The fifth book of the Old Testament, also known as the Fifth Book of Moses.

Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34

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Everything King James Bible
Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible
Book: Deuteronomy
Chapters: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8 · 9 · 10 · 11 · 12 · 13 · 14 · 15 · 16 · 17 · 18 · 19 · 20 · 21 · 22 · 23 · 24 · 25 · 26 · 27 · 28 · 29 · 30 · 31 · 32 · 33 · 34 ·

This Book repeats much of the history and of the laws
contained in the three foregoing books: Moses delivered it to
Israel a little before his Death, both By Word of mouth, that it
might affect, and By Writing, that it might abide. The men of
that Generation to which the Law was first given were all dead,
and a new Generation was sprung up, to whom God would have it
repeated By Moses himself, now they were going to possess the
land of Canaan. The wonderful Love of God to his Church is set
forth in this Book; how he ever preserved his Church for his own
mercies sake, and would still have his name called upon among
them. Such are the general outlines of this Book, the whole of
which shows Moses' Love for Israel, and marks him an eminent
Type of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us apply the exhortations and
persuasions to our own consciences, to excite our minds to a
believing, grateful obedience to the commands of God.

Modern theory holds that the book of Deuteronomy was written by an underground group of Jews who wanted to reform Judaism. This is based on a section of Kings II, wherein King Josiah discovers a "book of the law" in the Temple, and starts instituting reforms based on its contents.

A 19th century German scholar named Dewette noticed that these reforms are strikingly similar to the contents of Deuteronomy. He also noticed that Deuteronomy's language was different from that of the other books, indicating that Deuteronomy may have been authored separately (see the Graf Wellhausen Hypothesis). It is therefore believed that Deuteronomy was the book found by King Josiah in 622 BCE. He read it and proclaimed to the Jewish people that their entire observance of Judaism had been misguided. He instituted a series of reforms based on Deuteronomy, which later was attached to the body of written tradition as the fifth book of the Torah.

Deu`ter*on"o*my (?), n. [Gr. ; second + law: cf. L. Deuteronomium.] Bibl.

The fifth book of the Pentateuch, containing the second giving of the law by Moses.

 

© Webster 1913.

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