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THE FIFTH BOOK OF MOSES CALLED DEUTERONOMY
- Moses goes up Mount Nebo to the top of
Pisgah, and God shews him the whole extent of
the land which he promised to give to the
descendants of Abraham, 1-4.
- There Moses died,
and was so privately buried by the Lord that his
sepulchre was never discovered, 5,6.
- His age and
strength of constitution, 7.
- The people weep for
him thirty days, 8.
- Joshua being filled with the
spirit of wisdom, the Israelites hearken to him,
as the Lord commanded them, 9.
- The character of
Moses as a prophet, and as a worker of the most
extraordinary miracles, both in the sight of the
Egyptians, and the people of Israel: conclusion
of the Pentateuch, 10-12.
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Verse 1 . And Moses went
up
This chapter could not have been
written by Moses. A man certainly cannot give an account
of his own death and burial. We may therefore consider
Moses's words as ending with the conclusion of the
preceding chapter, as what follows could not possibly
have been written by himself. To suppose that he
anticipated these circumstances, or that they were shown
to him by an especial revelation, is departing far from
propriety and necessity, and involving the subject in
absurdity; for God gives no prophetic intimations but
such as are absolutely necessary to be made; but there
is no necessity here, for the Spirit which inspired the
writer of the following book, would naturally
communicate the matter that concludes this. I believe,
therefore, that Deut. xxxiv., should constitute the
first chapter of the book of Joshua.
On this subject the following note from an
intelligent Jew cannot be unacceptable to the reader:-
"Most commentators are of opinion that Ezra
was the author of the last chapter of Deuteronomy; some
think it was Joshua, and others the seventy
elders, immediately after the death of Moses; adding,
that the book of Deuteronomy originally ended with the
prophetic blessing upon the twelve tribes: 'Happy art
thou, O Israel! who is like unto thee, O people saved by
the Lord,' and that what now makes the last chapter of
Deuteronomy was formerly the first of
Joshua, but was removed from thence and joined to
the former by way of supplement. This opinion will not
appear unnatural if it be considered that
sections and other divisions, as well as
points and pauses, were invented long
since these books were written; for in those early ages
several books were connected together, and followed each
other on the same roll. The beginning of one book might
therefore be easily transferred to the end of another,
and in process of time be considered as its real
conclusion, as in the case of Deuteronomy, especially as
this supplemental chapter contains an account of the
last transactions and death of the great author of the
Pentateuch."-Alexander's Heb. and Eng.
Pentateuch.
This seems to be a perfectly correct view of the
subject. This chapter forms a very proper commencement
to the book of Joshua, for of this last chapter of
Deuteronomy the first chapter of Joshua is an evident
continuation. If the subject be viewed in this
light it will remove every appearance of absurdity and
contradiction with which, on the common mode of
interpretation, it stands sadly encumbered.
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Verse 5 . So
Moses-died-according to the word of the
Lord.
al pi Yehovah, at the mouth
of Jehovah; i. e., by the especial command and
authority of the Lord; but it is possible that what is
here said refers only to the sentence of his exclusion
from the promised land, when he offended at the waters
of Meribah.
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Verse 6 . He buried
him
It is probable that the reason
why Moses was buried thus privately was, lest the
Israelites, prone to idolatry, should pay him Divine
honours; and God would not have the body of his faithful
servant abused in this way. Almost all the gods of
antiquity were defiled men, great
lawgivers, eminent statesmen, or
victorious generals. See the account of the life
of Moses at the end of this chapter. See Clarke on Deuteronomy
34:10.
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Verse 7 . His eye was not
dim
Even at the advanced age of a
hundred and twenty; nor his natural force
abated-he was a young man even in old age,
notwithstanding the unparalleled hardships he had gone
through. See the account of his life at the end of this
chapter.
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Verse 9 . Laid his hands upon
him
See on Numbers
27:18-23.
