1And now Israel, hear to the laws and to the judgments which I am teaching you to do, so that ye shall live and go in and possess the land which Jehovah the God of your fathers gave to you. 2Ye shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, and ye shall not take away from it., to watch the commands of Jehovah your God which I am commanding you. 3Your eyes saw what Jehovah did upon Baal-Peor: for every man who went after Baal-Peor, Jehovah thy God destroyed him from the midst of you. 4And ye cleaving to Jehovah your God, are living all of you this day. 5See, I taught you laws and judgments as Jehovah my God commanded me, to do thus in the midst of the land where ye are going there to possess it 6And watch and do: for it is your wisdom and your understanding before the eyes of the peoples who shall hear all these laws, and say, Only this great nation a wise and understanding people. 7For what great nation to whom God being near to it as Jehovah our God in all our calling to him? 8And what great nation to whom laws and judgments just, as all the instructions which I give before you this day? 9Only watch to thyself and watch thy soul greatly, lest thou. shalt forget the words which thine eyes saw, and lest they shall remove from thy heart all the days of thy life: and make them known to thy sons and to the sons of thy sons. 10The day thou stoodest before Jehovah thy God in Horeb, in Jehovah saying to me, Gather to me the people and I will cause them to hear my word, that they shall be taught to fear me all the days which they live upon the land; and they shall teach their sons. 11And ye shall come near and shall stand under the mountain; .and the mountain burnt with fire even to the heart of the heavens, darkness, cloud, and gloom. 12And Jehovah will speak to you from the midst of the fire, ye hearing a voice of words, and ye seeing not an appearance, except a voice. 13And he will announce to you his covenant which he commanded you to do, the ten words; and he will write them upon two tables of stones. 14And Jehovah commanded me in that time to teach you laws and judgments for you to do them in the land which ye are passing over there to possess it 15And watch ye greatly to your souls, for ye saw not any appearance in the day Jehovoh spoke to you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire: 16Lest ye shall be corrupted and make to you a carved thing, the appearance of any likeness, the model of male or female, 17The model of any cattle that is upon the earth, the model of any winged bird that shall fly in the heavens, 18The model of any thing creeping upon the earth, the model of any fish that is in the waters from under the earth: 19And lest thou shalt lift up thine eyes to the heavens, and seeing the sun and the moon and the stars, all the army of the heavens, and thou wert driven and didst worship to them, and didst serve them, which Jehovah thy God divided them out to all the peoples under all the heavens. 20And Jehovah took you and brought you forth out of the furnace of iron, out of Egypt, to be to him for a people of inheritance as this day. 21And Jehovah will be angry with me on account of your words, and he will swear for me not to pass through Jordan, and not to go in to the good land which Jehovah thy God gave to thee an inheritance: 22For I die in this land, not to pass over Jordan: and ye are passing over and shall possess this good land. 23Watch for yourselves lest ye shall forget the covenant of Jehovah your God which he cut out with you, and ye make to you any carved thing, the appearance of any thing which Jehovah thy God commanded thee. 24For Jehovah thy God he is a consuming fire, a jealous God. 25When thou shalt beget sons, and sons' sons, and ye rested in the land and were corrupted, and made a carved thing, the appearance of any thing, and ye did evil in the eyes of Jehovah thy God to irritate him. 26I took the heavens and the earth to witness against you this day, that perishing, ye shall perish to-morrow from the land which ye are passing over Jordan there to possess it: ye shall not prolong the days upon it, but being destroyed, ye shall be destroyed. 27And Jehovah scattered you among the peoples, and ye remained men of number among the nations where Jehovah will lead you there. 28And ye served there gods, the work of men's hands, wood and stone, which shall not see, and shall not hear, and shall not eat, and shall not breathe. 29And thou sought from thence Jehovah thy God, and thou didst find, for ye shall seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul. 30In straitness to thee, and all these words found thee in the last of the days, and thou didst turn to Jehovah thy God and heardest to his voice; 31For Jehovah thy God a merciful God; he will not desert thee, and he will not destroy thee, and he will not forget the covenant of thy fathers which he sware to them. 32For ask now to the former days which were before thee from the day that God created man upon the earth, and from the end of the heavens to the end of the heavens, Has there been as this great word, or was heard like it? 33Did people hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire as thou didst hear, and shall live? 34Or did God try to go and take to him a nation from the midst of a nation by