{N}1,{/}1 According to later traditions, the people arrived at Sinai two months after their departure from Egypt (Ex 19,1), that is, during the third month of the year. They had left on the fourteenth of the first month. At Sinai they celebrated the Covenant and received the Law (Ex 20 and 33-34) on Pentecost, meaning the fiftieth day after Passover.

{N}1,{/}2 Speaks of Horeb which is identified with Mount Sinai and of the Kadesh-Barnea oasis. According to Numbers (13-14) it is there that the people refused to embark on the conquest of Canaan, and there they would have to remain for thirty-eight years.
Later, under Moses' guidance, they move towards Moab to enter Canaan from the east. They went through the Arabah, which is the southern part of the great depression through which the Jordan flows and where the Dead Sea also is located. The people came up against Sihon, king of the Amorites from Heshbon, on the west side of the Jordan, and defeated them. We are told that they also defeated another king named Og farther to the north on the plains of Bashan, but the historical authenticity of this is doubtful. The people then live in peace for a time on the hills of Moab, where Moses' activity as legislator of Israel is described during the last period before his death. 
See the commentaries on Ex 17,8 for a somewhat different historical description of this departure and movement. 

{N}2,{/}1 In this account of the march through the desert, verses 11-12 and 20 remind us that the Edomites, Ammonites, and Moabites, who were going to be Israel's neighbors, entered history at almost the same time as the Israelites. Other nomads also settled the lands inhabited by the Amorites and the Horites.

{N}4,{/}5 {N}THE WISDOM OF THE BIBLE{/}
{C}No other people are as wise and as intelligent as this great nation.{/} The book of Deuteronomy is contemporary of the chapter 20 of Exodus with the ten commands. This book was written eight centuries before Christ, and already we read this proud certainty: "God has given us a wisdom that he has not communicated to any other people." Today we may smile at the naivet\u00e9 of this inspired author, writing from the isolation of his village and unaware of the ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures as well as the great cultures and religions of the Far East which had preceded his. However, this author was still conscious of possessing unique laws:
- belief in Yahweh, the only true God, of whom no image should be made;
- belief in the Just God who demands interior fidelity and the practice of justice over any other form of worship;
- the rigorous obligation of the Sabbath as the means for preserving the freedom and dignity of the people; 
- the protection of human life and respect for foreigners, who very often were no more than Israelites living there, but from a different tribe;
- the prohibition of all sexual license.
The author of Deuteronomy already saw the great benefit of these laws, which would only be appreciated long after, when the neighboring cultures had disappeared.
Israel's pride in possessing a superior wisdom created a feeling of being a privileged people. The reverse was also true: confidence of having been called by God to a unique destiny was one of the pillars of Israel's wisdom. The whole structure of the Law would have collapsed if they had not believed in Yahweh's Covenant with Israel (4,13; 4,20). Deuteronomy, which was strongly inspired by the preaching of the first prophets from the school of Elijah, will repeat to us in a thousands of ways that Israel's salvation will come only through faithfulness to its calling.
Here we find a characteristic feature of the identity of the people of the Bible. Nowadays, we are aware that God has been carrying out the work of salvation in diverse cultures through the religions of the world. We must recognize with all honesty that many beliefs found in the religion of both Israel and Christianity already existed in other more ancient religions. Having said this, a comparative study of the world's Great Religions manifests the privileged uniqueness of biblical revelation. This revelation was entrusted to the only people to whom God manifested himself face to face. While other religions taught about a distant, indescribable God, Yahweh talked to Israel in the midst of their own community. While other religions proposed divine laws and wisdom in their search for the Absolute One, at no time did they center their search in service and obedience to the God who was known face to face (4,7; 4,35; Col 2,8-10).
It is true that in Deuteronomy we read: "You heard the sound of words, but didn't see any figure; you only heard a voice" (4,12; 5,24), but this is simply a prohibition of images and a call to faith. It does not deny that God has manifested himself to them. The author describes Yahweh constantly as a God who reveals his word to those he loves and who love him (4,37; 7,8; 6,4). In the New Testament, the Discourse after the Last Supper found in John 14-17 has no precedence or equivalent in any other religion!

{N}4,{/}9 We find this same command in 4,25; 6,12; 8,11. The author puts in Moses' mouth what his own experience has taught him. The religious indifference of his contemporaries is due partially to the fact that their generation had not experienced the wonders of God. But their stubborn indifference was not due just to the passage of time, because at that time the centuries old traditions transmitted orally retained the dynamic of a contemporary revelation. They forgot the experience of Sinai because they no longer lived as their ancestors had. Israel's culture had changed from that of being a nomadic community to being a stable, agricultural people united as a single nation. As settlers, they lived on land they claimed as their own, which they planted, harvested, and enjoyed its fruits, and in which they themselves became rooted. The dangers of nomadic life had passed.
But 11, 10 and following, while reminding them of the blessings of their ancestors' experience of salvation, provides a warning to shake them from their complacency. In Egypt there was suffering, but they could count on the fruit of their own labor. In Palestine, on the other hand, nothing they do can make rain fall from the sky. Only God can open or close the heavens. Therefore, they must remain faithful to God who has promised to send rain to a faithful people, since he is nature's master.

