Published: February 18, 2024 | Speaker: D. Aaron Wells | Series: Deuteronomy - The Law Is Good, If One Uses It Lawfully 1 - Part 7 | Scripture: Deuteronomy 2:1-3:22
Transcript
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I last week rather I um I did not read a certain selection of verses out of the main body of Moses first discourse uh because they they kind of interrupt the
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the main flow of of what he's getting at and it was apparent to me that the message that he is giving to the people of Israel and to us would be more
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evident if those parent thetical statements were excised for the time being the other reason for excising those parenthetical statements that I left out um it's not because they're
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less valuable by any means they I think they are actually of extraordinary value but they do present two uh challenges to us one a matter of
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just understanding context and the other a real textual challenge I think um for us I'm I'm going to cover both of those challenges uh today the the contextual
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challenge is that of apparent Giants um always a Hot Topic when you're on the on the fringes of of biblical study um
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there's much made of certain Hebrew words whose meaning is anything but as certain as often these uh self-styled teachers will make them uh and make
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Grand points from them so I hope to sort of disambiguate uh these words and demystify them a bit um and then the other is I think a a much more important
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Challenge and and that is of the why are these to be considered parenthetical statements why am I saying that and does that have any impact on our doctrine of
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scripture um our doctrine of scripture like any of our any that we know about God should God should be should be acquired in practice in the
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word of God in other words we we need to go where God's word leads us um and be very careful about making um U either narrow and and rigid
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statements or overly loose statements about the nature of God's word um it's it sounds all fine and good and we've talked about this a little bit with the systematics versus biblical theology it
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sounds wonderful to State one's case and an organized and and very um I don't know uh complete satisfying fashion but
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when when we read through the text of scripture at any point we will we'll often find our uh simple Notions that were very satisfying before disrupted um
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by the actual text of scripture uh the choice is often made to double down on the systematic and what I would
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encourage at all points is is that we we double down on this is what God's word says not doubling down on our own understanding mind you but doubling down
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on this is what the word of God says and my understanding Trails behind it and I'm going to be patient and I know that I'm not the only one of God's people and
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this is not God's only church we we live in an economy that God himself has set up in his great wisdom and we are seeing but a small part of it but whatever
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small part of it we see we're responsible for and so I think Deuteronomy has presented us with a laboratory of a variety of challenges and and two of them hope to U do today
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so the first one in your outline is that of giants um I am not going to give you any specific biblical references uh well no that's not true I'm going to give you a couple but I'm not going to be dealing
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trying to deal into the depth of the biblical data on this I'm going to give you the summary and I have if you would like I can provide you with an exhaustive uh list of when these terms
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are used and where uh and my breakdown in more detail over uh their usages so um I think the I'm actually not going to
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read the passages just yet so you'll find that this is kind of almost argued in Reverse um so I'm going to give you the summary of the of the main terms and then then we'll read the passages um I'm
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sure you're at least somewhat familiar with the three main words used for men of unusual ability strength and stature uh the first should should not be really unfamiliar to anybody and and that is
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the uh the word um Nephilim okay um as with any Hebrew uh term that e uh there means it's a plural
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um just something to bear in mind uh this refers to ancient Heroes and leaders perhaps of large stat okay but certainly of great might and accomplishment um it appears to share a
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root with the Hebrew word naal but the word is of very ancient origin and so that's that's a guess um the the Hebrew word it appears to share a root with
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nafal means to fall um that may give some insight into the nature of the word and it may not um it's only mentioned in two passages of scripture um one of
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which is in numbers uh specifically used by the people of Israel when they are whipping themselves up into a panic to evoke fear uh on the part of their
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brothers toward the people of the land I think that's a very important data point they say in numbers there um the the Nephilim are there and again part of their part of their Panic um so I think
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that's an important data point because it's important I think to note that this was an this was a notable class of men not monsters um Genesis says they were men of renown um there is a body of
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Jewish Lord that makes use of this term or or takes takes that Concept in Genesis off in a direction that almost casts them as demig Godlike beings um
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most notably The Book of Enoch um but these arose later much later uh and they simply don't make sense of the purpose of Genesis written to these people in
