Deuteronomy 30:11-20

The Close of the Concluding Addresses

The commandment is not too hard nor distant, but near, articulate, intelligible and practicable (Deuteronomy 30:11-14). Sheer life and death, good and evil, is set before Israel. Obedience means blessing, apostasy destruction (Deuteronomy 30:15-19 a). Choose life that thou mayest dwell in the land, sworn to thy fathers (Deuteronomy 30:19 b Deuteronomy 30:20). The discourse turns back to the present of the (assumed) speaker and closes the whole series of his addresses upon the keynotes which have rung through them. As Driver says, -it is next to impossible that Deuteronomy 30:11 can have been originally the sequel of Deuteronomy 30:1." Deuteronomy 30:11 may be a fragment from an unknown source, for their subject connects neither with Deuteronomy 30:10 (Berth. and Marti notwithstanding) nor with anything else in Deut. except Deuteronomy 29:29 (28), which however is in the Pl. address. Deuteronomy 30:15 supply the needed peroration to 28, which ends abruptly; but the changes of address in them point to their editorial origin.

It is the old question whether the same writer thus clenches his argument with the repetition of a number of his formulas or the hand of a later editor has collected these. The probability is with the latter. Cullen takes Deuteronomy 30:11 as part of his Book of the Miṣwah, in his scheme the original Deuteronomy. Berth. regards Deuteronomy 30:15-20 as immediately following 28, and as belonging, therefore, to D. Steuern. holds at least Deuteronomy 30:15 b, Deuteronomy 30:19 b, and part of 20 as D's. The changes of the form of address are signs that the passage largely consists of quotations.