Deuteronomy 10:15

Moses speaks on the plains of Moab, around 1406 BC, to a new generation raised in the wilderness and about to enter the land promised to their fathers. Chapters 9 and 10 have told the story of their parents’ rebellion at Horeb (Deuteronomy 9:7–29) and of the second tablets (Deuteronomy 10:1–5). “And now, Israel” turns from that history to what Israel is to do in answer to it. Moses puts it as a question so that the answer stands out plainly: what God asks is clear and close at hand, and Moses can name it in a single verse.

The answer names four things, and verse 13 adds a fifth. To fear the LORD comes first. The verb yârêʼ means to fear, and morally to revere, and here it is the awe that bows before God’s majesty, holiness and justice and leads to humble obedience. To walk in all his ways is to live by them day after day, so that the whole course of life, public and private, follows the path God has laid out in his law. To love him uses ʼâhab, which means to love, to have affection for. This is the love the Shema commands (Deuteronomy 6:5), and it answers the love God first set on Israel’s fathers (verse 15). It shows itself in keeping his word, as Jesus said: “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

To serve the LORD “with all thy heart and with all thy soul” takes in the whole person. The heart, lêbâb, is the inner self, the seat of thought, will, feeling and moral character. The soul, nephesh, from a verb meaning to breathe, is a breathing creature, its life, its very self. Together the two words mean that everything a person thinks, wants and is belongs to God, given to him whole.

“The LORD thy God” stands three times in this verse. Each time Moses reminds Israel whose they are. The God who asks is their own God, bound to them by covenant, and he asks as one who has already shown them mercy.

Scripture comes back to this question. Micah asks a later generation what the LORD requires (Micah 6:8), and Jesus names love for God with all the heart, soul and mind as the first and great commandment (Matthew 22:37–38). Moses himself returns to it near the end of the book, when he sets life before Israel and calls them to choose it (Deuteronomy 30:19–20).

Verse 13 finishes the question begun in verse 12, which is why the KJV puts its question mark at the end of this verse. To keep, shâmar, is to guard and observe with care, living by what God has said. The commandments, mitsvâh, are the authoritative instructions of the LORD, and they reach into worship, justice, personal conduct and the life of the whole community. The statutes, chuqqâh, are things prescribed, enactments, and the word is the feminine form of another word with substantially the same meaning. Paired, the two words take in the whole of God’s revealed will. They are the commandments “of the LORD”, Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name of the God who rescued Israel.

“Which I command thee this day” is Moses speaking as God’s mediator. The verb is tsâvâh, to command, and “this day”, yôwm, presses the law on the generation standing in front of him. What was given at Sinai is now theirs to keep.

Then comes the reason, “for thy good”. The word ṭôwb covers well-being of every kind, wholeness and flourishing in body and spirit, in family and in nation. God gave his law because he knew what would make his people’s life go well. Moses says the same elsewhere: “And the LORD commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as it is at this day” (Deuteronomy 6:24). He ties the keeping of God’s statutes to Israel’s welfare in Deuteronomy 4:40, and the same care that gave the law had fed Israel through the wilderness (Deuteronomy 8:2–3). The psalmist praises the law for its perfection and for the good it brings (Psalm 19:7–11), and Paul calls it holy, just and good (Romans 7:12).

“Behold” calls Israel to stop and take in what comes next. “The heaven and the heaven of heavens” is a Hebrew way of saying the utmost: the heavens, shâmayim, in their whole extent, from the sky we see to the highest heaven where God dwells. The earth, ʼerets, is his as well, “with all that therein is”, every creature, every resource, and the very ground Israel is about to receive. A psalm says it in nearly the same words: “The earth is the LORD’S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1). Nehemiah’s prayer praises the LORD as the maker and keeper of all things (Nehemiah 9:6), and Isaiah hears him call heaven his throne and the earth his footstool (Isaiah 66:1).

The owner of all this is named Yᵉhôvâh, “the LORD thy God”. The nations round Israel served many gods, each tied to a land, a people or a power of nature. Moses declares that the Creator and Owner of everything is the very God who made a covenant with Israel. That gives the commands of verse 13 their weight, since they come from the rightful King of all things. It also gives Israel confidence, since the One who owns everything is able to keep every promise he has made, and their land, when they receive it, will be a gift from its true Owner.

“Only” (raq) at the start of verse 15 turns the thought in a startling direction. The God to whom everything belongs set his heart on one family. “Had a delight in” translates châshaq, to cling, to be joined to, and so to love and delight in. God’s choice of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob came from a deep and warm attachment, freely given. He then “chose”, bâchar, a verb that means properly to try and so to select, their “seed”, zeraʻ, their offspring after them. “Even you” brings the choice home to the people listening, and “as it is this day” says that God’s choice still stood as Moses spoke.

