John Wesley

Accept this atonement, O LORD, for Your people Israel whom You have redeemed, and do not hold the shedding of innocent blood against them.”

“Forgiven - Though there was no mortal guilt in this people, yet there was a ceremonial uncleanness in the land, which was to be expiated and forgiven.”

his father and mother are to lay hold of him and bring him to the elders of his city, to the gate of his hometown,

“And it cannot reasonably be supposed that both would agree without the son's abominable and incorrigible wickedness, in which case it seems a righteous law, because the crime of rebellion against his own parents did so fully signify what a pernicious member he would be…”

Do not plant your vineyard with two types of seed; if you do, the entire harvest will be defiled—both the crop you plant and the fruit of your vineyard.

“Now this and the following precepts, tho' in themselves small and trivial, are given, according to that time and state of the church, for instructions in greater matters, and particularly to commend to them simplicity in all their carriage towards God and man, and to…”

You are to make tassels on the four corners of the cloak you wear.

“Fringes - Or laces, or strings, partly to bring the commands of God to their remembrance, as it is expressed, Num.”

then the man who lay with her must pay the young woman’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she must become his wife because he has violated her.

“Fifty shekels - Besides the dowry, as Philo, the learned Jew notes, which is here omitted, because that was customary, it being sufficient here to mention what was peculiar to this case.”

You must not bring the wages of a prostitute, whether female or male, into the house of the LORD your God to fulfill any vow, because both are detestable to…

“Or the price of a dog - It seems to mean, of a whoremonger or sodomite. Such are called dogs, Rev. xxii, 15. And it is not improbable they are called so here.”

Do not charge your brother interest on money, food, or any other type of loan.

“This among them would be little or no loss to the lender, because their land was so divided, their estates so settled, and there was so little a merchandise among them, that it was seldom or never they had occasion to borrow any great sums…”

If a man marries a woman, but she becomes displeasing to him because he finds some indecency in her, he may write her a certificate of divorce, hand it to…

“Let him write - This is not a command as some of the Jews understood it, nor an allowance and approbation, but merely a permission of that practice for prevention of greater mischiefs, and this only until the time of reformation, till the coming of…”

then the husband who divorced her first may not remarry her after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination to the LORD.

“Defiled - Not absolutely, as if her second marriage were a sin, but with respect to her first husband, to whom she is as a defiled or unclean woman, that is, forbidden things; forbidden are accounted and called unclean, Judg.”

Do not take a pair of millstones or even an upper millstone as security for a debt, because that would be taking one’s livelihood as security.

“Mill-stone - Used in their hand-mills. Under this, he understands all other things necessary to get a livelihood, the taking away whereof is against the laws both of charity and prudence, seeing by those things alone he can be enabled both to subsist and to…”

Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.

“Not put to death - If the one be free from the guilt of the others sin, except in those cases where the sovereign Lord of life and death, before whom none is innocent, hath commanded it, as chap. xiii, 1-18 Josh. vii, 24.”

When brothers dwell together and one of them dies without a son, the widow must not marry outside the family.

“One - Any of them, for the words are general, and the reason of the law was to keep up the distinction of tribes and families, that so the Messiah might be discovered by the family from which he was appointed to proceed; and also…”

Remember what the Amalekites did to you along your way from Egypt,

“Out of Egypt - Which circumstance greatly aggravates their sin, that they should do thus to a people, who had been long exercised with sore afflictions, to whom pity was due by the laws of nature and humanity, and for whose rescue God had in…”

Then you shall declare in the presence of the LORD your God, “I have removed from my house the sacred portion and have given it to the Levite, the foreigner…

“Before the Lord - In thy private addresses to God; for this is to be said presently upon the distribution of these tithes, which was not done at Jerusalem, but in their own private gates or dwellings.”

And when you have crossed the Jordan, you are to set up these stones on Mount Ebal, as I am commanding you today, and you are to coat them with…

“Here the sacrifices are to be offered, to shew that there is no way to be delivered from this curse, but by the blood of Christ, which all these sacrifices did typify, and by Christ's being made a curse for us.”

You shall build the altar of the LORD your God with uncut stones and offer upon it burnt offerings to the LORD your God.

“Whole stones - Rough, not hewed or polished. By the law written on the stones, God spake to them: by the altar and sacrifices upon it, they spake to God: and thus was communion kept up between them and God.”

“When you have crossed the Jordan, these tribes shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin.

“Joseph is here put for both his sons and tribes Manasseh and Ephraim, which are reckoned as one tribe, because Levi is here numbered; but when Levi is omitted, as it is where the division of the land is made, there Manasseh and Ephraim pass…”

‘Cursed is the man who makes a carved idol or molten image—an abomination to the LORD, the work of the hands of a craftsman—and sets it up in secret.’

“But how could they say it to the curses? It was both a profession of their faith in the truth of it, and an acknowledgment of the equity of these curses.”

‘Cursed is he who does not put the words of this law into practice.’ And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’

“Confirmeth not - Or, performeth not. To this we must all say, Amen! Owning ourselves to be under the curse, and that we must have perished forever, if Christ had not redeemed us from the curse of the law, by being made a curse for…”

The LORD will make you the head and not the tail; you will only move upward and never downward, if you hear and carefully follow the commandments of the LORD…

“The head - The chief of all people in power, or at least in dignity and privileges; so that even they that are not under thine authority shall reverence thy greatness and excellency.”

A people you do not know will eat the produce of your land and of all your toil. All your days you will be oppressed and crushed.

“Which thou knowest not - Which shall come from a far country, which thou didst not at all expect or fear, and therefore will be the more dreadful when they come; a nation whose language thou understandest not, and therefore canst not plead with them…”

Just as it pleased the LORD to make you prosper and multiply, so also it will please Him to annihilate you and destroy you.

“To destroy you - His just indignation against you will be so great, that it will be a pleasure to him to take vengeance on you.”

You ate no bread and drank no wine or strong drink, so that you might know that I am the LORD your God.

“Ye have not eaten bread - Common bread purchased by your own money, or made by your own hands, but heavenly and angelical bread. Neither drank wine - But only water out of the rock.”

because when such a person hears the words of this oath, he invokes a blessing on himself, saying, ‘I will have peace, even though I walk in the stubbornness of…

“To add drunkenness to thirst - The words may be rendered, to add thirst to drunkenness, and so the sense may be, that when he hath multiplied his sins, and made himself as it were drunk with them, yet he is not satisfied therewith, but…”

They went and served other gods, and they worshiped gods they had not known—gods that the LORD had not given to them.

“Whom God had not given to them - For their worship, but hath divided them unto all nations, for their use and service. So he speaks here of the sun and moon and stars, which were the principal gods worshipped by the neighbouring nations.”