Daily Thoughts from Deuteronomy 30:6: He Circumcises (Umal)

32 He Circumcises (Umal)

Then Yahweh your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your children, so that you will love Yahweh your God with all your heart and all your being, and thus you will live.

(D’varim 30:6)

Silence!  The day before had started this way only to quickly find silence disturbed by the ferocious growl of the cat and the nonsense muttering of satan.  What next?  It was his thirty-second day in the yeshimon.  What else must happen?

But there was nothing.  So he got up, peered out his cave entrance and felt the sun on his face.  It was a good feeling, as if God was touching him and infusing him with grace and kindness.  He felt warmed to the core of his heart.  No one was in sight.  He was all alone in this forbidding place.  But his Father had cared for him even as He had cared for Yisrael.  It was fitting that he was reading the d’varim, the words of Moshe.  It was the perfect companion as he relived his people’s journey through desert lands.

Somehow Moshe’s message today seemed the climax of all that had preceded. He knew that Yisrael was going to rebel and experience all that Yahweh had warned about in such strong terms.  Yet here he was also predicting that Yahweh would restore them when they turned to Him with all their heart.  But to enable them to turn to Him and love Him He would need to circumcise their hearts.  Here were more of the secret things of Yahweh with only a small glimpse of revelation about His purposes.  He would be faithful to His covenant with Abraham by bringing, finally, Yisrael back to covenant faithfulness by means of His own action upon their hearts of cutting away their hardness.  Until He did that they would not return, yet He was expecting them to receive His law communicated through Moshe, a law which was not far away or obscure but right there in front of them and whose obedience meant life.

Yet there was no obedience without circumcision of the heart.  Isn’t this what Yirmeyahu was promising through his new covenant description?  Yahweh would write His law on His people’s hearts.  This was the word of Yahweh through Yechezk’el, “I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes and be careful to obey My rules…then you will remember your evil ways, and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abominations.”  This was the “covenant of peace” He spoke about when He would raise the dry bones and make them one nation under David.  This is why Avraham slept while Yahweh passed between the bisected animal sacrifices by Himself.  Only He could enable Yisrael to become obedient, even though He commanded them to do so in vain for so long.

Moshe, Yirmeyahu and Yechezk’el were all bearing witness to the complete inability of God’s people to keep God’s commands while at the same time calling Yisrael to obey.  “The law is very close to you – in your mouth, even in your heart; therefore, you can do it!”  Yes, they could do it if it was in their hearts, their circumcised hearts that God was causing them to walk in through His Spirit in them.  Wouldn’t the satan have a great day with this!  He wondered why satan wasn’t here now, doing just that.

He was glad he wasn’t here.  Wrestling with this was hard enough without a constantly contrary voice.

Yesha‘yahu had said something along these lines to one generation of Yisrael.  Yahweh had told him to say to this people that though they kept on hearing they would not understand, seeing but not perceiving, because Yahweh had made their ears heavy and their eyes blind lest they see and hear and turn and be healed.  And He was holding them responsible for their hard hearts even though at the same time He was saying He caused it.  More of those secret things.  He did not deign to explain this apparent discrepancy.  He did not need to and likely it was not something Yisrael could understand if He did.  Rather it was something to live with as true and trust that Yahweh could figure it out in His great wisdom whether we could or not.

The day wore on as he pondered what God had revealed and marveled at Yahweh’s commitment to Yisrael.