Deuteronomy 11: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Moses tells Israel to love and obey the LORD, reminding the adults that they themselves saw what God did in Egypt, at the Red Sea, in the desert, and to Dathan and Abiram. He describes the land they are entering as hill country watered by rain rather than by hand, and ties rain, grass, and harvest to their obedience, warning that turning to other gods brings drought and quick loss of the land. He tells them to keep these words in their hearts, wear them, write them on their houses, and teach them to their children. He then sets a blessing and a curse before them, to be announced on Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal once they cross the Jordan.

Claim by Claim

1. 11:1
   • You are to love the LORD your God.
   • You are to keep his charge, his statutes, his judgments, and his commandments.
   • This keeping is to continue all the days.
2. 11:2
   • Moses tells them to know this day.
   • Moses says he is not speaking with their children.
   • Their children have not known and have not seen the discipline of the LORD their God.
   • The discipline included his greatness, his strong hand, and his outstretched arm.
3. 11:3
   • The LORD performed signs and deeds in the midst of Egypt.
   • He performed them against Pharaoh king of Egypt.
   • He performed them against all Pharaoh's land.
4. 11:4
   • The LORD acted against the army of Egypt, its horses, and its chariots.
   • He made the waters of the Sea of Reeds flow over them.
   • The Egyptians were pursuing after Israel at that time.
   • The LORD destroyed them, and the destruction stands to this day.
5. 11:5
   • The LORD acted on Israel's behalf in the wilderness.
   • This continued until they came to this place.
6. 11:6
   • The LORD acted against Dathan and Abiram.
   • Dathan and Abiram were sons of Eliab, son of Reuben.
   • The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them.
   • The earth swallowed their households and their tents.
   • The earth swallowed every living thing that belonged to them.
   • This happened in the midst of all Israel.
7. 11:7
   • Their own eyes have seen every great deed the LORD did.
8. 11:8
   • They are to keep the whole commandment Moses commands them today.
   • The purpose is that they may be strong.
   • The purpose is that they may go in and take possession of the land.
   • They are crossing over to that land to possess it.
9. 11:9
   • The purpose is that they may prolong their days on the land.
   • The LORD swore to their fathers to give that land to them and to their offspring.
   • The land flows with milk and honey.
10. 11:10
    • The land they are entering to possess is not like the land of Egypt.
    • They came out from Egypt.
    • In Egypt they sowed their seed and watered it with the foot, as a vegetable garden.
11. 11:11
    • The land they are crossing over to possess is a land of hills and valleys.
    • It drinks water from the rain of the heavens.
12. 11:12
    • It is a land the LORD their God attends to.
    • The eyes of the LORD their God are continually upon it.
    • This is so from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.
13. 11:13
    • The condition is that they diligently listen to the commandments Moses commands them today.
    • The commandments are to love the LORD their God.
    • The commandments are to serve him with all their heart and with all their soul.
14. 11:14
    • God will give the rain of their land in its season.
    • The rain includes the early rain and the latter rain.
    • They will gather in their grain, their new wine, and their fresh oil.
15. 11:15
    • God will give grass in their field for their livestock.
    • They will eat and be satisfied.
16. 11:16
    • They are to take heed to themselves.
    • The danger is that their heart be enticed.
    • The danger is that they turn aside and serve other gods.
    • The danger is that they bow down to other gods.
17. 11:17
    • If they do, the anger of the LORD will burn against them.
    • He will shut up the heavens.
    • There will be no rain.
    • The ground will not give its produce.
    • They will perish quickly from off the good land.
    • The LORD is giving them that good land.
18. 11:18
    • They are to set these words of Moses on their heart and on their soul.
    • They are to bind them as a sign on their hand.
    • They shall be as frontlets between their eyes.
19. 11:19
    • They are to teach these words to their children.
    • They are to speak of them when sitting in the house.
    • They are to speak of them when walking on the road.
    • They are to speak of them when lying down.
    • They are to speak of them when rising up.
20. 11:20
    • They are to write them on the doorposts of their house.
    • They are to write them on their gates.
21. 11:21
    • The purpose is that their days and their children's days may be many on the land.
    • The LORD swore to their fathers to give them that land.
    • Their days are to be as the days of the heavens above the earth.
22. 11:22
    • The condition is that they diligently keep all this commandment Moses commands them to do.
    • The commandment is to love the LORD their God.
    • The commandment is to walk in all his ways.
    • The commandment is to cling to him.
23. 11:23
    • Then the LORD will dispossess all these nations from before them.
    • They will dispossess nations greater and mightier than themselves.
24. 11:24
    • Every place the sole of their foot treads will belong to them.
    • Their territory will run from the wilderness and Lebanon.
    • Their territory will run from the river, the river Euphrates, to the western sea.
25. 11:25
    • No man will stand before them.
    • The LORD their God will put the fear and dread of them on all the land they tread.
    • This is as he spoke to them.
26. 11:26
    • Moses says he sets before them today a blessing and a curse.
27. 11:27
    • The blessing comes if they listen to the commandments of the LORD their God.
    • Moses commands those commandments to them today.
28. 11:28
    • The curse comes if they do not listen to the commandments of the LORD their God.
    • The curse comes if they turn aside from the way Moses commands them today.
    • Turning aside means going after other gods.
    • They have not known those other gods.
29. 11:29
    • The LORD their God will bring them into the land they are entering to possess.
    • When he does, they are to set the blessing on Mount Gerizim.
    • They are to set the curse on Mount Ebal.
30. 11:30
    • Moses asks whether those mountains are not beyond the Jordan.
    • They lie behind the way of the setting sun.
    • They lie in the land of the Canaanite who dwells in the Arabah.
    • They lie opposite Gilgal.
    • They lie beside the oaks of Moreh.
31. 11:31
    • They are crossing the Jordan to go in and possess the land.
    • The LORD their God is giving them that land.
    • They will possess it and dwell in it.
32. 11:32
    • They are to be careful to do all the statutes and judgments.
    • Moses sets those statutes and judgments before them today.

