Introduction to Deuteronomy

Title and authorship

The book names its speaker in its first sentence: these are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel Deuteronomy 1:1. What follows is not narrative with speeches in it. It is speech, almost from end to end — three addresses delivered in one place, on one occasion, by a man with a month to live.

It also records, twice, that he wrote it down. Moses wrote this law and delivered it to the priests the sons of Levi Deuteronomy 31:9; and later, when Moses had finished writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished Deuteronomy 31:24.

And it makes provision for the document as a document. The book is placed by the side of the ark Deuteronomy 31:26, and is to be read aloud every seventh year to the whole assembly — the men and the women and the little ones, and the foreigners who are within your gates Deuteronomy 31:12. A text that arranges for its own custody and public reading is a text that expects to be consulted after its author is gone.

The last chapter is written from that later standpoint, and it should be said plainly. It records his death and burial, notes that no man knows where his tomb is to this day Deuteronomy 34:6, and adds that since then, there has not arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses Deuteronomy 34:10. Those sentences look back across an interval. The book does not say whose hand appended them, and nothing is gained by guessing.

What is distinctive about the writing is that it preaches. The same commandments given elsewhere as statute are given here with reasons attached — do this, and here is why, and here is what happened the last time. A law code states what is required. This book argues for it, and the argument is addressed to people who are about to be out of earshot of the man making it.

Date

The date is given to the day. In the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, Moses spoke to the children of Israel Deuteronomy 1:3.

Everything in the book belongs to that month. The place is fixed as precisely: beyond the Jordan, in the land of Moab Deuteronomy 1:5, after the defeat of the two kings east of the river Deuteronomy 1:4. One location, one speaker, and a few weeks at the end of a generation.

The second verse carries the weight of the whole retrospect, and it is easy to read past. It is eleven days' journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir to Kadesh Barnea Deuteronomy 1:2.

Eleven days on foot. The book is dated in the fortieth year, and the sentence is placed second so a reader does the arithmetic before the story begins. What follows in chapter 1 is the account of how a walk of a week and a half took thirty-eight years, and the sum is stated before the reason is given.

The book's own horizon is the crossing, and the crossing has not happened. Every command in it is future — when you come into the land, when you have eaten and are full, when you set a king over yourself. Nothing is described from inside the country, and the man speaking has been told he will not enter it Deuteronomy 34:4.

So the whole book is spoken on a plain, in sight of a border, by someone who will not cross it, to people who have never been on the other side.

Backgrounds

The audience is a second generation, and one verse makes that the point rather than the circumstance. Yahweh didn't make this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive today Deuteronomy 5:3.

Most of the people listening were children at Sinai or had not been born. Their parents are dead in the wilderness. And Moses does not say the covenant was made with an earlier group and inherited; he says it was made with the people in front of him. The generation that did not stand at the mountain is told that it did.

That is the book's method throughout. Egypt is remembered in the second person by people who never saw it, and the memory is treated as binding.

The form of the book is a covenant document, and the shape can be read straight off the text. Who is speaking and where Deuteronomy 1:1–5. What has happened between the parties, from Horeb to the plains of Moab Deuteronomy 1:6–18. What is required, from the Ten Words to the last statute Deuteronomy 5:1–5. The consequences of keeping and breaking it Deuteronomy 28:1–68. Witnesses called Deuteronomy 4:26 Deuteronomy 30:19. The document deposited in a named place Deuteronomy 31:26, with arrangements for periodic public reading Deuteronomy 31:10–13.

That is the structure of a treaty in that world, and it runs from the first page to the last. It also explains the tone: a treaty is not a list of rules but a relationship with terms, and the terms are recited to everyone rather than filed with officials.

The land they are about to enter is described in a way that matters for everything the book asks. It is not like Egypt, where a man watered his seed with your foot from a river that came whether he prayed or not. It is a land of hills and valleys which drinks water from the rain of the sky, and Yahweh your God's eyes are always on it Deuteronomy 11:10–12.

They are moving from an irrigated country to a rain-fed one — from a place where water was engineering to a place where it is weather. The dependence is built into the geography.

Theology and purpose

This is the book of the law that talks about love, and it does so more than any other.

The central command is not an action. Hear, Israel: Yahweh is our God. Yahweh is one. You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might Deuteronomy 6:4–5. Everything else in the book is downstream of that sentence, and the Lord himself later names it the first of all the commandments Mark 12:29–30.

And the love runs the other way first. Israel was not chosen for size — you were the fewest of all peoples — but because Yahweh loves you, and because he desires to keep the oath which he swore to your fathers Deuteronomy 7:7–8. No reason is offered beyond the love and the promise, and the choice is explicitly detached from any quality in those chosen.

That sets the order of everything. The Ten Commandments here begin with a rescue: I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage Deuteronomy 5:6 — and the commandments follow. Obedience is the response of a people already redeemed, never the price of being redeemed, and the book never reverses that order.

The organ it cares about is the heart. The words are to be on your heart Deuteronomy 6:6; the people are told to circumcise the foreskin of your heart Deuteronomy 10:16; and, at the end, God undertakes to do it himself — Yahweh your God will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your offspring, to love Yahweh your God Deuteronomy 30:6. The book asks for something and then promises to supply it.

