Deuteronomy 13:1-3

Ye are the children of the Lord your God.

Israel’s relationship to God

Moses here tells Israel--

I. How God had dignified them, as a peculiar people, with three distinguishable privileges, which were their honour, and figures of those spiritual blessings in heavenly things with which God has in Christ blessed us.

1. Here is election. “The Lord hath chosen thee” (Deuteronomy 14:2); not for their own merits, or for any good works foreseen, but because He would magnify the riches of His power and grace among them. And thus were believers chosen (Ephesians 1:4).

2. Here is adoption. “Ye are the children of the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 14:1); formed by Him into a people, owned by Him as His people, nay, His family, a people near unto Him, nearer than any other. Every “Israelite indeed” is a child of God; partaker of His nature and favour, His love and blessing.

3. Here is sanctification. “Thou art an holy people” (Deuteronomy 14:2); separated and set apart for God, devoted to His service, designed for His praise, governed by a holy law, graced by a holy tabernacle and the holy ordinances relating to it.

II. How they ought to distinguish themselves by a sober singularity from all the nations that were about them.

1. In their mourning. “Ye shall not cut yourselves” (Deuteronomy 14:1).

(1) They are forbidden to deform or hurt their own bodies upon any account. This is like a parent’s charge to his children that are foolish, careless, and wilful. The true meaning of such commandments is, do yourselves no harm; and this is also the design of those providences which most cross us, to remove from us those things by which we are in danger of doing ourselves injury. The body is for the Lord, and is to be used accordingly.

(2) They are forbidden to disturb and afflict their own minds with inordinate grief for the loss of near and dear relations. If your father die, “ye shall not cut yourselves,” you shall not sorrow more than is meet, for you are not fatherless, you have a Father who is great, living and permanent, even the holy, blessed God, whose children ye are.

2. In their meat. Their observance of this law would make them to be taken notice of in all mixed companies as a separate people, and preserve them from mingling themselves with their idolatrous neighbours.

(1) It is plain, in the law itself, that these precepts belonged only to the Jews, and were not moral nor of perpetual use, because not of perpetual obligation (Deuteronomy 14:21).

(2) It is plain, in the Gospel, that they are now antiquated and repealed (1 Timothy 4:4). (Matthew Henry, D. D.)