Deuteronomy 30

De. 30 1 AND it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath driven thee, and shalt return unto the LORD thy God, and shalt obey his voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thine heart, and with all thy soul; that then the LORD thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the peo-

4 ples, whither the LORD thy God hath scattered thee. If any of thine outcasts be in the uttermost parts of heaven, from thence will the LORD thy God gather thee, and from thence will be 5 fetch thee : and the LORD thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it ; and he will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers. 6 And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD 7 thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live. And the LORD thy God will put all these curses upon thine enemies, and on them that hate thee, which persecuted thee. And thou shalt return and obey the voice of the LORD, and do all his commandments which I command thee this day. And the LORD thy God will make thee plenteous in all the work of thine hand, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, for good : for the LORD will again rejoice over thee for good, as he rejoiced 10 over thy fathers : if thou shalt obey the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which are written in this book of the law ; if thou turn unto the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul. 15 See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil ; in that I command 16 thee this day to love the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgements, that thou mayest live and multiply, and that the LORD 17 thy God may bless thee in the land whither thou goest in to possess it. But if thine heart turn away, and thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and 18 serve them ; I denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish ; ye shall not prolong 19 your days upon the land, whither thou passest over Jordan to go in to possess it. I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse : therefore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed : 20 to love the LORD thy God, to obey his voice, and to cleave unto him : for he is thy life, and the length of thy days : that thou mayest dwell in the land which the LORD swore unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.

30 : 1-10. It is very comforting to pass from so gloomy a chapter as the twenty-eighth to such a paragraph as this. In this thirtieth chapter, the onlook and outlook of Moses are much more extended than before. So distantly is his eye cast now, that he sees in the horizon a belt of glory bounding his view. C. C. — The thirtieth chapter foresees the tribes of Israel under punishment and expelled from their home, or taken captive by other nations. Then follows the preaching of repentance, so powerfully carried out by Jeremiah, Hosea, Ezekiel, and other prophets of a later time. Turning to God with the heart and hearkening again to his voice, the people were to be restored to their land and to his favor. Of this, Moses was permitted to give them early assurance ; and thus with a breadth of mercy and hope ended his weighty discourse to the people. Think of the aged prophet thus foreseeing the mischief that would come on a rebellious people ! D. F.

These promises had no doubt their partial fulfilments in the days of the Judges ; but the fact that various important features of them are repeated in Jer. 32 : 37 sqq., and in Ezek. 11 : 19 sqq., 34 : 13 sqq., 36 : 24 sqq., shows that none of these was regarded as exhausting the promises. In full analogy with the scheme of prophecy we may add that the return from the Babylonian captivity has not exhausted their depth.

The New Testament takes up the strain (e.g., Rom. 11), and foretells the restoration of Israel to the covenanted mercies of God. True, these mercies shall not be, as before, confined to that nation. The “turning again of the captivity” will be when Israel is converted to him in whom the Law was fulfilled, and who died “not for that nation only,” but also that he might “gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad” (John 11 : 51, 52). Then shall there be “one fold and one shepherd” (John 10 : 16). But whether the general conversion of the Jews shall be accompanied with any national restoration, any recovery of their ancient prerogatives as the chosen people ; and further, whether there shall be any local replacement of them in the land of their fathers, may be regarded as of “the secret things” which belong unto God ; and so indeed our Lord himself teaches us (Acts 1 : 6, 7). The letter of the verses before us and of the parallel passages seems indeed to point to both a national and a local return of Israel. On the other hand, in this very passage verse 6 seems plainly to intimate that in the kingdom of the Messiah the ceremonies and ordinances at any rate shall reach that accomplishment in which the outward sign shall be superseded by the thing signified (cf. Rom. 2 : 29). And God’s purpose may be similar as regards the promises. The restoration here foretold may be realized, and the promises to Abraham most abundantly fulfilled to Israel, yet not to the Israel “according to the flesh” merely, but to that spiritual Israel whose promised land is not narrowed to an earthly Canaan. To us however the exact import of the prophecies respecting the future of the Jews must remain as yet, as was the similar inquiry respecting the Messianic prophecies in pre-Messianic days, matter of reverent search and discussion only. Espin.

