Deuteronomy 19

 

The LORD made compassionate provision for accidental death

 

1 When the LORD your God has cut off the nations, whose land the LORD your God gives you, and you succeed/inherit them, and dwell in their cities, and in their houses; 2 You are to separate three cities for you in the midst of your land, which the LORD your God gives you to possess it. 3 You are to make a road, and divide the boundaries of your land into three parts, which the LORD your God gives you to inherit, so that every killer may flee there. 4 And this is the rule of the killer, who flees there, that he may live: Whoever kills his neighbor ignorantly, whom he did not hate in the past; 5 Like when a man goes into the woods with his neighbor to cut wood, and his hand swings a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and the iron slips off the wood, and lands on his neighbor so that he dies; he is to flee to one of those cities, and live: 6 Lest the avenger of the blood chase the killer while his heart is hot, overtake him because the way is long, and kills him though he was not worthy of death, because he did not hate him in the past.

 

  • The brother or nearest living relative of the killed person was the avenger of blood (Genesis 9:5).
  • God made cities of refuge for accidental murderers.
  • Today this would include car accidents though not drunk or drugged driving because we know that is dangerous and can cause accidents.
  • In verse 1 God casts off nations when their iniquity is full. He gave their land to His people.
  • Genesis 15:16 But in the fourth generation they will come here again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.
  • Genesis 9:5 And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother I will require the life of man.

 

7 Therefore I command you saying, Separate three cities for yourselves. 8 And if the LORD your God enlarges your coast, as he has sworn to your fathers, and gives you all the land that he promised to give to your fathers; 9 If you keep all these commandments to do them, which I command you this day, to love the LORD your God, and to always walk in his ways; then you are to add three more cities for you, beside these three: 10 That innocent blood not be shed in your land that the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance, and by it, blood be upon you. 11 But if any man hates his neighbor, lies in wait for him, rises up against him, and strikes him mortally so that he dies, and then flees into one of these cities: 12 the elders of his city will send and bring him there, and deliver him into the hand of the avenger of blood, that he may die. 13 Your eye will not pity him, but you are to put away the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, that it may go well with you.

 

  • If the death is intentional, the murderer has forfeited the right to his own life because he took the life of another.
  • God forbids pitying the murderer.
  • He lifts the burden of guilt.
  • He wants it to go well with all of us.
  • Genesis 9:6 Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood is to be shed: for in the image of God he made man.

 

14 Do not remove your neighbor’s landmark, which those at first have set in your inheritance, which you will inherit in the land that the LORD your God gives you to possess it. 15 One witness will not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any sin that he sins: at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, the matter is to be established. 16 If a false witness rises up against any man to testify against him what is wrong/falling away; 17 Then both the men, between whom the controversy is, will stand before the LORD, before the priests, and the judges who will be in those days; 18 The judges will make diligent inquisition: and behold, if the witness is a false witness, and has testified falsely against his brother; 19 Then you are to do to him, as he had thought to do to his brother. By this you take away the evil from among you. 20 And those who remain will hear, and fear, and from that time on will commit no more evil like that among you. 21 Your eye is not to pity; but life will go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

 

  • The landmark was the property line. Moving it to gave one more property and the other less.
  • God forbids cheating our neighbor.
  • These verses tell us that moving landmarks and falsely accusing someone are inspired by evil forces.
  • In Genesis 3 evil entered earth at Eden.
  • Doing what God has said cuts off evil.
  • Evil has no power on earth except through the choice of man.
  • God settled controversies through the priests and judges.
  • Matthew 7:12 However you want men to treat you, that is how you are to treat them: for this is the law and the prophets.

 

                                        Deuteronomy 20

 

God is with us to fight our battles

 

1 When you go out to battle against your enemies, and see horses, chariots, and a people more than you, do not be afraid of them: for the LORD your God is with you, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. 2 And when you come near the battle, the priest is to approach and speak to the people, 3 and say to them, Hear, O Israel, today you battle against your enemies: do not let your hearts faint, do not fear, do not tremble, or be terrified because of them; 4 For the LORD your God is he that goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.

