The Covenant in Moab: Deuteronomy Without Horeb 

Deuteronomy has Moses receiving a revelation at Horeb, but only teaching the Israelites its contents decades later in the Land of Moab. This two-step revelatory process, which is presented as two covenants (Deut 28:69), masks an earlier form of Deuteronomy that had no record of a Horeb revelation. 

Dr. Rabbi David Frankel

Sinai Mountain 1994  Richard Mcbee

A Repetition of the Law?

The name Deuteronomy comes from the Greek term Deuteronomion, meaning “second law,” the name given to the book in the ancient Greek Bible translation, the Septuagint. This reflects the conception that in Deuteronomy, Moses repeats the law that he first related to Israel at Horeb (Deuteronomy’s name for Sinai) to the Israelites encamped on Land of Moab. The rabbis similarly refer to Deuteronomy as a משנה תורה, in the sense of “a repetition of the law,” a term they borrow from the law of the king (Deut 17:18).^[1]

But this is not the meaning of the phrase in Deut 17:18, where it means that the king should have “a copy of the teaching” that was kept in the Temple under the care of the Levitical priests, so that he might read from it regularly and keep all its stipulations.^[2] The same meaning of mishneh appears in Joshua 8:32, where a copy of Moses’ Torah is written upon plastered stones so all would be able to see the law of the land.

Deuteronomy’s Conception of the Revelation at Horeb
Deuteronomy does not, in fact, present itself as reviewing and repeating the laws that Moses already told Israel at Horeb. Rather, according to Deuteronomy, God proclaimed only the Decalogue at Horeb, then carved them on tablets and gave them to Moses (Deut 5:19[22]).^[3]

God intended to continue proclaiming his additional commandments to the people. However, the Israelite leaders, fearful they might die “if we continue to hear the voice of YHWH our God any longer” (אִם יֹסְפִים אֲנַחְנוּ לִשְׁמֹעַ אֶת קוֹל יְ-הוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ עוֹד; Deut 5:22^[25]), approached Moses with a special request that he listen to God’s laws for them. Then, after receiving the additional laws from God on their behalf, Moses should relay these laws to them, which, they assure Moses, they will obey (Deut 5:20-24[23-27]).

God’s response to this unexpected Israelite request was positive and he tells Moses to free them from further communication with God (Deut 5:25-28[28-31]). In short, according to Deuteronomy 5, while Israel as a whole heard the Decalogue from God, they were to hear the rest of God’s commandments only via Moses. Moses relates these commandments to them for the first time only in his Deuteronomic address.^[4] 

Moses Relates the Horeb Laws to Israel on
the Plains of Moab for the First Time

Several considerations point to this conclusion:

1) They Leave the Mountain – According to Deut 5:27-28[30-31], God tells Moses to disperse the Israelites that were standing at the foot of the mountain and have them return to their homes, while Moses alone stays to hear the laws:

We are never told that he gathered them back again to this spot to hear the laws upon Moses’ descent. This stands in stark contrast with the account of the Sinai event in Exodus 20, according to which even after the Israelites ask Moses to speak with God on their behalf, the Israelites wait at the foot of the mountain for Moses to descend:

Moreover, when Moses descends in Exodus, he recites the laws to the people and writes a “book of covenant,” which he reads aloud (Exod 24:3-8).

Nothing like this is mentioned in Deuteronomy, which has Moses write the “book of the law” (31:9, 24), presumably a reference to the core of Deuteronomy, only in the land of Moab.^[5]

2) Horeb laws taught in Moab – The parallel between Deut 5:28[31] and Deut 6:1 suggests that the laws Moses received on Horeb were only conveyed to Israel at Moab:

The correspondence between these verses is clear, and the obvious implication is that Moses fulfills God’s directive at Horeb to teach Israel the Horeb commandments only in the land of Moab.

