The Land Drinks Rain from Heaven

“His charge” is mishmeret, a watch or guard duty, the word for the Levites’ assigned service (Numbers 3:7). The four-part list of charge, statutes, judgments and commandments recalls Genesis 26:5, where Abraham “kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws”.

In Hebrew this sentence runs on through 11:7 before it finds its main verb: know this day, not your children, the discipline, the greatness, the hand, the arm, the signs, the acts, and then at last, your eyes have seen. “Chastisement” is musar, the father’s training of 8:5.

“Miracles” here are otot, signs, the same word used for the plagues. Psalm 135:9 compresses this verse into one line: God “sent tokens and wonders into the midst of thee, O Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his servants”.

“Made the water to overflow” is the verb tsuph, which plays on yam suph, the sea of reeds, the Hebrew name of the Red Sea. Horse and chariot are the pair of the song in Exodus 15:1. “Unto this day” implies a lasting ruin: Egypt’s chariot army never came after them again.

A single line for thirty-eight years; 2:14 dates the stretch from Kadesh to the Zered. After the detail of 8:2-4 and 8:15-16, the wilderness needs no retelling. “This place” is the plains of Moab, where Moses is speaking.

Korah led that rebellion in Numbers 16, yet only the two Reubenites are named here; Korah’s sons survived (Numbers 26:11) and their line sang in the temple. Dathan and Abiram had called Egypt “a land that floweth with milk and honey” (Numbers 16:13). “Substance” is yequm, every living thing, a word from the flood (Genesis 7:23).

Here the long sentence begun in 11:2 finally lands. “Great acts” is singular in Hebrew, all the great work of the LORD. Judges 2:7 uses the same words of the generation that outlived Joshua, and 2:10 of the one after, “which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done”.

Strength is promised as the result of keeping, not demanded as a qualification for it. Joshua 1:7 turns the order round when the time comes: “be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law.”

“To them and to their seed” recalls the wording of the original promise, “to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever” (Genesis 13:15). The land was sworn to the fathers themselves as well as to their children, which the rabbis pressed hard; see 11:21.

How Egypt was watered “with thy foot” is guessed at: treading a water wheel, or pushing open and damming irrigation channels with the foot. A garden of herbs is a vegetable plot, the very phrase Ahab uses when he wants Naboth’s vineyard to grow vegetables in (1 Kings 21:2).

Egypt is watered from below, by the Nile’s flood; this land from above, by rain. Zechariah 14:17-18 knows the difference and threatens drought on nations that refuse to go up to Jerusalem, then has to find another penalty for Egypt, which has no rain to lose.

“Careth for” is doresh, seeks after or looks into, the verb of 4:29. “The beginning of the year” is reshit hashanah, close to the name of the Jewish New Year, and the rabbis read the verse as God weighing each year’s rain as it opens. The eyes of the LORD stay on the land all year.

11:13-21 is the second paragraph of the Shema, recited morning and evening after 6:4-9. The Hebrew opens with the doubled verb, if hearkening you will hearken. Moses speaks in God’s first person again: “my commandments”.

The first rain is yoreh, the autumn rain that softens the ground for ploughing and sowing; the latter rain is malqosh, the spring rain that fills out the grain before harvest. Joel 2:23 and James 5:7 both count on the same two seasons.

The cattle are fed before the family eats. The Talmud (Berakhot 40a) drew from the order a rule that a man should not eat before he has fed his animals. “Grass” is esev, the green growth the rain produces in the fields and on the hillsides.

“Deceived” is patah, to entice or talk someone round. It is the verb for seducing a girl in Exodus 22:16, and for the lying spirit sent to persuade Ahab in 1 Kings 22:20-22. The danger is being charmed, not forced.

Solomon’s prayer names this very case: “When heaven is shut up, and there is no rain, because they have sinned” (1 Kings 8:35). Elijah announces such a drought to Ahab (1 Kings 17:1). The threat strikes Baal where he was worshipped, as the god of storm and rain.

The words of 6:6-8 return with changes: the address is now plural, the words are laid up in heart and soul, and binding comes before teaching. Jewish tefillin hold both passages, together with Exodus 13:1-16, on parchment inside the leather boxes.

Where 6:7 said “teach them diligently”, sharpen them, this verse has limmadtem, the ordinary verb for teaching. The Hebrew “speaking of them” can mean the children speaking; the Sifre reads it so, telling a father to talk Torah with his son as soon as the child can speak.

The line is identical to 6:9. Both of these Shema paragraphs are written out on the parchment inside a mezuzah, so the verse commanding the writing is itself among the words written on the doorframe.

“As the days of heaven upon the earth” means as long as the sky stands over the ground; Psalm 89:29 says the same of David’s throne. Because the land was sworn “to give them”, the fathers already dead, the Talmud cites this verse as a proof of resurrection (Sanhedrin 90b).

To walk in all his ways raised a question for the rabbis, since 4:24 calls God a consuming fire. The Sifre answers by imitation: as he is called merciful, be merciful; as he is gracious, be gracious. Cleaving is the verb of 10:20 again.

The verb yarash has two faces, to inherit and to dispossess. With “greater nations” as its object it means to take over what was theirs. The comparison “greater and mightier than yourselves” is the fear of Kadesh turned into a promise.

Joshua 1:3-4 quotes this verse nearly word for word to Joshua. “The uttermost sea” is literally the hinder sea: Hebrew faces east to orient itself, so the Mediterranean in the west lies behind. The Euphrates is reached only under Solomon (1 Kings 4:21).

2:25 promised this dread had begun: “This day will I begin to put the dread of thee and the fear of thee upon the nations.” “As he hath said” reaches back to Exodus 23:27, “I will send my fear before thee”.

“Behold” is re’eh, singular, though “before you” is plural: each person is shown the choice set before all. The synagogue reading named Re’eh starts here. The same pair returns at the end of the law in 30:19, set beside life and death.

The blessing is introduced with asher, “that” or “in that”, and the curse in 11:28 with im, “if”. Commentators have noticed the difference: the blessing is spoken as though obedience were expected, the curse as a possibility.

“Which ye have not known” describes gods with no history with Israel, gods who did nothing in Egypt or the wilderness. The Song of Moses mocks them the same way: “new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not” (32:17).

The two mountains stand either side of the pass at Shechem. Joshua carries out the ceremony in Joshua 8:30-35, and chapter 27 gives its script. Gerizim became the Samaritans’ holy mountain; “Our fathers worshipped in this mountain” (John 4:20).

“Champaign” is 1611 English for open level country. The plains of Moreh are elon moreh, the great tree of Moreh, where Abram built his first altar in Canaan and first heard “Unto thy seed will I give this land” (Genesis 12:6-7). Israel’s first ceremony returns to the patriarch’s first stop.

“Ye shall pass over” is a participle in Hebrew, you are crossing, as though the crossing had already begun. Joshua 1:11 picks the moment up: “within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan, to go in to possess the land.”

The verse is stitched to the next: 12:1 opens with the same “statutes and judgments, which ye shall observe to do”. The seam marks where the address ends and the law code proper, chapters 12 to 26, begins.