Jesus: From Genesis to Revelation

Day 5: Blessings, Curses, the Choice of Life and Death, and the Death of Moses

Reading

Historical Context

Deuteronomy 28 is among the most architecturally imposing chapters in the entire Old Testament. The blessings occupy fourteen verses (28:1-14). The curses require fifty-four (28:15-68). The asymmetry is deliberate and devastating. The chapter follows the pattern of ancient Near Eastern treaty curses – particularly the Vassal Treaties of Esarhaddon (seventh century BCE), which threatened rebellious vassals with plague, famine, siege, madness, and exile in language remarkably similar to Deuteronomy 28. The literary parallels suggest that Moses (or the Deuteronomic tradition) employed a form well known in the ancient world, investing it with the theological content of YHWH’s covenant. The blessings are comprehensive: “Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground” (28:3-4). The Hebrew barukh (“blessed”) means more than happy. It means flourishing, empowered, positioned under the favor of God in a way that produces tangible fruitfulness. But the curses are even more comprehensive. They escalate in horrifying specificity – drought, pestilence, defeat, siege so severe that parents eat their own children (28:53-57), and finally exile: “The LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other” (28:64). The Hebrew verb putz (“to scatter”) reverses the gathering that the covenant was designed to accomplish. Exile is un-election – the scattering of those whom God had gathered.

Deuteronomy 29-30 records the covenant renewal ceremony on the plains of Moab. Moses declares that this covenant is made “not with you alone, but… with whoever is not here with us today” (29:14-15) – extending its reach across generations. Chapter 30 contains one of the most theologically remarkable passages in the Pentateuch: “The LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live” (30:6). The Hebrew umal (“circumcise”) applied to the heart is a metaphor of radical transformation. Physical circumcision was the sign of the Abrahamic covenant (Genesis 17). Heart circumcision is the sign of a covenant yet to come – one in which obedience flows not from external command but from internal renovation. Moses, standing on the plains of Moab preaching the Mosaic covenant, is already anticipating the new covenant. He knows the people will fail. He has just predicted their rebellion (31:16-18, 29). But he also knows that God’s purpose will not fail – that the day is coming when the Shema’s demand for total love will be met by a divine surgery that makes such love possible.

The great choice is set before the people in Deuteronomy 30:19-20: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life.” The Hebrew hayim (“life”) is not mere biological existence. It is the covenantal flourishing that comes from being rightly related to the God who is himself the source of all life. The three participles – “loving” (le’ahavah), “obeying” (lishmo’a, the Shema verb again), and “holding fast” (uledovqah) – describe not three separate actions but one integrated posture of total allegiance. And the final phrase – “for he is your life” (ki hu hayyekha) – is the theological center of the entire speech. God is not merely the giver of life. He is life. To choose him is to choose life itself. To refuse him is to choose death, regardless of how prosperous the refusal may appear.

The book closes with the death of Moses on Mount Nebo. “And Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho. And the LORD showed him all the land” (34:1). The geographic panorama – “all of Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the western sea, the Negeb, and the Plain, that is, the Valley of Jericho the city of palm trees, as far as Zoar” (34:1-3) – is a divine showing, a gift of sight to replace the gift of entry. Moses sees everything. He enters nothing. “So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD, and he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab opposite Beth-peor; but no one knows the place of his burial to this day” (34:5-6). The Hebrew vayyiqbor oto (“and he buried him”) is striking: God himself performs the funeral. The greatest figure in the Old Testament receives a burial conducted by the LORD and a grave whose location is known only to heaven. “And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face” (34:10). The statement is both epitaph and anticipation. Not yet. The prophet like Moses – the one who will know God face to face and lead the people not to the border but into the promise – has not yet come.

Christ in This Day

The curses of Deuteronomy 28 are not an abstraction. They are a prophecy – one that the rest of the Old Testament narrates in devastating detail. The siege Moses describes became reality at Samaria (2 Kings 6:25-29) and Jerusalem (Lamentations 2:20; 4:10). The exile he warns about happened – first to the northern kingdom in 722 BCE, then to Judah in 586 BCE. The curses of the Mosaic covenant fell with the precision Moses promised. And Paul sees in this curse the very thing Christ came to bear: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us – for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’” (Galatians 3:13, quoting Deuteronomy 21:23). The curses that the covenant justly pronounced on a disobedient people, Jesus absorbs on the cross. He does not abolish the curse by declaring it unjust. He exhausts it by bearing it. The siege, the exile, the scattering, the horror – everything Deuteronomy 28 threatens – converges on Golgotha, where the covenant’s wrath meets the covenant mediator’s willing sacrifice. The blessings of Abraham can now flow to the nations (Galatians 3:14) precisely because the curses of Moses have been borne by the one who stood under them in our place.

The promise of heart circumcision in Deuteronomy 30:6 is the Mosaic covenant’s own admission that it cannot accomplish what it demands. The Shema commands total love. The curses punish the failure to love totally. But between the command and the curse, Moses inserts a promise: God himself will circumcise the heart so that the love the law demands becomes possible. Jeremiah will develop this into the full-blown new covenant promise: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33). Ezekiel will add the mechanism: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes” (Ezekiel 36:26-27). And Paul will declare the fulfillment: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). The love the Shema demands and human effort cannot sustain, the Spirit produces. The Mosaic covenant is not replaced by the new covenant as though it were a mistake. It is completed by the new covenant as its intended destination. Deuteronomy 30:6 is the seed. Pentecost is the harvest.

