First, the time was at the end of the forty years of wandering, just before the people of Israel would cross over Jordan into the Promised Land.

Second, the place of the second reading of the law is, according to verse 5, what we call today Transjordan, east of the Jordan River in the ancient territory of Moab. Thus, the people of God were on the verge of the greatest movement they have made since they came out of slavery in Egypt and crossed over the Red Sea some forty years before. And while they were still God’s people, most of that generation which left Egypt had died out, and the group Moses is leading here is a new generation, with a few exceptions. Hence, they are preparing to cross into the Promised Land that God would give them!

However, to gain it, they would face a tremendous amount of fighting and risk their lives on the high places of the field. Naturally, any normal human, even those with faith, facing those kinds of battles would become quite sober, and probably have a bad feeling in the pit of their stomach. And so Moses is writing this book to encourage them, as Paul says, ‘that you might have hope through the Scriptures’ (Rom. 15:4). They need encouragement as they face an unknown, and warlike future. To do so, he gives them this encouragement by turning their hearts and minds to who God is, and to what His covenant promises are like for His people.

The principles embodied in the commandments are of abiding value, but the application of the principle changes, just as does the environment of the man who is within the covenant relationship. Thus the immediate significance of some of the commandments might differ from one environment to another. The meaning of the commandments to the Israelites in the newly formed theocracy may assume a different shape for modern man living under a form of technocracy. But the principles remain the same. Hence the commandments continue to be valid in the NT (e.g., Matt. 19:16–20) and are still considered to be of vital importance to the contemporary Christian.

O Israel, the statutes and the rules that I speak in your hearing today, and you shall learn them and be careful to do them.

8 And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so erighteous as all this law that I set before you today?

The biblical definition of freedom is not “doing whatever you want.” Freedom is enjoying the benefits of doing what we should. We too often think of the Ten Commandments as constraining us—as if God’s ways will keep us in servitude and from realizing our dreams and reaching our potential. We forget that God means to give us abundant life (John 10:10) and true freedom (John 8:32). His laws, 1 John 5:3 tells us, are not burdensome.

You think it’s burdensome to have Ten Commandments? Do you know how many laws there are in the United States? It’s a trick question, because no one knows! There are twenty thousand laws on the books regulating gun ownership alone. In 2010 an estimated forty thousand new laws were added at various levels throughout the country. The United States Code, which is just one accounting of federal laws and does not include regulatory statutes, has more than fifty volumes. In 2008 a House committee asked the Congressional Research Service to calculate the number of criminal offenses in federal law. They responded, five years later, that they lacked the manpower and resources to answer such a question.5

Studying the Old Testament strengthens us in hope—and who needs anything more than hope?