In an attempt to publish a blog post on the book of Deuteronomy before my upcoming trip to Japan, I decided that I’d just go ahead and do it. With that being said, I’ll do my best to not summarize too much yet still complete this post with as much information as I can muster.

Having concluded the book of Numbers, we’re now at the conclusion of the book of Deuteronomy. If you recall from my previous blog posts titled “The Bible – An Introduction” and “‘In the beginning…’ – The book of Genesis” the first five books of the Bible are known as the Pentateuch or the Torah. These five books (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) fit within the Historical group of books in the Bible and detail the revelation of God to man, the fall of man in sin, the genealogy of Adam to Abraham, and ultimately we see the unveiling of God’s plan for salvation. One of the most prominent parts of the last couple books out of these five is the numerous laws issued to man through the nation of Israel. In all practicality the vast majority of the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers issue countless laws the nation of Israel is to abide by and thus it is fitting that the name of these five books (the Torah) is Hebrew for law.

Fitting as it may be, Deuteronomy – the title, comes from the Greek translation of the Bible and means “second law” or “repetition of the law.” One of the interesting notes about Deuteronomy, however, is that it is not merely a recounting of the laws issued previously but, set in the context of that time period, it is a forward looking recounting of the law. Deuteronomy is written at the period of time where the nation of Israel has reach the border of the Promised Land (the land of Canaan). Based on information in Halley’s Bible Handbook, the book of Deuteronomy is actually constructed much like a formal treaty was in that time period only this treaty is between God and Israel. The book of Deuteronomy is a treaty that identifies the laws handed down from God to the Nation of Israel and specifically implicates how these laws apply to Israel upon settling in the land of Canaan.

Chapters 1 begins by identifying who the author is and on what grounds he has the authority to proclaim such a treaty. Keeping in mind from my previous posts that Moses wrote all five of these books, it is clean in Deuteronomy 1:1-5 that Moses is the author of this treaty and more-so has the authority granted him by God to declare the following information to the nation of Israel. Immediately after this, we flow into a reiteration of the relationship between Israel and God through Deuteronomy 1:6 – 3:29. Interestingly enough, In Deuteronomy 3:23-25 we see that Moses pleads with God to allow him to enter the Promised Land. If you recall from my previous post titled “Numbers,” Moses was barred from entering the Land of Canaan due to his lack of faith in the Lord and failure to give praise to the Lord for His provisions. Needless to say, God maintains faithful to His word and denies Moses’ request but knowing that God was about to bring Moses into a far greater inheritance as Moses would soon be brought up to heaven.

The meatiest part of Deuteronomy lies within Chapters 4 through 26 as these chapters outline the stipulations and lists the obligations the Israelites are to obey. Chapter 4 proclaims the importance of obeying God’s commandments but to not only obey them, to teach them to their children and to prevent corruption of their people by refusing to succumb to idolatry. A reiteration of the Ten Commandments occurs in Chapter 5 with the Greatest Commandment declared in Chapter 6. Halley’s Bible Handbook points out that Deuteronomy 6:4-9 is the Jewish confession of faith. Of course, verse 5: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” is the Greatest Commandment as re-iterated by Jesus and is repeated five or six times in the book of Deuteronomy. The nation of Israel was to fasten scripture to their hearts, doorposts, foreheads, and were to forever live for the Lord in all that they did, all they said, and what they taught. Many of these principles are alive and very true to the core of who I am today and my struggles revolve around lack of this idea. Though physically we may not see this occur today (at least not in our society) it is something we should all strive to do – fasten scripture to our heart and fill our mind with God’s Word.

