Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Deuteronomy · About this commentary
What Does Yahweh Require?
Deuteronomy 10:1-22
1 At that time Yahweh said to me, “Cut two stone tablets like the first, and come up to me onto the mountain, and make an ark of wood. · WEB
The summary of the law is five verbs, and the God who owns the universe is described as feeding orphans and loving foreigners.
The second set of tablets is cut by Moses and written by God — according to the first writing, the ten commandments Deuteronomy 10:4. The broken covenant is replaced with the identical text, and it is put in a wooden box.
The question that opens the second half of the chapter is the most quoted in the book, and it is asked as though the answer were small.
Now, Israel, what does Yahweh your God require of you, but to fear Yahweh your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, and to serve Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul, to keep Yahweh's commandments Deuteronomy 10:12–13.
Five verbs, and the last of them is the only one anybody could inspect. Fear, walk, love, serve, keep — an inward disposition producing an outward life, in that order. And the clause attached to the whole is for your good, which is how this book always describes the law's purpose.
What follows is an argument from scale to intimacy, and it is one of the finest movements in Scripture.
First the scale: to Yahweh your God belongs heaven, the heaven of heavens, and the earth, with all that is therein Deuteronomy 10:14. Everything, including the parts of the sky nobody can see.
Then the narrowing: only Yahweh had a delight in your fathers to love them, and he chose their offspring after them Deuteronomy 10:15. The one who owns everything settled his affection on a particular family, and the word used is delight.
Then the demand it produces: circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked Deuteronomy 10:16. The physical sign is turned inward. What was cut in the flesh as a mark of belonging is asked for in the part of a person that decides things — and at the end of the book God undertakes to perform the operation himself Deuteronomy 30:6.
Then the titles, piled up: God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, the mighty, and the awesome Deuteronomy 10:17. And immediately, in the same sentence, the first thing said about this being is that he doesn't respect persons or take bribes — the language of an honest judge in a small courtroom.
And then verse 18, which is where the whole argument lands: he executes justice for the fatherless and widow and loves the foreigner in giving him food and clothing.
The God of gods is described handing out clothes. The three named are the three with no legal standing in that world — no father to represent them, no husband, no tribe — and the one who owns the heaven of heavens is said to attend to exactly those.
The conclusion follows in one word: therefore. Therefore love the foreigner, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt Deuteronomy 10:19. Imitate what God does, and the qualification for understanding it is your own memory of having been the outsider.
settled What this mark means