Deuteronomy

A commentary

Gerhard von Rad

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 1966
• Print ISBN: 9780664221874
• eBook ISBN: 9781611645774
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Comentario bíblico

This commentary on Deuteronomy meets and exceeds the high standards of the Old Testament Library series. It provides one of the most sophisticated explanations to date of the compositional process that produced Deuteronomy, presenting that process as a combination of large-scale redactional activity and "micro-redaction." The commentary is also attentive to the historical background of Deuteronomy's origins in the reigns of Manasseh and Josiah. The fresh translation that heads each section is followed by insightful linguistic comments that highlight Deuteronomy's famous homiletical and didactic style.

The Old Testament Library provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The contributors are scholars of international standing.

CHAPTERS 1.1 – 3.29

1 ¹These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan in the wilderness, in the Arabah over against Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Dizahab. ²It is eleven days’ journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir to Kadesh-barnea. ³And in the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses spoke to the people of Israel according to all that the LORD had given him in commandment to them, ⁴after he had defeated Sihon the king of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, who lived in Ashtaroth and in Edrei. ⁵Beyond the Jordan, in the land of Moab, Moses undertook to explain this law, saying, ⁶‘The LORD our God said to us in Horeb, “You have stayed long enough at this mountain; ⁷turn and take your journey, and go to the hill country of the Amorites, and to all their neighbours in the Arabah, in the hill country and in the lowland, and in the Negeb, and by the sea-coast, the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. ⁸Behold, I have set the land before you; go in and take possession of the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and to their descendants after them.”

9 ‘At that time I said to you, “I am not able alone to bear you; ¹⁰the LORD your God has multiplied you, and behold, you are this day as the stars of heaven for multitude. ¹¹May the LORD, the God of your fathers, make you a thousand times as many as you are, and bless you, as he has promised you! ¹²How can I bear alone the weight and burden of you and your strife? ¹³Choose wise, understanding, and experienced men, according to your tribes, and I will appoint them as your heads.” ¹⁴And you answered me, “The thing that you have spoken is good for us to do.” ¹⁵So I took the heads of your tribes, wise and experienced men, and set them as heads over you, commanders of thousands, commanders of hundreds, commanders of fifties, commanders of tens, and officers, throughout your tribes. ¹⁶And I charged your judges at that time, “Hear the cases between your brethren, and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the alien that is with him. ¹⁷You shall not be partial in judgment; you shall hear the small and the great alike; you shall not be afraid of the face of man, for the judgment is God’s; and the case that is too hard for you, you shall bring to me, and I will hear it.” ¹⁸And I commanded you at that time all the things that you should do.

19 ‘And we set out from Horeb, and went through all that great and terrible wilderness which you saw, on the way to the hill country of the Amorites, as the LORD our God commanded us; and we came to Kadesh-barnea. ²⁰And I said to you, “You have come to the hill country of the Amorites, which the LORD our God gives us. ²¹Behold, the LORD your God has set the land before you; go up, take possession, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has told you; do not fear or be dismayed.” ²²Then all of you came near me, and said, “Let us send men before us, that they may explore the land for us, and bring us word again of the way by which we must go up and the cities into which we shall come.” ²³The thing seemed good to me, and I took twelve men of you, one man for each tribe; ²⁴and they turned and went up into the hill country, and came to the Valley of Eshcol and spied it out. ²⁵And they took in their hands some of the fruit of the land and brought it down to us, and brought us word again, and said, “It is a good land which the LORD our God gives us.”

26 ‘Yet you would not go up, but rebelled against the command of the LORD your God; ²⁷and you murmured in your tents, and said, “Because the LORD hated us he has brought us forth out of the land of Egypt, to give us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us. ²⁸Whither are we going up? Our brethren have made our hearts melt, saying ‘The people are greater and taller than we; the cities are great and fortified up to heaven; and moreover we have seen the sons of the Anakim there.’ ” ²⁹Then I said to you, “Do not be in dread or afraid of them. ³⁰The LORD your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, ³¹and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the LORD your God bore you, as a man bears his son, in all the way that you went until you came to this place.” ³²Yet in spite of this work you did not believe the LORD your God, ³³who went before you in the way to seek you out a place to pitch your tents, in fire by night, to show you by what way you should go, and in the cloud by day.

