#Deuteronomy 11:1-7
What Israel saw
In a vague reference to the plagues, a clearer description of the encounter with the Egyptians at the sea, and a nearly verbatim recollection of Dathan and Abiram, Moses here reminds Israel of all the things they saw with their own eyes.
What Israel saw
In a vague reference to the plagues, a clearer description of the encounter with the Egyptians at the sea, and a nearly verbatim recollection of Dathan and Abiram, Moses here reminds Israel of all the things they saw with their own eyes.
I think there are three big takeaways from this small passage. First is that D here, as everywhere, not only assumes but makes explicit that the Israelites addressed by Moses in the plains of Moab are the same Israelites who left Egypt. No generation change in the wilderness.
Second, D again demonstrates that it picks happily among the narrative fields of J and E, choosing whichever stories and episodes and references are best suited to its rhetorical purposes at any given time. Here it isn’t the moments of disobedience, but the big miracles.
Third, in referring to Dathan and Abiram - but not to Korah - D shows again that it knows an E that existed independently of J. For in Num 16 there is no Dathan and Abiram, but only Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. To know the story without Korah is to know E alone.
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