Numbers 27

The command to divide the land among the people “according to the number of the tribes of their fathers,” suggests the petition of the daughters of Zelophehad now brought before Moses (verses 1-6); and the decision in this case leads to a general enactment respecting the right of inheritance when a man died and left only daughters behind him. This law is afterward supplemented by certain restrictions as to the marriage of such heiresses (36). It is obvious that these successive enactments grew out of emergencies which presented themselves when the questions connected with the taking possession of Canaan came actually to be encountered. Espin.

A very interesting case arose on the promulgation of the land law which should govern the new settling of the country. It was the case of four daughters of a father who left no son to perpetuate the name of his family, and, of course, therefore, under the general rule, this family would receive no inheritance. The daughters, with true filial regard for the memory of their father and reverence for the name of his family, but, higher than all, with an abiding faith in the covenant of Jehovah with Abraham that the promised land would come into actual possession of the covenant people; and, therefore, with an earnest desire to share in the inheritance, came before Moses and the great court of the congregation and stated their case. S. R.—The singular case of these women caused an additional law to be made to the civil code of Israel, which satisfactorily ascertained and amply secured the right of succession in cases of inheritance. The law, which is as reasonable as it is just, stands thus: 1. On the demise of the father, the estate goes to the sons. 2. If there be no son, the daughters succeed. 3. If there be no daughter, the brothers of the deceased inherit. 4. If there be no brethren or paternal uncles, the estate goes to the brothers of his father. 5. If there be no grand uncles or brothers of the father of the deceased, then the nearest a kin succeeds to the inheritance. Beyond this fifth degree the law does not proceed, because, as the families of the Israelites were kept distinct in their respective tribes, there must always be some who could be called kinsmen, and were really such, having descended without interruption from the patriarch of the tribe. A. C.

Nu. 27 : 12. Though Moses was a servant of the Lord, a faithful servant, yet once he rebelled against God’s commandment, and failed in his duty; and though a very honorable servant, and highly favored, yet he shall hear of his miscarriage, and all the world shall hear of it, too, again and again; for God will show his displeasure against sin, even in those that are nearest and dearest to him. Those that are in reputation for wisdom and honor have need to be constantly careful of their words and ways, lest at any time they say or do that which may be a diminution either to their comfort or to their credit, or both, a great while after. H.—The time will soon arrive when the great servant of the Lord shall depart this life. That his death may not be altogether unexpected either to himself or to the people, and that he may complete the whole commission laid on him by God in respect to them, God solemnly apprises him of his approaching death and reminds him of his former sin. Gerl.

13. Thou shalt be gathered to thy people.** Moses had seen how easily and cheerfully Aaron had put off the priesthood first, and then the body; let not Moses therefore be afraid of dying, it was but to be gathered to his people, as Aaron was gathered. Thus the death of our near and dear relations should be improved by us as an encouragement to us to think of death without terror; it is but to die as such and such died if we live as they lived; and their end was peace, they finished their course with joy; why then should we fear any evil in that valley? H.

De. 3:23-25. The whole of this prayer of Moses is very characteristic. The longing to witness further manifestations of God’s goodness and glory, and the reluctance to leave unfinished an undertaking which he had been permitted to commence, are striking traits in his character. Espin.

Moses remembered the time when he had by prayer prevailed with God to recede from the declarations which he had made of his wrath against Israel (Ex. 32:14). And why might he not hope in like manner to prevail for himself? Let me go over and see the good land. How pathetically does he speak of Canaan, that good land, that goodly mountain! Though Moses, being one of the wrestling seed of Jacob, did not seek in vain, yet he had not the thing itself which he sought for. God may accept our prayers and yet not grant us the very thing we pray for.

26. God put an honor upon his prayer, in directing him not to insist upon his request. Speak no more to me of this matter. It intimates that God takes such a pleasure in the prayer of the upright that it is no pleasure to him to give a denial to it. H.—Yet part of the prayer was answered. Moses was permitted to see, though not to tread the good land. B.

It is remarkable how often saints who have spent their strength on some great Christian enterprise, and earnestly desired to see it accomplished before their departure, have been denied this gratification. Moses did not cross the Jordan; David did not see the temple, nor Daniel the return, nor John the Baptist the manifestation of Christ’s glory. Yet to all those saints there was granted some such view as that which gladdened the eye of Moses on Nebo. He who knows the hearts knew how dear to Moses’s heart was the good of Israel. Binnie.

Nu. 27:15-17. It is touching to see how meekly Moses received the sentence. Faithful to the end in his stewardship over God’s house, his chief concern was that God would appoint a suitable successor, so “that the congregation of the Lord be not as sheep which have no shepherd.” A. E.—This is a beautiful expression, and shows us in what light Moses viewed himself among this people. He was their shepherd—he sought no higher place; he fed and guided the flock of God under the direction of the Divine Spirit, and was faithful in all his Master’s house. To this saying of Moses our Lord alludes (Matt. 9:36). A. C.—This request was met by the command to take Joshua, whom we have met already on several occasions as his minister, and to set him apart as his successor before the high-priest and before the people. And so, having been freed from all anxiety on the score of the leadership of the tribes, he made haste to put everything else in order, in anticipation of his death. How diligently he labored with that end in view will appear from the fact that the entire Book of Deuteronomy belongs to the closing days of the great Lawgiver’s life. W. M. T.

18. He must ordain him; lay thine hand upon him. This was done in token of Moses’s transferring the government to him, as the laying of hands on the sacrifice put the offering in the place and stead of the offerer; also in token of God’s conferring the blessing of the Spirit upon him, which Moses obtained by prayer. It is said (De. 34:9) Joshua was full of the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him. H.—Well doth Joshua (Jesus) succeed Moses. The very acts of God of old were allegories: where the Law ends, there the Saviour begins; we may see the land of promise in the Law; only Jesus the mediator of the New Testament can bring us into it. So was he a servant of the Law that he supplies all the defects of the Law to us: he hath taken possession of the promised land for us; he shall carry us from this wilderness to our rest. Bp. H.

20,21. Though thus recognized as Moses’s successor, divinely commissioned to bring the children of Israel into the promised land, he was not to be Moses’s equal. It was only “some” of his “honor” that he was to put upon him. There was one point in which his inferiority was very strongly marked. Moses enjoyed unrestricted personal intercourse with God, “face to face.” This privilege was denied to Joshua. Eleazar, the high-priest, was to be his medium of communication with God. Joshua was to bring his matters to the priest, and he was to inquire of God for him, through the ordinary means of obtaining the knowledge of God’s will. E. V.

22. Moses did as the Lord commanded him. In this we see the great integrity, the sincere humility and self-denial of Moses, that he readily submitted to have the government of Israel translated from his own family and tribe to another who was of the tribe of Ephraim. By this means his own children were reduced to a mean condition; being not so much as priests, but mere Levites. This demonstrates that he acted not from himself, because he acted not for himself; but was contented to have the supreme authority placed where God pleased, both in Church and State; and to leave his own family in inconsiderable employment. This shows him to have had a principle which raised him above all other law-givers; who always took care to advance their own families, and establish them in some share of that greatness which they themselves possessed. This likewise shows that the future rulers of this nation had no temptation to advance the credit of Moses beyond what it really was; since they were not descended from him, but were of other tribes. Bp. Patrick.

It had not been so much his praise if he had thus resigned his honor to a son of his own; but with his own hands to ordain Eleazar high-priest, and then Joshua, one of another tribe, chief ruler, while his own children had no prepreferment at all, but were left in the rank of common Levites; this was such an instance of self-denial and submission to the will of God, as was more his glory than the highest advancement of his family could have been; for it confirms his character as the meekest man upon earth, and faithful to him that appointed him in all his house. H.

