Deuteronomy 30:17

Moses speaks these words at the end of his farewell to Israel, on the plains of Moab east of the Jordan. The generation that rebelled in the wilderness has died, and a new generation, raised in the wilderness, stands ready to cross into the land the LORD promised to their fathers (Deuteronomy 1:8). Moses knows his own death is near, so this is his last and most solemn appeal.

These verses gather up everything before them. Deuteronomy 28 set out the blessings for keeping the covenant and the curses for breaking it, down to exile from the land. Deuteronomy 29 recalled the covenant made at Horeb and bound this generation to the covenant in Moab. Then Moses looked past judgment to mercy: even after exile, if the people return to the LORD with all their heart and soul, he will gather them, restore them and circumcise their hearts (Deuteronomy 30:1–10). He assured them that God’s word was within their reach: “But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it” (Deuteronomy 30:11–14). Now he puts the whole covenant to them as a single choice.

“See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil.” Moses opens with a command. “See” is from râʼâh, the ordinary verb for seeing, which also means to look at something and take it in, so the people are to look at what lies before them and grasp how much hangs on it. “Set” is nâthan, the everyday verb for giving, putting or placing. God has put the two ways in full view, so that every Israelite knows what is at stake. “This day” (yôwm, a day or a span of time) fixes the choice in the present. Moses says “this day” four times in these six verses, and the decision belongs to the people standing in front of him.

Life, chay, is the word for being alive, and Moses uses it for life as God means his people to have it: health, children, peace and a long, secure home in the land, lived in fellowship with him. Good, ṭôwb, is what pleases God and agrees with his character, the word he spoke over his creation, and here it takes in right living, prosperity and his favour. Death, mâveth, is the end of life, and in this setting it stands for all that comes when God’s blessing is lost: the curse, ruin and removal from the land. Evil, raʻ, covers both wickedness and the adversity and calamity that follow it. Life goes with good and death with evil, so each pair describes the whole of what lies down one road.

Scripture speaks of these two ways again and again. Proverbs sets the path of the righteous against the way of the wicked (Proverbs 4:18–19) and warns, “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Proverbs 14:12). The first psalm puts the same two ways at the head of the Psalter, the blessed man who delights in the law of the LORD and the ungodly whose way perishes (Psalm 1:1–6). Wisdom in Proverbs says that whoever finds her finds life, and whoever hates her loves death (Proverbs 8:35–36).

Moses spells out the life he is urging twice, in verses 16 and 20, and both lists begin with love: “to love the LORD thy God”. The verb is ʼâhab, the ordinary word for love, the affection a person has for someone or something. It is the command Moses gave in Deuteronomy 6:5, to love the LORD with all the heart, soul and might, which Jesus called “the first and great commandment” (Matthew 22:37–38). Love comes first because everything else grows from it. Obedience in this covenant is the conduct of a people who love their God.

In verse 16 love is followed by walking and keeping. To walk, yâlak, is the common verb for walking, used both literally and of the way a person lives, and “to walk in his ways” means to order daily life by the paths God has shown. “His commandments and his statutes and his judgments” together name the whole of what God has revealed in his law, so keeping them brings every part of life under his rule.

In verse 20 love is followed by “obey his voice” and “cleave unto him”. To obey his voice is to listen to God as he speaks and then to do what he says. The word “voice” makes obedience personal, the answer of someone who has been spoken to.

Verse 17 traces the road to death step by step, and it begins inside. “But if thine heart turn away”. The heart, lêbâb, is the inner person: thought, will, desire and loyalty, the place where decisions are made. To turn, pânâh, is the ordinary verb for turning or facing, used even of things that simply face one direction. Here it pictures a heart that has come to face away from the LORD, whether by a deliberate choice or by a gradual drift.

“So that thou wilt not hear”. The ear follows the heart. To hear, shama, includes paying attention and obeying, so a heart that faces away stops responding to God’s commands, warnings and counsel. God speaks of this same deafness in his people in Psalm 81:11–12.

“But shalt be drawn away”. The KJV’s “drawn away” (nâdach) pictures being pulled or lured off the path, often by influences from outside and often slowly. Once the heart has turned and the ear has closed, a person is easily drawn further.

“And worship other gods, and serve them”. To worship, shâchâh, is to bow down, to lie prostrate before someone in homage. Bowing and serving together describe the whole of devotion, both reverence and active service, now given to gods other than the LORD. This breaks the first commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3), which lies at the centre of the covenant.

Israel would meet these gods as soon as they entered Canaan. The people of the land worshipped many gods, among them Baal, a god of storm and fertility, and Asherah his consort, with rites that included cult prostitution and the sacrifice of children. God knew how easily his people would turn. They had already made the golden calf (Exodus 32), and idolatry would trouble them through their history until the prophets’ warnings ended in exile. Jeremiah would later say, “The heart is deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9), and Jesus said, “No man can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24).

“I denounce unto you this day”. The Hebrew nâgad means to stand out boldly in front of someone, and so to announce, always by word of mouth to someone present. Moses says this to their faces, as God’s messenger. It is a formal and solemn declaration made before the event, so that the people hear the consequences while there is still time to choose.

