Deuteronomy 4:9

AN EXHORTATION TO OBEDIENCE. (Deu 4:1-13) hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments, which I teach you--By statutes were meant all ordinances respecting religion and the rites of divine worship; and by judgments, all enactments relative to civil matters. The two embraced the whole law of God.

Only take heed to thyself,.... To walk according to this law, and not swerve from it: and keep thy soul diligently; from the transgressions and breaches of it: lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen; either the statutes and judgments set before them, and the circumstances of the delivery of them; or the punishment inflicted on the breakers of them; or the favours bestowed on those that observed them: and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life; out of thy mind and memory, and have no place in thy affections, through a neglect and disuse of them: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons; their children and grandchildren, that they may be trained up in them in their youth, and so not depart from them when grown up, and in years; see Deu 6:7.

Israel was therefore not to forget the things which it had seen at Horeb with its own eyes. Deu 4:9 "Only beware and take care of thyself." To "keep the soul," i.e., to take care of the soul as the seat of life, to defend one's life from danger and injury (Pro 13:3; Pro 19:16). "That thou do not forget את־הדּברים (the facts described in Ex 19-24), and that they do not depart from thy heart all the days of thy life," i.e., are not forgotten as long as thou livest, "and thou makest them known to thy children and thy children's children." These acts of God formed the foundation of the true religion, the real basis of the covenant legislation, and the firm guarantee of the objective truth and divinity of all the laws and ordinances which Moses gave to the people. And it was this which constituted the essential distinction between the religion of the Old Testament and all heathen religions, whose founders, it is true, professed to derive their doctrines and statutes from divine inspiration, but without giving any practical guarantee that their origin was truly divine. Deu 4:10-12 In the words, "The day (היּום, adverbial accusative) "that thou stoodest before Jehovah thy God at Horeb," etc., Moses reminds the people of the leading features of those grand events: first of all of the fact that God directed him to gather the people together, that He might make known His words to them (Exo 19:9.), that they were to learn to fear Him all their life long, and to teach their children also (יראה, inf., like שׂנאה, Deu 1:27); and secondly (Deu 4:11), that they came near to the mountain which burned in fire (cf. Exo 19:17.). The expression, burning in fire "even to the heart of heaven," i.e., quite into the sky, is a rhetorical description of the awful majesty of the pillar of fire, in…

In this chapter we have, I. A most earnest and pathetic exhortation to obedience, both in general, and in some particular instances, backed with a great variety of very pressing arguments, repeated again and again, and set before them in the most moving and affectionate manner imaginable (v. 1-40). II. The appointing of the cities of refuge on that side Jordan (Deu 4:41-43). III. The particular description of the place where Moses delivered the following repetition of the law (Deu 4:44, etc.).