3) Today in Moab Israel is a people – For Deuteronomy, the covenant in the Land of Moab is continually referred to as the founding national event. Thus, we read in Deut 27:9:

The emphasis on “today” implies that Israel was not the “people of YHWH” in the full sense of this phrase previously.^[6] Presumably, the Israelites become the people of YHWH “today” in the Land of Moab because it is only then and there that they hear the laws of Horeb (beyond the Decalogue) and accept them.

4) Commanded today in Moab – The commandments are referred to more than twenty times as אשר אנכי מצוך/מצוה אתכם היום, “which I command you today.”^[7] This implies that they were not commanded to the people previously, at Horeb.

In a word, the Deuteronomic address in the Land of Moab is where Moses first reveals the laws he received at Horeb to the people.

Delaying what was Learned at Horeb to Moab

The idea that God reveals laws to Moses at Horeb, but that Moses only reveals them many years later in the land of Moab, seems strange. This problem is especially pressing if we assume, like most scholars, that Deuteronomy was not meant to be read as a continuation of the previous books of the Torah but as an independent document representing the one correct version of Israel’s narrative and law. Thus, the idea that Deuteronomy’s Horeb laws were only to be taught at Moab leaves us with a number of questions:

1. Delayed teaching – Why should Moses delay his teaching of the additional divine laws to the Israelites for forty years? This seems like a quite unnatural thing for Moses to do! And weren’t the people at all curious all those years to know just what laws God had told Moses while he was up there on the mountain top for so long?^[8] Don’t the Israelites need to keep at least some of these laws already in the wilderness?

2. Delayed writing – Why should Moses only write down the laws years after he received them? Even if he was not going to teach these laws until later, why not write them down immediately after learning them, like he does in Exodus 24 with the book of covenant?^[9]

3. Importance of the Land of Moab Covenant – Why is the “covenant in the Land of Moab,” so important in Deuteronomy, such that Israel only becomes God’s people in the Land of Moab and not at Horeb? The people already agreed to keep the laws at Horeb; is their hearing the laws so important?

4. Relativizing Horeb – On the flip side: Why should the Horeb event be relativized in this way, as if it were merely penultimate to the truly central event for the formation of Israel? After all, God appears in thunder specifically at Horeb and it is there that the Israelites hear and accept the Decalogue from God (Deut 4-5).

In sum, why did the Deuteronomic authors bother with two different covenants at two different sites altogether?^[10]

Weinfeld’s Approach: Horeb Covenant Was Abrogated

The late Moshe Weinfeld (1925-2009), an important Bible scholar from Hebrew University, suggested that Deuteronomy sought to highlight the covenant in the Land of Moab and to diminish the centrality of the Horeb covenant because the latter was believed to have been broken and invalidated by the sin of the molten calf, as symbolized concretely by the breaking of the tablets.^[11]

This answer has little textual support. Deuteronomy offers no indication that the Horeb covenant is null and void, requiring a new covenant at a new site. On the contrary, Deuteronomy 5:3 insists that the Horeb covenant was made with Moses’ living audience present in the Land of Moab:

The clear implication is that the Horeb covenant remains fully binding and authoritative for these Israelites and for all subsequent generations, and that, if anything, the covenant in the Land of Moab is grounded in that of Horeb.

Additionally, Deut 10:1-5 relates that the second set of tablets, inscribed with the very same commandments as the first set, were placed in the ark and entrusted with the Levitical priests. Thus, whatever negative effects the sin of the calf and the breaking of the tablets may have had on the status of the Horeb covenant, they were apparently rectified already at Horeb and without recourse to an additional covenant.

The Original Deuteronomy:
One Law-giving and One Covenant

A more compelling answer to these questions, in my view, is that an earlier form of the book of Deuteronomy did not speak of a Horeb revelation at all. The materials in Deuteronomy that speak of a Horeb revelation or assume one (e.g., 4:9-40; 5:2-6:3; 9:8-21; 10:1-5, 10-11; 18:16-22; 33:4) are all, I believe, late and secondary, including Deuteronomy’s version of the Decalogue. The original Deuteronomic work presented all its laws as having been given to Israel by Moses at the one and only covenant site – the Land of Moab. And there was only one written testimony to that covenant – the book of law written by Moses.

