Deuteronomy31chapter 31

Deuteronomy 31:1-2

Moses gives two reasons for handing over, and they sit side by side. I can no more go out and come in is the idiom for leading men in war, the same pair of verbs he used at Numbers 27:17 when he asked God for a man to go out and come in before the congregation. Deuteronomy 34:7 will say his eye was not dim nor his natural force abated, so both statements stand in the same book, and older readers take verse 2 of the office rather than of the body. The second reason is God's word barring him from Jordan, which this book gives three times as for your sakes at 1:37, 3:26 and 4:21, where Numbers 20:12 gives it as because ye believed me not.

Deuteronomy 31:3-5

The sentence puts God over Jordan first and Joshua second, and Joshua's commission is stated as something the Lord hath said rather than as an arrangement of Moses' own. The proof offered is Sihon and Og, the two kings east of Jordan whose defeat Numbers 21:21-35 records and this book retold at 2:26 through 3:11, so the argument runs from what this generation watched to what it has not seen yet. Verse 5 ties the conquest to the commandments already given, which keeps the war under the law rather than the law under the war.

Deuteronomy 31:6-8

Be strong and of a good courage falls three times in this chapter, to the people at verse 6, to Joshua at verse 7, and again at verse 23, and Joshua 1:6, 1:7 and 1:9 will put the same words to the same man on the far bank. Hebrews 13:5 quotes the promise of verse 6 in the form I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee, and turns it against covetousness and the fear of want. Moses charges Joshua in the sight of all Israel, so the nation watches the succession happen instead of hearing about it afterward.

Deuteronomy 31:9-11

The law goes into writing and then into two sets of hands, the priests who bear the ark and the elders of Israel. The public reading is fixed to one point in the calendar, the feast of tabernacles in the year of release, which makes it every seventh year, and it happens in the place which the Lord shall choose, the phrase that falls fifteen times in chapters 12 to 26 and never once names the place. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown set this beside the ordinary practice of drawing two copies of a contract, one lodged for safekeeping and one left with the parties, and read verse 9 and verse 26 that way. Nehemiah 8:1-8 and 8:14-18 record such a reading at this same feast centuries later.

Deuteronomy 31:12-13

The list of who must be gathered names the women, the children and the stranger within thy gates, so the hearing reaches past the men who go up to the feast. Verse 13 gives the reason for the seven-year interval, that their children, which have not known any thing, get their hearing before they are grown. John Wesley reads verse 11 to mean the priests and Levites did the reading in several assemblies at once, since one voice could not carry to a nation.

Deuteronomy 31:14-15

Joshua was designated at Numbers 27:18-23 with the laying on of hands, and here God calls him into the tabernacle to take the charge in person. Matthew Henry observes that this is the only appearance of the glory of God recorded in Deuteronomy, where the three books before it report such appearances often. The pillar of cloud that led the march out of Egypt at Exodus 13:21 now stands still at the door while the succession is settled.

Deuteronomy 31:16-18

God tells Moses what the nation will do before Moses is dead and before the nation is in the land. The words are the words of a broken marriage, go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land and break my covenant, which is the figure Hosea builds a whole book on. The judgment named is withdrawal, I will hide my face from them, and the people are quoted in advance getting the diagnosis right, Are not these evils come upon us, because our God is not among us. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown tie the hidden face to the absence of the Shekinah from the second temple.

Deuteronomy 31:19-21

The song is commissioned as evidence for a trial that has not opened, and verse 21 says why it will hold, that it shall not be forgotten out of the mouths of their seed. Verse 20 names plenty as the occasion of the turning, when they shall have eaten and filled themselves, and waxen fat, which is the warning of 6:11-12 and 8:11-14 arriving now as a forecast. The song itself is chapter 32, and the New Testament quotes it more often than any other chapter of this book, at Romans 10:19, at Romans 12:19 with Hebrews 10:30, and at Romans 15:10.

Deuteronomy 31:22-23

Moses writes the song on the day he is told to and teaches it, so the witness is in place long before the failure it was written for. Verse 23 delivers the charge announced at verse 14, and the speaker is left unnamed, so Keil and Delitzsch read the Lord as the speaker because verse 14 said that I may give him a charge, while others carry Moses over as the subject from verse 22. The words are the ones Moses used at verse 7, with one addition, I will be with thee, which Joshua 1:5 repeats to him again.

Deuteronomy 31:24-26

The book is finished and set in the side of the ark rather than inside it, where 1 Kings 8:9 says nothing lay but the two tables of stone. Both the song at verse 19 and the book at verse 26 are called a witness, and verse 28 adds heaven and earth to the record, which answers the two or three witnesses this same law requires at 19:15. 2 Kings 22:8 has Hilkiah finding the book of the law in the house of the Lord in Josiah's reign, and the reading of it turns the policy of a kingdom inside a day.

Deuteronomy 31:27-29

Moses gives his evidence for the forecast, which is the forty years he has watched, that ye have been rebellious against the Lord while I am yet alive with you this day. Stiff neck goes back to Exodus 32:9 at the golden calf, and 10:16 in this book told them to be no more stiffnecked. Verse 29 repeats to the elders and officers what verses 16 to 21 told Moses inside the tabernacle, so the people hear the forecast of their own turning from his mouth, and the phrase in the latter days carries it past the generation standing in front of him.

Deuteronomy 31:30

One text gets four handlings in this chapter: put in their mouths at verse 19, written at verse 22, taught to the children of Israel in the same verse, and here spoken aloud to the whole assembly. Until they were ended marks the seam, and what follows in chapter 32 is that text set down whole. Adam Clarke notes that matter meant to last was commonly cast into verse in societies where few could write, and that even history was sung.