{N}7,{/}1 Chapters 7-8 clearly distinguish Israel's identity from that of the surrounding nations. The Hebrew word, "goyim" can be translated both here in verse 1 and throughout the Bible as "peoples" or foreign nations. Another Hebrew word with a very similar meaning, habitually designates Israel, "the people." When the Bible says simply "the people", it means Israel in distinction to the pagan nations. Deuteronomy consistently distinguishes Israel in this way from other peoples inhabiting Palestine. 
Even after Joshua's conquest and during the time of the Kings, the subjected non-Israelite Canaanean population maintained its numbers. The biblical narrative usually ignores this fact, except when it warns Israel to avoid age-old pagan customs and religious practices, which many Israelites adopted without scruple. This is why Deuteronomy puts merciless words in Moses' mouth. "Condemn with anathema" all those who occupied the land before them, that is, "Exterminate them!" In more polite terms, everything would have been simpler for Israel if the co-occupants of the territory had disappeared; Israel would not have had constant bad example before their eyes.
God's people, in order to maintain their identity, had to reject the bad example of both sexual license and the worship of idols. Chapter 8 will denounce the sinful error that was the root of it all: Any person who deludes himself, thinking that what he has achieved in life is solely due to his own efforts (cf. 4,9).

{N}7,{/}6 {N}YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN{/}
"Yahweh has chosen you from among all peoples on earth to be his own people." Many ask: Why did God choose Israel instead of any other people? God does not act like a judge, selecting one candidate over another because of their relative merits and capabilities. God chose Israel in eternity, not in history when particular peoples began to emerge. That is why the Bible traces genealogies back to Adam (Gen 5,1; Lk 3,38).
Now this raises a very serious question to the Christians. If the actual jewish person is conscious of his originality in the middle of the rest of the peoples, by the simple fact of being born to jewish parents, it is hard for a Christian on the other hand to say in what way he is different from the rest, and even more how he has been chosen by God. Contrary to the first case, what makes a Christian is not the birth in one or another family or in one or another place.
It is true that until recently in Europe and the Americas, church membership was determined sociologically by the accident of geography and culture. The French, the Irish, Poles and Spaniards, for example, unquestionably baptized their offspring as Catholics. Parents determined the religious allegiance of their children, and no one could criticize this practice. Said tradition, however, left one of the essential characteristics of the baptism in the shadow, that is to say, the answer to a call from God. See Jeremiah's announcement of a new covenant involving the mutual recognition of God and his sons and daughters. 
The Acts of the Apostles presents the primitive Church being born from Jews who recognized Jesus as their Messiah and committed themselves to him in order to become the people of the New Covenant. And when they realized that most people did not follow their example, they better understood themselves as a chosen minority. Some years later, Greeks and other non-Jews who accepted the Gospel did so through the prolonged and disciplined process of the catechumenate by which they were eventually admitted into the community of those chosen by God. And they were conscious that their path to faith, which began by having met some believer, and their perseverance in the catechumenate, were personal gifts from God. 
To the degree that the path to Baptism has been a personal journey and a testing of one's faith, the celebration of Baptism may have been accompanied or followed by an experiential outpouring of the Spirit as described in the Letter to the Hebrews (10,32-33; 12,18-24) and as suggested in Peter's Letter (1 Pet 1). Whatever the moment is when the Spirit manifests its presence in the life of each one (1Cor 12,7; Gal 3,2), it is difficult to find an authentically christian faith without the support of a spiritual experience. That gift of the Spirit is, according to the Scripture, the most evident proof that we have been personally called (Rom 8,16).

{N}9,{/}7 In the following paragraphs the author will recall the sins of Israel: in the first chapter this had been done as well. He saw that he should base the love of God on a very strong awareness of the betrayals of the people and on the tireless patience of God. The love opens our eyes so we discover the injustice that until then we drank like water (Job 15,16), and in return, the awareness of the sin makes the love all the more humble and, consequently, even more authentic (Psalms 51; Lk 7,47). 
Here we find a new characteristic of love according to the Bible: by taking it as a rule in our daily lives, it makes known what has been called "the state of sin of the human race". In this chapter the same certainty that will be found in the epistle to the Romans is encountered: the faith according to Saint Paul is in the first place the welcoming of the reconciliation that God offers us, and by the cross of Jesus we recognize the immenseness of the Father's love (Rom 5,6-9; Lk 20,13).
It is true that the constant reminder of sin can be a way to develop guilty complexes, that is not very healthy (Ne 8,9-12), but we cannot ignore that we are sinners and every so often we close the door to the calls from above (Song 5, 2-6).

