Moses Binds Israel to the Covenant at Horeb

Moses stood before Israel on the plains of Moab, east of the Jordan, and delivered a speech that was not merely a farewell. It was a legal and theological summation of everything that had happened since Horeb. He commanded the people to hear the statutes and ordinances he taught them, and to do them, so that they might live and possess the land the Lord, the God of their fathers, was giving them. The command was absolute: they were not to add to the word he commanded them, nor diminish from it, but keep the commandments of the Lord their God exactly as given.

Moses pointed to a recent and vivid example. Their own eyes had seen what the Lord did at Baal-peor. Every man who followed that god was destroyed from among them. But those who clung to the Lord their God were alive that very day. The lesson was not abstract. It was written in the bodies of the dead and the breath of the living.

The purpose of keeping the law, Moses told them, was not merely obedience. It was their wisdom and understanding in the sight of the other nations. When the peoples heard these statutes, they would say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” No other nation had a god so near to them as the Lord was when they called upon him. No other nation had statutes and ordinances as righteous as this law.

Moses then drove the people back to the day at Horeb. He told them to take heed and keep their souls diligently, lest they forget the things their eyes had seen. Those things must not depart from their hearts all the days of their lives. They were to make them known to their children and their children’s children. He recalled the day they stood before the Lord at the mountain, which burned with fire to the heart of heaven, wrapped in darkness, cloud, and thick darkness. The Lord spoke to them out of the fire. They heard the voice of words, but they saw no form—only a voice.

That was the point. Because they saw no form, they were forbidden to make any graven image. Moses warned them explicitly: do not corrupt yourselves by making an image in the likeness of any figure—male or female, beast, bird, creeping thing, or fish. And when you look up at the sun, the moon, and the stars, do not be drawn away to worship them. The Lord allotted those to all the peoples under heaven, but he took Israel out of the iron furnace of Egypt to be his own people of inheritance.

Moses then spoke of his own fate. The Lord was angry with him because of the people and swore that he would not cross the Jordan. He would die in that land and not enter the good land the Lord was giving them. But the people would cross over and possess it. Therefore, Moses said, take heed lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God and make a graven image in any form the Lord has forbidden. For the Lord your God is a devouring fire, a jealous God.

The warning escalated. When they had lived long in the land and had children and grandchildren, if they corrupted themselves and made an image and provoked the Lord to anger, Moses called heaven and earth as witnesses against them. They would soon utterly perish from the land. They would not prolong their days but be destroyed. The Lord would scatter them among the peoples, and they would be left few in number. In those nations, they would serve gods of wood and stone, which cannot see, hear, eat, or smell.

But even there, Moses said, they would seek the Lord their God and find him when they searched with all their heart and soul. In tribulation, in the latter days, they would return to the Lord and listen to his voice. For the Lord your God is a merciful God. He will not fail you, destroy you, or forget the covenant he swore to your fathers.

Moses then challenged them to search history. Ask from the day God created man on earth, from one end of heaven to the other: has any such great thing ever happened or been heard? Did any people ever hear the voice of God speaking out of the fire and live? Did any god ever take a nation from the midst of another nation by trials, signs, wonders, war, a mighty hand, an outstretched arm, and great terrors, as the Lord did for Israel in Egypt? It was shown to them so that they might know that the Lord is God. There is none else besides him.

Out of heaven he made them hear his voice to instruct them. On earth he made them see his great fire, and they heard his words out of the fire. Because he loved their fathers, he chose their seed after them and brought them out of Egypt with his presence and great power. He drove out nations greater and mightier than them to give them their land as an inheritance. Therefore, Moses concluded, know this day and lay it to your heart: the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath. There is none else. Keep his statutes and commandments so that it may go well with you and your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land the Lord gives you forever.

After this speech, Moses set apart three cities east of the Jordan for the manslayer who killed his neighbor unintentionally and without prior hatred. The cities were Bezer in the wilderness for the Reubenites, Ramoth in Gilead for the Gadites, and Golan in Bashan for the Manassites. These were the testimonies, statutes, and ordinances Moses spoke to Israel after they came out of Egypt, beyond the Jordan in the valley opposite Beth-peor, in the land of Sihon king of the Amorites and Og king of Bashan, whom Israel defeated and whose land they possessed from Aroer to Mount Hermon and the whole Arabah eastward to the Sea of the Arabah under the slopes of Pisgah.