Deuteronomy 2:9

2:9 Then the Lord said to me, “Do not harass Moab and provoke them to war, for I will not give you any of their land as your territory. This is because I have given Ar ¹  to the descendants of Lot ²  as their possession.

Deuteronomy 4:10

4:10 You ³  stood before the Lord your God at Horeb and he ⁴  said to me, “Assemble the people before me so that I can tell them my commands. ⁵  Then they will learn to revere me all the days they live in the land, and they will instruct their children.”

Deuteronomy 5:9

5:9 You must not worship or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. I punish ⁶  the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons for the sin of the fathers who reject ⁷  me, ⁸ 

Deuteronomy 9:12

9:12 And he said to me, “Get up, go down at once from here because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have sinned! They have quickly turned from the way I commanded them and have made for themselves a cast metal image.” ⁹ 

Deuteronomy 9:21

9:21 As for your sinful thing ¹⁰  that you had made, the calf, I took it, melted it down, ¹¹  ground it up until it was as fine as dust, and tossed the dust into the stream that flows down the mountain.

Deuteronomy 9:28

9:28 Otherwise the people of the land ¹²  from which you brought us will say, “The Lord was unable to bring them to the land he promised them, and because of his hatred for them he has brought them out to kill them in the desert.” ¹³ 

[2:9]  ¹ sn Ar was a Moabite city on the Arnon River east of the Dead Sea. It is mentioned elsewhere in the “Book of the Wars of Yahweh” (Num 21:15; cf. 21:28; Isa 15:1). Here it is synonymous with the whole land of Moab.

[2:9]  ² sn The descendants of Lot. Following the destruction of the cities of the plain, Sodom and Gomorrah, as God’s judgment, Lot fathered two sons by his two daughters, namely, Moab and Ammon (Gen 19:30-38). Thus, these descendants of Lot in and around Ar were the Moabites.

[4:10]  ³ 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.

[4:10]  ⁴ tn Heb “the Lord.” See note on “he” in 4:3.

[4:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “my words.” See v. 13; in Hebrew the “ten commandments” are the “ten words.”

[5:9]  ⁵ tn In the Hebrew text the form is a participle, which is subordinated to what precedes. For the sake of English style, the translation divides this lengthy verse into two sentences.

[5:9]  ⁶ tn Heb “who hate” (so NAB, NIV, NLT). Just as “to love” (אָהַב, ’ahav) means in a covenant context “to choose, obey,” so “to hate” (שָׂנֵא, sane’) means “to reject, disobey” (cf. the note on the word “loved” in Deut 4:37; see also 5:10).

[5:9]  ⁷ tn Heb “visiting the sin of fathers upon sons and upon a third (generation) and upon a fourth (generation) of those who hate me.” God sometimes punishes children for the sins of a father (cf. Num 16:27, 32; Josh 7:24-25; 2 Sam 21:1-9). On the principle of corporate solidarity and responsibility in OT thought see J. Kaminsky, Corporate Responsibility in the Hebrew Bible (JSOTSup). In the idiom of the text, the father is the first generation and the “sons” the second generation, making grandsons the third and great-grandsons the fourth. The reference to a third and fourth generation is a way of emphasizing that the sinner’s punishment would last throughout his lifetime. In this culture, where men married and fathered children at a relatively young age, it would not be unusual for one to see his great-grandsons. In an Aramaic tomb inscription from Nerab dating to the seventh century b.c., Agbar observes that he was surrounded by “children of the fourth generation” as he lay on his death bed (see ANET 661). The language of the text differs from Exod 34:7, the sons are the first generation, the grandsons (literally, “sons of the sons”) the second, great-grandsons the third, and great-great-grandsons the fourth. One could argue that formulation in Deut 5:9 (see also Exod 20:50) is elliptical/abbreviated or that it suffers from textual corruption (the repetition of the words “sons” would invite accidental omission).

[9:12]  ⁷ tc Heb “a casting.” The MT reads מַסֵּכָה (massekhah, “a cast thing”) but some mss and Smr add עֵגֶל (’egel, “calf”), “a molten calf” or the like (Exod 32:8). Perhaps Moses here omits reference to the calf out of contempt for it.

[9:21]  ⁹ tn Heb “your sin.” This is a metonymy in which the effect (sin) stands for the cause (the metal calf).

[9:21]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “burned it with fire.”

[9:28]  ¹¹ tc The MT reads only “the land.” Smr supplies עַם (’am, “people”) and LXX and its dependents supply “the inhabitants of the land.” The truncated form found in the MT is adequate to communicate the intended meaning; the words “the people of” are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[9:28]  ¹² tn Or “wilderness” (so KJV, NASB, NRSV, NLT).