that you might fear Yahweh your God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you—you, your son, and your son’s son, all the days of your life; and that your days may be prolonged. Hear therefore, Israel, and observe to do it, that it may be well with you, and that you may increase mightily, as Yahweh, the God of your fathers, has promised to you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.
Hear, Israel: Yahweh is our God. Yahweh is one. You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. These words, which I command you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them for a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates.
It shall be, when Yahweh your God brings you into the land which he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you, great and goodly cities which you didn’t build, and houses full of all good things which you didn’t fill, and cisterns dug out which you didn’t dig, vineyards and olive trees which you didn’t plant, and you shall eat and be full; then beware lest you forget Yahweh, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall fear Yahweh your God; and you shall serve him, and shall swear by his name. You shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the peoples who are around you, for Yahweh your God among you is a jealous God, lest the anger of Yahweh your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth. You shall not tempt Yahweh your God, as you tempted him in Massah. You shall diligently keep the commandments of Yahweh your God, and his testimonies, and his statutes, which he has commanded you. You shall do that which is right and good in Yahweh’s sight, that it may be well with you and that you may go in and possess the good land which Yahweh swore to your fathers, to thrust out all your enemies from before you, as Yahweh has spoken.
When your son asks you in time to come, saying, “What do the testimonies, the statutes, and the ordinances, which Yahweh our God has commanded you mean?” then you shall tell your son, “We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt. Yahweh brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand; and Yahweh showed great and awesome signs and wonders on Egypt, on Pharaoh, and on all his house, before our eyes; and he brought us out from there, that he might bring us in, to give us the land which he swore to our fathers. Yahweh commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear Yahweh our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as we are today. It shall be righteousness to us, if we observe to do all these commandments before Yahweh our God, as he has commanded us.”
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 16, 18, 20, 23, 25 A reverent face and love of God is the…
A reverent face and love of God is the first beginning to keep God’s commandments.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20 Deu 6:2 That thou mightest fear the LORD thy…
Deu 6:2 That thou mightest fear the LORD thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged.
Ver. 2. That thou mightest fear the Lord.] "Fear God and keep his commandments." {Ecc 12:13} "Fear the Lord and depart from evil," {Pro 16:6} "this is the beginning," {Pro 1:7} and "end of all" {Ecc 12:13} This is the whole of man, or as some read it, This is the whole man {a} ( ibidem). It is a problem in Aristotle, Why men are credited more than any other creatures? The answer is, Man alone reverenceth God. {b} Deum siquis parum metuit, valde contemnit: huius qui non memorat beueficentiam, auget iniuriam: Not to fear God is to slight him; as not to praise him is to wrong him, saith an ancient.
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{a} Hoc est enim totus homo.
{b} οπι θεονς νομιζει μονον. - Fulgentius.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 15, 16, 18, 24, 25 That thou mightest fear the Lord, which he hereby…
That thou mightest fear the Lord, which he hereby implies to be the first principle of true obedience.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv4, 17 Here is, I. A brief summary of religion, containing…
Here is, I. A brief summary of religion, containing the first principles of faith and obedience, Deu 6:4, Deu 6:5. These two verses the Jews reckon one of the choicest portions of scripture: they write it in their phylacteries, and think themselves not only obliged to say it at least twice every day, but very happy in being so obliged, having this saying among them, Blessed are we, who every morning and evening say, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. But more blessed are we if we duly consider and improve,
1. What we are here taught to believe concerning God: that Jehovah our God is one Jehovah. (1.) That the God whom we serve is Jehovah, a Being infinitely and eternally perfect, self-existent, and self-sufficient. (2.) That he is the one only living and true God; he only is God, and he is but one. The firm belief of this self-evident truth would effectually arm them against all idolatry, which was introduced by that fundamental error, that there are gods many. It is past dispute that there is one God, and there is no other but he, Mar 12:32. Let us therefore have no other, nor desire to have any other. Some have thought there is here a plain intimation of the trinity of persons in the unity of the Godhead; for here is the name of God three times, and yet all declared to be one. Happy they that have this one Lord for their God; for they have but one master to please, but one benefactor to seek to. It is better to have one fountain that a thousand cisterns, one all-sufficient God than a thousand insufficient ones.
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2. What we are here taught concerning the duty which God requires of man. It is all summed up in this as its principle, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart. He had undertaken (Deu 6:2) to teach them to fear God; and, in pursuance of his undertaking, he here teaches them to love him, for the warmer our affection to him the greater will be our veneration for him; the child that honours his parents no doubt loves them. Did ever any prince make a law that his subjects should love him? Yet such is the condescension of the divine grace that this is made the first and great commandment of God's law, that we love him, and that we perform all other parts of our duty to him from a principle of love. My son, give me thy heart. We must highly esteem him, be well pleased that there is such a Being, well pleased in all his attributes, and relations to us: our desire must be towards him, our delight in him, our dependence upon him, and to him we must be entirely devoted. It must be a constant pleasure to us to think of him, hear from him, speak to him, and serve him. We must love him, (1.) As the Lord, the best of beings, most excellent and amiable in himself. (2.) As our God, a God in covenant with us, our Father, and the most kind and bountiful of friends and benefactors. We are also commanded to love God with all our heart, and soul, and might; that is, we must love him, [1.] With a sincere love; not in word and tongue only, saying we love him when our hearts are not with him, but inwardly, and in truth, solacing ourselves in him. [2.] With a strong love; the heart must be carried out towards him with great ardour and fervency of affection. Some have hence though that we should avoid saying (as we commonly express ourselves) that we will do this or that with all our heart, for we must not do any thing with all our heart but love God; and that this phrase, being here used concerning that sacred fire, should not be unhallowed. He that is our all must have our all, and none but he. [3.] With a superlative love; we must love God above any creature whatsoever, and love nothing besides him but what we love for him and in subordination to him. [4.] With an intelligent love; for so it is explained, Mar 12:33. To love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, we must know him, and therefore love him as those that see good cause to love him. [5.] With an entire love; he is one, and therefore our hearts must be united in this love, and the whole stream of our affections must run towards him. O that this love of God may be shed abroad in our hearts!
II. Means are here prescribed for the maintaining and keeping up of religion in our hearts and houses, that it might not wither and go to decay. And they are these: - 1. Meditation: These words which I command thee shall be in thy heart, Deu 6:6. Though the words alone without the things will do us no good, yet we are in danger of losing the things if we neglect the words, by which ordinarily divine light and power are conveyed to the heart. God's words must be laid up on our heart, that our thoughts may be daily conversant with them and employed about them, and thereby the whole soul may be brought to abide and act under the influence and impression of them. This immediately follows upon the law of loving God with all your heart; for those that do so will lay up his word in their hearts both as an evidence and effect of that love and as a means to preserve and increase it. He that loves God loves his Bible. 2. The religious education of children (Deu 6:7): "Thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children; and by communicating thy knowledge thou wilt increase it." Those that love the Lord God themselves should do what they can to engage the affections of their children to him, and so to preserve the entail of religion in their families from being cut off. Thou shalt whet them diligently upon thy children, so some read it; frequently repeat these things to them, try all ways of instilling them into their minds, and making them pierce into their hearts; as, in whetting a knife, it is turned first on this side, then on that. "Be careful and exact in teaching thy children; and aim, as by whetting, to sharpen them, and put an edge upon them. Teach them to thy children, not only those of thy own body" (say the Jews) "but all those that are anyway under thy care and tuition." Bishop Patrick well observes here that Moses thought his law so very plain and easy that every father might be able to instruct his sons in it and every mother her daughters. Thus that good thing which is committed to us we must carefully transmit to those that come after us, that it may be perpetuated. 3. Pious discourse. "Thou shalt talk of these things, with due reverence and seriousness, for the benefit not only of thy children, but of thy other domestics, thy friends and companions, as thou sittest in thy house at work, or at meat, or at rest, or to receive visits, and when thou walkest by the way for diversion, or for conversation, of in journeys, when at night thou art retiring from thy family to lie down for sleep, and when in the morning thou hast risen up and returnest to thy family again. Take all occasions to discourse with those about thee of divine things; not of unrevealed mysteries, or matters of doubtful disputation, but of the plain truths and laws of God, and the things that belong to our peace." So far is it from being reckoned a diminution to the honour of sacred things to make them subject of our familiar discourse that they are recommended to us to be talked of; for the more conversant we are with them the more we shall admire them and be affected with them, and may thereby be instrumental to communicate divine light and heat. 4. Frequent reading of the word: They shall be as frontlets between thy eyes, and thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, Deu 6:8, Deu 6:9. It is probable that at that time there were few written copies of the whole law, only at the feasts of tabernacles the people had it read to them; and therefore God appointed them, at least for the present, to write some select sentences of the law, that were most weighty and comprehensive, upon their walls, or in scrolls of parchment to be worn about their wrists; and some think that hence the phylacteries so much used among the Jews took rise. Christ blames the Pharisees, not for wearing them, but for affecting to have them broader than other people's, Mat 23:5. But when Bibles came to be common among them there was less occasion for this expedient. It was prudently and piously provided by the first reformers of the English church that then, when Bibles were scarce, some select portions of scripture should be written on the walls and pillars of the churches, which the people might make familiar to them, in conformity to this direction, which seems to have been binding in the letter of it to the Jews as it is to us in the intent of it, which is that we should endeavour by all means possible to make the word of God familiar to us, that we may have it ready to us upon all occasions, for our restraint from sin and our direction and excitement to our duty. It must be as that which is graven on the palms of our hands, always before our eyes. See Pro 7:1-3. It is also intimated that we must never be ashamed to own our religion, nor to own ourselves under the check and government of it. Let it be written on our gates, and let every one that goes by our door read it, that we believe Jehovah to be God alone, and believe ourselves bound to love him with all our hearts.
III. A caution is here given not to forget God in a day of prosperity and plenty, Deu 6:10-12. Here, 1. He raises their expectations of the goodness of their God, taking it for granted that he would bring them into the good land that he had promised (Deu 6:10), that they should no longer dwell in tents as shepherds and poor travellers, but should settle in great and goodly cities, should no longer wander in a barren wilderness, but should enjoy houses will furnished and gardens well planted (Deu 6:11), and all this without any care and expense of their own, which he here lays a great stress upon - Cities which thou buildest not, houses which thou filledst not, etc., both because it made the mercy really much more valuable that what they had come to them so cheaply, and yet, if they did not actually consider it, the mercy would be the less esteemed, for we are most sensible of the value of that which has cost us dear. When they came so easily by the gift they would be apt to grow secure, and unmindful of the giver. 2. He engages their watchfulness against the badness of their own hearts: Then beware, when thou liest safe and soft, lest thou forget the Lord, Deu 6:12. Note, (1.) In a day of prosperity we are in great danger of forgetting God, our dependence upon him, our need of him, and our obligations to him. When the world smiles we are apt to make our court to it, and expect our happiness in it, and so we forget him that his our only portion and rest. Agur prays against this temptation (Pro 30:9): Lest I be full and deny thee. (2.) There is therefore need of great care and caution at such a time, and a strict watch over our own hearts. "Then beware; being warned of your danger, stand upon your guard against it. Bind the words of God for a sign upon thy hand, for this end to prevent thy forgetting God. When thou art settled in Canaan forget not thy deliverance out of Egypt; but look to the rock out of which thou wast hewn. When thy latter end has greatly increased, remember the smallness of thy beginnings."
