Teorías que sustentan el estudio

(Deuteronomy 9:1-6)

1. Hear, O Israel: Thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to possess nations greater and mightier than thyself, cities great and fenced up to heaven,

2. A people great and tall, the children of the Anakims, whom thou knowest, and of whom thou hast heard say, Who can stand before the children of Anak!

3. Understand therefore this day, that the LORD thy God is he which goeth over before thee; as a consuming fire he shall de-stroy them, and he shall bring them down before thy face: so shalt thou drive them out, and destroy them quickly, as the LORD hath said unto thee.

4. Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the LORD thy God hath cast them out from before thee, saying, For my righteous-ness the LORD hath brought me to possess this land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD doth drive them out from before thee.

5. Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and that he may perform the word which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

6. Understand therefore, that the LORD thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy righteousness; for thou art a stiffnecked people. (Deuteronomy 9:1-6)

When men lose interest in the study of history, very often the rea-son is that they have first of all lost interest in the study of the Bible.

The Bible tells us that history is totally governed by God and cannot be understood apart from Him.

In the 1950s, an unknown young Russian wrote a novel challeng-ing Marxism. In the course of his novel, he wrote:

The Court is in session, it is in session throughout the world.

And not only Rabinovich, unmasked by the City Prosecutor, but all of us, however many we may be, are being daily, nightly, tried and questioned. This is called history.¹

More than history, it is God.

1. “Abram Tertz,” The Trial Begins (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1960), 59.

Our text cannot be seen as simply an ancient Hebrew document.

The records of antiquity cite victories, not defeats; they flatter but do not criticize. The text does not give us the opinion that the He-brews had of themselves. In fact, God sums up His indictment in v.

6 by calling them “a stiffnecked people.” James Moffatt renders this,

“for you are an obstinate race.” This is God’s opinion, not man’s, even though it comes through Moses. H. Wheeler Robinson cited Driver with regard to this description; Driver wrote, “The figure un-derlying the expression is of course the unyielding neck of an obsti-nate intractable animal.”²

According to Louis Goldberg, there is a contrast in these six verses between God’s majestic power and man’s puny righteousness. Men are marked by spiritual shortsightedness.³

God stresses that history is not determined by man but by Him-self, and man is His agent. This means, first, that the real victory in any and every case is God Himself. Whatever the apparent outcome, all history fulfills His sovereign purpose. For either the godly or the ungodly to imagine otherwise is a sin and a delusion.

Second, and specifically, for God’s people to claim the victory is to forsake God. No righteousness, strength, or merit on their part is the primary, or even real, cause of the victory. It is always God’s grace and sovereign purpose. God’s people may well be the more righteous by far, but for them to see this as determinative is to shift the power in and the government of history from God to man.⁴

In v. 3, God is identified “as a consuming fire.” God is repeatedly so described in the Bible:

And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.

(Ex. 3:2)

And the sight of the glory of the LORD was like a devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel.

(Ex. 24:17)

2. H. Wheeler Robinson, Deuteronomy and Joshua (Edinburgh, Scotland: T. C.

& E. C. Jack, n.d.), 102.

3. Louis Goldberg, Deuteronomy (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Lamplighter Books, 1980), 74-75.

4. J. A. Thompson, Deuteronomy (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, [1974] 1978), 137.

Sovereignty in History (Deuteronomy 9:1-6) 145 Out of heaven he made thee to hear his voice, that he might in-struct thee: and upon earth he shewed thee his great fire; and thou heardest his words out of the midst of the fire. (Deut. 4:36) For our God is a consuming fire. (Heb. 12:29)

In vv. 4-6, a key word is righteousness or justice. The governing force in history is not man’s justice but God’s. God’s justice governs all of history, and God in His patience often allows injustice to de-velop its full implications before He moves against it. God often al-lows evil to develop into maturity so that even the ungodly cry out against it. God therefore in these verses specifically rejects the cho-sen people’s idea of justice. It is His will, not man’s, that shall be done. Israel must never say, “My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth” (8:17). We must never see ourselves as the determining force in history nor in our own lives.