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the wilderness same audience that we're studying uh with in D uter onomy um that the idea of them being some sort of mythical uh demigod likee being doesn't
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make good sense of the purpose of Genesis written as a as a as an instruction or written as a work for the instruction and edification of the early
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people of Israel these were men of renown but nothing else is known uh of them the second term which is much more widely used uh is that of
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reim or reim or reim um this refers early in Biblical history to a group of tribes branched from an apparent single ancestry uh of
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large stature uh and at many times of great might um the word means or came to mean The Departed uh in Hebrew uh and it's later used as a word in the
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prophets for the dead um so it roughly means the The
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Departed um and I say came to mean because that's a that's an important feature of language where often the the word precedes its meaning you see that um with the man akan in Joshua where the
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valley came to be known as the valley of akor and his name came in the Hebrew language to mean trouble um it would seem that the root of these people could
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just as likely be their place of origin uh I've mentioned this before but in Hebrew all verbs are only three
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consonants so there's a limited number let the mathematicians do it a limited number vers that the language can handle right and then they did what we're now doing they made their nouns
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out of their verbs so or something about a people coming because there are three letters up there the the ph and the L that's a
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verb it means to fall it seems more likely that what you just said about the valley of P that these names were derived from place names that perhaps no longer exist and
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have been lost to Antiquity right because the names themselves doesn't I guess the taller you are the harder you fall maybe yeah
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right they don't really give us any insight into the nature of these people that's right but perhaps that you know there was a place called Raa and that's where they supposedly originated or a
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man uh named Rafa um that would be the other thing so what you're saying just in summary is that uh Hebrew language in general is dealing with a limited number of consonants in its words and it is
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able with different vowel of those consonants to give rise to an a wide vocabulary even from a single source so it is a language that is very able to
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develop in the direction that I've descried is that an accurate summary of what you're yes but it's hard to go in reverse okay and it's impossible to go in reverse a developed word back to its
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verb right because that verb could have easily gone in other directions um and often times when I when I'm you know when I'm studying even in Leviticus the
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emology doesn't make sense doesn't shed any life and I think it's because of the the limitations um if you only have three letter verbs there's only so many
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you can have we're used to being able to trace our languages atmology through a number of different language groups that are still well known and right and we can derive a lot of insight into our
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word usage from that atmology Hebrew is not providing that to us uh and so we're often just left with the bare fact of well this is what it says and it looks like it's related it may not um and
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that's why I've undertook particularly with this one to make to sort of catalog the the biblical usage of it because I think it's its usage in context is really going to tell us the most about
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it not its atmology in particular I just mentioned it's emology because you'll hear about it from some place
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based as far as the aramatic data I did not study that I do not know um I'm I'm reliant on the helps in this so I assume they have um looked at that yeah um but
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again I say uh and and it's even in your English translations it'll mostly be inconsistently translated um because it has a variety of usage and I think this is this is apparent even really without
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um without a lot of the knowledge uh so the first usage that occurs the earliest in in in my estimation is that of a specific usage uh for a defined group of
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people with a known ancestry um the second is more General uh a general term for a type of people that is um of large stature or of a warlike character or
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great power uh of some kind like we would use the word Amazon Amazon
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sure yes um the Third as I said in the prophets and in the Psalms is a symbolic usage uh and and again that that departed idea it comes to be used as a symbolic term for the dead um in our
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data in the verses that I'm we're going to study today the amim and Zam zum that were defeated by the descendants of lot and you can refer also to Genesis 14:5
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for mention of those peoples um back in lot's day um as well as the anakim uh of whom the people of Israel were greatly afraid are all counted as
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reim okay but were're in some sense distinct peoples settled in different regions so he he branches off to a number of tribes uh and and those are
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known with their own Nam so again amim Zam zum anakim uh all those are reim uh type peoples uh but distinct from one another and in different geographical
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locations um I the word I came up with and i' I'd entertain a better one for a word in our culture that has all of these meanings in this order was