Words Worth Explaining

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

11:1

"Charge," "statutes," "judgments" and "commandments" are four overlapping Hebrew legal words piled up for emphasis, not four separate categories. "Charge" is a duty someone is given to guard; "statutes" are things engraved or fixed; "judgments" are rulings of the kind a judge hands down in a particular case. Ancient Near Eastern treaties often stacked terms this way to mean "every part of this agreement."

11:2

"Chastisement" translates a Hebrew word (musar) closer to "training" or "discipline" than to "punishment": the instruction a parent gives a child, which may include correction. "Mighty hand and outstretched arm" was standard Egyptian and Hebrew language for a king's military power in action; here it is a fixed phrase that always points back to the escape from Egypt.

11:3

The "miracles" and "acts" are the plagues and the escape from Egypt, told in Exodus 7 to 12. "Pharaoh" is not a personal name but a title for Egypt's king, from an Egyptian phrase meaning "great house," which first meant the palace and then the man living in it.

11:4

The "Red Sea" renders Hebrew yam suph, literally "sea of reeds"; which body of water is meant has been debated since ancient times. Chariots were the most expensive and prestigious weapon of the age, the equivalent of an armored division, which is why their loss is singled out.

11:5

After leaving Egypt, Israel lived in the desert for forty years before reaching this spot east of the Jordan River.

11:6

Dathan and Abiram joined a revolt against Moses' leadership during the desert years, told in Numbers 16; the ground split open and swallowed them. Reuben was Jacob's firstborn, and his descendants formed one of the twelve tribes. "The earth opened her mouth" is a Hebrew figure of speech, not a claim that the ground was alive.

11:9

"A land flowing with milk and honey" is a stock phrase for a fertile country: milk from goat and cattle herds that always have grazing, and honey, probably wild honey and thick syrup boiled from dates and figs. It describes good pasture and good orchards, not literal rivers.

11:10

Egypt farmed by irrigation from the Nile, moving water through channels; "watered it with your foot" refers either to foot-powered water-lifting devices or to opening and closing the small earth dams between channels by kicking them through. The point of the comparison is labor: Egyptian crops depended on human effort at the river, Canaanite crops on rain no farmer controls.

