Deuteronomy 31:14

"And Jehovah said unto Moses, Behold, thy days approach that thou must die: call Joshua, and present yourselves at the tent of meeting, that I may give him a charge. And Moses and Joshua went and presented themselves in the tent of meeting. And Jehovah appeared in the Tent in a pillar of cloud: and the pillar of cloud stood over the door of the Tent. And Jehovah said unto Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers; and this people will rise up, and play the harlot after the strange gods of the land, whither they go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them. Then my anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall come upon them; so that they will say in that day, Are not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us? And I will surely hide my face in that day for all the evil that they shall have wrought, in that they are turned to other gods. Now therefore write ye this song for you, and teach thou it the children of Israel: put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel. For when I shall have brought them into the land which I sware unto their fathers, flowing with milk and honey, and they shall have eaten and filled themselves and waxed fat; then will they turn to other gods, and serve them, and despise me, and break my covenant. And it shall come to pass, when many evils and troubles are come upon them, that this song shall testify before them as a witness; for it shall not be forgotten out of the mouths of their seed: for I know their imagination which they frame this day, before I have brought them into the land which I sware. So Moses wrote this song the same day, and taught it the children of Israel. And he gave Joshua the son of Nun a charge, and said, Be strong and of good courage; for thou shalt bring the children of Israel into the land which I sware unto them: and I will be with thee."

The great Theophany here is the major part of this paragraph. God Himself appeared to Moses and Joshua in the Tent, the same being the tabernacle, erected upon the express command of God to Moses, as recorded earlier in the Pentateuch. The pillar of cloud which had been a prominent accompaniment of their wilderness journeys appears here one more time, and the terrible prophecy about the future of Israel which was uttered by the Lord must have been a source of great grief to Moses and Joshua alike.

"The tent of meeting here is the tabernacle."[20] The repeated commands in this chapter that Moses should "write," first the law, then this song (in the next chapter), are proof, "That there is absolutely no question whatever as to the contemporary nature of this record, and thus of the basic Mosaicity of Deuteronomy."[21] Furthermore, this certainty is by no means restricted to Deuteronomy. Moses did not write one book, but five! And no writer is supposed to sign every page of a letter. The fact of Moses' name being affixed so surely at this point constitutes a signature to the whole Pentateuch.

The remarkable event here, in which God Himself appeared to the departing and incoming commanders of Israel "may be viewed as the solemn inauguration of Joshua."[22]

"Play the harlot after the strange gods in the land ..." (Deuteronomy 31:16) In the KJV, this is "go a-whoring after strange gods," and, as Scott said, "It may be taken in a literal sense,"[23] due to the licentious orgies that were a cardinal feature of the worship of Canaanite gods.

Why should the Lord have chosen this dramatic moment to reveal in such blunt language the future apostasy and ruin of Israel? Cook thought it was done as a warning for Joshua, that "he should be fully aware of the dangers and strive to avert them."[24] Joshua was successful, for "Israel served Jehovah all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua, and had known all the work of Jehovah, that he had wrought for Israel (Joshua 24:31)." Nevertheless, near the end of Joshua's ministry, "He repeated the very same warnings and predictions found in this paragraph."[25]

It is of interest to note that "even before Israel entered Canaan (Deuteronomy 31:21)," "They were already making plans for various practices in which they could participate as soon as they crossed over the Jordan, and nearly the whole Book of Judges chronicles the historical accuracy of this prediction."[26]

"Write this song ..." (Deuteronomy 31:19) was addressed to both Moses and Joshua, "since the verb is plural."[27] This, of course, might indicate that Joshua "wrote" it in the sense of copying into the Book of the Law, after Moses had composed and written it down. "This song" is a reference to the song recorded in the next chapter.

"He gave Joshua ...a charge ..." (Deuteronomy 31:23). The subject here is "God." It was God, not Moses, who gave Joshua the charge.[28]