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Nazi um once referred to a specific political group it came to be have more General usage for its ideology and now you can refer to somebody as a grammar Nazi as somebody who is severe and very
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specific about uh some some point of culture or uh or practice um other ideas as to a word that has that sort of varied usage I'm curious I could not
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think of another one well anyways um the third uh which is a constituent people when it comes to its specific usage um
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is the the term anakim uh and that one's mostly used in this Deuteronomy through Joshua uh era here um this refers to a
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branch of the rim who settled in the Southeastern regions of Kanan and were descended from one ano the son of arba so we even know something about their genealogy um arba being uh the Man For
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Whom the city kriat arba was named uh which then became Hebron um uh the word itself seems to mean something like the
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neck uh in Hebrew perhaps you know tall stature long neck I don't know um but historically speaking they were defeated in their majority by by calb the son of
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yan uh he had been the one to declare that Yahweh would surely give them into Israel's hand okay and he specifically asked for their territory as his personal inheritance he wanted to go
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fight them um uh even though the rest of Israel at his time was afraid enough to Rebel over these peoples um and their presence in the land served as the purported basis of the former
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generation's belief that our little ones will become a prey we have seen the sons of ano there they said um so I hope that
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just brief this brief Jun helps us see the significance then of this character that appears by the name of O um the king of bosan he's specifically noted in
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these parentheses to be of the remnant of the of the reim um suggesting that he was even more imposing to them than the men feared by the former generation okay he he was
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they were in other words they were facing and the MC daddy um their their their fathers were afraid of of the the constituent people presumably less imposing he was really one of these um
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one of the leftovers his defeat by the new generation forms proof of yahweh's ability to subdue the anakim before Israel and I think that that is a major
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thread running through Moses discourse that if you excise these parentheses like I did is not not entirely clear um but these parenthetical statements do
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exist in our copies and so uh I want to I want to study them as parenthetical statements any questions or comments about this before I move on okay yes is that I think anybody up in
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the church has a lot Y is that
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most right exactly yes that that a lot of the Notions if you grew up in a church anywhere that you have especially about that one um are extra biblical ideas and and I'll be frank I don't take
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them seriously in the slightest um I think we would do well to study what scripture says about them particularly this one being semi mythical that serves no purpose in in
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scripture whatsoever they are not picked up anywhere else uh and discussed so what would be the point even if it were true that they were some sort of type of
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human that no longer exists what would be the point of knowing that where does Scripture show us what the point of knowing that is it doesn't rather if they are men of
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renown on the earth before and after the devil um the the great ones among men um that does serve a purpose which I'm not
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really going to lay out but that does serve a purpose for the for the people of Israel at the very least they are facing men they think are equal to those
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great men and Yahweh is defeating them before them yes abigael made the comment the other day that it must have been nice to be hisory in the 19th century when you didn't have to give Source material whatever you said same is true
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commentaries that and frankly this might sound almost retical is we need to be careful even even with someone like ershim that just because he was Jewish
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doesn't mean he has an inside track on second temple Judaism or geography or archaeology um we have a lot more at
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our fingertips now that they we have to beep when we read this means yeah it's like
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the word the word clearly right just be careful because a lot of it was conject that that any one commentary is but a data point um it is
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not is not the be all and end all we don't just read John Gil or edim for everything they are they are there for our assistance but but they cannot they neither report often report their Source
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material although edim does do a pretty good job of reporting his Source material matal um more than some others uh but they often don't report Source material is what you're saying and and then uh secondly they only knew what
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they knew yeah um well let's look at U let's look at these apparently parenthetical statements okay so the following statements appear to be
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parenthetical in nature possibly not part of Moses original discourse but added later now I'm giving you I'm giving you that in summary so that you know kind of where I'm going uh with
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this so we'll read them now if you want to turn with me to Deuteronomy 2 I would encourage you to have Bible open on this one because they're spread out through the meat of his first discourse it would be easy to kind of Lose Yourself and
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wait which one was that so let's look at chapter 2 veres 10 through 12 the amim speaking of the territory of Moab the amim formerly lived there a
