Deuteronomy, Jewish Prophets and the Sermon on the Mount: Moral Formulas, Comedy and Tragedy: Monophony of Polyphony?                 

The Classical Hebrew canon tends to be divided, for the purposes of classification, into the Law, the Prophets and the Writings. Deuteronomy is the final book of the Law, and the text articulates and threads together the Jewish political vision as the Jewish people are about to cross the Jordan into the much anticipated and longed for promised land. There is a very real sense in which Deuteronomy is the 1^st political manifesto written in the West (centuries before such western classics of political philosophy by Plato and Aristotle), and in this manifesto, an ethical, liturgical and distinctive political agenda is clearly articulated. The Jewish nation is offered a blueprint in Deuteronomy for both domestic and foreign policy issues.  Moses seems to be the lawgiver for most of the book, and Moses’ enhanced and enlarged view of the Jewish framework for running their new society cannot be missed. Deuteronomy merely means the second laws, the larger economic, social and political laws that were meant to build on the Decalogue (10 Commandments) and the Shema (‘Love the Lord Your God with All Your Heart, Soul, Strength and Mind’). The Shema and Decalogue are foundational to the Jewish tradition, and, in many ways, don’t raise the tensions that the larger history and 2^nd set of laws entails. Let us now turn to the tensions. 

Those who take the time to sit with the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament cannot but be taken by a trying tension and problematic dilemma. The problem is, at a primary level, theological. God is, at times, merciful, just, long suffering, generous, fatherly, shepherd like and compassionate. God is, at other times, angry, brutal, warlike and destructive. It’s often difficult to know which aspect of God will appear at what time and why. God seems no different from Zeus, Odin or Jupiter in his warlike and hawkish tendencies at places in the textual narrative. This has raised serious concerns and questions for those that take the Bible with some level of seriousness. Is God truly a consistent and good God, or does God’s willing and actions trump his goodness?  These tensions have been duly noted by many thoughtful exegetes of the Hebrew canon. Peter Craigie’s, The Problem of War in the Old Testament (1978), Eric Seibert’s Disturbing Divine Behaviour: Troubling Old Testament Images of God (2009) and Simone Weil’s Letter to a Priest (1942) are but three classics that probe and ponder this difficulty. It is this perennial tension that the well known Canadian theologian and philosopher, George Grant, grappled with much of his life.   If God’s ways are above our ways, can God do anything and humans have no right to question Divine behavior? If God is beyond good and evil, does this mean that God can use unjust and immoral means to achieve a Divine end? There are many passages in the Old Testament that seem to suggest this might be the case. Many of these questions and issues are expressed clearly and poignantly in Deuteronomy, hence to Deuteronomy we now turn to explore the ethical implications of such Divine behaviour.