Deuteronomychapter 9
29 verses · Moses, by tradition · 15th to 13th century BC · The Law
Key verse
It is not because of your righteousness or uprightness of heart that you are going in to possess their land, but it is because of their wickedness that the LORD your God is driving out these nations before you, to keep the promise He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
It stands in Not for your righteousness, verses 1 to 6.
The chapter
Chapter summary
Israel not righteous. A hard chapter to hear. The LORD will drive out nations greater than Israel, but ‘not for thy righteousness … doth the LORD thy God give thee this good land to possess it: for thou art a stiffnecked people’. Moses recalls the golden calf, the breaking of the tables, the forty days on his face pleading, the grinding of the calf to powder, the waters drunk in judgment. Taberah, Massah, Kibroth-hattaavah, Kadesh. The catalogue of rebellions. ‘Remember, and forget not, how thou provokedst the LORD thy God to wrath in the wilderness.’ The inheritance is not wages; it is covenant. Henry: repentance is the door of inheritance, not merit.
Context
Law · Moses · Deuteronomy overview
The world behind this chapter
Deuteronomy 9The history
Moses is the speaker and he is the one who kept the two fasts and prayed the prayer this chapter records. He rehearses the calf as a witness against the people he is addressing, who were children or unborn when it happened.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
The cities ahead are described as great and fortified to the heavens, which is how a Canaanite tell looked from below. A town was built on the mound of its own ruins with the wall following the crest, sometimes with a sloped stone rampart at the base that made the climb impossible under fire. Verses 1 and 2 give back the report of the spies at Numbers 13:28 and 13:33 in its own terms.
A first hearer knew what a young bull stood for. It was the standard image of strength and fertility across the region, and both Egypt and Canaan used bull imagery for their gods. Making one out of donated jewellery while Moses was still on the mountain broke the covenant within days of its making, and John Gill records that the mountain had been burning for six weeks by then.
The fast is reported twice, forty days and forty nights without bread or water, face down before the LORD. A fast of that length is at the outer edge of what a body survives, and the chapter states it twice to mark what the intercession cost.
The other rebellions are listed by place name, Taberah, Massah, Kibroth-hattaavah and Kadesh-barnea, the way a court record is read out. Albert Barnes records that the order is by weight rather than by date, and that Taberah lay in or near Kibroth-hattaavah and so is left out of the encampment list at Numbers 33:16.
One fact stands here and nowhere else in Scripture, that the LORD was angry with Aaron enough to destroy him and that Moses prayed for him. Exodus 32 records Aaron making the calf and says nothing of this sentence or of the prayer that turned it.
What it meant to them
The temptation the chapter heads off is a specific one, to say after the victories that God gave the land because Israel deserved it. The answer is given three times in three verses, that it is for the wickedness of those nations and for the oath sworn to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
For the first hearers that was humbling and steadying at once. A covenant that never rested on their record could not be cancelled by their record either, which is the ground Moses prays on at verses 26 to 29.
Sources cited
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament , 2000
- John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament , 1748 to 1763, on Deuteronomy 9:15
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments , 1832 to 1869, on Deuteronomy 9:20 and 9:22
- Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Pentateuch , 1866
Where the chapter sits
Deuteronomy 9 falls in Second sermon, the law restated (chapters 5–26). The Decalogue repeated; the Shema; laws for the land, for worship, for kingship, for war, for the poor. The covenant's central exposition.
Before it: First sermon, retrospective, chapters 1–4. After it: Third sermon, blessings and curses, chapters 27–30.
The whole shape of Deuteronomy→The structure of this chapter
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
A. Not for your righteousness
1. (vv. 1-3)
Deuteronomy 9:2
“This representation is much the same with that which the evil spies had made ( Num. xiii. 28, 33 ), but made with a very different intention: that was designed to drive them from God and to discourage their hope in him; this to drive them to God and to engage their hope in him, since no power less than that which is almighty could secure and prosper them.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Deuteronomy 9:3
“So shalt thou drive them out, and destroy them quickly - This is not inconsistent with Deu 7:22, in which instant annihilation is not to be expected for the reasons assigned. Here Moses urges the people to trust in God’s covenanted aid; since He would then make no delay in so destroying the nations attacked by them as to put them into enjoyment of the promises, and in doing so as fast as was for the well-being of Israel itself.”
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.
2. (vv. 4-5)
Deuteronomy 9:4
“I ask, what could be said more clearly against that pernicious opinion and presumption of ours, by which we want to attribute everything that we do to our free will and to our own effort? "Do not say in your heart, when the Lord your God has destroyed them in your sight: Because of my righteousness the Lord has led me in to possess this land." Did he not express himself clearly to those whose souls' eyes are open and whose ears hear?”
