The Rational Bible: Deuteronomy with Dennis Prager
Author, radio host, and friend of the show, Dennis Prager joins Charlie for an in-depth discussion of Dennis’ newest book and the third in his much celebrated series, The Rational Bible: Deuteronomy. Written by a Jew for the sake of all people, Christians included, his unique vantage point unlocks the weight and significance of the most quoted book of the Torah by the Founders, for a simple but profound goal: to change the lives of those who read it.Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Honoring Parents in the Ten Commandments00:15:28
Hey everybody, happy Friday, special Friday episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
My conversation with Dennis Prager, one of my mentors, and just people that have impacted my thinking so tremendously, author of a new book, Deuteronomy, God Blessings and Curses.
A rational Bible commentary.
It is life-changing.
It is an unbelievable work.
You've got to check it out.
It is, again, called Deuteronomy, God Blessings and Curses, the Rational Bible by Dennis Prager.
Email me your thoughts as alwaysfreedom at charliekirk.com.
To hear Dennis Prager in person, come to AmericaFest at A-M-F-E-S-T.com.
That is amfest.com.
AmericaFest is the place for you to stay engaged, stay involved.
Phoenix, Arizona, December 17, 18, 1920.
Check it out.
Email me your thoughts as alwaysfreedom at charliekirk.com.
Buckle up, everybody.
Here we go.
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I want to thank Charlie.
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Hello, everybody.
Welcome to this very special conversation on the Charlie Kirk Show.
I am honored to have with us today a teacher of mine, someone who I listen to regularly, especially his fireside chats.
And I learned so much from Dennis Prager.
Dennis, welcome back to the program.
Well, that is a beautiful introduction, Charlie.
Great to be with you.
And I mean it.
So I really want to talk about your new book.
And by the way, I just have to say, your Rational Bible series is a life-changer.
It really is.
Genesis is incredible.
I'm working my way through Exodus.
And it is now the third one that's published.
Is that right?
That's right.
That's correct.
I didn't go in order.
I did two, one, five, four, three.
So don't ask why I did it that way, but there was reason.
So I did Exodus, then Genesis, and now Deuteronomy, the fifth one.
By the way, Charlie, you will find this fascinating, I have no doubt, as I did.
And I wish I knew it when I wrote my commentary on this fifth book of the Bible.
But I didn't know it, and I learned it just recently.
The most frequently cited book by the founders of America is Deuteronomy, more than any other, not just biblical, but secular book.
That was going to be my first question.
So you totally stole my thunder.
So, but let's, what parts of Deuteronomy did they reference or cite?
What is it in Deuteronomy that our founders obviously found so important as they were designing the structure of our society?
So by way of answer, what people don't know, because we live in a secular sea, we're swimming in a secular sea.
People don't realize how deeply the founders of this country were influenced by the Bible.
For example, that on the Liberty Bell is a verse from the Bible.
I mean, how many people, and especially, by the way, this is interesting, the Old Testament.
I mean, they were either doctrinally Christian or nominally Christian, but the Old Testament is really what moved them.
Jefferson and Franklin designed a great seal for the United States, and it was the Exodus.
There was a scene of the Hebrews, the Israelites, the Jews in the wilderness.
That is how much the founders were influenced by these books.
So even from an American standpoint, one should know what these books have to say.
But when you said it was a life changer, that was what I wanted to hear.
It is meant to change people's lives.
What did they find in Deuteronomy, you asked?
Laws about governance.
First of all, the Ten Commandments is repeated.
This time, in Exodus, it's from God, and in Deuteronomy, it's from Moses.
And it's virtually identical, except interestingly, for one thing, one major thing, the others were minor, where the reason for the Sabbath is different.
God says, it's because I created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, so that when you keep the Sabbath, you are stating to the world that God created the world.
But Moses says it is because you are now free, and free people don't work seven days a week.
It's a very interesting difference.
That's fascinating.
And that's the only one in the 10 that's changed?
Yeah, well, yes, there's another minimal one of which eludes me for the moment, but it truly is minimal.
This was the one that was major, and it's fascinating.
It shows Moses figured, listen, these people who just got out of Egypt aren't interested in announcing that God created the world.
They're interested in how their lives have been changed because of the Exodus.
So he was very pragmatic.
And by the way, it's a completely irrational term.
I make the point.
If you work seven days a week, you may be wealthy, but you're still a slave.
Yeah.
And so I'm not familiar.
In Deuteronomy, does it start the same way as if it's the 11 statements, which I am the Lord your God who delivered you from Egypt?
