8
Can we rescue a word, and discover a universe?
Can we study a language, and awake to the Truth?
Can we bury ourselves in a lexicon, and arise in the presence of God?1
Despite the bitter facts regarding language death and the serious problems facing revitalization efforts recounted in chapters 3 and 7, the preceding chapter nevertheless claimed that there may yet be hope for the language that is the Old Testament. Perhaps it is not yet dead or so close to extinction that it cannot be brought back. If so, there is still the possibility of saving the Old Testament from what appears to be its terminal condition in so many Christian circles, at least in North America. This hope, however slim, is nevertheless a bright point, especially after the gloomy results of the testing in chapter 2 and the even more dismal signs of morbidity covered in chapters 4–6. Even so, since the matter under discussion is the full language of Scripture, and because the problems analyzed in chapters 4–6 at best reflect (re)pidginization and at worst reflect (de)creolization of that language, we shouldn’t be too quick to sugarcoat matters or put too positive a spin on things. The Old Testament is, for all intents and purposes, still in critical condition. Moreover, as we saw at the end of the previous chapter, the fact that our patient could “pass on”—could actually, truly die—is not only not unthinkable, it is a very real possibility. This is due to disuse (chap. 2) and misuse as well as abandonment if not total exclusion (chaps. 4–6).2
Additionally, since the language of the Old Testament is ancient and difficult, we must become familiar, if not altogether comfortable (i.e., fluent), with its more complex or darker hues, not afraid to turn away from the syrupy-sweet so as to linger over a hopeless lament like Ps. 88. Should someone object at this point, saying “But that’s exactly the problem with the Old Testament: too dark, too depressing, too wrathful, and the like,” I would simply recall what the previous chapters have repeatedly demonstrated: such an objection reflects a seriously distorted and pidginized view of the Bible as a whole, not just of the Old Testament. The Old Testament, too, contains the brightest of colors, just as the New Testament has its fair share of downsides (see chap. 9).
The upshot, in any event, is simply this: we shouldn’t be too positive about the Old Testament’s chances of survival, and certainly not too quickly. And so, even though this chapter and the next are about saving the Old Testament, we must consider additional evidence of our patient’s decline, even if it serves only to underscore how difficult the treatment regimen will be. Terminal conditions are, after all, serious and require the most aggressive intervention if there is to be any hope for recovery. But, after touching on these distressing indicators, I turn in earnest to the question of what can be done to prevent the Old Testament’s imminent demise, beginning with strategies found within the Old Testament itself, specifically within the book of Deuteronomy. The last chapter (chap. 9) contains further, concrete and specific recommendations on what should and should not be done to save the Old Testament.
In C. S. Lewis’s novel The Great Divorce: A Dream, a group of people take a bus ride from hell to heaven, where they are met by angelic figures—friends or family from their earthly lives who are now residents of heaven. These heavenly citizens try to talk the infernal visitors into staying, in which case the hell they knew previously would turn out to be only a kind of purgatory. Unfortunately, for various reasons, most of the visitors choose not to stay, preferring, as the old adage goes, the devil they already know. One vignette is particularly intriguing: it is an encounter between two friends who shared great theological interests in their former lives. As it happens, the visitor from hell is a theologian of no small fame who enjoyed great popularity, book sales, speaking invitations, “and finally a bishopric.”3
Adding to the irony that a famous theologian and bishop happens to be residing in hell is the fact that he is one of the visitors who prefers to return rather than stay in heaven. His reasons for this choice are several, but are exemplified in the final remarks this theologian (called “the Ghost” in this passage due to his insubstantial nature vis-à-vis the heavenly realities) offers to his heavenly friend (named Dick), who has invited him to experience true happiness in heaven:
“Happiness, my dear Dick,” said the Ghost placidly, “happiness, as you will come to see when you are older, lies in the path of duty. Which reminds me . . . Bless my soul, I’d nearly forgotten. Of course I can’t come with you. I have to be back next Friday to read a paper. We have a little Theological Society down there. Oh yes! there is plenty of intellectual life. Not of a very high quality, perhaps. One notices a certain lack of grip—a certain confusion of mind. . . .”4
In Lewis’s novel, hell is thus not only replete with a famous theologian or two (maybe more) but is also stocked with theological societies, though not, admittedly, of a very high quality!
Despite the obvious humor, this is a sobering story. While Lewis may be a bit too hard on theologians at this point—one hopes that Old Testament specialists, at least (!), are not in danger of eternal torment—there is nevertheless a point to consider here because what Lewis is getting at is the failure of theologians to prevent their own demise. If that is true, might it also hold true for the demise of the Old Testament? Is it possible that “the professionals” are ineffectual here as well? If so, that would be an especially troubling sign of the Old Testament’s sickness. If even the “doctors” can’t save it, what then?
There are a number of issues to wonder and worry about at this point. One is the professionalization or “academicization” of theology (and biblical studies) into “a field” of study, one among a vast multitude, many (if not most) of which seem to be of far more immediate relevance to human society and thus likely to garner federal funding, not to mention national media attention.5 To be sure, it has been centuries since theology was the “Queen of the Sciences”: anyone imagining that the present situation will somehow reverse itself, with theology restored to its former glory and supreme status, is guilty of a pipe dream or is hoping for the eschaton. It has also been centuries since theology “turned” academic, attempting to justify itself by using the methods and tools of other humanistic sciences.6
Given the linguistic analogy, it should once again be stressed that all languages change (see chaps. 1 and 3 and below; also chap. 9), and so one should beware any and all notion of an altogether pristine past—not to mention our ability to (re)capture such. Normal linguistic change is not at issue here, however; instead, along with a number of other writers,7 I wish to reflect on the nature and (non)efficacy of professional biblical scholarship such that so much of that scholarship doesn’t seem to be proving very helpful in stopping the rapid decline of the Old Testament, as chronicled in earlier chapters.
Every year publishers churn out massive amounts of technical scholarly literature on the Bible. Even in a generous construal of this situation—something along the lines of trickle-down economics such that even the most technical studies eventually find their way into accessible commentaries, then into pastors’ libraries, and then into sermons and adult education classes, and thus sooner or later (though only God knows how long this process must take) into everyday Christian life and practice—chapters 2 and 4–6 suggest that such a construal is simply not true. The trickle has stopped trickling. And what could one reasonably expect when it was only a trickle to begin with? It doesn’t take much, especially in a warming climate, to dry up a trickle altogether.
