B. Summons to the Commitment to the Covenant Established at Horeb (5:1-11:32)
The Ten Commandments were mentioned in 4:13. There they are also called his covenant. Moses now updates that experience. Those hearing him are responsible. The contemporary charge to the current generation is Moses' burden (5:3).
For a detailed discussion of some of the technical issues involved in the text of the Ten Words, see the standard commentaries. These Ten Words are the basis for the instruction following in chs. 12-26. Note the personal, comprehensive, incarnational, and affective dimension of these instructions from Yahweh. One did not enter the covenant by merely obeying them, but by faith and trust in Yahweh’s goodness (7:8), because of which it was to one’s benefit to keep the instructions from the sovereign Lord (4:5-8).
Yahweh gave instructions on how Israel was to live after he had graciously chosen them, loved them, and delivered them; they owed their deliverance and salvation to him (5:6). Grace was extended before the Torah was given. Exodus preceded Sinai. A new heart would one day be given to Israel (30:6ff.) so that she could keep the Torah. In the meantime, the grace of forgiveness was available if the Torah was broken (4:31). Yahweh, merciful and gracious, would not reject a repentant heart. He delivered his people and pleaded with them to follow him. He brought them out: first the love/choice, then the Exodus, then Sinai, then forgiveness, then restoration.
God’s mercy is never ending, but his just dealing with sin corresponds to the offense. The third commandment (5:11) is best understood in its ancient Near Eastern setting where the name of a person or a god was intimately related to the character of that being. To misuse Yahweh’s name was to abuse and scorn Yahweh’s character. No Israelite was to bear (claim) Yahweh’s name and live in disobedience to his Torah, for that would bring reproach upon the Lord. The reason given for keeping the fourth word of Yahweh in 5:15 stresses the humanitarian concerns of Deuteronomy (cf. Ex 20:8). An emphasis on humaneness and brotherhood runs through the book. The reason for Sabbath observance illustrates the reason why Israel should care for slaves: Israel had been in slavery, but Yahweh had delivered them. The fifth commandment continues to illustrate the high regard for persons that permeates Deuteronomy. The second great commandment is assumed and illustrated throughout this book. The length of life in the land is an ethical-religious issue (5:16). Respect for one’s parents results in Yahweh’s blessing. The tenth word for Israel is a clear example that the Mosaic covenant was a spiritual, affective, “heart” religion to its core. The terms covet (t̠aḥmōd̠) and desire (t̠it̠'awweh) (v.21) are the same words used of Eve when she failed the test in the Garden (Ge 3:6). In 5:29 Yahweh cries, “Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!”
The phrase “it might go well” is used here to describe what Israel will receive if she is righteous: trusting Yahweh and keeping his instructions (6:25). Ṭôb̠, “good,” is also the word used seven times in Ge 1 to describe the original creation. It indicates that the creation enjoyed a perfect state of health and order. This was God’s goal also for Israel. Israel maintained no idol of Yahweh in the Holy of Holies as other nations did. The Ten Commandments located in the mercy seat (ark) directed Israel to love both God and humankind.
The people of Israel bound themselves to the implications of the Ten Words (for the significance of a covenant relationship, see Nicholson’s introduction and comments) and to other words of the Torah that Moses received alone (5:23-27). Before the Torah is expounded in chs. 12-26, Moses once again grounds the Torah in the love of God and in the ethical-religious essence of the Torah (5:32-33).
Dt 6:4-9 contains the Shema Jesus quoted when he gave what he called the Great Commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” There is no question about what the center of the theology of Deuteronomy is: supreme love for Yahweh. Everything else in the Law and the Prophets is a footnote (Mt 22:37; Lk 10:27). Moses' appeal in Deuteronomy is to the heart of Israel. He implores the circumcision of their hearts unto Yahweh and the keeping of the Torah. If Moses could reach Israel’s heart, the obedience of faith would follow. The second Great Commandment is implied throughout the book. It is stated explicitly in Lev 19:18. The exhortation to faith in 6:4, followed by a command to love, is found ten times and only in Deuteronomy.
Dt 6:4 may mean: The Lord God (1) is one Lord—not many, or (2) the Lord is one—a unity. He is not composed of a number of petty deities, each reflecting a dimension or attribute of Yahweh himself. This teaching guarded against both polytheism and the worship of multiple manifestations of Yahweh.
Four other major points are dealt with in this chapter. Israel must not forget Yahweh (v.12) after being blessed in the land; they must fear him (vv.2, 13) in order to take the land and remain in the land. They must also preserve traditions for their children (v.20-25). By diligent observance of the whole law, they would be a righteous people. The faithful observance of the Ten Words depended on Israel’s love for Yahweh (5:29; 6:4-9).
In ch. 7 Israel is a “treasured possession” (v.6, 'am segullâ[h]) by virtue of being chosen and loved by Yahweh (4:37). He expects reciprocal love from them (v.9). The essence of Yahweh’s character is holy love (v.6). Yahweh chose Israel because he loved them (7:7-8). They were to be holy (qâd̠ôš) unto him in position (v.6) and character (vv.1-5). In keeping the Torah (vv.12-16), forgiveness and grace assured Israel of restoration if and when they turned away.
To break away from their earlier model of failure (1:6-46), Israel is exhorted to remember (7:18) and not to fear the “peoples you now fear” (vv.18-21). Yahweh will conquer them methodically and orderly “little by little” (v.22).