11:12

"From the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year" refers to the agricultural year, which ran from the autumn rains through the following harvest, a farmer's calendar, not a bureaucratic one.

11:13

In Hebrew, "heart" means the mind and the will, the place where you think things over and decide, not the seat of feelings as in modern English. "Soul" translates nephesh, which means your whole living self, your life and your appetites, not an immaterial part of you separate from the body. "With all your heart and with all your soul" means with your thinking, your choosing, and your entire life.

11:14

In the land's climate nearly all rain falls between autumn and spring. The "first rain" comes in October–November and softens ground baked hard by summer so it can be plowed and sown; the "latter rain" comes in March–April and swells the grain just before harvest. Miss either and the crop fails. "Corn" in the King James Version means grain of any kind, wheat and barley here, not maize. Grain, wine and oil together were the three staple crops of the region.

11:15

"Cattle" in the KJV means livestock of any kind, and in this region that means mostly sheep and goats rather than cows.

11:16

"That your heart be not deceived" carries the sense of being talked round or seduced. The realistic danger for farmers settling in Canaan was not a sudden change of mind but gradual drift into local religion, in which particular gods were credited with sending rain and making crops grow. That is why the warning runs straight into a threat about rainfall in the next verse.

11:17

"Wrath be kindled" translates a Hebrew idiom in which the nose or face burns hot with anger. "Shut up the heaven" pictures the sky as a store-room whose door can be closed, the standard way of describing drought.

11:18

Ancient readers debated whether this was a figure of speech for keeping the words constantly in mind or a literal instruction. It came to be practiced literally: small boxes holding written scripture passages, later called tefillin or phylacteries, bound by leather straps to the arm and forehead. "Frontlets" is an old English word for an ornament worn across the brow.

11:19

"When you sit… walk… lie down… rise up" is a Hebrew way of saying "at every point in the day" by naming its opposite ends, not a list of four specific occasions.

11:20

This instruction came to be kept by fixing a small case holding the written words, later called a mezuzah, to the doorframe. "Gates" means the gateway of a walled town, which was also where markets were held and legal cases decided, so the words were to stand at both private and public entrances.

11:21

"As the days of heaven upon the earth" means for as long as the sky is above the ground. It is a way of saying a very, very long time.

11:22

"Cleave" in 1611 English meant to stick fast to something, the opposite of its other modern sense of splitting apart. The Hebrew word is the one used of a husband holding fast to his wife in Genesis 2:24.

11:23

"Possess" in this chapter means take over the land of, and in verse 23 it means driving the existing population out of it. The KJV verb covers both halves of that, and English "dispossess" is closer to the second.

11:24

The boundaries name the largest extent ever claimed: "the wilderness" is the desert to the south, Lebanon the mountains to the north, the Euphrates the great river to the north-east, and "the uttermost sea", literally "the hindmost sea", the Mediterranean in the west. Hebrew orients by facing east, so "behind" means west. "Coast" in the King James Version means border or territory, not shoreline.

11:25

"No man shall stand before you" is military language for an enemy holding his ground in a battle line. "The fear of you and the dread of you" refers to a panic sent ahead of an army, a common motif in ancient war accounts, in which the enemy is beaten before the fighting starts.

11:26

Ancient treaties between a ruler and a subject people typically ended with a list of blessings for keeping the agreement and curses for breaking it, recited aloud in public. This chapter and the ceremony described below follow that form.

11:29

"Put the blessing upon" means to proclaim it aloud from that place. Gerizim and Ebal are two facing mountains with the town of Shechem in the valley between them, in the center of the land; the ceremony is described in full in Deuteronomy 27 and carried out in Joshua 8.

11:30

Moses is speaking from east of the Jordan, so "on the other side" means the western bank. The Arabah is the deep rift valley the Jordan runs through. Gilgal was the first camp after crossing the river. The "oak of Moreh", Moreh means "teacher" or "one who gives an oracle", was a famous landmark tree near Shechem where Abraham had stopped generations earlier; large trees served as recognized meeting places and boundary markers.

11:31

The Israelites are camped east of the Jordan on the plains of Moab, and the whole of Deuteronomy is presented as speeches Moses made there in the days before the crossing, a crossing he himself would not make.