Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Deuteronomy · About this commentary
It Is Your Life
Deuteronomy 32:44-52
44 Moses came and spoke all the words of this song in the ears of the people, he and Joshua the son of Nun. · WEB
Moses tells them the words are not a trivial matter but their life, and is told the same day to go up a mountain and die.
The song is recited to the whole nation, and Joshua is named beside him Deuteronomy 32:44. The successor stands with him for the last public act.
Then the summary of everything Moses has said in thirty-two chapters, and it comes in two sentences.
Set your heart to all the words which I testify to you today, which you shall command your children to observe to do Deuteronomy 32:46.
Two generations again — set your own heart, and hand it on. The book has never once assumed that obedience transmits without teaching.
And the reason: for it is no vain thing for you, because it is your life Deuteronomy 32:47.
The phrase no vain thing answers an objection nobody voiced but everybody feels — that this is a great deal of detail about oxen and boundary stones and roof railings. The reply is that it is not decoration or ritual scruple. It is the difference between living in the land and not.
Then, that same day Deuteronomy 32:48, the instruction comes.
Go up the mountain, see the land, die on the mountain where you go up, and be gathered to your people Deuteronomy 32:50. He is told the day of his death on the day he finishes his work, and the comparison offered is his brother, who died the same way on another mountain.
The reason is stated once more, and here it is specific rather than the general because of you he has used three times. Because you trespassed against me... at the waters of Meribah of Kadesh... because you didn't uphold my holiness among the children of Israel Deuteronomy 32:51.
One incident, at a rock, when he was provoked past endurance by the people he had carried for forty years. The book has not narrated it, and it names it now, at the end, without excuse.
And the last word to him is the hard one: you shall see the land from a distance; but you shall not go there Deuteronomy 32:52.
He receives that, and the next thing he does is bless the tribes.
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