Yet it is not just biblical studies proper that offers evidence of the Old Testament’s further decline. To return to the initial tests conducted in chapter 2, one could observe that, if the trickle-down studies did somehow make it into a pastor’s library, it could easily encounter a dam there prohibiting it from going any further. Indeed, if the Best Sermons series of the twentieth century are any indication, that is exactly what has happened. Stepping out of the pulpit, but remaining within the walls of the church, one could observe the hundreds of thousands if not millions of Bible studies taking place every week, if not every day, across the globe. But to what end? One is tempted to quote Ecclesiastes:
What do people gain from all the hard work that they work so hard at under the sun? (Eccles. 1:3 CEB)
But when I surveyed all that my hands had done, and what I had worked so hard to achieve, I realized that it was pointless—a chasing after wind. Nothing is to be gained under the sun. (Eccles. 2:11 CEB)
One is also tempted to wonder if the “hard work” (“toil,” in many translations) mentioned in these verses might be a cipher for “Bible studies” or “Sunday school” and to conclude that there is no net gain to be derived therefrom. Maria, a character in Elie Wiesel’s play The Trial of God, says that sometimes she wonders, when she hears the priest describe “our Lord’s suffering,” if “the Lord isn’t suffering because He must listen to sermons!”8 If she is right, the even greater number of toilsome Bible studies must be definitive proof of divine passibility.
The question facing all of these lower-level lay studies, no less than the high-level expertise of professional biblical scholarship, is whether any of it matters very much in terms of the overall bettering of humanity and the world (including the nonhuman elements thereof). Isn’t the proof of the pudding in the eating? Is the lack of such eating just more proof that the moral critique of Christianity, or at least the moral critique of so many sermons and Bible studies within Christianity, is spot on?9
Before rushing to final judgment on these matters, the linguistic analogy should be considered once again. When deployed with reference to lay Scripture study, it raises the question of whether so many Bible studies are about language learning at all, especially about learning a full, robust version of the language. Quite apart from the fact that so many Bible studies seem like little more than opportunities to consume too many sugared pastries and drink too much weak coffee in Styrofoam cups made still worse (if that is even possible) by powdered cream packets, the linguistic analogy leads us to worry that many such gatherings are, at best, about learning a pidgin (or creole)—the “Happy Bible” pidgin (creole), for instance, or the “American Bible” pidgin (creole)10—not the full language. Acquisition of the pidginized or creolized version may not be the overt, intended, or even conscious curricular goal of these meetings, just the unhappy result of interrupted learning or arrested development, especially if the Bible study in question is comprised of adults whose capacities for language learning are significantly limited.11 Whatever the case, in whichever scenario, it is not surprising that there is little “net gain” (à la Ecclesiastes) and no real difference in outcome (hence the moral critique of Christianity). The end result of pidgin(ized) or creole(ized) Bible learning is entirely what one would expect: people who look and think exactly like everyone else, including those who have never read the Bible and would not claim to be Christian. But no worries: depending on the pidgin or creole, these well-meaning folks are often (for the most part) nice, “happy” consumers on their way to billionaire status and large donations to their favorite political party, or so the mythos goes, even though that is not how the Bible itself goes. Maybe so many Bible studies are hamstrung from the start. That’s one option when they are seen through the linguistic analogy.
Here is another option: many people may not want to learn the language. Learning languages is hard work, after all, and it is made harder the more complex a language is. But, lest my critique seem unduly severe, let me soften it a bit by adding that the linguistic situation as described above indicates that many Christians have had little if any exposure to the full language at all. This means that many don’t know what they are missing of the full language and so are innocent of blame, though perhaps only to the extent that one is innocent of systemic sin—a dubious compliment to be sure! Enough, then, with softening the critique. Then things get worse: If the linguistic analogy holds any water, and if (re)pidginization and (de)creolization are operative as I have suggested, then the very real possibility follows that the majority of what most Christians have heard, and for the majority of their lives, is at best a pidgin or a creole (whether a passionate version or not matters little), and so they have little to no idea that there is anything more to learn. The reduction of the original, fuller language of Scripture is, once again, a sign of its (imminent) death and so, to return to Frederick Buechner’s line used as one of the testimonia to the present book, “If the language that clothes Christianity is not dead, it is at least, for many, dying; and what is really surprising, I suppose, is that it has lasted as long as it has.”12 Put differently, it’s no small miracle that so many people go to church at all, given the smallness of the vision (that is, of the language in the linguistic analogy) that they’ve been given. If people ever are exposed to something bigger, grander, more articulate—here and there, now and then—it may inspire momentarily, but its sheer oddity means that it is usually (and quickly) slotted into the much smaller grammatical structures that are already built in: into the memory and into the bones. Whatever the case, it’s not accurate to say that all of this is malevolent. It is just pathetic. Or, perhaps better, apathetic.
As for the apparent inefficacy of so much professional biblical scholarship—the inability of the never-ending flow of papers, publications, books, commentaries, and such to reverse the death of the Old Testament (the present book perhaps just one more instance of the same)—maybe “professionalization” itself is partly to blame. Disciplinary developments and increased specialization are also at work. Some fault should probably be laid at the door of at least some branches of historical criticism,13 perhaps the comparative approach above all, insofar as these have often moved further and further away from the scriptural texts proper to the world behind the texts themselves, to extracanonical comparanda, and so have tended to emphasize diachronic and developmental growth, filleting the biblical materials into ever smaller and more disparate layers, often with little concern for the whole, whether that be unit, canonical book, Bible, or linguistic system.14
Without some basic language ability already in place, the cumulative effect of such work is often to distance a (potential) language user from the language that is Scripture. It effectively challenges and critiques—and, to be sure, these are crucial, important, and altogether appropriate tasks. And yet, without some prior knowledge (that is, a language user with some facility), challenge and critique are by themselves ineffective and inefficient to engender, inculcate, and teach the language proper.15 Without prior knowledge, there’s nothing there to challenge and critique; the subtraction from zero is thus less than zero. In the end, then, such work may actually undercut if not completely obliterate a (potential) language user’s capacity (or felt need) to learn the language at all (or in the first place). The technical nature of professional language (jargon) is also not conducive to initial language learning.16
Even so (and at the very same time), biblical scholarship, even of the most esoteric variety, is in its own way functioning at a very high level in terms of language preservation. On the ground (perhaps we should think here of low dialects), the Old Testament may be dying, yet it is receiving as much attention as ever (if not more) in the guild and in publishing. This flood of publications, especially in countless editions of the Bible, may be “a distress crop” and thus a sign of imminent death.17 But the ever-increasing specialization of professional biblical studies (here the analogue is that of high dialects or technical professional jargons) coupled with the correlate distancing from ever-decreasing knowledge of the Bible on the ground, in everyday “speech” (the low dialect of real, practiced language), means that, in the end, two distinct languages—not just two dialects of the same language—will be spoken . . . or not spoken, as the case may be. Even the high dialect, that is, even though preserved, will cease to be a productive, living, spoken language by regular people in their regular lives. It will, for all intents and purposes, die as a practiced vernacular.18 The low dialect, in the meantime, may drift so far through processes like (re)pidginiziation, (de)creolization, and so forth that it too will end up as a completely different language from the original—an original that, however exactly it transpired, has expired.
