Question: Why is the Law of God so harsh?

“And the LORDyour God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORDyour God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live…And you shall again obey the voice of the LORDand keep all his commandments that I command you today.” Deuteronomy 30.6, 8

God commanded His people to “fear the LORDyour God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORDyour God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statues of the LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good…” (Deut. 10.12, 13) But in order to do this, Israel would have to “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn” (v. 16). But how this mystery was to be accomplished was beyond their ability to understand or to perform.

The people had no heart for God. Nor could they have understood what “circumcising” their hearts might require, or how to carry out this instruction. The result, as Moses would explain for the remainder of Deuteronomy, is that the blessings God promised His people would only fleetingly be theirs, and the curses they dreaded, and were reminded of in those harsh punishments of God’s Law, would more often be the norm.

Which must have made many of the people of Israel long for the day when, as He promised, God Himself would circumcise their hearts, enabling them to love Him as doubtless many longed to love Him, and to keep His commandments so as to realize His “good.”

Faithful Israelites would have longed for the day when the discipline of the Lord – the harsh punishments of His Law – were no more to be feared because of God’s having accomplished a work in their hearts so that they might live in justice and love according to His holy and righteous and good Law. The harsh aspects of the Law, therefore, would have helped the people to look beyond the time of the letter of the Law into a day when the Law would be on their hearts with such power, that they would fear and love and serve and obey God, in righteousness and peace and joy, precisely as He commanded.

As Ezekiel would later explain, that work of heart circumcision, promised in Deuteronomy 30, would be accomplished by the Spirit of God in a coming day of deliverance (Ezek. 36.26, 27).

T. M. Moore

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