“That ye shall surely perish”. The verb ʼâbad means to wander away, to be lost, and so to perish, and it is used of lost animals and lost property as well as of people. Hebrew doubles the verb here for emphasis, setting an infinitive absolute before the finite verb, which the KJV renders “surely”. The perishing Moses means is the collapse of Israel’s life as a nation in the land, as his next words show.

“And that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land”. To prolong, ʼârak, is to make long, and with “days” (yôwm) it forms a familiar phrase for a long and settled life. A promise of long days is attached to the command to honour father and mother (Deuteronomy 5:16), and Proverbs says, “The fear of the LORD prolongeth days” (Proverbs 10:27). Here that blessing is withdrawn, and a people who turn to other gods will have their time in the land cut short. The law had already warned that God would scatter them among the nations (Leviticus 26:33), and Joshua repeated the warning at the end of his life (Joshua 23:15–16).

“Whither thou passest over Jordan to go to possess it”. The land they are about to enter, the goal of all their hopes and the sign of God’s faithfulness, is the very land they could lose. They would hold it as a gift, and their life in it depended on staying true to the God who gave it.

Verse 20 gives the reason for all that Moses has urged: “for he is thy life, and the length of thy days”. The life set before Israel in verse 15 turns out to be found in a person. The LORD gives life, and he is himself his people’s life, its source, the one who sustains it and the one who fills it with meaning. The word for life, chay, that named one of the two ways now names what God is to his people. To choose life is to choose him, and to hold fast to him is to live. “The length of thy days” answers the warning of verse 18, because long days in the land are found in the LORD.

Verse 16 describes the same life in plainer terms: “that thou mayest live and multiply: and the LORD thy God shall bless thee in the land”. To live, châyâh, here means to be alive and to flourish, with health and well-being under God’s favour. To multiply is to grow as a people. For a nation about to settle on farms, large families and good harvests were clear signs of God’s blessing. The blessing comes from the LORD himself, and its place is the land. Joshua received the same word as he led the people in: by keeping the law and meditating on it day and night he would prosper and have good success (Joshua 1:7–8).

The passage ends with the land “which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them”. The land was promised long before Moab, when God called Abraham and promised to bless him and make of him a great nation (Genesis 12:1–3), and then said, “Unto thy seed will I give this land” (Genesis 12:7). Dwelling there would be the fulfilment of that oath.

People ask whether this passage makes life a reward for good works. The covenant itself began with God’s grace. The LORD chose Israel out of his own love, apart from any merit of theirs (Deuteronomy 7:7–8), and then gave them his law as the way to live within that relationship and enjoy its blessings. Obedience was the condition for enjoying the blessings of the covenant, and God’s choosing love was its foundation. This same chapter promises that God will circumcise his people’s hearts and that his word is near them, in their mouth and in their heart.

For us, salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8–9). Even so, our choices in obeying Christ shape the life we live now: our fruitfulness, and how fully we know God’s presence and blessing in this world.

God is the one who sets before his people life and death. He defines the covenant, its terms and its outcomes. Then he says, “therefore choose life”, and the choice he gives is real, with real consequences. Scripture holds both truths together, the potter’s right over the clay (Romans 9:19–21) and the call to work out our own salvation because it is God who works in us (Philippians 2:12–13). Believers differ on how the two fit. Some believers hold that God in his sovereignty has chosen to give people a real freedom to respond to his love, so that the choice of life is truly their own. Others hold that a person chooses life because God first works in the heart to will it, and that the choice is still truly the person’s own. On either reading, God sets life before his people and commands them to take it.

The life Moses offered comes to its fullness in Jesus, who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). The law showed Israel the way of life and also showed them their sin (Romans 3:20), and their history proved how often the heart turns away. Jesus did all that Moses asked. He loved the Father (John 14:31), obeyed him even to death on the cross (Philippians 2:8), and was one with him (John 10:30). He came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17), and he was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). As “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), he bore the curse that disobedience brings (Galatians 3:13). “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

God’s answer to the turning heart of verse 17 is a new heart. He promised to write his law on his people’s hearts (Jeremiah 31:33, Hebrews 8:10) and to give them a new heart and his own Spirit (Ezekiel 36:26–27). In Christ, believers receive a circumcision made without hands (Colossians 2:11), walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4), and are set free by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:2–4). Coming to Christ means turning from idols to the living God (Acts 14:15).

So the call to choose life becomes the call to trust Christ, “that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). The warning “ye shall surely perish” meets its answer there. The inheritance God gives in Christ is “incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away” (1 Peter 1:4), and a rest remains for the people of God (Hebrews 4:9–11). Moses said of the LORD, “he is thy life”, and Paul speaks of “Christ, who is our life” (Colossians 3:4).

These six verses show us who God is. He states the choice plainly, tells his people where each road leads while there is still time, and then urges them to take the road of life, because he wants them to live. He thinks of their children as well as of them. He binds himself by oath to their fathers and keeps his word. And the life he offers is himself, found in loving him, hearing his voice and holding fast to him, for “he is thy life”.

The passage also shows how faithfulness is lost, beginning in the heart long before anything shows outwardly, and how it is kept, by love, by listening and by holding on. For us the life set before Israel has a name in Jesus Christ, who loved the Father, obeyed his voice and held fast to him perfectly, and in whom God’s word to Israel, “he is thy life”, comes true for everyone who believes.