[This chapter ends with one of the ‘OT’ verses we used to commit to memory as Christians/Messianics; we should continue to keep it in mind, now that we have seriously taken YHWH’s TORAH as the one and only ‘very words of God’.
The Revelator on Sinai has given humankind only the instructions relevant to relationships—with Him, with fellowmen, with the rest of creation. Ironically, even with these instructions alone—there is failure in obedience on a grand scale, judging from the history of humankind and from what is observable in the world today.
There is no more reason in this age of computerized information technology, to remain ignorant of the TORAH. It is no longer a matter of information reaching every human being; it is a matter of choice: either one cares to know what God’s will is on every matter of life on earth; either one believes the God of Torah, or not.
Informed Israel (except for the remnant faithful) and uninformed non-Israelites (except for gentiles who have embraced Him and His Way) have all but ignored Divine revelation; yet, the instructions of YHWH are do-able. Part of the problem is the theology of one of the three major world religions that trace its roots to Abraham and the Hebrew Scriptures: Christianity. The teaching that springs from Paul who claims to be the ‘pharisee of pharisees’, who claims to be a Jew, has written the very words that deny the instructions of his own God: ‘we are under grace, not Law.’
What did he and all the followers of his teaching miss? LAW is GRACE!
The LawGiver taught humankind His Way so that we could navigate our journey in life doing what is RIGHT toward Him, our fellowmen, and the created world.
To stress the last and final verse of this chapter, hereunder is reproduced both the verse as well as the commentary, just in case some readers give up reading halfway through this post:
28 The hidden things are for YHVH our God, but the revealed-things are for us and for our children, for the ages, to observe all the words of this Instruction.the secret things . . . that we may do. ‘The secret things (of the sin) are for God to discover, but the judgment when revealed is before us for ever as a warning’ (Moulton).
In Jewish thought, this v. has been made into a great law of life.
- There are limits to what mortal beings can know.
- Certain things are in the hands of God alone, and must be left with Him.
- But there are other things which are ‘revealed’ — the words and ordinances of the Torah—
- and to these we and all successive generations must render willing obedience.
Benjamin Szold pointed out that the accentuation likewise emphasizes this truth. If we follow the accents, this v. reads:
‘The secrets things belong to the LORD our God and the revealed things; for us and our children it is to carry out all the words of this Law.’This v. is one of the 15 passages of the Bible in which words are dotted. The most probably explanation of these dots is, that they were intended to call attention to important homiletical teachings in connection with the words thus dotted.
Commentary here is from the best of Jewish minds as collected in one resource book by Dr. J.H. Hertz, Pentateuch and Haftorahs; our translation of choice is EF/Everett Fox,The Five Books of Moses.–Admin1.]
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Deuteronomy/Davarim 29
In this and the succeeding chapters, Moses sums up the argument in the previous discourses. He reviews the journey of Israel from Egypt to Moab. Israel now stands ready to enter God’s Covenant; let none dream to escape the curse of disobedience. God’s wrath will be manifest to all in Israel’s Exile. Yet even then, Repentance will bring return from Exile. Let Israel note the simplicity of the Divine Commandment, and the issues of life and death dependent on obedience or disobedience to it.
1 Now Moshe called all Israel (together) and said to them: You yourselves have seen all that YHVH did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, to all his servants and to all his land,
seen all that the LORD did. They had been witnesses of God’s special watchfulness over them, in guiding them safely through the wilderness, and in aiding them to crush their enemies.
2 the great trials that your eyes saw, those great signs and portents.great trials. See IV, 34.
3 But YHVH has not given you a mind to know or eyes to see or ears to hear, until this day.a heart to know. The constant succession of God’s mercies had no proper effect on them, as the spiritual power was not theirs to appreciate the full meaning of Israel’s history; . . . [fast-forward to Isaiah VI,9 and10:
hear ye indeed. The great failing of the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem during the prosperous reign of Uzziah was an insensibility to God and Divine things; they did not miss God, and therefore they were not prepared to seek Him. To such a generation, the first effect of Isaiah’s message of the holiness of god and His absolute sovereignty over their lives, would be to increase their blindness and obduracy. It would tend to ‘harden their hearts’; see on Exod. IV,21. Most of his hearers would stubbornly reject his message; they will harden their hearts; and the fuller the teachings imparted to them, the deeper will be the guilt of rejecting them. This tragic effect of his message Isaiah is clearly shown on the very threshold of his ministry and the ‘result of the prophet’s ministration is described as though it were its purpose’ (Skinner).]
