Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/1338

 of the heathen religions had set in; and at last, in Christianity, it has brought one heathen nation after another to the knowledge of the true God, and to eternal salvation, notwithstanding the fact that the divine truth was and still is regarded as folly by the proud philosophers and self-righteous Epicureans and Stoics of ancient and modern times.

verses 7-8
This mighty and attractive force of the wisdom of Israel consisted in the fact, that in Jehovah they possessed a God who was at hand with His help when they called upon Him (cf. Deu 33:29; Psa 34:19; Psa 145:18; 1Ki 2:7), as none of the gods of the other nations had ever been; and that in the law of God they possessed such statutes and rights as the heathen never had. True right has its roots in God; and with the obscuration of the knowledge of God, law and right, with their divinely established foundations, are also shaken and obscured (cf. Rom 1:26-32). Israel was therefore not to forget the things which it had seen at Horeb with its own eyes.

Verse 9
“Only beware and take care of thyself.” To “keep the soul,” i.e., to take care of the soul as the seat of life, to defend one's life from danger and injury (Pro 13:3; Pro 19:16). “That thou do not forget את־הדּברים (the facts described in Ex 19-24), <), and that they do not depart from thy heart all the days of thy life,” i.e., are not forgotten as long as thou livest, “and thou makest them known to thy children and thy children's children.” These acts of God formed the foundation of the true religion, the real basis of the covenant legislation, and the firm guarantee of the objective truth and divinity of all the laws and ordinances which Moses gave to the people. And it was this which constituted the essential distinction between the religion of the Old Testament and all heathen religions, whose founders, it is true, professed to derive their doctrines and statutes from divine inspiration, but without giving any practical guarantee that their origin was truly divine.

verses 10-12
In the words, “The day (היּום, adverbial accusative) “that thou stoodest before Jehovah thy God at Horeb,” etc., Moses reminds the people of the leading features of those grand events: first of all of the fact that God directed him to gather the people together, that He might make known His words to them (Exo 19:9.), that they were to learn to fear Him all their life long, and to teach their children also (יראה, inf., like שׂנאה, Deu 1:27); and secondly (Deu 4:11), that they came near to the mountain which burned in fire (cf. Exo 19:17.). The expression, burning in fire “even to the heart of heaven,” i.e., quite into