MSB Notes on Deuteronomy:
The English title of the book comes from the Greek Septuagint mistranslation of "copy of this law" in 17:18 as "second law, which was rendered as "Deuteronomium in the Late Vulgate.  The Hebrew title of the book is translated "These are the words" from the first two words in the Hebrew version of the book.  MSB says the Hebrew title is much better since Deuteronomy is not at all a second law, but instead contains Moses' words of explanation concerning the law.  This is also the last book of the Pentateuch, the fifth of the five books of Moses.

Moses is the traditionally recognized author of the book, and both the Old and New Testaments have verses that support that.  (MSB lists these verses).  Deut 32:48-34:12 was added to the book after Moses died, most likely by Joshua, but the rest of the book was written by Moses just before his death in 1405 BC.  Most of this book contains Moses' farewell speeches committed to writing by Moses, probably in Jan/Feb 1405 BC.  These written speeches were given to the priests and elders for the coming generations of Israel (31:9, 24-26).

This book does not advance the history of Israel but was all written in a single location as they were camped.  They were in the valley E of the Jordan River (Dt. 1:1), referred to in Numbers as "The Plains of Moab".  Those who received this book - other than Joshua and Caleb, fell into two groups.  All those older than 20 the first time they came to the border of Canaan are now dead.  All those 40-60 years old were born in Egypt, but were children when they first came to this border.  Those under 40 had all been born in the desert, and wandering was the only life they'd ever known.  Now all these, under Joshua as leader, are about to enter and conquer the Promised Land.

Chapter 1
This verse tells what this book will be about, and sets the stage for what is coming next:
5 Beyond the Jordan, in the land of Moab, Moses undertook to explain this law, saying, 6 "The LORD our God said to us in Horeb, 'You have stayed long enough at this mountain. 7 Turn and take your journey, and go to the hill country of the Amorites and to all their neighbors in the Arabah, in the hill country and in the lowland and in the Negeb and by the seacoast, the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. [Deu 1:5-7 ESV]

Moses explains that it is time to go into Canaan and take the land that the Lord has promised them.  He goes on to recount the journey of the Israelites from Egypt to now.  He reminds them of how good men were set over them to help judge, because they were too many and too burdensome for Moses alone.  He reminds them of the 12 spies, and how they refused to enter the land because of their report.  Moses tells them how God was angry that they would not enter the land, and swore that not one of them of age would enter the land.  And the wandering in the desert started.  The whole history of Israel since Egypt is summarized here, the milestones recounted.  It is interesting that the milestones are the times that Israel refused to do what God had told them to do.  Those who left Egypt are best described as a generation of tiny faith.  They had been slaves for 430 years, and they always wanted to be looked after, taken care of, and provided for.  They never wanted to stand on their own two feet and do the best they could.  Another characteristic was that they always looked to man and not to God for their help.  They always complained to Moses or Aaron.  And when they did, they blamed either them, or they blamed God for their troubles.  They never remembered that it was God who always delivered them from their problems.  They never learned to trust God, even given example after example, object lesson after object lesson.  They just seemed incapable of building on God's faithfulness.  And because of that, an entire generation is buried in the sands of that wilderness.

2023 - This verse:
39 And as for your little ones, who you said would become a prey, and your children, who today have no knowledge of good or evil, they shall go in there. And to them I will give it, and they shall possess it. [Deu 1:39 ESV]
I consider this to be the OT type for the age of accountability.  

Chapter 2
After much wandering they went through Seir, the land given to Esau, but they respected that land, purchased what food and water they needed, because the land was not theirs, and not to be theirs.  This verse:
4 and command the people, "You are about to pass through the territory of your brothers, the people of Esau, who live in Seir; and they will be afraid of you. So be very careful. 5 Do not contend with them, for I will not give you any of their land, no, not so much as for the sole of the foot to tread on, because I have given Mount Seir to Esau as a possession. [Deu 2:4-5 ESV]
As I read about the travels in Numbers, I don't recall seeing that they paid for everything in Seir.  I surely don't remember that the reason was because God had given this land to Esau's descendants.  But remember, Esau was also blessed by Abraham, and God said He would multiply him.  Here is God's statement that though much may go wrong in Seir, God gave it to Abraham's descendants, and I'm betting it will be preserved for them.  Another addition to studying the prophecies about these nations in various places.

Next they went to Moab.  They were not to disturb Moab either, because God had given it to Lot for a possession.
These verses:
9 And the LORD said to me, 'Do not harass Moab or contend with them in battle, for I will not give you any of their land for a possession, because I have given Ar to the people of Lot for a possession.' ... 12 The Horites also lived in Seir formerly, but the people of Esau dispossessed them and destroyed them from before them and settled in their place, as Israel did to the land of their possession, which the LORD gave to them.) [Deu 2:9, 12 ESV]

This verse dates the "passing through" of Seir and Moab:
14 And the time from our leaving Kadesh-barnea until we crossed the brook Zered was thirty-eight years, until the entire generation, that is, the men of war, had perished from the camp, as the LORD had sworn to them. [Deu 2:14 ESV]  So they went through these two countries after the people had embraced the 10 bad reports, attempted to take Canaan on their own, and been defeated.  They went through these places after God had said that whole generation was to perish.  And after Seir and Moab - where they purchased supplies, they were sent out into the wilderness to wander for 38 years.

And at the end of that time, upon coming out of the wilderness, we get this:
18 'Today you are to cross the border of Moab at Ar. 19 And when you approach the territory of the people of Ammon, do not harass them or contend with them, for I will not give you any of the land of the people of Ammon as a possession, because I have given it to the sons of Lot for a possession.' [Deu 2:18-19 ESV]
Imagine...Israel had been "sentenced to wander" and a whole generation to die because of their lack of faith at the border of Canaan. From there, they pass through Seir and Moab - and see first hand that God keeps his promises to give land to Abraham's descendants, and to keep them safe in what He gives them.  They wander and die for 38 years, and when that is over, the lesson is repeated.  They come out of the wilderness through Ammon, another country that is possessed by the descendants of Abraham because God gave them that land and now preserves them in that land.  The bookends of the wilderness wandering were visible evidences of God's faithfulness in fulfilling His promises.  They had totally missed out at the border of Canaan.  Wow.  

But there is still more...At the end of the description of Moab and Arnon, there are parenthetical references about the inhabitants.  As to Moab it says this:
10 (The Emim formerly lived there, a people great and many, and tall as the Anakim. 11 Like the Anakim they are also counted as Rephaim, but the Moabites call them Emim. 12 The Horites also lived in Seir formerly, but the people of Esau dispossessed them and destroyed them from before them and settled in their place, as Israel did to the land of their possession, which the LORD gave to them.)  [Deu 2:10-12 ESV]
...and about Ammon it says this:
19 And when you approach the territory of the people of Ammon, do not harass them or contend with them, for I will not give you any of the land of the people of Ammon as a possession, because I have given it to the sons of Lot for a possession.' 20 (It is also counted as a land of Rephaim. Rephaim formerly lived there--but the Ammonites call them Zamzummim-- 21 a people great and many, and tall as the Anakim; but the LORD destroyed them before the Ammonites, and they dispossessed them and settled in their place, [Deu 2:19-21 ESV]
Why so much information about their being giants in Moab and Ammon?  Because of this:
28 However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. [Num 13:28 ESV]
...and also this:
32 So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, "The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. 33 And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them." [Num 13:32-33 ESV]
The 10 spies based their recommendation to avoid Canaan on the size of the people who lived there.  They were giants, descended from giants.  This was the point that carried the day for those recommending cowardice.  So on their way into the wilderness, and again when they exit, God shows Israel land that He has given to Abraham's descendants that was also previously occupied by giants - yet God gave it to the "little people" just as He had promised.  On the way to the wandering, those who were cowards were shamed for their cowardice, and on the way out, the new generation was reminded that giants are nothing when God leads the charge.  I never ever heard this before, I never noticed this before today.

Next, God, through Moses, told the people to go over the Valley of the Arnon, and take possession of the land of Sihon, the Amorite, King of Heshbon.  And that fear will be struck into the peoples under the whole heaven.  This was done, and they killed men, women, and children.  They took all his cities and villages, and lived in them.  (Seems to me the chronology says they lived there for a couple of years, more or less., since this was after 38 years of wandering and they don't actually enter Canaan until year 40.). 

Chapter 3
Next the people fight and defeat Og, King of Bashan, another king of the Amorites.  They take 60 walled cities and all the unwalled villages.  As with Sihon, it seems to me these cities are razed to the ground.  I don't think Israel moved in and lived in these cities.  They were "devoted to destruction".  There is a note in MSB on vs 6 where the phrase "devoted to destruction" is used.  It says "That is, set apart (devoted) as an offering to the Lord (for destruction):..."   They kill men, women, and children, but keep the livestock.  Og was the last of the Rephaim.  His bed was made of iron, and 9 cubits long, 13.5 feet.  He was a giant, and he and his people were defeated by Israel.

Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh take their possession on the east side of Jordan because it is good for livestock.  Then this verse:
19 Only your wives, your little ones, and your livestock (I know that you have much livestock) shall remain in the cities that I have given you, [Deu 3:19 ESV]
This implies that the cities in the lands East of the Jordan were intact - at least some were.  No...Numbers 32:16 says that the tribes who took possession of these lands to the East of the Jordan built their own cities:
16 Then they came near to him and said, "We will build sheepfolds here for our livestock, and cities for our little ones, [Num 32:16 ESV]

Though Moses has been told he cannot enter Canaan, he asks God to let him go over and just see it.  In fact, in ESV it says Moses pleaded with God.  These verses:
23 "And I pleaded with the LORD at that time, saying, ... 25 Please let me go over and see the good land beyond the Jordan, that good hill country and Lebanon.' [Deu 3:23, 25 ESV]

God says no.  A pretty emphatic no:
26 But the LORD was angry with me because of you and would not listen to me. And the LORD said to me, 'Enough from you; do not speak to me of this matter again. [Deu 3:26 ESV]

But God lets him see it from a mountain on the east of Jordan.  God says Joshua will lead the people into Canaan.  Moses tells the people he can't go over because of them.  Moses' sin was striking the rock instead of just speaking to it.  Not sure how this is "because of them".  (MSB says that because of Israel's sin, God's punishment for them was that they could not enter the land.  They lacked faith that God could do what he said.   Moses' sin in striking instead of obeying God's command to speak to the rock, was the same sin - lack of faith.  Therefore, because Israel's punishment was to be kept from the land, Moses was also kept out.  Because of their punishment, he is punished the same way, for the same sin.)

Chapter 4
2021 - Moses finishes his travelogue of the nation of Israel from the time they left Egypt until the present day at the end of chapter 3.  Now he revisits the laws God has given them.  This reads very much like the verse in Revelation, and I believe the theme shows up in several other places:
2 You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you. [Deu 4:2 ESV]  There is that discourse of Jesus in Matthew 23 I believe it is where he reproaches the Pharisees for the bending and twisting they've done to the law.  Following the "God's word sacred" chain in TCR, next is 12:32, which repeats the injunction against adding or subtracting from the word.  

Moses tells the people to obey all the laws from God when they enter Canaan.  Their rules will show them wise, and will set them apart from the people in that land.  This verse:
8 And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today? [Deu 4:8 ESV]
Israel was unique in the world as to it's statutes and laws and sacrifices.  Nothing like it had existed before.  God was now dealing with a nation, rather than with individual men - Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  God is doing a new thing here, never before seen.  Take God out of the picture, and you have to ask how such a unique set of commandments and laws could have arisen in the middle of a planet populated by idol worshipers?  Where could the idea of one and only one God have come from, and how could it ever have "stuck"?

Moses reminds them that when God spoke, it was only a voice, not a form.  Therefore, no images are to be made and worshiped of anything that lives - man, beast, sea creatures, bugs - nor of any heavenly bodies like the sun or stars.  These verses are also interesting:
12 Then the LORD spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of words, but saw no form; there was only a voice. 13 And he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone. 14 And the LORD commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and rules, that you might do them in the land that you are going over to possess. [Deu 4:12-14 ESV]
This confirms that the 10 were not given to Moses alone, up on the mountain, and then he brought them down and read them to the people.  God spoke the 10 commandments to that whole nation from a mountain on fire.  Each one heard God's voice pronounce that these were His rules.  The old movie gets it wrong.  Completely wrong.

2021 - This answers the "why no idols" question:
15 "Therefore watch yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, 16 beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, 17 the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, 18 the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth. [Deu 4:15-18 ESV]  If that first phrase about any figure includes crosses, then we have some problems.  I note also that there is nothing about carved stars, suns, or moons here, yet we know these are included.  There are several places that give injunctions against idols.  I know that in Kings or Chronicles it talks about sun and star worship and forbids them.  Ahhh!  In fact this injunction is just a little further along in the reading....

And as to worshiping idols, no carved images of anything alive on the earth were allowed, nor were they allowed to worship these created things.  And this about the heavens:
19 And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. [Deu 4:12-19 ESV]
Worshiping something like the sun, that gives heat and light to all, makes no distinction between the righteous and the wicked, and cannot be persuaded with prayer and sacrifice to do anything other than it already does, not only shouldn't be worshiped, but obviously would just be ridiculous to worship.  Ahh...here is something science has done for us, and should get some credit for doing!  Science has shown that the sun is not a god, nor are any stars gods, and so on.  It shows us that animals are just animals, running on instinct, and completely unable to do anything for us no matter how much we pray to them.  Science has proved that nothing on earth, and nothing tangible in heaven, has the characteristics of a god, and most certainly not the characteristics of The God.  
Possible FB post.

2021 - Just to be complete about carved images of things in the sky, there is this, in the next chapter:
8 "'You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. [Deu 5:8 ESV]  This leaves out nothing at all.

The penalty for carving idols is severe.  The covenant with this nation is conditional on them NOT doing that - among other things.  Moses puts it this way:
25 "When you father children and children's children, and have grown old in the land, if you act corruptly by making a carved image in the form of anything, and by doing what is evil in the sight of the LORD your God, so as to provoke him to anger, 26 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess. You will not live long in it, but will be utterly destroyed. [Deu 4:25-26 ESV]
And this is what happens.  The sins of King Manasseh and the idol worship that he supports finally takes Israel so far from God's commandments that God reaches the end of his patience with them.  Assyria comes, and then Babylon, and finally Rome, leaving Israel desolate, broken, not a nation or a people, and from 70 AD to now they have had neither King or High Priest.  This is why Israel is set aside for now - for the Age of the Gentiles - and will not be restored until the end, when God keeps the promises first made to Abraham.

2024 - I would go so far as to say this is why Israel continues to be at war on every side and from within.  I would say this is why her own people are often her enemy.  This is also why there can be no end of this conflict.  It will stay that way until vss 29 and 30 below come to pass.  And look at the time frame in vs 30!  In the ESV it is phrased "...in the latter days, you will return to the LORD your God and obey...".  NOT UNTIL THEN!  You can broaden the definition of latter days all you want and so say the reinstatement of Israel as a state and the constant migration from that time to this is the "return" spoken of here, but I do not believe that.  If it was that, there would be no dispute about who's land this is.

2021 - This whole passage ought to be noted so I am putting all the verses in here.  If the people worship other gods - the sin of sins really, then these verses tell what the consequence for the nation will be.  Vss 25, 26 above say that they will be utterly destroyed as a nation, and then this prophetic warning that in fact unfolds the future of Israel right down to the end of the world follows in vss 27-31:
27 And the LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the LORD will drive you. 28 And there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands, that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell. 29 But from there you will seek the LORD your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul. 30 When you are in tribulation, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the LORD your God and obey his voice. 31 For the LORD your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them. [Deu 4:27-31 ESV]
The final restoration is prophesied in these verses:
30 When you are in tribulation, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the LORD your God and obey his voice. 31 For the LORD your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them. [Deu 4:30-31 ESV]
This is more than a warning.  It is also a prophecy that Israel will turn away, but will repent during the tribulation period prior to Christ's second coming.  Moses saw, this long ago, where history was going and where it would end.
The amazing thing here is that Moses was seeing beyond the Age of the Gentiles to the tribulation period at the end of the world.  Surely here, in a nutshell, is an example of how the prophets of old considered the present age and the tribulation at the end as continuous.  There is no word here about the Gentiles.  Yet, there are prophecies about the Gentiles.  There is just not enough detail to understand with foresight what seems so obvious to us in hindsight.  That mystery - the events of the Age of the Gentiles - is left for Jesus to fill in during his time on earth.  That is the unique ministry of Jesus- to complete the law, fulfill the law, explain the law, and tie all things together.  It is important to note here that Moses is specifically addressing assembled Israel.  All of them.  The nation.  He is not telling them what will happen individually to Israeli's in the future, but what is in store for the nation.  The fate of the nation.  This passage would seem to be a good argument for the continued separation of Israel as a nation, and the future fulfillment of their national promises, separately and distinctly from the fulfillment of the New Covenant.  I am ever more convinced that practically no Gentiles will be saved during the final 7 years, just as only a minute fraction of the Jews are being saved today.  In Tribulation, there will be really no justification at all for preserving a remnant of the Gentiles.  The promises to the Gentiles are fulfilled at the rapture!!!!  Oh my!  This is important!
2023 - Vs 27 talks about them being scattered among the peoples, and being left few in number.  Could it be that when their numbers get too big, God brings destruction to reduce their numbers back down?  In WWII  6 million Jews were destroyed. Surely this was a significant portion of their worldwide population at the time.  Perhaps that is why there is so much anti-Semitism - it keeps them confined and reduced and in many cases impoverished and so keeps their numbers low.  I have never heard this preached or taught, but I think it makes a decent amount of sense.

