In the Old Testament, Israel found itself surrounded by monarchies and empires with powerful rulers and highly stratified societies, and it eventually sought to emulate this type of system. Such political economies were filled with bureaucrats, professional soldiers, priestly classes, and, at the bottom of the social pyramid, peasants. Of course, peasants were supposed to provide food for everyone.
Yet Israel was called to become a countercultural community that embodied God’s character and participated in God’s missionary purposes – through faithful obedience to God’s righteous and righteous law. But this would require the formation of a righteous community composed of righteous people. Where do these righteous communities and individuals come from? How can people acquire and grow in the virtue of justice?
To answer this question, the book of Deuteronomy offers a breathtaking vision of what it means to become righteous, especially in contexts of class segregation like those that dominated the ancient world and many societies today. Yet his answer is surprising: discipleship begins with a party.
In Deuteronomy 14:22-27 we read God’s explicit instructions regarding tithing: Israelite households were to bring the firstfruits of their harvest and the firstlings of their livestock to the sanctuary. For what? So that they might enjoy it together before the Lord.
The explicit purpose of this feast was that the Israelites would “learn to fear Yahweh” always (Deut. 14:23, author’s translation). But how did the feast of tithing teach the fear of God? The passage makes no mention of teaching, reading, or instruction. Instead, it involves learning by doing —or more precisely, learning through food, emphasizing the repetitive and bodily nature of the meal. In this way, the celebration is considered a formative practice who cultivates the virtuous character and disposition that God requires of his covenant partners.
Every citizen of the ancient world would have been prepared for the powerful to demand that they bring tithes to the central sanctuary (Deut. 14:22), but they would not have been prepared for those tithes to be returned to them in the sanctuary central. in the form of a community-wide celebration (Deut. 14:23)! In the ancient world, festivals, like tithes, were tools used by the elite to consolidate power. They were used to display the power of the ruler, to repay him debts and even to gather tribute. Far from promoting justice, large meals could have been tools allowing the powerful to commit injustice.
The feast of Deuteronomy, in contrast, invites Israel to encounter a divine king who generously returns to his people a tax that rightfully belongs to them and calls them to a feast of royal proportions, a joyous feast organized and presided over by Yahweh alone.
Yahweh’s innovative tithing funded a formative feast that, quite literally, invited God’s people to taste, see, and feel the generosity of their divine king. That’s why the text highlights the feast’s lavish portions – 10 percent of a household’s total harvest and the firstborn of all its flocks – and offers a tantalizing description of the menu: grains, new wine, olive oil, cattle, sheep, wine, “strong drink,” and the twice-repeated catch-all, “whatever your heart desires” (Deut. 14:26).
But the holiday had another purpose: to foster a virtuous disposition of generous reciprocity with fellow Israelites and solidarity with the marginalized among them.
In ancient Near Eastern festivals, where you sat at the party, what you wore, when you entered, and what portions of food you received solidified where you belonged within a complex social hierarchy. Since these holidays were often used to generate social stratification rather than resolve it, God called Israel to reform and reorient existing holiday practices – to simultaneously collaborate and overthrow existing political and economic practices proposed in the culture at large.
Yahweh’s tax tithing program invited and welcomed people from all levels of the social stratosphere to attend the country’s most extravagant and extravagant destination festival of the year. The entire household was commanded to celebrate the feast together as equals: “You shall eat there before the LORD your God and rejoice, you and your household” (Deut. 14:26, author’s translation) .
This emphasis on family feasts is morally significant.
In the ancient world, a household included both extended family and non-kin, including marginalized groups like Levites, orphans and widows, wage laborers, debt servants, dependent foreigners and others. others who attached themselves to them as fictitious parents (see Deut. 12). :7-12; 16:11, 14; 26:11). The dining table was intended for families, because, as Georg Braulik says“to be able to eat together, we must be a parent or becomes close.” At the table, marginalized people received much more than food, drinks and a break from work: they were given the unique opportunity to start a family.
