Who By Fire - Deuteronomy 9

Chapter 9 is a basic rehashing of some of the concepts that have been discussed repeatedly. The first is that God will go in and destroy their enemies before Israel has to fight them. There is a phrase used here that sounded familiar to me in verse 2 which says, “Who can stand before the children of Anak!” This phrase is used a couple of times in the Book of Mormon as well, once in Mormon 9:26 when Mormon asks, “who can stand against the works of the Lord?” A second time is in Ether 14:18 which is where I remembered it from, which says, “Who can stand before the army of Shiz?” It was just interesting to me that this specific phrase was used in both the Book of Mormon and the Deuteronomy and it makes me wonder if this was a common phrase used among ancient peoples in the middle east to the point that it would have been carried with the Jaredites and used a thousand years later as they were destroyed. Or was this just a common sense phrase that I’m reading too much into?

The concept that we’ve been discussing the last couple of days, God miraculously destroying the enemies of His people, in verse 3, God introduces another way that He promises to do this, saying, “understand therefore this day, that the Lord thy God is he which goeth over before thee; as a consuming fire he shall destroy them.” I thought that God had used a consuming fire previously against the Egyptians but when I looked it up, I was mistaken. I’m currently listening to a book called “Extreme Ownership” that was written by a couple of Navy Seals and it’s supposed to be about leadership and maybe it will get there at some point but recently it’s rehashing a lot of their combat missions in Ramadi, Iraq. One of the situations they got themselves into was a pickle where 8+ enemy fighters were coming down an alley straight for them when they were just 2 guys alone and they talk about how they shot a couple of the guys and that spooked the others and they retreated, etc. But when I read the phrase ‘as a consuming fire he shall destroy them” I thought about how God’s promise in this instance might have played out in that scenario. The way that the event was described was very vivid and just listening, I could feel a smidge of the anxiety that they probably felt watching those enemy guys coming towards them while they were trapped. But after hearing this phrase about the fire, I imagine myself in the same scenario, just like I did when I heard it in the book the first time, and it was a much different feeling when I expected God’s divine protection and to have my back in fighting my enemies proactively. I don’t know if that makes sense but it was just envisioning myself in two separate scenarios, one where I was on my own, like these two guys were, and one where I expected God to rain fire down on my enemies, like was promised to Israel here, and it was a very interesting thought experiment.

Moses continues on recounting the previous rebellions and wickedness of the previous generation that disallowed them from going into the promised land 38 years previously. The way that Moses phrases this part, however, is first person current, so he’s basically saying “we could have been in the promised land by now but you guys were wicked and rebelled against God.” The problem is that the people that he’s currently addressing were not the one who rebelled, it was their parents. I don’t know why he is addressing them like this, I don’t know if it was just a literary device they used at that time or if he was trying to make them recognize the consequences that come when people rebel against God so that they can internalize it and not repeat their parents mistakes. Maybe it was so demonstrate to the people that their parents might not have been as amazing as they might have thought. Most people love, admire, and respect their parents, at least that’s what I’m told, so maybe Moses is trying to emphasize the importance of not repeating their parents mistakes and help them recognize that while they might love their parents, they messed up in a major way.

Moses also tells them of the times where he begged God to spare the lives of the Israelites because God was ready to kill them all for their disobedience. Again Moses is speaking to the people who were either not born yet or who were children at the time that these rebellions occurred, so maybe they weren’t aware that their parents had rebelled so seriously that God was ready to destroy them. It’s one thing to hear that God will fight and defeat your enemies for you, that motivates a certain group of people. But it is another thing to hear that if you rebel against that same God, He will turn his judgments against you and kill you, that motivates a different group of people. It’s two sides of the same coin, God will just his power to protect and prosper you if you can all work together in agreement, but if you break that agreement God will use his power against you as well. That dynamic makes it sound like it’s a coercive relationship, “do what I say and you’ll have a good life but if you don’t do what I say then I’ll kill you.” There’s not a lot of free will involved in that relationship, in fact, I think there are several mafia movies about that very concept. So maybe I need to think a little bit more about how that dynamic works without being manipulative. Maybe because it all has to be tempered with the downfalls of this mortality, the delay in blessings and punishments. I’m going to have to think about this.