Deuteronomy 4
4
Advantages of Fidelity. 1Now therefore, Israel, hear the statutes and ordinances I am teaching you to observe, that you may live, and may enter in and take possession of the land which the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you.#Dt 4:45; 5:1, 31; 6:1, 17, 20; 11:32; 12:1; 26:16. 2In your observance of the commandments of the Lord, your God,#Dt 13:1. which I am commanding you, you shall not add to what I command you nor subtract from it. 3You have seen with your own eyes what the Lord did at Baal-peor:#Nm 25:1–13; Ps 106:28; Hos 9:10. the Lord, your God, destroyed from your midst everyone who followed the Baal of Peor; 4but you, who held fast to the Lord, your God, are all alive today. 5See, I am teaching you the statutes and ordinances as the Lord, my God, has commanded me, that you may observe them in the land you are entering to possess. 6Observe them carefully, for this is your wisdom and discernment in the sight of the peoples, who will hear of all these statutes and say, “This great nation is truly a wise and discerning people.”#Dt 26:5; Gn 12:2; 18:18; 46:3; Ex 32:10. 7#2 Sm 7:23. For what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God, is to us whenever we call upon him? 8Or what great nation has statutes and ordinances that are as just as this whole law which I am setting before you today?#Dt 4:44.
Revelation at Horeb. 9However, be on your guard and be very careful not to forget the things your own eyes have seen, nor let them slip from your heart as long as you live, but make them known to your children#Dt 6:7, 20–25; 11:19–21; 29:29; 31:12–13; Ps 78:3–6. and to your children’s children, 10that day you stood before the Lord, your God, at Horeb, when the Lord said to me: Assemble the people for me, that I may let them hear my words, that they may learn to fear#Fear: not in the sense of “be terrified,” but rather “manifest reverence or awe.” me as long as they live in the land and may so teach their children. 11#Ex 19:7–20:21. You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, while the mountain blazed to the heart of the heavens with fire and was enveloped in a dense black cloud. 12Then the Lord spoke to you from the midst of the fire.#Dt 4:33, 36; 5:4. You heard the sound of the words, but saw no form; there was only a voice. 13He proclaimed to you his covenant, which he commanded you to keep: the ten words,#Ten words: the ten commandments, or decalogue (cf. 5:22; Ex 34:28). which he wrote on two stone tablets.#Dt 5:6–21; 10:4; Ex 20:1–17; 24:12; 31:18; 34:27–28. 14At that time the Lord charged me to teach you the statutes and ordinances for you to observe in the land you are about to cross into and possess.
Danger of Idolatry. 15Because you saw no form at all on the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire, be strictly on your guard 16not to act corruptly by fashioning an idol for yourselves to represent any figure, whether it be the form of a man or of a woman,#Dt 5:8; Ex 20:4. 17the form of any animal on the earth, the form of any bird that flies in the sky, 18the form of anything that crawls on the ground, or the form of any fish in the waters under the earth. 19And when you look up to the heavens and behold the sun or the moon or the stars, the whole heavenly host, do not be led astray into bowing down to them and serving them.#Dt 17:3; Jb 31:26–28. These the Lord, your God, has apportioned to all the other nations under the heavens; 20but you the Lord has taken and led out of that iron foundry, Egypt, that you might be his people, his heritage, as you are today.#1 Kgs 8:51; Is 48:10; Jer 11:4. 21But the Lord was angry with me on your account#Dt 1:37; 3:26. and swore that I should not cross the Jordan nor enter the good land which the Lord, your God, is giving you as a heritage. 22I myself shall die in this country; I shall not cross the Jordan; but you are going to cross over and take possession of that good land.#Dt 3:27; 34:1–12; Jos 1–12. 23Be careful, therefore, lest you forget the covenant which the Lord, your God, has made with you, and fashion for yourselves against his command an idol in any form whatsoever.#Dt 4:16; 9:12–14; Ex 32:1–10. 24For the Lord, your God, is a consuming fire, a jealous God.#A jealous God: Hebrew ’el qanna. The root of the adjective qanna expresses the idea of intense feeling focused on solicitude for someone or something; see, e.g., Ps 69:10; Sg 8:6; Is 9:6; 37:32; Ez 39:25. The Septuagint translated the adjective as zelotes, and the Vulgate followed suit; hence the traditional English rendering “jealous” (and sometimes “zealous”) found in the Douai-Rheims and King James versions. In modern usage, however, “jealous” denotes unreasonable, petty possessiveness, a meaning, even as nuance, wanting in the Hebrew. In the first commandment (5:6–10; Ex 20:2–6) and passages derived from it (like 4:24; 6:15; Ex 34:14; Jos 24:19; Na 1:2), Israel’s God is represented as totally committed to his purpose, and Israel is put on notice to take him and his directives for their life as a people with equal seriousness. #Dt 5:9; 6:15; 9:3; Ex 24:17; 34:14.
