Bible

 

Deuteronomy 31

Studie

   

1 And Moses went and spoke these words to all Israel;

2 and he said unto them, I am a hundred and twenty years old this day, I can no more go out and come in; and Jehovah hath said unto me, Thou shalt not go over this Jordan.

3 Jehovah thy God, he will go over before thee, he will destroy these nations from before thee, that thou mayest take possession of them: Joshua, he shall go over before thee, as Jehovah hath said.

4 And Jehovah will do to them as he did to Sihon and to Og, the kings of the Amorites, and to their land; whom he destroyed.

5 And when Jehovah giveth them up before you, ye shall do to them according to all the commandment which I have commanded you.

6 Be strong and courageous, fear them not, neither be afraid of them; for Jehovah thy God, he it is that goeth with thee; he will not leave thee, nor forsake thee.

7 And Moses called to Joshua, and said to him in the sight of all Israel, Be strong and courageous, for thou must go with this people into the land which Jehovah hath sworn unto their fathers to give them; and thou shalt cause them to inherit it.

8 And Jehovah, he it is that goeth before thee: he will be with thee; he will not leave thee, nor forsake thee; fear not, neither be dismayed.

9 And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who bore the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, and to all the elders of Israel.

10 And Moses commanded them, saying, At the end of every seven years, at the set time of the year of release, at the feast of tabernacles,

11 when all Israel cometh to appear before Jehovah thy God in the place which he will choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their ears.

12 Gather the people together, the men, and the women, and the children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear Jehovah your God, and take heed to do all the words of this law;

13 and that their children who do not know it may hear it and learn, that they may fear Jehovah your God, as long as ye live in the land, whereunto ye pass over the Jordan to possess it.

14 And Jehovah said to Moses, Lo, the days are near for thee to die; call Joshua, and present yourselves at the tent of meeting, that I may give him a charge. And Moses and Joshua went and presented themselves at the tent of meeting.

15 And Jehovah appeared at the tent in the pillar of cloud; and the pillar of cloud stood over the entrance to the tent.

16 And Jehovah said to Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers; and this people will rise up, and go a whoring after the strange gods of the land into which they enter, and will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them.

17 And my anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them, and they will say in that day, Have not these evils befallen me because my God is not in my midst?

18 And I will entirely hide my face in that day for all the evils that they have wrought, because they turned unto other gods.

19 And now, write ye this song, and teach it to the children of Israel; put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel.

20 For I shall bring them into the land which I swore unto their fathers, which floweth with milk and honey; and they will eat and fill themselves, and wax fat, and will turn unto other gods, and serve them, and despise me, and break my covenant.

21 And it shall come to pass, when many evils and troubles have befallen them, that this song shall testify against them as a witness; for it shall not be forgotten out of the mouths of their seed; for I know their imagination which they are forming already this day, before I bring them into the land which I have sworn [unto them].

22 And Moses wrote this song the same day, and taught it to the children of Israel.

23 And [Jehovah] commanded Joshua the son of Nun, and said, Be strong and courageous; for thou shalt bring the children of Israel into the land which I have sworn unto them; and I will be with thee.

24 And it came to pass, when Moses had ended writing the words of this law in a book, until their conclusion,

25 that Moses commanded the Levites, who bore the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, saying,

26 Take this book of the law, and put it at the side of the ark of the covenant of Jehovah your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee;

27 for I know thy rebellion, and thy stiff neck. Lo, while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against Jehovah; and how much more after my death!

28 Gather to me all the elders of your tribes, and your officers, that I may speak these words in their ears, and take heaven and earth to witness against them.

29 For I know that after my death ye will utterly corrupt yourselves, and will turn aside from the way which I have commanded you; and mischief will befall you at the end of days; because ye do evil in the sight of Jehovah, to provoke him to anger through the work of your hands.

30 And Moses spoke in the ears of the whole congregation of Israel the words of this song, until their conclusion.

   

Komentář

 

Woman

  
woman looking to sky
woman looking to sky

The word "woman" is used a number of different ways in the Bible – as a simple description, as someone connected to a man ("his woman"), as a temptation to the men of Israel (women of other nations) and even as a term of address (Jesus addresses Mary as "woman" twice). There are also various spiritual meanings, and context is important. In most cases, a "woman" in the Bible represents a church, either a true one following the Lord or a false one out to deceive. This follows from the idea that the true character of an organization – or of an individual person – is determined by its goals, its mission, what it cares about most. This is well represented by women, because women are, at their inmost levels, forms of affection and love. Men, by contrast, are forms of thought and intellect, which appear prominent but actually play the secondary role of describing and supporting the defining loves and affections. The most central of a woman's loves and affections is the love of truth. On an individual scale this is central to the union between a wife and a husband: She loves his intellect and ideas, and blends them with her own to produce acts of love and kindness; meanwhile her love inspires him to seek more true ideas and greater wisdom so those acts of love and kindness can be ever better. The relationship between the church and the Lord is different, obviously, because the Lord is perfect love and perfect wisdom in balance, and is ultimately both masculine and feminine. The church is also not specifically feminine, being made up of men and women working in harmony. Even so, the defining aspect of a church is its love for truth, and how it receives ideas from the Lord. So while "woman" sometimes represents a church in general, it can also represents the love of truth that exists in that church, or the love of truth itself. Not all churches are true, of course. The reason the people of Israel were so strongly forbidden to intermarry with the people that surrounded them was that the foreign women represented false churches and false beliefs. And for an Israeli woman to take a foreign husband represented introducing falsity into the Israeli church. Two other uses of "woman" are more limited, primarily to the Book of Genesis. One of them is Eve, the first woman, formed from the rib of Adam. In that story Adam represents the Most Ancient Church, and the woman represents what the Writings call the "proprium," a sense of self, of identity, of control that the Lord gave to people of the church at that time. In a way this fits with the more general representation, because the love of truth is an important way we can feel a sense of power in our own spiritual growth, but the representation of Eve is relatively unique. Much of the rest of Genesis is dealing rather directly with the Lord's own development during his childhood on earth. Since the Lord thought and felt more deeply than we can possibly imagine, the women in this stories – Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, Rachel and others – represent true ideas themselves, rather than affections for truth.