Today, I am reading and commenting on  Deuteronomy 1-2.

The Book of Deuteronomy declares itself to be what Moses told the Israelites as they camped on the eastern side of the Jordan.  There would be two reasons for repeating the Law which God had given Moses for the Israelites in this way.  First, except for Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, all of those who had been adults when God first gave them His Law had died and all of the remaining people had been too young to fully comprehend the Law when Moses first relayed it to them.  Second, over the course of their wandering in the wilderness, things had happened which led to clarifications on how to apply the Law.  So, Moses repeated the Law, with all of those clarifications included, to the Israelites.  There are scholars who believe that this book was composed at a much later time.  I believe that it was indeed initially composed before the Israelites entered the Promised Land (although I hold no opinion as to whether it was first written down then, or merely passed along orally for some time).  One thing which makes me believe that is what is written in chapter 1 verse 37.  There Moses says that it was because of the rebelliousness of the Israelites that God became angry with him and would not allow him to enter the Promised Land.  Yet, in Numbers 20 we are told that God said that Moses would not enter the Promised Land because he had struck the rock when God had told him just to speak to it.  What is written here sounds like something a person like Moses would say, while a third party writing later would have been more careful to align what they wrote with the earlier account.  I am not suggesting that Moses spoke deceptively here, merely shortening the account to keep from distracting from his primary message.  I also believe that some of the later scribes who transcribed this (either those who first wrote it down, or some of those who copied it for future generations) added editorial comments.  It seems to me unlikely that Moses would have bothered to make the comments about previous inhabitants of the land of the Moabites and the land of the Ammonites which we see in chapter two (and which the NIV puts in parenthesis).

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.