Chapter Twenty-Nine

Renewal of the Sinai covenant.

Deuteronomy 29:1. These are the words of the covenant that the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant that the Lord made with them at Horeb. The solemn renewal of the covenant that the Lord had concluded with the preceding generation at Sinai.

Deuteronomy 29:5. For forty years I led you through the wilderness, and your clothing did not wear out on you, and the sandals on your feet did not wear out; Cf. Deut 8:4.

Deuteronomy 29:6. you did not eat bread and did not drink wine or strong drink, so that you would know that I am the Lord your God. Cf. Lev 10:8-10. Bread and wine of ordinary origin were replaced by bread and water sent miraculously.

Deuteronomy 29:7. And when you came to this place, Sihon, the king of Heshbon, and Og, the king of Bashan, came out against us to fight us, and we defeated them; Deuteronomy 29:8. and we took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the tribe of Reuben and to the tribe of Gad and to the half-tribe of Manasseh. Cf. Num 21:21-35; Deut 2:24-37.

Deuteronomy 29:18. Let there not be among you a man or woman, a clan or tribe, whose heart turns away today from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of those nations; let there not be among you a root that bears poison and bitterness, “Poison and bitterness” — a figurative expression for the moral harm and bitterness of idolatry.

Deuteronomy 29:19. such a person who, having heard the words of this curse, boasts in his heart, saying: “I will be fortunate, even though I walk according to the desire of my heart”; and so the one who is full will be lost along with the one who is hungry; “And so the one who is full will be lost along with the one who is hungry” — according to the Greek-Slavonic text: “let not the sinner destroy the innocent with himself,” which harmonizes better with the beginning of the verse.

Deuteronomy 29:20. the Lord will not pardon such a person, but the anger of the Lord and his wrath will immediately blaze against such a man, and all the curses [of this covenant] written in this book [of the law] will fall upon him, and the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven; “And the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven,” as the name of many pagan nations of antiquity has been blotted out, and as the historical identity of the greater part of the Jewish people — the Israelites taken into captivity by Assyria — has already been terminated.

Deuteronomy 29:22. And the generation that comes after, your children who come after you, and the foreigner who comes from a distant land, will see the calamities of that land and the afflictions with which the Lord has made it suffer: Deuteronomy 29:23. sulfur and salt, a scorched wasteland — the whole land; it is not sown and does not grow anything, and no grass springs up on it, like the overthrow of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in his anger and his wrath. The present state of Palestine by no means resembles a land flowing with milk and honey.

Deuteronomy 29:27. for this reason the anger of the Lord blazed against this land, and he brought upon it all the curses [of the covenant] written in this book [of the law], Deut 27:1.

Deuteronomy 29:28. and the Lord uprooted them from their land in anger, in wrath, and in great fury, and cast them into another land, as is seen today. The reference is to the period of successive foreign dominations in Palestine and the captivities inevitably connected with them, as well as to the present period of the universal dispersion of the Jews.

Deuteronomy 29:29. The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but what is revealed belongs to us and to our children forever, so that we may carry out all the words of this law. “This was said so that the Jews would not labor in the pursuit and investigation of hidden things, since they are incomprehensible, but would pay close attention to whether they are truly heeding and following what has been revealed and commanded to them” (St. Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on the book of Deut., ch. XXIX).