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Deu_1:1-5
2. Deu_1:1. The hearers: All Israel.—The people as such. Significant for the selection, arrangement, presentation, and aim of the subject matter—the popular character of Deuteronomy. Jewish interpreters think that the elders of the people as the nearest circle of hearers are meant—but why reject those who would be witnesses and could have heard? Hess: “the congregation of the people, or some important and representative part of it, heads of families, judges,” etc.Jahn (Introd.) says correctly—“there is perhaps no other book in whose publication so wide a publicity was observed.” [“All Israel,” all the congregation, are phrases used frequently in the Bible to describe any national gathering. See 1Sa_7:3; 1Sa_12:1; 1Sa_12:19; 1Ki_8:2; 1Ki_14:22” etc.Wordsworth.—A. G.]
“The local determinations are also very significant” (Schultz), and indeed the more so from the very massing of local names, with which Knobel knows not what to do, but which even Onkelos and the Jewish tradition, although with a too limited understanding, refer to the “transgressions” of the people [and hence the book is called the book of reproofs—A. G.]. On this side Jordan.—Schroeder renders: the other side, Deu_1:1; Deu_1:5; comp. Introd. § 4, I.12. [The phrase indicates nothing as to the position of the writer—whether he dwelt on the one side of Jordan or the other. Although a standing designation of the district east of the Jordan, it is used also with reference to the western district. Comp. Gen_1:10-11; Jos_9:1; Num_22:1; Num_32:32; Deu_3:8; Deu_3:20; Deu_3:25. The context usually makes the sense of the phrase clear. See Bib. Comm., p. 801.—A. G.] The place was one for recollections, and therefore for warnings. Schultz says justly “the true sense is not already on the other side of Jordan, but still there.” So also, still “in the wilderness,” Deu_4:46; “in the valley over against Beth-peor” (Deu_3:29); here, Deu_1:5 : “in the land of Moab;” Num_36:13 : “in the plains of Moab.” The comparison of these precise statements shows certainly that the local idea rules Deu_1:1; that at the beginning of Deuteronomy the locality treated rather as a situation, becomes rhetorically introductory to the succeeding discourses. Thus the wilderness, in its moral and historical import with Egypt, on the one hand, and Canaan, on the other. The plain (arabah), which is geographically the whole valley of the Jordan from its sources to the Dead Sea, which indeed originally made no break in the valley, this extremely hot desert tract on both sides of the Jordan, stretching down to the Ailanitic gulf, naturally embraces also the plains of Moab. Comp. Deu_3:17; Deu_4:49; Deu_11:30; Jos_12:1. But in a special sense this plain begins at the southerly end of the Dead Sea, “a long, sandy plain” (Laborde), stretching from thence to the Red Sea; and it can only be used in Deu_1:1 in this narrower sense, since the description, in the plain, following the more general term, “in the wilderness,” is certainly a limiting and more closely descriptive term. While this description of the peculiar plain or wilderness well serves to recall to mind the catastrophe which doomed Israel to the “way of the wilderness” (Deu_2:8); presents vividly the locality which was pre-ëminently the cradle of the new, as it was the grave of the old generation; connects the present where (in Moab) with the immediately preceding how; its main reference is still, according to the contents and method of Deuteronomy, the retrospect to the first giving of the law. As the localizing of the present position was possible through the broader meaning of the term “Arabah”—here áָּòֲøָëָú ; Num_36:13, áְּòַøְáֹú —so its narrower sense gives the needed point of union with the wider past. It is in entire accordance with this view, if the Arabah reaches to Ailah, that the next still closer description, over against Suph, follows. Over against Suph [A. V.: over against the Red Sea].