Deuteronomy chapter 4

vs 41-42

These are the cities of refuge. I had to preach a sermon on these waaay back when I first started preaching. Interesting topic, kinda. Obviously he can't set up the others yet.

vs 43

Especially important information should you ever find yourself travelling back in time and accidently killing someone on the west side of the Jordan. And being able to pretend you're a Jew.

vs 44

Intro to the Law. Sounds like a first year university subject.

vs 45

What exactly is the difference in the Hebrew between a stipulation, a decree, and a law? This is where I really feel like I should get a good lexical commentary based in the NIV. Because the NASB one obviously translates the first word as "testimonies", and then describes it as "the testimony or witness of one or more people. Decree is translated "statute" in the NASB, and they say that is a prescribed task. Law is translated "ordinances" in NASB, and is actually the word "mishpat", which I know! Which is justice, so in this iteration I take it as laws pertaining to criminal offence and the like, to keep justice.

Overall, this could just be a dropping of multiple words to give a fullness of the transferrence - Moses is letting it all out, as it were.

vs 46

It seems pointless, but if it weren't for verses like this, we'd never have context. This book, then, is claiming to record what Moses said at this time in Israel's history. So it is making a historical claim. If you say that the book was written later, you are saying it against this claim.

vs 47

Just in case you'd missed that before. This is a big theme of the early part of the book, it seems, because it gets repeated a lot. For the new generation entering the land, this is their miracles for them to stake their faith in. That's how it seems to me, anyway.

vs 48-49

A less than exciting end to the chapter. But we can hope they've got landmarkings out of their system by the time we get back to it in chapter 5!