W. Robert Godfrey

But God is saying, I'm bringing you to a different land.

a land where you will farm on the basis of rain, and you will have crops only when it rains.

And God is saying, and that should be a picture for you, that your blessing comes from heaven.

It doesn't come from the work of your hands.

It doesn't come from the cleverness of your irrigation canals.

It only comes when I send it.

And I send it frequently enough that you can be presumptuous about it.

But don't be presumptuous.

I will send it to bless you, and I'll withhold it if you are not faithful.

So here is that Deuteronomic notion of blessing that is being articulated here.

But it's interesting how God uses what we think of as natural things to illustrate spiritual points for his people and how important that is, how valuable that is, and how important a lesson it really is.

And then verse 14 says,

of chapter 11, Moses says, God will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil.

And then we have one of those kind of summary statements again, calling us back to the word, that verse 18 of chapter 11.

You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul,

and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise, you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give them as long as the heavens are above the earth."

Now, you might say to yourself, Moses needs an editor.

He already said that in chapter 6.

Several verses there are just a quotation of chapter 6.