Deuteronomy 9

De. 9 1 HEAR, O Israel: thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to possess nations 2 greater and mightier than thyself, cities great and fenced up to heaven, a people great and 3 tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom thou knowest, and of whom thou hast heard say, Who can stand before the sons of Anak? Know therefore this day, that the LORD thy God is he which goeth over before thee as a devouring fire; he shall destroy them, and he shall bring them down before thee: so shalt thou drive them out, and make them to perish quickly, as 4 the LORD hath spoken unto thee. Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the LORD thy God hath thrust them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness the LORD hath brought me in to possess this land: whereas for the wickedness of these nations the LORD doth drive 5 them out from before thee. Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go in to possess their land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and that he may establish the word which the LORD 6 sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Know therefore, that the LORD thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy righteousness; for thou art a stiff- 7 necked people. Remember, forget thou not, how thou provokedst the LORD thy God to wrath in the wilderness: from the day that thou wentest forth out of the land of Egypt, until ye 8 came unto this place, ye have been rebellious against the LORD. Also in Horeb ye provoked 22 the LORD to wrath, and the LORD was angry with you to have destroyed you. And at Taberah, 23 and at Massah, and at Kibroth-hattaavah, ye provoked the LORD to wrath. And when the LORD sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying, Go up and possess the land which I have given you: then ye rebelled against the commandment of the LORD your God, and ye believed him

24 not, nor hearkened to his voice. Ye have been rebellious against the LORD from the day that I knew you.

10 12 And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, to keep the commandments of the LORD, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good? Behold, unto the LORD thy God belongeth the heaven, and the heaven of heavens, the earth, with all that therein is. Only the LORD had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all peoples, as at this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked. For the LORD your God, he is God of gods, and Lord of lords, the great God, the mighty, and the terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward. He doth execute the judgement of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God; him shalt thou serve; and to him shalt thou cleave, and by his name shalt thou swear. He is thy praise, and he is thy God, that hath done for thee these great and terrible things, which thine eyes have seen. Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons; and now the LORD thy God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude.

11 1 Therefore thou shalt love the LORD thy God, and keep his charge, and his statutes, and his judgements, and his commandments alway. And know ye this day: for I speak not with your children which have not known, and which have not seen the chastisement of the LORD your God, his greatness, his mighty hand, and his stretched out arm, and his signs, and his works, which he did in the midst of Egypt unto Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and unto all his land; and what he did unto the army of Egypt, unto their horses, and to their chariots; how he made the water of the Red Sea to overflow them as they pursued after you, and how the LORD hath destroyed them unto this day; and what he did unto you in the wilderness, until ye came unto this place; and what he did unto Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, the son of Reuben; how the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their households, and their tents, and every living thing that followed them, in the midst of all Israel: but your eyes have seen all the great work of the LORD which he did. Therefore shall ye keep all the commandment which I command thee this day, that ye may be strong, and go in and possess the land, whither ye go over to possess it; and that ye may prolong your days upon the land, which the LORD sware unto your fathers to give unto them and to their seed, a land flowing with milk and honey. For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs: but the land, whither ye go over to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven: a land which the LORD thy God careth for; the eyes of the LORD thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year.

13. And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments which I command you this day, to love the LORD your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, that I will give the rain of your land in its season, the former rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil. And I will give grass in thy fields for thy cattle, and thou shalt eat and be full. Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; and the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and ye perish quickly from off the good land which the LORD giveth you. For if ye shall diligently keep all this commandment which I command you, to do it; to love the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, and to cleave unto him; then will the LORD drive out all these nations from before you, and ye shall possess nations greater and mightier than yourselves. Every place whereon the sole of your foot shall tread shall be yours: from the wilderness, and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even unto the hinder sea shall be your border. There shall no man be able to stand before you: the LORD your God shall lay the fear of you and the dread of you upon all the land that ye shall tread upon, as he hath spoken unto you.

26. Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if ye shall hearken unto the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you this day: and the

28 curse, if ye shall not hearken unto the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day, to go after other gods, which ye have not known. 29 And it shall come to pass, when the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, that thou shalt set the blessing upon mount Gerizim, and the curse 30 upon mount Ebal. Are they not beyond Jordan, behind the way of the going down of the sun, in the land of the Canaanites which dwell in the Arabah, over against Gilgal, beside the 31 oaks of Moreh? For ye are to pass over Jordan to go in to possess the land which the 32 LORD your God giveth you, and ye shall possess it, and dwell therein. And ye shall observe to do all the statutes and the judgements which I set before you this day.

Israel might acknowledge that it was of God’s free gift that they possessed the land of Canaan, and yet might flatter themselves by thinking it was because of their righteousness and goodness that the gift was bestowed. To guard against this, Moses tells them that not because of their righteousness would God go before them and drive out the mighty peoples that then occupied the land, but because of the wickedness of these peoples themselves were they to be extirpated (ch. 9 : 1-6). He further reminds them of their transgressions in the past, and how they thereby came under the Divine displeasure, and were saved from destruction only through his earnest intercession (verses 7-24). W. L. A.

9 : 1-6. For no merit of their own but by the signal bounty of God they would be heirs of the land of Canaan; and this entirely flowed from the covenant and their gratuitous adoption. They therefore should persevere in the faithful observation of the covenant, and so should be the more disposed to honor him. Lest they should arrogate anything to themselves, he commends the greatness of God’s power, in that they could not be victorious over so many nations unless by the miraculous aid of heaven. Calv. —It was of great moment, and therefore Moses repeats it, that they should understand the true causes why God expelled these nations and gave their land to the Israelites: (1) The abominable wickedness of the Canaanites, for which they deserved to be rooted out (2) God’s gracious promises to the ancestors of the Israelites, with whom he had made a covenant and confirmed it with an oath, to plant them there in the room of the former inhabitants. Patrick. —There is scarcely any place in the Old Testament which is so utterly subversive of self-righteousness as this. As the ungodly are excluded from the heavenly inheritance by reason of their sins and the righteous are made partakers of it, even so was it to be the case in reference to Canaan. The free grace of the Lord chose the fathers and brought out all the good that was in Israel; but yet it was not this goodness for which the people were preserved, since they had a hundred times perverted all God’s gifts of grace. Gerl.

7,8,22,23. Moses points his admonition by reminding them of their repeated rebellions in past times, and dwells especially on their apostasy at Horeb. This was so flagrant that it was only his own earnest intercessions which averted the destruction of the people, and won at length from God a renewal of the forfeited pledges of the covenant. In referring to these circumstances Moses here, as elsewhere, has regard not so much to the order of time as to that of subject. He inserts e.g. mention of the provocations at Taberah, Massah, Kibroth-hat-taavah, and Kadesh-barnea (verses 22, 23), in the very midst of the narrative respecting the idolatry at Horeb and his own conduct in reference thereto.

10 : 12-22; 11 : 1-26. After these emphatic warnings against self-righteousness this division of the discourse is drawn to a conclusion in the next two chapters by a series of direct and positive exhortations to a careful fulfilment of the duties prescribed in the first two of the ten words. Pride having been shown to be utterly out of place in those who had so often provoked God, and who owed their all to God’s forgiveness and Moses’s entreaties, it remains for Israel to make such return as is possible for God’s undeserved mercies, by loving and fearing him and diligently keeping his commandments. Both for love and fear of him abundant cause is drawn from his past dealings with Israel: from his condescension to their fathers and to themselves in their distress; and from his great acts for them and against their enemies. Finally Moses reminds them of the consequences which await their conduct: prosperity and success if they be faithful, misfortune and sorrow if otherwise. The alternative is solemnly and distinctly set before them, and the choice committed to themselves. Espin.

