The Discourses of Moses

At the threshold of the promised land, on the plains of Moab, Moses gathers the people one last time. The generation that had refused to enter has died in the desert; it is to their children, ready to cross the Jordan, that Moses addresses his final discourses. In them he takes up the law received at Sinai, explains it, and engraves it on their hearts before he dies. The book of Deuteronomy, whose name comes from the Greek and means “second law,” gathers these words: a long call to remember, to love God, and to choose life.

The Road Already Travelled

Moses begins by looking back. He recalls the journey from Horeb (another name for Sinai), the kindnesses of God and the failures of the people, the covenant and the forty years of testing. This remembrance is the ground of faithfulness, for one stays attached only to what one keeps in mind. So Moses returns again and again to the same charge: “Take heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart; but teach them to your children and to your children’s children.” Deuteronomy 4:9. This remembrance will also become a prayer: in offering the first fruits of the land, each one will recite the story of his salvation: “My father was a wandering Aramean; he went down into Egypt and lived there as a stranger; there he became a nation great, mighty, and numerous. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a strong hand. He has given us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” Deuteronomy 26:5-9. To keep the memory of God’s works and to retell it to the generations that follow is how the faith is handed on.

The God No One Has Seen

At Horeb, the people heard God without ever seeing him: a voice out of the fire, and no form (Deuteronomy 4:12). From this Moses draws a rule for all worship: “You saw no form on the day the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire; take good heed to yourselves, lest you make for yourselves a carved image.” Deuteronomy 4:15-16. The nations surround their gods with images; Israel worships the one God, whom no image can represent: “Know therefore and lay it to your heart that the Lord is God, in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other.” Deuteronomy 4:39. This God whom no eye has seen will one day make himself visible: by becoming man, the Word will give the invisible God a face.

Hear, O Israel

At the heart of these discourses, Moses gives again the ten commandments received at Sinai, then gathers them into a single word, which became Israel’s daily prayer: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is the one Lord. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” Deuteronomy 6:4-5. Everything begins there: one God, and the undivided love owed to him. From this love flows the whole Law; the commandments are its paths. And Moses wants this word to enter the whole of life: “These commandments shall be in your heart. You shall teach them to your children, and you shall speak of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise.” Deuteronomy 6:6-7. The faith is spoken and lived at every hour of the day. Christ will name this love the first and greatest of the commandments.

God’s Love Came First

If Israel must love God, it is because God loved it first. Moses sets aside every idea of merit: “If the Lord has set his love on you and chosen you, it is not because you were greater in number than all the peoples, for you are the smallest of all; but because the Lord loves you and willed to keep the oath he swore to your fathers.” Deuteronomy 7:7-8. And when Israel receives the land, Moses reminds it of its revolts in the desert: “It is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God gives you this good land to possess; for you are a stiff-necked people.” Deuteronomy 9:6. The election and the gift come from the goodness of God, and not from any qualities of man: it is already grace going before and carrying all.

Do Not Forget the Lord

Moses foresees a danger that the desert kept at bay: abundance. As long as the people lacked everything, they depended on God for each day’s bread; once in a rich land, they risk taking credit for their own well-being and forgetting who saved them. Moses recalls the lesson of the manna: “Man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that comes from the mouth of God.” Deuteronomy 8:3. The hunger of the desert taught that life comes from God before it comes from bread; Christ will take up this word to repel the temptation in the desert (Matthew 4:4). So Moses gives a warning: “Take care lest you forget the Lord your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his laws that I command you today.” Deuteronomy 8:11. The peril comes less from need than from abundance: the sated heart lifts itself up and forgets the one who drew it out of slavery.

What God Asks

The whole Law, Moses gathers into a few words that show its heart: “What does the Lord your God ask of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, and to love and serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul?” Deuteronomy 10:12. To fear, to love, to serve: everything holds in this cleaving of the heart. The long body of laws that follows draws out its consequences for the whole life of the people. It calls for a pure worship, offered at the one place God will choose, far from idols. It watches over the weakest, for the love of God is proved in the way one treats other people: God does justice to the orphan and the widow and loves the stranger, and his people must do the same: “You shall open your hand to your brother, to the needy and the poor in your land.” Deuteronomy 15:11. Deuteronomy also foresees the day when Israel will set a king over itself. This king will remain subject to God like the rest of the people: chosen by God, taken from among his brothers, he must write for himself a copy of the Law: “He shall have it with him and read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God and to keep all the words of this law.” Deuteronomy 17:19. David will best answer this portrait: chosen by God and subject to his Law, he becomes the king after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14). To him God promises a throne established forever (2 Samuel 7:16). And this eternal throne the Father will give to Christ, the son of David (Luke 1:32-33). The nations seek to know the future through divination, sorcery, and consulting the dead; Israel will not imitate them, for God provides otherwise: “The Lord your God will raise up for you from among you a prophet like me: him you shall heed.” Deuteronomy 18:15. Tradition has recognized in this prophet Christ, the Word of God come in person.

Choose Life

At the close of his discourses, Moses sets the people before a decisive choice. On two facing mountains, Gerizim and Ebal, he has the blessings promised to faithfulness and the curses bound to unfaithfulness proclaimed, then he calls each one to decide: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, then, that you may live, you and your descendants.” Deuteronomy 30:19. To cleave to God is life; to turn away from him, death. The fate of the people rests on this free attachment. This life remains within everyone’s reach, for the Law is already given: “The word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may fulfill it.” Deuteronomy 30:14. And Moses gives a glimpse of a more distant promise: “The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, that you may love the Lord your God with all your heart.” Deuteronomy 30:6. The love the Law requires, God promises to make possible by transforming the heart itself.

Through these discourses, Moses binds the people one last time to their God, by love and by memory. He will not see the promised land, but into it he sends a word meant to dwell in hearts. And already this word reaches beyond itself. The prophet like Moses is a prophecy that calls for Christ, the one whom the Father will tell us to heed (Matthew 17:5). And the heart that God will circumcise foretells the new birth (John 3:5), where God remakes man from within and inscribes his Law upon his heart (Jeremiah 31:33). Deuteronomy awaits Christ, who will love God and his neighbor with a perfect heart, and will give to men a heart capable of the same love.