34 ‘And the LORD heard your words, and was angered, and he swore, ³⁵“Not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land which I swore to give to your fathers, ³⁶except Caleb the son of Jephunneh; he shall see it, and to him and to his children I will give the land upon which he has trodden, because he has wholly followed the LORD!” ³⁷The LORD was angry with me also on your account, and said, “You also shall not go in there; ³⁸Joshua the son of Nun, who stands before you, he shall enter; encourage him, for he shall cause Israel to inherit it. ³⁹Moreover your little ones, who you said would become a prey, and your children, who this day have no knowledge of good or evil, shall go in there, and to them I will give it, and they shall possess it. ⁴⁰But as for you, turn, and journey into the wilderness in the direction of the Red Sea.”

41 ‘Then you answered me, “We have sinned against the LORD; we will go up and fight, just as the LORD our God commanded us.” And every man of you girded on his weapons of war, and thought it easy to go into the hill country. ⁴²And the LORD said to me, “Say to them, Do not go up or fight, for I am not in the midst of you; lest you be defeated before your enemies.” ⁴³So I spoke to you, and you would not hearken; but you rebelled against the command of the LORD, and were presumptuous and went up into the hill country. ⁴⁴Then the Amorites who lived in that hill country came out against you and chased you as bees do and beat you down in Seir as far as Hormah. ⁴⁵And you returned and wept before the LORD; but the LORD did not hearken to your voice or give ear to you. ⁴⁶So you remained at Kadesh many days, the days that you remained there.

2 ¹‘Then we turned, and journeyed into the wilderness in the direction of the Red Sea, as the LORD told me; and for many days we went about Mount Seir. ²Then the LORD said to me, ³“You have been going about this mountain country long enough; turn northward. ⁴And command the people, You are about to pass through the territory of your brethren the sons of Esau, who live in Seir; and they will be afraid of you. So take good heed; ⁵do not contend with them; for I will not give you any of their land, no, not so much as for the sole of the foot to tread on, because I have given Mount Seir to Esau as a possession. ⁶You shall purchase food from them for money, that you may eat; and you shall also buy water of them for money, that you may drink. ⁷For the LORD your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands; he knows your going through this great wilderness; these forty years the LORD your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing.” ⁸So we went on, away from our brethren the sons of Esau who live in Seir, away from the Arabah road from Elath and Ezion-geber.

‘And we turned and went in the direction of the wilderness of Moab. ⁹And the LORD said to me, “Do not harass Moab or contend with them in battle, for I will not give you any of their land for a possession, because I have given Ar to the sons of Lot for a possession.” ¹⁰(The Emim formerly lived there, a people great and many, and tall as the Anakim; ¹¹like the Anakim they are also known as Rephaim, but the Moabites call them Emim. ¹²The Horites also lived in Seir formerly, but the sons of Esau dispossessed them, and destroyed them from before them, and settled in their stead; as Israel did to the land of their possession, which the LORD gave to them.) ¹³“Now rise up, and go over the brook Zered.” So we went over the brook Zered. ¹⁴And the time from our leaving Kadesh-barnea until we crossed the brook Zered was thirty-eight years, until the entire generation, that is, the men of war, had perished from the camp, as the LORD had sworn to them. ¹⁵For indeed the hand of the LORD was against them, to destroy them from the camp, until they had perished.

16 ‘So when all the men of war had perished and were dead from among the people, ¹⁷the LORD said to me, ¹⁸“This day you are to pass over the boundary of Moab at Ar; ¹⁹and when you approach the frontier of the sons of Ammon, do not harass them or contend with them, for I will not give you any of the land of the sons of Ammon as a possession, because I have given it to the sons of Lot for a possession.” ²⁰(That also is known as a land of Rephaim; Rephaim formerly lived there, but the Ammonites call them Zamzummim, ²¹a people great and many, and tall as the Anakim; but the LORD destroyed them before them; and they dispossessed them, and settled in their stead; ²²as he did for the sons of Esau, who live in Seir, when he destroyed the Horites before them, and they dispossessed them, and settled in their stead even to this day. ²³As for the Avvim, who lived in villages as far as Gaza, the Caphtorim, who came from Caphtor, destroyed them and settled in their stead.) ²⁴“Rise up, take your journey, and go over the valley of the Arnon; behold, I have given into your hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land; begin to take possession, and contend with him in battle. ²⁵This day I will begin to put the dread and fear of you upon the peoples that are under the whole heaven, who shall hear the report of you and shall tremble and be in anguish because of you.”