But the tithing festival also served as a reminder of the interdependence of the Israelites on one another in the economic ecosystem that determined their livelihoods.
Great festivals required a lot of work – including planting, harvesting, storing and preparing food – which the entire house and village would have to undertake months in advance. So, while the tithing meal was organized by the divine king, the people experienced it as a very participatory potluck meal to which everyone contributed. Yahweh is the ultimate provider of the holiday ingredients, but the meal is the result of the collective work of the households celebrating it.
There is also something surprising in Deuteronomy’s prescription that indulgent feasting is a morally formative practice for economic justice; elsewhere the book evokes a deep suspicion of indulgent eating (see Deut. 8:1-20). In fact, throughout the Bible, the enjoyment of economic prosperity is often linked with warnings about greed, idolatrous self-aggrandizement, and neglect or outright oppression of one’s poor neighbors.
Yet Deuteronomy’s solution to this danger is not fasting but feasting. . Instead of seeking to crush their selfish economic desires through deprivation, the book asks the Israelites to redirect their desires toward God and neighbor through indulgent and joyful celebration. The only sure way to seek and experience economic abundance, Deuteronomy suggests, is in the context of a community that ensures that all eat their fill together (14:29), including the most vulnerable in the world. between them.
At Yahweh’s table, generosity flows through community bonds, and the shared cup of wine and served plate are meant to solidify existing relationships and create new ones that transcend social divisions.
It is precisely at the party that the training begins, but she does not stay there. Learning to fear Yahweh through feasting was an integral part of developing the individual and collective virtue of justice intended to help the Israelites obey the righteous legislation described elsewhere in the book. This included commandments for debt cancellation, freeing slaves, and a three-year tithe, which required them to sacrifice a tenth of their harvest every three years to fund a social safety net for the most vulnerable among them. them (see Deut. 14:28-15:18).
Such laws depended on the Israelites’ possession of the economic virtues of generosity and solidarity, which they were expected to acquire through joyful and indulgent feasting together in the presence of Yahweh. In a world where political systems and communal holidays could contribute to injustice, Israel’s festivals were a central practice for God’s people to become just.
Deuteronomy demonstrates God’s ultimate desire to create a community characterized by righteous laws and composed of righteous people. At the feast, the Israelites learned to fear Yahweh by joyfully maintaining a habitual disposition toward him as a generous king present among his people, and a disposition of generous solidarity toward the vulnerable.
But how can this lesson serve as God’s speech to us today? How might these texts inspire us to learn how to become righteous disciples in our own communities facing economic injustice and segregation? What might it look like for our churches to pursue justice inspired by the feasts of Deuteronomy, both collectively in the context of our social structures and individually in terms of our moral character?
In keeping with the vision of the feast of Deuteronomy, everyone can find ways to practice greater closeness with the economically poor and marginalized among us. We can resist racial and economic segregation in our social spaces, including by changing where and how we work, play, worship, or educate our children. We can develop rich partnerships with churches and organizations located in poor communities. We can look for ways to feast with God’s people beyond the barriers that so often separate us in our society.
As in Deuteronomy, so it is today: seeking to create righteous structures and fostering righteous character are two sides of the same coin.
The good news is that the path to such righteous discipleship is paved with joy. We become simple disciples by learning the fear of Yahweh through practices of community celebration and solidarity before God and alongside all our neighbors. Communities and individuals seeking righteous discipleship will inevitably find themselves engaged in the hard work of seeking righteous policy, both within the Church and beyond.
Of course, when it comes to building solidarity and seeking justice within the community, food is almost always involved. As activist Ed Loring Put the, “Justice is important, but dinner is essential. » Let us also all enjoy ourselves on the path to justice. For until we learn to feast in the fear of the Lord – to eat in a way that cultivates a righteous and generous character capable of giving and receiving in community – we will fail to join with God in bringing about justice to victory.
Michael J. Rhodes is professor of Old Testament at Carey Baptist College and author of Righteous Discipleship: Biblical Justice in an Unjust World.
