Clarke's Bible Commentary - Deuteronomy 30:15
Verse 15. Life and good] Present and future blessings. Death and evil] Present and future miseries: termed, ver. 19, Life and death, blessing and cursing. And why were these set before them? 1. That they might comprehend their import. 2. That they might feel their importance. 3. That they might choose life, and the path of believing, loving obedience, that led to it. 4. That they and their posterity, thus choosing life and refusing evil, might be the favourites of God in time and eternity.
Were there no such thing as free will in man, who could reconcile these sayings either with sincerity or common sense? God has made the human will free, and there is no power or influence either in heaven, earth, or hell, except the power of God, that can deprive it of its free volitions; of its power to will and nill, to choose and refuse, to act or not act or force it to sin against God. Hence man is accountable for his actions, because they are his; were he necessitated by fate, or sovereign constraint, they could not be his. Hence he is rewardable, hence he is punishable. God, in his creation, willed that the human creature should be free, and he formed his soul accordingly; and the Law and Gospel, the promise and precept, the denunciation of wo and the doctrine of eternal life, are all constructed on this ground; that is, they all necessarily suppose the freedom of the human will: nor could it be will if it were not free, because the principle of freedom or liberty is necessarily implied in the idea of volition. See on the fifth chapter and 29th verse.
John Gill's Bible Commentary
Ver. 15. See, I have set before thee this day , etc.] Moses here returns to press the Israelites to the present observance of the laws, statutes, and judgments of one sort and another, he had been delivering to them; as being of great moment and importance to them, no other than life and good, and death and evil ; which are the effects and consequences of obedience and disobedience to them; a happy temporal life, and a continuance of it in the good land of Canaan, and an enjoyment of the blessings and good things thereof to them that are obedient; for not spiritual and eternal life, or spiritual blessings and everlasting happiness, are to be had by man’s obedience to the law of works, only through Christ, through his obedience, righteousness, sufferings, and death; (see Galatians 3:21); so temporal death, or a cutting short of natural life in the promised land, and evil things, calamities, and distresses, or a deprivation of all the good things of it to the disobedient; (see Isaiah 1:19,20).
Matthew Henry Commentary
Verses 15-20 - What could be said more moving, and more likely to make deep an lasting impressions? Every man wishes to obtain life and good, and to escape death and evil; he desires happiness, and dreads misery. S great is the compassion of the Lord, that he has favoured men, by his word, with such a knowledge of good and evil as will make them for eve happy, if it be not their own fault. Let us hear the sum of the whol matter. If they and theirs would love God, and serve him, they shoul live and be happy. If they or theirs should turn from God, desert his service, and worship other gods, that would certainly be their ruin There never was, since the fall of man, more than one way to heaven which is marked out in both Testaments, though not with equa clearness. Moses meant that same way of acceptance, which Paul mor plainly described; and Paul's words mean the same obedience, on whic Moses more fully treated. In both Testaments the good and right way i brought near, and plainly revealed to us __________________________________________________________________
Original Hebrew
ראה 7200 נתתי 5414 לפניך 6440 היום 3117 את 853 החיים 2416 ואת 853 הטוב 2896 ואת 853 המות 4194 ואת 853 הרע׃ 7451