IV. Some special precepts and prohibitions are here given, which are of great consequence. 1. They must upon all occasions give honour to God (Deu 6:13): Fear him and serve him (for, if he be a Master, we must both reverence him and do his work); and swear by his name, that is, they must not upon any occasion appeal to any other, as the discerner of truth and avenger of wrong. Swear by him only, and not by an idol, or any other creature. Swear by his name in all treaties and covenants with the neighbouring nations, and do not compliment them so far as to swear by their gods. Swearing by his mane is sometimes put for an open profession of his name. Isa 45:23, Every tongue shall swear, is expounded (Rom 14:11), Every tongue shall confess to God. 2. They must not upon any occasion give that honour to other gods (Deu 6:14): You shall not go after other gods, that is, "You shall not serve nor worship them;" for therein they went astray, they went a whoring from the true God, who in this, more than in any thing, is jealous god (Deu 6:15): and the learned bishop Patrick observes here, out of Maimonides, that we never find, either in the law or the prophets, anger, or fury, or jealousy, or indignation, attributed to God but upon occasion of idolatry. 3. They must take heed of dishonouring God by tempting him (Deu 6:16): You shall not tempt the Lord your God, that is, "You shall not in any exigence distrust the power, presence, and providence of God, nor quarrel with him," which, if they indulged an evil heart of unbelief, they would take occasion to do in Canaan as well as in the wilderness. No change of condition will cure a disposition of murmur and fret. Our Saviour uses this caution as an answer to one of Satan's temptations, with application to himself, Mat 4:7, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God, either by despairing of his power and goodness while we keep in the way of our duty, or by presuming upon it when we turn aside out of that way.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv2–25 That thou mightest fear the Lord thy God,.... Being…
That thou mightest fear the Lord thy God,.... Being taught to know the greatness of his being, and the nature of his mind and will, and the manner of his worship; and not with a slavish fear, but with a filial one, a reverential affection for God; being instructed in their duty, as of children, to their God and Father; see Deu 5:29.
to keep all his statutes, and his commandments, which I command thee; not in his own name, but in the name, and by the authority of God, whose minister and messenger he was; and all, having the stamp of divine authority on them, were to be observed and kept, and not one to be neglected or departed from:
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thou, and thy son, and thy son's son, all the days of thy life; a man and his children, and grandchildren; he was to take care that they kept all the commandments of the Lord as long as he lived, and had any concern with them:
and that thy days may be prolonged; long life being reckoned a very great outward mercy; a long enjoyment of, and continuance in the land of Canaan, is chiefly designed, which is usually expressed when this is observed; see Deu 4:26.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv5, 7, 8, 13, 15, 16, 17, 25 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with…
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart - And is this only an external commandment? Can any then say, that the Sinai - covenant was merely external? With all thy heart - With an entire love. He is One; therefore our hearts must be united in his love. And the whole stream of our affections must run toward Him. O that this love of God may be shed abroad in our hearts.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 25 Verse 2. That thou mightest fear the Lord] Respect…
Verse 2. That thou mightest fear the Lord] Respect his sovereign authority as a lawgiver, and ever feel thyself bound to obey him. No man can walk either conscientiously or safely who has not the fear of God continually before his eyes. When this is gone, more than a guardian angel is fled.
Thou, and thy son, and thy son's son] Through all thy successive generations. Whoever fears God will endeavour to bring up his children in the way of righteousness, that they also may fear God, and that pure and undefiled religion may be preserved in his family through all its generations, not only in word, but in practice also.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 15, 25 Deu 6:4. Hear, O Israel! — The passage contained…
Deu 6:4. Hear, O Israel! — The passage contained in this and the following verse, the Jews reckoned one of their choicest portions of Scripture. They wrote it on their phylacteries, (or slips of parchment bound on their foreheads, their necks, their breasts, or wrists,) and thought themselves not only obliged to repeat it twice every day, but very happy in being so obliged; having this saying among them, “Blessed are we who, every morning and evening, say, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord!” Jehovah our God is one Jehovah; 1st, The God whom we worship is Jehovah; a Being infinitely and eternally perfect, self-existent, and self- sufficient. 2d, He is the only living and true God, he only is God, and he is but one. The firm belief of this self-evident truth would effectually arm them against all idolatry, which was introduced by that fundamental error, that there are gods many. It is past dispute that there is one God, and that there is no other but he, Mar 12:32. Let us, therefore, neither have, nor desire to have any other.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 8, 10 In the land - Better: According as the Lord…
In the land - Better: According as the Lord the God of thy fathers promised thee a land flowing with milk and honey.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv3, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 16, 25 Hear. The Jews have a particular respect for the…
Hear. The Jews have a particular respect for the seven following verses, which they write on vellum, and recite every day, as a preservative against the devil. (Clarius.) --- To do. It will not suffice to hear nor to learn the law, we must also put it in execution, chap. v. 1. (Worthington)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v4 Hortatory Exposition of the First Two Commands
Hortatory Exposition of the First Two Commands
Deu_6:4 to Deu_11:32
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The First Commandment. (Deu_6:4 to Deu_8:20)
Deu_6:4-25
4Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord. 5And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. 6And these words which I command [am commanding] thee this day, shall be in thine heart: 7and thou shalt teach [sharpen] them diligently unto thy children [sons], and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. 8And thou shalt [omit thou shalt] bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as front-lets 9[brow-bands] between thine eyes. And thou shalt [omit thou shalt] write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates. 10And it shall be, when the Lord thy God shall have brought thee1 into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not, 11and houses full of all [every kind of] good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive-trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full [and thou 12eatest and art full], Then beware lest thou forget the Lord, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage [bondmen]. 13Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name. 14Ye shall not go after [go behind, follow] other gods, of the gods of the people which are round about you; 15(For the Lord thy God is a jealous God among you;) lest the anger of the Lord thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth [land]. 16Ye shall not tempt the Lord your God, as ye tempted him in Massah. 17Ye shall diligently2 [truly, carefully] keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and his testimonies, and his statutes, which he hath commanded thee. 18And thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of the Lord: that it may be well [good] with thee, and that thou mayest go in and possess the good land [the land, the good] which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, 19To cast out [so that, because he drives out] all thine enemies from before thee, as the Lord 20hath spoken. And when thy son asketh thee in time to come [in the future], saying, What mean [is wished, intended by] the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord our God hath commanded you? 21Then thou shalt say unto thy son, We were Pharaoh’s bond-men in Egypt; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand: 22And the Lord shewed [gave] signs and wonders, great and sore [evil] upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household, before our eyes: 23And he brought us out from thence, that he might bring us in [hither] to give us the land which he sware unto our fathers. 24And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as it is at this day. 25And it shall be our righteousness, if we observe [think upon, keep] to do all these commandments3 [this whole command] before the Lord our God, as he hath commanded us.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. Deu_6:1-9. The exposition of the first command (comp. Deu_5:6-7) connects itself both with the doctrine, the matter of faith, Deu_6:4, and with the life, the moral demand, Deu_6:5. (This is to the Jew the sacred quintessence of his religion, through the involuntary expression of which many betrayed themselves, and were burned during the persecution in Spain.) אֶחָד is not synonymous with לְבַדִּי, alone. But if Jehovah is one, Deu_6:4, he is therewith also alone Jehovah. The sense of the verse is, Jehovah our God is as such, as this Jehovah, one (Mar_12:29; Mar_12:32). [Wordsworth: “Surely the adoption of these words of Deuteronomy by our blessed Lord Himself is a sufficient refutation of the theory of those who affirm that Deuteronomy is a spurious work. Our Lord makes them the very ground-work of all true religion.” Bib. Com. “This mighty text contains far more than a mere declaration that God is one. It asserts that the Lord God of Israel is absolutely God, and none other. The last letter of the first and last word are written large, which the Jewish commentators make highly significant.”—A.G.] The predicate of the sentence begins with the repeated Jehovah; but Jehovah is repeated in order to bring out more impressively the absolute being of the God of Israel, from which results, qualitatively, His universality and eternity, relatively His absoluteness, quantitatively His unity (Deu_4:35; Deu_4:39). With the unity of the absolute, His simplicity also must be conceded, which, although it does not occur in the Scripture, in its metaphysical abstraction, meets us still in the attributis derivatis, His immateriality, spirituality and invisibility in the second command (comp. upon. Deu_5:8). For this first command, so far as the doctrine or faith is concerned, limits itself to the oneness, i.e. to the monotheism of the absolute Jehovah, over against polytheism generally, and also over against every polytheistic, paganistic nationalizing or localizing of Jehovah (Zec_14:9). This is the explanation of the I am Jehovah thy God, and the no other gods before me. This oneness, and therefore exclusiveness, of Jehovah well supports, Deu_6:5, the moral demand for the perfect ordering of the life. The Hear, O Israel (as usually behold), which in the conciseness of the expression calls attention to the importance of the subject, reaches still to this also. The polytheist is absolutely dependent upon no one of his gods, and thus religion with him never reaches the truth of its idea. But as and just because Jehovah is one, His demand generally upon Israel, thus the whole law, with all its variety of commands, must have a unity (Joh_17:21 sq.), just as law and promise are also one, Gal_3:21. Since, however, the unity of Jehovah opens or begins the law, it is only fitting that the unity in the demands of Jehovah should be placed as the first command (as the πρώτη ἐντολή, Mat_22:38), the opening for all that follows, in the very spirit of which they are to be understood.—And thou shalt love, καὶ ἀγαπήσεις, Mar_12:30. A simple continuation of Deu_6:4, as that which evidently flows from it. It is scarcely and strictly a command, rather as a direction or concession: the duty belongs to thee to love in this measure, sq.: at the most a demand; so love, sq. (Deu_5:10). To the unity of the absolute, since He is the God of Israel (Deu_5:6), agrees the redemption from Egypt (Deu_6:12; Deu_6:21 sq.), as showing that He is such, through which also this Jehovah appears worthy of love, and indeed to the whole man, in heart and life, and in all his relations. Heart (Deu_5:26) the innermost, then soul as synonymous with life, thus already more external than heart, (Deu_4:29) and then strength, which designates the still more outward effective proofs of the life. (Mat_22:37; Luk_10:27; Mar_12:33). [Bib. Com.: “The specification is intended to include every faculty that can possibly come in question.” Alexander on Mar_12:29-31 : “There is no need of attempting any nice distinction between heart and soul and mind, the obvious design being to exhaust the one idea of the whole man.” It is clear also from the reference of our Lord to this command, that the law and the Gospel do not differ as an outward and carnal service from an inward and spiritual one. Love holds the same prominence in both, but the gospel gives new and peculiar motives to enforce this love.—A. G.]. As the love to Jehovah, and the keeping of His commands are connected, Deu_5:10, so now Deu_6:6 sq., follows Deu_6:5, as love must show itself in this relation, or way. These words which, thus all which is commanded, Deu_6:1. Shall be in [upon, Schroeder] thine heart, (Deu_11:18) as the duty which rests upon thee, but also a matter of the heart, and therefore must be a “pleasant burden” (Schultz) 1Jn_5:3. “As written upon the heart, Jer_31:33.” Knobel. Whatever the heart is full of, that comes out from the mouth, Deu_6:7, and whatever comes from the heart, reaches the heart; but that it may reach the hearts of the children, it must be sharpened [taught diligently] upon their hearts, rigorously commanded, for mere words secure only a mere recollection (Heb_4:12). Of them.בְּ as in Deu_3:26, so that the discourses rest in them, have their very substance and contents in them, and indeed at all times and everywhere, Psa_1:2. Deu_6:8-9, state how the commandment should rule the private, domestic, and public life in figurative, but therefore in more vivid and proverbial language (comp. Deu_11:18; Exo_13:9; Exo_13:16; Pro_3:3; Pro_3:21-22; Pro_6:21-22; Pro_7:3; Isa_49:16) precisely in accordance with oriental usage. We use the hand in our acts, and hence to bind them upon thy hand is to keep them for a sign for thy conduct, as ever to be regarded, and which must determine my manner of action. The brow, between thine eyes, represents the chamber of thought, is as the door to the intellectual nature of man (hence the easy transition to the door-posts, Deu_6:9). The commandments, as frontlets or browbands, become therefore a badge or confession by which one may be known, and embrace the private life, both on the side which is turned, and open to the man himself, and upon that which lies open to other men (Rev_13:16; Rev_14:1). טֹטָפֹת instead of טַפְטָפוֹת occurs only in the Pentateuch, is obsolete in later periods. Transformed into a symbol and by the Pharisees perverted to carnal ends, Mat_23:5. The socalled Tephillim, for the left hand and the head, small cases with the Scripture texts Exo_13:1-11; Exodus 11-17; Deu_6:4-10; Deu_11:13-26, fastened with a leathern thong, are still worn among the Jews of to-day as an appropriate prayer ornament. But writing is first spoken in Deu_6:9. Since the commandments are a pledge or confession, he states also how they express the rule and support of the domestic and public life. That which is thus a confession, serves at the same time as a continual self-exhortation, as with respect to the family, so in civil life the Litera scripta manet. The analogy of Deu_6:8, the universality in the terms and write them, and the indefiniteness as to what is to be written, all go to prove that Deu_6:9 uses merely figurative language, and does not require any actual inscription upon the gates and door-posts. The references to Egyptian usages (Hengstenberg and Schultz), to the customs of oriental nations of to-day (Knobel), which might be enlarged still further from Germany, show how little of this kind it was necessary to require. [See also Wilkinson, A. E. III., 364,—Lane, Modern Egypt,—Kitto and Smith for fuller statements as to these oriental and Jewish usages.—A. G.]. If writing has once become a popular means to aid the memory it is evident that one would say, “lest thou forget it, write it upon thy wall, upon thy door.” If this is not what it means, still it must be regarded as a proverbial figurative expression for forget not! as Deu_6:12 expresses the exhortation. As the Tephillim are connected with Deu_6:8, so the Talmud connects with Deu_6:9 the (מְזוּזָה, door-posts, Exo_12:7; Exo_21:6), mezuzah, a metal case containing a parchment roll, inscribed with Deu_6:4-9; Deu_11:13-22, and dedicated to Shaddai, (the Almighty) which every Jew fastened to the right door-post of his house as a protection against death, the devil, ghosts and witchcraft.
