Deuteronomy 4

Division 2. (Deuteronomy 4:44-49; Deuteronomy 5:1-33; Deuteronomy 6:1-25; Deuteronomy 7:1-26; Deuteronomy 8:1-20; Deuteronomy 9:1-29; Deuteronomy 10:1-22; Deuteronomy 11:1-32; Deuteronomy 12:1-32; Deuteronomy 13:1-18; Deuteronomy 14:1-29; Deuteronomy 15:1-23; Deuteronomy 16:1-22; Deuteronomy 17:1-20; Deuteronomy 18:1-22; Deuteronomy 19:1-21; Deuteronomy 20:1-20; Deuteronomy 21:1-23; Deuteronomy 22:1-30; Deuteronomy 23:1-25; Deuteronomy 24:1-22; Deuteronomy 25:1-19; Deuteronomy 26:1-19; Deuteronomy 27:1-26; Deuteronomy 28:1-68; Deuteronomy 29:1-29; Deuteronomy 30:1-20.)The Exposition and Enforcement of the Law. We now come to that exposition and enforcement of the law which occupies evidently the body of the book. In the first of its three subdivisions we have its governing principle, -that is, of course, its essence, and this is embodied in the first commandment of its first table. In the second, we have the illustration of it in special commands. In the third, its sanctions, -the rewards and penalties which actualize it as law.

Deuteronomy 4:44-11

Subdivision 1. (Deuteronomy 4:44-49; Deuteronomy 5:1-33; Deuteronomy 6:1-25; Deuteronomy 7:1-26; Deuteronomy 8:1-20; Deuteronomy 9:1-29; Deuteronomy 10:1-22; Deuteronomy 11:1-32.)The governing principle, or the law in its essence. In the first subdivision there are five sections; in which we find, first, the law itself, and in the repetition of this we are called back to the manner and circumstances of its first announcement. In the first two commandments of the law, by which God is enthroned in the affections of His people, the spirit of the whole is seen. For this, the testimony to Him, and to the salvation He has wrought for them, is to be constantly maintained, -kept before their own eyes, and taught their children. For this also all toleration of the false gods of the heathen and of their worship is forbidden: they are to be a people holy to their God, the only true God. Then they are to beware of self-righteousness, which the enjoyment of His favor might engender; and in this, the lessons of the wilderness -of their humbling and discipline there, and of their need of it, -are to have their permanent use. Then responsibility is finally insisted on, and the issue of their conduct in blessing or in curse.

1. (1) The exposition of the law begins with the place in which and the circumstances under which it is given, -after their deliverance from Egypt, Jordan reached, the land of the two Amorite kings already in possession. It is evident that these are motives and encouragements to obedience, -pledges of the full blessing yet to come. In a similar interest, Israel are carried back to Horeb, and placed amid the solemn surroundings of the first giving of the law. Many of the eyes which were upon Moses now had beheld the glory of the fiery mount, as he reminds them. Face to face, out of the midst of the fire, God had talked with them. They needed no argument as to His being or power; but that power had been used in their behalf, and the first words of Him who spake declared Him their Deliverer out of Egyptian bondage. He did not claim their love without having done that which would secure it for Him. But this love must have reverence in it also: nothing is more offensive than that familiar tone assumed toward God by some who have been moulded upon the lax gospel often preached to-day. Yet God would have us near Him, -truly near, -the nearer, the more His majesty will impress us, the infinite distance between ourselves and Him will penetrate us. True, it was here the fiery mount: for the people had accepted law, and put themselves under it; yet the fear with which God sought to impress them was preservative, and in that sense gracious. And there remains for us, after grace has fully come, a “fear of the Lord” which is not terror, but which allows no levity, and along with which “the comfort of the Holy Ghost” is ever found. (Acts 9:31.) Spoken before written, the law of the Lord is a living reality; and while it may be a “ministry of death,” is never a dead letter. Our hearts may well delight to recognize in it all through, indeed, a “ministry” meant to blight only the pretentious pride and self-righteousness of man, and thus deliver him, -to shut him up among those “lost” for whom a Saviour is provided. In the recapitulation of the law, it is evident, as especially in the fourth commandment, that Moses does not confine himself to a literal quoting of the divine words. The ground for the observance of the Sabbath is here, not the six days’ making of heaven and earth, but the redemption of the people out of Egypt. Of course, the one reason does not conflict with the other; and indeed the latter is a needed supplement to the former. Man as the creature of God can only now by grace be sustained in this place, and at rest and after his wilderness-history is closed, as it is in Deuteronomy, this comes in more naturally than in Exodus, where the people stand as yet under the unbroken covenant. God’s Word is perfect and divine in every part. In the fifth commandment, the words, “as Jehovah thy God commanded thee,” brought in, show clearly that Moses is not simply repeating. The same words are found in the fourth commandment, but might be thought in that place to refer to the first institution of the Sabbath, when the manna fell. He adds here also, “that it may be well with thee.” Except in the fourth commandment, the differences are, however, slight. (2) Moses, after the recapitulation of the law, dwells upon their need of a mediator, -a need met, obviously, only typically in himself. A greater than Moses speaks to us here through him and we see how Deuteronomy presents to us the great features of the history as suited to us. Owning that Jehovah had actually spoken to them, and they lived, they yet declare this impossible to last and God owns this (from their stand-point) as true. But then the legal covenant was plainly hopeless. One only reason can there be why God and His creature should not meet together in security. No necessary distance between finitude and the Infinite One could make His presence destructive to what His hands had fashioned.