 

  • The LORD, the maker and sustainer of all the universe, of everything that exists, is the one who is with us on the world’s battlefields and our personal inner battles.
  • We all fight battles every day against unseen forces that want to lead us away from God, faith, peace, love, and joy.
  • God goes with us to battle to fight for us and to save us.
  • Romans 8:31 If God is for us, who can be against us?
  • Ephesians 6:12 we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

 

5 And the officers will speak to the people saying, What man is there that has built a new house, and has not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, so that he not die in the battle, and another man dedicate it. 6 And what man is he that has planted a vineyard, and has not yet eaten of it? Let him also go and return to his house, so that he not die in the battle, and another man eat of it. 7 And what man is there that has betrothed a wife, and has not taken her? Let him go and return to his house, so that he not die in the battle, and another man take her. 8 And the officers will speak further to the people: they are to say, What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return to his house, so that brother’s heart not faint as well as his heart. 9 And when the officers finish speaking to the people, they are to make captains of the armies to lead the people.

 

  • God exempted from battle those with new homes not dedicated, those who had not eaten fruit of their vineyards, those who were engaged but not yet married, and those fearful and fainthearted.

 

10 When you approach a city to fight against it, proclaim peace to it.

11 And if it gives you an answer of peace, and opens to you, then all the people that are found there will be tributaries to you, and they will serve you.

12 And if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then besiege it: 13 And when the LORD your God has delivered it into your hands, you are to strike every male there with the edge of the sword: 14 But the women, the little ones, the livestock, and all that is in the city, all its plunder, you may take to yourself; and you will eat the plunder of your enemies which the LORD your God has given you. 15 You are to do this to all the cities that are very far off from you, which are not of the cities of these nations.

 

  • These instructions came from God.
  • He told them to offer peace before battle.
  • God gave them the plunder of their enemies.
  • Isaiah 9:6 unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government will be on his shoulder: and his name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
  • 2Corinthians 2:14 Now thanks be to God, which always causes us to triumph in Christ, and shows the fragrance of his knowledge by us in every place.

 

16 But of the cities of these people, who the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance, save alive nothing that breathes: 17 utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD your God has commanded you: 18 So that they do not teach you to do all their abominations, which they have done to their gods; and you sin against the LORD your God.

 

  • God commanded total destruction of those whose ways lead to eternal death.
  • God only destroys peoples whose iniquity is full (Genesis 15:16).
  • Their ways lead to earthly sorrow, earthly suffering, and eternal death.
  • God’s ways lead to abundant life and eternal blessings.
  • The cities of Canaan, the Promised Land, were to all be executed because they were so deep in evil that they would never return to God and receive life.
  • Genesis 15:16 But in the fourth generation they will come here again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.
  • Revelation 21:7 He that overcomes will inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he will be my son.
  • Ezekiel 33:11 Say to them, As I live, says the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live.
  • 2Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any perish, but that all come to repentance.

 

19 When you besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, you are not to destroy its trees by forcing an axe against them: for you may eat of them, and do not cut them down to use them in the siege (for the tree of the field is man’s life): 20 You may destroy only the trees that you know are not trees for food; cut them down and build bulwarks against the city that makes war with you, until it is subdued.

 

 

                                         Deuteronomy 21

 

God told them how to cleanse the land of unsolved murders

 

1 If someone is found killed in the land that the LORD your God gives you to possess it, lying in the field, and it is not known who killed him: 2 Then your elders and your judges are to come out and measure the distance to the cities that are around him that was killed: 3 And the elders of the city that is closest to the killed man are to take a heifer that has not been used for work, which has not drawn in the yoke; 4 And the elders of that city are to bring the heifer down to a brook, which is neither eared nor sown, and strike off the heifer’s neck there in the brook: 5 And the priests, the sons of Levi, will come near; for the LORD your God has chosen them to minister to him, and to bless in the name of the LORD; and by their word every dispute and every assault will be tried: 6 And all the elders of that city that are next to the killed man are to wash their hands over the heifer that is beheaded in the brook: 7 they are to answer and say, Our hands have not shed this blood, nor have our eyes seen it. 8 Be merciful, O LORD, to your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and do not lay innocent blood to your people of Israel’s charge. And the blood will be forgiven them. 9 By this you put away the guilt of innocent blood from among you, when you do what is right in the sight of the LORD.

 

  • God walked among the children of Israel.
  • Blood shed by murder could only be cleansed from the land by the death of the murderer.
  • God remembers the victims.
  • Genesis 9:6 Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood is to be shed: for in the image of God he made man.
  • Psalm 9:12 When he makes inquisition for blood, he remembers them: he does not forget the cry of the humble.

 

10 When you go out to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God has delivered them into your hands, and you have taken them captive, 11 and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and desire her, to have her as your wife; 12 Then bring her home to your house; she is to shave her head, pare her nails, 13 take off the clothing of her captivity, and remain in your house, mourning her father and her mother a full month: and after that you may go in to her, and be her husband, and she will be your wife. 14 And if it happens that you have no delight in her, then you are to let her go wherever she will; but you are never to sell her for money. You will not make merchandise of her, because you have humbled her. 15 If a man has two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have born him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son is hers that was hated: 16 Then when he makes his sons inherit what he has, he may not make the son of the beloved firstborn before the son of the hated, which is indeed the firstborn: 17 But he will acknowledge the son of the hated for the firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he has: for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his.

 

  • This scripture does not authorize or condone bigamy (1 Timothy 3:2).
  • Some circumstances occur that give man more than one wife, like Jacob.
  • The firstborn is the beginning of a man’s strength.
  • God is impartial and expects His people to be impartial.
  • Acts 10:34 Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: 35 But in every nation he that fears him, and works righteousness, is accepted with him.

 

18 If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and when they have disciplined him, if he will not listen to them: 19 Then his father and his mother are to lay hold on him, and bring him out to the elders of his city, to the gate of his place; 20 And they are to say to the elders of his city, This, our son, is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. 21 And all the men of his city will stone him with stones, that he die: by this you put evil away from among you; and all Israel will hear, and fear.

 

  • “The most devastating effect of sin is that we are blinded to it.” (Billy Graham)
  • Evil comes from the devil.
  • Any person in life who is doing evil is following the evil one.
  • Evil leads those around it to death.
  • herefore it is loving and merciful of God to instruct His people to put the evil away from them.
  • We should hate evil. Evil is the source of most the misery in life.

 

22 And if a man has committed a sin worthy of death, and he is to be put to death, and you hang him on a tree: 23 His body is not to remain all night on the tree. Be certain to bury him that same day; (for he that is hanged is cursed of God;) so that your land is not defiled that the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance.

 

  • God curses evil.
  • He gives a grand inheritance to His own.
  • Deuteronomy 23:14 For the LORD your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you, and to give up your enemies before you; therefore your camp is to be holy: so that he see no unclean thing in you, and turn away from you.
  • Revelation 3:21 To him that overcomes I will grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.
  • Revelation 21:7 He that overcomes will inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he will be my son.

 

                                        Deuteronomy 22

 

God teaches us how to treat others

 

1 Do not see the brother’s ox or his sheep go astray, and hide yourself from them: definitely return them to your brother. 2 And if your brother is not near you, or if you do not know him, then bring it to your own house. It is to remain with you until your brother looks for it, then restore it to him again. 3 Do this also with his ass; do this with his clothing and with all lost things of your brother’s, which he has lost, and you have found, do the same: you may not hide yourself. 4 You will not see your brother’s ass or his ox fall down by the way, and hide yourself from them: definitely help him to lift them up again.

 

  • No ‘finders keepers, losers weepers’ in God’s plan.
  • You care for what belongs to another until it can be returned to him.
  • You help his animals if you see them in trouble.
  • Matthew 7:12 Therefore all things whatsoever you would like men to do to you, you do that to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

 

5 The woman is not to wear man’s clothing, or a man put on a woman’s clothes: for all that do this are an abomination to the LORD your God. 6 If a bird’s nest happens to be before you in the way in any tree, or on the ground, whether they are young ones, or eggs, and the mother sitting on the young, or on the eggs, you may not take the mother with the young: 7 But certainly let the mother go, and take the young for yourself so that it may go well with you, and that you may prolong your days.

