Deuteronomy 10: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Moses continues retelling what happened after Israel made the gold calf. God told him to cut a second pair of stone tablets and make a wooden chest for them; God wrote the Ten Commandments again, and God listened to Moses and did not destroy the people. Moses adds notes about the people's journey, Aaron's death, and the setting apart of the tribe of Levi, who receive no land because the LORD is their inheritance. He then tells Israel what God asks of them: to fear him, love him, serve him, keep his commands, stop being stubborn, and love foreigners, because they were once foreigners in Egypt.

Claim by Claim

1. 10:1
   • At that time the LORD spoke to Moses.
   • The LORD told Moses to cut two stone tablets like the first ones.
   • The LORD told Moses to come up to him on the mountain.
   • The LORD told Moses to make himself an ark of wood.
2. 10:2
   • The LORD said he would write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets.
   • Moses had broken the first tablets.
   • The LORD told Moses to put the tablets in the ark.
3. 10:3
   • Moses made an ark of acacia wood.
   • Moses cut two stone tablets like the first ones.
   • Moses went up the mountain.
   • Moses had the two tablets in his hand.
4. 10:4
   • The LORD wrote on the tablets according to the first writing.
   • What was written was the ten words.
   • The LORD had spoken those words to the people on the mountain.
   • The LORD spoke them from the midst of the fire.
   • He spoke them on the day of the assembly.
   • The LORD gave the tablets to Moses.
5. 10:5
   • Moses turned and came down from the mountain.
   • Moses put the tablets in the ark he had made.
   • The tablets are there still.
   • This was as the LORD commanded Moses.
6. 10:6
   • The children of Israel journeyed from Beeroth of the sons of Jaakan to Moserah.
   • Aaron died at Moserah.
   • Aaron was buried there.
   • Eleazar, Aaron's son, served as priest in his place.
7. 10:7
   • From there they journeyed to Gudgodah.
   • From Gudgodah they journeyed to Jotbathah.
   • Jotbathah is a land of streams of water.
8. 10:8
   • At that time the LORD separated the tribe of Levi.
   • Levi was separated to carry the ark of the covenant of the LORD.
   • Levi was separated to stand before the LORD to serve him.
   • Levi was separated to bless in the LORD's name.
   • This has continued to this day.
9. 10:9
   • Therefore Levi has no portion or inheritance with his brothers.
   • The LORD is Levi's inheritance.
   • This is as the LORD your God spoke to him.
10. 10:10
    • Moses stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights, as at the first time.
    • The LORD listened to Moses that time also.
    • The LORD was not willing to destroy you.
11. 10:11
    • The LORD said to Moses to arise and go on the journey ahead of the people.
    • The purpose was that the people would go in and possess the land.
    • The LORD swore to their fathers to give them that land.
12. 10:12
    • Moses asks Israel what the LORD your God requires of you.
    • The LORD requires you to fear the LORD your God.
    • The LORD requires you to walk in all his ways.
    • The LORD requires you to love him.
    • The LORD requires you to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
13. 10:13
    • The LORD requires you to keep the commandments of the LORD and his statutes.
    • Moses is commanding these to you this day.
    • These are for your good.
14. 10:14
    • The heavens and the highest heavens belong to the LORD your God.
    • The earth and all that is in it belong to the LORD your God.
15. 10:15
    • The LORD delighted in your fathers, to love them.
    • The LORD chose their seed after them, that is, you, above all peoples.
    • This choice stands as it is this day.
16. 10:16
    • Circumcise the foreskin of your heart.
    • Do not stiffen your neck any more.
17. 10:17
    • The LORD your God is God of gods.
    • The LORD your God is Lord of lords.
    • He is the great God.
    • He is mighty.
    • He is awesome.
    • He does not show partiality.
    • He does not take a bribe.
18. 10:18
    • He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow.
    • He loves the sojourner.
    • He gives the sojourner food and clothing.
19. 10:19
    • Love the sojourner.
    • You were sojourners in the land of Egypt.
20. 10:20
    • You shall fear the LORD your God.
    • You shall serve him.
    • You shall cling to him.
    • You shall swear by his name.
21. 10:21
    • He is your praise.
    • He is your God.
    • He has done for you these great and awesome things.
    • Your eyes have seen them.
22. 10:22
    • Your fathers went down into Egypt as seventy persons.
    • Now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

10:1

The "wooden chest" is what older translations call the ark, a portable box, later plated with gold, that held the stone tablets and traveled with Israel. "Ark" in the King James simply means chest; it has nothing to do with a boat except that Noah's vessel is called by the same English word. The mountain here is Horeb, also called Sinai, where the law was given.