This choice goes back to the call of Abraham (Genesis 12:1–3), and it made Israel God’s own treasure among all peoples (Exodus 19:5–6). Through Amos the LORD says that of all the families of the earth he has known Israel only (Amos 3:2).

“Therefore” ties the command to the love just described. Circumcision was the sign of God’s covenant with Abraham (Genesis 17), and every male in Israel bore it. Moses now applies it to the heart. The verb mûwl means to circumcise, to cut short. The foreskin, ʻorlâh, stands for whatever covers the heart, lêbâb, and keeps it closed to God: pride, rebellion, a will hardened against him. To circumcise the heart is to cut that away, so that the whole inner person, mind, will and affections, is given over to the LORD. The outward sign was to have its inward reality.

“Be no more stiffnecked” says the same thing with a picture from the farm. The phrase qasheh ‘oreph joins qâshâh, to be hard, with ʻôreph, the back of the neck. It brings to mind an ox that holds its neck stiff against the yoke and refuses to be led. The word describes Israel’s long resistance in the wilderness, seen above all at the golden calf (Exodus 32), and Moses pleads with them to give it up and let God lead them.

The Law and the Prophets come back to the uncircumcised heart. Leviticus speaks of Israel’s uncircumcised hearts (Leviticus 26:41), and Jeremiah calls Judah to circumcise their hearts to the LORD (Jeremiah 4:4). Then God promises to do it himself. Through Jeremiah he promises to write his law in their hearts (Jeremiah 31:33), and through Ezekiel to take away the stony heart and give a new heart and a new spirit (Ezekiel 36:26–27). Paul says that true circumcision is of the heart, by the Spirit (Romans 2:29). What Moses commands here, God gives in Christ, by the renewing of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5).

“For” gives the reason for everything just commanded, which is who God is. In “God of gods” the word ʼĕlôhîym stands on both sides of the phrase. It is plural in form, and when it names the true God it is read as a plural of majesty. Like “the heaven of heavens” in verse 14, “God of gods, and Lord of lords” means the highest of all. He is “a great God”, immeasurable in majesty, “a mighty”, strong to act in creation and in history, “and a terrible”, which in the KJV’s English means awe-inspiring. That word comes from the root yârêʼ, the “fear” of verse 12.

“Which regardeth not persons” renders nâsâʼ pânîym, literally to lift up faces. Nâsâʼ means to lift or bear, and pânîym is face or presence. To lift someone’s face is to favour him for who he is. God judges every person by what is right and true, whatever their wealth, rank, nation or appearance. “Nor taketh reward” means that he takes no bribe, and his judgment is beyond the reach of any gift.

This is the pattern for Israel. Its judges were to judge with the same fairness and refuse every gift (Deuteronomy 16:19). The nations Israel was about to meet thought of gods who favoured their own worshippers and of courts whose judgments could be bought, and against them Israel’s God is wholly just. Scripture keeps coming back to this truth, from the charge to Israel’s judges (2 Chronicles 19:7) to Paul’s word that “there is no respect of persons with God” (Romans 2:11) and James’s warning to the church against partiality (James 2:1–9). It also gives comfort, because the final judgment of every wrong rests with a God who sees rightly and cannot be swayed.

Verse 18 shows the great God stooping. The One who is mighty and terrible “doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow”. The word for judgment, mishpâṭ, covers the whole work of justice: deciding rightly, and also stepping in to secure people’s rights, correcting wrongs, vindicating the oppressed and restoring what is due. The fatherless and the widow had lost the man who would have stood for them and provided for them, and so they were easily cheated and pushed aside. God takes up their cause himself. A psalm calls him a father of the fatherless and a defender of widows (Psalm 68:5).

He also “loveth the stranger”. The verb is ʼâhab, the same verb Moses used in verse 12 for Israel’s love toward God. God’s love for the stranger is practical, “in giving him food and raiment”, the plainest needs of life. The LORD preserves the strangers (Psalm 146:9), and his care sets the pattern for his people.

Verse 19 makes that pattern a command. “Love ye therefore the stranger” uses ʼâhab again, so Israel is to love the stranger with the love God shows him. The reason reaches into Israel’s own story: “for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” They had lived in a land, ʼerets, that was not their own, under taskmasters set over them to afflict them (Exodus 1:11). Egypt is Mitsrayim, which Strong’s explains as the dual of matsor, naming Upper and Lower Egypt. For Israel the name always carried the memory of slavery and of God’s rescue from it, and the whole of Exodus 1 tells how hard those years were. Their own past was to teach them how the stranger feels and move them to kindness.

The law says this often. Exodus forbids Israel to wrong the stranger or afflict the widow and the fatherless, and warns that God hears their cry (Exodus 22:21–24). Leviticus tells Israel to treat the stranger as one born among them and to love him as themselves, and gives the same reason, that they were strangers in Egypt (Leviticus 19:33–34). Deuteronomy later guards the justice due to the stranger, the fatherless and the widow and makes provision for them (Deuteronomy 24:17–22). James calls the care of the fatherless and widows in their affliction pure religion (James 1:27), and Jesus counts the welcome given to a stranger as given to himself (Matthew 25:35–40). Love for God and the treatment of the weakest belong together.

