Deuteronomy 11, 12, 13

I'm going to go quickly through the remaining books of Deuteronomy. It's a midseason flashback episode of a book, and something tells me that Joshua will return to the narrative-based storytelling that suits my purposes much better. So for a while each post will contain short accounts of each chapter. Enjoy!

Deuteronomy 11
Moses relates this from God: "Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse; a blessing, if ye obey the commandments of the Lord your God; and a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside...to go after other gods." God really is like a father: He says the same thing over and over and over until you’re zoning out on the guy.  “Keep my commandments or die!” “Go clean your room or you’ll die!” “Can you come down here and put away these dishes—or die!”

Deuteronomy 12
As stated before, the Israelites should destroy everything they can get their hands on in Canaan, then make an offering to God. (Think “wave,” “hand,” “oil.”) They should eat the meat of the offerings but not eat the blood, or what modern people would call "drinking." And it bears repeating: don't worship other gods, and don't incorporate that god's religious customs into your own, because some of those customs are abhorrent. Like burning children as a sacrifice to their gods. Much better is the practice of burning heretical children during the Inquisition. That’s a completely different thing that God approves of.

Deuteronomy 13
In keeping with the false idols vein, God instructs the Israelites not to follow prophets. Well, a certain kind of prophet.

"If there arise among you a prophet," Moses says, "or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known and let us serve them, thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet."

Whew! For a minute there it sounded like Moses was talking about Jesus! I thought I had uncovered the largest scoop in the history of bible study namely that God doesn’t want anyone to follow Jesus. That would have been great find.

But what is to become of that prophet, "dreamer of dreams?" He should be put to death.

Hmm. Maybe I was right after all.

Actually, if anyone even attempts to get you to follow another god, you should just stone him right then and there. I’ll have to remember to take rocks with me on the subway for the Scientologists camped out with their e-meters.