Deuteronomy 1:1

"These are the words which Moses spake unto all the children of Israel beyond the Jordan in the wilderness, in the Arabah over against Suph, between Paran and Tophel, and Laban, and Hazeroth and Dizahab."

"These are the words which Moses spake ..." These are the most important words in the Book of Deuteronomy, and until these words are properly understood, there is no such thing as understanding the whole book. The words as they stand in the sacred text are either true, or they are untrue, and we wish to register at the outset here our conviction that the words are true. Deuteronomy is the Sacred Scripture to which Jesus Christ himself made appeal when assailed by Satan himself in the wilderness of our Lord's temptation, and the proposition that the eternal Son of God in his contest with the prince of evil would have relied upon a human book full of lies is itself a preposterous falsehood!

No educated Christian can be unaware of the allegations of unbelieving enemies of the Bible to the effect that neither the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy, nor the 15th century date of its production can be allowed. The arrogant claim of such Biblical critics is that devout priests during the reign of Manasseh wrote Deuteronomy, hid it in the temple, and then had it "discovered" in the days of Josiah! That little fairy tale is not half as credible as those written by Hans Christian Andersen! Now, it is not so much the impossibility of swallowing such a Gargantuan lie that we wish to emphasize just here. It is the somewhat subtle insinuation that those "wonderful, devout priests" did this monstrous forgery "in the service of God," that what they did was acceptable as morally justified by their entire generation, despite the obvious fact of its being deceitful, fraudulent, immoral, untruthful, and as crooked as anything hell ever desired! Now it is precisely this postulation of the Biblical enemies that we wish to explore a little further.

Note that they approve of the fraud, duplicity, and dishonesty of the alleged priesthood that concocted Deuteronomy "in the name of Moses." The critics do not often state this approval, but it invariably appears in the "motives" assigned for the fraud and deception. Thus, it is alleged that this colossal act of fraud and deception was for "the purpose of rooting out the idolatry that had become rampant in the long reign of Manasseh!" Indeed, how noble, and commendable such a worthy purpose appears! We have a specific example of this "approval" by Edgar Goodspeed, one of the 20th-century modernists. He denied the Matthew authorship of that Gospel, saying, "It was written by a Jewish Christian of insight and devotion!" (at a time long after Matthew lived).[1] The prominent point in all this is that the unbelieving enemies of the Bible approve the fraudulent and crooked devices alleged to have been practiced on the sacred text of the Bible. From this, we are required to be doubly suspicious of all their arguments. How many forgeries, deceptions, and false statements are to be expected in the writings of men who have such a loose conception of morality that they can refer to the crooked deceiver who palmed off his "Book of Matthew" as that of an apostle, as "a Christian of insight and devotion"? Therefore, we believe that such allegations against the Bible tell us far more about those who make the allegations than they tell us about the Bible. Certainly, the light shed on the Bible by those who deny the truth of it is nil.

This first verse is supported by another passage in Deuteronomy, as follows:

"And Moses went and spake these words unto all Israel ... And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto priests the sons of Levi ... And it came to pass when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished that Moses commanded the Levites that bear the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, saying, Take this book of the law, and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of Jehovah your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee. For I know thy rebellion, and thy stiff neck: behold, while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against Jehovah; and how much more after my death." (Deuteronomy 31:1,9,24-27)

Also, notice Deuteronomy 31:22, "Moses wrote this song the same day and taught it the children of Israel." No other Biblical book is so specifically assigned to its author as is this one, and these statements are "either true or false,"[2] as bluntly stated by Robinson, who added a statement of his acceptance of these scriptural affirmations.

Robinson also backed up his conviction that these statements are true with the following reasons:

(1) The whole nature of the book, including its contents, declarations, and historical references are appropriate to the times of Moses, and to those of Moses only.

(2) The Word of God emphatically declares that Moses is the author.

(3) There is nothing unreasonable about Moses' having put his five books in writing. Hammurabi wrote such a book centuries before Moses, and Moses had the necessary training and education to have written it.

(4) The military exhortations and the whole atmosphere of the book are appropriate to a nation standing upon the threshold of a war of conquest.

(5) There is a paternal vein running through the whole book that defies all identification with any age or any leader except that of Moses.

This student of the Sacred Scriptures accepts without reservation both the age and the person of Moses as having produced Deuteronomy.

(See the Introduction for further discussion of this.)

"Unto all Israel ..." This expression is characteristic of Deuteronomy, occurring not only here at the outset, but in Deuteronomy 5:1; 13:11; 21:21; 24:2; 31:1,7; and Deuteronomy 34:12. Also, there are a number of other similar expressions: "all the men of Israel" (Deuteronomy 19:10), "all the tribes of Israel" (Deuteronomy 2:21), "all the elders of Israel" (Deuteronomy 31:9), and "all the congregation of Israel" (Deuteronomy 31:30).

"Beyond Jordan ..." Unbelieving enemies of God's Word never overlook an opportunity to attack Mosaic authorship. T. Witton Davies, for example, concluded from this expression that "The writer of Deuteronomy lived WEST of the Jordan!"[3] Of course, like so many unbelieving arguments, this one is based upon ignorance. The expression "beyond Jordan" never invariably means either west of Jordan, or east of Jordan. "The phrase means nothing more than Trans-jordania ... The use of this expression in Numbers 32:19 and Joshua 12:1,7; and 1 Samuel 14:4 for each side alternately indicates that the expression itself affords no conclusive evidence of the standpoint of the particular writer. In Deuteronomy the expression `beyond Jordan' refers twelve times to the eastern and six times to the western side of Jordan."[4] Here the reference is to the EASTERN side of Jordan, not to the WESTERN side. These distinctions are clearly set forth in the KJV.

"In the Arabah ..." the long rift extending from Lake Galilee to the Gulf of Aquabah. "Over against Suph ..." Probably an abbreviation of [~Yam] [~Cuwph], which has the meaning of "end sea" and was the name of all the great southern oceans as well as of all their gulfs and extensions. (See the full discussion of this in my commentary on Exodus, pp. 177-179.) The other place names in Deuteronomy 1:1 "correspond roughly with those in Numbers 33:18-20, which are on the route from Horeb to Kadesh-barnea."[5]