewhat striking, especially when we bear in mind the protest raised by Samuel against the election of one (1 Sam. vii. 6-18). Samuel, however, was not altogether disinterested in the matter; and it was obvious that as soon as the conquest of Canaan was completed, there could be no national unity without a monarch who could represent the people and lead them in war. Before the time of Samuel, Abimelech had established a kingdom in Central Palestine, and tradition spoke of Moses also as ‘king in Jeshurun’ (Deut. xxxiii. 5). The Israelites, if ever they were to form a nation, were destined to follow the example of their neighbours; even in the wild fastnesses of Mount Seir the ‘dukes’ of Edom had been succeeded by kings. The idea of kingship was so familiar to the Mosaic age, that it is difficult to conceive of any legislation which did not contemplate it. Whether the legislation would have taken precisely the same form as that which we find in Deuteronomy is another question.
The commandments enjoined by Moses were ordered to be written on the stuccoed face of ‘great stones.’ Whether the whole of the Deuteronomic legislation is meant is more than doubtful. But that the chief enactments of the code should be thus placed before the eyes of the people was in accordance with the customs of the age. The acts and events of the reign of Augustus engraved on the marble slabs of Ancyra are a late example of the same usage; and the great inscription of Darius on the cliff of Behistun has similarly preserved to us the history of the foundation of the Persian empire. To cover stone or rock with stucco, which was then painted white and written upon, was a common practice in Egypt. It seems to imply, however, that the writing could be painted with the brush, and thus to exclude the use of cuneiform characters. At the same time, these characters could be cut in stucco as well as in stone, and it is possible that the stucco was intended to be a substitute for clay, where a large surface had to be covered. However this may be, the monument was ordered to be erected on Mount Ebal, by the side of an altar of unwrought stones.
On Ebal, moreover, and the opposite height of Gerizim, it was prescribed that a strange ceremony should be performed. While half the tribes stood on the one mountain, and the other half on the other mountain, the Levites were to curse from Ebal all those who disobeyed the law, and to bless from Gerizim those who obeyed it.[[252]] Unfortunately, as might have been expected, the curses much predominated over the blessings. We hear afterwards in the book of Joshua that the ceremony was duly performed, excepting only that Joshua read the words of cursing and benediction in place of ‘the priests the Levites.’ Critics have doubted the historical character of the occurrence, but it is inconsistent with no known fact, and it is difficult to find a reason for its gratuitous invention.
The latter part of the book of Deuteronomy brings the life of Moses to an end. It includes the final covenant made between himself on behalf of Yahveh and the people of Israel, to which are attached the various calamities that would await the breaking of it. It also tells us that the law contained in Deuteronomy was really written by the legislator, and delivered to the priests the sons of Levi with an injunction that it should be read every seventh year (xxxi. 9-11). Like the ‘witness’ to S. John’s Gospel, therefore, the compiler of the Pentateuch in its present form wishes to add his testimony to the belief that the Mosaic law was written by Moses himself.