Deuteronomy

Overview

Deuteronomy is Moses preaching. The generation that saw Egypt is dead; their children are camped on the wrong side of the Jordan, and the man who led them out is not going in with them. So he teaches the law again — the name means "second law" — to people who need to hear it as their own.

It is the warmest of the five books. Love is commanded here more than anywhere else in the Law, remembering is urged constantly, and the choice at the end is put as plainly as it can be: life and death, blessing and cursing — therefore choose life.

Background

Forty years have passed since Sinai. The wilderness generation is buried, Edom and Moab have been passed by, Sihon and Og have been defeated, and two and a half tribes have already asked to settle east of the river.

The book is shaped like the treaties of its day: a preamble, a history of what the great king has done, the terms, the blessings and curses, and witnesses. Israel is a nation renewing a covenant with the God who rescued them.

Key themes

• Remember — what God did, what you were, and what you promised.
• Love the LORD with all your heart; obedience grows out of love, not fear alone.
• One God, one place of worship, one people set apart from the nations around them.
• Teach your children, constantly and at home, or the next generation will not know Him.
• Blessing and cursing are set before them, and the choice is real.

Outline

1. What God has doneChapters 1–4

   Moses retells the journey from Sinai to here, failures included, and calls them to obey.

2. The heart of the covenantChapters 5–11

   The Ten Commandments again, the Shema, and warnings against forgetting God in a full land.

3. The termsChapters 12–26

   Worship, leaders, justice, warfare, property, family and neighbors — law for life in the land.

4. Blessing and cursingChapters 27–30

   The ceremony at Ebal and Gerizim, the consequences of each road, and the call to choose life.

5. Moses’ last actsChapters 31–34

   Joshua commissioned, the song and the blessing, and Moses buried by God in a valley of Moab.

Key passages

• Deuteronomy 6:4-9 Hear, O Israel — and teach these words to your children.
• Deuteronomy 8:3 Man doth not live by bread only.
• Deuteronomy 10:12-13 What doth the LORD thy God require of thee?
• Deuteronomy 18:15 A Prophet like unto Moses, whom God will raise up.
• Deuteronomy 28:1-14 The blessings of obedience.
• Deuteronomy 30:19 I have set before you life and death: therefore choose life.
• Deuteronomy 31:6 Be strong and of a good courage — He will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.
• Deuteronomy 34:10 There arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses.

Christ in Deuteronomy

Jesus answered every temptation in the wilderness by quoting this book, and named its Shema as the greatest commandment. Moses promised a Prophet like himself whom the people must hear — a promise Peter and Stephen both apply to Christ. The curse of the law pronounced in chapter 27 is the one Paul says Christ became for us.

Reading it

• Read it aloud where you can; it was preached, not filed.
• Chapter 6 rewards memorizing, and chapter 8 rewards reading whenever life is comfortable.
• Note what Jesus quotes from it, and where He was when He quoted it.