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people great and many tall as the anakim like the anakim they are also counted as rayim but the moabites called them amim
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the horites also lived in seir formerly but the people of asau dispossessed them and destroyed them from before them and settled in their place as Israel did to
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the land of their possession which Yahweh gave to them that is 2 10 2 10 through2 dealing with
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the am me okay um uh verses 20 through 23 farther down speaking of the territory of the sons of Amon or the ammonites it is also counted
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as a land of reim reim formerly lived there but the ammonites called them Zam zum a people great and many and tall as
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the anakim but Yahweh destroyed them before the ammonites and they dispossessed them and settled in their place as he did for the people of asau who lived in s when he destroyed the
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horites before them and they dispossessed them and settled in their place even to this day as for the aim who lived in villages as far as Gaza The korim Who Came From kaor destroyed them
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and settled in their place that's so that's so 2 20 through 23 speaking
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Zim um further down chapter 3:9 was another that I pulled out as as parenthetical and this one's a little different it's very short the sidonians call Mount
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Hermon this is speaking of the um the land of the two kings of the amorites beyond the Jordan from The Valley Of Arnon to Mount Hermon so I I
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guess I need to put that uh up here as well for us um so Mount Hermon uh somewhere in in this
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region okay so from here to here that makes sense makes sense right all right um so the sidonians call Mount Hermon serion while the amorites
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call it call it senir okay so that is 39 dealing
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senir okay um verse 11 for only o the king of bosan was left of the remnant of the rim behold his bed
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a bed of iron is it not in rabah of the ammonites nine cubits its length and four cubits its breadth according to the
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common Cubit and so that's that's an important one because that that act that forms a an important data point about a character that they met uh that we we
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might not know ourselves so dealing with O and his his person and then finally the one that touched all this off that made really invest tigating these
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parenthetical statements uh more necessary and the one that seems the least important too uh is uh the second half of verse 13 of chapter
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3-4 uh speaking of the region of the argob that is the kingdom of OG I gave to the Hal tribe of manace and here's the parenthesis all that portion of
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Bashan is called the land of reim yir the monite took all the region of the arob that is Bashan as far as the border of the gites and the moath itses
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and called The Villages after his own name havat yir as it is to this
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day and I'll have to justify why that one's the most important but I'm G just put uh put uh hav y
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hav y ear okay all right I wrote those because I can point to them
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um this one and I'll I'll lay out why in a second as I said I'm kind of backing you into my reasoning a bit this one is a is a bit of an issue uh because hav yayer was established apparently about
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300 years 300 years later um so we have in the text something that that may be referring to an event that had not happened yet uh in
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the text of deuteron omy because it is referring to Bashan is also called a land of reim that then connects it with
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at least three others this one's a little bit of an oddball okay but these statements are are certainly connected by reference to
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reim okay so this one then goodness gracious this one then referring to an event that maybe something that happened 300 years later makes us ask ourselves
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what what's going on and I I read Deuteronomy three or four times before I finally okay I need to need to sort of test this out a little bit I kind of
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came up with four logical possibilities um that critically speaking we're really forced to choose among by apparently parenthetical
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language so the first one is that Moses spoke all of the recorded words okay including these statements that are in question those even if we don't totally
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understand how they fit our understanding always Trails behind scripture so okay not a
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problem one they interrupt the flow of Moses discourse um which is not outside human tendency to to chase a rabbit um but I think demonstrated last week that there is a very tight uh tight narrative
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that Moses is weaving and these end up interrupting it for additional information um the the second uh thing is that this one if it is referring to
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the event in judges then brings into question other statements that are that are worded very
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similarly well that's I'm I'm laying out where where when we see statements like this we have to make a choice among certain logical possibilities and then also examine it from when we come to the scripture by faith what is our posture
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toward toward the text saying this was added later you make that stat I I'm I'm suggesting that these things were added later yes but but that's that's me
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suggesting that I'm I'm not saying it's a certainty well we have evidence of later editions in the description of Moses's death already in Deuteronomy of
