DEUTERONOM Y

I. TITLE, PERIOD, INTRODUCTION (Deut. i.-iii.).—This fifth portion of the Pentateuch, or Book of the Law, was headed by the Jews Elle haddebârim, which are the first two Hebrew words of it, meaning These be the words. For this heading the Greek Septuagint translators substituted one which should indicate the general contents, viz., Aevтepovóμiov, a word denoting a repetition of the law, evidently, in the main, from the circumstance that the Ten Commandments are here introduced for the second time, and that very prominently, their application and obligation being urgently pressed on the Israelites all through. The Latin Vulgate translators, while preserving the Greek title, made the portion a distinct book, naming it Liber Deuteronomii. The English title, an amplification of the Vulgate, is The Fifth Book of Moses, called Deuteronomy. The bulk of Deuteronomy consists of a great variety of miscellaneous rules, some repeated and amplified from previous books, others altogether new, set down without much method or arrangement; and as they stand in the text it is impossible to group them in any kind of useful classified order. Apparently they were added to the work just as each was called for by the occasion or was suggested to the mind of the Lawgiver. In this respect they answer exactly to our own printed collection of the national statutes, where a militia act may be followed by a church-building act, and that by a turnpike-road or a vagrancy act, each being added to the statute-book as it was wanted, or as it was convenient to enact it. The Book of Deuteronomy has all the appearance of having been composed in the same undigested order, quite in keeping with

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the character of a contemporary work written in a camp. The time comprised by the Book was about forty days, computed thus. The discourses began on the first day of the eleventh month in the fortieth year after the Israelites came out of Egypt (Deut. i. 3). About seventy days after that the Jordan was crossed, since it was on the tenth day of the first month in the forty-first year (Jos. iv. 19). But thirty days before the crossing Moses died; for the Israelites mourned thirty days for him before crossing (Deut. xxxiv. 8); thus leaving the first forty of the seventy days for the discourses. By way of introduction Moses first states the precise time and place, when, and where he opened these his last instructions, the time as above mentioned, the place in the land of Moab east of Jordan (i. 1-3). Then he proceeded to take a retrospective view of past events since the departure from Horeb ; noticing the appointment of judges, the arrival at Kadesh-barnea, the mission of the spies, the sentence of a long exclusion from the land, their presumptuous attempt to defeat that sentence, their ignominious repulse, their long detention at Kadesh, their circuitous journey round the Edomite range in order to reach another part of Canaan, the crossing of Arnon, the defeat of Sihon and of Og, the allotment of their conquered territories, their arrival at the spot where they were encamped near the Jordan. God had been, for His part, faithful to all His promises, the fulfilment of which, long delayed by the distrustfulness of the nation, had not been forfeited.

II. ISRAEL'S FUTURE (Deut. iv. 1–40).—To their prospects immediate and remote the Lawgiver now turns after having recapitulated their past. That divine and hardly unseen hand which had brought them thus far is still nigh; they have in their own experience now learned the absolute certainty of God's word, equally in its promises and its warnings; and if they will but bear that in constant remembrance, all will be well. In language that for pathos and beauty is nowhere surpassed in Holy Writ, and has not been approached by any other books deemed sacred in the world,

the tones of which those who have early learned to love them can never afterwards forget, this father of his people proceeds in chapter after chapter to utter his farewell charges. As to their future security, it lies, in one word, in their obedience: (Read iv. 1-5.) Then as to their future greatness he continues: (Read iv. 5-8.) Here is their superiority in the world, that they possess a holy law given them by God Himself. But one thing is essential, an absolute loyalty to the covenant by which they take the Lord for their God. Their duty in avoiding idolatry is so clear, so unmistakable, so easy, that the very slightest deviation even in heart and thought would constitute an unpardonable offence. Let them remember Horeb: (Read iv. 12-21.) Israel was entering a land teeming with visible gods. In that respect a new experience awaited them; for this generation never were in Egypt where such gods held possession, and the wilderness. in which they had been brought up was not occupied by them. The dominant religious thought of the wilderness was monotheistic. Everywhere that great solitude echoed the voice of one true God, and it reverberated in their ears with the Sinaitic Law, as they had experienced in many a chastisement; through its length and breadth for forty years the cloud-pillar and the manna had accompanied them; there they drank of the spiritual rock which followed them, and that rock was Christ; there all that while the Tabernacle had sojourned, and there on Mount Hor its first priest was resting in the flesh. To Israel the whole wilderness had been, in a way, no other than the house of God and the gate of heaven, in which dread place they had been brought up. Once, after leaving it, they had been for a moment, at Beth-peor, in touch with idols; but in that case it was vicious indulgence rather than any religious system that allured them. Henceforth, it would be different, and idolatry would appeal to their religious instincts as well as to the propensities of their sinful nature, meeting them with temples, priests, processions, altars, worship, and image forms of God. Now Israelites are warned that they must neither bow down to those forms nor imagine that they

