Deuteronomy 10 Bible study: What does the LORD require of you

Moses is still telling the story of the molded calf (9:16). He had broken the first tablets "before your eyes" (9:17). Now: "Cut two stone tablets like the first, and come up to me onto the mountain, and make an ark of wood" (10:1). Exodus tells the same command: "Chisel two stone tablets like the first. I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke" (Exodus 34:1), and in Hebrew Chisel and Cut are the same verb (tap cut). What Deuteronomy adds is the ark. Exodus 34 doesn't mention one, neither when the tablets are cut (Exodus 34:1-4) nor when they are written (Exodus 34:28). Here Moses makes it before he goes up: "So I made an ark of acacia wood, and cut two stone tablets like the first, and went up onto the mountain" (10:3). The LORD writes "according to the first writing" (10:4), and the tablets go straight into it: "I turned and came down from the mountain, and put the tablets in the ark which I had made; and there they are as the LORD commanded me" (10:5). How "I made an ark" fits with "Bezalel made the ark of acacia wood" (Exodus 37:1) is laid out in Exodus 37, and who wrote on the second tablets in Exodus 34.

Deuteronomy 10:17→leads toActs 10:34-36

Moses says the LORD your God is "God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, the mighty, and the awesome, who doesn’t respect persons or take bribes" (10:17), and that he "loves the foreigner" (10:18). In the house of Cornelius, a centurion (Acts 10:1), Peter said, "Truly I perceive that God doesn’t show favoritism; but in every nation he who fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him" (Acts 10:34-35), and went on to "good news of peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all" (Acts 10:36). Peter doesn't cite Deuteronomy 10, so this is a reading. Some hear this chapter behind his words: the God who doesn't respect persons and loves the foreigner welcomes people of every nation through Jesus. Others note that Scripture says the same of God elsewhere, as in "there is no iniquity with the LORD our God, nor respect of persons, nor taking of bribes" (2 Chronicles 19:7), and read Peter's words as what he learned from his vision, "God has shown me that I shouldn’t call any man unholy or unclean" (Acts 10:28), without pointing to this chapter.

מוּלmulsay MOOL

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "circumcise". Strong's: "to cut short, i.e. curtail (specifically the prepuce, i.e. to circumcise)". "Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked" (10:16). The command God gave Abraham was for the body: "Every male among you shall be circumcised" (Genesis 17:10). Here Moses speaks of the heart. Deuteronomy uses the verb only twice, here and near the end, where the one who does it is the LORD: "The LORD your God will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your offspring" (30:6). Jeremiah uses it the way this verse does: "Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of your heart" (Jeremiah 4:4).