Parshat Devarim
Rebecca L - July 17, 2026
This Shabbat is special. Shabbat Chazon, as it is called, is the last Shabbat before the holiday of Tisha B'Av, a fast day where we mourn the destruction of both the first and second temples. It is referred to by many, including hillel.org and chabad.org as the saddest day on the Jewish calendar. To really feel the weight of the holiday, the Haftarah portions of this week and the two before it are known as the "Three of Rebuke" or the "Three of Affliction." Rather than relating to the Torah portion directly, as is typical for haftarot, they are three passages describing the destruction and ruin of Jerusalem, culminating with this week's passage in Isaiah, in which he describes his chazon, his vision.
I want to describe the content of the Torah portion first, because to me they seem to have a clear call-and-response relationship with each other that I think is essential to understanding what this parsha means. I say I think because I am not exactly sure, and I'm hoping you all can help me figure it out. I also want to note that I am going to use male pronouns for this G-d - I struggled a lot with this, but since G-d is pretty militaristic in this one it felt more correct. Wow, am I saying that women can't be bloodthirsty military generals? Maybe it is genuinely sexist of me to think that a G-d who urges the Israelites into vicious conquering sounds weird being referred to as Her. Let me know later!
This week's Torah reading is the beginning of Deuteronomy, from Chapter 1 verse 1 to Chapter 3 verse 22. It begins with a framing device that the Israelites have just defeated King Sihon of the Amorites, and King Og of Bashan, and Moses is telling everyone about the last forty years of their history. After already having wandered and covenant-ed their way through the books of Leviticus and Numbers, Moses says that G-d told him to tell the Israelites that they had been hanging out on the mountain of Horeb for too long, and to finally go to the land that G-d had selected for the Israelites. Before they go, Moses reminds the Israelites that he was sick of dealing with their shit - literally "I cannot bear the burden of you," and that to help resolve their constant squabbling now that they have become so numerous, they should choose wise leaders from among their tribes to act as judges, and they do so.
The Israelites head on over to the land of the Amorites, where they send some scouts to check out the land in advance. The scouts bring fruit as proof that the land is good, but they also bring stories of tall walls and tall people that scare the Israelites, and this makes them complain that G-d hates them as He has brought them to this place to get their butts kicked by the superior Amorites. This bothers G-d who tells them that their promise of the land is revoked for complaining and being faithless, and tells the Israelites that they are banned from this land until all the military-aged men from this generation are dead. Only Joshua, Moses's friend and future replacement as leader of the Israelites, and their children too young to know right from wrong will be allowed in. The Israelites are very sorry, and decide to go and fight after all. G-d warns Moses to tell them not to do this, since G-d isn't with them, but they do it anyway and get their butts kicked just like they thought would happen. Oh well!
So back into the wilderness it is, for 38 years until all the men of military age have died. The Women's Torah Commentary notes that this was time to transition between the exile generation and the "conquest generation." In their wanderings, the Israelites pass by the territory of many other kingdoms and conquerors that G-d tells them not to attack, specifically noting that if they need anything from these civilizations they can only get it by buying it with money.
Moses tells the Israelites about the various successions in these lands, how many of them once belonged to one tribe and then were conquered, saying:
Similarly, Seir was formerly inhabited by the Horites; but the descendants of Esau dispossessed them, wiping them out and settling in their place, just as Israel did in the land they were to possess, which GOD had given to them.—
This could be seen as a normalization of the type of conquering and settlement that the Israelites are about to engage in. However, not everyone feels that way. 16th century Italian Rabbi Ovadia ben Jacob Sforno writes in his commentary:
Esau and Moav destroyed more land and people than they needed for themselves. They did so in order to wipe out all the former people residing there so that they could not one day avenge their defeat. This was a totally unjustifiable genocide.
I question this translation, since the word genocide didn't exist back then. But that's what Sefaria says. Finally, the Israelites arrive at their territory. It's the land belonging to Sihon the Amorite, King of Heshbon. To prepare the Israelites for going into battle, G-d puts the fear of Moses into the hearts of "peoples everywhere under heaven." 13th century Spanish commentator Bahya ben Asher ibn Halawa gleans from the text that in order to do this simultaneously to people everywhere, G-d stopped the movement of the sun in the sky. The only other time He has done this is in the book of Joshua, where G-d uses similar language and tells Joshua "just as I was with Moses I will be with you." This is important because the Book of Joshua, which immediately follows the five books of Moses, describes Joshua conquering the land of the Canaanites. The Book of Joshua is an extremely violent story. After G-d stops the sun, Joshua puts several Kings to death by impaling them on spikes, and puts several entire villages to the sword. People from Biblical scholars to regular joes in the r/openchristian subreddit have been shocked by the level of violence described in the Book of Joshua, with Reddit user u/Indigo_123 stating that they "had to put it down 11 chapters in because it was too painful to read. It made me question my faith.....It looked way too much like modern imperialism." Modern scholars have said that the events depicted in the Book of Joshua and some parts of Deuteronomy fit our legal definitions of genocide. Not only is this violence thematically linked via the stopped sun to what's happening in Deuteronomy 1:24-31, part of this week's parsha, but it is actually a direct continuation of that violence.