Nu. 36 : 13. Close of the Book of Numbers. The conclusion of this whole book, referring to the latter part of it; these are the judgments which the Lord commanded in the plains of Moab, these foregoing ever since (ch. 26), most of which related to their settlement in Canaan, into which they were now entering. Whatever new condition God is by his providence bringing us into, we must beg of him to teach us the duty of it, and to enable us to do it, that we may do the work of the day in its day, of the place in its place. H.

We have borrowed the name of this book, as in former cases, from the Vulgate Latin, Deuteronomium, as the Vulgate has done from the Greek version of the Septuagint Deuteronomion, which is a compound term literally signifying the second law, because it seems to contain a repetition of the preceding laws, from which circumstance it has been termed by the Rabbins mishneh, the iteration, or doubling. It appears that both these names are borrowed from ch. 17 : 18, where the king is commanded to write him a copy of this Law; the original is mishneh ha-torah, a repetition, or doubling of the Law; which the Septuagint have translated this second Law; which we properly enough translate a copy of the Law. In Hebrew, like the preceding books, it takes its name from its commencement, ELLEH HA-DEBAREEM, these are the words; and in the best Rabbinical Bibles its running title is SEPHER DEBAREEM, the book of debareem, or the book of the words. Our Saxon ancestors termed it the after Law.

The Book of Deuteronomy contains an account of what passed in the wilderness from the first day of the eleventh month of the fortieth year after the departure of the Israelites from Egypt, to the seventh day of the twelfth month of the same; making in the whole a history of the transactions of exactly five weeks, the months of the Jews being lunar. The history is continued about seven days after the death of Moses; for he began to deliver his first discourse to the people in the plains of Moab, the first day of the eleventh month of the fortieth year (ch. 1 : 3), and died on the first day of the twelfth month of the same year, aged one hundred and twenty years. As the Israelites were now about to enter into the promised land, and many of them had not witnessed the different transactions in the wilderness, to impress their hearts with a deep sense of their obligation to God and to prepare them for the inheritance which God had prepared for them, Moses here repeats the principal occurrences of the forty years, now almost elapsed. A. C.

As we have it, the Pentateuch is rounded and complete; it is a living unity; and to separate its parts is to mutilate and mangle it. In Genesis we have the soil and the seed; in the historical part of Exodus we have the stem; in the prophetic portion of the same book, in the priestly Book of Leviticus, and in the kingly Book of Numbers, we have the threefold development of the single stem as it branches out into three main limbs, one going right up from the central stem, and therefore finding a place in the same Book of Exodus, and the other two spreading out on the right hand and on the left; in the closing book we have the blossoms and the fruit, not, however, actually gathered, for it is a prophetic book, but the thought and idea of that fruit in the mind of Moses, who looked forward to the gathering of it after the people had come into the land to which the Lord was leading them. J. M. G.

And now, with the solemnity of death just before him, Moses proceeds in three great speeches to Israel to recapitulate the story of the deliverance and the journey, to restate the chief provisions of the Law, and to adapt its several provisions to the new and settled condition upon which they were now about to enter. These three addresses, together with an inspired ode and a prophetic blessing at the close, constitute the Book of Deuteronomy. The first address, extending to ch. 4 : 40, is of a hortatory character, reminding Israel of their continued rebellions against God and of his goodness and mercy toward them. The second and longest address extends from ch. 5 to 26, and contains a practical exposition of the Ten Commandments as the basis of all morality. He takes the first table of the Law and deduces from it the chief truths which should govern our relations to God. Then, in ch. 12, he proceeds to consider man in his social relations, and supplements the precepts of the previous books by the addition of many special regulations and the application of many of the former enactments to the altered circumstances of Israel in a settled state. In the third discourse, extending from ch. 27 to ch. 30, inclusive, he proceeds to set before them the blessings and the curses which will follow upon obedience and disobedience. S. R.—The remainder of the book, containing the thirty-first and three following chapters, was probably added to the rest by Joshua or some other duly authorized prophet or leader of the people after the death of Moses. The three addresses, which constitute seven eighths of the contents of Deuteronomy, reflect very clearly the circumstances which attended their delivery. They were spoken within the space of a very few days. By comparing De. 1 : 3 ; 34 : 8, and Josh. 4 : 19, it is evident that the delivery of these speeches, and likewise the utterance of the song and blessing, and the transaction of the closing events of Moses’s life, must all be placed chronologically in the first ten days of the eleventh month of the fortieth year. Espin.

Now the time had arrived for the people to pass over into the promised land, and for Moses to take leave of them. As Christ, the Mediator of the New Covenant, must leave his disciples even before they had received the promised Comforter and were endued with power from on high for their new life, in like manner must the Mediator of the Old Covenant take leave of his people without seeing them in possession of the promised land, or witnessing the fulfilment of God’s Word, and without being himself the accomplisher of it. But as Christ, before he went to his death, once more put his disciples in mind of what he had said to them in his farewell discourses, and confirmed them by the repetition of exhortations and warnings, in like manner did Moses clearly and emphatically lay before the people once more the whole counsel of God in the election of his people—how he had saved them by miracles out of Egypt, led them through the wilderness, made them to triumph over the Canaanites, as it was contained in the Law itself. The “repetition of the Law,” therefore, includes the memorial of these events, as well as here and there interweaves some new rules of conduct. Two somewhat long discourses of Moses open the whole book, which are written down by himself, as his last legacy of wisdom and love. Gerl.

The book repeats portions of the civil code and also of the religious system. It also gives a brief summary of the leading historical events of the exodus, of Sinai, of the golden calf, and of the murmurings of the fathers in the early years of their wanderings. This book was manifestly written within the last one or two years of Moses’s life, when the scenes of the desert wandering were drawing to a close. Moses stood before the people, almost the only old man of the nation at the age of one hundred and twenty years, while all the rest (Caleb and Joshua excepted) were under twenty when they came out of Egypt, and not exceeding sixty at the writing of this book. “The fathers—where were they!” Fallen in death; smitten with the swift judgments of the Almighty for their murmurings or cut off in middle life during their wanderings, to which they were doomed for their unbelief upon the report of the spies. The nation, as they stood before Moses, were truly his children. How had he borne them on his heart for forty years; given them line upon line of statute and of ritual; shaping their civil life and their religious life; watching every development of their character; devoted with the deepest love of his heart to their moral culture. The points of the history from Egypt and Sinai onward to that hour Moses brings forward here, with more or less expansion of the details for the sole purpose of enforcing their moral application. He makes those historic facts the basis of a series of exhortations to holy living, which testify how deeply he sympathized with God and with the true interests of his covenant people. Most solemnly does he exhort them against the great sin of their times—idolatry; and implore them to remember the God of their fathers; the Giver of all their mercies; the God of their national salvation. H. C.

Their aim is strictly hortatory; their style earnest, heart-stirring, impressive, in passages sublime, but throughout rhetorical; they keep constantly in view the circumstances then present and the crisis to which the fortunes of Israel had at last been brought. Moses had before him not the men to whom by God’s command he delivered the Law at Sinai, but the generation following which had grown up in the wilderness. Large portions of the Law necessarily stood in abeyance during the years of wandering; and of his present hearers many must have been strangers to various prescribed observances and ordinances, and those not unimportant ones. On their entry into settled homes in Canaan a thorough discharge of the various obligations laid on them by the covenant would become imperative; and it is to this state of things that Moses addresses himself. Espin.

