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Matthew Henry |
D E U T E R O N O M Y
CHAP. XXIX.
The first words of this chapter are the contents of it, “These are the
words of the covenant”
(ver. 1),
that is, these that follow. Here is,
I. A recital of God’s dealings with them, in order to the bringing of
them into this covenant,
II. A solemn charge to them to keep the covenant,
III. An abstract of the covenant itself,
IV. A specification of the persons taken into the covenant,
V. An intimation of the great design of this covenant against idolatry,
in a parenthesis,
VI. A most solemn and dreadful denunciation of the wrath of God against
such persons as promise themselves peace in a sinful way,
VII. The conclusion of this treaty, with a distinction between things
secret and things revealed,
| Mercies Called to Remembrance. | B. C. 1451. |
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1 These are the words of the covenant, which the LORD
commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land
of Moab, beside the covenant which he made with them in Horeb.
2 And Moses called unto all Israel, and said unto them, Ye have
seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt
unto Pharaoh, and unto all his servants, and unto all his land;
3 The great temptations which thine eyes have seen, the signs,
and those great miracles:
4 Yet the LORD hath not given you a heart to perceive, and
eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day.
5 And I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your
clothes are not waxen old upon you, and thy shoe is not waxen old
upon thy foot.
6 Ye have not eaten bread, neither have ye drunk wine or strong
drink: that ye might know that I am the LORD your God.
7 And when ye came unto this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon,
and Og the king of Bashan, came out against us unto battle, and
we smote them:
8 And we took their land, and gave it for an inheritance unto
the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half tribe of
Manasseh.
9 Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that
ye may prosper in all that ye do.
Now that Moses had largely repeated the commands which the people were
to observe as their part of the covenant, and the promises and
threatenings which God would make good (according as they behaved
themselves) as part of the covenant, the whole is here summed up in a
federal transaction. The covenant formerly made is here renewed, and
Moses, who was before, is still, the mediator of it
(v. 1):
The Lord commanded Moses to make it. Moses himself, though king
in Jeshurun, could not make the covenant any otherwise than as God gave
him instructions. It does not lie in the power of ministers to fix the
terms of the covenant; they are only to dispense the seals of it. This
is said to be besides the covenant made in Horeb; for, though
the covenant was the same, yet it was a new promulgation and
ratification of it. It is probable that some now living, though not of
age to be mustered, were of age to consent for themselves to the
covenant made at Horeb, and yet it is here renewed. Note, Those that
have solemnly covenanted with God should take all opportunities to do
it again, as those that like their choice too well to change. But the
far greater part were a new generation, and therefore the covenant must
be made afresh with them, for it is fit that the covenant should be
renewed to the children of the covenant.
I. It is usual for indentures to begin with a recital; this does so,
with a rehearsal of the great things God had done for them,
1. As an encouragement to them to believe that God would indeed be to
them a God, for he would not have done so much for them if he had not
designed more, to which all he had hitherto done was but a preface (as
it were) or introduction; nay, he had shown himself a God in what he
had hitherto done for them, which might raise their expectations of
something great and answering the vast extent and compass of that
pregnant promise, that God would be to them a God.
2. As an engagement upon them to be to him an obedient people, in
consideration of what he had done for them.
II. For the proof of what he here advances he appeals to their own eyes
(v. 2):
You have seen all that the Lord did. Their own senses were
incontestable evidence of the matter of fact, that God had done great
things for them; and then their own reason was a no less competent
judge of the equity of his inference from it: Keep therefore the
words of this covenant,
v. 9.
III. These things he specifies, to show the power and goodness of God
in his appearances for them.
1. Their deliverance out of Egypt,
The amazing signs and miracles by which Pharaoh was plagued and
compelled to dismiss them, and Israel was tried (for they are called
temptations) whether they would trust God to secure them from,
and save them by, those plagues.
2. Their conduct through the wilderness for forty years,
There they were led, and clad, and fed, by miracles; though the paths
of the wilderness were not only unknown but untrodden, yet God kept
them from being lost there; and (as bishop Patrick observes) those very
shoes which by the appointment of God they put on in Egypt, at the
passover, when the were ready to march
never wore out, but served them to Canaan: and though they lived not
upon bread which strengthens the heart, and wine which rejoices it, but
upon manna and rock-water, yet they were men of strength and courage,
mighty men, and able to go forth to war. By these miracles they were
made to know that the Lord was God, and by these mercies that he was
their God.
