The Song of Moses
Deuteronomy 32: 1-43
The Great Covenant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Max A Forsythe
Introduction: In an interesting note, Meredith Kline observes “In its general structure this poetic song follows the pattern of the Deuteronomic treaty:
(1-3) Is an invocation to give ear
(4-6) the covenant Suzerain is identified in preamble fashion
(7-14) an historical prologue recites the special favor of the Lord towards Israel
(15-18) illustrates the treaty stipulations in the condemnation of Israel’s ongoing rebellion
(19-25) contains the covenant curses for breaking the covenant
(26-43) but covenant renewal may be accomplished through redemptive judgment”
Thereby we have an outline of the poetic record laid out for our study today. But before we work through the details of this Song of Moses, we need to consider the tuneful purpose of just such a composition!
Time was when there were generally three to five distinct purposes for a nation’s music. There were of course the ongoing music of Christ’s Church, the folk music of the common people for working and playing in all manner of life situations. Then there were the crass drinking songs, the military maneuvering tunes and last of all the sophisticated court compositions for the serious set of artists. Professional musicologists of course, might quibble with my unsophisticated observations and historians might identify fewer divisions. But one thing dominates pre-twentieth century musicology. There was always a certain local, ethnic and cultural emphasis that has seriously been lost in the mass media marketing of the last hundred and some years.
Music once unified a people instead of dividing the culture. In my lifetime, it seems that almost on purpose – a new marketing trend comes along every seven to ten years to subdivide the musical tastes of the population into marketable shares. And those tastes cause divisions between children, parents and grandparents.
Even within the Church, the last hundred and fifty years has seen the minimal divisive trend setting of hymns displacing psalms and the hymns being displaced in turn by spiritual songs. Of course, that is an over simplification. However, my father did remember the introduction of the organ and hymns in the Presbyterian bodies of his youth. And we have come full circle here by not only using the best spiritual songs and favorite hymns, but also returning to our Presbyterian heritage in the singing of psalms with joy in the heart as well.
Of course, I looked in our hymnal to see if Moses' Ode to the Covenant were in modern musical form. I was surprised to see that it is not there exactly! What we have here in the text before us is the first hymn commissioned by God Himself. This is a Hymn written specifically to celebrate the covenantal structure of His relationship with His people. Moses of course wrote Psalm Ninety at least and perhaps a few more as well. The Lord’s Old Covenant Church would learn to sing and David’s great expansion of the hymnology inspired several choral groups to go further with the form for some centuries afterward.
Old Covenant Milieu: A couple of general notes on the composition before us. Various commentators do not agree with the assessment outline of Meredith Kline. Like all poetry, different people respond in various ways to the highly emotional strains and sacred rhymes, which are no longer completely understood. Therefore the translation into any other language from the Hebrew is difficult at best, and the ancient meanings of certain words and phrases almost beyond comprehension. To illustrate that point, just try explaining the phrase: “motherhood, hot dogs and apple pie” to someone who grew up in anything but an American Midwestern culture.
The covenantal celebration seems best appropriate for our understanding today, so that outline we began with will inform our ongoing comments as best as I can organize it. Dr Brown calls this hymn “a hymn of bitter grief, expressing God’s intense disappointment with his greatly loved people.” Dr Cragie insists “the song was not only a song of witness for the present, but one that would continue to be sung in the future, thus bearing a continuing witness of the covenant commitment and reminding the people of the implications of a breach of the covenant.” May I only observe, that here in the beginning of Hebrew hymnology, we are a long way from loving the law of God in Israel’s greatest and longest psalm, the 119th!
(Verses 1 to 3) So let us begin with the first three introductory verses. Here both heaven and earth are figuratively called upon to bear witness to the sense of the invocation being offered. Just as the rain and the dew enflower the fields of the earth – so too may these words empower the Lord’s precious people.
“For I proclaim the name of the Lord:
Ascribe greatness to our God.”