—Knobel thinks that the pass es sufah, or some place in its neighborhood, is meant,—not, however, Zephath, Jdg_1:17; Num_14:45; Num_21:3, which Ritter connects with this pass. But then so purely a geographical and generally obscure a statement is scarcely in harmony with the specific sense of the whole description. It is much better to regard ñåּó as an abbreviation of éîÎñåּó . Germ.: Schilf—Schilfmeer sedgesea, Deu_1:40; Deu_2:1. LXX: ðëçóßïí ôῆò ἐñõèñᾶò èáëÜóóçò . Vulg.: in solitudine campestri contra mare rubrum. Either because the Red Sea is so called from the great quantity of sea-weed (Keil, Gesen.), which Schultz claims only for its northern portion; or perhaps the whole sea takes its name from some important place of this same name, as Knobel conjectures, and in this way explains the absence of the article in éîַÎñåּó . In any case, we are not to refer it specially with Hengstenberg to the Ailanitic portion, the gulf of Akabah, since the Arabah is viewed much more as over against the gulf of Suez (if not the Red Sea generally). The short, abbreviated Suph, Deu_1:1, harmonizes with the concise, pregnant style in the titles. According to Keil, not “a closer designation of the Arabah” (Hengstenberg), but a more definite characterizing of the wilderness generally, as Israel “still found itself over against the Red Sea, after passing which it entered the wilderness,” Exo_15:22. It characterizes the situation generally as over against Egypt; the exodus from it, but specially “the northern part of the western fork of the Red Sea, in view of the place where the redemption from Egypt was completed” (Schultz). Between Paran, Deu_1:1.—As before the short form “Suph,” so now also the simple “Paran,” instead of the usual “wilderness of Paran.” In Num_10:12, this place is mentioned as the first station after the breaking up from Sinai; and since it was a station so well known, and occupied so long a time, since Kadesh lay in it, Num_12:16; Deu_1:46, the abbreviated form “Paran” is all-sufficient. The Arabic name—“Et Tih,” i. e., the wandering, as the Bedouins call it—explains satisfactorily the mention here of this more precise designation of the rejection of the first (Numbers 13), and the new arrangement with the second generation (Numbers 20). To this latter reference follows naturally: and Tophel.—Germ.: “and between Tophel,” the present “Tufail” or “El Tofila,” “Tafyleh,” situated at the Edomitic mountains, where a hundred fountains, pomegranate and olive trees, figs, apples, apricots, oranges and nectarines of a large kind, are found; and the inhabitants supply the Syrian caravans with the necessaries of life. Comp. Deu_2:28-29. Thus a place of refreshment (Schultz), in distinction both from the desert eastward, and Paran under the same broad parallel westward. Laban, Hazeroth, Dizahab.—These places, of which little is known, are here connected together, as the better known Hazeroth intimates, and the immediately following remark in Deu_1:2 clearly teaches, from the chief reference, to which the description is ever striving, the back reference to the first law-giving at Horeb. Whether “Laban” (Sept.: Ëïâüí ) is the same as Libnah, Num_33:20, and Dizahab (Sept.: Êáôá÷ñýóåá ), the gold mines upon the Ailanitic gulf, “Minah el Dsahab,” Mersa Dahab, “Dsahab,” parallel to Sinai, may be questionable; but the more indefinite name, Hazeroth [enclosures], which lay in the way from Sinai, Num_33:17-18, points us to the region about the mountains of Sinai as their location. Thus Moses spake to all Israel—this is the origin of Deuteronomy—while the Jordan and Canaan still lay before the people (so much, surely, the specified localities assert), and the impression of the wilderness was still prevailing. The Arabah—of which the plains of Moab, the present residence of Israel, reminded them—brings up afresh the most remote recollections,—of Suph, where the Egyptians were drowned (Exo_15:4), while Moses, the leader of Israel, had been once rescued from the Red Sea (Exo_2:3 sq.)—and, with the Exodus from Egypt, connects the whole long wandering, between Paran, where the wanderings began, but at the same time also the new order which led them at its close into the inhabited land (Tophel); and of Sinai, where the law was given, and from whence, had they been obedient, the direct course had led them quickly to Canaan.
3. Deu_1:2. In this latter sense we are to take the statement of Deu_1:2 as to the way and time which leads on to the others in Deu_1:3. It is either historical, that Israel actually spent so long a time, or simply a note, that no longer time is necessary to reach the southern limits of the promised land. The way of mount Seir (Seghir) is still the way to Mount Seir; although it only follows the general direction of this mountain, it thus runs along it, and leads to it. The special goal is Kadesh-barnea, Num_32:8; Deu_1:19; probably the “Kudes” (Ain Kades) discovered by Rowland in 1842. Comp. Winer, Real. “Horeb” stands here, as throughout Deuteronomy, for Sinai, the general name for the particular, Deu_33:2. Comp. Hengstenb. Auth. II., p. 397 sq.