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Verse 10 . There arose not a
prophet,
Among all the succeeding
prophets none was found so eminent in all respects nor
so highly privileged as Moses; with him God spoke
face to face- admitted him to the closest
familiarity and greatest friendship with himself. Now
all this continued true till the advent of Jesus Christ,
of whom Moses said, "A Prophet shall the Lord your God
raise up unto you from among your brethren, like unto
me;" but how great was this person when compared with
Moses! Moses desired to see God's glory; this sight he
could not bear; he saw his back parts,
probably meaning God's design relative to the
latter days: but Jesus, the Almighty Saviour, in
whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, who
lay in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared
God to man. Wondrous system of legal ordinances that
pointed out and typified all these things! And more
wonderful system of Gospel salvation, which is the
body, soul, life, energy, and full
accomplishment of all that was written in the LAW,
in the PROPHETS, and in the PSALMS, concerning the
sufferings and death of Jesus, and the redemption of a
ruined world "by his agony and bloody sweat, by his
cross and passion, by his death and burial, by his
glorious resurrection and ascension, and by the coming
of the Holy Ghost!" Thus ends the PENTATEUCH, commonly
called the LAW of MOSES, a work every way worthy of God
its author, and only less than the NEW COVENANT, the
law and Gospel of our Lord and Saviour
JESUS CHRIST.
Now to the ever blessed and glorious TRINITY, FATHER,
WORD, and SPIRIT, the infinite and eternal ONE, from
whom alone wisdom, truth, and
goodness can proceed, be glory and dominion for
ever and ever. Amen.
MASORETIC Notes on DEUTERONOMY
The number of verses in ELLAH HADDEBARIM,
Deuteronomy, is 955; the symbol of which is in which
word tsade stands for 900, nun for 50, and
cheth for 5.
The middle verse is Deuteronomy
17:10. And thou shalt observe to do all
that they command thee.
Its Pareshioth or larger sections are 11, the
numerical symbol of which is chag; Psalms
118:27: Bind the SACRIFICE with cords to
the horns of the altar. In which word cheth
stands for 8, and gimel for 3.
Its Sedarim or smaller sections are 27, the
symbolical sign of which is yaggid; Proverbs
12:17: He that speaketh truth, SHOWETH FORTH
righteousness. In which word the two yods
stand for 20, daleth for 4, and gimel for
3.
Its Perakim or modern chapters are 34, the
symbol of which is lebab; Psalms
111:1. I will praise the Lord with my whole
HEART. In which word the two beths stand for 4,
and the lamed for 30.
The number of open sections is 34, of its
close sections 124, total 158; the symbol of
which is yanchilem, 148, and cab-od, 10,
1 Samuel
2:8: To make them to INHERIT the throne of
his GLORY. The numerical letters of the word
yanchilem, 148, with od, 10, taken from
cabod, make 158, the total of its open and
close sections.
The number of verses in the whole Pentateuch is 5845,
the memorial symbol of which is hachammah, Isaiah
30:26: Moreover the light of the moon shall be as
the light of THE SUN. In which word, the letters
taken in their proper order make the sum,. "5845"
The middle verse of the Law is Leviticus
8:8: And he put the breastplate upon him, and he
put in the breastplate the URIM and
the THUMMIM.
The number of OPEN sections in the whole Law
is 290, the symbol of which is peri; (Cant.) Song
of Solomon 4:16: Let my beloved come into his
garden, and eat his precious FRUITS. The number of
its CLOSE sections is 379, the symbol of which
occurs in the word bishbuah; Numbers
30:10: Or bound her soul with a bond BY AN
OATH.
Total number of all the open and close
sections, 669, the memorial symbol of which is lo
techsar; Deuteronomy
8:9: THOU SHALT NOT LACK any thing in it.
SECTIONS of the Book of Deuteronomy, carried on from
Numbers, which ends with the FORTY-THIRD.
The FORTY-FOURTH, called debarim, begins Deuteronomy
1:1, and ends Deuteronomy
3:22.
The FORTY-FIFTH, called vaethchannen, begins
Deuteronomy
3:23, and ends ; 7:11.
The FORTY-SIXTH, called ekeb, begins Deuteronomy
7:12, and ends Deuteronomy
11:25.
The FORTY-SEVENTH, called reeh, begins Deuteronomy
11:26, and ends Deuteronomy
16:17.
The FORTY-EIGHTH, called shophetim, begins Deuteronomy
16:18, and ends Deuteronomy
21:9.