Therefore the earth and the heavens are to listen, because in the grand scheme of things the powers of nature may necessarily be turned against those who cherish not this hymn. “Let those refuse to sing, who never knew our God”, an old favorite hymn of mine goes. Those who refuse the wisdom of this song and the utilitarian purpose of upholding the Creator’s covenantal compact do miss out on the greatest theme of all history: God’s great covenantal undertaking to bring the Bride of Christ through all the circuitous meanderings of history into His final eternal home.
(Verses 4 to 6) In the second three verses, our precious Triune God of heaven and earth is identified and glorified as:
“A God of truth and without injustice;
Righteous and upright is He.”
The covenantal faithfulness of the Lord is contrasted with the unfaithfulness of the covenant people “Do you thus deal with the Lord” Moses boldly asks? Well should we appreciate the vast gulf that separates us from the being of the only true God and Father of man kind. I have often marveled at the speculations of liberal scholars who assume that mankind could willingly dream up a religion like the Old and New Covenant faith systems! As many New Agers readily admit, they can certainly dream up a system less oppressive and more uplifting for an enquiring peoplekin who only want to be all that they possibly can be! Why should anyone bask in the dreadful observations on the state of natural man contained in the scriptures, unless it is the honest truth!
There is the reason in verse six: “Is he not your father? He created you, He made you and he established you.” That solemn claim to ownership and sovereignty can and does give us a fresh breath of air unpolluted with the utopian dreams of a fallen race. All too sadly, not society has ever developed a system apart from the revealed Covenantal one – that bodes good for the least citizens of either the worldly or sacred cities into which the population is divided by covenantal blessing for those called into the everlasting spiritual kingdom.
(Verses 7 to 14) “The goodness of God is described in a series of poetic images and similes; the language alludes to God’s care for his people in Egypt, his bringing them out of that land, and the guidance and provision that he grants them during their travels. God is seen as a Father-figure, caring for his people in every dimension of their lives.” So writes Dr Cragie in his summary of these wonderful verses.
Here of course is as good a summary of the purpose of the whole Old Covenant record. The books of those ancient prophets, priests and kings show us the hand of God in history. It is the only Creator God of heaven and earth who gives purpose to the providential twists and turns of mankind’s common searching for satisfaction and meaning in and through lives lived before the face of God.
The goodness of God is seen in the backdrop of the history of His people. “All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28) We see expressed the wonderful love of the Lord is celebrated in the kind and loving attention of the eagle for its eaglets, as an example of the Lord’s kindness towards those who truly love Him.
(Verses 15-18) However, for everyone who loves the Lord – there is another who would be prey for demons instead of a people near to the heart of God. Look at the dismal swamp into which the common pagans have fallen.
“Then he forsook God who made him,
And scornfully esteemed the Rock of his salvation.”
How tragic that this life of Israel has had to be played out so many, many times in the history of both Covenant Churches. Even the covenantal concept revealed in the scriptures us suspect in the theology of our day and time. Just as the fall into heresy and apostasy warned many evangelicals away from confessionalism in the last century, so too has the fallen state of Israel made the covenantal compacts of scripture suspect as well. We do not sing too gladly of the covenantal relationship revealed in and throughout scripture. “The Old Rugged Cross” and other aspects of the crucifixion and redemption history are more favorite topics, and perhaps even over sentimentalized. Why is that I wonder? Perhaps it is just and so by the reasoning of the Reformers and ancients that it is the God of Glory who is praised and not the covenantal process?
But I wonder what would the political and spiritual landscape be like if we sang more of the systematic process by which the Lord God of heaven and earth saves His people? The topics in this song of Moses are not too popular in our day and time. Too much of the church is New Testamental only in its teaching and preaching authority. Too little is known or appreciated about the work of God down through the ages before Christ and of the terminal cancerous trends within the mind of the church in almost every time and place. There but for the grace of God would we all be unless the Lord Himself honors the terms of His Great Covenant according to His everlasting mercy and grace.
(Verses 19-25) Here we reach the depths of this sad song of historical allusion. All too true is the prophecy recorded here. Every vice, every false hope, every creative diversion from the true faith is more popular than the covenantal revelations.
“For they are a perverse generation,
Children in whom is no faith.”