trials, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a strong hand and by an extended arm, and by great fears, according to all that Jehovah your God did to you in Egypt before your eyes? 35Thou sawest to know that Jehovah he is God: no more beside him. 36Out of the heavens he caused thee to hear his voice to instruct thee: and upon earth he caused thee to see his great fire, and thou heardest his words from the midst of the fire. 37And because that he loved thy fathers he will choose in his seed after him, and he will bring thee out before him with his great strength from Egypt 38To drive out nations great and strong above thee, from thy face, to bring thee in to give to thee their land an inheritance as this day. 39And know thou this day, and turn back to thy heart, that Jehovah he is God in the heavens from above and upon the earth underneath: and none yet 40And watch thou his laws and his commands which I am commanding thee this day, that it shall be good to thee and to thy sons after thee, and that thou shalt prolong the days upon the land that Jehovah thy God gave to thee, all the days. 41Then Moses will separate three cities in the other side of Jordan from the rising of the sun; 42For the slayer to flee there when he shall slay his friend without knowledge; and he hated him not yesterday the third day; and he fled to one of these cities and he lived: 43Bezer in the desert, in the land of the plain to the Reubenites, and Ramoth in Gilead to the Gadites, and Golan in Bashan, to the Manassites. 44And this the instruction which Moses set before the sons of Israel. 45These the testimonies and the laws and the judgments which Moses spake to the sons of Israel in their going forth out of Egypt, 46In the other side of Jordan, in the valley over against the House of Peor, in the land of Sihon, king of the Amorites, who will dwell in Heshbon, whom Moses smote, and the sons of Israel, in their going out of Egypt. 47And they shall possess their land and the land of Og, king of Bashan, the two kings of the Amorites, which in the other side of Jordan from the rising of the sun; 48From Aroer, which is upon the lip of the torrent Arnon, and even to mount Sion (it is Hermon.) 49And all the desert the other side of Jordan, from the sun-rising and even to the sea, the desert under the springs of Pisgah.
Jamieson Fausset Brown Bible Commentary 1 AN EXHORTATION TO OBEDIENCE. (
Deut 4:1-
Deut 4:13)
hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments, which I teach you--By statutes were meant all ordinances respecting religion and the rites of divine worship; and by judgments, all enactments relative to civil matters. The two embraced the whole law of God.
2 Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you--by the introduction of any heathen superstition or forms of worship different from those which I have appointed (
Deut 12:32;
Num 15:39;
Matt 15:9).
neither shall ye diminish aught from it--by the neglect or omission of any of the observances, however trivial or irksome, which I have prescribed. The character and provisions of the ancient dispensation were adapted with divine wisdom to the instruction of that infant state of the church. But it was only a temporary economy; and although God here authorizes Moses to command that all its institutions should be honored with unfailing observance, this did not prevent Him from commissioning other prophets to alter or abrogate them when the end of that dispensation was attained.
3 Your eyes have seen what the Lord did because of Baal-peor . . . the Lord thy God hath destroyed them from among you--It appears that the pestilence and the sword of justice overtook only the guilty in that affair (
Num 25:1-
Num 25:9) while the rest of the people were spared. The allusion to that recent and appalling judgment was seasonably made as a powerful dissuasive against idolatry, and the fact mentioned was calculated to make a deep impression on people who knew and felt the truth of it.
5 this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes--Moses predicted that the faithful observance of the laws given them would raise their national character for intelligence and wisdom. In point of fact it did do so; for although the heathen world generally ridiculed the Hebrews for what they considered a foolish and absurd exclusiveness, some of the most eminent philosophers expressed the highest admiration of the fundamental principle in the Jewish religion--the unity of God; and their legislators borrowed some laws from the constitution of the Hebrews.
7 what nation is there so great--Here he represents their privileges and their duty in such significant and comprehensive terms, as were peculiarly calculated to arrest their attention and engage their interest. The former, their national advantages, are described (
Deut 4:7-
Deut 4:8), and they were twofold: 1. God's readiness to hear and aid them at all times; and 2. the excellence of that religion in which they were instructed, set forth in the "statutes and judgments so righteous" which the law of Moses contained. Their duty corresponding to these pre-eminent advantages as a people, was also twofold: 1. their own faithful obedience to that law; and 2. their obligation to imbue the minds of the young and rising generation with similar sentiments of reverence and respect for it.
