John Calvin Commentary Deuteronomy 6:10

"And it shall be, when Jehovah thy God shall bring thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee, great and goodly cities, which thou buildest not," — Deuteronomy 6:10 (ASV)

And it shall be, when the Lord your God. Since wealth and prosperity mostly blind men’s minds, so that they do not pay enough attention to modesty and moderation, but rather grow unrestrained in their lusts and intoxicate themselves with pleasures, God guards against this error by anticipation. For not without reason does He admonish them to beware lest they forget God when they have been generously and luxuriously treated by Him, but because He knew this to be a common vice, that abundance breeds arrogance; as He will later say in His song,

“Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked: thou art waxen fat, etc., then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation” (Deuteronomy 32:15).

First of all, He shows how base and unworthy their ingratitude would be if, when loaded by God with so many excellent benefits, they should cast away the recollection of Him. For as His goodness was inestimable in giving them cities built by the hands of others, and in transferring to them whatever others had prepared by their great labor and industry, so their impiety would be all the more detestable in neglecting Him, when He daily set Himself before them in this abundant store of blessings.

Let us learn, therefore, from this passage, that we are invited by God’s generosity to honor Him, and that whenever He deals kindly with us, He places His glory before our eyes. But, on the other hand, we should remember that what ought to be, so to speak, vehicles to lift up our minds on high, are, through our own fault, turned into obstacles and hindrances. Therefore, we ought to be all the more on our guard.

At the end of verse 12, He reproves their folly by another argument: if, being so suddenly enriched, they should give way to intemperance. It is as if He had said that their absurdity would be unbearable if, when uplifted by God’s bounty, they should not remember their origin. For nothing should have served more to incline them to humility than that wretched state of servitude from which they had been rescued. Therefore, He contrasts that ample dominion to which God had exalted them with “the house of bondmen”²⁴⁵, so that the recollection of their former condition might restrain all rebelliousness.

²⁴⁵ Margin of A. V.