Deuteronomy9chapter 9

Deuteronomy 9:1-3

Hear, O Israel opens four passages in this book, at 5:1, 6:4, here and 20:3, and each one introduces something the people are to take as settled. The cities fenced up to heaven and the children of the Anakims are the evil report of the spies at Numbers 13:28 and 13:33 given back almost in their own terms, with the opposite conclusion drawn from it. Verse 3 supplies that conclusion: the consuming fire of 4:24, which stood over Israel there, goes over Jordan in front of them.

Deuteronomy 9:4-5

Twice in two verses the text forbids the thought that the land is wages, and it forbids the thought before it forbids the boast, in thine heart. Two reasons are put in its place, the wickedness of these nations, which Genesis 15:16 had already said would take four generations to come to the full, and the oath sworn to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The land therefore changes hands as judgment falling on one people and a promise kept to another, and Israel's record supplies neither ground.

Deuteronomy 9:6-7

The third denial adds a ground of its own, for thou art a stiffnecked people, which is the word God used of them at Exodus 32:9 and which the rest of the chapter goes on to document. Verse 7 then carries both of the book's standing commands in one breath, remember, and forget not, and it is the only verse in Deuteronomy where the two meet. Remember falls fourteen times in the book and forget nine, and what is to be remembered here is forty years of provocation rather than a deliverance. Barnes reads the chapter as the argument Paul makes at Ephesians 2:8-9.

Deuteronomy 9:8-10

Horeb is named first among the provocations because the calf was made at the mountain where the law against it was being given, and while the mountain still burned. The forty days without bread or water at verse 9 is the fast of Exodus 24:18 and 34:28, kept again by Elijah at the same mountain in 1 Kings 19:8 and by Christ in the wilderness at Matthew 4:2 before he answered the tempter out of this book. Written with the finger of God repeats Exodus 31:18, and the day of the assembly renders the Hebrew qahal, which the Greek translators gave as ekklesia and which Cyril of Jerusalem made a point of in his catechetical lectures.

Deuteronomy 9:11-12

The tables are handed over and the order to go down follows in the next sentence, which is why Aben Ezra, quoted by Gill, observed that the calf was made on the very day the tables were given. God's words put the people into Moses' hands, thy people which thou hast brought forth out of Egypt, exactly as at Exodus 32:7. Moses hands them back at verse 26 of this chapter, thy people and thine inheritance, and the pronoun is the whole argument between them.

Deuteronomy 9:13-14

Let me alone, that I may destroy them names the one thing standing in the way, and the older commentators read the words as leaving Moses his opening rather than closing it. The offer that follows, I will make of thee a nation mightier and greater than they, is the promise made to Abraham at Genesis 12:2 held out to one man over the ruins of his people. Moses declines it here and declines it a second time at Numbers 14:12 when it is made again after Kadesh.

Deuteronomy 9:15-17

Moses comes down with the mountain still burning behind him and a table of the covenant in each hand. Exodus 32:19 says he saw the calf and the dancing and that his anger waxed hot, where Deuteronomy leaves both the dancing and the anger out and says only that he brake them before your eyes. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the breaking as a formal act declaring the covenant broken, and Henry calls it a bill of divorce served on the nation.

Deuteronomy 9:18-19

The forty days are kept a second time, now face down and on the people's account rather than to receive anything. Moses says what moved him, that he was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure, and the verse ends with the Lord hearkened unto me at that time also. Readers divide over whether verse 18 and verse 25 record two separate fasts or one told twice, and both readings are old: Barnes takes verse 18 for the second forty days of Exodus 34:28 and treats verse 25 as that same period in fuller detail, while Rashi, cited by Gill, holds the two to be the one fast repeated to suit the order of the prayer.

Deuteronomy 9:20-21

That the Lord was very angry with Aaron to have destroyed him is told here and nowhere else in Scripture. Exodus 32 records Aaron making the calf and answering for it, and it says nothing of this sentence on him or of the prayer that turned it, so the man appointed to make atonement for Israel is kept alive by another man's intercession. Verse 21 burns the calf, grinds it as small as dust and casts it into the brook, where Exodus 32:20 adds that Moses made the children of Israel drink of the water. Both accounts stand as they are given.

Deuteronomy 9:22-24

Four more places are named and they do not stand in the order they happened. Taberah is Numbers 11:3, Massah is Exodus 17:7 and is the failure Christ answers with at Matthew 4:7 by quoting Deuteronomy 6:16, Kibroth-hattaavah is Numbers 11:34, and Kadesh-barnea is the refusal of Numbers 13 and 14. Barnes reads the arrangement as moving from the lighter proofs of guilt to the heavier, which lands the list on ye rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God. Verse 24 then closes the indictment with a span rather than an incident, from the day that I knew you.

Deuteronomy 9:25-27

The prayer is given in Moses' own words and it asks for nothing on Israel's account. He pleads what God has already spent, thy people and thine inheritance, which thou hast redeemed through thy greatness, and then the three names of the oath, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Look not unto the stubbornness of this people, nor to their wickedness, nor to their sin is the denial of verses 4 to 6 turned into a request. Numbers 14:13-19 has him praying on the same two grounds after Kadesh, God's name and God's promise.

Deuteronomy 9:28-29

The argument Moses finishes on is what Egypt would say, that the Lord was not able to bring them in and that he hated them. He asks God to weigh his own name among the nations that watched the exodus, which is the plea he makes again at Numbers 14:15-16 and which Ezekiel 36:22 states as God's own reason for acting. The last words of the chapter answer the sentence God spoke at verse 12, yet they are thy people and thine inheritance, which thou broughtest out by thy mighty power.