We should shudder when we read those words, we who would make something other of the revealed Covenant of Grace. We who would prefer the common assumption that personal holiness will win out and persuade the God and Father of us all to look kindly upon us? The holy and righteous wrath of God is a constant necessary theme in the Old Covenant record. A theme that if precisely understood makes the free offer of Amazing Grace so wondrous to behold. We live in an age that little comprehends any necessity of being saved. Saved from what: is the common question. By what human measure have we failed the worldly blatantly wonder in a time when God’s word is hidden away apart from the methodology we train our young in.
Thus far, we have moved through five of the six “verses” in this covenantal hymn. An all too common practice in America is to sing only a couple verses from the old English hymns. And in that habit, much information that is good and purposeful is lost and made insignificant. Only favorite verses usually make the cut. One author even made the assertion that there had been a plot hatched in the universities of Britain to undermine the faith once given to the saints by subsidizing the emotional works of several authors and further by encouraging hymn books that were lighter in context and content. One has only to look at the content of the majority of spiritual songs to appreciate that singing yourself silly with such tripe is far short of working through all the verses of honest hymns that illustrate the true human condition is as different as night and day.
Verses 26-43) In this final section, Moses presents the everlasting gospel of grace. In spite of the continuing running astray, the free offer of mercy and grace may be accomplished in covenant renewal through redemptive judgment.
“For the Lord will judge His people
And have compassion on His servants,
When He sees that their power is gone.”
Hope for the hopeless, power for the powerless grace and mercy for those who need it most!
“He will provide atonement for His land and His people”
New Covenant Continuum: Dr Brown commends the gospel of Christ too us in these words: “His children are loveless, but God still loves them; he has compassion on his servants (36). They are disobedient, but he continues to be loyal to them, reaffirming his covenant name and nature as the great I…am (39). They are senseless, but he acts sovereignly in perfect wisdom … God knows precisely the right moment for his saving intervention. He assures Israel that there is a wise and providential purpose behind the seemingly disordered events of life. His plans for Israel are kept … in reserve and sealed … (34). This sovereign mercy of God is revealed in four significant aspects of spiritual renewal. The Lord exposes our sin (34-38), promises our deliverance (39-42), inspires our praise and guarantees our forgiveness (43).”
How little does today’s generation realize that the Great God we worship has been aiming at the atonement of Christ since before Adam and Eve ate of the fruit in the garden. There is and always has been a redemptive covenantal plan being providentially carried forward from day one. How very easily we can look upon the work of creation and believe without question that it was all created good, very good, and yet we still fail to comprehend the necessity of the atonement for sin accomplished by our Lord Jesus Christ.
Contemporary Application: You see we would prefer to gloss over the following chapters in Genesis, where the Lord reveals the fall, the entry of sin into the world and all the tragic outcome of desiring something other than God. There is a popular book out called Desiring God. To be fair to the author, I will admit that I did indeed judge the book by the cover – and did not purchase or read it. However, in that title alone, the popular imagination is tweaked to believe that we can accomplish something good apart from the eternal call of the Holy Spirit, apart even from the long-suffering love of Christ and even – if we take the premise to its logical conclusion: apart from the providential allowances of the Creator God to provide a heavenly rest for those He has called according to His purpose.
You can tell an awful lot from the titles of books these days. Another book whose title put me off was called: The Purpose Driven Church. I disagree with that premise also, ours is a “Person driven Church” and the Person is none other than Jesus Christ who desires a “bride” – a people to call His own. To them He has given the Great Covenant on which we have labored these many months. In our chapter for this week, He has shown us through the revelation given to Moses that we could even sing about the Covenant that would lead us on to glory if we comprehend it rightly.
Of course, we have to work through a lot of historic issues in every age and time to get to the last word in our text for today. And God’s last word for all time as well:
“He will provide atonement for His land and His people”
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound” we would rather sing today. But it is the same message in a covenantal context. “He will provide”. May we believe that with all of our hearts and minds and count on the promised blessing of salvation finally accomplished in the life and work of Jesus Christ. Amen.
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