The true principles of Christian obedience, as they are everywhere set forth in Scripture, are the love and fear of God: which are so far from being inconsistent with each other that they are really inseparable; the one deterring us from sin, the other exciting us to virtue and righteousness. They are both put together in these expressive words, in which Moses sums up his exhortations to the Israelites. Waldo.

10:12-16. And now, Israel, thifik again, “what doth the Lord thy God require of thee?” Could he ask less consistently with his righteousness and honor? Are not all his commands wise and right? Is it not an easy yoke to love a God so kind, to fear a God so holy, to obey a God so faithful and true? And now, Israel, look at the fact that all God’s commands are for your good (verse 13)! A perfect obedience would insure perfect content. All the while you have been rebellious against the Lord, you have been fighting against your own highest interests. God’s honor and your happiness require precisely the same course of life. And now, Israel, do remember this, for consider how great is the Divine condescension in caring for you at all (verse 14): “Lo! the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the Lord’s thy God, the earth also with all that therein is.” And what, what but infinite love should lead him thus to stoop from his high throne to care for you? It is not for your righteousness, for you are a stiff-necked people. No account can be given why God should care for you so, save that he loves to do it. Then surely the reason is overwhelmingly strong for your gratitude, loyalty, and love. And now, Israel, seeing these things are so, could you do less for such a God than he asks of you, even if he did not ask it? So rich should be your joy in him, so reverent your fear, so devout your love, that you would with ready mind give God all, even if he did not require all. What he is to you should lead you to be to him all that he would have you be. How much stronger every one of these points may be made from the evangelic standpoint! By as much as the love of God in the great redemption in Christ Jesus is a grander disclosure than his love as revealed in the deliverance from Egypt, by so much should each argument be the more tender and strong. C. C.

13. Keep his commandments and his statutes. Having given up ourselves to his service, we must make his revealed will our rule in everything; perform all he prescribes; forbear all he forbids; firmly believing that all the statutes he commands us are for our good. Beside the reward of obedience, which will be our unspeakable gain, there is true honor and pleasure in obedience. It is really for our present good to be meek and humble, chaste and sober, just and charitable, patient and contented; these make us easy, and safe, and pleasant, and truly great. H.

16. With all his brooding tenderness of feeling, he hesitates not to charge that favored people to their faces with rebellion, with weak defection and despicable cowardice, with stiff-neckedness and hard-heartedness since he had known them. Not for their sakes, but for the fathers’ sakes were they chosen, and in all that “great and terrible wilderness” had there been folded about them the everlasting arms. E. C. B.

Moses fitly follows up the command “to circumcise the heart” with the warning “to be no more stiff-necked.” His meaning is that they should lay aside that obduracy and perverse-ness toward God for which he had been reproving them, which had led them into so many transgressions of the covenant and revolts from God, and which was especially the very contrary of that love and fear of God required by the first two of the Ten Commandments. Similarly (30:6) circumcision of the heart is spoken of as a necessary condition of loving God; and on the other hand the epithet “uncircumcised” is applied to the heart, lips, etc. (Lev. 26:41; Jer. 4:4; Ezek. 44:9; Acts 7:51, etc.), to denote the native incapacity of the members of the body for God’s service. The language associated with circumcision in the Bible distinguishes the use made of this rite in the Jewish religion from that found among certain heathen nations. Espin.

Circumcise your heart. A plain proof from God himself that this precept pointed out spiritual things: and that the object of the Divine commandment was the purification of the soul; without which all forms and ceremonies are of no avail. Loving God with all the heart, soul, mind, and strength, the heart being circumcised to enable them to do it, was from the beginning the end, design, and fulfilment of the whole Law. A. C.—Wherefore, the prophets frequently taunt the transgressors of the Law by calling them uncircumcised, although they bore the visible sign in their flesh. When Moses exhorts them to sanctify themselves to God, he reasons from the nature and use of the sign, whereby they professed themselves to be his chosen people. In the second clause there is an elegant metaphor, of frequent occurrence, taken from oxen; for since the oxen which quietly offer their necks to the yoke are easily subdued to obedience, those are said to be

“stiff-necked” which are fierce and obstinate in their nature. Calv.

