“They roused him to jealousy with alien gods,
provoked him with abominations.”
-Deuteronomy 32:16
The first part of the Song of Moses gave us a clear picture of what it means to love the Lord our God from His perspective.
However, from verse 16, we’re given a clear definition of what it means to abandon the Lord our God.
One important point.
Understand that you can never “abandon” Hashem if you had never been in a relationship with Him in the first place.
So let’s get this straight.
A gentile or non-believer can never be accused of abandoning God because they never entered into a covenant with Him in the first place.
Only those who have entered into a covenant with Hashem are capable of abandoning God.
So what would be the first step towards abandoning God?
Well, verse 16 tells us it is to adopt certain “alien things” or practices into our lifestyles.
We’re talking about things that should have no place in the life of one who claims to be in covenant with Hashem.
Just last night actually while walking through Tokyo I passed a Shinto shrine and saw a couple of Japanese folks bowing down and offering up prayers to the deities of that shrine.
Let me make this clear, one could not accuse these Japanese of abandoning the God of Israel.
Why?
Because they don’t have a relationship with the God of Israel and have probably never even heard of the God of Israel.
A lot of Christian missionaries from America come here and sometimes stand in front of shrines like this and shout out to those entering the shrine “Turn away from your idolatry or you’re going straight to hell!”.
Um…no they’re not.
At least not on the basis of rejecting the God of Israel because they NEVER entered into a covenant relationship with Him in the first place.
On the other hand, if I saw a man wearing a Kippah at the shrine bowing down, I would have done a serious double take and I might even have walked up to him and inquired..”What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”.
Getting back to our text study, since verse 16 was obviously written in ancient times the examples provided of forbidden activities are pointing to only the heathen practices of the culture of those times such as…
….burning incense, bowing to foreign gods, or keeping wooden or stone idols in one’s possession.
The Scriptures tell us it were these “abominations” that provoked the Lord to great anger.
Do you recall the Hebrew word for “abominations”?
It is TO’EVAH.
This word would refer to any unclean thing the Torah clearly forbids such as any one of the following:
-UNCLEAN FOODS
-UNCLEAN SACRIFICES
-SEXUAL IMMORALITY
-IMPROPER MIXING OF SEEDS OR ANIMALS
-IMPROPER MIXING OF THREADS IN A GARMENT
-HOMOSEXUALITY
…and so on and so forth.
Recall from our past Torah studies that there are levels or degrees of badness of sin and that some transgressions were considered more worse than others.
It is these especially egregious offenses that the Lord calls out as being TO’EVAH.
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