Context No. 3468 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 29:22-29: in context

22The generation to come—your children who will rise up after you, and the foreigner who will come from a far land—will say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses with which the LORD has made it sick, 23that all of its land is sulfur, salt, and burning, that it is not sown, doesn’t produce, nor does any grass grow in it, like the overthrow of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath. 24Even all the nations will say, “Why has the LORD done this to this land? What does the heat of this great anger mean?” 25Then men will say, “Because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, 26and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods that they didn’t know and that he had not given to them. 27Therefore the LORD’s anger burned against this land, to bring on it all the curses that are written in this book. 28The LORD rooted them out of their land in anger, in wrath, and in great indignation, and thrust them into another land, as it is today.” 29The secret things belong to the LORD our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.

Moses looks ahead to a day when later generations, and even foreigners, will see a ruined land and ask, why has the LORD done this? And the answer will be plain: because this people forsook the covenant of the LORD and turned to serve other gods. The consequences of abandoning God would be so evident that even outsiders would read the lesson.

But the passage ends with one of Scripture's great humbling verses: the secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. There is much about God's ways and purposes we simply cannot know, the secret things, and we are meant to leave those to him. But what he has revealed, his will and his commands, we are responsible to obey. Wisdom accepts the limits of our knowing and gives its full attention to what God has made clear, rather than exhausting itself over mysteries he has kept to himself.

Am I content to leave the "secret things" to God, while giving my full attention to obeying the things he has clearly revealed?

Sources

Deuteronomy 29:29: "The secret things belong to the LORD our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law."
Deuteronomy 29:25: "Because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers."
Deuteronomy 29:24: "Even all the nations will say, Why has the LORD done this to this land?"