Chapter 12 (#ulink_08c46321-6c48-5665-967c-f2963e5ac263)
Chapter 13 (#ulink_e32a344a-34d6-5b7d-8f74-bb4733528686)
Chapter 14 (#ulink_924c2a04-765c-5838-94ed-f059d383a0c3)
Chapter 15 (#ulink_f90a121d-51e9-5e7f-8aa4-0099de2ad2c2)
Chapter 16 (#ulink_b830304f-6e8b-568f-bb91-96f0c3358d0e)
Chapter 17 (#ulink_80cd85ed-1be5-5e1e-9016-40d29a5b2e00)
Chapter 18 (#ulink_3c9a9fd1-e6db-5684-8c3e-a61bc96c9d48)
Chapter 19 (#ulink_7ff6e233-a16b-5abc-aa4d-50aef2dc7b53)
Chapter 20 (#ulink_79ad8e2f-e62d-5c1f-9cb3-746c1627c77a)
Chapter 21 (#ulink_50f132c2-a983-5ba3-b926-df413961787f)
Chapter 22 (#ulink_32754bfb-b212-5474-80ce-c2bfdf05659f)
Chapter 23 (#ulink_c24a2248-fc0d-50d4-8bba-be0d36d70102)
Chapter 24 (#ulink_4003a2fe-3da4-5c01-8ef4-77647ab3f9bf)
Chapter 25 (#ulink_f03acdbe-2b75-5b7e-b9d7-6162a90a6030)
Chapter 26 (#ulink_1df157bd-ffc1-596f-9621-0da1bbaca068)
Chapter 27 (#ulink_5d1b0083-74b2-5f11-94fe-6e6202db1738)
Chapter 28 (#ulink_58007a7c-fd01-5f8c-90a0-59660f1c5068)
Chapter 29 (#ulink_d1e1c4ab-2945-5fdd-9de7-b97d4a89758a)
Chapter 30 (#ulink_8c72d60f-44d7-5e5f-b54d-a5d881e89547)
Chapter 31 (#ulink_933f22c9-9678-5415-86b4-7ee05f190340)
Chapter 32 (#ulink_de50e3ec-236e-5c96-854c-586975921a6e)
Chapter 33 (#ulink_0074c994-8eea-56ad-a894-b534aa9fed22)
Chapter 34 (#ulink_9db14158-704a-504e-9990-0f6c71347771)
1 These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan—in the wilderness, on the plain opposite Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Di-zahab.
(By the way of Mount Seir it takes eleven days to reach Kadesh-barnea from Horeb.)
In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses spoke to the Israelites just as the LORD had commanded him to speak to them.
This was after he had defeated King Sihon of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon, and King Og of Bashan, who reigned in Ashtaroth and[1 (#ulink_cb600667-e938-57ab-b48b-fca99646b159)] in Edrei.
Beyond the Jordan in the land of Moab, Moses undertook to expound this law as follows:
6 The LORD our God spoke to us at Horeb, saying, “You have stayed long enough at this mountain.
Resume your journey, and go into the hill country of the Amorites as well as into the neighboring regions—the Arabah, the hill country, the Shephelah, the Negeb, and the seacoast—the land of the Canaanites and the Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates.
See, I have set the land before you; go in and take possession of the land that I[2 (#ulink_61741439-29ac-5685-8ed2-c9faa35665d2)] swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and to their descendants after them.”
9 At that time I said to you, “I am unable by myself to bear you.
The LORD your God has multiplied you, so that today you are as numerous as the stars of heaven.
May the LORD, the God of your ancestors, increase you a thousand times more and bless you, as he has promised you!
But how can I bear the heavy burden of your disputes all by myself?
Choose for each of your tribes individuals who are wise, discerning, and reputable to be your leaders.”
You answered me, “The plan you have proposed is a good one.”
So I took the leaders of your tribes, wise and reputable individuals, and installed them as leaders over you, commanders of thousands, commanders of hundreds, commanders of fifties, commanders of tens, and officials, throughout your tribes.
I charged your judges at that time: “Give the members of your community a fair hearing, and judge rightly between one person and another, whether citizen or resident alien.
You must not be partial in judging: hear out the small and the great alike; you shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God’s. Any case that is too hard for you, bring to me, and I will hear it.”
So I charged you at that time with all the things that you should do.
THE VERDICT IS IN
Our ancestors had a habit of using the word “judgment” in this context as if it meant simply “punishment”: hence the popular expression, “It’s a judgment on him.” I believe we can sometimes render the thing more vivid to ourselves by taking judgment in a stricter sense: not as the sentence or award, but as the Verdict. Some day (and “What if this present were the world’s last night?”) an absolutely correct verdict—if you like, a perfect critique—will be passed on what each of us is.
We have all encountered judgments or verdicts on ourselves in this life. Every now and then we discover what our fellow creatures really think of us. I don’t of course mean what they tell us to our faces: that we usually have to discount. I am thinking of what we sometimes overhear by accident or of the opinions about us which our neighbours or employees or subordinates unknowingly reveal in their actions: and of the terrible, or lovely, judgments artlessly betrayed by children or even animals. Such discoveries can be the bitterest or sweetest experiences we have. But of course both the bitter and the sweet are limited by our doubt as to the wisdom of those who judge. We always hope that those who so clearly think us cowards or bullies are ignorant and malicious; we always fear that those who trust us or admire us are misled by partiality. I suppose the experience of the Final Judgment (which may break in upon us at any moment) will be like these little experiences, but magnified to the Nth.
For it will be infallible judgment. If it is favorable we shall have no fear, if unfavorable, no hope, that it is wrong. We shall not only believe, we shall know, know beyond doubt in every fibre of our appalled or delighted being, that as the Judge has said, so we are: neither more nor less nor other. We shall perhaps even realise that in some dim fashion we could have known it all along. We shall know and all creation will know too: our ancestors, our parents, our wives or husbands, our children. The unanswerable and (by then) self-evident truth about each will be known to all.
I do not find that pictures of physical catastrophe —that sign in the clouds, those heavens rolled up like a scroll—help one so much as the naked idea of Judgment. We cannot always be excited. We can, perhaps, train ourselves to ask more and more often how the thing which we are saying or doing (or failing to do) at each moment will look when the irresistible light streams in upon it; that light which is so different from the light of this world—and yet, even now, we know just enough of it to take it into account.
—from “The World’s Last Night,” The World’s Last Night and Other Essays
For reflection
Deuteronomy 1:16–17
19 Then, just as the LORD our God had ordered us, we set out from Horeb and went through all that great and terrible wilderness that you saw, on the way to the hill country of the Amorites, until we reached Kadesh-barnea.