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the body right already in the P so we're not we're not saying the same thing as the liberal who says none of this was written by Moses correct it was all written by later priests and that's not
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the point the point is is that it was a fluid document in the life of Israel right to the point that we have several examples of the deaths of Moses Joshua
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or Samuel which could not have been written by that person being added because this was a and and and perhaps these parenthetical statements were simply
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explanatory to a generation that was not aware except by Legend of these peoples it it is absolutely not the same as saying Moses did right right and and
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like I said I am admitted stick with me a little bit because I am admittedly backing you into my reason if if if we were if we were all on the same page more or less about these things I would
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probably do this particular presentation exactly in Reverse um so stick with me here I also think that with regard to the to the documentary hypothesis I
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think it's nonsense but I I also think that there's a reason it exists they were seizing upon anomalies in the text that do demand some study and They
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concluded wrong on those it doesn't mean that they weren't seeing those issues for us in the text um the the other thing is I I aim to
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look things like the documentary hypothesis full in the face um let's go ahead and acknowledge it's out there it is two or like 200 years old or something along those maybe more
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depending on how you reckon it and it is a foundational part of how Academia treats the scriptures uh and we have to look at it so logically speaking Moses
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spoke all of it uh the second thing would be uh that oops there we go Moses spoke uh the vast majority uh of the words uh not
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including the statements in question okay would be a sub a sub Choice okay um which implication of this
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would be that these notes were added later but they are still the word of God being crucial that we have
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them or we say he spoke most of them not these and not scripture we have variants within our text which are within the text of scripture that are disputed um James
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White uh puts it that we have the problem of having a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle with 10 extra pieces um that's the biggest problem we have with scripture right there and that's a great
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problem to have if we had to choose one um so if Moses spoke most of the words in Deuteronomy as it says but not these brief
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parenthetical statements they are either scripture or not scripture seems logical the third would be what the documentary hypothesis says is is that all of Deuteronomy is this
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then called into question because the presence of parenthetical statements is evidence of inauthenticity or tampering okay it's a work manufactured later in Moses name but then the claim
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that Moses spoke these words to the people of Israel on the plains of Moab ultimately that's a lie that's effectively what the documentary hypothesis says um that it's an engineered work
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those are your possibilities um
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put none really okay it's the Moses tradition but these aren't actually his words those are your logical possibilities I want to say though we don't approach scripture purely from a logical standpoint this is just a a road
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map for thinking okay we come to scripture by faith this is the word of God we have we have possibilities that are in keeping with the spirit that God has put in us uh
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and the and can deal with the form in which God has provided Deuteronomy to us um this is the word of God therefore Moses spoke the vast majority at least of the
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of what was written okay uh because it says he did this this is not an engineered work there are number of the historical
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books the authorship of which we we do not know Samuel King's Chronicles right there's also a a person in the Old
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Testament whose impact on the Hebrew scriptures I don't think has been adequately dealt with and that is Ezra yes Ezra and so we're not we're not moving outside the revelatory action of
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God to recognize that he can move someone like someone like Ezra who who undoubtedly was a major contributor perhaps the Paul of the Old
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Testament at least the historical books and yet he doesn't really claim any of them yeah there is no signing of works that he may have actually put together
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and it would have been as a chronicler and much of what he did was Chronicles you know he very well may have gone in and said oh by the way this
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is where this is where the rim lived and OG was he was one of the last of the raim and you know and and that doesn't impact the the authority of scripture because
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Ezra was just as inspired as Moses right even though he didn't sorry and you you mentioned another one just in passing I would also point to Samuel um s Samuel's impact on the text
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of scripture is not something that is necessarily clear uh for us but we do know that his uh his um legates his
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students um form the basis of Samuel Kings we know for a fact that multiple ones of their writings form the basis for Samuel Kings so the idea of the
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documentarians that a work of scripture could be put together from multiple sources is absolutely there in the text of scripture as a possibility what they've done is they've gone and draw