No, it is sin which absolutely demands judgment, unless Another can intervene in righteousness in his behalf and here Moses can make no real atonement, as we know. He is a shadow, not the substance. Man’s refuge is not from God, but in God Himself. 2. Such is the text, and now we come to the exposition. Moses sums up in two brief sentences what the law implies in its first table. First, the unity and immutability of God: “Jehovah our God is one Jehovah” founded upon this, His claim to the undivided allegiance of man, -“Thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” If there be but one God, there is none beside to divide the heart with; and Jehovah claims in the most absolute way the whole of it. The words stand for the inner man, with all his affections, and in their full energy. And this is the reasonable claim of the Creator to the full answer of the heart to Him who created him, and in whose service alone all his faculties find their full occupation, rest, and satisfaction.

All freedom apart from this is only slavery. All slavery here is only freedom as he knew well who could say, “To me, to live is Christ,” and who in his epistle to the Romans signs himself His “bondsman,” -“Paul, bondsman of Jesus Christ.” (Romans 1:1, Greek.) Yet none can insist more earnestly that “we have not received the spirit of bondage.” (Romans 8:15.) To live in love, and serve Him who is love, is indeed the opposite. (2) Whose they were, they were to remind themselves and others at all times, and on all occasions. Their confession of God was to be of the most open character. How great a help and strength to the soul itself is this conspicuous putting God foremost! “I have set the Lord always before me” has necessarily for its companion-word, “He is at my right hand: I shall not be moved.” (Psalms 16:8.) God’s seal is for the forehead, not the back of the head; and how many are saved by it from the devil’s locusts! (Revelation 9:4.) Nor does the apostle hesitate to say, “With the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Romans 10:10.) Let us not think it legal to insist upon commandment, and to write upon every available space a “Thus saith the Lord.” Such a consecration of things is the way to prevent the devil’s scribbling, who has not the least hesitation or delicacy in appropriating every vacant spot. God’s word is no intrusion, and never out of place. By it the heavens were framed, and the earth established; and still it establishes, harmonizes, gives fullest meaning, character, beauty, to every thing. It is no more out of place any where than a ray of sunshine is; and, like it, glorifies what it rests upon. (3) But, alas! then as now, and now as then, the very fullness of the blessing enjoyed might cause forgetfulness of the gracious hand from which it came. “Fullness of bread” had of old been the destruction of Sodom. Trial and necessity awake the consciousness of man’s need of God, while without want he may lose easily the sense of his still existing dependence. Egypt, the type of the world away from Him, we have seen to be fed by her unfailing river. Mercies thus may through our pride and willfulness become that plagues shall have to become our mercies. In this condition the gods which man’s own heart has devised are more attractive than the glorious God who is our Creator, not our creature; and Israel can go after the idols of Canaan -of the nations they have seen driven out before Jehovah -away from Him who had given them these for a possession. Of this, then, they are warned beforehand, that they may retain Him in their fear, serve Him, and swear by His name. The God who loves them is jealous of their affections. They must choose between that love heretofore so fruitful to them and the wrath which will alike be fruitful; for indifferent He cannot be. (4) They must not tempt Jehovah, then, as they tempted Him in Massah. There, it was, in fact, belief in His indifference. They said, “Is the Lord among us, or not?” He had been, surely; but in their change of circumstances, they. had imagined fickleness in Him, and that His shoulder had thrown off the burden it had assumed. How little we judge it our sin that we have not counted on Him, that we have judged Him capable of abandoning the objects of His choice! No: He would fill His place; let it be only their care to fill theirs. Let them diligently observe His commandments, which were also His testimonies, and the result could not but follow -that it should be well with them, and that they should go in to possess the land. One blessed experience they had, and which was to be their testimony to the generations following. They had been bond-slaves in Egypt, and Jehovah had broken their bonds to bring them forth. This He had enshrined for their remembrance in those ordinances which, as they abode, should be testimonies that He abode still, their changeless God and Saviour. Thus was perpetuated among them the memory of a love which in all else manifested itself for them, -statutes which would be righteousness to those who observed them, and for their good alway: assurances of what He who gave them was in His own nature, as loving righteousness, -who commands love, because He loves. So in man also does conscience testify to the one of these, as the heart of parent, brother, friend testify to the other. In these, man cannot but be, however feebly, the reflection of his Maker. 3. So far as to Israel, simply looked at as from within: a sterner duty awaited them as to the land into which Jehovah was about to bring them. They were completely to destroy out of it the Canaanite inhabitants, showing them no mercy, making no covenant or alliance with them. Over and over again the cause of this has been explained. They were a people whose iniquity was now full, as in Abraham’s time it yet was not. (Genesis 15:1-21.) The land itself was spuing them out for their abominations, and Israel was in this respect but the executioner of divine judgment, not of their own passion or lust of acquisition. Instead of destroying them, as He might, by plague or famine, He chose Israel to perform this office, and thus gave His people themselves the most solemn lesson that could be given them, in the holiness of His own nature, and in what sin is before Him.