In these thirty chapters we have the essence of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers; only conveyed in a tone of patriarchal affection and personal tenderness. Deuteronomy is a speech rather than a book, full of that anxious fidelity and fatherly desirousness which, knowing that it is a last opportunity, can hardly leave off, and which, after attempting to close, begin again in the spirit of the last sentences (ch. 30:15-20). Hamilton.—The Deuteronomic Code is adapted to the supposed occasion of a popular assembly. It is simple in style. The technical language of the preceding books disappears. Nearly all the laws of Deuteronomy, moreover, are marked by a peculiarly hortatory, rather than a merely prohibitive style. The “thou shalt not” of Mount Sinai has largely taken on a pathetic “O, do not” of expostulation and affectionate appeal. What is enjoined is not alone put upon the conscience of the individual Israelite: he is expected to lay it to heart. Each of the codes treats of the respect that is due to the poor and the helpless; but neither of the others to the extent that it is done in this. It is exactly in the spirit of Deuteronomy to enjoin that the back of the enfranchised slave be loaded down with gifts from granary and wine-press (15:14). It is just like it to call attention to the circumstance that the day-laborer “sets his heart” upon his earnings and to urge that he be paid the wage of the day on his day (24:15). There is evidently a purpose in all this. As it seems to us, it cannot lie far off from that other purpose which prompted Moses to rehearse to the people their own code in a language they could understand and to provide for this whole impressive scene just preceding, as we are told, the exit of the great Law-giver from the stage of Jewish history. Alike the style of speech and the spirit of it harmonize perfectly with the circumstances of the case as they are frankly recited in the eleven chapters that introduce the code of Deuteronomy and the eight that follow it. With those other circumstances in the days of King Josiah (n.c. 621), alleged to be the real historic setting of these laws, clearly and emphatically they do not harmonize. For strictly speaking this is not legislation. It is rather the admonition that follows the precept, Moses performing the office of prophet, after fulfilling so well the office of leader and legislator. It is the same voice that we hear speaking, but one grown somewhat tremulous with age and full of the tenderness of a farewell utterance. Mark the motives to which appeal is made. These are the thousands of Israel, fresh from a pilgrimage of forty years in the rough wilderness skirting the southern borders of Canaan. But they are addressed as any audience of Bible-educated people in similar circumstances might be addressed. The standard that is set for them—how far short does it come of that which is set for us by the teachers and preachers of to-day? If there be imperfectness of form, there is surely none in spirit. It is a spirit that we recognize as Divine. E. C. B.

Deuteronomy is what it purports to be, a repetition and modification, under other circumstances, of older laws, at the hands of him who himself had been their medium at first, and who therefore had the right to modify, as well as repeat, them. It begins with the sublimities of Sinai and ends with the inimitable solemnities of Nebo and Pisgah. It is no effort at historiography interjected with pious expressions, as some critics represent the later biblical narratives to be. It is in web and woof sacred history, narrated, as it was enacted, under the eye of God. The point of view from beginning to end is conspicuously that of a tender father of his people, emphatically Mosaic, in short, and nothing else. That it is genuine, and not assumed for effect, the latest results of biblical archaeology unite with the best results of literary criticism in strongly confirming. E. C. B.

The aspect and attitude of the writer, both retrospective and prospective, are those of one in the position of Moses at the time immediately before the entrance of the Israelites into Canaan. The book presents itself as Mosaic, and with this the entire costume and coloring of the book is in keeping. “There is nowhere even a single expression which is not suited to the position of Moses at that time; the standpoint throughout the whole book is the same; the situation is ever that of one on the borders of the promised land.” W. L. A.—He speaks to hearers neither wholly ignorant of the Law, nor yet fully versed in it. Much is assumed and taken for granted; again, on other matters, he goes into detail, knowing that instruction in them was needed. Sometimes, too, opportunity is taken of promulgating regulations which are supplementary or auxiliary to those of the preceding books; some few modifications suggested by longer experience or altered circumstances are now made, and the whole Mosaic system is completed by the addition of several enactments of a social, civil, and political nature. Espin.

Whoever penned the Book of Deuteronomy as amanuensis or historiographer, if its own clear and continually repeated testimony is to be accepted, Moses is responsible both for its substance and general form. It does not simply belong to his time; it actually originated with him. It is essentially the product of his divinely illuminated mind, is thoroughly penetrated by his spirit, and in outward arrangement still carries throughout the peculiar individual impression he left upon it. It would surprise one unacquainted with the subject to know how large a portion of the book is put directly into the mouth of the Lawgiver and is represented to be spoken by him. By actual enumeration of verses, it makes fifteen sixteenths of the whole matter. Out of nearly a thousand verses, there are but about sixty that are not in the form of direct address—that is, that do not purport to be the word-for-word utterances of Moses himself. This is not all. Not only is Moses made responsible for the substance of the Book of Deuteronomy, he is equally so for its literary construction and expression. It is declared that he wrote it (31:9, 24), and wrote it “to the end”—an addition of no slight importance. It is true that the term employed is “this Law,” “this book of the Law.” Still, there ought to be no uncertainty on that account, considering the form in which the work is cast, its own usage as it respects this very term, and the admitted unity of language and style throughout. The whole book up to this point is meant. E. C. B.

Nothing can be more probable than that the

Lawgiver, now in the presence of a new generation, when the wanderings in the wilderness had come to an end, when the Israelites were to cease to be a Bedouin tribe, and to become a settled agricultural people—that Moses, at the close of his mission and of his own life, should now reiterate in the most solemn and impressive way the sanctity of the Law, the penalties and the promises. There might be even modifications and corrections, a harmonizing of the provisions, and in some degree an adaptation to the change of circumstances. The wild desert would now be left behind; the promised land, with its settled life, expand more fully. Certainly in Deuteronomy the people seem to be in a transitional state. Strange if a late imaginative writer, or even compiler, should preserve this singular accuracy—if I may so say, this naturalness of detail. Even in Deuteronomy there is still great want of order and arrangement; the laws do not follow each other in natural sequence; they pass from one subject to another, apparently with no connection or relation to each other; they are more or less mingled with historical incidents. But all this seems to belong to an early inartificial period of composition; it is precisely that which a later writer or compiler would have labored to avoid. The ancient legislation would afford materials for a code, the later would have framed a code. Milman.

The difference between the Law of the central books and the Law of Deuteronomy, so far as the substance is concerned, is chiefly the following. In the first place, the latter expressly refers to the circumstances in which the Israelites would be placed in the promised land (see, for example, ch. 6:1, etc.); whereas the former is much more general in its character, and no special reference is made to circumstances which would not arise till they reached the borders of the land. And secondly, the Law of the central books is chiefly of a priestly character—is, in fact, properly the Law for the priestly and Levitical order. By far the greater number of its laws are laws for the priests—laws which it was not necessary that any should be thoroughly acquainted with, except the priests (and Levites). The Law of Deuteronomy is much less restricted in its purpose. Its precepts all relate to the nation as a whole; and therefore it passes over all such precepts and ordinances as it was unnecessary for any but the priests and Levites to be particularly acquainted with. K.

There is much more in the last book of the Pentateuch than in the preceding four—regarded as a ground and moral condition of the Hebrew people of that time; for it consists of a series of popular addresses, orally delivered; and these, by the calm majesty of the style throughout, by the remonstrant tone, by innumerable allusions to events and usages, carry with them a demonstration of historic verity which no ingenuous and cultured mind will fail to admit. The Israelite of that time was such that to him might be propounded, intelligently, the sublime theology and the rightful and truthful ethics of the Book of Deuteronomy; which have held their place, unrivalled, as institutes of religion, from age to age. What is our alternative on this ground? This book is either “from heaven,” in its own sense, or it is from man. If from heaven, then a great controversy reaches its conclusion, by admission of the opponent; but if from man, then the people among whom this theology, and these ethical principles, and these institutions spontaneously arose, and to whose actual condition they were adapted, were a people far advanced beyond any other, even of later times, in their religious conceptions, in their moral consciousness, in their openness to remonstrance, and their sensibility toward some of the most refined emotions of domestic and social life. Our question is, What were these people, or what had they become in consequence of their Egyptian sojourn? what in consequence of the discipline of the desert? What, upon a new generation, had been the influence of the Sinaitic Law, and of tabernacle worship, and of the tribune administration of social order? Prospective as were many of the Mosaic injunctions, social and ecclesiastical, the theology was ripe and entire, from the first; so were the ethical principles, and so was the worship. The generation which then reached maturity along with all of younger age, from infancy upward, were the product of this religious and social training. The Mosaic homilies are available as indirect, yet conclusive, evidence of a true theistic habitude of mind among the people of the Exodus. They must have been a people with whom there had been matured a settled usage of theistic terms, devout habitudes, and withal a diffused warmth of those social sentiments which are consequent upon and which are the proper results of an expansion of the domestic affections. I. T.

