Deuteronomy 4:32

The Uniqueness of Israel’s God

4:32 Indeed, ask about the distant past, starting from the day God created humankind ¹  on the earth, and ask ²  from one end of heaven to the other, whether there has ever been such a great thing as this, or even a rumor of it.

Deuteronomy 4:34

4:34 Or has God ³  ever before tried to deliver ⁴  a nation from the middle of another nation, accompanied by judgments, ⁵  signs, wonders, war, strength, power, ⁶  and other very terrifying things like the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?

Deuteronomy 13:3

13:3 You must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer, ⁷  for the Lord your God will be testing you to see if you love him ⁸  with all your mind and being. ⁹ 

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 ¹⁰  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. ¹¹ 

Deuteronomy 17:2

17:2 Suppose a man or woman is discovered among you – in one of your villages ¹²  that the Lord your God is giving you – who sins before the Lord your God ¹³  and breaks his covenant

Deuteronomy 17:12

17:12 The person who pays no attention ¹⁴  to the priest currently serving the Lord your God there, or to the verdict – that person must die, so that you may purge evil from Israel.

Deuteronomy 19:15

19:15 A single witness may not testify ¹⁵  against another person for any trespass or sin that he commits. A matter may be legally established ¹⁶  only on the testimony of two or three witnesses.

Deuteronomy 24:3

24:3 If the second husband rejects ¹⁷  her and then divorces her, ¹⁸  gives her the papers, and evicts her from his house, or if the second husband who married her dies,

[4:32]  ¹ tn The Hebrew term אָדָם (’adam) may refer either to Adam or, more likely, to “man” in the sense of the human race (“mankind,” “humankind”). The idea here seems more universal in scope than reference to Adam alone would suggest.

[4:32]  ² tn The verb is not present in the Hebrew text but has been supplied in the translation for clarification. The challenge has both temporal and geographical dimensions. The people are challenged to (1) inquire about the entire scope of past history and (2) conduct their investigation on a worldwide scale.

[4:34]  ³ tn The translation assumes the reference is to Israel’s God in which case the point is this: God’s intervention in Israel’s experience is unique in the sense that he has never intervened in such power for any other people on earth. The focus is on the uniqueness of Israel’s experience. Some understand the divine name here in a generic sense, “a god,” or “any god.” In this case God’s incomparability is the focus (cf. v. 35, where this theme is expressed).

[4:34]  ⁴ tn Heb “tried to go to take for himself.”

[4:34]  ⁵ tn Heb “by testings.” The reference here is the judgments upon Pharaoh in the form of plagues. See Deut 7:19 (cf. v. 18) and 29:3 (cf. v. 2).

[4:34]  ⁶ tn Heb “by strong hand and by outstretched arm.”

[13:3]  ⁵ tn Heb “or dreamer of dreams.” See note on this expression in v. 1.

[13:3]  ⁶ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[13:3]  ⁷ tn Heb “all your heart and soul” (so NRSV, CEV, NLT); or “heart and being” (NCV “your whole being”). See note on the word “being” in Deut 6:5.

[14:21]  ⁷ tn Heb “gates” (also in vv. 27, 28, 29).

[14:21]  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.

[17:2]  ⁹ tn Heb “gates.”

[17:2]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “does the evil in the eyes of the Lord your God.”

[17:12]  ¹¹ tn Heb “who acts presumptuously not to listen” (cf. NASB).

[19:15]  ¹³ tn Heb “rise up” (likewise in v. 16).

[19:15]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “may stand.”

[24:3]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “hates.” See note on the word “other” in Deut 21:15.

[24:3]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “writes her a document of divorce.”