2023 - Vss 32-34, Has there ever been ANY account of any god who 1, spoke to his people in a VOICE coming out of the fire? or 2, ever attempt to take a nation for himself from another nation?  These two things are unique to the God of the Bible.  Never ever, anywhere else, has this been recorded.  So the answer to these two questions is still a resounding no.  Only one God has ever done these two things.
Possible FB post.

2021 - 35 To you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides him. [Deu 4:35 ESV].
If  you don't believe in THIS God, there is no other god worthy.  If this God does not meet your requirements, then you die godless, and alone, with no one to trust but yourself.  

Then, this early, three Cities of Refuge are designated on the East side of the Jordan.  Is this principle ignored in western law?  Did John Locke not make some provision for a similar "refuge"?  Or was this only necessary because of the "Avenger of Blood"?  This would be a good study.

Chapter 5
A couple of interesting verses at the beginning of the chapter.  First, this one:
1 And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, "Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the rules that I speak in your hearing today, and you shall learn them and be careful to do them. [Deu 5:1 ESV]
This begins Moses' second address to the assembled people.  Moses calls them all, and repeats the 10 commandments for them, so that they can learn them and follow them.  He knows his times is short, and rather than tell the people to look to the priests and the Levites for the rules and directions, Moses tells them to learn the law themselves, and to keep their own counsel as to these laws.  They are clear enough for anyone, and no special interpreter is needed.  
And then this verse:
3 Not with our fathers did the LORD make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today. [Deu 5:3 ESV]
This did not refer literally to the Dad's of those assembled.  The reference is that the Sinai covenant is distinct from the promises made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - from the Abrahamic Covenant.  This covenant is with the nation of Israel, not with individuals.  They are all a part of the covenant, but this is a national covenant.  This is an extremely important distinction.
2021 - The fact that Moses is telling the people to learn the law and to be careful to do it right is a crippling blow - I think - to modern priests in the Catholic church.  They have appropriated the Bible to themselves in direct contradiction of Moses' words here.  There is no way Peter would have opposed Moses' direction, he was too good a Jew.  Paul would also have had a huge problem with this, and he was an even better Jew.  The priesthood in Moses day was there to make the sacrifices, and to liaison between man and God, because the veil was still in place.  When that veil tore, there was no longer any need at all for a priest.  Not of any kind.  God could be approached directly for inquiry, and the last sacrifice ever needed was in the past.

The MSB note at the beginning of 5 puts 5:1-11:32 as a unit.  In 5:1-33 Moses repeats the basic commands that are foundational to the Sinai Covenant.  Then in 6:1-11:32, he expounds and applies the first three of the Ten Commandments to the present experience of the people.

The ten commandments are restated by Moses in vss 7-21.
This verse shows that this is not just a recounting of the 10 as from memory, but additional information - amplification if you will - of the intent of the Ten Commandments:
9 You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, [Deu 5:9 ESV]
Here is this verse, and we see it in context.  It is about idol worship, about putting faith in things man made or things in the heavens which all men can access.  If you worship such things, then so will your children and their children and so on.  It is in this way that our sins become the sins of our children and grandchildren.  It is NOT that they go to hell for our sins, but that they might learn to sin by copying our own sins.  It takes generations in most cases to overcome idolatry, and all that goes with it.  2021 - Another point here is that God only does this in response to being hated.  It is not that the children out to the fourth generation are never given a chance.  But so long as they hate God, then their fate is the same as their idolatrous fathers' fates.  Vs 10 emphasizes this by contrasting God's dealing with those who hate him with how he deals with the thousands who love him.

This one:
16 "'Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. [Deu 5:16 ESV]
Here also, as in the original, the long days are in Canaan.  This promise is to Israel.  We always apply it as a universal.  I have some doubt that it really applies in that way.  But Martha straightened me out.  The command is repeated in the NT, and it is Gentiles primarily that are being addressed.  Those verses are here:
2 "Honor your father and mother" (this is the first commandment with a promise), 3 "that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land." [Eph 6:2-3 ESV]
2021 - And as I read this passage in Deuteronomy today, it occurs to me that if this commandment carries over after the abrogation of the law, then why wouldn't the other 9?  If we read through them, it is pretty clear that they do all apply still, except for keeping the Sabbath.  But why would that one be different?  If the other nine carry, then we should still honor the Sabbath also, and keep it holy.  That's another confusing issue that I believe has been settled for me once and for all.

Vs 22 confirms yet again that the Ten were spoken to the entire nation of Israel, not just to Moses on the tablets so he could bring them down and tell everyone:
22 "These words the LORD spoke to all your assembly at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice; and he added no more. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me. [Deu 5:22 ESV]

Moses recounts that the people were very afraid of God's voice, and asked Moses from that point on to do the listening, and to relay what he was told.  They were afraid that if they continued to hear God directly they would die.

29 Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever! [Deu 5:29 ESV]
This was after the people said they were afraid to hear God directly, as they had a Horeb, and they asked Moses to hear for them, and they would do what God said through him.  Fear and reverence. Proper fear and reverence.  God is foreshadowing the continual and repeated rebellion of Israel with this statement.
Possible FB post.  Will need some work.

This verse, with a point I'd never noticed before:
31 But you, stand here by me, and I will tell you the whole commandment and the statutes and the rules that you shall teach them, that they may do them in the land that I am giving them to possess.' [Deu 5:31 ESV]
So the rest of the law - besides the 10 - was just as important and just as much given by God directly to the people.  It was given to Moses alone, though, at the request of the people.  It would be a mistake to diminish the importance and strictness of any of the laws God gave to Moses.  This makes sense in that the prescribed punishment for breaking some of those laws was death.  I have always seen the 10 as having a special, more "sacred" position in the hierarchy, and the rest of the rules as lesser rules.  I have been completely wrong about this.  
2021 - Perhaps the distinction, and the difference, between the first 10 give to ALL the people and then the rest of the law, is that what was spoken directly to all men is binding on all men forever.  The law that came through Moses was abrogated, pretty much entirely.  Maybe this is the reason Paul brings forward the honor your mother and father, but never advocates for circumcision, keeping the feasts, or any of that part of the law.  How interesting...

Chapter 6
4 "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. [Deu 6:4-7 ESV]
Vss 10-15 are an expansion of the first commandment, reminding the people of all that God has done for them, and reminding them that the covenant obligates them to worship only Him.  These verses:
14 You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you-- 15 for the LORD your God in your midst is a jealous God--lest the anger of the LORD your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth. [Deu 6:14-15 ESV]
2023 - This year I noticed this one:  13 It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. [Deu 6:13 ESV].  In the NT, Jesus says not to swear this way...I think.  I need to come back and look more deeply at this...but cannot right now.

Next, we get this:
16 "You shall not put the LORD your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah. [Deu 6:16 ESV]
This seems to be the beginning of the next point, but I don't see how it ties to the second commandment, nor to the first.  At Massah, the people complained because there was no water for them.  They accuse Moses of being the cause of their situation.  They are almost ready to stone Moses.  They were looking to him for deliverance, and not to God.  Is this the test?  The people were in full rebellion.  Perhaps the people tested God with the attitude that if God did not give them the water they wanted, they would rebel, walk away, go back to Egypt.  Perhaps they thought they could give God an ultimatum, and get their own way instead of His way.  When Satan tempted Jesus to throw himself down, because the angels would save him, this was the same attitude.  It seeks to take advantage of one's designation as "special" to God, or "holy" to God, or "set apart" by God as a lever to extort favors from God.  This is a huge mistake.  This might be what happens when we pray "Do this for me, Lord, or I will leave you forever".  It is truly a bad idea to try and blackmail God, to exact specific performance from God, in this way.
Possible FB post...though this would be the second on this same point I believe.

But still...why is this statement in this particular spot.  How does it tie to the first commandment?  Or the second? Or the third?  No help from the MSB notes.  Hmm...if you go all the way back to 5:29, where God's desire is that the attitude of fear and reverence be characteristic of His people from then on - and Moses uses a lot of verses recounting that time - and contrast it with their arrogance toward God at Mara, then that might be the reason it is stated here instead of elsewhere.

Moses spoke these words as he was reminding the people of God's statutes and commandments and judgements.

Chapter 7
Instructions as to how they are to deal with the nations they are about to conquer.  This verse:
2 and when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. [Deu 7:2 ESV]
There is no wiggle room here.  They were not to be merciful, compassionate, or empathetic.  God had already judged those to be conquered and found them worthy of death, not mercy.  They had run out of chances.  Just as in the future, Israel would also run out of chances.  It was not Israel that judged these nations and decided to wipe them out, it was God that judged.  To do other than God commanded is what would be "wrong".

But right after, you get this:
3 You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, [Deu 7:3 ESV]
If all those people were to be killed, then there wouldn't be anyone left to intermarry.  So this implies that they were to be destroyed as nations, kings deposed, property taken, they were to be relieved of all their worldly goods, and in many cases they were to be killed.  BUT, vs 3 acknowledges that they will not all be killed.  This was not complete genocide.  This was about nations, not about individuals.  We are in the Sinai covenant age, where God deals with nations, not with individuals as with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  This is a new thing, a stark contrast to what has gone before.
Possible FB post.  I think a lot of people wonder how to explain God's orders to kill so many people.

It was always in a battle against an army, or the siege of a city where God required complete annihilation of the inhabitants or of the army.  The small towns, unfortified cities were often not taken at all.  Those people just scattered when the fortress cities fell.  Maybe it is these that they aren't to intermarry with.

The reason that they are not to intermarry is also given.  Because if they do, the foreign spouses will worship their own gods, the gods of those former nations, and sway the Israelites to do the same.

And here, a final instruction on how to devote them to destruction:
5 But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire. [Deu 7:5 ESV]

2021 - Reading this again today, I don't know why I ever thought that God had ordered the death of every single person anywhere in Canaan.  It is nations that are devoted to destruction.  There are just too many other injunctions about how to deal with survivors for there to be any implication that all were to be killed.  In some cities, especially early on, every man, woman, child, and beast was to be destroyed.  This would surely lessen the resistance of the remaining enemies.  But this was about individual cities, never about an entire nation.  This explains things later also, as in Joshua, when it says they had conquered all the land - yet we know that a lot of cities still remained to be conquered.  It all fits together when you understand it this way.  The military power of Canaan was broken.  They were incapable of resisting a full occupation by Israel.  But there was still work to be done, and in fact more instructions are given here about how to handle the mopping up than about how to break the military back of Canaan.  

Here is an interesting verse:
9 Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, [Deu 7:9 ESV]
Is there anywhere else in the Bible that mentions a thousand generations?  This would be like 25,000 years.  It has been about 3000 years since this statement was made.  So...is this a clue as to how long the Age of the Gentiles might last?  If so, we have a VERY long way to go yet.  Hard to imagine us not all killing each other before we get to 25,000 years.  Probably best to take this as God staying faithful "forever" instead of a specific time period.  Still, this is interesting.
2023 - These two verses:
9 You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 10 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. [Deu 5:9-10 ESV].  There is a footnote to vs 10 that says "to thousands" can also correctly be translated "to the thousandth generation".  So yes, there is another place in the Bible that references a thousand generations.  This year, I also think it means for longer than man can ever comprehend, rather than setting a thousand generation limit on God's love.

Another promise about disease, which I focus on because we are going through this corona virus thing:
15 And the LORD will take away from you all sickness, and none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you knew, will he inflict on you, but he will lay them on all who hate you. [Deu 7:15 ESV]
Implies that God uses disease to chastise nations that hate Israel.  The promise of no disease is specific to Israel in the context here.  So the question is, can we look at this as a principle, or is this something between God and Israel?  In a larger sense, perhaps this is a covenant promise that ran as long as the Sinai Covenant.  Either way, it would not still apply to the New Covenant.

Here is another verse with a lot of "current interest":
20 Moreover, the LORD your God will send hornets among them, until those who are left and hide themselves from you are destroyed. [Deu 7:20 ESV]
So called murder hornets have arrived in the US.  If we take these as forever principles, then who is God driving us out before?  Who does He want to take over the US?  A godly nation?  Or is this like the Chaldeans conquering Israel later - a horrible barbaric nation sent as chastisement against a previously God-fearing nation that has gone too far down the wrong path?  I think the covenant argument wins...but still...
These two paragraphs together might make a FB post.  Also found this:
25 You shall serve the LORD your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you. 26 None shall miscarry or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days. [Exo 23:25-26 ESV]
2023 - So none of these are guaranteed, but conditional to Israel:  food  and water, sickness - think cancer, arthritis and so on, chronic disease of all kinds, miscarriage and barrenness, and a long full life.  In Israel's time, under the Old Covenant, God used these things to correct his people?  Or God intervened to keep these "natural occurrences" from the people.  That's it.  The implication is that it is normal in a corrupt and sinful world for all these things to happen.  In the OT, God promised, conditionally, to keep these things away.  The New Covenant, so far as I know, contains no such promises.  Instead, we have the Holy Spirit to comfort us even in the face of these corruptions of God's plan brought about by Adam's sin.
Possible FB post.

22 The LORD your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You may not make an end of them at once, lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you. [Deu 7:22 ESV]
The beasts that are eating the bodies of their enemies?  Carnivores multiply because there are so many dead?

Chapter 8
Moses continues his address to the people.
And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.
Deuteronomy 8:2 ESV
So it is not a question of whether they can take care of themselves now, not about whether they turned from a nation of slaves dependent on their masters to a self-motivated nation of proud people.  It was about whether they would see God in all that happened, praise Him for the good, and submit humbly to the bad He saw fit to allow, without ever questioning His motives.  They would praise Him for His blessings, and praise Him for the times of testing, knowing that by testing - by exercising faith in the dark - one grows stronger.

This verse also, about the testing.  How seldom we see the bad things as tests of our faith, as opportunity to grow:
3 And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. [Deu 8:3 ESV]
The MSB note says manna was previously unknown, and it appeared because God commanded it with his word.  God sent it.  It didn't just start showing up.  So the manna that fed them was there by the word of God.  It was God's word that caused the bread that fed the people.

2024 - But look at what else vs 3 says.  God knew they were getting thirsty at Mara.  He knew they were hungry before the manna.  God let that happen to see if they would look to him in faith, if they would trust him to supply their needs when they had no resources of their own.  When we have no food or water - which very few of us have experienced at all - we are  humbled.  We are reduced to a state where our whole ambition, our only goal, is to eat and drink.  The bad things that happen to us sometimes are testing us to find out on what we really depend.  God already knows, of course, so really God tests us so WE will know whether we truly depend on him or, sadly I think in most cases, on our own resources.  When things go badly, don't ask God to take it away, but ask him to help us truly KNOW that the Word is life, now bread.
Possible FB post.  Needs a little work, but a good one for Monday.

The text continues with God showing His people His power in the desert, preserving them and their goods, chastening and sustaining.  The fact that they have come to this point, about to enter the promised land, indicates that this second generation from Egypt has learned their lessons, they are looking to God, they have passed their tests.  Moses is reminding them how they got here, and why they are here and not their parents.

who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end.
Deuteronomy 8:16 ESV
The point of testing is to do you good in the end.

2024 - And these verses:
17 Beware lest you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.' 18 You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day. [Deu 8:17-18 ESV].
Look at how this is worded!  This implies that it is by our own power that we get wealth.  Of course we have a hand in it.  We don't just sit home and wait for God to dump pots of gold on the lawn.  We work.  What we have to remember though, is that God GAVE US THE POWER to get wealth, it is God that makes our labor productive, and even that is not because we are so cool, or so pious, or so charitable to others.  It is because God is/will/must fulfill HIS PROMISES made to those who came before us.  We are links in the chain, far removed from the location to which the chain is attached.  
This also means that promises like this are for the descendants of Abraham.  NOT for the Gentiles.  I do not think the Land promises are for us.  Israel will return to the land for a thousand years, and all these promises will be true during that time.  No disease, no sterility, explosion of population and livestock and food and drink of all kinds, likely sold to the rest of the planet at that time for great wealth.
Possible FB posts.  The first one to show that God "empowers" our work or no amount of labor would be productive.  Second, this only applies to us in a general way.  In principle, but not in promise.  Might not do this second part because it is about whether Israel and the church are separate.  I surely believe they are, but a lot of people do not.


Chapter 9
Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
Deuteronomy 9:5 ESV
We can never do enough good to deserve God's favors.  But we can do enough evil to deserve his wrath.  And when God does us good, and makes us stronger than our enemies or enriches us, in our pride we think we did it ourselves.  These chapters are written about Israel as a nation, not about his dealing with individuals.

2024 - Having a high opinion of ourselves, thinking that we have what we have because we are such shining examples of what God wants all those OTHER people to be like, seems to be about the worst thing we can do in God's eyes.  God doesn't care much for pride or self-esteem either one.  
The other side of that coin is that we also do not suffer because of what terrible examples we are.  Sin has consequences, yes, but we all know that bad things happen to good people, and we have seen in these last few posts that sometimes, the bad things are to test us so that we learn what it is that we really trust.  We are not successful because we are so good, but are instead recipients of things previously given to those who are so bad.  Careful with this one...
Possible FB post in a series.

2021 - Again, vs 5 doesn't speak of killing them every one, but of driving them out ahead of the invading Israeli's.  You don't drive dead people.  And the point is made again that this is not about how good Israel is, but about how evil the Canaanites are.