11: 1-32. Moses here renews his exhortation to obedience, enforced by regard to their experience of God’s dealings with them in Egypt and in the wilderness, and by consideration of God’s promises and threatenings. The blessing and the curse are set before them consequent on the keeping or the transgressing of the Law. W. L. A.

1. The representations of the Divine character in the earlier part of the Bible are essentially identical with those in the later. Nothing shows this more plainly than the fact that the true worshippers of God under the Old Testament showed no less confidence in him than the more privileged worshippers under the New, and that the principle by which this feeling was elicited was identical in every dispensation. Throughout the Pentateuch, especially in Deuteronomy, there is an evident purpose by an exhibition of God’s love to draw out love to him in return. It is this, indeed, which forms the real foundation for its oft-repeated command, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,” which is represented as the fulfilment of the Law and the sum of all God’s requirements. D. M.—Observe the connection of these two: Thou shalt love the Lord, and keep his charge: since love will work in obedience, and that only is acceptable obedience which flows from a principle of love. H.

2-6. There could not be a better way to keep the children of Israel in their integrity toward God than by frequently putting them in mind and fixing in their memory the history of all the miracles which he had wrought for them, from the time of their being in Egypt to their being in a triumphant condition in the land of Canaan: in which they had been eye-witnesses of more and greater miracles than all the world besides had been acquainted with from the time of the deluge. All that he expected from them for all his mercies was that they would acknowledge him their God, depend upon him, and not have recourse to other gods. Clarendon.

7-9. Thus from what they themselves had witnessed does Moses admonish the elder members of the congregation, summoning them to recognize in that the purpose of God to discipline and train them, that so they might keep his commandments and be strengthened in soul and purpose to go in and possess the land, and to live long therein. W. L. A.—The educative process by which God aimed at converting the hordes who left Egypt into a nation of brave, free, God-fearing, self-respecting, obedient men and women, blended deliverance with judgment on their enemies; loving-kindness in the bestowal of mercies, with severe chastisements in cases of rebellion; attention to their necessities, with frequent exposure to adversity, and consequent trial of their faith and patience. They had been put to school with the Almighty as their Teacher; their lesson-book was the whole extraordinary series of occurrences in Egypt and the desert; the end of the training was to form them to obedience. Orr.

God meant much in bringing them to pass, and they should mean much in the use they made of them (verses 8, 9). If they laid them to heart and acted out the lessons they were designed to teach, they would continue in the land which God had assigned to them. The reference in the phrase, “that ye may prolong your days in the land,” is to Israel’s continuance as a nation. National continuance dependent on national obedience, is the one truth most frequently named in the exhortations of Israel’s Lawgiver. All this has a present-day application to the people of God now. C. C.

10-12. “For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out.” The physical features of Palestine present a striking contrast to those of the land of bondage. A widely extending plain forms the cultivated portion of Egypt, and on the greater part of this low and level country rain never falls. This natural want is supplied by the annual overflow of the Nile, and by artificial means from the same source, when the river has receded within its customary channel. The water is distributed in small channels or earthen conduits, simple in construction, worked by the foot, and formed with a mattock by the gardener who directs their course, and which are banked up or opened, as occasion may require, by pressing in the soil with the foot. Thus was the land watered in which the Israelites had dwelt so long. Jamieson.

The absolute necessity of irrigation, and the nature of the irrigation, implied in the expression, “where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot,” receive illustration from the pictures in the tombs, which show us the fields surrounded by broad canals, and intersected everywhere by cuttings from them, continually diminishing in size, until at last they are no more than rills banked up with a little mud, which the hand or “foot” might readily remove and replace, so turning the water in any direction that might be required by the cultivator. G. R.