The hopes of the Hebrew people are ardently directed to these promises, and they confidently expect that God, commiserating their forlorn and fallen condition, will yet rescue them from all the evils of their long dispersion. They do not consider the promise as fulfilled by their restoration from the captivity in Babylon, for Israel was not then scattered in the manner here described—“among all the nations,” “unto the utmost parts of heaven” (verse 4); and when God recalled them from that bondage, all the Israelites were not brought back, they were not multiplied above their fathers (verse 5), nor were their hearts and those of their children circumcised to love the Lord (verse 6). It is not, therefore, of the Babylonish captivity that Moses was speaking in this passage; it must be of the dispersed state to which they have been doomed for eighteen hundred years. This prediction may have been partially accomplished on the return of the Israelites from Babylon; for, according to the structure and design of Scripture prophecy, it may have pointed to several similar eras in their national history; and this view is sanctioned by the prayer of Nehemiah (Neh. 1:8, 9). But undoubtedly it will receive its full and complete accomplishment in the conversion of the Jews to the Gospel of Christ. At the restoration from the Babylonish captivity, that people were changed in many respects for the better. They were completely weaned from sensible idolatry; and this outward reformation was a prelude to the higher attainments they are destined to reach in the age of Messiah, “when the Lord God will circumcise their hearts and the hearts of their seed to love the Lord.” The course pointed out seems clearly to be this: that the hearts of the Hebrew people shall be circumcised (Col. 2:2); in other words, by the combined influences of the Word and Spirit of God, their hearts will be touched and purified from all their superstition and unbelief; they will be converted to the faith of Jesus Christ as their Messiah—a spiritual deliverer, and the effect of their conversion will be that they will return and obey the voice (the Gospel, the evangelical law) of the Lord. The words may be interpreted either wholly in a spiritual sense (John 11:51, 52), or, as many think, in a literal sense also (Rom. 11). Jamieson.

Their conversion to Christ is to be the preliminary condition of their acceptance with God; for so long as their nation continues in a state of rebellion against Christ, they are not fit to be redeemed. And, in conformity with Moses, our Lord declared to the unbelieving Jews, “Behold your house” of the Lord “is left unto you desolate: for I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say,” with hearty repentance and true faith, “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord” (Matt. 23:38, 39). Dr. Hales.

1. These things are come upon thee.** Amid multiplied instances of oppression, misery, and contempt, the Jews have resolutely continued through eighteen hundred years a separate and distinct people. Their God hath not cast them away, nor abhorred them, “to destroy them utterly;” their great and wonderful plagues, which were to be “of long continuance,” still remain; the curses are yet upon them, which, in the strong language of Scripture, were to be “for a sign and for a wonder” upon them and their seed forever (De. 28:46, 59). Not mingled and lost among the kingdoms over which they have been scattered, they retain the means, upon their returning obedience, of beholding “their captivity turned,” and of being “gathered from the nations” and restored to “the land of their fathers.” No cause but the Divine interposition can satisfactorily explain this extraordinary condition of a whole people. Richards.—

Call to mind. The repentance described, which is the condition of these promises, begins in serious consideration, “Thou shalt call to mind that which thou hadst forgotten, or not regarded.” Consideration is the first step toward conversion (Is. 46:8), Bring to mind, O ye transgressors. The prodigal son came to himself first, and then to his father. But that which is the life and soul of repentance, and without which the most passionate expressions are but a jest, is, returning to the Lord our God with all thy heart and with all thy soul. H.—When Israel in his banishment brings back the Word of the Lord to his heart, and thus returns to the Lord, then the Lord returns to his mercy—i.e., to his people languishing in trouble; and this return is shown by his collecting them again.

5. This is the first of the many prophecies which represents the restoration of the people of Israel as a return unto their land, while Lev. 26:45 only speaks of the continuance of the covenant. But it by no means follows, that because their expulsion from their land is to be understood literally, therefore the return must be taken literally likewise. Rather, it is an essential characteristic of the whole work of redemption, that it not merely restores what was forfeited, but gives in its place something higher and more glorious. The redemption through Christ does not put man in the position of Adam’s innocence, and reinstate him in paradise, but the earthly paradise is a type of the heavenly (Luke 23:44), to which Christ admits his redeemed. He who for Christ’s sake leaves all that he has, does not receive a literal, but a far more glorious compensation, in this world; and so the restitution of earthly losses is a type of the reward of believers. Just as little were the promises of seeing Christ again (John 14:19; 16:16) fulfilled in what took place after the resurrection; and in like manner this and similar predictions were not fulfilled in Israel’s return after the Babylonish captivity. A literal restoration of the people of Israel would have renewed the old mode of life with all its deficiencies, and would have been of no moment to the kingdom of God under the New Covenant. Paul explains the true sense of this prophecy (Rom. 11), and refers its fulfilment partly to the going forth of the elect into the new church, partly to the conversion of the whole people still to come, which shall pour fresh life into the whole kingdom of God on earth, the precursor of their entrance into the heavenly Canaan. Gerl.

The prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures do not outrun their historic relations. They take the definite and accurate form of the Hebrew polity. They are history pushed forward and perfected in the future. The reign of one king is made the promise of another king who is greater. The services of one high-priest are made the type of another transcending all his predecessors. The holy of holies and the blood of sprinkling all promise a better sacrifice in a better tabernacle. A national deliverance from foreign subjugation is made to foreshadow a larger and worthier redemption; and so throughout the whole structure of the Hebrew prophecies. They take the form, the well-defined form, of those historic objects and events from which they sprung. History and prophecy are joined together in all the progress of revelation. Men may reason, conjecture, imagine what will come to pass; and events may justify the preprediction. But the peculiarity of the Hebrew prophets was that, springing out of a historic present, they described a historic future. They promise another Zion, another King, another Prophet, another Priest, another Redeemer, in the use of language which actual history had formed and made intelligible; so that, as a whole, they pledge the coming of a living person, and the rise of an actual state of things which may best be represented by all of dignity, and honor, and power, and dominion—by all of purity, and gladness, and greatness, which had already been associated with Jewish history. Our religion is not composed of mere ideas, but of facts. And that future which is made bright by the Hebrew prophets is not like the aurora of the northern pole, flashing its formless brilliancy in vacancy; it promises the advent of a living Being, who is to proclaim truth, deliver from wrong, and establish a perpetual and universal reign of righteousness, love, and joy. H. B. S.

“God hath not cast away his people.” Concerning them there is a twofold promise: of their conversion to God, and of their restoration to their land. Both are certain. Both will be fulfilled. The first, in their conversion to the Lord Jesus Christ. The second, in whatever sense the Holy Ghost used the words, but what that sense is is not so clear. When Israel is thus restored, it will be like “life from the dead” (Rom. 11:15). When the long-lost nation is regathered, when it returns with weeping and supplication to the Saviour, and, saved by him, sings the songs of Zion, then will it become by its evangelistic zeal what it now is by its sacred literature—a priesthood for the world! Concerning all this, the fulfilment of past prophecy is a prophecy of future fulfilment! Let us, then, ever hold the Hebrew race in high honor. “Salvation is of the Jews.” Let us bear them on our hearts in prayer. C. C.

6. Repentance leads to entire renewal of a man’s nature. “The Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed.” Honest endeavors after a righteous life shows to us a corrupt heart—a heart prone to love evil. The man who begins to pray for pardon soon learns to pray for purity. Nothing will satisfy the mind (when divinely illumined) short of complete regeneration. The repentant Jew discovered that the circumcision of the flesh effected nothing to deter from sin; now he perceives that circumcision of heart is the only real safeguard. At a later day, this inward change was more clearly pictured: “I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh.” To the same effect Jesus promised: “If ye keep my commandments, I will send you another Comforter, even the Spirit of truth, who dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.” D. D.

7. Will put all these curses upon thine enemies.** We have examples of this in Nebuchadnezzar, in Belshazzar, and in Antiochus Epiphanes, who were the three most remarkable oppressors of the Jewish nation. Pyle.—Jacob, in his prophecy, figuratively foretold the retaliation of Divine vengeance upon the persecutors of the Jews (Gen. 49: 11). Balaan comcisely foretold it in his last prophecy (Nu. 24: 24), and Moses more plainly in this passage; but it was reserved for the ensuing ode to describe these judgments in all their terrors. (See next section.) Hales.

9. Repentance in men awakens purest joy in God. “The Lord will again rejoice over thee for good.” So Jesus himself affirmed: “There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.” Union of nature and of interest between man and God is intimate. “His glory is great in our salvation.” “He will rejoice over us with singing.” The gladness of Jehovah at the completeness and beauty of creation was great; a hundred-fold greater will be his joy at the final success of redemption. Messiah will “see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.” D. D.—In a wider regard, this whole passage teaches that to the penitent there is: Forgiveness, with reversal of sentence of rejection (verse 3). Redemption from bondage (verses 3, 4; Col. 1: 13). Restoration to inheritance (verse 5; Eph. 1: 14). A new heart and spirit (verse 6). Deliverance from enemies (verse 7; 2 Thess. 1: 5, 6). Untold blessings (verse 9; Eph. 1: 3). Orr.

FINAL IMPASSIONED APPEAL OF MOSES (verses 15-20).

