When you’ve lived 120 years, walking with God for a century, you’ll have something worth saying!
Welcome to the fifth book written by Moses! Its first lines set the stage: “These are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel on this side of the Jordan…in the plain…” (Deut 1:1). Deuteronomy is composed of a series of talks by 120-year-old Moses to the next generation of Israelites. Their parents had doubted God’s wisdom, despised His grace, denounced His servant, and deserted His covenant. Thus God’s sad pronouncement: “The carcasses of you who have complained against Me shall fall in this wilderness…from twenty years old and above” (Num 14:29). Of course, that’s what they had said: “If only we had died in this wilderness!” (v 2). Deuteronomy, derived from the Greek translation, means “repetition,” restating the law for those poised to enter the Land. Yet it is much more than that. We’ll find many additions and clarifications here, including the climax of the book where Moses sings his 120th birthday farewell song, and concludes with his beautiful benediction on the tribes. So after introducing the people (Moses and the next generation) and the place (at the lower fords of the Jordan in the plains of Moab), we then have the point in time, poignantly given: “It is eleven days’ journey from Horeb by way of Mount Seir to Kadesh Barnea.” But how long did the path of unbelief take them? “It came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spoke to the children of Israel” (Deut 1:2-3). And the purpose of the book? “Moses began to explain this law” (v 5). We certainly won’t want to miss these “words,” as the Jewish people called the book—Devarim, simply meaning “words.” Let’s listen carefully because God is speaking, and through the only man to whom He spoke “face to face.”