They themselves would incur similar awful judgments if they followed them in their sin, of which their loathsome gods of lust and murder were the full outcome and expression. There must be no dalliance with this evil, no league of any kind with those infected with it. Axe and fire must deal with all its symbols, and Israel must be wholly devoted to Him who had set His love upon them in all their insignificance, and in that love, and faithful to His promise to their fathers, had now redeemed them to Himself. Thus they knew God, this true and faithful God, -faithful in holy judgment as in loving mercy. How needful all this reiteration Israel’s after-history shows abundantly. Here, therefore, follows the detail of various blessing, just such things as every man values, which would go with obedience; while the power of God, which they had witnessed in Egypt, would be against their enemies and consume them if slowly, even this in tender mercy to them, lest the wild beasts should increase too much in the vacant land. 4. Again, Moses returns to enforce all this with the ever-fruitful wilderness-lessons; -we too, in eternity, shall return to feast upon harvests gathered out of such barren soil. If these are lessons of humiliation, it is just this that is so needful for the proud heart of man. To the meek and contrite of heart God looks, -yea, dwells with these. Humility is the true undoing of the fall in one main feature; and thus the forty years of discipline have their justification. (1) They were to remember, then, all the way by which God had led them, -a way which had brought out for them, as His way still does for all, all that was in their hearts. This in its design was but their Father’s care, whether He suffered them to hunger, or fed them with His strange food, still by man so little appreciated. Patient weaning from self it was, patient instilling of lessons of dependence, so easy-seeming, so hard to acquire. Ah, in the life that He has taught us to be our possession, how sure that God’s Word is that which sustains it! -“By every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God doth man live.” If there was trial, how God’s tenderness was shown! Raiment never growing old; feet never swelling as they trod that flinty soil. We too have a robe of beauty that is fresh eternally; “feet shod with the preparation of the gospel, of peace,” of which the rough places only prove the abiding comfort. Discipline, -yes! but the tender discipline of a father for the son in whom he delighteth. Beyond, the good land beckoning them, -“a land of water-brooks, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills,” reminding us of the fullness of the Spirit which abounds at all levels for us; a land of grain and fruits, and stored within with precious metals. Alas! there lay for them dangers which the wilderness was meant to prepare them for; and they might say, “My power, and the might of my hand, have gotten me this wealth.” Into our laud, thank God! we shall enter with this lesson learnt; and yet how in this the wilderness may still be remembered as our teacher, and its teachings still be treasured up for endless blessing! (2) Not only might there be the thought that their own hand had gained them what they had, a subtler one might use the very acknowledgment of God as having bestowed it to foster a spirit of self-righteousness. Moses goes on, therefore, to review their course, as far back as Horeb itself, the place of covenant, and where it was so soon and so terribly broken through. When Jehovah’s power had cast out before them nations mightier than themselves, they might impute it to their own credit that He had thus manifestly favored them. No; but on account of the wickedness of these nations He had cast them out. And as to themselves, they had always been a stiff-necked people. And again he recites how he had gone up at first into the mount to receive the tables of the law, and how in that short space in which he had remained there, they had forfeited every thing, and provoked Jehovah so that His wrath threatened to destroy them all.

