The 5th book of the Torah.
Previous Book: Numbers
Etymology:
Hebrew Name: דְּבָרִים Devarim, meaning "Words" {of Moses}
Greek Name: Δευτερονόμιον Deuteronómion, meaning "2nd Law"
Language: Hebrew
Author: Attributed to Moses
People:
Moses
Caleb son of Jephunneh
Joshua son of Nun
Places
Wilderness
Promised Land
The Red Sea
Horeb - where covenant made with the LORD
Chapters
Chapter 1 | Events at Horeb Recalled Appointment of Tribal Leaders Israel’s Refusal to Enter the Land The Penalty for Israel’s Rebellion The Desert Years |
Chapter 2 | Defeat of King Sihon |
Chapter 3 | Defeat of King Og Moses Views Canaan from Pisgah |
Chapter 4 | Moses Commands Obedience Cities of Refuge East of the Jordan Transition to the Second Address |
Chapter 5 | The Ten Commandments Moses the Mediator of God’s Will |
Chapter 6 | The Great Commandment Caution against Disobedience |
Chapter 7 | A Chosen People Blessings for Obedience |
Chapter 8 | A Warning Not to Forget God in Prosperity |
Chapter 9 | The Consequences of Rebelling against God |
Chapter 10 | The Second Pair of Tablets The Essence of the Law |
Chapter 11 | Rewards for Obedience |
Chapter 12 | Pagan Shrines to Be Destroyed A Prescribed Place of Worship Warning against Idolatry |
Chapter 13 | Warning against Idolatry |
Chapter 14 | Pagan Practices Forbidden Clean and Unclean Foods Regulations concerning Tithes |
Chapter 15 | Laws concerning the Sabbatical Year The Firstborn of Livestock |
Chapter 16 | The Passover Reviewed The Festival of Weeks Reviewed The Festival of Booths Reviewed Municipal Judges and Officers |
Chapter 17 | Forbidden Forms of Worship Legal Decisions by Priests and Judges Limitations of Royal Authority |
Chapter 18 | Privileges of Priests and Levites Child–Sacrifice, Divination, and Magic Prohibited A New Prophet Like Moses |
Chapter 19 | Laws concerning the Cities of Refuge Property Boundaries Law concerning Witnesses |
Chapter 20 | Rules of Warfare |
Chapter 21 | Law concerning Murder by Persons Unknown Female Captives The Right of the Firstborn Rebellious Children Miscellaneous Laws |
Chapter 22 | Laws concerning Sexual Relations |
Chapter 23 | Those Excluded from the Assembly Sanitary, Ritual, and Humanitarian Precepts |
Chapter 24 | Laws concerning Marriage and Divorce Miscellaneous Laws |
Chapter 25 | Levirate Marriage Various Commands |
Chapter 26 | First Fruits and Tithes Concluding Exhortation |
Chapter 27 | The Inscribed Stones and Altar on Mount Ebal Twelve Curses |
Chapter 28 | Blessings for Obedience Warnings against Disobedience |
Chapter 29 | The Covenant Renewed in Moab |
Chapter 30 | God’s Fidelity Assured Exhortation to Choose Life |
Chapter 31 | Joshua Becomes Moses’ Successor The Law to Be Read Every Seventh Year Moses and Joshua Receive God’s Charge |
Chapter 32 | The Song of Moses Moses’ Death Foretold |
Chapter 33 | Moses’ Final Blessing on Israel |
Chapter 34 | Moses Dies and Is Buried in the Land of Moab |
Highlights:
Israel’s Refusal to Enter the Land
Deuteronomy 1:26-33
“It is a good land that the LORD our God is giving us." But you were unwilling to go up. You rebelled against the command of the LORD your God; 27 you grumbled in your tents and said, “It is because the LORD hates us that he has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to hand us over to the Amorites to destroy us. 28 Where are we headed? Our kindred have made our hearts melt by reporting, ‘The people are stronger and taller than we; the cities are large and fortified up to heaven! We actually saw there the offspring of the Anakim!’” 29 I said to you, “Have no dread or fear of them. 30 The LORD your God, who goes before you, is the one who will fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your very eyes, 31 and in the wilderness, where you saw how the LORD your God carried you, just as one carries a child, all the way that you traveled until you reached this place. 32 But in spite of this, you have no trust in the LORD your God, 33 who goes before you on the way to seek out a place for you to camp, in fire by night, and in the cloud by day, to show you the route you should take.”
The Penalty for Israel’s Rebellion
Deuteronomy 1:34-36
When the LORD heard your words, he was wrathful and swore: 35 “Not one of these—not one of this evil generation—shall see the good land that I swore to give to your ancestors, 36 except Caleb son of Jephunneh.