God’s Fidelity and Love. 25#Dt 28:64–67. When you have children and children’s children, and have grown old in the land, should you then act corruptly by fashioning an idol in the form of anything, and by this evil done in his sight provoke the Lord, your God, 26I call heaven and earth this day to witness against you, that you shall all quickly perish from the land which you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You shall not live in it for any length of time but shall be utterly wiped out.#Dt 30:19; 31:28; 32:1; Is 1:2. 27The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and there shall remain but a handful of you among the nations to which the Lord will drive you. 28There you shall serve gods that are works of human hands, of wood and stone, gods which can neither see nor hear, neither eat nor smell.#Dt 28:64; 29:17; Lv 26:30–39; Ps 115:4–8; 135:15–18; Is 44:9–20. 29Yet when you seek the Lord, your God, from there, you shall indeed find him if you search after him with all your heart and soul.#Dt 6:5; Jer 29:13–14. 30In your distress, when all these things shall have come upon you, you shall finally return to the Lord, your God, and listen to his voice. 31Since the Lord, your God, is a merciful God, he will not abandon or destroy you, nor forget the covenant with your ancestors that he swore to them.#Dt 31:8; Gn 9:9–17; 15:18–21; 17:1–21; Ex 34:6–7.
32Ask now of the days of old, before your time, ever since God created humankind upon the earth; ask from one end of the sky to the other: Did anything so great ever happen before? Was it ever heard of? 33Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?#Dt 4:36; 5:24, 26; Ex 20:19. 34Or did any god venture to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by testings, by signs and wonders,#Dt 7:19; 26:8; 29:2; Ex 7:3; 15:3–10; Jer 32:21. by war, with strong hand and outstretched arm, and by great terrors, all of which the Lord, your God, did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? 35All this you were allowed to see that you might know that the Lord is God; there is no other.#Dt 4:39; 32:39; 1 Kgs 8:60; Is 43:10–13; Jl 2:27. 36Out of the heavens he let you hear his voice to discipline you; on earth he let you see his great fire, and you heard him speaking out of the fire. 37For love of your ancestors he chose their descendants after them and by his presence and great power led you out of Egypt, 38dispossessing before you nations greater and mightier than you, so as to bring you in and to give their land to you as a heritage, as it is today. 39This is why you must now acknowledge, and fix in your heart, that the Lord is God in the heavens above and on earth below, and that there is no other.#Dt 4:35; 32:39; 1 Kgs 8:60; Is 43:10–13; Jl 2:27. 40And you must keep his statutes and commandments which I command you today, that you and your children after you may prosper, and that you may have long life on the land which the Lord, your God, is giving you forever.#Dt 6:3; 12:28.
Cities of Refuge. 41#Dt 19:1–13; Nm 35:10–28; Jos 20:1–9. Then Moses set apart three cities in the region east of the Jordan, 42to which a homicide might flee who killed a neighbor unintentionally, where there had been no hatred previously, so that the killer might flee to one of these cities and live: 43Bezer in the wilderness, in the region of the plateau, for the Reubenites; Ramoth in Gilead for the Gadites; and Golan in Bashan for the Manassites.
