Deuteronomy29chapter 29

Deuteronomy 29:1-3

the words of the covenant: Hebrew Bibles number verse 1 as the closing verse of chapter 28, so the line that opens this chapter in English ends the curses there instead. Moses calls what follows a covenant made in the land of Moab beside the covenant made in Horeb, which makes it a fresh ratification of the same agreement rather than a second set of terms. Verses 2 and 3 appeal to what the hearers saw in Egypt, though Numbers 14:29-30 and Deuteronomy 2:14-16 have that generation dead in the wilderness, and the book speaks to the nation as one body across its generations.

Deuteronomy 29:4

Moses says the LORD hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day, which sets the failure of forty years inside God's own giving as well as in the people. Adam Clarke reports that some read the verse as a question, and hath not God given you a heart, on the ground that God would not charge a duty on men he had not equipped for it, while Keil and Delitzsch take it as a statement of what was withheld. Paul reaches for the same three organs at Romans 11:8 for Israel's hardening in his own day, where he joins this language to Isaiah 29:10.

Deuteronomy 29:5-6

The clothes that did not wear out and the shoe that did not wear out were said already at 8:4, and Nehemiah 9:21 recites them again inside a prayer of confession. Verse 6 states the other half of the same provision, no bread and no wine or strong drink for forty years, which leaves manna and water from the rock as the whole diet. The purpose given is knowledge, that ye might know that I am the Lord your God, so the point of the shortage was who supplied it.

Deuteronomy 29:7-9

Sihon and Og are the last stroke of history this generation took part in, which is why the retelling stops there. Numbers 21:21-35 gives the two battles and Numbers 32 gives the grant of that land to Reuben, Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh, and those tribes already hold their inheritance while the rest of the nation waits. Albert Barnes notes that the word rendered prosper in verse 9 carries the sense of acting wisely, so keeping the covenant and doing well sit inside one Hebrew word rather than standing as a deed and its reward.

Deuteronomy 29:10-11

The roll runs from the captains of the tribes down to the hewer of thy wood and the drawer of thy water, and it takes in little ones, wives and the stranger in the camp. Joshua 9:21 later hands that exact pair of trades to the Gibeonites, which fixes it as the lowest standing an outsider held in Israel. Matthew Henry and Albert Barnes both read the presence of the little ones as ground for bringing children into covenant, and Barnes attaches Acts 2:39 to it, one of the places the older commentators argue infant baptism from the Old Testament.

Deuteronomy 29:12-13

Two words carry the one act, covenant and oath, and Adam Clarke observes that the verb rendered enter into is the verb for passing through, as the divided pieces at Genesis 15:17 were passed between. Verse 13 states what the covenant is for as a relation rather than a code, that he may establish thee for a people unto himself and be unto thee a God. The ground offered is the oath sworn to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so the covenant made in Moab rests on a promise older than any of its terms.

Deuteronomy 29:14-15

The covenant is made with him that standeth here with us this day and with him that is not here with us this day, and readers have taken the absent man two ways. John Gill allows that some were kept in their tents by sickness, while the medieval Jewish commentators Rashi and Ibn Ezra, and Albert Barnes after them, read the phrase of the generations not yet born and bound by what their fathers swore. The second reading is the one Jewish tradition carried, and Acts 2:39 uses the same reach when Peter says the promise is to you and to your children.

Deuteronomy 29:16-17

The King James sets these two verses inside a parenthesis, and they hold the reason for the warning that follows. What the people know by sight is listed in order, Egypt where they lived, the nations they came among on the way, and the idols of wood and stone, silver and gold. The same four materials stand at 4:28 and Psalm 115:4 sets them against the God who made the heavens, and the Hebrew word behind idols here is a term of contempt that Ezekiel uses of them throughout his book.

Deuteronomy 29:18-19

The danger is named at every scale, man, woman, family or tribe, so no unit is too small or too large to carry it. The root that beareth gall and wormwood is taken up at Hebrews 12:15 as a root of bitterness springing up and troubling many, following the Greek of the Septuagint, and Acts 8:23 uses the gall half of the pair to Simon. Verse 19 quotes the man in his own words, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, which Albert Barnes sets beside Jeremiah 23:17 and Psalm 73, and the closing clause about drunkenness and thirst is rendered in the reverse order by other translators.

Deuteronomy 29:20-21

The covenant was made with a whole nation standing together and the sentence here falls on one man out of all the tribes of Israel. To blot out his name from under heaven is the sentence passed on Amalek at Exodus 17:14 and repeated at Deuteronomy 25:19, so an Israelite who turns to other gods is put under the judgment held for the nation's enemy. The verb rendered separate in verse 21 is the one used at 10:8 for setting the tribe of Levi apart to the LORD, and here it sets a man apart unto evil.

Deuteronomy 29:22-24

The scene jumps forward to a ruined land and to two sets of onlookers, the children of the generation to come and a stranger out of a far country. Sodom and Gomorrah are named with Admah and Zeboim, the two other cities of the plain that Genesis 14:2 lists and that Genesis 19 leaves unnamed at the overthrow. Hosea 11:8 reaches for the same two cities when God asks how he shall give Ephraim up. The question of verse 24, wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land, is asked in the same words at 1 Kings 9:8 and Jeremiah 22:8, both times over the temple and the city.

Deuteronomy 29:25-28

The answer the nations give names the covenant rather than the land, and it dates that covenant to the day God brought them out of Egypt. Gods whom they knew not, and whom he had not given unto them, turns on the Hebrew word for an allotted portion, and Adam Clarke argues from that word that the God who calls himself the portion of his people never assigned these gods to Israel at all. Verse 28 speaks of the rooting out and the casting into another land as it is this day, in the past tense, from the mouth of onlookers standing after the event, and Daniel 9:11-14 prays these verses back to God from inside the exile.

Deuteronomy 29:29

The Masoretic scribes set dots above the words unto us and to our children in this verse, the only one of the fifteen marked places in the Hebrew Bible that falls in Deuteronomy, and what the mark was meant to flag has been argued over since. What is hidden stays with God and what is revealed is handed to the people and to their children for ever, and the last clause states the purpose, that we may do all the words of this law. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the verse as an answer to hearers astonished at the curses, Albert Barnes reads it of the timing of these things which God keeps in his own hand, and Acts 1:7 draws the same line when the risen Christ answers a question about the kingdom.