All that is to say that even the best of biblical scholarship, even when executed at the highest of levels and for the best of reasons, is insufficient for language preservation as long as it is devoid of practiced language-use. Lacking that, even the best of biblical scholarship, for the best of reasons, looks like nothing so much as documentation of a dying (or already dead) language, or even more specifically, like documentation of ever-more fine minutiae within such a language, such as the treatment of a specific preposition or analysis of a certain noun class. But even the best documentation does not suffice to save a dying language in the absence of living speakers.19
Here again the critique may be too harsh. I myself am a professional biblical scholar, after all, one trained in historical-critical approaches, especially of the comparative variety. I continue to practice these brands of interpretation (along with others) and think they have their appropriate place and proper function.20 I do not believe that any of these approaches (or others that might be mentioned) is inherently or somehow unavoidably antithetical to other, more theological and/or confessional approaches to the Old Testament as Christian Scripture.21 I myself tend to think that as much depends on the practitioner’s own self as on the methodological practice employed. The exegete’s fundamental dispositions toward the text, ultimate commitments, and so on and so forth are far more determinative than the method of study chosen, though the import of method should not be underestimated. Still further, I do not wish to give the impression that every publication needs to be somehow “watered down,” or have some sort of “immediate relevance” or impact. Theology, no less than medicine, various branches of the sciences, or indeed any area of academic inquiry, has its more esoteric aspects, some of which are relevant to other more pragmatic subjects somewhere down the line and some of which are not. That is fine and well and as it should be. Not every article in the New England Journal of Medicine should end with five concrete recommendations for pediatricians or primary-care doctors; it is enough that each article contributes to our understanding of medicine writ large. The same could certainly hold true for biblical studies, specifically, and theological studies more generally.22 Finally, the impact of professional biblical scholarship is not felt solely in print publications of whatever sort, but also in teaching, even in very basic introductory teaching. The latter often looks quite a lot like language instruction; indeed, it often is language instruction, whether literally of the biblical languages proper, or analogically of the biblical “language.” But even that kind of instruction isn’t automatically effective. Teaching, even teaching of Scripture, will only be instruction in the Old Testament as (like) a language if it is actually executed as such.23
My observations about professional biblical studies on the one hand and lay Scripture studies on the other could be expanded or further nuanced, whether to make them sharper or softer.24 Regardless, these observations suffice to evidence the Old Testament’s continued decline. Neither the steady production of technical scholarship on the Old Testament nor the plethora of “Bible studies” has proved to be effective therapies with regard to our patient’s malady. The Old Testament is still dying.
That dying was on special display above (see chaps. 2 and 4–6); thus evidence of further decline is not particularly surprising, even as certain aspects of it seem especially troubling. One hopes that this further evidence is not, à la Lewis’s Great Divorce, proof that many students of the Bible, professional or otherwise, have already purchased their tickets for the bus trip back to hell. Even so, it is a worrisome possibility that this evidence of further decline could be the ultimate and final sign of morbidity, the death of the language of Scripture and most particularly of the Old Testament. Even the “doctors,” those purportedly so fluent and dexterous in the language, along with the most devoted of adherents, those purportedly on board with the project, willing and able—all these simply can’t stop it from happening. Jesus’s pestering words in Matt. 23 start hitting close to home, but so do Job’s words to his unhelpful friends (Job 13:4; 16:2), not to mention God’s words to the same (Job 42:7–8).
Enough soaking in the problem. What, if anything, can be done to prevent the untimely death of the Old Testament?
Deuteronomy as a Model of/for Second-Language Acquisition (SLA)
The problems besetting the language that is the Old Testament are both several and significant. And yet, in the specific cases laid out here, it has repeatedly been seen that the full language of the Old Testament redresses these very real, very large problems. It is appropriate, then, to turn to the language of the Old Testament itself for help in the quest to save it. Furthermore, it is high time to do so: most of the arguments thus far have been about the Bible; what can be said with it or from it and on the basis of it?
The linguistic side of language survival was considered in chapter 7. Among other things, that chapter discussed how children learn languages, the problem of second-language acquisition, and some strategies for teaching languages, whether a first (L1) or a second (L2), so that they are effectively acquired. In what follows, I wish to consider Deuteronomy as a model of and for second-language acquisition (SLA).
Deuteronomy is an excellent book to consider for several reasons, the first of which is its ubiquity. This is captured memorably by J. G. McConville, when he writes that wherever one goes in the Old Testament, “Deuteronomy is always somehow there.” It is, he continues, the “theological colossus that guards the entrance to Old Testament theology.”25 Deuteronomy’s import extends into the New Testament as well, where it takes its place alongside Psalms and Isaiah as one of the three most important Old Testament books for the New.26 If Deuteronomy is useful, then, as a model of language acquisition and thus language survival, its example may well carry significant weight and be broadly applicable, even beyond the confines of Deuteronomy proper.
Moreover, Deuteronomy is the book of teaching par excellence in the Old Testament. It repeatedly calls itself “Torah” (tôrâ) or sēper (ha-)tôrâ (book of the Torah) or is referred to as the same elsewhere in the Old Testament (see Deut. 1:5; 4:8, 44; 17:18–19; 27:3, 8, 26; 28:58, 61; 29:21, 29; 30:10; 31:9, 11–12, 24, 26; 32:46; Josh. 1:7–8; 8:31–32, 34; 22:5; 23:6; 24:26; 2 Kings 22:8, 11; 23:24–25; cf. Deut. 28:58; 29:20, 27; 31:24; 1 Kings 2:3; 2 Kings 10:31; 14:6; 17:13, 34, 37).27 Etymologically, the word “Torah” derives from the verb √yrh, “to throw,” and so carries with it connotations of that which is thrown (by a teacher) or, perhaps better, that which is caught (by a student), and therefore “Teaching” (NJPS) or “Instruction” (CEB) are valid translations; so also is “Law” (NRSV, NIV).28
Appealing to etymology is hardly definitive, sometimes even fallacious, but in this case its utility is confirmed by the content of Deuteronomy, which is everywhere about teaching.29 Moses will not accompany the Israelites into Canaan. What they will have, instead, is his teaching—enshrined and encapsulated in Deuteronomy itself—in the book and in the poem (see below), which is to be placed with the ark of the covenant (Deut. 31:26) to go with the people of God from thence forward. Even this very brief summary of Deuteronomy evokes the numerous ways it may pertain to the linguistic analogy. A few of these deserve more extended discussion, beginning with the occasion of the book.
