A Voice Without an Image, a Covenant Beyond Exile

“Hearken” is shema, the verb that opens 6:4. Statutes are chuqqim, from a root meaning to engrave, decrees fixed like an inscription; judgments are mishpatim, rulings of the kind a judge hands down. “That ye may live” is the promise Leviticus 18:5 attaches to the same pair of words.

“Ought” is the old spelling of aught, anything at all. The rule returns in 12:32, and Proverbs 30:6 and Revelation 22:18-19 echo it. Ancient law codes carried similar clauses: the epilogue of Hammurabi curses any later king who alters the judgments inscribed on his stele.

Numbers 25 is the event: Israel joined itself to the Baal of Peor through Moabite women, and twenty and four thousand died in the plague (25:9). Hosea 9:10 still remembers it centuries later. “Followed” is literally walked after, the ordinary Hebrew idiom for serving a god.

Numbers 25:3 says Israel “joined himself” to Baal-peor, a verb for yoking animals together. Moses sets against it davaq, to cleave, the word for a man holding to his wife in Genesis 2:24. The proof of the warning is the audience itself: every listener is a survivor of that month.

“Behold” is re’eh, see. “I have taught” is limmadti, from lamad, to learn or teach. The root never occurs in Genesis through Numbers, yet runs all through Deuteronomy, which casts Moses less as lawgiver than as the teacher who explains what was given at Horeb.

Wisdom and understanding, chokmah and binah, are the vocabulary of Proverbs. It is the pair God grants Solomon in 1 Kings 3:12, “a wise and an understanding heart”, and 1 Kings 4:34 has all nations coming to hear it. Deuteronomy locates that wisdom in the keeping of the law, not in a king.

“Nigh” is qarov, near. In the Hebrew the adjective is plural, so the question can be heard as “what nation has gods so near”, setting other peoples’ images beside a God with none who still answers when called. Deuteronomy 30:14 uses the same word: the word is very nigh unto thee.

The second of twin questions, both opening “what nation is there so great”. The comparison is now between legal systems. “Law” is torah, from yarah, to point the way; the book first used it of its own contents in 1:5, “began Moses to declare this law”.

The address slips from “ye” to “thou”, a change of number Deuteronomy makes constantly, here turning to each hearer alone. “Keep thy soul diligently” is literally guard your life greatly; nefesh is the living self, not a soul apart from the body. “Sons’ sons” are grandchildren.

Horeb is Deuteronomy’s name for the mountain. Sinai appears in the book only once, in the poem of 33:2. “Gather” is the root of qahal, assembly, and the book will call the Horeb event simply “the day of the assembly” (9:10, 10:4, 18:16). “Learn” is lamad again.

“Unto the midst of heaven” is literally unto the heart of the heavens. The three words for dark are choshekh, anan and arafel. Arafel is the thick darkness Moses entered in Exodus 20:21, and the place where Solomon says the LORD dwells (1 Kings 8:12).

“Similitude” is temunah, a visible form or shape. Numbers 12:8 uses the same word of Moses: he beholds the similitude of the LORD. The people saw no temunah at all; the prophet who speaks mouth to mouth is the exception, and even he never describes it.

“Ten commandments” is literally the ten words, aseret ha-devarim, which the Greek turned into Decalogue. The phrase occurs only here, in 10:4 and in Exodus 34:28. “Declared” is the verb for making something known by telling it, fitting a covenant delivered by sound.

Two stages of revelation are set side by side. The ten words came directly from God to the people; the statutes and judgments come through Moses as teacher. Chapter 5:22-31 explains why: the people asked for exactly that arrangement because the voice terrified them.

“Out of the midst of the fire” is the refrain of these chapters, at 4:12, 4:15, 4:33 and 4:36, four times in 5 and again in 9:10 and 10:4. The Hebrew of “take good heed unto yourselves” again says guard your lives greatly, as in 4:9, but now in the plural.

“Corrupt yourselves” is shachat, the verb of the flood generation (Genesis 6:12) and of the golden calf, “thy people have corrupted themselves” (Exodus 32:7, Deuteronomy 9:12). Semel, “figure”, is rare: it names Manasseh’s idol in the temple (2 Chronicles 33:7) and Ezekiel’s image of jealousy (Ezekiel 8:3).