The nation of Israel is about two things.  It is about justice, in that the extreme wickedness of the inhabitants of Canaan, like the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, has reached the end of God's patience, and God has sent Israel to dispense that justice.  In so doing, secondly, Israel begins the fulfillment of God's unconditional promises to Abraham.  So we have here an overlap in the Abrahamic Covenant and the Sinai Covenant.  Hmm...it is interesting to note that an unconditional covenant is being fulfilled by a nation operating under a conditional covenant.  If Israel does not remain faithful to the conditions from which their benefits derive, then God can remove them - under the conditions of their contract - without diminishing the underlying covenant with Abraham at all.  These two covenants are layered on each other, not dependent on each other, not "mixed" with each other.  The two covenants have NOT become one in the nation of Israel.  Why then would we expect the New Covenant to become one with the Law of Moses, or the Abrahamic Covenant?  If God didn't put Abraham and Israel together as one - which he did not, but in fact annulled the Sinai Covenant - why would we think promises made to Abraham or to Israel are incorporated into the New Covenant.  The church, like Israel, is a layer atop the Abrahamic.  If the church failed, the Abrahamic would survive.  We know that the church does not fail completely, else there would be no reason for the rapture, which we know will come.  When the church is raptured out, the underlying Abrahamic Covenant will still be here, and it is the children of Abraham - in the form of the remnant of Israel - who will be used to fulfill that covenant in and through the Tribulation and Great Tribulation.

There is no way whatever that such an intricate, interconnected 1500 year long story could be written by so many different people.  No man or men are capable of weaving a "tale" like the one the Bible unfolds and reveals.  How can anyone ever doubt???

Moses reminds them of the first days at Sinai.  He reminds them that he was on the mountain forty days and got the tablets written with the finger of God.  But the people made the golden calf while they waited, angering God.  Moses says he came down, saw them, destroyed the tablets, and then went back up for another forty days, this time to plead with God to not destroy the whole nation of Israel and start over with Moses.  In light of where Israel ends up, this might actually have been better.  Moses also pleads for Aaron during this second forty days. So Aaron did not escape God's notice!  Exodus doesn't mention how angry God was with Aaron, but Moses tells us here that were it not for his intervention, God would have destroyed Aaron for what he did.  

Beginning in 21, we get sort of an accounting of all the times Israel rebelled.  The calf, Taberah, Massah, Kibroth-hatta-avah. When they were to enter Canaan the first time.  This chapter runs to where Moses is on the mountain the second time praying for God to refrain from destroying all Israel.

Chapter 10
Still continuing this same discourse from Moses.
"At that time the Lord said to me, 'Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to me on the mountain and make an ark of wood.
Deuteronomy 10:1 ESV
And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets that you broke, and you shall put them in the ark.'
Deuteronomy 10:2 ESV
I don't remember the ark of wood that the tablets were put into.  

God made the first tablets, that Moses broke.  Moses made the second tablets.  But God did the writing on both.

2023 - This verse:
4 And he wrote on the tablets, in the same writing as before, the Ten Commandments that the LORD had spoken to you on the mountain out of the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. And the LORD gave them to me. [Deu 10:4 ESV].  The Ten Words are different than the rest of the Law because the Ten were spoken directly to the people, to all of them, corporately, and at the same time.  The people - the whole nation - heard the God of heaven SPEAK to them.  And they agreed.  There was no filter, no buffer, no amplifier - whatever you want to call it - nothing at all was between them and God at that time.  This was before the priesthood.

These verses, which come after Moses recounts leaving Mt. Sinai on the way to Canaan to possess it with that first generation:
12  "And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul,
13  and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good? Deut. 10:12,13
This is a succinct statement of Israel's duties under the Sinai Covenant.  I think the phrase "with all your heart and with all your soul" is quite important.  That covenant was not just about ritual or sacrifices or priests.  It was about "buying in completely" to the idea that God would only require things that were for their good, and for their benefit, and they needed to believe this unwaveringly, no matter what.  Even if they were thirsty and there was no apparent water, their faith was to carry them in the knowledge that God would never abandon them to die of thirst.  The New Covenant is almost vs 12 alone.  Vs 13 is dropped.  All the law goes away, but the fear of the lord, walking in his ways, loving and serving to the core of our being are still required.  The law was dropped, and Jesus took its place.
2021 - The ceremonial law is dropped.  The things in the law that delayed punishment for sin are gone, because the perfect sacrifice came.  The dietary laws are gone, because the NT makes it clear that all things are good to eat.  But God's statutes and commandments are still to be obeyed.  We still can't go running off and do whatever we want.  I think we have established that The 10 are still in full forced and effect, and that if we love as we are supposed to - both God and neighbor - then the "whole law is contained in them".  I misspoke in saying the law was dropped.

Then this verse:
16  Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.
Again, the contrast between the external trappings, the jots and tittles, the do's and don'ts, and the real point of it all.  A heart set on God, and complete submission to His will.

2023 - This is the second time I have seen this phrase:
20 You shall fear the LORD your God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear. [Deu 10:20 ESV].  Here is the other place we saw it:
13 It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. [Deu 6:13 ESV]

Your fathers went down to Egypt seventy persons, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.
Deuteronomy 10:22 ESV
From 70 to over 600k men in 400 years.  Note that this  statement of fact fulfills God's promise to Abraham that his descendants would be this numerous.  This part has already been fulfilled.

Chapter 11
Moses is still talking, still the same discourse that began in Chapter 5.  Looking back at the MSB outline of the book, I note that there are three different speeches from Moses to the people in this book.  The first runs from 1:5-4:43, the second from 5:1-28:68, and the last from 29:1-30:20.

This chapter starts with "therefore", and the injunction is to love God and keep his commandments.  Moses follows this with reminders of God's power and punishment of those who defy Him.  He says he is speaking to the second generation - the ones who have seen God's power first hand, in Egypt, in the desert, and so on, rather than to their children, who have not had first hand experience of God's power.  

2021 - 6 and what he did to Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, son of Reuben, how the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households, their tents, and every living thing that followed them, in the midst of all Israel. [Deu 11:6 ESV]  I am having trouble resolving the original account of this with the verse that says the sons did not die, and now this verse that says "every living thing that followed".  The only way to read this is that Dathan's own sons revolted against him over his attack on Moses and Aaron.

vs 8 has a second therefore, plus two benefits from following God as the covenant requires.  The first is that they will be strong, and go in and conquer the land, and the second is that they may live in that land for a long time.  So the covenant is not short term by any means.  Just because they stay faithful long enough to conquer the land does not insure that it is theirs forever no matter how they or their descendants behave after that.  This covenant will only continue if Israel maintains the behavior they've agreed to, and their hearts stay true to God.  NOT just the ritual, but the heart that was spoken about in one of the last chapters.  It is increasingly clear to me - though I hadn't really understood it this way before - that the whole bargain God made with Israel would be abandoned if either party fails to abide by the stipulations.  This covenant was abandoned by God in King Manasseh's time.  He was the end.  From that King onward Israel was just a nation, unprotected by God, un-favored by God.  And in fact, once they crossed this line, they not only lost the blessings, but they also initiated the curses that God said would come if they walked away.  

But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven, a land that the Lord your God cares for. The eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.
Deuteronomy 11:11‭-‬12 ESV
Good Himself looks after the land He has given to Israel.  This land is contrasted in vs 10 with Egypt, where land must be irrigated to produce.  Canaan is watered by the rain, and produces without irrigation.  Because God makes sure the cycles work to the benefit of the crops.  In the next few verses, God tells them that should they cease to worship God, this beneficial agricultural cycle will be interrupted and they will go hungry, their cattle with die, and they will quickly be extinguished from the land.

2024 - Here is one we hear a lot these days, only reversed:
24 Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours. Your territory shall be from the wilderness to the Lebanon and from the River, the river Euphrates, to the western sea. [Deu 11:24 ESV].
From the river to the sea.  This promise was NOT made to Gaza or Palestina, it was made specifically and exclusively to the Jews.  When they say this, they know where it comes from.  They are seeking to expel the Jews from every spot the sole of their feet touched, from every square inch of the land that God gave them.  This chant is saying to God that they reject his allocation of what is his - all creation - to those for whom he made it.  Direct, knowing rejection of God's plan.  This will always have terrible consequences.
Can I do a FB post on this?

God gives Israel both a blessing and a curse depending on whether they obey Him or they follow other gods.  This verse:
26 "See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: 27 the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today, 28 and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside from the way that I am commanding you today, to go after other gods that you have not known. [Deu 11:26-28 ESV]
Plain as day.

The next verse sets up the scene for Israel's first action when they enter the land:
29 And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, you shall set the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. [Deu 11:29 ESV]
Some go up on one mountain and shout the blessings for right behavior, and others go up the other mountain, and shout back the curses for disobedience.  We will see this played out literally a little later.

Chapter 12
2023 - Three times in this chapter the Israelites are admonished NOT to eat the blood, but to pour it out like water.  They are not to eat "the life with the flesh".  

Now that the benefits and consequences of the rules have been reiterated, Moses begins to repeat the specific rules and regs that the people are to follow.  This will go on through the rest of this speech, which ends in Chapter 28:68.
I won't try to cover them all, but this first one seems very important:
2 You shall surely destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. 3 You shall tear down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their Asherim with fire. You shall chop down the carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place. 4 You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way. [Deu 12:2-4 ESV]
It wasn't just that God hated these false gods, idols, images, and so on.  It wasn't just that the Canaanites worshiped false gods, it was also that they worshiped in the wrong way.  God is distinguishing the worship of His people Israel from any worship that has taken place before.  He is contrasting them starkly with the practices of the nations in Canaan.  

In Israel, God is to be worshiped and sacrifices offered in only one, single, unique place and this will be chosen by God as His Place:
5 But you shall seek the place that the LORD your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name and make his habitation there. There you shall go, [Deu 12:5 ESV]
That place turns out to be Jerusalem.  God was there, and sacrifices were to be offered there.  It is no wonder so many people, even in this time, and under the New Covenant, that people are drawn to this place.

2024 - And we should see in this a complete departure from the way the nations surrounding Israel were doing things.  Only the worshipers of Jehovah came to a single, central location to make the sacrifices to their God.

2021 - 8 "You shall not do according to all that we are doing here today, everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes, [Deu 12:8 ESV].  Interesting verse.  The whole book of Judges is about everyone doing what is right in his own eyes.  This seems to specifically reference the sacrifices that were being made.  Apparently, even at this point after the establishment of the tabernacle, some were still sacrificing on their own and not using the priests.  God was allowing this at this time, but it was to stop once He established His habitation - Jerusalem.  When exactly did God choose Jerusalem, and this command about sacrificing only in that place go into effect?

Animals not dedicated to God may be eaten anywhere at any time.  They were never to eat the blood.  Here is an interesting verse:
20 "When the LORD your God enlarges your territory, as he has promised you, and you say, 'I will eat meat,' because you crave meat, you may eat meat whenever you desire. [Deu 12:20 ESV]
I would think this is PETA's least favorite verse.  Look how this puts animal  rights proponents in direct conflict with the Bible.  It puts those who are vegetarian because they think animals shouldn't be eaten into direct conflict with the Bible.  Even those who eat only vegetables because they think they are more healthy than meat would be indirectly at odds with the Bible, because this would be God saying people can have all the meat they want even though it's bad for them.  Why would God ever give us freedom to do something that is to our harm?  Remember too that the dietary rules of the Mosaic Law were to make even their culture distinct from those who surrounded them, make it difficult for other nations to "mingle" with them, and that those reasons went away with the Mosaic Covenant.  That is, even unclean animals can be eaten under the New Covenant....because those rules were never about the meat, they were about cultural isolation of Israel from others.

2021 - 23 Only be sure that you do not eat the blood, for the blood is the life, and you shall not eat the life with the flesh. 24 You shall not eat it; you shall pour it out on the earth like water. ... 27 and offer your burnt offerings, the flesh and the blood, on the altar of the LORD your God. The blood of your sacrifices shall be poured out on the altar of the LORD your God, but the flesh you may eat. [Deu 12:23-24, 27 ESV]  I had not thought about the significance of the blood being sprinkled on the altar or sometimes poured on the altar when sacrifices were made.  It was because the blood was life, and to appease God, life was required.  The price of sin is life itself, this is what must be forfeited for sin, or offered to God for sin.  It is not about food or fat, really, but about life itself.  Only God was allowed the blood.  No one else could consume it.  How have I missed this for so long?

The chapter ends with an admonition against idolatry.  And there are reasons given for why Israel is to worship in a way distinctly, completely different from these nations they are driving out:
29 "When the LORD your God cuts off before you the nations whom you go in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land, 30 take care that you be not ensnared to follow them, after they have been destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire about their gods, saying, 'How did these nations serve their gods?--that I also may do the same.' 31 You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the LORD hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods. [Deu 12:29-31 ESV]
These people worshiped by burning their own children as sacrifices.  God is making it clear that He abhors this.  He doesn't even want us to look into how they practiced their religions because they were beyond perversion and error and into another place.  A demonic place.  No more occult books, movies, etc for me.  God says we don't need to study such things for "historic value", or understanding.  We can live our lives just fine without ever knowing the religious practices of such people.  We need to leave it alone.
2021 - I note also that this injunction assumes there will be survivors in the land of Canaan.  God never intended that all should die there.  Never at all.

2024 - The "original owners" of Israel were so far gone that they were killing their own children to honor gods made of wood and stone and metal.  This is the depth of evil in which they lived.  Who is even capable of killing their own child?  Do we really want to say that the prior claim on this land by the descendants of such people ought to be honored?  That is a pretty intense question really...Ought we feel obligated to return land to its previous owners no matter how immoral - by any current standard - such people were?  Or ought we to honor those who drove such people into oblivion?

Chapter 13
"If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, 'Let us go after other gods,' which you have not known, 'and let us serve them,' you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
Deuteronomy 13:1‭-‬3 ESV
So this says that no matter how compelling the prophecy, miracles, signs, or wonders performed by a prophet, we are to KNOW beyond a doubt that if they try to persuade us to worship anyone or anything besides the God of the Bible, they are false prophets.  This is everyone's personal responsibility to know and distinguish a false prophet in this way.  This is almost like an early warning against the beast and the false prophet that will come in Revelation and lead away many with his miracles and signs.  We aren't to worship him - the Antichrist, because when he does these things, he will tell us to worship him and him only.  
Note also that God says He is going to allow things like this - miracle workers - in order to test us, our faith, our knowledge of what God requires.  If we truly love God, we will not follow these false prophets no matter how impressive their miracles.  
Possible FB post 2021

2024 - Another test.  Never believe a miracle without testing the message behind it.  1 "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, 2 and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, 'Let us go after other gods,' which you have not known, 'and let us serve them,' 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. [Deu 13:1-3 ESV]
Possible FB post

The next passage, vvs 6-11, say that anyone who entices others away from God towards other gods is to be stoned without prejudice.  If our own son or mother tries to persuade us toward idol worship, we are to be the first to "kill" that person.  We are to cast the first stone at our own family if they try to push any other god on us:
9 But you shall kill him. Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. 10 You shall stone him to death with stones, because he sought to draw you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. [Deu 13:9-10 ESV]
This is very strong stuff.  I am not advocating stoning.  Stoning was the penalty prescribed by the Mosaic Law, which is no longer in effect.  But the principle has surely not changed.  We would want to shun, to put out, anyone - stranger, acquaintance, friend or family - who tries to entice us toward a false god.  Mostly, we wouldn't have a problem with a false prophet trying to get us to worship crocodiles.  Or worship some comet that is coming by.  Some are lured away by these but most are not.  But what about a Jehovah's witness?  Or a Mormon, or a Muslim?  All three of these claim to be telling us about the God of Abraham.  How do we know who to shun and who to counter?  Who to shut the door on, and who to invite in for a discussion or a debate?  

2023 - Vss 6-11 end with this:  "And all Israel shall hear and fear and never again do any such wickedness of as this among you".  This is 13:11.  So the principle is that if the crime is to be discouraged forever, if it is never to happen again, then it's punishment must be swift and terrible.  The way this crime is punished has to strike fear into the hearts of the innocent - but temptable.  The punishment must be so out of proportion - in our eyes - to the crime that the crime is just NEVER worth it.  A father had to throw the first stone in the stoning of his own son if his son did this.  Or a man had to throw the first stone at his very closest friend.  We ought not to say this is unjust and unfair, we ought to ask whether this would eliminate that crime from the country.  We've all heard that in Arab countries they cut off the hand of a convicted thief.  We have also heard that if you leave your cell phone on a park bench it will be there when you go back to get it.  There is no doubt that this sort of "teaching justice" really works.  And what are we doing?  We're letting people break any law they care to break, and punishing anyone who tries to stop the lawbreakers.  Where do we expect this is going to lead?
Possible FB post 2023...but probably not.

Ahhh...this gets more clear in the next few verses.  Here is a phrase that I think applies:
13 that certain worthless fellows have gone out among you and have drawn away the inhabitants of their city, saying, 'Let us go and serve other gods,' which you have not known, [Deu 13:13 ESV]
Other gods which you have not known seems key.  In the experience of Israel, there was only the God of Abraham.  For us, only the God of Abraham is the true God.  It is our understanding of this God, the practice of worshiping our God, that some religions attempt to skew.  So the question would be, do Muslims worship the same God as Christians, or do they see Him so differently that in fact, they are proselytizing us to a completely false god?  This is the question that has to be answered.

2021 - As it goes on from vs 13, the command is that this city where the worthless fellows are is to be attacked, everyone and all the cattle killed, all the spoil gathered into the town square and burnt as an offering to God.  A heap of ashes will be all that's left, and this town is to remain a heap of ashes and never be rebuilt.  Worshiping other gods was about as serious as things could get.  And those who did such things were to be excised from the land of Israel - NOT tolerated, accepted, embraced.  Turning a blind eye to the worship of other gods was punishable by death. 

Chapter 14
Moses continues his address to the people, and is now reminding them of some of the specific laws God has given them.
The first 2 verses are about mourning practices identified with the religions of those Israel was about to dispossess.  Don't cut yourselves, or make your forehead bald for the dead.

