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There are times we just want a do-over on our lives, to hit the reset button. Ancient Israel needed such a new beginning after repeated rebellions against the LORD, the Savior from bondage in Mitsraim (Egypt), led to the nation’s judgment to remain outside the Promised Land for 40 years, until the first generation died out.
Thus begins the “second telling,” or deuteronomy, of who Israel was, where the nation was going and why. It’s also lesson for the “new creation” we become in the eyes of Heaven because of Yeshua haMashiakh (Jesus the Christ).
Thought questions
- Why does it say “Mt. Sinai” and “Mt. Horeb” when referring to the same mountain?
- What writer wrote Deuteronomy?
- How are the three different authors found in the Torah compare to the three synoptic gospels?
- How do critics use the book of Deuteronomy to dispute the route Israel took from Egypt to the Promised Land, i.e. the Land of Israel?
- Why did Moshe (Moses) go through this history in this chapter?
- Why is that history so important to our spiritual lives?
- Where is Mt. Seir, and how do we know whether it was on what is now called the Sinai Peninsula?
- Where is the desert of Paran in relation to the Promised Land?
- What does suph mean in Hebrew, commonly translated as “reed,” as in the “Sea of Reeds”?
- How language does suph actually come from, rather than from Hebrew?
- What is the Hebrew meaning of Edom, the nation descended from Yitzkhak’s (Isaac) son Esau that occupied the area southeast of the Dead Sea south to the northeastern shore of what is now called the Gulf of Aqabah?
- How does that meaning of Edom point to where the Red Sea really is?
- How does this account give us a deeper perspective of the events of the exodus of Israel from slavery in Egypt and the wanderings of Israel in the wilderness?
- What was the difference between how Moshe related to God and how other prophets related to Him?
- What did YHWH (the LORD) mean when He told Moshe that He would “raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him” (Deuteronomy 18:15)?
- Why is it important to “hear Moshe” first then “hear the Lamb,” or the Messiah, as suggested in Revelation 15:13?
- What was the purpose of the “New Testament,” according to Jeremiah 31?
- If we can enter the kingdom of God without “listening to Moshe,” i.e. just focusing on the Apostolic Scriptures, is it really necessary to “listen,” to read the Torah and the Prophetic Writings (a.k.a. Old Testament)?
- What does Messiah’s Parable of the 10 Virgins (Matthew 25) say to this question?
- Is that parable teaching that God isn’t working in the lives of those who don’t have God’s oil, His Word, in their minds?
- Why did Moshe go to the mountain a second time?
- How does it relate to Moshe’s relationship with God?
- Why did God have Moshe cut the two stone tablets out to have God write on them?
- How does it relate to Jeremiah 31?
- Where were the second set of tablets put versus being broken?