The FORTY-NINTH, called tetse, begins Deuteronomy
21:10, and ends Deuteronomy
25:19.
The FIFTIETH, called tabo, begins Deuteronomy
26:1, and ends Deuteronomy
29:8.
The FIFTY-FIRST, called nitstsabim, begins Deuteronomy
29:9, and ends Deuteronomy
30:20.
The FIFTY-SECOND, called vaiyelech, begins Deuteronomy
31:1, and ends Deuteronomy
31:30.
The FIFTY-THIRD, called haazinu, begins Deuteronomy
32:1, and ends Deuteronomy
32:51.
The FIFTY-FOURTH, called vezoth habberachah,
begins Deuteronomy
33:1, and ends ; 34:12.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE FIVE BOOKS OF MOSES
WE have now passed through the Pentateuch, and have
endeavoured carefully to mark its important contents.
Its antiquity sets it at the head of all the
writings in the world; and the various subjects it
embraces make it of the utmost consequence to every
civilized part of the earth. Its philosophy,
jurisprudence, history, geography, and
chronology, entitle it to the respect of the
whole human race; while its system of theology
and religion demonstrably prove it to be a
revelation from GOD. But on these topics, as many
observations have already been made as the nature of a
commentary professing to study brevity can possibly
admit.
Of MOSES, the writer of the Pentateuch, considered as
a historian and philosopher, a great deal
has been said in the course of the notes on the book of
GENESIS; and especially at the conclusion of the
fiftieth chapter; to which the reader is
particularly referred. See Clarke on Genesis
50:26.
Of Moses as a legislator, volumes might be
written, and the subject not be exhausted. What is
called the Law of Moses, is more properly the
Law of God; and Torath Yehovah, the
Law of Jehovah, is the grand title of the
Pentateuch. Such a definition of this term as comports
with the nature, structure, and design of
the Pentateuch, has already been given in the note, See
Clarke on Exodus
12:40. to which the reader is requested to refer.
Could we conceive Moses to have been the author
of this system, we must consider him more than mortal:
no wisdom of man has ever yet been able to invent such a
code of laws.
This merit however has been disputed, and his laws
severely criticised by certain persons whose interest it
was to prove religion to be a cheat, because they had
none themselves; and whose case must be hopeless could
it be proved to be true. To some whose mental taste and
feeling are strangely perverted, every thing in
heathenism wears not only the most fascinating aspect,
but appears to lay claim to and possess every
excellence. These have called up Confucius, Menu,
Zoroaster, and Mohammed himself, to dispute the palm of
excellence with Moses! To examine the claims of such
competitors, and to decide on their respective merits
would require a large treatise, and my limits confine me
to a sketch. To any godly, impartial mind, properly
acquainted with the subject, little needs to be said; to
those who are prejudiced, all reasoning is thrown away.
A few words on the merit of each of these competitors
must suffice.
1. To Con fu tsee, the great Chinese lawgiver,
corruptly called Confucius, are attributed, in
the records of his country, a number of ordinances and
institutions which do honour to his times and to his
people; but alas! how much of the darkness,
erroneousness, and infirmity of the human mind do they
exhibit! And however profitable they may be, as
prudential maxims and social regulations to a certain
extent, how little are they calculated to elevate or
ennoble the human mind, or inspire men with a just
notion of vice and virtue! Their author had no correct
notion of the Divine nature; his laws had no sanction
but that of convenience or necessity, and,
notwithstanding their boasted excellence, have left,
from the time of their promulgation to the present day,
the sum total of that immense nation which profess to be
governed by them, in the thickest darkness of the most
degrading idolatry, closely verging upon atheism
itself! Not so the Mosaic code; it was the light
that lightened the universe, and the glory of the
people who were governed by its dictates. We have the
firmest ground and the most ample authority to
assert, that the greatest kings, the
wisest statesmen, the most accomplished
poets and rhetoricians, the most
magnanimous heroes, and the most holy and
useful people that ever existed, were formed on
the model, and brought up in the bosom and under the
influence, of the Mosaic institutions. While the
Proverbs and Ecclesiastes of SOLOMON, the
history and poetic compositions of DAVID,
the inimitable discourses of ISAIAH, JEREMIAH,
JOEL, HABAKKUK, and others of the Jewish prophets
remain, every intelligent reader will have the fullest
proofs of the truth of the above assertion, which
shrinks not under the pretence of being hazarded;
but which must spring up in every ingenuous mind, from
the fullest conviction of its own truth, after a serious
perusal of the sacred code in question. All those
eminent personages were brought up in the Mosaic school
and were prepared by the Pentateuch for the prophetic
influence.