3. The victory they had lately obtained of Sihon and Og, and that good
land which they had taken possession of,
Both former mercies and fresh mercies should be improved by us as
inducements to obedience.
IV. By way of inference from these memoirs,
1. Moses laments their stupidity: Yet the Lord has not given you a
heart to perceive,
v. 4.
This does not lay the blame of their senselessness, and sottishness,
and unbelief, upon God, as if they had stood ready to receive his grace
and had begged for it, but he had denied them; no, but it fastens the
guilt upon themselves. “The Lord, who is the Father of spirits, a God
in covenant with you, and who had always been so rich in mercy to you,
no doubt would have crowned all his other gifts with this, he would
have given you a heart to perceive and eyes to see if you had not by
your own frowardness and perverseness frustrated his kind intentions,
and received his grace in vain.” Note,
(1.) The hearing ear, the seeing eye, and the understanding heart, are
the gift of God. All that have them have them from him.
(2.) God gives not only food and raiment, but wealth and large
possessions, to many to whom he does not give grace. Many enjoy the
gifts who have not hearts to perceive the giver, nor the true intention
and use of the gifts.
(3.) God’s readiness to do us good in other things is a plain evidence
that if we have not grace, that best of gifts, it is our own fault and
not his; he would have gathered us and we would not.
2. Moses charges them to be obedient: Keep therefore, and do,
v. 9.
Note, We are bound in gratitude and interest, as well as duty and
faithfulness, to keep the words of the covenant.
| The Covenant Renewed. | B. C. 1451. |
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10 Ye stand this day all of you before the LORD your God; your
captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with
all the men of Israel,
11 Your little ones, your wives, and thy stranger that is in
thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy
water:
12 That thou shouldest enter into covenant with the LORD thy
God, and into his oath, which the LORD thy God maketh with thee
this day:
13 That he may establish thee to day for a people unto himself,
and that he may be unto thee a God, as he hath said unto thee,
and as he hath sworn unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and
to Jacob.
14 Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath;
15 But with him that standeth here with us this day before
the LORD our God, and also with him that is not here with us
this day:
16 (For ye know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt; and how
we came through the nations which ye passed by;
17 And ye have seen their abominations, and their idols, wood
and stone, silver and gold, which were among them:)
18 Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or
tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the LORD our God,
to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be
among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood;
19 And it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this
curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have
peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add
drunkenness to thirst:
20 The LORD will not spare him, but then the anger of the LORD
and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses
that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the LORD
shall blot out his name from under heaven.
21 And the LORD shall separate him unto evil out of all the
tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant
that are written in this book of the law:
22 So that the generation to come of your children that shall
rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far
land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the
sicknesses which the LORD hath laid upon it;
23 And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt,
and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass
groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah,
Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in
his wrath:
24 Even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the LORD done
thus unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger?
25 Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant
of the LORD God of their fathers, which he made with them when he
brought them forth out of the land of Egypt:
26 For they went and served other gods, and worshipped them,
gods whom they knew not, and whom he had not given unto them:
27 And the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, to
bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book:
28 And the LORD rooted them out of their land in anger, and in
wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land,
as it is this day.
29 The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those
things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children
for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.
It appears by the length of the sentences here, and by the copiousness
and pungency of the expressions, that Moses, now that he was drawing
near to the close of his discourse, was very warm and zealous, and very
desirous to impress what he said upon the minds of this unthinking
people. To bind them the faster to God and duty, he here, with great
solemnity of expression (to make up the want of the external ceremony
that was used
&c.), concludes a bargain (as it were) between
them and God, an everlasting covenant, which God would not forget and
they must not. He requires not their explicit consent, but lays the
matter plainly before them, and then leaves it between God and their
own consciences. Observe,
I. The parties to this covenant.
1. It is the Lord their God they are to covenant with,
To him they must give up themselves, to him they must join themselves.
“It is his oath; he has drawn up the covenant and settled it; he
requires your consent to it; he has sworn to you and to him you must be
sworn.” This requires us to be sincere and serious, humble and
reverent, in our covenant-transactions with God, remembering how great
a God he is with whom we are covenanting, who has a perfect knowledge
of us and an absolute dominion over us.
