Deuteronomy 4:45-5:5
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45 These are the stipulations, decrees and laws Moses gave them when they came out of Egypt 46 and were in the valley near Beth Peor east of the Jordan, in the land of Sihon king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon and was defeated by Moses and the Israelites as they came out of Egypt. 47 They took possession of his land and the land of Og king of Bashan, the two Amorite kings east of the Jordan. 48 This land extended from Aroer on the rim of the Arnon Gorge to Mount Sirion (that is, Hermon), 49 and included all the Arabah east of the Jordan, as far as the Dead Sea, below the slopes of Pisgah.
1 Moses summoned all Israel and said:
Hear, Israel, the decrees and laws I declare in your hearing today. Learn them and be sure to follow them. 2 The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. 3 It was not with our ancestors that the Lord made this covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive here today. 4 The Lord spoke to you face to face out of the fire on the mountain. 5 (At that time I stood between the Lord and you to declare to you the word of the Lord, because you were afraid of the fire and did not go up the mountain.) And he said:
Today is an introduction to the Decalogue, what we call the Ten Commandments. We will finish chapter 4 today and delve a little into chapter 5 but not quite make it to verse 6.
Verse 45 should be the start of a new chapter as this starts the second sermon, the second address of Moses.
A quick review of what is meant by these words:
‘testimonies’ (stipulations) = ‘covenant stipulations’
‘statutes’ (decrees) = ‘ordinances’ which are decrees by a higher authority often written down and shared and read among the people
‘judgements’ (laws) = God’s judgement regarding right conduct and right response to the covenant.
In verse 46 we find that these places are easily recognised on maps but the context is that this happened soon after the defeat of the two kings and just before they were to cross the Jordan.
The end of this second address is found in Deut 29:1. This verse in the Masoretic Text, the Hebrew manuscript that is the most accurate actually puts this verse at the end of Deut 28 as verse 69.
These are the words of the covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which He made with them in Horeb.
Notice it seems like the start of the next speech, except in what follows there is nothing about the covenant in chapters 29 and 30. So, it is the conclusion rather than the start. We have to remember that
chapters were first added in 1227
verses
in 1448 for the Old Testament
in 1555 for the New Testament
as a help, and I do say help, for it is most of the time, but sometimes it is not quite right, like here. Don’t ever mistake chapters and verses for being Scripture itself - God did not put them there, people did. I personally am thankful for it helps us find what we are looking for and shows how to help others find it too.
The second sermon of Moses may actually be two sermons though we will treat it as one. So, as I said, it finishes in 29:1 but there is an argument for it finishing at the end of chapter 11 and a new one in chapter 12 finishing at 29:1. It doesn’t really affect things but it is probably is two addresses.
It appears as a non-stop sermon, then, till 26:19 and then jumps into chapter 28. Chapter 27 is about the covenant the people were to make with God over the Jordan. The sermon is in three parts:
The Ten Commandments (Decalogue) (5:1-6:3)
Hear, O Israel (6:4-11:32)
Theological foundation for living within the Covenant (12-26, 28)
The key verse in this is:
20 You shall follow what is altogether just, that you may live and inherit the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
Quite literally in the Hebrew it is: “Righteousness, righteousness you shall pursue, that you may live...”
Earlier on it says:
25 Then it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to observe all these commandments before the Lord our God, as He has commanded us.’
What does this mean? What is righteousness?
This relates to conduct, behaviour and actions to a particular standard. In fact, in Deuteronomy righteousness can be understood from an Aramaic inscription that describes a king as a righteous man because he was loyal to his overlord. It is God’s treaty with Israel, a life lived in accordance to the revealed will of God. We see this same word used of God:
4 He is the Rock, His work is perfect;
For all His ways are justice,
A God of truth and without injustice;
Righteous and upright is He.
He always acts according to the revealed standard. In relation to Israel this means that He keeps His promised commitments to His vassals as well as His discipline.
Righteousness governed Israel’s relationship with God, with family, with community and with the environment.
(Deut 5:1-6:3)
Now we come to what is called the Ten Commandments, which is properly known as the Decalogue but today we are just looking at the introduction.
This part is in four parts:
5:1-5 The interpretation of the Decalogue for this generation
5:6-22 The recitation of the Decalogue
5:23-33 The people’s response to the Decalogue
6:1-3 They were to carefully hear the Decalogue and Moses
We have two versions of the Decalogue in our Bible:
Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-22
and what we discover is that there are differences between what we find in Exodus and Deuteronomy in the Decalogue and this is on purpose.
