Scripture Daily

Context No. 577 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Context · Reflection

Deuteronomy 16:9-22: in context

9You shall count for yourselves seven weeks. From the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain you shall begin to count seven weeks. 10You shall keep the feast of weeks to the LORD your God with a tribute of a free will offering of your hand, which you shall give according to how the LORD your God blesses you. 11You shall rejoice before the LORD your God: you, your son, your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, the Levite who is within your gates, the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow who are among you, in the place which the LORD your God shall choose to cause his name to dwell there. 12You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt. You shall observe and do these statutes. 13You shall keep the feast of booths seven days, after you have gathered in from your threshing floor and from your wine press. 14You shall rejoice in your feast, you, your son, your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, the Levite, the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow who are within your gates. 15You shall keep a feast to the LORD your God seven days in the place which the LORD chooses, because the LORD your God will bless you in all your increase and in all the work of your hands, and you shall be altogether joyful. 16Three times in a year all of your males shall appear before the LORD your God in the place which he chooses: in the feast of unleavened bread, in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of booths. They shall not appear before the LORD empty. 17Every man shall give as he is able, according to the LORD your God’s blessing which he has given you. 18You shall make judges and officers in all your gates, which the LORD your God gives you, according to your tribes; and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. 19You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality. You shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous. 20You shall follow that which is altogether just, that you may live and inherit the land which the LORD your God gives you. 21You shall not plant for yourselves an Asherah of any kind of tree beside the LORD your God’s altar, which you shall make for yourselves. 22Neither shall you set yourself up a sacred stone which the LORD your God hates.

These are instructions for Israel's great feasts, the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Booths, and the striking thing is that God commands the people to rejoice. You shall rejoice in your feast, he says; you shall be altogether joyful. Joy is not left as an optional mood that may or may not show up; it is commanded, built into the calendar. But even more striking is who God insists must be included in that joy. Every time he calls for rejoicing, he spells out the guest list: you, and your son and daughter, and your male and female servants, and the Levite, and the foreigner, and the fatherless, and the widow who are within your gates. The joy is commanded to reach exactly the people most likely to be left out.

Look at that list again. The servant, the resident foreigner, the orphan, the widow, the landless Levite, these were the people with no property, no family safety net, no natural place at anyone's table, the ones most easily excluded from a celebration meant for landowners and their households. And God will not allow the feast to be a private party for the comfortable. The vulnerable and the outsider must be brought in, seated at the table, folded into the rejoicing. And he grounds it in memory: remember that you were a slave in Egypt. You know what it is to be the outsider; so make sure your joy includes the outsider now.

That reframes what it means to celebrate as God's people. My blessings and my joys tend to circle within a comfortable inner ring, my own family, my own friends, the people it is easy and pleasant to include. God commands a joy that deliberately reaches beyond that, that seeks out the lonely, the poor, the outsider, the ones with no one else to include them, and brings them into the celebration. When I feast and rejoice in God's blessings, do I keep the joy within my comfortable circle, or do I deliberately bring in the widow and the foreigner and the fatherless, the people most likely to be left out?

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