[Having come from Christian/Messianic ROOTS, it is difficult NOT to keep connecting what we have been taught by man-made religion, and what we have learned —not from ‘religion’ but from the Revelation given on Sinai, the Torah.
Truly, how does one reconcile the declarations of YHWH in this chapter with the Christian teaching that —-
- man is utterly helpless and definitely hopeless because of ‘original sin’;
- that man cannot rise above his inherited depraved nature
- because he has no ‘power’ within himself;
- that self-changing power is not internal but external,
- has to come from above, i.e. Holy Spirit;
- and that 3rd person HS inhabits only those who believe in the 2nd person of the Trinitarian God, Jesus Christ;
- and only then is one ‘enabled’ to obey.
Okay, but obey what? If the inventor of Christian theology, Paul of Tarsus, declares ‘we are under grace, not law’, then what are adherents of NT theology supposed to obey? Certainly not the Torah of YHWH, since that is obsolete and passé, says Paul.
So, obey what or obey who? If not YHWH of the “OT”, then who? Who else, or what else—the teachings of Christianity’s Man-God Jesus.
But think about it, who was Jesus?
A Jew who would have obeyed the Torah, in fact according to the gospels, who declared in Matthew 5:17-18:
“Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets; I came not to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished.”
And supposedly according to the teaching, ‘all things’ was accomplished at his sacrificial death on the cross as the Paschal Lamb of God, etc. etc. Please read other posts in this website if you need to be clarified because you’re still confused, or if you’re in shock to hear this for the first time.
The very fact that the 10 commandments (edited according to which Christian sect is using it),or the ‘decalogue’ has been adopted by Christianity as part of its commandments means it borrowed from the original teaching.
Where did it come from? Where else, the Old Testament that was retitled “old” to suggest obsolescence and that it is for the Jew and not for the Christian.
Really? The Decalogue states the ten foundation principles of the Sinaitic Covenant, intended for ALL people. Sometimes one has to wonder if the religion of the NT is indeed the ‘New Israel’ . . . when it sounds more like the ‘New Babylon’.
But back to this chapter: The Lawgiver (YHWH, not Moses) Himself assures the recipients that REALLY FOLKS, the commandments are not too hard nor too difficult to understand and apply.
The problem is NOT the commandments, the problem is the heart of each person who hears, hopefully understands, either accepts or refuses. The commandments are DOABLE! But unfortunately, even just the dietary prescriptions become a big issue; and the Sabbath . . . goodness gracious . . . man prefers to embrace a religion that caters to his convenience. Oh well . . . .to each his choice, that’s why the Creator endowed humanity with freedom of the will, but be ready to face the consequences of choosing SELF over the CREATOR of SELF.
INFORMED CHOICE: that is what we recommend in this website. We are a ‘resource center’ for seekers of Truth. Read, chew, then take it or leave it, digest or spit out! Never mind our words, but do not ignore YHWH’s WORDS of Life, the Torah, the Tree of Life. Choose life.
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.]
Deuteronomy/Davarim 30
MOSES’ THIRD DISCOURSE: CONCLUDED
1-10. OMNIPOTENCE OF REPENTANCE: RETURN FROM EXILE
A fuller restatement of the vital lesson taught in IV,29-31. Punishment is not God’s last word unto Israel. If Israel seeks God, Israel will find mercy at the hands of the LORD, and be brought back to the Land of his fathers.
1 Now it shall be: when there come upon you all these things, the blessing and the curse that I have set before you, and you take them to your heart among all the nations where YHVH your God has thrust-you- away,
and thou shalt bethink thyself. A consoling prediction that Israel’s woes would lead to Israel’s betterment.
2 and you return to YHVH your God and hearken to his voice, according to all that I command you today, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your being,shalt return. Israel would take to heart the hard lessons taught him by his exile.
3 YHVH your God will restore your fortunes, and have-compassion on you: he will return to collect you from all the peoples wherein YHVH your God has scattered you.God will turn thy captivity. He will change thy fortune, restore thee to thy former happy state (Luzzatto, Ewald). The Talmud renders it, ‘And the LORD thy God will return with thy captivity.’ When Israel was in exile, God was, so to speak, in exile along with him. The Divine Cause which it is Israel’s mission to champion was in eclipse.
4-6. Though the Israelites be scattered to the four winds of heaven, yet will God reunite them in the Land of the Fathers, and work in Israel a change of heart.
4 If you be thrust-away to the ends of the heavens, from there YHVH your God will collect you, from there he will take you,5 and YHVH your God will bring you to the land that your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it, he will do-well by you and make you many-more than your fathers.
6 YHVH your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your seed, to love YHVH your God with all your heart and with all your being, in order that you may live.
open thy heart. So that it be no longer closed up, impenetrable, and unreceptive of spiritual teaching. God would help Israel to fulfil his ideal of duty. The words of Jer. XXXI,32, “I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it,’ are taken by Nachmanides to express this particular teaching of Deuteronomy.
7-10. Israel will again enjoy the blessings of obedience on his own land.
