Deuteronomy 29:11

Your little ones, your wives,.... Who are scarce ever mentioned in any special law or solemn transaction: and thy stranger that [is] in thy camp; not only the proselyte of righteousness, who embraced

Your little ones, your wives, and thy stranger that is in thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water: Thy stranger that is in thy camp.

Thy stranger; such strangers as had embraced their religion. From the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water; all sorts of persons, yea, even the meanest of them, such as these were, , all sorts and ranks of servants.

Deuteronomy 29:11 Your little ones, your wives, and thy stranger that [is] in thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water:Ver. 11. From the hewer of thy wood.] The meanest amongst you, such as afterwards were the Gibeonites, who also by faith became covenanters, and are called Nethinims in Ezra and Nehemiah. They were made drawers of water to the temple, as a kind of punishment: God made it a mercy; for the nearer they were to the Church, the nearer they came to God.

(11) Your little ones.—Compare St. Peter’s words on the day of Pentecost: “The promise is unto you and to your children” (Acts 2:39). The covenant with Abraham was that the Almighty would be a God to him and to his seed (Genesis 17:7), including the child of eight days old (Deuteronomy 29:12), and the slave (Deuteronomy 29:13), who were to receive the sign of His covenant in their flesh for an everlasting covenant. From the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water.—From this Rashi infers that “there were Canaanites who became proselytes in the time of Moses, in the same way as the Gibeonites in the days of Joshua.” It may have been so. And we know that there were many female captives of the Midianites who became slaves. (See Numbers 31)

10, 11. Ye stand] The Heb. is stronger, and probably reflexive: ye have taken your station or position. all of you] This comprehensiveness, and the exhaustive definition by which it is followed are striking. Not only the representatives of the people—your heads, your judges (which read for tribes—there is only the difference of one letter—unless we read with LXX and Syr. heads of tribes, for LXX has judges as well after elders), your elders and your officers (for all of which except elders see Deuteronomy 1:13; Deuteronomy 1:15 f., and for elders Deuteronomy 16:18, Deuteronomy 19:12, Deuteronomy 21:2 f., etc.); and not only all the men of Israel, your little ones and1[149] your wives, but also thy gçr … from the gatherer (not hewer) of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water (Joshua 9:21 ff.)—appear before Jehovah to take the covenant. Cp. the Sabbath law, Deuteronomy 5:14, covering sons, daughters, servants and thy gçr; Deuteronomy 31:12, men, women, little ones and thy ger; the assembly which received the law under Joshua, Joshua 8:33; Joshua 8:35, gçr and home-born, women and little ones; and the covenant renewed under Nehemiah, Nehemiah 10:28, all the temple-servants, wives, sons, daughters, every one that had knowledge and understanding (see further Jerusalem i. 435 ff.). On the phrase in the midst of thy camp cp. Deuteronomy 2:14 f., Deuteronomy 23:14. [149] So Sam. and Syr.The conception of the gçr as a proselyte and as under the covenant, and the mention of the temple-drudges may be taken (as by many critics) for signs of the late date of the whole passage. Or since their introduction is coincident with a change of address to the Sg., it is possibly a later gloss on the rest. Yet again the Sg. of 11b may be due to the attraction of the Sg. in Deuteronomy 29:12 f., in which its use by a writer otherwise employing the Pl. may be explained on the ground that he is addressing the whole nation as one party to the Covenant; while in Deuteronomy 29:14 he resumes the Pl., because there he is addressing the individuals of the present generation in distinction from others not present. Here then is a case on which the changes between Sg. and Pl. are reasonably explicable as by the same writer and on logical grounds. Steuern. and Marti’s proposal to consider the whole of the Sg. clauses as an addition is thus unnecessary.

The covenant was national, and therefore embraced all the elements which make up the nation.

11. Little ones,… wives — As the covenant was with the nation in its organic unity it included all the members — the men, the women, the children, the Egyptians who left Egypt with them, (see Exodus