It must not be supposed, however, that this book is wholly a repetition of the history and the laws recorded elsewhere, with comments upon them and applications to the new state. There are some important additional historical statements and many important additions to the laws as previously recorded. The command of God to leave Horeb (De. 1:6, 7), the repentance of the Israelites when defeated by the Amalekites (ch. 1:45), the intercession of Moses for Aaron (ch. 9:20), are minor instances of additions to the historic record in Deuteronomy. There are also more important additions to the historical statements, such as the command prohibiting war with the Moabites and Ammonites and Edomites, and permitting Israel to buy of them food and water (ch. 2:4); the historical notice of the earlier inhabitants of Moab, Ammon, and Mount Seir (ch. 2:10, 23), the sixty fortified cities of Bashan and the king, who was a remnant of the giants (ch. 3:11), and the more extended account of the battle with the Amalekites (ch. 25:17). The additions to the Law recorded in Deuteronomy are still more extensive. Thus to the Law concerning cities of refuge (ch. 19:7); the appointment of one permanent place of worship (ch. 12:5); the removal of the restriction as to slaying the victims at the door of the tabernacle; the law of tithes (chs. 12:11, and 14:22); the law concerning false prophecy (ch. 12:5), etc. And so of many other precepts found in Deuteronomy, but not found in the previous records of the Law. S. R.

But these additions do not betray another and a later hand than that which gave the original code. They are one and all such as are supplementary or explanatory of earlier laws, and might well be suggested by a short experience of the working of those laws; or such as would have been premature or impracticable during the wandering in the wilderness, but became necessary when the people was about to settle down in Canaan. The occurrence of such enactments in Deuteronomy, and there first, is in thorough harmony with the time and circumstances set forth in the book itself as belonging to its composition. In like manner the alleged historical inconsistencies between this book and the earlier narrative are apparent only and not real; and the total omission of large portions of the Sinaitic legislation is easily intelligible when we bear in mind the purpose which the orator in Deuteronomy had in view. It is particularly to be noted that the laws passed over in this book are more especially those pertaining to the offices of the priests and Levites. And these are precisely the topics which it would be needless for one addressing the general assembly of the people to expound or insist upon. Espin.

With all its additions and modifications, the Deuteronomic Law is not a new legislation, or even a continuation of the preceding; it is the Sinaitic legislation enforced anew, and wherever necessary adapted to the circumstances which had emerged at the close of the forty years’ wandering. D. M.—More than seventy facts, recorded more fully in the previous history, are woven into the texture of this closing book of the Law. Nothing can be more spontaneous and natural than the way in which they are introduced. Some fresh particulars are added, but so naturally and in such agreement with the rest as to bespeak their own reality. Besides these historical references which link this book so closely with the whole previous history and disprove its later origin, its moral features and tone make the hypothesis of a forgery insufferable and monstrous to every mind which retains any spiritual instinct and has learned “to fear that great and terrible name, the Lord our God.” How real and earnest, how lofty and sublime is its tone of Divine authority, from first to last! How tender and delicate are its touches of human sympathy from the dying Lawgiver to the people he so dearly loved, and whom, for their sins even more than his own, he was forbidden to lead into the land of promise! Birks.

The Deuteronomist evidently had in mind, at least, nearly as extensive a code of laws as we possess in the priestly legislation. If this were not the case, it would be inconceivable that, with the exception of the Book of the Covenant, a popular address should be produced in which allusions were made to laws, but in which the laws themselves were not fully given. There are really no regulations in regard to priests and sacrifices in Deuteronomy. Hence it presupposes a code and one much fuller than the Book of the Covenant. If we accept the premises of modern criticism, we must also accept its conclusions. The Bible at once sinks to the level of other books. It is no longer God’s revelation to man. Its supernatural character is at once lost. The Old Testament ceases to be preparatory for Christianity as the religion of Divine revelation. There is no sin, and no need of a Saviour. From this point we can very readily accept the positions of a Haeckel, and deny the existence of a personal God. We cannot see any stopping-place. Curliss.

The alterations and modifications of the Law in Deuteronomy are in no way inconsistent with the old theory, that it was composed toward the close of the wanderings before the entrance into the holy land. Of these variations, some relate to a permanent place for the Divine worship, hereafter to be determined by God. This provision could not have been made during the wanderings. Some forbid idolatrous usages common among the tribes with whom they were or were about to be in contact; men wearing women’s clothes; worship of sacred trees, less common, no doubt, in the wilderness; laws about captive women and runaway slaves. These laws were especially necessary when war was about to begin. Some are modifications of ritual observances; tithes and first-fruits to the Levites, widows and orphans, not to the sanctuary; the slaughter of beasts (in Leviticus) before the door of the tabernacle, now (in Deuteronomy) anywhere. Strangers (Exodus and Leviticus) were bound to keep the whole law, now (in Deuteronomy) with certain exemptions. Some are more precise provisions for the administration of justice, being necessary for a settled people; the inhibition of man-stealing, not very likely in the wandering life; inheritance of elder sons. The simplicity of what may be called the prophet-law (De. 18) is singularly inconsistent with any later time, after schools of the prophets had been an historic institution, and during or after the great age not of one but of many prophets. All these discrepancies seem to me sufficiently accounted for by the change in the state and position and character of the people; from that when the original Law was delivered in the actual desert, and forty years after, when they had approached and were about to enter into Palestine. Milman.

That the character of the style and diction in this book deviates in various ways from that of the former ones, and that there is greater freedom and power in the flow of the narrative, is what we naturally expect to find when we take into view the purpose of the book, and the time in which Moses communicated its contents. It is the repetition of what had been before related, accompanied by impressive exhortations, promises, and threatenings, and rehearsed by Moses in the last two months of his life, to a people that had grown up under his eye, and with the land of promise in view. C. G. B.—The allegation so positively made that the very style of Deuteronomy betrays its late origin is arbitrary and baseless. No doubt the book is written in a very different manner from the preceding ones; yet the parallelisms between it and them both in ideas and expressions are neither few nor insignificant (cf. for instance De. 28 with Lev. 26 throughout). And the fact that the book consists mainly of three speeches addressed by Moses to the people in immediate view of his own death and their entrance into Canaan sufficiently explains its literary characteristics. Naturally the matter thus orally set forth is given in more sustained, flowing, and rhetorical language than would be employed when laws were to be promulgated, passing events chronicled, or ancient transactions, already perhaps enshrined in tradition or document, incorporated into a connected historical work. It is to be observed also that all the classes of archaisms, whether in vocabulary or grammatical forms, which have been pointed out as characteristic of the Hebrew of the Pentateuch (see Introduction to Pentateuch, pp. 18, 19) are found in Deuteronomy, and some of them frequently. Espin (Bib. Com.)

The style used in Deuteronomy answers to the changed circumstances at the close of the sojourn. The judgment on Korah, the Levite ringleader in rebellion, had made the deepest impression. Aaron had died, full of years and honor, second only to Moses in the reverence of the people, and Eleazar had succeeded in his stead. Phinehas, Eleazar’s son, had received the high approval of God and the promise of an everlasting priesthood. The house of Aaron were still few in number, and their honor for the present was secure; but the Levites were a tribe of many thousands. They were made to depend for their subsistence on the tithes and offerings of the people, and their honor and privilege needed new and strong safeguards after Moses was gone. This key explains the partial change of style in Deuteronomy, which no dual authorship can ever do. Moses first mentions the death of Aaron, and that Eleazar, his son, ministered in the priest’s office in his stead. After this he dwells mainly, if not entirely, on the privileges and duties of the whole priestly tribe. This feature of Deuteronomy, which has been alleged as a decisive proof of separate and later authorship, is really a sign of its historical truth and Mosaic origin. The relation to the history is of that delicate and real kind which no forger of later times could invent or observe. Birks.