26 ‘So I sent messengers from the wilderness of Kedemoth to Sihon the king of Heshbon, with words of peace, saying, ²⁷“Let me pass through your land; I will go only by the road, I will turn aside neither to the right nor to the left. ²⁸You shall sell me food for money, that I may eat, and give me water for money, that I may drink; only let me pass through on foot, ²⁹as the sons of Esau who live in Seir and the Moabites who live in Ar did for me, until I go over the Jordan into the land which the LORD our God gives to us.” ³⁰But Sihon the king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him; for the LORD your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, that he might give him into your hand, as at this day. ³¹And the LORD said to me, “Behold, I have begun to give Sihon and his land over to you; begin to take possession, that you may occupy his land.” ³²Then Sihon came out against us, he and all his people, to battle at Jahaz. ³³And the LORD our God gave him over to us; and we defeated him and his sons and all his people. ³⁴And we captured all his cities at that time and utterly destroyed every city, men, women, and children; we left none remaining; ³⁵only the cattle we took as spoil for ourselves, with the booty of the cities which we captured. ³⁶From Aroer, which is on the edge of the valley of the Arnon, and from the city that is in the valley, as far as Gilead, there was not a city too high for us; the LORD our God gave all into our hands. ³⁷Only to the land of the sons of Ammon you did not draw near, that is, to all the banks of the river Jabbok and the cities of the hill country, and wherever the LORD our God forbade us.

3 ¹‘Then we turned and went up the way to Bashan; and Og the king of Bashan came out against us, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei. ²But the LORD said to me, “Do not fear him; for I have given him and all his people and his land into your hand; and you shall do to him as you did to Sihon the king of the Amorites, who dwelt at Heshbon.” ³So the LORD our God gave into our hand Og also, the king of Bashan, and all his people; and we smote him until no survivor was left to him. ⁴And we took all his cities at that time—there was not a city which we did not take from them—sixty cities, the whole region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan. ⁵All these were cities fortified with high walls, gates, and bars, besides very many unwalled villages. ⁶And we utterly destroyed them, as we did to Sihon the king of Heshbon, destroying every city, men, women, and children. ⁷But all the cattle and the spoil of the cities we took as our booty. ⁸So we took the land at that time out of the hand of the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, from the valley of the Arnon to Mount Hermon ⁹(the Sidonians call Hermon Sirion, while the Amorites call it Senir), ¹⁰all the cities of the table-land and all Gilead and all Bashan, as far as Salecah and Edrei, cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan. ¹¹(For only Og the king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbah of the Ammonites? Nine cubits was its length, and four cubits its breadth, according to the common cubit.)

12 ‘When we took possession of this land at that time, I gave to the Reubenites and the Gadites the territory beginning at Aroer, which is on the edge of the valley of the Arnon, and half the hill country of Gilead with its cities; ¹³the rest of Gilead, and all Bashan, the kingdom of Og, that is, all the region of Argob, I gave to the half-tribe of Manasseh. (The whole of that Bashan is called the land of Rephaim. ¹⁴Jair the Manassite took all the region of Argob, that is, Bashan, as far as the border of the Geshurites and the Maacathites, and called the villages after his own name, Havvoth-jair, as it is to this day.) ¹⁵To Machir I gave Gilead, ¹⁶and to the Reubenites and the Gadites I gave the territory from Gilead as far as the valley of the Arnon, with the middle of the valley as a boundary, as far over as the river Jabbok, the boundary of the Ammonites; ¹⁷the Arabah also, with the Jordan as the boundary, from Chinnereth as far as the sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, under the slopes of Pisgah on the east.

18 ‘And I commanded you at that time, saying, “The LORD your God has given you this land to possess; all your men of valo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Commentary
• Index of Modern Authors