4. Deu_1:3. With Horeb the back-reference reaches the first law-giving (comp. Deu_28:62), and the local determinations of Deuteronomy now, therefore, receive their completion through the pregnant and precise time statements in Deu_1:3. Eleven days were sufficient, or might have been sufficient, and they were now in the 40th year since the exodus. At the first of the month—thus the day of the new moon. Usher reckons it a Sabbath day, the 20th of February, 1451 B. C. According to Josephus, Moses died at the last new moon of this year. But the reference to the “last moments” of Moses (Schultz) does not come into view here. On the contrary, indeed, since he speaks “from his own subjective views and impulses” (Baumgarten), it is stated with the utmost emphasis that all is spoken according to the commandment of Jehovah for the people. The active moving personality makes the limits of the commands a law to itself, so that in general only repetitions and expositions find place in the discourses, and even the enlargements, the continuations, the repetitions, are put in new peculiar settings on the ground of a divine command.
5. Deu_1:4. Deuteronomy is no mere “book of reproofs” (§ 1). Although the time and places, as they have been previously given, must remind the people of their sin, yet the truth as well as the holiness of God shines clearly therein, and the title and introduction can only reach its end when the two victories, Deu_1:4, have been first recorded and praised, “the pledge and earnest of future victories” (Baumgarten). Comp. with “Sihon,” Num_21:24, and with “Og,” Num_21:33 sq. After he had slain.—Moses in the name of Jehovah. Amorites.—A gentile noun from Emor (Amor), Gen_10:16; Gen_14:7,—important here, because all the Canaanites bear this name, Gen_15:16; Deu_1:20-21. Heshbon.—The capital city, of which Irby and Mangels (1818) found there still significant ruins, in two cisterns or pits, with human skulls and bones (Gen_37:20). Roman coins of Heshbon under Caracalla show a temple of Astarte or a Deus Lunus, with a Phrygian cap, the right foot resting upon a rock, the right hand holding a pine cone, and the left a spear, wreathed about with a serpent. See Ritter’sGeog.Bashan (Batanäa, El Botthin).—Also upon the eastern side of the Jordan, but further north, Deuteronomy 3. Ashtaroth and Edrei, the two residences of Og, Jos_12:4; Jos_13:12; Jos_13:31. Keil explains the absence of the “and” which is found elsewhere from the “oratorical character” of the discourse here. Sept. and Vulg. insert it. Since the overthrow of these kings is the characteristic thing here, and Edrei is the place at which it occurred, Deu_3:1; Num_21:33, the connection may well be “After he had slain—in Edrei.” [So also Bib. Comm.—A. G.] Ashtaroth.—“A region of flocks” (Deu_7:13; Deu_28:4), but at the same time closely resembling the name of the well-known goddess Astarte (Ashtoreth),—at the foot of the present Tell Ashtereh, in which there is excellent pasturage, and many goats and camels are found. Whether the same with Ashteroth Karnaim, Gen_14:5, is questionable. “Edrei,” the present “Dera,” “Draa,” a few wretched basalt huts upon a hill; or, perhaps, the other “Edhra,” Deu_3:10.
6. Deu_1:5. The foregoing introductory retrospect began with on that side Jordan, and now Deu_1:5 goes back again to the same point; but at the same time, since it is now directly introductory to the following discourse, he adds the present scene, over against the land of Canaan, the Holy Land, in the land of Moab, used here, Keil says, “rhetorically for the usual phrase, in the plains of Moab.” If every beginning is difficult, the “undertaking” of Moses, to speak on his own part after God had spoken, involves more than a mere beginning. But this primary signification of the word appears still, Jos_18:12; Jdg_1:27; Jdg_1:35, and also in Gen_18:27. The connection gives the more distinctive shade of meaning. In this connection there is so little of mere chance, or of his own pleasure, that Schultz and Keil point even to “an inward divine pressure.” If it does not intimate the humility of Moses, or point out how he still once more, before the entrance of Israel into Canaan, strove to bring the law before the minds of the people, the idea may be this: he began, although his goal stood near at hand. It was ever a new valedictory discourse, down to the song and the blessing, according to the method of Deuteronomy. It was an undertaking, less on account of the work imposed upon him, for which he was fitted if any one, than because he could only begin, but knew not whether he could finish, Deu_31:1 sq., 24 sq. It was thus a venture with reference to the hindrance through the approaching end of life— áֵּàֵø , Piel, to explain, Sept. äéáóáöῆóáé , Vulg. explanare. Thus to make clear, to expound,—this law, to wit, the well-known law in the following method. [Beer: the word implies the pre-existence of the matter on which the process is employed, and thus the substantial identity of the Deuteronomic legislation with that of the previous books.—Bib. Comm.—A. G.]