4 Now I had you travel for forty years in the wilderness; t here did not wear-out your garments from upon you, your sandal did not wear-out from upon your foot,led you forty years. The narrative here suddenly changes to the first person singular, with God as the speaker.
your clothes are not waxen old. You had no need to trouble yourselves with material cares.
5 bread you did not eat, wine and intoxicant you did not drink, in order that you might know that I am YHVH your God.that ye . . . LORD. To teach you dependence on God’s guidance and sustaining care.
6 When you came to this place, Sihon king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan came-out to meet you in war, but we struck them down,7 we took away their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Re’uvenites and to the Gadites, and to half the Menashite tribe.
8 So you are to be-careful regarding the words of this covenant, and are to observe them, in order that you may act-wisely in all that you do.
observe therefore the words of this covenant. Now that you have succeeded, be humble even in the midst of your triumphs; observe all the words of the Covenant, and do them.
9-28. MOSES’ THIRD DISCOURSE CONTINUED
Moses reviews the different orders of people before him, all assembled to enter into a Covenant with God: heads of tribes, elders, officers, all the men of Israel, the little ones, the wives, the strangers; he thinks of others who shall hereafter take part in such solemn acts. He warns every man or woman, every family or tribe, against nourishing evil in their hearts, and trusting to escape in the general righteousness. He proclaims how the sinful individual shall be separated for doom, the land of a sinful tribe overthrown in a curse. But he adds words of mercy; and he makes solemn appeals to choose life and not death (Moulton).
9 You are stationed today, all of you, before the presence of YHVH your God: your heads, your tribes, your elders and your officials, all the men of Israel,standing this day all of you. Moses spoke these words to the multitudes of Israel, whom he had assembled to stand before God on the day of his death (Rashi).
your heads, your tribes. i.e. the heads of your tribes (Rashi, Ibn Ezra).
10 your little-ones, your wives, your sojourner that is amid your encampments, from your woodchopper to your waterhauler,thy stranger. The non-Israelite element that accompanied them out of Egypt; Exod. XII,38; Num. XI,4.
hewer of thy wood . . . water. The strangers performing menial duties for the individual Israelites. Thus, all classes of the population are to be included in the Covenant.
11 for you to cross over into the covenant of YHVH your God, and into his oath-of-fealty that YHVH your God is cutting with you today-and into His oath. A covenant sealed by an oath; Gen. XXVI,28.
12 in order that he may establish you today for him as a people, with him being for you as a god, as he promised you and as he swore to your fathers, to Avraham, to Yitzhak, and to Yaakov.13-28. ISRAEL, PRESENT AND FUTURE, IS A UNITY
The Covenant is one which must be held to bind not only the living who were present that day, but their distant posterity as well.
13 Not with you, you-alone do I cut this covenant and this oath,14 but with the one that is here, standing with us today before the presence of YHVH our God, and (also) with the one that is not here with us today.
15 Indeed, you yourselves know how we were settled in the land of Egypt, and how we crossed amid the nations that you crossed;
for ye to know. ‘For ye have experience of the idolatry rife both in Egypt and among the other nations bordering on Canaan; and can judge consequently of the necessity of including future generations in the terms of the obligation’ (Driver).
came through the midst of the nations. The trying experiences they endured in their contact with Edom and Ammon, Moab and Midian.
16 you saw their detestable-things and their idol-clods, of wood and stone, of silver and of gold, that were with them-detestable things. A contemptuous designation for idols, with an implied reference to the immoral rites that went hand in hand with idol-worship.
their idols. lit. ‘inanimate blocks’, fetishes.
silver and gold. The costly ornaments with which their worshippers beautified them (Talmud).