2. Deu_6:10-19. Deu_6:10. Comp. with Deu_1:8; Deu_4:37-38; Gen_50:24. Cities, sq. A detailed description for the purpose of warning, to which the exhortation now passes. Deu_6:11. And thou eatest sq. The rich enjoyment and pleasure should not destroy the remembrance of Jehovah. (Deu_5:6). The religious secularization (of God) is image worship, here they are warned against the moral secularization (of men). But comp. Deu_31:20; Deu_32:15. Deu_6:13. They must guard above all against forgetting the name with which the redeemer of Israel out of Egypt had named Himself. Hence the positive form of the lest thou forget with reference to the name Jehovah, still not now for the purpose of explaining the third command, but rather to impress the heartfelt fear of Jehovah (Deu_6:2; Deu_5:26) for the individual, and the service of Jehovah in the cultus and life (Deu_5:9) for the household (Jos_24:15). And shalt swear by His name, i.e., when thou swearest—the solemn, vital, essential confession of the mouth, as before the court, so also in civil life and acts (Isa_19:18; Isa_45:23; Isa_65:16; Jer_12:16; Jer_4:2; Psa_63:11), [of the oath as an act of worship. See Mat_5:34; Heb_6:16; Jam_5:12.—A. G.]. The emphatic position of אֶה־יְהוָֹה prepares the way for Deu_6:14 (comp. further Mat_4:10; Luk_4:8; the Sept. adds μόνῳ) with which comp. Deu_4:3. Deu_6:15. See Deu_5:9; Deu_4:24;—Exo_32:11;—Deu_4:26; Deu_5:16. Deu_6:16 parallel to Deu_6:14. There superstition, here unbelief, which calls in question the presence of Jehovah, or generally His existence. Exo_17:7; Mat_4:7; Luk_4:12; (1Co_10:9). [Deu_6:16. This is one of the texts quoted by Christ in the temptation. And as He quoted Deuteronomy as a part of the sacred Scriptures, and as it was then held, i.e., as the work of Moses, so we have here again His endorsement of the Mosaic authorship of this book.—A. G.] Deu_6:17. Forgetfulness leads to apostacy, and to sinful doubt, love, to the keeping of the commandments sq. Comp. Deu_4:40; Deu_4:45. Deu_6:18. יָשָׁר even, straight. טוֹב (contracted from טהב = צהב), bright, brilliant, beautiful, the good as it falls in the eyes namely, of God, as pleasing to Him, (1Jn_3:22; Joh_8:29). There is here a play upon words, to the good, good comes, it goes well—here in reference to the good land, (Deu_6:10). Deu_6:19; Deu_4:38; Exo_23:27; Lev_26:7. Preparatory to chap. 7.
3. Deu_6:20-25. Deu_6:20. The carrying out of Deu_6:7, as Deu_6:8 sq. is of Deu_6:6. מָה with respect to their import, or their ground and aim. The son asks because he sees the father doing, as Deu_6:7 enjoins (Exo_13:14; Exo_12:26). A testimony, example, and earnest instruction is presupposed, (Psa_34:11; Pro_4:1; Eph_6:4). It concerns the ground or reason, if the youth asks wherefore? and the application to the heart and life, if the question is that just as frequently asked, What is that to me? to what end? (How practical)? First the wretched condition of Israel, bondmen, sq., then the redemption (Deu_6:22נָהַן as Exo_7:9. Comp. Deu_4:34) to its completion (Deu_6:23, that he might, sq.) with a citation of the promise, which he swore, sq., and with an emphatic mention of the fruits of salvation (Deu_6:24, comp. upon Deu_4:1). Lastly the thankfulness in Deu_6:25 : So we are under obligation to God. Righteousness (Deu_24:13, comp. upon Deu_4:8) refers to the acquitting sentence of the law, as opposed to κατάκριμα (Rom_5:16) and hence involves the fulfilling (Rom_2:13) of the whole law (Jam_2:10); and as more nearly defined here as before the Lord this righteousness is not opposed to that in Rom_8:4, which also consists in walking not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Thus Moses describes the righteousness which is of the law (Rom_10:5) as far from the hypocritical, or even merely external righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees (Mat_5:20) as Paul on his side separates widely justification by faith from the simple, external apprehension of the work of Christ for us. [But Paul never separates justification by faith from a hearty practical obedience to the law. He teaches that the man is justified by the simple apprehension and reception of the work of Christ for us, i.e., by faith—but this faith is never fruitless. The man so believing is in Christ, Rom_8:1, and so must walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. The note in Bib. Com. is judicious. The word translated righteousness is the same as in Gen_15:6, rendered in the N. T. by δικαιοσύνη. Moses from the very beginning has made the whole “righteousness of the law” to depend so entirely on a right state of the heart, in one word, on faith, that there can be no real inconsistency between the verse before us, taken thus strictly and properly, and the principle of Justification by faith only.—A. G.]. At the same time it is clear that although לפּני יְוָֹה cannot be referred to וצדקה, true righteousness is the justification of men, not before men, but before God, and therewith Christ is the end of the law for righteousness (Rom_10:4) Rom_8:3. Here also the faith, Deu_6:4, precedes the love, Deu_6:5.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. “All comprehensive obedience roots itself in the fear of the Lord, (Deu_6:2-3), for this is the first and nearest truth in the relations of Israel to Jehovah, (Deu_5:26). But if the fear of Jehovah especially restrains man from gratifying his selfish nature as opposed to God, it cannot rest in this mere denial of the self-will, although this is first as even the negative form of the decalogue shows, but leads to a union of the divine and human wills, and this is love, which has been explained as the true condition of obedience in the decalogue (Deu_5:10).” Baumgarten.
2. Since love—and love to God is the strength of the love to our neighbor—is represented as the sum of the commandments, the deep inward character of the Mosaic law appears here (comp. further Deu_10:12; Deu_11:1; Deu_11:13), and at the same time it is presented as one holy spiritual whole, so that we cannot speak of any higher New Testament stand-point in this regard. Pharisaism does not find its condemnation first in Christ, it met it long ago in Moses. But as this Jewish (not O. T.) idea and use of the law separates it into manifold external statutes, literally understood, so on the other hand it breaks the thread which connects the law, according to its origin with the covenant of God, and love as the fulfilling of the law with faith. The “position of faith to the law” in the old covenant, (Auberlen) is this, “the believer receives the law as a gracious gift of God, rejoices in its perfection, places his whole life under its sacred discipline and control. But the more earnestly he strives after the fulfilling of the law, the more he recognizes his own unfitness to the effort, his weakness to good, the power of evil in the heart. Then he seeks the forgiveness of sins, as it was already offered in the O. T., through the grace of God, and comforts himself with redemption through the Messiah.”
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Deu_6:4-5. Luther: “That God is one, profits us not, but that He is held as one God and our God, that is blessedness and life and the fulfilling of all the law. The first explanation of the first command relates to faith. For no one can have one God who does not depend upon Him alone, does not leave all for Him alone, otherwise he will be hurried away to manifold works, and feign himself manifold deities. The second explanation flows from the first, and relates to love. For when we understand that all things flow from Him, then a sweet love necessarily follows. In Deu_6:4 He claims the confidence of all, and then in Deu_6:5 awakens a joyful and free service of God. Thus in faith we receive through the unity of God all things freely of God, through love we do all things cheerfully for our God. The one God and His one command. True love requires the whole man). Deu_6:6. Berl. Bib.: “The heart alone receives this lesson. The language of love is taught by love, and love teaches to love.” Luther: “Not alone in the book, nor in thought, but in the innermost affection of thy heart.” Tueb. Bib.: “The law of God must be engraved upon our hearts with an evangelical pen, if we will keep it.” Starke: “Whoever will truly teach and inculcate upon others the commands of God, must first take them to heart, that he may mould his Christian character, faith, and walk, upon them. Mark that, ye parents and teachers.” Deu_6:7. Randgl.: “The more one obeys the word of God the clearer and fresher it will become. The longer, the more lovingly.” Starke: “Parents should not only send their children to school, and lead them to Church, but hold frequent instructive conversations with them. They should be diligently trained in the Catechisms in the Church, school, and at home.” (How faith and love rule all, heart, home, and land). Richter: “According to Deu_6:9 every Israelite must be able to read and write.”(?) Deu_6:10-12. Luther: “He reproves wealth and luxury, especially mammon and avarice (1Ti_6:10; Col_3:5). For the human heart yields itself to present good, but has no confidence in that which is not present. But trust in wealth, and faith, and love cannot rule in the same heart at the same time. See how Moses guards against the idolatry of the heart before he speaks of other gods.” Schultz: To be full becomes a peculiar pregnant expression in Scripture. Deu_6:12. Cramer: “There must be great strength to support such good days.” Deu_6:13. Luther: “This is the strength of faith, and the result of the first command, that in prosperity we are reverent and fearful, in adverse affairs we are secure and free, and in both lean upon God. In great wealth do not trust therein, hast thou none, be not therefore despondent. Moses never dreams of the doulia, latria, hyperdoulia of the sophists. And so also should’st thou take this oath, since thou remainest in the service of God.” (The true oath an act of worship). Deu_6:14. A bad neighborhood often corrupts good morals. Deu_6:16. Luther: “Before, it was that we should in prosperous times do right, now that in the opposite condition we should suffer right, and be certain that God is near us in the time of need. God is tempted, 1) when we do not use what we have, thus whoever complains and thinks that God should feed him without his own efforts; 2) when we appoint Him place, time, method, and so to speak feel whether He is there; thus through the pressure of want, and the counsel of a weak faith.” What is it to tempt God? To doubt His being, to test His omnipotence, to give direction for His help, to question His faithfulness, to hasten or anticipate His providence, to limit His grace to our own will, to ridicule His long-suffering patience, and also His righteousness, etc. Berl. Bib.: “God was tempted in His wisdom, Psa_73:11, in His truth, 2Ki_7:2, in His goodness and providence over us, Mat_4:6-7, in His power, Num_11:4-5; Psa_78:19-20; Num_14:22, in His omnipresence, Exo_17:7.” God never tempts us to evil, and we ought not to tempt Him out of our wicked will, (Mat_22:18). The right and the wrong doubt. Gideon (Jdg_6:36 sq.) Ahaz (Isa_7:12) and Jesus (Mat_4:7). The good is at the same time the beautiful. That is good which, 1) will pass with God; 2) upon which and through which good comes to us; 3) through which we may enter upon the good, the eternal good. Deu_6:20. Schultz: “As revealed religion was introduced into the world through teaching and discipline, so it must be preserved through the same method.” Lange: “Happy parents whose children seek after the commandments of God.” Berl. Bib.: “One may better be sparing in pleasures, and have a Bible in his house, better than all prayer books, that he may read with his family, and ever take it to his heart.” Deu_6:24. Schultz: “Our life support comprehends all that makes our life truly beautiful, easy, and blessed. As there is nothing without life, so there is no life, truly so-called, without many things, as health, success, joy and peace.” Berl. Bib.: “Serving God we truly serve ourselves, for then we have all things for our use.”