might bow down to their own God through them. Their thoughts must revert to the wilderness and its miraculous manifestations. Before their eyes had been God's attribute of Power, and God's attribute of Holiness, in every deliverance, and in every judgment. God's attribute of Personality, however, had never once been revealed to their bodily eye, but to their ear alone, to their ear by words afterwards written and recorded; words declaring His character as a person, and proclaiming Him the author of that power which had divided the sea for their passage. A holy one, a gracious one, a deliverer-that was to be the ruling idea of Him in their hearts, and they were to fashion themselves into copies of Him. Inspired words, recorded in writing by the hand of Moses, they were to be the memorials of Him; they alone, and not a form of any kind drawn from their own imagination-for as to any authoritative form, there was absolutely not one. Every attempt, therefore, to portray God's personality by human art was peremptorily forbidden. It would necessarily degrade that personality, and by consequence degrade man. Israel had been taught that all things in visible nature before their eyes were the work of God's hand, from the creeping worm to the glorious sun, and none of them could possibly be God. To worship their dead imitations of these things was a thousandfold more insulting. Such imitations too! Their revolting conceptions, their rude, their hideous execution, in the infancy of the arts, were enough to move scorn and derision; while as soon as man had acquired true artistic skill to shape out things of beauty, their gods and goddesses so designed might be executed by the most corrupt of artists to stimulate the basest passions of those admitted to worship them, as it was called. In mercy to man God allowed Himself to be heard but never seen, prior to the Incarnation of the Son. He encouraged no pretence of any authorised exhibition of His personality, and more especially He forbade it to Israel. Israel was God's inheritance, holy as God was holy; and by an expressive word, "jealousy," He declared every attempt to dishonour Him and corrupt them as a provocation past

forgiveness. Loyalty to their God, as against idol worship, was then the sole condition of Israel's continued possession of this land. On that question God declared Himself "jealous," or absolutely uncompromising, and expulsion would prove the certain consequence of any incorrigible national failure. In case of that punishment ever befalling the nation, re-admission was assured to them on repentance, i.e., on reformation, which repentance means. Such a restoration was in fact guaranteed by the great redemption by which they were brought out of Egypt and planted in Canaan, a grace that should never prove in vain when God's "inheritance" appealed to it in a right spirit.

III. THREE CITIES OF REFUGE (Deut. iv. 41-43).—In Num. xxxv. 9-34 Moses was commanded to set apart six cities, there called Cities of Refuge, three on each side of Jordan, and the design of them is there explained in detail. The three eastern cities are now specified, Bezer in the tribe of Reuben, Ramoth in Gilead belonging to Gad, Golan in Bashan to Manasseh. Bezer has not been identified. Ramoth in Gilead is usually placed at the modern city of Salt. Golan remains unknown, but is considered to have given the name of Gaulonitis to a district frequently mentioned in after times. In a later chapter of Deuteronomy (xix. 1-13) some further rules were added. There were to be three additional cities, making nine in all, in case the Israelite dominions should be enlarged to their fullest extent in consequence of the nation's obedience. If the man-slayer was known to be a murderer, not entitled to the benefit of this institution, the elders of his city were to fetch him home and deliver him to the avenger of blood.

IV. THE DECALOGUE RECITED (Deut. iv. 44-v. 33).Here more properly begins that special feature of this book which occasioned its being named in later times Deuteronomy, a repetition of the Law. Not at the foot of Sinai but in the valley over against Beth-peor, in view of Canaan, the new generation of Israel heard with their own ears the