Yet He had hearkened to his intercession both for them and Aaron. And from there to Kadesh-barnea they had constantly rebelled. (3) It was divine mercy only that had restored every thing. In that extremity of theirs, the promise to their fathers and the glory of His own name had given Him ground to take them up again. The tables had been renewed, and this time to be received into the ark for safe-keeping and there they still abode. Aaron died long after, transmitting the priesthood to Eleazar his son. While the whole tribe of Levi were separated to God to minister to him and to bless the people in His name, having Jehovah alone for their portion and inheritance. The statement as to Aaron is quite intelligible as showing the answer to Moses’ prayer, to which without any doubt it stands related, the section closing as it began with this, and the reiteration that God had answered it. But there are, at first sight, difficulties nevertheless connected with it, which furnish a pretext for cavil by those ready to find it. The main difficulty is, that the passage reads like a part of the itinerary of the wilderness, beginning before Mosera, at which Aaron died, and going on beyond to Gudgodah and Jotbath. The only other that can be really called so is that the time of the separation of the Levites seems to come after Aaron’s death, which in fact it preceded thirty-eight years. But this is founded only upon the expression “at that time,” coming after the account of Aaron’s death, which it does, but does not necessarily refer to it. It is the “time” of his great intercession that is in Moses’ mind; and to this he has before returned after going beyond it (as Deuteronomy 9:24-25). But the first difficulty needs more attention. It will be perceived at once that the death of Aaron, and the succession of Eleazar are the central points quite evidently; and that these are indeed in such relation to the whole history here, we have seen in Numbers. In Eleazar the priesthood of Aaron is maintained, spite of his death, and in the power of resurrection; and this connects significantly with the rapid advance of the people, who now press on through all opposition triumphantly to the very border of the land. Our great High-Priest, His work accomplished, and risen out of death, is able thus to lead on His people. In the passage before us indeed but a few stages of the journey are given: they are however a good sample; and those who realize the connection of the smitten Rock with the outflowing waters, and of Christ dead and risen with the gift of the Spirit, will mark with interest, as others have done, the record (surely not purposeless) of what was indeed so important for their journey, the water which they found. First, before Aaron’s death, and giving perhaps the meaning of the commencement here -the “wells of the (Horite) sons of Jaakan.” After Mosera and when Eleazar has succeeded Aaron, Gudgodah, which has been said to mean “a well with much water.” Then Jotbath, which (it is openly stated) is “a land of water-brooks.” Thus there is progress: has there not at least been corresponding progress since Christ our High-Priest has entered the heavens? From the wells which indeed furnish water, but in Horite hands -they were cave-dwellers, as we know, these Horites -to first the rise of many waters in that of Pentecost, and then the far and wide-flowing streams among the nations? 5. This part is now closed with a solemn reminder of their responsibility to God. (1) What did God require of them but a loving obedience to commandments which were always for their good? love to One who while infinitely great, heaven and earth belonging to Him, had nevertheless chosen them above all people in His love to them? Here was what made them so responsible beyond all men, while it should have made their duty easy of fulfillment. They had but to wear the light yoke of love, a thing which is indeed the moral power of the gospel: “We love Him, because He first loved us.” How far, then, does our responsibility exceed that of Israel? (2) They indeed knew God in His wonderful work for them, as well as in the commandments which displayed His character. They were called to imitate Him. If He cared for the fatherless and widows, and for the stranger, they too must care. And had they not known what it was to be strangers in that land out of which (marvelously multiplied amid all their suffering) He had delivered them with an outstretched arm? (3) In Egypt and at the Red Sea they had seen His signs, His anger, the more terrible for its holiness. And in the wilderness, when the earth acted for Him, and swallowed up the insolence of the stubborn transgressor. Now, the good land before them waited to receive them, and welcome them with all its wealth. But they must enjoy it holily or not enjoy it. (4) Indeed, this land was a land not like the land of Egypt. There, independent, as they might think, of heaven, the overflowing river both watered and fertilized it, needing but guidance upon man,s part, who with his foot could guide it as he would. Not so Israel’s land of hills and valleys and rain from heaven. Here God had chosen for them the better part of creature-dependence, therefore of the Creator’s care. “A land which Jehovah thy God careth for: the eyes of Jehovah thy God are continually upon it, from the beginning of the year even to the end of the year.” Could those vigilant eyes overlook their need? No, assuredly; but their need might be, alas! of chastening, and He would give it. Israel’s land might thus suffer where Egypt escaped.

