4:9 - Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.

Moses's initial call to give heed—composed of two consecutive imperatives of the same root, shmr (meaning "watch," "take care," or "keep") and qualified in the first case by the restrictive adverb, raq ("only") and, in the second, by the intensifying adverb, me'od ("very," "exceedingly," "diligently")—is urgent and emphatic. The point of this warning is that Israel should not forget the things they have seen. "Lest you forget" is synonymous with "lest they slip from your heart." Forgetting Yahweh and what he has done is so easy and its peril so dreadful that it is the subject in seven out of the thirteen occurrences of the verb shakach ("forget") in Deuteronomy, and a major theme in Moses's next address. Up to this point in Moses's speech, the "things your eyes have seen" might at first be understood as referring to the precedent event at Baal Peor (v.3). It becomes evident as we proceed into v.10ff., however, that its main referent is the events at Horeb. This watchfulness is bifocal. One is the focus on the need for a persistent and personal relationship with Yahweh ("watch yourselves . . . as long as you live"). The other is set on the next generation, to inculcate in them the truths about Yahweh's ways and commands ("teach them to your children and to their children after them"). In this way teaching the young is made not merely a socially desirable and beneficial undertaking (along the idea that not to groom is to doom), but a covenant obligation, and nowhere in the Old Testament is this obligation laid upon Israel with such insistence as in the book of Deuteronomy (and Moses will bring it up again later).

By contrast, there is a view, common nowadays especially among second and third generation Asian Christians (and in imitation to the West), that we should not impose our religious views on our children. Instead, we should let them choose what they would follow when they are mature enough to decide. Such a view, however, knows nothing of the certainty of the things in which it hopes, even if many think such an outlook enlightened and generous-hearted. It is the stake that will impale faith to death.

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