The mightiest of legislators, preparatory to his death, invoked heaven and earth to record that he had placed before his people life and death, and had sent forth his benedictions and his curses to his children of Israel; he had warned them, that by the strict observance of this law, without addition or diminution, their existence depended as “a holy” and “a peculiar people.” Never more than on that solemn farewell were this people of children stricken by terror and prophecy. The last appearance of Moses among his people is an incident at once awful and pathetic; and the prescient imprecations, eloquent and terrible, present altogether a scene without a parallel in profane history. D’Israeli.

The intense eagerness of Moses for the people’s weal is a sublime spectacle of generous devotement—an unparalleled instance of ardent affection. Calling up all his powers of persuasive and passionate appeal, he makes a final effort to win the tribes for God. D. D.

15-20. Death and life set before the people. In this earnest word Moses is summing up his deliverance. It has been called by Hävernick “the classic passage” upon the subject of death and life as understood in Old Testament times. “Shut out from the true community of life,” says Hävernick, “the sinner puts in only a pretended life, without God, enduring and promoting ruin in himself, until death physical, with its terrors, overtakes him. The Divine penalty manifests itself to the sinner as death.” As we love God with all our heart, and soul, and mind, and strength, we find that we have begun to live. On the other hand, the loveless life is only a pretended life, and carries within itself the “Anathema Maran-atha.” Love gives birth to new obedience, and obedience strengthens the spiritual life.

Separation from the source of life is death indeed. In this striking passage, while “good” and “life” go together, so do “death” and “evil.” The idea in death is not cessation of existence, but separation from God. Adam and Eve died the day they doubted God’s love and ate the fruit. They ceased not to exist that day, but died out of fellowship with God. Hence we are not to associate an annihilation view with the biblical idea of death. Men die when they are separated from God as really as the branch broken from the stem. Sin is the mother of death (Jas. 1: 15) It brings it forth, because it separates the soul from him who is the Fountain of life. Elyar.—Words cannot paint sin. It is only in the light of the great white throne, or by the flames of hell, or in the revealing light of the Holy Spirit, that any one can see the real character of sin. It is the enemy of God. It is the transgressor of his law. It is the great soul-poison and heart-plague. It is the only thing which really defiles or deforms the man. It is pollution, misery, guilt, incipient hell. It is the only thing to which we can give, in its fullest sense, the emphatic name of evil. Hamilton.

“Life” is more than existence—it is holy and happy existence. “Death” is not equivalent to non-existence. As respects the natural life, it is the separation of the living, thinking principle from the body, and is compatible with the survival of the soul in a future state. As respects the spiritual life—that life which the believer has, and the unbeliever has not, even now while yet both have conscious being—death is the cessation in the soul of all holy, spiritual functions, implying a state of moral ruin and disorganization, but by no means the wiping out of consciousness. “Death,” in verse 15, is deemed compatible with experience of “evil.” How strange that between such alternatives there should be a moment’s hesitation! Orr.

ALTERNATIVE LINES OF CONDUCT. All possible courses of life are reduced to two—one of which every man must take; a third course is excluded. The two are separately described. (1) The course of loyalty is described by the man’s state of heart, “To love the Lord thy God.” This determines all that follows—the root out of which all flowers and fruits of obedience spring. This love arises from a right appreciation of God. “He is thy life,” yea, the life of thy life. The life promised is nothing less than the life of God. “We shall be like him.” (2) The course of disloyalty is defined as a dislike of God: “If thine heart turn away.” The destiny of disloyalty is destruction: “Ye shall surely perish.”

16,19. Every element of needed information is furnished; and personal examination of spiritual facts is expected. Every man is bound to investigate, to ponder, to judge. There is authoritative command. “I command thee.” On the side of righteous precept there is supreme authority. Every appeal of God is an appeal to the noblest part of our nature—to conscience. Every solicitation of the tempter is an appeal to appetite and passion. There is tender entreaty. To the activities of wisdom and authority is added the impulse of love. If man’s benevolent love prompt him to use all measures to turn the disloyal unto God: how much deeper must be the love of God, of which man’s affection is but a faint adumbration! With all the pathos which human sympathy can lend to entreaty Moses pleads, “therefore choose life.” D. D.