The Occasion of Deuteronomy
At the end of the book of Numbers, all that is required for the story of Israel to proceed directly to the book of Joshua is an account of Moses’s death. But that death, and that Moses will not accompany Israel into Canaan, means that the new generation (the second from Egypt, according to Numbers) must receive adequate instruction in the Lord’s Torah. Despite the rhetoric of Deut. 5:3, not everyone now in the plains of Moab, across the Jordan from Jericho, would have been alive or of age at Sinai. When assessed through the linguistic analogy, then, the occasion of Deuteronomy sounds like nothing less than a fluent speaker, Moses (cf. Exod. 33:11; Deut. 34:10), whose time is now at an end and who, as a result, is desperate to ensure that he is not the last speaker of this language. He goes to great lengths, therefore, to make sure that the Torah, linguistically endangered as it is at this critical juncture, doesn’t die with him.
Moses’s skills in language instruction are manifest and his strategies for language instruction several. So, for example, not only does Moses himself teach this Torah, but he also consistently urges teaching of the same for all subsequent generations, thus commanding the parents to teach their children by using the same strategies he uses with them (see Deut. 6:7, 20–25).30 Indeed, the next generation (the third from Egypt), the children, are a topic of central concern in Deuteronomy; it is clear, moreover, by how these children are talked about, that they are not limited solely to those who are biologically young, but include any and every “next generation” (see Deut. 29:14–15).31 It’s almost as if Moses knows that it only takes a generation for a language to die (see chap. 3), and it mustn’t die, or else all is lost.
Deuteronomy places special emphasis on Moses’s immediate successor, Joshua (1:38; 3:21, 28; 31:3, 7, 14, 23; 32:44; 34:9), but the book is primarily concerned with the entire language community, with all Israel (1:1; 5:1; 13:11; 21:21; 27:9; 29:2; 31:1, 7, 11; 32:45), not just with one person. So, although Joshua is important (see further below), the emphasis of the language learning is resolutely aimed at the whole community of Israel, as a group and as specific individuals.
The Strategies of Deuteronomy’s Instruction, Especially Repetition
The strategies by which Deuteronomy accomplishes its language instruction are multiple. In terms of engaging Israel as a complex whole that is comprised of specific individuals, the book is famous for its grammatical alternation between second-person plural and second-person singular forms of address.32 If nothing else, this phenomenon (which has never been fully explained satisfactorily) functions to keep the addressees engaged on two crucial levels: (1) that of the corporate whole and (2) that of the specific individual. Just when a hearer might be tempted to think that the instruction is generically communal, intended for the group but not specifically for “me,” a second-person singular form of address disabuses the hearer of such a thought. And, lest the community think that the instructions are solely of the personal, individualist kind, the second-person plural form of address reminds Israel that these words are for “all of you.”
While the devices Deuteronomy employs in its instruction are numerous, the most important by far is repetition.33 Deuteronomy is highly repetitive on both macro- and microlevels. When the various instances of Deuteronomic repetition are analyzed, the result is that the book’s rhetoric seems designed to drill the main points in, over and over and over again, until they are mastered and the desired result achieved. The main points involve the key verbs (“keep, observe, do”) along with the primary objects of those verbs (“the commandments, the statutes, the ordinances”—that is, Deuteronomic Torah fully uttered), all within the primary time frame of the book (“right now, today”). The end result of this repetitive rhetoric, then, is someone who knows Deuteronomy’s central vocabulary through and through and is clear as clear can be about what Deuteronomy is about. What Deuteronomy is about is keeping, observing, and enacting God’s Torah, commandments, statutes, and ordinances in a whole host of ways, both now and, imminently, in the land of Canaan.
In brief, Deuteronomy’s rhetoric helps to create fluency by its incessant, insistent repetition.34 In this way, Deuteronomy’s repetitive didacticism makes Moses a kind of mother vis-à-vis Israel, here construed as his child, if only because “in the instruction of the young . . . iteration prove[s] an effective device for stamping the mind with the things that must be remembered.”35 And yet, although Moses may adopt some practices of motherese, especially repetition, he is not content with pidgin-like baby talk. Deuteronomy is far too complex for that, despite its incessant repetition. Moses may speak motherese of a sort to his children, but he is ever the master of the language, the altogether-fluent mother, who presses his children into deeper and deeper linguistic expertise.
Practicing Deuteronomy
Repetition is a kind of practice, especially when the Torah leaves Moses’s mouth and becomes a matter of Israelite concern, recitation, and enactment. Indeed, part of what Moses commands is precisely that these words be talked about regularly, indeed at all times (Deut. 6:7b: “when you are sitting around your house and when you are out and about, when you are lying down and when you are getting up” [CEB]) such that all of one’s life and activities are dominated by these words. They are also to be taught to children (e.g., 4:9–10; 6:20–25; 11:19; 31:12–13; 32:46; cf. 31:19), even incisively (6:7a), and internalized “on the heart” or “in the mind” (so often CEB; see 6:6; 8:5; 11:18; cf. 4:39). Deuteronomic Torah is to mark the Israelite’s external body as well, both hand and head (6:8), and it also marks the life of the corporate body: it is on every house and on the gates of every city (6:9). Given that the city gate was often the place of justice, it is fair to say that Deuteronomic Torah was intended to mark the body politic, as well. As if all this wasn’t enough, the words of Deuteronomy are to be inscribed on monumental stones atop mountains in the very center of the land (27:1–26; cf. 11:26–32), and Moses commands that the Torah be read, in its entirety, regularly and periodically to all the people (31:9–13).
