1 Now when all these things have come on you, the blessing and the curse which I have put before you, if the thought of them comes back to your minds, when you are living among the nations where the Lord your God has sent you,
See, I have put before you today, life and good, and death and evil;
Let heaven and earth be my witnesses against you this day that I have put before you life and death, a blessing and a curse: so take life for yourselves and for your seed:
And if they take thought, in the land where they are prisoners, and are turned again to you, crying out in prayer to you in that land, and saying, We are sinners, we have done wrong, we have done evil; And with all their heart and soul are turned again to you, in the land of those who took them prisoners, and make their prayer to you, turning their eyes to this land which you gave to their fathers, and to the town which you took for yourself, and the house which I made for your name:
But if in those lands you are turned again to the Lord your God, searching for him with all your heart and soul, he will not keep himself from you. When you are in trouble and all these things have come on you, if, in the future, you are turned again to the Lord your God, and give ear to his voice:
Today I put before you a blessing and a curse: The blessing if you give ear to the orders of the Lord your God, which I give you this day: And the curse if you do not give ear to the orders of the Lord your God, but let yourselves be turned from the way which I have put before you this day, and go after other gods which are not yours.
You have sent me out this day from the face of the earth and from before your face; I will be a wanderer in flight over the earth, and whoever sees me will put me to death.
Do not make images of false gods, or put up an image cut in stone or a pillar or any pictured stone in your land, to give worship to it; for I am the Lord your God. Keep my Sabbaths and give honour to my holy place: I am the Lord. If you are guided by my rules, and keep my laws and do them, Then I will give you rain at the right time, and the land will give her increase and the trees of the field will give their fruit; And the crushing of the grain will overtake the cutting of the grapes, and the cutting of the grapes will overtake the planting of the seed, and there will be bread in full measure, and you will be living in your land safely. And I will give you peace in the land, and you will take your rest and no one will give you cause for fear; and I will put an end to all evil beasts in the land, and no sword of war will go through your land. And you will put to flight those who are against you, and they will be put to death by your swords. Then five of you will put to flight a hundred, and a hundred of you will put to flight ten thousand, and all who are against you will be put to death by your swords. And I will have pleasure in you and make you fertile and greater in number; and I will keep my agreement with you. And old stores long kept will be your food, and you will take out the old because of the new; And I will put my holy House among you, and my soul will not be turned away from you in disgust. And I will be present among you and will be your God and you will be my people. I am the Lord your God, who took you out of the land of Egypt so that you might not be servants to them; by me the cords of your yoke were broken and I made you go upright. But if you do not give ear to me, and do not keep all these my laws; And if you go against my rules and if you have hate in your souls for my decisions and you do not do all my orders, but go against my agreement; This will I do to you: I will put fear in your hearts, even wasting disease and burning pain, drying up the eyes and making the soul feeble, and you will get no profit from your seed, for your haters will take it for food. And my face will be turned from you, and you will be broken before those who are against you, and your haters will become your rulers, and you will go in flight when no man comes after you. And if, even after these things, you will not give ear to me, then I will send you punishment seven times more for your sins. And the pride of your strength will be broken, and I will make your heaven as iron and your earth as brass; And your strength will be used up without profit; for your land will not give her increase and the trees of the field will not give their fruit. And if you still go against me and will not give ear to me, I will put seven times more punishments on you because of your sins. I will let loose the beasts of the field among you, and they will take away your children and send destruction on your cattle, so that your numbers will become small and your roads become waste. And if by these things you will not be turned to me, but still go against me; Then I will go against you, and I will give you punishment, I myself, seven times for all your sins. And I will send a sword on you to give effect to the punishment of my agreement; and when you come together into your towns I will send disease among you and you will be given up into the hands of your haters. When I take away your bread of life, ten women will be cooking bread in one oven, and your bread will be measured out by weight; you will have food but never enough. And if, after all this, you do not give ear to me, but go against me still, Then my wrath will be burning against you, and I will give you punishment, I myself, seven times for your sins. Then you will take the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters for food; And I will send destruction on your high places, overturning your perfume altars, and will put your dead bodies on your broken images, and my soul will be turned from you in disgust. And I will make your towns waste and send destruction on your holy places; I will take no pleasure in the smell of your sweet perfumes; And I will make your land a waste, a wonder to your haters living in it. And I will send you out in all directions among the nations, and my sword will be uncovered against you, and your land will be without any living thing, and your towns will be made waste. Then will the land take pleasure in its Sabbaths while it is waste and you are living in the land of your haters; then will the land have rest. All the days while it is waste will