The reason for the judgment on Canaan is Canaan’s depravity, and Israel is the beneficiary of this judgment. Therefore, “Speak not thou in thine heart...saying, For my righteousness the LORD hath brought me to possess this land: but for the wickedness of these na-tions the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee” (v.

4). The attitude condemned here is Phariseeism, the religious faith that condemned Israel, and many nations since then. It marks us to a great extent today. As Schneider observed, it is “native to fallen hu-manity to feel self-righteous.”⁵

Moses repeatedly uses the term “this day” or “today,” as in v. 3.

There is a stress on immediacy. God’s word is not an academic mat-ter for discussion on general mat-terms. It is an urgent and immediate word. God says, Hear me now, this moment, and always.

God tells Israel that, in their own way, they are no better than the Canaanites whom they will soon destroy. God’s favor to them is due to His covenant promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (v. 5). They are not a determining consideration in God’s sight. God knew them better than they knew themselves, and He describes them as a stub-born and perverse people. God warns Israel three times in these vers-es that the gift of the land is an act of grace. First, He tells them that, even though they will triumph, it will not be due to their righteous-ness nor their merits. It will be an act of judgment by God.

5. Bernard N. Schneider, Deuteronomy (Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 1970), 77.

Second, God was giving them this victory for reasons going back a few centuries to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The history of the mo-ment involves God’s purposes going back to creation and looking forward to all eternity. The narrowness of our vision and time-span does not determine the extent of God’s concern and action. God keeps an ancient promise made to the three patriarchs, and He exe-cutes a sentence on some ungodly peoples. Both these factors make Israel’s part a lesser one, and one that is not based on merit.

Third, God does not allow Israel to see that, in spite of these things, they have some merit on their side, some claim to a reward.

God calls them stubborn and perverse, and He stresses His grace to an undeserving people. However, as Craigie points out,

The gift of the land could not be a reward for righteousness; it was a gift of God’s graciousness. On the other hand, the con-tinuing possession of the land by the Israelites would certainly be contingent upon obedience. Disobedience to the covenant could lead to forfeiting the land, and the Israelites would join the Canaanites as ex-residents.⁶

This makes plain what all Scripture teaches, namely, that our salva-tion is by God’s sovereign and atoning grace, but our sanctificasalva-tion as well as our continuing place in His providential care depend on our obedience to His law-word. Those who are antinomian say in effect that they will receive from God but that they will not obey Him.

Joseph Parker’s comment on Moses’s words here is very good:

He told the people in crossing Jordan and undertaking a severe task that “God is he which goeth over before thee.” Having told Israel that the encountering people were “great and tall, the chil-dren of the Anakims, whom thou knowest, and of whom thou hast heard say, Who can stand before the children of Anak?” he said, — remember, or “understand” — grasp the theology of the case — God is at the head of the army, and the Anakim are be-fore him as the grasshoppers of the earth. Moses insists upon Is-rael having a right theology — not a science, not merely formulated opinion, but a distinct, living grasp of the thought that God is, and is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.⁷ In other words, simply believing is not enough: our faith must be a constantly determining and dominating force in our lives. Moreover,

6. P. C. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976), 194.7. Joseph Parker, The People’s Bible, vol. 4, Numbers 27—Deuteronomy (New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls, n.d.), 197.

Sovereignty in History (Deuteronomy 9:1-6) 147

“God prepares the way for his people,” and “success is due to God, not to persons.”⁸ From beginning to end, Deuteronomy emphasizes the unmerited grace of God as the only source of salvation for men or nations. Those who see salvation by law as basic to the Old Testa-ment are spiritually blind.

God’s preparation of Israel for the conquest thus was to stress the sovereignty of His grace. They had to see the theological issue clear-ly; they then had a duty to express their gratitude in obedience.

8. Roy Lee Honeycutt Jr., The Layman’s Bible Book Commentary, vol. 3, Leviti-cus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1979), 129-30.

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