Footnotes:
[1][Deu_6:10. Lit.: Shall have caused thee to come.—A. G.]
[2][Deu_6:17. Lit.: Keeping ye shall keep.—A. G.]
[3][Deu_6:25. All the command. The pronoun is singular; the commandment is one.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On v20 when thy son asketh thee in time to come,…
when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying--The directions given for the instruction of their children form only an extension of the preceding counsels.
Next: Deuteronomy Chapter 7
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 16, 22, 25 3. Promised thee, in the land — As there…
3. Promised thee, in the land — As there is no preposition before the word translated land the passage is better read: “For Jehovah, God of thy fathers, promised thee a land flowing with milk and honey.”
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 2. fear Jehovah thy God] Deu_10:12; Deu_10:20.
2. fear Jehovah thy God] Deu_10:12; Deu_10:20.
all his statutes and his commandments] Note the variation from Deu_6:1.
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which I command thee] am about to command thee.
that thy days may be prolonged] See on Deu_5:33.
2, 3. Transition to the Sg. with a somewhat loose accumulation of common deuteronomic formulas; on these grounds regarded by some as an editorial addition. This is not certain, but very probable. Omit Deu_6:2-3, and Deu_6:4 follows naturally on Deu_6:1 as the beginning of the Miṣwah, but couched, like the Decalogue in ch. 5, in the Sg. At the same time all of Deu_6:2-3 need not be editorial. Note that the one Pl. clause they contain is not a common formula.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 13, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 25 (3) That ye may increase mightily . . .…
(3) That ye may increase mightily . . . in the land.—The position of Israel in the land, and their continuance therein, depended entirely on their fulfilment of the purpose for which they were brought there—the observance of the Law of Jehovah, as it applied to their peculiar situation.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 13, 16, 19, 20, 22, 25 The reason for this announcement of the Law was…
The reason for this announcement of the Law was that the people might fear the Lord, so as to keep all that he enjoined, they and their children, from generation to generation, and that they might thereby continue long in life, and in the enjoyment of the advantages accruing from the land of which they were about to take possession.
HOMILIES BY J. ORR
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Descending obligations.
I CHILDREN WITH THEIR PARENTS ARE INCLUDED IN THE COVENANT. This has been a general principle in God"s dealings with his servants. We have it affirmed, both in the covenant with Abraham (Gen_17:7-15) and in the later covenant with Israel. (Deu_29:10-12) It was signified in the rite of circumcision. The Israelitish child was regarded as within the covenant, a genuine member of the theocracy, till by a personal act of apostasy if unfortunately it should be so he severed himself from its blessings. Similar language is used of the children of Christian believers. (1Co_8:1-4) Received into the Church by baptism, they are recognized with their parents as interested in the promise; they are expected, on coming to years of discretion, freely to appropriate the obligations of the Christian life; and they are, in case of refusal, justly regarded as apostates from Christ.
II THE STANDING OF CHILDREN IN THE COVENANT ENTAILS SERIOUS OBLIGATIONS ON THE PARENTS.
1. Religious instruction. (vers. 6, 7, 20; Exo_13:8, Exo_13:14, etc.) The children had not been personally at Horeb. They had not seen the mighty works of God in Egypt and the desert. It was the duty cf. parents to acquaint them with the history, and to instruct them in their duties.
2. Religious training, which is education in act, as instruction is education in word. (Gen_18:19; Deu_21:18; Pro_29:15, etc.)
3. Religious example. The parent is to be one who loves the Lord for himself (ver. 5). The Word is to be in his own heart (ver. 6). Only thus will he teach with effect. All this has its counterpart in the duties of Christian parents (Eph_4:4; 1Ti_3:4; 2Ti_3:15, etc.)
III THE STANDING OF CHILDREN IN THE COVENANT ENTAILS SERIOUS OBLIGATIONS ON THE CHILDREN. Where parental duties had been fulfilled, the Israelitish child was under the most sacred obligations to choose and adhere to the God of his fathers, and to serve him in the way prescribed. There was in this no interference with freedom, for when God proposes covenant relations to a human being, while it is his privilege, it can never be aught else than his duty to accept them. In the Christian Church, a like obligation rests on the children of believers. The baptized child is bound to serve God, and, if properly instructed, (Mat_28:19) it cannot evade the responsibilities thus laid upon it. Great is the guilt of a child brought up in a Christian home if wantonly it apostatizes. J.O.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv2, 4, 5, 6, 10, 14, 16, 18, 20, 23, 24 Thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them.
Deu_6:2-4
Thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them.
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Wars of the Israelites
There is, perhaps, no point on which the weakness of human nature is more clearly shown than in the difficulty of treading the right path between persecution on the one hand, and indifference to evil on the other. For although we are, it may be, disposed according to our several tempers more to one of these faults than to the other, yet I fear it is true also that none of us are free from the danger of falling into them both. If we have today been too violent against the persons of evil men whom we do not like, this is no security against our being tomorrow much too forbearing towards the practices of evil men whom we do like; because we are all apt to respect persons in our judgment and in our feelings; sometimes to be too severe, and sometimes too indulgent, not according to justice, but according to our own likings and dislikings. Nor is it respect of persons only which thus leads us astray, but also our own particular sympathy with, or disgust at particular faults and characters. Even in one whom we may like, on the whole, there may be faults which we may visit too hardly, because they are exactly such as we feel no temptation to commit. And again, in one whom we dislike on the whole, there may, for the same reason, be faults which we tolerate too easily, because they are like our own. There is yet a third cause, and that a very common one, which corrupts our judgment. We may sympathise with such and such faults generally, because we are ourselves inclined to them; but if they happen to be committed against us, and we feel the bad effects of them, then we are apt to judge them in that particular case too harshly. Or again, we may rather dislike a fault in general, but when it is committed on our own side, and to advance our own interests, then in that particular case we are tempted to excuse it too readily. There are these dangers besetting us on the right hand and on the left, as to our treatment of other mens faults. And in Scripture we find very strong language against the error on either side. A great deal is said against violence, wrath, uncharitableness, harsh judgment of others, and attempting or pretending to work Gods service by our own bad passions, and a great deal is also said against tolerating sin, against defiling ourselves with evil-doers, against preferring our earthly friendships to the will and service of God. Of these latter commands the words of the text furnish us with a most remarkable instance. We see how strong and positive the language is (Deu_7:2); and the reason is given (Deu_7:4). It is better that the wicked should be destroyed a hundred times over, yea, destroyed with everlasting destruction, than that they should tempt those who are as yet innocent to join their company. And if we are inclined to think that God dealt hardly with the people of Canaan in commanding them to be so utterly destroyed, let us but think what might have been our fate, and the fate of every other nation under heaven at this hour, had the sword of the Israelites done its work more sparingly. The Israelites fought not for themselves only, but for us. Whatever were the faults of Jephthah or of Samson, never yet were any men engaged in a cause more important to the whole worlds welfare. Their constant warfare kept Israel essentially distinct from the tribes around them, their own law became the dearer to them because they found such unceasing enemies amongst those who hated it. The uncircumcised, who kept not the covenant of God, were forever ranged against those who did keep it. It might follow that the Israelites should thus be accounted the enemies of all mankind, it might be that they were tempted by their very distinctness to despise other nations; still, they did Gods work; still, they preserved unhurt the seed of eternal life, and were the ministers of blessing to all other nations, even though they themselves failed to enjoy it. But still these commands, so forcible, so fearful--to spare none--to destroy the wicked utterly--to show no mercy--are these commands addressed to us now? or what is it which the Lord bids us do? Certainly, He does not bid us shed blood, or destroy the wicked, or put on any hardness of heart which might shut out the charity of Christs perfect law. But there is a part of the text which does apply to us now in the letter, thereby teaching us how to apply the whole to ourselves in the spirit. Be ye not unequally yoked together in marriage with unbelievers. For what concord hath Christ with Belial? It is, indeed, something shocking to enter into so near and dear a connection as marriage with those who are not the servants of God. It is fearful to think of giving birth to children whose eternal life may be forfeited through the example and influence of him or of her through whom their earthly life was given. But though this be the worst and most dreadful case, still it is not the only one. St. Paul does not only speak against marriage with the unbelievers; he speaks also no less strongly against holding friendly intercourse with those who call themselves Christs, yet in their lives deny Him (1Co_5:11). We need not actually refuse to eat with those whose lives are evil; but woe to us if we do not shrink from any closer intimacy with them; if their society, when we must partake of it, be not painfully endured by us, rather than enjoyed. We may put away from among ourselves that wicked person; put him away, that is, from our confidence, put him away from our esteem; put him altogether away from our sympathy. We are on services wholly different; our masters are God and Mammon; and we cannot be united closely with those to whom our dearest hopes are their worst fears, and to whom that resurrection which, to the true servant of Christ, will be his perfect consummation of bliss, will be but the first dawning of an eternity of shame and misery. (T. Arnold, D. D.)
Destruction of the Canaanites
The extermination of the Canaanites forces itself on the attention of the most careless reader of the Old Testament. We cannot deny that there is a difficulty which needs explanation: we cannot doubt that such a judgment was meant to give to every age a solemn and needful warning.
1. In the first place, it behoves us to understand that this destruction was not a punishment for idolatry. The war of Israel in Canaan did not resemble a crusade. The Canaanites perished, not because they had bowed down to false gods, or refused to worship the true God, but because they had made themselves utterly abominable. This is clear from Lev_18:24. The Canaanites perished because the earth could no longer bear them: the safety of the whole demanded their extirpation.
2. We observe, further, that they did not perish without warning. The sites of Sodom and Gomorrah, once like the garden of Eden in loveliness, withered and burnt up by fire from heaven, and at length turned into a bituminous lake, showed the end of those sins by which the land was defiled. It was a memorial not to be forgotten. The Dead Sea was a phenomenon which forced the inquiry, Wherefore hath God done this? The forty years sojourn in the wilderness was not only fraught with blessing to Israel and instruction to the Church, but it gave to the Canaanites time to consider and repent. It produced this effect on Rahab and on the Gibeonites, who humbled themselves under the hand of God and were spared. The rest of the nations of Canaan heard and feared, but repented not. We may not, then, marvel that the cup of wrath which such habitual and audacious wickedness had filled was deep and deadly. Yet the destruction is not without its parallels. Many modern campaigns have produced a greater loss of life and far intenser misery. The sword appalls us by its fierceness; but it is more merciful than the famine and the pestilence, which in our own days have ravaged large portions of the globe. It cuts short the suspense which is more grievous than death; it inflicts no lingering pain. Besides, this was the only judgment in which idolaters would have seen the hand of the God of Israel. Had they perished in thousands by want or disease they would have attributed this to the displeasure of Moloch or Baal. But they ever regarded battle as the trial of deities. So, when the iron chariots had been broken in the valleys, and the rocky fastness and fenced city had failed to protect the Anakim, all who felt the sword of Israel and all to whom the tidings came were forced to confess that Jehovah was to be feared above all gods. Hence we may see what Israel and all other nations were to learn from these wars in Canaan.