Read with 4:16-19, the list runs human beings, land animals, birds, creeping things, fish, then sun, moon and stars: Genesis 1 in reverse order, as several commentators have observed. “Winged fowl” is literally bird of wing, a doubled phrase for everything that flies.

“The waters beneath the earth” is the ancient picture of seas lying lower than the land, as in the second commandment (Exodus 20:4). Creeping things and fish were not idle examples: Egypt honoured the scarab beetle as a form of the sun god Khepri and the crocodile as Sobek.

“The host of heaven” is the star worship Manasseh set up (2 Kings 21:3) and Josiah tore out (2 Kings 23:5). “Divided unto all nations” is contested: either the lights were given to all peoples to see by, or the nations were allotted them as objects of worship, as 32:8 in some manuscripts may suggest.

An iron furnace is a smelting furnace, where ore is heated until the metal runs out. Solomon uses the phrase in his temple prayer (1 Kings 8:51) and Jeremiah quotes it (11:4). Isaiah 48:10 calls the same kind of place the furnace of affliction.

The third time Moses mentions his exclusion, after 1:37 and 3:26, and the Hebrew here repeats the verb of 1:37, a word built on the nose, the organ of anger. “Sware” matters: the oath that barred him uses the same form as the oath that gave the fathers the land.

“I must die” is a Hebrew participle, “I am dying”, as of something already under way. The verse is built on two pronouns, “I” and “ye”: I die here, you cross there. The good land is named once more, as it was in his refused prayer at 3:25.

“Made” is karat, to cut: covenants were cut because animals were cut in the ceremony (Genesis 15:10, Jeremiah 34:18). “Hath forbidden thee” is the King James supplying the sense; the Hebrew says only “which the LORD thy God commanded thee”, leaving the command implied by the context.

A consuming fire is literally an eating fire, and Hebrews 12:29 quotes the line. “Jealous” is qanna, a form of the word used in Scripture only of God (Exodus 20:5, 34:14). It is the jealousy of a husband for a wife, not envy of what belongs to another.

“Remained long” is noshantem, from yashen, old, the word for last year’s grain in Leviticus 26:10: grown stale in the land. “Provoke him to anger” is ka’as, a verb that becomes the steady verdict of the Books of Kings on king after king.

Treaties of the period listed gods as witnesses; Israel’s covenant calls heaven and earth instead. Moses does it again in 30:19 and 31:28, the Song of 32:1 opens by addressing both, and Isaiah 1:2 begins with the same summons. “Soon” means quickly, not at once.

“Scatter” is the verb of Babel (Genesis 11:8). “Few in number” is literally men of number, few enough to be counted, the reverse of 1:10, where Moses said Israel was already as the stars of heaven. “Heathen” renders goyim, simply the nations.

“Serve” is avad, the verb both of worship and of slavery, so exile returns Israel to serving as in Egypt. Psalms 115:4-7 and 135:15-17 enlarge the list of senses the idols lack. Smell is the pointed one: sacrifice rose as a sweet savour, and these gods cannot receive it.

Two verbs, baqash, seek, and darash, search out. Jeremiah quotes the line to the exiles in Babylon: “ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13). “With all thy heart and with all thy soul” appears here before 6:5 expands it.

“Tribulation” is tsar, a narrow place. “The latter days” is the phrase Jacob uses in Genesis 49:1 and Balaam in Numbers 24:14, the far horizon of what is coming. “Turn” is shuv, the root of return and repentance, which chapter 30 will use seven times in ten verses.

“Merciful” is rachum, from rechem, the womb: compassion of the kind a mother has. It stands first in God’s self-description in Exodus 34:6. “Forsake” is a verb for letting something go slack. Leviticus 26:42 makes the same promise, remembering the covenant with Jacob, Isaac and Abraham.

“God created man upon the earth” uses the words of Genesis 1:27, bara and adam. The question is set against time, back to the first day, and space, from one edge of heaven to the other. “This great thing” is the phrase Samuel uses of God’s thunder in 1 Samuel 12:16.

