Bible Commentaries

Deuteronomy 3:25

I. It was a land, a good land, which Moses looked upon; it was a land of promise which God had prepared. Canaan was, in a sense, the heaven of Israel's hope: the more heaven-like, perhaps, because it was so fair a feature of our world, because it was a land on which a foot could be firmly and joyfully planted—a home in which a man and family, a nation, could nobly dwell. St. Peter speaks of "a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." St. Peter and St. John looked for a scene which should be familiar, however transfigured, a scene which should keep its home-like character, however transformed.

II. The images which are employed by the sacred writers as most expressive when they are treating of heaven are all borrowed from the higher forms of the development of man's social and national life. This means that the human interests and associations prolong themselves in their integrity through death, and constitute the highest sphere of interest and activity in the eternal world. A home, a city, a country, a kingdom—these are the images; on the working out of these ideas the writers of the Scriptures spend all their force.

III. That good land beyond Jordan had some heaven-like feature herein: it was to be the theatre of the highest and holiest human association, under conditions most favourable to the most perfect development, and in an atmosphere of life which God's benediction should make an atmosphere of bliss.

J. Baldwin Brown, The Soul's Exodus and Pilgrimage, p. 361.

References: Deuteronomy 3:25, Deuteronomy 3:26.—Preacher's Monthly, vol. vii., p. 299. Deuteronomy 3:27-29.—Parker, vol. v., p. 3. Deut 3—Parker, vol. iv., p. 90. Deuteronomy 4:1-23.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iv.,p. 212. Deuteronomy 4:2.—H. L. Mansel, Bampton Lectures, 1858, p. 1. Deuteronomy 4:5-9.—J. Sherman, Penny Pulpit, No. 1901. Deuteronomy 4:6.—F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxii. p. 273.