Lecture 25: The Other Covenant: Deuteronomy 29 and 30, and the Heart God Must Change

The lecture, section by section

1. A covenant besides a covenant

   Essex reads 29:1 as the narrative introduction to Moses' third speech: these are the words of the covenant made with Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant made with them at Horeb. The Horeb covenant is the Mosaic covenant; the question is what this second one is. The predominant answer, held by Merrill, Grisanti, and Keil and Delitzsch, is covenant renewal: the Sinai covenant remade with the second generation on the plains of Moab.

2. The Palestinian covenant view

   Traditional dispensationalism has read it differently: a further covenant that supports the Abrahamic promises, usually called the Palestinian covenant because it concerns the land. Chapter 29 describes Israel dispossessed, the land brimstone and salt like the overthrow of Sodom; chapter 30 promises that from the ends of the earth Yahweh will gather them and bring them back to the land their fathers possessed. On this reading it stands beside the Davidic covenant of 2 Samuel 7 as an enhancement of what was pledged to Abraham.

3. A famine besides a famine

   Essex's exegetical key comes from Genesis 26:1: there was a famine in the land, besides the previous famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. The same construction as 29:1, and it is almost as if the Spirit anticipated the critics who would call the two famine stories one confused tradition. The text itself declares them alike but distinct: a later famine so like the earlier that Isaac nearly repeated Abraham's flight to Egypt until the Lord stopped him. So in Deuteronomy: a later covenant like a previous covenant, closely associated with it, and not the same covenant.

4. Why not the Palestinian covenant

   Two problems. First, whatever this covenant is, 29:1 defines it in relation to the Mosaic covenant, besides the covenant at Horeb, not in relation to the Abrahamic. Second, the emphasis: land overtones are real, scattering from the land and restoration to it, but the predominant note of chapters 29 and 30 is not land but heart, the heart Israel does not yet have and the heart God will one day circumcise. Heart before land, not land and then heart.

5. Why not a simple renewal

   The renewal view stumbles on the covenant's own opening note. Chapter 28 ends open ended, will Israel obey or not, and 29:2 to 28 answers: they will not, because, verse 4, the Lord has not given you a heart to know, eyes to see, or ears to hear. The stubborn man of verse 19 blesses himself in his heart and walks on to abomination and curse. A remade Sinai covenant would change nothing, because the old covenant is not the answer to a people without a changed heart; the whole point of the chapter is that another covenant is needed.

6. The secret things

   Between the chapters stands the interlude of 29:29: the secret things belong to Yahweh our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever. In this context Essex takes the secret things as the realities that lie between Israel's scattering and the far-off day when God changes their heart; what Israel has in the meantime is what has been revealed, the record of their failure and the promise of the future, to drive them to cry for the heart they lack.

7. Chapter 30: the covenant's contents

   Here Essex agrees with Craigie and McConville about the substance: 30:1 to 10 describes what the prophets will later call new covenant realities. Israel returns to Yahweh, he gathers them from the farthest parts, brings them to the land, and, verse 6, circumcises their heart to love him with all their heart and soul, answering 29:4 exactly. Then 30:11 to 20 presses the appeal into the present: the word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart; I set before you life and death, blessing and curse; choose life. The plea amounts to this: you cannot go in under the old covenant and live, so cry to God now, in faith, for the changed heart the other covenant promises.

8. A lonely position

   Where Essex parts from Craigie and McConville is that they blend the two, reading the Moab covenant as at once Sinaitic and new. But the text says God made a covenant, singular, besides the covenant at Horeb, and when Jeremiah finally announces the new covenant it will be introduced precisely by contrast with the old, not fused with it. So Essex's answer: the other covenant is the new covenant, given at Moab as God's guarantee, to be entered and experienced in the future, at the end of the age under the Messiah. He names the cost of the position with a grin: of all the commentators he has recommended, exactly zero agree, and even his faculty friends depart to positions a, b, or c.

9. Deaf ears, and a terrible anthem

   Chapter 30 ends with no narrative response; the covenant fell on deaf ears. Chapter 31 confirms it: you were rebellious while I was with you, and after my death you will act more corruptly still. So Moses gives Israel a national anthem, the song of chapter 32, and it is astonishing: generation after generation Israel must sing its own indictment, Jeshurun grew fat and kicked, forsook the God who made him, sacrificed to demons, forgot the Rock who begot him. The song insists it was never God's unfaithfulness but Israel's that brought the calamity, and it ends with God's judgment on the nations and restoration only at the end of the days, which is when the tribal blessings of chapter 33 finally land.

10. Paul read it this way

    If Essex has misread Deuteronomy, he says, then so has Paul. Romans 10 sets the righteousness based on law against the righteousness of faith, and to voice the righteousness of faith Paul quotes Deuteronomy 30: do not say who will ascend or descend; the word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart. The message Moses preached on the plains of Moab, the call for the heart God himself must change, is, Paul says, the very word of faith we are preaching: believe in the heart, confess with the mouth, and whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

11. Standing there, and not standing there

    A closing observation from 29:10 to 15: everyone is named, leaders, tribes, elders, officers, men, children, wives, and the sojourner, standing today to enter the covenant. Then verse 14 widens it: I make this covenant not only with you, but also with those who are not here with us today. The guarantee reaches the generations to come; the covenant offered at Moab remains open to every future Israel until the day it is finally entered.

12. Preach Deuteronomy

    Essex closes with counsel: Deuteronomy is among the most overlooked portions of the Old Testament and the easiest discourse in the Torah to preach. Chapters 1 to 11 preach readily, so do 29 to 34, and even the statutes open up once the law is taught as education rather than legislation for Christians. Do not make Leviticus your first Old Testament series and fail; begin, perhaps, at the Torah's end. His own classes on Deuteronomy have drawn one response again and again: I cannot believe how much of this speaks to me.

1. Deuteronomy 29:4 names the root problem: no heart to know, no eyes to see, no ears to hear. Where have you seen that knowing the right words and standing in the right assembly is not the same as a changed heart, in Israel's story or your own?

2. Moses pleads with people he knows will fail, and still sets life and death before them and says choose life. What does that pairing, honest prediction and urgent appeal, teach about how to speak the gospel to people who may refuse it?

3. Israel's anthem made every generation sing its own failure and God's faithfulness. What would it do to a church's worship if its songs were that honest about sin and that confident about grace?