Deuteronomy 5:33

Deu_5:33

That ye may live, and . . . prolong your days.

Prosperity and adversity

I. We fall, I conceive, into a very inaccurate method of speech, when we say that the prize which God proposes to His people is set forth in one of these clauses; the duty, or performance by which they are to earn that prize, in the other. Moses teaches his countrymen that God has conferred upon them the highest prize which man can conceive, freely and without any merit on their part.

II. Is there no duty, then, enjoined in the words of my text? Does it merely speak of a blessing or a privilege? Certainly when it is said, Ye shall walk in all the ways which the Lord your God hath commanded you, it must be meant that there was something required on the part of the creature as well as something bestowed by the Creator. If we believe that an actual living being to whom we are related has put us in this way, and that it is a way of dependence upon Himself, we can understand how the preservation of it becomes a duty to Him; we begin in fact to know what duty is. If, finally, we believe that He who puts us in this way is the only person who can keep us in it, or prevent us from going out of it, we may feel that His command is itself a power; that it does not merely say, Thus and thus you must do, thus and thus you must not do; but, This will I enable you to do, this will I prevent you from doing.

III. We come then at length to this class of blessings which are shortly gathered up in the words: That ye may live, and that it may be well with you, and that ye may prolong your days in the land which ye shall possess. It is here signified in very simple, clear language, which admits, I conceive, of no double sense, that a people in a right, orderly, godly state shall be a well-doing people; a people with all the signs and tokens of strength, growth, triumph; a people marked for permanence and indefinite expansion. I cannot put another meaning upon these words; I should think that a wish to dilute their force was a proof of the greatest carelessness about the authority from which they proceed, as well as of the most shocking inhumanity. If it be the distinction of saints and spiritual men that they do not trouble themselves about the external prosperity of a land, that they do not care whether the oxen are strong to labour, whether the sheep are bringing forth thousands and ten thousands, whether there is no complaining in the streets; if they are so occupied in the future as to have no interest in the present, too busy with their souls to have leisure for thinking about the ruin which may be threatening the bodies of their fellow men--then I say at once Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, were not saints and spiritual men. Since they held that Gods order was the perfectly right and living order, they could not but think that all disorder, all wrong and death which had invaded it, must have come through mans neglect to fulfil the part which had been assigned him;--through his unwillingness to till and subdue the earth which he was meant to till and subdue; through his idleness and distrust and self-seeking, his refusal to walk in the ways which God had commanded.

IV. And therefore it cannot be true--the whole history of the Jews declares it not to be true--that the blessings of adversity were unknown to them, were reserved for a later period. Which of the good men of the Old Testament was not proved in a furnace? Into whose soul did the iron at some time not enter? It was not because they believed in Gods promises to their nation, and were sure that its outward prosperity must and would at last correspond to its inward health and vitality; it was not because they longed for the earth to bring forth and bud, to have heaps of corn upon it, that its presses might burst forth with new wine; it was not on this account that they had to endure less of inward sadness, or fewer reproaches from the kings and priests and people to whom they spoke. No; the more strong their feeling was that God had chosen their nation and made a covenant with it, the greater was the struggle with their individual selfishness. (F. D. Maurice, M. A.)

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The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

5:33 Stay on the path: This figure of speech compares the course of life to making a journey. Israel was called to live in such a way that the nation would not be sidetracked from the purposes for which it had been chosen and equipped.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

As by obedience, God giveth us all felicity: so of disobeying God proceed all our miseries.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Verse 33. Ye shall walk in all the ways, c.] God never gave a commandment to man which he did not design that he should obey. He who selects from the Divine testimonies such precepts as he feels but little inclination to transgress, and lives in the breach of others, sins against the grand legislative authority of God, and shall be treated as a rebel.

That ye may live] תחיון ticheyun, that ye may enjoy life, (for the paragogic ן nun, at the end of the word, deepens the sense), that it may be well with you ותוב לכם vetob lachem, and good shall be to you - God will prosper you in all things essential to the welfare of your bodies, and the salvation of your souls.

That ye may prolong your days in the land] That ye may arrive at a good old age, and grow more and more meet for the inheritance among the saints in light.

On this very important verse we may remark, a long life is a great blessing, if a man live to God, because it is in life, and in life alone, that a preparation for eternal glory may be acquired. Those who wish to die soon, have never yet learned to live, and know not the value of life or time. Many have a vain hope that they shall get either in death, or in the other world, a preparation for glory. This is a fatal error. Here, alone, we may acquaint ourselves with God, and receive that holiness without which none can see him. Reader, be thankful to him that thou art still in a state of probation and pray that thou mayest live for eternity.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.