2. They are all to be taken into covenant with him. They were all
summoned to attend
(v. 2),
and did accordingly, and are told
(v. 10)
what was the design of their appearing before God now in a body–they
were to enter into covenant with him.
(1.) Even their great men, the captains of their tribes, their elders
and officers, must not think it any disparagement to their honour, or
any diminution of their power, to put their necks under the yoke of
this covenant, and to draw in it. They must rather enter into the
covenant first, to set a good example to their inferiors.
(2.) Not the men only, but their wives and children, must come into
this covenant; though they were not numbered and mustered, yet they
must be joined to the Lord,
v. 11.
Observe, Even little ones are capable of being taken into covenant with
God, and are to be admitted with their parents. Little children, so
little as to be carried in arms, must be brought to Christ, and shall
be blessed by him, for of such was and is the kingdom of
God.
(3.) Not the men of Israel only, but the stranger that was in their
camp, provided he was so far proselyted to their religion as to
renounce all false gods, was taken into this covenant with the God of
Israel, forasmuch as he also, though a stranger, was to be looked upon
in this matter as a son of Abraham,
Luke xix. 9.
This was an early indication of favour to the Gentiles, and of the
kindness God had in store for them.
(4.) Not the freemen only, but the hewers of wood and drawers of water,
the meanest drudge they had among them. Note, As none are too great to
come under the bonds of the covenant, so none are too mean to inherit
the blessings of the covenant. In Christ no difference is made between
bond and free,
Col. iii. 11.
Art thou called being a servant? Care not for it,
1 Cor. vii. 21.
(5.) Not only those that were now present before God in this solemn
assembly, but those also that were not here with them were taken into
covenant
(v. 15):
As with him that standeth here with us (so bishop Patrick thinks
it should be rendered) so also with him, that is not here with us
this day; that is,
[1.] Those that tarried at home were included; though detained either
by sickness or necessary business, they must not therefore think
themselves disengaged; no, every Israelite shares in the common
blessings. Those that tarry at home divide the spoil, and therefore
every Israelite must own himself bound by the consent of the
representative body. Those who cannot go up to the house of the Lord
must keep up a spiritual communion with those that do, and be present
in spirit when they are absent in body.
[2.] The generations to come are included. Nay, one of the Chaldee
paraphrasts reads it, All the generations that have been from the
first days of the world, and all that shall arise to the end of the
whole world, stand with us here this day. And so, taking this
covenant as a typical dispensation of the covenant of grace, it is a
noble testimony to the Mediator of that covenant, who is the same
yesterday, to-day, and for ever.
II. The summary of this covenant. All the precepts and all the promises
of the covenant are included in the covenant-relation between God and
them,
That they should be appointed, raised up, established, for a people
to him, to observe and obey him, to be devoted to him and dependent
on him, and that he should be to them a God, according to the tenour of
the covenant made with their fathers, to make them holy, high, and
happy Their fathers are here named, Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, as examples of piety, which those were to set themselves
to imitate who expected any benefit from the covenant made with them.
Note, A due consideration of the relation we stand in to God as our
God, and of the obligation we lie under as a people to him, is enough
to bring us to all the duties and all the comforts of the covenant.
III. The principal design of the renewing of this covenant at this time
was to fortify them against temptations to idolatry. Though other sins
will be the sinner’s ruin, yet this was the sin that was likely to be
their ruin. Now concerning this he shows,
1. The danger they were in of being tempted to it
(v. 16, 17):
“You know we have dwelt in the land of Egypt, a country addicted
to idolatry; and it were well if there were not among you some remains
of the infection of that idolatry; we have passed by other nations,
the Edomites, Moabites, &c. and have seen their abominations
and their idols, and some among you, it may be, have liked them
too well, and still hanker after them, and would rather worship a
wooden god that they can see than an infinite Spirit whom they never
saw.” It is to be hoped that there were those among them who, the more
they saw of these abominations and idols, the more they hated them; but
there were those that were smitten with the sight of them, saw the
accursed things and coveted them.
2. The danger they were in if they yielded to the temptation. He gives
them fair warning: it was at their peril if they forsook God to serve
idols. If they would not be bound and held by the precepts of the
covenant, they would find that the curses of the covenant would be
strong enough to bind and hold them.