19. Choose.** To force his will were to destroy the nature of his creature, which grace is not designed to do, but only to heal and assist it; and, therefore, God deals with man as a free agent, by instructions and commands, by promises and threatenings, by allurements and reproofs, by rewards and punishments. So true is the saying of Tertullian, “No man is made good against his will.” Bp. Womack.—“Therefore choose life.” Choice or moral determination underlies our salvation. Choice underlies the possibility of love to God. One deep choice in the heart’s centre underlies all the separate acts of choice involved in a life of obedience. The choice God wishes involves the choosing of Himself, with a view to love him, to obey him, and to cleave to him. The choice of God is the choice of life, and carries all lesser good with it. Orr.

Here is presented a series of considerations, cumulative in their force, which should be deeply pondered in strict order of progress. (1) Here is a great mass of truth set before men’s consciences and hearts. There are few words and phrases here given, in form most short and simple, yet in meaning how august! how deep! how high! They are such as these—God—the Lord thy God—good—evil—life—death—blessing—cursing. “Dread words! whose meaning has no end, no bound.” There are immeasurable, yea, infinite realities behind them. And having once been lodged in the conscience with the significance which is theirs, no power can dislodge them, nor can any one cause it to be to the man as if he had never heard them. (2) A great duty presses on men with whom this truth is deposited. To love the Lord, to obey him, to cleave to him, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments, and his statutes, and judgments—this is obviously the right course for men to follow. The Lord God is holy, and all his commandments are so too; and it is intrinsically and manifestly right to follow what is holy. As our Maker and Preserver, God has supreme claims on our loyalty of heart and life. As our Lawgiver, he has the infinite right to require our obedience. As our Infinite Benefactor, having commended his love toward us, having bought us with a price, he has a claim of love as well as a right of law. And it is not possible for a man to dispute this claim unless his nature is becoming so perverted that he begins to call evil good, or good evil. (3) A great blessing will follow loyalty and obedience. This is so under the Gospel, as really as under the Law. For the Law rested on a basis of gospel, and the Gospel brings with it its own law. The Gospel call is, “Repent, believe, obey.” This is the precise and immutable order. The grace of God teaches us that “we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, looking for that blessed hope,” etc. And we know what is the promised issue: “Godliness . . . hath promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.” “For God is our life and the length of our days.” Peace, joy, hope, and all joyful graces and blessings attend on a life which is in accordance with God’s will. (4) It is not possible that opposite moral courses should have like issues. If to love and obey God be good and tends to good, then the reverse must be evil, and can work nothing but evil. And such ill effects must, for aught we know, go on forever and ever unless something or some being interposes. The outlook for the despisers of Christ in the next life is darkness without a gleam of the light of hope in the distant horizon. And even in this life nothing but woe can possibly be to him who striveth with his Maker. (5) There are witnesses that we have not been left undirected and unwarned. Compare with this solemn adjuration of Moses that of Paul in Acts 20:26, 27; Phil. 1:8. “Heaven” was witness. For every warning given to men in God’s name is known and received on high. “Earth” is witness, for the record of the warning is published to the world. C. C.

The Bible, all through, presses men with threatenings of punishment, and holds out to them promises of happiness to lead them to a new life. But this is to be remembered, that it begins its work with men who are sunk in sin, and that the essence of sin is selfishness. It must arrest and raise them by motives adapted to their condition, provided that these motives are not wrong, and enlightened self-interest—that is, self interest which is consistent with the good of others, is not wrong. The Bible is too broad and human not to bring all fair motives into exercise. It is too philosophical to lose itself in the over-refinements of some modern philosophies which touch fallen human nature as a needle might a coat of mail. It has its still small voice, but it has its thunder before it. The sleeper must be roused to listen; and before the Gospel, and even with it, we must have Sinai’s word, “The soul that sinneth it shall die.” All through, in the Old Testament and also in the New, we have the principle, “If thou art wise thou shalt be wise for thyself.” “Behold I have set before thee death and life.” But the Bible is constantly advancing from the domain of threatening and outward promise to that of free and unselfish love. Its strength of appeal from the very beginning lies in the mercy of God pardoning unconditionally—a mercy which, when the clouds are severed, is seen to be the face of the Son of God and the Man of Sorrows devoting himself for those who had no claim on him but that of guilt and misery. He comes from a throne to a cross for them, and we see written on it, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us.” This love comes from a Divine fountain through a human heart that human hearts may feel the responsive throb, “We love him who first loved us.” When his law is inculcated, it is not that punishment may be escaped, but affection manifested. If heaven is promised, it is not a conditional reward, but a free and godlike gift; and this heaven in its essence is not a world of external delight, but of inward joy in the love and likeness of God, and deliverance from that sin and tyrant self, which are now our prison and our pain. As a man rises into the knowledge of the Divine plan he seeks and serves God, not from the hope of what he is to receive from him, but from the delight which he finds in him—in the true, the pure, the loving that dwell in the Father of Lights, and that in their present possession contain the pledge of eternal inheritance. Ker.