Vss 3-21 are about what they can and cannot eat, specifically.  There is this verse that I think gives some insight into the dietary laws:
21 "You shall not eat anything that has died naturally. You may give it to the sojourner who is within your towns, that he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner. For you are a people holy to the LORD your God... [Deu 14:21a ESV]
If this food could be sold or given to foreigners and strangers and passers-through, the point was not that these things were unhealthy or unsound to eat.  This likely applies to all the other foods that were prohibited to Israel.  It was maybe a little about diet, but mostly it was about setting them apart as a separate people, holy to God.  They were to be unlike any other people on the planet, and these dietary laws within their culture set their culture apart from all others.  None had dietary restrictions like this, and none worshiped a single God in a unique and appointed single place.  The fact that all these restrictions go away in the NT and are never a part of the New Covenant confirm that there is nothing inherently wrong with eating pork.  If there was, the restriction would never have been relaxed.  It was all about being different during this time when God was blessing a nation, working with a whole nation, rather than with individuals as He had up to that time.
These are some of the things contained in this section:
Don't eat unclean things- pigs, rabbits, hares, rock badgers, camels and pigs.
Don't eat fish that don't have fins and scales.
Don't eat eagles, vultures, kites, falcons, ravens, ostriches, nighthawks, sea gulls or hawks.  Nor owls, carrion vultures or cormorants, storks or herons, hoopoes or bats.  
No winged insects.

Beginning in vs 22, there is instruction concerning tithes.  It is interesting that they were to eat the tithe of grain, wine, and oil.  Though they were God's, this was portrayed in eating these tithes in God's presence.  So they were not "parted" from this produce of their land, they just had to eat it in a certain place.  
If you lived too far from the place God chose, you were to convert your tithe to money, take the money to Jerusalem, and spend it on whatever you desired or craved.  I have most certainly never seen this verse before:
26 and spend the money for whatever you desire--oxen or sheep or wine or strong drink, whatever your appetite craves. And you shall eat there before the LORD your God and rejoice, you and your household. [Deu 14:26 ESV]
Strong drink if you want it?  MSB has several notes on this:  Prov 20:1; Prov 23:29-35, about alcoholism, and Prov 31:4-7.  All three of these are about the dangers of alcohol, and some mention strong drink specifically.  Yet this verse in Deuteronomy remains...All things in moderation.  I am sure Dt is not telling us we can get drunk if it's a tithe.  But an unusual verse, and since I've never noticed it nor heard it preached before, I'm guessing it is not very popular with Baptists!

And here is another practice I'd not noticed before:
28 "At the end of every three years you shall bring out all the tithe of your produce in the same year and lay it up within your towns. 29 And the Levite, because he has no portion or inheritance with you, and the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, who are within your towns, shall come and eat and be filled, that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands that you do. [Deu 14:28-29 ESV]
Per MSB, in years 3 and 6 of the 7 year cycle, God's tithe was stored in each city, and used to feed the poor, homeless, widows, and so on.  They were taken care of by "the church" so to speak, in that God didn't demand that the tithe come to Jerusalem, but it was used for benevolence.  What an awesome way to do things!

Chapter 15
All debts to "brothers" forgiven after 7 years.  Debts to foreigners can go on for longer.  This keeps everything short term.  Risk is short term.
If they do as God tells them, there will be no poor:
4 But there will be no poor among you; for the LORD will bless you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess-- 5 if only you will strictly obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all this commandment that I command you today. [Deu 15:4-5 ESV]
A  conditional promise, but one with great possibility.  This was their goal.  A country with no poor or destitute at all.  Only God's blessings can result in such a place.  And they never got there.

Then this just a few verses later:
11 For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, 'You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.' [Deu 15:11 ESV]
This verse acknowledges beforehand the sad truth of the human condition.  They won't obey as they should.  This verse is a conclusion to the admonition that they take care of the poor who are Israelites, their brothers, no matter what.  They are not allowed even to "begrudge" this charity to their own.  Though they sometimes don't deserve it, and sometimes obviously will not be paying it back, it is still to be loaned to them.

Those who become your slaves are to be freed after 7 years, and sent away with flocks, goods, and so on.  They are to be liberally furnished for their service when they leave.
These live-in slaves served at half the cost of a hired worker.  So they were a bargain, and had earned a generous severance.  They could stay if they chose to do so.

2023 - Here it is again:
23 Only you shall not eat its blood; you shall pour it out on the ground like water. [Deu 15:23 ESV].  This was about what to do with a firstborn animal that had a blemish and so was unacceptable to God.  You didn't take it to Jerusalem and offer it as a sacrifice, you just ate it in your own town.  But even though it was not sacrificed, because it "would have" been the Lord's, you did not drink its blood.  So...if you killed a deer, could you drink that blood?  I really don't think so, I think drinking blood under any circumstances at all would have been against the Law.

Chapter 16
The Passover was to be observed at the place where God chose to have his name dwell, not just anywhere.  Much of the ritual required during this time is reiterated by Moses.  There is this interesting verse:
6 but at the place that the LORD your God will choose, to make his name dwell in it, there you shall offer the Passover sacrifice, in the evening at sunset, at the time you came out of Egypt. [Deu 16:6 ESV]
So they left Egypt at sunset, and they went through the Red Sea in the dark, and the Egyptians died at dawn.  This would be why they couldn't eat any leftovers the next day.  When they left Egypt, they walked all night and into the next day.  They didn't take any leftovers with them.
2021 - Imagine the facilities - the excess lodging - that had to be in Jerusalem in order to observe the Passover properly.

Feast of Weeks.  Seven weeks after grain first harvested.
Feast of Booths at the end of harvest.

Judges to be appointed in the towns, to judge righteously, without favoritism, without corruption.

Chapter 17
Moses continues to remind them of God's commandments.  Starts off this way:
1 "You shall not sacrifice to the LORD your God an ox or a sheep in which is a blemish, any defect whatever, for that is an abomination to the LORD your God. [Deu 17:1 ESV]
Anything less than the best we can find to offer to God is an abomination.  He knows.  Always.  Reminds me of that NT verse about putting your hand to the plow and looking back.  

Anyone who was worshiping other Gods in Israel was to be stoned at the gates of his city on the testimony of two or three witnesses.  The witnesses were to cast the first stones.
5 then you shall bring out to your gates that man or woman who has done this evil thing, and you shall stone that man or woman to death with stones. [Deu 17:5 ESV]
God was beyond serious about being a jealous God.  Any who worshiped other gods were to be killed - after a very careful investigation to insure that they had actually committed such a crime.  The reason is very simple, and found here:
7 ...So you shall purge the evil from your midst. [Deu 17:7b ESV]  This was never to get even a foothold.  It was like cancer.  If even one cell remains, it can, and often does, kill the whole organism.  And look at the things we are allowing to go unpunished, or even uncondemned, in this country.  Think of the things we are not even allowed to question!  We should be very glad that the Mosaic Law is no longer in force world wide.

Difficult criminal cases were to be taken to the Levitical Priest in charge.  So church and state clearly are the same here where punishment for crime is concerned.  If they took it to the Priest/Judge, then they had to abide to the letter by what he said.  To do otherwise brought a death sentence on you.

Here is an interesting verse:
14 "When you come to the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, 'I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,' 15 you may indeed set a king over you whom the LORD your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. [Deu 17:14-15 ESV]
God anticipated that they would want a King.  God goes to great lengths to talk them out of having one when this time comes, yet God not only knows it is coming, but has set up rules for the eventual king to abide by.
No King should acquire many horses, many wives, or much silver and gold.  The first was about returning to Egypt.  Apparently there were a lot of horses for sale there.  The second would make a man turn from God to the false gods of his wives, presumably to please and pacify them.  The last so that he would not grow presumptuous about where his power came from.

2021 - Still, it must have seemed odd to the people that God would give them the standards for what a King should be and for how he would conduct himself, and then tell them later that He didn't want them to have a king.  This is one of those that is very difficult to understand.  Like "it's a bad thing, but if you do it, it must be done this way."  Kind of like Gad and Reuben and half of Manassah staying in Gilead when that was not the promised land.  They were rich and well off for a while, but they couldn't  hang on to land that God had not intended for them.  You can have it,  but some day you will realize it was less than you could have had...

It goes on to say that the King has to have a book, with all these laws in it, a book approved by the Levitical priests, and while King, he is to continually read this book.  This is so he will always rule in accordance with this covenant.  Even as King, the covenant supersedes as to the conduct and requirements that God makes.  No King is allowed to do otherwise than the covenant says.  I had not noticed this before.  I don't recall anything in Samuel through Chronicles that says this was done.  Until they find that book of the law in either Josiah or Hezekiah's day, read that book, and shake in fear when they realize how far they've drifted.  I will try and look for other references to such a book as I read on this time.

Chapter 18
Levitical priests were to be given part of the sacrifices as their food.  Specific parts - one shoulder, the cheeks, and the stomach.  

Here is the reason that God gave Canaan to the Israelites.  This is why they were the particular ones to be dispossessed.  They had a land flowing with milk and honey, yet they pursued abominable practices in that land:
9 "When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. 10 There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer 11 or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, 12 for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD. And because of these abominations the LORD your God is driving them out before you. 13 You shall be blameless before the LORD your God, 14 for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the LORD your God has not allowed you to do this. [Deu 18:9-14 ESV]
At this point, I am certain that even "dabbling" in these things is a serious sin against God.  Ouija boards, tarot cards, and computer games where you cast spells are all equally sin.  Big mistake to participate in such things.  And the whole world is doing these right now.

God will raise up a prophet, like Moses, to replace Moses.  There may also be some false prophets.  Here is how you tell the difference:
21 And if you say in your heart, 'How may we know the word that the LORD has not spoken?'-- 22 when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him. [Deu 18:21-22 ESV]

2021 - So the people had specifically asked that God not speak to them directly.  So God gave them Moses to relay His words, and after Moses God says he will raise up another prophet.  This seems to be singular - one prophet like Moses.  The people are to listen to this prophet since it is through the prophet that God will speak to them, because they wanted it that way.  Yet they so often disbelieve the prophets that come, because they are men, and they just claim the prophets are wrong.  The next few lines tell them that some prophets will be false.  They will say things on their own that come from them and not from God.  Then there is the test for determining who the false prophets are.  They are the ones who foretell what does not come true.  So surely we have foretelling as a characteristic of prophecy in this time.  I think we can get from this that all prophets were foretelling at this time.  And if they got one wrong, they weren't real, and if they weren't real they were to die.  But ultimately, it was the false prophets they believed because the false prophets told them what they wanted to hear.  
Does this test still work, since prophecy is no longer considered to have foretelling as a characteristic?  Is it we who have re-defined what a prophet is, or did God change it?  Why would there be no more foretelling? Yesterday's reading...or recent reading...said that God would send false prophets showing false signs but who would lead them to other gods and they were to ferret them out and not follow them.  Why not us?

2023 - This is where a future prophet, like Moses, is promised:
15 "The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers--it is to him you shall listen-- ... 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. 19 And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. [Deu 18:15, 18-19 ESV].  Some thought John the Baptist was this prophet.  Not that there is only one promised.  God doesn't say He'll send lots of prophets like Moses, only one.  And it would seem that the distinguishing characteristic of Moses and this promised prophet is that they both speak words that come DIRECTLY from God.  These are not "studiers" who learn new things and speak them.  God gives them words, and they speak those words.

Chapter 19
Cities of Refuge.
4 "This is the provision for the manslayer, who by fleeing there may save his life. If anyone kills his neighbor unintentionally without having hated him in the past-- 5 as when someone goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood, and his hand swings the axe to cut down a tree, and the head slips from the handle and strikes his neighbor so that he dies--he may flee to one of these cities and live, 6 lest the avenger of blood in hot anger pursue the manslayer and overtake him, because the way is long, and strike him fatally, though the man did not deserve to die, since he had not hated his neighbor in the past. [Deu 19:4-6 ESV]
2021 - The cities were to be chosen so that the distance to them was minimized in the whole region.  The longer the distance, the more likely the manslayer was to be caught by the avenger, who would kill him when he really shouldn't, because it was an unintentional thing.  The cities couldn't all be over on one side.  Interesting also that "killers" were to be scattered around and not all concentrated in one region.

So the test was whether or not the killer had hated his victim, or had words with him, or had some other motive to kill the victim.  Imagine that today in light of the kinds of serial killers we have, where the killer never knows his victim, but kills almost for sport.  Under this rule, serial killers could seek refuge and be safe, so long as they stayed put.  These serial killers we have today are not like anything seen in those days.  Where did they come from, when did serial killing strangers begin, what and where are its roots?  (This paragraph is from the first time I made notes, and I see now that it just isn't correct.  Cities of refuge were only for those who killed entirely and completely by accident with no intention at all to do so.  Serial killers most certainly do NOT fall into that category.  Further, as discussed in a previous chapter, the one who fled to the City of Refuge still had to go on trial to determine if the death was truly an accident.  If it was determined to be murder, the CoR would give him up to the avenger of blood.  If it was an accident, entirely, the person still had to stay in the CoR until the high priest at the time of the crime had died.  There were serious repercussions even for those who accidentally caused another's death.

The idea of the Cities of Refuge was that the killer by accident had no guilt, so if "the avenger of blood" killed him, then innocent blood was spilled.  This verse summarizes:
10 lest innocent blood be shed in your land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance, and so the guilt of bloodshed be upon you. [Deu 19:10 ESV]
God eventually avenges innocent blood.  It cries out to Him from the ground.  First seen in the case of Cain and Abel, but mentioned again several times.  (Where, exactly?)  Abortion most certainly spills innocent blood, and it will eventually be avenged by God.  Hmm...or it would have been under Mosaic Law.  But we are not under that...Perhaps now, God's justice must wait for death sometimes.  (8/13/20 Cain and Abel were not under Mosaic Law and the blood cried out from the ground.  This still applies.)  This seems very unfair, to let the very obviously guilty live a rich life, killing children and selling their organs, and then they just die of old age.  No apparent consequences to them, or to those like them.  But we know their fate, even though we may not see it in their lifetimes.  Hmm...so we have to make up our minds here.  Do we prefer a system where worshiping any god but God results in stoning at the gate of the city, or a system where people live out their lives, whether good or bad, or beyond bad, and justice is only guaranteed postmortem?  Surely our modern sanitary way of doing things rebels against either system.  Today, we'd consider the first system fanatical and the second system unjust.  We want justice now, today, except for ourselves and our loved ones, in which case we want mercy and leniency and a second chance.  That last is, in fact, the New Covenant, where repentance and salvation and eternity in paradise is available to all right up to the very second of death.  That's why we don't stone people at the gate.  It is so they have a chance to repent of their sin, and so once dead, have no excuse whatever.  None can ever say "I would have repented tomorrow if I had just received a little bit of mercy."

2024 - This verse:
15 "A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established. [Deu 19:15 ESV].  This would have been a dangerous time to live.  Assassins are rarely seen.  At the same time, in this day, there were no snipers either.  To kill someone, you had to get up close.  But a requirement that multiple people witness the crime before one could be committed was a pretty  high bar and seems aimed more at preventing revenge by accusation and lies than at preventing the crime in the first place.  More to protect the innocent until proven guilty.  Now try and fit forensic evidence into this verse.  Two DNA experts must agree?  Two ballistics experts must agree? How often does someone go to prison because of one forensic witness and no eyewitnesses at all.  The bar is lower if science is one of the witnesses.  Science never lies, right?

Witnesses who lie:
18 The judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, 19 then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. [Deu 19:18-19 ESV]

Imagine the effect this would have on frivolous lawsuits.  Hmm...or would it have any at all?  They are usually brought by attorneys hoping to get 65% of anything awarded, right or wrong.  The one suing gets very little, and wouldn't have nearly as much to pay if they lose.  So should one only be able to bring a suit for as much as they can pay if they lose?  And should their law firm have to pay if their client cannot?  That would certainly cut down on ambulance chasers.  But it seems like the rich could bring a lot of tyranny on the poor if that was the rule also.  It would have to be pretty blatant for attorneys to bring suit in that case.
In criminal cases though...You wouldn't want to accuse someone of murder falsely, if you knew you would be executed if they were proven innocent.
This section ends this way:
21 Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. [Deu 19:21 ESV]
Pretty clear that lying under oath was not to be tolerated.  In today's terms, if a person claiming he got cancer from a chemical produced by a big company actually wins that lawsuit, the company pays money.  But it isn't money the one who is suing lost.  It is his life.  So wouldn't someone from that company have to pay with his life?  Things would be a lot different if we did things this way.  Perhaps it should be the lawyer defending the company that dies if he loses.  And if the one who brings the suit is shown to be lying about the cause of his disease - knowingly lying - then he's the one that has to pay all.

2023 - Every traffic stop ever made was a case of conviction by a single witness...well, it was unless there were two cops in the same car which is hardly ever the case any more.  Under Mosaic Law, there would be no tickets when there was only one cop in the car.  Wow.  Think about that.  Think how many more people would be speeding, and they would only "get caught" if they caused an accident.  Only those who didn't recognize their own limitations wold end up in trouble.  But think of the collateral damage that would accrue if we did things that way.  Still, an interesting idea.

Chapter 20
Warfare.  Israel to remember always, that even when outnumbered, it is God who fights for them.
10 "When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. 11 And if it responds to you peaceably and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. 12 But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. 13 And when the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword, 14 but the women and the little ones, the livestock, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as plunder for yourselves. And you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the LORD your God has given you. 15 Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. 16 But in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, 17 but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded, 18 that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the LORD your God. [Deu 20:10-18 ESV]
So if the cities were far away, and surrendered, lives could be spared.  This was more lenient than most national practices at this time.  So Israel is told to be merciful if they go to war with cities and nations far away.  If and only if they will surrender.
However, inside Canaan itself, God wanted everything killed.  Men, women, children, animals.  Everything that breathed.  This was the punishment for the abominations that these nations had and were committing, including sacrificing their own children to their gods.  Their punishment was death.  Those who actually killed their children and who actually practiced divination and such, were to be killed, and all those who stuck around and participated, or ignored or passively accepted such things, were also condemned to die.  Standing by while atrocity is committed over and over earns you a death penalty of your own.  How many of us would be condemned by these rules today?  What goes on while we stand by and do nothing?  Further, God did not want his people to begin practicing the same things that those in Canaan practiced.  Everything about the Canaanites religion was to die with the people who lived there and practiced those religions.