The nations posed the threat of Israel’s apostasy upon their entering the land (vv.4, 16, 25). Israel is commanded, on the basis of Yahweh’s evaluation, to wipe out the inhabitants of Canaan. Apostasy would have totally negated Israel’s calling. But Israel could be destroyed, too (v.26), if they become like the inhabitants of the land (vv.25-26). The people are utterly to abhor the Canaanite religion. But the Torah provided for repentance and restoration if apostasy occurred.
Several remarkable assertions are found in 8:1-19. Many of them indicate Yahweh’s concern with Israel’s attitudes (vv.2, 5, 17). The forty years of wandering in the desert tested the people to determine what was in their hearts, for the source of keeping the Torah lay in the condition of the heart of Israel (v.2). Another purpose of their wandering was that they might know (not “to teach” as in NIV, but hôdî'ak̠â) that humankind lives on the word of God (v.3).
The gift of the land is one of Yahweh’s blessings for a faithful people. But the land can be her most subtle and enticing enemy. The terms “remember” and “forget” are used five times in these few verses (8:2, 11, 14, 18-19) to indicate Israel’s failure to trust Yahweh (vv.19-20). If Israel forgets the benefits of Yahweh, they will be destroyed.
The tendency of Israel to abuse Yahweh’s blessing of prosperity in the land involves smugness and self-centeredness. Their inner attitude is the source of the problem: “You will say in your heart, my strength and the might of my hand have produced this wealth and power for me” (8:17, my trans.). Yahweh blesses them; he is faithful to the ancestors of his people (v.18).
The worldview of Deuteronomy is holistic. It includes all of the various perspectives of life. The glue that holds it together is the ethical-religious texture of reality. If that texture is missing or corrupted, meaninglessness and chaos ensues. In Yahweh Israel had the source of their religion and ethics. That religion and those ethics could create a nation and a people “wherein righteousness” would dwell. Jesus knew that humankind ultimately lives by the Word of God; therein lay his own hope (cf. 8:3, 10).
The direct quote of the people of Israel in 9:4 reveals the central problem in this section: Israel’s false assumption (as in 8:17 also) that God was giving the land to them because of their own righteousness, a thought conjured up in their hearts. In fact the people are not righteous except as God makes them righteous. But Yahweh will keep them as his people since he will forgive their sins if they keep the covenant instructions of repentance when they sin (4:29).
Israel is depicted in these verses as a stiff-necked and rebellious people from the day they left Egypt (9:7, 13, 22, 24). They ultimately need to be converted (30:6). Through Moses' repeated intercessions on behalf of the people, they are restored several times (vv.25-29).
This passage has a more powerful theme than failure and hopelessness running through it: the faithfulness of Yahweh to the ancestors (v.27), the willingness of the Lord to listen to his faithful servant Moses (v.20), his unwillingness to put a blot on his own character (v.28), and his unwillingness to forsake his people though they were stubborn (vv.13-14) and could have been replaced. Except for Moses' faithful intercessions and, above all, Yahweh’s willingness to remain among his people, the apple of his eye (32:10), Israel would have been cast off (Wesley, Notes, 586). Moses simply reports, “The Lord listened to me at this time also. It was not his will to destroy you. ‘Go’, the Lord said to me, and lead the people on their way, so that they may enter and possess the land that I swore to their fathers to give them'” (10:10b-11). Yahweh exhorts them to circumcise their hearts (10:16).
What if the system that is supposed to provide mediation and justice (mispat), the priesthood, is itself corrupt? There is no hope. Thus the gravity of Aaron’s sin, thus the recording of Moses' words, “but at that time I prayed for Aaron too” (9:20). The restoration of the covenant and the rewriting of the Ten Words and their placement in the ark show Yahweh once again sealing his love for the ancestors and their rebellious offspring.
A note of despair, puzzlement, and confusion permeates this section. It causes original hearers and subsequent readers to wonder how, being a rebellious and stiff-necked people, they can stand before the Lord. The answer comes at once in 10:12-13: “And now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the Lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?” (cf. Mic 6:8). These verses ask for love and obedience for Israel’s own benefit.
The literary quality of Deuteronomy is evident in these strategically placed passages. Much of 7:7-8 is summarized in 10:14-15. Yahweh’s hortatory wish for his people in 5:29 becomes an imperative in 10:16; this verse also contains the solution to the problems detailed in 9:1-10:11. Israel, knowing that they were freely chosen (v.15) are to be like their God. They are to love aliens among them because Yahweh loves aliens. They were aliens once themselves; a bond of common humanity enlightens Israel’s ethics.
Ch. 11 is a work of art both theologically and structurally. It is an exhortatory summary of 5:1-11:32. It closes the section (chs. 5-11) containing the Ten Words and the legal foundation of Israel’s Torah and opens the following hortatory section before ch. 12. It introduces the superstructure of the decrees, laws, commandments, stipulations, in short, Torah, that follow in chs. 12-26. Significantly, a repetition of the Shema is imbedded in vv.13, 18-20. It emphasizes the two choices before Israel and recalls Jos 24:15 (also Dt 28; 30:19-20). The stress on the need for the present generation to choose is emphasized (Clarke, 213). A vital part of the worship of the people of God in any era must be the reclaiming of the past in a new dynamic way that informs and molds the future. The people of Israel were to bind themselves to the covenant. The chapter appropriately begins, “Love the Lord . . . remember” (vv.1-2). Remember, for by remembering you will see how Yahweh has loved you.