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About this book

Deuteronomy

About this book
Chapter 26

1 When you enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and you occupy it and live in it, 2 you must take the first of all the ground’s produce you harvest from the land the Lord your God is giving you, place it in a basket, and go to the place where he chooses to locate his name. 3 You must go to the priest in office at that time and say to him, “I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord promised to our ancestors to give us.” 4 The priest will then take the basket from you and set it before the altar of the Lord your God. 5 Then you must affirm before the Lord your God, “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor, and he went down to Egypt and lived there as a foreigner with a household few in number, but there he became a great, powerful, and numerous people. 6 But the Egyptians mistreated and oppressed us, forcing us to do burdensome labor. 7 So we cried out to the Lord, the God of our ancestors, and he heard us and saw our humiliation, toil, and oppression. 8 Therefore the Lord brought us out of Egypt with tremendous strength and power, as well as with great awe-inspiring signs and wonders. 9 Then he brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10 So now, look! I have brought the first of the ground’s produce that you, Lord, have given me.” Then you must set it down before the Lord your God and worship before him. 11 You will celebrate all the good things that the Lord your God has given you and your family, along with the Levites and the resident foreigners among you. 12 When you finish tithing all your income in the third year (the year of tithing), you must give it to the Levites,⁠ the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows so that they may eat to their satisfaction in your villages. 13 Then you shall say before the Lord your God, “I have removed the sacred offering from my house and given it to the Levites, the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows just as you have commanded me. I have not violated or forgotten your commandments. 14 I have not eaten anything when I was in mourning, or removed any of it while ceremonially unclean, or offered any of it to the dead;⁠ I have obeyed you and have done everything you have commanded me.⁠ 15 Look down from your holy dwelling place in heaven⁠ and bless your people Israel and the land you have given us, just as you promised our ancestors—a land flowing with milk and honey.” 16 Today the Lord your God is commanding you to keep these statutes and ordinances, something you must do with all your heart and soul. 17 Today you have declared the Lord to be your God, and that you will walk in his ways, keep his statutes, commandments, and ordinances, and obey him. 18 And today the Lord has declared you to be his special people (as he already promised you) so you may keep all his commandments. 19 Then he will elevate you above all the nations he has made and you will receive praise, fame, and honor.⁠ You will be a people holy to the Lord your God, as he has said.⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare Deuteronomy 26:14 and Letter of Jeremiah 1:27

Hebrew Bible · Deuterocanon

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Summary

Deuteronomy stresses that offerings must not be eaten in mourning or given for the dead, establishing purity in worship. The Letter of Jeremiah echoes this, describing how those who worship idols do so as if they're giving offerings to the dead.

Passages

Deuteronomy 26:14

Hebrew Bible
12 When you finish tithing all your income in the third year (the year of tithing), you must give it to the Levites, the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows so that they may eat to their satisfaction in your villages. 13 Then you shall say before the Lord your God, “I have removed the sacred offering from my house and given it to the Levites, the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows just as you have commanded me. I have not violated or forgotten your commandments. 14 I have not eaten anything when I was in mourning, or removed any of it while ceremonially unclean, or offered any of it to the dead; I have obeyed you and have done everything you have commanded me. 15 Look down from your holy dwelling place in heaven and bless your people Israel and the land you have given us, just as you promised our ancestors—a land flowing with milk and honey.” 16 Today the Lord your God is commanding you to keep these statutes and ordinances, something you must do with all your heart and soul.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Deuteronomy

Letter of Jeremiah 1:27

Deuterocanon
25 Things in which there is no breath are bought at any cost. 26 Having no feet, they are carried upon shoulders. By this, they declare to men that they are worth nothing. Those who serve them are also ashamed, 27 for if they fall to the ground at any time, they can’t rise up again by themselves. If they are bowed down, they can’t make themselves straight; but the offerings are set before them, as if they were dead men. 28 And the things that are sacrificed to them, their priests sell and spend. In like manner, their wives also lay up part of it in salt; but to the poor and to the powerless they give none of it. 29 The menstruating woman and the woman in childbirth touch their sacrifices, knowing therefore by these things that they are no gods. Don’t fear them.
300–101 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Letter of Jeremiah

References

"... there are likely numerous references to cult of the dead activities in Trito-Isaiah. Those who are described in Isaiah 65:3 as “provoking [YHWH] to his face continually” are specifically charged with “sitting in tombs and spending the night among rocks.” Similar practices are probably in view in chapter 57, which refers to both child sacrifice (verse 5) and Molek (verse 9); particularly if the difficult word in verse 6 is related to the dead (“Your portion is with the perished of the wadi ...”), the passage is clearly condemning death cults. Francesca Stavrakopoulou has further argued that the gardens condemned in Isaiah 65:3–5, 66:17 and 1:29–30 were mortuary gardens and thus also manifestations of cults of the dead. And of course, the book ends with the unforgettable image of “the dead bodies of the people who have rebelled against [YHWH]; for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.” This nascent image of hell is the apotheosis of the “aversion therapy” technique that was pioneered centuries earlier by Isaiah himself. The precise significance of many of these later instances of the tradition are contested; they deserve and have generated fairly extensive scholarship, which cannot be summarized here. It is clear enough that cults of the dead continued to be a major preoccupation in the postexilic period (Letter of Jeremiah 27; Sirach 30:18; Tobit 4:17; Note also Baruch 3:10-11) ..."
Christopher B. Hays, Death in the Iron Age II and in First Isaiah (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 360.

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 26:14 and Letter of Jeremiah 1:27

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