10 the day that thou stoodest before the Lord . . . in Horeb--The delivery of the law from Sinai was an era never to be forgotten in the history of Israel. Some of those whom Moses was addressing had been present, though very young; while the rest were federally represented by their parents, who in their name and for their interest entered into the national covenant.
12 ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude--Although articulate sounds were heard emanating from the mount, no form or representation of the Divine Being who spoke was seen to indicate His nature or properties according to the notions of the heathen.
15 A PARTICULAR DISSUASIVE AGAINST IDOLATRY. (Deu. 4:14-40)
Take . . . good heed . . . for ye saw no manner of similitude--The extreme proneness of the Israelites to idolatry, from their position in the midst of surrounding nations already abandoned to its seductions, accounts for their attention being repeatedly drawn to the fact that God did not appear on Sinai in any visible form; and an earnest caution, founded on that remarkable circumstance, is given to beware, not only of making representations of false gods, but also any fancied representation of the true God.
16 Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image--The things are here specified of which God prohibited any image or representation to be made for the purposes of worship; and, from the variety of details entered into, an idea may be formed of the extensive prevalence of idolatry in that age. In whatever way idolatry originated, whether from an intention to worship the true God through those things which seemed to afford the strongest evidences of His power, or whether a divine principle was supposed to reside in the things themselves, there was scarcely an element or object of nature but was deified. This was particularly the case with the Canaanites and Egyptians, against whose superstitious practices the caution, no doubt, was chiefly directed. The former worshipped Baal and Astarte, the latter Osiris and Isis, under the figure of a male and a female. It was in Egypt that animal-worship most prevailed, for the natives of that country deified among beasts the ox, the heifer, the sheep, and the goat, the dog, the cat, and the ape; among birds, the ibis, the hawk, and the crane; among reptiles, the crocodile, the frog, and the beetle; among fishes, all the fish of the Nile; some of these, as Osiris and Isis, were worshipped over all Egypt, the others only in particular provinces. In addition they embraced the Zabian superstition, the adoration of the Egyptians, in common with that of many other people, extending to the whole starry host. The very circumstantial details here given of the Canaanitish and Egyptian idolatry were owing to the past and prospective familiarity of the Israelites with it in all these forms.
20 But the Lord hath taken you, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace--that is, furnace for smelting iron. A furnace of this kind is round, sometimes thirty feet deep, and requiring the highest intensity of heat. Such is the tremendous image chosen to represent the bondage and affliction of the Israelites [ROSENMULLER].
to be unto him a people of inheritance--His peculiar possession from age to age; and therefore for you to abandon His worship for that of idols, especially the gross and debasing system of idolatry that prevails among the Egyptians, would be the greatest folly--the blackest ingratitude.
26 I call heaven and earth to witness against you--This solemn form of adjuration has been common in special circumstances among all people. It is used here figuratively, or as in other parts of Scripture where inanimate objects are called up as witnesses (
Deut 32:1;
Isa 1:2).
28 there ye shall serve gods, the work of men's hands--The compulsory measures of their tyrannical conquerors would force them into idolatry, so that their choice would become their punishment.
30 in the latter days, if thou turn to the Lord thy God--either towards the destined close of their captivities, when they evinced a returning spirit of repentance and faith, or in the age of Messiah, which is commonly called "the latter days," and when the scattered tribes of Israel shall be converted to the Gospel of Christ. The occurrence of this auspicious event will be the most illustrious proof of the truth of the promise made in
Deut 4:31.
41 Then Moses severed three cities on this side Jordan--(See on
Josh 20:7).
44 this is the law which Moses set before the children of Israel--This is a preface to the rehearsal of the law, which, with the addition of various explanatory circumstances, the following chapters contain.
46 Beth-peor--that is, "house" or "temple of Peor." It is probable that a temple of this Moabite idol stood in full view of the Hebrew camp, while Moses was urging the exclusive claims of God to their worship, and this allusion would be very significant if it were the temple where so many of the Israelites had grievously offended.
49 The springs of Pisgah--more frequently, Ashdoth-pisgah (
Deut 3:17;
Josh 12:3;
Josh 13:20), the roots or foot of the mountains east of the Jordan.