(1.) Idolatry would be the ruin of particular persons and their
families,
where observe,
[1.] The sinner described,
First, He is one whose heart turns away from his God;
there the mischief begins, in the evil heart of unbelief, which
inclines men to depart from the living God to dead idols. Even
to this sin men are tempted when they are drawn aside by their own
lusts and fancies. Those that begin to turn from God, by neglecting
their duty to him, are easily drawn to other gods: and those that serve
other gods do certainly turn away from the true God; for he will admit
of no rivals: he will be all or nothing. Secondly, He is a
root that bears gall and wormwood; that is, he is a dangerous man,
who, being himself poisoned with bad principles and inclinations, with
a secret contempt of the God of Israel and his institutions and a
veneration for the gods of the nations, endeavours, by all arts
possible, to corrupt and poison others and draw them to idolatry: this
is a man whose fruit is hemlock (so the word is translated,
and wormwood; it is very displeasing to God, and will be, to all
that are seduced by him, bitterness in the latter end. This is
referred to by the apostle,
where he is in like manner cautioning us to take heed of those that
would seduce us from the Christian faith; they are the weeds or tares
in a field, which, if let alone, will overspread the whole field. A
little of this leaven will be in danger of infecting the whole
lump.
[2.] His security in the sun. He promises himself impunity, though he
persists in his impiety,
Though he hears the words of the curse, so that he cannot plead
ignorance of the danger, as other idolaters, yet even then he
blesses himself in his own heart, thinks himself safe from the
wrath of the God of Israel, under the protection of his idol-gods, and
therefore says, “I shall have peace, though I be governed in my
religion, not by God’s institution, but by my own imagination, to add
drunkenness to thirst, one act of wickedness to another.” Idolaters
were like drunkards, violently set upon their idols themselves and
industrious to draw others in with them. Revellings commonly
accompanied their idolatries
(1 Pet. iv. 3),
so that this speaks a woe to drunkards (especially the drunkards of
Ephraim), who, when they are awake, being thirsty, seek it yet
again,
Prov. xxiii. 35.
And those that made themselves drunk in honour of their idols were the
worst of drunkards. Note, First, There are many who are under
the curse of God and yet bless themselves; but it will soon be found
that in blessing themselves they do but deceive themselves.
Secondly, Those are ripe for ruin, and there is little hope of
their repentance, who have made themselves believe that they shall have
peace though they go on in a sinful way. Thirdly, Drunkenness
is a sin that hardens the heart, and debauches the conscience, as much
as any other, a sin to which men are strangely tempted themselves even
when they have lately felt the mischiefs of it, and to which they are
strangely fond of drawing others,
And such an ensnaring sin is idolatry.
[3.] God’s just severity against him for the sin, and for the impious
affront he put upon God in saying he should have peace though he went
on, so giving the lie to eternal truth,
There is scarcely a threatening in all the book of God that sounds more
dreadful than this. O that presumptuous sinners would read it and
tremble! For it is not a bug-bear to frighten children and fools, but a
real declaration of the wrath of God against the ungodliness and the
unrighteousness of men,
First, The Lord shall not spare him. The days of his reprieve,
which he abuses, will be shortened, and no mercy remembered in the
midst of judgment. Secondly, The anger of the Lord, and his
jealousy, which is the fiercest anger, shall smoke against
him, like the smoke of a furnace. Thirdly, The curses
written shall lie upon him, not only light upon him to
terrify him, but abide upon him, to sink him to the lowest hell,
Fourthly, His name shall be blotted out, that is, he himself
shall be cut off, and his memory shall rot and perish with him.
Fifthly, He shall be separated unto evil, which is the
most proper notion of a curse; he shall be cut off from all happiness
and all hope of it, and marked out for misery without remedy. And
(lastly) All this according to the curses of the
covenant, which are the most fearful curses, being the just
revenges of abused grace.
(2.) Idolatry would be the ruin of their nation; it would bring plagues
upon the land that connived at this root of bitterness and received the
infection; as far as the sin spread, the judgment should spread
likewise.
[1.] The ruin is described. It begins with plagues and sicknesses
(v. 22),
to try if they will be reclaimed by less judgments; but, if not, it
ends in a total overthrow, like that of Sodom,
As that valley, which had been like the garden of the Lord for
fruitfulness, was turned into a lake of salt and sulphur, so should the
land of Canaan be made desolate and barren, as it has been ever since
the last destruction of it by the Romans. The lake of Sodom bordered
closely upon the land of Israel, that by it they might be warned
against the iniquity of Sodom; but, not taking the warning, they were
made as like to Sodom in ruin as they had been in sin.
