Charles Ellicott Commentary Deuteronomy 33

Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel. —The title man of God is here used for the first time. Its counterpart is to be found in Deuteronomy 34:5: Moses the servant of Jehovah died.

The more any man is a “servant to Jehovah,” the more is he a “man of Elohim” to his fellow-men. After Moses, Elijah and Elisha are more especially described by this title (“man of God”) in the Old Testament.

Blessed ... Israel before his death. —“And if not then, when should he?” (Rashi.)

“And he said, Jehovah came from Sinai,
And dawned upon them from Seir;
He shone forth from Mount Paran.
And there came from the ten thousands of holiness,
From His right hand, a fire of law [10] for them.” (Deuteronomy 33:2)

[10] On this expression, see an additional note at the end of the book.

The appearance of God on Sinai is described as a sunrise. His light rose from Sinai, and the tops of the hills of Seir caught its rays. The full blaze of light shone on Paran. (Compare to Psalms 1:2: “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined.”) The statement “He came with ten thousands of saints” is a mere mistranslation. The preposition is from, not with. If the verb “he came,” in the fourth line, is taken to refer to God, we must translate: “He came from ten thousands of saints” (to sinful men).

Rashi takes from to mean part of. “There came some of His ten thousands of saints, but not all of them.” I believe the true translation is what I have given. The law itself was “ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator” (Galatians 3:19). It is called “the word spoken by angels” (Hebrews 2:2). The language of Daniel 7:10—“A fiery stream issued and came forth from before Him: thousand thousands ministered unto Him”—supplies a complete parallel. The fiery law came from the ten thousands on “His right hand;” or from them, and from His right hand. This construction is by far the simplest and agrees with what we read elsewhere.

ADDITIONAL NOTE ONDeuteronomy 33:2. “A FIERY LAW.”

The original expression, eshdath or esh dath, sometimes written as one word and sometimes as two, has created some difficulty. Esh is “fire,” and dath, if taken as a distinct word, is “law.”

But dath does not appear elsewhere in the Hebrew of the Old Testament until we meet it in the book of Esther, where it occurs frequently. It is also found in Ezra 8:36. In the Chaldee of Daniel and Ezra, it occurs six times.

Modern authorities assert that it is properly a Persian word. However, since it is found in the Chaldee of Daniel, it was in use among the Chaldeans before the Persian empire. The word has Semitic affinities. The Hebrew syllable thêth would have nearly the same meaning. A datum (or dictum) is the nearest equivalent that we have.

There seems no reason to doubt that the word dath had obtained a place both in Chaldee and in Hebrew at the time of the Captivity. It is perfectly possible that its existence in Chaldee dates very much earlier.

We must remember that Chaldee was the language of the family of Abraham before they adopted Hebrew. “A Syrian ready to perish was my father,” is the confession dictated by Moses in Deuteronomy 26:5.

Syriac and Chaldee in the Old Testament are names of the same language. In the Babylonian captivity, the Jews really returned to their ancestral language. It is therefore quite conceivable that Chaldean words lingered among them until the Exodus; and this word dath, if it is a true Chaldean word, may be an example. However, obviously, these Chaldean reminiscences would have become fewer as the years rolled on.

The three Targums all take dath to be “law” in this place. The Septuagint has “angels” (ἄγγελοι), instead of the combination eshdath. Possibly the word was taken as ashdoth (plural of the Chaldee ashda), meaning “rays” (of light?) and so “angels.” Compare to: “He maketh His angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire;” they “ran and returned as a flash of lightning” (Psalms 104:4; Ezekiel 1:14). It is also possible that the Septuagint read r instead of d in the word which they had before them, and that they arrived at the meaning “angels” through the Hebrew word shârath, “to minister.” The confusion between r and d, which are extremely alike in Hebrew, is very common.

The parallels referred to in the notes on the verse show that “fiery law” will yield a good sense. The only question is whether dath, “law,” can be reasonably supposed to have occurred in the Mosaic writings. If the word were at all generally known at that period, to whatever language it properly belonged, it would hardly have escaped such a man as Moses. I think it is quite possible that the common translation may be right. The Hebrew commentators accept it. The only alternative I can suggest is that of the Septuagint, which cannot be verified with certainty.

Yes, He loved. The connection appears to be this:

From His right hand went a fire, a law for them (Israel).
Loving the peoples also;
(that is, all who should hereafter become His people)
All His saints are in Your hand:
(the hand of Him who spoke on Sinai, and now “speaks from heaven”)
And they are seated at Your feet;
(the feet of the same heavenly Prophet. Compare to Matthew 5:1-2)
Every one shall receive of Your words.

Or, possibly, He, that prophet, will take of Your (that is, of Moses’) words. We know He did so.

Verses 4-5

“[Of] the law which Moses commanded us,
The inheritance of the congregation of Jacob,
When he (Moses) was king in Jeshurun,
In the gathering of the heads of the people,
The tribes of Israel together.”

This fourth verse, from its form, is evidently not what Moses said, but an explanatory parenthesis, inserted by the writer, who was probably Joshua. Upon “He was king in Jeshurun,” Rashi says, “The Holy One, blessed be He! the yoke of His kingdom is upon them forever.” It may be so. “When the Lord your God was your king,” is Samuel’s description of the whole history of Israel previous to himself.

The certainty that the King of kings, the Messiah of Israel, was and is the Lawgiver and Teacher, and Keeper of all saints, and that there are none of that character who do not “sit at the feet of Jesus,” makes the real meaning of the passage perfectly plain, even though the exact grammatical relation of the clauses may not be beyond dispute.

Let Reuben live, and not die. —“‘Live’ in this world,” says Rashi, “and ‘not die’ in the world to come.” The prayer meant that his misdeed (Genesis 35:22) should not be remembered. Rashi also notices the juxtaposition of this record with the sentence, the sons of Jacob were twelve. Reuben was not cut off, but he was disinherited (1 Chronicles 5:1), and his father’s blessing had so much disapproval in it that Moses’ prayer for him was not unnecessary.

And let not his men be few. —The sentence is difficult. The Septuagint inserts Simeon, “Let Simeon be many in number.” But there is no need for this. The most terrible destruction ever wrought in Israel by the word of Moses came upon Dathan and Abiram (who were Reubenites), when they and all that appertained to them went down alive into the pit. We cannot say how far the tribe was diminished by this terrible visitation and the plague that followed (Numbers 16). The fighting men of the tribe, however, had slightly decreased in the second census (Numbers 1:21; Numbers 26:7), and at this time, only two of all the twelve tribes had a smaller force than Reuben.

It seems best, therefore, to take the whole verse as applying to Reuben, and the negative in the first clause as covering the second clause also. “Let not his men be a (small) number.” The omission of Simeon may be accounted for by his coming within the inheritance of Judah, in Canaan, and enjoying the blessing and protection of that most distinguished tribe. Rashi also takes this view.