John Calvin Commentary Deuteronomy 30:15

"See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil;" — Deuteronomy 30:15 (ASV)

See, I have set before you this day. A solemn injunction, similar to the preceding ones, that the Israelites should consider what an inestimable blessing it was that God should have condescended to deposit His Law with them. If they did not receive it with reverence, the punishments for such foul ingratitude would be by no means light.

For, to deprive them of the pretext of error, He separates them from the pagan nations, which, through ignorance of the right way, wavered in uncertainty between life and death. He says, therefore, that He has set before their eyes life, indeed connected with true and complete happiness, and likewise death with its consequences.

Now, there is no one who, under the guidance of nature, would not seek life and recoil from death. Therefore, Moses reproaches them for being utterly senseless if they should plunge voluntarily into all miseries.

Meanwhile, he indicates that he is not offering them mere empty threats, but that his doctrine is armed with the power of God, so that whoever should embrace it would find salvation in it, while none would despise it with impunity. The distribution of the two clauses then follows: namely, that the love of God and the keeping of His Law are prescribed so that they may live; but if they turn away from it, their destruction is proclaimed.

It is not, then, without reason that I have called the promises and threats the Sanctions of the Law, because, for its authority to be assured to us, it is necessary that both the reward of obedience and the punishment of transgression should be set before us.

By the worship of other gods, he means every revolt from God, as I have already observed. He does not speak of their being “drawn away” to superstition as an excuse for their instability, but rather as an aggravation of their crime, since they are carried away by their depraved desires,²⁸⁷ and thus desert the truth of God even when well acquainted with it.

²⁸⁷ Addition in Fr., “comme d’un tourbillon;” as by a whirlpool.., “comme d’un tourbillon;” as by a whirlpool.