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Deuteronomy

About this book
Chapter 23

1 A man with crushed or severed genitals may not enter the assembly of the Lord. 2 A person of illegitimate birth may not enter the assembly of the Lord; to the tenth generation no one related to him may do so.⁠ 3 No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord;⁠ to the tenth generation none of their descendants shall ever do so,⁠ 4 for they did not meet you with food and water on the way as you came from Egypt,⁠ and furthermore, they hired Balaam son of Beor of Pethor in Aram Naharaim to curse you. 5 But the Lord your God refused to listen to Balaam and changed the curse to a blessing, for the Lord your God loves you. 6 You must not seek peace and prosperity for them through all the ages to come. 7 You must not hate an Edomite, for he is your relative; you must not hate an Egyptian, for you lived as a foreigner in his land. 8 Children of the third generation born to them may enter the assembly of the Lord. 9 When you go out as an army against your enemies, guard yourselves against anything impure. 10 If there is someone among you who is impure because of some nocturnal emission, he must leave the camp; he may not reenter it immediately. 11 When evening arrives he must wash himself with water, and then at sunset he may reenter the camp. 12 You are to have a place outside the camp to serve as a latrine. 13 You must have a spade among your other equipment, and when you relieve yourself outside you must dig a hole with the spade and then turn and cover your excrement. 14 For the Lord your God walks about in the middle of your camp to deliver you and defeat your enemies for you.⁠ Therefore your camp should be holy, so that he does not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you. 15 You must not return an escaped slave to his master when he has run away to you.⁠ 16 Indeed, he may live among you in any place he chooses, in whichever of your villages he prefers; you must not oppress him. 17 There must never be a sacred prostitute among the young women of Israel nor a sacred male prostitute among the young men of Israel.⁠ 18 You must never bring the pay of a female prostitute or the wage of a dog30, a male prostitute, into the temple of the Lord your God⁠ in fulfillment of any vow, for both of these are abhorrent to the Lord your God.⁠ 19 You must not charge interest on a loan to your fellow Israelite, whether on money, food, or anything else that has been loaned with interest.⁠ 20 You may lend with interest to a foreigner, but not to your fellow Israelite; if you keep this command the Lord your God will bless you in all you undertake in the land you are about to enter to possess. 21 When you make a vow to the Lord your God you must not delay in fulfilling it, for otherwise he will surely hold you accountable as a sinner.⁠ 22 If you refrain from making a vow, it will not be sinful. 23 Whatever you vow, you must be careful to do what you have promised, such as what you have vowed to the Lord your God as a freewill offering.⁠ 24 When you enter the vineyard of your neighbor you may eat as many grapes as you please, but you must not take away any in a container. 25 When you go into the ripe grain fields of your neighbor you may pluck off the kernels with your hand, but you must not use a sickle on your neighbor’s ripe grain.⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare Deuteronomy 23:14 and Onkelos Deuteronomy 23:15

Hebrew Bible · Targum

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Summary

Deuteronomy 23 describes God walking through the Israelite camp, suggesting that God has a body. The Aramaic translation in Targum Onkelos avoids this by using “Shekinah,” or glory, to describe God's nearness while removing embodied language.

Passages

Deuteronomy 23:14

Hebrew Bible
13 You must have a spade among your other equipment, and when you relieve yourself outside you must dig a hole with the spade and then turn and cover your excrement. 14 For the Lord your God walks about in the middle of your camp to deliver you and defeat your enemies for you. Therefore your camp should be holy, so that he does not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you. 15 You must not return an escaped slave to his master when he has run away to you.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Deuteronomy

Onkelos Deuteronomy 23:15

Targum
14 And you shall have a digging blade with your equipment, so that when you sit outside you may dig with it, and cover your excrement. 15 For the Shekinah of the Lord your God walks among your camp to save you and deliver up your enemies before you, and your camp shall be sacred, so that nothing offensive may be seen among you, or His Memra will turn away from doing you good. 16 You shall not deliver up a slave of the Gentiles into the hand of his master, when he has escaped to you from his master;
50–500 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Onkelos Deuteronomy

References

"... the concept of the visible glory of God as a substitute for speech about the visible God was well known before the Targums were written, and the targumists follow in the steps of that tradition. “Glory” can also be used wherever the targumist wished to render any biblical text that suggested God was spatially located in a place, as in Genesis 28:16 (Onkelos, Neofiti) ... Deuteronomy 23:15: Unlike the term “glory,” the term Shekhinah did not already have a long tradition behind it in Jewish theology, but the concept goes back to the biblical use of the verb used to denote the “dwelling” or local manifestation of God (Exodus 40:35; Deuteronomy 33:16) ..."
Edward M. Cook, “The Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in the Targums,” in A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism, ed. Matthias Henze (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 92–117.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Deuteronomy 23:14 and Onkelos Deuteronomy 23:15

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