Deuteronomy 29:10 - Meaning and Application

Moses’ words here are longer, fuller, and stronger than usual, because he is near the end of his speech. He is very earnest and wants this careless people to feel the weight of what he is saying. To bind them more firmly to God and duty, he speaks with great solemnity and, as it were, renews their covenant with God. This takes the place of the outward ceremony used in Exodus 24:4 and following, and it is a covenant God will not forget, though they must never forget it either.

Moses does not ask for a fresh formal vote. He lays the matter clearly before them and leaves it before God and their own consciences. The covenant is with the Lord their God, and they must give themselves to him fully. This calls for sincerity, seriousness, humility, and reverence, because they are dealing with a great God who knows them completely and has full authority over them.

All the people are brought into this covenant. Their leaders, the tribal captains, elders, and officers, must not think it beneath their honor to come under God’s rule. In fact, they should go first and set a good example for those below them. The wives and children are included too, though they were not counted in the same way, and so are the little ones who can be carried in arms. Even small children are fit to be taken into covenant with God and should be brought with their parents.

The stranger in their camp is also included, if he has turned from idols to the true God. This shows early kindness toward the nations outside Israel and hints at the mercy God would later show to the Gentiles, that is, non-Jewish peoples. Even the lowest workers, the woodcutters and water carriers, are not left out. No one is too great to come under the covenant, and no one is too low to share in its blessings. In Christ, there is no difference between slave and free (Colossians 3:11), and if a person is called as a servant, he should not worry about that (1 Corinthians 7:21).

This covenant also includes those who were not physically standing there that day. That means those kept away at home by sickness or necessary business were still bound by it, since they shared in the nation’s common blessings. It also includes later generations, even those not yet born. In that way, the covenant points ahead as a picture of the covenant of grace, God’s saving agreement with his people, and gives a strong witness to the Mediator, the one who brings that covenant to us, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

The heart of the covenant is simple: God will take them as his people, and they must live as his people. They are to be established for him, devoted to him, and dependent on him. In return, he will be their God, according to the covenant made with their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are held up as examples of faith and obedience. If people consider their relation to God and the duty that comes with belonging to him, that is enough to lead them into both the duties and the comforts of the covenant.

The main reason for renewing the covenant here was to guard them against idolatry, the worship of false gods. Other sins could ruin them, but this was the one most likely to destroy them as a nation. Moses reminds them of the danger they faced: they had lived in Egypt, a land full of idol worship, and some trace of that influence may still have remained among them. They had also passed through other nations, such as the Edomites and Moabites, and seen their detestable practices and idols. Some among them may have been drawn toward those visible gods, made of wood or stone, because they could see them, instead of worshiping the invisible God whom they had never seen.

Moses gives them clear warning. If they turn from God to idols, they do so at their own peril. If the covenant’s commands do not hold them back, then the covenant’s curses will. Idolatry would bring ruin first to individual people and then to their families. The danger begins in the heart, in the inward turning away from God. A person drifts from the living God to dead idols through unbelief and through the pull of personal desires and fantasies. Once people start neglecting God, they are easily led after other gods. And if they choose other gods, they are really turning away from the true God, because he will not share his place with rivals. He will be all, or nothing.

Second, the false worshiper is like a root that grows bitter poison, gall, and wormwood. He is a dangerous person, poisoned by evil beliefs and desires. He has a hidden contempt for the God of Israel and for God’s commands, while he admires the gods of the nations. So he works by every means he can to corrupt others and lead them into idolatry, the worship of false gods. His fruit is like hemlock, as Hosea 10:4 says, and wormwood. That is deeply offensive to God, and it will end in bitterness for everyone deceived by him.

The apostle warns about the same kind of danger in Hebrews 12:15. Such people are like weeds in a field. If they are left alone, they spread through the whole field. A little leaven, or yeast, can work through the whole lump of dough. So a little false teaching can infect an entire community.

Third, he feels safe in the sun, meaning he promises himself peace while still living in sin. In Deuteronomy 29:19, he hears the words of the curse, so he cannot claim ignorance. Yet he still blesses himself in his own heart. He thinks he will be safe from the anger of the God of Israel because he trusts in his idols. In effect, he says, “I will have peace,” even though he follows his own imagination instead of God’s command. The phrase “to add drunkenness to thirst” means to keep adding one sin to another.

Idolaters were often like drunkards. They were strongly attached to their idols, and they tried hard to draw others in as well. Their worship usually came with wild behavior and feasting (1 Peter 4:3), so this also warns drunkards, especially the drunkards of Ephraim. They keep going back to their sin, even after they have felt its harm (Proverbs 23:35). Those who made themselves drunk in honor of idols were among the worst drunkards. Many people are under God’s curse and still bless themselves, but they only deceive themselves. People are close to ruin, and unlikely to repent, when they have convinced themselves they will have peace while continuing in sin. Drunkenness hardens the heart and dulls the conscience as much as any other sin. It also tempts people strangely, even after they have already suffered from it, and they often try to pull others into it too (Habakkuk 2:15). Idolatry is just as trapping.

