Deuteronomy purports to contain the laws under which Israel is to live in the land of Canaan. It deals with the conditions of an agricultural people, settled in towns and villages, in the presence of a native population to the contamination of whose religion and morals the Israelites are exposed. This legislation was revealed to Moses at Horeb (Deut. v. 28-33), but, inasmuch as it was not to go into effect until Israel was established in the possession of Canaan, being in fact wholly inapplicable to nomadic conditions--a consideration of which P, in its code of worship, is oblivious--it was not promulgated till the moment when the people, encamped opposite Jericho, was on the point of invading Palestine. Then the aged Moses, about to lay down his office and his life, delivers to the people, in national assembly, the law by which they are in future to be governed, and adds his most urgent injunctions and solemn warnings to be faithful to their religion and the law of their God. The book is thus almost wholly in the form of address, and the hortatory note is insistent. As an introduction, Moses briefly recalls the history of the wanderings, from Horeb on, impressing at every turn the lessons of their experience (Deut. 1-3); the material is taken chiefly from E's narrative, which it was intended to supersede in an independent Book of Deuteronomy. There follows a hortatory discourse (iv. 1-40), closely akin to cc. 29-30. The last acts and the death of Moses are narrated in confused fashion in c. 31; xxxii. 48-52; 34. The Song of Moses (c. 32), and the Blessing of Moses (c. 33), are apparently independent compositions which have been given an appropriate place at the end of the book. The core of Deuteronomy is cc. 5-11; 12-26; 28. Speaking generally, the first part (cc. 5-11) expounds the fundamental principles of religion, while the second (cc. 12-26) contains special laws, and, as a fitting and effective conclusion of the whole, c. 28 sets forth the blessings which God will bestow on Israel if it keeps his commandments, and the curses it will incur by unfaithfulness and disobedience. The special laws, particularly in Deut. 22 ff., are similar in character to those in Exod. 21-23 and in Lev. 17-25, and doubtless embody in the main ancient custom; but beside them are provisions of a singularly Utopian kind, such as those on the conduct of war in c. 20 and the septennial cancelling of all debts (xv. 1-11).