‘Festive kinship’: Solidarity, responsibility, and identity formation in Deuteronomy

Abstract

This article investigates how the ‘family’ metaphor in Deuteronomy may be a medium for providing protective solidarity for those without subsistence and kin connection and how this may also play a role in fusing the identity of the ‘nation’ as the people of Yahweh. It first explores the nature of kinship in Israel, focusing on the mutability of kinship. An exegesis of six texts follows, which seeks to discern dynamics of solidarity and responsibility. Deut 10.16-17 demonstrates the connection between religion and identity and kinship. Through the festival calendar (Deut 16.1-17), the weakest are being enfolded as kindred. In a covenant renewal text, the metaphor of ‘family’ brings cohesion to a partially diffuse people group (Deut 29.9-14). Deut 31.9-13 produces solidarity between the household, the clan, and the ‘nation’. The social laws required Yahweh’s people to take responsibility, as kinsfolk, for those who were without the kinship protection.