Chapter 29
1 These are the words of the covenant that the LORD commanded Moses to make with the people of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant that he had made with them at Horeb. [Deu 29:1 ESV]
So the specifications above were an addition to the covenant made at Horeb. (Was Horeb Sinai? Is this added to what was said when Moses brought the tablets down?)
MSB says this opens the third address of Moses to the people. In the Hebrew Bible, this verse is the last of 28, not the first of 29.
Wow....There is a lot in the MSB notes here. I was right to wonder whether this is a different covenant. Three points of view: No, it is a restatement of the Sinai Covenant. However, the verse clearly says this covenant is "besides" the one at Sinai. Second, yes, it is new, and is the "Palestinian" covenant, which gave Israel title to the Land of Canaan. But MSB points out that the two chapters are not about the land, but about the change of heart of the people. Third, Moses is about to describe the New Covenant, coming in the NT, and contrast that New Covenant with the impossibility of keeping the Sinai Covenant. I did not catch this the first time, nor did I read this note in MSB. I now look forward to reading this chapter in this new context.
Oh my...so clearly stated here that under the Sinai Covenant, there is still something lacking, still a problem:
2 And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: "You have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, 3 the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders. 4 But to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear. [Deu 29:2-4 ESV]
No Holy Spirit within to guide, and no "heart of flesh" to understand. This says another, better covenant is coming to replace the Sinai Covenant, and fill this last gap in the relationship of God and Man that sin created at the fall. 2021 - ...and that Israel "earned" when Moses used to set up his tent outside the camp and convinced God not to do away with Israel and start over at that time. It says something better is coming, that will not require the veil to separate God from man so that contact can only be through the priests he designates. None of these things were sufficient for the relationship God wanted with man, but in his perfection and justice, God could not, and would not bypass the righteous requirements of that association.
2023 - So when Isaiah and Jeremiah and even Jesus talk about how Israel has no eyes to see nor ears to hear, does it really come all the way back to Deuteronomy? Most references in the margins take it back only to Isaiah. Moses is saying here that this problem - this inability to see or hear - is going to persist until the New Covenant comes along. There is still an unreconciled separation between God and man under the Sinai/Horeb/Palestinian Covenant, and this separation keeps Israel - and all others - from a personal relationship with God. It still had to be an arms length agreement. Here's the difficulty...If God had not given Israel eyes and ears, then how is it ok to be angry with them because they do not have it? This is the Bill Burr question in another guise. But maybe the way to see it here is that they don't have this, nor does God expect them to perform as if they do. God has given them a list of sins that they are to avoid, or to sacrifice for when they mess up, specifically because they have no eyes and no ears - no internal discernment - as to what is right and what is wrong. That discernment will not come until the New Covenant, through the blood of Christ. Full obedience and devotion was required under Sinai, but sins not specifically prohibited would not be held against them perhaps. And the Sinai shows that even with a very abbreviated list of sins, man alone is incapable of full compliance. Man cannot achieve sinlessness because of the corrupt state into which we are all born. The Law shows that even when God makes it "easy" to avoid sin, all men still "fail in one thing" and so bring the condemnation of the Law on themselves. But the New Covenant was coming, is now here, where our sins are removed as far as the east from the west by the blood of Christ, and not only are we guiltless but we are righteous by his life.
So I have seen this passage before - I had notes on it from way back, but this year, I understand its implications far better. If you yourself on your own cannot see, and you yourself on your own cannot hear, though you have eyes and ears, all you can do - all you are held accountable for doing - is obeying the written rules. And in Jesus' time, here were the Pharisees perverting the Law of God to make it achievable, and adding burdensome "law by tradition" of their own that made it achievable only by the very rich. A Law given to condemn all men turned into a Law the made the elite the ONLY ones going to heaven. What arrogance.