I cringe when I hear Muslims denigrated because they kill anyone who won't convert to Islam.  When we use that as the reason to hate them.  This is wrong, because it is indisputable that God ordered Israel to kill everyone, there was no opportunity to convert.  They were to be killed.
Our problem with Muslims should be that they worship a false God, they deny Christ, and they follow a false religion, a false god.  We need to witness to them, not denigrate them.
(Hmm...this second time through, I don't believe I have things quite right in the paragraph above.  There is more to it than saying that Muslims are only doing the same things God ordered Israel to do.  They don't claim to be living under Mosaic Law, nor do they use the Bible as their justification for what they do.  They have their own book, written in 600 AD and claim authority for what they do comes from that.
Muslims are living under their own perverted version of a covenant that has fallen under its own terms anyway.  Abraham, whom they profess to model their practices after, certainly never advocated killing everyone who opposed his religion.  He, and Isaac, and Jacob, very often moved away to prevent conflict with those who worshiped otherwise.  None of these three patriarchs was warlike, ever.  Muslim dietary laws, and ritual prayers, and so on - are just an imitation of the Mosaic Law that is no longer in effect anyway.  And wasn't in effect at the time of Muhammad.  The more you read the Bible, the more you see Islam as a mistake.  Perhaps a well-intentioned one originally, but an increasingly inexcusable one.)

The next verses, through 9, seem to speak against conscription.  Service was required, unless there were mitigating circumstances.  Certain situations warranted a - hmm, what was it called in the Viet Nam war?  Not a waiver.  But there were exceptions for young white men enrolled in college.  But very few for black men who were not in college.  Obviously, this rule can be corrupted also.  

The last few verses, 19, 20, say that slash and burn warfare was not to be practiced.  They could cut down trees, but not fruit trees.  They were not allowed to totally devastate the lands they were trying to conquer.  Fruit trees they could eat from, but they were not to cut them down. 

Chapter 21
If a body was found slain (murdered?), and there was no evidence of who had killed the person, the procedure below would keep that persons innocent blood from bringing guilt on the whole nation.
6 And all the elders of that city nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley, 7 and they shall testify, 'Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it shed. 8 Accept atonement, O LORD, for your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and do not set the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of your people Israel, so that their blood guilt be atoned for.' 9 So you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from your midst, when you do what is right in the sight of the LORD. [Deu 21:6-9 ESV]
"found slain" tells us from the beginning that this person died of other than natural causes.  But a murder was committed, and no one comes to justice over it, because it was done in secret, just between those two.  There are unsolvable crimes, and the whole country shouldn't be held accountable for those crimes - pending atonement to God for the blood.

It is interesting that the heifer used for this atonement is not sacrificed - that is, the heifer's blood is not shed.  Instead, its neck is broken.  Atonement puts off judgement for sin, but it does not forgive sin.  Atonement for intentional sin was a once per year sacrifice by the High Priest.  There is no forgiveness without the shedding of blood.

MSB note says that the breaking of the heifer's neck was acknowledgement that the crime deserved to be punished.  The hand-washing of the elders indicates that even though they accept responsibility for the crime, they were free from the guilt of the crime.  MSB also says that this ritual is mentioned nowhere else in the Pentateuch.

I am pasting in my notes on "The Day of Atonement".  
8 And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the LORD and the other lot for Azazel. ... 10 but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the LORD to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel. [Lev 16:8, 10 ESV]
I found a number of things relating to Azazel in the notes.  MSB says the word literally means "escape goat".  This is often interpreted as our word scapegoat.  There were the two goats.  One lot showed the goat that would be the Lord's, the one sacrificed, the one that died for the sins of Aaron and the people.  The death of this goat, and its shed blood, were substituted for sin's penalty due from Aaron and the people.  But instead of their deaths, there was the death of this goat.  The other goat was the scapegoat - which was released into the "wilderness of Azazel".   This represented the "removal of sin" from the people.  However, note that the sin was still there, but was in another place.  It was not among the people anymore, and a substitute had died for that sin, but the sin remains somewhere.  God still knows where that sin is.  The blood of bulls and goats is insufficient for the true removal of man's sin.  This is specifically explained in Hebrews.

So one goat is sacrificed and one goat lives, and does not shed blood.  It is released into the wilderness, and represents the removal of sin.  In the present context, the heifer dies, but does not shed blood.  They wash their hands over the heifer, washing the sin off them, and onto the heifer.  

MSB said this was nowhere else in the Pentateuch, but it sort of shows up in the NT.  When Pilate washed his hands at Jesus' trial, was he familiar with this ritual, and so was making use of a ritual that would have been very familiar to the religious elite of the time.  Was Pilate telling them, using their own scriptures, that he knew this was a crime about to be committed, and that it was on them, because this ritual would absolve himself of any guilt for it?  I have never seen this before...but now it surely makes me wonder.

Here is more that I think supports this interpretation:
These two verses:
19 Besides, while he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, "Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a dream."
I read somewhere - can't find where, but it is not in an MSB note on Matthew because I checked there - that Pilate's wife was a Jew.  But apparently we don't know for sure, based on this quote from Wikipedia:
Pontius Pilate's wife is the unnamed spouse of Pontius Pilate, who appears only once in the Gospel of Matthew, where she intercedes with Pilate on Jesus' behalf. It is uncertain whether Pilate was actually married, although it is likely. In later tradition, she becomes known as Procula or Procla and plays a role in various New Testament Apocrypha. At a later date, she acquires the name Claudia Procula in Western tradition, as well as other names and variants of these names. She is venerated as a saint by the Orthodox Church, the Coptic Church, and the Ethiopian Church. She has also frequently been featured in literature and film.
It is possible, though, that she was familiar with the Jewish ritual concerning atonement for the shed blood of innocents who's murderer(s) was unknown.  She may have informed Pilate about this ritual and encouraged him to use it to "clear himself" of Jesus' death.

24 So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, "I am innocent of this man's blood; see to it yourselves." [Mat 27:19, 24 ESV]
Compare the wording here to the wording in Deuteronomy.  Seems too similar for coincidence.

And I am supposed to be skeptical about the Bible.  Even in such minor matters, so many things tie together, and carry through consistently for THOUSANDS of YEARS.  Man cannot possibly bring such a thing about.



Rules on marrying female captives taken in war.  Doing so "promotes" them to citizenship, not slavery.  They do not serve their new husbands as slaves, and when/if the husband tires of her, he cannot sell her to someone else.  She becomes his wife, and as such is entitled to the same treatment as a Hebrew wife.  If he tires of her, she is divorced, and is free to do as she likes and go where she wants.  

The firstborn gets the double share of inheritance.  No exception can be made just because you loved the mother of his younger brother more.

Parents could bring about the stoning of rebellious, drunkard, gluttonous sons who would not listen to instruction.  There is a Proverb that says not to take this action, as there is always hope.

22 "And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, 23 his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance. [Deu 21:22-23 ESV]
Didn't I read somewhere once, that the Jewish leaders intended for Jesus to stay on the cross overnight, and so have him cursed by God?  But Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the counsel himself, went and begged for the body of Jesus, took him down, and put him in the tomb before sunset?  Begs the question of just how hot God can make hell.  Surely those who planned to have Jesus cursed by God are in that part of hell...

Chapter 22
More rules of behavior.  
2 And if he does not live near you and you do not know who he is, you shall bring it home to your house, and it shall stay with you until your brother seeks it. Then you shall restore it to him. 3 And you shall do the same with his donkey or with his garment, or with any lost thing of your brother's, which he loses and you find; you may not ignore it. [Deu 22:2-3 ESV]
Here is what was to be done with "found" valuables.  You were not to just ignore them and leave them where they were.  You were to take them home and keep them safe until someone came looking for them.

Here it is in black and white.  Transgender was an abomination in Israel.  
5 "A woman shall not wear a man's garment, nor shall a man put on a woman's cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God. [Deu 22:5 ESV]
MSB says this appears only here in the Pentateuch, and it prohibits transvestism.  No exceptions.  The created order of male and female - as determined by biology - is to be maintained.
Possible FB post.
 

2024 - Even so, this is part of the Law, and the Law has been fulfilled.  The Law was abrogated by Christ.  We cannot be as "resolute" about claims such as this as they could be in Moses time.  Then, wearing the clothes of the other sex was a stoning offense.  But under the New Covenant, it is the internal guidance of the Holy Spirit within the saved that guides us.  I absolutely maintain that the Holy Spirit is never going to guide a saved person to wear the clothing of the opposite sex, or to mimic the characteristics of the opposite sex, as a rebellious act against God's created order.  The Spirit will also never lead one to do this to illicit immoral thoughts or actions in others.  So even if you say the Law no longer applies there is still more than enough "wrong" about cross-dressing to make it a problem.  However, a woman wearing jeans and boots and a cowboy hat while she feeds the cattle would not be a violation of God's intentions in writing this Law.  I think of Harvey Korman on Carol Burnett, dressed up in "drag" for a comedy skit.  I really do not think God would condemn Harvey to stoning for that.  

2024 - These verses:  
6 "If you come across a bird's nest in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs and the mother sitting on the young or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young. 7 You shall let the mother go, but the young you may take for yourself, that it may go well with you, and that you may live long.
Consider what this is saying.  When the choice is between the mother and the babies and life hangs in the balance, even the life of one other than the mother or the chicks, the mother must go free.  We are never to "end" them all.  Crudely stated, the mother can make more chicks, but the chicks can't reproduce the mother.  And the chicks in the example would not make it if we did things the other way either.  To me, there is justification here for abortion if the life of the mother is endangered.  I don't think we have any evidence at all that such a thing was actually practiced in those days...but consider a difficult birth, where the midwife had to make some hard choices about who to save first.  It is clear in this verse that the mother has priority.  Even so...the context, and connecting that last phrase with the right preceding phrase, might make this a poor interpretation.
Ahhh....this is not about people, it is about survival.  The above is flat wrong.  If you find yourself needing food, and come upon this situation, you are still not to "reduce" the species by eating both mother and chicks.  If you must eat, eat the chicks, because there will be more.  Eat them all, and there won't be any to eat the next time.  This is probably a lot closer to the right interpretation.

2024 - Here is another with long term legal implication:  8 "When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house, if anyone should fall from it. [Deu 22:6-8 ESV].  We are liable for negligence in the death of another. If we see an obvious danger, and we do nothing about it, and someone else is harmed by our inaction, we are liable for that harm.  That legal concept goes all the way back to here.  

9 "You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, lest the whole yield be forfeited, the crop that you have sown and the yield of the vineyard. 10 You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together. 11 You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together. [Deu 22:9-11 ESV]
This is a repeat.  Like kinds are important.  If in seeds, livestock, and clothing, how about in marriage?  This is the closest I have seen to an argument against inter-racial marriage.  Yet Moses had a black wife, and Song of Solomon celebrates Solomon's love for a black woman.  Both caused problems of course.  And maybe that is the reason for this rule...
As I read it now, it looks like in the first one, you weren't allowed to do something like plant runner beans in with your grapes to try and increase the yield of that land.  You were risking both crops.  So we ought to think about this when companion planting.  But how does harnessing a donkey and an ox together endanger the plowing?  MSB notes says a donkey was unclean, an ox clean, and also that the two together couldn't possibly plow a straight furrow.  So this law, as the one before it, is to ensure a good crop.  As for wool and linen, MSB note refers us back to Lev. 19:19, where the note says combining these two may have been associated with idolatrous practices of that time.

Rules about proof of virginity.  This is a difficult one for us today.  Sex with a virgin doesn't always produce blood...at least I don't think it does.  So how could it ever be proven?  
2024 - And the penalties seem very mismatched in this case.  If he is the one in the wrong, he pays money and has a wife forever.  But if she is wrong, she dies.  Very lopsided.  I do not understand this one.

22 "If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel. [Deu 22:22 ESV]
Both shall die.  No discrimination here.  Following this verse are several more rules where the man is punished, along with the woman, and one where the man is to be killed but not the woman.
A phrase that has been repeated many times in Deuteronomy is "so you shall purge the evil from your midst."  There is no attempt at rehabilitation in these laws.  No prison reforms to turn criminals into model citizens.  For certain crimes, the only "cure" was death of the criminal, so that the attitudes, the internal misconceptions and attitudes that led them to commit these crimes, could not be observed and copied, and so that criminals would not continue to commit their crimes.  Getting away with crime leads inevitably to more crime seems to be the concept.  Not only that, but this way of doing things did not tie up resources taking care of criminals that could be put to more productive use elsewhere.
How though, did the New Covenant affect the punishment for crimes like this?  Is there specific instruction in the NT?  I surely don't recall any right now...

Chapter 23
2 "No one born of a forbidden union may enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of his descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD. [Deu 23:2 ESV]
MSB talks about how Egyptians and Edomites could worship in the third generation.  Maybe this is about first cousins, or sons who married their stepmothers.  That sort of forbidden marriage.  This seems a very harsh penalty for the children so born, as it was not their choice, but they bear the brunt, and carry this through 10 generations.  About 250 years!
The MSB note is actually quite long on this section.  It states unequivocally that forbidden unions is about producing illegitimate children.  The children of such a union could never, ever go into the Tabernacle, or later, into the Temple.  This is an indication of how much importance God places on sanctioned marriage - between a man and a woman - more than it is a punishment of the innocent children that can result from immorality.  The consequences to the progeny of such a union were so dire as to be an effective deterrent to immorality.  And remember the woman at the well.  Jesus offered her salvation despite her past and current indiscretions.  

In the next verse, the same stipulation was put on Ammonites and Moabites because they refused to help Israel when they first came out of Egypt.  For these two, it isn't just ten generations, it says forever.  MSB also notes that the Ammonites and Moabites were in close geographic proximity to the tribes that stayed on the East side of Jordan, and this would have erected a "wall" against their intermingling.

These verses:
3 "No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the LORD forever, ... 6 You shall not seek their peace or their prosperity all your days forever. 7 "You shall not abhor an Edomite, for he is your brother. You shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were a sojourner in his land. 8 Children born to them in the third generation may enter the assembly of the LORD. [Deu 23:3, 6-8 ESV]

I would think that prophecies about Ammon and Moab would take this injunction into account, and that they are both destined to a bad end.  But...they were descended from Lot...so maybe that affords them some eventual consideration.

I would expect that Edom and Egypt ultimately do ok.

15 "You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. 16 He shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place that he shall choose within one of your towns, wherever it suits him. You shall not wrong him. [Deu 23:15-16 ESV]
Isn't this interesting in the context of the slave who escapes his master in the NT, prompting a whole letter from Paul urging the old master to take it easy on the escaped slave when he comes "home"?  This seems unusual.  MSB note says it likely referred to escaped Canaanite slaves who came to Israel seeking to know their God and assimilate into their culture.  

Here is another verse that indirectly shows up in the NT:
25 If you go into your neighbor's standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor's standing grain. [Deu 23:25 ESV]
Remember when Jesus and his disciples went through the field on the Sabbath and picked some corn to eat.  The Pharisees didn't call it stealing from the one the field belonged to, but they did say it shouldn't have been done on the Sabbath.  This verse adds some depth and context to that whole incident.

Chapter 24
Laws about divorce...
A woman divorced, who remarries, and then is divorced a second time or widowed, may not return to her first husband again.  Deuteronomy calls this an abomination.  That's what it calls homosexuality.  This is the only law mentioned here.  Nothing about what circumstances allow divorce.  MSB note says that the abomination is that since she was sent away for other than adultery - because she'd have been stoned, not divorced, over adultery - that it was not accepted as an end to the marriage by God.  In His eyes, when she remarried, the woman committed adultery, and so from the perspective of her first husband, she is now a adulteress, and they were not to be taken back.  MSB note says divorce proliferates adultery.

The next section has several more laws reiterated, seemingly - at least to me - at random.

13 You shall restore to him the pledge as the sun sets, that he may sleep in his cloak and bless you. And it shall be righteousness for you before the LORD your God. [Deu 24:13 ESV]
If you loan a very poor man money, and the collateral is something he needs nightly, you must give it back each night, so he can use it, then take it from him again the next day.  The point is not to take advantage of the poor.   Loaning them money does not give you the right to be cruel to them.

The next verse expresses a similar principal:
14 "You shall not oppress a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your brothers or one of the sojourners who are in your land within your towns. 15 You shall give him his wages on the same day, before the sun sets (for he is poor and counts on it), lest he cry against you to the LORD, and you be guilty of sin. [Deu 24:14-15 ESV]

16 "Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin. [Deu 24:16 ESV]
I'm guessing that many cultures of that time practiced this sort of punishment.  God's laws make each responsible only for his own sin.  Evil is purged from the land by executing the guilty person, not the guilty person and his family.  Evil is not genetic in the sense that willingness to commit the worst crimes is passed down.  Sin itself - imperfection in our natures - is passed down.  But each can resist.  Or each can succumb.

Several laws about leaving some produce in the field for the hungry, the sojourner, and the widows and orphans.  You weren't to strip your crops completely, but always leave some for those in need to come and gather for themselves.  Hmm...It was to be left on the plants, in the field.  There is no admonition to pick it, inspect it, box it, and deliver it to those who need it.  They are required to come and help themselves.

Chapter 25
Says that if two men dispute in court, and the one found guilty needs a beating, that beating takes place right there, in front of the priest/judge, and that no more than 40 stripes can be given.  To go further is to degrade the guilty, not just to punish them.  More than forty is not rehabilitative.