Once the fear of Moses has been put in everyone's hearts, Moses asks the King Sihon of Heshbon if he can pass peacefully through his land, and the King, having just got the fear of Moses put in him, says no. G-d basically turns to Moses and says look what I set up for you - since you tried peace already and they said no, you're good to try war. Worth noting that the translation of the 1917 JPS Torah has G-d telling Moses "Behold, I have begun to deliver up Sihon and his land before thee; begin to possess his land," while the 1985, 2006, and 2023 translations all include the phrase "begin the occupation" in G-d's instructions. Either way, the Israelites follow G-d's command:
At that time we captured all his towns, and we doomed/annihilated/devoted to destruction every town—men, women, and children—leaving no survivor.
The Israelites take spoils and cattle as plunder, and then do the same to the territory of King Og of Bashan, down to the repeated description of dooming the men, women, and children. When the Israelites find the abandoned bed of King Og, they note that it's so huge he must have been a giant. Crazy! Finally, the Israelites divide up the territory, but they're not done. There is not yet territory for all the tribes, and so Moses commands all the men of the settled families to come out and fight, leaving their women and children behind, saying that only when they have conquered territory as nice as what they have will everyone be allowed to return home. The section ends with Moses telling Joshua "You have seen with your own eyes all that the ETERNAL your God has done to these two kings; so shall G-D do to all the kingdoms into which you shall cross over. Do not fear them, for it is the ETERNAL your God who will battle for you."
The relationship between G-d and the Jewish people could not be more different in the Haftarah. Through the prophet Isaiah, G-d paints a picture of a "sinful nation" that has turned against G-d in its actions, and will be destroyed. "I reared children and brought them up— And they have rebelled against Me!" G-d/Isaiah explicitly compares the city of Jerusalem to Sodom and Gomorrah, saying that we are lucky to have/will be lucky to have some survivors left. What did we do wrong? Many things. For one thing, we are engaging in empty ritual:
"Bringing oblations is futile,
Incense is offensive to Me.
New moon and sabbath,
Proclaiming of solemnities,
Assemblies with iniquity
I cannot abide."
G-d literally says that our prayers and rituals are a burden on them, which to me parallels Moses telling the Israelites that they are the same thing - a burden - for squabbling amongst themselves.
It is not just our rituals but our judgement and our actions that have become tainted:
Alas, she has become a whore,
The faithful city
That was filled with justice,
Where righteousness dwelt—
But now murderers.
Your rulers are rogues
And cronies of thieves,
Every one avid for presents
And greedy for gifts;
They do not judge the case of the orphan,
And the widow's cause never reaches them.
Are these the spiritual descendants of the same judges that Moses told the people to appoint so long ago?
Now, we are the ones who need to watch out for G-d's wrath:
I will turn My hand against you,
And smelt out your dross as with lye,
Quick note: dross is a term which refers to unwanted scum that forms on the surface of molten metal.
We are also given instruction of how we can do better:
Devote yourselves to justice;
Aid the wronged.
Uphold the rights of the orphan;
Defend the cause of the widow.
Put plainly, in what is possibly my new favorite Biblical instruction:
"Cease to do evil; Learn to do good."
Simple as, really. If we do this, G-d promises to restore the magistrates of old, again possibly referring to those appointed in the time of Moses, and that "Zion shall be redeemed through justice, and her penitent through righteousness." But I guess because we fail to do this, the temple is destroyed.
So what do we make of all this? To me, this week's parsha is about violence. When it's acceptable, and when it's not, and what it means. I think it is easy and not necessarily wrong to be horrified by the descriptions of violence and settlement depicted in this text, and to draw the conclusion that the social rot that Isaiah sees is the result of this violence. However, the historian in me also wants to try and meet the text of the Torah where it's at. My conception of what it means to be anti-war and anti-violence is wrapped up in a modern idea of nation-states, and a modern understanding of war and peace, and these mental models may be very different than those from the Biblical time. This isn't to say that I think we should be pro-war or even that the text is necessarily pro-war, but rather that I wonder if the framework of pro or anti war is one that makes sense to try and apply to this parsha. I also think that the nature of the violence in the Torah portion, ie violence done by one nation or people to another, is different than the moral rot described by Isaiah, ie murder between individuals within the same nation, and this makes me question what exactly the relationship between them is.
Therefore my questions are:
- What relationship towards violence does the text want us to have?
- How useful is it to try and read this text through our modern (presumably) anti-war framework? What assumptions does the text make about the existence of violence and war?
- Why is it that violence within a society (ie murder within Jerusalem) is condemned flatly as evidence of sin while violence between societies is sanctioned and often encouraged by G-d?
- What are we to make of this violence as a part of our people's narrative history, regardless of if it literally happened or not?
- Why has our tradition placed alongside each other the contrasting visions of the Jews as victims of destruction and perpetrators of violence against others?
- We know that a "Zionist" reading of this text is being carried out in synagogues all over the US and Israel, and that the presence of Jews in the holy land is being seen as a resolution to Biblical lessons even as Israel continues to commit genocidal settler violence - should we be actively trying to read the text "against" this interpretation?
I would like to close by saying that Isaiah 2, which immediately follows this Haftarah in the Book of Isaiah if not in the order we read them, contains the famous passage about beating your swords into plowshares and nations not taking up arms against nations. If you wanted a definitive anti-war message from scripture, it really can't get more literal or powerful than this, and if the wisdom of our tradition had wanted to make this easy they would have paired this with the reading of today instead. But they didn't, because this is not a time in the Jewish calendar for celebrating peace, it is a time for mourning destruction, and these things are not meant to be easy. So thank you all for hearing me out and it's a privilege to get to share my thoughts with this community. That's all!