Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/1482

 covenant.

Verse 9
Deu 30:9Deu 30:9 is a repetition of Deu 28:11. The Lord will rejoice again over Israel, to do them good (vid., Deu 28:63), as He had rejoiced over their fathers. The fathers are not the patriarchs alone, but all the pious ancestors of the people.

Verse 10
A renewed enforcement of the indispensable condition of salvation.

verses 11-14
The fulfilment of this condition is not impossible, nor really very difficult. This natural though leads to the motive, which Moses impresses upon the hearts of the people in Deu 30:11-14, viz., that He might turn the blessing to them. God had done everything to render the observance of His commandments possible to Israel. “This commandment” (used as in Deu 6:1 to denote the whole law) is “not too wonderful for thee,” i.e., is not too hard to grasp, or unintelligible (vid., Deu 17:8), nor is it too far off: it is neither in heaven, i.e., at an inaccessible height; nor beyond the sea, i.e., at an unattainable distance, at the end of the world, so that any one could say, Who is able to fetch it thence? but it is very near thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart to do it. It not only lay before the people in writing, but it was also preached to them by word of mouth, and thus brought to their knowledge, so that it had become a subject of conversation as well as of reflection and careful examination. But however near the law had thus been brought to man, sin had so estranged the human heart from the word of God, that doing and keeping the law had become invariably difficult, and in fact impossible; so that the declaration, “the word is in thy heart,” only attains its full realization through the preaching of the gospel of the grace of God, and the righteousness that is by faith; and to this the Apostle Paul applies the passage in Rom 10:8.

verses 15-17
In conclusion, Moses sums up the contents of the whole of this preaching of the law in the words, “life and good, and death and evil,” as he had already done at Deu 11:26-27, in the first part of this address, to lay the people by a solemn adjuration under the obligation to be faithful to the Lord, and through this obligation to conclude the covenant afresh. He had set before them this day life and good (“good” = prosperity and salvation), as well as death and evil (רע, adversity and destruction), by commanding them to love the Lord and walk in His ways. Love is placed first, as in Deu 6:5, as being the essential principle of the fulfilment of the commandments. Expounding the law was setting before them life and death, salvation and destruction, because the law, as the word of God, was living and powerful, and proved itself in every man a power of life or of death, according to the attitude