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broad conclusions that don't logically follow from that notion and and I got to say there there is no logical or spiritual connection between the idea that these
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are later are later additions okay and and doubt that Deuteronomy is substantially a record of the words spoken by Moses as the introduction States okay it may and it
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certainly has for me I address this as as a as a kindred spirit with anybody who goes now wait a minute okay that I don't like that idea on its face okay
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but really is there a logical connection between the idea that this is a parenthetical statement written later and and the idea that Moses spoke none of them there isn't and there's
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certainly no spiritual connection to be drawn between those statements he and and also I'll say for those for those who want to say no these are Moses words okay most of the apparent parenthetical
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statements refer to events that were to Moses past events so they really don't present any problem either way okay and where there is a question of where the things mentioned actually took place and
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I'd say this is your big one right here um were the so the real choice is were were they spoken by Moses or not spoken by
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spoken by Moses okay if yes were his words about events that had already taken place or was he speaking in the spirit about things yet to come
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or do I have this wrong was there an was there a man named yayer in that day who established a region uh of governance in
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this area called it havat Yer and then 300 years later another man named for the guy did the exact same thing it may have been I acknowledge that as a
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possibility still have chapter 34 right you you still have other things that's right and I think this is forcing us to ask these questions right right was not
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written by Moses and we'll get there in like five years I think at this rate so stick with me um yeah okay so then if Moses didn't speak those words I I want
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to make clear I think we have to ask some hard questions and be very um diligent about this idea just flippantly saying oh look they parentheses and then
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moving on is not sufficient I think I would I want to show that they answer certain questions of the text message better as par as parentheses than they
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do as Moses original words I want to show that it makes a lot of sense for them to have been added for the sake of all who would read Deuteronomy it makes more sense that
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they be cut in later as notations than it does for them to have been original I I feel like I have to show that and that's why I have to back you into my reasoning because I can't present the
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evidence yet I got to tell you kind of where I'm going here um so the first question that we would have to ask it really is what makes these statements seem out of place so uh to get to Abe's
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question um here here it is um none of them are we us statements they're only third person statements
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where they have a person at all that is somewhat odd Moses speaks about we us in this section because he was there he participated and his audience is in
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front of him but they turn and they make it they statements um that has some significance um significance um 212 here uh explicitly refers to Israel
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in the third person them not us uh admittedly I I say this can refer to the two and a half tribes that inherited on the east side during Moses Ministry
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there was at least one commentary I read that said oh he's he's referring in the third person because he's referring to a portion of portion of Israel I think given Joshua's posture toward the tribes and given Moses
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posture I mean we read later on he says uh he talks about um those two and a half tribes going in ahead of their brothers um to set them in their inheritance before they may go home I
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think given what we've said about the essential Unity of Israel dividing them at this point doesn't make a whole lot of sense uh of the text um they were to
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go over settle everybody in their inheritance and then go home so all of a sudden making a split in Israel doesn't seem to fit with Moses message all that well verse 12 is also past tense verse 12 is also past tense yes I was going to
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get to that right possession which they had done yet right yeah that is it is odd uh that you have gave uh not is
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giving or even has given uh but but gave so there are two anomalies grammatically here that make them feel out of step
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with the rest of the discourse uh third person and past tense um I as I said I think they seem to interrupt the flow of the discourse uh but at the same time I
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want to admit that's not necessarily out of keeping with normal human tendency I believe we were talking about a a record of a speech given to a people and the idea that Moses would chase a rabbit for a minute it's fine with me I'm I'm great
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with that I'm not saying that I unwilling to accept that Moses spoke all of these things what I'm saying is I think the the explanation of them as parentheses actually fits better with
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the overall thrust of of its message um 22223 um is the only statement without something strange in the way it's written or said okay but uh its mate
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which it undoubtedly is a mate to this statement because it makes repetition uh of this statement its mate does contain those strange turns of phrase the Third person in the past tense the sudden
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third person and the sudden past tense I might add um 39 that seems like an odd geographical and cultural note to make to a people