the land have rest, such rest as it never had in your Sabbaths, when you were living in it. And as for the rest of you, I will make their hearts feeble in the land of their haters, and the sound of a leaf moved by the wind will send them in flight, and they will go in flight as from the sword, falling down when no one comes after them; Falling on one another, as before the sword, when no one comes after them; you will give way before your haters. And death will overtake you among strange nations, and the land of your haters will be your destruction. And those of you who are still living will be wasting away in their sins in the land of your haters; in the sins of their fathers they will be wasting away. And they will have grief for their sins and for the sins of their fathers, when their hearts were untrue to me, and they went against me; So that I went against them and sent them away into the land of their haters: if then the pride of their hearts is broken and they take the punishment of their sins, Then I will keep in mind the agreement which I made with Jacob and with Isaac and with Abraham, and I will keep in mind the land. And the land, while she is without them, will keep her Sabbaths; and they will undergo the punishment of their sins, because they were turned away from my decisions and in their souls was hate for my laws. But for all that, when they are in the land of their haters I will not let them go, or be turned away from them, or give them up completely; my agreement with them will not be broken, for I am the Lord their God. And because of them I will keep in mind the agreement which I made with their fathers, whom I took out of the land of Egypt before the eyes of the nations, to be their God: I am the Lord. These are the rules, decisions, and laws, which the Lord made between himself and the children of Israel in Mount Sinai, by the hand of Moses.
Then Moses and the responsible men of Israel gave the people these orders: Keep all the orders which I have given you this day; And on the day when you go over Jordan into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, put up great stones, coating them with building-paste, And writing on them all the words of this law, after you have gone over; so that you may take the heritage which the Lord your God is giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has said. And when you have gone over Jordan, you are to put up these stones, as I have said to you today, in Mount Ebal, and have them coated with building-paste. There you are to make an altar to the Lord your God, of stones on which no iron instrument has been used. You are to make the altar of the Lord your God of uncut stones; offering on it burned offerings to the Lord your God: And you are to make your peace-offerings, feasting there with joy before the Lord your God. And put on the stones all the words of this law, writing them very clearly. Then Moses and the priests, the Levites, said to all Israel, Be quiet and give ear, O Israel; today you have become the people of the Lord your God. For this cause you are to give ear to the voice of the Lord your God, and do his orders and his laws which I give you this day. That same day Moses said to the people, These are to take their places on Mount Gerizim for blessing the people when you have gone over Jordan: Simeon and Levi and Judah and Issachar and Joseph and Benjamin; And these are to be on Mount Ebal for the curse: Reuben, Gad, and Asher, and Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali. Then the Levites are to say in a loud voice to all the men of Israel, Cursed is the man who makes any image of wood or stone or metal, disgusting to the Lord, the work of man's hands, and puts it up in secret. And let all the people say, So be it. Cursed is he who does not give honour to his father or mother. And let all the people say, So be it. Cursed is he who takes his neighbour's landmark from its place. And let all the people say, So be it. Cursed is he by whom the blind are turned out of the way. And let all the people say, So be it. Cursed is he who gives a wrong decision in the cause of a man from a strange land, or of one without a father, or of a widow. And let all the people say, So be it. Cursed is he who has sex relations with his father's wife, for he has put shame on his father. And let all the people say, So be it. Cursed is he who has sex relations with any sort of beast. And let all the people say, So be it. Cursed is he who has sex relations with his sister, the daughter of his father or of his mother. And let all the people say, So be it. Cursed is he who has sex relations with his mother-in-law. And let all the people say, So be it. Cursed is he who takes his neighbour's life secretly. And let all the people say, So be it. Cursed is he who for a reward puts to death one who has done no wrong. And let all the people say, So be it. Cursed is he who does not take this law to heart to do it. And let all the people say, So be it.
So that there may not be among you any man or woman or family or tribe whose heart is turned away from the Lord our God today, to go after other gods and give them worship; or any root among you whose fruit is poison and bitter sorrow; If such a man, hearing the words of this oath, takes comfort in the thought that he will have peace even if he goes on in the pride of his heart, taking whatever chance may give him: The Lord will have no mercy on him, but the wrath of the Lord will be burning against that man, and all the curses recorded in this book will be waiting for him, and the Lord will take away his name completely from the earth. He will be marked out by the Lord, from all the tribes of Israel, for an evil fate, in keeping with all the curses of the agreement recorded in this book of the law. And future generations, your children coming after you, and travellers from far countries, will say, when they see the punishments of that land and the diseases which the Lord has sent on it; And that all the land is a salt and smoking waste, not planted or giving fruit or clothed with grass, but wasted like Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, on which the Lord sent destruction in the heat of his wrath:
Rooting them out of their land, in the heat of his wrath and passion, and driving them out into another land, as at this day.
