Theopedia

Book of Deuteronomy

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

— Deuteronomy 6:4-5

Overview

Deuteronomy is the fifth and closing book of the Pentateuch. Its Hebrew title, Elle haddebharim (“these are the words”), opens the book; its English name comes from the Greek Deuteronomion, “second law” or “repetition of the law,” reflecting the later Jewish description of the book’s content. It consists of Moses’s farewell discourses to Israel on the plains of Moab, delivered shortly before his death and Israel’s entry into Canaan under Joshua (Deut. 1:1, 3).1

Author and Date

Jewish and Christian tradition has ascribed Deuteronomy to Moses since antiquity: the book itself records Moses writing “this law” and delivering it to the priests and elders for safekeeping and periodic public reading (Deut. 31:9, 24-26), and the New Testament repeatedly attributes its content to him by name, as when Jesus tells the Pharisees, “Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me.” Barrows, writing from this traditional position, notes that the Pentateuch was already known and undisputed in its present form by the time of the Septuagint translators in the third century BC, and had been so since the days of Ezra.2

Modern critical scholarship has often dated Deuteronomy considerably later than Moses. The classic form of the Documentary Hypothesis identifies Deuteronomy as the independent “D” document, composed centuries after Moses and connected to the law book discovered in the temple during Josiah’s renovations in 621 BC (2 Kings 22:8-13), only later combined with the Pentateuch’s other proposed sources.3

Historical and Literary Context

Deuteronomy’s overall shape follows the pattern of ancient Near Eastern suzerain-vassal treaties, particularly those of the Hittites, which bound a great king to a subject king through a preamble, a historical prologue, stipulations, and blessings and curses.4 Scholars have long recognized that the structure of the Mosaic covenant, and of Deuteronomy in particular, reflects this treaty form: Yahweh, in the role of the suzerain, renews his covenant with Israel, his vassal, rehearsing what he has already done for the nation before laying out its obligations and the consequences of keeping or breaking them.4 Like the treaty documents of the Hittite kings, this covenant text was to be deposited beside the ark and read publicly at regular intervals, with an inscriptional curse warning against altering its words (Deut. 4:2; 10:2; 31:9-13).4

Structure

Deuteronomy consists of a series of addresses delivered by Moses to the generation of Israel about to enter Canaan, generally divided into three main parts followed by a closing narrative section:5

  • Chapters 1-4: A recapitulation of Israel’s history since Sinai, with warnings and exhortations, closing with the appointment of three cities of refuge east of the Jordan.
  • Chapters 5-26: A restatement of the law given at Sinai, opening with the Ten Commandments and the Shema, and including exhortations to obedience together with the law’s particular precepts, modified and supplemented for Israel’s new circumstances in the land.
  • Chapters 27-30: The blessings promised for covenant obedience and the curses threatened for covenant unfaithfulness, set forth as motives to obey, culminating in the prospect of Israel’s future exile and restoration.
  • Chapters 31-34: Moses’s closing acts: his charge to Joshua as his successor, the deposit of the law beside the ark, his song and blessing over the twelve tribes, and the account of his death on Mount Nebo.

Major Themes

Covenant renewal. Deuteronomy presents itself as a renewal of the covenant Yahweh made with Israel at Sinai, now addressed to the generation that will actually possess the land (Deut. 29:1). Deuteronomy 29 concerns this renewal directly, and Moses warns Israel that without a heart to understand what God has done for them, the covenant curses, not the blessings, will follow their disobedience.6

Love and obedience. The book roots Israel’s obedience to the law in love for God rather than bare external compliance. This is summarized in the Shema itself: “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut. 6:4-5). When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, he answered each temptation from this same section of Deuteronomy, embodying the total devotion to God the Shema demands.7

The Shema. Deuteronomy 6:4 became, and remains, the foundational confession of the Hebrew people’s monotheism, recited as the core statement that God is one.8 Jesus later named it, together with the command to love one’s neighbor, as the greatest of all the commandments (Mark 12:29-30).

Blessings and curses. Deuteronomy 28 sets out at length the blessings that will follow covenant obedience and the curses that will follow covenant unfaithfulness, and Deuteronomy 30:1-10 anticipates a future beyond exile: a promise that God will circumcise Israel’s heart so that they will love him and live (Deut. 30:6). Eugene Merrill identifies this circumcision of the heart as “the radical work of regeneration,” a phrase found in the Old Testament only here and in Deuteronomy 10:16 and Jeremiah 4:4.9

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), chap. 19, “The Pentateuch,” 238. ↩

  2. Barrows, chap. 9, “Authorship of the Pentateuch,” 120-121. ↩

  3. John N. Oswalt, The Bible among the Myths: Unique Revelation or Just Ancient Literature?, Ancient Context, Ancient Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), chap. 10, “Conclusions.” ↩

  4. Michael J. Kruger, The Question of Canon: Challenging the Status Quo in the New Testament Debate (Nottingham: Apollos, 2013), 61: “It is now well-established by scholars that the structure of the Mosaic covenant, particularly Deuteronomy and the Decalogue, reflects the structure of these extrabiblical treaty-covenants.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. Barrows, 238-239. ↩

  6. Philip Chase Sears, “The Mystery of Israel’s Election and Hardening,” in “Mysterion and the Salvation of ‘All Israel’ in Romans 9-11” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2019), 187. ↩

  7. Micah John McCormick, “Messiah’s Obedience for Eternal Life Fulfilled,” in “The Active Obedience of Jesus Christ” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 240. ↩

  8. Ronald E. Heine, Classical Christian Doctrine: Introducing the Essentials of the Ancient Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), chap. 3, “The Lord Our God Is One,” 27. ↩

  9. Eugene Merrill, quoted in Matthew Michael Barrett, “The Scriptural Affirmation of Monergistic Regeneration,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 183. ↩