“And live” is the point. Exodus 33:20 says no man shall see God and live, and Manoah assumes he will die after the angel’s visit (Judges 13:22). Israel heard rather than saw, and survived, and 5:24-26 shows the people still astonished by it.

“Assayed” means attempted. “Temptations” are massot, trials or proofs, the plagues as tests put to Pharaoh, not enticements to sin. The list runs to seven items, temptations, signs, wonders, war, mighty hand, stretched out arm, great terrors, each one a name for what Egypt suffered.

“It was shewed” is a causative, you were made to see. “The LORD he is God” are the words the people shout at Carmel after the fire falls (1 Kings 18:39). “There is none else” becomes Isaiah’s refrain in chapter 45 (verses 5, 6 and 18).

Heaven and earth divide the event between them: the voice comes from above, the fire burns below. “Instruct” is yasar, to discipline or train, the verb of 8:5, “as a man chasteneth his son”. Exodus 20:22 likewise says, “I have talked with you from heaven.”

The first time Deuteronomy says God loved the fathers; 10:15 repeats it. “Chose” is bachar, the book’s own word for election. “In his sight” is literally with his face, by his own presence, answering Exodus 33:14, “My presence shall go with thee.”

“Greater and mightier than thou” was the fear at Kadesh (1:28) and will be said again of the nations in 7:1, 9:1 and 11:23. “As it is this day” is not only hope: east of the Jordan it has already happened, with Sihon’s and Og’s land under Israel’s feet.

“Consider it in thine heart” is literally bring it back to your heart, using shuv, the verb of return. Rahab confesses in the same words to the spies: “he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath” (Joshua 2:11), a Canaanite speaking Moses’ creed.

“That it may go well with thee” is one of Deuteronomy’s most frequent phrases, and “prolong thy days” is the promise tied to honouring parents in 5:16. “For ever” is literally all the days; the Hebrew speaks of the length of life in the land, not of eternity.

The speech breaks off and the book speaks of Moses in the third person. “Severed” is hivdil, to separate, the verb of Genesis 1 dividing light from darkness. Numbers 35:14 had required three cities of refuge beyond Jordan; Moses fixes them before he dies.

“Unawares” is literally without knowledge. “In times past” is the idiom temol shilshom, yesterday and the day before: no history of hatred between the two men. Deuteronomy 19:4-6 gives the classic example, an axe head flying off the handle in the woods.

One city for each eastern tribe, south, middle and north. Mesha of Moab claims on his stele that he rebuilt Bezer, which lay in ruins. Ramoth-gilead is where Ahab later dies (1 Kings 22), and Golan gave its name to Gaulanitis, today’s Golan Heights.

A heading, like 1:1, “These be the words”. Deuteronomy is built with several such headings, and this one introduces what follows as torah, instruction, reaching through chapter 28. Joshua 8:32 records Joshua copying “the law of Moses” onto stones at Ebal.

The third word is new beside 4:1: testimonies, edot, from ed, a witness, the solemn terms of a covenant (the tables of stone are called the testimony). “After they came forth” is literally in their coming out, so the whole forty years count as the exodus still under way.

“After they were come forth out of Egypt” appears in 4:45 and again here: everything is dated from the exodus. The location repeats 3:29 exactly, so the long speech of chapters 5 to 26 is set in the valley opposite the shrine of Israel’s failure.

“Amorites” comes from Amurru, the Babylonian word for the peoples to the west, Syria and Canaan. Deuteronomy uses it loosely for the inhabitants of the hill country and the kingdoms east of the Jordan. “Toward the sunrising” repeats 4:41.

“Sion” here is Si’on in Hebrew, spelled differently from Zion, Jerusalem’s hill. It is a third name for Hermon beside Sirion and Shenir in 3:9, perhaps meaning the lofty one. English spelling has made two unrelated mountains look alike.

“Springs of Pisgah” renders ashdot, the word the King James left as a proper name in 3:17, Ashdoth-pisgah. It more probably means slopes, where the plateau breaks down to the Dead Sea. The sea of the plain is the Arabah’s sea, the salt sea.