Deuteronomy 1 - The Call to Obedience | Bible Podcast, David Alley, Peace Christian Church
The Bible by David Alley · David Alley
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Show Notes
In this video listen to Deuteronomy 1 read by David Alley, followed by comments and prayer.
Deuteronomy 1 starts with “These are the words of Moses.” In Hebrew,the name for this book is Debarim from the phrase,ʾēlleh haddĕbārîm, meaning ‘these are the words.’ And in Greek the name of the book is Deutero Nomos meaning the second law. Forty years earlier Moses had an encounter with God at the burning bush and argued with God five times about his suitability for service.
One of his key arguments was that he could not speak, but God clearly knew what he had created. Here we see what God saw when he called Moses, and the many words that came from Moses from God. What a spiritual and personal change in his life resulted from doing what God required.
The Israelites are about to enter the promised land, but two things are noteworthy. First, this is the new generation that wasn’t alive when the law was given, and they didn’t experience the setting up of the tabernacle, Mt Sinai, the crossing of the red sea and slavery itself. Only two of them, Caleb and Joshua, apart from those under 20 at the time have any memory of Egypt.
So Moses is effectively speaking to a new group and informing their collective memory. But secondly, Moses is about to die, and this entire book equates to something of a deathbed speech, where the dying words of a man are more important and living in light of what is about to happen. Deuteronomy also represents the closest thing in the OT to teaching.
While the NT is full of doctrine and explanation, there is really nothing in the OT like that, but here we get a little closer as Moses tries to explain reasons for some things, such as in Deuteronomy 8:3 where Moses explains why God put the people through humbling experiences to teach them.