Joel Baden Profile picture
Jun 1 9 tweets 2 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
#Deuteronomy 24:16

Intergenerational punishment

Parents shall not be put to death for the crimes of their children, and vice versa. What happened to “visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and children’s children up to the third and fourth generation”?
What happened is - get this - different texts had different opinions on this matter. (Some picky asshat is gonna be like “well this one is about death and the other one says punishment so they don’t actually conflict blah blah blah” but shove it. This is a contradiction.)
This is, in fact, one of the ongoing points of “discussion” among the biblical sources, in the Pentateuch and prophets and beyond. (Sometimes they’re actually responding to each other; often it only feels that way as we read the canonical text.)
What’s wild about this one is…both the pro- and anti-intergenerational punishment positions are found within Deuteronomy, the “third and fourth generation” bit being from the Decalogue in Deut 5:9. So what gives?
I’ll admit that for a couple of reasons I suspect that 24:16 might be a later addition. First, it weirdly breaks up the continuity of the discussion of how to deal with the pledges of indebted vulnerable populations, in 24:10-15 and 24:17-18.
Second, the theological-historical logic of the deuteronomistic history (that’s Judges-Kings) is firmly in the pro-intergenerational punishment camp. Manasseh sins wildly and reigns for half a century; Josiah pays the price for it a generation later. Israel suffers for past sins.
By contrast, when Chronicles tells its version of the history there isn’t any intergenerational punishment anymore. Now it’s more in the “everyone gets what they deserve” camp. All of which has to do with how, and when, one tries to explain the course of Israel’s history.
When the deuteronomic historian is writing, it’s in the moment of exile, and the need to explain it - especially to an exiled people who feel they didn’t deserve it - opens the possibility of blaming present calamity on past sins, ones out of our control.
For the Chronicler, writing from the vantage point of a returned Israel with a rebuilt temple, it’s all distant past, so there’s no need to make excuses for anyone. Everything can be more orderly and tidy.

All of that to say, Deut 24:16 looks more like Chr than like Dtr.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Joel Baden

Joel Baden Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @JoelBaden

Jun 2
#Deuteronomy 24:17-22

Care for the vulnerable

You shall not deprive an immigrant of justice. Imagine that.

You don’t have to exact every last ounce of value from your property, but should rather make sure those in need have their needs met by your surplus. Imagine that.
These laws - which push back with ethical force against the potential abuses of a capitalist and nationalist system - are so important (or perhaps so contrary to some human nature) that they are given justifications looking both forward and backward.
To do this is to bring about divine blessing. It may feel like you’re giving up the fruits of your own success, but in fact you will gain all the more from acting ethically rather than self-interestedly.
Read 4 tweets
May 31
#Deuteronomy 24:10-15

Caring for the poor

This isn’t some generic “be nice to the poor” sort of thing you see elsewhere in D. This is specific law: financial and labor policy insuring that the poor don’t suffer just because they’re poor. It’s about dignity - it’s good stuff.
No going into someone’s house to collect their pledge. You give them the dignity of bringing it out to you. They may be in debt to you, but that doesn’t give you the right to bust into their home. Because they’re still people even if they’re poor.
Famously, you can’t take the cloak of a poor person as their pledge overnight. Even though they owe it to you, and normally you would keep it, their health - and dignity - override the usual practices.
Read 4 tweets
Apr 26
#Deuteronomy 21:18-21

Killing disobedient children

Here’s a marvelous example of a biblical law so manifestly unacceptable by virtually any standard that it almost single-handedly challenges the notion of the Bible as an ethical or moral guide to be read absolutely literally.
No one follows this law. I don’t think anyone even suggests that we follow it. Those who shill for a literal reading, and an application in real-world policy, for other biblical laws (you know which ones) don’t even come close to doing the same for this one.
And that’s not true only of today: the rabbis of the Talmud, in their discussion of this law, spent basically the whole time making it impossible to follow, by narrowing what counts as “stubborn and rebellious” until it was a bar that could never be reached.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 12
Sometimes, in trying to understand or explain various approaches to reading, interpreting, and studying the Bible, I find it helpful to imagine the text as an old unattributed painting. Bear with me.
You can concentrate on what’s happening in the painting itself, asking things like “is this a painting of a real event or person?” You can try to imagine what happened just before or after the moment captured in the painting, give the figures backstories etc.
You can imagine what’s happening just outside the frame - where the light is coming from, who the figures are looking at. You can invent an entire world in order to explain what’s going on in this painting. And in this way you can try to say what the painting must mean.
Read 13 tweets
Feb 10
#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.
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.
Read 4 tweets
Dec 21, 2022
#Deuteronomy 6:5

The Shema, cont.

Another super famous line - “you shall love the lord your god with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might” - that has come to mean something pretty far from what it once did. Lots to unpack here. Sorry in advance.
One of the great scholarly realizations of the mid twentieth century was that Deuteronomy followed the basic form of an ancient Near Eastern vassal treaty (see yesterday’s thread). YHWH is in place of the conquering king, and Israel is the vassal that must obey.
Part of that discovery was that some of the language used in D is actually formal treaty language. Like, imagine that someone wrote something today, and used the “whereas…whereas…therefore” structure. You’d know it was modeled on legal documents. Same thing here.
Read 13 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(