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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadPaul Kretzmann Commentary - Deuteronomy 30:1 - 30:10
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Mercies Promised to the Obedient
v. 1. And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse which I have set before thee, and history shows that the fulfillment of the curse came exactly as threatened by the Lord, and thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations whither the Lord, thy God, hath driven thee, for the bitter misery of their condition would bring at least some of the people to their senses,
v. 2. and shalt return unto the Lord, thy God, in true sorrow over the manifold transgressions, and shalt obey His voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thine heart and with all thy soul,
v. 3. that then the Lord, thy God, will turn thy captivity, with its misery and affliction, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations whither the Lord, thy God, hath scattered thee. The reference is to the gathering of the true Israel, that according to the spirit, for the early Christian congregations consisted largely of Jewish members of various countries, as the story of Pentecost shows.
v. 4. If any of thine be driven out unto the outmost parts of heaven, to the most distant inhabited lands, from thence will the Lord, thy God, gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee, for He has His elect even today among the Jews in every country, and there are still a few who are won for the true Messiah;
v. 5. and the Lord, thy God, will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it, namely, in the sense that the spiritual Israel will be found in all the nations of the world, Gen_17:6-16; and he will do thee good and multiply thee above thy fathers, since the believers, the true children of Abraham, are found in all nations, and peoples, and tongues.
v. 6. And the Lord, thy God, will circumcise thine heart and the heart of thy seed, Deu_10:16, take away the hardness and callousness, to love the Lord, thy God, with all thine heart and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live. It is after the coming of the Messiah, in the Church named after Jesus Christ, that the ideal of the Lord has been fully realized.
v. 7. And the Lord, thy God, will put all these curses upon thine enemies and on them that hate thee, which persecuted thee. Cf Gen_12:3.
v. 8. And thou shalt return, and obey the voice of the Lord, and do all His commandments which I command thee this day. At no time was Israel obdurate and therefore rejected in all its members] although the great mass of the people to this day are living under the curse. Those chosen by the Lord hare bowed down in the obedience of faith under the precepts of the Gospel.
v. 9. And the Lord, thy God, will make thee plenteous in every work of thine hand, in every undertaking, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy land, for good; for the Lord will again rejoice over thee for good as He rejoiced over thy fathers,
v. 10. if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord, thy God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this book of the Law, and if thou turn unto the Lord, thy God, with all thine heart and with all thy soul. Here the normal, the desirable relation between Israel and the covenant God is described, the fellowship which would result in rich blessings to all those that kept its obligations.