1. They learnt, first, Gods absolute sovereignty, His right and property, in the life of man, and therefore ill everything by and for which man lives. If, then, the Canaanite had no property in his life, nor power to retain it when God demanded it, we dare not claim more than stewardship of anything that we call ours. The largest possessions, the richest intellectual gifts, are less than the life. These, then, are at the disposal of Him who is the Lord of life. If we use them as Gods servants they will secure to us everlasting possessions; but from the unfaithful steward shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have.
2. Again, God manifested that man hath something better than life. Our hearts may be harrowed or sickened at the thought that the sword of Israel struck down not only the boastful warrior, but the feeble woman and the blooming child and the infant at the breast. But the same suffering and death of the weak and the graceful and the pure is continually forcing itself on our attention in every epidemic, in public calamities, and in the more frequent casualties of private life, in Indian and Syrian massacres, and even at the birth of Christ Himself, when Rachel was weeping for her children. All this piercing and cutting down of the young and the tender and the promising would be inexplicable if we had not the revelation of a higher life, for which suffering and the contact with suffering are the preparation. (M. Biggs, M. A.)
A noble resolve
Eliza Embert, a young Parisian lady, resolutely discarded a gentleman to whom she was to have been married the next day because he ridiculed religion. Having given him a gentle reproof for some impropriety, he replied that a man of the world would not be so old-fashioned as to regard God and religion. Eliza immediately started; but soon recovering herself, said, From this moment, as I discover you do not respect religion, I cease to be yours.
The danger of a morally vitiated atmosphere
Some time ago the following strange occurrence happened at St. Cierge, a village in the Jura. The principal room of an inn there, known as the Cerf, was lighted by a hanging petroleum lamp, above which had been placed, for the protection of the ceiling, a metal plate. In course of time the woodwork above the plate became desiccated, and one evening it took fire, and when the innkeeper and his family retired to rest was all aglow--a fact, however, which they do not seem to have noticed. From the ceiling the fire was communicated to the room above, and was first discovered by a neighbour, who, early next morning, observing smoke issuing from the door, gave an alarm, when, as none of the inmates could be aroused, the door was broken open. The fire, having gone on smouldering without bursting into flame, had done little material damage, and was easily extinguished; but all the people in the house--the landlord, his wife and sister--were dead. After the manner of country people, they had firmly closed their windows before going to bed, and the smoke, having no exit, had asphyxiated every one of them. In like manner those who allow a morally vitiated atmosphere to surround them, and willingly inhale its pestiferous fumes, wither and become spiritually suffocated.
The loss of spiritual tone
Animals that live in two elements are awkward in both. Do we find it difficult, even after the most innocent and unexceptionable entertainments, to brace the soul for its devotions? Do not our pinions flap languidly as we attempt our upward flight? And is it not the case that many of the so-called amusements which men pursue are in the last degree unfavourable to those exercises, without a constant application to which the highest zones of religious experience, the snowy summits of a pure spirituality--those glistening peaks that are the first to catch the auroral glow of the rising Sun of Righteousness, and the last to lose His evening beams--cannot be reached and maintained? To spoil a harp, you need not rudely break its strings and batter its sounding-board. Remove it from one temperature to another, and the mischief is done. We cannot say that people are not hurt by these things because they are not made openly and scandalously vicious. I maintain that a man has sustained a dire and irreparable, though a subtle, and at first impalpable injury, when he has lost his spiritual tone. (J. Halsey.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On vv4, 6 IN these verses we approach "the commandments, the statutes,…
LOVE TO GOD THE LAW OF LIFE
Deu_6:4-5
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IN these verses we approach "the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments" which it was to be Moses duty to communicate to the people, i.e., the second great division of the teaching and guidance received at Sinai. But though we approach them we do not come to them for a number of chapters yet. We reach them only in chapter 12, which begins with almost the same words as chapter 6. What lies between is a new exhortation, very similar in tone and subject to that into which chapters 1-3 have been transformed.
To some readers in our day this repetition, and the renewed postponement of the main subject of the book, have seemed to justify the introduction of a new author here. They are scornfully impatient of the repetition and delay, especially those of them who have themselves a rapid, dashing style; and they declare that the writer of the laws, etc., from chapter 12 onwards cannot have been the writer of these long double introductions. They would not have written so; consequently no one else, however different his circumstances, his objects, and his style may be, can have written so. It is true, they admit, that the style, the grammar, the vocabulary are all exactly those of the purely legal chapters, but that matters not. Their irritation with this delay is decisive; and so they introduce us, entirely on the strength of it, to another Deuteronomist, second or third or fourth-who knows? But all this is too purely subjective to meet with general acceptance, and we may without difficulty decide that the linguistic unity of the book, when chapters 6 to 12 are compared with what we find after 12, is sufficient to settle the question of authorship.
But we have now to consider the possible reasons for this second long introduction. The first introduction has been satisfactorily explained in a former chapter; this second one can, I think, quite as easily be accounted for. The object of the book is in itself a sufficient explanation. To modern critical students of the Old Testament the laws are the main interest of Deuteronomy. They are the material they need for their reconstruction of the history of Israel, and they feel as if all besides, though it may contain beautiful thoughts, were irrelevant. But that was not the writers point of view at all. For him it was not the main thing to introduce new laws. He was conscious rather of a desire to bring old laws, well known to his fellow-countrymen, but neglected by them, into force again. Anything new in his version of them was consequently only such an adaptation of them to the new circumstances of his time as would tend to secure their observance. Even if Moses were the author of the book this would be true; but if a prophetic man in Manassehs day was the author, we can see how naturally and exclusively that view would fill his mind. He had fallen upon evil times. The best that had been attained in regard to spiritual religion had been deliberately abandoned and trodden under foot. Those who sympathize with pure religion could only hope that a time would come when Hezekiahs work would be taken up again. If Deuteronomy was written in preparation for that time, the legal additions necessary to ward off the evils which had been so nearly fatal to Yahwism would seem to the author much less important than they appear to us to be. His object was to retrieve what had been lost, to rouse the dead minds of his countrymen, to illustrate that on which the higher life of the nation depended, and to throw light upon it from all the sources of what then was modern thought. His mind was full of the high teaching of the prophets. He was steeped in the history of his people, which was then receiving, or was soon to receive, its all but final touches. He was intensely anxious that in the later time for which he was writing all men should see how Providence had spoken for the Mosaic law and religion, and what the great principles were which had always underlain it, and which had now at last been made entirely explicit.
Under these circumstances, it was not merely natural that the author of Deuteronomy should dwell with insistence upon the hortatory part of his book; it was necessary. He could not feel Wellhausens haste to approach his restatement of the law. To him the exhortation was, in fact, the important thing. Every day he lived he must have seen that it was not want of knowledge that misled his contemporaries. He must have groaned too often under the weight of the indifference even of the well disposed not to be aware that that was the great hindrance to the restoration of the better thoughts and ways of Hezekiahs day.
He had learned by bitter experience, what every man who is in earnest about inducing masses of men to take a step backward or forward to a higher life always learns, that nothing can be accomplished till a fire has been kindled in the hearts of men which will not let them rest. To this task the author of Deuteronomy devotes himself. And whatever impatient theorists of today may say, he succeeds amazingly. His exhortation touches men from one end of the world to the other, even to this day, by its affectionate impressiveness, This exhibition of the principles underlying the law is so true that, when our Lord was asked, "Which is the first commandment of all?" He answered from this chapter of Deuteronomy: "The first of all the commandments is this, The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength. The second is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these." Now these are precisely the truths Deuteronomy exhibits in these prefatory chapters, and it is by them that the after-treatment of the law is permeated. The author of Deuteronomy by announcing these truths brought the Old Testament faith as near to the level of the New Testament faith as was possible; and we may well believe that he saw his work in its true relative proportions. The hortatory chapters are really the most original part of the book, and exhibit what was permanent in it. The mere fact that the author lingers over it, therefore, is entirely inadequate to justify us in admitting a later hand. Indeed, if criticism is to retain the respect of reasonable men, it will have to be more sparing than it has hitherto been with the "later hand"; to introduce it here under the circumstances is nothing short of a blunder.
In our verses, therefore, we have to deal with the main point of our book. Coming immediately after the Decalogue, these words render explicit the principle of the first table of that law. In them our author is making it clear that all he has to say of worship, and of the relation of Israel to Yahweh, is merely an application of this principle, or a statement of means by which a life at the level of love to God may be made possible or secured. This section, therefore, forms the bridge which connects the Decalogue with the legal enactments which follow; and it is on all accounts worthy of very special attention. Our Lords quotation of it as the supreme statement of the Divine law, in its Godward aspect, would in itself be an overwhelmingly special reason for thorough study of it, and would justify us in expecting to find it one of the deepest things in Scripture.
The translation of the first clause presents difficulties. The Authorized Version gives us, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord," but that can no longer be accepted, since it rests upon the Jewish substitution of Adhonai for Yahweh. Taking this view of the construction, it should be rendered, "Hear, O Israel: Yahweh our God is one Yahweh"; and this is the meaning which most recent authorities-e.g., Knobel, Keil, and Dillmann-put upon it. But equally good authorities-such as Ewald and Oehler-render, "Yahweh our God-Yahweh is one." This is unobjectionable grammatically. Still another translation, "Hear, O Israel: Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone," has been received by the most recent and most scholarly German translation of the Scripture, that edited by Kautzsch. But the objection that in that case lbhaddo, not echadh, should have been used, seems conclusive against it. The two others come very much to the same thing in the end, and were it not for the time at which Deuteronomy was written, Ewalds translations would be the simpler and more acceptable. But the first-"Yahweh our God is one Yahweh"-exactly meets the circumstances of that time, and moreover emphasises that in Israels God which the writer of Deuteronomy was most anxious to establish. As against the prevailing tendency of the time, he not only denies polytheism, or, as Dillmann puts it, asserts the concrete fact that the true God cannot be resolved in the polytheistic manner into various kinds and shades of deity, like the Baalim, but he also prohibits the amalgamation or partial identification of Him with other gods. Though very little is told us concerning Manassehs idolatry, we know enough to feel assured that it was in this fashion he justified his introduction of Assyrian deities into the Temple worship. Moloch, for example, must in some way have been identified with Yahweh, since the sacrifices of children in Tophet are declared by Jeremiah to have been to Yahweh. Further, the worship at the High Places had led, doubtless, to belief in a multitude of local Yahwehs, who in some obscure way were yet regarded as one, just as the multitudinous shrines of the Virgin in Romanist lands lead to the adoration of our Lady of Lourdes, our Lady of Naples, and so on, though the Church knows only one Virgin Mother. This incipient and unconscious polytheism it was our authors purpose to root out by his law of one altar; and it seems congruous, therefore, that he should sum up the first table of the Decalogue in such a way as to bring out its opposition to this great evil. Of course the oneness of deity as such is involved in what he says; but the aspect of this truth which is specially put forward here is that Yahweh, being God, is one Yahweh, with no partners, nor even with variations that practically destroy unity. No proposition could have been framed more precisely and exactly to contradict the general opinion of Manasseh and his followers regarding religion; and in it the watchword of monotheism was spoken. Since it was uttered, this has been the rallying point of monotheistic religion, both among Jews and Mohammedans. For "there is no God but God" is precisely the counterpart of "Yahweh is one Yahweh"; and from one end of the civilized world to the other this strenuous confession of faith has been heard, both as the tumultuous battle-shout of victorious armies, and as the stubborn and immovable assertion of the despised, and scattered, and persecuted people to whom it was first revealed. Even today, though in the hands of both Jews and Mohammedans it has been hardened into a dogma which has stripped the Mosaic conception of Yahweh of those elements which gave it possibilities of tenderness and expansion, it still has power over the minds of men. Even in such hands, it incites missionary effort, and it appeals to the heart at some stages of civilization as no other creed does. It makes men, nay, even civilized men of the wild fetish-worshipping African; but for want of what follows in our context it leaves them stranded-at a higher level, it is true, but stranded nevertheless, without possibilities of advance, and exposed to that terrible decay in their moral and spiritual conceptions which sooner or later asserts itself in every Mohammedan community.
