Deuteronomy 4:34
Context4:34 Or has God 1 ever before tried to deliver 2 a nation from the middle of another nation, accompanied by judgments, 3 signs, wonders, war, strength, power, 4 and other very terrifying things like the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?
Deuteronomy 15:2
Context15:2 This is the nature of the cancellation: Every creditor must remit what he has loaned to another person; 5 he must not force payment from his fellow Israelite, 6 for it is to be recognized as “the Lord’s cancellation of debts.”
1 tn The translation assumes the reference is to Israel’s God in which case the point is this: God’s intervention in Israel’s experience is unique in the sense that he has never intervened in such power for any other people on earth. The focus is on the uniqueness of Israel’s experience. Some understand the divine name here in a generic sense, “a god,” or “any god.” In this case God’s incomparability is the focus (cf. v. 35, where this theme is expressed).
2 tn Heb “tried to go to take for himself.”
3 tn Heb “by testings.” The reference here is the judgments upon Pharaoh in the form of plagues. See Deut 7:19 (cf. v. 18) and 29:3 (cf. v. 2).
4 tn Heb “by strong hand and by outstretched arm.”
5 tn Heb “his neighbor,” used idiomatically to refer to another person.
6 tn Heb “his neighbor and his brother.” The words “his brother” may be a scribal gloss identifying “his neighbor” (on this idiom, see the preceding note) as a fellow Israelite (cf. v. 3). In this case the conjunction before “his brother” does not introduce a second category, but rather has the force of “that is.”