Deeper Commentary
Deu 10:1 At that time Yahweh said to me, Cut two tablets of stone
like the first and come up to Me onto the mountain and make an ark of
wood-
The tables were the "tables of the covenant", which had been broken
by the apostacy with the golden calf. God now assures Moses that the
covenant relationship has been restored. This must be read in the context
of the previous verses, where Moses has doubted whether his intercession
for Israel has in fact "worked". He struggles to believe that God can be
that gracious as His word had stated. Just like ourselves. And so just as
Aaron had used a chisel to fashion the golden calf, Moses is asked to
chisel out two stone tablets, upon which the covenant will be reaffirmed
by God. At this time, God asked Moses to also make the ark, into which the
tables were to be put. This was to be the sign that His presence was
really to abide with His people as promised.
Deu 10:2 I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first
tablets which you broke, and you shall put them within that ark-
"Which you broke" is emphasized by God. Moses in Ex. 33 had been
doubting whether his intercession for Israel had really "worked", even
though God assured him that it had. Moses is being reminded that his anger
had burned hot just as God's anger had; but it was he and not God who had
smashed the symbols of the covenant in that wrath. The idea is that God is
kinder and more patient than man- even than a man as patient and loving as
Moses.
"Broke" is s.w. in Ex. 34:13; Dt. 12:3 used of breaking covenant relationship with idols. By doing so, Moses had purposefully sought to break Israel's relationship with Yahweh, despite having earlier prayed for it to be restored. When he saw the apostacy with his own eyes, he wanted God to revert to His 'plan A', to destroy Israel. He realizes in Ex. 33 that he was wrong in this and therefore probes God as to whether indeed His relationship with Israel is indeed intact, despite his having broken the symbols of covenant. And God is assuring him that indeed it is.
Deu 10:3 So I made an ark of acacia wood and cut two tablets of stone like
the first, and went up onto the mountain, having the two tablets in my
hand-
The acacia bush was all they had in the wilderness. It was hardly suitable for making furniture, being brittle and the sticks very thin and hard to weld together. The root translated "shittim" really means a stick or rod, and is translated "thorns" in Josh. 23:13.
It refers to the common thorn bushes found in the scrubland they were
passing through in the desert. Thorns were part of the curse in Eden. We shouldn't be surprised at the brittle nature of the folk with whom God works, their difficulty in binding together and resistance to being worked with- this is as it were all God has to work with. Acacia was plentiful in the wilderness, but it is little more than
brushwood; a surprising choice of material to be used in God’s dwelling
place. But His choice of us with
all our weakness and dysfunction, the common, weak stuff of the
wilderness, is no less surprising. The choice of acacia wood for
constructing the tabernacle is one of several points in the whole
enterprise where it seems a less than ideal material was chosen, from a
construction point of view. This aspect emphasizes that God prefers to
work with the soft, weak and broken in order to do His work (as also in
Ez. 15:2-5).
Ex. 25:10 "They shall make an ark" becomes "I made an ark" in Moses' autobiography (Dt. 10:3), although apparently Bezaleel made the ark (Ex. 37:1). The people were generous when asked, but were not real workers. Perhaps Moses himself had to make the ark because they didn't get to it. Or maybe his work was counted as theirs, as happens between the Lord Jesus and ourselves.
Deu 10:4 He wrote on the tablets according to the first writing, the Ten
Commandments, which Yahweh spoke to you on the mountain out of the midst
of the fire in the day of the assembly, and Yahweh gave them to me-
Although God spoke to Moses alone in the mount, Moses stresses that
actually God "spake unto you in the mount out of the midst of the
fire". The word of God to His scribes really is, to the same gripping,
terrifying degree, His direct word to us (Dt. 4:36; 5:45; 10:4). This
explains why David repeatedly refers to the miracle at the Red Sea as if
this had affected him personally, to the extent that he could ecstatically
rejoice because of it.
Deu 10:5 I turned and came down from the mountain and put the tablets into
the ark which I had made, and there they are as Yahweh commanded me-
The ark was not that big, and Moses carried the tablets one in each
hand as he descended the mountain. They were therefore quite small, and
contained only the ten commandments.
