Deuteronomy: The Book I Answered the Devil With

At a Glance

Who wrote it: It is presented as Moses’ farewell speeches. Most scholars connect its core with the scroll found in the Temple under King Josiah around 622 BC, which was expanded later.

When: Its core dates from the 600s BC. It reached its final form during or after the exile.

Where it fits: Forty years after Egypt, on the plains of Moab across the Jordan from Jericho. Moses speaks to the people before they cross into the land, and then he dies. In the next book, Joshua leads them over.

Where I quote it: The great commandment (Mark 12:29–30). All three answers to the devil (Matthew 4:4, 7, 10). The certificate of divorce (Matthew 5:31; 19:8). Two or three witnesses (Matthew 18:16). “You always have the poor with you” (Mark 14:7, echoing Deuteronomy 15:11).

If you only read three chapters: Deuteronomy 6, Deuteronomy 15 and Deuteronomy 24.

Words to Know

Deuteronomy — Greek for “second law.” It retells the Law to a new generation.

Shema — “Hear,” the first word of Deuteronomy 6:4. It is the prayer my people said every morning and evening.

Year of release — every seventh year, when debts between Israelites were to be cancelled.

Prosbul — a legal device from shortly before my time that let lenders get around the year of release.

The ban — the command to destroy a conquered town completely. The Hebrew word is herem.

The Book in Brief

Deuteronomy is almost all speeches. Moses gives them on the plains of Moab, in the fortieth year after Egypt, to the new generation that is about to cross the Jordan without him.

In the first speech, chapters 1 to 4, Moses looks back over the journey from Mount Sinai, which this book calls Horeb: the scouts and the people’s refusal to enter the land, the long years in the desert, and the victories east of the Jordan. He warns them never to make an image of God.

The second speech is the heart of the book. Chapters 5 to 11 repeat the Ten Commandments and give the Shema. They urge the people to love God, to remember the desert when they grow rich, and not to think they earned the land. Moses retells the golden calf to remind them how close they came to being destroyed.

Chapters 12 to 26 are the law code. Sacrifice is allowed only at the one place God will choose. Then come laws on false prophets, food, tithes, the cancelling of debts every seventh year, the freeing of slaves, the three pilgrim festivals, judges, kings, priests and prophets, cities of refuge, war, family life, and fair treatment of workers, widows, orphans and foreigners.

Chapters 27 and 28 set out a ceremony of blessings and curses to be held once the people are in the land, then long lists of blessings for obeying and curses for disobeying. In chapters 29 and 30 Moses makes a covenant with them in Moab, promises that God will bring them back even if they are scattered, and calls on them to choose life.

In the last chapters Moses appoints Joshua to lead, writes down the law and gives it to the priests, and recites a long song and blesses the tribes one by one. Then he climbs Mount Nebo, sees the whole land from far off, and dies. He is buried in Moab, and no one knows where his grave is.

After my baptism, I went into the desert and fasted for forty days. The gospels say the devil came to me there, three times.¹

The first time, he told me to turn stones into bread. I answered, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of God’s mouth (Matthew 4:4; Deuteronomy 8:3).

The second time, he told me to throw myself off the Temple and let the angels catch me. I answered, You shall not test the Lord, your God (Matthew 4:7; Deuteronomy 6:16).

The third time, he offered me every kingdom of the world if I would bow to him. I answered, You shall worship the Lord your God, and you shall serve him only (Matthew 4:10; Deuteronomy 6:13).

All three answers came from Deuteronomy. And the first one comes from a passage about the forty years in the desert, when God let the people go hungry and fed them with manna, that he might humble you, to test you (Deuteronomy 8:2–3). I was in the desert for forty days. I answered from the book about the forty years.

Of all the books of the Law, this is the one I quoted most.

Hear, Israel

Every morning and every evening of my life, I said the same words my people still say:

Hear, Israel: the LORD is our God. The LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might (Deuteronomy 6:4–5).²

When a scribe asked me which commandment was first, that was my answer (Mark 12:29–30). Then I added the second, from Leviticus: love your neighbor as yourself. I would not give him one without the other.

