Ulangan 1:22

1:22 So all of you approached me and said, “Let’s send some men ahead of us to scout out the land and bring us back word as to how we should attack it and what the cities are like there.”

Ulangan 8:1

The Lord’s Provision in the Desert

8:1 You must keep carefully all these commandments ¹  I am giving ²  you today so that you may live, increase in number, ³  and go in and occupy the land that the Lord promised to your ancestors. ⁴ 

Ulangan 12:18

12:18 Only in the presence of the Lord your God may you eat these, in the place he ⁵  chooses. This applies to you, your son, your daughter, your male and female servants, and the Levites ⁶  in your villages. In that place you will rejoice before the Lord your God in all the output of your labor. ⁷ 

Ulangan 14:21

14:21 You may not eat any corpse, though you may give it to the resident foreigner who is living in your villages ⁸  and he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner. You are a people holy to the Lord your God. Do not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. ⁹ 

Ulangan 21:23

21:23 his body must not remain all night on the tree; instead you must make certain you bury ¹⁰  him that same day, for the one who is left exposed ¹¹  on a tree is cursed by God. ¹²  You must not defile your land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.

[8:1]  ¹ tn The singular term (מִצְוָה, mitsvah) includes the whole corpus of covenant stipulations, certainly the book of Deuteronomy at least (cf. Deut 5:28; 6:1, 25; 7:11; 11:8, 22; 15:5; 17:20; 19:9; 27:1; 30:11; 31:5). The plural (מִצְוֹת, mitsot) refers to individual stipulations (as in vv. 2, 6).

[8:1]  ² tn Heb “commanding” (so NASB). For stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy, “giving” has been used in the translation (likewise in v. 11).

[8:1]  ³ tn Heb “multiply” (so KJV, NASB, NLT); NIV, NRSV “increase.”

[8:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 16, 18).

[12:18]  ⁵ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” See note on “he” in 12:5.

[12:18]  ⁶ tn See note at Deut 12:12.

[12:18]  ⁷ tn Heb “in all the sending forth of your hands.”

[14:21]  ⁸ tn Heb “gates” (also in vv. 27, 28, 29).

[14:21]  ⁹ sn Do not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. This strange prohibition – one whose rationale is unclear but probably related to pagan ritual – may seem out of place here but actually is not for the following reasons: (1) the passage as a whole opens with a prohibition against heathen mourning rites (i.e., death, vv. 1-2) and closes with what appear to be birth and infancy rites. (2) In the other two places where the stipulation occurs (Exod 23:19 and Exod 34:26) it similarly concludes major sections. (3) Whatever the practice signified it clearly was abhorrent to the Lord and fittingly concludes the topic of various breaches of purity and holiness as represented by the ingestion of unclean animals (vv. 3-21). See C. M. Carmichael, “On Separating Life and Death: An Explanation of Some Biblical Laws,” HTR 69 (1976): 1-7; J. Milgrom, “You Shall Not Boil a Kid In Its Mother’s Milk,” BRev 1 (1985): 48-55; R. J. Ratner and B. Zuckerman, “In Rereading the ‘Kid in Milk’ Inscriptions,” BRev 1 (1985): 56-58; and M. Haran, “Seething a Kid in its Mother’s Milk,” JJS 30 (1979): 23-35.

[21:23]  ¹⁰ tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates by “make certain.”

[21:23]  ¹¹ tn Heb “hung,” but this could convey the wrong image in English (hanging with a rope as a means of execution). Cf. NCV “anyone whose body is displayed on a tree.”

[21:23]  ¹² sn The idea behind the phrase cursed by God seems to be not that the person was impaled because he was cursed but that to leave him exposed there was to invite the curse of God upon the whole land. Why this would be so is not clear, though the rabbinic idea that even a criminal is created in the image of God may give some clue (thus J. H. Tigay, Deuteronomy [JPSTC], 198). Paul cites this text (see Gal 3:13) to make the point that Christ, suspended from a cross, thereby took upon himself the curse associated with such a display of divine wrath and judgment (T. George, Galatians [NAC], 238-39).