a U 1. Command.
W b 2-4. Egypt. Retrospective.
c 5-8. Past days (wilderness).
U 9. Command.
W c 10-15. This day.
b 16,17. Egypt. Retrospective.
1452 B.C.
Deuteronomy 29)
1: These are the words of the covenant (see 2 Kings 23:2,3), which the Lord (Yahaveh) commanded Moses to make with the sons of Israel in the land of Moab, beside the covenant which He made with them in Horeb.
2: And Moses called to all Israel (This begins the 6th address), and said to them, "You all have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land;
3: The great temptations which your eyes have seen, the signs, and those great miracles:
4: Yet the Lord has not given you a heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day.
5: And I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes are not waxen old upon you (Cp. 8:4, and Neh. 9:21), and your shoe is not waxen old upon your foot.
6: You all have not eaten bread, neither have you all drunk wine or strong drink: that you all might know that I am the Lord your God.
7: And when you all came to this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, came out against us to battle, and we smote them:
8: And we took their land, and gave it for an inheritance to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half tribe of Manasseh.
9: Keep therefore the words of this covenant (Cp. 1 Kings 2:3. Ps. 1:3), and do them, that you all may prosper in all that you all do.
10: You all stand this day all of you before the Lord your God; your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel,
11: Your little ones, your wives, and your stranger that is in your camp, from the hewer of your wood to the drawer of your water:
12: That you should enter into covenant with the Lord your God, and into His oath, which the Lord your God makes (= confirms) with you this day:
13: That He may establish you today for a people unto Himself, and that He may be to you God, as He has said to you, and as He has sworn to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob (all 3 Patriarchs mentioned. See Gen. 50:24).
14: Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath;
15: But with him that stands here with us this day before the Lord our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day:
16: {For you all know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt; and how we came through the nations which you all passed by;
17: And you all have seen their abominations, and their idols (either as manufactured, or derived from galal = dung = rotten, or detestable), wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them:}
b X d 29:18-21. Apostasy of persons.
e 29:22-28. Land. Judgment on.
Y f 29:29-. The word of Yahaveh. Revealed.
g 29:-29. Object: that we may do.
X d 30:1,2. Repentance of people.
e 30:3-10. Land. Return to.
Y f 30:11-14. The word of Yahaveh. Plain.
g 30:15-20. Object: that they may do.
18: Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe (Dan and Ephraim not named in Rev. 7. Cp. Judg. 17 Ephraim, and 18, Dan), whose heart turns away this day from the Lord your God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that bears gall and wormwood;
19: And it come to pass, when he hears the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, 'I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst:'
20: The Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord and His jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book (see Ex.17:14) shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven (see v.18. Did the Word say this sinner would be blotted out forever? No, it said he would be blotted out under heaven, or on earth. This sinner would still have a chance to repent. See Ex. 32:33).
21: And the Lord shall separate him unto wicked out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law:
22: So that the generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the Lord has laid upon it;
23: And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor bear, nor any grass grows therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the Lord overthrew in His anger, and in His wrath:
24: Even all nations shall say, 'Why has the Lord done thus to this land? and what means the heat of this great anger?'
25: Then men shall say, 'Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them forth out of the land of Egypt:
26: For they went and served other gods, and worshiped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom He had not given (= divided) to them:
27: And the anger of the Lord was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book:
28: And the Lord rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.'
29: The secret things belong to the Lord our God (The italics in the A.V. [put in Roman type in R.V.] show that the Hebrew was not clear to the translators. They made good sense in English, but that is not the sense in the Hebrew text. The words rendered "to Yehovah our Elohim" have the extra-ordinary points to show that they form no part of the text, and should come out. The meaning then is: "The secret things, even the revealed things, belong to us and our children for ever, that we may do all the word of this law", i.e. the revealed things, and the secret things which have not been, but will yet be revealed): but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever,
that we may do all the words of this law.