Go deeperThe Shema on papyrus, in leather and on doorposts

Deuteronomy tells my people to keep these words close: You shall bind them for a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates (Deuteronomy 6:8–9). By my time many did it literally.

Men wore small leather boxes on the arm and the forehead, called tefillin, or in Greek phylacteries, with tiny strips of parchment folded inside. Several have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, with their minute writing still on them: passages from Exodus and Deuteronomy, among them the Shema, and in some the Ten Commandments. The same caves held the small scrolls fixed to doorposts, called mezuzot.³ What I criticized was wearing them for show: They make their phylacteries broad (Matthew 23:5).

Deuteronomy itself was one of the most copied books at Qumran, the settlement by the Dead Sea, in whose caves most of the scrolls were found. About thirty copies have turned up there, more than of any other book except the Psalms.⁴

Before those scrolls came to light in 1947, the oldest known piece of the Hebrew Bible was a single sheet of papyrus bought in Egypt by an English collector, W. L. Nash, and published in 1903. It holds the Ten Commandments followed by the opening of the Shema, probably copied for prayer or teaching rather than as part of a scroll of the Law. It dates from about 150 to 100 BC, and it is kept at Cambridge University Library.⁵

The scroll found in the Temple

Deuteronomy presents itself as Moses’ last speeches, given on the plains of Moab before the people cross the Jordan. The name Deuteronomy comes from the Greek translation of a phrase in chapter 17, a copy of this law, which the translators read as second law.⁶

The book of Kings tells a story about a scroll. Around 622 BC, while workmen were repairing the Temple in Jerusalem, the high priest Hilkiah found the book of the law (2 Kings 22:8). When it was read to King Josiah, he tore his clothes in grief. Then he tore down every shrine outside Jerusalem and made the Temple the only place to offer sacrifice (2 Kings 22–23).

That is exactly what Deuteronomy demands: one place of worship, the place which the LORD your God shall choose (Deuteronomy 12:5). Since the early 1800s, most scholars have concluded that the scroll Josiah heard was an early form of Deuteronomy.⁷

And the last chapter tells of Moses’ own death and burial, adding that no man knows where his tomb is to this day (Deuteronomy 34:6). Even the old rabbis noticed that Moses could not have written that. One tradition says Joshua wrote the last eight verses.⁸

Go deeperDeuteronomy and the loyalty oaths of Assyria

In the 600s BC, Judah was a vassal of the Assyrian empire, and its kings swore loyalty to the king of Assyria. One oath of this kind has survived, though not from Judah itself.

In 672 BC the Assyrian king Esarhaddon made the peoples of his empire swear to accept his son Ashurbanipal as the next king. In 1955 British archaeologists at Nimrud, in what is now Iraq, found many smashed clay copies of this oath in a temple. In 2009 another copy turned up in the inner room of a temple at Tell Tayinat, in Turkey.⁹

The oath demands that the vassals love Ashurbanipal as they love their own lives. It orders them to report anyone who speaks against him, even a brother, a son or a prophet. And it ends with long lists of curses for anyone who breaks it.¹⁰ Readers of Deuteronomy know all three. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart (Deuteronomy 6:5). Chapter 13 orders the people to expose a prophet, a brother or a son who tempts them to serve other gods. And chapter 28 is a long list of curses, including one that closely matches an Assyrian curse: Your sky that is over your head will be bronze, and the earth that is under you will be iron (Deuteronomy 28:23).¹⁰

Many scholars think Deuteronomy’s writers took the form of the Assyrian loyalty oath and turned it around. Judah would give its whole loyalty not to the king of Assyria, but to the LORD.¹¹ Others think the pattern goes back to older treaties, such as those of the Hittites, which would allow an earlier date for parts of the book. The debate goes on.

Why the Sabbath

Deuteronomy gives the Ten Commandments a second time, with several small differences. The biggest is in one commandment.