 

  • Does not the One who made us and gives us life and breath have a right to say how we dress?
  • Women wore pants in history before they wore dresses.
  • Men wore long, flowing robes.
  • No cross-dressing for the purpose of sexual attraction, not even just for fun.
  • And God tells us to treat nature conservatively.
  • He wants good for us and long life.

 

8 When you build a new house, make a railing for your roof, that you not bring blood on your house, if any man falls from there. 9 Do not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seeds: so that the fullness of your seed that you have sown, and the fruit of your vineyard not be defiled. 10 Do not plow with an ox and an ass together. 11 Do not wear a garment of different kinds of cloth, like wool and linen together. 12 You are to make fringes on the four corners of your garment, with which you cover yourself. 13 If any man takes a wife, and goes in unto her, and hates her, 14 And gives occasions of speech against her, and brings an evil name on her, and says, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I did not find her a virgin: 15 Then the father of the girl, and her mother, are to take and bring forth the tokens of the girl’s virginity to the elders of the city in the gate: 16 And the girl’s father will say to the elders, I gave my daughter to this man to wife, and he hates her; 17 And, look, he has charged her with shameful deeds, saying, I did not find your daughter a virgin; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter’s virginity. And they are to spread the cloth before the elders of the city. 18 And the elders of that city will take that man and chastise him; 19 and they will fine him in a hundred shekels of silver, and give them to the father of the girl, because he has brought an evil name on a virgin of Israel: and she will be his wife; he may not divorce her all his days. 20 But if this thing is true, and the tokens of virginity are not found for the girl:

21 Then they are to bring out the girl to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city are to stone her with stones so that she dies: because she has done a shameful deed in Israel, to play the whore in her father’s house: by this you put evil away from among you.

 

  • God forbids slandering of un-favored wives.
  • God requires right treatment of animals.
  • An ox and ass plowing together would wear each other out.
  • God commands home safety.
  • He forbids crossbreeding of plants.
  • Remember that Jesus fulfilled this law fully.
  • This is God’s perfect standard.
  • God required stoning for fornication to put evil away from them.
  • Men and women who give themselves physically before marriage are following the voices of evil rather than God…like Eve in the garden.

 

22 If a man is found lying with a woman married to an husband, then both of them are to die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: by this you put away evil from Israel. 23 If a girl that is a virgin is engaged to a husband, and a man finds her in the city, and lies with her; 24 Then you are to bring them both out to the gate of that city and stone them with stones so that they die; the girl, because she did not cry out, being in the city; and the man, because he has humbled his neighbor’s wife: by this you put away evil from among you.

 

  • This tells us that the inspiration for adultery comes from evil.
  • These sins were judged on the cross.
  • They can be forgiven.


25 But if a man finds an engaged girl in the field, and the man forces her, and lies with her: then the man only that lay with her is to die: 26 But do nothing to the girl; there is no sin worthy of death in the girl: this is like when a man rises against his neighbor, and kills him: 27 For he found her in the field, and the engaged girl cried, and there was no one to save her. 28 If a man finds a girl that is a virgin, who is not engaged, and lays hold on her, and lies with her, and they are found; 29 Then the man that lays with her will give to the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she will be his wife; because he has humbled her, he may not divorce her all his days. 30 A man will not take his father’s wife or uncover his father’s skirt.

 

  • God requires death for rape.
  • He forbade marrying your mother-in-law.
  • If mankind followed the rules that God gave for man’s good, the world would be a blessed place.
  • Psalm 1:1 Blessed is the man that does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of the scornful. 2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law he meditates day and night. 3 He will be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth fruit in his season; his leaf will not fader; and whatever he does will prosper.
  • Psalm 93:1 The LORD reigns, he is clothed with majesty; the LORD is clothed with strength, with which he has girded himself: the world also is established, that it cannot be moved. 2 Your throne is established of old: you are from everlasting.

 

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SUMMARY: Deuteronomy 19-22

 

  • God made compassionate provision for the accidental killing of another person
  • He promises to bless us by enlarging our borders
  • He gives us a wonderful promised land
  • He goes with us to fight our battles for us
  • He saves in battle and gives us the plunder of the enemy
  • He delivers our enemies into our hands
  • He provided a way to cleanse and forgive the land of unsolved murders
  • He teaches us how to treat others