Study

a Bible passage

Click a verse to see commentary

Select a resource above

Rewards for Obedience

You shall love the L ord your God, therefore, and keep his charge, his decrees, his ordinances, and his commandments always. ²Remember today that it was not your children (who have not known or seen the discipline of the L ord your God), but it is you who must acknowledge his greatness, his mighty hand and his outstretched arm, ³his signs and his deeds that he did in Egypt to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and to all his land; ⁴what he did to the Egyptian army, to their horses and chariots, how he made the water of the Red Sea flow over them as they pursued you, so that the L ord has destroyed them to this day; ⁵what he did to you in the wilderness, until you came to this place; ⁶and what he did to Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab son of Reuben, how in the midst of all Israel the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, along with their households, their tents, and every living being in their company; ⁷for it is your own eyes that have seen every great deed that the L ord did.

⁸ Keep, then, this entire commandment that I am commanding you today, so that you may have strength to go in and occupy the land that you are crossing over to occupy, ⁹and so that you may live long in the land that the L ord swore to your ancestors to give them and to their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey. ¹⁰For the land that you are about to enter to occupy is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sow your seed and irrigate by foot like a vegetable garden. ¹¹But the land that you are crossing over to occupy is a land of hills and valleys, watered by rain from the sky, ¹²a land that the L ord your God looks after. The eyes of the L ord your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.

¹³ If you will only heed his every commandment that I am commanding you today—loving the L ord your God, and serving him with all your heart and with all your soul— ¹⁴then he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, and you will gather in your grain, your wine, and your oil; ¹⁵and he will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you will eat your fill. ¹⁶Take care, or you will be seduced into turning away, serving other gods and worshiping them, ¹⁷for then the anger of the L ord will be kindled against you and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain and the land will yield no fruit; then you will perish quickly off the good land that the L ord is giving you.

¹⁸ You shall put these words of mine in your heart and soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and fix them as an emblem on your forehead. ¹⁹Teach them to your children, talking about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. ²⁰Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, ²¹so that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the L ord swore to your ancestors to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth.

²² If you will diligently observe this entire commandment that I am commanding you, loving the L ord your God, walking in all his ways, and holding fast to him, ²³then the L ord will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations larger and mightier than yourselves. ²⁴Every place on which you set foot shall be yours; your territory shall extend from the wilderness to the Lebanon and from the River, the river Euphrates, to the Western Sea. ²⁵No one will be able to stand against you; the L ord your God will put the fear and dread of you on all the land on which you set foot, as he promised you.

²⁶ See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: ²⁷the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the L ord your God that I am commanding you today; ²⁸and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the L ord your God, but turn from the way that I am commanding you today, to follow other gods that you have not known.

²⁹ When the L ord your God has brought you into the land that you are entering to occupy, you shall set the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. ³⁰As you know, they are beyond the Jordan, some distance to the west, in the land of the Canaanites who live in the Arabah, opposite Gilgal, beside the oak of Moreh.

³¹ When you cross the Jordan to go in to occupy the land that the L ord your God is giving you, and when you occupy it and live in it, ³²you must diligently observe all the statutes and ordinances that I am setting before you today.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

16 Take heed to yourselves. By often inculcating the same thing, viz., that they should diligently take heed, he indirectly arraigns man’s proneness to superstition; and this too is again expressed in the words, “that your heart be not deceived;” for by them he signifies, that unless they take diligent heed to themselves, nothing will be more easy than for them to fall into the snares of Satan. Wherefore the impudence of the Papists is the less excusable, who intoxicate their own and others’ minds with security, when God constantly exhorts them to solicitude. Let us learn, then, that since many impostures and deceits besiege us on every side, we shall in the vanity of our nature be liable immediately to fall into them, unless we carefully guard ourselves. By the expression “turn aside,” he implies what has been before said, that whosoever declines to corrupted worship, impiously falls away from the true God. Unbelievers but little think so, for with them it is a light transgression to exceed in this respect; and they would wilfully blind the eyes of God with their inventions (commentis), nay, there is nothing too silly for them to desire to be approved of, and sanctioned by God. But if it be objected that obedience is better than sacrifice, they shield themselves under the cover of their good intention, as if God were not at liberty to repudiate what they foolishly obtrude upon Him. At any rate, they so pertinaciously indulge themselves in their inconsiderate zeal, that they will hardly acknowledge the slightest fault in it. But, on the other side, God declares that all are apostates who do not confine themselves to the simplicity of the Law. A threat is again added, that God will avenge the violation of His worship, and will curse their land, until He shall destroy them by dearth and famine; and, finally, He pronounces that they shall perish off that land which God had promised them to the end that He might be there purely worshipped.