In Exodus, you rest on the seventh day because God rested after creation (Exodus 20:11). In Deuteronomy, you rest so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt (Deuteronomy 5:14–15).

Same commandment. A different reason. One looks back to creation. The other looks back to slavery, and makes sure the servant gets the day off too.

Open your hand

Deuteronomy 15 is the chapter I want every Christian to read.

At the end of every seven years, you shall cancel debts (Deuteronomy 15:1). Every debt between Israelites, cancelled.

Then comes a promise: However there will be no poor with you (Deuteronomy 15:4), if the people keep this law.

Then a warning, because Moses knew people. Do not refuse to lend to a poor man because the seventh year is close and you know you will not get your money back (Deuteronomy 15:9).

Then this:

For the poor will never cease out of the land. Therefore I command you to surely open your hand to your brother, to your needy, and to your poor, in your land (Deuteronomy 15:11).

When a woman poured expensive ointment on my head and my friends complained that the money could have gone to the poor, I said, You always have the poor with you, and whenever you want to, you can do them good (Mark 14:7).

People quote my line to say that poverty cannot be helped, so there is no point trying. I was echoing this verse. In Deuteronomy, the reason the poor are always with you is the reason you must open your hand.

The loophole

The warning in verse 9 came true.

By my time, people had stopped lending as the seventh year came near, just as Moses feared. So a famous teacher, Hillel, approved a legal device called the prosbul. A lender could sign his debt over to a court before the seventh year, and then the release did not apply to it.¹²

It was done to keep credit flowing to the poor, and maybe it did. But it meant that in the country I grew up in, the law that cancelled debts every seven years had a way around it.

And I taught my friends to pray, Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors (Matthew 6:12).

Laws for workers and runaways

Deuteronomy keeps coming back to the people at the bottom.

You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy … In his day you shall give him his wages, neither shall the sun go down on it; for he is poor and sets his heart on it (Deuteronomy 24:14–15). In my story of the workers in the vineyard, the owner pays everyone at evening (Matthew 20:8).

When you reap your harvest in your field, and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go again to get it. It shall be for the foreigner, for the fatherless, and for the widow (Deuteronomy 24:19).

And this law, which was unusual in the ancient world: You shall not deliver to his master a servant who has escaped from his master to you. He shall dwell with you, among you, in the place which he shall choose within one of your gates, where it pleases him best (Deuteronomy 23:15–16). The laws of Hammurabi put a man to death for hiding a runaway slave.¹³ Deuteronomy says to let him live wherever he wants.

What a king is not allowed to do

Deuteronomy 17 says that if Israel ever has a king, he must not get many horses, must not get many wives, and must not pile up silver and gold. Instead, he must write out his own copy of the law and read it every day, that his heart not be lifted up above his brothers (Deuteronomy 17:16–20).

Now read about King Solomon. He collected horses from Egypt. He had seven hundred wives. He took in 666 talents of gold in a single year (1 Kings 10:14, 28; 11:3).

Deuteronomy is a law written by people who had seen what kings do.

Go deeperHow Deuteronomy shaped the history books

Read Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings after Deuteronomy, and you will notice that they speak its language. Moses’ warnings come true in them, one by one.

In 1943 the German scholar Martin Noth argued that these books, from Deuteronomy to the end of 2 Kings, are really one long history, written by someone steeped in Deuteronomy, to explain why Israel lost its land. Ruth is not part of it; in the Hebrew Bible it stands among the Writings. Scholars call this work the Deuteronomistic History.¹⁴

The history judges every king by Deuteronomy’s rules. Did he worship only at the one place God chose, or did he leave the country shrines, the high places, standing? Even good kings are marked down: But the high places were not taken away (1 Kings 15:14). Two kings earn full praise, Hezekiah and Josiah, the two who tore down the high places, and Josiah earns the most, the king who heard the scroll read. There was no king like him before him, who turned to the LORD with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses (2 Kings 23:25). Those are the words of the Shema.

