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Deuteronomy 4 · a question people ask

If Israel was not to add to the word (4:2), how could more of the Bible come after Moses?

In the text

The command is to Israel, about what they do with "the word which I command you": "You shall not add to the word… neither shall you take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God" (4:2). Moses says it again later: "Whatever thing I command you, that you shall observe to do. You shall not add to it, nor take away from it" (Deuteronomy 12:32). The same book has the LORD promise to speak again: "I will raise them up a prophet from among their brothers, like you. I will put my words in his mouth" (Deuteronomy 18:18). And it warns against "the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak" (Deuteronomy 18:20). So Deuteronomy itself holds both: nothing added to what the LORD commands, and more words from the LORD to come. Proverbs gives the same warning about God's words, "Don’t you add to his words, lest he reprove you, and you be found a liar" (Proverbs 30:6), and Revelation ends with it for "the words of the prophecy of this book": "if anyone adds to them", and "If anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy" (Revelation 22:18-19).

The verses

“You shall not add to the word which I command you, neither shall you take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.”
Deuteronomy 4:2 · World English Bible
“Whatever thing I command you, that you shall observe to do. You shall not add to it, nor take away from it.”
Deuteronomy 12:32 · World English Bible
“I will raise them up a prophet from among their brothers, like you. I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I shall command him. It shall happen, that whoever will not listen to my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him. But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.””
Deuteronomy 18:18-20 · World English Bible
“Don’t you add to his words, lest he reprove you, and you be found a liar.”
Proverbs 30:6 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Deuteronomy 4

Deuteronomy 4: A voice, and no form

At Horeb Israel "heard the voice of words, but… saw no form" (4:12), so they were to make no carved image of anything (4:15-18, 4:23). Scattered for their images (4:25-27), they would still find him if they searched "with all your heart and with all your soul" (4:29), because he would not "forget the covenant" (4:31). "There is no one else" (4:39).

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions