The Book of Deuteronomy

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Almighty, the writing finger of God?of whom it also declares ye saw no manner of form, no form only a voice (iv. 12, 15)?yet it lays still greater emphasis on this voice alone, on the spoken word of God. Sometimes, as in i. 6?8, it ignores the physical manifestation to which P gives constant prominence and records only the voice accompanying. To Deuteronomy all miracles are ancillary to the Law; they only lead up to this end: your eyes have seen all the great work of the Lord which he did; therefore shall ye keep all the commandments, xi. 7 f. The Law is the thing! The Book does not doubt the reality of the miracles even of the false prophets, yet the test of a prophet is to be not his miracles but the character of his teaching (xiii. i). All divination, necromancy and the like, all the magic which revels in alleged physical signs at the expense of the moral and intellectual elements of religion, are of course absolutely condemned; they are abominations to Jehovah (xviii. 9?22). Only the prediction that comes to pass is to be a mark of true prophecy?such a prediction implies faith and spiritual foresight?yet even it is to be repudiated if associated with false teaching (cp. xiii. 2 with xviii. 2if.). To this doctrine of prophecy and discriminate treatment of miracles there is no counterpart in the other documents. On the whole then, the truth, the purity, the love that the Word carries are the proofs of its divinity; in the acceptance of these consist the wisdom and the understanding (iv. 6) which distinguish Israel from other peoples. The greatness and the strength of Israel lie not in their power or wealth but in their statutes and judgements, and in their obedience to these (iv. 8, xi. 8, etc.). Life- -that ye may live and that it may be well with thee, very favourite phrases o...