Then vs 4 is just kind of stuck in there from nowhere:
4 "You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain. [Deu 25:4 ESV]  This is quoted in the NT.  Must have been mentioned earlier.  MSB note though, mentions references to this verse in three places in the NT but no other OT passage.  This one little thing, seemingly at random, but quoted three times in the NT.  All three times by Paul.  Maybe a favorite verse of his as a traveling preacher?
2021 - I just can't help but think there is something to this that I am not seeing.  It comes right after the guilty man being punished before the judge who sentenced him.  Could it be about the judge?  He is allowed to have his say when he pronounces sentence?  Or about the guilty man, who gets to yell and complain and call the judge names during the carrying out?  Hmm....The judge must be present, and the guilty cannot be silenced during punishment.  This sort of has a ring to it.  I need to compare this interpretation and see if it would apply to the way Paul uses it those three times in the NT.   (1Co 9:9, 1Ti 5:18, 2Ti 2:6).
2023 - The 1Co reference is about a lot more than that one verse.  The majority of the chapter is Paul defending himself because people have said he is not entitled to payment for his work.  Indeed, he says he has NEVER taken payment, but instead works at his own trade while he is also preaching, and that he should not be denied that either.  The "generality" of this verse in Deu 25, as I see it, is that whatever work you are doing, you ought to be allowed to support yourself by that work - you ought to receive some of the same "profit" as the one who set you doing the work.  An ox is processing grain into a state more profitable than before, so the ox should receive of the processed grain.  Paul says he ought to be allowed to profit materially from his providing spiritual teaching.  That is, he is working for those who want to hear the word, and they all make a living, so shouldn't he also be allowed to make a living from his preaching to them.  So...does this have anything at all that ties it to what came before - to how many licks the guilty man ought to receive?  Looking at Paul's explanation I'd say no, unless Paul is reversing the teaching.  The 1Ti reference seems to be a brief argument for paying elders and deacons who do enough work at teaching to deserve payment.  This would seem a reference about those who are basically church staff, to the extent that they have no other job, getting paid for the work they do for the church.  Sunday School teachers?  Yes...but not if their teaching is random or for entertainment.  I would think this applies to an elder or deacon who teaches church history and government to new members.  A staff position.  Then this last one from 2Ti:  6 It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. [2Ti 2:6 ESV].  Not sure that even ties back to Deut.  A stretch I think.  The 2Ti reference seems to be just a sort of general principle not necessarily tied to a quote in Deut.  The verse before says athletes only win if they compete fairly.  That's not in Deuteronomy!  Really, only the 1Co reference ties unarguably to Deuteronomy.  And if you read Deuteronomy 22-25, it is all jumping around quite a bit...but even so...this ox muzzling thing still seems quite random.  Perhaps that is the point.  It is there to make you hit the brakes and consider the principle upon which it is based.  It is "stuck in" a random place so that what seems to be minor point must be elevated to a higher priority.  Leaving it here again.  Apparently, whatever its real reason for being here, it pulls me up short every time I read it.

2024 - More on this section.  Look how it starts:
1 "If there is a dispute between men and they come into court and the judges decide between them, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty, [Deu 25:1 ESV].  First, there are two significantly different interpretations of this verse.  One group is like this, with the implication that this is about disputes that end up in court, presumably because they could not be resolved otherwise.  The other interpretation says that disputes ought to be resolved in court.  As in this rendering:  1 "If there is a dispute between men, they are to go to court, and the judges will hear their case. They will clear the innocent and condemn the guilty. [Deu 25:1 CSB].  This is also very close to how the Jewish Study Bible words it.  Perhaps best is the NASB95:  1 "If there is a dispute between men and they go to court, and the judges decide their case, and they justify the righteous and condemn the wicked, [Deu 25:1 NASB95].  IF they go to court.  Given the consequences to which the loser will be exposed, I would see avoidance of court as a better strategy.  In any case, there seems to be no condemnation of those who can't settle their differences.  Rather than come to blows with each other, court is best.  This contrasts with Paul's teaching in the NT where he says brothers ought to bring their problems before the church rather than go to civil court.  In Deuteronomy, those were one and the same.  

2024 - And then the next line is "You are not to muzzle an ox...".  Don't beat your brother with too many strikes...and don't muzzle an ox when it is working"...and If brothers live together, and one of them dies childless...
The muzzle thing seems so very out of place here.  What is the connection, either to what went before or what comes after?  Another year and I still don't see how this fits, and it is so without context that for Paul to quote it three times is astounding!  A verse like this can be claimed to mean just about anything we want it to mean.  So maybe next year...

Levirate Marriage.  This is important in the genealogies of Christ in the NT.  I don't remember the specifics, but have read about them.
A brother is to provide an heir for his brother by marrying the brother's widow. To not do so was to bring shame on your house.  Only the first son of this union with the brother of a dead man was dedicated to the lost brother, to perpetuate that lineage.  Subsequent children were the second brother's children, and carried on their father's name.  In the genealogy, there is a Levirate marriage that explains one of the "skips" as it were.  

2024 - Hmm...then we get another section that seems to be completely isolated from the rest of the context.  If a woman grabs a man's privates to help her husband get away from him, she gets her hand cut off, and this without pity.  This comes right after Levirate marriage.  In my hermeneutic, you just don't build too much doctrine around these contextually arid passages.  I wouldn't argue with Paul about what the ox passage means...but I wouldn't expand it to cover as many things as he does in 1Co 9 either.

16 For all who do such things, all who act dishonestly, are an abomination to the LORD your God. [Deu 25:16 ESV]
This is the conclusion of the rules about having just weights and measures.  Those who cheat others by falsifying the standard are abomination to God.  This principal would apply also, IMHO, to selling a used car that has a hidden problem, a house that is riddled with termites, or a gun with a bent firing pin.  All these things represent something to be accurate and true and in workable condition, but they are not.  Think how many laws we have on the books these days to prevent such cheating.  How many are employed to calibrate gasoline pumps?  How many consumer protection agencies and organizations to we have?  All we need is this one law, enforced without prejudice.  It covers everything.  The thing about unjust weights and measures is that having the tools to cheat others indicates the intention, and the practice, and the habit of cheating others.  These unfair weights and balances represent a lifestyle of injustice toward others, a daily practice of sin, rather than abhorrence of sin.  This is about putting greed ahead of righteousness.

2021 - It ends with an admonition to not forget what Amalek did to them, by cutting off their tail.  He apparently attacked the rear of the Israelites as they moved.  He killed those with problems, those lagging behind, probably for good reason.  He attacked the helpless like a coward would instead of attacking the main body.  Need to go back and re-read that.  (Ex 17:9-16, but it is not obvious that they cut off the tail, so this is new information.  The story is where Joshua and Caleb had to hold up Moses' arms in order for Israel to prevail, not about how Amalek provoked them to turn and fight.).

Chapter 26
5 "And you shall make response before the LORD your God, 'A wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. [Deu 26:5 ESV]
A wandering Aramean.  A Bedouin in today's terms.  From this God made a nation.  Never heard Jacob described as a wandering Aramean.  NKJV and KJV say Syrian.  NASB says Aramean.  ASV says Syrian, and so on.  
2023 - It is not about Jacob.  It goes back at least to Abraham, and very likely to Abraham's father, who left his home and wandered up to Ur of the Chaldees.

A tithe of produce was given every three years, and was sustenance to sojourners (immigrants), widows and the fatherless.  The tithe was apparently brought to the temple, and then distributed from there?  (Second time, no, this third and sixth year tithe was kept within the towns, and used to support the needy in each place.  The tither in these years swears that he took none of this tithe for himself, but gave it as required to the needy, rather than taking it to the Temple and offering it there.)  Wonder if they dried it first or otherwise preserved it so that it could be dispensed over the coming years, until the next tithe of produce was due?  A good way to do things, unless the priests doing the distribution become corrupt.

19 and that he will set you in praise and in fame and in honor high above all nations that he has made, and that you shall be a people holy to the LORD your God, as he promised." [Deu 26:19 ESV]
The place Israel occupies in God's design.  A people holy.

And this is the end of Moses' address to the people.  The second of three in the book as I recall...but that could be easily checked.  At any rate, a speech ends here.

Chapter 27
An altar to be erected on Mt. Ebal, with the words of God's laws written on them.  This altar was to be built of rock and covered with plaster.  I can't think of any previous altars that were not required to be unworked raw rock.  There was law saying that the altar could not be of worked stone.  So this is a big change.  Ah...the stone still had to be raw.  The plaster is all that was added.  

2024 - This verse:  9 Then Moses and the Levitical priests said to all Israel, "Keep silence and hear, O Israel: this day you have become the people of the LORD your God. [Deu 27:9 ESV].  "This day".  They were not God's people until that day, the day before they crossed the Jordan.  Is this right?  Does this mean that on "this day" they changed from being the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to the nation of Israel, God's chosen people?  Is it at this point that the conditional covenant - the Ebal and the Gerizim - goes into effect and Israel stands alone before God to sink or swim?  This seems like a very real possibility to me.
2024 - We might think of this as a transfer of the people of Israel from the Abrahamic to the Sinai covenant.  The Sinai still exists as an unconditional covenant with the descendants of Abraham.  And if I wanted to make an argument that the church replaces Israel as the descendants of Abraham because Israel failed so abjectly in the Sinai covenant, then this passage would be high on my list of "proof texts".

The people were to go up on two mountains, one for blessing and one for cursing.  They shouted God's laws, and the consequences of obeying and the consequences of disobeying, back and forth.  The primary laws are summarized in this chapter.  Very many of the laws recorded are about sexual sin.

2023 - Twelve curses are listed.  First, anyone who "makes" an idol for himself and sets it up - in secret - so that he worships what his own hands have made.  This is specific.  This is not about "hoarding gold and silver", this is about praying to idols.  Second, anyone who dishonors his mother and father.  This one does not say "failure to honor" which would be a negative thing, hard to prove, but instead says not to dishonor your parents.  How would you do that?  By stealing from them instead of working for yourself.  By embarrassing them by your actions.  Columbine killers?  Perhaps these are right, but there is probably a lot more that falls under this category.  The big thing to me is that this is about what the son DOES, rather than about what he fails to do.  Well...now I'm having doubts...what if he won't harvest the crop while he is living at home still?  Would that be under this rule?  Third, no moving the big landmarks.  That is tantamount to stealing land.  Your land is what it is, and if you want more you buy it, not steal it.  Well...these are really going nowhere.  Next one is about abusing the handicapped for laughs...I think.  Then one about mistreating immigrants, orphans, and widows.  Then four about not having sex with family or animals.  In this order:  No sex with Mom, no sex with animals, no sex with sisters, and no sex with mother-in-laws.  Four of these were considered "fundamental".  No pre-meditated murder of people you know - neighbors.  No being a murderer for hire - an assassin.  And cursed is anyone who rejects the law (I think this means all the law as Moses had recorded it) in a general way.  In our country that would be like rejecting the US Justice system and setting up sharia law and obeying that instead.  I complete rejection of the law of the land in favor of some foreign version of the law.

Chapter 28
Chapter 27 ended with the instructions for the shouting from the two mountains, one blessings, the other curses.  Then the curses are recounted, one by one, and at the end of each it says "And all the people shall say, Amen.".  So these seem to be instruction in what to do, not narration of what was done.

Then the first 14 verses of Chapter 28 are the blessings God promises to give to Israel if they diligently keep all his commandments.  It is a covenant, but most certainly a conditional one.  It is a covenant with a nation, not with individual people.  The nation will prosper, its flocks, herds, and crops will prosper, other nations will be defeated if they come against Israel, and they will lend to other nations but never borrow.  This promise was to the nation of Israel.  How anyone could ever claim that they kept this is beyond me.  This was broken, and re-broken, with God ultimately sending all Israel, north and south, into captivity.  Only the south even returned to the land...and again they failed to keep the covenant.
Perhaps this covenant fell under its own terms. (Second time - it most certainly did.)
But the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (I think) were all unconditional, and God swore by himself.  Those must still be fulfilled.  (Second time.  Those to Abraham were unconditional.  Need more detailed study on Isaac and Jacob, though the unconditional promises were renewed to them, there may have been some conditions added also.)

This verse is interesting:
11 And the LORD will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your livestock and in the fruit of your ground, within the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give you. [Deu 28:11 ESV]
True prosperity is measured in terms of increasing human population, increasing animal population, and increasing farm productivity.  There is no mention here of them getting a lot of gold and silver and jewels - all of which were mediums of exchange at the time.  But God doesn't look at things that don't breath as being useful to measure prosperity.  Even plants respire.  Prosperity is measured by the increasing abundance of living things.   Only by that.
Possible FB Post.  A good one.
2021 - Note that the promise applies "within the land that the LORD swore to your fathers".  Here is another place where Gad, Reuben and half Manassah should have paid more attention.  They did well in the land they chose because that land was truly good for livestock, and they acquired it by conquest instead purchase, and so were well ahead financially when they started.  But the promises made to the fathers DID NOT APPLY to this land the 2.5 tribes chose.  What they chose lacked God's divine protection.  I want to pay particular attention to how things go for these tribes and compare and contrast it to the rest of Israel, and especially to the other 7.5 tribes of the Northern Kingdom.
And why am I noticing this so often?  Am I on the wrong "land"?  Did I settle for good and forego best?  Am I falling short because I am so "comfortable" with what I have that I don't realize the blessings offered if I get up and move?  Are the things that go wrong just telling me that I'm in the wrong place and I'm interpreting them wrong?  Or, am I right where I'm supposed to be and the things that seem to be turned against me, the hate even that is sometimes directed my way, are telling me that I am in the right place, setting an example - a poor one, but a recognizably different lifestyle than those around me?  How do you know which is the case???
In the case of 28:7-14, all that is spoken is addressed to the nation of Israel.  These things are not spoken to individuals.  I mean they are, but to individuals in a collective sense.  So the part about going where God puts you instead of settling in a pretty good spot...technically that is about a nation, and specifically about Israel in that day.  So the second set of questions above apply more than the first.  I need to be where God puts me, but then, God put me here, in this house, over 30 years ago and I am still in this house.

2023 - Gad, Reuben and Manassah did request permission to settle where they settled, and all Israel had at that time conquered that land.  If we study out exactly what land God promised Abraham, then the land where they settled may well have been included.  Not the best of Canaan, but still promised land.  So...there is an argument here that GRM should not have stayed where they did, but should have gone on across the Jordan before settling.  But I am not sure it is a very good argument.

The rest of the verses, 15 through 68, are about what happens if they do not obey God in the land that He is giving them.  The curses far outweigh the blessings.  Much better, infinitely better, to obey.  Only a stiff-necked, hard-hearted, arrogant people would not obey. It is also noteworthy that they had ample, specific. definite unambiguous information as to both the benefits and the curses associated with the covenant they had entered into.  The curses that are about to be listed are not "new" - this is not the offering of a different covenant under which they will invade Canaan.  These curses are amplifications of the conditions already in place.  These verses list some possibilities that the people may not have considered, and are offered here to make it very clear that both blessing and cursing are dependent on their behavior - on their continued performance under the conditions of the covenant.

These verses about disease:
21 The LORD will make the pestilence stick to you until he has consumed you off the land that you are entering to take possession of it. 22 The LORD will strike you with wasting disease and with fever, inflammation and fiery heat, and with drought and with blight and with mildew. They shall pursue you until you perish. [Deu 28:21-22 ESV]
And here is another:
27 The LORD will strike you with the boils of Egypt, and with tumors and scabs and itch, of which you cannot be healed. [Deu 28:27 ESV]
To claim that God does not use disease as a punishment would be to ignore many verses in the OT.  It seems to me that disease is used not as a correction but as a consequence.  Disease is not aimed at rehabilitation.

Here is one that hits me pretty hard right now, while we are restricted from seeing the grandkids:
32 Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, while your eyes look on and fail with longing for them all day long, but you shall be helpless. [Deu 28:32 ESV]
I most certainly do feel helpless right now.  No way to argue, no logic to employ.  It is all in other hands.  It occurred to me this morning that this goes back to the FB post I did where griping about circumstances you don't like is not griping at Moses, but griping at God.  Israel had no water, and they blamed Moses.  I can't see my grands, and I blame Kristina.  This is wrong.  I need to make my appeals to the correct quarter.  (Note:  The morning I saw this error in how I was praying,  I changed.  I stopped blaming Kris, and I told God I knew that this was His doing, and that I wanted Him to let me see my grandkids.  We saw them later that very week, and I learned that we would the very first day I prayed the prayer the right way.)

Here is how it works:
47 Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, 48 therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything. And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you. [Deu 28:47-48 ESV]
While this law is not in effect, surely this principle still is.  If we despise God in favor of the things of this world, if we turn away from Him, and try to live our lives without Him, we always end up being slaves to a less benevolent master.  We serve our jobs to get ahead, we serve our "toys" so we can play and enjoy, we serve the debt we acquire so that we can "enjoy" the good things of this world.   We can end up slaves to alcohol, drugs, food, entertainment.  We need to take a look at ourselves regularly, and make sure, honestly and dispassionately, who or what master we are working for.  And we should never ignore those last five words, which give the result of serving the wrong master.
Good FB Post here also.

2021 -
49 The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like the eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand, 50 a hard-faced nation who shall not respect the old or show mercy to the young. [Deu 28:49-50 ESV]  Wasn't the eagle a symbol for Assyria?  Or was it Babylon?  No mercy to old or young.