Moses is not trying to give a photographic, intellectual recitation of the Decalogue but trying, as a preacher and pastor to change and affect their behaviour. That is, “learn them and keep them by doing them.”
The Decalogue summarises the establishment of their relationship and covenant. And
OT312 Book Study: Deuteronomy The Covenant People
Obviously contrary to fact, he declares that the Lord did not make the covenant with their fathers—that is, the exodus generation—but with the people standing in front of him. This is obviously not true literally, since most of the people standing before Moses on the plains of Moab had not yet been born when the people assembled there,
OT312 Book Study: Deuteronomy The Covenant People
those that had experienced the exodus, and had met with Yahweh at the mountain are dismissed as irrelevant. He said the Lord didn’t make a covenant with them, but with this generation, which according to Josh 5:1–9, they are uncircumcised, but they are viewed as the true covenant people (27:9–10).
Moses
OT312 Book Study: Deuteronomy Moses the Mediator
he would become more than just an administrator; he would be the mouthpiece for God’s revelation. That authority is important for him to declare here because it underlies the whole present address. This long speech, while it is cast as the words of Moses, is inspired by God. What Moses says, God says. What God told Moses to say, that he relays to the people.
We actually have some very old copies of the Decalogue within what is called the Nash Papyrus found in 1898 but dated to 150-200BC. We also have The Dead Sea Scrolls which are older than these. And we also have the Bologna Torah Scroll dating 1180-1215 which are more recent copies of this text but seems to have been a household product rather than copied according to strict rules, that is, this was not copied by a professional which is highly unusual.
Now, you may have noticed that I have been using the word ‘Decalogue’ rather than the Ten Commandments and this is because Scripture never calls these the ten commandments. Decalogue is Greek meaning ‘Ten Words’ and is used today among Scholars and Ministers rather than the Ten Commandments for this is not what they really are.or
Instead there are three main ways these are described by Scripture:
“the words of the LORD”
“the Ten Words”
Torah
Let’s look at each of these
1 And God spoke all these words, saying:
Notice this does not say “God issued all these commands” This is not legislation, it is communication, To confirm this it says in:
22 “These words the Lord spoke to all your assembly, in the mountain from the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice; and He added no more. And He wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me.
2.
It is called the Ten Words not Ten Commandments or Ten Commands:
28 Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.
Our Bibles do not correctly translate this: it should be, the Ten Words, instead going for tradition rather than accurate translation.
Same as in
13 So He declared to you His covenant which He commanded you to perform, the Ten Commandments; and He wrote them on two tablets of stone.
and
4 And He wrote on the tablets according to the first writing, the Ten Commandments, which the Lord had spoken to you in the mountain from the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly; and the Lord gave them to me.
Why Ten Words?
OT312 Book Study: Deuteronomy The Ten Words
Scholars are agreed that this is a mnemonic device; it’s a device to help us remember. We have one word for each of our ten fingers. You see, the Decalogue was not given to Israel to be read; it was to be memorized, and this helps us memorize it. We know that as we are memorizing or reciting, we need one command for every one of our fingers.
Actually, the Decalogue, the document, the tablets, were never seen by anybody. They were in the ark of the covenant, buried away at the back end of the tabernacle and later the temple. This is to help memorize this document and to recite it.
The Torah
Third, the document is called the torah in one instance. I have mentioned before that the word torah does not mean “law”; it means “instruction,” probably with a capital I. But this happens only in Exod 24:12: “The LORD said to Moses, ‘Come up to me on the mountain and wait there, that I may give you the tablets of stone, with the torah [that is, the command], which I have written for their instruction.’ ”
To be sure that we get the point that this torah is instruction rather than legislation, he adds that final infinitive “for their instruction”;
This Decalogue is about the Covenant of God with Israel, in fact it says in:
18 And when He had made an end of speaking with him on Mount Sinai, He gave Moses two tablets of the Testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.
And where it says ‘two tablets of the Testimony’ it can be properly translated as “the tablets of the pact”. And we’ll see next week, God willing, just why this is such good news, the Gospel according to Moses. And so, there you have it, it was an introduction to the start of Moses’ second sermon.
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