Deuteronomy

What Deuteronomy is about

Deuteronomy is a book of sermons. Israel is camped east of the Jordan, the wilderness behind them and the land in front, and Moses — who will not be crossing — speaks to them one last time. The name means second law, but the book is less a new code than a re-application of an old one to a people about to live somewhere entirely new.

Moses does three things. He retells the story, so that a generation who did not see Egypt will own it as theirs. He restates the commandments, with the reasons attached and the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner named again and again. And he sets a choice in front of them: life and blessing, or death and ruin. Choose life.

At the centre is the Shema — Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one — followed by the command to love God with all your heart and soul and strength, and to talk about it at home, on the road, lying down, getting up. It is the closest thing the Old Testament has to a summary of itself, and it is the verse Jesus quotes when asked for the greatest commandment.

Where it sits in the story

Deuteronomy closes the five books of the Law and sets the terms by which the rest of the Old Testament measures Israel. The books of Joshua through Kings read the nation’s history against this book’s warnings; the prophets prosecute their case with its language. It is one of the most quoted books in the New Testament.

Its last chapter is one of scripture’s most poignant: Moses climbs a mountain, sees the land he spent forty years walking toward, and dies there without entering it. The work is handed on unfinished, which is how most faithful work gets handed on.

Why it is worth reading

Deuteronomy is unusually alert to the spiritual danger of success. Its sharpest warnings are not about persecution but about prosperity — full barns, good houses, and a slow forgetting of who provided them. That makes it one of the most searching books in the Bible for comfortable readers.