Verse 20 gathers up the call of verse 12 in four commands, echoing and expanding an earlier one (Deuteronomy 6:13). “Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God” uses yârêʼ once more, the reverent awe of verse 12. “Him shalt thou serve” uses ʻâbad, which means to work, labour, serve, till and worship. Toward God it is worship and obedience in every part of life, and “him” marks the service as his alone. Jesus affirmed that God alone is to be worshipped and served (Matthew 4:10), and Joshua later set the same choice before Israel (Joshua 24:14).

“To him shalt thou cleave” uses dâbaq, to cling, cleave or stick. It is a close and loyal bond, like the one pictured when a man is joined to his wife (Genesis 2:24), and it holds fast to God in trust and fellowship through every trial. “And swear by his name” belongs to a world where oaths called on a god to guarantee the truth. Israel was to take its oaths in the LORD’s name alone, owning him as the guarantor of every promise and turning from every other god.

People ask how cleaving differs from serving. Serving is what we do for God: worship, work and obedience. Cleaving is the bond with the One we are joined to, a steady loyalty of heart and mind. The two belong together, and the love of verse 12 lives in both.

“He is thy praise” uses tᵉhillâh, praise, here meaning the one who is praised. God is the reason for Israel’s praise and its whole substance, worthy of it for who he is and for what he has done. “He is thy God”, ʼĕlôhîym, their own God, the only one they are to worship. Moses then grounds both in history. The LORD “hath done for thee these great and terrible things, which thine eyes have seen.” “Great”, gâdôwl, speaks of the size and weight of these deeds, and “terrible”, nora, a form from yârêʼ, means awe-inspiring. It carries the sense of acts so grand that they move people to wonder and holy fear.

These are the works that made Israel a nation: the Passover and the going out from Egypt (Exodus 12), the sea divided before them (Exodus 14), Sinai wrapped in fire and thunder at the giving of the law (Exodus 19), and the manna and protection of forty years. The night the LORD drove back the sea (Exodus 14:21) was fresh in the nation’s memory. The people standing before Moses had seen God’s works in the wilderness for themselves, and their faith and praise rested on what he had openly done.

The rest of Scripture sings the same: “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised” (Psalm 145:3). God formed Israel for himself so that they would show forth his praise (Isaiah 43:21), and Jeremiah confesses that there is none like the LORD (Jeremiah 10:6–7).

Moses closes with the plainest proof of God’s faithfulness, which is the people themselves. “Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons.” Shibʻîym is the plain number seventy, and it counts Jacob’s household who went down with him, besides his sons’ wives (Genesis 46:26–27). That small family came into Egypt in famine and in need. “And now the LORD thy God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude.” The verb sûwm means to put, set or make, and the LORD is its subject, so Moses gives him all the credit for Israel’s growth.

The stars, kôwkâb, recall God’s promise to Abraham that his seed would be as the stars of heaven (Genesis 15:5) and as the sand on the seashore (Genesis 22:17), and that he would make of him a great nation (Genesis 12:2). In Egypt the children of Israel were fruitful and multiplied (Exodus 1:7), even under oppression, and Nehemiah’s prayer later thanks God for multiplying them as the stars (Nehemiah 9:23).

This verse ties the end of the passage to verse 15. God delighted in the fathers and chose their seed, and here the seed stands before Moses, past counting. Israel saw a great people as a sign of God’s blessing, and they owed that blessing wholly to him. Moses warns them elsewhere to remember the LORD when they prosper and to keep from thinking their own strength won it (Deuteronomy 8).

Seventy in this verse is a count. The same number counts the elders who went up with Moses (Exodus 24:1) and the disciples Jesus sent out two by two (Luke 10:1), and the nations listed in Genesis 10 come to seventy as well. Here its work is to set a small beginning beside a great increase.

This passage sets what God asks beside what God has given, and the gifts come first. Before Moses asks for fear and love, Israel has been forgiven at Horeb and given the tablets again. Behind every command stands a reason drawn from God himself. He owns heaven and earth, he set his love on the fathers, he judges without favour, he feeds and clothes the stranger, he did great and terrible things before Israel’s eyes, and he turned seventy persons into a nation. What he asks is the whole heart, and he asks it for his people’s good.

The passage also shows us how the God of gods treats the weak. He takes up the cause of the fatherless and the widow and loves the stranger, and he asks his people to love as he loves because they know what it is to be strangers. Every believer in Christ knows it too, since we were once far off and have been brought near.

And the heart he asks for, he gives. Moses commands Israel to circumcise their hearts, and God promises to do it himself by his Spirit. The love he asks of us answers the love he showed first.