Josiah was killed in battle in 609 BC, and Jerusalem fell in 586 BC. So many scholars, following the American scholar Frank Moore Cross, think the history was written in two stages: first in Josiah’s reign, full of hope, and then again in exile, to explain the disaster.¹⁵ Others doubt that it was ever one planned work. But almost all agree that Deuteronomy shaped the way the history books tell the story.

The rebellious son

Deuteronomy 21 says that if a son is stubborn and rebellious, a glutton and a drunkard, who will not obey his parents, they may bring him to the elders, and the town shall stone him (Deuteronomy 21:18–21).

The rabbis after me were so troubled by this law that they hedged it with conditions until it could never be used. One of them said there never was such a son and never would be.¹⁶

Now think about the story I told of a son who demands his inheritance, wastes it on wild living, and comes home with nothing. By this law, he was the son you bring to the elders. In my story, the father sees him far off, runs to him, and throws his arms around him (Luke 15:11–24). I will let you decide whether I had this law in mind.

Divorce and witnesses

Deuteronomy allows a man to divorce his wife if he finds some unseemly thing in her, by writing her a certificate (Deuteronomy 24:1). The great teachers of my time argued over what unseemly meant. One school said only unfaithfulness. The other said anything at all, even burning his dinner.¹⁷

I went back past Deuteronomy to Genesis. Moses allowed it, I said, for your hardness of heart (Mark 10:5; compare Matthew 19:8).

But I did use Deuteronomy’s rule that a charge must be confirmed by two or three witnesses (Deuteronomy 19:15). I gave it to my friends for settling quarrels among themselves (Matthew 18:16).

The commands I never quoted

I will not skip the hardest part of this book.

Deuteronomy commands that when Israel takes the land, the towns of the Canaanites must be destroyed completely. You shall save alive nothing that breathes (Deuteronomy 20:16; see 7:1–2).

I never quoted those verses. I said, Love your enemies (Matthew 5:44).

You should also know two things about them. First, the book was written down centuries after the time it describes, in a kingdom where those peoples no longer existed as separate nations. Many scholars read the commands as a fierce way of saying do not worship their gods, written for Josiah’s generation, not as a record of what happened. Second, the archaeology of the conquest, which I will come to in Joshua, does not match a sweeping destruction.¹⁸

That does not make the verses easy. It means you should know what kind of writing you are reading before you use it.

A prophet like Moses

Moses tells the people, The LORD your God will raise up to you a prophet from among you, of your brothers, like me. You shall listen to him (Deuteronomy 18:15).

My people were waiting for that prophet in my time. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, this promise, in the words of Deuteronomy 18:18–19, is copied out on a single sheet with Balaam’s star prophecy, as a list of the ones to come.¹⁹ John remembers people in the crowds saying that I was the prophet (John 6:14; 7:40), and Peter applies this verse to me after my death (Acts 3:22).

Do not forget

Deuteronomy is a sermon to people who are about to get rich.

When you have eaten and are full, and have built fine houses and lived in them; and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold is multiplied … then your heart might be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage (Deuteronomy 8:12–14).

Beware, Moses says, lest you say in your heart, “My power and the might of my hand has gotten me this wealth.” But you shall remember the LORD your God (Deuteronomy 8:17–18).

And at the end, Moses sets the choice in front of them: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19).

He also tells them this law is not too hard, and not far off. It is not in heaven, and not across the sea. But the word is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it (Deuteronomy 30:14).

Check It Yourself

Look up: Deuteronomy 15:7–11, then Mark 14:7.

You will find: that “you always have the poor with you” comes from a law commanding you to open your hand to them.

Then read Matthew 4:1–11 and find each of my answers in Deuteronomy 6 and 8.

The Short Version

• Deuteronomy is Moses’ farewell sermon. Its core is most likely the scroll found under King Josiah around 622 BC.
• I answered all three temptations from this book, and said its Shema every day.
• It cancels debts every seventh year and commands you to open your hand to the poor. My line about the poor always being with you echoes it.
• It protects workers’ wages, the gleaner and the runaway slave, and it limits what a king may take.
• It also commands the destruction of whole towns. I never quoted those verses.