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This Pentecost text has commonly been considered the conclusion to the farewell speech of Moses to the people of Israel (Deuteronomy 29:1-30:20). This text is a part of the announcement of a new covenant of God with the people of Israel (Deuteronomy 29-32; see 29:1, 10-15), sometimes called the Moab covenant. This word from Moses … Continue reading “Deuteronomy 30:15-20 Commentary by Terence E. Fretheim”

The single-minded focus on the law in the book of Deuteronomy can too easily be summed up into catch phrases. Reducing the book to single statements can distract from the different perspectives on the law in the book. This passage contains two such perspectives. Including them in the same pericope for a lectionary reading on … Continue reading “Deuteronomy 30:9-14 Commentary by Steed Davidson”

Many Christians today seem to assume that keeping God’s law is impossible. Isn’t the law meant to be too hard for us to keep, in order to show us that we can only be saved through God’s work and not by our own efforts to keep the law? This text from Deuteronomy challenges the assumption … Continue reading “Deuteronomy 30:9-14 Commentary by Sara Koenig”

A friend of my sister’s, a member of my church youth group, chafed at the rules and expectations for behavior that our church taught its youth. And he found an “out” through his own simplistic understanding of grace: “I love to sin, and God loves to forgive sin, so we make a good pair,” this … Continue reading “Deuteronomy 30:9-14 Commentary by Kathryn M. Schifferdecker”

The text for this week comes at the end of a well-fashioned legal corpus in Deuteronomy (chapters 12-26). The opening lines of this collection (12:1-7) are an injunction for the community to demolish all the high places where other nations have worshiped their gods, and instead, they are enjoined to “seek the place that the … Continue reading “Deuteronomy 26:1-11 Commentary by W. Dennis Tucker, Jr.”

The offering of first fruits in thankful celebration of God’s good gift of the land to Israel is the surprising topic of this First Reading for the First Sunday in Lent. After forty years in the wilderness, Moses instructs the Israelites about God’s covenantal way of life and blessing in the Promised Land. As he … Continue reading “Deuteronomy 26:1-11 Commentary by Esther M. Menn”

The book of Deuteronomy records the orations Moses declared to the Israelites on the last day of his life. His speeches tend to dwell upon: 1) the covenant that God had established with the Israelites in the wilderness; 2) the laws of that covenant, and 3) the emphatic necessity of obedience to those laws as … Continue reading “Deuteronomy 26:1-11 Commentary by William Yarchin”

Where are the prophets today? Who speaks for God? How do we know if one speaks for God or if God is being used to promote a social or political agenda? This question is as old as the ages, and this text from Deuteronomy goes hand-in-hand with the Gospel lesson from Mark. These questions are … Continue reading “Deuteronomy 18:15-20 Commentary by Beth L. Tanner”

Prophets are a rather complicated gift. According to Deuteronomy 18:15-20, they were a gift from God to the people who needed to hear what God had to say but were reduced to a state of abject terror at the sound of the divine voice. To enable communication to continue, God will send a prophet “like … Continue reading “Deuteronomy 18:15-20 Commentary by Callie Plunket-Brewton”

“How can you tell a true prophet from a false prophet?” Spending my sabbatical year teaching at the Mekane Yesus Seminary in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, I encountered questions that I’ve never encountered in an American seminary classroom. Prophets? In my experience, prophets are people like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel — strange, charismatic figures whose words … Continue reading “Deuteronomy 18:15-20 Commentary by Kathryn M. Schifferdecker”