The Word Is Very Nigh Unto Thee, and Moses Says Where

He has a picture of where the Bible is kept and he has never examined it.

In the picture it is up. Not literally, but functionally: it is held somewhere above him, in a place that requires an ascent, and the ascent is made by people with training, and what comes back down to him is a report from up there.

He is not resentful about this. It seems reasonable. Everything valuable in his experience is held somewhere and administered by somebody, and the arrangement usually works.

What it produces, though, is a man who reaches upward for something and never reaches out. He waits for the report. He receives it gratefully. And the book itself, the physical object, sits eleven feet from where he sleeps and has for nineteen years.

There is a paragraph at the end of Deuteronomy that rules out two locations for it and then says where it actually is.

Two places it is not

Here is the passage, in the King James Version:

For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? (Deuteronomy 30:11-13)

It is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off.

Two negatives, up front, before any location is given.

Then the two ruled out places, and notice they have the same shape. Who shall go up for us. Who shall go over the sea for us. Both are questions about sending somebody. Both assume a delegate, a specialist, a person who makes the trip and brings back a report.

Moses rules out both, and he rules them out by ruling out the question. He does not say the delegate would fail. He says the question does not apply, because the thing is not kept in either place.

You are not reaching for something held out of range and you were never going to need a delegate. Deuteronomy 30:11 says it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off before it says anything else, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a qualification you lack who makes that nearness usable.

Where it is

But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it. (Deuteronomy 30:14)

Very nigh unto thee. And then two locations, both of them on the man.

In thy mouth. Which is the reading out loud. It is the most physical, least mystical location imaginable: the word is in the place where speech happens.

And in thy heart. Which is the interior, and the reason the two are listed together is that speaking a thing is how it gets from one to the other.

That is a striking place to put it, and it is chosen. He could have said in the tent. He could have said with the priests, which was true in a real sense and would not have been a lie. He says in your mouth and in your heart.

You have it as close as your own mouth and you were never separated from it by a distance. Deuteronomy 30:14 says the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, and it is His Spirit who makes a location like that a lived thing rather than a nice figure.

What Paul does with the same passage

Fourteen hundred years later Paul picks this paragraph up and applies it to the gospel itself, which tells you how load bearing he thought it was.

But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach. (Romans 10:6-8)

Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven?

He turns the two ruled out questions into a prohibition. Do not say that. Not because it is impolite, but because it is a false description of the situation.

And he says the nearness is the word of faith, which we preach, which folds preaching into it rather than out of it. Paul is a preacher writing this. He is not abolishing his own occupation. He is saying that what he preaches is the thing that is already near.

You have the word near you in the sense the New Testament means it and you were never on the far side of an ascent. Romans 10:8 quotes the word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and applies it to the gospel, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that nearness something a man experiences in an ordinary room.

What is expected of somebody it is near to

And two instructions that only make sense if the nearness is real.

And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. (Deuteronomy 6:6-7)

When thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way. Those are not liturgical settings. They are a kitchen, a road, a bed, a morning.

And Joshua:

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein. (Joshua 1:8)

Shall not depart out of thy mouth. The mouth again. Twice now, in two books, the location given is the same one.

That is an instruction to an ordinary man about an ordinary week, and it presupposes that the book is available to him in his own house, which is exactly the assumption a man who reaches upward has never made.

You have instructions written to somebody the book is near to and you were never outside the group they were written for. Deuteronomy 6:7 puts it in a house and on a road and Joshua 1:8 says it shall not depart out of thy mouth, and it is His Spirit who makes an ancient instruction fit a Tuesday morning.