From internal organ to external limb, from individual self to extended family, from nearby to far away, from house to village, from center to periphery and back again, in passing moments and at high holy days—all of space and time is to be marked by Deuteronomy and its “words.” This marking is because that is what Deuteronomy is ultimately about: “these words” that Moses speaks and teaches to Israel are what Israel must speak and teach in turn.36 In this way, Deuteronomy creates and represents a kind of language immersion program, one in which language learners are completely surrounded, even inundated, with the language they are trying to acquire. Such an environment also provides them with ample opportunities to practice—a crucial strategy in successful language acquisition.37
Deuteronomy’s “Pastor”
The transition to Joshua demonstrates that Moses’s instruction is effective: he will not prove to be the last speaker, a point to which I will return momentarily. The Old Testament also records how leadership continues beyond Joshua, through the judges, and into the monarchs. To be sure, some of these speak the language that is Deuteronomy better than others. In any event, long before any king formally steps on the stage, Deut. 17:14–20 presents the Pentateuch’s only law concerning Israelite kingship. In it, the powers of the executive branch are carefully circumscribed, and with a degree of specificity that suggests, despite Deuteronomy’s canonical placement before Kings, that the law is subsequent to the rise of monarchy and fully aware of Solomonic excess.38
Whatever the case, on virtually any account of kingship, what Deut. 17 advocates is not a monarch at all, certainly not by ancient Near Eastern standards, but at best a “designated reader”: someone who sits around all day reading Torah. The Israelite king that is prescribed here is forbidden to acquire many horses, wives, or riches; he is also not allowed to exalt himself over his subjects, who are twice (vv. 15, 20) referred to by means of a kinship term (אחים/ʾaḥîm; CEB: “fellow Israelites”). Instead, the king must be a Torah scribe, writing his own copy of the document in the presence of the Levitical priests (v. 18). And he must be a Torah reader, a completely obsessed and obsessive one at that, reading in it all the days of his life (v. 19). The king’s encounter with Deuteronomy, at least in its written form, is thus even more regular and extensive than Israel as a whole: it is a daily preoccupation and lifelong pastime (v. 19a: “he must read in it every day of his life” CEB). The king’s incessant and legislated attention to Torah not only makes him the ideal (or representative) Israelite; it also secures him a lasting dynasty (v. 20)—a dynasty, if he is any role model, that is made up not of despotic rulers but of designated readers.
In this way, Deuteronomy’s scribe-king functions as something akin to Israel’s “pastor”—one tasked with the community’s instruction in the language of faith—and the model of the designated reader becomes a pregnant one for contemporary ministers (who are potentially the last speakers within their congregations), whether they are formally ordained or not. Just as the scribe-king of Deut. 17 serves as a model Israelite and designated reader for the community, so also the Deuteronomic law of the king suggests that more recent leaders must read and learn the language of God’s word (Torah!) as representatives of and models for their people in order that this God-preoccupied designated reading on behalf of others never ends (cf. Deut. 17:20). These belated “scribe-pastors” are, as it were, “in-betweens,” standing between the language (text) and the people (congregation) so as to facilitate their interaction and engagement, in order to, as Walter Brueggemann explains, “re-text this community: to turn the imagination and the practice of the community back to its most elemental assurances and claims.”39
Re-texting a community will only happen by the creation of what Brueggemann calls “text-men” and “text-women.” To be such a person means “to study [the text], to trust it, to engage it, to be led by it, to submit our modernist assumptions to it, and to have confidence that this text—despite all its vagaries and violence, its unbearable harshness and confounding cadences—is the one that merits our primal attention as a word of life.”40 That is what Deut. 17 wants to accomplish, in no less a person than the highest officer of the land, and so legislates as much, according to the chronology of Joshua and Judges, hundreds of years before the first Israelite king is anointed by Samuel. Not long after Deut. 17, but long before 1–2 Samuel, Joshua is required to maintain very similar habits of attention (Josh. 1:8),41 which shows that the injunctions found in Deuteronomy apply to whomever leads God’s people, regardless of their formal title, whether ecclesiastical or political. One needn’t be a “pastor” to be instructed by the scribe-king of Deut. 17 or to be inspired by the model of the designated reader; neither must the “community” or “congregation” be a formal ecclesiastical body. After all, Deuteronomy’s instruction is as interested in the next generation of children as with any other group (see above). The accent, that is, should be placed on the scribe part of “scribe-king” or “scribe-pastor.” Perhaps equally fitting would be “scribe-parent” or “scribe-disciple.”42 In the latter case, Jesus’s words in Matt. 13 are particularly striking. After presenting a series of parables about the kingdom of heaven, not all of which are completely transparent, Jesus turns to the disciples and asks them if they have understood everything. “Yes,” they reply, to which he says: “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Matt. 13:52 NRSV). It is not only the use of “scribe” (γραμματεύς/grammateus) that is noteworthy here but also that this scribe is “trained for the kingdom of heaven” and knows precisely what to bring out of “his treasure,” apparently at exactly the right time. Even more remarkable is that, in Greek, the scribe’s “treasure” is θησαυρός/thēsauros, which eventually comes into English (via Latin) as a loanword: “thesaurus.” In the linguistic analogy, scribes trained for the kingdom, who are obsessed with the Torah of the Lord, have just the right word, new or old—as surely as a thesaurus is bound to have just the right term.
The Effectiveness of Deuteronomy
Did Deuteronomy work? Was Moses successful? The Old Testament suggests the answer to these questions is affirmative, at least to some degree. Again, per McConville, Deuteronomy is somehow present wherever one goes in the Old Testament. If nothing else, that remark demonstrates that Deuteronomic Torah really did “take”—at least in the final form of the Old Testament, which has Deuteronomy’s fingerprints (or perhaps better, voiceprint, replete with dialectical isoglosses) all over it, most notably in the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, and Jeremiah.
Other ways the efficacy of the book is felt is in the immediate succession of Joshua (already noted above)—not only in how Joshua is repeatedly instructed and encouraged in the book of Deuteronomy itself but also in how the book that bears his own name immediately repeats the same instruction and encouragement, underscoring via repetition (once again!) that Joshua must be constantly or even exclusively formed in and by this language (Josh. 1:6–9). This repetition to Joshua, no less than to Israel as a whole, shows that, whatever Joshua’s age and status, he too belongs to Moses’s “next generation,” is equivalent to Moses’s “child,” and is thus a second-generation speaker.