And death will be desired more than life by the rest of this evil family who are still living in all the places where I have sent them away, says the Lord of armies.
Because he had fear and was turned away from all the wrong which he had done, life will certainly be his, death will not be his fate.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible » Commentary on Deuteronomy 30
Commentary on Deuteronomy 30 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 30
De 30:1-10. Great Mercies Promised unto the Penitent.
1-10. when all these things are come upon thee, … and thou shalt return … then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity—The hopes of the Hebrew people are ardently directed to this promise, and they confidently expect that God, commiserating their forlorn and fallen condition, will yet rescue them from all the evils of their long dispersion. They do not consider the promise as fulfilled by their restoration from the captivity in Babylon, for Israel was not then scattered in the manner here described—"among all the nations," "unto the utmost parts of heaven" (De 30:4). When God recalled them from that bondage, all the Israelites were not brought back. They were not multiplied above their fathers (De 30:5), nor were their hearts and those of their children circumcised to love the Lord (De 30:6). It is not, therefore, of the Babylonish captivity that Moses was speaking in this passage; it must be of the dispersed state to which they have been doomed for eighteen hundred years. This prediction may have been partially accomplished on the return of the Israelites from Babylon; for, according to the structure and design of Scripture prophecy, it may have pointed to several similar eras in their national history; and this view is sanctioned by the prayer of Nehemiah (Ne 1:8, 9). But undoubtedly it will receive its full and complete accomplishment in the conversion of the Jews to the Gospel of Christ. At the restoration from the Babylonish captivity, that people were changed in many respects for the better. They were completely weaned from idolatry; and this outward reformation was a prelude to the higher attainments they are destined to reach in the age of Messiah, "when the Lord God will circumcise their hearts and the hearts of their seed to love the Lord." The course pointed out seems clearly to be this: that the hearts of the Hebrew people shall be circumcised (Col 2:2); in other words, by the combined influences of the Word and spirit of God, their hearts will be touched and purified from all their superstition and unbelief. They will be converted to the faith of Jesus Christ as their Messiah—a spiritual deliverer, and the effect of their conversion will be that they will return and obey the voice (the Gospel, the evangelical law) of the Lord. The words may be interpreted either wholly in a spiritual sense (Joh 11:51, 52), or, as many think, in a literal sense also (Ro 11:1-36). They will be recalled from all places of the dispersion to their own land and enjoy the highest prosperity. The mercies and favors of a bountiful Providence will not then be abused as formerly (De 31:20; 32:15). They will be received in a better spirit and employed to nobler purposes. They will be happy, "for the Lord will again rejoice over them for good, as He rejoiced over their fathers."
De 30:11-14. The Commandment Is Manifest.
11-14. For this commandment … is not hidden … neither is it far off—That law of loving and obeying God, which was the subject of Moses' discourse, was well known to the Israelites. They could not plead ignorance of its existence and requirements. It was not concealed as an impenetrable mystery in heaven, for it had been revealed; nor was it carefully withheld from the people as a dangerous discovery; for the youngest and humblest of them were instructed in those truths, which were subjects of earnest study and research among the wisest and greatest of other nations. They were not under a necessity of undertaking long journeys or distant voyages, as many ancient sages did in quest of knowledge. They enjoyed the peculiar privilege of a familiar acquaintance with it. It was with them a subject of common conversation, engraven on their memories, and frequently explained and inculcated on their hearts. The apostle Paul (Ro 10:6-8) has applied this passage to the Gospel, for the law of Christ is substantially the same as that of Moses, only exhibited more clearly in its spiritual nature and extensive application; and, accompanied with the advantages of Gospel grace, it is practicable and easy.
De 30:15-20. Death and Life Are Set before the Israelites.
15-20. See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil—the alternative of a good and happy, or a disobedient and miserable life. Love of God and compliance with His will are the only ways of securing the blessings and avoiding the evils described. The choice was left to them, and in urging upon them the inducements to a wise choice, Moses warmed as he proceeded into a tone of solemn and impressive earnestness similar to that of Paul to the elders of Ephesus (Ac 20:26, 27).