Deuteronomy 10

Today’s Passage: Deuteronomy 10

Moses keeps telling the story of the mountain. The LORD gave a second pair of stone tablets after the first were broken, wrote the Ten Commandments on them again, and had them placed in a wooden ark for safekeeping. Along the way the tribe of Levi was set apart to carry that ark and to serve. Then Moses stops the story and asks the question the whole book turns on: what does the LORD your God ask of you? The answer is not a long list but a whole heart, one that reveres Him, walks His ways, and loves Him. And because the LORD Himself loves the fatherless, the widow, and the foreigner, His people are told to love them too.

As you read, hold this: After the mercy of the second tablets, God asks one thing: your whole heart, revering Him, walking His ways, and loving the ones He loves.

Deuteronomy 10:1–5 (BSB)

¹ At that time the LORD said to me, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the originals, come up to Me on the mountain, and make an ark of wood. ² And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke; and you are to place them in the ark.” ³ So I made an ark of acacia wood, chiseled out two stone tablets like the originals, and went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hands. ⁴ And the LORD wrote on the tablets what had been written previously, the Ten Commandments that He had spoken to you on the mountain out of the fire on the day of the assembly. The LORD gave them to me, ⁵ and I went back down the mountain and placed the tablets in the ark I had made, as the LORD had commanded me; and there they have remained.

Notice how quietly grace moves through these verses. The people broke the first tablets, and the LORD does not walk away from the covenant; He tells Moses to cut new stone and promises to write the same words again with His own hand. What God had said, He still says. The renewed law is then laid inside a wooden chest and kept, a sign that these words are not a passing mood but a treasure the people are to carry with them wherever they go.

Deuteronomy 10:6–9 (BSB)

⁶ The Israelites traveled from Beeroth Bene-jaakan to Moserah, where Aaron died and was buried, and Eleazar his son succeeded him as priest. ⁷ From there they traveled to Gudgodah, and from Gudgodah to Jotbathah, a land with streams of water. ⁸ At that time the LORD set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the covenant of the LORD, to stand before the LORD to serve Him, and to pronounce blessings in His name, as they do to this day. ⁹ That is why Levi has no portion or inheritance among his brothers; the LORD is his inheritance, as the LORD your God promised him.

The travel notes read like the margin of an old journal, place names remembered because God went with them through each one, even through the grief of burying Aaron. Then comes the setting apart of Levi. This tribe receives no field of its own and no allotted land like its brothers, and Moses tells us why in a line worth resting on: the LORD is his inheritance. What the other tribes hold in soil, Levi holds in God Himself. To carry His ark, to stand before Him, and to bless in His name is treasure enough.

Deuteronomy 10:10–11 (BSB)

¹⁰ I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights, like the first time, and that time the LORD again listened to me and agreed not to destroy you. ¹¹ Then the LORD said to me, “Get up. Continue your journey ahead of the people, that they may enter and possess the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.”

Moses returns to the mountain and to the mercy he found there. He interceded, and the LORD listened, and the sentence that hung over the people was lifted. Then the word is not to linger in relief but to move: get up, keep going, lead them toward the land that was promised long ago. Mercy received becomes a journey resumed, the people still bound for the inheritance their God had sworn to give.

Deuteronomy 10:12–13 (BSB)

¹² And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God by walking in all His ways, to love Him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, ¹³ and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD that I am giving you this day for your own good?

Here is the summit of the chapter, and perhaps of the whole book. After all the story and all the law, Moses gathers everything into one searching question and answers it in a single breath. What God asks is not first a rule but a relationship: to revere (יָרֵא) yare, pronounced yah-RAY. Strong's H3372, to fear, revere, stand in awe. This is not the fear that runs and hides but the reverence that draws near and bows low. To fear the LORD is to hold Him in awe as the great and awesome God, and Moses places it first because a heart that truly reveres God is a heart already leaning toward love and obedience. Awe of Him is where the whole life of faith begins. Him, to walk His ways, to love Him, to serve Him with all your heart and soul. And that whole demand is aimed at the reader’s good, not against it. The commandments come from a God who is for His people, so that obedience and blessing turn out to be the same road walked in the same direction.

Deuteronomy 10:14–16 (BSB)

¹⁴ Behold, to the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, and the earth and everything in it. ¹⁵ Yet the LORD has set His affection on your fathers and loved them. And He has chosen you, their descendants after them, above all the peoples, even to this day. ¹⁶ Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and stiffen your necks no more.

The wonder of these verses is the word yet. The whole of heaven and earth belongs to God, all of it His, and He needs nothing from anyone. Yet He set His affection on this small family and chose their children after them. Such love is not owed; it is given. And the fitting answer is not a mere outward sign but an inward one. Moses tells the people to circumcise (מוּל) mûl, pronounced MOOL. Strong's H4135, to cut off, circumcise. The word means to cut off or cut away, the very act that marked Israel in the flesh as God’s people. Moses takes that outward sign and presses it inward: circumcise your hearts. The mark that mattered most was never on the body but under it, a heart with its hardness cut away, no longer stubborn but yielded to the God who loved them first. their hearts, to cut away the stubbornness underneath, and to stop being stiff-necked. God has given His heart; He asks for theirs, opened and made tender.

Deuteronomy 10:17–19 (BSB)

¹⁷ For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God, showing no partiality and accepting no bribe. ¹⁸ He executes justice for the fatherless and widow, and He loves the foreigner, giving him food and clothing. ¹⁹ So you also must love the foreigner, since you yourselves were foreigners in the land of Egypt.

The God who is highest over all is also the one who bends lowest to the least. He is God of gods and Lord of lords, so great that no bribe can sway Him and no face can tilt His judgment. And that same untouchable greatness leans down to defend the fatherless and the widow and to love the foreigner with something as plain as food and clothing. Then the command follows straight from His character: you also must love the foreigner. His people are to look like Him, and they of all people should understand, since they were once foreigners in Egypt and He loved them there.

Deuteronomy 10:20–22 (BSB)

²⁰ You are to fear the LORD your God and serve Him. Hold fast to Him and take your oaths in His name. ²¹ He is your praise and He is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome wonders that your eyes have seen. ²² Your fathers went down to Egypt, seventy in all, and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky.

The chapter closes by returning to where it began, to reverence and service, and adds two tender words: hold fast to Him. Cling to God as the one thing worth clinging to. And then Moses gives the reason for it all in a line that could stand as the whole aim of worship: He is your praise. God is not merely the one they thank; He is the very substance of their song. The proof is in their own history, seventy souls who went down to Egypt now grown as countless as the stars, a promise kept before their eyes.