John Cassian· written before 435· CONFERENCE 5.15.3-4patristic
Deuteronomy 9:5
“For the wickedness of these nations - So then it was not by any sovereign act of God that these people were cast out, but for their wickedness; they had transgressed the law of their Creator; they had resisted his Spirit, and could no longer be tolerated. The Israelites were to possess their land, not because they deserved it, but first, because they were less wicked than the others; and secondly, because God thus chose to begin the great work of his salvation among men.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
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.
3. (v. 6)
Deuteronomy 9:6
“Understand therefore that the Lord thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy righteousness,.... This is again repeated to impress it upon their minds, that it was not for any goodness of theirs, but as a gift of divine goodness to them, that they were put into the possession of the good land, which greatly exceeded any merits of theirs, and was entirely owing to the kindness of God to them, and not to any righteousness of theirs; and this he frequently inculcates, that they might have a thorough understanding of it.”
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.
B. The calf, the broken tables, the ground powder
1. (v. 7)
Deuteronomy 9:7
“We are apt to forget our provocations, especially when the smart of the rod is over, and have need to be often put in mind of them, that we may never entertain any conceit of our own righteousness. Paul argues from the guilt which all mankind is under to prove that we cannot be justified before God by our own works, Rom. iii. If our works condemn us, they will not justify us.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2. (vv. 8-10)
Deuteronomy 9:8
“Also in Horeb - Rather, “even in Horeb.” The time and circumstances made the apostasy at Horeb particularly inexcusable.”
1 more voice on this verse
Deuteronomy 9:8
“That was a sin so heinous, and by several aggravations made so exceedingly sinful, that they deserved upon all occasions to be upbraided with it. It was done in the very place where the law was given by which they were expressly forbidden to worship God by images, and while the mountain was yet burning before their eyes, and Moses had gone up to fetch them the law in writing.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Deuteronomy 9:9
Every form of nourishment is called "bread" in the Scriptures. This is clear from what is written concerning Moses: for forty days he neither ate "bread" nor drank water. The word that nourishes is multidimensional and varied. Not everyone can receive the solid and strong nourishment of God's teachings. Therefore, wishing to give an athlete's nourishment suitable to the more perfect, [Christ] says, "The bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
Origen of Alexandria· written before 253· ON PRAYER 27.4patristic
Deuteronomy 9:10
Moses anticipates the name of the ecclesia once again when he says of the tablets: "And on them were inscribed all the words that the Lord spoke to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly." It is as if he might have said more plainly: "you were called and gathered together."
Cyril of Jerusalem· written before 386· Catechetical Lecture 18.24patristic
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.
3. (vv. 11-12)
Deuteronomy 9:11
“And it came to pass at the end of forty days and forty nights,.... The time of Moses's stay in the mount, when it was just up, and not before: that the Lord gave me the two tables of stone, even the tables of the covenant, as in Deu 9:9. Aben Ezra observes, that this shows that the day the tables were given to Moses the calf was made.”
Deuteronomy 9:12
“Thy people - have corrupted themselves - Debased themselves by making and worshipping an Egyptian idol. See on Exodus 32 (note).”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Deuteronomy 9:12
“And the Lord said unto me,....”
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.
4. (vv. 13-14)
Deuteronomy 9:13
“Furthermore the Lord spake unto me, saying,.... After he had given him the two tables, and before his departure from the mount: I have seen this people; took notice of them, their ways, and their works: and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people; unwilling to submit to, and bear the yoke of my commandments; see Exo 32:9.”
Deuteronomy 9:14
“Let me alone, that I may destroy them,....”
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.
5. (vv. 15-17)
Deuteronomy 9:15
“So I turned and came down from the mount,.... As the Lord commanded: and the mount burned with fire; as it had for six weeks past, ever since the Lord's descent upon it; and so it continued, for the words may be rendered, "and the mount was burning" (b); and yet this did not deter the Israelites from idolatry: and the two tables of the covenant were in my two hands: one table in one hand, and the other in the other hand. (b) בער "de monte ardente", V. L. Heb. "burning", Ainsworth.”
Deuteronomy 9:16
“God was very angry with them for their sin. Let them not think that God overlooked what they did amiss, and gave them Canaan for what was good among them.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Deuteronomy 9:17
“I took the two tables, . . . and broke them before your eyes--not in the heat of intemperate passion, but in righteous indignation, from zeal to vindicate the unsullied honor of God, and by the suggestion of His Spirit to intimate that the covenant had been broken, and the people excluded from the divine favor.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
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.
