Deuteronomy 30:6

"And Jehovah thy God will circumcise thy heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live. And Jehovah thy God will put all these curses upon thine enemies, and on them that hate thee, that persecuted thee. And thou shalt return and obey the voice of Jehovah, and do all his commandments, which I command thee this day. And Jehovah thy God will make thee plenteous, in all the work of thy hand, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, for good: for Jehovah will again rejoice over thee for good, as he rejoiced over thy fathers; if thou shalt obey the voice of Jehovah thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which are written in this book of the law; if thou turn unto Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul."

"Circumcise thy heart ..." This is a far different thing from that which the Law commanded in the old dispensation. "In Deuteronomy 10:16, it is the Israelite himself who must do the circumcising as an act of obedience,"[11] but in the new covenant, which is certainly in view here, God Himself will create a new heart within His followers. As stated in Ezekiel 11:19, God would "give them a new heart and put a new spirit within them," thus linking this blessing with the reception of the Holy Spirit, an unerring indication that the New Covenant is meant. The forgiveness of the transgressions of Israel, implied throughout the passage, is also another indication of the same thing. Only in the days of the New Covenant would God forgive sins (Jeremiah 31:31ff). Cook therefore made the correct conclusion on this: "The `turning again of the captivity' will be when Israel is converted to Him in whom the Law was fulfilled, who died `not for that nation only,' but also, that He might `gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad' (John 11:51,52)."[12]

"In this book of the law ..." By no stretch of imagination could this be limited to the Book of Deuteronomy, or to anything less than all five of the Books of Moses. Sir Isaac Newton, one of the great minds of the last millennium, mentioned the lost book of the Law that was discovered in the eighteenth year of King Josiah and declared unequivocally that the book there discovered was, "The book of the Law now extant,"[13] meaning the Torah, the so-called five Books of Moses. Critical enemies of the Bible now deny this, but they have no proof of their claims, and while their theories exhibit a great deal of skill and ingenuity, any careful study of them can discover no basis of credibility. This "book of the law" was in the process of compilation throughout the lifetime of Moses, and, upon his death, Joshua, carried on the work, recording the death of Moses and the subsequent entry into Canaan. It should be remembered that God put the spirit that was in Moses in Joshua also.

Sir Isaac also pointed out that the Law (called by him The Pentateuch) was in existence long before the third year of Jehoshaphat, that Israel therefore had it long before the captivity, and that even the Samaritans "had this same Pentateuch."[14]

In this first section (Deuteronomy 30:1-10), we not only have a number of the most remarkable prophecies, most of which were never fulfilled until the beginning of the Christian era, but also some that are not even yet fulfilled, leaving such things as the final restoration of all Israel still far in the future, and all of this being most certainly true, how is it, as the critics claim, that some hypothetical "D" is the author of these great prophecies? Neither "D" nor any one else could have known such things as were revealed here unless he was miraculously inspired, and if he was inspired, it would have been impossible for him to have attributed his prophecies to Moses. As McGarvey wisely concluded:

"This prophecy, then, must have come from Moses; and it is in some respects the most wonderful prediction of the future ever uttered by a prophet of Israel. It antedates the predictions of the other prophets by some six or eight centuries, and it reaches farther down the stream of time than almost any other. It proves Moses to be the greatest prophet that ever lived until that Prophet like unto Moses appeared in the person of the Son of God."[15]

Kline also pointed out that, "The renewal and restoration here foretold by Moses is that which was accomplished by Christ in the New Covenant."[16] The words of Moses here am not restricted to any particular time, except, in a general sense, to the "times of the regeneration"; "but they comprehend all times."[17] "Israel has never been hardened and rejected in all its members, although the mass of the nation lives under the curse until this very day."[18]

"That thou mayest live ..." (Deuteronomy 30:6) is an interesting clause, because, as Oberst observed, "Unless people's hearts are truly given unto the Lord, they were not `living' at all, as far as God was concerned."[19]

Scott commented on Deuteronomy 30:8, that, "It does not refer to the Exile, but is used in a spiritual sense."[20]

"If thou shalt obey ..." (Deuteronomy 30:10). Keil called this, "The renewed enforcement of the indispensable condition of salvation."[21] Of course, obedience is indeed the constant and invariable condition of salvation. People who read the glorious promises of the word of God, whether in the O.T. or in the N.T., without strict attention to those mountain-high "IF's" that dominate the sacred text throughout are simply not reading it at all.

One other very important consideration was stressed by Harrison. "The book of this Law," meaning the whole Pentateuch, was mentioned in Deuteronomy 30:10, and, in the same verse, this obedience to this Law is stated to be the equivalent of "obeying the voice of Jehovah thy God," `Whereby attesting to its inspiration and authority; we can therefore speak of this book (the Pentateuch in particular, indeed the whole Bible) as The Word of God!"[22]