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The dual Torah readings נִצָּבִים Nitzavim and וַיֵּלֶךְ Vayelech (“standing” and “he went,” Deut. 29:9–31:30) records Moses’ third address to the second generation of the Exodus. It includes a renewal of the covenant that the first generation ratified at Mt. Sinai. Even after God inflicted the Egyptians with supernatural plagues, carried them through the Red Sea and caused that same sea to collapse on their armed pursuers, they questioned whether God had the power to protect them and lead them to the promised land. The first generation even refused to go into the land that God was giving them.
God warns the second generation that if they forget their history, if they break the covenant, that there will be dire consequences. Yet, he tells them that even when they go their own way, that the way of repentance is always open to them. God wants us to choose life, to chose the better path. He wants to guide us on that path. He also shows us how to choose the better path.
Moses is also preparing the people as he hands over leadership to Joshua, whose Hebrew name יְהוֹשֻׁעַ Yehoshua (H3068 and H3467) means “God saves.” It’s no accident a shortened form of that name (יֵשׁוּעַ Yeshua) is what the archangel Gabriel told Miriam to give the “Word made flesh” in her womb (Luke 1:31; John 1:14).
Between life and death, we are called to choose life. Do we really know what is life-threatening in our lives? Are we blaming someone else for our situation, such as our parents or our leaders? Do we blame the president or the governor for our lot in life? We are told not to leave our heart in the land of bondage, we are to give our heart to God and be free.
The Torah is not difficult, if it’s in your heart and in your mouth. This is what the New Covenant is about.
Hidden sins will be revealed so we are encouraged by God to live a life with nothing to hide. If you look back all the way to the beginning of Genesis, we read that at one point, they were naked but did not know they were naked so they were unashamed but later, they realized their were naked and they were ashamed. Before they sinned, Adam and Eve had nothing to hide from God but after they decided to find a new source of right and wrong, they had something to hide from Him. They were enticed away from God’s way to follow their own way.
Human leaders come and go, from Moses to Joshua and on and on history goes. Most of the leaders in history have been bad, very few have been good. The rock, the leader who is dependable is the God of Israel. He is the leader who is dependable from generation to generation.
What we build in life is only as lasting as the foundation upon which we built it. We have observed this in the real world when people built their homes on a hillside, thinking they were secure but the rains created mudslides and their homes slid down the hill and were destroyed. When we build our house on God, it will not slide away.
We need to hear “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God often. Whether it’s a habit or a memory, when we revisit them and repeat them, the habit or the memory becomes stronger. God tells us to hear, do, ponder and guard His word to cement them into our heads. God’s words are a part of our legacy that we should protect, share with others and pass on to the next generation.
Life is marvelous, with machines of biological origin, working against disorder and destruction. Things that are ordered trend towards disorder, if not continually protected and restored. The Creator sustains us by staving off those things that fight for our destruction.
We are also encouraged to get back up if we have been knocked down by sin. We are admonished not to sin, but when we do, we are told to go to our Advocate before the Father.
“Now not with you alone am I making this covenant and this oath, but both with those who stand here with us today in the presence of the LORD our God and with those who are not with us here today (for you know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the midst of the nations through which you passed; moreover, you have seen their abominations and their idols of wood, stone, silver, and gold, which they had with them); so that there will not be among you a man or woman, or family or tribe, whose heart turns away today from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of those nations; that there will not be among you a root bearing poisonous fruit and wormwood. “It shall be when he hears the words of this curse, that he will boast, saying, ‘I have peace though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart in order to destroy the watered land with the dry.’ The LORD shall never be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger of the LORD and His jealousy will burn against that man, and every curse which is written in this book will rest on him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under heaven. “Then the LORD will single him out for adversity from all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant which are written in this book of the law.”
Deuteronomy 29:14–21 NASB
One of the lessons of wormwood is the idea that “I am good with God even though I do not follow the Torah or worship Him in the manor He requires.”
Who is satiated and who is the one who is dry? The Sages are conflicted on who is who in this passage. The Targum Onkelos, and the medieval Jewish commentators Rashi and Rambam say that the “Watered” one in Deut. 29:19 is the deliberate sinner, while the “Dry” person is the “enticed sinner.” The water is iniquity so the one who is full of iniquity is satiated in sin while the dry person is the one who has not filled themselves full of sin.
But other sages, such as Ibn Ezra, who cites Judah Halevi (12th century Jewish commentator) connected the “watered” person to Moshe (righteous are “like a tree planted by waters,” Jer. 17:8) and the “dry” to the wicked (“like a bush in the desert,” Jer. 17:6).
Whose right? Yeshua knows. An important lesson of Sukkot and Shemini Atzert is the outpouring of “living water,” something Yeshua drew from during that season:
Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”
John 7:37–38 NASB
Yeshua tells His Sukkot audience that they need Living water from Him. Yeshua had earlier hinted at this font of “living water” in his conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 4.
The Samaritans were a mixed race and traditional enemies of the Jews. Although they worshiped the God of Israel and were also awaiting the Messiah, they accepted only the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures (the Pentateuch) as their Scriptures. They had built their own temple on Mt. Gerizim, which the Jews destroyed in 128 BC.
Orthodox Study Bible
Yet, Yeshua speaks about spiritual things opening with the Samaritan woman.
Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
John 4:13–14 NASB
The Samaritan woman (traditionally named Photini) responds and questions Him. She misunderstands Yeshua and asks, “Are You greater than our father Jacob?”
Yeshua and Photini speak further and the lights come on in her head and she says to Him,
The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.”
John 4:19 NASB
But He was much more than a prophet, and He revealed Himself to her as the Messiah. Yeshua gave further revelation to the Apostle John. On the Day of the LORD, the message Yeshua gave to the congregation of Laodecia through the Apostle John speaks of the need for spiritual senses to know when one is “thirsty” (Rev. 3:14-22).
Ibn Ezra and Judah Halevi saw a profound connection between Deut. 29:19 with Abraham’s “negotiation” with the LORD over Sodom Inc. when Abraham asks God this:
“Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?”
Genesis 18:23 NASB
The Hebrew word translated here as “sweep away” is safah (H5595). When we read in Romans 10:1-17, we read the phrase that is translated as Yeshua being the “end of the law.” The “end” in this text is the Greek word telos, which is the root word of English words such as telescope and telephone. Telos means soothing that is helping you to reach a goal that was a distance away from you.
The Messiah is the telos of the law, the law is taking us to the Messiah so in Romans 10, the Messiah is the goal of our journey from the land of bondage to the land of promise. The words of God written on our hearts so we can know God and that is our goal. We can only know God through the Messiah Yeshua.
So when Moses hands of his mantle of leadership to Joshua, Moses is also saying that in the future, there will be another prophet like him that will take them to the land of rest and that they should listen to Him.
Summary: Tammy