Introduction

It may be said, without overstating the fact, that no other book has shaped the contours of Old Testament spirituality and, subsequently, the topography of the Judeo-Christian faith as the book of Deuteronomy. But from whence does the book derive its authority to speak with such power as it has? The narrator is unabashed in acknowledging that this authority is, first and foremost, not his. Instead, it derives, he says in this introduction, from the fact that they are 'the words Moses spoke to all Israel' (v1), that these what Moses "had proclaimed to the Israelites all that the Lord had commanded him concerning them" (v3).

There was a time when it was the fashion to see the book of Deuteronomy as modelled on some forms of ancient Near Eastern (ANE) suzerain-vassal treaties; these verses were then understood as serving a function similar to the preambles found in these treaties. Scholars are no longer so confident about the relationship between Deuteronomy and these treaties.1 For one thing, nowhere in the book is the Lord depicted as a suzerain or Israel as a vassal. Also, the book is cast in the form of a series of sermons rather than a formal treaty. Covenant relationship, to be sure, lies at the heart of Deuteronomy, but this should not surprise us. For just as Israel lived surrounded by cultures steeped in idol worship, so she lived also in a world saturated with concepts of covenant and treaty-making. But, of course, to say that the book of Deuteronomy is cast in the form of homilies is not to say that these were the mere words of Moses, human even if useful and inspiring as sermons can often be, and no more. Crafting his introduction in the form of a palindrome (or chiasmus as it is more often called in academic literature), he asserts his conviction that these words of Moses indeed carry the full weight of divine authority:

A. These are the words Moses spoke to all Israel, v1a

B. Place: On the other side of the Jordon, in the Arabah, v1b

C. Time: in the fourth year . . ., v3a

D. Moses proclaimed all that Yhwh commanded, v3b

C'. Time: after he had defeated [the Amorite kings] . . ., v4

B'. Place: on the other side of the Jordan, in the territory of . . . , v5a

A'. Moses began to expound this torah, v5b

So, after introducing the book as "the words Moses spoke to all Israel" in v1, the narrator designates them next as "all that the Lord had commanded [Moses} concerning [Israel]" (v.3), and highlighting this fact by setting it at the core of his chiasmus, and designating Moses's words as "this law" (v5).

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