2. The emphasis which in every way is given to the wilderness calls our attention to its theological significance. It is perhaps true, as Baumgarten suggests, that “the desolate plain in which Israel had spent so much time,” in distinction from the “starting point, the mount of Horeb,” and the “goal, the highlands of Canaan,” represents “the whole last past, including the present, as a state of imperfection and preparation.” But on the one hand, it is not the “last past, including even the present,” but rather the whole past from Egypt, all of which bears the character of “the wilderness,” which is spoken of here, and, on the other hand, this “residence in the valley” symbolizes the object, the purpose of God in this providence (humiliation), as objectively the trial and subjectively the knowledge, which were also designed and held in view by God. Deu_8:2. The theological significance of the wilderness is generally and specially pedagogical. After the oppositions, world and redemption, bondage in Egypt, and freedom, the residence there, and the exodus thence until the Red Sea was passed, the reconciliation of these oppositions, i. e., the instruction and training of the people of God in faith, was necessary. As thus instructed only was Israel fitted for its judicial work upon the people of Canaan, and for the possession of the promised land. The wilderness, which was peculiarly fitted for this end, as far as locality and means of training were concerned, was the divine national school of Israel. Only in this significance is it perfectly clear that the temptation which results in knowledge and confirmation, and thus is to be regarded as a proving or testing, Deuteronomy 8; while in other cases it is presented as a punishment, Num_14:33.
3. This school character of the wilderness—not a school for “turning nomads into agriculturists,” but with which the “production of a new generation” goes hand in hand—is in some measure stereotyped for the kingdom of God by the frequently returning 40 days. Moses was 40 days and nights in Horeb, Exo_24:18; Exo_34:28; Deu_9:9; Deu_9:18; Deu_10:10. Elijah was 40 days and nights in the wilderness on the way to Horeb, 1Ki_19:8. It was a school-time for the prophets, as the appearance of John the Baptist in the wilderness was generally preparatory for Israel, and the 40 days and nights, Mat_4:2, show us the Son of God, after His completed home-life (Luk_2:51-52), in the school for His official life.
4. As the second tables of the law which Moses hewed, Exodus 34, so his second abode on Horeb foreshadowed the Deuteronomic law-giving. As if Moses, with whom God had spoken on Sinai, as with no other, was to the second generation what Jehovah was to the first. Luther: “It was named, the other law, not because different from that which was given upon Mount Sinai, but because it was repeated through Moses a second time, with a new covenant, and renewed before those who had not heard it as first given. For those who had heard it from the Lord Himself had perished in the wilderness.”
5. If repetition is mater studiorum, recollection as it animates the title to Deuteronomy, the introduction to the following discourses, is the practical means, the more plastic the more practical, first to excite gratitude to God here, but secondly, also, to self-knowledge, without descending into which abyss there is no ascent to the true knowledge of God. The consciousness of guilt generally grows stronger and more personal with the obligation to thankfulness, especially for those who in the existing love to God recognize the first love as one predominantly of feeling and fancy (Exodus 15), to whom in direct connection with the praises, the innermost nature of man, his self-deception and hypocrisy, discloses itself more and more, and who learn to perceive that the consciousness of redemption once experienced must prove, and confirm itself also, in the consciousness of the daily providence of God. (From Egypt and the daily bread for the day).
6. The norm of the Mosaic discourses, the commandments of God, shows the word of God in the narrower, but therefore for us also in the wider sense, both as immediate and mediate, to be the rule of doctrine and life. “He gives therewith the true way of prophecy, and indeed of every reformation.” Schultz. We have here also the critical principle of the historical reformation of the 16th century. The Lutheran and Reformed Churches are historical denominations, but reformation is the constant duty of the Church, and reformation is different from mere restoration.
Deu_1:1. All for the people, hence also for the whole people. As the reference to Canaan is the decisive one for Moses, so the look to heaven (“the other side of Jordan”) should be to us. The journey through the wilderness—the school-time for the inward man.
Deu_1:2. Our hindrances in the inward and outward life come from disobedience to God. Disobedience hastens quickly, but obedience comes sooner to the goal. From Horeb to Kadesh-Barnea, through the law comes the knowledge of sin, and the sentence of death.
Deu_1:3. In the love of God we do not leave school-life before the proper time. According to the commandment of God, should be the rule of our words as of our acts and lives. All according to the divine word! Faithfulness to the word: holding fast to the end, ever finding a word suited to those trusted in our care, in every word, judging ourselves by the word of God. Homiletics, what it should be.