Here is the setup:
10 "You are standing today, all of you, before the LORD your God: the heads of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel, ... 12 so that you may enter into the sworn covenant of the LORD your God, which the LORD your God is making with you today, [Deu 29:10, 12 ESV]
In a sense, the New Covenant is promised here. The New Covenant begins here, though it does not really come into full effect until the Sinai Covenant is set aside by God. This anticipates the ultimate failure of the Sinai Covenant - which was put in place to show the desperate failing of man without God, and to show the impossibility of man reconciling himself to God - and so the replacement of Sinai with a perfect covenant, that will at last restore the relationship of God and man.
14 It is not with you alone that I am making this sworn covenant, 15 but with whoever is standing here with us today before the LORD our God, and with whoever is not here with us today. [Deu 29:14-15 ESV]
What does this mean? Does he mean other Israelites that aren't standing there, or is this universally inclusive? MSB says it was Israelites, present and future.
2021 - But...if you read the specifics, this seems to be how God's covenant with individuals will be. We have stopped talking about national things and are talking to each man, woman and child, from that day on. We are seeing things like "lest there be among you a man or a woman", and "a root bearing poisonous fruit", "one, who" and so on. This is about individuals.
Moses speech now anticipates the failure of the Sinai covenant, foresees Israel laid waste, and all the curses itemized in the previous chapter actually coming to pass. Israel desolate, and its people scattered to the winds with no country to call their own - from 70 AD to 1948 this was precisely the state of the descendants of Abraham. Others will see their fate, and ask why it happened to them, and Moses gives this answer:
24 all the nations will say, 'Why has the LORD done thus to this land? What caused the heat of this great anger?' 25 Then people will say, 'It is because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, 26 and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them. [Deu 29:24-26 ESV]
The Covenant that Israel abandons by turning to idolatry is the final straw. King Manasseh builds altars to idols, to the heavenly bodies, and so on, within the walls of the temple itself. He offers child sacrifices to false gods. This King represents the total abandonment of the Sinai Covenant by the nation of Israel, and so the end of the covenant relationship of God and Israel as a nation.
I should put in the reference saying that it was Manasseh who brought about the end. -Done. Manasseh's story is in 2 Kings 21. Here is the crux of it:
12 therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing upon Jerusalem and Judah such disaster that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. 13 And I will stretch over Jerusalem the measuring line of Samaria, and the plumb line of the house of Ahab, and I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. 14 And I will forsake the remnant of my heritage and give them into the hand of their enemies, and they shall become a prey and a spoil to all their enemies, 15 because they have done what is evil in my sight and have provoked me to anger, since the day their fathers came out of Egypt, even to this day." [2Ki 21:12-15 ESV]
2023 - Look at this ending verse in Chapter 29:
29 "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. [Deu 29:29 ESV]. God does not tell us all things. If he did, we wouldn't need faith. He tells us what he wants us to know, and keeps secret what we don't need to know.
2026 - Reading these two chapters, 28-29, and the enumeration of the curses that God would send if Israel did not do as they had promised and follow his commandments and ordinances, it is easy to see that very much evil results from disobedience. Now these curses were sent on Israel as a nation, under the terms of the covenant, and we are under a different covenant. Even so, this is how God does things. He's told them that if they disobey, they will eat their own children and not share the meal with anyone in their greed. It is fine to say this is a curse on those who chose rebellion over obedience, but what about the children they will eat? What about those who remain faithful but are infected by their neighbors with the plagues of Egypt? Is this not physical evil as far as they are concerned? Are they not suffering because of the free will of others? Again we see evil as consequences, not as random chance, not as normal in a fallen world, but resulting from God's promised curses on those who disobey. I am not sure there is any such thing as random physical evil anymore.
2026 - Wow. And then we get this well worn verse, and the context in which it is found:
29 "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. [Deu 29:29 ESV].
Some things we will never know, never understand. They are likely too much for us anyway. We are responsible only for what reveals to us. The reasons, the why of calamity and suffering and loss and grief...These are secrets. God's. I come back to that line from "If God, Why Evil". It was something like "We don't know the why, but we trust the One who knows the why."