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Deuteronomy 30 · a question people ask

When is the promise of 30:1-6 kept?

Interpretation

Moses speaks of a day "when all these things have come on you, the blessing and the curse" (30:1), when Israel, among the nations, will "return to the LORD your God" (30:2). Then the LORD will "gather you from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you" (30:3), "bring you into the land which your fathers possessed" (30:5), and "circumcise your heart" (30:6). The chapter doesn't say when. Christians read it in three main ways, each resting on verses, and some hold more than one of them together. All agree that the promise is the LORD's own, to those who return to him (30:2-3), and that it reaches to "the heart of your offspring" (30:6).

How Christians read it

Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.

In the return from exile

Those who hold this view read 30:1-5 as kept when Israel came back from Babylon. Through Jeremiah the LORD promised, "After seventy years are accomplished for Babylon, I will visit you" (Jeremiah 29:10), and "I will turn again your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations" (Jeremiah 29:14), with the same Hebrew words as 30:3 for turn, captivity and gather. Ezra opens the story of the return with Cyrus's proclamation, made "that the LORD’s word by Jeremiah’s mouth might be accomplished" (Ezra 1:1). And Nehemiah prays Moses' word back to the LORD: "but if you return to me, and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts were in the uttermost part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there" (Nehemiah 1:9).

Jeremiah 29:10 · Jeremiah 29:14 · Ezra 1:1 · Nehemiah 1:8-9

A turning still ahead for Israel

Those who hold this view read 30:1-6 as looking to a turning of Israel still to come. They set it beside the LORD's promise through Ezekiel, "I will take you from among the nations and gather you out of all the countries, and will bring you into your own land" (Ezekiel 36:24), followed by "I will also give you a new heart" (Ezekiel 36:26), and beside Paul's words about Israel, "and so all Israel will be saved" (Romans 11:26).

Ezekiel 36:24 · Ezekiel 36:26 · Romans 11:26

Kept in Christ

Those who hold this view read the circumcised heart of 30:6 as given in Christ. Paul writes, "In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ" (Colossians 2:11). On this reading the heart the LORD promised to circumcise (30:6) is the circumcision "not made with hands" (Colossians 2:11).

Deuteronomy 30:6 · Colossians 2:11

From Favor's study of Deuteronomy 30

Deuteronomy 30: Therefore choose life

One Hebrew verb, shuv, runs seven times through 30:1-10: Israel returns, and the LORD returns and gathers. The heart Moses told Israel to circumcise (10:16), the LORD promises to circumcise (30:6). And "the word is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart" (30:14) is the word Paul takes up just before "confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord" (Romans 10:9).

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