(cf.
Deuteronomy 27.). This putting of the blessing and the curse on Gerizim and Ebal had significance -
I. AS A SOLEMN TRANSFERENCE OF THE BLESSING AND THE CURSE TO THE LAND OF POSSESSION. Blessing and curse, representing the award of eternal righteousness, must follow us so long as disobedience is possible. "If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die" (Romans 8:13). "That which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned" (Hebrews 6:8). In heaven there is "no more curse" (Revelation 22:3), but only because, confirmed in holiness, God's servants can no more fall away.
II. AS A SOLEMN REMINDER OF TEE TENURE ON WHICH THE LAND WAS HELD. We cannot render perfect obedience, but our duty is to aim at it. The condition of inheritance is that we are doers of the Father's will (Matthew 7:21).
III. As CONNECTED WITH A SOLEMN RENEWAL OF VOWS. Fitting on such occasions that both blessing and curse should be remembered. - J.O.
Ye shall pass over Jordan.
Helps for the Pulpit.
I. THE ANTICIPATED INHERITANCE.
1. A land of promise.
2. A land of abundance.
3. A holy land.
4. A land of rest.
5. Permanence of residence.
6. A land freely given.
II. THE MANNER OF POSSESSION.
1. The streams of Jordan rolled between the desert and the land of Canaan. So does the river of death flow between earth and heaven.
2. Jordan separated the Israelites from the inhabitants of Canaan. Death separates the church militant and the church triumphant. On this side is a parent, on the other side a child.
3. Jordan was subject to the command of God. When He gave the word, the waters rose and stood up (Joshua 3:16). Death, too, is under His control. Christ "destroyed him who had the power of death" (Hebrews 2:14, 15).
4. Through Jordan was a necessary way to the laud of promise. So is death, however painful and affecting. It is necessary that the river of death should be dark and formidable to render us content with the present state of existence.
5. Jordan was the last river they had to pass. Death will be the last conflict — the last enemy with which the saint will have to struggle. Observe that when the children of Israel passed over Jordan the following things were observable.(1) They were required to sanctify themselves previous to the passage (Joshua 3:5). Before death Christ must be made unto the believer "sanctification" (1 Corinthians 1:30).(2) The priests were to enter the river first. So Jesus entered the river before us — as our Forerunner. The eye of faith in the dying believer beholds His footprints at the bottom.(3) The priests stood firm in the midst of Jordan until all the people passed over (Joshua 3:17). Christ stands by His people in their dying moments, and they "feel the bottom of the river, for it is good."(4) When they had passed over, they erected memorials of praise (Joshua 4:5, 8, 20). So when the Christian reaches heaven he shall utter a song of praise. "We went through fire and through water, but Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place" (Psalm 46:12). "Unto Him that loved us" (Revelation 1:5, 6).Application:
1. The possession of the heavenly inheritance is certain: "Ye shall possess it." "Faithful is He who hath promised it, who also will do it."
2. Meditate much on heaven and Christ as an important means of inducing to preparation for the last conflict.
3. All sinners will be overwhelmed in the swellings of Jordan.
()
People
Abiram,
Canaanites,
Dathan,
Eliab,
Moses,
Pharaoh,
ReubenPlaces
Arabah,
Beth-baal-peor,
Egypt,
Euphrates River,
Gilgal,
Jordan River,
Lebanon,
Moreh,
Mount Ebal,
Mount Gerizim,
Red SeaTopics
Cross, Dwell, Dwelt, Enter, Gives, Giveth, Giving, Heritage, Jordan, Pass, Passing, Possess, Possessed, Possession, Resting-place, ThereinOutline
1. Another exhortation to obedience2. by their own experience of God's great works8. by promise of God's great blessings16. and by threatenings18. A careful study is required in God's words26. The blessing and curse set before themDictionary of Bible Themes
Deuteronomy 11:30 4284 sun
4528 trees
4857 west
Library
Canaan on Earth
Many of you, my dear hearers, are really come out of Egypt; but you are still wandering about in the wilderness. "We that have believed do enter into rest;" but you, though you have eaten of Jesus, have not so believed on him as to have entered into the Canaan of rest. You are the Lord's people, but you have not come into the Canaan of assured faith, confidence, and hope, where we wrestle no longer with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus--when …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 2: 1856The God of the Rain
(Fifth Sunday after Easter.) DEUT. xi. 11, 12. The land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven. A land which the Lord thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year, even unto the end of the year. I told you, when I spoke of the earthquakes of the Holy Land, that it seems as if God had meant specially to train that strange people the Jews, by putting them into a country where they …
Charles Kingsley—The Gospel of the Pentateuch
Gilgal, in Deuteronomy 11:30 what the Place Was.
That which is said by Moses, that "Gerizim and Ebal were over-against Gilgal," Deuteronomy 11:30, is so obscure, that it is rendered into contrary significations by interpreters. Some take it in that sense, as if it were near to Gilgal: some far off from Gilgal: the Targumists read, "before Gilgal": while, as I think, they do not touch the difficulty; which lies not so much in the signification of the word Mul, as in the ambiguity of the word Gilgal. These do all seem to understand that Gilgal which …
John Lightfoot—From the Talmud and Hebraica
Josiah, a Pattern for the Ignorant.