2. The Institutes of MENU, lately clothed in
an English dress by the elegant hand of Sir William
Jones, have been thought to stand in fair competition
with the laws of Moses. I have read them carefully, with
strong prejudice in their favour; and have endeavoured,
to the best of my judgment, duly to appreciate their
worth. I have sought for resemblances to the
Mosaic institutions, because I thought it possible that
the same God who was so fully known in Jewry,
might have made at least a partial revelation of himself
in Hindostan; but while I alternately
admired and regretted, I was ultimately
disappointed, as I plainly saw that the system in its
essential parts lacked the seal of the living
God. My readers may justly question my competency
to form a correct opinion of the work under
consideration-I shall not therefore obtrude it, but
substitute that of the translator, who was better
qualified than perhaps any other man in Europe or Asia,
to form a correct judgment of its merits. "The work,"
says he, "now presented to the European world,
contains abundance of curious matter, extremely
interesting both to speculative lawyers and antiquaries;
with many beauties which need not be pointed out,
and with many blemishes which cannot be justified or
palliated. It is a system of despotism and
priestcraft, both indeed limited by law, but
artfully conspiring to give mutual support though
with mutual checks. It is filled with strange
conceits in metaphysics and natural
philosophy; with idle superstitions, and with
a scheme of theology most obscurely figurative,
and consequently liable to dangerous
misconception. It abounds with minute and
childish formalities, with
ceremonies generally absurd and often
ridiculous; the punishments are
partial and fanciful; for some crimes
dreadfully cruel, and for others reprehensibly
slight; and the very morals, though rigid
enough on the whole, are in one or two instances, as in
the case of light oaths and pious perjury,
unaccountably relaxed."-PREFACE to the Institutes
of Menu.
We may defy its enemies to prove any of these things
against the Pentateuch. Priestcraft and
despotism cannot appear under its sanction: GOD
is KING alone, and the priest his servant;
and he who was prevented, by the very law under which he
ministered, from having any earthly property,
could consequently have no secular power.
The king, who was afterwards chosen, was ever considered
as God's deputy or vice-gerent; he was
obliged to rule according to the laws that were given by
God through Moses, and was never permitted either to
change them, or add a single precept or
rite to the civil or sacred code of his country.
Thus despotism and priestcraft were
equally precluded. As to its rites and
ceremonies, they are at once dignified and
expressive; they point out the holiness of their author,
the sinfulness of man, the necessity of an atonement,
and the state of moral excellence to which the grace and
mercy of the Creator have promised to raise the human
soul. As to its punishments, they are ever such
as the nature and circumstances of the crime render just
and necessary -and its rewards are not such as
flow merely from a principle of retribution or
remunerative justice, but from an enlightened and
fatherly tenderness, which makes obedience to the laws
the highest interest of the subject.
At the same time that love to God and obedience to
his commandments are strongly inculcated, love and
benevolence to man are equally enforced, together with
piety, which is the soul of obedience,
patriotism, the life of society; hospitality
to strangers, and humanity to the whole brute
creation. To all this might be added that it
includes in it, as well as points out, the
Gospel of the Son of God, from which it receives its
consummation and perfection. Such, reader, is the law of
God given through Moses to the people of Israel.
3. Of the laws of Zerdust or Zeratusht,
commonly called Zoroaster, It is unnecessary to
speak at large; they are incapable of comparison with
the Mosaic code. As delivered in the Zend
Avesta, they cannot so properly be called a
system as a congeries of puerility,
superstition, and absurdity; with scarcely a
precept or a rite that has any tendency to
elevate the mind, or raise man from his state of moral
degradation to a proper rank in civilized society, or to
any worthy apprehension of the Maker and Governor of the
universe. Harmlessness is the sum of the
morality they seem to inculcate, with a certain
superstitious reverence for fire, probably as the
emblem of purity; and for animal life,
principally in reference to the doctrine of the
Metempsychosis or transmigration of souls,
on which it seems to have been originally built.