It is the secret of the seventy-third psalm, only to be read aright, and acquiesced in joyfully, in the presence of God, in the sanctuary. If the wicked are “not in trouble as other men, neither are they plagued as other men,” -if, on the other hand, “all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning,” -here is the meaning of it, that “I am continually with thee; thou hast holden me with Thy right hand.” How blessed a reason! how glorious a compensation! “Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire in respect of Thee.” The presence of the Holy One with us necessarily implies discipline; but it is a Father’s discipline of the “son in whom He delighteth.” This, then, is what God appoints for Israel. They are perpetually to be upon His arm. They are to know the “living God” in the constant display of His resources for them, even as their land is to be not a dead level such as Egypt’s, but a land of valley and hill, such as must needs have the direct “rain from heaven” upon it. And then with it what Pisgah prospects, and what a place for a hardy race such as mountaineers are! And what mines of wealth in the bowels of these hills, -“a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou shalt dig copper”! what “fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills”! This is the creature-place -not a hard one, at its worst, when the opened eye beholds Him on whom all things wait. And at last its full meaning shall come out, how blessed! for in the creature it has been God’s will to manifest Himself; and into the creature-place the Creator Himself has been pleased to come, and to know fully all that dependence upon Him which to us only unbelief makes hard. “I was cast upon Thee from the womb,” is the word of Him, whom yet all nature shall put on its bridal dress to welcome, -the “MAN,” God’s “fellow”! (Zechariah 13:7.) Let Israel keep only in the place of dependence, taking from no hand but that of their God, serving Him with the only service fitting for Him to receive, then they have pledged a word that shall never be broken, for their full deliverance in the land. It is also pledged -and the pledge has been redeemed -that if they go away from Him, they shall learn in a closed heaven and a barren earth His faithfulness to the covenant they have despised. Let them only lay up in their hearts His word, and confess it in their lives, in multiplied days they and their children shall enjoy the fullness of a blessing, of which He who knows heaven can say, “As the days of heaven upon the earth.” (5) A career of conquest was now before them, and the land is conditionally made over to them, not merely in the extent to which they actually possessed it, but expressly all Lebanon and the wilderness -east of it -as far as the Euphrates itself. In David’s time a shadow of this was reached, but only in the way of supremacy over the nations that filled these countries. Israel is yet to have this in possession, and much more, for the southern limit is not defined here according to promise, and Edom, Moab, and Ammon were at present, as we have seen, excepted from the land assigned them. By and by these also are to be their own. Meanwhile, a large and plentiful land was put before them, which they did not possess, simply because of their own rapid declension and apostasy, their non-observance of the conditions so again and again insisted on. The blessing and the curse were to be solemnly rehearsed in the centre of the land when God should give it them, from the slopes respectively of Gerizim and Ebal. The last words which point out the site, “beside the oaks of Moreh,” -full of touching recollections for an Israelite, -show that this is the place where Abraham first rested upon entering Canaan. “Moreh” means “teacher,” as the oak itself suits well with the robustness of growth where the Word of God is that which teaches. The connection of Moreh with Shechem is seen in Genesis, and this lies between Ebal and Gerizim. “Shechem” means “shoulder,” and there Israel as a nation, now brought into the land, were finally to take up the burden of the law; a law which is commonly torah, or “teaching,” from the same root as Moreh. These are links which show us how God would carry back His people to the position of their great ancestor, so definitely the man of faith, and set them where he had been. Alas, they had accepted law, to stand in covenant-relation to Jehovah on that ground; and the shadow of this falls darkly over them. Ebal o’ertops Gerizim. Even this should have been but a voice of recall to Abraham’s blessing through a faith like his: some surely heard it.