"Because thine heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the Lord, when thou heardest what I spake against this place, and against the inhabitants thereof, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and hast rent thy clothes, and wept before Me; I also have heard thee, saith the Lord. Behold therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace; and thine eyes shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place."--2 Kings …
John Henry Newman—Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII
The Blessings of Noah Upon Shem and Japheth. (Gen. Ix. 18-27. )
Ver. 20. "And Noah began and became an husbandman, and planted vineyards."--This does not imply that Noah was the first who began to till the ground, and, more especially, to cultivate the vine; for Cain, too, was a tiller of the ground, Gen. iv. 2. The sense rather is, that Noah, after the flood, again took up this calling. Moreover, the remark has not an independent import; it serves only to prepare the way for the communication of the subsequent account of Noah's drunkenness. By this remark, …
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament
Subjects of Study. Home Education in Israel; Female Education. Elementary Schools, Schoolmasters, and School Arrangements.
If a faithful picture of society in ancient Greece or Rome were to be presented to view, it is not easy to believe that even they who now most oppose the Bible could wish their aims success. For this, at any rate, may be asserted, without fear of gainsaying, that no other religion than that of the Bible has proved competent to control an advanced, or even an advancing, state of civilisation. Every other bound has been successively passed and submerged by the rising tide; how deep only the student …
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life
In the Fifteenth Year of Tiberius Cæsar and under the Pontificate of Annas and Caiaphas - a Voice in the Wilderness
THERE is something grand, even awful, in the almost absolute silence which lies upon the thirty years between the Birth and the first Messianic Manifestation of Jesus. In a narrative like that of the Gospels, this must have been designed; and, if so, affords presumptive evidence of the authenticity of what follows, and is intended to teach, that what had preceded concerned only the inner History of Jesus, and the preparation of the Christ. At last that solemn silence was broken by an appearance, …
Alfred Edersheim—The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah
The Worship of the Synagogue
One of the most difficult questions in Jewish history is that connected with the existence of a synagogue within the Temple. That such a "synagogue" existed, and that its meeting-place was in "the hall of hewn stones," at the south-eastern angle of the court of the priest, cannot be called in question, in face of the clear testimony of contemporary witnesses. Considering that "the hall of hew stones" was also the meeting-place for the great Sanhedrim, and that not only legal decisions, but lectures …
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life
Among the People, and with the Pharisees
It would have been difficult to proceed far either in Galilee or in Judaea without coming into contact with an altogether peculiar and striking individuality, differing from all around, and which would at once arrest attention. This was the Pharisee. Courted or feared, shunned or flattered, reverently looked up to or laughed at, he was equally a power everywhere, both ecclesiastically and politically, as belonging to the most influential, the most zealous, and the most closely-connected religions …
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life
Covenanting Confers Obligation.
As it has been shown that all duty, and that alone, ought to be vowed to God in covenant, it is manifest that what is lawfully engaged to in swearing by the name of God is enjoined in the moral law, and, because of the authority of that law, ought to be performed as a duty. But it is now to be proved that what is promised to God by vow or oath, ought to be performed also because of the act of Covenanting. The performance of that exercise is commanded, and the same law which enjoins that the duties …
John Cunningham—The Ordinance of Covenanting
The Old Testament Canon from Its Beginning to Its Close.
The first important part of the Old Testament put together as a whole was the Pentateuch, or rather, the five books of Moses and Joshua. This was preceded by smaller documents, which one or more redactors embodied in it. The earliest things committed to writing were probably the ten words proceeding from Moses himself, afterwards enlarged into the ten commandments which exist at present in two recensions (Exod. xx., Deut. v.) It is true that we have the oldest form of the decalogue from the Jehovist …
Samuel Davidson—The Canon of the Bible
Deuteronomy
Owing to the comparatively loose nature of the connection between consecutive passages in the legislative section, it is difficult to present an adequate summary of the book of Deuteronomy. In the first section, i.-iv. 40, Moses, after reviewing the recent history of the people, and showing how it reveals Jehovah's love for Israel, earnestly urges upon them the duty of keeping His laws, reminding them of His spirituality and absoluteness. Then follows the appointment, iv. 41-43--here irrelevant (cf. …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament
Links
Deuteronomy 11:31 NIVDeuteronomy 11:31 NLTDeuteronomy 11:31 ESVDeuteronomy 11:31 NASBDeuteronomy 11:31 KJV
Deuteronomy 11:31 Bible AppsDeuteronomy 11:31 ParallelDeuteronomy 11:31 Biblia ParalelaDeuteronomy 11:31 Chinese BibleDeuteronomy 11:31 French BibleDeuteronomy 11:31 German Bible
Deuteronomy 11:31 Commentaries
Bible Hub