{N}14,{/}1 Chapters 14-16 establish the basis that will assure the cohesion of the israelite society. To begin with, there are prohibitions of food products. Later the tithes that will permit the maintenance of a worship worthy of God. Later comes the year of the remission, which put a brake on the processes that are separating all the more often the rich from the poor. Finally there are the feasts for all the men and women of the nation that will be the opportunity to meet in Jerusalem around the Temple.
The prohibitions of food items will be a means to separate themselves for the other peoples that inhabit Palestine. They will be completed with other rules that refer to the pure and the impure and will mark little by little the path of their daily lives. In this way they will obligate the Jew, even the emigrant, not to join the mass of the non-Jews, but to always be joined with their "brothers and sisters", creating among themselves a solidarity that will make Israel a people that is always alive and strong.
The tithes are a concrete obligation, one of those ones before which many believers pull back, with the pretext of a more spiritual meaning of religious realities. One part of the tithe is not totally given (14,22-27). It is to be spent in Jerusalem, which generates abundant entrance fees for the Temple and for the city. This is not the case for the tithe of every three years, designated to the poor and the Levite (28-29). Let us not forget that the Deuteronomy formed part of the great reform that put an end to the provincial temples in order to give the exclusivity to the Temple of Jerusalem. This was meant to eliminate numerous abuses in fact and many religious obligations, but it also depossessed all the priests that lived in these temples. The holy character that was transmitted from parents to children was not taken away, but the community would have to care for its maintenance.
The year of remission is what will be in the Leviticus the sabbatical year: a year of relaxation of the debts thanks to which each Israelite will conserve in Israel part of his heritage. It was supposed to favor the reconciliation and the social solidarity.
As for the three feasts, they are inseparably both religious acts and national manifestations. It is then when the people experiment their identity more profoundly as people of God and when the faith is reaffirmed with the reminders of God's interventions in their history.
It is evident that all of these laws make sense within the unique framework of the history of Israel. These laws should preside over the reform of Hezekiah, on which the second book of Chronicles makes us the greatest praise on the subject of the Great Passover that he had celebrated (chapters 29-31). They also inspired the Reform of Josiah one-century later. Yet when the Christians of today become worried about the moral collapse of the society in countries that had a christian identity, it would not be in vain that they read those pages. A country is not remade without imposing on it a mission, without requesting of it sacrifices that are hard and without creating institutions of effective solidarity and of redistribution. Gandhi had included among the fundamental laws of any society these two adages: there is no politics without morals, nor worship without sacrifices.

{N}15,{/}1 The Deuteronomy asks here that the seventh year be the year of remission. In the Leviticus, written later, in chapter 25, it distinguishes between the seventh year, the sabbatical year when the land rests, and the fiftieth year, which is the year of jubilee, or of remission.

{N}27,{/}9 Chapters 27-31 reunited diverse conclusions and were without a doubt repeatedly rearranged until the return from the exile. It is evident that the paragraphs 9-26 wants to give a different contents to the feast that is mentioned in 27,2, the one that was celebrated in Ephraim's territory, near Shechem, on the hills of Ebal and Gerizim (see Jos 8 and 24).

{N}32,{/}1 That canticle of Moses wants to remind Israel of its vocation, its blame, God's promises that will be fulfilled on the day that they find the path of faithfulness.
1. This canticle is presented as a summons; Moses takes the universe as a witness, as other texts do (Dt 30,19; Job 20,27; Psalms 50,1 and 6).

{N}32,{/}8 (8-9) The choice of Israel from the beginning of the history of the humanity.

{N}32,{/}10 (10-14) The ascent from the desert to the hills of Palestine: the grapevine and the wheat are the riches of the sedentary one.

{N}32,{/}17 They offered sacrifices to the demons. Often the idols are considered like dead works. But at times, the idol is seen as a trap that allows a demon to be adored through it (Ba 4,7; Psalms 106,37; and 1Cor 10,20).

{N}32,{/}21 (21-25) God's justice makes those who provoked his jealousy. 25: see Ez 7,15.

{N}32,{/}26 (26-27) God uses their enemies to punish his people, he will not let them enjoy their triumph: Is 10,5-7. 

{N}32,{/}28 (28-33) Will Israel ever understand what the reason for their disgrace is? When will they realize that the gods and the foreign culture do not more than alienate them?

{N}32,{/}34 (34-36) Yahweh will have his hour and will not be detained from rescuing his banished people.

{N}32,{/}40 (40-43) Yahweh's Judgement: against the enemies of his people and those of his people that are his enemies.