Memory is the mechanism, and forgetting is the danger. Remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt recurs as the reason for the Sabbath, for releasing debts, for keeping the feasts, and for leaving the gleanings Deuteronomy 5:15 Deuteronomy 15:15 Deuteronomy 24:22. The threat is not persecution but comfort: when you have eaten and are full and built good houses, then your heart becomes lifted up, and you forget Yahweh your God Deuteronomy 8:12–14.

Worship is to be centralized at the place which Yahweh your God shall choose out of all your tribes, to put his name there Deuteronomy 12:5 — one altar rather than a shrine on every hill, which is the practical form the first commandment takes in a settled country.

And the whole is put as a decision rather than a system. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore choose life Deuteronomy 30:19. The book does not end by explaining the law. It ends by asking for an answer.

Additional notes

Note — the Sabbath commandment, and the reason given here. The fourth commandment appears twice in Scripture with the same requirement and different motive clauses. In Exodus the reason is creation: God made everything in six days and rested the seventh, therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy Exodus 20:11. Here the reason is deliverance: you shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt... Therefore Yahweh your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day Deuteronomy 5:15.

The two are not rivals, and the passage itself shows why. This version is introduced as a repetition — observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as Yahweh your God commanded you Deuteronomy 5:12 — so it is not establishing the institution but recalling one already given.

What it does add is a clause about who benefits. The list of those who must not work is expanded, and it ends with a purpose: that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you Deuteronomy 5:14. That is what the Egypt clause is attached to. A people who had worked without rest are told to guarantee rest to the people who work for them, and the reason they are given is their own memory of not having it.

So the day's holiness comes from creation, where it was blessed and set apart before there was any Israel to command; the urgency of extending its rest to others comes from redemption. The first is why the day is holy. The second is why these people, of all people, have no excuse for withholding it.

Note — the place which Yahweh will choose. The formula runs through the central section of the book and never names anywhere. The place which Yahweh your God shall choose out of all your tribes, to put his name there Deuteronomy 12:5, and the same phrase recurs for the feasts, the tithe, the courts and the firstborn.

The withholding is deliberate, and it has an effect the naming would not. A site named in advance could be claimed by whoever held it; a site left to God's future choice cannot be. The people are told to bring everything to one place and are not told where it is, so the obligation is to God's decision rather than to a tribe's territory. Later books record the choice; this one records only that it is God's to make.

Note — a prophet like me. Yahweh your God will raise up to you a prophet from among you, of your brothers, like me. You shall listen to him Deuteronomy 18:15.

In its immediate setting the promise answers a request. The people at the mountain had asked not to hear the voice again Deuteronomy 18:16, and God's reply — they have well said that which they have spoken Deuteronomy 18:17 — grants them a human voice instead, in a passage whose surrounding verses are about how to tell a true prophet from a diviner. The immediate provision is therefore a standing one: Israel will not be left without prophets.

Scripture itself also draws the line to one figure. The promise is quoted in full and applied to Christ, with the warning attached that every soul that will not listen to that prophet will be utterly destroyed from among the people Acts 3:22–23.

Both readings are in Scripture and neither cancels the other. And the book's own last word keeps the promise open: after Moses died, there has not arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom Yahweh knew face to face Deuteronomy 34:10. The succession began, and the one like him had not come.

Note — nothing added, nothing taken away. You shall not add to the word which I command you, neither shall you take away from it Deuteronomy 4:2, repeated at the close of the code Deuteronomy 12:32.

It is worth noticing what it does not forbid. This book is itself a re-preaching of laws given elsewhere, with reasons supplied, applications drawn and cases extended — so the prohibition is not against explaining or teaching. What it forbids is treating the terms as negotiable: adding requirements God did not give, and dropping ones he did. Both are named, and in practice the second is the commoner failure.

Outline

How the book is built

Heaven and earth called to witness inclusio 4:26-30:20

• A 4:25-27 Heaven and earth are called as witnesses that a people who make an image and provoke God will perish quickly from the land and be scattered.
• A′ 30:19-20 Heaven and earth are called as witnesses that life and death, blessing and curse, have been set before the people — with the charge to choose life.

The same seven-word formula opens and closes the covenant address, and it appears nowhere between them. Both times the wording is identical — heaven and earth summoned as witnesses, today — and both times what they are called to witness is the same alternative. The first is a warning: if the people corrupt themselves they will perish from the land. The last is an offer: life and death, blessing and curse, set before them with an instruction to choose. So the frame turns the whole body of law into a document executed in front of witnesses, and the two ends of it differ in one respect only. The first names the outcome the people should fear. The second gives them the choice.

Blessed in the city, cursed in the city parallel 28:3-19

• A 28:3 Blessed in the city and blessed in the field — the two places a person's life is lived.
• B 28:6 Blessed coming in and blessed going out — every arrival and every departure.
• A′ 28:16 Cursed in the city and cursed in the field — the same two places, the same words, the verb reversed.
• B′ 28:19 Cursed coming in and cursed going out — the list closing where the blessing closed.

The blessings and the curses open with the same four categories in the same words, with only the verb changed — city and field, basket and kneading trough, the fruit of body and ground and livestock, coming in and going out. The repetition covers every place a person can be and everything a household can produce, and it is what makes the two lists feel like one document rather than two. One detail keeps it from being a mechanical copy: the middle two categories exchange places, so the curse list names the basket before the offspring where the blessing named the offspring before the basket. The frame drawn here uses the two pairs that hold their position at the outer edges, which is where the correspondence is exact.

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