Deuteronomy (; ) is the fifth and final book of the Torah (in Judaism), where it is called (). It is the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament.
Chapters 1–30 of the book consist of three sermons or speeches delivered to the Israelites by Moses on the Plains of Moab, shortly before they enter the Promised Land. The first sermon recounts the forty years of wilderness wanderings which had led to that moment and ends with an exhortation to observe the law. The second sermon reminds the Israelites of the need to follow Yahweh and the laws (or teachings) he has given them, on which their possession of the land depends. The third sermon offers the comfort that, even should the nation of Israel prove unfaithful and so lose the land, with repentance all can be restored.Philips, pp.1–2 The final four chapters (31–34) contain the Song of Moses, the Blessing of Moses, and the narratives recounting the passing of the mantle of leadership from Moses to Joshua and, finally, the death of Moses on Mount Nebo.
One of its most significant verses is Deuteronomy 6:4, the Shema Yisrael, which has been described as the definitive statement of Jewish identity for theistic Jews: "Hear, O Israel: The Lᴏʀᴅ is our God, the Lᴏʀᴅ alone." This was also quoted by Jesus in Mark 12:28–34 as the Great Commandment.
Traditionally, it was believed that God dictated the Torah to Moses, but most modern scholars date Deuteronomy to the 7th–5th centuries BCE. By some it is considered to be the oldest book-sized segment of the Torah.; Cross dates the first draft of Deuteronomy to the same timeframe as Noth, Weinfeld etc. but stipulates that it is partly overwritten in a later copy.
Structure Patrick D. Miller in his commentary on Deuteronomy suggests that different views of the structure of the book will lead to different views on what it is about.Miller, p.10 The structure is often described as a series of three speeches or sermons (chapters 1:1–4:43, 4:44–29:1, 29:2–30:20) followed by a number of short appendicesChristensen, p.211 or some kind of epilogue (31:1–34:12), consisting of the commission of Joshua, the song of Moses and the death of Moses.
Other scholars have compared the structure of Deuteronomy with Hittite treaties or other ancient Near Eastern treaty texts. But it is clear that Deuteronomy is not in itself simply the text of a treaty, as Deuteronomy is more than simply applying the secular model of treaty to Israel's relationship with God.
The Ten Commandments (Decalogue) in chapter 5 serve as a blueprint for the rest of the book, as chapters 12–26 are the exposition of the Decalogue, thus the expanded Decalogue. CommandmentsChapters1–312–13414:28–16:17516:18–18:22619:1–21:9722:13–308–1023–26
Summary
(The following "literary" outline of Deuteronomy is from John Van Seters; it can be contrasted with Alexander Rofé's "covenantal" analysis in his Deuteronomy: Issues and Interpretation.Rofé, pp.1–4)
Chapters 1–3: The journey through the wilderness from Horeb (Sinai) to Kadesh and then to Moab is recalled. Chapters 4–11: After a second introduction at 4:44–49 the events at Mount Horeb are recalled, with the giving of the Ten Commandments. Heads of families are urged to instruct those under their care in the law, warnings are made against serving gods other than Yahweh, the land promised to Israel is praised, and the people are urged to obedience. Chapters 12–26, the Deuteronomic Code: Laws governing Israel's worship (chapters 12–16a), the appointment and regulation of community and religious leaders (16b–18), social regulation (19–25), and confession of identity and loyalty (26). Chapters 27–28: Blessings and curses for those who keep and break the law. Chapters 29–30: Concluding discourse on the covenant in the land of Moab, including all the laws in the Deuteronomic Code (chapters 12–26) after those given at Horeb; Israel is again exhorted to obedience. Chapters 31–34: Joshua is installed as Moses's successor, Moses delivers the law to the Levites (a priestly caste) and ascends Mount Nebo or Pisgah, where he dies and is buried by God. The narrative of these events is interrupted by two poems, the Song of Moses and the Blessing of Moses. The final verses, Deuteronomy 34:10–12, "Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses," make a claim for the authoritative Deuteronomistic view of theology and its insistence that the worship of Yahweh as the sole deity of Israel was the only permissible religion, having been sealed by the greatest of prophets.Tigay, pp.137ff.
Deuteronomic Code
Deuteronomy 12–26, the Deuteronomic Code, is the oldest part of the book and the core around which the rest developed. It is a series of mitzvot (commands) to the Israelites regarding how they should conduct themselves in the Promised Land.