Yes.
Okay.
Correct.
So it starts the same way.
Can you talk a little bit about it's actually the 11 statements, not commandments, and how important it is?
Well, it's actually, no, it is the ten statements.
The Hebrew is ten statements.
English is ten commandments because the first of the statements in the Hebrew version is, I am the Lord your God.
I took you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage.
That is not in the Ten Commandments as such for the Christian or non-Jews generally.
I don't find it problematic, but just to be technically accurate, I think people should know that.
The Hebrew is ten statements because the first is a statement, not a commandment.
And that's an important thing to remember because literally it's about remembering.
It is the acknowledgement, hopefully, from the recipient, the Jewish people, that, hey, I'm the one that brought you here.
And before we go through these ten, can you build that out a little bit more about why that's critical?
Yeah.
I'm the Lord your God.
I took you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage.
So, number one, on a very basic level, you owe me something.
And I liberated you.
You're in debt to me.
And the beauty is the debt is nothing for God.
There's nothing there for God.
It isn't like I took you out of the land of Egypt, so bring me great sacrifices so that I could munch on yummy food, which is what it would have been in the pagan world.
But rather, hey, listen, I took you out of Egypt.
Now, don't murder.
Don't steal.
Don't commit adultery.
Be honest.
Honor your parents.
It's very powerful that the way in which you express gratitude to God, it's for all of us, not just the Hebrews 3,200 years ago, is by treating our fellow human being decently.
It's fascinating.
I want to talk more about the Ten Commandments in a second, especially treating your parents heavily, which is something I learned from you, which I find to just be so fascinating.
And one of the most important conversations I've ever heard you give was about the difference between treating your parents lightly or cursing them or honoring them or treating them heavily.
It's fascinating.
So that'll be a teaser.
But I want to ask you about a verse that is very important in Christian theology, as I believe it is in Jewish theology, which is Deuteronomy 6:4, which is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
What is the significance of that verse?
It was re-quoted again by Jesus in the New Testament.
And I'm going to butcher this, Dennis, but I believe that's the Shema Yizarel, if I'm not mistaken.
Well, you didn't butcher it.
Okay.
It wasn't.
Butchery would be too big a term.
I'm ribbing you.
You were close, actually.
It's fully.
I urge you.
No, no, I salute you.
It's the Shema Yisrael.
That's the way it would be.
Or Jews really just call it the Shema.
Shema means here.
And by the way, even that is an important point.
This is the credo of the Jewish people.
Jews often, even non-religious Jews, if they know they're about to die, they will say, Shemai Yisrael Adama Elohino Adonai.
Here, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone, or the Lord is one.
Jews walk to the gas chambers saying this.
It's a very, it is the motto of Judaism, of the Torah.
And what you'll find of interest, and by the way, I got to tell you, I'm very, very touched at how carefully you've read this, that you knew the heavy and the light.
We'll get to it.
I know you said that, but that's a big deal.
So I make the point that it's here, O Israel, or listen, O Israel, not look.
We often say, look, there's only one God, which is how we would speak, right?
Not here, there's only one God.
We don't speak that way.
The Torah, the first five books, and for that matter, the rest of the Bible, but especially the first five books, don't trust the I.
I get emails all the time, Dennis, from people.
In fact, I have one right here.
Charlie, I don't get along with my parents, and I think I'm going to avoid them this holiday season.
What does it mean, Dennis, to treat your parents heavily, not lightly?
When one knows the Hebrew, and it's a blessing in my life that I know biblical Hebrew very well, because I couldn't have done this commentary, the rational Bible, without that.
So you obviously found this fascinating, and I have a feeling your many listeners will.
So it says, honor your father and mother.
That's in the Ten Commandments.
The word honor is the same as the word for heavy.
And here's the beauty.
The word curse is the same root as the word light, the opposite of heavy.
So in effect, there are two laws about parents.
You must honor them and you cannot curse them.
But it could be just as well translated.
You must treat them heavily and you may not treat them lightly.
So that's the point from the Hebrew that you picked up, and I salute you for doing so.
So as I have said much of my life, and I've been teaching this for 40 years, there's no law to love your parents.
As part of an answer to the person who wrote to you and whose letter you just read, there is no law.
There's a law to love the stranger.
There's a law to love God.
There's a law to love your neighbor.
There is no law to love your parents.
And I think that that's brilliant on the Bible's part.
It understands that a lot of people have, at the very least, ambivalent feelings towards parents.
We're not commanded to love our parents.
So an analogy I would give is this.