Fourth, God’s judgment against such a person is just and severe, because of both the sin and the arrogant insult of saying he will have peace while going on in rebellion. That is like calling eternal truth a lie (Genesis 3:4). There are few warnings in all of Scripture more dreadful than this. Those who sin presumptuously should read it and tremble. This is not a scare tactic for children or fools. It is a real declaration of God’s wrath against human wickedness and evil behavior (Deuteronomy 29:20, 21).

The Lord will not spare him. The days of delay he has abused will run out, and mercy will not be remembered in the middle of judgment. The Lord’s anger and jealousy, his fiercest anger, will smoke against him like a furnace. The curses written in the law will rest on him, not just frighten him for a moment, but stay on him and drag him down to the lowest hell (John 3:36). His name will be blotted out, meaning he himself will be cut off, and his memory will decay and disappear with him. He will be set apart for evil, which is the clearest meaning of a curse. He will be cut off from all happiness and from all hope of it, marked out for misery with no remedy. All of this comes according to the curses of the covenant, the most fearful curses of all, because they are the rightful judgment for abused grace.

Idolatry would also ruin the nation. It would bring plagues on the land that allowed this root of bitterness to grow and spread. As far as the sin spread, the judgment would spread too. The ruin is described as beginning with plagues and sicknesses (Deuteronomy 29:22), as lesser judgments meant to call them back. If that failed, it would end in total overthrow, like Sodom (Deuteronomy 29:23). The land of Canaan had once been like the garden of the Lord in fruitfulness, but it would become desolate and barren, as it has been ever since its last destruction by the Romans. The lake of Sodom lay near the land of Israel, so they had a constant warning against Sodom’s wickedness. But since they would not take the warning, they would become like Sodom both in ruin and in sin.

The reason for this destruction would be asked about by later generations (Deuteronomy 29:22). They would see that their nation had become the opposite of what it once was, and they would be amazed when they compared the history with the promise. The stranger and the surrounding nations, as well as individuals, would ask, “Why has the Lord done this to this land?” (Deuteronomy 29:24). Great ruins often leave onlookers astonished (1 Kings 9:8, 9; Jeremiah 22:8, 9). It is time for neighbors to tremble when judgment begins at God’s own house (1 Peter 4:17). The question is pointed: Why has this happened to this land, this good land, the glory of all lands, the land flowing with milk and honey? It is a pity that such a good land should be made desolate. But it is more than that, 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 worshiped, and yet it was laid waste. It is no new thing for God to bring desolating judgment on a people who are close to him in outward profession (Amos 3:2). He never does this without a good reason. It is right for us to ask for that reason, so we may give glory to God and learn warning for ourselves.

That reason is then plainly given. Everyone would say it was because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers (Deuteronomy 29:25). God never leaves people until they first leave him. Those who turn away from the God of their fathers are justly cast out of their fathers’ inheritance. They went and served other gods (Deuteronomy 29:26), gods they did not know and to whom they owed nothing in gratitude or duty. God did not give the creatures to be served by us, but to serve us. Even the good they had from them came only because God enabled it. So we owe ourselves to the Creator, not to the creatures. For this reason God was angry with them (Deuteronomy 29:27), and in anger he rooted them out (Deuteronomy 29:28). So, however dreadful the desolation was, the Lord was righteous in it, as Daniel 9:11-14 acknowledges.

The law of Moses leaves sinners under the curse and drives them out of the Lord’s land. But the grace of Christ toward penitent, believing sinners plants them again in their land, and they will never be pulled up again, because they are kept by the power of God (Amos 9:15).

Moses closes his prophecy about the Jews’ rejection much as Paul later closes his teaching on the same subject, when it began to be fulfilled: “How unsearchable are God’s judgments, and his ways past finding out!” (Romans 11:33). So here he says, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God” (Deuteronomy 29:29). Some take this as one sentence: the secret things of the Lord our God are revealed to us and to our children, as far as we need to know them, and he has not dealt so with other nations. But it is better to take it as two sentences.

First, we are warned not to pry into God’s hidden plans or try to settle them for ourselves. God has already given a full answer to the question, “Why has the Lord done this to this land?” That answer is enough to clear God and warn us. But if someone asks further why God chose to spend so many miracles forming such a people, though he clearly foresaw their rebellion and ruin, or why he did not prevent it by his almighty grace, or what he still intends to do with them, those are questions that cannot be answered, and so should not be asked. It is presumption to search into the mysteries of God’s rule, or to inquire into matters of policy that are not for us to know (Acts 1:7; John 21:22; Colossians 2:18).

Second, we are told to keep studying what God has made known. “Things revealed belong to us and to our children.” Though God has kept much of his counsel hidden, he has revealed enough to satisfy us and save us. He has withheld nothing that is truly good for us to know, only what it would not be good for us to know.

We should learn these revealed truths ourselves, and we should teach them to our children too. We are not only allowed to search into them, we are responsible to do so. They concern us deeply. They are the rules we must live by, and the promises we must trust. So we must learn them carefully ourselves and pass them on carefully to our children.

All our knowledge should lead to practice. That is the purpose of God’s revelation, not to fill us with clever ideas or interesting talk for ourselves and our friends, but so that we may do all the words of this law and be blessed in what we do.