Deu 10:6 (The children of Israel travelled from Beeroth Bene Jaakan to
Moserah. There Aaron died and there he was buried, and Eleazar his son
ministered in the priest’s office in his place-
"Moserah" means 'place of chastisement / correction'. Aaron and Moses
will be in the Kingdom despite their sin, but it needed Aaron's death for
them to be corrected. The punishment was therefore their correction, and
was not the angry lashing out of an offended Deity. Moses only mentions
this place name at the end of his life, indicating how he looked back and
perceived that indeed he had been corrected and learned his lesson, even
if it cost him his life.
Deu 10:7 From there they travelled to Gudgodah and from Gudgodah to
Jotbathah, a land of brooks of water-
"A land of brooks of water" is precisely the phrase used of Canaan
(Dt. 8:7). They were constantly given foretastes of the Kingdom before
entering it, just as we are on our wilderness journey.
Deu 10:8 At that time Yahweh set apart the tribe of Levi to bear the ark
of the covenant of Yahweh, to stand before Yahweh to minister to Him and
to bless in His name, to this day-
Although the Levites had been set apart for Divine service
immediately after God's meeting with Israel at Sinai, as outlined in
Leviticus and Numbers, it seems that not until Aaron died at the end of
the 40 years wandering did they actually in practice begin to serve as
intended (Dt. 10:8). It could be that the reason was that the Levites were
ever slow to accept their responsibilities. And they generally failed in
their calling over Israel's history, climaxing in the priests arranging
the murder of God's own Son.
Deu 10:9 Therefore Levi has no portion or inheritance with his brothers;
Yahweh is his inheritance according as Yahweh your God spoke to him.)-
The Levites had no material inheritance because "the
sacrifices of Yahweh the God of Israel... are his inheritance... Yahweh God
of Israel was their inheritance" (Josh. 13:14,33; Num. 18:20; Dt. 10:9;
18:2). Notice how "Yahweh" is put for what is sacrificed to Him. His very existence is an
imperative to sacrifice to Him, despising all material advantage in doing
so. Job comments that to make gold our hope and wealth our confidence is
to deny “the God that is above” (Job 31:24,28). To trust in material
wealth is effectively to proclaim ourselves atheists.
Deu 10:10 I stayed on the mountain, as at the first time, forty days and
forty nights and Yahweh listened to me that time also; Yahweh would not
destroy you-
Israel were certainly representative of us. The degree of love shown by Moses to Israel is only a shadow of the degree, the kind of love shown by Christ to us, who hopefully are not rejecting him as Israel did. The power of this point just has to be reflected upon. That Moses could love Israel, to the extent of being willing to give his life and salvation for them, is a fine, fine type of the devotion of Christ. There is another oft
emphasized aspect of Moses' love for Israel: the power of his mediation for them. We are told that God "hearkened" to Moses' prayers for them (Dt. 9:19; 10:10). He prayed for them with an intensity they didn't appreciate, he prayed for and gained their forgiveness before they had even repented, he pleaded successfully for God to relent from His plans to punish them, even before they knew that God had conceived such plans (Ex. 32:10,14; 33:17 etc.). The fact we will, at the end, be forgiven of some sins without specifically repenting of them (as David was in Ps. 19:12) ought to
instill a true humility in us. This kind of thing is in some ways a contradiction of God's principles that personal repentance is required for forgiveness, and that our own effort is required if we are to find acceptability with Him. Of course ultimately these things are still true, and were true with respect to Israel.
"Corrupted" in Ex. 32:7 is s.w. "'destroyed" here. All judgment is finally self inflicted. Sin is its own judgment; hence the Hebrew word for "corruption" also means "destruction", for moral corruption is its own destruction. God Himself does judge, but always prefers men to judge themselves.
Deu 10:11 Yahweh said to me Arise, take your journey before the people,
and they shall go in and possess the land, which I swore to their fathers
to give to them-
It was only through Moses' leadership that they reached Canaan: "The
Lord said unto (Moses), Arise (cp. Christ's resurrection), take thy
journey before the people (as Christ, the good shepherd, goes before the flock, Jn. 10:3), that they may go in and possess the land" (Dt. 10:11).
Moses led God’s people to the land, the Kingdom, but
couldn’t himself take them in there- the Law with which he was associated
revealed the Kingdom, but it needed Joshua / Jesus to actually bring them
into it.
