DEUTERONOMY: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Deuteronomy 1:6 Would all of the names of people and places have made sense to Jews living in the 

Roman times, or would we have to go back further for them to be familiar with the places being 

mentioned?

There is really no way to tell. However, it has been suggested that the confusion as to whether the 

mountain was called Sinai or Horeb (see Exodus 19) was purposeful so that future generations would 

not know exactly where God had revealed himself.

Deuteronomy 2:4-5 Two questions: (1) The descendants of Esau that live in the hills would essentially be blood relatives of the people wandering around in the desert. Why would they see themselves as different? (2) Why does God keep having to tell the Jews not to pick fights with everyone they come across? 

In regard to the first question, even though their founders Jacob and Esau were brothers, years earlier there was not always peace between them. Secondly, Esau had married a Hittite woman and settled in the region of Edom, where his family intermarried with the local inhabitants.

To answer the second question: They had to learn that the sole purpose of fighting was to possess the 

land (Deuteronomy 2:5,18-19), and that they would only win when God was their strength (see 

Deuteronomy 1:41-45). God is pictured as their military commander, and they needed to obey orders.

Deuteronomy 2:6 The Jews are to give silver for the food they eat. Where exactly did a group of slaves 

who just ran away and have been wandering in the desert acquire silver?

They were given it by the Egyptians. See Exodus 12:33-36. This also explains where they got the 

jewelry to melt down into a golden calf.

Deuteronomy 2:22-23 I have heard that this prophecy of death by crucifixion is an amazing prophecy 

since this was a form of punishment totally unknown to the Jews. Is that historically true?

Unfortunately, these verses do not say that this was a means of killing someone, only a way of 

disgracing an already dead body. This practice was well known to the Jews (see Joshua 8:29; 10:26-27).

Deuteronomy 7:17-24 What is the hornet that God will send among their enemies?

Here is a long and confusing answer to a short, simple question:

The word translated “hornet” in the NIV translation represents an obscure Hebrew word that only occurs three times in the Hebrew Bible – Deuteronomy 7:20; Exodus 23:27-28; and Joshua 24:1-2. The first two references give God's promise that he will send “hornets” to aid the Israelites in their conquest of Canaan, and the last reference demonstrates that he did indeed do so.

The New International Dictionary of Old Testament Translation & Exegesis (vol. 3, p. 847) explains that the most likely literal translation of the word in question is as hornet, hornet's nest, wasp or wasp's nest. One could understand the references therefore to say that God sent stinging insects to soften the enemy up before the attacks by the Israelites and to finish off the remnants of the enemy after the attack. However, that is not the only understanding of these verses.

Taking a more figurative meaning to the word, it has been variously translated as “pestilence” (NRSV), panic (NEB, TEV), plagues (TEV alternative translation), and madness/frenzy (A. D. H. Mayes, Deuteronomy, p.188). DOTTE adds, “Yahweh's sting may well have been the dread/fear of him upon the inhabitants when they heard of what he did to Egypt. The report psychologically incapacitated them much as a wasp's/hornet's sting does (Joshua 2:10-11).”

As if that were not enough opinions, Weinfeld (Deuteronomy 1-11, p. 375) states, “The insects here serve as metaphors for invading armies.” In this context, J. A. Thompson (Deuteronomy, pp. 132-133) expresses the opinion, shared by others, that the hornets were actually Egyptian troops who invaded Canaan before the Israelite conquest and softened up the enemy's resistance.

In any case, “What is stressed is that the victory was [to be] gained not by force of arms but by God's miraculous intervention.” (New Bible Commentary, p. 25)

Deuteronomy 22:13-21 If a husband slanders his wife and claims she was not a virgin when they married, the girl’s parents are supposed to bring “proof” of her virginity in the form of a cloth they display to the elders of the town. What is the formal process for the parents to acquire this “proof?”

This regulation was designed to protect newly married women from being slandered by their husband. The issue was so important that the bride's parents would take great pains to insure that their daughter's reputation was not injured by such accusations. There was also an economic incentive for the parents to get such proof so that they would not have to refund the dowry money and have a subsequently unmarriageable daughter on their hands. The main question is: What kind of proof was required? And here scholars differ.

The usual answer is that the proof consisted of blood-stained bed linen following the first night of intercourse. In some Mediterranean cultures even today, the bed linen is publicly displayed right after the wedding night as proof of the bride's virginity. Alternatively, the linen could have been given by the bride to her parents to keep for future proof, if needed.

The problem with such “proof” is that it is not really an infallible test, as pointed out by several commentators. Therefore other possibilities for the so-called proof have been proposed:

    1. George Wenham feels that since the key word simla in the text usually refers to a garment, it cannot be a bed sheet. He suggests that it may be an undergarment worn by the bride just before or soon after her marriage showing menstrual stains, thus proving that she was not pregnant by another man at the time of marriage. (New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, Vol. 1, p. 784)

    2. J. A. Thompson, however, mentions the possibility that the girl's hymen was ritually broken right before the marriage, with her bloodstained clothing then serving as the needed proof of virginity. (Deuteronomy, Tyndale Commentaries, pp. 235-236)

In all of these possibilities, it would be up to the bride and/or her parents to obtain and retain the required proof.