Moses valued his opportunity too highly to spend his breath in repeating that which was so well known, nay, was daily before the eyes of the people, as the order of worship, the duties and emoluments of the priesthood and their assistants. From memory he calls, with remarkable freshness, as much as is necessary of the Israelitish history, just as it occurs to him at the time. He speaks from experience, emphasizes an old law, modifies it as the result of his observation through more than an entire generation, without thought or anxiety concerning the cross-examination which would arise as to the apparent differences between his reported speech and the existing documents. He throws out principles in bold outline, and speaks of tribes rather than individuals. He passes over Aaron, who is dead, with the briefest mention, although he does not thereby disparage his memory. His object is not eulogy. The tribe of Levi stands before him as the living embodiment of the priesthood. Hence he naturally speaks of the Levitical rather than of the Aaronite priests. Supposing the priestly law was already in existence, there was no object in his speaking of the priests as the sons of Aaron. It was rather natural in addressing, as it were, the nation, which was composed of twelve tribes, that he should connect the name of the tribe of Levi with that which gave it its honor and dignity, nay more, its very subsistence, the priesthood. As regards the authorship of Deuteronomy, we have, besides, the positive testimony that “Moses wrote this law,” not to speak of the strong personality which pervades the book. Of course, on Kuenen’s theory and that of other critics, we may believe that the author assumed the character of Moses for the sake of influence. But this is fatal to our belief that Deuteronomy is a divinely revealed book. The Christian experience very properly revolts from the idea that God could sanction the systematic fiction, “These be the words which Moses spoke unto all Israel,” and especially, “And Moses wrote this law,” as the medium of his revelation, if Moses did not write it, but some one else. The assertion that Moses wrote this book is too positive and its whole texture is too real and favorable to that authorship for us to accept an explanation which strikes at the very foundations of morality. That Moses should have foreseen the future woes of his people; that he should have anticipated the rise of the kingdom, and spoken accordingly; that he should speak of these things with prophetic certainty, can only be a stumbling-block to those who deny the possibility of a Divine revelation of the future. Cartiss.

The legislation of Deuteronomy was committed to writing from the first, but refers throughout to an earlier code, the covenant at Sinai, of which it is only the completion. There are nearly a hundred links of mutual correspondence—most various in their character—from a verbal repetition of the same law to supplemental developments of historical facts, or kindred laws where the principle is the same. But this earlier legislation, the central portion of the Pentateuch, is inseparably linked with the history of the desert, the sojourn in Egypt, the plagues, the Passover, and the exodus, which have gone before, and with the forty years in the wilderness which follow. And the allusions to these histories in Deuteronomy are in proportion not less numerous than to the Sinaitic legislation which intervenes. The coat may be said to be woven without seam from the beginning of Exodus to the end of Deuteronomy. Birks.

It must be added that Deuteronomy has in a singular manner the attestation of the apostles and of our Lord. Paul in Romans 10 and 15 argues from it at some length, and expressly quotes it as written by Moses; Peter and Stephen (Acts 3 : 22 ; 7 : 37) refer to the promise of “a prophet like unto” Moses, and regard it as given, as it professes to be, by Moses himself; our Lord, wielding “the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God” against the open assaults of Satan, thrice resorts to Deuteronomy for the texts with which he repels the tempter. Espin.

The Lord of glory himself has proclaimed that faith in his words and in the writings of Moses, his servant, stand and fall together. Whoever rejects Moses rejects also the words of Christ. The Law given by Moses and the grace and truth which have come by Jesus Christ form one twofold but harmonious message from the Creator, the Preserver, and the Judge of mankind. Birks.—To assert that he who is the truth believed Deuteronomy to be the work of Moses, and quoted it expressly as such, though it was in fact a forgery introduced into the world seven or eight centuries after the exodus, is in effect to impeach the perfection and sinlessness of his nature, and seems thus to gainsay the first principles of Christianity. Espin.

The Book of Deuteronomy has its truth and genuineness confirmed not only by the voice of our Lord and his apostles and the consenting testimony of the Jewish people in every age, but by the clearest signs of historical reality as the parting words of Moses. Its moral earnestness and pathos of appeal, its tone of holy reverence, its sublime and solemn grandeur, both in the opening exhortations and the song and blessing at the close, make the view which degrades it into a subtle and complicated forgery of some later age incredible, impossible, and monstrous. Most of the objections brought against it only turn, when fairly examined, into powerful evidences of its truth. The differences in style and diversities of statement, as compared with the earlier books, are such as any later forger would have been likely to have avoided with care, while they result naturally from the circumstances of the latest message of the Lawgiver before his own death. To this book of the Law, even more than the others, the warning of our Lord will clearly apply, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” Birks.

Deuteronomy, with its sermons and laws cannot have originated under Josiah, or, even earlier, under Manasseh. It is older than Isaiah; for not only Jeremiah, but Isaiah, Micah, Hosea, and Amos rest on Deuteronomy as a book of Divine revelation. The assertion that the prophecy does not imply the Law as antecedent is one of the greatest illusions of modern criticism. This assertion is confusing even in itself. For the prophets of the period of kings themselves celebrate Moses as a great prophet (compare Hos. 12 : 13 with Is. 63 : 11). F. Delitzsch.

Is this book an imposture of Jeremiah, or some unknown deceiver in Jeremiah’s time, or the genuine writing of “Moses, the man of God?” No middle ground is possible in this inquiry. If the discourses and parting words of Moses were real events, it seems certain that they would be recorded at once; and the Book of Deuteronomy, received by the Jews as a Divine message for at least twenty-three centuries, must be that record. If those discourses were not real, but invented long after, and ascribed to Moses and to God himself eight centuries after Moses’s death, then the whole book is a successful forgery by which the Church and the world have been long deceived. Viewed as history, it occupies only the eleventh month of the fortieth year. But the links are very numerous which bind it to the earlier histories. These are natural and impressive, when we view it as a genuine record of the words of Moses. But when it is ascribed to some forger of later date, or even of the age of Jeremiah, they involve such a combination of subtle invention with reckless and deliberate lying as to degrade the Law of God, the bright reflection of his perfect holiness, into nothing higher than a frightful masterpiece of Satanic falsehood. Birks.—Accepting the rationalistic hypothesis of the new criticism, Israel was either a religious development, an evolution, or it was a religious decadence, a failure. If it was a development up from low beginnings, then Moses is one difficulty. We cannot account for him. If it was a national declension and failure, then what shall we do with Christ and his words? Our Bible lies before us. What do we find therein?

Covenant, law, gospel; priest, prophet, Messiah. These stand in reciprocal relation. That relationship is not counter-destructive. Weddell.

Most probably the addresses which form the Book of Deuteronomy, and which were spoken to the people at the very close of Moses’s life, were left by him as separate documents, each written on its own roll of skin. And in a similar manner the song of Moses and the blessing of the tribes would each be copied upon a skin by itself. And it is exceedingly probable that Joshua, after the conquest of Canaan, gathered these records together, and himself added to them the account of the great Lawgiver’s death, excepting the last four verses. In them we have the solemn verdict of Ezra and the men of the great synagogue, as to the character and rank of Moses. In the grand roll of prophets who had ennobled their nation, not even an Elijah or an Isaiah had equalled the great “servant of Jehovah,” with whom God had spoken face to face. When the canon of Holy Scripture closed, the words of Moses in De. 18:15, 18 were, according to their deliberate judgment, still unfulfilled. R. P. S.