This explains why the Deuteronomic texts that speak of Israel entering the covenant of the Land of Moab “today” make no reference or allusion to any earlier covenant. The Israelites become the people of YHWH on the Land of Moab for the first time, since no revelation took place at Horeb. 

Absence of Horeb in Deuteronomy’s Historical Overviews
This explains, for example, why there is no reference to Horeb in the historical review of Deut 29:1-8[2-9].^[12] Before Moses calls upon Israel to keep the terms of the covenant, he reviews Israel’s previous history. He speaks of the great signs and mighty wonders that God wrought in Egypt, of his miraculous preservation of Israel’s clothing and sandals through the forty-year wilderness journey, and of the victory over Sihon and Og, but nothing about the event at Horeb!^[13]

This failure of Moses to make reference to Horeb in this historical overview stands in stark contrast to his words at Deut 4:9-10:

One can hardly assume that the author of Deut 29:1-8 was aware of Moses’ discourse of Deut 4 on the vital importance of relating the Horeb narrative to the next generations but chose not to mention it, emphasizing instead God’s preservation of Israel’s clothing!

The same thing may be said regarding the summary of great divine acts of Deut 11:2-7. It mentions the divine wonders wrought in the land of Egypt and at the Sea of Reeds, the divine provision in the wilderness and the destruction of Datan and Abiram. No mention is made of the great revelation at Horeb.

One Covenant or Two

Deuteronomy 29 continually refers to only one covenant (verses 8, 11, 13, 20, 24) and not, as would be required by Deut 4:13; 5:2-3; 9:8-21, to two covenants. Of course, a double covenant is mentioned in the summary verse 28:68 [29:1], but this is the exception that proves the rule and is a redactional insertion:

The final clause of the verse (in bold) is editorial. The clause begins with the term מלבד, which, as has been clearly shown by many scholars, introduces secondary, editorial clauses throughout the Torah.^[14]

Adding Horeb to the Law of the Prophet
The secondary nature of the Horeb tradition in Deuteronomy is evident in the law concerning the prophetic office in Deut 18:9-22. The first section of this text presents a Mosaic speech to Israel prohibiting occult practices and consultation with diviners of various sorts. Moses emphasizes that these are foreign practices for which Israel has no need, since God will appoint prophets like himself for them, who will relate the divine will to them directly.

The section stands perfectly well on its own. However, verses 16-22 suddenly and disjunctively ^[15](note the difficult syntactic nature of verse 16’s ככל אשר שאלת) grounds the institution of prophecy in the Horeb revelation.^[16]

The bulk of this section appears in the form of a first-person speech of God addressed to Moses alone (verses 17-20; in verses 21-22 God suddenly addresses Israel directly)^[17] and the speaking voice of Moses disappears completely. Without entering into an extended analysis, it is sufficient to note here that verses 16-22 constitute a secondary addition.^[18]  

Adding Horeb to the Introduction in Deut 4-5

A last example of the secondary introduction of the Horeb revelation in Deuteronomy is seen in the transition from Deut 4:44-5:1 to 5:2ff. The section first references what Moses will teach the Israelites:

Just when the readers expect to hear the “testimonies and the statutes and the ordinances that Moses spoke to the children of Israel” “today,” on the other side of the Jordan, the text moves to a prior period, to a narrative report concerning a covenant made at Horeb:

This seems rather disjunctive.^[19]

Reasons for the Incorporation of the Horeb Material

Why did the later editors of Deuteronomy^[20] ground the laws and covenant of the Land of Moab in the Horeb revelation? Three important concerns probably motivated them:

Harmonization – The original Torah of the Land of Moab was either unaware or otherwise independent of the tradition of the Decalogue and the revelation and covenant at Horeb. Yet it claimed to contain the definitive record of God’s covenantal demands of Israel. This situation could continue only as long as the Decalogue achieved limited standing and status.^[21] At a certain point in Israel’s history, however, the Horeb/Sinai covenant, and the Decalogue, must have become more prominent. At that point a place for it (and the traditions related to it) had to be found within the Deuteronomic corpus.

