May 31, 2010 by Tom Brunson
Deuteronomy ends with the Lord taking Moses to the top of Mt. Nebo and showing him the Promised Land that he will not enter before he dies. We tend to see the sadness in this, but there is also kindness and joy! Moses had been leading the people towards this land for 40 years, and He already knew he would not enter it with them. God could have just let Moses die, but instead He shows Moses the reality of the Promise!
Categories: Deuteronomy |
May 30, 2010 by Tom Brunson
The command to completely eradicate the Canaanite peoples and all traces of their religious worship from the Promised Land is often explained as a way to avoid the contamination of the nation. This is a concept that needs to be looked at closely, for clearly Scripture says that the Israelites did absorb / adopt / practice the idolatrous Canaanite worship, and this is one of the main reasons for the later exile.
Categories: Deuteronomy |
May 29, 2010 by Tom Brunson
Categories: Deuteronomy |
May 28, 2010 by Tom Brunson
The Bible says the Lord is full of grace and compassion, and yet the instructions to the Israelites as they went to conquer the Promised Land were to completely destroy the people who lived there. In part one of this post we noted that the people of that land had so rejected God and turned to worship pagan gods that this was a "just" decision, in that they deserved the sentence of death, due to humanity's crimes against God.
Categories: Deuteronomy |
May 27, 2010 by Tom Brunson
We focus on God's Grace and Compassion, because we owe our salvation to those characteristics. This was also how Old Testament Israel saw the LORD, as He described Himself in Exodus 34:6-7:
"The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin;"
But then we encounter the instructions to the Israelites about the conquest of the Land, as summarized in Deuteronomy 20:16-17:
"...in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you"
"...do not leave alive anything that
Categories: Deuteronomy |
May 20, 2010 by Tom Brunson
Deuteronomy is the last of the Pentateuch books that are traditionally understood to be written by Moses during the Exodus wanderings. Since the last part of the book tells of Moses' death, the ending was clearly added by someone else.
This book seems clearly written to the "new generation" of Israelites after the generation of adults who left Egypt had died off. Before they entered the Land they needed to understand all that God had done, and also to understand the Covenant they were to observe.
In modern times skeptics have questioned the authorship by Moses, suggesting these works were not written until much later in Israel's history. However, the beginning of the book of Joshua clearly speaks of the Book of the Law as Moses' writing, and instructs Joshua to know and meditate on it, so it existed at that time. Instructions in the Pentateuch to Israel's kings indicated they were each to make their own written copy of the Law. Much later in Israel's history, following the exile to Babylon, some of Israel's religious sects did not trust later writings or oral traditions, and counted only the Pentateuch as being reliable scripture, because they believed it dated back to (and was written by) Moses. The Samaritans of Northern Israel claimed they were the remnants of the 10 Northern tribes, and had their own written Pentateuch that they claimed to have maintained since the division of the Kingdom following Solomon. All of these traditions date much closer to the time of writing, and should not be easily dismissed, giving good reason to accept Moses as the author of these works.
Most see Deuteronomy as being written on the plains of Moab, recording Moses final "sermons" or instructions to the new nation. This area is east of the Jordan river, at the North end of the "Salt Sea" or Dead Sea as we know it today. Soon the waters of the Jordan would be parted, showing that their God, who had parted the waters as they escaped Egypt, was still leading them. The review of their history made this fresh in their minds.
Categories: Deuteronomy |