II. SECOND ADDRESS
A. The Lord’s Covenant with Israel
Introduction. 44This is the law#Law: Hebrew torah, meaning “instruction,” “law,” “teaching”; the standard translation “law” comes from the influence of the Septuagint’s nomos, “law,” and the extensive legislation in Ex 20–Nm 10. which Moses set before the Israelites.#Dt 4:8; 17:18–19; 30:10; 31:11–12. 45These are the decrees, and the statutes and ordinances#Statutes and ordinances: terms referring to the legal corpus in 12:1–26:19. which Moses proclaimed to the Israelites after they came out of Egypt,#Dt 4:1; 5:1, 31; 6:1, 17, 20; 11:32; 12:1; 26:16; Ps 25:10. 46#Dt 2:24–3:29. beyond the Jordan in the valley opposite Beth-peor, in the land of Sihon, king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon, whom Moses and the Israelites defeated after they came out of Egypt.#Dt 3:29; 34:6. 47They took possession of his land and the land of Og, king of Bashan, as well—the land of these two kings of the Amorites in the region beyond the Jordan to the east: 48from Aroer on the edge of the Wadi Arnon to Mount Sion#Sion: another name for Mount Hermon, besides those mentioned in 3:9 (to be distinguished from the Mount Zion of Jerusalem). (that is, Hermon) 49and all the Arabah beyond the Jordan to the east, as far as the Arabah Sea#The Arabah Sea: the Dead Sea, cf. 3:17. under the slopes of Pisgah.
Currently Selected:
Deuteronomy 4: NABRE
Highlight
Share
Copy
Want to have your highlights saved across all your devices? Sign up or sign in
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc
Deuteronomy 4
4
1‘And now, Israel, hearken unto the statutes, and unto the judgments which I am teaching you to do, so that ye live, and have gone in, and possessed the land which Jehovah God of your fathers is giving to you.
2Ye do not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor diminish from it, to keep the commands of Jehovah your God which I am commanding you.
3‘Your eyes are seeing that which Jehovah hath done in Baal-Peor, for every man who hath gone after Baal-Peor, Jehovah thy God hath destroyed him from thy midst;
4and ye who are cleaving to Jehovah your God, [are] alive, all of you, to-day.
5‘See, I have taught you statutes and judgments, as Jehovah my God hath commanded me — to do so, in the midst of the land whither ye are going in to possess it;
6and ye have kept and done [them] (for it [is] your wisdom and your understanding) before the eyes of the peoples who hear all these statutes, and they have said, Only, a people wise and understanding [is] this great nation.
7‘For which [is] the great nation that hath God near unto it, as Jehovah our God, in all we have called unto him?
8and which [is] the great nation which hath righteous statutes and judgments according to all this law which I am setting before you to-day?
9‘Only, take heed to thyself, and watch thy soul exceedingly, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they turn aside from thy heart, all days of thy life; and thou hast made them known to thy sons, and to thy sons' sons.
10‘The day when thou hast stood before Jehovah thy God in Horeb — in Jehovah's saying unto me, Assemble to Me the people, and I cause them to hear My words, so that they learn to fear Me all the days that they are alive on the ground, and their sons they teach; —
11and ye draw near and stand under the mountain, and the mountain is burning with fire unto the heart of the heavens — darkness, cloud, yea, thick darkness:
12‘And Jehovah speaketh unto you out of the midst of the fire; a voice of words ye are hearing and a similitude ye are not seeing, only a voice;
13and He declareth to you His covenant, which He hath commanded you to do, the Ten Matters, and He writeth them upon two tables of stone.
14‘And me hath Jehovah commanded at that time to teach you statutes and judgments, for your doing them in the land whither ye are passing over to possess it;
15and ye have been very watchful of your souls, for ye have not seen any similitude in the day of Jehovah's speaking unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire,
16lest ye do corruptly, and have made to you a graven image, a similitude of any figure, a form of male or female —
17a form of any beast which [is] in the earth — a form of any winged bird which flieth in the heavens —
18a form of any creeping thing on the ground — a form of any fish which [is] in the waters under the earth;
19‘And lest thou lift up thine eyes towards the heavens, and hast seen the sun, and the moon, and the stars, all the host of the heavens, and thou hast been forced, and hast bowed thyself to them, and served them, which Jehovah thy God hath apportioned to all the peoples under the whole heavens.
20‘And you hath Jehovah taken, and He is bringing you out from the iron furnace, from Egypt, to be to Him for a people — an inheritance, as [at] this day.