Divine Participation in the Covenant – Whereas the Horeb/Sinai tradition speaks of a dramatic descent of a thundering God to the top of the mountain to enter into a covenant with his new people, the Land of Moab tradition presents a God whose physical presence can hardly be discerned, in spite of the fact that the Israelites are said to have stood before YHWH when they entered the covenant (29:9). The supplementation of the Horeb tradition adds this dramatic element to the book.

Authorization of the Law – In Deuteronomy, God never proclaims the commandments; only Moses issues commands. At times Moses presents his commands as the commandments of God (Deut 4:2, 44-45; 8:11; 11:8, 26-28; 13:19; 28:1), but it is still Moses that issues them, and they are never presented as quotations of God.

At times it would seem that Moses is even presented as commanding on his own authority, as when he explains the rationale behind a particular law and follows this with the phrase “this is why I command you this thing today” (Deut 15:15).^[22] In any event, the laws of the Torah of the Land of Moab seem to lack explicit divine authority. The supplementation of the Horeb material and the depiction of God communicating his laws to Moses thus provided unambiguous divine backing for the Mosaic law.    

Conclusion

It is often asserted that the Horeb/Sinai revelation constitutes the most fundamental core of ancient Israelite faith. The analysis presented above shows that this assertion is an overstatement.^[23] Israelite faith was diverse and ever-changing. Sinai became all pervasive only late in the game.

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Dr. Rabbi David Frankel did his doctorate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the direction of Prof. Moshe Weinfeld. His publications include The Murmuring Stories of the Priestly School (VTSupp. 89) and The Land of Canaan and the Destiny of Israel (Eisenbrauns). He teaches Hebrew Bible to M.A. and Rabbinical students at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, where he lives with his wife and five children.

[1] See Sifre 160; b. Megillah, 31b.

[2] This point is made by Jeffrey H. Tigay, The JPS Torah Commentary: Detueronomy (Philadelphia and Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society, 1996), 168.

[3] Because of differences in how to count the verses of the Decalogue, some English translations have this verse as 22 and not 19. This difference in counting between the Jewish and non-Jewish versions appears in Exodus 20 as well, and even in other chapters in Deuteronomy (for different reasons). Throughout the article, the Jewish numbering is first, and the non-Jewish numbering is in brackets.

[4] This point is also made in Itamar Kislev, “Understanding Deuteronomy on Its Own Terms,” TheTorah.com (2015).

[5] See discussion in David Glatt-Gilad, “Deuteronomy: The First Torah,” TheTorah.com (2015).

[6] See also Deut 26:16-19 and 29:9-12.

[7] See 4: 2, 20; 6:6; 7:11; 8:1, 11; 10:13; 11:8, 13, 27; 13:19; 15:5; 19:9; 27:1, 10; 28:1, 13, 14, 15; 30:2, 8, 11, 12. The use of the today motif as a Leitwort is discussed in Everett Fox, “Committing to the Covenant Today,” TheTorah.com (2014).

[8] In addition, why didn’t the authors follow the model presented in Exodus and have Moses teach the added laws as soon as he received them at Horeb? The Deuteronomic authors already depicted Moses repeating the Decalogue in the Land of Moab, reminding the Israelites of those laws that they had already heard at Horeb (Deut 5). So why not present Moses as also repeating the additional Horeb laws, which he could most naturally have been said to have already told the Israelites at Horeb?

[9] How is he even to remember the laws for all those years without either writing them down or teaching them to others?

[10] This is very different, for instance, from the presentation of the Sinai covenant in Exodus, which never indicates that a future covenant will be made at some site beyond Sinai. All the essential laws were said to have been given there and that is where the one and only covenant was established. 

[11] Moshe Weinfeld, “Temple Scroll or King’s Law,” Shnaton 3 (1978): 219 [Hebrew].