Israel was saved from the same spiritual disease by the great words which succeed the assertion of Yahwehs oneness. The writer of Deuteronomy did not desire to set forth this declaration as an abstract statement of ultimate truth about God. He makes it the basis of a quite new, a quite original demand upon his countrymen. Because Yahweh thy God is one Yahweh, "thou shalt love Yahweh thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." To us, who have inherited all that was attained by Israel in their long and eventful history as a nation, and especially in its disastrous close, it may have become a commonplace that God demands the love of His people. But if so, we must make an effort to shake off the dull yoke of custom and familiarity. If we do, we shall see that it was an extraordinarily original thing which the Deuteronomist here declares. In the whole of the Old Testament there are, outside of Deuteronomy, thirteen passages in which the love of men to Yahweh is spoken of. They are Exo_20:6, Jos_22:5, Jos_23:11, Jdg_5:31, 1Ki_3:3, Neh_1:5, Psa_18:2, Psa_31:24, Psa_91:14, Psa_97:10, Psa_116:1, Psa_145:20; and Dan_9:4. Now of these the verses from Nehemiah and Daniel are manifestly later than Deuteronomy, and of the Psalms only the eighteenth can with any confidence be assigned to a time earlier than the seventh century B.C. All the others may with great probability be assigned at earliest to the times of Jeremiah and the post-exilic period. Three of the passages from the historic books again- Jos_22:5; Jos_23:11 1Ki_3:3 -are attributed, on grounds largely apart from the use of this expression, to the Deuteronomic editor, i.e., the writer who went over the historical books about 600 B.C., and made slight additions here and there, easily recognizable by their differing in tone and feeling from the surrounding context. Indeed Jos_22:5 is a palpable quotation from Deuteronomy itself.
Of the thirteen passages, therefore, only three- Exo_20:6, Jdg_5:31, and Psa_18:2 -belong to the time previous to Deuteronomy, and in all three the mention of love to God is only allusive, and, as it were, by the way. Before Deuteronomy, consequently, there is little more than the mere occurrence of the word. There is nothing of the bold and decisive demand for love to the one God as the root and ground of all true relations with Him which Deuteronomy makes. At most, there is the hint of a possibility which might be realized in the future; of love to God as the permanent element in the life of man there is no indication; and it is this which the author of Deuteronomy means, and nothing less than this. He makes this demand for love the main element of his teaching. He returns to it again and again, so that there are almost as many passages bearing on this in Deuteronomy as in the whole Old Testament besides; and the particularity and emphasis with which he dwells upon it are immeasurably greater. Only in the New Testament do we find anything quite parallel to what he gives us; and there we find his view taken up and expanded, till love to God flashes upon us from almost every page as the test of all sincerity and the guarantee of all success in the Christian life.
To proclaim this truth was indeed a great achievement; and when we remember the abject fear with which Israel had originally regarded Yahweh, it will appear still more remarkable that the book embodying this should have been adopted by the whole people with enthusiasm, and that with it should begin the Canon of Holy Scripture; for Deuteronomy, as all now recognize, was the first book which became canonical. I have said that the conception was an extraordinarily original one, and have pointed out that it had not been traceable to any extent previously in Israels religious books or its religious men. It will appear still more original, I think, if we consider what a growth in moral and spiritual stature separates the Israel of Moses day and that of Josiahs; what the attitude of other nations to their gods was in contrast to this; and, lastly, what it involves and implies, as regards the nature of both God and man.
As we have already seen, the earlier narratives represent the men to whom Moses spoke as acknowledging that they could not, as yet at any rate, bear to remain in the presence of Yahweh. Between their God and them, therefore, there could be no relation of love properly so called. There was reverence, awe, and chiefly fear, tempered by the belief that Yahweh as their God was on their side. He had proved it by delivering them from the oppressions of Egypt, and they acknowledged Him and were jealous for His honor and submissive to His commands. So far as the record goes, that would seem to have been their religious state. Progress from that state of mind to a higher, to a demand for direct personal relations between each individual Israelite and Yahweh, was not easy. It was hindered by the fact that Israel as a whole, and not the individual, was for a long time regarded as the subject of religion. That, of course, was no hindrance to the development of the thought that Yahweh loved Israel; but so long as that conception dominated religious thought in Israel, so long was it impossible to think of individual love and trust as the element in which each faithful man should live.
But the love of Yahweh was declared, century after century, by prophet and priest and psalmist, to be set upon His people, and so the way for this demand for love on mans part was opened. Mans relations with God began to grow more intimate. The distance lessened, as the use of the words "them that love Me" in the song of Deborah and the Davidic word in Psalms 18, "I love thee, Yahweh my rock," clearly show. Hosea next took up the strain, and intensified and heightened it in a wonderful manner, but the nation failed to respond adequately. In the later prophets the love and grace and long-suffering of Yahweh and His ceaseless efforts on behalf of Israel are continually made the ground of exhortations, entreaties, and reproaches; but, as a whole, the people still did not respond. We may be sure, however, that an ever increasing minority were affected by the clearness and intensity of the prophetic testimony. To this minority, the Israel within Israel, the remnant that was to return from exile and become the seed of a people that should be all righteous, the love of Yahweh tended to become His main characteristic. That love sustained their hopes; and though the awe and reverence which were due to His holiness, and the fear called forth by His power, still predominated, there grew up in their hearts a multitude of thoughts and expectations tending more and more to the love of God.
As yet it was only a timid reaching out towards Him. a hope and longing which could hardly justify itself. Yet it was robust enough not to be killed by disappointment, by hope deferred, or even by crushing misfortune; and in the furnace of affliction it became stronger and more pure. And in the heart of the author of Deuteronomy it grew certain of itself, and soared up with an eagerness that would not be denied. Then, as always where God is the object of it, love that dares was justified; and out of its restless and timid longings it came to the "place of rest imperturbable, where love is not forsaken if itself forsaketh not." From knowledge, confirmed by the answering love and inspiration of God, and impelled consciously by Him, he then in this book made and reiterated his great demand. All spiritual men found in it the word they had needed. They responded to it eagerly when the book was published; and their enthusiasm carried even the torpid and careless masses with them for a time. The nation, with the king at their head, accepted the legislation of which this love to God was the underlying principle, and so far as public and corporate action can go, Israel adopted the deepest principle of spiritual life as their own.
Of course with the mass this assent had little depth; but in the hearts of the true men in Israel the joy and assurance of their great discovery, that Yahweh their God was open to, nay, desired and commanded, their most fervent affection, soon produced its fruit. From the fragments of the earliest legislation which have come down to us, it is obvious that the Mosaic principles had led to a most unwonted consideration for the poor. In later days, though the ingrained tendency to oppression, which those who have power in the East seem quite unable to resist, did its evil work in both Israel and Judah, there were never wanting prophetic voices to denounce such villainy in the spirit of these laws. The public conscience was thereby kept alive, and the ideal of justice and mercy, especially to the helpless, became a distinguishing mark of Israelite religion. But it was in the minds of those who had learned the Deuteronomists great lesson, and had taken example by him, that the love which came from God, and had just been answered back by man, overflowed in a stream of blessing to mans "neighbors." Deuteronomy had uttered the first and great commandment! but it is in the Law of Holiness, that complex of ancient laws brought together by the author of P, and found now mainly in Leviticus 17-26, that we find the second word, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." {Lev_19:18; Lev_19:34} If we ask, Who is my neighbor? we find that not even those beyond Israel are excluded, for in Lev_19:34 we read, "The stranger that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as the home-born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself." The idea still needed the expansion which it received from our Lord Himself in the parable of the Good Samaritan; but it is only one step from these passages to the New Testament.
From the standpoint of mere fear, then, to the standpoint of love which casteth out fear, even the masses of Israel were lifted, in thought at least, by the love and teaching of God. And the process by which Israel was led to this height has proved ever since to be the only possible way to such an attainment. It began in the free favor of God, it was continued by the answer of love on the part of man, and these antecedents had as their consequence the proclamation of that law of liberty-for self-renouncing love is liberty-"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Without the first, the second was impossible; and the last without the other two would have been only a satire upon the incurable selfishness of man. It is worthy of remark, at least, that only on the critical theory of the Old Testament is each of these steps in the moral and religious education of Israel found in its right place, with its right antecedents; only when taken so do the teachers who were inspired to make each of these attainments find circumstances suited to their message, and a soil in which the germs they were commissioned to plant could live.
But great as is the contrast between the Israel of Moses day and that of Josiahs, it is not so great as the contrast between the religion of Israel in the Deuteronomic period and the religion of the neighboring nations. Among them, at our date 650 B.C., there was, so far as we know them, no suggestion of personal love to God as an effective part of religion. In the chapters on the Decalogue the main ideas of the Canaanites in regard to religion have been described, so that they need not be repeated here. I shall add only what E. Meyer says of their gods: "With advancing culture the cultus loses its old simplicity and homeliness. A fixed ritual was developed - founded upon old hereditary tradition. And here the gloomier conception became the ruling one, and its consequences were inexorably deduced. The great gods, even the protecting gods of the tribe or the town, are capricious and in general hostile to man-possibly to some degree because of the mythological conception of Baal as sun-god-and they demand sacrifices of blood that they may be appeased. In order that evil may be warded off from those with whom they are angry, another human being must be offered to them as a substitute in propitiatory sacrifice-nay, they demand the sacrifice of the firstborn, the best-loved son. If the community be threatened with the wrath of the deity, then the prince or the nobility as a whole must offer up their children on its behalf." This also is the view of Robertson Smith, who considers that while in their origin the Semitic religions involved kindly relations and continual intercourse between the gods and their worshippers, these gradually disappeared as political misfortune began to fall upon the smaller Semitic peoples. Their gods were angry and in the vain hope of appeasing them men had recourse to the direst sacrifices. Hints concerning these had survived from times of savagery; and to the diseased minds of these terror-stricken peoples the more ancient and more horrible a sacrifice was the more powerful did it seem. At this time, therefore, the course of the Canaanite religions was away from love to their gods. The decay of nationality brought despair, and the frantic efforts of despair, into the religion of the Canaanite peoples; but to Israel it brought this higher demand for more intimate union with their God. Whatever elements tending towards love the Canaanite religions originally may have had, they had either been mingled with the corrupting sensuality which seems inseparable from the worship of female deities, or had been limited to the mere superficial good understanding which their participation in the same common life established between the people and their gods. Their union was largely independent of moral considerations on either side. But in Israel there had grown up quite a different state of things. The union between Yahweh and His people had from the days of the Decalogue taken a moral turn; and gradually it had become clear that to have Abraham for their father and Yahweh for their God would profit them little, if they did not stand in right moral relations and in moral sympathy with Him. Now, in Deuteronomy, that fundamentally right conception of the relation between God and man received its crown in Yahwehs claim to the love of His people. No contrast could be greater than that which common misfortune and a common national ruin produced between the surrounding Semitic peoples and Israel.
But besides the small kingdoms which immediately surrounded Palestine, Israel had for neighbors the two great empires of Egypt and Assyria. She was exposed therefore to influence from them in even a greater degree. Long before the Exodus, the land which Israel came afterwards to occupy had been the meeting-place of Babylonian and Egyptian power and culture. In the fifteenth century B.C. it was under the suzerainty if not the direct sovereignty of Egypt; but its whole culture and literature, for it must have had books, as the name Kirjath-Sepher (Book-town) shows, was Babylonian. Throughout Israels history, moreover, Assyrian and Egyptian manners and ways of thought were pressed upon the people; and we cannot doubt that in regard to religion also their influence was felt. But at this period, as in the Canaanite religions, so also in those of Assyria and Egypt, the tendency was altogether different from what Deuteronomy shows it to have been in Israel.