The books of the Pentateuch are to be taken as the memorials of the birth—first, of a people, and then—of a NATION. No memorials altogether comparable to these have come down from ancient to modern times. In so far as these documents are in analogy with parallel documents, they work into adjustment with all that we know of Oriental antiquity, and of human nature everywhere. But in so far as they differ from all such instances, the difference is a difference available in proof of their reality, their genuineness, their authenticity: it is so by reason of the gravity and exactness of the matters at large, and of the matters in detail. A perusal of these books—the so-called Mosaic archives—carries, in minds not debilitated by sophisms, an irresistible conviction of truthfulness: there is a majesty here, before which we bow. There is nothing in this world, there is nothing in all history that is real, if there is not in these books the various, yet coherent and consecutive memorials and the authentic documents of the birth of a nation, as to its civil and its religious institutions. I. T.

FIRST PARTING ADDRESS: EXORDIUM; DISTRICTS OF THE LAND OF CANAAN; EXHORTATIONS TO OBEDIENCE, BASED UPON JEHOVAH’S GRACIOUS DISCLOSURES AND DEALINGS.

De. 1 1 THESE be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel beyond Jordan in the wilderness, in the Arabah over against Suph, between Paran, and Tophel, and Laban, and Hazeroth, and Di-zahab. And it came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spake unto the children of Israel, according unto all that the LORD had given him in commandment unto them; after he had smitten Sihon the king of the Amorites, which dwelt in Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, which dwelt in Ashtaroth, at Edrei: beyond Jordan, in the land of Moab, began Moses to declare this law, saying, The LORD our God spake unto us in Horeb, saying, Ye have dwelt long enough in this mountain: turn you, and take your journey, and go to the hill country of the Amorites, and unto all the places nigh thereunto, in the Arabah, in the hill country, and in the lowland, and in the South, and by the sea shore, the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the LORD swore unto your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them.

4 1 And now, O Israel, hearken unto the statutes and unto the judgements, which I teach you, for to do them; that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the LORD, the God of your fathers, giveth you. Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you. Your eyes have seen what the LORD did because of Baal-peor; for all the men that followed Baal-peor, the LORD thy God hath destroyed them from the midst of thee. But ye that did cleave unto the LORD your God are alive every one of you this day.

5. Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgements, even as the LORD my God commanded 6 me, that ye should do so in the midst of the land whither ye go in to possess it. Keep there- fore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understand- 7 ing people. For what great nation is there, that hath a god so nigh unto them, as the LORD 8 our God is whensoever we call upon him? And what great nation is there, that hath statutes 9 and judgements so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day? Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes saw, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life; but make them known unto thy chil- 10 dren and thy children’s children; the day that thou stoodest before the LORD thy God in Horeb, when the LORD said unto me, Assemble me the people, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children. 14 And the LORD commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgements, that ye 15 might do them in the land whither ye go over to possess it. Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of form on the day that the LORD spake unto you in 16 Horeb out of the midst of the fire: lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image 17 in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast that is on 18 the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the heaven, the likeness of any thing 19 that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth: and lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the host of heaven, thou be drawn away and worship them, and serve them, 20 which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all the peoples under the whole heaven. But the LORD hath taken you, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be unto 21 him a people of inheritance, as at this day. Furthermore the LORD was angry with me for your sakes, and sware that I should not go over Jordan, and that I should not go in unto that 22 good land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance: but I must die in this 23 land, I must not go over Jordan: but ye shall go over, and possess that good land. Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of the LORD your God, which he made with you, and make you a graven image in the form of any thing which the LORD thy God hath for- 24 bidden thee. For the LORD thy God is a devouring fire, a jealous God. 25 When thou shalt beget children, and children’s children, and ye shall have been long in the land, and shall corrupt yourselves, and make a graven image in the form of any thing, and 26 shall do that which is evil in the sight of the LORD thy God, to provoke him to anger: I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that ye shall soon utterly perish from off the land whereunto ye go over Jordan to possess it; ye shall not prolong your days upon it, but 27 shall utterly be destroyed. And the LORD shall scatter you among the peoples, and ye shall 28 be left few in number among the nations, whither the LORD shall lead you away. And there ye shall serve gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, 29 nor eat, nor smell. But if from thence ye shall seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find him, 30 if thou search after him with all thy heart and with all thy soul. When thou art in tribula- tion, and all these things are come upon thee, in the latter days thou shalt return to the LORD 31 thy God, and hearken unto his voice: for the LORD thy God is a merciful God; he will not fail thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers which he sware unto 32 them. For ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and from the one end of heaven unto the other, whether there 33 hath been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it? Did ever people 34 hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live? Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your 35 eyes? Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest know that the LORD he is God; there is 36 none else beside him. Out of heaven he made thee to hear his voice, that he might instruct thee: and upon earth he made thee to see his great fire; and thou heardest his words out of 37 the midst of the fire. And because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose their seed after 38 them, and brought thee out with his presence, with his great power, out of Egypt; to drive out nations from before thee greater and mightier than thou, to bring thee in, to give thee

39 their land for an inheritance, as at this day. Know therefore this day, and lay it to thine heart, that the LORD he is God in heaven above and upon the earth beneath: there is none 40 else. And thou shalt keep his statutes, and his commandments, which I command thee this day, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee, for ever.

It is the eleventh month of the fortieth year. It is the eleventh hour of the Mosaic Era. The great Lawgiver and Leader is about to be “gathered to his fathers;” yet “his eye is not dim, nor his natural force abated;” and of this he gives abundant evidence in the three long and spirited addresses which he delivers to the people as his parting charge. In these addresses he urges the people, with all the force of his mighty nature, to be mindful of the Lord that has redeemed them, to be obedient to his Law, and faithful to his covenant. They are, in fact, a powerful practical application of the Law which had been given on Mount Sinai. Hence the name given to the book which records these addresses: “Deuteronomy,” the second Law, J. M. G.

1 : 1-5. In these verses we have the inscription and general introduction to the book, announcing the contents of the book, the author of it, the parties whom he addressed, and the time and place of his addresses. W. L. A.—There are abundant, and abundantly satisfactory, grounds for maintaining the literary and material unity of the Book of Deuteronomy. It is a remarkable example of it in its outward form. One might be safely challenged to point to another book of the Bible that is more so. The few verses of introduction are singularly appropriate (1 : 1-5) and so detailed as it respects dates and places, amounting almost to a species of literary triangulation, that it scarcely offers a choice between a theory of honest history and egregious, not to say impossible, invention. It tells just where the Israelites were when these addresses were uttered, fixing the spot, as I have said, with little less than geometric exactitude by references to half a dozen other places in the neighborhood. It gives the year of the wilderness wanderings, the month, and even the day of the month, in noticeable, though clearly undesigned, coincidence with other important chronological data of the history. The crossing of the Jordan was on the tenth of Abib of the following year (Josh. 4 : 19). The previous month had been spent in mourning for the departed chief (De. 34 : 8). Hence ten, full, solemn days are left for the delivery of the great discourses of our book. The whole is popular, hortatory, retrospective, and spiritually elevating, nowhere falling below the key struck in the opening announcement: “These are the words which Moses spake unto all Israel.” E. C. B.

This exordium to Deuteronomy is remarkable. It states that this book is not, like the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, a direct narration or journal of the various events which occurred to the Jewish legislator and nation from the commencement of their deliverance from Egypt; but that it is a recapitulation of everything which Moses thought it necessary to notice, in addressing the people shortly before his death, at the close of the forty years during which he had acted as their lawgiver and judge. Graves.