[12] There is a reference to Horeb in the very opening of the first Deuteronomic discourse:

This verse may not be aware of anything beyond the idea that the Israelites were stationed at Horeb. Note that in Deut 2:3 God tells the Israelites that “you have been travelling around this mountain [Mt. Seir] for long enough” (רַב לָכֶם סֹב אֶת הָהָר הַזֶּה) and that its time to move on. This is the same kind of statement as Deut 1:6, but nobody suggests that this refers to an important revelation that took place at Mt. Seir. It was just a way station. The same may be true for Horeb in an early version of D.

[13]

[14] See Israel Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 56-58.

[15] Though several translations present verse 16 as the beginning of a new sentence (e.g. “For this is what you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said…” – NIV), the phrase ככל אשר שאלת means, “just as everything you requested,” and thus continues the previous verse. It must apparently be taken as continuing verse 15a: “God will raise up for you a prophet from among your brethren like me (obey him), just as you asked…” The problem with this reading is that it requires taking the emphatic and essential point of verse 15, “obey him,” as a parenthetical statement. Furthermore, it converts the perfectly reasonable sentence of verse 15 into the beginning of a long, run-on sentence:

God will raise up for you a prophet from among your brethren like me (obey him) just like you asked of YHWH your God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of YHWH my God, nor let me see this great fire anymore, lest I die,’ at which time YHWH said to me: ‘What they have spoken is good.  I will raise up for them a Prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him.

The bottom line of all this verbiage seems to be: God will raise up a prophet for you just as he said to me, “I will raise up a prophet for them,” when the Israelites asked that Moses hear God’s words in their stead. The awkward manner in which all this is tacked on to verse 15 speaks to its secondary character.

[16] Editor’s note: For more discussion of this text, see Jonathan Stökl, “Can There Be Another Prophet Like Moses?” TheTorah.com (2017); ibid., “Ancient Israelite Divination: Urim ve-Tummim, Ephod, and Prophecy,” TheTorah.com (2018).

[18] The secondary character of this section is also indicated by the manner in which it stands in tension with verses 14-15. The new section claims that it was back at Horeb, when the Israelites heard the Ten Commandments and asked not to hear the divine voice any more, that God decided not only that Moses would mediate the divine will for Israel (as related at Deut 5:28), but that future prophets would do so as well. Thus, the institution of prophecy (beyond that of Moses) was not, as implied by verses 14-15, part of God’s plan for Israel from the start. Rather, it was the result of Israel’s own special request. Had they not asked God to stop speaking at Horeb, the institution may never have arisen! Of course, the fact that there isn’t a hint of all this in Deut 5:2ff is a clear indication that the section is secondary in relation to it as well.

[19] The narrative report about the earlier covenant then leads into Moses’ repetition of the Decalogue that Israel had heard from God at the time. The formulation of 5:1, however, sounds like Moses is about to teach the Israelites something that they never heard before, and originally connected to a later verse in Deuteronomy, though as of now, I am not sure which.

[20] My sense is that even at this stage of editing, we are still dealing with Deuteronomy as an independent book. The presentation of the covenant of the Land of Moab as grounded in the Horeb revelation does not facilitate a smooth reading of Exodus as an introduction to Deuteronomy.

[21] For the limited reflection of the Decalogue in biblical literature and the implications of this see Yair Hoffmann, “The Status of the Decalogue in the Hebrew Bible,” in The Decalogue in Jewish and Christian Tradition (eds., Henning Graf Reventlow and Yair Hoffman; New York: T & T Clark, 2011), 32-49.

[22] For more on this, and how an originally Mosaic legislation developed into a divine revelation, see my, “Moses’ Commandments: The Secret of R. Nissim of Marseilles,” TheTorah.com (2015).

[23] For more on this point, see my “Judaim Without Sinai,” TheTorah.com (2015); Hava Shalom-Guy, “Nehemiah 9: The First Historical Survey in the Bible to Mention Sinai and Torah,”  TheTorah.com (2018).