In regard to Egypt this is somewhat difficult to prove, for the Egyptian religion is so complicated, so varied, and so ancient, that men who have studied it despair of tracing any progress in it. A kind of monotheism, polytheism, fetishism, animism, and nature-worship such as we find in the Vedas, have in turn been regarded as its primitive state; but as a matter of fact all these systems of religious thought and feeling are represented in the earliest records, and they remained constant elements of it till the end.
Whatever had once formed part of it, Egyptian religion clung to with extraordinary tenacity. As time went on, however, the accent was shifted from one element to the other, and after the times of the 29th dynasty, i.e., after the time of the Exodus, it began to decay. A systematized pantheism, of which sun-worship was the central element, was elaborated by the priests; the moral element, which had been prominent in the days when the picture of the judgment of the soul after death was so popular in Thebes, retired more into the background, and the purely magical element became the principal one. Instead of moral goodness and the fulfillment of duty being the main support of the soul in its dread and lonely journeys in the "world of the Western sky," knowledge of the proper formulas became the chief hope, and the machinations of evil demons the main danger. In the royal tombs at Thebes the walls of the long galleries are covered with representations of these demons, and the accompanying writing gives directions as to the proper formulas by knowledge of which deliverance can be secured. This, of course, confined the benefits of religion, so far as they related to the life to come, to the educated, and the wealthy. For these secret spells were hard to obtain, and had to be purchased at a high price. As Wiedemann says, "Still more important than in this world was the knowledge of the correct magical words and formulas in the other world. No door opened here if its name was not known, no daemon let the dead pass in if he did not address him in the proper fashion, no god came to his help so long as his proper title was not given him, no food could be procured so long as the exactly prescribed words were not uttered." The people were therefore thrown back upon the ancient popular faith, which needed gods only for practical life, and honored them only because they were mighty. Some of them were believed to be friendly; but others were malevolent deities who would destroy mankind if they did not mollify them by magic, or render them harmless by the greater power of the good gods. Consequently Set, the unconquerable evil demon, was worshipped with zeal in many places. With him there were numerous demons, "the enemies," "the evil ones," which lie in wait for individuals, and threaten their life and weal. The main thing, therefore, was to bring the correct sacrifices, to use such formulas and perform such acts as would render the gods gracious and turn away evil. Moreover the whole of nature was full of spirits, as it is to the African of today, and in the mystic texts of the Book of the Dead, there is constant mention made of the "mysterious beings whose names, whose ceremonials are not known," which thirst for blood, which bring death, which go about as devouring flame, as well as of others which do good. At all times this element existed in Egypt; but precisely at this time, in the reign of Psamtik, Brugsch declares that new force was given to it, and on the monuments there appear, along with the "great gods," monstrous forms of demons and genii. In fact the higher religion had become pantheistic, and consequently less rigidly moral. Magic had been taken up into it for the life beyond the grave, and became the only resource of the people in this life. Fear, therefore, necessarily became the ruling religious motive, and instead of growing toward love of God, men in Egypt at this time were turning more decisively than ever away from it.
Of the Assyrian religion and its influence it is also difficult to speak in this connection, for notwithstanding the amount of translation that has been done, not much has come to light in regard to the personal religion of the Assyrians. On the whole it seems to be established that in its main features the religion of both Babylon and Assyria remained what the non-Semitic inhabitants of Akkad had made it. Originally it had consisted entirely of a spirit and demon worship not one whit more advanced than the religion of the South Sea islanders today. As such it was in the main a religion of fear. Though some spirits were good, the bulk were evil, and all were capricious. Men were consequently all their lifetime subject to bondage, and love as a religious emotion was impossible. When the Semites came at a later time into the country their star-worship was amalgamated with this mere Shamanism of the Akkadians. In the new faith thus evolved the great gods of the Semites were arranged in a hierarchy, and the spirits, both good and evil, were subordinated to them. But even the great gods remain within the sphere of nature, and have in full measure the defects and limitations of nature-gods everywhere. They are not entirely beneficent powers, nor are they even moral beings. Some have special delight in blood and destruction, while the cruel Semitic child-sacrifice was practiced in honor of others. Again, their displeasure has no necessary or even general connection with sin. Their wrath is generally the outcome of mere arbitrary whim. Indeed it may be doubted whether the conception of sin or of moral guilt ever had a secure footing in this religion. It certainly had none in the terror-struck hymn to the seven evil spirits who are described thus:-
"Seven (are) they, seven (are) they. Male they (are) not, female they (are) not; Moreover the deep is their pathway. Wife they have not, child is not born to them. Law (and) order they know not, Prayer and supplication hear they not. Wicked (are) they, wicked (are) they."
There is here an accent of genuine terror, which involved not love, but hatred. Even in what Sayce calls a "Penitential Psalm," and which he compares to the Biblical Psalms, there is nothing of the gratitude to God as a deliverer from sin which in Israel was the chief factor in producing the response to Yahwehs demand for the love of man. Morally, it contains nothing higher than is contained in the hymn of the spirits. The transgressions which are so pathetically lamented, and from the punishment of which deliverance is so earnestly sought, are purely ceremonial and involuntary. The author of the prayer conceives that he has to do with a god whose wrath is a capricious thing, coming upon men they know not why. So conceived God cannot be loved. It is entirely in accord with this that in the great flood epic no reason is given for the destruction of mankind save the caprice of Bel. The few expressions quoted by Sayce from a hymn to the sun-god-such as this, "Merciful God, that liftest up the fallen, that supportest the weak Like a wife, thou submittest thyself, cheerful and kindly men far and wide bow before thee and rejoice"-cannot avail to subvert a conclusion so firmly fixed. These are simply the ordinary expressions which the mere physical pleasure of the sunlight brings to the lips of sun-worshippers of all ages and of all climes. At best they could only be taken as germs out of which a loving relation between God and man might have been developed. But though they were ancient they never were developed. At the end as at the beginning the Assyrio-Babylonian religion moves on so low a level, even in its more innocent aspects, that a development like that in Deuteronomy is absolutely impossible. In its worse aspects Assyrian religion was unspeakable. The worship of Ishtar at Nineveh outdid everything known in the ancient world for lust and cruelty.
On this side too, therefore, we find no parallel to Israels new outgrowth of higher religion. Comparison only makes it stand out more boldly in its splendid originality; and we are left with the fruitful question, "What was the root of the astonishing difference between Yahweh and every other god whom Israel had heard of?" Precisely at this time and under the same circumstances, the ethnic religions around Israel were developing away from any higher elements they had contained, and were thereby, as we know now, hastening to extinction. Under the inspired prophetic influence, Israels religion turned the loss of the nation into gain; it rose by the darkness of national misfortune into a nobler phase than any it had previously known.
But perhaps the crowning merit of this demand for love of God is the emphasis it lays upon personality in both God and man, and the high level at which it conceives their mutual relations. From the first, of course, the personal element was always very strongly present in the Israelite conception of God. Indeed personality was the dominating idea among all the smaller nations which surrounded Israel. The national god was conceived of mainly as a greater and more powerful man, full of the energetic self-assertion without which it would be impossible for any man to reign over an Eastern community. The Moabite stone shows this, for in it Chemosh is as sharply defined a person as Mesha himself. The Canaanite gods, therefore, might be wanting in moral character; their existence was doubtless thought of in a limited and wholly carnal manner; but there never was, apparently, the least tendency to obscure the sharp lines of their individuality. In Israel, a fortiori, such a tendency did not exist; and that a writer of Matthew Arnolds ability should have persuaded himself, and tried to persuade others, that under the name of Yahweh Israel understood anything so vague as his "stream of tendency which makes for righteousness," is only another instance of the extraordinarily blinding effects of a preconceived idea. So far from Yahweh being conceived in that manner, it would be much easier to prove that, whatever aberrations in the direction of making God merely "a non-natural man" may be charged upon Christianity, they have been founded almost exclusively upon Old Testament examples and Old Testament texts. If there was defect in the Old Testament conception of God, it was, and could not but be, in the direction of drawing Him down too much into the limits of human personality.
But though the gods were always thought of by the Canaanites as personal, their character was not conceived as morally high. Moral character in Chemosh, Moloch, or Baal was not of much importance, and their relations with their peoples were never conditioned by moral conduct. How deeply ingrained this view was in Palestine is seen in the persistency with which even Yahwehs relation to His people was viewed in this light. Only the continual outcry of the prophets against it prevented this idea becoming permanently dominant even in Israel. Nay, it often deceived would-be prophets. Clinging to the idea of the national God, and forgetting altogether the ethical character of Yahweh, without, perhaps, conscious insincerity, they prophesied peace to the wicked, and so came to swell the ranks of the false prophets. But from very early times another thought was cherished by Israels representative men in regard to their relations with God. Yahweh was righteous, and demanded righteousness in His people.
Oblations were vain if offered as a substitute for this. All the prophets reach their greatest heights of sublimity in preaching this ethically noble doctrine; and the love to God which Deuteronomy demands is to be exhibited in reverent obedience to moral law.
Moreover, that God should seek or even need the love of man threw other light on the Old Testament religion. If, without revelation, Israel had widened its mental horizon so as to conceive Yahweh as Lord of the world, it may be questioned whether it could have kept clear of the gulf of pantheism. But by the manifestation of God in their special history, the Israelites had been taught to rise step by step to the higher levels, without losing their conception of Yahweh as the living, personal, active friend of their people. Moreover they had been early taught, as we have seen, that the deep design of all that was wrought for them was the good of all men. The love of God was seen pressing forward to its glorious and beneficent ends; and both by ascribing such far-reaching plans to Yahweh, and by affirming His interest in the fate of men, Israels conception of the Divine personality was raised alike in significance and power; for anything more personal than love planning and working towards the happiness of its objects cannot be conceived. But the crown was set upon the Divine personality by the claim to the love of man. This signified that to the Divine mind the individual man was not hid from God by his nation, that he was not for Him a mere specimen of a genus. Rather each man has to God a special worth, a special character, which, impelled by His free personal love, He seeks to draw to Himself. At every step each man has near him "the great Companion," who desires to give Himself to him. Nay, more, it implies that God seeks and needs an answering love; so that Brownings daring declaration, put into the mouth of God when the song of the boy Theocrite is no more heard, "I miss My little human praise," is simple truth.
But if the demand illustrates and illuminates the personality of God, it throws out in a still more decisive manner the personality of man. In a rough sense, of course, there never could have been any doubt of that. But children have to grow into full self-determining personality, and savages never attain it. Both are at the mercy of caprice, or of the needs of the moment, to which they answer so helplessly that in general no consistent course of conduct can be expected of them. That can be secured only by rigorous self-determination. But the power of self-determination does not come at once, nor is acquired without strenuous and continued effort; it is, in fact, a power which in any full measure is possessed only by the civilized man. Now the Israelites were not highly civilized when they left Egypt. They were still at the stage when the tribe overshadowed and absorbed the individual, as it does today among the South Sea islanders. The progress of the prophetic thought towards the demand for personal love has already been traced. Here we must trace the steps by which the personal element in each individual was strengthened in Israel, till it was fit to respond to the Divine demand.