1. Beyond Jordan.** The words mean, taken by themselves, “at the crossing of the Jordan.” Used alone they point neither to the east nor the west side. Just what is meant in any given instance is a matter which can be determined only by the context. The writer of this book, in fact, employs the words in the very same passage, intelligibly and with clear intention, to mean now the east, and again the west, side of the Jordan (3 : 8, 20). Conscious of the ambiguity of the phrase, he uses it in no single case where misunderstanding might arise that he has not himself guarded against it. He says, “on this side Jordan in the plain over against the Red Sea;” or, “on this side Jordan in the land of Moab;” or, “toward the sunrising;” or, “by the way where the sun goeth down.” Every passage (of ten) is thus rigorously insured against the possibility of error by means of an added explanation, excepting one (3 : 20), which does not need it. How absurd, in these circumstances, the ado that has been made, and continues to be made, over these words by critics, learned and unlearned, who seem never to have thoroughly examined the connection in which they stand. E. C. B.

The wilderness. This term is used of any extensive district not occupied by inhabitants or subjected to culture; hence of vast prairies or pasture-lands, as well as of places properly desert and desolate. It here denotes the grassy plains or downs on the east and southeast of the Jordan, in the land of Moab (verse 5). In the plain; in the Arabah. This is properly the whole of that remarkable depression which stretches from the source of the Jordan on to Akabah, or the Elanitic Gulf; but here it is only that part of it which extends from the south end of the Dead Sea. This part still bears the name of the Arabah, the northern part being known as the Ghor. W. L. A.

In the second verse, elsewhere cited, Moses alludes to the fact that only eleven days’ journey intervened between Sinai and Kadesh-barnea. B.—Their natural route, had they been faithful and courageous, would have been from Horeb to Kadesh, close to Hormah, and not far from Beersheba. Their actual place was in the plains of Moab east of Jordan. The natural interval would have been only a fortnight or three weeks from Horeb to that southern border, where they would have begun at once their career of conquest. The interval of time actually spent had been thirty-nine years. How could Moses introduce this later repetition of the Law more impressively than by reminding them that their former rebellion had caused them nearly forty years of fruitless toil and bitter sorrow? What could be a more fit prelude to the cautions, warnings, and exhortations that are to follow? Birks.—3, 4. Here is intimated the time when the following addresses were delivered to the people. It was also after the destruction of Sihon and Og. This is significant. By the destruction of these kings, who sought to bar the access of the Israelites to the promised land, God had given proof that he would indeed fulfil his promise to his people, and had at once laid them under obligations to obedience, and given them encouragement to go forward on the course to which he had called them. The “he” here is Moses, who, at the command of God, had led the Israelites against Sihon and Og. 5. The locality is again described as beyond Jordan, and in the land of Moab. This designates the region elsewhere called Arboth Moab—the plains of Moab, the region on the east of the Jordan, opposite to Jericho, now known as the region of Kerak. W. L. A.

The first and introductory address of Moses to the people comprises the first chapter (from the sixth verse), the second and third chapters, with forty verses of the fourth chapter. The larger portion of this address, from the ninth verse of the first chapter to the thirteenth verse of the fourth chapter, is here omitted as containing a recapitulation of certain facts of the history which have been embodied in their orderly places in the previous narrative. B.

Districts Assigned in Canaan.

7. The different districts of the land of

Canaan are specified: The Arabah; the hill country of Judah; the shephelah, or lowland, the country lying between the mountain range and the Mediterranean Sea; the negeb, or southland (literally, dryness), the district which formed the transition from the desert to the cultivated land, extending from the south of the Dead Sea westward to Gaza, a vast prairie, for the most part pasture land; the seashore, or narrow strip of land on the coast of the Mediterranean from Joppa to Tyre (in the New Testament, “the coast of Tyre and Sidon”). The mention of Lebanon and the Euphrates is due to the fact that these were included in what God promised to Abraham and his seed. W. L. A.—In verse 10 of this chapter Moses tells them, “Ye are this day as the stars of heaven for multitude.” This was God’s promise to Abraham (Gen. 15:5, 6), and Moses affirms that it is now fulfilled. B.

Addressing the people on the very threshold of the promised land, Moses summarily recalls to them the manifold proofs they had experienced of the care and the faithfulness of God toward them, and the manifold instances of their own perverseness and rebellion. These their sins had shut them out during a whole generation from the inheritance covenanted to be given to their fathers. Espin.—Moses strives briefly, but very earnestly, to warn the people against the sins for which their fathers failed to enter the promised land, and to impress upon them the one simple lesson of obedience; that they might in their turn be ready to enter into the land. With this special object, he recapitulates the chief events of the last forty years in the wilderness, and especially those events which had the most immediate bearing on the entry of the people into the promised land. P. S.

4:2. Not add unto the word, neither diminish from it. The Law was to be kept as a complete whole; nothing was to be taken from it or added to it; it comprised the commandments of Jehovah, and therefore they were not only to do it as what Moses, their leader and Lawgiver, had enjoined, but to keep it as a sacred deposit, not to be altered or tampered with, and to observe it as what God their Sovereign had enacted for them. The dignity and worth of the Law are here asserted, and also its completeness as given by Moses. New laws and institutions appointed by God would, of course, have the same authority as those originally ordained by Moses; and such, it can hardly be doubted, were in point of fact under the Hebrew monarchy introduced by the prophets speaking in the name of God. The Law, nevertheless, was kept substantially entire. Even under the new dispensation the Law has not been abolished. Christ, as he himself declared, came not to destroy the Law and the prophets, but to fulfil them. W. L. A.—This prohibition preserved these books from any alteration since the time they were written. For the whole body of the people acknowledging their Divine authority, none of them dared to change anything either by addition or diminution. Of this there is a wonderful instance in the people that came out of Assyria, in the room of the Israelites, who were transported thither: these people, on coming to inhabit the country of Samaria, having received the Law of Moses, their posterity have kept it all along to this day as uncorrupted as the Jews themselves have done; although they were their mortal enemies, and have been exposed to all the changes and revolutions that can befall a nation, during the long interval of twenty-four hundred years. Allix.

4. Alive every one of you this day.** Either these words were uttered at the time indicated by “this day” or the statement is a fiction. These allusions are so numerous and precise that it may with justice be said, “If Deuteronomy is not the work of Moses, there is here the most exquisite of literary frauds, and that in an age which had not as yet acquired the art of transporting itself into foreign individualities and situations” (Hengst.). W. L. A.

5-8. I have taught you statutes and judgments. . . . Keep therefore and do them. What great nation hath statutes and judgments so righteous?** A modern jurist, a Frenchman and an infidel, observes, “Good right had Moses to challenge his Israelites. And what nation hath statutes like yours? a worship so exalted, laws so equitable, a code so complete? Compared with all the legislations of antiquity, none so thoroughly embodies the principles of everlasting and universal righteousness. Lycurgus wrote not for a people but for an army; it was a barrack which he erected not a commonwealth; and sacrificing everything to the military spirit, he mutilated human nature in order to crush it into armor. Solon, on the contrary, could not resist the effeminate and relaxing influences of his Athens. It is in Moses alone that we find a regard for the right, austere and incorruptible, a morality distinct from policy, and rising above regard for times and peoples. The trumpet of Sinai still finds an echo in the conscience of mankind—the Decalogue still binds us all.” (Henne-

quin.) Did the merit belong to Moses, in the annals of legislation his would be the proudest of names, for never before nor since did a code spring into such sudden existence or conquer such tremendous difficulties. As it is, that name stands out in serene and saintly pre-eminence, as the meek, self-merging medium through which heaven conveyed to earth the choicest of mercies. “Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for? And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?” It is beautiful to see how God gets all the glory, and Israel all the good; how, on the one hand, mingling himself with the mass of the nations, the man Moses here speaks of Jehovah as “our God”—their God as much as his; and how, on the other hand, he tries to lift their hearts from the midst of their mercies to that God who gave them this mercy so surpassing, statutes and judgments so righteous! Hamilton.

Never were any people so privileged in hearing from God, by the statutes and judgments which were set before them; this also was the grandeur of Israel above any people. No law so consonant to natural equity and the unprejudiced dictates of right reason, so consistent with itself in all the parts of it, and so conducive to the welfare and interest of mankind, as the Scripture Law is (Ps. 119: 128). The having of these statutes and judgments set before them is the true and transcendent greatness of any nation or people. It is an honor to us that we have the Bible in reputation and power among us. It is an evidence of a people’s being high in the favor of God, and a means of making them high among the nations. They that magnify the Law shall be magnified by it. H.