Deu_1:5. How the children of God begin right with respect to their end.—The Phœnix out of the ashes.—The faithful holds on preaching, testifying, teaching, and never wearies.—The glorious question of Calvin in his last days: “Do you wish that the Lord, when He comes, should find me idle?” (comp. the preface to the last revision of the Institutes, 1559), in which he speaks of himself “as one near to death:” “but the more oppressed with sickness, the less will I spare myself, that I may bring the work to its conclusion.” Thus he speaks of his writings, that God had granted him grace “earnestly and conscientiously to go to his work, so that he had not in one single instance knowingly distorted or incorrectly explained a passage of Scripture.”—The work of the true preacher is still to-day the exposition of the law of God; he is therein literally ever a beginner. As it is a work of humility, so also of courage.—The trumpet should give no uncertain sound, 1Co_14:8-9.—Moses has sought to put the law in the hearts of the anointed people, and expounded it for them. The exposition and practical carrying out of the commandments of God is a constant effort of the Church necessary to its own health and safety.
R. Gell: “In these words we have the title, ground and contents of this fifth book of Moses.”
Calvin: “God does not, as earthly kings are wont to do, enrich His law with new commands, as taught by experience, but will help the slow and crude sense of His people.”
Luther (Deu_1:3): “He repeats here, so that one should preach nothing among the people of God which he is not certain is in the word of God. It is necessary indeed that every one should be constrained to announce or declare the word of God. He does not say what was suggested to him, but what the Lord commanded him.”
G. D. Krummacher: “God says by the prophet Hosea: I will lead them in the wilderness, and says this not as a threatening, but as a fatherly discipline, and adds therefore: and will speak friendly unto them. Thus it is in a spiritual wilderness. It consists in removing all supports on which man might place his confidence other than God, and thus shutting him up to rest his hope alone upon the living God. He will never do this so long as he has around him or with him that which draws him into idolatry, and hence it must be taken from him. This removal of all creature supports is partly outward and partly inward, and at times both outward and inward. Thus with David when he fled from Absalom, 2 Samuel 15. The latter as with Abraham, King Jehoshaphat; Paul in Asia, 2 Corinthians 1; Peter upon the sea. With Job both occur. The disciples felt it when they saw Jesus dead, even upon the cross. Sometimes it occurs at once, and then ceases; but more frequently it comes by degrees and proceeds to a greater and greater extent. This removal has distinguishable degrees. In one case, a promise or a recollection of some past experience, or the like, is left; in another, all is taken, Psalms 88. Thus the Lord leads us, but only to empty us of all self-confidence and win us to a naked confidence in Him, 2Co_1:9. An urgent demand for humility and watchfulness against any self-exaltation, Pro_18:12. But also a word of sweet consolation: God can lift thee up again.” “The Church is in the wilderness, where on every side errors gain the upper hand, and the pure word seldom; where temptations to frivolity and worldly thoughts increase; where heavy persecutions and defections occur; where the wise virgins sleep with the foolish, and serious earnestness in the service of God, threatens to become extinct; and thus our time may be regarded as one peculiarly fruitless, with all our bustle and noise over our mission and Bible unions.” “Moreover, it seems to me remarkable that wilderness, in Hebrew, comes from a word which means both to speak and to lead, so that to be in the wilderness and under leading, in Hebrew, amounts nearly to one and the same thing.”
Berl. Bib.: “Obedience is the principal thing in every household of God. This Moses demanded in the law, to this Christ urges in the gospel, and to this end the Holy Spirit writes a new law in the heart, which is even typified in this book.”
Deu_1:2. Mark the incalculable injury of unbelief.—Wurtb. Bib.: “A Christian teacher should neglect no time or occasion to teach the word of God, but should use special diligence, that he may instruct youth thoroughly in the knowledge of God, 2Ti_3:14; 2Ti_4:2. A teacher also should not grieve to repeat often, for such repetition makes the hearer more certain, Php_3:1; 2Pe_1:12. Whoever speaks in the Church ought not to speak his own wisdom, or the speculations of reason, or the comments of men, but the oracles of God.” Chytraeus.
Schultz: “He will say: This I have done for thee; what wilt thou do for me? Comp. last words of Jacob, Genesis 49; of Joshua (Jos_23:24); of David, 2 Samuel 23. The older interpreters have already drawn the parallel between Deuteronomy and the farewell words of Christ.” Even Geddes remarks: “The whole discourse is one of the most beautiful which ever fell from human lips. Wisdom, appropriateness, overwhelming eloquence, and the paternal solicitude of the lawgiver, are apparent throughout the whole.”