Deuteronomy 31

The law says to kill them all. “When the LORD your God gives them to you, you’ll need to finish them off. After you defeat them in battle, wipe them out by killing them all. Don’t make any peace treaty with them. Don’t show them mercy” (Deuteronomy 7:2). Also: “They promised the LORD, ‘If you will let us defeat those people, we will annihilate all Canaanites and decimate their cities.” (Numbers 21:2). The Hebrew word for “annihilate” is herem. Scholars describe it as a “curse of war” or a “ban.” The “ban” means that when soldiers conquer a city, for example, they are banned from keeping anything for themselves—everything in the city is under the curse of war and must die. Joshua later fought by those rules. His orders at the Battle of Jericho: “Keep yourselves from the things devoted to destruction, lest when you have devoted them you take any of the devoted things and make the camp of Israel a thing for destruction and bring trouble upon it” (Joshua 6:18 English Standard Version).

Better known as the Ark of the Covenant, a sacred chest that held the Ten Commandments. It was Israel’s most revered object, and it was kept in the most sacred room inside the worship center, a room sometimes known as the Holy of Holies or the Most Holy Place. For a description, see Exodus 23.

Some Israelites would offer to work as slaves because they couldn’t afford to take care of themselves. Others were ordered into slavery to pay off debts they owed.

It’s often called the Festival of Shelters or Festival of Booths. In Exodus, it was the last harvest festival of the year. That’s when farmers harvested late-season crops such as grapes, figs, and olives (Exodus 23:16). This was in the late summer and early autumn. The Hebrew word describing the festival here is sukka. It can mean tent, canopy, or temporary shelter. Moses said God wanted the Israelites to observe this festival by building temporary shelters and living in them for seven days “so you and your descendants will remember that the people of Israel I led out of Egyptian slavery once lived in shelters like this” (Leviticus 23:43).

Somewhere along the way, the people forgot about this. The Law Book may have been the long-lost book of Jewish laws that was discovered at the temple during the reign of King Josiah (ruled about 640-609 BC). When he heard the laws read, he ripped his clothes because he realized the nation was breaking a lot of laws. He launched a revival and destroyed idols and shrines in his kingdom, the southern Jewish nation of Judah (2 Kings 22:8). The revival was apparently too little, too late. Babylonian invaders from what is now Iraq leveled Jerusalem and erased the Jewish nation from the political map during that same generation, in 586 BC.

The Hebrew word, anan, can mean: cloud, smoke, or “mist.”

In this context, the Hebrew word sakab means Moses is about to die. The word could mean: lie down, sleep, leave, go to bed.

Deuteronomy 32:1-43 is known as the Song of Moses.

“Law Book” probably refers to the laws Moses delivered in his speeches preserved in Deuteronomy, many scholars say. He reportedly wrote what is now Deuteronomy chapters 1-30 and gave them to the priests for safe keeping (31:9.

The original Hebrew word is dabar. It can mean: sing, recite, say, speak. It’s anyone’s guess which one Moses did.