As there is but one alternative hereafter—heaven for the holy, and hell for the unholy—so on earth there is either confession or denial of God. They who do not deny him confess him: those who do not confess, deny him. Surely this is an awful thought! Where then are—not the undoubted, bold, and rebellious sinners, but the easy, quiet, peaceful people? those who live like their neighbors, and do not desire or pretend to be singularly holy? those who do as much as in men’s judgments will do, and spare themselves further trouble? those whom unpopularity affrights, and opposition makes so cautious, that they do nothing? Can they believe themselves to be confessors—brave, earnest, and invincible confessors—before men, whose confession will, through God’s mercy in Christ, earn his confession in the day of judgment? Can they imagine this? And if they be not confessors, what are they? G. M.

Ardor must be matched with consistency. You are not to be carried to heaven by a fitful religion, periodically raised from the dead at seasons of social exhilaration; not by a religion alive at church, but stagnant in the streets and in the market-places; not by a religion kindling at some favored hour of sentimental meditation, only to sink and flicker in the drudgery of common work. It is to little purpose that we read and circulate and preach the Bible, except all our reading and all our living gain thereby a more Biblical tone. And it is quite futile that our breasts glow with some fugitive feeling in the house of God, unless that feeling dedicates our common dwellings to be all houses of God. There must be prayer to hallow labor. There must be faith to consecrate enterprise. There must be holiness to sanctify business. There must be a cordial “Thy will be done,” uttered to a personal God, to interpret suffering. F. D. H.

Religion is no dry morality; no slavish punctilious conforming of actions to a hard law. Religion is not right thinking alone, nor right emotion alone, nor right action alone. Religion is still less the semblance of these in formal profession, or simulated feeling, or apparent rectitude. Religion is not nominal connection with the Christian community, nor participation in its ordinances and its worship. But to be godly is to be Godlike. The full accord of all the soul with His character, in whom, as their native home, dwell “whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely,” and the full glad conformity of the will to his sovereign will, who is the life of our lives—this, and nothing shallower, nothing narrower, is religion in its perfection; and the measure in which we have attained to this harmony with God, is the measure in which we are Christians. If we look backward from character and deed to motive, this harmony with God results from love becoming the ruling power of our lives. The love revealed is the perfect law, and the love evoked is the fulfilling of the Law. And this is the might and nobleness of the Christian love to God; that it is no idle emotion or lazy rapture, no vague sentiment, but the root of all practical goodness, of all strenuous effort, of all virtue, and of all praise. A. M.

SPECIAL MESSAGES: ENCOURAGING ASSURANCES TO THE PEOPLE. INSPIRING CHARGE TO JOSHUA. PRIESTS AND ELDERS TO PRESERVE AND PUBLICLY READ THE WRITTEN LAW. PUBLIC SUMMONS OF MOSES AND JOSHUA TO THE TABERNACLE. DIVINE ANNOUNCEMENT AND SPECIAL COMMAND TO MOSES. JEHOVAH’S CHARGE TO JOSHUA. THE LAW COMPLETED AND PLACED BY THE ARK.

This commandment is not hidden, neither far off. The law of loving and obeying God, which was the subject of Moses’s discourse, was well known to the Israelites. They could not plead ignorance of its existence and requirements. It was not concealed as an impenetrable mystery in heaven, for it had been revealed; nor was it carefully withheld from the people as a dangerous discovery; for the youngest and humblest of them were instructed in those truths, which were subjects of earnest study and research among the wisest and greatest of other nations. They were not under a necessity of undertaking long journeys or distant voyages, as many ancient sages did in quest of knowledge. They enjoyed the peculiar privilege of a familiar acquaintance with it. It was with them a subject of common conversation, engraven on their memories, and frequently explained and inculcated on their hearts. Jamieson.

