So now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being. Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord your God, the earth with all that is in it, yet the Lord set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today. Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear. He is your praise; he is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen. Your ancestors went down to Egypt seventy persons; and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in heaven.
Deuteronomy 10:12-22 (NRSV)
This was the old Testament reading for Morning Prayer today. It happens to be one of my favorite passages in the Bible. I remember learning to read it in Hebrew back in seminary. I preached on it a number of times as a pastor. And it shows up every year or so in the Daily Office. Why is it a favorite?
There is some unique language in this passage–”keep the decrees..for your own well being”, “circumcise the foreskin of your heart”, “love the stranger, for you were strangers in Egypt”, “your ancestors were 70, now they are numerous as the stars in the sky.”
Our Own Well Being- If you think about all the reasons that you have been given over the years for keeping God’s commandments, when was the last time you were told, “It is for your own good”? Your health and well-being are at stake when living as one of God’s followers. There are 613 commandments in the Old Testament according to the Rabbis, many of them deal with issues of personal health and hygiene. Many of them have to do with the community health of Israel. Ponder this for awhile.
Circumcise the foreskin of your heart- I remember the Hebrew for this verse is very graphic-think carving. The idea is that the covenant God made with Israel is more than just cutting an outward body part, it is about making the covenant the core of our being, the heart of our living.
Love the stranger…you were a stranger- This idea occurs throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. The way we deal with the stranger and alien in our midst should be different because we know what it was like to be a stranger. I amused and saddened by so much of the discourse in today’s society regarding immigrants and the aliens in our midst. Our memory, like Israel’s, is short. Love the stranger- we were all strangers once.
Your ancestors will be numerous- This is an often repeated phrase in the Hebrew narrative. The old man, Abraham, was told that he would have more progeny than the stars in the sky ( a humorous statement for a guy with no children and old enough to have great grand children). Who would have imagined a couple of generations later, Joseph went down to Egypt and was able to protect his family of 70 while serving in the court of Pharoah. Many years later, long after Joseph had been forgotten, that family had multiplied so much that the Egyptians were afraid them. Today, billions of folks link themselves to that large family of slaves in Egypt, and we continue to recite their story.
What’s required of us? To continue to remember who we are, where we came from, and who made it possible.