In Chapter 7 we see another reiteration of the sorrow and grief that would be brought to the Lord by the sin of idolatry. Some very important points within Chapter 7 revolve around verses 6-11 in which God makes it clear and evident that the nation of Israel will not overcome the inhabitants of the Promised Land nor would they prosper within the land of Canaan due to their own righteousness rather it is merely due to their being chosen by God. It is only through God that they have survived the wilderness and it is only through God that they will be blessed and most of all be a blessing to every nation. Another interesting note (not to jump around too much) is verses 2-5. In these verses God plainly commands the Israelites not to make any covenant with the inhabitants of the land nor intermarry with them. I point this out because I’ll be referencing it later in a post on the book of Joshua so file it away in your memory.

Deuteronomy 8 -10 recounts the events of the past several years. From declaring the wonders of God and the provisions He made to sustain the Israelites (~2.5 Million people at this point) in a land that was harsh and barren to the consistent and persistent rebellion by the people of Israel. These chapters reiterate again how little Israel earned yet how faithful and loving God was to His chosen people. Even in the face of great rebellion, God showed mercy and compassion towards the Israelites. This is immediately followed by a declaration of the blessings that come from loving and serving the Lord and indicates God’s desire for their devotion and obedience to Him and His Word.

Through Deuteronomy 12 -15 we see that there are various laws related to what is clean and unclean, tithing, observance of the Sabbath year, slavery, offerings of first fruits, yet first there is a reminder of the importance of and warnings toward idolatry which again demonstrates how important this was to God. So Chapter 16 leads us into a recount of the various feasts that were to be observed. I wrote more about these in detail within my post titled “Leviticus.” Some things to keep in mind are that these feasts were to maintain God as the center of the nation through not only their observance of His laws but through submission to His provisions and recognition of His blessings.

A very interesting thing occurs in Chapter 17. Up to this point in time, the nation of Israel is a Theocracy. For those who are unaware of what that means, much like democracy – which essentially means ruled by people, theocracy means ruled by God. As we’ve read through the Bible to this point every decision and the direction of the chosen lineage of God has been directed by God. God has given specific instructions and provided the necessary provisions to accomplish His direction should they faithfully follow Him. In Chapter 17 we see a foreshadowing of and instructions by which Israel will have a King. I point this out because though Abraham and the descendants who followed lead their homes and Moses was a great leader of the Nation of Israel, all were directly in tune with, faithfully followed, and performed what God had declared (with some minor mistakes along the way). In all cases, they were a “leader” of their people but not a ruler over their people. To appoint a king implies that their is an individual who has latitude and freedom to make their own decisions in the best interest of the nation. This appears to be a big shift in the personal relationship with God and the transition to human control. Part of this image of transition comes from Deuteronomy 17:14 where God permits the Israelites to “…set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me.” This is one area where God is giving permission for the surrounding nations to influence the way of life of His chosen nation. The beauty of this passage is that God quickly follows up this apparent latitude by declaring that the appointed king must be one of their brothers and more importantly must “…write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left…” God clearly identifies that to appoint a leader is fine and they shall rule over those who appoint him so long as he maintains the Word of the Lord, the commandments of the Lord, and humble himself to the people whom God has chosen all of. This is a lesson I believe most of our world should seriously evaluate and allow to guide their leadership within all of our society. Some prominent personnel listed in the Bible Handbook who believed in reading the Bible (the law) each day included Billy Graham, George Mueller of Bristol, D.L. Moody, Abraham Lincoln, W.E. Gladstone, George Washington, Daniel WEbster, Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Charles A. Dana, Thomas Huxley, Patrick Henry, U.S. Grant, Horace Greeley, Andrew Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Lord Tennyson, John Quincy Adams, Immanuel Kant, Charles Dickens, Sir William Herschel, Sir Isaac Newton, Goethe.

Chapter 18 declares again the provisions set aside for Priests and Levites who serve the Lord as they have been called to do and then reiterates to the Israelites that they should not fall victim to doing as the other nations do but to live according to the law. In the very same chapter we see a very important prediction. That predication occurs in Deuteronomy 18:15-19. We see here that God will very well raise up a prophet like Moses from the Nation of Israel who will “…speak to them all that I [God] command them.” This will be a prophet that God will place His words within His mouth. Though there is some debate over who this prophet is as there were other prophets such as Isaiah and Joel, there is a strong indication that this passage refers to only one and that one would be the Messiah – Jesus. The belief is that God foreshadows the Messiah as the one who will speak to all nations the words of God Himself.

