Ulangan 4:34

4:34 Or has God ¹  ever before tried to deliver ²  a nation from the middle of another nation, accompanied by judgments, ³  signs, wonders, war, strength, power, ⁴  and other very terrifying things like the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?

Ulangan 10:8

10:8 At that time the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi ⁵  to carry the ark of the Lord’s covenant, to stand before the Lord to serve him, and to formulate blessings ⁶  in his name, as they do to this very day.

Ulangan 12:18

12:18 Only in the presence of the Lord your God may you eat these, in the place he ⁷  chooses. This applies to you, your son, your daughter, your male and female servants, and the Levites ⁸  in your villages. In that place you will rejoice before the Lord your God in all the output of your labor. ⁹ 

Ulangan 17:12

17:12 The person who pays no attention ¹⁰  to the priest currently serving the Lord your God there, or to the verdict – that person must die, so that you may purge evil from Israel.

Ulangan 21:5

21:5 Then the Levitical priests ¹¹  will approach (for the Lord your God has chosen them to serve him and to pronounce blessings in his name, ¹²  and to decide ¹³  every judicial verdict ¹⁴ )

Ulangan 25:5

Respect for the Sanctity of Others

25:5 If brothers live together and one of them dies without having a son, the dead man’s wife must not remarry someone outside the family. Instead, her late husband’s brother must go to her, marry her, ¹⁵  and perform the duty of a brother-in-law. ¹⁶ 

Ulangan 25:7

25:7 But if the man does not want to marry his brother’s widow, then she ¹⁷  must go to the elders at the town gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to preserve his brother’s name in Israel; he is unwilling to perform the duty of a brother-in-law to me!”

[4:34]  ¹ tn The translation assumes the reference is to Israel’s God in which case the point is this: God’s intervention in Israel’s experience is unique in the sense that he has never intervened in such power for any other people on earth. The focus is on the uniqueness of Israel’s experience. Some understand the divine name here in a generic sense, “a god,” or “any god.” In this case God’s incomparability is the focus (cf. v. 35, where this theme is expressed).

[4:34]  ² tn Heb “tried to go to take for himself.”

[4:34]  ³ tn Heb “by testings.” The reference here is the judgments upon Pharaoh in the form of plagues. See Deut 7:19 (cf. v. 18) and 29:3 (cf. v. 2).

[4:34]  ⁴ tn Heb “by strong hand and by outstretched arm.”

[10:8]  ⁵ sn The Lord set apart the tribe of Levi. This was not the initial commissioning of the tribe of Levi to this ministry (cf. Num 3:11-13; 8:12-26), but with Aaron’s death it seemed appropriate to Moses to reiterate Levi’s responsibilities. There is no reference in the Book of Numbers to this having been done, but the account of Eleazar’s succession to the priesthood there (Num 20:25-28) would provide a setting for this to have occurred.

[10:8]  ⁶ sn To formulate blessings. The most famous example of this is the priestly “blessing formula” of Num 6:24-26.

[12:18]  ⁷ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” See note on “he” in 12:5.

[12:18]  ⁸ tn See note at Deut 12:12.

[12:18]  ⁹ tn Heb “in all the sending forth of your hands.”

[17:12]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “who acts presumptuously not to listen” (cf. NASB).

[21:5]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the priests, the sons of Levi.”

[21:5]  ¹² tn Heb “in the name of the Lord.” See note on Deut 10:8. The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[21:5]  ¹³ tn Heb “by their mouth.”

[21:5]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “every controversy and every blow.”

[25:5]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “take her as wife”; NRSV “taking her in marriage.”

[25:5]  ¹⁶ sn This is the so-called “levirate” custom (from the Latin term levir, “brother-in-law”), an ancient provision whereby a man who died without male descendants to carry on his name could have a son by proxy, that is, through a surviving brother who would marry his widow and whose first son would then be attributed to the brother who had died. This is the only reference to this practice in an OT legal text but it is illustrated in the story of Judah and his sons (Gen 38) and possibly in the account of Ruth and Boaz (Ruth 2:8; 3:12; 4:6).

[25:7]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “want to take his sister-in-law, then his sister in law.” In the second instance the pronoun (“she”) has been used in the translation to avoid redundancy.