Deuteronomy Devotionals
One for each chapter. Want to test what you read? Take the Deuteronomy quizzes.
- Deuteronomy 1: Carried All the Way
Moses begins his farewell by retelling a failure. At Kadesh-barnea, Israel stood at the edge of the land God had placed before them, holding fruit from the land, and refused to go…
- Deuteronomy 2: The Lord of Every Border
Deuteronomy 2 covers thirty-eight years in a few lines. The generation that refused to enter the land dies in the wilderness, just as the LORD had sworn (2:14-15). Then God gives…
- Deuteronomy 3: When God Says No
After victory over Og and his sixty fortified cities (3:3-5), Moses tells Joshua what those wins mean. The LORD will do the same to every kingdom ahead, because he himself fights…
- Deuteronomy 4: The Way Back from Far Away
Moses asks Israel a question worth sitting with: what other nation has a god as near to them as the LORD is whenever they call on him (4:7)? At Horeb they heard his voice out of…
- Deuteronomy 5: Commands for a Freed People
Before God gives a single command at Horeb, he says who he is: the LORD their God, who brought them out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery (5:6). The order matters. Israel was…
- Deuteronomy 6: Love with Everything
Deuteronomy 6 holds the confession Israel would repeat for generations: the LORD our God, the LORD is one (6:4). From that one God comes one all-consuming command, to love him…
- Deuteronomy 7: Loved for No Reason but Love
This chapter begins with one of the hardest commands in the Bible. Israel is to devote the seven nations of Canaan to complete destruction, make no treaty, and show no mercy…
- Deuteronomy 8: More Than Bread
Forty years in the wilderness had a purpose, and Moses names it. God led Israel there to humble and test them, to bring into the open what was in their hearts (8:2). He let them…
- Deuteronomy 9: Not Because You Were Good
Three times in three verses, Moses insists on the same thing. When God drives out the nations, Israel must not tell themselves it happened because of their own righteousness…
- Deuteronomy 10: The Tablets Written Again
After the golden calf, the covenant lay in pieces at the foot of the mountain. Deuteronomy 10 opens with God telling Moses to cut two new tablets so he can write the same words…
- Deuteronomy 11: A Land That Drinks the Rain
Moses draws a contrast between two lands. In Egypt, Israel watered their fields by their own labor, like a vegetable garden (11:10). The land ahead is different. It drinks the…
- Deuteronomy 12: Worship on God's Terms
Before Israel settles in the land, God tells them how not to worship. They are to tear down every Canaanite shrine on the hills and under the green trees, and not to worship the…
- Deuteronomy 13: Loyalty Beyond Every Sign
Deuteronomy 13 imagines three kinds of pressure to abandon the LORD: a prophet whose sign actually comes true, a beloved family member or closest friend whispering in secret, and…
- Deuteronomy 14: A Treasured People at the Table
Identity comes before instruction in this chapter. Israel are sons of the LORD their God, a holy people he has chosen as his treasured possession (14:1-2). The rules that follow,…
- Deuteronomy 15: Generosity Without Keeping Score
Every seventh year, Israel was to cancel the debts of their neighbors, and Hebrew servants were to go free after six years of service (15:1-2, 12). Moses anticipates the…
- Deuteronomy 16: Feasts That Remember
Israel's year was shaped by three journeys to the place God would choose. Passover recalled the night the LORD brought them out of Egypt, eaten with unleavened bread so they would…
- Deuteronomy 17: A King Under the Word
Even the gravest charge in Israel, worshiping other gods, could not end in execution on the word of one witness. Two or three were required, and the witnesses had to be the first…
- Deuteronomy 18: The Voice God Provides
Israel was entering a land full of ways to seek hidden knowledge: divination, omens, sorcery, spells, mediums, and consulting the dead (18:10-11). God forbids all of it. His…
- Deuteronomy 19: Refuge Within Reach
God tells Israel to set apart three cities and to build roads to them, dividing the land so that every part is within reach of one (19:2-3). The picture is specific: two men…
- Deuteronomy 20: Courage That Comes from God
Deuteronomy 20 is about war, yet it begins by sending soldiers home. Before battle, a priest reminds the army that the God who brought them out of Egypt goes with them to fight…
- Deuteronomy 21: Cursed in Our Place
When a body is found in a field and the killer is unknown, the elders of the nearest town cannot shrug. They break the neck of a heifer, wash their hands, and ask the LORD to…
- Deuteronomy 22: No Looking the Other Way
Many of these laws concern ordinary moments. If a neighbor's ox or sheep wanders off, Israel must not pretend not to see it, but bring it back, keeping it until the owner comes…
- Deuteronomy 23: A Curse Turned to Blessing
This chapter's rules about who may enter the LORD's assembly can be hard to read. Ammonites and Moabites are excluded, and the reason given goes back to the journey from Egypt.…
- Deuteronomy 24: Left in the Field on Purpose
A lender may not walk into a borrower's house to pick out what he will hold as security; he must wait outside (24:10-11). If the borrower is poor and has handed over his cloak, it…
- Deuteronomy 25: Justice That Guards Dignity
Even a guilty man who is flogged may receive no more than forty lashes, so that he is not degraded in the eyes of his brothers (25:3). That concern for dignity runs through the…
- Deuteronomy 26: A Story Told with a Basket
When Israel harvested their first crops in the land, each worshiper was to fill a basket with the firstfruits and bring it before the LORD. Then he would tell a story, and it was…
- Deuteronomy 27: Agreeing with God's Verdict
On Mount Ebal, Israel was to set up plastered stones with the words of the law written on them, and beside them an altar of uncut stones for offerings eaten with rejoicing…
- Deuteronomy 28: The Weight of the Covenant
Deuteronomy 28 is among the Bible's most sobering chapters. It begins with blessing: if Israel listens to the LORD, they will be blessed in the city and the country, in their…
- Deuteronomy 29: What God Has Made Plain
Moses gathers everyone for a covenant renewal: leaders and elders, wives and children, even the foreigners who cut wood and draw water (29:10-11). The covenant is also made with…
- Deuteronomy 30: A Heart Made New by God
Moses now looks past the curses to a day after exile. When Israel, scattered among the nations, calls these things to mind and returns to the LORD, he will gather them even from…
- Deuteronomy 31: A Promise That Outlasts Moses
Moses is a hundred and twenty and can no longer lead (31:2). Israel is about to lose the only leader most of them have ever known. So Moses points them past himself. The LORD will…
- Deuteronomy 32: The Rock Whose Ways Are Just
The song Moses teaches Israel begins with God himself. The LORD is the Rock. His work is perfect, all his ways are just, and he is faithful without any wrong in him (32:4). He…
- Deuteronomy 33: The God Who Holds His People
The last words Moses speaks over Israel are a blessing, not a warning. He speaks over the tribes one by one, and the blessings are as varied as the tribes themselves: life for…
- Deuteronomy 34: Waiting for a Greater Prophet
Deuteronomy ends on a mountaintop. The LORD shows Moses the whole land, from Gilead to Dan, to the Western Sea and the Negev, and reminds him that this is the land promised to…