I not only don't love the current president, I have deep contempt for him.
However, if he walked into the room, I would stand up, not for him, but for the presidency.
So I honor the presidency, even though I have contempt for him.
And you honor your parent no matter how you feel about them.
Now, obviously, if your parent beat you, put you in terrible circumstances of sexual molestation, or I mean, those are outlier issues.
And what is it, you know, bad cases make bad ones.
And by the way, we don't even get, those emails aren't the case.
It's I don't get along with them.
Exactly.
That's right.
And so you don't get along with them.
But it doesn't absolve you from periodically contacting them, from sending them an email or a text message at the very least or a call.
And I write, I open up the introduction to each of the volumes of the rational Bible with my own story.
And I note that I had a difficult time with my parents, as so many young people do in my late teens and early 20s, especially late teens.
But I am proud to say, although I'm not saying it for the reason of pride, I'm saying it because that's what God commanded me.
I called my parents every single week of my life.
It didn't matter what circumstance I found myself in.
I called them every week.
And I did it because, I mean, ultimately I did it.
I had a sense of indebtedness to them.
And, you know, in adulthood, I got along just perfectly with them.
But I did it in the beginning because I believed God commanded me to.
That is the importance of believing God commanded you.
All of these young people or these adults who won't speak to their parent because the parent voted for Donald Trump, these despicable adults, they're despicable for doing this.
By the way, you're despicable if you don't talk to your parent for voting for Joe Biden.
Yes.
Understanding Context Over Blind Faith00:11:55
There's something sick in your soul.
You're a narcissist to some degree I can't even relate to.
That's why we need commandments.
I don't care if you hate your father for voting for Trump or for voting for there wouldn't be a commandment if it was easy.
Bless you.
That's exactly the point.
There's no commandment to love your child.
And it matters, and you say this all the time, Dennis, which we're going to get into in the next segment, how you behave towards your parents, not how you feel towards your parents.
It's a fundamental difference.
You have no idea how much it means to me how carefully you've read my stuff.
I mean that I have touched a guy like you is a big deal.
Dennis, what I'm so struck about your Bible commentary when I read it is you go out of your way to communicate in the preface of Genesis, if I remember correctly, at least I think in every one of them, that this is written for Christians, for Jews, but also the non-religious.
Please talk about that.
So there are Jews, I don't know how many, I don't know what percentage, but in the religious world in which I grew up in Judaism, I think there was a sense that, which is totally understandable, that God gave the Torah to the Jews, and then they would put a period at the end of that sentence.
I never, of course, I believe that, but I never accepted the period at the end of the sentence.
And what are we supposed to do with it?
See, I never believed that something could be relevant to one group, but not to another.
If the Torah has something to say to a Jew, it has something to say to a non-Jew.
And my analogy is Beethoven.
Would anybody say, oh, Beethoven has only something to say to Germans?
I mean, the idea is preposterous.
Shakespeare only has something to say to the English?
Preposterous.
The Torah is either relevant to all of humanity or it's irrelevant to the Jew.
That is how I look at it.
And my teaching it to non-Jews as well as Jews for much of my life proved it to me.
And so it's either the greatest font of wisdom ever devised or it isn't.
And if it is, it's universal in its applicability.
When I write it, I'm thinking often of a peasant in rural China.
I'm not kidding.
That is my image.
Will the peasant in rural China understand the point I'm about to make?
Who never heard of Moses or never heard of the God of the Bible or Abraham?
Wright, exactly.
So let me ask you this, Dennis.
It is called the rational Bible, which some smug college students that I will talk to would find that to be a contradiction of terms.
And that's their approach, obviously not ours.
They'd say, how could you be rational towards a book of, you know, miracles?
Fairy tales.
Yeah, fairy tales.
I don't even want to use that descriptor.
That's what they say.
Yeah, that's what they say.
So here's the irony in today's world.
The people who say men give birth think they're rational and think the Bible is irrational.
This is how powerful the indoctrination has been.
I use reason and only reason to make every point I make.
I never asked the reader to take anything on faith.
And if I did not use reason persuasively, then I failed.
But I do it for two reasons.
One, because I don't ask people to take anything on faith.
That's why it's called the rational Bible.
But B, I don't.
My route to God is through reason.
I admit it.
I'm not saying it's a better route, but that is my route.
It was not prayer.
It was not a God appearing to me.
It was not a spirit that dawned upon me since I was a kid.
It had to make sense.
These books do make sense, and it's my task to show how much sense they make.
