Choose life: restoration, the near word and the two ways

Deuteronomy 29 and 30 close the main body of Moses' final address. After restating the law (chapters 5 to 26) and setting out the blessings and curses (chapters 27 and 28), Moses calls Israel to enter the covenant in Moab, a renewal described as separate from the covenant at Horeb (29:1). The people stand on the plains east of the Jordan, about to cross. Moses is a hundred and twenty years old and will not go with them (31:2).

The boldest feature of chapter 30 is that it speaks of Israel's failure and exile as if they had already happened. Moses says 'when', not 'if', these things come upon them (verse 1). The tradition that Moses wrote the book takes this as prophecy. He has already said the people will be unfaithful (31:16-21, 27-29). Many critical scholars, by contrast, think the passage reflects the experience of the Babylonian exile and was shaped or expanded by that time. Whichever view is taken, the chapter is addressed to the original hearers as a word about their future, and it was read by the exiles as a promise they were living inside. Nehemiah's prayer cites it (Nehemiah 1:8-9).

The first hearers were the second generation of the wilderness. They had seen their parents die for unbelief, and Moses has spent chapters warning them about the same danger. Chapter 30 stands as the end of that warning and the beginning of hope. The curses of chapter 28 are not the last word on Israel's story. The ancient Near Eastern treaty comparison makes the same point from another side: covenants of that kind regularly end with a call to loyalty and witnesses, as chapters 30 and 31 do.

Deuteronomy 30 is covenant exhortation in the form of a sermon, and it should be read with the preceding chapters in view. The blessings and curses of chapter 28 are the background for every line. Moses describes a sequence: the curses fall (30:1), the people remember and turn (30:2), the LORD restores them (30:3-5), the LORD changes their hearts (30:6), and obedience and blessing return (30:7-10). The verbs of turning and returning dominate the first ten verses. The Hebrew root shuv, 'to turn' or 'to return', appears repeatedly: Israel turns back to the LORD, and the LORD turns back to bless. This is the classic language of repentance.

The chapter contains conditional statements, such as 'if you obey' in verse 10, alongside promises that God will act, such as verse 6. A reader must not turn one into the other. The text itself puts them side by side, and the question of how they fit is one of the oldest in Christian reading of the Old Testament. Later in this class the options are laid out fairly.

Verses 11 to 14 are the chapter's most disputed passage. 'This commandment' could mean the whole law, the call to return in verses 1 to 10, or the commandment to love in 6:5. Paul's quotation in Romans 10 is read by most Christians as an inspired interpretation. Some scholars have proposed that Paul reads Moses as already pointing to Christ, others that he borrows Moses' language to say something new. In either case, the first step is to understand what the words meant to Moses' listeners.

Verses 1–2

Moses imagines a time when 'all these things' have come upon the people, 'the blessings and curses', and they call them 'to mind in all the nations'. The wording is literally to bring them back to the heart. Exile is described as a place of remembering. Then they and their children 'return to the LORD' and obey 'with all your heart and all your soul', the same pair of terms as in the Shema (6:5).

Verses 3–5

The LORD will restore them from captivity and have compassion. The verbs of gathering are tender: he will 'gather you from all the nations', even from 'the farthest horizon', literally the end of the heavens. The image is of a shepherd collecting scattered sheep. The promise of land and increase ('more than your fathers') reverses the curse.

Verse 6

'The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, and you will love Him with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.' Circumcision was the sign of the covenant given to Abraham (Genesis 17). To circumcise the heart is to remove what blocks the person from loving God. In Deuteronomy 10:16 Moses had commanded the people to circumcise their own hearts. Here God promises to do what he commanded. The promise includes the children, which shows the covenant reaching to the next generation. The purpose is love: the heart is changed so that the first commandment can finally be kept.

Verses 7–10

The curses move onto Israel's enemies, and Israel is restored to blessing. The section ends with a condition again: God will delight in them 'if you obey' and turn with all the heart and soul. The restored people are still under the covenant's terms.

Verses 11–14

Moses turns from future to present. The commandment is 'not too difficult' and not 'beyond your reach'. The Hebrew idea is of something too wonderful or hidden to be grasped. It is not in heaven, so that someone must go up to fetch it, and not across the sea, so that someone must cross over. The word of God had been spoken at Horeb and written in a book, so Israel had no need of a heroic search. 'The word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you may obey it.' The mouth and the heart are where the Shema was to live (6:6-7).

Verses 15–18

The choice is stated in starkest form. Life and good are set against death and disaster. To love, walk and keep is to live and increase in the land. To turn away and bow to other gods is to perish and be removed from the land. The two ways are laid out so clearly that the reader can see exactly where each leads.

Verses 19–20

Moses calls 'heaven and earth' to witness, as he does elsewhere (4:26; 31:28; 32:1). Appeals to heaven and earth as witnesses belong to the language of ancient covenant and lawsuit. Then comes the plea: 'choose life'. The choice is not left abstract. It means loving the LORD, obeying him, and holding fast to him, and the reason is the last line of the chapter: 'For He is your life.' Life is not just a reward for loving God. It is God himself.

Deuteronomy 30 sets out the pattern that shapes the prophets: sin, exile, repentance, and restoration. Leviticus 26:40-45 has the same arc, and the prophets repeat it. The chapter also introduces an idea that reaches beyond the old covenant's framework. If Israel's problem is the heart, then the remedy must be a new heart, and verse 6 says God himself will provide it. Jeremiah takes the promise forward when he writes of a new covenant with the law written on the heart (Jeremiah 31:31-34), and Ezekiel promises a new heart and a new spirit (Ezekiel 36:26-27). Both look back to the promise of circumcised hearts.

The New Testament treats these as promises that Christ fulfils. Paul says the true circumcision is of the heart, by the Spirit (Romans 2:29), and describes believers as those who worship by the Spirit (Philippians 3:3). Stephen charges his hearers with being 'uncircumcised in heart' (Acts 7:51), using the same category. The chapter's other theme, the nearness of God's word, runs through the Psalms (119) and into John 1, where the Word becomes flesh.

The chapter also holds together the two things that Deuteronomy and the rest of the Bible affirm: the call to choose and the promise that God makes the choice possible. It would be wrong to resolve this by deleting either half. The restoration after exile was partial in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, and the New Testament presents the full return as coming through Christ.

Paul quotes this chapter in Romans 10:6-8. Writing about the righteousness that comes from faith, he says not to ask who will go up to heaven, that is, to bring Christ down, or who will go down into the deep, that is, to bring Christ up from the dead. Instead, he says, the word is near, in your mouth and in your heart, and he identifies that word as the word of faith that he and the other apostles preach. This is a fulfillment, but Paul's way of handling it is subtle. He does not simply say Moses was speaking of Christ. He lets Moses' language describe what has now happened: God has sent Christ down in the incarnation and raised him from the dead, so no one needs to climb or descend to find salvation. The word that was near in Torah is now near in the gospel.

The promise of verse 6 is a promise the New Testament sees fulfilled through Christ's work. The new covenant is sealed in his blood (Luke 22:20), and the Spirit who writes the law on the heart is given through him (Ezekiel 36:27; John 14:16-17; Acts 2). Here the connection is a promise made by Moses, developed by the prophets, and fulfilled in Christ and the Spirit.

The last line of the chapter, 'He is your life', has an echo in the New Testament's claim that life is found in a person. Jesus says 'I am the way and the truth and the life' (John 14:6), and Paul calls Christ 'your life' (Colossians 3:4). This is an echo and not a quotation, but it follows the logic of Moses' final sentence.