Re'eh - Deut 11:26-16:17

As I have mentioned several times before, theists who view themselves as monotheistic, will offer the Book of Deuteronomy as their primary proof text within the Torah, ignoring all of the problems that the other four books offer when one holds that the Torah is anything but henotheistic. However, one who does this is careful to not quote Deuteronomy as a whole, since that mostly monotheistic view of this book is not carried through the entire book because, like the other books, it was also not composed by a single author, although it does appear to have fewer authors than, say, Genesis.

The term "Other Gods" (אלהים אחרים) appears more in Deuteronomy than the other four books of the Torah combined, with a third of those occurrences appearing in this Torah portion alone.

So because of that, I thought that it would be useful to describe how the ancient people viewed an invasion by a people with their special God, especially based on the audience of the OT.

Remember, Yahweh was first appears in Canaan, and decides to create a special cult for Himself, choosing Abraham to father this cult.

And when the Hebrews went into exile, Yahweh, in effect, went into exile as well, for more than 200 years, dwelling atop a mountain near Midian, upon which, Moses would encounter Him, and would be chosen to lead the people back to Canaan, carrying their God on His golden throne, bringing Him back to Canaan, where He would be the one and only God of the land.

But it's been awhile, and while Yahweh was gone, other Gods were the protectors of the other peoples, and they needed to be destroyed.

If you read the Book of Daniel, the idea of supernatural agents, in this case, angels, fighting one another was a common view. Each nation had its own supernatural agent, and when one nation went to war against another, the supernatural agents went to war as well. Humans fought humans and Gods fought Gods.

(It should be noted that the difference between Gods, angels, and demons are simply semantics.)

So in this week's portion, Moses tells the people that they are going to encounter resistance, and that the incoming Hebrew forces needs to wipe out all of the places where the other Gods are worshiped, which includes their shrines, alters, idols, and even their names.

One of the words used is asherim, which are the idols of the Goddess Asherah. This term appears in Exodus 13:34, Deut. 7:5, and this week's verse. 12:3. Using this expression is an anachronism. Asherah was not a Goddess in Egypt, nor would she have been known by the Jews in the wilderness. However, during the first-Temple period, she was quite popular among many Judeans. The Hebrew word for tree, eitz, also means wood, or when used as an adjective, "wooden". So while some translations (KJV excluded) translate "eitz-asherah" as an "asherah tree", a more likely expression of this would be a wooden idol of asherah, and being a fertility Goddess, likely a phallic one at that.

The wiping out of the names commandment is an interesting one in that the Tanach will often not mention the names of the other Gods, as in "Lord of Peor" (baal-peor), or will use polemical names, such as "Lord shit-eating-pest (fly)". From this commandment to erase the names of other Gods, a the sages of the Talmud enacted a law to forbid the erasure of 7 names of God: Yahweh, Adoni, El, Eloah, Elohim, Shaddai, and Tzvaot. The Jewish code of Law (Shulchan Aruch) lists another 90 names.

Summary

The ancient view of the Gods was that each nation had one, and when there was an invasion, the invading force brought their God with them to fight the resident God. This is exactly what the Book of Deuteronomy is depicting in its preparation for the Israelites coming to the land of Canaan, after having been bred and raised and trained to be part of the Yahwist cult, carrying Him like the returning King, to depose those who had taken over after He had left more than 200 years before.

It's not quite the same story that one is presented on a Sabbath sermon.