Moses Commands Obedience
Deuteronomy 4:1-2 So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the LORD, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. 2 You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the LORD your God with which I am charging you.
The Ten Commandments
Deuteronomy 5:6-21
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 7 you shall have no other gods before me.
8 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me, 10 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
11 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
12 Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. 13 Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 14 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. 15 Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.
16 Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
17 You shall not murder.a
18 Neither shall you commit adultery.
19 Neither shall you steal.
20 Neither shall you bear false witness against your neighbor.
21 Neither shall you covet your neighbor’s wife. Neither shall you desire your neighbor’s house, or field, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
The Great Commandment
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. 6 Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 7 Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, 9 and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
The Second Pair of Tablets & The Ark
Deuteronomy 10:1-5
At that time the LORD said to me, “Carve out two tablets of stone like the former ones, and come up to me on the mountain, and make an ark of wood. 2 I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets, which you smashed, and you shall put them in the ark.” 3 So I made an ark of acacia wood, cut two tablets of stone like the former ones, and went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hand. 4 Then he wrote on the tablets the same words as before, the ten commandments that the LORD had spoken to you on the mountain out of the fire on the day of the assembly; and the LORD gave them to me. 5 So I turned and came down from the mountain, and put the tablets in the ark that I had made; and there they are, as the LORD commanded me.
The Essence of the Law
Deuteronomy 10:12 So now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you? Only to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 and to keep the commandments of the LORD your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being. 14 Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the LORD your God, the earth with all that is in it, 15 yet the LORD set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today. 16 Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer.
A Blessing & A Curse
Deut. 11:26 See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: 27 the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you today; 28 and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn from the way that I am commanding you today, to follow other gods that you have not known.
Clean and Unclean Foods
Deut. 14:3-21 You shall not eat any abhorrent thing. 4 These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, 5 the deer, the gazelle, the roebuck, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope, and the mountain-sheep. 6 Any animal that divides the hoof and has the hoof cleft in two, and chews the cud, among the animals, you may eat. 7 Yet of those that chew the cud or have the hoof cleft you shall not eat these: the camel, the hare, and the rock badger, because they chew the cud but do not divide the hoof; they are unclean for you. 8 And the pig, because it divides the hoof but does not chew the cud, is unclean for you. You shall not eat their meat, and you shall not touch their carcasses.
9 Of all that live in water you may eat these: whatever has fins and scales you may eat. 10 And whatever does not have fins and scales you shall not eat; it is unclean for you.
11 You may eat any clean birds. 12 But these are the ones that you shall not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the osprey, 13 the buzzard, the kite, of any kind; 14 every raven of any kind; 15 the ostrich, the nighthawk, the seagull, the hawk, of any kind; 16 the little owl and the great owl, the water hen 17 and the desert owl, the carrion vulture and the cormorant, 18 the stork, the heron, of any kind; the hoopoe and the bat. 19 And all winged insects are unclean for you; they shall not be eaten. 20 You may eat any clean winged creature.
21 You shall not eat anything that dies of itself; you may give it to aliens residing in your towns for them to eat, or you may sell it to a foreigner. For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.
Regulations concerning Tithes
Deuteronomy 14:22-27
Set apart a tithe of all the yield of your seed that is brought in yearly from the field. 23 In the presence of the LORD your God, in the place that he will choose as a dwelling for his name, you shall eat the tithe of your grain, your wine, and your oil, as well as the firstlings of your herd and flock, so that you may learn to fear the LORD your God always. 24 But if, when the LORD your God has blessed you, the distance is so great that you are unable to transport it, because the place where the LORD your God will choose to set his name is too far away from you, 25 then you may turn it into money. With the money secure in hand, go to the place that the LORD your God will choose; 26 spend the money for whatever you wish—oxen, sheep, wine, strong drink, or whatever you desire. And you shall eat there in the presence of the LORD your God, you and your household rejoicing together. 27 As for the Levites resident in your towns, do not neglect them, because they have no allotment or inheritance with you.
Child–Sacrifice, Divination, and Magic Prohibited
Deuteronomy 18:9-14
When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you must not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. 10 No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire, or who practices divination, or is a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, 11 or one who casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits, or who seeks oracles from the dead. 12 For whoever does these things is abhorrent to the LORD; it is because of such abhorrent practices that the LORD your God is driving them out before you. 13 You must remain completely loyal to the LORD your God. 14 Although these nations that you are about to dispossess do give heed to soothsayers and diviners, as for you, the LORD your God does not permit you to do so.
Next Book: Joshua
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