7 YHVH your God will place all those threats upon your enemies and on those-that-hate-you, that pursue you;8 and you, (if) you return and hearken to the voice of YHVH and observe all his commandments that I command you today:
9 YHVH your God will make you excel in all the doings of your hands, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your animals, and in the fruit of your soil, to good-measure, indeed, YHVH will return to delighting in you, to (your) good, as he delighted in your fathers-
10 if you hearken to the voice of YHVH your God, by keeping his commandments and his laws-what is written in this document of Instruction- if you return to YHVH your God with all your heart and with all your being.
11-14. THE NATURE OF GOD’S COMMANDMENT
God’s commandment is not too hard nor distant; but nigh, clear, and practicable. Sheer life and death, good and evil, are set before Israel. Obedience means blessing; disobedience, destruction.
11 For the commandment that I command you this day: it is not too extraordinary for you, it is not too far away!this commandment. In the collective sense, meaning all the laws in Deuteronomy.
too hard. Or, ‘too wonderful’ to understand and beyond one’s power to do; nothing abstruse or esoteric, like the heathen mysteries (Hirsch).
neither is it far off. Out of reach, out of ken, far removed from the sphere of ordinary life.
12 It is not in the heavens, (for you) to say: Who will go up for us to the heavens and get it for us and have us hear it, that we may observe it?it is not in heaven. It is not something inaccessible or supernatural, making it necessary for a man to scale the heights of heaven to find it, and bring it down to earth!
13 And it is not across the sea, (for you) to say: Who will cross for us, across the sea, and get it for us and have us hear it, that we may observe it?beyond the sea. In some distant land, among strange peoples.
14 Rather, near to you is the word, exceedingly, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it!the word is very nigh. The word of god is on the lips of fathers and children, teachers and taught. Man can carry the Torah, unlike the Sanctuary, everywhere with him. ‘When thou walkest, it shall lead thee, when thou liest down, it shall watch over thee; and when thou awakest, it shall talk with thee‘ (Prov. VI,22). R. Jose, son of Kisma applied those words to the Torah, thus:
when thou walkest, it shall lead the—in this world;
when thou liest down, it shall watch over thee—in the grave;
and when thou wakest, it shall talk with thee—in the world to come.
that thou mayest do it. Moses does not say it is easy, ‘but more justly and finely, that it carries with it the conscience and provocation to its fulfillment by man’ (G.A. Smith).
15-20. PERORATION TO THE DISCOURSES OF DEUTERONOMY
A final reminder, as in XI,26, that two ways lie before them, one leading to life and good, the other to death and evil. The choice lies in their own hands. Only if they choose wisely will they enjoy long life and prosperity upon the land which they were about to inherit.
15 See, I set before you today life and good, and death and ill:16 in that I command you today to love YHVH your God, to walk in his ways and to keep his commandments, his laws and his regulations, that you may stay-alive and become-many and YHVH your God may bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. 17 Now if your heart should face-about, and you do not hearken, and you thrust-yourself-away and prostrate yourselves to other gods, and serve them,
18 I announce to you today that perish, you will perish, you will not prolong days on the soil that you are crossing the Jordan to enter, to possess.
19 I call-as-witness against you today the heavens and the earth: life and death I place before you, blessing and curse; now choose life, in order that you may stay-alive, you and your seed,
I call heaven and earth to witness. Heaven and earth are chosen as witnesses because they abide for ever, outlasting all the changes of human life; IV,26, Micah VI,1.
FREE WILL IN JUDAISM
therefore choose life. Jewish ethics is rooted in the doctrine of human responsibility, that is, freedom of the will. ‘All is in the hands of God, except the fear of God,’ is an undisputed maxim of the Rabbis. And ‘to subject our will to the will of our father in Heaven’ is the great purpose of man’s life on earth. Josephus states that the doctrine of Free-Will was maintained by the Pharisees both against the Sadducees, who attributed everything to chance, and the Essenes, who ascribed all the actions of man to predestination and Divine Providence. ‘Free will is granted to every man. If he desires to incline towards the good way, and be righteous, he has the power to do so; and if he desires to incline towards the unrighteous way, and be a wicked man, he has also the power to do so. Since this power of doing good and evil is in our own hands, and since all the wicked deeds which we have committed have been committed with our full consciousness, it befits us to turn in penitence and forsake our evil deeds; the power of doing so being still in our hands. Now this matter is a very important principle: nay, it is the pillar of the Law and of the commandments’ (Maimonides).
We are free agents in so far as our choice between good and evil is concerned. This is an undeniable fact of human nature; but it is an equally undeniable fact that the sphere in which that choice is exercised is limited for us by heredity and environment. As the earth follows the sun in its vast sweep through heavenly space, and yet at the same time daily revolves on its axis, even so man, in the midst of the larger national and cultural whole of which he is a part, ever revolves in his own orbit. His sphere of individual conduct is largely of man’s own making. It depends upon him alone whether his life be a cosmos—order, law, unity ruling in it; or whether it be chaos—desolate, void, and darkness for evermore hovering over it. Thus, in the moral universe man ever remains his own master. Though man cannot always even half control his destiny, God has given the reins of man’s conduct altogether into his hands. See Exod. XX,11.