The things revealed are not “hidden”—that is, abstruse and hard to be understood; nor “far off”—that is, out of thy reach, so that thou canst pretend thou canst not attain to them. They are not “in heaven”—that is, locked up there as a secret, but revealed from thence; nor “beyond the sea”—that is, at such a distance as will expose men to great danger to arrive at them. But they are “very nigh” thee indeed, as that which thou ownest with “thy mouth,” and dost with “thy mind” assent to. Bp. Kidder.—The word was brought “very nigh unto them,” even to their very doors, by Moses the servant of God, who now delivered to them the Divine will; as the Son of God himself did afterward, when he came and dwelt among them: and it was made so familiar to them, that they might always have it in their common discourse, to teach it their children; and it had now been so often repeated, that it might well be laid up in their memory, never to be forgotten. Bp. Patrick.—Since God himself pronounces his “commandment” so easy to be observed, because it was “not hidden from them, neither far off,” it must have been the Israelites’ own inexcusable fault, and a voluntary rejection, if, having life and death set before them, they would not choose life, it being absolutely in their own choice: and our task is yet so much more easy than theirs was, besides our being freed from the ceremonial law, in that we have no temptation to that crying sin of idolatry, which was their destruction. Lord Carendon.

11. God’s Word is a “commandment.” It comes to men with all the character of a law. It is not possible that we should treat it as we please. We are not permitted to mutilate or dismember it—not permitted to accept a part and reject a part. As in a tree the living sap runs into every branch and twig and leaf, so that we cannot pluck the tiniest part without breaking the vital current; so every part of God’s Scripture is instinct with high authority, nor can we neglect the least commandment without defying the majesty of heaven. We are bound to bow our wills to it; it will, in no degree, bend its requirements to suit our tastes. D. D.

14. On the part of scriptural truth, there is an exquisite fitness to meet the capacity of men’s minds and the needs of their souls. “The word is nigh thee; yea, in thy very heart.” There is perfect accord between the constitution of the man and the contents of revelation. The Bible is the counterpart and complement of conscience. It is obvious that the Lord of conscience is Lord of Scripture also. The Bible says, “Thou hast sinned;” and conscience admits the fact. The Bible says, “Thou art helpless to save thyself;” and conscience knows it true. The Bible declares that happiness is inseparable from obedience; and conscience feels that it is so. There is a living witness in every man (until gagged by sin) which testifies to the authority and necessity and reasonableness of God’s Law. D. D.

God came down to Mount Sinai, and spoke to the people directly. The trouble then was that he was too near; they wished him farther away. Then prophets came, and for fifteen hundred years the word was brought very nigh to men. At last God’s Son became incarnate, and brought the message so close to men that only the proud escaped it. The whole genius of revelation is contained in the remarkable words, “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight.” The revelation is for babes; for men of a childlike—not a childish—spirit; for men who have laid aside their pride and presumption, and can take truth trustfully from the Infinite Father. The idea is surely monstrous that God cannot break his Divine bread small enough for his human children; that none but men of a certain mental calibre can get hold of the food or digest it. It is surely a diviner plan to bring the truth so plainly home that none have any excuse for rejecting it. We must humble ourselves, and recognize the truth brought in Jesus Christ to our very door. If we required terrific effort to reach the truth, we would boast that we had succeeded through that effort. If it depended on great mental powers and struggle, we would take credit for both. But the fact is, it is brought so near to each of us, and so plainly home, that not one of us can boast of our discovery, but only chide ourselves that it was so long near us and so long overlooked! Elgar.

Its essential truths are within the compass of every mind. Every man knows what it is to love; that love is due from each man to his Maker. Every child knows what obedience means: that obedience is due to the Father of our spirits. Truly, some facts concerning the eternal world are so profound that, like ocean-depths, human reason cannot fathom them. But these are not the facts which lie at the foundation of man’s safety and hope. The practical duties which appertain to virtue and well-being are so plain that even a child may understand. Whatever difficulty lies in the way of human obedience, it does not lie in the haze or uncertain meaning of the revelation. The difficulty is within a man, not without him. The objects of faith are clearly revealed; we want only an eye to discern them. D. D.

The Apostle Paul (Romans 10:6-8) has applied this passage to the Gospel, for the Law of Christ is substantially the same as that of Moses, only exhibited more clearly in its spiritual nature and extensive application, and, accompanied with the advantages of Gospel grace, is practicable and easy. Jamieson.—Paul not merely adopts the language of Moses, but pursues the line of his deepest thought. The prophet anticipated a time when Israel would incur Divine wrath by disobedience, and instructed them to turn with all their hearts to God himself, whose word was very nigh. The apostle in his time saw Israel going astray from God and his righteousness by misuse of the very Law of Moses, and about to incur that penalty of dispersion which lies on them unto this day. Accordingly he labored to teach them the contrast between righteousness which is of the Law and righteousness which is of God by faith, and in order to this, used the language originally employed by Moses for recalling Israel to God; the distinction, however, being made, that, whereas Moses spoke of the revelation of God as their beneficent Ruler made to Israel, Paul spoke of the fuller revelation of the same God in his Son, and the grace and truth that have come by Jesus Christ. This Gospel-teaching, too, the apostle so gave as to enlighten the Gentiles as well as the Jews, because he was a preacher of the Gospel of the grace of God to every creature. D. F.

