Deuteronomy 9
Israel Will Conquer, Not by Merit 1–6
Remember Israel’s History of Rebellion 7–21
Continued Rebellion in the Wilderness 22–24
Moses' Intercession for the Nation 25–29
Bible text: King James Version (1769 Blayney text) · Public domain
Study Notes for Deuteronomy 9
Verse 1
fenced up to heaven — Batsar, to fortify. Israel’s fear of the cities ‘walled up to heaven’ is the spies’ report of 1:28; Moses gives the same account of the same land, ‘nations greater and mightier than thyself’, as in 4:38 and 7:1. The verse is addressed to the generation standing at Jordan, ‘this day’.
Verse 2
the children of the Anakims — Anak’s sons are the ‘giants’ the spies saw at Hebron (Num 13:22, 33). ‘Tall’ is rum, to be high, the verb of the ‘lifted up’ heart in 8:14. Caleb later ‘drove thence the three sons of Anak, Sheshai, and Ahiman, and Talmai’ (Josh 15:14).
Verse 3
as a consuming fire — He ‘goeth over before thee’, as 31:3 promises again: ‘he will go over before thee, and he will destroy these nations from before thee’. The title is the LORD’s own, ‘a consuming fire, even a jealous God’ (4:24; Heb 12:29). The verse gives both parts: the LORD destroys ‘as a consuming fire’, and Israel is told ‘so shalt thou drive them out, and destroy them quickly’.
Verse 4
Speak not thou in thine heart — Beside the boast of strength in 8:17 stands a boast of merit, ‘For my righteousness the LORD hath brought me in’. The nations are driven out ‘for the wickedness’ of them (resha), as Gen 15:16 had said of the Amorites, ‘the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full’. Paul: ‘Not by works of righteousness’ (Titus 3:5).
Verse 5
Not for thy righteousness — Two grounds are given for the land: the wickedness of the nations and the LORD’s oath, ‘that he may perform the word which the LORD sware unto thy fathers’. ‘Uprightness’ is yosher, straightness of heart. The land was promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in Gen 15:7, 17:8, 26:3–4 and 28:13.
Verse 6
a stiffnecked people — The phrase is the LORD’s own, spoken first at the calf: ‘I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people’ (Ex 32:9; repeated in v.13). Literally it is ‘hard of neck’. Stephen applies the word to his hearers, ‘Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears’ (Acts 7:51).
Verse 7
Remember, and forget not — The two verbs, zakar and shakach, are placed together, as at 8:18–19. ‘Provokedst… to wrath’ is qatsaph, which returns in vv.8, 19, 22; ‘rebellious’ is marah, found again in vv.23, 24. The charge runs ‘from the day that thou didst depart out of the land of Egypt’.
Verse 8
Also in Horeb — The sin at the mountain itself is the molten calf; Ps 106:19, ‘They made a calf in Horeb, and worshipped the molten image’. ‘Angry’ is anaph; the LORD was ‘angry with you to have destroyed you’, and the same word is used of Aaron in v.20. The account is in Ex 32:7–10.
Verse 9
forty days and forty nights — Moses went up for ‘the tables of the covenant’ and fasted the whole time, ‘neither did eat bread nor drink water’ (cf. Ex 24:18; 34:28). The same span is Elijah’s journey to Horeb (1 Kings 19:8) and Christ’s fast in the wilderness: ‘when he had fasted forty days and forty nights’ (Matt 4:2).
Verse 12
have corrupted themselves — Shachat, to ruin, the verb Moses uses of the future in 31:29, ‘ye will utterly corrupt yourselves’. ‘Quickly’ (mehera) stands twice, as in Ex 32:8, ‘They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them’. The LORD says ‘thy people which thou hast brought forth’, and Moses returns the title in v.26.
Verse 14
Let me alone — The words are those of Ex 32:10. The offer to ‘make of thee a nation mightier and greater’ recalls Gen 12:2, ‘I will make of thee a great nation’, and is made again after Kadesh (Num 14:12). ‘Blot out their name from under heaven’ echoes the ‘destroy their name from under heaven’ of 7:24, said of the nations’ kings; here it is turned on Israel itself.
Verse 17
brake them before your eyes — Moses ‘cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount’ as soon as he saw the calf and the dancing (Ex 32:19). The tables were ‘the tables of the covenant’ (v.9), and Jeremiah names the breach on the people’s side: ‘my covenant they brake’ (Jer 31:32).
Verse 18
as at the first — The first forty days were those of v.9; this second period of fasting and prostration is told in Deut 10:10, ‘I stayed in the mount, according to the first time, forty days and forty nights’. ‘Fell down’ is naphal. The fast was ‘because of all your sins which ye sinned’.
Verse 20
I prayed for Aaron also — Aaron had fashioned the calf (Ex 32:4) and the LORD was ‘very angry with Aaron to have destroyed him’. Palal, to pray, is the verb of intercession. Heb 7:27–28 sets the high priest of the law, ‘which have infirmity’, who must offer ‘first for his own sins’, beside the priest who offered himself once.
Verse 22
Taberah, and at Massah, and at Kibrothhattaavah — Taberah means ‘burning’: ‘the fire of the LORD burnt among them’ (Num 11:3). Massah is the place of the chiding at the rock (Ex 17:7), and Kibrothhattaavah is where the people who lusted were buried (Num 11:34). All three are told in the wilderness before Kadesh.
Verse 23
Kadeshbarnea — The sending is in Num 13–14, ‘Go up and possess the land which I have given you’. The people ‘believed him not’ (aman, the verb of ‘faithful’ in 7:9). Ps 106:24 says ‘they despised the pleasant land, they believed not his word’, and Heb 3:19 draws the end: ‘they could not enter in because of unbelief’.
Verse 25
Thus I fell down — The forty days of v.18 are taken up again after the list of vv.19–24 and joined to the prayer that follows. The cause is stated: ‘because the LORD had said he would destroy you’. The prayer itself is vv.26–29, and v.19 records that ‘the LORD hearkened unto me at that time also’.
Verse 27
Remember thy servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — Moses takes his plea from the oath, as at Ex 32:13. ‘Stubbornness’ (qeshi) is found only here in Scripture. He asks the LORD to ‘look not’ at the people’s wickedness; the plea rests on the three names and on no merit of the people’s.
Verse 28
the land whence thou broughtest us out — Moses fears the Egyptians’ speech, as at Ex 32:12, and the nations’ speech after Kadesh: ‘Because the LORD was not able to bring this people into the land which he sware unto them’ (Num 14:16). ‘Hated’ is sane; the supposed charge is that the LORD brought them out ‘to slay them in the wilderness’.
Verse 29
thy people and thine inheritance — Moses gives back the title the LORD had set aside in v.12: ‘thy people which thou hast brought forth’. Nachalah, inheritance, is used by Solomon in the same terms, ‘thy people, and thine inheritance, which thou broughtest forth out of Egypt’ (1 Kings 8:51). The ‘stretched out arm’ is that of 4:34 and 5:15.