Widows & Fatherless - Deuteronomy 10

The part about chapter 9 at the end that I didn’t cover is Moses telling the people that he begged God to let them live twice and both times he had to go into the mountains fasting, without food or water, for 40 days each time. Both of these times he went into the mountains fasting was to secure God’s covenant and commandments for the people and so Moses continues his narrative that he took the tablets to the mountain to get God’s commandments, and made an ark “of shittim wood” to keep them in. Interestingly, I just watched a video on Instagram that talked about the ark of the covenant being symbolic of the temple because it holds the commandments and covenants from God for the people. I thought that was an interesting comparison. Moses also recounts a little bit of their journeys in the wilderness, Aaron’s death, and asks an important question, “now Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord the God with all thy heart and with all thy soul. To keep the commandments of the Lord, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good?” TB talks about what it means to love God, and if we consider that the concept of “love” then isn’t the same as ours now, as we see that when God said to love him, he didn’t mean get a tingly feeling inside, he meant take action that shows dedication. In that context, “love the Lord thy God,” can be defined as “keep the commandments,” because that’s how you show it.

Verse 16 has an interesting phrase, saying, “circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.” TB says that this is meant to mean, remove the covering of your heart and might, your feelings and your thinking, that is blocking God from entering. I thought that was an interesting definition. TB says, “the illustration is that to circumcise the foreskin of your heart means to remove the protective (even impenetrable) covering over your mind and decisions that keeps God from entering in. It means to stop being hard headed and thus blocking the Word of God from taking root in your thoughts.” Additionally, I had the thought that circumcision was the mechanism that showed a man had made the Abrahamic covenant with God, therefore, circumcising your heart might also be interpreted as making covenants with God.

Verse 17 says, “For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward.” TB says that this statement is to contrast this God with the pagan gods that the Israelites were used to back in Egypt. The pagan gods were many, and some had a hierarchy, some were just generic, but he’s saying that this God, the God of Israel, is the main God and has more power than any of the other ones, he’s the top guy, he answers to no one, there is no one above Him. The mighty and terrible statement seems to be reminding the people that this God is so powerful he can work greater miracles than can ever be imagined, but if you disobey him after making a covenant, the consequences will be terrible. Finally, “which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward,” is in contrast to the pagan gods who will play favorites and who can also be bribed to do the bidding of certain individuals who either flatter them enough, or offer them certain things, etc. It’s a very corrupt situation, these other gods, and a very untrustworthy alliance for anyone who tries to manipulate the gods through this route. The God of Abraham is not like that, He cannot be manipulated, or persuaded against his will, trust me, I’ve tried.

Finally, Moses tells the people that part of loving God means protecting “the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” There are very people more vulnerable than the widows and the fatherless. When my grandpa died and left my grandma a widow, it was disgusting how the vultures swooped in and so many people tried to scam her immediately. I was a single mom for 14 years and it was disgusting how many people saw me as their payday, lying and conning me into all types of this to try and get my money away from me. They didn’t care that I had to work 3 jobs to take care of my kids alone, they didn’t care about my struggles or our suffering, they only thought how they could take advantage of me. I just read an article about some interviews done with pedophiles in prison and so many of them said that they targeted single mothers specifically because they knew there was no father in the home to protect those kids so they would be vulnerable to them. Honestly, that’s one of the reasons that I haven’t dated since my divorce 13 years ago, I didn’t want my children to be targets. I’m not saying that there aren’t great men out there who wouldn’t be loving fathers to children that aren’t biologically theirs because there are those men. I just didn’t want to put time and effort into trying to find one. I worked too much to date in the first place, and the couple of times I did try to put myself out there, the men I came across were not stand up guys, and knowing the data, I just decided that it wasn’t going to be a priority for me. Most of my other friends remarried and they seem to be doing well, but it just wasn’t going to happen for me.

The word “stranger” here means “foreigner, sojourner” in the footnotes, it could mean just traveler, but TB implies that it also means immigrant, someone who settles and lives among you. Immigration is an tough topic right now, and it’s a fine line between caring for the stranger and taking care of your resources. But on the other hand, if God is feeding you manna from heaven, then it doesn’t matter about your resources because food is literally falling from the sky. It’s interesting to consider that maybe if were obedient to the commandments as a whole people, maybe we would have infinite resources for everyone. It would be interesting to see what the world would look like if everyone was more concerned with loving God and their neighbor than certain groups of people are concerned with exploiting the vulnerable for wealth and power. Interesting to think about.