"Drive out" is s.w. "possess". We must note the difference between the
Canaanite peoples and their kings being "struck" and their land "taken" by
Joshua-Jesus; and the people of Israel permanently taking possession. This
is the difference between the Lord's victory on the cross, and our taking
possession of the Kingdom. Even though that possession has been "given" to
us. The word used for "possession" is literally 'an inheritance'. The
allusion is to the people, like us, being the seed of Abraham. The Kingdom
was and is our possession, our inheritance- if we walk in the steps of
Abraham. But it is one thing to be the seed of Abraham, another to take
possession of the inheritance; and Israel generally did not take
possession of all the land (Josh.
11:23 13:1; 16:10; 18:3; 23:4). The language of inheritance / possession
is applied to us in the New Testament (Eph. 1:11,14; Col. 3:24; Acts
20:32; 26:18; 1 Pet. 1:4 etc.). Israel were promised: "You shall possess
it" (Dt. 30:5; 33:23). This was more of a command than a prophecy, for
sadly they were "given" the land but did not "possess" it. They were
constantly encouraged in the wilderness that they were on the path to
possessing the land (Dt. 30:16,18; 31:3,13; 32:47), but when they got
there they didn't possess it fully.
It
was God's intention that Moses would go before the people and lead them
into the land (Dt. 10:11), but Moses failed, and so it fell to Joshua. But
it seems he was nervous, and so God used the ark rather than Joshua
personally to 'go before the people' (s.w. Josh. 3:6). All the time we see
God setting up potential programs which have to be amended because of
human weakness.
The repeated references to the “journeys” of the people in the
wilderness had as their basis the description of Abraham taking his
journey through the desert to the promised land (Gen. 13:3); the very same
two Hebrew words recur in the command to Israel to now ‘take their
journey’ (Dt. 10:11), following in the steps of their father Abraham. As
Abraham was commanded to "be perfect" (Gen. 17:1), so Israel were told: "You
[after the pattern of father Abraham] shall be perfect with the Lord" (Dt.
19:13).
Deu 10:12 Now Israel, what does Yahweh your God require of you, but to
fear Yahweh your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him and to serve
Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul-
Alluded to in Mic. 6:8, where walking in God’s ways is understood as
walking in humility; and ‘loving God’ is expanded into loving to show
justice and mercy. To love [God]" is paralleled with "to love mercy". If
we love God, we will be merciful as He is. To know Him in truth is to
actively be like Him. We can be tempted to think that we can ‘love God’
within our own hearts by accepting His existence and reading the Bible.
But it has to be more than that; to love God is to love others, to be
merciful to the irritating and ungracious (:18). We cannot love God
without loving our brethren (1 Jn. 3:17; 4:21). To love God in this way is
in the end ‘for our own good’ (:13).
Yahweh was to be loved with all the heart, soul and mind (Dt. 6:5). This is understood by Joshua as meaning that those who loved Yahweh would not "mix with" and intermarry with the nations and accept their gods (Josh. 23:11,12,16). "Love" for God was not therefore a feeling; Joshua said that they must "take good heed therefore to yourselves, that you love Yahweh" (Josh. 23:11). This is the love of conscious direction of the mind, the love which is a choice rather than an emotion.
Some time, read through the book of Deuteronomy in one or two sessions. You'll see many themes of Moses in Deuteronomy. It really shows how Moses felt towards Israel, and how the Lord Jesus feels towards us, and especially how he felt towards us just before his death. For this is what the whole book prefigures. "Love" and the idea of love occurs far more in Deuteronomy than in the other books of the Law. "Fear the Lord your God" of Ex. 9:30; Lev. 19:14,32; 25:17 becomes "love the Lord your God" in Deuteronomy (Dt. 6:5; 7:9; 10:12; 11:1; 19:9; 30:6,16,20). There are 23 references to not hating in Deuteronomy, compared to only 5 in Ex. - Num.; Moses saw the danger of bitterness and lack of love. He saw these things as the spiritual cancer they are, in his time of maturity he warned his beloved people against them. His mind was full of them. The LXX uses the word ekklesia eight times in Deuteronomy, but not once in Moses' other words (Dt. 4:10; 9:10; 18:16; 23:1,2,3,8; 32:1). Responsibility for the whole family God had redeemed was a mark of Moses; maturity at the end of his life, at the time of Deuteronomy. It is observable that both as a community and as individuals, this will be a sign of our maturity too.
