The Jewish orthodox sages and Rabbis understood the literalness of all of the Old Testament prophecies. Premillennialists and dispensationalists are in good company in seeing the Bible interpreted in a normal, literal hermeneutic. Someday, the eyes of the Jews will be open in seeing the Lord Jesus Christ as the promised Messiah. Meanwhile, their interpretative notes and commentaries on great prophetic passages continue to support the “rightness” of looking for future prophecy being fulfilled actually, and literally!
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Deuteronomy 30:1-10
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Sources:
The Pentateuch and Haftorahs.
Society and Religion in the Second Temple Period, Michael Avi-Yonah and Zvi Baras (Jerusalem: Massada Publishing, 1977).
The Messiah Texts, Raphael Patai (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1979).
Dictionary of Judaism in the Biblical Period, William Green, ed. (Peabody, MS: Hendrickson, 1999).
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Deuteronomy 30:1-10
The Prophesied Restoration of the Jews to the Land
30:1 When these things have come upon
you, the blessing and the curse … Punishment is not God’s
last word to Israel. When Israel seeks God, and accepts the Messiah,
Israel will find mercy at the hands of the Lord, and be brought back to
the Land of the fathers.
You will call them to mind. The Jews will
realize there is no place to go but back to the Lord, and the accepting
by faith the salvation of their Messiah.
30:2 You will return to the Lord your
God. Israel will take to heart the hard lessons learned in the
exile. They will come back literally to the Land. How foolish of the
allegorists and amillennialists to think that this will not happen, or
that it is applied in some “spiritualized” or mystical way to the
church!
30:3 The Lord you God will restore you
from captivity. He will change your fortune, restore you to your
former blessed state. The Talmud renders this, “And the Lord your God
will return with your captivity.” When Israel was in exile, God was, so
to speak, in exile with him. The Divine Cause which it is Israel’s
mission to champion was in eclipse. By “fortune” means prosperity in the
land, but it also refers to the fact that they will be blessed in body,
heart, mind, soul and spirit!
30:4 The Lord will gather you and bring
you back. It has to be a satanic ploy that would spiritualize these
thoughts and apply them to the church. This is a literal, actual,
historic return back to the “Promised Land.” Though the Israelites be
scattered to the four winds of heaven, yet will God re-unite them in the
Land of the fathers and work in Israel a change of heart. They will
trust their Messiah for salvation and as their King!
30:5 The Lord will bring you into the
land which your fathers possessed. This is a pointed and specific
promise that must be fulfilled by some future generation of Jews. We are
seeing the “beginning of the beginnings” as to what is now happening in
Israel. The complete and final return will come about when Jesus the
Messiah’s feet touch the Mt. of Olives. He will begin then the 1,000
year Davidic kingdom reign and rule! The prosperity and blessing of the
Jews will be greater than their fathers!
30:6 The Lord your God will circumcise
your heart. Physical circumcision was an outward command and it was
a sign of the Abrahamic covenant. It was hygienic in that circumcision
helps because the foreskin is cut away. It shows that the Jewish people
are to be clean physically, yes, but more; they are to be clean morally
and spiritually. This spiritual circumcision is part of the New covenant
that will replace the Mosaic covenant, the Law, as prophesied in
Jeremiah 31:31-on. The Jews will obey the Lord “with all your heart and
with all your soul, in order that you may live.” The words of Jeremiah
31:32, which is the prophecy about the New covenant, “I will put My law
in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it,” are taken by
Rabbi Nachmanides to express this particular teaching of Deuteronomy.
The heart of the Jews will no longer be closed
up, impenetrable, and unreceptive of spiritual teaching. God will help
Israel to fulfill its divine purpose.
30:7 The Lord your God will inflict all
these curses. The evil that has fallen on the Jews the last two
thousand years will come upon the pagan, Gentile nations who have so
persecuted the Jews. This is vengeance (which belongs to the Lord) and
it is retribution.
30:8 And you shall again obey the Lord.
The New covenant, activated by the Holy Spirit, will be the
instrument of Israel’s obedience. Christ, the Messiah, ratified the New
covenant by His death on the cross.
30:9 The Lord will again rejoice over
you. Notice the word “again.” This cannot be something new for the
church age. This is a restoration of “rejoicing” over God’s earthly
people, the Jews. He will completely bless them in every area of their
existence. This will be carried out by the working of the Messiah in His
earthly reign over Jerusalem and over the Holy Land!
30:10 If you obey the Lord your God …
with your heart and soul. The word if is the Hebrew word
key and is better translated “When” you do this. The conversion of
Israel is not in doubt, neither is God holding back His plans, waiting
for Israel to respond. These things “will come to pass.” The NAS sees
this issue over “if” and correctly translates it in a side note: “For
you will obey the Lord your God …”
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Sources:
The Pentateuch and Haftorahs.
Society and Religion in the Second Temple Period, Michael Avi-Yonah and Zvi Baras (Jerusalem: Massada Publishing, 1977).
The Messiah Texts, Raphael Patai (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1979).
Dictionary of Judaism in the Biblical Period, William Green, ed. (Peabody, MS: Hendrickson, 1999).