21‘And Jehovah hath shewed himself wroth with me because of your words, and sweareth to my not passing over the Jordan, and to my not going in unto the good land which Jehovah thy God is giving to thee — an inheritance;
22for I am dying in this land; I am not passing over the Jordan, and ye are passing over, and have possessed this good land.
23‘Take heed to yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of Jehovah your God, which He hath made with you, and have made to yourselves a graven image, a similitude of anything [concerning] which Jehovah thy God hath charged thee:
24for Jehovah thy God is a fire consuming — a zealous God.
25‘When thou begettest sons and sons' sons, and ye have become old in the land, and have done corruptly, and have made a graven image, a similitude of anything, and have done the evil thing in the eyes of Jehovah, to provoke Him to anger: —
26I have caused to testify against you this day the heavens and the earth, that ye do perish utterly hastily from off the land whither ye are passing over the Jordan to possess it; ye do not prolong days upon it, but are utterly destroyed;
27and Jehovah hath scattered you among the peoples, and ye have been left few in number among the nations, whither Jehovah leadeth you,
28and ye have served there gods, work of man's hands, wood and stone, which see not, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.
29‘And — ye have sought from thence Jehovah thy God, and hast found, when thou seekest Him with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
30in distress [being] to thee, and all these things have found thee, in the latter end of the days, and thou hast turned back unto Jehovah thy God, and hast hearkened to His voice;
31for a merciful God [is] Jehovah thy God; He doth not fail thee, nor destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers, which He hath sworn to them.
32‘For, ask, I pray thee, at the former days which have been before thee, from the day that God prepared man on the earth, and from the [one] end of the heavens even unto the [other] end of the heavens, whether there hath been as this great thing — or hath been heard like it?
33Hath a people heard the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, thou — and doth live?
34Or hath God tried to go in to take to Himself, a nation from the midst of a nation, by trials, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a strong hand, and by a stretchedout arm, and by great terrors — according to all that Jehovah your God hath done to you, in Egypt, before your eyes?
35Thou, thou hast been shewn [it], to know that Jehovah He [is] God; there is none else besides Him.
36‘From the heavens He hath caused thee to hear His voice, to instruct thee, and on earth He hath shewed thee His great fire, and His words thou hast heard out of the midst of the fire.
37‘And because that He hath loved thy fathers, He doth also fix on their seed after them, and doth bring thee out, in His presence, by His great power, from Egypt:
38to dispossess nations greater and stronger than thou, from thy presence, to bring thee in to give to thee their land — an inheritance, as [at] this day.
39‘And thou hast known to-day, and hast turned [it] back unto thy heart, that Jehovah He [is] God, in the heavens above, and on the earth beneath — there is none else;
40and thou hast kept His statutes and His commands which I am commanding thee to-day, so that it is well to thee, and to thy sons after thee, and so that thou prolongest days on the ground which Jehovah thy God is giving to thee — all the days.’
41Then Moses separateth three cities beyond the Jordan, towards the sun-rising,
42for the fleeing thither of the man-slayer, who slayeth his neighbour unknowingly, and he is not hating him heretofore, and he hath fled unto one of these cities, and he hath lived:
43Bezer, in the wilderness, in the land of the plain, of the Reubenite; and Ramoth, in Gilead, of the Gadite; and Golan, in Bashan, of the Manassahite.
44And this [is] the law which Moses hath set before the sons of Israel;
45these [are] the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments, which Moses hath spoken unto the sons of Israel, in their coming out of Egypt,
46beyond the Jordan, in the valley over-against Beth-Peor, in the land of Sihon, king of the Amorite, who is dwelling in Heshbon, whom Moses and the sons of Israel have smitten, in their coming out of Egypt,
47and they possess his land, and the land of Og king of Bashan, two kings of the Amorite who [are] beyond the Jordan, [towards] the sun-rising;
48from Aroer, which [is] by the edge of the brook Arnon, even unto mount Sion, which [is] Hermon —
49and all the plain beyond the Jordan eastward, even unto the sea of the plain, under the springs of Pisgah.
Currently Selected:
:
Highlight
Share
Copy
Want to have your highlights saved across all your devices? Sign up or sign in
maintained by the British and Foreign Bible Society