Again there is a reiteration of various laws throughout Chapters 19-26 ranging from war to rebellious sons to divorce. Most of these we’ve discuss previously without much to note here. Something interesting is that in Chapter 27 we see that an altar is to be erected at Mount Ebal. The instructions dictate that the day they cross the Jordan into the promised land they are to erect stones with plaster and inscribe on them the words of this law. This altar is to be erected on Mount Ebal. The book of laws that Moses refers to is a book that he himself has written (the first five books of the Bible) and that has been written for the nation of Israel to have and to persistently read and mediate upon. This book will be handed to Joshua who as we’ll see succeeds Moses as the leader of Israel. As Chapter 27 concludes we see a listing of curses to be declared to the Israelites. Chapter 27 served as the declaration of storage and instructions for public reading of the treaty.

Chapter 28 serves the purpose of laying out how God will respond in obedience and disobedience to the treaty that is being enacted. Therefore, the chapter identifies and lists out the blessings and curses associated with Israel’s actions regarding the observance and obedience to God’s commandments. This chapter is the foundation for many of the references to Israel’s impending doom found in almost all of the prophetic writings and clearly demonstrate the beauty and promise of restoration to all the world. These verses in essence summarize what has been observed throughout the Bible to this point: God honors His commitments and promises regardless of the obedience or disobedience of His people. The important aspect of this is that Israel must repent of their disobedience and turn back to the Lord their God. This principle is reiterated in Chapter 29 and 30 with the renewing of the covenant as well as the descriptions given regarding repentance and forgiveness. Deuteronomy 30:15 states clearly God’s perspective: “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days…”

Thus we near the conclusion of Deuteronomy with the declaration that Joshua shall succeed Moses and the illustration that Moses writes the Law in a Book which serves as the early Israeli Bible. Along with the book, Moses instructs Joshua to read it periodically to the people of Israel which serves as a constant reminder and resetting to their hearts. For as we read the Bible today to ground ourselves in the Word of the Lord our God that we may know what God has to say about situations and temptations we may find ourselves in, the Nation of Israel was to read God’s Word to prevent corruption and influence from surrounding nations. Moses departs from our story by writing a song that Israel could sing as a constant reminder and method for writing the law upon their heart. Moses also blesses the tribes of Israel and provides a prediction of their future prior to climbing Mount Pisgah. It is an item to note that Moses, at the age of 120, was still strong enough to climb a mountain and upon seeing the Promised Land, the Lord took Moses from the earth. It’s amazing to see that God took Moses without anyone else around and without Israel having any knowledge of his bodies whereabouts. It is noted in my studies that this is potentially a method of God’s to prevent the Israelites from creating an Idol of Moses’ remains remembering that from the very beginning of the nation of Israel, God declared that Moses was to be God to Aaron and the people of Israel. As such, they most certainly worshipped Moses as a God and God foretold of the disarray that the Nation would become upon his death in Chapter 31 verses 16-18.

I hope I didn’t do too much injustice to the enormous amount of information that exists within the book of Deuteronomy. There are significant items within this book that you may not have gotten earlier and I most certainly urge you to read through Deuteronomy. I wanted to take this opportunity to say congratulations on completing daily readings thus far. The first five books of the Bible are a very important set of books and make up approximately 1/4 of the Old Testament and nearly exceeds the entire length of the New Testament. I pray that you continue through your daily readings and encourage you to post any comments or interesting notes that you’ve found within your readings as part of this blog.

ESV Daily Reading Bible Halley’s Bible Handbook
ESV Study Bible