“What nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this Law which I set before you this day?” is the confident tone in which Moses claims the obedience of his countrymen and the admiration of the world. It is a challenge which might still be made in reference to the greater part of the nations of the earth. Moses had the conviction that his legislation was destined to exert a commanding influence on the progress of government and civilization. He evidently anticipated that his laws would become known and be imitated by other nations; and he employs this expectation as an argument to that end. “Keep, therefore, and do them (he says), for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear of these statutes, and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” The event was in harmony with the anticipation. Hardly any historical fact rests upon a more solid foundation than that the most celebrated nations and lawgivers of antiquity borrowed many of their wisest institutions from the laws of Moses. We have plain and certain proofs that these laws were powerfully felt in modifying the religious sentiments, the philosophical opinions, the literary labors, the political maxims, the civil institutions, and the moral judgments and practices of mankind. E. C. W.

4:9, 10, 14. Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget; . . . make them known to thy children and thy children’s children. Teach you statutes and judgments, that ye might do them. These words of simple, direct appeal, uttered again and again as a solemn, fervent refrain throughout all the closing addresses recorded in this entire book, express the one burdening thought and yearning of his soul concerning his people. Their best and most effective comment will be found in the reader’s own profound meditation upon them. B.

15-20. As the people had seen no form or figure when God spake to them, so they were to beware for their very lives of acting corruptly by making any kind of image, whether of man or of beast, for the purpose of worshipping God as represented by it; they were also to beware of being so attracted by the splendor of the heavenly bodies as to be forcibly seduced to worship them and offer them religious service. They were not in this respect to imitate the heathen; for God, who had delivered them out of the furnace of Egyptian bondage, had taken them for himself to be his special possession; and therefore they were to take heed not to forget the covenant of Jehovah their God, nor to offend him by making any image or representation of him as the object of worship. Among the heathen, and especially in Egypt, images were the very pillar and support of religion; but in Israel, as God had revealed himself to them without form it was as a spirit he was to be worshipped, and not under any outward representation. W. L. A.

20. But the Lord hath taken you.** Two powerful arguments to obedience: First, God’s great mercy in delivering them from the bondage and miseries of Egypt, which is here expressed by the “iron furnace,” or furnace where iron is melted (Ex. 20:2). Secondly, his taking them for his peculiar people (Ex. 19:5). Both of these arguments God made use of when he gave them his Law. Bp. Kidder.—God had passed his people through a hot furnace in the terrible sufferings they endured in Egypt, but with the gracious purpose of ultimately delivering them, and giving them an inheritance in Canaan. We learn: that God’s people are sometimes subjected to sufferings of incredible severity. The expression an “iron furnace”—i.e., a furnace for smelting iron, conveys no weaker an idea; and these sufferings are appointed to serve disciplinary ends. The use of the figure of a furnace implies a purpose in the sufferings. The furnace acts on the hard, impure iron to separate it from dross, and make it soft and workable. The severe sufferings through which God passes believers make the nature plastic to God’s will, and subdue it to meekness, and so fit the man thus sanctified for new and higher uses. Orr.

21. The Lord was angry with me.** Moses calls this to their recollection again, though he had mentioned it twice before (1:37; 3:26), that they might be the more sensible of the danger of offending God, since such a man as he was excluded from the good land for one single fault. Patrick.

25-31. Moses enforces the warning against idolatry, by predicting the evil that should come upon the nation through the apostasy of those who should in after times turn from Jehovah to strange gods. When they should have begotten children and children’s children, and had been long in the land—i.e., when in after years a generation should arise that had not known the things they had seen or had forgotten them, and the nation should then become wanton and corrupt and fall into idolatry; then should they utterly perish from off the land of which they were now about to take possession. W. L. A.

30. When these things are come upon thee.** The history of the Jews is an unanswerable argument in favor of the truth of prophecy and the reality of Divine revelation. The singularity of that history is such as can only be fully accounted for on the idea of a supernatural Providence interesting itself in their fortunes; but the strangest fact is that in their own sacred books this wonderful history is predicted with minute precision. The Book of Deuteronomy furnishes a series of these predictions. We may read this passage first as a prophecy, then as a warning. Orr.

31. “The Lord thy God is a merciful God”—I know him; I have lived with him; I have been closeted with him in the secrecy of the mountain girded by light and by tempest; I know him; he has denied my desire to go and see the land flowing with milk and honey; and yet my dying testimony is—“The Lord thy God is a merciful God!” J. P.

32-40. Still more to enforce his warning against apostasy, and urge to obedience and faithful adherence to the service of Jehovah, Moses appeals to what they had already experienced of God’s grace in the choosing of them to be his people, in his speaking to them to instruct them, and in the miracles which he had wrought for their deliverance and guidance; grace such as had never been showed before to any nation, or heard of since the creation of the world, and by which those who had experienced it were laid under the deepest obligations of gratitude and duty, to love and serve him by whom it had been showed. With this appeal he closes his first address. W. L. A.

32. The appeal of Christianity also is, “Ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and ask from the one side of heaven unto the other,” whether any other religion tries to make the same kind of men that Christianity makes? It never made one man weak. Strong men, valiant men, men of the keenest mind, men of the largest judgment, men of the most generous disposition—if that is the kind of men Christianity wants to make, where is the religion that can excel or equal Christianity in that purpose? Where Christianity has entered into a life, what has it done with that life? Can it be proved that Christianity, fairly understood and thoroughly received, has soured the temper, narrowed the sympathies, dwarfed the noble ambitions of the soul? Has Christianity ever made unhappy homes, unrighteous parents? Let the challenge be thoroughly understood and frankly replied to. J. P.

33. Did ever people hear the voice of God?** It seems to have been a general belief, that if God appeared to men it was for the purpose of destroying them. And indeed most of the extraordinary manifestations of God were in the way of judgment; but here it was different. God did appear in a sovereign and extraordinary manner; but it was for the deliverance and support of the people. They heard his voice speaking with them in a distinct articulate manner. They saw the fire, the symbol of his presence, the appearances of which demonstrated it to be supernatural. Notwithstanding God appeared so terrible, yet no person was destroyed, for he came not to destroy, but to save.

34. From the midst of another nation.** This was a most extraordinary thing, that a whole people, consisting of upward of six hundred thousand effective men, besides women and children, should, without striking a blow, be brought out of the midst of a very powerful nation, to the political welfare of which their services were so essential; that they should be brought out in so open and public a manner; that the sea itself should be supernaturally divided to afford this mighty host a passage; and that in a desert utterly unfriendly to human life they should be sustained for forty years. These were such instances of the almighty power and goodness of God as never could be forgotten. A. C.—35-39. Moses would have the Israelites to regard God’s deliverance of them from Egypt as a matter for the most grateful admiration. There had been nothing like it since the beginning of the world. There was direct and immediate communion with God; there was deliverance of the people from Egypt by unexampled judgments; and all was to show his character as a sovereign and loving God. The effect of such a discipline should be filial obedience. Edgar.

40. This fourth chapter, which comprises the hortatory portion of the first address, closes with the refrain of earnest appeal with which it began, and which all its statements are designed to enforce: “Keep his commandments, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee!” B.

SECOND PARTING ADDRESS (BEGUN): INTRODUCTION. REMINDS OF THE COVENANT AND LAW OF SINAI, AND URGES FAITHFUL FULFILMENT; REFERS TO THE DANGERS OF PROSPERITY; WARNS AGAINST IDOLATRY AND DISREGARD OF SPECIFIC COMMANDS; RECALLS PROMISES OF DIVINE PROTECTION, HELP, AND BLESSING TO THE OBEDIENT NATION.