And you do a remarkable job of it, including some of the laws that are mocked by the secular world.
The one that just comes to mind that always struck out to me, and I can't remember.
I don't even think it's an Exodus.
It's just maybe, maybe it is.
It was in one of the speeches you gave, is that if an animal murders a human, you must kill the animal.
And the point being, what?
That taking human life is a big deal.
Yeah, by the way, the word for an animal would be killing a human, because an animal can't murder.
Right, because there's no free will and there's no moral aspect.
Yes, thank you.
It's a very important point.
And Deuteronomy has something analogous since you asked about Deuteronomy for good reason.
That's the latest volume.
So there's a law there that's really obscure, and I'm sure 99% of readers who read it, their eyes glaze over.
There's a whole ritual, if a dead person who's clearly killed is found near your town or village, you don't just bury the body.
You understand, we let this man down.
And people don't know how seriously the Bible, and especially the Torah, which is the first five books, which are the basis of the Old and New Testaments, take murder.
For example, how many Christians even know that God prescribes capital punishment when creating the world?
It's in Genesis.
There are almost no laws in Genesis.
All the laws are in the other four books.
But there are maybe two or three or four, maybe actually seven, I think it is, in Genesis.
One of them is, if a man's blood is shed by another human being, human beings must shed his blood because in the image of God, man is created.
You are violating the sanctity of human life by letting every murderer live.
Wow.
And that's why it drives me crazy when people, Catholic, Protestant, or Jew, who say that they take their religion seriously come out against capital punishment in every case.
Do you know that in the five books of Moses, the Torah, it is the only law in all five books to take a murderer's life?
So that, back to your point, the point that I make, why do we kill an ox that gores a human to death?
It's not the ox's fault.
And obviously the Torah knows that.
So I'll give you an example.
You'll love this.
If we have the time, I don't want to.
Is this Lenny?
Is that the...
When you talk about if you let the animal live, you keep on pointing to the animal and you say, oh, yeah.
Yeah, the ostrich.
It was an ostrich.
Yes.
Yeah, very many years ago on my show, a woman called up.
My dad had an ostrich farm, and one ostrich kicked him to death.
So I said, did you take the ostrich's life?
She said, of course not.
So I said, I don't understand.
What do you do?
Do you point out, oh, yeah, this is the ostrich that killed my father?
Yeah, that's cruel, actually.
Well, It's demeaning to the father.
Yes, that's right.
That's exactly right.
So let me ask you about one or two of the more obscure laws, if that's okay.
Because, you know, people, I'm far from a biblical expert, but every once in a while there's a smart alec that will come up to an event and they'll ask me about one of the laws, and I just couldn't answer it.
Okay.
So what is the rational case?
This one's in numbers, so I might put you on the spot of a different one.
And I think this is only the one delegated for women, and I think there's only three of them, where you must set aside a piece of dough when baking bread.
What is the rational explanation for that?
So, yeah, it's odd that somebody would raise that.
Why would any ceremony be problematic?
I can understand where people are troubled by taking the life of a bad child that occurs, which I explain as one of the great moral achievements of the Torah.
Why would it bother somebody?
That's a new one to me, Charlie.
I must say.
It's like saying, gee, I'm really troubled by the fact that they sacrificed doves.
Or I'm really bothered that people do communion.
Yeah, that's right.
I was going to use communion, but then they could say, well, I can't really believe it becomes the body of Christ and the blood of Christ.
Okay.
I'm not troubled.
I try to explain ceremonies.
And ultimately, that is explained.
By the way, since I raised it, I just want people to know about the killing of a rebellious or bad son.
It was never done in Jewish history.
What the Torah did was brilliant.
It took the right to kill a child away from parents.
It was the first civilization to ever do that.
If you want your child to be executed, you bring him to a court, but no court ever executed a child.
And I'm not talking about an eight-year-old.
I'm talking about a really horrible, it's obviously a horrible kid, bad seed, if you will.
But that's what the purpose of that law was.
So I go out of my way to explain all the toughies, including eye for an eye, which was another awesome moral achievement.
The eye of a nobleman is not more valuable than the eye of a peasant.
That's what it's saying.
That's human equality, is what it's saying.
That's exactly what it's saying.
Wow.
Yep.
So, I mean, there's 613 laws, and Deuteronomy has a fair amount of them, including, I believe, some that talk about the family.
For example, should a man die childless, his brother must either marry the widow.
That's Deuteronomy 25, I believe.
Right.
This was to protect the woman has now lost the ability to have a child and to be taken care of.