17 (beware) lest there be among you a man or a woman, a clan or a tribe whose heart faces away today from YHVH our God by going to serve the gods of those nations, lest there be among you a root bearing-fruit of wormwood and poison-herb;lest there should be among you. An elliptical phrase. The full sense is: “I adjure you to enter into this oath and covenant, for fear lest there should be among you . . . .’
gall. Heb. rosh, a poisonous herb.
gall and wormwood. Poison and bitterness—the consequences of idolatry. The sinner is here pictured as a bitter root among deadly fruit, destroying the life of a nation.
bless himself in his heart. Congratulate or delude himself. Because of God’s oath to Israel, this man flatters himself that he is secure, no matter how recklessly he indulges in evil.
in the stubbornness of my heart. ‘Though I persist in the strong wayward impulses of my heart Jer. XXIII,17.
that the watered be swept away with the dry. Or, ‘to sweep away the well-watered soil with the dry’; a proverbial phrase, denoting a hurricane of destruction that would annihilate the community through the sinfulness of individual members here and there. As often in Scripture, the consequences of the idolater’s self-congratulation are here represented ironically as his purpose. Other’s translate: ‘to add drunkenness to thirst’; i.e. to increase desire by indulgence; as indulgence increases desire, and desire in turn hastens to satisfy itself by indulgence (Maimonides, M. Lazarus).
19 (that) YHVH will not consent to grant-him-pardon, rather, then the anger of YHVH will smoke, along with his jealousy, against that man, and there will crouch upon him all the oath-curse that is written in this document, and YHVH will blot-out his name from under the heavens.shall be kindled. i.e. shall break forth in a destructive fire; Psalm XVIII,9.
shall lie upon him. The Heb. root of this word is used to denote the crouching of a wild beast at the moment of pouncing upon its prey. So here, retribution will pounce upon the evil-doer unawares.
20 YHVH will separate him for ill from all the tribes of Israel, according to all the oath-curses of the covenant that are written in this document of Instruction.shall separate him. ‘If the sinners be a whole tribe, then shall it be sundered from the other tribes, and its members carried away into exile’ (Ibn Exra)—a fate which later befell the Ten Tribes (II Kings XVII,6).
21-28. The whole land and people will suffer for apostasy, and future generations and the most distant nations will learn with horror God’s judgment upon the depopulated land.
21 Then shall say a later generation, your children who arise after you and the foreigner that comes from a land far-off, when they see the blows (dealt) this land and its sicknesses with which YHVH has made-it-sick:22 by brimstone and salt, is all its land burnt, it cannot be sown, it cannot sprout (anything), there cannot spring up in it any herbage- like the overturning of Sedom and Amora, Adma and Tzvoyim that YHVH overturned in his anger, in his venemous-wrath.
brimstone . . . wrath. The imagery is drawn from the desolate surroundings of the Dead Sea; Gen. XIX,24-29.
Admah and Zeboiim. See Gn. XIV,2.
23 Then shall say all the nations: For what (reason) did YHVH do thus to this land, (for) what was this great flaming anger?24 And they shall say (in reply): Because they abandoned the covenant of YHVH the God of their fathers that he cut with them when he took them out of the land of Egypt:
25 they went and served other gods and prostrated-themselves to them, gods they had not known and that he had not apportioned to them.
26 So the anger of YHVH flared up against that land, to bring upon it all the curse that is written in this document.
not allotted unto them. See IV,19.
26 So the anger of YHVH flared up against that land, to bring upon it all the curse that is written in this document.27 So YHVH uprooted them from their soil in anger, wrath, and great fury, and he cast them into another land, as (is) this day.
as it is to this day. As we see it to be the case now; II,30.
28 The hidden things are for YHVH our God, but the revealed-things are for us and for our children, for the ages, to observe all the words of this Instruction.
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the secret things . . . that we may do. ‘The secret things (of the sin) are for God to discover, but the judgment when revealed is before us for ever as a warning’ (Moulton). In Jewish thought, this v. has been made into a great law of life. There are limits to what mortal beings can know. Certain things are in the hands of God alone, and must be left with Him. But there are other things which are ‘revealed’ — the words and ordinances of the Torah—and to these we and all successive generations must render willing obedience. Benjamin Szold pointed out that the accentuation likewise emphasizes this truth. If we follow the accents, this v. reads: ‘The secrets things belong to the LORD our God and the revealed things; for us and our children it is to carry out all the words of this Law.’
This v. is one of the 15 passages of the Bible in which words are dotted. The most probably explanation of these dots is, that they were intended to call attention to important homiletical teachings in connection with the words thus dotted.