Deuteronomy 4:10

4:10 You ¹  stood before the Lord your God at Horeb and he ²  said to me, “Assemble the people before me so that I can tell them my commands. ³  Then they will learn to revere me all the days they live in the land, and they will instruct their children.”

Deuteronomy 5:22

The Narrative of the Sinai Revelation and Israel’s Response

5:22 The Lord said these things to your entire assembly at the mountain from the middle of the fire, the cloud, and the darkness with a loud voice, and that was all he said. ⁴  Then he inscribed the words ⁵  on two stone tablets and gave them to me.

Deuteronomy 14:21

14:21 You may not eat any corpse, though you may give it to the resident foreigner who is living in your villages ⁶  and he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner. You are a people holy to the Lord your God. Do not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. ⁷ 

Deuteronomy 17:20

17:20 Then he will not exalt himself above his fellow citizens or turn from the commandments to the right or left, and he and his descendants will enjoy many years ruling over his kingdom ⁸  in Israel.

Deuteronomy 25:9

25:9 then his sister-in-law must approach him in view of the elders, remove his sandal from his foot, and spit in his face. ⁹  She will then respond, “Thus may it be done to any man who does not maintain his brother’s family line!” ¹⁰ 

¹ tn The text begins with “(the) day (in) which.” In the Hebrew text v. 10 is subordinate to v. 11, but for stylistic reasons the translation treats v. 10 as an independent clause, necessitating the omission of the subordinating temporal phrase at the beginning of the verse.

² tn Heb “the Lord.” See note on “he” in 4:3.

³ tn Heb “my words.” See v. 13; in Hebrew the “ten commandments” are the “ten words.”

⁴ tn Heb “and he added no more” (so KJV, NASB, NRSV); NLT “This was all he said at that time.”

⁵ tn Heb “them”; the referent (the words spoken by the Lord) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁷ tn Heb “gates” (also in vv. 27, 28, 29).

⁸ sn Do not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. This strange prohibition – one whose rationale is unclear but probably related to pagan ritual – may seem out of place here but actually is not for the following reasons: (1) the passage as a whole opens with a prohibition against heathen mourning rites (i.e., death, vv. 1-2) and closes with what appear to be birth and infancy rites. (2) In the other two places where the stipulation occurs (Exod 23:19 and Exod 34:26) it similarly concludes major sections. (3) Whatever the practice signified it clearly was abhorrent to the Lord and fittingly concludes the topic of various breaches of purity and holiness as represented by the ingestion of unclean animals (vv. 3-21). See C. M. Carmichael, “On Separating Life and Death: An Explanation of Some Biblical Laws,” HTR 69 (1976): 1-7; J. Milgrom, “You Shall Not Boil a Kid In Its Mother’s Milk,” BRev 1 (1985): 48-55; R. J. Ratner and B. Zuckerman, “In Rereading the ‘Kid in Milk’ Inscriptions,” BRev 1 (1985): 56-58; and M. Haran, “Seething a Kid in its Mother’s Milk,” JJS 30 (1979): 23-35.

¹⁰ tc Heb “upon his kingship.” Smr supplies כִּסֵא (kise’, “throne”) so as to read “upon the throne of his kingship.” This overliteralizes what is a clearly understood figure of speech.

¹³ sn The removal of the sandal was likely symbolic of the relinquishment by the man of any claim to his dead brother’s estate since the sandal was associated with the soil or land (cf. Ruth 4:7-8). Spitting in the face was a sign of utmost disgust or disdain, an emotion the rejected widow would feel toward her uncooperative brother-in-law (cf. Num 12:14; Lev 15:8). See W. Bailey, NIDOTTE 2:544.

¹⁴ tn Heb “build the house of his brother”; TEV “refuses to give his brother a descendant”; NLT “refuses to raise up a son for his brother.”