4. The KORAN of MOHAMMED is the only remaining
competitor that can be supposed to be at all qualified
to dispute the palm with the Pentateuch of Moses; but
the pretensions of this production will be soon settled,
when it is known that it possesses not one excellence,
the purity and elegance of its language excepted,
which it has not borrowed from the writings of
Moses and the prophets, or the sayings of
Christ and his apostles. This is a fact
which none can successfully dispute, and of which the
Koran itself bears the most unequivocal evidences. What
can be fairly claimed as the peculium of the Arab
lawgiver makes a motley mixture with what he has stolen
from the book of God, and is in general as absurd and
weak as it is on the whole false and wicked. As to the
boasted morality of the Koran, it will have as
little to exult in of this kind when the law and
the Gospel have taken from it that of which they
have been plundered, as the daw in the fable had when
the different fowls had plucked away their own feathers,
with which the vain bird had decorated herself.
Mohammed, it is true, destroyed idolatry wherever
he came; and he did the same by true religion;
for Judaism and Christianity met with no
more quarter from him than the grossest errors of pagan
idolatry. To compare him with the pure, holy,
disinterested, humane, and heavenly-minded Jewish
legislator, would be as gross political as it would be
palpable religious blasphemy. When we allow that he was
a man of a deep and penetrating mind, well acquainted
with the superstitious turn of his countrymen; austere,
cunning, and hypocritical; a great general and a brutal
conqueror, who seemed to sacrifice at no other shrine
than that of his lust and ambition, we do
him no injustice: the whole of his system bears the most
evident proofs of imposition and forgery; nor is there a
character to which imposture can lay claim that does not
appear prominently in the Koran, and in every part of
the Mohammedan system. The chief of these distinctive
marks have already been examined in reference to the
Pentateuch, in the concluding note on Exod. xviii. These
are all found in the Koran, but not one of them in the
Pentateuch. The Pentateuch therefore is of God; the
Koran came from another quarter.
5. The different systems of the Grecian ethic
philosophers cannot come into this inquiry. They
were in general incongruous and contradictory, and none
of them was ever capable of forming a sect that
could be said to have any moral perpetuity.
6. The laws of Lycurgus and Solon could
not preserve those states, at the basis of which they
were laid; which the laws of Moses have been the means
of preserving the people who held them, amidst the most
terrible reverses of what are called fortune and
fate, for nearly the space of 4,000 years! This
is one of the most extraordinary and astonishing facts
in the whole history of mankind.
7. The republic of Plato, of which it
is fashionable to boast, is, when stripped of what it
has borrowed from Moses, like the Utopia of Sir
T. More, the aerial figment of a philosophic mind, en
delire; both systems are inapplicable and
impracticable in the present state of man. To persons
under the influence of various and discordant passions,
strongly actuated by self-interest, they can
never apply. They have no tendency to change the moral
state of society from vice to virtue: a
nation of saints might agree to regulate their
lives and conduct by them, but where is such to be
found? Though Plato has borrowed much from Moses, yet he
has destroyed the effect of the whole by not referring
the precepts and maxims to God, by whom alone strength
to fulfil them could be furnished. It is the province of
the revelation of God to make the knave an
honest man; the unholy and profane,
pure and pious; and to cause all who act by
its dictates to love one another with pure hearts
fervently, and to feel the finest and fullest
impressions of
"The generous mind that's not confined at
home, But spreads itself abroad through all the public,
And feels for every member of the land."
• Key
Additional Resources
Copyright Statement
The Adam Clarke Commentary is a derivative
of an electronic edition prepared by GodRules.net.
Bibliography
Information
Clarke, Adam.
"Commentary on Deuteronomy 34". "The Adam Clarke
Commentary".
<http://www.studylight.org/com/acc/view.cgi?book=de&chapter=034>.
1834.
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