Deuteronomy proves to be highly effective at several key points in the book of Joshua (see, e.g., Josh. 8:30–35), but perhaps nowhere more famously than in Joshua’s last speech to the people of Israel before his death (Josh. 23–24). Here one finds nothing less than a miniversion of what one finds in the book of Deuteronomy.43 In the end, Joshua’s final words sound like nothing so much as his “father’s” words: he too, like Moses, summons Israel to recommit to its covenant and its enactment (that is, to long-term language learning) before he dies and is no longer present to teach them the language in person. So then, not only in its large movement and its rhetorical devices, but also in the use of specific phrases and terms,44 the book of Joshua, not just its lead character, shows that Deuteronomy can be learned and learned well.
Further proof of the same is found in the figure of Josiah, probably the best of Judah’s kings (at least by Deuteronomic standards), who, upon hearing the words of “the book of the Torah” (once again, Deuteronomy or some part thereof), immediately grasps the significance of what has been read (2 Kings 22:11) and institutes a reform that, for all intents and purposes, looks like an attempt to put Deuteronomy’s laws of cult centralization (Deut. 12) into practice centuries after Moses is said to have passed them along.45
Josiah takes the throne at the tender age of eight, and the book of the Torah is recovered in his eighteenth regnal year, making him only twenty-six at the time of this reform. Perhaps his youth may say something about Josiah’s ability to pick up Deuteronomy quickly and expertly as an L2. Whatever the case, at the end of his life Josiah is valorized in a remarkable, indeed altogether singular, commendation: “There’s never been a king like Josiah, whether before or after him, who turned to the LORD with all his heart, all his being, and all his strength, in agreement with everything in the Instruction from Moses” (2 Kings 23:25 CEB, emphasis added). Josiah thus was the very incarnation of the Shema of Deut. 6:4–9, where Israel is enjoined to “Love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your being, and all your strength” (6:5 CEB). This is high praise, indeed, made still more impressive by the fact that he is the only king—the only person, in fact—in the entire Bible of which this claim is made. Second Kings 23:25 suggests that not only did Josiah acquire Deuteronomy later, as an L2, but he also learned to speak it natively, without even a hint of an accent.
In sum then, yes, Deuteronomy’s language program was highly effective: according to the flow of the canonical narrative, its language was successfully transmitted to the immediately following second generation (Joshua), and it was also successfully acquired by someone who lived many generations removed (Josiah), who thus had to learn it as an L2. Of course, not every Israelite learned the language or learned it so well; the Deuteronomistic History of Joshua–Kings goes to great lengths to point this out. There are numerous and even countless failures along the way. But the fact that those failures are presented in terms familiar to, even derived from, Deuteronomy—even in the most specific of ways, via the fine points of the phrasing used46—shows how profoundly the “language” of Deuteronomy left its impress on later Israel. It wasn’t just a language that was passed on for posterity; it was interwoven into Israel’s cultural memory, its understanding of its identity, and was a key factor in the formation of both. That sounds like nothing so much as a real language spoken by a real linguistic community that lives by the cultural forms located within and perpetuated by, in no small way, its common tongue.47 And while other moments in that community’s life might be mentioned, Joshua and Josiah are two important figures that bookend the beginning and end of the Deuteronomistic History and demonstrate that for individuals, too, Deuteronomy’s Torah is both teachable and learnable.
Performing Deuteronomy
Joshua’s and Josiah’s instantiations of Deuteronomy show that its language “took”: it was embodied and enacted, not simply memorized for the purposes of some singular moment or ultimately trite religious recitation. Joshua’s and Josiah’s instantiations are thus life performances of Deuteronomy and of its “language.” Moreover, since each of these individuals is separated in time, not only from each other but also from Moses’s original discourse in Deuteronomy, each one is of necessity a different performance. This is simply to underscore that time and circumstances matter, or in terms of the linguistic analogy, that real languages change (see chaps. 1 and 3 and further below; also chap. 9).
Deuteronomy itself knows this: the statutes and ordinances that Moses continually promises throughout chapters 1–11 are finally delivered in chapters 12–26. They are specifically and explicitly said to be for Israel’s life in the land (12:1), which has not yet occurred in the narrative of the book. Moses himself speaks across the Jordan, in the plains of Moab, thus not in the land (1:1). What Moses says in Deuteronomy, therefore, must be enacted in different ways, in different places, and in different and later times.
The discipline of linguistics pays much attention to diachronic change. Language use means language change such that any language that is not changing—which is just another way of defining a language that is not being used—is dying.48 This means that any and all enactments of Deuteronomy in different times and circumstances, which is every enactment subsequent to the literary audience of the book itself, are not only performances, they are also, and in no small way, updates: ways that the language survives in new times and later circumstances. The statutes and ordinances for life in the land in Deut. 12–26 represent just such an update for the Israel that will cross over the Jordan devoid of Moses, but the entirety of the book of Deuteronomy can be seen as such an update in how it receives, repeats, and revises earlier biblical legislation in various ways.49
Here again, repetition proves to be an important device, not only in terms of effective instruction in and acquisition of the language but also in proper maintenance of the language. Repetition ensures that the language that is (of necessity) updated nevertheless remains in recognizable continuity with its previous form(s). Repetition keeps the updating from becoming an entirely new language, whether via (re)pidginization, (de)creolization, or some other phenomenon.50 It thus is not hard to discern that Joshua and Josiah instantiate Deuteronomic Torah and not something else. Joshua’s “Deuteronomy” and Josiah’s “Deuteronomy” may not be exactly identical one with the other, let alone with Moses’s initial iteration, but they are both instances of Deuteronomy’s language and evidence of its survival. Even if Joshua’s and Josiah’s versions are later “dialects”—which they no doubt are and of necessity must be due to diachronic change and language use—they are nevertheless later dialects of the same language. The way Deuteronomy’s language survives intact is based not only on regular and repeated performance but equally also on performance that is marked by regular(ized) repetition. Performance ensures that the language is actually used (practiced) so that it continues to have a vibrant life in the linguistic community; repetition ensures that the language spoken is the same language and not some other—despite necessary and essential, even inevitable, updating. Sameness, of course, is a hallmark of repetition, even and despite the existence of difference, which also plays a significant role in repetition.51 Difference, in the present case, is the linguistic change brought about by new times and circumstances and repeated language use, but the sameness is equally important: it is repeated use of the (same) language.
In his insightful study of repetition in literature and film, the literary critic Bruce Kawin argues that repetition can have a timeless quality, taking us somehow (at least for the duration of the repetition) out of time via its emphasis on the same/similar. Such repetition places us in the eternal now of the present moment.52 This timeless aspect of repetition also helps to appropriately restrict the range of invariable diachronic change, making sure the latter doesn’t drift so far as to end up as an entirely different language.
