FURTHER REMEMBRANCES AND WARNINGS FOR THE PROMISED LAND Remembering God's guidance through the wilderness, how it was both material and moral, sustenance and chastisement (Deuteronomy 8:1-5), Israel must keep His commandments (Deuteronomy 8:6); and in the land, whose richness contrasts so forcibly... [ Continue Reading ]
The change from Sg. to Pl. is confirmed by Sam. LXX has Pl. throughout the _v_. Is the Heb. and Sam. Sg. in the first clause due to the attraction of the Sg. in the previous verses? Or is the LXX Pl. due to a harmonising purpose? It is impossible to say. The suspicion of the originality of the _v_.,... [ Continue Reading ]
_thou shall remember all the way_ Another of the many calls in D to remember God's Providence (Deuteronomy 5:15; Deuteronomy 7:18, etc.), but this time to fresh aspects of that Providence, cp. Deuteronomy 29:5. _forty years in the wilderness_ See on Deuteronomy 2:7. _humble thee, to prove thee_ Cp.... [ Continue Reading ]
_And he humbled thee_, etc.] Better, SO HE; for the _v_. proceeds to illustrate the facts by which God's purpose of proving the people was carried out. In the main these were two: first the hunger of the people and then the provision of manna. _suffered thee to hunger_ Heb. one verb, only here and... [ Continue Reading ]
_Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee_ Similarly Deuteronomy 29:5, Pl.; Nehemiah 9:21. On _raiment_see Deuteronomy 24:13. _neither did thy fool swell_ or _rise in blisters_, only here and Nehemiah 9:21. Rhetorically applied to the nation as a whole; the Pl. passages dwell more on the damage to the n... [ Continue Reading ]
_And thou shalt consider in thine heart_ Lit. _know with thy heart_; cp. -conscire sibi," and see above on Deuteronomy 7:9. _as a man chasteneth his son_ DISCIPLINETH, cp. Deuteronomy 4:36; Deuteronomy 11:2 _q.v._; Hosea 11:1-4, also Deuteronomy 2:14 on the wilderness as a school of discipline. In D... [ Continue Reading ]
This _v_. has been marked by Steuernagel as a later addition on the ground that it gives a strange turn to the main thought of the context. But the enforcement of _the keeping of the commandments_is the chief purpose of the whole discourse; and is more particularly relevant here in view of the tempt... [ Continue Reading ]
_bringeth thee is about to bring thee_: see above on Deuteronomy 6:10. _a good land_ Deuteronomy 1:35: Sam. and LXX add here _and a large_(Exodus 3:8). _brooks of water … fountains … depths_ The principal and characteristic waters of Palestine (for the hydrography of the land see especially Robinso... [ Continue Reading ]
_wheat and barley_ Not the most characteristic products of Palestine, but put first as the staple food of man and the principal distinction of the cultivated soil from the desert, the _land not sown_(Jeremiah 2:2). On the distribution of wheat and barley in Palestine see _Jerusalem_, i. 298 f. These... [ Continue Reading ]
_without scarceness_ The noun is found only here, and its adj. thrice only in the late Ecclesiastes 4:13; Ecclesiastes 9:15 f.; cp. Isaiah 40:20. Scarcity of bread is a great curse of the desert nomads: some tribes taste it but once a month, others not so often, and it is regarded as a luxury (Robin... [ Continue Reading ]
_And thou shalt eat … and … bless_, etc.] -The verse is the proof-text for the Jewish custom of prayer at table; possibly, however, the custom is older than our passage; cp. 1 Samuel 9:13 " (Bertholet). D's renewed emphasis that Jehovah is the giver of the land and its fruits: see on Deuteronomy 7:1... [ Continue Reading ]
_Beware lest thou forget_, etc.] Deuteronomy 6:12; Deuteronomy 8:14. _in not keeping his commandments_, etc.] That this formula is a later intrusion (so Steuernagel) is possible: it changes the direction of the exhortation (10 17) which is not against disobedience, but against the nation imagining... [ Continue Reading ]
_thine heart be lifted up_ Deuteronomy 17:20; Hosea 13:6. _house of bondage_ Deuteronomy 6:12.... [ Continue Reading ]
_great and terrible wilderness_ Deuteronomy 1:19: cp. Deuteronomy 7:21. _fiery serpents and scorpions_ The former, in the collective singular _naḥash sarapḥ_, are described in the plural in Numbers 21:6 E: cp. Isaiah 30:6: _the flying saraph_. If _saraph_really means burning and is not a foreign wo... [ Continue Reading ]
See on Deuteronomy 8:2 and Deuteronomy 4:34. _to do thee good_ Deuteronomy 28:63, Pl., Deuteronomy 30:5, Sg. _thy latter end_ Misleading translation. Lit. _thine afterness, thy later years_. There is nothing eschatological in the phrase. Steuernagel marks Deuteronomy 8:14 _b_, Deuteronomy 8:15 and... [ Continue Reading ]
_thou say in thine heart_ That is not only as if convinced; but, whether or not thou sayest this expressly with thy lips, thou feelest and practically behavest as if thine own power and might had gotten thee this wealth.... [ Continue Reading ]
Renewed emphasis on the writer's chief principle that Jehovah is the author of the people's blessings and that because of His faithfulness Deuteronomy 7:9; Deuteronomy 7:12 ff., etc., etc. _as at this day_ The writer again betrays his date; it is when Israel is securely established in the enjoyment... [ Continue Reading ]
_I testify against you_ Here begins the Pl.: the phrase is found only with Pl. passages, here, Deuteronomy 4:26; Deuteronomy 30:19; Deuteronomy 32:46, cp. Deuteronomy 31:26; Deuteronomy 31:28; elsewhere only in Jeremiah 11:7; Jeremiah 42:19. _ye shall surely perish_ Only here,... [ Continue Reading ]
The change from the Sg. to the Pl. address (substantially so in Sam. and LXX) suggests that an expanding hand has been at work in these verses; and the suggestion is confirmed by the fact that the leading phrases in them are found elsewhere only with the Pl. Further, the destruction of the nation se... [ Continue Reading ]
_maketh to perish is about to_, etc. Here the writer is true to the standpoint of the speaker. _because ye would not hearken_, etc.] The construction is found elsewhere only in another Pl. passage, Deuteronomy 7:12.... [ Continue Reading ]