Deu 10:13 to keep the commandments of Yahweh and His statutes-
Which I
command you this day for your good?-
Throughout the Law of Moses, the unity of Israel was emphasized. But
that unity was not predicated upon any statement of faith, and the history
of Israel has no example of the faithful minority removing themselves from
association or “fellowship” with the majority, who clearly were unfaithful
in both theology and practice. Moses in his last great speech as recorded
in Deuteronomy seems to have purposefully confused his use of "you" plural
[AV “ye”] and "you" singular [AV “thee”] in addressing them; as if to show
that they, the many, were also one body (e.g. Dt. 10:12-22; 11:1,2). He as
it were zooms in from the collective to the individual, lest any should
think that they were just some nameless individual before God, saved or
damned only according to their group affiliation.
We note that the sum total of the commandments were intended to reinforce spirituality, obedience led to more obedience. Hence the whole system would lose its potential power if commandments were added or removed from it. But the law was "holy, just and good" because it was not a burden to man, but intended for his "good".
Deu 10:14 Behold, to Yahweh your God belongs heaven and the heaven of
heavens, the earth, with all that is in it-
God's possession of literally all things, the entire cosmos, is cited
here as an encouragement to believe that He could therefore so easily give
Israel the promised land. Just as it is not at all difficult for Him to
give us His Kingdom. But like Israel, we balk at the promise, as if
somehow His ability is somehow limited. The simplest truth is that God
loves us and it is His will and pleasure to give us the Kingdom. And
seeing He owns all things, to give us a place in His Kingdom is not at all
difficult for Him. The choice is only with us.
Deu 10:15 It’s just that Yahweh had a delight in your fathers to love
them, and He chose their seed after them, even you above all peoples, as
it is at this day-
This is a clear statement that love is a choice, not a passing
emotion. For the love of God is reflected in His choosing to love His
people rather than others.
Deu 10:16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more
stiff-necked-
Col. 2:12 presents baptism as the equivalent in our day if we wish to
enter the new covenant, which is based upon the same promises to Abraham.
But there is more to new covenant relationship than simply the ritual of
baptism. Circumcision spoke of a cutting off of the flesh in the most
private and intimate place. We always read of circumcision as being done
to a person. Water baptism enables us to receive the birth of the Spirit,
whereby the Lord will work through the Spirit to change our hearts, to cut
off our flesh in the most private and personal recesses of human hearts.
Col. 2:11 explains: "In him you
were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the
putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ".
Through baptism, we enter the "in Christ" status, and our flesh is as it
were cut off, by status we are in Him and not in the flesh. This is
repeated in Paul's argument in Romans 1-8, although there he stresses that
our flesh still remains; but from God's perspective, it is cut off. It
takes faith to believe this- faith in God's operation, that the
circumcision operation was really performed by Him (Col. 2:12). Baptism is
the means by which we become "in Christ" and in spiritual terms cease to
be uncircumcised (Col. 2:13). If Israel took the initiative in attempting
to circumcise their hearts (Dt. 10:16; Jer. 4:4), then God would confirm
them in this by doing what man cannot do- operating directly upon the
human heart to cut off the flesh from it (Dt. 30:6).
Time and again, Moses speaks of the state of their heart. He warns them against allowing a bad state of heart to develop, he speaks often of how apostasy starts in the heart. Moses makes a total of 49 references to the heart / mind of Israel in Deuteronomy, compared to only 13 in the whole of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers. This indicates the paramount importance which our Lord attaches to the state of our mind. This was perhaps his greatest wish as He faced death; that we should develop a spiritual mind and thereby manifest the Father and come to salvation. Moses likewise saw the state of our mind as the key to spiritual success. But do we share this perspective? Do we guard our minds against the media and influence of a mind-corrupting world? It's been observed that the phrase "The God of [somebody]", or similar, occurs 614 times in the Old Testament, of which 306 are in Deuteronomy. Our very personal relationship with God was therefore something else which Moses came to grasp in his spiritual maturity. Statistical analysis of the word "love" in the Pentateuch likewise reveals that "love" was a great theme of Moses at the end of his life (Moses uses it 16 times in Deuteronomy, and only four times in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers).
Deu 10:17 For Yahweh your God, He is God of gods and Lord of lords, the
great God, the mighty and the awesome, who doesn’t respect persons nor
take reward-
The argument proceeds in :18,19 to appeal for Israel to show justice
and grace to the foreigners and poor. God does this because He doesn't
respect persons. And so our likely temptation not to do these things is
because we effectively do respect persons. We are more likely to give some
help to someone whose person we know and respect, on our own broad social
or ethnic level; rather than the mass of poor folks whom we are tempted to
refer to as "Them... just them...", as if their low status precludes us
from having a duty to relieve them.
Deu 10:18 He executes justice for the fatherless and widow and loves the
foreigner, in giving him food and clothing-
The Hebrew mishpat, "ordinances" or "justice", has a wide range of meaning.
The idea is of judgment, as if God and His Angels gave these laws as their
considered judgment after considering the human condition, and Israel were
to abide by them. But the word also the idea of a right or privilege; and
that is how we should see God's laws. They are only felt as a burden
because of human hardness of neck towards God's ways. His laws are not of
themselves burdensome, but rather a privilege and blessing. The law was
indeed "holy, just and good" (Rom. 7:12), designed to inculcate a holy,
just and good life (Tit. 1:8), a way in which a man should "walk" in daily
life (Lev. 18:4), a culture of kindness and grace to others which
reflected God's grace to man. If we dwell upon the idea of "rights"
carried within the word mishpat, we note that the law begins in
Ex. 21:1,2 (also Dt. 15:12-18) with the rights of a slave- those
considered to have no rights in the society of that day. The "rights" to
be afforded by us to others are the essence of God's rightness / justice.
Deu 10:19 Therefore love the foreigner, for you were foreigners in the
land of Egypt-
One of the most repeated themes of Moses in Deuteronomy is the way he
keeps on telling them to "remember" all the great things which God had
done for them on their wilderness journey (e.g. Dt. 10:21; 11:3-6), and
especially the wonder of how he had redeemed them as children (his
audience had been under twenty years old when they went through the Red
Sea). Just look up all the times "remember" occurs in Deuteronomy. He
really wanted them to overcome the human tendency to forget the greatness
of God as manifested earlier in our lives and spiritual experience. Our
tendency as the new Israel is just the same- to forget the wonder of
baptism, of how God reached out His arm to save us. And the
remembrance of our own status in the world, before we were redeemed, is
to make us generous to foreigners and oppressed persons in practice.
Deu 10:20 You must fear Yahweh your God; you must serve Him and cling to
Him and you shall swear by His name-
The idea of 'cleaving' to God is a big theme of Moses in Deuteronomy
(Dt. 4:4; 10:20; 11:22; 13:4,17; 28:21,60; 30:20); the only other time
Moses uses the word in his writings is in Gen. 2:24, concerning a man
cleaving to his wife. Moses seems to have been suggesting to Israel that
their covenant relationship with God meant they were
marrying God. This was a real
paradigm breaker. We may be used to such things. But against the
theological background of the time, not to say the generally low level of
spirituality among Israel, this was a shocking idea. It reflected the
heights to which Moses had risen.
Deu 10:21 He is your praise and He is your God, Who has done for you these
great and awesome things which your eyes have seen-
Fear is always the antithesis of faith. God
is often called an "awesome God" (Dt. 7:21; 10:21 etc.). The Hebrew word
for "awesome" is that for 'fear' (s.w. Gen. 3:10; 15:1; 18;15 etc.). The
idea is that God's people are to be in such fear / awe of Him that they
fear / are in awe of nothing else. Hence Dt. 7:21 says that Israel should
"not be scared of" their enemies, because their God is "awesome", He is
the one to be feared.
Deu 10:22 Your fathers went down into Egypt with seventy persons, and now
Yahweh your God has made you as the stars of the sky for multitude-
This was an initial, primary fulfilment of the promises to Abraham;
we too have some foretastes of the Kingdom life even now.
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