In sum, each part of “performing Deuteronomy” is crucial: both that Deuteronomy is performed and that the performance done is of Deuteronomy. In this way, performing Deuteronomy means that Deuteronomy is everywhere and always updated and yet always remains itself.
Singing Deuteronomy
The book of Deuteronomy ends with Moses’s death, but Moses’s teaching in the book ends with two poems.53 Deuteronomy 33 contains Moses’s blessing of the tribes, which is preceded by the poem in chapter 32. Although the poem in Deut. 32 is often referred to as the Song of Moses, its introduction in Deut. 31 makes clear that the poem is a piece of divine instruction in a way that Moses’s blessing in chapter 33 is not. Deuteronomy 33 contains Moses’s final words of blessing to Israel, but in chapter 32 we have God’s final words of instruction to Israel in the book of Deuteronomy and in the Torah as a whole, as it now stands. Deuteronomy 32 is thus the ultimate climax, not only of Deuteronomy but of the entire Pentateuch as well. This climax comes in the form of a song.
In Deut. 31, in the introduction to this climactic song, God breaks the bad news to Moses: despite the extensive—and repetitive!—language instruction that Moses has been engaging in for thirty some chapters, as soon as he dies, Israel will stray (31:16; cf. 31:27–29). For these two reasons—Moses’s departure and Israel’s apostasy—Israel needs a witness (31:19). In light of the deadly results of Israel’s straying (see 31:17–21), this witness is the only hope that Deuteronomic Torah has, the only hope that God through that Torah has, and the only hope that Israel by means of that same Torah has.
The witness is a song that will confront Israel (31:19, 21). Moses is instructed to write this song down and recite it to the people (31:19, 22, 30). Elsewhere in chapter 31 we learn that what Moses writes is the book of Torah (31:9, 24), meaning Deuteronomy itself (see above), and this book serves as a witness (31:26), just as the song is said to do (31:19, 21). The overlapping language suggests that the song that is written down and taught (31:22) and then sung (32:1–43) is the same thing as the Torah that has been taught for thirty chapters and is now written down in a book. If so, then what we have in chapter 32 is a poetic version of (the book of) Torah. Deuteronomic Torah, as powerful and effective as it is—both in its juggernaut status and its impressive rhetorical strategies—is incomplete without an ending that is poetic, even lyrical. Deuteronomic Torah, as powerful and effective as it is, must include poetry, must end with a musical version—probably because poetry, music, and song are so memorable (see below and chap. 9). Indeed, God promises that even after Moses’s death and Israel’s inevitable apostasy, the song will not be lost from the mouth of the children (31:21). Therefore the children will remember. And in Deuteronomy, remembering means obeying (see, e.g., 5:15; 8:2; 9:7; 11:2; 15:15; 16:12; 24:18, 22).
Ending Deuteronomy and the entire Torah with a song may sound beautiful and apropos, but it is also rather odd. The song of Deut. 32 is not very representative of what has come before—if what has come before is understood primarily or exclusively as the various statutes and ordinances found in chapters 12–26, let alone other legal corpora in the Pentateuch. On the other hand, the song of Deut. 32 is the perfect conclusion to the Torah: it is Torah itself, precisely because it captures the movement of the book of Deuteronomy and the Pentateuch, the ways of God with Israel.
The song begins with the perfect Rock that is God, whose well-cared-for children become spoiled and gluttonous (32:6–15a). The children in question are “children,” the metaphorical children of Israel of all times and places, including everyone who belatedly reads or hears the poem. The immediacy of the song for the listening or reading audience is underscored by the fact that they are suddenly inscribed directly into the song at this very point (32:15b):
Jacob ate until he was stuffed;
Jeshurun got fat, then rebellious.
It was you who got fat, thick, stubborn! (32:15 CEB, emphasis added)
This satiety—“your” satiety, which becomes also our satiety whenever we read Deut. 32—leads to rebellion and idolatry (32:16–18; cf. 31:20; 6:10–15; 8:7–20), which in turn leads to God’s punishment (32:19–26). But at the crucial point, God relents from destroying Israel. The turning point comes, in part, because the punitive tool of choice—the “no people” the Lord has chosen to use against Israel—has grown proud and has misunderstood its place and purpose (32:27; cf. 8:17). The success of these unnamed enemies is only because God has supported them (see 32:30).
The pride and misunderstanding of those used by God against God’s own people changes everything: they are a nation that knows nothing, and certainly not the ways of the Lord (32:28–31). This leads to a new development in God’s strategy of destruction. But just then something else happens that changes everything. As was the case in v. 15b, the Israelites once again find themselves—to borrow words from Pablo Neruda—“in the stanza,” but this time, in v. 31, they are “cleansed of all evil.”54 At the very moment when it seems that all is lost, when God has handed Israel over to a deadly foe and is now engaged in personal dispute with that enemy nation—a dispute that may end up having little or nothing to do with the fate of God’s people—suddenly, just then, Israel reinserts itself: “Their rock is not like our Rock,” they say, as do all who read or hear this song after them (32:31 NRSV, italics added).
Two things must be said about this (re)insertion. First, in v. 15b, Israel found itself inserted passively, whether they wanted to be or not; and that insertion was for judgment: you grew fat! In v. 31, Israel reinserts itself, actively; and that (re)insertion is for hope if not also doxology: our Rock is incomparable! The shift from v. 15b to v. 31 is not solely a matter of agency, passive versus active, nor only one of content, judgment versus praise. It is also one of language learning: the Israel that speaks v. 31 has learned from v. 15b. Israel has learned a grammatical “rule,” as it were, that they can find themselves “in the stanza” not only for judgment but also for hope. This linguistic “rule,” if it may be called that, is thus successfully acquired and subsequently redeployed effectively, even salutarily.