Composition
Composition history Mosaic authorship of the Torah, the belief that the five books of the Torah – including the Book of Deuteronomy – were dictated by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, is an ancient Jewish tradition that was codified by Maimonides (1135–1204 CE) as the 8th of the 13 Jewish principles of faith. Virtually all modern secular scholars, and most Christian and Jewish scholars, reject the Mosaic authorship of the Book of Deuteronomy and date the book much later, between the 7th and 5th centuries BCE. Its authors were probably the Levite caste, collectively referred to as the Deuteronomist, whose economic needs and social status the book reflects. The historical background to the book's composition is currently viewed in the following general terms:
In the late 8th century BCE both Judah and Israel were vassals of Assyria. Israel rebelled and was destroyed circa 722 BCE. Refugees fleeing from Israel to Judah brought with them a number of traditions that were new to Judah. One of these was that the god Yahweh, already known and worshiped in Judah, was not merely the most important of the gods, but the only god who should be served. This outlook influenced the Judahite landowning ruling class, which became extremely powerful in court circles after placing the eight-year-old Josiah on the throne following the murder of his father, Amon of Judah. By the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, Assyrian power was in rapid decline, and a pro-independence movement was gathering strength in the Kingdom of Judah. One manifestation of this movement was a state theology of loyalty to Yahweh as the sole god of the Kingdom of Judah. According to 2 Kings 22:1–23:30, at this time Hilkiah (the High Priest and father of the prophet Jeremiah) discovered the "book of the law" – which many scholars believe to be the Deuteronomic Code (the set of laws at chapters 12–26 which form the original core of the Book of Deuteronomy) – in the temple. Josiah subsequently launched a full-scale reform of worship based on this "book of the law", which takes the form of a covenant between Judah and Yahweh to replace the decades-old vassal treaty between King Esarhaddon of Assyria and King Manasseh of Judah. The next stage took place during the Babylonian captivity. The destruction of the Kingdom of Judah by Babylon in 586 BCE and the end of kingship was the occasion of much reflection and theological speculation among the Deuteronomistic elite, now in exile in the city of Babylon. The disaster was supposedly Yahweh's punishment of their failure to follow the law, and so they created a history of Israel (the books of Joshua through Kings) to illustrate this. At the end of the Exile, when the Persians agreed that the Jews could return and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, chapters 1–4 and 29–30 were added and Deuteronomy was made the introductory book to this history, so that a story about a people about to enter the Promised Land became a story about a people about to return to the land. The legal sections of chapters 19–25 were expanded to meet new situations that had arisen, and chapters 31–34 were added as a new conclusion.
Chapters 12–26, containing the Deuteronomic Code, are the earliest section. Since the idea was first put forward by W. M. L. de Wette in 1805, most scholars have accepted that this portion of the book was composed in Jerusalem in the 7th century BCE in the context of religious reforms advanced by King Hezekiah (reigned c. 716–687 BCE), although some have argued for other dates,Before and after de Wette works by Spinoza, Wellehausen, Martin Noth, Gerard von Rad, Moshe Weinfeld and others represent major phases in the understanding of this book. These discussions and reconsiderations of Deuteronomy have had a tendency to stand out as a paradigm-shifting contributions to source criticism from its beginnings as a discipline. The argument about Deuteronomy begins effectively at the same moment that arena opens for secular or non-ecclesiastically determined explorations of Biblical history opens up, with Spinoza’s seminal work in the subject terrain, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. The double-entry of the law of Moses in the Torah, and the non-identity of the two versions of the law is a starting point for Spinoza’s investigations into how the Bible might have been put together, when and by whom in the Treatise. such as during the reign of his successor Manasseh (687–643 BCE) or even much later, such as during the exilic or postexilic periods (597–332 BCE).
There is a suggestion in Moshe Weinfeld's translation and commentary on Deuteronomy, based on substantive affinities between the blessings and curses that appear in the book and the vassal treaties of Esarhaddon (pledging allegiance to the God of Israel and the Law in one version and to Esarhaddon in the documents exhumed from the archaeological record), that an important phase in the compilation of Deuteronomic law occurs at the same time as (and may be partly identical to) the Josianic reform. Weinfeld stringently rejects and dismantles the notion that the main body of the work might be post-exilic, without dismissing the obvious and unremarkable truth that textual changes accruing over generations of copying that extend for centuries are likely to have occurred and may be evident in the text. The dates that Esarhaddon reigned as an Assyrian 'King of the Universe' tend to prohibit any notion that the book was nearing a form that approaches its final draft during the reign of Hezekiah. However, the presence of Jeremiah on the scene, and of a general presence of northern refugees in the territory of Judah during Josiah's reign and thus throughout his reform, go some distance toward reconciling this reading with the notion that Deuteronomy is passed down to Judah as a Mosaic tradition of the north, insofar as Jeremiah has been interpreted as a liaison between the refugees of Israel and the native citizens of Judah sympathetic to both sides who enjoyed a reputation of authority in both communities.
Apart from the main body of the law of Moses in Deuteronomy, the second prologue (Ch. 5–11), and the first prologue (Ch. 1–4) appear as distinct units of the text; the chapters following 26 are similarly layered.
Israel–Judah division The prophet Isaiah, active in Jerusalem about a century before Josiah, makes no mention of the Exodus, covenants with God, or disobedience to God's laws. In contrast, Isaiah's contemporary Hosea, active in the northern kingdom of Israel, makes frequent references to the Exodus, the wilderness wanderings, a covenant, the danger of foreign gods and the need to worship Yahweh alone. This discrepancy has led scholars to conclude that these traditions behind Deuteronomy have a northern origin. Whether the Deuteronomic Code was written in Josiah's time (late 7th century BCE) or earlier is subject to debate, but many of the individual laws are older than the collection itself.Knight, p.66 The two poems at chapters 32–33 – the Song of Moses and the Blessing of Moses were probably originally independent.
Position in the Hebrew Bible