Several verses here, but I am pasting in the whole section.  Among the worst of the curses are these:
53 And you shall eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies shall distress you. 54 The man who is the most tender and refined among you will begrudge food to his brother, to the wife he embraces, and to the last of the children whom he has left, 55 so that he will not give to any of them any of the flesh of his children whom he is eating, because he has nothing else left, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in all your towns. 56 The most tender and refined woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because she is so delicate and tender, will begrudge to the husband she embraces, to her son and to her daughter, 57 her afterbirth that comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears, because lacking everything she will eat them secretly, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in your towns. [Deu 28:53-57 ESV]
People will end up eating their own children in the cities besieged by enemies God sends as a curse for breaking this covenant with him.  Not just this...they will be so starving and hungry that they won't share the flesh of children, or the bloody afterbirth with those they profess to love.  This is horror beyond horror.
I note that these curses start benignly.  They start with a few food shortages, then those are followed by low birth rates among cattle and then people.  Then confusion of mind - dementia if you will.  People start to do things wrong, to see things wrong, to interpret cause and effect wrong.  Then diseases of various kinds.  Incurable some of them.  Crime will get out of control.  Hard won accumulation will be continually destroyed and stolen.  The future will grow increasingly uncertain.  You can't plan far ahead, because civil authority has broken down, and can no longer stop foreign raiders and robbers.  Injustice at the hands of civil authority comes next - those from other countries will be favored to the point where they will be allowed to consume the produce of Israel and those who grew that produce can do nothing.  Then full on invasion.  Parts of the country taken captive or occupied.  Children taken as slaves and nothing that can be done.  As the country weakens further, full on armies invade, besieging towns and cities, to the point of cannibalism of ones own offspring within the "safety" of the city walls.  This does not happen over night.  But we are given a very detailed description of the consequences of despising our God.
This belongs on the website.

2021 - The cannibalism happened in 70 AD.  I don't think it really did with Babylon's siege of Jerusalem.  And perhaps that eagle symbol is what Rome carried, rather than Assyria or Babylon.  Rome certainly came from further away.  Perhaps these verses in Deuteronomy are about the end of the Old Covenant completely and the beginning and impetus for the New Covenant.  There was no Israel after 70 AD.  
2023 - I think there was cannibalism during Babylon's siege of Jerusalem too.

2024 - Double punishment.  God later tells them they will be doubly punished.  The first was when Babylon came, the second when Rome came.  So that part is fulfilled.  But he also says that he will continue to punish Israel until his wrath is spent on them.  That wrath started with two successful invasions of Israel, 600 years apart, and continues now with worldwide antisemitism, a nation scattered all over the planet, always disdained, always mistreated, never feared or respected.  All this is in Dt 28.

These verses sum up:
58 "If you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the LORD your God, 59 then the LORD will bring on you and your offspring extraordinary afflictions, afflictions severe and lasting, and sicknesses grievous and lasting. 60 And he will bring upon you again all the diseases of Egypt, of which you were afraid, and they shall cling to you. 61 Every sickness also and every affliction that is not recorded in the book of this law, the LORD will bring upon you, until you are destroyed. [Deu 28:58-61 ESV]
It seems that invaders and siege are still not the last.  The final demise of the nation will be brought about by disease.  This is the ultimate punishment, in that it can take out a whole nation - where invaders would let some live as slaves.

I am pasting a lot of verses...this is God talking:
63 And as the LORD took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the LORD will take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you. And you shall be plucked off the land that you are entering to take possession of it. [Deu 28:63 ESV]
This one got my attention because it says God takes delight in bringing ruin.  I suspect this is more in the context of justice than pleasure.  God delights in justice and righteousness, whether positive or negative for the recipients.  MSB has some references here, but no comment.

And then there is this, that reminds me of the persecution of the Jews when Hitler came to power:
64 "And the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. 65 And among these nations you shall find no respite, and there shall be no resting place for the sole of your foot, but the LORD will give you there a trembling heart and failing eyes and a languishing soul. 66 Your life shall hang in doubt before you. Night and day you shall be in dread and have no assurance of your life. [Deu 28:64-66 ESV]

2024 - Here is another phrase:
61 Every sickness also and every affliction that is not recorded in the book of this law, the LORD will bring upon you, until you are destroyed. 62 Whereas you were as numerous as the stars of heaven, you shall be left few in number, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God. [Deu 28:61-62 ESV].  Has this happened?  Did these diseases overtake Israel in 586 BC and 70 AD?  Or are they still out there somewhere?  It is hard to imagine that such a thing could happen with them scattered all over the globe.  But it could have happened before, twice.  I don't think there's a lot of documentation of what happened in Jerusalem and other places during those two periods.

No rest.  Hearts fluttering constantly for fear. No backbone to fight back.  Cowering like rabbits.

2021 - Here, in vss 15-68, are the verses I've been looking for.  This is the progression from God's correction to punishment to wrath, when a nation disobeys God, leaves Him out, worships other gods or none at all.  This is the promised pattern of how God deals with unruly nations.  These are the things we should be looking for in the news every day as we try to determine if what is going on in the US is about the US and our apostasy, or is about the end of the age, and we are just the first that must be taken out of the way.  If the second, then the pattern will be different, because it will be Satan taking us out and not God correcting us.  The difference should be obvious.  I want to go through these "steps" in detail, and put the chronology together and be able to link the daily news directly into it and thus see where exactly we are.

2024 - Another aspect of all this:
68 And the LORD will bring you back in ships to Egypt, a journey that I promised that you should never make again; and there you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer." [Deu 28:68 ESV].  I don't believe anything even remotely like this has occurred.  This doesn't look like a prophecy of a few but of many.  Will this be what occurs between the rapture and the defeat of Antichrist?  You wouldn't think so, because the Jews will be turning back to God in great numbers at that time.  But perhaps this is the culmination of God's wrath toward them, in making them sink so low as to sell themselves back into Egyptian slavery.  I suppose it is also possible that it just never got this bad.  This also is a part of that conditional covenant.  The "no one will buy you" part though speaks of a time when no one will want anything to do with Jews, perhaps because they are hotly pursued where ever they go by the followers of the SoP.  
2024 - The note on 28:68 in MSB says that after 70 AD, Titus shipped 17,000 adult Jews to Egypt to perform hard labor there and had those who were under 17 years old publicly sold.  He goes on to say that under Hadrian, countless Jews were sold and suffered such bondage and cruelty.  BUT, you cannot sell them without buyers.  So perhaps this is still to come, as a part of end times persecution.
 

Chapter 30
The last chapter ended with Moses anticipating the fall of the Sinai covenant due to non-performance by Israel - especially in the area of  idol worship.  This chapter opens with the anticipation of the  scattering of the people to various countries, but not in their homeland  anymore.  The curses have won out over the blessings.

Even after rebellion, if Israel will return to the Lord, He will bless them even more than he blessed their fathers.
Moses tells them that even after rebellion at this level, God will not have completely forgotten them.  These verses:
1 "And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God has driven you, 2 and return to the LORD your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, 3 then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you. [Deu 30:1-3 ESV]
I believe the gathering spoken of here is the Millennial gathering where the hearts of the Jews are changed, and they come back to God, and they come back to Israel.  If that is right, then these verses are looking all the way past the Church Age, the Age of the Gentiles, to the reinstatement of the promises to the nation of Israel, and with it, entwined with that, the fulfillment of the unconditional promises to Abraham.  I do not see this as referring to the New Covenant.
2021 - I agree even more with the previous evaluation that these verses are about Trib, Great Trib, and the Millennial.  The gathering here is the return to God by the Jews.  Moses knew this is where it was all going.  But there is not one hint that I can see about the Age of the Gentiles.  It says they will be scattered - which is what we're going through now - but it doesn't hint at it being a different age, a different dispensation.

This verse ties the description here to the verses in Ezekiel where God will take away the stony heart and give them a heart of flesh:
6 And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live. [Deu 30:6 ESV]
Here are the verses I believe reinforce this:
19 And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, [Eze 11:19 ESV]
26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. [Eze 36:26 ESV]
These verses in Ezekiel continue and talk about how the crops will be restored, the land will be tilled, the numbers of Jews at that time will be greater than the numbers previously....all these things would seem to require some time to fulfill.  However, the land in Israel is being tilled at this time, and has been again since 1948.  The current population of Israel is about 8.6 million - per internet.  When they left Egypt, there were 600,000 men, plus women and children.  So the population part is also currently true.  The Jews are coming home to the land of their fathers, they are cultivating that land, and their numbers are great and increasing.  However, I think the radical change of heart that is talked about is still future.  For the most part, Israel is still a mostly secular country.  So the change of heart is, in my opinion, yet to come.
2021 - I think the change of heart is a God thing.  I don't think some miraculous rabbi will arise in Israel and turn their hearts back to God.  I just don't.  I think God Himself will circumcise their hearts, just as it is God who saves us today according to His will, not according to ours.

2021 - These verses:
12 It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' 13 Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' [Deu 30:12-13 ESV]
I think this is now the third place I have seen these words about who will ascend to heaven.  In fact, if you do a search of the ESV for that word, there seem to be about seven places the word is used, and perhaps all are related.  Ascend seems to be a rare word in the Bible.  I don't think I'm going to dig into this today, but there is a lot in this verse that is recurring in both OT, and then carried over into the NT.  Yet I do not see the phrase in Psa/Proverbs as I remembered it.  I found those when I searched for "ascended" in past tense.  I am not up for diving into this right now, but it would make an excellent study I think.  There is some "mystery" here that ought to be searched out.
MSB says the whole point of the passage here is that the way to obtain all these blessings from God is not far away in heaven, so that someone must go and find it, bring it back, and explain it, nor is it on earth but far away.  These people have all they need of God's word through Moses, given in easy, simple terms that they and theirs can understand and follow.  The point here is that it is NOT a mystery but a plain and simple truth that they can all grasp with not need to resort to anyone else - even to Moses at this point, as he has held nothing back.  (So sort of a direct hit on Roman Catholicism and their priests!)  So with this understanding of the original use of this phrase, study the other uses and see if they are appealing to the same interpretation.

14 But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it. [Deu 30:14 ESV]
This implies that it was possible, at that time, to meet God's requirements.  The sacrifices imply that you couldn't keep them all, but this verse implies that you can.  This was after the 10, so thoughts were part of the requirement, not just performance, but thinking.  Maybe the point is that vs. 14 is to Israel, and the 10 are to each individual separately.  The point is that if they obeyed in their hearts and stayed dedicated, then the sacrifices would be sufficient to keep them in God's favor.  It was possible to obtain perpetual forgiveness of their sins if they obeyed the law, and if their hearts were right.  Surely they would continue to sin, but as Jesus blood covers us now, the sacrificial blood postponed the price of sin then.  Maybe the point here is that God did not make their part of the Sinai Covenant impossible for them.  The rules were within their grasp.  It was what was in their hearts that made keeping the Law, and shunning idols, that would make or break their part of the covenant.  This is a hugely important point that Moses is making.  They must be committed...as we must.  This is common between the Sinai and the New Covenants.

Their choices are succinctly stated here:
16 If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. 17 But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, 18 I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. [Deu 30:16-18 ESV]
Salvation has always been internal.  Always about hearts, never about deeds.

Chapter 31
This chapter returns to their immediate future, rather than the distant future.  Moses is about to die, and Joshua to take over, and they are about to invade Canaan.

Moses tells the people that he is 120, and cannot lead them anymore.  He tells them Joshua will lead them.
The law was to be read to the people every seven years, at the year of release, at the Feast of Booths.

When God commissions Joshua, as he and Moses stand at the door of the tabernacle, God tells Moses that He knows Israel will go "whoring after other gods" once they have conquered Canaan and grow fat and lazy in the land:
16 And the LORD said to Moses, "Behold, you are about to lie down with your fathers. Then this people will rise and whore after the foreign gods among them in the land that they are entering, and they will forsake me and break my covenant that I have made with them. [Deu 31:16 ESV]
There are more verses after this one, that talk about further sin they will commit, and God foretells that He will hide his face from them in His anger.  

Moses is to write a song, and all Israel is to learn it and the children will learn it.  All will remember it.  The children will learn the song, and so it will continue through the generations.  And this song will be a witness against the people, that God knew how they would behave:
19 "Now therefore write this song and teach it to the people of Israel. Put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the people of Israel. [Deu 31:16, 19 ESV]

This partial verse:
21 ...For I know what they are inclined to do even today, before I have brought them into the land that I swore to give." [Deu 31:21 ESV]
A good verse for debating whether or not God's foreknowledge is determinative.  Is there really only one "timeline" running into the future that cannot be changed, or do our choices present many possibilities...
I'm in the "one line" camp, but am open to the idea that God can make all the possibilities eventually converge at prophesied events, however those events are brought about.

Moses finishes his writing - both the Book of the Law, and the Pentateuch I believe are in view here.  This verse:
26 "Take this Book of the Law and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, that it may be there for a witness against you. [Deu 31:26 ESV]
I wonder if this is the book that is found in Hezekiah's day?  This very book, or a copy?

The actual song is in the next chapter...

Chapter 32
God's Song that Moses taught the people to remind them that He knew they would rebel, reads in part:

2022 - This verse:
"4 "The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he." [Deu 32:4 ESV].  Is this title for God, "The Rock", a reference back to the water from which the water flowed?  Jed's Chitwood book says they Rock is about Jesus, and then ties together some things that I don't think are even related to each other.  But this...The Rock is God, the Father, the first person of the Trinity.  The Rock is not Christ.  If anything, Jesus is represented by the water, but to be consistent with the rest of scripture, the water represents the Holy Spirit.  The word translated "The Rock" is the transliterated Hebrew "tsoor".  It means rock, cliff, edge...a few others.  Here are some other verses that use it:
"6 Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink." And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel." [Exo 17:6 ESV].  Sure makes you think this is the connection, when the same word is used.  BUT, there is also the NT verse:
"4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ." [1Co 10:4 ESV]
So not an "either/or" situation.  Paul says the Rock was Christ.

​

2024 - Here are a number of verse, not all of them by far, that make it clear that in the OT, God was the rock:
15 "But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked; you grew fat, stout, and sleek; then he forsook God who made him and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation. [Deu 32:15 ESV]
2 "There is none holy like the LORD: for there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God. [1Sa 2:2 ESV]
3 my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold and my refuge, my savior; you save me from violence. ... 32 "For who is God, but the LORD? And who is a rock, except our God? ... 47 "The LORD lives, and blessed be my rock, and exalted be my God, the rock of my salvation, [2Sa 22:3, 32, 47 ESV]
31 For who is God, but the LORD? And who is a rock, except our God?-- [Psa 18:31 ESV]
9 I say to God, my rock: "Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?" [Psa 42:9 ESV]
There is just no doubt that in the OT, beginning with the Song of Moses, the rock was God.  Therefore, Paul, in the NT, must be speaking in some other sense.  Could it be that the "rock that followed them" in 1Co 10:4 be "followed" in the sense of millennia.  About time instead of geography.  I mean, rocks do not move.  That is a characteristic of rocks and all the verses about God being the rock in the OT have that sense of timeless, stationary, never wavering rock.  So Paul didn't mean it that way.  
Still 2024 - Here is the BLB definition for G190, followed, akoloutheo in Greek:
1.              to follow one who precedes, join him as his attendant, accompany him         
2.              to join one as a disciple, become or be his disciple         
   1.                      side with his party                 
Now look back at 10:4 and test each of these as the meaning of "followed" in that verse.  "the spiritual Rock that followed them".  Did Christ follow them physically?  No.  Pre-incarnate.  Did he become their attendant?  Certainly not that.  Did he accompany them?  No, they didn't even know he was coming at this point.  How about def 2?  Was Jesus THEIR disciple?  NO!  None of these work.  None of these can be correct.  
The Rock followed them in time, that is, he came much later than them.  He was God when he came, and so the Rock, but he was still spirit at the time of Moses.  
This doesn't work very well either.  I think what we have here is a metaphor, an analogy, and I am not smart enough to make the right connection to spiritual rocks that follow people around and Jesus.  I do not like MacArthur's note below.  At all.  I will keep at it.  It will clear up.

Reading on in 1Co10, Paul says the passing through the sea and the cloud - the baptism into Moses, all eating the same spiritual food, and all drinking the same spiritual drink are examples (typos) for us.  So the NT DOES tie these events to the NT as types for us.  There is much here that I have not understood yet.  
The MSB note on 1Co10 says that the pre-incarnate Christ followed the people of Israel and protected them in the desert.  MSB also talks about a "tradition" the Jews had saying that the rock from which the water came actually moved along with the Hebrews as they traveled through the desert, constantly providing them with water.  MSB says this is a misunderstanding of what "tsoor" really means.  Paul is calling the pre-incarnate Christ the Rock.  I am not getting it.  I don't understand the connection between Christ in teh NT and those two rocks in the OT.  Christ as our spiritual food and drink...the rock provided drink, but not food.  I don't think this is the typology that Paul is speaking of.  There is more here.
Some other verses:
"21 And the LORD said, "Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock," [Exo 33:21 ESV]
In Ex 17:6 above, and again here, God is near the rock, but is not literally the Rock.  YET, in Deu 32:4, Moses refers to God as THE ROCK.
I still do not see how any of this helps explain why Moses was to speak to the second rock rather than strike it, and I still say there was more to this sin than just the breach of procedure.  There was far more to it if it kept both Moses and Aaron from Canaan.
This one:
"13 He made him ride on the high places of the land, and he ate the produce of the field, and he suckled him with honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock." [Deu 32:13 ESV]
This has to be metaphor, and this is about Abraham.  No, if you look at how it starts it goes back much further than that, to the sons of Noah.  He gave them all honey and oil from rock.  In all these examples, "The Rock" sustains the chosen of God.  No matter the place where God's chosen found themselves - desert, mountain, under the sea, in the cloud, dwelling in tents - no matter how rocky and harsh their literal situation, God supplied all their needs, and the rocks at Horeb and Mirabah are the types for that.  The rocks are about God's provision, God's plan.  In the same way that the rocks provided physical sustenance, Christ was and is God's provision for spiritual sustenance.  This makes sense as typology.  
BUT, it still does NOT explain the difference in hitting and speaking.   Moses keeps on, in his song, about the Rock...and let us not forget that Moses has identified this Rock as God, not Christ:
"15 "But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked; you grew fat, stout, and sleek; then he forsook God who made him and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation." [Deu 32:15 ESV].  They forsook God - they didn't even know Jesus - and they worshiped other gods.  They abandoned the real source in favor of fakes.  
This verse is still more corroboration that Moses DOES NOT have Jesus in view in this song:
"18 You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you, and you forgot the God who gave you birth." [Deu 32:18 ESV]

6 Do you thus repay the LORD, you foolish and senseless people? Is not he your father, who created you, who made you and established you? [Deu 32:6 ESV]
This one should hit home to us today.  Look at the rampant disregard for God and His ways in this country, and many others.  We make our own rules, as if we have authority to do so, and we follow the rules of men because they make "good sense" to us, and they establish our rights.  Not rights as the created of God, but rights of our own, to stand alone.  As if we could!  Does the slave tell the master what rules he will follow?  Does the private tell the general?  The prisoner tell the warden?  No, in all these cases we see how ridiculous even the concept of it would be.  But that's what we do when we tell God what rights we have.

