Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/29

the words of this law in a book, to the very close, that Moses commanded the Levites, which bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying: Take this book of the law, and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of Jehovah your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee,” etc. This double testimony to the Mosaic authorship of the Thorah is confirmed still further by the command in Deu. 17:18, that the king to be afterwards chosen should cause a copy of this law to be written in a book by the Levitical priests, and should read therein all the days of his life, and by the repeated allusions to “the words of this law, which are written in this book,” or “in the book of the law” (Deu. 28:58, Deu. 28:61; Deu. 29:21; Deu. 30:10; Deu. 31:26); for the former command that the latter allusions are not intelligible on any other supposition, than that Moses was engaged in writing the book of the law, and intended to hand it over to the nation in a complete form previous to his death; though it may not have been finished when the command itself was written down and the words in question were uttered, but, as Deu. 31:9 and Deu. 31:24 distinctly affirm, may have been completed after his address to the people, a short time before his death, by the arrangement and revision of the earlier portions, and the addition of the fifth and closing book.
The validity of this evidence must not be restricted, however, to the fifth book of the Thorah, viz., Deuteronomy, alone; it extends to all five books, that is to say, to the whole connected work. For it cannot be exegetically proved from Deuteronomy, that the expression, “this law,” in every passage of the book from Deu. 1:5 to Deu. 31:24 relates to the so-called Deuterosis of the law, i.e., to the fifth book alone, or that Deuteronomy was written before the other four books, the contents of which it invariably presupposes. Nor can it be historically proved that the command respecting the copy of the law to be made for the future king, and the regulations for the reading of the law at the feast of Tabernacles, were understood by the Jews as referring to Deuteronomy only. Josephus says nothing about any such limitation, but speaks, on the contrary, of the reading of the law generally (oÎ aÏrxiereuÃj ... aÏnaginwskeÂtw touÃj noÂmouj paÚsi, Ant. 4: 8, 12). The Rabbins, too, understand the words “this law,” in Deu. 31:9 and Deu. 31:24, as relating to the whole Thorah from Gen. 1 to Deu. 34, and only differ in opinion