The Expositor's Bible: The Book of DeuteronomyHarper, Andrew
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Deuteronomy
Harper, Andrew
Bible. Deuteronomy -- Commentaries
In the section from the twelfth verse of chapter x. to the end of
chapter xi. the hortatory introduction is summed up in a final
review of all the motives to and the results of obedience and love
to God. The fundamental exhortation as to love to God is once more
repeated; only here fear is joined with love and precedes it; but
the necessity of love to God is expanded and dwelt upon, as at
the beginning, with a zeal that never wearies. The Deuteronomist
illustrates and enforces it with old reasons and new, always
speaking with the same pleading and heartfelt earnestness. He does
not fear the tedium of repetition, nor the accusation of moving
in a narrow round of ideas. Evidently in the evil time when he
wrote this love towards God had come to be his own support and his
consolation; and it had been revealed to him as the source of a
power, a sweetness, and a righteousness which could alone bring the
nation into communion with God. In affecting words resembling very
closely the noble exhortation in Micah vi., "He hath showed thee,
O man, what is good; and what doth Yahweh require of thee, but to
do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"
he teaches much the same doctrine as his contemporary: "And now,
Israel, what doth Yahweh thy God require of thee, but to fear Yahweh
thy God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve
Yahweh thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, to keep the
commandments of Yahweh and His statutes which I command thee this
day for thy good?"[67]
[67] Chap. x. 12.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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