6. (vv. 18-19)
Deuteronomy 9:18
“I fell down before the Lord, as at the first - Moses interceded for the people before he came down from the mountain the first time Exo 32:11-13. This intercession is only briefly alluded to in this verse. Afterward he spent another 40 days on the mountain in fasting and prayer to obtain a complete restitution of the covenant Exo 34:28. It is this second forty days, and the intercession of Moses made therein (compare Exo 34:9), that is more particularly brought forward here and in Deu 9:25-29.”
Deuteronomy 9:19
“For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure wherewith the Lord was wroth against you,....”
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.
7. (vv. 20-21)
Deuteronomy 9:20
“It was not the people alone that sinned but also Aaron, the high priest. For Moses says, "And the wrath of the Lord was upon Aaron"; "and I prayed for him," he says, "and God forgave him." Now Moses made supplication on behalf of the high priest who sinned and prevailed upon the Lord by his importunity. If so, will not Jesus, his only-begotten Son, imploring God in our behalf, more so prevail?”
Cyril of Jerusalem· written before 386· Catechetical Lecture 2.10patristic
1 more voice on this verse
Deuteronomy 9:20
“Israel could not even boast that its heads and representatives continued, faithful. Aaron had been already designated for the high priestly functions; but he fell away with the rest of the people. It was due therefore solely to the grace of God and the intercession of Moses that Aaron himself and his promised priesthood with him were not cut off; just as at a later time, when Aaron had actually to die for a new sin Israel owed it still to the same causes that Eleazar was substituted and the High Priesthood perpetuated (compare Deu 10:6; Num 20:24-26).”
Deuteronomy 9:21
“I cast the dust thereof into the brook that descended out of the mount--that is, "the smitten rock" (El Leja) which was probably contiguous to, or a part of, Sinai.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
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.
C. Rebellious from the day he knew youvv. 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 9:22
“See the marginal reference. Taberah was the name of a spot in or near the station of Kibroth-hattaavah, and accordingly is not named in the list of encampments given in Num 33:16. The separate mention of the two is, however, appropriate here, for each place and each name was a memorial of an act of rebellion. The instances in this and the next verse are not given in order of occurrence. The speaker for his own purposes advances from the slighter to the more heinous proofs of guilt.”
Deuteronomy 9:23
“Likewise when the Lord sent you from Kadeshbarnea,....”
1 more voice on this verse
Deuteronomy 9:23
“It is good for us often to remember against ourselves, with sorrow and shame, our former sins, and to review the records conscience keeps of them, that we may see how much we are indebted to free grace, and may humbly own that we never merited at God's hand any thing but wrath and the curse.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Deuteronomy 9:24
“You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you. Either from the time he first had and took knowledge of them and visited them, before his departure from Egypt to the land of Midian; (see Exo 2:11 compared with Act 7:25); or from the time that he was sent to them to deliver them out of Egypt; see Exo 5:20 and especially from the time he brought them into the wilderness.”
D. Forty days and forty nights on his face
1. (vv. 25-27)
Deuteronomy 9:25
“Thus I fell down before the Lord forty days and forty nights, as I fell down at the first,.... Which Jarchi says are the selfsame said above, Deu 9:18, but doubled or repeated, because of the order of his prayer.”
1 more voice on this verse
Deuteronomy 9:25
“But on a comparison of this passage with Nu 14:5, the subject and language of this prayer show that only the second act of intercession (De 9:18) is now described in fuller detail.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Deuteronomy 9:26
“And I prayed therefore unto the Lord,....”
Deuteronomy 9:27
“Remember thy servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - As if he had said: “These are their descendants, and the covenant was made with those patriarchs in behalf of these.” God bestows many blessings on comparatively worthless persons, either for the sake of their pious ancestors, or on account of the religious people with whom they are connected; therefore union with the Church of God is a blessing of no common magnitude. The reader will find the grand subject of this chapter explained at large in the notes on Exodus 31 and 32, to which he is particularly desired to refer.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
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.
2. (vv. 28-29)
Deuteronomy 9:28
“Lest the land whence thou broughtest us out say,.... The land of Egypt, the inhabitants of it: because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land which he promised them; the land of Canaan, the inhabitants of it being so mighty, and their cities so strongly fortified.”
Deuteronomy 9:29
“Yet they are thy people,....”
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.
This page carries no textual note on Deuteronomy 9. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Calvin, Commentary on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Pentateuch and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.
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