The Bible Year

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 24, 1916

Assignment for February 27 to March 4

February 27: Numbers 34 to 36. February 28: Deuteronomy 1 to 3. February 29: Deuteronomy 4, 5. March 1: Deuteronomy 6 to 9. March 2: Deuteronomy 10 to 13. March 3: Deuteronomy 14 to 17. March 4: Deuteronomy 18 to 21.

For Supplementary Study

REVIEW the book of Numbers. Make a list of sins shown by this record to be abhorrent to God; such as, slander (chap. 12); unbelief (chaps. 13, 14); Sabbath breaking (chap. 15). Add others. What have you learned about “acceptable offering” from reading this book?

Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy is the fifth and last book of the Pentateuch. It is mainly made up of three addresses by Moses, given just before his death. In chapters 1 to 4:40, he rehearses God’s goodness to Israel; chapters 5 to 26 review the law for the new generation; chapters 27 to 30 are a renewal of the covenant. It is from the second section that the book is named, the word “Deuteronomy” meaning the “second law,” or a “duplicate of the law.”

These addresses by the leader of Israel were both an admonition and a farewell. “His words look both forward and backward—backward along the way in which they have been led by God, and forward along the way in which he is yet to lead them. The deliverance from Egypt is repeatedly made the motive for obedience; obedience is the condition of their obtaining the land before them.” There was much in their past experience that Israel needed to remember. “Thou shalt remember,” “lest thou forget,” “take heed to thyself,” are expressions that occur frequently.

NECESSITY FOR THE BOOK.—A crisis had come in the affairs of the nation, and a review of Israel’s history and a restatement of God’s law must be made. (1) A new generation had grown up in which had not heard the original promulgation of the law at Sinai. (2) A new country was before the nation. This country was devoted to an idolatrous worship of the most seductive kind. On every high hill and in every grove this worship was carried on. An unflinching devotion to God was necessary to resist this alluring worship, which was more to be dreaded than any armed resistance. (3) New duties: The people had been leading a nomadic life; now they were to be settled in cities and villages, and to till the land. The observance of some laws had been suffered to lapse. The people must be shown the need of conforming their lives and conduct in these new relations to God’s laws.”

TIME.—The time covered by this book may be easily reckoned. It opens with an address given by Moses on the first day of the eleventh month of the fortieth year of the exodus. In Joshua 4:19 we read that Israel entered Canaan on the tenth day of the first month—seventy days later. This includes the thirty days’ mourning for Moses.

Know Your Bible

“When Alexander the Great was plundering the palace of Darius, one of his soldiers found in a leather bag the crown jewels of Persia. The prize was worth millions, but the stupid fellow opened the bag, shook out the little glittering stones among the rubbish, and went away boasting about the fine sack he had got for carrying his food.”

“A slave was one day climbing a mountain when his foot slipped, and he fell. To break the fall he caught a shrub, but it gave way, and man and bush went rolling together down the mountain side to the bottom. When he got up, he noticed curious little white particles sticking to the roots. They looked like silver. He hastened back to the spot where the bush had grown, got down on his knees, and with his hands dug away a few inches of the soil. Lo! he had discovered the mines of Potosi, which have yielded hundreds of shiploads of solid silver. The owners of ‘the silver mountain,’ as it is called,—for it is now honeycombed with more than five thousand silver mines,—were till that day poor men. Only the surface was theirs; they knew nothing of the riches beneath.”

“You sing,— ‘Holy Bible, book divine— Precious treasure, thou are mine!’”

Is it yours only as the jewels belonged to the soldier, or as the silver mines belonged to the owners before the slave made his happy discovery? The scribes and Pharisees are said to have known the Bible so well that, if every Bible in the world had been destroyed, they could have rewritten it from memory without a mistake. What good did it do them?

“The Bible in the hand won’t do; the Bible in the head won’t do; but the Bible in the heart—made a living thing by God’s good Spirit—means eternal life.”