This is a very early way of taking care of a widow.
That's what it was about.
It is not practiced.
It was not practiced for most of Jewish history.
People must, it's like the founders.
You have to put the founders in the time in which they live.
The Torah wasn't written for 2022 alone.
I'm guided by it in 2022.
But it isn't written only for 2022.
Why Intentions Matter in Homicide Cases00:02:59
It had to elevate people.
Why are there sacrifices at all?
The biggest reason, according to the greatest Jewish philosopher who ever lived, Maimonides in the Middle Ages, was to wean them away from human sacrifice.
Much better to sacrifice an animal than sacrifice a human.
You have to understand things in the context.
We should do that with laws.
You gradually make people better.
You don't just abolish overnight something and then it doesn't work.
So that's the reason it's worth reading this stuff.
All right, Dennis, tell your position on what, do intentions matter?
Tell our audience what your belief is.
Well, intentions matter.
For example, if someone's on trial for homicide, it makes a big difference if the person dropped a hammer doing construction work and it split a guy's skull open and he died, or whether he went with a hammer and split the guy's skull open and he died.
Clearly, one is intentional and one is accidental.
So in those instances, intentions matter.
But as a general rule in life, only your behavior matters, not your intentions.
The number of people who intended good and supported communism is in the millions.
But it was the greatest slaughtering machine that has ever existed in history.
100 million people just by communism alone.
So that's why whenever I hear, oh, he meant well or she means well, I think, who cares?
And I think I agree with that in large part.
I would just say, though, maybe on interpersonal relationships, this is an example, right?
If my wife forgets to feed the dog, I would treat that completely differently than if she decided to starve the dog.
It's the same action.
Yeah, well, that was my homicide.
That was my homicide analogy, of course.
But remember, that's a specific act of a specific person in a specific condition.
I know you agree with me because you and I so know the damage the left has done and is doing today, but a lot of these people don't mean to do damage.
They don't wake up in the morning and say, how can I destroy America?
I see what you're saying.
How can I destroy the Western world?
What you're saying is that we shouldn't exempt them just because they say they mean well.
That's exactly right.
And I mean, it caught me in that unbelievably great podcast you did where it was the, I love myself with unlimited good intentions, or I'm a broken human being knitted together with an endless ocean of good intentions.
Rejecting Self-Love to Save Society00:03:08
All that self-love nonsense that is permeating society.
Don't start me.
It's one of the great.
You know, I have to admit, and this may not even sound good to your many listeners.
In my whole life, I never even thought, do I love me?
The idea makes me laugh.
You should respect me.
I do ask.
Yes, that's right.
I do ask, do I respect me?
Yes, I must say, yes.
And unfortunately, we live in a world where self-love is glorified.
It actually creates miserable people.
I really narcissist.
That is exactly right.
Yes.
If you love others, you'll be a happier person than if you just work on loving yourself.
I don't want you to self-loathe either, obviously.
But I don't even know what I love me.
What does that even mean?
No, I'm not kidding.
I don't know what it is.
It's inherently dual personality, too.
It's creating as if there's an I and a me.
As if there's two sorts of beings.
And so it's very confusing.
I would say so.
So, Dennis, in closing here, we only have a minute and a half remaining.
What did we not cover on your Rational Bible series you want our audience to be aware of?
In Deuteronomy, the latest volume, there is a law that almost nobody knows about, and it is the one that I always cite on behalf of this book.
That is not, I don't mean my book, the book of Deuteronomy.
Man goes into war, his army is victorious.
He sees a woman belonging to the conquered people.
He wants her.
The law in Deuteronomy is you cannot touch her.
You can bring her to your home.
You must let her mourn her family for 30 days.
You don't touch her.
And then if you still want her after 30 days of her crying, and it says crying, you can only touch her if you marry her.
Given the amount of rape and war in all of human history, I find that law alone says, wow, this is a special book.
That's a law of restraint and decency.
And for an entire movement that wants to talk about progress, that's something very special.
Yep.
Dennis, thank you so much.
And everyone, check out the Rational Bible.
It'll change your life.
God bless you, Dennis.
Thank you.
God bless you.
Thank you.
Everybody, email us freedom at charliekirk.com and subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast.
And I mean it.
Check out the Rational Bible, Deuteronomy, Exodus, and Genesis.
They're just terrific.
And come to AmericaFest, everybody, A-M-F-E-S-T.com, amfest.com.
Post there behind me, December 17, 18, 19, 20, in Phoenix, Arizona.
God bless you guys.
We'll see you soon.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.