Deuteronomy 9

Deuteronomy 9:4

I besought the Lord - We should allow no desire in our hearts, which we cannot in faith offer unto God by prayer.

Deuteronomy 9:5

Thou hast begun to shew thy servant thy greatness - Lord, perfect what thou hast begun. The more we see of God’s glory in his works, the more we desire to see. And the more we are affected with what we have seen of God, the better we are prepared for farther discoveries.

Deuteronomy 9:6

Let me go over - For he supposed God’s threatening might be conditional and reversible, as many others were. That goodly mountain - Which the Jews not improbably understood of that mountain on which the temple was to be built. This he seems to call that mountain, emphatically and eminently, that which was much in Moses’s thoughts, though not in his eye.

Deuteronomy 9:9

He shall go over - It was not Moses, but Joshua or Jesus that was to give the people rest, Hebrews 4:8. ‘Tis a comfort to those who love mankind, when they are dying and going off, to see God’s work likely to be carried on by other hands, when they are silent in the dust.

Deuteronomy 9:12

The statutes - The laws which concern the worship and service of God. The judgments - The laws concerning your duties to men. So these two comprehend both tables, and the whole law of God.

Deuteronomy 9:17

In the sight of the nations - For though the generality of Heathens in the latter ages, did through inveterate prejudices condemn the laws of the Hebrews, yet it is certain, the wisest Heathens did highly approve of them, so that they made use of divers of them, and translated them into their own laws and constitutions; and Moses, the giver of these laws, hath been mentioned with great honour for his wisdom and learning by many of them. And particularly the old Heathen oracle expressly said, that the Chaldeans or Hebrews, who worshipped the uncreated God, were the only wise men.

Deuteronomy 9:18

So nigh - By glorious miracles, by the pledges of his special presence, by the operations of his grace, and particularly by his readiness to hear our prayers, and to give us those succours which we call upon him for.

Deuteronomy 9:19

So righteous - Whereby he implies that the true greatness of a nation doth not consist in pomp or power, or largeness of empire, as commonly men think, but in the righteousness of its laws.

Deuteronomy 9:21

Thou stoodest - Some of them stood there in their own persons, though then they were but young, the rest in the loins of their parents.

Deuteronomy 9:22

The midst of heaven - Flaming up into the air, which is often called heaven.

Deuteronomy 9:23

No similitude - No resemblance or representation of God, whereby either his essence, or properties, or actions were represented, such as were usual among the Heathens.

Deuteronomy 9:25

Statutes and judgments - The ceremonial and judicial laws which are here distinguished from the moral, or the ten commandments.

Deuteronomy 9:26

In Horeb - God, who in other places and times did appear in a similitude in the fashion of a man, now in this most solemn appearance, when he comes to give eternal laws for the direction of the Israelites in the worship of God, and in their duty to men, purposely avoids all such representations, to shew that he abhors all worship of images, or of himself by images of what kind soever, because he is the invisible God, and cannot be represented by any visible image.

Deuteronomy 9:27

Lest ye corrupt yourselves - Your ways, by worshipping God in a corrupt manner.