Someone we know as "the Deuteronomist" wrote a fair-sized chunk of the Bible, including the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, and more.
The Deuteronomist, like all Biblical authors, had a certain point of view. Politically, for example, the Deuteronomist was a monarchist. The book of Judges shows you what happens when you don't have a king, and the books of Samuel and Kings tell of King David who shows you what a real king looks like.
In terms of every day ethics, the Deuteronomist took the position that people who did right get rewarded, and people who do wrong get punished. Sin is directly punished, virtue directly rewarded.
When times were bad, the Deuteronomist took the position that it was the peoples' own fault. It was their sin which had brought difficulty upon the land. If they would "turn"--shuv, a big word for the Deuteronomist--from their evil ways and "turn" back to God, God would make it all right, maybe.
The problem, of course, is that the real world does not work that way and anyone can plainly see that it does not. Virtue is not necessarily rewarded, and sin is not necessarily punished, neither in one's personal life nor in our national life.
The book of Job is a direct contradiction of the Deuteronomist. Job is punished for no reason at all. His friends--good Deuteronomists!--try to convince him that he surely must have done something. Otherwise, he wouldn't be being punished. Their arguments seem small and off-point.
Some scholars believe that the great prophet Jeremiah might have been the Deuteronomist. I don't think so myself. Jeremiah was too aware of human frailty to come up with something as wooden as Deuteronomistic theology, and his vision was much more expansive.
What prompted this impromptu reflection on the Deuteronomist is this statement yesterday by presidential candidate Michele Bachmann:
“We too are at a crucial time today. And I think it is for us to remember, that if we do as Chronicles tells us, if we humble ourselves, and pray and confess our sins, and turn away from our wicked ways, and ask an almighty God to come and protect us and fight the battle for us, we know from his word, his promise is sure. He will come. He will heal our land. And we will have a new day.”
One shouldn't be surprised that she would quote Chronicles. Though Chronicles was written down later than the Deuteronomist, Chronicles is about the exploits of King David in 2 Samuel and Kings. Much of Chronicles is word-for-word from those two books. Its primary source is the Deuteronomist.
Chronicles tends to put an even more positive spin on the monarchy than does the Deuteronomist. The Chronicler takes out the less virtuous parts of King David's career, for example, and also Solomon's as well. (The reason is probably because Chronicles was written later, at a time when the Jews were starting over after return from the exile, and were being encouraged to look favorably on their ancient traditions.)
Bachmann's reference is a paraphrase of 2 Chronicles 14. The immediate context is that the Lord God finds King Solomon to be absolutely wonderful, so much so that the Lord God communicates personally with King Solomon in a dream and tells him to tell the people to shape up.
Contrary to the Chronicler, King Solomon wasn't all that great a king, nor even particularly wise. He raised taxes and increased slavery. When he died, ten of the twelve tribes seceded from the union, and formed their own country. You don't do something like that if you're happy with the monarchy.
In any case, it shouldn't be surprising that Michele Bachmann would refer to a selection from the Bible that is politically propagandistic, devotedly monarchist, at odds with observed reality, and theologically shallow.
That said, she expressed it well. Her comment, while borrowing heavily from Chronicles, is still a very succinct expression of Deuteronomist theology and politics.
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