God’s commandment under the Gospel is that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ. If we ask, as the blind man did, Lord, who is he? or where is he, that we may believe on him? this Scripture gives an answer. We need not go up to heaven to fetch him thence, for he is come down from thence in his incarnation; nor down to the deep to fetch him thence, for thence he is come up in his resurrection. But the word is nigh us and Christ in that word; so that if we believe with the heart that the promises of the incarnation and resurrection of the Messiah are fulfilled in our Lord Jesus, and receive him accordingly and confess him with our mouth, we have then Christ with us, and we shall be saved. He is near, very near, that justifies us. The Law was plain and easy, but the Gospel much more so. H.

God had written to Israel the great things of his Law. He had made known his name, his precepts, the conditions of acceptable service, the way of life; had given that people a revelation, full, clear, adequate, adapted to their mental stature, and to their condition as sinners. And it is this evangelical element in Moses’s “commandment” which comes clearly to light in Christ, and which is embodied in Paul’s doctrine of the “righteousness of faith.” The words of this passage apply with increased force to the historical revelation of the Saviour. They strikingly suggest: That man needs a revelation. That he instinctively craves for one. That he would sometimes make great sacrifices in order to get one. But the revelation which man needs most of all is the revelation of a Saviour. He wants to know how he can escape from sin, from guilt, from wrath, from bondage; how he can be restored to holiness, to peace, to blessedness. The “commandment,” in its wider sense, gave him this knowledge in part; the full discovery is in the Gospel. The Word, in the preaching of this Gospel, as well as in the circulation of copies of the Scriptures, and the innumerable opportunities enjoyed in Christian lands of getting acquainted with the way of life, has now come very nigh to us. It is in our mouths and in our hearts, while the salvation which the Word makes known is as readily available as the Word itself is simple and intelligible. Orr.

Religion is here affirmed to be a very simple thing. These farewell words of Moses touch the high-water mark of his doctrinal teaching, and they are repeated by the Apostle Paul, in the tenth chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, as descriptive of the Gospel which he preached. Moses and Paul are in perfect agreement in their conception of what God requires of man. He does not demand impossible things at our hands. He places the truth beyond no earnest man’s reach. We are not required to scale the heavens, nor to fathom the abysses, nor to cross the seas, in order to secure the priceless treasure. It has a lodgment in every man’s heart, and it springs unbidden to his lips. It simply waits for his confession and obedience. Religion is a very simple thing, and its simplicity constitutes the living unity between the Old Covenant and the New. Peter sums it up in fearing God, and working righteousness; reverence and obedience are its cardinal virtues. Paul defines it as believing in the heart that God raised Christ from the dead, and confessing him with the mouth; trust and obedience are its essential qualities. Elsewhere these are called faith and repentance, a change of life based upon reverence and trust. Nor is this a new version, introduced by Christ and his apostles. Fifteen hundred years before Moses described it in the same way. Two things are emphasized, and only two: turning to the Lord with all the heart, and keeping his commandments. Faith and obedience were the cardinal virtues of the Old Testament religion, as they are of the New. The difference between the two is not essential, but formal. It is the difference between promise and fulfilment. The ground of Abraham’s faith was in what God would do; the ground of our faith is in what God has done; and in both cases obedience springs from the same loyal, trustful temper of heart. So far as true religion consists in inward and personal dispositions, and in habits of action growing out of these, it has always been the same, and it has always been very simple. A little child is its best illustration; for it is essentially a life of glad and voluntary trust, and of prompt obedience to him on whom we depend. This conception of piety dominates the entire Old Testament. David did not deceive himself on this matter, but knew that a broken heart and a contrite spirit were God’s only acceptable sacrifices. Samuel rebuked Saul when the latter presumed to cover his disobedience by an offering upon God’s altar. The prophets never imagined that observance of the elaborate ancient ritual constituted piety. Micah’s words are the keynote of the ancient religion: “What doth the Lord require of thee, O man, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” Twenty-five hundred years ago those words rang through Samaria and Judah; and not even Paul uttered anything more Christian. The two covenants are one at heart; though we speak of one as the Law, and of the other as the Gospel. Behrends.