10:2

The breaking of the first tablets refers back to the episode in which Moses, coming down and finding the people worshiping a golden calf, smashed them at the foot of the mountain (Exodus 32; retold in Deuteronomy 9).

10:3

Acacia (King James "shittim") is a hard, dense, insect-resistant desert tree, one of the few sizeable timbers available in the Sinai wilderness.

10:4

The Hebrew phrase behind "Ten Commandments" is literally "the ten words", hence the older term Decalogue. "The day you all gathered there" refers to the assembly of the whole nation at the mountain when the law was first proclaimed.

10:5

"There they be" is 1611 English for "they are still there." Moses is telling his audience that the original tablets are in the chest at that very moment, decades later.

10:6

Aaron was Moses' elder brother and the first high priest; the office passed by descent, so his son Eleazar succeeded him. These verses list stopping places on the wilderness route; the order and names differ from the itinerary given in Numbers 33, where Aaron dies at Mount Hor, and the difference has never been fully reconciled.

10:7

In a desert march a "land with streams of water" is worth recording, permanent running water, not the seasonal wadis that carried water only after rain.

10:8

Levi was one of the twelve tribes; its men were assigned to the care and transport of the sanctuary and its furnishings rather than to farming. A covenant is a formal binding agreement, in this culture the same kind of instrument used for treaties between a ruler and his subjects, with stipulations and sworn obligations on both sides. The chest is called the ark of the covenant because the tablets stating those terms were kept inside it.

10:9

"Inheritance" here means an allotted share of the land of Canaan, held permanently by a family and passed to its descendants. The Levites received no such territory; they lived on portions of the offerings brought to the sanctuary and in towns granted within other tribes' land.

10:10

This is the second forty-day stay on the mountain, after the golden calf, when Moses asked God not to wipe out the people.

10:11

The "ancestors" (King James "fathers") sworn to are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to whom the land was promised in Genesis.

10:12

"Fear" in the King James, and "awe" here, translates a Hebrew word that covers everything from dread to reverence to loyal respect for a superior; it does not mean simple fright.

10:13

"Commands and rules" (King James "commandments and statutes") are near-synonyms in Hebrew legal language; the piling up of such terms is a standard way of saying "the whole body of law," not a list of distinct categories.

10:14

"The heaven and the heaven of heavens" is a Hebrew way of forming a superlative by repeating a word, the sky, and beyond it the very highest reaches of the sky. The same construction produces "God of gods" and "Lord of lords" in verse 17.

10:15

"Seed" in the King James almost always means offspring or descendants, not something planted. "Had a delight in" translates a word for setting your affection on someone by choice.

10:16

Circumcision, the cutting away of the foreskin, was the physical mark of belonging to this people, performed on every male infant. Here the image is turned into a figure of speech: cut away what is blocking the heart. "Stiffnecked" is a farming image, an ox that sets its neck against the yoke and refuses to be steered.

10:17

"Regardeth not persons" is a courtroom term: literally "does not lift the face," that is, does not favor one party over another because of who they are. "Taketh reward" in 1611 English means accepts a bribe, not receives a reward. "Terrible" in the King James means awe-inspiring, not dreadful in the modern sense.

10:18

Fatherless children, widows and resident foreigners were the three groups with no male head of household and no clan land to fall back on, and so with no standing to press a claim in court. Ancient law codes across the region single them out as the test of a just ruler.

10:19

"Stranger" in the King James means a foreigner living long-term among the people, a resident outsider with limited legal standing, not a passing traveler or an unknown person.

10:20

"Cleave" in 1611 English means to stick fast to something, the opposite of its other modern sense of splitting apart. Swearing by a god's name was the ordinary legal procedure for guaranteeing testimony or a contract; whose name you swore by declared whose authority you lived under.

10:21

"Terrible things" again means acts that inspire awe, here the plagues and the escape from Egypt.

10:22

"Threescore and ten" is seventy (a score is twenty). This is the number given in Genesis 46 for Jacob's household when it went down to Egypt during the famine.