Deuteronomy 29 Bible study: A heart to know

The chapter opens, "These are the words of the covenant which the LORD commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant which he made with them in Horeb" (29:1). Horeb is where "The LORD our God made a covenant with us" (5:2). Now, in the land of Moab, after "forty years in the wilderness" (29:5), there is a covenant here as well. In the Hebrew text, 29:1 is numbered as the last verse of chapter 28, so it can be read as closing the blessings and curses or as opening what follows; the English chapters put it here. The word covenant comes seven times in this chapter, in the WEB and in Hebrew (tap covenant). Moses says what entering it means: "that he may establish you today as his people, and that he may be your God, as he spoke to you and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob" (29:13). God had said to Abraham, "I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you… to be a God to you and to your offspring after you" (Genesis 17:7).

Deuteronomy 29:4→leads toMatthew 13:16

Moses says, "But the LORD has not given you a heart to know, eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day" (29:4). When his disciples asked why he spoke in parables (Matthew 13:10), Jesus answered, "To you it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but it is not given to them" (Matthew 13:11), and "Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they don’t see, and hearing, they don’t hear, neither do they understand" (Matthew 13:13). To his disciples he said, "But blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear" (Matthew 13:16). Jesus doesn't cite Deuteronomy 29, and the prophecy he names is Isaiah's (Matthew 13:14-15), so setting the two side by side is a reading. Some hear in his words the thing 29:4 says had not been given: eyes that see and ears that hear, given to those he calls blessed. Others read his words with the Isaiah passage he quotes, without pointing to this chapter.

אָלָהalahsay a-LAH

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "oath", and among its uses "oath of covenant" and "curse". Strong's: "an imprecation". Israel enters "into the covenant of the LORD your God, and into his oath" (29:12), and Moses makes "this covenant and this oath" not with them only (29:14). The same word comes back three times where the WEB has curse: the man who hears "the words of this curse" (29:19), "all the curse that is written in this book" (29:20), and "all the curses of the covenant written in this book of the law" (29:21). Deuteronomy uses the word only in this chapter and once more, when "The LORD your God will put all these curses on your enemies" (30:7). The curse of 29:27 is a different word.