Old Testament · The Law
דְּבָרִים
Moses' farewell sermons, the law repeated for a new generation on the edge of the land.
Not a law code but a farewell sermon, preached on the plains of Moab by a man who knows he is not going in. Deuteronomy retells the exodus for people who were children when it happened, and its refrain is remember: you were slaves, God brought you out, do not become the kind of nation you escaped. Its shape follows the pattern of ancient treaties, a historical prologue, terms, witnesses, blessings and curses, which is one of the stronger arguments for the antiquity of the material. Two things repay attention. The Shema in chapter six is the sentence observant Jews have said morning and evening ever since, and it is the verse Jesus names as the greatest commandment. And the book is startlingly concerned with the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner, mandating debt release every seven years and a harvest deliberately left incomplete. It is the book Jesus quotes from most in the wilderness.
If you remember one thing
Jesus quoted this book more than any other. Its central claim is that obedience grows out of memory: you keep the covenant because you remember being rescued.
“Hear, Israel: Yahweh is our God. Yahweh is one. You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.”
Deuteronomy 6:4-5
Deuteronomy 7:1-6 and 20:16-18
The command to devote the Canaanite nations to destruction. Christians have answered this in several ways and none of the answers is easy; the passage should not be read quickly.
Named here rather than skipped. Where Christians read a passage differently, we say so instead of choosing for you.
Everyone here has a write-up, drawn from the same records that explain the names while you read the text.
Jacob's favored son, sold into slavery by his brothers, imprisoned on a false accusation, and raised to second in Egypt because he could read dreams. When his brothers finally stood before him he said the line the whole story turns on: you meant it for evil, God meant it for good.
Raised in Pharaoh's household, exiled for forty years as a shepherd, then sent back to demand Israel's release. He led the nation out of Egypt, received the law at Sinai, and led them forty years through the wilderness, but died on Mount Nebo within sight of the land he never entered.
Moses' assistant and one of the two spies who came back from Canaan saying it could be taken. He led the crossing of the Jordan and the conquest, and at the end of his life made the whole nation choose openly whom they would serve.
The other spy who urged Israel to go up at once. Forty-five years later, at eighty-five, he asked for the hill country with the fortified cities in it, on the grounds that he was as strong as the day Moses sent him out.
A diviner from the Euphrates hired to curse Israel, who could only say what God gave him to say, including one of the clearest messianic lines in the Torah. The Bible's later verdict on him is harsh: Numbers, Peter, Jude, and Revelation all treat him as the pattern of a religious professional who sells his gift.
Two Amorite kings, of Heshbon and of Bashan, who refused Israel passage and were defeated. Their names become a fixed pair in Israel's memory, recited in psalms and speeches for centuries as the standard example of what God did.
Manasseh's son and the clan descended from him, who took Gilead east of the Jordan. In the Song of Deborah, Machir stands in for the whole tribe. A separate Machir of Lo-debar sheltered Mephibosheth and later supplied David during Absalom's revolt.
A quiz for Deuteronomy is on the workbench. In the meantime, the games for the judges, the kings, and the prophets are open.