[2.] The reason of it is enquired into, and assigned. First, It
would be enquired into by the generations to come
(v. 22),
who would find the state of their nation in all respects the reverse of
what it had been, and, when they read both the history and the promise,
would be astonished at the change. The stranger likewise, and the
nations about them, as well as particular persons, would ask,
Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land?
v. 24.
Great desolations are thus represented elsewhere as striking the
spectators with amazement,
1 Kings ix. 8, 9; Jer. xxii. 8, 9.
It was time for the neighbours to tremble when judgment thus began
at the house of God,
1 Pet. iv. 17.
The emphasis of the question is to be laid upon this land, the
land of Canaan, this good land, the glory of all lands, this land
flowing with milk and honey. A thousand pities that such a good land as
this should be made desolate, but this is not all; it is this
holy land, the land of Israel, a people in covenant with God; it
is Immanuel’s land, a land where God was known and worshipped, and yet
thus wasted. Note,
1. It is no new thing for God to bring desolating judgments upon a
people that in profession are near to him,
2. He never does this without a good reason.
3. It concerns us to enquire into the reason, that we may give glory to
God and take warning to ourselves. Secondly, The reason is here
assigned, in answer to that enquiry. The matter would be so plain that
all men would say, It was because they forsook the covenant of the
Lord God of their fathers,
v. 25.
Note, God never forsakes any till they first forsake him. But those
that desert the God of their fathers are justly cast out of the
inheritance of their fathers. They went and served other gods
(v. 26),
gods that they had no acquaintance with, nor lay under any obligation
to either in duty of gratitude; for God has not given the creatures to
be served by us, but to serve us; nor have they done any good to us (as
some read it), more than what God has enabled them to do; to the
Creator therefore we are debtors, and not to the creatures. It was for
this that God was angry with them
(v. 27),
and rooted them out in anger,
v. 28.
So that, how dreadful soever the desolation was, the Lord was righteous
in it, which is acknowledged,
“Thus” (says Mr. Ainsworth) “the law of Moses leaves sinners under the
curse, and rooted out of the Lord’s land; but the grace of
Christ towards penitent believing sinners plants them again upon
their land, and they shall no more be pulled up, being kept by the
power of God,”
[3.] He concludes his prophecy of the Jews’ rejection just as St. Paul
concludes his discourse on the same subject, when it began to be
fulfilled
(Rom. xi. 33),
How unsearchable are God’s judgments, and his ways past finding
out! So here
(v. 29),
Secret things belong to the Lord our God. Some make it to be one
sentence, The secret things of the Lord our God are revealed to us
and to our children, as far as we are concerned to know them, and
he hath not dealt so with other nations: but we make it two
sentences, by which, First, We are forbidden curiously to
enquire into the secret counsels of God and to determine concerning
them. A full answer is given to that question, Wherefore has the
Lord done thus to this land? sufficient to justify God and admonish
us. But if any ask further why God would be at such a vast expense of
miracles to form such a people, whose apostasy and ruin he plainly
foresaw, why he did not by his almighty grace prevent it, or what he
intends yet to do with them, let such know that these are questions
which cannot be answered, and therefore are not fit to be asked. It is
presumption in us to pry into the Arcana imperii–the mysteries of
government, and to enquire into the reasons of state which it is
not for us to know. See
John xxi. 22; Col. ii. 18.
Secondly, We are directed and encouraged diligently to enquire
into that which God has made known: things revealed belong to us and
to our children. Note,
1. Though God has kept much of his counsel secret, yet there is enough
revealed to satisfy and save us. He has kept back nothing that is
profitable for us, but that only which it is good for us to be
ignorant of.
2. We ought to acquaint ourselves, and our children too, with the
things of God that are revealed. We are not only allowed to search into
them, but are concerned to do so. They are things which we and ours are
nearly interested in. They are the rules we are to live by, the grants
we are to live upon; and therefore we are to learn them diligently
ourselves, and to teach them diligently to our children.
3. All our knowledge must be in order to practice, for this is the end
of all divine revelation, not to furnish us with curious subjects of
speculation and discourse, with which to entertain ourselves and our
friends, but that we may do all the words of this law, and be
blessed in our deed.
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