This leads to the second thing that must be said about this (re)insertion: Israel’s unexpected clinging to God at the point of no hope, when all seems lost, in the darkest night, leads directly to God clinging to them. Precisely at the moment of Israel’s ultimate nadir, God promises to avenge God’s people (32:35–36, 41–42; cf. Jer. 30:15–16). Although the poem itself does not make this explicit, it is tempting to suggest that Israel’s language learning, from v. 15b’s insertion for judgment to v. 31’s reinsertion for hope, is precisely what preserves Israel’s relationship with God—and God’s relationship to Israel. Everything is up in the air in v. 30 until Israel demonstrates its mastery of the grammatical “rule”: the self/community can and must be (re)inserted into the stanza. The deployment of this linguistic “rule” then changes everything. Now God is not manifest in judgment against Israel, but against Israel’s enemies. What can Israel possibly do thereafter but respond in unrestrained praise (32:43)? And, as they do so, Israel’s transformation is complete. They have been transformed from “degenerate children” (32:5), gluttonous idolaters (32:15), and those who suffer God’s wrath (32:25): changed into those who cling to God in doxological hope (32:31) until finally, as victims, they are cared for and rescued by their Lord, and as a result, they praise God for divine justice and absolution in the end.
The poetic movement of Deut. 32 is Deuteronomic Torah. It is altogether consonant with the movement of the book of Deuteronomy as a whole, which takes Israel from past blessing (the ancestors, the covenant at Horeb/Sinai), into disobedience and judgment (Kadesh, the golden calf, exile), and out the other side again (the Moab covenant of chaps. 29–31) because of the inexplicable love of God for Israel, and the inexplicable mutuality of the covenant that binds God to Israel despite the worst disobedience and that binds Israel to God despite the worst punishment. Still further, the movement of Deuteronomic Torah is altogether consonant with the movement of the entire Pentateuch, which moves from creational blessing, to threats to that blessing, to deliverance, covenant, calf, wilderness, and Moab, until it arrives, at last, at Deuteronomy, where it receives an altogether crucial and thoroughly resonant and repetitive recapitulation. In this way, the song of Deut. 32 is Torah, and the Torah is (a) song.55
At the conclusion of Moses’s song, we learn that it is actually a duet sung with Joshua (32:44). The duet is further proof of Moses’s pedagogical abilities in the book and a foreshadowing of Joshua’s penchant for language acquisition: he has a knack for Deuteronomy’s language (see above). The duet also makes two additional items clear: first, Moses’s death is truly imminent since he now needs explicit accompaniment; but also, second, the language of Deuteronomic Torah will most certainly live on with new speakers (singers!), like Joshua, ready to move forward, and with effective strategies of transmission in place, like the song of Torah itself, if and when all else fails (31:19, 21).
And the song worked! Joshua and Josiah have already been mentioned, but the song’s efficacy was long lasting.56 In 2 Macc. 7, a mother and her seven sons are martyred for their faith. After the death of the first son, the mother and the remaining brothers “encouraged each other to die honorably, saying, ‘The Lord God truly watches over us and will come to our aid, just as Moses’ song personally bore witness against them, clearly saying, “God will have compassion on his servants”’” (2 Macc. 7:5b–6 CEB). The citation comes from Deut. 32:36, but what is significant here is not only how the song lived on—it was not lost from the mouth of Israel’s children even much, much later (see Deut. 31:21)—but also how the-Torah-that-is-a-song and the-song-that-is-the-Torah made a difference in this mother’s and these children’s living and dying. This Torah-song wasn’t “just” words, a cultural-linguistic script living only in the left brain, devoid of actual practice.57 No, this Torah-song was an embodied language that was performed, enacted, and enfleshed—even at the most treacherous of moments, even at the very moment of death.58
The story from 2 Macc. 7 is retold in 4 Macc. 18, only this time the mother gives credit to her husband, the boys’ father, who is said to have been exemplary in teaching the language of faith to his children. Among the things the mother says her husband taught his sons—indeed, in the final climactic position in her list—is Deut. 32: “And he didn’t forget to teach you the song that Moses taught, which says, I kill and I bring things to life: this is your life and the length of your days” (4 Macc. 18:18–19 CEB, italics original). This version of the story demonstrates that knowledge of the Torah-song of Deut. 32 is dependent upon diligent parental instruction (see above and Deut. 6:20–25). As in the case of 2 Macc. 7, so also here, the Torah-song is explicitly mentioned, but the specific passage that is cited differs: here it is Deut. 32:39 but in combination with a phrase from Deut. 30:20. Learning the Torah-song at a parent’s knee, that is, will inevitably involve branching out so as to include texts beyond just Deut. 32, encompassing more and more of God’s Torah, God’s instruction, God’s teaching, God’s ways.59 That sounds like nothing so much as a developing capacity for full language fluency. One should also not miss that in 4 Maccabees, no less than 2 Maccabees, the Torah-song is recalled at a critical juncture and with crucial information that is needed at precisely such a deathly moment as this one: in this case, full fluency brings with it hope in God’s resurrection power.
Then, finally, we can turn to Rev. 15, to the close of Christian Scripture and to the end of time (according to that book), where we find those who are victorious over the beast standing by a sea of glass, praising God with harps in hand:60
They sing the song of Moses, God’s servant, and the song of the Lamb, saying,
“Great and awe-inspiring are your works,
Lord God Almighty.
Just and true are your ways,
king of the nations.
Who won’t fear you, Lord, and glorify your name?
You alone are holy.
All nations will come and fall down in worship before you,
for your acts of justice have been revealed.” (Rev. 15:3–4 CEB)
Specific citations from Deut. 32 are not as clear here as they are in 2 Maccabees or 4 Maccabees. The allusions in Rev. 15:3–4 run far and wide and are not limited solely to Deut. 32 as in 2 Macc. 7, or to the larger book of Deuteronomy as in 4 Macc. 18; this passage in Rev. 15 is truly a pastiche of Old Testament texts.61 But that doesn’t detract from the point; if anything, it is further evidence of what was on display in the parental instruction of 4 Maccabees: the cultivation (and demonstration) of full fluency in the entire language of Scripture. Moses’s song has clearly “stuck,” and that Torah-song wasn’t ultimately about the specifics of Deut. 32 per se but about the larger movement of Torah, about the perfect God (Deut. 32:4), the praiseworthy Lord, who sets things right for God’s people and for the world. That movement is found in another “song of Moses,” the Song of the Sea in Exod. 15,62 but also elsewhere in Scripture—all over Scripture in fact (see above)—and so now, in the fullness of time according to Rev. 15, that movement incorporates yet another poem (!): the song of the Lamb. Two songs may be mentioned by name here, but there is ultimately just one melody. The language has changed, as all languages do; it has been updated, insofar as it now incorporates the Lamb, but it is still the same language, ultimately just one lyric, only one song: “the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb.”
Based on the material from Deuteronomy that may serve as a model for SLA, the next chapter offers five specific recommendations for acquiring—and thus saving—the language that is the Old Testament.