Moses dies on the mountain, seeing a land he cannot enter. The scene is one of the most poignant in all of Scripture – and one of the most theologically loaded. Moses, the lawgiver, the mediator, the faithful servant, cannot bring the people into rest. He can bring them to the edge. He can show them the way. He can plead, warn, and teach. But he cannot cross the Jordan. That task falls to Joshua – Yehoshua, “the LORD saves” – whose name is the Hebrew form of the Greek Iesous: Jesus. The author of Hebrews builds his argument on this precise transition: “Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son” (Hebrews 3:5-6). Moses was faithful in the house. Christ is faithful over it. Moses testified to what was coming. Christ is what was coming. And the rest that Joshua’s conquest provided was incomplete: “For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God” (Hebrews 4:8-9). Moses dies looking at a land he cannot reach. Joshua leads the people in, but the rest is temporary. Jesus rises from a tomb and opens a kingdom that cannot be shaken. The name tells the story across testaments: Yehoshua. The LORD saves. From the plains of Moab to the empty tomb, the name carries the promise to its fulfillment.

Deuteronomy 34:10 – “There has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face” – is both the Old Testament’s highest tribute and its deepest longing. Moses knew God face to face, yet he died outside the land. The law he mediated was holy, righteous, and good (Romans 7:12), yet it could not give what it commanded. The covenant he administered offered life, yet the people chose death. Everything about Moses’ career – his greatness, his faithfulness, his limitations, his death on the mountain – is designed to produce a hunger for someone greater. “The law was our guardian until Christ came” (Galatians 3:24). Moses is the guardian. Christ is the destination. And when Jesus stands on the Mount of Transfiguration with Moses and Elijah – the law and the prophets – the Father’s voice repeats the Shema command of Deuteronomy 18:15 with finality: “This is my beloved Son; listen to him” (Mark 9:7). Moses’ farewell is over. The one he pointed to has arrived.

Key Themes

Connections

Old Testament Roots

The blessings and curses of Deuteronomy 28 draw on the covenant structure established in Leviticus 26, which similarly pairs obedience with prosperity and disobedience with exile. The heart circumcision promise of Deuteronomy 30:6 is the seedbed for Jeremiah 31:31-34 (the new covenant) and Ezekiel 36:26-27 (the new heart and new spirit). Moses’ death on Nebo (Deuteronomy 34) fulfills the sentence pronounced at Meribah (Numbers 20:12): “Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land.” The closing epitaph – “there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses” (34:10) – looks back to the promise of 18:15 and forward to a fulfillment the Old Testament will not witness.

New Testament Echoes

Paul’s argument in Galatians 3:10-14 rests squarely on Deuteronomy 28: those under the law are under its curse, and Christ redeems us by becoming a curse for us. Romans 7:7-25 is the existential outworking of Deuteronomy’s built-in tension: the law is holy and good, but it cannot empower what it demands. Romans 10:6-8 quotes Deuteronomy 30:12-14 – “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” – and applies it to the gospel of Christ. The author of Hebrews develops the Moses-Jesus comparison throughout chapters 3-4, arguing that Jesus is the faithful Son over God’s house and the giver of the rest that Joshua could not provide. Jude 9 preserves a tradition about the archangel Michael contesting with the devil over Moses’ body – a cryptic detail that underscores the cosmic significance of Moses’ death and burial.

Parallel Passages

Joshua 1:1-9 – the transfer of leadership from Moses to Joshua – is the immediate sequel to Deuteronomy 34, with God commanding Joshua to be “strong and courageous” and to meditate on “this Book of the Law” day and night. 2 Kings 22:8-13 – the discovery of the Book of the Law under Josiah – triggers a covenant renewal that echoes the Deuteronomic pattern of hearing, repenting, and choosing. Nehemiah 8-9 – the reading of the Law by Ezra and the people’s response of weeping, then celebrating – shows the Deuteronomic cycle of forgetting and remembering still operating centuries after Moses’ death.

Reflection Questions

  1. Moses sets before Israel “life and death, blessing and curse” and commands them to “choose life.” The command seems obvious. Yet the rest of the Old Testament shows Israel consistently choosing death. What does this relentless failure reveal about the human capacity to obey God’s commands apart from divine intervention? How does the promise of heart circumcision (30:6) and the gift of the Spirit address the gap between the command and the capacity?

  2. Moses sees the entire Promised Land from Nebo and enters nothing. God shows him everything and then lets him die. What is the emotional and theological weight of this scene for you? What does it mean that the greatest leader in the Old Testament cannot finish the mission – that the task of bringing God’s people home falls to someone else, someone whose name means “the LORD saves”?

  3. Paul says Christ “redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). The curses of Deuteronomy 28 – famine, siege, exile, madness – are real and terrible. How does knowing that Jesus bore the covenant’s curse on the cross change the way you read these chapters? Does the severity of the curse deepen your understanding of the cost of grace?

Prayer

Sovereign Lord, you set before your people life and death, blessing and curse – and then you watched as generation after generation chose death. The law you gave through Moses was holy, righteous, and good, and we broke it before the ink was dry. The curses were just. The exile was deserved. The scattering was the consequence of a love divided and a loyalty betrayed. And yet you did not abandon your people to the curse. You sent your Son to stand under it – to bear the weight of Deuteronomy 28 on a Roman cross, to absorb the wrath the covenant demanded, to become the curse so that the blessing of Abraham might reach every nation. Thank you for the promise Moses glimpsed in Deuteronomy 30 – that you yourself would circumcise the heart, that the love the Shema demands would one day flow not from human effort but from your Spirit poured out. Thank you that Moses’ death on Nebo is not the end of the story – that the one who bears Joshua’s name has already crossed the Jordan, already entered the rest, already opened the kingdom to all who hear and believe. We choose life today – not in our own strength, but in the strength of the one who chose the cross so that we might live. In the name of Jesus Christ, the prophet greater than Moses, the mediator of a better covenant, the Lord who saves. Amen.