So Deuteronomy is progressing...
I'm in an interesting position, because I can't think of a time over the last 60 days when I've felt less motivated to actually make a new post.
It's not because I'm not enjoying the book itself, mind you, because I am, but it's mostly just because so far the book has consisted of nothing but recap from Moses to Israel, so apart from the occasional minor discrepancy between the original account and Moses' retelling, there's just not a lot of new ground to cover.
One thing, however, did jump out at me, and that was 9:5:
5 "It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
For whatever reason, I've never really considered the opposite side of the Israelites coming to the Promised Land, and if I came close, I think I always just tacitly went along with the "God's Chosen People" card and chocked it up to that.
This, like most of the things that have confounded my previous understandings, is far more interesting. Not just because it (sort of) removes the potential moral dilemma in having entire civilizations wiped out to make room for a new one (not that this sort of thing wasn't perpetually happening in the ancient near-east at the time...) but also that is seems to imply a prior relationship of some sort between these peoples and God.
I like when the Bible gets a little meta and casts references to God's activities beyond its pages.
That's all I've got.
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