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who have not yet spread out from one another okay presumably they all share a common knowledge and a common vocabulary at this point we talked last week about how eventually they won't uh but they do
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now so why is this here why do we care what the sidonians sedon like up in here here somewhere why do we care what they call this mountain it's it's a question
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worth asking uh 311 here about o um seems like an odd question or justification to make to this people they said is his bed his bed is it is it
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not in rabah of the ammonites um why do they need that proof okay they this this is a speech made to a people many of whom would have
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seen that artifact and better yet would have seen the man to whom it belonged both alive and dead so why do they need that
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justification um also I want to know how did his bed get into the hands of the amorites into the hands of the ammonites okay so whatever explanation I want to have about these parenthetical
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statements would need to include that what happened to the bed the reference to sidon and
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am as significant as significant places would put this somewhat in the time of time of David right because that's where I me Ty andon were not
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really they weren't really there Phoenicians and all of that I mean I guess sedone was it's just it's at this point it's far away right and it doesn't
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really come into the geopolitical realm of Israel until the time of d right right I'm getting
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there right if it is as it is to this day they know that they're in this day the as it is to this day the reason I don't make a huge big deal out of that is because you would have to establish when that day was and that requires
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other data to do it so I'm not saying it isn't significant I just I just don't put a whole lot of stock in in it um because that could be said at any time
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uh and have its own meaning like other data has to lead us to when that is um so then finally this one um appears very strongly to refer to a development
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described in the time of the judges uh if you turn with me to judges 10 yes but that's referenced also numbers it is thank you yes this event
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also is referenced in numbers yes yeah and I guess by extension I would say that it is either it's an
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event that has a striking similarity to an event three centuries later and a man with the same name which again is not outside the realm of possibility but if but whatever I say about Deuteronomy I'm
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probably saying about numbers too yeah um look at judges 10:3 after him that is after uh toah um after him arose yahir The
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gileadite Who judged Israel 22 years this is by the way after Gideon um and he had 30 sons who rode on 30 donkeys and they had 30 cities called havat yir
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to this day which are in the land of Gilead and yir died and was buried at kimon um the hav yir is issue is actually treated I think four times one
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of Numbers Deuteronomy in judges and then in first Chronicles as well it apparently had some significance and importance uh in their history um so
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because uh Chu Chuck's seeing where I'm going on this yes I'm saying that I think these were added late in the time of the judges so what I have to answer and quickly I guess uh is what purpose
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do these statements serve for the people of Israel late in the time of the judges um I think that ultimately the notes provide subtext that the the later generations would not have along with
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proofs the existing generation would not need being need being eyewitnesses so one they're looking centuries back into their past this is speaking of people 300 years no longer
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longer than 300 years uh people late in the time of the judges close to the ministry of Samuel are looking back centuries into their past the Israel of their present is fragmented and harassed
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by enemies okay but there're still yahweh's possession along with their brothers in the Deep past okay secondly centuries removed the subtext of Moses discourse Visa these
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people great and Tall may have been obscured requiring some additional comment to make the connection this is what what you said earlier um under the
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heading of the essential Unity of Israel one the geographical designations may vary among the tribes now at the point late in the time of the judges okay being spread out in the land but believe
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leaving Israel all drawn near together to Shilo to hear the reading of the law to offer to offer sacrifice okay and they must therefore
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understand a Common Language and vocabulary this is an important this this is even more in the in the days of Ezra an even more acute crisis is that of language um but in the time of the
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judges we're talking centuries uh language will have changed um judges shows us several places that the sense of unity then among the tribes was had
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been greatly marred politically uh to the point that they resented coming to one another's Aid without some sort of tribal benefit we talked last week about the people of Ephraim being particularly Troublesome among the tribes having a
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very rigid and calcified tribal identity um and then after numerous subjugations at the hands of their enemies certain artifacts of that time may be lost to
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them okay speaking of O's bed if these these are additions late in the time of the judges it would theoretically explain how O's bed came into rabah with the ammonites the ammonites became a