How beautifully exact is the contrast drawn by Moses between Palestine and Egypt; representing the latter as a flat country, and as a country favored of God only through a portion of the year—during the overflow of the Nile—and requiring to be laboriously irrigated during the rest of the year; whereas Palestine is an undulating country, and a country watched over by a perpetual Providence, receiving from time to time, as it needs, rain from the skies. The force of the contrast between Egypt and Palestine here described, and the contrast as it must have been felt by those who all their lives had known only the flat country of Egypt, can be imagined by the modern traveller who visits Palestine after Egypt. Hills and valleys never made such an impression on me as when I came into the holy land after having been three months in Egypt. N. C. B.—It is the Egypt of Sethos I., Rameses I. and II., and of Meneptah that has left its indelible impression on the Pentateuch. The nearly two score references to it by name in the Book of Deuteronomy alone are of unmistakable significance. In eleven only of the thirty-four chapters do we fail to find them. They abound equally in every part—laws as well as history. More than half the references are to Israel’s deliverance and the signal manner of it. The next largest number are to the wonders wrought upon Pharaoh. Others are to the fact of the hard servitude, the homelessness, and the oppression of Israel. Four make mention of what kind of a land Egypt had been found, its evil diseases, and its methods of agriculture. Could anything, for example, be more true to nature or more picturesque than this: “For the land of which thou goest to take possession is not like the land of Egypt, whence ye are come out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot as a garden of herbs” (11:10)? Two passages make tender allusion to the circumstances that attended the going of Jacob into Egypt, and two contain terrifying ones to a possible future thraldom there. How abundant this testimony, and how inexplicable on the supposition that our book was written at any time between the reign of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat and the reforms of King Josiah? Moreover, it is of one uniform character. Selected out, a shred here and a shred there, from the entire web, there is no dissimilarity of color or texture. It is a Shemitic fabric, woven thick with threads of Egyptian memories. E. C. B.

14. The rain in its season, the former rain and the latter rain. By the former rain we are to understand that which fell in Judea about October, when they sowed their seed; this served to moisten and prepare the ground for the vegetation of the seed. The latter rain fell about April, when the corn was well grown up, and served to fill the ears and render them perfect. Rain rarely fell in Judea at any other seasons than these. If the former rain were withheld or not sent in due season, there could be no vegetation; if the latter rain were withheld or not sent in its due season, there could be no full corn in the ear, and consequently no harvest. Of what consequence then was it that they should have their rain in due season! God, by promising this provided they were obedient, and threatening to withhold it should they be disobedient, shows that the very rain of heaven falls by particular direction, and the showers are regulated by an especial Providence. A. C.

15-17. “I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle.” Undoubtedly the special blessing of the former and the latter rain was one principal cause of the extraordinary fertility of Canaan in ancient times. That blessing was promised to the Israelites as a temporal reward for their fidelity to the national covenant. It was threatened to be withdrawn on their disobedience or apostasy; and most signally is the execution of that threatening seen in the present sterility of Palestine. Mr. Lowthian, an English farmer, who was struck during his journey from Joppa to Jerusalem by not seeing a blade of grass, where even in the poorest localities of Britain some wild vegetation is found, directed his attention particularly to the subject, and pursued the inquiry during a month’s residence in Jerusalem. “Most clearly,” says he, “did I perceive that the barrenness of large portions of the country was owing to the cessation of the early and latter rain, and that the absence of grass and flowers made it no longer the land (verse 9) flowing with milk and honey.” Jamieson.

