Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Deuteronomy · About this commentary
Not for Your Righteousness
Deuteronomy 9:1-29
1 Hear, Israel! You are to pass over the Jordan today, to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourself, cities great and fortified up to the sky, · WEB
Israel is told three times that the land is not a reward for their goodness, and the proof offered is their own record.
The chapter exists to prevent one sentence. Don't say in your heart, after Yahweh your God has thrust them out from before you, 'For my righteousness Yahweh has brought me in to possess this land' Deuteronomy 9:4.
The denial is then repeated three times in three verses, which is the most emphatic thing in the book. Not for your righteousness. Not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart. Not for your righteousness, for you are a stiff-necked people Deuteronomy 9:4–6.
Two reasons are given instead, and neither is complimentary. The land is being taken for the wickedness of these nations, and to keep a promise sworn to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob Deuteronomy 9:5.
So the conquest is presented as a judgment on the occupants and a promise kept to the dead, and Israel is the instrument in both. Being used is not the same as being deserving, and the text will not let the two be confused. The same logic later removes Israel from the same land Deuteronomy 4:26, which is what makes it consistent rather than partisan.
What follows is the evidence, and Moses assembles it as a prosecutor would. Remember, and don't forget, how you provoked Yahweh your God to wrath in the wilderness Deuteronomy 9:7.
The golden calf is retold at length — the forty days on the mountain, the tablets written with the finger of God, the discovery, the breaking of the stones in front of them, the burning and grinding of the calf and the scattering of its dust in the brook Deuteronomy 9:9–21. Then a list of other places: Taberah, Massah, Kibroth Hattaavah, and Kadesh Barnea Deuteronomy 9:22–23.
And the summary is total: you have been rebellious against Yahweh from the day that I knew you Deuteronomy 9:24.
The last section is the prayer he prayed while lying on the ground for forty days, and its argument is worth following because it contains no defense of Israel at all.
He appeals first to God's investment: your people and your inheritance that you have redeemed Deuteronomy 9:26. Then to the patriarchs, and then he asks God to look away from the facts — don't look at the stubbornness of this people, nor at their wickedness, nor at their sin Deuteronomy 9:27.
Then the argument that carries it, and it is about what the neighbors will conclude. Egypt will say God was not able to bring them in, and because he hated them, he has brought them out to kill them in the wilderness Deuteronomy 9:28.
That is the same slander the people themselves had spoken at the border Deuteronomy 1:27. Moses takes the lie his people told about God and uses it as the reason God should spare them.
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