These verses:
8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. 9 But the LORD's portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage. [Deu 32:8-9 ESV]
I copy these in because of the MSB note about them.  This idea never occurred to me, but from MSB.  I'll copy it as a quote:
"The Most High.  This title for God emphasized His sovereignty and authority over all the nations (See Ge 11:9, 10:32, 14:18, Nu 24:16) with the amazing revelation that in the whole plan for the world, God had as His goal the salvation of His chosen people.  God ordained a plan where the number of nations (70 according to Gen 10) corresponded to the number of the children of Israel (70 according to Gen 46:27).  Further, as God gave the nations their lands, He established their boundaries, leaving Israel enough land to sustain their expected population."
Never ever have I heard anything like this before.  Here is Gen 10:1:
1 These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Sons were born to them after the flood. [Gen 10:1 ESV]
All the sons, the cities, the "nations" that arose following the flood are listed in this chapter.  I did not try to count them, but I'm betting there are 70.  So MSB is saying it was right here that all the nations of the earth were established.  Names change, boundaries move here and there, but Israel is always there?  Even from 70 AD to 1948?
Here is Gen. 46:27:
27 And the sons of Joseph, who were born to him in Egypt, were two. All the persons of the house of Jacob who came into Egypt were seventy. [Gen 46:27 ESV]
Is this a big stretch...or is this something almost everyone misses?  I can see in the Deuteronomy verses how you can fit this in there...but is that really what Moses meant?  So interesting!
2021 - This is still a fascinating verse.  Here it is in KJV:
8 When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. [Deu 32:8 KJV]
There is also a note in TCR suggesting comparison between several original texts including the Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint.  Then it says that the Masoretic Text reads "sons of Israel" rather than "sons of God".   This all makes it seem like a pretty important verse, and like even the "copiers" tried to clear it up as they translated into other languages.  I assume the Dead  Sea Scrolls are mentioned because they include a very old copy.  

17 They sacrificed to demons that were no gods, to gods they had never known, to new gods that had come recently, whom your fathers had never dreaded. [Deu 32:17 ESV]
Demons masquerade as gods, to deceive, to corrupt, to diminish.  But never to promote anything but their own hatred.

2023 - In vss 24-25, God says he will destroy them by hunger, plague, and poisonous pestilence, teeth of beasts and venom of crawling things, and sword.  These are the four that God uses, always, to punish, to correct.  Famine, sword, disease, and beasts.  Are we being corrected?

These two verses:
26 I would have said, "I will cut them to pieces; I will wipe them from human memory," 27 had I not feared provocation by the enemy, lest their adversaries should misunderstand, lest they should say, "Our hand is triumphant, it was not the LORD who did all this."' [Deu 32:26-27 ESV]
Answers the question of why the Lord put up with such a people as Israel.  He didn't want others to think they had done away with what God had chosen.  Moses used this argument several times, asking God to spare Israel lest the Egyptians think either that God couldn't protect His people, or that God had just taken them out there to destroy them because they were so bad.  This theme runs through it all.  Would be nice to compile the verses where Moses uses this argument coupled with this final explanation of why that argument carried so much weight.

This verse defines a wise nation:
29 If they were wise, they would understand this; they would discern their latter end! [Deu 32:29 ESV]
Puts the lie to existentialism.  Also to atheism.  The first says today is all we need focus on, not the consequences.  Atheism says there is no latter end.

Moses tells them the purpose of this song, so they give it the weight that it deserves:
47 For it is no empty word for you, but your very life, and by this word you shall live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess." [Deu 32:47 ESV]

This verse:
51 because you broke faith with me in the midst of the people of Israel at the waters of Meribah-kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin, and because you did not treat me as holy in the midst of the people of Israel. [Deu 32:51 ESV]
Answers the question of what exactly Moses did that was so bad it overcame all the good things he did, and kept him out of Canaan.  He broke faith.  He made God less than holy.
However...the MSB note on 32:48-34:12 says "This literary unit was composed and added to the text after the death of Moses."  I guess we don't know who wrote them.  Still, they are in the Bible, they should be given much weight.

2022 - This is God's reason, his stated, specific reason for keeping Moses and Aaron from Canaan.  1, because he broke faith with God at Meribah-kadesh, and 2, he did not treat God as holy before the people.  Perhaps, really, those two are the very same.  If we say that the problem was that Moses disagreed with God's plan for the people after they failed at the door of Canaan, after they cried all night like babies, and had no faith or courage...what?  Did Moses think they should all be killed?  Did he think they should get to go in anyway?  Did he think that HE should get to go in and wait while they wandered in the wilderness?  And how did striking instead of speaking show us that Moses diminished God's holiness?  What different perception would the people have had about God if Moses had only spoken to the rock rather than strike it?  How would the people have seen that differently?  By striking, Moses indicated that God "needed" him to accomplish things, to provide for Israel?  No, that makes no sense.  
I don't understand why I cannot understand this.  I don't understand why I am so obsessed with understanding why what Moses did was so very wrong?  Joshua and Caleb were not sinless.  But their sins were "small" enough that they still got to go in.  You know Moses wanted to go in, he was as faithful at the point of decision as Joshua and Caleb were.  
Did Moses not understand that they would be going in, they'd just have to wait 40 years, or did he think God had "failed" to keep His promise?  Did Moses think the 40 years was to wipe out Israel entirely, and that he was leading nothing more than a death march?  Did he think that God just wasn't going to be able to do what he said he would do?  And if God couldn't do that, maybe he needed help with the rock?  Maybe Moses decided it was himself that was able to bring water from rocks, by his actions, and that he could do so without any help from God.  Or that God could not do it without his help, since God had just shown that he couldn't lead Israel into Canaan, because they wouldn't follow him.  Did Moses believe himself a better leader than God?  Did he think he understood more about how to lead people than God?  
I JUST DON'T KNOW, and there is nothing in Arlen Chitwood's book that explains it.  He is on and on about types and symbols and foreshadowing.

2023 - I still don't get it.  I don't "see" either of God's reasons.  Broke faith?  By striking instead of speaking?  If he did - and he must have because God says he did - then the sin was inside Moses' head.  Had I been there watching, and Moses struck the rock, I would not have thought "Oh hey, Moses just broke faith with God."  Even to think that, as one of the people, I'd have to already know that God told him to speak to the rock, and that Moses was doing it wrong.  Did the people know that?  No.  In Numbers 20:6, Moses and Aaron LEAVE the presence of the people and go to the door of the tent of meeting, where God appears to them, and tells Moses to speak to the rock.  Here is that verse:  8 "Take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and Aaron your brother, and tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water. So you shall bring water out of the rock for them and give drink to the congregation and their cattle." [Num 20:8 ESV].  And the next verse says this:  9 And Moses took the staff from before the LORD, as he commanded him. [Num 20:9 ESV].  So maybe this whole thing is about that staff?  Where was this staff and what was important about it???  We have to go back to this sequence of events that begins in Numbers 16...

2023 - In Numbers 16 we have the rebellion of Korah where Korah, Abiram and Dathan attempt to usurp the positions of Moses and Aaron, and God makes an end of the rebels, of the conspirators, showing absolutely clearly that God has chosen Moses and Aaron to lead the people, and that the things Moses and Aaron do are from God.  The ground opens up and swallows the three rebel leaders, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram - something never seen before, to prove it is from God.  Even so, the VERY NEXT DAY, all the people of Israel approach and accuse Moses and Aaron of killing people, in this verse:  41 But on the next day all the congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and against Aaron, saying, "You have killed the people of the LORD." [Num 16:41 ESV].  They are STILL blaming Moses and Aaron for the things that happen.  They think Moses and Aaron are wielding the power of God however they want, and they make Aaron and Moses RESPONSIBLE for the deaths of all those people the previous day, rather than  understanding that it was God who put down the rebellion, using Moses and Aaron as his spokesmen.  God is incensed by this and sends a plague to kill the entire nation of Israel.  Moses dispatches Aaron, with a censer containing coals from the altar, to get between the dying and those not yet exposed, and this stops the plague.  So...you would think the people would give credit to Moses when he saves their lives, but they just never quite see it that way.  
After the plague has stopped, God says this:
2 "Speak to the people of Israel, and get from them staffs, one for each fathers' house, from all their chiefs according to their fathers' houses, twelve staffs. Write each man's name on his staff, [Num 17:2 ESV]  All the staffs went into the tent of meeting overnight, and this verse:  5 And the staff of the man whom I choose shall sprout. Thus I will make to cease from me the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against you." ... 10 And the LORD said to Moses, "Put back the staff of Aaron before the testimony, to be kept as a sign for the rebels, that you may make an end of their grumblings against me, lest they die." [Num 17:5, 10 ESV].  So the idea was that God would send a sign overnight, making the staff of his chosen bud, and that would stop people grumbling about Moses and Aaron.  It would show instead that it was God who was making the decisions.  The next day, Aaron's staff, and only his staff, had budded and had ripe almonds growing on it, indicating that Moses and Aaron were in charge and there should be no more rebellions.  After this is done, we get this verse:  10 And the LORD said to Moses, "Put back the staff of Aaron before the testimony, to be kept as a sign for the rebels, that you may make an end of their grumblings against me, lest they die." [Num 17:10 ESV].  This staff became a symbol to show, to remind the people, that they have no business rebelling against Moses and Aaron, because it is God who is doing these things.  Moses and Aaron are NOT deciding whom to punish and how to punish.  Moses and Aaron are not responsible for the earth opening up and swallowing people.  God is the one deciding these things.  And it is here that the Aaron's staff remained until Numbers 20.  

2023 - That brings us back to Meribah, and to Numbers 20:8,9, where God tells Moses to go and retrieve this very same staff, get everyone together, and to speak to the rock.  Moses goes in and gets that staff.  Here is what Moses does next:
10 Then Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, "Hear now, you rebels: shall we bring water for you out of this rock?"
11 And Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice, and water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their livestock.
12 And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them." [Num 20:8, 10-12 ESV]
So while holding this staff, this reminder that God is in charge of everything, that it is God who sends the plagues or the blessings as He sees fit, and these things DO NOT come from Aaron and Moses, Moses says "Shall WE BRING WATER FOR YOU..."  And then Moses uses this symbolic staff as a tool and strikes the rock with it. What was supposed to happen is that this staff was to remind the people of the results of their previous rebellions against Aaron and Moses, because here they were doing it again, and the rock was to flow when spoken to, showing that God was making the water rather than that Moses knew some trick to get rocks to give up water by his own actions.  Moses' fault was then what?  Does any of this help at all?  Moses broke faith in that he did not carry out God's command precisely.  Being faithful is being obedient to the commands of one's master.  And he did not treat God as Holy, in that he usurped God's position as the one who brings both blessing and curse by saying "Shall we...".  After all that trouble to show that Moses was NOT making the decisions, Moses' does things in a way that portrays him to the people as the one making the decisions.  Moses knew what that staff symbolized - basically it showed that Moses had no power to anything but what God told him to do - and then Moses "over rode" that symbol, in his anger at the people, and made it look like he DID have the power whenever he chose to exercise it.  And the sin was infinitely worse because of Moses' position.  The people would have recognized Moses' words as contradicting what God had shown them by making that staff bud in the first place.  They'd have seen this as Moses placing himself above God.

2023 - Maybe that's it.  I've gotten obsessed with it once again, and as a result I have connected the details - the staff which is central to the story and which I had not previously paid any attention to at all - and maybe finally I understand.  I do now see the sense of it..

That very day, the day that Moses taught them this song, God called him up to Mount Nebo, to see into Canaan, and then to die on that mountain.

This song should be read often.  Monthly at least.  So much perspective here.  It would keep us mindful of our place in the grand scheme of things.

Chapter 33
Moses' final blessing on the people of Israel is in this chapter.

2023 - Jeshurun is a symbolic name for Israel, describing her ideal character, per the BLB note on Is 44:2.

2022 - This verse:
"5 Thus the LORD became king in Jeshurun, when the heads of the people were gathered, all the tribes of Israel together." [Deu 33:5 ESV]
Another verse that I totally do not understand.  BLB says Jeshurun is a symbolic name for Israel.  But the first place it appears in the Bible was in the previous chapter, in Moses' song.  Do we distinguish between God as The Rock and God as King of Jeshurun?   Or are those the same?  MSB is no help at all.  And he admits he doesn't know, and that there are a number of possible meanings.  MSB refers back to 32:15, that first use of the word, and says it means "righteous", and is used sarcastically in that verse because Israel was NOT righteous.  God's provision for them made them "fat, dumb, and happy", and rather than thank God for his provision, they rebelled against him.  As they will rebel against the salvation inherent in Christ when he comes later.  Or, really, as we all do even now.  But why this special - but sarcastically derogatory - name for Israel at this time.  Moses' song was to serve as a warning and a reminder of the sins of Israel.  Its purpose was to keep them aware of previous failures, aware of the things God hated, and to remind them that it was He alone - the Rock alone - that provided.  So...King in some symbolic sense, as the provider for the nation?

There is a blessing on each tribe, named specifically.

2022 - HERE IT IS AGAIN!!!!
"8 And of Levi he said, "Give to Levi your Thummim, and your Urim to your godly one, whom you tested at Massah, with whom you quarreled at the waters of Meribah;" [Deu 33:8 ESV].  Moses is a Levite!  Here are the two rocks again, Massah and Meribah!  Tested and quarreled.  Moses quarreled with God?  He disagreed with God.  That has to be the reason for his not entering Canaan.    In vs 9, we are reminded about why the Levites have this elevated position of service to God.  Because they killed their own families at Sinai over the worship of the golden calf.  Those men put God ahead of the lives of their families, and received God's portion of the sacrifices once those were established.  Yet, tested and quarreled are still in there...I do not understand this.

2022 - This about Benjamin:
"12 Of Benjamin he said, "The beloved of the LORD dwells in safety. The High God surrounds him all day long, and dwells between his shoulders."" [Deu 33:12 ESV].  It was the Benjamites who figure prominently at the end of Judges, who are so awful that the rest of Israel decides to wipe them out as a tribe...and then commits some pretty horrible acts to make sure they survive as a tribe!  Saul was a Benjamite!  Beloved of the Lord?
Wow.  These last chapters of Deuteronomy are really causing me problems.

These blessings would be good to refer back to in the dynamic situations that are coming as they take the land of Canaan, then go through the time of the judges and the kings.  The tribes often have conflict, and there may be keys to how they handle conflict that are found in these blessings from Moses. It would also be interesting to compare these to the words Jacob used of each of his sons when he died.  

2022 - And this is how the chapter ends:
"29 Happy are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the LORD, the shield of your help, and the sword of your triumph! Your enemies shall come fawning to you, and you shall tread upon their backs."" [Deu 33:29 ESV].  God has saved them, defends them, run offense before them.  God is their provider, beyond the physical, and including the spiritual.  
BUT, this is the OT.  And while we may see some Gentile application, after the fact and having the NT, can we truly say that Moses understood Christ in terms of anything but his Kingship over Israel in the Millennial?  Wasn't this what Moses truly foresaw?

Chapter 34
2024 - God let's Moses see the land he is giving the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Consider the boundaries.  Moses does not see "from the river to the sea".  He sees Gilead, on the east side of the Jordan, but he doesn't see the Euphrates at all.  He sees south all the way to Zoar, where Lot took refuge, but not into Egypt at all.  So I ask this:  Was the conditional promise about the land that was made to Israel actually just a subset of the total that was promised unconditionally to Abraham?  Surely modern day Israel includes the land that Moses was shown.  But the rest of what was promised to Abraham was never promised to the nation of Israel.  (((Later - WRONG!!!  See Joshua 1:4, Dt 11:24.  It seems that in both of these verses God promised the nation of Israel - as Abraham's descendants, all the land from the Med to the Euphrates.))))  It was promised to Abraham's descendants, both circumcised and un-circumcised.  Here, I think, is a very good argument that the church has become NOT Israel, but the descendants of Abraham.  (((No.  This also falls in light of the verses above.))))  In this context, that makes good sense.  And it explains why the court of the Gentiles in Ezekiel's temple is so large!

​

Moses dies, on Nebo, on Pisgah, in the land of Moab.  But God did not bury him on the mountain, but in the valley, opposite Beth-peor.  Moses was as healthy the day he died at 120 as when he was a young man.  Would it be harder to die healthy?  Wouldn't you think it unfair to die healthy?

9 And Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him. So the people of Israel obeyed him and did as the LORD had commanded Moses. 10 And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face, 11 none like him for all the signs and the wonders that the LORD sent him to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, 12 and for all the mighty power and all the great deeds of terror that Moses did in the sight of all Israel. [Deu 34:9-12 ESV]

Leadership of Israel transfers from Moses to Joshua, without quarrel or dissent.  This is truly a different generation than the one that stood here the first time.

A final tribute - a forever eulogy - to Moses.