The high calling of the people reacted on the individual Israelites. They saw that in many respects the nations around them were inferior to them. Much that was tolerated or even respected among them was an abomination to Israel; and every Israelite felt that the honor of his people must not be dragged in the dust by him, as it would be if he permitted himself to sink to the heathen level. Further, the laws regarding even ceremonial holiness which in germ certainly, and probably in considerable extension also, existed from the earliest time, made him feel that the sanctity of the nation depended upon the care and scrupulosity of the individual. And then there were the individual spiritual needs, which could not be suppressed and would not be denied. Though one sees so little explicit provision for restoration of individual character in early Yahwism, yet in the course of time-who can doubt it?-the personal religious needs of so many individual men would necessarily frame for themselves some outlet. Building upon the analogy of the relation established between Yahweh and Israel, they would hope for the satisfaction of their individual needs through the infinite mercy of God. The Psalms, such of them as can fairly be placed in the pre-Deuteronomic time, bear witness to this; and those written after that time show a hopefulness, and a faith in the reality of individual communion with God which show that such communion was not then a new discovery. In all these ways the religious life of the individual was being cultivated and strengthened; but this demand made in Deuteronomy lifts that indirect refreshment of soul, for which the cultus and the covenants made no special provision, into a recognized position, nay, into the central position in Israelite religion. The word, "Thou shalt love Yahweh thy God," confirmed and justified all these persistent efforts after individual life in God, and brought them out into the large place which belongs to aspirations that have at last been authorized. By a touch, the inspired writer transformed the pious hopes of those who had been the chosen among the chosen people into certainties. Each man was henceforth to have his own direct relation to God as well as the nation; and the national hope, which had hitherto been first, was now to depend for its realization upon the fulfillment of the special and private hope. Thus the old relation was entirely reversed by Deuteronomy. Instead of the individual holding "definite place in regard to Yahweh only through his citizenship," now the nation has its place and its future secured only by the personal love of each citizen to God. For that is obviously what the demand here made really means. Again and again the inspired writer returns to it; and his persistent endeavor is to connect all else that his book contains-warning, exhortation, legislation-with this as the foundation and starting-point. Here, as elsewhere, we can trace the roots of the new covenant which Jeremiah and Ezekiel saw afar off and rejoiced at, and which our blessed Lord has realized for us. The individual religious life is for the first time fully recognized for what ever since it has been seen to be, the first condition of any attempt to realize the kingdom of God in the life of a nation.
And not only thus does our text emphasize individuality. Love with all the heart, and all the mind, and all the soul is possible only to a fully developed personality; for, as Roth says, "We love only in the measure in which personality is developed in us. Even God can love only in so far as He is personal." Or, as Julius Muller says in his "Doctrine of Sin," "The association of personal beings in love, while it involves the most perfect distinction of the I and Thou, proves itself to be the highest form of unity." Unless other counteracting circumstances come in, therefore, the more highly developed individuality is, the more entirely human beings are determined from within, the more entirely will union among men depend upon free and deliberate choice, and the more perfect will it be. In being called to love God men are dealt with as those who have attained to complete self-determination, who have come to completed manhood in the moral life. For all that could mix love with alloy, mere sensuous sympathy, and the insistent appeal of that which is materially present, are wanting here. Here nothing is involved but the free outgoing of the heart to that which is best and highest; nothing but loyalty to that vision of Good which, amid all the ruin sin has wrought in human nature, dominates us so that "we needs must love the highest when we see it." The very demand is a promise and a prophecy of completed moral and religious liberty to the individual soul. It rests upon the assurance that men have at last been trained to walk alone, that the support of social life and external ordinances has become less necessary than it was, and that one day a new and living way of access to the Father will bring every soul into daily intercourse with the source of all spiritual life.
But this demand, in affirming personality of so high a kind, also re-created duty. Under the national dispensation the individual man was a servant. To a large extent he knew not what his Lord did, and he ruled his life by the commands he received without understanding, or perhaps caring to understand, their ultimate ground and aim. Much too of what he thus laid upon himself was mere ancient custom, which had been a protection to national and moral life in early days, but which had survived, or was on the point of surviving, its usefulness. Now, however, that man was called upon to love God with all his heart and mind and soul, the step was taken which was to end in his becoming the consciously free son of God. For to love in this fashion means, on the one hand, a willingness to enter into communion with God and to seek that communion; and on the other it implies a throwing open of the soul to receive the love which God so persistently has pressed upon men. In such a relation slavery, blind or constrained obedience, disappears, and the motives of right action become the purest and most powerful that man can know.
In the first place, selfishness dies out. Those to whom God has given Himself have no more to seek. They have reached the dwelling "of peace imperturbable," and know that they are secure. Nothing that they do can win more for them; and they do those things that please God with the free, uncalculating, ungrudging forgetfulness of self, which distinguishes those fortunate children who have grown up into a perfect filial love. Of course it was only the elect in Israel who in any great degree realized this ideal. But even those who neglected it had for a moment been illuminated by it; and the record of it remained to kindle the nobler hearts of every generation. Even the legalism of later days could not obscure it. In the case of many it bore up and transfigured the dry details of Judaism, so that even amid such surroundings the souls of men were kept alive. The later Psalms prove this beyond dispute, and the advanced view which brings the bulk of the Psalter down to the post-exilic period only emphasizes the more this aspect of pre-Christian Judaism. In Christianity of course the ideal was made infinitely more accessible: and it received in the Pauline doctrine, the Evangelical doctrine, of Justification by Faith, a form which more than any other human teaching has made unselfish devotion to God a common aim. It would hardly be too much to say that those philosophical and religious systems which have preached the unworthiness of looking for a reward of well-doing, which have striven to set up the doing of good for its own sake as the only morality worthy of the name, have failed, just because they would not begin with the love of God. To Christianity, especially to Evangelical Christianity, they have assumed to speak from above downwards; but it alone has the secret they strove in vain to learn. Men justified by faith have peace with God, and do good with passionate fervor without hope or possibility of further reward, just because of their love and gratitude to God, who is the source of all good. This plan has succeeded, and no other has; for to teach men on any other terms to disregard reward is simply to ask them to breathe in a vacuum.
In the second place, those who rose to the height of this calling had duty not only deepened but extended. It was natural that they should not seek to throw off the obligations of worship and morality as they had been handed down by their ancestors. Only an authoritative voice which they were separated from by centuries could say, "It hath been said by them of old time…but I say unto you"; and men would be disposed rather to fulfill old obligations with new zeal, while they added to them the new duties which their widened horizon had brought into view. It is true that in course of time the Pharisaic spirit laid hold of the Jews, and that by it they were led back into a slavery which quite surpassed the half-conscious bondage of their earlier time. It is one of the mysteries of human nature that it is only the few who can live for any time at a high level, and hold the balance between extremes. The many cannot choose but follow those few; and the dumb, half-reluctant, half-fascinated way in which they are drawn after them is a most pathetic thing to see. But too often they avenge themselves for the pressure put upon them, by taking up the teaching they receive in a perverted or mutilated form, dropping unawares the very soul of it, and suiting it to the average man. When that is done the bread from heaven becomes a stone; the message of liberty is turned into a summons to the prison house; and the darkness becomes of that opaque sort which is found only where the light within men is darkness. That tragedy was enacted in Judaism as rarely elsewhere. The free service of sons was exchanged for the timorous, anxious scrupulosity of the formalist. How could men love a God whom they pictured as inexorable in claiming the mint and cumin of ceremonial worship, and as making life a burden for all who had a conscience? They could not, and they did not. Most substituted a merely formal compliance with the externalities of worship for the love to God and man which was the presupposition of the true Israelites life, and the mass of the nation fell away from true faith. Strangely enough, therefore, the strength of mens love for God, and of their belief in His love, gave an impulse to the legalistic Pharisaism which our Lord denounced as the acme of loveless irreligion.
But it was not so perverted in all. There always was an Israel within Israel that refused to let go the truths they had learned, and kept up the succession of men inspired by the free spirit of God. Even among the Pharisees there were such-witness St. Paul-men who, though they were entangled in the formalism of their time, found it at last a pedagogue to bring them unto Christ. We must believe therefore that at the beginning the attainment marked by the demands of Deuteronomy and the Law of Holiness existed and was carried over into the daily life. As the national limits of religion were broken down, the word "neighbor" received an ever-wider definition in Israel. At first only a mans fellow-tribesman or fellow-countryman was included; then the stranger; later, as in Jonahs picture of the conduct of the sailors, it was hinted that even among the heathen brethren might be found. Finally, in our Lords parable of the Good Samaritan the last barrier was broken down. But it needed all St. Pauls lifework, and the first and most desperate inner conflict Christianity had to live through, to initiate men into anything like the full meaning of what Christ had taught. Then it was seen that as there was but one Father in heaven, so there was but one family on earth. Then too, though the merely ceremonial duties by which the Jew had been bound ceased to be binding on Christians, the sphere for the practice of moral duty was immensely widened. Indeed, had it not been for the free, joyous spirit with which they were inspired by Christ, they must have shrunk from the immensity of their obligation. For not only were mens neighbors infinitely more numerous now, but their relations with them became vastly more complicated. To meet all possible cases that might arise in the great and elaborate civilizations Christianity had to face and save, our Lord deepened the meaning of the commandments; and so far from Christians being free from the obligation to law, immeasurably more was demanded of them. To them first was the full sweep of moral obligation revealed, for they first had reached the full moral stature of men in Jesus Christ.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v13 (See Scofield "Psa 19:9").
fear
(See Scofield "Psa 19:9").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v16 The Admonition Substantiated
The Admonition Substantiated
v. 16. Ye shall not tempt the Lord, your God, put either His mercy or His righteousness to a test, as ye tempted Him in Massah, Exo 17:2-7, in the matter of demanding water to drink in the wilderness.
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v. 17. Ye shall diligently keep, literally, "observing ye shall observe," the commandments of the Lord, your God, and His testimonies and His statutes which He hath commanded thee. It was and is a sacred duty, a solemn obligation.
v. 18. And thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest go in and possess the good land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers,
v. 19. to cast out all thine enemies from before thee, to make room for His own people, as the Lord hath spoken. This was the reward of faithfulness, and its object was to strengthen Israel in its loyalty to Jehovah.
v. 20. And when thy son, any of the children or descendants, asketh thee in time to come, saying, What mean the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments which the Lord, our God, hath commanded you?
v. 21. then thou shalt say unto thy son, We were Pharaoh’s bondmen in Egypt, forced to perform the work of slaves; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand, Exo 3:19;
v. 22. and the Lord showed signs and wonders, great and sore, namely, the bad plagues, upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household, before our eyes, Deu 4:34;
v. 23. and He brought us out from thence that He might bring us in to give us the land which He sware unto our fathers. Thus the Lord carried out His promise to its full completion.
v. 24. And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord, our God, for our good always, for it is always to the believer’s own advantage if he walks in the ways of the Lord, that He might preserve us alive as it is at this day.
v. 25. And it shall be our righteousness if we observe to do all these commandments before the Lord, our God, as He hath commanded us. In this the righteousness of the children of Israel consisted, namely, that they observed and kept the will of the Lord in the love which flows from true faith. Thus the righteousness of faith always precedes the righteousness of life, and the latter serves to indicate the presence of the former. The believers in Christ will not walk after the flesh, but after the Spirit, and thus give evidence of the fact that they are possessors of justification by faith.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 13, 16, 18, 20, 24 General Information:
General Information:
Moses continues to tell the people of Israel Yahweh's words as if the Israelites are one person. (See: Forms of You)
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listen to them
Here "listen" means to obey, and "them" refers to Yahweh's commandments. The full meaning of this statement can be made explicit. AT: "listen to Yahweh's commandments, statutes, and decrees" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
keep them
"obey them"
a land flowing with milk and honey
This is an idiom. AT: "a land where plenty of milk and honey flow" or "a land that is excellent for cattle and farming" (See: Idiom)
translationWords
Israel
honey
Yahweh
God
ancestor
promise
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 13, 16, 21, 22, 25 6:2 God’s awesome power and glory (see 4:10) require…
6:2 God’s awesome power and glory (see 4:10) require that God’s people fear him, treating him with respect and reverence (see study notes on 7:21; 10:12-13).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.