Thoughts on Deuteronomy 22 & Luke 2

Today’s reading: Deuteronomy 22; Luke 2

I have what I think will be short thoughts on both of the passages we are reading today.

Thoughts on Deuteronomy 22

There are a handful of laws and corresponding consequences in Exodus through Deuteronomy that just make me stop and say, “Why would anybody even do that then if that’s going to be the consequence?” On the one hand, some of them seem kind of silly to even need to include given the consequences, but on the other hand, I guess that means they are probably accomplishing their purpose pretty effectively.

One of these here in Deuteronomy 22 is the law about a man hating his new wife and accusing her of not having been a virgin on their wedding night. If he makes such an accusation and the woman’s parents are able to produce the evidence of her virginity, then the man is to be whipped, fined, and then not allowed to ever divorce the woman. And you realize, given this law, that if he hates her and doesn’t want to be married to her anymore, there is no way he is going to make this up and lie about it. If he does, he is going to get found out, he is going to get whipped and fined, and then he is going to be married to this woman he hates forever. This would just make absolutely no sense for someone to do.

Now, on the one hand, I’m betting that this law exists because this happened. Just like when you read the ridiculous things on warning labels and realize that they are probably only on there because someone tried it and sued the company over the result because the warning label for the toaster didn’t specifically say not to make pop tarts on a raft in a swimming pool. So there probably was a man at some point who tried to get out of a marriage in such a shameful way and this was the result. But the reason that it is included in the actual law codes is so that it doesn’t happen again.

But I guess the important thing I want to call our attention to with a law like this is that Deuteronomy isn’t just a download from God into Moses’ brain. These laws are not from God, sitting up in heaven, just trying to think of what might make for some good laws to have on the books. These are largely case laws. Some of them likely were preemptive instruction, but many of them would have come about, potentially during the wilderness wandering, or maybe even in Egypt before, and they wanted the result to be encoded for future generations, based on the wisdom and direction of God in how to deal with these circumstances.

So when we run into these laws that make you say, “Why even include that then, who would ever do that if THAT is going to be the result?” it’s worth remembering that this isn’t just God making up laws that Moses writes down with no basis in the happenings of Israel, but that these are real people, who have been seeking out Moses’ ruling on all kinds of things for 40 years now, and that Moses would take those things to God. So while we do have the encoded wisdom of God for Israel here in these books we’ve been reading, this is not a disconnected data-dump, but is Moses recording the results of decades of dealings with God on behalf of national Israel.

Thoughts on Luke 2

The way I picture the birth of Jesus is very different now from most of the rest of my life. I know I’be mentioned this book before, but a number of years ago I read a book that I would highly suggest called Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, and there was a section in that book that talked about the events of Luke 2.

When we think of the birth of Jesus, we tend to think of the Christmas nativity scenes and church plays where Joseph and Mary are traveling alone to Bethlehem, arrive in the city and, though they are the only travelers there, there’s no room at the inn, so they end up staying in a stable (again alone) where she has Jesus, probably the same night they arrive. But they pointed out, in that book, how silly that picture really is. They would have had a wide window of time to travel for the census, so if it was just the two of them, why would Joseph wait to travel until Mary was close to giving birth? Instead of going alone, Joseph and Mary would have gone with a larger caravan of family. We actually see, at the end of chapter 2, that they would caravan down to Jerusalem with family every year for the feast, so those same families also would have gone to Bethlehem to register for the census. So much more than likely, the reason they traveled close to Mary’s due date was because that was when the larger caravan was heading from Galilee to Bethlehem, and they were going as part of that group.

They also pointed out that, back then, there isn’t normally large scale travel to smallish towns, so if a town or village had an inn, it would only have a few rooms. And in places in the world where this is still the case, if there are more people needing a place than there are rooms, and no families in the town have space for the travelers, staying in the stables for a night or two is not uncommon. So this was not a cruel innkeeper unwilling to make space for a lone traveling couple, this was a time when a LOT more people than normal had to travel to Bethlehem, and so there was no space for the large group arriving from Galilee, so the group stayed in the stables while they were there.

We actually get a glimpse of this when the shepherds tell Mary and Joseph what the angel had told them and Luke tells us, “And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.” Who is the “all” that Luke is talking about? It’s the rest of the family packed into the stables with Joseph and Mary, it’s the women who helped deliver Jesus, it’s the random other people who arrived for the census at the same time and ended up in the stables with this group, etc.

Maybe that’s already the mental picture you have of these events, but what used to live in my head was very much so the standard children’s storybook version that, when you step back and think very deeply about it at all, doesn’t actually make all that much sense. So I wanted to share that in case you also need to add a few dozen people to your nativity set this Christmas like I do…

And also, if you haven’t read it, and you’re a Westerner, you should read Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes.