Deuteronomy 4

Deuteronomy 4:21-22

Deu. 4:21, 22. In this Moses was a type of Christ. God was angry with Moses for their sakes. So God was, as it were, angry with Christ for our sakes. He bore the wrath of God for our sakes. Our iniquities were laid upon Christ. Our guilt lay upon Him, and so He in some respect partook of our guilt. So Moses partook of the guilt of the children of Israel when by their rebellion they provoked his spirit, so that he “spake unadvisedly with his lips.” And Moses was, as it were, a sacrifice for them; he died in the wilderness, and they lived and went out to possess the good land, as in verse 22.

Moses mentions this as an instance of God’s mercy to the people, as is evident by the foregoing verse, and by verse 22 - “But ye,” etc., God was pleased so greatly to testify His displeasure against Moses’s sin, though he but lightly partook of the sin of the congregation, as utterly to refuse to suffer him to go over and possess the good land, and yet to suffer them, the children [of Israel] of that generation, who partook more largely of their fathers’ sin, to go over. God insisted on having a great outward manifestation of His displeasure against the sin of that congregation. The death of so great a person and so holy a person as Moses, the head of the congregation (who only was nearly related to them, and lightly partook of the evil of that degenerate time), was so; as God, in a time of public judgment, is pleased sometimes to slay the righteous with the wicked, whereby there is so much greater and more awful testimony of His displeasure to the world (Ezekiel 21:3; Ezekiel 21:4). God thus slaying Moses and not suffering him to go in to the good land, God looked on the outward manifestation of wrath by this means to be sufficient without slaying the congregation, and so the younger generation were spared, and suffered to go in to the good land. Thus Moses’s death was a kind of atonement for the congregation as to temporal judgment and manifestation of God’s wrath in this world, and so he was an eminent type of Christ.

Deuteronomy 4:32

Deu. 4:32-34. That which is here mentioned is spoken of as the wonder of wonders - that a people should hear God speaking to them out of the midst of the fire, such a devouring fire that was so terrible to behold, that had such peculiar manifestations of God’s awful majesty and His consuming justice and vengeance (see chap. Deuteronomy 5:25), and “yet live.” It is not to be supposed that God would speak of this as so exceedingly and beyond all parallel wonderful, but that He had in His eye that which is indeed the wonder of wonders, and which is often spoken of as such by the prophets, which God’s people are the subjects of through Jesus Christ. Through Him we hear God speaking to us out of the midst of the fire. God manifests Himself to us in all His dreadful majesty and most terrible and strict justice, and yet we live; we are safe; God appears to us as a strict judge and terrible revenger of all sin, and yet as our Saviour and a fountain of life to us. God is just, and yet the justifier of him that believes on Jesus.

Although this that the children of Israel were the subjects of at Mount Sinai is here spoken of as so exceeding wonderful, yet this which is accomplished by Christ is spoken of as so much more wonderful. These things which God did for the children of Israel, when He brought them out of Egypt, are represented as no more worthy to be mentioned or remembered after God had wrought this (Jeremiah 16:14; Jeremiah 16:15; Jeremiah 23:7; Jeremiah 23:8; and Isaiah 43:18; Isaiah 43:19). Balaam does in effect say that these things that God wrought for Israel, when He brought them out of Egypt, are typical of that wonderful, astonishing thing which He would work for them in the latter days: Numbers 23:23 - “According to this time [or agreeable to what God has done at this time] it shall [hereafter] be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!’ See also Micah 7:15. The context is a full proof that this was what God had in His eye when God spake to the children of Israel from Mount Sinai in so terrible a manner. It was in giving the Law; and thus God’s people hear God speaking to them from Mount Sinai in all ages; for they all hear God’s voice in His holy, strict Law. God’s appearing at that time as a consuming fire,” without doubt was a representation of the thing spoken of here in Deuteronomy 4:24 - “The Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God;” and the words of the text we are upon are brought in as an evidence of what is spoken of in the immediately preceding verses - viz., God’s forbearing to execute justice on the people for their wickedness and His forgiving their iniquities, in the exercise of His great mercy, and His faithfulness to the covenant of grace made with their Fathers.