22-25. If they were sedulous to keep God’s commandments, and faithfully adhered to him, loving him and walking in all his ways, he would drive out before them the nations of the Canaanites, and cause them to possess the territory of nations greater and mightier than themselves. Every place on which the soles of their feet should tread should be theirs—i.e., they had but to enter the land to become possessors of it. This is more exactly defined as restricted to the land the boundaries of which are given—from the Arabian desert on the south to Lebanon on the north, and from the river Euphrates on the east to the Mediterranean on the west. W. L. A.—Euphrates, which was on the East, to the uttermost sea, the Mediterranean, which lay westward of the promised land. This promise, notwithstanding the many provocations of the Israelites, was fulfilled in the time of Solomon, for “he reigned over all the kings from the river (Euphrates) even unto the land of the Philistines, and to the border of Egypt.” A. C.

26-32. Moses, in conclusion, refers to the blessing and the curse consequent on the observance or the transgression of the Law, and prescribes that when they had entered on possession of the land the blessing should be proclaimed from Mount Gerizim, and the curse from Mount Ebal. W. L. A.

27,28. A blessing, and a curse.** This blessing and this curse are here represented as suspended respectively upon the obedience and disobedience of the people. And it is observable that the whole historical part of the Old Testament witnesses the truth of this, that God blessed or cursed them according as they kept or violated his laws. Patrick.—He sums up all his arguments for obedience in two words, the blessing and the curse—that is, the rewards and the punishments as they stand in the promises and the threatenings, which are the great sanctions of the Law taking hold of hope and fear, those two handles of the soul by which it is caught, held, and managed. These two, the blessing and the curse, he explained that they might know them; he enumerated the particulars contained both in the blessing and in the curse, that they might see the more fully how desirable the blessing was, and how dreadful the curse. He confirmed them that they might believe them; made it evident to them by the proofs he produced of his own commission, that the blessing was not a fool’s paradise, nor the curse a bugbear, but that both were real declarations of the purpose of God concerning them. He charged them to choose which of these they would have. They and we are plainly told on what terms we stand with Almighty God. If we be obedient to his laws, we may be sure of a blessing. If we be disobedient, we may be as sure of a curse. Say ye to the righteous (for God has said it, and all the world cannot unsay it) that it shall be well with them: but woe to the wicked, it shall be ill with them. H.

Proceed upon the line of obedience, and you come to blessing; proceed along the line of disobedience, and a curse is the inevitable necessity—not a threatening, not an exhibition of fretful vengeance, but a spiritual necessity: a curse follows evil-doing, not as an arbitrary punishment, but as the effect, which can never be changed, of a certain, positive, operating cause. J. P.—The fire that does not melt, hardens. To know God’s will and not to do it, inflicts unspeakable mischief upon the soul. Resistance of inward convictions begets callosity of heart, darkening of the understanding, and enslavement of the will. No blacker curse can enwrap a man than this. D. D.—The decision to which God summons us involves the alternative of a blessing and a curse. That was what it came to then, and it is the same still. Blessing or curse; life or death. Whether God is to be our God, blessing us, renewing our inward life, enriching us with his Spirit, bestowing on us grace here and glory hereafter; or whether we are to live beneath his frown, withering up under it in body and soul, and vanishing at last into outer darkness. The issue of one is death, of the other life everlasting. Orr.

29,30. Thou shalt put the blessing; thou shalt give forth, utter, announce, proclaim. The two mountains named stand opposite to each other, with a valley between, about two hundred yards broad at the widest part, in which stood the town of Shechem, now Nablus. They were selected for the purpose mentioned, doubtless, because of their relative position, and probably also because they stand in the centre of the land both from north to south, and from east to west. W. L. A.

The mountains Gerizim and Ebal rise in steep walls of rock immediately out of the valley of Sichem, the present Nablus, about eight hundred feet high on each side. Each of the mountains has a table land which affords room to a considerable number of men. Gert.

ONE CENTRAL SANCTUARY. LAW RESPECTING THE KING: CHOSEN OF GOD AND APPROVED BY THE PEOPLE; AN ISRAELITE, NOT A FOREIGNER; SHALL NOT MULTIPLY HORSES, WIVES, TREASURE; SHALL READ AND OBSERVE THE LAW.