Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Deuteronomy · About this commentary
The Woodcutter and the Water Carrier
Deuteronomy 29:1-15
1 These are the words of the covenant which Yahweh commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant which he made with them in Horeb. · WEB
Everyone present is named into the covenant down to the foreign laborers, and it is made with people who are not there.
A second covenant is being made, in addition to the covenant which he made with them in Horeb Deuteronomy 29:1. Not a replacement — an extension, at a new place, with a new generation.
The historical summary that opens it contains a sentence that should stop a reader. They saw the plagues, the signs and the great wonders — but Yahweh has not given you a heart to know, eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day Deuteronomy 29:4.
Forty years of miracles have not produced understanding, and the lack is stated as something not given. It is the same problem God named as a wish at the mountain — oh that there were such a heart in them Deuteronomy 5:29 — and the same problem he undertakes to solve in the next chapter Deuteronomy 30:6. Evidence is not sufficient by itself, and the book says so plainly rather than pretending otherwise.
Then the assembly is enumerated, and the list is the point of the passage.
Your heads, your tribes, your elders, and your officers, even all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and the foreigners who are in the middle of your camps, from the one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water Deuteronomy 29:10–11.
It runs downward. It starts with tribal heads and ends with foreign laborers doing the two least skilled jobs in the camp. Children are named. Wives are named. Resident foreigners are named — people with no ancestral claim on any of this — and then, in case anyone thinks that means the prominent foreigners, the woodcutter and the water carrier are specified.
Everybody is in. The covenant is not made with representatives, and the enumeration exists so that nobody can say afterward that it was made over his head.
And then the reach extends past the field entirely: neither do I make this covenant and this oath with you only, but with those who stand here with us today... and also with those who are not here with us today Deuteronomy 29:14–15.
Those absent are bound. That is the strongest form of the claim this book has been making since chapter 5, where a generation that was not at Sinai was told the covenant was made with them Deuteronomy 5:3. Here it is stated as the intention rather than left to be inferred, and every later reader is included by name in advance.
settled What this mark means