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29. Renewal of the Covenant

¹ In Hebrew texts 29:1 is numbered 28:69, and 29:2-29 is numbered 29:1-28.These are the terms of the covenant the LORD commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in Moab, in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb.

² Moses summoned all the Israelites and said to them:

Your eyes have seen all that the LORD did in Egypt to Pharaoh, to all his officials and to all his land. ³ With your own eyes you saw those great trials, those signs and great wonders. ⁴ But to this day the LORD has not given you a mind that understands or eyes that see or ears that hear. ⁵ Yet the LORD says, “During the forty years that I led you through the wilderness, your clothes did not wear out, nor did the sandals on your feet. ⁶ You ate no bread and drank no wine or other fermented drink. I did this so that you might know that I am the LORD your God.”

⁷ When you reached this place, Sihon king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan came out to fight against us, but we defeated them. ⁸ We took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh.

⁹ Carefully follow the terms of this covenant, so that you may prosper in everything you do. ¹⁰ All of you are standing today in the presence of the LORD your God—your leaders and chief men, your elders and officials, and all the other men of Israel, ¹¹ together with your children and your wives, and the foreigners living in your camps who chop your wood and carry your water. ¹² You are standing here in order to enter into a covenant with the LORD your God, a covenant the LORD is making with you this day and sealing with an oath, ¹³ to confirm you this day as his people, that he may be your God as he promised you and as he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. ¹⁴ I am making this covenant, with its oath, not only with you ¹⁵ who are standing here with us today in the presence of the LORD our God but also with those who are not here today.

¹⁶ You yourselves know how we lived in Egypt and how we passed through the countries on the way here. ¹⁷ You saw among them their detestable images and idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold. ¹⁸ Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the LORD our God to go and worship the gods of those nations; make sure there is no root among you that produces such bitter poison.

¹⁹ When such a person hears the words of this oath and they invoke a blessing on themselves, thinking, “I will be safe, even though I persist in going my own way,” they will bring disaster on the watered land as well as the dry. ²⁰ The LORD will never be willing to forgive them; his wrath and zeal will burn against them. All the curses written in this book will fall on them, and the LORD will blot out their names from under heaven. ²¹ The LORD will single them out from all the tribes of Israel for disaster, according to all the curses of the covenant written in this Book of the Law.

²² Your children who follow you in later generations and foreigners who come from distant lands will see the calamities that have fallen on the land and the diseases with which the LORD has afflicted it. ²³ The whole land will be a burning waste of salt and sulfur—nothing planted, nothing sprouting, no vegetation growing on it. It will be like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboyim, which the LORD overthrew in fierce anger. ²⁴ All the nations will ask: “Why has the LORD done this to this land? Why this fierce, burning anger?”

²⁵ And the answer will be: “It is because this people abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their ancestors, the covenant he made with them when he brought them out of Egypt. ²⁶ They went off and worshiped other gods and bowed down to them, gods they did not know, gods he had not given them. ²⁷ Therefore the LORD’s anger burned against this land, so that he brought on it all the curses written in this book. ²⁸ In furious anger and in great wrath the LORD uprooted them from their land and thrust them into another land, as it is now.”

²⁹ The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.

19. And it come to pass when he heareth the words. He shews that it is not without reason that he has used so solemn and severe an adjuration; since nothing is more common than for men to flatter themselves, and by levity to evade the decision of God. He therefore repeats, that they are standing before God, who neither deceives, nor is deceived, nor even allows Himself to be thought lightly of; in order that they may tremble at His threats. Let the majesty of God, he says, be dreaded by you; so that none who despises Him, and wantons in his own lusts, should promise himself impunity. “To bless himself in his heart,” is to hope in his secret imaginations that all will go well; as the hypocrites do, who, in their foolish self-adulation, applaud themselves deceitfully, lest they should hear God thundering. ²⁶⁹²⁶⁹ Addition in Fr., “par maniere de dire.”

From this passage, therefore, let us learn that nothing is worse than to hope for peace, whilst we wage war with God; and to promise ourselves that He will let us alone, when we provoke Him by the impetuosity of our lusts.

The conclusion of the verse, “to add the drunken to the thirsty,” is variously explained on account of its ambiguity. ²⁷⁰²⁷⁰ Lat., “Ut addat ebriam sitienti.” A.V., “To add drunkenness to thirst;” Margin, “The drunken to the thirsty.” So Ainsworth, “To add the drunken, to wit, the drunken soul to the thirsty, or the moist to the dry, meaning to add sin unto sin in abundance, as in Isaiah 30:1.” Dathe follows Le Clerc, and explains it, “to add water to a thirsty soul;” and compares it to Isaiah 44:3, where, he says, the same metaphor is used, though in a good sense. I am ashamed to repeat the silly triflings of the Hebrew interpreters. To me it seems unquestionable that Moses, by a proverbial figure of speech, forbids us to excite the appetites of the flesh, already sufficiently heated, by new stimulants. As, therefore, they are said to add oil to the grate, who add more flames to a fire already lighted, ²⁷¹²⁷¹ “Que ceux, qui augmentent le mal, mettent l’huile en la cheminee;” that those who augment an evil put oil into the chimney. — Fr. so they are said to add the drunken to the thirsty who seek provocatives of their audacity, in order to sin more freely; for lust in a man is like an insatiable dropsy; and if any one indulges in such intemperance, he adds the drunken to the thirsty, i e., the madness of his own folly to unrestrained desire. רויה, ravah, however, is, in my opinion, used actively, as elsewhere. In Psalm 23:5, it is said, “My cup רויה, revayah, runneth over;” and, in like manner, in Psalm 66:12, a well-watered land ²⁷²²⁷² A.V., “a wealthy (margin, moist) place.” See Cal. Soc. Comment. on Psalms, vol. 2, p. 473. is expressed by the same word, because it abundantly moistens the corn and grass. It is very appropriate that the desires of the flesh, that we burn with, should be compared to thirst; and the licentious impetuosity, which carries us away without reflection, to drunkenness; because the sinner stupifies himself into forgetfulness of the distinction between good and evil. And thence Paul calls those who are plunged in brutal forgetfulness of God and themselves, ἀπηλγηκότες (past feeling.) (Ephesians 4:19.)