In Deuteronomy 4:1, Moses cries out, “Hear now, O Israel, the decrees and laws I’m about to teach you….that the Lord my God commanded me (5) for you to obey in the land you’re about to occupy.”
And in verse 6, “Make sure you carefully follow them too, for this will show your wisdom and understanding in the eyes of the peoples in that land, so that when they hear about all these statutes, they will say, ‘This great nation is indeed a wise and understanding people.’”
Imagine being told that and comparing it to their lives back in Egypt. What chance did they have back then of wowing other nations with their wisdom when they were stuck in the clutches of a tyrannical regime that considered them enemies of the state and a danger if allowed to survive, that felt utterly justified, therefore, in killing all their boy babies? And what was their everyday life like too, being mere slaves, and if they protested the regime came down even harder on them? They lived in constant fear, reduced to just surviving, with no prospect of escape.
And yet here they were, free of all that, and being told that even with their miserable background of knowing nothing but toil and hopelessness, and having no skills beyond making bricks for the Pharaoh’s vanity projects, they would become so “great a nation” themselves that other nations would be impressed enough to want to check them out.
So what, then, would make them so great? Moses answered that with two questions, the first in verse 7: “What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him?” Good point, because it was the Israelites crying out to God directly in Exodus 2:23-25, that got their rescue from Egypt started. He answered their cry, showing he really was that near to them. And a lot of non-Israelite people took note of it too, who left with Israel in the Exodus (Exodus 12:38).
And then Moses’ second question in Deuteronomy 4:8 – “What other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?” What would really catch the attention of others would be the wisdom and understanding the Israelites gained from the highly practical set of laws Yahweh had given them in Exodus 21 to 24. Because these laws would make them “Skilled in the art of living”….(next blog)
