Not so on the plains of Moab.  The theocracy had then been long in operation.  The details of its service were well understood, and there was no need of formal and circumstantial repetition.  The work of Moses now was not to give a new law, but to enforce the law of Horeb, with such subordinate modifications and additions as were required by the new circumstances of the people, now about to take possession of the promised land and change their wandering life for fixed abodes.  He had to do, therefore, more prominently not with the administrators of law, but with the people; and accordingly his precepts assume a hortatory character, and his style becomes more diffuse and flowing.

The personal relation of Moses to the people was also greatly changed.  At Horeb he had the great work of his life before him, but now it is behind him.  He is about to leave his beloved Israel, whom he has borne on his heart and guided by his counsels for forty years.  Hence the inimitable tenderness and pathos that pervade the book of Deuteronomy.

When now we take into account all these altered circumstances, we have a full explanation of the peculiarities which mark the book of Deuteronomy as compared with the preceding books.  Were these peculiarities wanting, we should miss a main proof of its genuineness.  Nevertheless the book is thoroughly Mosaic in its style, and the scholar who reads it in the original Hebrew can detect peculiar forms of expression belonging only to the Pentateuch.  As to alleged disagreements between some of its statements and those of the earlier books, it is sufficient to remark that upon a candid examination they mostly disappear; and even where we cannot fully explain them, this furnishes no valid ground for denying the genuineness of either portion of the law.  Such seeming discrepancies are not uncommon when a writer of acknowledged credibility repeats what he has before written.  Compare, for example, the three narratives of the apostle Paul’s conversion which are recorded in the book of Acts.

The question as to the extent of meaning which should be given in Deuteronomy to the expressions, “a copy of this law,” “the words of this law,” “this book of the law,” is one upon which expositors are not agreed, nor is it essential; since, as we have seen, the Mosaic authorship of the former part of the law rests upon broader grounds.

In Deut. 27:3, 8, it seems necessary to understand the expression, “all the words of this law,” which were to be written upon tables of stone set up on mount Ebal, of the blessings and curses—­ver. 12, 13—­contained in this and the following chapter.  But elsewhere, chs. 17:18; 31:9, 24-26, we must certainly include at least the whole of Deuteronomy.  If we suppose that it was Moses’ custom to write out the precepts of the law with the historical notices pertaining to them in a continuous roll, which was enlarged from time to time, and that he added to this roll