Deuteronomy Chapter 10

From: Notes and Comments 2 By: John Nelson Darby

Deuteronomy 10 • 1 min. read • grade level: 11

1-9. I take these verses to be all a parenthesis, and verse 10 to connect directly with chapter 9: 29, showing that after the apostasy of Israel, the law (but now in the ark), the priesthood, and a land of rivers of waters, and levitical service with no inheritance but the Lord, was set up a system of patient grace in Israel. The death of Aaron showed, through Eleazar taking his place, that the priesthood continued, as did the service of Levi in the land which is the subject of this book, not merely in the wilderness in which all this was set up.

1-11, takes up the standing of the restored people. The basis of it all is laid in Ex. 34:1-9¹And the Lord said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest. ²And be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning unto mount Sinai, and present thyself there to me in the top of the mount. ³And no man shall come up with thee, neither let any man be seen throughout all the mount; neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount. ⁴And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone. ⁵And the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. ⁶And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, ⁷Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. ⁸And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped. ⁹And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance. (Exodus 34:1‑9), which stands by itself; passing on (verse 28) to Moses, with the people—a mediatorial condition and government, see verse 27.

6, 7. Compare Num. 33:37, 38³⁷And they removed from Kadesh, and pitched in mount Hor, in the edge of the land of Edom. ³⁸And Aaron the priest went up into mount Hor at the commandment of the Lord, and died there, in the fortieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the first day of the fifth month. (Numbers 33:37‑38). There is no difficulty here.

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