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very dangerous enemy late in the time of the judges uh it was the it was the Saul did Saul did not face the Philistines first he faced the ammonites okay um
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speaking of subjugation by their enemies the enemy on the ascendancy later in the time of the judges was the Philistines which we need to make sure we know that the remnant of the rim had taken
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employment among those people as Champions most notable of which was golad or Goliath okay okay and the original fear of these people would seem
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all the more pertinent uh to the People For Whom the teaching of Deuteronomy was now reaching its crisis point I'm going to make several different cases that Deuteronomy itself lays out instruction
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for the following Generations up until the time that a prophet will arise like me from among your brothers and I'm saying that Prophet is Samuel okay its first fulfillment not its ultimate but
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its first fulfillment is the ministry of Samuel so up until the ministry of Samuel Deuteronomy is the last instruction to the people for centuries and it will have reached by that time an
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acute crisis where they will find their answer in answer in Deuteronomy okay so the original fear of these people would be very acute at time
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where Deuteronomy was reaching its crisis finally speaking of Mon's Heritage because that's often that's that's ultimately what we're talking about here um manast was the only tribe
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that was split on either side of the Jordan here in here okay and and their Heritage seems to have been a constant genealogical concern in looking at this
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trying to find the names out and things like that I I did a lot of looking in the genealogy the genealogy um and was surprised once I got down to it how often Mana says Heritage has
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additional detail to try to clarify it um they apparently had gotten a little bit blurred in their tribal identity even prior to the Exodus due to numerous
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intermarriages with other tribes and that these intermarriages continued later on I do think that that somewhat explains to us why the daughters of zof Fahad issue occurs several times between
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uh between Exodus and and Joshua um because it was a really important issue Mana says tribal Heritage was uh very much in question and later on would be
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subject to subject to question um they may also and I think there's good biblical data for this may also have lost and had to reassert control over lands lost to neighboring
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kingdoms a couple of the kingdoms mentioned in this parenthesis the gites uh and the City of MAA um they only that those names only occur later in the time
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of David uh he made a marriage alliance with the king of gesu um believe it was the King of gesu from from whose daughter Absalom came um so it's an odd
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mention of those peoples which I don't know I think there's reason to doubt that they were even a people at that point um but they do they are mentioned in the days of the monarchy um so uh
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anyways a couple of them mentioned in David's day um and they're conveniently mentioned here helping us with as a as a guidepost and and I think that this I think I'm reading the biblical data
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right to say that this led to uncertainty uh as to which tribe these lands belong to um so things were anything but stable during the time
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leading up to the monarchy and I think these parentheses are addressing that instability and that fear and the fact that Deuteronomy was reaching its crisis so my my assessment of the data data
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then is that these are parentheses added later for the sake for our sake and for the sake of the people who would most need them so to put it in summary and I know I've gone over but uh bear with me
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a moment longer God had been faithful even to Edom and Moab and Amon in the past they had pushed out these same peoples that the former
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generation feared okay God had been faithful to fight for Israel and give their enemies into their hand they had faced one greater than those whom their
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fathers most fathers most feared and they had overcome God had made them one people and he would continue to be in their midst as one people no matter what their
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geography told them no matter what their politics told them no matter what their language told them they were one people with Yahweh of hosts in their mid
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that's what God told them through Moses in Deuteronomy let's [Music] pray father thank you for this
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record father please guide us these things are are hard uh to study and and I ask in front of my brothers that that you would cover me in
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my imperfections and in my faults and in my propensity to to foolish nness and to sin you you know very much what you are doing you
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are the Lord of History it's perfect witness and The Giver to us of this word that we study you have revealed yourself to us in the pages of scripture and we
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are in awe of it and even more I am in awe of who can do this who can take your word and Proclaim it to people knowing
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what is in the heart of what knowing what is in my heart please grant us understanding please grant us deeper fellowship please
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grant us love a one among one another let us not be subject to quarreling over opinions uh or to getting lost as as Paul warned us in the genealogies and
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things of that nature but rather please show how you have edified us in every point in Scripture rure and please unify us as the body of Christ just as we see
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Moses speaking of the unity of the people of God in the wilderness we ask this in Jesus name amen