Deuteronomy 9:7 - Meaning and Application

Moses gives them no room to think that God brought them into Canaan because they were righteous. He reminds them that it was a miracle of mercy that they had not already been destroyed in the wilderness: “Remember, and do not forget, how you provoked the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 9:7). Far from earning God’s favor, they had often placed themselves under his anger.

Moses lays their fathers’ guilt at their feet too. If God had dealt with their fathers as they deserved, this generation would never have existed, much less entered Canaan. We are quick to forget our sins, especially after the pain of discipline has passed, so we need to be reminded of them often. That keeps us from imagining that we stand before God because of our own goodness. Paul uses the guilt of all people to show that no one can be made right with God, that is, justified, by their own works (Romans 3:19, Romans 3:20). If our works condemn us, they cannot save us.

They had been a provoking people ever since they left Egypt (Deuteronomy 9:7). For forty years, God and Moses were grieved by them. Moses leaves them with a very sad word at parting, “You have been rebellious since the day I knew you” (Deuteronomy 9:24). Almost as soon as they became a nation, they formed a party against God and his rule. The books of Moses record only a few events from the first and last years of those forty years, but this summary shows that the rest were much the same, one long pattern of provoking God.

Even at Horeb, the mountain where God gave the law, they made a calf and worshiped it (Deuteronomy 9:8). This sin was especially terrible because it happened right where God had forbidden image worship, while the mountain still burned before their eyes, and while Moses was up on the mountain bringing them the written law. They turned away quickly (Deuteronomy 9:16). Their speed in sin made their guilt even worse.

God was very angry with them for this sin. They must not think that God overlooked what they did wrong and gave them Canaan because there was something good in them. No, God had decided to destroy them (Deuteronomy 9:8), and he could easily have done it. He even told Moses to leave him alone so he could carry out the judgment (Deuteronomy 9:13, Deuteronomy 9:14). This showed how serious their sin was, because God is never angry without reason, even though people often are. Moses himself, though God’s friend and chosen servant, was shaken when he saw this anger from heaven against their sin (Deuteronomy 9:19). “I was afraid of the anger of the Lord” (Psalm 119:120).

By their sin, they broke covenant with God and lost the privileges of that covenant. Moses showed this by breaking the tablets of the law (Deuteronomy 9:17). It was as if they had been served a bill of divorce, and from then on they could justly have been cast off forever. This left them with no right to claim any righteousness of their own. In effect, God had rejected them when he said to Moses, “They are your people, they are not mine” (Deuteronomy 9:12).

Aaron, Moses’ brother and Israel’s priest, also came under God’s anger, even though he was a holy man and had only been drawn into the sin by fear or surprise: “The Lord was very angry with Aaron” (Deuteronomy 9:20). No one’s rank or reputation can protect him from God’s wrath if he joins in evil. Aaron should have been making atonement, offering sacrifice for the people, but he himself fell under judgment. That shows how little they considered what they were doing when they dragged him into it.

It took Moses a long time of fasting and prayer to turn away God’s anger and keep the people from total ruin. He fasted and prayed for forty days and forty nights before he obtained their pardon (Deuteronomy 9:18). Some think this happened twice, for another forty days (Deuteronomy 9:25), since Moses says, “as I fell down before the Lord.” Others think it was only one forty-day period, mentioned twice, as in Deuteronomy 10:10. Either way, it shows how great God’s displeasure was and how close they came to destruction. Here we also see something of God’s anger against all mankind: nothing less than his Son, and nothing less than his own blood, would turn it away.

Moses tells them the substance of his prayer for them. He had to confess their stubbornness, wickedness, and sin (Deuteronomy 9:27). Their case was very bad when even their defender could not speak a good word about them. He could only point to the great things God had done for them, which only made their sin worse (Deuteronomy 9:26). He could mention that they came from good ancestors (Deuteronomy 9:27), though that too could be turned against them, since it made their rebellion worse, not better. He also argued that the Egyptians would mock God if he destroyed Israel, as though he were unable to finish what he had begun (Deuteronomy 9:28). Even that plea could have been answered, for it matters little what the Egyptians say when the heavens declare God’s righteousness. So their rescue from ruin was due entirely to God’s mercy and Moses’ urgent prayer, not to any merit of their own.

To make them feel their danger more deeply, Moses describes in detail the destruction of the calf they had made (Deuteronomy 9:21). He calls it their sin, perhaps because it was the object of their sin, and also because destroying it stood as a witness against their sin and showed what the sinners themselves deserved. Those who made the idol were like it, and they would not have been wronged if they had been ground to dust, crushed, scattered, and left with nothing. It was pure mercy that accepted the destruction of the idol instead of destroying the idolaters.

Even after that narrow escape, they went on provoking the Lord again and again. Moses only needed to name the places, because their names already carried the memory of the sin or the punishment (Deuteronomy 9:22). At Taberah, “burning,” God sent fire among them because they complained. At Massah, “testing,” they challenged God’s power to help them. At Kibroth-hattaavah, “the graves of craving,” the food they longed for became their poison. After those sins came their unbelief and distrust at Kadesh-barnea, which Moses had already described.

If they had been treated according to their own merits, those sins would have fully ruined them. Moses mentions them again later in this chapter (Deuteronomy 9:23), and he wants the people to see the same truth here. Whatever kindness God would later show them, by defeating their enemies and giving them the land of Canaan, it would not be because they were righteous.

It is good for us to remember our past sins often, with sorrow and shame. We should look again at what conscience records against us, so that we see how much we owe to free grace, God’s undeserved favor. Then we will honestly admit that we never earned anything from God except his wrath and the curse.